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pbandjesse · 5 years

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Today was a bit of a crapshoot. I felt very upset after lunch. Which led to me having a pretty bad headache. August a lot of it has to do it because I'm just very very tired. James just left to go take a walk around the neighborhood. He's worked inside for 2 days now and he missed the fresh air. So I'm just chilling. Trying to work through feelings I'm having.

After I did my post last night, James came home. We hung out for a bit and by eight all of the D & D people were here. It was a fun night. I have to listen to my headphones and have listened to that. The night ended when Jordan's character had to seduce James's character. It was very funny. But it was also almost midnight. So they all left.

Me and James were up till almost 1. And I slept okay but having to wake up a little bit before 7 I did not get enough. But I got up and got dressed. I felt okay. Not thrilled to be awake but fine. But I didn't want to leave. I was just so tired. I hate working 8 hours a day. I hate having to wake up so early. But I love my job so I packed up my stuff and I left.

I stopped at Dunkin Donuts and got a snack. I went to get the bus. But I got the second bus because I normally get must have already left. And so I didn't get to school early. Instead I got there exactly on time. Which was fine except I was a little bit stressed about the laptop situation.

Thankfully someone had pulled the laptop out but then I spent almost 25 minutes trying to figure out the projector and was just feeling very stupid and very stressed out. So because of that ask Marcus to lead the little kids yoga. And I just lead the big kids.

Start time was great. I wish our time was all day. Because my kids listen to me for almost 40 minutes talk about racial Injustice and women's rights and the Black Panther Movement. And then they colored it was great. They made such cute little sketches for their political posters. I was very proud of them.

Reading was fine. And then we have lunch. Most of my kids finished but there was one girl who was still eating. The little kids usually go outside before the big hits. So I told one of the other teachers hey I'm going to have this one child sit with the big kids while she finishes eating and she'll come out with them. And apparently I threw everything off with her. Because she was not happy with me when I then 10 minutes later texted that I was the only adult outside. Because there was no reason for that. And she starts saying that it was her lunch break and I made her work during it. Why were you in the cafeteria sitting with the kids if you were on your lunch break? You should be a way. If you're in the space you need to be flexible. The other teacher that is normally there during the lunch wasn't feeling good and he had stepped out of the room. So I wasn't thrilled. But everything was fine. There was apparently a kerfuffle of some kind with some of the older girls. And it was just a lot of drama but I did not want to be a part of it.

But that led to a lot of screaming during recess that stress me out real bad. And I tried to talk to a couple of my 4th grade girls to figure out what happened. And I was just not pleased. Which made the rest of the day pretty difficult because I was leaving stem and I was upset because we needed t-shirts and we didn't have them. Thankfully most of the older kids have brought them. So I took all of those kids to the back of the room and I explain to them how to make a tote bag out of their t-shirt. And they did a great job and I was very proud of them. I kind of let them do their own thing. One of the girls was standing on the table at one point as I made her get down but I didn't scream at her so it was no big deal. They're kids. And it's summer camp. The kids that didn't have T-shirts worked on laptops on science games. Not my favorite but it's fine.

We finished up and I had mr. Marcus collect all of the fabric scraps because I knew only four of the little kids had brought t-shirts. Turns out it was five and one of the teachers went missing. Which I'm not pleased about. Because it led to tears from one of my favorite students. It's fine. We used all the fabric scraps and I taught the kids how to make yarn out of it. And then we braided. They prayed it all their scraps and made bracelets. And it seems like they had a good time. I went and took my break for the second half because I had a horrible headache. Which made me nauseous.

I laid on the couch is for half an hour and then went back. Just laid on the floor with my kids while we watch a video about recycling. We had snack. Play a game. And listen to music. And then we went home.

The end of the day was fine but annoying because the sign-out sheet went missing for about 10 minutes. But I got to go home on time. Or I got to get the early bus at least. Because of traffic downtown with the water main break I still didn't get home until almost 4:30. But that's okay.

James was here when I got home. He came home early to work on paperwork stuff. He's being too hard on himself right now because he feels like he keeps misplacing things. He couldn't find the RSVP for the wedding we're going to. I found it. But he also apparently lost his social security card somewhere in the apartment and he feels horrible about it. But it's fine. He's going to get a new one. The new job will understand. These things happen it's not that deep. I understand his upset and I would be upset too but he needs to stop being so mean to himself. Makes me upset.

He heeded me up a baked potato for dinner. And he made himself Falafel. I'm going to have some of the leftover Falafel for lunch tomorrow. And now I'm just laying here. I already took a shower. Allergies are bothering me and I am very tired. I think I'm just going to hang up my clothes for tomorrow and get ready for bed.

One positive thing is that the apartment that we saw on Sunday emailed us back that she's going to get a form ready for us to apply on Sunday. Which I hope mean she's not going to be showing the apartment to anyone else. I want that place so bad. Like Jess said though, if we don't get it wasn't meant to be. In somewhere else better will be in the works. But I hope it's this one.

Sleep well everyone. Tomorrow is another long day. It's too hot outside and it's making me sick. But we're possibly going to a baseball game so let's hope that's fine. Have fun everyone. Be safe.

#ootd #work #babe #selfie #art #tuesday #kids art

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alexswak · 6 years

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From Castlevania to Boruto: Spencer Wan Interview

I myself had all sorts of questions after watching Castlevania, and seeing that Spencer Wan was so active on Twitter I thought I might try asking him, what resulted in a long interview. The scene he is best known for is the abstract black-lines-only part of the opening, but he had remarkable participations in many other known projects despite his young age. Other than Castlevania, where he animated, AD’ed and directed episodes even, he also worked on Boruto and Invader Zim among others. My notes are in bold. Conducted on behalf of AnimeTherapy and originally posted on their website.

First tell me a bit about yourself and how you started with animation.

Spencer: You know, that might be the only question I wasn’t prepared to answer. I’m not great at talking about myself. Okay, I’m 25 years old and I’m from a small town in the Deep South. I got into animation after seeing Norio Matsumoto’s work on Naruto. I used to watch it with my friends in high school and I’d never seen anything like it before. I’d intended to major in illustration when I got into college, but I ended up swapping to animation at the last second because I couldn’t get his work out of my head. I thought maybe I could learn how to make animation like that at school.

Where did you start your professional career and how?

Spencer: So after I dropped out of school I spent a year sort of just wandering around and doing very little with my life. I was having a hard time finding any sort of work, let alone artistic work. I ended up working in a tire shop for a while, actually. Dana Terrace was the one who dragged me out of that. She’s the creator of the show I’m working on now(The Owl House). I’d helped her with one of her student films when we were in school, and she was doing way better than me as a professional artist. She gave me a sort of a pep talk and told me about this animation studio called Animation Domination High Def that was looking for animators.

It's worth mentioning that there aren't very many studios in the United States that hire traditional(hand-drawn) animators anymore. We were even told in school not to pursue traditional animation as a career because those jobs didn't exist. Anyway, I applied the next day, they had me do an animation test, and few weeks later I moved across the country to work for them.

The work I did there was very different from the work people expect from me now. It was mostly parody cartoons, and we had to animate 2-3 scenes a day so it was hard to make anything look very good. It was a difficult job, and it wasn't what I wanted to be doing with animation, but it taught me how to draw very fast.

An interesting backstory, really. So you stuck with traditional animation because you wanted to create something like what Matsumoto makes?

Spencer: That's how I started anyway, but he was just my first exposure to this sort of animation. When I got older I came across the work of Yutaka Nakamura, Mitsuo Iso, Toshiyuki Inoue, etc. They're all incredible in different ways, but I could feel that they were also drawing on something similar. There's a sort of feeling I used to get looking at the work of a really talented Japanese animator, and I really wanted my work to illicit that same feeling.

It would've been a lot easier to change tracks to storyboarding or design. I had enough technical skill to do it, and there were many more opportunities available, but I stuck with traditional animation because I was chasing that feeling. I knew I couldn't be satisfied as an artist until I understood it.

Alright, now to more specific stuff. How did you get involved in Castlevania?

Spencer: Well after working at ADHD, I ended up moving away from LA because I couldn't find anyone who wanted to hire me for animation. I went back to my hometown and spent a year freelancing for scraps. I actually tried to go to Japan for work at one point, but my visa was rejected because I'm a college dropout. It was around this time that Sam(Samuel Deats), the future director of Castlevania, had been emailing me to try to get me to work for Powerhouse. Actually, I rejected him the first time and tried to get my visa through again…

Obviously that didn't work out, so I told Sam I'd changed my mind and I moved to Texas to work for Powerhouse. He'd been telling me the whole time about this awesome secret project the studio might acquire soon. I completely wrote him off because as a freelancer you hear that sort of thing all the time and it's never as good as it sounds. That project was Castlevania. It ended up getting greenlit after I'd been working at the studio for a couple months. Sam plucked me off the animation team to work on it and I started storyboarding on the first episode. It was actually my first time storyboarding, so naturally I was given the scene where the crowd gets attacked by an army of creatures in an elaborate gothic city.

I see. Then can you give me a quick overview of the workflow the staff followed while working on Castlevania? From finished storyboards to finished scenes. I'm interested in the workflow you followed since Castlevania is obviously not your run-of-the-mill project.

Spencer: *laughs* Well in season one it was a constantly changing process. Powerhouse had never handled a TV show before, and so we were sort of creating the process as the show went on. We didn't even manage to standardize our storyboarding process until episode 4. Our background team doubled as our incidental and prop design team, with one of the background artists serving as a part time storyboarder. Sam was the director, but he was also storyboarding and designing all the main characters. His brother Adam, who's meant to be supervising compositor, became our editor. It was all over the place, but it allowed for a lot of experimentation. That's how I came to animate on the show instead of just storyboarding.

I'm getting kind of off topic though- the way it would usually work is that we'd receive an approved script and we'd have a few weeks to storyboard it. We didn't have any revisionists working with us, so if there was a problem, we'd address it ourselves and then Adam would cut together an animatic and add sound. It's worth mentioning that we didn't have any voice acting to work with in season 1, so we sort of had to guess at how the actors would read their lines.

After the animatic was approved we would ship it along with the designs and key backgrounds to MUA Film, our outsourcing studio in Korea. And then in some specific instances we would leave a note telling them to exclude a sequence, because Sam or I had planned to animate it ourselves. After storyboarding was done I jumped right onto animation. We were working with a pencil and paper animation studio, so even though I work digitally, I would have to write x-sheets(equivalent to time sheets in anime) for my work as if I'd drawn it on paper. At some point in the process we decided we wanted to do a much more specific compositing job on the show, and so we had the studio ship us back their cleaned and colored animation, and our in house compositing team would polish it with a mountain of after effects work. A lot of why the show looks so cinematic is because of them.

So I take it this is how it went with the average scene. But your scene in the OP, that got a lot of attention, is clearly exceptional. Can you tell me more about how you came up with this style and scene? Personally I have to admit, it’s one of the best and most striking animation pieces I have seen in a while.

Spencer: Thanks! We really slaved over that opening. It actually wasn't meant to exist- there was no time or budget set aside for it. Sam had done the storyboards for it in his free time and pitched them to the producers. They said we could do it if we could somehow find time for it. I think Sam originally intended to handle the entire thing himself, but when the time came to animate it, I was the only one available. So Sam pulled me into his office and showed me the storyboards, specifically the part at the end. He said something to the effect of, "I know I want this to look like fire. You can do it in whatever style you come up with, as long as it's done quickly." Never in my career had someone put so much trust in me. A lot of people like to compare the sequence to the music video for Take On Me, but when I was trying to come up with the style, the first thing that came to mind was one of Yutaka Nakamura's animations. It's from an anime I watched in high school called Soul Eater where the character goes to draw his sword, and the entire scene turns into this abstract looking sort of river of pencil lines on a red background(this scene). I thought maybe I could do something similar to that. It took me about an hour to realize I couldn't do it the same way, and my imitation of it was coming out far too abstract to tell what was going on. I ended up doing another pass on it, but instead of trying to copy Nakamura's abstract linework, I tightened up the drawings focused on the shadows. I thought I could try to mimic the look of how light shifts around on an ember, and that's where I got the shadows that constantly roll across the characters. The finished result still bears a lot of his influence, but I think I managed to put my own spin on it.

I remember that Soul Eater scene! Now that you mention it, I can definitely see similarities. But the Take on Me? Not really. How much time did you spend on that scene, if I may ask?

Spencer: It was something like two weeks? I don't remember that well anymore. I worked entirely through the last four nights, so it felt longer than that. I remember losing an hour to daylight savings time, and that put me in a really foul mood.

I've never mentioned this before, but it's unfinished. I ran out of time in the end, and so the part with Trevor and Sypha is just my rough first pass. I was devastated when we shipped it that way. At the time I considered it to be my biggest failure as an artist. Ironically it's the piece of work I'm known best for now.

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Sypha's scene in the 2nd season is also yours right? Glad to see the same style made it into the show.

Spencer: Adam had wanted to have it in the show for a while, and I really didn’t want to do it. I was so upset about the opening before it aired that I swore I would never draw in that style again. But then the opportunity presented itself and I thought, “Well I guess it would only be for a second or so”. I felt the second time I did it it was a lot less inspired though.

Can't complain myself, it was pretty cool.

Spencer: Well I had more experience the second time *laughs*. I didn’t have to feel around for what the style was.

So moving on. The problem with your Alucard fight scene, that you had problems translating your digital motion guides into paper, you said that also happened for the Cyclops sequences. How widespread was this problem then? Did it only affect your work or the work of other animators as well?

Spencer: It would only affect animations that had large camera movements, that we sent overseas for clean up. It was a problem born from the fact that we don’t really do paper animation in America anymore.

When the camera moves around a lot, the field has to get bigger. You have to use something called panning paper in order for the drawings to maintain a proper size for clean up. But there was no one that I could learn that from. I had to teach everything to myself, and so my first instinct was to make the drawings smaller to fit them on the page. The clean up artists overseas fixed this by scaling the drawings up, but then they had to recreate my spacing from scratch and they didn’t have enough time to do it the same way. The result was that drawings would pop anywhere from a few pixels to a few millimeters out of position all the time. Adam ended up respacing everything, but it wasn’t a perfect match to the original, so drawings tend to pop around. Most people don’t notice it though.

Actually I’ve had a similar issue with other productions where if my spacing gets too tight, there’s a chance a drawing could pop out of place too. I’m still learning how to solve some of those problems.

I see! Shame you found yourself in this situation, but this is a nice segue to another traditional project I want to ask you about, Boruto. You worked on Boruto a few months ago, episode #65 specifically. How did you get involved in this project? You were an interesting case because you are not affiliated with studio LAN like most of other foreign animators in that episode, as far as I know at least.

Spencer Wan: *laughs* I could see why it seemed a little out of nowhere. It's because Chengxi and I had already been talking on twitter for a while. I consider him a close friend. He asked me to animate for him and I agreed. It was as simple as that.

Looking at your original work and the final version in Boruto, I see that it went mostly uncorrected. Why is that? Were you just given a lot of freedom in that episode? Because of Chengxi and your aforementioned good relation with him?

Spencer: Oh, it was nothing like that. I was a lot more concerned with doing the work properly than trying to stand out or show off. Chengxi's storyboards and the model sheets for Boruto were very clear. I followed them to the best of my ability, and my work ended up going uncorrected aside from a light fill being added. I should've anticipated the need for that light fill, actually. I wasn't thinking about how it would look in color.

Boruto is more of a traditional animation(paper) show, right? Didn't you have problems with that this time? I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to Boruto specifically, so I don't know how much of its production is digitalized.

Spencer: The process was actually very similar to what I used on Castlevania, only this time there was no complicated camera movement to worry about, and I had Chengxi to help me with parts of the paper process that I didn't fully grasp yet. Some of the other foreign animators helped me out too- namely Guzzu. It was my first time not having to figure it all out on my own, and I was really grateful for that. I feel I learned a lot.

You are right, the nature of this scene is different. I thought maybe it was the Japanese industry being more used to this dual nature of digital and paper. So generally working on Boruto, although a Japanese show, wasn’t different from Castlevania and other shows you worked on before?

Spencer: There are differences in style when it comes to x-sheets. For example, the Korean x-sheets I've written list the layer order completely backward from the Japanese ones used on Boruto. Americans will write "truck out" when they want the camera to pull out, but the Japanese shorthand is apparently T.B for "track back" instead. It's a lot of differences like that, but the idea behind them is mostly the same. It was an adjustment, but not a very big one, and I was told I did an alright job writing them... I hope they weren't just being nice.

I was just watching Castlevania and now that you mentioned him, Chengxi did some animation! Also others such as Hero. Were you the one who invited them this time?

Spencer: I was the one who invited Chengxi. Sam invited the others after I’d left the production.

And you inviting Chengxi and working on #7 was after boruto, I suppose?

Spencer: Actually it was beforehand! He had to cut his work short to start working on Boruto. He did such a brilliant job regardless. That guy is a genius.

Aha, interesting. That was the last of my questions, I'm very grateful for the chance you gave me and for your amazing, detailed answers!

Spencer: No problem! I hope my answers weren’t too boring. That technical stuff can get dense.

#Spencer Wan #Castlevania #Boruto #Interview

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crimsonblackrose · 5 years

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oh boy camp is going to be an experience. I usually love camp but yikes.

At my old school camp was 2 weeks. I picked a theme and then picked fun educational things to do that would tie into that theme and expand upon what they had learned throughout the semester. I did all this on my own. The only thing I didn’t do was buy the actual supplies or send the kids info on the camps. But all the teaching, all the prep everything was just me. I did a full 2 week cooking camp, space camp, detective camp, pirate camp, and harry potter camp.

At my new school it’s 5 days. My coteacher had a list of things she wanted to include: a dance, crafts, a movie, and some sort of cooking. She didn’t want a them, but hey cool that’s 4 days right there. So I started lesson planning based off of these plans. Because we taught this extra class during lunch she’d pretty much wiped me out of silly dances that I knew from when I was a kid: hokey pokey, cha cha slide, macarena. All I had left was the chicken dance and had to keep swatting her hand from trying to take it to use during that lunch class. But let’s be real the chicken dance isn’t particularly a hour and a half long lesson so I decided to pair it with some of her crafts and this idea of future tense. I want to be/ I don’t want to be. Her idea was we’d do an eco bag and the kids would decorate it and I was like cool. They can decorate it with their dreams. Perfect. And that’ll be day one, toss in the rules and maybe we can squeeze a class out of it.

Day two would be when is your birthday and I’d teach them star signs and we’d learn about personality traits and essentially expand upon their ability to answer when their birthday is as well as do a card game and some crafts (star viewer). She hemed and hawed over how difficult it’d be to learn their different star signs but I repeated again and again they just have to learn their own. She also wanted them to have a water gun fight so I added that to the end in a red light green light type of game where they’d use the months of the year to move forward. ( she recently told me the water gun fight has been scrapped)

Day 3 was animals. I found some fun animal straw crafts online and put it together with a cup game and that we’d learn the catagories that animals fall into: mammal, reptile, amphebian, ect. (DId I tell you half these kids are already fluent?)

Day 4:Cooking- per my coteacher’s request peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lemonade. Super easy, no heat required version of cooking but also very non-Korean so something fun and new to try for the kids. And this day we’d start watching the movie she picked “Toy Story 3″

Day 5- Finish Toy Story 3 (yup that’s it, that’s the whole day per her request)

So yeah that was camp. But then she said she changed up the schedule and it would be movie first and cooking first because she felt bad about these kids who had reading camp at the same time and didn’t want them to feel left out. Uhhh okay. Fine. I’ll just adjust the powerpoints and move the rules from chicken dance day to Toy story solo day because we’re starting with that. But then today I got a message from the school about the whole schedule and A. Time is different by a good 20 minutes (which she never told me even though we share a room) and B. the Reading camp is 2 days and it’s the two days she moved the movie camp and cooking too which means it wasn’t her being this aww I feel bad for the kids move it was (I’m deducing) because she does not like the librarian and they seem to have a mini feud happening, so she’s being petty and moved the things she considered fun to the beginning to “punish” the kids who signed up for the other camp. Even though these two camps were originally never suppose to overlap. But she changed the schedules and asked for the schedule to be changes so I’m just like WTH?

So I go through all this work of slowly changing my power points to get them to realign with her plans and then boom today, last day of the semester, day before we actually have camp the Toy Story 3 movie finally arrives. And she gives it to me. Less then 40 minutes before it’s time for me to go home. And so I mess with it and try to figure out how to get it to work because you always check media and tech before you use it. And guess what? The thing doesn’t work. The computer doesn’t actually have any DVD player set up to it. So I have to scramble around trying to find some sort of software I can download to get it to work. I download one of the suggestions from Microsoft’s store. Doesn’t work. I download VLC, doesn’t work. I download Gom player and boom we have a picture. But! it’s moving ridiculously slow and there’s no sound. And this is when she shows up and is like well that’s because it’s not hooked up to the TV. And I’m like no, my headphones are int here should be sound. But she turns on the Tv and still no sound and still snail pace and of course the entire media player is in Korean so I can’t figure out what should work and what shouldn’t and she just walks off. And I’m like it’s in Korean! You’re first language! Surely you can get it set up! But no, she’s super not good with tech and when I try and tell her how I got from the DVD to where I had been she can’t figure out how to right click and get Gom to even pop up. And I’m just like great. Everyone else went home early so it’s just us two and we apparently can’t figure this out before I have to leave. So she tells me “Let’s do the chicken dance tomorrow and the orientation” (orientation? What the heck? You mean go over the rules?) “and let’s do the animal craft.” (Hold up those are two different days ma’am. No can do. I tried explaining how they were different days and the chicken dance day goes with the eco bags...which it turns out aren’t eco bags and the kids aren’t decorating them. They’re giant hard plastic bags that she bought baby shark stickers for them to use to decorate and like really? That’s not fun. That doesn’t fit into the theme we agreed on. Why couldn’t you buy a canvas bag like you said you were and let them decorate that with markers? Why’d you have to buy something that’s probably more expensive and is not fun? Also the older kids don’t get a bag, they get a tumbler with the same baby shark stickers. Really?) So I tried to be like “Uh those are two different power points. And she just stared at me. And I was just like seriously? You don’t talk to me like all week and then in the final hour right before camp starts you’re like this? You changed the schedule on me multiple times and have yet to tell me that the actual time of the classes have been pushed back by 20 minutes? And you changes the lesson plan so surely you know that they all go together, but now we’re acting all willy nilly and going back to the starting point because oh boy the DVD I ordered last minute came in last minute and surely in like 40 minutes you can troubleshoot that before going home.

Like I literally spent the last two days doing nothing. She made this big deal about “oh there’s something to tell you about camp but I’ll tell you later’ (she always does this) “I’ll tell you Tuesday because we don’t have classes” and then she wasn’t there at all yesterday. So I did NOTHING. (okay lie, I finished the book I was reading) And then today I was so bored I finished the NEW BOOK I WAS READING and started listening to an Audio book. ) I had ample time to play with the DVD and figure out how it worked and ask for help from other teachers who aren’t as....technological inept as my coteacher. But noooo.

Oh and the other stupid thing is apparently we have prizes. Prizes for the two kids who do the best every day during camp. No. You either give something to everyone or give nothing. You don’t make kids feel bad during camp. Camp is suppose to be fun. It’s suppose to be a time for them all to find something enjoyable about English in the hopes that that fun and joy keeps them motivated to learn throughout the year. And my coteacher made a big deal about how we don’t have enough of a budget to buy them all snacks, even though she wants to so the principal said we could give them little things to motivate them. And I have to be the one to tell them at the start of everyday. Yeah the best two of ya’all gets a prize. BUT for some ridiculous reason we were able to afford a DVD version of Toy Story 3, enough hard plastic bags for the entirety of the 3rd and 4th graders coming, tumblers for all the 5th and 6th graders and stickers for everyone, map puzzles they can color (that’s been added to the chicken dance day because I had to tell her AGAIN that I don’t have any more dances up my sleeve that that’s the last one I know). Like really? REALLY? Buying a box of capris sun and some chocopies will cost less then like one of those tumblers. But no instead we bought...I assume fancy AF pencil cases for the 2 best kids per day.

Ugh. Anyway camp starts tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to this mess.

#mumblings

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teashadephoenix · 5 years

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11 Questions

I got tagged by @pomegranate-belle <3 I'm sorry this took for fucking ever?!!??

I’ll tag @lioness--hart @fox-in-the-library and @whitegodiva if you guys want to do it? And anybody else, obvi <3

1. How long have you been writing?

Actually sitting down to type stories out? Eight years old. I've been making shit up since I could talk. I have it on good authority I am entertaining to listen to.

2. What are the major themes of your current wip(s)? LONG ANSWER

omg I really dont know. I spent several hours over several days banging on this question in my head both in front of the computer and away from it only to come to the horrified realisation that I Don't Know. *gay panic*

I know the things I like to write about. I like to write about free exchange of culture, of mutual respect and fraternity with your fellow humans (which leads to themes of unity, unconditional love not only of people but of the world, and the gray area of what it means to protect those things without giving in to hate, indifference and intolerance. THE GRAY AREA IS WHERE I THRIVE.)

I like to write about intergenerational relationships (which leads to themes of obsolescence, changing of the guard, and how people, in general, not individuals, never really change. Like, there's For a Good Time graffiti on the walls at Pompeii. That is HILARIOUS.)

I write a lot about family, both born and found. (Everybody has a place and everybody is loved.) I write about mental illness and being queer (which all by itself leads to themes of not knowing your place in the world even if you have one. Frequently comes up against the previously mentioned theme)

So yeah. I don't know. My big WIP, the Aalee Rise series, is about a young woman on the cusp of adulthood going out into the world for the first time. It's her idealism vs reality. The other main characters in that cast are all foils re: various facets of societal structure and ideologies. One challenges her idea of government, another her idea of religion. She falls in love, her loyalties to her brother and parents are tested, she makes mistakes, she fights monsters and saves the world. A lot.

tldr; It's my sandbox and I just wanted to build castles in it. I don't really know if the castles will mean anything when I'm done. I hope they do.

3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it?

My greatest ambition is that I could ever write a hero as beloved as the heroes I read about growing up, figures that reminds not to give up hope, to get back up when we're down, that the dark times ahead of us will come to pass.

At best, if I've done that, I'll be ecstatic and satisfied.

At worst, as long as you had a good time, if you didn't throw the book across the room in disgust, I'll take it.

4. Would you be excited if people write fanfiction about your wip(s)?

YAAAAS. I would literally never read it because Im terrified of accidentally absorbing someone's ideas and making them my own bc Christ alive that's a legal nightmare, but yes that would make my life.

And you can have my firstborn if you send me fanart.

5. What’s your go-to writing beverage?

Tea. Really strong and sweet. I make a fresh quart each morning and usually go through it by the end of day.

6. Who is your favorite oc? Tell me about them!

OMG ALL OF MY CHILDREN ARE PRECIOUS. (it's Aalee.)

Aalee Dering is the eighteen-year-old protagonist of my Aalee Rise series. When we meet her in volume one (Worldwalk) she and her twin brother are setting off on their coming-of-age journey around the country. Her people, the Noruahai, have defended humanity for generations from unearthly creatures called asmic, and if she wants to become a licensed Marshal like her famous mother (and wow, she really, really does) she'll have to prove herself on her Worldwalk.

Aalee thinks with her heart first and always. She loves beautiful things, and all things are beautiful to her. She's quick to cry and struggles with anger, as well as distraction; she has trouble keeping focus. Good for getting into trouble. Not so good when it comes to being a responsible adult.

It would probably be easier if she wasn't of two minds on every single decision she has to make. She empathises with everyone, which can be paralysing-- how can she fight someone whose point of view she gets?

7. Do you feel that mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey?

Mistakes are learning tools of life, darling. In writing they generally aren't the types that will destroy friendships, health, financial status, etc, which means they're generally easier to bounce back from. Unless you commit career suicide in some way...

8. Rank your ocs by their capability in a footchase (either running after or from smth, your choice)

1. Fall from the Aalee Rise series. He's a complicated human. Without getting into the context of the world he's from, he's hard to explain; but the short version is he's half-ghost so he can basically turn himself into the wind.

2. Rosie Frey from Color of the Stars but only when she's a lion. In her human form she's pretty normal.

3. Lynn Blythe (or any of the other vampires) from Echoes of Eden, because they're cheating cheaterfaces who use mystical vampy powers to be stronger and faster than humans

4. Sendmarshal Henley from the Aalee Rise series. Probably the fastest regular human. Imagine the most beautiful, tall, leggy black woman you can, all lean muscle and elegant grace, and now imagine her scooping you up and zipping out of danger with an easy smile on her face... *fans self* I stan.

5. When running headlong into danger to save someone? Aalee Dering. When running away? Frustratingly, satirically slow. She's one of those idiot heroes who stops to make sure everyone got away okay so Fall's always running back to grab her ("MOVE, IDIOT" "But that little old lady--" "FIRE-BREATHING MONSTERS. MOVE.")

9. Does your wip have romance? tell me about it!! if not tell me about a friendship/important relationship in your wip!! MORE LENGTHY BLAH

Relationships are the driving force of my writing. How one loves or is loved by other people, how they relate and engage with others, is how one grows, in real life and in fiction. There are a number of relationships in all my series that I'm fond of for various reasons. (For instance, even though she cannot STAND him, I'm eager af to write Eden and Lynn's relationship in Echoes of Eden because of how complicated it is.)

And as a rule all of my characters are queer or questioning unless otherwise stated, and I ship everybody with basically everybody else, and almost everybody has a love story in their history. (at least, their parents certainly do because I am a gross vile romantic and these fuckers came from somewhere.)

That having been said, for the sake of brevity I'll stick with Aalee Rise and limit myself to the Big Three: Aalee and her brother Elles, Aalee and her best friend Norah, and Aalee and Fall.

FAMILY: Aalee and Elles are twins. Born together and never separated, which stands out in a world where families are broken up by chaotic circumstances and random death on a regular basis. Aalee is easily distracted and has difficulty communicating her thoughts, so she tends to act on impulse; Elles is forever the cool head and the hand grabbing her by the back of the shirt to stop her from walking into danger. And after eighteen years of this... he's tired of it. He loves his sister, but he longs to see the world on his own terms, walk his own path. And Aalee doesn't share that sentiment. Not only doesn't share it, but is blown away when it comes into play. Her partner in crime wants to break away, and she does not take it very well. The first volume (Worldwalk) explores how their relationship suffers, grows, and changes due to this break.

FRIEND: Aalee's best friend of ten years is Norah. They met as little girls in a monster-ravaged town; Norah was entertaining the youngest orphans with a story and Aalee joined in. The pair of them spent a long night keeping civilians from panicking while Marshals battled asmic beyond the walls of the bunker. They exchanged addresses and became penpals over the next few years, since both of their parents travelled and they were rarely in the same place at the same time. That changed suddenly when Norah lost her father. Since then, Norah's family and Aalee's have lived in the same town. Norah is her warm hand in the dark, her shoulder to cry on, the first person she tells any good news. for Norah, Aalee is the only person (at the beginning of the story, anyway) with whom she can be her real whole self. They love each other no matter what.

ROMANCE: And then there's Fall. Aalee meets Fall when she rescues him from being murdered in a back alley-- except, oops, turns out it was a sting operation to catch the killer because he's not actually the helpless filthy vagabond she assumed he was; he's actually a powerful Marshal who was on assignment. Stuck together for various reasons, he becomes a mentor to her on her worldwalk, while she blatantly digs into the mystery of who he is, which turns out to complicate their lives, the lives of their friends and families, randos they happens across, their enemies, and also God's. To say they fall in love with each other is an understatement of cosmic proportions. They choose each other.

10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings?

Yeah but I take the advice as intended; which is not, as most assume, kill your fave characters, but to get rid of that which does not work, even if you love it. That pearlescent line of dialogue, or that golden bit of allegory? Doesn't matter how much you love it and how proud of it you are, if it does. not. work. it HAS. TO. GO. (save it in a new file to reread when you feel down and scrap that shit from the main file.)

that said re: killing characters, in my youth I was very much of the George RedRum Martin camp of "KILL THEM ALL" but as Ive gotten older my main focal point has been "What purpose does their death serve?" Death is not the only sacrifice worth writing. So while I am not afraid to kill my characters, I do take the nature of their deaths in the writing very seriously. There has to be a point.

11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why?

WORLDBUILDING MANYEXCLAMATIONPOINTSGOHERE! Plotting is like the maths of writing. It's measurement, it's brickwork, it's demolition when the wall you put up last week is three feet too long and now you have to scrap it and start over. Vital. But not my favorite part.

Worldbuilding is the art. It's the music your OCs hum and the stories that they treasure and the faith that holds them up when the crap you throw at them might tear them down. It's the story behind the jacket they wear and it's the reason they nod to the altar when they enter a place of worship and it's the meaning of their names. It's the magic. How the world works, the little details that make it real to the reader because it's real for your characters, is my favorite part of writing.

#long post #writing #about Tea which is me #tea writes

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ficdirectory · 6 years

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Somewhere Inside (Disuphere series #4) Chapter 3

(To listen, click here) - 11:08

“Levi. Levi!”

He groans and rolls over. “What?”

Through blurry eyes, he can just make out Pearl standing at the side of his bed. Cleo is trying desperately to jump up here. Still half-asleep, Levi reaches down and scoops up the dog. Lets her get comfortable. Levi is on his way back to sleep when he hears Pearl’s irritated voice again.

“Levi, I am serious. You need to get up.”

“Why?” He’s whining. But he doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to work ‘til 3:00 today. So, that means he should get to sleep til 2:30. He knows it’s not 2:30. It’s still way too early.

“Because, we need to rent the car and drive to the airport. It’s three hours each way, and we need time to rent the car. Get up. I am serious.”

“I have work at 3:00,” he mumbles, petting Cleo.

“Then why did you tell me you’d traded your shift and that you’d go with me last night?”

Levi tries to think back. He’d arrived back at the cabin, wanting nothing more than to get to his room and be alone, but Pearl was there asking all kinds of questions. He always found it easier just to say yes. Turns out that strategy had come back to bite him.

“I literally have no memory of this conversation.” Levi says, finally sitting up.

“Maybe if you actually listened when I spoke, you’d recall it.”

“Sorry. I’ll call and see if somebody can switch.”

“We have to leave in 20 minutes,” Pearl insists. “Get a move on.”

Lucky for him, it’s spring break, which means all the high school kids who worked at SuperOne are available and they want hours. It takes some convincing to give away a 3-11 shift, but he manages.

When he heads upstairs to take a shower, Pearl looks like she wants to murder him.

“You showered last night!” she calls, exasperated.

“So?” he returns, as smart as he dares. He showers in a hurry. Throws on clothes. He’s waiting in the car in 16 minutes.

Pearl and Cleo follow. They get in back. Pearl gives him directions to a local rental place. Levi’s ready with his school ID and his cash.

“You have to be 25 to rent a car. To drive it, too.”

Levi’s mouth drops open and he wordlessly follows Pearl inside. Waits as she signs paperwork and eventually gets keys to an SUV. He goes to get in the front passenger seat and she snaps at him.

“Not there.”

“Okay….” he says, dragging out the word. He opens the back door and climbs in the seat diagonally behind Pearl. “Here?” he asks.

She nods. Tense.

They drive in silence for a while. The only commentary provided by Siri or whoever on Pearl’s phone giving them directions to the airport.

“So...I had to get up out of bed, switch my shift and come with you, so I could sit back here?”

“No. Levi, you said you’d come with me last night. You could’ve said no.”

“Could I have?” he presses, hurt.

“Yes. But I thought, based on our conversation last night, that you wanted to meet my friends. Apparently, you don’t, as this is all new information…” Levi’s not used to her sarcasm. It hits wrong. Like meanness.

“Maybe because it is...” he stresses.

“We had already discussed it and you agreed,” Pearl insists. “That’s the only reason you’re here.”

Pearl has no idea what Levi’s problem is. All she knows is that he is the personification of waking up on the wrong side of the bed right now. She hopes this mood he’s in won’t last. She hates being behind the wheel anyway, but none of her friends are older than 25, so it’s got to be on her to rent the car.

Cleo’s curled in the passenger seat, watching everything Pearl does.

Her phone dings with a message. She has a string of them now, all from Jesus:

Awake.

Leaving.

Airport :( Francesca says safety in numbers.

Plane. Landing at 2:25 your time.

She’s confused until she realizes it’s not her own phone she heard. It’s Levi’s.

“Hey, Mom…” he says quietly. “Yeah, I’m up. On the way to the airport. No, I’m not traveling. Just picking people up.”

Pearl tries not to be jealous of the fact that Levi has a mother who calls him at least once a week just to check in. She’d never had that kind of relationship with her mother, and spent the majority of her life believing that her father was dead, when he wasn’t.

After he hangs up, Pearl drives in silence for a while longer. Finally, she speaks:

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you out of bed to come with me. I really thought you wanted to.”

He shrugs. “It’s okay. I just...thought you needed me.”

“What?”

“Because usually I help out with stuff. You need me.”

“Right.”

“But you don’t seem to want me here…” he ventures.

“Levi, of course I do. I want my friends to meet you. I want you to meet them. Just...driving’s not my favorite thing.”

“So, I’m here as emotional support?” he quips.

“What’s wrong?” she presses.

“I haven’t heard a word about these friends. You’re so secretive when you call or text. You never video chat when I’m around. I have no idea who they are. So...I guess...I’m wondering why you’d think I’d be excited to meet strangers…”

“Because they matter to me,” she insists.

The air is heavy with unspoken words. Pearl meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. He closes them.

“Do I?” he finally sighs.

“Pardon?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Levi whispers.

Dominique doesn’t know what she expects but it definitely wasn’t to be missing Roberta her diva cat so much. Mom and Dad had promised to take care of her while they were away. Even drove them to the airport this morning.

She’s dressed as Kaz Kaan. No giant Toblerone because security. But she always feels more powerful dressed in a suit. Francesca seems a little embarrassed but is trying not to show it. Jesus is just trying to keep it together. And Mariana? She’s just trying to stay awake.

It’s hard to say exactly why Dominique agreed to come to Minnesota, other than peer pressure. Not that Jesus or Mariana pressured her, but the last thing she wants is for The Avoiders to go somewhere while she is left behind alone.

She has come to depend on them, and they on her. So even though she has no idea who this Pearl is, if she’s important enough for Jesus and Mariana to plan for this long to come see her, Dominique’s willing to go. Even just to hang out in the giant cabin Francesca keeps talking about.

Traveling isn’t easy for any of them. LAX it turns out is every horrendous trigger that Jesus has, but with ample time to prepare, and lots of meetings at Avoidance, they had managed. Now, the plane’s about to touch down and Dominique has never been more glad. She really hates forced closeness in a confined space.

They hurry off the plane, and walk a bit until Jesus’s face breaks into the biggest smile. He runs for this woman who’s probably 15 years older than he is. Skids to a stop in front of her. Dudley’s at his side. He’d been scared on the plane, but held it together admirably.

Dominique finds chairs for Mariana and Francesca and goes for the baggage claim. They decided early that they’d spare Jesus any sight of extra bags.

But Dominique’s not expecting to be tailed by the younger guy who had stood behind Pearl. Could be a friend. Or a stalker. She’s feeling pretty watched, pretty exposed, when he finally steps up. “Thought you could use a hand.”

He’s soft-spoken. Young. Maybe high school aged, maybe newly graduated. He’s neatly dressed. But none of these things hold off Dominique’s suspicion. “Jesus didn’t mention anybody was gonna be with Pearl…”

“Yeah, she didn’t really mention you guys either, so I’m not surprised,” he says. “Levi,” he offers, keeping an eye out for their bags, even though he doesn’t know the first thing about what they look like.

“I tied all of ours with bright pink fabric scraps so they’d stand out.” Dominique offers, but keeps her eye on Levi.

“I see one,” he exclaims and goes into the fray, coming back with Mariana and Francesca’s suitcases. “What color are the rest?”

“Yellow and purple,” Dominique fills in and Levi goes back in. Emerging first with Jesus’s bright yellow suitcase, and eventually with her own purple one.

“If we can just get the keys, then we can get these squared away…” Levi offers and before Dominique knows it he’s asking Pearl for the keys and they’re walking together toward the rental.

They’re both quiet. Dominique doesn’t feel particularly at ease, but comfortable enough as Kaz to take care of what needs to be done. She leans into the confidence the suit gives her, the disguise of the pink wig and purple contacts.

“Long flight?” he finally asks, hefting each suitcase into the trunk, before she can even ask.

“Who cares what time it is--”

“--when the future’s an interminable abyss of wackness,” Levi has joined to finish the Kaz Kaan quote. Nobody knows Kaz Kaan. Dominique has gone from mortified that she was quoting something Levi would never get to having him join her, and get it.

“Whoa..” she breathes. “That’s never happened to me before.”

Levi just smiles. “Okay. So, their loss…”

“Right,” Dominique nods. She’s still not ready to introduce herself but Levi doesn’t seem to be in a rush.

It doesn’t take long to realize that Kaz Kaan is the only person glad Levi is there. The rest of Pearl’s company has been here before and had been counting on one on one time with their friend. Levi’s heard names, but only remembers Kaz.

“Who’s he?” the little girl whispers to Kaz.

“Levi.”

“Pearl, is Levi your boyfriend?” she asks, no tact. No shame.

“He is, uh, my roommate.”

Gut-punch. (Seriously?)

“But Jesus said it was gonna be friend time with us and with you,” she points out, betrayed.

“Francesca. Come on. Manners,” Jesus reprimands.

“What? I didn’t say it to be rude.” Francesca pouts.

“It’s okay. You guys can hang out. I’ll stay out of your way,” Levi assures.

For the rest of the ride, Levi listens as Pearl makes conversation with Jesus, Mariana and even Francesca. While he and Dominique (he heard Francesca use Kaz’s real name once) are largely overlooked in the farthest of back seats.

He tries not to be bothered by Pearl’s awkwardness about him. But she’d invited him to live with her. He’d sought her out. Claimed her as his sister before they ever met. Dad made sure he always knew he had a sister, always knew she loved him.

But she’s not acting like she loves him. She’s acting like he’s a giant pain. And the way Pearl’s talking around stuff? Makes Levi suspect the reason she invited them here in the first place is because she needs to vent.

About him.

Levi closes his eyes again. Wishes he were anywhere but here.

#fic: somewhere inside

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comfortablynumbonthepuzzle · 6 years

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No Scissors Required (Byeler Fic)

Description:

Joyce is changing Will’s sheets when she finds a tear in the bottom of his mattress. Upon further investigation, she finds he’s hidden a notebook, and even though she knows she shouldn’t, she opens it, finding some incriminating photos of a certain male celebrity and even more incriminating drawings of a certain male best friend. Joyce knows she shouldn’t meddle, but she can’t help it. Sometimes a mother knows best.

Angsty but has a (kind of) happy ending.

No Scissors Required

It’s 4 pm on a Sunday. As the daylight slips away and with it the promise of a productive weekend, Joyce is attempting some form of damage control.

She’s doing okay: she’s got dinner on the stove, a load of laundry whirring in the dryer, and neat stacks of envelopes, bank notices, and coupons divided on the kitchen table, waiting to be opened and handled and filed appropriately. She’ll get to that, of course. Right after she’s had a cigarette.

It’s one of those rare afternoons where it feels like the dust has settled, and that she’s finally got a handle on things. A small, spiteful part of her wishes Lonnie could see her doing so well. She then thinks of Hopper, feeling equal parts buoyed and daunted by the potential in their future, then, remembering Bob, instantly guilty. She tables that thought for now, but resolves to call the police station first thing tomorrow morning, certain she can conjure up something to be worried about by then. Hopper will know it’s a ploy, but he’ll appreciate it. He can’t seem to work up the nerve to call her unless it’s under silly pretenses either.

Will’s studying in the dining room. He told her for what, but she can’t keep track. Everyday, it’s something new, something for “organic chemistry” or “advanced calculus” or “studio art” or “classical poetry” (meanwhile, Joyce herself can’t remember ever taking anything but ‘math’ and science’). She trusts him to handle it himself; is continually amazed by his composure, his perseverance, his seemingly infinite capacity for information and instruction; balks at how much he seems to absorb. School is the one realm in which she won’t meddle; the one thing that seems to have stayed the same, even after everything. If anything, Will’s become more involved, taking on more responsibility, working harder, longer hours. Still, he sees his friends regularly, and though she wishes he’d spend just a bit more time having fun, she figures it’s all a necessary distraction.

She can barely see him over the piles of books and paper, just the top of his head bobbing every now and again, more aggressively when he’s erasing a mistake. She feels such strong fondness for him. She and Will have always been close, and continue to be even as Will and his friends careen ungracefully into adolescence, but still she finds herself, like any mother, wondering: What is he thinking? What is he feeling? What does he worry about? Is he okay?

He’s fourteen now, in his first year of high school, the same age she and Lonnie started going out. True, we didn’t date consistently until much later, she concedes, and for the briefest of moments her mind flashes back to Hopper. She wonders, not for the first time, if maybe Will’s found himself a- well, not a Lonnie.

But she knows the answer. Will spends too much time at home, too much time studying, too much time with her, or Jonathan, or his friends. And even if he didn’t, Joyce knows that Will is too careful, too cautious, too used to hiding his feelings. But she also knows it’s more than that. Will’s never expressed interest in anyone, at least not to her. In fact, as long as Joyce can remember, Will has looked so discomfited at any mention of romance, at any allusion to any sort of love life he may or may not have, that Joyce has stopped bringing it up. She’s even considered that maybe he’s not interested in that sort of thing at all.

But Joyce knows that’s not true. She just knows. And she’s tried, albeit in roundabout ways, to address whatever it is that flusters him. She speaks in cautious, neutral terms. She avoids pronouns. She never asks direct questions, instead making statements, testing the waters, waiting for him to agree or disagree. Things like, she’s kind of cute or he’s got nice eyes, don’t you think? or I just read in the school newsletter that the Snowball’s coming up. (Normally he responds to her questions with noncommittal shrugs but that one earned her a sharp so what?). And, she’s not sure why she feels so compelled, but she tells Will she’s proud of him as often as she can. She tells him how much she loves him, and how she’ll continue to do so forever, no matter what. Still, Will won’t budge, and Joyce worries, worries, worries.

The timer on the stove goes off, and Joyce jerks her head towards the sound. The laundry’s ready to come out of the dryer.

She’s unloading the warm sheets into a basket when she notices a loose thread hanging from the corner. She pulls at it, hoping it’ll snap, but it only ensnares more fabric. Annoyed, she begins to rummage through her sewing box, looking for scissors. They’re nowhere to be found.

“Will?” She calls.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have the scissors from my sewing kit?”

There’s a pause. “They’re in my room,” Will calls back, sounding slightly guilty.

“Baby, I thought we agreed you would use your own scissors for art projects?”

“Sorry! Yours are better.”

Balancing the laundry basket on her hip, Joyce walks into Will’s room, where the scissors in question are resting on his desk atop a nondescript pile of magazine paper scraps. Joyce notes the mess: clothes litter the floor, Will’s bed is unmade, and there are open books everywhere.

“Will, honey, your room’s a mess!” She calls.

“Sorry! I haven’t had time to clean it.”

Joyce feels a pang of guilt. “I know. I know, you’ve been working so hard lately.”

She sighs, eyeing the unmade bed. Normally, Will prefers to clean his own room. Joyce figures it’s a consequence of all his time spent in Hawkins Lab being poked and prodded and examined; that he’s eager to preserve his privacy and personhood in whatever little ways he can. Joyce doesn’t mind. She indulges him when she thinks it’ll help him cope, and knows, secretly, that if not for Will it would probably never get done.

The longer Joyce stands there, surrounded by teenage mess, the more she feels the urge to do something nice for him, for studious, brilliant, thoroughly decent Will, who’s studying so hard just meters away. So she decides she’ll clean his room, just this once. Because, she reasons, he shouldn’t study for hours and have to return to clutter. Surely he won’t mind. She begins to strip his bed of its bedding, replacing it with the soft, warm, forest-green sheets she’s just removed from the dryer, taking pains to smooth out every crease. She likes this, trying to make things comfy. It makes her feel most like a mother.

She’s pulling the fitted sheet over the fourth and final corner of the bed, when it comes loose on the left side of the other end. Joyce tries to pull it back over the edge, but it won’t budge. Frustrated, she lifts the mattress up, trying to get leverage. And that’s when she sees it.

There -- inconspicuous, but there nonetheless -- is a long slit cut into the underside of the mattress. Joyce almost doesn’t know what she’s looking at, until she reaches out and touches it, and realizes that the edges of the crater fold back. She reaches inside, and her hand makes contact with something thick and paper. A book, maybe? Her heart begins to thud as she pulls it out.

It’s a notebook. Nothing special. Just a beat-up, spiral notebook with a red cover. She knows she shouldn’t open it. She knows it’s a violation of Will’s privacy, that it would be wrong to trespass like this, that whatever is in there is clearly meant for Will’s eyes and Will’s eyes only. But Joyce can’t help thinking: What is he thinking? What is he feeling? What does he worry about? Is he okay?

So she opens the notebook. A stack of photos falls out, scattering all over the cluttered floor.

Joyce curses to herself in a whisper-shout, dropping the notebook, closed, onto Will’s bed. She drops to the ground, frantically assembling the photographs, trying not to make a sound. And she’s so caught up, and there are so many of them, that it takes a few seconds for her to even look at them properly.

The first one she sees doesn’t strike her as odd. It’s a black and white photo of River Phoenix, standing on what seems to be a balcony in New York City, looking over his shoulder at the camera. It’s a good photo, she thinks, but she isn’t sure why it’s been hidden. Confused, she looks through the photos she’s already collected, then at the other ones still around her on the ground. She begins to notice a pattern: some are in color, some not, but all are of River Phoenix. River Phoenix with long hair, with short hair, with hair wild and big, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. In one, he’s holding a guitar, and his shirt is only buttoned up halfway. Joyce stares at that one the longest. They’ve all been cut out of different magazines and newspapers (is this what he’s using my scissors for...?), meaning they’d been collected from different sources, over some length of time. But why? Why these photos? What exactly does he do with - And then it clicks, and Joyce knows exactly what she’s looking at.

Her fingers begin to tremble. She glances at the red notebook perched on the side of Will’s bed, just above eye-level. She grabs it and stares at it for what seems like forever, until finally resolving to open it. What she finds when she does is almost worse than the photos.

What she finds is sketchaftersketchaftersketchaftersketch of a face she knows all too well. It’s Mike Wheeler, as animated in Will’s drawings as he is in real life, displaying the full spectrum of human emotion. Will has drawn Mike sitting down and standing up, from all sorts of angles, and in a comprehensive range of styles. There’s cartoon Mike, for example, the protagonist in what looks like the beginnings of a comic book set in Hawkins High, drawn impeccably in sleek black ink. There are rough, imprecise renderings done in charcoal pencil that smear and blend into one another. There’s one particularly impressive full-page pencil sketch of Mike talking into a walkie talkie, his hair wild and big, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. It’s not just sketches, though - Will’s masterful drawings are interspersed with doodles and phrases written in his distinctive chicken-scratch. Mike’s full name is spelled out several times, alternately in cursive and in block letters. And all of Joyce’s suspicions are confirmed, all at once.

Joyce can’t help it when her nose starts to sting and she feels tears. She’s not angry, no. Not disappointed. Not disgusted. Joyce, in this moment, feels a sober sort of pride. She’s proud to know that Will feels love, in the same way that any parent rejoices when their child first begins that tricky, exciting ritual. For a few seconds she’s reminded how grown he is, how frighteningly close he is to leaving her. But this is what she’s always wanted for him, for as long as she can remember. She thinks, horribly, of the times she’d lie awake at night, imagining a future where Will is happy and in love, praying that it offers him some respite from a world full of Lonnies. She wonders if Mike knows about the drawings, or the sentiment attached. She figures he doesn’t, and if he does, it’s probably not because Will told him.

So she’s sad, too. She has sensed, from a very young age, that Will was different, and that his path would be a little darker, a little more treacherous. For the first time she really understands that Will knows this too. After all, there’s a reason the notebook is in the mattress. It breaks her heart.

“Mom?” Will’s voice calls from the living room. Joyce freezes.

“Mom?” Will calls again. Joyce curses to herself, rushing to tuck the photos into the notebook and shove the whole thing back into the mattress.

Will walks into the doorframe just as Joyce finishes making the bed.

“Yes, honey?”

Will’s brow wrinkles. “Did you change the sheets?” He asks.

“Um, yeah.” Joyce says, trying to conceal how hard her heart is pounding.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Will says sharply. Then, softer: “I mean. Thank you. But you really didn’t have to do that. I like doing it myself.”

Joyce shrugs. “I know. I just thought you’d appreciate a mother’s touch.” She’s trying very hard to add humor to her inflection, not sure if he’ll buy it. Will smiles, forgiving. Joyce wraps her arm around him, kisses his temple despite the eye-roll it gets her, and grips him just a little too tight.

She feels guilty for the rest of the day.

----

It’s 1 am on Sunday morning, one week after Joyce first discovers the notebook, and the boys are all asleep on her living room floor.

They’d all gone to see Back to the Future at the Hawk earlier that night, returning to the Byers’ house afterwards to continue the fun. Once the shrieking and the laughter die down, and Joyce feels confident that they’re asleep, she ventures out in search of a glass of water. She moves quietly over the carpeted floors, but stops at the threshold of the kitchen. She can hear faint whispering, barely intelligible, coming from the behind the couch.

“I guess I’m just relieved,” she hears someone say. It’s too raspy to know who for sure. “There’s a part of me that hasn’t accepted that we’re finally together after all this time.” Joyce knows that voice. That’s Mike.

“Yeah. Me too.” This voice is weaker, sleepier, and she immediately recognizes it as Will.

Who? She thinks. Who’s together after all this time?

“...especially because I thought it would never happen.” Mike again. What would never happen?

“What would your parents think?”

“I’m not going to tell them.” Wait a second. Are they-?

“Well, yeah. But if you did?”

“Are you kidding me? They’d flip.” Is Mike-?!

“Really?”

“Uh, yeah. Can you imagine my dad’s reaction? With everything that’s going on in the country right now? Honestly, some shit is just too weird. Even for Hawkins.”

“What about at school? Are we supposed to pretend?” Joyce is frozen, she can’t believe what she’s hearing.

“Do we have a choice?” Mike says, softly.

“I guess not.”

“I guess we have to wait and see what Hopper says.” Hopper? Joyce thinks, confused. What the hell does Hopper have to do with anything?

“Does he want us to call her Jane, or El?”

Jane?

Mike laughs. “She’ll always be El to me.”

And then Joyce realizes that they’re talking about Eleven. Of course they’re talking about Eleven.

Mike starts to speak again. “But everything will be how it’s always been. You know, at school. Nothing’s going to change.” His voice is laced with something cautious. Will laughs softly, as if trying to bury it, whatever it is.

“What are you talking about? Everything’s going to change.” And Joyce swears she can hear the regret in his voice.

----

It’s 6 pm on a tuesday, three days after the sleepover and ten after Joyce first finds the notebook, and Joyce is finishing up a shift at Melvald’s.

She feels happy. She’s got a lot to look forward to. Jonathan is bringing home takeout from the diner, club sandwiches and french fries, and Will will come home excited and talkative after A.V. club. (And, of course, Hopper happened to stop in today, looking for hair clips for El. He of course played it off like he was overwhelmed, but it was impossible to miss how happy he was to again be participating in the rituals of having a growing daughter. What about these ones? He’d asked. Joyce tells him that the ones he’s picked, bright pink with acrylic bumblebees, look a little young for her, don’t you think? Oh. Well, you know, it’s been a while. Well, you know her better than I do- I only have boys. She does like pink. Then get them! He smiles. They smile. Bitchin’.)

Will and Jonathan will be home a little later than usual, with Will coming from A.V. club and Jonathan from work, so she has just enough time before they arrive, Will first and then Jonathan, to set the table and smoke a cigarette in the quiet emptiness.

Their family dinners, infrequent thanks to work and academic commitments, always seem to make everyone happier. Joyce remembers Sunday morning after the sleepover, how Will looked more subdued than usual, how he hugged Mike goodbye somewhat tersely and watched him ride his bike down the driveway until he disappeared, and thinks: he needs it.

She waves goodbye to Donald and heads toward the exit. The automatic doors open when she nears, but Joyce stops short at the threshold, staring at the magazine rack.

It’s 6:18 on a Tuesday, three days after the sleepover, ten days after Joyce first finds the notebook, 18 minutes after she has what she hopes isn’t a terrible idea, and Joyce is waiting in the kitchen for Will to get home.

She’s standing in a part of the dining room where she knows she can’t be seen from the door, watching and waiting for it to open. She’s relieved when it does and Will walks in. He kicks off his shoes and sheds his jacket in seconds, and Joyce is warmed by how eager he seems to just be home. “I’m home!” He calls, but Joyce doesn’t say anything. Not yet.

Will lets his backpack drop to the ground with a thud and collapses onto the couch. He sits there a minute, idle. Come on. Joyce wills. Pick it up.

Almost a minute passes, and then Will seems to notice something on the coffee table, something Joyce can’t see from where she’s standing. His eyes are wide as he looks around, thisaway and thataway, to check if anyone’s there. Cautiously, he picks it up.

It’s a copy of People Magazine, with River Phoenix on the cover. It’s not Mike, Joyce thinks, but it is something.

Joyce watches as he flips through it, and when a pink blush creeps over his cheeks, she knows he’s reached the centerfold -- a glossy, full-page photo of River Phoenix, without a shirt on, posing behind a wire fence.

And it’s perforated. Able to be ripped out of the magazine neatly and cleanly, to be hung up on a wall or folded into a spiral notebook and shoved under the bed.

No scissors required.

Notes:

1. The last time I wrote fanfiction was in high school and I can say with some certainty it is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever produced, so ridiculous that when I went looking for it a couple months ago I knew I just had to distribute it to all my friends alongside a “reader’s companion” (yes- a reader’s companion to my erotica) highlighting everything cringeworthy. Point is I'm new to this, pls be nice!

2. This is not erotica. They’re 14. Not. Erotica. Not even close. Not even a little.

3. I know it’s a bit anachronistic. River Phoenix hadn’t even starred in Stand By Me by the time this fic is supposed to take place, but I really think that Will would be into him because he’s artsy and sensitive and beautiful, AND because he and Mike remind me of Chris and Gordie.

4. thanks eversomuch to @otpgod1 for their kind words of encouragement in publishing this!

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fantasticnewtimagines · 7 years

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Request | Newt x reader *I’m a Wreck Without You*

◘ Anonymous asked: hiii if it's okay can you please write a fluffy fic based on line without a hook by ricky montgomery (rly good song btw) thank you ♡

→ This is my first imagine request! I really hope I did well! *nervous smile*

You leaned back in your chair as you listened to Newt scribbling about on his notepad a few inches across from you. He was deep in his work checking over his rough draft of his book in the tiny hut within his enchanted suitcase. You and him had been traveling together for months now after meeting during one of his longer stops in Paris. During his time there, you got quite acquainted with him seeing as you helped run the inn in which he had taken refuge during his visit there. Longing for more than what Paris had to offer and your mundane life, you leapt at the opportunity to travel beside him. Your parent’s were both muggle and as much as you loved them and their tiny inn, you had always dreamt of a life in the magical world. Newt lived one of the most magical ones of all and you were grateful for the love you two had found together.

“Newt?” You brushed your H/C hair from your face and leaned across the table to him, poking his arm. He looked up and gave you a confused look.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been going over your book for hours now…. don’t you think we should go check on the creatures?”

Newt blinked and instantly looked back down. He started scribbling again on the paper and it seemed as though nothing you had even said registered with him. Slightly annoyed, you leaned in again and poked him twice.

“Newt!”

“Oh…. yeah… could you go and check on them? I need to make sure I get through all of this tonight….” He didn’t look up but continued to erase and write, scribble out, add in, erase again… Finally feeling defeated, you sighed, stood up and walked out of the hut. You made your way to your favorite habitat, the niffler. The little bugger could be annoying at times, but you found him mostly adorable. After him you moved on to the bowtruckles. They were your second favorite of his creatures. You always thought how sweet it was how Pickket was so attached to Newt. Siting down near the tree, you began to draw in the dirt with a stick. Newt was so distracted lately which you understood. He had to finish his book and you wanted him to. But lately he had become so engulfed in it that he hardly spent time with you. He was your only source of human interaction most days and you were beginning to feel lonely.

“Oh!” You jumped when one of the bowtruckles landed on your shoulder. “Hello!” You giggled and held your hand up so it so it could sit in your palm. “How are you?”. The bowtruckle wiggled it’s leaves atop it’s head and you smiled. You turned to face the hut hoping maybe Newt had emerged but he hadn’t. Slumping your shoulders down, you laid you head back to rest on the tree and closed your eyes.

Hours had passed and you woke up forgetting you had fallen asleep beneath the bowtruckle tree. Pushing yourself up you made your way back towards the hut to check on Newt. Quietly walking in, you saw him face down on the table fast asleep.

“Oh, Newt…” Gathering a near by blanket, you placed it over him and made your way out of the suitcase. Your room you had rented at the inn was a tad chilly and so you decided to go out and find something warm to drink. Picking up the nearest piece of scrap paper, you quickly wrote a note so Newt wouldn’t worry when he awoke and you were gone. He probably wouldn’t even see it, you thought. He’ll be down there all day…

The chilly air blew your H/C hair and you struggled to keep it back. Clutching your warm tea in one hand, your other holding your hair back, you made your way towards a small park bench beside a lake. Sitting down, you began to drink your warm beverage while gazing up at the morning sun. Oh how you loved the sunrise. Watching the colors blend together to create a beautiful masterpiece in the sky. Sighing to yourself, you could think of one thing that would really make this moment better… Newt by your side.

The sound of birds and the small waves upon the lake filled your senses as you began to think. You thought about the past months and how you truly loved spending time with the wizard you found to be the most amazing man you had ever met. He now seemed so distant and such a stranger. You tried to fight back the tears but they came to eyes like a cannon going off and came barreling down your face like a waterfall. Only moments had passed when suddenly you heard a familiar voice.

“Y/N! There you are.” Newt, carrying his suitcase, plopped down beside you. Immediately you hid your crying eyes and tried to look as though you were just enjoying a nice morning out, but failed. Newt’s eyes became filled with concern as he wrapped you in his arms. “Y/N, what is it? What’s happened?!”

“Newt, I-I….” The words were too hard to say.

“Has someone done something?”

You turned to meet his eyes and answered, “I don’t think I can stay…”

Newt stared at you. Had he heard you correctly?

“What?”

“Newt, this book is important and you love and care about your creatures and that’s wonderful! I thought I could maybe fit in but I just… I don’t think I do. At least not right now… I’m a burden and-“

“No you’re not” Newt cut you off and instantly took you head in his hands and looked you straight in the eyes. “You have never been and never will never be a burden! I love you, Y/N. My creatures are important to me and so is my book, but if I were to ever lose you…” His eyes began to swell up with tears. “I would never forgive myself if I were to drive you away. I’m so sorry… I never meant to make you feel as though you were invisible or a burden in any way.” It broke his heart to see that he had hurt you. He wanted to take back everything and anything he had done to make you feel this way.

He pulled you in and embraced you tightly. You laid your head on his shoulder nuzzled in to the crook of his neck, taking in his calming scent. His one hand cradled the back of your head. “I’m so sorry…” He whispered. “

Lifting your head up, you met his eyes with yours. Newt cupped your face in his hands and without a single care in the world, he pulled you in for a deep and passionate kiss. It felt as though explosions were going off inside you. He hadn’t kissed you this way in what seemed like months. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you pulled him in closer, deepening the kiss. He took a breath and rested his forehead against yours. A few moments passed before either one of you spoke.

“I love you, Newt”. “I love you more, Y/N”.

■ I really hope I fulfilled your request, anon! I enjoyed writing this!

→ Stay tuned for part 4 of Washed Away pretty soon! ♥

#newt scamander imagines #newt scamander x you #newt scamander x reader #newt scamander #request

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bilienski · 7 years

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Paint me like one of your... canvases - Part 2

Read on AO3 Rating: Mature Wordcount: 1960 Summary:

Derek just really likes Stiles' back. The span of fair skin makes a perfect canvas. -- The one where Derek’s in art therapy and is just really inspired by Stiles’ moles.

They were all cleaning up their supplies after having finished their last project. To make a 3D replica of something they want to remember forever. A couple students sculpted the face of a loved one, there was one person who’d soldered scrap pieces of metal together to make an abstract looking dog and another one who’d made a diorama of her favorite spot to go on holiday. And Derek… Derek had thanked the heavens for letting Stiles gently push him to therapy, because otherwise he’d never gotten to this art class in the first place. Who knew he’d enjoy it so much? Who knew he’d actually be kind of good at it? Who knew that art therapy would actually be therapeutic?

But it was. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to him, aside from Stiles of course. Not that Derek would ever say it out loud. It’s not that he was ashamed about it, he was actually quite proud sometimes of the things he managed to make after a year of this class… therapy… art thing. Derek just didn’t like talking about this stuff for no reason. He had learned to talk though, talk to his therapist, talk to Stiles. Even about the really difficult things, even about his feelings.

He’d learned that it was one thing to start caring again but it was another to actually let the people he cared about into his life. Let them know him like he knew them. It was a long process, he still had a long road ahead of him before he’d really be fine again. But for now okay was enough. He hadn’t forgiven himself yet for what happened, not completely anyway. But he’d realized it wasn’t entirely his fault, if he was to blame for anything that happened, he definitely wasn’t the only one. He was still being cautious about his happiness and his love and the whole caring business, but he let himself live in the moment most of the time.

Of course there were bad nights where he still had nightmares about fire and smoke and a maniacal laughing blonde. Or bad days where he tried pushing Stiles away from him to protect him from… from the damage, the ruins that Derek would undoubtedly cause. But Stiles never let himself be pushed away. And after those bad days were over – those bad days were becoming more infrequent, every time being separated by more of the good ones – Derek would pull Stiles as close as possible. Derek would treat him like a prince, apologize for the things he’d said and make up for it with organizing movie nights where he cooked Stiles’ favorite things and cuddled him on the couch the entire night and scented him and loved him and Stiles would hold him close and Derek would know that no one was leaving anyone here.

So yes, he was getting better, and he had his therapist and art teacher to thank for that. Because this class, this 4 hours a day, 3 days a week simple thing was doing what 8 years of time and trying to run away from his problems hadn’t been able to do. After all the things that he’d – that had been – destroyed in his life, after seeing so many important things just crash and crumble around him, of course it was nice to finally create something.

To watch his hands, the hands he’d blamed for so long now, finally make some beautiful things instead of demolishing them. The blood replaced by paint splatter or clay or glue. The claws replaced by scissors or craft knives. He’d even tried his hand at some metal casting (Stiles had cried even though it wasn’t an engagement ring), to see the heat of fire create instead of destroy was probably a really important part in his healing process.

And this last project, recreating what he never wanted to forget had allowed him to actually rebuild his family home. Even though it was just a miniature, an incredibly detailed dollhouse, he was fairly sure that once he got it home and could look at the finished project in peace he’d cry.

Once he was ready for it, he’d use that replica to tell Stiles about some little things. Like how Laura had the room next to him and how her bed used to creak and how he’d rat her out by asking – no, begging – his parents to buy her a new bed. He’d tell Stiles about how his mom couldn’t stop laughing when Christmas rolled along and she gave Laura her new bed, but his dad sat there glaring at Collin the blushing boyfriend.

He’d tell Stiles how he and Cora had made sure to “help” their parents while putting the bed together when Laura spent Christmas eve with Collin’s family. But really they hadn’t screwed everything together properly, were surprised the bed could even hold the weight of the mattress with the way they’d built it. When he was actually ready he’d be able to tell Stiles, with a fond smile on his face, how Cora had spent the night in his room, waiting for Laura and Collin to come upstairs. He’d laugh with Stiles over how his parents had come running when they’d heard the bed collapse, he’d laugh with Stiles like he’d laughed with Cora that night. One day he’d be ready and then this dollhouse would have his back.

The supplies were being put back in the cupboards and their finished products were carefully wrapped in tissue paper and prepared for transport. Right when everyone was about to go home, the teacher spoke up.

“For next time I want you all to think about how you would incorporate the human body in your art. I want you to think out of the box and I want it to be meaningful to you. Not just in a way that the finished piece has meaning, but the way you use the human body in your project needs to mean something to you. You all did very well on this last piece, you’ve really come a long way.” She looked at every one of them for a couple of seconds, fondly as if she was proud of her students. “Okay, that was it for today. Get home safely and I hope to see you all here on Wednesday with fresh ideas in your minds.”

Derek didn’t have to think for long, he knew exactly what he wanted to do for this next project. Stiles. The answer was always Stiles.

Instead of going straight home like he’d meant to do, Derek stopped by the art store first. He went straight to the canvases, picked up the largest one and was on his way to the checkout when he saw it. He’d never really looked at this part of the store, there weren’t supplies there he’d need usually. But those bodypaints… well, the teacher had said to think out of the box and making a portrait, even if it would have a couple of interesting quirks, wouldn’t really count as out of the box.

There was only one issue… Stiles, the answer was always Stiles. So he stopped by the supermarket as well. He got popcorn and chocolate and M&Ms, maybe that would appease his boyfriend for a couple hours.

Because of his detour, Stiles was already in the kitchen cooking when Derek got home. Even though Mondays were definitely Derek’s turn to put some food on the table.

“Hey, I’m sorry, I went by the store and I guess I lost track of time.” But as he put the bags down Stiles just looked over at him with a smile on his face.

“It’s fine. I thought you were just finishing up that project you were working on. You can do the dishes to make it up to me.” Ugh, when had they become so… happy and good together? It was doing things to Derek’s heart, things he wasn’t sure were actually healthy. So to try his best at stopping the racing beating he took the couple of steps to end up right behind his boyfriend and wrapped his arms around him.

“Sure, I’ll do the dishes, how about we watch some movies tonight? I’ve bought some snacks.”

“Sounds good to me.”

After dinner, Derek did the dishes while Stiles got dressed into something comfortable and started his long, long process of picking a movie. But surprisingly, when Derek walked into the living room, carrying the snacks, Stiles had already narrowed it down to three movies. And by the time Derek had gotten his supplies together, Stiles had picked one.

“What’s all that for?”

“Can I paint your back?” Derek and Stiles never really discussed the artsy stuff. Stiles had learned very early on that the things Derek made in his classes were personal, things he was still working through in his head. Occasionally Derek would show him something he finished a while back and then they’d talk about it. Stiles would just look so proud and happy for Derek having found his thing and being so damn good at it. And that the thing was actually helping him through all of that shit he’d been shouldering alone for so long now, that was the best bonus Stiles could wish for.

“Not like paint a picture of your back, I bought bodypaint, it’s for this new thing and… can I paint your back?”

“No dicks though, Sourwolf! If you paint a bunch of dicks on my back, your dick is not going anywhere near the interesting part of my back for a long time, got it?”

“Oh, dang it… now I have to come up with a whole new idea… you make it so hard sometimes.”

“That’s what he said.”

They put on the movie and Stiles took off his shirt, because even if he’d joked about this seconds before, he trusted Derek. He trusted Derek with his life. And Derek trusted Star Wars to keep Stiles’ mind busy enough so he wouldn’t be fidgeting constantly. Derek had a paper plate as his pallet, squeezed out all the colors of bodypaint on it that he would need. He had some water and some brushes, and with Stiles laying down on his belly, Derek had Stiles’ thighs as he perfect seat.

Stiles shivered as the brush touched his skin for the first time, the paint was cold, but the feeling of the brush moving against his skin was oddly soothing. All gentle, careful strokes. Derek noticed that bodypaint was very different to work with, but it was a challenge he’d gladly accept. It dried quicker than acrylics so he actually ended up finishing the piece before the movie ended.

He’d always thought his projects turned out surprisingly well for the fairly limited amount of practice Derek had had, but this one was by far his favorite. It was perfect. Stiles was perfect.

Derek took a couple of pictures, carefully adjusting the lamp standing next to the couch to light his living canvas perfectly. When he was finally happy with a picture he’d taken he showed Stiles.

“Oh wow… that’s a damn good galaxy. Have you been browsing Pinterest again?” He looked a bit closer, even zoomed in on the picture to take a careful look at all the details. “Wait a minute… those stars… are those my moles?” He’d always wanted to map the constellations on Stiles’ back, and now he’d finally done it.

“Yes… they bring something beautiful and unique to my… my universe.” And Stiles just looked at him with those ridiculous doe eyes of his and Derek blushed because, fucking hell that was cheesy.

But that didn’t make it any less true.

#sterek #stiles #derek #teen wolf #fanfic #original fic

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trendyelle · 6 years

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7 Wine And Face Mask Pairings To Do When You’re Stranded Inside

If you, like me, spent the last week get fucking crazy ringing in the New Year in the same channel you’d celebrate v important calendar times such as the Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo then, first of all, I applaud you. Second of all, please tell me your surface is as fucked up as mine is rn. I’m really just astonished that my skin only destructions me every once in a while considering all of the shit I set it through on a daily basis. Accompany, I like to do this thing where I “treat myself” sevenish days of the week–it’s sort of like playing Russian roulette with my skin but instead of missiles it’s massive amounts of alcohol and pizza. I know, I’m a peach. ANYWAY, I am sure I’m not alone out there so because I’m find philanthropic and too because I’m already weighing down the minutes until it’s 5pm and socially acceptable to open wine-coloured, here’s a roll of best available booze and look concealment pairings to get you started on your happy hour surface upkeep journey. 1. Champagne+ Bubbles Mask Get it? I’m pairing bubbles with foams? Okay , not super original SO SUE ME. But this will examine v cute on Instagram and isn’t that really all we’re striving for here? Try E.L.F’s Hydrating Bubble Mask for a frothy appearance concealment that’s more recreation than a Snapchat filter and it also nourishes the fuck out of your skin. 2. Cosmopolitan+ Detox Mask This is for all my municipality daughters out there who have to deal with scrap humen who literally shit on public transportation( earnestly, I saw this happen once ). A detox mask is the perfect style to freshen your surface after a long week of are working with sociopaths on the subway, and we hint applying Caudalie Instant Detox Mask including with regard to. The natural clay ingredients give your skin a deep cleanse while at the same time leaving your face smooth and your complexion even. And before you start talking shit, I know no one boozings Cosmopolitans anymore because it’s not the year 2000, but I’m proposing this pairing anyways because it seems v pathetic to manufacture yourself a vodka cran to Netflix and coldnes … alone. Just saying. 3. Boxed Wine+ Peel Off Mask I’m not sure who are continuing sucks wine out of a carton, but I’m acquiring it’s the same person who buys their face disguises from the sales region at Walmart. I presume. Masque Bar Luminizing Charcoal Peel Off Mask is going to be your go-to mask. Both this mask and boxed wine are inexpensive AF but still v efficient and will get the job done during frantic, frantic times. 4. Bordeaux+ Clay Mask Bordeaux were legit acquired for boozing in a clay concealment. They’re full-bodied and earthy just like the shit you’re putting on your look rn. This is the kind of shit person like, say, Hannah Baker would sip and savor and then program out how to be extra AF from beyond the tomb( I assume ). Pair a clay disguise, like Aveda Deep Cleansing Herbal Clay Masque, with any bordeaux. Any betch with compounding skin will appear holy AF exploiting this disguise because it gleans out impurities from the surface while also absorbing any plethora petroleum. FML eternally it is not. 5. Wine Cooler+ Anti Aging Mask It seemed fitting to pair something that’s supposed to reclaim your youth with a sip that no one above persons under the age of 19 sips. Drunk Elephant’s T.L.C. Sukari Baby Facial is perfect for any surface type and its main objective is to “minimize the review of fine strings and wrinkles, refine holes, and boost overall clarity and radiance.” And a bonus is that you can now experience the wine-coloured jug in the privacy rights of your own home instead of the neighbourhood Wawa parking lot. Blessings. 6. Pinot Grigio+ Hydrating Mask Pinot Grigio is basically like water, which is not a information but exactly my personal opinion–it’s light-colored, refreshing, and I suck 8 glass of it a era. Hydrating masks, like Glossier’s Moisturizing Moon Mask, disappear perfectly with Pinot Grigio. Made of almond petroleum, hyaluronic battery-acid, licorice spring, lemon return, honey, and aloe–it’s discern sufficed chilled( both the wine-coloured and the disguise) and will refresh the fuck out of your look. But, like, I’ve too heard white wine will give you a disease of the skin so there’s certainly conflicting message over here. Like can we get person on this please? GOP, can we to stop ruin the health care system and instead focus on the more important issues at hand, like, is my Pinot Grigio safe ?? K, thx. 7. Tequila Shots+ The Trend Mask I never admonish taking tequila shots because no matter how many sections I read about tequila reaching your bones health or lending years to your life I’m convinced it’s all just forgery information. There’s no way that tequila, the same alcohol that my sorority sisters parties do body fires with and reassured me to get my belly button pierced at 20 years old on spring disintegrate, is actually are you all right. That tell me anything, you’re going to need all the hits when you try out all kinds of veer concealment that’s being pimped out hyped hard by boys on Instagram. Specially the Hanacure gel disguise because this is the face that they are able to look back at you in the reflect and it is terrifying TAGEND ^^ actual footage of me looking at my thinking rn But South Koreans did come up with this make so you know it’s some good shit. It plucks tightly on your scalp, totally warping your face until you gaze old as blaze, but when you take off the concealment it leaves your surface searching 10 years younger by reducing wrinkles and your pore length. Read more: www.betches.com http://selfhelpantiagingtips.com/7-wine-and-face-mask-pairings-to-do-when-youre-stranded-inside/

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ultralifehackerguru-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/fact-checking-the-artisanal-pencil-sharpener-how-to-really-sharpen-a-pencil/

Fact-Checking the Artisanal Pencil Sharpener: How to Really Sharpen a Pencil

David Rees thinks he knows how to sharpen pencils. He says people have entrusted 1,500 pencil points to his sharpening business. I know a little something about working with sharp pencils, and let me tell you, if you send your pencils out for sharpening you’re a fucking amateur.

I’m trained in botanical illustration with both graphite and colored pencils. If you can’t keep a needle-sharp point on your drawing tool, you won’t be able to do precision work. I can’t send my pencils out for sharpening because I need to touch up their points every few minutes.

Yes, I know his video is a joke. I’m fact checking it anyway.

The Claim: “You’re going to need a fair amount of equipment…you can buy everything you need for less than one thousand dollars.”

The Facts: He’s right. Yes, you can easily buy a pencil sharpener for less than $1000. And you will end up with a fair number of sharpeners, mechanical and electric, and none of them will be quite perfect. Rees shows us what he claims is a circa-1905 sharpener, and there’s a grain of truth to the desire for antiques. See, for graphite you can make anything work, but colored pencils are trickier, since they tend to gum up burrs and blades. If you want to get a roomful of colored pencil artists to fight, offer to sell a vintage Panasonic KP-4A to the highest bidder.

The Claim: “Number two pencils [are] the only type I sharpen…. It is our responsibility to choose a pencil that is worth sharpening.”

The Facts: Number two pencils are, in fact, a great choice. But you should choose your pencil based on how it draws when sharpened well, not on which one is the most fun to sharpen.

The artsy term for a number two pencil is an “HB” pencil. And, in fact, this was the only type I was allowed to use for my first 18 or so hours of botanical illustration classes. We spent the entire first day, I kid you not, carefully shading boxes so we could learn the full range of grays this pencil could produce, and so we could appreciate the importance of a sharp point.

Paper has a “tooth” to it, you see, and a dull pencil can’t get its graphite down into the microscopic nooks and crannies of the paper. You have to lightly grind the point over the paper, rubbing off bits of graphite to fall into those little craters and stay there, forming the drawing. This is why a sharp point is so important, and why it disappears so quickly.

The Claim: “You should take a couple hours to look through your own home and find a pencil that’s suitable for you to sharpen.”

The Facts: True. I don’t know where the hell all my pencils are. They should be in the drawer next to my art desk, in a plastic case, but sometimes they are in a pouch instead. Or the graphite ones get mixed up with the colored pencils. Or my kids will steal them. The pencil you need is always where you least expect it.

Cheap graphite pencils are almost as good as expensive ones. The problem is that they may have tiny chunks of clay or wax that you wouldn’t notice if you’re writing a grocery list, but that will drive you crazy as you try to do precision work.

A good drawing pencil is the Faber-Castell 9000, $1.75 list price, but you can probably get it cheaper with a coupon at your local art store. I know artists who splurge on Caran d’Ache pencils at $3 to $4 apiece, but do I look like I’m made of money?

The Claim: “Is it centered?…. Is it straight?…. Expose the graphite, then shape the graphite…. I am moving with such a delicate hand that I have exposed the graphite while producing minimal divots and almost no scratches.”

The Facts: If your $1.75 pencil isn’t straight with the lead more or less centered, you’ve been had. But you can sharpen it anyway, especially if you use a knife like this guy does. Just cut around the lead, wherever it might be.

Rees is right about the two steps of the process: you have to cut through the wood before you can worry about pointing the graphite. But instead of carefully carving the pencil, it’s fine to run it through whatever sharpener is on hand, or even hack at it with a kitchen knife. It really doesn’t matter how you got the pencil into its rough shape. The important part is that last millimeter.

The Claim: “We reach now for our sanding block, or our high grit sandpaper, any fine abrasive surface that we want… This is delightfully messy and wasteful…”

The Facts: Yes, people sand their pencils. Although I don’t see the point in lugging around a block in a vintage case when you can just carry an emery board if that’s the way you like to do it.

I use an x-acto knife instead. I don’t even strop it. After getting my pencil to a rough point, I use the side of the blade to scrape away any burrs or hard edges. Even my best sharpeners leave the point just a little imperfect, but with some careful scraping the pencil is ready for business.

As I’m using the pencil, if it gets a little uneven but I’m not ready to re-sharpen it, I’ll just rub the point on a scrap of rough drawing paper to get it back in shape.

The Bottom Line: His Pencils Are Okay But Mine Are Better

David Rees’s pencil sharpening methods are fine, but he takes too long and doesn’t even seem to be starting with a good quality pencil. From the mention of display tubes and labels, we can assume that these pencils never or rarely get used, making them poseurs, examples of supposed craftsmanship divorced from the joy and functionality of actual use.

On the other hand, my pencils may not be sharpened over an antique table, but I do a damn good job, I do it quickly, and I do it many times an hour. When I’m done, I have a tiny stump of a pencil and a piece of Fine Art, not a pointy sculpture that will sit sadly in a display case until artisanal pencil sharpening falls out of fashion.

Learn to sharpen your own pencils. It’s the best way.

But Don’t Take My Word for It…

My Favorite Pencil

The best way to sell a cool pencil is to show what it can do

Show Us Your Favorite Pencil

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findingthewardrobe · 7 years

Text

21 Things Only ADHDers Understand

1. When you can’t focus because you focused so hard on focusing that you’re no longer focusing on what you were trying to focus on.

Okay, I really need to listen to this lecture. There’s a lot of information here, and I need to know this, so I’ll just listen. See? Listening isn’t so bad! Listening is great. Listening is awesome, and easy, and I’m awesome at this. I’m going to ace this next exam because I’m actually focusing and listening for once … wait, what? How did we go through 10 slides so fast? What just happened?

2. The endless cycle of starting new projects, throwing yourself into them wholeheartedly, then completely losing interest … after the mess has already been made.

I don’t care if it’s 2 am on a school night, I just realized my life calling is to decorate journals with all the scraps of colored patterns and pictures I just ripped out of 50 different magazines! Let’s do this!

-the next morning-

Let me just step around these piles of ripped up paper so I can go get some books on composting …

3. The hunger like no other when your meds have worn off for the day.

Hell hath no fury like a post-Ritalin stomach.

4. Wanting, needing to sit and just get something done, but feeling like your brain is a separate person trying to pull you away from whatever you’re doing.

Time for homework. This is due tomorrow, so it has to get done. Alright, this isn’t so bad … Hang on … no, don’t get up … WHY AM I WALKING AWAY?! NO. WHAT IS HAPPENING? Aaaaaand I’m baking cookies.

5. Trying to be cool and laugh when other people joke about how “ADD” they are, but really just wanting to strangle them.

Trust me, you do not feel my pain.

6. Also wanting to strangle people when they go on and on about how fake ADHD is and how if you just had a little more discipline or didn’t watch so much TV as a child, you’d be fine.

Actually, I was rigorously tested over a pretty extensive period of time before being diagnosed by a mental health professional who determined my brain is chemically different from yours, but thanks for your expert opinion. You can go back to your Big Pharma-conspiracy-theorist blogs now.

7. Either procrastinating like it’s your job or being more focused than anyone has ever been in the history of the world.

I may or may not be putting off studying for medical nutrition therapy as we speak, but the other day I sat and worked for 8 hours straight without so much as a lunch break. There is no in between.

8. Knowing you actually do your best work under pressure, but feeling like you shouldn’t feel that way.

It helps my creative process, so just back off.

9. Spending just as much time planning to do something as actually doing it.

If there isn’t a pretty color-coded schedule of what steps you are going to take when, are you actually doing anything?

10. Having an intricate, crazy organization system that makes sense to no one but keeps your brain in order.

7 paper trays and 50 labeled and color-coded folders later … My old coworker used to get so mad at my “messy” desk, but also got pissed when it took me 15 minutes to find something because it was organized how she wanted it … PICK ONE, MARY ANNE.

11. Taking your meds too late in the day and immediately knowing it’s going to be a long night.

It’s 3 am and you have zero chance of falling asleep, but at least you’re focused!

12. Feeling like your brain is a whirling tornado of ideas, random bits of information, good intentions, and a million other things all at once.

I hate the question, “What are you thinking?” Well, let’s see. Have you got an hour or two?

13. Figuring out you can trick yourself into doing something you were putting off by putting off something you want to put off more.

A couple weeks ago I was dreading going to the gym, so to procrastinate I spent over 2 hours cleaning the condo from top to bottom, which had needed to get done for over a month. Win.

14. When the meds are too strong and your personality decided to take a vacation.

Happy, cheerful, crazy, impulsive you is gone, and a stuffed animal is here in your place.

15. Always being the most creative one in the room.

Thinking outside the box, jerry-rigging things, and switching gears on a moment’s notice is kind of my specialty, so it comes in handy a good part of the time. Coffee maker’s broken? Some ribbon and a rubber band later, it’s fixed. Need any song choreographed? On it. You want a new scarf? Let me grab my needles.

16. Feeling like a superhero when you kick yourself in the pants and get something done without getting distracted.

I am SuperWoman.

17. When your thought trail makes complete sense to you, but whoever you’re talking to is staring at you like you just broke out in Swahili.

Yeah, so my friend Hannah used to live across the street from Eminem. People always assume I do too, since I live on Six Mile which is like two streets up from Eight Mile. If it has “mile” on the end if it, people always think you’re best friends with Eminem! Have you been to Fresh Thyme on Five Mile? Literally the best grocery store ever. I basically picked my condo because it was close to it. Ugh, my upstairs neighbors are the worst. I swear, I’m about to call the cops on them. Did I tell you my sister-in-law is marrying a cop?

18. Constantly thinking you’re forgetting something.

My best friend used to call me “Gritful Forgetful,” (Grit was my maiden name) because every single day on the way to school, I’d be convinced I was forgetting something important.

19. Getting excited, way over-promising, and ending up trying to juggle a thousand things at once.

If anyone can multitask, it’s us, but we way overestimate how much we can actually do. Triple-booking yourself for coffee dates, agreeing to proofread your friend’s 20-page paper, and signing up to bake cookies for the dinner party tonight? No, I’ve definitely never done anything like that.

20. Sometimes feeling like there’s something wrong with you and wanting to be like the other kids.

Unless you find someone like you, no one can come close to understanding how your brain works. It can be a huge burden, especially when the world is set up in a way that works for the “normal” people.

21. Knowing when it comes down to it, you wouldn’t change a thing.

Your ADHD helps make you who you are. Yes, it can be difficult to manage sometimes, but it’s so worth it.

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