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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 313: Deku VS Lady Nagant

Previously on BnHA: Hawks’s super-hot badass murder senpai Lady Nagant showed up to fire a cupid’s arrow into my heart, and a bunch of literal bullets into my son. Deku was all “oh shit it’s Hawks’s super-hot badass murder senpai, what do I do, let me think back to Hawks’s advice for a sec.” Flashback!Hawks was all “anyway Deku so if my super-hot badass murder senpai ever shows up you’re basically screwed so you’d better abscond the fuck out of there.” Present!Deku was all “lol idek why I flashed back to that conversation since I’m just going to do the exact opposite of what Hawks said” and charged directly toward Nagant because WHY NOT. Overhaul was all “waah I need to get back to my boss who I put in a coma out of love” and Nagant was all “jesus christ why did I even bring you here” and had a flashback to AFO who was all “ILU NAGANT IMMA GIVE YOU AN EXTRA QUIRK SO PLEASE CAPTURE DEKU FOR ME PLEASE AND THANKS” and yeah. Shit is all over the place right now and I love it.

Today on BnHA: All Might gets attacked by a pair of discount assassins and is all “Call an ambulance! ...BUT NOT FOR ME” and it’s really badass but also I really wish he would stop tempting fate like this. Lady Nagant is all “[casually flies around town shooting shit]” and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t read an entire chapter of just that. Deku is all, “[gets shot (≥_<)]” and releases a giant Smokescreen which prompts En to show up. En is all, “( •᷄⌓•᷅ ) (⌣̀ Δ⌣́) ( •̀_•́ )σ (¬､¬) (눈_눈)” which I consider to be a high point of both the chapter and of my life. The chapter ends with Deku using the Third’s quirk to launch a bunch of random objects at Nagant so that he can jump up and grab her arm all sneaky-like, and I’m sure this is going to prompt another week’s worth of discourse that I don’t care about at all, but fuck it, I’m having a good time.

OH WE’RE CUTTING BACK TO ALL MIGHT WELL THAT’S NICE I GUESS. CONGRATS ON NOT BEING DEAD

you named your car??

you named it Hercules??

I love you so much??

please marry me you giant fucking dork???

lmao speaking of huge fucking dorks

who the fuck are you clowns. la dee da we’re gonna murder All Might with our synchronized spear attack!! I mean... they’re clearly trying their best... maybe I should just be nice and politely hype them up like All Might is so clearly trying to do

like okay, but we all agree that this is actually the least intimidating attack any of us has ever seen, right?? these guys zipped up their hoodies all serious-like and are trying to attack All Might and Hercules with their Walmart tiki torches, but just, no?? right?? like the only way this could possibly be effective is if they were trying to kill All Might with secondhand embarrassment

“those are assassins” this is a VERY generous assessment, All Might

OH MY GOD THE TIKI TORCHES ACTUALLY KILLED THE FUCK OUT OF HERCULES

[slaps roof of car] this baby can fit so many weaponized festive backyard lighting solutions in it

and yet, even after watching this with my own two eyes, I still can’t take these dudes seriously. idek what it is. anyways r.i.p. Hercules, I loved you a lot but I guess you weren’t actually a very good armored car were you

omg they didn’t know it was All Might??

okay 1) for a moment there I was like “oh hey maybe they’re not so bad after all” but then a moment later it was like “ah nope, they are.” like, that was an interesting .06 second emotional journey there. anyways 2) All Might you have my permission to kick their asses for this disrespect, and 3) anyone else all of a sudden getting “wouldn’t this be an interesting time for Stain to suddenly show up” vibes?? no?? just me???

(ETA: hmm tbh I’ve still got those vibes and they haven’t gone away lol. Stain?? you out there buddy?? do you want to be cool for just once in your life. ball’s in your court pal.)

OH SNAP ALL MIGHT ARE YOU REALLY GONNA DO IT ARE YOU GONNA KICK THEIR ASSES

PROTECTIVE DAD MODE ACTIVATED?? BECAUSE YOU KNOW I’M HERE FOR THAT SHIT, SO YEAH, FEEL FREE

omg he’s shouting at them about how much Deku has suffered lmao and they’re just like falling over from being scolded

so they have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about though, right? “SIR THIS IS A WENDY’S” well whatever, you killed his pet car so he’s in a bad mood now

OH MY GOD

LIKE, JUST SO WE’RE ALL CLEAR, THESE FOUR PAGES SO FAR HAVE MADE ALMOST ZERO SENSE. LIKE MAYBE 2% SENSE TOPS. BUT ASK ME IF I CARE. GO AHEAD AND ASK. I SAID GO AHEAD, IT’S OKAY. ...NO I DON’T CARE AT ALL THANK YOU FOR ASKING

(ETA: also, the more I look at this panel, the more I’m just like, why the hell would you phrase it like that though, sob. way to doubly tempt fate?? are you trying to give Horikoshi a challenge??)

and now back to Deku who is randomly bouncing around the city and narrating it to himself just in case he was confused about why he was doing this

who are you talking to Deku. but thanks we appreciate it

man you gotta love that overconfidence. the smartest guy in the world warned you away from this lady, so SURE, LET’S RUN RIGHT UP TO HER. “I APPRECIATE YOUR INPUT, FLASHBACK!HAWKS, BUT I’LL TAKE IT FROM HERE” well okay then!!

I think it would be funny if RHA.com put little Buzzfeed-style polls in between the chapter pages so they could survey people at random intervals as they read their way through the chapter. like, you finish this page and then there’s a little poll there asking “do you think Deku’s plan of catching up to Lady Nagant and finding out where Shigaraki is will work?”, and you click “no” just like everyone else and then nod as the results show that 97% of your fellow readers also picked “no”, and you chuckle to yourself wondering how many of the 3% accidentally clicked on the wrong option by mistake, and then you keep on reading

ANYWAY, SO

HOW’S THAT PLAN WORKING OUT FOR YOU SO FAR DEKU. nice kick, though!!

omggggggg

ouch

update: Deku’s plan not really working out. sources tell me my boy has been fucking shot. this is an ongoing story and we will keep you posted with the latest developments as they come in

wait what

feel free to explain to the rest of us what all of this “UNLESS...” and “THAT POSSIBILITY...” shit means anytime, Deku

oh lol did he realize she could fly??

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE, CNN’s John King reports that Deku is still fucked. eyewitness reports now coming in that Nagant is doing no-look shots and basically not even giving a fuck. sources described her mannerisms and expression as “sexy, but in like an effortless sort of way.” we will continue to bring you the latest

so now there’s basically an entire page of Deku being all “ah fuck so she’s basically closing in and she could already hit me with impossible accuracy even from Far Away, so if that’s the case then her being Up Close is probably going to be even worse!” making good use of that Big Hero Brain there, Deku

so now what, you’re doing some kind of spiraling kick thing?? how is that going to help

oh lol he’s using Smokescreen to create some cover. aww, good for you Deku you named one of your Smokescreen attacks

OH NO LADY DON’T TELL ME AFO DIDN’T EVEN FILL YOU IN ON THE BASICS

seriously, AFO?? you basically told her what Deku’s exact strategy was going to be but then couldn’t be assed to drop that little, small, barely notable piece of knowledge that Deku is rocking multiple quirks?? is it supposed to be a secret or something?? you dropped the ball here man

damn this is getting intense now

(ETA: the way En is poking Deku’s head in that first panel is fucking sending me, I love this guy so much omg.)

well then what are you planning, Deku?? I’m actually really curious!! I am genuinely starting to be invested in this fight scene not only in the “wanting to see who wins and how that impacts the plot” sense, but also in the “wanting to see how it happens because the choreography and strategy is actually pretty cool” sense, which honestly hasn’t happened for quite a while now! this is fun

anyway so what’s up Deku, are you going to use another quirk?? I’ve been speculating that he hasn’t actually unlocked the last two yet (since Two and Three didn’t exactly seem convinced when we last saw them), but maybe I’m about to be proven wrong

(ETA: well he clearly has Three’s obviously, but Two’s is still MIA, and that’s the one I am of course the most curious about. that’s the one we’re all curious about, let’s be real.)

OH SNAP???

AHHHH I’M HYPED LOL. ANOTHER SHINY NEW QUIRK LOL SHOULD I PUT UP THE USUAL DISCOURSE DISCLAIMER

(ETA: so yeah, after thinking on it, I’m not gonna say “please no Deku discourse on my blog” this week, but I probably will ignore any discourse that does come my way though, just because I don’t have much interest in getting involved in what would probably be a pretty repetitive discussion. like, I can just sum up my opinions (which is what they are) here instead. in fact here they are lol:

1) I like the SIXQUIRKS and I like seeing Deku be a badass.

2) I also don’t think Deku is too OP. more like he’s exactly as OP as he needs to be at the moment, given that we’re approaching the end of the series. I expect the other kids will also be pretty damn OP when we see them fight again. we’re just at that point now where they’re all badasses (as well they should be; they’ve grown a lot and they deserve it). it’s just that Deku’s the one we’re getting to see right now.

3) of course I miss Kacchan and the others, but for me this vibes much closer to the MVA arc where even though I missed them, I was still having a blast (as opposed to the dark days of the Basement arc where I was pretty much losing it lol). like, even though Kacchan’s my favorite, I still love Deku a lot and this arc has been amazing for him getting to shine on his own (for like the first time, really).

4) y’all know I love the OFA plot and I’ve never been shy about that lol. I like all of the Vestiges a lot. Banjou and his over the top personality; En and his “guy you thought would be serious and :| all the time but is actually hyper-animated and ALL OVER THE PLACE” energy; Shiro who actually is a :| sort of guy lol; Three who I still expect will be fleshed out in a more detailed flashback at some point; and of course Two, who, well. you know what I think about him lol. Bakuverse is still on the table and I’m still hyped. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we still have yet to see Two actually talk to Deku (as opposed to talking to the other Vestiges while Deku is distracted). did he lend him his power yet?? or is he still holding out?? either way it’s definitely going to be a Big Thing when it finally happens and I can’t wait to see it.

5) Lady Nagant is Everything and just because Deku grabbed her arm doesn’t mean the fight is over yet lol. Overhaul hasn’t come into play yet either. not to mention that even if the fight is over, the “where do we go from here” part still has me excited either way. her connection to Hawks and the HPSC is very intriguing and we’ve barely touched on that as of yet; she definitely has more of a role to play in this.

6) last but not least, I feel like every week the discussion is all about how much focus Deku’s getting, and how OP he is or isn’t, and OFA this and OFA that, but meanwhile I’m actually so invested in the character development here though?? the way Deku has distanced himself from everyone (except for the Vestiges, because of course they’re already dead so it’s not like they can die again lol)?? the way he’s pushing himself far too hard and we can see the shadows in and under his eyes, and the fact that he never smiles, and even All Might has remarked on how he isn’t taking care of himself at all?? the fact that he’s so single-mindedly obsessed with focused on stopping AFO?? the fact that he’s still the same sweet old Deku despite everything and was so kind to that fox lady with the umbrella, but there was also something so sad about that scene because it felt like a reminder of the type of hero that he wants to be, but that he’s not allowed to be right now?? because the stakes are too high and the world is falling apart?? and he feels like he’s the only one who can do something about it?? and that he has to be?? and that he is putting so much pressure on himself right now, and it’s absolutely too much pressure for any one person to bear, and I feel like no one is fucking talking about this lol goddammit.

anyway so yeah. I have feels about this, and every week that slow-burn angst is getting more and more intense behind the scenes, and I feel like it’s all going to hit a breaking point eventually. sooner rather than later. it really feels like a mirror of Katsuki’s post-Kamino arc. where all that angst was just churning below the surface for like twenty chapters and then it finally was like “okay it’s time” and it all came bursting out and we got the best five chapters of the fucking series (in my admittedly biased estimation lol).

basically, I know that most of fandom is billing this as either the “villain hunt” arc or the “solo Deku SIXQUIRKS fighting arc” or whatever. but for me, it’s always been and still is the Deku Angst arc lol. the cool fights are a sexy bonus (the worldbuilding less so because even though it’s interesting to see society at such a low point, it’s also very depressing and gets old pretty fast), but for me the thing that’s really keeping me engaged chapter after chapter is seeing Deku like we’ve never seen him before. seeing him all quiet and withdrawn and brooding and focused on AFO, AFO, AFO, and seeing that “he just doesn’t take himself into account” mentality taken to extremes. I am invested in that. I’m soaking up that angst each and every week, and I’m invested in seeing what comes of it. it’s a big picture thing. week to week this arc might just seem like a bunch of villain fight scenes, sure. but Deku’s emotional journey is the thread that’s going to carry this arc through from beginning to end, and for that I’m willing to be patient.

anyway that turned into a BIG OL’ RANT there but yeah! so those are my thoughts on the disk horse as it currently stands. and like I said, I’m open to discussion, but tbh I will probably just wind up repeating these same talking points endlessly so just a fair warning lol.)

anyway so Three says Deku has yet to use his quirk at ALL but now he’s trying to combine it with another quirk?? damn. also please check out En’s face here you guys

En launching a sneak attack up my favorite character list by the sheer power of his expressions alone. he really knows how to make the most of his screentime

OH DAMN DEKU

at this point the 3% from that hypothetical poll earlier are starting to feel prettttty damn smug, I’ll bet. well shit

what in the fuck

?? so like releasing his chi or whatnot?? isn’t that basically just like base OFA all over again?? also Deku did you seriously just apologize to Gran’s cape

update: Nagant has turned her eyeball into a gun

hm. hmmmmmmm. ...okay yep, still somehow sexy

anyway so she’s just floating up there building suspense, as one does. lord I sure hope she has good reflexes because something tells me she’s going to need them

OH SNAP HE THREW GRAN’S CAPE AS A DECOY WHAAAAT OKAY THAT’S SOME SMART SHIT DEKU

LOL SHE’S MAD NOW

JESUS CHRIST SHE JUST NEVER TAKES A GODDAMN BREAK FROM BEING AWESOME HUH

DEKU ARE YOU JUST THROWING EVERY DAMN THING IN YOUR INVENTORY

but without the cape and the hood how will you continue to look like an enigmatic badass. you really can’t. which means we might finally be moving on from the wandering nomad part of this arc, stay tuned

LOL YOU MANIAC

I hope he went full Kacchan with the dialogue there. his face sure looks like it lol. popped out of a building all mad fdskljlkj omg

well this was fun, shit. I still have basically no idea what Three’s quirk does though lol. like, can he use it to charge up objects with kinetic energy or something?? but then what was all of that talk about combining it with one of the other quirks?? or was that just because he was using Smokescreen at the same time??

(ETA: having seen and read an additional half-dozen explanations of Three’s quirk, I can say with confidence that I still have basically no idea what it is or does.)

anyway so!! Deku is a badasssssss but something tells me not to count Nagant out just yet even so. also I really enjoy seeing Deku flip out on people like he doesn’t have a fucking hole in his torso because it reminds me of A CERTAIN SOMEONE and I always love to see him channeling that feral energy; I feel like it’s been a while

anyways good luck to you both!! I truly wish that both of you could win. but if not, then maybe you can at least become friends instead. you have so much in common, you both can fly and have multiple quirks and you’re both badasses, and plus it would just be really funny to see the look on Hawks’s face lmao

#bnha 313 #midoriya izuku #lady nagant #bnha meta #deku meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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davidmann95 · 3 years

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Thoughts on DC's on time and apparently competently done solicits?

Batman: The Imposter #1: So is this guy cowriting The Batman or not? Looks like the answer is 'not' at this point and this is his consolation prize; if this is based on his scrapped ideas, shame on DC for making this but not an adaptation of Nic Cage Superman.

Arkham City: The Order of the World #1: Less than no interest in the premise but oh my god that creative team and that cover, insta-buy.

Catwoman #36: RAM V WRITING GHOSTMAKER, THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Detective Comics #1044: ...David Lapham is drawing a backup?

I Am Batman #2: Jesus, Coipel's gone already?

Task Force Z #1: Wait, why's Man-Bat here?

Batman: The Long Halloween Special: Utterly shameless on the part of everyone involved.

Catwoman: Lonely City #1: So Black Label's been picking up some de facto subgenres of the kind of stuff it's doing, and is 'older Catwoman after Batman's dead' becoming one of them?

DC Vs. Vampires #1: Not clear what niche this fills when Taylor's still definitely doing DC3sed down the road, and I assume Tynion's involvement will be minimal, so this might be a pass.

EDIT: Anonymous asked: Tynion seems like the main guy on DC Vampires from his newsletter! He was the one who pitched it, then brought Rosenberg on board as co-writer.

This does sound a lot more interesting, I'll check it out after all.

Human Target #1: All about it! I think Smallwood was being rightfully groomed as a big name in the making only to be working on Moon Knight when everything came out about Brian Wood, glad to see him making a comeback. Not that familiar with the characters' comics adventures, but it's a good concept that's a great fit for King and that's before Lex gets involved. The only problem is that my love for the franchise doesn't come from the comics - which means I'll inevitably be disappointed by this being something very different - it comes from the TV show, specifically the best opening credits of all time:

youtube

Aquaman/Green Arrow - Deep Target #1: Bonkers pairing but really looking forward to what Thomas will do with it.

Batman: The Audio Adventures Special: Did this podcast start and I heard nothing about it?

Wonder Woman 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular: Very solid lineup of talent, looking forward to this.

Wonder Woman: Historia #1: At last! I'm not the biggest DeConnick fan but I'm very interested in this, even if it's a shame they finally bit the bullet and brought in other artists for the other issues even if the alternative would be waiting another 5 years or thereabouts for Jimenez.

Nubia & The Amazons #1: Was initially very uninterested but realized I was mixing up Stephanie Williams with Stephanie Phillips, I'll definitely check this out.

Wonder Woman: The Adventures of Young Diana Special #1: If you haven't been getting the regular Wonder Woman definitely grab this collection of the backup feature, it's a lot of fun.

Action Comics #1036: THE CREW IS HERE. Clark wearing his regular clothes and not graying seems to confirm Morrison's guy in Superman and The Authority won't be the 'regular' Clark, however that plays out, which is alright with me given it'll likely help that stand alone as a perennial more strongly. Wonder if Janin comes on partway through here.

Batman/Catwoman #8: lol

Justice League #69: Gonna go ahead and be the one with the courage to say this should have been the issue about the League having an orgy, you know Bendis wants it

Superman vs. Lobo #2: Ok, this sounds fun.

Superman: Son of Kal-El #4: Really keeping it ambiguous beyond the basic details, though this really sounds like it's pushing the "bright mirror to Injustice" comparison.

#DC Comics #Opinion

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riceball1759 · 3 years

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Reading Tips from your Hyper Librarian

"So many books, so little time", right? If anyone understands this, it's us bibliophiles and librarians (and publishers) -especially someone like me! My interests are super varied and many times, I'll start reading a few chapters in a book that REALLY REALLY interests me...but then, I have that ADHD SHINY moment and the poor thing is forgotten. Seriously, this is a constant struggle. Being a librarian makes this even more important that I know what I'm recommending. And I do! I just can't get the focus to actually read them>< I'm part of a committee that is assigned reading every year for 3 months (give or take) and -you guessed it- I get that done. Why? It's got a deadline and I churn through them like nobody's business. It also helps that I didn't choose them and they aren't always what I normally like to read. It gives me an edge when helping certain patrons look for something I normally don't read. Not that I don't have an idea already -it's just more cemented than usual since I actually read that particular book. Though I kinda gave you one of my tips in this blurb, I'll rehash later!

A little more on my SHINY moments and then we'll get to my tips! Like I said before, SHINY really takes a toll sometimes on my goals, but it also helps. How? Situation: I hear all this buzz about this upcoming book (debut author/fresh voice/intriguing plotline/etc.). I either miraculously get an ARC or I'm waiting with bated breath, for the dang thing to get shipped to my library so that I can "steal" it for the weekend before it gets catalogued (I tell everyone I'm borrowing it, so don't judge me!). If all goes according to plan, I DEVOUR it within a day and come back exclaiming all the virtues of reading said book. I might even write a glowing review (if I had the capacity at the time). This has happened with a few books in the past years: Stay Gold, Wicked Fox & Vicious Spirits, Ember in the Ashes, Invisible Differences, and a few others, but I can't remember right now. Point: it's super hard for me to get the reading I want done, actually done.

AND NOW, for the star of our show: The Hyper Librarian's Reading Tips!

Please remember, these are things I remind myself of when I'm having a hard time getting through my TBR (the library-books-out-that-are-due TBR). Some lead into or are extensions of others, but being specific is necessary for me. You can adapt them to your needs or or just copy/paste them into your life :)

1) It's ok to DNF. So you gave this book the 'old college try' and just can't do it -it's becoming torturous and you're at risk of going into the dreaded slump... Just stop already and save yourself more grief. Another reason is that you're just not in the mood to finish, so don't. Why torture yourself (again -I seem to like using this word, but it's so accurate at times!) by seeing a book lying close by that you wish was anywhere but? Some of us (incl. moi) have a shelf on Goodreads just for those pesky things. Let's cut the drama and move on! I find it therapeutic as well as final.

2) You are your own censorship committee. We all have that verbal content line where ~once toed/crossed~ our tolerance, belief, comfort level, etc., is compromised to the point where there's no enjoyment because of that one or more 'tidbits' giving you grief. Sometimes, I'll scan several reviews before starting because I want to make sure I don't get any 'surprises'. Most times, I get to that proverbial part that has me slamming the book closed, never to be opened again (dramatic, yes, but sometimes very true!). {{Point}}: you are the only person keeping you from reading something you don't like!

3) Be picky! You are as unique as your fingerprint. Why wouldn't your reading habits follow? If you get a rec that is absolutely not your thing, say no (thank you). It's not fair to you if you're just going to trudge through it anyway for the sake of being polite to friends/family/librarians/coworkers/etc (publishers, I'm sorry). If you like vampires, werewolves, and all things paranormal (like me) don't despair of the current books coming out -look back to the '90s and '00s! Reading is one of the most personal things we experience in our lives. {{Please, for the sake of your sanity}}: read reviews, look for trigger warnings (if that applies to you), verify that historically under-represented voices are portrayed correctly (misinformation is our greatest threat). For example: I won't buy a book about LGBT+ characters without verifying the plot as authentic (i.e. all fluff and no real problems vs real problems with a happy ending). I need to know that the book about that Transgender girl is written by someone who is either also Transgender or very well-informed.

4) Own your reading preferences. Just own it. I read somewhere in a journal interview that the concept of "guilty pleasure" shouldn't exist. So you like SJM's ACOTAR and are all about that fan community life, but are afraid to talk about it even though it's basically a mainstream subculture now? {{Point}}: Stop feeling guilty for what makes you happy! If people judge, that's their problem. I read romance for stress relief and because I just happen to like happy endings. Seriously, people need to stop shaming romance readers and self-shame is a huge part! Don't shame yourself, "SHUN THE NON-BELIEVERS"! (Charlie the Unicorn, RIP in Youtube history)

5) It's ok to read more than one book at a time. If you're anything like me (the Attention Deficit part), you probably have up to 5 books going at the same time: that paperback at home, the ebook on your phone, audiobook in the car, hardcover in your office, etc. (I know that's not 5 -I ran out of ideas!). Point: it's only natural you're in the mood for something different at certain periods of the day, week, or whatever. They'll get finished eventually. Just spare a thought for the 1 or 2 that are a little extra "dusty" cuz that might mean you need to DNF...just a thought.

6) Book clubs are your friend! They can be your enemy, too; but here's what you do: choose one that reads almost everything you want to in a specific genre. I'm not talking the next bestseller (unless that's you). I'm talking genre-specific and something you researched before joining. Online or in-person, this is has the potential for changing your reading habits for the better because you'll actually want to interact and read the books! I decided to join a book club so I could finally talk about a niche genre that is one of my favorites: Christian fiction. No one around me reads this (anymore) and I have no one to talk to (regularly) and trade recs with, so I joined a Facebook group and it's really nice to chat about all these great books and authors I've recently read with others who do the same:)

7) Book journaling. Yes, you may have heard of these things. There are so many ways to journal about your reading: bullet journals, the blank ones where you can let loose your creativity, the ones like from Moleskin where you just fill in the pre-determined spaces (aka: reading log), lined journals for writing your heart out, themed reading planners and TBR journals... Just look it up, the interwebs has you covered. The key is to use them as a tool for expanding and enriching your enjoyment or education (nonfic). I don't journal for everything, but I do like to do it for the ones I know I'm going to review later or for general reflections as I read. I started doing it by chapters, but that doesn't cut it when something jumps out at me from a random page and I NEED to write about it immediately. So, I make note of the page # and we good! I'm very personal in my writing (if you can't tell) and it can turn into tangents, but that's how I roll. I don't do that artsy stuff because that takes away from the reason I'm doing this in the first place. I write about anything regarding my reading -incl my reading slumps. I love it.

Wishing you Happy Reading! Thank you for reading:)

#reading #reading tips #books #reading is life #booksarelife #happy reading #reading problems #reading slump #book journal #booklr #reading blog #book blog #book club #reading advice #bookblr #adhd

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newtedison · 3 years

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my thoughts on the crank palace

i touched about this a bit on twitter (@newtedison_) but i figured i would Try and touch on my points more here (spoilers obv) again, its sort of lengthy

1. im gonna start with talking about the ending because i need to get it out of the way. either i havent read the books in a while and i forgot some canon (which could very well be true, i literally forgot that Bliss was a thing) or this ending makes no sense and is (somehow) setting up for a tdc sequel? so first off, newt was shot in the Head with a Bullet and somehow didnt immediately die? i know that that can happen in real life but it just seems so unlikely that not only would he not die, but he would survive long enough for someone from WCKD to transport him back to their labs and try to revive him. and who the fuck was he talking to? did thomas get newt’s journal at some point and i just dont remember? like i said, either im forgetting stuff or this ending doesnt make sense and is setting up a sequel which...i’ll get to later

2. why was this written? like, what was the point? i understand that this wasnt going to be all sunshine and rainbows but i feel like i was reading torture porn. like, literally all that happens is newt gets tortured (which is described in detail) by WCKD soldiers, has bouts of insane-fueled rage where he KILLS MULTIPLE PEOPLE, and then he dies. ??? what did this contribute to the canon? what was this trying to accomplish? truthfully, i never really wanted a newt-POV...well, anything except for maybe those little nuggets he wrote some time ago. but even if i HAD wanted a newt-POV novella, this is not what i would have wanted. he KNOWS that newt is almost universally the most loved character in this franchise. you can tell because he constantly uses him as a way to get fans in his good graces again. so why on earth would he take that character that so many people love and write a novella where its torture porn and a descent into madness before death? i am not interested in that At All. i’ve read fics (and even written a drabble) where newt is a Crank, and those were more respectful and easier to read than tcp. the parts where newt is having bouts of the Flare were literally exhausting to read; it was described in such vivid and torturous detail that it made me sick reading it. and it didnt help that newt is a character i care a lot about. i didn’t need to know what becoming a Crank felt like. the way it was described in the other books (and even the movies) told me everything i needed to know. the way thomas and everyone found newt at the crank palace in tdc and hes described as obviously not well, but not knowing what exactly happened to him...thats good enough on its own. the mystery of what exactly newt had to endure is part of what gives his journey more emotional depth. not everything needs to be written out and explained. not every gap needs to be filled in.

3. me saying “the characterization felt off” is going to make some people roll their eyes because ‘duh, sami, the characterization will be off because he’s going insane’ to which i say...exactly. we weren’t really reading a newt-POV novella, were we? even if he isn’t past the Gone in the beginning, hes clearly not the same person we knew him as. the whole novella felt like an uncanny valley situation; i knew i was supposed to be reading about newt, but it felt like i was reading about someone else who looked like him. and that is part of what made this such a disconnect and made me lose interest at parts. not only that, but the world building and lore is inconsistent. newt makes a comment about how it used to rain in the glade, and apparently (as ive been told) that is simply not true. keisha having somehow working cell phone that magically connects her to her family also doesnt make sense. how would they have each others’ numbers? what are the odds that they BOTH found working cell phones in an apocalypse? i get that its a novella but you cant just throw something that crazy in there as a plot convenience. actually work on your plot and world building in a cohesive way, please. and another thing that doesnt make sense...

4. ...is newt finding out that sonya is his sister. if there was anything i would have wanted from a newt-pov novella, it would have been this. him finding out that not only is sonya his sister, but he already knows her post-WCKD. something that would have made this novella actually captivating, contributing something worthwhile to the canon that i would actually want to read, is if newt found out while in the crank palace that sonya was his sister; the Flare would remove that part of the Slice in his brain, and he would realize it was her. then, knowing that he couldnt go past the Gone before seeing her, he would try to find a way to get back to her. he could learn this after thomas and everyone originally see him, so it could match up with the canon. and then, by the time 250 comes along, hes lost all hope of that actually happening, and lashes out to thomas in a fit of rage. the journey of him trying to find his ACTUAL sister would have meant more to me than the story of keisha and dante. trust me, i love a found family trope as much as the next girl. but this series is FULL of the found family trope. it pretty much is the backbone of the franchise. so to see a blood family dynamic would have been a refreshing change of pace that i actually would have been interested in reading. also, the way that newt DOES find out about sonya is...underwhelming. he just randomly says “you remind me of my sister, sonya” to keisha in the WCKD truck. first of all, sonya is not the name you would actually know her by. you would know her by her birth name (which is lizzy? elizabeth?). second, why does he act like he didnt already meet her in the series? when the WCKD doctor tells him sonya is his sister and is alive, hes so surprised. wouldn’t he have known that already? why is there not more emphasis on the fact he already met her? that would have been a really interesting dynamic to explore, and im sad they didnt

5. the pacing and dialogue of tcp is so dragged out. i remember specifically there was a section where newt goes to talk to keisha after she starts abandoning dante, and i swear to god there was a page and a half of text before anything ACTUALLY happened or anyone ACTUALLY said anything. dashner described a launcher at one point as “the energy dependent electric firing projectile device.” that’s SIX words to describe a stun gun. a fucking stun gun! we know what it is! why did you have to use six words??? it just felt like everything was dragged and stretched to the longest it could possibly be and it added to the exhaustion i felt while reading it

6. okay i cant end it without talking about newtmas. its very obvious by now that newtmas is a VERY large part of this fanbase. its clearly the most popular ship and what keeps a lot of people interested in this series. even the marketing team for the MOVIES used newtmas as a advertising tactic (i.e.; using thomas and newt standing face to face as a thumbnail for the trailer, emphasizing newtmas based questions in interviews, even making a fucking facebook memories video for them. yes that last one is real). not only does dashner use newt as a way to lure fans in; he also uses newtmas. the parts that were sprinkled into this were so obvious that it didnt feel authentic. i cant speak for the original trilogy; i dont know the culture around ships back then, and i dont know how much it influenced his writing at the time. but the scenes in those books felt more genuine than tcp. by genuine i mean; he wrote scenes without a relationship in mind, but the chemistry had noticeable subtext that, while unintentional, was largely agreed upon by the larger audience. the parts of newtmas he added into tcp felt artificial and forced, likely as a way for people to take snippets of and use as a free marketing tool for him. one example you might have already seen; “he had already gotten used to his post-thomas, post-WCKD life.” the fact that dashner SPECIFICALLY used the phrase “post-thomas” rather than “post-his friends” or something similar shows that he is using newtmas as a hook on purpose. not only that, but to make newt’s last thoughts as he died “tommy. tommy will understand...” is...wow. first of all, i never wanted to know what newt’s dying thoughts were, but thanks, i guess? and second, when we all initially thought newt died underneath thomas with a gun to his head, i was pretty much inferred that newts last thoughts would probably be about thomas; they would sort of have to be, given the circumstances. so adding that in gives me the same feeling that “i’m coming for you, newt” at the end of the fever code gave me. not as offensive, but written very much on purpose. and the ending is implying that there will somehow be a sequel where thomas gets newt’s journal from...someone. at this point, i can only think that this sequel will retroactively make newtmas canon somehow. now that newt has been confirmed as gay, it could happen. which brings me to my last point...

7. hearing dashner confirm newt is gay was already mind-boggling before. now that i’ve read the crank palace...im angry. im very angry. i think its safe to say that newt is the character that suffers the most in this series. you can argue with me but hes definitely high on the list, if not #1. so; you take this character. you give him a horribly sad arc in the original trilogy, then decide to expand upon it and tell us, your largely QUEER fanbase, exactly how painful and torturous his last days were, in detail. and then you tell us he’s gay. something that is never mentioned in the canon, only in an offhanded reply to a tweet of someone calling you out. on a base level, i can understand why people would be happy. representation (i guess), seeing themselves in the character, having their headcanons be confirmed. great. but what i see is you telling your largely queer fanbase “hey, you see the only confirmed gay character? im going to literally write torture porn about him before killing him off and offer it to you like im providing a service to your community.” how fucked up is that? “hey, kids, if youre gay, you WILL be violently tortured and become violent and a danger to the ones you love. then you will die and your love will never be reciprocated.” what a message! and if he DOES end up retroactively making newtmas “canon” in some weird sequel...i will start foaming at the mouth. THIS is an example of how not all queer representation is good or genuine.

i’ve definitely forgotten some points but this is long enough already. let me know if you agree or if theres anything else you want to add! im interested in what you guys think

(8. I JUST REMEMBERED!!! if WCKD needed to study newt so bad bc sonya is his sister and is immune while he isnt, why did they let him run around the crank palace in the first place??? you cant test his vitals or anything you’re literally just watching him. what is the point????)

#my fingers hurt from typing lol #the crank palace #the maze runner #newt #newtmas #anyway...

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microbiologynerdd · 4 years

Text

Effective Revision Methods - Learn Smarter NOT Harder

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all well! Lets jump straight into it!

Revision. The daunting task for every student, with the hardest thing being where to start. So, today I’ve decided to share with you my process, things that have worked for me, things that haven’t, and where to start.

What type of learner are you?

This is such an important question because you need to cater YOUR revision to YOU. This being visual, auditory or kinesthetic/tactile learning. If you aren’t sure just google ‘what type of learner am I quiz’ you can find hundreds of quizzes to find out. Or usually, you can deduce it from your current revision methods or the methods you know you defiantly hate. But remember you can be a mix, e.g. I’m both a visual and kinesthetic learner. Auditory learning is not my jam – seriously I hate it… haha.

Once you know this you can make your learning EFFECTIVE, use your EVERY ADVANTAGE to learn content. No point listening to your notes if you are visual learner right? Catering to your style means that content which took you 1 hour to learn before could actually be learnt in 30 mins. Who doesn’t want SHORTER REVISION TIME but with the SAME quantity of information absorbed?

Ineffective revision methods:

1. STOP READING THE TEXTBOOK. – I’ve said it, your teachers said it, EVERYONE has properly said it. So STOP! This passive revision method well sucks. If you do not attempt to recall information from your brain you are not making ‘connections’ between neurones (cells) within your brain – or at least not at the rate you could be. More ‘connections’ = More information learnt (more or less).

2. Copying your notes – Not as horrendous as the devils spawn above, but still not ideal. You are not retrieving this information from your brain, and as mentioned above this is a really important factor.

EFFECTIVE revision methods:

This section is split into 2 parts depending on the type of assessment.

For multiple choice questions/ short answer questions:

1. Flashcards - Flashcards are my favourite.

Writing the cards allows you to consolidate your learning, find out what you don’t understand and what you do understand. I recommend Anki or Quizlet for my visual/kinesthetic learners and recording your cards on your phone for my auditory learners. You can’t write a card on something you don’t understand! Once you’ve consolidated into cards you can go straight to learning! Skipping the time consuming and ineffective ‘copying your notes’ stage. More Time spent Learning the cards, rather than copying notes = more knowledge obtained, and most likely better grades!

I know a lot of people are guilty of writing their notes out, then writing flashcards - me included. But this is essentially the same step. I’m not saying you wont absorb any knowledge from doing this, but you will learn more from practicing the flashcards... hence why you write them in the first place ;)

2. Practice papers/ Questions

Would you go into a driving test without ever driving a car before? No? Then, why are you doing this for exams? Practice papers don’t only allow you to test your knowledge but also practice your time-management during the exam. And if you are lucky sometimes questions can be repeated between each different exam years. FREE MARKS – HELL YES!

3. Focused group revision

I use the word ‘focused’ for a reason. Going to the library with your friends to ‘revise’ aka chat about last nights football game or the latest group gossip isn’t really going to help your grades – but you already know that. However, coming together, each with a set of questions, and asking each other about them will help. You will consolidate further the information you do know, and you will learn new information from your friends and vice versa. This method is great for kinesthetic and auditory learners.

For essay-based assessments:

1. Essay plan mind maps

Mind-maps. Mind-maps are a great way to plan potential essays for an exam, but you don’t want to be writing out full essays word for word. Hence why I recommend mind-maps. This style forces you to stay concise so you do not run out of room on the page. Try and keep 1 essay plan per page.

2. Recalling essay plans

Writing them is great, but no point writing them if you can’t remember them. So practice writing them out from memory and then fill in the gaps. Great for information learning but also great for structure learning too! This also helps you link ideas together, practicing what the you’ll be required to do in the exam. This is often a problem I find with using flashcards for essays, you are ‘triggered’ by the MCQ (multiple choice question), whereas in an essay exam you must create your own triggers to unlock the information you have learnt, from the previous sentence you have written

3. Essay plan lists:

For my friends who hate mind-maps. I use essay lists – picture below. Simply write those mind map branches in a chronological bullet-point list. I use different colours to separate the information. Try and keep all the information on one page!

4. Group Study:

This is the same as the group study above but this time discuss topics as a group, as though you were writing the essay aloud. Or work together to plan an essay together, using as much detail as possible. You will learn new phrasing and information from your peers. Use mark schemes too if they are available, but often at university level, they are not – a bit annoying I know.

But what if I love note taking/ reading from the textbook?

Okay, let’s make your note-taking a bit more effective.

Write out your notes, but ensure you are consolidating and not copying. Copying won’t help. At the end of each page or each topic, write yourself a list of questions about the information you have just written. And then when you come to learn the information e.g. by reading it out loud to yourself hundreds of times; make sure you test yourself with these questions at the end and see what you can recall. This way you are still actively recalling this information.

My experience:

What I am trying to ‘sell’ you is this concept of active recall. If you actively recall something you are more likely to remember the information than if you are passively writing or reading. Once you have done this you need to go over this information at different time intervals i.e. spaced repetition. Anki – the flashcard app I mentioned earlier really helps me do this. If you want more information on space repetition or how I do this then let me know in the comments.

All of the above information comes from my education experience, I have tried note copying, reading my notes throughout GCSE and A level. Yes, they got me where I am, but using my time with efficient methods could have given my grades an extra boost like it has done at university. Once I took some time to look into ‘effective’ revision methods AND implemented them, my revision game changed – and so can yours.

The information I’ve provided above is based on studies, not just some fairy-tale I have made up – This source and others online can show you the real positive impact active recall methods have on your learning. My explanations above are purposely ‘not sciencey’ but understanding this concept matters not the exact science. Active recall sounds like a big word, but its literally just testing yourself from the earliest opportunity.

Conclusion

I think by now you get the point and I don’t need to keep babbling on. But if you are to take anything from this post about revision is to:

1. Revise by the type of learner you are

2. Test yourself from the earliest opportunity.

Switch up your learning, make it exciting, make it effective. Then, you have more time to learn different content or for your leisure activities. More knowledge in less time!

As always you’ve got this!

Speak soon,

Lucinda x

P.s If you have any methods that work for you, mention them in the comments below!

#revision tips #revision #active recall #studyspo #Studytips #study motivation #motivation #anki #quizlet #studyblr #ukstudyblr #college #university #alevels #undergraduate #youve got this

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themadauthorshatter · 3 years

Text

WELCOME BACK!

Kind of a loud intro, but I'm working on this early since I'm on a creative wave and don't want to get off.

Quick recap of parts 8 and 9, like super fast, so pay attention, class, because I'll only explain it 82 more times so I don't forget: After the successful rescue that totally went off without a hitch, Henry took a page from Right's book and arranged a video call and hostage swap: Reginald for Charles. Right agreed, but Charles had other opinions. After a heartfelt Copperright reunion, Charles ruins it by bringing a gun to the peace meeting, but Henry literally jumps into action and the two start fighting, something Henry totally started, if you ask Charles, and won fair and square, if you ask Henry. The CCC sees the whole thing and try to use Terrence as a means to an end before the scuffle ends with a shot to the hand delivered by Galeforce and Charles passes out because he's a sore loser and tired. They head back to the base, more worried about Charles than Right's and Reginald's escape by to the orbital station.

As always, feel free to catch up fully on the previous parts right here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

With all that out of the way, let's go check on our favorite stick people... that I gave hair. FUCK IT, LET'S GO!!!

We start off with Henry zoning out as a medic reapplies a bandage on his eyebrow; it will not become a scar, though he does have to grow the hair. Speaking of hair, he is now rocking a buzz cut because he got tired of looking at where Charles pulled his hair out.

He gets pulled out when Ellie limps over to him.

"Feeling better?"

He nods and points to her leg. 'I'm fine. You're getting better at walking.'

"Yeah. About time, too." Ellie's smile drops as she bites her lip, unsure of what to say next.

Henry notices and writes on a notepad, 'How's Charles?'

Ellie is silent, hugging herself before replying. "They really hurt him. He keeps coughing and trying to rub his eyes."

'Trying?'

When Ellie doesn't meet his eyes, Henry gets up and sees a soldier leaving what is basically the psyche ward, even though it's just a surgical room they mostly cleared out and filled with basic hospital room stuff. Inside this room is Charles, who is strapped down in his bed, even with his ankles and wrists restrained, just in case, and keeps writhing and kicking around trying to break free. He's screaming something, by neither Henry nor Ellie can hear him.

The sight makes Henry sick to his stomach.

"The General said it might be a while before he's himself again, and we can't take any chances."

Charles eventually calms down and lies back, and sees Henry and Ellie as a medic walks in. She also turns on some sort of intercom system, so they can hear him, before she walks into his room.

"Hi, Charles." She says with that same fake, condescending tone that all nurses use to talk. "How are you feeling?"

Charles, naturally, glares at her. "Terrible. And talking to me like I'm a kid won't make me feel better."

"Is there anything I can get you to make you feel better?"

"I want to get out of this bed," he says with a pull of his wrist. "These restraints are too tight."

Henry holds his hand to his mouth as the nurse shakes her head.

"I'm sorry, Charles, you heard what the Genersl said. We're not supposed to let you out until you get better."

This riles Charles up too much because he thrashes even more violently, which scares the hell put of the medic.

"Why are you doing this!? I'm a traitor! You should've killed me by now! Stop wasting your time and get it over with already!"

Charles tries to yell some more, but coughs and starts gasping very loudly.

The medic moves quickly, getting a needle and inserts it into Charles's chest to help him breathe again. She also injects him with a sedative to calm him down, in case he acts up again.

Ellie sees Henry staring and pulls him back as Rupert approaches them.

"The general wants to see you two."

After a glance back at Charles, the two meet Galeforce, who is sitting rather calmly at his desk.

"Nice to see you two getting better. Hood to see you on your feet, Ellie."

"Thanks. Did something happen?"

Galeforce grimaces and hands Henry a note from Bill Bullet asking that the government take care of the Toppat Clan before anything else with Henry, and that it shouldn't be a problem because they have the perfect man for the job.

'What about the deal?' Henry signs.

"He's holding off on it until the Clan's taken out. He won't talk about anything beyond that."

"So we're taking orders from the CCC now?" Ellie asks, finding the idea very tasteless.

"It's not an order. More of a... favor. And the Wall contacted me about that escape you pulled off."

Ellie groans and Henry rolls his eyes. 'They cannot blame us when we're going to give them the entire clan.'

"Dmitri couldn't care less about new inmates," Galeforce barks. "All he wants is your head devorating his mantle," he says as he points to Henry.

Henry tenses and looks between the two of them. 'So how do we take care of them?'

Galeforce shakes his head. "I don't know, but we're gonna take care of the Toppat Clan and get the CCC off our backs, regardless. Understand?"

The two nod and Henry leaves quickly to check on Charles.

Speaking of which, he's resting after getting air back in his lungs, and is VERY loopy when Henry walks in. He's still restrained, but doesn't really care. The medic is still in the room and is ready to translate for Henry.

"Henry? Is that... really you?"

Henry nods as he pulls up a chair and sits by his friend.

"You look... like an egg."

Henry snickers as Charles tries to reach out and feel Henry's cool new buzz cut hair.

"You do. You look like a hairy egg. Like someone left an egg out snd it got moldy."

Henry signs and the medic translsates, "He said, 'Eggs don't get bad like that, but tomatoes do.'"

Charles scowls and signs, 'Can read. I know what saying.'

Henry signs that he's glad Charles is back, crying as he does so.

Charles turns his eyes to the ceiling and lets his own tears fall, real ones, not artificial ones that he's had to put in. "When I saw those government destroyers get shot down or saw the pilots get shot right in front of me, I had a pretty good idea that I wasn't going anywhere. I started forgetting why I really joined the government and just saw why I shouldn't be anywhere near them. I forgot how much I wanted to be back. Fly their helicopter again."

'Don't you mean 'your helicopter?'' Henry signs.

"No. It was theirs. My parents. Mom was better a flying, but Dad was faster. They were really good at what they did. Too good. I was nine when the General told me. It was their last mission and they couldn't let enemy forces through. The general said it was a kamikaze attack, but my dad said he and my mom loved me. And that they were sorry they couldn't make it back for my birthday."

Henry is literally floored by this news. Charles never brings up his parents. NEVER! It's got nothing with a lack of trust, he just doesn't like talking about them, not even with the general, who took him in after their funeral.

"I don't know what they'd think, if they were alive, but I know they wouldn't want anything to with me either." Charles turns his eyes to Henry, tired and very saddened. "Why didn't you take the shot? He was right there."

Henry gulps and signs to Charles, 'I was scared. I didn't want to miss and hit you. I should've taken the shot anyway, but I didn't. I'm sorry.'

Charles keeps his eyes on Henry and stays silent for a few seconds. "How do I know this isn't all just in my head? How do I know I won't just wake up back there?"

Henry holds and rubs Charles's hand, writing on his wrist with his finger.

'This is real. You're home. I screwed up the mission, I know, but they're working on a plan to take down the Toppat Clan for good.'

Charles tightens his grip on Henry's hand as his eyes go wide. "Promise me. If that... that son of a bitch has me again and... and you're there, promise me you'll shoot him. Don't waste time worrying about me! I can't- I can't go back there! I can't handle it happening again! I can't go back! PROMISE ME I WON'T GO BACK!"

Henry holds Charles's shoulders and nods, trying to calm him down. 'I will. I promise I won't let anything happen to you.'

Charles rests his head against Henry's shoulder and nods, trying to calm himself down.

Henry only hugs him, makimg sure that when the time comes he will keep his promise to his friend.

And that is Part 10! Charles's recovery will not be easy, but he made Henry promise to keep him out of Toppat clutches and Henry will oblige.

I hope you guys enjoyed this one, it's a little fluffier, but I think we've all earned that after everything that's happened in the series

#henry stickmin #completing the mission au #charles calvin #toppat!charles #ptsd tw #angst #ellie rose #stickvin #fluff #swearing tw

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spooks-and-tea · 4 years

Text

Entangled (Spencer Reid x femReader) [Ch.9]

Summary: You don’t know how it happened. One moment you were watching Criminal Minds, and the next moment you were literally in the show. Can Spencer be the key to helping you find your way back home?

Warnings: minor character death, mentions of su*cide, bad explanations of quantum mechanics, bad words, sexual situations (some non-con), the usual criminal minds-type content

A/N: Uhh more quantum mechanics that I don’t fully understand.

Word Count: 3,357

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10. Chapter 11.

************************************************************************

Y/N (3 months later) You wanted to see the BAU again; to be in that world again. That's what motivated you to join the show and, somehow, you got the part.

Your character was new on the team, around your age, and Spencer's love interest. Of course.

Reading your character's description had almost put you off of accepting the part all together. Was it wrong to live vicariously through the show? It felt wrong. It felt wrong to pretend that tv-Spencer was your Spencer. Yet, you wanted to be on the sets, working at the BAU. You missed everyone and everything about that life.

Today, you walked onto the lot. You had a scene with Matthew. It was going to take place on the set of Spencer's apartment.

You mentally prepared yourself as you sat still for hair and makeup. This was the first time you would be in any form of Spencer's apartment since the night you were taken away.

You stopped in front of the production studio, screwing your eyes shut and counting to 10.

Your hand moved of it's own accord, over your chest. Would that magnetic feeling ever go away? Would it haunt you for the rest of your life? Would it remind you every day of what you lost, or of what you could've had?

You stepped onto the set and looked around, taking in the familiar setting that was once a place you called home. That big apartment never felt like a home. If you could go back you would've sold that place in a heartbeat to live with Spencer. Although, it was early on in your relationship, you both got along well when you lived together. You both could share the small space and still have enough room to love each other.

"Y/N! How's it going? You ready to film today?" Matthew came up to you with a coffee in his hand and a big smile.

You tried to not let that smile break your heart.

"Hey, I'm great. This is my first time on this set actually, it's cool to see it in real life." You bit your lip to mask the exaggeration in your tone.

"Ah. We won't be here long, we've got a bullpen scene later."

"Yeah."

You looked at your shoes. You knew what scene that was and, from what you read of the script, you weren't going to enjoy filming it.

Matthew studied you for a second, but was called away by the director before he could say anything else. What he was looking for, you couldn't say.

You read over this scene's lines and got into place. The director filled you in on some script changes and how he wanted your reactions to come across to the audience. You nodded in understanding and the cameras were rolled into place.

You cleared your throat and got into character just before the scene started.

************************************************************************

Spencer 3 months had passed by; 3 more months without her.

For 3 straight months, Spencer worked himself sick. People could tell he wasn't eating or sleeping. Garcia made the extra effort to bring him lunch everyday because he refused to leave the office to get it himself. Morgan would invite him out some nights, even volunteering to watch documentaries with him, but Spencer always shot him down.

His mind was constantly on the equation papers. Whenever the team wasn't working on other cases, he was looking over the equation, scribbling notes, rewriting the equation, and reading countless material on quantum mechanics. He felt so close to the answer, like it was just out of his reach.

Then, one day, Spencer received an unexpected call.

"Hello?"

"You'll find him at the warehouse at 4pm." A older woman's voice.

"Who is this?"

"You should hurry, if you want to see her again, that is. Your lives are already entangled. When the time is right, just follow the magnetic pull and it will lead you to her."

"I-" The caller hung up before Spencer could speak. He checked his wristwatch, it was 3pm. If he wanted to get there in time, he would have to leave now and drive fast. He looked around the bullpen for anyone that would let him borrow their car without asking too many questions.

"JJ!" He ran to catch up with her.

"Hey Spence? Why are you so excited?" Her eyebrows rose. She could barely contain her smile at his excitement. She'd been worried about him.

"I got a lead. I need to borrow your car. Please."

She immediately knew what case this lead was for.

"Spencer. How do you know this isn't a trap? You could be running blindly into a dangerous situation."

"I know and I don't care. This could be my last chance to find her. Please JJ, I don't have much time," Spencer pleaded.

She gave him a worried look. "Okay, but I'm driving."

"JJ, you don't have to come with me. If this is a trap I don't want you getting hurt. You have a family."

"You're not alone in this, Spence. We all want Y/N back. I'll call for backup when we get there."

************************************************************************

"4pm." Spencer suddenly said as JJ drove to the warehouse at the outskirts of town.

"It's 3:25. We still have time," JJ assured; side-eyeing him from the driver's seat.

"No. That's the answer! That's the missing piece to the equation!" Spencer's eyes were wide and he was accentuating his words with hand gestures.

"Okay, genius. What are you talking about?"

"The equation we found. I concluded that it was configuring quantum tunneling equations. When quantum particles gather enough energy, they're able to pass through barriers-"

"Like radio waves?" JJ asked.

"Yes! These pieces of equations, the Schrödinger's equation part, in particular, shows that our unsub was studying these high energy quantum particle waves. I understood that much, but valuable information was missing in those burnt pages."

"And what information was that?" JJ did her best to follow along.

"Time, the missing variable, it's time and space! Doctor Who! Dammit I've been so blind this whole time." His false memory was telling him the answers, but he had brushed them aside as delusions. His false memory of watching Doctor Who with Y/N before she woke up in his dimension.

"The Doctor travels through time and space in a loop, a void space. Time isn't linear, as we understand it, in these equations. The walls of her dimension cracked, a particle wave with high enough energy got through, but barely; cracking her end. That's how she got through, or at least that's how someone got her through."

"Okay Spence, watch the language, you're starting to scare me a little." JJ gave him a worried look. He hadn't been eating or sleeping, should she be driving the doctor to a doctor?

************************************************************************

Y/N You were stronger than you realized. The scene in Spencer's apartment had called for your character, Agent Audrey Stryfe, to subtly flirt with him. Being able to separate Matthew from your Spencer outside of your scenes was proving to be a helpful coping mechanism that you kept at the back of your mind during filming.

What wasn't going to help was the scene you were just getting into place for.

"Aaaaand, action!"

"Dr. Reid." You strolled over and sat at the edge of his desk in the bullpen set. He looked up.

"Explain to me again how our unsub was able to pull off all of this in one night." You tunnel visioned, no longer seeing the cameras or edges of the set in the peripherals of your vision.

Matthew twirled his pencil, flicking his eyes down at your skin that peaked out from under your fitted skirt.

"Actually, I don't think our unsub was acting alone. Remember the box of ticket stubs located at the first hideout? Those were momentos; kept in pairs. I believe we're dealing with 2 unsubs, a couple."

"Star-crossed lovers, a new-age Bonnie and Clyde," your character considered.

Matthew nodded and stood up, walking up to the pinboard.

"Based on the geographical locations of the crime scenes and hide outs, we can see that they're making their way west." He ran his fingers along the map's red markings.

"Will they cross state lines?" You walked up next to him.

"There's a high probability they will, yes."

"Can we confidently say that one is the aggressor and one is just tagging along?"

"Yes, in cases with couples like these, typically the male is the aggressor. For example, Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde had a history of committing crimes long before he met Bonnie. She only became a criminal after they became a couple."

"But why would the unsub's partner go along with these killings willingly?" You asked.

Matthew turned to look at you.

"Love. History says Bonnie fell in love with Clyde and that's why she stuck by him as his partner; though he was a terrible criminal. He made multiple failed attempts at robbing banks. Clyde actually wrecked their car at one point, nearly killing her with these 3rd degree burns that nearly lost her a leg. She was also struck by bullets multiple times, but still she stayed by his side. We know he loved her too because a smart, or ruthless, criminal would have left her behind after the leg injury. Clyde carried her around; sometimes she limped. She couldn't properly walk for the rest of her short life."

"Devotion, idolization, justification. These unsubs are recreating the Bonnie and Clyde crimes. I can't agree that it's love that drives them, though."

"Why is that?"

"When you love someone, you want what's best for them. You'd never put them in harms way. If Clyde really loved Bonnie, he would have never taken her along with their gang in the first place," you nearly choked on the familiar words.

Matthew nodded, eyes scanning the map.

"I suppose a more appropriate defining word for their relationship would be 'obsession.'"

"If you were in the male unsub's position, what would you do, Dr. Reid?"

"I'd protect her." He looks at you again. "I'd turn myself in, admit that everything was my doing." Matthew was a great actor, but he couldn't recreate your Spencer's expression when he looked at you.

"Hmm," you hummed.

I'm going to be sick.

"Have you ever been in love, Agent Stryfe? You seem to know a lot on the subject."

"Yes, in fact. I have." You swallowed, eyes going glossy.

"May I ask with whom?" He smiled, slyly.

"I'll tell you if you promise we can take a break from this. We've been working all night. You promised me dinner, Dr. Reid." You poked his chest.

Stay in character; just stay in character and get through this scene. You can cry later.

"I didn't think all this talk of murder would work up much of an appetite," he chuckled.

"We've worked here long enough, catching murderers is normal. " You smiled.

Matthew nodded, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips.

"We could raid the snacks in the break room, then get right back to work." He suggested.

"Oh no. You're going to properly wine and dine me, Doctor." You stepped forward, placing your hand over his chest.

He went quiet for a heartbeat.

You shrugged. "Fine, then I'll just have to treat myself." You smirked at him and turned to grab your purse from your desk.

Matthew grabbed your wrist, stopping you. You gave a sly look to the edge of the nearest camera.

Matthew spun you around, placing his hands on either side of your face and bringing you into an intense kiss.

You disassociated from yourself, right then, letting him lead you through the kiss. He pulled away, still holding you.

"Dr. Reid. If I had known you kissed like that, I would have asked you out sooner." There it was, your final line.

"So-" He cleared his throat.

"Dinner?" Has asked, holding out his elbow. Your character giddily wrapped her arms around it and swept up her purse.

"Cut! That was great! Take a break, we'll come back in 5." The director called out.

You breathed heavily, practically running out of the studio. You needed fresh air.

As soon as you broke through to the outside lot you felt the tears begin to fall. You gasped for breath, sobbing for someone who didn't exist here. Sobbing for the Spencer Reid who originally wrote that script for you.

5 months you had gone without him. You could no longer remember the exact last words he spoke to you. Your mind hazily pictured his eyes as he watched you begging for him. He was becoming a fading dream.

You wondered if he was still searching for you. Was the whole BAU on your case? He must've known by now what really happened; that he could never get you back. He must have blamed himself.

You cried harder.

If you could just send him one more message. You could properly tell him that you loved him and that it wasn't his fault.

You clenched your aching chest.

"Y/N?" You held your arms around yourself tighter at the sound of his voice. You knew it wasn't your Spencer, you would only hear him in your dreams now.

"Sorry Matthew. I just need a moment alone." You were facing away from him, but your posture and voice gave away your emotions.

"Listen. I know that I remind you of someone important. You have the most difficulty filming scenes with me, more than with Shemar or anyone else. I feel super bad about it. Let me take you out for dinner later. I'll even sing Disney songs in the car at the top of my lungs with you." He stepped in front of you.

You laughed a little through your tears. Matthew was a lovely friend, he didn't deserve to feel guilty about something he couldn't control.

"You don't have to take me anywhere. I'll be fine, really." You sniffled, looking up at him.

"Nope. I think you need junk food. The greasiest food that Southern California has to offer." He smiled, pulling you into a tight hug.

You giggled. He wasn't going to let this go.

"Fine," you grumbled.

************************************************************************

"So let me get this straight. I strongly resemble your ex and that's why you've been acting strange around me?" Matthew spoke through a mouthful of In-N-Out cheeseburger bits.

You nodded, sipping your milkshake. You'd never eaten on the hood of a car before, but Matthew thought it was absurd not to watch the sun set turn the sky pink and orange. It did make the semi-empty parking lot look more ethereal.

"You seem really torn up over him, did things end badly?" Matthew asked.

"Neither one of us wanted it to end. I was taken away from him." You lay your head back down on your elbow, looking up at the sky.

"What do you mean?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Y/N I believe in a lot of things. A lot of things others don't believe in. I know there are things out there that we can't explain and I know you have no reason to lie about something I see effecting you every day. I'll believe you." You did know he was into the paranormal. Would he actually believe you?

"Alright you asked for it." You turned on your side to look at him.

"Remember how I told you that I missed the first Criminal Minds casting call I was lined up for?" He nodded while biting into his greasy food.

"Well I missed it because I woke up in another place, as in, not-of-this-dimension." You paused, bracing yourself to be verbally torn apart.

He blinked, but motioned for you to continue. You were stunned he hadn't immediately laughed at you.

"I woke up in a dimension where the plot and all the characters of Criminal Minds were real. I woke up in the BAU and everyone there knew me."

"This sounds like a dream," he commented.

"I thought it was, so I tried to jump off a cliff into a lake to wake myself up. It's my greatest fear, but it didn't work. Spencer Reid saved me before I drowned. After, I stayed in that dimension for a month." Matthew's eyebrows raised.

You continued to explain everything to him and he stayed quiet, just listening, barely giving reactions.

"Spencer Reid is your ex." He realized just before you got to the part where you had confessed your love to Spencer at the BAU.

"Yes, he is."

"Does he- look like me? Does he act the same way he's written in the show?"

"He looks and sounds just like you, but he has his minor differences with his facial expressions. He's a bit different than how the showrunners write him."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"But how did you get back here? How did you get separated?" He frowned.

"An unsub kidnapped me and brought me back here. I think he has something to do with how I left in the first place."

"So you really were taken from him," he breathed. "I'm so sorry."

"Yes, but I'm coming to terms with it. There's no way I can ever see him again. It was nearly impossible that I ended up in his dimension in the first place."

"Y/N, I've been playing the guy for 15 years. If I know him, which I believe I do pretty well, I know he won't stop trying to find you."

You sighed.

"That's what I'm afraid of; I don't want him to go the rest of his life feeling guilty and searching for something he can't possibly find. I just want him to be happy."

************************************************************************

Spencer

When JJ parked outside the warehouse at 3:53pm. Spencer practically took off running inside.

"Spencer!" JJ called.

He burst through the doors and drew his firearm. He spun around, checking his surroundings. The warehouse had only one large space at this point, with beams to hold up the roof. The integrity of the interior, individual room walls, had given out; leaving only rubble behind.

Spencer's eyes widened as they landed on a platform machine that stood in the middle of the old warehouse. It was connected to a generator, filling the room with a humming noise. A dim, white light emanated from the circle in the middle of the platform. Near it was a table with scattered paperwork, identical to the notes Spencer had found at the abandoned house. A large computer with maybe 100 multi-colored wires connected to a box-shaped machine with blinking red, blue, and green lights. This box connected back to the platform with two large black wires on either side.

Spencer slowly neared the computer, the humming of the machinery matching up perfectly with the wavelength of the magnetic humming in his chest; it pulled him closer.

"Spencer watch out!"

Spencer spun on his heel just as JJ called out. He dropped to the floor just as an older man in a trench coat reached forward to grab him. The momentum caused the man to trip over Spencer, landing hard on the concrete floor in front of him. JJ took this opportunity to lunge at the man, quickly and skillfully handcuffing him.

"Oh you are lucky I came with you! What the hell do you think you're doing Spencer?!" JJ yelled.

Spencer caught his breath, looking at the man. He was the one Y/N saw; he was the unsub.

"That's our unsub He's the one who took Y/N." Spencer spoke quickly.

He checked his watch; 3:57pm. He had 3 minutes. The unsub could wait, Spencer needed to find you.

Spencer sprung up and sprinted to the computer. A white box with a blinking line waited for an input. Spencer tuned out JJ reading the unsub his rights and calling for backup.

His eyes glanced over the scattered papers. He willed his brain to work faster than it ever had before as he calculated the full equation, with time and space included, in his head. He mumbled incoherent variables and squeezed his eyes shut.

The humming grew louder. 3:59pm. His eyes flew open as he typed in the answer; harshly clicking 'enter'. He stumbled to the platform, standing over the glowing white circle just as 4:00pm hit.

The last thing he saw was a blinding white light.

Next Chapter

#cm #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fic #spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fanfiction #fanfiction #drama #romance #mgg fanfiction #matthew gray gubler

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elliewan · 3 years

Text

Boom Boom - Behind the Scenes

Hi everyone! As hinted in Chapter 14th notes, here is a (long?) tumblr post for some behind-the-scenes trivia about Boom Boom! I’m sorry it took me some time, but I’ll probably develop my HC for Thermite and Ace in another post :]

So. Here’s a small table of contents for this post. And of course, massive spoilers incoming! haha

Origin of the Title

Chapter and Rhythm building

Thermite’s friendships

Interviews with Harry

IQ/Kali’s background relationship

HC Timeline

In a nutshell

1. Origin of the title

The initial placeholder title was “Norwegian Dynamite”, then “From Texas with Norway”, then… “Boom Boom”. I’m still not happy with the title, but I think it’s good enough. And funfact, it’s kind of a mistake, but not so much. In French, my native language, heartbeat’s onomatopoeia is “Boum Boum”, while I read that in American English (the English I tended to use for my fanfic), it’s supposed to be “Thump Thump” or something like that. But I also read than in most of Norwegian dialects, “Boom Boom” could be understood as a heartbeat too. So anyway, Boom Boom refers both to the beating of their heart and to the explosions of their hard-breaching gadgets. It’s also dual, meaning that each of them is a “Boom” haha And it’s also a cute Mika song about two people being totally in love despite what their families think, and making love everywhere haha (cause in French “Faire crac crac boum boum” [“doing crac crac boom boom”] means “having sex” haha)

2. Chapter and Rhythm building

Unlike most of my fanfics, Boom Boom wasn’t written “as it goes”, I didn’t “discover” the fic while writing it. In fact, I hadn’t contemplated writing a multi-chapter for them until some comments on my Siegetober Ace/Thermite one-shots where people showed interest in the ship and a potential multi-chapter or longer story for them.

So after the Siegetober rush, while I had several wips ongoing, I started working on it. The first blank page was basically: Ace/Thermite – how do they get together for real and a series of bullet points for potential scenes. Then, I opened a PowerPoint file and started filling the following diagram:

Though this is now a bit obsolete, this was the first foundation. Thanks to this diagram, and the several bullet points for potential scenes I had brainstormed, I started building the story in a (ugly) board. Once again, several things are obsolete and I never really updated it – it was more of a working document for the “pre-writing” of the fic, to see if the story really made sense:

And one thing that really didn’t help was Ubisoft releasing the cutscene about Aruni out of nowhere haha. At the beginning, I panicked a bit because I thought it changed several things in my Thermite HC, but it happened to eventually fit quite well and even help adding more drama haha

And once I was ok enough with the board, despite it having several plot holes, I tried to measure the intensity of “love” and “dramatics” to see what kind of rhythm the fic was going to follow and check if I found it entertaining enough:

3. Thermite’s friendships

In the initial draft, Castle had a MAJOR part as Thermite’s best friend. He would help him sort his feelings, see the evolution of his relationship with Ace, and even go to Texas with him to help him face his family. But when re-reading for the umpteenth time Thermite’s file, I realized there was not a single mention of Castle, contrary to Hibana, Twitch and Thatcher. Not to mention Harry’s board where it’s written Thermite has a “sibling” relationship with Ash.

And that’s when everything ticked: Thermite is surrounded by great women. Sisterhood is part of who he is, how he was raised, how he lives. And this is why those women should have a stronger place in the story. So Hibana, Twitch, Aruni and Ash became real sisters to him. Hibana and Aruni being more like the big sisters – they’re reliable, sturdy and coolheaded, they provide him with advice and comfort; Aruni especially is quite similar in temper to his biological sister in my HC. Twitch is more like his same-age sister (though she’s younger), they see eye-to-eye but there’s no authority nor “big sister” feels between them; she’s the confident. As for Ash, she’s more like that distant sibling that has evolved a lot in life to the point where they don’t talk as mush as they used to… but who could move mountains just to get to him if she hears he’s in trouble. This is what I tried to convey :’)

4. Interviews with Harry

Honestly, interviews with Harry were my ultimate cheat code to give more information regarding Ace and Thermite’s psychological statuses, and various hints regarding their mental health. Though I sometimes prefer to bring this sort of nakedness and vulnerability throughout conversations with close friends, it wasn’t very possible here because: 1. Ace had no close friends with whom he could be this vulnerable, and he’s still new at Rainbow. (and he’s not even aware of his coping mechanisms and insecurities) 2. I kind of wanted Thermite to be incredibly good at clouding his issues, changing subjects and rejecting any kind of help, meaning that only Harry could get him to openly talk (or so he thought haha) about his mental health.

As for Harry’s behavior, I tried to render him as this kind of smooth, yet not evasive, therapist. One that wouldn’t be in the judgement, and who could wait whole minutes for the person to take their time to open up, and slowly but gently poking at the aching spots, and providing various resources to help them :)

Also, since in most of his psychological reports he seems to be very aware of friendships at the base, and to push some operators to meet some others, I tried to convey this vibe too. Just like when he says that he finds similarities with Ace, Dokkaebi and Sledge. Or when he offers Thermite to ask Lion and Meghan about their tattoos etc.

Also, here’s a bit of HC on how each of them deals with Harry haha

5. IQ/Kali’s background relationship

I have to admit I may have accidentally mirrored a lot Ace/Thermite’s relationship with IQ/Kali’s. Thing is that I wanted Kali to change too! I wanted her to be this impartial and authoritative bossy businesswoman that would slowly change into someone, though still sharp and arrogant, more human. I wanted Jaimini to show up a bit more. I have given veeery small hints to offer some glimpses at her true self, at what’s behind that mask. For instance, there is that moment in the fic where Ace and Kali argue, and he tells her:

“Jai, you and I both know very well that you didn't take this contract just for the money.”

Which makes Kali pale a lot, because he’s hitting a good nerve. In fact, I kind of headcanon Kali having softened enough around him, throughout their collaboration, to have confided a tiny bit about why she created Nighthaven, and all the frustrations she had grown up with. And thing is, Kali created Nighthaven because she wanted to be a hero too, just like him. She wanted to be at the heart of the battle, to protect people, to save lives, and she dreamed of a soldier life, of self-sacrifice and heroism. She just slid the wrong way, and her childhood dream turned into a private corporation of which she became a ruthless tycoon. Just like Ace, I think things went out of control at some point for her, and she just lose connection to reality and morals.

And the thing with IQ happened quite naturally. At the beginning, once I was okay with the three main squads (especially Alpha and Bravo), the relationship just happened on itself. While Montagne and Twitch were just those lovely and patient sweethearts, IQ was the one that had the hardest time with the Nighthaven folks, whether it were Ace or Kali. Both because she didn’t trust them and their secrecy, and because she has very little patience for people with difficult tempers in general haha

So, Kali being that bossy and defiant puzzle, refusing to let her see Nighthaven’s gadgets’ blueprints, things were just meant to sparkle between them. And Kali just couldn’t resist teasing IQ and reminding her she was untouchable. And through the teasing, the premises of a relationship were born. But unlike Ace/Thermite, I don’t think it followed a Colleagues to Friends to Lovers progression, but more an Enemies straight to Lovers progression haha

So anyway. I wanted to give a little boost to Kali, so that she opens up a bit more with Rainbow, and to bring a truce between Rainbow and Nighthaven’s disputes. And love just happened, once again, to be the perfect last push <3

Another thing that could have helped her would perhaps have been some true challenging from an authority she does respect, but I found it difficult to stage and Kali wasn’t the focus of the fic anyway – perhaps another time ;)

6. HC Timeline

And here is the ugly timeline I worked with haha It’s still probable that there are some inconsistencies, but I tried to avoid them as much as possible and I’m sorry if you find some! I’m horribly bad with figures, years and stuff haha

I used most of the canonical dates, except for Jordan’s mother and sister deceases, which weren’t accurately dated in his biography and which I reinterpreted a bit to fit my story.

Also, isn’t it absolutely lovely that their birthday is only 1 day apart? u_u #ProudPisces!

7. In a nutshell

So, those were my major documents that helped me build the foundations of the fic. What happened next was some drafting and pure writing, following the publishing tempo. I think the gist of what I wanted to convey through the story is still there, even if I reworked some chapters entirely. The journey (and the destination <3) is still the same.

+ I want to once again give a proper shout out to all the wonderful readers of the fanfic, whether they’re anonymous or not! I had never received so much feedback, and so many sweet words on any work before, even back in my time on fanfic.net. I feel so grateful for that, and though I already answered to everyone who commented, and wrote many notes, I still can’t find the way to properly translate just how much it means to me. So once again THANK YOU :’D

And thank you for reading this post too, if you did haha <3

#long post #ace/thermite #iq/kali #writing fanfiction #r6s fanfiction #my hcs #my work

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kamandzak · 3 years

Text

Into the Great Night - Chapter 2

I started writing this book about a year ago and finished it ~7 months ago. Performing a big rewrite and this chapter is so dismally beautiful I can’t keep it to myself.

Context: Andrew Garland’s boyfriend of eight years has passed away and he is struggling

Recommended listening: Compass and Miracle by Two Steps from Hell

It was foolish of me to think it would be any better at Tessa’s house. Merely leaving the place Greg and I had cohabitated didn’t mean our past would leave me; that my grief would leave me.

It was no better sitting on Tessa’s couch as opposed to my own.

It was still lonely. It was still joyless.

It was still too cold.

If that was my new normal…. If that was the life of which I would be forced to live for the rest of my days, I preferred to die.

Tessa was worried. Beth was worried. Sara and Clara were worried. They all had the right to be. Mom and Dad still hadn’t reached out. I couldn’t say I was mad about it.

For the first month I carried the same daily, depressive routine: Wake up, shower, watch videos, eat, shower again, sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. Nothing to disrupt the morose mentality I held from the moment my eyes opened until they closed. Even in my dreams I continued being sad. I couldn’t escape – trapped forever.

Jake’s constant messages of concern did nothing but send me sinking deeper and deeper into hazy nothingness. Peppered with queries about when I planned to emerge onto the gaming scene, along with the occasional ludicrous statement about how he understood my stuffy brain, each message was deleted as it was read. There was no reason to have those hanging around, reminding me why I was in Reno and not where I had once dreamed of making a life for myself.

Whenever I closed my eyes, Greg’s face appeared in the dark. Maybe I was napping; maybe I was finally sleeping fully through the night; maybe I was simply blinking. Always, he was there.

Sometimes it was a fleeting glance of what used to be the best part of my life. Sometimes I dreamed of things that had already happened, or things I wanted to be that would never come to light.

One night, I dreamed we got married. Waking up was almost as painful as watching him die.

Tessa was worried I’d off myself. It wasn’t like we talked about it or anything, of course, but I could hear her and Beth sitting over tea every weekend, hushed mutterings coming from her dining room table or her room or her little porch. My grief had thrown a wrench into the lives of those around me, Beth worrying about my life when she normally would work on lesson plans for her rambunctious class of first graders. When she was feeling brave, Tessa would ask why I kept my secrets down deep for so long. That right there was why.

I had suffered from depression before but what I was feeling wasn’t just unadulterated sadness; it was a fierce, far more complicated set of emotions leading me to exist in a far more dangerous mindset than I had ever been in before. Instead of having an urge to kill the part of me that is making me feel so unbelievably yet nondescriptly sad, I wanted death. Death, full stop.

Mom and Dad and Sara and Clara and Beth and Tessa weren’t good enough reasons to stay alive, and all I wanted was to see Greg just for another minute. I wanted to give up a life with my own flesh and blood just to see him again. I would have given up all the time in the world for one more night of SNL and inside jokes with a man who made me feel like so much more than who I actually was; a unextraordinary nerd with awkward social tendencies and difficulty communicating. With Greg I felt like I was more than just me; without him, I didn’t know who I was anymore.

“Andrew! Your phone!” A crumpled ball of paper bounced off my head as Tessa’s voice cut through my outer shell, the sounds of my phone following her words. My phone beeped loudly, the tell-tale sign of a Facetime call on it’s way, and I dragged my finger across the screen to accept before I read the name. Each bodily movement seemed to take ten times longer than Before. I was living seconds behind reality.

“Garland.”

Jake’s face popped onto my screen. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1….

“Hi.”

“You look like hell.”

Jake’s mouth stopped moving before I even put together the string of letters that made up his blunt statement.

“Mm,” I managed.

“You in Reno?” I nodded. “I’m heading out that way this weekend. Never been to Vegas believe it or not. Figured I’d go explore. Have you seen anyone since everything happened?

“Andrew, want anything from the gas station?” Tessa stood in her door frame and as I shook my head she left without another word.

“I’ll take that as a no?”

“Yeah, no. No, I haven’t seen anyone. I don’t want to see anyone.”

“What if they came to you? So you didn’t have to leave where you are?”

“I’m not about to let a stranger into my sister’s apartment.”

“We’re not technically strangers at this point, right?”

“Why are you so hell-bent on meeting face-to-face?”

Jake paused, inhaling loudly, wheezily, in a way that reminded me of Greg; then again, everything reminded me of Greg whether it had anything to do with him or not.

“The best thing that came out of the worst time in my life is now I can be empathetic to other people going through the same thing.”

The tiniest part of me wanted to know what he’d been through but the larger part didn’t have the brain power to care because what actually mattered didn’t exist anymore. I didn’t think Jake was purposely jabbing at open, festering wounds for the sake of cruelty; he was just caring for me.

I didn’t want his caring. I only wanted one person’s caring and couldn’t get past the knowledge that I'd never have it again.

“Let me know if you want someone to talk to. I’m only in Nevada for a couple of days. I won’t mind stopping. Really.”

“Mm.”

“I gotta go. Message me.”

The screen went black. Please Rate the Quality of your Call, a prompt stated, with the outlines of five stars beneath. I did no such thing.

I wasn’t about to message him, even if I had a reason to do so. I wasn’t going to be messaging anyone because all conversations led back to Greg. How was gaming going? Was I still in Los Angeles? Was I still going to be on YouTube? All questions would eventually wind up being about him and the more I talked, the more I would have to remember. The more I would have to remember, the more I would have to feel, the more I would hurt.

It started happening when I arrived at Tessa’s; my need for answers led me to the internet and introduced me to the term dissociation; I would simply leave my body. Up to the ceiling I seemed to float as if filled with helium, watching what was taking place below. Tessa waking up and making breakfast before going to her gaming room; her video editor Reese chatting with her about her upload schedule; Beth coming and going; myself sitting in the same spot on the same couch day in and day out.

I didn’t know why it was happening, the only reasonable explanation being that I so desperately didn’t want to exist but was too much of a damn coward to kill myself. In the end, dissociation seemed like the best option. Just remove myself painlessly from my surroundings. Was certainly better than the alternative. It was peaceful, exiting the current plane and living somewhere else if only for just a few minutes.

Live. That was the key word. I was still technically alive, my heart still beating and my stomach still digesting and my eyes blinking and lungs expanding with each breath. The human being my brain commanded was still moving. My mind was developed enough to operate on autopilot, doing the dumb things it had to do to keep everything in stasis. I ‘lived’, for lack of a better word.

When I did gather the courage to look up what I was feeling on the internet, nothing made sense. Nothing could be remotely tailored to fit my situation. I could relate to none of it. These people with their inspiring stories and memoirs written in loving memoriam, and benches dedicated to loved ones… their experiences seemed to minimize what kept me awake at night. How were they able to do that? How could those strangers make me and my emotions feel trivial without even knowing me and without me actively posting in detail what was happening in my head? As hard as I tried to imagine those brave widows and widowers and left-behinds feeling the way I did, their stories always wound up being of getting over that tremendous loss.

I didn’t want to get over it. If I got over it I would lose Greg forever. I’d already lost him once.

The grocery lists of things I could do to help myself mocked me as I read the advice of people who claimed to know how to recover from the un-recoverable. Write them a letter, authors would write in silly, curly-cue fonts before giving me a whole page to write the letter, as if I was going to sit down and put pen to paper and tell Greg about something I saw that reminded me of our first date. List all the good times, one said, with bullet points for me to fill out five moments, as if every moment we had together wasn’t the best of my life. Find someone to talk to, another whimsically suggested as it reminded me that keeping my feelings inside was dangerous. As if I didn’t already know it was ripping me apart from the inside.

They didn’t tell me how to start a letter to Greg where all I could do was say how much I missed him. They didn’t tell me how to find someone to talk to when I didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. They gave me five fucking spots to talk about good times as if our six-year relationship could be reduced down to that many moments and no more.

They said all of it was doable; they said that when the lost their husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or best friend or grandparent or dog or whatever, those were the steps they took to recovering and moving on.

They weren’t me, though. They weren’t me and they weren’t Greg and they weren’t the set of circumstances under which we had lived. Even if half of the equation was there, the other wasn’t. Maybe their loved one was sick. Were they sick with the same ailment, or one that carried similar stigma? Did they purposely risk illness for the sake of their significant other or family member or friend? Did their risk become reality because fate can be an unnecessarily cruel mistress? Did they love the other person so much they shortened their own life?

The door opened and couch shifted as Tessa’s hands landed on the sides of my face.

“Andrew”

I cracked at her voice, her icy hands wrapping around my head and pushing me against her. Worming my arms under hers, I clung to her small shoulders, weeping into her jacket sleeves. Eyes screwed shut I gasped for air, seeing Greg in the darkness as he mirrored the same breathy sounds. While mine were of sadness, his were of death – the only sound of him I could manage to remember despite being together for so long. Tessa pulled at my non-resisting body and we sat together, tangled in a heap of coats and scarves and unwashed hair. Much like when we were young – when we didn’t understand what the world was about or why we were with the people we were with – and Tessa would protect me, we sat close, her love drowning out the pulsing drone of fear and hatred and sadness and anger rushing through my mind as it struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible.

For several minutes, we sat in silence.

“Andrew.”

“Mm.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” “And,” she finally pushed me off her body, holding me in front of her. Cold air hit my hot face, adhering the salty wash of tears to my skin, “And you can talk to me about anything you need to. I know you don’t want to. I know you think you’re strong enough. Maybe the only way to become strong is to not be.”

“Where do I s-start?” I hiccupped.

“Let’s get the team together,” she began, rising slowly and pulling me up with her. “Maybe they can help.”

“But-.”

“No one knows you like we do.”

Hours later, beneath the door of Tessa’s bedroom, I heard her. I heard them.

“You guys have to get here as soon as you can. Please.”

“What’s the matter, Tess?”

“I think it’s happening…. I think the numbness is wearing off. He’s starting to feel things again. It’s not that I don’t want to be here when it happens. I just don’t want to not have you guys here with us. I don’t know what do to.”

Greg’s death wasn’t supposed to be affecting my sisters as the sounds of their video call trickled through the under-crack of the door. It wasn’t supposed to be affecting Jake or anyone else but me and the Davis’.

It was a stupid thought and their voices continued, muffled by my sense of inadequacy. Of course it would be affecting other people. It started doing so the moment Tessa posted my video. It started affecting the girls the second I told them I was having an emergency and they needed to come see me. What I hadn’t wanted was exactly what I had dug myself into when I welcomed other people into the hell-circle I was stuck in.

I didn’t want them to come see me. I didn’t want Beth to take time off and Clara to leave Frank and Sara to leave Duncan to come take care of me. I was twenty-four. I should have been able to take care of me.

The front door opened several hours later and I looked up with a faux look of surprise. Out, I sent them telepathically. Please go.

“Why are you here?” Tessa rolled her eyes at my question.

“Boy, don’t pretend like you weren’t listening on my Zoom call with them,” she cracked a smile before reading the room and immediately coming back to our reality. “You know why.”

“We’re just afraid that there’s more to address than just your changing grief,” Beth began and bile began rising in my throat. It was only a matter of time really, before they put two and two together. I guess I had thought it would take a little longer. Her hand landed in the middle of my back, leading me to the same sofa where Tessa and I had broken down together.

“Don’t worry about me,” I began confidently. “I’m just-.”

But then I coughed. I coughed and coughed and the more I tried to regulate my breathing, the harder it was. Choking; gasping.

Hands rubbed my back while others pushed me down and a another lowered a glass of water into my field of vision. Sip, choke, swallow, repeat until I could finally shakily inhale with difficulty.

Looking down at me were four sets of beautiful, worried eyes with which I could barely stand to keep contact.

Clara spoke,

“Stage three.” “What?”

“That’s what you’re in, isn’t it? Frank just… just lost a patient and when I asked him, especially when Tessa told me about all of your shakes and fevers, he said he thinks it's stage three. I think I believe him.”

I was at a complete and utter loss. In my molasses-filled, sloths-paced brain, grief at the loss of Greg drifted beside my own secrets and the suffering of my sisters, bouncing off of one another like oil and water.

“You don’t understand,” I finally said.

“Don’t understand what, exactly,” Tessa asked pointedly, further questions and opinions trapped behind pursed lips. I could practically see them stabbing her mouth, begging to be released.

“Everything!” I exploded. I hadn’t been truly angry yet; up until then anger had taken too much effort. What energy grief didn’t zap from my system the HIV stole for its own selfish purposes. “It’s all connected, isn’t it?” I asked, huffing out laughs like a mad scientist whose madness had taken over the scientist within. “I can’t tell the world about me and Greg because I’m afraid of people finding out I’m not straight. Then I’m with Greg and he’s so afraid of never having love and I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life, so then we take a risk and guess what? Protection fails. The risk becomes reality and I get HIV but I can’t talk about the love or the disease because it’s been ingrained in me since I was a child that people who get sick with this illness get it as recompense for their actions. I don’t believe it when I look at Greg but when I stare at myself in the mirror all I can hear is Dad’s voice. I go to clinics occasionally but only outside of town and without people I even sort of know because I’m afraid subscribers who have never seen my fucking face will recognize me and assume I’m going there for a reason I don’t want anyone to know about and guess what? They’re right! I don’t want them to know about going to get HIV treatment because I’m afraid of people finding out I’m not straight.”

“Andrew-.”

“We keep loving each other because hey, once I’m sick, we might as well, right?”

“Andrew-.”

“And then Greg dies. Greg fucking dies and I can’t tell anyone because I don’t have anyone and the only reason I don’t is because I spent the first seventeen years of my life having it ingrained in my mind that if I don't date, marry, and have a family with a beautiful woman, I’m damned to a life of eternal suffering.”

“But we-.”

“I can’t tell the gaming community because then Dad could find out. I can’t tell you guys or Mom because I feel bad that I kept it a secret for so long but I had to keep it a secret so I could stay safe and love the man I loved because I knew he didn’t have all the time in the world. So now I’m one serious infection away from dying because I didn’t do serious enough treatments to start with because I was so afraid of people finding out I’m not straight,” I nearly screamed, throat raw, standing up and spinning around to face my audience. “How the fuck am I supposed to deal with all of this?”

From all four sides, warm sweaters hit my torso as each sister came from a different angle and held on tightly, two of them shaking against me with emotion. Long nails raked through my hair, hands rubbed my back and arm and nape of neck; hair tickled my nose. Cold, dry lips pressed against my forehead.

When I dared to observe who was directly in front of me, Sara had tears running down her slim cheeks.

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” I whispered. “All it’s doing is making you sad.”

“I would have been sad when you first told me, Andrew. Nothing keeps human emotion from happening. But you’ve kept it in for so long, and the longer it builds up the more explosive it is when you finally release the valve. If you told me six years ago that you were in love with a boy and were scared, I would have been so proud. I would have supported you in whatever you wanted to do… however you wanted to live your life. If you told me whenever you found out about being sick that you were sick, I would have been devastated. I still am. It’s just… complicated now,” she petered off as the others nodded in agreement.

“I’m not mad at you, in case you think that,” Clara spoke. “I don’t think any of us are. In a way it’s nice to finally know all your dirty laundry so we can be here as a family. I know you have your reasons for doing what you did. We all do. There’s a lot to sort out. A lot to do. A lot of catching up that has to take place.”

“There’s no timeline for this stuff,” Beth began and before I could stop myself, I opened my mouth,

“AIDS, Beth. A. I. D. S.”

“Grief, Andrew. G. R. I. E. F.”

“Awesome,” I mumbled. “How am I supposed to do this?”

“Not alone. We need to get you a doctor here,” Tessa said with a sad expression that, for a brief moment, I wanted to smack off of her face. “I haven’t seen you go since we moved. You don’t want to, but we don’t want to lose you.” I wanted to lose me but that was beside the point so I kept the words inside. “I can’t lose you,” she managed and faint sounds of stifled sadness cut through the quiet.

“I know you want to go,” Beth said as Clara and Sara ushered Tessa away from the scene. “Not to the doctor, but to him. You want to go to Greg. Right now what we say won’t change that. Nothing we say will change how you feel. Nothing feels worth living for right now and I know that. When you go through something like this, you can tell other people you really do know what they’re going through. We aren’t worth living for right now and I understand that. There isn’t much we can do, but what we can do is make sure you’re eating and at least taking some medication. There isn’t much more to do right now than sustain yourself. Let us help.”

“Okay.” “You loved him. I understand that,” Beth whispered, wrapping her arms around me. “And you both did what you could with the time you had. Life’s unfair. I don’t know why things happen to people the way they do. I’m sorry.”

“Why wasn’t my best good enough?”

“Oh, Andrew. It was. I promise. There are just some things we can’t control. It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

#writer #writing #novel #novelist #author #kamandzak #into the great night #grief #tw suicide #tw dissociation

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midshipmank · 3 years

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i read 118 books in 2020. how the heck did i do that?

some reflections and advice below the cut.

before we get started, i just want to say upfront that i’m honestly surprised by how many books i managed to read last year. i had never even read 100 books in a year before (let alone more than 100), and i have depression! but somehow reading was one of the things i managed to do really well last year, so this post is here to explain the practicalities of How The Heck I Did That for those looking to smash some reading goals

1. audiobooks

audiobooks are great if you don’t have a lot of free time to sit down and stare at a physical book, or if you have trouble sitting still to read for long stretches of time. i use them for both reasons. (if you’re one of those people who doesn’t think audiobooks count as real reading, this post isn’t for you. please go on your merry way.)

i downloaded Libby at the beginning of the year for the audiobooks. Libby is an app that allows you to check out ebooks and audiobooks through your local library system (for free!), so you have to have a library card (free!) before you can use Libby (for free!). i used Libby a lot. i had a new workout schedule i wanted to stick to, so i listened to audiobooks while i exercised. i listened to audiobooks while i got dressed and put on makeup. i listened to audiobooks while i cooked. i listened to audiobooks while i updated my bullet journal, folded clothes, cleaned! you get the point. listening to audiobooks actually ended up improving my ability to do everyday tasks because i was more willing to do them if i could read at the same time. i did also buy audiobooks through Audible a few times (i know 😞), but i mostly used Libby.

(listening to books while exercising was also great for stress relief. once when a parent was getting mad at me in my inbox (i’m a teacher), i put on The Return of the King and went for a run. it was the Battle of Pelennor Fields. i ran out all of my anger and frustration while Eowyn killed the Witch King. 11/10, highly recommend)

2. motivation(s)

yeah, this was probably obvious, but having several different motivations for reading as much as i did definitely helped, so here are those motivations (in order of ~how motivating~ they were):

1. spite. i was sick and tired of looking at my bookshelves and seeing unread books. one of my more concrete goals was to read at least 50% of the books i owned (i did an inventory a few years back & discovered i’d read only 48%). i have no idea if i actually accomplished this because i still have to reinventory my books lol

2. diversity goals. i made a list of how many books i wanted to read by specific categories of authors (Black women, Jewish women, other WOC, queer people, etc.). this was somewhat challenged/constrained by what books i already owned, but trying to reach my goal in each category was very motivating. (i’m planning to make a separate post reflecting on these goals specifically, because this year really did show me something about my reading habits through which categories were easy to complete vs which i had to plan for)

3. filling the creative well. this is something i first heard from Victoria Schwab, but lots of creative people talk about it. taking a break from creating to “refill the creative well” is one of the ways creators deal with burnout, with the idea that consuming more stories helps you learn how to create better stories. i wanted to get back into writing (fan)fiction this year, so i was motivated to read widely. for this reason i also chose not to DNF any books this year. if a book wasn’t working for me, I wanted to think about why it wasn’t working for me. (audiobooks helped here too, because it’s much easier to read a book you don’t like if it’s being read to you lol)

4. academia? last but not least, i wanted to see what kinds of books resonated with me academically and/or if any did at all. i was basically trying to figure out if i wanted to apply to grad school. (the answer ended up being yes, but then some of my top grad schools closed applications because of covid rip)

3. page count goals

when i was in college, i started tracking how many pages i read a day because i often felt like i was just sitting around reading and never getting anywhere. i always wanted to try to read 100 pages a day, but never achieved it. this year i did! in order to achieve my larger reading goals, i read at least 100 pages a day every day. ngl, it was a struggle sometimes. but for me, it was about making daily progress (and it was super useful to be able to guestimate how long it would take me to read any given book). the 100 pages were usually spread out across several books since i usually read multiple books at once. i also set smaller page count goals for denser books/books i struggled with. (the only reason I finally finished Broke Millennial was because i read 15 pages of it a day 😭) i get that 100 pages is a lot, but setting a smaller daily page count goal is a good place to start if you wanna try it out

(for those wondering how i figured out how many pages i was reading while i listened to audiobooks: i only checked out audiobooks i (or someone else in my household) already owned physically, so i could keep track of how many pages i read (& read the acknowledgements when i finished the book))

4. reading sprints

i kind of hate calling them this, but i couldn’t think of anything better. what i mean is that i did most of my reading in 15-30 minute chunks throughout the day. sometimes even 10 minute chunks! i had other things to do (like work lol), but i figured out i was way more effective at doing those things if i took regular breaks--and that i was also way more effective at reading 100 pages if i didn’t try to do it all in one go. how many pages i could read in one of these sprints really depended on the book, but they always got me to my page count goal in the end

and that’s it! that’s How The Heck i read 118 books last year. now when i look at my shelves, i’ve read lot of the books there! sometimes most of them! it’s a wild feeling. i really enjoy it

#books #reading #booklr #i'm just gonna keep on keeping on like this in 2021 #there are still many books to be read #i have 28 pages left for today #& before anyone asks yes i also read at least a million words of untamed fanfiction lmao

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third-rail-vip · 3 years

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fic writer interview

Tagged by @adventuresofmeghatron

I’m late so you’ve probably already done this but tagging: @laurelsofhighever @tanaleth @asaara-writes @allisondraste @pchberrytea @red-hot-chili-tiefling

Thank you for tagging me! Sorry it’s taken me forever, my imposter syndrome has been laughing loudly in my face at the idea of being considered a ‘writer’. Please, come in, sit down and have a look see at my complete lack of process or general idea of what’s going on :)

Name: Ginger

Fandoms: Fallout 4 currently. Dragon Age a while back.

Where you post: I put all my full fics on AO3 and if it’s a shorter one then I post the whole thing here on tumblr too. If it’s giant then I post a snippet here with a link to AO3.

Most Popular One-shot: Based on kudos The Wanderers - yeah i’m surprised too. It was my first venture back into writing after taking time out and it was a whole new fandom and a game I was new to. It was a fun silly little exercise in me learning my new otp and working out their fairly early days dynamic.

By comments, it’s Complicated. I’d had that one in mind for a while before writing it (probably why it took 4 rewrites before it felt how I wanted it to). It’s a good bit of post-feral encounter wound tending and hurt/comfort with some feels starting up (or becoming harder to deny).

Most Popular Multichap: I don’t have any multichapter fics any more. Once upon a time I had a Dragon Age Origins one. I’m not good at the commitment of multichapter. I made it 14 chapters into that one and it took me so long to drag myself out of Lothering I took it out back and shot it.

My Fallout one shots are part of an ongoing series - Then I Met You - which is a series of snapshots of Ivy and MacCready relationship (it’s still in pre-relationship stages right now). It’s mostly character driven rather than main plot driven, but it does fit within the fallout 4 canon with some backstory and timeline canon divergence.

Favourite story you’ve written so far: You know what, it’s my least popular Fallout one, but I have a soft spot for Blood & Rain. It’s the second one I wrote and it’s Ivy’s pov with a hint at her pre-war life (she’s a non-canon origin sole survivor). I got to indulge myself in writing descriptions and some action - my old faves from when I used to write (pew pew is way harder to write than stab stab). It’s also got a really important bonding moment between Ivy and MacCready.

Fic you were nervous to post: Every damn one. Sharing anything you’ve made really is putting a little piece of your heart out on a platter for everyone to see and waiting to see what will happen to it. I guess The Wanderers was extra nerve wracking because it was the first thing I wrote after telling myself I’d never go back to writing, it was kind of a make or break experiment. Blood & Rain because of the potentially triggering material, hoping I’d touched personal subjects with enough sensitivity but also still telling the story I needed to.

How do you choose your titles: hahahaha WELL, I finish faffing with the main story in AO3 and then am outraged that I’m expected to have a name ready before I can post it. Honestly though, I’ve no formula. They all have working titles in google docs which tend to be either a vague description of what’s happening, or a song title/lyric that’s running through my head while I write. Like, the current fic I’m working on is ‘mass pike pt 2’ which is a useless title since the part 1 was actually called Gunners & Grudges. And I won’t know until posting day what I’m going to call it.

I did put some serious thought into a title for my series - Then I Met You. I was cycling through song lyrics or things that might be a general vibe for them but settled back on one line from MacCready’s final affinity chat, “then I met you”. And it just fit so well. Meeting each other is a turning point for both of them; whether you just look at it as making a friend in the wasteland, or finding some direction after drifting for too long, or there finally being a glimmer of hope after a long time in the dark (this all counts for both of them), something changed when they met.

Do you outline: Sort of. I have a massive ‘fallout notes’ document where i just jot down whenever i have an idea of something i want to write, or just random bits of dialogue that spring into my mind (that may never see the light of day again). From there, if I want to expand them I tend to bullet point with plot ideas, more dialogue, key backstory or important things I want to cover. I tend to have multiple fics I’m doing this with at once and I bounce between them depending on where my mind has drifted off to that day. By the time I actually come to write something, I tend to have a lot of notes to work from, in fact quite often I have to cut back on all the ideas I wanted to cram in and some things get slotted back into the giant fallout doc for future reference.

Complete: I only have one shots, so technically they’re all complete and can be read, for the most part, individually without you needing to have read the others. They will make sense, there might just be some context from previous one shots in there.

In progress: Then I Met You is an ongoing series for my Mac x Ivy one shots.

Prompts?: I do put prompt list out there for Mac x Ivy when my brain isn’t cooperating and I feel like a need a little extra inspiration. For the current series I’m hoarding them and working them into the context one shots I have planned. Pretty much all my Dragon Age Origins one shots over on AO3 were prompt fills.

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: Ugh guys we’re getting close to them getting together territory and boy do I wish my brain was being cooperative so I could get these couple of stories in between down on the page and could start working in earnest on those ones. There’s a lazy morning in bed after a big party fic I’m really looking forward to writing (I’m looking forward to both tbh) - any excuse to explore stories behind scars and tattoos and I’m there for it. I’m even getting a commission from the amazing @tarberrymentats for it *discord wiggle*, so yeah, I’m excited about getting to that one!

Anyway thank you for reading my ramblings x

#fic writer interview #my writing #then i met you #mac x ivy

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charlies-crashcourses · 5 years

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Charlie’s College Crash Course #1: How to write a 10-page paper in 1 day

Background info first: I’m in the last year of my English undergrad degree and I’ve had to write at least 3 dozen 10+ page papers in that time. That being said, I’ve never once started writing a paper more than a few days in advance, and 9 times out of 10 I go for one day only. Honestly, this should be considered my trademark at this point because after all my high school AP courses and my English degree, it’s been going on 7 years of 1 day papers.

and so, dear friends, I would like to pass on this skill to you all. I should mention, none of this will work if you’re not already pretty solid on paper writing, i.e. if you only ever get C’s on your papers now this isn’t magically going to get you up to an A with one day. This is just to streamline the process, allowing for more time for other things or, more commonly, allowing you to not freak the fuck out when you realize the deadline is tonight at midnight and you’ve procrastinated all month on the final paper for your class.

(I should also mention that I’m currently procrastinating a 2.5k word paper due tomorrow night that I’ve only read one of two books for, so. There’s that.)

Anyway, without further ado, here we fucking go:

Step 1: Prep for the Day

this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, so make sure you prep the day accordingly. Ideally, you’d wake up before noon, make sure there’s nothing else planned for the day, and tell your roommates/parents to leave you alone until you officially reemerge at midnight (or, if you’re in college and have a 24 hr library, try going there. Mine has closed off study rooms that I can chill in, but if you’rs doesn’t just find a relatively comfy quiet spot). If you’re at home, pick one spot, clear it off super quick, grab some snacks and energy drinks, make sure you have everything charged and ready to go. I don’t recommend cafes or the like simply because there’s lots of distractions and also those places close before midnight, so you can’t stay there the entire time and therefor waste time moving halfway through.

Also, I would recommend taking a break between all the steps after this one. Don’t let the break take too long, but just long enough to walk the block, or grab another snack, or do some stretches, or watch a ten minute video, something like that. I personally never break at a natural stopping point, because then I’ll never get back to it, but how you break is up to you.

Step 2: Preliminary Research

now normally I do some preliminary research beforehand. Basically looking into the topic, figuring out generally what resources would be best, etc. That can usually be done in five to ten minute bursts throughout the week or so before the due date, whenever the topic comes to mind.

But then again, I’ve also procrastinated that until the very end as well, so. Usually all that takes if you go for the day of is some quick google scholar searches, or if you have access to the MLA database that works as well. Or, if you’re more like me, you could just deep dive on wikipedia and check out what relevant facts pertain to what numbers in the bibliography, then go ahead and cite those wherever possible.

Basically, get a good base knowledge of the big facts. This step should be quick and dirty. For instance, for my paper my sophomore year on Robespierre (14 pages written in a record 6 hours) I combed through his wiki, some websites on the French Revolution, and watched the Crash Course youtbue video on the subject. The rest of the research was done after I did my first outline.

Step 3: Outline #1

This is just a basic “What the fuck am I talking about” outline. It can be bullet points, numbers, stream of consciousness, i don’t care as long as it works for you.

For the Robespierre paper, my first outline was something to the effect of: -born poor -school -elected to govt -took over govt -killed people -got killed

and that was it. It’s like, before you build a house you have to clear off the right amount of land, make sure there’s nothing in your way, and give yourself a vague area in which to build. Super simple stuff.

I did get some advice, from somewhere I can’t remember, that a paragraph is basically equal to half a page, and so (excluding one page length for your intro + conclusion) you should have around two paragraphs or ideas per page. So my outline above would need some more points, there, to keep me on track for my page count. I eventually added a whole paragraph about how he was chosen to read for a visiting King Louis at his school and was then ignored which made him hate the monarchy, and another about what happened after he died what with the government in shambles, etc etc. So two bullet points per page should do it.

Step 4: More Research

This is where you get a little more in depth. Look at your bullet points and learn everything you need to about them.

For my first bullet, I found stuff like: “Robespierre was born in France in 1758 as Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (the third of this name), to a lawyer and the daughter of a brewer, he had two siblings, and he could read by age eight. he also loved pigeons and started a lifelong feud with his sister over one that he gave her that she let die."

and then I would move on to the next bullet point, and so on and so forth, filling in the gaps. Make sure to keep track of where your info comes from, as well. It doesn’t have to be a full citation, but just the hyperlink after the fact is going to save you so much time, i promise

Pro Tip: don’t throw out anything as irrelevant just yet. Just gather all the facts, no judging. Trust me on this.

Step 5: Better Outline

this is where you start to have fun with it. I would like to remind you that no one, unless you have some crazy micromanaging professor, sees your outlines. This is for you and you only, so write it in whatever way makes sense to you. It can be colorful and fun and whatever you need it to be.

I actually took screenshots of my outline for that robespierre paper (hence why i chose that one as an example) so here’s a look at what I do:

so, really, honestly, as shitty as you need this to be, or as many jokes, or whatever works for you my dude. Explain it like you would if it were a story you were telling, not a biographical/argumentative paper. Get informal with it.

Step 6: Write the Damn Thing

Okay to now that you did the research and wrote your fun outlines and all that, all you have to do now is write it! I tend to do this in the same doc as I do my outline, but starting again from the top so I can see what I need to add next right under where I’m typing, then delete it once I’ve covered the material.

If you did your outline well, this is really just cleaning that up so it’s “school appropriate” and “not an affront to people’s eyes and sensibilities” or whatever. At this point, it should go super quick, maybe 2 hours max to finish up writing what you need to write, here.

Pro Tip: do your citations as you go. Better yet, make your bibliography first so that A its already done and B you know what your in text cites will be from the start so that you don’t have to add them in later. If you kept your hyperlinks next to your research, just open up citationmachine and get those cites, then replace the links in your outline with the actual citations so it’s easier to line them up with in text cites while you go

Step 7: Fudging

oh, you thought we were done after writing the paper? nah fam. Chances are, you didn’t hit the page count you wanted to, you’re probably around 1 full page short, unless you love long sentences. This is where my pro tip from all the way back on step 4 comes in.

First, before you do anything drastic, make sure your formatting is correct. If your prof wants the big long “name, date, class, assignment, etc” in the top left then that adds a lot of length. Fonts will also change your page length, and so will footnotes and citations.

If you did it right and saved all the less relevant details, congratulations! Just sprinkle a few of those in there and you’re magically at your page count. This is the only reason I included the pigeon story in my paper (and this post), because I was about 3/4 of a page short of passably saying I got to 14.

If you didn’t save those inane details, don’t go looking for them now. Trust me, it’s much more pain than it’s worth. Your best bet, then, would be to either A. Add one more point if you can think one up, B. do some more research for relevant details to add in, or C. expand on the details you already have with more examples or effects or whatever applies.

do not, i repeat do NOT, just try and expand the words you use, like changing “to” into “in order to” or whatever those deflate your phrases charts tell you Not to do. They tell you not to for a reason. 1. it sounds stupid adding them in after the fact, and 2. your professor absolutely 100% will know and will mark you down if you do that in excess. Inflated phrase charts like that are well known by professors, and also adding them in after the fact won’t fit in at all with the voice that the rest of your paper was written in, so it’ll stand out like a sore thumb. just don’t do it unless it’s your last possible “i have ten minutes to turn this in” effort.

Step 8: Celebrate!!

And that’s it! If you did it right, this whole process should have taken you around the equivalent of 1 hour per page you had to write or so, so in a regular twelve hour day you’ve got time to take breaks and eat and all that shit. Go turn it in and celebrate your victory!

#study tips #adhd studying #paper writing #don't procrastinate kids #crash course #charlie's college crash course

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forestwater87 · 4 years

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Ok this is super embarrassing but you’re one of my favorite writers in this uh.. whatever this blogosphere is so!! I wanna try and take a crack at writing my own fanfic but.. I got no idea where to even start. Any advice?

Oh man, I feel awful about this! I didn’t know my inbox had any new messages, so some of these asks have been sitting here for . . . some time.

Anyway, first off thank you very much! Secondly, the most obvious advice is just, you know, “do it.” But that’s infinitely easier said than done. I started writing fanfic when I was around 10 years old, so overthinking it wasn’t an issue, since I thought I was the world’s greatest writer. Assuming you’re not 10 years old and as blind to the concept of literary criticism as I was . . . well, the first step is obviously getting an idea. EDIT: Holy shit, this is long. I’m gonna have to break this bad boy up with headers, like it’s a real blog post or something.

Getting Ideas/Inspiration

I don’t know if you already have something you’d like to write about or if you’re still at the “gee that looks like fun” level of fanfic ruminating, but if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, turning to the existing fandom is a great place to start!

1: Filling in fandom gaps: I’ve found a lot of my best fic ideas by looking through what already existed and seeing where there was something missing; when I first started writing for Camp Camp, literally only @raenbowsofficial created anything for Gwenvid -- it didn’t even have a ship name yet, and I’m pretty sure the 3 people into it were still throwing “daven” and “gavid” around as well -- so there being zero other fics for it meant that if I wanted it to exist, I’d have to be the one to write it. (That’s also nice if you’re kind of insecure, because when no one else has tried the idea you’re interested in, you have no pressure to compare it to anything else.)

Also, you could take a popular/already existing concept and write it the way you’d like to see it, if the existing fanfics do something with the story or characters that you’re not thrilled with. That’s handy because it gives you a general blueprint to work off of in terms of tropes and broad story beats, while letting you explore something new. Obviously, don’t rip off someone else’s fic note-for-note, but being inspired by someone else is a great way to kickstart your creativity! If you do have a specific author or story that you’re using as a jumping-off point for your own writing, I would strongly recommend linking them in your author’s notes at the beginning or end of the fic, and maybe gifting the story to them! You don’t have to, since the creation is entirely your own, but it’s still always nice to acknowledge the people who inspire you the most.

2: Fandom inception. If you want to be a little more direct and literal, there’s always the option of writing fanfic of a fanfic or fanart that you really love, if there’s a universe or story idea that you like, and you want more of it. As long as you give credit and notify the original creator, I think you’d have no issues in terms of fanfic etiquette, and I imagine they’d be honored to have inspired your own writing. Fandom is a very collaborative experience, after all, and we’re all in this together! :)

3. For more general “I have a vague idea of what I want to do (the ship, or maybe a tiny plot bunny) but I’m not sure where to go with it,” my biggest recommendation is music. Especially folk indie-rock music, which is 90% angst and 100% haunting. And again, looking at fanfic/art is a great way to get inspired -- I have a tendency to put up a particularly good or emblematic piece of fanart/fic in another window when I’m working on something tricky to write, just for something to stare at when my ideas start running dry (shoutout to @doritofalls, @ellohcee, and the aforementioned RA for being my go-tos when I need to stare at something pretty to feel inspired; there are absolutely others, because this fandom is filled with absurdly talented people, but those 3 are my heroes of inspiration and if you SOMEHOW don’t already know them, fix that immediately).

Wow, that’s a lot and it’s literally just all about getting an idea . . . which you might already have. Yikes. For the sake of people who have to scroll past this, let’s put the rest under a cut:

Fleshing Out the Idea: An Ode to Outlines

Some people are able to just sit down and write something incredible from a vague idea, and the story just builds on itself without any sort of planning or organization to guide them along the way. These people are named Cipher/Campernetics, and we hate her for being unfairly talented.

For the rest of us, outlines are essential.

My outlines tend to be insanely specific, because I’m very afraid of letting a single idea slip through the cracks, and I build on them over time as I get increasingly sure of where the story’s going. The early outlines tend to be extremely vague, with lots of “and then something happens” connecting major plot points. An example for a current WIP I’m doing right now:

(Seriously, “Julia and everything”? Future Forest is going to be so pissed at current Forest when she reaches that point and realizes she has no idea what she’s doing)

And as the story starts to take shape and a plot eventually forms -- they tend to take at least 10 chapters to materialize, but they do generally show up! One of the great things about fanfiction is that plot is largely optional, though, so no worries if you’re starting without a full story idea -- I find myself writing more and more details down, if for no other reason than that I want to make sure I remember what I was thinking when I finally get to that scene (because I have absolutely gotten to a point in a story and forgotten what I’d had planned. It sucks). Here’s an example from another fic with pretty significant spoilers if you can figure out which one it is oops:

I’d recommend keeping your outlines pretty simple, at least to start with: words and phrases, rather than whole-ass sentences like the above. The complexity will develop as your ideas do, so no need to wrack your brain trying to write out the entire story in bullet form.

I use the bolded ideas as stepping stones, more or less; I’ll write out the piece of the story that each line represents, which can be as little as a sentence or as much as 4 or more chapters (RIP my most recent long-running fic), then delete that line and move on to the next.

Bolding them isn’t necessary, but it does make it easier to differentiate at a glance what needs to be written. If you keep everything in the same hundred-page Google Doc like I do, this is very important.

Your outline doesn’t have to be well-written, and you can 100% use fillers like “and then something happens here.” I do that all the time -- again, another completely different story:

Now, the vaguer things are, the more annoyed Future You will be when it comes time to write whatever it’s bulleting -- there’s a reason I haven’t updated this fic, and it’s because I have zero idea what the everliving fuck “Pinky-and-the-Brain-ing all over the place” means -- but it’s really good for when you’re first getting started sketching out the vague outline of your fic. The more you panic trying to figure out all the twists and details at the very start, the less likely you’re ever just going to sit down and write the damn thing.

(This might be why I don’t write plot-heavy stories, to be fair. Mystery writers very well might have to have it all planned out from the get-go, and I’d recommend chatting with someone who’s a bit less “coffeeshop AU” and a bit more Agatha Christie for that kind of advice.)

Knowing When to Post

There are people that exist, who have amazing self-control, who can wait until their entire story is written and then release it in sections, at regular intervals, until the story is completed.

I am not one of these people, though I try to be with literally every single fic I’ve ever written.

Personally, I do this until I reach a point where I get stuck and need validation, and then post what I have in a giant chunk and then don’t update it for several months. This is almost universally known as the worst way to write fanfics, both in terms of getting interaction from fans and keeping readers from wanting to kill you, and if you have the ability to write the entire thing and sit on it until it’s ready to be shared, you are a hero.

Alternatively, if you can actually stick to a set schedule of writing it as you go and still update with a new chapter every X days, you are not human and I’m terrified of you, because if you find a way to weaponize this power you will rule the world.

Honestly, a good rule of thumb? Post it when you’re ready for people to read it, whether it’s done or not. Not all works will get done, and it seems mean to deny people the delicious little stub you’ve written even if you’re not going to finish it. When you’re happy with what you have -- or are so tired of looking at it that you need to post it or you’ll throw your computer out the window -- just do it and let out a sigh of relief, then either take a few days before going back to writing or just jump in immediately like a goddamn masochist.

(I have tried to get far enough ahead that I can start posting the already-written stuff on a schedule, figuring by the time I’m caught up I’ll have completed the entire story and won’t have any awkward gaps. Ahahahahahahahahaha that has never once worked.)

If you’re not certain about your writing, get a beta! The fandom is full of talented people who’d be happy to read over your work, and if the person you ask doesn’t have the time or spoons, they probably have a few ideas of other people you could reach out to. You don’t need a beta, but it always makes me feel better to have another set of eyes look over my writing before posting, and my beta always catches things I completely missed. Plus, you get a nice taste of that sweet, sweet validation we all crave.

This . . . is a bad guide. Just in general. The advice is . . . not good, and I think it’s largely useless. But I keep trying to think of useful things to add to it and coming up empty, so I hope something in here helped, and if you’d like to bounce your ideas off of someone, feel free to shoot me a message! Talking ideas over with friends is a great way to flesh them out as well, and I am happy to be anyone’s fandom friend.

#ask forest #forestwriting #legit no one is going to read this and i'm not saying that to judge anyone #in fact i'll lowkey judge you if you DO read all of this because why #Anonymous

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oculusius · 4 years

Text

Desk Jockey

“I want that report on my desk at 6 AM tomorrow or your ass is on the street.”

I look up from my keyboard, from the sickeningly modern, blank desk to the even worse face of my branch manager. Picture what you’d expect the person saying this to look like, and you’re probably right. Tall, dark hair combed back, slicked back with just enough gel to not be disgusting. Attractive, but only conventionally, because it hides his fetid interior. The rotten, wriggling insides of the kind of guy who relishes other’s misery, especially when he’s snorting high grade blow on the weekends. Though he’d probably prefer orphan’s tears (But that’s a story for another time).

I’ll do my best, you fucking cretin.

I mumble out some garbled excuse. I won’t even tell you what I said because I forget, or rather, it was so insignificant that I never committed it to memory in the first place. “Sorry Eric,” (He’s one of the ‘hip’ bosses that makes us call him by his first name), “Won’t happen again”, Please don’t take my healthcare away I will literally suck your dick to keep it. He shakes his head and walks away. We’re the last ones in the office, one of the tallest buildings in our shitty, Midwestern town; all glass and steel like some gaudy San Francisco startup. The only lights still on are in the lobby; besides that the only other illumination is from the sickeningly crisp glow emanating from my monitor. As soon as the elevator doors close behind Eric, I grasp my hair in my hands; it’s drenched in sweat and I’m balding already, despite being in my late twenties. Flakes of dandruff are appearing on my scalp, but by the time I get home from work I’m too damn tired to remember to get that special shampoo. Stress related? Probably. Did I have time to fix it? Fuck no.

I swear to God you motherfucker I’ll name you when I eat a fucking bullet you shit fuck…

Stop. The more rational voice in my head. Finish this shit in the next—5 hours? Shit, it’s already 1 AM! I’ll smash bottles and get proper wasted when I’m finished. And when the following day is over, seeing as I’d probably be pulling an all-nighter. Fuck. I take two caffeine pills from the nondescript tin in my top drawer.

Alright. I need to get the excel sheet from that old email inbox the intern left when he quit (not that I blame him). To do that, I need to go through my inbox and find that time I CC’ed him about scheduling that conference call. But to get into my inbox, I need to reset my password because company policy is to change passwords every 3 weeks, and it can’t be a past password…

Alright. One step at a time.

It’s two hours later. I found the file, finally. I feel like I crossed the fucking Rubicon with no limbs to get here. Now, to get the shit I need from it and send it to Eric. I hope he chokes on it. While bleeding. From every orifice, and then some. I open the file, and I’ve never been so goddamn happy to see the sickening green of excel. Document recovery—what’s that? Fuck it, I’ll deal with it later. I ctrl f the account name. Beads of sweat are dripping off my forehead. Outside, it’s still the vaguely pinkish black of night in any big city. I might actually get some sleep tonight…

WHY IS THERE A FUCKING HYPERLINK HERE?

Oh boy, this better not cost me my job. I get sent to a greyish webpage, the kind of soulless portal that screams ‘high finance’. A nondescript login page for “Kleene-Rosser Accounts Management LLC”. I roll my eyes. Management occasionally threw us these shitty platforms because their friends from way back developed them, and they wanted to help them out. Because God forbid we use Citibank.

There’s no login, but there’s a support number on the bottom of the page. Maybe if I call, they can help me? It’s worth a shot. I mean, I had nothing but time, and if it actually worked and saved my job, I would fly all the way to India or some shit to kiss that phone technician on the lips. Alright. God, when I was an undergrad did I ever imagine this would be my waking life (or lack thereof?) I should’ve joined the military. Better to be blown up overseas then mentally scarred over here.

4-887-612-393: 24/7 Live Support

I call from my office phone, in the hopes that it’ll lend credence to the claim that I fucking need this login. The phone rings for what seems like half an hour, but I can tell from the clock on the wall that it hasn’t been a single, godforsaken minute. Maybe I’d died and gone to purgatory? Seemed believable enough—although, I wasn’t sure what I’d done in a past life to deserve this. Maybe I was a Mongol slavedriver, and…

“Hello, this is ZenDesk, my name is Robert. How may I help you today?” My crisis of existential spiraling instantly, mercifully, shatters. I put on a cheery voice.

“Hi, I work at [company name]. I really need to find something for my boss, and in this accounts payable excel file, it says that I’m supposed to login to a ‘Kleene-Rosser Accounts Management?’ I have all my company info if you need it, I was just never told we used this firm before.”

A beat passes. I hope he heard the desperation in my voice, because if I had a guardian angel, it’d be on the other end of that phone line. Why did I tell him I never heard of this place? He doesn’t care! He isn’t paid to care!

“Of course, sir. Just a moment please. What’s your name sir?”

That thin veneer of politeness again.

“Uh, Keith Sanders. I also have my company email, if you can send the password there…”

“OK sir, what’s the address?”

I spell it out for him. My fingers are digging into the faux-leather of the chair. I’m starting to sweat. If this doesn’t work, I’m fucking hosed…

I tell him the address, and soon I have the URL to reset the Kleene-Rosser password. Surprisingly, my company email works for the username. Lucky guess I suppose? I thank him, truly from the bottom of my heart, and wait for the page to load.

According to the web page, the site was some kind of file storage service. Besides a few nondescript tabs on the top leading to “Home”, “Support”, etc. there’s nothing but a grey background set behind a very basic file directory.

[company_name]/Accounts/Accounts_Payable/2019/May/.

There it is! So deceptively close. 05.19.19.xcl

When I try to open it, I hear the most awful of noises: the Windows 10 error sound, impossibly loud. File corrupted. WHAT THE FUCK? HOW DO YOU CORRUPT A FUCKING EXCEL FILE? SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS SIDEWAYS?

I dig my fingertips into my temples. I can feel the faint outline of an engorged vein on the side of my head. I imagine it, an angry, vibrant purple, the shooting representation of my immense, earth-shattering frustration.

It was as if every cog in the infernal machine that was my work place was designed specifically to drive me fucking bananas. Like my life was some cosmic joke to see how much I would endure before going postal, or at least smashing my monitor. Jump out an office window, strapped with speakers blaring “FUCK THIS PLACE” over and over again, even when they’re scraping me off the pavement with a comically large spatula. Every little thing piled atop one another to form the worst shit tsunami eternally suspended above my head. Every wriggling, squealing fucking cell in my brain…

Alright, let��s think of solutions. Eric wanted the file, and if it was corrupted, I’d just tell him the truth: that it’s how I found it. Man, why did I drive myself up the wall earlier? So stupid… I log into my email. Actually, I don’t. As soon as I hit enter in the URL bar, I get that fucking google “no internet” error dinosaur. At this point, I try to keep rolling with the punches. Alright, network diagnostics, here we go. After what feels like centuries, after windows resets the router, etc. I finally get an answer. Sort of. An error code. I had two hours left before I was unemployed. I take another caffeine pill and keep going, determined to see this shit through to the end.

Hidden on the fifth page of the search results is my answer. It’s on an obscure, early 2000s web forum that had a grand total of 2 users online, probably bots. A post from a literal decade ago has my same issue, and one of the commenters mentions he had the same thing. Apparently, it’s a hardware issue with the router. Despite being woefully underqualified to deal with IT issues, I have no other choice. No fucking way Eric will believe that the internet cut out 2 hours before my deadline. I find the tech support number, and pray that the information is up to date and that they won’t have to send a technician out to fix it.

As the phone rings, I ponder my situation. I was unlucky enough to find what I needed right as the Wi-Fi died, and it was probably one of those issues that fixes itself in an hour anyway. There it is again; I can almost see the shadowy gears of the universe working against me, trying to crush my psyche beneath their teeth into bits of mental scrap. When I finally get a response, I’m caught off guard. This guy seems American. His voice is a bit hoarse, and I picture him as the fat comic book guy from the Simpsons, gut and all.

“----- tech support. How can I help you?”

I don’t like the way his voice trails off every word, leaving a breathy wisp behind like the tail of a comet. It makes me want to shudder.

“Yeah, uh—“

My mind blanks for a minute. I’ve been derailed, and it takes an agonizing few seconds for me to decide what I want to say.

“I was trying to email my boss, and—“again with the unnecessary details “I got this error code, and I saw online that it was an issue with the router.”

“Uh huh.” He sounds skeptical. And disapproving. I imagine he’s wrinkled that gob of cartilage clinging to his face he calls a nose. “What’s the model number?” He finally asks.

I read off the name, and he laughs. He fucking laughs. Is my suffering amusing him? Arousing him?

I have a clearer image of this guy now. Pervading my mind, filling the gaps in my brain, covering my synaptic gaps with fucking cement. He’s grossly overweight, in some dark room somewhere. He smells like BO and he is sweaty milky beads off his forehead that are landing into his keyboard and congealing. The scent is odious, like a corpse coated in mayonnaise and left in a tomb for five millennia, except it’s still wet.

“Sir?” That subtle tone of annoyance again. “Do you understand me, sir?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry. Would you mind repeating that? I was just—talking to someone.” Idiot he can tell you weren’t.

I write down his instructions, but first he pontificates about some issue with a chip in the router or some shit. Apparently I have to call the manufacturer? And they can help me dust it off or some such?

He’s fleshy and sickeningly soft, like a malformed, hairless puppy. That shirt’s been pasted to his damp stomach longer than you’ve been on Earth. It’s just a crude impersonation of the kind of people that run this industry. And you’re just his plaything, to be antagonized and fucked with until…

As soon as my attention is re-centered, I say “Alright thanks bye” without even knowing what he was rambling about before. He laughs. No, cackles. I can practically smell the stale coffee and tobacco on his breath. I slam the receiver down. It was starting to stick to my face with sweat and I really wanted to switch to my cell anyway. Peeling it away was orgasmic.

I examine the napkin I had scribbled on. I’d written it down in a haze, and it almost felt like I was reading someone else’s handwriting. Was that a 5, or a 6, or what? Doesn’t matter. I plug in the numbers, to some obscure fucking company I know nothing about. There’s like 12 digits, not like any number I’ve ever dialed. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to make the worst fucking mistake of my life, worse than taking on that debt to go to college or that time I puked on grandma’s casket at the funeral. Light years away, I imagine, some metaphysical blade was eagerly, sexually, preparing to scoop out my insides and flay them across time and space, flicking its imaginary tongue back and forth in anticipation.

I had expected that infuriating error code, but instead, I feel it. All of it. The other side is cold, and every hair on my body stands right on edge.

“Hello?”

The phone’s definitely connected.

“Hello?!”

This time it seems to echo. I’d opened a door, a beaming ray of light into a place that hasn’t been graced by it in eons.

“Is this Infolink appliances?” I gulp suddenly. My throat is impossibly dry. Everything that made me me, my identity, my memories, my interests… were spilling out into space, into an impossible void far blacker than even the darkest of nights. Please. Like my brain was a plastic bag full of air, but now it’s been punctured. It’s getting sucked out like a breached spaceship, and my body is curling around the now torturous void. I am a husk.

I drop the phone on the ground, and the screen cracks. But I’m far beyond caring about that screen now. The spiritual, inky black is billowing out of the phone like an endless wave going out in every direction. And there’s something else. A raucous laughter, and sneering, they’re laughing so hard somewhere backstage that their mouths, or whatever they call those fucking gullets, are overflowing with sickening white foam with streaks of yellow bile. Dark silhouettes that have been eagerly waiting this whole time for this horrible climax. I’d played my part. Everything else was out of my hands now.

#horror #writing #lovecraft

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