#she said no one really understands the apostrophes and that it is probably for the best if I never use them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mrs-theirin · 3 years

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understanding.

so uh this originally started as “hating rebecca hours”, then it was loving nate hours, and then suddenly at the last second it became.......mutually respecting adam hours??? so here we are. @magebastard this one’s for you <3

calliope langford x nate sewell / calliope & adam du mortain, 2585 words. mommy issues paired with getting to know your stuffy leader better (also on ao3 <3)

The apartment is quiet.

Mind-numbingly quiet, actually.

“Stay home and enjoy yourself,” Tina had said, practically pushing Calliope out the door, a wide smile plastered on her face that said if you don’t go home right now I will end you. Even Verda came out from the lab to say goodbye, his gentle eyes hardened in a way that let her know there was no fighting him.

She needs something to do. The apartment just isn’t the same without Farah’s laughter, Adam’s groans of distaste, the irritating clouds of Morgan’s smoke—which still lingers on everything she owns. Honestly, she’s going to take Morgan’s cigarettes and shove them somewhere unpleasant—and Nate’s warm, calming presence. She debates sending him a text, maybe asking him for coffee, but the idea leaves as quickly as it came.

He’s probably busy. She’s sure he has more important things to do than—

Im bad at this texting thing. Coffee

Calliope laughs. Before she can respond, another text from Nate comes in.

That was supposed to be a question. I cant find the apostrophe or question mark. I would like to have coffee with you.

Another text, separate from the last.

Now, if you can. I heard you were sent home from work and I know how much you like the pastries there.

Her heart races at the thought of Nate frantically typing away at his phone, confused but determined to send her a text. She must admit, it’s a hilarious image, and she laughs as she sends her response.

relax and look for the “123” on the left of the keyboard. you’ll find all your punctuation needs there. and yes, i’d love to go get coffee. meet me there?

Ah! Found it. Thank you. And no, I’m outside your apartment.

Calliope straightens, deigning to push aside the curtain and peek out at the sidewalk. Sure enough, Nate stands awkwardly outside, staring down at his phone. His gaze flickers up as her hand makes the curtain dance, and he waves politely. She waves back. She mouths “be right there” and pulls away, cursing herself for looking outside in the first place. Did he just run here? Was he just outside her apartment when he sent the original text? Did he just assume she would say yes?

She rushes to her bedroom, ripping the nicest—and hopefully subtle—thing she owns out of her closet and throws it on, stopping in front of the mirror to undo the messy bun she has her bright orange hair in and tussle it into something appropriate. She glances at the panicked look in her eyes, and tries to calm down. What is she freaking out for? It’s just Nate.

I would fight through any form of technology if I knew you were on the other end.

Nate, who can make her face flush with just a few words. Nate, who towers over her, his warm brown eyes staring into her soul. Nate, who is patiently standing outside waiting to take her to coffee. She tries not to hold out too much hope that it’s a date.

“Hey!” she says when she finally makes it outside, unconsciously taking too large of a step and standing uncomfortably close to him, which she quickly rectifies by inching backwards. They both laugh nervously. “Did you—”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Nate rushes out, his face flushing. “It’s a beautiful day out.”

She accepts the obvious lie with a face full of heat. “Let’s go then.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She loves the way he laughs.

At Haley’s, he relaxes; his shoulders slouching, his gaze softening. He is no longer scanning every person on the street, trying to gauge if they’re a threat. He is talking and he is joking and he is smiling and he is laughing. And every time he throws his head back to laugh at some stupid sarcastic joke she makes, she melts.

He sighs dreamily, then faces her with soft, kind eyes. “I really missed you, Calliope.”

Her heart thumps in her chest. “I missed you too. You could’ve called, you know.”

His smile fades. “I wasn’t allowed to. The Agency thought it was better if we just...left you alone for a while.”

“So I could recover?”

Nate turns away, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah. That’s it.”

Before she can ask him to elaborate, she hears a familiar clack of heels behind her. Her body tenses. “Calliope,” her mother’s voice says, clear and professional, though surprised. She wasn’t expecting her daughter to be here.

Calliope doesn’t even turn. Her hand clenches around her coffee and she clears her throat. “Rebecca.”

Something in her dies when she sees Rebecca take the seat next to her. It is crushed to ash as she turns to Nate, who is smiling kindly at Rebecca, ordering another pastry for her, inviting her to stay longer than Calliope prefers. Her mother hums gently. “Coffee date?” she asks, though there is something else in her voice. Something resentful. Something...cautious.

“And what if it was?” Calliope mumbles into her coffee, as Nate replies, “Oh no, just catching up.”

“You should be careful about how much time you spend in the open, Agent Sewell,” Rebecca offers, and it’s obvious why she’s saying it. Calliope begins to shake, as she always does around her mother, and washes her resentment down with her coffee. The warm liquid contrasts the coldness of her bitterness.

It wasn’t always this way with Rebecca; there was a time where they laughed and smiled and shot each other with water guns. But eventually laughter dies out, smiles fade away, and water guns change to Glock 22s. Love changes to resentment. Dads die.

She understands why secrets were kept. She hates that Rebecca doesn’t understand why she would be upset by the secrets that were kept. The way Rebecca’s eye twitches when Nate leans into Calliope is sign enough on its own. Can’t even be happy with the circumstances she has, apparently.

“Of course,” Nate says, professional as always. “Understood.”

“Let the man...or, vamp, live,” Calliope retorts. “We’re just having coffee.”

Rebecca presses her lips together tightly. “Calliope. Do I need to remind you why you’ve been wearing turtlenecks for months?”

She chokes on her coffee, slamming the cup down on the counter, the paper crunching in her hand. Typical of her mother to remind her of trauma, trauma that deeply affects her, as if it’s just a statement she can throw out at any given moment, like a quick anecdote or conversation starter. How can one look at their daughter having her neck torn out by a killer vampire and think, “This will be good for future scoldings”? And her scoldings, well, of course they aren’t scoldings, they’re concerns. Worries from a concerned mother. A mother who was so concerned about her daughter that she left for years with no contact, leaving the local librarians to raise Calliope.

Calliope tenses as she feels a hand on her shoulder, but deflates when she realizes what side the hand is on. Nate squeezes her shoulder affectionately, and she cannot thank him enough for being a rock. If Rebecca is the storm—cold, predictable, unrelenting—then Nate is the hearth; warm, welcoming, reassuring. He smiles softly at her.

“Of course you don’t,” she finally speaks, subconsciously scratching at the scars. “But considering I’ll be working with the Agency again soon, getting coffee won’t matter much, will it? Or are you trying to say that I can only put myself at risk if I’m not having fun?”

Rebecca’s eyebrow twitches as she sighs. “I’m only trying to look out for you—”

“No, you aren’t.” Her voice is stern, but quiet. Don’t want to draw too much attention. That’s the way it’s always been, right?. “You’re looking out for yourself and your reputation as a ‘good mother’, but it’s all crap anyway. If you wanted to preserve that, you wouldn’t be begging me every 5 seconds to tell you you’re doing a good job.”

“Calliope,” Nate gently warns, and she slowly shrugs his hand off of her shoulder. Now is not the time for another one of those sad, soulful looks he gives her when she argues with Rebecca. She doesn’t have the effort.

Rebecca’s lips are thinned again, in that disappointed scowl Calliope’s seen so much of since this whole Agency business started. “Sweetheart,” she starts, and Calliope is already cringing away, already preparing herself for whatever pandering crap Rebecca is about to spew. “I want you to be safe.”

“But not happy, clearly.”

“Calliope Langford.” Rebecca’s voice is harsh, but it only manages to enrage Calliope more. Her mother isn’t stern often, usually grabbing for the ‘soft and meek’ route, but on the occasion she does show annoyance, it’s never a pleasant feeling. Not because it upsets Calliope, but because she knows it’s a ruse. If she holds out, her mother will give in, because they both know she can’t stand being the bad guy (despite making herself the bad guy in every single conversation they have). “This is dangerous business. I don’t want to see you hurt. I do love you, whether you believe me or not.”

Calliope stands abruptly, slapping a $20 bill on the counter. “Why don’t you concern yourself less with whether I believe you, and more with whether you believe yourself. Come on, Nate.”

She starts to walk away, but hesitates when Nate doesn’t immediately follow, out of his seat but hunched over, like a kicked, obedient puppy. A twinge of betrayal tugs at Calliope’s chest, but she waves it off, instead holding up her hand, exasperated. She leaves without another word.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The phone rings.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Calliope sighs in exasperation, about to hit the red ‘end call’ button, when the phone finally clicks, a stern, professional voice coming through as clear as day: “Special Agent Adam du Mortain. Is this something important?”

She rolls her eyes, unable to keep the smile off of her face. “It’s just me, Adam. You don’t have to answer the phone like that.”

“Is this something important,” he repeats, though this time it’s less of a question.

She gives in. “I was wondering if you wanted to spar. You said you were...less than impressed with my combat skills, so why don’t you teach me?”

The line is silent for a moment, before Adam lets out a small huff. “Where?”

She blinks. She hadn’t thought of that. “...Here?” she offers, uncertain.

He sighs heavily. “Open the door.”

The call ends and she is rooted in place for a moment before she springs up from her couch, opening the door and peeking out. Adam is standing on her stairs, looming over her, and he raises a single eyebrow, making the action of entering her apartment. She steps aside and watches him analyze the living room. “Move the table,” he says.

“You’re the one with the super strength,” she jokes, closing the door behind her. “Can’t you do it?”

He glares at her. “Are you serious about training with me?”

She straightens under his gaze, nodding sharply. “Yes,” she responds, though it comes out like a nervous question.

“Then move the table. And slide the couch away too. We need plenty of room.”

She salutes him, tying her hair back into a high ponytail. “Can do!”

He groans.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Why didn’t you call one of the others?” Adam asks, crossing his arms and staring down at the panting, sweating Calliope, who is holding onto her knees for dear life.

“Oh, you know—” she says between heavy breaths. “You’re starting to grow on me.”

“Your form is poor.”

“Oh, I know!” she wheezes. “You actually told me that, a bunch of times, like two seconds ago.”

If she didn’t know any better, she can swear she sees a ghost of a smile threatening to appear on Adam’s lips, then it’s gone as quickly as it came. He regards her with complete and utter disappointment. “They would’ve been nicer.”

“Ah, but nice isn’t what I need. I need to learn how to fight.”

This time Adam does actually smile, though it’s still not quite a full smile, more like pride over seeing a lesson learned. He cocks his head to the side. “It could also be that you’re fighting with Nate.”

She hesitates for a moment before scoffing. “I’m not fighting with Nate. Fighting would require words, of which there were none.”

Her two seconds of hesitation were enough for Adam, because he nods his head sharply, and scowls. “Figure it out. I don’t want you two at odds next time we’re all together.”

“Why?” Calliope drags the table back to its original spot, collapsing on the couch with a heave. “I thought I was a distraction.”

He joins her on the couch, his posture as formal as ever, the distance an obvious sign of something. “You are a distraction. But you’re more of a distraction when Nate is running through his mind trying to make up a list of ways he can make it up to you.”

“Make what up to me?”

“You’d have to tell me that.”

The two stare at each other before Calliope sighs, smiling. “Thank you for coming over. You didn’t have to.”

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t wish to,” he simply says, and she rolls her eyes.

“Loosen up a little sometime, huh? I think it would do you good.”

“Then you and I will have to have differing opinions.”

A knock sounds at the door, and Calliope starts to stand, but Adam takes the lead instead, gesturing for her to stay put. She doesn’t put up a fight, after all, her body is aching and all she really wants is a nap right now, maybe a 3 day slumber. When the door opens, she strains her ears to hear the soft mumbles of whoever is at the door. Adam’s voice is strong, and overshadows the meeker, much quieter voice of the person—no, woman, that’s a woman’s voice—standing at the door. A few more minutes pass until Calliope finally hears Adam say, “I think you should leave,” and shuts the door. When he returns, she gives him a curious smile.

“Who was that?” she asks, and he shakes his head.

“No one important. It’s late, I should leave. Goodnight, Detective Langford.”

She stops him before he can zip out. “Adam, honestly. You can call me Calliope. I promise you won’t implode.”

He hesitates, gears in his head clearly turning, then gives in, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “Goodnight, Calliope. You did well.”

“You’re lying to me!” she calls after him, and he says nothing as the door shuts behind him. She lets out a soft, incredulous laugh. Well, at least one good thing happened today.

She heads to the light switch, peeking out of the window just for a second to try to catch a glimpse of the woman Adam had sent away. Her heart drops into her feet as she sees the car she knows too well. Rebecca sits in her car, taking a deep breath, and eventually starts it up and drives away, shaking her head. Calliope is frozen at the window.

It was Rebecca at the door. Rebecca, who Adam...turned away? Told to leave?

She takes a moment to suck in a deep breath, letting out a loud sigh. Huh, she thinks, turning off the light and heading to her shower, eager to wash off the grime and sweat of training. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.

#just for you marty <3 #calliope langford #detective x nate sewell #detective x nate #nate x detective #detective & rebecca #detective & adam du mortain #nate sewell #rebecca #adam du mortain #the wayhaven chronicles #wayhaven chronicles #wayhaven #twc #fic #quill's writing

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vfdbaudelairefile13 · 5 years

Text

Chapter Thirty-Two:

The One When the Baudelaires Learn of Their Lunch Date With Captain Sham

“It can’t be...” Klaus cried.

When you lose someone important to you, ‘it can’t be’ are often the words that run through your saddened head. It can’t be that I’ve lost someone so important. It can’t be that I will never see them again. It can’t be. It can’t be. These were the same words that the Baudelaire children had thought that day Mr. Poe told them about the fire. It was the same exact words Lemony Snicket himself thought every day since that night at the opera when he had lost the love of his life. It was also what he said when he learned about the fire that had claimed the same woman’s life. And unfortunately, ‘it can’t be’ was the same exact thing that I thought to myself when I lost everyone near and dear to me.

The Baudelaires believed, incorrectly, that they would never see their Aunt Josephine again, but it can’t be that you are interested in watching these two children suffer as her last words echo again and again throughout her empty and doomed house. It can’t be. I can grant you a courtesy that was not granted to myself or my associate when we researched the Baudelaire’s stay in the Anwhistle residence, which is granting you the chance to leave. Because this tale was only going to get worse.

Klaus decided to call Mr. Poe, hoping that he’d be of some kind of help to the children. What else could he do? He read the note aloud to Mr. Poe just to hear Mr. Poe tell him that he and Sunny can always rely on Mulctuary Money Management and that he’d be here in the morning.

He made his way to the library again, still clutching the note in his hand, he reread the note for the umpteenth time aloud.

“Stop! ” Sunny shouted at her brother from the desk chair he had sat her in, wiping her eyes. “ Stop! Stop! Stop!” Now you might think that this was Sunny’s complete thought, but when she yelled ‘stop’ several times at her brother, she meant, “Stop reading it out loud, Klaus! We already know what it says!”

“Sorry,” he whimpered, “I just...I can’t believe it,” he turned the note around for the umpteenth time. “There’s something funny about this note, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“What?” Sunny asked angrily. “Unhumor!” she replied, which meant, “There’s nothing funny about Aunt Josephine jumping out of a fucking window to her death, Klaus!”

“No, not funny as in a funny joke. Funny as in a funny smell. Why in the very first sentence she says ‘my life will be at it’s end’.”

“Now!” Sunny yelled shuddering, which meant, “Yeah, and now it is!”

“No, you’re not understanding me,” Klaus replied impatiently. “She uses ‘it’s’. As in I-T-apostrophe-S, which always means ‘it is’. But you wouldn’t say ‘my life will be at it is end,’. She means I-T-S, ‘belonging to it’. Remember Captain Sham’s stupid business card? She said he had made a serious grammatical error.”

“So?” Sunny replied. “Qui curat?!” which meant, “Who the fuck cares!? Seriously, who the fuck cares about grammatical errors when Aunt Josephine has jumped out of the window!?”

“Sunny, Aunt Josephine would have cared. That’s what she cared about most: grammar. Remember, she said it was the greatest joy in life!”

“Non satis!” she screamed, which meant, “Well, obviously it wasn’t enough! No matter how much she liked grammar, it simply didn’t matter!”

“But there’s another error in the note,” Klaus pointed out. “It says ‘inbearable’ with an I. When it should say, ‘unbearable’ with a U.”

Sunny looked at Klaus with a face of pure annoyance. “Unbear! You!” Sunny yelled pointing at Klaus, which was her way of saying, “ You are being unbearable, with a U,”

Klaus, without entirely thinking, angrily replied, “And you are being stupid, with an S!”

“Fuck you!” Sunny yelled at her brother angrily flipping him off.

Klaus opened his mouth to continue his argument with his baby sister, but then he realized who he was arguing with. His baby sister. Oftentimes, when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But that was the thing, Klaus was old enough to realize that this never truly helps. Plus, Sunny was already as miserable as he was. He sighed putting the note in his pocket and knelt down to Sunny’s level. “I’m sorry, Sunny,” he said, meekly. “You’re not stupid, you’re remarkably intelligent especially for someone your age.”

Sunny looked at her brother and frowned. “Sorry,” she replied. “No unbear,” which was her way of saying, “I’m sorry, too, Klaus. You’re not unbearable. Our situation is unbearable.”

Klaus picked up his baby sister and hugged her tightly. “I hope we’re clever enough to get us out of this situation. Aunt Josephine has jumped out of the window and left us in the care of Captain Sham, and I don’t know what we can do about it. Mr. Poe’s on his way, but I have my doubts.”

“Same,” Sunny replied.

Both children knew in their hearts that Mr. Poe was never any help. They knew their chances of Mr. Poe being of any help were rather slim. When the orphans lived with Count Olaf, Mr. Poe dismissed the blatant child abuse that they were receiving as Olaf acting in ‘loco parentis’. When the children lived with Uncle Monty, Mr. Poe refused to believe them when the children tried to explain to him about Olaf’s treachery.

“I wish I never read him that note. Then we could’ve torn it up and forged a new one in her handwriting leaving out the Captain Sham part.”

“Dificil?” Sunny asked, which meant, “But wouldn’t it be difficult to imitate her handwriting?”

“Maybe…it’s not her handwriting at all,” Klaus said smiling.

“Aha!” Sunny shouted.

“That would explain I-T-apostrophe-S. That would also explain ‘inbearable’.”

“Leep!” Sunny replied, which probably meant, “Captain Sham threw Aunt Josephine out the window and then wrote this note to hide his crime.”

Both children shuddered thinking about Captain Sham throwing Aunt Josephine into the same lake that she feared so much. Then the children thought about all the terrible things that Sham will do to them if they didn’t expose him for his crimes. The children waited for Mr. Poe in silence. Taking turns napping, hoping to rest and recharge themselves. But neither child was able to actually sleep peacefully since they were worried about how they were going to escape Sham’s clutches this time.

Finally, when Mr. Poe arrived, for once in their lives they were happy to see him. “Mr. Poe,” Klaus said. He intended to tell him immediately about their forgery theory, but as soon as he saw him, his words stuck in his throat. You see, tears are a curious thing, for like earthquakes and anxiety attacks, they can occur at any time, with little to no warning at all and with little to no real reasoning. “Mr. Poe,” Klaus said again and without warning, Klaus and Sunny burst into tears. Both siblings cried so hard that their shoulders shook with sobs, Klaus was crying so hard that his tears were making his glasses slip down his nose and Sunny cried so hard revealing her four sharp teeth. Mr. Poe stood there awkwardly as he put away his handkerchief. He was not very good at comforting people but he put his arms around Klaus and Sunny the best he could and murmured “there, there,” which is a phrase that some people murmur to comfort other people despite the fact that it doesn’t mean anything.

“Forgery?” Mr. Poe said coughing into his handkerchief. After his and Sunny’s crying spell, Klaus had wasted no time explaining to Mr. Poe the Baudelaire siblings’ theory about the note. Even showing him the shattered window in the library. “That’s a very serious charge.”

“Not as serious as murder,” Klaus pointed out. “Which is what Count Olaf did! He murdered Aunt Josephine and forged a note.”

Mr. Poe rolled his eyes. “Again with Count Olaf,” he said after another fit of coughing. “I understand that the two of you have had some horrible experiences, but I hope you’re not letting your imagination get the best of you. Remember when you lived with Uncle Monty? You were convinced that his assistant, Stephano, was really Count Olaf in disguise.”

Sunny rolled her eyes as Klaus sighed deeply, “But Stephano was Count Olaf in disguise!”

“Well other than the hole in the window, I can see no sign of a struggle or a break-in,”

“Dixi vobis!” Sunny screamed in reply, which meant “We’ve already told you! Count Olaf didn’t have to break in because he was in disguise and Aunt Josephine fell for it, hook, line, and sinker!” Klaus was quick to translate for her.

“Please, there’s no time for fishing jokes,” Mr. Poe replied, “There’s a very simple way to tell who wrote this note. We simply have to compare it to your Aunt Josephine’s handwriting.”

The two Baudelaires looked at each other in surprise. “That...that’s actually an excellent idea,” Klaus commented as Sunny looked at Mr. Poe confused as to how someone without a brain just had a decent idea.

“You are very intelligent children, but even the most intelligent people sometimes need the help of a banker.”

Klaus hurried to the kitchen, grabbing a piece of paper and walking back to the library. He handed the paper to Mr. Poe, “Here’s Aunt Josephine’s shopping list. We can use this to compare.”

Mr. Poe and Klaus looked down at the two pieces of paper. “Oh, look here. Look at the ‘B’ in ‘Baudelaire’ and how it matches the ‘B’ in ‘Bottles of water’. And look at the ‘C’ in ‘cold soup ingredients’ and how it matches the ‘C’ in ‘Captain Sham’. And look where she writes, ‘I think shopping is terribly dangerous’ and how it matches, ‘think of me kindly, even though I’d done this terrible thing’.” He explained to the Baudelaires.

Klaus looked confused at the note, noticing yet another error in the note. “It should be ‘ I’ve done this terrible thing’.”

“Yes, it is a terrible thing, and I’m sure it’s very upsetting to read. But once and for all, we can see the note is not a forgery.”

“You’re right,” Klaus said sadly looking at Sunny.

“But why would this Captain Sham person go through so much trouble just to place you under his care?”

“Sham!” Sunny yelled, which meant, “We’ve already told you. Captain Sham is Count Olaf in disguise!” Klaus translated for his sister.

Mr. Poe dismissed that thought entirely. “The point is that you children can’t just start jumping to conclusions. You’ve jumped to the conclusion that this note was a forgery, and now you’re jumping to the conclusion that a villainous man who swore he’d stop at nothing until he got ahold of your parents’ enormous fortune is involved in some complicated plot to get ahold of your parents’ enormous fortune.”

“You...you don’t believe us...again?” Klaus asked breathing heavily. “Mr. Poe you have to believe us when we tell you that Captain Sham is really Count Olaf. Aunt Josephine’s note might not have been forged, but there’s something suspicious about her note. It’s full of grammatical errors!”

“Children, disguises and grammatical errors, these are dire accusations, but they’re easily investigated,” Poe said as he began to cough in his handkerchief. “We can settle the whole matter over brunch.”

Klaus and Sunny’s eyes went wide.

“Brunch?” Sunny asked.

“Yes, it’s a word for the combination--”

“ We know what brunch means!” Klaus yelled.

“Oh, good, then you’ll have an easy time with the menu. Captain Sham’s invited us all to a restaurant to talk this over.”

The Baudelaires felt their hearts sink in their chests. “Y-you’ve already spoken with Captain Sham?” Klaus asked as he began to shake.

“Yes, by some strange coincidence, he called me accidentally, trying to reach a knife store to buy a surprise for some children he knows,” Mr. Poe said as Klaus put a hand on his own chest, shaking harder remembering what Olaf had done to him with an umbrella. “He was shocked to hear about Josephine’s death but overjoyed at the prospect of raising you children. What sailor wouldn’t be?”

“W-we’re not going to brunch with that villain!” Klaus screamed angrily. “We’ll stay here and examine her note,”

“Now, Klaus, we’ve already figured out that your Aunt Josephine was the one who wrote that note, which makes it a legal document. Someone’s last will and testament is an official statement of the wishes of the deceased. You were placed in Josephine’s care, so she had the right to assign you to a new caretaker before she leaped out of the window. It might be depressing, but it is entirely legal.”

“No!” Sunny shrieked.

“No...we won’t go live with him again !” Klaus shouted fiercely. “He’s the worst person on Earth!” He closed his eyes. All he could think about was his failed rescue attempt. His body shook violently where he had to sit down. “He’ll do something...he’ll do something terrible to us...I know it. I’ve lived it!”

“Fortunae!” Sunny yelled, which meant, “Klaus is right! All he’s after is the Baudelaire fortune! Please don’t make us live with that evil man!”

“You may not like Captain Sham, but there’s not much I can do about it. I’m afraid the law says that that’s where you will go,”

Klaus shook his head fiercely. “We’ll run away!”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” Mr. Poe replied sternly. “Your parents entrusted me to see that you would be cared for properly.”

“Shit!” Sunny yelled, which meant “You’ve done a shit job at it! I was shoved in a birdcage and Klaus was deeply affected by whatever Olaf did to him!” Klaus translated for Sunny still shaking.

“Baudelaires, you want to honor your parents’ wishes, don’t you?” Mr. Poe asked.

“Gaslit!” Sunny yelled, which meant, “Yes, we do...but…!” Klaus translated for her, still shaking his head at Mr. Poe.

“Then please stop making a fuss. Think of what your poor mother and father would say if they knew you were threatening to run away from your guardian.”

Both Klaus and Sunny knew that the Baudelaire parents, of course, would have been horrified to learn that their children were to be in the care of Captain Sham, but before the children could say this to Mr. Poe, he had moved on to other matters.

Sunny looked at her brother, who was a big mess. “Klaus?”

“I just can’t believe it. I was sure we were on the right track with the forgery idea. We know Captain Sham has done something here, we know he has, but he’s been even sneakier than usual.”

“Captiosus,” Sunny replied, which meant, “We’ll have to be smarter than usual, then. Because we’ve got to convince Mr. Poe before it’s too late.”

Before Klaus could reply to his sister, Mr. Poe ushered them to follow him into his car. Klaus picked up Sunny but Sunny could tell that he was concentrating on something. His eyes were focused and he was silent. Klaus noticed after awhile that Sunny was staring at him. “What?” he asked as he got into Mr. Poe’s car.

“Whah?” Sunny asked confused.

“You’re staring at me,”

“Cogitare?” Sunny asked, which meant “You’re thinking something! You must have figured something out. You’ve been reading Aunt Josephine’s note over and over and you had an expression as if you’ve figured something out. So what is it?”

“I’m not sure. I might have begun figuring something out. But I need more time,”

“No time!” Sunny said, which meant, “We don’t have any time, we’re going to have lunch with Captain Sham right now! ”

“Then we’re going to have to make some more time, somehow,” Klaus said determinedly.

“How?” Sunny asked. Klaus shrugged. He went back to think about Aunt Josephine’s note while Sunny began to think of ways to invent more time. She knew that she couldn’t invent time...that wasn’t possible. But maybe, just maybe she could figure out how to get her and her brother excused from this brunch that way they’d be able to find a way to stop Sham’s treacherous plan. Both children were lost in their thoughts and their fear. Klaus and Sunny were frightened about what was going to happen next. Both children knew that they could not end up in Sham’s care but they were afraid that they couldn't figure out how to get out of this situation.

You probably know of a plant called the Venus Flytrap which grows in the tropics and in the apartments of certain lonely people. The top of the plant is shaped like an open mouth with toothlike spines around the edges. When a fly attracted to the smell of a flower lands on the Venus flytrap, the mouth of the plant begins to close, trapping the terrified fly who slowly, slowly, slowly dissolves into nothing. As Klaus and Sunny arrived at their brunch with Count Olaf, a few minutes late because Mr. Poe missed the turn, they felt like the fly in this situation. It was as if the disastrous fire that took the lives of their parents had been the beginning of a trap, and they hadn’t even known it. They had buzzed from place to place, from Count Olaf’s house in the city, to Uncle Monty’s home in the country, and now, Aunt Josephine’s house overlooking the lake, but their own misfortune always closed around them, tighter and tighter, and it seemed to the two siblings that before too long they would dissolve away to nothing, the children felt as helpless as a fly as Count Olaf’s evil scheme closed around them. Unfortunately, for them, they would not learn for a long time that a couple of people were there, desperately trying to help them.

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astridthevalkyrie · 5 years

Text

call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me

‘did you really just send me off with the kim possible theme song’

‘if you just call my name!’ ‘wow, you’re a bit of a dork, aren’t you?’

Hiccup is plain. Astrid is italicized.

(12:10) the next time i see you i am going to KICK the SHIT out of you i swear

(12:12) ouch. harsh. but i’m assuming it was for someone else.

(12:13) oh

(12:13) fuck

(12:13) yeah

(12:14) sorry, that was meant for my friend

(12:14) she changed her number recently and i havent deleted this one yet

(12:15) what did she do to deserve you kicking “the SHIT” out of her?

(12:15) (mildly concerning, by the way)

(12:17) she borrowed my homework to copy

(12:17) said she would give it back before my class started

(12:18) guess who DIDNT have their homework when it was being collected

(12:21) yikes.

(12:21) yeah, i’d be mad too.

(12:22) (its not concerning if shes my friend)

(12:22) depends. WILL you kick the shit out of her?

(12:23) no, ill probably just

(12:23) i dont know

(12:23) punch her arm

(12:30) see, that’s much better.

(12:32) your welcome, stranger

(12:32) i’m happy my friend-punishing isnt interfering with your morals

*********

(12:55) hello?

(12:55) was it because i called you stranger?

(12:55) because like

(12:56) no offense

(12:56) you are literally just someone i accidentally texted

*********

(2:18) oh, sorry.

(2:18) i had lunch and then class started and the teacher is really strict so

(2:18) you know.

(2:20) (why would I take offense to you calling me a stranger?)

(2:23) i dont know, maybe you wanted nudes

(2:23) girls dont send strangers nudes

(2:24) are you saying that once you get to know me you’re going to send me nudes???

(2:24) are you asking for them?

(2:25) gods, no.

(2:26) good, that response was cock-or-block for you

(2:26) HA

(2:27) I refuse to believe you were gonna pass up the opportunity to mess with me if I wanted nudes

(2:28) okay, fine, pop quiz

(2:28) an old dude asks you for nudes

(2:29) how do you most effectively mess with him?

(2:30) hmmmm.

(2:30) what website is this on?

(2:31) omegle

(2:31) WHY WAS I ON OMEGLE

(2:30) you wanted to make friends

(2:30) considering my life so far

(2:31) that’s not far off for me, I’ll take it.

(2:31) you can’t send pictures on omegle, though.

(2:31) i feel like youve had some extensive experience with omegle

(2:32) I may or may not have used it a little during...ninth grade?

(2:32) oh god you poor thing

(2:32) anyway

(2:32) he asks for your kik

(2:35) oh shit uh

(2:35) lovergirl420

(2:37) THATS the best you can come up with?

(2:37) the sex bot gods have deemed you unworthy

(2:38) guess I’ll be able to go on tumblr then.

(2:39) omg

(2:39) youre pretty funny, you know

(2:39) thank you, I aim to please.

(2:41) if you had stuck around for the end, “lovergirl420’ would only send pictures of shaggy.

(2:43) nude shaggy?

(2:47) why would you think I have nude shaggy on my phone????

(2:48) fair question, however

(2:48) why would you have regular shaggy on your phone?

(2:49) i expected better

(2:50) bold of you to assume shaggy didn’t just appear on my phone himself.

(2:51) that’s how powerful he is.

(2:53) i give that meme TWO more days

(2:54) then you’re being merciful

(2:54) i give it...a few more hours?

(2:56) youre underestimating the shaggy meme fandom

(3:00) that is horrifying, holy crap.

(3:00) 1. did you have that on your phone (in which case, you have no right to judge me) or did you search it up?

(3:01) 2. thor threw his axe at purple mcwarlord when he had all the infinity stones and hurt him, HE is the strongest.

(3:06) youre telling me, i love him

(3:06) and no, i found it on google

(3:07) also “purple mcwarlord” lmao

(3:09) so, a list of things I know about you so far:

(3:09) you like thor

(3:10) you’re definitely on tumblr

(3:10) a number of dudes have been hurt because you messed with them on omegle

(3:10) you have no qualms about hurting your friends

(3:11) you hate apostrophes???

(3:14) ugh, im not gonna switch to the other keyboard just to put a little line between my letters

(3:14) don’t you switch for the comma?

(3:15) commas are worth it

(3:15) nice logic.

(3:16) i gotta go, my cousin is goading me into playing chess.

(3:18) cant say no to that

(3:18) but while youre gone

(3:18) heres what i know about YOU

(3:19) you suck at making fake kik names

(3:19) pacifist?? maybe??

(3:20) punctuation freak if i ever saw one

(3:20) more funny than the average person, honestly

(3:21) i’d like to keep talking to you if we’re not like, too far apart in age

(3:21) see, that was two apostrophes, just for you

*********

(5:34) I’m honored.

(5:40) did you win the chess game?

(5:42) I always do.

(5:43) oho, someones a bit of a braggart

(5:44) if you met my cousin, you’d understand.

*********

(11:03) I’m a 17 year old guy, by the way.

(11:04) and I’d like to keep talking too.

(11:20) huh

(11:20) im a 17 year old girl

(11:20) weird

(11:30) it’d be weirder if you were, like, 40

(11:32) i could be

(11:33) i could be a viking for all you know

(11:36) aaaand “viking” is your contact name now. thanks.

(11:39) so i guess were gonna keep talking?

(11:41) I guess we are.

(11:41) so, you know.

(11:42) call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me.

(11:43) did you really just send me off with the kim possible theme song

(11:43) if you just call my name!

(11:45) wow you’re a bit of a dork aren’t you?

(11:45) just a little bit.

(11:47) great. so youre “dork” in my phone now

(11:47) excellent.

(11:47) i’ll talk to you soon, viking.

(11:48) count on it, dork

#httyd #hiccstrid #modern au #hiccup #astrid #valkyrie stories

54 notes · View notes

kitanoko · 6 years

Text

In which Natsuo meets Yaoyorozu Part 2/2

As requested by @foxxhunter44! the second part for the fic and I just wanna say its been my hc for a long time that todo is scared of horror movies; more of Natsuo teasing Shouto and Momo HEHE once again I had fun writing this and thanks to those who supported the first part :D!

BEEP. BEEP.

Shouto stared at the speck flashing at the corner of his phone and saw a photo of Natsuo’s comical expression appear, replacing the usual picture of Yaoyorozu in his costume.

Seems like it’s a phone call from his older brother. MM. Rare.

“Hello?” The young boy spoke, pressing the phone on his cheek, “What’s up Natsu.”

“YO,” a playful voice came, “You got to your room already? Showered yet?”

Shouto tossed the damp towel on his head forward, aiming right beside the vase of purple flowers on the drawer.

‘Yes, I just showered.”

“Thanks for showing me around today. I had a lot of fun, I’m going to share the video with Fuyumi and Mom in a bit.”

“Great.”

Shouto could hear rustling on the other side before Natsuo continued.

“I guess we haven’t really spent much time together before nor have we ever had ‘guys talk’ before...you know....between two bros...I’d understand if you feel awkward---”

“No, that’d be nice,” Shouto said abruptly and sat crossed legged on his futon, “We could talk before I head to bed.”

Shouto had a feeling Natsuo must be grinning from ear to ear.

“Cool!” His older brother’s voice raised in pitch, “So...was the demonstrating hard on ya today?”

“Nope, just like usual,” Shouto determined after a thoughtful second, “Our team worked well together, just that Shouji’s team ended up getting the prize since...” The younger Todoroki let up an almost inaudible sigh, “....since I was overconfident and didn't listen to my teammates.”

He could imagine Natsuo searching for words.

“Ah, well you know, you did save Momo-chan after though. I was all like holy shit my brother’s so cool! I was pointing at you, telling everyone we’re related.”

Shouto rested his chin on his knee and figured he wouldn’t bother correcting him on the whole ‘Momo-chan’ issue.

“I was actually wondering if you could help me with something, Natsu.”

Was he sure he wanted advice from Kaminari the second? Shouto tapped a finger against his foot and pondered as his wet hair continued to soak the back of his V-neck tee.

“Yeah?”

“I want to make it up to her, I mean, Yaoyorozu, for making her go through that. What should I do that’s the best?”

Natsuo made a brief choking noise.

“Of course you should take her out and treat her to a relaxing day, my good little brother!”

Shouto cocked a brow at Natsuo’s unnatural speech as if he came out of a 1980s musical. And he almost sounded excited?

“Sure I guess.” The younger Todoroki muttered hesitantly, “Like bring her for lunch or something?”

“Something simple would do, Momo-chan seems like a simple person. Take her to the theatres, watch a movie, maybe oh I dunno...bring her home for dinner? You know Fuyumi is a great cook!”

Shouto couldn’t deny that his older sister should’ve been a chef if she had decided against her current career path. Her omelette rice rivaled the ones he had when he was visiting Osaka.

“Alright, thanks Natsuo, I’ll take your word.”

“Now go over and tell her in person right now!”

Shouto wanted to tell his older brother to calm down. “Right now? But its late.”

Natsuo huffed. “Yes, right now. It’s more sincere. Tell me how it goes. Fuyumi’s calling for me, guess she made some late night snack. Talk to ya later! Good luck!”

“Uh, okay,” The fire and ice user mumbled into the mic, “See you.”

The call had ended. Shouto scratched his head, putting the phone back to the charging station. Guess he had to go find Aizawa sensei first; after all, there were some strict rules in place in the dorms.

` The scent of freshly made earl grey tea lingered around her as she lied face first, smothering herself onto the pillow. Yaoyorozu muffled out a sigh, tension releasing from her sore, overworked muscles as Jirou pressed the ‘play’ button on the cracked screen of her phone.

“Michael Jones’ pianoscapes,” Jirou rested her elbow on her bent knee and said, “your favourite.”

“Thank you,” Yaoyorozu murmured and stretched both of her arms fervently upwards as if trying to touch the sky, “my mother seemed pretty impressed with me today so I’m very content with myself. But...”

The clink of Jirou’s tea cup was met with a perplexed expression as she sank further onto the mattress.

“But?”

“But my parents wouldn’t stop asking me about Todoroki-san and it’s been bothering me since!”

The short-haired heroine twirled her earphone jacks loosely and let out a lax giggle. “How DID it feel when Todoroki carried you though? Honest to god, I was really worried about you until I saw him, quite literally, FLY towards you on a bed of ice. SSSZZZHOOOOM.” Jirou zipped a flat palm across the air as if to imitate a takeoff. “It was like a scene from a K drama, you know?!”

“Jirou-san, you and my parents are sounding awfully similar now.”

“Hey hey,” the girl sitting opposite of Yaoyorozu raised a finger tenderly, “Just asking out of curiosity, I don’t have any other intention, unless you mean the intention of confirming whether or not you like Todoroki then you’re not wrong.”

“JIROU UGH PLEASE.” Yaoyorozu agonized as she tossed a beany baby at her best friend. The latter caught it with laughter. “We are definitely not like that, I LIKE HIM AS...”

“A FRIEND,” Jirou finished for her, while making imaginery apostrophes in the air, “I know your excuses Yaomomo, even his older bro was asking about you two. God how dense are you? And you’re supposed to be the most intelligent one in our class!” Yaoyorozu scrunched her nose in agitation, “Well I’m going to sleep so stop the....”

Two steady knocks howled against the door just then and both of the girls uncrossed their legs. It was probably Ochako returning her notes from the second class.

“Who is it?” Jirou called out.

“Uh, its Todoroki. ”

Yaoyorozu’s mouth pursed into a thin line.

Jirou turned her head towards the black-haired girl so fast that her earjacks slapped herself in the face. Oh man, Jirou’s probably cackling victoriously deep inside right now.

If only I could wipe that shit-eating grin right off your face, Yaoyorozu thought as her best friend started walking towards the door.

Shouto went silent on the other side as Jirou opened a slight gap, only enough to see his left eye. “Ooh you’re so dead Todoroki,” Jirou said looking quite proud of herself, “You know you’re not allowed here in the girls’ building.”

“I got special permission from Aizawa-sensei just now.”

Jirou stopped the door from widening any further with her knee. “Fine,” she said as she peered through the gap, “what do you want from us, are you here to say how you voted for Yaomomo again ‘cas gees Todoroki you’re getting real sappy nowadays.”

“JIROU-SAN!!!” Yaoyorozu yelled behind her friend, not leaving the comfort of her bed. This was getting ridiculously embarrassing! Though she and the other girls did do the same when Jirou first got together with Kaminari.

“Actually I just wanna talk to Yaoyorozu privately,” the boy informed in a nonchalant tone, “but if you two are busy I’ll leave.”

“Wait!” Yaoyorozu frantically flailed her arms as she tried to slip into her fuzzy socks, “Jirou please give us a moment?”

The earphone heroine rolled her eyes and released her grip from the doorknob. “You can have all the moments you want. I’ll go shower and get to bed then.” She paused and stared at Shouto who now took a slight step into the vicinity. “Just so you know, Yaomomo and I don’t keep secrets from each other so don’t think I wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

Yaoyorozu facepalmed and waved her hand, hurrying her best friend to leave them in peace. The latter returned a shrewd scowl and stuck her tongue out before heading out the halls, most likely awaiting the juicy gossip after.

“Todoroki-san please sit!” The black-haired girl stood up to fix up the nearby chair ridden with unworn clothes. Woops was that a red bra lying around? She quickly pushed it under the covers.

“What do you wish to speak to me about?”

The boy ran a hand through the white side of his hair and tried to hide the fact that he did indeed see that red bra. “Glad you aren’t asleep yet. Guess I should’ve texted you first but I left my phone in the room. I came to... apologize for today.”

Yaoyorozu tilted her head in a dainty manner. Apologize? For what?

He wasn’t sure if she was pretending to be confused but he cleared his throat and continued. “For making you hang halfway dead on the edge of a cliff. I take full responsibility, I should’ve accounted for the dangers but I didn’t.”

“That’s okay,” the girl answered, watching him lower onto the velvet-covered chair, “We all learn from our mistakes. That’s what makes us great heroes!”

She is so. dang. considerate. It literally HURTS to see her be so naive.

Shouto forced a smile. “But I still can’t help but feel bad for it. Let me make it up to you somehow? I’m thinking a movie and then dinner at my place?”

A blush creeped on her face as she curled a loose piece of her pony tail behind her ear. Shouto watched her dark eyes wander.

“Yeah okay, I’d like that,” Yaoyorozu finally said and took the last sip of her tea, “Ah, where are my manners, I totally forgot to pour you some earl grey tea!”

Shouto shook his head, pushing himself up from his seat, “It’s okay Yaoyorozu. I’m about to head out. I’ll get the tickets online and meet you tomorrow at the lobby around 2?”

“Ya sure!” The girl nodded her head earnestly and followed him to the door “I’m looking forward to it!”

“Night.”

“Night!”

She pressed the door to a close a tad bit too fast when she could no longer see Shouto’s shadow or hear his footsteps, and she bit her lip hoping she hadn’t disturb anyone’s sleep.

The girl skipped towards her bed after pinching herself. Ouch. Okay she wasn’t dreaming. Blood once again rushed away from her extremities and she felt numb. Numbingly happy that was! How was she supposed to sleep tonight knowing full well she had a date with Todoroki Shouto tomorrow?

She kicked her feet up and plopped satisfied onto her plushies, casually throwing one up into the air.

Tomorrow she’ll have to wake up early and pick something nice to wear.

10:02pm Shouto: I got tickets to A quiet place. some thriller

10:02pm Shouto: nothing else left so I had no choice.

10:08pm Natsuo: kk good! the theatre on 5th st right? have fun! I alrdy told sis u 2 coming over for din

10:08pm Shouto: ya thats the closest theatre. whats she making

10:09pm Natsuo: she said you have too much soba so shes making tomato and fish roe pasta. come back by 6

10:09pm Shouto: ok ttyl

“SIS!!” Natsuo screamed running towards her as she cleaned the dishes, “Shouto’s bringing Momo-chan to watch a movie tomorrow...”

“You’re not thinking of stalking them are you?” Fuyumi glared at him, “If Shouto finds out you will die a horrible death.”

The white haired boy pouted. “Aw man but I wanna see what’s gonna happen...I’ll be careful,” he took out his phone in a hurry, “Lemme get a ticket before its all sold out. Aight only one showing for that movie, thank god I dun hafta guess which time.”

He made a few taps. “Okay done. Wish me luck sis!”

Fuyumi rolled her eyes, a look of displeasure etched on her face as she flicked a soap bubble onto her brother’s forehead. “Just make sure you’re back for dinner you idiot.”

“Yaoyorozu, you ready to go?”

The fire and ice user had arrived exactly at 2pm but the girl awaiting him had gotten there even earlier. His heterochromic eyes did a casual up-down that she hadn’t notice; he quite liked the outfit she had on today--a plain navy blue top and a long white chiffon skirt. Very Yaoyorozu-like.

Mineta was standing at the corner of the room muttering something along the lines of ‘eff you Todoroki you big bozo thinking you’re so cool...etcetc’ but Shouto had completely ignored his grape-ass face.

“Todoroki-san! Ya let’s go, which movie are we watching today?” Yaoyorozu replied and donned a lovely smile, pearly teeth showing.

The boy gloved his hand into his pocket, pushing his nylon crossbody bag behind his waist, “A Quiet Place. Have you heard of it?”

Yaoyorouzu’s auspicious eyes lit up even more.

“Of course!” She answered him, a hand clutching her ivory handbag. She had a light bounce in her steps. “I’ve been waiting to watch this. I hope it’s not too scary.”

Shouto bit his lower lip. Shit. He didn’t even check what the heck the movie was really about.

“Uh, I don’t know,” he shrugged and said, inwardly chastising his own carelessness, “It’s probably not that bad.”

“Well if it was,” Yaoyorozu said, tongue-in-cheek, “You could always lean on me.”

The trailers weren’t on yet when they had arrived and luckily there were many seats still free. They chose somewhere not too close and not too far from the screen and ensconced right in the middle. Yaoyorozu had wanted popcorn and so Todoroki went to grab some (with extra butter, she had requested) before saying excuse me several times to get back to where they were sitting.

“Thank you,” the girl whispered as the first trailer finally appeared and took the crunchy snack off his hands. He wondered how much she was going to eat as she had already stuffed two handfuls into her mouth.

Lipids, he remembered, must be to maintain the lipids.

For a second he thought he had heard a familiar voice behind him but he shook it off and decided to prepare himself for the movie. Truth be told, he absolutely despised scary movies. He thought ‘thriller’ meant ‘thriller’ but now that he checked again, the word ‘horror’ was present right under the genre in the movie’s description box on google. Shouto inhaled deeply and ordered himself to relax.

3:00pm Natsuo: the movies about to start I'm sitting right behind dem, shouto bought momo popcorn what a gentleman

3:00pm Fuyumi: okok you think momo likes cheesecake? im at the bakery

3:01pm Natsuo: ya ok get cake pls if she doesnt like it ill eat it

3:01pm Fuyumi: haha

3:02pm Natsuo: why isnt shouto wrapping an arm around her its gonna be scary for godsake

3:02pm Natsuo: you think I should text him

3:03pm Fuyumi: NO u du

3:03pm Fuyumi: dumbass**

3:04pm Natsuo: fine shit I just kicked momochans chair ok gotta hide

"The guy behind me keeps bumping into my chair," Yaoyorozu said trying hard to lower her voice, chin pointing downwards. She was about to see who it was when Shouto turned around before she could.

"Sorry do you mind not kicking my friend's seat." Shouto deadpanned, twisting his shoulder over. He came eye to eye with a guy in a hoodie and sunglasses.

"Err sorry kid." Natsuo tried to sound more mature than he was, pulling onto his black hoodie. Did his white hair poke through? Hopefully not.

"K no prob."

Phew, Natsuo thought, good thing it's so dark here.

Shouto turned back to the screen wondering why the hell he looked so suspicious. He guessed some people just had incomprehensible fashion sense.

“AHHHH!!!” One of the childhood actors screamed on screen and Yaoyorozu leaned forward as if she wanted herself to be in the movie. Her hand missed the popcorn bag a few times before successfully stuffing another handful of buttery goodness in her mouth.

Fuckity fuck fuck, I want this to end!!! Shouto thought, hands sweating, eyes popping out of its sockets. His arms stuck together against his lap when a monster had jumped out of nowhere in front of him. He flinched with his eyes shut tight. Yaoyorozu was so focused that her hair didn’t even move. The boy opened one eye and saw from the slits of light reflected on Yaoyorozu’s eager expression that she indeed was in love with what was happening.

Alright, the character on the screen just got mulled to death.

Shouto took another gulp of air and tried to visualize himself in his room. His zen room. Eating cold soba. With tempura.

But just then, another shriek made him grab onto Yaoyorozu’s right arm almost instinctively. The girl placed his hand on her lap and with the other she stroked his forearm in a soothing manner as if to tell him to calm down.

This was not the way he wanted the date to go. Okay actually this was not a date. Not a date.

The young boy saw the couple beside them hugging tightly as if they’d die if they let go. He rolled his eyes.

“Todoroki-san.” He felt her hot breath against his ear and noticed she had closed the distance between them, making him shiver. “Are you alright?”

Her voice was just above a whisper and he mumbled a “uh huh.”

Yaoyorozu seemed content with that response and placed his hand back on his knee.

Dang it. He thought. I actually liked the way she was touching my arm. Fuck what the heck are you thinking Todoroki Shouto?!

The boy swallowed hard and figured there should only be another half and hour of torture left. He’ll manage. He’ll just close his eyes until then.

4:42pm Fuyumi: so hows it

4:42pm Natsuo: omg i just got out. horrible. it was scary af. i saw shouto flinch at least 100x

4:45pm Fuyumi: you both suck at watching horror movies

4:46pm Natsuo: ya i know, also now ive lost them ‘cas i went to the washroom

4:46pm Fuyumi: im guessing shouto didn’t see you

4:50pm Natsuo: ya not yet, im pree good at this

4:51pm Natsuo: ok I found them looks like they’re heading back to our place

4:52pm Natsuo: also wtfuck shouto has momochan as his wallpaper

4:52pm Fuyumi: ya hes had it for awhile, she let him use it so

4:55pm Natsuo: lmao

“WOOO,” Yaoyorozu exasperated, “That was amazing! I loved the acting!”

Shouto meekly smiled back. “Yes, that was...good.”

The girl noted the insincerity in his voice and puckered her lips. “I didn’t know that the great Todoroki Shouto was that afraid of horror movies.” Yaoyorozu’s teasing tone made the boy shoot her a stern glare.

“I’m just not great with jump scares.”

“Okay,” She hummed playfully, “Whatever you say. But all in all, thank you, I very much enjoyed it.”

“Cool, fulfilled the purpose then. I’m glad.”

A young boy donning a baseball cap and overalls pulled his mom over. His tongue and mouth were coated with chocolate.

“Mommy!” He cried, “It’s Shouto from UA!”

Yaoyorozu and Shouto immediately exchanged glances and the former suppressed a chortle. The kid tugged his mom’s sleeve again leaving tiny cocoa fingerprints.

“Say hi,” The mother encouraged.

The kid grew stiff. “Hel--Hello Shouto. I watched you fight before.”

Shouto rested his hand on his neck and his lips curved slightly, wondering what it was he was supposed to do. Wave? Shake hands? Also shouldn’t the mom clean up her kid?

“Would you like a picture with him?” Yaoyorozu cooed and crouched down to eye-level with the little boy who started to shuffle around his mother’s hold.

“You’re Creati,” he said, focusing on his shoelaces, “You’re cool too.”

“I’m sure my son would love a picture with both of you, if that’s okay?” The mother grinned and asked, “Come on, Kazu.”

Shouto answered with a meek ‘mm’ and shrugged. If Yaoyorozu wanted to, then he’d be fine with it. He touched the kid’s shoulder lightly and urged him to stand in between him and the creation heroine who was immediately beaming. The mother angled the camera carefully, finally deciding to shift an inch to her right.

“Say cheese!” The older woman called out and after what felt like several shots, she raised a thumbs up.

“These pictures are great, thank you very much. My son really likes UA and he hopes to one day be in it.”

Shouto extended his hand over to pat the kid on the back.

“Work hard.” The fire and ice user simply said, managing to at least sound somewhat friendly, and the kid almost had tears in his eyes.

“Thank you. See you and Creati again.”

With several waves, the two young heroes said their goodbyes.

“Kazu’s a nice name,” Yaoyorozu pondered for a minute, turning on her heels, “I like it. Hope we’ll meet him again and see what kind of hero he’ll become.”

Shouto could only nod in response. Observing Yaoyorozu’s motherly behaviour with kids was a scene to behold; she really does give off an approachable vibe that he decided was something to be admired.

The rest of the way to Todoroki’s house was a hodgepodge of silliness; Yaoyorozu laughed wholeheartedly when Shouto insisted that Bakugou would have for sure died if he were in the movie.

“It’s called A Quiet Place, Yaoyorozu,” Shouto began, “You think Bakugou wouldn’t have been attacked within the first 5 seconds? I swear he would be the one asking for death, screaming ‘COME ON DIE!!!!!’ while ten monsters came at him full speed.”

The girl coughed, choking on her own saliva, “Yes of course! He would also most likely push Midoriya-san to some luring trap. Oh poor Midoriya-san.”

The fire and ice hero gave a chuckle. It wasn’t everyday he had time like this with Yaoyorozu. She was probably the only one who could make him feel almost as though Endeavor had never existed.

Speaking of that, was his father going to be having dinner tonight? The thought immediately killed the mood. Although, he wasn’t sure if he should be thankful or not that his father did seem to favour Yaoyorozu. He saw the girl beside him tilt her head towards him.

“You okay, Todoroki-san?” Yaoyorozu had knitted her brows together when she noticed her friend’s sudden quietness.

“It’s nothing,” he lied, fist clenched,“Let’s get to the bus stop before we miss the next one.”

“Oh my god good thing I took the taxi,” Natsuo cried when he came back home, “ I did it, I was like a ninja. He didn’t notice anything.”

Fuyumi had already begun prepping the ingredients when the white haired boy had strolled in, folding his shades back into the holder.

“Good job dating master. If you could make yourself useful, please set the table.”

Natsuo scowled. “Alright sis, don’t hafta make fun of me.” He counted exactly five pairs of chopsticks before sliding the drawer back in. “If you were there you would have seen the way Shouto looks at her.”

“Yes I’ve seen it and hence,” Fuyumi started flinging the ladle towards the boy, steam coming out of it, “why I didn’t want you to interfere. BUT you did sorta make this date happen so kudos to you.”

Natsuo chuckled. “Yes and kudos to you for telling dad to come home for dinner. How'd you do it?"

He could see his sister grin mischievously.

“All I said was Shouto’s bringing his friend over and dad automatically assumed it was Momo-chan.”

Natsuo was impressed with how easy that sounded. “We make a great duo sis.”

“We would’ve had more fun if you’d just stop hiding at your college, Natsu,” Fuyumi said looking peeved as she took a taste out of the tomato sauce, and Natsuo could only answer with a monotonous hum. He did consider moving back but perhaps now wasn’t the best time. He just couldn’t get his head away from thinking about Touya.

“I’m back,” Shouto announced. The whiff of fresh basil and oregano filled his senses and his stomach let out a low growl. He took a step forward to make room for Yaoyorozu who slid the door to a close.

It’s been awhile since he’d return home and somehow he yearned to sit with his sister again just to enjoy casual tv with soba. Maybe deep down he was more family-oriented that he had thought.

After he gestured Yaoyorozu to leave her shoes beside his, Shouto did a scan. Nothing was displaced, even the medal he got from UA still hung above the clock.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Yaoyorozu spoke and bowed as she placed her hands gently in the mid of her skirt. “Thanks for having me.”

She remembered coming here long time ago, the chalky sound of the paper sliding doors reawakening those fond memories of when she used to help Shouto study math. He seems a lot better with it now; in addition to that, Yaoyorozu do not recall studying with the boy ever since he aced his calculus exam. She grimaced inwardly at the thought.

A wisp of white and red hair caught her attention.

“Hello Yaoyorozu-chan!” Fuyumi still had the same bookish demeanor completed with an amiable smile, “Welcome, I’ve missed you! It’s been awhile hasn’t it?”

“Yes it sure has been.” the younger girl replied and did another modest bow.

The fire and ice user had always felt unease seeing such formal mannerisms but with Yaoyorozu, it came as natural as the sky was blue.

“Sis, did you and Natsuo go out today?” he asked, somewhat distracted by his brother’s messily placed sneakers.

Fuyumi hesitated a laugh. “Oh yes Natsu went out for a job earlier and I had to go get groceries.”

“He didn’t help you carry it home?” Shouto inquired. Strange, Natsuo’s shoes still looked somewhat damp from the puddles outside.

“Uh, of course he did silly!” Fuyumi said with a slap of her wrist, “We came home together!”

Shouto shrugged and glanced at the girl who was now scrutinizing a potted orchid beside the foyer.

“Yaoyorozu,” he nudged, “I’ll take you to the dining room.”

“Oh ya, okay!” The girl said, straightening herself, her purse swinging as she did so.

“And I’m apologizing in advance if Natsuo scares you. He’s a bit over-reactive.”

“Don’t worry, I had a great chat with him last time!”

“Yeah that’s the problem, he misunderstands the relationship between us.”

Crap, he couldn’t retract his words now that he let it slip.

“Huh?” Yaoyorozu said, slowing down her pace, and the boy in front of him pulled the door wide open.

“Nevermind what I said,” Shouto groaned. Looks like there will be exactly 5 people in this dinner which meant his devil of a dad was going to be here soon as well. If there was something he hated more than having dinner with his dad was having dinner with his dad while Yaoyorozu was here.

The time before, his dad asked Yaoyorozu so many different questions it felt like she was here for an interview to join an internship under him. The time before that one, his dad actually gawked in respectful silence because he practically forced Yaoyorozu to a game of chess after dessert in which she won against him in less than 5 moves. Then there’s that one time when she spoke so passionately about the theory of relativity (because she just watched Interstellar the night prior) that both his sister and his dad looked utterly dazzled. She was a mine of knowledge and he wasn’t one to contest but the impressed grin on his dad’s usually ascetic face made him hurl.

“Something wrong?” His companion couldn’t help but ask and Shouto shook his head, stuffing his hands back in his pockets, eyes wandering as he lied.

“It’s nothing," Shouto answered, trailing off, "...I’ll grab you something to drink.”

Dinner was served at exactly 6:15. Yaoyorozu was seated between Fuyumi and Shouto while Natsuo sat across. Enji was late by a bit and it was highly likely that he had rushed home from work because of the occasion. For the life of him Shouto was confused why everyone seemed to be overly worked up by it. It wasn't like the queen was over for dinner.

Yaoyorozu was poised, legs folded, spine straight (the ballet lessons when she took when she was 8 was most likely the explanation) and took a sip of her miso soup. Shouto noticed she had rounded her delicate fingers around the steaming bowl with such precision that he contemplated whether or not Yaoyorozu had ever had the time to learn anything besides etiquette when she was a child.

There was a galling silence ever since his father had entered the room and finally Natsuo decided to step up.

"So Yaoyorozu-chan, how was your day today?"

He mentally did a somersault thinking his brother was going to let her nickname slip again. Face unchanging, Shouto figured the pasta needed a little more salt and reached for it.

"It was great! Todoroki-san treated me to a movie."

Was that a smirk on Enji's face? The fire and ice user tilted the salt dispenser and shook it a few times too many. He swallowed a gulp, dread pooling inside his stomach and grimaced when Natsuo nudged him with his knee.

"Shouto you took her to a movie?!" Natsuo said sounding fake as hell as though he wasn't the one who told his little brother to do it in the first place, "Which one?"

"A Quiet Place."

(For a second he wished they were in the movie right now, at least no one would have to talk)

Fuyumi hummed like it was a great choice.

"I heard it's scary," The woman tried to join the conversation, tipping over to her pasta, "Did Yaoyorozu-chan like it?"

"Yes I did! The premise was excellent, not to mention I actually felt scared. I believe Todoroki-san very much enjoyed it as well."

"Oh Shouto hates horror movies." Enji randomly popped in, the tofu in his mouth half-chewed. "I tried showing 'The Ring' to him when he was 3. Only weakness I'll allow him to have."

Good ol' Enji, ruining everything he's a part of.

"Maybe that's why. 'Cas he has childhood trauma." Natsuo slammed his miso soup bowl and emphasized.

Everyone had to stop chewing for a second to comprehend what was happening.

It was at that moment that Shouto sincerely had a need to face plant onto a plate of tomato sauce. Truly the only way for him to rest in peace.

"Dad, Natsu... now is not the time..." Fuyumi intervened.

"Why didn't you tell me you didn't like it?" Yaoyorozu's lips turned downwards looking like she had just gotten 95 instead of 100 on an exam. The light reflecting off her glistening eyes made her appear even more disappointed.

"As long as you liked it I don't mind," Shouto merely said while attempting to twirl the pasta up his chopsticks. If only he'd opted for forks instead.

At that, Natsuo seemed overtly appeased, gorging yet another broken up tofu with pieces of bitter yuzu stuck on it.

"So," Enji proceeded, "Yaoyorozu, you're interning with who again?"

Someone tape his goddamn mouth, Shouto grunted inside.

"Ms.Uwabami, sir," the girl answered without hesitation.

"Still?"

"Yes I've been learning quite a lot!"

Enji gawked. "Such a smart young lady like you should be interning with only the best. And I think you know who I'm talking about."

Yaoyorozu's gaze uplifted. "Oh yes! All Might, of course! Though he is no longer fit to battle anymore unfortunately."

Shouto choked, soup threatening to exit his nostrils. Natsuo and Fuyumi actually clammed up and Enji's fire moustache flared for a few seconds.

Did his female seatmate, the usual courteous, cordial lady of the Yaoyorozu family just shut his father up? Shouto clamped his hand against the coarse fabric of his pants to suppress the bouts of laughter that was about to flourish. His heart beat quickened and he questioned whether Yaoyorozu would ever stop surprising him.

"Ah, yes...All Might." His father still tried to redeem himself. His face looked rather heated now. "I was actually speaking for myself. I would like to extend an offer to you, Yaoyorozu, you could learn with my son, Shouto. I admire your courage and intelligence, a heroine like yourself would surely make great use in my agency."

"Thank you very much, I am zealous about such an opportunity but..."

"Yes?"

Yaoyorozu cleared her throat. "When I say I am learning lots from Ms.Uwabami, I'm not joking. She has shown me not only how to fight and protect citizens but also fun endeavors such as making ads and so forth."

Enji gritted his teeth. Natsuo and Shouto suddenly had appetite again.

"I believe 'appearing on tv' and 'modelling' are a waste of time and resources. But, it's beyond doubt that you would uptake my offer again in the future. I believe that. I'd even consider it if you'd wish to be my sidekick."

A wry, reluctant smile appeared on the girl's face as she smoothed down her skirt.

"Thank you, I'll keep that in mind."

After chatting with Fuyumi and Natsuo, Yaoyorozu had the impression that she was even more welcomed than she had originally hoped. Enji had made a thoughtless remark about how he wanted tea and Yaoyorozu volunteered to brew some, with a gorgeous smile to boot. With each sip, Enji made a satisfied gesture as if he hadn't had tea for a long time. Awhile after when Shouto was basically forced (by Natsuo and Fuyumi) to show his collection of cat-themed merchandise, the clock had already struck 8. A signal for leave.

"These were supposed to be for your family," Yaoyorozu said extending a box of Fornum and Mason out of her bag, "I think I had too much fun today and had forgotten! Sorry about that."

The girl handed it over to the boy while balancing herself to put on her shoes.

"Thank you." Shouto said eyeing her carefully as he settled the box on top of a cupboard, "You’re not going back to the dorms for the weekend right? I feel like I should bring you home."

"No it is --"

Without a creak, Enji had managed to appear behind the pair.

"Yes Shouto, be a gentleman and take her home. We would be happy to see you again Yaoyorozu, thank you for the gift and take care."

"Wow who the hell replaced our dad with an alien?" Shouto heard Natsuo mumble to Fuyumi.

Shouto hated to agree with his dad but for once he felt like they were thinking in the same channel.

"Yes Yaoyorozu, it wouldn't take me that long anyway. Let's go."

"Well," the girl began, ignoring the butterflies fleeting in her gut, "if you insist."

It could be the way her heels clicked against the soddened asphalt or that oddly alluring sound she makes when she giggles, but Todoroki Shouto found himself wanting to find out more and more about her.

Whether it was simply sitting beside her with no task at hand, or watching her make matroyshka dolls in a blink of an eye, the boy concluded it was something he was looking forward to.

“odoroki--Todoroki-san? Hello?” Yaoyorozu waved her hands in front of his face. The boy blinked twice.

“Oh sorry, you were saying?”

“I was asking you if you could ask your sister for the pasta sauce recipe.”

“Oh, yea of course.”

Yaoyorozu locked her arms beside her, the moonbeam rendering her like a doll.

“I hope you liked spending time with me,” she said carefully as if the words were a secret, and Todoroki nodded in response.

“Sure thing, we should do this more.” He said, watching her sway her skirt whimsically, one step at a time. And perhaps to Mineta and Awase’s chagrin, he thought.

Yaoyorozu pressed her palms together as she slowed down in pace. “You think I was a little bit rude to your dad?”

Shouto held down a snort.

“Definitely not. You were just speaking the truth.”

The girl grinned and rubbed her hands together briskly. “Okay, just making sure, I didn’t want to give off the wrong vibe.”

“Don’t worry,” he ensured and watched her cross her arms in front of her chest, “You cold?”

Yaoyorozu quickly released her arms to her side, slightly sheepish.

“No, no, I’m alright---”

Shouto didn’t listen to her full explanation and wrapped his left arm around her shoulder. They were so close he could smell her shampoo---highly likely the one she’s been advertising for.

He hadn’t notice her cautious eyes, the area underneath going pink. Shouto continued to look forward, focusing on the lulling of the crickets and the dispersed street lights amongst the night fog.

“My left side can warm you up,” he said and she grew even more stiff.

“Thanks, Todoroki-san.”

All of a sudden he grabbed her further to his side, and she let out a gasp.

Oh, there was a bike passing by, she thought as the cyclist dawdled through.

“Better watch where we’re going,” he said. He felt the phone in his pocket vibrate and cursed under his breath. Must be Natsuo.

“You should check it, Todoroki-san.” She said, voice soft.

Naturally she walked in tandem in front of him, allowing him to release his hold and he checked the message.

8:30pm Natsuo: you okay?

8:31pm Shouto: ya

The boy inserted it back before another message came again.

8:32pm Natsuo: dun kill me but u should give her a hug or something, just a suggestion

Shouto gaped at his screen irritated and shoved it into his pockets in vex. If he could he would telepathically swear at Natsu, sadly that was not his quirk.

“Well, my house is just this turn,” Yaoyorozu spoke, pointing briefly behind her, “that was a quick walk.”

Her eyes seemed to speak to him then and without much attention, he tilted forward, strong arms spread, ending in a tight a hug. She snuggled against his neck for a short second and began to panic.

“WH-WHAT, Todoroki-san?! What are you doing?!”

“You’re uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have done that.”

She shook her head immediately.

“I just wasn’t expecting it...” Yaoyorozu twirled a piece of loose hair and took a step back, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She observed him discreetly and noticed his usual habit of resting his hand against his neck had resurfaced. A sign that he was either embarrassed or weary.

She took his hand in hers, “Safe walk home? And I’ll see you on Monday?”

Shouto sent her a smirk, one that his fans would probably dwell on.

“Ya, see you.”

9:12pm Yaoyorozu: home?

9:12pm Todoroki: yes

9:13pm Yaoyorozu: :)

9:15pm Todoroki: could you do me a favour and not tell ppl about my fear

9:16pm Yaoyorozu: of ?

9:16pm Todoroki: scary movies.

9:18pm Yaoyorozu: of course, except I already told jirou

9:18pm Todoroki: .....

9:18pm Yaoyorozu: jokes hehe :) goodnights

9:20pm Todoroki: night

9:30pm Todoroki: shit my sis forgot to give you some cake, ill bring it to your house tomorrow

9:31pm Yaoyorozu: isn’t that just an excuse to see me? :)

9:31pm Todoroki: maybe, k night.

#todomomo #bnha #yaoyorozu momo #todoroki shouto #boku no hero academia #my fanfic #fanfic request

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oscopelabs · 6 years

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Evil in the Mirror: John Carpenter’s Revealing ‘Prince of Darkness’ by Joshua Rothkopf

[Last year, Musings paid homage to Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You’ve Never Seen, a review anthology from the National Society of Film Critics that championed studio orphans from the ‘70s and ‘80s. In the days before the Internet, young cinephiles like myself relied on reference books and anthologies to lead us to films we might not have discovered otherwise. Released in 1990, Produced and Abandoned was a foundational piece of work, introducing me to such wonders as Cutter’s Way, Lost in America, High Tide, Choose Me, Housekeeping, and Fat City. (You can find the full list of entries here.) Our first round of Produced and Abandoned essays included Angelica Jade Bastién on By the Sea, Mike D’Angelo on The Counselor, Judy Berman on Velvet Goldmine, and Keith Phipps on O.C. and Stiggs. Over the next four weeks, Musings will continue with another round of essays about tarnished gems, in the hope they’ll get a second look. Or, more likely, a first. —Scott Tobias, editor.]

It’s generally accepted that John Carpenter wasn’t a personal filmmaker—not personal in the way that Martin Scorsese, only five years his senior and Italianamerican from the start, was. Carpenter grew up movie-crazy in the ’50s and ’60s. He wanted to make Westerns exactly at the moment when that became an unrealistic career goal. His heroes were Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and, above all, Howard Hawks. It’s been nourishing to listen to Amy Nicholson’s wonderful eight-part podcast Halloween Unmasked, still in progress, and to hear Carpenter—usually oblique in interviews—open up about his boyhood in the Jim Crow–era South. He mentions visiting an insane asylum during a college psych trip and locking eyes with a prisoner who spooked him. That may be the basis for killer Michael Myers but, by and large, this was a guy who wrote what he dreamed up, not what he knew.

That’s not to suggest Carpenter didn’t develop his own signature style. When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1968 to attend film school at USC, he reinvented himself, transforming from a Max Fischer–like creative wunderkind (he was a rock guitarist and high-school class president) into a laconic, bell-bottomed cowboy who listened more than he spoke. He was too cool for nerdy Dan O’Bannon, who worked with him on Dark Star. He was too cool for Hollywood itself, even after he’d succeeded there, rarely mingling socially and turning down projects like Top Gun and Fatal Attraction.

But the cool act was a bit of smokescreen. I once asked Carpenter about it, and he owned up to a private sense of pain in regard to his work. “I take every failure hard,” he told me in 2008, singling out the audience’s abandonment of The Thing, a remake of his favorite film (one that actually improves on its source). “The movie was hated. Even by science-fiction fans. They thought that I had betrayed some kind of trust, and the piling on was insane. Even the original movie's director, Christian Nyby, was dissing me.”

Carpenter would rebound from that 1982 commercial disaster—as well the indignity of getting sacked from Firestarter—by playing the game even better. He directed Jeff Bridges to a Best Actor nomination on Starman (that’s as rare as a unicorn for a sci-fi performance) and, just as things were turning golden, blew all his capital again on 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China, which was rushed and subsequently buried in the massive shadow of Aliens. “You try to make a studio picture your own, but in the end, it’s their film,” Carpenter said in our interview, the Kentucky rascal turned bitter. “And they’re going to get what they want. After that experience, I had to stop playing for the studios for a while and go independent again.”

This is the pivotal moment in Carpenter’s career, the one that fascinates me the most. It should fascinate more people, given what the filmmaker did. Divorced and with a two-year-old son, Carpenter is, at that point, 38 years old. He’s already feeling like a Hollywood burnout, with a decade of ups and downs to prove it. The solution was a pay cut, a big one: Prince of Darkness, financed through “supermensch” Shep Gordon and Alive Films and released in 1987, would be made for a grand total of $3 million, the first title in a multi-picture deal that guaranteed Carpenter complete creative control.

Scrappy but never chintzy, Prince of Darkness is the most lovable of movies. On the surface, it has all the cool minimalism a JC fan could ask for: elegant anamorphic compositions (Gary Kibbe’s muscular cinematography adds millions more in production value), a seesawing synth score, a one-location “siege” structure akin to the director’s Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing. The movie also has Alice Cooper killing a grad student with a bicycle. It has a swirling canister of green Satanic goo in a church basement.

Critics, by and large, were unkind. In a representative review from the New York Times, Vincent Canby called it “surprisingly cheesy,” singling out first-time screenwriter Martin Quatermass for particular scorn (he “overloads the dialogue with scientific references and is stingy with the surprises”), not realizing that this was a pseudonym for Carpenter himself. Would it have mattered? Released days before Halloween, Prince got clobbered by the gig Carpenter turned down, Fatal Attraction, still surging in its sixth weekend.

But below the surface—and still a matter for wider appreciation—is the film that Carpenter dug himself out of his psychic hellhole to make: his most personal horror movie, starring a version of himself. Prince of Darkness is about watching and waiting. In a way, it’s a romantic view of the auteur’s own time at school. It’s a movie about the evil that stares out of the mirror (i.e., yourself). Like all of his films, it arrived under the possessive title John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. In my mind, that apostrophe is actually a contraction: John Carpenter Is Prince of Darkness. And Prince of Darkness is him.

First, let’s understand what $3 million means in 1987. To compare it to some other movies of the same period, Blue Velvet’s budget is twice as large. Hannah and Her Sisters, largely shot in Mia Farrow’s apartment, was funded at $6.4 million. When Scorsese decided to go indie and make his audacious The Last Temptation of Christ, he had a $7 million allowance—and that’s for robes and sandals. Carpenter, on the other hand, would be doing practical special effects in camera. He’d be doing a movie with gore and supernatural nuttiness. In a now-quaint New York Times article from April 1987 titled “Independents Making It Big” (“The major studios have abandoned small, serious, risky films, the kind that often win prizes”), Merchant Ivory’s Oscar-winning A Room With A View gets prime positioning with a big photograph; that one has a $3 million budget, roughly. (Not coincidentally, Carpenter’s financiers, Alive Films, are name-checked in the piece as the producers of Alan Rudolph’s Trouble in Mind.)

Coming off Big Trouble in Little China’s estimated $20 million budget (it was probably more), Carpenter would be making a radical shift. But he agreed to Alive’s terms. He’d return to doing things fast and smart, to distilling his vision down to its cleanest, clearest grammar, to getting it done in 30 days (Halloween was shot in 20, over four weeks in May 1978). Even if you disregard the whole of Prince of Darkness’s content—and we won’t be doing that—Carpenter’s desire to work in total artistic freedom is breathtaking. He will do what it takes to move forward.

A little plot: In Prince of Darkness, scientists, theologians and academics plunge into a dilapidated church where they power up their equipment and study a mysterious genie in a bottle: an “anti-god.” The scenario has some of the pseudo-tech fizz of Poltergeist or, in a lighter vein, the Harold Ramis scenes in Ghostbusters. It’s not meant to hold up under scrutiny. Carpenter, who says he was reading books about quantum uncertainty at the time (maybe not the most comforting bedside material given his professional predicament), gives pages of chewy dialogue to the twin father figures of his oeuvre: Donald Pleasence, returning from Halloween and Escape from New York, plays an unnamed, worried priest; and Big Trouble’s wizened Victor Wong appears as an esteemed professor of metaphysical causality.

If the movie has a conventional hero (it doesn’t), it’s Brian, a student who splits the difference between creepy and generically handsome. He’s played by Jameson Parker, then a TV star on Simon & Simon. Or at least I think it’s Jameson Parker. Unlike his more famous San Diego private detective, Brian sports a robust, porn-star-worthy moustache. It makes him look swarthy, mysterious—a little like the lanky John Carpenter himself, who shoots these early scenes in classrooms and hallways at his alma mater, USC. “I spent many happy years at SC as a film student,” Carpenter says on Shout! Factory’s collector’s Blu-ray. “I really enjoyed myself. I learned everything about how to make movies there.”

Watching Prince of Darkness is as close as we’ll come to seeing the director’s formative years re-enacted, memoir-style. In getting back to basics, Carpenter decided to do it literally. Brian sits in class listening; he has a bit of a Laurie Strode moment looking out the window, distracted. Who is he? He’s a young scientist observing evil, almost flirting with it. He spies on a pretty girl in the courtyard (Lisa Blount). She’s got a boyfriend and it irks him, wordlessly. Later, Brian will woo her to bed and use some hard-core Howard Hawks dialogue on her: “Who was he? The one that gave you such a high opinion of men?” he says, straight out of Lauren Bacall’s playbook in To Have and Have Not. It works. She kisses him.

The movie isn’t all wish-fulfillment. In fact, it’s charming how fully the Carpenter surrogate recedes into the team; Brian isn’t even a factor in the final showdown. Maybe his job is to watch other people vanquish evil. That would make sense, since it’s his creator’s comfort zone. In the meantime, the offscreen Carpenter is building some of his grossest sequences, spraying unsuspecting people in the mouth with streams of ectoplasm (à la Rob Bottin’s landmark FX in The Thing), mounting parallel action and deploying beetles, maggots and ants where necessary.

Prince of Darkness has one moment that’s proven unforgettable, transcending even the horror genre. It’s an eerie transmission, the voice slowed down and distorted: “This is not a dream…not a dream…” DJ Shadow samples it a few times on his groundbreaking debut, 1996’s Endtroducing. (The voice is actually Carpenter’s, impossible not to notice once you’ve been made aware of it.) He’s supposed to be a future dude reaching backward in time—“from the year one, nine, nine, nine”—maybe to prevent a biblical apocalypse. All we see is a jittery handheld shot of a silhouetted robed figure slowly emerging from the church, the ominous end-of-the-world smoke gathering.

The economy of the shot is beautiful, Carpenter achieving the texture of a half-remembered nightmare using only a capture-video-off-a-TV-screen trick. (It’s very Inland Empire—and come to think of it, that basement cylinder of swirling green evil is a lot like the glass box from the first episode of the rebooted Twin Peaks: The Return.) So in a situation where Carpenter is facing his most prohibitive spending limits, he’s actually expanding his craft. Prince of Darkness signals his own creative rehabilitation after turning his heel on the studios. Or, to quote the film’s poster: “It is evil. It is real. It is awakening.”

What does it mean that Carpenter’s big payoff involves a mirror? These Cocteau-like shots were some of the most dangerous to pull off. One of them involved plunging a prosthetic hand into highly toxic liquid mercury (a substance the crew had to drain from their hydraulic cranes just to make the gag work). Then, to capture the action on the “other side” of the mirror, poor Lisa Blount had to swim submerged in a darkened swimming pool while an underwater camera shot upward at the glimmering surface. I include these technical details not only to express awe at Carpenter’s commitment (along with that of his collaborators), but also to stress the obvious: The mirror climax was really important to him. The movie’s final seconds are the whole of Prince of Darkness’s reflexivity in a single cut: Brian, woken from a double dream, approaches his bedroom mirror. We see from the perspective of the glass. He touches that porn ’stache tentatively, then reaches out. Cut to black.

It’s not easy to touch that mirror—to walk away from everything you’ve labored to achieve over years, to a place where it’s just you and your talent and what you can do. To me, that’s what Prince of Darkness expresses, subtly. Creatively, the experiment worked: It led directly to Carpenter’s 1988 stealth masterpiece They Live, his most confident political statement and a kindred project in its use of real L.A. locations. That film’s critical reputation has already been defended at large. But maybe it’s time to rally behind the moment slightly earlier, when the director had to rediscover who he was, and what he wanted—and when he found a way to turn everything around.

#john carpenter #halloween #prince of darkness #the thing #they live #horror film #produced and abandoned #demon #big trouble in little china #assault on precinct 13 #joshua rothkopf #oscilloscope laboratories #o-scope labs #film writing #musings

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girls-scenarios · 6 years

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Have a Little Courage

Idol: Mina (Twice)

Prompt: Woooow, I've been waiting for this moment for like centuries, I'm so happy. Can I ask you a Twice's Mina scenario set in the world of Harry Potter? Mina is in love with the Slytherin reader (female) but is afraid to declare her love because she is a Gryffindor. Something fluff, thank you very much

Writer: Admin Kiwi

A/N: It’s really been so long since I watched the original movies or read the books, and Fantastic Beasts didn’t really have anything about Hogwarts in it, so if the classroom seems a bit off, I’m sorry. Ignore the weird thing Tumblr is doing with the apostrophes, hopefully it goes away soon. Also, I’ve been writing a lot of Mina lately. I think we had more requests for her than usual. And this is pretty long. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this story!

Warnings: A curse word or two

Mina glanced over at the Slytherin table, eyes straying over the occupants for the third time since she’d sat down to eat breakfast. Her fellow Gryffindor friends were talking about something, apparently something exciting because Dahyun was waving her hands animatedly beside her, but she wasn’t paying attention. Her attention was instead focused on a certain person at the Slytherin table.

She watched as you laughed at something the person beside you said, and something twinged deep in her heart. She didn’t exactly feel hungry any more, especially when you leaned into the person and rested your head on their shoulder. She swallowed thickly and looked down at her plate.

“Mina, are you even listening?” Dahyun’s voice broke through her thoughts and she looked up, eyebrows raised.

“What?”

“I knew it.” Dahyun huffed and crossed her arms. “You never listen. What are you spacing out about that’s so important?”

“She’s always staring over at the Slytherin table,” Momo pointed out, wiggling her eyebrows. “Did you not hear about her crush?” The sick feeling in Mina’s stomach got worse, and she wrinkled her nose.

“Shut up, Momo.” She’d always known it had been a mistake to let Momo know about her crush. Her best friend had pried it out of her, but Mina knew it was only a matter of time before Momo spilled to Sana, and then everyone in the school would know.

“I didn’t know you had a crush, Mina. That’s exciting!” Then Dahyun seemed to connect the dots. “Wait. You have a crush on a Slytherin?”

“Keep your voice down!” Mina shushed her, giving her a little glare and glancing around at the rest of the table. Thankfully, no one else seemed to be paying them any attention. Dahyun leaned in closer, an incredulous look on her face.

“You’re kidding me, right? On a Slytherin?”

“She’s not kidding,” Momo said, then grunted when Mina elbowed her in the stomach.

“Shut up, guys. I’m going to leave if you guys keep picking on me.”

“But a Slytherin?” Dahyun repeated. Mina rolled her eyes.

“Not all Slytherins are bad, Dahyun. Nayeon, for example. Or your friend Tzuyu.”

“You guys only think Nayeon is nice because she has a giant crush on Momo. Trust me, Tzuyu can be evil when she wants to be. Jihyo can confirm.” Momo’s face bloomed red at Dahyun’s words, and Mina just sighed.

“You’re too prejudiced. There are Slytherins who don’t fit the stereotype, just like I don’t fit the Gryffindor stereotype.” Momo seemed to have recovered from Dahyun’s jab at her relationship, because she snickered.

“Yeah, you can’t even get any courage to ask someone out.” Mina elbowed her again, hard, and grabbed her plate as she stood up.

“Forget this. I’m done being picked on. I hope potions is especially hard for you today, Dahyun, because I’m not helping you any with your homework.” Dahyun’s head swivelled and her eyes widened.

“Wait, Mina, you know I didn’t mean it!” Mina ignored her call, quickly walking away from the table. She was annoyed, mostly with her friends but somewhat with herself too. As she left the hall, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her robes, sighing at herself.

Momo had been right. She didn’t have any of the courage that Gryffindors seemed to have. All her housemates had no problems confessing to the people they liked. Momo had always been vocal about liking Nayeon, and Dahyun had walked right up to Sana the first time Mina introduced them and hit on her. It was only Mina who was afraid.

Really, she didn’t need to worry too much about the whole Slytherin rivalry thing. Sure, there was still something there, and Momo and Nayeon had faced some opposition at first, but usually people would move on to bigger and better gossip after a few days and forget to care about people dating between houses.

Even though she didn’t need to be, she was nervous. Nervous of rejection, mostly. From both you and her housemates. Momo would stand by her side, she knew, and so would Dahyun, but she feared not everyone would be so understanding. Maybe they had only accepted Momo’s relationship because she was popular, with good standing and a infectious smile that left Mina a few steps in her shadow.

Her shoulders felt heaver as she thought more, and she bit her lip, fighting back tears. She really didn’t belong in Gryffindor at all. She should have been sorted into Hufflepuff, like Sana. But even then, her crush would still be looked down on. There was no way around it, because she certainly didn’t belong in Slytherin either.

So with heavy shoulders, and an even heavier heart, she headed to her charms class.

Apparently, her gloominess was obvious, because as soon as she sat down in her seat, Nayeon turned around in the chair in front of her and put her elbows on Mina’s desk.

“What’s up, sunshine? You look dead.” Mina looked up to see Nayeon squinting at her, and then glanced over to the other side of the class, where you sat with your partner.

“Nothing. I’m just not feeling well.” Nayeon didn’t seem to be buying it.

“You know, I’ve seen you when you were throwing up, and you just looked sick. Right now, you look like you just lost your best friend, or found out someone killed your owl.” Mina made a face.

“You have a weird train of thought.”

“Whatever. My point is, you’re obviously sad. So come on, tell Nayeon what’s up.” Mina chewed on her lip, debating whether or not to tell Nayeon what was going on inside her head. Sure, she trusted Nayeon. A bit, at least. Nayeon had always been great to Momo, and she’d never done anything to upset Mina either. But at the same time, Nayeon was in the same house as you, and anything could easily go wrong.

“I don’t know if I should-.”

“Is this about your crush?” Mina’s brain went blank for a minute. And then she slammed her head into the desk. “Oh my god, Mina?” Nayeon’s voice rang in her ears, and she felt Nayeon’s hands touching her face. “What the heck, Mina, you’re going to hurt yourself. Oh my god, people are looking over here like I did something to you, stop that before I get attacked by your housemates.” Groaning, Mina sat back up.

“Did Momo tell you about it?” Nayeon was looking at her with a weird look on her face, and was definitely judging her.

“A little bit, yeah. Was that enough for you maybe to give yourself a concussion?” Mina did feel a little dizzy.

“What did she tell you?”

“Just that you had a crush, damn.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else. She’s not that bad of a friend, give her some credit.” Mina’s shoulders slumped in relief.

“Oh thank goodness.”

“Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Mina sighed and rubbed her forehead, then was struck by how much sighing she had been doing today.

“Promise not to tell anyone?” She was probably crazy, doing this. But she’d done worse before. Nayeon leaned forward, nodding her head.

“I promise.” She looked way too interested for Mina to feel comfortable, but she continued anyway. There was no going back now.

“Well. I may have a little crush on one of your housemates.” Nayeon’s eyebrows jumped up higher than Mina had ever seen them go, and her mouth dropped open a bit.

“For real?” She whispered, eyes darting around. “Are they in this class?” Mina hesitated, then nodded.

“Yeah. They are.” Nayeon’s eyes twinkled.

“Who is it?” Then, something seemed to go off inside her head. “Wait, is it (Y/N)?” Mina sat back a bit.

“How did you know?” A smile was spreading across Nayeon’s features, and Mina didn’t like it.

“A few things make sense now. You stare at them a lot, you know?” Mina flushed automatically, bringing her hands up to cover her face.

“Shut up,” she grumbled, but Nayeon’s grin just grew.

“Listen. You should just talk to them. I promise nothing will go wrong.” Mina peeked out at the other girl.

“What do you mean?”

“Just talk to them. Maybe even ask them out. I’m telling you, you wont regret it.” Mina narrowed her eyes and brought down her hands, but just as she was about to speak, the professor entered the classroom. As Nayeon went to turn back around, she gave Mina a wink and mouthed “just do it”. The problem was, Mina wasn’t sure she could.

When class had ended, Nayeon had caught up to Mina at the door and grabbed her hand, giving it a quick squeeze.

“Listen to me, Mina. I have an idea.”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Mina replied, her heart in her throat as people passed all around them, headed to their classes. Nayeon rolled her eyes.

“Trust me, you’ll thank me later. Anyway, my idea. We have some tests coming up, right? Momo already agreed that we should all study together in the library. I’ll casually invite (Y/N) to join us, and then officially introduce you guys and let you get to know each other. If you feel like you really want to get to know them more after studying with them, then you can ask them to hang out with you again sometime. It’s as simple as that.” Then, Nayeon winked. “Or, you can ask them out, right there on the spot.”

“You know I couldn’t do that,” Mina retorted, giving Nayeon a look. Nayeon huffed and crossed her arms.

“What kind of Gryffindor are you, even.”

“A bad one.” Mina checked the time and swallowed. “We both have to get to class, Nayeon.”

“Fine,” the other girl said, flipping her hair. “But you’re coming with me and Momo to the library tonight, and you’re going to talk to (Y/N) and break out of your pathetic little shell.”

“Thanks, Nayeon,” Mina said, sarcasm dripping from her voice, but she knew Nayeon didn’t really mean any harm. Nayeon sent her another wink, before turning around and disappearing into the crowds of students. Mina swallowed and watched her go for a minute before turning around and heading the other way. Could she really do this?

Apparently, she was going to have to, because Momo gave her no choice.

“We’re doing this for you, Mina,” she said as she tugged Mina out of her comfortable bed. “That, and for our grades. But mostly for you. I’m tired of watching you pine.” Mina gave in and stood up, stumbling over to put on her robes and grab her books.

“I don’t know why you guys are so into my romantic life,” Mina said, letting Momo pull her out of the dorms and towards the library. Momo shrugged.

“You make it hard not to be. You’re so cute and smitten, it’s makes everyone want to help.”

“By everyone you mean you and Nayeon,” Mina pointed out.

“Little details,” Momo responded.

The library wasn’t as busy as Mina had expected it to be, with all the upcoming tests, but Momo still steered her towards a small corner in the back of the library that she hadn’t even known existed. It was dark, but comfy, with pillows and a small table nestled into the tight space. Mina gave her best friend a look.

“How do you know about this place?”

“Would you believe me if I said that it was actually Chaeyoung and Jeongyeon who showed me this spoke first?” Actually, she would. For Revenclaws, the two were pretty good at getting into places they shouldn’t be.

“It’s not going to distract me from the fact that I don’t want to know what you and Nayeon have been up to back here.”

“Well, I’m not spilling,” Momo said with a grin, plopping herself down onto one of the many pillows. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable.”

Nayeon arrive only a few minutes later, with you right behind her. Mina’s heart jumped when she saw you, but smiled when she noticed that you looked just as suspicious as she had.

“Did you just bring me to your make-out spot, Nayeon?” Nayeon shrugged and sat down beside Momo.

“Maybe. But we’re going to do some homework here now, so it’s okay. I wont kiss anyone while you’re here.” Momo giggled and wrapped her arms around her girlfriend, and you locked eyes with Mina. The only open spot was beside her, and she realized what Momo and Nayeon had been planning. Still, she gave you a small smile and scooted over.

“You can go ahead and sit here,” she said, “I don’t bite.”

“Unless you ask,” Momo said, wiggling her eyebrows. Mina kicked her under the table, her face heating up.

“Don’t be gross,” she hissed, but you laughed as you put your books on the table.

“I don’t think I’ve talked to you at all since second year,” you said, smiling at Mina. “My name is (Y/N), by the way.” Like Mina totally didn’t know.

“I’m Mina,” she said with a smile.

“I know,” you said, then blushed and looked down at the table. “I mean. I remembered your name.” Mina felt hope bubbling up in her chest, and couldn’t hold back the little giggle that escaped her lips. Nayeon looked between them, enjoying the scene a little two much.

“You’re both so adorably awkward,” she commented, cooing a bit. You shot her a look and Mina fiddled with her books, trying not to feel too nervous.

“How are we supposed to study back here,” you said, changing the subject. The blush was still evident on your cheeks, though, and Mina thought it looked cute. “It’s so dark.” Immediately, Momo pulled out her wand. The space was bathed in light as she muttered a spell, and then she smiled.

“Enough light for you?” You huffed and didn’t bother to answer, instead opening up your book. Mina smiled a bit and opened up her own as well, while Momo and Nayeon shared a look before untangling their limbs to grab their own things.

“Well, I guess we’ll get started.”

Studying with you right beside her, Mina realized, was distracting. When you asked her about a problem and she leaned over to explain it, you leaned in even closer, forgoing the concept of personal space. Your shoulder and hands brushed against her and she felt jittery at all the contact. Still, the hope that she’d had was only growing, because when she looked up, she’d sometimes catch you looking at her. You’d quickly look away, of course, but it made her heart do jumping jacks inside her chest.

When it came time to leave, Mina didn’t want to. She mourned the feeling of your shoulder against hers as they all stood up, gathering their things.

“Well, that was surprisingly productive,” Momo commented. “We actually got a lot of shit done.”

“I honestly thought we’d talk more than study,” Nayeon commented. “But I guess this is best for our grades.”

The four of you walked out, past a few other groups packing up. Once all of you stepped outside of the library, Momo stopped and turned around.

“Should we do this again?” Nayeon nodded, but it was you that answered.

“For sure. I mean, if you guys are down with it.”

“I’m up for doing it again,” Mina said, smiling at you. You smiled back, and her heart jumped again.

Nayeon turned to leave, and you glanced at her before glancing back at Mina, like you were waiting for her to say something. Mina swallowed, and wished to the courage of the great Gryffindors before her for help.

“Um, actually. I-.” A hundred things ran through her mind to say, but only one made it through. “I like you.” Nayeon’s mouth dropped open, and Momo grinned, proud. Your face immediately bloomed bright red.

“Really?”

“Yep. I guess I’ve probably liked you since second year.” You bit your lip and glanced at Nayeon before looking back at Mina and smiling a bit.

“Would it be weird if I said I’d liked you since then too?” Mina internally screamed, but externally, she giggled.

“Not at all. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Not to break up this cute moment, but we’re getting really close to curfew and I don’t feel like being caught again,” Nayeon butted in. All of you laughed, and then Mina turned back to look at you, a hopeful smile on her face.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” You gave her a blinding smile.

“Of course. I can’t wait.” And the giddiness in your voice told Mina it was true.

#twice #mina #myoui mina #twice mina #mina scenarios #mina scenario #twice mina scenarios #twice scenario #twice scenarios #girl group scenarios #girl group scenario #girl groups #kpop scenario #hogwarts au #t:hogwartsau

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prettyandsarcastic · 6 years

Text

A Gift

So today is @ladylike-foxes birthday and as a gift I decided to write a little something featuring her Arcana Apprentice Rune, because she is an angel who has listened to me whine about school and my parents and my life.

This takes place at the start of the game, the same day that Asra leaves, and there’s some in-game dialogue used.

I hope I kept Rune as in character as possible. I went through her character tag to find out what I could about her, but there’s not a whole lot so I added my apprentice Orla to give me a stepping off. Also I haven’t written anything in... a long time, so this is kinda rough, but I hope you like it anyway!

Happy Birthday!

EDIT: Everytime I try to put this under a Read More, it screws up and makes my quotations and apostrophe’s weird special characters. Sorry!

“Rune!”

Rune looks up from her sweeping as Asra pushes aside the curtain to the backroom and wanders into the shop proper. “Wait ‘til you see what the woods had to offer today!” he says, smiling brightly as he overturns his bag onto the counter.

“Oh wow!” she says, setting aside the broom before beginning to sort through the assortment of things Asra has brought back. Most of it is edible, ingredients for simple meals but there’s quite a few magical ingredients they can use for the shop. He watches from the other side of the counter, head propped on his hands, delight dancing in his eyes. “This is way more than we need right now. Why did you get so much?”

Nonetheless, Rune turns from the counter to find empty canisters to store the things Asra has brought back, to separate what will stay downstairs and what will go upstairs. When she turns back around, she notices some of the mirth fall away in Asra’s expression as he stands to his full height again. There’s an uneasiness that seems to drape itself over his shoulders, his gaze suddenly going askance.

“I thought it would be better to have plenty,” he says, voice quieter than it was moments ago. “I don’t want to leave you here with nothing to eat but pumpkin bread.”

Rune’s hand stills over a small animal skull, bleached white by the sun. Oh. There’s an ache that settles in her chest at the thought of him leaving again, it feels as though he had just returned from his last trip. It meant worrying and sleepless nights and –

“So you are leaving again?”

Orla.

Rune’s head snaps in the direction of the stairs just in time to see her step into the room. Orla’s face is blank, stilled into her usual mask of placid disinterest, but Rune can easily see the storm behind her eyes. They both hate when Asra leaves, but Orla has never been afraid to tell him just how much.

Asra gives her a reluctant nod, eyes softening in the way they always do around Orla – like regret and with a thousand apologies that he doesn’t quite know how to begin. “Yes. Tonight,” he replies. And Rune’s heart gives a painful lurch with the pleading tone of his voice, the way it begs Orla not to start this argument again.

But all of them know better.

Orla steps up to the end of the counter between Asra and Rune, braces her hands against the top. “Take us with you,” she says, tone sharp with the implication that it’s not a request. “Either of us. We want to go with you.”

Rune doesn’t say anything, doesn’t voice her own desire to go with Asra, but she glances between her master and fellow apprentice. This argument isn’t new, but it feels… different from the others somehow. She knows that Orla doesn’t really mean to be so aggressive with him, that she loves him in her own way, but the frustration at Asra’s secret-keeping gets the better of her and turns her best of intentions into anger.

Asra blinks and his eyes falls from Orla’s determined face as he sighs. He holds out his hands to both of them, Rune and Orla each take one without thought as he leads them away from the counter to stand in front of him. His soft gaze wanders between them and his hands come up to cup their faces, his thumbs soothing along the angle of their cheekbones.

Both girls breathe a sigh, softening under Asra’s touch.

“I know you both want to come, and I wish I could take you… but –”

“It’s too risky?” Orla finishes for him. And all of a sudden her hackles are raised again and color rises to the apples of her cheeks. “It’s always too risky! Or too far for us but not for you! Why is that?”

“Orla, please.”

She shakes her head, mouth contorting into a grimace as she twists out of Asra’s reach. Rune steps to reach for her, offer whatever comfort she can but Orla takes a step back from even her and Rune is shocked to see the glassy sheen in her eyes.

“I’m going out,” she announces to no one in particular and moves to brush past Asra to the back door. With her hand on the doorknob Orla twists and over her shoulder says, “I hope you find what you’re looking for this time, Master.”

When she slams the door shut in her wake, the window rattles so hard Rune is afraid for a moment it’s going to shatter. It wouldn’t be the first time.

In front of her Asra releases such a long breath that she’s certain he had been holding it. “That went well,” he mumbles. “Sometimes I think she would just rather I didn’t come back at all.”

“Don’t say that!” Rune snaps at him and Asra at least has the decency to look chagrined. “She just… worries, and it comes out wrong… we both worry.”

What Rune doesn’t say is just how big the shop feels without him, or just how wide the bed the three of them share becomes without Asra’s warmth between her and Orla. Doesn’t tell him that neither of them really sleep, that she stays up playing her fiddle to the wee hours and Orla comes home bloody and bruised more often when he’s gone. She doesn’t tell him that sometimes it feels like she and Orla just go through the motions until he returns.

But again, Rune is suddenly overcome with the feeling that something about this time is different and it teases at the edges of her mind. It makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She wonders, briefly, if Orla might have felt the same thing and that was why her argument with Asra was more impassioned than times before.

“I know,” he says, reaching out to draw Rune to him, “but it’ll be alright.”

Even with Asra’s assurances and his arms around her it does nothing to ease the disquiet whispering in the back of Rune’s mind.

Something’s coming. She’s certain of it.

Orla breathes a relieved sigh when she finally crests the top of the stairs into the small apartment above the magic shop. Managing to make it into the shop and up the stairs without incident is a feat, but Orla knows the way the shop settles, times her movements around the building’s natural creaks and groans.

Asra’s already gone. She feels his absence in the air around her, in the stillness that settles over the shop in the wake of his departure. With it comes an ache, or a hollowness that yawns in the space behind her ribs – guilt, probably, though Orla doesn’t want to admit it – for not being here to send him off.

What if something happens to Asra on his journey and the last words Orla had spoken to him had been harsh and angry?

Orla shakes the thought from her head. It’s too late to think about it now anyway.

She turns to venture into the washroom, to rinse her face and hands when behind her, Orla hears the sound of someone snapping their fingers and the room at her back suddenly comes to life with light.

Orla’s eyes slide closed as she sighs, “Damn it.”

“Aren’t you tired of getting caught yet?” Rune says behind her.

Orla shrugs. “I’ll get lucky some day.”

But she knows better. Rune doesn’t sleep well when Asra’s gone. Neither of them do, really, crowding into the middle of the bed, into the space his body usually occupies, sometimes pressing so close their noses touch. The space he leaves behind is so much more than his physical absence that it’s all they can do to go about their daily lives.

“You missed Asra leaving, he waited as long as he could,” she tells her and Orla doesn’t miss the displeasure in Rune’s tone.

Her shoulders round in on themselves under the weight of Rune’s disappointment. “I know.”

Behind her, Orla hears the legs of the chair scrape against the floor as Rune stands and begins to walk toward her. “I understand why you’re so hard on him, but he doesn’t like leaving us anymore than we like – oh gods!” Rune cuts herself off suddenly as she rounds in front of Orla and gets a proper look at her friend’s face. “You went down to the docks again, didn’t you?”

Orla knows she must look a fright. She can feel it in the way one eye is trying to swell shut, the way it hurts to breathe through her nose, and the blood dried in her hairline; the way every time she talks the split in her bottom lip gapes and bleeds anew. And that’s only what Rune can see. And really it looked a lot worse before Orla tried to heal some of it. But… healing magic has never been her strong suit so she just had to be satisfied with the fact that she managed to dull the pain enough so she could make it home.

“It’s not as bad as it looks?” she offers, and tries to smile.

Rune blinks at her like she can’t understand what Orla just said, annoyance evident in the slight twitch of her eye. “Your definition of not as bad as it looks and mine are two completely different things,” she says. After a moment, Rune sighs, “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“To be fair,” Orla says as she follows Rune to the washroom, “I did try to sneak in so you wouldn’t have to see this.”

Rune doesn’t deign to reply as she forces Orla into the washroom, then out of her torn and bloodstained clothes and into the tub before starting the water. She putters around while the water rises, gathering different bottles and small tins of ointment, digging Orla’s hairbrush and sleep clothes out of the dresser.

As Orla watches Rune bustle around, guilt wedges itself in the back of her throat. This is exactly why she had tried to sneak in.

“You don’t have to do this, Rue,” Orla says, drawing her knees up to her chin. But she does it every time.

Rune pauses in her movements, hand still hovering over the candle she’s just lit. She takes a breath to answer, but seems to think better of it and shakes her head before continuing. After she’s dumped a generous amount of bath salts into the tub, Rune turns off the water, rolls up the legs of her pants and sits herself on the edge of the tub behind Orla, her knees on either side of the other girl’s shoulders. She still doesn’t speak as she pours warm water over Orla’s hair and gently massages the dried blood from the white strands.

Rune reaches over the edge of the tub and Orla hears the sound of a bottle uncorking. “I can heal the worst of it tonight,” Rune says, putting the bottle back down and then suddenly the room fills with the smell of lavender as Rune slicks the oil over Orla’s bruised, sore muscles. “The rest I can heal tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Orla says, tilts her head backwards to look up at Rune and tries to smile.

Rune rolls her eyes, brushes the washcloth over her face as gently as possible. “I don’t do this because I have to you know,” she says, massaging healing magic into the skin around her eye until the swelling begins to go down. “I do it because I love you and we have to look after one another while Asra’s gone.”

Orla nods, tilts her head to rest against Rune’s thigh and because Rune is one of the only people that can soften Orla’s sharpness admits, “I just… wish he didn’t keep so many secrets from us.”

And Rune sighs, soothing her hand over Orla’s damp hair. “I know, me too.”

“Asra had me do a reading for him before he left,” Rune tells Orla as they sit on their bed after Rune’s washed away the blood and soothed the bruises.

Orla shudders. “His deck gives me the creeps.”

Behind her, Rune laughs softly making another pass through Orla’s hair with the brush. “I know, that’s why he left it with me. He joked that you probably would have made him hide it somewhere.”

“I would have!”

The girls share another laugh until the sound of frantic knocking echo from downstairs up to their room. Orla looks over her shoulder, “Did you forget to put out the lantern?”

With a shake of her head Rune stands from the bed. “I don’t think I did, and even so… it’s a little too late for a reading.”

They sit in silence for a moment, barely daring to breathe, both of them hoping that whoever was at the door might just leave. Just as it seems like whoever it is has left, the knocking returns harder and more insistent than before.

Orla sighs as she stands as well. “Might as well go see who it is.”

Together, the two girls head down into the shop to deal with the stranger at the door entirely unaware that it was about to change everything.

#the arcana #thearcanagame #fan apprentice #the arcana fic #asra #rune #orla

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sulfurousdreamscapes · 6 years

Text

Meera’s card fell in the whiskey and she didn’t even notice it. Her finger was pointed in Crispin’s direction, and when she did that, you knew that a war declaration was imminent. A squadron of fighter jets combed the musty air of the underground bar, flying in Crispin’s direction and summarily separating as they bombed him with their mistress’ pissed-drunk face.

“If you can’t follow the game’s rule’s,” Meera drawled and her finger jabbed at an old wound begging for her touch, “You can leave the table right now. All those in favour say aye.” She followed it up with an ‘I’.

“Well, firstly, there’s no apostrophe in 'rules’,” Crispin replied and if you squinted (like Meera right now), you could tell that he was really a medieval choir boy.

“You’re a fucking medieval choir boy,” Meera slurred and fished the card out of the rocks. Her army sent a crane to lift the card and she struck it with her middle finger a few times to clear the whiskey off.

“And secondly,” Crispin’s hymn resumed for exactly two words before Sara yelled “Aye” and laughed.

“Two ayes and one… not ayes,” Meera said, her face kind of falling off of her neck and onto the table so it could look at Xochitl’s opinion on the vote. The spotlight shone on Xochitl, she in the red dress, with skin that makes petals of rose look like asphalt. A forest of microphones aligned to listen to what she had to say.

“That’s not how votes work,” she said.

“Thank you, I knew I could count on you,” Crispin smiled, while Sara continued laughing at the invisible comedy and Meera groaned in her chair.

Sara’s lieutenant was an orangutan of just the right size to inform her of the other players’ hands. She nodded as he whispered in her ear, and then put him back in her purse. Her composure had returned now, and she pulled out a card from her hand. “My turn,” she announced, and lay her card on the board.

“This is bearly fair, but whatever,” Meera rested her face on a fist made out of dismantled revolutions.

“You mean 'barely’ fair,” Crispin said.

The spotlight shone on Xochitl, she in the red dress, with eyes that make owl eyes look like caterpillars. Cheap cellphone cameras flashed and blinked to watch what she did.

She held up a stopwatch and waited for herself to make up her mind. Once done, she meticulously wrote it down in a notebook and tore the page clean off, throwing it in the air. As the others watched the page descend, she made her move.

“My turn,” Meera shot her fist into the air above. “And my, what a turn it’s going to be,” she grinned a grin, the sort of grin that causes all the paracetamol tablets to come spilling out through her mouth. She held her card aloft, and licked it from a distance. “This once going to win me the game,” she slammed the card down on the table, kicking off enough wind to blow away the bar and elevate the table to the top of a pillar that overlooked the entire city.

“One’s. Apostrophe this time,” Crispin said.

“Sure is windy up here,” Sara huddled in the cold and her hair got in her face. Crispin leaned far too back in his chair and nearly fell off, so he jerked forward suddenly. Meera grinned despite being barely able to keep her eyes open. “Their’s the clincher,” she said as she finally let go of the card with the index finger that had it pinned to the table.

“There’s, you mean. At least you got the apostrophe right this time,” Crispin said, his voice a little weak, but bolstered a little by the surge of soda bubbles inside his veins. “But if you think the game has ended, you are sorely mistaken,” his snake face smiled back.

“Don’t you mean ‘soarly’,” Meera drawled, but Crispin shook his head and adjusted his glasses. “No, that’s not the word at all.”

“Then mine isn’t either, ugh,” Meera clenched her glass of whiskey and downed it.

“Oh, there’s a war down there in the city,” Sara commented, looking down. “Come on, have a look!”

The spotlight shone on Xochitl, she in the red dress, whose beauty attracted the seven dwarves. Hands cupped ears to hear her better as she spoke her mind.

“Don’t care,” she said.

Crispin spent minutes on his card. His eyes darted back and forth, forth and back, across the hills and through the meadows, into the sea of the city, into the broken windmill he played at as a kid. That was his card. He knew it.

The card appeared in his hand and he sprinkled the holy water he’d brought along in his pocket. He smudged the art on the card and laid it down on the table. “I’d been holding on to this one for a while now,” he said. A knife of sunlight cut through the skies to cleave his card in two.

The two parts of the card raised up in front of Crispin, and each settled over one of his eyes. They forced themselves to join together, until his eyes became visible through the cards. He looked awkward, but his devil of a face was only lacking horns.

“Gosh Crispin, you take the longest time,” Sara yawned, and looked to the table again. She stared at Crispin’s eyes, and then at the table again, then back at the eyes. “I’m sorry, should I not stare or something? I don’t understand the protocol behind this.”

Sara cleared her throat and looked at her cards. It was going to be hard to beat the last two cards, but she had enough of a lead to not worry about the rest. She’d always had the lead, all her life. That’s the key to longevity, having the lead. The slower you go, the more you grow a shell and turn into a tortoise. She saw the others as just that: hunched tortoises sitting at tables.

“Oh, they’re celebrating down there. Looks like someone won,” she said. As Crispin and Meera turned to look down, she quickly swapped an older card with a weaker card of her own.

The spotlight shone on Xochitl, she in the red dress, whose light broke every darkness it touched. Paper cup telephones shot in her direction to hear her mind.

"She cheated," she said.

"I did knot," Meera's jaw dropped as she jabbed a finger in Xochitl's direction.

"You mean 'not'," Crispin said, relieved his pronouns were he, his and him. He then turned towards Sara, who was studying her hand. She pulled out a card and lazily tossed it onto the table. "Alright, who's next?" she asked.

The waiter topped up the drinks on the table.

Sara stared back at Crispin, daggers shooting from her eyes that Crispin deftly dodged. Finally, she gave up and checked her phone for new notifications.

"This is an interesting situation," Crispin said. "But Xochitl has already played, so now it's Meera's turn now."

Sara smiled at her phone and then put it back in her pocket, where it disappeared into a bottomless abyss.

The spotlight shone on Xochitl, she in the red dress, who makes the angels weep. Notification sounds buzzed in the dark, relaying excitement.

She got up and walked away from the table, leaving the bar and disappearing for good. She was never seen again.

Sara watched her go, and then shrugged. "Wasn't any fun with her around any way."

Crispin buried her head in his hands. "Why does this keep happening? We keep playing and she keeps leaving forever. We always manage to screw up in some way. Always."

"Naught my fault," Meera groaned. "She's a grown woman, she can make her own decisions."

A locust sat in the centre of the table. It's not common to see locusts around these parts, much less in a bar. But there it was, all the same.

"We should probably kill it, before it alerts its mothership," Sara said. "Or we could be looking at a locust invasion on our hands."

Meera was asleep on the table.

"Did you notice that locust only appeared after Xochitl left?" Crispin asked. It was difficult speaking over Meera's snoring.

"No? I mean it's true, but I didn't notice it at all," Sara said.

The locust skittered on the table and examined each of the cards. It turned in each player's direction. It spent the longest time staring at Xochitl's empty chair. Sara and Crispin each assigned meanings to the locust's actions, but they couldn't decide on which one was real.

Another locust flew onto the table. Crispin stared at the new locust and gave it new meanings. So did Sara. They couldn't decide on which meaning was real. And then a third locust appeared, and new meanings, and a fourth locust, and so on, until the locusts were crawling all over the table.

"What did I tell you? Locust invasion," Sara sighed. Meera was covered in locusts now, and new critters appeared on Sara and Crispin's bodies.

"This is an unfortunate ending," Sara sighed.

"I agree," Crispin sighed back. "Thanks for screwing it all up."

"Until next time."

#writing #writeblr #words #fic #short story #short fiction #short fic #short stories #short prose #prose #original prose #daily writing

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yujachachacha · 7 years

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And since you that busy I will steal your waifu's from you

3 points: (1) Your grammar got on my nerves more than the actual statement itself. (2) The term “waifu” is creepy, and I personally don’t use it except as a joke. (3) You can’t “steal” away favorite characters.

As for the “busy” portion, feel free to refer to my previous asks on what I think about your accusations of my blog activity. If you really wanted to motivate me to work harder, you could’ve asked nicely instead of giving me all this material to sass you with, y’know.

I actually ended up writing an entire grammar lesson devoted to #1 plus some ramblings about my issues with the term “waifu” in general, but I assume you’re the same anon who sent the previous ask, i.e. I know you hate my long-winded answers. You can find the non-tl;dr version under the cut, if anyone’s interested in learning about a tricky English grammar rule.

…but since I find it important, let me put the essential part of the lecture up here for people to see: STOP CASUALLY USING APOSTROPHES TO DENOTE PLURALS. IT’S WRONG. waifu’s → waifus.

All right, have your “Keep reading” thing now.

1. It’s “waifus”, not “waifu’s”.

I get that, for some godforsaken reason, people have it in their minds that adding an apostrophe + s to certain words creates the plural for those words. But it’s wrong. Let me say that again for emphasis. IT’S WRONG. You only use this form in very special cases for plurals - mainly, to avoid confusion. Here are some examples:

How many i’s are in Mississippi? I’m still triggered when I see 0’s because of that one LLS episode. There were countless “harasho’s” transmitted in the lobby of the EliRin Score Match. → Used when counting letters/numbers/words, though usually people (including me because I’m lazy) omit it. This is because “How many is are in Mississippi” looks hella confusing, while in most cases people will generally understand what you’re saying (i.e. you’re referring to the phrase “harasho” rather than some unknown word “harashos”).

I have B.A.’s in Politics and Economics. → Used for abbreviations with more than one period. Does not apply to abbreviations without periods, such as TVs. This rule is pretty much ignored too, since like I said before it’s not essential for clearing up any confusion.

You should use apostrophes for possessive cases and contractions, e.g. “I can’t handle this anon’s misuse of the apostrophe.” You could’ve said “I will steal your waifu’s love from you” and that would’ve been perfectly acceptable. TBH I’m actually more upset by your grammar mistake than the statement itself which probably says a lot about me as a person lol.

I know perfect grammar isn’t called for on the internet. Hell, I use “imma” and “gonna” all the time. But even slang follows certain structures - I’ve read papers on the subject and even went through a college lecture on this. The “you that busy” (as opposed to “you’re that busy”) works fine for slang, but the “waifu’s” thing? Nope. A lot of style guides argue over how to use apostrophes in different situations, but nowhere will you find one that allows you to use “waifu’s” as a plural.

So for the love of god, to everyone reading: STOP CASUALLY USING APOSTROPHES TO DENOTE PLURALS. Please. I die a little every time I see it, which is why I’m going through the trouble of pointing this out.

Addendum: If English isn’t your first language, I applaud your progress in the language so far, and hope that you consider this an informative lesson on the subject. If it is, please note that you’ve been upstaged by some punk who spoke Korean better than English until about age 7.

2. I don’t refer to Love Live! characters as “waifus”, so your statement is invalid.

I haven’t used the term for favorite characters since my high school days except to parody something (e.g. “rinnya aishiteru be mai waifu 4ever!!!111”). I don’t use the term “waifu” in the LL fandom - in fact, I don’t even use it at all outside of a joking context.

You might have noticed that I often refer to the LL girls in the following ways:

omg don’t hurt this precious baby

bless this child

look at my beautiful daughter

someone stop this kid

I’m Suwawa’s age, so do the math: I’m old. Though actually, referring to high school girls as wives is pretty creepy, regardless of age. Anyways, I’ve reached the point where I relate more to the parents going “omg this child is being reckless and doing stupid shit” instead of going “omg this superhero is being badass”. Seriously. I watched Spiderman: Homecoming recently and couldn’t stop pulling my hair out over Peter Parker’s stupidity. Instead of being impressed by the fight scenes, I was more worried about all the cars being destroyed in the movie (What if someone’s livelihood depends on their ability to drive to work?! Oh my god Parker, you just destroyed a car you borrowed from someone, that was an Audi do you know how much those things cost) and the poor saps who had to rebuild all the structures in New York and Maryland (You get a free suit from Iron Man, and you repay him by causing needless destruction to people’s homes and businesses?! Parker you little shit you go to a school for gifted kids so fucking stay in it!!!).

Whoops, got sidetracked. What I’m trying to say is, the LL characters are teenage girls. I’m not interested in them romantically. If anything, I see them as kids who need protection from all their haters and precious darlings who need to be shown the best of the world.

Do you want to know who I’ve used the term “waifu” for? Just two people.

The first is a living, breathing, actual person in real life who was one of my best friends in high school. I’m pretty sure you’re not referring to her. If you are, that’s hella creepy for a whole bunch of reasons, including “dude i don’t call her that now and she’s probably taken” and “that’s a detail from my private life, how the fuck did you even know about that???”. I nicknamed her “Waifu” for shits and giggles. Well, there was actually a reason behind it, but, uh…it’s a long story.

Anyways, there is exactly one anime character I’ve labeled “waifu”, and that dubious honor goes to Nagato Yuki of the Haruhi series. She was my first legitimate favorite character, since IMO characters like Pikachu and Sasuke don’t count (I just thought he was cool back when I was like 11, plus that was before he pulled all that weird shit with Orochimaru…oh god I feel old again). But yeah, instead of just going “I like her because she’s pretty/kickass” I was just like “omg she does so much to protect her friends and suffers so much, why can’t she be happy???”…which is, admittedly, a trend with my favorite characters…why am I like this…

Anyways, I’m pretty sure you weren’t referring to her, either.

3. You can’t “steal” away favorite characters, so your statement is still invalid.

Let’s assume that you were thinking of Rin and You (and maybe Shukashuu?) when you were sending in that ask. Here’s the issue - “your” waifus. Uh, news flash: you can’t steal away a favorite character. Like, my favorite color is red, and you’re allowed to have that be your favorite color too.

That’s partially why I detest the term “waifu” - it implies exclusivity and possession. They’re not “things” you can take. Also, I kinda hate people who bicker over who’s the #1 fan of a certain person or character. Bruh, if you’re a true fan you’d just cheer them on from the sidelines and want the best for them, rather than poisoning the fandom with your attacks.

And on the subject of that “(and maybe Shukashuu?)” above…referring to seiyuu as “waifus” is super-duper mega creepy. They’re real people, and they’re all pretty young, too. Please treat them with respect.

tl;dr: I don’t have “waifus”, and even if I did you can’t “steal” them away. Also, please fix your grammar.

#yujachask #anonymous #my ramblings #today on my blog: no one wanted a grammar lesson but i gave it anyway #don't get me started on when people misuse it's and its #i screenshotted this while i was writing it and showed it to ONIBE #the response was 'this is why yuja is QC' lol

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beatlebob64 · 7 years

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Q&A with Paul McCartney about the Sgt. Pepper album that took place at Abbey Road’s Studio Two – the very room where the album was recorded! PaulMcCartey.com [PMc]: Do you remember coming up with the cover and band concepts? We understand that the original concept came from you doing a doodle on a plane based around an Edwardian military band? Paul McCartney [PM]: Yeah! Well, what really happened was I was coming back from a trip abroad with our roadie, Mal Evans, just the two of us together on the plane. And we were eating and he mumbled to me, asked me to pass the salt and pepper. And I misheard him. He said [mumbles] “saltandpepper”. I go, “Sergeant Pepper?” I thought he said, “Sergeant Pepper”. I went, “Oh! Wait a minute, that’s a great idea!” So we had a laugh about it, then I started thinking about Sergeant Pepper as a character. I thought it would be a very interesting idea for us to assume alter egos for this album we were about to make.

So that’s what we did. And yeah, I started doing drawings of how the band might look. I sort of got this military look thing going and one of my ideas was that they were being presented by the Lord Mayor of some Northern town in a park. And in the old days they used to have floral clocks, they called them. It was like a clock that was made out of flowers. So I did drawings of the floral clock and then, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band”, AKA The Beatles, getting an award. So they’ve got a big cup and they’re getting some sort of award from the town.

So that’s where the idea came from and then I just talked to all the guys and said, “What do you think of this idea?” They liked it and I said, “It will mean, when I approach the mic, it’s not Paul McCartney. I don’t have to think this is a Paul McCartney song”. So it was freeing. It was quite liberating.

So, you know, we didn’t keep that idea up all the time, but that was the basic idea that we would make something that was very free. Something that this other band might make, instead of doing something that we thought The Beatles ought to make. It originally came from that mishearing of salt and pepper!

PMc: Were you doing the drawings on the same flight? PM: I don’t remember if I did the drawings on the flight, or whether that’s just got morphed into the same story. But definitely on the flight coming back. That was the start of it when I misheard that. So that’s the essence of the whole idea.

PMc: Had you already started to write the songs for that album? PM: No, but when I got back I started thinking, “Okay, what would their theme tune be?” So I wrote what became the opening song where they would introduce themselves and then they would introduce another character: Billy Shears, which was Ringo.

It was just to give us all alter egos, to give us all invented characters. So that now we were making this album like a piece of theatre. We were now going in to the studio as other people. And we came down to Soho, in the West End, and had our uniforms made by Berman’s the theatrical costumiere.

PMc: Was there any reason for the different coloured outfits? PM: No, we just chose a material. Said, “I’ll have that, he’ll have that”. There was no concept, no. It was just whoever wanted what colour.

PMc: We understand there were two drum skins created for the cover. Was there any specific reason for that, or was it just to make sure you had different options? PM: No, I think the drum skins - as I recall - were organised by Peter Blake, who had someone he knew who did painting for fairgrounds. So you see the rides in the fairgrounds - like the Waltzer, or you know, the House Of Fun and all that - it’s always lettered and painted a certain way, which is quite an ancient tradition, apparently. There’s a specific look to it all and there are people who specialise in those, so I think Peter had those done by those people, and I suppose he just had a spare one made as well. I think we probably would have just said, “That one”.

PMc: We realised in the office that there are some grammar mistakes on the drum skin: a semicolon after ‘Sgt’, and there isn’t an apostrophe in ‘Peppers’. Is that just an accident? PM: Yeah, that’s an accident! The guy doing it was, as I say, a fairground guy, so all this sort of stuff [Paul points to the logo on the album cover] - the filigree and all these decorative things - are the kind of things you would see on the side of a Waltzer, when you go to the fairground. It’s covered in this kind of stuff.

So I think he will have just been told “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, and instead of putting a dot after the ‘gt’ of ‘Sgt.’ - which I think you might naturally do - I think it just looks better as a composition to be down there. And there’s no particular reason for it being a semi colon. It could have just as easily been two dots, or something. And then no apostrophe? There’s no reason for it. He was asked to do that and he came up with that beautiful design.

PMc: Do you remember who’s idea it was to have the cut outs that came with the album? The moustache, medals, stripes and band stand up? PM: I think those were Peter’s ideas. I certainly gave him the basic idea of the Sgt. Pepper band. There was the floral clock that got changed into the little flower arrangements on the cover. And then the idea was that each of these characters in the “play” would have their own background. So I asked all the guys to come up with a list of people who their character might be fans of. So everyone did that like as a bit of homework, kind of thing.

PMc: Was there anybody who kind of didn’t make the final collage on the cover? PM: Oh, yeah! I mean, some, because it was just a fun thing. You know, I think someone brought Hitler. And that was vetoed immediately: “No!” And then Jesus was in there. You know, he was an understandable hero. But there were certain ones that might have offended people.

I mean, Hitler, I think was just a joke. No way he was gonna get on there. Jesus was not so much a joke. He could have been in there but we didn’t want to offend Christians.

PMc: Do you remember any specific names you suggested? PM: [Looking at the album cover] I think these were mine: Aldous Huxley, because I had been reading a book by him. H.G. Wells, Fred Astaire. And then there was Dylan Thomas.

There’s a footballer there, I think that’s Dixie Dean. I mean this is all documented exactly who they are. Laurel and Hardy, we liked them. William Morris, Marilyn Monroe, Terry Southern. This is what the floral clock became at the bottom of the cover. And then people thought this was marijuana, which they weren’t. They were just plants! But, of course, in those days everyone read everything into everything we did.

But that was it. We all had a list of favourites. George put in an Indian guru, that’s Yogananda. And Babaji is in there. So we just each put people in that we admired through history, so that was the idea. It was really just so if a fan magazine had said to the characters in this fictitious band, “Who are your favourites?” They’d go, “Oh, these people”. We’d go, “Okay this character, is that kind of guy. George: he’s more into mystical people, you know. Paul: okay, he’s more into literary ones, or whatever”. So it would give us each an identity. It was really just for background.

There were certain ones we all liked, like Oscar Wilde. Max Miller was a British comedian. And then there’s Stuart [Sutcliffe], who had been our old bass player, who died. Aubrey Beardsley, the artist. The Bowery Boys, they were a TV series when we were growing up, and there was one of them who wouldn’t do it. One of them wanted money for it.

We just wrote to everyone and said, “Do you mind?” Well, at first we didn’t. But the head of EMI, Sir Joseph Lockwood came to my house and complained! He said, “This is going to be a nightmare. There are going to be legal battles!” I said, “No, no, no. People are gonna love it! They’re all on The Beatles cover, you know! It’ll be a laugh, they’ll understand”. He said, “No, you’ve got to write to them all”.

So we did. We got a letter out: “We are planning to do this using your image. Do you mind? Is it okay? Please give us the okay”. And all of them did, except for one of the Bowery Boys who wanted to cut a deal. And we thought, “You know what, we’ve got enough people on here!”

PMc: Did that delay the album release? PM: No. No the cover wasn’t shot. We had the idea… Or it may have been, it may have been actually. Yeah, I think it was shot, but we just had to ask them all.

PMc: Would you pick different people for the cover today, compared to 1967? PM: I’m not sure. You know probably, yeah. But just because it wouldn’t be the same time.

PMc: We’ve read that the Sgt. Pepper moustache came about because you had been in a bike accident. Is that true? PM: Yeah! I had a moped and was with a friend of mine up in Liverpool. It was Tara Browne, who was one of the Guinness family. He and I were going to visit my cousin Betty on these mopeds that we had, little motorised bicycles. And there was a very full moon and I said, “Wow, look at that moon!” Then I suddenly realised I’d lost my balance and I looked back and I smacked the pavement and bust my lip! And we went to my cousin’s house with my hand over my lips saying, “Hey Bett! Don’t be worried”. And she’s thinking, “Oh, isn’t he funny”. And then, “…Ahh!”

So, Betty said, “Oh, I’m gonna get this guy”. This doctor, he’s the local doctor and he came over. But, tell you the truth, he’d had a few. So he said, “I’m gonna have to stitch you!” And I said, “Oh!” Because, you know, it was Christmas time or New Years time, and he definitely was over the limit!

So he got his needle, and he could barely thread it, he couldn’t thread it even. So I think Betty sort of said, “Here, let me do that”. So she threaded his needle up for him and I went, “Ahh… Here goes nothing!”

So he put it in – no anesthetic. Bang! “Oww!” You know, and then he put it through and made a stitch up, put it through the other side, “Oww! God!” I was just sort of standing there. It was not wonderful, but I thought, “Well, he’s got to do it”. He pulls it right through, and the thread comes out. “Oh, we’ve got to do that again, then.” “Jeez.” Was I happy? No!

But yeah, so after that I started growing this moustache to hide quite a big, sizeable bump. There’s a bump still there. But it was quite a good gash, and I broke a tooth!

Yeah but anyway, so he had to do it. He finished it off. It wasn’t a brilliant job. So then, as I was recovering, I let this grow as a moustache. I wasn’t really in the public eye for a while, so then the first thing people knew was that I’d grown that moustache. And the other guys liked it and so we all grew them. It was just like a fun thing. So that’s that!

PMc: At the end of the album - following ‘A Day In The Life’ - you have that very high-pitched tone. And then you have the inner groove loop on the record. Where did those ideas come from?

PM: Okay, so the loop thing was that at that time people were partying a lot and getting stoned a lot. And one of the things is you would be in a party with everyone, you’d be playing an album on vinyl and so the record would end. But everybody would be so sort of stoned that the record would just go [mimics the noise of the record player getting stuck in the inner groove]. You’ve all been there! And people would go, “Ahhh… Yeah…” And no one would turn it off!

So we went, you know what, we should have something there. We should put in a little loop so when that happens, there will be something there! So that was the basis of that idea. So we just recorded something, we just all got around the mic, and we just said stupid stuff. It’s just a loop cut out of some stuff we said.

I think John said something like, “Cranberry sauce, cranberry sauce”. And that was just a little bit of fun for us, because we were always trying to be different from other people who made records. So this would be a very “Beatle-y” thing to do. So we did it, and it was just for that moment where [mimics record player playing the inner groove]. It would say something instead of just, “Cuh-chug, cuh-chug”.

The crazy thing was, as I said, everyone read into everything we ever did in those days. So somebody arrived at my house and the rumour was that if you played it backwards, it said something. If you play it in that groove backwards and then we thought well none of us have ever tried. So I said, “No, it’s nonsense. That’s not true, at all!” And they said, “It is! It is! It is!” And they insisted. So I said well come and show me. So he took it, and somehow, we just went against the player’s motor, turned it backwards, the loop. And sorry folks, excuse my expletives, but it was supposed to say, “We’ll fuck you like supermen”. I went, “This is just ridiculous!” But sure enough, “We’ll fuck you like supermen, we’ll fuck you like supermen”. It sounded like that!

PMc: So that was just by complete chance? PM: It was, yeah! It was pretty random, but those things happen with the readings, you know. Because people would look into it so much, and that was that.

PMc: And no one had done that kind of inner groove loop before, is that right? PM: Yeah, nobody had done it on a loop like that. It’s a silly idea. No one was as silly as we were!

But the other thing, that was fascinating: the high-pitched noise [whistles]. We would have great conversations with George Martin in the studio, because he was very swotty, George was. Very mathematics, and he knew the science behind a lot of what we were doing, whereas we didn’t. We just enjoyed it and loved it. But he was talking about frequencies. He said, “There are so many frequencies”. For instance, he said, “Your ears are all younger than mine”. He said, “Let’s do a little test’. So he took a little oscillator that we had and went [whistles from a low to high pitch]. And he got it up to [whistles very high]. And he said, “Can you hear that?” We go, “Yeah…” He goes [whistles higher]. He said, “I can’t hear that, can you?” We go, “Yeah!”

Then he took it higher so even we couldn’t hear it and said, “It’s still there”. The noise, the frequency was still there. He said, “Dogs can hear that. Dogs have a different framework, a different range of hearing”. We went, “Fantastic! We’ve gotta put that on the record!” So when suddenly when everyone’s listening to it, no one can hear it and the dog would perk up. You know, prick his ears up: “What’s that?”

So that arrived from those great conversations. And the other end of that conversation was he said, “Lots of people know this, this frequency thing. And one of the things Hitler had was these sort of PR people, who did movies for him. You know, Leni Riefenstahl. And there was a PR machine behind everything he did”. He said, “And one of the things, and it’s suppose to be true, was that at these rallies, hundreds and thousands of people would arrive, and you see film of it. And he wouldn’t arrive, he wouldn’t be there. And what they would do is they would put a subsonic noise [makes low-pitched hum] through the speakers. But no one could hear it, but it was sort of was rather discomforting. So you can’t hear it, but it kind of puts you off a bit.” It’s like a super sub-bass at a big club. It’s like, it can actually sort of get to you, it can bother you a bit, so he said, “They used to play this, this is the story, and then just before Hitler showed up they would turn it off”.

PMc: So they would get a sense of relief? PM: Yeah! Like, “I feel so much better, now he’s here!” You know, and nobody knew that there’s a subsonic noise.

PMc: And George Martin told you that story? PM: Yeah, George Martin. This was all one conversation: “The Highs And The Lows” by George Martin. But you know, we took it all in. We loved him. We loved these little chats and we used it all in our music.

You know, if someone put a tape machine on backwards by mistake once, the tape op, and we were like, “Oh! What’s that?” Whereas I always say any other band would have just gone, “You’ve got it on backwards, stupid! Put it on right!” But we were always, “Ahh, how can we use that?”

George was such a good producer and got it. And he would say, “Well, we could do it. And if we did this, and if we did that…” And so that really made it interesting, because there were all sorts of physical things like that that he would educate us with. Like half speed things. If things were very fast, the guitar solo in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ [sings the song]. It was very hard to play normal speed. So George would say, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do…” So we took it down to half speed on these studio machines. You have to take it down an octave, that’s what was intriguing. So half speed, the octave would go down. You would play it on a bass guitar or a guitar [sings song again, lower and at half speed], and it’s easy to play! And then you just put it back up [sings at full speed]. So if you listen to that solo that’s at double speed. So we had a lot of fun with that, you know, it’s gonna go down an octave, we’re gonna play it slow.

PMc: I’ve always wondered if you guys slowed down ‘When I’m Sixty Four’ because your voice sounds slightly higher? PM: Sometimes I would just speed things up a bit. Often, when you make a song you record it and then you think, “It’s not quite fast enough!” So rather than do it again, you just lifted the tape. These days you can lift the tape and not lift the pitch, with Logic and a few other machines. But back then you would actually lift the pitch a bit.

PMc: So another question we quite often see is, in hindsight, do you wish ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields’ had been included on the album? And if so, where would you have placed them? PM: No, I was happy. So we won’t even get into placing them! I was happy that it was the precursor to ‘Sgt. Pepper’. And the thing was, you know, we always liked to release things fresh. We had just made those tracks, so the thought of waiting until we had completed the whole album would not have appealed to us. You know, we liked that as soon as it’s made, at the nearest point to the actual making of the song and the record, we would like to put it out. So I was glad how we did it and it was like a fanfare, that single. Another thing we liked about it was it was simple value for money. You really got two A-sides. But it kind of heralded what was to come.

PMc: Kind of like a road sign showing what was on the way? PM: Yeah!

PMc: Another question we see is: Did you have any kind of idea at the time just how big this album would become? PM: No, not really. The only thing we knew was that the music press, I’m not sure who it was – it would probably have been The New Music Express or The Melody Maker, the two music papers that were very big at the time – one of them, somebody from one of those music papers said, “Oh, The Beatles have dried up. They’ve finished. We haven’t heard anything from them, you know, they’ve run out of ideas”. So we were quietly tinkering away at Abbey Road knowing we hadn’t run out of ideas and knowing it was gonna be really great to be able to say, “No, we didn’t run out. Check this out!” And give them ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and go – “Take that back!”

In fact, when it did get released, the music critic from The New York Times said it was terrible. And Linda said she met him in the street and said, “You’re crazy, man. It’s a great album! What are you talking about?” And there must have been a lot of people that said it to him that week, because he took it back a week later. He said, “You know what, it’s grown on me. I like it’.

PMc: And looking back now, what always blows our minds, is that you were only 24 when that album was recorded. That’s quite incredible! PM: Yeah, I mean there’s quite a few people who feel they’re very grown up when they’re 24. And we did! We’d been doing the group since, well, since we were kinda 19 and 20. So four years at that kind of pace was a long time. And we all smoked Rothman cigarettes. And we had Carnaby Street stuff, so we thought we were pretty hot. So 24 didn’t seem young to us, because we had just been 20!

I mean, I always tell the story of when were 17, me and George - and George would have been 16 - and we used to go round to see John at his Art College, which was next door to our school. We were where LIPA now is, The Liverpool Institute. Next door was the Arts School which is now part of LIPA as well. But that’s where John was, so we’d go round just to hang out and see him during lunchtime and there was a guy who was in John’s year, who was like older than the class. You know that phenomenon and he was 24 and we felt so sorry for him! No, we really did, like a genuine sorrow. [Whispers] “He’s 24? God, it must be awful!” You know, now looking back he was like a child. But, you know, so by the time we were 24, we felt like we had done quite a lot. We had done enough to sort of think we were pretty grown up!

A coda from PaulMcCartney.com: After we stopped recording our Q&A, Paul carried on telling us some very cool stories, such as how one day in the studio the ‘A’ string on John Lennon’s guitar began to resonate when he leant his guitar against an amplifier. The band jumped up when they heard the noise, saying, “What’s that?!” After George Martin explained how certain frequencies will make objects vibrate, it was agreed they would record this new sound for the start of ‘I Feel Fine’.

Paul told us how he really loved that about The Beatles: when those “happy accidents” happened, the band would want to use it in a song somehow. He likened it to how a painter might see a small, unintended brushstroke on a canvas and decide to leave it in, rather than painting it out.

Another story Paul told us was about how one of the engineers threaded the tape machine the wrong way in the studio during a session. When they pressed “Play” the song played backwards and again, up they jumped asking George Martin if they could use that somehow. Paul told us George’s response was always to rub his chin, look thoughtful then reply, “Well, I suppose we could…” And the rest, as they say, is history!

#paul mccartney #the beatles #sgt.pepper

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artificialqueens · 7 years

Text

astronaut (sashea) -- by svetlana

a/n: really, a study on the topics of dreams and how they relate to love & sasha giving an impromptu lesson on narrative structure.

“I’m not good at living in the moment,” Sasha says. “I don’t think anyone is, and maybe love is when you find something that tethers you to real time.”

She is drunk, teetering just past the brink of rational thinking, and Sasha can’t tell if it’s possibilities or alcohol burning through her veins. As far as she can remember, it’s the first time that it doesn’t matter.

Shea is drunk which is familiar, and she’s Dali-blue in the moonlight, which isn’t. The thoughts stop and all Sasha can hear are the crickets, the wind rustling through Central Park at night, the water of the lake lapping against artificial shores. Then, Shea’s voice, soft as summer. “I like that.�� She shifts onto her side so that she faces Sasha. They are apostrophes, beginning and end, knees tucked and necks bent toward each other. There is barely any grass between them, but Sasha counts five dead leaves. “Is that why people grow old? ‘Cause loving people makes you wanna age with them?”

Something trails itself across Sasha’s neck. Perhaps an ant. Perhaps a blade of grass. “Loving anything.” Her voice is weaker than she intended. “Loving people, loving art, loving, we’re able to define our love as humans because of mortality. There’s an end, so there’s exposition, rising action, and…”

Everything is raw and new. She is six-years-old Lady Macbeth with Crayola blood on her hands. She’s Norman Bates-Nosferatu. She is learning how to create, how to fabricate new realities to escape to and she wields metaphors as shields because it’s hard to stay in the now when the now is so steeped in – and there is always a bigger picture, a fabulous distraction because she’s a single-minded researcher who won’t stop till she knows all about Stonewall or World War II propaganda songs or Shea Coulée, and there, at last, the thoughts stop. She touches Shea’s lashes. They flutter beneath her fingertips.

“Is love murder?” Shea asks.

It’s the part of Shea that no one else gets to see – the part hidden behind the crude jokes and sass and French. She wonders what makes her special before deciding that it doesn’t matter outside of the fact that she is. They are still touching. Sasha exhales, touches Shea’s forehead. “I like your mind.”

Shea snorts. “Girl, don’t forget my body’s here too.

Obligingly, Sasha pinches Shea’s bicep. “Oh, so firm and accessible, like the revolution.”

“Shut up, oh my god, you’re so gone you don’t even know what you’re saying anymore.“

But they’re both laughing, and the moon is swollen above them. Details, the bigger picture, maybe Sasha lied. She can’t help it after all. They are out of drag and Shea has started rubbing what feels like a new alphabet into the back of Sasha’s head and it’s the first time that the world has been swept to the side, where there’s nothing else but just wanting to be soaked in dew and insects with Shea at ungodly hours in Central Park.

In Classics 120, they’d called it hamaratia, a fatal flaw. Johnny had called it feeling too much and said that he’s like that too, two big-eyed introverts with a fondness for big words and exploration and they cover their apartment with paintings and designs, go to sleep early so that they can read to each other in the mornings. It’s easy.

But she doesn’t understand Shea, who has a habit of asking one too many questions like, “So would you rather – like for real – be able to speak to animals, or teleport?” and following up with things like, “What makes you put on wigs sometimes? What does your mind palace look like?” The best guess she has is that maybe Shea is trying to map out her mind, and isn’t it funny that she doesn’t mind at all?

Now, Shea asks, “Why’d you look away?”

“I didn’t.”

“No, I mean I usually see you look at someone for the same amount of time and then you just look down like it’s an afterthought.”

“I read articles on how there’s an average amount of time for when you look at acquaintances, friends, and partners. Sometimes mid-conversation, I just remember the counts.”

Shea has stopped moving. There’s a strange smile on her lips. “You can look at me however long you want, Sasha, and I’ll probably just stare back.“

Sasha laughs. “Are you trying to start a staring contest?”

“I mean, we could just always be playing spoons.”

“Oh, spoons. I think we’ve just gone back in time.”

I should draw this, Sasha thinks. It’s the perfect study of light. But she knows she won’t. There’s no good medium to express how it is to feel interesting, the sensation of secrets building up behind her smile. In any case, Shea must have a good idea already, if she’s this used to their conversations.

“Well, if you’re not good at living in the moment, then the past works.”

The sky in the city is paper thin, and long ago, she’d listen to songs about paper moons with her family at dinner and wonder if one day she’ll poke pinprick stars into existence through all the light pollution. When she hadn’t been a Lady Macbeth, Sasha had wondered what it would be like to be an astronaut. Lately, she’s been dreaming about taking rockets to Pluto, and she thinks maybe she’s scared that one day it will all become old and there will be nothing left to discover or share. And maybe there’s something to be said for how gravity affects dreams, how the inexpressible is traded for words and colors and things within human comprehension.

She doesn’t say, and you’ve reminded me of this. Instead, she asks, “What about you? You bribed me into friendship with a stalk of broccoli and then started talking about the time-space continuum.”

“I figured you’re the smart one so you’d probably know,” Shea says. Like it’s a given. “It’s not like I was planning it anyway. I’m just curious around you.”

Oh. Ironic, that she’d forgotten to look inward, too busy being inspired by history and politics and her family, that of course there would always be new places to find and people to meet and she should have more trust in herself, because Shea would never look away, would just stare back, she should know by now that she’ll never run out of ideas. And that if she does, she knows who to call. “You’ve taught me a lot, just by asking.”

Shea cackles. “Oh, she says that to me now after all those times I tried to coach her into doing the splits. She comes into my home –“

“Girl, come on.”

It’s not murder per se, but it’s its own form of recreation. And Sasha happens to be very fond of rebirth.

#please remember your tags!!#sasha velour #shea coulee #sashea #svetlana #rpdr fanfiction #submission #s9

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kitanoko · 7 years

Note

I absolutely adore your TodoMomo fics! ;_; Thank you so much for writing them! If there's a jealous Izuku, how about a fic starring a jealous Todoroki next? >

Note: Thanks! To celebrate the blog reaching 800+ followers, I made this one longer than usual. Comedic and light hearted; Enjoy!

In which Todoroki and Yaoyorozu go to a photoshoot

It’s been 3 hours. The gel was trickling down her neck. Histoo, actually. The heat of the salon lights bounced off the sweat protrudingfrom every pore of his face and he decided then that this could be a form oftorture. He would never agree to it again; but the way her eyes begged andpleaded sucked the soul out of him. Ugh. He just couldn’t refuse.

Todoroki turned his head to face his partner in crime asrequested by his so-called “experienced” stylist.

“Thanks for helping out,” Yaoyorozu said. She was sittingacross from him with another crew of stylists and advisors around her, and sheclosed her eyes as another mist of holding spray was applied on her silky,black locks.

“When they asked me to bring a guy to do the ad with me, thefirst person I thought of was you.”

Todoroki winced as his stylist accidentally poked him toohard with the comb for the tenth time that hour. He was starting to think thisstylist had something against him.

“No problem,” he answered, trying to hide his discomfort andhe heard a hearty laugh from afar, “Kaminari, I can hear you.”

The blond spectator held his palm against his mouth, andYaoyorozu pressed her lips together.

“Let me enlighten you,” Yaoyorozu rose a finger in the airlike she was a tenured professor. This was her element.

“Heroes have to appeal to the public by any means necessary.So although Todoroki and I may look silly right now, this is just part of ourgrowth as young heroes.” She saw Kaminari’s stoic expression and continued, “Ilearnt this during my internship with Ms.Uwabami.”

Kaminari quickly nodded to placate the girl. Neverunderestimate Yaoyorozu’s power to educate.

“Sorry, you look great Yaomomo. I was just laughing atTodoroki.”

Jirou, lying low, angled and positioned her phone in frontof her face. With a final decision to move one inch to her left, she steadiedher hand.

“Smile! Wait, Todoroki can you smile a little wider. No,smile like you mean it. Okay, that’s perfect!” Jirou’s phone flashed and shewent on, “As per Ashido’s orders, I am to take as many pictures of thebackstage process as possible. She’s probably crying right now in her supplementaryclass.”

Yaoyorozu gave a winsome smile, one that Todoroki was surewould have earned her an academy award if she were an actress, and gazed uponher own reflection to examine her appearance. She seemed impressed. Within abrief moment, the stylists told them to get into the dingy little studio with camerasand flimsy backdrops set up by anything but their own accord.

“Okay we’ll be watching from here!” Kaminari called out, movingover to the side,“and uhh, Jirou’s gonna be our own little ‘camerawoman’.” Hescratched imaginary apostrophes above him for emphasis.

Todoroki was actually, for once, doubting himself.

“We’re gonna start with Ms.Yaoyorozu’s solo shots,”the camera man said loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “Mr.Todorokiplease observe from the side.”

Todoroki complied and crossed his arms, moving himself overto Kaminari’s right. He felt like one of the audience in a show and foundhimself astonished at Yaoyorozu’s professional demeanor. True, she was in herelement when she was teaching and fighting crime, but Todoroki had to confess,modelling might also be her calling.

Yaoyorozu sat gracefully with her legsextended in front of her on sand that was too yellow to be real, beside a beachball. She was wearing a black bikini, no patterns, just a bunch of straps thatwas supposed to ‘hide’ her creamy skin. To add onto the sultriness of thephoto, the staff sprayed some water on her chest and limbs to portray a ‘heylook I just came out of the water’ type of image. Her hair was down and she washolding a bottle of shampoo, levelled with her face; with every move of thecamera, her slightly poised head would follow with a radiant smile brighterthan the flash itself.

“Excellent,” the cameraman muttered with every click of his skillfulfinger. “Ms.Yaoyorozu let’s do one where you’re laying down on your stomach,looking into the camera.”

Jirou froze, “Hey isn’t that a little too…” And she blushed.Her new position made Todoroki’s blood boil in places it shouldn’t be. Were they advertising the shampoo or Yaoyorozu?

“Great!” The cameraman cried after a few shots, not willingto waste another second, “Okay now Mr.Todoroki could you please come and joinher?”

Todoroki glued his fingers together like a glove and slidthem down. Wait, where the hell were thepockets. He sighed. He totally forgot he was wearing these thin, red swimshorts with an airy shirt that looked like it came out of a gaudy 1980’s closet.

“Hey, shouldn’t Todoroki be shirtless? I mean, they’re supposedto be at a beach right,” Kaminari suggested, eyes looking heavenward as if hewas thinking. God, Kaminari do you evernot cause me trouble, Todoroki thought. The cameraman looked hesitant.

“Well, Mr.Todoroki isn’t really supposed to be the focus ofthe shot-“

“Trust me, he has great abs,” Kaminari interjected, lookingunnecessarily proud and patted his friend’s shoulder. Todoroki turned over andtook a deep breath without saying a word. Someonecontrol this idiot or he will take a blow to the stomach, slung over my knee inSatan’s presence.

The cameraman was convinced right away, “Mr.Todoroki, hurry,take off your shirt and both of you…” He placed a finger on his chin inthought, “lean against each other, back to back, and tilt your heads down.”

Todoroki looked visibly annoyed and unbuttoned his shirt.Tossing it carelessly somewhere beside him, he noticed at the side of his scopeof vision that two female staff were ogling at him. He took them in stride andwas quick to sit beside Yaoyorozu, who was waiting for him patiently.

The two did as they were told, albeit unfamiliar with theimmense skin-to-skin contact.

“Sorry, we’re sortatouching,” Yaoyorozu said, peeking through her eyelashes. Her eyes weredowncast upon her fingers below, giving the boy next to him a clear view of herchest and Todoroki whipped his head around to evade that image from brandinginto his mind.

“You chose me to help with this because you’re comfortablewith me right?” Todoroki commented and pressed his back harder on hers. He sawthe lens of the camera zoom and rushed to add, “Don’t worry, the shot will turnout great.”

The next week was a total nightmare for some, but heaven forothers. Especially Mineta.

“Oh my gosh,” Ashido squealed, flailing about, “You two areon fire! Look at the bulletin board at the lobby!” She landed her hands onYaoyorozu’s desk, staring at the other girl, and continued, “Well I should say,there’s only one picture of both of you there, and the others were mainly just you,but still!”

The acid heroine’s excitement was superfluous and on theside, Mineta was engrossed with the screen of his phone, looking like he washaving a field day. Jirou peered over his lumpy purple head and saw whatappeared to be snapshots of Yaoyorozu’s ad as the wallpaper on his phone. Shegagged.

On the other side of the school, Todoroki and a few othersobserved as hormone-filled, puberty-ridden guys surrounded the bulletin boardwith mouths drooling. The fire and ice hero was undoubtedly fending offfangirls of his own that morning, but Yaoyorozu’s solo advertisements weremagnetizing crowds beyond his scope of understanding. Why UA decided to havethese on full display was questionable.

“Midoriya, let’s eat lunch here today,” Todoroki uttered.The melon bread was slowly being punctured out of its misery in his grasp.

“Why? I thought we were just passing by to check out yourshots, well more like Yaoyorozu’s shots.”

“I don’t know, I just think this would be a good spot.”

Resembling a human coagulation of darkness, Tokoyamishook his head, “Todoroki, there’s a whole assembly of people here. How is thisa good spot.”

Todoroki didn’t take his question into account, and promptlysat down across from the bulletin board, chewing his food slowly. Kirishimashrugged and followed suit.

“Does it have something to do with Yaomomo’s posters?”Kaminari asked, lowering himself beside the Red Riot hero and followed Todoroki’sseemingly point blank gaze. Todoroki gritted his teeth whenever someone tooktheir phones out to record their own Yaoyorozu memorabilia and gulped down thelast bit of his bread.

“Wow, you ate so fast,” Kirishima noted as he scooped a pileof rice into his mouth and Todoroki mumbled an incoherent response. One particularlysuspicious-looking boy started to pluck out the pins out of one of the postersin succession. His eyes reflected an accumulation of inconceivable lust andTodoroki jetted off his spot as if to lunge at him. His friends’ mouths werewide open, except for Tokoyami who acted like he predicted this, when the normallyrational Todoroki pressed his hand hard against the dangling poster.

“You’re not allowed to take this,” his voice was serious butdidn’t stop the boy from pulling.

“But there are so many anyways,” the boy commented casually,“Who’s to know? Plus this one is my favourite, look at how great her –”

Todoroki further deepened his voice and lifted his head,“ Theposters are here for…educational purposes only.” He knew that was a long shot,but went on, “It’s called stealing. If you don’t put those pins back, I willphysically make you.”

“Okay, why don’t you try?”

The crowd began to bustle, but no one had the nerves to step between them.

Kaminari exhaled and went to the commotion, “Hey, if you don’tput it back. I’ll let Aizawa sensei know and he’ll deal with you.” The boyswallowed hard at that. This first-year probably had his ass kicked by Aizawaonce, by the looks of it.

“Uh…fine!” The little thief stuttered, “But…But—“

“Just get lost,” Todoroki spewed, eyes glaring indiscriminately, and the crowd began todisband.

Kaminari scoffed, “Ijust saved that kid from having frostbitten toes, didn’t I. Gotta give it to him though, what a brave soul to dare talk to you like this.”

The boy’s previously anger-plagued eyes softened, “Thanks, Idon’t know what came over me. Just a sense of justice, probably.”

“Sure, justice,” Kirishima slogged over, a piece of rice stuckon the edge of his chin, “I feel like it’s more of another word that startswith a ‘j’…mmm…what could it be?”

“Jealousy?” Kaminari teased and they both chuckled.

“Oh man, he’s not even denying it!”

“Should we go now, or does Todoroki here wanna continueplaying tower defense?” Tokoyami joined.

“Good one,” Kirishima high-fived the birdman asthe latter did a lopsided grin. These guys were deadly when they’re together. Midoriya stifled a laugh too, but did not chime in, watching as Todoroki turned his back to themwithout even a hint of protest.

“That…that happened?!” Yaoyorozu covered her face in embarrassmentwhen Kirishima and Kaminari re-enacted the whole scene for her.

“Yeah and he was all like ‘oh my god I’ll kick you until youcried for your mommy’ and he looked so pissed, he had steam coming out of hisears!” Kirishima mocked and began to laugh hysterically.

Kaminari held his stomach in pain, “and I swear he was –“

A sudden chill creeped down both of their spines.

“Are you guys done?” Todoroki came out of the blue andglowered. Kaminari looked taken aback and pulled Kirishima to run for theirlives, leaving the two alone to drown in discomfort amongst the quiet line oflockers.

Yaoyorozu fiddled with a piece of her bangs, “Thanks fordoing the photo shoot the other day. If you’d like we could do another one? I wasasked to do a car commercial.”

Todoroki still had an unreadable expression and she frowned,“or not…?”

He thought for a moment and considered her proposal, “Sure,I wouldn’t mind.” She nodded happily. Her hands fished inside her backpack, andpulled out something small enough to fit in her palm.

“Before I forget,” she held out her hand, “give me yourwallet.”

The boy cocked an eyebrow but did as told. Yaoyorozu swiftlyopened his bifold and slipped in the thing in hand. Curiously, he checked theinside when she returned it. At the front transparent pocket, was a photo ofthem, clad in skimpy swim wear and looking ecstatic.

“The studio gave us each a smaller version to keep,” shecommented with a triumphant smile, “I hope you won’t lose it.”

“Mm, I’ll take good care of it,” he responded, “WhatKaminari and Kirishima said, could you forget about it?” The last part wasadded to ease his conscience.

“Yeah of…of course! You did it out of the goodness of yourheart! Those two were just joking!” She flopped her hand in the air to appealfor his approval and he relaxed. Watching as he stretched the muscles of his neck, she drapedher bag over her shoulders.

“I have to go now,” she waved her hands, “see you tomorrow.”

“Wait, it’s getting dark. I’ll walk with you back to thedorm, Yaoyorozu.”

Her heart fluttered at the unexpected offer and followed hisfootsteps, walking in tandem.

It could be just her overactive imagination, but she had toadmit, they did look amazing together.

#todomomo fanfiction #yaoyorozu momo #todoroki shouto #todomomo #todoroki x yaoyorozu #todoroki x momo #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #anime #manga #fanfic request #kaminari denki #jirou kyouka #tokoyami fumikage #kirishima eijirou #midoriya izuku

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coffeecupandteatime · 7 years

Text

Jagerbomb’s Mini-Review #2

HELLOOOOOOO~ Jagerbomb here for ANOTHER mini-review ʕ◕0◕ʔ Exciting isn’t?

Anyway the rules of a normal review apply here as well. I wall be as offensive as possible, so please don’t be a bitch.

ʕಠᴥಠʔ So please, sit down, and crack open a cold one with the boys, and enjoy the sporking.

Very dark HarryxOC fic. It's not your average fic, I promise. Harry and crew are suffering the effects of Voldemort(Apostrophe)s regained power. Set in sixth year.

What in the living fuck. This is the actual SUMMARY to the story.

1. Meetings

Let’s see here…. Shitty chapter title? Check.

A/N: BWAHAHAHAAAA!!! I finally wrote a fan fic (One word)! Maybe somebody will READ this one! All my poor originals have to be force fed to my friends

You sir are turning out to be a very rude Author already.

…. No one else even knows they're there I think… Oh well. All I ask for is reviews. ^_^V

Ohohohohoho! You’re getting a review alright! ʕಠᴥಠʔ▄︻̷̿┻̿═━一

Darkness rising

Why the hell is the story’s title AFTER the chapter’s???

Harry's summer had gone horribly. His books and broom were locked up, Hedwig was out for the night, and he'd been sent back to the cupboard under the stairs for pissing off Dudley.

Question: I thought Harry had a room upstairs now? I mean I can’t recall ever seeing him being sent back to the cupboard. Ever.

He'd had no word from Ron, Hermione, or Sirius, and he had no idea what was going on in the wizarding world. To top it off, it was August, and it was raining.

Nooooooo! Not the rain! Anything but the rain!

Harry couldn't stand it anymore. He was going out. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia hadn't and wouldn't object to him going out into the rain without telling them.

Tsk…. Harry you’re an idiot. You have magic but you’re still HUMAN, you’ll get sick.

Do it.

They could only pray he would get run over or die from pneumonia. He grabbed his jacket and walked silently out the door. Since he'd exchanged some of his wizarding money for muggle cash, he could afford to go get something to eat at least.

Why would he have wizard money on him outside of the Wizarding world anyway? Has has a bank account.

While walking down some random street, he found a lone hot dog stand open in the rain. Feeling sorry for the girl behind it, he decided it was hot dogs for dinner tonight.

“I’m already risking getting sick from this rain, might as well have a shitty hot dog.” Good job buddy.

He walked over to her and was about to order when a strange sensation came over him. This girl was a witch.

When the ever living fuck could Harry sense someone else was magical? ʕಠᴥಠʔ This is one of THOSE stories isn’t it?

"Um, can I have a chili dog please?" He asked, pondering whether or not to ask which wizarding school she went to.

Hey harry, have you ever had a vendor dog? Their pretty awful… Then again, it’d be the best meal you had! OOOOOOOOH!

Get it cos the Dursley’s rarely feed him enough ʕ;-;ʔ Eh?

"Sure. That's um… 2.75 please." Harry handed her the money, noting her American accent.

2.75 in what? Dollars? Pounds? Yen? PESOS!?

"If you don't mind my asking, you aren't from around here are you?" She shook her head.

Oh my god…. Don’t tell me there’s a Mary Goddamn Sue already.

"No, I'm a California Girl. I'm here to meet my grandfather, I guess. You don't want to hear about me, though." She shook her head.

FUCKING DAMMIT ALL TO HELL!

Harry was caught for a moment, noticing just how pretty she looked. She had pretty brown hair with bleached streaks, and amber eyes with flecks of orange and brown in them. Harry had grown a lot over the summer, but she was still just a centimeter taller. He smiled for her.

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

Fuck you. ʕಠᴥಠʔ╭∩╮

"It's not like I have something else to be doing. Why don't you tell me about it to save me from loss of sanity to boredom?" She chuckled softly.

“I’m just the Sue who’ll most likely be your love interest!”

He noticed how sad her eyes were. "I'm Harry. Harry Potter." He said, holding out his hand. She hesitantly took it.

Harry is being awfully nice to a complete stranger, for all he knew she could be faking it to steal his liver. Good thing mine’s dying! ʕಠᴥಠʔ Nice try bitch!

"Sandra Davis."

“Now fuck off you little bastard.”

Harry quickly learned that Sandra was fascinating. Besides the fact that she was gorgeous, she was smart, too. She was a muggle-

HOW IN THE HELL CAN SHE BE A FUCKING MUGGLE!?!

-(Which confused Harry to no end), and had stopped going to High School in preference of the City College level classes.

Aren’t you a special snowflake! Here’s a gold star!

She was apparently in England coming to visit her Grandfather, whom she'd never met. She apparently lived alone as well.

I’m say it it now, her grandfather is probably some powerful wizard.

"I'm a little worried though, I have to take the train in London to meet my Gramps, but have you ever heard of a platform Nine and Three- Quarters?" Harry was more than slightly surprised.

Oh no… Please don’t… I beg of you!

"Do you know what quidditch is?" He blurted out. She shook her head. "All right, sorry. Um, do you know what your grandfather does for a living?" Harry tried again.

Please don’t say magic, please don’t say magic, please don’t say magic.

"He's headmaster of some school here. Hogwarts,-

Oh you better be pulling my chain bub.

- I think. What a weird name, I mean really. Almost as weird as his, get a load of this, his name's Albus Dumbledore.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-Hahahahahahhahahahah! ʕಠᴥಠʔ -Shaking intensifies-

-Go figure, eh?" She laughed quietly. Harry was in shock. Albus Dumbledore's granddaughter was a muggle? He had a granddaughter? What in all hell was going on? She had magic, why wasn't she at Hogwarts?

I’m just as surprised as you Potter, just as surprised as you.

"That's my school." Harry said, for lack of anything else. "He's my headmaster."

-Deep inhale- This is top-notch interactions.

Sandra looked a little surprised, and looked around to make sure no one else was on the street. Then she leaned in and whispered-

Why the fuck do ya got a hyphen there?

"So that means you're the Harry Potter? The one who defeated this Voldemort guy?" Harry nodded, once more caught completely off guard.

“Nah, I’m the Harry Potter from Chicago. Ya know what they say about our sausage?” ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

"Oh good! My Gramps told me to go find you, and you'd make sure I got to Hogwarts all right." She looked immensely relieved. Harry had to stare at her for a minute.

OFFUCKINGCOURSE!

"I'm sorry, but you've confused the hell out of me." She smiled, but Harry had to notice again how it never reached her eyes.

Oh if only Coffee were here, she’d be having a blast tearing this a new anus. ʕಠᴥಠʔ

"She told him the whole story then. It turned out she was half and half (MUDBLOOD). She'd always known her mother was a witch, but the whole family had gone with Sandra's father to live as muggles, even though he was outnumbered.

What the hell? How did it come to that? He didn’t ask you that. -Head slamming gif-

Her parents had both died in a "car crash" when she was five. In reality, a pair of rouge (Rogue, did Kiryu get in here??) Death Eaters had gotten them.

Aren’t Death Eaters already rogues…?

Dumbledore hadn't taken her in because her parents had strictly told him she was to be left to grow up as a muggle.

Of course they did sweetie. ʕ◡ᴥ◡✿ʔ You’re a snowflake. ʕʘᴥʘ✿ʔ I must melt you.

Now though, it was too dangerous to leave her on her own, and he was bringing her where he could keep an eye on her.

So who was watching her prior to this? I’m having a hard time understanding that part.

""I'm a little angry with my parents, actually." She said with a blank look on her face as she looked out into the rain. "They should've let me make my own decision, instead of leaving me helpless like this." Harry sighed.

I’m with you on this Potter. I suggest we run very far from the Sue.

"They probably thought I'd killed Voldemort properly, they didn't know I'd end up brining (BRINGING) him back." She looked at him for a moment.

Who thought you’d killed Moldybutt properly? Who is talking right now?

"I heard about that. It wasn't your fault, Harry."

“You’re just the final horcrux, so it’s only your fault if you live, no big deal.”

"I should've known what was going to happen the minute my name came out of the Goblet of Fire, I'm-"

Where in the timeline is this taking place exactly? Explain shit Author! GAH!

ʕಠ益ಠʔ

"-Perfectly within the rights of being human." Sandra cut him off. "No one can think of everything."

Yet you most likely will, Sue.

Harry felt strangely comforted.

Correction: He felt strangely awkward.

"You're not a bad guy, Harry. I'm glad I met you." Sandra gave him a rare heartfelt smile.

Sandra is a broken girl I see. Oh boy.

Harry couldn't help but smile back.

No don’t empower her Potter!

***

The fuck is THAT!

Hedwig came back that night, carrying four letters at once. One each from Ron, Hermione Sirius, and Dumbledore.

Bet cha Dumbledore’s is about Sandra. What’s the plot again? Why does it need her?

Harry opened the one from Dumbledore first, hoping it might have a few more answers for him.

HA! That old bastard have answers? Yeah right!

Dear Harry,

“Regret to inform you that there is a Sue amongst us.”

I trust Sandra has come safely to you by now. I also trust you have plenty of questions for me. The first of which I can answer easily. Yes, I have a granddaughter. Surprised? The rest of the staff will be too. I want you to take Sandra to the Leaky Cauldron Inn as soon as possible. I'm having the Weasleys pick you both up. Mrs. Weasley was insisting you two could stay with them, but I had to deny. They will be spread apart as well, so they'll be harder to target. Ron and Hermione will be staying with you at the Leaky Cauldron. I want you three to stay together! I cannot stress this enough! Sirius will be at the inn when you get there.

Do take care Harry,

Albus Dumbledore

I feel as if this letter is supposed to be important, yet I can’t help but feel bored by it.

P.S. Do try and be delicate with Hermione when you see her.

The fuck? Why is ALBUS telling Harry to be delicate with Hermione?And for what? Did they date before in this story and you refuse to tell us, Author?

Harry was less that settled by this.

I would be to if an old guy told me to be delicate with a girl.

He carefully put the letter down and moved on to Hermione's letter, wondering why he should need to be 'delicate' with her. His stomach dropped when he read the letter.

Well then, I wonder what’s so bad about her letter.

Dear Harry,

Please forgive my lack of correspondence this summer, I was a bit, preoccupied with a few affairs of mine. Death Eaters got to my father, Harry. He's dead. I can't stand it. I'm so scared, I just don't know what to do. I've been reading the Daily Prophet, and, Harry, it's terrible. Horrible. Absolutely terrifying. He's everywhere. Everywhere. And it's only the beginning.

Hermione Granger

-______________________- Am I supposed to feel bad for her? What good does killing her father have to the plot… If any.

Poor Hermione!

Not really.

Harry shuddered at what this letter was telling him about the condition of the wizarding world. Things were bad, and they could only get worse.

There’s nothing in this story that could get worse then the idea of it.

Dear Harry,

God, Harry, this is horrible. Hermione's a wreak. She came last night saying she just couldn't stay at home. I can't stand seeing her like this. And now Dumbledore's splitting up my whole family. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'd want to be at Hogwarts this year.

Come soon, Harry, please, come soon!

Ron

Why the hell are you writing this? Honestly, this story makes me a very angry drunk.

I enjoy my drinking time dammit!

Dear Harry, I'm cleared. We got Fudge to believe me about Pettigrew using Snape and Lupin as witnesses. I'll be coming to the Leaky Cauldron to keep an eye on you.

Sirius

LET’S JUST ALL COME TO THE INN EVERYONE! I’M SURE THERE’S ENOUGH ROOM!

Harry felt the largest headache he'd had in his life coming on.

Trust me Potter, till you’ve gotten drunk to the point of wearing twelve hats on your head and walking down two sets of stairs, without dropping any, and then waking up with a hangover the size of Kurotsuchi's ego… You won’t know what a large headache is.

His friends were in danger, Voldemort was everywhere,

Moldybutt, Posidemort, Voldemort, whatever his name is.

he had to protect them, and now Sandra too. This was too much. For the first time in his life,

For the first time in my life I can’t drink this shit way. FUCK!

Harry wished he was just a muggle. Blissfully ignorant, not a care in the world.

Muggles have many cares in the world. We also have wars, dumbass, and if Voldemort threatens the Wizarding world, he threatens the Muggle world…. They ARE on the same planet.

CONCLUSION.

I was not awake enough for this shit.

The plot, well, I hardly see a plot right now. This whole chapter is pretty much the introduction for a poorly done OC, with bonus letters at the end about useless nonsense. Why does Hermione’s dad need to be dead? Why does Dumbledore need a granddaughter? Why is she even in this story?

The story is poorly written and to fast paced for it to work well.

The insertion of a generally useless and unoriginal OC. Seriously, both parents are dead, was raised as a muggle, related to a super important character. Not original in the slightest.

The actual interaction was bland at best.

1.5/10.

Now the fuck outta my office.

ʕಠᴥಠʔノ彡 Shoo!

#Jagerbomb fun time #Harry Potter #sporking #bad fanfiction #mini-review

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satheon · 7 years

Text

The Sins You Commit in Your Writing

It’s a long one. Sorry.

Last week, my old college counselor taught me the difference between an English class and a Writing class. You will take an English class in high school as well as in college, but you won’t take Writing until you get to college.

Here’s the reason why: you will need writing for just about every single career out there. Professional writing, that is. English (at the high school level) is a core subject that one must study in order to be considered “educated,” which is why you’ll also find it in your GenEd requirements. Writing focuses on the professional element of writing. For that class, only one book is required: Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. In an English class, you will go in-depth into all kinds of works, learn how to analyze the plot structure or core elements of a specific piece of work and express your ideas in a clear, concise essay.

So, satheon, why the fuck is English useful if you’re going into anything other than English? Beats me. Why is history useful if you’re not going to become a historian? Science? Math? I don’t know. Don’t ask me. Ask the people who decided this would be our country’s educational system (USA). I’m just glad I don’t have to take them anymore. Writing is the only “practical” English course because every successful scientist, journalist, historian, or whoever the fuck needs to be able to communicate his ideas to other people exactly as he intends them if he wants other professionals to validate or build on his ideas.

But here’s the thing: fiction writers do not give a fuck about the rules. This class is taught in an English major’s freshman year for a reason. And that reason is that writers (you know, the people who will actually make a career out of it) seldom find anything they learn in that class useful. It’ll teach you proper grammar conventions, sure, but that’s about it. What you learn as a writer comes from reading, writing, and breaking the rules.

So without further ado, I present to you the ways in which you have sinned in you

1) You supersaturate your prose.

It’s actually disgusting.

You don’t need to explain every little thing because most of what you’re doing can probably hinge off of context. This is vague, I know, so I’ll expand on this later.

Do not try to use bigger words.

Holy fuck do not use a bigger word because your ashamed of how small it is and you want to sound smarter. Trust me, you’ll sound 200 times dumber.

“It’s not about how big it is, it’s how you apply the force.”

(Yes, this also refers to penises).

2) Semicolons, dashes, and parentheses.

I don’t care if you use them. But it is fucking distracting IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THEM.

Because I know for a fact a majority of the people who read this will not look it up, here’s a short definition for each (adapted from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style)

Semicolons serve two functions:

1) join two independent clauses whose ideas relate closely enough that they have equal weight

Mary Shelley’s works are entertaining; they are full of engaging ideas.

This function gives the feel of a comma, but it doesn’t halt flow like a full stop (period) does.

You’ll know that you used it correctly if a period could grammatically fit in the same place (99% of the time, it should be a period).

2) separate items in a list in which commas are already used

Jane, the doctor; Elizabeth, the ecologist; Robert, the veterinarian; and Bob, the historian set out on a quest to find the first Coca-Cola ever bottled.

You know what you don’t use a semicolon for? WHEN YOU CAN’T DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO USE A COMMA OR A COLON. I swear to God, if I had a trigger, this would be it.

Example of how NOT to use it: “That’s what villains are supposed to be; evil.”

No. Please stop.

I’m going to mention colons here because I feel it’s necessary.

Colons are preceded by an independent clause, a sentence that could stand completely on its own. No exceptions.

Example:

Jane felt that she needed the following on her trip: water, a toothbrush, and a good book.

NON-example:

Jane felt that she needed: water, a toothbrush, and a good book.

No. Fuck you.

Colons have a much stronger impact. They place emphasis on whatever follows.

Example:

Only one thing could stop her now: her arch-nemesis.

Dashes

A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parentheses.

In other words, it’s punctuation you use when all else fails.

An abrupt break from prose that is so abrupt that a comma would not serve properly here. If a comma would serve where you want to use a dash instead, chances are that you should just use the comma.

Jane bought me a--wait, where did I put it?

Dashes also serve to announce long appositives or summaries.

The first thought he had after getting out of bed--if he had any thought at all--was to get back in.

The increasing reluctance of the sun to rise, the extra nip in the breeze, the patter of the shed leaves dropping--all the evidences of fall drifting into winter were clearer each day.

A good rule of thumb: (and yes, I know, I’m breaking the colon rule, but this is suuuuper informal) use it only when you have good reason not to use any simpler punctuation.

Parentheses

Punctuation for whenever you include extra information.

Example:

You may not reproduce this document in any way (this includes, but is not limited to: photography, photocopying, or reproducing verbatim).

You can make me happy in many ways (ex: buy me a car).

NOTE: punctuation such as periods, commas, and other shit like that go AROUND the parentheses (as shown above). A period does not go before a sentence. (like this--because what the fuck ew gross and you’re not supposed to punctuate inside parentheses but what am I gonna do now? oh well.)

Yikes. This is LOOONG.

3) Adverbs.

Especially after “he said” or “she said.” Ugh. Kill me.

I’ll talk about dialogue attribution later. That’s another thing entirely.

Ironically, packing your prose with words doesn’t saturate it; it dilutes it.

Adverbs tell a reader, “I’m afraid that you won’t understand what I mean, so I added this here to clarify.”

Honestly, they have it in context, so they probably know what you mean.

Here’s an example:

He closed the door firmly.

WEAK, right? If we take the adverb out, we get something stronger:

He closed the door.

You see how the finality of a period gives off the same message as “firmly,” only stronger?

That doesn’t suit your needs? Well, what about this one?

He slammed the door.

Oooh, spicy.

One point stands out: a sentence that doesn’t have adverbs is far more engaging, far more entertaining, and quicker to the point.

4) Punctuation around quotation marks confuse you.

Allow me to settle it once and for all:

No matter what the case, periods, commas, and semicolons GO INSIDE THE QUOTATION MARKS.

Example:

She told me that I was “alt-right,” but then again, that’s just her opinion.

“I understand your confusion,” she said, “But I just don’t see the problem.”

Do not use apostrophes as a quotation for an individual letter. Use quotation marks.

If you have any further questions on this...maybe I’ll respond if you message me. I probably won’t.

5) The Oxford comma and the possessive after an “s”

The oxford comma and the possessive after an s irk the shit out of me. I have my own opinions on it.

I do not omit the oxford comma to express my ideas as clearly as possible. I use an ‘s after every single instance of singular possession.

He brought chips, soda, and pretzels.

Chris’s notes are detailed and precise.

The opposite are also correct. (Just fucking pick one, English!)

Pick one and stay consistent. That’s it. No more debate.

6) Dialogue attribution.

Oh boy. This one’s got a lot of debate.

Said is not dead.

What is dead is the horrendous substitutes you manage to come up with. “Exclaimed” is just about the only wiggle room I’ll leave in this area.

Using anything fancy or selective could just draw the reader’s attention away from the plot line. It’s nasty.

if you want to keep avoiding “said” like it’s the plague, fine by me.

But using “he said” or “she said” keeps the reader focused on what really matters. Usually from context of the story, the reader will be able to figure out how they said it.

As Stephen King once said, “To write adverbs is human; to write “he said” or “she said” is divine.”

7) If I need to explain to you at this point what passive voice is or why passive voice is the worst thing to grace the earth (the one exception being that it’s a great way to meet a page count minimum), then give up entirely. Or maybe you’re new. Either way, sorry, but I do not feel like explaining what everyone else has already shot to hell.

I’m going to cut it off here. Remember: these are just my two cents, here. Don’t take it personally/seriously, and please don’t remind me of the sins in my work (I cringe every time, trust me).

Any last recommendations I would give to any aspiring writer is 1) read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style at least once, 2) read Stephen King’s On Writing, and 3) read, read, read! Put in the work, and it’ll be sure to pay off.

#fanfiction tips #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #prose

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