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a-is-for-abel · 3 years ago

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“It’s a very odd sensation, standing over your own grave.” prompt from @givethispromptatry

Crows barked, throaty and dry, from their perch high in the gnarled branches of the tree at the head of the cemetery. The letters etched into the granite before him shined and the heavy mist settled over his shoulders, oppressive and thick.

He counted the crows in the tree, a rhyme coming to mind as the black winged birds called into the fog. "One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a funeral… Four-- Four for..."

A funeral… His brow furrowed. The name on the gravestone drew him back in and he eyed the letters. Bells from the steeple of a church coughed in the distance.

"It's a very odd sensation, standing over your own grave." He turned to see a man leaned against a tall gravestone, a lit cigarette in his fingers. "But you seem to be taking it rather well."

The man flicked a lick of hellish embers off the end and took a long drag. Smoke trailed from his lips and curled over his salt-flat empty eyes. "Say, you haven't died before have you? That'd make this a bit awkward-- See, I don't really do the whole doing someone else's do-over. Those contracts tend to get a little messy, if you know what I mean."

Dressed sharply in a suit jacket and trousers to match, the man didn't stand out quite that oddly against the backdrop of a graveyard. However, with no procession, he was out of place without the rest of the mourners to stand shoulder to shoulder with.

It was even harder not to notice the way he stood a little too tall, a little too pale, and a little too thin...

And the eyes--

He couldn't remember having ever seen eyes like that. Though, he also really couldn't remember how he had gotten here either.

The man frowned, cigarette dangled from his lips. "You're not very talkative are you. That's gonna make this a little hard if you don't at least start asking some questions."

"Who are you?" he asked, voice hoarse.

"Ah, there it is-- Everyone always starts with that one. Never a 'where am I, how'd I get here', it's always the who are you?" The man shrugged. "I got a lot of names, kid. Just make one up, it'll probably be better that way."

Paul. It was the first name that came to mind, risen like the valleys of weathered hands and deep-set wrinkles the name brought with it.

"Paul?" The man hissed, eyes scrunching as he flicked the cigarette onto the ground and ground it out with the toe of his dress shoe. "Wow, you're real bad at this. Look, I'll settle for something like, uh-- How's Paal sound? Good? Great."

Even as Paal dismissed it, he tried to latch onto the name Paul and the hands that came with it. Somehow, he knew those hands had shown him how to hold a chisel and carve with the grain and not against it. That they had smoothed down his hair and lain flat against the crown of his skull as the other drew a new line against the door jamb, and he had childishly smiled at the inch gap that had grown between it and the old one below.

"Well, now that we got names out of the way--" Paal reached into his coat and pulled free a scroll. "Let's get down to business."

The parchment unfurled with a dry cough, ink dripped over the page and rearranged itself into letters that shimmered, ruddy and wet.

"So, for starters, my contracts are pretty straightforward. I don't do all that funny business the others do." Paal pointed to the second line. "The overall payment is going to be your eternal soul, of course. The only exception I'll make here is if you can name something of equal value and I also deem said thing of equal value. Now, don't get all excited. Not a lot of things add up to a human soul. Unless you'll be trading someone's else's soul as your payment. Simple math and all of that."

His eternal soul? He looked at the cross atop the gravestone and wine-dipped stained glass and the pulpit of a church flitted to the forefront along with it.

"We on the same page here? You look a little lost?" Paal asked, tilting his head.

"Sorry, I just--" He furrowed his brow. "Am I dead?"

Paal pointed to the grave. "Is that your body in there?"

"I--" He looked at his hands. "I think so."

"I wouldn't say I'm a genius myself, but I think we can both put two and two together here."

He grit his teeth. "Right…"

"Fantastic-- Now, onto the good stuff." Paal pointed further down the parchment. "So, in exchange for said eternal soul, I grant you a few things. First off, you get to get up on your own two feet and walk out of that grave. A pretty good deal, right?"

"Deals go two ways."

"See, now you're catching on--" Paal pointed at him and then tapped the next line on the scroll. "Alright, so it's pretty damn expensive to bring a soul back to life. Maker's got an idea in mind and tampering with that's always gonna cost you a little extra."

"Do you mean money? I don't exactly..." He held his hands out, the empty state of his pockets hopefully obvious.

Paal laughed. "Money? What the hell am I going to do with money? No, no, no-- I need a favor."

"A favor?" He asked, eyes narrowing.

"Yeah! A favor. something pretty simple, actually. But to get that body back and with all your precious little memories intact, you gotta do something to pay for that. More than just signing off your soul, that is."

"And who exactly am I paying back?"

Paal grimaced. "You're asking questions you really don't want the answers to, kid."

"Fine." He rubbed at his jaw. "What's the favor then?"

"Bounty hunting. Or collecting, I guess?" Paal gestured vaguely. "Whatever-- Basically, a few folks deferred on their contracts and I need to collect on their souls a little early."

"How early is early?" he asked, squinting.

"Well, I'd say I'm a pretty generous dealer. I give you about how much worldly time you should've had-- Had things not gone absolutely shit for you." Paal held up a finger. "So, in this case, I'd be collecting these souls well before they croak from becoming all ripe and old like they normally would've."

"So, I get my life back..." He chewed the inside of his cheek and glanced at the cross on the gravestone. "Is that it?"

"Is that it?'" Paal mocked and then grinned. "Look at you, already driving a hard bargain."

"You wouldn't have come to me if my soul wasn't worth something."

"Did you come to that astonishing conclusion all by yourself?" Paal said flatly.

He glanced over the demon.

Or devil... Or whatever hellish equivalent he was supposed to be. The lack of the classic horns or even a tail made it hard to pin any kind of fiendish charm to him. Besides the eyes and the pallor of someone who's never seen the light of day, he looked rather ordinary...

And his memories, few and far between-- muddled even-- like he was reliving them from underwater-- As unreliable as those memories were, he still remembered sitting upon a pew in a sun-washed room, a pastor at the head of the church, attesting how the devil would always wager in ways that would seem fair and just, but never were.

"What else do I get?"

"Greedy, aren't you? Fine." Paal rolled up the scroll part way and pointed at a line halfway down. "You can't die. At least while you're contracted under me to collect souls. If you call on me and I deem the request reasonable enough I can and will help you. Think of it like, uh-- Praying to a guardian angel. Except I'm absolutely nothing like that and I'll actually show up."

"And collecting on these contracts? What does that entail?"

"Killing them, for starters." Paal said simply. "I can't exactly grab their souls when they're still kicking around like that. And a lot of them have found ways to sort of, eh-- protect themselves from me. But you're just a bag of bones, maybe a little bit juiced up when I'm done with you, but you'll be human enough."

He didn't feel like picking that last aside apart too much. "So, you want me to kill for you?"

"Yes."

"How exactly?"

Paal flicked his hand and the scroll snapped out of sight with a thwick. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled free a revolver. Six-shot, shined, scarred with engravings up and down the muzzle and wrapped around the barrel. Handle a bone-white ivory, pale and unblemished.

Paal held it out to him. "With this."

Dropped into his palms with little fanfare, he cradled it, as if a newborn lamb. He glanced up from the gunmetal shine after a beat. "I can't shoot."

"Oh, you won't have to. You just have to aim." Paal formed his fingers into a mock-gun and pointed it at his forehead before mouthing ‘pow'. "It does all the hard work for you. Unless you're into that kind of thing, then by all means I'll take the training wheels off of it and let you do the trigger pulling."

"No…" he swallowed, careful to keep the muzzle pointed away from himself. "Training wheels is fine."

"Fantastic. Do we have a deal then? All of this--" Paal gestured to the whole of him. "--for the meager, one time price of doing a simple chore for me."

He stared flatly.

"And your eternal soul after you've lived a long and happy life, but that's just semantics," Paal laughed, waving him off.

He tilted the gun in his palms and glanced down at his pockets. It wouldn't exactly fit very well… "Is there a holster?"

"Oh, right--" Paal patted his chest and fished around in his suit jacket before drawing out a belt. "Here. It's a bit used, but at least it's already worn in, right?"

Mottled stains scattered the edges of the leather belt and where intricate markings had been stamped and tooled into the holster itself.

"Thanks…" he said, pinching it between two fingers while trying to find a good way to hold the pistol with his other hand.

"Woah, don't sound too grateful there, champ," Paal said. "You'd think I wasn't about to do you the biggest favor of your life."

He paused in his inspection of the holster and gave Paal the flattest look he could muster.

"Get it?" Paal's grin dropped. "Not a funny guy then… Noted."

Finally, managing to holster the gun he slipped the belt around his waist and fumbled with the buckle before fastening it. "How exactly do we seal the deal?"

"Eager, are we?" Paal held out his hand. "Just shake my hand and that's it. None of that writ in blood nonsense."

He wrinkled his nose.

Paal flexed his fingers and held his hand out further. "Look, if you really need me to draw up a traditional contract and give you a copy, I can do that too, but it's dreadfully boring and I do enough paperwork as it is. I mean, what do you have to lose, honestly? You're already dead. I'm just offering you a second chance… and a little bit of revenge."

"Revenge?"

"No one ends up dead in a ditch with a pack of dogs eating their face without being fucked over somewhere along the road."

"I don't…" He knitted his brow. "It's hard to remember."

"Oh, it'll be like that for a bit. It gets better once we get everything settled. Trust me though, you've got quite the bone to pick with someone back up there. And I for one would love to see how it all pans out."

"This is a form of entertainment for you," he said flatly, eyeing the still outstretched hand.

"What's the harm in mixing business and pleasure?" Paal smirked. "Plus it'll be fun to see what you do."

"Can you not bring back the memories now?"

Paal tutted. "That's quite expensive, and we haven't made a deal yet."

"How do I know I even want to go back then?"

"Does it even matter who you were before if you get a re-do?"

He looked at the name on the gravestone. "Won't they recognize me?"

"Oh, no-- Uh, see, you're not going back into your original body." Paal grimaced. "I can only repair so much and those dogs really did a number on you."

"Great…"

"Don't worry though, I got a good one picked out for you. Close enough to be uncanny even. Just some little differences, barely noticeable."

He grimaced.

"Don't you humans love taking leaps of faith? What's with all the hemming and hawing? What happened to all that stupid recklessness?"

"Not all of us are stupid."

Paal groaned. "I would get stuck with the biggest coward this side of the Mississippi."

'Look, it's lil' yellow-bellied Bern!'

'Just take it from him. He's not gonna do shit-- He'd flinch at a fly if it looked at him wrong.'

'Pa said he's soft. That his own daddy made him like that.'

He blinked, flinching and scrunching up his eyes at the sudden, sharp jab that needled at his skull. "I'm not a coward."

"Then take my hand."

His head pounded, and if he really was dead he wondered why he could still feel that out of everything. If the sweat pricked along the back of his neck was more memory than actual sensation, or if the way his tongue had grown heavy in his jaw was all made up too. He eyed Paal's hand and the discolored fingernails, the sheet white skin, the odd scarring along the knuckles and on the palms.

'Leave and don't you ever come back here. And if I ever see you again, you'll be begging the devil to take your soul from me first.'

He grit his teeth, fingers curling into fists.

The voice bit across his cheek like knuckles, like blood on his tongue and smattered across his hands. It curled like snake oil and melted wax, like the dust settled over the rafters of an ever empty church and like floorboards stained with drying flecks of rust.

He reached for Paal's hand and Paal grabbed his wrist instead, wrapped his fingers around him and squeezed, hard enough he twisted with the motion. Paal didn't budge, no matter how he pried at him, and the hand burned-- Burned the way laying your palm across a sheet of ice stung and wormed its way deeper and deeper the longer you left it there.

He stumbled as Paal released him, clutching at his wrist and hissing. "What the hell?"

"Part of the contract. It'll fade in a second."

The burning stopped and when he let go of his wrist, a coiling band of white took its place. Sat snugly, flat and lined with black, was an ivory snake wrapped three times about his wrist. The head of the serpent rested along the heel of his thumb, eyes a nearly translucent blue. It faded, still standing out against his skin, more like an impossibly pale tattoo and less like the actual snake it was a moment ago. His arm ached dully with it, like he had come in from a long frigid day, and his fingers cramped as the feeling returned to the very tips of him.

"Oh, right-- You'll be needing bullets." Paal grabbed his hand and dropped a freezing piece of metal into it.

More followed as Paal fished around in his suit jacket for them. At the fourth one Paal paused. "What was that little rhyme you were doing before I arrived? I rather enjoy that one. The ending is always my favorite."

He watched where the bullets settled in his palm. The casings a blood-red ebony and the bullet itself the shade of bone.

"And four for birth…" Paal dropped another bullet. "Five for heaven..." Another. "And six for hell," Paal said with a smirk, manually curling his hand around the bullets and patting it. "Now keep track of those, they're not exactly easy to make."

He didn't tell Paal that he didn't finish the poem, that there was still one more line that needed to be said to complete it. Instead, he pocketed the bullets.

"Walk with me a sec--" Paal grabbed his shoulder and nudged him forward.

They meandered along the lines of graves, passing headstones that varied in shape and size, some cared for, with flowers and candles and even worn sepia photos left at their feet. Others were less fortunate. Grown over, dulled, and abandoned.

They stopped before one with a less modest headstone. A large stone cross jutted up from the top and an angel carved above the name of the soul that was laid to rest below their feet.

"You know, I really do think this is the start of a great partnership..."

He raised a brow.

"Marcus J. Bern--" He flinched at the name, not expecting it to fall from Paal's mouth so casually. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you."

He hesitated, shoulders drawing up, hand coming to rest on the gun at his hip. "Uh, you too…?"

Paal smiled, like he found that amusing. And he hadn't noticed how sharp his teeth looked until he was staring the oversized canines dead in the face.

"Now--" Paal said, placing his hands on his shoulders, dusting them off before squeezing lightly. "This might hurt a bit."

"What--"

Paal shoved him.

He fell and fell and the earth swallowed him whole.

Dirt and silt and death surrounded him. Impossibly endless and vast, the grave didn't catch him as it should have. And the chill that bit at his limbs gnawed feverishly, right down to the core of him until he felt a yell clog up with the hallowed ground packed against his tongue. Further and further he descended, gut flipping and twisting with him, until he thought this would be his new forever. That Paal had lied to him, and he would simply be doomed to free fall for the rest of eternity, until all returned to dust as it had once emerged and longer still.

Light broke up the darkness overhead and he reached for it, arm outstretched. The white snake coiled around his wrist writhed and burned at the first touch of it and dripping with pale ichor, his veins stood out a ghastly silver against him. A venom coursed through him as it wound further and further down, closer and closer to where his heart had thrummed to life and kicked against his ribs in a fevered fit. He clutched at his chest as the ground-- as something-- hurtled towards him.

Breath slammed into him with a rattling gasp and his eyes shot open.

Blinded, he blinked and squinted against the grace of a new day, trembling and shaking where he had woken upon the dirt. The cross of the gravestone cast a merciful shadow over him and he could see the tangled fingers of the tree beyond it.

Raucous caws chorused above him. A murder of crows dotted the grey sky overhead, having flighted from their perches high in the dead limbed oak.

One, two, three, four, five, six--

"And seven for the devil, his own self..." he muttered, hand falling to his hip and the gun now holstered there.

#writeblr #creative writing #writing #prose #prompt fill #original work #my writing #fiction #demons #gothic vibes #this is technically me testing out these two for a longer novel idea #the prompt just happened to fit really well #its a bit long but it got away from me #hell's comin' with me #making that the official tag for this i guess in case i ever expand on the two of them and the world etc #thank you for the prompt!!

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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Welcome back, everyone! Starting here in Chapter Six these recaps are doing double duty with my latest attempt at completing National Novel Writing Month. Granted, this isn’t a novel and yes, I technically started this project well before November, but there’s no way I’d manage 50,000 words of fiction in 2020, so I’m hoping to hit that with these recaps instead. You all get semi-frequent updates and I may get to finally say I completed this challenge! That’s a win-win as far as I’m concerned.

Quick reminder: new teams, CFVY was separated, everything is awful. There, done. Seventy-five pages in we’ve come back to Velvet’s point of view as she and the other students are carted off in airbuses. She’s experiencing the “same shock and dismay” that she saw on Yatsuhashi’s face before they were separated, thus I’d like to re-emphasize last chapter’s argument that though shaking up the teams isn’t inherently a bad idea, doing it in this way while your students are recovering from/still involved in a war is… not so great for their mental health. Yeah, yeah, Remnant is a hard place and these kids experience traumatic events on the weekly, but still. There’s a fine line between preparing students for that kind of life and simply traumatizing them further, because this is a kind of trauma when the teams so heavily rely on one another - fill every aspect of one another’s lives: friend, colleague, family, teacher, student, leader, follower, romantic partner - and you’re now uprooting them with no warning. Whether or not new teams actually happen, the students think they are and that’s messing with their heads. Basically they’re just:

This problem is highlighted when we get confirmation of what I stated last time: the teams aren’t merely colleagues turned friends, but family. These fighters have got all their emotional eggs in one basket. Velvet goes so far as to imply that she loves her team more than her parents, with the logic being that they (her parents) “never talked to each other anymore.” So… if Coco and Yatsuhashi stopped talking would that undermine your love for each of them as individuals? I get what the overall takeaway is - divorce is a nasty business and can leave lasting scars on kids caught in the middle, to say nothing of the fact that, as a young adult, Velvet is poised to start creating a family by choice, not blood - but it’s still an odd way to phrase the issue. Here we have another instance of me picking up on implications due to RWBY, the franchise’s, overall themes. When you’ve got a story so thoroughly touting a teens vs. adults mentality, having Velvet mentally reject her parents for her team reads differently than it otherwise would. Chock that onto the pile that already includes things like, ‘Ruby denies that Qrow ever helped her’ and ‘Yang is no longer a part of grieving for Summer’ and ‘Weiss seems to have forgotten all that Klein did for her.’ There’s a lot of uncomfortable details attached to our heroes and how they see the adults in their lives, parents included.

Velvet doesn’t get to worry for long though. A much happier voice sounds across the airbus and she spots Sun, classically hanging from his tail. Instead of hearing more about her fears we segue into - you guessed it - Sun bashing. The first thought to pop into her head is that Sun “wasn’t with the rest of his team, but knowing Sun, that might have been his decision.”

...Velvet, you just tried desperately to stay with your own team and were (somehow) swept away by the apparently overwhelming crowed (still ridiculous imo). But if you didn’t manage this, what makes you think Sun had a chance? Why is his separation suddenly a potential choice when yours was presented as nothing of the sort? That is some real insistence on thinking the worst of him. I dragged Sun for abandoning his team in Volume 4 because that was abandonment. It was a choice worthy of criticism. This? This was outside of his control and Velvet knows it.

Sun saw her, smiled, and waved. Velvet looked away.

Nice, Velvet.

He comes over anyway and (kindly!) asks if she’s okay. Velvet says no, specifically because “Yatsu and I were separated.” Here we have another example of how close the partners get even within each team. Blake and Yang are inseparable. Ruby talks to Weiss more than her sister (and the concept of her talking to Blake in any meaningfully way is hilarious at this point). Now, despite being separated from her entire team - everyone is in the same awful boat - Velvet frames the situation as just being separated from Yatsuhashi. Later she repeats, “Well, I still want to try to find Yatsu.” So would it be a disappointment to find Fox or Coco instead? It’s especially weird because in the main show we see Velvet and Coco interacting the most. I actually had to look up who Velvet’s partner was because I just assumed our two girls were a duo. Apparently not. I’m not really into the CFVY side of the fandom, but I imagine there’s a substantial ship community for these two based solely on how Velvet embraces RWBY partnerships in this book, outside of the always popular Velvet/Coco, of course.

That’s admittedly a ship I can get behind.

After Velvet unloads all her worries “Sun stared ahead, like he couldn’t quite manage to feel bad.” Attention, readers, this is an important lesson coming up! In fandom spaces I often see people analyzing novels (and other print media/visual media with narration) without taking into consideration the perspective. Unless we’ve got an omniscient perspective we need to take into account that our narrator might, simply put, be wrong (and even then, omniscient unreliable narrators are a popular choice). Often I see readers taking a characters’ thoughts - and words - at face value, which is understandable given that we’re meant to emotionally connect with them, but we have to keep in mind that this is their interpretation of events. We see the story through their eyes, how they perceive the world, but their perception of the world may not be accurate or, at the very least, is open to further interpretation. Sometimes this is used in an obvious, plot-driven manner - there’s a surprise twist for the reader, made possible because our protagonist was likewise kept in the dark - but it applies to our reading of more casual interactions too. This is a good example. Just because Velvet says Sun looks “like he couldn’t quite manage to feel bad” doesn’t mean that’s actually how Sun feels. As we’ve just re-established, Velvet is inclined to think the worst of Sun, or at least consider the worst as a distinct possibility. So if we’re asking the question, “Is Velvet’s perspective accurate to reality here?” weighing her previous assumptions against actions like Sun smiling, waving, and asking how she’s doing, AKA caring about her situation… I’d say no, it’s likely not.

At least she doesn’t outright accuse him of anything. Given that he’s not privy to these insulting thoughts, Sun chatters on about the test. He thinks it “isn’t a bad idea” because, as established, a lot of students lost teammates and are having trouble settling into Shade while still trying to live the life they had at Beacon. Changing the teams could be a “chance to really commit to our new school and our training, and learn from one another in a new way.” That’s what I think!

“Right… Or maybe some of us burned bridges with our team and might be looking for an easy way to avoid fixing those relationships.”

Velvet what the actual fuck. Can our cast NOT be assholes for five minutes??

Sun goes red at the accusation and calls her out on being harsh. “Tough love” Velvet calls it. Okay, no. Tough love is reserved for people you’re actually friends with and is meant to have them face a harsh reality they might be avoiding. Sun is avoiding an overt apology with his team, but we (and Velvet) have been given no indication that his thoughts on the test are a smokescreen to hide ulterior motives, which is what she’s talking about here. Sun clearly wants to make up with his team, he’s just struggling to accept what needs to be done to do that. Tough love would have been Velvet encouraging Sun to use this separation to reflect on what his team means to him and then, regardless of whether they end up back together, apologizing for how he unintentionally hurt them. Not… this. Plus, again, Velvet hasn’t exactly been friendly lately. She has little ground for dishing out “tough love.” You need established “love” before the “tough” part.

In addition, she’s not listening to what Sun’s saying. “If they want us prepared for an attack, breaking up teams sounds counterproductive.” When did Sun mention anything about an attack? That’s your assumption of what’s going down based on the illegal investigation you’ve been assisting with. Sun just said that changing the teams would provide some of them with a much needed clean slate, which is true. Just because that’s not what Velvet needs doesn’t mean it’s not useful for others. As she eventually acknowledges, they can get too comfortable in the roles they’ve been playing.

We get her line about wanting to find Yatsuhashi followed by, “Sun, you do whatever you want. That’s what you’re good at.” Velvet seriously? Then minutes later she’s hoping Sun sticks close to her if he can. Real talk: everyone deserves better than this. ‘Friends’ who constantly act like your presence is a burden, insult you whenever they get the chance, insist such insults are for your benefit (it’s just tough love), but then turn around and play nice when you have something they want... those aren’t friends. Note that Velvet is - both privately and overtly - mean to Sun while he’s just existing in the airbus, going through the same horrible test as her, trying to be nice, and holding an otherwise civil conversation. While trapped on the bus with nowhere to go, Sun is a nuisance despite his best efforts. When the floor suddenly opens up and Velvet is terrified of falling and surviving on her own though, then his presence is desirable. That’s not friendship and in another story I’d praise the author(s) for writing a compelling move from shaky acquaintances to a strong bond… but I’m honestly not sure that the relationship (any of them, really) will improve. Far as I can gather, Myers thinks this is friendship.

So Velvet accuses Sun of always and forever hurting others in his pursuit of doing what pleases him (after checking in on Velvet… literally minutes ago…) which is right around when Scarlet decides to make himself known. He agrees with Sun’s belief that this test will be harder than they assume: “I think you’re right… For a change.” Everything comes with a caveat. Apparently Scarlet has been listening in the whole time, but somehow manages to turn that into an insult as well with “I’ve been standing five feet away. Maybe I’m ready for a new team, too.” Wait, is the implication that Scarlet is further annoyed because Sun didn’t notice him? Do you all have ANY idea how many times a friend has stood right next to me and I didn’t notice them because I was caught up in something like work, a show… a conversation? I’m oblivious af. I get that Sun has things to make up for but at the very least these characters could keep their criticisms to what he’s actually done wrong, not crazy reaches like, ‘Sun probably abandoned his team when everyone was separated’ or ‘Sun was busy talking to Velvet and didn’t notice me eavesdropping, so I guess I don’t mean much to him, huh.’ I’m constantly torn between the presumed realism of this writing - people are unfair in their criticisms, teens do hold unsubstantiated grudges - and acknowledging that Myers seems to have felt confident writing (1) personality and just gave it to everyone. Velvet privately becomes as critical as Coco, who is as vocal as Fox, who agrees with Yatsuhashi, who echoes Sun’s team, and Sun himself often throws that attitude right back. Round and round we go.

As one might imagine, the three begin theorizing about what the test itself will be like. Usually Shade sets up initiation just like this. Students are transported in windowless airbuses, dumped in the desert, and told to find their way home. I’m interested in the bit about how teams are made up not only based on arrival, but also “the manner in which [the students] survived.” It definitely lends support to the assumption I’ve always had that the teams can really be random. At least not entirely. There’s strategy on the part of the instructors, thinking through aspects like, ‘Well, these two students used their wits in this manner so they’d pair together nicely.’ Or the reverse, ‘Put together the strategist with the student in love with blunt force, let them balance each other out.’ I certainly don’t think that Ozpin formed teams based solely on who ran into each other first. Not only do we have agency on the part of the students (Weiss leaves Ruby, then Jaune, then goes back to Ruby), as well as the fact that two sets of partners had to be paired together someway, but Ozpin was also carefully watching their whole performance. If the only thing that mattered was getting back to Beacon with a chess piece, why bother examining their choices? Shade appears to employ a similar setup of careful decisions portrayed as randomness, which would make sense given that Ozpin set up these schools. Though all the headmasters may not realize it (is Theodore a part of the inner circle?), or perhaps don’t agree with his methods overall, Ozpin’s influence is undeniably evident in each institution we’ve seen.

The only difference between normal initiation and this test seems to be that the students have to find a gold figurine this time around. Though as our trio points out, there’s likely to be other differences as well, otherwise the original Shade students would have a pretty significant advantage.

During all this Velvet remanences about Beacon’s initiation and we learn that Ozpin does, apparently, use the whole ‘Throw you into the woods where you’ll find some relic’ setup each year, as Velvet remembers being “thrown into the air” during hers. She also hits on another concern that hadn’t crossed my mind until now: what if a team includes a new student alongside the “more vocal in harassing recruits from Beacon and Haven?” It might do the Shade students some good to get to know the newcomers, but it’s not the newcomers’ responsibility to teach them some basic respect and kindness.

During all this Rumpole, via a screen, has been explaining how the test will go down. Her little info session concludes with her telling them to “Prepare for drop-off… See you back home soon.” I really like that she used the term “home” here. It says something about how she views the school and her students’ place in it, despite the tough attitude and tougher culture of Vacuo.

Turns out, when Rumpole said drop-off she meant that literally. The floor opens up and we get a mix of some students panicking while others just happily jump out.

Yeet.

Like I said, Ozpin’s influence.

I didn’t understand the panic initially - aren’t landing strategies a basic part of huntsmen training, something everyone (except Jaune) is expected to know coming into a school? Isn’t it at least partway through the year when everyone, even firsties, has had practice at this? - until I remembered Rumpole’s comment about how she hoped everyone remembered to bring their weapons this morning.

…that’s one hell of a lesson. Let’s break this down for a second. Yes, everyone at Shade is expected to carry their weapons at all times, but the meeting that started all this was early in the morning and, far as I can tell, entirely unexpected. ‘Supposed to’ is not the same thing as ‘will,’ especially when one is dealing with college-equivalent students who are still figuring expectations out. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone did leave their weapon behind. So now what? These buses are thousands of feet in the air, dropping students randomly as they jump/fall. If a student did need help how in the world would a professor assist them? Do they just expect other students to help like Pyrrha did for Jaune? It’s possible given that in a moment Octavia will help Velvet despite seeming to dislike her... but that’s not something I’d want to bank on. Whether a student forgot their weapon or has a weapon unsuited to a landing strategy, they’re going to die from this fall. Yeah, yeah, the test is supposed to be deadly, but what’s there to learn then? You’re dead! The lesson ‘Don’t forget your weapon’ or ‘Find a weapon more suited to landing strategies’ will never stick unless there are contingency plans in place to ensure that students survive their first mistakes.

It just all seems kind of flimsy, like everything works out because the plot says it must, not because I believe this in-world setup is geared towards keeping students alive and teaching them how to survive this world. (The reverse of the story conveniently not killing civilians off during a major grimm attack.) If landing strategies are so crucial to a huntsmen’s work - and we see them a lot - why are students allowed to have weapons like Yatsuhashi’s Fulcrum that, far as I can see, provide you with no way of slowing your descent? What if you don’t have a suitable semblance? Or it hasn’t been unlocked yet? What if your weapon would work, theoretically, but you haven’t taken any pictures of other suitable weapons lately (Velvet)? What if you never figure out that there are parachutes on the ship? Unless the instructors have a secret way of saving someone from getting splattered, this seems like a test rife with deadly mistakes, not just encounters. Why not teach your students to carry mini high-tech parachutes on their belts, with weapons and semblances as backups? Incorporate Atlas tech into standard schooling, then give us huntsmen who suddenly have it taken away with the embargo, resulting in a lot of problems. I mean, the students are legit scared in this scene, Velvet included. Having them face deadly grimm is one thing, but why test the odds with a thousand foot plunge when there’s absolutely no reason to? Far as I can see, the schooling isn’t built around ensuring they survive a fall like this - nothing like weapon requirements, or carrying additional gear if you semblance is something like Ren’s - which means making the fall a part of the test itself is... not great.

Which, to be clear, is the fault of the author(s) and how much thought (or not) they’ve put into their fictional school, not the fictional school’s fault because it’s, you know, fictional. Basically, the world building in this series kind of drives me nuts, in case you haven’t noticed lol.

Velvet does find the parachutes, oh so conveniently, and at least has the decency to give one to Sun. Also yeah, kudos for thinking to search for them in the first place. I do like the ‘survival is the only thing that counts’ theme. Cheating, lying, and the like is great when it’s used because the odds are already stacked against you. We get her agreement to try and stick close because remember, there’s nothing like a dangerous situation to remind you to be decent towards someone else. As Velvet magnanimously thinks, “Being with Sun would be better than being alone.”

Okay. Low bar, but okay.

So they fall and we get to hear a fair bit about Vacuo’s history based on what Velvet remembers about each landmark from history class. Honestly, I’m impressed at her recall. I wouldn’t be able to dredge up class notes while falling through the air. We get an abandoned city previously hidden by sand and the somewhat confusing sentence, “These were all that was left of the underground mines, the Drylands, the site of the old Paradise Oasis, long since dried up following Dust mining and the Great War.” Are these three separate places among the rock-less area pockmarked with holes? Or is this a single area of underground mines, called the Drylands (for some reason?), that includes the contrasting place called Paradise Oasis? I’m not sure. The takeaway though is that Velvet hopes Coco isn’t heading to that ambiguously named place because she’s incredibly claustrophobic.

What I find the most informative in all this is the description of the quarries as “physical manifestations of the wounds that still ran deep in the people of Vacuo.” The overall issue of outsiders coming into Vacuo, draining it of its resources, and then taking it back to their own kingdoms (while leaving their trash behind) is the sort of theme significant to our own lives and worthy of examination in fiction… Not saying that RWBY necessarily handles this theme well - especially given the messy conflation of that generational trauma and the awful treatment of any ‘outsider’ who wanders into the kingdom - but I do appreciate when I can see the series trying. Even if it fails, effort is (to an extent) still worth acknowledgement.

What I’m less inclined to praise is the strange follow up of “maybe that was why Rumpole was sending students there.” …what does this mean? Velvet just told us the quarries are the “wounds” of Vacuo, so are they being sent there because they’re dangerous? Because huntsmen will somehow fix this?? Neither of these make sense but I literally don’t know what point Myers is trying to make… which happens a lot. Again, there’s a whole lot of wise-sounding statements in this novel that, at the end of the day, mean very little - if anything at all.

Velvet eventually lands, nearly getting pulled into one of the openings when she can’t get out of her parachute. She’s saved at the last moment by Octavia Ember, a member of Team NDGO. You know, “One of the people she least wanted to run into.” We all knew the moment Velvet worried about running into one of the crueler members of Shade that it would happen.

Their conversation is filled with heartfelt gratitude and riveting greetings:

“Thanks?” Velvet said.

“Whatever.” Octavia sheathed her blade and started walking away. That was more like it.

What is wrong with all of these people? My kingdom for a kind, enthusiastic, non-team exchange!

You know the ‘enemies forced to work together’ conflict couldn’t end there though (a trope I normally love and would likely love here except having Octavia be another stereotypical mean girl was the least innovative choice possible). She and Velvet end up heading towards the same quarry, simply because there’s nothing else for miles around. Velvet displays some quick thinking when she explains that the instructors likely hid the relics in there to ensure they weren’t forever hidden under the sand. Velvet, unlike Yatsuhashi, has also realized that there’s more to the test than just their fighting skills. They’ll be graded on everything, “Including how we treat each other.” I’m always appreciative of characters who use their brains as much as their brawns.

Perhaps that not-so-subtle nudge resonated with Octavia because she opens up a bit. By this I mean she moves from “Whatever” to telling Velvet the traumatizing story of how she lost a third of her clan to Blind Worms in one of these quarries. Okay. That’s a complete 180, but I’ll take it. Velvet continues to have supposed insights about the Vacuans like, ‘Maybe they don’t cry because that’s a waste of water?’ and ‘Maybe they hate everyone on principal because of the past?’ and ‘I guess bullying is just something you’re supposed to survive out here’ (um… no.) In Velvet - and Myers’ - defense she acknowledges that none of these explanations excuse their actions… but I’m not so sure it explains them either. A few chapters ago we were hammering home how teens don’t have an emotional connection to their past, despite it not actually being that long ago (recall Coco’s conversation with Rumpole in class), but now we’re supposed to believe that all of these teens reject newcomers because of stuff that happened during a war they weren’t alive for? Also, I’m neither a doctor nor an anthropologist, but the concept of a desert people refusing to cry because it’s a waste of water - especially in an otherwise advanced civilization - seems suspect. I can buy someone being unable to cry because they’re currently dehydrated, but a whole culture denying themselves this outlet when most of them don’t actually lack water anymore is odd.

Granted, culture isn’t always logical. Case in point: memes. So let’s give that a pass.

However, we’ve still got the issue of continuity across paragraphs. First Velvet is smug because she’s a better climber than Octavia. Then Octavia is ahead and supposedly annoyed that Velvet was slowing her down. It’s unclear when, or if, they’ve finished climbing at this point and a second later Octavia is climbing a tree - why didn’t Velvet do that? Really, I lay little blips like this at the feet of the editors, not the author(s), simply because as an author I know precisely how easy it is to lose track of every detail you’ve introduced. It becomes obvious to the reader when things don’t quite align, but it will often go unnoticed by the writer - like typos. (RIP my own work.) Which is why you need that second perspective to not just catch the big mistakes, but tweak all the smaller ones too. RWBY is now a part of WarnerMedia and Before the Dawn was published by Scholastic. There’s a standard here I don’t think either is meeting.

As said previously though, Octavia climbs a tree because Velvet - with faunus eyes - spotted a trinket the others had missed. Octavia falls, Velvet catches her, and a whole swarm of Ravagers show up, which seem to be a bat-like grimm. Nice. My gothic, vampire, Stellaluna loving ass can get behind that.

Behold: my childhood.

They make a run for it and we - finally - get some solidarity as Octavia admits that the relic is technically Velvet’s and Velvet wonders in turn if they can share it. I offered my kingdom for a kind exchange and I got it! Hurray! More importantly, apparently that is an option because the airbus coordinates have shown up on both their scrolls. I’m not going to pretend that I understand how that tech works, but that’s a level of world building we don’t actually need. Not unless the hypothetical of students piggybacking on another’s relic is a part of the evaluation.

I love that Velvet used her camera flash to scare off the Ravager in their way. That’s a fantastic twist on the ‘Velvet will use her semblance and impress Octavia’ expectation as well as a great way to demonstrate that she is a formidable fighter, capable of paying attention to her situation/surroundings and responding accordingly.

There are more Ravagers though, incoming Blind Worms, an avalanche… and the airbus. A narrow escape indeed. Octavia drops that attention-catching, “Thank the Brothers” as they reach safety.

Going back to my earlier point about Shade seeming happy to kill its kids, apparently Velvet and Octavia were the last to reach the bus and Sun told the pilot to wait. That says good things about Sun, but horrible things about the test. If Sun hadn’t insisted on staying would Octavia and Velvet have had a way out? Why in the world wasn’t the pilot told to wait longer?? The whole timeline is confusing, with Sun and Velvet leaving the airship only a short time after everyone else, but it looks like the whole group was way ahead of them (the quarry is empty of both relics and people by the time they arrive), except Sun managed to get super far ahead of Velvet somehow, and their pilot was apparently working under an unspoken deadline… I’m just taking information at face value because if you try to piece it all together, good luck.

Also sorry, but I straight up laughed at Sun’s “You woke up the Ravagers. And you lived to tell the tale.” That is so unnecessarily dramatic. Oh no. Not the Ravagers. Literally the first thing I thought of was some B horror movie like

Coming only to a streaming service near your couch because we’re still living through a pandemic. Wear your masks, friends!

Back to this very entertaining reaction. Sun, you and Velvet have both taken out Atlesian knights, you fought a gigantic sea monster with Blake, and Velvet just bypassed a nest of Ravagers with a simple bright light. If RWBY is going to randomly try and make the grimm threatening again, do it with stuff that actually reads as a significant threat to these fighters. After you’ve got your first years blasting through (Yang) and riding (Nora) bear grimm at initiation, a couple of bat grimm just doesn’t cut it.

Moving on, Velvet’s iffy perspective rears its head once more as she thinks, “What if Sun had passed by the trinket in the tree, knowing it would be too dangerous to retrieve it? She and Octavia had not had that luxury.”

There’s a lot wrong with this theory:

How do you know Sun has better vision, even as a fellow faunus? As Volume 7’s Tyrian attack brought to the surface, supposedly not every faunus has that advantage.

Velvet straight up says that she wasn’t able to see the Ravagers, otherwise she would have warned Octavia about them. The whole point is that they startled her and she fell. So what, Sun not only has faunus vision but better than Velvet’s? (Do monkeys have better vision than rabbits? I have no idea, but this is the kind of stuff I would google if I wanted to potentially draw attention to it in my book).

If that trinket was too dangerous to retrieve, why did the instructors put it there in the first place? Fox mentioned things being unfair with his lack of sight, but that’s a pretty big difference: easy grabs in a supposedly abandoned quarry vs. a grab that wakes up the whole nest of grimm.

“She and Octavia had not had that luxury” why does this sound like another dig at Sun? Like it’s worth criticizing that he… got there first? Got lucky with the relics closer to the floor? Probably because everything is a dig at Sun in this book, including Velvet’s surprise that he might have “respect in his eyes.” Velvet! He was just asking about you, made the bus wait, and has always worn his heart on his sleeve! Sun’s respect/care is not in question, only how he chooses (at times) to display it.

Not that the story seems to get that. We can’t work through Sun’s questionable choices if we’re stuck in this never ending loop of ‘He’s so annoying/incompetent/willfully cruel’ into ‘Hark! is that a positive trait I see?’ and then back to ‘Never mind he’s awful.’ Maybe Velvet’s pride at his reaction to the Ravagers will finally move things forward.

Which is where we leave off. The airbus scares off the other Ravagers with its guns, the group heads back towards Shade (or a second part of the test? That did feel too much like a normal initiation to be fair), and Velvet ends with the equally dramatic line, “The initiation ritual had been hard and almost deadly, and even worse was yet to come: the assignment of the new teams.”

I have to say though, that is the most teen-accurate thought I’ve seen so far. An 18 year old would be more scared of their team social life than getting eaten by a monster lol.

On that note, drop a comment or an ask if you feel like being social yourself and I’ll see you during the next burst of NaNoWriMo energy! 💜

[ Ko-Fi ]

#rwby #BTD Recaps #Before the Dawn #mymetas

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unscharf-an-den-raendern · 4 years ago

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"Am I doing these things because I'm neurotypical or did I just learn them due to masking or are they due to my anxiety/social anxiety/some other mental illness?"- A Novel by Me. (Though I just read the social anxiety is suspected to be caused by neurochemical imbalances and hyperactivity in some areas of the brain, so I guess that counts as neurodiversity?)

Like:

I had no idea what you were supposed to do after someone complimented you, until someone told me in 7th grade.

I had no idea what's the right amount of days to go without showering, so I established a routine (and if I go one day above the usual amount of days I get uncomfortable. Going under is fine.)

Some girl from 8th grade, two grades under me: *is autistic* Me, watching her: "She reminds me of younger me. Well, I just hope they won't bully her."

Apparently neurotypicals don't usually flap their hands when they're exited?

I had two stims I got bullied for because I wasn't aware people would notice them, so I switched to more socially accepted stims similar to nervous fidgeting.

Other stims included twirling and chewing on my hair but I had to stop doing them at home cause they damaged my hair.

There are some things where I'm not sure if they are/were just an obsesssion or a special interest. Like, do neurotypical people get this feeling where they're so obsessed with something they find it hard thinking about anything else because it makes them so happy? I have a lot of diary entries that are just me rambling over my latest obsession cause I couldn't talk to people about them.

For example, I have 53 hours of playtime im Portal 2 singleplayer, a linear game, because I was so obsessed with it I finished it five times and got all the achievements possible in single player. And I wasn't just interested in the game itself, I was also interested in the lore, the technical stuff behind it, etc.

Complete silence makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

Same goes for unfamiliar situations, I tend to have less anxiety about them when I have a script for them.

I've been told I talk too loud/too quiet even when I think I'm talking at a normal volume.

One time I had a "crush" on someone and pretty much every diary entry from that time is me misinterpreting social cues.

My fine motor skills suck. Never learned how to ride a bike. Can't swim properly. Can't tie my shoes using the bunny ears method. Trouble with buttoning and unbuttoning shirts, etc.

A very early diary entry from a diary I no longer own is me being at my grandparents house and being irritated by a smell nobody else noticed.

I notice details a lot. Number plates, text in the background, etc.

One time we talked about white lies in class and one of them was telling a terminally ill person they're going to get better and I was like "That doesn't make sense, why would they say that?" Same goes for my mum using white lies. I don't mind if I use them though.

I have trouble differentiating between platonic and romantic attraction because I can't really grasp the difference between them.

I do get sensory overload sometimes but can also be completely fine in large crowds at protests.

I am drawn to people who are also "different" to the majority in some way.

I hated wearing turtlenecks and hair clips when I was a kid and I still hate wearing tight clothes. I was bullied because I didn't wear skinny jeans but I tried wearing them once and was like Nope. I also hated having to put my hair into a ponytail for PE.

I absolutely hated and still hate doing group projects, unless I get assigned a specific task.

Anyhow, I'm still very hesistant to reblog posts about neurodivergent things I do relate to because I always feel like I'm invading a space I don't belong to cause every autism spectrum test out there puts me right on the cusp between neurotypical and neurodivergent.

#shut up charlie

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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march - just some thoughts

i have read more this month than any other month? and its not slowing down its only 3/12 so i have 2/3 of a month to go and i’ve read 26 chapters. even if these chapters are ‘short’ at 10 pages, if i wanna count by ‘20 page’ chunks i’ve still read 13 chunks so far. and i’ve still got more time in the month left. most other months i’ve managed to read ‘a lot’ i read 10-20 chapters. so i’m doing really good.

grammar is a weird thing? in reading i feel like its quite easy now to understand. when listening or watching - same. and yet if asked ‘why do i say/type X’ or ‘why is it written/spoken like X’ i have absolutely no explanation in my head. i could not explain the grammar if prompted. this puts me in a weird place and i feel like i SHOULD go over a grammar guide again just so i can WORD what i’m intuitively understanding.

this is a bit bizarre to me because within the first 6 months of study i DID read through an entire grammar guide just to get an idea of what i was about to look at, and it hardly made sense once actually reading/watching/listening. i understood the guide fine, but actually Seeing chinese i was still confused. i would reference AllSetLearning’s Chinese Wiki on some basic points, then after 6 months i just stopped. now its been what 1.5 years and - reading is so easy, listening is so easy, grammar wise. none of the grammar confuses me. but i no longer ‘explicitly’ have any idea what the fuck the grammar is. i used to. i studied it explicitly before trying to read/listen. and yet now that i can read/listen, i have no idea how to explain the grammar. i can listen to a podcast and i don’t think about what the grammar is i just get it. i read and just know what i’m looking at. its like english - i cannot fucking explain it. Which makes speaking/writing a bit hard. Because when i try to check if i’m right i have no fucking clue HOW anymore - i just say/write what comes to mind and HOPE it makes sense. i have no way to conciously check for errors except ‘does this feel right’? And that’s not good enough for me lol. So I definitely do need to eventually read a grammar guide for explicit explanations again.

Technically I think “English and Chinese Grammar Side By Side” grammar book would be an excellent one to use. Because i read the first 50 pages of it and it compared it to english (so it explained english too), and it was very easy to understand and started basic then got more involved.

I’m probably gonna use my very old Chinese Grammar Self Taught by Thimm book instead. Just because I really like that book. Then I guess use another after (probably Basic Chinese Sentence Patterns since its modern and perfect for ‘catch your own mistakes’ study and much shorter than Eng+Chinese Grammar side by side).

Anyway I’m in a very weird place right now lol. I know i’m understanding grammar that is stuff I never even studied initially in the grammar guide, but unable to explain what it is, and a lot of stuff i did explicitly study in a grammar guide i completely forgot the explanation for. My reading and listening is GREAT, because all my effort only has to go into learning new words lately! its relaxing! Its the only part i need to do! But my writing/speaking i am very concerned about because being able to check myself for mistakes is something i’d like the ability to do.

how grammar is presented really makes a difference in how well i get it. there is some serious benefit to ‘show simple first then build up what you know’ that text books tend to prefer. versus like grammar reference books that may start with some in depth stuff.

i tried to read a japanese grammar guide the other day and 1 it was great but 2 it covered some ADVANCED stuff i never learned in genki 1+2, and so it was Explicit grammar description of stuff i had literally years ago been immersing in japanese and Still not conciously known about. So i felt. Overwhelmed lol. I felt so confused. I feel like I might switch to Tae Kim’s grammar guide primarily just because its structured with basics covered first. and i feel like until the basics are again glued into my brain, seeing even more advanced stuff just confused me so much i had no idea how to remember it. which is funny because? my usual strategy with grammar guides is to just read it and let what sticks stick and what is confusing be moved on from, in the hope i will later see it again and understand it better. so like based on what i usually do i should’ve just been able to read through it (and i’m gonna try anyway lol). but truly japanese grammar just... my mind does not like wrapping around it and remembering it. (chinese grammar is so much easier for me... so much easier....;-; )

i have been tempted to just Restart Nukemarine’s LLJ (Lets Learn Japanese) memrise decks, because I KNOW they worked for me last time really really well. And they include Tae Kim grammar lessons. And I know if i did it then maybe i’d get back to where i was years ago pretty fast.

I tried Earthlingo app. Its a cool idea, I don’t think its worth it though unless you planned to get Rosetta Stone (since Earthlingo is FREE). Earthlingo features 1000 words per language, taught to you by exploring video game worlds as an alien. Its a cool concept, but since all words seem to be nouns then you aren’t even learning the most common verbs/adjectives. And 1000 words is not a lot. And you could learn 1000 quite fast if using srs flashcards like Memrise or Anki (think weeks if you push yourself, and a month or two months if going at a regular pace). Earthlingo you have to slowly explore the worlds so that eats time, you have to choose to test yourself (so you don’t review nearly as often as flashcard apps), and one test includes walking around the world clicking the object which you’re given the word for (takes time to find the right object). All this means a word that might take maybe 15 minutes to study over a few weeks, might instead take much longer to study and learn. I don’t use duolingo because it generally covers so few words (usually 2000-4000 i think which is good for a beginner resource but you have to do the WHOLE course to get to all those words and i take so long on duolingo that could take YEARS for me versus a month on a flashcard app or clozemaster). Duolingo I also don’t use because it very slowly paces learning material (it takes me months/years to get through 1000 words on duolingo - just personally i go so slow on it, i think faster people would find a use for it). Likewise Lingodeer takes me AGES to get through (and i think covers 2000 words nowadays? I’m shocked Duolingo has more words for the japanese course tbh). However, Lingodeer is by far the best ‘app’ for Japanese grammar lessons in app practice form. Even if basically all the apps feel pretty slow to me in how fast they give you new info. Earthlingo is cool that its free, and for learners 12 and under i think it would be super useful as a way to engage them and keep them studying (since what child likes flashcards? whereas as a child i would’ve loved this). But as an adult Earthlingo is sooooo slow on how fast you can learn words, and it does not even offer very many words (1000 is a nice bare minimum but without verbs/adjectives it can only be a supplementary learning tool for beginners at best).

Link about Lingodeer having 2000 words in a course. (Since its SO hard to lookup how much vocabulary lingodeer includes :c )

Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks (which I’m considering going through again but ToT agh flashcardssssss.... they sure do work though agh)

http://www.chinese-grammar.com/beginner/ - this is the site I read a chinese grammar guide on at like Month 3. I am rereading it now maybe it will help me remember wtf grammar explicitly is. ToT (A tip, read Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced sections). Last time I visited the site you just clicked a section, then saw each fully explained grammar point and clicked ‘next’ it was nice. Now its laid out a little less ideal for me, but its still got all the same nice info! (Also honestly if you are a beginner I really DO like this grammar guide... it introduces basic info first, gradually gets more complex, and i could follow its logic knowing like 200 hanzi and 100 words ToT. its very easy to understand even if it takes a while to apply that info).

im probably gonna read hanshe more today. i’m at the point where either i know enough vocab, or the writers style has just ‘clicked’ idk. but now i just am not getting bogged down by unknown words and am just. speeding through enjoying the plot. Also rip me this novel has 155 chapters and im only on chapter 30.

watching japanese lets plays is really fun! i feel like im 3 years old cause i just see nouns i can learn pretty easy in context cause i know the game well, and hear some vaguely familiar verbs, but its fun! also it helps i know kingdom hearts 2 like by heart so. a lot of it makes me instantly cheerful and nostalgic. roxas’s voice is so cute in the japanese version.

oh i almost forgot: I found a book recently for chinese that for it’s like 10 page grammar guide summary at the beginning ALONE i think is more than worth the 4 dollars it costs to get. It has a ton of compound words and its a reference book in mandarin and cantonese (it has pronunciation for both, all characters are in traditional). I got it initally because it as a bunch of compound words and I’d like to get better at knowing a lot of common ones. But the intro to the book has a page explaining sentence structures in chinese, then examples. Its so straightforward and to the point. I love it. The book is “Understanding Chinese: A Guide to the Usage of Chinese Characters” by Rita Mei-Wah Choy. (There is also a companion book for individual hanzi, which is nice but this book specifically I’m finding more useful).

what i really like about Listening-Reading method, and reading, as study activities: no matter how I do them it is only improvement. I have a tendency to ‘redo’ material i don’t feel i fully mastered, or refuse to move on. So when i have duolingo, flashcards (sometimes i can move on if i ignore reviews/make myself do new stuff), books, grammar guides, self guided classes - i have a tendency to redo the material. over and over. and not progress and challenge myself. whereas with reading - every time i look up a word its useful because its new or something i clearly Need to review (not something i’ve actually learned and can move past reviewing). so whether i reread material or read new stuff, as long as i run into things i find somewhat challenging (feel the desire to word look up), i know i am running into new material i can learn. Same with listening-reading method: whether i finish a book or just skip to random books, any new chapter i do will give me new words to learn/remember (until i’ve reached a point of perfect listening comprehension which is a WAYS away). There’s no way for me to mess it up. I can give up a book im bored with, i don’t have to stick to one resource to the end.

someone tell me why professionally made chinese audio books almost NEVER line up to the chapters???? whyyyyy ;-;

Even More Notes lol:

So I read so much in Pleco, which auto pronounces, I have COMPLETELY forgot. 得地 - for these two, when they’re attached after a description like 淡淡慢慢高兴 etc, when are they pronounced di versus de???? i’m pretty sure 得 is pronounced de when its an adjective like ‘-ly’. but for 地, i don’t remember if when part of a describer if its pronounced di or de????

#rant #march progress #march #everyone using ore in kh2 is hilarious a lil to me tho #u are all bishies u are all tiny kids WHy u acting so tough lol

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namorres · 5 years ago

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GIVE ME YOUR WORD ∞ E. MIKAELSON

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

wc | 3.3k

warnings | nnope

notes: here’s a lil in between suspense kinda chapter :)

masterlist

Facing the reality that Anastacia Ward was forced to live was hard enough to swallow as it was. A deal with a witch made some two hundred years ago in exchange for something she could truly never have, a contract to kill the one man she’d loved without end. There was so much weight on her shoulders, so much to bear. In her life, she’d killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of vampires, werewolves, even witches.

There were times when she’d wished she stayed dead, waited until someone she knew in her life passed on and was able to join her. But she knew, deep down, she would’ve wandered helplessly, looking for any way to get back, regardless. She wasn’t ready to die – hell, she’d never be ready to die. The prospect of having the ability to watch empires rise and fall, kingdoms conquer, then diminish, it sent an unmatched thrill through her bones.

She briefly wondered if her passion for an endless life would ever get her killed again. If demons of her past would come back, haunt her, make her want to find an end so they couldn’t torment her mind. Ana saw it happen to a friend once – another mercenary, working for her employer. Same deal, but with a different witch in the Other Side. He went on for years, followed by each of his kills, listening to their whispers in his ear as he pulled the trigger on a gun, pushed a stake into a chest, removed heads from bodies.

Then, Ana found him, in his apartment. Grey, ashen, dead. Stake in his chest, hands bloody. She remembered feeling absolutely helpless, falling to her knees and taking his head into her hands and wishing there was a way she could wake him up. He’d been a friend, someone she trusted, and he killed himself. For a time, the idea that she could’ve helped lingered in her thoughts, but she knew it wouldn’t have done a thing. Demons followed people like her mercilessly.

She was lucky to not have any yet.

A sinking feeling invaded her senses as she thought about the word yet. Not one of her kills had meant anything to her; people who had said the wrong thing and pissed another somebody off to the point of murder. It wasn’t her business why, it was just her business to do the dirty deed. Now, though, it wasn’t “just business”.

This was far more personal, far more invading. She would have to drive a stake into Elijah’s heart, she would have to watch him die, watch betrayal fly across his face, feel his hand on her arm as he grasped for something out of instinct, gasp for air that he wasn’t going to need. They all did that. He would be no different, Original status be damned.

She hated that thought. God, she hated herself for being so numb to it all.

Marcel’s voice pulled her from her horrible thoughts, shattering the image of a dead Elijah Mikaelson, “I’ll distract ‘em. There’s been some dirty business in the corners of the city they haven’t seen yet – some gathering of vampires huntin’ ‘em down.”

Ana nodded, looking over the man that stood in front of her and seeing the remnants of the boy she knew. A smile formed, fleeting yet sincere, “Thank you, Marcellus.”

“Ana,” he said, hand resting comfortingly on her arm, “you know I’d do anything for you. And please, it’s Marcel.”

“Marcel,” she tested, appreciating that he found a way to outgrow who he used to be, just like she had. She squeezed the hand on her arm with her own, then gave a nod. “I’m going to the Compound. Can you have them out in twenty minutes?” That was more time than she’d need to get there, but she figured she could take the scenic route.

“Absolutely,” Marcel nodded, offering a reassuring grin. She muttered a thank you once more, then made her way out of his abode. She’d always appreciate the man for honoring family the way he did, even if neither of them were technical Mikaelson’s at all. Ana was further from the name, anyway. She’d found that two centuries and death put a strain on who you called a worthy family member.

She gave Marcel the benefit of the doubt and took a thirty-minute route to get to the Compound, touring the once-familiar streets of New Orleans. The buildings had been altered, made modern, but still maintained the rustic french notion they had been built with. Scenes of happiness played out in her mind whenever she passed certain street corners, remembering days of ambling through the town with Elijah, hand in hand. Other times, she was with Rebekah, shopping for clothes and looking over the selection of men that New Orleans provided – though, both women were most definitely spoken for. There were few memories she shared with Klaus on the streets of the French Quarter, most of them including another sibling, but the times she’d spent with him alone, she found that she could trust him with even her deepest secrets. He was the perfect definition of an older brother.

Briefly, she wondered if that relationship could ever be rebuilt. Niklaus Mikaelson did not trust easily, not without failsafes. In fact, in the file she’d scoured through a day or two after she’d talked to Marcel, there were no ties with Niklaus that didn’t have something to do with his family. Besides a woman named Camille. But Ana wasn’t going to do anything with that information if she didn’t have to.

Then the sinking feeling returned as she rounded the same corner from her first night in New Orleans. In front of her stood the compound, magnificent and beautiful. Without giving herself time to second guess, she stepped off the sidewalk and traipsed into the building, surprised she was able to waltz in so easily.

The courtyard before her looked exactly as it had two hundred years ago, save for less extravagant decorum and the vines that had creeped up the cement. The M had been shrouded by the greenery, hidden away from the world if you didn’t look close enough to find it, and the unintentional irony behind it wasn’t lost on her.

She figured the family would be busy for a few hours, but she didn’t want to dally. Speeding up the stairs, she looked around the first floor, recalling each room she’d been in, and which rooms she refused to set foot in. The entryway lead her to the room she figured things would be kept in, and Ana wasted no time getting there. Memory upon memory flooded into her senses like a battalion of soldiers advancing on the front line, and she could only do her best to block them out long enough to find what she was looking for and leave.

Her first thought was the desk that sat prominently in the center of the room, sifting through the drawers and doing her best to return everything to the place she’d found it. Elijah was observant – if he noticed one thing out of place, she was sure to be found out. But nothing was in the desk. Ana went for the large bookshelves next.

A fond smile pulled at her lips as she looked on at the writings they had lined on the shelves, remembering the order and if Elijah had read them at the time or not. Her fingers threatened to ghost over the spine of her favorite novel, but she wondered if it would be a smart idea to do so. Deciding against it, her hand dropped, followed shortly by her gaze, and she went through each drawer there was.

Nothing. This was going to take longer than she’d anticipated.

∞

Eight rooms later and she found absolutely nothing. She knew Niklaus was always one for keeping things out of sight, but did he really have to take it to such extremes? It was ridiculous. Without thought, she walked into the next room, stopping in her tracks the moment she looked up. Elijah’s room.

Things were neat, orderly, all in their proper places. His bed was made, closet opened to show a rack of suits, all pressed and clean and ready for wear. She took in a long breath, looking around the room she used to call hers, the one she used to share with him. There wasn’t a hint of her left, not even a lamp she’d picked out. Her brows furrowed as she remembered that it was likely Elijah had moved on, gotten past her. He needed to, she’d reasoned that much with herself.

He had an unhealthy habit of hanging onto things that were lost, so in a way, it was refreshing to see that he’d let something go. Even if it was Ana.

Her eyes drifted to the books that were also in his room, all of them just as familiar as they had been in the parlor. None of them were ones she’d taken any interest in. Then she looked at the rest of the room, and something told her if she walked any further than the bookshelf, she wouldn’t be able to walk out the same. And, she highly doubted there was anything kept in here for putting down family members – not Elijah Mikaelson’s style.

Closing the door, she took a breath before huffing hopelessly. “There’s nothing here!” Her words echoed through the empty building, and she found her feet carrying her back to where she’d started. She couldn’t leave until she found it, couldn’t leave until she found something.

Once she crossed the threshold into the parlor room, her hands slapped against her thighs. She thought about what places she hadn’t checked, where she hadn’t touched or smelled or hell, tasted. Biting her lip, she looked at each of the paintings, then to the books, then to the desk, then down at the floor. She’d gone through each part of the desk, hadn’t even considered looking behind paintings for things – there was probably a safe that she wouldn’t have the code for, so it was pointless. Sighing out, she walked quietly over to the bookshelf, staring up at the novels like before.

Her gaze trained on the book she’d almost touched before, and without much second thought, she reached up and tugged it from its place. It felt familiar, a happy familiar; the sound of the pages opening, the weight of the hardcover, the smell of the old paper. The story had been a tragic romance, that was never meant to go much further than retreating touches and far-off glances. If she remembered correctly, the woman would die in the end.

Skimming various pages, the smile didn’t leave her face. A bibliophile at heart, Anastacia Ward truly was. When she flipped to the end, a small piece of paper, entirely separate from the book, newer, slipped from between the pages and fell to her feet. Her brows furrowed, looking at the novel, then down to the folded paper. Closing her hand, she snapped the book shut and set it on the counter that jutted out from the shelves. Kneeling down, her fingers pinched the paper from the ground and she flipped it in her palms, a breath catching lightly in her throat.

On it, in very familiar script, was her name.

Her hands began to quake, a shaky sigh leaving her chest as she stared. He’d written something for her after she died and hid it away, hid it where he was sure he wouldn’t look. Looking back up, she stood tall and tucked the paper in her pocket, taking the book in her hands and moving to replace it. But a glint caught her eyes, as fleeting as it had been.

Shifting to the balls of her feet, she stood up taller, seeing as the shelf had been just over her head. A laugh left her chest, satiric but joyful, as she spotted a small cubby behind the books, neatly sized so that it wouldn’t be seen had a book not been removed. Checking over her shoulder, she listened for a moment, hoping to hear if anyone had come in, but to her luck, she was still alone.

Reaching into the cubby, she felt around until her fingers clutched the hilt of a knife, dragging it carefully from the shelf and into her hands. Its blade was slender, the tip sharp as ever. The hilt had been engraved with elegant hands, and if she didn’t already know what this was for, she would think it to be a family heirloom passed down from their father.

Though, in hindsight, she supposed it could count as much.

She was holding a dagger that could put them to sleep until it was pulled out, and she wasn’t sure why she was so enthralled by it. It was quite literally the cause of so many rifts in the family, even though it itself was small, concealable, devious. Turning it over in her hands, she examined it further as if it would begin to speak, as if it would begin to tell her what to do.

But, the longer she held it, the heavier her stomach felt. Her amazement turned into morbid curiosity, then into something like regret. She was staring at something that could help her put down an Original, that could aid her in ending Elijah’s life. A breath left her chest and she closed her eyes, hands dropping from her view and falling to her side.

Would she really be able to do it? When the opportunity presented itself, whenever Elijah was vulnerable, would she be able to drive a stake through his heart and end his thousand-year life?

A month ago, she would’ve said absolutely. She would’ve said that this was her job.

Now, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

Her eyes shot open, head snapping to the entryway of the parlor as she heard the sounds of voices – men – walking into the compound. Drawing in a quick breath and struggling to be as quiet as possible, she tucked the dagger back into its spot in the bookcase, then shoved the book in front of it, keeping it as neat as possible. The voices got closer, and as she fell back to her feet, her gaze bounced between the entryway and anywhere that she could hide, terror striking her right in the center of her chest.

Spotting the open balcony door, she sped outside, flattening herself against the wall. It was then she noticed how dark it had become outside, dusk casting an orange light over the city. Licking her lips, she kept her breathing shallow, listening closely to the voices as they neared.

“Listen, Klaus,” one of them said, and it took her a moment before she deciphered it as Marcel, “you need me on your team. I had your back out there!”

There was a silence, and then a smug tone replied, “Yes, indeed you did, little warrior.”

Her eyes closed, and she took in a deep breath. Being so close to Klaus again, in the house, it reminded her of times spent playing children’s games to pass the time, reminded her of the times she was truly happy, of the times she had family.

Footsteps neared the door and her breathing stilled, her lips parted and her chin lifted as she watched a pair of shoulders walk out the door. Her eyes went wide, fear making her limbs rigid and her brows high on her forehead. Though it should’ve, no relief found her whenever she saw Marcel staring at her with a curious furrow, Niklaus speaking behind him.

Ana stayed still, hoping to anyone above that Marcel would have the decency to let Klaus know she was there – she’d told him that much whenever she’d first spoken with him. She would be the first to tell them of her presence there. She was sure of that much. He had told her he was sure of that much.

Her eyes closed and her chest deflated whenever Marcel gave her a curt, subtle nod, turning around and leaning in the doorframe of the balcony. He was blocking Klaus. Looking around, she looked for another place she could go, easy, unnoticeably. Another balcony, just below the one she stood on, the doors to it closed. Knowing she had no other choice, she jumped from one to the other, landing without a sound and looking up to Marcel, who had leaned out to see she was gone.

Wasting no time, she pulled on the handles of the doors in front of her, opening them with unexpected ease, then shutting them behind her. She was still in the compound, but it seemed the balcony was connected to just an inside hallway that really didn’t lead anywhere but the courtyard and back upstairs. Letting out a breath, she gave herself a moment of reprieve, falling against the wall behind her.

“I hate my job,” she muttered, eyes screwing shut for a moment before she pushed off the wall and set out to find a quiet means of escape.

Night had set on the Crescent City, the streets buzzing with life just like every other night. The sound of music came through the walls of the compound, faded, smothered by bricks. As she reached the end of the hallway leading into the courtyard, she leaned against the wall and stayed in the dark. Listening.

Marcel’s voice was gone, as was Klaus’s. Either they had gone quiet, or one of them had left, or better yet, they were both gone. Pushing from her spot, she began to walk but was stopped in her tracks yet again, the door opening and footsteps echoing into the wide-open room. Shrouded still, she watched as the owner of the footsteps came into the light.

Elijah.

Though, she shouldn’t have been surprised. This was his home. He then stopped for a moment, hands tucked in his pockets and eyes fixed on the second floor. Then he looked toward down, at his feet, and she could tell he was doing exactly what she had been. He was listening.

She weighed her options then – though there weren’t many. She could run out the back, get out of the place. But what good would it do? To keep sneaking around? Her other option was to go upstairs, let Elijah find her there, and face this. Face him. His gaze lifted to the hallway where she stood, and she knew he couldn’t see her. But it felt like he could.

A breath left her parted lips and she held his gaze, for just a moment, then she was gone.

#elijah mikaelson x oc #elijah mikaelson x reader #the originals imagine #the originals x reader #elijah mikaelson imagine #*gmyw #give me your word

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ironwoman18 · 4 years ago

Text

We found love in a hopeless place part 11

Chapter 11: Rainday

Spencer and Max were agree to meet at the same park they went a few days ago. He would bring their breakfast and juice with she decided to make them dessert and coffee.

Coffee was something they had in common. She was amazed by how many cups of coffee he could drink and the sugar he put in his cup was insane.

He once told her that coffee kept his brain awake and working at full speed. She laughed at that but was agree. Coffee was her energy too.

She discovered so many things about him everyday. Like his love for all literature, especially the one from fifteenth century. He said his mother read it to him when he was a child.

Then he read it himself and enjoyed it. She also find out about his love for chest, he even taught her some moves to check mate someone. She played with her dad and he was amazed when she won after 20 years of losing against him.

He also discovered so many things about her like her favorite artist is Michelangelo and she also enjoyed Carlos Cruz-Diez kinetic art.

He discovered she played soccer in college and that she was really good at it. He told her his one and only experience with a sport, he gave his team the victory but he made Morgan promised to not include him again.

She laughed and hugged him gently saying it was the beginner's luck. He also laughed because he was totally aware of it but he was happy it happened at that moment because the team they defeated was annoying.

Spencer walked out of his apartment and saw the sky. There were gray clouds so maybe it could mean a rainy day. He really hoped not to because he wanted to enjoy his last day of vacations with her.

He drove to the park and found a good place under a tree. There were some kids playing, there were some teenage girls complaining about the clouds and how they messed up their tan.

He waited for a while until he saw Max. She ran towards him and sits on a blanket he put on the floor for them "hey handsome" she smiled catching her breath "sorry, I'm late. I made my mother's cookies recipe but they almost burned" she sighed.

"Hey it's ok. I don't mind burned cookies" he laughed helping her with her backpack and after her settled it on the floor she held her arms around his neck and kissed him softly "I could get use to this kind of greetings" he whispered as he grabbed her closer to him.

"Me too" she smiled and they moved away to sit down "let's see what you made for us" she laughed softly.

"Not a big deal" he got out a tupper full of sandwiches "I made a lot, just in case we stay longer" she bit her lip to stop her laugh "and I brought a bottle of juice. Orange juice"

"Sounds amazing, let's eat" he handed her a sandwich with a napkin and held one for him.

They ate in silence for a while. She checked his clothes and realized he was very casual that day. He was wearing jeans and a shirt.

She was surprised but pleased at the same time. She loved his dress shirt and pants but something about him wearing something "normal" made her like him even more, if that was possible.

On the other hand, Spencer saw her clothes, she was wearing black sweatpants and a white shirt, it was not her normal type of clothes but it looked good on her.

"I normally like to run and even do some yoga on Sundays so after I came here I was finishing my yoga class" she said like reading his mind "by the way, you look good wearing jeans" she smiled.

"You think so? I'm used to use them. Derek gave me these at my birthday but never had the chance to use them. I use suits for work and I never had friends out of work" he said then looked at her "in fact I never had vacations this long"

"Well I'm happy you decided to spent it with me" she smiled playfully "tomorrow it's your first time back to work right?"

"Yeah. I hope they decided to let me return to my job. I love my free time when I'm with you but the days I was alone, I got bored" she held his hand.

"I'm sure you will return to work and save more lives" they both smiled and suddenly it started to rain.

"Oh no... No, no, no..." He said as he looked the rain getting harder "I saw the clouds when I was coming here and estimated there was a fifty percent chance of raining"

"So there was another fifty percent of not raining?" He nodded.

"I wasn't sure of which possiblity was more likely to happen so it was fifty- fifty" he was glad that he picked a tree with a good protection so they did not get wet.

The problem was that Max did not care and pushed him out of their cover and jumped out as well.

"Hey!" He screamed at her but she just laughed then they started to run "not funny"

"It is and it was worthy though" He was chasing her around as she laughed and poked her tongue out at him.

He finally got her and they felt on the ground laughing.

Then they decided to leave. His apartment was closer so they went there.

When they arrived, he asked her to take a shower to not get sick. She was happy to have a change of clothes in her backpack and luckily in a bag where it could not get wet.

Meanwhile she took a shower Spencer turned on his coffee machine to have hot and fresh coffee for them.

She got out and it was his turn to get a shower. Max decided to check his apartment. As she imagined he had lot of books, technical books but also classics and even novels in others languages.

She recognized the Russian and Spanish but nothing else. The Russian because she knew they used other alphabet and Spanish because she got some classes in highschool.

After a few more minutes he walked out of the bathroom, fully clothed "I was making coffee. I guess the one you made is cold already"

"I think so. I put it in a bottle where it should not get cold too fast but I guess the rain could get it cold faster.

He poured some coffee in two cups and they ate cookies and drank coffee talking about everything they just did and how funny it was.

He never had this much fun ever, maybe before he had to take care of his mother and himself. Became an adult too soon. Then they cuddle in his couch and he opened up about some difficult things he had to deal with.

Mostly as a kid. He had a lot to tell her but he decided to start easy on her. His mother with schizophrenia and his father leaving them was enough sadness for a day.

She kissed him gently and rubbed his hands softly. She wanted him to open up and she was not afraid of his darkness. She wanted him to feel safe with her and she will make sure to protect him.

Sadly at night they rain stopped and he decided to take her back to get her car and leave to her apartment.

"Next time the sleepover should be at my apartment" she laughed and he laughed too "maybe popcorn and movies"

"If that's an invitation then I'm in" he laughed and opened her door for her.

"Perfect then it's an invitation" she kissed his cheek and got in her car. She left and he smiled. He was so happy and had the best Sunday ever or he could call it Rainday.

The next day he had concentrate. Shooting test. He almost destroyed one of the targets as he looked like Mr. Scratch.

Due to this situation the Deputy director decided to make him take 30 days off for every 100 hours in the field.

It was his only condition to return to work. Emily told him she knew and planned some seminaries for him.

He will need to get ready for those so his mind will be busy while he is alone at home. Thankfully he has Max now who will help him after classes.

He told her that night when they were in the hotel, taking a rest to continue tomorrow.

She promised to help him during those days as much as she could so he does not feel bored in between seminaries.

OOooOOooOO

I have some ideas for this one but didn't know how to connect them until I sat down and started to write.

I loved the part where they ran in the rain. I had so much fun with it. I thought about that moment in season 15 when she pushed him to the sprinklers but of course this was bigger because it's rain.

Hope you liked it. Comments are welcome and loved. Thank you for the likes, favorites, kudos... I love you.

#criminal mind #maxcer #spencer reid #maxine brenner #fanfiction

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The U.S. doesn’t have what it needs to fight the novel coronavirus. N95 respirator masks are emergency room workers’ ideal line of defense against the small particles of spittle that can transmit COVID-19. It’s a banal-looking medical product — like a baseball straining under a small tarp of synthetic cloth — but its mundanity doesn’t make it easy to find. A recent NBC News survey of health care workers reported widespread rationing of N95 masks in hospitals. The country also doesn’t have enough ventilators — machines that assist breathing — and the need for those will be a matter of life and death in the coming days. There are around 160,000 ventilators in U.S. hospitals and only 16,600 ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile, according to a recent report from the Center for Public Integrity. New York state alone is requesting an additional 30,000. While it’s unclear how many ventilators the country might need in the coming weeks and months, one estimate from a 2005 Department of Health and Human Services pandemic simulation put the number at 742,500.

The shortage of critical supplies has led many public officials to ask President Trump to make full use of a little-known-until-a-week-ago law, the Defense Production Act. So far Trump has been reluctant to fully deploy it, to the consternation of many (including those in his own party). White House statements on the use of the DPA have been muddled, suggesting a deeper bureaucratic confusion about how to even implement the act. But even with the law’s powers in full use, the pandemic has revealed America’s precarious place in the global marketplace as just another buyer, rather than an industrial fortress ready for a fight on its own shores.

Passed in 1950 in response to the Korean War, the DPA allows the government to jump the supply chain line for needed goods in the midst of emergencies — it was invoked in 2017 to procure supplies for hurricane victims, for example — and authorizes it to incentivize the production of needed supplies.

Trump’s stance on deploying the DPA fully has been hazy, and his statements about the gravity of the supply shortage has varied — during a Thursday evening appearance on Fox News, he cast doubt on New York’s need for 30,000 ventilators. On March 18, he said that he would be “invoking the Defense Production Act just in case we need it.” The administration has said it would use some powers in the act, like the one that goes after hoarding and price-gouging of emergency supplies and one that requires companies to prioritize government contracts and allows the federal government to allocate emergency resources (it’s not clear how efficiently that’s actually being done yet). But groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have reportedly lobbied the Trump administration against using the law to its full effect. The past week has seen Democratic lawmakers and former national security officials pillorying Trump for what they see as inadequate use of the law. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday, “I do not understand the reluctance to use the federal Defense Production Act to manufacture ventilators. If not now, when?”

The short answer is that’s not quite how the law works.

Those familiar with the workings of the DPA are quick to note its implementation is not a panacea. Dave Kaufman was in charge of DPA authorities in his role at FEMA during the Obama administration. He told me that there seems to be a fundamental public misunderstanding of what the law can do. “It’s being talked about in the media as restructuring the economy a la WWII. It’s not actually really that — it’s a powerful authority, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not nationalization of industry, which is kind of the way we’re talking about it.” Industrial leaders like General Motors Co. reportedly balked at the idea of the White House invoking the DPA.

The kind of DPA powers that Cuomo and the media have largely been talking about are the ones vested in Article III of the act. That portion of the law is meant to “create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore domestic industrial base capabilities essential for the national defense.” To go about that, the government is authorized to provide loans and loan guarantees to stimulate domestic production of needed goods, to make agreements to purchase products on a long term basis in order to encourage the production of needed goods and “to procure and install equipment in private industrial facilities,” in the words of a Congressional Research Service analysis of the DPA.

Kaufman said that invocation of the DPA isn’t always needed to get a job done. “You could also just make a commitment to a multi-year procurement and send the pricing signal to the market to stimulate development of supply,” he said. Ford, 3M and GE Healthcare pledged this week to jump-start production of ventilators and masks, though they didn’t give a timeline for the needed scale-up of production — it would likely be months. (On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that “General Motors MUST immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio, or some other plant, and START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!!” As Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan quickly pointed out, GM no longer owns the plant.)

But with N95 masks and ventilators, many of which are made overseas, things are tricky. “DPA authority is great to talk about, but if the commodities don’t exist here in the scale and quantity needed for demand, claiming the first off the line for what does exist is not really solving the problem,” Kaufman said, referring to the DPA power that allows the government to jump the supply chain.

China is a major producer of N95 masks and ventilators and the U.S. is competing for emergency supplies manufactured there, much like the rest of the world. It’s a stark reminder that despite Trump’s trade wars and inflammatory rhetoric, China remains a manufacturing behemoth. Well before the coronavirus pandemic began, the U.S.’s reliance on China for key goods dismayed government officials. A September 2019 NBC News report detailed the alarm of national security officials over how dependent the U.S. is on Chinese-manufactured pharmaceutical products. A Council of Foreign Relations analysis from December 2019 noted the rapid growth of the Chinese medical device manufacturing sector, aided by its government’s protectionist policies.

There is some production of the needed emergency products in the United States. 3M is a major producer of respirator masks: A spokesperson said in an email that it makes them in two locations in the U.S., South Dakota and Nebraska. A March 22 statement from 3M’s CEO noted that the company produces 35 million respirators per month and that “more than 500,000 respirators are on the way from our South Dakota plant to two of the more critically impacted areas, New York and Seattle.” At the time of publication, it was unclear how the masks would be apportioned to each region.

Governors have asked the federal government to take control of the allocation of ventilators and masks by using the DPA. Under Title I of the law — which technically, the Trump administration has said it has put into effect — the federal government can take charge of the allocation of emergency supplies. It’s not clear how well it’s doing that or communicating its plans to the states. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, the chief executive of the state that produces so many N95 masks, expressed frustration during a call with Trump last week. “I need to understand how you’re triaging supplies,” she said, with other governors on the line. “I don’t want to be less of a priority because we’re a smaller state or less populated,” she said. According to The New York Times, Trump assured her that would “never” happen. Subsequently, the report noted, “Ms. Noem’s telephone line was disconnected.” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker was referring to similar allocation concerns when he said that his state was “competing” with other states and federal agencies on the open market for emergency medical supplies.

Confusion over how or whether the Trump administration is using the DPA has grown over the last few days, a worrisome sign given the bureaucratic organization needed to oversee so many moving parts of government and industry that should ostensibly be working together. News came from the White House this week that the production of 60,000 testing kits had been expedited under the auspices of the act, but FEMA later said that in the end, it hadn’t needed to invoke the DPA. In an email to FiveThirtyEight over the weekend, a FEMA spokesperson wrote that it was “actively engaged with private industry partners through the National Business Emergency Operations Center. One outcome from this engagement is the stand-up of a cell that is coordinating needs and sourcing re-supply for the community-based testing sites.” Over the course of the week, it became clear that FEMA’s newly established Supply Chain Stabilization Task Force, headed by Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, was the agency’s attempt at centralizing interactions with private industry.

If a recent Democratic proposal from the Senate is any indication, there is a worry about the administration’s ability to marshal and organize critical information from private companies in the time of crisis. The proposal calls for basic information-gathering provisions, like an assessment of the country’s emergency medical protective gear, a point person to communicate with states and companies, and a hotline for companies to call for information.

Banal bureaucratic organization problems seem, for now, to be blunting the collective power of American capitalism in a time of crisis.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

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kristallioness · 5 years ago

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2016 | 2017 | 2018

*quietly sneaks back in*... Happy New THIS Year, my dear followers! In Estonia, we have this saying that if you wish someone a 'happy new year' after Three Kings' Day (the 6th of January), you gotta have a bottle of alcohol with you and give them a drink. *lol*

Anyways, I would like to apologize for the sudden disappearance that happened prior to Christmas. I was just busy travelling back home for the holidays, unpacking and putting away my stuff, watching some great, traditional movies or shows on TV, and most importantly, working on those 2 latest masterpieces that I posted (which barely got 30 notes each.. *sigh*).

But as you can (and probably will) see, the year of the yellow earth pig (i.e. my dad's year) was a rollercoaster of emotions and accomplishments, or lacking thereof.

My creative side seems to have suffered the most due to lack of leisure time. I only managed to finish 3 full digital drawings and left behind several sketches or unfinished WIPs (2 of which are revealed here under the months of June and November for the first time, I intend to finish the Korrasami one btw). At least I got to start 2020 with a completed drawing on the very 1st day, ha-ha! Perhaps that's a good omen for this year?

If so, then I hope I'll find the time to finish the rest of the 2019 Inktober prompts, since I only did 4/31 this past October (even though I'd thought of ideas for all of them). I brought all the necessary drawing utensils and sheets of paper with me, so whenever I'm in the mood, I'll try to sketch another one.

*calculates for the nth time*.. I wrote 18,110 words worth of fanfiction, plus 820 words for the UYLD prompts (making the total 18,930). Technically, you can count another 8k+ in there, since it comes from that unfinished story (of Aang taking care of a flu-ridden Katara, as illustrated by the September sketch), which I haven't finished within the last 4 months or so. Plus, I barely wrote 1/5 of the amount compared to 2018.. *hides in shame*

Then again, I was an excellent pupil for picking up an actual book and reading through 150+ pages (which means I have ~300 pages to go). I'm talking about the new Kyoshi novel that came out. As I once said, I haven't voluntarily read a book in years make that 2 years ago (most of the reading I've done in my life is either Tom & Jerry comics, now the Avatar comic trilogies and art books as well as fanfiction online, or compulsory reading during school). But this novel is freaking fantastic superb!

Not only that, I bought all the new comic trilogies and managed to read them through. Damn, did they give me feels.. especially "Ruins of the Empire" (ngl I squeed so hard when I saw the Korrasami farewell kiss on the 1st page of the 2nd part). I can't wait to read the 3rd part this year!

However, I failed to rewatch Avatar last year, and I haven't seen Korra since.. 2016, I believe? Wow, that's 4 whole years.. But I intend to fix that mistake starting from 2020. Hopefully I'm in the mood to start my rewatch this weekend tonight. *fingers crossed*

But as I said, I had much less time to focus on my hobbies since 2019 was the year for finally moving on with my life (sort of, I'm still working on it). I still remember how down I'd been feeling for a while and how valid those emotions really were. The first quarter of the year (+ like a month or two) was a continuous descent into desperation and feelings of utter failure, which already started around the 2nd half of 2018 and only continued to deepen around that time.

Everything began to change when I was first chosen to be part of a 2-month summer internship in an IT company, and I had to start building a new nest in a new location in Tallinn this May. And now, I feel like I've hit the jackpot by getting a permanent job in another IT company this October.

I got the opportunity to work in two different fields, in two different teams within a year. I met some awesome colleagues (a lot of whom are foreigners) and got the chance to really put my English skills to the test.

Thanks to the new job, I also had to go to a free health check, which went really-really well. Despite my nervousness in the beginning, I feel much more relaxed about my physical (and mental) health, cause the results showed that everything's okay (something I'd been worried about since March 2017).

Speaking of health or staying healthy, there were a few sports events that I went to, too. Our team held the first winter team event (it was the first one for me, at least) by going to do archery in a range on the outskirts of the capital.

I watched the football match between 2 teams of our local league at my hometown together with my dad on his birthday. Our home team won the match and came in 4th place overall in the league this year, which is their best result so far (I'm really proud!). And merely days before I started work, I visited the Tallinn International Horse Show for the first time (also with my dad). I last got to watch horses jump over fences or dance to their musical programs ~ 10 years ago, and I loved it!

Event-wise 2019 was pretty full of them. As has become tradition, I went to the Defence Forces parade on our 101st Independence Day (which seemed rather bleak compared to the centennial, even more so since we didn't have ANY snow at the time).

What will hopefully become new traditions, I visited the television tower on the Restoration of Independence Day (where Uku Suviste gave a free concert in the evening), and went to the Veteran's Rock concert (to honour our war veterans) on our Freedom Square on the 23rd of April (since I'm residing in the capital now, I should be able to go again this year).

To continue with the centennial celebrations (yes, some things are STILL turning 100), I saw and explored inside the armoured train no. 7 called "Wabadus" ("Freedom") in the Baltic Station. This armoured train was one of the keys that led our country to victory during the War of Independence from 1918-1920.

There was an even bigger (150th) anniversary to celebrate in the beginning of July, when I attended our Song and Dance Festival. This was a really important, if not the biggest event of the year. I intend to make a longer post about my experience, cause it's something that you foreigners need to see for yourself. I can't simply describe or put it into words, I have to show you some videos and photos.

But while we're on the topic of concerts, I should mention that I went to 2 more at the beginning of June - Bon Jovi and Sting - as well as 2 that were part of Christmas tours in December - Elina Nechayeva and Rolf Roosalu.

Besides that, I went to 6 different festivals, half of which I'd been to several times before, such as the Türi Flower Fair, Jäneda Farm Days (where I went on my first helicopter ride for my 25th birthday present) and the Christmas market in the Old Town of Tallinn.

The other half is comprised of festivals that I'd been considering going to for a while, or which took place for the first time. The latter applies to the Black Food Festival, whereas the "Valgus Kõnnib" ("Wandering Lights") and the duck rally, both of which took place in Kadriorg, fall under the first category.

The duck rally is a charity event held in the beginning of June. Regular people can buy at least one (or several) rubber bath duckies for different prices, which will then be dumped into a tiny stream that'll carry them towards the finish line. This event has grown more popular each year, and the money the Estonian Association of Parents of Children with Cancer (sorry, long name in English!) collects is donated to the Cancer Treatment Fund.

*wipes forehead*.. Phew! I'm surprised, that's a whole lotta positivity for 2019. I think there's one more important, but seriously negative topic I haven't covered yet, but I feel should be mentioned and explained.

When it comes to politics, 2019 was a complete disaster for us. EKRE (Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond in Estonian, or Estonia's Conservative People's Party in English) i.e. our populist/nazi/pro-Trump party is in the government as of April 2019, thanks to 100,000+ idiots (out of our population of 1.3 million) who voted for them and gave them 19/101 seats in the Parliament.

No, I am NOT going to apologize for calling them a nazi party, because their main leaders have repeatedly supported ideology that's common to nazis (they use aggressive rhetoric, blame the media for making them look bad, downgrade women, minorities, are racist, anti-semitic etc...). And I will not apologize in front of the people who voted for them, because "thanks" to this, EKRE has dragged our country's reputation straight through a mud puddle (not to mention the scandals that have accompanied 5 of their ministers, 3 of who have THANKFULLY stepped down from their positions) and.. *swears like the British*.. it's BLOODY EMBARRASSING.

I am done being nice, I have at least some kind of prejudice about anyone who supports them or their ideals. And I will certainly not let Estonia end up like America. So that is why I participated in two protest events against EKRE and our current government (because the 2 other parties, who were willing to form the coalition with them, are spineless jellyfish that simply seek to hold onto their current positions of power). I'm willing to take bets as to when our government falls (the sooner the better).

*shakes off the frustration*.. Brrr! So besides that, I guess the only downside to 2019 was my spare time falling back in the list of priorities (which shows in the empty square of July).

2020 is gonna be the year of the white metal rat. I can only hope (and take action so) that it'll be just as eventful, and much more creative than 2019. Thank you all for following me (or lurking anonymously) for so long, especially to the bloggers who've offered me support through better or worse! *raises a glass* Here's to 2020!.. *sip*

#personal #shards of Kristal

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ryanneredheart · 5 years ago

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Frozen 2 Thoughts

Eh, I just gotta let this out, will probably delete it later. Spoilers ahead, mild to mid, not too specific, with some rambling.

So, watched Frozen 2 with my fam. I didn’t come in with any uber high expectations, Disney would surely nail animation and visuals for one of their most profitable names so I end up being most curious for story direction, characters, and music, with terrible to no memory of the one or two trailers I may have seen previous. After letting it settle, and allowing myself to enjoy it for what it is, as it sits in my mind, I find it becomes a frustrating film to me. I enjoyed most of the music, enjoyed the expanded world building, and I enjoyed the main cast interacting with each other as just themselves. Elsa and Anna interacting more was very much welcome. But I also cringed at some bits of it -like Kristoff being left on the side for almost half the film- and for some of the humor, and raised my brow at certain decisions made by characters. Pacing felt off at times, I had no idea how much a difference in time there was between this film and its previous, and it seemed like we got too much information -not all of it quite useful- in some areas which sacrificed said pacing and character interaction. Technically there’s nothing overly wrong with the film; it’s somewhat predictable -which isn’t automatically bad, but it sometimes clashes with the idea it’s a kids film while trying to bring in a darker tone and more mature themes- and there’s worse things out there. It can be enjoyed just fine, but something about it felt under-cooked/rushed in its writing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, until I took a step back and let the film settle in my mind for a bit longer, and it clicked for me. It doesn’t feel like Frozen 2, it feels like a Frozen 3, a trilogy end. Hear me out. Frozen 2 is a film that focuses on themes of growing up, maturity, change, not shirking from the mention of death and even grief at one of my favorite scenes -even having the feeling it wouldn’t last long, Disney liking its happy endings-. It takes us back to Elsa and Anna’s past, but more namely their parents and tying in their mysteries. The story itself starts in the Fall, a time thematic of change and transformation, with some leaning into going into a darker or more challenging time. The threat of separation is there but it’s made to feel even more dire with the general tone. And at the end of the film, Elsa chooses to be the queen of the woods, and Anna becomes queen of Arendelle with Kristoff at her side, with it known they’ll keep in touch and likely be visiting each other. Something about all this feels like it’d be more a finisher, more than a follow up. I’m aware there’s some novel out there called the Forest of Shadows that takes place between the two books, but if that’s the case, why not have something more directly after the first film time wise in film form? World build around recovering from the first film and integrate more characterization? More than what the Frozen shorts would imply in things just being all comical and dandy. (nothing wrong with them per se either but they’re not exactly the best vehicles for story and characterization) It feels like this film had jump too far ahead. Frozen 1 ends in the sisters reunited, and Frozen 2 with them apart already? -even if not far or permanently, the idea is still jarring- I feel we didn’t see enough in between to see Elsa and Anna learning to be proper sisters again; to each overcome some personal flaws, to see them interact with Kristoff and their people, have Olaf remain as humor but used sparingly since he is also a character with heart. It’d be neat to have a situation that allows these characters with plenty potential to develop a bit from their flaws and even struggle with moving on from them or changing because of them. Maybe we start and stay in the present day not long after the first film; Arandelle maybe isn’t fully on Elsa’s side of things quite yet, maybe some fear lingers and can be a catalyst to seeking to family history and/or an outside force that could affect Arandelle. It can be the extra challenge to overcome, but also a test of the main characters each proving themselves to the people, to each other, and themselves. And still, even in the end, even with acceptance and reassurances from her sister, maybe Elsa finds she just can’t shake the feeling she doesn’t fit in, try as she may. And that’s okay, would make for a great message for kids even if written well. But I admit, I don’t know of an exact adventure idea that could take full advantage of this while still being something kids can watch as a Frozen 1.5. Maybe that Forest of Shadows book has something but I don’t know much about it, aside from it from having been something that took place and mention of Anna dealing with nightmares and such. But were there something between the two films’ stories, it could help fix some issues that Frozen 2 has, by taking on some of the magical backdrop and vague mentions of the past that beckon questions to lead into said film 2. (Thus, Frozen 2 could have had more character interactions and working together, even if there’s times of separation) Then after that Frozen 1.5, you go from modern day back to a jump to the past in Frozen 2, have some of the mystical matters having been explained in 1.5. You go full circle, reminded of Frozen 1′s start with little Anna and Elsa, you get a hook in regards to finally seeing to the origin of Elsa’s abilities. Then having the magic reintroduced and the past intertwined doesn’t feel as harsh a transition. Then go on from there with your spirits story, and while it might not fix all the flaws Frozen 2 may have, it’d smooth things out. Buuuut in the end, what’s done is done, so this is all wishful thinking really.

Frozen 2 is out, and if people enjoy it and have fond memories with it, that’s alright too.

#frozen 2 #frozen #spoilers #disney #frozen 2 spoilers

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sunshineandfangs · 5 years ago

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Klarosummer - Quote || قلم قدرتمندتر است

Quote: “Newsflash - seashell bras give me hives.”

@klarosummerbingo

This one gets a bit meta. Also yes, I am going to make you all suffer through the Persian alphabet because when I tried to get a phonetic translation I failed and just butchered the language.

---

Caroline nibbled on the tip of her pen, struggling to find the words she wanted to say. She didn’t often use pen and paper, only when she was suffering a particularly strong block. Something about the motion, the way dark ink looked on clean paper was soothing and satisfying. Usually, by now something would have come to her, but today? Nothing.

She groaned, tossing the notebook down beside her as she leaned backward against the seat of the bench. It wasn’t comfortable. The hard wood digging into her spine and shoulder blades, blood rushing to her head as she let it hang.

Grumbling some more to herself, she eventually threw herself up and out of the bench, taking back her notebook as she marched through the park. Nature was good inspiration, or so she’s been told.

---

Shoving through the front door, Caroline set her keys down with a clank in their designated dish. All she managed to accomplish was getting a semi-decent workout, her pace increasing from a walk to a mild jog the more frustrated she got. That, and amusing herself by drawing a very fancy calligraphic “t” for the word “the.” SpongeBob was a classic.

Trudging toward her room, she threw herself across her duvet, glowering up at the ceiling as if it had all the answers to her problems. And she glared long enough for her eyes to start to feel strained, solving exactly zero of her problems. Tiredly, she rubbed her palms against them, figuring it was time for a break.

It was just so frustrating. She had all these worlds circling around in her mind. Sometimes she could picture them so vividly it felt like she could step through and taste them. There were characters who seemed to beat against the inside of her skull, their voices and thoughts and feelings so strong.

But the link between her imaginings and reality just didn’t click all the time. She would go to write something, but it just wasn’t quite right. Cross it out, backspace, start again. Stare blankly at a blinking cursing feeling a scene in her mind and having it escape her as soon as she went to type.

Caroline bit her lip.

Well, that wasn’t quite the whole truth.

Closing her eyes, she let herself fall. Down, down, down the rabbit hole of her mind, sinking into the core of her being. She reached out, grasping the strongest pulse she could sense.

Caroline gasped, eyes shooting open as she lunged for her laptop.

“Newsflash - seashell bras give me hives.” Poured out onto the page, a vivid image of young woman danced around in her mind. Red hair, slight waves, green eyes, a smattering of freckles. Her name was Candice, she knew, a bit of a spitfire and sassy, but also kind.

Her friend was Nina. A brunette, her hair curlier and longer, and her personality a bit more abrasive. But they were steadfast friends. Their relationship birthed in childhood, forged in the fires of teenager drama: boys and crushes and sex, rumor mills and social ladders.

Now, at twenty-six the two of them did odd jobs together as they worked to pay for med and law school respectively. This one probably one of their weirdest.

“You know that,” Candice scowled.

“Suck it up, buttercup,” Nina chirped, looking a bit too delighted for Candice’s liking. “The pay check for this one is really, really good. It’s crazy how many people want to pretend mermaids are real. But hey, whatever, money is money.”

Caroline’s fingers flew as she typed, depicting the (mis)adventures of Candice’s and Nina’s latest job. The little pulse she could feel fluttering in her chest grew louder and stronger until two heartbeats seemed to pound inside her.

It was startling when she finally looked up, the sky pitch black outside her window, the clock on her computer helpfully informing her it was now 1:29 AM. She had lost hours pouring herself into her stories. Fleshing out the details of Candice’s and Nina’s relationship. Added in family members and romance. It felt good to release the little slice of life into the world.

Quickly, re-reading what she had written, Caroline debated whether she wanted to continue or not. Build a more intricate world or let it go? Let it go, she finally decided. The heartbeat settled down until it was just her own once more.

---

Klaus scowled at his canvas, rather irked that the only paintings he could make lately were distorted smears. Don’t mistake him, he was proud of his abstract work, just not when it conveyed frustration and a lack of inspiration.

He tossed his brush aside, wiped the paint flecks from his skin. Running an aggravated hand through his curls, he decided to get out of the house.

---

The park wasn’t a place he would normally frequent, but desperate times and all that rot. As expected though, as he let his eye drift around the scene before him nothing much caught his attention. There were screaming children, tired parents, enamored couples. The typical things one might expect to see and none of them sparked new passion or anything of the sort.

And then he saw her.

She looked frustrated, not unlike himself really, but there was something about the way her eyes flashed with her ire. The purposeful way she moved as she went from a walk to a run.

Klaus left not long after, carrying his unexpected muse with him.

When he made it back to his apartment, images came to him in a hurry. A passionate gesture with an arm. A cat-like smile, mischievous and playful. Gorgeous flashing eyes, bright with temper.

As soon as he started, he couldn’t stop. The vivacious blonde woman stayed a constant, but others soon came to him. A red-head. A brunette. An unexpected desire to do a study of water and distortion. The shimmer of scales.

It was certainly some of his best work.

---

Caroline walked listless down the sidewalk, a heavy smear of concealer under her eyes to disguise their puffiness. She wasn’t sure how many tears she had cried. Enough that though her heart still felt like it was being crushed, there were none left to shed.

Just a few months ago she had felt on top of the world, new stories seeming to pour out of her by the dozens. An original work ready to be published. And then a week ago she got a phone call.

Her mom was sick. Cancer. Terminal.

She didn’t live far away, and Caroline had dropped everything to go and visit. She still visited everyday, making sure her mom was comfortable, that she was getting the best care available. Yet she felt useless, she was doing everything she could and it seemed to be nothing at all.

And her mom could see it wearing on her, had all but kicked her out and told her to come back when she had a chance to take a breath.

Well, here she was. Breathing. And not feeling better at all.

She kept walking. Not bothering to scramble for cover when a drizzle built into a downpour. Moved at the same pace and ducked into the next building several feet down.

She blinked. Blinked again. Wondered if stress and grief had made her go crazy.

Apparently, she had stepped into a gallery, and spread across the walls were snapshots of Candice and Nina, exactly as she had pictured them. She even saw would looked like a glimpse of mermaid tails.

Impossible.

---

What are the odds? Klaus thought, incredulous. His muse just stepped into his gallery.

---

Caroline’s eyes darted around wildly. If she had been more famous, then maybe she would think someone hacked her manuscript or something. But she wasn’t. Not at all.

Her upcoming book would be her first full length novel, everything else she had published in magazines. Short stories and poetry. An editorial or two when her inspiration was particularly low.

How could this be?

Because it wasn’t just a resemblance to her characters. They were identical, down to the pattern of freckles across Candice’s nose.

“We’re technically closed, love.”

Caroline jumped, startled out of her wide-eyed examination of Candice.

“O-oh,” she stuttered, whirling around. “Sorry, the door was open. And it was raining. I-do you know who did these?” She rushed out, desperately needing the answer.

---

Klaus was startled by the woman’s apparent mania, her resemblance to the muse he discovered in the park almost nowhere to be seen. He answered her though, perhaps that would lend some clarity to this baffling situation.

“I did.”

He stumbled back when she lunged for him, her thin fingers deceptively strong as she gripped his arms, eyes wide and gleaming. “When? How? What made you think of these images?”

“Bloody hell, woman! They just came to me. I was in the park looking for some inspiration and I got it.” He certainly wasn’t going to mention it came from her now. She seemed unhinged enough already.

---

Caroline stumbled back, an absolutely absurd idea bouncing around her brain.

This is crazy, Caroline. Crazy!

And yet she couldn’t help herself. What could it hurt?

With almost no conscious thought, her hand reached for her bag, snagging the small notebook she always kept on her. Her movements egged on by half remembered dreams, flashes of figures she thought belonged only in her mind.

She grabbed a pen and started to write. How a distraught blonde named Caroline stumbled into a gallery and discovered paintings of people she had thought she only imagined. How she had an extraordinary idea and started to write. Write out her story. Penning out a future in which a doctor calls as she finished writing. Calling to report a miracle. That after numerous tests checking and double checking, it seems Caroline’s mother’s cancer has gone into remission.

The pen dropped from her nerveless hands. Her heart pounding in her throat, her breath halted as seconds stretched like hours.

And just as she was about to ridicule herself for her insanity, her cell phone rang.

---

Author’s Note: Yes, I did cheat and wrote about writing. I also liked this story’s concept more than I ended up liking the execution :/. It’s definitely a weird one though.

Anyway, the title means “The Pen is Mightier” obviously derived from saying the pen is mightier than the sword. Unfortunately, an Englishmen first said that so in my quest to make a non-English title I did some mental somersaults. Basically I took the idea that writer’s are the “gods” of their own worlds (which Caroline makes even more literal here). And one of the first monotheistic religions known to us is Zoroastrianism which originated from Persia. And that concludes today’s peek into the weird way my mind works.

#Klaroline #KlarosummerBingo #Klaroline Fanfiction #Klaroline Drabbles #Klaroline Edits #Klaroline Photosets #Klaroline Aesthetics #My Writing #My Edits

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youknowmymethods · 6 years ago

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Content Creator Interview #6

Hello again and welcome to our sixth interview. This time, it’s the turn of @ashockinglackofsatin to put @sunken-standard ‘s writing under the microscope. Together they chat about the early days of the Sherlock fandom, how music can influence writing, and why the I Love You scene helped end sunken’s own great hiatus.

For those who don’t know me: I am @ashockinglackofsatin on tumbr, satin_doll on AO3. My test subject...erm, sorry - interviewee - is the notorious sunken_standard, probably most famous for her two epic, novel-length stories Longer Than The Road That Stretches Out Ahead and Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, which can be found on AO3 (along with her other wonderful stories) and should be required reading for anyone aspiring to write fanfiction.

You should know, first off, that I’m crap at doing interviews, which I discovered years ago when I had to interview musicians and various personalities as a job. I didn’t last long at that job.

So here is Kat’s Idiotic Interview with @sunken-standard.

satin_doll: You’re very good at writing Sherlock’s emotional cluelessness without making him seem like an idiot or an ass. Can you talk a little about the way you see Sherlock’s character that allows you to do this?

sunken_standard: Thank you :D So the answer to this is going to carry through to some of the other questions, but basically, I write Sherlock as a version of myself. I feel a kinship with the character, a highly intelligent person surrounded by idiots and so, so frustrated by it, but even more frustrated by his own brain and the inability to control it. Probably autistic, just like I'm probably autistic (and I don't want to get into it but I'm not trying to co-opt an identity here or anything; I've tried to get a diagnosis and found out that's just not possible with my current healthcare options).

Anyway, one of my probably-autistic things is being hyper-aware of other people's emotions, but also having trouble identifying them and the appropriate responses. At times I do lack empathy, like I honestly can't understand why someone is feeling what they're feeling because I wouldn't feel that way in the same situation and it doesn't make sense. Sometimes I can empathize so much that it's overwhelming and I just kind of short-circuit, especially when it comes to grief or loss, and I end up being insensitive or just not saying or doing what a normal person would.

So basically, I approach his responses to other people's emotions the way I would my own, only stripped of female socialization and self-awareness.

satin_doll: How much do you draw on your own life and experiences in your fics?

sunken_standard: For scenarios and specific scenes, not a lot. For emotional and sensory experiences, more. I haven't done very much or lived to my full potential, so it's not a very deep well on either account. Every now and then anecdotes or details creep in (like Mars Cheese Castle and the “call me Daddy” during sex thing [which, for the record, was skeevy as fuck irl]), but most of it just comes from nowhere or stuff I saw on TV.

satin_doll: Both “Longer than the Road…” and “Fumbling Toward Ecstasy” are novel length stories. “Road”, however, is written without breaks/chapters. Did you ever consider breaking it up into parts or chapters? How hard was it to keep it all in one piece and how long did it take you to finish it?

sunken_standard: When I write, I usually just start and then go 'til it's done or I burn out. I got through three or four chapters' worth of FTE (and was on the verge of giving up until maybe_amanda convinced me not to). Since the story wasn't nearly finished and I wanted to start putting it out into the world (mostly because I have no patience, but also because I knew there was a window to stay relevant and a large number of people were looking for a longer, meatier [cough] post-TFP fic), I decided to start posting what I had and just write as I went because I was, in hindsight, probably hypomanic and I was keeping a good pace at that point.

I dunno, I think there was a lot more of that long-format thing happening in fic back then, where you'd have a 40k piece that only had breaks because of the word limit per post on LJ.

As far as how long it took, I don't remember. I know I started it February of that year and had probably a good 75% of it finished (all written at a tear, over the course of probably ten days or so, because when I was still smoking actual cigarettes I could and did do 3-5k words/ day), but then I dropped it and went on to try other ideas. I went back to it when those other stories fizzled, and I finished it in maybe another 2-3 weeks with editing and beta reading. I had some real problems with the ending and it was never good enough for me, but I just got to a point where I was sick of it and it was good enough.

So basically, it's harder for me to work in chapters than it is one long piece. There's more discipline to a chaptered work; each chapter is its own story, in a way, and each one needs to end on a certain kind of beat. I still don't feel like I have a knack for it, and I think if I did anything long like that again I'd have to write most of it without breaks and then shoehorn them in where I could later on.

satin_doll: You took a long hiatus from Sherlock fic after S2, and came back for S4. What was it about S4 that sparked your writing again?

sunken_standard: I don't really know. I mean, the ILY was a big thing, but I think S4 gave me more to work with for the kind of things I write (all the angst and inner monologue) than S3 or TAB. I had mixed feelings about S3. I didn't like Mary much for a long time because she was one of Moffat's women (and anyone who's seen my tumblr knows how I feel about that), but I finally unclenched after a while because I like Amanda Abbington a lot and Mary was preferable to Sarah Sawyer (who I'm more ambiguous about now, but really didn't like for a long time because there was something about her that I read as smarmy, though now I see her reactions as more subtly uncomfortable and kind of like “what's going on/ this is weird/ John's a nice guy but is everything around him always this weird?”). Anyway.

I did try writing a bit after S3, but I never finished any of it; I didn't really feel like there was a place in the fandom or much of a community at that time, either—at least, not like what I had been used to from the early days. The tribe that existed wasn't my tribe (any of them). I think I need a certain degree of shared enthusiasm to motivate me to keep writing. Like, I have a lot of ideas for fic in other fandoms, but they're dead or never existed in the first place. And I know I'll have some audience for the small fandoms and people will read and kudos and everything, but there's no one around to geek out with or bounce ideas off of, so it just isn't as appealing. If I'm going to be miserable and alone while writing something, it's going to be something I can at least make money off of, y'know?

satin_doll: Do you edit as you go or finish the story first and go back over it to edit?

sunken_standard: Edit as I go. When I get stuck, I break that cardinal rule of writing and go back over what I've written and nit-pick it to death. It's a bad habit, but at the same time, small changes have led to big developments in the course of the story later on. I mean, I think sometimes this is why I have so many unfinished things, but I've tried just writing through and that doesn't work for me either. Once I get to the end of something, I've already made most of big cuts and done a lot of the reworking, so the beta polishing isn't as labor-intensive. I'm one of those people that when I feel like something's finished, I don't want to have to go back to it again. And if I didn't edit as I went, it would kind of feel like redoing the whole story and that's extremely unappealing to me. It's kind of like baking—it's always better if you clean as you go, rather than waiting until the cake's out of the oven to do the dishes and put stuff away (which I do when I'm low on spoons, but it ends up seeming like double the work).

satin_doll: Do you proof it yourself or rely on someone else to proofread it for you? I’m talking technical details here, proofing as opposed to simple beta reading.

sunken_standard: Mostly proof myself, since I edit as I go (and proofing is inevitably part of that when the mistakes just jump out). My beta catches everything else (and she's amazing; I misuse words and just legit don't know spelling differences for a lot of things [stationary vs stationery] and I'm not great with grammar and prepositions because I'm an ignorant fucker with no education).

satin_doll: When did you first start writing? When did you first discover that you COULD write?

sunken_standard: I remember writing stories as a kid, but I burned them all when I was a teenager so I don't even know what most were about or anything. I do remember that I wrote one when I was in like 4th or 5th grade that was ST:TNG self-insert fanfic and I think the plot was me working with Data to bring Lal back. I know it was Data, because I had a huge crush on him as a kid. I really thought I could grow up to write ST:TNG novels at that point.

And as for CAN write—jury's still out on that one. Ask my 12th grade English teacher, who laughed in my face when I told him I was thinking of pursuing English so I could be a writer. But before that, I had some other teachers that used to give me A+s on my creative writing assignments (despite all the spelling and grammatical errors). In 11th grade, I had a really great teacher, Mr. Lansing, who turned me on to the good parts of American lit and really encouraged me to read (and write) what I liked, not just what other people told me I had to. He encouraged me when I applied for the Governer's school, too. (The Governer's School is this program in PA for kids who excel; it's like a summer camp for the elite nerds. They have a bunch of them, each for different areas—math, science, medicine, I think one that's like history/ government/ civics, and then one for the arts. For creative writing, they take a total of 20 kids—10 for poetry and 10 for prose. I tried for the poetry category and made the first round of cuts and went for a regional interview (with about 50 other kids, so like maybe 150 kids state-wide); long story short I didn't make it. I was the first alternate, meaning if somebody couldn't attend, I would get their spot. #11 out of 10. I was so crushed, because it basically reinforced what I'd been told by other people—I was a big fish in pond too small to even piss in and there were always going to be people better than me. I was already mostly checked-out when it came to academia and aspirations; after that there was just really no point to keep going.)

Anyway though, I did write bits and pieces here and there even after school, thinking one day I'd get my shit together and write my own Confederacy of Dunces and then off myself (it's still a viable plan). Then, in 2008 I was recently unemployed and everything in life was shitty, so I wrote a big happy-ending fic for The Doctor and Rose. It was kind of the right bit of media at the right time that inspired me. More about that later though.

satin_doll: What/who do you think has had the biggest influence on the development of your style?

sunken_standard: I've been asked this before, and I always feel like I'm a little pretentious and I trot out the same names (both fanfic authors and book authors), but I had a realization a while ago that I'm always missing one person—Vonnegut. I think he's got this kind of no-bullshit way of saying things that still manages to be poetic and delicate and that's what I most aspire to.

I think a lot of my style is influenced by film, too. Some influences are probably Todd Solondz, Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, and John Waters, as far as the way I approach the reality within the story. I think I tend to focus on a lot of the same things—the weird, the mundane, the mildly uncomfortable—but I don't go nearly as far in any direction. I think even the way I string scenes together and the shifting of focus within my scenes between action, dialogue, and inner monologue are influenced by cinematography. I always say I'm just transcribing the movie in my head, so I mean, there's bound to be some kind of influence.

satin_doll: You’re noted for the banter between your characters, humorous and otherwise. Do you have rules/profiles for characters that establish their voices for you? Are there things, for example, that you think Sherlock or Molly simply would never say/do or would always say/do? How structured are these characters in your head when you start writing?

sunken_standard: It varies slightly from story to story/ universe to universe, but I think I have patterns for the banter (and I have a different set for Sherlock and John, and Sherlock and Mycroft, but there are common threads throughout). As for comedy, it's not quite straight man/ funny man, but I tend to default to Sherlock being more literal and deadpan and Molly being more expressive and emotive. I use the scraps of the dynamic the show's given us and just build on that. It's kind of formulaic, actually: Sherlock does a not-good thing (degree of severity varies), Molly reacts with a blend of annoyance and amusement while going along for the ride.

I have a kind of mental file for things I think would be out of character for each of them, but sometimes I like to try to find a way to get to one of those things and slip it into a fic organically. One of the reason I liked doing the one-line prompt fics so much was that so many of them could easily have been intros to the kind of fluff that makes me gag; I'm no fool, though, and I love me some low-hanging fruit, so I just adjust it to my tastes. I'm a never-say-never kinda gal. Mostly.

That being said, there are a lot of things that I think would take a lot of doing to make them be in-character. I don't think they'd ever use pet names for each other unless it was through gritted teeth or with at least a bit of irony (like how I used “yes, dear,” in FTE, and I think in some of the universes in Ficlet Cemetery). I can't see Sherlock ever doing housework unless it was for a case (though dishes and sanitizing surfaces are an exception, because both those chores are tangent to the kind of cleaning up after oneself one does in a lab setting, and imo that fits with his logic). I can't see him being very affectionate in public, except under rare circumstances when he might do an arm around the shoulders or a guiding palm to the small of the back.

And as for structure, I think they all start with the same scaffolding, but in every new universe they get draped slightly differently according to variations in backstory or tone or genre or whatever. Or like, they're already sculpted, but the lighting changes. I think that as I write, they take on different nuances and acquire more depth, though. Like it wasn't really until a few chapters in to FTE that I got a fuller picture of the Molly I was writing, even though I had the rough idea of her backstory from pretty much the beginning. Same with Longer Than the Road, too. As I come up with details of someone's past, I experience those scenarios and it makes me rethink and fine-tune everything about them in what I've already written, and adds more texture as I keep going.

satin_doll: You’ve listed a playlist for “Longer than the Road…” Do you write to music? How much does music inspire your writing? Does every story have a playlist?

sunken_standard: It's funny, but I don't listen to music nearly as much as I did even 5 years ago. Not sure why, honestly, maybe something to do with my mental health and overstimulation? So I don't write to music much anymore. Not every story has a playlist or songs attached (I don't think any of the FC stuff does, at least not in any significant way), but it seems like my best work is inspired by music in some way.

FTE didn't really have a soundtrack, but I listened to a lot of the music I had in common with the version of Molly that I was writing—very 90s alternative and pop rock. Lots of Pulp (which I picked as Molly's favorite band because I think they're Loo's favorite, or one of her favorites). For the proposal, I had “Dreams” by The Cranberries on a loop as I wrote. There's just something musically about that song that's full of anticipation and the wavy kind of guitar (I don't know the music terms and it's been so many years since I was into anything instrument-related that I'm not even sure how the sound is made, like a whammy bar or wiggling their fingers on the frets or whatever but anyway) just has this kind of wavering emotion that makes it feel like it's on the cusp of something. And also it's the big romance song from every coming-of-age thing ever, and so just hearing it is like an auditory shorthand for breathless, adventurous romance, at least for women of a certain age (namely, my age, and I'm only a year younger than Loo/ Molly). There was another scene—I can't remember what it was without rereading the fic—that I spent like three days listening to nothing but “The Way” by Fastball. It might have been the thing with the drink testing and then the sex on the sofa and the cake baking. (As an aside, I just started listening to the song and immediately got hit with a sense memory of night-wet spring air blowing in my window, because that's what the weather was when I was writing to this and it gives me a weird yearning pull in the back of my throat, like nostalgia almost but something else in it. Like, did you ever hear a pop song that taps into some deeper part of the human experience, both musically and lyrically, and you just feel like there's some universal truth in it that's too much to totally grasp? That's how I feel about both of those songs. Anyway.)

Another story that had a few songs attached was Stainless, Captive Bead. Radiohead's “Creep” was what they were listening to in the tattoo parlor, and a lot of the sex bits were written while listening to Nine Inch Nails' “Closer” (look, if it's set in the 90s and there's fucking in it, I'm going to find a way to relate it to “Closer,” because that song is just dark sex and angst set to synthesizers and a high hat).

Also, sometimes when I write I listen to ambient noise stuff, cityscapes or rain or whatever fits the tone of the piece and my mood. I can't listen to anything for too long, though, because I get listener fatigue and I burn out faster.

satin_doll: Have you ever considered self-publishing your stories as a book or series of books?

sunken_standard: I've tried to file off the serial numbers on the Girlfriend series, but it was harder than I thought it would be so I back-burnered it. I still like to think that one day I will, it's a life goal, but if I put too much pressure on myself I only make it worse and nothing gets done.

satin_doll: You seem to have a detailed backstory for every character in your stories, from Janine to Molly’s mother. Do you work these out beforehand or do they just happen in your head as you write?

sunken_standard: Both? I kind of touched on it earlier, but I usually have an idea of the backstory, the bones at least, and then as I write it gets richer. I have multiple headcanons for every character, so I just start off with one of those. Like I have five different families for Molly, all things I was coming up with when I was writing other stories. Hell, I've got like five different Uncle Rudys (most of them highly unpleasant and most likely triggering).

I have a habit of just sitting and thinking about a character, like “what would make them this way?” armchair psychoanalysis stuff. And if I can establish a plausible-sounding backstory, I have a better foundation for introducing non-canonical traits or details. I think that's the downfall of a lot of fic authors—they just write a canon character as they would an OC and expect us to play along without demonstrating any internal logic. Maybe I'm just picky; there's certainly an element of that, too.

satin_doll: How detailed is the story in your mind before you start writing it? Do you work from plans and outlines with every story?

sunken_standard: It all depends on the story. Sometimes I have a whole series of detailed scenes just waiting in my head to be written out. Sometimes I only have one thing and I just keep going. I say I use an outline, but it's not a proper outline. More like a collection of notes and bullet points of what I want to happen and what kind of beats I want to hit. I usually keep it at the bottom of my working document so I don't have to switch to another doc to look at it if I need to.

satin_doll: Where does a story begin with you? What constitutes the “urge” to write? You once mentioned (in a comment reply I think) that you know the ending of the story first and then write the rest of the story to get there. What do you do when a story goes off track? How do you get it back to the way you planned it, or do you even try to do that?

sunken_standard: (I don't know why my document formatting went tits-up here, so I'll answer 1 & 2 both here)

So stories are a visceral kind of thing. I always have ideas. Seriously, give me a theme or a title or something and I can spit out a summary and details in as long as it takes to type it out. But actually crafting prose (can I sound more pompous?) is best likened to the urge to poop. Classy, right? I said it was visceral. Really though, it's that same kind of state of heightened awareness/ arousal (in the strictest medical sense of the word, not sexual arousal), something is happening and if it doesn't things are going to get weird and I'm going to be very uncomfortable for a very long time. Also, like pooping, if it's not ready, no amount of grunting or straining is going to make it happen, and it might even make it worse in the long run. As you can tell, I've been very, very constipated for the last year.

Anyway.

Stories going off track... a lot of the time I just let it happen because it's taking me to a better place than where I thought it was going to end up.

satin_doll: Quote from you: “I spend way too much time thinking about who Molly is as a person. Writing porn and comedy both have their appeal, but I really like sitting down and thinking about what makes any given character tick and how they might feel about what's happening around them. 30s and single has so much baggage to it, even if all the women's magazine articles and whatever-wave-we're-up-to-now feminist thought pieces say it's a myth or a stereotype or whatever. It's a truth we don't want to be true because it's not fair. I mean, it's not the thing that solely defines any woman, but it's there, just like cellulite and brand new and worrying moles and our favorite brand of whatever suddenly being discontinued (or significantly changed) because some marketing person decided it was too 'old.' But anyway, such is life. And I like putting that in fic.”

Do you write character studies to use as a reference for your stories, or just wing it for each individual piece?

sunken_standard: The character study is dead, isn't it? Like, as standalone fic. Never see them anymore, which is a real pity. I used to write them (or, well, start them, heh) before I took a break from writing/ fandom, mostly to try to get some of my headcanons down in some kind of usable way. But I haven't really written a character study (in prose, at least) since 2012 or so.

So when I write, I keep two documents open—the working copy that's a first-through-final draft and a “notes/ cut bits/ things to work in somehow” document. In the notes document I usually keep any character details (backstory or how I want them to react to something later, whatever). There are themes I go back to over and over, like a cluster of traits I reuse in some fashion because I think they fit the character (Mycroft and disordered eating, Molly as a middle child in some fashion, John as the child of alcoholics, etc.), so a lot of that just lives in my head. Any bits of characterization specific to a story go in the notes doc for that story, while any generic thoughts or something that I think I might want to use later gets stuck in another document full of random ideas, snippets of dialogue, jokes, AUs I'll never write, that kind of thing. I've got a few of those docs from different writing periods. They're mostly just a way to externalize a thought so I don't lose it; I hardly ever go back to them for anything.

satin_doll: What was your first involvement with fanfiction? Where did it all start?

sunken_standard: I started to answer this in another question; basically, fanfic's been in my wheelhouse in one way or another since I was a kid (Star Trek novels are fanfic, period). I discovered fanfiction back in the days of eXcite searches and webrings while looking for translations of Inu Yasha manga scans; I stumbled upon an English-language fancomic/ doujinshi called Hero in the 21st Century and it was so well-written, funny and poignant and well-researched I was just drawn in. I still think about it and the author's other works to this day. I did pick at the idea of writing myself, sometimes even put down scenes or outlines and did hours of research, but never did the thing.

And then, in 2008, the stars aligned and I started a thing. Journey's End spawned a ton of Doctor Who fic, and that was good, because I could just kind of slip mine in there and I probably wouldn't get a lot of criticism or attention. So I wrote like two chapters without any idea of how it was going to end, and I submitted it to Teaspoon and an Open Mind (which was the Doctor Who fic archive at the time; it was curated/ moderated and where you went when you wanted to read something you knew would be good, or at least conform to certain standards, unlike The Pit [which is still garbage today]). And I got rejected. My grammar and spelling were awful (I didn't even have spell-check in whatever program I was using) and they said the whole thing had good bones, but I really needed to work on the English before they'd look at it again. Getcherself a beta, they suggested, and I think they had a forum where writers and betas could connect. So I got myself a beta and she stuck with me for like 30 chapters, answering questions and keeping my characterization on-track and basically re-teaching me the rules of written English. I tried to email her a few years ago to thank her again, but her email bounced back. Her name was Julia and if she sees this, thank you Julia. You're a wonderful person.

Anyway, I wrote lots in that fic universe for like 2 months, then got another job and tapered off. I abandoned it completely after a year. Life got in the way of a lot of things, and the next time I was really inspired to write anything was a couple years later, for Supernatural. I only put it on my LJ, never posted to a community or anything, and no one read it. Literally, I don't think the post got any hits at all and for sure no one commented. I sometimes think about putting it on AO3 just because. And then Sherlock happened and here we are.

satin_doll: Do you think writing fanfic has hurt or hindered your original work? Why or why not? (that looks like a high school test question - sorry!)

sunken_standard: Lol @ test question :D

I'm not really sure, tbh. On one hand, I only have so much creative energy—it's definitely a finite resource, and a scarce one—and devoting it to fanfic diverts it from any original work. On the other hand, all writing is practice. The only way to improve is to keep doing, no matter what it is. So in that sense, fanfic's certainly helped me to find a comfortable voice and a prose style that works for me. There are still problems to solve, figuring out the best approach to a scene or story from a technical standpoint (stuff like tense and perspective and all that), so I'm always learning something as I go. Mixed bag, really.

satin_doll: What was it about the Sherlock/Molly dynamic that got you started on a piece like “Longer Than the Road…” What did you see there that made you want to explore it in such detail?

sunken_standard: So I always talk about how Sustain was my come-to-Jesus moment with Sherlock and Molly. Here's something I've never told anybody, not even maybe_amanda (because I was kind of ashamed, but not for the reasons people might think): before ever reading Sustain, I started a story that was Sherlock/ John and Sherlock/ Molly. I had it roughly outlined and a few pages written, but I just kind of lost the feeling of it and it was starting to get problematic for character motivations, yada yada, so into the scrap heap it went. It had a passing similarity to Sustain because of a platonic-sex-for-pregnancy element (hence why I never talked about it), but the major difference was that it was going to end up as a kind of polyamorous arrangement, Sherlock loving both of them and having a kind of co-parenting triad. In mine, John wanted a baby, and Molly wanted her own baby, and Sherlock thought “best of both worlds!” and why do IVF when you can write awkward angst-fucking instead. But yeah, I never finished it.

Anyway, I always saw something there, but I couldn't make it work in a way that was consistent with my own characterization of Sherlock until after Series 2. Even in Series 1, he looks at her with a kind of fondness and a sort of bewilderment that just lends itself to nerds in love. At the time (and even now, tbh), I kind of attributed that to BC having a crush on Loo (and oh man do I have theories, which are gossipy and gross and not the kind of thing I usually even bother having opinions about, but have you listened to the S1 commentary and some of the interviews around that time? there's something more there) and that kind of just spilling over onscreen and it working for the editor because it makes BC look sexy.

I mean look, I make no secret of the fact I started off shipping Sherlock with John almost exclusively (though I'd read just about anything), and after S1 aired it was just a different time. I get really annoyed when people talk shit about the pairing and the people who still ship them, because most of them weren't even in the fandom at the time and didn't have the same experience as the OGs. When Series 1 aired, hardly anyone knew who BC was, and Martin was just the guy from The Office and some other shows that were kind of unremarkable; most of the fandom was composed of old-school ACD Sherlockians and a few stragglers (like me) that got there from Doctor Who or were just general mystery/ thriller fans that got sucked in. We had a different perception of it because we weren't led into it by Star Trek or Hobbits or MCU; the characters didn't have that baggage attached for us. A lot of us already had a perception of Holmes and Watson as some shade of gay, so it was no great leap to see the very obvious romance (and yes, they all called it that in interviews at the time) onscreen as a romantic one. Martin, when asked, said basically that he'd play the next series (S2) however they wrote it, and if romance was there he'd go down that road. Whatever, I don't need to defend it because people think what they think anyway.

Anyway, getting back to the actual question instead of a million tangents and rants, I think I saw a lot of the things that have since become like backbone tropes of the pairing (even in canon, with the whole “alone, practical about death” thing). Their interactions in S2 were great; everything hinted at more than what was on-screen. And I really liked the idea of exploring the dynamic that was pretty much already there, as far as Molly having both a crush and self-respect and Sherlock suddenly having to rely on this person (that he picked because she was reliable to begin with) who's a friend, but also kind of a stranger in the way that a lot of the people we consider friends are (at least, friends made in adulthood; work-friends, church-friends, club-friends, gym-friends). Past that, I really saw the potential for character growth stemming from their interactions, but not like her humanizing him or whatever; both of them gaining insight about themselves, with the other person (and their relationship) as a vehicle for those realizations. I think I could have done better on that front, but hindsight blah blah.

satin_doll: How familiar were you with the Sherlock Holmes character before the BBC series aired, and what made you want to write about him?

sunken_standard: So I wasn't very familiar at all. Just what was in the general cultural lexicon, maybe a few episodes of the Granada series on PBS as a kid, a few of the stories that I just couldn't get into when I tried to read them because I hate Victorian prose (hate it, everything about it, I won't read anything written before 1920 or so because I just hate it [Wilde being the singular exception, but I even get bogged down by him]). Oh, and the RDJ movie, which wasn't really Sherlock Holmes to me, but just like a Victorian-era action movie. After S1, I just devoured canon (though, full disclosure, I still haven't read all of it, probably only about 80%), then moved on to other adaptations and canon-era fic and pastiches, read a bunch of extra-canon material on the internet. So as far as that goes, I'm very much a poseur and newbie in the greater Sherlock Holmes fandom. At least I did my research?

Anyway, it really took the modern adaptation and BC's performance to make the character resonate with me. The aspects he chose to play up—the frustration and impatience and frantic mental energy—just hit a nerve. He really channeled the “gifted” experience (which I suspect was just a lot of BC himself bleeding through). Finally I could use a fictional character to bemoan how stupid everyone around me was and sound like a complete asshole and be completely in-character! The heavens smiled upon me.

Really though, I was initially attracted to how cerebral it was and how smart the fandom was overall. It was the early fandom (and I mean early, like days after episode 1 aired) that drew me in, at least to a participatory (vs. consumptive) level. Lots of very clever, very educated, very queer people having these deep, insightful discussions about everything (sometimes only tangentially related to the show). When I did start writing, I didn't have to dumb anything down; the challenge was to sound smarter than I actually am. And, I mean, I got to dredge up a lot of my own emotional baggage from being a perpetual outsider, which is always cathartic (and probably not very healthy, long-term, because it's not resolving anything, just exploiting myself, but that's a can of worms).

satin_doll: Are you more drawn to Sherlock or Molly as a character, or both equally? Why?

sunken_standard: Sherlock, I think, for the reasons described in the last question.

I don't generally identify with female characters in fiction, since my own identification as female is tenuous (and in general they're poorly written and poorly realized, but that's another story). I mean, I can draw from my own experiences as a (mostly) female-shaped person with female socialization, but I have a hard time intuiting feminine and it's harder for me to write a “normal” woman.

Paraphrasing something I read in an interview with another fic author I admire, writing a woman is always a self-portrait, and how much of yourself do you really want to reveal? Since I don't know how to woman correctly, I'm always afraid I'm going to slip up and hit the wrong beat for what a normal woman is and end up ruining the characterization. I do manage to channel a lot of my own frustrations with men, relationships, being a single and childless woman over 30, and the patriarchy into Molly's character, though.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I really love Molly (and always have—I was one of the first to use her as a main character and not just a punching bag or a punchline). I love her sense of humor and her job and her fashion sense, all of it. She's not one-dimensional. It's just easier for me to write Sherlock than it is to make decisions about who Molly is.

satin_doll: You are “internet famous” for Longer Than the Road (rightfully so!) What about that story do you think is so affecting for fans? How has “Road” influenced subsequent work you’ve done in the Sherlolly ship?

sunken_standard: You know, I'm really not sure why it seems to resonate with people. Maybe the homesickness or the exhaustion that comes with impermanence (and I mean, we all feel that on an existential level, everything's always changing and it's faster every year, just existing is like trying to walk in an earthquake). Or the healing/ recovery aspect of it (I tried to balance both sides, the affected and the caregiver). Or maybe I just wrote it at the right time (when there wasn't much else out there) and people kept coming back to it because it was familiar.

As for how it's influenced subsequent work... I'm sure it has, but I don't know how, exactly. I still think it's the best thing I've ever written and the closest to something literary I'll ever get, so in a way it's an albatross (no one ever wants to be reminded that they already peaked). I get frustrated when my newer work doesn't live up to the standard I set for myself with it. That frustration doesn't make me a better writer, it just makes me tired, so everything I do now is paler.

One thing it did do was cement my characterizations of Sherlock and Molly and the dynamic between them. I tend to write them a certain way and don't deviate from that, and that all has roots in the push-pull, love-hate thing I established in Longer Than the Road. I can't write Molly without a degree of contempt for Sherlock and I can't write Sherlock without a degree of shame and contrition in his feelings toward Molly.

satin_doll: How does feedback affect what you write? How important is it? Is it more important that a reader “get” the point of the work or just that they like it? What kind of reader do you write for?

sunken_standard: I try not to let feedback affect my writing. I mean, I only get positive feedback, really, so it's a high. I'm not trying to brag or anything; I count myself lucky that I don't get the shit others do (though I honestly think anybody that posts on The Pit is opening themselves up to it because it's a garbage dump, but I've never liked the site, so). I try not to let it go to my head or anything though.

I also try not to let it influence the direction my writing takes; I might do a comment fic or write a silly HC or something, but I like to keep my substantial pieces pure, so to speak. Though sometimes a comment sparks something and a whole other fic grows out of it, so I fail there, I guess. Sometimes it's a lot of pressure when people say they want to see more of something, or want me to write a kind of specific scenario, so I usually just don't, and then I feel bad about not giving nice people what they want and it starts this whole weird spiral of guilt and obligation and then swinging the other way and getting (internally) belligerent over not owing anybody anything. I uh, have a complicated relationship with my work being acknowledged in any capacity.

As for people “getting” it... I don't know if they really do or not. Sometimes I get comments and I can tell they're definitely on my wavelength and they picked up on an allusion or a detail or just saw or felt everything in the scene like I did when I was laying it out. Once in a while I get a comment that has a different interpretation than what I was trying to get across, and that's really cool because it makes me re-examine my own work and see it from a different perspective (which I think makes me stronger for the next thing). It's really validating when someone “gets” it, but at the same time, I write to entertain other people (as well as myself), so as long as they like it, I feel accomplished.

It's cliché, but I write for an audience of one. I've tried to write outside my taste and it doesn't end well. Sometimes I write tropes that aren't my bag (like the Wiggins “the Missus” thing, or kidfic/ pregnancy), but it's kind of like a nod and wink to people who do like it, rather than outright pandering. At least, that's what I tell myself. Sometimes you need to try on every bra in your size, even the ones you know you hate, just to make sure you're getting the right one, y'know?

satin_doll: Do you think fanfic has changed since you began writing it? If so, how?

sunken_standard: Yeah, but I don't think it's a good or bad thing. And it depends on where you look and what you consume.

In the last like five years, Tumblr's purity culture has shamed a lot of kink back into the closet, I think, and people (in my fandoms, at least) aren't really writing on the edge. I see darkfic, but it's about as dark as the night sky over Hong Kong. I think people are afraid to go really dark anymore because they don't want the backlash from a generation fed on a diet of pink princesses and promise rings. And I think everyone's desire for happy-ending escapism has ratcheted up because the real world is shit and TV shows are all playing Russian roulette with surprise deaths to add drama (thanks, The Walking Dead, for making that element so ubiquitous that the rest of the mainstream picked it up and ran).

On the other hand, I'm not seeing near the amount of badfic as I used to. It was never as much of a problem on the old platforms and AO3 (compared to The Pit), but there were always some. I mean, there are still lots of turds out there, but they all seem a bit more polished these days. As far as the English goes, at least. Maybe my fandoms are just maturing.

I think people interact a lot differently now, too. This is going to kind of tie into the next question, but the types of feedback are different now and I think authors have changed what and how they produce to kind of chase the dragon of positive feedback. Like, when I started, most public archives (read: not just one author's own website with all their fic, like you found in webrings a lot)—both completely open and curated—had some way to submit comments and allowed author replies. There was really no other way to let an author know you liked their work. I mean, some sites tracked numbers for bookmarking features or hit counts, but those weren't as... active(? I guess), they weren't really participatory for the reader.

Then AO3 came along and started the kudos thing (which people still bitch about because they think they get fewer comments; like be happy you get anything, ya fuckin' ingrates). Kudos count became a de facto rating system, thanks to the sort feature. Whenever I start reading for a new fandom, I pick a pairing, pick a rating, and sort by kudos. Sure, popularity isn't the best way to find good fic, but in any decent-sized fandom you can assume that the stuff on the first page is going to be written to a minimum standard. Anyway, one of the ways to game the system a bit on kudos is to do a multichapter fic; I've seen works that are like 80+ 200-word chapters (don't get me started on omnibus fic across fandoms). They aren't the best fic by far, but they pick up kudos every chapter, often from guests that are just people not signed in or on a different device. I'm not knocking it, exactly, since it front-paged me for more than one fic. Part of me still feels like it's disingenuous, but I also recognize that I should pull the stick out of my ass. Anyway, the kudos count was kind of the death of the one-shot longfic (which, when I wrote Longer Than the Road, was a pretty common format).

And now, it seems like the Tumblr fic culture is writing ficlets (under 1k words) and posting without a beta (and I do it too). Fic consumption has become a social activity. Reblogs aren't always about one's personal taste, they're a social signal of group affiliation. If you don't reblog certain things, you're suspect and given a wide berth. Woe betide the poor fucker that crosses party lines and posts one of the verboten ships. And I mean, this isn't just one fandom, I've seen complaints about it from all corners—Supernatural, Star Wars, MCU, Steven Universe ffs. I think when you have predominantly female spaces, you're always going to have an element of Mean Girl culture, y'know? I'm probably going to get my fingernails pulled out for being misogynistic or some kind of -phobic for saying that.

Whatever. It's true that a kind of hive-mind develops and all kinds of tropes and HCs get repeated until they become fanon. I mean, that kind of thing's always happened, but the whole culture of Tumblr forces you to identify yourself and your group affiliation by what fanon you subscribe to, probably because it's harder to find your tribe without dedicated community spaces like LJ had. With Tumblr, you basically have to trawl tags until you find your echo chamber.

I'm old and I fear change.

Tumblr ain't all bad, though. It's very collaborative, kind of like the old-school round-robin fic people used to do. Authors and artists riff off each other and a lot of really cool stuff comes out of these casual collaborations. And I do like the prompt lists; I remember kinkmemes and prompting communities back on LJ, but it feels more off-the-cuff and spontaneous to just give someone a numbered list and let them roll the dice for you.

You know what else has changed? We're kind of in a new era of epistolary storytelling with memes and shitposts; stories emerge that aren't prose (though might contain a prose element). I mean, people did mixed-media epistolary in 2008, but it was a lot harder then (create graphic, hand-code into text piece, hand-code all the italics and bolding and font changes to denote various media types, if you're really a wizard add in-line text links to audio clips to add ambiance). It's a lot easier to add a new thing on each reblog now, like someone does a video, followed by a 3-panel comic sketch, followed by a ficlet, and then a gif, you get the idea. I like it; it's just a shame that it's so ephemeral. Maybe that's part of the charm, though.

satin_doll: You’ve talked a bit about your experience with LiveJournal in the “old days”; what other platforms have you used in the past? Which ones did you like best?

sunken_standard: I went into it a little in another question, but I first posted fic to A Teaspoon and an Open Mind (www.whofic.com). Honestly, I don't remember much about it. I'm not sure, but I don't think they had a richtext editor at the time (2008) and I had to hand-code some or all of it. I vaguely remember having to do HTML for italics and paragraphs. I know I had to do that on LJ sometimes because the formatting from whatever word processor I was using at the time did some hinky shit sometimes on a copy/paste.

Next came LiveJournal (and DreamWidth, but I really only used that to back up my old LJ blog). It wasn't better than Teaspoon, just different. Teaspoon is niche, only fanfic and only for one fandom (well, one universe of fandoms, really, with all the spin-offs), where LJ was all kinds of stuff under one roof—personal blogs, communities with various intents and levels of participation, fanfic, fanart, gossip blogs, you name it. I liked the friendslist view thing; it was like proto-Tumblr. And you could talk to people on the threads; even personal blogs were like a forum.

I joined AO3 in 2011, after waiting like six months for more invites to open up, but I didn't post anything there until 2012. I'm really happy with it as a platform for posting fic. I like the editor and I like the tags, ratings, and sort features. I never even considered posting to ff.net because I'm a snobby fucker (and they can blow me with their whole “adult content ban” that still continues to be selectively enforced). Anyway, I preferred having my fic on AO3 before I even left LJ, since I didn't have to split my stories into parts because of character limits.

And then Tumblr took over and I kind of hate it, since you can't have conversations anymore, it's like leaving passive-aggressive post-its and there's no editing something once it gets reblogged, so typos and bad links and all that are always there. And even when the original is deleted, the reblog keeps going, which I really hate from a creator's standpoint (though the archivist/ curator part of me likes it because it doesn't get lost in the ether [the recent purge notwithstanding] like so much of the early days of the web did). Tumblr's really bad for posting anything but ficlets and links to fic on other sites.

satin_doll: What would your ideal fanfic publishing platform be like?

sunken_standard: Honestly, AO3 is just about as close to ideal as I can think of. I just wish you could directly upload images instead of having to do code jiggery-pokery to link to something hosted elsewhere. I've tried a million times and followed all the tutorials in an attempt to add the cover art to Longer Than the Road (gifted to me by @thecollapseinwonderland), but it just never works. It shows on the preview, but not on the live version and it's frustrating because I'm computer literate, goddamnit. Anyway. And I mean, in an ideal world there would be better ways to find quality fic to my taste, but there's no real way to add a rating system (like 5-stars) independent of kudos without discouraging authors (and I mean the potential for abuse and bullying is just too great).

Additional reader questions from @ohaine:

Stylistically, Longer than the road is quite different from the other fics at the top of the AO3 Sherlolly ratings; stream of consciousness at the beginning, and the nested internal thoughts. How much of that was a deliberate departure, and how much was you just channelling the story as it came out of you?

sunken_standard: At the time I was really influenced by a Sherlock/ John fic (I can't remember the title or author, it was 7 years ago, but I feel bad about forgetting). It was originally on LJ and their journal was a lightish blue color and the font was small (if anybody remembers this... there was something with an EKG and I think something with shooting up blood as a romantic gesture?). It was Sherlock POV and the author had a really unique way of presenting internal monologue. Anyway, at that time there was a lot of experimental writing going on on the slash side of things, it was great. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't read a lot of Sherlolly fic at that time because what did exist (as far as happy-ending/ happy-for-now stories vs like darkfic/ angst) was really, really not to my taste (the exception being Sustain). So it was only deliberate in that—even when I wasn't being experimental—I didn't want to write Harlequin books.

I wish a story like that would just come out of me. I mean, to a degree it did, but doing the thoughts and sub-thoughts was work. I mean, I've always been a brackets-and-footnotes kind of person because I like reading it, but the way I did the thoughts was more like writing HTML than a regular rambling narrative.

I think I read recently (maybe on a blog post?) that Riders on the storm was the original inspiration for Longer than the road. Was the scene in the storm your starting point with the story, or where did you begin?

sunken_standard: That was the first scene I wrote; at that time I had a really nebulous idea of the story. The imagery was really clear in my head, though the very earliest concept took place in the desert—the classic American image of the road going on forever and rusty sands and the heatwaves rising up off the asphalt. I'm not sure how it morphed into North Dakota, I might have seen a picture of lightning over the plains or something.

So after S2 aired, I just kind of sat and chewed it over for a month before any really strong ideas emerged for a story. I had to find the internal logic for the kind of plot I wanted to write—namely, them on the lam together. Making Sherlock have a breakdown seemed pretty natural at the time; in ACD canon (and many, many pastiches) he was always having them and going off to the country to recuperate. But he was supposed to be dead and he was all over the tabloids, so it's not like he could just move to some sleepy little village and hope no one recognized him.

I thought about sending him to Europe, using the places ACD Holmes went after Reichenbach (and I did start more than one with them in Florence, a few incarnations of which were Molly/ Irene wanklock PWPs, I actually think one of the Rusty Beds stories came from that, but I digress). The only problem with Europe is the language barrier; I thought it was too convenient to make Molly fluent in another language (she might have some conversational Spanish from a holiday or something, but that's it), so I had to make them go somewhere where English was common enough. I also didn't want them too far from the UK; I wanted Sherlock to be able to get on a plane and be back within half a day (I realize this isn't the reality of flying, but deus ex Mycroft, so). So Asia, Australia/ NZ, and even South Africa were out, leaving Canada, the US, or parts of the Caribbean. I didn't want them to by happy, so they didn't go to the Caribbean. Canada's great, but it's too nice and they also don't have deserts. America it was; it also really added some background tension because I think a lot of non-USians have a love-hate with us. Movies are okay, music too, and of course the tech and consumer innovations, but everything else is garbage and we're all just rude, ignorant, obese Yosemite Sams. For someone like Sherlock, I think the US is the last place he'd want to go (even though canon ACD Holmes was really into America). And I mean, write what you know, so that was that sorted.

Once I got them here I needed them to do something; I wanted to tell a very intimate story, and that would be boring if they were just living in a 2BR cape cod in Jersey. And I mean, what city would really suit Sherlock? Where could he have a life that wasn't London? Anyway, the inside of a car is just about as intimate as two people can get, and the greatest tradition in American literature and film is the road trip, and that was when I knew I had a solid foundation for a story. After that, it just kind of flowed as I planned the route.

Perfect, not perfect-perfect is a beautiful, brave piece that I think has a real air of authenticity to it. It was a very tough read, purely because of the journey the characters are on, and I wondered how difficult it was for you to write? Was it catharsis or an emotional black hole?

sunken_standard: You know, I'm not really sure if it was either catharsis or black hole. A lot of the particulars and even the emotional places in that story aren't mine, but an amalgam of some other friends' experiences with polyamory. My own experience with it was pretty shit and pretty unremarkable, but I learned a lot about the human heart and how some people can lie to themselves because they can't let go of their ideals and their identities (I'm also still a little bitter), but that's got nothing to do with the price of tea in China, so moving on.

Since a lot of those experiences weren't mine, it wasn't raw, so it wasn't very hard on me, personally. I think I wrote it in like three days? I don't think I wanted it to be a slog, so that's why it's in present tense and very sparse and matter-of-fact. Dispassionate, even. There are times when I'm writing really emotional stuff that I'm disconnected from it (which is a fuckin' mercy, because most of the time I'm right there going through it, over and over for days sometimes until I get the scene right and can move on to the next thing), and this was one of those times. I was writing this alongside the Girlfriend series, so there was some overlap there; I'd already done the emotional labor for everything up to Mary's death and I was thinking of different angles of approach for later installments of the series.

The most “me” part of it is near the beginning, writing my way around the bisexual experience from someone else's point of view. I don't have a lot in common with any of the characters; they're a higher social class, urban, products of a more liberal culture, yada yada, but there are some things that are just kind of universal and misunderstood about bisexuals, the stereotypes that we have to contend with and end up internalizing.

Oh, and the perpetual alienation is all me, too. Molly's feelings of being left behind are mine, how I felt every time friendships drifted apart or when female friends got married and then had kids. So a lot of the fatalism and insecurity are me projecting how I would feel or react. I kind of like depressed Molly, more than the perpetual ray of sunshine/ cinnamon roll at least.

*********

Many thanks to sunken_standard for taking the time to answer these questions!

And many thanks and much love to OhAine for all her hard work putting this project together! It’s been fun and enlightening!

Next week, Friday 29th March, it’s the turn of @ellis-hendricks and @geekmama

#content creator interviews #sherlolly #Sherlock #ashockinglackofsatin #sunken_standard

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sairenharia · 5 years ago

Text

Queen of Secrets pt. 3

Part 2

AO3

Nino would admit he's not the most observant of people. He missed Marinette's crush. He missed Alya was Rena Rouge. He often misses announcements for homework and tests. He could admit that he needed to work on that.

But he wasn't blind.

Especially when it came to Adrien. The dude had a horrible tendency to bottle things up, keep them to himself without asking. So he notices when things...shift between him and Chloe.

The thing was, Nino knows Chloe. He's been in school with her for years and ended up in her class more than once. She's always been a self entitled brat. Bragging about this expensive thing, threatening that with her dad's power, insulting and bringing people down. He had honestly been surprised at just how nice Adrien was despite being friends with her since childhood. He had figured out that he wasn't a bully like Chloe fairly quickly, just maybe afraid to be alone. He didn't expect the kind of guy who was genuinely optimistic, believing in people and always eager to help and give and not in the seeking approval way Sabrina did. He couldn't understand how someone like that would still be friends with Chloe even after he had won over their classmates.

Adrien said that Chloe wasn't always like that, she could be cool sometimes. Nino had thought maybe that was just him being too nice for his own good.

Until Adrien got pulled out of school for losing that book. He knows Chloe's crocodile tears. Everyone knows Chloe's crocodile tears except Kim. Even the teachers know and only 'fall' for it because if they don't, it moves to threats.

Those hadn't been crocodile tears. After meeting Gabriel Agreste, Nino could see why Adrien held such loyalty for her. She was a horrible bully, a complete brat, but at least she was willing to show she actually cared about him. Even if she bragged about knowing him, flirted with him even though he didn't seem interested, she would at least be upset for his misfortune. So much so when she asked him to DJ her party in her efforts to be 'nice,' he agreed. If she was trying for Adrien, he could at least do what he loved for her benefit.

Not that it lasted, though she DID cause less Akumas, so there's that. And then....

Then it gets a little weird.

Because the thing was, Nino saw Chloe in a way no one else besides Alya could. How she was as Queen Bee, up close and personal. He's been in school with her for years, but he's never seen her lift a finger for a school project, never offer a helping hand, never put in a bit of effort for anyone else besides herself unless she could turn the effort into a way for why she should be loved. And sure, she bragged about being Queen Bee, of course she did, but he also fought WITH her.

She had been good. Confident and bold which was more of a comfort while fighting bad guys then the annoyance of school life. She had been quick to act, pick up slack and save people, and when Rena had been hit, she had watched their back until her parents showed up, but to be fair, they were gunning for her hard. Nino knows what it's like to be a superhero. The more he did it, the more he recognized it was scary, it was hard. The rush of superpowers helped face it, but there was a very real risk. It was why Alya and him were practicing parkour, to get better when they were recruited. And the times Chloe was Queen Bee was when things were hardest, the scariest. Her own father, Heroes Day, Miraculer and Mayura. The time where things were the most dangerous and she still wanted to be a hero and she put in the actual effort.

He's not sure what to make of her honestly, because she is absolutely still a horrible brat even if she's gone down from an eleven to more a seven. He thinks whatever Adrien saw in her might actually be there, just buried real, real, reaaaaaaal deep.

And now there was this shift.

For as long as Adrien's been in school, most conversations between him and Chloe had mostly been Chloe bragging about something or flirting up a storm with Adrien. Or it's when Adrien is trying to get Chloe to lay off in his very gentle way of his. It was rare he ever see them just talk like the friends they both claimed they were. Adrien often treated her with the same distance he did with most of their classmates, something he's learned to recognize as uncertainty on how much he could let go of 'the perfect golden boy of Gabriel Agreste' persona. Adrien had slowly dropped it as they bonded, opened up about things piece by piece and Nino can see the stark difference when they hang out with people, and when it's just them. He's starting to relax around Alya and Marinette, thankfully, but it's a slow thing.

Then one day, Chloe had sat on the edge of his desk and showed him her phone, talking about a show she thinks he should watch. Never mentioned the name, Nino only learned it was a magical girl anime when he leaned over to look at the picture and Chloe gave him a pretty nasty glare in turn.

And he learned that one, Chloe was apparently a complete weeb which does explain the Ladybug cosplay, and two, the 'do not talk about weebitude' rule also applies to her. And three, he is trusted enough to keep silent on it? Well, he IS, he hasn't outed Adrien yet. Or the fact he was a complete nerd in a lot of ways.

It continued on like this, Chloe talking to Adrien about things other than riches and bragging, normal, everyday things, usually in terms where it's vague unless someone is paying attention and she doesn't feel the need to exclude him. Or didn't care he knew? She barely acknowledged him, he wasn't sure what it meant. But he does know Adrien was starting to relax more and more around her at school.

He asked Adrien about it once. Who had just shrugged and said they had gotten stuck together during that Akuma that had been after him shortly before the Shift and reconnected. When he asked further, Adrien shook his head and said that it was private and Nino let it go. If Adrien wants to talk about it, he will when he's ready. He knows he's here if he ever needs to.

And Nino was willing to just leave it at that. Adrien seemed happier, Chloe had less time to be rude to people, it was a win all around.

Then when he was meeting Adrien at a bookstore, a surprise hang out session, he showed up with Chloe.

"Uh, dude, why is she here?" Nino asked.

Chloe gave him a withering look. "I'm Adrien's friend. Why wouldn't I be here?" She asked.

"It was her idea," Adrien said, as Chloe made an offended noise and smacked his arm, causing him to laugh. "She knows father has to be in a really good mood to 'approve' of us hanging out. But he'll approve me hanging out with her, and if you just happen to be there..." He shrugged.

Chloe scowled, crossing her arms. "You always let me lead our hang outs. I already do that with Sabrina, I wanted a break. I thought at least he might have a suggestion," she said, earning another laugh from Adrien. "After we check out the new manga releases. There's a PreCure manga adaption out," she said, heading into the store.

"PreCure?" Nino asked as he followed after them.

"Pretty Cure. It's a magical girl series," Adrien said.

"The best magical girl series! So many fall into just the feelings and beam magic, Cure girls get real physical! They have a lot of good tips for a superheroine who relies more on martial arts," Chloe said, an excited smile on her face.

Nino honestly worried about her level of denial about no longer being Queen Bee.

"It does have pretty good fight scenes," Adrien said and nudged Nino's side. "You might like it."

"You can decide where we go next, though we've only got Adrikins for an hour and a half," Chloe said with a dismissive wave before turning into the graphic novel section.

Without the rest of their classmates, Adrien and Chloe are far more willing to show their excitement, talking about the new volume, and even trying to explain it to Nino. Well, Adrien started, then Chloe had to show how Adrien had it wrong and it was the most surreal experience in Nino's life because Chloe was actually kind of pleasant to be around? It was hard to not be pulled into their excitement even if he was incredibly confused.

They stopped in an overly fancy cafe for snacks, after a brief argument where Chloe refused to go into a normal convenience store. They compromised with Chloe and Adrien buying for Nino. He could afford normal snacks, not fifteen euros for a chocolate bar!

Then they ended up at a music store, with Nino showing Adrien samples of more underground music, and Chloe keeping mostly quiet. Only speaking up when she found piano sheet music of more modern music. But really, the fact she didn't complain about his taste in music was just another thing to add to the list of her being weird. And nearly giving him a heart attack when she asked to hear the improved mix from her party.

But eventually Adrien's schedule reared it's head and he had to go, with Chloe and Nino waving him off and he just...he had to ask.

"Dude, what has been with you?" Nino asked, fully expecting some kind of defensive snap.

"Oh shut up, I wanted to talk to you anyway and you wouldn't agree to meet me alone." Is what he gets instead.

"What?" Nino said in confusion.

She looked around, almost bored, and pulling out her phone and gestured for him to walk with her. He followed, feeling his annoyance mounting. She wanted to talk, but then went on her phone? What the heck?

"We're going to have more outings like this," Chloe said, eyes not straying up from the phone. "It is true. It's a lot easier for Adrien to get approval if he's supposedly hanging out with me. As long as I'm there, the Gorilla is technically bringing him where he's supposed to be, and if there's others, he's willing to let it slide if Adrien's having fun. As long as he's doing his job, whatever extras there are don't matter."

"And you're sure about that?" Nino asked.

Chloe scoffed. "I've spent over ten years learning the loopholes of the Agreste Overprotection Tendencies. Of course I'm sure," she said, shifting her phone and it's then Nino realized she wasn't reading anything. Her camera was on, and it was looking at the street behind them. What...? "Don't ask about it," she said, voice lowered.

"...why are you doing this now? Wait, is this why you showed up to those group gatherings near the beginning of the year?" Nino asked, still curious about what she was doing with her phone, but not asking. For now, at least.

"No, that was me wanting to spend time with Adrikins and making sure he was okay," she said. "And I'm doing this now because I love him and I want him to have a better quality of life."

Nino glared at her. "....are you doing this to try and get him to date you?" He asked, feeling a flare of anger. If Chloe was actually trying to trick Adrien-

She looked up with a nasty glare. "Romantic love and friend love are not mutually exclusive things, Lahiffe. Adrien and I just schooled you in magical girl tropes, you should understand that," she snarled.

"I don't know. You've been weird all day, it'd make sense if you were trying to trick him," Nino shot back, unwilling to be easily cowed when it was his best friend on the line.

"The only reason you met him is because of my love for him," Chloe hissed.

"What?" Nino said, taken aback.

"His father didn't approve of him going to school. How do you think he registered?" Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow.

It takes a moment. Because that's a good point. How did Adrien get in if his father didn't approve? People can't just join a class without paperwork. So how...

"Dude. Did Adrien ask...?" Nino asked, suddenly worried he read Adrien all wrong.

"Of course not. I just told him he was registered and he didn't ask how I did it," she said with a dismissive wave, looking down at her phone, moving the camera to look up near the rooftops behind them.

....okay, that made more sense. Adrien did have a tendency to just not ask if he knew he wasn't going to like the answer. "Why? You've never made it a secret you don't like anything about our school," Nino said.

"Because of people like you," Chloe said.

"....you keep losing me, dudette," Nino said.

Chloe sighed, rolling her eyes. "Seriously, you're so...you've MET his father. And Nathalie. His bodyguard. The help? He doesn't interact. They're hired to be discrete and professional. They don't talk unless spoken to. The only ones Adrien has a personal relationship are those who are directly responsible for him instead of the house," she said.

Nino frowned at that. Yeah, he knew it was pretty lonely. Cold. Adrien didn't talk about it a lot, but what little he's said combined with what Nino has seen, he knows it's not an ideal way to live. Especially with someone as lonely as Adrien had seemed to be.

"And as amazing as I am, I'm not...the best when it comes to emotions," Chloe said and Nino repressed a snort. That was one way to put it. Chloe wasn't good with most emotions or empathy in general. Nino though, he was a bit better and after the momentary moment of humor, he could see the look on her face. It was too blank, too carefully made to look unaffected. "Adrien didn't have a lot of people in his life. Nathalie and the Gorilla who barely count. His parents. And me. Then he lost his mother, his father lost whatever warmth he'd usually show, and the help was to be even more strict. I was the only emotional support Adrien had," she said, voice calm, and even.

And it clicked in Nino's head just how rough his bro must have had it before he showed up in school. It's hard to imagine the dork he met his first day was really stuck with that mourning and only having CHLOE to help. Suddenly his running off at Christmas made a lot more sense. Just going out for air his foot.

"And it became obvious that I wasn't enough. But Adrien has always wanted to go to school, wanted to be around other kids. I figured that at worst, it was a distraction. At best..." She looked his face, gaze more impartial then anything. Familiar.

The moment she handed over the Miraculous before she got arrogant and declared she'd be Queen Bee again.

"At best, he'd find people like you."

She exited out of the camera, turning off the screen before pocketing it. "I know Adrien doesn't love me romantically. I'm not an idiot. But we do love each other, and if I had to, if I thought it'd help, I'd burn the world for that boy. Those feelings aren't going to change. And if that means encouraging his relationships with people I don't like, spending time around them, and being....nice." Only Chloe Bourgeois could say that word like it was the worst thing in the world. "Then that's what I'll do. And I think he's suffering more than he let's on and that's the only way I can see helping him right now."

"Wait, what? What do you mean suffering more?" Nino said. He's not sure how to take the rest of all that, the proof that Chloe Bourgeois can indeed care very deeply about another person, but the thought of his bro suffering? That was easy to react too.

"I have reason to believe he's more stressed out than he let's on. There's no way of convincing him to cut back on all the things he has to do, so it's important to make sure he's actually unwinding in what time he has off. So if you have something he seems like he'd want to go to, contact me. Lord knows he won't ask me for a favor on his own, I think being nice is the first real favor he's asked of me in years. So you do it and I'll do what I can to make it happen," she said and held out a hand to him. "And we'll tolerate each other to make sure he's happy. Agreed?"

Nino paused, trying to think if there was any way this was some kind of trick or ploy. But as he looked at Chloe, he didn't see Chloe the bully. There wasn't any nastiness or smugness to her expression, none of the arrogance. She looked far more like Queen Bee, confident and sure she'd do a good job.

He huffed and adjusted his cap. "Well, if it's for my bro, I can't really say no," he said, taking her hand and shaking it.

"Excellent," she said, pulling her hand away and pulling out a handkerchief to wipe her hand, earning an unimpressed look from Nino. "You have my number still?" When he nodded, and turned and started walking, towards a car at the corner. "Then talk to you later, Lahiffe."

"Yeah, later dude," Nino said, shaking his head. Of all the things he thought to come out of magic and monsters being real, he never thought Chloe showing she had a heart would be one of them.

#ML: Queen of Secrets #miraculous ladybug #Chloe Bourgeois #Adrien Agreste #Nino Lahiffe #miraculer spoilers

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