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barks-hideout · 10 months

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So, I said that someday I’d upload ref sheets for my marvel ocs, but I never guessed that it’d be all at once 💀💀💀

here’s a summary of each (heads up folks, I’m pretty sure I wrote the sequel to The Bible)

Marley Underwood: She’s just a fangirl character I made for Smokey. I like to imagine she runs a blog or something dedicated to her. She likes to hang around the arcade that Cami works at, who is rather fond of the kid.

Captain StinkBomb: He’s an experiment like Rocket, being number 89R14. He snuck off the Higher Evolutionary’s ship and fled to Counter-Earth, where he lived his life as a small farmer in the woods. That was until the guardians showed up and CE blew up. He, obviously, was upset and blamed the guardians for what happened. Now he lives his life as a space pirate until Rocket met him and they became friends.

Chris Caleb/The Brown Recluse: I made a post a few months back with his story and spider suit, but basically, Chris was an orphan bitten by a radioactive brown recluse. Because of the untreated spider bite, he developed gangrene, but because of the mutation, any part of his body that rotted off instantly regenerated. He was adopted by my universe’s Doc Ock and became a superhero, all though, most of the crimes he stops are usually his dad’s.

Dom Lee Cho/The Sun God’s Disciple (hero name is still a WIP, would love better suggestions): I don’t have too much of a story, but basically, Dom was chosen to be next in line as a disciple of Haemosu, which is the Korean Sun God. His father, who was the previous disciple, was murdered by a jealous follower of Haemosu. Dom is hesitant to take the title, insert something about generational trauma and legacy, yeah…it ain’t much, but it’s honest work.

Miguél Rodriguez/NightVision: So, Miguél is basically an ex-con who is trying to get his life back together. He gets a job at Crystal Corporations, a tech company trying to change the world as we know it. One day, while cleaning up, Miguél finds mysterious crystal shards in the trash behind the facility and decides to take them back to his apartment so he and his roommate, Archer Dodge, can mess around with them. Realizing that the crystals have powers stored in them, Miguél takes this as a sign to become what he’s always wanted to be, a superhero. He and Archer work together to create NightVision and Miguél becomes a sorta micro celebrity in NY. His boss, a shady businessman named Giovanni, finds this out and coaxes Miguél into working together, making Miguél a poster boy for Crystal Corp. Giovanni, like any shady white guy businessman, is basically stealing Miguél’s hard work and claiming it to be his own, and when Miguél tries to call things off, Giovanni blackmails Miguél into staying with the company through Miguél’s criminal records. Miguél breaks things off and his crimes are exposed (I’m still wondering about the crimes in question) and Giovanni becomes the new “hero.” Looking more into Crystal Corp and its business practices, Miguél realizes that Crystal Corporation is using these crystals for Evil Shit (tm) so now it’s up to Miguél to take down the company, which he does, but Giovanni dies in the process. This leads to Miguél having an opportunity to become the new president of Crystal Corp. He rejects this, however, and gives the title to the Giovanni’s assistant, Sook Lee Cho (who happens to be Dom’s sister omgggg)

CatFish: There isn’t much of a story to CatFish yet, but here’s what I have so far. CatFish, legal name Kenny Campbell, was a kid growing up in the ghettos of Detroit. He lived with his single mom, who was an asshole to him, and never really cared for him, especially when he started questioning his gender identity. Because of this, CatFish would always get involved with gang violence and other legal trouble. This continued until an attack on the US was made from HYDRA, and a 10 year old CatFish was met with Dr. Edward White, who claimed he was part of a rescue team that was trying to help the children in the war. Of course, Kenny was actually experimented on and became the way his is now. While living his life in Project K wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, he’d rather be there under the command of Dr.White rather than go back to his mom, wherever she was. I mean, Dr.White was even nice enough to let Kenny transition, so how bad could he possibly be?

Amar Bucciarati: Born in a small town in Spain, Amar was either always bullied or babied for his blindness. He couldn’t go out without a ball to the face, or a kick to the shin, and he couldn’t stay in without his family trying to coddle him and do everything within their power to “cure” him. He couldn’t stand it. All he wanted, just once, was to be treated like a normal person. When he was 8, his town was attacked by HYDRA, and was left alone in the rubble of his home until Dr.White came to help. He was experimented on and developed telekinetic abilities. With these abilities, Dr.White taught him how to become stronger, and use his skills for spatial awareness to help him see. Since then, Amar has been nothing but loyal to Dr.White, and will always be White’s most faithful soldier.

Dr.Edward White: So, this is the moment you all’ve been waiting for. So, Edward was born in Tennessee as the younger brother to Chris White.

Growing up, Eddie was always an outcast, often being seen as “weird and creepy” compared to the charm of his brother. Home life wasn’t any better, with an abusive father and an exhausted mother, Eddie was always seemed invisible. He found one thing he loved, which was science. He always flourished in school, and was on his way to change the world. He became obsessed with the idea of superheroes, and wanted to,not be them, but make them. This obsession made his family rather…uneasy. Everyday Eddie would always talk about how he wanted to experiment on people, studying the human body and it’s limits, even going so far as to take live animals and “work” on them. This continued all the way up into his adulthood, being a successful geneticist and biologist, while his brother became a famous football player and was married to his wife, Clara, a nurse. On April 12th, 2005, Clara have birth to a beautiful baby girl, which the couple decided to name Camellia Anabelle White, the first name being after the flowers they were so lovingly given to them during their honeymoon in Japan. Eddie couldn’t explain it, but he felt such a deep connection the moment he laid eyes on his niece, one that he knew he wanted to keep. When Camellia, shortened to Cami, was growing up, her and Eddie became inseparable. Eddie would always teach her how the world works and take care of her when babysitters or her parents couldn’t, and would always indulge in listening to whatever his niece was fascinated with at the time.

The two would often visit an open field filled with colorful flowers and waste the day away with bliss until it was time to go home. If he wasn’t by Cami’s side, Eddie was at work. He would continue to conduct his superhero experiments at a little facility called HYDRA. If he wasn’t there, he was posing as a scientist for the government, and feeding the information back to HYDRA. One year, Dr.White got word on the possibility of certain people having a certain chromosome mutation that would grant the person superpowers, these people were known as “Mutants.” When the US found out about their information being sold to other parties, there was talks of war looming over the world. Eddie knew this, and used it as an opportunity to start funding a facility that was designed to continue the education of children in case war was coming, this building was known as Project K. Still hiding as a weasel for HYDRA, Dr.White was assigned a new task, “Make sure the war happens.” He and other scientists would start causing havoc amongst parts of the US, trying to provoke the government into war. Looking at all the people that were affected by the destruction that was being, Dr.White got an idea. “With the new research we’ve gotten on superhuman abilities, why not run experiments on the children of the war?” It sounded insane, ludicrous, but Eddie had an explanation. “People are always hesitant to war, but the children? The children would go out and fight anybody that took away their homes and families without hesitation! As for our opponents? What kind of monsters would they be if they were to hurt such sweet and innocent souls?” As crazy as Eddie was, he was also a genius. This was when Project K became a breeding ground for mutant experiments, where damages would be done, Dr.White would take the children, and run experiments on them. This pattern continued until White was given another idea. What’s stopping him from bringing Cami into the mix? August 19th, 2011, Cami was left at home with a babysitter, staying up late to watch her dad play in the championship game. She wanted to go, but her parents all wanted to keep their daughter out of the presses. Both Cami and her babysitter watched the game, cheering for the girl’s father…until an explosion went off in the center of the field, then another in the crowd, and another, and another, until the cameras shut off and the TV cut to static. Cami, being only 6, didn’t understand what was happening or why her babysitter was making such frantic calls to her parents. She only realized what happened when a tearful Uncle Eddie came home, but her parents didn’t. Eddie took her in to Project K, a few months after the funeral, and ran tests on Cami. The first thing Eddie needed was a blood sample from Cami to look into her DNA for the now known X-Gene. Unfortunately, she wasn’t compatible, not at first. Eddie remembered research he’d done on mutants and called back to a serum that would make people with a recessive X-Gene into a dominant one. He spent weeks perfecting the formula, and finally out Cami under the needle, or needles. He ran test after test on her, putting her body through straining tasks that not even adults could handle (if you’ve seen Deadpool, YOU KNOW)

Finally, Cami gained the ability to control fire, and what a glorious flame it was. Eddie continued getting kids and running tests on them, the facility now more productive than ever with the new serum being used, and started training the children to use their new abilities for combat. This was when he would then send out kids 12+ to their first battles in the now ongoing war, dubbed WWX. This wasn’t enough for Eddie, however, he wanted to aim even higher, and so, started running tests on his top soldier, Cami included, to push them to their genetic limits. These new types of mutants were called “Provectus,” meaning advanced in Latin. With the difference between them and normal mutants being that they now have a new subset of their original powers. This sparked another building called “Provectus Mundi,” or “Advanced World” in English. Where it was Cami and 9 other kids being held as the most dangerous of Dr.White’s army. Eddie and Cami’s relationship would continue to strain until a 15 year old Cami was snooping through old files in her uncle’s lab and found an audio recording of the night where her parents died, the night where Dr.White killed them. Eddie attempted to explain himself, manipulating her into staying quiet, but Cami wasn’t having it. She burned Eddie alive, leaving him disfigured so severely, that he had to replace parts of his body with tech. This lead to Cami wanting nothing to do with her uncle, refusing to listen to him any chance he got. Which, in turn made Eddie upset. In his mind, what he was doing was all out of love. After a mission, it was reported that Cami was MIA and Eddie was LIVID, going off in the rest of his niece’s team. This disappearance caused him to go off the deep end, becoming more violent and aggressive than normal, even at his angriest. He even went as far as to give himself mutant abilities just for a chance of growing strong enough to find Cami. This time period was also when he started research on another concept that had been swimming in the back of his mind since the beginning, the multiverse. He finds Cami in the current MCU timeline and starts building his own machine to successfully travel through the multiverse, finally being able to see his niece again. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily work. With Cami finding her strength and beating the ever loving hell out of Eddie, getting other mutants to slowly take apart the original Project K. Before his last breath, Eddie looked his niece in the eyes and squeaked out his last words

“I love you…so much Camellia…”

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apprenticenerd · 4 years

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"Anyone can send me an ask with one of the titles and I’ll post a snippet or talk about that WIP!" The Acropolis, Tacet, Checklist, A Tiny Galaxy, Hearsay, Going Back, Ella Disenchanted, Making Peace, The Slashed Circle, Wake Up, Tenno, Midnight, Heliotropism, Arrhythmia, the one about Among Us, the one about Library of Ruina, the one that’s a D&D world concept. Yes, all of them. I know you wanna talk about all of them. So go, go forth and do it!

Hoooo boy, this is gonna be a long post. Lots and lots of writing snippets under the cut to avoid dash stretch!

The Acropolis - original - length uncertain - 1.4k and counting

im not ready for this im not i thought it would be yrs i thought id at least get an english degree first

omg sal whats goin on

fuckin hell whyd it have to be now i have a chem lab tomorrow

sally-tate macpherson. u never swear. ever. wtf is goin on.

ok. jess. i need u to listen really really carefully. understand?

answer the goddamn question ur scarin me

shut up and listen and this will go a lot better

fine but u need to tell me wtf is happnenig

ok. im going to tell you a bunch of stuff. not giving u advice, thats not allowed, but im gonna tell u stuff it seems like itd be impossible for me to know.

?????????????

i said shut up this is really important dont question how i know it. just go with it and figure out what to do. and dont die. bc no matter how crazy stuff seems, if u die, ur dead. here and everywhere. ok?

This is an original story coming straight from a @/writing-prompt-s prompt about a crack in a kid’s hardwood floor that they fantasized was a portal actually being one. I originally intended to write the entire thing like this, as a conversation over text, but that may not be feasible given a certain world-building detail at the other end of the portal (and the limits of my creativity lmao).

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Tacet - The Blackout Club - one-shot - 3.2k and counting

She closed her eyes again, and there it was. Hallucination? Some new science trick with electromagnetic radiation off the visible spectrum? Evidence that she was actually going insane? Whatever it was, it burned behind her eyelids in bright, incontrovertible red - and was completely invisible when she opened her eyes again. There was just the usual mess of club posters and one big one about someone’s exceedingly dumb-looking lost cat.

Eyes open, there was only Sargent Snuggles. Eyes closed, there was the normal darkness and then three lines of text where the poster had been, wavering like scarlet fire:

JOIN TBC JOIN TBC JOIN TBC

TBC? What the fuck was that? She’d never heard of any group with that acronym before. Hardly aware of the flurry of weird looks from half the other people in the hallway, she crossed the hall to examine the lost cat poster more closely. It felt like perfectly normal paper when she touched it, and there wasn’t even a hint of red with her eyes open, unless you counted the cat’s tacky pink sweater. How the hell was this even possible?

“You’re finally cracking, Bri,” she groaned under her breath, then headed for her locker. She did have to get home. Add another big fat entry to the weird shit list.

A backstory one-shot for my Blackout Club OC Briar, telling the story of how she got into the club in the first place. I’ve been stuck in the same spot for a while now, after Briar’s friend Dani explains the club to her, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the scene’s over as is. Of course, writing the next one is the tough part.

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Checklist - The Blackout Club - one-shot - 1.7k and counting

8. You still have a headache. Shouldn’t you go back to sleep and try to do this in the morning?

9. (wake up)

10. Nah, you’ve always been a night owl, and school starts criminally early, too early to get much done beforehand. It’s quiet, except for Dad snoring. Your parents are asleep already. You can stay up until this is done, and they’ll be none the wiser.

11. Your head hurts worse. It’s getting harder to think. At only 9 pm? 9:30? Whatever. You should sleep.

12. (wake UP)

13. What are you thinking? You have to read at least a little of this chapter, or there’s no way you’ll be able to bullshit your way through class tomorrow. Besides, all of a sudden, the silence feels...strange. Heavier? You can’t describe it.

14. You need to sleep. You need a drink of water or something. You need to finish this damn homework. You need to sleep. You need to sleep.

15. Stare at The Great Gatsby. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

16. Realize what’s up with the silence. Dad’s not snoring anymore. You aren’t feeling like yourself. You need to sleep.

17. Something’s weird.

18. (WAKE UP)

19. ...No. Something’s wrong.

Another Blackout Club story and another Interface Screw, as it were, this time in the form of a (very long) checklist. None of the characters have names (yet). It describes another way a kid could find themself running around at night with the Blackout Club, this time by fighting off the Song just enough to run into a club member who could wake them up the rest of the way. As with Tacet, I still need to write the suspenseful part.

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A Tiny Galaxy - Warframe - 4 chapters planned, 1 complete, 1 in progress - 7.8k and counting

Try it if you don’t believe me, the kid in the vent had said.

It was impossible. It was physically impossible. All of this was impossible. Had the Void...? Could the Void...?

The ship was at a standstill. Her mother had tried to kill her, and something had happened. She’d made something happen. There had been no holoprojector in that kid’s hand. Nothing was impossible anymore.

Jhia took a deep breath. How the heck was she supposed to do this? Was she supposed to feel something, some internal guide? Blue Hair hadn’t said. Feeling incredibly stupid, she did a quick mental checkup on herself. Nothing felt wrong, or different - but now that she thought about it…

Afterward, she would try many times to explain it, and fail every time. The best she could come up with was that once she found the Void, calling on it was as easy and as natural as breathing. She opened her hands in front of her, concentrated on that force like an extension of herself, reopened her eyes, and there it was: a riotous little ball of energy, wisps and motes of light and not-quite-light like a tiny galaxy, the Tau system in the palm of her hand, raging.

More OC backstory time! This one’s for my Tenno, a nerdy fourteen-year-old (at the time of this story, anyway) by the name of Jhia, going through the hell that is the Zariman Ten-Zero and what happened on it. This is possibly the first part of the story I actually wrote: the roll-credits moment when Jhia realizes the Void’s changed her more already than she thought.

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Hearsay - Lobotomy Corporation/Library of Ruina - one-shot - 1k and counting

"Oh? Did they investigate further?"

"They tried. Found a few fingerprints, but they didn't match anyone in the database."

"What's the update, then?"

"Reports from elsewhere in the district of someone not in uniform carrying a Zwei sword. They're slippery, good at avoiding us, which would suggest Syndicate operative to me and HQ. Except that in every one of the descriptions we managed to get, our sword thief is a child."

"What? How?!"

"You tell me, Iona. You're the one who went to the crime scene."

"Right... Jeez, if it's a kid, I guess that'd explain why Petrov thought they weren't a threat..."

"My thoughts exactly. HQ has a fair amount of hearsay to go on, but nobody can quite agree on how old the child is, or whether or not she's with a Syndicate. Most agree that she appears to be a girl, tall for a child, auburn hair, clothes and demeanor typical of a Backstreets native."

"We got a name?"

"They've heard Yeri, Kali, Redbird, Suma, Aelfin... No one knows which is her real one, or if it's even any of them at all."

"Damn. ...Say, are you going to drink that entire pot of coffee?"

"Help yourself."

This is one of those stories that turned into an accidental AU when more of canon came out. The idea behind it is that it’s Kali’s backstory told entirely in conversations in which she did not participate, showcasing the fact that a Fixer’s fame is their livelihood and Kali was about as famous as they come, before the whole L Corp thing happened. Of course, the vast majority of the headcanons here got invalidated with a certain Ruina update, so my motivation’s kinda down on this one.

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Going Back has already been talked about here!

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Ella Disenchanted - The Blackout Club - one-shot (maybe two-shot??) - 1.4k and counting

She woke. Her stomach went through a series of panicked flip-flops as she thought something strange had done it, Dad or a little-kid-nightmares shadow beast had made noise, but no - why had she fallen asleep in the first place? Her butt and shoulder were sore where they’d been leaning on the bottom and side of the windowsill, presumably all night, since the sun was full up over the trees on Old Growth Hill.

All night. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t fall asleep, but she did anyway. God dammit.

As she unfolded herself from her cramped ball, though, she froze. Under the comforter she’d pulled around her shoulders for warmth, she was wearing her gray jacket, a T-shirt, jeans, sneakers getting dried mud all over the carpet.

Last she remembered, she’d been in her pajamas.

In which a Blackout Club kid’s little sister wonders where he’s gone when he runs away to the boxcar, and tries to get to the bottom of the mystery herself. Usually she’d be too young for the club to recruit, but her investigations and an incident involving SAO are more than enough extenuating circumstance. Unlike most of my other WIPs, there’s a whole outline at the end of my doc for this one.

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Making Peace - Warframe - multi-chapter - 1.5k and counting

“I…” Iksoh finally said. “Sorna, I hope you realize. I’m not into this. I never - I’m not doing this. Whatever you’re doing, I can’t.”

“I know,” Sorna said softly. The decision tore at her heart again and she almost backed out of the vent, but no. She had to go. She wouldn’t see another innocent crumple in her rifle sights. “I hope you realize. I’m not coming back.”

Behind her, Iksoh let out a long, shaky breath. “It’s taking all I’ve got not to report you right now. Sorna… the Queens’ll have my head for this. Please, please, let it be worth it. Go. Don’t let them take yours.”

“I won’t,” Sorna promised, and meant it.

Later, after her last fight for her freedom was done, on the Steel Meridian ship headed for Kronia Relay, Sorna looked out at the planet retreating behind her and thought of Iksoh. She’d just learned a new word from a Meridian soldier: vaykor tal, the defector’s spirit. Iksoh had let her go, at risk of their own life. They’d had a bit of the vaykor tal themself, even if they hadn’t known it, even if they’d thought it was just some weakness that was bound to get them killed.

“Ranre treri, duf krun,” she whispered into space, a Grineer well-wishing passed down from sergeant to tube-fresh lancer since time immemorial. May your hands be steady, and may life be kind.

This is an AU born of me and some friends wondering why in the heck Perrin and the Meridian hate each other so much in game. It’s about a group of Kavor - Grineer defectors distinguished from other Meridian members by their pacifism - who get to a Relay and start wondering the same thing. Besides Sorna (and, later in the story, Iksoh as well), there would have been Chakh, Beket, and Sydon, plus at least four of the syndicate leaders and a bunch of side-character OCs, all caught up somehow in what turns out to be a surprisingly far-reaching web of intrigue.

The Slashed Circle - Warframe - one-shot, probably - 429 and counting

In addition to their written and spoken language, the Grineer have a full language of hand signs. It has its quirks, as all languages do - be careful of confusing it with the Corpus sign language, in which the sign for “to pay” roughly approximates the Grineer sign for...a certain portion of the male anatomy. Among these is the common Grineer sentiment against those who defect from their ranks, baked into the sign just as much as their spoken words.

The sign of the slashed circle, the sedashkur - a finger drawn in a circle on the chest, followed by a diagonal line - is the highest of taboos to any loyal Grineer. It shows support for such scum as the Kavor and Steel Meridian, enough so that it forms the basis for the Meridian’s battle standard. To sign the sedashkur is to betray your siblings, commit a grave insult to your superiors, paint a near-indelible target on your back. It is an object of hatred and fear throughout the ranks.

She fears it, yes, but she does not hate it, for all her life and into her death as well. It shouldn’t trouble her now, though. It is easy to hide a language, and she burned her journals before she was called to the fortress.

This is a fic about Jhia and her one (1) converted Kuva Lich, namely about the process of said Lich’s defeat and defection, that kinda never got off the ground. Contrary to this snippet, I think most of it would have been written in what are essentially space emails back and forth between Lich and Tenno? I definitely got as far as Jhia sending an audio recording of a bass-boosted dog fart, anyhow.

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Wake Up, Tenno - Warframe - one-shot - 950 and counting

“Wake up, Tenno.”

She wakes. She is - she is Tenno, right? She is a Tenno? Her mind is confused, so full of fog and dead ends - how long was she asleep?

The voice that woke her seems familiar. She might have loved the speaker, in her scrambled past life, the woman in the purple helmet, the one called Lotus in her HUD vision. Her surroundings are a ruin of some sort. Her body is—

...what?

She can move just fine. Her fingers and arms and legs respond with suspicious ease, given how long she must have slept to be this scattered upon waking up, and yet there’s some fundamental disconnect. This is her Warframe, her body, but it’s not her body somehow.

...wait, where did the term “Warframe” come from?

A Tenno, unnamed but intended to be Jhia on my end, wakes up on Earth at the very beginning of the in-game storyline. Since the tutorial has gotten an overhaul in recent months, I may have to modify even what little I have on this a lot.

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Midnight - Iconoclasts - poem - 280 and counting

been anything smaller than been anything

never been anything smaller than

“good morning, how’s miss grump doing today? i heard about that last mission...if you didn’t sleep well i can call you in sick, it’s alright-” “oh, shut up, grey”

there has never been anything

“oh, shut up, grey” “love you too”

smaller

“love you too”

than

A very fragmented, stream-of-consciousness-y poem meant to represent Agent Black’s failing sanity near the end of the game. The words of her famous one-liner (“there has never been anything smaller than me”) are interspersed, out of order until the end, with poetic descriptions of other characters and bits and pieces of a flashback involving Agent Grey.

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Heliotropism - Iconoclasts - one-shot - 1.1k and counting

Lily, though she’s superstitious, will have none of these self-important truths, none of these semblances of certainty when really all it is is wishing on Ivory and hoping for the best. She calls for Miss Andress instead.

A stout but severe woman with ten grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way, Miss Andress is perhaps the quintessential matriarch: nurturing, selfless, brutally honest. She is the one the people of 17 trust when they feel they can trust no one else. Lily needs the kind of reassurance only she can give, with the authority of ninety-one years and the wisdom of two sons, one daughter, and some five dogs raised under her care.

When Miss Andress visits House 4, she asks Polro and Lily to each bring an object they cherish the most. For Polro it’s his largest wrench, pitted with use but still polished to a brassy shine; Lily surprises everyone by pulling out a tiny, unloaded stun-gun, and surprises them more by not explaining it at all. Miss Andress doesn’t question it. She just turns the two tools over and over in her hands, head bowed, squinting at them as if trying to read the secrets of the universe in the scratches carved into them by time.

Finally she straightens up and sighs, pushing a strand of silver hair behind her ear. Her forehead is slick with sweat, though the night is cool outside. “I don’t know what she’ll do,” the wise woman says, heavily, as if delivering bad news. “I just know she’ll change the world.”

Can you tell I like backstory fic? This one is for Robin, with one short anecdote for each year of her life, up to age 17 and the events of the game. It’s also an excuse to world-build a bunch, lol.

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Arrhythmia - Crypt of the NecroDancer - one-shot(?) - 4k and counting

The creature didn’t say anything, just beckoned to the shadows. Before I could move, two other creatures came for me, sending the other humans - former humans? - scrambling away in panic. One landed a hard blow on the back of my head that sent me to my hands and knees, seeing sparks; the other said “Freeze!” and I could only watch as ice sprouted from the leaf litter, cementing me to the ground.

The one who’d hit me produced a dagger from the inside of its cloak. I tried to pull myself up, to do anything at all to keep myself from getting shanked, but it was no good. There must have been a secondary effect on that spell; my limbs wouldn’t respond. I felt the dagger tear cloth in the region of my back, and prepared for the pain.

It didn’t come. The creature cut a slit in the back of my tunic, then another. Neither one touched the skin at all. I can’t really describe what happened next - my brain was having trouble computing how my arms were in front of me, visible, unable to move, but it felt like the creature was pulling them through the gashes in my tunic, but that was wrong, they didn’t feel like arms at all.

“Holy fuck,” I heard someone say.

The ice holding me down melted into nothing as the spell wore off. I jumped back up, head spinning a little, ready for another fight, only to spot two flicks of scarlet in my peripheral vision. I spun around, but they moved with me.

I think I already knew what they were. I just couldn’t admit it to myself.

You’ve already seen this one, Nick, though I’m pretty sure it was well over two years ago. It’s a pile of old headcanons, some of them now outdated I’m pretty sure, about how Nocturna ended up a vampire in the first place and a little bit about how vampire society works. According to Google Docs, I’ve been stuck on this one since March 2018. Whoops.

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untitled (working title “adult citra meets an impostor bc what is self-control”) - Among Us - one-shot - 572 and counting

“I know. You’re stuck, aren’t you?” Having well and truly gotten their full attention, Citra continues, “God, I can barely imagine. Having to take a weird-ass host whose biology might even be toxic to you, I don’t know. Needing to get to a whole other galaxy, feeling like the only way to do that is by deception and death.” “How…?”

She sighs. “I told you, this isn’t my first rodeo. One of your kind saved my life when I was a kid. Since he’d killed Mom and Dad had been out of the picture long before, he stayed here and helped raise me afterward. It’s how I learned to pronounce...a few of your words, at least.”

“You missed the ‘H’ sound.”

“Isn’t that the one that’s literally impossible to do right with Terran anatomy?”

“Maybe. You think I know Terran anatomy all that well?”

Citra chuckles. “Fair point. You let us find your buddy and fix the ship, I’ll raise Xai when we get comms back and he can try and help you get home. Deal?”

I found an Among Us comic on Tumblr, absolutely ran into left field with it to make a couple of OCs, and then made AUs of those OCs because of course I did. This one is from a future scenario in which Citra (typically orange) meets someone rather familiar on a mission with the crew of the Skeld.

---

untitled (working title “library of ruina but they adopt half the guests”) - Library of Ruina - length uncertain - 1k and counting

“And what happened to not caring about others because it’s a waste of time and heartache?”

Now it’s Roland’s turn to sigh. “I don’t care about him. I just don’t want the guilt of killing - look at him, he can’t be older than eighteen or nineteen!”

Raised eyebrow. “Finn will be twenty years old in fifteen days’ time. He is a legal adult. I fail to see why this should matter to either of us.”

“He’s fresh off his first Fixer license! I have years of experience! He had no idea what he was getting into when he signed that invitation and you know it!”

Angela fixes him with a glare that turns his stomach, his freshly remade body reacting to the memory of its sudden, and extremely painful, dismemberment. “I could quite literally hold your soul in my hands if I wanted,” she reminds him in an undertone of steel. “I must do the same for him, following the invitation’s guidance, or my entire plan will be lost, my coworkers’ sacrifices all for naught. Do not disappoint me or ask any more impertinent questions. You know what to do, and what will happen if you do not.”

Look, some of the people you fight in this game deserved so much better, okay? I came up with an AU concept where if a guest willingly concedes the fight and agrees to stick around, you can get their book without killing them. Finn doesn’t die; neither do Tomerry or Shi Association; all the former employees realize exactly what’s going on with Philip after the Wedge Office fight and manage to calm him down, avoiding the whole Crying Children situation. (And then Gebura makes him collect his jaw off the floor by revealing herself as the Red Mist.)

---

The one that’s a D&D world concept doesn’t have anything concrete written for it yet. (Don’t read this bit if you might want to play in my campaign at some point!) Instead of your typical Forgotten Realms planar setup, the world at large would be called the Seven Spheres, each of them different in terms of climate, geography, native species and magic, etc. The First Sphere would be the most “generic” one (to our way of thinking) and the main setting of the campaign; it would also be the smallest of the Seven, its primary continent home to a former empire of dragons that spanned most of the Sphere until its mysterious fall a thousand years ago.

Now, since the empire fell, the dragons and their children have slowly been dying out. Best estimates are that there’s only a thousand or two left in the entire First Sphere, with fewer eggs hatched every decade. The player characters enter a world with pretty typical low-level quests to start with, but every so often, especially if they engage with optional story stuff (this would be a more roleplay-focused than combat-focused campaign), they get wind of changes in the air - a failed harvest here, an unusually hot and stormy summer there, a trade war once they start hitting mid-levels.

It mimics real-world climate change in all but cause. As coastal cities struggle to contend with rising seas and, more alarmingly, wizards all over the Sphere start to notice their magic falter and wane, the PCs’ goal becomes getting to the bottom of this. And what’s at the bottom is...your typical Nerd fusion of science with fantasy settings.

The Seven Spheres are not planes of existence in the normal D&D sense, but seven planets in the same solar system, each with its own ancient god far more powerful than any god in any mortal pantheon; the First Sphere is so named because it’s closest to the sun. These planetary gods are incredibly large and incredibly alien, thinking in geologic time and concepts far too broad and slow for most sapient beings to comprehend. A thousand years ago, the fall of the dragon empire was caused by an ill-advised ritual meddling with the god of the First Sphere’s natural process of rebirth, causing said god to die without a replacement.

It’s taken this long for the First Sphere to feel the effects because, again, geologic time - a thousand years is a blink of an eye in this kind of time scale. But now the ancient earth-magic that had kept the Sphere’s climate temperate and its magicians in business is failing. The dragons, as beings of magic intrinsically, have been failing all along. And now it’s up to the PCs, up at level 17-20 if not higher by that point, to figure out how to fix the situation and find a new planetary god for the First Sphere before the whole Sphere burns to death.

#bulletnick #wow this got long #you're right i did want to talk about all of them though

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neshabeingchildish · 5 years

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Madame President.

“On today’s special episode of Pipe Up! I would like to introduce Psychiatrist to the Supers…” Charlotte turned the TV down. It was recording, anyway. Piper double majored in psychology and sociology in college, worked as a professional counselor in her office, which was what used to be Junk N’ Stuff, became one of those internet professionals who had a thriving career and an online presence/following for it, not to mention all of her old following when she was a public figure… So it was only natural that her dreams of becoming a television lifecoach came true. She had done multiple talk shows as a guest, documentaries, reality projects for clients that she had who were famous, and for the past several years, after helping Charlotte to found SupesSpace (the mental health network for supers and heroes), she had her own show Pipe Up! Pipe Up was about helping and healing the heroes that kept our world safe, but also highlighted the professionals who guided them through those processes.

It was partially mental health information, from professionals, testimonials from those who had been going through things (often heroes that had been nonconsensually unmasked, or had been forced into the life early - Piper and Charlotte’s soft spots), partially tips for those in need from the very people who did this kind of work, partially backstories of those people, because a lot of times, those not in the field considered them necessary, but rarely knew anything about them or took the time to ask them how they were. Sometimes, Piper’s clients wanted to share their story on the show and it would be special segments.

Today’s guest was the leading supers psychiatrist. Charlotte definitely wanted to see it, but had so much to do today. She was turning over her power to Max Thunderman, of all people. She had no idea that the super community would ever forgive him enough to entrust him with this position, but here they were - he was getting ready to “retire to” President of the Hero League, and she was getting ready to campaign for President of the United States.

There were a lot of people who didn’t like the thought of a super in the White House. Charlotte was tired of the gymnastics that once went into making people comfortable with having her in spaces that “weren’t meant” for her. While, some part of her worried that the Oval office was much too powerful and had too many possible setbacks for her to ever be able to redirect the country in much needed ways (even some of the historically “best” presidents had a tough time of making a dent in the state of things), she still held out hope that she could possibly make some kind of positive difference in an oppressive nation in a world built upon the oppression of others.

Whenever she and Simone gathered to bring or pick up their children from playdates, she would always tell her, “You know that they’re going to suck your soul out in that position, right? It’s the reason that the Hero League acts in the best interest in humanity first and has sovereignty over supers. This country is a wasteland with a gated community of a certain percentile and that office is to keep the waste where it belongs and to go wherever it takes to obtain more for that gated community. Every U.S. President is a puppet and a clown…” Or some variation of it.

Charlotte would toss a shady joke in her direction such as, “Every since you got those goddess locs, you’ve been on your bullshit again.” SImone would just smile and shake her head. Those locs looked great on her. Charlotte thought about them, but it was going to be difficult enough to run for a major office in this country with her natural hair, much less that style, as majestic as it looked. And Simone’s skin was shining every since she shed all the green genes. Max was always posting “My Four Girls,” her, in the middle of the twins and their youngest daughter Meaux (Pronounced “Mo”), now what 8 years old, maybe? They had twin boys in between her and the baby girl (Simon and Maximus Jr), maybe a year younger than Charlie - but Charlotte wasn’t keeping up with ages anymore, just how quickly everyone seemed to surpass her height! Charlie was the only kid of all their bunches that seemed like she probably wasn’t going to be taller or as tall (short) as Charlotte.

Max, with his salt and pepper long hair and beard looked more like a supervillain than president of the Hero League, but insisted that was part of his “mystique.” He was the poster boy for reformation. He was what any villain could look to whenever they tired of their evil ways and for that, people felt somehow safer with him. He was always scrutinized for his past, therefore, they felt like he must’ve been really reformed, to not have had any incidents in nearly 20 years. With this position, Max had goals, but the greatest of them was to “Ride it out here until I die.”

Meanwhile, Simone had not been involved in politics in a long time. Instead, she opened a center for supers who just want to be able to have normal lives. There were all grades of school and there was housing for those beyond school age. It was basically a supers community where nobody was expected to be the hero. She helped people to start businesses - everything from frozen yogurt shops to boutiques. She studied dance and opened her own dance studio in that community. But, The Center of Hope for Heroes (With the general prohibition sign covering the word Heroes) was in the center of the community and was the heart of it. It wasn’t too far from the Mimi Memorial, so Ray settled in the community with Katelyn, and buried her in tree form at Mimi’s grave. It took him a while to allow himself to care for another dog, but he’d frequently go to the dog shop to try to convince himself to do so. He was just tired of losing others and knowing that this was his fate as an indestructible man. He would last longer than most of the people he cared about. It was depressing, but the lady who owned the pet shop made it a little more bearable.

She would introduce him to different dogs, but also gave him the information of a licensed supers counselor who worked with heroes who have lost partners. “A lot of people think that because they weren’t in the field with you that meant that they aren’t your partner, but you came home to her everyday and you took care of her, the two of you took care of each other, for many years. She counts as a partner and a friend and her loss is no less important than if you had lost a child or a romantic partner.” He had lost one of those and the potential other. He never really thought about talking to a counselor about it, beyond Piper, though. After he did, he went to check on another dog, and to check on the pet shop owner. She was single… and interested. He couldn’t stop smiling about the possibilities. Mimi would’ve wanted him to move on years ago, but his heart wasn’t ready. He and Katelyn simply coped until he had to face it - not everyone made it, and that was okay. He didn’t have to bury himself with those who left before he did, and they wouldn’t want him to...

Jasper was going to go ahead and call in his surrogate again. That was cool. If it was gonna be a girl, he wanted her to be called Bushida, which Charlotte told him she didn’t think that was a name and also that the word that he was probably looking for might not be appropriate for his daughter. If it was another boy, he wanted to call him Bucket. “Do you simply hate your children, or…?” He waved a hand at her. He didn’t care about the haters. Bushida or Bucket were gonna be well loved and have at least one dad that made them laugh ALL of the time. Mitch might be an overgrown child, but children loved that about him.

Charlotte had so much money that before she even made her donations to charity, she honestly just made sure that her loved ones had everything that they could need. That meant all friends from the Man Cave, and now the Lady Lair - Piper’s family, their parents, even Jasper’s folks, the Thundermans, the Bilsky’s, The Center of Hope for, the Academy, despite Hamilton’s removal, Evelyn was still an important part of her life, and she believed in the school… She still had much to give away for her charity interests, technological advances, and other cares, causes and concerns. And, she would have enough to run a successful presidential campaign, hopefully while keeping her morals in tact.

Running a country with such a system in place and all of the insistence to continue it for all of the purposes that there were to continue it… She knew that wouldn’t be easy, if she even made it to that point. She did still have a husband and children and thought maybe, just maybe… She should actually take a BREAK, for once.

Charlotte looked at herself in the mirror. She looked… similar to how she remembered. She looked at this version of herself a lot less than she had when she was younger. A lot of times, she had her hair and makeup done by someone else. A lot of times, she ate while she got dressed, or conferenced in on of of Hank’s corporate calls while she brushed her teeth on mute, or looked over assignments to dispatch heroes to while she did her skincare routine at her desk. This woman in the mirror - she was some person who had been much too busy to remember to pause every now and then. Even both of the times that she was on maternity leave, she always had a lot of “not on your feet” work to do and taking on a huge role at this moment would mean that she wouldn’t be able to get that break any time soon. It’d likely be about 2 years of campaigning, and then 4 years in office. She would probably look in the mirror in six years and the patch of gray that had grown across the front of her head would be a head full of gray and maybe there would be more worry creases and wrinkle lines.

Charlie helped her put her hair up and they had a mother daughter spa day, which was usually Charlotte trying to relax while a very excited Charlie, with very expensive product on her flopped around and attempted to tell her 50-11 stories. At the end of it, Charlotte never felt reasted, at all… just softer. She’d put Charlie to bed, check around the house to see if Hank was there (he usually wasn’t). Much like both of his parents, he was quite the workaholic. He was generally in the Danger Fortress, though… That was what Charlie had somehow gotten them to start calling the command center from which Charlotte used to assist Mr. Danger. Hank would work on upgrading things for fun, sometimes with Schwoz’s help or guidance. She found him in there, with four holographic screens pulled up with stats from businesses and with campaign projections.. “Hope you’re wrapping up and getting ready to head to bed,” she said.

“I don’t have anything to do in the morning,” he observed, typing notes on a notepad connected to his waist.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said and made eye contact with him.

“Yes, Mom.” She looked around the room. It felt different, but the design wasn’t new. She just knew that a lot had changed since she set it up. “Miss it?” Hank wondered.

“Not especially. But, I have a lot attached to it. How are Henry’s legs?”

“In perfect shape. I would tell you if anything changed.” He began to shut things down and they left the room together. “Charlie is coming into the lair tomorrow, so I wanted to have everything squared away.”

“Coming in for training?”

He nodded and went into his bedroom, “Homework first though. I told her that I would help her with it because Dad helped her and wound up having to look up all the answers to her math. She got points deducted because she didn’t show the work.”

“Ugh. He’s supposed to grab you when he doesn’t know what he’s looking at!” She complained.

“I was at the site we’re looking at for Page & Thunderman Corp. But, I’ll handle it tomorrow.” He gave her a kiss on the face and went into the room. She watched him for a moment, kick off his shoes, but neatly place them in a shoe rack, grabbed his night clothes and activated his computer to work on verbal command.

She went in and checked the crystals that she knew he only kept nearby because of her. “Interface, adjust Hammy’s room for sleep, not work and replace his crystals and put these with those that need cleansing and charging, please.”

“Yes, Madame President.” She furrowed her eyebrows, and left the room. Henry was doing pull ups in his home gym and she got his attention and tapped her watch at him. He nodded, finished his set and grabbed his towel. “Did you know that Interface called me Madame President tonight?”

“Yeah, we programmed her to do that. Well, Hank programmed her to do it, but it was my idea. You always tell me that you gotta envision and claim and manifest.” She smiled at him and he kissed her on the cheek. “You take a shower yet?”

“No, I was waiting on you, Dude. But, Charlie told me about you planting her a violet garden and getting her a statue commissioned?”

“I’m positive that she said ‘commisionerred,’ because that’s what she said every single time, but yeah. I’m using my allowance card, because honestly, what I promised her is gonna cost me.”

“Stop promising her grand things.”

“She’s my daughter,” he said, as though that settled it. She nodded, so it did. “She wants the garden to have a fence with purple lights, a purple birdbath, with a birdhouse hovering above it and a bird feeder inside the birdhouse - all this is supposed to be purple, so I guess I’m gonna have to decide which shades, because naturally I won’t just have a big violet eyesore on the premises. There’s a place for all of the plants on these grounds.”

“I actually already heard the plans. I just wanna get your hot body into the shower so that I can have my way with you and you can put me to sleep.”

Henry threw his towel away and set his water down and picked her up to go do just that.

They were laying in bed afterward and Charlotte commented, “You make love to me like I’m still as beautiful as when we started.”

“Well, dang… I was tryin’ to do it like you’re more beautiful now than you’ve ever been!” He smiled at her. She looked emotional. “You okay?”

“I’m tired and I feel old, but I have goals and I know that I won’t rest until I’ve met them. I just want to be able to take a break… but I guess that’s what retirement is for. 65 full stop, right?”

“I’m leaning more towards 45, but…” She looked at him and he said, “Just kidding. These legs have another good 50 years. My heart will give out before they will. So… Maybe 65 for me. I already feel old, though.”

“Your work is physical. You really need to start looking for a sidekick, Hen. You don’t want to be old and trying to train someone through a headset.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll start thinking about it. Maybe I’ll create an ad on FaceMask.”

“I think SymBIOsis would be better for it. More range.”

“Yeah, but FaceMask is tried and true. I KNOW I’ll get legit level sidekick there… if I EVEN do that!”

“Well, I just want us to one day be able to take a break, while I still have some life left in me.”

“You… You get some news or something?” He asked, concerned.

“I looked in the mirror. Some old chick was looking at me. Had the nerve to be moving like I was, like she was me or something.”

He smiled and nudged her with his nose, “Oh, her… I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’ve been hitting that for years. She really does it for me. I’m sure she always will, and I just can’t let her go.”

“What if she gets older and older and more old?”

“I’m gonna be tapping it until her hips go bad.”

She cackled at his proclamation. “She must have that good good!”

“The goodest,” he said and winked at her.

Two years later

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States..."

Hank didn’t want to live in the White House. Henry didn’t want to leave the Charteaux to landscapers, even the finest that they hired to keep up with everything. Charlie just wanted to be a superhero and being the President’s daughter seemed pretty close to that, so she was fine with whatever. She was more concerned about her facial adjustments and her body changes.

The first concern was the fact that she had glasses. She had to get them when she turned 11, but she was constantly breaking them to the point that now, she had ones that were much too big for her face, in her opinion and the ones that Hank worked on for her were more like goggles… So those messed with her hair, which was already a lot to take care of! The next concern was NOW, she needed braces! And… she hated the thought of it. She’d have to care for them and clean them and all of that? She hated stuff like that! For what? Straight teeth without gaps in them? For her mom’s perfect set? What could possibly go wrong with her body next?

She hated that she asked! Because not too much longer afterwards, she went to the bathroom and there was blood everywhere. Now… she knew what it was and she had been taught what to do when it happened, but when it happened, she just froze for a moment, then rushed to try to clean up and score protection. She didn’t tell her mother about it. She knew that she’d probably have some kind of serious person talk with her and she wasn’t into that. She told Hank and he got her everything that she needed and then binged movies with her and ate snacks. He was sincerely the best brother and she always loved the fact that everybody else thought he was words like “pretentious” and “narcissistic,” but she only knew him as “awesome.”

They were in her second cycle and their new way of handling it whenever she commented, “I wonder now that Mom’s president if that means that I can start trying to look into doing things through Hero League, since she can’t BLOCK me anymore.” She said it with a lot of resentment that Hank didn’t appreciate, but he understood the frustrations. To this day, he had held himself back from trying to become a super because of his anxiety over what Charlotte would say, do, or think if something went wrong.

“I’m sure that she has Maxi on the lookout for stuff like that, but… I mean, maybe she’d go a little bit easier now that you’re 13 and you’ve reached this portion of your journey.”

“What does that mean? Say it like I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, you know, because you have a superpower, you can register for legal adulthood when you hit puberty, but you already have to be in a position to take care of yourself, for instance have money, powers, or intelligence that makes you capable of supporting your own lifestyle and needs, OR you have to be a registered hero with the Hero League. I can’t imagine that Mom WOULD support you moving forward with it, but if you want me to try to talk to her, I can always remind her that dad started his job at your age.”

She gasped and asked, “HE DID???”

“Yeah… Dad used to be Kid Danger, didn’t you know that?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that he was an actual KID, I thought it was a nickname like that funny guy you listen to on old podcasts! Kid Fury! Dad was a KID kid when he was Kid Danger? That means that I’M ready to be a sidekick too! He’s been looking for one, but he’s been training one the whole time!”

“I don’t know… I was thinking more along the lines of you speak to them about becoming legal, getting your inheritance turned over to you and safely living freely until you’re actually old enough to be a superhero.”

“I AM actually old enough to be one! You just said it! It’s legal and it would be hypocritical for them to refuse me! Daddy did it!”

“I don’t think you’re getting the moral of my message…” She zipped out of the room and he massaged his temples, “Mom is gonna be piiiiiiiiiiiiissed.”

Mr. Danger was appointed to President Page by the Hero League for the first ever Head of the Super Secret Service. The Secret Service would still be in effect, but it was unprecedented that an unmasked super was President of the United States and therefore, getting non-pow humans to guard her life seemed unfair and unethical to her. She had never even had bodyguards before, save Mr. Danger, so an entire team felt like a lot for her. But, if they were supers, she felt better and if Danger was in charge of those supers, well - that was the best case scenario. The children had non-pow secret service, simply because she certainly didn’t want to put any of these dutiful people out of work.

Charlotte was in meetings with Mr. Danger posted outside whenever Charlie got her guards to bring her to him. He thought it might be an emergency, but kept a calm face. “Charlie, what is it?”

“Hank told me that you began being a superhero when you were my age, which means that I’m eligible for being your sidekick and I won’t take no for an answer, because that would be unfair!”

“We have to discuss this later, Sweetie,” he said and gestured for them to lead her back to her room.

“Just tell me yes right now. We shouldn’t have to discuss anything, Daddy. You say all the time that I’m way better at what I do than you were when you were younger! I didn’t know that you HAD THE JOB when you were underqualified! I am over qualified then and you need a sidekick…”

He nodded his head, “Okay, Sweetie, but Mommy’s in here working and Daddy has to guard and keep a lookout, so please, let them bring you back to your room…” She squealed and hugged him and rushed off, telling her guard about how she was going to be a sidekick. Wait.. Had he said that to her? He replayed the conversation in his mind…

Her: just say yes…

Him: Okay, Sweetie… but…

“Oh my God… Charlotte’s gonna be piiiiiiiiiiiiised,” he whispered to himself.

Charlie handed Hank her designs for her costume and her notes of the features she needed, “You can do this, right?”

“No, Charlie! Mom is not gonna let you be Dad’s sidekick. I don’t care what you think he said to you today,” He looked at the designs, “But, this is excellent work. You… must’ve gotten mom’s fashion bug.”

“Mom? Fashion?” She busted out laughing. “Anyway… So, see here, that violet will be what we can use to keep me tuned into the Interface… And I will actually settle for goggles in costume, since I can’t imagine going to battle with these!” She pointed to the glasses on her face. “This getting a period thing kinda rocks. I know what they mean when they say you become a woman…” She looked at Hank. He was still studying her plans and apparently hadn’t heard her.

“And the schematics are properly done to scale.”

“Ummm, you bug me about details all of the time.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect you to pay attention. I’ve been bugging Dad about details since I was a kid. He still tells me stuff like, “Just take it in a little in the middle and make it a tad longer in the back. I blame mom for knowing what he means by non-measurements and just making it work. But… I need to go to the Danger Fortress…”

“I’m coming!”

“No, we can’t both go. Mom will flip out.”

“Why would she? We’ll have those secret service dudes for decoration and me for protection! I’m a sidekick now, Hank.” He sighed and rolled his eyes, grabbing her hand to help her up. “Should we clean this up before we go? Mommy says it’s rude to just leave a mess, even when there’s a maid.”

“We’re coming back.”

“You’re gonna stop doing a project to come back here?”

“Good point, make it snappy and meet me at the car.”

“Will you leave me if I’m not quick enough?” She asked. He smirked, but didn’t answer, so she hauled ass to clean up their mess and rushed to meet him at the car to go back to the property and work.

Charlotte came out of her chambers hours later and all she wanted to do was kiss her husband, hug her kids and try to settle for the night until the next obligation. Mr. Danger was pacing, and not wearing his mask.. Which - technically, he didn’t need it because the world knew who he was, but he still wore it because of work and stuff. “Hey, you okay?” She asked. He yelped at the sound of her voice and smiled at her, “Okay… Tell me what’s going on.”

“Okay. Well. I. May. Have… Possiblyyyyyyyyy… Perhaps… Mayhaps, even… Perchance…”

“Henry!”

“I told Charlie that she could be my sidekick!” He gasped right after he finally said it out loud and covered his own mouth, like that was going to have him to take it back.

She looked relieved, “Oh. Jeez. You scared me for a moment. I thought it was something serious.”

“She and Hank are at the Danger Fortress working on her costume.”

“Wait. Right now? You told Charlie that she could be your sidekick right now? At her age? In this time? While I’m the president and you’re supposed to be working here on my behalf?”

“That’s the beauty of it, right? If she’s my sidekick, then she’s just at my side in the White House and stuff. We won’t have an assignment assignment for like 4 years!” He cheered, having just thought of this right now.

“Only, that’s not true. You’re one of the Hero League’s best operatives. Max isn’t just letting me HAVE you for four years. You’re creating a system, showing this group how to on the job and I’m sure that within months, maybe even weeks, he’ll have you in the field, on assignment! You… You gotta go tell her that you made a mistake and it can’t happen!”

He sucked in air through his teeth and clasped his hands, “I’ve tried to, but she keeps bringing up great points and now, I don’t know… I’m gonna just give it a shot…” Her face went on a full journey through emotions that he knew, ones that maybe she didn’t even know, and ones that terrified him, before she smiled and blinked her eyes and asked, “Why would you do this?” She clenched her fists and then held out her hands, honestly awaiting an answer.

“Hey, I started at 13 and I was fine.”

Almost immediately, she lost her entire cool, “Ray broke child labor laws, not to mention behaved morally and ethically questionable in hiring you! You were too young and it wore you out! It was incredibly hard for you and he didn't even cut you slack! If I thought for one moment that you would follow in his footsteps, I wouldn't have given you my support in your hero’s journey and certainly wouldn't have bore your children!”

He hated when she did this. She would get mad and go off on him and say something just nasty and hurtful like this. “Char, you're angry, so you're being mean…”

“You're darn right, I'm angry. Our daughter hates me enough already and now I have to go tell her that I'm forcing her not to be able to do what you promised her. Damn you, Henry, for making me have to make her hate me more!” Her voice was loud and high pitched and she knew that she shouldn’t be doing this in the White House, because somebody somewhere would have something to say about it, but her nerves were bad about this. The relationship with Charlie had been struggling since she was a little girl and whenever Charlotte began working towards being the president, a lot of Charlie’s ways and habits just… would no longer fly. She didn’t understand why SHE had to be a presentable aspect of Charlotte’s life and whenever Charlotte explained how difficult it was and how hard on her the public would be because of her marginalizations - race, gender, superpower, it would be even harder to gain their approval. But, Charlie couldn’t comprehend why she would WANT approval of anybody that she worked hard to get it from. Why not just be herself and they could take it or leave it. Hell, Charlotte playing the game was how she was even privileged enough to feel entitled to people receiving her. She was floating on Charlotte’s respectability and...

“Charlie does not hate you. She loves you. You two just don't have much in common. She wants to impress you, like Hank does. She thinks this is the only way to do that. If she can't do it, she won't hate you, but she'll be worried that you'll never see her the way that you see Hank.”

“This is unfair, Hen.” She whispered it, and her voice sounded almost like begging. It was breaking his heart, but of course, he would fix it. Of course, he would answer whatever plea her words couldn’t form.

“Char… Just, give me the chance to have her as my sidekick. Of course, I'm not gonna follow in Ray's footsteps. She'll be fighting crime with me, but I'll be protecting her while we do.”

“She'll be an easy target for any villain with half a brain!”

“I won't allow it. I promise… Char, I promise you, on us - on my love for you, on our family - that I will never let anything happen to Charlie, in the field, or otherwise.”

“On us, huh?”

He nodded once, “On us.”

She sat in that for a while and he rocked on the balls of his feet, eager for some confirmation that she believed in him and trusted him to do this properly. He was a great father, but he was also a great superhero and with mixing both of those things, yes - he full well knew that it would be much tougher when he had one of the loves of his life in the thick of danger with him, but he wanted both of his girls happy and both of them healthy. “Well, that's a grave promise. Because, if anything does happen to her, Henry, you're dead to me. I mean it.”

“I know. If anything happens to her, I'm dead to me, too. I wouldn't be able to live another day.”

“I want her happy, but I want her safe.”

“We'll make sure that she's both.”

#henry danger #hd fanfic #Nesha HD Fics #Family Danger

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desdemonafictional · 5 years

Text

27 Club

Original fiction

short story (rough draft)

zombies/disturbing imagery

The guard at the gate was wearing sunglasses. It was ten o’clock at night.

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all, “it’s at capacity. No more tickets.”

“Lynda’s my ride home,” Althea said. Her nose ring flashed as her nostrils flared. “She can’t just go now! I’ve got work in the morning!”

“Please,” Lynda said. She was wearing one of the four identical Fight Club t-shirts she’d bought from the sales rack at the Wal-Mart and chopped up in a series of miniscule different ways in search of some kind of post-corporate statement. This was the one that Althea had made: the most daring cut and the clumsiest stitches. “I’ll just hang out at the merch table, I promise.”

The venue was out at the edge of town, a long way from either of their homes. They had been over at Craig’s house, talking about the scene lately, when Althea casually unfolded the letter of invitation she had received the night before from a friend of a friend down at the club, resplendent with one small, free ticket. In strange old-fashioned type it listed the times and the location of the venue, and Althea, by name. They passed the paper around and around, but nobody seemed to know who had booked the stadium out at the edge of town. Kent Kinley, who had been drinking Sierra Mist and vodka at the back table, knew almost every single band that passed through, even the dad-rock ones, and he had no idea who or what the performers were.

“It’s probably Reignstorm’s side project,” Althea said. She leaned forward, cleavage flashing under her tank top. “Mcleod’s been awfully cagey the last couple times I’ve talked to him.”

“I don’t think so, Thea,” Kent had said. “He can barely fill a venue downtown, and the stadium is big.”

Lynda watched Althea consider a series of propositions with the careful poise of a judge presiding over a courtroom, egging the argument on each time it threatened to die down again, and she had thought: this is something Althea likes. And then, as if someone else had opened up her mouth and spoken out of it, she had said: “If you want to check it out, I’ll drive you.”

The look on Althea’s face as her attention finally fell on Lynda—delight, calculation, shrewd interest—made Lynda feel ten years old again, holding out the glittering creature she’d snared to the pretty girl on the swing set whose brown curls flashed gold in the sunshine. The Althea of that distant playground and the Althea of this queenly basement court never seemed so much the same as that moment. Her heart fluttered like a butterfly in her child hands.

Just like it always had been, by the time Lynda realized what she’d done, it was too late to back out.

So here they were, just the two of them together again for the first time in almost a decade, as Althea gradually got more and more bent out of shape yelling at the bouncer. Lynda hung back, unconsciously hovering just outside of the splash zone. At the gate there were posters for old country singers and some pop star’s reunion tour, but nothing with tonight’s dates, and nothing that seemed to match the sound coming over the wall. From the moment she’d stepped out of the car it had seemed to clutch at her, a bass thump that rattled the pebbles on the sidewalk, a rhythm like it was running to catch up with itself and tripping forward into terror.

She jumped as Althea grabbed her hand, startled by the sudden touch and unnerved by the darkness. “Fine!” Althea said, “the band sounds shitty anyway!”

Lynda trotted after her, trying to keep up, until they were well out of sight of the bouncer or the gate. The sound of something like a violin gasped over the top of the wall, setting Lynda’s teeth on edge. It seemed to keen, more like a wounded animal than an instrument.

Althea skidded to a stop. “Okay,” she said, “stand next to the wall. Back up to it.”

Lynda slowly scooted towards the wall, until Althea impatiently pushed her flat against it and pushed a finger into the concrete right at the top of her head. She glanced up from it like she was measuring. Her brown curls flashed green and gold in the street lights. “Shit. You’re not tall enough,” she said. “I won’t be able to pull you up after me.”

Lynda looked from the top of the wall to the marker-finger to Althea, who was scanning the sidewalk. She did not want to hop a fence, and she certainly did not want to get any closer to that keening whine on the other side of the wall, but it had been her idea to come out here and she couldn’t afford to back out now. She had no idea how she’d managed to pull off even this much. Althea had hardly said ten words to her in a month of Craig’s Friday night basement parties, despite how much she’d tried to make herself available for conversation. It had seemed like such mystic serendipity when Althea had first seen her shopping for shirts in the Wal-Mart, stepping out of the aisles like a ghost from a childhood dream. Grown up but still somehow the same as ever, in her winged eyeliner and shrewd eyes, she had paused at the sale rack and Lynda had said – “Althea? Is that you?”

That Althea had spoken to her, remembered her, and extended her casual invitation to basement Friday nights? Incredible enough. But that she had come back across town with Lynda, like it was the easiest thing in the world, to supervise the slicing and stitching of shirts? That whole day seemed unreal to her now. In the sunlight that poured through the carport, Althea had threaded a needle with her beautiful but clumsy hands, talking about music, making the air shine with her laughter. She held a shirt up to the light. Scissors flashed in her grip. For months, Lynda had been raking through the glitter and kohl, trying to find that Althea again.

What had she come here for if not to catch Althea’s attention? What was the point of any of this if she gave up what little gain she’d made now?

“What about the trash can?” Lynda said.

Althea peered down the curve of the wall and spotted the trash can, one of the vaguely coffin shaped kind with the ashtray on top. Teeth flashed under her shiny dark lips. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s try that.”

With the can tipped over on its side, Lynda was almost able to stand on it and touch the top of the wall. She boosted up Althea, who huffed and puffed and pulled herself up onto the flat top of the wall, and then pulled Lynda, who was lighter, up off the trash can after her. From the top of the wall the whole stadium was bathed in lavender light, pulsing and flashing. They lay there for a moment, panting into their elbows, as the whine of the music plunged right through them and dripped down onto the street on the other side. The stage was set with what looked like enormous crystals, maybe carved ice, jutting up into the light. Whoever was on stage was howling into a microphone, not without some melody but with—Lynda couldn’t think of a better way to say it—a brutal kind of mourning. Beside her, Althea sucked in a sudden breath.

“Son of a bitch,” Althea said, and the same time that a man’s voice from the other side of the wall called, “Hey, is somebody—”

“Jump,” Althea whispered, and then she vaulted down onto the grass, landing in a crouch.

Lynda broke out in a cold sweat, hesitating for a moment too long between two bad alternatives, thinking of her ankles and her ribs, and then finally rolled off after Althea just as the first beam of a flashlight passed through the darkness beside her. Her wrists screamed as they hit the ground. Her boots broke right through the soft turf.

“How are we going to get back out?” she wheezed.

Althea was already straightening up, brushing off her dirty hands on her jeans. “Same as everyone else,” she said. “Through the door.”

“But the bouncer—”

“We’ll just leave with the crowd. No problem.” She had turned her attention on the stage, to the howling performer, her eyes narrow with interest. “I feel like I recognize him,” she said. “Let’s get a closer look.”

Hadn’t the bouncer said the venue was full? The crowd seemed awfully small to Lynda, who had expected a production big enough to account for ice sculptures and a light show to attract at least a couple hundred. It seemed like it was just the enormous thrashing mosh pit, and whoever was up in that box they’d erected over it. She’d never seen anything like it. Opera houses she’d seen, sure, with viewing boxes. Actual sports stadiums too. But never anything quite like this.

“He kind of looks like Nathan,” Althea said. She was squinting down at the stage, trying to block the strobe lights with her hand. “You wouldn’t know Nathan, he stopped coming around before you got involved. Craig was sure he was about a year away from signing on with somebody, he had this killer EP he’d produced himself. Some of the guys think he just ditched us for the LA scene but I’m sure he didn’t, he wouldn’t have gone without saying anything—”

As they circled the hill above the mosh, Lynda looked down into the heaving crowd and drew her arms up around herself, unnerved and unhappy and unsure why. Something about the figures below felt wrong, like furniture in a familiar house all moved slightly to the left, like the way the legs of a spider move.

“He would have at least told me,” Althea said, “he never would have left without telling me.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” Lynda whispered, dashing to catch up from where she’d lagged behind.

“Did you think we jumped the fence for our health?” Althea said. “Come on, there’s a space in front of that thing. We can get a good look from there.”

The spectator’s box glinted up at them, a pavilion of curtains and shadowy bodies mounted on strata just high enough to put it at the same height as the stage. It hovered over the sea of frothing bodies like a pirogue floating over the bayou.

“Indie artists are so flaky,” Althea muttered, “I don’t know what it is about them, one day they’re vaping into a paper bag in your parent’s basement and the next day they’re just gone! No calls, no texts, not so much as a hey thank you for the mix CD I really liked the folk metal.”

As the hill dipped down into the bottom of the stadium, a hundred upraised, grasping hands lay at Lynda’s feet. She watched them, blue and purple in the relentless alien light, pumping their fists in time to a catastrophic breakdown. Some of their fingers seemed mashed and flattened, boneless against the dark. Digits seemed to flop from their knuckles. Lynda did not want to go down into that mass.

“Must be a private event,” Althea said, still shading her eyes as she peered through the gloom to the pavilion. “Probably some bougie wanna-be rockers with cash to burn. What do you think would happen if I just walked right in there? I could probably jump from the edge of this hill. Do you think they’d notice?”

“Althea,” Lynda said, “I don’t like this. I think we should go.”

“Where are you gonna go?” Althea said. “Bouncer’s still out there.”

“Couldn’t we just,” Lynda said, “wait in the girl’s room until it’s over?”

“Yeah, that’s where I wanna spend my Friday night, in a trashed bathroom ten feet away from the actual show. Christ Lynda, it’s like fifth grade all over again. Well I’m not missing out on the party because you’re afraid of a ten dollar Target ouija board this time, so you can stay or you can make a break for it, but you’re on your own.”

Lynda rapidly blinked away any water her eyes before it could think of becoming tears. It was fine, it was nothing to cry about, it was just—Althea being Althea. She didn’t mean to be hurtful. It was just these new contact lenses irritating her eyes, that’s what she would say…

“That is Nathan!” Althea shouted, grabbing a fist full of Lynda’s shirt all at once and shaking her. “That rat! He got signed and he didn’t tell me!”

Lynda found herself being dragged forward by the collar, the hasty stitches down her sides popping and tearing against the force of it. As she stumbled down the hill, her feet seemed to touch the ground so little that it felt as if she was flying, or falling. They descended, hair whipping out behind them, and Lynda thought for a moment that she met the eye of someone inside the pavilion—for a crystalline moment, a pair of eyes almost glowing with the lights from the stage, narrowed on her. And then they were down in the pit, with the rest of the crowd, looking up at Nathan’s sunken face. It was hard to see what Althea found so interesting in him; his skin was drawn tight around his bones like paper around a frame, his knuckles clutching the microphone seemed like the segments of some sickly worm. Althea shrieked and waved up at him, doing her best to be heard over the deafening noise, but Lynda drew back from the stage.

There was no security in sight. Bodies bumped and thumped into each other, never quite crossing the invisible line between the front row and the bottom of the stage. There was no gate. As Lynda turned back to find someone in the crowd who might stop and explain it to her, she found herself face to face with a man caught in the frothing, wide-eyed throes of an overdose, his eyes fixed on the stage above as he was bounced from shoulder to shoulder in the fray. He never fell. He only continued to surge forward and stagger back, blue in the face and white at the lips, his eyes as glassy as a corpse’s, his hands reaching up, up—

Lynda tore out of Althea’s grip, almost clawing at the grass in her hurry to get up the hill again, like a child so frightened to climb the dark staircase that she went on all fours. She collapsed partway up, remembering Althea too late. She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t go forward. She scrambled up onto her back and drew her knees up to her chest, watching the crowd thrash below her in numb dread. Who were they? What were they? In the flashing darkness she could just make out one jawless horror, skin blown back and glittering sticky with what had to be blood. At their head Althea was still shouting at the stage, jumping in time to the music as it coughed and howled. There was no rest for the band between melodies. They plunged forward without a pause for breath, or water, or tuning.

A persistent flash of motion at the edge of Lynda’s vision drew her finally away from the macabre scene before her. Inside the pavilion—now almost level with her again—a figure was beckoning her forward. They gestured to the gap between the hill and the banister, miming something like a leap across the gap. Their beautiful high cheekbones and darkly shadowed eyes could have been male or female or anything in-between, but their expression was like the sharp interest of a child watching an insect, fingers already green with the guts of previous playmates. Lynda looked from the stage, to Althea bobbing furiously in the ghastly crowd, and finally back to the pavilion. What had shaken Lynda down to her gut, Althea hadn’t even noticed. Right now, Lynda knew from dismal experience, she was a buzzing fly at the edge of Althea’s vision. Her eye was always fixed on the next big thing, and tonight that thing was Nathan. Maybe if Lynda knew something, maybe if Lynda could bring her something bigger and juicier than Nathan, she could lure Althea up away from that damn stage. What other option was there? Lynda climbed to her feet and, with a breath so deep her chest ached, took a running leap at the edge of the pavilion.

The edge of the banister punched the wind out of her chest. As she scrabbled to pull herself over, eyes watering, the beautiful stranger only watched with delight. Lynda slid to the floor of the pavilion, panting, and looked for the first time at the inside of the spectator’s box. There were maybe a dozen people lounging across the array of furniture, drinking something pale and bubbly from crystal flutes. The ones nearest her all watched surreptitiously from the corners of their eyes.

“Look at you,” said the one who had beckoned her over the gap, showing a set of pearly shark-tipped teeth. “I don’t believe you were invited to the show.”

Lynda pushed herself up, a hand on the banister. “Sorry,” she said, “it was Althea’s idea. Sorry. We didn’t realize it was a private event. Is this, like, somebody’s sweet sixteen?”

But even as she said it, she knew that couldn’t be right. What kind of birthday party was full of scores of dying metal heads? The stranger wore a jacket that was something like a military dress uniform, glinting with silver buttons, too sharp and clean to be entirely punk. They were all like that up here, sharp and clean and whole and strange, none of them a day over thirty or an hour under eighteen. One, with her long hair pulled back like shining raven’s wings, lifted her hand and took a drink from a passing tray without ever looking away from Lynda.

She swallowed. “I’m Lynda, with a ‘Y’,” she said, as she always did, face hot with embarrassment. She was aware that no amount of stylish ‘Y’s could make her name sound any less like an advertisement for mom-jeans. She knew that, and she still insisted on doing it, the same as she’d done since she’d first introduced herself to Althea a decade ago, lying to feel a little closer, a little cooler. The day they met, Althea had already been a kind of royalty, with her fairy tale name and her endless curls. A fifth grade lie she’d lived ever since. By the time Althea left, everything that had been Linda Dacule was lost in the world of the false “Y” forever.

“Hello, Lynda with a ‘Y’,” the stranger said. “You can call me Robin Goodfellow. What do you think of the show?”

She glanced back down at the pit, but only for a moment. She couldn’t bear to look for any longer. “What’s wrong with them?” she asked. “They should be in so much pain. Some of them look like they’d keel right over if everyone else stopped shoving them around.”

Robin leaned over the banister, flashing eyes fixed on the world below. “I think rock’n roll is immortal, don’t you?” they said. “It’s a religion. It’s got its pantheon of saints, its Kurt Cobains and its Janice Joplins. If you live fast and die young, you can go on forever. Your friend gets it.”

Lynda followed their gaze, trying to spot whatever they were looking at, but all she could make out was the 27CLUB emblazoned across the drum set on stage. She shifted uncomfortably against the banister. “I’m sorry?” she said.

“Your friend,” Robin said. “She’s one of those girls who’s going places. Maybe not everyone likes her, but she’s always welcome. She’s bright, but not too bright. When she walks into the room, everyone makes a little more room for her.”

“Uh,” Lynda said. “She’s always been like that.”

At the front of the crowd, Althea had stopped shouting for Nathan’s attention. Now her hands reached up, as if in supplication, and she surged with the same urgent need as the rest of the crowd. Standing where she was at the head of them all, it was almost as if they were following her, riding her tide against the unforgiving shore. Out of all of them, she was the only one perfectly whole, a queen among the legions.

“Out by twenty-five, dead or alive,” Robin remarked.

Lynda looked down at the crowd. There was something too perfect about their synchronization, something inhuman in the rhythm of their surge. She was certain that if she could see Althea’s eyes now, they would be as black and hollow as Nathan’s.

“Why don’t I feel it?” she said. “What’s so special about me?”

“Special?” Robin repeated, delighted. “There’s nothing special about you! You’re absolutely ordinary. Designated driver Lynda. Boring, supportive, ordinary Lynda. That’s why you can’t feel what she feels. She’s a star, and you’re just a stage hand!”

Lynda went red in the face, fixing her furious stare at her boots. Surely she was more than that. No matter how she shook out her memory, she could find nothing else but dutiful offering after dutiful offering, a pair of clapping hands, a set of keys—a no one, an empty space. Even when they were children, Lynda had had trouble keeping Althea’s attention. The world was so big, and Althea wanted all of it. When they were thirteen, the world had finally won the war for Althea’s love. Lynda had watched the car door close on Althea and the boy with the brand new driver’s permit, and even then she had known that it was ending.

“We should,” Lynda said, “we should go. Sorry for crashing your party.”

“She won’t go with you,” Robin said. “You can try, if you want. She won’t, though.”

“Why not?” Lynda said.

“There’s nowhere to go from here,” Robin said. “This is the cutting edge, Lynda with a ‘Y’. The bleeding edge. Even if you managed to drag her home, she’d only dream of us.”

“She can dream all she wants,” Lynda said, “but we’re going.”

“Pearls before swine,” Robin said, clicking their tongue. “Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of kids are dying to join this party?”

“It doesn’t seem like so many,” Lynda said, looking pointedly down at the pit.

“Well not everybody has what it takes,” Robin said, with a shrug. “You certainly don’t.”

Lynda tightened her fists.

“Oh, no, don’t be angry. Why don’t you stay a while,” Robin said, soothing now, voice softening. “Have a drink with us. Watch the show. You’ll have something interesting to talk about when you go home, won’t you? And with Althea gone, people will be looking for someone interesting to talk to. You know you don’t have to be a stage hand all your life, Lynda with a ‘Y’. Have a drink with us.”

As smoothly as a clockwork scene, a server passed just beyond them. Robin reached out, lifting a single glass of champagne from the silver platter as it went. Not a drop spilled in their hand. They held it out to her, bubbles glowing in its pale depths.

“Besides,” Robin added, “we both know you’re too afraid to go back down there. You can’t even walk home in the dark alone. You slept with the closet light on until you were sixteen. That’s awfully old for such things.”

Lynda paused with her hand half way to the offered glass, shaken. What—what had she been doing? She snatched back her hand and retreated.

“Thank you for having us,” she said, heels sliding across the floor. “Enjoy the rest of your party.”

“She won’t thank you for it!” Robin called after her. “She won’t love you for it! How could anyone ever care for an ordinary thing like you?”

Lynda paused, one foot on the banister. She would have liked to turn and say, no, that was a lie. But the truth was, she didn’t know. She was afraid that Robin was right. She was afraid of everything that lay below her, the clawing pit and the howling singers and Althea’s dead black eyes. With another deep breath, Lynda climbed over the banister and leapt down to the slope of the hill. I am afraid, she thought, but if I just move fast enough—it’s like the stairs, you have to climb them so fast that there’s no time to think about it. You have to run.

Lynda flew down the hill, down past the grasping hands of the pit, past the breakers that surged towards her, down to where Althea was. She battered away scores of reaching arms. “Althea,” she gasped, “we have to go, we have to—”

The moment she put her hand on Althea’s shoulder, the crowd broke over her. Their bloodied and boneless and grasping hands closed around her, dragging her away from Althea, who was deaf to everything but the stage. Stitches pulled and snapped down the sides of Lynda’s butchered Wal-Mart shirt. Hands smeared their gore across her skin, endless fingers slimy with sweat, nails tacky with blood. Hairs all down her arms prickled under the chill ooze. She was afraid to try and pry them all off—if she let go of Althea, she was certain they would drag her back under before she could peel herself free.

“Althea!” she shouted, “listen to me, you know me!”

Althea didn’t so much as flinch. A heavy hand clutched at Lynda’s neck, fingers digging into her windpipe. She coughed.

“Thea!” she said. “Look at me! God damn it, will you look at me for once in your life!”

Althea reached for the stage, her fingers grasping at the limelight, her eyes reflecting back the glittering darkness. She was gone, she was as surely gone as she had been when Chase Conner looked at her first the first time in eighth grade, with his new learner’s permit and his acoustic guitar, and his mysterious high school savvy. Lynda had never been enough to hold her back. There was a gulf of a hundred unanswered texts between them, more than half a decade of silence, and all the little lies that Lynda had built this bridge to her out of, starting with the first paltry “Y”. She didn’t even like folk metal! But she had pretended to, for an excuse to sit next to Althea on Friday nights in Craig’s basement, picking through the glittering queen to find shards of the girl beneath. The girl who couldn’t hold a needle properly, who sat in the evening for hours and laughed at her own stitches, that girl could—that girl might—

“Why is nothing ever enough?” Her fingers slipped over Althea’s shoulder, fear and sweat threatening to tear them free. “Why am I never enough?”

Tears burned her eyes as she dug her nails into Althea’s arm. She’d thought that serendipitous day in the carport meant something, that it was the start of something, but maybe she had only been kidding herself. Maybe there had never been anything to resurrect.

“Just tell me you want to stay!” Lynda shouted. “Thea, if you tell me you want to stay I’ll let go! Just say something to me, anything! I loved you, I loved you and I love you and if you didn’t love me then that’s fine, but at least have the decency to tell me goodbye!”

There was a glint of light on Althea’s cheek. It startled Lynda. Her hand flinched open, just for a moment, but long enough for the clawing of the crowd to drag her back, their ruined but relentless fingers closing over her shoulders, drawing her back into the froth and ooze of bodies frozen as if forever in the moment of their deaths. She reached—her sweating fingers slipped—and Althea caught her, hand tight around wrist. Althea’s face was wet as she pulled, locking her grip and reeling Lynda back out of the crowd, over the invisible line that kept the pit at bay. Lynda fell into her arms as she finally broke free. They stumbled back against the edge of the stage, where the thud of the drums rumbled straight through their bodies. Althea said something, weak and lost in the wash of the music. In front of them, the pit threw themselves against that invisible edge endlessly, maybe reaching for the two of them, maybe just reaching—

Althea took hold of Lynda and ran. They crested the hill, passed the pavilion full of glittering, unblinking eyes, flew past the empty merch stand, and crashed into the ticketing area. Behind the booth, the bouncer turned his blank sunglasses to face them.

Lynda froze on the threshold, with the howl of the stage behind her and the icy silence of the ticketing ahead. The bouncer sat perfectly still. His face was expressionless. Althea pulled her friend close against her side and walked slowly past the booth. He followed them like an owl, his head slowly turning, as if his eyes were pinned in place behind those glasses.

“Goodnight,” Lynda whispered to him, fixing straight ahead until she couldn’t see him anymore. She did not look back.

The street outside was silent and dark. Not even the relentless thump of the drums could be heard through the wall, which had nearly vibrated before. Her ears rang with the deafening quiet. At her heel, a playbill from last week’s show skittered over the concrete, caught in the wind. She shivered, wondering if the bouncer was still watching them but too terrified to check.

“What was that,” Althea said, sounding as dry-mouthed and miserable as if she was caught in a brutal hangover. “What the hell was that.”

Lynda hesitated. “I don’t think it’s a place many people leave,” she said. “They wanted you to stay.”

“Oh,” Althea said, screwing up her face. Even sweaty and miserable and scowling, there was still something about her. “They were singing about diamonds,” she said, rubbing ineffectually at her smeared cheek. “And dry flowers—yellow petals—the sound of drowning—”

“Let’s get you home,” Lynda said, scanning the parking lot for a sign of her car. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere else.”

“It was so goddamn sad,” Althea mumbled. For a moment, her cheek rested against Lynda’s shoulder. “They were singing it for me. I could see Nathan’s eyes…”

Althea reached up clumsily, fingers bumping the skin below Lynda’s eye. Lynda froze.

“You used to wear glasses,” Althea said. “Why’d you stop wearing glasses?”

Lynda felt herself soften, carefully closing her hand around Althea’s. “You said they were lame.”

Althea made a sound half like a snort and slumped against her side. Her flannel jacket flapped in the wind, the only sound on a silent street. “Did I say that?”

“Two weeks ago,” Lynda said. “In the kitchen. You poured me a vodka cranberry.”

Althea pulled back her fingers, gentle as the flutter of an insect’s wings. Her nails glinted as golden as her hair, a halo of mussed curls against the street light. “Damn,” she said. “Why the hell did I say that.”

She shook her head. The playbill skittered away from their tired feet, twisted in the wind, and melted away into the night.

“I heard your voice,” she said, “in the song. Yellow petals—the loneliest thing I ever heard—and then I heard your voice.”

#original fiction

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forsythiias · 5 years

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hey ! i’m rachel. i’m 20 - almost 21 ! - she / her pronouns, gmt timezone ( i live in ireland and spend like a week in england every month at this rate . u guys will get used to it ). a fun fact abt me is that i spoke to hugh jackman & gave him a wolverine pin rly recently . that’s all i got . anyway. i’m playing jellybean jones, the baby of the fp jones fam ! she’s my absolute KID and i would LOVE to plot , so please feel free to shoot me a message or smash that like button and i’ll come at you in the not so distant future.

⌜ genderfluid, she / they / he | out of time by the rolling stones, the local record store, the pop culture fiend ⌟ ⏤ hey, isn’t that FORSYTHIA PARTHENIA JONES? the NINETEEN year old SOUTH SIDER has lived in town for their WHOLE LIFE, and has always denied their resemblance to DIANA SILVERS. they’ve been a STUDENT & WAITRESS for a while now, and i guess it makes sense - they’ve always seemed so TENACIOUS & INDIVIDUALISTIC, though i have heard that they can be pretty GARRULOUS & ACERBIC. did you hear about how they SOLD JACKED CARS IN TOLEDO TO PUT THEMSELVES THROUGH COLLEGE? i always knew that there was something up with them. you can check out her pinterest board HERE and her stat page HERE.

you can CHANGE the world, girl, you really, truly can.

part one of three : bullet point history. trigger warnings for talk of infant health issues.

august fifth, 2000. it was a sticky autumn night when FORSYTHIA PARTHENIA JONES entered the world with a pitiful cry. the only daughter of two south siders, gladys and fp, and the younger sister of a one jughead jones, she wasn’t born to MUCH ; which made all that she did have matter all the more. a mother and a father who loved her? check. an older brother she would someday idolize and love like no other in the world? double check. a small ventricular septal defect, discovered only after her birth? triple check.

forsythia was, it seemed, destined to be a sickly child. her first few months were dotted with trips to the emergency room and visits to a local doctor, something always seeming to be wrong. infant colic was ten times worse. she caught a chill when she was two weeks old and needed to spend a WEEK in the icu because of the resulting chest infection. the doctors who treated her at birth had been confident over time that the hole in her heart - jellybean shaped, on the very first ultrasound - would close by itself, as many do. hers, however, didn’t. as she got older, the effects became more pronounced. she kept catching chest infections. she couldn’t seem to put on weight. breathing was, at times, a struggle. and she was SLEEPIER than any baby they had ever known before. the original plan had been to wait and see and hope that her tiny heart healed on it’s own. at ten months old, it became apparent that this would never happen ; and the surgery was scheduled.

your baby is supposed to be PERFECT. she isn’t supposed to take ill every few days and ultimately be wheeled into a room for open heart surgery. it was likely a very harrowing experience, and those first few months of her life were understandably marred - but if there had ever been any doubts before, it became clearer than day when she came out of surgery that the youngest jones was a FIGHTER, through and through. they’d been prepared for a month long wait to bring her home again - it ended up being a fortnight. she didn’t cry, after. she didn’t FUSS. it was as if she had known that the first little while had been tough, and was trying her hardest to make all of their lives that little bit easier. lord knew that the jones’ needed it, especially when the stress of all that was going on with her had combined with their bills.

now affectionately named jellybean for the defect she had survived, she grew into a remarkably NORMAL child. there were differences, of course, between her and the kids that she grew up surrounded by - she required regular checkups, she needed to dress extra warmly in winter, and she always got that little bit more wiped out than everybody else - but anyone told the story behind the scar in the middle of her chest gaped in shock. the girl who swung from the lower boughs of the trees at the edge of sunnyside trailer park and sprinted after her friends at full speed had once had a hole in her heart? impossible. that sort of health issue was reserved for those with a lot less life in them than the high spirited girl that jellybean became known as being, and never once did she allow it to define her. she was a SPITFIRE, pure and simple, and she’s proud to say that never once did she let herself sit out of an experience just because she was worried about what would happen if she partook.

life was not all sunshine and adventure, though. not every child notices the cracks in their home life appearing. jellybean didn’t. not until the rug was pulled right from under her feet. to her wide eyed and rose colored self, everything seemed to happen overnight. one day, they were happy. the next, her dad was an alcoholic and she and her mum were in transit to toledo, where they would move in with stony faced grandparents who treated her with corporate coldness. she didn’t understand the why of it all - couldn’t have even hoped to, when she was still so young. the reality of her father losing his job and their lives going to shit thanks to it didn’t sink in. all she knew was that she had lost the father she idealized and the big brother that she had always wanted to BE.

she spoke to them both on the phone, of course. she was even lucky to see jughead a couple times, though their grandparents never wanted to hear about it afterwards, no matter how excited she was. it must have been jarring for him the first time he turned up to find that the pigtailed little girl who loved kids pop that he remembered had sheared her hair and was now listening strictly to pink floyd and other classics. but none of it was the same. not really. it wasn’t having her family together. to say that her drastic transformation might have stemmed from a place of resentment towards whatever forces were at play in ruining her family - that starting to go by JB, so similar to the FP that her nana and granddad refused to allow be mentioned around them might’ve been an act of defiance - wouldn’t have been incorrect. she wanted things to go back to normal. the fact that they didn’t killed her.

and they never really did. she and her mom returned to riverdale, a new opportunity spotted, but things never went back to how they had been before. she learned not to talk about it, though - and now she’s older, wiser, and she knows how to hide her feelings behind an easy bluff. there’s nothing to do but make the most of what she does have, right? a new brother. a new life. a new self. she has to stop dwelling on what she used to have, she supposes ; though sometimes, it hurts to think about what she’s lost.

part two of three : headcanons.

jellybean is gonna be a lawyer someday, but she NEVER really wanted to be one. her dream from ages 3 to 11, she wanted to be a princess. she overheard some of the older serpents sarcastically referring to the jones family as royalty, and she really chose to run with it - refusing to take off a makeshift crown for the first month and getting called princess jellybean by her father for the next few years. after that phase had passed, though, she found her real passion - and for most of living memory, she’s wanted to own a record store. nothing too extravagant, really, just a first floor, one room sorta deal - she’d plaster the walls with posters of the greats and keep the merchandise in crates resting on rickety tables, and every friday night she’d hold a jams night where people could come and lounge around the floor on beanie bags, listening to some of their favorites. she had it all planned, and it’s still something of a dream - but if there’s one thing that jones’ family knows how to do, it’s sacrifice their dreams for harsh reality. with penny peabody DISGRACED, the serpents and southsiders in general need someone who knows them to represent them, when things go to trial, and feeling a sense of duty to the people she was raised around, jb bit the bullet and stepped up. she’s got a love for arguing and a knack for winning, so much so that god HELP whoever goes against her in a courtroom, someday.

she has yet to officially join the serpents ( her parents wouldn’t approve of it, for one, not now, and there’s a whole host of OTHER reasons ) - but jb went right ahead and got a tattoo on her right hand anyway, cause as a jones, she’s still serpent adjacent. the only difference between the picture linked and the one she has is that hers is done in white ink - her way of keeping things lowkey while still honoring her heritage.

miss her with a motorbike. they’re COOL and all, but jb values her life a little bit too much to trust a two wheeled death trip waiting to happen. she’s more into classic cars, anyway, and has pretty recently invested in the frame of a 1979 pontiac gto from the scrapyard that she plans on fixing up to perfection.

her style is southside meets cute. of course she loves her leather and fishnet combos - but jb is ALSO a huge fan of dungarees and sloganed t-shirts in a whole assortment of colors. anything ‘edgy’ she wears ( big boots, mesh tops, the list .. could go on ) gets coupled with something a little less so ( pink scrunchies, colorful makeup, a disney bag … again, the list could go on ), and that makes her her.

and finally, for now, cause i’m not sure i’ve done a good job of conveying it - jellybean is a good kid. she REALLY, truly is. she’s got some bite to her ( enough of a short fuse that it’s advisable not to test her limit ) & wouldn’t be her fathers daughter if she DIDN’T, but she’s also genuinely sweet. being a serpent doesn’t equal being a bitch, and so long as people out there treat her with respect, she’ll do the SAME. jb doesn’t turn unless she’s given reason to … and if they do, she won’t hold back.

part three of three : wanted connections.

fp & gladys jones !

kids from the south ( or north ) side that are in or around the same age, who jellybean would have grown up with / went to school with !! they might have reconnected after she returned to riverdale and now know her as who she’s become, but they also might be people who she lost contact with for a LONG TIME and who never got to see her post transformation - any and all variance on this wc would be fun!

anyone attending carson college who she might, maybe, rub shoulders with !! i’d love the most mundane of connections - maybe they sit with each other during lunch, or they help each other study, or one time, jb dropped a book on their head in the library and they’ve been friends / enemies since! gimme anything !

regulars at pops / the speakeasy.

so .. she’s pretty self sufficient, and she’s paying her way in terms of college by working shifts at pops and picking up extras in the speakeasy. she’d know a lot of people from that, i’d wager, and i’m sure she has her favorites!

more people southside serpent adjacent who she can play off of !! one of jb’s goals in life is to become an OFFICIAL member of the gang, which she hasn’t yet - but she is something of a southside princess, and that means she’d know most of them in some way!

p much anything else !

#pep.intro #「･ﾟ ♕ . ･ * she was not a woman born easy to swallow ― forsythia parthenia jones. 」#i m so grateful to god n myself one yr ago for having a whole ass bio already wrote .... blows kiss to the stars

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justjessame · 3 years

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Babysitting Butcher Chapter 49

I was on the phone when Billy returned with lunch and he raised an eyebrow when he heard my tone. “What do you mean you don’t know if that chip has been neutralized?” I was ready to chew a steel nail in two after the research I was dealing with. “I’m telling you, there’s OUR chip, another chip that seems to be of an UNKNOWN origin, and then there’s a VOUGHT chip. So why the fuck hasn’t anyone neutralized at least the unknown one if not both the unknown and the Vought?” I listened as Raynor’s replacement squawked about the tone and my use of the word ‘fuck’ and rolled my eyes, blood boiling in an entirely normal way. “Let me explain something to you, I’M in charge of THIS office and at the end of the day ANY and ALL supes come under MY jurisdiction. Didn’t YOU read the fucking handbook and bylaws? So when I ask why something wasn’t done from YOUR end, I don’t want a lecture on HOW I asked it, I want to know the ANSWER to the fucking question. Do you understand?” I waited, listening to a noise that sounded like teeth grinding and then assurances that she’d find out something for me. “Good, I’ll expect it by the end of the day.” Another grinding noise, and a reminder of the time of day and I sighed. “Fine, the end of tomorrow then.”

I hung up and smiled up at Billy. “What’s for lunch?”

“Throwing your weight around a bit are you?” He leaned down to kiss me, then put the bags bearing the name of our favorite Chinese take-out place on his desk. “Since your desk looks like you’re preparing to invade suburbia, let’s eat over here.”

Opening cartons and sighing happily at the scents of my favorite dishes, I told Billy what I wasn’t learning about Ryan’s situation. “No one seems to know shit about shit, Billy.” I stabbed a piece of sweet and sour chicken with enough force to make his eyes widen and glared at it. “The neighborhood? It’s been bought and sold through so many corporations and our government programs that who the fuck can tell who owns it now?” Even Joseph was having issues wading through the piles of bullshit that I’d found online and in our own resources. “The tutors and his guardians? Let’s see,” I reached behind me and grabbed a sheaf of papers near the edge. “Blue Eyes is actually Regina Davos, she’s been with the agency for roughly three years, this is her first major duty, before that? The fuck does anyone know? Literally, it’s like she never existed. The male? I can’t find shit about him. Not a boo peep. No facial recognition, nothing. One part of me is thinking, alright, so our government went fully dark with this particular rotation, but Ryan is under ten, he’s a child who does have superpowers, but aside from Homelander and Vought, he has no known enemies.” I bit into my crumpling chicken and chewed. It didn’t make any fucking sense.

Billy was eating as he digested what I told him, or ranted at him as the case may be. “What you’re saying is that Ryan’s being guarded by two people that have no known background, in a place that has no known owners, surrounded by no neighbors, and being taught by people who I assume fall under the same shit?” I nodded, in a fucking nutshell. “And the CIA ain’t got a single solitary fucking clue about the chips?”

I sighed. “I sent the information the gizmo application that Frenchie set up for me to him and he’s the one who told me there are THREE chips. Vought’s, ours, and this third one that he can’t tell who implanted, since the gizmo only shows the devices, not who put them there. We’re guessing about theirs, ours, and the other.” Billy nodded as he ate his noodles and I went on. “I call Raynor’s replacement, useless dull witted cunt,” he snorted so hard I thought he was going to blow a noodle out of his nose so I waited until I knew he was safe from death by noodle in the nostril. “And she’s utterly baffled by the entire idea of Ryan. The fact that he has chips inside of him is absurd, much less three.” I rolled my eyes and stabbed another bite of chicken. “How does this happen, Billy?”

Taking a deep breath, Billy pushed his carton of noodles away and sat back in his chair. I watched him as he processed what I’d gone on about and I ate more of my chicken and even managed to choke down some rice.

“Mallory made the arrangements, at least that’s what she told me.” I shook my head, that’s not what the paperwork was showing. While Grace had an early hand in getting shit started, she’d been cut out of the decisions early on. “She said he’d be taken care of, that he’d be protected, Ronnie.” He looked as worried as I felt, which fucking sucked, but I needed a partner in this and who better than the man I love?

“I’ve put in an order that I’ll be monitoring this weekly,” I sent it up the flagpole, I hadn’t only thrown my proverbial weight to Raynor’s replacement, I’d gone full power mad bitch from Hell while he’d been gone. “Sundays are now Ryan’s ‘therapy’ days.” He nodded, biting his lip. “I think that you’re going to have to do more than sit outside, Billy.” I hated to do it, force him inside, force him to confront how he felt about Ryan full on, but I didn’t trust that house or those guardians.

“Wasn’t planning on it if you went back anyway,” he wasn’t looking at me, but I knew from the way he was staring off into thin air that he was planning for something that even I wouldn’t contemplate. “There’s not a hint of cover in that entire fucking neighborhood, I know, I walked it, rode it, hell I did everything but climb a house.” His eyes finally met mine. “Drone.”

Frenchie and Kimiko were in the office the next day when my former supervisor called in with her ‘update’. Billy and Frenchie were looking over the plans I’d managed to find for the neighborhood that Ryan was living in, while Kimiko listened to them and pointed out things that I’m sure neither noticed.

“You’re saying that no one has ANY idea who placed this third chip in a child?” I was fast becoming beyond irritated and had to thank God and the doctor who figured out the cure to what had nearly killed me because I’d definitely be filling my fucking office with steam if I was still under the influence of that shit. “That while WE definitely thought it was reasonable to CHIP a child like a fucking RESCUE DOG, and VOUGHT also chipped him, we haven’t a FUCKING CLUE who else tagged him?” Frenchie’s eyes widened at my voice being raised, but Billy tapped his shoulder to get him back on task. “How is this possible? We took custody of this minor to protect him and NO ONE considered, I don’t know, deactivating the ONE chip we ACTUALLY fucking knew about?” I was pissed off, Ryan had NO ONE, no real advocate and this shit was getting tiresome. “Now that we know about the SECOND chip, is anyone going to, I don’t know, neutralize it?” I listened to her make noises that were vaguely apologetic but also offered no real answer. “Great, you’re still as useful as ever.”

Hanging up, I sat back in my chair and stared out the window at the view that Anthony had laughingly called the best view in the building when I first arrived. Sure, best view if I wanted to stare at the back of the building and an alley and I guess the skylight that showed - fuck.

“Have we found out anything about the next member of The Seven?” They were down two, last count. Translucent and Black Noir, no, wait three, The Deep was still landlocked in Ohio or some shithole. “Billy?”

“Soldier Twat was being considered,” he’d gone to his desk and was flipping through the files. “Aside from that, I know they were in talks to rehabilitate Fishy again, but that’s all I heard.”

“Herogasm is over, the escorts are either being paid off or scraped off the surfaces of where they were fucked into oblivion,” I sighed, considering all the shit that we could be being handed. “MM is still working on the other possible Sage Groves, and I think I figured out who chipped Ryan.”

I wasn’t looking at the others, my eyes still on the building in the distance. The one that Anthony or any supe loving freak might think would add to the fucking view. The Seven’s building, rising like a phallus of bullshit, and in it was Ryan’s dad, who fucked a Nazi willing to do anything to build what her hateful asshole past wanted most of all. And who better to be the REAL poster child for that cause than a little boy born of an actual SUPE - and not ANY supe, but THE SUPE. Stormfront, that fucking bitch. While she and Homelander had taken Ryan on their little kidnapped ‘reality’ run, she’d found a chance to embed her own little homing beacon in him and I’d been running my ass ragged trying to figure it out. Bitch. I truly hoped that she was roasting in a Hell that was hotter than anything her tits being lasered by Homelander could have prepared her for.

Turning back to the room, I shook my head and shuffled the pile of papers nearest me. One fucking puzzle down, around a million more to deal with, and probably a trillion more lining up behind those. One at a time, I told myself, as Billy came over and rubbed my shoulders. One at a time, because that was going to be the only way to manage this entire mess.

#billy butcher x ofc #the boys #alternate universe

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jayfurr · 5 years

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My Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory

I apologize to the world.

Yes, I know that statement sounds really stupid. But hear me out.

I know that I often rub people the wrong way. I can be thick as a brick and not realize when others find my presence or my behavior grating. I have often been so needy and so focused on attention-seeking behavior that I’ve taken situations that should have been about others and tried to make them all about me, me, me. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve interacted in a social setting or work setting with others only to come home and realize what a total jackass I had been.

For most of my life, I’ve been the guy you don’t invite to the party. The guy who causes you to abruptly change the subject of conversation when he walks into the room.

I get it: I’m annoying.

I wish I’d had this epiphany sooner. But it wasn’t until I spent quite a few sessions with a therapist back in 2012-2013 that I realized how in need of getting myself under control I really was. I’ve worked very hard on anger management and self-awareness and focusing more on the needs of others.

I don’t think I do a very good job in this regard, but at least I’m trying.

I’m not an alcoholic; I hardly ever drink these days. I’ve never done illegal drugs. I don’t have a gambling problem — in fact, I don’t even buy scratch-off tickets, let alone taking trips to Vegas. From time to time I overeat, but never gotten to the point of having stacks of empty donut boxes next to my bed, and in any event, I’ve lost 50 pounds this year (yay). I sometime spend money on stupid things I don’t need in the vain hope that they’ll cheer me up, but I don’t compulsively buy things with no rhyme or reason. And so on.

So when I say I’ve spent plenty of time reading materials from twelve-step programs, you might go “why?”

I grew up in a family where my father basically treated his kids like resented houseguests who’d overstayed their welcome. He literally never had a kind word for any of us. It’s pretty obvious to me now that my father should never have had kids, but like a lot of people, he didn’t figure that out until it was too late.

Dad had some very strange ideas about proper child-raising; he constantly reminded me not to take pride in things like having above-average intelligence, because I’d done nothing to achieve it — it was something I’d been born with and hence I had no right to feel special about it. He went to great pains NOT to compliment me or praise me for scoring highly on gifted-and-talented tests and assessments because he didn’t want me going around bragging.

I wound up pathetically desperate for attention. I’d act out in hyperactive ways in elementary school and, surprise surprise, had absolutely zero friends. Never did homework, either, all the way through high school. There was no incentive to do well in school; Dad wouldn’t have treated me any better if I had. I ate lunch at a table by myself all through middle school and most of high school, absurdly lonely but having no idea how to make friends or get positive attention.

I wised up a little bit, socially, by the time I finished high school and managed to become a class clown of sorts. But that didn’t translate into anything worthwhile; I never had a girlfriend, never went on a date. (It’s not like Dad would have let me have the car to take a girl out on a date, anyway.)

I somehow got into college and kept right on being an infuriating ass. I was the poster guy for “does not, can not, LEARN”.

And so it goes. I wound up in a career where “being paid attention to” is at the center of everything: I’m a corporate trainer, and from what I understand, apparently a reasonably competent one, in that I’ve managed to keep my current job for 21 years and counting. I get to run my mouth and be the focus of attention ALL DAY LONG.

<sarcasm>Woo-hoo! Score!</sarcasm>

(How did I ever get married? I was desperate and the woman who became my wife was equally desperate. We were both people who left a trail of pissed-off acquaintances wherever we went. We were perfect for each other. How we’ve lasted 22 years is anyone’s guess.)

I’m addicted to attention.

Yes, I know how sad it is that I work out my daddy issues by trying to get people to look at me, listen to me, notice me.

I know it’s not going to change anything in any substantial way; no matter how much me-me-me I do, it’s not going to bring my father back from the grave and get him to say “I respect you, son” or “Good job, son.”

I don’t think there’s a 12-step group out there for “attention whores” (pardon the expression). But if there was, I imagine I’d be there week after week going “Hi, my name’s Jay, and I’m an attention whore.”

As you probably know, one of the core concepts of a twelve-step program is taking an inventory of oneself and one’s flaws and then working to overcome them. Another core concept is making amends. I’ve been working pretty hard for the past seven years on the first part there — to the point that I think I’ve come to annoy those people who can’t entirely avoid interacting with me with endless talk of exactly how awful I am, and in what specific ways my awfulness expresses itself.

It’s the second part that’s so hard to do: the amends.

When you’ve driven people crazy your whole life through aggravating, maddening “acting out”, it’s not exactly easy to contact someone and go “hey, I’m really, really sorry for being such an asshole that time”.

Especially when the act of reaching out is itself an attempt to get attention.

The best, most effective “amends” I can think to make is to basically just disappear, as much as I can, as much as my still-needy ego will let me.

I used to do a lot of social media — now my Facebook account is completely devoid of content, to the extent that I don’t even have a profile photo. I still tweet a little bit now and then, but usually think better of it a day or two later and scurry around deleting everything.

Most of the time these days I just want to be invisible, to go unnoticed, to just completely drop off the radar. If I didn’t want to follow a few organizations and pages on Twitter and Facebook, I’d delete the accounts for good and save you all my presence. That said, from time to time I deactivate both accounts for a few weeks or months; no one ever notices me gone. I only maintain the furrs.org blog itself because once in a while it’s vaguely enjoyable to do a bit of writing; I’m well aware that you can count the number of people who read this crap on the fingers of one hand (but I thank those of you who do).

And at the end of the day, I’m well aware that the act of writing and posting this long-winded garbage is itself a cry for attention. But I’m only really writing it so I can pin it to my Twitter and Facebook profiles in case someone does wonder where I’ve gone. I doubt anyone will come looking for me, and as a result read this, but if they do, well… I apologize to them too.

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#IFTTT #WordPress

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succeedly · 6 years

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5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Rick Rando on episode 260 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

School culture and policies are part of what helps us combat bullying in schools. Rick Rando, school empowerment speaker, shares what schools can do to help stop bullying.

Check out Reinventing Writing, the book I authored that teaches about the nine collaborative writing tools, how to build writing communities, and tips and tricks for collaborative writing in Google Docs and more.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Link to show: www.coolcatteacher/e260 Date: February 16, 2018

Vicki: Today we’re talking with Rick Rando @RandoSpeaks. He travels the country, delivers keynotes, and has a message about anti-bullying. But today, we’re going to talk about five ways to stand against bullying in every school.

So Rick, what’s our first way?

Rick: Well, basically, it all comes down to culture.

Number one? Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

Tip 1: Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

I’m a big Disney fan. Roy Disney said it best, “It’s easy to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

I have a quick acronym for you. It’s BEEE.

Build

Establish

Execute

Enforce/Reinforce that culture.

What you have to do is figure out what your school is about, how you want to approach bullying, to find exactly what it is about bullying that you need to look for or identify, and then basically create a culture around not having that be present.

Essentially, this has to be exhibited from the top down. And I’ll do one step further. Once you create your anti-bullying culture — what it looks like, how to identify it –, then you can’t be afraid to revisit that culture, knowing that. Is this something that’s working? Is it not working? Be able to revisit that tool, basically, create it or implement it almost like a business.

In a business when they implement something, it’s create and then train their staff and implement a new idea, and then they have to assess if it’s working or not to retool and retrain.

Essentially, it’s all about creating an anti-bullying culture. That’s something that we forget to do. When I go into schools, it’s something that a lot of schools don’t have, frankly.

Vicki: Yes. I remember seeing two young men today, and they said, “Oh, we’re just playing and having fun.”

I said, “I don’t like how it looks. You just have not to do it, because I don’t like how it looks.”

That’s part of that culture of, “This is how we treat each other.”

OK, what’s our second, Rick?

Rick: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

Tip 2: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

Like I said, once you clearly defined what bullying actually is (because there’s a difference between bullying and name-calling, teasing — there’s definitely a little bit of difference there, so it’s important to establish exactly what it is) but then, go ahead and give your staff, your parents, your students, your administrators the tools that they need to go ahead and stamp it out, identify it, deal with it.

To give you an example, like staff… I went to one school once and they all had t-shirts on that said, “We are not a bully school!”

From verbal training to disciplinary procedures to positive reinforcement of an anti-bullying platform or message…

Parents: In Allegany County, Maryland have on their website information that you can access, but also submit and anonymous incidence report. What happens is they get a chance to — the school board can assess to see exactly what this is and where it’s happening and follow up with administrators and hopefully serve those needs in that particular school. Parents feel really connected, that they have a platform to reach out and know that the school and the school board is going to handle it.

Students: Posters, fliers, assemblies. I do assemblies. I just came from one this morning in schools, talking about anti-drug, anti-bullying. Again, it’s about creating that culture of, “We’re not going to stand for it.”

Staff: Having those messages from the guidance counselor — guidance talks and handouts.

Administrators: I think that too many times, administrators are hamstrung about what they can do and what they can’t do because they can’t share information due to confidentiality. Or a lot of times, they just don’t know where to turn.

Giving them the resources necessary to again, identify it, and also be able to thrive in that culture where it’s going to be a zero-tolerance. So you’ve got to give your staff and your people the opportunity to be able to have the resources to deal with it and thrive in that culture.

Vicki: Very true. What’s next?

Rick: The third one is empower your students to take a stand.

Tip 3: Empower your students to take a stand.

At my martial arts studio, we have a program called Common Sense Before Self Defense. We give an anti-bullying tip every single week, and it’s all using your mind or your brain to be able to diffuse a situation or outhink the bully.

We say, “Using your brain before causing pain.”

We say, “Find your voice. Find a trusted adult. Find the courage to tell a parent your guardian. Find your voice to stand up to a bully. Tell them how that makes you feel, that it’s not OK. Find a trusted adult to confide in at the school system or a babysitter or childcare provider. Also find the courage to tell mom and dad, because a lot of kids think it’s their fault, that they’re doing something wrong, that they have shoes on or they speak the wrong language or have the wrong skin color.

In more concrete terms of being able to handle bullies, when you empower your students to take a stand, you can teach them how to agree with a bully. “Yeah, I know these glasses maybe look a little odd. But, man, I can see crystal clear, and that’s why I get such good grades.” Or, “I know these shoes might look a little off, but man, I can run really fast.”

You know, being nice to the bully, walking away, using trickery. If you’re caught into a bathroom, and all of a sudden the bully comes in. You can suddenly start itching like you have poison ivy or something. “I wouldn’t touch me. I’m really contagious.”

Of course refusing to fight or calling for help — these are all concrete things that you can use to teach to empower your students and your kids to stand up to bullying.

Vicki: So important. OK, what’s our fourth?

Rick: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success as often as humanly possible.

Tip 4: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success.

So as a teacher, as an educator, we do what we call spotlighting or highlighting. When we see a positive behavior being done, we want to say, “Guys, did you see how Timmy lined up so fast and so quickly. He’s standing perfectly still, and this is what we want to see everybody do.”

What we’re looking for is once we’ve created this culture, this anti-bullying culture in your school system, saying we’re not going to be picked on, we’re not going to tolerate this behavior, we’re going to go ahead and showcase people that are actually modeling that culture, modeling that positive behavior.

Essentially, in business, we say, “Find somebody doing something right. We’re going to spotlight it. We’re going to highlight it.”

Everybody’s version of success could be different. Johnny with ADHD is having trouble concentrating, so when he does something in that realm, that one step further of concentration, we want to pat him on the back, and we want to spotlight him. Whereas Timmy who gets good grades all the time, and for him, it could be really going above and beyond on a project, where we want to highlight him and give him that high-five and that fistbump. Also just making sure that we’re catching kids doing something right in that positive behavior realm.

Vicki: Oh, and catching them doing something right is so important, because otherwise, people are always running because we’re never saying anything positive! (laughs)

OK, what’s our fifth?

Rick: Our fifth thing is probably the most important element as far as anybody that’s handling or being around children. It’s to be there for your students and families. Serve their needs each and every day.

Tip 5: Be there for your students and families. Serve their needs each and every day.

“Serve” is this catch phrase. It’s this buzzword now in the corporate world. It really comes down to being present, listening, paying attention, and being willing to go above and beyond — even when you don’t want to, even when it’s inconvenient, even when you feel like this kid doesn’t deserve it. OK, you’ve got to be there, and you’ve got to pay attention. You’re looking, and you’re noticing these small things, these small imperfections. How do we, as parents, know that our kid is being bullied anyway? We’re looking for different patterns of how they’re eating, or how they’re behaving. Maybe they’re short with us. We know when our kids are not feeling well because of the signs, the physiognomy that we use to study our child. Why can’t we do the same thing in a classroom? Why can’t we do the same thing in our class of 25 kids? We’ve got to know these kids. We’ve got to know that THEY know that they care about us and we care about them because we’re in that leadership position.

As a teacher — and I’ll just end with this — you have an unshakeable accountability to continue to be a positive example in our society, but the most awesome responsibility lies in the magnitude of our daily actions in the minds of our adolescents that we model and are around. They continuously look to us with wide eyes and open hearts to mimic our actions, repeat our words. Our ultimate role — of a teacher, of someone that influences children — is to be their superhero. Be present.

Vicki: Wow, Rick. I think we’ll end with that.

Educators, let’s take a stand against bullying. Let’s really be present for our kids.

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford [email protected]

Rick Rando – Bio as submitted

Author, Consultant, 6th Degree Black Belt, and Keynote Empowerment Speaker, Master Rick Rando is regarded as a High-Octane Motivational Master. Focusing on instilling confidence and individuality, Master Rando has conducted thousands of presentations on empowerment and leadership in the business world and in academia. He owns one of the largest open-spaced martial arts studios in the country, teaching hundreds on children weekly.

Rando is a CEO (www.randospeaks.com), philanthropist, marathon runner, and most importantly husband to a beautiful wife and father of two wonderful children.

Blog: www.randospeaks.com

Twitter: @RandoSpeaks

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post 5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School published first on https://getnewcourse.tumblr.com/

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growthvue · 6 years

Text

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Rick Rando on episode 260 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

School culture and policies are part of what helps us combat bullying in schools. Rick Rando, school empowerment speaker, shares what schools can do to help stop bullying.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Link to show: www.coolcatteacher/e260 Date: February 16, 2018

So Rick, what’s our first way?

Rick: Well, basically, it all comes down to culture.

Number one? Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

Tip 1: Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

I’m a big Disney fan. Roy Disney said it best, “It’s easy to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

I have a quick acronym for you. It’s BEEE.

Build

Establish

Execute

Enforce/Reinforce that culture.

In a business when they implement something, it’s create and then train their staff and implement a new idea, and then they have to assess if it’s working or not to retool and retrain.

Essentially, it’s all about creating an anti-bullying culture. That’s something that we forget to do. When I go into schools, it’s something that a lot of schools don’t have, frankly.

Vicki: Yes. I remember seeing two young men today, and they said, “Oh, we’re just playing and having fun.”

I said, “I don’t like how it looks. You just have not to do it, because I don’t like how it looks.”

That’s part of that culture of, “This is how we treat each other.”

OK, what’s our second, Rick?

Rick: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

Tip 2: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

To give you an example, like staff… I went to one school once and they all had t-shirts on that said, “We are not a bully school!”

From verbal training to disciplinary procedures to positive reinforcement of an anti-bullying platform or message…

Staff: Having those messages from the guidance counselor — guidance talks and handouts.

Vicki: Very true. What’s next?

Rick: The third one is empower your students to take a stand.

Tip 3: Empower your students to take a stand.

We say, “Using your brain before causing pain.”

Of course refusing to fight or calling for help — these are all concrete things that you can use to teach to empower your students and your kids to stand up to bullying.

Vicki: So important. OK, what’s our fourth?

Rick: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success as often as humanly possible.

Tip 4: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success.

Essentially, in business, we say, “Find somebody doing something right. We’re going to spotlight it. We’re going to highlight it.”

Vicki: Oh, and catching them doing something right is so important, because otherwise, people are always running because we’re never saying anything positive! (laughs)

OK, what’s our fifth?

Tip 5: Be there for your students and families. Serve their needs each and every day.

Vicki: Wow, Rick. I think we’ll end with that.

Educators, let’s take a stand against bullying. Let’s really be present for our kids.

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford [email protected]

Rick Rando – Bio as submitted

Rando is a CEO (www.randospeaks.com), philanthropist, marathon runner, and most importantly husband to a beautiful wife and father of two wonderful children.

Blog: www.randospeaks.com

Twitter: @RandoSpeaks

The post 5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School published first on https://getnewdlbusiness.tumblr.com/

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patriciaanderson357-blog · 6 years

Text

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Rick Rando on episode 260 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

School culture and policies are part of what helps us combat bullying in schools. Rick Rando, school empowerment speaker, shares what schools can do to help stop bullying.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Link to show: www.coolcatteacher/e260 Date: February 16, 2018

So Rick, what’s our first way?

Rick: Well, basically, it all comes down to culture.

Number one? Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

Tip 1: Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

I’m a big Disney fan. Roy Disney said it best, “It’s easy to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

I have a quick acronym for you. It’s BEEE.

Build

Establish

Execute

Enforce/Reinforce that culture.

In a business when they implement something, it’s create and then train their staff and implement a new idea, and then they have to assess if it’s working or not to retool and retrain.

Essentially, it’s all about creating an anti-bullying culture. That’s something that we forget to do. When I go into schools, it’s something that a lot of schools don’t have, frankly.

Vicki: Yes. I remember seeing two young men today, and they said, “Oh, we’re just playing and having fun.”

I said, “I don’t like how it looks. You just have not to do it, because I don’t like how it looks.”

That’s part of that culture of, “This is how we treat each other.”

OK, what’s our second, Rick?

Rick: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

Tip 2: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

To give you an example, like staff… I went to one school once and they all had t-shirts on that said, “We are not a bully school!”

From verbal training to disciplinary procedures to positive reinforcement of an anti-bullying platform or message…

Staff: Having those messages from the guidance counselor — guidance talks and handouts.

Vicki: Very true. What’s next?

Rick: The third one is empower your students to take a stand.

Tip 3: Empower your students to take a stand.

We say, “Using your brain before causing pain.”

Of course refusing to fight or calling for help — these are all concrete things that you can use to teach to empower your students and your kids to stand up to bullying.

Vicki: So important. OK, what’s our fourth?

Rick: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success as often as humanly possible.

Tip 4: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success.

Essentially, in business, we say, “Find somebody doing something right. We’re going to spotlight it. We’re going to highlight it.”

Vicki: Oh, and catching them doing something right is so important, because otherwise, people are always running because we’re never saying anything positive! (laughs)

OK, what’s our fifth?

Tip 5: Be there for your students and families. Serve their needs each and every day.

Vicki: Wow, Rick. I think we’ll end with that.

Educators, let’s take a stand against bullying. Let’s really be present for our kids.

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford [email protected]

Rick Rando – Bio as submitted

Rando is a CEO (www.randospeaks.com), philanthropist, marathon runner, and most importantly husband to a beautiful wife and father of two wonderful children.

Blog: www.randospeaks.com

Twitter: @RandoSpeaks

The post 5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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ralph31ortiz · 6 years

Text

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Rick Rando on episode 260 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

School culture and policies are part of what helps us combat bullying in schools. Rick Rando, school empowerment speaker, shares what schools can do to help stop bullying.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School

Link to show: www.coolcatteacher/e260 Date: February 16, 2018

So Rick, what’s our first way?

Rick: Well, basically, it all comes down to culture.

Number one? Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

Tip 1: Know your school’s anti-bullying culture and showcase it proudly.

I’m a big Disney fan. Roy Disney said it best, “It’s easy to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

I have a quick acronym for you. It’s BEEE.

Build

Establish

Execute

Enforce/Reinforce that culture.

In a business when they implement something, it’s create and then train their staff and implement a new idea, and then they have to assess if it’s working or not to retool and retrain.

Essentially, it’s all about creating an anti-bullying culture. That’s something that we forget to do. When I go into schools, it’s something that a lot of schools don’t have, frankly.

Vicki: Yes. I remember seeing two young men today, and they said, “Oh, we’re just playing and having fun.”

I said, “I don’t like how it looks. You just have not to do it, because I don’t like how it looks.”

That’s part of that culture of, “This is how we treat each other.”

OK, what’s our second, Rick?

Rick: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

Tip 2: Give everyone the resources to live and to thrive in the culture that you’ve actually just created.

To give you an example, like staff… I went to one school once and they all had t-shirts on that said, “We are not a bully school!”

From verbal training to disciplinary procedures to positive reinforcement of an anti-bullying platform or message…

Staff: Having those messages from the guidance counselor — guidance talks and handouts.

Vicki: Very true. What’s next?

Rick: The third one is empower your students to take a stand.

Tip 3: Empower your students to take a stand.

We say, “Using your brain before causing pain.”

Of course refusing to fight or calling for help — these are all concrete things that you can use to teach to empower your students and your kids to stand up to bullying.

Vicki: So important. OK, what’s our fourth?

Rick: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success as often as humanly possible.

Tip 4: Reinforce effort. Work at leadership success.

Essentially, in business, we say, “Find somebody doing something right. We’re going to spotlight it. We’re going to highlight it.”

Vicki: Oh, and catching them doing something right is so important, because otherwise, people are always running because we’re never saying anything positive! (laughs)

OK, what’s our fifth?

Tip 5: Be there for your students and families. Serve their needs each and every day.

Vicki: Wow, Rick. I think we’ll end with that.

Educators, let’s take a stand against bullying. Let’s really be present for our kids.

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford [email protected]

Rick Rando – Bio as submitted

Rando is a CEO (www.randospeaks.com), philanthropist, marathon runner, and most importantly husband to a beautiful wife and father of two wonderful children.

Blog: www.randospeaks.com

Twitter: @RandoSpeaks

The post 5 Ways to Stop Bullying in Every School appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e255/

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iuniverseblog · 6 years

Text

Using “The Art of War” to Market Your Book!

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, written in the 5th century BC, remains a classic for military strategists as well as corporate marketers and salesmen. Today, I’ll show you ways in which to use Master Sun’s lessons to market your book.

The Art of War gives advice for generals on outsmarting and defeating the enemy. Naturally, you, as the author, are “the general”. But how to define “the enemy”? For all practical purposes, it is the crowded marketplace of books, the skeptical or complacent customer, and the competing authors in your genre. Regarding the latter, the best way to “defeat” them is to outshine them through your marketing.

“All warfare is based on deception”: Let’s begin with the book’s most famous line. What kind of “deception” are we looking to use here? This applies to writers who have not yet published, as well as published authors who are looking to market their new book. For those who have not yet published, here are some “deceptive” strategies:

Choose a title that is catchy instead of just informative. A great example of this is seen with the book If You Want to Be Rich & Happy, Don’t Go to School, by Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad). Kiyosaki’s publisher wanted him to call the book “The Economics of Education”, to which Kiyosaki replied that he would probably then only sell two copies. The more catchy title made the book much more attractive to shoppers.

A more extreme method of deception involves choosing a strategic pen name. A good example of this is Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, whose real name is Jim Grant. Child chose his pen name because he wanted his books to be between Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie on the shelf in a bookstore. Hence, if you are a horror writer, choosing a last name that would fit in between “King” and “Koontz” would be a good move!

If you’ve already published your book, there are still many strategic gambits that you can use:

Headlines and titles: One of my professors, during my Masters Degree, wanted the department to come to a somewhat dry lecture about how Sir Walter Scott’s writing style occasionally took a feminine turn. He titled the lecture, “Sir Walter Scott in Drag”, and the lecture hall was filled. Likewise, you can advertise your book using any headline you wish. If your book has a title that isn’t particularly attractive in a marketing sense, use a headline for your ads that is enticing.

Another devious tactic involves placing your book on the shelves of bookstores, even if they haven’t stocked it. Similar to the strategy employed by Lee Child, you can then have your book next to the superstar authors, and in the genre that you want. Shoppers are bound to consider you as of a similar caliber, just by being there. I used this ploy with my self-help book, Winning the Fight to Be Happy, and placed it next to a book by the Dalai Lama! Yes, your book technically won’t be for sale in the store if someone tries to buy it, but with enough interest shown by shoppers (your “spies”, as mentioned later), the store will eventually want to carry a book that will make money for them.

“Know your terrain”: In other words, know the marketplace. A good example of someone who studied the marketplace and has become a huge success is Meredith Wild, author of the erotic thriller Hardwired and numerous other books in that genre. Wild somewhat “piggybacked” on the success of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, and actually advertised her book in movie theaters just before the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey came on. For erotic thrillers, it is also important to have an e-book version of your novel, as many readers in this genre are too shy to buy it in paperback at the bookstore. This was actually the case with Fifty Shades of Grey.

Knowing your terrain means knowing the target audience of your book, what genre it falls into (and subgenre), and how to capture that demographic – i.e. understanding customers’ buying behavior in your genre, and also where they are likely to come into contact with your book. If you write fantasy or sci-fi, try to attend one of the many conferences, such as Comic-Con, with plenty of business cards and copies of your book to give out. Join chatrooms and websites where these types of readers spend their time. As Master Sun says, “He who has a thorough knowledge of himself and the enemy is bound to win in all battles.”

“Attacking with Fire”: This means being proactive and keeping an arsenal of “weapons”. When Sun writes, “The material for raising fire should always be kept in readiness”, this relates to both your advertising and promotional material and — if it is possible for you – some money to run the ads. Here are some weapons you should always have at your disposal, many of which don’t cost a penny:

Carry a copy of your book with you at all times

Have photos of yourself holding your book, in your phone and on your computer, and indeed anywhere else where people can see it

Have an “elevator pitch” for your book: be able to describe your book in one to two sentences to a complete stranger

Have a short “abstract” of your book, two to three paragraphs, in case a newspaper asks you for one

Set aside a small budget in case you need to print posters

Have an author page and an author website, and post frequently on social media, especially Facebook. When you post, use catchy headlines and pictures.

Contact bookstores and ask if you can do a book-signing. The worst they can say is “no”.

Make sure to always have at least ten spare copies of your book in your house

Throughout all of these, do not simply market your book haphazardly, hoping that random onslaughts will create attention. As Sun says, “Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained.”

“The Use of Spies”: In your case, “spies” will be your friends and family, whom you will ask to help you with promoting the book. Don’t be shy about asking others for help. As the old saying goes, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Their “spying” activity can consist of giving you any information about promotion, and simply spreading the word. One of my friends mentioned my book to a bunch of her friends, and I ended up giving a motivational talk to the sales team at one of their companies – selling some copies of my book in the process, and ending up with some new friends, some of whom promoted me on their Facebook pages. Your “spies” can also give signed copies of your book to people as gifts – everyone is always happy to know a published author – and can leave copies at strategic locations – including bookstores!

Make sure to check out the iUniverse site for more advice and blogs, as well as iUniverse Facebook and iUniverse Twitter.

–By Tom McKinley

#iUniverse #iUniverse Blog #iUniverse Publishing

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micaramel · 7 years

Link

Artist: Jesse Benson

Venue: Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

Exhibition Title: Miracle Grow

Date: September 24 – November 11, 2017

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

Press Release:

Michael Benevento is pleased to present Miracle Grow, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Jesse Benson. Benson’s second solo exhibition with the gallery will consist of works from his ongoing series Repaintings, works from his ongoing series Dad Paintings, a specifically designed ceiling installation, and subtle gallery space alterations. Though aesthetically and stylistically diverse, the painted works all feature Benson’s mastery in rendering and complex layering of appropriated representational imagery.

The Repaintings were initiated in 2008 as an open-ended body of work involving the painstaking brushstroke-for-brushstroke hand replication of painted images found from outside the canon of Art History. Sources from professional illustration and amateur painting are discovered by Benson within situations that are sometimes relevant to the meaning of his work, and contemplation regarding the original producer also plays a role, but the uncanny, perverse, or otherwise questionable quality of the imagery itself drives the production of the Repaintings. Each chosen source painting is re-painted by Benson with at least one visual deviation from the original. For Miracle Grow Benson has arranged a specific grouping of Repaintings.

Repainting 2 (Miracle Grow) is based on the most famous image Benson has chosen for use as a Repainting. Though still outside the official canon of Art History, American professional illustrator Harry Anderson enjoyed wide public acclaim for Social Realist Americana illustration and more specifically for his contemporary Postwar Christian illustrations inspired by a connection to the Protestant denomination Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Anderson is credited with the first paintings of Christ in a Modern setting. Anderson’s depiction of a giant floating blonde Jesus knocking on the monolithic UN Building was circulated in countless prints after the image was first painted in 1961. It is an image that seems to be equally celebrated and mocked for its blunt message and skillful yet clumsy aesthetic approach. For his Repainting Benson affected the source image by enlarging it considerably, by combining effects from different warped and faded versions of the print, and by fading out two corners of the image. A relatively ubiquitous printed image at some point in certain American Protestant communities, Benson first encountered a copy at his Grandmother’s suburban Orange County home when the artist was a young child.

Repainting 5 (Prince of Peace) takes its title from the aforementioned Harry Anderson Jesus/UN Building painting but the depicted bearded white figure in Benson’s work is an oddly descript American Santa pulled from an illustration on a Christmas gift bag. The image, by an unknown illustrator, shows a closely framed rosy-cheeked Santa catching snowflakes with his glistening Santa tongue. For his Repainting Benson depicted the Santa illustration with precise commitment to the original style and palette of the source but instead of a full-bleed the borders of the image have been painted to appear specifically shaped. The resulting shape mimics a cutout snowflake, but with bilateral symmetry rather than radial, and also suggests the silhouette of a hanging ornament or of a Weihnachtspyramide. The specific shaping of the edges is open to interpretation but intentionally contains references to, among other things, razor blades, fighter jets, grenades, and the eagle design from the Great Seal of the United States.

Repainting 8 (White Man’s Burden), Repainting 9 (Orange County), and Repainting 10 (Bob Henry) are three of four related Repaintings that represent the four quadrants of a found poster split into discrete images. The poster shows a rendering of a public park with baseball fields in Orange County painted by Laguna Beach based illustrator Michael Bryan. Mr. Bryan is internationally known for flashy imagery of the aircraft, cowboy, showgirl, sports, and sports car variety, and for his work with corporate entities such as BMW, In-N-Out Burger, and the Olympics. The technique Benson employed in the making of these Repaintings mimics the transparency, puddling, and dripping effects in the original watercolor as well as the faded quality of the old printed poster. For these works Benson rendered not just the illustrated imagery of the park, but also the graphic text and corporate sponsorship logotype that accompanies the imagery on the poster. The scene shows little figures running around and enjoying Bob Henry Park, a prototypical Southern California park model in Newport Beach. Bob Henry Park is named for a police officer killed in the line of duty in 1995. In his previous exhibition with Michael Benevento, Benson’s work depicted decorative objects waiting to be hung in an FBI office. It was through that process that Benson was able to gain access to the poster, as it was décor that had been retired from the office walls.

Of the alterations to the space the most significant will be a ceiling installation work titled Chief Executive Officer. The work, composed of a single line of acoustic office ceiling tiles with embedded fluorescent lights, is designed to be installed from the ceiling against the wall directly above the running installation of Repaintings 8-10. The installation serves many functions for the exhibition, as the show’s corporate god looking down and shining light upon us, and as a synthetic reference to the untitled full-ceiling installation of acoustic tiles and lights in the storefront space where Michael Benevento was located for Benson’s previous exhibition. In that way Chief Executive Officer functions as an active document like an architectural remnant, or like a Repainting. For the purposes of the exhibition the regular circular flow of traffic between the galleries will be restricted by temporary construction that will compartmentalize the viewing experience and define movement with designed breaks between rooms and emphasized transitional spaces.

The exhibition’s final room will contain several new painted works from Benson’s series titled Dad Paintings, which interacts directly with a 1995 work by Conceptual Photographer/Labor Activist Fred Lonidier. In contrast to the Repaintings, these works by Benson appropriate a photographic canonical artwork and exist as a finite body. Lonidier’s 1995 work utilized photographs he had taken in 1983. They show a closely cropped wall scene with two calendars in the same design template, both printed for a hardware store. One is themed with topless female pinups and the other with Catholic imagery. Lonidier used the photographs of the two calendars within the design of a printed calendar-like object. Benson’s series of immaculate painted representations appear nearly identical to Lonidier’s “calendar” pages: panels sized to U.S. Letter with precise black and white photographic imagery, text, and graphics painted thinly in oil. The fonts and graphics in the sourced Lonidier work are typically Conceptual in their minimal and DIY aesthetics. Images are commonly reused in different pairings. The pages have black design layouts that reference a calendar in this context but aren’t broken up graphically into a grid of days in the month. The exception is the cover image, which shows a true calendar grid layout below a pulled-back shot of the wall.

From Organic Gardening Magazine, July/August 2000 Issue:

Miracle-Gro is a synthetic fertilizer that contains ammonium phosphate and several other chemicals that can be toxic to your soil and plants. It is prohibited from use in certified-organic farming. Here’s what soil expert Robert Parnes, Ph.D., says in his book Fertile Soil: “[Ammonium fertilizer]acidifies the soil, and thus it is probably more harmful to soil organisms than any other nitrogen fertilizer. The application has to be timed carefully and placed properly to avoid burning the leaves and roots. In addition, ammonium tends to inhibit the release of potassium. Ammonium fertilizers are deliberately manufactured to be spread at high application rates in order to obtain maximum yields with no regard to adverse effects on the soil. Probably nowhere is the conflict between the mass production of food to feed the world and the preservation of the soil more obvious than in the confrontation over the use of either ammonium fertilizers or liquid ammonia.”

Link: Jesse Benson at Michael Benevento

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2zlK84s

#micaramel

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cathleenviner78-blog · 7 years

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Racism's Past On Tv.

There has actually constantly been that uncertainty in on my own regardless if I can easily attend to my family members in a society that appears to present the image that dark daddies are unable to preserve and create a powerful family members along with concept, worth and also field. Byrd points out the punishment of Maker is actually merely yet another phrase from the hate shown toward his father on that particular darker night in 1998. That sounds like the white colored girl desires to have her fun along with the dark male but truth sets in when they determine several black males cannot sustain a household. I sympathize along with everyone on listed below who possesses had the bad luck to have a npd father. Initiatives had been actually made to clean this, but approximately a quarter-inch splotch from blood stayed on the hasp. Happiness White still feels remains confident that she and also her little girl can easily patch factors up and collaborated once more.

I really feel as if I'm in someone else's planet if I'm not well-maintained as well as don't have tidy around me. The bride-to-bes and also bridegrooms partook rows of white plastic chairs, some squirming nervously while others took selfies flaunting their wedding event rings just before large posters from Moon. His mother was Australian and his papa came to Australia in 1947 as a British subject matter. The house he grew in was grimy as well as loaded with cobwebs ... additional like a possessed mansion house than a frequent home. They start from classy as well as basic diamond concepts including Solitaire Soul Frame Establish Necklace White and also Jewelry Sphere Bezel-Set Necklace. Finding my own father cope with his declining health after my mom's fatality created me experience powerless, lost and a quite embarrassed that I couldn't perform even more to relieve my daddy's pain and also create his life simpler. In the metaphorical sense, the WHITE OPENING is actually BULLISH; and the BLACK HOLE is actually IRRITABLE. Aside from early childbearing, growing without a dad is actually connected with non-residential parenting. I will definitely conceal most of that out properly for some of your college expenses, thus your dad can not invest that on kava kava root powder. Your kid could walk freely around the house with his or her morning meal grain while you settle back and also hear some songs, laid back understanding certainly there will not be actually a clutter on your flooring to clean letter. Will definitely the fair cream makers as portion of their corporate social responsibility begin using the creams on buffalo grass to ensure that Our Web Page team could consume milk from white colored buffaloes as well as not dark. But he lastly won the hearts and minds from everyone, and even the authorities needed to acquiesce the wisdom from his concepts, striking down the Jim Crow" regulations which had actually always kept monochrome folks apart for over 4 centuries. You the the papa expect to care for your child however in just what I merely reviewed his taking advantage of the condition. At that point be sure to inspect out the white colored as well as dark zebra print with pink soul emphases, if that is your choice. He worked as an earnings police officer for the IRS and also his father was actually the head from the collections division for Three Decade; so it runs in the loved ones.

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amnportfolio · 7 years

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Shopping with Mom - Memoir

At first, the video is unintelligible, rendered grainy from the years.

But then, the film focuses on a door and the nymph-like singing of a child can be heard. A strikingly pale hand presses against the grey wood of the door, and once again the camera has to refocus. Now, a white tile bathroom with seashell pink walls comes into view. I’m sitting in the tub, four years old, swaddled with nothing but baby fat like a child in the Garden of Eden. My tiny voice swells and fills the bathroom with a shameless yet gentle melody. My grandma always told me that babies only sing when they’re happy, so I’m assuming in that moment, I am happy, content with the thin, warm water of the bathtub and the presence of my mother. I still retain an affinity for bathtubs.

The woman holding the camera giggles. “What are you doing?” She asks. Her voice is deep and instrumental. It’s clear she adores me, her only daughter. In my infantile eyes, my mother is life giving goddess, a Platonic form of beauty. I smile up at my mother, dimples creasing the edges of my mouth. The same dimples dapple the outskirts of her lips, too.

“I wrote a song, mommy.”

“What’s it about, baby?”

I laugh, a high-pitched reflection of my mother’s own laugh, the kind of laugh you only hear before the complexities of adulthood put their hands around a child’s throat. “I don’t know.”

My mom turns the camera on herself, now sitting on the edge of the bath tub. The camera refocuses on a moony face with warm brown eyes and cropped red ochre hair. It is apparent that my green eyes must have come from my dad, but everything is else is wrought from the chromosomes of this woman. My mom looks at the camera lens, her pupils darting from side to side, trying to figure out where to look. We always teased her about being bad with technology.

“My baby wrote a song,” she asserts with a quiet pride.

This tape is all I have of Mom before the walker and the pain pills and blood tests and Lupus. Always the Lupus.

***

“Ok, Mom. One foot at a time.”

I take my mom’s leggings in my hands and gently roll them up, so that they go on faster when she puts her atrophied legs in. Gingerly, I take the first foot and place it in the bunched up hole of the legging, and smooth the fabric across her soft, creamy calf. I follow the same delicate operation for the second foot, and look up at her face when I’m done.

“Ready?” I ask.

She shuts her eyes tightly. They are almond shaped and slope downward innocently, like mine.

In one quick, haggard movement, she shoots up off the edge of the bed onto her feet, with help from her walker, so that I can pull her leggings up all the way. A grunt laced with pain and effort escapes her translucent lips, and she crash lands back onto her bed.

“Ok. Ok. You did it,” I murmur, brushing some lint off her knee. “You’re dressed.”

“Thanks baby,” Mom begins, and then tacks an “I’m sorry” onto it discreetly. She is always apologizing for being my mom. While I can understand this sentiment, there is nothing to be sorry for. Despite her severe Lupus and all the consequent health problems, she is a good mom. Always has been.

“Alright. I’m going to work. I got my cell on me at all times. Dad’s taking a nap on the couch.” I brief my mom as I open the window blinds beside her big, four-poster bed. Silvery slivers of sunlight shoot into the room, illuminating all the oak furniture and the shag carpet and the dated floral patterns. We moved into this house fourteen years ago, so it’s a different house than the one in the video. I never liked it. It’s a big house in a nice American neighborhood, the kind that the wind blows right through without being warmed first.

“Sounds good hun. Have a good day.” My mom settles back into her pillows. I lean down and plant a kiss on her forehead, careful not to lean on her too hard. I’m afraid of breaking her.

My workplace is a hot pink, sparkly gumball of a world. I’m a part-time key holder for Charlotte Russe, a young women’s clothing store. All my coworkers are also women, so sometimes over the summers, I forget men actually exist.

We do things like bring each other waffle fries from Chik Fil A on our breaks and give each other discounts we aren’t supposed to give. We sarcastically dance to the cheap pop music corporate makes us play, and the giggles of girls line the merchandise fabric like rhinestones.

As much as I like my work, the constant montage of moms and daughters shopping together reminds me of something I’m missing.

I see girls running out of the dressing rooms in half naked ecstasy to show their mom an outfit, and I can’t relate. I see girls asking their moms for advice on color coordination and nothing in my brain pings in response.

You see, I can’t remember the last time I went shopping with my mom. It’s such a petty, suburban detail, I know, but you don’t realise how much the little things count in a relationship until you can’t have them.

***

The first Spring Formal dress I bought, I bought alone. I bought it the spring that my mom was in the hospital (again) with pneumonia. It was the spring the dog died, and not soon after the floods came and washed out the wildflowers on the side of the road, and the road with them. Houston forgot how to swim. It was the spring I forgot how much my body was worth and slept with a boy I really shouldn’t have slept with; so it was also the spring of my almost baby, and crying in a nail salon bathroom.

Though it was a beautiful dress, it was a dark one, more suited for fall than spring. The bodice was a nude tan with muted rhinestones peppering it, and it was slightly too big— gravity and my ribcage fought for supremacy. However, I could endure the suffering and the constant bust checks for the sheer beauty of the dress. The full length, ballroom tulle skirt was tar black. Add a couple stars, and it could have been mistaken for the night sky.

For that Formal, I got ready at my friend’s house. I remember sitting on the stairs in my dress as her mom took pictures with her, smiling boisterous pearly smiles into the camera lens. I could almost see the camera flashes bouncing off their teeth. Her mom told her in melodic tones how beautiful she looked in her purple mermaid dress. A thick ball of an emotion I could not quite name formed in my chest, on top of my heart, and it sat there all during the Spring Formal. It was there when I danced with my friends and when I drove my friend home that night across town, the highway unraveling under my swollen feet. It was there when I arrived home at 2am and nobody was awake to greet me.

I sent my mom a few selfies of the dress in a mirror at the dance, but the hospital always had had bad reception.

The first and only time Mom saw my dress was on a hanger a few months later. She looked at it with an expression like flat soda in her eyes. She ran the tulle between her finger tips lightly, considerately.

“It’s lovely, Lexy. Really,” she said her wind chime voice. She didn’t say it, but we could both feel the “I’m Sorry” hanging thick in the air.

***

“Shit. I just remembered something.”

“What is it Lex?”

“The Spring Formal is next weekend. I still need a dress.”

“Why can’t you wear the one you wore last year?”

I shake my head. “It’s too big now, Mom. I’m gonna have to go today to get a dress.”

I look over at my mom. We are cuddled into her bed the day before Easter, an expanse of half eaten Cadbury bunnies and crème filled eggs spread before us. Her eyes are getting dewy clear and red.

“Oh God, Mom. What’s wrong? Please don’t cry.” At the sight of my mother getting choked up, I feel a wad of tears in my throat as well. It’s a universal, primitive instinct, the urge to cry at the sight of one’s mother crying.

“Dammit. I wanted to go with you this year.” Her voice cracks a bit, coated with a mixture of frustration and sorrow.

“Relax. What about next year?”

“Next year I’ll still be sick, baby.”

Unable to respond, I walk to her side of the bed and wrap my arms around her small nymph body. I have to be careful not to step on one of the Ziploc bags of pills on the ground. We remain like that for a bit, twisted into each other like wisteria plants. The TV murmurs with “Say Yes to The Dress” in the background. I want to reach in between the static and crawl away, my mom in hand.

“Listen. I’ll send you a picture of all the dresses, ok?” I know this offer isn’t much, but my brain is wired for problem solving like my father, and this is the best I can come up with.

Surprisingly, Mom brightens up at this idea.

“Deal.”

At the mall, I try four different stores and countless dresses. I film myself dancing around the dressing room in all of them, and my mom responds with her varying, unapologetic opinions. The other moms and daughters look on in confusion, wondering what the hell I’m doing, and why I’m alone. The moms help their daughters carry the heavy dresses and are convinced of their child’s exceptionality. I am alone to haul my own dresses back and forth from the sales floor to the changing room. By myself, it is a daunting and tiring task to wriggle in and out of the dresses, but my mom’s digital voice urges me on. I can almost see the invisible thread tying us together suspended above the dressing rooms, and reaching across town and over all the heads of the other moms and daughters.

After two hours of this, I narrow things down to two dresses. One is relatively reminiscent of the dress I picked last year; strapless, with a muted peach bodice and dusky ballroom skirt. But the other one is so strikingly different from anything I’d usually pick.

It, too, is a full length ball gown, but instead of polite, quiet colours, it’s awash with vivid spring magentas and oranges. Water colour flowers flit about on a silvery satin ocean. It’s an open back with a crisscross. If I wanted to be buried in my past dress, I wanted to live in this one.

My mom and I are sold.

“THAT’S THE ONE” she texts in all caps.

Before racing to the checkout, however, I check the price tag and realize it’s egregiously off budget. I sink back into the changing room bench. In the next dressing room over, I hear a mom helping her daughter shuffle into a dress. At first they spar at one another in shrill voices, but once the dress is on, silence pervades the dressing room.

“Oh, wow.” Her mom finally sighs. “You’re so beautiful.”

I can’t hear the girl blushing, but I can feel it.

I sigh and reluctantly call my dad, the budget setter.

“I think mom and I found a dress we like.”

“Oh great! Are you gonna be home in a bit?” His burly Caribbean accent fills my ear.

“Well, the dress is a little bit more than we expected. Like 80 dollars more.”

My dad makes a sharp sound by blowing air through his teeth.

“Lex, are there any other ones—“

He is cut off by an assertive yell in the background.

“Well, you just got lucky. Your mother chimed in. She’ll pay the extra 80.”

I jump up off the dressing room bench.

“Really?”

“Yup. Hurry home. I just made dinner.”

“Oh. Ok. Thanks Dad. Tell Mom I said thanks.”

He lets out a broad chuckle. “You’re welcome. See you in a bit.”

When I get home, it is my turn to be exceptional. My mom and I coo over the dress, and I jump up and down on my side of her bed and dance around the dusty oak bed posts, hot pink hibiscus flowers bouncing victoriously on my hip bones. I think I hear every synonym for “beautiful” that night. In the shiny dress before my mom, I am rendered a bright creature, lit from within like a floral Christmas light. She just smiles and smiles and the bedroom fades into a warm whirlpool of laughter and lamp light.

Suddenly I don’t care about the dressing rooms or the other girls or the Lupus.

***

I still dream about being able to go shopping with my mom. By this, I mean that the walker and the pills melt away, and my mom rises from the bed. By this, I mean that I imagine the Lupus gene switched off, allowing us to be just a mom and her daughter.

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