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terri-does-gods-work · 5 years

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Somersault (a fic following the events of 3x13)

Disclaimer: I’ve tried to make this as realistic as possible but I can’t really write narrative so here goes; also this is the first fanfic I’ve written djkfhsk

Word count: 2733

Chapter One - Apologise

Seven missed calls from TJ. My notifications show two messages from him:

“Cy, please pick up.”

“It’s not what you think, I swear!”

“He’s texting me again. What do I do?” I ask Buffy and Andi as I shuffle around some baby taters.

“Don’t text him back,” replies Andi.

“Yeah, he needs to feel how you feel,” Buffy adds on.

“But he said, ‘it’s not what you think’! What does he mean?”

Sure, I am undeniably upset that TJ bailed on me for some girl he’d known for, like, two minutes, but I still want to hear his explanation. It might put some things in perspective.

“Does it matter, what happened? He bailed on you. You counted on him and he did a costume with Kira,” started Andi.

“Who he met five seconds ago,” continued Buffy.

“And with the whole gun thing…” Andi trailed off.

“We’ve moved past that,” I said, “Something’s wrong, I can tell.”

“If you’re so sure, then confront him,” Buffy paused for a brief moment, “but we don’t think you should,”

“Yeah, Cyrus, we don’t want you to get hurt again. We don’t want TJ to become a ‘Jonah: Part Two’” Andi continued.

“What? That’s not how it is at all!” I probably wasn’t being very convincing. I really like TJ, and I wish I knew what was going on inside his head when he ditched our amazing costume- which he thought of- for a less-than-minimal effort basketball costume with She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Buffy’s phone rang. “I have to go. My mom is calling me home for dinner,”

“I should go, too. I’m meeting Amber. Apparently, I still need some more ‘rage relief’” said Andi.

I let out a fake chuckle as they leave The Spoon and unlock my phone. My thumbs hover over the keyboard on my chat with TJ. I have no idea what to say. Realising he’s online, I say the first thing that comes to my head. “What is it, then?” I type, instantly regretting how passive-aggressive that sounds. But almost immediately he replies, “It’s hard to explain over text. Meet me by the swings in ten?”

I say “Okay” and leave some cash on the table before leaving the diner.

By the time I reach the park TJ is already sitting on the swings, not swinging. He probably heard my footsteps because he suddenly looked my way.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, before I can even open my mouth, “I wasn’t thinking, and I shouldn’t have gone with Kira. Especially without telling you first.”

“So why did you do it?” I asked, still confused, “it was your idea to do the costume together in the first place!”

TJ sighed before asking, “Do you hate me?”

His eyes were filled with worry and he looked at me, hoping for a response. I look away. I start to turn on my heel to walk away. That was some explanation, I thought.

“Before you walk away, please, just give me a chance to explain,” I turn back to face TJ.

“Isn’t that why you called me here?” I replied, curter than I wanted, but it seemed to do the trick.

TJ sighs and stands up, “Kira came by after you left and asked me to do a costume with her,”

“I already know how this goes, TJ, I don’t need to hear it from you after having lived it last week,”

“Cyrus, please. Hear me out,”

I shrug and sit down on the swing next to his.

“Kira came by after you left and asked me if I wanted to do this ‘really cool’ costume with her. I told her that I was already doing one with you, but she wouldn’t let up. Then she asked me if I would rather do a costume with her or with you and—”

“And you picked her,”

“No, that’s not it! She said, ‘have fun with that’, and started walking away. I wanted to know what she meant, so I caught up to her,” TJ paused and took a deep breath before saying, “She has something on me. Something I thought I was fine with, but apparently, I’m not. And she told me she would tell people if I didn’t do the costume with her.”

I could feel my eyes involuntarily widen, “TJ, you know you can tell me anything. I’m—”

He turns away from me and looks straight ahead, “Honestly, of all people, I’m the most scared about telling you,” he started shaking. He fiddles with his fingers for a while before sitting back down beside me. He stares at the grass below his feet.

I could hear my heart beating out of my chest. Was he? There was no way. The biggest jock in the school could never be- it just doesn’t make sense.

“TJ?”

TJ looked up from the ground and into my eyes. As if it was even possible, my heart raced even faster. Was I really about to tell him? I wonder if TJ can tell how nervous I am. Not right now, I thought.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I swear, I was going to, but I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know how to tell you what happened,”

“Well, I have something to tell you, too,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I need to take a minute before I continue, “but you’re the one person I don’t know how to say it to, either,”

“I guess we both have stuff,” TJ shrugs, before looking back at the ground.

“I guess we do,” I reply, trying to deconstruct TJ’s countenance.

We swing in complete silence until TJ’s phone beeps.

“I have to go,” says TJ as he gets off the swing.

“Was that Kira?” I ask.

He began to say something, but I cut him off, “I get it.”

I start to walk away, but as I do so, he is all I can think of. I turn back to see TJ walking in the opposite direction, before carrying on with my journey home.

Chapter Two – Me Too

When I get home, I open the GHC group chat and begin to type:

Me: Don’t be mad, but I talked to TJ.

Andi: And?

Cyrus: He said Kira made him do the costume but idk anymore.

Buffy: He didn’t say why? I should’ve known Kira was behind this.

Cyrus: He said she has something on him, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.

Buffy: TJ Kippen isn’t telling the truth? Shocking.

Andi: He still could have called.

Cyrus: He said he didn’t know what to say and he seemed genuine.

Buffy: Like when he used to say that I was right, just to get his way?

Andi: Have you spoken to him since then?

Cyrus: He keeps texting me saying he wants to explain but he never seems to have the words.

Cyrus: And sometimes, neither do I.

Buffy: What do you mean?

Cyrus: I almost told him. I almost said it. Luckily, I didn’t, or that would have been a big mistake.

Andi: You weren’t ready. It’s okay. He needs to sort himself out first, anyway. I don’t want you putting yourself in harm’s way.

Cyrus: I’m not, I promise.

Cyrus: I should go, it’s dinner time.

***

After dinner I check my phone. Ten messages from TJ:

TJ: are you still mad at me?

TJ: I understand if you are

TJ: I’d be mad at me too

TJ: but please talk to me

TJ: I just want to know if you’re okay

TJ: I know I haven’t been a good friend lately

TJ: I really want to tell you

TJ: I just don’t know how to say it

TJ: cyrus please say something

I hold my breath as I open the chat.

Me: I don’t know what I feel rn.

TJ: cyrus I want to talk to you

TJ: in person

Me: Idk, I’ve been kind of busy lately.

TJ: tell me when you’re free

Me: Ok.

***

The next day, Andi, Buffy and I walk side by side down the corridor of Jefferson Middle School. We part ways to get to our lockers. I see TJ standing by mine and stop in my tracks. I take a deep breath before continuing, not making any eye contact with him.

“I have something to tell you,” said TJ.

“If it’s about Kira again, I don’t want to hear it,” I open my locker and take out my books.

“It’s not. It’s about me,”

I shut my locker and stare at TJ.

“Kira found out—”

Really? I thought, “I should have known! Kira, Kira, Kira. You’ve barely known her a week and she’s all you can talk about! What does sh—”

“Cyrus, Kira found out that I like boys!” TJ shouts.

I don’t know what to say. TJ Kippen. Gay. Like me.

“You…” “Yeah,”

“You mean you’re—”

“Yes, I am.”

“TJ,” I began.

“I have to go,” TJ hurriedly walked away, panting and shaking. I watched as he did, dumbfounded.

I could barely concentrate the rest of the day. Andi and Buffy were constantly trying to bring me back down to Earth. I still don’t know how I feel about this. Happy? Relieved? For one, I was worried for TJ. God, I can’t believe Kira is that awful of a human being. At least I understand why he did what he did to me.

During lunch, I sat with Buffy and Andi, per usual.

“Did you see TJ today?” questioned Andi.

“I hope not. That boy is trouble,” I try to interrupt Buffy, but she continues, “And paired with Kira? I can’t even imagine,”

Oh, if only they knew.

I look at Andi and shake my head, “no”.

“He’ll come around. He always seems to,” Andi paused, “for you,”

I think I saw a little smirk across Andi’s face, but I’m not sure. Buffy kicks Andi under the table.

“Huh?” I say.

“Nothing, don’t worry,” replies Buffy.

And just like that, there goes the lunch bell.

As we walk out of the cafeteria, I catch a glimpse of TJ sitting alone, out of the corner of my eye. He sees me, too, and walks away as fast as he can. I hope he doesn’t think I’m homophobic, because I’m the exact opposite of that! Homo…philic? I thought to myself, making myself chuckle out loud, receiving strange looks from Andi and Buffy.

***

The day goes on. I’m still befuddled by TJ. I go home by myself (making up a half-hearted excuse for not going to The Spoon with the rest of the GHC) and collapse on my bed. I take out my phone and check my messages. Nothing from TJ. I open our chat and look through the messages before typing, “Hey, can we talk?”

TJ, as usual, responds within milliseconds, “At the park?”

“You know the place.”

This time we reach the park at the same time. We walk towards each other, hesitation in every step. I wriggle my hands in my pockets. I can feel them become sweatier by the second. When we meet, neither of us break the silence. TJ turns and we start walking in the same direction.

After a minute of silence, TJ says, monotonously, “I know what you’re going to say,”

“You do?” I ask.

“You’re going to say that I’m ‘too young’ and that I don’t know what I’m doing, or that it’s ‘just a phase’. But it’s not, Cyrus and—”

I really can’t have TJ, of all people, thinking I’m homophobic, “TJ, I was going to say that I’m proud of you. Because I am,”

“You are? Kira said—”

“What Kira said doesn’t matter,” that name leaves a bitter taste on my tongue, “You’re you. And no one else can tell you who that is,”

A faint smile appears across TJ’s face, forming wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. He is so cute, I think to myself.

“But that’s not all I wanted to say,” I guess there’s no time like the present, right?

“Oh?” I notice TJ’s smile fade.

I stop walking, TJ soon realises and stops, too.

“You know how you just said—”

“Yeah, I know” he interrupts me, afraid.

I take a deep breath before saying, “I am, too.”

“You are?” TJ’s eyebrows furrow.

Well, I don’t really hide it, but yes, I thought, “Just like you,” I half-smile and look TJ in the eyes. His beautiful, green eyes.

“Do Andi and Buffy know?”

“Yes,”

“And Jonah?”

“Him, too.”

“I see,” TJ’s expression doesn’t waiver, “when did you—”

“At my bar mitzvah… and at my grandmother’s shiva,”

“Is this what you wanted to tell me at the swings the other day?” asked TJ.

“Is this what you wanted to tell me at the swings the other day?”

We look at each other, visibly anxious but smiling, and continue our walk.

Does this mean I have a chance with TJ Kippen? There’s no way.

Chapter 3 – Confess

Over the weekend, I barely hung out with Andi and Buffy. Which I should have felt bad about, but I was too busy with TJ. We were together pretty much the whole weekend. He even slept over. But the whole time I wished we were “together” in another sense. I still walked to school with the rest of the GHC on Monday, however.

“You and TJ seem to be spending a lot more time together,” Andi states.

“Yeah, I thought you guys still hadn’t worked out the Costume Day thing,”

“You talked to him?” asks Andi.

“It’s complicated,” I reply, “I can’t tell you everything,”

“Cyrus, you can tell us anything, you know that,” says Buffy.

“I know, but it’s not my story to tell. What I can tell you is that… I told TJ,”

“You did? That’s great, Cy!” Andi practically starts jumping up and down, “What did he say?”

“Not much,”

“Oh,” says Buffy, disappointed. I could tell she kind of started to like TJ.

“No! That’s not bad! He didn’t mind. Like Jonah’s reaction, or lack thereof,”

“I guess Kira didn’t poison him after all,” says Andi.

Yeah, Kira.

The bell rang and we went to our classes. Buffy and Andi had the same class and didn’t bother to keep their conversation secret as I walked away.

“Do you think Cyrus likes TJ?” asks Buffy.

Am I that obvious? Gosh.

“Buffy! He’s still in earshot!”

I’m always in earshot- they’re so loud.

“Ok, ok!”

They wait for a few seconds before continuing, “Yes, I do. Does Cyrus know, though?”

“He has to! They’re his feelings,”

“Feelings are weird,”

“I’ll ask him after school,”

“Buffy?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be harsh.”

They started talking about Jonah or something after this.

***

After school I checked my phone.

Buffy: So… TJ?

Cyrus: What about him?

Buffy: Do you like him?

Cyrus: Yeah. He apologized and we put all that stuff behind us.

Buffy: That’s good.

Buffy: So, do you like him?

Cyrus: I just told you.

Cyrus: What are you getting at?

Buffy: Oh, nothing. Just wondering if you like him.

Cyrus: Like him like what?

Buffy: Like… how you like Jonah?

Cyrus: I think so.

Buffy: This is great!

Cyrus: Why?

She didn’t reply.

***

I hear a knock at the door and rush to open it. It’s TJ. My heart starts beating at the speed of light. Are you allowed to call yourself whipped?

I let him in, and we go downstairs, to my game room. I get out the table tennis racquets and hand one to TJ, along with the ball. He looks… anxious.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

TJ rolls the plastic ball in his hand, “I think I like you,” his shaking hands serve me the ball, but I let it bounce off the table.

“Me?” Me?

“Is there anyone else here?” TJ asked.

“I guess not,” I respond, unable to process what was just said. I pick up the ball from the ground and serve back. As it bounces across the net, I realise that I had to say it, “I think I like you, too.”

Once again, the ball bounced off the table.

“Me?”

“Do you see anyone else in the room?”

TJ lets out a nervous laugh and I do the same.

“What does this mean?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

#andi mack #tyrus #hc #fanfic #this is how im coping #this hiatus is killing me #already

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lovehatinganime · 6 years

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BNHA role swap. The Villains are Yuuei Students: Shigaraki Tomura Edition

“I'm going to ignore the fact that Shigaraki would be called Shimura Tenko because I really don't like that name” this was my first thought and then a whole fanfic plot idea came out of it.

Nana Shimura, after a night with her lover, accidentally got pregnant. This dude is foreign or a special agent, making it impossible for him to stay around. Nana and him spoke about abortion or giving the baby away. It was honestly the cleverest idea. However, Nana decided to have the baby as a single mom in the very last minute. She didn't tell him not to ruin his career... and well, mostly because it was against what they had arranged. (I actually hate this scenario, but I had to take the father out of the picture and that`s the only explanation it ocurred to me).

Everything went fine because she had help from a lot of people to raise her kid (you can choose male or female, is not relevant to the story). Thanks to this, she could still continue with her job as, you know, world saviour. Nana`s child grew, fell in love, married and planned to have his/her own family quite fast (the next Shimura generation is simply a normal person. One who, although having a good quirk, never took an interest in following his/her mother`s steps). Here is when things got twisted. Nana had made a lot of enemies during her hero service years and the bad guy who hated her most, villain All Might, attempted to murder her offspring. The police and pro heroes arrived when he was torturing the pregnant woman. It was precisely Nana herself who ´saved` her daughter/ daughter-in-law. The doctors did all they could but unfortunately it was not enough to prevent her from dying. However, they were able to take the baby out. After a month of intensive care in the hospital, Tenko was like any other baby. Nana had no doubt this time, she could not keep him. That`s why handman is yet called Shigaraki Tomura in this au of mine.

Kurogiri, a retired hero who used to work with the police, infiltrating in multiple crime gangs; became his legal tutor. In the present, Shigaraki is a 16-year-old hero wannabe and Nana is a still alive, kicking ass and quite young grandmother. Very few people know they are related, but Tomura is well aware of the whole story. The heroine tries to visit him as much as she can, taking extreme precaution measures. They get along very well.

All this is like the background info, so the actual plot would start when Villain All Might`s successors (probably Deku and some other canon 1-A classmates) find out Shiggy`s existence and want to end him; to finish the job that got their master into prison. Maybe they try to recruit him to psychologically torture Nana... or directly try to kill him, not sure. Any way, they fail the first time, so the thing would be that now Tomura and some others who get stuck in the jambo mambo (probably the ones who canonly form the league of villains) have to survive on the run.

Author Note: What do you think? (scratches the back of her neck) I would love to know your opinions. I am writing concrete headcanons now, so you get more info about other characters and how I imagine them in this parallel reality. I am hoping to make a series out of this if I have enough time and inspiration. It is also a bit of a high school AU, to be honest. I've tried not to make it look like a soup opera but it sometimes just happens. I live for the tea.

Tomura would be this kid who never gets over his early adolescence emo phase: his hair is always covering his face, never shows the slightest amount of his pale skin and seems allergic to sunlight; wears hoodies on summer what the actual fuck; loves dark themes/topics and favourite colour is black, total edgelord, bitter sense of humor, MRC and BVB...

A videogame freak unable to open a book and study a bit.

Watches anime because he is too lazy for the manga.

Him as a student:

One of his teachers (All for one), for some reason, puts great trust on him, naming him class representative.

Tomura is not amused.

Complies to his duties, yes, but with extreme exasperation.

AFO also believes Shigaraki has great potential as a hero. Insists on the idea that if he got better at fighting, with his quirk, he could disintegrate any dangerous weapon a villain had before they could hurt anyone.

Moreover, this sensei affirms a Tomura in good shape would be impossible to escape as he is able to destroy any hiding place or possible obstacle someone tries to throw into the persecution.

Considering all this, AFO stars training Shigaraki.

Tomura is not giving much, tho.

He is a bit depressed because he is sure he is never going to be like his grandmother. He passes all his courses with shameful results. He cannot find the motivation to make a bigger effort and just keeps going that way until...

a) he has a life changing experience when he disintegrates a broken building wall that was about to crush some kids. Tomura realises his quirk is very useful, actually perfect for rescue missions.

b) Chisaki Kai arrives, transferred from Shiketsu. Contrary to Tomura, he is handsome, polite and with a quirk only destroying to create. He hates his guts. Although it seems to be one of the few people, if not the only one doing so. Kai is starting to become the yueei candidate for top class pro hero. Shigaraki does not like this a single bit. In his eyes, Chisaki is all a facade. Underneath that cool appearance he is just a weirdo prick with a superiority god complex. Tomura is not going to let someone like that enter the same category as Nana Shimura. That`s how he gets his act together (hate is a pure emotion, best fuel ever haha Nah, I am just a sucker for the Overhaul x Tomura relationship. Not in a shippy way, more like rivals).

His hero costume:

Hasn't designed one yet.

He starts thinking about it after the aforementioned epiphany.

Interactions:

Dabi is his best (probably only) friend, even if they are all the time bickering. He belongs to one of the most famous families in the hero society, him being the outcast. Tomura thinks of him as a total rebel without a cause. Despite his bad behaviour, Dabi has a natural talent that makes him one of the best at yuuei academy.

The only thing Shiggy enjoys about being clas representative is the status it gives him.

He cannot help but smile when he sees people who dislike him or would not talk to him in any other circumstance, be obliged to face him and treat him with great respect.

Tomura gives a gay vibe and is popular with guys.

Much to his disappointment because he is actually more into girls (I am saying “more” and not making him straight because my open minded multishipper ass always tends to give characters the possibility of discovering they are indeed bisexuals).

Sadly for him, the only one who shows to have such interest is Toga Himiko, a first year unicorn lover, who is way too obsessed with him.

Dabi, instead of helping him get rid of her (idk if you are aware of how ShigaToga is actually my favourite romantic ship for both of them BUT without the villainous context i can't see Tomura having the slightest interest on Himiko), encourages Toga and has lots of fun.

#mha au headcanons #bnha villains as heroes #yuuei villains #shigaraki tomura #nana shimura #villain all might #villain class 1a #chisaki kai #all for one #dabi #toga himiko #league of villains #bnha role swap

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gold-from-straw · 5 years

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Help me choose what to write!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

In the interests of trying to be consistent, I figure I’ll do my round-up of what I’ve been writing this month as my blog post today, but first, I wanted to flail a little about @stardustloki who sent me messages AS they read Zero Degrees! It literally made my New Year’s! If you’re supposed to spend your New Year’s Eve doing things you want to represent the whole of the following year, I feel pretty damn positive about that ^_^ I’m also going to write all the comments up on post-it notes and stick them in my own copy of the book so I can make myself happy whenever I want!

This month has been relatively quiet, actual-writing-wise. I’ve done quite a lot of fanfic stuff, a bit of planning, but mostly I’ve been editing Zero Degrees to publish on the 21st. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, but I’ve also decided to start sending it, and the next two WIPs I’ve got (The Willing and Not Broken) to publishers and agents because I SUCK at marketing. So bad. Like every now and then I’ll hold up a copy of my book and say ‘hey, guys, I wrote a thing AHHH RUN AWAY!’

Needless to say, that’s not a particularly successful strategy.

I’m also trying to work out what books to get started on for next time. I’m trying to aim to have at least one book in each stage of the process – drafting by hand, typing up, editing and formatting ready to publish, and right now that first column is empty. I’m going to choose two books to work on. I’ve already chosen the first one, a queer romance set in 1920s colonial Kenya because I at least vaguely know my history in that area! Hopefully my family won’t be too horrified that I’ve made the family history gay...

I now just have to choose from the following for my second WIP:

I’m Not Here: About two kids (late teens) who don’t realise they’re part of a network of magic users because their parents die before they can explain it all to them. Not being able to use their magic causes mental health issues. There’s some cool stuff I’m looking forward to with antipodes (places that are exactly opposite each other on the Earth) because I’m a total nerd. Seriously, I spent an hour working out 6 antipodes which should create a good network over the Earth, it was very satisfying... I also learned a lot about French Antarctic territory, which I didn’t even know existed...

Passing: About a young person who’s spent their entire life passing as something they’re not. They look white, but they’re mixed race. They sound English, but they’re Kenyan (hello, I will write what I know thank you very much!). They appear as a straight man, but the story is about them realising that they might not be either straight or male. It’s got the potential to be really angsty, but their (ex)girlfriend/(always) best friend is awesome and I’m looking forward to writing their complex relationship. She’s also a grown up June from The Forest Hotel, for no reason whatsoever other than she wanted to be involved... The main character isn’t exactly based on me, but I have a lot of identity issues based on passing for things I’m not, and feeling guilty about it. I’m also hoping to bring in a lot of discussions about heteronormativity and the kind of bullshit that passes for acceptable in het relationships

Changeling: A child gets lost in the forest and comes back not quite the same. The fairies have stolen the first one and sent back one of their changelings because fairies are creepy as hell and just like to screw with people. This is about two parents who don’t care how their child acts, they’ll love them all the same and try to guide them to learn how to behave kindly. The child isn’t used to this kind of treatment at all, and starts to become guilty about taking the place of someone who was so obviously loved. The entire thing was triggered off on a tangent when I was writing Living the Dream, and I’m planning to have a set of young punks in there, influenced by my Cre and Mal in that story, but also the Rowdy 3 from Dirk Gently, to guide the changeling girl and help the parents when they launch a rescue...

Ripples: Two people at the end of their endurance meet by chance and stop each other from making a terrible permanent choice. Twenty-something Li is panicking about her new baby and single-motherhood, and 17 year old James isn’t sure he can cope with his dad’s beatings any more, or the fact that his boyfriend is terrified of them being found out. When James gets thrown out of his home, Li puts aside her own problems to give him a place to stay, and they help each other get better. James meets a lovely boy, Ravi, and Li makes friends with Ravi’s mum. The romance is slightly influenced by Wicked Boys and Stop Me in Hours of Darkness, where Ravi is kind of like Harry, and James is kind of like Credence. Or at least that’s where they started, but they’ve become so completely their own people in my head now...

I still haven’t fully decided which one of those to go ahead with… I’m up for a vote, if anyone wants to have their say?

Also just in case Tumblr gets too overrun with porn bots and spontaneously combusts, I also blog about all my original stuff on Wordpress! Come find me if that’s your thing!

#original ramblings by Lyn H #original novel #The Willing #not broken #Slopes of Mau Summit #Zero Degrees #I'm Not Here #Passing #Changeling #Ripples

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aziraphaleandcrowley · 3 years

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Sometimes I really wish I could just finish something. I have a 4000 word start of essay + 30000 word document of research about asexuality on screen which I wanna base my masters degree on - but I’ll probably never actually do a masters so what’s the point - but I don’t wanna write it unless it’s for my masters cos I want it to actually be good and mean something.

But I also have an 11000 words worth of writing and research for an essay I was gonna write about destiel - and now I just don’t care about it at all. Like, congrats they got married, but I just don’t care about them anymore, nor the C*W hell so that’s not going anywhere either

I’ve also got like 4000 words in writing and research about Schitt’s Creek but I just don’t have the effort.

And I know that Current Events TM don’t help with being motivated to do anything but ugh. I love wrtiting essays and I really wish I could get some inspiration back pls.

(I ramble about life after this so ignore if you wanna)

I could actually do my masters this year if I could find enough motivation and inspiration to actually want to, but I know that even if I could find the effort to go through the application process and actually get in, that I wouldn’t have the effort or time management skills to actually get what I want out of it.

Does not help that I’m aro?ace and not out to my family -cos why should I have to announce that I’m not sexually or romantically attracted to people really? If I find someone I actually like enough to have a relationship then great, but considering I can barely maintain friendships I’m not hopeful - but anyway I’m not out to my family and I wanna do a gender and sexuality masters degree writing about representations of asexuality on screen and do not want to have to announce that to my family cos I don’t see how I’d be able to do that without outing myself or lying and I don’t wanna do that either. I don’t even want to announce it to people other than my closest friends cos as soon as you mention gender studies, let alone sexuality studies, no one takes you seriously - speaking from experience after mentioning it to one of my colleagues :/

Like as soon as I mention sexuality studies I feel like people are gonna see me as queer - which I am - but I don’t want them to and Idek. Living at home with my parents makes it difficult to work out who I actually am and want to be cos I’m always hiding parts of who I am - and I probably don’t need to, I mean my mums at least a little homophobic but I think that’s more uneducated than anything but my dad is chill. But I don’t wanna come out in actual terms and not just ‘I’m not interested in anyone’ which I say now, cos I don’t wanna say, oh yeah I’m not attracted to anyone, but I still wanna date and have sex and that could be with a guy or a gal or a non-binary person, let’s see what the future holds.

I don’t know how to own/be proud/be confident in my sexuality/queerness and it making it difficult to be proud/confident/open about queerness in general. I still avoid watching queer things around my parents, listening to tv with headphones cos I don’t want to come off as too interested in queer things. My Netflix list is full of queer stuff which I try and avoid my parents seeing cos it’s like 99% queer which feels very telling. I’ve embroidered little pride flags that I have not allowed my parents to see. I’m current crocheting an ace flag coloured jumper which I’m not explaining in the slightest and I’m gonna do a David rose inspired pride love heart jumper next which I’m hoping doesn’t get questioned. I’ve been reading queer fanfic for like 10 years and to this day I haven’t let on to what I’m reading about. I’ll say I’m reading about Merlin, or supernatural etc, but never any extra details cos that’s too gay. I get asked what I want to watch on tv and I’ll rarely say anything cos all I watch is queer stuff I don’t want to be be judged by. Or more like I don’t want do anything that could lead to questions about my sexuality cos I don’t wanna lie but I don’t wanna be out either. I don’t want to say no I’m not gay cos I might end up in a relationship with a girl one day and that would be great. But I’m not straight either and my parents wouldn’t even know aceness is a thing. I hate that I’m like this but I am. It feels safe even though I know there’s no actual danger in revealing myself

Ugh I’m not even gay but I have so much internalised homophobia about being judged as being queer idk.

I think I’d benefit from speaking to someone about this - like professionally, cos this just cycles around my brain and has done for months on end. Plus changes in situations now means my parents will see very little - if any - inheritance so they won’t be able to afford to live once my dad retires and I feel like it falls on my shoulders as an only child to try and deal with that even tho it’s not really. Ugh. But with restrictions meaning you can’t see anyone, the only way I’d be able to speak to someone is from my own home, where my parents are and who I don’t want to overhear me speaking about my many issues. Plus accessing mental health help in the uk at the best of times is terrible, speaking from my mums experience and, being a cheap ass, I don’t wanna have to pay for the privilege even knowing it’s be beneficial.

Idk. Ever since last year when I realised I wanted to study gender and sexuality studies after doing an online course looking at representations of women in the media run by a uni in Glasgow, then realising studying in Glasgow seemed amazing not just because I could leave home and study something I wanted in a beautiful place but also in a place which has a queer bookstore and therefore a queer community and queer events and being able to picture myself living a better life in a better place, then realising that that uni course wouldn’t actually be best suited to my interests, and that I couldn’t actually afford to study in Glasgow anyway, and that I’d have to use all savings I didn’t even have at that point to afford to even go to uni, then COVID happening I just don’t know what I wanna do. There was a solid week or two when it all sounded amazing and possible and I could see the future opening up with so much potential for actually getting to live the life I might actually be happy with and now I just don’t know. I don’t.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this. This wasn’t my intention when I started writing, I just wanted to moan about my stack of word documents gathering cyber dust on OneDrive...

I’m gonna nap now I think, or try to at least. But at least this is written and going into the tumblr void and therefore out of my head, even for a little while.

#Rebecca speaks #ignore my ramblings #gonna actually try and kick my ass into gear later and see it that helps.#sorry to the peeps who have recently followed me for Schitt’s creek content who haven’t experienced one of my rambling sessions yet

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femslashrevolution · 7 years

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Towards A Darker Femslash by holyfant

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

Hello everyone! I hope your Femslash February is going great so far. I was stoked to be asked to write a little something for I Am Femslash, particularly because while I’ve written bits and pieces about my experience as a young, queer, multishipping and writing young woman in fandom, I’ve never really tried to put any of my thoughts together in a truly coherent way. So, here I go, attempting to write about a topic that is dear to me. Feel free to engage me on any of the points I make in this little essay!

So, hi. I’m holyfant, a 26-year-old ESL fanfic and (aspiring) original fiction writer. I’ve been active in fandom for nearly fifteen years, and have written fic for a lot of that time, picking up English and fannishness along the way. Writing fic gave me a way to connect with other people who had to same interests I did – and only later did I realise it also paved the way to more self-knowledge. At some point during my teens, the question of my own sexual and romantic identity became pressing; maybe paradoxically this first drew me to male slash, and only later to femslash – perhaps because the former was and is more visibly present in fandom than the latter, and perhaps also because reading and writing femslash was still too direct a way to engage with my own identity at that point. I still don’t fully understand this; I remember that when I was first playing with the idea that I might not be straight, it felt safer to read about men in love than women in love. Maybe seeing male characters discover their non-straightness was close enough to my own experience to stir up emotion and feeling, but far enough removed from it that it didn’t stir up panic. Who knows?

Either way, when I was more comfortable with who I was, I returned to f/f and found it infinitely rewarding. I read a metric ton of femslash fic and wrote lots myself – for a fairly long stretch of time I enjoyed deep obscurity in the Harry Potter and Greek mythology fandoms as a niche femslash writer with two or three loyal readers, and it was truly a lovely time. I engaged with femslash in a curious, non-discriminatory way – I shipped everyone. I’d take two minor female characters who perhaps had never even interacted in canon and found a way to put them together. I took prompts for characters that were only featured in throw-away lines, and wrote a lot of fic for the now sadly defunct LJ community hp_rarestpairest, which encouraged the nichest of pairings. Basically I was honing my writing skills, while also representing my questions, hopes and fears about my own sexuality at the same time. In my fics I dealt with women falling in love, being rejected, having sex with each other, coming out to their families and friends, dealing with heartbreak – all of these were things that I was thinking about, was experiencing or wanted to experience, or was scared of. I think it will surprise few queer femslash writers to hear that reading and writing femslash taught me a lot about my own identity and sexuality and gave me a community of queer women that I would otherwise never have found.

Despite the fact that I was mostly a femslash writer in my early times in fandom and the fact that I write f/f in my current fandoms today, it remains a curious truth that my growth as a writer from someone who wrote 1,000-word oneshots in one go to someone who wrote novel-length fanfic over several months coincided with going into a different fandom where my main focus was a m/m ship (BBC Sherlock, where I was sucked into the black hole that was Sherlock/John). I said I “shipped everyone” earlier – it would be just as correct to say I shipped no one, because I had no deep emotional investment in the ships I wrote about, and often wrote only one fic per ship. (Perhaps the only exception was Lavender/Parvati, which I wrote often and regularly gave me the warm fuzzies to think about.) It wasn’t until Sherlock happened that I started to understand what people meant when they said a ship was their OTP, or how people could get so intense about their reading of a relationship. As a result of this increased feeling of investment I read and wrote so much fic that I became a much better writer for it, by pushing myself to write more and more complex stories. This was all fine in itself, but even as it happened I was aware that it was curious that this sudden spur of feeling and craft was because of a juggernaut white dude ship, something that had never held much interest for me before. I felt – even at that heady time when you’re in a new fandom and it’s like being in love – like I wanted to continue to write smaller pairings and explore female characters, too. And I did, but the point remains that when I look at my story stats now, it’s clear that my f/f stories are shorter in word count and are less varied in their plot and execution than my m/m stories.

All this to show that I am 100% part of what I am about to describe: not a problem, per se, but an observation that I think is useful to be aware of and think about. The fact is that femslash, across fandoms, remains a niche category, and that while there are great amounts of people who read and write almost exclusively m/m this is barely ever the case for f/f. A lot of the f/f writers I know have talked at some point about the realisation that f/f in general seems to lack novel-length stories and stories that have the diversity of plotting and thematic exploration that we easily find for m/m ships. Most f/f stories are shorter stories or oneshots that focus on meet-cutes, sex and domestic bliss. Longer fics are rare. Darker themes, such as character death and grief, trauma, relationship issues, adultery, abuse and so on are also rare. I am not the first to notice this and not the first to theorise on it, but I would still like to identify why I think f/f fandom has developed in this direction, and to formulate some ideas as how to diversify our creative experiences a little.

I think there are a lot of possible reasons that f/f writers are in general less motivated to write long stories that explore complex themes, and these will surely differ for everyone. For me, I’ve identified three causes, in increasing order of importance: 1. a small audience, and therefore a smaller possibility of extensive feedback, 2. a lack of variation and complexity in female characters and their relationships in a lot of canon materials, and 3. the awareness that f/f is often rooted in a deeply lived experience for many of its readers and writers, and that it’s therefore necessary to be wary of representing “bad” female characters or negative tropes about lesbian and bisexual relationships. The most complex of these is certainly no. 3, which is why that’s the one I will be writing about a bit more.

Statistically f/f is most likely to be written and read by cis queer women, which of course influences our relationship with the characters we portray, because they refer to our own lived existence. This makes f/f different from m/m – m/m is also mostly written by cis women (straight and otherwise), which creates a certain leeway for “true” realism. Anecdotally I can share what happened when my housemate and my best friend, both cis gay men, delved into the world of m/m fanfic on some of my recommendations. While they enjoyed a lot of the stories I told them I’d liked, they also talked about many of the things they felt were inaccurate about gay sex and romance – for instance, they could name several often-described sexual acts that they said didn’t quite “work that way”, and they were generally uncomfortable with the fannish (certainly often problematic) tendency to label characters as strictly tops or bottoms, especially if this was based on stereotypical characteristics outside of the bedroom. If gay men were to write these stories (which they do, of course, only in much smaller numbers), they might look different – they might be less fictionalised, less genre-specific; the language developed to talk about men in love might be different, there might be different focuses. It’s hard to definitively say what it would be like. Either way, it would seem logical that it follows, from the fact that lesbian and bisexual women overwhelmingly write the fannish stories that we have about lesbian and bisexual women, that we should find it easy to access their spaces and write about many different aspects of their lives. In reality this doesn’t necessarily seem to be so. Perhaps the scrutiny, both internal and external, is larger – perhaps because we are writing about ourselves we put more pressure on ourselves to “get it right”, and perhaps our audience, who is looking to see itself represented, does the same at times. Or maybe we simply perceive our audience as being more critical than it truly is.

What is a “bad” female character? Most people will agree that women often get the short stick of characterisation in most media – to such an extent that there are tropey names for them, like the Girl Next Door, the Femme Fatale, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and so on. Women are still often used as crutches for men; their stories are supporting stories, their pain is used to further a male character’s pain. Writing about women in fanfic is often already a rebellious act in itself, one that reverses harsh or flippant treatment by canon writers. While this is fine in se, and sometimes even lends a pleasant sheen of fannish disobedience to writing female-centric fic, I do believe it has the unintended and unsavoury result of effectively also policing the sort of woman that can be written about. This may seem like a paradox, but in reacting to the one-dimensional representations of women in fiction it can become important to “fix” those wrongs, and this makes it hard to write about women who don’t overtly challenge assumptions about womanhood: unsympathetic women, women who are perhaps weak-willed, petty, bigoted, jealous, aggressive, criminal, highly sexual, or abusive. Considering that, at least in a Western vision on literature, stories derive meaning at their base from conflict, removing the option to write “bad” women removes a lot of possibility for thematic conflict. This might be part of the reason why there are significantly less plot-driven f/f stories than there plot-driven m/m stories; plot usually requires conflict, and conflict often requires flawed characters and flawed relationships.

I know that when I write about women I’m conscious of the fact that I have internalised societal ideas about what it “should” mean to be a woman, but I’m also aware that in trying to combat those ideas it’s easy to get mired in different ones. I know that I sometimes interrogate myself about what it is that I’m saying about women when I write about this particular woman cheating on her partner or being generally secretive and untruthful – doesn’t that reproduce a societal prejudice that women are untrustworthy? It’s very hard to separate a single performance of fictional womanhood from the general performance of womanhood – this is not usually a problem with (white) men, who are allowed to represent only themselves, and not their entire gender.

The above paragraphs talk about “women” – clearly the problem of treatment that I write about becomes many times more pressing when dealing with women who are on other intersections of oppression. Women who love women are more vulnerable to prejudice and abuse than straight women, and wlw of colour are again many times more vulnerable than their white sisters. And when these wlw or woc are not cisgender, again their situation becomes many times more dire. These societal realities are often reproduced in media – 2016 was the year in which no lesbian or bisexual woman on tv seemed to be safe, and their pain and deaths hurt all the more because we are confronted with this pain in real life, too. I remember my tumblr dash around the time that The 100’s Lexa died; the pain there for many queer women who watched the show was very real, because – I think – it echoed a feeling of being unsafe, of being cruelly treated in society. I remember fans writing about how hurtful it was to see a brave female character who loved another woman killed off like this; in their pain many people stated that it was unacceptable that lesbian or bisexual female characters should be killed in fiction at all. Of course, this was understandable considering how hurt fans were, and how often they had been disappointed – still, the typical fannish tendency towards lack of nuance frustrated me. In capable writers’ hands, tragedy can be performed very meaningfully. I wrote a little about this on my blog at the time, because I was starting to feel insecure about my own tendency to prefer darker thematic material – was I complicit in my own oppression, and was I hurting other queer women by writing what I enjoyed? Clearly my own privilege was also part of this question: I am a wlw, but I’m white and cisgender, and I hail from a country where legal equality has been realised for the entirety of my adult life. Obviously homophobia is still a problem, but my close environment has been nothing but supportive and accepting from the moment I first came out as lesbian at 16, and again as bisexual at 24. So I haven’t experienced much of the tension and fear that other wlw might have experienced. Does this make me a part of the oppressive machine that performs queer women’s pain for shock value? I seriously thought about this question before tentatively concluding that I had to have faith that I was a thoughtful enough writer to avoid these pitfalls.

It might seem from this essay that I find writing femslash to be an exhausting trial of constantly having to think about what prejudices I’m reproducing – this is not the case. I love writing femslash and I love my femslash-writing friends. I’ve learned heaps about myself and others by reading some of the stellar f/f stories out there, and with every f/f story I write I become more aware of how much I love to write about queer women – and I remind myself that I should certainly do it more often, and more ambitiously. As I stated above, this is something that I’ve noticed in my own writing practice, so it’s not an accusation leveled at anyone else. It’s simply something that I find worthwhile to examine. Judging by some of the conversation that periodically does the rounds in my f/f-loving circles, I’m definitely not alone in that.

Now how to deal with this in our f/f-writing community? There’s no singular answer to that, and whatever we can do is both blindingly obvious and hard to actually do. One of the possible answers is, as it is with so many complex questions that have complex roots, to simply push through and do it anyway, to try to ignore some of the fear and uncomfortable associations we might feel in writing unsympathetic f/f narratives and write them anyway. Diversifying the stories we write will automatically diversify the stories we feel we’re allowed to write. Audience response is probably important too; I think that there must be plenty of people who feel, like me, that it’s a shame that so much of femslash is short and that a lot of it focuses on narrative happiness rather than also exploring narrative unhappiness and conflict, which (in my opinion, at least) yields more fertile literature. And if we feel that way, then we have to try to reward people who write the things we like to read, through our attention, our comments, our kudos, our podcasts, our recs, et cetera.

I write this mere days before the beginning of Femslash February, and I’m certainly planning to walk the walk that I’ve talked in this talk; I’m absolutely sure that the strong core of people who love to read about women loving women will continue to keep this community vibrant and alive and that there are plenty of new directions our stories can go in. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other voices who are participating in I Am Femslash have to say, and I’m looking forward to all of the new content that will be produced. I’m grateful that as a young teen I stumbled upon fandom and that I found my way towards femslash a few years later; I’m pretty sure my own journey of discovery and creativity would have been very different, and probably more difficult, if I hadn’t found this community. So, to all of us: We Are Femslash! <3

About the author

holyfant is a 26-year-old bisexual woman from Belgium, who’s been writing about women and their relationships since she was a budding young wlw. She loves to think about literature and how it relates to the core of our human experiences: the only thing she really wants to be, in the end, is a storyteller.

Tumblr: http://holyant.tumblr.com

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant

#holyfant #I Am Femslash #Type: Meta #Femslash February #Femslash February 2017 #submission

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cicatrixtwigs · 7 years

Text

Buffyversary

Well. Holy crap. 20 years of Buffy. 20. YEARS.

Let me talk to you about what Buffy means to me.

I'm a "first wave" millennial. I was born in 1985. My formative years were spent on the internet before that was a normal thing to do. It was the great unknown.

I didn't get into Buffy at the start. When it started airing on BBC2, I didn't pay much attention. I watched one episode (I think The Witch) after some urging by a friend. I'd always been into the supernatural. I played VTM (predominantly online, in Yahoo chat - "The Vampyres Tavern", under the "Romance" chat rooms). I read predominantly fantasy. I think it was mostly my friends that ended up influencing me to start watching just as season 2 kicked off.

By the end of that season, I was hooked.

I'm not sure what it was the spoke to me. The fighting? Yes, i love people kicking ass. The language? Buffyisms stay with me until this day. The characters? None of them were what you'd expect. They played against stereotype. It was awesome.

I remember being aggressively pissed off that my boyfriend at the time booked this wonderful valentines date... because it was the day Once More With Feeling first aired. Luckily for him, he also recorded it for me.

I was a totally Bangel shipper, but i never heard the term "bangel" until about 5 years after the show ended. It was just "Buffy/Angel". It was a miraculous love.

I had a bit of a ritual. Friday nights. All lights in the living room off. Me, a bottle of pepsi, and a box of jaffa cakes. I demanded silence. I got SO MAD when my parents or brothers interrupted. That was MY TIME. Dork.

I will never forget when I realised spoilers were bad for me. I devoured Buffy spoilers, but for some reason didn't do the same for Angel. Then "The Trial" aired. At the end of that episode, Drusilla makes a shock return, siring Darla. I was jumping up and down. I was PSYCHED. And then I realised that if i'd know that was coming, i'd have not experienced the same feeling. I swore off spoilers from that day, and never returned.

Buffy was also my first Internet Fandom. I'd been around nerdy spaces on the net for years by this point - at 14 i was a chat room/forum vet, already moderating a bunch - but all about role playing. I tried to get into The Bronze forum a few times. I never really felt welcome. It seemed mostly americans, so spoileriffic. Somehow i found this Buffy fansite, "Anywhere But Here", and on that board i found my people. It was a good mix of people from the UK and America. It was pretty queer centric, being run by a straight woman and a gay man, and i found my confidence to talk openly with those people about being bisexual before i was ready to talk to my real life peers. I had 3 amazing friends, all females from the UK, and we formed "The Wiccan Watchers". Yeah, we were a bit of a clique, but i dont think in a nasty way. We just liked having our own special thing. We wrote fanfic together. I met my first "internet strangers" in a trip to Devon, where all of us teenage girls finally got to meet.

My mum had to phone the other girls mum before she let me go. So embarrassing.

I'll always remember drinking tequila with nectarines instead of lemon, because thats what we had, and it was yummy.

I'll also always remember beeing deeply suspicious that the BTVS writers were lurking on ABH. Particularly after things we wrote started appearing in the show. I screamed at my TV when Giles and Willow discussed the wiccan coven in Devon.

We had awards ceremonies for board members. I hosted. I wrote a song for one. It was based on the Sarah Michelle Gellar/ Jack Black 2002 MTV movie awards intro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okcp0AVsPD0

We were the coolest.

We all went off to university, me last of all, in 2003 (i was the baby). We grew away from ABH. A few people moved on to become Browncoats, myself included. I got care packages from my Buffy friends. I sent care packages to my Buffy friends. They were more than "internet friends".

Buffy was still airing. Angel was still airing. But not for long.

Being a cusp millennial - let me tell you about my internet. At home, i had broadband. In my halls of residence, i had dial up. That you had to pay for, on TOP of the charge you had to pay to use your phone line to begin with - oh yes, i paid for my landline phone like with a pre-paid card. Now, i cant even imagine it. Luckily, being a nerd and having nerdy roommates, i found a dealer. A guy from the computer studies class who would download eps of Buffy and Angel on the lab broadband and burn them off for me. Excellent. I still had my backup though... Box sets. 6 seasons of BTVS on VHS. 4 season of Angel. That was about... 57 VHS tapes. They were my security blanket. They went with me wherever i went. Absolute NIGHTMARE for my parents who had to ferry me up and down the country during breaks.

Thank god for DVD’s. Then Digital Downloads. SO MUCH EASIER.

My Buffy friends also set my dating criteria. I'd had a couple of bad ones. They told me i wasn't allowed to date anyone until they met specific criteria, including loving StrongBad from Homestar Runner, and of course, Buffy.

That night i had a "one night stand" with the hot goth nerd i'd been sporadically flirting with. We joked around about strongbad. The next day we spent the whole day in bed watching Buffy, until i kicked him out without even a phone number to go on.

13 years later, we have a mortgage. He's still a hot nerd. We still make each other cry laughing, and still lie around watching cult TV. Funny how life works out.

My Buffy Friends have done well by me.

While my life drew me away from internet fandom, Buffy was ever a presence in my life. Once i was on MTV as a selected group of Whedon nerds. The producer tried to give us "kooky" facts like "I've watched Buffy 5 times!". 5 times? Laughable. 50 maybe. We all sort of cut in and gave true facts - mine being that i was writing my dissertation on intertextuality in the works of Joss Whedon. She gave us the startled blink that only non nerdy people can when faced with SHEER GEEK and was like "... oh, Okay. Wow they are better than what we came up with."

That is the one time i met Joss. I got a hug. I'm terrible at meeting people i admire. Its just an impossibly huge task to be faced with someone who changed your life but doesn't even know you. I always say something fucking stupid. This time, i just got a hug. It was good.

I try not to regret anything, but there is one thing in my life i do regret. At the Serenity premiere in London, i had a ticket for the after party. My partner was with me. We had to catch a train. I couldn't justify abandoning him and going. Luckily... one of my Buffy Friends was there. One of my original ABHers. I gave him my ticket.

He danced with Joss. I am full of raging jealousy. I'm also full of joy that if i couldn't go, another life long Buffy friend could.

I haven't even mentioned Anya yet. Oh, how i love Anya. Anya was the first TV character i ever encountered that i felt was speaking my language. I mean, she's an ex vengeance demon, so i'm not sure what it says about me...

But... seriously. Video below. My everlasting spirit animal.

It gives me ridiculous nerdy joy that my nieces both have an accidental Anya link... 1) Born on the 4th July, 2) Called... Anya.

I like to think that Buffy made me who i am today. And who i am is a kick ass woman.

We can all live by the wisdom of the Buffyverse, and it will make the world a better place.

"Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are." - Whistler in "Becoming (Part 1)" - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

youtube

#Buffy The Vampire Slayer #BTVS

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