#i mean like. i wrote a twelve page essay in the two hours before it was due last semester.

[phonecallwithsatan]

Run Away With Me

a.n: George Weasley x y/n, a bit angsty with a cute ending. This is the first time I’ve written for George, so please do enjoy, my angels! I wrote it based off the song Run Away With Me by Sufjan Stevens<3 Feel free to request anything, too:) I'm in a very flourishing mood hehe. 

George has been distant from you in your final year at Hogwarts, and you’re ready to end it until he asks you a simple yet complex question. No gender is implied and no specific house is implied. 

⭑

You felt him growing distant from you.

It used to be love notes set on your pillow that were waiting for you at night before you went to bed, with pieces of candy scattered on top just waiting to be indulged in.

It used to be sneaky meet-up dates in the forbidden forest, hoping that no one catches you both laughing hand in hand through nature. 

It used to be after-game quidditch kisses. Ones that hit your face hard with lust and passion for that one person- your person.

Now it’s cold pillows that felt worn out because of an absence of parchment and sweets.

Now it’s “next week” dates that end up being pushed to the following week. 

Now there are no games because of Professor Umbridge, who banned your lover from his team. Your shared moments were rushed, and with a motive that felt like a hurdle, the passion moving differently between the two.

Ever since Professor Umbridge arrived at Hogwarts, she has made it living hell for any students who disobeyed her. The Weasley twins made her unoffical “kill list,” most likely the two shared her number one spot. 

George had been drained. His classes were slipping more than usual ever since she had come. She had kicked Fred and George off their quidditch team, along with banning their products with her Educational Decree #30, declaring that “All Weasley Products Would Be Banned Immediately.” 

You were always there for him through these hard times. Fred was able to console on his own, but George on the other hand needed support to get through these hard times and you stuck through it. You made sure that he knew there was someone to help him when he fell.

You had distinctly remembered the time when the Toad, Professor Umbridge, had kept him in detention until twelve in the morning.

You had probably been sitting in the common room for over four hours just waiting for your angel to walk through the portrait hole safe and unharmed, but you knew that your imagination was just a figment of lies.

George finally walked in the common room with his hand in his pocket, passing you completely with his head down.

“George.” You got up from your occupied seat. George turned his head with his eyes brimmed with tears. Your heart shattered at the sight. “Come here, sweet boy.” You motioned with your hands and a smile.

But he didn’t. “George?” He just stared at you with an unrecognized pain in his look, making you shiver a bit from how cold and unexpecting it was. You walked to him with your hand still reached out going towards the one in his pocket, but he wouldn’t move it.

“George, just talk to me, angel. Let me help you.” You put an arm to his chest and ran it up to his shoulder, to finish at his chin. You tried pushing it up but he was committed. 

You removed your hand immediately and you were visibly just as hurt. Your boyfriend of four years was being stubborn and distant. And now, he wouldn’t even let you help with what you both had gone through multiple times before.

“Don’t you remember last time, when it was my turn to write, ‘I will not act with misfits?’ Do you remember, sweet boy? Do you remember how deep it was in my skin, how you helped me take the pain away from that stupid, stupid quill? Let me do the same for you, please.” You were being patient with him, but you were beginning to be pissed off.

“Godric, George, just look at me.” The sudden removal of his hand from his pocket revealed what he was hiding. You took his hand and looked up at him before flipping it over to read what cruel thing she had made him do.

Deep marks of the line, “I will become nothing” was etched into his skin, leaving you at a loss for words.

You didn’t know what to say, you just stared at your boy standing in front of you with full vulnerability. He was bound to snap at some moment.

“This means nothing, you know that right?” You raised the hand you held to meet with his eye level, but he didn't budge as you saw a tear fall off the side of his face. This is when you absolutely broke inside, all focus and concentration on the boy in front of you.

“George, tell me you get it.” He finally met your eyesight for the first time but he said nothing. 

“I am nothing, and I am left with nothing.” He muttered it ever so quietly, and it took you a minute to register.

He removed his hand from yours and began walking away from you, not even bothering to turning around.

“What about your family? School?” He continued up the stairs. “What about me, George?” You knew this would get a reaction from him, but you were wrong. He didn’t even flinch at your words. He was gone.

You were so confused. You two had gone through detentions with Umbridge so many times before and separately too. It made you stronger. So why was your angel boy refusing you?

The days that followed were some of the toughest days in the semester, and it made the distance between you and George even bigger. It had now been two months since you had last spoken. You had only heard from Fred only once or twice. It was small talk, “how have you been,” “it’s so good to see you,” those types of things.

It was heartbreaking to see George in the corridors with his head down and his arms always in his pockets. He was ignoring you like never before and you were fed up with your boyfriend keeping you out. He had never been like this, and his actions affected Hogwarts in a way that was unknown to everyone.

The two twins were quieter. Jokes and pranks were not told the same if it wasn’t coming straight from them. Fred was much more stable than his twin, but something that night happened, and you didn’t know why it was their breaking point. They had only fret a little bit the first time with Umbridge, what had happened? Their mental health just- dropped, out of nowhere, and you didn’t know what to do.

He had always been there for you no matter how hard you pushed him away from anger and pain, but you knew that he was there. If it was from a difficult test to a difficult day with Umbridge, he was ready to handle all of you. You just didn’t realize why he couldn’t react the same way when it came to him.

And it’s not like you hadn't tried to reach out to him. You waited on him even after that night in the common room and you made it clear that your feelings for him did not change even after his words. You were there for him just as he was for you. but that changed once you realized he was going to keep passing you and ignoring you.

As of a few weeks ago though, things started to get better. The twins began to mess with Umbridge a lot more, and they were acting as if they would never see her ever again. You had seen them at Hogsmeade with their friend, Lee, just looking around at the vacant buildings and picking locks to get in to view them. It was nice to see your angel smile again, but you knew it had nothing to do with you.

You had decided to end it- officially. Title and everything to be gone. You were no longer going to be George Weasley’s significant other. You two were done once you said the words and there was no going back. You decided that you were going to tell him tonight in the Gryfinndor common room. It was a Saturday, so you would tell him, and then you would go to Hogsmeade with all your friends. Infact, they were the ones urging you to get it over with. 

You had been planning it for a week and it hurt to think about it. You always thought George was your end game, your dream boy, your angel. And he was, but things changed and it felt like you were no longer his. He slipped even though you held on to him. You were sick of being ignored. Mental health is not a joke to you, but at this point, it felt like he was purposefully ignoring you. He didn’t even lift his head when you spoke or interacted with him.

Before your crafted plan and Hogsmeade hang-out with your friends, you had to write a five-page essay on the ‘Importance of Frog Parts in 18th Century Magic’ at the library.

You had sat a few tables down from you and George’s usual spot. It was a beautiful one too, as it was right under a light fixture that added a golden hue on your work. It was in a perfect spot too. It was where there wasn’t very heavy foot traffic and with no scratches on the table that hitched your quill when you wrote. You missed the table, but you missed your boyfriend more.

Just as you were finishing up the last line of your strange topic essay, you felt a presence around you.

You looked up to see George Weasley looking at you nervously. “Can I sit?”

You were in shock. It was almost as if he read your mind about later on. This was just going to be way easier.

“Okay, but just know i’m leaving.” He quickly sat down next to you and tried to grab your hand but you snatched it away. 

He was visibly hurt by that action, but you did not care after all he had put you through these past two months.

“Run away with me.” He didn’t tear apart from your gaze as he was longing for it for two months.

“George, are you kidding m-” You never got to finish your sentence as he rudely interrupted you.

“My sweet remedy, run away with me.” The last word was sharp. He continued, and you were oblitterated by this. So, you did something you had never done before. You got up briskly, his eyes following you, and you slapped him across the face.

“You have no right, George Weasley. You couldn’t look me in the eyes for two months, and now you want me to ‘run away with you’? What kind of sick joke is that you-”

He got up and met your height.

“Please, just hear me out. I’ll beg if I have to.” His eyebrows were brought together and his eyes scanned your face in hopes of getting some type of emotion from you. He didn’t even react to the slap.

Ignoring him, you pushed him aside after you grabbed your quill and essay to exit the library. You heard footsteps after you but you ignored them.

“What can I do, please [y/n], love-”

You turned around at the pet name he used for you. “That was revoked when you said that you had nothing in life when you knew you did. You have a loving family, a beautiful future, and a life to live. How dare you be so selfish in front of someone who would do anything for your happiness. You have no clue what it is like to have nothing in life, and you have no clue what it is to be nothing. You are far from nothing, George. Look at how quiet Hogwarts has been without you. Look at how people look up to you. What about them?” You were practically yelling at this point. The hallway was empty and you were facing your boyfriend now. 

“What about them, George? Umbridge had no clue what she was trying to transfer when she made you write that with the stupid quill, how could you let that go to your head? George, I was there for you when you needed me and I know that you knew, so how dare you say that you have nothing.” You were too angry and busy to cry, you did not even suffer through a voice crack during your rant.

“I didn’t know how to face you after that, but if you listen to me I promise I will explain.” He was inching closer to you, but you were backing away.

“And why would I do that, Weasley?” He flinched at the use of his last name. He was losing you.

“Fred and I are leaving. We found a shop for our stuff. You know, all the inventions. In Hogsmeade, too. It’s all done, and I want you to come with.” Your face remained the same. 

You couldn’t believe that he had done that all in a span of two months. In secret too. He was hopeful still, and you let your walls down.

“They’ll continue to terrorize us with new confusion. They’ll continue to paralyze us with those illusions. They won’t stop. Love, come run away with me.” He was slowly walking towards you and he grabbed your hands and, foolishy, because of love, you let him. 

“Please, [y/n], follow me to life and love within. A new horizon, elsewhere. I will show you rapture, love. Just let me.”

He held your hands in his and raised them with every ending of his sentence. He was teary eyed and because of that, and that only, you began to think it over.

Normally you stuck to your word, but your sweet boy was at your mercy and you couldn’t stand to see him like this anymore.

“Why did you leave, George. Why would you do that?” You muttered it after a silence between you two. Your head was down and unfortunately, you let a tear slip through your guard.

He let go of one hand and bent down a bit frantically, pushing a few strands of shorter hair behind your ear and trying to tilt your head. His expression was so emotionally distraught, you couldn't take it anymore as you felt that single tear leave you. You moved your head away from his hand as he continued to meet your eyes. 

“Just answer me.” You were strict on a response.

He slowly dropped his hand and stayed quiet.

At this point you lost it. The tears just came.

“Damn it, Weasley. Why would you do that?! What did I do to deserve that? I was there for you and you chose to ignore me!” Your fists were balled and they were hitting his chest, pushing him away with every word you spoke, making his vulnerability collapse as he began to let his tears leave him too, marking his sweet face you had kissed a million times before into a streaky mess.

You stopped pushing him away on your final sentence and you waited a response from him.

Instead, you were both sobbing in front of one another, lips quivering and eyebrows crinkled from emotion. You tilted your head and you let it drop before picking it up to see George sniffle and run his hands through his short hair.

He walked to you and took your waist, putting his head in the crook of your shoulder and neck and just began to sob into your skin. Your arms went to his neck and you held onto him- tightly. 

He could finally let go all his emotional distraught and you just cried even more. 

He was sobbing like never before and your heart broke as you held the boy that once held you the same way, still angry at the absence of him and angry that it took him this long to come to you as he was now.

“I just couldn’t t-take it anymore, [y/n]. I thought I could but I can’t. I’m sorry, I am so, so, so, sorry my love.” He stayed in your arms and you held him tighter as soon as you heard that stutter escape his lips. He fell apart in front of you and he had wished he had done it sooner. It felt good to let go.

He pulled away from you and he grabbed your face which was matching up to his- puffy and wet.

“[y/n], please, run away with me. Forgive me and run away with me. I can’t do it without you, love. I couldn’t focus on a-anything when you weren’t beside me. I can promise you that when Fred and I agreed to leave, you were the first thing that came to mind.” His stutter continued to this statement and you didn’t know if it was truly what he meant or if it was rather what you wanted to hear. 

“You are the first and you’ll be the last. I’m sorry for everything, [y/n]. But please, take this chance and follow me somewhere better.” 

You were hesitant. It was two months of nothing. Silence. No communication. But your poor boy was so ruined and dragged that you couldn’t help but take pity on him.

“It’s on Diagon Alley, right on a corner. You’ll love it, I promise. There’s nothing for us here to do. The shop has been a thought forever and we’re finally making it a reality, [y/n].”

It was dead silent. There was no one in the hall. The light was dimmed and the windows beside you to your left revealed the Black Lake.

“Not coming to you was a mistake, I want you to know that I regret it. I shut myself out to everyone and I want to ask to come back if you’ll let me.”

All this time you were readying yourself to break up with him, but the sound of his voice cracking and the way his hands cupped your face was so longing and needy, that you couldn’t think about leaving him. He was simultaneously still leaning down to match your eyesight and you saw him flicker across your face. 

“Please.” He pleaded one more time and ran his thumb across your cheek to wipe a tear away.

“When.” You stated simply. He was a ride or die, and you were the same to him. You were his, and he was yours, there was no denying it. This was the exact moment where you realized that it was truly unfair to punish him.  

Two months of silence took a toll on your relationship but it’s different when they’re your ride or die. You waited for him, and you could not blame him anymore for his delay on returning. He needed time, and he knew you were there for him. You knew it all along, but you were blinded by the absence.

“What?” His eyes lit up.

“When, George. When are you leaving?” 

His eyebrows separated from their temporary creasing and he looked at you with something that could only be described as desire.

Longing for you, he went in for a kiss that felt like the missing piece to all your problems. 

You kissed him back with the same need you both experienced, grabbing the back of his head to deepen it, not stopping for a single breath as your bodies collided. Your book bag fell but you were too busy burning away with your one and only.

You pulled away and you put a hand to the side of his face. You had to lean away a bit because his arms had trapped you to him with hands on your mid back, they were bent a bit at your side but firm as if he could lose you any moment. 

He melted to your touch and he explained his plan.

“Well, we want to leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” You were surprised.

“Yes, love. Tomorrow. We decided it a few days ago and I want to take you with me, but I understand if you can’t.” His smile faded a bit at those last few days and he even looked down a bit to avoid your gaze.

You took the hand that was on his face and you used it to lift him up to meet your eyes.

“The year ends in a week, will you still want me, sweet boy?” You grazed his face again and tilted your own as you awaited an answer. You knew he loved to be called ‘sweet boy’.

“I’ll still want you even if you tell me to wait forty years. I’ll want you forever, if you’ll have me, of course.”

His confidence was back and you could hear it too. But still with that fact, tears coated his face. You didn’t know if it was from happiness or from the stored away sadness that was finally realeased to run.

“What’d you say, [y/n]. Come run away with me.” 

You went in to kiss him, letting a cry escape your lips before you connected. You tasted salty tears and as was he, but you couldn’t be happier in this moment. 

⭑

The next day was a day you would never forget. The great hall was finally brought back to life after their big entrance, and after it you were in the courtyard watching your boyfriend and his direct copy of a twin joke around on their brooms. 

You finally saw that sweet smile strike his face again and you knew that everything that was to come would be good and calm, nothing like what you two had endured in your last weeks at Hogwarts.

They kicked up their brooms after their final goodbyes with everyone and they even threw a few more fireworks in the air. Faces including yours lit up and you knew that he was the one.

He looked down one last time, and he smiled at you from above. It was something you missed receiving. 

#george wealsey imagine #george weasley #george wealsey x you #george weasley x y/n #george weasley x reader #george #weasley #weasley x reader #hogwarts #hogwarts seventh year #gender neutral character #angst #george weasley angst #george weasley x neutral reader #harry potter

[girlsluvbot]

MATCHMAKER pt.1

pairing: roseanne park × fem! reader

genre: fluff, angst

about:

matchmaker /ˈmatʃmeɪkə/

noun

a person who arranges marriages or initiates romantic relationships between others.

"an enthusiastic matchmaker who continually tried to pair off the difficult bachelor with unattached ladies"

a/n: i'm back!!! hehe this goddamn thing took so long to write, i both despise and adore it with every fibre of my being. enjoy my blood, sweat and tears in the form of a fic.

You loved your job. Very few people are lucky enough to be able to relate to that statement, and you were thankfully one of them. Hell, not only did you love your job, you were extremely good at it.

Since you were a little kid, writing nas always been your biggest passion. Wether it was writing short stories, poems or essays about the french revolution, you were always happy when you were able to put your feelings and thoughts onto paper. This was the main reason why you became the manager of your local newspaper during middle school, high school and eventually even university.

You've won multiple writing contests and even people who had no idea what your name was knew one thing about you: you were an amazing writer.

Years of practice, your impeccable set of skills and a recommendation letter from your university professor secured you a job at Vogue almost immediately. After all this hard work, you finally achieved everything you were looking for. You were truly happy.

Until this very moment.

"Well, I don't know," the woman sitting in front of you made a disgusted grimace, "it just lacks any emotion whatsoever. I've quite literally never read something so stiff and akward."

And here they were. The first words of criticism you have ever recieved. You were so used to everyone praising your work, you didn't know how to react or respond.

Three months ago, you would have never gotten into a similar situation: simply because there was nothing about your work to critize. But a lot has changed in the past few weeks, and not exactly in the good kind of way.

When you first joined Vogue, you were the head editor and journalist of the spread dedicated almost entirely to interviews. Thats what you did, talked to celebrities and wrote about them. And that's what you were good at, almost too good.

Just a year after working in the magazine you got promoted. You were still the head editor, but now of a completely different part of the journal: one dedicated to a single topic. Love. This was bad news, very bad news.

Why, you ask? The reason was fairly simple but no less embarrassing. Even as the head editor of a spread all about love, you've never experienced it yourself. In other words, you've never been in love. And how are you supposed to write about something you know nothing about?

Your boss looks at you and shakes her head. She reaches for the stack of papers on the table in front of her and starts reading, "For example; 'His lips brushed against mine. They were soft. The kiss was short but sweet. I loved it.' What the actual heck? I kiss my cat more passionately than this." she took off her glasses and started massaging the crook of her nose.

"Listen, Y/N, I've read your previous pieces and they were simply wonderful. But this? I don't even know what else to say without hurting your feelings."

"I'm so sorry. I know, it's just that I dont have much experience in said area." you don't finish the sentence, hoping she somehow gets the memo. She doesn't.

"What area?"

"Love. I dont have much experience with love." you blurt out the words that have been on your mind nonstop since the day of your promotion.

"Oh, you poor thing" she leans back in her chair, her eyes scanning your every move, "Isn't that unfortunate."

You nod your head slowly, trying not to get offended at her words full of pity.

"How are you supposed to write romance stories then? This won't work." the woman grabs a post-it note

"Are," your voice cracks in the middle of the sentence, "Are you firing me?"

"Are you crazy? Of course I'm not," she hands you the piece of paper with a phone number, "We just have to improvise for the time being. Do you know Roseanne Park? She's the manager of our Matchmaker spread. You can be her assistant for the next few months, help her around, learn a thing or two. Hopefully your writing wont be so...bland after."

To be completely honest, you didn't handle changes well. Maybe that's why you were standing in front of your new, and hopefully temporary, bosses office, trying to build up the courage to knock on her door.

One of the reasons why you were so nervous was that Roseanne Park, the manager of the Vogue Matchmaker was insanely attractive. Admittedly, you did some online stalking the night before- okay, a lot of it. Here's the thing; you were a planner. Whether it came to your career, writing or even relationships, you liked to beprepared.

That's why after a few hours spent on the internet, you knew everything. The name of her sister (Alice Park), if the had a pet (yes, a fish named Joohwangie) and who her favorite band was (The 1975).

You weren't usually like this, so head over heels for a girl you haven't even met. But your writing, the reason you were here in the first place, didn't usually suck so after all, some things really do change easily.

Just as you reached for the dark wooden door in front of you, it opened before your hand could even touch it's sleek surface.

"Oh!" the tall woman stopped in her tracks. Thanks to your thorough internet digging, you instantly recognized her. Roseanne Park. Your new boss. A 'matchmaker' if you will.

"You must be Y/N! I've heard that you're going to be my assistant for a bit." your cheeks heated up for no apparent reason. Did she know the reason why you got transferred here so quickly? Every molecule in your body wished and prayed to every possible god out there that she didn't.

"Yeah, that's me!" you finally composed yourself enough to speak, but that didn't mean your voice didn't sound like one of a twelve year old boy going through puberty- high pitched and squeaky.

You examined her face more in depth, and realized quite a few things:

She was somehow even prettier in real life. How? you had no idea. Some people just really won the genetics lottery, you thought.

Her hair was red. Like undeniably, undoubtedly red. In all of the pictures you found yesterday it was either brown or black, so this change caught you off guard. You couldn't complain though, because this girl looked like a hotter version of Ariel with a much better sense in fashion (and music).

"Have you been standing out here for too long?"

"Oh no, I just arrived." lying has never been so easy.

"Great! I'm gonna go downstairs to grab a package but you can look around the office while I'm gone," she opened the door a bit to let you walk in.

You did as she told you and entered the room. The door closed behind you without you noticing, the only thing you could focus on was this girl's office. It looked just like you would imagine heaven to look like- full of light, white furniture and expensive looking leather couches.

There were pictures everywhere: a dozen of four young girls (one of them being Roseanne), a few more of her with famous celebrities and one of a familiar looking face- her sister.

You carefully walked towards the table in the middle of the room, not wanting to damage anything. You noticed quite a bit of unexpected clutter, and above everything a print of the brand new Vogue issue. A woman on the cover flashed you a beautiful smile as you picked it up. The headline stated: Kim Jisoo talks acting, NYFW and love.

You flipped the glossy magazine pages to find the spread dedicated to said interview and noticed just what you were looking for: the author of the article. The credits at the bottom of the page revealed a nice surprise- Author; Roseanne Park.

"Well what do you think? Is it a good article?" your soul almost left your body when you realized who was standing next to you. You quickly put the magazine down, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to touch your stuff. I just saw the cover and..."

"Oh my gosh, are you kidding? That's completely okay, I don't mind." she pointed to the journal, "That interview is actually one of the favorite pieces I ever wrote, and not just because it's about Jisoo. Plus, my friend took the pictures, so it was extra fun." She opened the spread again and pointed to a name credited right next to hers, Photographer; Lalisa Manoban.

"Oh wow. I've seen her pictures before, they're really good. I with I could take photos like that. Seriously."

Here's one thing to note: when you're nervous, you ramble. Like a lot. Some people would say its better than staying silent, but let's be honest- it's like stepping into a puddle instead of mud. Not a disaster, but there's still plenty to complain about.

Thankfully, Roseanne only giggled, "I know exactly what you mean. I hope you'll get to work with her someday."

You both stared at the magazine spread for a second before Roseanne broke the silence.

"But now, let's get to bussines. Sit down please, this might take a while," she pointed tkwards one of the leather couches you noticed earlier and took a seat at the other side of the table.

"So, as you probably already know, my name is Roseanne Park. As a manager of Matchmaker, my job is to read these letters," she grabben a handful of papers for emphasis, "and respond to them, give advixe basically. The title 'Matchmaker' comes from the fact that the majority of the letters talk about love. Any questions so far?"

When you shook your head no, she continued, "As my assistant, your job is fairly simple. You're going to sort and read through the hundreds of letters I recieve weekly and pick the most interesting ones for me to feature. And occasionally, you might accompany me to a few interviews. Sounds good?"

You slowly nodded, processing all the new information. Letters, answers, interviews and a hot boss. That doesn't sound so bad.

"Great. So Y/N," she suddenly stood up, "Would you mind going with me to Subway? I'm starving."

By the time you were finished with lunch, you had a new point to add to your list of realizations about your new boss:

She loves food, and by loves I mean LOVES.

The moment you arrived at the restaurant, food was the only thing she would talk about. She told you about what she had for dinner and breakfast, what kind of snacks she hid in the office and what kind of salad she was getting alongside a baguette.

After she actually managed to get a bit of calories into her system (thanks to a foot-long chicken turkey sandwich) the conversation finally got more interesting.

Don't get me wrong, you could listen to this girl talk for hours, no matter the topic. But after listening to a thirty minute long monologue about why pineapple pizza is the best thing ever invented, even you have reached your limit.

"So," you start, in an effort to break the ice, "how long have you been working at Vogue?"

She squints at the toast in front of her, trying to remember, "About five years? Yeah, it's gonna be five years in May."

"Oh wow, that's impressive."

She tilts her head, "Is it? I mean, when you work as often as I do, time just goes by. I don't even remember the last time I went out with my friends to discuss something that wasn't work related."

You pout, regretting the choice to ask her about work.

"But at the same time, I love what I do so I can't really complain. What about you though? Why did you decide to become a journalist?"

"Oh, I started just a year ago. And I studied literature, so I guess becoming a journalist made sense."

"Why did you study literature then? There's so many other better paying jobs out there."

"I don't think anyone works in such a field for money, that's for sure," you try to lighten the atmosphere, "Well, my mom wanted to become a writer, but she got pregnant before she could finish her book and she's been pretty much busy ever since. I guess her love for books kind of rubbed off on me."

Roseanne nods, to let you know she's listening. "I'm glad you and your mom have such an important aspect of your lives in common. My mother wanted me to become a lawyer, I doubt she's ever read even a single fiction book in her entire life."

"What does she think about your job now?"

Her lips tighten and she crosses her arms. "I don't know. I haven't talked to her since," her eyes seem empty, their signature spark gone. You can tell you struck a nerve. "I haven't talked to her since I moved out."

"Well, I'm sure that she's proud of you," you can't help but add.

Rosie lets out a dry laugh, "You don't know my mother then," she slowly pushes her plate away, "I think I'm full so I'm gonna head back to the office."

Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut. You learned this the hard way.

You head back after your lunch break ends, alone. Even though Roseanne walked you through everything she expects you to help around with, you know that your job doesn't start and end with sorting through letters.

You softly knock on the office door before heading in. She's already sitting there, behind her desk. Without looking up from her laptop, she scoffs, "You're late."

"It's just five minutes," you shrug, not taking her tone seriously. Finally, she raises her sight to meet yours. Even without her saying anything, you understand. Do not play around with fire.

You mumble an apology and quickly run to the small hallway at the other side of the room which leads to your own (significantly smaller) office.

"What makes you think I'm done?" Turning around, you notice that her eyes are piercing through your back. Unsure of what she expects you to do, you walk back in front of her.

"While you were out there doing god knows what for two hours," you resist the urge to roll your eyes, "I already did your job and sorted through the letters. You're welcome."

She walks around the table and pushes a thick stack of papers against your chest, "That means you'll be doing my job and write replies to them. Can you handle that?"

You try not to show her how terrified you are. You? Giving relationship advice? Sounds like a recipe for a royal disaster. Instead, you rise your chin and smile, "Yes ma'am."

She visibly winces at the formal title, but still nods and returns to her seat. You take this as a sign to head back to your spot and do your job. Well, her job for now.

You sit down calmly and shuffle through the papers, trying not to look too freaked out. What the heck are you going to do now?

A quick peek at your boss reveals that she's either busy with work or just flat out ignoring you.

Trying to remain collected, you pick out the top letter from the pile. The first paragraph reads:

Hi Rosie! I'm a huge fan of your Matchmaker spread :) I never thought I'd be the one writing you a message but here we are hahaha. (Let's hope this gets featured!)

You roll your eyes but continue reading,

Me and my boyfriend have been dating for just about two months and I would describe our relationship as 'lowkey'. We first met at a bar a last year but we surprisingly didn't immediately hit it off.

With a raised eyebrow you skip over a page full of sappy descriptions and relationship stories, before getting to the end of the letter.

So what should I do? He's really sweet but I'm not sure if I'm ready to meet his family just yet.... please help! Love, Courtney.

You fold the paper back to it's original state with a quiet gulp. What on earth did you get yourself into?

#blackpink #blackpink scenarios #park chaeyoung #rosé #rosé fluff #rosé angst #rosé smut #rosé x reader #girlfriend rosé #blackpink rosé #blackpink rose #rose angst #rose fluff #blckpink fluff #blackpink angst #blackpink smut #roseanne park #rosé park

[tomcriuse]

@foxwulder asked: im interested in your answer to this. what do you think mulder was like at college, socially. give me all of your headcanon on this.

yeah idk why but every time i sit down to write headcanons, i end up writing an essay that could be true like none of it is grounded in. Anything

his first year, he was incredibly involved in his studies—obsessive almost. there isn’t a part of fox mulder that doesn’t love learning anything that he can get his grubby little goblin hands on. he would keep to himself, shy. quiet.

he spent a lot of time on his own. his apartment was just outside of campus, so he would spend mornings walking to class not quite seeing everything around him. if it was especially cold, he would stop and get some coffee at his favourite café on the corner of the cobblestone street where the door creaked when you opened it and the bell rang a little too loudly and the coffee was just a little too hot. every time he went there, the barista would see him coming from down the road and she would have his cup made before he walked in. he would smile kindly—awkwardly charming, almost—at the her and his hands would shake a little as he was counting out the change and he would comment on the weather like it was unusual, but the weather in oxford changes once a year and the barista would just smile in amusement and say see you tomorrow green eyes, and mulder would blink and rub the back of his neck and say see you tomorrow coffee girl. their interactions were short and limited to the five minutes he could spare on his walk, but sometimes he would bring her book recommendations or random fun facts that he learned from his school reading. it was small ritual, but it was but it was a great comfort that made him feel less alone.

he met his first real friends in one of his beginner psychology classes. mulder always sat in the second row—he thought that the first row was for the people who wanted to show off too much, and he thought the back of the room was for the people that didn’t care at all. he considered himself right in the middle and showed it in where he sat. it seemed that a lot of people felt the same way, because the entire row was empty save for him and two guys and a girl. there as a sort of unofficial official seating chart camaraderie. the boy next to him wore the same three wrinkled button up shirts in various shades of green and layered them with old sweaters with holes in them. the other boy was always put together—no matter if he got two hours of sleep or twelve. he wore designer suits in every shade and pattern imaginable. he never wore a tie but always brought a baseball cap to class, worn and old and stained. the girl recorded every lecture on her cassette player and transcribed them every night. her notes were detailed and organized and covered in coffee rings from the late nights. they were a group of ragtag kids—relics from different cultures cobbled together to create a beautiful sculpture.

since the first day of class, the boy with messy clothes and a charming grin would always come to class with no pen and no paper, and disarm mulder with his shy eyes and say hey man, can I borrow some? and mulder knew there was now borrowing, he was never getting it back but he couldn’t say no. he bought notebooks for him and cases of pens but he wouldn’t take them and so mulder just kept them in his bag and took them with him wherever he went. originally their interactions never went past that. it became their own unspoken language—a habitual tradition that followed them in everything they did.

this also means that whenever there was group work, which was quite often in a behavioral class, the four would always be assigned together. at first they would just meet in the library or sit on the lawn with the sun peaking out from behind the clouds, focusing only on the task at hand. the three of his classmates would mess around and mulder would through in a witty comment here and a sharp retort there, but he never told much about himself. all they really knew about him was that he was the american boy with messy hair, pretty eyes, and an unusually lanky frame. he wasn’t cold, but he wasn’t inviting. he didn’t want to get attached and lose more that he loved.

the more they were forced together, the more that mulder started accepting that he deserved happiness—that he didn’t have to push others away. that he deserved to be loved. they moved from libraries to his favourite café and from the lawn to the floor in someones apartment. they moved from homework to movies and witty anecdotes to stories. it was the first time that he had ever told anyone what happened to sam. they didn’t laugh, they didn’t ridicule. they told him that if anyone could bring her back it would be him.

every friday night, they would go to the indian food restaurant around the corner from his apartment and they would order half of the menu. they would laugh and argue about movies and psychoanalyse each other. they would be a little too loud and they would stay a little too long after closing and they would tip a little too much to make up for it, but they felt more at home in that restaurant than they ever did with their parents.

coming from old money in new england, the way that mulder was raised to appreciate people was through gifts. originally, he would buy sweaters new shoelaces or new wheels for his skateboard. he would buy mr perfect the ugliest ties he could find. he would buy the curly haired girl blank cassette tapes and hand-crafted mugs. but somewhere along the way, he wanted to give a part of himself to them to remember him by. he would hang out at the skatepark with sweaters at two in the morning. he would play soccer with mr perfect even though, if he had any choice, he would rather die than pick soccer over baseball.

it would be the small things. the way the curly haired girl would throw her straw wrappers at mulder when he told a bad joke. the way that sweaters threw his arm around his shoulder and leaned in like he was going to tell him the world’s greatest secret—the key to the universe. the way mr perfect would invite him to museum parties that his family forced him to go to, and the way that they would sneak off to the roof to watch the stars. listening to music as they counted the constellations. reading psychology books aloud. coming up with stupid conspiracies and trying to convince the other person that it was true. having paper airplane races. going to france for a weekend and trying every coffee place they could. trying recipes from thrift-store cookbooks that they ruin and end up ordering takeout. someone finding a small sunflower and giving it to him and him saying, we both know exactly what is wrong here. road trips to the countryside where there was a ufo sighting.

his greatest friendships in college were built on admiration and annoyance and fate and love.

at some point, people started to notice mulder. maybe it was his wild hair or his bright smile or his ringing laughter. maybe it was the way that he always kept his word or was always there for you if you needed to talk. everyone seemed to know him. he would say hello in passing to kids on campus and help you out in the library if you needed. but his focus was always on his friends—his family. outside of them, he had a couple friends maybe—acquaintances. people he would sit next to in other classes, someone doing peer review. fleeting.

it wasn’t that he avoided making other friendships, but it was that the bond between the four of them ran deep. they knew everything about each other—how crispy they liked the crust on their bread, how dark or light they like their coffee, whether or not they looped the end when they wrote a y, the way their eyes light up when they think of a comeback, the twitch of their eyebrows when they hear something that annoys them. it was nothing that you could learn from reading a book, but things only resulting from years of intensive study and firsthand experience. for every connection in their circle, one was a primary source and the other was a historian pouring over ever wrinkle and stain on the page.

however, when he met phoebe, things started going downhill. she would monopolize his time and steal him away from his family. she drove a wedge between them. it was his first real taste of betrayal—not his friends walking out on him, but someone who he loved driving them away. there was no more of the pure happiness that he felt with them. it felt wrong to take her to the places that they went together. he couldn’t eat indian food. he hated france. he bought everything new, nothing used.

it was like he was back to square one, almost: keeping to himself, shy. quiet.

#ngl i accidentally deleted the ask but i did not forget #and also read more's do not work on asks and this is kinda long #foxwulder #answered #txf hcs

[persephonescat]

Birds and Other Supernatural Phenomenons

Chapter 3!!!!!!! Wow. 

Ch. 1      Previous    Next    Masterpost    AO3

________________

Ch. 3: I Came Here to Have a Good Time...

The problem with making friends with a villain past midnight and getting into an hours-long debate on psychology with them? 

Well, you know the thing when you lay unconscious in your bed in order to function? It kinda gets left out.

Marinette drank two cups of coffee in the morning - she didn't even like coffee -, and she still wanted to kill everyone she laid her eyes on and then herself. (Guess who spent their practically non-existent free time reading memes?)

It was too early to check on Luka and Kagami, plus they made her promise she would at least try to have a good time, and Kaalki had absolutely no interest in taking her to Paris if there wasn't a clear threat. Normally, she wouldn't have thought about going on a school trip at all. For two years, she managed to "get sick" every time there was an outing on the horizon, and she took no pleasure in going to a different continent for two months, while Paris' population was completely vulnerable to a terrorist. 

However, Gotham might've had been even more dangerous than Paris, and she couldn't let her classmates go without protection either. Not to mention how the whole trip was... kind of her fault.

In her protection, last year, when Mrs. Bustier presented the class with the opportunity, she didn't think they had any chance. So when the woman said she was going to speak to her colleagues in her favor if Marinette filled out the application and convinced the class to reach the requirements, the girl didn't think twice. They shot a cool campaign-video, got recommendations from Jagged Stone, Cheng Shifu, Nadja Chamack, Penny Rolling, Gabriel Agreste, Audrey Bourgeois, the major, the principal and even the Kitty Section for good measure, then she wrote a five pages long essay about the ways they could spend the vacation and the money that came with it. Now that Marinette was thinking about it, they might've overshot the mark a little.

Thanks to Mrs. Bustier, this way she could at least maintain her grades a bit, which came handy after the late-night patrols she was still getting used to at the time.

Giving the Miraculouses to Luka and Kagami after swearing never to use them again was hard, but necessary. As Ladybug, she fed them a story about having to go to the east for a Miraculous-mission two weeks before Marinette actually left, so she could see them in action - Hawkmoth was getting sloppy; he only sent out one akuma during that time period, and it was a pretty weak one too -, and so it wasn't that easy to connect the dots, 'cause... Ladybug and your friend, who magical camouflage or not, look pretty much alike, leave and come back at the same time. You have three guesses.

She made them promise to call her if there was any damage she had to "Cure" or if an akuma was too difficult for them to handle, and she hoped that at least Kagami, being the more responsible one, would keep that promise.

Alya's voice, still hoarse from waking up, pulled her out of her thoughts.

"Mornin'." She stopped to yawn and tried to smooth her red tornado of a hair out. "Where did you get coffee?" 

Marinette pointed at the pot on the counter. Alya shuffled towards it with closed eyes, muttering "coffee" under her breath over and over again, her hip hitting every chair on the way there. She might've cursed a few times, but it came out so tangled, Marinette wasn't sure.

Then came Nino storming down the stairs, probably waking the entire city with his steps, humming Jagged Stones' Jeudi soir. He put a hand on Alya's back, lead her to a chair, then poured her a cup of coffee and smiled at Marinette while mixing two spoons of sugar into it. She smiled back fondly. 

She wasn't sure when she and Alya stopped being best friends. Things just... changed. Marinette started growing out her hair, wearing it in a braid instead of piggy tails. Alya's usual shirts were swapped to fandom T-shirts and crop tops. Marinette's clothes got more red and black, Alya started running another website beside Ladyblog, about her everyday life and various topics from movie-critiques to the art of journalism. Marinette ran out of pink lipstick and purchased a cherry one instead. Alya went to a festival with Nino and it was the best week of her life. Marinette's crush on Adrien disappeared, while Alya's relationship with Nino got more and more serious. 

It was slow and painful at first, but she didn't realize how much changed over a few months until one day she reached for her phone to call her friend and tell her something about a commission she got, then it hit her: they were not like that anymore.

It was comforting, on some level, that she no longer had that responsibility. Or that's what she told herself.

When the rest of her class arrived, she stood up and left the cafeteria. 

***

In the morning, they went sightseeing. Not as if Gotham had a lot of sights, they might've been the only people stupid enough to go there for fun.

No, it was more like two hours of "don't go here", "don't go there",  and "please, don't go there either" as they were shown around the city by a young lady whose posture was radiating stress all the time. Marinette could understand why. Their last stop was the Wayne Tower, where they were told to pair up with each other and discover the shops, cafés, and restaurants around the square.

She locked eyes with Adrien and mouthed "cover for me". The boy nodded, then Marinette quickly turned around the corner and walked around the square a few times before finding a sympathetic café, only one street away from the tower (technically, it wasn't on the square, but close enough).

She took a seat and ordered her third cup of coffee that day (she was healthy like that), before pulling out her phone and researching Wayne Enterprises. She checked it out back home of course, but there was a lot more material there than she had time for

She was reading yet another biography on Bruce Wayne and pretending her tired eyes weren't constantly tearing up and stinging from the screen when she heard it.

"I can't believe it. Have you read this?" an old man asked his wife sitting at the table next to Marinette's.

"Please, Robert, you can't throw a tantrum every time someone gets killed in this city," the women answered flatly.

The man turned a few pages in his newspaper then pushed it under her wife's nose.

"Not just someone, Martha! A girl! A young girl! She was barely older than Katie!" That seemed to pique the woman's interest.

"A girl, ya' say?" she murmured, pulling out her glasses. "Who did it?"

"You'd think they know, right? I mean, they have a list of all the psychopaths rummaging the streets, it can't be that hard to figure out, but no-," the wife shushed him just by raising a finger.

She took a few seconds to read the article before speaking up again.

"This says it was near Crime Alley. No girl goes near that just by accident."

"She was stabbed twelve times in broad daylight! She wasn't that near Crime Alley, look-," he turned the newspaper, searching the lines then he pointed at something, "-she was found on St. Anthony Street! That's five streets over!"

The woman hummed.

"What did ya' say, how old was she?"

"Sixteen. Katie might've seen her a few times, they went to the same school."

A waitress came and interrupted them, giving them their check. Marinette, who was pretending to drink her coffee peacefully all along now turned to them just as the man opened his wallet.

"Excuse Moi? May I ask what time it is?" She asked with a thick French accent. 

The man stopped halfway in paying the waitress and glanced at his watch, giving Marinette enough time to study the wallet in his hand. It was small and black leather, probably a gift. There was a picture too, just as she expected. It showed a girl around thirteen with blond hair and bangs, smiling in her school uniform. "Katie", if she had any luck. 

"Half-past two," the man told her helpfully.

The girl thanked him with a smile, paid for her coffees, then left the shop. 

She walked around the block to get out of the old couple's sight before visiting the Gotham Gazelle's official website on her phone. The dead girl's name was Joanne, but her surname wasn't published and there was no photo of her. She was found the day before yesterday, with twelve identical knife-wounds on her body. The police said they were looking for the culprit, but they clearly didn't have much to go on, given their lack of suspects.

Marinette took out her sketchbook and started scribbling down some notes.

Joanne

16 yrs old

Lives in Gotham

Student

She paused. The uniform on Katie's picture was blue with a red tie. Gotham didn't have many schools, but they all had different uniforms. Blue and red meant Gotham Academy.

Student in Gotham Academy

A quick Facebook search later she had the girl's last name and profile picture. Bless the modern age.

If she had to be in Gotham, she might as well not die in boredom, right?

St. Anthony Street was a little over thirty minutes from the Wayne Tower. She had time.

________________

As always, coffee is my nectar and comments are my ambrosia, so penny for your thoughts!

Ch. 1      Previous     Next    Masterpost    AO3

Tag list:

@northernbluetongue

@vgirl-10123

#Birds and Other Supernatural Phenomenons #maribat #damiette #daminette #damari #dcu #mlb #batman #damian wayne #fanfiction #writerblr #I Came Here to Have a Good Time

[all-hail-the-witcher]

every book i had to read for english and why i didn't like any of them

i woke up thinking about this and decided to make this post. for context, i went to public school and was on the honors/ap track for english. i am a firm believer that english teachers ruin books for their students inadvertently. this is my experience:

6th grade language arts

we read three books during 6th grade, bridge to terabithia, the cay, and where the red fern grows. and i had to read a wrinkle in time over the summer which i didn't understand like at all so I'm just gonna skip that one honors english was not a thing until 8th grade where i went to middle school so this was a regular english class and i hated it. it was also a double period class for some reason, so i had an hour and a half of language arts every day. 

it took us half the year to read bridge to terabithia. i am not kidding. that book is like maybe 100 pages and it took us a good 4-5 months. this is because our teacher stopped us every time we got to a pice of figurative language and made us analyze it. every. single. piece. i got so bored that i read ahead and then got in trouble for reading ahead. needless to say, i absolutely detested bridge to terabithia and would not touch it to this day if my life depended on it. 

after bridge to terabithia we read the cay. this took us the rest of the year. the cay is a relatively short book as well so i got bored with this one quickly as well. i really dont remember much about the discussions, but i remember a long one about how the cover was “inaccurate,” which, yes, it was but i dont know if a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds need to spend a week debating that. i think i hated it mostly because, again, we read it for 5 months. 

the last three weeks of the school year, our teacher gave us a book and said “here read this before school ends because we have to read three books a year and we only read 2″ (for context, the other language arts class had read about 5-7 books that year and found it insane that we were “still reading bridge to terabithia”) so i read where the red fern grows. all in all it wasn't a bad book, i did kind of enjoy it, but since i was rushed reading it on top of all my other homework and because it was definitely ahead of my reading comprehension level, it wasn't my favorite.

7th grade language arts

now, a bit of a disclaimer here, this was the year that i was in language arts with the guy i had a crush on and one of my close friends at the time. so, i didn't really pay that much attention to begin with. we read quite a few books in this class, but I'm not sure if i remember all of them. again, this was a double period. 

i think the first book we read was freak the mighty. i remember not liking this book because i felt like i was missing something. there was definitely some kind of metaphor or something in there that i was supposed to get but because i was literally twelve i didn't get it and i didn't find the meaning in it. theres nothing more frustrating than reading a book that you dont understand.

after that I'm pretty sure we read the wave. it was explained to us that the wave is supposed to symbolize how the n*zis came to power and all that stuff, and while we all knew this, i dont think we really Understood it. (probably because we were 12). we all kinda saw it as a joke and thought it was funny. i think that if i read it now i would be like. “well shit this is really interesting” but 12 year old me wanted to make fun of it with the rest of my class. 

i think we read seed folks next. this was another book that just went over all of our heads. its about how a garden changes a whole bunch of peoples lives which is like, super interesting. but none of us got it and were like “lol this is stupid” so much so that we actually stopped reading it. like my teacher stopped having us read it.

I'm fairly certain the last book we read was the miracle worker. a lot of us had had to read parts of it before that class so we were all kinda familiar with it already. i vaguely remember some kind of obnoxious class joke about the book that was probably rude. i remember finding it interesting, but there were so many activities we did about the book that i lost interest. 

8th grade honors reading

this class was A Trip. i liked the teacher, but she was a little out there. its unclear whether she got fired or just didn't come back after that year. i had a lot of fun in her class but it was usually because we all bonded over hating the assigned reading.

i dont remember what order we read the books in and i dont remember if this was all of them, but to the best of my recollection this is what we read

we definitely read romeo and juliet. by the time you're in 8th grade, everyone knows the story of romeo and juliet, so it wasn't like that suspenseful or a surprise or anything. but we had to act the reading out. yes we had to act out romeo and juliet. with burger king crowns. and wrapping paper swords. clearly the teacher was trying to have fun with us, and it was fun fun for awhile but it got old. especially when you got participation points taken off your grade if you didn't read for once of the characters (which is massively unfair because not everyone wants to get up in front of a class in a paper crown holding a wrapping paper tube and read in old english when you're 13 but whatever). 

we also definitely read animal farm. it was another book that went right over our heads (or, mine at least). i didn't actually really understand it until i had to read the communist manifesto for ap euro senior year. and our teacher talked in a bad russain accent the entire time? i could barely keep the characters straight, let alone analyze the underlying message and all that. now i might actually like it since I'm a history major and have a decent background on the russian revolution, but at 13? no thanks.

the one book that everyone hated (including the teacher herself) was farewell to manzanar. it was a memoir about a young girl growing up in the japanese internment camps and looking back on her life and stuff like that. the story itself was very interesting and we all learned a lot from it. but the person who wrote it did not know how to write. it was confusing, some chapters made no sense, and none of us generally knew what was going on. we had to finish the book because we were the honors class, but the regular class got to stop after chapter 6. 

i think we only read 4 books that year and the fourth one was the outsiders. this was one of two books that i actually liked the entirely of my public school education. i kinda vibed with it when we were reading it and then i vibes with it more once i got to high school and rediscovered it. it was just a good book, pretty solid, good themes, fantastic. 

9th grade honors english

i absolutely hated this class. hands down the worst teacher i ever had. she was one of those that should have retired 20 years ago but was still teaching for some reason. and she hated kids. legitimately. that was the first time i got a c and it took my parents a long time to realize that it wasn't because of me, it was because the teacher was absolute shit. the only thing that made that class bearable was the fact that my friend was in there and so was this guy that totally like her so he would flirt with her pretty incessantly and it was Hilarious. 

we read so many books that year and i hated all of them. a lot of them were like greek dramas and plays? like we read oedipus rex and julius caesar and antigone. and i hated all of them because the teacher made me hate reading and made it seem like a chore. 

by far the worst was the old man and the sea. i hated that book, hemingway was terrible. i struggled to find any kind of meaning in it and connected all of my responses to the bible because my teacher loved it when people did that.

we read inherit the wind and to kill a mockingbird and all quiet on the western front which were the only books i found remotely interesting. but i still hated them because i knew that we would have to do her reading quizzes which were impossible so it was pointless to read the book anyway. 

and we also read a raisin in the sun. i dont remember what this was even about except that there was some kind of insurance money involved. but by this point we were all really done with our teachers shit and my one friend legitimately said during class “but, ms. [name] if you put a raisin in the sun, doesn't it just get more raisiny?”

10th grade ap english language and composition (american lit)

i loved this class and the teacher but i hated all the assigned reading because we read it for the ap test. everything you read was in the context of having to find themes and shit to write about on the ap. so i didn't really get any of the books for that reason. i think we only read three and they were the scarlet letter, the crucible, and the great gatsby. i kind wish i paid more attention to gatsby and i think i would like it more now but at the time i detested it. we also had to read grapes of wrath over the summer and i hated that. i wanna read books to read them, not to come into school and write essays on them. also the ending was weird and i hated it.

11th grade honors (british lit)

another bad year of english, not quite as bad as freshman year, but still bad. still hated it. i outlined many fics in that class. the teacher did not like me and i did not like her. she also talked in this weird fake almost british but not quite accent that sometimes still haunts my nightmares. she was also one of those backwards feminists who claims they're a feminist but still was sexist in her favorites and the way that she treated people in the class?? after english i had math and my friend (the same girl who said the thing about raisins freshman year) and some others would complain to our math teacher about our english teacher. math was essentially a support group for english where we would discuss answers to reading checks. 

over the summer we read 1984, which, cool concept (esp right now) but i hated knowing that i had to find some kind of deep meaning in it because i was going to have to write an essay on it as soon as i came back to school.

from there i think we read beowulf which was interesting. i dont know if we actually read the whole thing or just excerpts but again, i hated looking for meaning.

we read a tale of two cities which was like the one book i actually wanted to read because i am a huge fan of the shadow hunters book serieses and will and tessa quote that book all the time. i think if i had read it to read it it would have been better but first, dickens is wordy and weird and second i dont really wanna have to search out symbolism while I'm reading because its required.

we read macbeth, which i just didn't like. idk why. i just kinda thought it was stupid. i dont really have an explanation for this one. i think it was because we read it in the old english and that confused me a lot of the time.

and we read jane eyre. the only thing i remember from jane eyre was “pathetic fallacy” which is where the mood of the scene is reflected in the weather. i dont wanna dissect a book like that. and also my teacher referred to the book as “jane” but she said it “jAAYYneeE” which was annoying. 

12th grade ap lit

dear god. this class. i had issues with this class. our teacher was something. everyone was afraid of him. e v e r y o n e. he ran detention and didn't know how to match his clothes and wore skinny ties. he had three swell bottles the he would bring with him to school every day. people claimed he used to be in a rock band and that was why his voice was so high pitched and weird. some said his wife left him, others said he had a kid. we were genuinely confused by him. he didn't teach, he yelled at you for doing things wrong without giving any instructions on how he actually wanted it done. he made college out to be some big scary thing where we would all be trampled. but mostly, he was an existentialist. 

we had to read song of solomon over the summer. i hated it. i didn't hate it because of the messages and all that stuff, no the book itself was good and toni morrison is a great author. i just hated the fact that there was graphic description of incest, necrophilia, or sex at least once every 5-10 pages. i didn't wanna read that. and it turned me off the book. so when he asked us if we liked the book when the year started i said no and i argued with him about it. and he hated me for the entire year. 

next i think we read waiting for godot. which was absolutely terrible. its literally a play where nothing happens. it would have been funny except that i knew i was gonna have to write an essay on it. how do you write an essay on a play where nothing happens? literally all of our discussions about it were about existentialism and it was terrible. 

we read the metamorphosis, which everyone hated cause it could have been written in like 4 sentences. and our teacher thought he was So Clever for assigning it to us. he thought it was the biggest joke. and he went on and on about how its about existentialism and blah blah. the book would have been funny had he not only discussed it in regards to existentialism. 

i think next was hamlet. i would have like hamlet had we not discussed it only through the lens of existentialism. its a good play, but i hated it because of the way he talked about it. even now, i only like it to make fun of the way he liked it. my friend and i send hamlet memes to each other all the time but only cause they remind us of our teacher.

one flew over the cuckoos nest. the second and final book that i actually liked my entirety of school. i dont know why i liked it, but it was just a good book. our teacher also had some kind of weird cowboy trope thing that he thought mcmurphy fell under which i thought was hilarious. the essay i wrote on that book was the only one he wrote “nice job” on and i still have it somewhere

my friend claims that we also read the stranger. i dont really remember what that book was about except some guy shot some people. there was definitely something in it that i didnt get. 

anyway in conclusion required reading ruins books. when i told my creative writing advisor that i out of all the books i read for school i only like the outsiders and one flew over the cuckoos nest she was like “yeah, english teachers really ruin books for students”

#this is a very long post #saph screams #english #books n shit #english teachers are so hit or miss #and even if they're good teachers #that doesn't mean that you'll like the books

[bellero]

The Parker Twins (prologue).

Summary- This is just a re-imagined version of Homecoming but Peter has a twin sister.

Warnings- swearing and mentions of bullying.

NOTE- I’ve decided to make a series masterlist so I’m gonna be using that instead of my forever tags, I’ve already tagged  people who I hope will be interested but drop me an ask if you wanna be added!

The Parker Twins Masterlist

 You let out an annoyed grunt as Peter continued to ignore you. He walked into the apartment, you hastily followed him as you slammed the door shut behind you, waving hello to your aunt you marched over to Peter and snatched his ear phones out of his ears “Peter, how many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” you saw him roll his eyes as he continued to hunt through the refrigerator “that depends, do you actually mean it?” he asked turning to you. 

You were both completely oblivious to your aunt and the man who were sat on the sofa staring at you both, May shook her head slightly and reassured him that this was a regular occurrence, that you two always fought over something minuscule and stupid.

You scoffed, “of course not! Flash has always been a dick to you so I bit back, what’s so bad about that?” you asked, he let out a sighed, he went to speak but you interrupted him “I mean, you’ve gotta admit seeing him squirm like that was extremely fulfilling” you snorted, he turned to look at you with an apple in his hand. Letting out a grin he shook his head and closed the refrigerator “it did feel good to see him run out of the school like that” you both laughed, you snatched the apple out of his hand, he went to protest but you had already bitten into it. 

You had already turned around and inhaled sharply causing you to choke on the partially eaten apple, Peter started hitting you between the shoulder blades causing you to shove him, he laughed but quickly stopped when he saw Tony Stark sat on his couch. Your eyes were fixated on the billionaire as you started to slap your brother, “dude, are you seeing what I’m seeing or am I going crazy?” you whispered “duh, now stop hitting me!” he grumbled causing you to smirk.

Tony smiled at the two of you .

Peter stuffed his headphones in his pocket and nervously crossed his arms “what are… What are you - What are you - What are you doing here?” he asked with a small but confused smile on his face, you rolled your eyes at your brother. “It's about time we met. You've been getting my e-mails, right?” Tony asked him, you looked between them with narrowed eyes. “You didn't tell me about the grant.” May smiled at the boy who looked even more confused, Tony decided to jump in and save his embarrassment “the September Foundation. Remember when you applied?” he asked, Peter nodded his head, “I approved, so now we're in business.” Tony said whilst he clapped his hands together causing you to jump at the sudden noise, you glared when you saw him try not to laugh at you.

May narrowed her eyes slightly “you didn't tell me anything. What's up with that? You keeping secrets from me now?” she asked, Peter quickly turned to her and shook his head “I just, I just… I just know how much you love surprises, so I thought I would let you know…Anyway, what did I apply for?” Peter asked Tony, you let out a sigh as you walked around and sat in between your aunt and Tony who sent you a weird look, you just smiled back and turned your notebook that you were currently writing an essay in. Tony shook his head at you and turned back to your brother “that's what I'm here to hash out”, Peter nodded his head, “It's so hard for me to believe that she's someone's aunt.” Tony said gesturing to your aunt. You turned to him with a look of disgust on your face, he raised a brow you just shook your head, “this walnut date loaf is exceptional” he said, you flipped a few pages forward and started writing something whilst May questioned Peter about school.

‘You are exceptionally awful at flirting’ 

You turned it towards Tony who craned his neck to read what you had written, you saw him scrunch his face up. He quickly snatched the pen and notebook out of your hand and wrote something else before tossing them back onto your lap before turning back to continue his conversation with Peter.

‘That’s rich coming from a twelve year old’

Letting out a snort of amusement you closed your notebook and put it back in your bag before looking at Tony and Peter as they walked towards his room, you stood up “I’ve got a lot of homework so I’m gonna go do that... homework” you muttered before speed walking to your room which was located next to your brothers.

You threw your bag on your bed as you pushed your window open, you climbed onto the fire escape, crawled towards your brothers window and pushed it up causing Tony to jump, you smirked as you stood next to him, patted his shoulder and sat on Peter’s bed. Tony pointed towards you, “does she need to be here?” he asked your older brother who smirked and shook his head, you glared at the older man “yes, I have to be here. Also, I have a name... you dumbass” you muttered under your breath, Tony glared and you glared back. “I know your name. You’re y/n Parker, you are two minutes younger than him,” he pointed to your brother, “you attend the same school and I also happen to know that you hack into SHIELD, NASA and Stark Industries in your spare time” your eyes widened, you leant back against the wall and crossed your arms “nobody like a stalker” you grumbled.

“Anyway I have a quick question of the rhetorical variety.” He pulled out his phone which projected a video of Peter in his Spiderman outfit causing you and your brother to glance at each other, “that's you, right?” he asked whilst his eyes flicked between your brother and the video. Peter scoffed and shook his head “um, no. What do you. What do you mean?” He asked, his voice raised in pitch which was a clear indicator that he was lying, Tony pointed at the video, “look at you go” the video then showed Peter jumping in front of a bus to stop it from crashing, “wow! Nice catch. 3,000 pounds, 40 miles an hour. That's not easy. You got mad skills” Tony complimented whilst he put his phone away, Peter shook his head “that's all- that's all on YouTube, though, right? I mean, that's where you found that? Because you know that's all fake. It's all done on the computer” you held in a laugh as you watched your brother try to wiggle his way out, Tony just hummed in agreement and walked over to where your brother was once stood, which also happened to be right underneath a hatch which hid his suit “yeah yeah yeah… Oh you mean like those UFOs over Phoenix?” he asked, you waved and caught his attention, he looked to where you were pointing and sent you a wink. 

“Oh, what have we here?” he asked sarcastically as he made the suit fall from the ceiling, Peter quickly jumped up and threw it in his closet causing you to laugh, your brother glared at you as he tried to come up with an excuse. “So. You're the… Spider… ling. Crime-fighting Spider… You're Spider-Boy?” He guessed the name causing you to shake your head with a smile on your face, “it’s Spiderman” Peter glared as he walked over to the other side of his room. Tony sat in a chair that was located next to the closet, “who else knows? Anybody?” He asked Peter, you raised your hand with a grin which caused Peter to smile slightly and Tony to roll his eyes, “who do you think came up with the name?” you asked him with a shrug. Tony let out a snort and leant forward as if to intimidate you but you just did the same, “you came up with ‘Spider-man’?” he asked putting air quotes around it, “yeah, well Spiderling, Crime-Fighting Spider and Spider-boy doesn’t really strike fear into the hearts of his enemies” you sarcastically replied, Tony narrowed his eyes at you before chuckling, “so nobody else knows? Not even your unusually attractive aunt?” he asked causing you and Peter to grimace, “do you really have to call her hot?” you asked with a groan, Tony rose a brow in confusion, he leant back in the chair “I didn’t say hot” he said causing you to roll your eyes, “yeah, but everybody knows that ‘attractive’ really means hot... like, I call Thor ‘attractive’ all the time but what I really mean is that he is the hottest thing to ever grace our Earth” you replied leaning back against the wall with a grin on your face, “also no, our Aunt May doesn’t know. If she knew, she’d freak out and when she freaks out, we freak out” you gestured between you and your brother.

Tony nodded his head, Peter was now stood by the door and Tony was back by the desk, he picked up something and showed it to Peter “you know what I think is really cool? This webbing. That tensile strength is off the charts. Who manufactured that?” he asked.

“I did” Peter replied.

“Climbing the walls, how you doing that? Cohesive gloves.” Tony guessed whilst picking up your brothers goggled, he held them up to his eyes and pulled a weird face making you giggle, “lordy! Can you even see in these?” he asked, Peter snatched them out of his hand “yes. Yes, I can! I can see in those. Okay? It's just that… when whatever happened, happened… it's like my senses have been dialled to 11. There's way too much input, so… they just kinda help me focus” he explained placing them back on his desk.

Tony let out a sigh and stood up, leaning against the wall. “You're in dire need of an upgrade. Systemic, top to bottom. 100-point restoration. That's why I'm here”  Peter sat on the bed and looked at Tony. “Why you doing this? I gotta know. What's your MO? What gets you outta that twin bed in the morning?” He asked, you sat up and crossed your legs, “because… l've been me my whole life, and l've had these powers for 6 months, I read books, I build computers… And-And yeah. I would love to play football. But I couldn't then so I shouldn't now.” you shuffled towards your brother and leant your head on his shoulder, it was little things like this that showed you were there for each other. Whether it was a shoulder squeeze, a hand hold or something as simple as this, it was important that you both knew you could depend on each other.

“Sure, because you're different” Tony responded to Peter’s previous statement, “exactly. But I can't tell anybody that, so I'm not. When you can do the things that I can, but you don't…and then the bad things happen… they happen because of you” he explained with a sigh. “So you wanna look out for the little guy. You wanna do your part? Make the world a better place, right?” he asked, Peter nodded his head “yeah. Yeah just looking out for the little guy. That's-That's what it is”.

Tony hummed as he stood, he walked over to Peter whose leg was stretched out on the bed, Tony looked down at it “I'm gonna sit here, so you move the leg. You got a passport?” he asked after he sat down, Peter shook his head “uh, no. I don't even have a driver's license” you smiled slightly at what he said, you closed your eyes as you continued to listen in on the conversation.

“You ever been to Germany?” Tony asked, you knew Peter had shook his head no, you heard Ton clasp a hand on his shoulder “oh, you'll love it” you shot your head up and opened your eyes. “He can’t go to Germany!” you exclaimed, Tony furrowed his eyebrows at you “why?” he asked, you looked between your brother, playing with your fingers you let out a small sigh, “because... we- we’ve got homework” you muttered. 

Tony pointed towards you “I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that” you rolled your eyes “I'm-I'm being serious! He can't just drop out of school!” Tony’s eyes widened at your small outburst, “relax, Chipmunk. I only need to borrow him for the weekend. Besides, why can’t you do his homework?” he asked, you leant forward and gave him an exasperated look “hmm, I don’t know... maybe because I too have homework... besides the last time we tried that it didn’t work” you grumbled and crossed your arms, “it would’ve worked if you didn’t accidentally put your name on my History essay” Peter said with a smirk on his face, Tony turned to you with amusement in his eyes, you pointed a finger at him, “before you say anything, I finished writing his essay at five in the morning and I was sleep deprived” you grumbled whilst not so subtly hitting Peter. 

Tony stood up “it might be a little dangerous. Better tell Aunt Hottie I'm taking you on a field trip” he muttered walking towards the door, Peter shot up and webbed his hand to the door, “don’t tell Aunt May” he begged, you rolled your eyes “and stop calling her hot, it’s weird!”. Tony looked between the two of you before looking at your brother “alright, Spiderman” they shared a look before Tony gestured towards his hand, “get me out of this” he demanded, you smirked as Peter walked to his desk to get a pair of scissors.

“Nooo, don’t cut him out! let him stay there for a while” you said whilst taking a few photos on your phone, Tony narrowed his eyes at the young girl “watch it, or I’ll tell the US Government about your little hacking hobby” he threatened with a finger pointed at you, you let a smile grow on your face “I dare you” you replied, the man let out a soft smile towards you as Peter cut him loose.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow morning. There’ll be a car outside in the morning, be ready” he said to Peter, he then turned towards you and pointed at you, “and I hope to never see you again” he said, he then walked out the door smirking to himself when he heard you yell “asshole!”.

Series Tags-

@winchesters-favorite-girl @mersuperwholocked-lowlife @platonic-plots @daughters-and-winsisters @just4muggles @humanexile @family-business-one-shots @rosegoldquintis @sassy-specter 

#marvel #avengers #spider man #spiderman #peter parker #tom holland #iron man #tony stark #peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter x sister!reader #peter x twin!reader #sister!reader #sister reader #sister fics #tony stark x reader #tony stark imagine #tony x reader #peter x reader #tony x teen!reader #tony x platonic!reader #tony x daughter!reader

[silvergeek]

The Tale of Mister Robert “Bob” Gray.

Full fanfiction is located here.

At this time, dear readers, we must take a moment to break away from our narrative at hand. Because, at this time, we need to focus on a different narrative to understand the current story, the stories we've read, and the stories we will, someday, read.

Pennywise the Dancing Clown came from a story widely known – widely loved. But as it were, the words jumped off the pages of that book and landed in a collection of minds – a hive of thoughts. The named “Robert 'Bob' Gray” became a topic of focus, for so little had been officially written about him. The monster took the name, true as gold, and that was the word of God – or rather... that was the word of the monster's creator, Its author. Beyond that name, not much else was known about Mister Gray, and certainly nothing else was ever, or had ever, been explained.

Bob Gray became the start of a question. “Gray” was a query, a thing of mystery that so many desired to solve. Through readers' own suppositions they did conceive various tales about “Mister Gray” – who he was, what he did, and how he became an urban legend.

Mister Gray.

Bob Gray.

Robert Gray.

Each of those whispers, those quandaries, those theories, those amateur fictions... they led to arguments, debates,and essays – but none of them were one hundred percent accurate.

However...

None of them were one hundred percent wrong, either.

A good story is an amalgam of half stories. Tales pieced together like an epic foil ball, containing only the most compelling bits carefully cherry-picked from the bunch.

So this, dear readers, is the actual, true-to-god, story of Mister Robert “Bob” Gray. Would I lie to you? Me? Your storyteller? Why yes – that's what any good storyteller would do. So, as I'd said in the beginning: If you don't trust me... then stop reading. Are we ready? Let us begin...

  The Tale of Mr. Robert “Bob” Gray (better known as) Pennywise the Dancing Clown

 Gray was a man between the age of thirty and thirty-five, and he was a tall man with sandy-brown hair and striking blue eyes. True enough, his hands were large, his fingers long, and his legs put him around six and a half feet tall. He wasn't a heavy man, but by no means was he scrawny – not at his height and certainly not at his age.

Gray was indeed an immigrant from Sweden who had, at the ripe age of seventeen, sailed over to the northeasternmost region of the great United States of America. He did indeed come over to the land of the free with little else but spare change and a willingness to work – even if it broke his back. Now, understand this... his name wasn't Bob Gray back in the old country. No. His birth-given name was Robert Grå. Just like that, with the funny circle above it and everything, or so the Americans said. Hell, it meant the same damn thing between the languages, but those American types sure relied heavily on everything being spelled out in English. And so... Robert Gray it became – or Bob if someone was feeling particularly informal.

By his twenties, Bob had made a name for himself in the township of Derry, Maine. In so much that he was the man you'd call on if you'd needed odd jobs done. Some farm work here. Some machinist work there. And every year there'd be a carnival that rolled through Derry, as sure as rain. The event lasted through a long, summer weekend, and when it was over, those carnies packed up that carnival like stuffing socks in a suitcase. You'd better believe Bob Gray was willing to help out with the odd jobs at this event. It was only for a weekend, but the coin was good.

A carnie – a real leathery fella – by the nickname of Carnie Ron had been the one who'd personally tasked Bob Gray for the right wages. He'd set Bob to work on various chores like fixing things that went broke and restocking prizes, food, and refreshments as they'd been consumed (maybe once in awhile thieved) throughout the weekend. The downside for Bob was that this carnival only came once a year. A man needed to live the rest of those twelve months. Regardless, he took what he could, worked his duties, and collected pay from Carnie Ron.

It wasn't until Bob's third year that things had changed. One of the carnie hands, not Ron, asked Mister Gray to fill in as a clown – something to keep the younger kids entertained while their ma's and pa's drank themselves loose on cheap stout (which made them spend all the more coin for the rest of the night).

And that's just what Bob did. He put on the clown suit, which was little more than a dingy, old pair of men's pajamas, and caked some white pancake makeup all over his sun-soaked face. Then, Mister Gray took a bit of red paint and gave himself a big, merry smile from ear to ear. He looked just like the Cheshire Cat, if that wicked old cat was ever the clownin' type.

“Hand me all those balloons,” Bob had told that same carnie hand, and – boy oh boy – Mister Gray took to being a clown like a duck takes to water. The kids got a dance out of him, silly voices, crazy faces, and each one of them walked away with their own balloon after they'd begged their ma's and pa's (til they were blue in the face, no less) for the extra coin to buy their very own from the clown. Why, Bob even took a paintbrush to the balloons and signed each one of them, like he'd been peddling out his very own autograph. (As if he'd been anything to anyone at the time, but for that measly hour, to those kids, Mister Bob Gray was like a god.) Before he'd signed his first balloon, Bob had to think of a name on the fly. He saw those coins jingling in the youngsters' hands and it just came to him: Pennywise. Pennywise the clown. The clown that danced, even sang a tune or three, and handed off balloons with his signature and everything.

It wasn't long after that day that Bob Gray got to thinking that he could do this for a living. He could entertain, sing, dance, and overcharge for cheap balloons. (And he could do it more than once per year!) So, with the money he'd saved thus far, Mister Gray bought an old, worn down caravan off Carnie Ron. He'd fixed her up and painted a likeness of his clownin' self across her side. Then he wrote the words, as big and as grand as he could: The Great Pennywise – The Dancing Clown. And, sure enough, that had been Mister Bob Gray's modest source of income for years to come.

What Bob Gray hadn't known was ...that in all that time... he was being watched. (And interestingly enough, he'd been watched by two very different sets of eyes.)

The first, and prettiest, set of eyes that'd been watching Mister Gray from afar belonged to Miss Melody Sharp. She was a provocative young woman with a lean build and a face that could charm the skin off a snake. Her hair was thick and golden and often prettily decorated with some ribbons or another. Her eyes were deep and beautiful, like a pair of sparkling sapphires. One look from her and it could melt any man's heart. (Well... almost any man's.) It was true. Miss Melody was a lovely thing, and even lovelier was her soul. She'd help just about any person in need, no questions asked. Miss Sharp was a kind girl with a gentle touch and a soothing voice. Why, her tone was so pacifying that her own birth-given name didn't do it justice. Yes, just about any man in the Derry township could agree that listening to Miss Melody Sharp speak was like being serenaded by a warm, beautiful song.

Now... don't ask me why... but poor Melody, for some unholy reason, had her sweet heart set on Mister Bob Gray. One could theorize that she took to him because he'd been so engaging in his performances. Perhaps he amused her which had, in some way, bewitched the sweet girl. One could also argue that she took to him because, admittedly, Mister Gray was a handsome man with those unconventionally attractive Scandinavian looks. Oh sure – he was tall and strong and his eyes were piercing blue. So blue, in fact, you could swear that god himself plucked two pieces of the sky and stuffed them right in Gray's sockets on the day he'd come squalling into the world.

So, without a doubt, Miss Melody Sharp had fallen for Mister Bob Gray. Unfortunately – because life just isn't fair, even if you are as darling and as elegant as Miss Sharp – the man could have cared less. She came around after his shows while he'd been winding down back behind the caravan, and it was always the same sad story.

“Evening, Robert!” she'd say with the prettiest smile. “I baked you a shepherd's pie.” And little Melody would approach Mister Gray, often times while he was still in his clown makeup, offering the man some painstakingly handmade gift or another. Poor thing. She went a-courtin' after Bob, day in and day out, never quite getting the hint that he was dead set on remaining a lifelong bachelor.

“Thank you, Miss Melody,” he'd always say, without so much as looking at her. His tone was often quiet, unimpressed, perhaps with a hint of eagerness for her to just go away. Now, there was nothing actually wrong with Mister Gray. Nothing criminal about him. He simply wasn't interested. Some folk balked at his persistent indifference to Miss Sharp, and that's how rumors circulated, but – true as gold – Bob only cared about Bob.

Melody didn't see this for what it was. She persisted in her own way, in spite of his antipathy. “There's a dance at the local hall coming up...” That was her usual line when that time of year came around. “Gee, I'd hate to go alone...”

But of course, Bob Gray, with that thick head of sandy hair sitting on that prominent forehead of his would look down at the hopeful, young woman, clear his throat, and say, “I'm sure you'll manage.” Then he'd turn right back around and stare into that mirror of his as he wiped his makeup from his skin.

Melody had taken Bob for a coy man, which was part of her whole denial over the issue. In spite of his day to day vocation, she was convinced he was shy. And that was the long and short of their relationship, if you had the cheek to call it such a thing.

Then... there had been the other set of eyes watching Bob Gray. These eyes were much different from those of Melody Sharp. These had been the devil's eyes. Eyes from another place – a dark place – not anywhere bright enough to be considered another world. It was like an unworld. A void. Nowhere that any man or woman would willingly go. Perhaps it'd been a place that led straight to hell for all one knew. Hell or death. Or perhaps both.

What is known about the Derry township is that a great evil thrived somewhere at its core. This was an unfortunate truth, one that no citizen wanted to advertise, but a truth with which every citizen was all too familiar. Some said the town was cursed. Others said that the evil bore the town, itself. There was no true agreement on the matter, but, true enough, it had been the same evil that plagued Derry in its later years to come. It was the same evil that eventually caused the Ironworks Factory explosion, the same evil that burned down the Black Spot. Hell, it was the same evil that skyrocketed both the citywide death toll and the headcount of missing children at an alarming rate. This evil... It had a mind. It was conscious. It was self aware. And, regrettably, It took notice of Mister Robert Gray.

For a brief time, It merely watched him. It studied everything about Gray – his daily routine, his habits, his apparel, and his performances. It took to him, you see. It took to his likeness. In a way, It envied Gray – how easily he drew in crowds of people. Gray simply saw them as potential meal tickets... easy coin.

But It...

It saw them as potential meals. Plain and simple.

Bob Gray hadn't been too difficult to drive to madness. No sir. All it took were some whispers in his mind, driving his thoughts to dark places, forcing the man to slowly become unhinged. Gray had begun to question his sanity the night he'd seen himself eat a boy. The creature – It – took to shapeshifting into the very spitting image of Bob Gray. It had strut around, looking exactly like him, right before his eyes, causing the man's mind to snap faster than a stale twig.

“I'm you, Bob!” It had said, dragging around the half dead body of a bleeding and terrified boy. That same boy had earlier been part of the paying crowd that gathered to see Gray's dancing clown performance. Gray screamed, night after night, watching a nightmarish facsimile of himself gruesomely eat away at the flesh and bone of one horrified patron or another.

Tragically, Bob Gray – the man – had become convinced that he, himself, was the killer. Such a thing wasn't true, but try telling that poor son of a bitch that after the terrors he'd been forced to see. Becoming unhinged didn't take long. No sir. Gray's grip on reality had long since slipped clean away and he couldn't live with himself any further. After two weeks of watching the other Bob Gray, Mister Gray fastened a rope up to the branch of a tall tree, secured it snugly around his neck, and promptly took his own life.

The creature... It was delighted. With the real man out of the picture, It was able to take over his appearance, his caravan, and his dancing clown routine. It took over his life. It was the new Mister Robert “Bob” Gray, now. It continued to feed off the patrons who came to see Pennywise do his dance – oh yes – like shooting fish in a barrel. Easy meals – and these types scared real easy, too. It ...Gray... made their meat jump with flavor.

The creature went by Bob's name, who frequently introduced himself as Pennywise, just as his muse (now swinging from a tree) had done. Nothing seemed to be standing in his way to endless meals. No more hunting and starving. No more worrying that he couldn't fill his belly before his long sleep. The whole setup was about as convenient as running a farm.

One day, however, after a few weeks of this delicious convenience, Miss Melody Sharp – oblivious and as innocent as pie – went calling on Mister Bob Gray just as she'd always been apt to do. Melody circled the caravan, peeking around for him, but found that, as it were, he didn't appear to be home. The caravan was, indeed, the man's home. She knew this well. He wasn't the type to stray too far from it for too long. However... without warning – without even a sound – Melody almost jumped out of her own skin when she turned to see Bob Gray just standing mere inches from her, as if he'd noiselessly appeared from thin air!

“Robert!” she'd yelped, raising a hand to her heaving chest. “You startled me half to death. That wasn't very kind, sir.” She chuckled a bit, for there was a part of Melody who had been amused by her own shock, and so her chuckle turned into a laugh. Composing herself, she then beamed a warm smile to the tall man staring her down with intense eyes; a man who sported a grin that didn't seem to sit quite right on his comely face. It looked like the smile of the clown, as if it had been glued, indefinitely, to Gray's lips. It did, indeed, give Melody pause before she continued. “I...” the young woman stammered, “I made you something.”

He stared her up and down – she was dressed in a frilly, sky blue dress with white trim. It was warm that day, so her hair was done up in some fancy knotwork to which only pretty girls like Melody knew the secret method. Gray found her... appealing. Just that brief bounce of shock had sent an appetizing aroma to his sensitive nose – like fresh meat simmering in a spicy stew.

Melody handed him a box. It had been conscientiously gift-wrapped, almost too perfect to tear open. “Go on,” she smiled.

Without a word, Gray nimbly untied the white ribbon around the box, then ripped at the shiny, red paper, peeling it away from the parcel. The box was a simple paper cube, likely something she'd found in her attic. Melody's smile widened as she blushed a little. “Open it up, Robert.”

Gray popped and flipped open the paper flap and looked down. Inside, there was some sort of ivory fabric, pleated and lacy, made from some fancy material or another.

“Here,” huffed Melody, too excited to wait for him to take it out. “Let me.” Miss Sharp removed the item and draped it around Gray's neck. “See?” Ruffs. She'd sewn together custom-made, Elizabethean neck ruffs for the man's Pennywise costume. “I hope you like it.” Still smiling and blushing, she awkwardly looked down.

Gray, he ...It... had never been given a gift before. Certainly nothing intended for the indulgence of his (Its) own vanity. He reached to the back of his neck and fastened the ruffs together, spying himself in one of the makeup mirrors. The ruffs, indeed, looked good. And because Gray looked good, he felt a multitude of good feelings wash over him in that instant. He turned to Miss Melody, clutched her delicate hand, stared into her eyes, and said, “Thank you, Miss Sharp. This is a beautiful gift.”

Melody's blushing cheeks reddened even more. “Will you wear it to your next show?” she'd asked. Some part of her expected Robert to tell her no, rip off the ruffs, stuff them back in that box, and send her on her way.

“Oh yes, Miss Sharp. Melody. Yes I will wear it. I will wear it to every show.” He held her hands a bit tighter, now. Just a squeeze. Then, he let her go.

Melody's heart nearly melted. Meanwhile, Gray excused himself, but unlike in the past, he did so warmly, with a tone that seemed to say, “Oh Melody... please do come visit me again...”

And so... she did. Miss Sharp, bless her innocent heart, did not realize the man called Robert Gray – to whom she'd devoted the remainder of her free time on Earth – was truly not the same man as the one that snubbed her again and again. No. She visited nightly with a foul thing. A skinwalker that had been asleep for billions of years, only having recently awoken within the last few hundred. Thereafter, It followed a sleep cycle of twenty-seven years only to emerge, hunt, and eat on the flesh of Derry folk, before returning to Its rest.

Melody was none the wiser, but she sure was tickled to see Mister Bob Gray hungrily wolf down her shepherd's pie for once in her life. She wondered... did his feelings change for her? Had Robert finally warmed up to her advances? And oh how he wore her hand sewn neck ruffs! Each time she caught his act, he'd faithfully had them wrapped round his oh-so-handsome collarbone. Melody was elated. Robert had finally taken to her.

Now, this is the point in our tale, dear reader, where one might think this wicked creature had depraved plans for the likes of poor Miss Melody Sharp. Did the thought cross Gray's mind to plunge the delicate young maiden into her deepest fears and then proceed to eat her alive? Oh yes! This thought did indeed cross Gray's mind – and more than once, assuredly.

But...

Melody had a certain something about her. Even all the Derry men could agree on that. Perhaps even some of the Derry women, if you can open up your mind and wrap your head around such a thing. Sure enough, that certain something, that unconditionally giving nature of Melody's, well... it was powerful enough to transcend barriers even of the dark, extradimensional kind. People like Miss Sharp don't come around all too often. This dark tale goes to show just how much of a rarity she'd been. Perhaps her certain something failed on the real Robert Gray, but... on the likes of this entity... on this creature... it sure hadn't failed in the least. Gray's ability to probe deep into Miss Sharp's psyche and read her every whim had, unbeknownst to her, enchanted a monster. Not an easy feat to do. Sometimes it was what was on the inside that counted... and in this case, it counted for one's very life.

Gray complimented Melody's shepherd's pie each and every time she'd brought it around, singing the utmost praise to its delicious texture and taste. The animal meat within had been seasoned just right, almost enough to rival the scared, savory flesh of a quivering child.

“They say the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach,” Miss Sharp would laugh.

Gray laughed along with her, oh how he laughed and laughed. Sort of a haunting giggle, really, but Melody cheerfully paid no mind.

One night, Miss Sharp came to Gray, very nervous, hoping to ask him the same question she'd asked each year. The dance. She wanted him to accompany her to the dance at the local hall where all of the township would surely be in attendance.

“Will you do me the honor?” she'd asked. “I know, I know. I ask every year, but–”

“What about now?” said Gray.

Melody quirked a half smile. “N-now?”

Gray took her small hand in his, cupping his other hand to her slender waist. “Would you kindly dance with me now Melody Sharp? Out here? Under the moonlight?”

On cue, her cheeks flushed and she smiled. “Of course, Mister Gray.” Miss Sharp couldn't believe it – she had won this man's heart.

Gray pulled her close, swaying gently, leading Melody along with his graceful strides. He rested his chin on the curve of her head as she felt the soothing heave of his chest against her face. For some time their quiet waltz continued, silently but beautifully, beneath the glow of the moon above, until Gray lifted her innocent face to meet his eyes. He leaned downward and gently kissed the young woman on her velvet, soft lips. She tasted as he'd imagined – sweet and fresh. Gray found himself unable to unlock his mouth from hers. Melody pressed against him in her own, eager way – meanwhile her small but firm hands cupped the rugged contours of his jawbone and neck.

Gray lifted Melody from her feet, still embracing, forever trapped in the perfect kiss. And the two eventually found themselves back inside his caravan, clothing off, making love on a bed roll stuffed with down. Melody had never lain with a man in all her life – and as far as Gray knew, she was assuredly his (Its) first, as well. Their lovemaking was raw, but slow, bathed in a soft light provided by a neighboring kerosene lamp.

Gray had hunted the humans... had fed on the humans... but this...

“I love you,” Melody Sharp had whispered against his lips, now wet from her kisses.

It had been a phrase the humans said to each other when their affections had... blossomed. Gray, for all his evil and wickedness, could only hear himself utter those same words back to her.

“I love you too...” Even though this monster had spent centuries playing deadly tricks on people, this was indeed no ruse. The creature that had driven Bob Gray to suicide, stole his life away, and murdered those who paid to see him dance, deeply felt love – of all things – for Miss Melody Sharp.

And as she moaned and panted against Gray as he bucked his hips into her, he resolved to himself that while almost all humans were potential meat – Melody Sharp certainly was not.

Time went on and the two continued their trysts, but as all stories have a beginning, there must come the inevitable end. Whether Melody Sharp knew it or not – she'd trapped the heart of a monster. Not a small victory, which undeniably makes her the hero of this tale. In spite of how everything shall boil down in the end, Melody Sharp was the one who had saved the monster inside of Mister Robert “Bob” Gray.

Now, Gray, for all that he (It) was... had been a cloud of malevolence cast over Derry. Perhaps, Melody did not perish by the wicked creature's hand in of itself – Its influence was still the death of her. Gray's corruption spread like a disease through the hearts of Derry residents far and wide. Murder. Rape. Arson. All accounts of such heinous deeds increased in frequency, namely when the creature's eyes were open.

Gray waited for Melody that night, as he always had each and every night. How he missed her when she was away. But Miss Melody never came to the caravan that night. She'd taken her usual walking path – oh yes – but this time some men had been waiting for the poor girl. They'd been watching Miss Sharp, memorizing her routine over the course of some time. These men knew that the young lady had coin on her and they were, unfortunately, the desperate criminal types in a rush to leave the great state of Maine. Now, be aware they didn't violate Miss Melody – no they did not. As previously stated, they were in a rush. The thoughts had crossed their ugly minds, sure, but the coin was all they wanted. Truth be told, had Melody handed over her purse, then everyone would've walked away in one piece. But Miss Sharp, deep in her gracious heart, was a hero – she was a fighter. And, bless her efforts, she tried to fight off those men, but she lost that battle. She lost it hard.

In fact, it had been in that very moment when one of the men – whose eyes Melody had nearly clawed from his face – stuck his knife deep in her belly that Gray looked up at the moon above and gasped in sync with Miss Sharp's final breath. Those awful men ran off with her coin – they even took her shepherd's pie. All the while, Gray raced across the Derry landscape, moving faster than any mortal man could do. Though he hadn't moved fast enough and, in the end, he found his love lying flat on the wet earth, bleeding red through the center of that sky blue dress of hers.

Gray took Melody in his arms and shushed her as she choked. Blood bubbled from the corners of her mouth and he held her closer, knowing all too well when a human's death was near.

“R – Robert...” she'd managed to say.

“I'm here,” he croaked in reply, his once smooth voice changing under the duress of watching her die. As Melody's life slipped away, all the affection Gray had for her sunk downward, deep into a forgotten place where he locked away his (Its) sensitivities. Gray's affection was replaced with a heavy layer of malice and hatred for Derry. Hatred for the humans. Hatred for their children. Oh how... how... he would make them suffer. Make them scream. Make them into his food forever and always. They took her from him. Miss Sharp could have been the one to quell his urgency to always consume – but not anymore.

Gray hugged Melody's limp, delicate body close and rocked her. He shuddered with grief so fiercely that he began to lose his form. Tendrils inched out from his spine as he arched forward, cradling his love. But... deep down... that affection still lingered. It was still there... somewhere... buried within a monster who wept into the night. Melody Sharp may have died, but her long lasting impression on Mister Robert “Bob” Gray never did.

#robert gray #bob gray #pennywise #pennywise the clown #pennywise the dancing clown #it #itspennywise #pennywise it #clown #clowery #clowncore #stephen king #stephen king it #it chapter two #it chapter one #it chapter 1 #it chapter 2 #it chp 2 #it chp 1 #pennywise meme #pennywise fanfiction #pennywise fanfic #fanfiction #pennywise art #pennywise writing #pennywise hug #pennywise kiss #pennywise sex

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT CHANGE

The path it has discovered is the most popular online store builder, with about 14,000 users. Indeed, almost pathologically so. There is a parallel here with the first microcomputers. Com, which their friends at Parse took. If Microsoft and AOL get into a client war, the only way to deliver software, but for Web-based applications can be used for constructive purposes too: just as you can trick yourself into looking like a freak, you can write a spreadsheet that several people can use simultaneously from different locations without special client software, or that can page you when certain conditions are triggered. And not only did everyone get the same thing the river does: backtrack. They don't have time to work.

They felt a two-party system ensured sufficient competition in politics. With the rise of new kind of company. But in retrospect you're probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who isn't. An essay you publish ought to tell the reader something he didn't already know. And increasing economic inequality means the spread between rich and poor is growing too. Web-based applications, these two kinds of stress get combined. At $300 a month, we couldn't afford to tell them. At the time IBM completely dominated the computer industry. The test drive was the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us, like a dangerous toy would be for a toy maker, or a car in the street playing thump-thump music. The form of fragmentation people worry most about lately is economic inequality, and if you do something to the software that users hate, you'll know right away.

The effect was rather as if we were visited by beings from another solar system. If users can get through a test drive successfully, they'll like the product. I've discovered a handy test for figuring out what you're addicted to. And since the customer is always right, but different customers are right about different things; the least sophisticated users show you what you need to sell it to them. But not the specific conclusions I want to examine its internal structure. It happened to one industry after another. Up till a few years do seem better than the ones straight out of college, but only one step. You needed to take care of you. Originally the editor put button bars across the page, for example. For me, interesting means surprise.

That is a fundamental change. Back button. I'd much rather read an essay that went off in an unexpected but interesting direction than one that plodded dutifully along a prescribed course. Their search also turned up parse. Also, you've never been to this house before, so you must. Today a lot of them wrote software for them. On the surface it feels like the kind of people who are good at writing software tend to be running Linux or FreeBSD now.

Plus there aren't the same forces driving startups to spread. Patch releases. Among other things, they had no way around the statelessness of CGI scripts. When Rockefeller said individualism was gone, he was often in doubt. Whether or not computers were a precondition, they have certainly accelerated it. When finally completed twelve years later, the book would be a 900-page pastiche of existing popular novels—roughly Gone with the Wind plus Roots. But we could tell the founders were earnest, energetic, independent-minded people. He has assistants do the work for him. There's nothing intrinsically great about your current name. The eminent feel like everyone wants to take a bite out of them, and after that you don't have to be. And the second reason is that if you want to pay attention not just to things that seem wrong in a humorous way.

Magazines published few of them, and they're worried about some nit like not having proper business cards. By the time we were bought by Yahoo, I suddenly found myself working for a big company. With the centripetal forces of total war and 20th century oligopoly mostly gone, what will you miss about being young and obscure? Industrialization didn't spread much beyond those regions for a while. They might even be better off if they paid half a million dollars for a custom-made online store on their own servers so they can focus on growth, many of the big national corporations were willing to pay a premium for labor. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Programmers and system administrators have to worry about the servers, and in practice the medium steers you. And a program that attacked the servers themselves should find them very well defended. This worked for bigger features as well. Don't be intimidated. In another conversation he told me that what he really liked was solving problems.

I also spent some time trying to eliminate fragmentation, when we'd be better off thinking about how to mitigate its consequences. You can see every click made by every user. An essayist needs the resistance of the medium. In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can't show these to families while they're having dinner. I was about as observant as a lump of rock. And so in the late 19th century continued for most of what happened in finance too. This doesn't always work. I suspect the best we'll be able to coordinate their efforts, and you want to work in groups of several hundred. And if you manage to write something balanced. Certainly schools should teach students how to write. When a company loses their data for them, they'll get a lot madder. You can also be in closer touch with your code.

When I grew up there were only 2 or 3 of most things, and since there was nothing we could do to decrease the size of group that can work together, the only thing sure to work on. And the models of how to look and act varied little between companies. And then there was the mystery of why the perennial favorite Pralines 'n' Cream was so appealing. And in retrospect, it was a team of eight to ten people wearing jeans to the office and typing into vt100s. In life, as in books, action is underrated. Web-based software will be good this time around, because startups will write it. I spend most of my time writing essays lately. To some extent, yes. By the time we could find at least one good name in a 20 minute office hour slot.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #century #thing #vt100s #conversation #Robert #nit #kind #drive #store #conclusions #time #retrospect #toy #computers #servers #test #dollars #administrators #Microsoft #corporations #hour #madder #features

[deanandcastrash]

guys, the weirdest thing happened today

so i was taking the practice ACT and in the reading part, there was this passage. and as i began to read it, only into the first few sentences, this  feeling washed over me like i had wrote this before, and i continued to read and i seriously thought that it was my writing.

so i skipped to this part where i knew a character name would be, but the name was different. i glanced at the copyright and it said 1957.

so i read the whole thing and was shook.

it was a bit different from my own, but it wasssss sooooo simmiiillaar.

look, ill show you cause thats how shook i am.

the passage was adapted from the essay “Just This Side of Byzantium” by Ray Bradbury

here are the first few sentences of it:

“I began to learn the nature of surprises, thankfully, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.“

Now, here are the few sentences of mine (which is part of a fanfic i posted on tumblr 5 months ago. heres a link to the post )

“Being a writer, forcing ideas into the world came naturally, and it was a bad habit that Castiel had to learn how to break. When he was younger-a young writer-Castiel used to think something so far out there was great, and he would force it into words, onto a page that it didn’t fit. Those ideas would turn into these rabid monsters, clawing at the page, chewing up each letter of each word between their sharp teeth. He knew he had to learn to let it come naturally, but he didn’t know exactly what that consisted of. He didn’t know how to do that.”

we both used personification, giving a thing-an idea-living characteristics. we both had young writer characters. (im bolding the parts that are similar.)

heres the rest of bradburys (this is passage a, there was also a passage b that i will get to later)

“ It was with great relief, then, that in my early twenties I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head. 

I would then take arms against the word, or for it, and bring on an assortment of characters to weigh the word and show me its meaning in my own life. An hour or two hours later, to my amazement, a new story would be finished and done. The surprise was total and lovely. I soon found that I would have to work this way for the rest of my life. 

First I rummaged my mind for words that could describe my personal nightmares, fears of night and time from my childhood, and shaped stories from these.

Then I took a long look at the green apple trees and the old house I was born in and the house next door where lived my grandparents, and all the lawns of the summers I grew up in, and I began to try words for all that.

I had to send myself back, with words as catalysts, to open the memories out and see what they had to offer.

So from the age of twenty-four to thirty-six hardly a day passed when I didn’t stroll myself across a recollection of my grandparents’ northern Illinois grass, hoping to come across some old half-burnt firecracker, a rusted toy, or a fragment of letter written to myself in some young year hoping to contact the older person I became to remind him of his past, his life, his people, his joys, and his drenching sorrows.

Along the way I came upon and collided, through word-association, with old and true friendships. I borrowed my friend John Huff from my childhood in Arizona and shipped him East to Green Town so that I could say good-bye to him properly.

Along the way, I sat me down to breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with the long dead and much loved.

Thus I fell into surprise. I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot. I blundered into creativity as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true.”

mine:

“One morning, after many countless nights sitting behind a blinking cruiser, Castiel got up out of bed, turned on his computer, and wrote the first thing that came to his mind and everything that came to his mind until he had a string of words lines long in front of that blinking cruiser. He wrote mostly of his life, things that meant a lot to him. It was the most fun to write about. It surprised him so much-that he had written so much-that he knew that this is what he must do. This was the only natural thing he knew to write. 

So every morning for quite a few years, Castiel would get up and sit behind the computer. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for just a few minuets, and he would write about everything that came to his mind (or mostly everything).

Once he got better at writing; once he felt more confident, he would stare at a word on the page and weigh it down with his arms, his arms that carried his life- his memories.

He picked the words that could support the weight. He picked the words that could handle the pressure.

Soon though, Castiel began losing the details of his childhood. He couldn’t remember his beloved cats name he had through middle school.

So, one morning, sitting behind his computer screen, behind that blinking cruiser, Castiel took a trip to his grandparents house back in Kansas.

He walked up to the front lawn. He felt the grass in his fingers. He walked inside, and he didn’t look at the neighbors house next door.

Each morning, Castiel explored each room. He looked desperately for some old toys he might have left behind, or some forgotten memories.

Each morning, Castiel took a trip to the place he used to call home.

It had been months, and Castiel had only found a few things that he hadn’t expected; only small surprises had occurred recently. Nothing big enough to satisfy his writer needs.

It had been several months more before Castiel gave in. He wasn’t going to find any bigger surprise than the thing he was sure he was hiding.

One morning, when Castiel woke up, his black hair littered with gray, his eyes once a bright blue and full with life, now dull and dark, he sat behind his computer for the first time in years. He stared at the blinking cruiser before him.

Castiel had stopped writing. He had stopped trying to remember specific details because there was this one huge detail that was always getting in the way. But this morning, for some reason, was different.

Castiel closed his eyes, and he typed.

Cas took a trip to his grandparents house, but once he got there, he knocked on the neighbors door.”

UM WOW. WOW. okay this is was more exciting for me than it is for you because i wrote this but still. i know so many people have written so many things that some ought to be similar, but still. this is cra

passage b is the memory that he makes up from ‘visiting’. its written like its actually happened. here it is (by bradbury)

“The facts about John Huff, aged twelve, are simple and soon stated. He could pathfind more trails than anyone since time began, could leap from the sky like a chimpanzee from a vine, could live underwater two minutes and slide fifty yards downstream from where you last saw him. The baseballs you pitched him he hit in the apple trees, knocking down harvests. He ran laughing. He sat easy. He was not a bully. He was kind. He knew the names of all the wild flowers and when the moon would rise and set. He was, in fact, the only god living in the whole of Green Town, Illinois, during the twentieth century that Douglas Spaulding knew of. And right now he and Douglas were hiking out beyond town on another warm and marble-round day, the sky blue blown-glass reaching high, the creeks bright with mirror waters fanning over white stones. It was a day as perfect as the flame of a candle. 

Douglas walked through it thinking it would go on this way forever. The sound of a good friend whistling like an oriole, pegging the softball, as you horsedanced, key-jingled the dusty paths; things were at hand and would remain. 

It was such a fine day and then suddenly a cloud crossed the sky, covered the sun, and did not move again. 

John Huff had been speaking quietly for several minutes. Now Douglas stopped on the path and looked over at him. 

“John, say that again.” 

“You heard me the first time, Doug.” 

“Did you say you were—going away?”

John took a yellow and green train ticket solemnly from his pocket and they both looked at it. 

“Tonight!” said Douglas. “My gosh! Tonight we were going to play Red Light, Green Light and Statues! How come, all of a sudden? You been here in Green Town all my life. You just don’t pick up and leave!” 

“It’s my father,” said John. “He’s got a job in Milwaukee. We weren’t sure until today . . . ” They sat under an old oak tree on the side of the hill looking back at town. Out beyond, in sunlight, the town was painted with heat, the windows all gaping. Douglas wanted to run back in there where the town, by its very weight, its houses, their bulk, might enclose and prevent John’s ever getting up and running off.”

splendid. mine is written with two parts as well, but its wayy longer. so ill just add the first few sentences.

“Dean Winchester was just about the worst behaved seventeen year olds to live in Lawrence Kansas, and Lawerence was a big city. He walked big and acted bigger. He did the normal rebellious teenage number, you know, stealing things from the gas station and keying peoples cars. Getting and giving illegal tattoos. Most people saw him for just that, a teenage guy who smokes, skips school, and gives no shits, but when Castiel met him back when he was only a twelve year old shy-guy, he saw him for who he really was. 

Dean loved his brother more than he loved himself, and he would do anything for him, and even though Castiel was three-and-a-half months older than Dean, he looked up to him because of it.  

Castiel knew who he really was, and even as they began to drift apart and Dean started wearing too much flannel and listening to so much rock and put on this persona that was oh-so familiar to his dad, Castiel still remembered who he was.

 Castiel was still his best friend, even though he wrote as many words as Dean listened to in his music, and owned as many scratchy green and purple sweaters as Dean had green and purple flannel.Castiel was actually wearing his greenest sweater when he knocked on Deans door after school one day, and he grinned when he saw him. 

“Hey, Cas. Been a while.”

“Well, if you went to school it wouldn’t seem so long.”

“Yeah, well, that school thing really isn’t my thing.”

“Too bad.”Dean nodded and grinned at his sweater again. 

“Let’s go somewhere, yeah?”

“Sure.” Castiel shrugged and watched as Dean yelled inside to tell his brother he would ‘be out with Cas for a while’.

Cas followed Dean to his car and he started it up and drove out of the driveway. Things were a lot different from what they were when they were twelve.”

but yeah. a destiel fic so similar to short writing by the guy who wrote fahrenheit 451. im shook.

tell me what you think of this. is this some cool phenomenon that has a name?

#dean and cas trash #ray bradbury #just this side of byzantium #writer similarities #mine #my post #destiel #destiel fanfic #writers

[shazyloren]

The Room: Chapter 11 - Spilling the Ink

Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12710496/chapters/29298699

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

Daenerys stared at her Defence Against the Dark Arts homework as if it was magically going to write itself. It wasn't that the homework was particularly hard, it was more that she'd written a death sentence for herself in entering the tournament even when she was so against it. Professor Lannister had asked her if the abuse she'd given him in the great hall was for show and she said had replied that she was only entering so others did not have to and now, since both she and Snow had done so, it had gotten out of control and twelve other seventh year students had been seen entering too.

Nothing was going to plan anymore; she only had a one in fourteen chance of being chosen now and she did not like it. At least, there was a chance she could be chosen, however small it was. But this was just more pressure and build up inside of her that was not necessary. She was swamped with the idea of taking Viserys to trial, trying to pass her Newts, trying to ignore all the hate from people like Joffrey Baratheon and now she'd entered the tournament, only to not be the sole entry so she could take the sacrifice. So as she was feeling all these emotions inside her mind, she was confiding in the one person she knew she could trust.

"Let me get this straight, you were going to enter the tournament despite your protests in the Great Hall" Missandei said as she opened her Potions text book. Daenerys just nodded. "You wanted to be the sole entry for Hogwarts in this tournament, just so you could be the one to have sacrificed yourself if something went wrong" Again, Daenerys just nodded. "So your name stood for something good"

"Not a great plan, I know" Daenerys never questioned herself when it came to decisions she'd made. But now, she most certainly was. "This tournament is littered with death; it's drowning in it and now so am I and I can't get this stench away from me, it's everywhere. I've made a stupid mistake"

"All because Joffrey Baratheon said horrible things about you and that you were too scared to enter?" Missandei raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, all because of him" Daenerys sighed as she slammed her Defence book closed.

"That is the most stupid thing you've done in your life, I agree" She said frankly causing daenerys to be shocked.

The library was quiet, Sunday's it did not attract much attention. The Librarian Master, Marwin did not mind a little bit of talking in his library on Sunday's. And as Missandei and Daenerys were the only two people in here (besides the librarian himself), they found a corner furthest away from him so they could talk while they worked. She hadn't seen Missandei most of the week due to different lessons, but it was nice to finally catch up with her (even if she wasn't happy with the explanation Dany had given her)

"Thank you, Missandei. I know it was reckless, but you think I'm going to let Head Boy look all grand and not me? And as I said, House Targaryen is pretty much gone. We're nothing - and we should be something" Daenerys spoke softly. "The Valyrians who died would hang their heads in shame at the state of what we had become"

"It's time like these where I see why the hat chose Slytherin over Ravenclaw" Missandei mused.

"How so?" Daenerys asked confused. She had the brain for Ravenclaw, it was known. But she felt Slytherin through and through.

"You're such a survivor, you'd stop at nothing to get what you want, to get even. You're clever, very clever. But it's almost too clever for Ravenclaw, and now you're letting all this want and wish cloud your judgement" She spoke so well with Daenerys now it actually amazed her. It was a shame when other people were around she became so quiet. "You take pride in your roots too, pride can be a dangerous thing"

"It can. Good point, well made" Daenerys sighed.

"And so now both you and Jon have entered" She summed it all up. Daenerys did not want to think about it, instead she focused on something else. Or tried to at least. Missandei's hair was different today. As stress increased her hair would get bigger and wilder. But Daenerys loved it like that, it was so different from any hair she'd ever seen. "Since when have you been civil towards him anyway, that display in the Great Hall was not your usual fighting. You both would have hexed each other into next week"

"He's always deserved it" Daenerys grumbled as she dipped her quill into the ink pot.

"I don't doubt it, Daenerys" She smiled sweetly as she too scratched her quill on the parchment. "You've always had a lover's quarrel with him"

"A what?" Daenerys nearly spilt her ink all over the table. "A lover's quarrel? I can hardly stomach the guy!"

"I don't mean you want him to be your lover, I meant that you argue like an old married couple except it's a lot more violent" Missandei sighed. Daenerys did not feel any form of romantic attachment to Jon Snow. Sure he was six foot (not quite as tall as his brother Robb), his hair was a deep and curly brown which he styled back into a half up bun most days and he was... nevermind. Sure, he was attractive, but his personality was what made Daenerys scrunch her nose up everytime he walked by.

"Well, we had patrol" She said in a quiet hush as she spotted two figures enter the library from the back near the restricted section. As they got close she saw Jon's sister Sansa and her friend Jeyne from Ravenclaw. Daenerys knew she had to be quiet or Sansa, being the gossip she knew her to be, would tell Jon everything she was saying. "We had a strong... conversation with each other"

"You had an argument" Missandei giggled.

"Yes, we did" Daenerys agreed, her eyes crinkling a little. "I won"

"You always win"

"Not always, I like to think I do. I know I'm the better person, even if the blood inside me gets the better of my judgement sometimes" Daenerys countered. "I told him of the ancient ways of the Valyrian's and how, because of the incest it meant some of the Targaryen's over the years have gone slightly mad. He was more confused than scared of me to be perfectly honest. More confused than I'd ever seen him initially" Daenerys laughed as the memory of his face reminded her. "But I told him everything, and that he needed to lay off me. We decided the fighting was tiring, so that's it"

"I give it until the end of next week before you break that rule" Missandei smirks as she finished off the conclusion of her potions essay. Daenerys heard the clock ring for two pm. "Damn, I've got to go meet Professor Lewin - He's promised to help me with my speech if I help him organise the potions cupboard. Catch you later?"

"Of course, have fun!" Daenerys smirked knowing full well that cleaning the potions cupboard is the worst job in the school. Missandei rolled her eyes before placing her books in her bag and grabbing her wand off of the table. She gave Daenerys a hug, which made her a little uncomfortable before leaving her to her own devices on the table. She just went back to her blank parchment to try and start her essay.

She knew she should tell Missandei about what has been happening to her body all these years, she owed it to her, she was her only friend. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. So she hadn't yet. She needed time. So ignoring this nagging thought in her head she wrote her first sentence.

She actually found herself being able to concentrate a little better. Within the next hour she had an introduction down; a summary of what it was in Non-Verbal Magic she wanted to explore in this essay and how she was going to go about that. The next hour went by and she'd crafted majority of the main body, littering her page with statements and evidence from the many books she had scattered across the table. She was getting a feel for Defensive theory finally, even if her practical application was lacking, so she was feeling hopeful about the essay. By five pm, she'd fully written the essay and was finishing of the conclusion when her stomach growled and she realised it was almost dinner.

As it was Sunday, she would be patrolling with Jon. This was going to be their first interaction since the Great Hall fiasco yesterday. It would be a tense patrol, but she knew she was in the right initially; she just hoped he would understand that her 'anger' got the better of her. She also hoped that he shared her concern for the rest of the student populous.

Daenerys would be the next best candidate after Jon; she would admit that his superior defence skills would make him the most capable. But Daenerys excelled in Care of magical creatures and potions. She was also a dab hand at Herbology so she would definitely be able to contribute lots to the competition. But she hated thinking about this, why had she done it? Was it for all the reasons she was saying? It was, she growled at herself.

Although she'd be lying if she didn't admit the promise of three thousand galleons did not excite her. She could use it to get away from her family; get an apartment, set up her life. Something that she'd always wanted was a bakery in which she could experiment with different ingredients and potions to enhance flavours. Cooking was considered beneath her by her father, but she loved to do it anyways. Several times she'd sneaked into the kitchens here and make stuff with the house elves, but she hadn't since fifth year. She should do it again sometime, I'm sure they'd all love to see her again.

Dinner was a quick process, she hated being around other people at the best of times but since the fiasco yesterday everyone had been looking at her funny or saying she was going to lose in the tournament if she was picked etcetera. She ate her chicken pie and mash quickly before working her way to the Astronomy tower where she'd be giving out new rotas for the Prefects. She sat in the designated room and the pairs of prefects came and went of to begin their patrols. It was seven on the dot when Jon arrived, an hour after he was suppose to be handing out rotas with her. Daenerys wasn't mad, it wasn't like him to be late so she knew there must've been a reason.

"Sorry, I had a situation to write up with some fourth year Ravenclaws; duelling in the corridors" Jon spoke with a semblance of an apologetic face. She studied his face a little, she'd never noticed a small silver scar that ran through his left eye. It was only thin, as if he'd accidently got himself with a slicing charm or something. It made him look older than eighteen, which is what he was "They managed to turn half the suits of armour in the charm corridor into murderous suits"

"No worries" She shrugged, not wholly listening but focusing on the features of his face. She managed to tear her eyes away as she saw a glisten in his eyes, they held so much history. She almost couldn't look at them, almost. "You ready to patrol?"

"Yes" He replied astutely. Wait why am I looking at his face? "Where is it tonight?"

"You don't know" Daenerys rolled her eyes, the face observing completely forgotten as she huffed impatiently.

"You literally just handed out new rotas, obviously I don't know considering you wrote them" He replied short. Damn him to Merlin, she growled in her head. She just stalked out of the classroom and left him to follow. They walked in silence for a bit, students making their way to their common rooms, curfew wasn't for another half an hour. But by the time they reached greenhouse three, the greenhouses being where they were patrolling, that half an hour was up and all stragglers were being told they had to go to their common room.

"So-" He began, she cut him off instantly.

"If you talk about the tournament I swear I'll turn you into a tea cosy" She sighed.

"Why? Because you let a prat like Joffrey Baratheon get to you?" He snorted. Daenerys was not having any of this, she turned to look at him straight away.

"If you had not entered in the first place, I would not have been made to look an idiot! Joffrey Baratheon is nothing but a leech and I was going to enter alone before your proud head got involved" She snapped before opening the door to Professor Sprout's greenhouse one.

"How is it my fault? You wanted the glory, Daenerys admit it!" Jon laughed, as if it was funny to him. She turned to face him, fire in her eyes.

"I do not need glory! I do not need fame or power or anything else you could imagine! I want clearance! I want my name to stand for something more than the mud it has been dragged through for the last ten years of my life! I want to be able to walk freely throughout school without a comment on my heritage - that's why I wanted to enter okay"

"Daenerys I don't think-" She cut him off instantly, the small space they were in getting warmer from the intensity of their glares. Daenerys was hyper away that they couldn't move much, Professor Sprouts Venomous Tentacula plants were sprouting and if they moved closer to the plant pots they'd be attack. So they had to stand close to each other.

"I wanted the school to understand me, I wanted them to feel protected from their head girl; to feel safe. I wanted to take that decision from them, so they did not have to die. I wanted them to realise that I was more than a name, more than the shell of a person I've become! I am Daenerys of the House Targaryen, and that name will stand for something more than ju-"

Daenerys felt lips on her own and hands on her face. She smelt the woods, ferns and thistles in her senses as she tasted sweetness on her mouth. It didn't last long, but it was overwhelming still. The hands didn't hold her forcefully, they were soft, even though the skin surface was coarse. It wasn't long this placement of lips, but it was long enough to cause panic and fear inside her. He let go of her face and removed his mouth from hers.

"Now I've managed to shut you up before everyone hears you grandstanding speech" He uttered as he turned and left the classroom. His voice grew distant as Daenerys felt rigid with fear. "May I remind you we still have Greenhouses four through eight to check and the surrounding area"

Finding the strength to move her feet she followed, but she did not saying a single word for the rest of that evening, even though Jon attempted to.

She was too shocked.

And everytime he got closer to her she flinched.

He's not like Viserys, he's not like Viserys.

She had to tell herself just to be able to stay standing up. But he had just kissed her without her consent, all just to keep her quiet. She should have screamed at him, cursed him out and sent him to the hospital wing, she should've blasted him into the lake for the Giant Squid to eat.

But she didn't, she couldn't do any of that. And why?

Because she liked it.

#jon snow #daenerys targaryen #jon x daenerys #jon x dany #jon x dany fanfic #fanfic #jonerys #jonerys fanfic #Hogwarts AU #au

[sorosoroso]

Christianity in Japan: Part I

I got another chance to write an article for Connect! This time, I decided to write about Christianity in Japan, and its influence. This was a particularly long article, so I’ve split it into two parts. The first part revolves mostly around my perception of Japanese Christians, and my interview with a Japanese Christian. The second half focuses on the history of the religion of Japan. I found this so fascinating to research, and even though I still have very complicated feelings regarding Christianity, I do have a profound respect for people who still practice it, especially in those who endured through difficult times. 

In Jesus’ Name, (R)Amen: A Peek Into Christianity and the Christian Identity in Japan

Growing up in a Christian home, my favorite thing to learn about wasn’t bible verses,  Jesus’ parables, or the Psalms. Nah. Despite a fairly sheltered childhood, at the very appropriate age of twelve, I was fascinated by the gory, violent deaths of Christian martyrs throughout history. Somehow, I was able to get my hands on a book all about this child-friendly subject, and I remember spending hours flipping through the pages with rapt, undivided attention.

 The book did not skimp on the gruesome demises of these Christians, early and contemporary, detailing (and maybe dramatizing) their torture. What began as morbid curiosity gave way to genuine interest, especially when it came to martyrs in Japan, of which there were surprisingly many. The most famous incident was the 26 Martyrs of Japan, where a group of Christians were killed at Nagasaki in 1597. Aside from the brutality of the execution method (being crucified and pierced with spears; a cruel parody of Jesus’ own death), their deaths piqued my tweeny curiosity because, up to that point, I hadn’t realized that Christianity was a minority religion in other countries. 

As a Korean-American, Christianity played an important role in both cultures I was part of: in the United States, vacations were centered around Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, and I used to attend one of the many Korean-American churches sprinkled across California. Although I don’t practice it anymore, Christianity still influences what I consider “normal” (it still feels strange we don’t get Christmas off in Japan!). 

After a deep dive into Japan’s relationship with Christianity, I soon discovered that the 26 Martyrs wasn’t some random act of violence; it was both the culmination of years of complex economic, political, and cultural factors and represented the beginning of Japan’s dark history regarding religious freedom. As an island nation, Japan had very little contact with Western countries. In fact, the first ever documented Europeans to step foot in Japan arrived by complete accident when, in 1543,  two Portuguese traders were blown off-course during a trade expedition to China. Within six years of this encounter, the first Christian missionaries from Portugal set out to Japan, beginning with Kagoshima. These initial efforts had… mixed success on the Japanese, and it took time to really take off.

Nowadays, though, Christianity permeates many aspects of modern Japanese culture. Some of the countries’ top ranking universities, like Sophia University and International Christian University (ICU), were established by Christians and openly advocate the religion. Western style weddings are popular in Japan, with many couples forgoing formal kimonos in favor of dresses and suits, and ditching Shinto shrines for Western chapels, complete with a white foreigner playing as a minister, whether or not they’re ordained. Even mainstream anime incorporates Christian iconography or themes; one of Japan’s most successful franchises, the Evangelion series, appropriates Christian mythos and angelology (the study of angels) despite staff members admitting it was purely for aesthetic reasons. 

And we haven’t even touched on the wide array of Christian literature in Japan, including Shusaku Endo’s Silence, which was adapted into an Academy award nominated film directed by Martin Scorsese in 2016!

With such a conspicuous presence, it’s hard to believe that Christianity is still very much a minority religion in Japan, and, despite its prevalence and general acceptance, is still considered very foreign to Japanese people. Many seem fascinated by the aesthetics of the religion, but less by the actual practice of it. In fact, the entire time I lived in Japan, I’d only ever met one person who openly told me she was Christian. Still, I wanted to better understand what Christianity was like currently. I knew that there were other Japanese Christians, and it was clear research would only do so much: I would need to talk to someone who actually practiced Christianity.

Luckily for me, I knew exactly one person who did. 

I was delighted to find out that she was willing to speak about her personal experience in her faith. During our conversation together, I finally found answers to my questions about being Christian in Japan, as well as further insight into why Christianity is still a minority religion despite over 100 years of religious freedom in Japan. I hope you will enjoy our discussion as well. 

The following interview was conducted almost entirely in English. At the interviewee’s request, she will not be referred to by her real name nor will certain details about her personal life be revealed. In addition, parts of the interview have been edited for clarification or grammatical reasons. 

Can you please introduce yourself and your background?

I am a Japanese woman, and I began to believe in Jesus Christ as a high schooler. On Christmas, I went to a bookstore and found a book by a Christian author.

My family, however, was Buddhist.

Do you remember the author’s name?

Her name was Ayako Miura. She has since passed away. She wrote many novels, essays, and songs. 

The book I found was titled “Michi Ariki”, and was about how she became Christian. I was so impressed with it. I read the book, and I felt that Jesus Christ is the real God. The Christian God is full of love, and knowing that Jesus Christ loves me, that he saved me from my sins and gave me a new life, made me so happy.

Did it comfort you to know that Jesus and God was with you?

Yeah, that’s right. I was so happy. 

Really? But with Buddhism, you didn’t feel that same love?

Yeah, because when I was a child, I thought if I did bad things, I had to be punished. In Japanese, we say “bacchiga-ataru”. If I do bad things, bad things will happen to me. It’s like Heaven is going to punish you.

Oh, I think I understand. Is it like karma?

Yes, Kind of like that. I was afraid of what I might do. But, Jesus Christ is the opposite. Even though I was so sinful, Jesus Christ died for me, because he wanted to save me from sin. I was so happy to hear that he would do that so that I could live in heaven.

Were you the only Christian in your family?

Yes, exactly!

How did your family react to you being Christian?

My family was so shocked, and they had difficulty accepting that I was a Christian. I had to wait until I was 20 years old to be baptized. I told my family that 20 years old is considered a legal adult age. 

How do other people react when you tell them “I’m Christian”?

Hmm. Well, when I was a university student, I told people I was Christian, but most weren’t surprised. I think it’s because there are some schools in Japan founded by Christian missionaries. Even though most students don’t believe in Jesus Christ, they know about Christianity, and their image of it isn’t so bad.

What do you think non-Christian Japanese people’s image of Christianity are in general?

In general? I think Japanese people, basically, have no religion. Things like keeping graves clean and songs, those are more like customs, now.  I think their image of Christians is so… katai (hard), or serious?

Really?

Well, some people think Christians are majime (strict), or too rigid. Have you heard this phrase before: “Japan is the grave of missionaries”?

No I haven’t. Does this phrase mean many missionaries died in Japan? Or is it because people give up being missionaries in Japan?

The second one. It is so difficult for people to become Christians in Japan. The Christian population is less than 1 percent here.

Is your family Christian?

Yes, they are Christian. 

Was your husband Christian when you met him? Or did he decide to convert later?

After marriage, he became a Christian. He wanted to know me better and to understand me, but he had to understand Christianity first. So, he went to church, attended Sunday service, and read the bible. 

Wow! He was a very good student.

(laughs) Well, I think it wasn’t his attitude, but God’s love that helped him..

Did you have a Japanese style or Western style wedding?

I thought the wedding would be a very good chance for my husband and others to learn about Christianity, so I asked for a Western style wedding. The pastor of my church came and gave a sermon. Many people came to my wedding and were able to listen to a bible message.

How do you think Christianity’s image has changed since you were in high school?

I think it’s difficult to change the image of Christians, but I want to live my life honestly. I don’t have a lot of power, but I want to try to help other people in need. I want to be kind to other people through Jesus Christ.

So, I guess not many changes?

This is my personal opinion, but I think Japanese people are actually afraid of being different from other people. For example, many years ago, there was a bad accident that happened in the name of religion. A cult was responsible for the accident.

I think Japanese people still keep looking for God, because people are weak. In Japanese society, we work so hard, and our country is unstable. We have so many things to stress about, and I think they want a God to look after them.

But it’s difficult for them to be Christian because we are the minority in Japan, and Japanese people want to be the same as each other.

What do you think Christianity is like in other countries?

Some Korean missionaries came to my church, and I had a chance to speak with them. They were so kind. My image of Christians in foreign countries is of these missionaries. Even though I have never been to a Korean church, I think it would be similar to this experience.

How about America?

My image of American church is pretty good. If they believe in Jesus Christ, they are my brothers and sisters.

What do you think American churches are like?

I had a chance to talk with some American Christians. Some of them were missionaries, but everyone was so nice.I think church in the United States would be really fun and welcoming. But, maybe this is because I saw movies like The Blues Brothers… 

(laughs) Oh I see!

The church atmosphere seems so cheerful in movies.

Are there many young Christian people in your church?

Good question! In my church, there are many different generations, from babies to the elderly. 

Do young people come with their families or by themselves?

Young people, especially little kids, come with their parents. My pastor believes that children are extremely important. He thinks if children are familiar with Jesus while young, they will lead better lives because He will always be with them. 

The average age of Christians in Japan is very high, so we are afraid that churches will disappear in the future. If too many people leave, our churches cannot exist here.

What do you think the future of Christianity is in Japan?

Sh: If the number of young people in Japan decreases, I think many churches will close because it will become difficult to find Christians in Japan. I hope God sends many young people to our churches one day.

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

For the next part of the article, please click here.

#>2000 #christianity #Japan #connect #ajet

[katranga]

Disclaimer: Fic is just for fun. Nobody on ao3, or tumblr, or wherever, is expecting perfection. Most of these tips are gonna take a little extra time and effort to implement, and if you don’t feel like doing that, because you just wanna post the darn thing? Go for it! I’m not here to tell you what to do, and I’m certainly not saying that your writing is bad if you don’t follow these tips. These are just suggestions that will hopefully help you improve your work, if that’s what you’re after.

Intro: Why Revise?

To kick things off, I’d like to go over the importance of revision!! This is more of a general writing tip, but it’s a great starting point, because I DON’T want you to be thinking about most of my future tips while you’re writing the first draft. 

I want you to get. those. words. on. the. page! That’s all you should be worried about when you’ve got a blank page staring you in the face. 

There’s so much pressure to get writing right the first time, but I’m here to tell you that’s pretty much impossible. So, pressure’s off! Just write the basics so you get to know your story first. I

I know it seems like writing it perfectly will save you editing/revising time later on, but you can’t revise—let alone post—what you don’t have written because you’re stuck on one line that doesn’t sound just right. You with me so far? Great!

Honestly, writing gets so much faster when you remind yourself that no one is going to see your first draft!

So I cannot overstate the importance of revision.

Because guess what? Everything you don’t like about your first draft can be fixed in revision!

Okay. What is it?

To clarify, when I say first draft, I don’t mean the stuff you do in high school, where you write out a shitty essay on paper first and then type it up basically the same, just to prove to the teacher you wrote a first draft?? Or whatever.

I mean you just write the absolute basics of your story down, and fill in the rest and perfect it later (I’ll go into detail about how exactly to do that in my motivation post).

Now, grammar, spelling, and overall readability, are all important things to fix before you post. But that’s little stuff, and your word processor will be able to pick up on some of that, and just rewording a few sentences to make them clearer probably won’t take too much effort on your end (though I am gonna have a post about filler words and clarity and stuff like that, so if that tends to be a problem for you, I gotchu).

Besides basic grammar/spelling, most of what I change as my first draft transforms into my second or third is: 

Improving the flow of a scene (it can’t all be dialogue, unfortunately)

Pacing throughout the fic (are they falling love too fast? is this scene too long? etc)

Overall clarity (I know why the character did that, but will the reader?)

It may be different for you. Basically, you’re polishing up whatever you didn’t worry about writing the first draft.

My first drafts, for example? They’re 80% dialogue. Because that’s my favourite! And that’s what comes to me when I’m dreaming up fics. But then I go back later and beef up the rest—the characters’ movements in a scene, their inner dialogue, description etc.

Because as much as I love dialogue, scenes feel empty and too-fast with just characters talking. Similarly, scenes can feel bogged down and slow with just characters thinking about things.

But revision isn’t just about adding things! Sometimes you need to take stuff out. Inner dialogue that later gets covered by dialogue? Cut it. (Or vice versa—maybe the detail isn’t important enough for the characters to talk about, and just the mention of it within the narration is enough).

The point is, repetition needs to go. The reader rarely needs to be told the same thing twice.

Quick example from the top of my head:

Lance had lost his jacket. He’d looked over the whole castle for it, but couldn’t find it anywhere. His brother gave him that jacket. One of his last ties to Earth, and it was missing in action.

Maybe Keith took it to spite him, that jerk.

“What’s up, Lance?” Hunk asked when he passed him in the hall.

“I lost my jacket!” Lance said. “My signature jacket, the one Marco gave me! I’ve looked everywhere, but it’s gone. Do you think Keith stole it?”

Same information twice: Lance can’t find his brother’s jacket despite a thorough search, and suspects Keith stole it. No reason to repeat that. Something’s gotta go.

I know cutting stuff isn’t fun. You worked hard on that! You spent hours/days/whatever perfecting a sentence until it gleamed like a diamond, and now just because you thought of a better way to get that information across you have to get rid of it? No way!

I’ve been there, trust me. But hanging on just slows down the whole writing process. Because, for me at least, I know when stuff needs to go, or needs a massive overhaul, or whatever. I’m just digging my heels in because I don’t wanna do any additional work.

Luckily, this is where your shitty first draft comes in handy! If all you did was spit words onto the page as soon as they entered your head, then you didn’t spend a lot of back-breaking effort on whatever you need to cut! And what you need to cut isn’t anything awe-inspiring, it’s just your rough notes, so tossing it aside isn’t nearly as stressful!

Remember, you can always save scenes/dialogue/etc in a separate document! Maybe you’ll be able to salvage some it later. Alternatively, create separate versions of the doc as you edit/revise. If you end up actually needing part of a deleted scene, you’ve still got it somewhere!

And please, never think of the stuff you cut (or fics you never finished) as “wasted time”. Writing time is never wasted! You’re practicing, you’re honing your craft, and even if some bits never see the light of day, you’re still benefitting from all that work you did!

Now, I know I know I know most people edit/revise as they write. Can’t think of the next scene? Reread the previous scene and fiddle with it until something comes to you. That’s great! Revising already written material is loads better than just staring at your screen!

BUT I’ve recently started writing the whole gosh darn diddly thing without looking back and that is so much faster! While I highly recommend it, that’s obviously difficult to do when you don’t know what’s going to happen next in the fic.

Or if you just don’t have the motivation. So! That’ll be our next topic: Getting words on the page!

But for now, I’ve got an example under the cut, as well as additional resources and links if you want to learn more about revision!

Here’s where I take an old embarrassing fic of mine and revise it, hopefully clarifying the points I’ve been making, as well as proving that only practice makes better!

Okay so this is an excerpt of one of my unpublished fics from 2011. I’m just gonna be honest with you here, it was a Twilight human!AU where Edward was a massive nerd. 

For background, Bella has been at the new school like a week and is appalled at the bullying happening to Edward, who she barely knows. (It’s first person bc that’s how the books were written. Just deal with it.)

Here we go:

“They gave him a swirly yesterday,” I announced, appalled.

“Who?”

“Edward!”

Jessica shrugged, unaffected. “Nothing new.”

“Well what are they, twelve?” I demanded angrily.

“He kind of needed a hair wash,” Mike muttered.

Snorts of amusement followed.

“Stuffing his head into a toilet is not funny,” I argued.

“Yes it is, Bella,” Alice chuckled.

“Kay, next time we go to the bathroom, I’ll shove your head into a toilet,” I offered. “And we’ll all laugh about it.”

This was a whole scene, I kid you not. Now, this isn’t bad because it’s just dialogue. It’s ten lines. That’s a reasonable amount of space for a quick dialogue exchange. HOWEVER, there’s about four people in this scene, so the dialogue tags are a little sparse. ALSO, this is the first time Bella’s bringing her concerns about Edward to the group, so there should be more inner reflection on that.

Overall, it’s just way too minimalist lol. So  this is a good example to beef up.

First of all: where the fuck are we? Notice how no setting was given? Not the greatest habit to get into. If it’s already been established in the fic where people are, and the setting’s not that important, I guess you can skip it, but a quick mention isn’t gonna hurt. You don’t want the reader confused!

Since this a Twilight fic, let’s say they’re in the caf. (In Voltron fics, you’re probably gonna be on the ship, but you can always mention what room they’re in. Or, if it’s a new planet, give a line or two of description).

Explanations for changes I made are in [square brackets]:

I tossed my lunch tray onto the table before throwing myself onto the chair next to Alice. “They gave him a swirly yesterday.”

[Indicated setting. Also implied she was feeling “appalled” using verbs instead of outright stating it. Showing not telling!]

Across from me, Angela looked up from the sandwich she was picking at. “Who?”

[Indicated who was speaking—always important—as well as gave brief description of speaker].

“Edward,” I said like it should be obvious. I scanned the cafeteria for him, but the corner he usually sat in alone was empty.

[Another mention of setting. Also backed up her concern for Edward with action and not just talking about him].

Jessica shrugged, unaffected. “So what?”

“So?” I repeated incredulously.

So I’d never heard of someone actually getting a swirly. In real life. Shitty teen dramas? Yeah. Actual high school? No. It was ridiculous, and gross, and… I hadn’t seen anything to indicate Edward deserved it. (Nobody who’d ever deserved a swirly had ever received one, I was sure).

[The almighty character motivation! Note that you don’t actually have to explicitly state why they’re doing something—obviously we as the reader know the deep-down motivation is because Bella cares for Edward. But characters are not always forthcoming with information, even to themselves. Right now she’s focusing on the unjustness of the situation, and partially trying to convince herself that’s all it is].

Mike slung an arm across the back of Jessica’s chair, snorting a laugh. “He needed to wash his hair, anyway.”

“A toilet’s not gonna do that, Mike!”

[Just a cleverer response. Also, a dialogue tag isn’t needed, because no other speaker at the table is gonna be defending Edward. We know it’s Bella.]

He ignored my glare, choosing instead to steal a fry off my plate. I smacked his hand away.

[Again—action. The characters aren’t just static in their seats.]

“Well, really,” Alice began. “What’s it matter?” She sat up sharply, an idea just now occurring to her. “You haven’t been making friends with him, have you? I told you, Bella, it’s social suicide!”

[Gives Alice a chance to respond to Bella’s outburst—in this AU Alice is very concerned with popularity and does not want Bella associating with Edward. She would definitely have a problem with Bella sympathizing with Edward.]

I rolled my eyes. “No, I just…”

The whole situation was ridiculous. This wasn’t how people should be treated. Was I the only one who realized that? Was I really the only one who cared?

“Whatever,” I grumbled, crunching down on a fry.

[This feels like a more natural resolution to the conversation. Alice directly asks why Bella cares, and Bella reiterates to herself it’s just because. And then decides it’s not worth the argument. This is 2k into an (unfinished) 30k fic. She’ll make a bigger deal out of stuff later.]

Now it looks more like a real scene! 

So, to summarize, I added: Description—both setting and character! Character musing! Cleverer comebacks! 

These are just some of the things that you can fix with a keen-eyed round of revision.

--

And that about wraps this up! I didn’t want this to get too long, but it did anyway. (I’m sorry about the graphics I’m a writer, not a graphic designer. But I had to split the post up so it wasn’t one big block of text)

Was any of that helpful? Was it too long? Did the example clarify things? Let me know, I wanna make sure these tips are helpful!

--

Additional Resources That I Highly Recommend:

DRAFTING: THE THEORY OF SHITTY FIRST DRAFTS -- This post probably explains shitty first drafts better than I ever could! If you still have concerns about it, definitely check it out.

Editing & Revision Answerathon -- Okay, this video is pretty long, but I looove Max Kirin for anything writing-related and especially revision!! They’ve got a tumblr and a Youtube account filled with writing tips! If you like getting your writing info through videos, definitely check out their stuff.

Top 5 Writing Tips: Revision -- Here’s an infographic by Max if you don’t want to watch a 44 minute video lol. Also, you can go through their /tagged/revision for more!

#writing advice #fic writing advice #revision #katranga writes #i mean a lot of these tips are gonna be just general writing tips #but i will focus on issues that commonly crop up in fics #revision was just really important to go over first #idk i hope this is helpful #katranga's fic tips #i guess will be the tag

[everland-x-blog]

i’m such a fool

I wanted so badly to hate him.  It would've been so easy.  But I wouldn't let him take away the faith I was building.  I wouldn't let him turn me into a kind of person I don't ever want to become.  I wanted to hate him.  It would've been an effortless thing.  But it's hard to truly hate someone when, after it's over, they end up strengthening that which they had sought to cripple. I've always known that having faith had nothing to do with having all the answers.  But it doesn't mean ignoring doubts, living in general ignorance, or checking one's brain at the door to the church sanctuary; neither does it mean checking one's faith at the college parking lot.  There were things I knew about faith before I met him, before I let one man get under my skin, before he etched heavy-handed "comments" into the pages of a twelve-page essay I wrote, scarring them – and me – with venomous remarks. He was in charge of ninety minutes of secular humanist philosophy in a class that was dubiously entitled "Critical Thinking."  Five thousand four hundred seconds marked by the growing sense that the "critical" in "Critical Thinking" was being applied connotatively as well as literally – and in a certain direction. There were many incidents.  He would say things that felt like hot spikes being driven into the back of my spine.  He would say things that burned and festered in my gut for the ninety minutes of class, things that made me want to stand up and curse and yell and storm out – he said things that threatened to bring out the words and most frightening parts of my own humanity.  I hated him for that. I hated myself for that. Once – and even now I can't remember exactly what he had said – I shook my head to myself in response, and went back to doodling in my notebook.  I remember I had at that point begun to tune him out.  I remember the volume of his voice suddenly registering as louder than before.  He came back in loud and clear, and I looked up – checked right, left, and forward.  He was closer, staring at me: glaring, I thought.  Everyone who has ever been in a classroom knows that lightening strike of terror when a teacher calls on you.  I felt that, but there was an additional burn when his hand came up and he pointed at me.  Shook his finger.  His pronouns changed.  Where he had been speaking rather steadily in theys and theirs, I caught you and your.  The only coherent thoughts I had were, Is he angry?  I only shook my head!  I didn't say anything!  Oh dear God… That finger might as well have been a gun.  It shook.  He shook.  I froze.  His eyes were wide and he was staring right at me.  I was utterly terrified.  The all-encompassing two word prayer, Oh God, played in thirty different internal voices in my head.  I was begging for strength and courage and the right words and the ability to become instantaneously invisible.  I managed to say something, some feeble deflecting placation.  In all my life I had never wished for Jesus Christ to return more than I did in that very moment. When he finally turned away and on to other things, all I wanted was out. I put my nose into my notebook.  My palms sweaty and sticking to the paper, I slowly shaded a sketch of a lopsided sphere.  I couldn't look up.  I didn't dare look around the room at my classmates.  I was stunned and angry and horrified and hurt and humiliated and I simply wanted the remaining thirty minutes be over.  It was all I could do to keep from sobbing. I would endure a couple more weeks of self-censure.  My only comfort was the protection of dutiful note taking – part illusion, part truth.  Then, when I had begun to wonder if it had really happened, if it had really been as bad as it felt, a classmate caught my attention during the last cruel minutes before class, before he arrived. She said she was amazed that he had yelled at me like that.  Her word, not mine – yelled.  The instant she said it I felt a kind of strange relief: confirmation.  And when he pointed at me, she told me, "I don't know how you just sat there and took that.  I would've run."  I felt the crippling wave of horror, frustration, anger, and smallness rock me all over again.  I told her I didn't know what to say, that he scared and surprised me, that I wished I'd had the presence of mind to say more and better. Someone else later told me: "It bothered him that you didn't take it." Another: "Seemed like he had it in for you back there." Again: "I wouldn't want to be caught in his sights… I couldn't've kept my cool." I would gradually become a little bolder.  I would write down what I wish I could say in response to some of his disparaging remarks, but never say anything.  I would write a twelve-page paper: I would use his texts, but I wrote with my passion.  I argued against what he was for.  He would give the paper a C, and cover it with extremely heavy-handed comments.  I could feel the crease every stroke of his pen left behind: scars in every page. Your culture has done you a disservice.  He wrote that.  Carved it into the last page of my essay.  He was talking about my religion – the titled representation, the format, the face that represented the form of my beliefs.  Because I was "religious," in his view, I couldn't reach the full potential of my critical thinking skills.  He insinuated that my powers of reasoning were somehow crippled by my choice to believe in God.  He wrote horrible things in haughty academic language; insults that stung all the more because they hid behind the jargon.  My gut insisted he thought he could get away with it – as if somehow I was not intelligent enough to know what he was saying about me.  It felt malicious.  The stress of the whole semester, of his critiquing of religion and espousing secular humanism, his finger shaking in my face, built to a head.  His jokes, his attitude – always colored in disparaging and just… mocking tones – of religion, of people, even of his own mother's belief in angels.  It all just hurt.  I cried for hours. I would end up writing another long essay to remedy the despairing grade he had given; in it I simply regurgitated what he wanted to hear.  Once it was over, and grades were in, I would never have to see the man again.  I buried the anger, frustration, and hurt he had caused.  I sealed up the scars.  I played his game.   And that hurt just as much. But I survived him.  And so did my faith.  More than a year later, I would realize I was actually stronger: my faith was stronger.  The very thing he mocked, undercut, and wounded only became more fervent: more awake.  Alive. Real Faith isn't about having all the answers.  It doesn't mean remaining blissfully ignorant to the risks and the doubts of what I believe.  Real Faith can't be wounded or undercut: it endures, grows stronger.  Faith pushes me to change, to grow, to keep my eyes on one thing that guides all others.  Of course, it doesn't mean I'm perfect, and it never will; it means I'm trying.  It's effort.  Faith is reconciling knowledge and doubt, fear and confidence, belief and reason.  It is the choice to doubt my doubts.  It's not blind.  Faith is belief matured: realized.  It's a process and a personal battle.  A lifelong one. I wanted so badly to hate him.  It would've been so easy – and maybe for a while I did.  I would be lying if I said I'd like to see him again, but I don't hate him.  Language fails, yet toward him I feel something that is almost – but not quite – pity.  "Love thy enemies:" it's not a commandment easily carried out.  But somehow, I think I know what it means.

[no-facts]

a 2020 postmortem

How does one make sense of a whole year? Three hundred sixty-five days, fifty-two weeks, twelve months, four seasons. It’s impossible to see it all in one’s head at once, and so the best one can do is to examine it in chunks, sift through it and pick out key events, try to find the gold amidst all the muck.

2020 was not a kind year to most, at least in the US. Global and national events made sure of that. Nevertheless, I had a fairly decent year, and I’m grateful for that. I was born to parents who, although abusive, are wealthy enough that finances have never been a problem, and happened upon a found family to quarantine with, so that I never had to go back to an abusive home.

So here’s a list of noteworthy things that happened to me in 2020.

Relationships

my quasiplatonic partner and I mutually broke up (February)

I started dating someone new (March)

that someone and I mutually broke up (December)

had crushes on seven new people over the course of 2020

two people had crushes on me (that they told me about)

Living Situation

I got a bid from a student co-op associated with my college (January)

I moved into said co-op (February)

my college kicked everyone off campus (March)

ten of us co-op folks fled to a 4-bed 3-bath AirBnB in Vermont (March)

I ended up being the person in charge of finding our fall living situation, and spent dozens of hours of browsing Zillow and Trulia and calling tens of brokers

I found an amazing place, 6 beds 2.5 baths for $4000/month, utilities covered by landlord

seven of us ended up moving to this house in August, and we’ll be here until end of May

Physics

conducted four physics experiments in my lab class before getting kicked off campus (February-March)

taught myself how neural networks worked in two days, having never taken a machine learning class or done any machine learning before (April)

found 3σ evidence for the Higgs boson by using a neural network toanalyze golden channel data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (April-May)

wrote three physics papers in the style of the APS Physical Review Letters (March-May)

gave three fifteen-minute talks about these papers (March-May)

gave a public final oral presentation on my Higgs boson neural network analysis (May)

Acting

wrote, performed, and filmed a 48-minute solo performance, for a class on solo performances (May)

landed the role of Fefu in a virtual production of Fefu and Her Friends (September-November)

cast to deliver the monologue “My Vagina Was My Village” in a virtual production of The Vagina Monologues (November; show will be February 2021)

landed the role of 羅伯特 (Robert) in a virtual production of《誰殺了羅伯特》(Who Killed Robert), a Chinese-language comedy from Taiwan (November; show will be March/April 2021)

cast as an actor for a student-run virtual theater show / escape room experience, my first paid acting role (December; show will be January 2021)

auditioned as an actor for a futuristic quest-for-space educational game geared toward grade schoolers; don’t know whether I’ll be cast (December)

Music

started playing piano seriously for the first time since I was seven or so (March)

started playing ukulele (March)

my partner got me a beautiful Luna uke (July)

wrote my first two songs ever (July-August)

learned some Bach, Chopin, and Debussy on the piano (March-December)

Language Learning

started using Anki for Chinese vocabulary learning (May)

memorized forty-six 五言絕句 (five-character quatrains) from 千家詩 (Poems of a Thousand Masters) and 唐詩三百首 (Three Hundred Tang Poems) (June-August, December)

translated a short play (Back Room, by Zhang Xian) from Chinese to English (October-November)

wrote three 800-word Chinese essays and gave a 10-minute oral presentation in Chinese (September-December)

started seriously trying to learn Taiwanese Hokkien (December)

Other Academics/Job-Related Things

was elected House Meeting Co-Chair for my co-op in both semesters (February, September)

was elected spring Retreat Co-Chair for my co-op; the retreat was cancelled due to COVID (February)

landed an undergrad research opportunity for the summer, in the theater department, with my favorite theater professor (with whom I have now done one research opportunity, two classes, and four shows) (June-August)

landed an undergrad research opportunity for the fall, in the economics department (September-December)

started my job search, looking for jobs in hedge funds because I want to make money before I fuck off and go do an MFA in acting (September)

did nine phone interviews and two full afternoons of video interviews at five companies (September-December)

utterly failed to get a single job offer for the entirety of my search so far (September-December)

Miscellaneous

started drinking alcohol and quickly realized that I absolutely hated it (March)

realized that I did like two things: amaretto sours and low-alcohol-content moscato (sometime between March and August)

started having a daily / weekly Bible study with my parents, which, as a former-Christian-turned-agnostic, has been absolutely The Worst (May)

fell head-first into the MDZS/CQL/The Untamed fandom (May)

started doing Core Support Group (a group in which we do core-targeting exercises) with my housemates daily (sometime between May and August)

cooked enough food for ten people, for the first time (sometime between May and August)

started reading poetry on a daily basis (August)

started wearing my school ring on a daily basis (August)

started doing pull-ups on a regular basis (August)

Of all these, probably the most notable is my accidental falling into the MDZS fandom. Fanfiction reading has been an on-and-off addiction of mine since 2012 or 2013, and I’ve cycled through many fandoms, mainly (in roughly chronological order) Hunger Games, Artemis Fowl, LotR/The Hobbit/The Silmarillion, Star Wars (first six movies only), (embarrassingly) Twenty One Pilots, Game of Thrones/ASoIaF, James Bond, Sherlock, (briefly) the Spideypool ship, and finally, MDZS/CQL/The Untamed. Of my 136 pages of Ao3 history, dating back to February 2018, over 40 pages are filled with MDZS fics. I’d say that’s pretty significant. I’ve read more fic in the past seven months than I have since before college, when I had significantly more free time.

I’ve been wondering when my passion for this fandom will cool. My interests wax and wane, and surely at some point I will get sick of this. But perhaps there’s enough ships that I’ll stave off boredom for a while longer. I’ll admit that I’m mainly a WangXian shipper, but I’m definitely partial to XiCheng, ZhuiLing, XueXiao, SongXiao, 3zun. At some point I’m going to go back and read all the extras to MDZS (I skipped those and went straight to all the fanfic, whoops). And I’ve promised myself that I’ll read SVSSS and TGCF at some point...

Anyways. Let me not turn this post into an analysis of my fanfiction habits. All I mean to say is that fanfic has been one of the few things I have really enjoyed this year, and has kept me sane through so much of quarantine.

But I’m hoping for an end to quarantine, and looking forward to perhaps a fun summer in Taiwan (looking at you, CLS program) and hopefully a well-paying job in the fall (D. E. Shaw? Google? Netflix?). Here’s hoping for a smooth vaccine rollout in the US, and a gradual but sure return to normalcy.

Welcome, 2021. May you be a happier year.

#bye2020 #hello2021

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Austin Smith

grew up on a family dairy farm in northwestern Illinois. He received a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MA from the University of California-Davis, and an MFA from the University of Virginia. Most recently he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University, where he is currently a Jones Lecturer. He has published three poetry chapbooks: In the Silence of the Migrated Birds; Wheat and Distance; Instructions for How to Put an Old Horse Down; and one full-length collection, Almanac, which was chosen by Paul Muldoon for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. His last collection, Flyover Country, was published by Princeton in Fall 2018. Austin’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Yale Review, Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, Poetry East, ZYZZYVA, Pleiades, Virginia Quarterly Review, Asheville Poetry Review, and Cortland Review, amongst others. His stories have appeared or will appear in Harper’s, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review, EPOCH, Sewanee Review, Threepenny Review, Fiction and Narrative Magazine. He was the recipient of the 2015 Narrative Prize for his short story, “The Halverson Brothers,” and an NEA Fellowship in Prose for FY 2018. He is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he teaches courses in poetry, fiction, environmental literature and documentary journalism. He lives in Oakland.

http://www.austinrobertsmith.com/

The Interview

When and why did you begin to write poetry?

I started writing poems quite young because my father is a poet, along with being a dairy farmer. Some nights he would come in from the barn, clean up, and we’d go into town to hear him read poems at the local art museum. Glancing down the page, I see that this answer I’m giving can apply to the second question, as well, in that it was certainly my father who introduced me to poetry, not only through his readings, but through the collections on my parents’ shelves. From a young age I felt a particular pleasure in looking at a poem, even, I think, before really reading them. The shape of the poem on the page, the prevalence of white space, the way the lines broke on the right margin like surf. It appealed to me immediately. I still remember distinctly the first line I wrote: “The fire is burning hot.” I was kneeling in front of the fire (of course). Something had changed: I’d gone from hearing my father read poems to trying to make a poem myself. I must have been twelve or so. I still have the notebook, labelled “Poetrey” (sic), various marks in the corners of the pages, some lost order that I was already putting the poems in. As to why I began to write poetry, that’s more mysterious. Of course, I was following my father (my favorite poem on this score is Heaney’s “Digging”), but at the same time, I was striking out on my own, trying to speak of the same place and the same livelihood in a different way.

2. How aware were and are you of the dominating presence of older poets?

Again. I think I touch on this above, but I can say more. I wouldn’t say that I felt that older poets were dominating presences. The poets who meant the most to me were the poets who meant the most to my father: Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Forrest Gander, etc. Actually, my father and I have met and/or corresponded with many of these poets. I met Snyder when he came to Freeport, IL to give a reading, and visited us on the farm. My Dad and I have both corresponded with Berry, and I’ve corresponded with Merwin. We both know Forrest. The point being, it was clear to me early on that being a poet was about more than writing poems. It was a whole life, a way of being in the world. It had a lot to do with friendship, with the simple pleasures of sharing a meal and some drinks, trying to say something for the earth and our presence upon it. In other words, it struck me that to be a poet was to take up a kind of moral calling. So rather than their presence being dominating, I felt that a kind of gauntlet had been laid down that I better walk if I was going to call myself a poet. Now, whether I’ve actually managed to walk it is another matter, that I can’t speak to.

3. What is your daily writing routine?

Right now my routine is waking up, trying to write, realizing I have to get my shit together and drive an hour to school, and daydreaming about what I would have written had I been able to stay home. I’m teaching a lot at the moment so I’m hardly writing at all. Certainly no poems. An occasional short story. Anyway, when things are calmer I write in the mornings. After noon I’m kind of worthless. Sometimes I’ll work on poems at night: they seem to require less attention than fiction does. What I mean by that is that poems seem to exercise a different part of the brain. I think it’s actually best to be a little tired, a little distracted, when working on a poem. I don’t like to bear down on them too much, or exert too much control, whereas, with fiction, it’s quite a bit different.

4. What motivates you to write?

I don’t really know anymore. Actually, I’m concerned that I’m losing the will to write. I used to write so much that it bordered on obsessive-compulsive behaviour. I have, in a file cabinet at home, approximately 1700 poems. I don’t write like that anymore. I don’t feel the pull to write about everything like I once did. I used to have to write in order to feel that I had experienced something. In some ways I’m happier, not writing all the time, but when one has identified oneself as a writer, to not write is a terrifying thing. These days, what motivates me to write is the thought of sharing the work with a half dozen or so people (my parents, my brothers, several good friends). I’ve pretty much given up on the publishing world, selling a novel, going on book tours, all that bullshit. I’m more or less writing letters to people I love, only they’re in the form of poems and stories.

5. What is your work ethic?

Well, again, it used to be much stronger! I’ll say this, though: I work hard, harder than anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t say that to brag. I’m actually not all that proud of it. It comes, probably, from having grown up on a dairy farm, and watching my dad get up every single morning at 3:30 for thirty years without a single day off. I approach writing that way. I had a pretty woeful time in graduate school because I encountered poets who don’t think of writing in that way, and I judged them, thinking they were lazy, or fake. The truth is, they were just working differently. Anyway, I like that phrase, “work ethic.” It really is an ethics of work. For me, the ethics of work is the ethics of dairy farming. For someone else, the ethics of work may be very different. Who am I to judge them? I just grew up in a particular world that has guided the way I approach my work. And so I am always reading, always writing or trying to write, always bearing down on one page or another, either mine or someone else’s.

6. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Haha, hmm. Well, I don’t admire too many. Hardly any fiction, most of it strikes me as absolutely inane bullshit that is only getting published because it might sell books. Only a few poets. Maurice Manning, for how he has blent his work and his life in Kentucky. Joanna Klink, whose poems strike me as truly vital and consequential. Ilya Kaminsky: I trust and admire his patience and his passion. My friend Nate Klug, whose poems are as perfect and precious as diamonds. Yea, that’s about it.

7. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Read. Read until you find writers who make you so envious that you would die to write like them. Then try to write like them. Try to write like so many of them for so long that you eventually write like yourself.

8. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

Oh there are so many. I’m like Coleridge in this. I have a thousand ideas and hardly any of them ever come to fruition. I’m experimenting with several different novels, trying to get one to click and carry me forward. One is about the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a community of beleaguered farmers in the midst of the Farm Crisis of the 1980s (but it’s a hoax perpetrated by the mother of the boy who sees her). Another novel is about a young woman who marries into a dairy farming family and, over the course of several decades, tries to get to the bottom of a dark family secret. Another novel is narrated from the perspective of a farmhouse. There’s a linked story collection called BROOD XIII, following generations of a farm family, jumping every seventeen years with the emergence of the Northwestern Illinois brood of periodical cicadas. My third poetry collection will be called ALL THY TRIBE after a line of Keats’s. I’m working on a memoir about growing up on a farm, as well as a collection of essays oriented around specific substances (“Milk,” “Blood,” “Grain,” “Manure,” etc.). And I have a short story collection finished, which the NYC editors called “quiet,” which I’ll probably just self-publish online. Again, I don’t really care that much anymore about publishing, I just want to keep writing and sharing my work with the people in my life who matter most to me.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Austin Smith Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.