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tired-enjolras · 3 years

Text

Capable of Being Terrible. Enjolras/Grantaire.

Read on AO3

NEXT CHAPTER HERE

Warnings: alcoholism, smoking, addiction/recovery arc.

Genre: Angst-Hurt/Comfort.

Words: 1297.

Summary: It’s a hard semester for everyone, Combeferre and Joly are working an internship, Éponine works two jobs and somehow gets it all done, and Grantaire drinks himself an inch from incoherent every night. Enjolras doesn’t have it worse than anyone - better than most, actually. But this year keeps knocking Enjolras down and, for the first time, cannot figure how to get back up again.

CHAPTER ONE.

It was Friday night. Every other student in the city was off doing something fun and frivolous. Enjolras was not. He was not one for fun until work was complete. The blonde man could laugh louder and harder than all of his friends and co-workers combined, but he’d simply have to party on Saturday instead. He was only days out from the start of exams week. Desires could wait. His computer was open on the bed, resting on a red pillowcase and gray sheets. It was playing a documentary film about the Paris Climate Accords that was required for a biology class - his lowest grade this semester was this class. He cared about science and certainly about climate change, but he was just fundamentally bad at the subject. There were others who could handle it. Enjolras could be the change in other areas.

Enjolras did not focus on the monitor, but instead his hand scrawled ferociously in a yellow spiral-bound notebook. One could hardly blame him for his excitement. Not only had he prepared a new pamphlet for his student political organization - which he would need to remember to copy at the library the next day - but he had discovered this American politician called Harvey Milk. He was working on final stage research and outlining for a research project on him for his World LGBT Advocacy class. That remained one of about two classes that were worth him expending a fuck on during this particular semester.

The number of credits he had chosen was much too high. 7 classes (one having a lab) was an irrational choice. It was Enjolras’ first year funding half of his own housing off-campus. He worked a real job. As real as scanning books and accepting payment could be. This, really, was the first year Enjolras had learned that everyone was correct in telling him that he was incapable of doing everything he assumed he could.

He did not live alone, but it felt like he did. The other half of the rent was supposed to be paid by Combeferre, who had been gracious and helpful and always so willing to do his part. Until he wasn’t and moved out. Combeferre had moved in with a very tall and very stupid man that Enjolras sincerely enjoyed named Courfeyrac. The two men cared terribly for each other, so Enjolras was happy to see them be able to make a sort of home together. Combeferre’s replacement was not gracious or helpful and almost never willing to do his part. René Grantaire had crashed into the apartment like a car fire. Enjolras was decently sure he would not enjoy his time with Grantaire whatsoever; that they would be professional and nothing more to each other. That never happened. Initially, he was very pleased that Grantaire never imposed an organizational system for Enjolras because everything he had sat in stacks, falling off of shelves and spread across each open surface. Grantaire picked up on this philosophy and effortless operated within it. For a while, they seemed to make perfect sense to each other.

In mornings, Grantaire would get coffee brewing, immediately being able to remember how Enjolras took it. In exchange, Enjolras would sit in destroyed stack of leaflet rough drafts and crack an egg and a shot of hot sauce into a glass for Grantaire. They moved in perfect sync like Aristophanes four-limbed love people. Before too long, they stopped being roommates and started being bedmates. Their relationship lacked definition, but both miraculously kept their affections exclusive and they liked this way.

Then Grantaire’s drinking, once consisting of some wine, a few beers and maybe one or two of something a little stiffer over the course of an entire week turned into several bottles of wine, a case of beer and empty liquor bottles collecting in the trashbagless bin in front of the kitchen sink. So Enjolras tried to take some actions.

The bedroom door swung open.

“Good evening, mon Ange,” Grantaire often called him this. My Angel. Grantaire thought was funny because he may as well have been saying Mon Enj. My Enjolras. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy...”

Grantaire stood, leading against the doorframe. Whether for physical support or confident swagger was still unclear. He looked bad. Enjolras felt sick to his stomach to consider saying that about this person he cared for, Grantaire could never really look bad to him, but he was glassy eyed and sallow. Grantaire pushed himself off of the door, and walked to the side of the bed, crouching to his knees to throw an arm around Enjolras flat to the bed body.

“You smell like alcohol.” Enjolras stared plainly.

Grantaire scoffed. “Good nose you’ve got there,” he reached out and gently flicked Enjolras across the nose. “I was, in fact, drinking.”

Enjolras sighed, refusing to look over at his... whatever they were. If he looked at him now, he would get emotional. Hysterical or angry, it wasn’t yet clear which. “We talked about this.”

“I know, but look at me—“

“Hey, how much did you drink?”

“Oh, am I being cross-examined now?”

Enjolras sat up on his knees in bed, Grantaire’s arm sliding away. He was looking at the darker haired man now. His blue-green eyes burned. “No, but I can call a witness, if you’d like...” he extended his fingers to the other side of the bed for his phone. Marius would know. Éponine perhaps was there. Bahoral, or Courf, maybe. Wouldn’t take too many calls to figure it out.

“Lord God Almighty, Enj... Fine. A lot. Lost count after a couple rounds. But it’s Friday. I’m...” Grantaire cleared his throat, trying to sober his voice up some. “I’m not working tomorrow. Big deal. Don’t you ever get tired of talking about ol’ me?”

“Friday’s fantastic, but what about every other day that isn’t Friday?”

“It’s social. I’m social.”

“Grantaire.”

Fuck. “Mhmm?”

Enjolras’ jaw was tight. He was not going to yell. It was after midnight and the neighbors would call their pig of a landlord again. “Couch tonight.”

“It’s Friday!”

“René,” Enjolras had said this in the voice that mothers use when their child doesn’t understand why they can’t keep sticking their hand in the cookie jar. It was not mean, it was firm. Final. Grantaire sat up a little straighter. “Couch. Please. I love you to pieces, but this is getting fucking ridiculous. Sleep it off.”

Slowly, Grantaire raised himself to his full height. “You win. You always win. Happy?” He braced an arm on the bed and leaned down to plant a kiss on the top of Enjoras’ curls. The brunette swiped a discarded blanket off of this ugly leopard print chair that sat in the corner. Grantaire walked through the door, not bothering with a change of clothes for bed and shut it quietly behind him.

Enjolras was far from happy. It had been so truly okay and it’s not anymore. Everything was too much. Homework, organizing that protest, holding the pieces together for Grantaire when there’s clearly more going on than what he wants to share. Grantaire was Enjolras’ most important person and he was going to watch him finish his degree if it killed them both. Dear Reader, do not think for a second that Enjolras believed Grantaire was some kind of burden. He wasn’t. Enjolras loved him too much to ever consider him to be one, he just was unsure of how best to be supportive. No one ever supported Grantaire so Enjolras would simply have to be that person. There were too many things to care about in Enjolras’ life, too many problems. But that had historically been where he thrived. And Enjolras would find the time to fix them all. He always did.

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margridarnauds · 4 years

Note

for the otp meme: number 6 for d'aramis, peyronan and any character you wish richard to be with please~ 💕

So.........guess who just discovered this in my drafts, uncompleted. Also I’m tagging you @odachans just in case Tumblr is predictable and bungles the notification process.

1. Who cuddles up to the other when they are cold?

D’Artagnan is a natural cuddler. This sent Aramis into multiple Gay Panics (or, rather, bi/pan panics) before they actually got together. 2. What do they depend on each other for?

2. What do they depend on each other for?

I feel like Aramis depends on D’Artagnan for motivation and inspiration. Aramis is a brilliant Musketeer in his own right, he’s obviously successful as a priest, but the second D’Artagnan comes, he gets onboard. Why? Because even if D’Artagnan isn’t his lover (yet), he’s a genuinely good, charismatic leader, and THAT is enough to get Aramis back in the game. I feel like he might become a little....complacent, over time, but D’Artagnan would make it very hard for someone to be complacent while also not going TOO hard down their throats.

D’Artagnan relies on Aramis for loyalty. Not necessarily blind loyalty; he doesn’t WANT anyone to, say, risk their lives for him. He doesn’t leverage loyalty like, say, Artois would. But he knows that, if he shows up to Aramis, Aramis would be the first one to hear him out, and he WANTS his right hand man back anyway, because it probably doesn’t feel RIGHT without him there anyway.

3. Who forgets everything so the other leaves notes all around the house?

D’Artagnan forgets, Aramis leaves notes, as the Confirmed Moronsexual™ in their relationship.

4. Who tells the other they look beautiful everyday?

D’Artagnan. Aramis thought that it wouldn’t matter, given how often he’s been complimented on his looks, but with D’Artagnan it’s….different. It means more.

5. Who gets stressed out and the other has to calm them down?

I feel like D’Artagnan, even though in general he’s very easy going, might get a little too caught up in his Gascon pride and wanting to do right, which subsequently makes any failure CRUSHING. (Though I also think that Aramis might not be quite as cool as he projects, which means that by the time he cracks, he CRACKS.)

6. What makes them a good couple?

They mutually respect and admire one another; they would be fine either as friends or as lovers, and, tbh, even if they were to split up, I don’t see a huge DRAMA over it. It would just be like….okay. Yeah, it would hurt them and there might be a tiny bit of tension for a little while, but I think that, in the end, they would still be friends who had one another’s backs.

7. Who takes pictures of random dogs and sends them to the other person?

GENERALLY D’Artagnan, but Aramis has, at least on one occasion, seen a golden retriever, taken a picture of it, and put in a caption that just said, “This reminded me of you.” And then D’Artagnan responded with a heart emoji and he nearly felt himself die from how much he loved him.

8. Who laughs at the lamest of jokes?

D’Artagnan. Aramis thinks that he’s faking at first, but no, D’Artagnan considers them genuinely hilarious.

9. Who likes to drive at night?

D’Artagnan, particularly if it’s along old country roads. (Aramis would never say that he’s mildly freaked out by the deers’ eyes glinting along the sides of the road, in the woods.)

10. What does their bedroom look like?

Aramis is used to slightly more lavish arrangements, but he can settle for a golden cross above the bed and a few nice pillows. After all, he was a musketeer before he became a wildly successful priest/love expert, so like. He has to have roughed it at least a LITTLE. D’Artagnan isn’t quite at “hurricane” levels of organization, but you do have the occasional bit of training equipment scattered around the floor, with the notable exception of the sword, which he treats like his actual CHILD. There isn’t all that much in the way of furniture, you have a bed, you have two night tables, Aramis’ tends to be stocked with a copy of the Bible, which D’Artagnan routinely tries to distract him from reading from, usually causing Aramis to actually FREEZE out of sheer bi panic. (Yes, they’re basically married. No, that doesn’t mean that he still doesn’t occasionally just freeze at something D’Artagnan does because HOW is he so attractive? HOW?)

Peyronan

1. Who cuddles up to the other when they are cold?

Ronan. He’s used to living in a situation where he shares a bed with Solène and his father anyway, and, since he moved away, he’s really missed having that added warmth. I think that it was actually one of the harder adjustments he had to make when he abandoned Solène went to Paris. So, actually SHARING a bed with someone again, he’s going to want that connection, he’s going to want that warmth, and it’s kind of instinctual to him. Lazare isn’t used to having contact AT ALL, he’s never really had to share a bed to the same degree (he might have when he was still a young officer/possibly aide de campe to one of The Big Boys because space was limited, especially if we accept that he MIGHT have been the right age to fight in the American Revolution, but, now, as at LEAST a colonel of a regiment? He isn’t going to go for it.) So….it just isn’t INSTINCTUAL for him. He isn’t really used to being touched or having any degree of warmth, and he’s genuinely shocked when he finds himself leaning into Ronan when he cuddles with him.

2. What do they depend on each other for?

They both depend on one another for stability as the tension in the streets escalates. Had Ronan survived, they would have relied on one another increasingly for that. (Especially if both had survived past 1794 and the downfall of Danton, Desmoulins, and Robespierre. Ronan would have needed SOMEONE to cling to, and Lazare would have been mourning the Ancien Régime.

Lazare relies on Ronan for affection and emotional intelligence, Ronan relies on Lazare for having someone to pull him back when he threatens to go overboard.

3. Who forgets everything so the other leaves notes all around the house?

Ronan forgets, Lazare leaves notes, though they don’t really do any good.

4. Who tells the other they look beautiful everyday?

Both of them routinely go “…whoa,” at times when they see each other. Neither one of them has really LOST that novelty, and there’s very much this sense of “This is my person, I am with them, HOW?” That being said, Lazare tends to keep his admiration for Ronan to quiet moments, generally when he wakes up before Ronan or Ronan falls asleep before him (which is often), and he gets to stroke Ronan’s hair and back while he sleeps, or when he catches Ronan in another rare quiet moment (he would think, years later, how stunning he had been on the Bastille, that last day, sun-glinting off his rifle). He doesn’t outwardly EXPRESS it, not in words or really in any way that is tangible, though Ronan still knows. Ronan’s stupid, yes, but emotionally, of the two of them, he’s smarter, and in some ways, I think he knows Lazare’s emotions better than Lazare does. (And in other ways, he doesn’t, especially relating to Lazare’s complex relationship with the Army/Royal Family.)

Ronan, though….he KNOWS he married up. Not just in terms of a peasant being with a count (that…doesn’t really compute to Ronan in terms of their relationship. Not that it doesn’t IMPACT them, but in the sense that Ronan doesn’t feel unequal or like he should necessarily be grateful to The Count de Peyrol for “choosing” him. Other people would be flattering, fawning over Lazare and doing everything to stay in his good graces. Ronan doesn’t. Which is exactly why Laz chose him in the first place), but in terms of “Holy *Hell* he’s hot. And smart. And capable. HOW?” It’s like…he thinks of everyone that he could have been with, had he stayed in the Beauce or if he’d gone for someone Camille in Paris, and Lazare is just…several steps above, even if he’s stuffy and formal and emotionally constipated and anal about everything being in order. And he has no restraint telling Lazare what a handsome officer he nabbed for a lover. (Lazare is kind of ???? because…it isn’t necessarily that he has low self esteem, re: his looks, just that they’ve literally never mattered to him before. His main concern has always been “How intimidating can I be?”)

5. Who get stressed out and the other has to calm them down?

Lazare doesn’t SHOW his stress, in the sense that he doesn’t have a paper bag that he huffs into, but he gets much more disturbed when things move outside of what he considers normal. He gets very irritable and stressed if things don’t fit into his special place for them, and he has the tendency to become absorbed in his job. Ronan tends to be the one to bring him down. Generally via what he considers “subtle” seduction. (It is not subtle. At all.) Though a lot of the time, really, that seduction is just wandering over to Lazare’s desk, putting his arms around his midsection, burying his face in his neck, and groaning “Come to bed” like a recently re-animated zombie. After which, barring a national emergency, Lazare will eventually put down his pen and dutifully cuddle with Ronan until he goes to sleep. Ronan’s actually picked up the habit of playing with Lazare’s hair/scratching his head when he’s stressed, which generally does wonders for relaxing him.

6. What makes them a good couple?

In some core areas, they actually are very compatible. Both of them are in a relationship for the long run. The initial execution might be brief, but when it comes to “Do we actually want a relationship? Or are we going to change our minds a month in?” the answer is yes for both of them (and a “no” to the last question). They’re both committed, like that. Regardless of their arguments, at the end of the day, they are each other’s significant other. Ronan gets into a fight with Lazare, yeah, he might scowl, get drunk, and sleep in a drain somewhere, but he isn’t going to cheat on him out of revenge, and Lazare, at an absolute low, might bluster about how it was a mistake to go for a peasant who couldn’t understand, but he isn’t going to bring someone new in, either. After they’ve both slept on it, they’ll be back in the same room, patch things up, and they’ll be fine. (And Lazare will spend some time making up for the mistake comment.)

Lazare is high intelligence, in terms of things like common sense and caution, along with more conventional markers like math, geometry, history, etc. (though he isn’t as well education as people, especially Ronan, tend to assume). That being said, he’s stunted in terms of his socialization and has never really LIVED outside of his career. He’s numbed emotionally, and sometimes, I think he doesn’t really know what he’s feeling. I think he knew he felt SOMETHING for Ronan from the beginning, but I’m not sure that he was really, concretely aware that it was attraction and then love until Ronan more or less jumped on him. Ronan is….well, low intelligence in just about…everything, he’s impulsive, but he gets Lazare out of his shell, and he is, generally speaking, more emotionally intelligent than most people give him credit for, and he’s quick at making connections. (Remember how he was able to guess that Olympe worked for the Queen and that the guy he dueled was Fersen, even after about a week of torture? Yeah, he’s not smart, but he’s QUICK.) And Ronan is very, very affectionate, which…for someone as touch starved as Lazare…on one hand, it can definitely be overwhelming and Ronan doesn’t always know his boundaries, but on the other hand…it can be exactly what he needs. He has, basically, a lifetime of touch to make up for.

Ronan livens Lazare up and can make him act when he would have otherwise been cautious (for better or worse), while Lazare can hold Ronan back; they balance one another out.

7. Who takes pictures of random dogs and sends them to the other person?

Ronan sends them to Lazare, probably in a not-so subtle attempt to get Laz to adopt one for the two of them. (In the end, he does, and despite claiming that it’s “Your dog,” guess who the dog insists on sleeping with every night? And who can be found stroking it in his lap as he does his morning coffee + newspaper reading. It ain’t Ronan.)

8. Who laughs at the lamest of jokes?

Ronan. RonanRonanRonanRonan. He both tells the bad jokes and laughs at them. Sometimes, he gets Lazare to quirk a smile, and every single time, it feels like his heart’s going to explode. (It’s an ongoing quest of his: Make Lazare smile.)

9. Who likes to drive at night?

Lazare. It’s calm at night, less traffic, less noise. It’s easier to concentrate, and it’s easy to simply exist when it’s just him and his meticulously chosen driving playlist. (Depending on whether or not Ronan’s collapsed in his seat yet. Ronan has two modes: “Off” and “On.”)

10. What does their bedroom look like?

Lazare’s own style is naturally very austere and dark. He can survive with a bed, endtable, writing desk, and some place to store his (very limited, for an aristocrat) clothes, and his color scheme tends towards dark blues and silvers, very cold colors. But, once Ronan moves in, things start changing, since Ronan’s style starts coming into play. So, you get that odd mix of those austere colors and then BOOM a vibrant orange chair by the fireplace. Lazare actually had to buy a new bed when he moved Ronan in, since before that, he’d been perfectly content to sleep in a single bed, so they ended up with a four poster, canopy style bed (Laz does like the canopy, because it gives him some privacy).

Ronan, of course, wanted one like this:

He was, tragically, vetoed, though the lining to the bed IS a vibrant yellow, and the blue is much, much brighter than you’d generally expect from Laz, even if it still looks like something you’d find in Elsa’s ice castle.

Also, even though they’re very little used, they do both have their own beds. Lazare’s experience of domesticity, as much as he’s ever known it, has been that aristocratic model of the married couple having their own rooms, and it isn’t something he’s REALLY given up for Ronan. Lazare loves Ronan very, very much, but sometimes, he needs his own space.

Ronan doesn’t really understand it, himself, since…again, he’s used to being with his family CONSTANTLY in their old home, but…there is Something in knowing that his relationship with Lazare doesn’t just depend on him being ready and available every night. Like, I think that his worst nightmare, relationship wise, would be turning out to be an expendable toy that Lazare only spends time and money on for a little while after everything Ronan’s kind of put in and sacrificed to be with him (namely, his ongoing guilt at being with the man who killed his father + betraying the revolution by being with him), and this is very clear evidence that, regardless of whether Ronan wants to sleep with him on a given night, they’re together. It isn’t Lazare playing with him, he isn’t a momentary distraction that’s only good for a few nights, they’re living together, and he has this space that’s His that’s totally separate from his relationship with Laz. It’s also where, had Ronan lived, he would have gone every July 24th, when he felt the anniversary of his father’s death hit him head on. For a week or two leading up to that…he loves Lazare, he DOES, he’s utterly devoted to him, but he can’t be around him constantly when his father’s so heavily on his mind, when there will always be those thoughts of “If it hadn’t happened, he would have been 45-50-55-60, he would have been happy” and the loss hits him square in the chest. When he has to reconcile the man he adores with the man he left for Paris to take his revenge on.

Richard/Emma

Because motherfucking Tango Korrupti

1. Who cuddles up to the other when they are cold?

My mind says Emma, because it seems like it’s been ages since her last relationship and she’s probably starved for any real, genuine touch she can get, but my heart says Richard, even if he’d deny it. He just....moves towards her while he’s sleeping until his head is tucked into her neck.

2. What do they depend on each other for?

Emma does need Richard to make the cut throat career decisions that she normally wouldn’t make but that are necessary to survive in Hollywood. Also, you can bet that when she’s sick, when she’s on her period, when she’s just in one of those moods that are less than glamorous, less than Star-Like™, Richard’s right there to cover up any tiny smudges and make it seem like everything’s normal. And Richard, for better or worse, is FIERCELY protective of her. And yes, this often goes to extremes, but he does protect her from some of her more adrenaline seeker tendencies, and in an ideal world, that would be toned down to him making her rethink it without necessarily trying to control her. And if a director ever tried to use the casting couch on her or, for example, DO a Quentin Tarantino and force her into an unsafe working condition, I do think Richard would go down their throats. Yes, he wants the money and the prestige, but he can’t get that if Emma’s hurt or traumatized. (Or, at least, that might be what he tells himself at first.)

In short, Richard can use his innate Karen powers for the cause of good.

I discuss it a little below, but, Richard can naturally get carried away and become....well, a miniature, American Napoleon. And when he does, Emma’s there to bring him down. He needs her for her star power and her glamor, yes, but he does need her to keep him in line as well. And, it’s odd, but I do feel like Richard himself might need a little bit of a break from Hollywood himself. And he wouldn’t REALIZE it like Emma would, because he’s normalized it. I don’t necessarily want Emma saving him, and I’m not sure that there IS a way to “save” Richard without utterly destroying him as a character, or whether I would be interested in Fully Normal Richard. I do suspect that he could do with some loosening up, if he was willing to take it, and if, while Emma’s trying to find that compromise between Emma Carter™ and Adele Waldvogel, she drags Richard into eating pizza on the living room floor cross-legged, that’s fine with me.

3. Who forgets everything so the other leaves notes all around the house?

They both leave notes. When they’re having an argument, they can get VERY passive aggressive.

4. Who tells the other they look beautiful everyday?

Richard. At first, Emma thinks it’s professional (Hell, RICHARD thinks it’s professional, because Richard is an utter MASTER at self deception, see: Macho Macho’s entire existence.) But then as time goes on, it’s like “....Oh, he actually. Does.” Rochard gets PERSONALLY offended if anyone suggests that Emma’s lost it as a star or that there’s anyone else that can take a role. Emma has actually gotten him to change his mind a few times by saying “Yeah, and they said that if they couldn’t get me, they would go for Florence Pugh or Charlize Theron” and Richard just goes into “How DARE they?” mode.

5. Who gets stressed out and the other has to calm them down?

They both have various ways of getting stressed out, but Richard is canonically always around one step away from an outright panic attack. She keeps a stock of paper bags on hand.

If they ever have a child....Richard outside the waiting room would be...

6. What makes them a good couple?

This is actually I struggled with, because in canon, as they’re presented, they distinctly WOULDN’T be. Or, rather, at least, not necessarily a healthy one, which doesn’t mean they can’t be entertaining to watch. Richard’s too controlling, while Emma is feeling increasingly disconnected from HER, which Richard has every interest in destroying in favor of her embracing a superficial life, even to the extent of hurting her to do it.

Now, I’m not saying this in order to ravage it, because I chose this ship for this ask BECAUSE I love it. Simply laying out why it’s difficult to pinpoint why I think that they could actually work, if you rearrange a few things.

In a world where Emma accepted the Tango Korrupti, where she didn’t get warm and fuzzy feelings awakened by the promise of brown bread and an alps skiing trip, it would be the kind of relationship where they both WORK with one another and what they want.

Maybe Emma would still fall in love with Josi in this timeline, but they would simply be incompatible, because Emma likes Hollywood, the glitz and the glam, and she can’t manage a long distance relationship with Josi at the same time. So, it comes to her career or him. And she loves him, yeah, but she doesn’t love Adele Waldvogel, or the situation that she left behind, and even though her relationship with Hollywood is complicated, that doesn’t mean she inherently wants to leave it ALL behind.

Richard’s controlling, and that’s something that would need to be discussed as far as “If I take you back on, I do my own thing. I’ll listen to your advice, but I’m my own person. Take it or leave it.” And there would be quarrels over it, when Emma wants to do something risky (Disneyland nearly gives Richard a HEART ATTACK), but they could reach an agreement. And, in that scenario, it would work, because Richard is cut-throat, he can be ruthless, and he would look out for Emma’s best interests. It would be a case of “us against the world” or, at least “us against Hollywood.” Sure, Emma could become engaged to Pablo, maybe even have a few more relationships on page after the inevitable divorce (though they remain good friends), but in the end, the one who she could really trust would be Richard. Emma herself has a sardonic edge to her, as shown in “Bussi, bussi,” where she freely takes the piss out of LA society, so I can see her and Richard standing on the sidelines to some party, making catty comments.

And Richard....I actually don’t see that he would necessarily WANT to fall in love with Emma, because she’s a client. That’s bad for business, especially when he needs to advise her on the best relationships to bring in the cash. And Richard’s top priority has always been his money. (Also, I feel like before this, Richard 100% believed he was gay and then it was like “......Bisexuality is an OPTION?”) But Emma’s smart, she’s funny, she’s stunning, and she puts up with no bullshit, and on some level, he HAS to know her better than anyone else does. (He was obviously there for her first breakup, and even though I’m not going to sanctify Richard, because he’s, canonically, a prick...I do like to think that at least a PART of his concern over her being with someone new wasn’t just jealousy or a concern over his money, but him genuinely seeing how much she was hurt.) And Richard probably has seen Emma at some of her least glamorous as well, because his job is really to invent the glamor when it’s not naturally there.

7. Who takes pictures of random dogs and sends them to the other person?

Emma sends them to Richard, who at first is concerned because what if she’s allergic? What if she wants to get one now? Where would they GET one? What about the mess? And who will let the dog out? After all, if she goes out walking with it, that gives the paparazzi a chance to swarm. Emma points out that dogs are EXCELLENT publicity.

It’s an Austrian Pinscher, though Richard would SWEAR it bore an uncanny resemblance to Josi. Emma’s thrilled because it’s just like one she used to have as a child.

8. Who laughs at the lamest of jokes?

I started off leaning towards Richard and ended up on Emma. I feel that when Emma is more relaxed, she has a much, much dorkier sense of humor, it’s just that Emma Carter™ the brand can’t really be seen laughing at lame jokes, she has to laugh at the right ones, usually said by powerful people, and not too long or too hard. I think that the sound of her own, genuine laugh actually surprises her because it’s been so long since she’s heard it.

9. Who likes to drive at night?

Richard gets very antsy when Emma drives at the best of times, though Emma will point out that people have gotten into car crashes with chauffeurs just as easily as if they’d been driving themselves. LA is hypnotic at night, lit up by all the billboards and late night places still open, palm trees dotting the roads, and it’s easy to think about how far she’s come. When SOMEONE isn’t being a backseat driver.

10. What does their bedroom look like?

For some reason, judging from what I’ve seen of Emma’s design choices as far as her clothing in the musical, I kind of like the thought of her going for black and white designs, with the black serving as a lining to the white. A FEW geometric designs, but nothing over the top.

Basically, like this, but I do see Emma having a few pink accents in there, possibly swapping out those white pillows for something in hot pink. (The poster would, obviously, be a Quentin Tarantino one.)

#odachans #1789 les amants de la bastille #afo #iafa #long post #bold of you to assume you were just getting one

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muggle-writes · 4 years

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Happy Storyteller Saturday! What are some ways you organize your notes/writing thoughts?

thanks for asking! Sorry I'm answering late, I had a rough headache and tried to sleep it off for most of Saturday so it's like 2am Sunday now (3am when I finished because I'm tired enough to have very little filter which means it's ramble time) but I'm awake so I'm answering.

to be honest, it depends on where I am and whether I have free time where there's nothing else I "should" be doing.

if I'm out and about, or if I "should" be doing something else I'll be writing on my phone. usually with a program called Quip, occasionally with a program called Bookstack. I'm out at my QP's right now, and she and my wife are talking video games, and I don't have my laptop handy so I'm writing in Quip. it's kind of a dropbox/google docs alternative, and it has a not-terrible app. I sort everything into a personal writing folder (i used to use quip for other things too, which I kept in other folders since it has a decent checklist ability) and if I expect something to be a long story I'll create a folder for it and put different scenes in different documents in that folder. if I expect it to be short, I'll just create a document straight in the writing folder and hopefully remember to give it a descriptive name. If I'm intending to write something especially short and post it immediately, like this, I won't usually give it a title. sometimes this bites me in the butt but mostly it's fine. I write things in quip rather than directly in the tumblr editor for two related reasons: tumblr mobile has a really annoying habit of eating my longer posts instead of posting them. i haven't figured out if this is more related to the length of the text added, or the length of time I have the draft open. on top of that, if I type it in tumblr mobile and try to make a backup copy, the largest unit I can copy at a time is a paragraph, not the whole document, so it would be a hassle to copy out. often, for posts this long, I wind up copying in three or four paragraphs at a time, saving the draft again, and waiting for tomorrow to display my changes before I click edit draft and add another few. it's easier to copy text into tumblr than out of it

if I'm on bookstack (a mediocre Google docs/scrivener alternative but it's open source and my wife runs an instance so I've tried it out. among other problems, it doesn't have an app so I have to write through my mobile browser and I have to have internet. quip stores locally regardless and syncs with the internet when possible so I tend to use quip instead) When I'm using bookstack, I'm forced to use its organization system. broadest to narrowest categories: shelves books, chapters, pages. you can put pages directly into books, or into chapters. I usually use pages as scenes, and keep them sorted into chapters. in theory I like bookstack but it needs some major improvements (options for variable theme, offline mode, general mobile UI, etc) before I would actually recommend it.

If I have my laptop I occasionally write in bookstack but more often Microsoft Word (I got a free student copy when I was in college and whenever my current laptop dies I'm going to get Open Office or Libre Office instead rather than pay for Microsoft.)

I sort my writing into fanfiction and original works. there's very little in the original works side, sadly. Within fanfiction, since I generally publish to ao3 as I go, I separate it into folders incomplete and completed. within each, I sort it into fandoms, within incomplete, I then have a folder for each fic, and then documents titled "published" and "unpublished" within each. within completed, there's individual documents for each fic (equivalent to "published" within incomplete) I cut and paste things between documents, or move documents around as necessary

for editing, it's a different story:

in Word, if I'm writing a variant of a scene I've already written, and I want to keep the old one and decide later which one I like better, I'll strikethrough the old paragraph and write another. If I get several of these I'll color code the old scenes so I can tell which one's which (sometimes I reuse parts of sentences in like. 3/5 variants so they're usually intertwined. my drafts get colorful) If I'm going in a really drastically different direction, sometimes I'll create a new document and in the title describe what the difference is.

In Quip (actually, in bookstack too, when I'm on mobile, so probably it's just my phone keyboard not playing nice with long documents. somehow I never have the same issue when I'm writing directly in the tumblr app) if I try to select large sections and replace or delete them, it deletes significantly more than I want it to, probably twice as many characters? twice as many minus one? idk. if I'm not happy with something in quip, it's a little glitchy about strikethrough so I'll just put a few blank lines, a line of squiggles (~) and/or an all caps "ALTERNATELY" and another line break and then the replacement.

anyway. that's all for when I'm composing prose (or publishable poetry)

when I'm scribbling down notes to keep them because I'm plotting a longer story or because I want to write but don't have time, I'll open up one of the above programs (usually quip or word) and create a bullet point list of sentence fragments and notes. I put major points at the top level of bullet points, indent for the next level of detail under each one. the top level bullets are usually vaguely in chronologial (or storytelling) order, but flashbacks/"this sets up for..." often show up in the nested bullets.

If I have a really thorough outline, with a full sentence for every scene, in word I'll make a copy of the outline with a page break between each outline point, and then I'll skip around between scenes based on my inspiration and write the scenes in their corresponding place in the draft so that the end result is pretty effortlessly in order. (in bookstack, I'll create "pages" for each scene. in quip I put three or four line breaks between the scene prompts or occasionally split them into separate documents.)

#storyteller saturday #asks and answers

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avatarmerida · 6 years

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Fullmetal Alchemist Secret Santa: The Authority of Words

Hey there @theysangastheyslew I’m your secret santa! Just under the wire. I’ve had this idea for a long time so I hope you like it! I was so excited to get one of my favorite people for this exchange!!!! Happy holidays!!

“These reports are an absolute disgrace,” groaned Hawkeye shuffling through the mess of papers all covered in identical chicken scratch.

“We are off the clock,” groaned back Rebecca, trying to enjoy her coffee and ease her mind despite the cafeteria being so loud. “This is a work free zone.”

“Well I’m sorry,” said Riza. “But these pages are impossible to read. I can’t have the colonel signing things I can’t even read.”

“Does the colonel really read the papers or does he just sleep all day and sign where you tell him to?”

“That’s beside the point,” muttered Riza, attempting to read. “He’s bad enough when it comes to paperwork, I can’t have the rest of the team slacking off too. It’s just so unlike Fuery to be so sloppy.”

“He’s probably just sad cause his little girlfriend isn’t stopping by anymore.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Yeah, the little mousy girl with glasses?”

“Sheska?”

“:Yeah! That’s the one!” she exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “She one who was helping Hughes, right? Ever since he passed, she’s been walking from department to department practically begging for things to read.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, i guess once she finished everything he needed her to do she was bored. She’d read my expense reports and proof read them and edit them. She’s like some kind of machine.”

“So she’s been doing my team’s work for them?”

“Naw.” replied Rebecca, looking at the documents in Riza’s hands. “She just tweeks them, makes them better. But I haven’t seen her in awhile so she must’ve found something else to do.”

“I wish I had known,” sighed Hawkeye. “I would’ve bribed her to stay.”

“Major Armstrong, might I get your opinion on something?” asked Riza an hour later. Her efforts during her lunch break had proved futile; if it wasn’t the spelling it was the grammar and she was more confused than when she started.

“Oh course lieutenant, anything for you!”

“Well, I’m having trouble reading my teams reports lately, and I thought you-.”

“Oh the quality is lacking since the departure of Miss Sheska I assume?”

“Yes,” sighed Riza. “Did everyone know about this except me?”

“Yes, it would appear so.” he replied. “But don;t feel sore dear lieutenant, I am an avid supporter of the arts and when I found Miss Sheska distraught and throwing herself into these rather dull documents I encouraged her to expand her horizons.”

“Did you now?” chucked Riza.

“Yes!” he exclaimed with one of his famous flexes. “The girl was in desperate need of an outlet. As you know I have my painting and sculpting so I encouraged the girl to create.”

“And did she?”

“Oh yes!” he burst, dashing quickly into his office with no explanation. He returned as quickly as he departed his arms brimming with papers which he unload into Hawkeye’s. “A most glorious creation!”

“Sheska wrote a book?” asked Hawkeye, trying to make sense of the various papers, some stapled together, some lose, and some tied with strings.

“A novel!” he declared. “Such a romantic and touching tale too! This is merely her first draft, I’ve read it countless times since she entrusted it to me. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you read it as well! It’s such a lovely story!”

“Well I’ll see,” she said as she struggled to gather the pages. “I haven’t much time when it comes to reading for pleasure, but I’ll let you know what I think.”

“Oh please do!” the Major, brimming with excitement. “There’s nothing I would love more than someone to discuss this tale with!”

After several talks with her team, the paperwork situation began to improve but not by very much. She had enough to handle with the colonel just being the colonel that the task of editor lengthened her work days and left little time for herself. One night, she found herself finally catching up on organizing and found Sheska’s pages waiting at the bottom. She decided that browsing a few pages couldn’t hurt, having earned a break from numbers and summaries.

Ronald was typically know to be a ladies’ man, a heart breaker of sorts. This reputation often preceded him, but held no truth for he belonged to no one and had never held a heart long enough to break it. But this was the kind of man he admired, the kind of man who traveled the world, and so it was the kind of man he aspired to be. But these kinds of men are not born great, if only it were that easy. No, they must be challenged and rise to the occasion. But no such challenges presented themselves to Ronald in his small town, and so he had to seek them out.

She was that challenge.

He barely knew he better than a shadow on a wall, but found her just as comforting and mysterious. Every day she’d walk past his room and he’d do his best to act as though he didn’t see her. He needed to seem aloof, wise, and serious. Though just a boy, he knew that was the kind of man who received respect though why he did not know. All he did know was that she made him want to be better. She pushed him. When he finished one job and his teacher deemed it successful he sent his daughter with the next project. And although they only talked about his work and were only allowed to talk about his work, he looked forward to those moments more than anything. She would offer a compliment and he would ask about her studies and she’d have to excuse herself to get back to them and it was awkward and short but it was the fire that kept him moving.

They were essentially strangers minus these encounters which was most likely his teacher’s intentions. He knew he was supposed to learn his trade and leave this place behind him eventually. He wasn’t supposed to get attached or be distracted, but something about her begged to be discovered. But it was not meant to be.

Until the fateful night they found themselves caught in the rain.

She slammed the pile of papers with great force onto the colonel’s desk. “Have you read this?” she said, clearly unamused.

“Just add them to the pile and I’ll get to them eventually,” mumbled Mustang, leaning back in his chair attempting to nap.

“These aren’t government forms,” she stated. “They’re pages from a book Sheska is writing.”

“Hawkeye, if I don’t have time to read the papers I am paid to read then why do you think I have time to read a young girl’s diary?”

“It’s not her diary sir,” she struggled to keep her voice low as she turned to shut the door to his office. “It’s about us.”

“Us? Like surveillance?”

“No, no sir,” she replied trying to find the words.”Us. As in, you and me. When we were… younger.”

“Oh, so Sheska is writing my biography is she?” remarked Roy smugly. “What is it war stories? I can see how that might be upsetting.”

“No, well yes. Well, not exactly. There’s… more.”

“More?”

“It’s not about us but it’s our story,” she tried. “I don’t know how, but it’s… you and I.”

“Hawkeye, you’re acting very strangely,” said Roy, concerned. He picked up a page and began to read it, not taking long to understand what she meant. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” she said sternly. “Now care to tell me how exactly Sheska came to know these very… intimate details?”

“Look, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never told her any of this. We swore we’d never discuss it.”

“What if this gets out?”

“Hawkeye, it won’t-.”

“It already has, Armstrong is raving about it.”

“Well, do we really know it’s about us?” he tried brushing it off. “I mean, the names are all different and-.”

“People will find out because Sheska found out,” said Hawkeye sternly. “This is an invasion of privacy regardless and if it was discovered that these characters are supposed to be you and I…”

“Yes Hawkeye I know the results would be undesirable,” finished Mustang skimming the pages. “I mean, are we sure this isn’t a coincidence? I don’t recall saying more than 10 words to Sheska ever. I mean it could be oh no.”

He cut himself off, solving the mystery but wishing he hadn’t.

“What is it sir?”

“It was me.”

“You told Sheska?”

“No, I told Hughes,” he groaned, covering his face. “We would go out drinking or stay up late at the academy and it would come up. You know how he was always pestering me, I thought it was harmless. Just reminiscing. He must have told Sheska. I mean he was always talking it’s possible right? At the very least he had the sense to change the names.”

“So you have a few drinks and suddenly you can’t keep secrets that aren’t solely yours? What else did Hughes know?”

“Nothing you’re thinking,” he said. “The girl I grew up with was my first crush, my first kiss and that’s something friends discuss. You expect me to believe that you never think about back then?”

“There’s nothing to think about, sir because as… pleasant as those memories may be, those times weren’t as simple as nostalgia would have us believe. I believe in moving forward.”

“Well I believe you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.”

“I’m disposing of these and I’ll have Sheska do the same to any copies she may have,” she said, gathering the papers and not wishing to engage in a walk down memory lane. “End of discussion.”

“Is that really necessary? I mean, was what happened all those years ago so-?”

“End of discussion,” she insisted.

“Very well, lieutenant” he sighed. “Let me burn the pages, you have enough on your plate already.”

“Sheska I hope you don’t mind but the lieutenant gave me a copy of your book and I-.”

“Oh did you like it?!” she practically yelled. “Oh, that’s just my first draft, so it’s a little rough. I’m still finding the language, but what did you think? What didn’t you like? Did you write any notes I’d love some notes.”

“I loved it,” he said gently. “I couldn’t put it down. Where did the inspiration come from?”

“They’re stories Lieutenant Colonel Hughes would tell me. Old friends of his, regular star-crossed lovers! After he passed I didn’t want the stories to die with him so I just wrote them down. I added a few things but the original story is so good.”

“Any idea where they are now? Did they ever get their happy ending?”

“No idea,” she admitted, sadly. “But I did write a sequel of sorts, my own thoughts on what could’ve happened. After he left her without telling her how he felt the lack of closure tore me apart. So I composed a reunion I thought would resolve things nicely.”

“You wrote more?”

“Yes!” she dug deep into her satchel and pulled out a heavy stack of messy papers. “Their dynamic was so tragic and beautiful, er tragically beautiful. Beautifully tragic? I just kept revisiting them and writing more and more. There’s just so many directions to go. Like if they had ran away together like they talked about or if he had gotten off the train or if she had gone with him… ”

“I’d love to read them,” interrupted Roy. “Every one of them.”

“Really?” she beamed. “I mean, they’re not much. Just short stories. I guess… I just can’t give up on them because Hughes never did. I know I’ll never know what happened but I like to think that one of the versions I think of is the right one.”

“So… do you really think that she loved him?” he asked somewhat timidly. ‘I mean they were so young and things change, but if they were to meet again now, do you think she would still love him?”

“Of course,” she said. “But I’ve never met her so I really can’t say for sure.”

“And, just a silly question, do you think she prefers dogs or cats?”

“Dogs, definitely.”

“Well I have to trust you,” he smiled. “You obviously know the characters very well.”

#fullmetal alchemist #fullmetal alchemist secret santa 2017 #fmab #fma #royai #royai fanfiction #fluff #royai fluff #theysangastheyslew #my fanfic #my writing #my fanfiction

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kittensartswriting · 6 years

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25 Questions Tag

Thank you @rosecorcoranwrites for tagging me! :)

1. Is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason? I’ve been holding of a murder mystery novel I was planning about year? two? ago. At some point I realized I’m not ready for it, not because it would need better writing than fantasy, but more like I felt I didn’t understand our own world good enough yet (does that make sense?) and didn’t yet had the means and patience to do enough research to get the understanding.

2. What work of yours, if any, are you embarrassed about existing? Oh boy... Many. The bright side is, I’m so bad at finishing anything I start that I have never finished a full length novel. (Though I’ve written many and many terrible things that only counts as short stories because of length.) I remember writing starting a fantasy story in high school or primary school where main character was a prince of tyrannical kingdom and suddenly he changed to a black panther (not the superhero) and couldn’t change back. Of course he came across the shape shifting rebels and there was of course this girl that turned into a tiger and of course they didn’t get along but we all know how that ended up. I’m pretty sad that it was so many computers ago it is lost forever.

3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favorite scenes first? Something else? Chronologically. As character exercises I tend to write my favorite scenes as I invent them, but usually they don’t end up in the novel or at least without some changing.

4. Favorite character you’ve written? Would you pick a favorite of your own children??

5. Character you were most surprised to end up writing? I’ll go with Valeri. He is not the usual type to end up my main character and that is the precise reason I made him. I don’t want to limit myself with writing only characters I would like in real life. I definitely wouldn’t like him if I met him, but I like him as a character. 6. Something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now? There are no such changes for me. I have started my current wip three times from the scratch. If I feel there is such a big change that should be made I drop the project for a while and think about it. If I still want to write it, I make the change, if I have fell out of love, I move on. (Also as I’ve never get so far as the finish, it is possible.)

7. When asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write? Embarrassed... Usually I’m not shy and I’m pretty confident in myself, not caring really what other think, except when it comes to writing. I’m not really sure what is it, but I think it’s that I’m pretty private person and writing is something I do right from the hearth.

8. Favorite genre to write I like historical fiction so much too (also mystery), but I have to say fantasy. I just love the world building!! At same extend you can’t do that much world building in any other genre (except scifi), and I love it.

9. What, if anything, do you do for inspiration? Read books and read especially non-fiction. Most of the time reality is stranger than fiction. 10. Write in silence or with background music? Alone or with others? Definitely alone and mostly in silence. Though sometimes instrumental music (ambient, classical or movie music)

11. What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing? I don’t know, I had so many flaws (still do) that I can’t really say what I was worst at.

12. Your weaknesses as an author? Firstly: finishing the god damn thing. Secondly: action scenes and writing action overall 13. Your strengths as an author? Characters and world 14. Do you make playlists for your work? Sometimes but rarely use them as I prefer silence :D 15. Why did you start writing? I had so many things in my head I wanted to put on paper. It’s my form of self-expression. 16. Are there any characters who haunt you? Currently Valeri. I can’t get him of my mind :D

17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

Do and outline, decide ending before starting. Outlining isn’t for everyone but it is sure worth trying. And you start with FIRST draft, it is something like a sketch, so just write it, don’t think too much. Then you can write second, and third and as many drafts as you need.

18. Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they? I would argue that everything that I’ve read have affected my writing style, some more than others. Nothing very clear, I think. Of course Harry Potter, almost anyone my age can say that, but I’ve read so little lately that I really don’t remember how each author writes. 19. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.? With Drive. I have docs where I write all the names of the characters, no matter how unimportant they were, and tell in few words who they are. I organize the docs by area. Then I have a docs named ‘timeline’. There I have all the historical events as well as main events of the story listed by year and month. Also I have list of character arcs and subplots for every main character. And then of course I have list of chapters and events in each, also some notes on the chapter. As you can see I like listing things. I fill all the lists as I go along. 20. Do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts? I either don’t write at all or I sit down straight seven hours and write non-stop. I don’t have in between mood

21. What do you think when you read over your older work Depends how old :D If its a few years old, it’s surprisingly good. If its about five years old it’s in the awkward zone where it is bad, but not bad enough to be funny, reading them makes hurt inside. Everything older than that is just super funny. 22. Are there subjects that make you uncomfortable to write? Not really. I’m not planning on (at least yet) showing my writing for anyone but here in internet where no one knows me and for my boyfriend who know me inside out and I have nothing to lose :D so I feel I can write literally anything. Only thing I can think of is sex scenes. I really like smut but I’m pretty bad at it, as I don’t want it to feel erotica but also I don’t want it to be censored or too vague. 23. Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing? Hard to name anything specific as I believe that all life experience helps writing. You know, when you write about people and life, I really helps to be people and live. 24. Have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story? While starting to write Saga of a Shieldmaiden, I became kind of a expert on Finnish mythology and life and history of Vikings. My knowledge was very limited on both subjects before that. Also for a murder mystery novel (that I mentioned in the first question) I read a criminology book.

25. Copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of. I answered same question before in another tag game, and I’m now too lazy to translate another paragraph. So this one is from the original Saga of a Shieldmaiden (that I’m now revising). It might be a bit too long though.

Something big was moving around me as I felt the water flowing differently. In the thickening darkness I couldn’t see anything. Or maybe I had my eyes closed, I couldn’t be sure.

It is not the sea that is suffocating you. It is the fear. You reek of it. You are so full of fear, it is dripping out of your throat. So full, your breath cannot flow.

I felt a touch on my throat. It was not a touch of a human. It was not a hand of a human. Massive crooked claw rested on my neck. The claw was rough and stony hard, full of scales. Sharp end of the nail pressed against the skin of my throat without piercing it. I felt a breath of a warm current behind my back. One breath caused so strong tide, it would have wiped me away, if the claw wouldn’t have kept me put.

Let the water into your lungs. Let the salt clean you of fear.

Every moment without air led me deeper into the dark, closer to death. Maybe he was the Death. I turned to look over my shoulder. To my horror I was faced by great, scaled, sharp-fanged head. A head of a dragon. It’s long serpentine body seemed to extend twisting into the endless blackness. The silvery scales glowed in the darkness of the sea and the deep-blue wells that were his eyes looked at me without blinking.

I’ll tag @lady-redshield-writes, @coda-wolf, @alittle-writer, @starlitesymphony and @plaguecraft! :)

#tag game #tagged #my writing #writeblr

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purkinje-effect · 3 years

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The Anatomy of Melancholy, 64: Ice Cream Scoops

Table of Contents. Second Instar, Chapter 31. Go to previous. Go to next. That was the way it was. TWs: Disrespectful behaviors toward disability, joint trauma.

__________________

Click, click, click-click.

In a bathrobe and little else, Melancholy sat at the opened secretary desk in the chill upstairs room of Glenn Johnny’s, opening and closing the lid of a Mentats tin. He supposed the rich dirt-like smell wasn’t coffee, after all, when he saw Angel through the glassless window at the balcony, busied with laundry.

He wondered what sort of water arrangement the place must have, since he had noticed a space where a bathtub must have been when he went to the bathroom upon first waking. The toilet worked fine, but he didn’t try the sink. He’d washed his hands and face, and knocked the dirt and blood from the hair that could directly touch his face, with the tin of water Angel had left for him alongside a bottle of Melancholia. The bathroom only had an extending shaving mirror in tact. For some reason, relying on it for general maintenance elicited the specific grudge at the unlikelihood that he’d ever use one for its intended purpose. He wondered if as a ghoul Sticks even needed to shave anymore, or if it simply came down to the fact Sticks might use mirrors so little that he’d never bothered to replace the larger one.

So much of the ice cream parlor had stayed so well kept, and it didn’t surprise him a bit. Sticks had worked at Concord’s Hardware Town before the war, after all. Despite a general disconnect from technological savvy, the ghoul absolutely knew his way around plumbing and electrical alike. The ghoul had truly taken the time to edit the space for function and comfort.

'Choly’s companions had both risen before him, likely long before. He didn’t want to bother Angel or Sticks, but did hope one crossed paths with him soon without his having to call after either. He disliked the thought his clinginess might echo his chem exposure and activities from the day before, and shoved the thought away. The next he looked down, he realized he wasn’t clicking the tin anymore. It was hard to say at what point he’d set it down and begun clicking his finger joints back and forth to similar effect.

He popped off the cap with the Nuka World bottle-letter opener from one of the drawers, and worked at his tart, cherry-flavored breakfast. Brushing out his hair and pinning it up took tremendous effort because his hands wouldn’t behave. Sooner than fuss with the unwashed mess, he tucked up a half-managed bun into the ushanka. He couldn’t tell whether he directed his bitterness more toward the source of his constitution or to the previous owner of the hat. He’d promised Angel not a week ago that he’d try to go as clean as he could, to divorce his condition from his withdrawals. But, the aching remained constant, and it was evident his motor skills and energy levels had only worsened.

It didn’t even matter whether he’d got the recipe right. Could this stuff be considered Melancholia proper, without opiates? Sticks had already provided him access to Med-X, of which 'Choly wasn’t a fan. But the Melancholy’s salts, that was a hubeine mix, not a codeine mix...

It should’ve distressed him, that such digital mistreatment didn’t hurt significantly more than the arthritis to which the cryogenesis had inured him.

Every part of him knew only aches.

He drew the Merrick Index from its pigeonhole and fingered through the Addenda, to reference the hubeine dosage he’d calculated before. He hadn’t exactly tested his calculations, though, because his one trial had been intended to be lethal. Hubeine had no easy, safe tests to confirm it posited more than a poison, either, no matter the dose. The few Lexington raiders left standing half a day after dosing them were dead on their feet. He struggled to locate the page he’d scrawled leading up to the Berserk Syringe demonstration, to cross-reference his initial collected thoughts against the frenetic vapor of going to town on a faction that had collectively abused him far too long.

Even with the Mentats he’d found in the desk, he could hardly think straight.

Oh, how he wanted little more than a cup of coffee.

He massaged at the fur lining of an ear flap of the cap, spaced out again a ways.

The MKEXCEED Papers weren’t on the desk with the Merrick and history textbook. He assumed Angel just hadn’t had the time to organize such effects just yet. Or maybe, for all he knew, it was acting the part of the DIA Handy as always, and protecting once confidential documents.

It dawned on him, that he still had his transcript of The Unfolding in a draft on his Pip-Boy’s holotape. He fidgeted with the device, still nursing his meal replacement. First he noticed the radio stations that the thing could pick up: The one he’d listened to on his way to Lowell had changed its branding, but retained its frequency. He tuned to WXXX. A mellow ambient orchestral piece smoothed out the morning air in the room. Then he flipped tabs over to what started as an unexpectedly coherent account of events.

A few paragraphs into reading over his rough notes, he flinched. He’d drafted directly onto his decryption holotape. He twisted about from his seat, to confirm Sticks didn’t possess a working terminal. It’d have to live where it lay until he could find one, in order to copy it to a different holotape.

He let himself unclench, admiring the view of the river bend and falls out the East windows. The thought of becoming a reclusive writer had some appeal. Maybe if they were to live here together, he could get Sticks to help him locate a terminal and set it up upstairs. He hadn’t really needed one before. A typewriter had suited him fine. The terminal at 103 Old North Lane belonged to Sticks. But now, viable paper stock seemed a very rare commodity. Reusable media felt more reliable and easier to manage, though they required on hand equipment...

Accurate, embellished, or entirely fictional, any narrative seemed a bit beyond him still. With a sigh, he resumed skimming the Merrick. He could hear the ghoul downstairs, and the robot humming softly to itself outside. Maybe the two of them would hear the radio and know he was awake, and come investigate...

His soul was too tired to summon any rightful frustration with the entrepreneur.

Clarimentin. He flipped back to the page containing pharmaceutical data on the antibiotic. Nothing in its entry indicated encouraged use alongside high doses of Rad-X. Cross-referencing Rad-X yielded the same nothing, not so much as mention of any antibiotics. He leafed through the book both ways for some time, with mounting exasperation to blame the Mentats for not helping enough with even rudimentary research comprehension.

He sat up with a start when something was set beside him on the desk, then wilted in nuisance with himself when he recognized a hot mug of black coffee.

“I haven’t got any cream, and I figure you’d rather have sugar than sugar.” Sticks leaned down to peck his forehead, and rub at his back. He smiled, pronouncing the split in the side of his upper lip. “Going to assume I’m not the only one with sticky digits. That’s a Deenwood percolator down there.”

“I did smell coffee! Ohhh, thank you.” He soothed his hands wrapping them around the mug for a minute. Then, he turned to give the shying ghoul a good morning kiss to his cheek, then a thank you kiss to his lips. “I take my coffee black. I’m lactose intolerant, anyway.”

“Mm. Oh. Sorry for not waiting up on you to eat. I figured you’d make your breakfast order when you got up. You looked like you could really use the rest, and I was starving. I don’t mind cooking twice. Let me get something whipped up for you. What’ll it be? Tato hash? A nice big ‘Lurk omelette? Maybe some of my channel rat sausages--better than it sounds, I swear.” He leaned in to whisper. “Believe it or not, I’ve got a working waffle maker.”

“Oh, Mister Sticks.” ‘Choly wheezed, picking up on the husky playfulness. He picked up the mug to blow on it and sip as much as he could manage. “Really, don’t trouble yourself if you’ve already eaten. I’ve got my Melancholia.”

The ghoul shoved down making a weird face.

“What, that mouthwash stuff again? ...If that’s all you think you can stomach right now, suit yourself. Far be it for me to force fresh grub on you. Just let me know when you really do get hungry, and I’ll gladly oblige.” He tugged at the ushanka. “You really like that thing, huh.”

Having noticed the two had awoken, Angel came in to strip the now vacant bedding to wash next.

“Mister Carey has subsisted on that meal replacement for years at a time. If he were malnourished, the Pip-Boy’s health diagnostics would say so!”

‘Choly glanced to the Pip-Boy, and checked the vitals tab despite having avoided it all morning up until that point. He grunted as he glazed over the enumeration of what ailed him.

“Of all the things wrong with me, malnourishment is not one of them.” After downing half the coffee, he softened. “...And yes. Yes, I do. It’s... a comfort.”

“It’s yours, then. You’ll need it in a few weeks, that’s for sure. But for now...”

Sticks pulled off the ushanka and set it on the desk, to admire ‘Choly’s mess of hair. He leaned in, to see if ‘Choly would permit another kiss.

“I am most impressed with the craftsmanship Miss Bones put into your coat, Sir!” the Mister Handy continued through the open balcony door. “All the blood and grime just wipes right off, even after it’s dried overnight!”

“She must have had DWR on hand,” Sticks surmised, his posture squaring as he bristled. “They occasionally scav military materials like that. There’s a lot in Historic, and not just in Boott Mills.”

“Oh, do I ever commend her on that degree of attention! You’ll find I’ve got the blood out of all your effects. I always say, I know my way around a blood stain, laundry machines or no! Ha-Hah! But to have others looking out for your appearances as well! I’m not the only one keeping you looking Sharp, Sir.”

“Yes, well.” Sticks went out onto the balcony to pluck ‘Choly’s orthotics from the clothes line. He tossed them down on the bare mattress, and patted at the end of the bed with enthusiastic impatience. “Here, your braces and stuff are dry. Allow me to help you get nicely laced up for the day. Slumping over the desk like that can’t be good for your... anything.”

‘Choly shouldered off the robe into the chair as he stood, and permitted Sticks to help him into the orthotic corset. The ghoul was wearing the faded yellow longshoreman’s garb again, and he assumed Sticks typically favored it. He stiffened at the ghoul’s grazing touches, only to force himself to relax. He had to remind himself Bones wasn’t the one helping him dress. He expected Sticks to feel him up all the while, but beyond scrutinizing the evenness of lacing tension, such sensuality didn’t bubble up. Then Sticks knelt to help him with his wrists and ankles as well, with the gentleness of changing third degree dressings, and the chemist couldn’t help but wonder if he were just in the moment victim to wishful perverse thoughts.

Everyone seemed to have gained so much from the Battle of Lowell, except him. His efforts entitled him to a reward, right? The value of things didn’t feel like they measured up to what Sticks had achieved. Small and decrepit. For it all, he could only show some fancy garments, a book printing not even a full day old yet, and a repairman ghoul who couldn’t see people as anything but tools. Maybe a repairman could fix him.

“I do wish I had a wheelchair here.” His eyes remained on the open Merrick. “I’ll admit the stairs have been an obstacle.”

Sticks didn’t look up from putting socks on 'Choly’s feet.

“The only local place that might have one is underwater in crab country, unfortunately. Having one wouldn’t help you with the stairs, anyway.”

“I’m all right, being upstairs-bound, I suppose.” ‘Choly couldn’t help but frown somehow. He let the ghoul lace his ankle braces for him while he put his Pip-Boy back on. “There’s a bathroom on this floor, a balcony, and a bed... And you and Angel are both here to bring me anything I might need.”

All these things... but no chem setup.

“Angel...” ‘Choly gave it an uncertain wave. “Angel, bring over the binders Olivia gave you. I want to confirm they’re genuine.”

“...Of course, Sir,” it finally replied after a pause. When it complied, he got to skimming. Pensive, Angel’s tendrils curled up to its chassis. “A bit heavy for reading material so early, though, isn’t it?”

He leafed through the continuous stock and squirmed back into his robe, not bothering to unfurl the accordion-like mess. He nodded softly to himself stopping intermittently from resultant goosepimples, noting what details added up in his mind to legitimate federal-grade documentation. He straight up shivered understanding that this printout disclosed both MKEXCEL and MKEXCEED, seemingly in full.

Sticks yanked the chair back from the desk, with ‘Choly in it. He gave the dizzied chemist an intense glare.

“You can mess with all that later. Stop focusing on all the serious stuff for a minute. Nobody’s making you work. Relax already. I can’t handle all this moping. Let me... sweep you off your feet!”

Unexpected and unsolicited, Sticks scooped him up. 'Choly let out a tense bubbling laugh when the ghoul teetered slightly, seeming to sway a bit in the string instrumental on the Pip-Boy. He worried less that Sticks might drop him, and more that he hadn’t had any say in being picked up. He curled his face into the small of Sticks’s neck, and decided to pay little mind to where the ghoul might carry him. But then, the ghoul tossed his gun harness in his lap and took him downstairs, and he questioned whether it had been a fumbled attempt at romance at all.

Sticks set him down at a booth near the front door, to grab both their shoes. He handed ‘Choly his oxfords with a grin, then finished putting on his own boots.

“Let’s get out of Angel’s hair, huh?” Sticks swatted ‘Choly’s hands away from his shoes when he struggled longer than it took Sticks to put his own shoes on. “Just outside for a bit. Some fresh air.”

“I suppose if you can trust Angel to keep your house.” ‘Choly tied the robe tighter. “Shouldn’t I... get dressed, though?”

“Nonsense! It’s just you and me for at least a mile, in every direction. And it’s a nice, brisk day. You don’t need to worry your pretty little mess of a head, 'Choly. Here!” He handed ‘Choly his cane from the umbrella stand, and held up a wood from the golf bag ‘Choly had brought. “A little protection, between this and your... whatever-it-is gun.”

He frowned, then laughed.

“A wedge might serve you better, if you’re intending to hit things that aren’t golf balls.”

“Which one’s the--” ‘Choly got up and took the wood from him to put it back, then gave him another. “Ah, yes. The wedge.”

“Really doesn’t make all that much difference, since loft isn’t a factor,” he admitted, fastening his holster with a sneering grin. “I just don’t want you fucking up a perfectly good driver.”

“I’m hurt!” Sticks grabbed ‘Choly around the middle with his free hand, to dip him back a bit. “You think I’d damage an antique such as this?”

“Take it outside, Romeo.”

“Outside it is, then.”

Sticks held the door with a chivalrous bow. Once it shut, he trailed after ‘Choly and swept him into dancing in swirling tune with the radio across the balding green that was once the southernmost tail of the Heritage State Park. He slung the cane and club both to his back, so he could use both hands to guide ‘Choly. The two devolved into fumbling giggling in the crisp, clear autumn day. Sticks hoisted him up onto the concrete amphitheater stage, and joined him, swaying into a slow dance. ‘Choly melted into Sticks’s chest, listening to his heavy heartbeat. Eventually, he fell back into his worries as usual.

“Jacob,” he asked, cheek firmly against Sticks, “what happened this week was a good thing, right? Things are safe and stable now?”

As if on cue, the radio shifted over to play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ Sticks recoiled, but he insisted it was fine to leave it when ‘Choly went to just turn off a song the ghoul disliked. The ghoul pulled them both right back into dancing.

“Laverne used to run that broadcast,” Sticks said, distantly. “She loved songs that kept the apocalypse burning strong. They fed her Eyebot surveillance or something. But maybe she really is signing off once and for all.”

‘Choly had no idea what he was on about, but didn’t want to press him. All he could think of, in mentioning the Rust Devils’ leader, was Olivia, and how she’d produced decades upon decades of confidential military pharmacological research just like that. He hadn’t even gotten to any of it yet, but he had read the phrase ‘Defense Intelligence Agency’ too many times in skimming for him not to expect to find those files too, if he just looked. The DIA could no longer argue over its own existence, or concern itself with the grey area where civilian, military, and federal life overlapped.

What does it even mean, to be a war criminal these days, if there’s no one to try you?

“Of course it was a good thing,” Sticks finally barked with zeal. “It was a great thing! You can’t possibly assume total accountability for something as overarching as yesterday, C.O. or not. You can’t blame yourself for the whole shit show any more than I can blame myself. Your lot’s just you and me now. Now come on.” He shook him a bit and smiled down at him insistently. “Get out of your head already and cut loose. You can be present. I know you can.”

‘Choly surrendered with resistance. He wanted to start into Sticks for costing him Deenwood’s luxuries, but it struck him dumb to recognize that the ghoul had saved them both from the incomprehensible inhumanity of General Olivia Francis of the Deenwood Pharm Corps.

“I don’t need all those prewar amenities on base for my happily ever after. I’m slow dancing with the only important prewar relic I could ever need.”

Sticks’s grin grew dopey and squinted, and he stroked at the small of ‘Choly’s back.

“Makes two of us. We might’ve lost pretty much everything, but I’ve still got you. If that’s all right with you, anyway.”

“Only if it’s okay that I’ve got you.”

“I’m grateful, in a way, that you never told me you were into me before everything fell apart. All things considered, I would’ve spent two hundred years lacking you, and hurting even worse than I already have for it.”

‘Choly glanced up shyly before pressing his cheek back against him with a small grin.

“So we really are partners in crime, then.”

‘Choly murmured, comforted by the prospect of stability. He barely kept himself from reminding Sticks that he couldn’t remember whether he’d made ‘Choly’s heart flutter then, like it did now.

“For real, this time.”

They got lost in the music, in the euphoria of each other. Having Sticks to lean on, ‘Choly didn’t have to worry about his balance, or his constitution. Before ‘Choly could make sense of it, Sticks had already scooped him up and sprinted for the front door. A flurry of Merrilurks shrieked fast toward them. Sticks flung ‘Choly down on top of a booth table to free his hands to board up the door with a series of pulley mechanisms. Heaving, the ghoul took him up the stairs to the bed. He slammed the stairwell door shut and latched it, then watched from the East-facing windows in intent dread.

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#fallout 4 #fo4 #fallout 4 fanfic #fo4 fanfic #sole survivor #melancholy #sticks #angel #the anatomy of melancholy #ghoul oc

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profitablepractices · 4 years

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9 Tips to Turn Your Blogs into Cash Machines for Your Private Therapy Practice!

If you’re like most therapists, you weren’t taught much about marketing in graduate school, especially about online marketing. Online marketing for therapists is an incredibly easy (yes, easy!) and inexpensive way fo let your ideal clients know who you are and how you can help them. A super easy and inexpensive form of online marketing is blogging, but there are a few tricks you need to turn a random blog into an online marketing tool. So what are we waiting for? Let’s dive in and learn how to do it! By the way: If this seems like a lot of information and you'd like support in the process, please feel free join my program for an extra sense of support!

The easiest way to attract whatever types of clients are perfect for you is to write blogs about topics that interest those clients, make sure the world sees them, and make sure the blogs guide people to actually book your services. I know many of us (myself included!) felt like never writing anything ever again after 5+ years of graduate school including a 100+ page dissertation, so let me just say that blogging for marketing purposes is much easier than writing grad school papers. In fact, those old grad school papers can come in handy; keep reading to see how! Here are some easy ways to kick out some blogs that will sit online forever, working to attract business for you while you sleep, catch up with friends, see clients, or do whatever you enjoy doing while those blogs do your online marketing for you:

1. Recycle your old essays into blogs. Remember those papers you had to write in grad school on topics like how two different theorists conceptualized anxiety? Or a painstaking case analysis that included pages and pages of explanation regarding how certain interventions helped a particular client? Good news: You can adapt nearly ALL of that into bite sized blogs.

2. Write a “how to” blog. Whatever types of therapy goals you enjoy helping people with, write blogs about those topics. For example, “How to Raise Your Self Esteem”. Or “How to Move Past an Old Relationship”. Nearly any therapeutic goal can be converted into some sort of “How To”. “How To” blogs tend to get a lot of traffic because readers quickly and easily understand their use. These types of blogs are great for marketing because they will be intrinsically targeted towards your ideal type of client issue. Here's an example of an article I wrote for US News and World Report on how to choose an online therapist... guess what types of clients it helps me attract?!:) Oh, and you're wondering how I got to write for USNWR? They saw my blogs on my own site and like them so much that they approached me! Yet another good reason to blog and make sure your blogs are wallpapered all over the internet (see tip # 8).

3. Try using a ghost blogger. If you’re just allergic to writing, try jotting down a few key points, or just have a phone call with someone who is good at writing. Tell them to just write down whatever you say. Depending on the quality, you can either use it as a rough draft or it may be basically ready to go. Undergrads and graduate students are usually up for this type of work. Just make sure you get a signed release that whatever output they create is your intellectual property that you’re free to use without crediting them. Or, you can save money by offering to list them as second author; if that interests you both. Here is a link to a ghost blogger I have used before when I'm in a pinch for time or when I was still learning how to generate blog ideas.

4. Remember, “less is more”. When I was first starting to blog, I used to think I needed to write big huge long essays. Then, I learned that the public tends to get overwhelmed by long blogs. So keep it short. If you are overflowing with information, consider breaking your blog into a multi-part series.

5. Talk in lists. See how you’re reading this list right now? That’s what readers like to do. Lists of 3 are generally good, though in some cases lists need to be longer.

6. Brainstorm at least 5 titles. The title is actually KEY to getting people to read. Don’t make the mistake of spending lots of time on a great blog and then dropping the ball with a boring title. Titles that include phrases like “How to” and numbers (ie “Three Top Tips for xyz”) tend to get clicks since readers know there will be actionable info in your blog.

7. Close with a “Call to Action”. For most therapists, the call to action goes something like, “If you’d like to talk more about (topic of blog), please feel free to reach out to discuss private sessions by visiting (your online booking page here or however you want to be reached)- I love helping clients with this issue!”. Many therapists are afraid to seem pushy, but remember: this is only a blog, and you’re just telling people that you’re available. It’s really not pushy; it’s professional. 8. Post EVERYWHERE. Once you have created a blog, squeeze the maximum value out of it by posting it everywhere you possibly can. “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, does it make a sound?” The same question could be asked, “If you write an awesome blog and no one reads it, does it help you?” Personally, I keep a spreadsheet of all the places where you can post blogs for free. Every time I create a blog, it gets posted on every single one of those websites. And of course, you will have an author page on each of those blog sites. The more sites that link to your website, and the more sites that are posting your material, the better you’ll do in organic searches on Google. Make sure you also post them to your LinkedIn profile, and to your personal and/or professional Facebook page. For a copy of my spreadsheet and more guidance on this, you may want to check out my on-demand social media workshop for therapists.

9. Use Facebook. Facebook ads are also a great way to promote your blogs very cheaply to people who reside in your area, are your desired age range, have indicated an interest in therapy/anxiety/depression/relationships/whatever your blog topic is. You can even target Facebook ads towards people who have an income level that connotes an ability to pay for services. Facebook ads can run for as little as $1 per day.

10. Bonus Tip! I know I said 9 tips, but here's one more: Every time you have a new blog, make sure to send it to your existing mailing list as well in your monthly newsletter. My office always sees a bump in bookings when we send the newsletter. The newsletter stimulates existing contacts to think of you, and this is a positive thing if your newsletter is full of helpful information, such as a great blog on a topic many of your readers enjoy!

Conclusion

I know it may sound daunting to write a bunch of blogs, post them to high heaven, and potentially even market them on Facebook. Don’t worry about doing it all at once. Personally, I just keep a list of all the topics I might want to blog about as well as a list of all the places to post blogs. When I was first starting out, I’d blog if I was feeling energetic and talkative; and do the mindless posting admin stuff when I was feeling quiet or mentally tired. Now, I have an assistant who posts the blogs everywhere. You might be able to find a student or online assistant to help you with this part, but when you’re starting out it’s all part of the process. Sometimes, I’d take my laptop to a restaurant and work on this type of stuff over lunch, dinner, drinks, or whatever. It was a fun way to be “out and about” while still feeling productive.

Do you need help brainstorming a list of topic ideas? Join a ProfitablePractices.net group coaching call or discuss on our alumni listserv! You are SO FULL of ideas, and you may not even know it-- we'll help you discover them together!:)

Remember: blogs are a win-win for you because they not only help get your name out there to reach new clients, they also allow you to shape what potential clients see when they Google you. Plus, blogs are what’s known as “evergreen”, meaning that once you create them they sit online forever blasting your message. If you have a newsletter, make sure you share relevant blogs there too. It’s okay to re-share the same blog if there’s a relevant reason (ie every holiday season I re-share my blogs about holiday stress).

Do you want more tips on how to grow your practice? I’m proud to say that my practice grew super quickly to the point where I had to hire people after being open less than two years. I’m now taking pleasure in teaching other therapists how to do the same, since I remember how scared I was when I was first starting. To learn more, join ProfitablePractices.net!

https://profitablepractices.net/9-tips-for-cheap-easy-and-successful-online-marketing/

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topicprinter · 5 years

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Hey all! I'm a small business (print shop) owner and, having established my business locally over the past few years, have decided to spend 2019 studying and immersing myself in online marketing- Facebook/Instagram/Youtube/Tik Tok...I spent the past few months studying the Tik Tok alogrithm, figuring out what makes videos successful and best practices are when using the platform. Below is a rough draft of a write-up I'm planning to release on Linkedin in a few weeks. I think it's got some very useful info for those new to the platform and am open to debate with anyone who has successfully built a following and disagrees on any of the points :)Thank you!----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What is Tik Tok:If you haven’t heard of Tik Tok yet, it’s time to start familiarizing yourself with the social networking platform. With over 500 million active users and a higher organic reach than every other social media app on the App Store, Tik Tok is well on it’s way to overtake instagram (just like instagram overtook Facebook) as the must-have app for millenials and gen Z in the next half decade.I was put on the app by my younger brother, now twelve, who started using Tik Tok over two years ago. Back then the platform wasn’t as popular in the US, with most of its user base being centered in China and India. It also went under a different name- “Musically”. In 2017, the company was bought out by ByteDance and rebranded. Since then it has seen explosive growth in the United States, mainly among kidsA strange shift has occurred. Rather than gen Z following in the footsteps of millenials and adopting Facebook and Instagram as their platform of choice, zoomers found their own place on Tik Tok. Stranger still, month by month, I see my friends and peers downloading and using the app, and the older demographic on the app growing.For those not in the loop, Tik Tok is an app that allows users to take short, 15-60 second videos and share them with followers and strangers. The in-app video editor features a host of features, including fun filters and effect (like those seen on Snapchat and Facebook Messenger) and an audio embedding feature that plays a pre-recorded audio loop behind you clip. Users can borrow each others audio clips and record their own video over them sort of like a template, fostering as meme sharing culture. It’s really much easier to understand simply by hopping on the app and spending a few hours watching videos.Personal Experience:As I mentioned before I first heard of the app through my brother, Jimmy. He has been on the platform for about two years now and makes at least a video a day without fail, sometimes more. Most clips are shot in his room and the content ranges from short, highly edited, silly dances to 60 second videos of him talking about his day. He averages about 50 views a video and, on a good day, may get 15-20 likes.I made myself an account over a year ago but have only been a lurker up until last week, when I decided that I understand the ecosystem enough to throw my hat in the ring. I shot my first video on my iphone 8, made some minor edits on my computer, and posted the clip. Within the first 48 hours the 16 second video had over 200 thousand views and 30 thousand likes (edit: now 300k+ views and 50k likes). What’s even more impressive is that the clip wasn’t a random dancing video or funny skit, it was a product video. Specifically, it was a short montage of me printing a tshirt at my home studio, a tshirt I sell online. I’ve since posted several other clips with various success and hope that Tik Tok will be a viable marketing platform for my business and my personal brand in the coming years. (feel free to check it out at @this_is_jonjon on TikTok)The success of my first post was not a fluke but a function of proper search engine optimization and my familiarity with the Tik Tok algorithm. While the video itself was nothing out of the ordinary, everything else- the caption, the thumbnail I chose, the hashtags used, even the backing track in the clip were all vital to it’s reach. Below is a more detailed explanation of the Tik Tok algorithm and a list of the factors I believe made the clip go viral.The Algorithm:I’ll mention right off the bat that no one other than ByteDance developers know exactly how the Tik Tok algorithm works, however, while minor points can be debated, the overall idea of how Tik Tok distributes and "rates" content isn't a secret.When you first load the app, you land on the “For You” page, similar to the discover page on Instagram or Facebook/Linkedin news feed. This is where you, as a consumer of Tik Tok content, will spend most of your time. The app will show you videos in all sorts of random categories- car videos, funny videos, dancing videos.. And will decide based on view time (how long you continue watching each video before clicking away) and interactions (whether or not you like/comment/ or follow the creator) whether or not you have any interest in said category. Despite only working with these limited variables, Tik Tok very quickly figures out what you’re interested in and begins feeding it to you, still occasionally throwing in unrelated content to see if you’ll “bite”. You don’t need to tell Tik Tok anything about your interests, they figure it out for you, and they’re almost always right.The content that ends up on your “For You” page isn’t content that’s made by your friends like on instagram or creators you subscribe to like on Youtube, it’s completely random content. Whenever someone uploads a video, regardless of what category the video is in, Tik Tok will try to show it to 50-100 people to gauge the viewers’ reactions. If the video has a good engagement rate, Tik Tok will continue showing it to random users, and if it has bad engagement, it will be swallowed by the void. About a quarter of the videos on my For You pajjge are these “tester” videos, made by unknown creators and with (usually) less than 50 impressions. Tik Tok found a perfect balance between showing you proven content you’re genuinely interested in and showing you “tester” content to figure out whether that content is worth sharing with more users. If the app senses you’re getting bored, it will feed you less “tester” content and more videos with proven positive responses, and visa versa.Gaming the System:Your first video)There is one final detail I failed to mention in the previous few paragraphs. The first video that any user on Tik Tok posts gets an instant spike in impressions. As a new user, Tik Tok metaphorically “throws you a bone” and will in most cases show your video to more people right off the bat than it would a video by a repeat poster. This means that it’s vital to make your very first post on Tik Tok engaging.Unlike Youtube, for example, where you can feel free to post tons of crappy content as you get comfortable in front of the camera and find your voice, Tik Tok will literally punish you for having a bad start. The app will rate you based on your first video, and while it’s possible to climb back up after a bad start, it’s better to just hit the ground running.Consider making a “tester” account to try out a few different video formats before having an official launch on another account, or simply take several videos and save them all as drafts until you find something that’s worth launching your Tik Tok journey with. Whatever you do, don’t open your account and launch with a boring “Hello World” style video, it’s instant death.Follow general video guidelines)Your videos need to be engaging, so it should go without saying that they should be of decent quality. If your video is grainy and pixelated people will click away before even hearing your message (I’m calling you out, Android users!). The majority of Tik Tok creators are teenagers filming on the cheap, front-facing camera on their smartphones. Simply using the back-facing camera on a newer model iPhone and finding good lighting is enough to set you apart from the competition. I mention iPhones for a reason, by the way. It’s not because I’m an Apple fanboy, it’s simply because apps like Tik Tok and Snapchat are better coded for working with Apple hardware.Make sure not to go the opposite extreme, however. Tik Tok culture values authenticity, high definition videos filmed on 4k DSLR cameras come off as too professional and almost feel like advertisements. Tik Tok users want to see you filming on a handheld device, they want you using the in-app filters and sounds, and will click away instantly if they sense your content is fabricated and ingenuine.Trend hopping)In my personal experience, understanding the culture of Tik Tok is the most vital part to anyone’s success on the app. My viral post used an audio clip that had just become popular a day before, and therefore rode on the success of about a dozen other viral videos using the same clip. Just like a musician can gain their first small group of followers by doing covers of trending songs, many Tik Tok influencers gained notoriety by jumping on trends that were already proven to be popular. Much like Tik Tok feeds its users popular videos and interjects “tester” clips every once in a while, many popular Tik Tokers post mostly trending videos- clips of them lip syncing popular songs and copying current memes, and interject personal skits and less popular content within.There is no way to explain Tik Tok culture and current trends in an article like this, especially since new memes and trends appear literally every day. The best advice I can give to aspiring influencers is to download the app and spend 30-60 minutes a day over the course of the next two weeks browsing the For You page. You’ll quickly begin to recognize common themes and motifs, and will get an understanding of the culture I’m talking about.Ask for the close)Even at only 20 years old, I find a lot of the content on Tik Tok cringy and childish. This is likely because, though the user base is growing, gen Z’rs still make up the majority of content consumers on the app. Regardless of the reason, attention-seeking behavior tends to do fairly well on Tik Tok. Actually, very well.Simply adding “I worked super hard on this vid pls like” at the end of your clip is enough to boost conversion. My biggest mistake in my first post was not asking for the close. I didn’t embed my Tik Tok username in the video, I didn’t have good profile picture or bio on my account, and I didn’t ask people to follow me in the description. As a result, no one followed me. After the first 24 hours or so the video had reached over 100k views and 15k likes but I had about 50 followers on my account. Upon realizing this I quickly changed my profile picture to a clear photo and changed my bio to something along the lines of “follow me for more cool content”. My follower count more than quintupled within the next few hours.Though this may seem in-authentic to the average marketer, it really isn’t. Tons of kids on Tik Tok pour their heart and soul into their content and genuinely want people to follow them. These creators, as well as most of the audience, see nothing wrong in asking for likes or follows. Asking for the close, in the Tik Tok community, is seen as more of a friendly reminder than a pushy sale.more info on: https://influencermarketinghub.com/tiktok-statistics/ (this is not my website, just a source)Thanks for reading! Hoping this helps some people launch/grow their account. I haven't seen a decent writeup on Tik Tok best practices yet so I'm hoping this can serve as a foundation. Please debate/add on points in the comments. -Jonathan.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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suechoiart · 5 years

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SU19 Internship_ Week 9+10

Next week is my last week! I want to spend some time talking about schematic design/concept design, where I’ve spent a lot of time this summer... But I’m going to start with a general overview of design phases!

_ design phases / file organization

Firma adopts the typical and standard approach to design phases, especially for scope of work and billing. Their file management for projects reflects this to a degree. The CAD folder, inside the project folder, is divided into the four typical phases:

1- schematic design,

2- design development,

3- construction documentation, and

4- construction administration

The fifth typical phase, bid & negotiation, happens outside of AutoCAD and relies heavily on correspondence, via emails and annotated PDFs (these typically live in the sent/received folders).

I’ve been exposed to a lot of different projects in the 10 weeks I’ve worked with Firma. Today I want to focus on one project in the schematic design phase that Firma allowed me to try out ‘designing.’ For this project, the timeline for CD/SD was very short (1 business week), but otherwise went through important stages of

_ finding a new project

When new clients sign the contract, projects are added to the list of active projects. Most projects have been acquired through word of mouth: Firma does good work, and other industry people who are involved (e.g. contractors or architects) refer Firma to other potential clients.

I’ve not been to a pre-client meeting, but when Scott drafts the contract, he already has a good idea of what the project focuses are. I’ve seen contracts for very standard residential plans to a very speculative eco-tourism project (where Firma would do the SD work mainly). Prior to writing the contract, Scott probably asks the right questions and listens to the client and figures out priorities.

The project I want to talk about today is unique because, it just quickly happened. If I recall this correctly, on Monday, Scott mentioned the architects across the street had a school expansion project and that they wanted our input in the outdoor area. We started working on this pretty quickly, I believe before any formal contracts were signed. (Or that part happened very quickly after we started working.)

((This was probably due to Scott’s good relationship with the architects- they bring us good work, we provide them good work- and being good people to work with seems to make a good relationship!))

PROJECT: NONDESCRIPT URBAN CAMPUS IN NASHVILLE

(They converted a bigbox store into a campus! How cool.)

_ site visit

(Sarah, Scott, and architect Ethan on Tuesday on site)

One of the first things to do on a project is to visit a site. Nearly all of Firma’s projects are local, and most are within 20 minutes driving distance to the office (and most-of-most are about 10 mins away). Each visit lasts about 1.5-3 hours because it involves a couple of things:

Site inventory: for some projects, we have an existing plan or survey either from the client or a contractor. While surveys are very accurate, sometimes they don’t include site elements that we need to know, such plant material. One survey we received did not have all trees on site, or ones that were demo’d.

Measurement: Again, surveys do not include 100% of the information that we need. Sometimes the plan or survey that we receive do not have recent additions. Because plans are 2D, we occasionally have to measure height (we had to do it for this project).

Site photos: We include a lot of existing photos in client presentations to orient clients and communicate our design intent. In addition to that, photos from site are great references for when..... Wait, what did that sidewalk actually look like? How is the existing canopy? ..... Nothing is a better reference than photo documentation. (Besides teleportation and time travel...)

If the client is present (as for this trip- the architect), they will show us project focuses and constraints on site and everyone will brainstorm on the spot a few quick things.

_ receiving / developing the base plan

Base on the site visit notes, we create a base plan for Firma to sketch out designs. What this process looks like depends on what’s already available. Few scenarios:

We create something from nothing. For the office building we rent from, we measured everything roughly by hand and I created a base plan in CAD.

We update existing documents. For a residential project that Scott designed, the clients ended up doing some of the hardscape very loosely according to what Scott had designed; so we went and measured the site and updated the baseplan accordingly.

We modify existing documents. For this school project, we received CAD files of surveys and other existing information directly from the client (architect). By making a copy, we ‘freeze’ (hide) layers of information we don’t need in our work, and sometimes update tree sizes.

This school expansion project included a new property that the school had acquired, so we had to combine 2 surveys together into 1 document. Aside from that and the usual layer organization, there wasn’t a lot of work to be done.

((side note: We originally received a CAD file that had all objects on 1 layer (likely exported from a modeling software); Scott advised us to request original CAD files where all the layer organization was already done from the architect.))

_ identifying goals and constraints

As mentioned before, one desired outcome of the site visit is to physically understand site constraints and objectives. For this campus project, the focus was to extend the outdoor playing area from the existing property into the newly acquired property. The building footprint would stay relatively the same (the two buildings would stay separate). The new property had a lot of ‘back of the house’ that would be converted into the play area.

The three big constraints for this project was:

The connection (”transition space” in the diagram) was a 4-5 foot elevation drop.

The design would be a similar to the existing play space, since the purpose is to ‘extend’ it onto the new property.

There would have to be an ADA path that connects the two separate levels.

(First image: the existing play area; second image: the new play area. Scott and Ethan are standing in the space right above the dumpster, behind the fence.)

When we came back to the office, Scott and Sarah immediately had precedents in mind: big slide(s)! With that in mind, I went into sketching and drawing, and researching slides.

(Slide at Shelby Farms in Memphis. Source: Shelby Farms Park Conservancy & Memphis Daily News)

_ sketch

Big marker -> smaller marker. Big moves getting more delicate and detailed. That’s the gist!

I started with this basic bubble diagram on top of the base drawing. (This developed into the program diagram above.) This helped with getting a very rough sense of how big things should be / could be, and the purpose of each ‘room.’

I made a few quick iterations in scale and talked with Scott about the options. These drawings show different dropoff designs: the current building has parking spaces right in front of the building. I suggested that we just move the handicap parking aside, Scott drew a tighter diagram, and from there I drew with a smaller marker with some of our strongest options.

This part of the process (Wednesday and Thursday) also involved research! I looked up typical slide specifications and used that to draw a general idea about where the slide would be, how long it would be, etc.

_ illustrative drawing (me)

So I did it! It took a lot of “this is the right one.....” sketches, but I put together a 1″ = 30′-0″ scale drawing with annotations for what’s what. It includes the slide and ADA path that was part of the goals/challenges.

Biggest issue with the drawing? It...... doesn’t meet goal 2, where it was supposed to be the extension of the existing playspace.

The existing playspace is .... rectangles.

_ Scott’s drawing

So Scott took into consideration my drawing/idea, but tightened the concept in consideration with real considerations (bioretention area, dumpster). Scott also created this drawing at a big scale, 1″ = 20′-0″

_ presentation and annotation

On Friday we had this scanned by sending it to a graphics shop and we put it into the computer. The presentation graphics were made that day along with a ‘narrative’ (site element descriptions) that spoke to specific design intent of the schematic plan. This is one example:

4. Slide

Prefabricated embankment slide anchored to monolithic rock steps below; material to be heavy duty polyethylene resin, 12’ length; approximatedly 6’ vertical drop; assume 2 to 4 steps to access top of slide.

15. Sidewalk Connector

Existing asphalt parking spaces to be removed and replaced with turf, 5’ wide concrete sidewalk, 4’ wide tree planting strip, and concrete curb.

The #4 takes from a prefab product I found during my slide research. #15 formally writes out what was there before, and what we drew there.

_ conclusion

I’m really grateful that Scott and Sarah gave me this opportunity. This was a really quick and short exercise but a good one to get an idea of what the priorities are when it comes to schematic design!

#lar561 #internship #landscape architecture #schematic design

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reomanet · 6 years

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Reckoning With Pinegrove | Pitchfork

Share on Twitter Open share drawer On a muggy July night in 2017, Pinegrove guitarist Nick Levine was stabbing a hot needle of indeterminate origin into my flesh. I was getting my first stick-and-poke tattoo. The design was a single square. Sitting next to us on the hardwood floor of a bedroom in Kinderhook, New York—a small, sleepy country town a few hours north of Manhattan—was Evan Stephens Hall, the band’s frontman and primary songwriter. We were at the spacious, light-filled house where the members of Pinegrove had been living and recording. Hall was giving himself a much poorer version of the same tattoo. The unassuming shape is a loaded one for Hall. “It’s very hyper-aware of narrative layers,” he said, delineating the logic of the square, or frame, in between spiritedly mumble-singing along to the Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There.” Technically, these were not Pinegrove tattoos. A Pinegrove tattoo is two intersected squares, like a cubic Venn diagram; the band’s iconography also includes an ampersand, and both symbols are inked to Hall’s inner bicep. They are meant to indicate an ethic of tolerance and coexisting perspectives. The squares featured prominently on the cover of Pinegrove’s 2016 breakthrough, Cardinal , and in that album’s wake, the band began retweeting dizzying numbers of kids with identical Pinegrove tattoos. They retweeted quoted lyrics and fan art and endless bedroom-recorded covers of their earnest songs. At least one fan wrote a high school English paper analyzing Pinegrove lyrics. These young people called themselves Pinenuts. In their honor, Hall put a line about Pinegrove tattoos into a new song called “Rings”: “I draw a line in my skin,” he sings, “I’m pinning down inchoate meaning.” Though Pinegrove’s sound hews closest to alt-country-flecked indie rock, it is sometimes labeled emo, and this affiliation makes sense: Their music is open-hearted, communal, earnest, lyrical, with a discernible ease, and Cardinal was released on the emo-aligned Boston label Run for Cover. It bears the influence of Gillian Welch’s gleaming twang and the angularity of early Death Cab for Cutie. If you are someone who grew up on emo before getting into supposedly more “sophisticated” artists, you could hear your whole musical coming-of-age packed into a Pinegrove track. Their signature song peaks with a line about calling your parents and telling your friends that you love them. But the rabid obsessiveness of Pinegrove’s youthful fanbase was the most emo quality of all. Those tattoos felt cultish and symbolic—of empathy, of aliveness, of artmaking in general—as if denoting a more tender but no less radical update on the Black Flag bars, as if each square sung that timeless mantra: Our band could be your life . Once, I admit, I considered searing those two squares into my skin. Pinegrove’s songwriting had come to represent, to me, a positive force within our ever-awakening music world. Where the pop-punk subculture of my youth could be hostile to young women, I saw something like true progression at Pinegrove shows and in their Twitter stream. They defied the all-white-male image of so many emo-adjacent bands and pushed progressive politics; by January 2017, they had donated over $21,000 in Bandcamp sales to Planned Parenthood and released an album, Elsewhere , to benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil rights advocacy nonprofit. Whether emo or indie, Pinegrove were compellingly thoughtful; they pointed in a better direction. I had gone to Kinderhook in 2017 to report what I thought would be a fairly triumphant profile of Pinegrove as they worked on their new album, Skylight . The band had already fulfilled the promise of DIY self-manifestation, having formed in 2010 around two lifelong friends, Hall and drummer Zack Levine, in their suburban hometown of Montclair, New Jersey. They had played music together since childhood and spent years roughing it on self-booked tours, playing to no one, subsisting on personal convictions. In Kinderhook, I paced across some springy fields with Hall while he philosophized about the practice of “peripatetic discourse” (that is, walking and talking at the same ti me). I list ened to him muse on the genius of Elena Ferrante. We caught sight of monarch butterflies and deer. I sat around while the band—Hall and Zack Levine, plus a rotating cast of Nick Levine, Nandi Rose Plunkett, Adan Carlo Feliciano, Sam Skinner, and Josh Marre—recorded music and made tacos. I observed while they scrolled through drafts of Hall’s semi-surrealist tweets and decided which to publish to the band’s account. From the time Hall picked me up from the train, with Loretta Lynn on the speakers, he had also been excitedly confessing about a musician he had recently met and become infatuated with. They had just spent several days hanging out—even duetting on his favorite song of all time, Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”—and Hall had stayed up all night writing a song about her, which he played for me and his bandmates. He said he ought to be honest: She would no doubt be occupying his mind throughout the duration of my trip. Hall was an open book, an intellectual chatterbox, a compelling storyteller. His personality met the honesty and high-wire energy of his songs. I still went for just the one square on that July night. Perhaps it was my own ingrained skepticism, but even in the summer of 2017, true Pinenut ink already felt too daring for comfort. I knew not to put that much faith in a male public figure, even if his songs have saved you. On November 21, 2017—at the height of the watershed #MeToo movement—Hall wrote a strikingly long, puzzlingly vague message on Pinegrove’s Facebook page acknowledging that he had been “accused of sexual coercion.” The statement described a “short but intense” relationship with an unnamed woman, and it carried an apologetic but defensive tone—not least of all when Hall attempted to rationalize his behavior by noting, “i believed all of our decisions to be based in love.” Following his opaque chronicle of the relationship, he also wrote that he had once said he “could sense who from the crowd would be interested in sleeping with me based on how they watched me perform.” The statement ended earnestly—“i have never felt remorse like this before”—but it raised a monumental number of troubling questions and answered few. After posting the statement, Hall did not deflect responsibility. In accordance with the alleged victim’s wishes, which were communicated to Pinegrove via a mediator, the band began a year-long hiatus from touring. Hall entered therapy. Skylight was shelved. A band who once prioritized clear and open communication went completely silent. The mediator clarified to me that, in this case, the alleged sexual coercion took the form of “verbal and contextual pressure” and that “the accusation is not of a physical nature at all.” The alleged victim requested that she remain anonymous in public discourse and declined to speak with me on the record for this piece. Hall’s statement was only the beginning of a story that has persisted, this year, in finding new ways to unravel. As an April report by SPIN revealed, the statement and ensuing fallout was instigated by a series of emails from the Philadelphia-based organization Punk Talks, which purports to connect touring musicians and music industry workers with free therapy. Their motto: “You don’t have to be sad to make great music.” Sheridan Allen, 27, founded Punk Talks in 2015, after she received bachelor’s degrees in social work and sociology from Northern Kentucky University, where she also completed graduate courses involving intimate partner violence and forensic interviewing as part of a child welfare program. On November 14, 2017, Allen emailed Pinegrove’s label, Run for Cover, and the promoters of a Cleveland, Ohio festival called Snowed In, which the band was set to play on November 25. In the email, which was obtained and reviewed by Pitchfork, Allen wrote that she was moved to reach out after speaking with an alleged victim of Hall’s, with whom she had connected via social media. “In the wave of people in influence being called out for dangerous behaviors,” she wrote, “I was approached today concerning Pinegrove.” Allen proceeded to describe Hall’s “predatory and manipulative behavior toward women attending Pinegrove shows and women he has been sexually involved with.” She stated that the alleged victim was “NOT THE FIRST” (emphasis hers) to tell her as much. She shared her belief, “as a mental health professional,” that Hall should “step away from music to receive intensive treatment.” She noted that the cancellation of Pinegrove’s tour and album release would be “nearly impossible to do without making a public statement,” though she did not specify who ought to write such a statement. Allen offered to speak with Hall herself and also suggested that Punk Talks could offer him “rehabilitation services.” She copied one of the organization’s licensed therapists on the email for “further guidance or clinical direction.” But even by sending that initial instigating email to Pinegrove’s label and promoters, Allen was possibly overstepping her boundaries. If Allen’s mission was to facilitate mental health treatment, then, as one licensed therapist told me, it would be unusual “to offer that service and then also be engaging in these unofficial accountability processes.” Mental health support is a markedly different resource than a community-based accountability process. “It would be incongruent with the mission [of a mental health provider] to approach this person and say, ‘You’re a perpetuator,’” the therapist told me. “If a therapist is going to engage in reparative accountability work, that would be extremely confidential. Everyone would be consenting to engaging in that.” Two days after Allen’s email, in an internal update sent to the Punk Talks team, she wrote that if Pinegrove did not step away from playing so that Hall could enter therapy, “the original victim and another identified victim plan to speak publicly, which we support 10000%.” She added, “I hope you will stand with me on this, it has not been an easy time working directly to take down the biggest band in indie right now and I am very tired.” (Five months later, Allen walked back those comments on Twitter, writing that Punk Talks “are not and will never be in the business of ‘taking down’ bands; this was a poor choice of words on my part and not an indication of the work we do.”) Allen had been approaching her effort from a few angles. According to Snowed In promoter Cory Hajde, Allen first contacted him to vaguely say that someone came to her “outing Evan as an abuser.” He considered removing Pinegrove from the festival, but without concrete details, Hajde said, he was “legally obligated” to keep the band on because they were in a contract. Allen pressed on. Hajde said she then proposed the idea of telling the opening bands on Pinegrove’s upcoming tour, Adult Mom and Saintseneca, about the allegations in an effort to cancel the shows. Hajde declined to intervene. “I think she felt like she had something to gain, which was very bizarre,” Hajde told me. “I felt bullied by the way she was talking to me throughout the whole process.” Steph Knipe, who performs as Adult Mom, is a trusted queer feminist voice in underground music. Knipe told me they received a text from Allen a week before their scheduled tour with Pinegrove, warning them about an issue with the tour but offering few details. “She put me in a weird position,” Knipe said. “A lot of people, myself included, don’t have the tools to know how to deal with situations like this. I was under the impression that Sheridan was a licensed therapist or social worker or counselor. Sheridan—coming from [Punk Talks], saying, ‘I’m trained to deal with this’—was basically abusing that safety, which made it doubly confusing and hard. When I got that text, I was like, ‘Oh thank god, this is exactly what we need in a situation like this—this will be handled really well!’ And it wasn’t.” Knipe said Adult Mom ultimately decided to cancel their dates with Pinegrove after they spoke with the alleged victim directly. Fellow opening act Saintseneca arrived at their decision similarly, according to band leader Zac Little. The same alleged victim, who knew a member of Saintseneca, contacted the group to say she had been sexually coerced by Hall. “We took this account seriously and decided to withdraw from the tour,” Little told me. The morning after Adult Mom and Saintseneca dropped off—just a week after Allen’s first email—Hall posted his statement; Pinegrove canceled the tour. But the alleged victim, it turned out, did not want her allegation to be made public. “Sheridan Allen did many things without my knowledge, support or permission involving the Pinegrove situation, even after I had already asked her to remove herself entirely from the situation,” she wrote in a statement to SPIN earlier this year. “I never asked for her to request or demand any type of statement from Pinegrove or Run for Cover. I’ve never said or implied to Sheridan that I wanted to ‘take down’ Pinegrove.” Allen inserted herself in many ways, she continued, “without my knowledge or consent.” When I reached Allen via email—she declined to be interviewed by phone—she said she knew of the victim’s wish for the situation to remain private, which is why she emailed band affiliates “rather than putting Evan or Pinegrove ‘on blast’” via social media. She denied asking Pinegrove to make a statement. “There was no motivation other than to help a survivor move forward from their trauma,” she wrote. In her email to Punk Talks staff, Allen mentioned a second “identified victim” of Hall’s. That person was—in Allen’s mind—Autumn Lavis, a Phoenix-based organizer and educator who has helped run an organization called Safer Scenes, which traveled on Warped Tour teaching bystander intervention to bands, crew, and fans. “I have been a victim of sexual assault and I have spent years working to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Lavis told me. “But my involvement with Evan wasn’t like that.” Lavis and Hall first met in the summer of 2016. They had a brief, intimate relationship that, Lavis said, ended when Hall got back together with an ex-girlfriend. “The aftermath made me feel bad about myself,” Lavis said. “But I never felt that he was abusive towards me at all. If someone did have a negative experience, I want to validate that, but mine was consensual.” When the hurt of their relationship was still fresh, Lavis said she vented to Allen, who was her friend at the time. In the fall of 2017, Allen contacted Lavis to discuss Hall again. “She kind of made me feel worse about the situation,” said Lavis, who grew concerned when she saw a screenshot of Allen’s internal Punk Talks email circulating. “I asked Sheridan if she was referring to me [as a victim], because I had a strong feeling, and she said yes. I told her that I felt like I was misrepresented. She was apologetic. But it didn’t fix the situation.” (Allen confirmed to me that Lavis “was absolutely misrepresented in this email,” adding that she “misunderstood their interactions” and takes “full responsibility” for the error.) “I felt it was invalidating,” Lavis said, “not only towards me as someone who has been sexually assaulted, but to other people who have as well.” Lavis is in school to be a teacher, where she studies restorative justice—the idea that a perpetuator can reconcile with the community. “In that email, Sheridan was talking about ‘taking down Pinegrove,’” she said. “Restorative justice doesn’t look like that. It’s not a vendetta.” Before they became entangled in turmoil, Allen and Hall had actually been mutually supportive of one another. They met in April 2016 at a Pinegrove show in Columbus. Pinegrove were reaching the end of a nearly two-month tour; they made $100 per night and drove themselves around in a Ford Windstar. According to Hall, Allen told him about Punk Talks and said, “If you ever feel like you want somebody to talk to, you can talk to me.” Hall was unaware that Allen was not a licensed therapist. “I was like, ‘Awesome—being at the end of a seven-week tour, I could really use someone right now, if you have a minute,’” Hall recalled to me this year. “She said, ‘sure.’” According to Hall, they then went to the Pinegrove van; he sat in the driver’s seat, Allen in the passenger’s seat. “I confirmed confidentiality, and she said, ‘Of course, only if you’re a harm to yourself or planning harm to others would I say anything,’” Hall said. “Which is of course invoking a therapeutic context. I understood us to be having a session.” (Allen did not recall the specifics of their conversation.) Allen later checked up on Hall via text, and Hall referred a friend to Allen. Hall claims that Allen represented herself as a therapist and used confidential information from their session in her original instigating email, which he felt “violated” by. Hall comes from a family that valued therapy, he said; his mother was once a social worker and the director of a women’s shelter. Allen denies offering Hall therapy. “I did not at any point act as Evan’s therapist,” Allen wrote, calling their initial conversation only “personal in nature.” But others besides Hall told me that Allen represented herself as a therapist, and Allen referred to herself as a “professional therapist” on Twitter this April. When asked whether she ever represented herself as a therapist through her work with Punk Talks, Allen responded, “I have referred to myself as a therapist because, at that time, I was working as a therapist under the supervision of an individually licensed professional. I tried my best to make it clear to everyone that interacted with [Punk Talks] that our therapists are individually licensed and that I am not licensed to practice therapy independently.” Allen, who’s currently working to earn master’s degrees in social work and nonprofit management, acknowledged that, “I made egregious errors and mistakes throughout this situation. I was acting without any guidance or a board and I have done absolutely everything I can now and in the future to ensure adequate checks and balances, as well as ensuring this will never happen again.” Punk Talks has since assembled a board of directors, which Allen says she formed because she felt “unprepared” to handle the Pinegrove situation. Punk Talks and Pinegrove are now equally embroiled in a story that has no doubt perpetuated harm from both sides. It has become an almost gross magnification of the cultural moment we are living through, in which social media call-outs stand in for real resolution, when situations that ought to be accounted for in private are haphazardly made public, when definitions of consent are only flimsily and selectively applied, when what we believe as right or wrong feels impossibly far from what we might ever know as true or false . It is our inclination to cancel people, to nullify them. This makes some sense, particularly when considering that this burdensome question — What do we do with people who cause harm ? — so often falls onto people who have themselves been harmed. “I know that casting people off is not a permanent solution. It doesn’t really fix anything,” Adult Mom’s Knipe told me. “But the way to heal is to get this person out of your sight.” In some sense, I related. After reading Hall’s perplexing statement, it was my instinct to abandon this Pinegrove piece. But to ignore the story ultimately felt like a denial—of nuance, of truth, of the complications of the world we live in now, where these stories are objectively not all the same. “Everyone is capable of hurting other people… it’s just very ingrained in our behavior,” Knipe said. “And that’s why talking about it and accountability processes are so important.” In the wake of these newly public traumas, the conversation—the forum, the hearing, the entangling narrative threads—is profoundly crucial. It might be all we have. A year after my initial visit, I went back to Kinderhook this summer. The house was more lived in: Records were on the shelves, studio soundproofing had been built out, and Hall showed me a sizable plant named Orlando, after the Virginia Woolf novel. In a dining room, the stuffed toy monkey that once served as the band’s mascot on tour sat on a shelf presiding over the table where Hall, Zack Levine, and I talked for four hours. The year has been still for them and it showed. Hall’s demeanor has calmed; he’s grown his hair out. Since late 2017, both the band and the alleged victim have focused on coming to a private resolution via a trusted mediator. Until that resolution was reached, Hall said, “there was really no way for us to offer any clarification” to their fans. It was the alleged victim’s request that Pinegrove take a year off from touring and that Hall enter therapy. “We wanted to honor that,” Hall said. “She recognized that we’ve honored it, and has since approved our plan to release an album and play some shows later on this year.” (Their mediator confirmed this.) The uncertain extent to which Hall was being accused of abuse has now loomed over Pinegrove for nearly a year. That uncertainty is due to the absence of the alleged victim’s voice as well as the fact that sexual coercion, the term Hall used in his statement, can take many forms. T he mediator elaborated on the alleged victim’s account: “She and Evan had a brief relationship, and she was in a relationship when it started. She felt that he coerced her into cheating on her partner with him, and she felt that she said no to him several times… and he continued to pursue her.” Hall maintained that their relationship progressed mutually but acknowledged the alleged victim’s “right to describe her experience however feels true to her.” He added, “I definitely could have conducted myself better.” Hall has spent the year reflecting, reading, taking walks. He started skateboarding at a nearby park. He said he has been listening to “Kacey Musgraves and drone music exclusively.” He is attending therapy weekly in Montclair and has generally tried to slow down. He said he has been thinking about how consent applies to all relationships, about how to “live more democratically” among peers . “This situation has demanded a full re-inventorying of myself,” Hall added. “I’ve tried to approach that with humility and with focus.” H e said the band never considered breaking up. Being off the road has been crucial since, as Hall put it, “Touring a lot prevents you from dealing with your emotional ecosystem because it’s so demanding and decentralizing.” Hall has been reading Canadian novelist Rachel Cusk, more Ferrante, and the intersectional feminist writer bell hooks’ 2000 classic All About Love —a book that has been especially helpful in the #MeToo era as we collectively search for answers in the wake of so much public trauma. hooks promotes living by a “love ethic” over a “power ethic,” and emphasizes the necessity of open and clear communication in achieving that. When I asked Hall what he has learned from it, he mentioned hooks’ definition of love as “actions that nurture the soul of another person or yourself,” the fact that “patriarchy promotes dishonesty,” that “love is incompatible with abuse.” I asked Hall about how his perspective has changed since the day he posted his statement to Facebook last November. “At first, I felt defensiv e. I was trying to understand what the accusation was. It really didn’t jive with my memory of what had happened,” h e said. “I take consent seriously. All of our encounters were verbally consensual. But, OK, certainly this isn’t from nowhere. If she came away feeling bad about our encounter, feeling like she couldn’t express how she was feeling honestly at the time, that’s a huge problem. So I have been reflecting a lot about how a relationship that promotes honesty is an active process, and that maybe there are conversations we should have had that we didn’t, or maybe there’s something else I could have done to make her feel like she could have said how she was feeling. I’ve been thinking about that all the time.” Of his chosen language in the statement, Hall said, “A lot of people took issue with the phrase ‘sexual coercion,’ because they understood it was evasive, like I was obscuring a more serious accusation. But I included that phrase because that was the language used by the person I was involved with. It was meant as a symbol of respect to have her dictate the language of the conversation. In the context of our relationship, she felt that I had sometimes pressured her into having sex—not physically, but verbally and contextually.” Hall characterized the statement as a direct response to what he calls the “elevated and inflammatory language” of Allen’s email, which he said “felt like a threat.” For Hall, the notion of an alleged second victim “contributed to me kind of spiraling out, like, ‘Holy shit, if there are multiple women who have complaints about me, maybe I’ve been completely delusional.’ I was really trying to address that possibility.” It put him in a headspace of “paranoia and fear.” “I was responding very specifically to one person,” Hall said, referring to Allen. “I wanted to appease them. I don’t know. I was not thinking clearly, and I said some things that I can’t totally stand behind.” Hall spent three days mulling over the statement, with one day and night of focused writing. He said he has “probably 100 drafts” of thoughts in his phone. Hall and Levine enlisted the guidance of trusted friends and people on their team, but the statement was ultimately their doing, or as Hall put it, “something we really need to own.” No one tried to stop them. “I mean, I remember my mom being like, ‘Are you sure you have to do this?’” Hall recalled. “And I was like, ‘No. I don’t know if I have to do this. But a lot of people are telling me that I do. And I think I do. I wanna do the right thing. I’m not sure what it is.’” Hall said he included the part of the statement about how he “could sense who from the crowd would be interested in sleeping with me based on how they watched me perform” because it was mentioned in Allen’s email, and he felt compelled to address everything brought up against him. According to Hall, that line was based on something he told the alleged victim once in private. “I was noticing people act towards me in a certain way, from the audience,” Hall said. “And then those same people would sometimes approach me at the merch table or in person after the set, and be very directly solicitous, or proposition me. This was an observation based on a correlation. I was not objectifying people from the stage.” I told Hall that, when I read the statement in November, it seemed to insinuate that he had sexualized fans in the crowd. He clarified, “I categorically do not target fans for sex. Nevertheless, I understand why reading what I wrote would make people reflect on their experiences at our concerts through an uncomfortable lens. And I’m so sorry to anybody who read that and felt uncomfortabl e. When I really think back about the statement, the language is just so dissonant and horrible. It’s not ever what I’ve meant to convey. W e have always prioritized the safety of fans at our concerts, and we always will prioritize the safety of fans at our concerts.” If he could do it all over again, Hall said, he would make the statement shorter. “I’ve gotten into all sorts of trouble throughout my life just not knowing when to stop, verbally,” he continued. “Being honest in situations when I’m not supposed to be.” He murmured, “Honest to a fault, I guess.” For a long time, after posting the message, Hall didn’t look at the internet. When he did, he was destroyed by “the emotional impact of seeing people calling me a rapist, which is not even what I’m being accused of, with such authority,” he said. “Or even seeing people call for my death on Twitter.” While reflecting on his attempts to not internalize it all, he began to cry. Even so, Pinegrove have not appreciated uncritical support, either. “If the band defended ourselves, it would have required us to basically be representing ‘the accused,’” Levine reasoned. “We’re not looking to defend that group of people.” “We don’t want listeners who are like, ‘We don’t care about this sort of thing,’” Hall added. “ We care about this sort of thing. I’m way more sympathetic to people who are like, ‘I don’t understand this situation, it seems fucked up, fuck this band,’ than people who are like, ‘I don’t understand this situation, fuck this situation, I love this band.’ We are thoroughly in favor of the dismantling of patriarchal structures, and the movement right now to elevate survivors and victims of abuse. And we are not interested in a listenership that doesn’t care about that.” As the only woman in Pinegrove, Nandi Rose Plunkett had a singular perspective on Hall’s situation. (A multi-instrumentalist, she left the group’s full-time lineup at the end of 2016 to pursue her own project, Half Waif, though she still performed on Skylight ; she is currently engaged to Pinegrove’s Zack Levine.) Plunkett made her support of her bandmate clear: “I do not think Evan is at all a threat to young women attending shows,” she wrote via email. Plunkett added that she has had “many productive conversations privately” about the allegations against Hall, but said it has felt “daunting” to speak in public. “Still, I’m hopeful that the space is beginning to open up for these challenging conversations,” she said. “ I want any young female fans and fellow musicians to know that I’m fighting for them. I’ve dealt with a lot of challenges as a multiracial woman and I’ve been thrust now into the middle of a situation that I never imagined I’d be a part of. But I’m learning a lot from it, having tough conversations and pushing myself and those around me to dismantle the structures of privilege that have built and bound us. In order to grow into a more loving and understanding community, we have to work towards healing through sensitive and open communication. And that’s what we’re trying to do.” Pinegrove plan to release Skylight on September 28, though they will be putting it out themselves. The band was not dropped from Run for Cover, according to label head Jeff Casazza. But according to Hall, there was “some discomfort expressed” from other artists on the label about Skylight ’s release, spurring the mutual decision. (Pinegrove plan to work with a different label in the future.) The band will donate all proceeds from Bandcamp sales of Skylight to three charities: the Voting Rights Project , the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention , and Musicares , which offers mental health resources to musicians among other services. The album’s cover features a pale blue square inside of a navy one. Hall said Skylight has not changed in any significant way since it was recorded in mid-2017, which gives it an eerie prescience. Its opening lines find Hall committing, “I draw a line in my life/Singing this is the new way I behave now.” And then there is the ecstatic “Intrepid,” which wonders about “what type of world we wanna live in” and what might happen “if we learned to love ourselves better.” Skylight ’s stark centerpiece, “Thanksgiving,” is perhaps most uncanny of all considering how closely the fallout overlapped with that holiday a year ago: “Warm night before Thanksgiving/What do I have to be nervous for?” On the album’s closer, the pedal-steel weeper “Light On,” Hall pleads, “I wanna do much better.” That same sentiment echoed throughout Hall’s Facebook statement, and I was so befuddled that the song was completely written before the public Pinegrove reckoning—as all of the lyrics on Skylight were—that Hall had to remind me, “The same person who wrote the statement wrote that song.” Pinegrove made its name on a song called “Old Friends.” The Cardinal opener is, in its three and a half minutes, a song about ambition, defeat, introversion, autonomy, happiness, humility, love (platonic, romantic, familial), and the complex familiarity of home. Its central lines, however, are purely a matter of life and death. They form what Hall calls “a summary of what we’re about… the logical conclusion.” I saw Leah on the bus a few months ago I saw some old friends at her funeral My steps keep splitting my grief Through these solipsistic moods I should call my parents when I think of them Should tell my friends when I love them It sets a mood: vulnerability, introspection, compassion, severity. “It’s about saying what you mean and having the confidence to say it,” Hall explained to me in July 2017, sitting on the floor of his Kinderhook bedroom. “There was someone who was an acquaintance—a friend of a friend, really—that died in a very sudden and tragic way. It was an accident. I had always sort of distantly had a crush on her, but I had never taken the time to really get to know her. We don’t have much time. So why do we withhold our true feelings? Why are we playing it cool?” “Old Friends” reminded Hall of his dim, dusty bedroom in Montclair, where he would spend long, lonely afternoons in his mid-20s, without direction or purpose, smoking weed and staring at the mess on his floor. “I was coming from a pretty dark place,” he said. “This moment shook me out of that. Eventually I imagined my way out. I was just writing a song that I needed.” In 2016, I needed it, too. I was already obsessed with Cardinal by that fall, when I learned that an old friend of mine had died. The friend and I had been on uncertain terms for many years, and I was devastated by the realization that we would never fully reconcile. I listened to “Old Friends” as a reminder to never let that happen again. It really was one of the only things that helped. I was mourning a deeply complicated relationship. It had ended, mostly, with an instance of sexual harm that nauseates me to mention; with me cutting him off, him getting help, and surfacing, years later, to apologize. I really felt he had changed. I half-heartedly accepted the apology, and carried on with my life. The relationship ultimately made me see and feel—with a gravity that has staked itself into my heart—the entanglements of mental illness, addiction, predation, and depression. We bring ourselves to music; it’s the only way. The song is there, but so are we, processing it in tandem with our personal inventories, the rolodexes of pain and trauma and fortitude and joy that make us the people we are. When clarity is in short supply, we still have the agency to think our way through. Our experiences dictate what we are comfortable with, what we can possibly forgive, and what we cannot accept.