#and ngozi didn’t know that’s what we were calling him until someone asked about him during a livestream I think. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

longitud-de-onda · 4 years

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Porque el querer causa pena, pena que no tiene fin

pairing; mad sad genius (we never got a name) x reader summary; you can love someone with all your heart, but nothing compares to the madness that exists in their absence rating; t warnings; language, a bit of alcohol, angst, it isn’t specifically covid-19 but it is a pandemic science fiction story, so the quarantine and other situations are taken to the extreme which could be potentially triggering depending on how you’re handling the quarantine. word count; 3.0k a/n; this is fanfic for ngozi anyanwu’s for all the lovesick mad sad geniuses which aside from pedro’s amazing performance, is a brilliant monologue. we’re taking the title from the rosalía song (maldición, cap. 10: cordura) that helped inspire this.

You met him at an art gallery. It was your own show, and you were standing in the corner drinking wine from a clear plastic cup, the edge of which was sharp against your lips. You held a paper plate with five almonds, a mozzarella and tomato crostini, and a mini chocolate cupcake carefully balanced in your other hand.

He was standing in front of your favorite piece. No one else was. Probably because the gallery owner told you it wasn’t the sort of work that would stop anyone. That out of all the work in your collection, it was the type that belonged in the back, where it would be found by the people who cared enough to wander there, whose interest would likely be piqued enough for them to enjoy it. It hurt to hang it up on the back wall and not up in the front where you wanted it.

But he hadn’t stopped at everything else. He had walked into the gallery minutes before, giving every painting a quick glance before settling on the one in front of which he was standing. He had been there for almost five minutes before you decided to walk up next to him.

He looked over upon seeing you approach and your heart stopped. He was the most beautiful person you had ever seen. His smile reached his eyes and you found yourself falling into them. You almost asked him if he would model for you.

You didn’t paint portraits.

“This one is beautiful,” he told you.

You smiled and took a sip of your wine. You didn’t need convincing that it was beautiful. That much you already knew. It was the one piece you were confident beyond belief about.

“What do you like about it?” you asked, jutting your chin up at the painting in question.

“The artist seems to have cared. You can see the brushstrokes. They’re more detailed than the others. Someone only spends that much time on something they really care about.”

That was when you fell in love with him. Thirty-three words. That was all it took.

Your first date was dinner after the gallery closed for the night and he dragged you out to his favorite burger joint because he said you deserved it after opening an exhibition. After wolfing down more than enough food and splitting a tub of fries, you spilled out onto the streets in a pile of laughter and joy and you’ll never forget the look on his face when you asked for his number.

Your second date was a night you’ll never forget. He had taken two days to contact you after the first night, and you had begun to worry you would never hear from him again, but he called you and said he wanted to meet you at 6pm the next day and to dress nicely. You showed up where he told you too and he was there with that goddamn smile.

He took you to a Chinese restaurant and said I’d take you somewhere nicer but I don’t think you’re that kind of woman. And you would have slapped any other guy in the face but he looked so earnest and he was right about you. It was like he could read you like a book. And when you laughed he’d sometimes stop laughing with you just to stare with a certain reverence that made you question what you did to deserve the sort of man who looked at you that way.

He took you past all the big theaters showing musicals and stopped at one tucked away with a modest set of doors but the grandest entry hall you had ever seen. You let him lead the way as he took you through the doors into the auditorium and you walked down the aisles to seats near the front.

You didn’t know what you had done to let him know you loved comedies, but he had picked out the perfect play. By the time it was over your stomach hurt from laughing so hard and your eyes held the watery ring around them from your tears. You hit the cool night air just as it started raining, and any other time you would have run for cover but with him and his smile next to you, you didn’t give a shit.

The aimless wandering that night was your favorite part. You were doubled over laughing as he told you the parts of the play he liked, and the parts he didn’t.

“She was a fucking genius and a poet, you know?” he said.

“Who?”

“The playwright.”

“What? Why?” you asked.

“She wrote a play about another fucking genius,” he said. “And despite it being the funniest shit ever made, it still had all those deep-ass lines. You know, like, ‘If you got one friend when you die then most people never have something like you.”

And he didn’t know why you started giggling until you calmed yourself enough to tell him what the real quote was in between fits of laughter. He had that look from earlier that night on his face. The one where it was like he didn’t even know you could see him. He gazed at you like he could see you. Not just on the surface, but underneath everything too. Like he could see every thought that went through your head and took the time to hold every one and appreciate it before letting it go.

He leaned down to kiss you and you tilted your head up to meet him and you wondered how you hadn’t kissed him before. Why you didn’t when you said goodbye your first night. Why you didn’t when you were getting to know him over a burger. Why you didn’t let him kiss you that first fucking moment when you fell in love, right there, after he told you about your own goddamn brush strokes.

You fell in love all over again the following weekend when he took you to his favorite spot in the park, a large grassy hill overlooking all the kids playing below and you spread out a blanket and ate sandwiches that he had put into little ziploc bags. You told him that he should have packed some wine and he said baby, we didn’t need any alcohol our first two dates and you flushed and told him about the wine you had at the gallery and he laughed.

“I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to walk up to you without it,” you protested when he jokingly expressed mild disappointment.

“If you hadn’t walked up, I probably would have shouted ‘where’s the fucking artist, I need to talk to her!’ by the end of the night,” he said, and you found yourself laughing again.

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened at one of my exhibits,” you said.

You met him every morning before work to go out for coffee, even if it meant waking up an extra hour early because he’s a morning person. You had his coffee order memorized by the third day.

He invited you to his apartment one day and you found yourself laughing over home videos of him as a kid late into the night. When you said goodbye, your heart yearned to stay. To take one of his shirts and wear it as you curled up next to him in bed. Instead, you kissed him good night.

After dinner one evening, you brought him to your place and showed him the little studio you had in the most well-lit room. He spent almost an hour exploring it, asking you questions about every little thing, the brand of paints you liked best, the angle you preferred to set your easel, your favorite tools, your favorite color, and telling you how honored he was to be in the workplace of a genius.

You didn’t tell him he was the smartest person you had ever met.

You didn’t tell him that he was the genius out of the two of you. That he could talk about his work and you could listen for hours to his voice but not understand a single word he said. That he would talk like no one was listening and then say the most serious shit. The sort of thing that made you rethink life, and by the time you had escaped from your thoughts he was already on another topic, rambling about the multitudes of things he loved. He saw the beauty in everything.

How the hell could a man like him love you?

He was the sort of person you would hear about in movies. The type to never stop dreaming. Someone watching the two of you would think you both mad. He had his head in the clouds and you would watch from below in awe as if his brain was firing off fireworks, and then you would speak about anything and he would give you that smile and that goddamn look that drove you crazy.

Your entire life he was there, living his own life without ever having met you, and you often wondered how many times you had almost met. You lived in the same city, surely there must have been times. Hundreds if not thousands of moments in which your paths nearly crossed. Whether what kept you from meeting was a mere 3 feet of distance in a crowd or a mere 3 minutes of time and space in which one of you was running late or early to something along which way you would have found him.

But you were lucky to have met him when you did. Gotten to share the brief moments while they lasted. That was before the virus hit.

You were sitting on his kitchen counter, covered in acrylic paint he had bought at the grocery store as the two of you detailed messy renditions of Van Gogh’s work on his cabinet doors, and he had wrapped his dirty hands around your waist, leaving two purple handprints on your painting shirt, and pulled you into a kiss. And this one was different. It was deeper, searching for more. There was more heat and passion. Your whole relationship, months of it, had been slow and beautiful and intimate, but there were times where it was more like friendship then romance and neither of you minded as you walked along the fine line between the two, happy with the state of things as they were. But you had loved him since the first day and you didn’t mind the idea of, one day, collapsing naked and sweaty into bed with him instead of snuggling up against his side as he wrapped you in his arms like he usually did when you did decide to spend the night.

But that was for another day. You broke apart after minutes to return to your project. By the end of the night you were screwing the doors back in and he was admiring everything. If you were being honest, he was completely helpless when it came to handiwork. Couldn’t hammer a nail, tighten a screw, sand some wood, or even recreate a decent Starry Starry Night, but that didn’t matter. Because his kitchen looked vibrant and beautiful and the art reminded you of all the ideas you could see swirling in his head. The fucking genius.

The reports had started to come in by then, but it wasn’t until the following morning that you realized how serious everything had gotten. Schools announced that day that they were closing. He called to tell you he was working from home. You got the call that evening that you would be too.

A week later and you had met with him once, in the park. It was a long trek for both of you, living on opposite sides of the city. But the brief kisses, kind words, and soft touches on the waist, thighs, arms, neck, jaw, nose, back, anything? Those were all worth it.

The following day you learned you couldn’t leave your neighborhood. You video-chatted with him in tears. If only you had let yourself follow the thoughts of moving in with him instead of stamping them out as soon as they started to take root in your head. If only you had let him spend the night one more time. So you wouldn’t be clinging to his fading smell on the t-shirt you stole from his closet.

It was like your whole world cut out when the strikes started. No internet. No cell service. No connection. The postal service was all but gone, and you had no way of connecting with him. Your only source of news was the newspaper, three times a week, delivered to your doorstep. And your neighbor who got it every day and would shout to you the important things.

You wished you had photos of him framed around the house.

Then when you did, the sight of him staring at you from every corner of your apartment was enough to drive you mad with longing that you took them all down.

When the government got the strikes under control, they started to introduce the plans for rolling out the internet services again. Things had become grim. You spent every night dreaming of him, but you were starting to forget his face. Did his nose curve that much? Were the creases around his eyes that deep? Was his shabby beard that full? Did he have dimples, or were you just making that up?

You would stare at the photos on your phone, desperately trying to commit him to memory. Remember how he looked when the man in the photo came to life in three dimensions. How did he walk? How did he wave his hands?

By that time, life was different. You didn’t make art anymore. What was once your life had been shoved into your studio room, the light turned off, and the tubes of paint left to dry up. Your apartment didn’t smell like clay and charcoal and linseed oil anymore. You didn’t have it in you to keep painting. You went to the grocery store once every fourteen days, grabbing produce and frozen goods, bottles of alcohol and some cleaning supplies before handing over your newly minted ration card to receive the staples. Rice, pasta, beans, eggs, flour, sugar, a couple bags of dried fruit, a bottle of milk. It wasn’t so bad when you lived on your own, but you felt bad for the mothers and fathers in line behind you, knowing that their children might be too picky to even eat the food they were lucky to get.

The introduction of connectivity services was a slow process. Neighborhood by neighborhood across the country so as not to overwhelm the systems. There were new rules. It was only to be used for three things: education, work, and essential communication between legal family members.

Your finger hovered over the call button next to his name hundreds of times, but you could never press it out of fear that someone would be watching or listening. You knew that when you walked the streets they were. It was likely the same for your phone now too.

One day in a drunken fit of anger and yearning and the craze of love, you deleted all the photos on your phone, hoping that maybe without them you could forget how much you missed him.

You tried to forget him. But every night you dreamt of his slowly warping face. You wondered if he was doing the same.

Sometimes you would watch the DVDs you had and try to replace his image in your head with the actors. Sometimes it would work and weeks would go by with only dreams of the movies. But it would always lose its effectiveness. Usually around the time that you remembered that he was probably your soulmate and you didn’t get enough time.

In every single one of the possibilities of your lives together that you daydreamed about for hours every day, there was never enough time. But this reality was the worst. You were sure of that.

You had read every book in your house. Read every poem you could get your hands on, even the ones you had risked your life for in searching them on the internet, carefully saving pdfs and screenshots and printing them out on the dwindling paper in your apartment. Words didn’t do the same thing they used to anymore. They didn’t bring joy and excitement and escape. You stopped reading them.

You talked with your neighbor for the first time in a month. It seemed that almost everyone had stopped reading books. You wondered if people stopped doing other things too.

The world before was starting to blur around the edges. You couldn’t remember if the path you liked to walk in the park had such an erratic course or if it was more subtle than you could remember. What did you like to do on the weekends? There was a place, a building, that you liked to go to. You couldn’t remember what it was called or what was inside, but you remember the feeling of standing there. The musty smell and the awe and the sensation that you were staring out at all of humanity. And you had no idea what the fuck it was.

You weren’t sure how much of the world before you had forgotten. But you couldn’t shake him from your memory. You wished you could.

When you weren’t working you were cooking or eating or sleeping. And when you weren’t doing that, it constituted the dangerous time where you didn’t have anything to do and nothing to interest you.

And every fucking thing you did, be that making pasta or lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, made you think of him. You had loved him as you’d never loved anyone before. And you never told him. Did he even know that you loved him? Did he know that you knew he loved you back?

You would close your eyes and the only thing you were sure of in your mind’s image of him was that goddamn smile.

taglists; (let me know if you want to be added, removed, or moved around)

perm taglist; @turquiosenights @el-lizzie @sparrows-books @dxxkxx @opheliaelysia @trashbin2 @rzrcrst @arcadianempress @stevieharrrr @peterparkers-tingle @blushingwueen @coredrive @lokiaddicted @mserynlarsen @badassbaker @1-800-fandomtrashqueen @flower-petal-blooming @talesfromtheguild @eupphoriaaa @weirdowithnobeardo @gaybroadwayloser @randomness501 @adikaofmandalore @ahopelessromanticwritersworld @poesdxmerons @bountyguild @sinnamon-bunn @readsalot73 @gooddaykate @rage-isaquietthing

pedro taglist; @pascalisthepunkest @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @mrsparknuts @souls-rain @twomoonstwosuns @sophiasescape

#for all the lovesick mad sad geniuses #pedro pacal #24hourplays #ngozi anyanwu #camila writes #rated t #under 5 #angst #pedro fics #fatlmsg #fatlmsg fics #mad sad genius x reader

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garden-of-succulents · 6 years

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Ask I got: So with your post on your writing and Kent its like yeah I usually love a lot of your stuff but whenever Ngozi's line about "Kent getting all he wanted and not getting to grow and Jack getting all he feared and growing" I'm just kind of shocked you agree with that cause I mean you know Kent didn't want Jack to OD and I bet losing Jack in anyway was one of Kent's biggest fears.

plus like here the idea of growth ends up being tied to being out or closeted. Jack's maturity and self acceptance ends up being reflected through how open he is, the high point of his arc and growth as a player ended with him coming out to the world. Which unfortunately bounces back and frames Kent as immature and ties that immaturity to being closeted. [SOME BITS TRIMMED FOR LENGTH] And then make him an antagonist and frame all of his interactions with Jack/Bitty and all of his victories as negative just kind of burn my tongue

even more so when fans intentionally or not run with all that framing and end up connecting all of Kent's issues with his choice to be closeted for his career condemn his choice and point to it as evidence of immaturity or lack of self love or warped priorities, when that choice isn't just the norm but literally the only one any NHL player has ever made at this point and a choice millions of us make each and every day for our own safety, success, and happiness.

My reply: People criticizing the link between immaturity and closetedness are really on point, I think. When I was supporting N's comments about "Kent got everything he wanted, and didn't grow, while Jack got what he didn't want, and grew", I didn't know the full content of 3.26, especially the fact that Jack was going to come out on television and that Kent's teammates were going to be pretty LGBT-hostile.

I mean, I do think that Kent is immature, especially in the sense that his social and emotional development is stunted, and that his immaturity is the result of his decision to go into the NHL and be a professional player from age 18, while Jack's relative maturity is the result of his time in rehab and at Samwell. However, I don't think Kent is uniquely immature in the NHL, and his immaturity isn't linked to him being queer—I think, rather, that immaturity is a result of the incredibly toxic masculinity an NHL career demands, and the effects of that toxic masculinity. Jack's unique because his talent, family history, and financial privilege have given him the advantage of being able to fight that toxic masculinity in the way few professional hockey players have been able to.

So, I'm from Alberta. Small town with a hockey rink and not much else. Major oil-producing sector. Grew up around hockey players. I did part of my practicum as a mental health therapist at a university counselling centre in Vancouver where they had a really strong athletics program, and I had hockey players on my caseload. And the hardest thing for me to communicate to people from elsewhere about hockey culture is how relentlessly, insistently hypermasculine it is. Everything you've heard about a "man box", everything from The Mask You Live In or Men's Work or I Don't Want to Talk About It. That's what gets pushed by coaches, by commentators, by everybody—toxic masculinity is how you play. Dominate, suppress your emotions, overcome pain, win at all costs.

I am honestly saying that the entire feeder system for men's professional hockey is fucked up on a very fundamental level. From elementary school-aged kids getting up at 4am for practice and doing hockey every day and having no social lives outside of hockey, to teenagers leaving home before they're developmentally ready to be away from their families, having substance abuse issues at a grossly disprortionate rate to their peers, shortchanging their educations, and earning very little money. The system produces top players by getting them to focus on hockey at the expense of everything else, which includes their social and emotional development.

I'm talking about basic shit like "realizing when you are feeling an emotion and being able to identify what emotion it is". The inability to do this is called alexithymia, and it often comes from growing up in an invalidating environment where your emotions are never recognized, acknowledged, or accommodated. I'm talking about stuff like "not being able to tell someone about your basic wants and needs"—something that is really hard when the least expression of emotion is seen as "weak" or "gay".

So when I say that Kent "hasn't grown" or is "immature", I mean that things went so bad at the Epikegster because these are skills he hasn't developed. When he spits out, "I miss you," it comes out like it's the absolute limit of what he's capable of saying. His entire sales pitch to Jack has been in terms of money, power, and dominance—You'll be on a great team; you'll earn lots of money; you'll be better than before. It's not until he's at the end of his rope that he admits to wanting Jack back because he misses him. And therefore he doesn't see why he's failing at persuasion; he doesn't realize that Jack has an emotional attachment to the Samwell players, that his priorities for joining a team aren't just about prestige and money.

Because here's the thing about toxic masculinity: there are the things Kent really feels and wants, and the things he is allowed to admit he feels and wants according to toxic masculinity.

Acceptable masculine interests according to toxic masculinity:

Money

Power

Violence

Dominance

Competition

Prestige

Sex

Unacceptable masculine interests according to this system:

Emotional intimacy

Intellectual curiosity

Artistic expression

Play

Authenticity

Personal fulfillment

Safety

According to the system, Kent was only allowed to want to be rich, famous, and successful. Those were the only things he could admit to without being lambasted in international press outlets, because hockey media is sooooo fucked up.

Jack's OD emotionally devastated Kent Parson—and he would have been pilloried for letting it show. In that moment, he wasn't expected to feel anything except humble, grateful, and happy. So that's how he acted. Being closeted is such a secondary concern here.

So in some ways "immature" is the wrong word because Kent is an incredibly mature public figure, polished and good at keeping his mouth shut; he's mastered the art of being what he's expected to be, at being what will let him succeed at his chosen profession. It's kind of like how PTSD is a disease, a dysfunctional set of behaviours, in a peaceful, prosperous society, but it's what keeps you alive in a warzone. It's why I don't counsel hockey bros as a chosen profession: I don't respect their athletic and professional achievements enough to work with them every day. I don't think it's worth winning a trophy if you were never home and ruined your marriage and failed to look after your children, and I'm not good at honouring a belief system that says it is worth it.

But I would define "maturity" as the ability to understand your own needs and fulfill them; to live your own reality and express it in a way that satisfies you.

The ways Jack "grew" were when he admitted that something was wrong and accepted convalescence and treatment instead of skating through the pain. When he got to know himself as an intellectual and artistic person as well as an athletic one. When he made space in his life for empathy and play. Because when you see NHL players being criticized on a personal level, what's it for? For having "big personalities", for being "unprofessional" and "unserious", for being "girly". For celebrating too much, dancing too freely, being political, intellectual, for questioning power hierarchies, and for putting their personal welfare ahead of their teams' success.

(Hockey players' compliance to power hierarchies is valued above all things, but that's a different rant)

Jack's moment of maturity wasn't kissing Bitty on the Stanley Cup ice; it was a year earlier, in his own room, when he understood how he felt and acted on it, and communicated it to Bitty, thereby achieving an emotional intimacy that was more important to him than hockey. In that same room, Kent struggled so badly to understand what he wanted and why, and to express it to somebody else, that he backfired in his intended aim, injured his friendship with Jack more deeply than ever, and hurt the person he wanted to express love for.

So the dichotomy of closeted/out is super new in the comic, and super new to analyses of Kent. A lot of what we've been talking about, and the theories we've evolved, have really not been based on 3.26.

And yes, like you, I'm really leery of letting that be a consistent part of the analysis. We don't know why Kent isn't out yet (my personal theory is that it was strategic) and I'm way more willing to say he's immature because of the way that interaction with Jack went to shit, than to say he's immature because he's doing the smart thing and surviving in a homophobic-as-fuck industry.

And, as always, a lot of my fic about Kent is about him developing those things his industry wants to punish him for having--why I write about him escaping to music festivals with queer pagan poets, respecting and supporting female athletes, caring for helpless animals, developing strong aesthetic tastes and artistic hobbies, finding spirituality, fighting back against his hierarchies, admitting his problems, or quitting to raise a baby. Because I want him to develop too. But I think the draft sent him to the desert in more ways than one, and it’s a struggle for him to thrive.

#stuff i wrote #kent parson #omgcp #coming out discourse

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clawfootpress · 3 years

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Dear Mr. Met:

The other day I was riding my bike and I blew right through a stop sign. Didn’t even slow down. Didn’t even see it. I blame the Mets, partly. I was listening to a Mets game on my phone and they were winning but the Orioles had the bases loaded in the eighth and I was getting nervous. It was only my second day as a dog walker, so the part of my brain that wasn’t worried about the Mets was worried that I’d left a dog outside or a door unlocked or maybe the owners thought my notes were weird and they didn’t want me walking their dog again. With my brain full of such thoughts and feelings, I blew right through the stop sign.

I don’t mean I saw the stop sign, slowed down, looked both ways, and rolled on through without coming to a full stop. I do that all the time. No, I’m talking about blowing right through it, not even knowing it was there.

I don’t normally listen to my phone when I’m out biking, running, or walking. I don’t like things in my ears, for one, and I genuinely like hearing the sounds of the city. I thought I might be okay listening to the game since I wasn’t wearing ear buds. I had the phone mounted on my handlebars, the volume turned all the way up. It worked right up until the bases were loaded and I got nervous and blew right through the stop sign.

A guy in a truck honked at me and called me an asshole. It could have been worse, he could have also been distracted, maybe also by the Mets. Who knows? It’s a big city in a big world. Maybe it was his second to last day on the job. Maybe it had been too many days since his last day on the job. Maybe his daughter was in the hospital. Maybe his daughter wasn’t talking to him. Maybe his daughter finally called him that morning after twenty-eight years. Maybe his boyfriend broke up with him. The multiplicity of possibilities boggles the mind.

The point is, the guy could have also been distracted and blown right through the stop sign and then I really would have been in a jackpot. I still didn’t like being called an asshole, though, so I hit my brakes and turned around.

Oh, he said, yeah?

Yeah, I said, and rode right back at him.

You know how there’s this idea that if we put energy out into the world our desires can manifest? I believe that to be true. I’m not sure exactly how it works, I just know it works because I’ve seen it work. Rather, I’ve seen the inverse work. The energy I put out disintegrates the objects of my desire, which Buddhists say is good, I think, but I don’t know. I find it to be frustrating more than anything.

It makes sense when you think about it. If there is a law of attraction, then there has to be a law of repulsion. No light without dark. No day without night. No hot without cold. No pleasure without pain. No sweet without salty. No joy without sorrow. No life without death. No attraction without repulsion. Imagine someone out there setting an intention for something. As the thing is moving toward them, it has to be moving away from someone else. In order for them to attract, someone else must repel. That’s physics.

Even the great Jacob deGrom is not immune. In a game against the Rockies, he struck out nine batters in a row. Ten, as you know, is the record, held by the greatest Met of all, The Franchise, Tom Seaver. deGrom looked untouchable. He looked inevitable. I got excited. I texted my friends. The next batter got a hit.

Boy, was the guy in the truck mad. Understandably. I broke the law and put myself and others in danger, including him. He honked and yelled at me, which was freedom of expression at its finest. I stopped and turned back toward him and rode right back at him. I did that because he called me an asshole. I was wrong to blow through the stop sign, but I’m too proud to let someone call me an asshole.

God and Ben Franklin gave that man every right to shoot me dead in the street (Freedom of Worship), but he didn’t shoot me, even though I charged at him like a wild beast.

Instead of shooting me, he said, Oh, yeah?

Instead of apologizing, I said, Yeah. You don’t get to call me names.

I said this because I’m a man and deserve to be treated as such, even when I fuck up. I dared to look the man in the pickup truck in the eye and demand he treat me with basic dignity. To which he responded, You’re right. I was wrong about that.

Organized religion is dying but religiosity is alive and well. Prayers of Confession are all the rage.

Everybody wants confession, everybody wants some cathartic narrative for it. The guilty especially. I’m watching True Detective, Season One.

Look: Ellie Kemper should not have been in that Veiled Prophet debutant ball mostly because debutant balls are dumb, but raking her over the Twitter-coals until she apologized did nothing good. She was nineteen. At nineteen she was just as much a Victim of the Patriarchy as a Perpetrator of White Supremacy, but the crowd demanded atonement. Atonement for what? For being born into and participating in the life of a particular place with particular people at a particular time?

Maybe you never had to navigate growing up with racists. Maybe you never had to navigate the complexity of loving racists. Or being loved by racists. Maybe you never had to do the emotional labor of depending on racists to drive you to the hospital. Of knowing racists are more than their racism. Knowing they are capable of great acts of love, which make them beautifully human, but makes their racism more stark, more deliberate, more sinful, awful, frustrating, heartbreaking. Of having to choose as a child, then as an adolescent, between participating or feeling completely alone. In a time and a place where there were no counselors, or the counselors were also racist. Maybe you’ve never had to parse out different subcategories of racism as you try to discern which relationships are worth it, whatever that might mean, and which are completely irredeemable, and then finding the courage to act accordingly. If you haven’t, you’re lucky. Privileged, even.

Twitter got its confession, but neither you, nor I, nor Ellie Kemper, nor America is any less racist for it. I submit that Twitter only got its confession because Ellie Kemper was already prone to introspection, has been introspecting most of her life, and has done more introspecting than the average Twitter-activist. She didn’t change her mind, she was forced to dig up her past shit and lay it on the table to be picked over by people who only just took a seat. The new arrivals took a look at the shit and said, Boy that stinks. Then they felt better, and Ellie Kemper felt worse, and nothing else changed and that’s called progress.

My tension and adrenaline drained away. I saw his face, his particular face. He wasn’t a Man In a Pickup Truck, representative of everyman in a pickup truck; he was who he was. He had a round nose and bags under his eyes. Two or three days of stubble on his cheeks and chin. I wonder if he has grandchildren who complain about how scratchy it is? He looked scared, like a tired man who’d almost hit a careless cyclist. He didn’t to kill anyone and he was angry that I almost caused him to kill someone. I didn’t want this man to kill anyone, and I certainly didn’t want him to kill me.

It was then that I apologized for blowing right through the stop sign. Well, I was wrong about that.

He looked a little confused. It was a confusing situation. So, he said, we’re good then?

I felt a little confused. Weren’t we supposed to keep yelling?

We’re good then, I said.

His last words to me were either, I love that, or I love you. I’m 99% sure he said, I love that, but isn’t it pretty to think that he said, I love you?

Listen: it’s not that I’m anti-confession, but I’m wary and increasingly wary of proforma Prayers of Confession, especially when they are religiously proscribed by a demographic that claims to be Not Religious. (In the words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Ask them a question and you are told the answer is to repeat a mantra.) Public confessions do, for better or worse, what religion does, for better or worse: tell us a story, give us a sense of control, shape our experience, and help us think we’re actually doing something – Look what we did, we extracted a confession! Private confessions don’t provide narrative, characters, or catharsis. All they offer is humanity, complexity, intimacy, vulnerability, and, occasionally, transformation.

I’m working on non-attachment, and, accordingly, on non-judgment, judgement being a form of attachment to the story we tell ourselves about how things should be.

It’s difficult. I remain attached to the story that thirteen-year-old boys should be allowed to grow up, no matter how much they fuck up when they are thirteen-years-old, therefore I judge the officer who killed Adam Toledo. I judge the adult who gave the boy a gun and showed him how to shoot. I judge the people who made the gun and all the hands that carried the gun to the boy. I judge people who love guns more than they love thirteen-year-old boys.

I ‘preciate you, I said, clipping the first syllable like I was someone I’m not. If this was fiction, I’d strike that dialogue as sounding untrue, not in character, but real life is messier, real people are inconsistent, and that’s really what I said.

I’m not great at talking to people. I was kind of hoping to get this one job with a delivery company because it was closer to home and paid more. The interviewer asked how I’d heard of their company. I said a friend had used them to move a large machine. I should have stopped there, but there is a word-gremlin inside me that likes to blow through stop signs. I said I’d moved that machine before and boy was I glad I didn’t have to move it again. I said that to the guy interviewing me about moving machines.

So I’m walking dogs.

What I want to do is write stories. I desire to never sit through another interview. I want my stories to be my interview and you, the reader, the one who says, You’re hired, you can start immediately, you’ll never have to move machines or walk dogs ever again.

I hesitate to say this too loud, lest the Inverse Laws of Attraction hear me. I also say this with an acute awareness that what writing does, for better or worse, is tell a story, give me a sense of control, shape my experience, and help me think I’m actually doing something. The obligation I have, then, is to tell good stories, to the best of my ability, populated with characters full of humanity, complexity, intimacy, vulnerability, who, at their best, offer the possibility of transformation. No cartoon villains.

Unless I’m writing a cartoon. And there are villains.

Is it possible for me (or anyone) to privately apologize for something I say or write, but publicly defend the right – and even the necessity – of saying it? It is. Is it possible for each to be equally true? It is.

Fully human/fully divine. Very well then, I contradict myself.

In the meantime, the world keeps shouting. It’s really difficult to talk when people are shouting all the time, especially when they are shouting the same thing over and over again, which is, BANG BANG BANG!

I don’t know what to do with that. It feels like I either have to shout or ignore it. Shouting makes me tired but ignoring it feels as reckless as blowing right through a stop sign. So I work on my stories and let them try to make sense of this absurd world.

Speaking of absurd, just when I thought I had this letter all buttoned up and ready to send out the door, my wife was in a car accident. Another driver blew right through a stop sign and slammed into the driver’s side of our car. My wife is okay; our car is not. The woman who hit her was not distracted by the Mets because the Mets were rained out that day. I don’t know much about her other than she was driving on a suspended license without insurance. God and Ben Franklin gave her that right (No Quarter Without Consent). Who are you or I to tell her how to live?

Equally, my wife could have shot her right between the eyes (Redress of Grievances) and of course that would have solved everything, except my wife doesn’t carry a gun. She probably never will. Can you believe that?

The guy in the pickup truck nodded and drove away. Such things can happen, even in America, depending on the characters, and when they don’t the story seems more stark, more deliberate, more sinful, awful, frustrating, heartbreaking.

#LFGM,

Matt Lang

PS –While I was naming and claiming my desire to watch Jacob deGrom strike out ten batters in a row, in another part of space-time Aaron Nola struck out nine batters in a row, and he looked untouchable, he looked inevitable. Someone got excited, someone texted their friends. On June 25th Aaron Nola, pitching for the Phillies, against the Mets, in New York, struck out ten Mets in a row, tying the record held by the greatest Met of all, The Franchise, Tom Seaver. I listened to all ten while riding my bike.

Be careful what you wish for.

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mmtions · 7 years

Text

wedding: impossible (pt.2)

(pt.1)

michelle jones/peter parker - college/future fic (wip)

Against his better judgement, Peter has agreed to be MJ’s fake date to a wedding so she can usurp the bride, or something. Considering how much he’d like to be her not-fake date, he’s not really looking forward to it.

Despite all her apparent indifference to them both - and, really, most of her peers - MJ had become a close friend to Ned and himself. So much so that he freely told her his big, spider-themed secret. (She’s actually the only person he’s deliberately told, which is a milestone he’s not keen on analyzing too deeply.)

She’d reacted pretty calmly, actually, only hitting him with a medium-sized Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche novel, rather than the special edition hardcover that was also in reaching distance.

So, they survived high school together, becoming an unexpectedly tight-knit trio (with absolute no parallels to Harry Potter, shut up Ned). They even survived the entry and violent departure of Harry Osborne from the group, which caused all kinds of angst for Peter, definitely revolving around the supervillainy rather than the whole dating-MJ thing, thank you very much.

And they’d even survived college applications together. Ned and Peter had been talking about MIT since they realised it wasn’t a fictional place on spy TV shows, and Harvard should consider itself lucky to get MJ as one of its alumni. It was a happy coincidence that they all lived within a twenty-minute car ride of each other, really.

None of this, however, explains why exactly Peter is currently on a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, trying to make conversation with MJ that isn’t horrifically awkward.

He’d picked her up from her college dorm in the car guilt-gifted to him by Mr. Stark after the whole Infinity War mess, and most of the words exchanged during the whole hour-and-a-half trip had been about which radio station to play. They’re currently sitting inside the main ferry, a booth to themselves, looking out onto the passing waves. Peter’s already wearing his suit, the plain black one he last wore to graduation, but MJ told him that she’d change on the journey. (As long as she’s not expecting him to keep driving while she strips off in the front seat next to him, he’s perfectly happy with the plan).

“Hey,” she suddenly says, apropos of nothing. “Does this remind you of that time with the Vulture and the ferry splitting in half?” Because of course she’d gone into scary-research-mode with she’d first found out his double life.

“Um,” he looks around. The smell of seawater is stronger when it’s not filtered through a fear-sweaty mask, and the view isn’t quite the same, but, “Yeah, kind of, now you mention it. Thanks for that.”

She snickers. “No problem.”

And, well, he finds himself smiling, because he can’t help himself, and because this is their status quo, her making fun of pretty much every aspect of his character, and he didn’t realise how much he missed it even in the past week.

He readjusts his tie - although maybe he could just have taken it off for the journey - and of course MJ’s eyes narrow in on the movement. “I like your suit,” she says.

“Thanks,” he says. “May said I should match the tie to your dress, but you won’t tell me anything about it, so…”

Laughing easily, she replies, “Gold medal to Aunt May for remembering prom etiquette. Anyway, I’ve brought two dresses with me, and they’re different colours.”

“I’m sure I could have packed two ties,” he counters with a perfect poker face.

“Shut it, Parker.” She leans to teasingly shove at his shoulder. “Seriously, thanks for coming. I was considering Ned, but I’ve seen him on Dance Dance Revolution, and I can’t afford to lose an eye during the macarena, you know?”

He snorts. “Sure, happy to save you from that. But who turned you down before you considered me?”

He meant it as just a joke, ready for her to roll her eyes and say a cheerleader or her current debating rival, but as soon as he says it, he realises how desperate it probably sounded. He swallows, and prepares his commentary on the weather, when she frowns, a crease between her brows like every-time he says something stupid.

“I didn’t consider anyone else,” she says, and she actually seems sincere, which, honestly, has happened maybe five times during their entire friendship.

He rolls his eyes. “I’m joking, MJ, don’t worry.”

“Peter,” she says, and she puts her hand over his where it rests between them on the bench. “Seriously. You were my first choice.”

He casts his gaze anywhere but her face. “It’s okay, I’m here, you don’t need to-”

“Peter, I needed someone charismatic, and hot, and nice, and who I trust. Your waltz skills were a big bonus, I’ll admit,” and here, she grins, disarmingly casual, as if his whole world hasn’t stuttered a little bit at so many compliments coming from her mouth. “But I wanted you to come with me.”

“Uh,” he says, eloquently.

“I’m gonna go change into my outfit,” she says, abruptly, standing and edging out of the booth. “Stay here. And try not to sink the boat this time, yeah?”

He shakes himself. “Not funny!” He yells after her retreating figure. She flips him off in response, and a mother shields her daughter’s eyes from the gesture as MJ stalks past them, duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Great.

While he waits for her to return, he nervously fixes his hair - and probably messes it up more - and considers texting Ned. Although what would he send?

(hey, has MJ been complimenting you recently? unrelated q: how’s that alien mind control detector coming along?)

He could maybe text May, but she’d get the wrong idea. Well, probably the right idea, but she’s always liked MJ, even more after the whole first semester mess that was his month-long relationship with Carlie Cooper. Even thinking her name makes the smell of burning strong in Peter’s nostrils, and he shivers. Bad mental path to go down, Parker.

He decides to just refresh Twitter, liking Pepper Potts’ (@CEOStarkPotts) tweet about fracking, and Mr. Stark’s subsequent reply about where he’d like to drill for oil, which he only likes out of courtesy because the actual mental image is bleach-drinking worthy.

He quickly finds himself then in a internet spiral, and he’s watching a Youtube restoration of a dug-up axe when there’s a cough from somewhere near. He startles, and looks up, and then thinks that maybe the ship did sink and he’s dead. Completely and utterly dead.

“It’s red,” he chokes out. At this point, it might be easier to just tattoo ‘giant dweeb’ across his forehead.

She rolls his eyes. “Cheers, Parker, consider your next opticians’ appointment postponed. Seriously, is it okay, or should I try on the other one?”

He shakes his head so fast he’s in danger of dislocating his jaw. He’s staring, definitely, but he doubts anyone would blame him. Because MJ - Michelle freakin’ “fashion is capitalism’s worst industry” Jones - is wearing this long red slinky dress that looks soft and shiny and amazing. “Nope, no,” he says. (Smooth.) “No, I think that one works. It’s, ah, you’re really - it looks good. Yeah,”

God, it’s almost the exact shade as the red on his suit. Don’t worry, Dr. Octopus, MJ is going to murder Peter Parker by just wearing spaghetti straps, you’re welcome.

She slides back into the booth, and tucks her hair - which is out of its usual ponytail and falling all around her face in all its wild glory - behind her ears. “Thanks.” Then the soft smile is quickly hidden behind a meaner grimace. “This’ll show Anna.”

“You still haven’t told me what your big problem with this girl is,” Peter points out, thankful for the distraction of conversation.

She sniffs. “It’s a long story. And I can only tell it when the sun’s down.”

He rolls his eyes. He has no idea why he likes her so much, honestly.

They follow the GPS’s directions and arrive at the hotel, a charming place with white stone and a long gravel driveway accented with pretty, flowering trees. Naturally, MJ pulls a face at it.

“This is so typical of her,” she says.

“It looks nice,” he rebukes.

They follow the signs to the car park, and Peter only takes three tries, amidst MJ’s laughter, to get it into the parking bay. They traipse to the main entrance, other guests mingling and following their path.

"Wait," Peter asks as they reach the lobby and join the queue of people for the reception desk. "We're staying here tonight?"

"Yeah," MJ replies casually. "The ceremony and reception are here, so."

"You booked the rooms?"

At this, MJ suddenly seems distracted by her fingernails. "Room. Singular. And, yeah. Least I could do for dragging you out here."

He's too afraid to ask the other question he has, which is promptly answered when they get up to their designated Room 342. It has exactly one double bed, right in the middle of the room, like it's taunting him.

"I-" he swallows. "I'll call reception, get them to send some more pillows so I can sleep on the floor."

"Don't be stupid," she dismisses, already chucking her bag onto the right side and popping the complimentary pillow mint into her mouth. "You can't help little old ladies cross the street if your back's as bad as theirs. We can share."

Right. They can share a bed. Sure.

"When does the ceremony start?" Peter asks, a little desperately as MJ sits on the bed and bobs a little, testing the springiness, which is not a turn-on, shut up.

"In half an hour, probably." She shrugs. "I'm not bothered if we turn up late though."

He narrows his eyes. "You want to turn up fashionably late to a wedding ceremony."

"I'm not saying I want to, I'm just saying I wouldn't be bothered," she counters, with a straight face, until she breaks and stands back up. "Kidding, kidding. Let's go. I think one of my cool cousins is here."

He frowns, following her out into the hallway and only just remembering to grab the keycard from the small table by the door. "How come your cousin is here? I thought you knew this girl from middle school?"

"Yeah, we went to middle school together," MJ agrees, and perhaps Peter should know not to be fooled by her casual tone by now. "But she's my aunt's daughter."

Peter stops. Like, he actually stops walking, right there on the patterned carpeting. "So, your cousin.”

She mockingly shudders. "Gross. I try to pretend we're not related."

“This is your cousin’s wedding,” he says slowly, the horrible truth dawning on him.

She stops at the elevators just in time to give him a side profile of her rolling her eyes. “Yes, if you want to be pedantic, I guess.”

He swallows. "Exactly how many of your family members are going to be down there?"

She finally halts as well, and turns to look at him, raising an eyebrow like he's the one being ridiculous. Then she twists her lips, thinking. "Hm," she says, and he waits with held breath. "Only the ones on my mom's side."

Yep. He's going to die.

He throws his arms in the air. Possibly he's being very dramatic, but come on! "MJ! Are you kidding? This would have been vital information before we got here!"

Something weird and undefinable flickers across her face. "Would you have not come if you knew?" she counters, which is really beside the point.

"Of course I would've come," he says, immediately, because it's the truth. If MJ asked him to come as his date to a wedding between a disapproving Steve Rogers and Electro, he would've turned up with his shoes shined. Regardless, he thinks he has the right to be a little thrown. "You're seriously going to introduce me to your whole family as your boyfriend? To get revenge on your cousin?”

He at least expects a little contrition from her. But instead, the elevator doors slide open with a small chime, and the corner of her lips are curling, like she’s daring him to do something. “You up for the challenge, Spider-Man?”

God help him. His head rolls back in defeat, and she slips into the elevator. He has a split-second to decide: and then he’s darting forward to slide in before the doors shut.

She looks up at his entrance, as if maybe she hadn’t been all that sure, and he shoves his hands in his pockets. “Fine, I’m in,” he says, and his smile is met by one of her own. “But you have to tell me the story behind your hatred of Anna, and I get to tell everyone you cried at the ceremony.”

She bites down on her bottom lip in that way she does whenever she wants to laugh at one of his dumb jokes but is too proud to. “Deal.”

“And,” he adds as she presses the button for the lobby, because something feels different, and he’s still sparking from the sight of her in that dress. “You have to strongly imply I’m the best you’ve had in bed.”

He’s expecting her to laugh straight in his face. But suddenly her expression is… different. Before he can work out exactly what’s going on, the elevator doors are opening again, and she’s striding away.

He takes a deep breath, and readjusts his tie one last time. Come on, Spider-Man, he thinks, and follows her.

thanks for the amazing response so far!! I think this is going to be my last update on tumblr - I’m going to finish the rest, and then probably post the full thing as a one-shot on ao3. hope you enjoyed this next part!

#spideychelle #peter x mj #peter x michelle #spiderman: homecoming #peter parker #michelle jones #spideychelle fanfiction #spider-man fanfiction #i

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piesforjack · 7 years

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please acknowledge canon jack/p*rse for what it really actually is/was ; I think this is a reasonable thing to ask; however, I think a huge part of why there is confusion about the relationship is we actually get a lot of conflicting information about it, like how is ----

“You know when it’s the last summer of your childhood and you’re just hanging with your bro and you’re smoothing out his cowlick and you fondly call him Kenny while trying not to think about how mercilessly cruel fate is lol you know bros being bros” the same as “I didn’t even know we were dating” Camilia

there’s a lot of back and forth with this where Kent was both Jack’s first and closest best friend and also Bitty was the first person he was romantically in love with and yet even with Bitty jack wasn’t really aware of how he felt till last minute. Considering it is already hard enough to differ romantic/platonic love when one is highly emotionally intelligent and Jack isn’t by a long shot and Jack has been an unreliable narrator before its still hard to know just what the relationship was.

i’m assuming these all go together?? i’m sorry i literally JUST got a whole influx of anons about this (i guess my blacklist was blocking them until now for some reason??? odd!!)

but anyway.

to start, i want to get one thing out of the way, whether jack is “reliable” as a narrator or not doesn’t negate the things p*rse did and said in the few panels we’ve seen of him. i won’t budge on that. (not that i’m saying you’re asking me to, i just wanted to make that rly clear for anyone who might get confused by my response below)

i agree there’s a difference between the two (camilla and k*nt) but i also feel like this particular extras excerpt supports the idea of jack/p*rse being more fwb from jack’s POV???? like maybe it’s just my read but, that doesn’t sound like it’s implying hyper-romantic unearthed feelings, more like the circumstances in which they were brought together and taken apart and what their “relationship” entailed was not as it seemed/could’ve been/potentially would’ve been had fate not had other plans, ie. all roads lead to bitty. (otherwise jack wouldn’t be in this story etc) like, maybe fate is cruel for giving jack someone who he should/could love but he just doesn’t in that way, giving him a friend whom he loves and values in a purely platonic way when said friend wants more, fate effectively tainting something that could’ve been something safe and easy had physical intimacy not become a part of the equation. to me, and again i have bias, that’s how i interpret that–especially when taking into account jack’s retelling of the relationship to bitty in canon.

aside from that, i’m also a firm believer in that the outside narrator sympathy doesn’t really change or effect my view?? like?? i’m basing my understanding in canon, wherein bitty’s perspective is the *true* narrative. i don’t know if i can explain this well, but basically, even though bitty has a bias as the main character, it’s his story we’re reading therefore the bias is implicit and shapes the story as canon. so, however ngozi presents k*nt in the comic is how bitty views him, therefore i’m more inclined to believe that over ngozi’s own commentary on k*nt and jack’s relationship. why? bc while the extras and notes could (at any time in any situation) present conflicting information from canon, it’s canon that presents the “true” story, the one we follow and build the universe around.

so while i can respect confusion (because there’s different interpretations, ofc) i feel like there’s enough canon, undeniable evidence to support the idea that jack and p*rse were not in love like people headcanon them to be; such as jack l i t e r a l l y saying so to bitty. idc about emotional intelligence, unless jack was purposefully lying by omission to bitty in an otherwise open and honest conversation…i have a hard time believing that jack felt the same way as is being interpreted by parts of the fandom.

#this is rly long #thank you for being respectful and kind with your message!#really genuinely appreciate kind discourse!!#i hope my response makes sense i wrote it up p quickly!!#Anonymous

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