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perfeggso · 3 years

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I don’t want a lot (Johnny x Reader)

I wrote this as part of @suh-insane’s walking in a winter wonderland collab, so thanks to her for hosting! Happy holidays and I hope y’all enjoy ❄️☺️

Genre: domestic fluff

Characters: Johnny, fem! reader, Ten

Warnings: nothing really just mentions of bad things that have happened this year lol. It’s a very...2020 fic. Also I guess some language. Also, smoking pot.

Rating: teen and up

Length: 3.5k

My movie quote is “They can’t evict you on Christmas! Then you’d be ho-ho-homeless!”

December 18th 2020, 4:37 p.m.

“Knock, knock!” You pound your fist against the wooden door in front of you, then pull your coat tighter around you. You’d moved to Chicago five years ago for college, and you’re still not sure if you’ll ever adjust to the snowy winter months. It was at said college that you met,

“Johnny Suh!” You bang a fist on the door three more times. “I know you’re in there. Take your headphones off, you dumbass.”

You’re about to pull your phone out of your pocket and go to the trouble of removing a glove to text your boyfriend when you hear the door unlock from the inside, a metallic tumbling sound.

When the door opens all the way, Johnny is standing just past the threshold of his apartment, his catlike lips curled up at the edges. He’s wearing grey sweatpants and a blue flannel, and his freshly dyed blond hair falls to where his headphones rest around the base of his neck. You can hear Nirvana coming from them because you are dating a stereotype.

Johnny leans his large frame against the side of the door where he had been holding it and smirks, but there’s nothing but softness behind the expression.

“Long time no see, sicko,” he teases.

You roll your eyes as he moves to let you pass into the entryway of his and Ten’s shoebox dwelling.

“You look even more like a deadbeat than you did a month ago,” you say, not moving because your clothing is starting to drip melting snow onto the floor and you don’t even know where to begin with taking it off. “This is proof you need me around taking care of you.”

Johnny pushes off the door and closes it, pausing his music. He crowds close and starts unwrapping your scarf so you don’t have to think about it anymore, shakes some of the slush off it so it pools at your feet, and hangs it on the coat rack. He does the same with your puffer jacket.

“Aw,” he pouts, “you don’t like the new color?” He tries to remove your beanie too, but it was part of your Outfit, so you yank it back down onto your head and give Johnny puppy dog eyes, choosing to ignore the way your heart rate picks up a little from the proximity. Hey, isolation was rough, okay? Johnny tucks your hair behind your ears instead.

“No, baby,” you say, starting to toe off your snow boots. “I love it. It’s very Disney prince, but simultaneously very… Kurt Cobain.” Johnny smiles and lets you finish stripping your winter gear, walking his way back towards his sofa until he’s sitting, legs wide. Snow falls in flurries past the window behind him. “It’s just that, I dunno, you look like you’ve been spending more time on Reddit or something.” Johnny sulks jokingly at your ribbing as you hang up your purse and try not to fixate on how cold the indoor air still is. “I can tell you haven’t gotten laid in a while,” you continue. “Oh wait! I forgot you have Ten around for that.”

Now it’s Johnny who’s rolling his eyes, but he doesn’t seem too offended because he beckons you over to sit with him. You follow his gesture, skipping towards him until you can curl into his side on the couch. He removes his headphones and lays his head against the crown of yours, taking your hand softly.

“It’s not my fault my girlfriend abandoned me for a month,” he complains, rubbing his thumb over yours.

This makes you chuckle. Oh, how you’ve missed him. “If that’s what you call ‘considerately protecting you from the Novel Coronavirus’,” you joke, “then I guess, but I refuse to apologize for doing my civic duty.”

Your case hadn’t been bad, but it was a logistical nightmare. You’d spent two weeks in total isolation, nursing a cough, guzzling hard alcohol straight to see if you could taste it, sending your best friend out to shop for you, and thanking your lucky stars for having a job that would let you work from home. You’d spent the next two waiting to test negative for the virus and a positive for antibodies. Johnny was initially distraught when you told him, sending you cloying messages and calling everyday to see if your symptoms were getting better or worse. Once you’d convinced him you weren’t dying though, he went back to his usual obnoxious self, joking about planning your funeral and accusing you of faking it to avoid him.

Johnny pulls you tighter into his side. “Whatever,” he concedes. “Is it safe to kiss you yet?”

You look up at him and shrug. “Nothing’s 100% but…”

That’s all the reassurance he needs to pull you into his lap and connect your lips. It's soft and languid, and you hold each other through it. His arms are so solid around your waist it simultaneously makes your heart flutter and makes you feel like you could relax and take a nap right here and now. When you pull away, Johnny runs his hands along your figure, as if to reassure himself you’re really there. The smile he gives you glows, but only for a moment. You curl yourself into the crook of his neck and place the back of your hand on his cheek, tender. His skin there scratches yours just the tiniest bit.

“I missed you,” he says, chuckling.

“Mm-hm, I missed you too,” you reply. “How are you, anyway? You said you had something to tell me?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. He maneuvers you off his lap to sit by his side, and from this angle you can truly tell that he’s going sheepish. Suddenly it feels like there’s an alien hand in your stomach. What could this possibly be about? Johnny’s nervous silence gets your brain spinning – a zoetrope of stupidity. Am I being broken up with? No – obviously not. Does he have a family member dying of COVID? I fucking hope not; that’d be complicated on multiple levels. Maybe it’s good? Maybe he finally got a job offer but he has to move away or something.

Johnny starts talking before your mind can come up with any other ridiculous hypotheses.

“We’re getting evicted.”

You furrow your brow. Had you misheard him? You shake your head, incredulous. Johnny and Ten had always maintained a good relationship with their landlord. It didn’t make sense for everything to turn on a dime, even if they were struggling financially.

“You’re kidding,” is all you manage to say.

Johnny just purses his lips and raises his eyebrows as if to say, “it is what it is.”

What he really says is that he wishes he was kidding, but he’s not.

“Oh my god,” you respond, crossing your arms in irritation at, well, at everything lately. “Fuck! When is this happening?”

Johnny sighs. “Technically in a week.”

You feel the cogs of your post-COVID brain start to crank against each other. A week from today would be…hold on,

“Wait,” you say, as the situation starts to appear more and more ridiculous. “Like exactly a week from today? Like on Christmas? You’re being evicted on literal Christmas?” You’re trying really hard not to raise your voice, even if it’s clear that if you did, it would be out of indignation on Johnny’s behalf. You’re obviously not upset with him.

Johnny’s eyes roll around in their sockets as if this is the first time he’s contemplated the exact timing.

“Well, yeah, I guess a week from today is Christmas…”

The absurdity of this all is getting to you, and you can’t help it, you start to laugh. It’s that kind of nihilistic, fuck-all laughter that’s been one of the few things getting you through this year.

“They can’t evict you on Christmas!” you quote. “Then you’d be ho-ho-homeless!”

Johnny looks at you blankly for a second, so you contort your face into that open expression universally recognized as the “get it?” face.

“From Go?” You hint. “C’mon, Johnny boy.”

And before his nickname can fully escape your mouth, your boyfriend is cutting you off with a long sound of recognition and doubling over his lap in giggles.

“Good one,” he says into his right knee, and you giggle along with him. “Wholly inappropriate, but clever nonetheless.”

“Why, thank you,” you say, enjoying the levity, but unable to uproot the feeling of dread in your gut at Johnny’s conundrum.

Go is one of you and Johnny’s favorite movies to watch around Christmastime, mostly because it’s only tangentially related to Christmas, it’s kitschy and ridiculous, and has a plot that is 90% crime. You’re surprised he didn’t catch the reference more quickly, but to his credit, he has more pressing worries taking up mental space.

“Where is Ten, anyway?” you ask, looking around performatively at the messy and claustrophobic room. A silver plastic Christmas tree twinkles on a table in the corner. “Have you two talked about a plan yet?”

“He’s grocery shopping,” Johnny explains. “He’ll be home soon. And yeah, we have an idea.”

“You do? Because you could always move in with me.”

Johnny scrunches his face up. “I would love to live with you.” Your heart rattles a little in excitement, even though you know there will be a ‘but.’ Johnny goes on, “but you know both of us wouldn’t fit in your apartment. Where would Ten sleep? Or put his stuff? We’d all be on top of each other.”

You nod, defeated because you know he’s right.

“Hey,” Johnny says, “but we can always have the ‘moving in’ conversation again, okay?”

“Okay,” you say, grabbing his hand. “Sounds good.”

It suddenly feels very dark in the apartment (it’s still chilly enough you think you might be able to see your breath, but you aren’t about to complain because you know there’s a very good reason for that), so Johnny pushes himself up off the couch to turn on a couple of lamps.

“So,” he says, facing you from across the room, “we’re gonna be evicted on Christmas, no matter what the cinematographic masterpiece that is Go tells us is right or wrong. Christmas is just as much of a capitalist construction as our rent, after all.”

You’re about to pipe up again about how fucked that is and how surely they can come to some sort of agreement with the landlord, but Johnny anticipates this and keeps talking.

“We tried to argue, babe, but as I know you know, we don’t exactly have much of a leg to stand on.”

Johnny is right. Again. How many months behind were they on rent at this point? They’d gotten a few months delayed back in spring, but they still owed everything that built up from that before the end of the year, and they’d blown through their stimulus check a long time ago. Johnny has tried to find work, but the theater business hasn’t exactly been booming. Ten, for his part, is able to make a bit of money doing freelance illustration and teaching dance classes over Zoom from his room, but his studio’s engagement has dropped since March and he still unfortunately gets paid per student. You can’t help wanting to punch a wall in frustration at how unfair this all is, but it’s not like any of it comes as a shock. You’re not naïve. You and Johnny met at a leftist theory club for Christ’s sake.

“We’re helping organize a rent strike,” Johnny says, calming you down. Finally, a glimmer of hope. “We’re not the only ones in the building going through it right now, and we know a lot of the tenants who aren’t being evicted well enough we can convince them to join.”

Right then, the front door flies open and thwacks a startled Johnny in the back.

“I’m home!” Ten calls from behind a sack of groceries. You can’t even see his face yet. “I’m terribly sorry,” he directs at Johnny, then heaves the bag of food onto the kitchen counter which is also sort of in the middle of the living room.

“Ooh,” he coos when he sees you, still sat on the couch. “The missus is back!” He strips himself of his winter coat, ignoring your scoffing and revealing an oversized red and white striped sweater. He shimmies against the cool air and lets out a sort of squeal. “I was not built for this actual winter shit.”

“Hi, Ten,” you say once he finishes his theatrics. “Missed you.”

Ten shoots a sappy pout your way. “I miss you too. I’m so glad you’re feeling better! You have no idea how morose Johnny got without you constantly around. Can I give you a hug?”

You nod and try to warm up Ten’s tiny frame with yours while Johnny mutters something about Ten not knowing what “morose” means. When you break away, Johnny is rifling through the week’s haul to put things away.

“I see you didn’t go off-brand for the ramen,” Johnny remarks, stacking several Shin bowls in the cupboard. He turns to Ten with a raised brow. “Big spender.”

“They didn’t have anything else but if you would answer your damn phone I could have called and asked you about it.”

“I answer my phone,” Johnny grumbles, stowing some orange juice away in the fridge.

“Besides,” Ten continues, ignoring his roommate, “since I’m the only one making any money in this household I figured I’d give myself some discretion for spending it.”

Johnny grimaces, and you figure this is where you should probably step in.

“We were just talking about the rent strike, Ten. Johnny was filling me in.”

Ten turns his attention back to you, letting Johnny house the food items in peace.

“We’ll see how it goes,” says Ten, looking out the window just past your shoulder, “but I’m letting myself hope a little bit. As far as I’m concerned, they’ll be kicking my corpse out of here before they put me on the streets.”

Johnny scoffs. “Always so dramatic.”

“Says the former theater major.”

“Touché.”

You’d missed the ‘old married couple’ dynamic your boyfriend has with his roommate.

“But really, just, please try not to get the cops involved,” you plead. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” says Johnny as he closes the last cabinet and crinkles the brown paper bag up for storage.

Ten shrugs. “No promises.”

You sigh.

Once everything is good and settled a few moments later, Ten decides the apartment needs a more festive atmosphere, so that’s how you end up getting dragged down the short hallway to Johnny’s room while Ten belts Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” from the living room and accuses Johnny of being a scrooge. Even still, Johnny sways playfully from side to side as he walks backwards, shimmying his shoulders and mouthing the words with a smile between protestations that this is “not how I envisioned finally spending time again with my girlfriend!” The way he buries his hands into the sleeves of his flannel to make sweater paws makes your heart so full you want to curl up and die. But, moving on.

Once in his bedroom, Johnny flicks on a warm-hued lamp and watches fondly as you collapse on the bed.

“I really did miss you guys,” you say for what feels like the hundredth time in an hour.

Johnny’s lips press into a little smile. “Yeah. We missed you. A lot. Especially me – you have no idea.”

You laugh sardonically. “Based on your text messages, I think I actually do have an idea.”

Johnny flops down on top of you, crushing you a bit.

“Oh really?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. His golden hair is falling in your face and it tickles, but Johnny halts any laughter with a kiss, then dots tiny kisses all over your cheeks and nose. They tickle too.

“You wanna smoke?”

“Sure.”

Johnny has a pre-rolled joint on his bedside table, and you watch him light it, feeling like you’re in a snow globe with the fall of snowflakes outside. The sky is that weird greyish off-yellow that only comes with a snowy night.

After a couple of hits, Johnny lies back down next to you and hands you the joint. The smoke brings you that usual tight feeling, like your lungs are shrinking but at the same time swimming in radiant heat. You don’t know if you should technically be doing this right after COVID, but you’re young and your body is resilient; you figure you’ll be fine. Besides, you can already feel the pleasant lightness setting in around your mind. It’s a placebo at this point, no doubt, but the relaxed anticipation is nice. You take note of the fact that Johnny had started playing music while you were thinking about lungs. The Strokes’ “Under Control” is doing battle with Ten’s Christmas tunes still seeping in through the cracks in the door.

You hand Johnny his joint back and roll onto your side, supporting your head with one hand and curling the other into Johnny’s abundant hair.

“I just want to say one more time,” you begin, “if worse comes to worst, you can always move in with me.”

Johnny takes another hit and holds it for a second, leaving you in anticipation.

“I know,” he says simply. “But I really think this’ll work. I have to, right? Besides, if Ten had to hear us fucking multiple times a week we would all start to regret living together. That, I can promise.”

You laugh, burying your increasingly silly-feeling head into Johnny’s chest. “Okay, fair.”

There’s stillness for a few beats where you just count your and Johnny’s breaths, trying to synch them up. This doesn’t work though, since Johnny’s lungs are bigger. Then,

“There’s no way your parents would lend you some money?” Your voice comes out quiet. “Or let you stay with them for a while?”

Johnny looks down at you, letting out a heavy sigh. “No, no. That wouldn’t be a good idea for…so many reasons. Besides, they don’t exactly have an extra few months worth of Chicago rent lying around either.”

You nod against Johnny’s chest. “I figured,” you say. “Just checking.”

Johnny brushes his fingers through your hair and kisses your part. “I appreciate your concern,” he says, offering a slightly sly smile.

You kiss the white fabric of his undershirt. It’s been so long since the two of you just laid together, and it feels better than you could have hoped, Johnny’s body heat helping to alleviate some of the cold of an apartment gradually losing its utilities. You wish you could get closer than chest to chest. You kind of wish you could burrow into him, but not in a weird way, you know?

“I believe in you guys,” you say. “However I can help, I will.”

“Thanks.”

Apparently, Johnny is done with talking, because he pulls you in for a warm kiss. Then, he gets the brilliant idea to shotgun the pot smoke. This activity quickly devolves into a very giggly makeout session, only to be interrupted by Ten’s voice outside the door.

“I’m opening the door in five seconds, you guys,” he says, “and if Johnny’s dick is out when I get in there, I’m evicting both of you myself!”

You and Johnny fall together laughing as Ten cautiously cracks the door. He swats at the air in disapproval.

“Stinks…” he remarks. “Oh, thank god you’re decent. Anyway, John, if the lady is staying for the evening, you both need to come help cook dinner, because I am not your housemaid, even if I do look good in a maid costume. Chop-chop.”

It takes way too long to get up out of bed because Ten, as usual, has made both you and Johnny absolutely lose it. Eventually, you manage to rise, but Johnny pulls you quickly back against his lap.

“Hey!”

“Just a minute.” He presses one last kiss under your left ear. “I love you.”

You can feel your skin tingle, although it might just be the weed. Either way, you’ll never tire of hearing that. “I love you too, Johnny.”

“I think Mariah was right,” Johnny whispers, voice displaying mock awe as if he were coming to a mind blowing realization. “All I want for Christmas is you.”

You give him a sympathy chuckle because that was kind of cute, in a corny way, and Johnny just swats your ass a little in response to get you back up to standing.

“Well, you and some basic shelter would be ideal,” Johnny deadpans. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask but I guess we’ll see.” You smile sympathetically. This strike is no doubt going to make for a stressful week, but you’re glad it’s starting like this.

“Hey, love birds!” Ten hollers from the kitchen.

“C’mon,” you say with a laugh. “Let’s not leave him waiting any longer.”

#my fanfic #my work #nct #nct 127 #nct fanfic #nct johnny #johnny suh fanfic #johnny suh fluff #johnny suh #christmas fic #neothestars #johnny x reader #nct ten #chittaphon leechaiyapornkul

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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I really don’t want to start a discourse™, but I want you to know that I really appreciate how you write joe and Nicky in deo volente. So many of the fics I’ve read have placed yusef in the role of more sexually experienced and less devoted to god, while Nicky is depicted as an inexperienced and virginal priest/knight/monk and so forth and so on. Your narrative of joe out there rescuing people and being faithful, while Nicky looks back on his life of gambling and pleasures of the flesh ...(1/?)

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with either, obviously. I love guilty priest Nicky and repressed Nicky and p much every Nicky. But in the vast array of fics out there, it’s rare to see the opposite. Not that you’re working in a binary morally good/religious vs. not way. Your writing in the fic is really subtle and and your characterizations reveal a lot of depth. I just think it’s cool to see Nicky, average second son of a duke, drinking and gambling and feeling terribly guilty (2/?)

Guilty about the crusades and the fucking horror of crusade 1 without being excessively devout. Just an average dude. Not some paragon of virtue (btw, I’m on chapter 2 of the fic, so I don’t know how much your characterization changes moving forward. You have a lovely ability to combine your incredible knowledge of history, your beautiful writing, and these intimate details of the characters that make them fit— fit the canon and fit the history. (3/? Shit I’m sorry this had gotten way too long)

I enjoy the way you’ve really inserted us into the quotidian aspect of history. Aaaaaanyway— the discourse that I was afraid of: I think that a lot of fans of the movie that are generating fan content (tysfm to all of you beauties, btw 🙏🙏♥️) are westerners (which is a whole nother kettle of fish) and that carries a sort of ignorance about the Muslim world in the Middle Ages and this desire to simplify Europe as “Christian” “fighters for faith” etc. (4/? Fuuuuck. One(??) more)

And when we do that, we end up as characterizing the brown people as “not that”. The thing I love about this fandom is that people are definitely down on the crusades. I feel like all the fic I’ve read has been particularly negative about those wars, but the thing I love about your fic is that you don’t just say war is bad because people died and it was despicable and this pious white dude says so and this one brown person agrees. (5/6, I see the end in sight I swear it)

Instead you give us a larger cast of Muslims and Arabs and really flesh them out and give them opinions and different interpretations of faith, and I really appreciate that. The crusades were terrible, and we know this because these regular dudes who struggle with their different faiths and lives say so. And I just. I think that’s really great. Also, I fucking love yusef’s mom. I feel like more people would be accepting of the gift in this fashion and I think she’s lovely and (god damn it 6/7)

Aaaaaaaand. The bit where yusef returns and she’s already gone breaks my fucking heart. Also the moment where he’s like “I’m not sure about Abraham’s god, but my mothers god is worth my faith”?? Just really fucking great. So. Excellent fic. Excellent characters. Excellent not-being-accidentally-biased-towards-white-Christians. That is what I came here to say. Thank you so much for your amazing stories. I love them and I love history. Sorry about the rambling. idek how I wrote so much. (7/7)

Epilogue: tl;dr: you’re great.

Oh man! What a huge and thoughtful comment (which will in turn provoke a long-ass response from me, so…) I absolutely agree that no matter what fandom, I don’t do Discourse TM; I just sit in my bubble and stay in my lane and do my own thing and create content I enjoy. And I don’t even think this is that so much as just… general commentary on character and background? So obviously all of this should be read as my own personal experience and choices in writing DVLA, and that alone. I really appreciate you for saying that you love a wide range of fan creators/fanworks and you’re not placing one over another, you understand that fans have diverse ranges of backgrounds/experience with history and other cultures when they create content, and that’s not the same for everyone. So I just think that’s a great and respectful way to start things off.

First, as a professional historian who has written a literal PhD thesis on the crusades, I absolutely understand that many people (and regular fans) will not have the same privilege/education/perspective that I do, and that’s fine! They should not be expected to get multiple advanced degrees to enjoy a Netflix movie! But since I DO have that background, and since I’ve been working on the intellectual genealogy of the crusades (and the associated Christian/Muslim component, whether racially or religiously) since I was a master’s student, I have a lot of academic training and personal feelings that inform how I write these characters. Aside from my research on all this, my sister lives in an Islamic country and her boyfriend is a Muslim man; I’ve known a lot of Muslims and Middle Easterners; and especially with the current political climate of Islamophobia and the reckoning with racism whether in reality or fandom, I have been thinking about all this a lot, and my impact on such.

Basically: I love Nicky dearly, but I ADORE Joe, and as such, I’m protective of him and certainly very mindful of how I write him. Especially when the obvious default for westerners in general, fandom-related or otherwise, is to write what you are familiar with (i.e. the European Christian white character) and be either less comfortable or less confident or sometimes less thoughtful about his opposing number. I have at times tangentially stumbled across takes on Joe that turn me into the “eeeeeeeh” emoji or Dubious Chrissy Teigen, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about them because I was like, “nope not for me” and went elsewhere rather than do Discourse (which is pretty much a waste of time everywhere and always makes people feel bad). This is why I’m always selective about my fan content, but especially so with this ship, because I have SO much field-specific knowledge that I just have to make what I like and which suits my personal tastes. So that is what I do.

Obviously, there’s a troublesome history with the trope of “sexually liberate brown person seduces virginal white character into a world of Fleshly Decadence,” whether from the medieval correlation of “sodomite” and “Saracen,” or the nineteenth-century Orientalist depictions of the East as a land variously childishly simplistic, societally backward, darkly mysterious and Exotic, or “decadent” (read: code for sexually unlike Western Europe, including the spectrum of queer acts). So when I was writing DVLA, I absolutely did not want to do that and it’s not to my taste, but I’m not going to whip out a red pen on someone else writing a story that broadly follows those parameters (because as I said, I stay in my lane and don’t see it anyway). Joe to me is just such an intensely complex and lovely Muslim character that that’s the only way I feel like I can honestly write him, and I absolutely love that about him. So yeah, any depiction of hypersexualizing him or making him only available for the sexual use and education of the white character(s) is just... mmm, not for me.

For example, I stressed over whether it was appropriate to move his origin from “somewhere in the Maghreb” to Cairo specifically, since Egypt, while it IS in North Africa, is not technically part of the Maghreb. I realize that Marwan Kenzari’s family is Tunisian and that’s probably why they chose it, to honor the actor’s heritage, but on the flip side… “al-Kaysani” is also a specifically Ismai’li Shia name (it’s the name of a branch of it) and the Fatimids (the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade) were well-known for being the only Ismai’li Shia caliphate. (This is why the Shi’ites still ancestrally dislike Saladin for overthrowing it in 1174, even if Saladin is a huge hero to the rest of the Islamic world.) Plus I really wanted to use medieval Cairo as Joe’s homeland, and it just made more sense for an Ismai’li Shia Fatimid from Cairo (i.e. the actual Muslim denomination and caliphate that controlled Jerusalem) to be defending the Holy City because it was personal for him, rather than a Sunni Zirid from Ifriqiya just kind of turning up there. Especially due to the intense fragmentation and disorganization in the Islamic world at the time of the First Crusade (which was a big part of the reason it succeeded) and since the Zirids were a breakaway group from the Fatimids and therefore not very likely to be militarily allied with them. As with my personal gripes about Nicky being a priest, I decided to make that change because I felt, as a historian, that it made more sense for the character. But I SUPER recognize it as my own choices and tweaks, and obviously I’m not about to complain at anyone for writing what’s in graphic novel/bonus content canon!

That ties, however, into the fact that Nicky has a clearly defined city/region of origin (Genoa, which has a distinct history, culture, and tradition of crusading) and Joe is just said to be from “the Maghreb” which…. is obviously huge. (I.e. anywhere in North Africa west of Egypt all the way to Morocco.) And this isn’t a fandom thing, but from the official creators/writers of the comics and the movie. And I’m over here like: okay, which country? Which city? Which denomination of Islam? You’ve given him a Shia name but then point him to an origin in Sunni Ifriqiya. If he’s from there, why has he gone thousands of miles to Jerusalem in the middle of a dangerous war to help his religious/political rivals defend their territory? Just because he’s nice? Because it was an accident? Why is his motivation or reason for being there any less defined or any less religious (inasmuch as DVLA Nicky’s motive for being on the First Crusade is religious at all, which is not very) than the white character’s? In a sense, the Christians are the ones who have to work a lot harder to justify their presence in the Middle East in the eleventh century at all: the First Crusade was a specifically military and offensive invasion launched at the direct behest of the leader of the Western Roman church (Pope Urban II.) So the idea that they’re “fighting for the faith” or defending it bravely is…

Eeeeh. (Insert Dubious Chrissy Teigen.)

But of course, nobody teaches medieval history to anyone in America (except for Bad Game of Thrones History Tee Em), and they sure as hell don’t teach about the crusades (except for the Religious Violence Bad highlight reel) so people don’t KNOW about these things, and I wish they DID know, and that’s why I’m over here trying to be an academic so I can help them LEARN it, and I get very passionate about it. So once again, I entirely don’t blame people who have acquired this distorted cultural impression of the crusades and don’t want to do a book’s worth of research to write a fic about a Netflix movie. I do hope that they take the initiative to learn more about it because they’re interested and want to know more, since by nature the pairing involves a lot of complex religious, racial, and cultural dynamics that need to be handled thoughtfully, even if you don’t know everything about it. So like, basically all I want is for the Muslim character(s) to be given the same level of respect, attention to detail, background story, family context, and religious diversity as any of the white characters, and Imma do it myself if I have to. Dammit.

(I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on the second half of the fic, especially chapter 3 and chapter 6, but definitely all of it, since I think the characters they’re established as in the early part of the fic do remain true to themselves and both grow and struggle and go through a realistic journey with their faith over their very long lives, and it’s one of my favorite themes about DVLA.)

Anyway, about Nicky. I also made the specific choice to have him be an average guy, the ordinary second son of a nobleman who doesn’t really know what he’s doing with his life and isn’t the mouthpiece of Moral Virtue in the story, since as he himself realizes pretty quick, the crusades and especially the sack/massacre of Jerusalem are actually horrific. I’ve written in various posts about my nitpicking gripes with him being a priest, so he’s not, and as I said, I’m definitely avoiding any scenario where he has to Learn About The World from Joe. That is because I want to make the point that the people on the crusades were people, and they went for a lot of different reasons, not all of which were intense personal religious belief. The crusades were an institution and operated institutionally. Even on the First Crusade, where there were a lot of ordinary people who went because of sincere religious belief, there was the usual bad behavior by soldiers and secular noblemen and people who just went because it was the thing to do. James Brundage has an article about prostitution and miscegenation and other sexual activity on the First Crusade; even at the height of this first and holy expedition, it was happening. So Nicky obviously isn’t going to be the moral exemplar because a) the crusades are horrific, he himself realizes that, and b) it’s just as historically accurate that he wouldn’t be anyway. Since the idea is that medieval crusaders were all just zealots and ergo Not Like Us is dangerous, I didn’t want to do that either. If we think they all went because they were all personally fervent Catholics and thus clearly we couldn’t do the same, then we miss a lot of our own behavior and our parallel (and troubling) decisions, and yeah.

As well, I made a deliberate choice to have Nicky’s kindness (which I LOVE about him, it’s one of my favorite things, god how refreshing to have that be one of the central tenets of a male warrior character) not to be something that was just… always there and he was Meek and Good because a priest or whatever else. Especially as I’ve gotten older and we’ve all been living through these ridiculous hellyears (2020 is the worst, but it’s all been general shit for a while), I’ve thought more and more about how kindness is an active CHOICE and it’s as transgressive as anything else you can do and a whole lot more brave than just cynicism and nihilism and despair. As you’ll see in the second half of the fic, Nicky (and Joe) have been through some truly devastating things and it might be understandable if they gave into despair, but they DON’T. They choose to continue to be good people and to try and to actively BE kind, rather than it being some passive default setting. They struggle with it and it’s raw and painful and they’re not always saints, but they always come down on the side of wanting to keep doing what they’re doing, and I… have feelings about that.

Anyway, this is already SUPER long, so I’ll call it quits for now. But thank you so much for this, because I love these characters and I love the story I created for them in DVLA, since all this is personal to me in a lot of ways, and I’m so glad you picked up on that.

#history #medieval history #queer history #dvla asks #long post #the old guard meta #anonymous #ask

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the-lincyclopedia · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Interview

Tagged by @weneedtotalkaboutfic. Thanks, Lau!

Name: Lin

Fandoms: Currently almost entirely Check Please, though we’ll see if the third Simon Snow book drags me back into Snowbaz land!

Most popular multi-chapter: Ugh. It’s “The Jumper Chronicles,” which I wrote from ages 17-19 and then abandoned. It’s a crossover of Harry Potter and Sherlock, it’s awful, and multiple people have favorited it in the past 24 hours.

Actual worst part of writing: Editing. Like real rewriting. For fics I mostly just don’t, but I just started draft four of the novel I’ve been querying, and . . . ugh.

How do you choose your titles: These days, usually song lyrics. Before they tended to be more thematic, and that still happens sometimes.

Do you outline? Occasionally, but it’s pretty rare. These days I tend to have some idea where I’m going, at least, which I definitely didn’t with my multi-chapters as a teenager.

Ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: I have so many half-baked ideas relating to Kent Parson that I have no idea how to pull off. Also a series where Lardo, Shitty, Jack, and Bitty are all some variety of trans.

Callouts @ me: Writing-wise? It’s okay not to describe how the characters got from point A to point B. It’s okay to just pick up two hours later rather than saying what they did in the meantime.

Best writing traits: I honestly think my persistence is more impressive than any individual aspect of my writing. When I was in sixth grade, all my friends and I decided we wanted to be published authors, and I’m the only one still chasing fiction publishing. As mentioned, I’m on draft four of a novel.

Spicy tangential opinion: There are people who go so hard when it comes to fanfiction that it is as good and as hard to pull off as anything traditionally published. And there are other people who do not go that hard when it comes to their fics, and that’s fine. I’m in the second camp. My original fiction is something I put a lot of effort into and get input about from other people. I want to feel relaxed when I write fanfiction, and I certainly don’t want a beta who recommends a lot of major changes. I treat the two things differently. And there are people who treat their fanfiction like it’s going to get published! Both are fine!

I tag @doggernaut @cricketnationrise @ivecarvedawoodenheart and anyone else who wants to play!

#mine #tag game #fanfiction

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

Note

So just out of curiosity, what inspired the whole Beacon Bay idea? What kind of sharks and dolphins are they? This entire thing is very intriguing to me and I can't wait to see more.

So first off, anyone who’s ever played soundingboard to my original stuff like Moukie or Adam can attest to the fact that I’m ocean obsessed, so there’s pretty much nothing I’m interested in that isn’t a mere two or three steps removed from an ocean/merfolk/sea witch AU in my head. Gimme anything and like, five minutes, and I can make it ocean themed. Space operas included. I grew up near the ocean, been surfing for ages though of course I haven’t in years, blah, but like. I’m a big fan of the deep blue sea. Its just....neat. ghaskfhalkfhla

So I’ve always had a bunch of ocean-set concepts. This particular AU came about from like, smashing a couple of them together to preserve them when my plans for doing original stuff with them fizzled out, at least for the time being. Cuz the other thing about me is the way some people like, take their fanfic and file off the serial numbers to turn it into original novels, I more often do the reverse, lmao. When I have something I can no longer do something with original-content-wise, for whatever reason, but I still like the idea, I turn it into fanfic so I can still play around with it whenever I want and like, have purpose to that, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting time by still ‘indulging’ in that concept or whatever.

Like my Batfandom fic By Lost Ways, as I’ve mentioned before....that actually started out as an original high fantasy novel set in my ‘Tales of the Citadel’ shared universe. BUT the setting ended up being similar enough to a sci-fi project I wanted I to move forward with, ‘Waveriders’ (the one with the sky pirates and the ATLA-style benders only instead of evoking the four classical elements, waveriders could each ‘hack’ a different kind of wavelength, that one) like....basically, the projects FELT similar enough in setting and various superficial elements that I started to feel derivative of myself moving forward with both, so I picked Waveriders and then recycled the setting and a lot of the plot of the sky-set fantasy novel for fanfic, just for fun.

Same thing here, though Beacon Bay is basically the mash-up of two different shelved original projects. Basically, its the plot of a CW-style show about teen sirens and the sea witch making like the Fagin to their Oliver Twists, from a pilot I wrote years ago.....it got some interest but I refused to make it less gay because lol have you met me, so it ultimately never went anywhere but I still liked the plot.

And then remember the werewolf books I mentioned awhile back, that had the mongoose shifters in them? LOL. Yeah, so I’d written two and a half novels in that series and had this whole expansive worldbuilding of twelve different shifter clans each with their own innate magic, patron deity/creator, etc, but all my agent and editor contacts at the time were like yeah sorry, shifters are over for now, and I was like wow, can’t believe cancel culture’s real and publishing cancelled werewolves, wtf, rude, and then I was like eh, still wanna play in this universe especially with the dolphins and shark shifters which I never even really got to in those books, so I’m just gonna air-lift them out of that and drop them smack in the middle of my CW siren plot and fanfic away to my heart’s content and call that ‘being productive’ when I feel like it.

Anyway, found family was a big theme of those books and the world-building I did there in general, because again, have you met me, I’m not predictable or anything (shhh, the word is consistent), and one of my initial things there was I wanted the various shifter types to all have innate magic, because for literally no real reason that I can discern other than Whimsy, I have always been Team Werewolf in vampires vs werewolves, and I was tired of werewolves always being by default the underdogs in those narratives. Even if that does make for a good pun.

SO, I wanted to come up with werewolf magic that felt natural and organic to werewolves, like nothing too flashy or obscure, but that would make them a legitimate threat even to other supernatural creatures. And I made it so each of the shifter types were granted an active and a passive magic by the god that created their type of shifter, and with werewolves, their active magic was that of the pack gestalt. I took the idea of ‘their whole is greater than the sum of their parts’ that TW kinda briefly touched on when presenting (but never really doing much with) the idea that the more wolves in a pack, the stronger that pack was.....and I decided okay what if being part of a pack upped stats all across the board AND all shifters have a SLIGHT innate resistance to magic, being innately magical beings themselves?

So a werewolf pack, with enough pack members, would thus not only be formidable in strength, speed, senses and speed of healing....but compound that innate shifter resistance to magic, which in a single shifter is negligible, like, just enough to make them slightly harder to track with magic or curse or whatever.....but in a whole werewolf pack, that adds up to make the pack effectively immune to foreign magic. Vampires can’t compel them, demons can’t possess them, witches can’t curse them, etc. So a lone werewolf, not part of a pack, is formidable, but nothing another supernatural being can’t take on. But a lone werewolf who IS part of a pack....different story entirely, because now most other supernatural beings, no matter what their USUAL strengths, are reduced to taking on that werewolf hand to hand, as their own supernatural gifts or spells or whatever, like, aren’t gonna do them any good against these particular foes. And werewolves are USED to fighting with just brute physical strength and attributes, which gives them the edge against opponents who are more used to being able to fall back on magic in battle.

But as much as I like sticking to a theme, I like to diversify that theme where possible, so when it came to the other shifter types, I wanted to similarly come up with ways where ‘the whole would be greater than the sum of their parts’ but in like, entirely different ways.

So with dolphin shifters, their ‘passive magic’ (in quotes cuz that’s not quite the right word for it but whatever) is that they’re all empaths, with their more active magic being weather manipulation. Their empathy is a two-way street....they project emotions as well as just feel other peoples’, which ties into the fact that their patron deity was Dionysus. Dolphin parties....legendary. But in an extremely wild, dangerous and Bacchanalian kinda way. In terms of Beacon Bay specifically, this is a bit of a problem for the BB dolphins, as the closest thing they had to an official Triton (the dolphin shifter version of an Alpha) was Peter, but they were like nope, not loving this guy, and kinda drove him out of town in the AU S1 backstory of this ‘verse, which means Scott and the others are kinda just making it up as they go along, and don’t really know the ins and outs of BEING dolphin shifters. (Derek is....elsewhere, in this. Mostly).

So bottom line is they have reputations around school for being loud obnoxious goofs and trouble-makers, constantly playing hooky and such, but its because they don’t really know HOW to safeguard against spilling their emotions onto everyone around them so they try and err on the side of being the life of the party whenever possible, as that’s better than the alternatives in their opinion. And when they’re just having bad days and bumming hard, the whole pod will just skip school and glomp around the bumming pod member whilst self-caring, rather than like, accidentally bum out the entire school.

But their weather manipulation magic is where the gestalt idea comes into play with them, as I love weather manipulating powers, but I didn’t want to make them all Ororo Munroe, y’know? Only Ororo Munroe can be Ororo Munroe. Don’t make me scoff. I’ll do it. I’ll scoff so hard. SO I went with the idea of weather control married to manipulating storms via song and was like, okay what if a dolphin pod is like, a symphony of shifters.

Basically, its like each individual dolphin shifter is a single voice in a chorus, and there’s magical equivalents of being a baritone, an alto, etc. Like, none of them can whip up a storm on their own. Its more that each of them can summon or conjure a PIECE of a storm with their song, with it being different for each of them....symptomatic of their magic as an expression of them as an individual. So for instance, Scott’s song is ‘tuned’ to lightning. He can call down a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.....but he can’t summon so much as a drop of rain to save his life. Literally. Its an actual plot point at one point. Whereas Isaac’s song is all about calling down rain, Boyd’s is more of an arctic wind, and Erica’s kinda summons a pressure front that in harmony with the two of theirs can whip up a mean waterspout. And then Corey’s all about conjuring fog banks with low visibility while Liam can whistle up a strong, gale-force wind but sucks at using his song as a precision instrument. Etc, etc. But the real magic is when they all use their voices and magic in concert....as a group, they can summon huge magical thunderstorms.

Also, one thing I love about using different kinds of shifters is the opportunity to explore enhanced supernatural senses that aren’t just keen sight, smell or hearing. So the dolphin shifters aren’t like wolf shifters in being able to detect chemosignals or anything like that....in fact, their sense of smell isn’t much different from anyone else’s. But they do have an ability to use what’s effectively supernatural echolocation even above water, and their sight is adapted for optimal viewing underwater, making them particularly good at seeing in the darkness even on land.

(Also, related but somewhat tangential to both the shifter senses and dolphin ‘voices’....all dolphin shifters have a strong talent for mimicry, but this isn’t technically a form of magic, more just a combination of their control over their voice and their keen senses of pitch, etc).

The shark shifters, on the other hand, have some of the keenest senses of all shifters. Not only is their sense of smell even better than a werewolf’s, they’re sensitive to changes in pressure, for one thing. Which means on land, they can even feel changes in atmospheric pressure.....so like, the shark shifters of Beacon Bay could be in math class and then ‘feel’ a sudden drop in air pressure and thus even before some strange weather phenomenon occurs, they’re groaning like ugh fucking A, what the hell did the damn dolphins do now.

Also, their magnetic field perception is such that they can kinda ‘sense’ when people are around, just by being aware of the approaching magnetic field of another living being.

And then with the sharks, I was looking for ways to lean into the associations we have with sharks and blood, but subvert them to be less macabre and more communal. And another big theme of mine in general is like, I am DETERMINED to go to my grave shouting at the top of my lungs “Its THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT IS THICKER THAN THE WATER OF THE WOMB, NOT BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER, HOW DID PEOPLE GET THAT SO BACKWARDS ITS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF HOW ITS USUALLY STATED!”

Like, that’s just...HUGE pet peeve of mine. Its like nails on a chalkboard, lmfao, that drives me nuts. That phrase is usually cited by people using it to express like, the idea that there’s no greater force than family, specifically BIOLOGICAL, ‘blood’ relations, but its literally meant to be the exact opposite, that the blood of CHOSEN bonds, of covenants, of vows or promises, is a greater force than the water of the womb, ie being born of the same womb, as in biological siblings. The entire point of the phrase is biology ain’t shit, family is what we choose. And somehow it got turned ENTIRELY around.

(Note: Okay, so for the record, its not ‘somehow’, there’s actually a very clear reason for why that particular interpretation gained so much momentum, and that’s because for a long time it was conflated with an old German proverb from like a thousand years ago that basically translates to “kin-blood is not spoiled by water.” Which basically was meant to mean that nothing can ‘dilute’ blood relations, not time, not distance, not water. So that phrase DOES correspond to the idea that ‘blood is thicker than water.’ Problem is, there isn’t a direct trace from that particular proverb TO most USAGES of ‘blood is thicker than water,’ which when you throw in the OTHER phrase, which in its entirety is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” what you end up with is a lot of people SAYING that one when they actually MEAN to say ‘kin-blood is not spoiled by water’ and that’s where the meanings get switched. But I fucking digress. Per usual).

Anyway. So combine that particular pet peeve with my found family fixation AND the fact that this is about magic and magic means I can do whatever the hell I want, fuck your biological connections mwahahaha.....I decided to base shark magic on the idea of the blood-ties of family....but CHOSEN blood-ties, as in blood of the covenant ties.

What I mean is okay, so it first of all just made sense to me to have shark shifter communities be heavily focused around adoption, because like....let’s be real, shark shifters going around biting people to change them into shifters, and then people magically healing from....shark bites....was going to attract a lot more attention than people turning after being attacked by other types of shifters. Not to mention the fact that not only are shark attacks always big news, part of why they’re big news is because they’re actually pretty rare.

So, shark shifter communities were never really gonna propagate via lots of random shark shifter attacks turning people. So the way they DO expand and grow is by, well, family. Both biological AND adoption...as well as of course shark shifter communities taking in people who ARE attacked by rogue shark shifters, when that does happen.

But bottom line is, there’s an additional element in play in shark shifter communities, beyond just the gene pool....and that’s like, a magical tidepool of talents, let’s call it. Because I do love me some alliteration. But also tidepool of talents is just a cool phrase, IMO.

Anyway, the main part of shark shifter magic, and how THEIR whole is greater than the sum of their parts, is that any shark shifter can draw upon or channel the talents, skillsets or knowledge of anyone else in their communal family. And whenever that family gets added to, the talents, skillsets and knowledge of the new addition gets added to the pot, so to speak. So shark shifters are kinda all like Rogue, if Rogue’s focus was less on the superpowers of other people and more on things like Beast’s scientific knowledge, Cyclops’ strategic skills or Cable’s weapons expertise.

And then their ‘passive magic’ is a form of psychometry whenever they come into contact with blood. By touching even just a drop of someone’s blood, they can get a vision of how that blood was spilled or even get a sense of where the person who spilled it is now.

As to the types of sharks and dolphins they all are, for that I went with the thing about the shape you take reflects the person you are.....all the shifters here are full shifters, and there’s no genetic component to their shifting, its purely magical, so like....just because Peter turned the various dolphins of BB doesn’t mean they all turn into the same kind of dolphin he was. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of dolphin he was on account of I don’t really care tbh, lol. Whereas Erica’s an Atlantic spotted dolphin, Liam’s a pygmy killer whale which looks like an orca just tiny in comparison and is actually a dolphin, and I found that combination of factors hilarious, etc, etc.

Same thing with the shark shifters. Even among biological relations, there’s a ton of variety of shark types. Like the twins aren’t even the same type...Ethan’s a blue shark and Aiden’s a bull shark, Tracy’s a tiger shark and Hayden’s an angel shark. Danny’s actually a throwback to an unnamed prehistoric shark, not Megalodon big but big enough to shut up Jackson when he goes on about being a great white shark. Shark and crocodile shifters are the two oldest shifter clans, old enough that literal dinosaurs fall under the umbrella of their shifter type, and thus occasionally show up even in modern generations.

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sanderssidesfanfiction · 3 years

Text

If There’s a Place I Could Be - Chapter Eighty One

If There’s a Place I Could Be Tag

July 16th, 1999

Remy glanced up from the back corner of the library as a girl laughed a little too close to comfort for him. His mom had let him come to the library on the condition that she be there (and monitor what he checked out, but neither of them acknowledged that), but he was allowed as much time as he wanted in the teen section. Which meant he could sneak in some magical-girl-manga-reading.

He checked to make sure his mom wasn’t around and continued to read. He loved this, probably a little too much for his own good, but he didn’t care right now. Right now, he just wanted to make sure the Sailor Scouts would get out of peril safely.

And maybe, one day, he’d find a place where he could rent out the books and not have to pray that no one checked out the one he was reading while he was gone.

February 14th, 2002

Remy looked over his list again, grumbling. That idea was too sappy, that one was too plain, that one didn’t have the right amount of sentimentality, the other one had too much! How hard could it be to find a proposal plan that worked?! Seriously, he was going insane figuring this out, and he hadn’t even decided on a ring, yet!

Maybe he should do that first? But no, he wanted the ring to fit the occasion too. Because Emile was a traditions sort-of guy, but Remy wasn’t. And he was pretty sure Emile would kill him if Remy bought Emile a diamond, but that meant the options for rings just grew.

“Decisions, decisions...” Remy grumbled, staring at the paper. He ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair. He had no idea what he was going to do.

An idea struck him over the head in an instant. What if he proposed at Sleep Easy, once it was clear that the store was going to be a success? Opening day would also be dramatic, but Remy wanted to be sure that the store would do well, in case in the heat of the moment he made allusions to the success of the store relating to the success of their marriage. Yeah, that could work!

...Gay marriage would have to be legal for them to actually get married, but hey, they could probably invite their friends and Emile’s family to a ceremony even if the actual marriage part didn’t happen.

Remy smiled. Yeah, he could find a ring that he’d be willing to show off to the patrons of Sleep Easy in a ring box as he proposed to Emile. He could work with that...

He was rooting around in his desk for another piece of paper and a pen to write down more ideas when there was a knock at the office door. Remy turned with a smile to see Emile there. “Hey, stranger,” Remy said. “What’s up?”

“You’ve been in here for at least two hours. It’s Valentine’s Day. I demand attention,” Emile said, offering a playful smile.

“Oh, come on,” Remy said, letting his arms fall off the armrests of the chair. “You can’t even give me a couple hours to scheme something romantic for you before you want me back with you?”

“For me?” Emile said, moving closer.

Remy slammed the papers into his designated drawer of the desk and locked the drawer. “Uh, no, nuh-uh, you are not reading what this is about, mister!”

“Oh, I see, so you can get grumpy about me keeping the shop from you for literal months but the second I try to read something you wrote I’m not allowed to?” Emile teased.

Remy rolled his eyes. “I admitted you were right, that the shop was much better as a surprise. Same thing applies with this. You don’t want to know.”

Emile did an exaggerated pout before he grinned. “So, what’s up? Do you have the time to spare to pay attention to me?”

“Yes, honey, I can spend time with you,” Remy said, rolling his eyes and standing up, leading Emile out of the room. “What are you hoping to rope me into today?”

“Maybe a little...afternoon out?” Emile asked, grinning. “I’m willing to take you to the local comic shops to browse, maybe buy a few things that you’ve been eyeing for a while.”

Remy’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, really?”

“Mhm,” Emile agreed. “And then we could go out to dinner, and maybe afterwards we could head to the park, stargaze a bit, and have a little bit of time to ourselves this Valentine’s.”

“As opposed to every other day when we’re, what, surrounded by children?” Remy asked, amused.

“No, but we have outside worries, and things to focus on that aren’t each other,” Emile said with a shrug. “And I think just focusing on each other for a bit would be nice.”

“You’re right, that would feel good,” Remy agreed, smiling softly. “I’ve been way too caught up in my own head recently and I want to spend some quality time with you.”

“So what say you to going out and having some fun, girl?” Emile asked with a wink.

“I say...sounds perfect,” Remy said, kissing Emile’s cheek and grabbing his jacket.

Emile grinned and Remy let himself be led out to their car and got in the passenger’s seat. Emile got in the driver’s seat and started the car, a smile on his face. Remy frowned when instead of a left out of the neighborhood, Emile took a right. “This isn’t the way to the comics shop,” Remy said.

“Yes it is,” Emile said.

“No, Emile, I’ve driven there a thousand times, we make a left if we want to get there. Right is how we get out of the city,” Remy said.

Emile just grinned and continued to keep driving.

“Emile, I don’t understand you, and I hope you realize that when you realize you’re wrong, I will be saying I told you so,” Remy said.

“That’s fine,” Emile said, “Because I’m not wrong.”

Remy rolled his eyes and let Emile drive, arms crossed. He listened to the music on the radio, not really paying attention to anything until he noticed they were in the same city that they went to Pride last year. “Emile, where are we going?”

“I told you, we’re going to the comic book store.”

Remy shook his head. “No, seriously.”

“Seriously,” Emile said, pulling into a parking lot and parking the car. “We’re going to the comic book store.”

Remy blinked and got out of the car, looking at the small building in front of them. It didn’t look run down, but it wasn’t some top-of-the-line huge corporation either. Emile led Remy inside and Remy gaped. Wall to wall to wall and dozens of bookshelves were holding comics, graphic novels, and geekery of all kinds. “What?” he asked barely above a whisper. “What is this place?”

“I got on the subscription list for that comics startup you were interested in,” Emile said. “This is their first store. Obviously, they carry some of the bigger comics, but most of their stuff is local, start-up based, and queer.”

Remy looked around in awe. “Unbelievable,” he breathed. “Un. Believable. And you were going to tell me about this?”

“Yeah,” Emile said. “If you weren’t up for going out today I would have told you. But they only opened in January, I figured we should give them a little bit of time to stock everything.”

Remy nodded idly, already drifting towards the shelves upon shelves of comic books. He hesitantly reached for a couple before pulling his hand back and looking at Emile. “Don’t judge me?” he requested.

“Why would I judge you when I literally brought you here to geek out?” Emile asked.

“Because people can be arbitrarily mean and weird about my interests for whatever reason they can tangentially tie to it,” Remy said.

“I’m not people,” Emile said. “I’m your boyfriend.”

Remy considered that a moment, before reaching back to the comic and pulling it out. “I’ve been really wanting to read this series for a while.”

Emile looked at the cover, frowning. “What is it?”

“Think... Sailor Moon crossed with Darkwing Duck,” Remy said, a blush creeping up his face as he realized exactly how stupid that must sound.

“Magical girls crossed with a super-powered duck?” Emile asked skeptically.

“More like...magical girls crossed with found family and crime fighting. Darkwing Duck was the first thing I thought of that you might recognize.” Remy shrugged. “I know it sounds dumb...”

“You kidding me, Rem? That sounds really cool!” Emile exclaimed. “I didn’t take you to be one for magical girls, though.”

“I...well...I always had this guilty pleasure about it,” Remy admitted. “I always wanted that, in a way. The ability to have that confidence wearing a miniskirt.” He laughed weakly.

Emile didn’t. “I think we all have those,” Emile said. “Rem...”

Remy’s stomach sank. “Oh, I know that tone.”

“You’re really sure you’re not trans?” Emile asked, grimacing.

“I...I don’t...know...” Remy admitted. “I always get clocked as trans, I know this, you know this. I like wearing blouses and one day I want to be brave enough to try a dress or a skirt, go full drag. But I never really...” Tears were coming to his eyes. “I never really felt like a full woman for more than a day or so at a time. And the rest of the time I’m mostly happy being a guy. I don’t...I don’t want to be a woman. Not all the time. I just want to be...me. Whoever that is.”

Emile looked Remy up and down and said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Remy repeated dumbly.

“Okay. You want to be you? Be you. Whether that’s a man, a woman, that non-binary thing we hear about at Pride, or a genderless blob. We can call each other boyfriends for simplicity’s sake if you want, but I won’t judge if you don’t want to be what everyone expects a man to be,” Emile hugged Remy tight as he continued, “I just want you to be happy, Rem. Forcing yourself to say you’re a guy all the time doesn’t make you happy. So if you just want to be Remy, then you absolutely can just be Remy. Not a guy, not a girl. Just you.”

Remy didn’t realize how much he wanted, or needed, to hear those words until he heard them, and he broke down crying. He clutched Emile’s shoulders, comics all but forgotten as he realized that he was safe here. He had a safety here that he hadn’t ever felt with any of his family, including Toby. He was free to be his one hundred percent authentic self, and he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have that.

When his tears finally dried, he took a step back from Emile, and he was beaming. “Let’s get these comics, I have a feeling that you’ll like them too,” Remy said, picking up the stack.

Emile smiled genuinely at Remy as he moved around the rest of the shelves, continuing to geek out for as long as they were there. Once they had purchased the comics Remy was interested in, they went to dinner at a sit-down restaurant (which Remy still had to remind himself would not break the bank, much as he worried otherwise), and they went to the local park as the sun was setting. The February air was brisk, but Emile laid out a blanket for the two of them to lie down on, and Remy got settled into Emile’s side, just a hair away from lying on top of him. No one would mistake them for simply being friendly like this, but Remy didn’t care.

“Tonight was nice,” Remy sighed. “I really, really loved it.”

“Good, I’m glad,” Emile said with a smile. “You know I love you, Rem.”

“I love you too, Emile,” Remy said back, a smile lacing his words.

“Hey, Rem?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to come to the next monthly meeting with Dice? It’s coming up at the end of the month...”

“That’s okay, Emile, I’m not too worried about it,” Remy said with a hand-wave, eyes never leaving the sky as the first few stars started twinkling. “If something important happens, I trust you to tell me, or at least...y’know, set up a surprise for me. You wouldn’t keep the information to yourself indefinitely.”

“You love Toby too much to let me get away with that, first of all,” Emile laughed. “Second of all, I love you. I want to see you happy. And I know, one-hundred percent, that this will make you happy. It might take some time and catching up and therapy, but this would be good for you, Rem. I don’t want to hold you back from that.”

“I love you too, I hope you know that.”

“Trust me. I know.”

#if there's a place i could be #sanders sides fanfiction #remile #emile picani #ts sleep

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brightbeautifulthings · 5 years

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Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

"We love films because they make us feel something. They speak to our desires, which are never small. They allow us to escape and to dream and to gaze into eyes that are impossibly beautiful and huge. They fill us with longing."

Year Read: 2019

Rating: 5/5

About: It's shortly after graduation, and Emi is already an intern in set design on a major Hollywood film. Her older brother is leaving his apartment to her for the summer with only one caveat: do something epic with the place. When she visits an estate sale for a famous but reclusive old Hollywood actor, she discovers a letter he'd written to a mysterious woman from his past. Emi and her best friend, Charlotte, decide to try to deliver the letter, and the mystery leads them to an enigmatic girl named Ava. Emi can't help the attraction to her, but she's recently gotten out of another relationship (for the fourth or fifth time), and Ava's life is far from perfect. Love, family, friendship, and romance come together in a soft summer romance about acceptance and how life isn't always quite like the movies.

Thoughts: It’s official. I’m going to have to read everything Nina LaCour ever wrote. I really liked We Are Okay, but Everything Leads to You is so much my book, I don’t know how I lived my whole life without it. We Are Okay is poetic in its sadness and its brevity; ELtY is more immersive but just as lovely, and while it deals with some heavy topics, it’s a much lighter read. The writing is beautiful and atmospheric, and LaCour’s eye for detail (shown through Emi’s passion for set design) is unparalleled. Just like Emi designs sets for fictional characters, it's the small details and the objects that fill their lives that make LaCour's characters feel like actual people. Between the L.A. setting that feels real enough to step into and the love for film that comes off every page, I almost felt like I was in a Weetzie Bat book without the fairytale magic. Except some magic is the kind we make ourselves, and ELtY has that in abundance.

I suspect I would have loved this book even without so much plot--just following the characters around in their everyday lives is interesting--but the plot caught me right away, probably because it's like something out of a movie. I'm not much for mysteries, but I might be tempted if there were more of them involving old, larger than life Hollywood actors. What's better is that LaCour doesn't include the mystery for its own sake, and the more invested Emi gets in the people involved, the more she realizes that it's not there for an audience or for entertainment; it's just real people living their lives, and the ways they hurt and save each other. There's a good amount of character development to be had in every direction.

It would be hard for me to love the characters and their relationships more. Emi and Charlotte are the kind of best friends that just get each other, and while their friendship seems effortless, we can tell through small interactions and the way they value the things that are important to each other that it's effortless because it's built on years and years of trying, to where being there for each other is the natural response. Emi's love for film and her gentle persistence in bringing characters to life through the spaces they inhabit is both fresh and relatable. I love the insights into her job and the way that organized, steadfast Charlotte is her perfect complement.

Then there's the romance, and I'm so, so happy that LaCour has been setting the stage for more happy wlw romances. Ava is harder to get a handle on than Emi; she sometimes reacts in extremes, but I feel like we're given enough backstory and justification that the drama doesn't feel out of place. The novel tangentially deals with issues like teen homelessness and homophobia. For readers looking for a serious examination of those topics, I don't think it will be in-depth enough, but I feel like LaCour handles them with the appropriate care. They're never just there for drama, but to provide depth and development to the characters. Like all the best novels, I wished for it to go on longer so I could see how things turn out, but that's probably just because I loved it so much. Now, how to convince everyone in my life they need to read it...

#book review #everything leads to you #nina lacour #lgbtq fiction #wlw romance #ya romance #ya contemporary #contemporary romance #5/5 #rating: 5/5 #2019

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nadziejastar · 5 years

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I like this blog a lot, but I think it could improve. Sometimes you'll answer an ask with an essay that's only tangentially related to the question, like with the recent one where the ask is about Saix and Xion's relationship and you use it as a springboard to talk about his relationship with Axel again (I get it, they're my OTP too!) It's okay if you can't think of an essay-length response for the topic, a brief one is fine. Better to stay on topic and put the unrelated parts in a separate post

Yeah, you’re right. I can see how it seemed like I just wanted to write a shipping manifesto and used an unrelated topic to do so. I was thinking it might come across that way when I was writing the post, actually, and it bothered me. Because honestly, that’s not my intention. I genuinely didn’t want the post to come across like that. The main problem with me is that I’ll get more ideas as I think about a specific topic. Like Axel’s connection to that subject. He actually seemed kinda disgusted by Xion when he realized she was a replica, too. Especially in the novels. I felt like that was interesting and wanted to write about it. But, yeah. I get off-topic because of that tendency of mine. I guess I fear that if I get focused on an entirely different topic afterwards, I’ll forget and then I’ll never wind up touching upon that idea, lol.

Truthfully, I just get disorganized since I have so many things floating around in my head. Sometimes, the reason I can make new posts so quickly is because I already wrote about a specific idea a long time ago, and saved it as an unfinished draft. Whenever I get an idea, I’ll write it down in an unfinished state, so it gives me something to talk about later. I have a lot of unfinished drafts and bounce around a lot. Sometimes, I’ll get an ask about one of those things. So, I can just finish that post and it seems like I am such a fast writer because of that.

I should ideally just write separate posts for separate ideas. The ask was about Saix being a puppet and hating Xion because of that. I think that whole concept was about the third eye, the pineal gland and his “X” scar. It’s what I think his whole character was about, really. He hated her because she was a puppet with a heart. He’s a human puppet with no heart. And the entire reason he can’t even “see” her in the first place is because his third eye is dead.

I’ll take your advice to heart. I think I needed to hear this, so it will help me stop being so OCD. It’s probably better to just leave some ideas on the shelf for a while, lol. It’s funny because I actually thought of even more stuff about the whole replica topic last night in the shower, that I feel like it’s worth talking about. But I will just wait make that a separate post now.

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idiopathicsmile · 6 years

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any advice on how to get work done for college when the anxiety/depression/adhd cocktail is being absolutely horrid?

hi! um. oh man. i have to tell you, i mostly got through college by picking classes that i knew would be interesting-yet-relatively-light-on-the-courseload (what’s up, creative writing seminars) and by putting each paper off until midnight the night before it was due, using that sudden panic as focus-fuel, and then working on it all night, often finishing within an hour of the due date.

i would not recommend this.

ngl, i’m posting this in the hopes that this is one of those cases where other people comment with better advice than what i got, but here’s what i got:

1. take a deep breath. whatever situation you are in, with regards to stress and deadlines--even if you knowingly put off stuff way too long and it’s objectively your fault--remind yourself that there is absolutely nothing to be gained in this moment by beating yourself up.

“but i procrastinated and now i only have eight hours to write an eight-page paper in spanish, a language i do not speak! i deserve to feel bad about this, i--”

nope. nope nope nope. this is kind of just how college goes, at least part of the time, for most people. hell, even neurotypicals, i have to imagine. (i’m gonna go ahead and bet that, if this post gets more than 3 comments, one will be “oh god, Smile, how dare you give me undergrad flashbacks like that”)

and because i’m gonna go ahead and give up any pretense at directing this at anybody but my younger untreated/unmedicated self: hey guess what, despite what your brain tells you, hating yourself is never virtuous. no matter how badly you’ve screwed up, there’s nothing ethical or just about sitting there deliberately thinking the meanest thoughts you possibly can about yourself, in order to punish yourself.

put aside whether you “deserve” to feel good or bad. that’s not your job anyway; you’re not Athena, and this moment is not about what type of judgment you need to lay upon yourself.

it’s about finishing your work.

(and if you try to get to the work-mindset, and then you hit a patch of self-hatred and slip back into that swamp for a second, don’t punish yourself for that either. this is also not useful to the task, which is to finish the work.)

(later, when the work is done and handed in, and you have some time to breathe again and reflect on how gross it feels to pull another near-all-nighter, that is the time to--not tear yourself apart, but calmly reflect on how you could maybe prevent or at least decrease these adventures. calm reflection will be easier when your brain isn’t screaming DANGER anyway.)

2. have you had any water recently? fill up a cup or a mug and drink some water.

3. pick whatever’s the most urgent. set everything else aside for a moment; give yourself permission to not even feel bad about that stuff.

set a timer for fifteen minutes. tell yourself, “all i need to do is work on this assignment for fifteen minutes, and then if i need to, i’ll let myself take a five-minute break.” if the timer goes off and you’re in the zone, keep going until you feel your attention slipping, then reset your timer for that five-minute break. get up, pace around, stretch, make a cup of tea. when the timer goes off, set another 15 minutes of task-time and so on.

(i stole the timer trick recently from a youtube channel about adhd stuff; it was not a strategy i had as a student, but it’s useful in adulthood. so much of the time with a panic spiral, the most important thing is just bypassing the fear-based avoidance and tricking your brain into getting started.

4. if this is about studying, and not about assignments, that the most efficient way to internalize information is to reinterpret it in your own words, as if explaining to someone unfamiliar with the concept, and then to write that out, by hand. also, when studying tonight for a test that’s tomorrow, please disregard item 5 about staying up all night. sleeping before a test is as important as studying before it. study efficiently as possible, and then allow yourself a decent chunk of sleep. never pull an all-nighter to study for a test happening the next morning. you will hate your own consciousness.

5. there comes a point, when you are working on a big paper due the next day, where you realize, ‘ah, okay, i will not really be sleeping tonight. tomorrow is going to be a tired day.’ don’t shame yourself for that, either. accept it. make your peace. you are not scum if you don’t manage any meaningful sleep tonight. tomorrow is a new day, and probably you’ll be able to find time in there for a nap.

also at this point, i think it’s okay to at some point allow yourself like a fifteen-minute break (between periods of being productive) to just blast a loud, upbeat song that is kind of tangentially related to what you’re working on* (headphones if you have a roommate or if it’s after quiet hours) and dance around your room like an idiot. sanity is a strange beast, managed in strange ways.

*ex. for a gender and the arts class, once i wrote a paper discussing the portrayal of Fantine being pushed by class and gender inequality towards a life of prostitution in the novel Les Mis, and comparing it in tone to the musical Les Mis, exploring how the music and staging did or didn’t seem to match Victor Hugo’s intent. (in the height of the most recent surge of Les Mis fandom, you could find better meta on the fucking sidewalk. but i got an A- i think.) anyway, my themesong that night was ‘the fallen’ by franz ferdinand. (which is ironic, because it’s much more of a bahorel song.)

if what you really need is some emotional hand-holding, you could instead opt to listen to the gentlest song you can find, while curled up in a ball. pick something personally relevant that will be soothing to you. if you’re blanking, there’s always the iron and wine cover of ‘such great heights.’ (you’ll still want to set that timer, because this can slide back into procrastination if you’re sad or tired enough.)

6. remember that the amount of work you have ebbs and flows. however bad it is right now, this too shall pass.

7. more on the ‘general maintenance’ end, and not the ‘oh god everything is on fire’ end of stress--my life has gotten much easier since i started programming into my phone calendar everything i need to do and when i need to do it, AND setting alarms to remind myself like an hour beforehand.

8. one more reminder: don’t beat yourself up for those moments when it all feels like too much. there’s a reason why most post-graduation adults still have college stress dreams.

#mental illness cw #Anonymous

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amorremanet · 7 years

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2, 10, 42, 47

asks for fanfic writers

well, no. 10 and no. 42 are over here, but!

2. things that motivate you

* The stereotype that autistic spectrum people are only good for STEM-related things. Like, for all of the folks on the spectrum who are good at STEM things, that’s great and I wish them all the best — but I suck at math and I can’t do anything science-related without turning it into, “how can I make a sociopolitical sci-fi critique out of this” or, “but do gay aliens believe in me,” so nah, I’m gonna pass on doing anything STEM-y.

I’d much rather give a big middle finger to everyone who has this ridiculous notion that autistic spectrum people are completely and utterly uncreative, and that we are only ever good for STEM things, and I’d like to do it by being successful in my chosen creative pursuits, please and thank you.

* Tangentially? Temple fucking Grandin. I don’t actually have any problems with her, herself — but I have a lot of problems with how allistic people hold her up as The One True Way To Be A Successful Person Who “Suffers From” Autism™ and how about fuck that, no. I want to be a successful autistic writer who is nothing like Temple Grandin, apart from both of us being white autistic women/dfab people who are going to be identified and treated as women by other people irl regardless of any wibbly wobbly messy gender feels on our part.

* Talking with people about my projects. On one hand, it’s a way of getting feelings kind of like validation. On the other, and way more importantly for me? I love getting feedback from people, or hearing the questions they come up with — like, on NYE, my aunt and I chatted back and forth about my novel while playing a weird card game with one of my cousins, and Aunt Kelly asked some questions that got me to put a few ideas I’ve been playing with into words more concretely, which was super-helpful — and I get a lot of motivation to work from getting jazzed up about things through talking with people.

* Totally a petty thing, but? Getting cranky with JK Rowling over all of the Good Ally Cookies she doesn’t actually deserve to claim, or all of the characters of hers who Deserved Better (lol, uh. today, my therapist learned that I get Upset about Percy Weasley very easily and about my longstanding hate-on for his parents, and bless her heart, when I went, “uh, I just over-identify with Percy Weasley a lot and there’s a good deal of projection going on here but I also don’t think I’m wrong,” she kinda smiled and nodded and went, “I can tell :)” — she’s great, I love her)

or how, even ignoring all of the #Problematic things about her body of work in the Potterverse, there’s SO MUCH GOOD SHIT in the HP series but she’s so clearly invested in the plot as she envisions it and the story she wants to tell for Harry, to the exclusion of all else, that she ends up completely short-changing basically every other character who is not named Severus Snape or Hermione Granger (most of the time, but not 100% of the time)

Like, I’ve said it before and I will say it until everyone is completely sick of me saying it, then I will continue saying it anyway: JKR views all of her characters — barring Harry, and sometimes Snape and Hermione — as plot devices more than she views them as characters.

She’s a bit better about some of them (Remus, Sirius but not as much as Remus, Ron and Luna but not as much as they deserve, Neville and Draco but not in the ways that they deserve)

but she’s really bullshit about most of them (this is not a complete list, but: Cho; Ginny; Cedric; Tonks; Fleur; Albus, Aberforth, and Ariana; Voldemort — not in that I need her to be sympathetic toward him but ffs, some 101-level consistency in his characterization would be nice; Kingsley; Percy; Wormtail; James; Lily;

Lockhart — “I’m not bitter about JKR’s ableism and victim-blaming with regard to Gildylocks,” I say bitterly, with a bitter expression, while hanging up informational posters about how bitter I am; Andromeda and Ted — deserved better, this is not a question or a debate, I want to say that it’s not even an opinion, but tbh, I know that it is, so hmph; Regulus; Barty Crouch Jr. because he is my Favorite and I can’t make this list without mentioning him;

Bellatrix — again, I don’t need her to sympathize with Bellatrix because how about no? but Bellatrix Black Lestrange is one of the shittiest villains I’ve ever read, in terms of HOW she was written, and I think a lot of the flaws in how JKR wrote her could have been remedied if she actually did anything to make Bellatrix a fully realized character, which would’ve made her a more effective and meaningful villain, and not a shrieking Saturday morning cartoon caricature;

Molly and Arthur — I’m not going into full detail about why I hate them today, you lot can just go read my tag on the subject if you want to know, and I don’t think that JKR’s “plot device first, people second” method of characterization is the only problem? But I think it’s a major contributing factor to The Problem Of Molly And Arthur, because she presents them as this image of Idyllic Domestic Perfection even when their actions and the internal fabric of the Weasley Family, don’t support that claim, and it sucks)

—basically, JK Rowling motivates me by fucking up a lot, because she was one of my idols as a kid and as a teenager, and she was a relevant and immediate source of inspiration because Oh My God You Can So Too Write Novels For A Living And Make A Difference In People’s Lives, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that she saved my life a few times, albeit mostly in indirect fashions…… but she fucks up a lot, and this is motivating for me because it makes me want to do better than her.

It’s not even exclusive to HP fic, either. Like, she’s one of my biggest sources of motivation to work on my novel and put thought and love and heart into making it the best that it can be — because I want to do better than her and even if I never have her kind of money (which lol, never gonna happen), I still want to beat her at something. Once I earn it, I will happily accept beating her at artistic integrity and commitment.

Is it petty? Yes, definitely. But hey, man, fish gotta swim, dogs gotta eat, and sometimes, I gotta think about my issues with JK Rowling to remember that I need to do better than her and motivate myself to do the work

* You know those, “do it for her/him” memes based on that one thing from The Simpsons that people make with their fave characters and/or celebs? Yeah, I kind of want to make one for myself with Oscar Wilde. Because there’s a lot about him that wasn’t ever perfect (he was a white guy in Victorian England, even accounting for his Anglo-Irishness, so…… yeah), and there are several points on which I don’t agree with him (like, for example: if you are such a shit to your wife that your boyfriend, who is so completely up his own ass that it’s a miracle he hasn’t found a way to Narnia, notices and calls you out on it? I’m kinda thinking that you might want to reassess how you treat people and stop being like that, bub)

—but I also want to be a fabulous gay Slytherclaw social satirist who uses that #aesthetic and the popular tropes of the day to do my own thing and redefine outside the box, and hey, if I ever get a, “wit and wisdom of…” book published with some of my coolest quotables in it? That would be an awesome bonus.

* “Okay, but seriously: how obvious can I be that Yael and Elizabeth are a big, ‘fuck you’ to Marvel about all of their queerbaiting with Charles and Erik before I can get sued for it? Because while Yael and Elizabeth are still characters in their own right, their original inspiration was, ‘hey, what if I flipped the bird to Marvel about all of their fucking queerbaiting with Charles and Erik, and did it with extra lesbians? that’s be pretty fucking cool,’ and I don’t want to be sued, but I also don’t want for my point to be missed here”

—or more generally, “I can’t die before I finish my novel, I have a lot of people to piss off and call on their crap through the magic of the written word *makes a sparkly rainbow with my hands like Spongebob going, ‘imaginaaaaaaaation!!! :D’*”

* So, there’s this one bit in Dry, Augusten Burroughs’ memoir about the early parts of his struggle with alcoholism and addiction. In his rehab, one of their assignments for group therapy is to write letters to people in their lives and feel their feelings about these relationships. He writes to Pighead, his best friend/“it’s complicated,” who is HIV-positive.

Reading the letter at group, Augusten finds himself crying, then shares the whole tangled-up backstory that he and Pighead have together, from how they first met on a phone-sex line, to how Augusten fell hard in love with him, to how they were friends with benefits and then he told Pighead that he was in love with him and Pighead plays the, “I love you but I’m not in love with you” card (that is verbatim what he says in the book, and the way Burroughs reads it in the audiobook kills me every single time), so Augusten dates other guys and tries to fall out of love with Pighead, only for Pighead to come see him first when his HIV test comes back positive and realize that he’s In Love with Augusten only, “after he became diagnosed with a fatal disease”

—which gives us the great line, “Part of me felt deep compassion. And another part felt like, You fucker.”

(Which is seriously one of my top ten lines in all literature, ever. tbh, it’s probably top five, but the top ten list would be hard enough to come up with to begin with, and I’d have to parcel things out into Poetry, Prose [possibly split into Fiction and Nonfiction, at that], and Dramatic Writing just to get it down to ten things on each list, and? It’s just a perfect line, oh my god)

At the end of it, Augusten has a moment with Kavi, another one of the patients at his rehab, who is addicted to cocaine and sex. Kavi tells him about how he left his lover who was HIV-positive after his diagnosis, so that he wouldn’t be the person getting left for once, and about how he feels like cocaine never leaves him. And we get: “Suddenly, I want to drink.… I don’t want to drink in a jovial ‘Highballs for everybody!’ way. I want to drink to the point where I could undergo major knee surgery and not feel so much as a pinch.”

I just.

There is so much about this section of the book that fucks me up so hard, but in ways that I love so much — and there’s a lot that I love about it for a lot of reasons, but like?

Speaking entirely with my writer hat on right now?

That part is just immaculately written. Every word is perfectly chosen, and they are strung together just right. Burroughs chooses the exact right images and scenes to characterize his and Pighead’s developing relationship, and his moment with Kavi, and it’s just

This part of the book makes me remember why I write. Because I have been reading and rereading this book since high school — I have had my battered up and taped together paperback copy with the yellowing pages since Easter 2005 — and this part STILL fucks me up, every. single. time. The audiobook version of it still fucks me up every. single. time.

Back in high school when I first read it, it hit me so hard because I had a habit of falling in love with girls who were straight and/or just did not like me back (and it would get worse, because the girl I was in love with who dared me to write D*rarry just to see if I could? Would go on to put me in the position of being her Girl Friday while I got to watch her love everybody but me, and praise the creative work of everybody but me, and go on about how two of her other friends were totally brilliant and misunderstood creative geniuses because they were incomprehensible and it was totally bourgeois for me to want to write to be understood but it was okay she knows I’m ~mainstream like that, but then still call on me — which made the whole Augusten/Pighead thing hurt so much more for me because I was kind of her, “I love you, but I’m not In Love with you”)

(I will say this about that relationship: I didn’t handle it well, either. I was petty and jealous, and waaaay more damagingly? I hadn’t yet grasped the idea that you sometimes have to just let people be messed up at you about the shit they’re going though without trying to fix everything for them, especially when there’s nothing that you can actually do to fix it. In retrospect, it’s kind of hilarious that I loaned her a copy of Perks of Being A Wallflower that I never saw again, because the whole idea that you can’t just constantly put someone else’s needs before your own and call it love, and the related concept that doing this is actually kind of a form of selfishness, in a way?

………yeah, that was VERY relevant to how I handled that relationship, and she rightfully called me on a lot of shit related to those ideas, and I spent a lot of time having an unfair chip on my shoulder because I was jealous on one hand, and indignant about how her other friends got to be Real Artists™ because their shit was incomprehensible but I got to be a Poser Artist™ because I wanted to be understood and not just fap around with some neo-Dadaist nonsense — and as seen here, I still do have a chip on my shoulder about Dadaist anything, but in fairness, I’d have that with or without any of this story because Dada is the worst — and I’m not saying that I was totally pure or innocent in anything here.

But at the time, I cried a lot over Augusten/Pighead feels because I felt that whole, “I love you but I’m not in love with you” situation and trying to fall out of love with someone only to crumble when they needed you and resent them for needing you but hate yourself for resenting them — I felt all of that so hard.)

My appreciation for this part of the book has evolved and changed over time, and it’s deepened — as I’ve learned more about LGBTIQ history, I’ve come to appreciate the context of the story more and gain more of a sense of reverence for the LGBTIQ people who came before me and actually fought through the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and it has changed how I read this part of the book more than anything else (c.f., my passive-aggressive addition of the REST of the quote to one post of the, ‘deep compassion vs. you fucker’ part because I was really annoyed with a bunch of straight people who were reblogging it without the full context and acting like they actually had any idea what it’s like to be gay and in a situation like Augusten is with Pighead here) — and I just

The biggest thing about this part of the book that’s made it stick around for me? is that no matter how I’ve appreciated it at any point, and no matter which parts of it have been the most important to me at any given moment, and no matter WHY it’s fucked me up — it’s still fucked me up so hard every. singled. fucking. time…… but in a way that has always made me feel a lot less alone in the world

It’s sort of similar to something that one of my fiction profs in undergrad once said about creating characters: we were talking, in one of our biweekly one-on-ones, about a story I’d brought in with one of my more off-putting characters (his name is Emerson, he’s an abrasive little shit who does a lot of very fucked up things and was kind of influenced by the Kurt/Karofsky plot back in season two of Glee because that was happening on TV at the time and I had a lot of feelings about it that I didn’t have any other way to deal with because I didn’t want to write Glee fic about all of it. He was more similar to Karofsky than Kurt)

I was convinced that everyone would hate him (not least because he an asshole to basically all of the other characters and assaulted the guy he had a crush on while he was high). Instead, he was actually really popular and one of my classmates, who I admired because her writing was so lyrical and confident and she was a great person, said that she found herself identifying with him, especially during some of his worst moments in that draft. While I was boggling about this, Professor Lucy said that one of the reasons why Emerson went over so gangbusters in workshop was that, instead of going the route of creating a tabula rasa character like Stephenie Meyer wrote Bella Swan to be, I’d given him so many clearly defined character traits and behaviors

According to Professor Lucy, the specificity is what makes it easier for people to identify with characters and feel for them, because it makes them more fully realized. (The, “according to” is just for the sake of attribution because this is a point that I’ve taken to heart and that I do totally agree with Professor Lucy about.) And I feel that a lot with the Augusten/Pighead part of the book because it’s so specific and it’s so grounded and it’s so REAL

And that’s a huge part of why it’s always gotten to me emotionally, and why it’s stuck with me after all this time, and why it’s consistently made me feel less alone and irreparably freakishly weird

Anyway, this got way longer than I intended to get, but the ability to affect someone so deeply with your work — that’s a responsibility that I take very seriously when it comes to writing, with regard to all different aspects of how you can possibly do this with the written word — and this part of Dry is such a source of motivation for me because it’s such a great example, for me, of How To Do An Emotionally Affecting Writer Thingy Well

I use technical language like this because I am such a Serious Business Writer, oh yes I am

47. how many unfinished ideas/stories are you working on at the same time?

I usually don’t count, because it’s usually a lot and not all of them are really guaranteed to ever be properly finished, oops.

#memes for ts #mine: personal #actual about me #mine: writing #mine: asks #writing is hard #fandom shenanigans #actuallyautistic #opinions for ts #jk rowling is not a gift #about me: if i were psychic do you think i'd be writing #about me: slytherin pride #augusten burroughs #i just have a lot of feelings #alcohol cw// addiction cw//#Anonymous #asks for fanfic writers

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