#when you voluntarily decide to raise your childhood friend because you care about him but you're not even his favorite

[lunapegasus]

#its dadow hour again #and yes I'm implying ian jr is immortal #also sage if you're reading this this is the meme you predicted I was making #shadow the hedgehog #silver the hedgehog #dadow #sonic 06 #sth #sonic #my art <3 #also you guys should read this onion article. its hilarious there were a lot more and they slowly got crazier and crazier lmao #when you voluntarily decide to raise your childhood friend because you care about him but you're not even his favorite

[goffilolo]

Revival of Midoriya Izuku: Chapter 4 "My depression may be chronic, but my ass is iconic"

I bet you didn't think you were ever gonna see an update. well neither did I. What can I say? writing with a broken hand is a struggle.

Link to the fic on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16929483/chapters/81090403

Izuku’s first day of high school was interesting, to say the least, or it would’ve been if he actually went to school instead of spreading mayhem amongst UA’s first years. Shinjuku Metropolitan has been rather lenient in regards to his attendance or lack of thereof, thanks to whatever bullshit Shin wrote to the school on his behalf to ensure that the faculty would accommodate his ‘condition’. Which is just fancy wording for ‘I got a get out of school card’. Truth be told, this is probably the best thing that the doctor has ever done for him since Izuku was nowhere near ready to return to mainstream education, not after everything that has happened in middle school. The last thing he needed were looks of pity and guilt-induced niceties from people who otherwise had no problem laughing at his misfortune.

So instead Izuku has decided to spend his time productively - if you could count tormenting your ex-childhood friend and having an accidental family reunion as such.

Uncle Shouta always had a bit of a mean streak to him, although it never really felt as such when Izuku himself interacted with him. From what little of his childhood he could remember that didn’t involve trauma and discrimination, his uncle was a somewhat kind, but grumpy man. He believed in a brand of tough love - that somehow did not correspond with the way his mother raised him in the slightest and went above and beyond for things and people he held close to his heart. Sure they haven’t seen each other since Izuku was 4, but if his uncle’s empty threats from today’s Quirk Apprehension Test are anything to go by, not much has changed.

Which brings him back to now; sitting in an empty classroom that he does not belong to - a school that he does not belong to, writing down his ever-so-detailed notes about the quirks he will only be able to admire from afar. Not much has changed , indeed.

It almost feels like a betrayal. Almost , being the operative word, because he has no reason to cling onto the things that he no longer cares about - should no longer care about, for they had died along with him that day on the roof, and were properly buried within the four walls that Izuku called his own during his stay in the hospital.

But well...looks like today Izuku is in a mood to dig up old corpses.

Metaphorically, that is.

“God, you’re still here!”

“Kacchan we’ve talked about this” he replied, rather dramatically “God is dead and all that’s left is me”

Kacchan clearly did not appreciate his superior sense of humour, if the lack of response is anything to go by. “No seriously, why are you still here?”

“I could ask you the same”

“I actually study here you fuckwit!” the blond exclaimed in his ever explosive fashion “Besides I had to come back and get my change of clothes since that demonic pet of yours was sitting on them when we were all leaving for the test”

“Huh, that actually reminds me...where’s Bandit?”

“Oi, don’t change the subject you shitty Deku” replied Bakugou, as he kicked one of the chairs over towards the desk that was currently occupied by Izuku and slumped down in it in a way that would perhaps appear as non-caring to absolutely no one “I didn’t know your uncle was a pro-hero.”

Ah, so that’s what he was bothered about.

“That makes the two of us”

“Wait, really?!”

“Honestly Kacchan! Did you really think that IF I knew my uncle was a pro-hero that I would be able to ever shut up about it?”

“No way in hell!”

“Exactly!”

Well, now that the topic of his uncle has been cleared up, there wasn’t much else to talk about, at least not much that wouldn’t result in collateral damage or a Bakugou shitshow 2.0. Both of the boys were well aware of it of course, but let it never be said that either of them could be stopped by things like common sense, especially when it came to avoiding conversational land mines.

“So...what are you scribbling over here?” asked Bakugou in a rather poor and possibly the most awkward attempt at establishing small talk that has ever been known to man and sheep kind alike.

“Ok, no! That is not happening” snapped Izuku, who very much saw where this was going and was having none of it “We are NOT having a civil conversation!”

“Why the fuck not?!” replied the blond, his anger as booming and apparent as his quirk.

“Because that is not something we DO Kacchan!” shouted the teen, banging his hands against the desk, his notebook long forgotten.

“Well, maybe we should?!” exclaimed Bakugou, who was quick to anger, yet quicker to notice his ex-friend’s unusual mood as he tried to make an effort to de-escalate the situation.

“Oh? Should we really? !” sneered Izuku, feeling the kind of anger and disdain he hasn’t felt in a long time, not since that fateful day in the ward.

“That’s rich coming from you” he continued as he stood up form the chair, unable to keep still in his fury as he circled the classroom “All you ever did was shout at me, insult me and throw baseless accusations at me left and right for god knows how long, but suddenly YOU want to have a conversation with me? Isn’t it enough that we kinda talked about our feelings that one time when I was still stuck in the psych ward?!”

Honestly, what do you expect Kacchan?” asked Izuku, feeling raw and hysteric and all kinds of wrong, spilling his metaphorical guts to his ex-bully/friend “That we will just start having normal conversations like nothing ever happened, act like we’re friends or some shit? Because let’s be honest, we haven’t been friends for a very long time, that ship has sunk long before I even attempted suicide! ”

“Don’t you think I know that?!” screamed Bakugou, feeling equally angry, but mostly out of his depth in the situation. He expected Deku to possibly mock him for his awkward attempts at small talk. What the blond didn’t expect was for him to snap, in a way that was somewhat familiar but not quite, as even the few times they’ve spoken back when Izuku was in the hospital or when he got released, his tempter felt controlled in a way it was not at the moment. Katsuki wasn’t sure what exactly triggered such a strong response, but he was not looking forward to having another fight, at least not one initiated by him.

“I’m not trying to pretend it didn’t happen” he explained “I just want to move forward. I’m not the same asshole I was last year and neither are you, so I don’t want to be stuck on how things used to be ! It makes me feel like I’m going nowhere.”

“Ok! Fine! You wanna talk?! Then let me fuckin TELL you something! You asked me what I was ‘scribbling’ over here?” exclaims Izuku, as he stomps his way back towards the desk and snatches his notebook, waving it aggressively in front of Bakugou “IT’S THE SAME STUFF I’VE BEEN SCRIBBLING THE ENTIRE GODDAMN TIME!” he screamed “Those quirk analysis notebooks you used to mock me for? It’s another one of those because as it turns out  I still AM the same asshole I was last year! Now then, can YOU tell ME how many of those I’ve had?”

“Thirteen…” mutters Bakugou, feeling like he’s walking into a proverbial trap.

“Good boy, you can count! Now, can you tell me what number does it say on this one?” sneers Izuku sarcastically as he points once again at the notebook in question.

“Is this a trick question? There’s fuckin nothing on it”

“EXACTLY! And you want to know why?” screamed the distressed teen, no longer feeling angry, but tired and vulnerable, unable to stop himself from having a conversation he didn’t even want to be a part of “Because these notes used to serve a purpose, a purpose I no longer have. Hero Analysis for the Future , to be exact. But guess what Kacchan…” he whispered, no longer looking at the red eyes that used to bring him so much pain “...I no longer have a future…”

The blond hung his head in shame as he listened to his childhood friend break down in tears while hiding his face behind the very notebook that started their argument, all the while Trash Bandit who woke up due to their screaming was trying to get his owner’s attention with pathetically quiet ‘baaah’s.

“You have the right to be angry with me, after all this shit I put you through” stated Bakugou after what felt like an endless silence broken only by Izuku’s stuttering sobs. He never thought of himself as a coward, but at this moment he could not find enough bravery to sit face to face with the crying teen.

“I KNOW that you shithead-” replied Izuku as he shakily tried to take a breath in between the sobs “-but what good is that gonna do?! You’ve actually admitted that the way you treated me was wrong, hell you even voluntarily went to therapy! You’re basically going through a whole-ass redemption arc and what do I do? * sob * I’m still stuck in the past and I can’t let go of my grudges, which isn’t doing me or you any favours. I’ve told you to get your shit together, and this is exactly what you’re trying to do and instead of being h-* hic *- happy for you I’m mad-”

His rant broke off as he took another breath with tears still rolling down the freckled cheeks despite the boy’s best efforts. Izuku slumped down in his seat and with shaking hands he took out a cigarette and lighter from his backpack that was still hanging by the hook on the side of the desk. And although putting the cigarette in his mouth was relatively easy, lighting it was another matter. As Izuku grew more frustrated with the quiver in his hands, so did Bakugou. The blond became impatient as he grumbled “give it here damn it” much more quietly and gently than he normally would’ve done as he leaned forward, all the while grabbing the other teen by his shoulder with one hand, as he used to the other to quickly light the cigarette with a small explosion. Izuku’s flinch at the sudden but familiar noise and heat did not go unnoticed.

To say that Izuku was shocked by his ex-friend’s action would’ve been an understatement, but he was pleased nonetheless. If anything it proved his point that Kacchan was trying to be nicer to him, even if the attempts were somewhat awkward. The freckled teen, feeling only marginally better, leaned back in his chair facing the ceiling as he continued to blow circles of smoke up into the air, trying to regain his original train of thought.

“You’d think they would have a fire alarm in here or something” mused Bakugou as he stared at the disappearing circles.

“Hmm” replied Izuku, absentmindedly “You’d think”

The silence has once again stretched between the 2 boys, although this time it felt less oppressive in its need to be filled. Bakugou was happy to wait for Deku to finish what he started, it was the least the blond could do seeing as he was at fault for the current state of things between them.

“I’m so fuckin angry...” stated Izuku as he crashed the burnt out cigarette against the desk, which Bakugou conviniently ignored seeing as the desk was his. “I’m so fuckin angry-” he repeated despite his tone and words not matching at all “-because this proves that you could’ve gotten your shit together this whole time” he continues while gesturing vaguely between the two of them.

“You could’ve stopped this bullshit and apologised to me!” exclaims Izuku in a tone that is half resigned and half accusing “You could’ve spared me the misery, and yet you didn’t. I feel like I’ve suffered for nothing-”

“You did!” interrupted the blond.

“What?”

“You’ve suffered for nothing” clarified Bakugou “There’s literally NO good reason for you to have gone through even half the shit you did”

“I dunno about that Kacchan” teased Izuku “I’m pretty sure the reason is sitting right in front of me”

“I said no good reason damn it, don’t go around twisting my words you fuckin Deku!”

And Izuku couldn’t help but break out in laughter, because he was pretty sure that this was the first time ever that Bakugou had made a joke at his own expense and this moment was going to live in his brain rent free from now on.

“Oh God, Kacchan-” he wheezed, trying to stop himself from laughing “You were right, you really aren't the same asshole that you were last year!”

“I sure fuckin hope not” replied Bakgou who was just as close to laughing “Otherwise I would’ve had to demand refund for all of those shitty therapy sessions”

“Look at us Kacchan” said Izuku, his laugh now subdued “We’re still a fuckin mess”

“I guess we are” agreed the blond as he stared down at his friend’s notebook in a thoughtful expression.

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

After the truthfully embarrassing heart-to-heart with Kacchan, Izuku wanted to do nothing more than sink into the void for the next eternity, or at least until he gets his reminder text that he’s running late for yet another therapy session. Unfortunately neither of these options were viable seeing as he was on a self-appointed mission to catch up to his uncle. The boy hoped that uncle Shouta would still be somewhere on the premises seeing as his ugly-ass sleeping bag was still in the classroom. Izuku used that to his advantage as he gave the sleeping bag to Bandit who promptly sniffed it and began to follow the scent of a premature-midlife-crisis. Who knew that sheep could make such good hounds?

Bandit had dutifully led their owner through an ever inconvenient maze of corridors, which eventually ended with the two entering the teacher’s lounge like they had every right to be there (which they kinda did, shoutout to Nedzu!). As expected, Izuku’s uncle was in the lounge, surrounded by fellow members of staff as they tried (unsuccessfully, at least by Izuku’s standards) to get any information out of him regarding his class this year. Uncle Shouta for the most part looked like he’d rather be doing anything else and so Izuku has made an executive decision to insert himself obnoxiously into the situation.

“In my humble opinion-” he said, as he sat down next to his uncle, while Bandit jumped up on his lap “that Mineta kid should’ve been expelled. Like, we get it uncle, he has potential ” continued Izuku, as he spat the word distastefully “But how far is that potential gonna get him when all he does is harass the entire female population, like every other mediocre straight guy with self awareness of a sea cucumber?”

“A sea cucumber? Really?” asked uncle Shouta, sounding like the unimpressed bitch that he is.

“I mean don’t get me wrong” he continues, completely ignoring the unnecessary commentary “Straight people are already embarrassing as they are, but this guy is on another level, the kinda level that usually leads to a straight jacket, am I right?! Hah- I just made a pun!”

“The little listener does have a point, Shouta” replied Present Mic.

“Also, did he just say uncle ? Shouta, is there anything you’d like to tell us?” asked Midnight, you know, like a traitor.

“No”

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

It wasn’t until they walked past the gates of the school that his uncle finally stopped in his tracks to voice at least a portion of the questions that have been bubbling in his mind since the impromptu family reunion with his nephew.

“Izuku” says Shouta, with as much concern as an uncle-who-you-haven’t-seen-in-almost-a-decade is allowed to voice “What the fuck?”

“Look, I heard that question far too often in my lifetime, mostly from my therapist, so you’re gonna have to be a bit more specific” replies Izuku sounding like the unimpressed bitch that he hopes to evolve into through the sheer power of genetics and generational trauma.

“Look kid-” says the hobo looking man that has the privilege of being related to Izuku as he puts his hands together, takes a deep breath and prays to whichever God he believes is not yet dead for some guidance on how to handle this “-as much as I’d love to elaborate on the sheer amount of confusion I am experiencing right now due to your questionable way of life, I do actually have to go on a patrol so this conversation is gonna have to be postponed. In the meanwhile give your mother my regards, and I’ll hopefully see you in the near future when you decide once again to wreak havoc in my classroom.”

“No” replies the freckled teen in a total disregard for other people’s prior engagements, thus truly earning his title of a problem child.

“What do you mean no ? Izuku, I have a job to do!”

Instead of replying, Izuku has decided to simply pull a pro-gamer move, by quickly taking out a familiar pair of handcuffs from the side pocket of his backpack, cuffing one side to his uncle’s hand and the other to his own. That on its own is probably not particularly impressive, however it is the speed of the action that has earned it the title of a pro-gamer move, which Izuku is quite proud of. His uncle on the other hand is definitely less so, looking at his cuffed wrist like it has somewhat betrayed him.

“Please tell me you did not just do that”

“I did not just do that”

After wasting about 10 minutes of his life on fruitless struggle of trying to get the handcuffs off like an untrained dog trying to chew off its own leash, Aizawa Shouta; the underground hero Eraserhead, the infamous Erasure Hero has slumped in defeat, internally swearing to himself to one day get revenge on his unruly nephew.

“God, I am so going to have a talk with my sister about this” he says, as if a threat of authority had any meaning to the green headed teen.

“Yeah, no shit, that’s the whole point, we’re going to my house now” replies the teen, completely disregarding any attempt at ‘ an adult asserting their authority ’ over him.

“I still have to go on a patrol tonight” repeats Shouta, as if it was somewhat relevant.

“That sounds like a you problem”

#demise!au #bnha #revival of midoriya izuku #fanfic

[oshbluepacific]

Blind Meeting

Type: fluff

Character: Kim Namjoon (CEO Au!) x Reader

Words Counted: 2k+

questions and request are available / masterlist

“(Y/N), i’m soo sorry for calling you this late!” Your friend suddenly burst with an apology as you picked up the phone. “Don’t worry, I was still playing Harvest Moon… What’s up?” You asked her, shifting your position on the bed “You know I have that really important meeting with that guy tomorrow right…” “Yeah, the one that’s really important if you screw up, Jules would screw you out of your office.” You added, before taking a sip of your hot chocolate. “Unfortunately, my son got a terrible fever and… Felix is not in town at the moment, so…” Then you heard her sigh. “You want me to cover for you tomorrow?” You asked her voluntarily. “I feel so guilty—but would you please?” She asked. “It’s fine I’ll do it, but I’m expecting food on my desk by the time you’re all clear.” You joked and you could hear her laugh on the other end. “That would be noo problem at all!” And you chuckled. “All right, take care of little Kanda, hope he gets better soon.” You smiled. “Thank you (Y/N), thank you so much!” She thanked you again before you said your goodbye and hang up the phone. You placed your phone right next your Nintendo  GameBoy Advance. You took it to save the game before shutting it off and proceed to your desk.

Tomorrow was supposed to be your day off, but unfortunately, things turn up the way you didn’t want them too. But this meeting is so important you, now, can’t mess it up for your friend, or even your boss, Jules. You couldn’t let your co workers down.

“Okay then…” you sighed, turning your laptop on.  You opened your internet and typed in the name of the person you’re going to see tomorrow.

“Kim… Nam…Joon…” You typed in Google Search before pressing enter.

You looked through his profile and he was a successful businessmen in your area. He’s now the CEO of the Joon Company that was formally owned by his father before retiring and decided to spend the rest of his life with his wife and play golf. Once Namjoon was in charge he expanded the company and became one of the most successful multimillionaire in the country under 30.

You looked through his social media, and you were surprised to see how simple his living situation is. He doesn’t really post much but there was a picture of him and his family at a wedding. He was handsome, tall and well dressed. There was a picture of him smiling, showing a sweet dimple and no wonder a lot of girls were into him. He was cute, and also a multimillionaire. He also post artsy foods, probably a book and songs that he’s into and also a lot of picture of him and his 6 others friends which were also cute. When you were studying about Kim Namjoon, your phone suddenly let out a sound, letting your know there’s an incoming text. You walked to your bed and took your phone.

From: (Y/F/N) Hey, I mailed you some documents to you, incase you need to know about him, his background, his company and also a documents for him to sign. but please, don’t drool on his photos dear ;)

You chuckled and send her a reply.

To: (Y/F/N) This is why human created Google Search. and thanks, but please… I won’t. :)

You went back to you desk and started to read all the documents your friend gave you on Kim Namjoon.

The next morning you decided to wear a black jeans and your favourite black and white Blouse. You kept your make up to a minimum and yo decided  to let your hair down. Taking your sling back, your carefully slip the documents and all your carry ons before walking out of your room. You cooked yourself toast with eggs and smoked beef on the side. “Hello?” You answered your phone as you were about to eat your breakfast. “You’re meeting him at the LePlaza Restaurant at 1 P.M., I called the restaurant and changed the reservation under your name, and don’t for the love of my husband and son, don’t be late and don’t mess up!” You’re friend listed and you chuckled. “Honey, relax, this isn’t my first important meeting you know?” You told her, before taking a bite of your toast. “I know, but I don’t know why I’m the one that is worried here.” She said in a worried tone. “Don’t worry, I’ll do you guys proud.” You smiled, getting confident. “Okay great! please let me know how the meeting went after!” She said. “Okay.” “And, (Y/N), thank you so much for covering for me…” “It’s no problem… Really.” You smiled. You hung up the phone and continue to eat your brunch before cleaning your dishes, gabbing your bag and car keys.

The restaurant was elegant, you’ve never been here before so this was really your first time. Usually you’d be going to a meeting somewhere in the city in a coffee shop or just a normal restaurant, but this is different from something you usually do. European style paintings were at the ceiling, some even hanging on the walls. There was a certain area where the tiles were made of glass and beneath it was a pool filled with colourful fishes and plants.

This is a palace.

You got into your seat and your told the waiter you were waiting for someone. “Maybe a drink?” He asked. “Is it appropriate to drink champagne this early?” You asked, getting curious. The waiter just smiled. “People say that it’s better to start early than late.” You laughed in response. “Champagne it is then—oh, would you mind bringing two glasses?” You asked. “Right away madame.” He smiled before rushing to the back. You let out a sigh and just took the time to admire the place. Most of the people here were wearing super formal attire. Most of the women wear dresses and jewellery as if there’s a gala this noon. And most of the men were wearing shirts and suits. You thanked the lord that you did get dressy, because mostly you just throw on shirt and a shirt and that’s it. “Excuse me,” you turned to see a stunning tall man. Brown hair, bright and brown clear eyes. A dimple formed when he smiled at you. “hi, I’m Namjoon, I’m… sorry if I startled you.” He chuckled nervously. “Oh, no, no it’s fine, Hi…” You stood up from your chair to formally greet him. “I’m (Y/N), you were suppose to meet my friend but her son go sick so I’m covering for her, is that okay with you?” You asked politely. “Oh, of course it’s fine, I hope her son gets better.. uh, please let’s sit.” He said. And you laughed nervously. “Did I took you long?” Namjoon asked, as he took his seat. You shook your head. “No, not at all… i just arrived myself.” You told him. “You see that man right there?” Namjoon suddenly points at a table behind you, and you turn to see where he was pointing at. “The guy in the orang polo shirt, that’s my friend, Taehyung.” He explained. You’ve seen him in Namjoon’s social media post. You figured that he’s a close friends. “When I walked in, he quickly went up to me and greeted me, so we chatted for a while before I laid my eyes on you.” You looked at him raising your eyebrow in confused. “Why?” You asked, smiling. “I thought I was late, and I thought you’ve been waiting for a while.” He said, with a nervous chuckle. “Oh don’t worry, If you want to talk to your…” “No, it’s okay.” He smiled. “Is he your… like business partner?” You asked him. “He’s my childhood friend actually, but as we are older we kinda’ have our business together.” He explained and you nodded in interest. “Excuse me, madame, sir.” Suddenly the waiter came back with two glasses and a bottle of champagne. “This is the best champagne I’ve ever drink.” Namjoon expressed. “You’ve been here?” You asked him as the waiter pours you your portion. “I come her sometimes… dinner with family, sometimes on my own, but never for a meeting actually.” Namjoon said. “Oh… I see, this is my first time being here and I’ve never had a meeting in a place like this!” You giggled, and Namjoon just smiled.

Ugh, you almost feel like you want to touch his face when his dimple showed.

“Perhaps you would like to order now?” The waiter asked. You turn to Namjoon and he nodded. “The salmon or steak here the best, do you want to try?” Namjoon asked. “I trust you Namjoon.” You laughed and he joined in. “I’ll Have the sirloin steak and she’ll have the grilled salmon, both with mashed potatoes.” “Okay, anything else?” The waiter asked. Namjoon turned to you and you shook your head. “Nope, that’s all.” Namjoon smiled. And with that the waiter thanked you and rushed back to the kitchen. “So what are we going to talk about?”

You talked about business before the food came, but once the food was on the table, Namjoon turned the subject and you both got to know each other better. “Wait, really?” You asked surprised, covering your mouth with your hand because there were soon in your mouth. “Yeah! My dad made me do it and I got cold the next day, so I couldn’t attend the horrid meeting.” He laughed. “Woah… But this isn’t horrid right?” You asked, jokingly. “No, of course not! i’m actually enjoying this meeting.” He smiled, and you felt happy that he is enjoying his time. “But really, aside from everything we had discuss, we, would like to do a partnership with your company. We thought that with your technology and our brands, it would be the something amazing in the future.” You explained, trying to nail this meeting. Namjoon nodded. “Alright, but do we have to have another meeting, or do have to talk to other people from your office?” Namjoon asked. “Oh, I’ll ask my colleague about that.” You told him, as you try to pull the papers from your bag. “Let me know, if anything, i just want to talk to you.” You felt your cheeks redden as he said and and you just smile. “Really, because most of the meetings I attend to are so formal and so boring, but when I’m talking with you, I feel like i’m talking to a friend as well and not just a business partner.” He told you. “Well I’m glad to be your friend as well.” You told him with a smile.

You gave the documents to him and he pulled his glasses out from his suit pocket and you swore on your life that he looks a thousand times better with it. He reads through the documents really quickly before signing the the bottom part of the paper. You both shake hand and just in time for dessert.

“It was really a pleasure meeting you Namjoon.” You said as you both stepped out of the restaurant. “It was my pleasure as well.” He smiled, slightly bowing to you. “Do need a ride home? Or…” Namjoon asked, shoving one of his hands his pocket. “Oh no, I came her with my car.” You told him politely. “Oh okay…” He nodded. “Look, (Y/N), I really enjoy spending time with you and I hope I can see you again some times?” He said. “Oh, o-okay sure let me put in my number.” You extended your hand and Namjoon automatically pulled his phone out and gave it to you. You punched in your number in his phone before handing it back to him. “Call me tonight maybe?” You asked. “I will sure do, and I will see you, tomorrow night.” He smiled “Tomorrow night? What’s up with tomorrow night?” You asked him, suddenly all confused. Because as you remembered, you don’t have anything important tomorrow. “Oh, I’m planning on booking some place that i think you might like tonight, then I’m going to call you after that, and ask you out for a second date.” He smiled cheekily. “And… let’s be honest, this feels more like a blind date than a meeting.” He joked, but to be honest to yourself, it did. “Okay… Let’s just hope your plan goes the way you planned it to be.” You winked, turning around and walked away slowly from Namjoon towards the parking lot. “Was that a rejection?” He shouted with amuse. “I don’t know, why not try and then you’ll get the answer.” You twirl happily and trotted towards your car.

Once you got into you car, you squealed happily, your cheeks all red and the butterflies flutters in your stomach.

To: (Y/F/N) you should stay at home more often. i nailed the meeting and i nailed the guy as well ;)

#bts #bts imagine #bts imagines #bts fan fiction #bts fanfiction #bangtan #bangtan imagine #bts scenario #bangtan scenario #bangtan fanfiction #kim namjoon #RM #namjoon fanfic #namjoon imagine #namjoon imagines #namjoon CEO Au! #namjoon scenario #namjoon one shot #namjoon oneshot #bts CEO Au! #bangtan CEO Au! #namjoon #kpop #kpop imagine #kpop scenario #kpop CEO Au! #kpop oneshot #kpop fanfic #kpop fan fiction #CEO Au

[okimargarvez]

SCREW TO THE LIMIT - 1

Original title: Vite sull’orlo del baratro.

Prompt: prostitution, sacrifice, danger.

Warnings: A.U., mention of sex content.

Genre: angst, drama, family, romantic, smut.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez, Luke’s son, BAU team, others OC, Derek Morgan.

Pairing: Garvez.

Note: oneshot.

Legend: 💏😘😈👓🔦🐶👨‍👩‍👧‍👦💍🎲🎈.

Song mentioned: none.

Screw to the Limit- Masterlist

GARVEZ STORIES

PART 1

He keeps hear the baby's cry even if he is alone in his head.

He almost forgets it, then sees the number on the calendar and everything rising from the deep up again.

He never pronounces that name. Not even in his mind. He fears its power. It's an irrational fear and not for this less powerful.

The opposite.

 LPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPL

 A creak, then the door opens wide. This is the noise that announces their first meeting. No bell or trumpet of judgment. No choir of angels. Nor thunderbolt; just a pair of eyes that look at the female body as if it were a piece of furniture, because for him she's something like this: a piece to be included in the scheme of his work.

Penelope Garcia. He read her name in the folder they gave him. She can't avoid being amazed to observe her long blond hair with a few pink locks. He obviously expected a Latin chica and maybe they sent him for this reason. No, it's a lie, he knows perfectly well that they sent him here because of his past and his obsession. All the members of the team know it, practically the whole FBI. He doesn't care so much. The woman gives him her back and doesn't seem to notice that a person has entered. She wears a white dress with black polka dots, very... childish. And between the hair what looks like a bow, in Minnie style, or Daisy. Yet she is one of them, a prostitute, a whore, depending on whether he want to be fine or vulgar, the meaning doesn't change. One of those who practice the oldest profession in the world.

Since he had begun to serve the law he had seen so many. Too many. All different for style of hair, clothes, way to talk, pose... yet with the same look sad, faded and, in the worst cases, accusatory, against a society that hid them in the day behind false moralism, but not disdain them with the arrival of the night. But when he goes around the table to sit in front of the blonde, he remains surprised for a second time in not noting that expression. There is certainly sadness. But there is no sign of stun, given by drugs and alcohol that are usually taken voluntarily (at least in part) not to think about what they are doing (and so change their mind). In any case, the woman's face is soft, sweet. And proud. From her dark and determined eyes, his gaze goes downward more, to the spectacle left to be show by a generous neckline. For a nanosecond, the mix between that innocent air as child and the exuberant forms left to glimpse just enough to tease, confuse him. Then he returns himself.

-Penelope, right?- naturally he receives no answer. She doesn't even look at him. She seems indifferent to his claim. -Do you know why you're here?- she shrugs, showing that she is listening, but isn't interested. He sighs, trying to keep calm. It irritates him to be ignored. -We know you knew Melissa. You were friends?- nothing. -You two protect each other?- so far he used a neutral tone. He tries changing tactics. -Hey, I know you're scared, but we don't want to hurt you.- he doesn't even know why he insists on using the plural. -We don't even accuse you.- the low, delicate and understanding voice doesn't seem to have any effect. -We want... I just want to find the bastard who killed Melissa and many other innocent girls.- yet it's difficult to get out of the stereotype of they in part asked for it. Even for someone like him. He stretches out his hand and barely touches hers, which retracts her immediately, almost disgusted, indignant. For a moment he is crossed by a strange thought: to try again and take her against her will. He decides again to change the way to ask himself. If good manners don't work... He extracts the photos from the folder. Not the ones with the smiling victims, before being killed, and maybe even ending up on the street. No, the bloody ones, on the place of the find, on the anatomic table, after the autopsy. He spares her nothing.

And it was the right choice because Penelope begins to waver, finally reacts. She swallows and shake hands until her knuckles become white. -That's enough! Enough, I don't know anything! Take this off out of my sight!- just disguising a smug smile, he performs as required.

-You aren't telling the truth. Kayla and others have hinted at something that happened to you, before arriving in Virginia.- tactical break. -The same man from which you managed to escape could be our unsub, an unknown subject.- he hastens to add as an explanation. -In other words, the bastard who did this. We need you to tell us this story.- and suddenly the woman explodes, she stands up with such impetus as to overturn the chair.

Her face is red, purple and deformed by anger. -Do you know what I think, instead?- she passes from formal terms to colloquial one. She crosses the table and reaches him. -That in reality you are a maniac and that you are enjoying it badly, in this situation. That do you want me to tell you all about so that you can relive it in your beautiful little head, because you don't have the balls to make it happen.- she lowers in his direction and Luke can see other layers of skin, besides the small of the breast. -I'm sorry- he raises the card hanging on the pocket of his shirt and lets it fall down -SSA Luke Alvez, but I'll not give you this satisfaction.- the man is displaced, but doesn't expect her next move. -Watch a good porn, tonight, ok?- and her hand ends up palpating right that sensitive spot not too protected by the fabric of the pants. Already stiffened because of her moves, after being touched, the 'little friend is even more hard. Penelope pretends to be surprised. .I was right.- she exclaims, almost satisfied.

But the expression enjoyed doesn't last long. Luke in fact stands up in his turn, forcing her to move back until her back meets the coldness of the wall. It's the man's turn to feel pleasure in overpowering her, just because of the difference in height between them. -Be careful, pequena, you play with fire and you have no idea of ​​the risks you take...- the body pressed on that woman's. -You feel it, do not you?- he whispers in her ear. -I know that you like it, and I also know that you would want it.- he doesn't let her practically breathe. -But if this auction will penetrate you, it wouldn't be comparable to other times when you've been fuck. It would be another thing. You would touch the sky with a finger and then you would beg me on your knees, to have more, and again and again...- he's making fun of her. Penelope looks at him badly, but his words and gestures have nevertheless had the desired effects. Fortunately, Luke has no evidence to this effect. After a moment he leaves her free but remains close enough. -Now that we have clarified this point, your tongue is loosen and your memory is refreshed?- Penelope just look at him and he decides to surrender, at least for today, before making some worse mess.

 LPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPLPL

 Once he is safe within his walls, that thought doesn't abandon him. He hates the fact that he couldn't make her spill the beans. He was usually able to complete such a task in no time. He is the best in this field. Because he knows which buttons to touch with women. But this Penelope is a tough girl, one of those who might even make moved out; if only she really wanted it. And he must admit that she intrigues him. If they hadn't been in a Bureau room, complete with cameras, he wouldn't just be limited to threats. He would have put her in her place and every moan would have been a supplication...

-Daddy, what are you thinking?- a voice that bears several traces of childhood (missing a few years before it starts to change) brings him back to earth. In front of him a plate of pasta just touched, practically cold. In front of a child with the same color of his hair but green and awake eyes (inherited from his mother) who looks at him waiting for the answer.

-Work. Dad is a bit messed up, in this period... - he smiles, but his son's reply arrives very quick.

-Only in this period?- and they both laugh.

Even after having tucked in Adam (who protests because he says he has become too big for something like that, but he knows that deep down he still likes this kind of attention) and lying down in turn, he can't get rid of her or sleep a wink. He tries to take a cold shower, but he can't cool his hot spirits don't and in the end, he is forced to vent concretely those thoughts how he can, going with hand and imagination.

TAGS: @theshamelessmanatee  @arses21434 @kathy5654 @martinab26 @reidskitty13 @jenf42 @gracieeelizabeth27 @silviajajaja @smalliemichelle99 @charchampagne14 @thinitta   @myhollyhanna23 @garvezz @mercedes-maldonado  @shyladystudentfan @cosmicmelaninflower @avengerquake123 vanuusims

#garvez #criminal minds #cm #penelope garcia #luke alvez #BAU team #derek morgan #penelope x luke #luke x penelope #alvez x garcia #garcia x alvez #A.U.

[tea-and-cardigans]

Do You Notice Me - Bughead Canon AU Oneshot.

This is a one-shot fill for the @bughead-fanfic-wishlist submitted by the always lovely @raptorlily . I can only hope that I have done this prompt justice for you. I have not written Canon is so long it was strange to go back to it. But I cannot wait until new episodes with new canon springboards to launch off!!

Ao3 Link Here.

(Apologies for the Keep Reading cut for mobile users)

Canon AU - What if Jughead wasn't the one who initiated their first kiss? What if it were Betty? Write me a story exploring Betty's growing feelings for Juggie and her deciding what to do with those feelings. Bonus Consideration: she put herself out there and got rejected by Archie, and Jughead isn't exactly an open book. He's also her childhood friend, just like Archie. Perhaps the rewards outweigh the risks?

Do You Notice Me

Betty Cooper had a problem.

Jughead Jones.

He hadn’t started out as a problem. Quite the opposite to be exact but he had fast become one. Betty, after the disaster that was admitting her feelings for Archie had wanted something uncomplicated. She wasn’t looking for romance, or longing looks or fantasies about removing a certain crown shaped beanie and running her fingers through what she imagined were soft, dark waves.

No.

She wanted to solve a murder, find her sister, maybe reconnect with an old friend. Not… this.

She found herself watching him without meaning to. It was almost like she was seeing him again for the first time. They had been friends for so long it was almost like she had missed him growing up. But she was noticing him now.

But now instead of simply accepting that Jughead was a boy with a beanie she began to wonder what was underneath. Ever since she had known him he had worn that beanie, a security blanket of types. She knew what it was like to put up a barrier between yourself and the rest of the world.

That's what her pastel pink sweaters and perfectly curled pony tail was. Something that she presented to the rest of the world a careful concealment of a part of her that was becoming more and more dominant. As if the darkness that was now consuming the small town had taken her down with it.

She had started to notice him, really notice him, that night at Pop’s. After once again managing to subdue that darker, wilder part of herself in her confrontation with Cheryl she had made up with Veronica as they headed to Pop’s. She noted how different he looked her first time really seeing him since the summer break and he looked ‘older’. He was no longer that scrawny kid that they hung out with in Archie’s tree house sipping lemonade made by Mrs Andrews. He had grown up. She had smiled shyly at him when he hopped into the booth opposite her and he returned her smile with a subtle raise of his eyebrows as he stole a sip of her milkshake. Something that he had always done since they were kids. His eyes challenged her to stop him but she just leant back in her seat, allowing him to take what he wanted.

It became abundantly clear to everyone in that booth that night how enamoured Archie Andrews was with new girl Veronica Lodge. Betty knew that the pain that she felt now would lessen. Stepping back now she could see how her ‘crush’ on Archie, and it was just that, had been a long held childhood fantasy of hers. She had seen them as that power couple. The high school jock and the girl next door looked so good on paper. But in reality Archie had only eyes for Veronica.

The little looks that Jughead sent her did not go unnoticed by her. Small, shy smiles. Kind eyes. And for a brief and fleeting moment she found herself wishing that she was on the other side of the booth next to him, sharing their own private jokes together as they had when they were children. As they had before she went away for the summer.

“I can wait out here until your mom gets here.” Jughead said from behind her as they had stood out the front of Pop’s watching Archie and Veronica leave together. His hands were shoved in his jacket pockets as he glanced at her, kicking some stones at his feet. She thought about the expression on her mom’s face if she turned up to pick her up at Pop’s to find her with Jughead Jones. Alice had made no secret of her disdain for the Jones family as soon as Betty started hanging out with Jughead. She wondered which her mother would be more disapproving of, Jughead or Archie.

“It’s okay Juggie, she’ll be here soon.” He gave her a quick nod before he returned inside to the booth that they had been sitting at. She watched him pull out his laptop and begin to type, the waitress already putting down another cup of steaming hot coffee. A loud beep tore her away from her observations as her mom leaned over to the passenger side’s window telling her to hurry up and get in the car. She stole one more glance before she made her way to the old station wagon.

In reality she hadn’t expected him to say yes when she asked him to help her resurrect the Blue and Gold. He was right, writing for the school paper wasn’t really his scene. So she had batted her eyelashes and pouted her lips slightly. It wasn’t the first and it probably wouldn’t be the last time that she used this tactic on him. She knew by his heavy sigh and slumping of his shoulders that she had won and eagerly agreed to his conditions.

It felt somewhat familiar being the sleuthing duo of Riverdale High. It reminded her of the time the summer before last where Archie had gone off to football camp and the three musketeers had become a reluctant two. They spent their days at Pop’s Betty reading her book on one side of the booth while Jughead furiously typed on his laptop while Betty occasionally would try to steal a look. Jughead would quickly turn the screen away from her prying eyes not yet ready to share what he was working on. Betty would hmph and then skip to the counter to get them another round of milkshakes ignoring the voices in her head of Alice Cooper and Cheryl Blossom that she shoud make better choices if she wanted to succeed. Jughead never said anything.

She hadn’t expected him to say yes to finding Polly. She reasoned that it was because he was committed to finding out who killed Jason and Polly was a key part to the mystery. She had expected him to turn and run when she suggested that he came to breakfast so that she could get a good look at her mum’s checkbook. No-one voluntarily put themselves in the same room as her mother. But he had. Giving her a final pleading look as Alice Cooper led him from the breakfast table, his eyes lingering on the cooked breakfast he was leaving behind.

He had offered to travel with her to see Polly. She could have gone on her own, even Archie offered to go with her and she had turned him away. The Betty of a few weeks ago wouldn’t have even given Archie’s offer a second thought accepting immediately. Betty liked to think that she had changed since that night at the dance. She had grown up.

Her eyes continued to drift over to him during the bus ride to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. He stared out the window, his eyes flicking between the trees and buildings as they passed them. Her heart stopped as they set foot off the bus and the building came into view. A home for wayward teens, it looked more like an insane asylum. She could feel the tears already beginning to well. Shutting her eyes to try and keep them at bay. She felt his hands on her shoulders turning him to face her. She opened her eyes and was met by the intensity of his own green ones.

“We are going to get her out of here Betts.” She nodded. His eyes narrowed waiting for her more convicted response.

“We are going to get her out.” She repeated as he gave her shoulders a final squeeze and Betty thought that maybe he was going to pull her into an embrace, before he let go. She took a deep sigh, straightened her shoulders and pulled her ponytail that much tighter as they stepped towards the building.

She needed to see him. After the events of the day before and her conversation with her parents she needed to talk to someone and where her mind would previously have thought of Kevin or Archie there was now a new name coming to mind Jughead. She waited until her mom and dad left the home for the register. Before she snuck out. She had texted him already asking to meet her at the Blue and Gold.

Her hand was shaking a little as she turned the handle and was relieved to see him already there. She was reminded of the way that he had tried to reach out to her and her sister at the Sister’s, held back by one of the porters. It had been an unpleasant car ride back to Riverdale to say the least. Betty sitting in the front passenger seat her mother stopping her from getting in the back of the car with him. A pointed look telling her not to test her any further and Betty knew that she would be wise to heed her mother’s warning.

“Betts.” He breathed out as he saw her and Betty paused briefly at the door before she shut it behind her. He was by her side by the time the door had shut his hand on her arm in what she took as a gesture of concern and nothing more.

“Jug, I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.” She removed herself from his grip and sat up on one of the old desks.

Jughead followed her across the room, leaning against her perch. “I volunteered.” He reminded her. She looked down his hand was resting against the desk so close to her own hand. She thought about moving the last few inches to touch her fingers against his own to see if he would pull back. Whether he would look at her in confusion at her actions or jerk his hand away. She had been burned once this school year and was not so sure she was keen to be burned again.

“I shouldn’t have told her about Jason.” She pulled her hand to her lap removing it from temptation. Jughead jumped up to sit beside her on the desk. Eliminating the distance that she had just put between them.

“You needed to Betts. Otherwise you wouldn’t be any better than your parents. She deserved to know especially because -”

“Of the baby.” Betty whispered. She was still in shock that her sister was pregnant. That she was going to be an auntie. That new life growing inside her sister had already lost their father. She wouldn’t let her parents take away their mother as well.

“Yeah.”

“I asked my dad.” She looked up from her lap to meet his eyes. “About whether he killed Jason.”

“And?”

“He didn’t. But they’re crazy Juggie, both of them. And Polly, the way she was talking. She sounded crazy. Maybe I’m-”

“Hey.” His hand was on her shoulder, a soothing rubbing motion. Not unlike how he had back at the Sister’s. “All our parents are crazy.” A small smile across his lips brought a little comfort to her and she realised she was now staring at his lips.

It wasn’t the first time she had found herself in this position in the Blue and Gold office since they had started their investigation into the murder of Jason Blossom. She had imagined closing the distance between them as he leant over her shoulder watching her as she would carefully edit one of his articles or as they sat together on the old desk both looking at the ‘murder board’ as if there was something there that they were both missing. He would stare at the board and Betty would sneak glances at him as he pulled his bottom lip in concentration. Or occasionally twisted that one curl that always managed to find it’s way out of the confines of the gray woollen beanie on top of his head.

There was that voice in her head holding her back. Telling her that it was all in her head. Those gestures of comfort, those shy smiles, the private jokes, all of it was just her imagination. They were friends was it really something that she wanted to jeopardise just like she had her friendship with Archie because she couldn’t keep her emotions in check. She had been trying to analyse him. See if there was something there, whether he was feeling anything for her. She had run through his comment about her and Trevor’s date a million times.

‘You just called it a date.’ Was he jealous? Curious? Perhaps concerned that she was putting herself out there again after just having her heart stomped all over by their friend. He had said it so casually that she couldn’t read into it further. She looked for signs and yet Jughead Jones was a closed book that she desperately wanted to read.

“Juggie.” She whispered. Her hand moved to his arm and she felt him still slightly under her touch and she thought about pulling back, backing out completely. “Thank you.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek. She pulled herself back to examine his reaction as he turned to face her. His eyes searching hers his expression as always unreadable to her.

She leant in again, this time pressing her lips against his. They were warm and soft against her own. She heard his breath hitch as she moved her lips against his waiting for him to respond. She thought for a moment that she had messed up. She had altered another friendship through the complications of her own emotions. She went to pull back from the kiss, but his hand on the back of her head stopped her as he kept her in place as he finally began to return her kiss in earnest.

She sighed into the kiss as their mouths explored one another. This kiss was different to the one she had shared with Archie when they were still kids playing. Different to the one she had shared with Brad during her internship in Los Angeles at the carnival. It was as if every part of her body was on edge, every sense was heightened and she could only think of him. Her heart was thundering in her ears as she felt his hand moved from her head to her neck, his thumb brushing against her pulse point as her own hands moved from his arms to his jacket pulling him towards her so that he was closer to her as they both shifted on the desk. She pulled back smiling at him, her grin widening as she noticed that he shared her expression. Was this what her sister had felt when she had first kissed Jason? Before their families had torn them apart, when they were planning their secret get away to -

“The car!” She exclaimed her eyes widening in realisation as her mind tried to catch up to it’s own thought while still trapped in the feeling of her kiss with Jughead.

“And I thought we were having a moment here.” She met his eyes and thought that she could see a hint of disappointment.

“We were, we are, but Polly said that her and Jason had stashed a car on route 44. Maybe if we can find that car.”

“Then we can find some concrete evidence.”

“That Polly isn't crazy.” Her hands were either side if his face as she kissed his lips again. “To be continued?”

“Most definitely.” He replied taking her hand in hers as he pulled her from the desk as they left the Blue and Gold together.

Off to solve a murder, and maybe something more.

#bughead fanfiction #bughead #canon au #mywork #raptorlily #prompt fill #betty cooper x jughead jones #bughead-fanfic-wishlist

[shedoesthings]

I’m Not Him

Jughead x Reader. 

Prompt: The reader is in a bad relationship with one of the jocks, when they get into a huge fight she goes to see her Jughead, her best friend. Jughead tries to convince her she deserves better. 

I’m Not Him 

“No, your an ass-hole!” You shout, pushing his chest away from yours. You look up to meet his cold eyes, like he was feeling nothing about this whole situation. How he didn’t even care about how he had hurt your feelings. The countless times he had made you feel “unworthy”. The dates he stood you up on. The time you thought were romantic, personal moments between the two of you, but he left you the minute you looked away. Always finding something better. 

“Don’t over-react Y/N. Not again” he sighs, rolling his eyes yet again. “Over react?! It’s our 5 month anniversary and you don’t even care! You’d rather spend it one some stupid guys night out?” “Hey! I am always letting you go off to spend nights with Veronica and Betty, I never complain then!” “Okay, one, when I spend those nights with my friends, it’s not on our anniversary or when we’ve made plans. And excuse me? You "let me” spend time with my friends?“ "You know I didn’t mean it like that” he rolls his eyes again. Is he serious right now? You feel your blood start to boil in your veins as your anger rises. You press your hand into a fist behind your back, your nails digging into the palms hard. 

“I don’t care what you meant. I’m leaving” you sigh, biting your lip to stop it from quivering. You grab your jacket and bag from the floor next to the couch you were both sitting on and rush over to the door. “Come on Y/N. Chill the fuck out. It’s not like we were going to do anything special” he scoffs. Clearly not remembering how you’d confided in him. How a few weeks ago in a heated moment where he had tried to take off your clothes you promised him that you would make your anniversary special. Giving him your virginity was something so special to you, it showed how much you trusted him, how much you cared, how much you loved him. Clearly it meant nothing to him. “Fuck you” you whisper, hoping he heard you as you walk out the door, slamming it behind you. The cold hit you as you walked the empty, dark streets. The thin jumper you picked up this morning was perfect for the cool breeze of morning but when it became night, the thin layer was not enough to save your skin from the air. You shivered, hugging your arms as you walked. Where to go? Not home, he would think of that, be there waiting for you, waiting to make up. With blood still boiling you decide to walk far and fast. No particular direction, just any way to distract yourself. “Y/N?” asks a voice in the darkness, making you jump. With worried eyes you look around, suddenly realising where you had walked to. A movie plays in the background to an almost empty drive in. The voice coming from your best friend who was leaning against the door to the projection room. His crown perfectly settled on his head as usual, proving to the world how much of a prince he really was, despite so many people being unable to realise it. “What are you doing here?” Jughead asks, talking over the movie which you realise is Pretty In Pink, a classic, and one of your favourites. It was the scene where Andie confronts Blane about their prom, shouting at him to admit he is ashamed of her. How ironic. “I just needed to breathe” you sigh, your breath appearing like a cloud of smoke in front of your face. “You look freezing” he rushes over to you, pulling off his jacket and draping it around your shoulders. When he gets up close he looks at you properly. His intense stare looking at every detail on your face. “Thanks Juggie” you force a smile on your lips. “Y/N? What’s going on?” he asks, looking down at you, never breaking his gaze, clearly concerned. Why did he have to be so perfect. He cared so much that it felt inhuman sometimes. He cared for everyone, was always there for Archie in times of need, when Betty needed calming down or cheering up, he was always there. But sometimes that looked like nothing compared to how he looked out for you. Whenever there was the slightest glint of sadness or anger on your face he was there, within seconds he would be making you smile, cuddling you when you felt lonely, bringing Pop’s take out to your house with a movie to cheer you up before you had even text him to ask if he was free. It’s like he knew you better then you knew yourself. Bringing you inside the projection room he walks behind you, his hands rubbing up and down your arms trying to warm you up as much as possible. You both sit down on his mattress laid out on the floor in the corner. You had constantly offered Jughead a place to stay at your house, your parents loved him and would do anything for him, but Jughead knew your boyfriend. Knew how jealous he would get, and he didn’t want that drama at school. Drama was never something Jug voluntarily got into unless it was to protect someone else. “So, are you going to tell me what brings you out here so late at night?” He asks with a sigh, lifting his arm up to lazily swing it around your shoulder, bringing you in closer so you can lean against his chest. You sigh happily in the comfort of the moment. All the anger you had early started to fade away as you melted into his arms. “Just… It’s just him” You hear Jughead sigh. He knew exactly what he was like, his habit of lowering your confidence, making you beg for his attention as if he was a God you had to worship. From the beginning Jughead had shown his distaste for your taste in men, the amount of times he told you to leave him but you never paid attention. You thought you knew what love was, but if this was it, was it really worth it? “What has the ass-hole done now?” he asks, squeezing your shoulder, pulling you closer into his chest, if that was even possible. “He’s decided he wants to miss our anniversary for a guys night out” “Y/N” he says sympathetically. “He’s a dickhead. I’m not surprised…” Listening to Jughead rant was not what you needed right now. He lectured so many times about him but now was not the time for another lesson. “Jughead stop. Please!” You shout, louder then you had intended too but the anger in you had started to rise again. You push yourself away from his chest, sitting up to look at him directly. He stops mid-sentence, just staring at you. “I can’t listen to this right now. I know you hate him. I know. You are my best friend, that’s what I need you to be right now! I don’t want you to tell me how he’s a dick, how he keeps doing this because I know he does! I’m the one who’s had to put up with it first hand! I don’t want it repeating for me by you, not now!” You shout, your eyes watering in the moment. It felt like everyone was against you. Like everyone wanted to treat you like shit. Like a child who couldn’t understand, or a toy for them to play with. You look away from Jug, towards the wall where he had posters hanging loosely, despite this you could still feel his eyes gazing at you. “Fine.” Jughead says, finally breaking the silence that had fallen between you two. “Fine. I won’t say anything else about him ever again. As long as you listen to me know Y/N” He grabs your hands, pulling your attention back towards him. He softly strokes the pad of his thumb against your hand, a soothing gesture which makes you breathe deeply, calming yourself. He looks at your eyes deeply. “Y/N, you deserve so much better. I can say he’s a jerk all I want, I know that won’t change your feelings. But I just want you to know the way he treats you is bullshit. You are the most intelligent, funny, beautiful, fantastic girl I know. Any guy would be the luckiest man on Earth to even have a chance to be with you. You deserve the world. The whole galaxy even and he can’t even bring you a star.” “Jug…” you say, speechless to his words. “I know I’m not him but if I was then I would be fighting everyday to make you the happiest girl ever.” You sit there for a second. Trying to find the right words to say to your best friend. The guy you had known since childhood, yet you had never seen this side to him. Never felt so special, so speechless, so loved. In a rush you lean forward, placing your lips delicately on his. It takes a second for him to respond, but soon he kisses you back. A hand cupping the back of your head, pulling you closer to him. He smiles into the kiss, pressing his lips hard on yours, rough and desperate. I move closer, placing my leg over his so I was straddling him. He bites my lower lip and sucks harshly, making me moan into the kiss. My hand lands on his chest, the other going to his hair, pulling off his beanie along the way. I gently tug his hair, making his moan as well. After a minute I break the kiss, looking down at him as he catches his breath. I look down and smile. “Jughead. You are my world” I say honestly. A smile breaks out on his face as he raises his head, delicately pressing his lips back on mine.

Please send in requests!!

#riverdale #riverdale fic #riverdale fan #riverdale jughead #jughead x reader #jughead #jughead jones #jughead fic #jughead fanfiction #jughead fluff #jughead imagine #jughead oneshot #jughead riverdale #riverdale fluff #riverdale fanfiction #imagine #fluff #imagines

[thegloober]

Where Does Creativity Come From (and Why Do Schools Kill It Off)? (Ep. 355)

Studies show kids are more creative when they aren’t promised a reward. But schools — with their incentives for performance and emphasis on quantifiable outcomes — may not be set up to prioritize creativity. (Photo: Ben_Kerckx/Pixabay)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Where Does Creativity Come From (and Why Do Schools Kill It Off)?” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

Family environments and “diversifying experiences” (including the early death of a parent); intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations; schools that value assessments, but don’t assess the things we value. All these elements factor into the long, mysterious march towards a creative life. To learn more, we examine the early years of Ai Weiwei, Rosanne Cash, Elvis Costello, Maira Kalman, Wynton Marsalis, Jennifer Egan, and others. (Ep. 2 of the “How to Be Creative” series.).

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

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Stephen DUBNER: I don’t understand why you’re not in prison in China. It sounds like — obviously they did it for a little while.

Ai WEIWEI: I’ll tell the truth. I tried to think about it and suddenly, just this moment, I realized the answer. The jail in China is not large enough to put me in.

DUBNER: What do you mean?

WEIWEI: I’m just too large for them. My ideas penetrate the walls.

Are your ideas big enough to penetrate walls? His, apparently, are.

WEIWEI: My name is Ai Weiwei. I’m 61 years old. I was born in 1957 in Beijing, China. But in the year I was born, my father was exiled.

In our previous episode, we asked the art economist David Galenson to name a true creative genius.

David GALENSON: I mean, Ai Weiwei is a giant. Ai Weiwei I believe is not only the most important painter in the world, he’s the most important person in art. Ai Weiwei has changed the world. With his art, he has made a contribution to political discourse. This is a unique person in art, almost in the last hundred years.

So we went to Berlin to visit Ai Weiwei. We interviewed him in his subterranean studio, a former brewery in the former East Berlin.

DUBNER: And how do you describe what you do now?

WEIWEI: That is a little bit confusing, because as a profession, most things I did relate to so-called art. So people call me artist. But since I have been also working in defending human rights or freedom of speech or human condition, they call me activist.

DUBNER: Do you care what people call you?

WEIWEI: I don’t really care. I think I’ll live my life. I do care if I still can wake up the next morning. I do care if I can walk to school to pick up my son.

(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)

You can see why people are confused by what, exactly, Ai Weiwei is, or does. He spends a lot of time making things but also a lot of time on Twitter, calling out institutional hypocrisies or cruelties. He once created a museum piece comprised of 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds; he also made a series of photographs in which he drops a Han Dynasty urn to the ground and smashes it to bits. Lately, he’s been consumed with the global refugee crisis: he hung 14,000 life vests around Berlin’s main concert hall; he installed a sprawling public-art project in New York called “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”; and he made a documentary film called “Human Flow.”

WEIWEI: The officials came here and told them, look, there’s no way you’re going to get papers to continue. Either you go voluntarily, or we arrest you.

Ai Weiwei’s enduring obsession has been to stick his finger in the eye of the Chinese government. He helped design the Olympic stadium for Beijing’s 2008 Games; but by the time it was built, he’d attacked the organizers for cronyism and corruption. After the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan that killed tens of thousands, he launched a citizens’ investigation into the poorly-built schools where so many children died; he gathered up the mangled rebar from quake sites and turned it into a sculpture called Straight. When the government placed him under surveillance, he responded by making a sculpture called Surveillance Camera. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was kidnapped and jailed by the Chinese government, charged with “subversion of state power.” Upon being set free, he decided it was best to leave China.

WEIWEI: Since I was born, I would be seen as a son of the enemy of the people. They see you are dangerous. They see you are someone who could have a potential to make big trouble.

DUBNER: They were right.

WEIWEI: They’re perfectly right. But I try to live up to that kind of conditions, too. I am not satisfied with what I did.

Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was a prominent poet and intellectual. Before the Communist revolution, he was considered a leftist subversive. When Mao took over, Qing started out in the new regime’s good graces but eventually fell out of favor, and the family was exiled from Beijing.

WEIWEI: So I grew up in the Xinjiang province, which is Gobi Desert. And spent about 18 years in that location.

DUBNER: So when you were a kid, you’re growing up in — we call them labor camps or reeducation camps. I don’t know what you call it?

WEIWEI: We call it reeducation camps to remake you, to become a better part of a society.

DUBNER: It didn’t seem to have worked.

WEIWEI: It did work on me.

DUBNER: Well, if the state was trying to reeducate you —

WEIWEI: But that reeducation is very important, because it builds your reactionary to this kind brainwashing or trying to limit individual’s rights and freedom of speech. So you get, somehow, immune to these attacks.

For several years, the family lived underground, in a cavern. For two decades, Ai Ching did not write.

WEIWEI: My father is so scared. There is no single day he comes home not physically shaking because he’s been so mistreated and —

DUBNER: He tried to kill himself several times.

WEIWEI: He did. He attempted three times.

DUBNER: How did he try? Do you know?

WEIWEI: He once, the electric — how do you call that?

DUBNER: Socket.

WEIWEI: Socket. Of course, the whole light went off because of the shortage. And he once tried hanging himself, and it’s so lucky the nail was loosened.

DUBNER: And you were a teenager then or younger?

WEIWEI: I was about eight or nine.

DUBNER: And did you know what happened?

WEIWEI: I didn’t know at all. He told me.

DUBNER: Later.

WEIWEI: Yeah.

Concerning Ai Weiwei’s upbringing, at least two questions come to mind, both of them probably unanswerable. The first: what are the odds that that boy, living in a labor camp in the Gobi Desert, would become one of the most influential artists in the world? And: how much did that environment have to do with who he became?

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Ai Weiwei’s childhood was of course atypical. And a lot of his art is clearly a response to his family’s treatment during China’s Cultural Revolution. But is there any way to say that his upbringing was a cause of his creativity?

Dean SIMONTON: Yeah, that’s very important. We actually have a term for it. We call it “diversifying experiences.”

Dean Simonton is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California-Davis. He’s spent decades studying the biographies of great artists and scientists to help understand where creativity comes from.

SIMONTON: What “diversifying experiences” means is you’re exposed to one or more events, in childhood or adolescence, that puts you on a different track from everybody else. So instead of being raised just like all the other kids on your block in a very conventional fashion, you all of a sudden find yourself different. You see yourself as different. You have different goals. And these diversifying experiences can take a lot of different forms, and often you look at the lives of a lot of creative geniuses and you see more than one of them operating.

DUBNER: So you’re saying that diversifying influences would tend to lead to higher creativity then, yes?

SIMONTON: Tend to lead to creative genius.

Pat BROWN: I didn’t realize that he was a spy until I was a teenager.

That’s the scientist Pat Brown. He grew up all over the world — in Paris, Taipei, in Washington, D.C.

BROWN: The way I figured it out was that a good friend of mine, my dad was his boss in a way, and he made some mention of the fact that his dad worked for the C.I.A., and I thought, “Well, that’s weird because —”

DUBNER: “My dad doesn’t.”

BROWN: Yeah.

For a time, Brown was best known as an inventor of a method of genetic analysis called the D.N.A. microarray, which has become useful for the study of cancer.

DUBNER: Was this research primarily within the context of solving cancer, addressing cancer, or no?

BROWN: No. Let’s put it this way. It’s kind of hard to, for so many of these things that I would do, any scientist would do, it’s not necessarily that there’s a single reason why you’re doing it. You just realize that, if we could do this, there’s all these cool things that you could apply it to. Okay. And in fact, in the early days when we had first got this thing working, we had a few good ideas there was reason enough to do it. And then as you’re actually doing experiments you realize, “Oh we could do this. Oh we could do this.”

Until a few years ago, Brown was a sort of high-end researcher-without-portfolio at Stanford. And then he took a massive left turn and founded a startup with rather modest goals.

BROWN: I’m currently the C.E.O. and founder of Impossible Foods, which is a company whose mission is to completely replace animals as a food production technology by 2035.

I asked Brown whether he saw any connection between his globe-trotting childhood with a C.I.A. dad and his scientific career.

BROWN: I think the fact that I traveled and lived in multiple places in the world. And in those days kids were a lot more like free-range at a young age. And I felt like I had a lot of freedom to explore all these places and so forth, I think had an impact on me in the sense that it just it just made me aware of the fact that there is basically no place on earth that’s inaccessible.

Maira KALMAN: Probably the base of everything that I do is a fantastic curiosity about people, intense empathy that we’re all struggling, we’re all heroic to just even wake up in the morning.

That’s Maira Kalman.

Maira KALMAN: I am an illustrator and author.

And she’s got a son.

Alex KALMAN: My name is Alex Kalman and I’m a designer, a curator, a creative director, a writer, an editor, and someone with generally many ants in their pants.

DUBNER: Can one or both of you — you can take turns, you can interrupt, whatever you want — just describe briefly the family. That’s a small topic, but just a little bit about the family growing up and until now.

Maira KALMAN: Did you say that’s a small topic?

DUBNER: Yeah.

Maira KALMAN: Oh my God. That’s an epic. I think that’s the epic topic. There is no bigger topic than the family.

Maira Kalman is best known for her children’s books and her illustrated edition of The Elements of Style and her work for The New Yorker, including one of its most famous covers ever, called “New Yorkistan.” Her work manages to be whimsical and melancholy at once. Paintings of cake and dogs and demure old ladies in plume-y hats. She once bought a pair of the conductor Arturo Toscanini’s pants at auction, just to have them. Actually, she bought the whole suit …

Maira KALMAN: But his pants have a lot more panache when you say his pants.

For years, Maira Kalman was best-known as the right-hand woman to her husband Tibor Kalman, a wildly creative and influential designer. He died young, nearly 20 years ago, when their two children were young. I’ve known them since around that time.

DUBNER: Pretend I don’t know either of you at all.

Maira KALMAN: Okay.

DUBNER: And we’re sitting next to each other on an airplane or something and I say, “Who are you?” Oh, you guys are a mother and son, tell me a little bit about yourselves. What kind of family was this? Where did you live and what was that household like?

Alex KALMAN: I think we’d say, “Do you mind if we swap seats so that we don’t have to sit next to each other on our flight.” Yeah. We’d prefer not to talk, actually.

Maira KALMAN: I’m going to say, I’m going to be in business class and he’s going to be in — no, anyway, so go on.

Alex KALMAN: Mom!

Alex and Maira are collaborators too. They created an installation called Sara Berman’s Closet — Sara Berman being Maira’s mother and Alex’s grandmother — and the installation consisted of the contents of Sara’s closet, artfully curated and arranged. It’s appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. So I was curious what the Kalman house was like to grow up in.

Alex KALMAN: It was a really joyful and wild and fun childhood. We were all very close and we went on many adventures. And days were filled with looking around and making books when we were bored and cooking dinner and listening to music from all corners of the earth and just a real — really deep exposure to everything and anything that was not familiar in our day to day.

Maira KALMAN: And I thought that a house where we’re making books and dancing and making costumes and turning the furniture upside down is — How could you not do that? So the creativity in the home, in the family, was a sense of play and a sense of loving language and art and music.

Alex KALMAN: I think that real creativity isn’t this thought to say, “Okay now let’s be creative.” It’s just a natural feeling or understanding of saying, “All these rules are opportunity to create new rules or bend certain rules.” And the joy in that type of experimentation and that type of play, hopefully with some result that is meaningful or profound or funny or entertaining.

Nico MUHLY: My parents to their enormous credit were really not that pushy.

That’s the composer Nico Muhly, the youngest person to ever have a commission from the Metropolitan Opera, in New York. He grew up in New England with a painter mom and a documentary-filmmaker dad.

MUHLY: And it’s the usual, you have to be driven to the thing and then you have to get all the books and you have to pay for these classes and whatever. So my parents were really great about that, but it wasn’t this version of the thing where it’s as if we were going to press you so hard to become a concert violinist. Nor was it, isn’t this a cute hobby but you need to work for Goldman Sachs. I think they found the good middle point.

It’s less about them being artists and more about them creating a household in which ideas were spoken about. And I think that’s the real luxury of my childhood was not necessarily being surrounded by art in that way, but by people who read and thought about a million things and channeled that into, not just artistic expression. I mean, we all know, we all have horror stories of people raised by artists.

Horror stories, maybe. But also success stories. Growing up in a creative household means learning not only that a creative life is possible; but if you pay attention, you can learn how to do it. That was the case with Elvis Costello, the singular singer-songwriter, whose father was a singer with a popular dance band.

Elvis COSTELLO: Nobody would regard them as hip in the slightest way but the leader, Joe Loss, he managed to front a band from the late 20’s to the 80’s. He was a remarkable character in English light entertainment. They weren’t by any means up with the rock and roll vibe or anything like that.

Young Elvis — actually his name was Declan MacManus back then — young Declan would hang out in the darkened balcony of the Hammersmith Palais in London during the band’s Saturday afternoon set. Watching his father emerge into the limelight, in jacket and tie. Which is why to this day, Elvis Costello pretty much always wears a jacket and tie.

COSTELLO: You have a sort of admiration for your parents’ ability to do whatever it is they do. That was one perspective of performance. And he brought music into the house that he was learning for the weekly broadcast. Later on, after my parents separated, his life transformed. He then sort of took on an appearance closer to sort of Peter Sellers in What’s New Pussycat? He grew his hair long and he started to wear fashionable clothes and listen to contemporary music, because he left the safety of the nightly gig with the dance band and decided he wanted to do his own thing.

So that striking out and being independent thing was sort of from his example, no matter what the music was or the style — and bear in mind my taste in music changed just like any teenager; it was all about one thing, the next day it was all about another; it was always about the song. I had spent the last two years of schooling in Liverpool which at that time was musically very quiet in the early 70’s, and tried to make my own way playing my own songs. I had a partner, we sang in bars and any evening where they would let us on the stage, really.

We were making tiny little bits of money, just about covered our expenses, and I learned a little bit how to do it, but I never really thought that I was — I looked at the television every Thursday to see Top of the Pops and saw the distance between the way I looked and felt and sounded and what was a pop singer right then, which was a lot of people in baker foil with eye makeup on; that was the music of that moment, the glitter, glam moment. That seemed very distant from a 17-year-old.

DUBNER: Did you wish you could do that?

COSTELLO: No, I never wanted to do that. I might be the only person in English pop music that made a record that never wanted to be David Bowie, while still loving everything he did.

Wynton MARSALIS: My father really struggled a lot. He couldn’t make money playing modern jazz.

Wynton Marsalis is one of the most celebrated musicians alive — a jazz and classical trumpeter who also composes, teaches, and runs the landmark Jazz at Lincoln Center program. His father, Ellis Marsalis, is also an accomplished jazz musician: a piano player.

MARSALIS: He played with great musicians, but the people didn’t really want to hear the style of music they were playing.

In the 1960’s and 70’s, when Wynton was growing up in New Orleans, the dominant popular music was funk and R&B; not the modern jazz his father played.

MARSALIS: I’d grown up around the music, so my father and them played, they listen to their music, no one else was listening to it, but I heard it.

So Ellis Marsalis supported the family by teaching.

MARSALIS: Well my daddy, the first jobs my father had paid $5,000 a year, $6,000. He was a band director for segregated high schools and in towns like Opelousas, Louisiana. Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.

But Ellis was still an influential musician in New Orleans — and for his son.

MARSALIS: Musicians knew what he was. People in the neighborhood respected him for his opinions. Yeah you can’t say nothing to jazz musicians; they know stuff. The barbershop or something. And also because in the barbershop, at the height of black nationalism, my father was always the one who was not nationalistic and that was a great embarrassment for me.

I’d be saying, “Man, why are you always talking to stuff that’s against what everybody is saying?” And he would always be very philosophical: “Man, you don’t attack people that’s not there. You gotta tell the people in front of you what they don’t want to hear.” And he was always, a big one, he used to say, “All of everybody never does anything.” If you said, “they,” he would always say, “Who is they, man? Can you tell me who they is? Do you know them? Who are their names?”

Wynton’s mother was also a big influence.

MARSALIS: My mama was unique, and she had an originality. Her food tasted different, she had her own way of doing stuff. She was a big creative person.

DUBNER: The way she decorated your house, I understand was artistic? Yeah.

MARSALIS: Everything about her, everything. She grew up, she’s from the projects. So, she’s very unusual, because she very much had the street element which has become a cliché now. Then it wasn’t as cliché. And she was also it was her first to graduate from college, she went to Grambling University. She was extremely intelligent in terms of just her ability to do, she could do my chemistry homework when I was in high school and any spatial problem she understood. But she also had a very deep social consciousness that was not, it was not cliché.

And Wynton Marsalis distinguished himself at a very young age.

MARSALIS: Well, I played the Haydn Trumpet Concerto with the New Orleans Philharmonic when I was 14. And the Brandenburg Concerto with the New Orleans Youth Orchestra when I was 16.

DUBNER: How did you recognize that trumpet was going to be what you were good at?

MARSALIS: Well, I didn’t know till I was 12 that I was going to be interested in it and then it was just a matter of applying, practicing and stuff. I noticed, if you practice you got better. Because a guy in my neighborhood was always picked on. And he saw Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon, and he decided to get some nunchucks. And man he would swing these sticks and then all of a sudden, maybe five months of him swinging these sticks every day, he became a virtuoso at it.

Then there was no more picking on him, calling him fat, taking his money, stuff that people liked to do him. All of a sudden it was, hey, say Fats, come swing them sticks for us. And then Fats, his name was Theodore. We called him Thedo. We grew up, we were in the country, Kenner, Louisiana the black side, segregated side. And I noticed one day, he had an encounter with a guy name we called Big Pull, and after that encounter he definitely was not picked on.

And I thought, “Man, practicing is something.” This guy, six months ago, everybody was picking on him, now he practiced swinging these sticks and his whole position in the hierarchy of this food chain has changed. I understood from watching him that just the diligence and repetition, intelligent repetition you could become better at things.

A couple of years later, Wynton and his brother Branford joined a funk band.

MARSALIS: I was good at making a bass line. I’m left-handed so they would always say, “Put a bass line on this bro,” so I’d put a bass line or something. We rehearsed in the 9th Ward, we had a band called The Creators at that time. In New Orleans, my brother and I were the two youngest musicians on the whole funk scene. I was 13 and Branford was 14. Our band was mainly older men, maybe in their early 20s and teens, late teens. There were maybe 10 to 13 bands they all had names like Cool Enterprise, Flashback, Stop Inc., Vietnam, Blackmail, the Family Players.

We would have battles of the bands, we’d play dances. We’d play gigs everywhere, wedding receptions. We did a series of talent shows that the police department would sponsor to make community relations, and people would come up out of the audience, we played the worst areas of New Orleans, and it was the most fun we ever had. And they would come up and sing or play. And we had to learn their 15 or 20 songs and we learned that, we never look at music of course, most of the times there was never music. We just learned the music and we played and it was great.

I actually didn’t want to join the band, because at that time, when I was 12, I wanted to play jazz. And my daddy is the one that said, “Man, play in the band.”

DUBNER: Oh really?

MARSALIS: Yeah he said, “Man, join the band.”

DUBNER: Because why?

MARSALIS: Because you have to have experiences to know what something is. Don’t cut yourself out of experiences when you’re young. He was always saying, don’t adopt my prejudices; develop your own.

Mark DUPLASS: Jay and I were just this little two-person team.

That’s the filmmaker and actor Mark Duplass, one half of another New Orleans brotherhood.

DUPLASS: We would sleep in Jay’s single bed together for way too late. Jay had already gone through puberty. I mean it was weird. But I think we started to develop this sense of we might try to become artists. And that seems like an impossible thing to do and be financially sustainable. So we better link arms and souls.

Mark and Jay Duplass both write, act, and direct, sometimes together, sometimes not. They had a pretty standard-issue suburban upbringing.

DUPLASS: Mom’s home with us while Dad’s cranking away 50 to 55 hours a week, building the American dream. So we can one day take a vacation that’s not in the car, one day fly to a vacation. That was the goal. So what that meant practically for me and Jay is that we didn’t have a lot of stuff. Our parents gave us a lot of emotional support and a lot of love, but they didn’t buy us a lot of stuff, so we were very bored.

And I think when cable arrived which was a marker of success. My dad was like, “We’re getting cable and we are doing it.” That’s when H.B.O. came into our lives and that really lit us up as a storytellers, because for those of you who don’t remember in the early-to-mid 80’s, there was no curation as to when certain kinds of movies were shown. They generally leave the R-rated movies for the nighttime now but back then we would come home from school and it was Ordinary People and Sophie’s Choice and we were just enjoying the hard-hitting dramas of the late 70’s and early 80’s. And I think it really shaped a lot of who we were.

DUBNER: I’m curious, so you guys are what? You’re maybe 10 and Jay’s 14 or something at this point?

DUPLASS: Yeah, right around that age, yeah.

DUBNER: Yeah. So you’re watching Ordinary People and Sophie’s Choice, which are not exactly teen or tween fare. Were you aware that you were outliers in that regard?

DUPLASS: It was still very subconscious, because we would take our bikes to the streets and still play with the other kids and play football. They really wanted to talk about Star Wars. And we were fine, and we watched those movies to keep up. But it was this feeling, which I think a lot of people have maybe later in high school when you start to realize, “Oh, this is not my tribe. I know how to play this game. I know how to talk about the things to get along, but when I go home, I’ve got my one or two people that are really are my tribe. And we’re talking about that stuff.” That sort of dynamic happened to me and Jay much earlier than most people talk about it happening.

The Duplass brothers pretty much built their mental model of a creative life from scratch. For Rosanne Cash, the opposite was true. She’s the daughter of country-music legend Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian. As for Rosanne following in his footsteps:

Rosanne CASH: My mother was afraid of the life it would lead to. So she didn’t encourage me that much. My mother was very creative in other ways. She crocheted, and she painted, and she was president of her garden club and she was creative in some domestic realms. But writing and music just carried a lingering fog of fear around it for her.

But I remember my dad was on the road and I remember secretly writing him when I was 12 and saying everything I wanted to do with my life, that I wanted to be a writer that I wanted to do something important, that I wanted people to read my words, that I loved language, that music was so important to me and had changed my life. I told him all of these things and he wrote me back and he said “I see that you see as I see.” It was powerful even to a 12-year-old. It gave me encouragement.

Her parents got divorced around this time; her father had become a heavy drinker and a drug addict. This made her rethink putting music at the center of her life.

CASH: Well, that was complicated for me because my dad was a very famous musician and I grew up thinking that fame was a terrible thing that happened to you, like a disease. And I thought, why would I go into that? Why would I try to attract that kind of attention? And you never have any privacy and privacy is so important to me because a writer needs privacy and I don’t want to go on the road and I don’t want to take drugs and get divorced. Well, actually I did want to take drugs in the beginning so that was — But most of that imprint came from my mom because she was really afraid of fame because of what happened in her life with my dad.

For Rosanne Cash, it was a cautionary tale but, in the end, not enough to stop her.

CASH: Yeah, I started writing songs and then I wanted to sing them myself and then I made demos and then I showed them to a record label. There was no turning back.

Rosanne Cash went on to put out many records, mostly country and pop, some of them big hits; she’s also written four books. She’s about to release a new record, called She Remembers Everything. A childhood like hers — a musician father, always traveling; drugs and alcohol; fame and its attendant burdens; her parents’ divorce: it’s practically the model for what we think of as a dysfunctional family. And having a dysfunctional family is often seen as the model for living a creative life.

Teresa AMABILE: It’s false.

That’s Teresa Amabile, a social psychologist from Harvard who studies creativity.

AMABILE: Many creative people do have dysfunctional families but not every creative person has a dysfunctional family. There’s some interesting research on this by David Feldman and Robert Elbert and a number of other people who have looked at the biographical backgrounds of people who have distinguished themselves for their creativity. Very often they faced a lot of adversity in childhood. Maybe they had a serious illness themselves. Maybe a parent was seriously ill or died. Maybe there was an ugly, acrimonious divorce or they lost a sibling.

Those kinds of events can crush a child, they can they can lead to a lot of problems; they can lead to substance abuse, they can lead to various forms of emotional illness. They can also lead to incredible resilience and almost superhuman behaviors, seemingly, if people can come through those experiences intact. I don’t know if we — we being the field in general — have discovered what the keys are, what makes the difference for kids.

It is true, however, that eminent people in a range of fields are much more likely than the average person to have lost a parent at a young age. In the U.S., the rate of parental death before age 16 is 8 percent. For high-performing scientists, the rate is 26 percent; for U.S. presidents, 34 percent; for poets, 55 percent. But, we should note, the rate of parental death is also disproportionately high for … prisoners. So it may be that a parent’s death is a shock to any child’s system, but that it’s hard to predict the direction of that shock. Too much depends on the circumstances, like how talented the kid is or whether they have some key guidance.

AMABILE: Sometimes it’s one key adult who can somehow rescue them in their lives. Sometimes it seems to just be a trait of the kid. Something within themselves.

There’s also the notion that creativity itself can be a kind of coping mechanism — as it was for the graphic designer Michael Bierut.

Michael BIERUT: I was a really good elementary school and junior high school and high school artist. I was very accomplished, I could do very realistic drawings that impressed people. And boy, did I take pleasure in impressing people. Most of my other physical attributes and mannerisms were the things that would provoke many strangers just to beat me up. But this magic ability to draw things actually seemed to be a thing that even bullies would be impressed by.

Early on, I started associating creativity not with just something that I would do in a lonely room for my own satisfaction but something that somehow would give me a way of operating in the larger world. If you were designing a poster for the school play, you got to go to rehearsals. So even if you couldn’t sing or dance or act, you got to make a contribution to the overall effort that went into bringing that play to the stage.

SIMONTON: Well, that’s another example of a diversifying experience. Being in an out group.

Dean Simonton again.

SIMONTON: Being a minority, as long as you’re not oppressed. I mean, this is the problem. A lot of minorities are oppressed, and so they’re not going to realize their potential, even though they are more inclined to think outside the box. If they can’t get a job, then it’s not going to help them much. I mean, a good example of that is that Jews in Europe are well-known to be overrepresented in a lot of domains of creativity, particularly in the sciences. For example, Nobel prizes in the sciences, Jews are overrepresented.

DUBNER: It’s something like 20 percent.

SIMONTON: But, guess what? That’s most likely to be in the case where Jews were emancipated, where they were no longer subject to the kind of anti-Semitism that they saw in medieval Europe. In Switzerland and a number of other countries. So Switzerland, that disproportion is much much higher than you see in Russia, which actually has many more Jews, but had a much longer history of anti-Semitism.

Maira KALMAN: I used to use the Nazis invading my studio as a motivator to finish an assignment that I was dragging. And I would say, “Well, if the Nazis came in two hours, would it be done? What if they came in one hour — would it be done then?” And that was expecting the worst. And I was brought up, of course my family — especially from my father that sense of you never know what’s going to happen. Horrible things will happen.

Kalman grew up in Israel, her parents having escaped Belarus before the Holocaust. But the rest of her father’s family did not make it out.

Maira KALMAN: In our family, all roads lead to the Holocaust. It’s kind of an inescapable part of a section of our lives and it’s a reference point for so many things. When we talk about politics or things being bad and we say, “Well, it’s not the Holocaust so get a grip.”

When I visited Kalman recently in her Greenwich Village apartment, one room was dominated by cardboard boxes, recently freed from storage. They contained the possessions of her late husband. She and her son Alex are planning to make a documentary about Tibor Kalman.

DUBNER: Would it be fun to open a Tibor box and just see what’s in one?

Maira KALMAN: No. I mean, it could be. Oh wait, I take that back. Let’s open this box.

DUBNER: Okay.

Maira KALMAN: This box is — no, not that box. This box — Yes. Okay. This is — he used to take this extendable fork to a restaurant. And he’d opened the extendable fork and then all of a sudden — this is — well this needs to be repaired but he would reach over to another plate from the customers next to us and take the food off their plate.

DUBNER: Oh, not at your own table?

Maira KALMAN: No, not at our own table. What would have been the fun of that? The fun of this was that he would reach over into somebody else’s table and take their food. He did it in Italy, and everything is much more jolly and festive there and everybody’s laughing a lot at this guy who’s reaching over. And these are Karl Marx communist potato chips which I made for the Tiborocity show. We created a mock store, and this is after he died of course, and I thought, shouldn’t we have Karl Marx communist potato chips, as if that was part of our collection.

The Mmuseumm is housed in an old freight elevator. (Photo: alexkalman/Wikimedia)

Maira and Tibor Kalman’s son Alex is now 33 years old. It’s pretty obvious that a lot of his creative spirit comes from his mother and his father. His main project at the moment is a small museum called Mmuseumm, he calls it “a contemporary natural history museum” and a form of “object journalism.” This is where “Sara Berman’s Closet” originated, before it landed at the Met. We visited Mmuseumm with Alex Kalman one afternoon. Mmuseumm is very, very small. How small? It’s housed in an old freight elevator. About three people can fit comfortably. And yet: it is a museum.

DUBNER: This is nicely done.

Alex KALMAN: Museum quality.

DUBNER: It is museum quality.

Alex KALMAN: It is.

DUBNER: Seriously.

Alex KALMAN: Yeah. Well the idea is that it’s a museum. There’s certain rules we felt we had to follow.

DUBNER: Yeah.

Alex KALMAN: And if we did that then, there’s other rules we could play with. So this collection is called “Modern Religion,” and it’s basically exploring how these ancient traditions stay relevant in today’s society and one way of staying relevant is redesigning the elements or the tools of that religion to fit in with modern trends. So today, everybody’s gluten-free. So now there’s gluten-free communion wafers. Or everybody’s on-the-go, so there’s on-the-go Communion kits. It’s looking at these seemingly banal objects, and —

DUBNER: And this one here is the —

Alex KALMAN: Yeah.

DUBNER: Really? It looks like a piece of Nicorette, and is that wine and a little host, then?

Alex KALMAN: That’s right, yeah. The idea in Mmuseumm is that we want to touch on many different notes of what it means to be human. So there’s things in here that are totally devastating and there’s things in here that are completely absurd and we don’t want the trick to be on you. We want you to be a part of it.

I asked Kalman how his father, and his father’s death, influenced him as a human and as a creative.

Alex KALMAN: There always felt to be a really deep and natural and profound connection between Maira and Tibor and Lulu and me.

Lulu is Alex’s sister.

KALMAN: So there is just a sensibility and a way of feeling and interacting and thinking and doing and why we’re doing and what we’re doing that feels very just binding and natural. And I often think that, subconsciously, the work that I do today feels like a way of maintaining a dialogue with Tibor and he feels very present and very active in it all.

*      *      *

Dean Simonton, you will recall, is a psychology professor who’s studied the biographies of creative geniuses.

Dean SIMONTON: To get back to just pure psychology, there’s something called the “Big 5” personality factors.

The “Big 5” are: conscientiousness, extraversion-slash-introversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and …

SIMONTON: And one of those “Big 5” factors is the openness to experience factor. And it has a lot of different facets to it. It is openness to values, openness to actions, you’re willing to try out different foods, try out different music, all sorts of different things. And this factor is so powerful as a predictor of human behavior, that you can actually tell by going to someone’s dorm room in college whether or not they’re high or low in openness to experience. Okay? Well it turns out this correlates very, very highly with creative genius. Creative geniuses tend to be very, very high in openness to experience. They’re willing to explore different values, different approaches.

We did find a lot of openness to experience in the creatives we’ve been speaking with, often starting in childhood.

Margaret GELLER: I was very much interested in the arts as a child.

That’s Margaret Geller, a path-breaking astrophysicist.

GELLER: And my mother, who was a walking dictionary and loved literature, used to take me to the beautiful Morristown, New Jersey library. It was in a very old building, and one of the things that we read together were plays by all the famous American playwrights. And from that, I really inherited a love of the language and I became fascinated by the theater and by the human condition. So I demanded that I go to acting school. I don’t think my father was that fond of this idea, but it was impossible not to do it.

Geller’s father was a chemist at Bell Labs, the famous tech incubator.

GELLER: I think he started taking me there when I was around 10 and he used to have a mechanical calculator, probably nobody listening, or virtually nobody, knows what one of those are. But they were called Monroe calculators, and the fascinating thing was all the noise they made. And the best thing was to, say, divide one by three, so it would just go, “ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk,” and just put out all the threes it could.

I learned how to load an X-ray camera, and I learned how to measure an X-ray diffraction photograph, how to use a Vernier. And people would come in and chat with me. And also Bell Labs had, in its lobby, a Foucault pendulum which I used to be fascinated by, many stories high. So that was a fascinating thing to see.

The inventor James Dyson, he of the multi-billion-dollar vacuum fortune, was not predestined for a life of engineering.

James DYSON: My father was head of the classics department at my school till he died. My brother was a classics scholar. And my mother was an English scholar. So there was no engineering, or manufacturing, architecture, or anything in sight.

So how’d that happen?

DYSON: So all I knew about creativity, or the only creative thing I did in school, was art. I went off to art school or arts university to pursue art as a career, as a painter, in fact. But when I got there — and this is in London — I discovered that you could do quite a large number of forms of design, like furniture design, interior design, architecture, ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, filmmaking, and so on. And I became interested in design but ended up doing architecture.

And while I was doing architecture I discovered that I was very interested in structural engineering. I don’t know why. Except that at that time, it was the time of Buckminster Fuller and his triadic structures, geodesic structures, and Frei Otto with cable-tensioned structures. And it was a time that concrete and, for that matter bricks, were disappearing as the structure for buildings and being replaced by steel structures of one sort or another. And I realized that architecture was going to be about the structure and the engineering, and not so much the form. And I found engineering fascinating, I don’t know why. I’d never come across it in my life before.

DUBNER: I’m curious if you were at all intimidated by the notion of architecture and engineering as much as it appealed to you, did it strike you as something that lay outside the realm of possibility for a boy who came from a family where the classics were the foundation? Did it seem at first just too hard?

DYSON: Not at all. You have to remember — or maybe it’s my arrogance, but you have to remember this was the mid-60s in London, where anything was possible. And it didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t be an architect or a structural engineer or anything for that matter.

It’s probably no coincidence that moving to a big city like London changed the way James Dyson thought about his creative prospects. The same thing happened to Ai Weiwei years ago when he lived in New York City for several years.

WEIWEI: Yes, basically the whole universe is so quiet. Not everywhere is like New York City.

The world has gotten more urban over the past few decades. And that’s probably a good thing for the sake of creativity and innovation. Economists like Harvard’s Ed Glaeser argue that cities play an outsized role in economic growth.

Ed GLAESER: I think the city is our greatest invention because it plays to something that is so fundamental in humanity. It plays to our ability to learn from one another.

Our ability to learn from one another in cities. Ideas colliding, on purpose and by accident. Also, there’s competition in cities — and with that competition comes strong incentives to create. But this raises its own, larger question: is creativity best-served by external incentives and motivation, or internal? When Wynton Marsalis was first thinking about pursuing a career in music, his father warned him: he said don’t do it unless you truly love it. “Don’t sit around waiting for publicity, money, people saying you’re great,” he told him, because “that might never happen.” Things obviously worked out well for Wynton Marsalis, but he remembers his father’s message well, and passes it along to his own students in the jazz program at Juilliard, where he teaches.

MARSALIS: My first thing I have my students do is write a mission statement. And that mission statement has three sentences. What do I want to do, how do I achieve it, and why am I doing it? And based on that mission statement, I teach them. And I have, my fundamental teaching to them is, I want you to rise above the cycle of punishment and reward. I’m not going to reward you or punish you. This is information, and you can do what you want with this information. So, you’re always actualizing. And I always tell them, if you want to learn something I can’t stop you. If you don’t want to learn it, I cannot teach you.

What Ellis Marsalis taught Wynton, and what Wynton teaches his students, is supported by the academic research on creativity and children. A few decades ago, the Stanford psychologist Mark Lepper ran an experiment with nursery-school students in which he first watched them doing various activities, one of which was drawing with markers. Teresa Amabile, who studied under Lepper when she was getting her Ph.D., tells the story.

AMABILE: He then took all of the children, if they’d shown any real interest in these markers, he put them into his experiment. And had them go into a separate room and they were randomly assigned to one of a couple of conditions. The experimental condition was one where the children sat down, and the experimenter said, “Hi, I’ve got some Magic Markers and some paper here for you. I wonder, would you be willing to make a drawing for me with these materials in order to get this “good player award?” And the experimenter then held up this little award certificate with a big shiny gold star on it and a place to write in the child’s name. That was the expected-reward condition.

The kids in this group, as promised, got the certificate for making a drawing. A second group of kids were invited to make a drawing — with no mention of a reward — and got the certificate as a surprise afterwards. This was called the “unexpected-reward condition.” And a third group of kids, a control group, made drawings but were neither promised a reward nor surprised with one.

AMABILE: The results were amazing. They were very strong. The kids who were in the control condition, who were in the unexpected-reward condition, were just as interested in playing with those markers and drawing pictures in their free play time as they had been before they went into the experimental room. The kids who were in the promised-reward condition, the contracted-for-reward condition, were significantly less interested in playing with those markers. So this showed very clearly — and there were many subsequent experiments showing — that intrinsic motivation, intrinsic interest in children and in adults, can be undermined by the expectation of reward.

This finding — that extrinsic motivation can erode someone’s intrinsic desire to create — came as a surprise.

AMABILE: It was revolutionary at the time, which was the early 1970s, because behaviorism still held sway in much of psychology, the notion that rewards are purely good, that they motivate behavior, that you can shape behavior with reward and that is true. In fact it’s still true that rewards can be very powerful shapers of behavior. But Mark discovered this very counter-intuitive, unexpected, unintended negative consequence of reward.

Amabile herself, in a follow-up experiment, explored how extrinsic motivation affects the quality of creative work. She gave kids a bunch of art supplies and asked them each to make a collage.

AMABILE: Without a really strict time limit, although we generally guide people to finish the collage in 15 to 20 minutes.

The kids were divided into two groups. The first group was not promised any sort of reward; the second was told that the best collages would win an Etch-a-Sketch or a Magic 8 Ball. This was called the “competitive-reward condition.” Now all Amabile needed were some judges.

AMABILE: I brought in people from the art department at Stanford individually and asked them to rate each collage relative to the others on creativity on a nine-point scale, something like that. And when I analyzed the data, I found that the kids in the competitive-reward condition, made collages that were significantly less creative than the ones made by the kids in the other condition.

Based on this research and more, it would seem that the promise of extrinsic rewards — the kind of incentives that economists think encourage productivity — that actually discourages creativity, and decreases the quality. At least for kids, in these settings — it’s impossible to generalize. But the evidence is strong enough for Amabile to draw some conclusions.

AMABILE: I think that the biggest mistake we make in our schools, and I’m talking about everything from kindergarten now up through college, is to focus kids too much on how the work is going to be evaluated. Part of that is the extreme focus on testing in the United States right now and the past several years. Part of it is the way curricula have been structured, even before the current major push on testing.

There’s too much focus on “what is the right answer, what are people going to think of what I’m about to say?” and too little focus on “what am I learning, what cool stuff do I know now that I didn’t know last week or a year ago, what cool things can I do now that I couldn’t do before?” And I think that if we could if we could switch that focus, we would do a lot to open up kids’ creativity.

Kids come intrinsically motivated to learn, and we stamp that out of them through the educational system. I don’t think it’s impossible to reorient the way we teach. It’s not going to be easy. But I think we can do it. I think we have to do it.

Walter ISAACSON: I think we all see kids who are slightly rebellious, who talk back, who question the teacher.

That’s Walter Isaacson, who’s written biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein.

ISAACSON: And at a certain point, the teacher either spends more time and lets the imagination wander or punishes them and says, “Quit questioning me.” Einstein ran away from his school in Germany because he was expected to learn by rote, and he was swatted down every time he tried to question the teacher. So he was lucky — he gets to run away and go to Switzerland, where they have a new type of school system that nurtures questioning authority.

One institution that has raised the questioning of authority to an art form is the M.I.T. Media Lab. It has research units called Opera of the Future and Biomechatronics — and Lifelong Kindergarten. That last one is run by a professor of learning research.

Mitch RESNICK: My name is Mitch Resnick.

Resnick argues that randomized, controlled experimentation — the gold standard of a lot of science — just doesn’t work very well for a subject like creativity.

RESNICK: One problem is it changes one variable at a time. And I don’t think any one variable is going to be the key to creativity. I think that what we see is the most creative environments have lots of different things that work together in an integrated way. So it’s really not so easy to take the classic approach of make a tweak in one variable and see the changes. I don’t think it’s going to be the way that we’re going to get a deeper understanding of the creative process.

Resnick argues that the lack of clear, quantifiable outcomes is a big reason why schools don’t prioritize creativity.

RESNICK: Schools end up focusing on the things that are most easily assessed, rather than focusing on the things that are most valuable for kids and valuable for thriving in today’s society. So what we need to do is to focus more on trying to assess the things we value rather than valuing the things that are most easily assessed.

Resnick and the Lifelong Kindergarten group develop software that lets kids make things, like animated stories or interactive Lego models.

RESNICK: Very often, traditional learning has taken the form of delivering information, delivering instruction. And the view has been if we just find a better way to deliver the instruction, kids will learn more. But I think research has shown that learning happens when kids, and adults for that matter, actively construct new ideas. There’s the expression we “get” ideas. We don’t “get” ideas. We make ideas. So I think that yes, there’s some role for just delivering information. But I think the most important creative experiences come when kids are actively engaged in making new ideas through their interactions with the world.

The program is called Lifelong Kindergarten because Resnick thinks the ideas should extend well beyond childhood.

RESNICK: We focus on four guiding principles that I call the four Ps of creative learning: projects, passion, peers, and play. So we feel that the best way to support kids developing as creative thinkers and developing their creative capacities is to engage them in working on projects based on their passions in collaboration with peers in a playful spirit.

We lead most of our lives by working on projects. A marketing manager coming up with the new ad campaign is working on a project. A journalist writing the article is working on a project; in our personal life, we plan someone’s birthday party. That’s a project. So we want kids to learn about the process of making projects.

We also want them to work on things that they’re passionate about. We’ve seen over and over that people are willing to work longer and harder and persist in the face of challenges when they’re working on things they really care about. They also make deeper connection to ideas when they’re working on projects that they really care about.

The third P of peers — we’ve seen that learning is a social activity, that the best learning happens in collaboration and sharing with others. We learn with and from others.

Then the final P of play, I sometimes call the most misunderstood P. Often when people think about play they just think about fun and laughter. And I have nothing against fun and laughter but that’s not the essence what I’m talking about. I see play not just as an activity but a type of attitude and approach for engaging with the world. When someone has a playful approach, it means they’re constantly experimenting, trying new things, taking risks, testing the boundaries. And I think the most creative activities come about what we’re willing to experiment and take risks.

Jennifer EGAN: I remember when I would come home from school and no one was home and I didn’t have a plan. There was this almost mysterious excitement that I would feel about just being alone.

That’s the writer Jennifer Egan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad.

EGAN: I have to say, I feel I lost touch with that through maybe even decades of my life where I was so worried about what everyone else was doing, how I measured up, how what I should be doing as opposed to what I was doing whether there was some important thing everyone else was doing that I should be doing too. And this was before social media. I think this is a scourge for young people now. From everything I hear. But if I can get that out of my head, which I find easier and easier as I get older, there’s a feeling that there’s sort of a mystery that’s waiting for me that I can possibly enter.

There’s so many childhood narratives that are really about this. I mean, The Secret Garden, all the Narnia books about passing through a membrane or a border or a door or jumping into a pool and being in another world. It’s a really basic fantastical longing. This wish to be at a distance from one’s own life and to touch something outside it, which is first of all thrilling in and of itself. And second of all returns you to your real life charged in some way. That’s what fiction writing does for me.

ISAACSON: I think that when we’re young, we really indulge our wonder years.

Walter Isaacson again.

ISAACSON: That notion of playing and being imaginative, and having downtime where you can be creative — that’s something we sometimes lose in our school systems today.

One beneficiary of this creative downtime? Leonardo da Vinci.

ISAACSON: He had the great fortune to be born out of wedlock, which meant that he couldn’t go to one of the Latin schools that middle-class families of the Renaissance went to. And so he’s self-taught — he sits by a stream and puts rocks and different obstacles in it to see how the water swirls, and he draws it. And then he looks at how air swirls. All of these things you get to do when you’re young, you’re full of wonder, and you’re using your imagination.

We see that in Ben Franklin as a young kid, just being interested in, “Why does condensation form on the outside of a cold cup?” The type of thing that maybe we thought about, but somehow we quit thinking about. So that’s the number-one secret of being imaginative and creative, is almost being childlike in your sense of wonder. Albert Einstein said that. He said, “I’m not necessarily smarter than anybody else, but I was able to retain my childlike sense of wonder at the marvels of creation in which we find ourselves.”

But Walter Isaacson — like Mitch Resnick and Teresa Amabile — isn’t calling for a ban on conventional instruction.

ISAACSON: I think that creativity is something you can nurture, and even try to teach. But more importantly, creativity without skill — creativity without training and learning — can be squandered. If Louis Armstrong had not found somebody — King Oliver — to teach him how to play the cornet, all of his imagination would have been lost. So we should not disparage the role of training, of learning.

The same is true of Einstein — as a little kid, he’s wondering how the compass needle twitches and points north. What’s important is that he goes to the Zurich Polytech and starts understanding the concepts behind Maxwell’s equations. So people who think we should just nurture creativity without the skill sets and the training that allow creativity to be turned into action, to allow for things like applied creativity, they’re being too romantic about it. Leonardo had to work in Verrocchio’s workshop and learn how to do a brush stroke.

There are, of course, plenty of obstacles that may keep a person from gaining both proper instruction and the latitude to play and imagine. Nor is every kid lucky enough to grow up with two parents as talented and creative as Tibor and Maira Kalman. Or with parents like Margaret Geller’s, taking her to Bell Labs and indulging her passion for acting. These are privileges, not rights. They’re not always fully appreciated. Here’s John Hodgman, the comedian, author, and former Daily Show correspondent.

John HODGMAN: People who are hand-to-mouthing it and are really economically anxious, of course they’re going to have a disadvantage to, say, an affluent white dude from Brookline, Massachusetts who is an only child who had the full benefit of all of his parents’ love and never had to share anything in his life. I had a lot of time to sit around thinking and daydreaming to the point where, when I went to college, my dad said, “I don’t care what you do in college, I ask you only that you take a single course in bookkeeping and finance, so you know how that world works.” And I was like, “Dad, I love you, but no way.”

DUBNER: Really? That wasn’t a big ask on your father’s part.

HODGMAN: Even that. I know, fathers, I know.

DUBNER: What a spoiled brat you were.

HODGMAN: Totally. This is what I’m saying. I’ve regretted it every day of my life. It was an incredibly selfish and ridiculous thing to do, because I was spending his money to go to college. And yet I was like, “No, I’m going to sit on the grass and read 100 Years of Solitude for the fifth time.” You could make an argument that it paid off for me, to a certain degree.

But I mean, look: art comes out of all communities everywhere. Communities of means and communities of no means. I mean, the greatest art movement of the 20th and 21st century, that is probably the most globally meaningful art movement, is the development of hip-hop, which was creation in the South Bronx by young people who were obviously not affluent.

John Hodgman sure sounds like he’s got a grip on the causes and consequences of creativity. Wouldn’t you say? And that he’s got his own creative ducks in a row. He’s had a lot of creative and commercial success. But do not be deceived. If you think prior success insulates a creative person from — well, anything, you should think again.

HODGMAN: I mean, let me put it this way: I am a person for whom being creative is terrifying. It is the most rewarding thing that I can do. But it is a constant struggle with a very clear feeling that I am out of gas every day, every day. And that I will not be able to support myself or my family, because I have now finally run out of ideas, for sure, this time, I mean it. It’s not even a fear. It is a certainty that I’m done, that I have no further ideas, and I’ve been doing this — this and only this, whatever this is — now for 21 years.

We’ll explore that fear, and many other aspects of creativity, in future episodes of this series. Until then, keep your ears open for a bonus episode, our full conversation with Elvis Costello, who’s had one of the most extraordinary careers in modern music and has just put out a wonderful new record, called Look Now.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Stephanie Tam and Matt Frassica. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, Harry Huggins, and Zack Lapinski. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Teresa Amabile, psychologist and professor emerita at the Harvard Business School.

Michael Bierut, graphic designer.

Pat Brown, chief executive and founder of Impossible Foods Inc.

Rosanne Cash, singer-songwriter.

Elvis Costello, musician, singer, songwriter, and composer.

Mark Duplass, film director, film producer, and actor.

James Dyson, inventor, industrial design engineer and founder of the Dyson company.

Jennifer Egan, novelist and journalist.

David Galenson, economist at the University of Chicago.

Margaret Geller, astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Ed Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard University.

John Hodgman, humorist.

Walter Isaacson, biographer and professor of history at Tulane University.

Alex Kalman, co-founder, director, and curator of the Mmuseumm

Maira Kalman, illustrator, writer, artist, and designer.

Wynton Marsalis, American musician, composer and bandleader.

Nico Muhly, composer.

Mitch Resnick, leader of the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the M.I.T. Media Lab.

Dean Simonton, professor emeritus of psychology at University of California, Davis.

Ai Weiwei, contemporary artist and activist.

RESOURCES

Creativity In Context by Teresa Amabile (Routledge 1996).

EXTRA

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Knopf 2010).

Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play by Mitch Resnick (M.I.T. 2017).

The post Where Does Creativity Come From (and Why Do Schools Kill It Off)? (Ep. 355) appeared first on Freakonomics.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/where-does-creativity-come-from-and-why-do-schools-kill-it-off-ep-355/

[celestial-writespace]

Seemingly

Sometimes, your greatest love isn’t always the one you end up with.

[ genre: romance, teen fiction ]

Have you ever met someone who you thought was seemingly perfect? It’s this one person who just seems to have absolutely everything you’re looking for. A person you’d never thought could even exist. That one person, the one who you’d always have a soft spot for. That was it, that was exactly what I’d describe Kyle. I’m Margaux, and this is how a green eyed boy who wore dark grey jeans and a black hoodie that day in September changed my life forever.

If you’re reading this, then it must mean that it’s probably already some time in 2040 where I’m all grown up, being stable and all, and this “story” I’m writing, just happened to live on for a couple decades. I don’t know who’ll be reading this, if you’re my friend or a completely random stranger, but in case you didn’t already get it, or you just completely went over all the things I said, I’m Margaux. As of June 20th of the year 2018, I’m 18 years old, and I’m probably the typical freshman college girl. I was born and raised (as typical as it may sound) in the sunny town of Phoenix, Arizona. Let me start my story a little like this:

Okay, let’s flashback to the day I first started college. Now, I’m generally a pretty open, outgoing girl, but this day just made me so anxious. I woke up today at 4 AM, and the welcoming rally starts at 8. I was totally not stressing out. I mean, who would’ve thought i’d actually make it into my dream school? Did I even deserve it? WHY WAS I THERE? REALLY? Anyway, so I started my morning, like any other, with coffee and bread, in a desperate attempt to calm myself down and make it feel like it was just any other day. The anxiety didn’t fully go away, but my favorite bittersweet sensation from a good cup of freshly brewed coffee definitely helped. A few hours of stress, anxiety and weirdly enough, boredom combined, and the clock struck 7 o’clock. Of course, I immediately left at that moment.

As I arrived in school, the anxiety took over me. There were so many people who were so much better than me. Talk about insecurity, right? Flash forward to the end of the day, when I became tired, scared, but thankfully, a little less anxious, and a little more excited, but nevertheless, I came here to learn, and I kept in mind that I really shouldn’t let those things bother me. I deemed college one of the most life changing periods in my life. At that time, I was so ready to reinvent myself, move on from the horror that is high school, and prepare myself for a better future ahead of me.

When three months had passed since my first day at University of Phoenix, midterms had just ended, and I had been a member of this lovely sorority where my mother was once a member of, for around 2 months now.. I hoped to gain a sisterhood like no other through this. This was where I met my first college best friend, Sarah. I was definitely off to a great start, and I hoped so hard that nothing changed this for the next 4 years. However, it was way too early for me to hope, right?

One day in September, I committed to going to a Mura Masa concert with Sarah. She and I both loved Mura Masa, and it was his first show ever in Phoenix. To add, Sarah had been such a nice friend to me. She was the only one caring enough to show me around the campus voluntarily, and we’d have lunch together every time our schedules aligned. Seeing this, I knew we just had to go together. Little did I know that going to that concert would change my life forever.

My phone read 9 o’clock, the concert just started, and I was having the time of my life seeing one of my favorite artists play live with my college best friend. But there was something more magical about that night. There was a tall guy that was standing beside me, in his dark grey knee-ripped jeans, a black Mura Masa hoodie and some beat up Nikes. He sparked up a simple conversation as the intermission started. Nine. That’s how many words it took for him to finish his sentence, and how many seconds it took for me to gaze at his beautiful face, which was a bit too long for someone to respond to such a simple question. “What do you think the next song’s gonna be?” he asked me.

“I think it’s definitely gonna be my favorite, Firefly” I responded, as I lock eyes with the silver haired fellow. Suddenly, the music started. But that wasn’t the only thing that started that night, but also a love that just seemed so right. I see this as mystical I'm sure that you know, my favorite line from Firefly played as I stare at him once more. That night was mystical, for sure. Although, I’m not quite sure if it was those green eyes that got me lost every time I looked at him, or his soft-looking lips I would have loved to lock with in those moments. Kyle and I danced and sung along to our favorite songs, and not too soon after, Sarah joins in and gets to know him a little more.

The concert ended, and me and my friend were now with Kyle. As we were walking to the parking lot, we exchanged numbers. Turns out, he was an artist who dropped out of college in his sophomore year. He loved painting and photography the most, for he thought that being able to capture beautiful moments in one’s life was one of God’s greatest blessings to mankind. But to me, it was people like him. Those that appreciated the beautiful little details, and those that believed that imperfection is most times what makes us human, and what makes us beautiful.

Sarah drove me home, and during our drive, she talked to me about Kyle. “Soooo, Kyle huh?” she teases me. I wasn’t gonna deny it to my best friend.

“Yeah, I like him, what’dya think?”

“I think you guys are really compatible for each other, hell, couldn’t even get you guys separated.”

So that night I came home, I could not stop smiling and thinking about the enchanting night I had just experienced. I wondered until about 3 in the morning. Did he know how wonderstruck I was when I met him? And all I could hope for was that, he wasn’t already in love with someone else. I fell asleep to these thoughts.

The next morning, I woke up to a vibration from my phone, which rested on top of my chest. I received a text from him. “Forgot to tell you, I thought you were wonderful last night, and i’d love to get to know you more, perhaps over some coffee?” it read. The text struck my stomach with butterflies as I eagerly texted back “I feel the same, actually. How about today at 4PM?” A minute passed and I got a confirmation text, complete with the words “Can’t wait!”

We met up at a local cafe on the corner of 10th street and Park Avenue. I walked into the cafe but failed to spot him anywhere, so I decided to sit down at the table by the glass window. Five minutes passed and I saw him on the other side of the street, about to cross the road. Seeing him once more brought an uncontrollable smile on my face. He entered the cafe, approached me and I ultimately greeted him with a warm hug. He smelled bittersweet for some unknown reason, like the coffee I drank every morning. He smelled like.. Home. It was the scent I could wake up to every morning.

And so we talked for hours about our favorite songs and how he loved travelling so much that he could spend the rest of his days travelling everywhere and never have one permanent home. He told me his adventures in Peru, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, all at his age of 23. It was truly amazing to see how one man could appreciate so much in life. Everything to him was beautiful. I wondered if I was too.

Seven o’clock struck and he invited me back to his place for some dinner. I spent such a wonderful afternoon with this man, but I was not to forget why I stayed in Phoenix despite my longing urge to leave this city, my studies. I told him I had things to do and his persistence went on, not in a bad way though. He wanted to help me finish my paper for a writing class I had. Well, he was an artist so I figured he’d be of great help. I was wrong. “OH WOW now I know why you stuck with playing music and visual arts, you are absolutely terrible” I say, teasing him as I giggle. He really was terrible, but that’s not what I looked at. I looked at how hard he tried despite knowing he wasn’t exactly a good writer. It was cute. He was cute. This infatuation has really gotten over me. “It’s cute you know,” I said, staring at him as he typed on my laptop a few more senseless lines.

“What is?” He asked with a grin on his face.

“When you try like that, but fail in the end,” I answered.

“How is that cute?” He asked, this time, looking at me in the eyes that showed the most interest in what I was saying.

“Because you’re determined, and I find that cute.”

He pinched my nose and said “not as cute as you, you little human bean.” We spent the rest of the night teasing each other and just talking for hours, being with each other like nothing else mattered. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. We were spending most our nights together like this until the next month. We knew each other’s favorites, our interests, our childhood, and even our past, including past relationships. At this point, it was safe to say i loved him. Or at least I thought it was.

It was movie date after park dates after study dates. Although he dropped out of college, he never stopped supporting me in my goals. He understood how college was so important to me, and how I wanted to make things right in college after all my mistakes in high school. He knew that for me, college was the time I wanted to reinvent myself, and he was more than happy to be part of such a life changing period in my life.

Never have I met someone who scarily liked the exact things as I did. He had the same political views, same moral values. Never have I met someone so beautiful, someone who saw wonder in the least wonderful things. You could say we sort of completed each other’s sentences. He was good for me, I knew, because I felt that I was growing as person, becoming more positive around him, and others. We complemented each other, and it was all going good. It truly was as if we were made for each other. We were compatible, but perhaps, too compatible that it scared me too. I thought that somewhere along the way, it might become a problem.

The time came, it seemed as if something kept bothering him. That smile I could never tired of, was gone. Was I doing something wrong? What was it I was lacking? I thought. I just couldn’t bare that I wasn’t making him happy. So one day, I came over to his place, and I decided to confront him. “Why aren’t you happy with me anymore?” I was hoping to hear something like “You’re a bit too clingy” or that he didn’t really like me anymore, or he just simply got bored of me in general. But it wasn’t because of any of those that we just couldn’t be together. It was because of a fragment of his past that kept reappearing in his head every time he looked at me. He told me I was beautiful, and that he had spent his greatest days with me, but it was all too familiar for him.

Before I came into the picture, he had dated this girl named Emma. I had gone to high school with her. No doubt, she was beautiful, kind and smart, which had caused her to be one of the most popular girls in school. However, she had transferred in senior year, and no one knew why. It turned out she had severe anxiety and depression, as Kyle said. This had also become the reason for Kyle to drop out of college. He took care of her. He was so sure about her, that he wanted to spend the rest of his days with her. She had graduated high school and a few months after, he proposed to her. He said he knew they were young, but he had been so sure about his forever with her, that she was his, and he was hers, and nothing could have broken them apart.

I thought we had an invincible love, a love that no one could top, until I saw the way his eyes sparkled talking about Emma. It never sparkled that way when we were together. He had a different glow to him. He was sad talking about this, but he had more life than he ever did going on dates with me. Seeing the way he talked about her, It hurt. It hurt that he couldn’t be that way with me. Though I knew he had feelings for me, it wasn’t enough. It was not the best kind of love he deserved. He deserved Emma, not me.

However, let me tell all of you that during those moments, I was more in awe at how one man could love a woman so much than I was jealous. At that point, I already knew where it was going. We weren’t going to end up together and maybe it was okay. Maybe he’d be better off without me, because I knew at that moment, I wasn’t what he needed. And maybe I never will be.

Moving onto the story, Kyle and Emma plan their small wedding. Emma and her dad drive to pick up her wedding dress days before the wedding, but gets into a major car crash which costs her dad his life. This triggers her depression and long story cut short, she decides that suicide is the best option for her. She was found in the bathtub of her parents’ house lifeless, with a note “I’m sorry, Kyle. Know that i’ll never stop loving you, even in the afterlife. I’ll see you soon.” And of course, Kyle is distraught. The woman she loved so dearly, the woman who he had planned to spend his entire life with, committed the most selfish act of all. Up until now she remains in his heart, and he was never really meant to be mine to begin with. Although they never got married, it was as if they did. He was going to love her, for better or for worse, even after death tried to do them part.

Maybe I’m too busy being yours to fall for somebody new, a line from one of the songs in his playlist which he loved listening to. And now I know why. He couldn’t deny he had feelings for me, for it was too real for it all to just be fake. One thing i’ll always remember in his voice though, is how he bid me goodbye that day.

“You are a beautiful and respectful woman, Marge. I’m so thankful that I met someone like you. Any man, and I mean any man would be so lucky to have you in their life. Although it would have been nice for me to be that man, i’m sorry. I still think about her countless times a day. I see her in you sometimes, and I don’t want that to be the reason I stay with you. I don’t want you to fall in love with someone whose thoughts keep wandering to someone else, more so,someone else who’s long gone. Promise me, Marge, you’ll find someone who’ll give you the world, because I know that’s what you deserve, and exactly what I can’t give you.”

I hugged him tight and gave him a quick kiss. Our first, and last. And maybe also the first and last time i’ll feel that way about someone. And so I told him that there was no need for such an apology. “Maybe we’ll find our way to each other someday,” were the last words I told him.

It hurt, but I knew he was doing this for me. It was a kind act, kind of like mercy killing. I would have endured a greater pain if he hadn’t told me as early. I was never going to forget the genuine happiness he always made me feel whenever i’d be in his presence, and maybe, just maybe, i’ll feel that way again with somebody else, or maybe, with him but in a different time. I was truly hopeful, that maybe it was right love at the wrong time, and if it was right love, maybe the right time will come.

It was sad getting to experience a love so surreal but not having it last for so long, but I don’t regret having met him. He showed me what it was like to truly love someone so deeply. He showed me how beautiful life was, and that we should never stop loving, even after death, may it be your own, or anything/ anyone else around you. Loving was a gift, one that we should practice, even if it hurt. Sometimes there are things that will continue to make love a hard thing to do, but we shouldn’t stop. Alfred Lord Tennyson once said “'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” That experience of mine is one I would never forget, and never regret. Kyle and I remained friends, but months after we decided to remain friends, he seized to travel the world, and I deemed i’d never see him again, nor hear from him.

EPILOGUE

I now write as Margaux, a 34 year old woman, with a stable job in the state of New York, who graduated form the University of Phoenix with awards, like I always pictured myself back then. I write as a married woman, with a loving husband, and 2 amazing children.

I met my husband when I landed my first job in LA. The best part about it is, when I met him, you could tell he had the brightest glow in him, his eyes sparkled whenever he’d see me, and you could feel it in his kiss. It took us 3 years before he proposed to me, and I could never been happier that day I said “I do, Father.”

I write because few years after I got married and had my first child, I received a letter from somewhere in Puerto Rico. It read:

“To the beautiful Margaux,

I heard you got married, and I could never have been happier for you. I’m glad you’ve found someone who will treat you well, much that I couldn’t. I don’t exactly know if you still care but, just as you remember, I left because I traveled the world to find myself. During my first year of travelling, i fell in love with immersing into the different cultures and learning more about each one. I started volunteering at charity foundations in every country I visit, and i’ve become a self-proclaimed journalist now. And I guess travel is whom I’m married to now. Anyway, I hope you’re living the wonderful live you deserved. Write back, so at least I know you got this.

Sincerely,

Kyle”

#fiction #creative writing