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thelastviolin · 4 years ago

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I was having a rough day, so I did a thing and finished my first fanfiction story. Super short, but if you are interested, it’s on AO3 and below the cut.

Safer than Shaking Hands- Hotch/Reid (brief)

1.8k words

Safer than Shaking Hands

“The number of pathogens passed during a handshake is staggering. It's actually safer to kiss.”- Dr. Spencer Reid

The tradition began after the team returned from a case in Oklahoma, during which Spencer had informed more than one cop about his no-hand-shaking policy. The general reaction was surprise, quickly followed by the cop shuffling away in case Spencer suggested an alternative greeting. The team had quietly held back laughter after this happened for the third time, but Spencer didn’t seem to notice the discomfort he was causing.

They were gathered in the bullpen before going to their respective homes for a well-deserved weekend off. Emily grabbed her purse and was walking with JJ towards the elevators when she stopped next to Spencer. He was hunched over his desk rifling through his messenger bag when she pressed a kiss to his cheek. When he looked up in surprise, she smirked.

“It’s safer than a handshake. Have a good weekend.”

She walked off, leaving Spencer to look at JJ in surprise. JJ laughed at the expression on Spencer’s face before placing a kiss on the top of his head.

“Bye, Spence. Give me a call if you want to come to the zoo with us on Sunday, ok?” she called over her shoulder as she raced to catch up with Emily.

Spencer was sitting at his desk on Monday when the rest of the team wandered in. As JJ passed him on the way to her office, she pressed a kiss to his hair and shared a grin with Emily. Spencer ducked his head and swatted her away, blushing. Derek raised an eyebrow.

“Something I should know about?”

Spencer rolled his eyes. “I think JJ and Emily are trying to make a point about my handshake aversion. They are taking my tip about kissing being safer a little too literally.”

Derek laughed. “My man! I might have to try that line myself.” He winked at Spencer, who shook his head and returned to the files in front of him.

The morning passed quickly as Spencer worked through the backlog of cold cases. He was startled to hear loud laughter coming into the bullpen and looked up to see Emily, JJ and Penelope returning from lunch. He looked down at his desk and frowned, trying to remember if he had anything in the fridge to grab for a quick snack since he hadn’t brought his lunch.

He was startled to see a brown bag dropped onto his desk. He looked up and saw Penelope smiling at him. “You need to eat to keep that brain of yours working, junior G-man. Don’t worry- no pickles or tomatoes.”

Spencer opened his mouth to thank her when she quickly kissed her two fingers and pressed them to his lips. “No need to thank me. But I reserve the right to collect a real kiss at a later date.” She winked and walked off to her office leaving Spencer speechless. He sighed, glad that all of the girls had now had their fun and made their point, before digging into the sandwich the girls had brought him.

Fortunately, he had made time to eat, as they were summoned to the conference room just two hours later. A bomber was targeting random grocery stores in Celina, Texas and his pace was accelerating. Hotch had to stay behind to care for a sick Jack, so Morgan took the lead and the team was off to Texas before dinnertime.

The local sheriff’s department was grateful for the BAU’s arrival as another bomb had just detonated, claiming the bomber’s first victim. The team gathered in a conference room set aside for them and began dividing up the work. Morgan would take JJ to interview the witnesses and Rossi and Emily were going to the latest crime scene to see if there was any new evidence that could help build their profile. Spencer would stay behind to continue working on the geographic profile.

Spencer was already hunched over the table scribbling furiously on the map when the group filed out. Morgan stopped and placed his hand on Spencer’s shoulder. “Hey, you ok staying here alone? These guys seem friendly, but if you aren’t comfortable…”

Spencer cut him off. “Derek, I can take care of myself. Go. I’ll be fine.” He returned his attention to the map in front of him.

Morgan huffed out a laugh before leaning over and placing a kiss to the top of his head and ruffling his hair. “Alright, alright. I’m out. Give me a call if you get anything, ok?”

Spencer glared at Morgan’s retreating form as he attempted to fix his hair. He was grateful that none of the local LEOs were around to witness that particular interaction and misconstrue their relationship- he had no desire to explain his team’s odd behavior. He was quickly coming to accept the idea that handshakes may not be such a bad idea if this was his team’s alternative.

The others had not made much progress when Spencer called to inform them that the geographic profile seemed to pinpoint the local high school as a potential area of interest. Unfortunately, the whole town seemed to know that the FBI was investigating the bombings and a growing sense of hysteria was causing potential witnesses to give conflicting accounts of the man they had seen loitering outside the bombing locations just prior to the explosions. Since it was generally agreed that it was a young man, no older than his late 20’s, Morgan and JJ were going to the high school to interview teachers about potential suspects while Rossi and Emily met with a bomb expert the Texas Rangers had sent to assist the investigation. Morgan was about to tell Reid to meet him at the high school when he heard a loud explosion. He swirled around, grabbing JJ and preparing to take cover when he realized that the explosion had come from the other end of the phone. He saw the terror in JJ’s eyes as she realized what they had just heard, but quickly pulled himself together to call Rossi and Emily. Soon, the team was en route to the police station, terrified at what they might find.

When they arrived at the police station, they found a young man holding a cell phone, shouting at everyone to back up or he would set off another bomb. The building was almost completely collapsed at this point and injured officers could be seen crawling out from beneath the rubble. Morgan and Emily helped to establish a perimeter around the scene as Rossi approached the young man, attempting to negotiate. JJ had immediately taken off towards a group of officers that had made it out of the building to find out what they knew about Spencer.

Rossi was beginning to worry that their unsub was considering suicide by cop when he suddenly dropped the cell phone detonator and fell to his knees. Rossi kicked the phone away and watched as a local officer placed handcuffs on the teenager. As he was lowering his gun, he heard a shout.

“Spence! Spencer!”

Spencer staggered towards his team, sore and covered in dust but relatively unharmed. He collapsed into their waiting arms, allowing JJ and Morgan to direct him towards an ambulance for evaluation. He had just taken a seat to wait for an available medic when Rossi ran up to him.

“Kid, you scared the crap out of us! I don’t know what I would do without this bella facia!”

Suddenly, Spencer was pulled to his feet as Rossi grabbed his face and placed a kiss on each cheek. The others tried to contain their laughter, but finally began giggling in earnest as Spencer sputtered a bashful apology. He narrowed his eyes when he caught sight of Emily.

“For the record, I am blaming this on you. I’ve been kissed more in the last week than my entire life!”

That caused another round of laughter from the team before the adrenaline began to wear off and they realized how close they had come to losing their young genius. After the medics declared that Spencer didn’t need to go to the hospital for an evaluation, the team soberly made their way back to the hotel to prepare to head home. Normally they would stay and help the locals wrap up the case, but with so many witnesses to the final showdown and the fact that they had never actually completed a profile, they felt the locals could handle the details- they were desperate to get home.

Hotch and Penelope were standing by the doors of the bullpen as the team arrived at the unit. Penelope rushed forward to gather everyone in a group hug before pushing everyone aside so she could see for herself that Spencer was unharmed. Spencer was trying to escape her mothering when he met Hotch’s eyes. His boss gave him a soft smile and began to walk towards the group.

“Garcia, let him breathe.”

Chastised, she stepped back. “Yes, sir. I’m just so happy to see all of my babies home safely.”

Hotch smiled softly. “So am I. I apologize for not being with you guys. Jessica is home with Jack now, but I wanted to see everyone.”

Derek stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You were right where you needed to be. Now go back home, you belong with Jack right now.”

Hotch took a deep breath. “Actually, I’m right where I belong.” He took several steps forward before gathering Spencer in his arms and kissing him gently. Everyone froze as Spencer relaxed into his embrace and kissed him back.

When they parted, Spencer rested his forehead against Hotch and sighed. “This is not how we discussed telling the team about our relationship, Aaron.”

Hotch looked around to gauge the reactions of the team and was pleased to see that while they were surprised, no one appeared to be angry. “Spencer and I have been together for a little over a year. We are very happy but if you have any concerns, you may bring them to me privately at a later time. Right now, we need to get home to our sick son.”

Spencer smiled and shook his head as he allowed Hotch to guide him to the elevators. Before they got onto the elevator, Emily shouted after them with a smirk. “Sir, does this mean we should revert to handshakes when greeting Reid?”

Hotch laughed. “That’s up to Spencer- but I hear kissing is safer.”

As the elevator doors closed, the team was given one last glance of the BAU’s newly outed couple sharing a passionate kiss. The team smiled and as they got on the next elevator to go home themselves, Derek said, “I have REALLY got to start using that line!”

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner x spencer reid #heid #hotchreid #team as family #first time writer #quick fic #why write article analysis when you can write about your favorite boys #now i have to do my homework #aaron hotchner #spencer reid #derek morgan #penelope garcia #emily prentiss #david rossi #jennifer jareau

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postmodernbeing · 4 years ago

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Shingeki no Kyojin headcanons: 104th training corps (College AU)

Hello, Postmodernbeing here. This time I wanted to write about things that I actually know, since I’m a college student and I’m studing History and Social Sciences I found myself wondering about what would the 104th training corps focus their studies on if all of them had chosen humanities as their career. I hope you find this funny and at least a bit accurate.

IMPORTANT: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin, only these HCs are my own. // Might contain a few spoilers from the manga. // English is not my first language and I study uni at Latin America, so scientifical terms/words/concepts may vary. Anyhow, I thank you for reading and for your patience.

Eren Jaeger

He’s passionate about Military History, not to be confused with history of army. Eren’s rather focused in strategies, weapons and semiotics involved in military speech.

First started with books about great wars in modern era. The use of certain weapons took him by surprise due the technological development.

Then he took classes about discourse analysis, semiotics and such, and felt inspired by the discourse reflected in emblems, uniforms, flags, etc.

Eren doesn’t really have a preference between occidental or oriental, North or South, Modern or Ancient settings. He would simply devour all the books that deal with military strategy and warlike conflicts. Although he has more experience and information about great wars in modern era.

He’s fascinated with the inexhaustible human desire of freedom and the extent that it can reach. This fascination might not be very healthy, he concludes.

Also, finds a cruel beauty in violence when showed in freedom and ideals are protected over one’s own life. But he won’t tell his classmates or professors. He knows is a controversial opinion for he’s still aware the implications of massive conflicts and the abuse of power.

One thing led to another, Eren is now taking classes and reading about philosophy in war and anthropological perspectives about violence through time.

He’s so into social movements besides his main interest in college: “No one’s really free until all humanity is”, that’s his life motto pretty much.

Due his readings and researches he decided it was important to develop a political stance about the world’s problems. Eren strongly believes all lives worth the same, but systems and nations had imposed over others and vulnerated other human's lives.

Yes, Eren is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

Mikasa Ackerman

Asian Studies Major / History Minor.

She thinks by studying these degrees, she pays honor to her heritage. Specially to her mother. Her family is the proudest for Mikasa is also the best student in her whole generation.

Mikasa received a scholarship thanks to Azumabito family, who are co-founders of an academic institution dedicated to Asian historical and cultural research. She might as well start working when she graduates.

Although she’s passionate about Japan’s history, she has written a few articles and essays about Asian Studies themselves and the importance of preserving but also divulging by means of art and sciences.

In her essays and research work, she likes to employ tools from many disciplines since she strongly believes all humanities and social sciences serve the very same purpose at scrutinize the social reality all the same. Might as well use demographics, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, archeology, and so on. For it proves to bring light into questions that history by itself could answer unsatisfactorily (in Mikasa’s opinion).

Even her professors wonder how she manages to organize that much information and pull it off successfully. She might as well be more brilliant than a few PhD’s students.

Armin Arlert

Prehistoric studies / Archeology

He’s so into the studies about the prehistoric humans and routes of migration.

Passionate about the ocean and natural wonders since kid, Armin believed his career would be environmentalist or geoscience related.

That was the agreement he had with his grandad since middleschool, until he read Paul Rivet’s “The Origins of the American Man” book and captured him thoroughly. The way the book explained logically the diverse theories about global migration and enlisted the challenges of modern archeology -for there are numerous mysteries- simply devoured his conscience.

He knew from the books he’d read that most evidence of the first settlements are deep under dirt or far away in the ocean whose level has risen over the centuries leaving primitive camps – and answers – unreachable.

That’s the reason he is so eager to study and give his best to contribute both archeology and history disciplines. Also, he’ll forever love the ocean and nature, just leave him do all the fieldwork, please.

Jean Kirstein

History of industry / Industrial heritage / Historical materialism

Jean first started interested in capitalist industries and production development in first world countries. Kind of rejected other visions and explanations since he’d read about positivism studies.

His interest in such matters started when he was a just boy. He often found himself wondering how things were made and that question captured him ever since. As he grew up, he realized that machines and industrial processes were highly involved in the most mundane objects creation.

Nonetheless, he learnt that not always the best machinery was used, nor the best work conditions were available for mass production. From that moment he’d started to read about the First Industrial Revolution and his mind just took off with questions. Invariably, he learned about labour struggle and the transforming power due workforce.

Between his readings and university classes, he’d knew more about labour movements, unions. And in the theoretical aspect, he'd learned about historical materialism analysis.

One could say that Jean possesses a humanistic vision of the implications in mass production under capitalist system along history and nowadays.

Marco Bodt

Royalty's history / Medieval Studies

I wanted to keep his canonical fascination to royalty and the best way to do that was including Medieval Studies.

Marco would study since the fall of Roman Empire until the latest gossip of royal families all across Europe.

Might get a bit of Eurocentric with his essays but in real life discussions he’s always open to debates about decolonization. He has even read Frantz Fanon books and possesses a critical thinking about colonial countries and their relations with the so named third world.

Nevertheless, Marco finds a strange beauty in the lives of monarchs and he’s interested in study from their education, hobbies, strategies, relationships, everything.

I’d say that his favorite historical period is probably the establishment of the descendants of the barbarian peoples in the new kingdoms such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Angles and Jutes (holy shit, they're a lot).

Because this would transcend as the beginning of his favorite matter of analysis.

Sasha Braus

History of gastronomy, development of cooking, antropology and archeological studies.

Sasha’s interested in the history that shows human development of food and cooking. She finds wonders when she inquires into cultural aspects from the first farming till modern artistic expressions that would involve food.

Such as gastronomy. But her attention got caught in literature’s food representation too, with its symbols and allegories, also in paintings that belong in still life movement, but also Sasha finds interest when food is used as rhetorical devices (for example: the apple in Adam and Eve’s myth).

She’s curious about primitive systems of irrigation, cultivation, food distribution, adaptation of wild species; as well as the domestication of animals, the diversification of the diet and its link with sedentary life, as well as the subsequent division of labor once the need for food was assured in humanity’ first cities.

Sasha’s convinced that alimentation is the pilar of civilization as we know it. For it involves cultural, artistic, economic, emotion and social aspects. Food is a microcosm of analysis of humanity.

Sasha hasn’t a favorite historical period or setting. But she definitely has a special fascination for first civilizations and their link with alimentation. Also, she likes to study the development gastronomy in occident world around different regions, social classes, and time.

Although, let’s be honest, Sasha would devour (lol, couldn’t help it) ANY book about agriculture, cattle raising, cooking or gastronomy.

Connie Springer

Micro-history / History of everyday life.

Connie loves his hometown, has a deep respect to his family and traditions. That’s why he finds himself wondering about the most ordinary events that developed in his dear Ragako.

The book “The Cheese and the Worms” by Carlo Ginzburg changed the way he used to understand history and capture him into meaningful discussions about what he learned was called micro-history.

His favorite quote from that book is: “As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty.”

Once deep into studying the Italian historians and their works, he decided to give it a try, and ever since he’s mesmerized with the mundane vestiges craftsmen that worked in his village left behind.

Connie’s parents are so proud of him and his achivements, but mostly because he became a passionate academic over human and simple matters, (so down to earth our big baby).

His attitude towards his essays and research works truly shows his great heart and humility. Connie is aware that academic works have no use if they are not meant to teach us about ourselves too and current times.

Empathy and hard work, that’s how one could describe the elements that integrate his recently started academic career.

Historia Reiss

Political History / Statistician

Her father’s family pressured Historia since she was a little girl into studying History just like his dad. For he’s a very famous historian that had made important researches and books about the greatest statesmen of Paradis.

She thought in numerous ways that she could sabotage her career or study any other career without her family’s consent and end with her linage of historians. But she ended up enrolling in tuition and so far, she is trying her best in her studies. Historia swears this is the right path for her.

But don’t let the appearances fool you, even thought she studies her father’s career and the very same branch of history’s discipline, she has her own critical sense and she’s so talented on her own, very meticulous with her research papers.

Definitely wants a PhD about women, power and politics. We stand a Gender Studies Queen.

Her complementary disciplines are Political Sciences. Historia also has a talent for philosophy and owns a diary with all her thoughts about them. She hopes one day she would write a book or a manifesto about an innovative methodology for research and teaching History of Politic Thinking.

Ymir

Religion’s History / Theology

Just like Historia, Ymir was pressured into studying History. And if she’s totally honest, she still has some doubts about it. Even if she couldn’t imagine herself studying anything else.

Anyways, Ymir thought that she could build her career around topics that she enjoys. So, she finally chose theology for unusual reasons.

Her classmates had grown up in religious families or had experience studying the doctrines they practiced. But she, being an agnostic, found satisfaction in unraveling belief systems in different cultures and time periods.

Albeit she studies in Paradis’ University, she currently has the opportunity of taking an academic exchange at Marley’s University. This only made Ymir more conflicted about her future, for she wants to stay (near Historia) but she’s aware that Marley would offer her more academic opportunities for her specialization.

Nowadays she’s working in some collaborative research paper with some people from Mythological Studies from the Literature department. She’s nailing it, writing some historical studies about titans in Greek mythology and its impact in shaping neoclassical poetry. Her brains ugh, love her.

Reiner Braun

Official History / Biographies of heroes and great wars.

His mother convinced him with numerous books about great national heroes, but mostly because she knew that would mean sure job to her son. All political administration in every level requires of an official chronicler.

When he started his college courses, Reiner felt motivated and he was actually convinced that he had the vocation. But the more he read the less sure he felt that the academic world was for him. He wondered if he made the right choice. If he did it for him or for his mother.

Stories and myths about heroes have always cheered him up. That gave him purpose and consoled him when feeling down. Or at least it was like that when younger. Reiner truly didn’t feel like himself when regretting his choices, but he couldn’t help it for he was changing in more than a way.

That’s why he decided to experiment with other disciplines and with time he would find joy in historical novels. He would analyze them just as good as a litterateur and research about historical context in the written story AND study the artwork’s context itself.

His favorites theorical books are: “Historical Text as Literary Artifact” by Hayden White and Michel de Certeau’ “The Writing of History”.·

Heroes stories would always accompany him, just differently now.

Bertolt Hoover

History of mentalities / Les Annales

Intimate relationships, basic habits and attitudes. / Culture

Bertie has always been a much reticent and shy guy. As he grew up, he consolidated his sullen personality, but maintained a friendly attitude towards anyone who needed him. That’s why he thought that the priority in his studies was to be at the service of his classmates.

So, although he was passionate about research and was a fan of the French Les Annales current, he considered his mission to be in the Archive. As a cataloger, organizer and curator of ancient documents.

But the ways of History are always mysterious, and Doctor Magath showed him that other way of being was possible. Before Bertolt picked his specialty, he met Theo Magath, a professor who recently had finished writing a book: “The Idea of Death in Liberio’s Ghetto in Marley During its War Against Eldia (Paradis)” (long-ass titles are historians specialty btw). After Magath ended his book’ presentation, Bertolt reached him. They talked for hours and finally, he felt inspired into pursuing his true passion. Magath gifted him “The Historian’s Craft” by Marc Bloch as a way to reminding him his way.

By the time Bertolt took History of Mentalities as optional class, he already had some basic notions about Les Annales, Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Jacques Le Goff and such.

Being the gentle giant he is, Bertolt finds joy in reading about different lifestyles in diverse cultures. He constantly wonders about the origin of social constructs and the way they shape thinking as much as identity.

This boy is a wonder, he might not be the best in oral presentations or extracurricular activities but sure as hell he’ll graduate with honors.

Annie Leonhart

Oral history, about institutions. Particularly, police and justice system in early XXs.

Albeit she got into the same University than Bertolt and Reiner, even shared classes and hopes, Annie regularly felt disconnected from her studies. With time she realized it wasn't due her career itself but rather because of the currents that her professors had suggested her taking. Until now.

Talking with Hitch and Marlow about their doubts concerning subjects and departments it came up the topics of history and present time but also oral history. She’d never heard something like that before. So, that very same week, Annie started searching for information about that.

She ended up with more questions: is it all of this just academic journalism? Or maybe sociology? When we can talk about regular history and when it starts being present time? If she introduces interviews due oral history, then that makes it an interdisciplinary work? Which are the best systems for analyzing data? Definitely, she’ll need help from anthropology and sociology departments if she wants to keep going.

Contrary to her initial prognostic, philosophy and history of historic writing became her new allies, and the text “Le temps présent et l'historiographie contemporaine” (Present Time and Contemporary Historiography) by Bédarida among others, provided Annie another perspective.

Regarding her favorite topics, she wouldn’t say that she selected them freely. They were just practical preferences. For institutions own extensive archives and numerous functionaries. One way or another, she ended up tangled in judicial system and police issues.

With new tools and object for studying, one could find Annie having a blast as detective too. Even if her academic essays focus on institutions’ history and configuration, she’s also working in corruption and more. She doesn’t do it because she believes it’s the right thing, but besides, the thrill of the tea is spicy. Although she won’t admit it.

#shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #aot headcanons #snk headcanons #eren jaeger #mikasa ackerman #armin arlert #jean kirstein #marco bodt #sasha braus #connie springer #historia reiss #ymir #reiner braun #bertolt hoover #annie leonhart #modern au #college au

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kissinginkitchens · 4 years ago

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You Bring Me Home — Chapter One: Flightless Bird, American Mouth

a/n: I've been working on this story for mooonths now and I'm so excited to finally share it with the world! It's heavily inspired by Harry's Behind the Album mini doc, except I changed the setting to Hawai'i because I've personally spent some time there and as they say, write what you know! YBMH takes place in the period between One Direction's hiatus and Harry's first album/tour, but with that being said, this is entirely a work of fiction and some events don't follow the true timeline. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my little story, I hope you love it as much as I do! It will be updated every Friday at 5 PM PST. My inbox is open, so feel free to talk to me once you've finished reading! I'd love to hear from you :) Much love, Mel <3

Pairing: Hawai'i!Harry x Original Character

Warnings: swearing

Word Count: 5.5k

May, 2016

Harry watches LAX get smaller through the airplane window and visualizes all of his worries stuck at the terminal gate, their magnitude also diminishing as he takes flight. He sinks lower in his seat and skims through playlists on his phone when a nagging feeling at the back of his mind pulls his attention away from the screen. Looking up from the song choices, he spots a cell phone quickly lowered from his line of vision and a girl with flushed cheeks who quickly averts her gaze. Harry shoots a tight-lipped smile in her direction and goes back to his phone with a sigh. The days when he could roam the streets freely without fear of recognition—or worse, harassment—feel like an entirely different lifetime. He sometimes imagines that he’ll wake up back in his childhood bed as if the past five years had all been a dream, but he never does. In fact, his privacy and anonymity seem to dwindle with each minute of radio play that One Direction receives. It’s a bittersweet pill to swallow, but one he hopes will go down easier with some time in the Hawaiian sun.

His close friend and new manager, Jeff Azoff, had suggested the vacation as soon as the band privately agreed to take a hiatus.

“You’ll go home for a few weeks,” his voice had crackled through the speakers of Harry’s phone. “Visit your mom and Gem, lay low for a while until the smoke blows over,”

Harry mulled it over in his mind, eyes flickering over the rolling landscape outside of the tour bus window.

“Then what?”

“Then you go for a little vacation. The label offered to cover a house in Hawaii so you can start working on the album,”

“Alone?”

Jeff chuckled lightly on the other end before responding. “I mean, if that’s what you want,”

“No,” Harry corrected. “You and Tom should come. Mitch and Bhasker, too,”

“The dream team,”

“And there’ll be a studio there?”

“Yes,” Jeff started, almost hesitant. “But I don’t want you to think about that too much,”

“But you said the label—"

“I also said vacation. Look, Rob said ‘it will all happen in due time,' did he not?”

Harry twisted the rose ring around his finger, tracing over the silver petals and thinking back to his conversation with the CEO of Sony Music, Rob Stringer. Upon the proposal of his debut solo album, Rob had told him that the most important ingredient for a successful debut would be patience. The singer had agreed in the moment, but every day not spent in the studio felt like a test he hadn’t studied hard enough for.

“Yeah.”

“So you take the free vacation,” Jeff suggested. “You go out, live, get some writing material. Maybe mess around with some tunes. And then we come back to L.A. and get to work. But until then, I just want you to focus on taking it easy.”

So take it easy he had. Or at least he had tried to when he was back home in England. Harry quickly grew restless after what felt like the millionth awkward conversation with past friends and acquaintances, all of which eventually led to the topic of One Direction and it’s unexpected hiatus. After one month at home, his mind and journal were full of ideas for songs, things that he wanted to say before he lost his nerve. One night as he tossed and turned in bed, he shot Jeff a text, just two words that would kick off a three month getaway to the Big Island of Hawai'i:

I’m ready.

********

“Sounds great, I'll go put in your order.” Alani offers sweetly, trying not to overdo it with the customer service voice. After waiting on the family at her designated table, she heads back to the kitchen and finds her younger sister, Pua, crouched in the corner taking what appears to be a serious phone call.

“I don’t know, I just saw it!” Her sister cries in a hushed tone. “Where do you think he’s going?”

“Is everything okay?” Alani cuts in with concern.

Pua whispers into the speaker before bringing the phone to her shoulder.

“Harry Styles was just spotted on a plane this morning,”

“Who?”

“The guy from One Direction,” her sister explains with a hint of irritation in her voice. “The band who sings that song you secretly like, ‘Fireproof,'”

Alani vaguely recalls the melody, but she waits expectantly for Pua to elaborate. “And this is news because…”

“Because the band just broke up, so where could he possibly be going?”

"The unemployment office?”

Pua rolls her eyes and returns to her phone call while Alani envelops her in a tight hug.

“I’m just kidding!” Alani apologizes, squeezing tighter despite her sister’s attempts to break free. “I’m sure he’ll be living off of royalty checks until he’s, like, eighty,”

“Get off me, freak!” Pua cries out, finally breaking the embrace.

Alani clutches her chest and pulls out an invisible knife. “Ouch. I’m telling Harry you said that,”

“This is exactly why I don’t tell you things.” the younger sister huffs, storming out of the kitchen through the employee entrance where Alani’s best friend, Maleah, has just arrived.

“Looks like someone forgot to eat their Cheerios today,” she remarks, tying her curls into a high ponytail.

Alani shrugs and leans against the counter. “She’s going through something. Just discovered that boys in pop bands are, in fact, just regular boys.”

“Poor thing,” Maleah frowns. “We all have to learn eventually.”

********

The sky is a blend of cotton candy pink and burnt orange when Alani returns home from the café with a strawberry smoothie in tow. She empties the mailbox and sorts through the various bills and advertisements, but her stomach drops when she sees a familiar return address label. After a quick greeting to her excited dog who waits at the door, Alani bolts up the stairs and quietly shuts the bedroom door behind her. Breathe, she reminds herself before tearing into the envelope and discarding it onto the wooden floor.

Dear Ms. Hale,

We are very grateful to have received your submission to Rolling Stone magazine. However, we regret to inform you—

She doesn’t read the rest, slumping to the floor in defeat. The sixth rejection letter from Rolling Stone lies crumpled at Alani’s feet and she kicks it across the room with a frustrated grunt. She had worked for over two months perfecting her analysis of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi and its allusions to the environmental impact of urban development in Hawaii. As part of her initial research, Alani had even traveled to both the Royal Hawaiian hotel in Honolulu, which is the famous Pink Hotel mentioned in the song, and Foster Botanical Garden that Mitchell referred to as “the tree museum.” She was certain that her effort and persistence would result in at least a consideration. The second third time's the charm! Maleah had joked watching Alani submit the piece. Six articles in the span of two years, each one facing the same rejection despite the increased effort Alani had put in over time. The fact that the rejection letter hadn’t changed over the course of the two years brings an incredulous smile to her face, and her stomach turns when she considers that the editors probably hadn’t even read her work, anyway. All that effort, she thinks to herself, all that time, for nothing.

“It will take time,” her favorite professor, Dr. Hudson, had reassured her three months after the Joni Mitchell article was submitted. “Every great writer faced countless rejection until that one piece. Yours will come. Keep your eyes open and your pen ready.”

Alani sighs and lifts herself off the floor, choosing to crawl into her unmade bed instead of slumping onto the hardwood. She hears a soft scratching at the door before her King Charles Spaniel, Freddie, pads into the room.

“Come here, bubs,” Alani whispers. He obeys and burrows into the duvet, giving her temple a gentle lick before nuzzling into the nape of her neck.

“You still love me, right?” she asks, voice cracking. “Even if I’m a failure?”

Freddie sniffs her ear in response.

********

“Right,” Harry says, his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as he reads the map. “No, left, sorry,”

“Do you actually know how to read a map?” Jeff teases, correcting the turn.

Harry pouts in response, his brows furrowing. “In my defense, we’re literally in the middle of fucking nowhere,”

“There are worse places to be,” Mitch pipes up from the back seat. “England, for example, where they say things like ‘litchrally’,”

“Very well said, Mitchell,” Jeff Bhasker adds with a fake British accent of his own.

Harry turns to his friends in the back seat with a finger pointed like an agitated mother. “If you lot don’t shut up, I’m gonna lead us to a volcano and push you in,”

“Where are we even going? I forgot,” Tom complains.

“To get food,” his manager responds from the driver’s seat. “I think,”

“Why can’t we just stop there?” Mitch asks pointing to a café pulling up on their right.

Jeff merges into the turning lane quickly without a second thought. “Good enough for me, I’m starving.”

“Sorry, H.” Mitch pats his friend on the shoulder.

Harry scoffs. “You’re the one who wanted poke.”

The Aloha Nui Loa Café is much more spacious than the exterior suggests, yet it still feels cozy. The walls are painted sage green and adorned with various local art pieces, as described by the plaques that accompany them. A skylight fills the center of the room with plenty of warm lighting, leaving the space along the walls in a bit more shade for an intimate feel. In one corner, a hanging disco ball leaves freckles of sparkling light along the walls where the sunlight hits, making the whole image very idyllic in Harry’s mind. As if he couldn’t enjoy the setting more, he hears the beginning of an Otis Redding song that he’s had stuck in his head drift through the restaurant speakers.

“Welcome in!” a voice calls, which pulls him from his survey of the room. His head whips to the source—a girl around his age with wavy, dark hair and honey skin. “For here or to go?”

Harry takes a hesitant step up to the counter. “For here,”

She smiles warmly and pulls some menus from under the counter. “How many in your party?”

“Five.”

“Great, follow me.”

Harry and his friends follow the waitress to the corner of the room under the disco ball and take their seats at the round table.

“My name is Alani,” she introduces herself, setting the menus down. “I’ll be serving you today. Can I get you started with some drinks?”

Harry continues scanning the restaurant while his group orders. His eyes land on the shirt that Alani is wearing, a white tee with the words “Enjoy Health, Eat Your Honey” in blue lettering that surrounds a picture of a cartoon bee.

“Harry,” Jeff says gently, catching his drifting attention.

The singer turns to his manager, who nods to Alani waiting with a pen pressed to her notepad. Harry feels a rush of embarrassment creep across his cheeks and he clears his throat to cover it.

“Just water,” he says, eyes glued to the menu. “Thanks.”

“You got it.” Alani nods, flashing a toothy grin at the rest of the group before turning back to the kitchen. Harry. Her mind repeats, finding a hint of familiarity, though she doesn’t know why.

When Alani arrives at the drink station, she finds her sister staring at her, mouth agape, while Maleah unsuccessfully conceals her laughter.

“What?” she questions, checking herself for any embarrassing stains or smells.

“You were—and he—” Pua stammers. “He was—and then he—”

“That’s Harry Styles,” Maleah translates, her voice hushed as she peers over her friend's shoulder.

Alani turns to steal a glance at the table she just seated, but Pua and Maleah latch onto her and shake their heads frantically.

“Don’t look!” her sister hisses.

Alani smirks, amused at their reactions. “No shit. That’s One Direction?”

Maleah snorts, clasping a hand over her mouth as Pua huffs. “No, dumbass! It’s just Harry. I don’t know who the other guys are,”

“But the blonde guy? That’s not—?”

“No!” Pua and Maleah giggle in unison.

“Okay, geez,” Alani relents. She manages to steal a quick glance at the table over her shoulder, immediately searching for Harry. Her eyes scan over the long, curly hair kept out of his face by a pair of white sunglasses that she had seen on Kurt Cobain once. All of his features are sharp and striking, from his pointed nose and defined jawline to the bright blue eyes. Or maybe they were grey? Alani wonders, trying to remember the exact shade. He doesn’t look anything like the fresh-faced teeny bopper she’d had in mind, the one from a music video her sister had shown her a long time ago. She would have never guessed that the What Makes You Beautiful singer had so much dark ink trailing down his bicep and forearm, though her knowledge of One Direction was very limited.

“What did he order?” Pua questions, her eyes wide.

Alani quickly snaps back to reality and resumes filling the drinks. “A water,”

“Oh my god,” Maleah swoons. “I’m never drinking anything else ever again,”

“I didn’t even know you liked him,” Alani teases with an eyebrow raised.

Maleah sneaks another peek at the table and catches her lower lip between her teeth. “I mean, I didn’t really think so either but look at him. What a fucking dream,”

Harry was objectively handsome, this Alani could admit, but she personally didn’t see the appeal and had a strong feeling that he was just like every other male celebrity. The fact that he hadn’t even bothered to make eye contact with her only served as further proof of what she knew to be true.

“Okay, well, your dreamboat is waiting for his water. So excuse me,” Alani winks, making her way back to the table.

The singer spots Alani returning out of the corner of his eye and the sight of her causes a strange flutter in the pit of his stomach that makes him want to duck for cover. Instead, he pulls his phone from his back pocket and pretends to be occupied with something on the screen.

“Okay,” she greets, setting the drink tray down. “I have a Blue Hawaii, a Mango Mama, two Loco Cocos, and a water,”

The group graciously accepts their drinks with a chorus of “thank you," but the only one under Alani’s scrutiny is Harry. He still doesn’t meet her almond eyes, and though she figured he wouldn’t, she can’t help the inkling of disappointment that washes over her. After taking their meal orders, Alani heads back to the kitchen, checking on her other customers along the way. Harry’s eyes follow her and he observes the way customers light up at her presence, indulging her conversation with laughter. He watches as she lingers by the jukebox in one corner of the room, a detail he had missed in his initial scan, and waits anxiously to see what song she chooses. Baby I’m-a Want You begins softly and Harry feels the corner of his lip curl ever so slightly. Good choice, he thinks.

********

“He’s still here,” Pua muses, peering through the tiny window in the kitchen door. It had been nearly two hours and the five men were still seated around their table cracking jokes and doing a lot of talking with their hands.

Alani doesn’t look up from her bowl of sliced kiwis, offering a hum in response. “And what do you want me to do about that?”

“Nothing,” Pua shoots back. “Don’t bother him,”

“What kind of girls do you think he’s into?” Maleah asks, attempting to peek through the window.

Alani shrugs, bored of the conversation and of thinking about Harry. “I don’t know, but I’ll bet he’s a real sucker for the ones who stalk him while he’s eating,”

“How does he make eating a salad look hot?”

“Can we talk about something else now?” Alani whines, poking holes in a lone kiwi with her fork.

Pua tosses a wet dish rag in her sister’s direction and cheers when it lands in her face. “Go see if he wants more water, he looks thirsty.”

“I already refilled it,” Alani defends. “Twenty minutes ago. I’ve refilled it a hundred times, I’m surprised he hasn’t peed his pants.”

I’m gonna piss myself. Harry thinks, his right leg bouncing to distract himself. He really wasn’t all that thirsty, but he couldn’t stop himself from finishing each glass of water that Alani placed in front of him. He really wasn’t all that thirsty, but he couldn’t stop himself from finishing each glass of water that Alani placed in front of him. Like clockwork, she would return to fill his glass almost as soon as the last drop had been drained, and so what began as a little experiment slowly turned into a bladder hazard. But if the trend was to be trusted, she would be back any minute and he wasn’t going to miss it; afterall, there were only so many ways to casually linger in a small café without making it weird. Unable to bear it any longer, he heads to the restroom and hopes that Alani doesn’t clear their table before he has a chance to see her again.

Harry pads down the back hallway with his eyes cast down at the floor, which proves to be a mistake when he walks directly into another person.

“Sorry!” they both apologize quickly, Harry’s palm taking purchase on the other person’s upper arm.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” he offers, finally meeting the dark, mocha eyes already looking back at him.

Alani presses her lips into a tight smile. “Me either,”

Harry’s heartbeat picks up when he realizes it’s her, and he isn’t aware of how close they’re standing until he detects the faint scent of kiwi on her breath. He takes a step back and rakes a hand through his hair.

“So I guess I’ll just—”

“Yeah, sure.”

Green. Alani notes to herself. His eyes are green.

********

Shortly after Harry returned from the restroom, him and his friends settled their bill and headed out. Alani cleared their table and her eyes nearly fell out of her head when she saw the hefty tip left behind. The word mahalo was also left behind on the receipt, underlined twice, and she wondered if it was his handwriting.

Later that night, she settled into bed with her laptop and hesitantly typed his name into Google. As she expected, countless articles about the split of One Direction emerged, most of them speculating what was next for each member. To her surprise, however, Harry’s name seemed to be mentioned more than his fellow bandmates as various sources labeled him “the next Justin Timberlake” and rising star of the group. Upon further investigation, she learned that the demand for information about the elusive Harry Styles was high, especially concerning any possible solo music. No news had yet been confirmed by Styles himself, nor anyone claiming to represent him, but she still wondered if his presence in Hawaii had anything to do with a possible solo project. Almost as soon as she thought it, Alani dismissed the theory in favor of the idea that he was most likely just taking a vacation. And from the buzz that she saw surrounding the news about One Direction, she couldn’t blame him.

The more Alani read, the more she wanted to know, and something deep down told her that his was a story worth telling. Of course, the only problem was that she had hardly talked to him, and there were only so many things she could say about the fifteen glasses of water he downed. There was no way of knowing if she would ever see him again, either, or if he was merely stopping in Hilo on his way to another island or somewhere else entirely. Alani sighed, thinking back to her most recent rejection from Rolling Stone. She knew that there was no possible way she would ever see or talk to Harry ever again, and even if she did, why would he bare his entire soul to a stranger? Still, she let her mind wander through the possibility.

Dear Ms. Hale, the letter would read, we are very grateful to have received your submission to Rolling Stone magazine and are pleased to inform you that your piece on Harry Styles will be featured in next month’s issue. Additionally, we would be honored to have you on staff, effective immediately.

It was far-fetched, Alani knew this, but she dozed off that night with endless ideas swimming in her head.

********

By the third day after his visit, the only trace of Harry is in Alani’s search history. She would have completely forgotten about him if it weren’t for her sister’s constant reminiscing and multiple attempts to rename the house salad to the “Harry Special.” As a result, a part of Alani’s thoughts periodically linger back to that day and the subsequent hours spent on Google that she’d rationalized as research instead of stalking. Somehow the knowledge that she’ll never see him again only adds fuel to the questions still burning in her mind, but a customer clearing their throat while she sorts menus below the hostess podium interrupts her thoughts.

“Welcome in!” She calls, standing. “What can I—”

She stops in her tracks, unable to believe her eyes. Harry blinks and waits for her to continue.

“What can I get started for you?” Alani tries again, hoping that he hadn’t noticed her shock. Luckily for her, Harry had been too focused on choosing his next words to register her mistake.

“What’s in the Honu smoothie?” he asks, mentally kicking himself for asking such a stupid question when the menu just inches above her head clearly spells it out.

Alani hums, thinking back to the times she had made the smoothie herself. “Kiwis, spinach, mango, avocado, and a hint of lime,”

“I’ll take one of those,” Harry says, reaching for his wallet.

Alani punches in the order with trembling fingers and nods. “For here or to go?”

“To go,”

Disappointment fills her chest. Sure, she hadn’t planned on seeing him ever again, but the fact that she did felt like a sign. If she wanted to take the chance, she’d have to do it fast.

“Anything else?” she asks, weighing her options while he skims the menu.

“No thanks.”

Alani makes the smoothie quickly, head spinning. She had spent most of the night after their initial meeting planning out exactly the type of questions she hoped to ask him and what kind of article she would write. She was used to writing about what she knew—artists and music she’d admired for years— but she figured that starting fresh with someone she hardly knew would be a good challenge. Not to mention that it seemed like just the thing Rolling Stone would jump for. Alani finally works up the courage as she finishes his smoothie, but when she returns to hand it to him and hopefully strike up a conversation, his ear is pressed to his cell phone. She holds out the drink and he graciously accepts, giving her a small nod as a “thank you” and rushing out of the restaurant.

Two days later he returns and is seated at the counter, typing away on his phone. Alani feels both a rush of optimism and annoyance at the universe for dangling his presence so unexpectedly. She starts heading over to him, but Maleah cuts in.

“Trade me?” she proposes, eyes wide.

Alani blinks. “Oh, I would but I—”

“Please,” her best friend pouts. “I’m leaving to see my grandparents in stupid California for two months. Who knows when I’ll get the chance to see him again?”

Alani sighs, but gives in, reluctantly exchanging Harry for the family of four seated by the window. A strange feeling settles into the pit of his stomach when he sees that she heads in the opposite direction after a hushed conversation with another waitress. He doesn’t know why she traded him for a different customer, but he takes the hint.

A week goes by without another sighting of Harry and Alani has permanently taken on the role of greeting hostess in hopes of seeing him again. Her heartbeat temporarily speeds up when she sees a long haired customer approach the door, but her spirits quickly fall when the face doesn’t match his.

Another week brings another disappointing realization that Harry might be gone for good. One rainy morning when the restaurant is quiet and only two customers huddle together in a booth near the back, Alani hunches over the hostess podium and doodles on a stray receipt— a sunflower, a crescent moon, and two hearts. The bell above the door jingles but she doesn’t look up, too absorbed in her scribbles.

“Do you serve coffee?”

The familiar accented voice stops Alani’s pen dead in its tracks. She lifts her eyes first to confirm, and then straightens up when she sees that her ears haven’t deceived her.

“Yes,” she swallows.

“Great. I’ll take it to go,”

She slightly deflates, but Harry thinks he’s reading too much into it.

“Actually,” he corrects anyway, just in case he isn’t. “I think I’ll stay for a while,”

Alani flashes a warm smile and nods in the direction of the counter. “Right this way,”

Harry sheds his windbreaker onto the back of the seat, revealing a black and white Rolling Stones t-shirt that makes Alani’s blood pressure rise. A sign, she thinks.

“What do you want in your coffee?” she questions carefully.

“Nothing,” he responds, shaking out his damp hair gently. “Or actually, uh, butter...if you have some,”

Alani blinks, not sure if she’d heard correctly or if there had been some transatlantic miscommunication.

“Butter?”

“Yeah,”

“Like the—”

“Spread, yeah,” Harry confirms. “It’s weird, I know,”

She lets out a light-hearted laugh and nods. “It’s a...unique request,”

“I thought the same thing at first,” Harry confides. “It’s not bad, actually. But maybe I’ve just been in L.A. for too long.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

She offers a polite smile and heads to the kitchen where the cook and two other waiters talk amongst each other. Alani is grateful that the restaurant is slow this morning because she knows that it means minimal interruptions to her time with Harry. To ensure this, though, she asks one of the other waiters to cover the podium and returns to Harry with his coffee.

“One butter coffee, free of judgement,” the waitress announces, setting it down.

Harry grins softly, stirring the drink with the spoon Alani provided. “You can judge, it’s alright,”

“I just wanna know why,”

The coffee had been part of a fad diet while on tour in order to boost Harry’s energy on stage and stay trim for the hundreds of photo-ops he would be a part of. He doesn’t know how to communicate all of this to Alani, however, not sure how much she knows about that part of him, so he shrugs and tells a simplified version of the truth.

“I read about this trend a while back, it's called bulletproof coffee. Supposed to get your energy up and I needed it for my job,”

“Which is…” Alani trails off, downplaying the knowledge that she had acquired from Google.

“I make music,” is all Harry says and he takes a sip of the drink to avoid elaborating.

“Anything I would have heard?”

He swallows hard and listens to the faint rumbling of thunder outside before replying. “Possibly,”

“Try me,” Alani challenges.

He narrows his eyes and takes another sip of coffee. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself first?”

“What do you wanna know?”

Everything, Harry responds internally, though he reigns it in. “How you got into waitressing,”

Alani sighs, resting her elbows on the counter across from him. “There’s not much to tell, it’s a family business. What I really wanna do is write,”

“Music?”

“Articles. I’m studying Journalism at UH,”

Harry hums in response, filing the detail away in the back of his mind. “Sounds interesting. You ever publish anything?”

“Not yet,” Alani shakes her head gently, toying with the sleeves of her green University of Hawaii crewneck. “Hopefully soon, though,”

Harry racks his brain for something else to say, but before he can, Alani speaks up again.

“Is it my turn to ask something now?”

He offers a curt nod and stirs his coffee.

“What kind of music do you write?”

Harry chooses to be vague again. “Different stuff. Pop, usually. Been messing with some classic rock, though,”

“Explains the shirt,”

He peers down at the design on his tee and agrees. “Yeah, I guess so,”

“Do you like it?” Alani asks, her eyes begging to make contact with his again. “Writing music, I mean,”

“Yeah,” Harry confirms, tapping his spoon against the rim of the mug. “I really do,”

Alani’s heart pounds. This is her chance, a moment to finally secure her breakthrough piece. She doesn’t know how to approach it, so she opts to dive right in without looking back. The worst he can say is no.

“Can I ask you something else?”

“That’s cheating,” Harry teases lightly. “It's my turn,”

She pouts playfully, but obliges. “Fire away,”

Harry doesn’t know which question to ask first, but when he glances down at the crescent moon inked on her wrist, he decides to start there.

“What’s with the moon tattoo?”

Alani isn’t sure what she expected him to ask and wonders what purpose such a detail could possibly serve him, but she answers anyway.

“Oh, well,” she begins, tracing her index finger over the outline. “It’s kinda the meaning of my full name. It’s Mahealani, Hawaiian for ‘heavenly moon,'”

Fitting, Harry comments to himself. Every detail he learns about her makes him want to learn that much more, from her favorite foods to the last thing she thinks about before falling asleep. Studying her expectant eyes, he suddenly remembers that it’s his turn to respond.

“That’s cool,” is all he says.

Alani doesn’t know what to make of the faraway look in his eye, but she decides to pose her most burning question while he appears to be in good spirits.

“I know this is gonna sound totally out of the blue,” she starts, working past the lump in her throat. “But when you mentioned how you write music, I was just reminded of this assignment I’m working on in my class,”

Harry waits for her to continue, nursing his now lukewarm coffee.

“I’m supposed to write a piece about someone who I don’t know that well,” she continues. “You know, to practice our interviewing skills. And, well, I was just kind of wondering if you might be interested in helping me out—being the subject, I mean,”

Alani had every intention of telling Harry the truth, about how she really planned to submit the article to Rolling Stone in hopes of securing an internship before her college graduation next Spring. But as she started speaking, she quickly realized how it would come off: a complete stranger asking for personal information to submit to a well-known publication. She knew that there was a chance he would shut down and never return, so she lowered the stakes and hoped that this route would be less risky. Was it ethical? Alani hadn’t decided yet, but she would work out the details later. After six failed articles and two years of rejection, she saw a ray of hope and wasn’t going to let it slip away.

Harry ponders her offer for a moment, which confirms that she had recognized him. Normally he would be off-put by such a request, and to a certain extent he is, but there is something sincere in her voice that he trusts deep down. Before he agrees, however, he decides to fish around a bit to test her reaction.

“You know who I am,” he says gently. “Don’t you?”

Alani’s heart drops into the pit of her stomach, not sure what to say next. She hopes with every fiber of her being that she hasn’t upset him, or worse, ruined her chances, so she decides to offer some truth to throw him off her scent.

“My sister recognized you,” she explains. “That day you came in with your friends. I thought they were your bandmates at first,”

This lets Harry know that she isn’t a total stalker, which is comforting, but he wouldn’t have been minded if she were a fan simply engaging in conversation.

“Oh,” he laughs weakly.

“I totally understand if you say no,” Alani offers quickly, trying to smooth things over. “I just thought it was worth a shot. And that it might be more interesting than interviewing our produce guy,”

Harry decides to give her one last scan for any sign of insincerity. He’d always felt that his gut instinct was strong and it hadn’t led him astray thus far.

“An interview?” he clarifies.

“Just one,” Alani promises. “An hour, tops. And you can proofread all of it once I’ve finished, too.”

Harry waits a beat, already knowing his reply, but he wants to see how she will react to his silence. She doesn’t budge, almond eyes set and determined.

“Okay.”

next chapter

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles writing #harry styles x oc #harry styles fluff #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fic #ybmh #she's here she's here she's here!!!!!

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starsfic · 3 years ago

Text

Niú Mówáng R. Boy and Qi Xiaotian

Summary: Writer Red's summer of peace is broken one morning when his new neighbor moves in.

AO3

-_-

A loud crash was what Red woke up to.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes, still not quite awake and very confused. Loud yelling and the beep of a moving truck was what made him wake up enough to growl and pull a pillow over his head.

The plan had been peace and quiet. His therapist had encouraged this summer of serenity to give him time off from writing and time to think over who he wanted to be without his parents’ expectations. He had thought the country would be nice and peaceful.

Except he was wrong.

Another blaring honk broke the silence and Red growled, glancing over at the clock. It was six, way too early to deal with this. He dropped the pillow and grabbed his slippers and bathrobe. He stalked to the door, throwing it open.

“-wake up the entire neighborhood! Just-just leave it by the curb!”

The sun wasn’t even up yet and all he could see was a thick blanket of fog. The streetlight managed to break it a bit. As well as the headlights of the moving truck. He slammed the door shut and stalked towards it. Whoever was making that noise was going to get an earful.

Before he could do that, something rammed into him. There was a yelp from him and whomever, as well as the sound of things falling into the gravel at his feet. “Sorry!” Red turned at the voice, clearly the person yelling.

And blinked.

The first thing he noticed about the noise complaint was the bright orange jacket that contrasted vibrantly against the fog. Then they looked up, revealing a pretty young man, a red headband pushing back dark hair. His mouth was pressed in a firm line and dark eyes were annoyed. “Sorry,” he repeated before turning back to the ground. He was holding a box that was full of books and art supplies, several books and a drawing tablet on the ground.

“I didn’t mean to bump into you,” the man explained, grabbing the books and stacking them in. “This fog is really thick and- this isn’t even my yard. Sorry about the noise!”

Red found himself kneeling, helping him stack the books in. “It’s no issue,” he said, his anger extinguished and mouth dry at the sight of the handsome man. He grabbed the tablet and the last book and stood, watching as the man stood. Something about the book caught his eye.

Stars of the West.

Hey, he had written this! It was his very first novel, a sci-fi version of the Journey to the West and the stepping stone to the literary power he had today. Nowadays, he was more known for business articles or his research into how much influence the economy had in politics. He ran his thumb over name indented into the glossy cover: Niú Mówáng R. Boy. He hadn’t been able to help it. Red Boy had been his favorite character in the Journey to the West.

He hadn’t seen it in years.

“Have you read it?” The man said, having noticed his gaze. “You can borrow if you haven’t.”

“I’ve read it.” Red said. He should’ve told him it was him that had written it. He had done it to several people before and he had always enjoyed the reactions. But he stayed his tongue. “One of his older ones, right?” Maybe he could hear an honest critique.

“Yep!” The man took the book and tablet and managed to stack them in the box. Steadying it on his knee, he managed to get a grip with both hands on the box. “Nice to meet you!” And just like that, he was walking past him and to the house next door. Red managed a wave.

So, that was his new neighbor.

He stood there in the fog and his pajamas, feeling the latter getting damp from the former. The thought rolled through and he looked around. It seemed like the driver wasn’t interested in helping, so…

He sighed and turned back to his house.

Once he was inside, he headed up to his bedroom. He got dressed, ignoring his stomach’s desire for breakfast, finding himself choosing casual but flattering clothes. He headed back out and to the moving truck, finding his neighbor was at the back, grabbing another box and nearly falling out of the truck.

“Do you need help, Noodle Boy?” The nickname came in a flash, stemming from the white shirt he wore that read Pigsy’s Noodles. He resisted the warmth that wanted to rise up when he squeaked, eyes tracing his arms.

“Uh, yeah! That would be great.” He passed him the box, turning back to the truck to grab another. “I’m MK, by the way.”

“Red.” he said simply.

The two worked together to bring in boxes. Much to his pride, Red noticed a few more of his novels, but he held off on asking. Soon enough, the last thing was the couch. Together, the two managed to heft it up and lug it to the door.

Then a problem presented itself.

The door was too small.

“Maybe if we turn it sideways…” MK eyed him, sweat making his hair stick to his face. Sweat started to form, but it was more due to the low boiling heat coursing through Red than any of the work. It was a bit before he realized the other was speaking. “- a shot.”

Then he was distracted by moving the couch.

“Turn it a little to the left- My left!”

“Yeah, that’s right!”

“No, my left!”

“That’s my right!”

After a few minutes of arguing and shoving, the couch popped through the doorway. The two managed to set it in place and Red collapsed on it, sighing with relief. He heard MK moving around, but he didn’t open his eyes, not even when the door closed and he could hear the moving truck move away.

Then something warm rested on him. He opened his eyes and bit back a yelp when he saw MK leaning against him. His new neighbor seemed to not notice, busy typing. “So, it’s a bit late for breakfast,” he said, looking up with a smile that made Red’s heart flutter. He was cute. And charming. And read his books. It was hard not to like him. “But can I treat you to brunch?”

“Absolutely.”

After that, MK hopped off the couch and set to work opening boxes. Red followed, placing things where they were supposed to go. Another novel of his caught his eye. The Blueprints of the Star Chaser was another sci-fi, this one a short story and reminding him. “So...what do you think of Niú Mówáng R. Boy?”

There was a chuckle. “I like his older stuff.”

He blinked, caught off-guard. Most people he had spoken to preferred his more current stuff. (The fact that most people were his parents was something he ignored.) “Really? Don’t you think it’s kinda… childish?”

“Yeah, they’re amateur, but that’s what I like. He clearly enjoyed what he was writing back then. Nowadays it’s either articles or political dramas. I can understand why people like his more polished stuff, but at least it didn’t read like every word was a rotten tooth being dragged out by a dentist.”

That was… graphic. But his parents had told him that he needed to get serious to be respected, and his sci-fi novels and different analyzes of the Journey to the West weren’t serious. Before he could spiral into these thoughts, MK’s voice broke his thoughts. “What about you? What do you like?”

“Qi Xiaotian.” It was immediate. The name brought up the memory of beautiful art. “His comic version of the Journey to the West , to be specific.”

“Really?”

Red shrugged, unable to resist his smile. “I love his artwork. It’s so colorful and… wow. You can really feel his passion on every page. And that doesn’t describe his blog posts and short stories! I mean, on some of his analysis I don’t agree with. But the amount of research shows.” When he looked up, MK was flushed, a pleased smile on his face. Before he could continue or ask, there was a knock on the door.

They both hopped to their feet and scrambled to their feet, eager for food. When Red opened the door the delivery boy yelped. “Ah! Mr. Niú Mówáng! Are you- I mean, I have an order for a Qi Xiaotian?”

Red froze.

“That’s me!” MK said, reaching forward with cash in his hand. “I’m paying for all of it.” Soon enough, money and canvas bag full of food had exchanged hands and he was shutting the door. Now alone, the two blinked at each other.

“So…” MK said, breaking the silence, tapping his fingers together. “Can we forget the part where I compared your writing to rotten teeth?” Red burst into laughter and he smiled, moving past Red to the kitchen. “But, seriously, I’m sorry for whining about you not writing sci-fi anymore.”

Red chuckled, leaning over to grab the set of paper plates and plastic utensils Mk had set. “Well, I’ll forgive you, Noodle Boy, if you tell me what you’re working on now if you forgive me for my dislike of your analyzes.”

“Deal.”

Yeah, this was gonna be great.

#au #my writing #Monkie Kid #Lego Monkie Kid #Spicynoodleshipping #Red Son #MK #Qi Xiaotian

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ask-the-clergy-bc · 4 years ago

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What do you think the main Clergy crew's favourite books are, and are any of them more avid readers than the others?

Papas/Copia’s Favorite Books and Reading Habits

All of them have had to read a LOT to get as far as they have in the Clergy- it’s required. You don’t become the head of any Church by not knowing your own literature and opposing prints!

But they all have very different leisurely reading habits!

Papa Nihil: Nihil didn’t really have a favorite book until he was much older- when he retired to Grandpapa and really got to settle down from responsibilities. He found he adored actually reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz instead of just watching their film adaptations. So far his favorite has been ‘The Shining’! Really enjoys the eerie feeling horror novels have that are different from his scary movies.

Despite his knowledge of the Clergy, Nihil is actually not big on reading. In his younger years he had trouble sitting down to read, as he had a lot of energy and just wanted to do something more exciting and productive! But in his later years he’s calmed down enough. Still won’t read, he much prefers to write his own on his outdated type writer! But you might catch him reading his favorite horror authors time and again!

Papa I: Papa’s favorite book is actually an untitled one with an unknown author- but has been passed through the clergy libraries for centuries. It was rumored to be written by an older member of the Emeritus bloodline that never made Papacy. To Papa, this book has held the most accurate analysis of their faith and relation to Lucifer- and he treasures every copy he has managed to find. Less than 20 are known and he has been diligently translating it for decades.

As for being an avid reader, the man reads as much as he breathes! Papa is a scholar by heart, and a very well informed one at that. As a child he did nothing but read, and it’s no exaggeration when it’s claimed he read every book in the library he could get his hands on. He doesn’t prefer fiction, even if it’s well written. He rather learn and read up on articles and findings to expand his own mind.

Papa II: When he was in Seminary he made it a point to read every single banned book in the world, no matter what country it was from. Forbidden knowledge and as a way to stick it to convention. Out of all of them his favorite book emerged in the form of ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath. He still gets goosebumps on how it made him open his eyes as a young man, despite the narrative centering around a female protagonist with experiences he would never know or first hand understand. It really shaped his hatred towards conventional society expectations and a deep seeded appreciation for women and how strong they are. Despite his promiscuous habits it helped him adore Lilith and her brood and made him want to be more of a gentleman (aka, not like his father.)

Papa has always fancied himself more of a man cultured in music than in literature, but he won’t say no to a good book. In fact, he still loves to find new controversial reads just to see what all the fuss is about. It’s a way to unwind with wine after a long day- nothing more, nothing less. If you get him in the right mood, he’ll even has a discussion about his favorite novels. But he knows he’s no where near the level his older brother is. And that’s perfectly fine with him! He has enough to read as Papa, why add more to the pile if he doesn’t want to? Fun fact, he burned his copy of 50 Shades because he was so pissed at how horribly BDSM was depicted- he will rant if you bring that book up!

Papa III: The Karma Sutra? I jest- he actually adores reading when the mood strikes him. His favorite book is a collection of Italian Renaissance poetry- a time he is very invested in Historically. The Renaissance was a time of new ideas, innovation, and the indulgence of more art- something he can relate to with his own Papacy. Nothing makes him feel more at home than reading the romantic words of the old masters like Isabella Di Morra and Michelangelo.

Much like his father, he much rather be out having adventures instead of reading about them. But Papa has a love of poetry collections over novels. There is something beautiful about seeing art in a simple yet complex way that only a poet can capture. Anyone could write a novel, but there is so much more skill needed to be a poet! It’s like song writing, and Papa loves every parallel between poetry and music.

Cardinal Copia/Papa IV: He’s so embarrassed to admit that his favorite book ever since he was a young man was an anthology of Shakespeares lesser known plays. Embarrassed at the clicheness of how it sounds- but he is a sucker for theater! When he was a young man many swore he could have been the next David Garrick had the Clergy not been his main priority. Despite his love of novels and scholarly books, Copia adores old theater. Catch him still being able to recite Cymbeline monologues without missing a beat!

Copia is no where near the level of Papa I (though he’s always fighting to change that!) but reading has always been a huge escape for him. Ever since he was a boy devouring fantasy novels, to a young man craving old tomes of yore. Though he’s incredibly busy with so much, Copia still tries to keep at least one novel on his night stand to read before bed (on the rare occasions he gets to sleep normally.) He likes a fantasy novel or a best seller as ‘light’ reading to get his mind to relax.

#the band ghost #ghost bc #Ghost headcanon #ghost headcanons #papa nihil #papa emeritus i #Papa Emeritus II #papa emeritus iii #papa emeritus iv #cardinal copia

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vincent-g-writer · 4 years ago

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The Silver Screen Savant, pt 2- the Meh, the Bad and The yikes.

Hello Writers!

Last time here on Starry Starry Write, I talked a little about Autism in the media and my personal experiences therein. Today, I’d like to go a little broader, and tackle the topic from a macro perspective.

In recent times, you’ve probably heard “Representation Matters” oft repeated. Especially in prominent talking spaces like social media. But what does that mean, exactly?

Why “Representation Matters,” and how.

The short answer:

Diverse representation in media tells us that everyone has a place in the world. That everyone’s story matters.

The long answer:

It’s no secret that we begin engaging with media at a young age. When I was growing up in the 90’s and 00’s, TV and video games were often the babysitters of my peers. I was one of the few kids in my neighborhood whose parents weren’t divorced. The kids I knew? Not so much. Most of them were raised by single parents, grandparents and of course-the boob tube. I personally prefered books, when my mom wasn’t yelling “it’s too nice out to be holed up in that dark bedroom!”

Now, don’t mistake my preference for some kind of intellectual superiority. I watched plenty of TV too. Besides, books aren’t magically out of the equation. Printed material is our oldest form of media. And- often just as problematic. Though I will say- I saw a much broader range of people on covers adoring library shelves than I ever did titles on a TV roster. But, I digress. The point is: for many of us, consuming media begins at an early time of our life. And that’s where the problem starts. Even in my childhood, where The Magic School Bus, Hey Arnold, and Sesame Street showed people of all kinds, I can point to many that did not. Especially not people like me. Which did me a grave disservice. I didn’t know I was on the spectrum for a long time, and when I finally found out, I was horrified, thanks to what I had seen on TV.

Because media is not only a wonderful way to learn about people that don’t look, act or sound like us. It also informs our ideas of who we are, and what we can be. Whether we like it or not: it shapes how we understand the world. And it doesn’t stop with Childhood.

Time Changes Much, but not all.

Things are better now. Well, a little bit, anyway.

As an adult, I see more people like me on the screen nowadays. Which is nice.

Ish.

Why “ish?” Well…

Frequently, these “noticeably different” characters (read: Autistically coded) are branded “NOT AUTISTIC!” You heard it here first, folks! That one character (insert your favorite) is Totally Not Autistic. Despite being written in a way that gives every indication otherwise.

*Facepalm*

Now for some examples, which we’ll call the “Meh,” “The Bad” and the “Yikes.” For “fun,” we’ll also go into the off-air perceptions of the characters.

The “Meh.”

First on the list is Dr. Spencer Reid, from CBS’s “Criminal Minds.”

Dr. Reid is the youngest member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, having joined at the age of 22. He holds three B.A degrees in Sociology, Psychology and Philosophy, as well as three Ph.D’s in Engineering, Chemistry, and Mathematics.

He also has the social skills of a limp dishrag. Wait, what’s that? High Intelligence + Low Social Awareness? Hmmm…Then there’s his restrictive behavioral patterns, obsessive interests, and general “quirkiness!” that we could talk about. But let’s hear a quote from the actor who plays him, Matthew Gray Gubler:

“..an eccentric genius, with hints of schizophrenia and minor autism, Asperger’s Syndrome. Reid is 24, 25 years old with three PH.D.s and one can’t usually achieve that without some form of autism.”

Hoooo-boy. I could go into all the things wrong with this, including why the term “Asperger’s” is both horrific (TW: Eugenics,Ableism, N*zis) and harmful. However, today we’ll simply leave it with the fact that this term is no longer applicable, having been reclassified in 2013 as part of Autism Spectrum disorder.

The “Bad.”

Next up, we have Will Graham, from NBC’s Hannibal.

Like our first example, Will works for the FBI. He’s a gifted criminal profiler with “special” abilities, namely hyper empathy, which allows him to reconstruct the actions and fantasies of the killers he hunts. He’s intellectually gifted, hates eye contact, socializing, and prefers to spend…most of his time…alone.

Oh dear. Haven’t we been here before? But, I mean, he doesn’t have Autism! The show runner says so!

For Will Graham, there’s a line in the pilot about him being on the spectrum of autism or Asperger’s, and he’s neither of those things. He actually has an empathy disorder where he feels way too much and that’s relatable in some way. There’s something about people who connect more to animals than they do to other people because it’s too intense for whatever reason.

You can’t see me right now, but I’m cringing. A lot. This is just…ugh. I mean, for starters, I know a handful of autistic people who struggle with hyper empathy, which can make social situations overwhelming and hard to navigate. In fact, I happen to be one of them. Plus, there’s a cool little thing about how, frequently, people on the spectrum more readily identify with animals. But, y’know. Who am I to say? I’m just someone, one of many, who’s dealt with this my whole life.

Now, onto the “Yikes.”

*sigh*

And finally, we have BBC’s Sherlock, a modern adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s renowned “consulting” detective, and probably the most famous fictional character of all time.

Now, I’ll start by saying that the BBC incarnation is not the first to be Spectrum labeled. In fact, Sherlock was my childhood hero, and the first “person” I saw referred to this way. My aunt, an avid reader herself, casually remarked to a friend “I’ve always wondered if Holmes is Autistic,” after I came yammering on about how fantastic the books were. Had I not been champing at the bit to get back to my reading, I might have asked her what that meant.

I also believe this fandom driven speculation is why many detective type characters (see above) are often coded as Autistic, intentionally or otherwise.

In this New York Times article, Lisa Sanders, M.D. describes Holmes traits:

He appears oblivious to the rhythms and courtesies of normal social intercourse — he doesn’t converse so much as lecture. His interests and knowledge are deep but narrow. He is strangely “coldblooded,” and perhaps as a consequence, he is also alone in the world.

Now, before we go any father, let me take a moment to defend his creator. During the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first created his most famous work, Autism was not known. That isn’t to say it didn’t exist. We’ve always existed. In fact, it’s now believed that the Changeling Myth, a common European folk story, was a way to explain Autism. In one telling (there are a few) children displaying “intelligence beyond their years” and “uncanny knowledge” were imposters, traded out by Fae creatures for offspring of their own. Children believed to be “Changlings,” regretfully, often came to a bad end. A chilling reminder that the stories we tell impact our real lives.

So while Autism was at least somewhat recognized, it did not become its own official diagnosis until 1943.

Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes was first published in 1892. Now, as a writer who often draws from my personal reality, I imagine Doyle probably “wrote what he knew,” which is to say, acquainted with one or more Autistic people, he used them as inspiration.

On the other hand…

BBC’s Sherlock first aired in 2010. And while one might argue that the writers simply capitalized on the Autistic fan-theory, or took already available traits and exaggerated them for their version… they left a lot to be desired. Autism aside, this new Sherlock is…well…an asshole. Narcissistic, abusive and egocentric (to name a few) he sweeps his caustic behavior under the rug of “high functioning sociopath,” and blytly ignores the consequences.

Which is a major problem. Because while doing this, he’s still “obviously” (at least in the Hollywood sense) Autistic. In my previous post, where I said some characters are “too smart™, and logical© to ever have feelings, friends or empathy,” this is what I meant.

This is bad. We’re looping right back to Representation Matters. Bad representation, and the navigating of such, is just as important for writers to think about as good representation. Maybe even moreso. Because bad representation paints real people into cardboard, stereotyped people-shaped things. It otherizes. And it’s harmful. You would not believe the people I’ve met assume I’m not Autistic because I’m not an egotistical jerk. Why? Because they watched, you guessed it, BBC Sherlock.

Confession time:

Now here’s my little secret:

I love all of these characters. They are some of my favorite on tv. Why? Because for good or ill, I recognize myself in them. Finally, I can turn on the TV, and see myself. Or, somewhat, anyway.

My favorite character out of this list? Loath though I am to admit it… Is Sherlock. See, what those well meaning folks didn’t know (the ones who say I’m I’m “too nice,” to be Autistic) is… well, if we’re being honest, I wasn’t always nice. A few years ago, I was that guy. I was a jerk because I thought I was the smartest person in the room. Which is really not a good look. In fact, sitting down and watching the first season of sherlock, (around three or four years after it came out) made me realize how much of a jerk I actually was.

There are other things there too. Things that tie me to all these characters, that I didn’t list. But that’s for another today.

For now, I’d like to add a caveat or two:

1) I’ve watched all the shows listed above, and adore them. As I mentioned, Sherlock is my favorite. He’s also the one I’ve watched the most (Repeatedly, in fact. Whoops.) and I recognize it’s not all bad. In the end, he learned to treat people better (somewhat) and certainly became more human over time. And, there are other deeply problematic elements of the show I’d like to tackle, eventually.

*cough* Queerbating! *cough*

2) I’m well aware that the above cases are all thin, white, able bodied, “straight” males. But I chose these characters for a couple of reasons. One, they’re the most prominent type on TV. Again, we loop back around to representation, and why we need more positive, diverse examples of it.

And finally-

3) In my last post, I mentioned I’d give some “good” instances of Hollywood Autism trope. But I didn’t exactly do that. Partially, because half way through, I thought…perhaps…I’m not the best to judge what might be a good Autistic character. I mean, I’m sure someone will read this and think my current aforementioned characters are fine. Heck! They might even argue my perception here, and say the characters are just fine. I accept that. In my life, both on and off the page, I recognize that I cannot, should not (and don’t want to) speak for an entire community.

Because of this, I cannot tell you how to write a “good” Autistic character, or what media is “acceptable.” I can’t even really tell you what a bad character is. Sure, I have a lot of opinions about it. But- if you’re on the spectrum and like and identify with the above? That’s fine. I mean, even with all the problems I noted (and some I didn’t) I certainly do.

On the other hand, if you’re a writer, and you want to write a character from this (or any, for that matter) community you aren’t part of, I caution you.

Do your research. Preferably from multiple credible sources.

Talk to people on the spectrum about what it’s really like. (Though try to steer clear of asking for emotional labor.You could, say, hop on reddit and ask the community there, for instance, which is a no pressure way to obtain potentially decent info.)

Finally, whatever you do, remember this-

Autistic people can look like anyone. We can act, and think and be different, like anyone. We are real, living, breathing people. Not robots, not sob stories, not tropes. People. So if you write about us, write us like people. And your work will be all the better for it.

-Your Loving Vincent

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senadimell · 4 years ago

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DW: The Monster in the Closet

I realized while looking at a Girl in the Fireplace analysis that when Moffat involves a child in an episode, he chooses a particular set of tropes. It’s no secret he has favorite types of stories; this one I’ll call “The Monster in the Closet.” Moffat came onto Doctor Who writing Monster in the Closet stories; in fact, take a look at his first 6 stories: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, the Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, The Eleventh Hour, and The Beast Below. With the exception of Blink, they all fall into this category. Why? More on that below, after we look at what the episodes share.

I’m including Night Terrors in this analysis because it’s so fitting: it’s literally about a monster and a closet. It’s actually written by Gatiss, but copies many of the same tropes and subverts the ending. I’m not including Listen, because I honestly don’t remember it well enough to analyze and don’t care for a re-watch just yet. Plus, I think Moffat was trying to branch out by that point.

Here’s what’s in a standard Moffat Monster in the Closet episode.

The Child

Fake Faces

Repetition is Creepy

The Doctor’s Reputation

The Bad Guy isn’t evil, just fulfilling its nature

The child (or perceived child) is isolated from the adults in their life who should protect them but don’t realize the monsters are real. The Doctor steps in to validate them and solve figure out how to tackle their monster, who is real.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Nancy (Jamie and the kids Nancy looks after are also contestants here.)

The Girl in the Fireplace: Reinette

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: Cal

The Eleventh Hour: Amelia Pond

The Beast Below: Mandy (Timmy is also a contestant)

Night Terrors: George

Fake faces indicate something uncanny is occurring. The two-faced nature of the monsters suggests that the monster is not what we think it is.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

The Girl in the Fireplace

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

The Beast Below: (Liz 10 also has a mask and initially comes off as sinister, and is revealed to be part of the problem by choosing ignorance)

This is a bit of a stretch, but here’s the face-changing Prisoner Zero from the Eleventh Hour:

It’s worth noting that the Doctor had his own face change in this episode, so we’re waiting to see if he’s the genuine article or if he’s more like the monsters.

Night Terrors. Doesn’t get creepier than this.

Repetition is creepy. This doesn’t really serve a narrative purpose beyond being creepy, other than perhaps to indicate the monster has a goal that we do not understand. When we do, we can solve the problem. This kind of reminds me of when a kid is trying to get their parent’s attention, but they’re on the phone and don’t really hear. I find that just like fake faces, the more often this is used, the more banal I find it.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Creepiest thing ever

The Girl in the Fireplace: What is that mysterious ticking noise?

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: (so much repetition here that any episode after it that uses repetition feels like overkill to me)

The Eleventh Hour:

The Beast Below does something a little different. It goes for a creepy nursery rhyme instead:

GIRL: A horse and a man, above, below. One has a plan, but both must go. Mile after mile, above, beneath. One has a smile, and one has teeth. GIRL: Though the man above might say hello, expect no love from the beast below.

Night Terrors:

DOCTOR: George! George, what's going on? Are you doing it? ALEX: What's happening? GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. DOCTOR: George, no! GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. ALEX: Help me, Doctor! GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. DOCTOR: George, no! (The Doctor is dragged back into the cupboard.) GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. (Alex is dragged into the cupboard.) ALEX: No! (And the door slams shut. Peace reigns again.)

Line about Doctor’s reputation scaring off the bad guys: The Doctor acts as a parental figure, but instead of dismissing the childish fear of the monsters, he validates and vanquishes. He fulfills a parental role, though, and just as parents scare away monsters by virtue of being an adult, the Doctor scares away monsters just by being the Doctor.

*The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Saving this one for last.

The Girl in the Fireplace:

DOCTOR: Even monsters from under the bed have nightmares, don't you, monster? YOUNG REINETTE: What do monsters have nightmares about? DOCTOR: Me!

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead:

VASTA NERADA: These are our forests. They are our meat. DOCTOR: Don't play games with me. You just killed someone I liked. That is not a safe place to stand. I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up. (The Vasta Nerada desists and gives him a day to evacuate the library)

The Eleventh Hour:

DOCTOR: Okay. One more. Just one. Is this world protected? Because you're not the first lot to come here. Oh, there have been so many. (The projection shows the Daleks et al.) DOCTOR: And what you've got to ask is, what happened to them? (A run through of all the previous Doctors, then this Doctor steps through the projection with a jacket and bow tie.) DOCTOR: Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically, run.

The Beast Below:

This one breaks the mold a bit: It’s Liz 10 who does all of the “fear my reputation lines” and pulls almost the same line as the Doctor in 11th hour (I'm the bloody Queen, mate. Basically, I rule). What ties this to other Monster in the Closet episodes is that problem’s solution comes from realizing how amazing the Doctor is, and applying that logic to our misunderstood Starwhale. Since it doesn’t need to be scared away like our past few monsters, we get this instead:

AMY: The Star Whale didn't come like a miracle all those years ago. It volunteered. You didn't have to trap it or torture it. That was all just you. It came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry. What if you were really old, and really kind and alone? Your whole race dead. No future. What couldn't you do then? If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind, you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry.

AMY: Amazing though, don't you think? The Star Whale. All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind. DOCTOR: But you couldn't have known how it would react. AMY: You couldn't. But I've seen it before. Very old and very kind, and the very, very last. Sound a bit familiar?

Night Terrors:

Again, the formula’s changing. Here, the Doctor’s title declaration triggers the monster and makes the scary stuff happen rather than the other way ‘round because the resolution is reconciliation between parent and child. If the Doctor were to be the substitute parental figure, he would interfere with that reconciliation.

GEORGE [memory]: Who are you? DOCTOR [memory]: I'm the Doctor. GEORGE [memory]: A doctor? Have you come to take me away? Away. Away. Away. DOCTOR: That's what did it. That's what the trigger was. He thought you were rejecting him. He thought he wasn't wanted, that someone was going to come and take him away.

(It should be noted that there’s still a title declaration where the Doctor assumes that people should know and respect his title, even though they have no logical reason to:

DOCTOR: I'm not just a professional. I'm the Doctor. ALEX: What's that supposed to mean? DOCTOR: It means I've come a long way to get here, Alex. A very long way. George sent a message. A distress call, if you like. Whatever's inside that cupboard is so terrible, so powerful, that it amplified the fears of an ordinary little boy across all the barriers of time and space. )

So that brings me back to The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. One of my huge Doctor Who pet peeves is the Doctor’s growing hubris. I could manage it in seasons 2-4 because everybody and their dog was calling the Doctor out when he went too far, but it just kind of stopped in season 5 and the Doctor threw out more and more lines about how great or scary he was.

What I love about Nine is that he’s humble. What? you ask. The man who told us “I am so impressive!” is the most humble? Yes. Despite his “devil may care” blustering, Nine carries a huge burden of guilt and he constantly questions whether or not he has the authority to make big decisions when lives are at stake. It’s no coincidence that Harriet Jones pulls the “I’m the only elected official” card in World War Three to tell the Doctor to save the world even if she and Rose might die, or that when the Doctor acts unilaterally to let the Gelth posses corpses in The Unquiet Dead, he’s wrong, or that his actions to free the human race from the brainwashing news just leads to societal collapse and allows the Daleks a place to lie in wait, or that he’s spared from deciding Blon’s fate in Boomtown by the TARDIS. It all leads to his decision in front of the Daleks: Coward or killer? Do I have the right to decide who lives and dies? His answer is no, I don’t (then Rose saves the day).

In keeping with his personality, it would be totally out of character for him to boast of his reputation to scare away the monsters. Instead, we get this beautiful inversion of the Monster in the Closet Doctor/Parent figure scaring away the monsters by virtue of title:

DOCTOR: Amazing.

NANCY: What is?

DOCTOR: 1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it. Nothing. Until one, tiny, damp little island says no. No. Not here. A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you. Don't know what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me. Off you go then do what you've got to do. Save the world.

Instead of an “I’m the Doctor! Monsters are scared of me!” line, we get the Doctor saying ‘the monsters are scared of you.’ Then, he says he himself is frightened of humans. That’s an odd thing to say, since Nine doesn’t act frightened of humans and seems to just love them, until you consider the thematic implications. Who’s scared of the humans? The monsters.

The Doctor from ‘Dalek’ is calling.

The Doctor considers himself to be one of the monsters, even if he’s trying to atone for his past. He’s desperately avoiding whatever reputation’s left after the Time War and doesn’t pull that card until he’s facing a Dalek army. I am so so so grateful we got this line, instead of a line about how great the Doctor is.

The bad guy is not actually malicious, just following its nature: The monster is always something real here, but it’s never properly evil. I do like a good “the aliens just have different needs than humans” plot. That said, it can get predictable when you know there’s going to be a twist coming. I like the twists less and less as the episodes go on.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: The monster is the child! Sort of: the good-at-healing but bad-at-AI nanogenes made Jamie and everyone else a monster since they didn’t know what they were going for as they repaired the humans.

The Girl in the Fireplace: Arguably the most sinister on this list, the droids aren’t malicious, just trying to repair their ship with re-purposed body parts because they broke down. Not evil, just following incomplete AI instructions like our Nanogenes. This was the only thing I liked in this episode. At least the monsters had a reason they were obsessed with Reinette, unlike the stalker-y actions the Doctor took that were supposed to be 100% okay, even though he criticized the Robots for doing that?

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: The Vasta Nerada are creepy and eat people, but it’s just because their forest was pulped and they came here in the books! They just want to be left in peace to hunt like normal predators.

The Eleventh Hour: This one doesn’t fit quite so neatly. However, it should be noted that the primary danger in the episode doesn’t come from the bad guy, Prisoner Zero, but the cops looking for him who are willing to boil the earth. They’re not evil, just callous and need to be reminded of proper boundaries.

The Beast Below: The weird scorpion stingers are just the Starwhale! It loves children. It doesn’t even care about being tortured for centuries and will keep driving everyone through space.

Night Terrors: George is monster! That is, he’s the one causing the creepy stuff to happen because he’s an alien who stressed out about the parents he brainwashed abandoning him. I guess that’s sci fi for you?

With the exception of Blink, all of the monsters are shown as innocent, if dangerous. They just need to put their energy in a different direction. It’s not until Victory of the Daleks that Moffat breaks the mold. Why? The punchline of “Monster in the Closet” stories is that the monsters are real and scary, but not evil, just following their nature. Daleks fall into the “these are actual bad guys” category, not the misunderstood monster. (Which is kinda funny, because it’s been established that Daleks are genetically engineered to kill and hate. They may be a Nazi analogue, but Nazis were people who chose evil. The Daleks are bred to hate and exterminate--note what happens to the “impure” dalek in Dalek and Evolution of the Daleks: they don’t kill people, and then they die.)

My biggest beef with these episodes that they’re all relatively close together, so it’s easy to notice the overlap. When Moffat uses almost the exact same line in one episode as in the previous episode, I notice. When he uses the same mask design, I notice. When he has a constantly repeated line and does it again, I notice. Even before I waded into anti Moffat stuff, I noticed a shift at the end of season 4. I attributed it to a new cast since I just couldn’t click with anything. Then, I learned there was a new writer, and found out he had also written my least favorite episode of New Who (The Girl in the Fireplace).

After writing this, I can’t help but parrot what I’ve heard elsewhere: Moffat’s trying to write a fairytale. A lot of the people and dangers feel more like archetypes than people, and the dialogue is witty but often unnatural--nobody goes around bantering like that all the time. The villains are identified by their form just as much as what they intend to do. There’s also this weird idolization of childhood and the innocent child. I don’t like it much. I’m more of the Coraline, Witches of Worm, Egyptian Game, and Wrinkle in Time mold, where the kids are just as realized and human as their adult counterparts and can lack empathy and be as creepy as adults. Alternatively, I’ll take Shannon Hale’s fairy-tale retellings where the bad guys are people and the solution involves personal courage and collaborative effort. (Moffat can keep his Day of the Doctor maypole children, and I will keep Chloe the scribbler, even if her episode was a little off).

My rating for these episodes, from least to most favorite:

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Love Christopher Eccleston’s performance and was very creeped out by the child monsters. The solution to the problem was implied but not obvious so I didn’t get it until I was supposed to. I didn’t enjoy the introduction of a love triangle or the constant innuendo, but at least it was gone in an episode. Also, I will never not fangirl over “Everybody Lives!” and its significance to Nine.

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: Thoroughly enjoyed these episodes, though I do have things to quibble with (wish Lee was black like Donna’s other romantic interests--she’s got a type and it’s not “gorgeous and can’t speak a word,” among other critical things). Overall, a great episode

The Eleventh Hour, which I enjoyed, but makes me feel weirder and weirder the more I watch it between child/adult Amy, handcuffs and porn references, and the annoying “prisoner zero has escaped” mantra, plus “I’m the doctor! The earth is protected! I also didn’t like the repeat of comatose people sitting up and saying things. It was good the first time, not so much the second. Funny, but also uncomfortably awkward and creepy, and not in the “are you my mummy” way.

The Beast Below, which felt like it was recycled from earlier tropes to me. Maybe if Liz 10 wouldn’t have had the GitF porcelain mask, I wouldn’t be as tempted to compare it to other Monster in the Closet episodes. Overall, just meh.

The Girl in the Fireplace, which rubs me wrong in every way, except for the droids cannibalizing crew to save the ship--what does that say about me and the episode? I will not rewatch this episode willingly.

#anti moffat #analysis #dw meta #amelia pond #the girl in the fireplace #9th doctor #ninth doctor #10th doctor #tenth doctor #11th doctor #even if this is moffat analysis #i feel like it's too anti to tag it with a plain moffat tag #doctor who #doctor who meta #the monster in the closet

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tsthrace · 5 years ago

Text

White Knuckles

Awhile back, I asked y’all to send me a song so I could take its energy, lyrics, and/or feeling and write you a 1,000-word Clexa fic.

This one shot meandered way beyond 1,000 words. It’s based on White Knuckles by Tegan and Sara, as requested by @damiana-atx.

Angsty academia AU. No content warnings except for some swearing.

You can also find it on ao3.

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

“Fuck, this is good,” Clarke said aloud to no one as she tossed the journal on the table. She leaned back in her chair. Godlessness Centered: Negotiating Queerness in The Left Hand of Darkness by Alexandria J. Woods, PhD. When Clarke had first picked up the journal, she scoffed. The Left Hand of Darkness? Really? And queerness? How overdone.

But it was brilliant. A discourse on Le Guin’s own spirituality and how it defied casual dualities.

I should have thought of that.

She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes.

---

Lexa smoothed the lapels on her blazer, though they were already perfectly flat. She gazed at herself in the hotel mirror, staring at the buttons on her shirt. She had a choice to make—the choice of the one awkward button. Button it, and she would seem, well, buttoned-up, uptight. But unbuttoned, it was a bit...revealing. There was no middle ground.

She pushed her glasses up on her nose and took a breath. Then buttoned the button.

---

They met in Bloomington, Indiana. All the sci fi literature conferences seemed to be in random small cities in the Midwest. They were strange events. Mostly men in khaki and tweed carrying beat-up leather satchels, experts on Vonnegut and Wells (H.G., that is). But there was also the overt geek element. Undergrad boys carrying frayed copies of Asimov and Gaiman, their laptops covered in Star Trek and My Little Pony stickers, and the occasional girl wearing a Strong Female Character t-shirt.

Then there was Lexa, sharp in a plain black cashmere sweater and grey herringbone slacks, her glasses suggesting both intelligence and the ability to break you. The geeks followed her but kept an admiring distance.

Clarke, for some reason, seemed more approachable. As she sipped her gin and tonic at the hotel bar, the kids (as she called college students) would creep up to her, their eyes down.

“Dr. Griffin?” they’d ask.

“Call me Clarke,” she’d say, smiling.

“I just had some questions on your takedown of the Darkover series.”

Clarke would always give them about twenty minutes then politely end the conversation, turning back to her drink.

She had had three such conversations when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Clarke didn’t mind the attention, but she was getting tired. She spun around, ready to dismiss herself.

“Dr. Griffin.” Lexa stood above her.

“Dr. Woods,” Clarke replied, nodding politely. She had read all of Lexa’s work. She had to. They were two of the only feminist sci fi lit scholars who were regularly publishing. But they’d never actually met.

“I don’t really prefer the term ‘doctor.’” Lexa said, looking just past Clarke. “It’s a little....” She didn’t finish her thought. After a moment she tilted her head. “Do you really think we should stop reading Bradley because of her scandal?”

Clarke put her drink down. “Scandal is kind of an understatement. And I didn’t say we should stop. I just said it’s hard.”

Without invitation, Lexa sat down at Clarke’s table. “If we bring every artist’s personal life into how we engage with their work, we probably won’t be able to enjoy anything.”

Clarke raised an eyebrow. “I never took you for a modernist.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That sometimes shitty people create amazing art.” Lexa’s eyes lit up with her smile, like she was issuing a friendly challenge.

“Are you flirting with me?” Clarke returned her version of the same smile.

Lexa sat back and shrugged. She took a sip of her martini.

---

A few hours later, Clarke was sprawled across Lexa’s bed looking up, her hair in tangles across the pillow, a corner of the sheet pulled over her midsection. Lexa was curled up next to her, sweaty and wondering what just happened. She took a few breaths, looking for words. She squinted to herself, couldn’t think of anything to say. She felt Clarke shuffle a bit and prepared for the awkward banter that would come when they’d get up to look for their clothes.

“Do you believe in God?” Clarke asked instead. She didn’t get up.

“Pardon?”

“Do you believe in God?” Her tone was so casual.

“I...I don’t know.” Lexa looked up at the ceiling. She suddenly felt cold and reached down for a blanket. “Why do you ask?”

“I think I do,” Clarke said, not answering the question.

“Why?”

“I just look around this world, and it seems pretty incredible to me. Like it wasn’t an accident. Someone had to have created all this. Created us. Then made us creators.” Clarke shook her head and looked past Lexa. “It all seems like such a miracle.”

“Are you a Christian?” Lexa felt her face crumple.

Clarke laughed. “I don’t know. I do like the idea of the trinity.”

“When I grew up, my parents took me to one of those born again churches.” Lexa looked down. “It was mostly Jesus. I mean, I know what the trinity is, but…” Why was she telling her this?

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Clarke shook her head. “Not like God as some guy who makes you love him or else you burn in hell. That’s bullshit.”

Lexa squinted.

“The trinity. It’s like a dance between these three ways God reveals herself.” Clarke smiled. “It’s beautiful actually.” She looked at Lexa. “Did you ever read A Wrinkle in Time?”

Lexa side-eyed her. “Clarke, I’m a sci fi scholar.”

“Okay, so there’s Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which…”

They stayed up the rest of the night, moving from L’Engle to Shelley to Jemisin and the spiritual worlds of their stories. Evil and suffering, goodness and hope. Retribution, sacrifice, and justice. Beauty and joy. Mouth to neck, hands to curves, skin to skin.

By dawn, Lexa had found God.

---

Lexa went back to UC Irvine and Clarke returned to her adjunct job at Georgetown, but they emailed constantly. Long, meandering messages about particular chapters of The Stone Sky and Spinning Silver. Clarke sent her Marilynne Robinson essays, and Lexa responded with questions. Together, they laid theologies over imagined worlds, mapped them out and connected them to other imagined worlds. They took down Ender’s Game, built up The Hainish Cycle, and even let themselves dabble in Stardust, which they both had to admit they secretly admired. Back and forth, tens of thousands of words over the course of months. They only talked on the phone a few times, but the emails were constant.

Not long into their messages, Clarke had mentioned how her father had died when she was young. Lexa hinted at being on her own at age 16. These details were wrapped in blankets of analysis and metaphor, the theological undercurrents of the imagined worlds they studied, the anthropology of beings who only existed on pages and in minds.

They made plans to meet in Cleveland to present together at a lit crit conference. A week before, Lexa bailed. “Sorry,” the text said. “An emergency came up.”

“Everything okay?” Clarke responded.

Nothing.

The conference was rough. Clarke knew it would be, but she thought she’d have Lexa’s powerful presence demanding attention. The lit crit crowd all secretly loved what they called “genre” fiction—sci fi and fantasy—but they publicly derided it as “unserious” or “not literary.” She held her own, but it wasn’t fun.

She texted Lexa when she got back to her hotel room. “Wish you had been here. Same straight white male bullshit as usual.”

Silence.

“Did I say something wrong?” Clarke texted a few days later. At that point, though, she knew Lexa was gone.

A heaviness set in on her. Clarke reread their messages looking for hints, but Lexa’s words seemed wide open, even joyful. What happened?

She immersed herself in a chapter she was writing for a textbook on book fandoms and lecturing on feminism and postmodernism in Harry Potter—not her favorite topic, but it was a popular course. She had almost let herself forget about Lexa when, six months later, she was flipping through Foundation: The Journal of Science Fiction and saw her byline in the table of contents. Justice & Joy: The God Revealed in the Feminist Imagination. By Alexandria J. Woods, PhD.

Clarke turned to page 137 and ran her eyes down the columns. She bit her lip. The essay was essentially a catalog of their emails, one idea bridged skillfully to another by Lexa’s pointed and lucid prose. But they weren’t just Lexa’s ideas. They weren’t just Clarke’s, either, but a stream of their thoughts flowing together like a river. It was beautifully done.

Clarke didn’t notice that her hands were balled into fists until she felt her nails cutting into the skin. She opened her laptop and pulled up the messages. Lexa had been careful to rephrase Clarke’s words, but it was all there, even with citations of Marilynne Robinson. The Death of Adam.

Clarke pounded out an email. How dare you...couldn’t even ask for me to be a coauthor...you hadn’t even thought about these things until you met me. She knew Lexa wouldn’t see it. She probably had blocked her address. She didn’t bother hitting send.

Her face fell into her hands. She remembered that night in San Diego. Lexa’s smile—that curiosity despite herself. The way her hands traced the skin over Clarke’s side.

That woman wouldn’t have done this. But there it was. Twenty-six pages of shared conversation now claimed for Lexa only.

---

Clarke’s department was buzzing about it the next day. The religious studies chair was also a huge geek who kept up with Foundation, and he had been blown away by how seamlessly interdisciplinary the article was. “I hadn’t thought to connect the Christian trinity and A Wrinkle in Time, but it’s really so obvious when you think about it.”

Clarke seethed. She thought about printing up the emails, sending them to Foundation and the UC Irvine Disciplinary Committee, but something stopped her. Allegations of plagiarism would ruin Lexa’s career as a scholar. And was it really plagiarism? Clarke wanted to be sure, but she wasn’t.

So she wrote instead. A deep and cutting rebuttal highlighting where Alexandria J. Woods’ religious arguments were rudimentary at best, illustrating how shallow her connections were, and then plunging further, mining Catherine Keller and other theologians for an even deeper exploration of the worlds of Butler and Clarke (Arthur C., that is). Foundation published her essay the next quarter. Lexa answered, bringing in Buddhism and Humanism. A spotlight grew around their debate, so they continued writing—back and forth between literary, cultural, and religious journals. WIRED magazine picked up the story: Feuding Feminists Shifting the Sci Fi Landscape.

That’s when the invites started rolling in. A conference on spirituality and pop culture invited them to speak on a panel together, but Clarke refused. She couldn’t bear to see Lexa in person. Instead, she accepted an invitation to lecture at NYU while Lexa spoke at Cal.

Clarke’s classes filled with long waitlists every semester, her success intertwined with Lexa’s and their endless intellectual feud. They both thrived. Lexa’s ideas sharpened Clarke’s, and Clarke’s sharpened Lexa’s. She couldn’t admit it, but she needed Lexa as much as she despised her.

---

Lexa was in her office when the call came.

“Dr. Woods?” A male voice.

“It’s Professor Woods.”

“Excuse me, Professor Woods,” he corrected himself. “This is Dr. William Porter at Georgetown. The chair of the Department of English.”

Lexa felt something jump in her chest. “Good morning.”

“I’m calling because a very generous donor has recently endowed a tenure-track professorship here specifically for women in science fiction studies.”

“You’re kidding me.” it felt like a prank, and a mean one at that. Lexa had never heard of such a thing.

“Uh, no.” Dr. Porter seemed thrown off. “We’re inviting only a few people to apply, and you’re on our short list. Is this something you’d be interested in?”

They hung up with lingering plans to arrange flights and meetings.

Lexa sat for a few minutes, her fingers tapping idly on her closed laptop. Clarke would be one of the other candidates—and maybe the only other candidate—she was sure. She looked down and shook her head, thinking back to that day when she made the worst decision of her life.

She had printed out some of the emails she had sent Clarke to reference them against some short stories when the dean knocked on her door. He noticed a copy of L’Engle’s Walking on Water open on her desk.

“What’s that about?” he asked.

“Uh, just a side project I’m working on.” Her face burned with the exposure of her new interest in religious studies.

“Mind if I look?” he asked, picking up one of the print-outs before she could answer.

She bit her lip as he read, his forehead creasing.

After a few minutes, he looked up. “Professor Woods, this is good stuff.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “Thank you. I’ve been working with Professor Griffin at Georgetown—”

“But these are your words, right?”

“Yeah, what you’re holding. That’s mine.”

“You need to publish this. It could be really good for you and the department.”

“Yeah, Professor Griffin and I—”

“Lexa,” he said in that kind but firm I’m-A-Man-In-Charge voice, “there’s a distinction to be made between attribution and inspiration. I’m inspired every day by the ocean, by James Joyce.” Lexa hid her contempt. Scholars who pretended to understand Joyce were pretentious liars. “But I’m not citing them.”

“Dr. Titus.” Her voice was firm. “I couldn’t have written that without Professor Griffin.”

“Professor Woods.” He looked her straight in the eye. “This department doesn’t need a co-authored paper with someone from Georgetown. We need a win.” He tapped the paper. “These are your words. Are they the product of a broader conversation? Sure, but what isn’t?” He looked out the window at the budding trees. “We took a chance on your genre work. And I’m seeing some good stuff. But I need to see more if we’re going to keep you on.”

Lexa looked past Dr. Titus and took in a silent breath. Jobs in her specialty was rare. UC Irvine had invested more than most schools to create a department where someone like her could thrive. She nodded.

“Get me an abstract and outline next week,” the dean said. “The managing editor at Foundation is a former student.”

When he left, she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She would need to cancel her panel with Clarke in Cleveland. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to look at her again.

---

Clarke let out a deep breath as she stepped into the crisp fall air. It had been a long day of interviews. She stopped on the stairs. She knew Lexa was close by. She had to be. They were the two people in the country most qualified for the job. She’d been on these interview panels before. Two, sometimes three, a day, candidates rotating between deans and panels. Clarke was surprised she hadn’t seen her yet.

She shook her head. Maybe she should have said something about that first paper. The job would be hers if she had. But would she even be considered without that paper? It had launched her career. Her public debate with Alexandria J. Woods, PhD, got her lectures around the country, a longform article in The Atlantic, and the keynote spot at conferences that two years ago would have never taken her seriously. Their refusal to appear together added to their mystique. Geeks and academics alike lined up on reddit and twitter to take sides.

Her success was bound to Lexa’s, two sides of the same double helix.

She bundled a scarf around her neck. It didn’t matter where Lexa was. Clarke loved the work she did, and she had rocked the interviews. But she was tired. It was time for a drink. She pulled out her phone to call a Lyft. Something about the fading purple sky changed her mind, though, and she decided to walk.

The cobblestones on O Street felt somehow comforting under her feet. Solid. Old. Not going anywhere. She thought about calling Dr. Reyes from the engineering department to join her—Raven was always good for either a loud night of much alcohol or a quiet night of raw, stinging truth—the latter of which was why Clarke had never told her all that had happened with Lexa. She shook her head. Maybe she just needed some gin and silence.

She sat at the bar at L’Annexe and ordered a Tom Collins. Bartenders always smiled curiously at her when she ordered one. Funny, you don’t look like a 75 year-old man to me. She’d smile back impatiently. Just make my damn drink. When the drink arrived, she took a sip and let out a deep breath as the gin started to glow through her. No one can fuck up a Tom Collins. It was simple and always felt good and sharp and bright going down.

She was halfway through her drink when a man sat next to her and ordered a scotch. Clarke glanced at his plaid scarf, wool sweater, and worn leather shoulder bag. Definitely a TA. He noticed her looking at him and smiled.

“I’ve seen you,” he said. “You teach that Harry Potter course.”

Clarke’s stifled a sigh. “That’s me.” She tilted her head back and drank the rest of her Tom Collins in one swig.

“Can I get you another?”

“No,” she said, picking up her bag. She made eye contact with the bartender. “I need to pay.”

“Whoa,” the man in the scarf said, raising his hands. “I’m just trying to be nice.”

“And I was just trying to be alone.” Clarke nodded towards the guy sitting on the other side of him. “Maybe you can be nice to him.” She dropped some cash on the check that had arrived and made her way to the door.

It was darker outside than when she’d arrived. And colder. She buttoned her wool coat and started making her way down Pennsylvania Ave. towards the bus stop.

---

Lexa was sipping a Syrah at a window table when she saw Clarke walk by outside. She took in a breath, remembering how Clarke’s eyes got soft when she asked, “Do you believe in God?” She shook her head. She could just let her keep going, and they could go on avoiding each other forever. Unless Lexa got the job.

Shit.

She grabbed her coat, leaving a $20 under her mostly full glass. By the time Lexa got out the door, Clarke was halfway down the block, almost lost in a crowd of loud students. Lexa didn’t button her coat, and it billowed out as she jogged down the street.

“Clarke!” she shouted as she got closer. She saw Clarke stop, her back straighten and stiffen. She didn’t turn around.

---

Clarke wanted to be angry. When she heard that voice, she wanted to spin on her heel and unleash a cascade of expletives that would make the passersby uncomfortable. She not only wanted Lexa to hear the words traitor, cheat, betrayed, she wanted her to feel the force of them rip through her body like a landmine.

But she froze. When she heard that voice, she felt tears sting at the corner of her eyes. She felt a slow storm in her chest, all rain and no lighting. She closed her eyes. She wanted to be angry, but all she felt was heaviness. She held her breath and waited.

When she opened her eyes, Lexa was in front of her, her eyes uncertain and her arms folded in front of her. “Hey…” she said after a few moments.

Clarke bit into her lip, hoping not to draw blood. She looked up, her blue eyes blazing, about to spark. She could tell Lexa was waiting for her to say something, so she stayed silent.

Lexa nodded. “I’m so sorry, Clarke.” She didn’t know what else to say.

Clarke’s eyes locked on Lexa’s, but she refused to respond.

“I don’t expect you to understand...” Lexa trailed off. “It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.” She looked past Clarke to a stoplight turning from yellow to red.

Lexa’s open coat revealed a gray plaid suit, smart and uncompromising, the top button studiously and chastely buttoned. So she had interviewed today. In this moment, though, it all felt wrong. Lexa seemed so small to Clarke. She wasn’t the woman she met at the hotel that night, but she also wasn’t the woman who submitted that article. This woman was drawn in on herself, her hair falling around her face like a curtain. Clarke remained silent.

Lexa sucked in her lips. “I know you probably hate me, and I get it.” She looked down. “I hate me, too.”

“No.” Clarke’s voice was deep and quiet. “You don’t get to do that.” She felt confused when she saw a shadow of relief cross Lexa’s face.

“You’re right,” Lexa said. “That’s not fair.” She took a long, deep breath and let it out. “I’m going to tell them.” She looked Clarke in the eye. “I’m going to tell Georgetown, and I’m going to tell Foundation. I’ll—”

“Don’t.” Clarke cut her off. “It’s done.”

“But—”

“Fuck you, Lexa.” She barely looked at her as pushed past, a slow fire burning through her as she walked briskly towards Dupont Square.

---

Lexa was freezing by the time she got back to her hotel room. She had stood on the sidewalk for a long time, watching Clarke get smaller and smaller. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Forgiveness? Punishment? Clarke had given her neither, which is what she knew she deserved.

She had never written a paper more carefully, never thought about the ideas so closely, never danced so delicately around sentence structure and tense. In a twisted way, she was proud of it. It was sophisticated but accessible, and completely defensible. Even if Clarke had tried to accuse her, she was sure she would have won.

She shook her head sharply. That’s not who I am. But it was. She was intelligent and ambitious and ready for a breakthrough. She knew Titus had been threatening her, but she also knew that what she had been writing with Clarke was good. Really good. She had never felt so alive in her work as when she was in conversation with Clarke. No one had ever challenged or inspired her like that. Even after that first paper, her debates with Clarke from essay to essay were electric, almost feverish. Clarke tapped something in her that was insatiable.

She picked up her laptop and opened some of the first emails she and Clarke had exchanged after Bloomington. She couldn’t help but smile. There had been a giddiness to them, this breathless excitement to constantly share new discoveries, interesting connections. They had sent seven, sometimes eight, messages a day. Thousands of words.

And that night in Bloomington.

She closed the laptop. Was it worth it? For months, Lexa had tried to convince herself that it had just been one night, that she didn’t even really know Clarke. When she saw Clarke on that sidewalk tonight, though, she knew that was all bullshit.

They had been falling for each other the best way they knew how. Lexa had betrayed all of it.

—-

Lexa was sitting on the floor outside Clarke’s office when she arrived the next morning.

Clarke sighed. “Seriously?” She didn’t look at her as she slid her key in the lock. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a meeting to cancel.” Lexa shrugged, not getting up.

Clarke pushed her door open. “I don’t have anything else to say to you, Dr. Woods.”

“I withdrew my name.”

Clarke froze. “Why?” Clarke noticed jeans and a sweater under Lexa’s coat. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun. She was serious.

“You know why.”

Clarke’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did,” Lexa said steadily as she stood up. The smallness from the night before was gone. She stood tall, her shoulders thrown back. “I don’t know who else they’re interviewing, but I’m not your competition anymore.” She swallowed and looked into Clarke’s eyes. “I don’t want to be your competition anymore.”

Clarke let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She wanted to say, Good luck, Dr. Woods, and close the door behind her, but instead she felt herself pushing the door open, heard herself saying, “Come in.”

Lexa bit her lip. “You sure?”

Clarke nodded and ushered her in. The door clicked as it closed behind them. Clarke set her bag down and sat at her desk. She shook her head, frustrated. “I just want to hate you. That’s all. I want to tell you to fuck off, and I want to go on with my life.”

Lexa sat in the reading chair in the corner of Clarke’s office. She nodded, looking down at her hands. “Then why don’t you?”

Clarke huffed, a cynical laugh. “I can’t get away. You’re everywhere.” She threw up her hands. “I saw you on the fucking New Yorker site this morning. How did you land that?” A rhetorical question. “I assign your essays for my classes. I have to. I hate how good you are.”

“You’re good, too, Clarke,” Lexa said quietly. She looked up. “Very good. I keep researching and writing because you keep responding.”

Clarke closed her eyes. She knew it was the same for her, but she didn’t want to say it. Finally she looked up. “Why did you do it?”

Lexa looked past her at Clarke’s diplomas on the wall. Undergrad at Cornell. She shook her head, almost said I don’t know, but she didn’t want to lie. “I wanted to do something big.” She gathered the courage to look at Clarke’s face. “I wanted to do it with you, but my dean pressured me to take solo authorship.” She closed her eyes, ashamed. “And I was a coward.”

“Yeah.” Clarke leaned back in her chair. “You were.”

Everything that came into Lexa’s head to say felt like an excuse, so she kept her mouth shut. They both did, the loud ticking of the cheap clock on the wall cutting through the silence.

Finally Clarke shook her head. A corner of her mouth curved up. “It was really beautifully done.”

Lexa looked up, her head tilted.

“I was so fucking angry, Lexa.” Clarke breathed out like she was letting something go. “I should have been a coauthor, but, fuck, it was well written. Like it was on a whole other level.”

Lexa’s green eyes were bright as they locked in on Clarke’s. “You inspire me, Dr. Griffin.” She sat back. “It’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She paused and sucked in her lips. “I think we should write a book together.”

As soon as Clarke heard the words, she knew it was a good idea. Maybe the best idea. But all that would come out was, “Fuck you, Lexa.” It was almost a laugh.

Lexa’s face was stone, but her eyes were alive. “An editor already approached me. If I brought you on…”

“You can’t buy your way out of the shitty thing you did, Lexa.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Lexa ran her hand over her hair then looked up, her face suddenly soft. “I meant it, Clarke. I’m better with you.” She shrugged. “And I think you’re better with me, too.”

Clarke bit her lip. She took in a heavy breath, and let it out in a long sigh. She stood up. “Come here.”

Lexa squinted her eyes.

“Just come here, please. You owe me that.”

Lexa stood up in front of Clarke. Clarke lifted her hand to her face and leaned in, her lips barely touching Lexa’s. Lexa didn’t move, but Clarke felt her shiver. She leaned in and kissed her softly. Then she pulled back.

“I just…” Clarke didn’t know where the end of that sentence was supposed to go, and she didn’t tried to find it. Instead, she lifted her eyes and looked at Lexa as her chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

Lexa held her breath.

Finally Clarke smiled, almost laughing at herself. “That’s not a yes, Dr. Woods. But it’s not a no.”

#clexa #clexa fanfic #clarke x lexa #CLEXA AU

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imbellarosa · 4 years ago

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A Million Visions and Revisions

ORRR

How TS Eliot’s Love Song was rewritten (or reinterpreted) in “Alfie’s Song (A Not So Typical Love Song)” . I’m so excited for this because The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock is my favorite poem, ever, period, (and the title of my blog!) so to be doing an analysis of this song in the context of this poem - and the movie that goes with it! - is super cool to me.

There are two levels of analysis here: the meaning of the poem, and the meaning of the song. Love Song is usually spoken about in context of courage, cowardice, and the passage of time. The speaker says, at the very beginning, says: “oh, do not ask ‘what is it?’. Let us go and make our visit.”. He then describes the happenings of life - from the minutiae to the macro - asking if he dares disturb the universe in one breath, and in the next he asks if he dare eat a peach. Something that becomes apparent, however, is that the speaker has a secret, and whatever it is, he struggles with debating whether or not he should speak it, if one single person would not be able to accept him. If they were to say, “That is not what I meant. That is not it, at all.”

Here are three takeaways from the poem that I absolutely adore:

The speaker - presumably Alfred himself - understands that he is but a player in a larger story, and that the story will go on without him. He sets the stage for someone else, and he does not need a great story. He is, perhaps, scared of it.

He dreams of magic, of mermaids and universes and beautiful people and iced cakes and yellow fog on calm October nights. And he feels as though reality is drowning him. The last sentences is literally “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” This is a lovely juxtaposition between Prufrock’s dreams and his reality. In his dreams, there is magic. In reality, he is drowned - silenced - by the pressure of the voices around him telling him to keep his secret.

The reader never knows what Prufrock’s secret is. Based on the title, one might infer that it has something to do with love, but there isn’t any certainty in this answer - it’s just my conjecture.

Now onto the song. I made the assertion that it re-contextualizes the poem, and I’d like to take a minute to explain why: this song was written as the primary song for Love, Simon, which came out in 2018. The movie came out in March, the song in January. But the movie - based on a book called Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens’ Agenda - is about a gay teen with a secret boyfriend. So immediately, you know what the singer is talking about when he says that they were caught up in a “not so typical love song”.

The only thing I have to say is odd about the song is how it does not at all fit the theme of the movie. The movie is about self-realization and self-actualization, while the song is about mending a difficult, if lovely, long-term relationship. A few lyrics are really interesting to me, and I’ll go through them one at a time.

The first is the very first lyric: “Fake young when we met/ Everything seemed alright”. I love the idea of being “fake young”, which can be taken a couple of ways: the first is that you’re acting younger than you are, which denotes a sort of immaturity, and doesn’t really fit the rest of the song. The second way - my preferred way - is that the singer had to grow up faster than they were meant to. Which makes total sense if the singer was, say, a secretly gay sixteen year old who was on the precipice of his very first long term relationship, thinking that they have met The One, and knowing the hardships that might come with that. (I’m talking about Simon, in case it’s confusing, and I can absolutely see why it might be haha).

“But how I love those days we didn't get out of bed/ Left your taste in my mouth/ Your strange voice in my head”. I’m not confused about this lyric at all, I just wanted to highlight it because it reminds me of this tweet and this song, both of which are lovely, and the tweet came from the dude who, hum, let’s see, wrote this song. Just worth mentioning. The other song isn’t at all relevant I just love it, and the band.

“Oh, I wanna hear it again/ Cause back then we were caught in a love song so loud, oh yeah/ No not so typical love song/ Cause it hurt us again and again/ So sang that I really need you so bad, oh yeah”. Interesting only in that this is where they most directly mention Eliot’s poem, but also in that you might think that Blue (Bram, Simon’s eventual boyfriend, who goes by Blue because his name is Bram Louis, so he is therefore (B)lou) is a musician, because of the reference to his voice, and now the love song reference, but nope. He’s just your average, every day varsity soccer player.

“You'd leave the cities and chase bullet holes/ That's actually star light/ And in those rare moments you and I were brilliant/ We were gonna be alright.” I honestly, genuinely don’t get the first line. I think it has to do with chasing something that, on it’s face, seems dangerous, but is actually beautiful. The last two lines again gives that feeling of privacy and secrecy, which, yeah, is a theme of the movie. Something can be private and personal and beautiful even if it feels dangerous and risky to chase it.

And then they just repeat the same pre chorus and the chorus until the outro, which reads “I wanna be alright with my baby tonight”, which is a nice, hopeful way to end the song, and gives an insight that they’re going to be okay.

Right! So that’s the song’s break down! Of course, after hearing the song, I do think of the poem a bit differently. If you’re curious about Eliot, and what Prufrock’s intended secret was, there’s an article called Outing T.S. Eliot which argues that there is intentional queer subtext in his writings. I happen to agree. I think this poem could easily be about a man who is afraid to share his love - or his kind of love - with the world, because he is afraid that someone will turn away from him, or brush him off.

The song sort of hits on this, and this song does it better, but there is a strong undercurrent of bravery. To be openly in love inside a “not so typical love song” that “hurts again and again” is brave. To write the song, sing it, record it, and attach it to a movie about a boy who finds his life partner and himself and is brave enough to share it is also brave. They seem to answer the question that is asked in Eliot’s poem: “do I dare disturb the universe?” They do. They will. And next time, “you'll have learnt from it when it comes back; you'll be doing better”.

#i say things #song recs #anaylsis #the bleachers #which is a KILLER BAND #alfies song #love simon #ts eliot #the lovesong of j alfred prufrock #my fav poem ever #and it really did change things when I realized that the name of the song #came from this poem #and i had A LOT of thoughts about it

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passiveaggressivegummybear · 4 years ago

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I had not in fact ever considered Michael and Alex being stock characters in a Taylor Swift song. Would you elaborate? I am very interested.

oh man anon. thank you for this, i get to talk about my two favorite topics of the week, getting this ask has made my NIGHT. also this is going to be long and largely incoherent, apologies in advance.

when i said that both of malex were stock characters from taylor swift songs i didn’t mean that there are specific taylor swift songs that each of them are in (though if you’re asking my first impression is that michael would be style and alex, contrary to the gifset you are referring to, would be red). i’m talking about the type of stories taylor swift tells. i think the most efficient way to explain what i mean is to look at each part of malex from the other’s perspective. for example:

alex from michael’s pov: you fell in love with a boy at 17/18 years old, had brief and absolutely magical connection, and then he went off to war. 10 years later, he comes back and you’re both different but the you you are now still loves the him he was then, and it kills you inside, and you break your own heart over it. you are slowly realizing that the boy he was is still in there, and you might still love him.

michael from alex’s pov: when you were 17/18 years old you fell in love with a boy who was smart and kind and caring, and you had to leave him for good reasons and you broke your own heart over him. 10 years later, you come back home so much more experienced only to find that he’s more jaded and sharper, and the reasons you left are still lurking, but you try and try and try to do the actions of loving him anyway, you try to make something work, and it doesn’t work out, and you break your own heart over him, again.

not too long after 1989 came out taylor swift did a small concert at the grammy museum where she performed blank space, and in that concert she pointed out that the character the media made her to be was quite different to who she actually is. this got me thinking, and eventually i came to the conclusion that most of tswift’s songs are like… not from her perspective. “dear john” is, obviously, and “welcome to new york”, and a few others. however, i would argue that most of them aren’t about her, or at least i think it’s better when you don’t automatically assume the song in question is autobiographical.(1)

so when you think about it from a “she is writing fiction” standpoint and do a more in depth analysis of the characters she crafts, the boys & men that tswift writes about are pretty archetypal. it’s pop/pop country music, and her musical ambitions aren’t to like… reach the narrative complexity of someone like john darnielle. they’re simpler and more broad, and that’s not a bad thing — there’s a reason only damaged people listen to the mountain goats, but everyone can relate to a taylor swift song and if they say they can’t then they’re lying to you.

there’s a point in tswift’s career where she switched from writing about romeo to writing about james dean, or, as todd puts it, from love to sex.(2) this is also about the time when she stops idealizing relationships in the same way; there’s a growth moment here, and it’s why i like so much of taylor swift’s new work so much.

all of that preamble to say: when i say that malex are stock characters in a taylor swift song, i’m talking about pre-1989 taylor swift. the entire story of malex up to and including 2x06 could have been a single song on Red. specifically, i think that they’re each one of her archetypal characters as seen by the other one. there’s something uniquely tragic about being young enough that love hasn’t hurt you as much as it will, and being that young and loving someone and having it fall apart around you. that happens in a lot of taylor swift songs; it’s part of why she’s so relatable. it’s also why i tune into the fucking CW every week despite the fact that the show is [checks notes] bad.

footnotes!

1. assuming autobiography is a problem in music and writing about music in general? it’s generally easier for men to write songs that are fictional stories about other people and not have their personal lives or opinions projected onto them. this article goes into it about mitski and is worth the read, but to sum up women are generally assumed to be more confessionalist than men, which is maybe not a good assumption to make.

2. i disagree with a lot of what todd says about tswift here but he makes good points and it’s worth checking out.

#roswell new mexico #meta #roswell new mexico meta #taylor swift #oh man was this fun to write.oh man #malex #michael guerin #alex manes #otp: past tense

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morlock-holmes · 6 years ago

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This anonymous article from the Washingtonian, (Which is apparently... a magazine? Of some sort?) “What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right “ was being reblogged on my dash a few times and looking at some of the notes a lot of people were calling it propaganda without saying which side they thought it was propaganda for.

I think a LOT of people were so swayed by the “One Concerned Mom Speaks Out!” tone of the thing that they kind of missed the actual narrative.

I mean... If anything it’s kind of propaganda in favor of the alt-right, isn’t it?

Here’s how the author of the piece sums up the inciting incident in the story:

One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s [The author’s son] mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”

No one called me as this unfolded, even though Sam cried for about six hours straight as staff members parked him in vacant offices to keep him away from other students. When he stepped off the bus that afternoon and I asked why his eyes were so swollen, he informed me that he would probably be suspended, but possibly also expelled and arrested.

Later there’s more, but basically the school authorities double down, Sam’s parents decided that if the authorities were that cruel and insane Sam needed to be in another school, and so they transferred him. Sam then starts getting into 4chan and reddit alt-right communities, who explain that what happened to him happened because of feminism gone crazy.

So, as a slight aside I have always thought since I was in high school myself that this kind of zero-tolerance, authoritarian crap is particularly cruel to inflict on growing children. A boy Sam’s age is trying to differentiate himself, see himself as an individual, and the authorities come in and go, “It doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t matter why you did what you did, we will never care about that, we see you as a type and there is nothing you can do to convince us otherwise.”

This message would be incredibly dispiriting to anybody, but particularly to children.

Contrast, meanwhile, his experience on Reddit:

Soon Sam stopped trying to convince me to join his brave new world. He was so active on his favorite subreddit that the other group leaders, unaware that he was 13, appointed him a moderator. Among his new online besties, this was a huge honor and a boost to his cratered self-esteem. He loved Reddit and its unceasing conversations about the nuances of memes—he seemed in love with the whole enterprise, as if it were an adolescent crush.

...

Eventually, Sam had to give up moderating for the most practical of reasons: Eighth grade ended and he was packing for sleep-away camp. He would be offline for a month and would need other mods to cover for him. To ask for help, he had to out himself as a kid.

Sam and I both laughed about the absurdity of the situation, though he admitted he was nervous he’d be exiled from moderating. I asked him to read me the responses to his message. They were all of the “Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me” variety—one of their most sophisticated and reliable colleagues was a middle-schooler heading off to Jewish summer camp!

Later, it was my turn to be surprised: They all contributed to a going-away gift for Sam and mailed an emoji-themed fidget-spinner to his bunk address.

Faced with new information that Sam has broken the rules, his school imediately brands him a predator, threatens to arrest and expel him, and responds with undisguised hate.

Faced with new information about who Sam is, his alt-right buddies are shocked, but then reiterate that they still care about him and value the contributions he has made to their community, and get together to express that to Sam.

I’d like to make a little list of what Sam gets from the alt-right in the narrative:

A group of people who have shown that they will support and value him, even if they find out new things about him.

People who listen and care about what he has to say

An explanation of what, exactly, happened to him and why.

Ideas about how he can protect himself and others from having that happen again in the future.

Allies and support for enacting those ideas.

His parents, by his Mother’s own admission in the article, were only able to provide fumbling efforts to provide protection from that particular school’s administration. His parents and their politics were totally ready to say that taking all that stuff about cucks seriously was pretty weird and dumb, his mother is totally ready to counter any statistics his alt-right buddies might have, but is completely and utterly unequipped to provide any of the other stuff I listed up there. There’s a moment where Sam explains to her what he and his friends think happened:

Sam pledged fealty to the idea of men’s rights because, as he said, his former administrator had privileged girls’ words and experiences over boys’, and that’s how all of his troubles had started in the first place. I’d never in my life backed the “masculinist” cause or imagined that men needed protecting—yet I couldn’t help but agree with Sam’s analysis.

The mother’s politics didn’t actually equip her with an alternate explanation of what happened; rather, she has to concede that his explanation makes sense, and having conceded that has no idea what to do with herself.

In fact, as the article ends she is only vaguely starting to come to grips with the fact that Sam needed the kinds of support I listed above:

“All I wanted was for people to take me seriously,” [Sam] repeated matter-of-factly. “They treated me like a rational human being, and they never laughed at me. I saw the way you and Dad looked at each other and tried not to smile when I said something. I could hear you both in your room at night, laughing at me.”

I struggled for a moment because I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true. But I couldn’t deny his accusation. Behind closed doors, when my husband and I thought our children were asleep, we had often vented to each other about Sam’s off-the-wall proclamations and the bizarre situation we found ourselves in.

So I told Sam simply that I was sorry for making him feel bad.

I still think about his words a lot, especially when alt-right figures headline the news. But mostly, I wonder how I could have tried so hard to parent Sam through this crisis and yet tripped up on something as basic as not making my own kid feel small.

By the end of the article Sam is disenchanted with the Alt-right through, well, it’s not totally clear. The author of the article, by the end, seems to understand that Sam needed at least some of the things I outlined up there, but it’s not clear to me if she views the fact that her own politics were completely unable to provide them as an actual problem.

In fact, it’s not clear to me what she believes her politics are actually for. I know, I know, it’s not a philosophical article, but the question of “How much power do public school administrators have over their charges and what can parents do to counter them” is a nakedly, inarguably political question; after all, it’s about how a state-run institution should be run. And rather then turning to her own left-wing beliefs to contextualize and fight this decision, her solution is that her family has enough money to put Sam in another school.

Now, I’m not criticizing this decision, I think it was probably difficult, even brave. But it’s noticeable that her left-wing, non-culty politics don’t seem to have much to offer the next Sam, a Sam whose parents might not have private school tuition sitting around in their bank accounts.

In fact, she seems to regard the fact that Sam’s alt-right buddies were able to offer up compelling narratives and give him hope of implementing a solution and reasserting his self-worth as, well, cheating. Isn’t that cult-like behavior? Politics aren’t actually supposed to help the Sams of the world contextualize the things that happen in their lives, and when they do, it’s awfully sinister.

This seems to be part of something that has heavily infected the American left. It’s a kind of unspoken philosophy that says, “Politics is for solving major problems, the rest should be handled elsewhere.”

Even when a question overtly connected to Mom’s politics crops up in their life, her politics have literally nothing practical to offer any of them. Her left-wing politics are correct it doesn’t matter if they’re helpful.

This is what I keep trying to get at when I say people are missing the point with Jordan Peterson. Yeah, a lot of what he says sounds factually rickety to me as well, but, well, when I spend every day wondering why I can’t seem to get my life together, simultaneously dreading it AND feeling like there’s no point in trying to change, how does having a more correct view of lobster biology help me out with that?

I mean, I’m not saying it can’t, I’m saying people won’t even connect the two. Look at the reviews of 12 rules and people will usually grudgingly admit that his self-help advice might be useful, but really, it will tend to rile up exactly the wrong kind of person, and anyway, what does any of this have to do with politics?

This is what I keep trying to get at about effective altruism, as well. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s that by its very nature it will never be about providing me, personally, with any help, because it’s focused on stopping rogue AIs and mailing out malaria nets, fine causes but notice that, while Rationalists see “How can I stop a super-intelligent AI from destroying us” as a solvable problem “How do I make the kind of friends who will spontaneously check on me if I sound like I’m sick?” is completely insolvable.

To the extent that my existing faculties haven’t already made it happen, unfortunately there are no clarifying frameworks or advice better than, “Well, it’s hard.”

Rationalists are better about this than generic leftists but I also feel like that’s a low bar. Answers to the question “What can I do to concretely improve my life, and, for that matter, why should I even bother, what’s the point?” are becoming ever more disconnected from left-wing thought, and most of the concrete attempts to answer these questions are coming from the right.

I actually don’t think this is good, incidentally.

#politics #rationalism

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sunjaesol · 5 years ago

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(for the director's cut thing) ⭐ "Limerence" and "Afoot and lighthearted, I take to the open road" please!!! Those are my favorite AnnE fanfics of yours and I'd love to hear more about them.

ahh, i was hoping someone would ask me these!

Limerence

so i wrote this after coming of the awae s1 train that i was on. I don’t exactly remember what the seed was for this story, but i knew i wanted to try something new aside from little in canon fics so i decided to go with an AU. I wondered how they’d dress and behave, how they’d do in a modern time. Then, I had a dream about Gilbert taking pictures of her and the storyline was set.

Afterwards I began looking for a title. I was fooling around with the words “first love”, but i found it too cliche, so then i found the word “limerence” in like a buzzfeed article, and suddenly i had the name for the story AND Gil’s project.

A lot of the pictures that Gilbert takes are inspired by pictures i saw on weheartit, like this one, this one and this one .

I loved John in season one, which is why I gave him and Anne an amicable relationship.

Lines I loved to write: Were they? Sometimes she felt like they were, silences being comfortable and atmosphere enjoyable. They worked well together. When Gilbert asked her to turn her head a certain direction, she knew the hundred other implications that were hidden in that single command as well. He held her company during her painting session, and even pointed out to her when her hair almost got stuck in the paint.

She supposed he had nice hair, and pretty eyes, but that was honestly it.She convinced herself that after the project, it would go back to the way it was before and those stupid, little thoughts about kissing the boy next to her will evaporate. based on me having a crush haha

Gilbert rolled his eyes, ‘The principal will love it. Probably even call the news to tell them how devoted we are.’ based on my high school principal

t was autumn when I got adopted, when I still had an alter ego to escape to when life became too much. Princess Cordelia. She was magical and pretty and perfect. She embodied everything I wanted to be. When I watched Anne With An E, I realised that her daydreaming and things like “Cordelia” is for her a way to cope with the life she lived in that horrible orphanage and other homes. Sometimes we forget she worked for an abusive household, but it’s part of who she is. Kids with trauma often resort to daydreaming as their form of escapism, and i wanted to keep that in this fic as well as use it for her art installation.

the second chapter, kind of like a “where are they now” came to me on a city trip in Riga past midnight and i began crying IN BED. The next day we were on a plane back home and i wrote it in the notes of my phone in one go. immediately uploaded it afterwards. i just wanted to portray how they would interact in a relationship in modern times with the addition of technology.

Afoot and Lighthearted I take to The Open Road

I started writing this in february of 2018 on roadtrip with my dad after wondering what Gilbert would actually do now that he’s gone. i began to wonder what the consequences were of losing his last family member, his father. i began to wonder how i’d feel if i lost someone at such a young age. after a few pages, i realised i wanted to make a psycho-analysis of Gilbert in the aftermath of John’s death with shirbert sprinkled throughout. In the later chapters it’s defnintely a heavier theme, but it always comes back to how Gilbert feels. Anger, sadness, despair, loneliness, envy. When I saw how big it had gotten on such short notice (because there were literally 20 fics lol), i began to very carefully plan out every chapter and how that would pan out in the ones after that. it was the first fic i legitimately outlined. while writing and posting, i got some heartfelt messages about how my fic helped them cope with their own problems and even come to terms with them. it’s the best feeling ever to receive those messages and why i began posting on ao3 in the first place. aalitttor has a special place in my heart.

I chose the title because that’s what Gilbert reads to his father in the last scene of them together. It’s from Walt Whitman and, I read the story, really symbolises what Gilbert went through afterwards. The perils and all that.

My favourite part was one I struggled to write since it was bothering myself how I didn’t have an answer to it.

‘Gilbert,’ she said after a moment of blissful silence. One eye opened, seeing her watching him expectantly. He murmured a “yeah”.‘When you left, did you find what you were looking for?’

The other eye opened. ‘What do you mean?’Anne’s gaze fell away from his face, fixating on the brown crumbs on her apron. She waited another minute, the rusting wind that shook the corn and strands of her hair taking the space instead. Gilbert wiped the sweat of his brow.

‘You left, because you wanted to see this… colossal, sweeping world first. But I can only assume there’s a bigger reason behind it, no?’ She peered at him through her straw hat, awaiting his response.Gilbert could laugh. He has been trying to figure that out throughout his whole journey of going and coming back. Was it to find himself? Or pieces of his father? Or to just get away from everyone that reminded him of everything he knew? He still hated being at home. It was cold there, even with the stove on. Every time he entered the school building, his first instinct was to turn around and run back to Ireland. They all treated him like a stranger in the night, as if the boy he used to be was nothing but a mirage and the boy he now was a scam. He was a crook with a long scar on his stomach and people didn’t like that. Why did he leave to only come back to a place that only brought him pain? Every night he pondered on the thought, wondering if he hadn’t made a mistake. He had been impulsive, emotional – everything that wasn’t rational – that night in Ireland. The burly man with the protruding belly should’ve just told him to go back to bed.

‘I left because I was mad at the world,’ Gilbert said, his lips moving before his thoughts could catch up. He himself was surprised by the answer. ‘I’m still mad,’ he confessed, his eyes finding hers, ‘but I’m trying to forgive, I guess.’

Being mad, in my opinion, is one of the most emotional feelings you can have. It’s ugly and vulgar. Madness can mean so many different things as well. Through writing the story, I felt like I figured out how to see Gilbert as the person he became and was.

Another thing I loved to write is his panic attack scene in the sixth chapter. I looked up what a panic attack entailed and i tried to wrote it as best as i could. luckily it was well received :). I play with silence and noise in that scene, which was cool to do.

The funniest thing I wrote (imo) was: ‘How dare you talk to Diana like that? The only doormat is this place is you! You’re an opinion-less plant that can’t spell!’, Anne glared at him, bravely stepping closer.

The epilogue wasn’t supposed to be there, but at least ten people asked to know how Anne would react to the letters, so i quickly wrote one anyway, haha. I’m actually writing a sequel to this, based on what we know of season three!

I hope this pleased your hunger to know more!

#kyloreigns #anne with an e #awae #shirbert #fanfiction #ao3 #ask ophelia #directors cut

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alittlepad · 5 years ago

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From Pet Sounds to SMiLE: The 60s Defined with The Beach Boys

(Originally uploaded to my personal blog on Tungle, now hosted here for convenience).

This is an essay I wrote for one of my college classes during my fall semester, which I’ve neglected to share with others despite it being one of my personal favorite pieces I’ve written. It is the result of feverish nights spent reading articles, books, websites-- all of that-- trying to gather all the knowledge I can about The Beach Boys. Of course, as a result, there’s a lot of love poured into this.

Our prompt was to examine and analyze the American 60s through the work of a chosen artist, musician, writer, etc., of the time, while also incorporating an examination of an appropriate film. As a diehard Beach Boys fan, I felt as if it was my duty to talk about their legacy as “America’s Band,” and where that title truly comes from.

Apart from examining Pet Sounds and SMiLE (whose analyses in this essay are not as in-depth as I’d like, but I’d like to keep this vanilla/unaltered version for my future reference), I also look at some of their earlier discography and provide a brief blurb about Bill Pohlad’s 2014 film, Love and Mercy. Amongst all of this Beach Boys nonsense, I insert some quips about historical events that occur within the 60s, however, it’s still not to the lengths I’d like to write about :(

Anyway, please enjoy and let me know what you think. The essay is under the read more.

From Pet Sounds to SMiLE: The 60s Defined

Highs and lows marcate great, enthralling dramas. Surrounding every great drama is reverence, nostalgia, and critical analysis. The 60s, in this regard, is a great drama, forever cemented in the American psyche as a dreamland of innovative music, free love, drugs and expansions; yet also a hellish landscape of violence, strife, and trepidation. Amongst this music sits The Beach Boys: the pioneers of popular surf rock, the American competition to The Beatles, the creators of the first concept album, and the chaotic family. The Beach Boys as “America’s band” is a title they fought for through Pet Sounds (1966) and SMiLE (unreleased, 1967), encapsulating what made the 60s into the beautifully volatile era that still reverberates within the America of today.

In the early 60s, The Beach Boys revered the sun and an almost utopian California in their music, reflecting the era’s need to escape from the uncertainty that sprawled before itself. Leisure culture was rapidly expanding– cars were becoming more accessible, the West Coast found itself fiercely gripped by surf, the beach became a safe haven, and rock ‘n roll found a place in the hearts of many. It is here where The Beach Boys found their most commercial voice. In songs like “Fun, Fun, Fun,” The Beach Boys sing about a girl taking her car out to have some of that aforementioned fun, fun, fun. In “Little Deuce Coupe,” it’s all about talking about how cool cars are. And, in one of their most well-known songs (which is just Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”), “Surfin’ USA,” they sing about the magical sport of surf and how it will bring together the entire United States, despite most of it having no access to a beach. These songs all reflect that same leisure culture and its greatness, yet, not all of their songs from that time just stagnate in some sort of happy, fun, and oblivious dream.

Brian Wilson, the founder, songwriter, and producer of The Beach Boys, had another message to put out into the world that echoed what he felt, and what the rest of America felt but wasn’t able to express entirely with words. Songs like “The Lonely Sea,” “In My Room,” and most remarkably, “The Warmth of the Sun,” echo a terrible loneliness and introversion that America found itself embroiled in. “The Lonely Sea” describes the sea as it constantly changes, never permanent or staying– although it primarily focuses itself on the topic of an uncertain romance, it is the romantic narrative of America from the 50s that is changing. It reflects the rapidly changing landscape of civil rights, politics, and war that emerged in the early 60s. With “In My Room,” Brian retreats into his room, a place where he feels safe, secure, and set away from the world around him– a topic previously unexplored in music of that time, accompanied with the lush harmonies that The Beach Boys are so fondly known by. He, and the rest of America’s teenagers retreat from the changing world around them, and in “The Warmth of the Sun,” these sentiments are turned into intense clinging to what good is left in the world– most plainly, the warmth of the sun. The song was written in response to JFK’s assassination, and reflects the sheer panic that America was faced with– only in clinging to the good could they prevail as conflict in Vietnam escalated into war. The Beach Boys, and the rest of America, continued to retreat further into themselves and sought respite through whatever means necessary.

As the Gulf of Tonkin resolution is passed, the 60s takes a sharp turn into the psychedelic as anxiety and fear wildly scatters itself about, reflected in The Beach Boys’s magnum opus, Pet Sounds (1966). Apart from the American invasion into Vietnam, The British Invasion has begun with the Beatles playing on the Ed Sullivan show and garnering a massive swarm of crazed fans. In 1965, they release Rubber Soul, pushing what pop music was, which Brian Wilson found himself challenged by. Following a panic attack on a plane from a live show, Brian promises to retire from touring entirely, and focuses his efforts on creating the best pop and rock album of all time.

Brian looks deeply into himself to find what he, and the rest of America yearns for– good times in the face of the violently bad; a return to romance. Yet, he could not ignore what else was brewing within him and America as well– turmoil, fear, terror, and resignment. He did not achieve this through introspection alone– with the help of psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs that took the youth of America by storm, he was able to expand his mind and the scope of what music was. He turned his feelings into grandiose instrumentation, and took those instruments into a studio, and in turn, made the studio into an instrument as he produced and wrote the entirety of Pet Sounds by himself. Brian Wilson, at 23 years old, created the first ever concept album– an album for only listening. A narrative of a love that falls apart that is littered with self-doubt, worry, desperation, and a keen sense of pure innocence. A work of art.

The album’s opener is The Beach Boys’s most popular song, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” a relatively cheerful song about running away with your love from a society that refuses to accept that same love– a feeling that hit home for the slowly growing LGBT community in the 60s, but also for the America that wants to escape. In “I Know There’s An Answer,” Brian (following an acid trip) sings about people who are close-minded and yearns to know exactly why they’re the way that they are– echoing the counterculture’s questioning of the status quo through its exploration of sexuality, spirituality, and mainly drugs. Through “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” he speaks of how he doesn’t feel like he has a place in the world, isolated, confused, and almost defeated– again, previously unexplored topics in music before its release. In the album’s closing track, “Caroline, No,” the unnamed, hypothetical girl that Brian Wilson sings about (and to) through the album’s run is described to have changed so much that he cannot even recognize her, and he questions whether or not things may ever return to normal– these sentiments are sent off with a train whirring past as dogs bark amongst the cacophony.

These ideas bleed throughout the 60s and its constant evolution back then and today– will things ever return back to normal? Although the counterculture that The Beach Boys are attempting to embrace is pushing what that normal is– will that constant change ever cease? Will there ever be a time where The Beach Boys, and effectively, America, feel safe?

In the creation of the unreleased 1967 album SMiLE, The Beach Boys attempted to define what America is in order to preserve whatever of it they could save, and its collapse echoed the collapse of the 60s’ beloved fervor and wild personality. The 60s’ ideals of peace, love, and connection are kicking into high gear in the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam.

These great ambitions are shared by Brian Wilson, who aspires to meet the outrageous expectations that came with the release of Pet Sounds, and he clamors to put together material for the album– his “teenage symphony to God.” He smokes weed and drops acid time and time again. He competes with himself and his band. He comes to the realization that he can tell the story of America with music.

Emboldened, Brian heads to the recording studio and records, records, records. He creates bits and fragments of instrumentation that, when eventually combined, are to create “mini-symphonies” that each carry their own distinctly American narratives– like reaching Plymouth Rock (“Do You Like Worms?”), the genocide of the Native Americans at the hands of colonists (“Heroes and Villains”), the building of the transcontinental railroad (“Cabinessence”), and the Chicago fire’s blazen destruction (“Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow”). Amongst those narratives lies themes of innocence, wellness, and unfettered energy.

The aforementioned themes come together in pop music’s greatest and most expensive song ever created: “Good Vibrations,” the last No.1 hit from The Beach Boys that was supposed to be SMiLE’s greatest hit. It’s an electrifying single that features the innovative use of a theremin, wildly piercing triplets on the cello, genuine musical movements, the voices of The Boys in sheer celebration, and one of two songs that shows Brian’s fully realized talent.

“Surf’s Up,” in that regard, is the other display of Brian’s fully realized talent. It is a dramatic and evocative symphony that recounts a spiritual awakening, resignment, and an unanswered hope for innocence’s return.

If “Good Vibrations” is the 60s the America remembers through rose-tinted glasses– an era of love, passion, peace, celebration, and innovation– then “Surf’s Up,” the soul of SMiLE, is the 60s America sees without those glasses– an era where a collective aspiration was to cling onto a form that was rapidly deteriorating before the eyes of the public.

SMiLE’s collapse, following tensions regarding management, excessive drug consumption, Carl Wilson’s (the youngest Wilson brother) draft evasion, and heavy expectations, is a representation of that 60s aspiration’s collapse. It is from Pet Sounds where the 60s expresses its uncertainty and fear, and it is through the absence of SMiLE where the 60s falls apart and leaves America wondering if it will ever return.

In the 2014 biopic Love and Mercy (dir. Bill Pohlad), this saga is explored through a younger Brian Wilson (played by Paul Dano) who represents The Beach Boys in the 60s, and an older Brian Wilson (played by John Cusack) who represents The Beach Boys beyond the 60s. Dano is energetic, troubled, creative, and impulsive. Cusack, on the other hand, is a shell, weathered, depressed, and traumatized– it is a drama of Brian’s psyche that echoes the drama of two differing accounts of the 60s that makes The Beach Boys’s story, and in turn, the 60s so palatable, compelling, and relevant to this day.

Brian Wilson, with SMiLE, you aspired to define America. Yet, it is with your Pet Sounds and SMiLE that The Beach Boys became “America’s band”, and that 60s America is defined as a dreamland and hellscape; a drama. A drama that lingers, ghosting about, crafting America into a world forever changed by the 60s that dared to see the country’s innocence protected and preserved.

#writing #music #essay #the beach boys #brian wilson #60s #classic rock #pet sounds #the smile sessions

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