#i just thought it would be cool to write about post ch2 from the view of an outsider

[sunshinereddie]

a month after her husband’s passing, patty uris sees something strange on the news.

it’s a story about a missing person, a man who has been missing for a month now- a man named edward kaspbrak. patty watches as the news anchor explains the story, about how edward one day got up and left his job in new york without notice, told his wife he would be gone for a few days, and has not been seen or heard from since. a video recording plays of mrs kaspbrak, advocating that this behaviour was completely out of character for her husband, how something was definitely wrong with, that she fears something has happened to him, that she just wants to find him. the date on that video is three weeks old. edward kaspbrak remains missing.

the news anchor goes on to explain how the search for the man has extended out of new york and into neighbouring states and even further in the attempts to find him, but patty isn’t really listening to the words being spoken. because she is far too busy looking at the picture of the man in the top right corner of the television, her heart pounding in her chest and her hands beginning to shake…

because she knows that man.

well, she doesn’t ‘know’ him- she’s never met him before in her life. but his face, she knows she’s seen it before. and the name, kaspbrak, she’s definitely heard it before, but not with the first name ‘edward’… no, she knew him as something else, a nickname…

patty drops whatever she’s doing and rushes into her bedroom, opening up her closet and pushing all of her clothes aside. her late husband had always been quite sentimental, and stanley had kept quite a few mementos from his youth all the way through adulthood- and he kept them all in these boxes at the back of their closet. patty pulled out the dusty boxes, and with trembling hands, she opened them for the first time without stanley.

in the boxes were various random objects, perhaps looking like junk to someone else, but patty knew that they were some of stanley’s most loved possessions. an old battered copy of a birdwatching book, the first one stanley had ever received as a child. the baseball from the game where stanley had gotten the winning point for his team (stanley had stopped playing long before he had met patty, but he had never stopped being sentimental about that game). patty shuffled various yearbooks, trading cards, and journals that littered the box, until she came across what it was she was looking for: a photo album.

she placed the book on her lap, reading the title that stanley had written in his neat printing: ‘SUMMER 1989’. she hesitantly flipped open the book, and began looking through the pages. each one was filled with photographs, of her husband at twelve years old along with the group of friends she had always heard so much about. not so much as of recently (in the years before his death, it seemed as though stan’s memory of his past was starting to grow worse and worse), but when they had first started dating, oh how her husband- then boyfriend- had told her stories. stories about his friends, “the losers club” they had called themselves. how they were the best friends stan had ever had, how they were a little less like friends and a little more like family. stanley spoke of them less and less as the years went on, but patty never forgot- she could never forget about the people who had made her husband so happy and so loved, despite never having met them herself.

but she wasn’t looking through the photo album just for the memories- she was looking for something. someone. and it was close to the end of the book (well, it wasn’t quite the “end” of the book, it was only about halfway through, but that was where the pictures mysteriously stopped, and made patty wonder what had happened the rest of that summer) that she finally found it: the picture that made her blood run cold.

it was a photograph of her husband during that summer of ‘89. he wore a small smile on his face as he stared into the camera, but it wasn’t him that patty was focused on. instead, she was looking at the other person in the picture- the boy who had his arm thrown around stanley’s shoulder, and a wide, toothy grin on his face. his face was thirty years younger and ever so distorted from the poor quality of the old picture, but there was no mistaking it.

it was the face of the man patty saw on the news.

she picked off the piece of tape holding the photograph against the page, and slowly turned the picture over, where she was once again met with stan’s neat printing on the back of the picture- and this time, it felt like her heart stopped.

July 27th, 1989- Stanley Uris & Eddie Kaspbrak.

there it was. eddie kaspbrak- the man patty saw on the news. the man who was missing. as she read the name over and over again, then flipped the picture over and stared at the young boy’s face, it felt like the world around her was slowly starting to fall around her.

she always thought that there was something not quite right about stanley’s death. how sudden, how unexpected it had been. but now… things were starting to become far too strange for her. first, stanley’s death. then, just the very next day she had received a frantic phone call from a woman claiming to be his old friend, asking about him. and now, one of stanley’s best friends from childhood, the ‘eddie’ that patty used to hear so much about, was missing? and from the sounds of it, had gone missing right around the same time stanley had passed a month earlier.

patty’s hands dropped to her lap, the photo album falling to the floor in front of her. as she stared down at the photograph, those two young smiling faces staring back at her, she had only one thought going through her mind.

what had really happened to her husband?

#so this was the post i was talking about yesterday heheheheh #i just thought it would be cool to write about post ch2 from the view of an outsider #from the view of someone who doesn’t know everything that’s gone on #but ya i really like this idea i hope you guys do to!!! #i may even write a second part to this but who knows heheh #patty blum #patty uris #stanley uris #stanpat #the losers club #it #it hc #it 2017 #it 2019 #it stephen king

[finn-nelson-for-the-win]

The Good Life: Chapter 4

Hello, my lovelies! I’ve been working hard this week to get caught back up on my writing and to get ahead a little bit so I can post new chapters on a regular basis going forward, so I’m beyond proud that I was able to finish this chapter and post it earlier than I had initially expected to!

Need to get caught up? The Good Life: Ch1, Ch2, Ch3

If you want to be added (or removed) from the tags list for this story, just feel free to let me know!

@pink-royaute @believethaticanandiwill @milllott @likeashootingstarfades @i-dream-of-emus

The Good Life: Chapter 4

The sun was already beginning to set as Rae and Finn arrived at the last apartment for rent that they had included on the list they made while having dinner the previous evening.

“Feel free to walk around the apartment and let me know if either of you have any questions!” called the landlord for this apartment from where he stood near the entryway.

Rae and Finn went in different directions to look around the vacant apartment and trying to make mental notes about what they thought.

“Hey, Rae! Come look at this!” Finn called from one side of the apartment while Rae had been looking at the bedrooms.

Rae walked into the other room and noticed Finn standing in front of a sliding glass door that led to the balcony of the apartment.

“Holy shit,” Rae muttered as she slid open the door and stepped out onto the spacious balcony.

“Does this fulfill your request for some type of balcony-like space?”

“This balcony is huge! And look at the view from here!” Rae replied as she walked closer to the stone wall of the balcony that overlooked the city.

“I think overall this may be one of the best apartments that we were able to tour today,” Finn mused as he looked out at the city beside Rae.

“I think so too,” Rae agreed, “I was getting a bit worried after the first three places were nothing like how they were described online, but this one and the last one have both been great.”

Rae and Finn went back inside the apartment and continued their inspections of the apartment.

“Did either of you have any questions for me?” the landlord asked when Finn and Rae had rejoined him near the entryway.

“I do have a question, actually,” Rae said, “Online it said that there were classic layouts available but you mentioned that this is an updated model. Does that mean that the price for this apartment will be different as well?”

“We are in the process of remodeling all of our apartments, actually, so the price listed online is the correct amount for all of our open layouts, since none of the classic layouts are going to be rented out anymore.”

“Oh! Okay, perfect.”

“I have a question as well,” Finn replied, “When is the earliest that this apartment would be available for move-in?”

“It’s available now, so once all the paperwork and official business gets sorted out, you would be able to move in if you would like to. If you’re not ready to move in yet, you could still secure your position by filling out the paperwork sooner rather than later and letting us know when you intend to move in.”

“Thank you!” Finn replied as he considered what the landlord had told them.

“Were there any other questions that the two of you would like me to answer for you? You’re more than welcome to continue looking around the apartment or touring the community if you’d like. I’ll still be available to answer any questions either of you may have.”

“I think that’s all the questions we had for you today,” Rae replied after looking over at Finn to ensure that he did not have any pressing questions, “Thank you for letting us take a look at the apartment. All the information you provided was very helpful.”

“I’m glad I could help the two of you out. If you have any other questions or would like to move forward with the paperwork if you’re interested in living here, please do not hesitate to call or email us,” the landlord added as he handed Rae a business card with the contact information printed on it.

Rae and Finn followed the landlord out of the apartment but continued wandering around the rest of the apartment community after thanking the landlord once again for his help.

“So, what’s your opinion of this apartment?”

“I liked it,”

“Did you ‘like’ it enough to picture us living here?”

“I’ve pictured living with you in the last three apartments we visited,” Finn said before stammering and clearing his throat, “I mean...I could picture us being roommates in the last few apartments we saw, but overall I think you liked this one the best. I guess the real question is, can you picture living in this apartment?”

“Yeah, I think I could see you and I living together here,” Rae replied with a small chuckle at the blush that crept back into Finn’s cheeks as her words sunk in.

“Uh, cool. That’s, uh, really good. I guess we can give the landlord a call tomorrow and arrange a time to sign all the paperwork and get that whole process started, right?”

“Yeah, that sounds good to me!”

Finn and Rae walked to where his car was parked and Finn began driving Rae back to her apartment.

“I’d say today was a fairly productive day! It took most of the day, but I’m really glad that we were able to find an apartment that I think will work out well for both of us.”

“I’ve gotta admit, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed at first, but now I’m just excited and ready to get this process moving along and actually move into the apartment.”

“That’s completely understandable.”

“So, do you have any fun plans for the rest of your weekend?”

“Well, it appears that I’m gonna be moving sooner rather than later, so I should probably finish packing up my current apartment so I’ll be ready to move once all the paperwork goes through for the apartment.”

“Oh,”

“Why? Do you have plans?”

“I was just gonna say that I’m going to need to get some new furniture because my da wants to turn my current room into a guest bedroom, so I was going to ask if you wanted to join me for some furniture shopping, but I’m sure you’ll be pretty busy all day with packing, so never mind,”

“I’d love to come furniture shopping with you, Finn! We could also look around for some furniture and decorations for the common areas of the apartment.”

“Oh, okay, perfect,” Finn replied with a smile as he pulled into a parking space in front of Rae’s apartment building, “I’ll text you tomorrow to find a time that would work for you to go look at furniture, alright?”

“Yeah, that’s fine with me. Have a nice night, Finn, and I’ll see you tomorrow!” Rae replied as she climbed out of Finn’s car.

“See you tomorrow, Rae!” Finn replied as he waited for Rae to unlock the door of her apartment before driving away.

A/N: I initially wanted to make the previous chapter the last one before they *officially* become roommates and this chapter was combined with the previous one, but I didn’t like how it flowed so I broke them into two chapters, which I like a lot more. I had a lot of unexpected time to write this week, so I’ve gotten a decent start on the chapters to come and I really like them and think they are a lot of fun, so hopefully you all agree with me and enjoy where this story is going? Maybe...perhaps?

What are your thoughts about Rae and Finn living together? Will it work out well? Will it ruin their friendship? Will it lead to more than just friendship between these two?

Truth be told, idk exactly where I want this story to go in the grand scheme of things quite yet, but with each chapter I’m planning and reading the responses from readers and trying to determine what I want to do/what y’all expect I’m gonna do and try to make things feel fun and new...fingers crossed that I don’t fuck it up! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Until next time: Stay awesome, my friends! :)

#mmfd #my mad fat diary #mmfd fanfic #my mad fat diary fanfiction #The Good Life #the good life: ch4 #My writing #finn-nelson-for-the-win #OMG LOOK AT ME! I'M ACTUALLY POSTING WHEN I SAY I'M GONNA POST!! #I'm a changed woman! #I'm trying to be good and I even have the next two chapters written and ready for editing and then posting #so HOPEFULLY ya girl won't fall behind on posting this time around

[birdsgoflying]

Letting Go Ch.3 Behind-the-Scenes

Here is my behind-the-scenes analysis of chapter three of my fic, Letting Go!

Link to chapter three: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11512686/chapters/26083806

Links to previous behind-the-scenes posts:

Chapter 1: https://birdsgoflying.tumblr.com/post/165566140213/letting-go-ch-1-behind-the-scenes

Chapter 2: https://birdsgoflying.tumblr.com/post/165600823428/letting-go-ch2-behind-the-scenes

CHAPTER THREE:

Wally had never really believed in the afterlife. He thought he would die, and poof, fade to black. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. It’s over. Your consciousness just dissolves away and that’s that. No more Wallace Rudolph West.

But, here he is. Wallace Rudolph West, still existing. … He is literally stuck in this weird swirly orange-ness, and he’s pretty sure he’s still literally dead, but he’s still conscious.

He isn’t entirely sure what he’s supposed to do with that.

He doesn’t know where his body is, and he doesn’t know if that means his consciousness had been separated from it at some point during the dying process, or what. He briefly runs through the implications of a separation between body and mind (So I’m dead but conscious, and that would make me a zombie – way cool – except that I don’t have a body. So does that mean I’m a ghost? Can I haunt people? Cuz I can think of a few amazing pranks to use on Hal…) before giving up. He’s tired. He feels like he has been running for years.

All of Wally’s parts are such incredibly fucking fun for me to write. I wanted to showcase their personalities by changing the “voice” that I used when writing their respective parts, so I wrote Dick’s and Wally’s parts slightly differently. Dick and Wally both use humor to cope, but Wally is more flippant - even when referencing his own death, he cracks jokes about it. Dick is definitely the pun lord and eternal jokester in canon, but I figured that he would be a little more closed off given the circumstances.

  Dick purposely chose Metropolis as his new dwelling place – the last place he would ever otherwise choose to go – and traveled there by a series of cabs and trains rather than an easily-traceable Zeta tube.

 I legitimately don’t know why I chose Metropolis. I wish I could say that it was a purposeful choice because Metropolis is canonically near Gotham City on the map, or that it is meaningful because it’s where his idol (Superman) lives and he was subconsciously drawn to it, but I honestly don’t have a good answer for why I chose it. I just did.

  When he woke up the next morning, Daniel was nowhere to be found, but he noticed a neat pile of hundred dollar bills on his bedside table.

 This chapter contains the transition from ‘drunk runaway Dick Grayson’ to ‘actual prostitute Dick Grayson’. I have to be honest, I knew that it’s where I wanted this story to go, but I struggled in figuring out how to get from point A to point B. I always try to frame the characters’ decisions in a way that makes sense given their situation and personalities, and it took me a while to figure this one out. Dick wouldn’t just throw himself into being a prostitute without preamble, no matter how drunk he was. That’s why I made the decision to have him mistake a request for sex for pay, as a date; it just kinda… happened to him, and he went with it because he was drunk and bored and it ended up picking up steam until, before he knew it, he was a full-time prostitute.

  If his first mistake was leaving the team, his second mistake was staying with Artemis for as long as he had.

 I knew I had to have Wally moving on from Artemis fairly early in the fic, or it would not have been believable for him to fall in love with Dick – which, as Birdflash is endgame, is obviously the goal.

  When Wally really focuses his thoughts and searches the orange swirling orb around him, he can see flashes of his friends and family’s lives as they carry on without him.

 I wanted to show Wally struggling with not being able to help his friends and family move on after his death. I based his reactions largely on the lyrics from the Coldplay song ‘The Hardest Part’ – “The hardest part/ Was letting go, not taking part”. Those lyrics are so beautiful, and it’s a perfect way to describe how he feels. He’s not the type of guy to sit still when someone else is hurting, and he’s forced to do just that as he watches his friends and family mourn over him. It’s torture for him, honestly.

  And some time later, when he peers through the orange swirl and sees Artemis kissing Kaldur, he can honestly say he’s relieved.

 I knew from the very beginning that this is the direction I wanted to go with Kaldur and Artemis. They have a lot in common now, since Kaldur lost Tula and Artemis lost Wally. They have complementary personalities - Artemis is brash and upfront and unrefined, and Kaldur is polished and reserved and soft-spoken. I think they would be quite fantastic together; they’d balance each other out and cover each other’s weaknesses.

Now, here’s the thing. Birdflash is obviously endgame, but part of writing a good fic is arranging the plot in such a way that it makes the character’s actions believable and in-character.

Artemis moving on is very believable. She is not the type of person to get stuck after experiencing loss. She has a sensitive side, but she’s also tough as nails after all of the shitty stuff she’s had to deal with in her life. She picks herself up and moves on. She even said at the end of season two that she took up a new identity as Tigress because Artemis was Kid Flash’s partner and she wanted to distance herself.

HOWEVER - Wally moving on easily would not be quite as believable. Even though their relationship was clearly a mess towards the end - speaking strictly from the source material, there were several moments in season two where I felt as if Wally and Artemis had a strained conversation that pointed towards problems – Wally is a loyal guy, and he has five years (!!!!) invested with Artemis. I don’t think he would have moved on easily, and when he finally did, he would have felt a deep sense of guilt over it. If Artemis is romantically available when Wally comes back, even if Wally admits to himself that he is in love with Dick and not with Artemis, it would have create a lot of tension within the Dick-Artemis-Wally dynamic because Wally would know that everyone would expect him to get back together with Artemis. Wally would expect Artemis to want it, too. And not only that, but Artemis would be expected by everyone else to want it. It would cause a hugely awkward situation that, frankly, I didn’t want to deal with later on. It would cause a lot of drama, and I didn’t want THAT kind of drama in my fic. I want the potential reunion to be happy, not strained.

And it sounds terrible, but hear me out – in order to achieve all of this, I needed Artemis out of the way. I wanted her unavailable when Wally comes back, because otherwise, Dick would not feel okay about pursuing Wally and it would be unrealistic to expect Wally to move on from her if she was still available; he would go back to her out of guilt or habit or caving to what everyone else expected of him, if nothing else. And honestly? In order for my desired outcome (Birdflash) to happen, Artemis can’t be a viable romantic partner for Wally anymore. Artemis has to get with someone else in a permanent kind of way (more on that in a later chapter). Kaldur was the obvious choice, because I honestly SHIP IT SO HARD YOU GUYS they would be so damn cute together, such a power couple, and they would have the cutest babies that have ever graced this planet.

…So, yeah. I had to have the moving-on process happen early. One of the most important parts of writing this love story is that I wanted Wally to move on from Artemis completely independently of falling in love with Dick.

 If we’re talking about a character being emotionally/romantically available, I wanted both Dick and Wally to be available by the time the reunion happens. I didn’t want Wally to ever feel as if he had to choose between the two of them. No fucking love triangles, thank-you very much. This isn’t that type of angst fic.

My honest opinion on love triangles is this: it’s overused. It’s boring. There is virtually no way to make it feel creative and original to the audience. It’s cheap angst purely for the sake of creating emotional pull. It’s lazy. There are so many better ways to create emotional pull. It’s a trope, and not even a good one. Whenever I see a love triangle in a story, it just feels so fabricated and pointless. I’ve literally never seen it happen in a way that felt refreshing and original. From the point of view of creating a rich and meaningful story with mature themes and believable character development arcs, it just doesn’t make sense to me. It just feels like the equivalent of junior high cafeteria drama.

But at the same time, I have to be true to what the characters would be feeling at the time; I can’t just make Wally magically get over spending five years with her, and have him fall in love with Dick the next day. I have to allow him time to let go of his previous relationship, but I didn’t want him to do that because of Dick. I wanted him to do it because he realizes that he shouldn’t have been in the relationship for as long as he was in the first place. So, to avoid that cheap drama pitfall, I decided to show the moving on process early in the fic.

(Sorry if any of you actually like the love triangle trope. I have a deep love for many tropes that most people would consider lame – fake relationship or accidental marriage, anyone? – so I really have no place to judge. I just really hate that trope.)

#letting go fic #birdflash fic #birdflash #young justice fic #young justice #birdsgoflying #kateshines