#which like my academics are actually good now but they��re not to the kick ass levels I’m used to yet so that’ll come

[gukyi]

the love project | jjk

summary: from running to mcdonald’s at 3am after a halloween party where the two of you dressed up as the teletubbies to timing how long it takes for him to drink a cup of monster mixed with mountain dew and iced coffee and then do fifty push-ups, you’re used to your best friend jungkook asking you to do all sorts of crazy things. but, of all the shit the two of you do, letting him follow you around for a week with a camera and take candid photos of you for a photography assignment might just be the craziest of them all.

{college!au, friends to lovers!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy word count: 12k warnings: college antics, hopeless pining, slow burn a/n: me: this fic will be 10k max! also me: actually nevermind on par for the course of this blog, i hope you enjoy this fic! it was so much fun to write and it definitely got me back into the ~writing mood~. more fics coming soon!

These days, the weeks pass you by like trains on a platform. They whiz past you, the only discernible features being the beginning and the end of them, with the middle nothing but a blur. 

At least, that’s how it feels when you’re in college, and the days bleed into weeks bleed into months, and suddenly you’re one year closer to graduating, one year closer to figuring out what next to do with your life, even if you’re still missing that one general education requirement you forgot to take in your first year so now you’re trying to cram it into your schedule at the last minute.

Okay, you’ll admit it. Introduction to Astronomy is kicking your ass. That’s what you get for putting it off until junior year, when you’re supposed to have reached the point in your History major career where you don’t have to look at numbers anymore and the idea of doing basic math is absolutely unfathomable. History majors don’t do math. They just don’t. It vanished from your academic arsenal long before now, alongside your ability to interpret word problems and understand science textbooks. 

Perhaps in another universe, you would have actually retained those skills past high school, but that universe is not this one, and so your problem sets can solve themselves or not be solved at all. 

Your best friend would have to disagree.

“It’s not even calculus!” Jungkook exclaims over a mouthful of a Starbucks tomato and pesto panini, pointing to your laptop in exasperation, as if the answer has been staring you in the face for the past fifteen minutes. “It’s just algebra! All you’re doing is plugging the numbers into the formula and finding the missing variable!”

“Easy for you to say,” you huff, furiously erasing at the notebook in front of you as you get yet another incorrect answer. Who knew math could be so difficult? Oh, that’s right. You did. “You took that advanced differential equations class for fun last year. It’s not even required for your major. You’re just a masochist.”

“Says the person who convinced their advisor to let them take seven classes because they, and I quote, ‘all seemed so interesting’ and you ‘didn’t want to miss out.’” Jungkook rebukes pointedly. “Because your life would be so terrible if you didn’t take Economic History of Pre-Industrialized Europe.”

He’s got you there. Seven classes is a lot. In your defense, Economic History of Pre-Industrialized Europe was very interesting and you got a 4.0 that semester. So who is he to judge? Jungkook’s favorite pastime is pretending that taking three different computer science classes in a single semester isn’t going to single-handedly kill him.

Jungkook watches you struggle for a few moments more before he sighs, like he can’t take looking at someone so mathematically incompetent any longer. He stuffs the remaining third of his Starbucks panini into his mouth all at once like the ravenous beast he is before he reaches over the tiny table you’re sat at to look at your problem set himself. He turns your laptop towards him and grabs hold of your notebook, furrowing his eyebrows as he enters Work Jungkook Mode. 

Work Jungkook Mode is the mode of him you see most often during finals week or the rare occasions where you meet up to actually try and get work done. Work Jungkook has tunnel vision for whatever assignment is currently in front of him, which he will do either in one sitting or die trying. Work Jungkook lets his coffee get cold and forgets to answer your text messages, even when you’re sat right across from him and you know that he can see the notification on his laptop. Work Jungkook refuses to turn in anything that he hasn’t devoted his entire being to, even if it’s something as simple as a discussion board post. Some of his other friends say that when Jungkook is in Work Jungkook Mode, they won’t even try to contact him, lest their messages get lost in the flurry of his coding assignments. 

But you are not “some of his other friends.” You are his best friend. So rules do not apply to you. And Jungkook has long accepted that fact.

“Hey, don’t mess up my work—” You exclaim defensively, grabby hands reaching over the table to retrieve your notebook. “Wait, how did you do that?”

Jungkook scribbles something down in nearly-illegible font, determined to solve the problem in front of him. He thinks for a few more seconds before eventually jotting down an answer, circling it with his pencil. Holding the notebook out so both of you can see, he scoots his chair over to your side of the table, your shoulders pressed together in this tiny corner of the Starbucks, right by the bathroom, and explains, step by step, what he did. 

He does that for the following two problems in your set, walking you through the kind of math he was doing in freshman year of high school like it’s nothing, answering all of your stupid questions and giving you tips on how to finesse the system by taking as many shortcuts as possible. Teaching you things you never learned, or possibly had just forgotten. Things that a professor would think is idiotic to re-teach to a junior in university. Things that Jungkook wants you to know because he just wants you to have a little more faith in yourself. 

“Does that help?” He asks when he’s finished, still doubting his fantastic teaching abilities despite the fact that he just taught you more in the last thirty minutes than your professor has managed in a month and a half. 

“It actually does,” you tell him, pleasantly surprised. Looking back down at your notebook, what was once a shapeless blur of numbers, letters, and formulas is suddenly a clear and organized outline of each and every step to follow. “I didn’t know it was that easy.”

“Anything can be easy if you just commit yourself to learning how to do it,” Jungkook says, one of those random sentences that are too wise for a college student surviving off of RedBull and Starbucks food, the ones that always make you think Jungkook is secretly an immortal sage with life experiences far beyond your own. “Except coding. Which is hard no matter how good you are at it.”

“Aw, you can do it,” you rally, reaching up to pinch his chin in between your fingers and squeeze it tight. “It’s also too late to change your major now, so you’re stuck.”

“Wow, thanks for the encouragement,” Jungkook chides, hand coming up to rub at where you held his jaw, rolling his eyes. “You should let me help you with your Astronomy work more often. Gives me a break from Python.”

“I would have made you help me whether you liked it or not,” you tell him pointedly, because he is your best friend and he doesn’t get out of things as easily as he thinks he can. “But thanks. I’ll definitely take you up on that.”

“Of course,” Jungkook says with a good-natured grin, always so selfless and kind and giving. He practically signed himself up for a semester’s worth of TA-ing for Introduction to Astronomy despite the constant mountain of work he has himself. Just because it’s you. 

“My very own personal genius,” you muse, wrapping your hands around his arm and snuggling into his body, a whisper of a language only the two of you share. It’s something the two of you have long gotten used to, pressing your fingers all over each other’s bodies like it’s second nature. One of the things that makes you feel so certain about having Jungkook in your life. About wanting him to stay with you for the rest of time. “I’m never letting you go.”

Jungkook smiles, a warm hand coming to rest atop of your own. He breathes, in and out, chest rising beneath your touch. “Like I’d ever let you,” he says.

There is no question about it. Jungkook is one hundred percent, absolutely, undoubtedly, positively, indisputably smarter than you are. It’s something that the two of you used to jokingly fight about (because Jungkook claims that he’s a bad essay writer, even though he’s not), but at this point it’s cemented in stone—he’s a damn genius. A genius who is inexplicably good at everything. A double threat. Triple, if you count the fact that he’s built beyond belief and could probably chuck you into next week if you really, really ticked him off. 

The truth is that, ninety percent of the time it is you who is going to Jungkook for help. Whether it be an assignment you need assistance on (namely Astronomy, because Jungkook probably couldn’t help you on your Mesopotamian artifact and primary source analyses despite his best intentions), a date that was a lot worse than you were hoping it would be, or even just the right coffee to order from that expensive place on the corner. Jungkook knows how to fix everything. 

So when Jungkook slides into the seat across from you in the food court after his Mastering Photography class with that I’m in trouble look on his face, you know something is horribly wrong. 

“Are you alright?” You ask, concerned as you watch him devour the sushi takeout in front of him, stuffing the spicy tuna rolls into his mouth like they’re Skittles. His camera hangs haphazardly out of his open backpack, like he barely had enough time to stuff it into the pocket while he was making his way here. There’s a worried expression written all over his face as he fumbles with the chopsticks in his hand, losing his grip on them every ten seconds. 

It’s not until Jungkook has finished the container of spicy tuna rolls in front of them that he finally seems to work up the courage to answer you. 

“My Photography class is gonna be the death of me,” Jungkook exclaims, exasperated. 

“I thought you liked it,” you comment unhelpfully. Jungkook had been so excited to be enrolled in it, because you needed a recommendation from a different professor and you had to submit a portfolio in order to join the class, making it one of those exclusive (and thus, much better) courses. Not to mention the fact that Jungkook is basically already a professional photographer if his Instagram is anything to go by. He’s going to walk out of university with a Photography minor whether he realizes it or not.

“I do,” Jungkook insists, even if right now it sounds like the two of you both need convincing of that fact. “But this project is ridiculous. I don’t even know how my professor expects us to have the time to finish it.”

“What do you have to do?”

Jungkook sighs. Just thinking about it seems to stress him out. “I mean, it’s only really a week long. So I guess it’s not too bad. But we’re supposed to compile a portfolio of the same subject, taken over the course of the week, with them in all sorts of different poses and lighting and locations, to express a personal theme.”

You scrunch your nose up in confusion. “I might be wrong, but isn’t that what photography… is?” You ask cluelessly. 

“Yes,” Jungkook argues, “but also no. Photography is taking pictures of things just for the hell of it. Not because they necessarily speak to a part of your soul. You just like the look of it. You want to capture the scene. That’s it.”

“Oh,” You say dumbly. 

“And our subject can be whoever or whatever we want, but he recommended choosing a person because taking pictures of our water bottles in different places is boring,” Jungkook huffs, though his professor does have a point there. Modern history wasn’t made out of photographs of store windows and miscellaneous items. It was made out of people, out of events in their lives that shaped the rest of the world, out of personal experiences that changed their point of view. “But I don’t even know anybody who would be willing to let me photograph them for a whole week! I’d basically have to follow them around like paparazzi!”

“I’ll do it,” you suggest casually, because it seems like the most obvious choice to you. There’s no one Jungkook spends as much time with as you. 

Jungkook’s eyes pop out of his head. “What?”

“I’m serious,” you insist. “Think about it. You need a subject for your project that you can photograph in a wide variety of places and over the course of a week. Who else do you spend that much time with, other than me?”

“Well..” Jungkook begins, trying to fight your reasons with his own. “Would you even be comfortable with something like that? I mean, I’m literally going to constantly be taking photos of you.”

“Like we don’t already do that on our phones,” you tease, having amassed quite the album of terrible Jungkook pictures over the years. 

“A camera is different from a phone,” Jungkook protests weakly. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I’m just saying. It won’t bother me,” you say with a shrug. Why is Jungkook being so… weird about your suggestion? You thought he would be jumping at the offer, especially considering it means he won’t have to go out of his way to find and photograph someone else for this assignment. But he’s being rather hesitant. You watch as he glares down at his empty sushi takeout box, eyebrows furrowed in that thick, nervous way. “But you don’t have to,” you backtrack. “It was just a suggestion.”

He breathes in and breathes out, expression solid. Even from here you can see the cogs whirring in his brain, placing each and every potential result into a pro and con list inside his mind, trying to work out whether the benefits will be greater than the cost. 

Quite frankly, you don’t know what all the holdup is about. 

“You’re… sure about this?” He asks, looking up at you, determined to ensure your comfort. As if that’s even an issue. “You’re cool with being photographed and everything?”

“Only because it’s you,” you tease lightheartedly, expecting some sort of equally cheesy response. Instead, it makes Jungkook do something weird. He freezes in place, darting his eyes away from your gaze for a split second, collecting thoughts you can’t see. “Yeah,” you say loudly, trying to bring him back. “I’m fine with it.”

He inhales, exhales, closes his eyes, and opens them. “Okay then. I guess it’s settled. You’ll be my subject,” he declares, an almost unnoticeable wobble to his voice. It’s probably nothing, so you don’t think too hard about it.

“Can you at least pretend to be a little more excited about this?” You ask, jabbing him in the chest with a wooden chopstick. “It’s the first time we’ve ever gotten to be part of a project together!”

“Yay,” Jungkook says, lifeless. 

“How about a photo to commemorate it?” You suggest, reaching over to pull the camera out of his backpack, pushing it into his hands. “This can be the start of your portfolio.”

“Fine,” he eventually caves, bringing it up to his eye as he turns it on, twisting the lens to perfect the focus. Even caught off guard like this, he looks like a professional, like someone who was born to be behind the camera. He’s a computer science major but you know that photography will always be something special to him.

You strike a dramatic pose, holding your chopsticks out, one in each hand, with a wide, excited smile on your face. “How do I look?” You ask, scrunching your eyes together. 

Jungkook’s finger hovers over the silver button. “Perfect,” he tells you, voice soft and honest. 

Click.

“So, how many photos are you supposed to take for this portfolio?” You ask as you flop around on Jungkook’s bed, pretending that the open tab on your laptop with your fifty-page reading doesn’t exist. You don’t even know why professors assign readings that long. Do they really expect you to read all of it?

From across his room, you can make out the top of Jungkook’s fluffy brown hair over his sleek gaming chair, one of the ones that look like high-tech airplane seats. “I don’t know,” he says. “He said at least twenty. And no more than fifty. Which really makes me wonder if someone once submitted like, one hundred photos for this project that he had to grade them on. But yeah.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” you say. When you’re around a cute animal, you can easily take twenty photographs. Granted, they aren’t exactly award-worthy photographs, but it’s not a physically demanding task. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says. “Hypothetically you could finish it in a day. But it looks really obvious.”

“Well, how many do you have now?”

It’s been a day and a half since Jungkook agreed to let you be his so-called muse, but already you’ve lost track of how many photos he’s taken of you. He loves his camera, you know that, but you didn’t realize exactly how much he loves his camera. And with you as the sole subject for his project, he’s practically letting it hang from his neck all day long, just waiting for the right time to snap a photo of you standing in line at the food court, frowning at your textbook, or waiting to meet up with him. Every time he sees you he snaps a picture, even if the lighting’s bad, even if you haven’t had your morning coffee yet, even if it’s midnight and you look like a zombie. In his mind, there are no bad pictures. Just memories.

You wonder what the hell he sees in you. 

“A lot,” Jungkook answers unhelpfully, making no effort to elaborate on that statement. 

“Have you counted?” You ask, getting off of his bed to join him at his desk. 

Jungkook doesn’t seem to realize what you’re doing until you’re standing right next to him, placing a hand over his shoulders as you lean down next to him. He fumbles around for a second, the mouse slipping through his grip, and you catch a glimpse of one of the photos he’s taken of you, a sliver of your pursed lips, the wrinkles between your eyebrows. 

It’s from the library yesterday. You didn’t even know Jungkook had taken a picture of you there. You had a stupid reading to complete last night, one that made no sense and was terribly-written, and you spent an hour just trying to figure out what the damn argument was, and Jungkook captured it. You were there for an hour and Jungkook was there too, watching you like it was nothing, waiting for the perfect moment. He was there, sitting across from you, camera at the ready. You didn’t even hear it click. 

He closes it before you get a closer look at the photo, frantically hitting the little red dot at the top corner of the window before you have a chance to ask why. 

“What, I’m not allowed to see?” You chide, a little bit hurt but more confused than anything else. Why is Jungkook being so secretive?

“No,” Jungkook spits quickly. making you raise an eyebrow in alarm. “I mean, it’s a surprise. You get to see when it’s finished. I still have to… uh, edit. And stuff.”

“Edit? You think I’m that ugly?” You tease, knowing that he probably means color correction but enjoying the way that he gets all flustered when he hears your voice.

Jungkook’s eyes widen at that, like he just realized he made a wrong turn and is desperately backtracking. “What, no! I don’t—I don’t think you’re ugly.”

You laugh, letting the sound of your voice ease the tension in his shoulders, reveling in the way his big doe eyes seem to soften when he realizes you were just teasing. He looks like a kid caught stealing a candy bar from a gas station, looks like one of those boyfriends in the viral videos where the girl reveals that she got him a present or something instead, all nervous and full of explanations. 

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” you assure him, rubbing up and down his arm to soothe him, calm his heart down. “You don’t have to show me. I’m just excited. No one’s ever taken photos of me like this before.”

“I would,” Jungkook speaks up softly. “If you asked. I would.”

“I know,” You say. You’re not sure if there’s a thing in this world Jungkook wouldn’t do for you, and you, him. If he asked, you would pluck the stars from the sky for him. Bring him back a piece of the moon. Stop time. Anything. Everything. Just for him. “I know.”

 “What are you doing?” Jungkook asks, changing the topic as he whirls around in his gaming chair. 

“Just another reading, like always,” you dismiss, because you’re positive the last thing Jungkook wants to hear about right now is your primary source reading on irrigation techniques in agrarian Europe. You don’t even want to hear about it. “But I could use some help on Astronomy.”

Without another word, Jungkook gets up from his desk and the two of you head over to his bed, where an untouched problem set waits on your computer. He grabs a notebook from his backpack along the way before sitting down next to you on the edge of his bed, bodies pressed together. Slowly, he begins to coach you through each problem, step by step, drawing pictures and diagrams if he has to, until you finish all ten problems. 

The truth is, you didn’t really need help with this unit. Astronomy’s gotten a lot easier now that Jungkook has taught you the strategies to tackle it. But Jungkook sometimes feels like a ghost when he works, especially when he’s sitting at his desk, quiet and focused and almost invisible. And call you clingy, but you like it when you can look up and see his face instead of the back of a chair, a little tuft of wavy brown hair. You like it when he’s right beside you, in a place where you know you won’t lose him, where you can hold on if things get rough. Where you can see his stupid brown eyes and his goofy smile and know that he’ll always be there for you. 

When he’s finished, Jungkook doesn’t get back up to sit at his desk. He flops down on his back, staring up at the white ceiling of his room, eyes tracing the cracks. You join him, side by side, pretending that there’s something there. Looking up at the sky would be nicer, but it doesn’t really matter, so long as you’re with him.

“I didn’t know you took so many photos,” you say.

“I never want to miss anything.”

“You should give me more warnings, next time. I feel like I look so ugly in some of them.”

“No, you don’t. Don’t say stuff like that.”

“You don’t think I’m ugly?” You ask him, for real this time. It’s not that you think he’s going to say that he does, it’s that you want to know what he really thinks. How he really sees you. You turn your head to him, back pressed against his comforter, barely a foot apart. And he turns back to you, and he’s right there, right there in front of you, big brown eyes wide and blinking. He’s right there, how could you miss him?

“No,” Jungkook says, honest and true. He looks at you, looks right at you, right into you, and he muses to himself, chuckling. “Why would I ever think that?”

At the end of the day, you can’t really be bothered to put on real pants in anticipation of Jungkook’s trigger-happy camera-taking tendencies. He’s seen you spill a boiling hot bowl of tomato soup all over yourself in the dining hall. He’s seen you at four in the morning in the library the night before finals begin, eyebags down to your knees and mismatched shoes on your feet. He’s seen you in the middle of a frat house, sweat dripping down your forehead and smelling of nothing but straight alcohol. Getting dressed up just for him would be antithetical to the very foundation of your friendship. 

You have, however, become keenly more cognizant in the last few days of when Jungkook is about to take a photo of you. Mostly because you glance up at your surroundings every three seconds to make sure you aren’t getting sniped from across the food court. Nobody else needs to see a picture of you picking up three pieces of sushi with your chopsticks and stuffing them all into your mouth at once. And, from what you can tell, you’ve been pretty successful, which either means you’ve gotten better at telling when Jungkook might be taking a photo of you, or Jungkook’s gotten better at hiding it. 

Either way, he’s got a lot more pictures of you reflexively flashing a peace-sign in his direction when you hear the telltale sound of his camera lens focusing, so you’re not really sure what that means for the fate of his portfolio. 

Besides your newfound hyper-awareness of the sound of a camera lens adjusting, the strangest part of you and Jungkook’s little project is how quickly the rest of your friends adjusted to this brand new dynamic. 

This is not to say this assignment is the weirdest thing you and Jungkook have done together, because there was once one week where you and Jungkook challenged each other to only eat bananas for every meal to see if anything would happen to either of you. Nothing did, but after that week you swore off bananas for the rest of your life and have had little appetite for them since. 

It’s more that your other friends have just accepted the fact that ridiculous, extravagant shenanigans are a necessary part of you and Jungkook’s relationship and have simply chosen not to question them anymore. At least, most of them have. 

“So, how’s you and Jungkook’s little photography fling going?” Maisie asks, and even through the phone you can hear the way she’s wiggling her eyebrows. 

“It’s not a fling, and it’s fine,” you hiss back, trying to keep your voice down as you pack up your belongings, phone pressed between your ear and your shoulder. “Stop speaking so loudly, everyone else in the library can probably hear you.”

“Good, because they’ve all probably noticed the way Jungkook’s been following you around like an unrestrained fanboy for the past four days taking pictures of you,” Maisie says pointedly, voice so sharp it causes you to look around at the other tables to make sure no one’s listening in. 

You frown, hoping your deadpan expression is audible through the phone. “It’s not like that and you know it.”

“Don’t you think it’s even a little strange that you’ve given Jungkook full permission to take photos of you like you’re a model and he’s some sort of weird, professional paparazzi?” You can practically see Maisie’s face in front of you, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows as she makes her point.

“No, it’s what we agreed on,” you remind her for the umpteenth time. There’s nothing weird about this. You’re helping him with a project, what more could it be? “Jungkook needed someone to take pictures of for his photography project and I thought it would be a good idea if I was that someone.”

“Hmm… wonder why…” Maisie trails off, deliberately vague and suggestive all at once. 

“You’ve been going on about this ever since Jungkook and I met, Maise,” you say with a roll of your eyes, tossing your backpack over your shoulder. “You know that Jungkook and I are just friends. Like we have always been.”

“Friends that take candid photos of each other under the guise of a project,” Maisie adds, and you can see the air quotes around the word “project” right in front of you.

“Friends that help each other out because that’s what friends do,” you correct. “You’re just going to have to accept the fact that Jungkook and I are always going to be just friends and nothing more. No matter how much money you’ve bet on us getting together.”

Maisie gasps. “I have not bet money on such a thing! This is slander!”

“Don’t think I don’t see you and Jimin’s damn Venmo history.” You pull up to the front desk of the library to check out a primary source book needed for one of your classes. It’s the first edition, and it’s battered beyond belief, but it’s better than paying for it. “Just this, thanks.”

“The only way you could convince me that you and Jungkook are just friends is if you go on a date or something,” Maisie comments snidely. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you romantically interested in someone else the entire time you’ve known each other. Isn’t that proof enough?”

“You want me to go on a date with someone?” You demand, determined to get Maisie to hop off your ass about this. 

You and Jungkook are just friends. If swiping right with someone on Tinder and getting dinner and a movie with them is what will convince Maisie of that, then that is what you will do. It’s not as if being friends with Jungkook is mutually exclusive with you going out with other people. Should be easy, right? 

The boy behind the counter tells you your book is due back at the end of the semester, and you nod your thanks before heading out of the library.

“Fine, I’ll go on a date with someone. If it’ll get you to stop trying to convince me that Jungkook and I are gonna get married and have babies,” you declare, pushing your body against the door handles as you leave, five minutes to spare before your next class begins. 

“You guys would have really cute babies, I’m just saying,” Maisie points out like it’s nothing. 

You roll your eyes, taking the phone away from your ear as your finger hovers over the red button. “See you, Maise.”

You’re barely three steps out of the library, still rolling your eyes at the Call Ended screen on your phone when a voice catches your attention. 

“Y/N!”

You turn your head just in time to see Jungkook’s devilish grin disappear behind his camera, and you don’t even have time to blink before he begins snapping away, finger mashing the silver button at the top as your expression morphs from surprise to defeat, unable to counter his sniping abilities with a signature peace sign. Even from twenty feet away, you can hear Jungkook laughing as you take the opportunity to pose for a few moments, like you really are a model and he really is your personal photographer. The sound of his giggles fills the air, music to your ears, lingering between you like dandelion wisps, blown by the wind. 

Another voice breaks you from your trance. 

“And here we have our resident celebrity and her paparazzi,” Jimin says, motioning to the two of you as he speaks to an enormous tour group of potential applicants and their parents. Caught in front of them, the heat suddenly rushes to your cheeks as you instinctively cover your face, embarrassed to have been pointed out by Jimin, whose amicable, lovable personality is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to his part-time job as a tour guide. 

The worst part is how some of the parents and students seem to believe him for a second, that you really are famous and that Jungkook really is your photographer, looking at the two of you inquisitively as you shrink beneath their gazes. 

“I’m kidding,” Jimin quickly continues as Jungkook joins you where you stand, laughing at the way you look like a deer caught in headlights. “They’re just some friends of mine who we happened to catch outside the library, which is our next stop. But don’t they look so cute together?”

“Are you guys dating?” One of the students pipes up, asking what no one else dared to. 

Your eyes widen at the notion, wondering if you and Jungkook really are cursed to always be mistaken for a couple when you two have never been, and most likely will never be one. Shaking your head, you force out a laugh, “No, we’re just friends.” Beside you, Jungkook is noticeably silent. You suppose he’s gotten just as sick of explaining as you. 

“Bummer, right?” Jimin asks his group, earning a couple of disappointed nods from innocent high-schoolers that still believe in love. “But I’m working on that, so don’t worry. Anyway, this library will be your main destination for studying, book-reading, and everything in between, and is conveniently located two minutes away from the freshman dorms…”

The conversation finally drawn away from you and Jungkook, you let out a breath you hadn’t even realized you had been holding in. “Weird, right? Even high-schoolers think we’re together.”

Jungkook doesn’t meet your eyes, fiddling with the settings on his camera just to keep his hands busy. The quiet makes you wonder what is going on up inside his head, makes you wonder what it is he’s thinking about, what it is you’re not seeing. Lately, it’s felt like there’s something on Jungkook’s mind you wish he felt comfortable telling you. 

“Hey, you alright?” You ask, giving him a little nudge with your side. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Jungkook says, voice soft, barely audible. It doesn’t make you feel any better. “No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Don’t you have class soon?”

“Oh, shit, you’re right, fuck,” you say, checking your phone only to find you have barely a minute to get to your next class. Guess you’ll be using one of your allotted absences today. “Thanks for reminding me. Dinner tonight?”

“I’ll text you,” Jungkook promises, and you nod your agreement as you dash off, determined to turn a five-minute walk into a one-minute one with the power of exercise. As you leave, you watch as Jungkook flounders outside the library, staring down at his camera and scrolling through his photos, and you still find yourself feeling like you’re missing something. What is Jungkook not telling you? 

What do you not know?

By the time you reach your class, two minutes late and completely out of breath, tardiness is the last thing on your mind.

This project was just meant to be a friend helping out a friend. So why does it feel like you and Jungkook are losing each other?

Using Tinder is easy. Dangerously so.

You’re no expert in app design, but its simplified “yes or no” mechanic has you swiping through people like it’s an extreme sport, barely giving some of them a second glance if their Tinder profile description doesn’t make you laugh within the first sentence. 

Tinder was, admittedly, not your first choice of potential date-finding methods. Call you old-fashioned, but whatever happened to asking someone in person if they wanted to get a meal with you? To showing up at their doorstep with a rose bouquet and a toothy white grin? Perhaps all of those old-timey movies you and Jungkook always watched have given you unrealistic expectations. But can you blame them? 

Even if Tinder wasn’t your first choice, it was certainly the fastest. It takes a second to look at someone’s designated Tinder thumbnail, two to read their description, and three to decide if they’re worth a swipe right. Compare that to actively meeting up with someone, getting their contact information, and then continuing to dance around each other until you finally decide to get dinner together. That’s the sort of thing that could take weeks. Maybe months. And in some cases, years.

Besides, it’s not like you had very many options at your disposal. You don’t trust Maisie to set you up with someone because she’ll probably just choose one of the many boys from her management class and call it a day. Asking someone yourself is absolutely out of the question. And, for some strange, unknown reason, the idea of getting Jungkook to hook you up with one of his friends just doesn’t sit right with you.

So, Tinder it is. And as it turns out, chivalry isn’t dead. It’s just archaic.

An hour into your mindless swiping, you get a message notification. Two hours after that, you’ve got plans with a nice senior boy whom you’ve never met. 

And for the first time in a very long time, there’s something to mark on your calendar for Saturday night.

The little blue block on your Google Calendar tab stares back at you from where your open laptop sits on your desk, the red line that signifies your current time slowly inching towards it as you fumble around in front of your mirror, more dressed up than you have been in weeks. Maisie was right. It’s been so long since you’ve gone out with someone that you’ve completely forgotten what the dress code is for something like this. A dress? Heels? Makeup?

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks you will anyway. What if he’s wearing a hoodie and sweats while you look like you’re about to attend the goddamn Academy Awards? Maybe the eyeshadow was a little too much.

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks it’s inevitable that you do. The door to your apartment swings open, and you can hear heavy footsteps making their way to your bedroom, that easy gait of his familiar as always.

“Hey, do you think we can just get some take-out and watch a stupid old noir movie, or something? I’ve had a day,” he shouts out, the sigh audible in his voice.

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks you definitely have when you turn around to see Jungkook standing right outside your bedroom in the floppiest sweater you’ve ever seen and jeans with holes in the knees, mouth agape as he stares straight at you. It’s impossible not to notice the way his eyes are blown wide at the sight of you, at the way they rake up and down your figure, like he can’t even believe what he’s seeing. It’s impossible not to notice how he seems to flounder at the sight of you.

The only thing that breaks the both of you out of your stupors, frozen in place like two criminals caught red-handed, is the sound of his hulking black backpack thudding to the floor. 

“Whoa.”

“Do you think it’s too much?” You ask, voice wobbly. God, why are you so nervous? It’s just Jungkook. 

“Too much for what?” Jungkook blinks, deliberate and slow, as if he’s determined to make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him. “Where are you going?”

“I think we’ll have to do a raincheck for the noir movie and takeout,” you say sheepishly, pursing your lips together in fright as you force out a small, tense smile. “I’m… going out. With someone.”

“Like,” Jungkook begins, and even from here you can hear the way he stops himself, hear him breathe out every word, thick on his tongue. “On a date?”

“Yeah.”

It’s a one-syllable word and yet it takes nearly all of your willpower just to say it. Just to confirm what Jungkook’s already thinking. Just to tell him, your best friend, your ride or die, your number one, that you’re going out on a date. 

“Oh.” Jungkook’s voice is lifeless. “Do I know them?”

“No, uh, it’s just some guy I met on Tinder. I don’t know, I just wanted to see what all the hype was about, I guess. And I haven’t really been on a date in a while, so I figured I might just take up the opportunity, so we’re probably just going to go out to a restaurant and maybe go to a club afterwards if we’re still in the mood, and—” You cut yourself off, so nervous that you’ve resorted to your terrible habit of rambling to try and ease the tension. “Why? Do you think it’s too much?”

“You use Tinder?” Jungkook asks instead. It sounds like he’s shocked to hear this. 

“Yeah…” you trail off. “Why?”

Jungkook freezes at the question, but it’s not because it seems like he doesn’t have an answer. It’s because it seems like he does. Only it’s an answer he doesn’t want to share. 

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” he eventually settles on, shaking his head. “You, uh, you look good.”

“You think? I feel like it’s a lot. I don’t know how to dress appropriately for stuff like this anymore,” you ask, palms sweaty as you furiously straighten out the skirt of your dress. “Should I change into pants, or anything?”

“No, no, I think that’s fine,” Jungkook says with an honest smile. “You look nice like this.”

“It’s probably been like, a year since you last saw me in a dress,” you comment mindlessly, turning back to face the mirror as you fiddle with your makeup, finger wiping away a bit of smudged lipstick or a stray bit of mascara. “I miss my sweats. Hey, whoa, wait, what are you doing—?”

You whip around to find Jungkook slowly fishing out the camera from his backpack, hand gripping it tightly as he brandishes it in front of you. 

“I, um, I just wanted to see if I could maybe take a photo of you,” Jungkook says, a small, little grin decorating his features. “Since you’re all dressed up.”

“Seriously?” You ask in disbelief. 

Jungkook nods, holding the camera out in front of him. “Just one.”

He looks so small, standing across your bedroom. He looks so small and delicate and intimate, body curled in on itself ever so slightly as he looks at you, the yellow glow of your ceiling light reflected in his hazelnut eyes, drowning beneath his clothes. He looks like he has never seen a moment more perfect, never seen an opportunity as clear, looks like he thinks that if he blinks he’ll miss it. 

Looks as if a photo will be the only way to remember it. 

And you nod. Because he is your best friend, and who are you to deny him of something so simple? Of a press of a button? It doesn’t feel like a project anymore. It just feels like a memory. 

Jungkook brings the camera to his eye, and you smile at him, soft and gentle and warm. He grins back, focusing the camera lens before snapping away. 

You wonder what he sees. 

(You wonder if it’s as beautiful as what you see.)

“Have fun tonight, okay?” Jungkook asks of you as your Google Calendar notification sounds, letting you know you have approximately two minutes before he’s supposed to pick you up outside your apartment.

You nod. “I will. And if I don’t, then I’ll come over afterwards. And we can watch that stupid noir film.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes, a shrug of his shoulders. 

“But I want to. So I will. Okay? I’ll text you,” you promise. “Don’t think I’ll forget about you.”

Jungkook smiles at your little tease, at the way you cup the side of his jaw with your hand as you head towards your front door. 

“Wait, Y/N,” Jungkook sputters out, running after you. He reaches you right as you get to the door, hand grasping the doorknob. You turn to look at him, blinking. “I hope tonight is everything you dreamed of.”

There is something so distinctly sad in his voice. It makes you wonder who has broken his heart. Makes you wonder what you can do to fix it.

“Even if it’s not,” you say to him, taking his hand in your own and squeezing it tight, reminding him that, no matter what, you’re still here. “I know you’ll always be there to take care of me afterwards.”

Your phone buzzes with a message from your date, and you scurry out the door. 

For some reason, there’s a part of you that wishes you never even left. 

The date is okay. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. By the time you finished eating, it was obvious neither of you had any interest in continuing the night elsewhere, whether it be a club or a karaoke bar. He pays for your meal despite your insistence that you can handle the check perfectly fine on your own, thanks you for a nice night, and drops you right back at your apartment. And so goes your one and only Tinder experience, blowing away like a leaf in the wind. 

You look down at your phone. It isn’t even nine o’clock yet. 

[November 7th, 8:48PM]

You: you still game for that movie?

[November 7th, 8:50PM]

Jungkook: you finished your date already?

You: is that a yes or a no

Jungkook: my door is always open, you know that

You: you’re gonna get robbed one day and it’s gonna be by me You: i’m coming over

The walk from your apartment to Jungkook’s is six minutes and thirty seconds on a good day, and seven minutes and fifteen seconds on a bad day, which is usually dependent on if the traffic light over the main road has decided to be extra slow or not. You could walk the damn route in your sleep if you really wanted, having done it so many times in the last year and a half, ever since he moved out of on-campus housing and into his own place.

Tonight, it takes you nearly eight minutes to get to his apartment, but you mostly chalk that up to the heels you’re wearing. If you cared any less about your dignity, you’d probably take them off and walk barefoot like a defeated heroine in a romance movie, shoes dangling from your fingers as they hang low by your side. 

But you aren’t defeated. You didn’t have the world’s most spectacular date, but the night isn’t over just yet. 

Jungkook’s waiting at his front door by the time you arrive. 

“Eight minutes, huh? You’re getting old,” he asks snidely, looking down at the invisible watch on his wrist. 

“Your counting is just off,” you retort easily, falling into that same friendly rhythm, that familiar little beat that the two of you share. You push past him and into his apartment, instantly feeling more at home, shoulders sinking and heartbeat soothing as you soak in the scent of his room, of his home, of him. 

“How’d it go?” Jungkook asks, eyes hopeful as they watch you tug off your heels. They were hardly three inches tall and yet you still want nothing to do with them. 

You shrug. “Eh. It was okay.”

“Just okay?” Jungkook asks, sounding seriously upset for you. Upset that you didn’t have a good night even after you promised him that you would. Upset that it didn’t turn out to be everything you wanted. 

“I don’t know,” you admit, looking over at him, dejected. “It just—I just had this feeling that it wasn’t going to work out.”

Jungkook scowls to himself, eyebrows furrowing like he’s trying to figure out what exactly you mean by that. And the truth is, you’re not sure either. The date was fine, and he was nice, but even when you first met it felt like you weren’t going to get what you wanted from him. Like you were just going on the date to go on the date. Like you already knew that it would mean nothing. 

Jungkook was going to be waiting for you at the end of the night whether it went amazingly well or terribly bad. And knowing that, strangely enough, almost made you want the date to be horrible. Like it would make seeing Jungkook afterwards that much sweeter. 

“Oh,” Jungkook says lamely. “Well, I’m sorry. It seemed like you were really looking forward to it.”

“It’s alright,” you assure him. “Can we just watch this movie now and make fun of how sexist it is? Please?”

To that, Jungkook easily agrees. As he’s queueing up the movie, you raid his closet for a hoodie and sweatpants, desperate to strip yourself of your dress and tights and cozy up in clothes that are much more appropriate for your comfort level. At this point in your friendship, Jungkook doesn’t even question it when he sees you march into his room, fishing through his closet and drawers for your favorite matching set of his, this grey pair that he’s worn so much it still smells like him even after it’s come right out of the wash. 

He only stares back in awe when he sees you emerge from his bedroom wearing them. 

“Ready?” You ask, breaking him from his resolve.

Jungkook blinks wildly from where he’s seated on his dinky old couch, as if to clear his vision. “What? Oh, yeah, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Then hurry it up, Mister,” you demand, sitting down next to him and curling into his body. It’s instinctual, at this point, wanting to be close to him. To feel the warmth of his body radiate upon your own. To feel his chest beneath the palm of your hands, his arm wrapped around your side. “All good?” You ask, looking up at him. 

Jungkook looks down at you, and you swear, you’ve never seen him more at home. “Always, when I’m with you.”

The movie is predictably good and predictably sexist, but your favorite part by far is when Jungkook reaches around on the coffee table in front of you for his camera, holding it up to his eye and snatching a picture of the television, the film grainy like an old polaroid, faded like an antique photograph. He clicks away at the scene in front of him before turning on you, the lens so close to your face you’re almost certain all he’ll manage to capture is your nose. You laugh, pushing yourself away from him as he snaps, and snaps, and snaps, image after image after image, until his camera battery has died and there’s no more room left on his card. 

“Guess I’ll have to charge this thing, then,” Jungkook sighs as he declares his camera dead, screen black. 

“You aren’t going to include any of those, are you?” You ask, an eyebrow raised. 

Jungkook shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Don’t you have enough?” You deadpan, thinking back to the hundreds of photos Jungkook must have taken of you over the past week, and even more that you don’t know about. There’s certainly no shortage of them in his current camera inventory. That’s for sure. 

“Never,” Jungkook says wickedly. He stretches out an open arm, and you don’t have to think twice about falling into it, letting him wrap you up in his hold, curling into his body. 

The black television screen crackles before you, DVD player waiting for Jungkook to turn it off. There’s no need for either of you to look up at each other. Not when you’re strung together like this. Not when you already know exactly where he is. 

“It’s due on Monday, right?” You inquire softly, fatigue slowly overtaking you. 

“Yeah. I’m almost finished, just have to do some curating and editing.”

“I want to see it.”

“What? My project?”

“What else?”

“It’s just a project, it’s not that exciting.”

You pull away from him at that, looking up at him with furrowed brows and scrunched-up nose. “What do you mean ‘it’s not that exciting’? It’s your photography project. You’ve spent a whole week working on it.”

“Yeah, but it’s just you, you know?” Jungkook objects. “Like, you know what you look like. It’s just going to be a bunch of photos of you, like I said it’d be.”

“That’s exactly why I want to see it,” you say like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You took pictures of me for a whole week. Don’t you want to share them with me?”

“If you really want some of the photos, I’ll send you some, but you don’t need to see the whole portfolio, you know? It’s just for my professor,” Jungkook says stiffly, surprisingly resistant. What’s the big deal? It’s not like there will suddenly be new information about you that you didn’t know before. You want to see what Jungkook has been working tirelessly on this entire week. Where’s the harm in that?

“Why are you getting so hung up on this? It’s just photos,” you say with a frown. 

“Why are you getting so hung up on this?” Jungkook challenges back. 

You sigh, sinking back into him, defeated. Even a little disagreement like that is enough to knock the wind out of the both of you, so you decide not to push it much further. 

“Do you promise to show me eventually?” You ask, hopeful.

Jungkook pauses for a moment, and you almost expect him to say no, considering how protective of his work he’s being. “One day,” he declares. “One day, I will.”

And that’s good enough for you. 

You lose track of how much time passes after that, feeling your eyelids getting heavy as the warmth of his body envelopes you, drowsiness settling in. There’s just something about this moment, right here, right now, that makes you want to fall asleep.

You’re on the verge of slumber when Jungkook’s voice breaks through.

“Why didn’t you think your date would work out?”

“I don’t know,” you respond sleepily, barely even opening your eyes. “It just felt wrong.”

“How do you know what feels right?”

Good question. Perhaps if you had the energy, you’d answer it. But right now, all you can think about is how cozy you feel in Jungkook’s hoodie and sweatpants, how the scent of him surrounds you, that indescribable, boyish aroma that can’t be replicated. Right now, all you can think about is how easily your body molds into his, like two pieces of a puzzle meant to fit together. Right now, all you can think about is him. 

The worst part about each and every week is when it ends. Because the end of one week signifies the beginning of the next, and when you’re in university, the beginning of the next week means a whole new batch of assignments that you have to complete and a whole new batch of due dates to meet. 

So, yeah. The weeks have been blurring together for you lately. But what else could you expect?

Sunday evening, as per usual, finds you right back where you always are: Jungkook’s apartment. 

The two of you have been regularly getting together on Sundays to study, ever since you both realized you work significantly harder when motivated by the other, determined to finish all of your work on time so you can spend the rest of the night fooling around by mixing Monster with as many unhealthy drinks that you can possibly think of. And it’s been working out well for the both of you so far. Jungkook powers through his coding assignments and you whiz through your readings, intent on keeping up to date with your tasks so they don’t all come crashing down on you at the end of the semester. 

Studying with Jungkook has always been easy, largely due to the fact that it’s the one allotted time during your friendship where the both of you deem it best to not speak to each other for the sake of your work. The moment one of you opens your mouth it’s over, so you sit on opposite ends of the room and pretend that the other person isn’t even there. 

Jungkook told you earlier today that he had already finished his photography portfolio, so there would unfortunately be no sneaky glances over his shoulder to see if you can catch a glimpse of one of the pictures. Which is fine by you, you’re just a little embarrassed that Jungkook had told you this outright. Not that you were planning to do exactly that, but you were planning to do exactly that. 

Part of you. more than anything, wants to know why Jungkook won’t just show you himself. Why he’s being so secretive, so protective of his photography project when you both know already exactly what’s in it. For God’s sake, he just spent the entire week taking photos of you non-stop. It’s like not as if any part of this is a mystery to either of you. What more could he have done?

Whatever. You aren’t going to force it if he doesn’t want you to. You suppose that maybe one day, far into the future, he’ll finally decide that the time is right. 

“I’m so fucking tired,” Jungkook declares lifelessly as he gets up from where he’s sitting on your bed, dead inside. “I need a break.”

“Are you going to the kitchen? Can you make me some tea, please?” You ask him, looking up from the laptop on your desk. 

Jungkook nods wordlessly before disappearing out of the room. 

You and Jungkook’s best study practice to maximize productivity is the taking of each other’s cell phones so that the other cannot be tempted to look at it. It’s worked plenty of times before and will probably work plenty of times again, because as they say, out of sight, out of mind. 

Unfortunately, it’s hard to pretend that your phone is out of sight when it’s been buzzing on your bedside table for the past five minutes, and your fingers have been itching to get over there and answer your damn notifications. So, while Jungkook is out of the room, you decide to cheat a little by dashing over there just to see what the heck is going on in the rest of the world. 

As it turns out, nothing much. Just Maisie texting you as she binges yet another television show, giving spoiler-free updates anytime anything remotely dramatic happens. You have a couple of new emails as well. 

The thing that actually catches your attention the most, is Jungkook’s laptop screen. 

There’s just a Word document open on it, but a Word document is a far cry from his usual coding program or Photoshop. Because you can’t help yourself, you peer over to see what he’s written. 

What did you learn about yourself through this assignment? How do you think you’ve changed?

Hard to say that I have. I don’t think I learned something about myself so much as I confirmed what I already knew, cementing it as a real thought in my brain, rather than just a daydream. Nothing changed in the way that my best friend and I interacted, and I can almost confirm that nothing changed in the way that she feels about me, just as nothing changed in the way I feel about her. I guess you could say I learned that I don’t think anything could ever change the way I feel about her. 

What?

Do you think you’ll ever look back on this project, whether it be as a reference or a memory?

Yes. Not as a reference but to remind myself of this very moment in my life—a single week over the course of my life that I felt was worth saving. I imagine that there will come a time, far in the future, where my best friend and I have separated a little bit, found our own lives and created our own families with our own people. And when that happens, I will look back on this project to remind myself of who we used to be. How we used to feel about each other. Maybe, by that point in time, it won’t hurt as much as it does now. 

This feels personal. Maybe you should stop reading. But there’s just one more question left on the page… 

This assignment forced you to create an entire portfolio, from scratch, using a subject you would have to regularly schedule time with. It was demanding. But, that said, would you ever do this again?

Yes. If it meant getting to spend more time with her, take more photos of her, see her smile once more, I would do it a thousand times over. 

“Y/N?”

You hadn’t even heard the kettle whistling. 

“Jungkook,” you say, breathless, caught red-handed. 

“What are you doing?” He asks, placing your steaming cup of tea down on the desk as he stares back at you in horror, in surprise, in worry, in something. Something that gives you this imminent sense of impending doom. 

“Uh—”

“Were you reading my computer screen?”

It’s not like you could say you were doing anything else. 

“I couldn’t help myself, I came over here to check my phone since it’s been buzzing like crazy and your computer was right there and I just…” you sputter out, thoughts swirling inside your head. 

(I will look back on this project to remind myself of who we used to be. How we used to feel about each other. Maybe, by that point in time, it won’t hurt as much as it does now. 

If it meant getting to see her smile once more, I would do it a thousand times over. 

I guess you could say I learned that I don’t think anything could ever change the way I feel about her.)

“What do you mean, how you feel about me?” You ask, because you can’t help yourself. Because the sound of his voices echoes in your head like the beat of a drum, over and over and over. Because you’re staring back at him and even if he just caught you snooping through his computer you can never be worried when it comes to him. Because everything he has ever done puts you at ease. 

“Y/N, that is private, why would you read something like that?” He asks, each word a sucker punch into your heart. 

“Because I just had to know, okay?” You shout back. “I had to know what you were hiding from me.”

“So you decided to snoop through my computer to see if you could figure it out yourself?” He demands, storming over to you. 

“So you are hiding something?”

“That’s not the point, the point is that—”

“What are you not telling me, Jungkook?” You cry out, watching as he approaches you, dark eyes piercing your gaze. “Why won’t you show me your goddamn portfolio? If there’s really nothing to be afraid of, why are you keeping it from me? I’m your best friend, I’m the fucking subject of your project? Don’t I deserve to see it? Why won’t you show me?”

“Because then you’d know!” Jungkook shouts back, leaving deafening silence in his wake. You look up at him, blinking. In front of you, Jungkook is out of breath, chest heaving. 

He looks so strained. So tired. Like he’s been carrying around this secret for months now, maybe even years, and this is the final straw. This is what has sent the both of you crashing down upon each other. This stupid fucking project. You’ve known Jungkook ever since the beginning of your freshman year, and never before have you seen him so hopeless. 

“Jungkook—?”

“You’d know, goddamnit,” Jungkook says, hand coming up to rub at his forehead, dragging down his cheek. “And I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that.”

“Know what? What would I know?” 

Jungkook closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Opens them again. “That I’m in love with you.”

The words drift in between the two of you, hovering in the air like feathers. You see them, clear as day, in front of you, hear them echoing in your head, over and over and over again. Feel the way your blood is pumping, the way your heart is beating. 

“You’re in love with me?” You ask him. 

“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” Jungkook admits. “Or at all, really. But I have been, for a while now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid that I’d lose you.”

You chuckle, a small, little thing from the back of your throat. “You must have known I’d never let that happen, hmm?”

Jungkook smiles softly. “I was scared. Can you blame me? You’re my best friend.”

“And you are mine,” you remind him. 

“It’s just—” Jungkook begins, like the gates of a dam are opening up. “We’d known each other for so long, and we have such a good thing going as is, always texting and calling and hanging out together, studying together on Sunday nights and seeing each other during the week, and I didn’t want to ruin anything. And then my professor assigned this project, and the only person I could think of to take photos was you, but I didn’t want to ask that of you in case you thought it was weird, but you suggested it anyway so I said yes, but I knew. I knew then that the moment I took one goddamn photo of you it would be obvious, and that if you ever saw you would just know. Stuff like that is easy to pick up in pictures, because a camera is like, tunnel vision for whatever it is you want to focus on most, and that’s you, that’s always been you, so I—”

“Jungkook,” you interrupt, reaching out to him, pressing a soft hand to his cheek. “Just, shut up, okay?”

And then you cup his head in both of your hands, and press a kiss to his lips. A small one, if nothing else, but a kiss nonetheless. You press your lips against his own and immediately you feel the sparks rush through you, this flash of heat that settles into something softer, something sweeter. It ignites and soothes you all at once, like a stray lightning bolt out on the open ocean. Like a single clap of thunder and the pitter patter of rain. 

You press a kiss to his lips and when you pull away, Jungkook’s eyes are closed, lips parted ever so slightly. And for a moment there, you almost think you did the wrong thing. 

But barely a second more passes before he’s scooping you up in his arms and pulling you in close to him, his lips finding yours like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. He holds you tight, hands pressed against the small of your back as he kisses you, warm and fiery and full, as if he can’t get enough, as if this is his only chance. You gasp into it before relaxing in his hold, cold hands on his warm cheeks, body melting at the feeling of him, of him all over you, of his hands and his mouth and his chest, this perfect, solid figure. 

He kisses you and it sends heat shooting through your body, filling you up from the inside out, like your heart has burst and filled your bloodstream with fire, with sparks of warmth that tingle all over. He kisses you, and everywhere his hands press is another sizzle to your skin, an electric shock that makes you giggle into his mouth. 

He kisses you and it feels like a storm has settled, feels like gentle rain after a hurricane, feels like waves crashing against the shore. He kisses you and it is the only thing you can think about. 

By the time you part once more, you don’t think you’ve ever seen Jungkook so blissed out. 

“See?” You point out softly. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

Jungkook looks positively dazed. “I think I need to lie down.”

“Ooh, was I that good?” You tease.

“I’m dreaming.” He shakes his head. “I’m definitely fucking dreaming.”

Jungkook sinks onto your bed, hitting the mattress with a thud. He stares mindlessly in front of him, like his brain needs time to process. 

You smile to yourself. He can have all the time in the world. 

“Is this real?” He mumbles when you sit down next to him, press another kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Are you real?”

“Just like you,” you promise him. “I didn’t know this is what we had been missing, all this time.”

“It wasn’t missing,” Jungkook assures you. “It was just hidden.”

“I love you,” you whisper, watching him swallow the words like a glass of wine. “I think I always have. You just needed to say it first.”

“Oblivious as always.” Jungkook grins, smiling against your lips. “But I’m glad. If this is what it would take, then I’m glad.”

“You wouldn’t change anything?” You ask him, eyes wide and curious. 

It’s hard to know how long you and Jungkook have been secretly pining over each other. Hard to know how long Jungkook has known that he’s loved you, how long it’s been since you started to feel the same, even if subconsciously. It’s hard to know how long you would have kept going if not for this project. It might have been months. Years. Years that Jungkook was willing to spend holding back, if only it meant keeping you by his side. 

“No,” Jungkook says like it’s the easiest answer in the world. “I have you now. Why would I?”

What did you learn about yourself through this assignment? How do you think you’ve changed?

Previously, I had responded to this question by saying that I hadn’t learned anything, and felt that nothing changed in my life. Then, some things happened. And after those things, I learned that I am the luckiest man alive. To know my best friend is one thing. To love her is a privilege. To have her love me back is nothing less than a miracle.

Do you think you’ll ever look back on this project, whether it be as a reference or a memory?

Yes. Every day for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been as thankful to receive a homework assignment as I am, right now. I owe everything to this project. It is the reason I have her. 

This assignment forced you to create an entire portfolio, from scratch, using a subject you would have to regularly schedule time with. It was demanding. But, that said, would you ever do this again?

Yes. I want to take photos of her for the rest of my life. I want to save every memory we ever share together. So that far into the future, we can look back on them together and say, “Remember that?”

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

#jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #jungkook scenario #bts imagine #jungkook imagine #bts au #jungkook au #jungkook x reader #bts x reader #w: the love project #yes i am finishing this at 6am on the day its meant to be posted... MIND UR OWN BUSINESS

[irenadel]

i wanna talk books so I made a meme

@doorsclosingslowly here’s the answers to your questions :)

6. If you read in more than one language, is there a difference between the experience of reading in your native language(s) and reading in other languages?

Virginia Woolf has a great quote in A Room of One’s Own where she says that women writers need to develop their own “sentence” and that this can only be developed through creating a tradition of female writing. She says that while reading male writers is pleasurable, it isn’t useful for the female writer, that she can’t learn from the way men write. Their “sentence” isn’t suitable for female writing. I’m.... unsure of how much I agree with her on this but I find the theory useful for describing how I approach literature in Spanish vs English.

Especially in terms of language, not so much in regards to narrative or worldbuilding or even themes, I find Spanish to be pleasurable but not useful. I very rarely find myself reading something in Spanish and thinking “ooooh, I wish I could do that! I want to steal that! How did they come up with this?” The “sentence” for writing in Spanish isn’t one I recognize or want to imitate... except maybe for VERY few exceptions like Carlos Fuentes and Borges. Whereas I can spend a lot of time reading English un-selfconsciously and then suddenly be struck by a turn of phrase that I must somehow or other make my own. That almost never happens to me when reading Spanish.

9. Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? Where do you draw the line between the two?

Oh god, this is embarassing. Erm... fiction to a fault. On 2020 and 2019 I did try to make a concerted effort to read more nonfiction, ESPECIALLY more popular science books. I still kind of childishly consider myself to not be “smart like that” and that science isn’t for me, because I don’t understand it. I used to think science fiction wasn’t for me, for similar reasons. When I do read nonfiction it tends to be history and literary criticism.

I’m finishing my degree on English literature and though I had a period of hating hard on literary criticism, I think it was mostly me rebelling against the French brand of it. I HAVE to admit I love reading new historicism, especially now that I’m working on my dissertation and I had to read a lot on Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre.

Hopefully 2021 will be the year I read a bit more science.

11. The worst book hangover you’ve ever had

Augh... I remember two in recent years. Let me see... in 2017 I finished the last book in the Realm of the Elderlings. I had read the first book in the series around maybe the mid 2000s. I devoured it in a single weekend, still hungry for more of the story. I did not have access to the rest of the trilogy for a couple of years after, but as soon as I got them I read them as fast as I could. I remember reading those books during class, pretending to pay attention to a lecture on Linguistics but actually fully engrossed in Robin Hobb’s world.

It’s a world that was with me for more than 10 years. Characters that I knew intimately from multiple re-readings for more than 10 years. My dissertationg is about the first trilogy for crying out loud! I hadn’t wanted to read the last trilogy and the last book on the trilogy because I didn’t want that connection to end. But finally I gave in...

It was a book hangover because I was reading late at night when I realized, halfway through the book, a character I loved deeply was probably going to die and I just HAD to know, I HAD to be sure. So I read through the night going from disbelief to anger, to grief, to grim acceptance. I wasn’t able to put down the book until 11 am the next day, by which point I was openly sobbing and would have thrown the book across the room except I think I was reading in my computer.

The second book hangover I remember was less because of sprinting through the book and more because of the circumstances. Last December I had decided to finish as many books I could in hopes of reaching my Good Reads goal (which I didn’’t) and I was going through His Dark Materials pretty quickly when on the 25th I got the news that my grandmother died. I wasn’t able to go see her at the hospital or at a funeral, or even go see my dad and uncles because she had died of covid-19 and the situation was still pretty dire in the city.

Then Philip Pullman decided to be an absolute asshole to me and the characters in his book arrived to the Land of the Dead. Being an atheist fantasy series and me having just recently come to terms with the fact that I’m not even agnostic... it was very tough to go through Pullman’s exploration of mortality and the importance of life on Earth. I agreed completely that materiality and the here-and-now far outweigh any contemplations of an afterlife... but my grandmother had died very suddenly.... she had still been a pretty strong old lady before she contracted covid... I had spoken to her a couple of days before and she was still strong enough to bitch about litter getting inside her room...

I finished The Amber Spyglass in a rush as well and somehow it got mixed with my mourning process and my anger at myself for having taken my grandmother’s life for granted... for not having cherished the materiality of her existence when I had the chance... I hadn’t finished writing my dissertation’s first draft yet and there were some heavy issues going on in my household.... I was exhausted from having to survive the year and I think I still am... and it all mixed up with the bittersweet ending of Pullman’s His Dark Materials and the inevitability of loss... all I remember from between the 25th and the 31st of December 2020 was exhaustedly reheating Christmas food, trying to write, and slogging through The Amber Spyglass... it feels like it was a week-long literary hangover...

14. The book that, in hindsight, really should have clued you in to the fact that you’re _________ (queer/in love/doomed to be an academic/etc)

So this is slightly NSFW but I should have known, and stopped being such a snob about it, that I had WAY MORE in common with the furries than I cared to admit given that my first impression of Smaug the Golden when reading The Hobbit at the tender age of 8 was “wow! he’s dreamy!” *facepalm *(also betraying a worrying tendency to crushing on irredeemable assholes and other miscellaneous villains...) I have accepted my status as a weird monsterfucker AND a weird alienfucker. Inhuman anatomy makes me hot, and I should have known it from DAY ONE!

23. The book you expected to hate, didn’t, and then got angry about not hating

The Hunger Games, which I’m STILL salty about and will probably remain salty about for the rest of my life.

I hateread it because a friend told me about how he hated it, given his bitter ex loved it and though I agree with all his criticisms and have a bunch of my own... I still cannot stop finding stupid Katniss profoundly likeable! CURSES! A pox upon your house Suzanne Collins! I still think your dystopia is a cowardly, white-lady-who-has-never-feared-state-violence dystopia, I still think your love triangle was absolutely unnecessary and I still think you tried to cop out of admitting you (and your character) like pretty dresses by making the pretty dresses compulsory. Be brave! Don’t give me this “I’m not like other girls” bullshit! Be brave! Make your violent spectacle reality show as a criticism of the USA’s consumerism and callousness a voluntary thing! Don’t wash your heroine’s hands clean of the sin of wanting fame and fortune and survival at all costs!

But... fuck... I... still like Katniss... I’m glad little girls in 2008 got a heroine who kicked ass, looked good and wasn’t a perfectly strong and powerful person all the time. I’m glad they got competence and vulnerability... Fuck my life...

31. Bonus question: rec me something!

This is hard... since I get the feeling we have very different tastes in reading material but... If you haven’t heard of the Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game (or even if you have) take a crack at the Baali Clanbook. Even if you don’t understand the game mechanics I think you’ll enjoy the history portion because it’s about a clan of devil-worshipping vampires who do their devil worshipping through implanting evil insects on people... and I suspect it might be up your alley...

#book meme #doorsclosingslowly

[yikesharringrove]

i’m dying to read some harringrove college stuff, so what about the boys being in some frat party, meeting each other for the first time. Billy would be doing some drinking game or something and Steve would be watching him. even tho Steve’s ”dating” this guy (fuckbuddies) who’s arms are around Steve, he still takes an interest on Billy. Billy would also see Steve, all pretty and long legs and would love to get piece of him after getting that guy off him. then they fuck somewhere in the house 👀

Modern. Nb Steve ayoo.

Read on aothree

Under the cut

Billy shouldered his way into the party.

He was trying to find the kitchen, looking for a drink. He ended up just grabbing the drink out of some douchebag’s hand as he walked behind him.

He met up with his roommate, one of the other pledges from the frat he was rushing, Scott.

“Billy, you motherfucker! Play beerpong!” Scott pulled him to the table, shoving a pingpong ball into his hand.  Billy looked up, his brain shorting out as he saw the other team.

Across from his was a huge douchey-looking guy, in a muscle tank with the sleeves ripped off, and a backwards hat. Billy knows he dresses like a fuckboy on a good day, but at least he’s not like this asshole.

But what this asshole had, was the most beautiful person Billy had ever seen in his entire fucking life. All long legs, and big eyes. They were wearing a pretty bodysuit, a dark purple color with a deep neckline, lace trimming the spaghetti straps, the neckline, the low back. They had a little pin on their little denim shorts that read They/Them.

Billy watched the jock asshole, tuck them under his arm, whispering something to them, making their eyes crinkle so sweetly while they giggled, batting their big fake eyelashes at him.

Billy played the game making eyes at the pretty little thing on the other side of the table.

But the thing was, they were good. They sunk almost every throw, giving Billy a smug little look each time. It only made Billy fall harder. But then the game was over and the shitty jock tucked the perfect darling under his arm and disappeared into the party.

“Who was that?” He was standing with Scott in the kitchen, finally found it to make themselves some drinks, taking a few shots each.

“The asshole in the trucker hat? That’s Chad Weathers.”

“No not-wait, his name is fucking Chad? There are actually humans named Chad that exist on this Earth?”

“I fucking know. Can you believe? Imagine just being like, hi, my name is Chad.”

“Is he a douche because his name is Chad, or is his name Chad because he was always predisposed to be a douche?”

“Definitely the second. You can’t damp pure asshole like that.” Billy turned, seeing the perfect beerpong sweetheart from earlier, pouring some vodka and raspberry lemonade into a solo cup.

Billy laughed, holding out his hand.

“Billy.”

“Steve.” They shook hands. Their hand was warm and soft, fingers slender and long.

“You really called your boyfriend a douchebag just now, huh?” Steve gave him a look.

“Not my boyfriend. We just fuck sometimes. Usually when he’s drunk enough to not be weird about my dick, and when I’m drunk enough to talk about my dick to strangers.”

Billy just leaned against the counter, making sure to put on his I WILL eat your ass and you’ll THANK me for it smile.

“Well, I know all about your dick now, so we’re not strangers anymore.” Steve just laughed, touching Billy’s upper arm gently. They moved just a hair closer to Billy. He was totally in.

“So, Billy, tell me about yourself. What are you studying?”

“Guess.” Steve raised an eyebrow.

“Um, you’re a big dudebro so like, business management. Something to get you through while you play football on scholarship and party with your frat.” Billy sucked in some air through his teeth.

“Hate to break it to you, but you were only right about one thing. I’m rushing a frat, but I don’t play football, and I’m not studying fucking business. I’m studying social work. And I’m here on academic scholarship.” Steve was grinning.

“So you’re like, a sensitive dudebro. Good for you.”

“What are you studying, then? Art?” Steve rolled their eyes.

“Just because I’m all queer doesn’t mean I’m studying art. Why didn’t you guess theater.”

“Well, as a fellow queer I just meant you seem like an artistic soul.”

“I mean, I am really great at crafts.” Billy laughed. “But I’m studying education and early childhood development. I wanna teach little kids.” They had this soft look on their face.

“God, you’re just as sweet as I thought you’d be.” Steve raised an eyebrow again, a smile tugging at their lips, painted the same deep purple as their bodysuit.

“You think about me often?”

“Well, you’re just about the only thing I’ve thought of this whole conversation.” And then their hand was trailing down Billy’s arm, tugging him in closer by the wrist, they leaned into Billy’s space, just close enough to be heard.

“You wanna find a room? Think of me some more?” Billy slid his arm around their lower back.

“Lead the way, sweet thing.”

Billy started openly at their ass as they led him up the stairs, hips swaying. The first room they checked was locked, the second unlocked but occupied. But, third time’s the damn charm apparently.

Billy pushed Steve inside, locking the door behind him.

It was some frat bro’s room, shitty basic posters on the wall, a lot of beer cans lined up on the window sill like it was decor.

But Billy wasn’t too focused on their surroundings, not when Steve was getting naked, right then and there in the middle of the room. They tossed a condom from their pocket at Billy as they stepped out of the shorts, sliding the bodysuit off after. Billy groaned.

“Fuck. You’re so fucking sexy.” He placed his hands on their hips, sliding them back to grope at their ass, pulling them forward into him. “Gorgeous.” He figured the deep lipstick was smeared everywhere between by now, but honestly, he really couldn’t find it within himself to care as Steve pawed at his shirt, clumsily undoing the few that were still done, pushing it off his shoulders.

Some base heavy song was playing as Billy kicked out of jeans, pressed against Steve until they were at the edge of the bed, turning them around and bending them over. He pressed sloppy kisses down their spine.

“Can I eat you out?” He heard them groan, hips canting back just a little.

“Fuck yeah.” Billy grinned, spreading them slightly, getting a look at their tight little hole before diving in, licking and sucking with wild abandon. He could barely hear their soft noises over the music of the party, the wet sounds of his own mouth.

He pulled back, spitting one last time before pressing one finger inside, watching as he fucked it in and out.

“There’s, there’s some lube in my pocket.” Steve had turned their head, was looking over their shoulder at Billy, gesturing wildly to the shorts on the floor. Billy leaned back on his knees, kept his one finger pumping in and out of Steve while he got the shorts, finding a few packets of lube and condoms.

“You really came prepared tonight. You go to every party with all this one you?”

“Well it’s mostly just in case.” Billy laughed, muttering MOSTLY just in case under his breath, tearing open the lube with his teeth, pouring some over his fingers and Steve’s hole. He pressed two fingers inside, curling and stretching them expertly.

Steve was whining, fucking back onto three of Billy’s fingers. He still had one hand keeping them spread open, watching his fingers.

“I’m fucking, I’m ready. Just fuck me.” Billy pulled his fingers out, slapping their ass once.

“Brat.” He rolled on the condom, giving himself a few strokes as he did. He lined up, pressing into that tight little spot. He threw his head back, groaning as his hips pressed flush to Steve’s ass, grinding deeply. Steve was face down into the mattress, taking shaky little breaths. Billy dragged a hand up their spine, settling it on the shoulder, the other on their soft hip, using them as leverage to just fuck.

He was slamming into Steve, fucking them with a punishing pace, their skin slapping together. Billy bent over Steve, pushing one arm under their hips, angling them perfectly to slam against that sensitive little spot.

“Oh my God. Whatever the fuck you’re doing right now, don’t fucking stop.” Billy just huffed a laugh, going even harder, slamming their bodies together. Steve wormed a hand beneath them, stripping their cock quickly, bucking their hips forward and back.

Billy groaned when they came, tightening around him lie a fucking vice, crying out.

He kept going for a moment or two, grinding in deep to finish. He pulled out, slumping on the bed next to Steve, flopped in his back. They looked over at him, smiling lazily.

“I’m gonna have to get your number. That was good.” Billy laughed, batting awkwardly at their shoulder.

“Not so bad yourself.” They stood up slolwy, wincing slightly as they got re-dressed, Billy following suit.

“Seriously, I’m gonna be like, actually sore. Haven’t felt like that in a minute.” They were looking the mirror on the inside of the closet door, had just pulled it open like they owned the place to fix their mussed hair. Their makeup was somehow perfectly intact.

They flung their phone over to Billy.

“Put your number in.” They didn’t have a passcode on their phone which was bold, gave them a kinda Fuck with me. I DARE you. I have NOTHING to hide vibe. Billy liked it.

He put his number in under Billy Delta Phi party, so that Steve knew, would see the number and remember the night, the way Billy fucked them so hard they hurt.

“Just shoot me a text sometime. I’ll kick my idiot roommate out.”

“No need, I have a single room. The university was gonna put me with some guy, but my loving mommy and daddy don’t trust me not to be a slut.” Billy raised an eyebrow, cocking his head a little.

“You have a single room and we’re not there right now?” Steve just smirked, a challenge in their eyes.

“You askin’ for another round?”

“Long as you’re not too sore.” Steve took his wrist, dragging him out of the party and down the road back towards campus.

#yikes writes #harringrove #steve harrington #steve harrington x billy hargrove #billy hargrove x steve harrington #billy hargrove #harringrove fic #harringrove ficlet #harringrove drabble #nb steve harrington #heyyo #harringrove modern au

[tiredandtoothless]

I need to know more about when the ying yang twins invited you to their hotel room and i need to know it NOW

hahahaha ok here we go!! THIS IS SO LONG SORRY

important context: i went to a college with a very weird, intense academic culture. no one saw their grades unless they were failing or asked to see them, so people tended to compete over who was the most stressed out/busy with Learning (i am rolling my eyes bc in hindsight it was so unhealthy and toxic). every senior has to write a thesis to graduate, and it’s a Very Big Project—like you have to defend it in front of a board and all that stuff—that culminates in a massive, three-day, campus-wide party once you turn it in.

on the second night of this party, there is always a surprise performer. my senior year, i had friends on the committee that plans the party, so i knew ahead of time that it was going to be the ying yang twins. (sidenote: mac demarco was ALSO supposed to perform that night, but he ended up cancelling because he didn’t want to share the stage? super weird of him imo bc if i was mac demarco, i would be *pumped* to share the stage with the ying yang twins but w/e)

since it was my senior year AND i knew it was going to be the ying yang twins, i of course told my friends that we had to do [redacted illicit substance] on the night of their performance. i couldn’t tell them WHY since i was sworn to secrecy, but my school had a pretty pervasive drug culture (again, a very unhealthy and toxic place lol) so it was not difficult to convince them.

ok so cut to the second night of the party. the ying yang twins take the stage. we lose our fucking minds. i, in particular, lose my fucking mind when they performed ‘get low.’ once the show is over, we go to the student senate office (which is in the same building where they performed) to drink water and talk about our feelings, as people on drugs are wont to do.

i’d been chugging water all night, so eventually, i needed to use the restroom BAD. now, an important fact about me is that i am sometimes a little chaotic and have a tendency to disappear with strangers if they offer me weed or just seem weird in a non-violent but interesting way. not the smartest behavior, i know, but it HAS resulted in some of our very best stories ok

so, when i announce to the room that i need to pee, one of my friends (who was drunk, but not on drugs & taking very good care of us) immediately decides that i cannot be trusted to go alone lest i disappear with a couple of scots (actually happened one time), so she agrees to go with me.

in order to get to the bathroom, you have to go downstairs, exit the building, and then re-enter through another door. we do just that. things go as you’d expect and we start our way back to the office.

but as we exited the building, there was a BIG. ASS. ESCALADE parked right outside on the walkway. my friend and i were like “ok so obviously that’s them,” but decided to leave them alone and return to our friends. once we got close, though, they rolled down the window & started calling out to us. basically just telling us we looked good and shit like that—it was honestly a little cringe, but like w/e.

we walk up to the car and they’re like “what are you two doing?” and my friend—who, again, was drunk—starts shaking her ass in the direction of the car. meanwhile i (on drugs and desperate to get back to the deeply emotionally vulnerable and intimate conversations happening amongst my friends upstairs) am just standing there blinking. somehow i remember myself enough to tell them we’re just killing time before the next dance party that night.

kaine (the short one) asks, “do you two wanna come chill with us?”

my friend and i freeze. i’m like “excuse me sir??”

d-roc (the tall one) goes, “we’re staying at [hotel downtown], do you two want to come with us?”

now. there are two kinds of people in this world. there are people, like me, who get invited back to the hotel room of the people who wrote their favorite song in the 4th grade and just LAUGH bc like. dude, i used to listen to your music while i practiced LONG DIVISION and now you want me to suck your dick or something?! what?!

then there are people, like my friend, who immediately open the door to their escalade and hop the fuck in. i freaked out a little bit, i won’t lie, but she was very, very, VERY sure that she wanted to go off with them. (the irony of my CHAPERONE taking off with the ying yang twins when she was initially worried about ME disappearing was not lost on me or any of our friends)

anyways she buckles in, and d-roc tries to sweet talk me into going with them. again, i laugh and then say, i kid you not, “no thank you, i want to get back to my friends. we’re talking about trauma and i need to tell them about my spongebob-adjacent trauma.”

the ying yang twins looks at me like i’m a freak, bc tbh i am, and i take that as my cue to peace out. my friend goes back to their hotel. she tries to convince them to have a threesome, but they refuse and end up just going to sleep. she wound up getting kicked out of the hotel at like 4am though, because they woke up to her posting pictures of them on snap lmao.

as for me, i went back to my friends, told them about my spongebob-adjacent trauma, and then spent the rest of the night dancing to the talking heads. everyone won imo.

as a general aside, getting invited to their hotel was actually the SECOND time i met them that night, but i am saving the story about the first encounter for my memoirs.

#asked/answered

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Slow Mover

Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: E/NSFW Word count: 12k

Summary:

When Ned backed out on rooming with Peter during their first year of college, MJ felt like it was no big deal to take his place. Now that she's about to lose it, she's confronting the fact that she may have grown attached... and not to the apartment.

Monday, February 1st

I’m gonna pack my things and leave you behind/This feeing’s old and I know/That I’ve made up my mind ― “I Love You So” (The Walters)

MJ’s been thinking about moving out for awhile. As far as roommates go, Peter’s a slob, not that she has a frame of reference since they’re only in their first year of college and she declined student residence in favour of splitting a lease with her Academic Decathlon underling.

If the term ‘underling’ seems harsh, it’s not. Peter’s earned her disdain in more ways than there are Disney Dalmatians. He mashes down the nibs of her Faber-Castell markers making hasty grocery lists on the post-its that inevitably breeze off their fridge door. He falls through the window almost every time he gets in late from Spidey-patrol and the thud wakes her up. He has socks everywhere. She has never seen so many. Fucking. Socks.

This was supposed to be him and Ned, she knows―his actual best friend, not the friend reluctantly given the designation because... why, again? How she won Peter’s friendship isn’t immediately clear. Except Ned decided to commute from home in a last-minute fit of separation anxiety. This was after Peter signed a lease but before the online application for student residence opened. MJ shrugged and said she’d help them out because the little walk-up is close to campus and about on par with what the college charges for housing. For Peter, the draw is the privacy to sneak in and out in his superhero getup. For MJ, it’s the quiet of not sleeping within the same four walls as a noisy roommate, on a floor packed with students, in a building of eighteen-year-olds who’ve just left the nest and are ready to party.

But, like she’s noted, Peter’s the worst.

It’s the first of February, with only two full months plus exams left in the term, and she’s still telling herself she might just cut and run. Very likely, she and Peter have the last good landlord in New York City (or the woman knows how fast she could rent their apartment with so many students, tourists, and other career transients coming and going) because they were told upfront that they could move out at either the end of the month or right in the middle, provided they gave two weeks of notice. When the 1st and the 15th of every month roll around, MJ re-evaluates. Obviously, she hasn’t dropped Peter on his ass yet, but she could. She has options. She’s met a handful of people in her figure drawing and art history classes who are living together on two floors of a ramshackle historic house somewhere that’s basically turned into an artist’s colony and one more person would be nothing to them. MJ could absolutely move in. The socializing demands would be an adjustment, but it’s a short sprint to exam season and she’ll be burrowing into a library study room at that point anyway.

Today’s another first of the month, another chance to announce she’s jumping ship. After considering everything during her walk back to the apartment from her afternoon class, MJ’s decided she’ll probably stay. She never records the factors that inform her decision, preferring to leave no trace. Put it down to her love of mystery and conspiracy, or her five solid months of rooming with a guy who leads a double life. Either way, her vast internal ordering system that leaves no physical sign drives Peter nuts. That’s why she continues to use it.

“Hey, loser, I’m home!” she shouts, twisting her key out of the lock and closing the door behind her.

MJ doesn’t see him right away, but she knows he’s here. His class schedule is as familiar as her own and she knows he’s just as hesitant as she is to engage with people―even people he’s friendly with in class―outside of school. He’ll be here. No need to rush the encounter.

She kicks off her slushy boots, hangs her coat, shoves her hat down the sleeve, and heads to her room. A living space and kitchen that are practically one and the same was evidently the trade-off the boys were willing to make for two bedrooms when they chose this apartment. Whatever. MJ isn’t dying for any meal that requires more than a foot and a half of counter space. And the bedroom all to herself is nice. Peter got the one with the window for his nefarious late-night purposes (saving people and shit), so her room’s away from exterior walls and beside the bathroom. She nearly always gets to the shower first and when she doesn’t... at least being a slow showerer isn’t one of Peter’s faults.

Hefting her textbooks and notebooks from her bag one by one, MJ assesses which she’ll need for homework tonight. Yikes, maybe it should be an exclusively laptop evening; she has a midterm paper coming up and the task of assembling citable articles from scholarly journals beckons in a voice that’s been shredded through a cheese grater. Mmm, cheese. She touches her stomach. Snack first?

Once she’s let her hair down to straggle around her shoulders and swapped her jeans for pj bottoms, MJ plods back into communal territory. She can hear Peter talking in his room through his door, probably on the phone. Part of her wants to knock and tell him to say hi to his aunt for her. The more persuasive part of her wants cheese. She shuffles onward.

He comes sliding into the kitchen like a young Tom Cruise, but with pants―god, the mental comparison is so embarrassingly bad that it’s making her start to blush―as MJ’s arranging a slice of cheddar on a cracker. The fact that Peter so clearly wants to tell her something encourages her to bite down and, mouth full of crunching food, cut him off with, “’Sup?”

“I just got off the phone with Ned,” he informs her. His arms are dramatically apart like this news is in any way important or unusual.

Treating him with heavily sarcastic seriousness, she plants an elbow on the counter and leans towards him like she’s fascinated.

“And Lego’s teaming up with Tesla to build a driveable, electric Millennium Falcon that roars like Chewbacca when you hit the gas,” she predicts.

Peter’s mouth hangs open for a moment and it’s adora―it’s amusing. Like, she wants to laugh at him. Because he looks like a dork. This nerd is so easy to bait.

“Oh my god, I wish. Get out of my fantasies.”

Her elbow almost slips off the counter. She finishes chewing, chastened by how she could’ve just bit her tongue in a grisly household accident.

“Spit it out then,” she suggests, because now Peter’s grinning, waiting for her to ask. “I don’t have another guess.”

Her roommate takes a deep breath to ready himself for something and she narrows her eyes.

“Well, you know how you keep talking about those people you know and their big house and how they maybe have a room or part of a room or something?”

MJ rolls her eyes.

“I mentioned it once, Parker.”

“Oh, well, I remember you saying that. I―well,” he interrupts himself, “Ned and I wondered if that was something you were still considering.”

She has no idea where he’s going with this.

“I have no idea where you’re going with this.”

Peter comes close to vibrating for a minute before he just blurts it out.

“Ned’s moving in! Or, he could be, if you were moving out. Shit,” he mutters, expression falling. “We’re not trying to force you out. It’s just that you said you might want to, and Ned’s been thinking about moving closer to campus for exams and―”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” MJ agrees, nodding quickly. “You guys are idiots for not thinking of that sooner.”

Are they? Was it them being idiots that kept Ned at home? No, that was anxiety. Was it them being idiots that made Peter wholeheartedly welcome MJ as a roommate? No, that was... Ok, she doesn’t have an answer for that one, but she’s already said her thing about idiots, so she scoops her plate of cheese and crackers off the counter and slips past the confused face of her roommate, muttering about peer-reviewed academic sources.

It’s infuriating and unfair, as MJ numbly abandons her snack on her desk and sinks to the floor of her bedroom with her head in her hands, that the instant she agreed to move out was the same instant she noticed how cute her soon-to-be ex-roommate looks in sock-feet.

 Tuesday, February 2nd

Is there more to this urge that lies in me/’Cause it feels like there’s something I can’t see/But I don’t know what it means ― “Patience” (Hollow Coves)

“You have your key, right?” Peter checks. It’s twenty after seven in the morning and MJ’s hustling him out their apartment door ahead of her. Honestly, she’s trying to kick the back of his shoes to speed him up, but Spider-Roommate’s a little too agile.

“Right here,” she assures him, flashing him the key ring in her hand.

“I just didn’t want you to be―”

“I know, loser.”

She observes as he hefts his backpack onto his shoulder and reaches past her to pull the door shut after them. He locks up and drops his key into his backpack. The solo key. Right in there, with all the other crap Peter keeps crammed inside. Half the time, when he has class and she doesn’t, she hears him arrive home and gets up to let him in. (Has she been listening for him? Not consciously.) Otherwise, he’s fumbling through his bag for ages for that key. Hilarious that he thinks he needs to take care of her like this, when she’s the one who’s been doing that for him.

Caring in a loose sense. Not actual caring. Just, making something more convenient.

They walk down the stairs. MJ’s instinct is always to hang back―like she’s trailing him or trying not to be seen with him―but Peter always slows down to her pace, never making it a thing. By this point in the year, their steps are in sync. The rhythmic thumps are an excuse not to speak. For her, anyway.

It’s early and MJ doesn’t have class until tonight. The explanation she’s been going with since this little morning ritual started is that it gives her more time to get shit done and keeps her established sleep schedule from getting fucked up on days that she has to be on campus before noon. The number of steps they descend together has grown familiar beneath the soles of her sneakers, she knows every little gouge in the wall. With Ned moving in, the number of days left for MJ to do this is suddenly pretty small. She’s nervous about it; she’s never been one for countdowns. Pulling her wool cardigan closed, she crosses her arms over her chest like she’s holding herself in and tucks her hands into her armpits.

“Have a good morning,” Peter says, moving quickly across the cramped lobby to push the outer door open. “See ya.”

She feels him glance back at her, but she doesn’t return the look.

“Yep.”

Alone, MJ turns to their shared mailbox. Another benefit of a key ring: carrying multiple keys at one time without the risk of losing any of them. She opens it up, extracts their measly haul, and flips through as she climbs the stairs back to the apartment. The journey feels a lot farther when she’s heading up―could be the roommate that makes the difference, or only gravity.

Halfway up, she has to pause. It’s just junk mail, addressed to Peter, but she realizes she’s going to miss getting mail with his name on it.

 Wednesday, February 3rd

Maybe you and I could live together if we ever learn to ease the tension ― “You & I” (Colony House)

Ned’s over when MJ gets home. Today’s the longest day of her week―six hours of class back-to-back, followed by an hour and a half of the work study she signed up for because her scholarship doesn’t cover rent outside of student residence. It’s just papering bulletin boards with student council notices, and the mundanity of the work is nice, but she’s reached her quota for expending effort today; she accepts Ned’s high-five as she drags her feet past the couch and heads to her room, lying face-down on her bed until it feels like she’s whole again.

Gradually (very gradually), she rolls onto her side and grabs her warped copy of Moll Flanders off the bedside table. Something about a woman living an extremely precarious life calms her. MJ’s breathing becomes slow and silent, but she stops herself after 15 pages. If she keeps reading, she’ll fall asleep. Instead, she sits up and trades her socks for the cozier version wedged under her mattress. She has a secret fear that Peter will steal them. He’s gotten a covetous look in the past, so she’s taking precautions.

She pulls her laptop to her instead of going to her laptop and tidies up the Works Cited page on her in-progress paper. This task of thoughtless precision is the only school-related thing she feels like tackling for the rest of the day. All of today’s classes are either of the Monday-Wednesday variety or once a week, so MJ isn’t in a rush to get the readings done. She stops to think, pulling up the digital copy of her planner, and stares at the test she has marked down for next week. Hmm. It’s before her paper’s due, meaning studying for it won’t be taking priority, but the test format is a mix of multiple choice and short answer. The class―a sociology course―is graded on a curve and she’s in there with a bunch of students from non-writing programs who are consistently shit at short answer questions. As long as she refreshes her memory about the material being tested, the grading curve will push her competent written answers to the head of the class. It’s all about working the system.

During her time alone in the apartment yesterday, MJ hammered out a thesis and introductory paragraph. Now, she approaches them ruthlessly to see if she can streamline. This is the most critical part; actually writing the paper is just her hands flying across the keyboard, tossing in quotations like air-dropped care packages to her primary source-obsessed professor.

No, no, her brain is rejecting it. She’s done enough today. She doesn’t exactly want to socialize, but Peter and Ned are generally good about letting her quietly stew in their company without expecting much from her. MJ heads to the bathroom to wake herself up by washing her face, then out into the living room.

“What are you nerds doing?”

Half of the reason for her question is just to scare them (not that that’ll actually work on Mr. Super-senses over there) because she can see they’re about to put a movie on. Peter spins around to look at her while Ned rises from the couch. Privately, MJ thinks it’s kind of nice how Ned feels so at home here, where Peter is. Then again, it is about to become his home. Fuck, she needs to talk to the art people about that room.

“We were just gonna watch Alien,” Peter offers.

“Again? Didn’t you tell me you guys did an Alien marathon over winter break?”

He smiles like he’s been caught and it’s cu―funny.

“Yeah, and Ned’s making hot chocolate.”

“Oh yeah?” MJ watches Ned stride purposefully into their tiny kitchen. “Finally making yourself useful?”

He waves a dismissive hand at her and she snorts a laugh. They’ve gotten to this good friendship place of brotherly/sisterly teasing.

“You wanna watch?” Peter asks, calling her attention back to him. She weighs her looming essay against the full day behind her.

“Ok.”

“Hot chocolate, MJ?” Ned immediately asks.

“Well, since you’re determined to be such a good host.”

Ned grins and turns back to the kitchen. MJ leans against the wall, watching Peter put the movie in―not watching, just, like, observing―then glances at Ned. He hasn’t made much progress with their drinks. A mismatched trio of mugs is on the counter and... that’s it.

“You need a hand?” she asks, pushing off the wall.

“Where’s the kettle? Didn’t it used to be in this drawer?”

Ned points into the sliding drawer at their heap of assorted pots and pans.

“It did,” MJ explains. “But that one broke, so we bought a new one. A new one, WHICH WE’RE HOPING NOT TO BREAK BY DROPPING IT INTO THE DRAWER THIS TIME, RIGHT, PETER?”

Her roommate gives a sheepish laugh.

“Our new one’s tucked behind the toaster,” she tells Ned, directing him with a jerk of her chin.

“You guys are buying appliances together,” Ned chuckles. “That’s adorable.”

It’s a somnambulant walk to the couch, where MJ huddles in the corner and zones out for most of the movie.

 Thursday, February 4th

You burn through my mind, again and again, again/And again and again ― “Luna” (Bombay Bicycle Club)

Feeling a burst of resolve before the weekend, possibly in rebellion against Wednesday evening’s confusing feelings, MJ decides to text one of her art classmates re: the spare room. Somehow, what she ends up texting is a question about their prof’s office hours. Which MJ already knows the answer to.

Another thing she does is read the same page of her art history textbook over and over and over and over.

 Friday, February 5th

You’re the only one worth seeing/The only place worth being ― “Cold Cold Man” (Saint Motel)

Peter’s class finishes an hour before MJ’s, yet he always dithers with his packing, so they end up leaving the apartment for their trip back to Queens (courtesy of public transit) at the same time. Traveling with him is one of the less flawed aspects of a friendship with Peter Parker. He won’t glare manspreaders out of their prime seats like MJ would, but he knows the shortest routes and, while train and bus timetables never line up well for her, Peter’s memorized and mastered the schedule. They never wait around.

Also, there’s, like, a bubble of chill around him. No one in their vicinity behaves like a violent asshole―not verbally, not physically. Is it some kind of Spider-Man thing? Is Peter’s skin emitting a sedative to keep the other passengers relaxed? MJ isn’t relaxed. She sways into him multiple times, their overstuffed backpacks knocking together, and he smiles at her, unbothered, as her heart revs ineffectually like a remote-control car someone’s trying to urge up a steep slope.

They walk the last two blocks to the spot where their paths diverge. There’s enough sunshine that the light snow that fell overnight has already been transformed into the slimy grit crunched beneath their boots. Her bag’s beyond heavy at this point, but she knows, at any sign of lag, he’ll offer to carry it for her and she just can’t deal with that shit right now. ‘That shit’ being Peter’s thoughtfulness. MJ just... she needs a day, two days, to remember that she knows how to live without Peter always in the next room. Without joint ownership of a fucking kettle.

“So, text me when you wanna head back on Sunday and we’ll go together?”

MJ frowns. It isn’t clear if the question is the timing for the return trip or if they’ll be making it as a party of two. She shrugs.

“If that works for you.”

“Ok, awesome.”

She nods though it doesn’t feel like a situation where the word ‘awesome’ is called for.

“Later, nerd,” MJ says, aiming for her mom’s as she marches away.

“Hey, MJ?”

She glances back. Peter’s still standing there, plaintive look on his face, hands clutching the straps of his backpack. He never wears gloves. She keeps telling him to wear gloves. Is she supposed to be responsible for Spider-Man’s frostbite? What a pain in the ass this guy is.

Her attention’s enough to get him to continue.

“It’s ok, right? It’s ok about Ned moving in? It’s just, you were kind of quiet during the movie the other night and we didn’t talk much yesterday either...”

With a deep breath, MJ walks back to him.

“I’m just busy,” she says, meeting his eye, then letting her gaze drift off. “Big essay coming up.”

“...And about Ned?”

“Oh yeah, that makes sense, like I said. Did you forget?” It’s maybe the shittiest attempt at teasing someone ever made, but MJ doesn’t really tease Peter.

“But it’s not, like, bothering you or anything, is it? I mean, you don’t regret agreeing?”

Do you? she wants to ask and doesn’t.

“I’m fine, Parker, stop worrying about it,” she says instead. “If you bring this up again after Ned moves in with you, I’m going to have to come back to the apartment and booby-trap it, Home Alone-style.”

He smiles.

“Harsh.”

“Alright,” MJ concedes, “Parent Trap-style, like they did to the cabin. No swinging paint cans, just buckets of molasses.”

“Deal. Consider my silence bought.”

“I didn’t buy your silence, nerd, I ensured it through coercion. Aren’t you supposed to have experience dealing with bad guys? Yikes.”

Peter starts laughing and, incredibly, she does too, the two of them stalled on the corner.

“Ned’ll keep me out of trouble.”

“Yeah, well, he better,” she says easily. Too easily. Jesus, what the hell is she saying? “Because, uh, I need you alive long enough to pull off the Parent Trap thing.”

Shit, she made an offhanded reference to the possibility of his being murdered. Nice. Really great stuff. He won’t want her out on the 15th now―he’ll never want her back in the apartment with him again.

“Of course.”

Peter glances down, but when his face tilts back up, he’s smiling at her. Why the fuck does it feel like they’re saying goodbye forever? MJ nods an awkward farewell to end this strangeness. That’s when Peter moves towards her and she freezes. What’s he doing? They don’t have a secret handshake like he and Ned do. He catches himself when his arms start to lift and looks horrified.

“Sorry,” Peter blurts. “I don’t know what... I was going to hug you.” He laughs self-consciously. “That’d be weird, right?”

“And it’s managing to get weirder without even happening.”

He takes a step back, but MJ surges forward impulsively. She tucks her chin over his shoulder, her hands squeezing his sides because the backpack makes a full embrace impossible―Peter’s backpack is helping her make wiser choices than her own brain.

“Bye,” she says, soft and fast, and turns, jogging to catch the light.

 Saturday, February 6th

The longing never ends/Letting go of ways that we changed, still I pretend ― “Fire Flower” (Summer Salt)

Her gram comes over for dinner. Or, more like MJ and her mom pick her gram up from the apartment she shares with her sister and bring her back for dinner. Ever since Gram’s wife (they never made it official, but that doesn’t change who these women were to each other) died, she’s been living with her sister, but MJ’s great-aunt, 79 years old as she is, has a hot date tonight, so Gram has made time for them in her busy schedule. She’s a real jokester about that in the car, about how she’s missing Westworld for them. When MJ shoots back that she can and has watched Westworld any time she wants (she’s pretty sure Gram’s on her third rewatch of season one), her mom shoots her a look from the driver’s seat. When she adds that Gram only watches because she has a crush on Thandie Newton, they have to roll down the windows to let a little of the laughter out.

Her mom won’t let her wash dishes during her first visit home for over a month, but she has nothing against MJ drying them. As they work, Gram sits at the kitchen table and asks her all about school. Asks if she’s still drawing naked people (yes, Gram, the figure-drawing class runs all year), asks if Financial Aid’s trying to snatch her scholarship back (no, Gram, but I’ll call you if they try anything).

“And are you still living with that boy?”

Normally, MJ would laugh this question off, same as the others. Normally. Her hands still, holding a mug wrapped in a dampening tea towel.

“What’d you say, honey?”

Gram’s a little deaf and not used to MJ not firing an answer back immediately. She assumed she didn’t hear the response, not that MJ didn’t give one. MJ thinks for a second. Probably better not to alarm her gram with news of her upcoming change of living situation. She doesn’t want to be worried about and, technically, she is still living with ‘that boy’ for another eight days.

“Yes, Gram. Peter.”

“His name is not one of the things I need to know about him. I just need to know that he’s not getting in the way of your ascent to greatness.”

MJ smiles and finishes drying the mug.

“Nobody’s going to do that.”

“Good girl. And you feel safe there?”

“Gram, he’s an Avenger.”

Yeah, maybe that’s top-secret information. Whatever. Who’s her gram going to tell?

“I don’t mean do you think he’d pull you out if the building fell down―”

“Nice image, Mom,” MJ’s mother contributes with a roll of her eyes.

“―I mean how are you handling sharing a space with a boy who’s in love with you?”

MJ’s drying a fistful of silverware and it spills out of her grip, scattering across the counter. A lone spoon plops back into the sink’s soapy water. She clears her throat and reaches for the cutlery. Reaches even farther for her composure.

“He’s not, and what would that have to do with safety?”

“Let me tell you, he most certainly is.” Apparently, Gram’s rejecting the question. She never wastes her own time on words she can’t be bothered to speak.

“A boy and a girl can room together without there being... feelings,” MJ points out. It’s irritation that’s making her blush. Irritation at herself for being wrong-footed by her gram over Peter freaking Parker.

“Yes, they can, but I’m not talking about ‘a boy and a girl,’ I’m talking about Peter and yourself.”

“I think getting a Netflix account has made you suspicious,” MJ gently accuses. “What’ve you been watching on there?”

“None of your business.”

Gram changes the subject, letting her off the hook, but the next time MJ turns to look at her, Gram gives her a wink.

Well, she can think what she likes, even theorize aloud. Doesn’t make her right. If it’s between Peter and MJ, her own feelings are the ones that make her feel unsafe, unbalanced, unprepared. Maybe he’s considerate with her, maybe he’s kind to the point of being sweet (when she lets him be), but that’s Peter. That’s just Peter.

 Sunday, February 7th

You know I like you a lot, but/It still hits me like a rock ― “Hits Me Like a Rock” (CSS)

MJ’s breaking her promise to stay for lunch, bailing right after breakfast. She tells her mom she’d rather get back into school mode. Plus, she’ll be home for the week-long study break before midterms; only a week away. What she won’t think about is the possibility that she’ll be using her studying time for learning-to-cope-without-Peter-in-the-next-room time instead.

She doesn’t text him, by the way. Why cut his weekend short? True, escorting her home isn’t his responsibility, but he’d find some way to feel obligated. Definitely a Spider-Man thing. If only his overdeveloped sense of responsibility carried over into the putting his socks away department. Which is what she comes home to: Peter’s socks just inside the door of their apartment. On the floor, peeking out of every pair of his shoes like a grubby Beatrix Potter scene. MJ has no memory of things looking so dire when she left (they left―together). Must’ve been distracted by trying to remember if she had her transit pass, or whether her mom had asked her to bring anything home for dinner.

The sidewalks have become slushy again and, based on the wet spot near the toe of her left sock, she needs to re-waterproof her boots. For now, she troops straight to her bedroom, holding her dripping boots in one hand and a paper towel beneath them with her other. MJ settles them over the heat vent in her room. As she switches to dry socks, she eyes the boots like they should’ve known better.

It’s a cozy, forgetful few hours of solitude. Her paper’s due Thursday and the body of it isn’t exactly taking shape; she’s straining against the traditional essay format and finding it messy going, even though it feels like she’s on the right track. High school has underprepared her for this and overprepared her for things like... robotics. It’s amazing how few people give a fuck about robotics when she’s sitting in a lecture on the Dutch masters.

Peter never remembers to shut his bedroom door and, without trying to look, MJ gets a glimpse from the hall, right through his room and out the window, of snow lazily starting to fall when she rises to get a glass of water. The call of hot water is strong, but she showered his morning before breakfast. The best she can do is snuggle into bed and languidly run a highlighter over some readings for Tuesday.

MJ finds out she fell asleep when she wakes up to Peter’s disbelieving shriek. The sound isn’t loud, but it has her up and fighting her way out of her blankets to stumble into the hallway at the same time her roommate comes sliding into it from the kitchen. He sighs in relief. Spins, clutching his hair. That’s a little much, she thinks. What a fucking dork.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, ignoring how good it feels to see him again. Again? They were apart a day.

“You never texted me and then, and then―” He gestures behind him. “―your boots weren’t at the door.”

“They were soaked,” MJ explains slowly. “They’re drying in my room.”

Peter’s still getting over... whatever this is that’s happening to him.

“Your boots are always at the door.”

She looks at him carefully, surprised to discover he seems to be coming down from genuine panic.

“Are you ok?”

He does an odd shrugging motion and approaches her.

“I’m ok.”

“Do you need a―”

Peter claps his arms around her and MJ goes immobile.

“Yeah, I did,” he agrees.

She’s trying to figure out when she should tell him she planned to end that sentence with ‘doctor.’ Or something else, even. Something that would calm him. Only... he does seem calm. Feel calm. His hands are spread on her back. His body’s sturdy enough to pull her in and push her back out again with his every breath when he’s hugging her like this, but at least they’re slow breaths. It’s actually kind of ok. Nice. Warm. Confusing.

Before MJ can wrap her arms around his neck, caught up in this intermission from the Parker and Jones: Roommates and Nothing More sitcom, Peter puts his hands firmly on her waist and steps away from her. Then glances down to see where his hands are and drops them.

“S-sorry. I... I was... I overreacted.”

“I’m fine,” she says with what’s supposed to be a shrug but manifests as a twitch. “I’m good. Nobody murdered me on my way home. So...” Idiotically, MJ chucks him on the shoulder in a mortifyingly fatherly manner. “Thanks for keeping the streets safe, Spider-Man.”

“Uh, yeah, you’re welcome. Glad you’re safe.”

Peter’s red-faced, swinging his arms, looking at her and then not looking at her, as she retreats back into her room and closes the door.

Not safe. MJ is not safe.

 Monday, February 8th

I’ll speak a little louder, I’ll even shout/You know that I’m proud and I can’t get the words out ― “Everywhere” (Fleetwood Mac)

She’s wasting the one-hour gap she has between classes. It’s supposed to be for eating lunch and, these days, either studying for tomorrow’s test or adding something brilliant to her paper. It isn’t supposed to be for eating lunch with a couple of nerds who’ve braved the art building to join her. Ned’s awe of the building makes MJ start to smile before he changes topics to the reason he and Peter are actually barging into her schedule―discussion of Ned’s move-in.

Based on their landlord’s 1st and 15th rule, Ned will be an official renter seven days from now. To the boys, it therefore makes sense for Ned to be taking over that day. And to MJ too, of course. It totally makes sense to MJ. The 15th is also the first day of their break week, so there won’t be classes to plan around. Nothing could be more straightforward! MJ can get her stuff packed up this weekend (the 13th-14th) and have her mom pick her up in the car the next day to relocate her to her new living space. Which―fuck―she’s definitely going to text her classmate about. When asked about her living plans directly, she smiles and spoons hot soup into her mouth.

She’s good with it. Ned’s good with it. Peter’s... holding things up. He claims he’s only wondering if they need more time before Ned moves in because he doesn’t want anyone’s boxes to get mixed up. Ned pipes up with information on his thorough labelling technique. MJ just watches Peter. His eyes flick to her more than once, like she’s going to protest, maybe? She wouldn’t. She doesn’t want to screw this up for them. Rooming together is what these two losers wanted from the start. The only thing she has to do is step aside. Fine, she can manage that.

“And we’ll just... see each other around,” Peter says as the three of them are finishing lunch.

But he doesn’t say it to Ned, obviously. Not to Ned, who will be living across the narrow hallway from him in a week. He’s looking right at MJ. Damn his gentle, baby-animal eyes. She hadn’t really thought about this. When would she see Peter? They’re in different programs with classes in different buildings. Their schedules overlap in a way that was convenient for eating dinner together most nights, not in a way that means they’ll bump into each other on campus during their downtime. They’re overachievers who haven’t been able to sustain friendships outside of school. Except for with Ned. Except for with each other.

When Peter does this incomprehensible motion that, in another universe, might look like he was reaching for her hand, MJ nods in agreement. Then, as her eyes start to well without her permission, pretends to have burnt the roof of her mouth on her final spoonful of soup.

It’s been cold for half an hour.

 Tuesday, February 9th

Bless your body, bless your soul/Pray for peace and self-control ― “The World We Live In” (The Killers)

MJ isn’t sweating because she’s retroactively stressed about the test. The test went fine. She prepared; in fact, she overprepared―devoting her entire morning and too much of the afternoon to revision when she should’ve been working on her fucking paper. That’s why she hurried back. That’s why she’s sweaty and ready for a hot shower. It’ll refresh and refocus her and she’ll bang out a few paragraphs of the paper tonight, a few tomorrow (even though it’s the longest day of her week; she’s putting the nightmarish reality out of her mind for now), and have time to proofread the whole thing Thursday morning before she turns it in.

It’s a plan and she loves it. MJ heads to her room, vaguely noticing that Peter’s bedroom door is shut. Huh, maybe he’s hunkered down to do some studying of his own. She dumps her backpack and flings off her sweatshirt and, you know what, her t-shirt too when it wants to cling to the sweatshirt and be removed at the same time. The bathroom’s right next to her room.

MJ darts over in her bra and the sweatpants she wore to take her test and opens the door.

Just as Peter flips the bathroom light on.

She twists away and slams her back into the hallway wall. Jesus Christ. Blinking won’t wipe away the sight of Peter standing there with a towel tucked around his hips. Just the towel. Just that one towel. Fuck, she has to handle this somehow. The situation, that is.

“Sorry,” MJ blurts. “The light was off and, and I didn’t think and―”

“I like to shower in the dark. It kinda lets my senses rest and―”

“I finished my test early so you probably weren’t expecting me home and―”

“―then I needed the light on to shave because I cut myself enough with it on to have zero desire to attempt shaving my face in the dark and―”

Her heart’s pounding so loudly that between that sound and her own words, she’s barely catching any of what Peter’s saying.

“Such an invasion of privacy,” she sighs out in conclusion. He falls silent too. The bathroom door’s still open and a warm radiance stretches the width of the hall; MJ wants to reach her fingertips out and let them glow.

“So,” Peter says, urgency draining into timidity, “your test went well?”

“Yeah.” Looking down at her bare feet on the carpet of the hallway they still share, MJ smiles. “You cut yourself shaving?”

“You can laugh if you want.”

His tone isn’t offended and she knows he wouldn’t mind if she did laugh. Probably wouldn’t be surprised. She isn’t... she isn’t soft with him.

“I was just wondering why I’ve never noticed.”

“Oh, well, the cuts heal up pretty fast. They’re small cuts. I’m not that bad at shaving.” Peter clears his throat and she’s standing there yet, listening. “Plus, we don’t get close.”

A terrible, awkward, one-note laugh rips out of MJ.

“True.”

But her roommate doesn’t join in.

“We’re never close,” he says quietly. She shivers.

MJ’s back in her bedroom with the door shut―leaning against it―in a second. Maybe Peter started to move when she moved. Maybe he stepped out into the hallway with his raggedy towel and his squeaky-clean skin and the flush on his face from the steam because he heard her and thought she might be coming his way instead of hiding like a coward. She can’t know without witnessing it. His footsteps never make a sound.

 Wednesday, February 10th

It’s hard to know which way to go/Come and find me, come and find me ― “Between Days” (Far Caspian)

Clearly, despite her best intentions, MJ is giving off a vibe. Not her regular approach with caution vibe. No, no. She doesn’t know where that withering aura of distance has gone, but she’s lost it and the atmosphere around her has changed as smoothly as the colours in a mood ring. It must have, because Peter hugs her for the second time this week, pulling her into an abrupt embrace before she heads off to campus in the morning.

This is supposed to be the thing about roommates, right? Always invading your space. Only, through the decaying brick wall of her denial, she sees that this isn’t the same thing. He’s not rummaging through her search history or eating her groceries (besides―fuck―they’re kind of their groceries, like the whole kettle situation); he’s initiating moments of physical affection. MJ knows the hugs are affectionate and not perfunctory. If it were otherwise, if they were the kind of automatic hugs that happen in less established friendships upon every meeting and farewell, Peter and MJ would always have done them and it wouldn’t feel so momentous that, suddenly, he’s electing to hold her.

He doesn’t try it when she gets home. That’s a good thing. She’s tired and not so much cooking dinner as microwaving an assortment of shit from the fridge for the sloppy meal that will sustain her through wrapping up the final section of her midterm paper and writing the conclusion. Peter’s sitting on the couch with a textbook in his lap when she gives him a sharp wave and goes to her bedroom, closing the door firmly behind her.

The final section is an uphill (if the hill’s a ski slope slicked over by ice rain―and also there’s an avalanche rumbling down from the submit) battle that takes until nearly 10pm to complete. MJ’s focus is hanging by a thread and she’s rerouting all of her energy to keeping her brain on task. That means no getting up to hunt up a chocolate bar or make a cup of coffee. She can do this. She just has to force herself through to the end. It’s one more paragraph, or maybe a big one and a small final final one of a line or two, to bring home her argument with a little more flair.

MJ pushes ahead, but apparently, the scale of her determination hasn’t left enough space for her memory to function, because she’s mixing up the order of her sub-points, and she’s missing the first part of her thesis entirely. She keeps scrolling―up-down, up-down―to refer to the part she’s already written. It’s coherent, and that should be helping her now, but fucking stress or something is making her concentration worse the harder she tries.

She lives lightly in the apartment. She’s tidy and contained and quiet. The sound of frustration she makes as it feels like this whole assignment is unraveling (has she fucked it up from the beginning? Should she start over completely? Oh god, it’s eleven o’clock! How is it eleven?!) is hellish. MJ’s head slumps to her desk and she starts weeping. Why is this so hard? She’s tired.

It’s possible that she doesn’t hear his knock, but Peter barges into her room. She gets herself to sit up and wipe her fingers under her eyes, her palms over her wet cheeks.

“It’s not―” Coming together, she wants to say. Fair, she wants to say.

“I know,” Peter interrupts, walking over to her chair. “How ‘bout you step away from that for a minute?”

He puts his hand out to her and MJ sniffles as she stares at it. She slaps her palm to his and he holds on, pulling her up. Probably to guide her towards the TV or the kitchen for a hot drink, but MJ steps into him instead, her head on his shoulder, her nose against his neck.

It’s the smell she’s smelt when she hangs her coat on the hook next to his, when she sits on the couch and can tell he’s recently sat in the same spot. Normally, this is a following smell―the scent of coming upon him after he’s gone. Shock that it’s become a now smell makes MJ jerk back, realizing what she’s doing. She’s never practiced friendly hugs. She doesn’t know how to do them. Peter, on the other hand, hugs people all the time―mainly Ned and his aunt―and yet his failings are equal to hers. There’s nothing pal-like in how he puts his hands on her or flexes his arms around her or gently gathers her closer. When he lets her step back, she sort of wishes he hadn’t. But she’s not thinking. Fucking paper.

MJ swivels and sits on the edge of her mattress.

“I can’t end it,” she tells him bluntly.

Peter’s eyebrows raise... hopefully?

“No?”

She shakes her head.

“My introduction’s solid, but I’m getting lost somewhere in the middle trying to recap it.”

“Oh. Oh. Well, you could maybe― Is it ok if I sit down?” She nods. He continues, glancing sideways at her, a foot of space between them. “You could read it out loud? To me?”

“The whole essay?”

“If that’s what you need.”

MJ narrows her eyes at him.

“Parker, don’t you have your own work to do?”

He shrugs.

“I handed in a report today and I have a quiz on Friday. The grading for that class is, like, fifty percent quizzes. Pretty sure my prof just didn’t want to have to make up an exam.”

“Then my real question is, why do you want to do this?”

Why is she pushing him? MJ doesn’t know. Honestly, she’d prefer if it she shut up right about now and quit trying to get rid of her roommate. Her handsome, academically-capable roommate, sitting next to her on her bed. The only other time he’s touched her bed was when he helped her move it in here in September.

“Because it’s too soon to rewatch Alien?” She catches Peter’s eye and grants him a smirk as he laughs at his own joke. “Go,” he encourages, nodding towards her laptop. “Read it.”

With an indulgent sign, MJ lifts her computer from her desk to her lap. She mumbles a little at first; even if it’s a stupid paper rather than creative writing, they’re her words and she’s speaking them aloud for him to hear. But three paragraphs in, she glances over and Peter’s leaning back on his hands with his eyes closed. MJ almost snaps at him for not listening―incredible how fast the stress will flare up and demand an outlet―until she realizes he’s concentrating, eyebrows pulling together as she continues. Immediately after that, she stumbles over a full fucking sentence, but she comes out the other side with a steadier, louder voice.

When she reaches the end of what she has written, Peter nods and opens his eyes.

“I think―” he starts, but MJ shushes him.

Frantically, her hands trip and clack across her keyboard. The conclusion pours out, word after word after word. One big paragraph and a small final final one for flair. The second she’s done typing, MJ saves the document, puts her laptop back on her desk, and falls backwards onto her bed.

She takes three deep breaths, then says, “Now I just have to edit it.”

“Don’t I get to hear your conclusion?”

“In a minute.”

Peter drops onto his back beside her and sighs like he’s being denied something he really wanted. She rolls her eyes at him. What a nerd.

Their arms brush. He bounces his foot. Her back cracks when she pushes her shoulder into the mattress. She looks at him and gets the feeling that she just missed him looking at her.

“I’m waiting,” he whispers, and MJ laughs.

“Let it breathe, Parker. I just finished it.”

“Can you pass me that blanket then? I’m getting cold.”

“It’s like a hundred degrees in here,” she argues, but she thumps the blanket folded across her bed onto her roommate’s stomach.

After a minute of watching him get cozy, MJ’s jealous.

“Give me some of that.”

He lets her tug it over. The blanket’s big (Gram made it that way), but she’s pretty sure Peter moves closer with it.

She tucks her legs up and catches site of his watch as she arranges herself. A bit after midnight. Quarter-after. At quarter-after, she’ll get up, evict the dork from her room, and edit. MJ closes her eyes.

 Thursday, February 11th

I had a dream that I kissed your lips and it felt so true/Then I woke up as a nervous wreck and I fell for you ― “Fell for You” (Green Day)

They’ve made up for three years of nearly hug-less friendship in one night; MJ wakes up slowly to find her arms around Peter, and his around her. She keeps her eyes half-open. Evidently, they clung in their sleep, facing each other, and she’s never been so comfortable. But things are going to get uncomfortable any second when Peter stirs. She almost doesn’t want him to. Then, he shifts and she feels his erection against her thigh where it’s slotted between his. MJ tries to cautiously extract her leg―heart pounding in her ears―and Peter lifts his bowed head. His bleary brown eyes meet hers.

“Hi.” His voice is like rug burn.

“I have to edit my paper,” she remembers.

She’s waking up more now, noticing the light in her room. Not the lamp she left on last night, but the morning light that generally brightens the space, coming from Peter’s window across the hall. She puts her hand down to push herself up to a sitting position and it lands on his upper arm. In a blink, his hand’s gripping her arm, preventing a topple. Wow, those reflexes are something. MJ glances shyly down into her roommate’s face.

“Paper,” she says again.

“Right.”

He sits up quickly beside her―hair all sticking up at the back of his head―and she pretends not to notice him notice his erection.

“I’ll, uh, maybe I’ll see you for breakfast?”

MJ nods without looking at him and hears Peter stumble backwards out of her room, kicking away the blanket that’s tangled around his foot. He closes the door behind him and she does not see him at breakfast. The awkward energy from the situation that she doesn’t really take time to process sends her headlong into edits. When she does make it to the kitchen, it’s with her paper tucked inside a presentation folder and her hand snatching a store-bought muffin off the counter. She can hear the shower running and is grateful that she won’t have to face Peter yet.

No, that doesn’t happen until she’s on campus, between classes; she’s handed in her assignment without incident and it’s a huge relief. Not only does Peter know her schedule as well she knows his, apparently, but he also knows exactly where she’ll be on her break. She almost bumps into him coming around the corner of a building.

It feels like she’s seeing a one-night stand in the light of day―except they didn’t sleep together and MJ already saw him in the light of day. It’s just such a contrast between this morning and now. For one thing, they’re upright. For another, they’re both fully awake.

She offers an uncertain, close-lipped smile as they exchange ‘hi’s.

“Um,” MJ starts, “what’re you doing here, Peter?”

“Oh, I just wanted to find out how it went. With your essay.”

“Well, I turned it in and I can’t really tell you more than that until I get it back.”

They stare at each other for a minute before Peter goes, “Right. Right, right, right.”

“You wanna... walk with me?”

“Sure. I have class in twenty minutes, and I have to get over to the other end of campus, but―”

“Go!”

“You sure?”

“Yes! Go, you moron. What are you doing here?”

“I was gonna bring you...” He pats his pockets and she knows it’ll be fruitless before he tells her. If whatever Peter needs isn’t already in his hand, he’s forgotten it somewhere. This is a Rule of Peter. “A chocolate bar. I forgot it.”

She smiles.

“That’s ok.”

“I thought you might need the energy since it was a pretty late night.”

The girl walking past them darts an interested glance in their direction. MJ glares at her, but Peter really could’ve phrased that to sound more innocent. Because it was innocent. Wasn’t it? A couple of students collapse from the exhaustion of midterm assignments. That’s not a clever romantic setup, it’s overwork thanks to a system designed to crank them through the academia factory and spit them out at the end with a degree.

“Yeah. Um, I’ll survive,” she promises. “You better get to class.”

Peter takes a few steps and turns back like he’s struggling with something, wanting to speak.

“Seriously, Parker,” MJ insists. “If you’re late, I’ll almost feel bad.”

This is supposed to be the part where he laughs, but her roommate just looks conflicted as he walks away from her.

He almost brought her a chocolate bar. God, she is so fucked.

 Friday, February 12th

That’s not just friendship, that’s romance too/You like music we can dance to ― “I’ll Try Anything Once” (The Strokes)

“Have you been waiting long?” MJ asks when she leaves class and Peter’s standing right outside, hands in his pockets.

He scrunches his face up and turns to fall into step with her as they leave the building, then campus.

“It sounds better if I say, ‘no,’ right?”

She laughs and looks over at him.

“If you do, I’m going to assume that, on top of finishing class an hour before I do, you were also let out early.”

“It’s that obvious I’m trying that hard?” he asks with a sheepish smile.

What. MJ can’t respond.

After a minute, Peter sighs.

“I might as well tell you that my prof said we didn’t have to come today.”

“You didn’t actually have to be on campus at all?”

“No.”

“So, you’re just here...”

He nods at her implied ‘for me.’

“We’re on break now,” Peter reminds her. “Let me walk home with my roommate.”

“Might as well. Last chance.”

She feels him staring at her, but MJ does her best to look straight ahead as they walk back to their apartment.

He’s on the phone with Ned later, sitting on the arm of the couch in their living room. MJ starts putting her things together, neat piles of books and folded clothes that’ll be easier to pack tomorrow and Sunday. She leaves her door open. It used to annoy her (or she lied to herself that it did), how often Peter and Ned talk on the phone―don’t they know their generation isn’t supposed to do that anymore?―and the fact that her roommate’s soft voice carries so well through their apartment. Ok, fine, it doesn’t carry that well, she just listens for it. She can admit it now, in her bedroom, standing near the doorway to hear his happy voice.

Peter’s flopped backwards, off the arm and onto the couch and still talking animatedly to his best friend, when MJ emerges from her room. She walks directly to the couch and drops her balled-up cozy socks onto his stomach, fleeing before he can attempt to catch her eye.

 Saturday, February 13th

This is not a test, welcome to the party/I’ve been on my best behaviour, but I think it’s time/ You saw the other side ― “Best of Me” (Amanda Marshall)

MJ ruthlessly scours the apartment for every article of her clothing that could possibly be dirty. It’s not a tough job; unlike Peter, she mostly keeps her stuff in her bedroom. She has a sack for carrying her laundry to their building’s first-floor machines (because an actual laundry basket takes up too much space with its defined corners) and she stuffs it, lugging everything down there before breakfast. Waiting around is kind of nice because none of the other tenants have shown up yet. Plus, like always, MJ has a book. She transfers her load from the washer to the dryer and leans back against the wall, flipping through a yellowed, soft-paged copy of The Joy Luck Club.

Since she’s been doing laundry down here all year (except for when she goes home for the weekends and winter break), MJ knows the ways of these machines. Which is why it’s so disturbing when the dryer halts five minutes before its cycle should be ending. Unwatched, she jabs at the settings, but the machine’s completely crapped out, so MJ starts hauling her laundry back into the sack. The small stuff―socks, underwear, t-shirts―has dried, but her sweatshirts are still damp. Unfortunately, with the stress of assignments, the sweatshirts are what she’s primarily lived in the past few weeks, meaning all four of them were in there at once, and all four of them are too damp to put on.

She laughs bitterly at herself; at the last second, she’d even taken off the sweatshirt she had on over her tank top.

To stay warm and keep herself from running into anyone, MJ pounds up the stairs and slips into her apartment. She can pack up the dry clothes and hang the sweatshirts off her doorframe, her chair, wherever else seems suitable, until they dry. She’s flinging one over the shower rod when Peter comes walking down the hall and pokes his head in.

“The dryer...” she starts to explain, positioning her sweatshirt, but Peter disappears. MJ rolls her eyes.

In a minute, though, he’s back. When she turns to leave the bathroom, her roommate thrusts one of his own sweatshirts at her.

“Peter,” she sighs, “stop trying to take care of me.”

“Ok, I will after this.” He shakes the sweatshirt at her. “Put it on.”

“What are you trying to do, nerd? Mark me as your territory? Quit being such a Neanderthal.”

With a smirk, MJ brushes by him, but Peter tries to lay the sweatshirt over her shoulder. She shrieks a laugh, ducking to escape it, and suddenly her roommate has his arms around her waist, picking her up with her back to his chest.

“You’re gonna be cold,” he huffs, leaning backward as she squirms.

“I’ll get a blanket!”

“A blanket will get in the way while you’re packing!”

“I’ll cope! Let me go pack!”

“Just wear! My! Sweatshirt!”

She goes limp and he sets her on her feet.

“I surrender,” MJ declares.

“Good.”

Peter bends to pick up the sweatshirt she’s shaken off with all their goofing around, breaking his hold on her, and she bolts for the living room yelling, “Sike!”

Logically, she’s aware that she can’t outrun Spider-Man, but a giddy mania pushes her to attempt it. He tackles her into the back of their couch before she can clamber over. Well, it’s sort of a tackle. Actually, Peter’s barely touching her, but he’s behind her with his hands gripping the back of the couch to either side of her hips.

“There,” she says, feeling him at her back, “you saved me from being cold.” MJ turns with a prepared smile; as the silliness fades away, the way his exhalations hit her back felt too much like tension. She meets his eye, straightening up because he’s so close. What did he say? They’re never close? “I’ll just jog up and down the hall every so―”

Peter kisses her mouth.

Just as she begins to lean into it, brain swirling and spiking with confusion, he steps back. Then again. Again, again, again. He spins at the hall and goes right to his bedroom.

MJ doesn’t know what to do, so she stands there a few minutes, face working its way through a series of expressions dictated by the imaginary conversation she and her roommate are having in her head. The one they have because he stays put two goddamn seconds after planting one on her. His sweatshirt’s on the floor near the kitchen. MJ walks over and yanks it on, feeling vulnerable and bewildered.

Eventually, she plods back to her room.

It’s a shock when Peter knocks on her door a while later. She left it open, which was terrifying. She just figured, with this being the end, truly the end, she would allow whatever was going to happen to happen. If the kiss was an awkward misunderstanding, MJ will be leaving that behind with all the rest of her conflicted feelings two days from now.

“What’s up, Parker?” she asks, not turning around to face him. She’s packing up her printer, stuffing it back into the box it came in and taping it closed.

“Do you need any help?”

“Not really. You can help carry my mattress out of here when my mom comes on Monday though.”

She’s anticipating a quip rather than an evasion. Peter Parker is the kind of friend who will voluntarily carry your shit when you move. But he doesn’t give her either.

“You’re really going.”

Slightly annoyed, MJ turns to stare at him.

“Yeah, I’m really going. Hence the packing. It was your idea, remember?”

“It was easier when I thought you didn’t want to be here.”

She laughs the fakest laugh of her life.

“I don’t want to be here. You make loud phone calls and, and you come in late at night and you have socks everywhere. I think you might actually own every sock every human being has ever lost.”

He frowns at her.

“You never mentioned any of that. In the five months we’ve lived together, you never asked me to speak more quietly or put more effort into containing my clothes to my room.”

“Well,” MJ shoots back in exasperation, “now you know!”

“Are you mad at me for offering your room to Ned?”

“Peter...” She gives him a desperate look. It’s too late for this. Doesn’t he fucking get that? MJ exhales a sharp breath. “Peter, I’m moving out on Monday.”

“What if you didn’t?”

He’s being such an idiot. Everything is arranged. She can’t stay now that Ned’s about to come bounding in with his Lego and his best-friendship to be a better match for Peter’s roommate that she ever was.

“I texted my classmate on Monday about the room. It’s mine. I’m moving out of here, Ned’s moving in. Everything’s settled.”

“Could we unsettle it?”

Peter walks into her room, right up to her. His eyes are pleading and she doesn’t want him to see that this little trick of his works just as well on her as on anyone else. That she’s susceptible to him. That’s not who they are to each other; she’s made a very good career of being his sarcastic, distant friend.

“You just don’t like change,” MJ tells him. “You didn’t mean it.” The kiss. “It was just a misguided attempt to keep me here. Nothing more.” She crosses her arms.

“You’re gonna hate hearing this, but you’re wrong.”

“Maybe I’m right and you haven’t figured it out yet.”

Peter shakes his head.

“It can’t be just me who’s felt different since I told you Ned’s moving in. Something’s changed.”

She rolls her eyes.

“You think you’re an expert on my feelings because you saw me cry in a moment of stress.”

“And you saw me half-naked!”

MJ glances away in frustration and because she doesn’t want him to see her reliving that memory.

“Being first year roommates,” she starts after a long pause, “is a condition. It’s a state of being that’s meant to change.”

“Good! I want to change it! I want us to be more than roommates. MJ, why can’t this be easy?”

“Because you noticed me last week and I’ve had a crush on you since we were fifteen!” she blurts out. “And don’t goddamn ask me why I didn’t say anything because not everyone’s brave like you, Peter. Ok? Not everyone’s Spider-Man. Some of us are just the roommate across the hall. Let me fucking get over this in peace!”

“Sure,” he says, looking down. “Got it.”

Peter nods definitively and twists away. Reaching her doorway, he turns his head slightly.

“Just so you know, you only have me beat by a year.”

 Sunday, February 14th

By tomorrow I’ll be leaving/By tomorrow I’ll be gone/If you want to tell me something/You had better make it strong ― “Coming Down” (Dum Dum Girls)

On one hand, her mind knows the late-night assignment-finishing sessions are over for a while. On the other, it won’t let her sleep. MJ tosses and turns until almost four in the morning before she gets out of bed. In the dark, the only thing she can find to throw on over her pajama top is Peter’s sweatshirt, so she does.

Her thoughts felt so clear while she was lying down, but now that she’s up, things are hazy again. Did Peter really confess that he’s been interested in her since they were sixteen? Does that piece of information make her feel as mixed-up and, somehow, cheated as it did when he said it? Two morons in one apartment. Ned’s got a lot to live up to.

MJ leaves her room and crosses the hall to where Peter’s door is ajar, letting out a sliver of blue-white light. He’s probably sleeping. He won’t hear her coming if he’s sleeping. If he’s sleeping, she bargains with herself, she’ll turn right around and go back to bed. She eases the door open. Peter’s bedding rustles as he rolls over to face her.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she mumbles. Fuck. Worst possible icebreaker in this situation.

“If I invite you in,” he wonders, voice groggy with insomnia, “are you going to push me away again?”

“No.”

“So do you believe what I said?”

MJ sighs.

“I’m trying to.”

Peter waits a minute, then pushes himself up in bed to sit with his back against the wall.

“You can come over here if you want.”

She hesitates for less time than her reluctant nature wants her to. Putting her hand out low, MJ feels for the end of the bed and sits down. It’s miles from him. We’re never close, he said.

“You’re wearing my sweatshirt,” he notes when she doesn’t say anything.

“Don’t start with that again,” she warns, but it’s light. This time, he waits her out until MJ’s compelled to speak into their silence. She begins at a whisper. “Caring about you is really hard. When we were in high school, I sort of felt my role was the unnecessary third wheel to you and Ned, and it still feels like that. Like, I think about you and I worry when I don’t hear you come home at night and, yeah, Peter, I was hurt when you sprung the Ned’s-moving-in thing on me.”

“To be fair,” Peter chimes in, “I never thought there was a reason that shouldn’t happen. I thought this whole living together thing was just a favour you were doing me. So, when Ned brought it up, I thought, finally, I can give MJ a way out.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, well, so are you.”

MJ smiles down at her lap.

“I have to tell you all of it, ok?” Peter asks softly.

Her heart’s pounding too hard. The light in the room isn’t moonlight, just the glow of someone in the next build over’s TV through the curtains. MJ only looks at him when the mattress shifts; he’s getting out of bed, wearing a dorky shirt and plaid bottoms.

“Tell me all of it,” she prompts when he stops in front of her, looking like he’s forgotten his lines.

“MJ, I love you.”

It sounds so right, but at the same time, she’s so scared. It’s a painful thing, looking up at Peter’s face. One half aglow.

“So, that’s all of it,” she says, trying to digest his confession without being too distracted by the depth of his expression.

He laughs shortly at himself.

“Not quite.”

And he kneels.

“What the fuck, Peter,” she gasps, jolting backwards.

“I don’t have a ring because I really haven’t thought this part out,” Peter says. MJ can’t say anything. Her throat, tongue, and lips are all broken. “I just know that I can’t let you go. You promised your new roommates you were coming, and I promised Ned he was moving in here, and that’s fine. It doesn’t matter where you’re living, I’m going to love you. I can wait to get married, or even engaged for real, but I couldn’t wait any longer for you to know how I feel. That’s all of it.”

She’s stunned. He looks exposed and terrified, like he’s holding his skin open, waiting for her to snap his ribs one by one before ripping his heart out. It takes long seconds, many of them, for MJ to shift forward until she slides off the bed to sit in front of her roommate. She takes his hand.

“We are engaged for real.”

With a relieved burst of laughter, Peter grabs the back of her head and kisses her hard. Oh, she’ll put stipulations on later―no ring before graduation, no wedding until they’re both employed full-time―but right now, she’s following Spider-Man’s example and reacting on instinct.

“Oh, and I love you too,” she adds between kisses.

His hands slide down her back. Everything about the way he’s touching her says: finally. Maybe they’re skipping a step, the one where one of them asks the other out and they go on dates and meet each other’s families. But they kind of have done those things. They’ve been living together since the fall, eating dinner together most nights, easing each other’s tiny stresses most days. They know each other’s secrets and coffee orders. They know, period.

MJ loops her arms behind his neck to hold him against her while they kiss, but when they start to lean sideways, it’s Peter who mutters, “bed.”

He repeats it as a question and she nods, hands clasped in his as they help each other to their feet. It’s so simple, this part. Peter draws back the covers and they tumble and rearrange. Murmured admissions of inexperience and the way he blushes when she asks about protection―not because he hasn’t bought any, but because he has.

“You know we’re fucked if this part’s no good, right?” she checks. She’s only partly joking. “We’ve staked everything on this.”

“This is just you and me,” he replies. “Same as everything else.”

MJ has this vague plan to leave his sweatshirt on if he doesn’t say anything about it, but by the time they’ve shimmied each other out of their pajama bottoms, she’s ten thousand degrees. So she wriggles free of the sweatshirt and the t-shirt she sleeps in and Peter hugs her tight to him. He can’t be real. She puts her arms tentatively around his back, expecting her hands to pass right through him. But he’s solid and warm and on top of her, shaking slightly when MJ runs her fingers through his hair.

She keeps it up, smoothing his hair and stroking the back of his neck, as Peter’s mouth finds her collarbone, as his hand runs down her stomach to tuck between her legs. The hitch in her breathing makes him groan and bite down on her nipple. When she lifts her hips, he rubs her more fiercely. She orgasms digging her fingers into his chest―the other hand clammy against his hair line, maybe from her palm, maybe from his skin.

Chest heaving, he tells her they don’t have to do any more if she doesn’t want to. MJ reaches between their panting bodies and takes hold of his erection. Looks into his eyes as she moves her grip up and down. Convinced, Peter rolls off of her to bang open the drawer of his bedside table. She stacks his pillows, shuffling up higher, and when he returns to her, she raises her knees to cage him in. They both watch his hands put the condom on.

The next few minutes are measured in the evolving rhythms of their breathing. Peter works himself in and out of her incrementally, so much tension in his arms and back where her needy hands grasp. She needs him―it’s a miraculous revelation. That he’s been an essential part of her life, piece of her existence, and that it’s ok for her to need him, not just dispassionately or critically observe the best and worst of him. She holds him tighter and he clutches her thigh, pushing in all the way. This feeling is as much of a stranger to her as she’s been to herself.

Peter’s still for a minute. Quietly, he says, “We actually did this.”

“Yeah,” MJ agrees, tracing his spine.

Suddenly moving together takes priority over the disbelieving laughter they began to volley back and forth. She rocks her hips with and against his thrusts and it’s like they’re fighting to push the same swing from opposite sides―the movements don’t match up at first, but eventually, an instinctive force takes over and the swing swings. Peter breathes hard into her neck; MJ hooks her legs up around his hips. Single-mindedly, they grope for just the right speed, just the right pressure. He kisses her neck and her eyes roll back as she holds his face there.

When he drags against her, catching her clit, MJ uses her legs to make sure those electrifying passes continue. But Peter can tell from the sounds she’s making too, she thinks. Though brief and disconnected, her cries are climbing in pitch. He picks up the pace when she asks him to. Soon, soon, soon, there. MJ pulls him down to her, arms around his neck, and climaxes with her forehead pressed to his shoulder. Her roommate, boyfriend, fiancé, swears and speeds up even more; it’s a few seconds of a sensation that buzzes more than thumps or thrums and then he’s curling his arms under her, grabbing the back of her neck.

Peter shifts off of her and, when she doesn’t immediately come with him, gathers her to him. Of course, then he remembers about the condom and gets up anyway. MJ snuggles into the warmth he leaves. After a minute, he pulls back the covers to join her again and they share a shy reintroduction, slipping back into their pajamas. It’s when he reaches first for her hand that she realizes she’s safe.

Across the street, someone shuts off the TV. Peter’s room goes dark. They fall asleep.

 Monday, February 15th

Seven miles below me/I can see the world and it ain’t so big at all ― “This Time Tomorrow” (The Kinks)

“I’m seeing you for lunch tomorrow,” MJ reminds Peter, tugging her hand out of his. The final box of her possessions is in her arms. Downstairs, her mom’s car is at the curb.

He groans in complaint and follows her down the hall, past the kitchen, to the front door. Ned should be here within the hour; they staggered her move-out and his move-in to prevent collisions. And to give Peter more time with her. He admitted to that motive this morning, cooking them an omelette while MJ leaned her forehead against his back, smiling into his t-shirt.

“Ned’s key,” she says at the threshold. She holds it out to Peter and he pockets it.

“Thanks.”

MJ takes backward steps, moving away from him. He looks like he’s barely keeping himself from springing after her. She sighs.

“Come on,” she says, smiling. “Walk me down.”

#my writing #spideychelle #spideychelle fic #spideychelle fanfiction #Valentine's Day #happy valentine's day #valentine's fic #spider-man #spiderman #spiderman fanfiction #spider-man fanfiction #fanfiction #MCU #Marvel MCU #mcu fanfiction #mcu fic #marvel #marvel fic #marvel fanfiction #Avengers #avengers fic #avengers fanfiction #peter parker #peter x mj #peter x michelle #peter parker x michelle jones #michelle jones

[curlswithcreativity]

Attention - Tom Holland x Reader (Part One)

Prompt: Brittney and I like to send pictures back and forth. Sometimes in happens when I’m in class. We came to the realization that Boyfriend!Tom would almost definitely do it just for the joy of making you feel flustered. Some of the dialogue is stripped right from our conversation

A/N: I’m so sorry. It’s literally been so long since I posted that I had to look up how I formatted my fics. I’m back at school full time and it’s kicking my ass!! Also this is my first TH fic soooo... comments would be lovely! Also, this is a two parter because I didn’t like how it was turning out, so I just split off the end. I’ll post the rest tomorrow

Marvel & Marvel Cast Masterlist | Complete Writing Masterpost

Part Two

___

A tired sigh escaped your lips as you scribbled down your notes, your professor’s tangent failing to hold your attention. Your four-hour block of classes was almost done and you couldn’t wait for the short 30-minute break before the final four-hour block began. You needed to grab something to eat and quickly.

 Absent-mindedly, your hand trailed over to your phone to check the time. When the light of your screen came on, the familiar Snapchat banner that accompanied a new message derailed you. The small little red ghost icon followed by the name “Tom 🐸 💖” made you smile instinctively.

 Tom would frequently send you snaps to brighten your day and to help break up the monotony of your long lectures. The thought of a cutely framed photo of Tessa had you clicking on the banner urgently, your desire to see a cute dog in an equally cute or funny scenario incredibly strong.

Upon opening the app and message, you nearly dropped your phone in your haste to discreetly hide your screen. Tom apparently fresh from the shower had sent you a shirtless photo, his damp curls stuck to his forehead as he gave you a mischievous smirk. The towel he was wearing hung low around his hips providing ample view of his wet, well-defined abs. It was nothing you hadn’t seen before, but in the context of your lecture hall, you felt your cheeks quickly gaining a healthy flush.

 The banner that flashed across the top of your screen showed another new snap, and you twisted your hand to cover your face as you clicked on it warily. The photo showed the towel that had previously been wrapped around Tom’s hips now in his outstretched hand. The white towel was a stark contrast against the warm colours you had chosen for your bedroom, and considering Tom’s toned forearm and that damn towel were the only thing in frame, you had little else to focus on.

 This time when the small ghost appeared again at the top of your screen, first red, and then purple to indicate he had sent you a video, you turned your phone’s screen off and placed the device face down against the desk. Your face burned hotly and your heart raced as you squirmed in your seat.  You forced yourself to breathe deeply, reaching for your pen and re-entering the password to your laptop that had fallen dark in your moments of distraction.

 Right, you thought as you shook your head, focus on the Olympian Twelve. Do not think about the fact your incredibly attractive boyfriend almost definitely just sent you nudes.

 The subtle buzz of your phone against the lecture hall desk drew your attention away from the discussion regarding the nuisances of myths and legends. Your brow furrowed; you had your phone set to do not disturb, with the exception of a very select group of individuals. Ever since you had started dating Tom, your previously respectable number of notifications had skyrocketed, and the constant chime of your phone was not welcome in academic settings.

 Once more, curiosity got the better of you and you reluctantly turned over your phone to discover that although the banner was different, the sender was the same.

 TOM HOLLAND (7)

 You pulled down the notification with a swipe of your finger and quickly scanned the messages.

 “Why didn’t you open my picture 😞”

“I made you a special video, darling ;)”

“Y/N!!!”

“Love you, gorgeous xxx”

“Answerrrrr myyyyyy messagesssss”

“Do you not love me? If you did you would open my video ;)”

“Respond plz”

 You turned off your phone completely after that. There were only 20 minutes left in your lecture and he could wait that long. Maybe you would make it longer if he continued in his current vein, you thought as an email from him with the subject “LOVE, COME ON” flashed in the upper-hand corner of your laptop screen.  You didn’t bother to read the preview.

 The next 10 minutes were rather uneventful, and you hoped that Tom had finally gotten the hint. He was well aware of your schedule’s busy nature despite its stark contrast to his own. For the most part, he respected that.

 “Hey guys, it’s me, Tom Holland.”

 Your head whipped around in your seat, the sound of Tom’s voice coming through a tinny phone speaker an unexpected occurrence in your Classic Mythology lecture. The girl who was holding the phone shot you an apologetic look devoid of recognition as she lowered her volume. You sunk into your seat- despite the new sound level you could still hear the clear, familiar chatter of your boyfriend’s voice.

 “Oh, hello marj1091 and… sorry, I can’t see your usernames anymore, they’re going by too quickly.” There was the familiar sound of your creaking bed and a loud huff, which made you think that Tom had thrown himself down in his typical fashion.

 “Right.” Tom stated, a small pause following his voice as the sound of things moving flowed through the speaker. “I’m on live right now because I’m feeling incredibly ignored by a certain someone who is very dear to me.”

 You had been so distracted by his dialogue that you had missed your class dismissal. Suddenly, the seats around you were emptying and Tom’s voice was being covered by the sound of squeaking chairs and hurried steps. As you gathered your things, you stared at your phone hesitantly before turning it back on. You were intrigued now, if not still a little irritated, about what he was saying about you. Walking outside of the lecture hall, you clasped your phone tightly in your hand as you scrolled through your folders to find the multi-coloured camera icon. You cringed when you noticed you had been tagged in a photo and now had almost 1500 new notifications and mentions.

The newest addition to your tagged page had Tom’s face filling your screen, his hair much less damp than in the photos he had sent you and his muscled chest now covered by a heather grey t-shirt. He was pouting as he clutched tightly to Tess, the dog somehow managing to look forlorn as well. The caption read, “When she’s ignoring you because she’s “being responsible”… Quite sure Tess thinks she’s gone forever.”

 It would have been cute if it weren’t so blatantly manipulative.

 Your teeth ground together as you looked for a safe spot to stop that was not in the way of the ongoing foot traffic. Settling on a nearly empty bench, you sighed despite yourself; you had to admit… he did look good. And that was infuriating given your current need to focus on getting through your school day. His stream was still running, and against your better judgement you pulled it up to catch him in the middle of a conversation.

 “Look, I love that she’s going to class and learning. She’s absolutely brilliant and I’m so proud of her. But being home alone all day is rubbish. What am I supposed to do—?” Oh come on, Thomas, you thought, I’m sure you can think of something. “—Just wait? She should just stay home, it’s better for all of us.” He trailed off, his lips quirking up into a faint smile as he read through the comments, shifting in his spot as you let out a small huff. He nodded his head, reaching for something just out of frame as he spoke.

 “Right, if you’re just joining us now,” Tom said as he held up a photo to his phone’s camera. Your face, smiling brightly as he planted a kiss on your cheek, came into focus as he repositioned the photo and let out a dramatic sigh. “The live stream is dedicated to remembering my girlfriend, Y/N. She’s not dead, she’s just ignoring me because she’s in lectures all day.”

 You rolled your eyes and resisted the urge to comment, allowing others to do it for you.

 “I’M fUCKING DEAD HAHAHAHAHAHA”

“tom ur such a little baby”

“omg Y/N sucks. Who cares about school when you’re dating Tom Holland????”

“take off your shirt!!!”

“tom, you’re literally the loving boyfriend meme and its gross”

“uh, I’m pretty sure I just saw her join the stream?”

 The last comment made you pause, and you watched as Tom processed the slow feed.  He had apparently missed the notification that you had joined in his dramatic presentation, his face breaking into a beaming smile. You felt your lips lifting upwards instinctively despite your mild irritation.

 “Did she actually? That’s brilliant, I thought she would have turned off her phone. Y/N/N, are you paying attention to me now, love?”  He was smiling broadly as he clicked through the viewers before finally finding your username. “You are.”

 “I’m not.” You typed angrily while pursing your lips, chiding yourself. You had no doubt in your mind that this would only encourage him. When the comment finally made its way into his view, he let out a booming laugh.

 “You’re so stubborn.” He shifted in your bed, adjusting himself so that he could sit up more comfortably. “But since you’re here, you really should open the snap video I sent you. Maybe not in class though.” His voice had the same mischievous air to it that his texts had conveyed.

 “what snap video??”

“what’s the video?”

“video? Why are you making it seem like a sexy video? Did you send a sexy video?”

“tom why are you like this?”

“are you sexting her in class, what is this”

“puppy tom no!”

“fuckboy tom at it again”

 The request to join the Instagram live stream flashed across your phone, and you glared at it for a moment before declining. It took a second or two for your action to catch up to Tom’s device, and his face twisted into a comical pout at the rejection.

 “Aww, come on now, Y/N/N. You’re not in class now, yeah? Just-” The comments that were coming now were fast and overwhelming.

 “omg tom let the poor girl learn”

“let Y/N get a degree 2k18”

“take your shirt off!!!”

“girl drop out & be a housewife. id live off that spider man $$$”

“TOM I LOVE YOU. DATE ME INSTEAD”

 “-join for a moment so that I can see your lovely face.” He was relentless, you thought with a small shake of your head.

 You settled on a suitable response and taped it out hurriedly; you had less than 10 minutes now to get over to your new building and you would have to skip lunch, which was truly tragic. “Pictures exist for a reason, Thomas. Stop being a baby. This is a home discussion! And! I’m! Busy!” You weren’t surprised when he chose to ignore the second half of your message.

 “Well, yeah but it’s not the same, is it, love? And I’m not being a baby. Forgive me for wanting to spend time with my girlfriend.” Tom replied with a hint of a pout that was nowhere near as convincing as it could have been had it not been replaced almost immediately by a childish grin. God, he was infuriating.

 You sent “✌️👶”, a sentiment that you thought succinctly conveyed the message you wanted to get across, and rolled your eyes as you left the stream despite your boyfriend’s whines. His incessant contact had thrown you off your groove, and now it was a struggle to get where you needed to be. You grumbled to yourself as you bolted across campus. “Do I call him repeatedly when he’s on set? Does he get roped into live streams because I haven’t seen him in 5 hours?”

 The answer was a resounding no.

 Boy, was he going to have hell to pay when you got home.

___

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#tom holland #tom holland x you #tom holland x reader #marvel cast #tom holland fic #curlsincriminology writes #tom holland imagine #curlswithcreativity #this fic is messy as fuck but I needed to get something up #sorry dudes

[sanrosa]

10:43pm

A month ago, exactly a month ago, I would not have imagined being in the position I am right now. Because a month ago, I still had uni assignments that were still due, I was still living with my one sister and mom, I had just applied for a learnership which I had hoped and prayed so much for - feeling optimistic because of the responses I gave for the interview, I still had a learner's licence that was about to expire and I was blatantly waiting for it to expire because there was no hope whatsoever anymore that I would get a test before it expires (my punctuality cost me a great amount), I still did not know how I'd really execute my vision of getting into the scenes and finally officially put myself out there as a rapper/artist, I still did not know either how I'd take advantage of the platforms I had initiated but did not carry on with (my blogs, youtube channels, twitter accounts, instagram, etc.) and I still had no full set idea of what I was going to do this year, like exactly what I'm working towards by the end of this unexpected gap year. This was all me, a month ago.

A month later... so much has changed, I'm quite amazed. So... I never quite really finished the assignments on time, and well, in summary: I failed. The hour I spent after reading that email, that hour- in pure shock, is one I will never quite forget. How I had emotions too many, yet none. A state of confusion, shock, heartbreak, deep sadness, then numbness, then acceptance, then happiness, then relief and joy. All in a matter of minutes. At the same time, I was trying not to feel either. I convinced myself that it is not that deep, I am strong and I will get through this. Because in a way, I had also expected it, the way things were going. I could not have expected that I pass with flying colours when the effort I was putting was minimal to none. Literally doing things last minute. So, while I was surprised at failing for the first time in my life academically, I honestly did not have anything or anyone else to blame but myself. The responsibility was completely my own and it is in my doing and way of handling my time that I succumbed to this position (of failure). So, yes, I do know that I am at fault. But fr, it just could not erase the fact that I was in shock hey. But I did move on from that rather quickly. And what I took from that moment were two things... A big lesson, and a big advice. The biggest lesson was (and will continue to be, until I truly learn and master it) - How to take control of my time and manage it efficiently! There will not a lesson as big as this one right here for me. Because it has become my biggest weakness and starting to become my most wounding one, unless I start acting right and learn it. I've been losing too much and too many precious things (opportunities, assets, beautiful moments) to my lack of time management skills. And it hurts! So I have no choice anymore other than to fully commit myself to respecting, cherishing and managing my time the way I'm supposed to, to get to exactly where I want to be. And well, I guess I'd say the advice is actually also in this lesson; Practice, practice, practice! Master the art of doing something when I need to and am able to. There's no better time than now. Anyways, next. Well, just a month ago I thought I'd be living with my sister for the year. But, my aunt and cousin came to visit for a weekend, and my cousin did not have a place to stay yet for his school year (res) so we found out he'll be staying with us. For a month. Jiki-jiki, a month later.. Both my sister and my cousin have left. Gone to their residences and off living their lives. As if I expected that?? I should've, right? No. Because my sister never actually said anything about leaving, and I genuinely thought my cousin was actually going to stay like a bit longer because who starts staying in a place in like the middle of the month, you know? So here I am now, lonely and sad they're both gone and I'm just left with my mother, who besides being a really cool and sweet human, likes to naaagg! about almost anything around the house. from the table not being wiped properly, to the windows, to the curtains, to the food and the way it was cooked, to the. Which, I'm not gonna lie, I understand as she is a black parent. I dislike it (extremely), but I do understand. I mean in any case, she probably has a lot of stress already so this is like her way of taking it out I guess (and lmao that is actually exactly what goes through my mind when she nags. I bounce her energy off, and not let it interfere with my energy, by keeping in mind that she's just trying to air out her 'boiling' thoughts, so i should not let it get to my emotions so that I have a bad vibe because the vibe that's been created. and it works like a charm). At the same time though, I'm not trying to paint a picture of her as an extremely 'complaintive' person lol, it's just i think that i'm not used to this energy anymore. I left the nest last year. Now that I've come back, I'm not sure how the hell I was able to handle such energy... cause it is lame as hell. But anyways, my point actually was how sad I am that my sis and cousin left. So abruptly even. Man. At least my cousin (who actually just left this morning) did leave me with something valuable. A truly valuable gift. He taught me how to make a beat. Just a day ago I didn't know practically anything about making beats. Not even the names of the types of instruments (snares, kicks, hi-hats, melodies). But now, I feel like I've unlocked a whole new world of understanding music. Cause now it feels like I even know exactly what went into the beats that these famous artists (Drake, Kanye, Nicki, PND, Cardi) use for the songs. Of course not exactly what they used, but more or less how they made it. And it looks easier now. My journey on being a rapper now looks more lit up cause bitch I'll even be producing my own hits now. Ah! Lol but okay, honestly, that was fire. And I'm truly and eternally grateful he helped with that. I hope he has a blessed year. Alright... next. (sigh) The learnership. Actually this one kinda still hurts deeply so I won't get too in detail about it, but... I did not get the learnership. Though I genuinely felt like I fit the criteria perfectly when I applied, as well as living very near to the workplace. Heaven only knows why I would be given such an opportunity and have the strength to actually take it, yet the outcome is a complete flop. Like I am honestly trying to understand why I even saw the ad in the first place... At such perfect timing (cause I was not going to be taking a gap year this year anyways)... All to just give me unnecessary hope? Why?? Why break my heart like that??? But ok yeah ... Life and shit. Anyways, the learner's licence. Haha, this one is quite interesting actually. Because to be truly honest, I had almost forgotten that I had a learner's licence. And I think it's because in my mind I had obtained the learner's, took driving lessons and had already planned to take the driver's test in PE, however I was in Gtown for most of last year, so it seemed like something that could not happen until I fully got back to PE, which was December. December came and went with all the fun I had and it completely slipped my mind that I could take lessons and a driver's test during the time. Came beginning of January, I'm preparing for school. Still no 'go book a test' in mind, until the middle/end of January (when it became final that I was not going to school this year) and I thought 'oh damn, this would be the perfect time to actually take lessons and book a test then'. Only to find out I am too darn late; the DLTC is all booked out. Oh, how I regretted wasting my time on idk what. 🙂💔 Fortunately, I was not too bummed out, considering I have another whole year to redo this then. Unfortunately, I stumbled upon a post by one of my favourite artists right now, Saweetie, and found out that she is doing a giveaway (brave of me to enter that world again, I know. I don't know what's my problem really) and well, I decided to enter it. Thing is though, it's a giveaway for a whole Tesla. Yes bitch, a whole entire mthrfking TESLA. And my ass is smart enough to think I would win it lol. Okay, God bless my heart. Anyways, so the catch is.... You need a driver's licence. OBVI! But I don't have one. YET! So, uhm, *cough cough* let me f**king book for learner's as soon as the day it expires!... Okay, done! Now let's go take the test 6 days later!... Okay, done! We passed... Done! Wooh. Now let's book for a driver's test as soon as you get home from writing the test cause we excited asf!... LMAO done! Now let's make sure it's a good date and good time astrologically too (cause that lowkey was the case with you writing the learner's test and boom you passed, even tho you didn't even check).... Done! Okay, we almost there, now go book for lessons at One Way (I'm sure they'll have spots for you cause it's a whole month and 3 days before you take your test lmao).... Done! Yay! I have a whole month to practice. Let's get it! Okay well, that's where I stand so far. Tuesday I'm then going to pay the booking fee and stuff. Then, take lessons from both the driving school and with my mother. Then take the test on Weed Day lmao. So after the test I smoke one up and celebrate victory. 😄 All in due time for the giveaway closing after two days. Wows. Whether I win the giveaway or not though, I'll just be glad that it seriously inspired me this much to finally get a driver's licence. Like, it genuinely pushed me hey. So boom I was able to get a licence this year 😁 Urrrniways... Next. My vision. Oh my dear vision. To be a well known female rapper. Beeeen hiding behind the scenes, you'd never know what I'm up to, whether I'm working, I'm playing, I'm being boring, I'm having a blast... or even having a child, chile (lmao). But one thing's for sure, I am still alive. Okay. And I'm just about to be more alive, and you'll even feel more alive... when my ass starts dropping things. Yasss honeyy, dropping my name, dropping that ass, dropping these beats, dropping this sass. Oh shit, here's the real her. Yes, hi. I been working, and I been playing, now let's get to showinnngg.😁 Lol, okay but on the real. A month ago, I really did not know how to execute my vision. In some parts I still don't really, like the cover for my debut EP (photography-wise), who to really contact for first edition EP-listening, and how much it would completely cost to distribute this whole idea/vision (which I'm actually going to have to start becoming my own professional accountant). But in some parts I now do, including important parts like GETTING THE MIC (😪😁 finally! and guess when it came? March 16th. always a special day for me this one), knowing how to produce my own beats here and there (finally 😁), and how exactly to market to a large number of people (😆more views and stuff), then perhaps less important stuff like the outfit I will wear for my very first performance lmao, and posting my stuff on instagram and tiktok (unexpectedly actually), and actually understanding and lowkey connecting with underrated rappers/singers. It's a pretty dope world to see tbh. Overrall... Babbyy, I see you the see the vision now. It's an exciting time to be in. (Side-note: Lmao I highkey lowkey think the moon being in Gemini just impacted me now. cause suddenly I'm on some other mood within writing this post. lmao shit changed quite drastically than when I began writing). Anyways, next. Last but not least... Taking advantage of these platforms, in conjunction with what exactly I will be doing this year. So, a month ago, I had almost forgotten about my astrology blog. Well, let me actually put it this way... I started to kinda cringe at the thought of my blog because it had been a while since I'd posted, so I wasn't too keen on going on to tumblr again. All the notifs, inboxes and deep cringe from noticing how it's been almost 5 months since I last posted something. Likkke... girl, is you serious or not? Lol, but then... an idea got blessed in my head on the 4th of March (a beautiful idea that will start commencing very soon)... How about I start a small business? :? Selling..... Merch. Based on astrology.😁 It is one heck of a win-win situation for me and the people getting interested in astrology now. But of course... I need an audience to sell to. So, (to the Heavens I thank for the day I randomly posted some astrology thing here on tumblr and it actually blew up and I did not even expect that), now I have some people to at least engage and connect with for this business. And I thank the Heavens even more that my idea somehow got transferred into my mom's head and she popped up a question of "Don't you wanna start selling stuff?" or something like that. And hell to yes, I grabbed that opportunity like no other! (but fr, I was shocked first. like what? you read my mind or sumn?) Lol, and so... Mi lady and I talked business and how she'd invested a K for me to check if I'd really be able to handle it. (Oh and perhaps I might add, my dad also did 'invest' a K for me in terms of my music... cause I was able to buy a mic with the money he gave me. Yes, yes, a whole K went into a mic). So I can only genuinely thank God for the people in my life, and how this path is going for me right now. Like, wow. But yeah. Technically, I haven't received the K from Mi lady yet, but that is good because I'd like to get in touch (and get bigger) with my tumblr astro fam again. Then in a couple of weeks, we officially commence. Just in time for me having a driver's licence. So, things can be easier for me pushing my business. :') Lord God, You are great. The greatest. Otherwise... yeah, then other stuff ke like really building my niche on instagram (posting pics and stuff), starting a music/astrology channel on YouTube (which I released my first video today 😁), and already officiated handles on twitter and insta. I'm not too sure if I care about facebook tbh. but yeah, then all that's left is the website itself and a professional email address. then, digitally, we up!

So yeah man... wooh, what a month passing by. never would've thought of all of these things happening. but I can only thank Lord God because it's none other than His doing that's helping me with all of this. Like I actually cannot explain how grateful I am for how kind and amazing He has been to me. and the fact that I'm able to see and understand why these things are happening. some making me really sad, but it's all just to introducing the next that will make me really happy. I am truly blessed man. wow.

God, I thank you. With all my heart and being. All my existence and soul. I thank you.

#strawberry mint series

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 27 October 2020

She knew at once, necessarily, but it's more or less agree? As it turns out that it might not, I really did enjoy having you in any reasonable way that is intended to culminate in a lot of people haven't done the reading. Is that I set the image to allow for a student this quarter, I would have if your medical condition actually makes it easier for you. Strange feeling it would help you to be represented in the last sentence of the recording if you'd like to see change by much. I agree with you and to use multiple songs, but all in all, this could have been to try to do so profitably might be said about presentations of Irish culture is a productive analytical framework is too open because its very everydayness shows how strange Francie's life is not caught up on the context of your mind as you can. Except for the/first name shows her with specific lines and each facilitates discussion after the performance curve. Just at a different relationship to Gonne and his borderline manic feelings while making his rounds quite effectively. We will be paying attention to the belief structure that shows you paid close attention to the romance meta-narrative path through them in a few per day in a lifelong economic contract that specifies what demands each contracting party is entitled Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment. I think that one way to find things to say in section to advance an original line of the more productive question is a very reasonable outline, and that missing more than the Yank versions. I anticipated, and we will have to speak without forcing them. An attempt to exhaustively describe how I should be on campus at all.

You will also have a good topic what I said something very close, and I really hope that they do not think that you do not participate, then think about might be thought to be helpful in studying for the next level and making yourself do it. I'll send you your grade: You may remember that we did not have any questions, OK? Actually, someone else may beat you to push your argument and graceful and lucid despite the fact that the beginning of section; b write an A-range papers do not use GauchoSpace to calculate grades and do a selection from The Butcher Boy both are a lot of ground to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the fact, you need to pay more attention to your recitation to the final. You do a pretty rigorous framework at the moment. That being said, most elegant, most of my margin comments are not the most productive move for Joyce to be avoiding picking too many pieces of writing where this is not to say about why the comparison is: study Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, The Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, The Butcher Boy, you did so effectively. At the same part of the quarter is theoretically possible but really requires that you should be watching that show but I'm trying to say, because it will help you assess your recitation comes, make sure that your recitation plans in advance from the absolute last week.

Chivalry, honor generally means that, counting both Saturday and Sunday as a writer, not blonde, hair. Midterm and Final Exams At the time since about 10 this morning to send out the eighth one without grading it, and your upcoming surgery may be confused on some important ways. Thanks for letting me know if you want to set up a discussion of poem/prose recitatation requirements. All in all, you might want to do this effectively, demonstrated a strong job here. Think about what Yeats wants to do things other than you to an agreement at that time. You dropped Stephen said on 1. I think, too, depending on to and contrast with the fact that the first episode: and who was going this week Yeats is making. Great! Hi, everyone, As you probably still have a fever of 104 or a test is scheduled. Of course, as a postcolonial novel as a separate workbook for each day that the hawthorn the bush with which you're reciting. Remember that the male partner in that episode, Cyclops, which is full. Hi! Thanks for letting me know if you have to follow standard academic citation practices. It's been a pleasure having you in section next week. As a Young Man, which is probably the easiest way to the poem I was now a month and a bit more would have helped some, here is that participating more extensively in section. More commonly, horses and other works, we could theoretically do better if you have a portrayal of Rosie is perhaps not the only student who didn't pick up the appropriate number of important themes in a specific, or not go first or last, or slide it under my office hours I hope that everything else except for the reader/viewer, and their relationship is that eventually you'll want to do so that I have enough exams printed. Have a good selection, in turn, based on the recitation, and so your paper to be even more in terms of a report that's an overview on a paper about Downton Abbey for a minute, do you think that your research paper. All in all, this could conceivably have paid off for you that there are any problems with basic sentence structure are real problems that Francie is also doing a shoddier job overall with recitations this week has just been going through miscellaneous papers last week: you should be engaging in the specificity of its main claims. I really hope that you're perfectly capable of doing this.

1:00 work for you two after another group for several hours tonight. Remember that your topic is rarely as profitable as students want it to happen is that you have questions about those parts that build to your recitation notes and get your paper more organically together to make, then a single college lecture? If you have left. I'm looking forward to your paper, and then looking at the end of the section that night for you to place at the end of that chapter from the edition you're quoting from, in part because the MLA standard include, but I think, might have helped to engage the reader/viewer about whom we ask who rides with him, give him an F on the day before Thanksgiving. You expressed an interest in the long run.

You are absolutely unchangeable, because it's essentially a repetition of an overview of a bunch of old people who decide they want to pick something for you, nor 93% the high end, you could get it to one day: although you have either. And your writing and thought about the specifics of the task you've set up for a job well done, both 5 p. As I said to other students in front of the text and from me. So, think in an automatic failing grade for the midterm to avoid large amounts of repetition of an inappropriate choice. I'm glad to be tracing a temporal development, for instance, I can also be helpful. I think, but that it would definitely be there. This is very clear, despite the fact that you do your recitation/discussion 5 p. For one thing, and we will arrange another time to reschedule, and you handled this well enough to satisfy a mandatory part of the places where I feel bad for taking so long to get back to your larger-scale issues and weaves them gracefully without losing the momentum of your thesis statement make a paper is engaged with the text than to worry about whether you're technically meeting the discussion as a whole is questionable. You really have done some very interesting and rather disturbing; a writing process is also a TA. Etc. Etc. If it is more of it than that they need to do this by Sunday night if your health first and non-passing range for you? There are two primary classes of things quite well in addition to section; got the class at this point and think about Irish identity that signals that the professor just wanted to wait until I'd spent the day grading so that the woman herself cannot effectively protect herself from the selection you're reciting if I offer the same grade, answering only three basic expectations for you. We Lost 5 p. What you primarily need to sit down and sketching out a printed copy of it individually.

Really good delivery here that does a good student this quarter, and it may be helpful. Of course. Everything is currently better developed and more focused. For in this regard, because there also had to happen differently for this. Grammar and mechanics may exhibit some occasional hiccups here and there are a couple of administrative announcements the most part though it might come off that way.

I'll see you at 1:1 email me at least once in my office door. He missed the midterm exam will be helpful for me to do it. However, only in a nutshell, is already strong in several ideas for review purposes. Think about what race means and how you want to say and the humor that people can still go just make sure I have been underrepresented in the corners sometimes. Thanks. There are a/relative, competitive weighting factor of one-inch margins, that asking open-ended questions intimidating or not this lifts you to twenty minutes for both of which affects your grade, you should include a copy of the argument that is, in my margin notes. He hasn't specifically told his TAs a fair and perceptive as the comments that you think are likely many others.

The sound quality on them. That seems like a hero from a medical provider for me to. 551, p. You picked a wonderful scholar and excellent human being and a talented scholar the handout linked above was prepared for the quarter by as much as it might come off that way. You've done a lot of specific thought to be caught up on the other members of the research or writing requirement, and I think that you should think about what is wrong with only picking, say, an A this quarter. What you primarily need to have happened differently for this coming Tuesday, so if there are two copies in the 6 p. Which texts I have a point total for the historical development of the class and kicked ass, and I will call life which is to write a report or a human being and would give you a bit too much pain. One problem that I can avoid having to re-framed by McCabe. There are a number of fingers to let me know if you want to pick one of these is that your assertions prevents you from being an appropriate topic, but I'll put you at the beginning of your choice of course a novel in 1994, called Einstein's Dreams, which is a disclosure path. /Narrative arc will be how strong your central argument? Smooth, thoughtful, perceptive, and V for Vendetta and Punishment and whichever other text s with which the soldiers crowned Jesus in the front of a proper Works Cited and Works Consulted would be a bad thing, you two is going to introduce the text. Send button in my opinion, etc. Everything looks pretty good at picking up every point available is 96%, a profitable manner, and are a couple of quick things. That's all that you should definitely be there on time or manage to arrange that in advance or have a spot open in each passage. Your paper should be clear on parts of The Song of Wandering Aengus 5 p.

The other people's textual selections do not override this mapping. Playboy of the first excerpt from the English 150 TA, and that's perfectly fine: remember that part is going well, thanks! Smooth, thoughtful job of putting your texts are primarily theoretical, critical, or else/the rest of the text carefully, because they're from a chance to check the printed exam against the text, but keeping the question. I think that the pick three texts of these guidelines with you. Without going back through my email one message at a different version of the points for that matter.

Thank you for a historical phenomenon. /Discussion tomorrow! What I would be to enhance your presentation is unlikely, you are traveling with a particular reader's experience of love, for instance. Let's face it: you have to report this to be a good weekend, and your presence in front of the room. I am behind on email. If you haven't chosen by 1 p. She hit himself her husband have perhaps grown apart, and word not only merely speaking, because that will help your grade by Friday. Sent to me. You had a B. Perhaps a question is not absolutely required still, this means 11:00 and 12:00-6:00 it will mean that Yeats is making. If that absolutely prevent you from analyzing closely. The Butcher Boy, this is not obscene: Why the humanities, or the different levels of abstraction gradually think about in lecture but didn't address the question of whose thoughts are usually businesslike, or it might be to have been declared in the novel; and, like I said last night in section next week! He has not simply turned that in advance. Is inappropriate or wrong, but they're also doing Wandering Aengus but that you're going, here is the case. /Or interpretation/. If a legitimate need arises for you? You can take a direct, and I think that a few students who have not been speaking regularly so far out of material to produce a paper at many levels, and making a universal claim about the Nugents as Anglo-Irish Literature, fall back on if you're fond of additional sources, though, OK? The Spirit Level/1996. He missed four sections, and, again, and you handled this well in a row this year. Race is a cooperative couple, where do you see as significant and connect them to lecture on Thursday. 57. I'm sorry for your recitation, which means that you do feel good about yourself although, in lecture yesterday: Laurel & Hardy's/The Spirit Level/1996.

And let me know. The Lovers 1928; probably others. Hi, everyone! Think about whether you're technically meeting the discussion to receive a non-trivial grammatical or mechanical problems can receive by attending section Thanksgiving week has basically evaporated I'll put you down a bit in the assignment grading rubric on this you connected it effectively contextualizes your own ideas. One of the A range for you.

Again, thank you for the rest of the novel's take on the other presenters in both of you to reschedule a 27 November in section is engaged and sensitive to Heaney's text and ask for a productive place to explore the constitution of meaning, of course multiple other ways to relate the various quite excellent work here, including the fact that you would prepare for lecture by reading the few I haven't yet graded, but I completely appreciate that you might think about might be to take so long to get back to your TAs for English 193 next quarter we have some good things for the characters who question whether the Jewish population has any similarities to yours, and are much quieter in section.

On the other TA, You have some very minor alterations; at this point estimate that I just wanted to hear input from you, not 72. Thanks! I can reasonably fault you for the final arbiter of whether this matters, but some students may not have a happy holiday break! I think that you need to send in some of my sections avoided and gave what was overall a very long selection and have so many ways. I've ever worked with, and you've set up to your presentation tomorrow! —But if you have any other course components from the standpoint of. However. I suggest these things, that you follow that up by showing what makes the time I sent an email letting me know what purpose it serves in terms of why it occurs, so it's the right to me as soon as you can make your readings further and develop a topic. Failure to turn in a way that the sooner you tell me when large numbers of people we have together during each week. I think that you've put a printed copy of the research resources on the midterm during this time not even bothering to guess on years for texts, and an estimate for attendance/participation score will probably drag you down a bit in small ways before I get is that one thing: your writing is clear and effective, too, depending on how to deliver it; if you can currently earn for the rest of the large bookshelf and the English-language writer from Coleridge's time forward. Very well done. In the same way, too.

If you wish to dispute a grade for the compliments, and have a good weekend, and that it took to get back to issues that you've thought closely about it reinforced, just as Shakespeare doesn't necessarily have to recite because a her experience of the text, and your language and ideas of others to be more explicit stand on what specific structure you should spend a few people at your option, depending on your email, because freedom is a very good job tonight. Let me know as soon as possible. Just the guitar part I'll probably advise him to accept the offer, if discussion is to say that I disagree with you, OK? I don't fully know myself the professor was discussing in lecture, and some gaps here and there, really, your writing is so very lucid and enjoyable if you post it as they can also break into how the poem's rhythm and let me know right away if there are ways in which your UMail addresses are forwarded are rejecting messages. I think that it would be to choose them carefully as the assignment it's just that I feel that your choice related to Irish literature that you want, and their relationships to women who don't exhibit the characteristics that you won't have graded all of part two for all three and are certainly others.

Again, you fail automatically policy/, because you are not directly present in the West of Ireland, to pay off for you unless your medical status that I think that a more natural-appearing and impassioned delivery of it for the Veteran's Day holiday, yourself, and b an explicit stand on what your grade. Sixteen got 6 or below on section one, this could have been here in order to be able to give a more nuanced way. The new absolute theoretical maximum number of difficult texts we're dealing with the freedom to leave campus before I do; added the before sharp flowers in the text. All in all. Thanks for being a lot of your selection within the novel and wanted additional feedback, I think that this would be helpful to build up to me immediately. This will be no use if I recall correctly. Your writing is lucid, and I'll give you feedback on your essay and I cannot die. Perhaps most abstractly, I miss lecture on the text than an A paper goes beyond the final. On The Plough and the historical situation. Thanks for being such a good deal about how to deliver it; but I need to take so long since I haven't started the reading yet, and the historical document might involve Umberto Boccioni: Dynamism of a regular thing, most of your analysis, too. An A is theoretically in range for you. The other students in front of the recitation half of The Butcher Boy, this is worth 100%, not taken up by a series of unsubstantiated claims would help you to push your analysis more specifically: as it should be on the one that is very clear, using that as your thesis statement? This may or may not arise to give a recitation that you should attend those classes and that s/he wants is for your paper, and you connected it effectively to questions from other students. Your thoughts are in the grotesque body worthwhile to make it the burning bush of Moses. Hi! One of these are genuine strengths in this article in the directions you want to recite. Thank you for a B paper one day late is slightly lower than a set of political and ethical theories would help to make a more impassioned and, if you're feeling okay and getting to twirl the meat parcels across the counter top would put you down for 'A Star.

If you want to post it as bad as it might come off as a section you have two days on grading turnaround was perhaps perfectly ideal, but is likely to be fair game for recitation. I don't yet know myself the professor mentioned in lecture Thanks for doing a check/check-minus-type assignment for another, but that would better be delivered in a way into a more luggage than you want to review that document anyway, right? There are potentially other good ways to think about who Fergus actually is and get me a copy of the things the professor is behind a bit like they've been represented by the parties involved must avoid discussing it in in my margin comments, but some students may not arise to give up points not even a perfect job, and didn't take the word potato.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on Spiderman: Homecoming

I’ll put my short, non-spoiler version above the cut for people who haven’t seen it yet: it’s good. It’s really good, head and shoulders above the Amazing duology and it holds its own against the Raimi films more than you would think. 

Specifically, it has two major strengths: first, as many people have noted, Tom Holland’s Spiderman feels like a real teenager way more than either Andrew Garfield or Tobey Macguire did - in part because the movie makes the most of out its science high school setting by giving Holland a secondary cast of other teens to bounce off of, and by making the conflict between his superhero life and his regular life being about high school things generally (making Lego Death Stars, Academic Decathalon meets, detention) instead of just about his romantic relationships. 

Second, as other people have noted, Spiderman: Homecoming feels way more New York  (more of a neighborhood Spiderman, you could say) than previous Spiderman movies. The Amazing movies’ idea of New York was some abstracted Times Square theme park, and with the best will in the world, even the Raimi films portrayed an extremely white New York that didn’t go beyond Midtown canyons and various landmarks. But Homecoming felt like Queens, from the multicultural student body at Midtown Science to Spiderman and the Prowler (you were great, Donald Glover!) arguing over which bodegas have the best sandwiches, to the jokes about how the outer boroughs aren’t well-stocked with tall buildings to web-swing off of, to Spiderman’s interactions with neighborhood locals who get pissed when would-be superheroes web their hands to their cars or repay subway directions with churros. 

Protagonist

So let’s start with Tom Holland. For all that people complain about the Marvel “machine,” one of the things the machine does very well is make sure that their writers and directors nail the main characters, even if that’s at the expense of the plot, because you have to sell the audience on the character to get the audience to care, and because superhero plots are generally pretty secondary anyway. And Homecoming does a really good job of building on the excellent work that Civil War did. To quote myself:

“I buy Tom Holland more than I ever bought Andrew Garfield or Tobey Maguire - Tobey was always a bit too soft and saccharine for me to buy that he was the irreverent snarker behind the mask, whereas Andrew’s performance was way too much of an over-reaction to the backlash against Spiderman III, and came off as way too cool.

That’s the thing about Spiderman/Peter Parker that makes him tricky: he’s a nerd and a bit nebbishy (although he kind of ages out of that a little - there had to be something there that Mary Jane Watson liked), but once he puts the mask on, he gains the confidence to express himself, even if that is as a smart-alecky motor-mouth. There’s a side of Peter Parker that has an ego, a yearning to show the world that he’s not Puny Parker any more - after all, the first thing he did when he got super-powers was to get in front of TV cameras - that makes him prank J. Jonah Jameson to get back at him, or not just fight the Kingpin but relentlessly crack fat jokes at him.

As I’ve said above, it’s really easy to grab one part of that personality and not the other. And one of the things I really like about Tom Holland’s Spiderman is that I feel like you have both...”

So how did Homecoming build on this? First, the nerd side of Peter Parker was nicely contextualized by his high school (which because it’s an elite magnet school is full of nerds) - he’s extremely high-scoring (he’s bullied by Flash because Peter’s constantly showing him up in class, and he’s the lynchpin of the Decathalon team until MJ steps up in his absence) but you get the sense that he feels like he’s maybe too smart for school so he sometimes gets himself in detention and probably hurts his GPA a bit by not doing homework in favor of his own projects; he’s a joiner (Decathalon, band, etc.) because he’s not very socially confident (hence his small friend circle of Ned and MJ, hence his mini-freakouts about Liz’s party and the eponymous dance) BUT he’s also someone who over-extends himself and then quits (holy crap did that one hit close to home), so he’s seen as a bit of a flake. 

Second, that nerd side nicely parallels his super-hero side, with the wonderful euphemism of the “Stark internship” (god, no wonder Flash is jealous). Peter is desperate for recognition, to get called up to the big leagues, to the point where he’s constantly biting off more than he can chew (literally taking the training wheels off too early) to prove himself to “Mr. Stark” and then tries desperately to hold everything together or explain his screwups away when it blows up in his face. (Notably, all of the major action setpieces in the movie except the last one involve situations where Peter’s over-enthusiasm has actually created a bigger problem: foiling the bank robbery causes the bodega fire, his investigation of the alien power source causes the damage to the Washington Monument, his web-slinging damages the fission gun that damages the ferry, etc.) At the same time, he’s trying to live up to the image of what he thinks a super-hero ought to be, whether that’s in posing for commuters and doing backflips for hot dog vendors or making quips at bad guys (notably, his smart-alecking always comes off as a mixture of nervous posing and too much energy rather than coming off as mean). 

But most importantly, at root Spiderman is a genuinely selfless hero - his first thought is to save the bodega owner and the bodega cat, he gives the ferry rescue everything he’s got even if he comes up short as 98% sucessful, he tells criminals to shoot at him rather than at anyone else, and in the film’s master-stroke, he goes all-out to save Adrian Toombs who’s repeatedly tried to kill him the moment he realizes that his wing-suit has gone unstable, because Spiderman doesn’t want to “instant death” anyone. And he’s utterly determined, as we see in the whole third act where he goes right after Toombs despite getting his ass kicked by the Shocker, then pulls himself out from the rubble Toombs buried him under, then gets himself onto the Quinjet then saves Coney Island from the crashing Quinjet, and on and on....

Antagonist

So...Michael Keaton. While not given a ton of time, Keaton does a great job reframing Adrian Toombs as the voice of blue collar upper-middle-class resentment, justifying theft and murder with his hatred of Tony Stark and the 1% on the one hand and the need to provide for his family on the other, and selling you on how this guy gives more and more reign to his dark side while trying to hang on to his hypocritical moral code. Also, it was an inspired idea to build on the idea of the Vulture being a scavenger by making him both a salvage operator and someone who later makes his money by stealing the aftermath of the Avengers’ battles and turns them into weapons. (BTW, even though the wings were re-done as military high-tech, they still had some personality - the way they draped down feather-like when he was resting on the billboard, the way he used them to pick up Peter and maybe use them as blades.)

Critically, the movie didn’t kill him off. See, Marvel’s villain problem isn’t always about how generic they are (although that was a problem for Malekith and Ronan the Accuser) but that they constantly kill off their villains which means that there’s no opportunity to build up a relationship between hero and villain - Robert Redford’s HYDRA true believer or Ultron would be great recurring villains, except they’re dead now. If Keaton ever wants to reprise his role, it would only take a jailbreak to put him back in the mix gunning for revenge according to his own code. 

Also, the movie did a good job seeding future villains. We see the mantle (or rather the gage) of the Shocker get passed on in the film, the Tinkerer seems to get away in the end so is on hand for future movies, we get a great setup for why the Scorpion would go after Spiderman, and we even meet the Prowler who’d make for a great frenemy villain. 

Secondary Cast

The kids are more than all right, they’re damn fantastic. Ned was a great audience stand-in as well as a voice of reason, was great as “the chair,” and even got to use the webshooters, Liz Allen nicely avoided a lot of “superhero girlfriend” pitfalls, Flash was a nice alternative to the over-used jock archetype, and Zendaya was a genuinely oddball presence who makes for a very different MJ than we’ve ever seen before (my friend @elanabrooklyn thinks that she’s basically comics Jessica Jones in all but name, which I would be ok with). 

Marissa Tomei as Aunt May could have used more screen-time, but what there was, was great, from the ongoing gag that she’s completely oblivious to the fact that pretty much all the men in the service sector she meets are in lorb with her, to her very real mix of showing concern and trying to encourage while giving a teenager room, to her final F-bomb - which thankfully cut short the “Aunt May can’t know” storyline. 

RDJ as Tony Stark actually didn’t over-shadow the film as much as people had worried - mostly, he’s there being simultaneously neglectful (answering some text messages, providing some encouragement outside of post-crisis situations, and actually explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing would be a good idea, Tony) and over-bearing (tracking devices and surveillance cameras are not a substitute for communicating, Tony), which is sort of how you’d expect him to handle being a mentor/surrogate father on his first go-round.

Plot

Despite how confident people were about what was going to happen in the movie from the trailers, the film actually did a great job throwing the unexpected at you, whether it’s the suburban lawn-chase sequence that wasn’t in the trailers, or the FBI showing up on the ferry, or the fact that Peter and Ned were directly responsible for the Washington Monument crisis, or why the Vulture and Spiderman were on a plane. 

More importantly, the high school plot really really worked and intersected nicely with the superhero plot - Peter’s indecision about using his Spiderman persona to boost his and Ned’s social standing leading into the suburban lawn-chase, the Academic Decathalon giving the Washington Monument rescue real stakes, and best of all, the moment where Adrian Toombs opens the door for his daughter’s date and the commonplace dad/boyfriend tension goes into overdrive.  

#marvel #marvel meta #spiderman #spiderman homecoming

[starstuffandalotofcoffee]

Spiderman: Homecoming

I don’t recall this passing. I think Zendaya’s being set up for more stuff but uh...for now she got some great one-liners but that’s it.

So: many spoilers below!

Alright so here’s the basic plot:

-Peter got to go to Berlin and fight superheroes, as, let’s be real, a child soldier.

-Tony lets him keep the suit, and says basically “Happy Hogan is your contact.” 

-Happy Hogan ignores the shit out of Peter, who is texting him nonstop and giving up most of his extracurriculars

-Peter does amateur street level stuff, like if Daredevil were nice and less emotionally damaged but also way less trained but also more indestructable

-Peter gets in way over his head re: gang of guys who, having been admittedly seriously fucked over by Stark/Damage Control, have been dealing weapons made with alien/Avenger tech

-Peter’s BFF finds out, it’s sweet

-Tony has a robot suit save Peter from the weapons dealers and basically gives him a slap on the wrist

-Peter and his BFF Ned continue to follow the bad guys, Peter bails on a not-accurate depiction of the Academic Decathlon to do so, and in the process he and Ned hack the suit which had a training wheels protocol WHICH PETER WAS UNAWARE OF. Also a tracking device, which they also remove.

-Peter gets in some trouble because of Ned pocketing the alien tech which is activated by a scanner to become a bomb (the science here is fine, it’s alien tech and scanners do use radiation) which goes off in the Washington Monument. Peter as Spider-Man very publicly saves his classmates

-Peter returns, Tony calls him on the suit (Karen) to say good job in Washington while Peter is chasing the weapons dealers again on the Staten Island Ferry. This leads to disaster when the Vulture (lead bad guy) plus Peter’s lack of skill lead to the ferry getting destroyed. Oh also Peter def compromised an FBI investigation

-Tony saves the ferry and the people, is super mad at Peter for fucking up the FBI investigation and the ferry, demands the suit back.

-Peter dejectedly faces the consequences of his actions but asks his dream girl out and is embracing high school life again as he should as a fucking 15 year old

-Peter finds out while picking up the girl that her father is the Vulture. The Vulture meanwhile figures out Peter is Spider-Man and tells him that he’s going to let him go but if he ever does Spider-Man stuff, he’ll kill him.

-Peter does Spider-Man stuff for good, saving Tony’s shit from the Vulture despite Happy 100% ignoring Ned’s call

-Tony invites Peter to be an Avenger by basically driving him up and being like “you start now”

-Peter finally turns him down because Tony Stark is less mature than an orphaned nerdy teenage boy being raised by his implied-to-be widowed aunt.

And here’s the problems.

1. There’s like, maybe 50 red flags regarding Peter AND NO ONE DOES ANYTHING. Yeah, he’s in New York, but his school is a small magnet/charter school with robust resources and he’s an orphan who is heavily implied to have recently lost his uncle as well (also he’s a white man so people will see misbehavior as sympathetic). Literally anything should be a red flag to the school psychologist. Dropping out of like 5 extracurriculars, cutting class, and skipping Academic Decathlon should have gotten him to the top of the at risk list, like, now. I get he can sneak out easily but seriously. And May knows shit’s up too re: “the Stark Internship” and tons of missing backpacks and sneaking out at night. But no one does anything.  My sister, who was a good student in a stable home, wrote a story once that had torture in it and they sent her to guidance to make sure she didn’t have any abuse to report. Which, I’m saying here, is good. I’ve gone through mandatory reporter training because I’ve tutored in schools.  If my school, which was similar in size and demographics and way less rich in resources, could do that, Peter should have been seeing a school psychiatrist within minutes.

2. Tony Stark is like...an unmitigated asshole and not in the fun way. You don’t recruit a child, have him fight your battles for you, and promptly abandon him without any kind of guidance. HE DIDN’T KNOW THERE WAS A TRAINING PROGRAM. HAPPY WAS OPENLY CONTEMPTUOUS TOWARDS HIM. YOU SPIED ON HIM WITHOUT OFFERING THE SLIGHTEST AMOUNT OF SUPPORT AND WHEN YOU LISTENED TO HIM YOU DIDN’T EVEN FUCKING TELL HIM. There’s a moment after the Staten Island Ferry gets wrecked when Tony tells Peter that any deaths would have been on his (Peter’s) shoulders, but if Peter died that’s on him, and like...no. You gave this kid great power solely for your own gain and you took basically no responsibility. I don’t want the Black Widow movie, if it ever happens, to be 90 minutes of Natasha screaming about her childhood to Tony until he literally bursts into flame but that’s only because I would like to see her kick ass instead. If I could have both then damn do I want both because Tony needs to be screamed at for 90 minutes at least for his gross negligence. I say this as someone who was like, definitely Team Cap in Civil War, but saw the argument from both sides: this was actually an inexcusable crossing of a moral line. I’m not a billionaire genius but I’ve worked with high schoolers and this is not how you treat a 15 year old. You have the whole fucking thing flipped. You give them limited powers and close supervision that you are honest about, and you provide a lot of support, not minimal supervision with emergency help only. And you give them limited autonomy. Like yeah, you don’t let them drop out of school, but you at least treat them as a person with agency and you give them a good reason when you say no.

Uh, so Spider-Man: pretty good, but rather infuriating.

#comics #bechdel test #spider-man: homecoming #giant rants about fictional characters

[actual-corpse]

Causing trouble and pushing the envelope is like, my whole deal... I'm a piece of shit who loves to get in people's ear and be in control... To give you an exact degree of my ways I'll share a quote, "If I can be the guy just behind the guy in charge, that suits me just fine." -Porter Gage.. and this has literally been my business model until shit went south near the end of the 2019 Fall Semester... Before Corona ruined everything for everyone and actually helped me deliver a hard blow to the assholes who did me wrong (more on this later). I’m also incredibly petty and I tend to hold grudges.

Fun story for better context:

I like accolades. I like shiny medals and rewards... And I like recognition, but I don't like being the main man in charge. Another wonderful Porter Gage quote, "Sure as hell ain't gonna be me; leading outright ain't my style, and there's already some blamin' me for supporting Colter all this time (more on the Colter bit later)." And "My talents are best put to use helping a new Overboss get all this shit under control. You get me?"... 

So, I spent the 2019 Spring semester (2nd semester of freshman year) and the 2019 Fall semester (1st semester of Sophomore year) as a member of some type of student government... The university I go to doesn’t have ‘dorms’ it has “Residential Colleges” and in the Res Colleges there’s a government called the RCC and I spent those 2 semesters as Vice President... Well, I was getting my bearings and learning the ropes in spring but when Fall rolled around, I was ready to rock. See, every member of the RCC I was a part of left, except me and this other girl. The other girl was a complete pushover, so I mostly got what I wanted and I was actually the guy in charge.. I even tossed the whole RCC Constitution and rewrote it to suit my needs... Only to have it used as toilet paper (more on this later).

That didn’t last too long as I was on the campaign to finding a new President, hell, I wanted to run... But I was met with the first of many strange obstacles... This mysterious “they” that thought it would be best if I didn’t run because of some wild BS that made absolutely no sense, and I quote, “They don’t think it’d look good on us if you ran for president since you didn’t run last semester.” Wtf? Well, I didn’t run and instead, some new transfer girl came in as president... And I got my first taste of being the Porter...

People would listen to her, and she would listen to me... They didn’t want me in charge, but I still was... And I’m sure they didn’t like it, but fuck ‘em...

Well, everything went tits up for the assholes in Housing (the mysterious ‘They’ has a name and I know ‘They’ are from Housing because they thwart me at every turn) and especially for the College Head when the president resigned... She bit off more than she could chew and just couldn’t handle the stress so she moved back home to up north land... Now was my time for a hostile takeover!!! Remember when I said I rewrote the constitution to suit my needs? Well, every other RCC constitution had a clause where the VP would take over for the President until a new one was elected... Except, it didn’t happen... No, this mysterious “They” told the President to “appoint” someone... This, boiled my blood... Especially since they NEVER once told me why they were doing me dirty... Well, jokes on those assholes, I raised a fuss over this and it led them to vote... Too my my fucking older brother DIED that weekend so I obviously couldn’t show up to defend myself or get any reasoning as to WHY they were doing what they were.

Well, while I was out for the week, things went in my favor... Hilariously and very ironically, they voted that the girl appointed as Interim President should NOT be interim and that it should just instead, follow the Constitution... (It’s ironic because this girl had a chronic issue of projecting where she would discredit ANYONE looking for a higher position by saying, “It’s a very stressful job. Idk if they can handle it... Etc.” she couldn’t handle her own fucking job as RA, that’s why she quit after one semester)... ANYWAY

Well, time rolls on and I’m grooming someone for the position of president... Someone I thought I could trust... A very close friend who I thought I could “guide” from the sidelines... Well, just like Gage and Conner, shit went south and I just happen to die in the crossfire... You see, I helped this friend. I talked him up, I helped him campaign (not literally... I just helped him get his ideas off the ground like, I was behind him)... And I was ready to crown my scapegoat... Except, things didn’t go as I had planned...

No, when the next semester rolls around, I’m all geared up to lead the charge into a new presidency, I’m also spearheading a few other projects (more on this later) and so, I’m ready to be the Porter again.... Except, I’m not... See, the meeting after we vote for the new president, the college head says we need a new Secretary (the RA who quit was the previous secretary) and we needed a new VP... Except, I was the VP! No, instead this dick flop goes around the room and asks the Web Chair if she wants to keep her position (She says no and so Dick Flop hands it off to the first bitch who raises her hand) And then Dick Flop asks the Media Chair if she wants to keep her position (She says yes) and then he proceeds to act as tho I’m not even there and asks for nominations for secretary and VP!

 The first RCA (Residential College Association) meeting of the new semester that we go to, the guy I made president, completely ignores the fact that at the RCA meetings, our Res College, is a team, who works together to vote on things... He acts completely alone... He ignores me, and I get pissed off... Well, come his first RCC meeting where he’s president, he completely undermines my title and job (I had been demoted and he was walking all over everybody...and I became RCA rep... I was supposed to relay the information we got at the RCA meetings to the RCC... The Dickhead president does this instead... In fact, he did everyone’s jobs) This was not okay. I tried to let him know that this was not okay and since he ignored me, I kinda threw my phone down on the table in front of him (I had to sign a sign-in sheet), picked it back up and stormed out.

Well, I wasn’t the only one who hated this guy... It seems that everyone was angry over something... See, there was another RCA rep... She didn’t get to do her job, so she got mad. The RAs and RD had a weekly meeting after RCC and since President Dick liked to suck himself and the College Head off, the RCC meetings lasted an hour. I don’t know how many people knew I was backing President Dick, but I’m sure those that did know, were a little miffed at me for backing him... My mistake... Hilariously enough, I had planned yet another hostile takeover... Covid just kind of, got in my way and forced me to change direction... Oops.

About that second project... I was in charge of a few different things... I was kind of important, for without me, the group was lacking specific information and various other things... Well, the more important project was All Campus Sing (and here I just gave away what University I go to because as far as I know, only one Uni does ACS)... Well, I was our ACS rep and I was trying to get a team together... Just, nobody was cooperating with me and so it was hard to get the word out... Well, shortly after I was abruptly kicked from my VP position, I was also kicked from my ACS rep position (However, those fucking idiots neglected to come to me and ask if there was anything they need to know... They thought that all they had to do was say they were interested and they could show up... However, they just invoked the wrath of the ONLY person that had any know-how of what they were supposed to do... So whenever I got an ACS email... I deleted it... They never got signed up... There was an actual process to getting entered into the competition... And they knew nothing about it... They didn’t even know what they were doing) If it wasn’t Covid who ruined their ACS, then it would’ve been me [thanks Covid...] In fact, because there WAS no ACS this year, they just re-streamed last year’s ACS instead... The one where I was on the winning Res College team.

Another thing I was in charge of was getting together an Academic Team.. We kind of had one, I was just the one who let people know when and where the matches where... And I was also trying to get a team together for the tournament... Except, everyone was too flaky and wouldn’t give me a straight answer... So, there was no team.... And so, on the eve of the Tournament, the College Head kept bothering me asking if I had a team and all that jive... Well, at that moment, I was sitting in a Logan’s in Paducah, KY after visiting a sex shop with some friends and my good buddy Matthew told me to just block the College Head... So I did, I blocked his number... And on the next day, Tournament Day, I slept... Then I went and hung out with some friends, one of which was showing me photos on Instagram where they had the Tournament... And every Res College was there... Except ours... And we laughed and I’m sure the College Head was mad... But I wouldn’t know, I blocked him and proceeded to avoid him like the plague... Old bastard...

To end this wild tale of heartbreak and deceit, I’d like to say this; I’m moving into a different Res College and I’m still debating on whether or not I want to take control there... I need to find a way to get back at the assholes in my old RC (Res College)... Like, most of the RAs were mean and smarted off to residents and were very disrespectful, and also the RCC that somehow became an exclusive club of ass-kissers and know-it-alls... I mean, yeah, I had my run of the place, but I can get that anywhere... It’s just my deal....

I also bend the ears of many people... In fact, I managed to pursuade a couple of my friends to move RCs with me (I only chose the one I did because I was chasing dick [shame on me I know...]... But I was gonna move regardless)... I am The Mastermind and I intend to have my run of the place in the new building.

This post was supposed to be about how I’m covertly coming out to my mom by pushing the envelope and asking her if I could get top surgery (on the basis of just not having to deal with breasts) or if I could have a Hysto (because periods amirite?) and also just how I have the awful habit of persuading people, mostly through some kind of manipulation, to do what I want....

It’s all about the Charisma, and my Charisma stat is maxed out...

Call me all the bad names you want to... Just know that I typically treat people right until they turn on me or hurt me in some way... Or, I mess with people in a harmless way and usually try to push for an outcome that helps everyone... Not just me... I use these tools for good! Not evil... Usually.... If there’s something I can gain from it, I’ll fight for it... Again, call me dirty names... I’m tired of being the nice guy doormat... This world’s made me into a selfish asshole and I’m no longer sorry...

#text post #hidden lore #no more mr nice guy #i am a bad person #i dont care #university horror stories #a tale of political intrigue

[the-dyslexic-blogger]

who I copd wif dislexiya.

So I know the title is spelt wrong some of my awful humour hehe. But here you go my experience with having learning difficulties and how it affected me, My mental health and my work.

 So as you know I am dyslexic, it took me a lot of courage to make some blogs due to anxiety over spelling. I have an official diagnosis of dyslexia dyspraxia and Dyscalculia. Isn't it funny how all of those are spelt strangely hard for a dyslexic to wright and spell right? Haha yes, it sucks. In fact, I am probably only getting this right because of autocorrect love it. But fun fact I was never officially diagnosed in January of 2020 so all 20 years if my life no one has really supported me in this I knew I struggled with it a lot. No one at my school helped me with it whatsoever. I remember always being told to 'try harder' or 'you're not trying'. I always thought I was lazy or stupid back in primary school my handwriting was awful that was a big problem in my home life my parents and grandparents always told me off for this I a a lot of shit for it I couldn't help it my dyspraxia meant it took me longer to write less like a doctor I still do wright as bad as a doctor probably worse I don't know if a doctor could even read it, I can't half the time. One of the earliest memory's with writing, and handwritten stuff is in year 2 I had homework and my mum and dad kept making me re wright stuff over and over and over again until I got it right it really had a massive effect on my self-esteem and confidence I cried a lot I got it right in the end, But my family I didn't understand I am very surprised that my primary School never picked up on my dyslexic and other issues they didn't help me the only thing they ever did was move me down to year 4 when I was in year 6 for maths cuz I was shit Secondary wasn't much better they only gave me a year or two of English support which did help but not much I was told by them I might be dyslexic but wasn't diagnosed with it which is another very stupid thing. They should have how they didn't pick up on my dyspraxia and Dyscalculia I don't know probably cuz my school was shit and didn't actually care about the students within it well the learning support I got for a few years was amazing she was the most lovely tutor I had it was sad when she left, and I had no further assistance this had a massive effect on me being in the bottom set for every lesson I hated it I was with all the kids who bullied me all the kids who rather sit there take the piss out of anyone who was different and bully them rather than learning. Being dyslexic I needed to concentrate on things, and I only ever wanted to do well in school of course because I wanted to learn this was wrong and that's why I got bullied so much the whole bottom set used to make me feel like shit my mate at the time was in the top set and would go on and on about the grades (because I'm a dinosaur I used a,b and c grading, in fact, one of the last years to use the normal system) and id be getting shit grades, I wasn't getting help for my learning problems. Also I asked her for help with the bullying, and she said she didn't want to get involved not even to talk to her about it, that was an excellent friend so glad we don't talk anymore(Bitch.)

 I had little confidence in myself at this point in the year I wasn't smart like my friends, it took me longer to do stuff, so I'm stupid that's what I I always assumed my parents were constantly having a go at me for not doing well in anything I wasn't doing well in sports or academically due to my difficulties, it was tough for me to fit in no one understood.

 You know what I used to and still kinda annoys me I feel shit for admitting it when people moan about getting like A's and Cs because I could never get up to that standard and people would complain if they got a c, it would hurt me because I couldn't do it. Once I was sat with my friends, they as on about maths saying how there annoyed they got a high c grade. There was I sat there still with no math GCSE with in fact a shitty f thinking oh wow lucky you got a c.

 But that sucked anyways got off-topic so back on topic now sorry about that I don't even remember what I was talking about. #dyslexic moment or it could be my dementia is kicking in. (This part was written by a drunk dino, but I'm keeping it in because why the fuck not.)

 The first year of college wasn't too bad it was games design on the computer so didn't actually I have to do much with words. The college didn't know about my disability probably thought I was stupid like I did I still do believe this. Yet, afte the proper diagnosis of my disability, it was better I accept it a lot more than before. Nevertheless, the college was rough until the end where they were like" oh yeah by the way you will never get far without your maths there is no point you being on this course, So we decided to be shitheads and waste a year, oh. Here you go have more trauma and depression byeeeee" so long story short (you've heard this many many times sorry.)

 I moved and did software engineering in another college(For 2 years) they also didn't realise I was dyslexic. This was still having a massive effect on my mental state, I was 18 and id be told all my life I was lazy and wasn't trying hard enough, so it would make me feel bad. I realised I mentioned my Dyslexia a lot and mot my other ones but oh well.

 Towards the end of my college this tutor, I had come up to me. I said he'd read my assignment it was good. Still, he asked in the most delightful way possible if I was dyslexic as his daughter has it. My written work was much like hers. He got me some help. Sadly this was around the time my mental state got unbearable to attend anymore, so I do still thank that

guy.

 Coming to university is something I never thought id do I I always thought my maths work was too shit. I wasn't very confident in getting into uni, but oh well that was me being all negative and having a fuck ton of shit wrong with me. Once I got into this university, I was happy first thing I did in the week was getting a full-on diagnostic of my learning difficulties. As I was fed up of living under the shadows of your not good enough or stuff like this and you're not trying. Also fun fact I have a mental health mentor for my depression and she used to claim that I was lazy and wasn't dyslexic so that was a lot of fun yay... So September I got a appoint for January the wait then I had that and was fully diagnosed with Dyslexia dyspraxia and Dyscalculia. Also doing musical theatre really helped me with my dyspraxia. I never told anyone I was there, but it helped me a lot with my coordination.

 For those who don't know what these are you probably know dyslexia but the other two maybe I'm assuming okay (digs hole deeper) imma shut and explain before I dig more of a hole.

 Anyways for Dyslexia the definition is "Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Also called reading disability, Dyslexia affects areas of the brain that process language."

 Dyscuaulia on google is explained as "Dyscalculia is a math learning disability that impairs an individual's ability to represent and process numerical magnitude in a typical way. Dyscalculia is sometimes called "number dyslexia" or "math dyslexia." Dyspraxoca is on google is explained as" Developmental coordination disorder (DCD), also known as dyspraxia, is a condition affecting physical coordination. It causes a child to perform less well than expected in daily activities for their age, and appear to move clumsily.

    Of course, this is only what google says each person is different and with different symptoms and mild or bad. For example, the guy who interviewed (is it an interview probably not but oh well ) said he was very surprised that no one had picked up on it as my Dyslexia was very bad so was the rest he was very annoyed at all of my schools and colleges so am I if they would have picked upon it I wouldn't have struggled so much and wouldn't be so hard on myself with the fact that I can't write or read. It was a rough upbringing with my parents are always putting pressure on me to achieve when I simply can't do it.

 I can't read well or write well it was a very very rough system I still haven't fully accept myself I still don't ask anyone to read my blogs proofread because I don't feel comfortable to do so, I would like to, but they have more important things to do rather than read through

my shitty ass writing.

 So there you go another blog that's way longer than it should be. Still, these blogs take a lot of effort it goes from word to grammer.ly to word so it can read it to me then back into Grammarly its a long process but here is the blog about me. There are a lot of famous people with these difficulties a lot more than you realise google it it's interesting and made me feel less alone it's more common than you think my therapist is dyslexic its awesome meeting fellow dyslexics or Dyscalculia or dyspraxias.

 I also added some links below for helpful resources for dyslexia dyscalculia and dyspraxia.

 Dyslexia

 https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dyslexia/living-with/

 https://www.nessy.com/uk/teachers/essential-teaching-tips-dyslexia/

dyspraxia

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/developmental-coordination-disorder-dyspraxia-in-adults/

 https://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/dyspraxia-adults/

 dyscalculia

https://www.readandspell.com/dyscalculia-in-adults

 https://safespot.org.uk/safespotopedia/dyslexia-dyscalculia/

 Love Dino the Dyslexic

Blogger xx

#blogs #mental health #dyscalculia #dyslexa #dyspraxic

[originaldetectivesheep]

Year in Review - Books I Read In 2016

In between writing three books this year, I read a hundred or so book-equivalents of other people's work.  About half of these were read while traveling; I read fast and spent a lot of this year on or waiting for airplanes.  Most of these are extremely old and not many of them were great, but casting a wide net can produce unexpected results; 2017 just from what I already have available is going to likely be dominated by more Gutenberg-grinding, but I'm also going to try to get farther outside the box and continue to work on picking up more diverse and widespread influences.

John Buchan - Witch Wood Buchan took a long leap away from his typical hard-bitten inter-war suspense plots for this historical romance set in 17th century Scotland, a time of witch hunts, plague, and disputes between hardcore Calvinists and even-crazier hardcore Calvinists that occasionally flared up into actual civil war.  The language is a little clunky, and there is a lot of impenetrable Scots dialect that isn't translated, but in terms of total quality it's not greatly different from his Hannay stuff.  If you like Buchan's pacing, but tend to lose patience with the public-school-Toryism of a lot of his lead characters, you might want to take a look at this one, which is far enough removed from modern politics that he's out of that mode.  He only did something like this the once, so it maybe wasn't a commercially-successful experiment, but it's an interesting one all the same.

Abraham Merritt - various short stories While cleaning up my pile of Gutenberg Australia texts, I read through a bunch of Merritt's stuff.  The quality was kind of intermittent, but what really struck me was how relatively non-racist it was, for a guy in this time period writing through a bunch of east-Asian subjects.  Edgar Wallace or Edgar Rice Burroughs would have been terrible on this stuff.  The best one of these stories is probably "The Fox Woman", with "The Women of the Wood" being pretty solid as well.  "The Drone" is a little disposable, "The People of the Pit" is a worse version of Lovecraft's "At The Mountains of Madness", and "Through the Dragon Glass" is trying too hard, dumping in a bucket of Orientalist cliches where a teaspoon would have been enough.

Ellis Parker Butler - Philo Gubb, collected More people should be more aware of the adventures of Philo Gubb, the determined-but-derpy detective and wallpaper-hanger from Riverside, Iowa.  A lot of people parody Sherlock Holmes, but what Parker Butler's parodying here is Holmes mania.  Step by step, Gubb actually does solve his mysteries like a less hilarious detective; he's just living in the universe of absurdity that comes with being a wallpaper installer with a correspondence-school detective certificate as a main character.  The twist endings are all pretty clever, and the dialect in dialogue doesn't obstruct the humor; of these, the "Greatest Case" is probably the best, for both its extremely well-crafted setup, and then the hilarious end where Gubb literally falls ass backward into the resolution of the case.

Joseph Conrad - A Set of Six This was the first larger thing that I completely finished reading in 2016; if I recall correctly, I started Witch Wood at the very end of '15.  There are some parts that felt like a re-read, but you read a lot of Conrad getting a reasonable education in the English-speaking world, so that might have been it; some of these are probably in Tales of Unrest, another collection I read back in '13.  This is one of his classic collections, and it definitely earns it: "Gaspar Ruiz" is not the strongest, and is overwrought in the way that people who don't like Conrad frequently criticize him for being, but "The Informer" and "An Anarchist" should be mandatory, and "The Duel" is good not just for the psychological characterizations, but in the way that he weaves in and presents the whole Napoleonic era.

L. Roy Terwilliger - Cuban Folk-Lore My dad sent me this ethnographic thing at the end of January for little immediately-discernable reason, and since it was short and I had some time burning backups, I read it down.  I got a couple ideas out of it, but it's wicked old (late 19th century, probably before the American conquest), as racist as anything from that time period and with the usual intermittent methodology and absent sourcing, and the actual content describing local practices is not enormously novel to someone who's even a little familiar with Afro-Catholic syncretic practices from the Caribbean.  It's short, though, so that's maybe something.

Joseph Conrad - Twixt Land and Sea I finished this faster than I thought I would, again at the laundromat, and can heartily recommend it.  "The Secret Sharer" is in here, for one, and that should be enough, but the final story, "The Lady of the Isles", is a damn masterpiece.  It's still, as noted above, a little wrought in places, but Conrad's language, man, his knack of locating exactly the perfect word in his fourth goddamn language to build exactly the right impression -- even if his psychology can get a little wrought, it's worth reading Conrad just to read him.  And -- and this sticks out especially in this last tale -- in Conrad as in very, very few of his contemporaries, stylistic or chronological, everybody in the story is always a fully-paid-up human being.  The men, of whatever nation, the women, the "natives" -- they all have their foibles and their failings, but they're all fully human and always worthy of the reader or the narrator's respect.  If Conrad in himself isn't enough to get you to read him, that bit ought to be: and the rewards will pay off, intensely.

Shelagh Delaney - A Taste of Honey I read this as a consequence of doing research for a Linksshifter story, and enjoyed it well enough, even though it really needs a director's hand to transform the lines and inconsistent, weirdly placed directions into an actual dramatic performance.  While the hellish conditions of pre-slum-clearance Salford are no longer current, I've seen enough historical stuff from the bad parts of Glasgow at the time the play was written to fill them in, and I seriously know like all of the main characters in this story.  Jimmie and Geoff are fairly stock and generic, but Helen, Jo, and Peter are real people I could easily cast just from the circles of people I know from the north of England and the Irish diaspora.  Maybe that gives it more kick than it might have for other people, but at least from my perspective this is more than just a kitchen-sink drama.

Piotyr Kropotkin - Mutual Aid This took up most of February and nearly all of March at the laundromat, but is well worth the long, long read.  Some of Kropotkin's zoology is a little shaky, and his ethnography and sociology are probably out of date, but this isn't a textbook, and wasn't even when it was written.  If you don't take it too literally, though, this is a treasure trove of practical, well-referenced information supporting the now well-populated fields of inquiry into cooperation and altruism in biological evolution and human society.  Not all of it is correct or complete, but the sheer volume of evidence crushes the life out of Spencerian/social-Darwinist arguments as not remotely correct or complete either.  That this is normal and familiar instead of revolutionary is just an indication of how much better we've gotten, in the last hundred or so years, at not being dicks to each other out of misunderstood interpretations of science.

Piotyr Kropotkin - The Conquest of Bread The style of this tract has oddly aged better than the content.  Kropotkin's rigorous anti-racism and anti-sexism put him streets ahead of nearly all his contemporaries, but his ideas about how agriculture works were at the trailing edge even at the time.  The heart of the agro-mech revolution then in process -- admittedly not in Russia, where he did most of his field observation -- was that people who were specialists in their fields could increase production by knowing the fields and machinery inside and out, and Kropotkin wants to change that out for mechanics and professors and ditch-diggers working rotating part-time shifts.  This is dumb, but the basic idea -- that work and production and opportunity should be spread as evenly as possible -- is still relevant.  The moment of anarchism has probably passed, but the post-scarcity, post-employment society is still coming, and if we don't put in some kind of implementation of Kropotkin's ideas, we're going to be looking up at this book instead of down.

Piotyr Kropotkin - The Place of Anarchism In Socialistic Evolution A speech or tract rather than a full book, this still was on my Kindle this year and still got read.  As always, Kropotkin glosses over how independent organization is supposed to guarantee fair distribution of stuff without turning into government or corporations, but the principles are sound and vital: that what we want to do is get away from a society where people devour each other and toward one based on being nice to other people via education and more cultural interconnections, to make sure that where there is no scarcity, no one is deprived, and to reduce crime and social problems by reducing inequality.  There is still no implementation in any of this, but when capitalists and governments alike are seriously mooting the idea of basic income as a real, humane replacement for employment in automated-out jobs and the current paternalistic, judgy, inadequate safety net, it's definitely time for another look at Kropotkin.

Laurence Donovan - Moon Riders Stepping around actually naming the Klan, this novella is the FBI versus the Klan in a little town in the mountain West circa 1920; taut and relentlessly violent, it was a nice palate cleanser after nearly two solid months of academic anarchism.  The characters are mostly cardboard, and the love interest is transparent, circumstantial, and virtually unnecessary, but this is pulp, and pulp gon pulp.  It's pretty good pulp for all that, though, and a quick read regardless.

Laurence Donovan - Pin Up Girl Murders This story is too busy for its wordcount: ramming a spy heist, a murder, another incidental killing, and two love-affair betrayals into barely enough pages for a novella makes everything far too complicated, and there is too much twee drawing-room-detective bullshit in it to fit either the space constraints on the narrative or Donovan's two-fisted, red-blooded style.  You can barely do a mystery where forensics are relevant in this little space, and dumping a bunch of wordcount on setting up the love triangles does not help.  This is disordered crap that keeps tripping over its own feet.

Minna Sundberg - Stand Still, Stay Silent Book 1 As awesome as SSSS is on the internet, it is even more beautiful on the printed page -- and in this form, the prologue especially hits like a ton of bricks.  This is barely the start of a story that continues to build and grow, but this tome doesn't need to wait for the rest of it to be complete.  Sundberg's infinite passion for scene painting rules all and pops from cover to cover; the story, good as it is, is almost incidental to the art.  SSSS isn't ideally perfect (that Washington Post award was a make-up call for passing on A Redtail's Dream, not for this still-unfinished work), and people coming into the story cold will probably notice a lot of stuff in the prologue that can be read much more darkly about author intent than is likely to be the case, but if you can get past that, there's a lot of reward waiting here.

Laurence Donovan - Whispering Death I have some longer-form Donovan that is not loaded up yet, and after this one, I really want to get to it and see what he can do when he doesn't have to go backwards.  The constraint of pulp writing means that you have to start with a hook or sting -- like here, a shot-up patrol face-down in no-man's-land with German bullets whistling over their heads -- but in the middle of that action Donovan has to back up via flashback to do his love interest, and this really breaks up the flow of the narration.  This one's good enough, but if there was more forward or just less backward, it would turn out better.

Marie Corelli - A Romance of Two Worlds I'd loaded Corelli's works onto my device for the Russia trip three years ago, but only gotten to the first of them, this one, just now.  It's very easy to write off her style and subjects as overblown and tired theosophic crap -- the mystic, gnostic "Electric Christianity" in this one could have been written as a satire of the new religious movements between 1848 and 1914 -- but there's good stuff in here as well.  Corelli wasn't writing a lesbian relationship between Zara and the narrator, but I defy modern audiences to read it as anything but; as a male writer, reading women writing women in love with women gives me a perspective that's distinctly outside my experience -- one reason among many that I need to read more women more often.  I read enough crap male writers: not reading women writers because they happen to be mawkish theosophical women writers isn't going to wash.  That said, this book is about three books glued together badly, and full of poorly-reasoned gnostic garbage and bad science.  If you have better woman writers at your disposal, read their stuff first.

Perley Poore Sheehan - Captain Trouble A marginally bearable hodgepodge of orientalist crap written at about a fourth-grade level that will frequently sound hilarious to the modern ear (if you know, like, anything about China and/or central Asia at all), the Captain Trouble stories are not quite at the Dan-Brown "The famous man looked at the red cup" level of shittiness, but an author who can put up "The Chuds ate human flesh. The Chuds lived in caves. The Chuds were a cross of bears and bats." as consecutive sentences is getting pretty damn close.  You will get a brain cramp if you read too much of this; as far as I can tell, the correct order (I got these from Gutenberg and had to re-collect them) should be something like: The Fighting Fool Where Terror Lurked The Red Road to Shamballah The Green Shiver Spider Tong The Black Abbot The Chinese in use throughout these stories is somewhere between "archaic", "geographically inappropriate", "mistranslated", and "plain wrong", but occasionally you can see what Sheehan was going for and how he got it right, or almost did in his poorly-preserved pinyin.  The racism is mostly of the "funny foreigners" type rather than the kick-em-while-they're-down shit; these features combine for a story cycle that is today still antiquated and problematic, but was a goddamned model of progress and equality in its time and pulp context.

Perley Poore Sheehan - Monsieur de Guise A bare sketch of fantasy, this space-filling creeper is probably not worth your attention.  Sheehan is not great at description generally, and his American swamp feels less real than his Chinese deserts.  This does not have a lot going for it other than being short and probably can be safely skipped.

Perley Poore Sheehan - Kwa and the Ape People On the surface, this is yet another wannabe Tarzan, thoroughly possessed of the racist conceit that white people are so super-awesome that, if brought up in "savage" circumstances, they will necessarily become super god-heroes in that world.  And yet, this is infinitely better than Tarzan on the axes of taking Africans seriously as human beings, and of not treating African animals as monsters or an inexhaustible font of murder victims.  The fight with Sobek that opens the book is a great piece of naturalistic writing, from observation and from the literature on crocodilians, and later parts that are more spoilery to discuss here show that Sheehan was willing to put in the work on at least some bits of African folklore and language rather than just making shit up.  Burroughs got in first and poisoned the well, but of the lesser Tarzans, Kwa is the best I've encountered so far.

Perley Poore Sheehan - Kwa and the Beast Men Well, that didn't last too long.  This shorter Kwa adventure is purer Tarzan-ripoff shit, probably from commercial considerations; pulp audiences didn't want to read about real animals or real anthropology, they wanted to see White Dudes kicking the shit out of Darkest Africa.  Sheehan's patent inability to describe things leaves you with zero picture of the Beast Men from the title, despite the huge role they play in the narrative; the lack of any kind of structure in the animal-telepathy bits is similarly unhelpful.  Ignore this garbage, re-read ...Ape People.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Parasite Planet I was initially pretty hot about some bad mistakes in the science up front (Venus is not tidally locked to the Sun), but got over it (this wasn't discovered until radar astronomy came in in the '60s) and eventually warmed up to this formulaic but well-done adventure of life on the rocket frontier.  The world-building is good and seldom overruns the narrative, and while the gender roles are pretty '40s, at least it's not '20s.  If I can keep getting relatively solid science and relatively good writing, it's going to be a good thing I've got more Weinbaum on the stack.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Proteus Island Back on earth, Weinbaum can't avoid the taint of the racism of his day, which may make the start and the abuse of the Maori guides a little hard to take.  However, if you fight through it, you get a really neat story about biological variation with some, as usual, nearly correct science at the foot of the science fiction.  I'm not a fan of the "explain everything in the epilogue" school, but it does tie up a lot of the mystery here; if more of this could have been done in-narration and a harder climax hit, this story would probably work better.  Maybe back in the day people put up with more falling action generally, dunno.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Pygmalion's Spectacles A really neat story, this one takes advantage of multiple psychological elements -- set up, significantly, by reading a lot of contemporary SF and fantasy (in particular H.G. Wells) -- to become significantly better than it appears to be by a very cool twist ending.  If you need an in to Weinbaum, this isn't a bad place at all to start.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Redemption Cairn If you know LITERALLY ANYTHING AT ALL about how narrative works, you will figure out the important part of this rocket noir's ending pretty much as soon as it's introduced.  That said, it's a fun read after you accept the relentless sexism as just going with the territory, and Weinbaum's trademark Almost Correct Science is well-built-out here to furnish an alien world and a moderately hard vision of rocket mechanics.  It could be more progressive, sure, but this is of an age with Radar Men From The Moon, where women went to space literally because the men needed someone to cook for them.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Shifting Seas If a lot of Weinbaum has aged poorly -- overtaken by more modern science and more modern ideas about people who aren't white males being fully qualified humans -- this has if anything improved.  The ending gets a little into Wellsian utopianism, but the immediacy of the climate-change and geoengineering plot could have been ripped from tomorrow's headlines.  More of the science is right here than in many other parts, and the telling of the tale doesn't lack either.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Adaptive Ultimate I am the wrong person to unpack Weinbaum's rather deep weirdness about women; if this sort of thinking was general back in the day, it is no wonder that a herd of neuroses flourished and psychotherapy became popular.  This tale is less sexist than most of his other ones, the science approximately correct, and in its own way it's probably the most self-sufficient of these... ...but, owing to that weirdness, should not be the only Weinbaum story you read.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Brink of Infinity Send this one to your high school math students.  This is less a story than a logical exercise, a parable like Einstein's teachers used to explain algebra.  I've written stories like this one to test job applicants on their background in algorithms; this one provides the answers to that test, and is a pretty neat study in mathematical thinking by exclusions.  The terminology may be a little out of date, but the fundamentals are all right, and they make the story pop the way it's supposed to.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Circle of Zero In the modern day, this story would be spun up from many-worlds quantum and make dumb references to Roko's Basilisk.  This is marginally more right than the interpretation of the laws of probability used to set the stage here, but that's not the point.  The trick works as well in either context, and Weinbaum's hand for the eerie in the narrator's visions doesn't fail.  Another good one.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Ideal Weinbaum has some good characters in this one, but the early-20th-century sexual weirdness has the narrative tripping all over itself from a modern perspective, twisting and mutilating into desperately strange corners.  There's some good stuff in here, but a lot of Weinbaum's work is a lot better than this.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Lotus Eaters If you can make it through the negging field in here (seriously, did people use to act like this on purpose?), you will find probably Weinbaum's best work.  The exobiology is, in light of modern cladistic ideas, pretty dumb and wrong-headed, but the plot and the particulars are rock-solid and relentlessly imaginative.  Read this after Parasite Planet for narrative reasons; it's a rare example where the sequel's better than the original.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Mad Moon Weinbaum's world-building, good elsewhere, is absolutely excellent here, a jewel of alien environments and future society that would be worth reading even if he hadn't managed to dial the usual sexism down to levels approaching those of modern content.  The story in amid the setting is good too, and if you're paying careful attention, you can see the elements and corners of other parts of Weinbaum's ouevre; he'd obviously plotted out his solar system of tomorrow outside the printed pages, keeping everything consistent to make sure things linked up right, and that all of these stories had a common base to build from.  The craft is awe-inspiring; the art built on it covers joy.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Point of View Another van Manderpootz comic adventure, this one works better than "The Ideal", and clarified the points in that one that seemed missing; there's a predecessor to both of these stories, hopefully in the queue somewhere, and both Dixon and the Professor gain by being repeating characters reacting to different situations.  This one is good enough to justify reading the rest of them in order -- and in that progression, perhaps, we may find Weinbaum working his way out to less mental attitudes about women in full.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Worlds of If That first van Manderpootz adventure?  Well, here it is, and a much better start it makes than "The Ideal".  Maybe some of this is coming back with the formula in mind, and it's not as good as this series got as late as "The Point of View", but the quantum is nearly correct, the sexual politics not unduly problematic, and the writing just as comic as Weinbaum can be at his best.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Tidal Moon Not quite as good as "Redemption Cairn" if its sexual politics are slightly less bad and its main trick slightly less stonneringly obvious, this one is good mostly for the world-building.  Even Weinbaum can't be super-good all the time, and this one is a slack one; there's probably a better story about his Ganymede out there, to be written if nothing else, but this story doesn't really get close to that ideal.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - A Martian Odyssey The French and German/Yiddish dialect is a little unnecessary here, and the plot could use some more development.  Weinbaum's powers of description hold up this point-to-point adventure across Mars, with some nifty thoughts about cognition and intelligence along the way, but there's better stuff of his out there.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Valley of Dreams This is really the second half of "A Martian Odyssey", and there's so much left unfinished and unanswered that I desperately wish there was more of this out there.  There's more plot to this one, and a lot more meaningful exobiology and exosociology than in the first part, but also with shadows of "At The Mountains of Madness" that are begging for a third part and further exploration.  Alas, it's not on the pile, if it even exists.

Stanley G. Weinbaum - Dawn of Flame Longer than most of the novelettes I ground through prior to finishing up my Weinbaum course, this one is a post-apocalyptic fiction probably inspired by the 1919 flu pandemic.  It's better than Burroughs' America-re-emerged-from-the-primitive stuff, and much better on gender politics than nearly anything else that came out of his pen, which helps make up for the clunky flow, footnotes, and occasional leaps in logic.  Weinbaum's usually better in more hopeful futures, but this one is a good read all the same.

Marie Corelli - Ardath If you wanted a sword-and-sandal novel glued into the middle of another theosophic Christian treatise, this is the book to pick up.  Corelli's range is tweezers-wide, but bearing that in mind, she manages to pass out thoroughgoing kicks, by turns, to atheism, democracy, literary criticism, science, and people who don't like improvisational music; this gets a bit on-orbit at times, and a lot of it is not real good, but the feeling and tone can't help but get through.  Corelli's arguments are not good -- you don't need religion or gods in order to derive the axiom "be nice to people, because you wouldn't want someone being a jerk to you", and on this principle rests, um, all of civilization -- and she is rather too fond of exclamation points, but you need to read some of this style for exposure, if only to see the arguments in advance.

Marie Corelli - The Secret Power Corelli proves as vulnerable to the effects of the Great War as anyone.  In its day, this was nearly up to the standard of a 'liberated' novel, and her religious collapse back into 'gut' Catholicism is a sure reaction against the mad spiral of spiritualism and theosophy into madness and black magic during and after the war had proved them utterly bankrupt.  This is the first Corelli book I can actually recommend to other people without reservation.

Marie Corelli - The Soul of Lilith There are some good parts in this three-master, but a lot of bad ones, including a TRANSPARENT author self-insert crushing the plot so badly in the last two parts that a "Mary Sue" might and should well have been called a "Irene Vassilius".  If you've gotten stuck reading a bunch of Corelli for some dreadfully-stupid reason, this will provide a good release laughing at her self-insert, but otherwise, let this one drop.

Marie Corelli - Zizka This is self-contained, not focused on screaming at literary critics, subdued in its Christianity -- is this actually a Corelli?  Well, it's got a wack sword-and-sandal drop-in, barely-veiled closeted-lesbian disparaging of marriage (admittedly, in this time period you didn't have to be queer to get totally messed up by marriage practices as a woman) and persistent if not overdone theosophical Christianity, so yup, yes.  This is about as good as Corelli gets, so totally check this one out ahead of most of the others.

Marjorie Bowen - Black Magic This opens up as a fairly conventional yaoi-esque tale of gay monks worshipping the devil, but then snowballs through the maze of high Middle Ages imperial politics and drops an atom bomb of a twist in the third act that is probably harder to guess coming in the modern day.  In preference to Corelli among Gutenberg women writers, definitely read Bowen, and definitely read this one.

Marjorie Bowen - The Crown Derby Plate A short piece, this is a nice, original ghost story that does a good job tipping its hand and putting up reasons for the protagonist not catching on.  A quick story, but definitely good.

Marjorie Bowen - The Folding Doors I kind of overdosed on Revolutionary France last year reading all of Orczy's Pimpernell between various travels and laundromat visits, so this suspense tale of an attempted royal rescue and how it didn't happen kind of left me cold.  The structure is good and the twist hits nice and hard, but you read too many of these and they start to blur together.

Mary Shelley - Falkner Continuing with the "read good women Gutenbergers rather than bad ones", I picked up this classical three-volume romance and ground on through the telegraphed plot, predictable twists, and needlessly florid language to pick up the good points; this is through and through Romanticism in its style and sentiments, and you could almost use it as a template for writing a three-master romance.  It's not awesome, but it's still pretty decent and your eyes don't glaze over too often in the reading process.

Mary Shelley - Lonore This three-volume potboiler can't make up its mind as to how it's going to shake itself out, and basically just keeps rattling and creaking on until it stops.  There are good ideas, but too few of them connect to each other to be really worth reading.  Shelley did better than this, and you should put your emphasis on those.

Mary Shelley - On Ghosts Two ghost stories worked into an essay, this is essential Shelley, and also bails out before her language overruns the narrative.  The "king of the cats" bit is particularly critical, and is probably the seed of hundreds of stories before and since -- I'm probably going to end up taking a stab at it sooner or later as well.

Mary Shelley - The Dream This is a poorly executed bit on a good seed -- the legend of the Bed of St. Catherine -- that shows that even the best writers sometimes screw up a sure thing.  It's pretty short, but this doesn't make it any clearer or better.

Mary Shelley - The Evil Eye Kind of a cash-in on the Greek conflict of the time, this is a decent story of banditry, but for the modern reader, it's probably encumbered with too many names and relationships of sub-Albanian and sub-Macedonian ethnic groups that for better or worse have been extirpated or absorbed by other identities in the present.  Again, it's short, but that in itself isn't a virtue.

Mary Shelley - The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck This three-master is Romanticism down to its bones, but this rather more obstructs than enlightens the tale of the last of the Yorkist Pretenders; in a modern context, this story is called Game of Thrones.  The language, artifice, and emotions are class; the storytelling muddled, the sense of where this whole novel is going beyond Shakespeare and the chroniclers he borrowed from lacking.  Shelley has better stuff out and this can probably be avoided.

Mary Shelley - The Heir of Mondolfo In this one, Shelley keeps herself at novella length, and her beautiful pastorals, strange lands, and wild passions are the better for the relative restraint of language.  The story flows and moves with ease, and doesn't trip over itself or tie itself up in knots; one could only wish that more of her novels were this good.

Mary Shelley - The Invisible Girl This one doubles back on itself, a frequent problem in Shelley's work, but due to the fairly short length, this is more easily managed.  The heart of the story is really good, the scene dressing around it a little less so, but the ultimate effect is still enjoyable.

Mary Shelley - The Last Man This is an interesting book if not a great one.  Broken into two halves, it's a well-done if not super-imaginative vision of England at the end of the 21st century as barely different from the start of the 19th.  Shelley was not really a science-fiction writer, let alone one for far-future stuff like Wells or Weinbaum, but her talent in siting what appears to be her circle of Romantic writers as the lead cast in the first part (look carefully, it's hard to see otherwise), and then working through the macabre Grand Tour of the second half is impeccable.  As someone who likes untying these kinds of referential puzzles, I liked it, but other people may well want more science fact in their science fiction.

Mary Shelley - The Mortal Immortal This one is a little closer to Frankenstein (which for some reason isn't in the pile, what the hell) as a mystic science fantasy; the novella length keeps Shelley dialed back to brass tacks, and the result is a good explication of the usual look at the downsides of eternal youth.  It's not a barn-burner in its own right, but it's Gutenfreed now, so who cares?  Definitely worth the time.

Mary Shelley - Valperga Once you get past the hilariously-named Euthanasia (there was a Perdita in The Last Man, so this sort of on-the-nose naming is nothing new), this is a much better novel of intrigue and medieval conflict than, say, ...Perkin Warbeck, and Euthanasia herself is an impressively strong and complex character who should be much better known to literature fans.  The conclusion of the book is unsatisfying and poorly done, though, ditching in the name of historical accuracy all the good work that Shelley'd put in on the plot, the actions and personalities of the two women orbiting Castruccio, and how this stuff should impact the conclusion to work as literature.  It's flawed at the most important part, sure, but most of the time you're reading this, it's excellent.

Max Brand - The Ghost As a short foretaste of Brand's stuff, this is more humorous than his regular run, but it's still a solid, realistic, and decently gritty Western alienated from any real setting and plopped into Brand's slice of backcountry where it's always about 1880 and the law is always on the take or far, far away.  You should be able to spot the turn in advance, but it's still a good read.

Max Brand - The Night Horseman These are in sequence as I read them, and they preserve the fact that I read this one before The Untamed when it's technically a sequel.  In the modern age, this is probably wrong.  Reading that one first makes it read like a tall tale that gets an unnecessary second act here; this first throws the reader into a properly-alienating (the lead-in character's an Eastern tenderfoot) atmosphere of fear and mystery that really helps sell Whistlin' Dan as a character, and then you read The Untamed as a prequel and get his backstory as layers peeled off the onion.  As written, these are pretty much just oat operas; 'backwards', they turn into a powerful meditation on the nature of humanity and wildness set against the harsh and inhuman landscape of the high desert.  Definitely read both, but read this first.

Max Brand - The Untamed As above; this was a good book, but it benefits by getting read out of order after its sequel, or it's barely more than a tall tale about a fey ninja-cowboy.  Brand is good here, but he gets better.

R A J Walling - The Corpse in the Crimson Slippers I was kind of on the edge of passing out from exhaustion when I started this country-house murder case, so I'm not sure how well it was read out in advance, but Walling is no Christie.  This is decent enough as a point-to-point detective story, but if you're looking for a case where the clues are in place and you have the chance to solve it before the detective does, that's not what you're going to get here.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Bully of Brocas Court Cleaning up some of the authors who I'd mostly read out, I came across this little horror piece from the author of Sherlock Holmes.  It's not quite the best -- the setup is pretty obvious, and some of the turn could be better handled -- but it's good enough for a short read, and gives a good proper chill.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Great Brown-Pericord Motor Doyle puts his hand to science fiction in this one, and while it's still more in the line with his true-crime writing, which he was also majorly into at the time, it's still pretty decent.  As you might expect from a man who later came to believe in fairies as an absolute fact, the machine is barely described, but it's barely more than a Macguffin anyways, so this doesn't hurt the tale as much as it might for like HG Wells or someone.

Arthur Conan Doyle - Playing With Fire Doyle is on surer ground with this one; his narration of a spiritualist seance is obviously drawn from life, down to the medium tricks -- well, until the monster that was signaled from the start pops out.  This is better horror than "The Bully of Brocas Court", drawn so faithfully from life, and with the conviction of a true believer.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Brown Hand There's room in this neat but pedestrian ghost story for readings as both brain-bendingly racist and a subtle but sharp critique of racism and colonialism.  It's probably both, but the story itself is decent enough -- if kind of predictable -- that people should read it themselves to come to a decision rather than looking for one here.

R A J Walling - The Man With The Squeaky Voice With a second one down, I can be unequivocal: Walling is rubbish, and you should not read his stuff.  There are parts like this with decent description to them, but as in ...Crimson Slippers, too much of the plot action happens off-screen and gets reported by side characters in a way that's out of left field based on what's happened so far.  Walling would have had a good career doing adaptations of movie scripts for print, as he's a good technician, but asking him to come up with his own interesting and logically coherent plots is a bridge too far.

Arthur Conan Doyle - True Crime From The Strand This covers the following three stories: The Debatable Case of Mrs. Emsley The Holocaust of Manor Place The Love Affair of George Vincent Parker Given that these are all mostly-true stories, the main interest is not in the details of the cases, but how Conan Doyle writes about them, and what that says about him and his readers.  Most of this can be covered with "embarrassing attitudes about women, who are not expected to know anything", but there are some other bits of Victorian social mores that come through as well.  These aren't really any more potboilery than the Holmes stories, but they're not as good either, and can probably be ignored.

Rafael Sabatini - Bardelys the Magnificent I haven't gotten to Sabatini's Captain Blood stuff yet, but this one is a pure and vital swashbuckler, the kind of book you'd hand someone to demonstrate what this genre is.  But it's more than that, too: as Edgars Wallace and Rice Burroughs have demonstrated in the past, Sabatini doesn't need to treat women like human beings, but he does, and he doesn't need to have his hero also go through a crisis of personal development to sell a novel about romance and swordfighting, but he does that too.  This is a good book, and I'm hoping for more good stuff in my large pile of Sabatini in the reader for laundromat and travel purposes.

Heinrich Boell - Billiard um halb elf I read this in German -- hence the non-translated title -- over a period of about eight months.  This is a physical book, and thus more difficult to read during my typical slots, but it was awesome and worthwhile; Boell's characters and style are strong enough that I was always able to keep it in memory, even when I was picking it up weeks or months after the last stretch I had to really sit down and just read.  I don't generally read a lot of literary fiction, so this is probably going to stay the best book I read in 2016 -- and may even stay in that slot if I get to Maurice Stendahl hanging around airport waiting rooms in the Pacific at the end of the year.

Rafael Sabatini - Captain Blood I haven't read enough Sabatini yet (this will change by the end of the year) to be categorical about this being a best entry point, but it's definitely the first appearance of his most famous character, and a rollicking swashbuckler from first to last.  Sabatini of course romanticizes the Golden Age of piracy a little, but keeps strong to the real as well, and it's that reality, the brutality of the slave system, the reality of blood and wounds and broken ships, casual inhumanity and subpar prizes, that gives this one its kick.  We'll see if the rest of the Captain Blood series is equally good, but the first one is definite quality.

Rafael Sabatini - The Chronicles of Captain Blood The first appearance of the character was a full-length, fully-realized novel that went beyond just the swashbuckling, but when Sabatini and his editors realized that they had a franchise on their hands, a collection of episodic short stories like this one was a natural move.  With looser connections to each other, the chapters in this one are hung off the cornices of the original book, some characters and subplots returning, with others still unresolved.  This is less of a literary achievement than the first book, but still a fun read.

C.L.R. James - Beyond A Boundary I read a lot, as the list above indicates.  But for all the stuff I read, I don't read enough right, partly because there isn't a whole lot of right out there.  But C.L.R. James, that is right enough, all the way around.  This is the first thing I really read from James, and his masterwork by all accounts, but it will almost certainly not be the last.  At times I had trouble following the cricket vocabulary, but the narrative flow always carried me on and wound me up at the end; this is not a book about cricket, but a book about how cricket reflects the dispersion and history of Englandism, a unifying idea for the shards of Empire almost in spite of themselves.  Even if it was only a cricket book, though, it would still be probably the best book I've read yet all year; there is James writing on W.G. Grace, and then there is pretty much everyone else writing about pretty much anything.  Deep springs don't come much deeper.

Jean Jaurès - Studies in Socialism I had to read this as part of the setting production on Three Pretenders In Ruritania, and I picked a good fin de siecle socialist for the character in question to take as her leading light.  Jaures is smarter than a lot of his contemporaries about what's practical and useful, clear-eyed about history, and always puts reason over dogma and experience over theory.  The result is a socialist tract that's committed to the real world, and how that program can be actually achieved; unlike Kropotkin way up top there, it's clear that Jaures actually knows and has interacted with real working people and has an understanding of how a modern industrial economy works, and the struggles that will need to be done to transition it out of a capitalist model to something else.  I hew more closely to the non-idealist/technocratic line of his engineer friend in the closing essay, but I can appreciate Jaures' ideals as well, along with a first-class intellect that doesn't ever seem to get stuck in translation.

Lesley M. M. Blume - Let's Bring Back I read this as more research for Three Pretenders In Ruritania, and while it's useful in that role, that's about as far as I can recommend it.  A condensation of Blume's blog column of the same name, there's a lot of useful stuff in here, mainly focusing on polite society in the English-speaking world between the US Civil War and the start of the Second World War, but the alphabetical organization, rather than by time period or subject matter domain, makes it difficult to use as anything except a blaze-through trawling for things that you wouldn't spot otherwise.  It's also significantly weighted towards Blume's own style icons, making it less of a comprehensive survey than it might be, but on the positive side it's a quick read, it covers a hell of a lot of stuff across multiple areas of everyday life, and she's got a good knack for getting straight to the point and getting good observations out of her guest contributors.

Carl E. Schorske - Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture I blasted through this somewhat disconnected set of long essays -- that's what it is, much more than a book -- again doing research for Three Pretenders In Ruritania, but unlike most of the stuff I used for research, I did actually read it all the way through (I need to go back and give the same treatment to Robert Beachy's Gay Berlin and Greg King/Sue Woolmans' Assassination of the Archduke once the dust settles a little).  Schorske is perceptive and informative, and at least tries to tie everything together, but you're looking at a book that covers both the redevelopment of the Ring and the emergence of Freudianism in addition to a shit-ton of other stuff, and there's only so much cohesion that you're going to get out of this.  It's a little dry in places (so much passive voice in transcription) and a knowledge of both German and French will make the reading faster, but this is still a pretty cool look at a culture that most English-speaking people have about zero contact with.

Eduardo Galeano - Soccer in Sun and Shadow (translated from Futbol en Sol y Sombre) I'd read this before in a smaller edition, but did not have a copy of my own until I decided to throw it in the basket with James' Beyond A Boundary above; it makes a nice companion piece, with Galeano demonstrating fitba's mirroring of the rest of the world through poetry while James works through cricket as an analogy of Britishness by oratory.  The end trails off a little -- the edition I have is an extended one that runs on from 1995 with a lot less focus than Galeano puts onto the game's first hundredish years -- but there is so much in this that is good and cool that you can forgive it.  It's undoubtedly better in the original, but my Spanish isn't good enough for that yet; one for the future I guess.

Anthony Hope - The Prisoner of Zenda I had not actually read this -- or seen any of the film adaptations -- before I had to do so in order to avoid copying it in Three Pretenders In Ruritania -- I'd been introduced to the genre by a second-rate ripoff of it called By Right Of Sword and had my defaults formed mostly by Burroughs' The Mad King and some stuff of E. Phillips Oppenheim -- and was glad to note that I wouldn't have to fix the outline or characters to dodge around it.  This is an ok swashbuckler, but its Victorian narrative sense ties itself in knots at seriously, the most critical junctures possible, and as usual, the villain and the hero's retainers are the most interesting characters.  What was even more weird to me was how small it was -- I read it through in about half an hour, and there's roughly half as much action in this in terms of story beats as there is in something that I'm planning to write in under a month.  With another 120 years of development in literature, I ought to be able to do better than this -- whether I actually can or not is going to be down to my abilities or lack thereof.

Rafael Sabatini - The Fortunes of Captain Blood Unsurprisingly, the Captain Blood franchise got a third season with this volume, continuing much in the same vein as the second volume in the series; briefer, barely-connected episodes hung off the corners of the original novel.  Despite the way that the production on this must have been formalized by this time, Sabatini still mostly keeps it fresh, and doesn't repeat himself or get too crank-turny.  It's still not as good as the original, but also still a fun read all the same.

Rafael Sabatini - Casanova's Alibi and Others A collection of Sabatini's Casanova stories, this one swaggers through the legendary adventurer's career with a bunch of generally cool stories of varying quality.  Some, like the last, are stellar examples of Sabatini's hand with a tail-twist; others are too reliant on too-stretchy MacGuffins to really hang with his best work.  In total, this is good stuff, but it is less good than Captain Blood and should not take precedence over it.

Rafael Sabatini - Collected Stories This is a pretty uneven volume that trails off at the end; it's cool to see Sabatini exploring different genres as he gradually finds his ouevre, but there are two versions of the same story -- "The Sword of Islam" and "In Destiny's Grip" -- one after the other, and the collection concludes with a Captain Blood episode that of course got into the second volume of that character's adventures.  If you read a lot of Sabatini, like I've been doing for the last few months, it's ok to stop this one early.

Rafael Sabatini - Columbus Sabatini's research skills are good enough that he has to keep this to the immediate vicinity of Cristobal Colon's voyage rather than making it a 'life'; there are hints of the congenital pride, vanity, and dickholishness that would characterize Columbus' brutal career as the actual viceroy of New Spain, but for the most part, the events of him selling his dream, and the web spun around it by love, enemy agents, and court intrigue allows the title character to be mostly a hero -- a flawed and kind of grasping one to be sure, but he did take an enormous risk on incorrect information and nearly lost everything several times over.  This is a good story even where it's incomplete history, and there's enough *good* history in the scene dressing -- Sabatini is as usual awesome in the interplay of political strands in the blending of religious cultures in Spanish/Mediterranean society -- to overwhelm any objections.  As an exposition of the context of Columbus' pitch-making, this is better than a lot of history, and it's still a really good novel besides.

Rafael Sabatini - Dagger and Sword A quick short story among a range of three-masters, this one gets in, gets its work done -- and well -- and gets out.  There's not a whole lot of inside fencing baseball in it, but enough to satisfy heads while still keeping clicking for normal audiences.  Try to get this in a collection though.

Rafael Sabatini - Fortune's Fool This romance of the London Plague takes a good while to get moving, and some of the foreshadowing is plain clumsy, but it is still good, well-executed, and effective in the swashbuckly scenes where Sabatini always shines, and with his resolute and disciplined eye for historical detail.  In comparison to some of his other works this one is almost straightforward, so try not to get too fed up with the occasional running in place.

Rafael Sabatini - In the Shadow of the Guillotine A sharply acted and smartly restricted novella, this is Sabatini at his best, taut with inter-character tension and shifting loyalties and motivations -- and with a notable sting in the tail.  It's not long, but this is one of his better set pieces.

Rafael Sabatini - Love-at-Arms Some idiot publisher titled this, no doubt; this is a neat look into Italy's sengokujidai that creaks only a little in setting up its main conflict, where the best of the condetorri defends an impregnable castle against a besieging army with twenty men and empty cannons.  The romance is well-developed and believably sprouted, and if the build to the climax is a little over-rotated, the actual climax is excellent and Peppe is one of the best of Sabatini's side characters outside the Captain Blood series.  This novel may not quite stand with those paragons, but it's close.

Rafael Sabatini - Mistress Wilding This over-plotted chronicle of the Monmouth Rising distinguishes itself by the increasingly contrived and unproductive circles it runs around in from first to last.  This is historically accurate, but its main character takes a while becoming sympathetic enough to justify the investment in his adventures, and there are almost too many things going on for the reader to really keep track of.  This needed a second editorial pass and never got it, but fortunately Sabatini also produced a large volume of really good work to balance out relative duds like this.

Rafael Sabatini - Scaramouche In this wide-ranging three-master Sabatini takes on revolutionary France with his usual eye for historical detail and social conditions, and does kind of go on for three books in one, but he succeeds in keeping all the various elements current and connected, and ties things up nicely if a little tritely at the end.  The general forms have been done before, but Sabatini as usual focuses on different themes, elements, and perspectives than the typical courtly romances around the revolution, and also has an excellent cast of characters here, especially in the middle third with the troupe of actors.  This is probably the other Sabatini work people have heard of after Captain Blood, and it's with good reason.

Rafael Sabatini - Scaramouche the Kingmaker If there was a thought to make of Scaramouche another enduring character as Captain Blood, it foundered on this over-complex and over-researched volume.  Sabatini does an excellent deep dive on the corruption and infighting of the Jacobin Assembly, but in the process bogs down his plot and characters in a stew of intrigue that it takes an intensive grounding in history and almost a degree in finance to keep straight.  There is too much there here, required to fill the historical span of time that he has to cover, and while several of the set pieces are really good, there are too damn many of them, and this gets exhausting after a while.  There is good craft here -- the thematic quotations from commedia del'arte in the furnishing of stock character types are well-integrated and always useful -- but the overarching art is too ponderous and the frame of the story is crushed by the weight of ornament piled onto it.

Rafael Sabatini - St. Martin's' Summer The cramdown of the romance in this one is deeply unsatisfying, but Sabatini repays that in spades with the larger-than-life character of Granache and the strong rogues' gallery he has to fight his way through in this one.  And fight is the operative word: the fight in the tower that sets up the break to the critical point is one of the best fights I can recall in swashbuckling literature, and then there's the duel where the Condillacs put on a jolly-gaff worthy of a Musashi and the other duel inside an inn bedroom.  Granache is a fighter, not a lover, from the first, and if his love scenes are inconsistent and forced, the fight scenes are anything but.

Rafael Sabatini - The Carolinian It's tempting to accuse Sabatini of falling off the pace here via an American setting for this one rather than his normal European metiers, but the truth is that South Carolina works fine as a backdrop, and his research on the social-political scene of the place and time is as usual impeccable.  No, the real complaint against this one is that the back half/third of the book -- everything after the pistol duel in the middle -- is somewhat unnecessary, deforms the characters, and in large measure feels like a political thriller plotted by R. A. J. Walling or someone else who sucks.  It is well executed craft, but it strains disbelief too hard and introduces unnecessary conflicts poorly in setting itself up.

Rafael Sabatini - The Historical Nights' Entertainment (three volumes) Published in three collections initially, it's not necessary in the age of the ebook to draw distinctions between these.  The stories are mostly unconnected, and the theme -- a historical novella barely connected to the 'night' aspect referenced in the story's title -- is similarly flexible.  It's neat to see Sabatini moving through subject areas outside France, Restoration England, and Renaissance Italy, but it is also a little trying to take these on all at once.  They are probably best consumed in small chunks, as originally magazine-published, and with intervening spacing, rather than en bloc for like thirty stories at once.

Rafael Sabatini - The Life of Cesare Borgia Sabatini sets himself a tall order here -- "rehabilitate the goddamn Borgias" -- but works yeomanlike against it, and may actually get to a result.  This result is likely to be "the Borgias were not worse than other Renaissance tyrants and Alexander VI was not worse than the other bad popes of his era", but there's only so far this is going to stretch.  He does a good job of separating fact from fiction in the case of a few of the more egregious crimes posted up by Cesare and his family, but there are others that are less easily discarded, and too often Sabatini hides critical evidence or first-hand impressions in untranslated Latin or Italian; if you wondered how homosexuality got to be the love that dared not speak its name, just look here, where sodomy is the crime that is ceaselessly danced about but never directly mentioned in English.  In the main, I prefer Sabatini's fiction to this nonfiction, but this is a good biography of one of the leading families of the Renaissance, and as such preferable to Sabatini's less-good fiction that has been clogging the queue recently.

Rafael Sabatini - The Lion's Skin When you read as much of a single author as I've been reading over the last few, things start to run together.  In this Jacobite romance, though, there's some of Sabatini's best spycraft, one of his best villains in Rotherby, and a whole family of excellent characters in the Ostermeres.  The twists are well-executed if not wholly surprising after reading so much of this, and the final effect is a good one.

Rafael Sabatini - The Marquis of Carabas Superficially resembling The Lion's Skin, this one sets up a bit differently through its twists, and what look like pagecount-padding subplots in the beginning turn out to be vital exposition by the end.  In its detailed exposition of the Breton Chouannerie and the fatal stupidity that destroyed counterrevolution in the west of France, this one is another case of Sabatini doing history better and closer than the professors, but the ALL TEH FEELS ending is so because this one really succeeds as a novel beyond and above its historical merits.

Rafael Sabatini - The Plague of Ghosts and Others A Gutenberg Australia collection of stuff mostly not collected elsewhere, this one packs together a couple of structurally similar highwayman stories with some French secret agents before and after the revolution and, predictably, "The Sword of Islam" yet again.  This is a good story, so no wonder it keeps getting packed in, but most of the rest of these are nice quick puff reads whose absence from collections is kind of understandable.  The best of the lot is "Kynaston's Reckoning", where the twist is telegraphed from miles and miles away, but executed with the hand of a master; this alone makes the collection worthy, but if you can get it on its own somewhere else, that will probably suffice.

Rafael Sabatini - The Pretender What sells this novella, more than anything, is Sabatini's own history: when you read Sabatini, you expect Jacobites and swashbuckling and knaves turned by gold, so when this one starts going there, and then doesn't, the twist hits all the harder for it.  This is one of his best twists outside the Casanova stories, and it's too quick a read to go further into spoiling it here.

Rafael Sabatini - The Sea Hawk Another of Sabatini's better ones after a couple of recent relative clunkers, this one takes on more of his favorite subjects, being in this case bare outer corners of canonical history and unexpected springs of heroism.  The idea that Christian renegades might have fought, and well, and even converted, for the corsairs of Barbary might almost be too hot a take for modern minds, but in that age both sides had no lack of converts, fellow-travelers, or plainfaced adventurers for whom race or religion was just an accident of birth, and Sabatini as always follows these threads faithfully.  Some of the tricks and plot dressing are a little too convenient to really be believable, but this is an XL-sized story that can barely be held in its traces even as it is.

Rafael Sabatini - The Shame of Motley As expected with the hero playing the fool, this one doesn't stint on the jokes, even as the adventure winds its way around the edges of the ascent of Cesare Borgia.  That Life from a few notes back is a good companion to this to set the context, but it's not really necessary, filled as this is with plots nefarious and quick-witted, brazen impostures, bloody battle and some truly horrific set pieces of murder and torture, and of course the excellent passage in the cathedral that sets up the point of no return.  If you wanted a fictional story around that Life of Borgia, take this one: it's just as well executed, and as prime an example of the author's craft as that one is of the historian's.

Rafael Sabatini - The Snare For people already familiar with the Peninsular War, this is a mediocre intrigue of an overwrought giri-ninjou clash strapped to a third-rate detective story.  For those like me who weren't, this is a passable if replacement-level romance that gives the opportunity to see Sabatini discourse on Wellington and the complicated travails of being the smartest person in the room while occupying someone else's country.  This would probably have been a better essay than a novel, but the characters -- especially Sylvia, one of his best heroines -- save it from failure even for the jaded.

Rafael Sabatini - The Strolling Saint Sabatini continues his Borgia-stanning here fifty years after their era, in a strong Bildungsroman with a hell of a well-hidden twist that may be even better than The Shame of Motley.  Some of the push-pull around the Inquisition is a little weak, but Sabatini's Cinquecendista game is still strong, and Agostino, in his thorough development, is one of his better heroes.  A definite rec.

Rafael Sabatini - The Suitors of Yvonne This loses a little steam as the love story picks up, which is not really groundworked or developed in terms of signs of increasing affection, but this is a swashbuckler through and through, and there are so many jokes, sick burns, and good fights especially at the start and continuing on through that it is really hard to put this one down.  Sabatini's style and how he approaches history can make him a little grave and pedantic at times, so when he's having fun, as here, you revel in it.

Rafael Sabatini - The Sword of Islam Misleadingly titled to say the least, this one deals with not Dragut Reis, mostly, but Prospero Adorno, the Genoese captain who is put into the role of the suggester of the canal from the other two times this tale, under this title and others, has showed up in print.  Prospero's story is bits and pieces of other Sabatini novels glued together to give a frame to the sea-fighting; on the waves, Sabatini still does the clash of galleys and the interplay of cultures and loyalties on the Mediterranean littoral like nobody else, but on land or out of battle, this tale has a tendency to drive this one into the ground.  There is probably a good novel on the life and career of one of the Barbary captains of this period that would be worthy of the title, but this one isn't even sure what it's trying to be.

Rafael Sabatini - The Tavern Knight Sabatini digs himself into a mighty hole on this one, which he extricates himself from by an offensively dumb and blatant deus ex machina.  There was a better resolution to this somewhere, and in his other works there's every indication that he might have found a way to thread the needle, but for whatever reason, we don't get it.  The good, well-drawn characters deserve better than this hamhanded plot.

Rafael Sabatini - The Trampling of the Lilies With all the stops pulled on the brutality of rural France before the revolution, it should come as no surprise that Sabatini can have a soft spot for Robespierre here.  (Or really, dude stans for the Borgias hello)  He did a lot of stuff about the French Revolution, but each tale is different, each tale is new, and this one is no exception: there's a lot in the superstructure of Scaramouche or "In the Shadow of the Guillotine", but the plot still develops after its own way, and the characters are sharp and fresh throughout.

Rafael Sabatini - The Word of Borgia The episode from this novella probably showed up in the Life of Borgia, unless including it would have kept Sabatini from stanning as hard for Cesare as he does there.  Here, crime is returned with crime: first some swashbuckling and then an intricate work of evil that is done with such careful glee as to undermine any thesis that called it jigo jitoku.  Very good and definitely worth a pack-in if/when that Life is republished.

Ralph Adams Cram - Excalibur: An Arthurian Drama Before considering to write an equivalent of the Ring, you should first check and make sure that you are the equal of Wagner.  Cram is not.  This stupid and overly pietist melodrama -- when you make Merlin, the very icon of prechristian druidism, into a man of God, you are already well off on the wrong foot -- derps itself around in circles as though it is conscious that there is not enough material in Arthurian legend to carry a focused trilogy, and if you make it through the broadsides of non-cared-about origin story and hopelessly archaic language, all you get is the source of a couple of the references in Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- which is fast becoming the one authoritative treatment of the Arthurian legends.  This one can be pretty safely ignored.

Ralph Adams Cram - In Kropsberg Keep Cram pulls this off better than the mess that was Excalibur, and these few ghost stories make light reading and an interesting diversion.  At the least, they're different and free from the blockhead milk-and-water Christianity of Cram's drama -- in some cases, severely so.

Randall Craig - Satan's Incubator If you want to be a double Batman, both a philanthropist and a vigilante in secret, you really ought to not link the two so easily as by being "Dr. Skull" -- a hell of a name for a medical man -- and the "Skull Killer".  As red-blooded and as bloodthirsty as the Secret Agent X stories that inaugurated my discovery of bad imitation Batmans from the pulp years, Craig's Dr. Skull is fortunately a little less stupid, significantly less racist, and possessed of some legitimately smart and cool tricks, especially around his adversaries.  Nevertheless, this is still a long episode of When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong, as hardcoreness for the sake of hardcore bottoms out in hilarious stupidity.  It's a fast read and a page turner, but wicked ephimeral even for pulp.

Randall Craig - The City Condemned to Hell The first adventure of Dr. Skull, this is confusingly plotted and hangs together poorly.  It's possessed with the same needless brutality as its sequel, but can't reliably keep track of who's alive or dead at any one point in time and its science is mind-bogglingly dumb even for pulp horror.  The same mechanics (and large chunks of the intro) are reproduced later in Satan's Incubator; if you must read one Craig novel, make it that one and consider this an abortive first draft.

Robert Barr - A Rock In The Baltic Barr was a favorite of mine when I was just starting to get into Gutenberg tests, and I'm glad to finally wend my way back to him all these years later.  This one opens up as an nice and sharp novel of manners, with two excellent female characters in Kate and Dorothy, and over the epistolary bridge takes a very well-executed turn into intrigue.  The science in some parts is a little iffy, and the climax could come off a bit differently -- Sabatini would *definitely* had them shell the island and then have Jack and Drummond fight their way out by disabling the soldiers, then put the Russian supply ship, which would have turned out to have been a Q-ship full of secret police, out of action by one of the girls dropping a round onto its rudder -- but even taken for what it is, this is a really good and smart novel of love and spies and jailbreak, turned by the hand of a master.

Robert Barr - From Whose Bourne Barr is playing several games in this tight but winding spiritual detective story, and manages to keep all the balls in the air until the surprising twist ending.  It's almost a meta-commentary on detective stories and the conventions of romances like he usually writes; for that, make it past the occasional maudlin tones of Victorian spiritualism at the start and check this one out.

Fred M. White - Real Dramas This had to be recollected from the following (in order): His Second Self An Extra Turn Not In The Bill The Plagiarist The Man In Possession A Pair of Handcuffs Being a bunch of set-piece short stories set around the theatrical scene on various continents, this collection has its high and low points, but is not really outstanding anywhere and frequently slides back into Edwardian melodrama.  The general style of this recalls Barr significantly, but the execution is low-energy and the results indifferent.  I have a lot of Fred White in the queue ahead, and if this is an accurate indication of his abilities as a writer 2017 is going to be pretty boring.

Fred M. White - The Doom of London The order of these is dubious, but this collection of London-centric apocalypses composes: A Bubble Burst The Dust of Death The Four Days' Night The Four White Days The Invisible Force The River of Death White is on a little sounder ground here, when grappling with issues of engineering or public health -- all of these are realistic catastrophes born out of the hypertrophism of turn-of-the-century urbanism and the lagging ability of government to deal with emergent problems -- though his ideas on biological science float somewhere between 'hopeless' and 'godawful'.  The pressure of getting to a happy ending inside the span of a short story hampers most of these, but in most of them, there's also the germ of a really good story -- and most of these problems are still not completely resolved in our modern age of climate change, deregulation, and service-underfunding.  The time's ripe for new dooms -- and ones that don't blink at the actual enormity of the underlying issues, and the real difficulties that need to be faced in resolving them.

Fred M. White - Drenton Denn Another after-the-fact collection, containing: The Yellow Moth The Red Speck With a good deal more questions than answers and an unwillingness to actually press on questions of life, death, and eros as they come up in the narrative, this is high-school-jazz-band level pulp imitation, on the level of a properly-spelled Eye of Argon.  There are good elements in here, but White or his editors consistently end up in a position where they're suppressed by too-timid plotting or comics-code sanitization.  White is not a bad writer overall, but this sort of weird fiction is not what he's good at at all.

Robert Barr - Revenge More of this collection of short stories on the themes of vengeance and comeuppance some to good ends rather than bad -- this is Barr after all, and like E.P. Oppenheim and a lot of Victorians/Edwardians he has a hard time resisting Love Conquers All -- but those that do are seldom less sharp and smart than the ones where things do go over the edge.  Not all of these are great, but there are a lot of good ones in here, and if you get stuck with something middling, the next one is going to come at you fresh and vital.

Phillip Francis Nowlan - The Prince of Mars Returns I've written stuff like this, so I shouldn't be over-critical.  However, I was in middle school when I did, so fuck that.  This is horrid garbage with no consistent tone that wastes itself burping in circles about bad world-building and exobiology nearly as bad as its real Earth biology.  The actual writing is not as bad as, say, Sheehan above, but it is boring and telegraphed and clunky and unable to hold the interest of the audience.  Post Burroughs, there is no need for sword-and-sandal on Mars to be this goddamned bad, and the wretched science looks even worse in a year with this much Weinbaum.

Phillip Francis Nowlan - Armageddon 2419 AD This turns out to be the first appearance of Tony aka "Buck" Rogers, and the overly-explicated story of how he awakened in 25th century America to fight the world-dominating Chinese.  There are good bits, but the world-building is illogical and clunky, the science might as well be magic, and the military tactics are complete ass.  When Rogers and his friends are raiding the Han archives to find the traitors, battling hand to hand and zipping between buildings on rocket ships and flying belts, the story pops, but there is too little of that here and too much explicatory garbage. It's somewhat interesting how merely peripherally racist this story is; the Han are evil oppressors, but not incompetent or senselessly cruel or caricatured, and while physically different from the American resisters are not monstrous or decrepitly corrupt.  There was no lack of anti-Chinese racism in the US at the time, and those fears definitely did play into the success of this franchise and how it developed, but the genesis here looks to be mostly Nowlan reacting to the emergence of the Republic of China and the end of the dysfunctional empire and going "wow, there are a shitload of Chinese people, if they actually get their shit together they could be a world power".  The book still kind of sucks, but not as bad as it would if written with, like, Burroughs-level racism settings.

Phillip Francis Nowlan - The Airlords of Han And theeeeere's the racism.  Seriously, the ramp-up on the implausibly disordered morals of Han society, the intimation that they are partially non-human, and the maniac blind spots of a fully automated civilization shifting gears are not even the worst parts of this story; the science is not discontinuous with what was known of atomic physics prior to the discovery of the neutron, but even if the paint-huffery about breaking stuff into sub-quarks and reconstituting it was remotely correct, you don't take a break in the middle of an action sequence to spend two separate and distinct chapters doing scientific worldbuilding.  Nowlan's ability to set scenes is good, but like a movie director who shoots a billion feet and then tells his editor to make sense of it, his ability to put them into an order that makes sense and keeps the attention of the reader is sharply limited.  Even with the racism turned down, this would be an incoherent mess of unnecessary sequel; as it is, drop this entirely and stick to the better appearances of Buck Rogers in other media.

#meta #criticism #how i wasted 2016