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mockinggold · 3 years

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If you guys ever feel like your writing is bad, here’s the first chapter of my first ever fanfic

“"Tch- Like I would want to be around any of you extras," said Kacchan. He leaned farther in his chair and smirked.

"Aw c'mon Bakugou, we'll have a blast!" Kirishima smiled. "We'll go and get something good to eat and hang out like real bros. I'll get you dinner on me!"

Kacchan sat up straighter looking at Kirishima. He regained his composure and scoffed "Whatever. I'll go just to keep your sanity shitty hair, and so you all get off my ass about it." Kacchan glanced up at Kirishima. Kirishima nudged him on the shoulder and smiled.

"Yeah that's what I'm talking about!" Kirishima chuckled. "Hey Midoriya, who all else is coming?"

I look up at Kirishima and flipped up my fingers with each name I said. "Well," I started. "We've got you, me, Kacchan, Uraraka, Iida, Tsu, Sero, Tokoyami, Yaoyorozu, Kaminari, Ashido, Jirou... and I think that's it"

"What's with the listing of names?" I heard from behind. I turned around to see a tall, muscular, heterochromatic guy staring down at me. I was caught slightly off guard by this and I felt my checks get a little warm.

"Oh, uh, hey Todoroki-kun! I-um... we're just going to the mall after school today to hang out and uh, yeah. I mean it's nothing too exciting but you're welcome to come if you'd like to," I stammered, regaining my composure halfway through.

Todoroki smirked. "Add me to your count then," he said. "Class ends in 7 minutes. Seeing as Aizawa is asleep, I have some loose ends I need to tie up. I'll be outside the main entrance when you guys are ready. See you soon." Todoroki calmly walked towards the exit. As he passed me, he lightly brushed against my shoulder. I felt the ghost of his contact linger for a few seconds longer before I glance back to see the last of his red and white hair sweep out of the door.

I blushed a little wondering if his small touch was intentional or not. Todoroki has always been a huge mystery to me, and maybe that's what's drawn me to him for so long. After the sports festival, it's clear he's been trying to be more social with the class but that doesn't stop me from wanting to know more about him. Not only about his quirk, but about his character. What makes him laugh, cry, yell, smile. I want to know what keeps him awake, what makes him fall fast asleep. I want to know so badly-

"OI DEKU!" Kacchan shouted. I jumped from the yell. "Are you gonna stand there or are you coming with us?" I glance up at the clock. Did I really just think about Todoroki for 7 minutes? I shook my head and grabbed my notebook.

"I'm coming!" I shouted to no one in particular. I picked up my pace for a bit until I caught up to Uraraka. I walked next to her as she giggled a little. I cocked my head at looked at her waiting for an explanation.

"It's super obvious, yknow?" She giggled.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Your crush on Todoroki. You always stare off into space for a long time with a dumb smile whenever he is or has been around. It's adorable and you should definitely ask him on a date." She smiled.

I felt my face heat up a little. And then a lot. "What? Oh! I-I-I think you got it all wrong. I mean yeah I stare off and mutter sometimes but it's not because of Todoroki I mean yeah sometimes I think about Todoroki-I mean his quirks and how they work and stuff I do that for everyone I'm just saying that it's not like I think about him for hours on end I mean that would be ridiculous right?" I said painfully fast. Even I felt that that was over the top.

"I see," she smirked. "Well if that's how you'd like to treat it, then go ahead. Hang on I need to catch up with Iida." She started skipping ahead. She suddenly turned around and yelled back at me. "Keep in mind you never denied my statement!" She grinned and caught up to Iida.

I felt my face get red hot. I knew she knew she was right. But at the same time, it felt hopeless. It's obvious Yaoyorozu liked Todoroki and it was most likely that he liked her back. Who wouldn't like him. He's the sweetest, kindest, cutest, strongest, bravest-

My train of thought was cut off by running into a wall.

I managed to startle myself to the point of falling.

"That looked like it hurt." Todoroki chuckled. "You were almost out the door too." He reaches out his hand to me and smiled. He had the smile that you could look at and feel safe and warm for the rest of your days. A smile that could make a demon blush. His mismatched eyes stayed locked with mine, they twinkled like no other. Those blue and gray eyes could catch your attention from a mile away. I cut myself off from staring and smiled back. I reached out my hand to grab his. We grasped each other's wrists and he pulled me up in one swift motion.

"Thanks" I muttered trying to avoid eye contact. I felt like he could see straight through me and how flustered I was.

He glanced towards the exit and smirked. "Of course," he said. I smiled back at him, aware of the dust of light pink in my cheeks.”

This was the entire chapter

Honestly, this is embarrassing to post for me. I could go on for hours about how terrible this is.

- POV used terribly

- Just about every sentence beginning with a name or pronoun unless I was making a burst of conscious effort not to

- Capitalization of entire words

- starting the story in a time where it seemed as though the beginning half of the story hadn’t been explained

- recapping crucial information as background information from past

- unrealistic enter/exit of characters

- unrealistic dialogue

- emotionally 2-D characters and emotions

- set up for no growth

- appears rushed

- plot unclear

- mixing of tenses (I still do it on accident though I try not to)

- unnecessary filler (I do that still too but I’m working on it)

- unrealistic and choppy time passes

- no good plot information given aside from character love interest

That was only what I could come up with in three minutes without referencing the text. If I gave myself ten more minutes I could expand on that list a lot

Please don’t get discouraged when you feel as though you’re not improving !!! You are always improving and the best way to know that you’re improving is to NEVER delete anything you write. It’s good to look back on so you can see growth

The best way for you to improve is to read !!! Keep reading fan fictions or any novel that is well written because you will absorb that grammar and writing style and be able to use some of it for your own !!! Seeing well written things will expand your vocabulary, sentence structure, syntax, and diction. There are so many ways to write the same sentence and the more you read, the more you find. Reading does wonders for your writing

Also practice !!! Even if you don’t post it, do little warm ups for yourself where you write short 300-500 word scenes and try out different styles, descriptions, dialogue techniques, anything. You’ll get more comfortable with how you write and you’ll allow yourself to be able to try new things without getting discouraged easily !!!

If you see a certain writing style you like, try it out !!! There’s no shame in copying a writing style and messing with it to build your own with it. Unless you’re copying word for word, referencing writing styles is a great tool to find your own and to be able to help create your own. Do not try to turn yourself into another author, you may like someone’s writing style, but not like writing it and that’s okay

I’m not any New York bestseller, but if I can encourage at least one person to not give up and keep writing and keep improving, that’s enough. Even if you look at what I posted and think ‘that’s like my writing style’ that’s okay. That style is simply not for me but if that’s the style you like and the one you want to improve on, go for it !!! Writing is an amazing talent and I encourage everyone to keep doing it. Share your writing with me, I’d love to read it !!!

#boku no hero academia #ao3 #writers #writerslife #writers on tumblr #writer #writing #writing techniques #writing tips #fanfiction #fanfic #my hero academia

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dogbearinggifts · 5 years

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“Dad Sent Me to the Moon” vs. “Because Dad Made Me”

How Luther and Vanya Talk About Trauma, Part One

In this fandom, I’ve heard a lot about Luther and Vanya.

Most of the things I’ve heard about Luther are negative. He constantly whines about his time on the Moon. He won’t shut up about how he had it worse than everyone else. He invalidates his siblings’ trauma. Meanwhile, Vanya is spoken of as if she’s his polar opposite: a kind, timid woman who genuinely did have it worse than everyone else but suffers nobly in silence while quietly ensuring her siblings are okay. I wanted to see if these perceptions were accurate, so I decided to take an empirical approach. During my sixth rewatch, I noted every time Luther mentions the Moon or Vanya mentions her exclusion, as well as how each of them responds to hearing of someone else’s trauma.

I want to stress that I am not out to throw one character under the bus. I’m not out to prove that Vanya is the actual worst and that Luther is the literal best, or that Vanya is amazing and Luther is awful. I’ve just heard a lot about both characters from within the fandom and I want to see how strongly the show itself supports the fandom’s perceptions. I won’t be examining every quote they have, and I won’t be looking at every scene they’re in. A deep study of both characters would certainly be fun, but for now, I’m only interested in how they address their own trauma and how they respond to the trauma of others.

Note: I’ve chosen not to include Vanya’s book as a mention of her trauma. While her book does indeed bring it up and examine it in detail, I wasn’t sure how to quantify it for my own purposes. Do I count it as a single mention, because she only wrote it down once, and thus risk underestimating its impact? Do I count each sale as a separate mention, guesstimate the number based on how many copies sold it takes to reach bestseller status, and therefore grossly inflate her numbers? Because the book is impossible to quantify with any sort of accuracy, I’ve chosen to leave it aside. Rather, I will keep my trauma counts limited to what Luther and Vanya say to friends or family members. This also means I won’t include her voice-over while we see her writing her book, or the moments where she reads excerpts aloud.

I’ve also chosen to write down the exact quote each time Luther or Vanya mentions their respective trauma or respond to someone else’s trauma. I’ll share my analysis, but I also want to give you all the chance to see each quote for yourselves and make your own judgments. You’re welcome to disagree with my conclusions and take or leave them as you see fit. However, because these analyses will become lengthy in places, I plan to do only a few episodes at a time.

Episode 1: We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

No explicit mentions of trauma from either Luther or Vanya. It’s established that Luther lived on the Moon for a while and that Vanya was raised to believe she had no powers and excluded from the family dynamic as a result, but neither one addresses what they went through.

Episode 2: Run Boy Run

Following the episode opener—a flashback to the day Five time-traveled and accidentally got stuck in the apocalypse—we hear Five share the harrowing details of his time there. Eating cockroaches, subsisting on scavenged food, learning the hard way that Twinkies do in fact expire—it’s pretty awful stuff. After Vanya takes it in stunned silence, we have this exchange:

Five: You think I’m crazy. Vanya: No, it’s just…it’s a lot to take in. Five: Exactly what don’t you understand? Vanya: Why didn’t you just time-travel back? Five: Gee, wish I’d thought of that. Time-travel is a crapshoot. I went into the ice and never acorn-ed. You think I didn’t try everything to get back to my family? Vanya: If you grew old there, you know, in the apocalypse, then how come you still look like a kid? Five: I told you already. I must have got the equations wrong. Vanya: I mean, Dad always used to say that time-travel could mess up your mind. Maybe that’s what’s happening?

This is our first onscreen mention of trauma, and Vanya invalidates it. However, there are some factors to consider:

Five’s story is pretty bizarre. “Yeah, after I ran away from home and time-traveled, I got stuck in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, lived there for 40 years or so, ate cockroaches and bad Twinkies, and then I jumped right back here but because math failed me almost as much as Dad failed at parenting I still look just like I did the day I left. You got any booze?”

There is no evidence to corroborate his story. He looks exactly the way he did when he left, and he has no way to prove he visited the future at all. The most logical conclusion here is that he spent a year at most figuring out how to return and wound up jumping ahead to 17 years after his disappearance.

As we see in the flashback, Five has always been arrogant and headstrong, growing angry when corrected. His anger and impatience toward Vanya’s insinuations that he’s lost his mind are not a reliable indication that he’s telling the truth; if anything, Vanya is well within reason to assume she’s edging too close to a truth he’s not ready to face.

Reginald Hargreeves was a terrible parent. But he was also a very smart man who knew more about his children’s powers than they themselves did. When he said that time-travel could mess up one’s mind, Vanya had every reason to assume he knew what he was talking about.

Reginald often used “YOU CHILDREN MUST ONE DAY SAVE THE WORLD FROM AN IGNOMINIOUS END” to scare his kids into doing the dishes. Not only has Vanya probably had enough of that talk to make her decide the world is going to die a natural death billions of years after hers, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to assume Five’s time-travel-addled mind latched onto those doomsday threats and twisted them into something truly strange.

So, yes, Vanya does invalidate Five’s trauma, suggesting it’s all in his head. But when your choices of explanation are “my brother time-traveled before he was ready and it messed up his mind” or “my brother time-traveled to an apocalypse that’s going to happen in 8 days, lived there for 40 years without ever trying to get back, and now looks like a 13-year-old kid because he got the math wrong,” the former is easier to believe than the latter.

Additionally, we see she genuinely cares for Five. His sudden reappearance, his talk of an impending apocalypse, his story that to her has holes large enough to drive a Volkswagen through—all of that has got to be terrifying. It’s clear she’s not invalidating his trauma out of any sense of malice, but rather concern. If he’s a victim of time-travel messing up his mind, she wants him to get the help he needs (as evidenced by her recommending a therapist later). Her invalidation of his trauma isn’t right, but it’s also a human response that comes from a place of genuine concern and good intentions.

It’s also worth noting that, the very next day, she returns to the Academy to apologize for how she responded to his story. She does recommend a therapist, but only when Five says “Maybe you were right, maybe it was all in my head.”

A few scenes later, we get Vanya’s first mention of her trauma.

Allison: No offense, Vanya, if I wanted advice, it wouldn’t be from you. Vanya: What’s that supposed to mean? Allison: You don’t have a child. You’ve never even been in a relationship. Vanya: That’s not true. Allison: So you know what it’s like to love someone like this? Like, when you’re apart from her, you can’t breathe? Like you would die—and I mean, actually die, to know she’s okay and happy? I mean, you separate yourself from everything and everyone, you always have. Vanya: Because Dad made me. Allison: Did Dad make you write that book about us, too? Pause You’re an adult now, Vanya. You don’t get to blame your problems on anyone but yourself.

The first thing to note about this exchange is that, although it’s Vanya’s first mention of her own trauma, it’s Allison who brings it up first. The second is that when she brings up her trauma, it’s as an explanation for her behavior: I separate myself from everything and everyone because Dad made me.

Vanya is definitely sympathetic here. I’m not going to argue she isn’t. She tries to be nice to her sister, catches her when she’s distressed, and gets reamed out for the attempt. That’s a shitty thing for Allison to do, which she later acknowledges.

However, there’s also their history to consider: Allison is a movie star. As I’m sure we all know by now, image is everything to the rich and famous. I don’t mean that as a jab at their vanity (although vanity is certainly involved, more often than not) but as a fact: They are the product, and their image is part of the advertising. Everything they do in public (and much of what they do in private) is pounced on by the paparazzi and spun into the next big story. And this isn’t always fair to them; a single misspoken word can set off rumors that come back to bite them in the ass.

And Vanya wrote a tell-all book about how Allison treated her as a child.

As we see from the intro sequence in Episode 1, it seems Vanya’s autobiography hasn’t kept Allison off the red carpet. But it would have certainly hurt her public image. While it’s true we don’t know everything Vanya put in her autobiography, we do know Vanya harbors a lot of bitterness and resentment toward her family. We know she sees her siblings as near-strangers who had an easier time of it than she did at best, superpowered copycats of their father at worst. From the reactions we see later on—Diego taping Vanya’s author photo to a punching bag, Ben saying “I can’t believe she said that!” as Klaus shushes him—it’s safe to assume she did not say kind things about her siblings in that book.

If the things Vanya said about Allison matched the things Allison later says about herself—that she used her power to get everything she wanted as a kid, that she grew up spoiled because of it—then that would not have done any favors for her public image. And the paparazzi would have gone apeshit for it. Yes, Allison is an incredibly popular actor, but that doesn’t mean the press wouldn’t have turned on her the second they got a juicy morsel about her past. I imagine her having to field many uncomfortable questions from trashy reporters while out for lunch with friends, having an interview about her upcoming film suddenly turn tense when the interviewer said “Now, Allison, your sister—who none of us even knew existed up to this point—wrote about you in her book, and I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I want to know more about….” There’s even a chance Vanya’s autobiography contributed to Patrick’s continuing antagonism toward her, since reading a book detailing Allison’s childhood power abuse could have convinced him his wife had always been bad, right from the cradle. (Or it could have fostered suspicion toward his wife and led him to keep a closer eye on her and therefore is the reason why he was close to Claire’s bedroom the night he saw Allison Rumor her, but that’s another theory for another time.)

You might say she deserved it. You might say she’d set herself up to fall and that all Vanya did was push that first domino over. You could even say her house of cards needed to topple, since part of her perfect life involved running roughshod over her own daughter’s free will, and possibly even Rumoring her husband into falling in love with her. Those arguments are absolutely fair, but they’re not my point. My point is, Allison’s harsh words to Vanya in this scene don’t come on her out of the blue. There’s a painful history there—painful for the both of them—and Allison harbors a lot of unresolved anger toward her sister for what she wrote in her book. And I don’t think that anger is unfounded, just as I don’t think Vanya’s resentment toward Allison is unwarranted. What Allison does in this scene is shitty, but Vanya has already done something shitty to her, in retaliation for shit she went through as a kid, and on and on the chain of pain goes. Vanya is far from guiltless in their relationship, but that does not make Allison’s lashing out at her okay.

And this is getting pretty long, so I’ll cut things short here. I’m going to list the count for trauma mentions/reactions below—and since I’ve seen this show multiple times over, I know it’s going to change; so don’t take the fact Vanya’s count is higher than Luther’s as an indictment of her. It’s just where we are at the end of Episode 2.

Own Trauma: Vanya 1, Luther 0 Trauma of Others: Vanya 1, Luther 0

Enjoying this series? Read on to Part Two.

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theladyragnell · 6 years

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PLEASE write Jessica/Trish for 12: writer and editor!

(First I started writing a Very Dark version with Jessica as the author and then I decided that it was time for a nice mundane AU where nobody has superpowers and Killgrave is not at all a thing.)

JessicaJones is maybe the leastlikely editor of romance novels Trish could imagine. She is rarelyseen without either a leather jacket or a hoodie, drinks like a fish,and claims that she's good at editing romance novels because shedoesn't believe any of the bullshit.

Shetells Trish this the first time she meets her over coffee, askingfirst why the fuck Trish is writing romance novels and second why thefuck Trish is using a pen name. Trish is pretty sure based on thatalone that she is going to request a different editor based onpersonality mismatch, but when she explains her reasons, dredges upthe story about how stealing her mom's assistant's romance novels onset pretty much saved her life when she was doing It'sPatsy, Jessica listens throughit, and finally sighs. “At least it's not complete shit,” shefinally says. “I'll take it.”

Trishraises her eyebrows. “Like you're doing me favors?”

“Look,I'm abrasive, if my performance reviews are anything to go by, butI'm nitpicky, and I know how people work, so if you want to be abestseller and stick it to your shitty stage mom by totally ruiningthe world's image of you, you're going to want to stick with me.”

That'sa lot more honest than Trish was expecting anyone in this process tobe, and more perceptive too. “Who the hell are you?” she asks,shocked into it.

“Keepup, Trish, I'm the person who's going to make you even richer and noteven make you accidentally-on-purpose drop your identity before thefirst book launches. You want to make the bestseller list withoutyour star power? Okay, let's try it.”

Trishonly realizes later that Jessica may know who she is, but she doesn'tdefault to Patsy or even Patricia like everyone else she knows does.Trish introduces herself that way once, and Jessica never calls heranything else.

Thefirst book does well for a newcomer—not exactly breaking down theNew York Times Bestseller List, but it gets notice on blogs and withreviewers, and Trish reads the reviews, the good and the bad and noneof it mentioning what she used to do. It's an addictive feeling.

“Youare the only person I have ever met who gets this excited overreviews saying that your romantic conflict is overblown. Which, fuckthat person, by the way, they are insulting me if they think I'dleave anything overblown in your books,” says Jessica over drinksone night, when they're monitoring the progress of sales after a bigblog does an overall positive review.

“Youuse a lot of four-letter words for a book editor,” Trish pointsout, signaling for another drink. “And the reviewer didn't say thatthey still really want to be my friend, so anything is good.”

“Iuse the exact fucking right amount,” says Jessica, grinning andtoasting her, and then starts frowning into her whiskey. “Suckswhen nobody lets you leave your past in the past, right?”

Trishknows next to nothing about Jessica Jones, but from the way thatsounds, all she can do is nod and clink their glasses together andchange the subject.

“When'sbook two hitting my desk?” Jessica asks when they're saying goodbyefor the night. “Or was this just an experiment, and you're goingback to the public eye?”

“I'mediting it before I send it to you. A couple weeks, maybe.”

“Don'tbother. I edit better than you do,” says Jessica, and walks off.

Bythe time Trish's second book (Jessica snorted when she heard thepitch, about a child star and the journalist who finds her running abakery and tries to get the story of her life out of her, but she'sbacked it and backed Trish's determination to stay anonymous againstthe marketing department's begging) hits the NYT bestseller list,Trish is in love with Jessica.

Jessicais prickly, and honest about Trish's failings and good points inequal measure. Her assistant clearly loves her, and Jessica lets himhelp her edit sometimes when, she claims, the pages are spinning infront of her face, because she knows Malcolm wants to edit somedaytoo. Trish worms bits and pieces of her past out of her as time goeson, and Jessica lets her have them—sometimes with a roll of theeyes, sometimes with her hands clenched tight on the edge of a bar,sometimes offhand in an e-mail.

Theproblem is that Jessica is always saying that she's a great romancenovel editor because she's a skeptic and doesn't believe in romancebullshit, so she can just treat it like literature. Trish isn't goingto set herself up for a heartbreak if Jessica really doesn't want todate anyone ever, which she sometimes claims. Ifshe's genuinely not into that, it's fine. Trish is happy being herfriend.

Shejust really also wants to kiss her and take her on dates, and it's aproblem.

Inthe end, she goes to Malcolm, who knows Jessica better than prettymuch anyone else even if that's not saying much and who is alsoincredibly good about making sympathetic noises at Jessica's authorsafter a brutal meeting with her and then telling them gently to gettheir shit together.

“IfI asked Jessica out,” she asks after bribing him with coffee andmaking sure Jessica is gone being yelled at by her boss, “do youthink she'd say yes?”

“No,”says Malcolm, with infinite sympathy. “I think she'd want to, forwhat it's worth, but unless you want her dropping you and ignoringall your calls forever, you probably shouldn't try it.”

Trishwinces. “She must have some really shitty exes.”

“Ihave no idea,” he says, in the tone of someone who's made someeducated guesses and definitely isn't going to share. “But yeah. Idon't think you're on your own here, but I think that's more likelyto make her run in the opposite direction, not less. If you want tobe friends, I'd recommend getting over it.”

Orgetting used to pining. Trish has never been great at either of thosethings.

Trishis invited, on her own merits as an author and not as Patsy, tocontribute a novella for a collection with some more establishedromance authors with the press, all of them supposed to write about afriend group with a loose frame story about all of them deciding togo a year without dating anyone—and, of course, screwing that up.

Allthe other authors are New York based too, and she has a great lunchwith Karen and Claire and Joy,all of whom are a lot of fun and care more about her as an authorthan as a child star, once they're over the initial surprise offinding out who Cathy Wilde is. All of them toss around ideas abouttheir novellas, and when Trish throws hers out, she gets three nearlyidentical pitying looks, but nobody tries to talk her out of it.

Shee-mails the novella to Jessica, since she's still Trish's primaryeditor and also because she has the right to veto it before it goesto publish. Sure, she would hold up the release if she wanted Trishto rewrite, but they're romance authors and editors. They'll get thegrand gesture.

Trishe-mails Jessica about the member of the friend group who's ajournalist falling madly in love with her really grouchy editor(which made Karen, whose degree and career was in journalism beforeshe moved into romance novels full time, laugh). Trish is good enoughand too proud to make things map too closely, but anyone who wants tosee what she's getting at will see what she's getting at.

Inresponse, she gets three days of radio silence (increasingly unusual,when Trish knows mostly authors and editors aren't quite as closelytied as this) and then a phone call from Jessica where she'sobviously kind of drunk. “I fucking hate novella pacing,” saysJessica, first off.

Trishlaughs, because she can't help it. “That's what you have to say tothat?”

“Yeah.I mean, it's as good as novellas can be with the pacing, but it's allfast as shit. Way too unrealistic, and everyone knows it's just amoney-grab capitalizing on whoever's big from the publisher rightnow. But yeah. The pacing is shit, and also the hero is kind of adick.”

“Well,the heroine finds it endearing, because he's at least not the usualkind of dick. But yeah, maybe I should fix that. I don't know if Ican fix the pacing, though. It can't help needing to be a novella.”

“It'stoo fast,” says Jessica, and maybe she's still talking about thebook, but Trish doubts it. “Theyneeded like five years for him to get over himself.”

“Yeah,maybe, but by then she would have waited. I just couldn't fit allthat in a novella. They aren't real life. There, yeah, waiting isprobably a good idea.”

“Yes,it really is,” says Jessica, and changes the subject to pacingissues Trish can actually fix.

Thewhole thing feels hazy and strange, and by the time Trish hangs upshe's almost completely certain that they really were having the sameconversation.

Jessicakisses Trish the day her fifth romance novel comes out, this one withthe byline Patricia Walker writing as Cathy Wilde,because Trish is finally ready to let the world see what she's beendoing on her terms. There's not a launch party, because at the end ofthe day, famous or not, Trish is writing trade paperbacks, so she'ssitting on her couch with Jessica, both of them a beer into acelebration and yelling at the contestants on a stupid reality showneither of them actually really cares about.

“It'sbeen a while,” Jessica says during a commercial break, and shesounds like she's leading somewhere, but Trish isn't sure where.“Since we started working together, I mean.”

“Yeah.I'm really glad Hogarth assigned me to you.”

“Metoo.” And Jessica kisses her, like that somehow logically followsafter years, but Trishisn't going to waste her chance if Jessica has finally decided thatthe timing is right. She's been waiting, just like she implied shewould and never mentioned again, and she kisses back.

“Isthat your way of saying we finally worked out the pacing?” Trishasks when Jessica pulls back, her lips curling into a smile.

“Youare so embarrassing, shut the fuck up,” says Jessica, and followsit up with another kiss, so Trish shuts up.

#sometimes i write stories #haha cathy wilde wildcat get it #i'm a font of cleverness #anonymous #answered asks

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ryukoishida · 7 years

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Arslan Senki Fandom Day 2017 [Encounter] | The second instalment of how idol!Gieve and singer-songwriter!Isfan meet and fall in love.

Written for Arslan Senki Fandom Day 2017 – [Encounter]

Title: Primadonna and the Piano Man [Part II] Author: ryukoishida Character(s)/Pairing(s): Isfan/Gieve Summary: This is the story of how one of the nation’s top idol Gieve and bestselling folk-rock musician Isfan meet (and eventually fall in love). [Idol/Musician!AU] Rating: T Warning: N/A A/N: The song that Isfan and Gieve worked on is based on “Lost One’s Weeping”, links of which you will find in the reblog!

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Sing When You’re in Love Series:

i. We Sing We Dance We Steal Hearts ii. We Sing We Dance We Fall in Love iii. Untitled iv. This Storm, It’s Coming v. I’m Yours (and so are they) vi. Primadonna and the Piano Man [Prequel] [Part I | Part II]

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Despite their temporary truce, their journey to achieve a top hit pop song is perilous and full of conflicts.

The first two sessions mostly involve the two of them throwing general ideas back and forth at each other. The discussion goes from the target audience to the genre of music they want to make. While Gieve is known for his catchy dance pop and sugary love songs mostly aimed at the younger teenage audiences, Isfan’s style strays from folk-rock songs dedicated to nature and romance to melancholic ballads of lost identity and destructive love.

After much shouting, pen-throwing, and paper-crumpling, they’ve finally decided the theme of their song would be about the burdens of education and pressures of expectations that many young people and students face nowadays. It’s a serious but relatable topic that would engage a wide range of listeners. As for the genre, Gieve wants to do a mellower, stripped-down, acoustic version — something that’s more forlorn and heart-wrenching; however, Isfan wants to make it into a rock anthem, angrily declaring the dissatisfaction and resentment, and calling for an action to change.

They reconcile with the decision to try both versions for now, and only after discussion with the producer and other staff will they make their final choice.

Then the song-writing process begins, and it doesn’t get any easier from there.

“This riff here doesn’t sound right,” Gieve, who’s sitting on a stool next to Isfan’s piano bench, is saying as he points at the eleventh and twelfth bars on the music sheet, which have been scrawled with Isfan’s neat handwriting, drawn notes and lines. “It’s not enough…”

“Not enough…?” Isfan glances over at the idol, a single eyebrow quirked up in question and his hands still hovering above the keyboard.

“You know: flair, energy, pizzazz!” Gieve waves his hands in a huge arching gesture, hoping the other man will understand.

Isfan stares blankly back at him, uncomprehending.

“Can you be any more vague?” Isfan heaves out an exasperated sigh and shifts over a little. “Why don’t you just show me? Here.” He pats the empty space next to him, and Gieve only hesitates for half a second before he accepts Isfan’s invitation and plops himself down on the bench.

The worn-out leather and oak seat isn’t really suited for two full-grown adult men, and so even with Isfan basically sitting on the very edge on one side, Gieve’s arm still lightly brushes against his whenever the idol moves just the slightest.

Not that Isfan is paying any special attention to how warm and comfortable Gieve feels sitting so closely next to him, or how nice he smells from whatever cologne he’d sprayed himself with that day, or how elegant and sensual his pale, slender fingers look against the black and white keys of the piano.

“Hmm, I’m thinking maybe something like this,” Gieve plays a series of notes that’s similar to what’s written on the music score, but with a slight variation to the rhythm so that the entire riff sounds a little livelier, a bit richer, than before. He tries a few more variations, his eyebrows puckering in deep concentration as he plays and teases the melodies much like how he does with the strings of his guitar. His glasses are sliding down the bridge of his nose but Gieve doesn’t even seem to notice, and Isfan has the strongest urge to reach over and fix it for him.

“Isfan… Isfan! What do you think?”

“Sorry, what was that?” Isfan instinctively shifts back and almost slips and falls off the bench when he realizes just how close Gieve is — close enough that if he ducks his head slightly, his lips would be touching the soft hair by the idol’s temple.

“The riffs — the ones I just played for you — which one do you think is better?”

To be honest, Isfan has stopped functioning after the first one Gieve has played. Gods. Staying in this god-forsaken studio with no natural lighting coming in for six hours straight is doing weird shit to his mind; he needs a break, and maybe a snack.

“Do you want to go for a break?” Gieve asks as if he’s just read his mind.

“Do you mind? I can use some caffeine and cup noodles.”

Isfan’s stomach growls in agreement.

“You know both those things are bad for your throat, right?” Gieve is surprised to find that the singer-songwriter, who seems so solemn and a stickler for rules at first glance, cares so little about his diet. Having healthy bodies and protecting their voices are especially important for artists like themselves, so ever since Gieve started training with his idol unit, he’d maintained a strict diet and exercise regime.

“Let me have some fun, mother,” Isfan yawns, standing up to stretch. His jeans ride low on his hips and a sliver of tanned skin is shown for just a few seconds, but the little display is enough to give Gieve a tiny heart attack, his cheeks flushing and turning uncomfortably warm.

He clears his throat, and turns away to face the piano when Isfan glances down at him.

“Wow. You? Fun? I never thought I’d hear you wanting to be associated with the word ‘fun’,” Gieve chuckles, getting up as well.

“Oh, fuck off,” Isfan is way too tired and hungry to come up with more creative insults.

“Come on, there’s a place close by that opens late and has really good savory snacks,” Gieve winds an arm around the taller man’s shoulders and steers him out the door.

“But the song…”

Isfan is only planning to quickly whip up some noodles and coffee in the pantry, so a thirty-minute break would have sufficed.

“The song can wait! Come on, come on! My treat!”

By the time they are sitting down to write the lyrics, the two musicians with drastically different roots and conflicting beliefs have become quite in sync in terms of their ideas. Occasionally, bickering would still break out, and staff passing by the studio, the door sometimes left a crack open to let in some air, would hear snippets of “what are you even trying to convey with this line here?” or “that doesn’t even rhyme!”

Even stranger still, those same staff members who’d overheard the arguments would often see Gieve and Isfan coming out of the studio after a few hours, and they would either share companionable silence after a long day of work or chattering about where to get dinner.

One night, the two were kicked out of the studio due to equipment maintenance, but neither of them wanted to stop because they felt like they were on the verge of finally writing something good after days of scraped ideas and ripped up notebook pages, so Gieve invited Isfan back to his place to continue.

Isfan didn’t even think twice before agreeing.

When they were satisfied with what they had written, it was already two o’clock in the morning. The public transit had stopped running and Isfan’s car had been left in the company parking lot, so naturally, Gieve volunteered to make spicy instant noodles with extra toppings and treated themselves with a bottle of ice-cold beer each for the conclusion of the gruesome yet fruitful lyric-writing session.

During the few weeks they spent together, Gieve discovered that Isfan was especially talkative when he got tired, and while they ate, slurping the hot soup and moaning at the deliciousness of cheap MSG-fueled ramen, Isfan began to ask questions.

“Why did you want to become an idol?”

“Finally taken an interest in me, Isfan?” Gieve sent him an exaggerated wink across the steaming pot sitting in the middle of the dining table.

“Just curious.”

“Honestly, it’s the same old story,” Gieve replied after swallowing a mouthful of noodles, “I was scouted by an agent from Ecbatana while I was still in high school. I didn’t have any grand plans back then, and no world-shattering ambitions or goals to speak of, so I thought, ‘Why the hell not? Sounds fun!’ and just went with the flow.”

“That’s so you,” Isfan commented with a small laugh.

“Isn’t it just? And then of course behind all that glamour, rivalry arose, friendships were crushed over jealousy and competition,” Gieve carefully blew on the fishcake dangling between his chopsticks to cool it down before putting it into his mouth.

“But you made it; you’re here,” Isfan said, placing his chopsticks down. ��

Gieve hummed, and for a brief moment, the two men concentrated on finishing their food and drinks.

“I’m sorry,” Isfan murmured, gaze dropping to the bottle of beer in his hands, fingers dragging droplets of condensation as they left smears on the table, “for my shitty behavior when we first met. I shouldn’t have judged you or your abilities before I even get to know you.”

“I sure showed you though, didn’t I?” Gieve grinned openly, and through the thin veil of steam that was still rising from the pot of finished noodles, he almost seemed surreal, the green of his eyes beckoning him in the fog, the quirk of his lips bearing a subtler message that Isfan had yet to decode, but that strange, clawing feeling disappeared as quickly as it had swooped down over him, and he found himself turning his head away, feeling uncomfortably hot and prickly.

“Isfan?” Gieve leaned over, his face full of concern.

“Sorry, just tired. It’s been a long day.”

Gieve didn’t ask any further.

After putting the dishes away, they settled contentedly on the couch, and with the politics and bloodshed of Game of Thrones playing softly in the background, the two men fell asleep leaning against each other, their breathing slowing down until they became one harmonizing melody.

The only main task left for them is recording the song. The instrumentals for both versions are recorded without any major hitches; Isfan is responsible for playing the piano in the acoustic version while both he and Gieve contribute to the guitar portions in the rock version. The rest of the instrumentals are filled in by the company’s contracted musicians.

However, recording vocals hasn’t gone as smoothly as they’ve hoped.

It has taken Gieve many, many tries before he can pinpoint the exact emotion he wants — that deep, furious growling that he’s still not quite used to but is necessary for this song — without messing up the lyrics, and this is especially difficult due to the unforgivingly swift tempo that leaves the singer with very little space in between to take a breath.

On the contract, it’s been stated that Gieve will be responsible for the main vocals of the single, so while Isfan doesn’t necessarily need to be present for the vocal recording, he still sits in the recording booth with the audio engineer, entranced by the way Gieve puts everything into his singing while he keeps insisting that he can do better and pleads with the recording engineer to let him have another attempt even though his voice is obviously becoming scratchy from overuse.

During the weeks they were working on the melody and lyrics, Isfan already realizes that despite the idol’s seemingly gregarious and flippant personality, as if he never takes anything or anyone seriously, Gieve is an entirely different being when he throws himself deep into his work: he will nitpick and scratch out ideas until he deems the product near perfect to his satisfaction, and this is certainly one quality that Isfan has learned to respect.

About two hours into recording, with almost the entire bottle of water emptied, Isfan signals at the idol for him to come out of the booth, but Gieve merely shakes his head and speaks into the microphone to let them know that he’s still fine to continue.

The audio engineer looks between the two musicians, uncertain of how to proceed, but Isfan gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder before entering the recording booth himself, half-dragging, half-persuading Gieve to take a much-needed break.

“Just let me try a few more takes! I almost got it, come on—”

“No, your voice is cracking. You need to rest,” Isfan insists.

“Isfan’s right. Let’s give it another go tomorrow,” the audio engineer tells Gieve kindly.

Isfan nods his thanks, and then with a firm and steady hand, he pulls the bewildered idol out the door with a polite “see you tomorrow” aimed at the audio engineer.

“All right, all right, will you let go already?”

Gieve has been blindly following Isfan without really questioning where he’s taking him; not that he has any choice to begin with since the taller man still has a strong hold of his hand as he leads them down one hallway after another. A few passerby staff give them odd looks as they rush past, but they keep the muttering to themselves, though it doesn’t stop all kinds of rumours from spreading outside of the company that will gradually accompany the release of the single in the upcoming weeks.

Isfan finally lets him go when they reach the roof. They’ve taken the stairs instead of the elevator to avoid the worst of the crowd, but even walking up three flights of stairs is enough to make Gieve, who exercises regularly through dance rehearsals and gym visits, sweat and breathe raggedly, his arm hanging onto the railing to support his weight when they finally reach the top.

The roof of Ecbatana Entertainment Productions has been renovated into a garden where employees can rest in a peaceful spot away from the stress and worry of their work for a little while. The place is usually crowded during lunch time, but it is now nearing seven o’clock in the evening, the sky deepening into violet and blue and awash with splashes of pink and gold of the setting sun, the rooftop garden is utterly deserted.

Bushes of blooming lavender planted in squares of soil in the center of the garden create a waft of pleasant and sweet floral scent with a trace of evening summer breeze. Leaves of various plants that neither man remembers the names of whisper and rustle softly around them, and for the moment, they share the illusion of being the only ones in this world as the city halts its steps for the night.

The two men settle on one of the benches that allows them to overlook the city skyline.

“Now that you’ve got me all by my lonesome,” Gieve breaks the silence easily and glances up at him with his infamous smile, the frustration from a few minutes ago gone without a trace as he wraps an arm intimately around Isfan’s shoulders, “is there something you wish to confess?”

Turning to face him properly, Isfan almost loses the ability to speak; their faces are only inches apart, and it reminds him of the first time they met — how irritated he’d felt towards the cheeky idol, how much he’d wanted to push him away and walk out of that room, how much more he’d wanted to pull him in and kiss him until neither of them can breathe.

He exhales slowly, eyes slipping close to refocus, but he doesn’t move away. He doesn’t want to.

“I’m worried about you,” Isfan says.

“Oh,” Gieve chuckles airily, “this is new.”

“I’m serious, damn it,” Isfan grits out, eyes flashing golden and black when he opens them again. “You’ve been pushing yourself too hard for the past week; you’ve barely finished any of your meals, and I know you’ve been chugging energy drinks when you thought nobody’s watching.”

“Well, apparently, someone’s been watching me closely,” Gieve’s grin turns a little mischievous as he leans in even closer, close enough that their breaths are mixing, a hand dragging up to the nape of Isfan’s neck.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Isfan murmurs, feeling the idol’s fingers splayed warm and heavy against the back of his neck, and he’s entirely too distracted by the other man’s eyes, made deeper green by the colored contact lenses and lightly lined in kohl due to an event he needs to attend later on tonight, and his smiling mouth, the subtle twist an alluring challenge, an undeniable invitation.

“Seeking comfort, decreasing my stress levels, trying to make you notice me more, and so on and so forth,” Gieve replies.

Isfan laughs lightly at the last item of Gieve’s statement, clearly amused by the idol’s attempt to flirt with him (which is working weirdly well, all things considered), and Gieve pouts at the reaction, slightly insulted.

“What? Why are you laughing? This is no laughing matter, you know—”

Isfan only laughs harder, the corner of his eyes crinkling and the sound of his laughter soft and rumbling like distant thunder echoing in a forest that sets alight something deep within Gieve, making his blood tremble with delight.

“You’re impossible, you know that?” Isfan says, and then he’s pulling Gieve towards himself by a fistful of his shirtfront, his mouth crashing against the idol’s unceremoniously in a messy kiss.

“And this week, on the Pars Top 40 Chart, a newly released single has reached the number one spot: it’s Gieve, featuring guest artist Isfan, ‘The Lost Ones’ Fantasy’!”

---

A/N: Goodness. Excuse the terrible writing. I started giving up towards the end and didn’t really bother anymore…

#arslansenkifandomday2017 #arslan senki #the heroic legend of arslan #gieve #isfan #isfan/gieve #gieve/isfan #bowie's crappy writing

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idombledore · 5 years

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The Offworld Guide to Self Publishing - Part 1

The Offworld Author's Guide to Self Publishing is now serialised in various articles.

We will be tackling all the things you'll need to take care of in your Self-Publishing journey including Ghostwriting, Editing, Proofreading, Book Funding, Book Design, Book Production, Book Rights, Book Reviews, Book Publishing, Book Publicity, Book Promotion and Social Media, Literary Agent Pitch, Promo Videos, Audiobooks, Translation, Author Websites, Search Engine Optimisation, Screenplay Adaptation, Film Makers, Film Producers and Original Music.

All of these elements are key to giving you everything you need to make your book a success.

Don't want to wait for the next thrilling installment?

You can get your FREE Author's Guide here.

Have a look at our video as well....

Fifty Shades of Grey

EL James

Perhaps the best-known self-publishing success story, EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey series began as Twilight fan fiction. She published it on fan sites and eventually decided to turn it into an original erotic trilogy. She self-published the first book, and it took off. The rest of the story you surely already know.

The Celestine Prophecy

James Redfield

Redfield managed to sell 100,000 copies of The Celestine Prophecy out of the trunk of his car before it was finally published by Warner Books. Since then, the book was adapted into a film, expanded with three sequels, and spent 165 weeks on the NYT Bestsellers list.

Wool Trilogy

Hugh Howey

Howey’s Wool Trilogy began with a short story he self-published through Amazon. He decided to expand on the series and eventually sold it to Simon and Schuster for half a million dollars. He also sold the film rights to the series.

Still Alice

Lisa Genova

Genova self-published Still Alice through iUniverse. In 2009 it was reissued by Simon and Schuster. Since then it has been translated into twenty languages, been on the New York Times Bestsellers List for over forty weeks, and been made into an Academy Award-winning film starring Julianne Moore.

Riyria Chronicles

Michael J. Sullivan

When Sullivan wrote the Riyria fantasy series, he found an agent but couldn’t find a publisher. So he decided to self-publish through a company his wife started. His sales were so good that traditional publishers took note, and he sold his next novel for six figures.

The Wealthy Barber

David Chilton

In 1989 Chilton published his financial planning advice book, The Wealthy Barber, out of his basement. It went on to become one of Canada’s all-time bestselling books, spawning a sequel in 2008.

Ten Tiny Breaths

K.A. Tucker

Another Canadian success story, Tucker self-published a YA fantasy series, which gave her enough of a following that she was able to sell her adult novel, Ten Tiny Breaths, to Atria Books in 2013.

Damaged

H.M. Ward

Ward self-published her first book, Damaged, as an eBook on Amazon and it went on to become a #1 Bestseller in the New Adult category. She has continued writing the series and has sold over 4 million copies, all without signing on with a traditional publisher.

My Blood Approves Series

Amanda Hocking

Hocking was one of the first self-published YA authors to make over two million dollars simply with eBook sales. Though already very successful, Hocking signed a 2 million dollar deal with St.Martin’s in 2011.

Here are what some best-selling Self-Publishers say about what they've done and some sage words they are:

“Be confident in your work, but be careful not to put a book out into the world until you are sure that it is your very best work and professional in all respects (writing, editing, cover design, formatting, etc). As with anything, you get only one chance to make a first impression, and every reader deserves a quality product.”

Darcie Chan

“Anyone who says it’s easy to self-publish a book is either lying or doing a shitty job.”

Nan McCarthy

“Whatever you may have heard, self-publishing is not a short cut to anything. Except maybe insanity. Self-publishing, like every other kind of publishing, is hard work. You don’t wake up one morning good at it. You have to work for that.”

Zoe Winters

“At heart, self-publishing is kind of like a bake sale. The end product does not need to resemble the one that comes from a commercial bakery, but it must taste good. No-one wants the lumpy under-baked oatmeal cookies with spinach and alfalfa flavoured chips.”

D. C. Williams

“You are a start-up … The next great business is you.”

Hugh Howey

“The free charts on Amazon are constantly trawled by people with voracious reading appetites. Getting read is an obvious way to sell more copies via word of mouth.”

Ben Galley

“The best self-promotion is your next book. And the book after that and after that …”

Bella Andre

“Writing a book makes you an expert in the field. At the very least, when you hand someone a book you wrote, it’s more impressive than handing a business card.” James Altucher

“The good news about self-publishing is you get to do everything

yourself. The bad news about self publishing is you get to do everything yourself.”

Lori Lesko

“For a long time now, self-publishing has been dismissed as an act of vanity – mainly by frightened executives in publishing houses, who hold up terrible examples of self-published works and say ‘See? This is why we exist.’”

Hugh Howey

“Authors today need a publisher as much as they need a tapeworm in their guts.” Rayne Hall

“Some books and authors are bestsellers, but most aren’t. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it’s harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.”

Amanda Hocking

“I’m outselling a bunch of famous, name-brand authors. I couldn’t touch their sales in print.”

Joe Konrath

“Traditional publishers aim to publish hundreds of thousands of copies of a few books, self-publishing companies make money by publishing 100 copies of hundreds of thousands of books.”

David Carnoy

And that's it for this brief taster to our series.

Get stuck into Part 2 and read about "The Learning Curve"

Take care, big hugs and adios.

Episode 2

The Learning Curve

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angryelves2-blog · 7 years

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A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

★★

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's maneuverings and the invading king threatening to bring Prythian to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit-and one slip may spell doom not only for Feyre, but for her world as well. As war bears down upon them all, Feyre must decide who to trust amongst the dazzling and lethal High Lords-and hunt for allies in unexpected places. In this thrilling third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Sarah J. Maas, the earth will be painted red as mighty armies grapple for power over the one thing that could destroy them all.

As I’ve said before in my review of Empire of Shadows, I have a complicated relationship with SJM’s books. Some of her worldbuilding interests me, as do one or two of her characters, but her worlds and stories are so problematic and so white, cis, allo and straight that now I’m just waiting to read the last books of her series to say good bye to her writing completely.

(Spoilers ahead) (I do mean it: SPOILERS AHEAD).

(Also, this review is 3.5k words long, fyi).

I had heard many bad things about A Court of Wings and Ruin before starting it and sadly most of them are true. I wanted to talk first about her use of acephobic tropes, first brought to my attention thanks to the excerpt below:

Dagdan and Brannagh had listened to her fawning with enough boredom that I was starting to wonder if the two of them perhaps preferred no one’s company but each other’s. In whatever unholy capacity. Not a blink of interest toward the beauty who often made males and females stop to gape. Perhaps any sort of physical passion had long ago been drained away, alongside their souls.

There is a lot to unpack here. First, the assumption that lack of interest in a beautiful women probably means the two characters have no physical passion; second, the link between having no physical passion and no soul, since they (the souls and their physical passion) apparently were sucked out of their bodies together.

Many fans of the series said that the soulless part of this paragraph had been mentioned before, so no, their lack of physical passion and their soullessness weren’t linked. I disagreed with them – even if it had been mentioned before, it’s not okay to say two soulless characters lost their “physical passion” alongside their souls, not only because the statement itself is shitty (it implies someone with a soul would never lack physical passion) but because it assumes everyone has this “physical passion” and that not having it is abnormal.

Now, when I first read this, I thought Feyre meant it literally – as in, Dagdan and Brannagh had their souls drained away for real. But when I read the book, surprise!, they didn’t. They are just evil.

Here’s the first time Feyre mentions the twins’ evilness:

But it was the two commanders – one male, one female – that had a sliver of true fear sliding into my heart. High Fae in appearance, their skin the same ruddy hue and hair the identical inky black as their king. But it was their vacant, unfeeling faces that snagged the eye. A lack of emotion honed from millennia of cruelty.

And how she keeps establishing that they feel no emotion:

Tamlin inclined his head to the prince and princess. “Welcome to my home. We have rooms prepared for all of you.” “My brother and I shall reside in one together,” the princess said. Her voice was deceptively light – almost girlish. The utter lack of feeling, the utter authority was anything but.

By the way, there is no proof whatsoever of them being incestuous. Granted, we can assume SJM left it open and that they probably are, but Feyre thinks they are because 1. they don’t fawn over Ianthe, the beautiful woman, or show any “physical passion” and 2. they sleep in the same room/tent.

That’s it.

So no, their souls weren’t drained from their bodies.

And no, there is no proof in canon that they are incestuous twins.

They are just evil. Cold, emotionless faeries who are so evil they don’t feel any ~physical passion~ (only maybe for each other, which, again, isn’t even canon, it’s just something Feyre assumes about them).

Their characters rely in many acephobic tropes, because well, lots and lots of villains rely on acephobic tropes. One of the most common ace(phobic) stereotypes is that ace people (or just people who feel no “physical passion”, since no one ever uses the word) can’t feel anything and are cold, frigid beings, mostly likely also evil. It’s no coincidence that in a series like this one, where anyone who is 1. pretty or 2. good will probably date/have sex with someone at some point and where hetero romances are forced down the reader’s throat all the time, the characters who are portrayed as feeling no physical passion are evil, emotionless and cruel.

I’m not saying SJM wrote them thinking, hehe I’m gonna use acephobic stereotypes and hurt ace folks! because I’m sure she didn’t. This trope is ingrained in the way we tell stories. Villains are the cold, emotionless ones who feel no sexual or romantic attraction and are forever alone. Heroes are the open, feeling ones who get the girl/boy in the end and live happily ever after. This goes back to what I’ve talked about a thousand times in this blog: the belief that sex and romantic love are what makes us human, and if aro & ace people don’t feel romantic/sexual attraction, then they aren’t human. Since villains are usually villains for not being nice humans, then they also never have sex (and if they do, they don’t feel in love with the person and that is portrayed as something bad) and never date anyone, which implies a lack of sexual and romantic attraction.

See what I’m trying to say? Lack of sexual and/or romantic attraction = bad, and since villains = bad, it’s common for villains to be portrayed as lacking sexual and/or romantic attraction. Which is, well, one of the reasons I spent my whole life relating to aro/ace coded villains instead of relating to the straight, cis, allo heroes, since aro/ace coded heroes are so damn rare, but using this trope to build evil villains is still a shitty thing to do. I’m not saying villains can’t be aro/ace, but we must be careful with how we portray the lack of sexual and romantic attraction and why we usually link these two things to villains who are literally the most evil, cruel and mean people to walk on earth.

SJM sadly wasn’t careful. She made use of aphobic tropes like many authors do, and while I’m sure she didn’t do it on purpose, that doesn’t mean the harm she caused is any less valid.

And since her series is so damn saturated with sex and romance, the use of this trope is even more glaring.

Second thing I wanted to talk about: her portrayal of the only bisexual character, Helion, the High Lord of the Day Court.

This is how his bisexuality (or pansexuality or polysexuality) is introduced:

Helion threw himself onto the couch across from Cassian and Mor. He’d ditched the radiant crown somewhere, but kept tht gold armband of the upright serpent. “It’s been what – four centuries now, and you three still haven’t accepted my offer.” Mor lolled her head to the side. “I don’t like to share, unfortunately.” “You never know until you try,” Hellion purred. The three of them in bed… with him? I must have been blinking like a fool because Rhy said to me, Helion favors both males and females. Usually together in bed. And has been hounding after that trio for centuries.

Which… Well, I’m sure I don’t need to say why this is not exactly good rep, but in any case: one of the most common stereotypes of bisexuality is that bisexuals are 1. always promiscuous and 2. always looking for threesomes.

Or in Helion’s case, foursomes.

Of course there are bi people who have a lot of sex and enjoy three or foursomes, but the stereotype is so common, and so harmful, that the author, esp a straight author, needs to be very careful when they write a bi character like this. And well, Helion isn’t an important character. I mean, he is – he’s the High Lord of the Day Court, after all – but he’s not one of the main characters and he isn’t that crucial to the story. Maas doesn’t have time (or just didn’t bother, who knows) to develop him and establish him as a more multidimensional, complete character. As it is, all we know about Helion is that he’s really powerful, really beautiful, that he’s the High Lord of the Day Court, that he loves three/foursomes with both men and women and that he did nothing to save a woman he loved from her abusive husband. Also, that he’s Lucien’s father.

That’s it.

I think things could have been different if he were a more developed character. In ACOWAR, unfortunately, he’s more stereotype than character, which doesn’t really convince me of SJM’s efforts to diversify her work, especially if we take the problematic way in which she revealed Aedion’s bisexuality in Empire of Storms in consideration. Also, it’s pretty clear she didn’t do any research or had any sensitivity readers; the promiscuous, threesome-loving bisexual is easily, as I said, the most common stereotype about bisexuals. A simple google search would’ve saved her in this one, but apparently she couldn’t be bothered to do that.

Third thing: Mor.

Mor comes out as lesbian to Feyre only in this book. Here’s how she does it (after Feyre throws in her face that fact that Mor doesn’t do anything with the info that Azriel loves her):

“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “No. I don’t … You see …” I’d never seen her at such a loss for words. She closed her eyes, fingers digging into her skin. “I can’t love him like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I prefer females.”

For a heartbeat, only silence rippled through me. “But—you sleep with males. You slept with Helion …” And had looked terrible the next day. Tortured and not at all sated.

Not just because of Azriel, but … because it wasn’t what she wanted.

“I do find pleasure in them. In both.” Her hands were shaking so fiercely that she gripped herself even tighter. “But I’ve known, since I was little more than a child, that I prefer females. That I’m … attracted to them more over males. That I connect with them, care for them more on that soul-deep level. But at the Hewn City … All they care about is breeding their bloodlines, making alliances through marriage. Someone like me … If I were to marry where my heart desired, there would be no offspring. My father’s bloodline would have ended with me. I knew it—knew that I could never tell them. Ever. People like me … we’re reviled by them. So I never breathed a word of it. And then… then my father betrothed me to Eris and… And it wasn’t just the prospect of marriage to him that scared me. No, I knew I could survive his brutality, his cruelty and coldness. I was– I am stronger than him. It was the idea of being bred like a prize mare, of being forced to give up that one part of me…” Her mouth wobbled, and I reached for her hand, prying it off her arm. I squeezed gently as tears began sliding down her flushed face.

So she is a women loving woman who is okay with having sex with men (maybe she’s bisexual, but homoromantic? The whole thing isn’t clear, in my opinion. Does she just enjoy the sex and feel no sexual attraction to men – which is more probable, I think, since I doubt SJM knows about the split attraction model – or feel sexual attraction to men, but not romantic love?). She’s had a female lovers before, even one with whom she says she was quite happy, but she was a human queen who died long ago. Mor’s story is also full of suffering because homo/lesbophobia and she’s still in the closet because of fear.

She doesn’t sleep with men in hopes it will cure her, though. She mentions she thought about sleeping with Azriel to see if she could feel something for him, but ultimately chose not to because of how he would see it and the fact that she knows she just won’t fall in love with him. In her words, “I’m not sure I can give my entire heart to him that way. And… and I love him enough to want him to ind someone who can truly love him like he deserves. And I love myself… I love myself enough to not want to settle until I find that person, too.”

Honestly? I’m not sure about her rep. I’m not a wlw, not a lesbian and not even a woman, so I prefer to abstain from comments on it. The whole thing is complicated and I don’t think a voice outside of the wlw community or the lesbian community is needed here.

Some other notes on diversity: there are more queer characters and more characters of color in ACOWAR. Thesan, the High Lord of the Dawn Court, and his male lover; Nephelle and her wife; Helion, who is described as having “dark skin”, Lucien, who is revealed as being biracial (he’s Helion’s son, after all, though I don’t remember Maas mentioning that he has darker skin than his (half) brothers until this book), and some other character here and there. With the exception of Lucien, all of them are minor characters, and Thesan’s lover and Nephelle and her wife don’t even speak. In fact, I don’t think Nephelle’s wife and Thesan’s lover even have names.

So. Yeah.

Which brings us to another thing I wanted to talk about: the worldbuilding of this series and how much of a mess it is sometimes. Something I’ll never understand is why Maas never bothered to name the human queens, for example (with the exception of Vessa), or even her kingdoms. I mean, have no idea of where these kingdoms are. In fact, I didn’t even know (or remember) that there were other faerie kingdoms besides Hybern and the Seven Courts.

But what really bothered me was how SJM tried to retcon her world into being queer friendly while still making it heteronormative.

There was no mention of queer characters in book one and two, as far as I can remember. They simply didn’t exist. And well, the fae are really, really heteronormative and exorsexist. There is only male and female and 99% of the time it is assumed that a male must want a female, and a female must want a male, and that everyone, regardless of gender, must want someone else as well. I mean, look at the mating bonds – they are many times described as something primitive, that the males can’t resist, and in ACOWAR Rhy even admits mating bonds probably only exist as a way to provide the strongest offspring:

“A mating bond can be rejected,” Rhys said mildly, eyes flickering in the mirror as he drank in every inch of bare skin I had on display. “There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some … preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.” A smile at me—at the rareness, perhaps, of what we had. “Even so,” Rhys went on, “there will always be a … tug. For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female. Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but … Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”

The Fae’s masculinity is more often than not extremely toxic. Extremely feral and territorial. Usually because of the bond, something apparently biological that exists to provide “the strongest offspring”.

The foundations of this society are built on heteronormativity, sexism and amatonormativity.

And yet it is queer-friendly, with the exception of the Court of Nightmares, Mor’s home. No one blinks at the very minor queer couples. Not even Feyre, who was raised a human beyond the wall, which one can understand as being a indicative that humans are also queer friendly.

And yet there were no queer people, or at least no hint that queer people could at least exist, in 2/3 of the series.

Now, I’m not saying the fae society should be queerphobic. Far from that. But in my opinion? Maas didn’t even think about including queer characters (or POC) until people criticized her for her lack of diversity (which, fine, it happens to straight cis allo white authors), but then she didn’t do the work to actually make her queer-friendly society believable based on what she had already established. If no one bats an eyelash at Thesan and his male lover or at Nephelle and her wife or at Helion and his many male and female lovers, than why was Mor assumed straight all this time? Yes, I know she came from the Court of Nightmares, but most characters didn’t. As far as the reader knows, the other characters grew up in a queer-friendly world, and not one of them suspected she might not be straight?

Why is the assumption that everyone is straight a thing in a mostly queer-friendly world?

And how does the bond work for same sex couples? Does it exist? If not (I think not, since it is a “we need STRONG offspring” thing), then how does that difference influences the way straight couples and queer couples are seen? Or it doesn’t? And if doesn’t, then why is the mating bond such a big deal?

(WHY why W H Y does it exist at all???)

We just don’t know.

And that’s what really bothers me. Maas’s world is extremely heteronormative, cisnormative, exorsexist, amatonormative and so on, and yet she tries to mask everything with some worldbuilding elements that make no sense. It’s the same thing for how abuse is handled – ACOWAR is full of conversations about consent where Rhys tells Feyre he doesn’t own her, that she is free to do as she wants, etc, but not once does it acknowledge that what Rhys did to Feyre Under the Mountain was a violation of her consent. That it was abuse. Everything is explained away with “well, I did it to save you“, which isn’t exactly nice.

As for the story… there are some good elements in it. I liked Lucien and Feyre’s moments, for example (Lucien is in fact my favorite character in this series and I’m still pissed that SJM made him have a bond just to make him miserable) (and pissed that the abuse he suffered in Tamlin’s hands wasn’t recognized) and despite some things (aka the men being ridiculous) I really enjoyed the meeting of the High Lords. But this is the weakest novel in the trilogy for me. The writing I liked in ACOTAR is gone, as is that amazing atmosphere that made me want to read reading it, and the sex scenes continue to be truly awful (not only awful. Dreadful. Embarrassing. Maybe romance novels have been spoiling me, because SJM’s sex scenes are so terrifyingly bad). The ending here is rushed and lacks tension. So many things were badly handled – there was so much build up to the Ouroboroes mirror, for example, for 0 payoff, and no one will ever convince me that the Weaver and the Bone Carver didn’t die so Feyre & Cia didn’t need to deal with them being free. It was so obvious that Maas didn’t want Feyre and Rhys to deal with two powerful death-gods free in the upcoming spin-off series.

Also, Amren and Rhys dying and coming back from the dead? So cheap. As much as I like Amren, at least her should’ve continued dead. Bringing them back was such a cheap move, and the whole scene was also so bad. It’s like Maas was running out of time to write it.

Also, Lucien was away for like, 60% of the book, which was extremely disappointing.

In conclusion, this wasn’t a good book. The latter half in especial was bad, rushed and not fun to read. I have no idea of which story Maas will tell in the spin-off series. My only interest in it is in the possibility of it being about Lucien, but if she makes a love triangle between him, Elain and Azriel…. ugh.

2.0 stars for A Court of Wings and Ruin.

#acowar #a court of wings and ruin #(this is a negative review pls stay away if you are a stan)#sarah j maas #reviews #my reviews

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kandrsdarkangelsbookblog · 4 years

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"The Hardest Play is everything I love about sports romance. A.S. Teague once again masterfully delivers a book full of heart that will surely stay with you long after the last page.”- L.K. Farlow, bestselling author

The Hardest Play, an all-new emotional new-adult standalone from A.S. Teague is available now!

It’s easy to convince the world that you have it all.

I’m Quinn Miller––record breaking running back, professional football’s favorite rags-to-riches story, all-around good guy.

What’s not so easy? Repairing your reputation after mistakes both on and off the field leave you labeled as a disgrace to the league.

With only one team willing to give me a chance, I have no time for a relationship.

But after one night with Georgia Reed, the hopeless romantic with fiery red hair and an attitude to match, I’m hooked.

With Georgia cheering me on, it doesn’t feel like the world is against me anymore.

That is, until her father steps into the locker room as my new head coach.

Finding the woman of my dreams was the easy part; it’s keeping her that will be the hardest play of all.

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Excerpt

“Quinn Miller? Is that really you?”

I turned, and my eyes landed on a face that I hadn’t forgotten. “Georgia Reed.”

Her lips parted in a smile that lit up her entire face, and she jumped from the stool she’d been perched on next to where my sister had been sitting and threw her arms around my shoulders. “I thought I saw you walk in earlier!”

I wrapped my arms around her waist and gave a quick squeeze before pulling back and looking her up and down.

I’d met Georgia last year at my best friend, Aiden’s, Christmas party. Her brother was a famous orthopedic surgeon who’d saved Aiden’s knee after a devastating hit. The two of them had forged a friendship, and Dr. Hampton Reed had brought his sister along when he’d been invited to the famous Shaw Christmas Party.

I’d seen her from across the room that night, unable to miss the gorgeous auburn hair that she’d let flow down her back. I’d walked over to introduce myself, but her green eyes had sparkled when she informed me that she already knew exactly who I was.

I wasn’t sure what I’d said after that, probably something ridiculous and cheesy, but we’d spent the rest of the evening chatting.

“How ya been?” I asked.

She stuck the straw that was floating in a pink drink between her pink lips and lifted a shoulder. After a quick sip of a fruity cocktail she said, “Same old. What about you? I heard you’d been traded and was hoping I’d run in to you sometime.”

I’d completely forgotten that the Reeds lived in Atlanta, where my new team was, but suddenly, that shitty trade that I was forced to accept didn’t seem so bad after all.

“Hey.” I glanced over to where my sister was eyeing us, her lips pressed together to conceal what had to have been the biggest shit-eating grin ever and squinted at her before turning and looking back to where Georgia was still sipping her drink. “You know, I don’t know much about this town. You’re a local, right?”

“That I am. Born and bred in the great state of Georgia. You know, my parents, they probably could have been a little more original when they named me.”

“Any chance you’re free this weekend to play tour guide?” I asked, hoping that I sounded fun and flirty and not like the pathetic loser that I felt like.

Jamie choked on a laugh and tried to cover it with a cough. I swung my head in her direction just as she covered her mouth and quickly looked away from my death glare. God, my kid sister was an asshole.

I felt fingertips on my bicep, forgetting my stupid sister immediately when I glanced down to see the perfectly manicured yellow fingernails that were resting on my arm. “Let me make sure I am clear on what you’re askin’.” Georgia’s eyes were gleaming, and she stepped closer to me. “Now, am I going to show you the popular clubs and bars, the parks to take your dog, and the restaurants that cater to locals, and then you’ll thank me and we’ll go about our ways? Or is this tour going to consist of me taking you back to my place, and before I know it, your lips are on my neck and my dress is around my waist?”

My mouth fell open and I sputtered. “I, uh, I, what?”

“Well, you know at Aiden’s Christmas party, after you kissed me––”

“Woah!” I stepped back, her arm falling to her side. “What are you talking about?”

Her head shook back and forth. “I’m not sure if I should be insulted or not that you are this clueless. We had a drink outside around the fire pit, and then you leaned in and kissed me, remember?”

“That is not at all what happened!” I fired back incredulously. I’d had a couple of beers that night, but I never let myself get so drunk that I would completely forget kissing the gorgeous woman standing before me.

She frowned, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from watching the way she worked it. No, I would most definitely remember if my lips had tasted hers. “It’s not? Are you sure?”

My eyes bugged out of my head. “I’m pretty sure we didn’t kiss. Think I would have remembered that.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Maybe that’s just what I hoped would happen.”

About A.S. Teague

A.S. Teague enjoys the warmth of South Carolina with her husband and two daughters. The stereotypes about peach cobbler and sweet tea are not overstated. After years in the medical field, she is now enjoying every minute of being a stay-at-home mom. She loves wine, the beach, wine on the beach, and crying at Disney movies. When she doesn't have a book in her hand, she can be found pestering her husband with pictures of animals she wants to rescue, as well as debating whether to exercise or take a nap.

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