#she just wanted to spend time with him without having to overexplain | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dream-a-little-bigger-x · 5 years ago

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Hero Complex | Owen Patrick Joyner

Requested by anonymous: Hi!! Can you do one where the reader is Jeremys little sister and she comes to set and hits it off with Owen and they start to hang out a lot and Jeremy gets really protective of her

A/N: I hope this is what you were looking for!

Pairing: Owen Patrick Joyner x Little Shada!Reader, Jeremy Shada x Little Sister!Reader

Warnings: fluff, big fight, anxiety

Words: 7,084

Reader’s POV

Jeremy and I have been the best of friends ever since the day I was born. He might be my older brother, but I’ve always considered him more like my best friend. We used to play games together when we were younger where I’d pretend to be a princess and he was the knight protecting my castle from dragons and dangerous monsters. Or, when we were in a swimming pool, I’d pretend to be a mermaid and he was my dolphin. We played so many pretend games, I’d lost track of most of them. When we got older and made a lot of new friends, we still tried to take at least one night in the week where we’d spend time together, whether it was watching movies together or jamming or just chatting about absolute nonsense or going out together. I even got to be his best (wo)man when he married Carolynn about a month ago, and we’ve been calling each other non-stop since he started this new project of his with Netflix called Julie and The Phantoms. I helped him prepare for his audition and was equally as excited as he was when he got it. This role was written for him. Though, when bootcamp and filming started, it did mean I’d have to miss him for a very long time since he was all the way in Vancouver for months on end. So, now I’ve come up with the idea to go and visit him and Carolynn in Canada. I’d called Carolynn to help me out and surprise him. She picked me up from the airport just a few minutes ago, and as we’re catching up in the car, I can’t help but feel giddy at seeing my brother again. It feels ages since I’ve last seen him at his wedding. That’s also when I saw the rest of the cast last. Jeremy had introduced me to the ones that were at the party, and I loved hanging out with them. It felt like being introduced to one big family that quickly became part of my own family. That was one fun night, but that’s all it was. One night of spending time with all these people and then never hearing or seeing them again. To be fair, they were all really busy with rehearsals and filming and everything. “Are you ready?” Carolynn asks when we’re at the door of their Vancouver apartment. “Yes!” I reply in a hushed voice, just to make sure Jeremy doesn’t hear me. Carolynn unlocks the door and walks in first, I follow suit. My eyes dart around quickly to take in as much as possible before the two of us turn a corner to the living room here Jeremy’s on the couch, watching something on the tv. “What’re you watching, bro?” His head snaps up at the sound of my voice, his eyes widening as he takes in my presence. “No way!” he exclaims as he gets up quickly and rushes over to me, taking me in his arms in a bone-crushing hug. “I can’t believe you’re here!” he mumbles in my ear as he twirls me around. “I wanted to surprise you,” I tell him as he puts me down again, taking my hands in his instead. “I don’t go back to college until like next week, so I figured, why not?” I’m overexplaining again, I know it. Jeremy doesn’t care how I’m here, he just cares that I’m here. “You wanna come to Set with me today?” he asks with this sparkle in his eyes he only gets when he’s really excited about something. “I’m sure the others would love to see you again!” I can’t help the smile tugging at my lips as I think about how much fun they all were at the wedding. There’s no denying that I’d love to see them again too. So, I nod my head eagerly, earning an excited squeal from the boy in front of me. “The driver will be here in half an hour, you need some time to freshen up after your flight?” “Yes, please!” Carolynn guides me to the bathroom where she puts out a pair of towels for me. I shoot her a thankful smile and when she’s out of the bathroom, I get into the shower. Once I’m all dressed and ready to go, the driver is already in front of the building. “Hey, Darren,” Jeremy greets as he gets in. “My little sister’s coming with me today.” He buckles himself into the seat as I do the same. “Hi, I’m Y/N, it’s nice to meet you,” I say to the driver. He gives me a kind smile through the rearview mirror, letting out a small ‘hi’. He must not be very talkative. “What scenes are you filming today?” I ask my brother instead whilst the driver heads down to the next stop. “I think there’s a gig scene we’re filming today,” he answers, and the car comes to a standstill. “We’ve got about ten more minutes before Charlie and Owen head down. You want some coffee?” My eyes bulge out of their sockets at the thought of caffeine alone. I’ve been up for so long, I could use a good shot of wakeup-juice. “Guess that’s a yes. Let’s go!” he lets out a chuckle before getting out of the car with me in tow. “Do I need to remember anything I can or can’t do on set?” I ask the only thought that’s been haunting my mind since coming up with this idea. I knew he was going to have to work, and I also knew he would want to bring me to set. As a newbie to this entire world of filming a show, I worried I would be in the way or say the wrong things or break something. I knew I needed some pointers from my best friend to calm me down. “Just try not to trip over anything, Clumsy,” he simply answers before turning to the barista. This coffee shop seems really quiet at this time of the day, there are no customers at the counter. Just a few at the tables, most of them with their laptops open. “A large coffee with two extra espresso shots, and a medium black coffee to go, please,” he tells the man behind the counter. “Can I get your names, please?” he asks with the pen in hand. “You can write Shada on both of them,” Jeremy answers. The man nods his head curtly before scribbling down the name on both cups. He pays the barista and then moves to the end of the counter, pulling me along. “Filming with Kenny Ortega is really chill, Lil’ One, no need to worry,” he reassures me, taking me into a side-way hug, planting a kiss to my hair. “I’m just really nervous to be on a set, does that sound ridiculous?” I ask, twisting the bracelet around my wrist. It’s the one I got from Jeremy and Carolynn for Christmas last year. “No, I think that’s pretty normal. I ought to bring you to set more often, get you used to it all.” “Yeah,” I agree in a hushed voice, going over every possible situation that could go wrong. My train of thought is interrupted by the barista calling out our last name, sliding the two cups over at us. I grab the large cup whilst Jeremy takes his, and exit the joint to head back to the car. “Oh, seems like we’re right on time,” he points out, waving at two boys near the car. The brunette I know as Charlie, waves back before hopping into the front seat next to Darren. The blonde guy, better known as Owen, doesn’t get in yet, and instead waits for us to reach the car. He holds the door open for me, letting me get in first before hopping in himself. Jeremy jogs to the other side, getting in there. Now I’m squeezed between the two boys, clutching my coffee as if my life depends on it. “It’s good to see you again, lil’ Shada,” Charlie says, turning to face us. I giggle at the nickname. They’d called me that at the wedding. The entire night. “Surprising your big brother?” I nod my head in response. “Yeah, I didn’t have anything better to do, so… Came to annoy my brother and his buddies at work.” This makes all three boys laugh, which, not going to lie, makes me feel ten times more at ease. I thought seeing the boys again would be awkward. It’s anything but that. They make me feel so relaxed, and as though I’m a part of their group. Once we’re at the set, Jeremy introduces me to most of the crew and the rest of the cast, but especially Kenny Ortega. “Oh, look at that! Lil’ Shada’s here!” he says, opening his arms for a hug, which I gladly give him. I did meet him at the wedding, but it was so brief, I didn't think he’d remember me. “Hi, Kenny!” I greet excitedly and then let go of him. “You don’t mind if I hang around the set the next couple of days, right?” He inspects me from head to toe, eyebrows raised, and I can’t help the anxiety that’s welling up inside of me. I knew I shouldn’t have come over, I knew this was a bad idea. Kenny doesn’t want me here. I’m just going to be in the way of his mastermind working its magic on this show. I’m going to be a distraction for the actors, especially Jeremy. “Of course I don’t mind, Lil’ Shada! Jeremy's family is my family!” The pressures and intrusive thoughts wash away immediately. Those are the words I needed to hear. I sometimes think I need too much affirmation and confirmation, that other people get annoyed. My therapist told me that’s just my anxious brain speaking. He said if I want confirmation, I need to ask for it. Jeremy has been a great sport in my mental health journey from the very beginning. He took me to my sessions, did the exercises my therapist gave me with me. He’s always making sure I’m okay and gives me the confirmation I need whenever he feels I need it. Which is always at the right moment. “See, Lil’ One? Told you it would be okay!” I shoot both the men a thankful and relieved smile. Kenny places a hand on my shoulder as he passes me, leaving Jeremy and me all by ourselves. “You wanna go to makeup and wardrobe with me?” he asks, to which I nod. He then grabs my hand and leads me to the destined trailer. The second I step inside, I hear an ear-piercing screech coming from one of the chairs, and before I know it, I’m engulfed in a group hug by two pairs of arms. The sweet floral scent entering my nose tells me who it is without having to look at them. Savannah Lee May and Victoria Caro. “Hi, girlies,” I giggle, hugging them back equally as tight. The two let go of me, keeping me at arms length to inspect my entire being. Their make-up is only half done, Savannah’s hair is curled to perfection whilst Tori’s is put up in curlers. “I can’t believe you’re here, Lil’ Shada!” Savannah says, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. “We were just talking about you last night,” she points at Tori, who nods vigorously. “Yeah! We were wondering when we’d see you again because we missed you after your brother’s wedding!” the smaller girl explains. My heart melts at the idea of these two girls caring so much about me, they’re wondering when they’d see me again. “Aw, you guys! I missed you too!” I pout, trying my hardest not to start crying from happiness. “Hey! What about us?!” Owen’s voice sounds from the back of the trailer. I turn around to find him in the last chair, getting his hair done. “I missed you too, Owen, but I already saw you earlier!” I tell him whilst making my way to Madison and Jadah in the other chairs. I hug them each from behind, making sure not to ruin their neatly-done hair. “Yeah! But you didn’t say you missed us!” he exclaims. His bottom lip sticks out in a pout. Shaking my head, I make my way towards him and place my hands on his shoulders as I stand behind him. “I thought that was a given,” I whisper in his ear and then turn again to find Sacha and my brother near the doorway. The latter is looking at me with happiness emanating from his eyes. “Hey, Sacha!” I offer the boy a wave, which he returns with a smile. A busy-looking woman squeezes past me towards Owen, so I take a step back to give her more room. I watch her as she plays around with his hair, using spritzes of hairspray to keep it in place. I always loved doing other people’s hair when I was younger. I braided all of my cousins’ hair or used curlers on them whilst playing ‘hair-dresser’. My love for hairdressing went out the door as I got older and more anxious, but seeing this woman play around with Owen’s hair so determinedly, it reawakens the desire and enthusiasm. “This is Teresa,” Owen says when he catches me staring at his head and Teresa’s fingers. “She’s a magician when it comes to hair.” Teresa shoots me a kind smile through the mirror, which I nervously return. They caught me staring, that must’ve been a weird -- and kind of creepy, let’s be honest -- sight. “Y/N used to dream about becoming a hairdresser,” Jeremy informs them when he’s taken a seat in one of the chairs too. As both Teresa and Owen look at me with surprise in their eyes, I feel the heat rising to my cheeks. “You wanna give it a try?” Teresa asks, stepping aside from Owen. I open my mouth in pure horror, not knowing what to tell her. There’s no way I could ever do what Teresa’s doing. What if I mess it up entirely? What if I ruin all the work Teresa has put into his hair? What if I ruin Owen’s hair? “There’s not much you can do wrong with Owen’s hair. It pretty much just does what you ask,” Teresa tries to reassure me after probably seeing the absolute horror in my face. I glance at Owen in the mirror. He gives me an encouraging nod. “Okay…” I mumble and step up to his chair. “How do you need his hair?” I ask Teresa. Owen’s character Alex probably has a specific way to how he wears his hair. He’s a ghost from the 90’s, I’m sure it’s a little different from his usual hairstyle. “Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic,” Teresa simply replies, which is enough for me to know. I nervously raise my fingers to Owen’s head, suddenly anxious about the fact that I’m going to be touching this attractive man’s hair. My eyes dart over to his reflection in the mirror, our eyes locking. He licks his lips before they curl up into a smile that gives me enough encouragement to just go for it. I play around with it a little and grab a comb to guide me before asking the hairspray. Teresa hands me the bottle and I spritz some more of the product onto his blonde locks. Though Teresa has already done the works, pretty much, I’m just left with the finishing touches. It takes me about five minutes to get it in perfect shape. “You can tell you’ve had years of practice,” Teresa says, impressed at my work. “I mean, you pretty much did the gist, I just… finished it…” I trail off shyly. I avert my eyes from Teresa to Owen, who’s checking himself out in the mirror. “No offense, T,” he starts, turning to Teresa, “But I think someone’s coming for your job.” I’m frozen to the floor from the compliments that I don’t even move when Owen gets up from his chair and turns around. Suddenly, he’s mere inches away from me and all I can do is crane my neck to look up at him. A vibe I never felt around him when I first met him surrounds us now, resting down on us like a blanket. I don’t know why this is happening or how, but all I can see for a good minute is Owen and his tender smile. Until he places his hands on my waist, picks me up, and puts me down again a feet further. “I gotta go,” he says with a smile, “See you around, Lil’ Shada.” He boops my nose. The sudden movement startles me a little. I watch him walk out of the trailer before I come back from my daze and find everyone else in the trailer looking at me. “What?!” I ask, confused at why I’m being stared at. “What was that about?” Jadah asks, chuckling as she turns to face me. “What was what?” I ask again, seriously unaware what had just happened. “You, pretty much drowning in Owen’s eyes,” Madison reminds me. The thought of Owen’s eyes looking into mine just minutes ago warms me up from the inside out. Especially the nose-boop. “What?! No, I wasn’t,” I deny, but I don’t think I can hide it from either of these people. Thank God Jeremy had left before Owen. He would not have liked that. Jeremy is an amazing brother, but he can get a little overprotective when it comes to love-interests. “I’m gonna go…” I cough awkwardly, trying to come up with a good excuse, “Find my brother…” That feeling I had in that trailer doesn’t subside for the rest of the day. Sometimes I think it does, and then Owen looks my way or sends me a wink from the other side of the room and I’m back to feeling absolutely and utterly mushy. “Hey, you wanna go get lunch with us, Lil’ One?” Jeremy asks around noon when they’re done filming the scene. I take a look behind him, Owen and Charlie standing there, awaiting my answer. I lock eyes with Owen again, and he offers me a beautiful smile that persuades me. “Yeah, sure,” I reply and link my arm with Jeremy’s. The two other boys fall into step with us, Owen on my left, Charlie on Jeremy’s right. “Where are the others?” I ask. Not that I don’t like the idea of having lunch with these three boys. I just really like hanging out with the others too. “They had to start filming another scene, they had lunch earlier,” Jeremy informs me as we enter the restaurant on the other side of the street from the lot. Owen takes a seat next to me while Jeremy and Charlie sit down on the opposite side of the table. “So, Lil’ Shada,” Charlie starts after we’ve ordered our food and drinks. “I heard you did Owen’s hair this morning…” I am taken aback by his subject of choice, especially since he makes it sound so teasing. My eyes dart from my brother to Charlie and back, unsure of what to say. Owen jumps to the rescue then, feeling me tense up beside him. “Yeah, she did a wonderful job! Her fingers are kinda like magic.” I look up at him, earning a smile from him in return. “Yeah, well, what can I say? It’s a talent,” I flip my hair over my shoulder confidently, though in my mind I’m wondering where all this confidence comes from. Even Jeremy is a little surprised by it whilst the other boys just laugh. “Maybe you should ask Kenny to start next week,” Charlie suggests with an excited grin. “Yeah! Then you could stay with us longer!” Owen’s enthusiasm dazzles me even more so than the words that come out of his mouth. He wants me to stay longer… “I still have to get through college, you guys. I can’t just quit?” I’m catapulted back into reality as those words roll off my mouth. “Do you know how much college costs?!” Owen and Charlie share a glance, wondering if either one of them knows. “I’m an actor, Lil’ Shada, so no…” Owen whispers in my ear without breaking eye contact with his buddy on the other side of the table. I let out a laugh, shaking my head in amusement. “How long are you staying?” Charlie then asks, his eyes flickering from me to Owen and back. “A week. I start college again next Monday,” I reply when the waitress finally brings us our food. “Thank you,” I say to her with a smile, the others doing the same. “So, you’re just gonna stay a week?” Owen queries before taking a bite from his lunch. “Yep… Going home on Sunday,” I answer. The disappointment in his face is prominent. “But I might come back soon if Jeremy will let me.” My eyes dart over to my brother, who hasn’t said much since we sat down. “Can’t really say no to Lil’ Shada, can I?” My lips curl up in thankfulness. “Besides, I think the rest of the cast would hate my ass if I took you away from them.” His eyes flick towards Owen for a split second. He has caught on to the vibe Owen and I have been giving off towards each other. Maybe it’s not just in my mind. “That’s very true,” Owen agrees, his mouth full of food. I turn my head to look at him, eyebrows raised at his immature way of eating his food. My eyes then fall on his chin, which has a little dressing seeping down it. I raise my hand and swipe my finger across his skin, taking the sauce away. He freezes at that moment, halting mid-chew. “Dressing,” I show him before licking it off my thumb. He swallows harshly and when I look back at the boys on the other side of the table, they’re staring at me too with wide eyes. “Someone ought to get this dude a bib,” I joke, trying to take the tension away. Charlie lets out a laugh, nodding his head agreeingly before turning back to his food. My brother, however, just raises his eyebrows at me. He doesn’t love the idea of his little sister being intimate with anyone. Especially not one of his best buddies. I can’t help it though. I’m a twenty-one year old woman, I have feelings. I have hormones. Jeremy’s overprotectiveness isn’t going to take away the fun from this week. I’m not going to let it.

And I don’t. I spend the entire week on set, either hanging out with some of the girls or with my brother and the other boys. Teresa lets me help out in the mornings with the cast’s hair, teaching me some new tips and tricks. If anything, it just brings me closer to the cast, which is a nice bonus. Mainly because it also brings me closer to Owen. The connection we created during my time in Vancouver has only grown from that first day. Whenever Jeremy’s not around or he can’t hear it, the two of us harmlessly flirt with one another and, whenever he doesn’t have a scene to shoot, we hang out together. One day, he took me to Julie’s bedroom set where we sat on her bed and talked until we fell asleep huddled up into a cuddle. Jeremy wasn’t happy when he found us like that. Even though I did tell him it was just an innocent nap. He didn’t take it. My brother’s disapproval didn’t stop us though. We just kept going to that set to take a nap together. It has become my favorite part of the day. “Hey,” he captures my attention. We’re cuddled up on Julie’s bed, legs entangled. My head’s resting on his chest, one arm slung over his stomach whilst the other is squished between our bodies. He has his left arm draped around my shoulder, his fingers trailing up and down my arm. “What?” I ask, looking up at him. He’s staring at the decorative lights above us. “Do you really have to leave tomorrow?” His voice sounds so soft, I’d almost believe he’s sad. “I mean… Yeah… I don’t think I can miss my first classes of the semester,” I whisper as though it’s a secret. My fingers start drawing patterns on his chest and abdomen as my eyes focus on them instead of his face. I’m too scared I might kiss him if I keep looking at him. “Can’t you follow them online? Or just… I don’t know…” he exhales deeply, my head bobbing along. “I just don’t want you to leave yet.” I want to reply, but people bursting in the room cut me off. I scramble upright, terrified it might be Jeremy. Instead, Owen and I are tackled by Charlie, Savannah and Madison. “Group cuddle!” they scream, making me and Owen giggle. I go back to my previous position while Charlie comes to rest his head on my thigh, his arms around my waist, the rest of his body curled up between Owen and me. Savannah takes Owen’s other side, mirroring my position while Madi rests her head on his stomach. “What were you guys chatting about so intimately?” Savannah asks, followed by a yawn. “Me leaving,” I sigh joylessly. I feel Charlie’s arms tighten around me and Owen tense beneath me. Savannah’s eyes lock with mine, a pout forming on her face. “I don’t want you to leave. It’s been way too fun with you around,” she whispers. “I agree,” Charlie mutters. “Ditto,” says Madison, making me smile widely. Even more so when Owen presses a kiss to my hair. This is where I want to be for the rest of my life. Not on some stupid campus studying for a job I don’t even want to do. I need more time with these people. And I’m going to get it. It’s about time I did something for myself instead of constantly doing shit for others.

“Can I talk to you guys for a moment?” I ask Carolynn and Jeremy at the dinner table. Jeremy halts, his fork lifted mid-air, while Carolynn simply places her cutlery down, giving me her undivided attention. I inhale deeply, trying to gather all of my courage. “I was wondering if I could stay here a little longer? I haven’t talked to mom and dad yet, but I wanna do an independent study this year while interning with Teresa.” Jeremy drops his fork on his plate, a loud clatter echoing through the place. “She asked if that would be something I’m interested in, and to be quite frank, I am. Helping around this week really reminded me of how much I loved doing it.” I glance at Jeremy, noticing how tense and frustrated he’s becoming with every word I say. “Being a doctor was never my dream, Jer. It was mom’s. I think I need to do this. I need to do more things for myself instead of wanting to please others.” “I agree, sweetie,” Carolynn chimes in, offering me a supportive smile before the two of us turn back to the man of the house. He has his lips pursed, clearly mulling this over in his head. “This is about Owen, isn’t it?” he finally asks. The mention of the boy I had grown so attached to startles me at first, I didn’t expect him to be brought up in this conversation since it has nothing to do with him. “He put you up to this?” I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. I have no clue what to tell him. On one hand, I do want more time with him and Charlie and all the other cast members. I want more time with my brother. But I can’t hide that it’s mostly Owen that’s drawing me here. Spending time with him made me feel so much more connected to myself, in some way. He calms my anxiety. He makes me feel happy. Genuinely happy. “Of course he didn’t, Jer. Why would he do that?” I finally manage to bring out. “Because you’re clearly in love with him, Y/N!” The loudness of his voice and harshness of his tone makes me flinch. “But he’s not right for you! He’s distracting you from your goals, making you think this is what you want! You don’t know what love feels like but you think you do! You and Owen can’t happen, and you can’t stay here. You have to go back home!” The anger and frustration builds inside of me, and pours out in the form of tears. “You don’t have a say in this, Jer! I am twenty-one, I’m not a child anymore! I can decide what I want to do with my life and I can decide who I love!” I’m surprised by the words that flow out of my mouth. “I get that you wanna be the protective brother, Jeremy, but this is going too far. You have to let me make my own mistakes! You have to let me live my life the way I want it to!” He angrily shoves his chair back when he stands up in frustration, making Carolynn flinch. “You’re still a child, Y/N!” he shouts at me. I stand up too, leaning my hands on the tabletop. “I’m not even a year younger than you, Jer! If I’m a child, so are you!” I yell back. “At least I’m married and have a family!” he aggressively points at Carolynn, who’s rubbing her face in desperation. My eyes flicker from my sister-in-law back to my brother. “I would be in a relationship if you didn’t scare off every person I ever brought home!” “I didn’t want you getting hurt, but did I ever get a thank you for that?!” I scoff at him. He’s not playing the petty card right now. “That’s just life, Jer! People get hurt! People break your heart! But you never even let me experience that pain because you’re too obsessed with being the good brother!” My heart is pounding out of my chest. Jeremy and I have never fought like this. Sure, we used to bicker when we were teenagers, but it’s always been something stupid. This screaming match sounds like years of bundled up distress from both of us. “You have a hero complex, Jer…” I lower the volume of my own voice. Jeremy lets his head drop, knowing all too well I’m right. About everything. About the hero complex, about him meddling in my life. Everything. “I think it’s better if you go to your room for a while, Y/N,” Carolynn orders sweetly. The pent-up anger still hasn’t gone completely, it makes me want to lash out at Carolynn too. “Still not a child,” I mutter instead before grabbing my bag and leaving the apartment. Once the cold Vancouver air hits me, the realization of what just happened does too. The tears escape again, along with anger and regret. I don’t regret what I said to my brother. It’s the truth. It’s exactly what I’ve been thinking for years. What I do regret is telling him all of that in a burst of anger instead of a civilized conversation like we used to back in the day. That’s the only thing I really do regret. After a while of roaming the streets of Vancouver and getting riled up about the whole situation again, I find myself aggressively knocking at Charlie and Owen’s door. I don’t know where else to go and Owen’s the only one who could calm me down from the anger and frustration I’m still holding inside for my brother. I still can’t believe he even dared to say that to me. “Lil’ Shada!” Charlie greets excitedly, but his smile quickly disappears upon seeing my state of being. Jaw clenched, balled fists, tears running down my face. “Hey, Gorgeous, are you okay?” Owen appears in the door too after hearing Charlie utter my nickname. Upon seeing the boy, I race into the apartment, grab his face and bring him down to meet his lips. He’s startled at the force and aggression I’m putting into this kiss, but that soon dissolves when he kisses back. His hands find their way to my waist, pulling me closer and closer until I can’t do anything else but wrap my legs around his waist. He holds me tight, scared he might drop me while my fingers find their way into his hair. I pull back from his lips, but keep my forehead pressed to his. Both of us are panting from the intensity. I can tell from that sparkle in his eyes he has no clue what happened, but he wanted it to happen for a while. “I’m gonna stay,” I tell him in a whisper, which only makes the sparkle in his eyes more earnest. Without another doubt, he crashes his lips on mine again. This time, he takes it a little slower, making it more sensational without depriving it from the sizzle from before. I try to forget about the fight I’d just had with Jeremy and focus solely on Owen, but my brain counteracts. His words are on repeat in my mind like syncopated beats. This time Owen pulls back when he no doubtedly tastes the saltiness of my tears mixing in with the passion. He looks at me, the sparkle in his eyes making room for worry. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he whispers, putting me down on my feet again but keeping his arms around me and my body close. “I’m sorry, I just…” I inhale sharply, “I had a major fight with Jeremy and I just can’t shake it. I have never seen him like this…” Owen snakes his arms around my shoulders, pushing him closer into his chest. He lets me cry for a while, holding me in his arms until I’ve calmed down a little. He takes me to the couch where Charlie’s sitting too. I hadn’t even noticed him still in the room, let alone that he moved. “Talk to me, Gorgeous,” Owen whispers, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. He’d stopped calling me “Lil’ Shada” a while ago, which makes me feel like I’m more than just Jer’s little sister. Savannah told me it was what he did to anyone he liked. Those little details are his way of showing his appreciation or love to someone. I like the small details in Owen’s love language. “I wanted to ask him and Care if I could stay at their place a little while longer, and I told him about the independent study and internship I wanted to do while here. For some reason, he thought I was doing all of this for you, that you put me up to this.” Owen inhales sharply at this. I can tell he hates being part of a fight between two people that mean a lot to him. “I told him it had nothing to do with you, but he didn’t believe me. He was shouting and screaming that I was still a child and that I couldn’t make my own decisions. I told him he had a hero complex,” I scoff at myself. This whole fight sounds even more ridiculous now. “Told him that he wants to be the good brother and that he has this idea of being a good brother that doesn’t let his little sister live… or love.” Owen’s eyes flick at mine, a small smile tugging at his lips. “I shouldn’t have shouted at him though… This was all just pent-up anger and frustration from the past twenty-one years. I should’ve just told him to back off like an adult instead of yelling at him like a child.” I glance at Charlie, who had been listening to the entire conversation. His eyes look somber, almost heartbroken. These two boys are just too good for this world. I can’t imagine a life without them anymore. “We both acted like children,” I mutter, shaking my head. There’s rap on the door, shaking all three of us awake from the somber cloud we’re all on because of me. We exchange glances, knowing exactly who’s at the door. Charlie goes first, Owen and me following suit. The anxiety welling up inside of me must be visible to him because he takes my hand, intertwining our fingers as we stand a little behind Charlie as he opens the door. “Hey, Char… Is Y/N here?” I hear my brother ask. The Canadian boy opens the door a little further, presenting Owen and I. Jeremy had been crying too, I can tell. His eyes are red and puffy, his lips swollen from biting on them in distress. “I’m so sorry, Lil’ One,” he mutters from the door. That’s enough for me to let go of Owen and launch myself into my brother’s arms. He’s stunned at first, but then wraps his arms around me too. “I know I can be a little overbearing sometimes, but you have to know it’s only because I love you,” he whispers in my ear, followed by a sniffle. “You’re an adult, just like me, and it’s time I treat you like one.” I push him back slightly but keep my hands on his shoulders. “It’s about time you figured that out.” He lets out a chuckle, dropping his head in defeat. “Hey,” he looks back up. “Thanks for looking out for me. I know you mean well.” “We’re family, Lil’ One, we’re supposed to look out for one another,” he looks past me at the two other boys, “We’re all family.” Charlie and Owen walk up to us, the latter scratching the back of his head with a pained expression on his face. “Yeah, can we not call it a family? Because otherwise, I’m in love with a family member.” He places his hands on my shoulders and presses a kiss to my hair. I meet his eyes whilst my heart beats faster. He’s in love with me. A boy I’m in love with is in love with me too. I mean, of course he is, he wouldn’t have kissed me like that. Jeremy glances from me to Owen and back, trying to decide what to think about this entire situation. I can tell it’s hard for him to let this idea of his little sister go, but he’s trying. “Be careful with her, alright? You might be my best friend, but I will not hesitate to kill you,” Jeremy’s pointing at Owen, a harsh look on his face. “Bro, I could never hurt her,” he reassures my older brother, and me at the same time. “You better keep that promise, Joyner!” That night, Jeremy calls Carolynn over too, and the five of us sit on the couch all night, talking and watching movies. I love being in Owen’s arms so much. Though we used to cuddle and be flirty with each other before, it really does give a whole different vibe knowing I could just turn my head and kiss him now. My parents allow me to stay in Vancouver and go through with my plan, much to all of our relief. Days on set are amazing. I help Teresa and the other hairstylists every morning and during all the scenes when they need touch ups, spend every night at Owen’s and Charlie’s place, and have the most fun I ever had in my life with all these people around here. “Cuddle session?” Owen whispers in my ear when we’re rounding up the scene. His sudden hands on my shoulders and lips against my ear makes me jump at first, but I calm down just as quickly. “Baby, I’m working,” I giggle, clearing all the hair products from the table, knowing he’ll convince me within five seconds. Teresa really is a very loose mentor and wouldn’t mind if I escaped now. “But you’re almost finished though? And Teresa is here to take over from you?” he tries, which makes me look up at him, and then at Teresa. The woman I call my Canadian mother winks at me, letting me know I’m good to go. I turn around in Owen’s arms, wrapping my arms around his neck. “You are so lucky Teresa’s this awesome,” I tell him and peck his lips quickly. “Thank you, T.” I grab Owen’s hand and guide him to the bedroom set we’d used so many times for cuddles, whether that be alone or with the others. The second we’re in the room, Owen tugs at my arm, making me stumble into him with a squeal. Before I can ask what he’s doing, he cups my face with his warm hands and brings me in for a passionate kiss. He pushes me backwards when I kiss back, right until I feel the bed push into the back of my knees. I crawl backwards, Owen following suit as he’s still attached to my lips. He pulls back for a moment, looking me in the eyes with those tender eyes of his. He’s holding up his weight by placing a hand next to my head, using the other to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “I love you,” he whispers, causing the corners of my mouth to curl up into a smile automatically. “I love you too,” I whisper back and diminish the space between our lips by pulling him down by the back of his neck. My fingers tangle up into the blonde hair I styled this morning. Doing his hair might just be my favorite part of the day, along with this. “Group cuddle!” Our intimate moment is disturbed by a mop of our friends attacking us on the bed. With a groan, Owen drops next to me, the others piling onto us. That lunch break, all of us take a collective nap on Julie’s bed, some on stomachs, on chests, shoulders, thighs. All our limbs are tangled up together, no bystander would be able to tell which limb belongs to who. To say my new job is the best ever would be an understatement.

Taglist: @hannahhistorian92 @marinettepotterandplagg @thequirkybookaholic @bookdealer5 @tenaciousperfectionunknown @hemmingsness @iainttakingshitfromnobody @ifilwtmfc @angryknightstatesmantrash @kiss-themoongoodbye @rudysbay @caitsymichelle13 @thedarkqueenofavalon

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masonscig · 4 years ago

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water

wayhaven summer fic #5

pairing | nate x ramona

word count | 2.1k

warnings | mention of sex, an innuendo

author’s note | i tried to figure out how to get around nate’s aversion to water, and i hit a wall so... i dug around it and decided to write an actor!au !!!! i’d seen a comic months and months ago by @/pvnkvampr and another one that i can’t seem to find again, but i wanted to take that and apply it to nate and ramona! nate’s the type to fall in love with his costar after years of working together and you can’t convince me otherwise. also, to clarify !!! the beginning of the fic is supposed to be like nate x ramona’s romance route so any of the exposition centered around their relationship being fleeting/him being deeply in love with her is nate the character rather than the actor! (you’ll see lmao i’m definitely overexplaining) this is a bit of a stretch bc they’re on the water... and ramona drinks water. but whatever it works !!!!!

•─────────────────•

She was standing on the edge, looking out at the glimmering water, the sun, high in the sky, skipping off of each wave like a smooth rock.

The wind whipped her hair, tossing her short curls until they were unruly, and she was smiling.

Her grin was wide, eyes closed, as she inhaled, drinking it all in – the sunshine fueled her.

Half of Unit Bravo were under the deck, quietly stewing in annoyance. They’d given up complaining to Ramona, though. Frankly, she didn’t care.

Farah was passed out on the floor underneath a sliver of shade at the top of the yacht, chest heaving as she slept soundly. Ramona had taught her how to swim earlier, and she’d used all of her energy flailing around determinedly in the relentless July rays.

Nate watched her as she held her arms out to her sides, fingers outstretched, chin tipped towards the sky.

She was unbridled joy held together by the strings of her bikini, and she radiated a warmth that could rival even the summer sun itself.

So unrestrained that changes didn’t phase her – most conflict rolled off her shoulders in a way that startled Nate, a being who’d existed for hundreds of years and had seen the best and the worst of it.

Nothing baffled him more than this part of his existence.

The way love fell into his lap and he didn’t have to try anymore.

But despite it all, he’d deluded himself into thinking it was permanent – they were permanent. And they weren’t. And that was okay.

“Oh, you’re back!” She grinned, stretching her arm out until her fingertips grazed his bare arm, her palm warm against his skin. “I was wondering what you were up to.”

“I had to do a quick wellness check of our crew –”

“– Oh my god, are Adam and Morgan still seething down there?–” She asked, cutting him off with a laugh.

“– Very much so, I’m afraid,” he said, his mischievous smile betraying his tone.

“I thought a tiny little shindig would be better than a huge shebang, you know?” She turned in his grip, back against the railing, his arms curled around the bare skin of her waist.

“You’re still trying to stump me? Give it a rest, love,” Nate laughed into the thick mess of curls at the top of her head, pressing a kiss to her sun-warmed strands.

“I will say a phrase you don’t know and then you’ll owe me some juicy Agency secrets,” she giggled, snaking her arms around his neck.

“Like what?” He asked, lips straining at corners, his grin threatening to falter.

“Like how the hell does Morgan wear jeans and no underwear? That’s something I can’t for the life of me wrap my mind around,” she all but shuddered.

“That’s an answer you’ll have to coax out of her, unfortunately.” He said, a bit distracted.

“You know you can keep your Agency secrets, mister secret agent. I have no need for ‘em,” she stuck her tongue out, still stained bright red from the margarita she’d finished hours before.

He must’ve looked puzzled, because she continued, inching in closer until he could feel her everywhere and it wasn’t in the least bit appropriate.

“We both know you have even juicier secrets to spill,” she said, before leaning in to whisper the last bit, her fingers tangled through his hair.

“And I’ll lap up every last drop of ‘em,” she murmured, kissing his earlobe.

The pads of his fingers were sunken into the flesh of her hips, and he tried desperately to anchor himself to spare the others, but he couldn’t get a grip on anything but her warm, warm, sunkissed skin –

He blanked.

His thoughts were scrambled and he couldn’t form words. Couldn’t recall the words he needed to say. But he could see the paper so clearly –

“Line?” He mumbled, feeling her go limp with disappointment in his arms.

Farah groaned from across the deck.

“Cut!” The director yelled, and all but stormed over to him. “What happened out there? You were on a fuckin’ roll! The chemistry was insane. God, I wish you could’ve been watching –”

“Don’t make him feel like shit over it, Craig,” she gently warned, stepping forward just a bit until she’d angled her body between them. “I flubbed my lines all last week and he was so patient with me.”

Craig sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, the wrinkled skin between his brows crinkling even further. “Alright, alright, I get it. Not gonna hound you over one take, but I need you to get it in gear, man. We’ve only got a couple more hours of sunlight in this godforsaken shitheap, and we’ve gotta wrap this part up so we can film the sunset kiss –”

“I understand. I won’t mess it up this time,” Nate promised, glancing over to his co-star with an apologetic smile.

Ramona shrugged, waving his statement away. “It’s fine, seriously. I’m totally okay with running that again.” “Speak for yourself! I’m dying out here,” Farah called from across the deck before turning back to the hair and makeup people, pursing her lips for more lip balm and sunscreen. “Please get it right this time, Agent Sewell.”

“That’s just the name of my character –”

“I’m well aware of that,” she yelled, cutting him off. “Method acting. You get it.”

His co-star shook her head, patting him on the back. “Don’t mind Miss Hauville. She’s just upset she was dragged out here to lie down on a hot sundeck like a dead body for half of an episode.”

He laughed at that, relieved that his co-star was keeping things light.

Truth be told, he’d had a rough time getting his on-screen family to cooperate with him, much like the character Nate Sewell.

Adam’s actor was a notoriously nice guy, but he had a knack for intense method acting, so he’d been a stoic asshole for months – there was no getting through to that guy when he was in filming mode. Morgan’s actress was a bit of a wildcard. She was fucking the executive producer and everyone except Craig knew it.

Farah’s actress was arguably the biggest success of them all – she was constantly booked and busy and effortlessly making headlines. And it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was only there as a favor, not because she wanted to.

She was a film star who never touched TV, but hell, she was half the reason millions of people tuned into the pilot episode.

The Wayhaven Chronicles wouldn’t be the same without her, or Ramona’s actress, the fan favorite. Yeah, she was the protagonist, but the cast, crew, fans, and everyone alike loved her.

And he had a bit of a crush.

He was aware that on set romances usually fell apart before they could really begin, but he couldn’t help it.

Not only did he spend nearly all of his free time with her running lines and hanging out in her trailer, but to make matters worse his character was canonically falling for hers, and… he found himself enamored with her, too.

He’d never admitted it out loud, and probably never would, but it was getting harder and harder to push those feelings away when they had to share an on screen kiss.

Season one wasn’t too bad, considering they were just testing the waters to see who the fan favorite love interest was out of the four of them, but by the end of it, social media had all but rioted to lock in the “Natemona” romance plot.

And there they were, well into season two, a handful of kisses shared (a lot more than that considering the reshoots and the practicing) and a plot decided.

And he was into her – way more than he’d like to admit.

The rest of filming went pretty smoothly. He got over his nerves and kissed her like a champ, and they got patted on the back for their realistic chemistry by all the execs and producers on set.

When they finally broke for a quick food break, she followed him to his trailer.

“People are gonna eat this episode up, huh?” She asked, closing the door behind them and grabbing a water bottle from his fully stocked mini-fridge.

“Surely they will,” he agreed, stepping around her to grab his salad from the fridge. “If they were rallying for the relationship before, they’ll be vindicated this episode.”

She laughed into the rim of her bottle before chugging it. “So why were you frazzled today? Something at home?”

He eyed her, raising a brow.

She held her hands up in mock surrender, before plopping onto the couch across from him. “You don’t have to answer, dude, I’m just lending my ear.”

He chewed thoughtfully, trying to choose his words wisely. He swallowed, took another bite, chewed.

His mind was just as blank as the deck scene.

He shook his head before setting his food down. “I’m sorry I’ve been off today.”

“I don’t care if you’re not feeling like yourself. It’s normal to have an off day. I just wanna know if you’re okay,” she said with a tenderness that he’d never heard from a co-star before.

“To be quite honest, you’ve been distracting me,” he admitted, timidly.

She pursed her lips. “What can I do to fix it?”

He squirmed in his seat. God, this was a lot harder than he thought it’d be.

“It’s, uh, nothing you can really fix. It’s all me.”

“Well, what can I do to help?”

He shook his head again, glancing away from her.

“Look, I know Craig’s been rough on us this week, but don’t let it get to you. We can practice more –”

“It’s not that, I promise.”

She waited, sensing that he had more to say. He took a deep breath, then continued.

“It’s something I don’t want to admit to you. It’s embarrassing.”

“Honey, my last job involved waxing places that would make your grandmother gasp. I promise nothing phases me,” she joked, running a hand through her hair.

“There’s… quite a few lines Nate says this season that I’ve resonated with,” he started, trying to figure out what he was gonna pull out of his ass.

She sipped her drink, waiting.

“Things like… ‘I care for you, Ramona’ and, uh, ‘You’re important to me’,” he said, twisting the ends of his summery button up shirt between his fingers.

“Yeah, same here. We’ve become really close –”

She stopped abruptly the moment she noticed the look in his eye. And the subtext hit her like a truck.

“The things Nate feels for Ramona… I find myself feeling for you,” he admitted, hesitantly, looking anywhere but her face.

“If you don’t feel the same, that’s okay. I’ve just developed a bit of a workplace crush that I can’t quite shake, and that’s my fault –”

She stood from the couch, and he glanced up at her, finally, nervous to see how she’d taken it.

And before he could register what was happening, her lips were on his – a sweet tender kiss.

One that, scarily enough, felt exactly like the last time they’d kissed. And the time before that. And the time before that. And the time before that.

When she pulled away, she cupped his cheeks with the softest touch in the world, gazing down at him with an expression like she’d gotten the best news of her life.

“Those kisses weren’t just practice to me, either,” she whispered, stroking the pad of her thumb across his stubble. “I just wasn’t sure if you felt the same.”

He blanked. Again.

He couldn’t find any words, so he did what Nate would do. What he wished he’d had the courage to do for over a year.

Gently enclosing his arms around her waist, he tugged her down to the couch with him, planting kisses across her face, cheeks, nose, lips, over and over and over, revelling in the broken giggles that erupted from her.

Maybe allowing the essence of Nate Sewell and how he loved pervade his life over the past year and a half of filming was the right step. It’d gotten him the girl, after all.

#the wayhaven chronicles #twc #nate sewell #twc detective #my fic #wayhavensummer #nate x ramona #detective ramona guerrero

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jotonomy · 6 years ago

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Okay, beneath the cut is the way I approach writing explicit sex scenes. this is not a how-to guide, nor am I suggesting that my way is the best way, but this is how I got comfortable writing sex scenes myself and why I find them fairly easy to write (beneath a cut because...well, I don’t mince words).

Oh, and I’ve tried to watch gendered language and kept it to what parts the person has, rather than what gender they identify as. Sorry if I missed any!

Also, ultimately, don’t worry too much and just write it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Humans are rarely if ever perfect.

I’m going to bullet point this because I find that...the only way I like talking about things is bullet points.

My first and foremost thought when I begin writing a sex scene is where and when I want to talk about the feelings they’re having. It’s not all orgasmic. There are...surprises sometimes. I have a REALLY intense startle reflex, so sometimes if I get touched somewhere new, even if I’m in the moment my body is like WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT, like it’s a goddamn bug even though I KNOW what it is. (It has never been a bug.) Not even in a bad way, you’re just EXTREMELY keyed up and sensitive to touch and your nerve-endings know that shit.

I find it kind of amusing but extremely flattering when someone says that my sex scenes are realistic, because lately I’ve been writing a lot of heterosexual sex scenes and i’ve never not once in my life encountered a penis up close, much less an erect one.

I got comfortable writing about cocks because I was in my very early 20s and very virginal and had a very bisexual, sexually active cis-male good/best friend that was more than happy to read my first forays into smut writing and tell me for sure if it sounded like the penis-haver in my fic sounded realistic.

Everyone’s dick and everyone’s vulva is different, and what works for everyone is different. As in: some penis-havers like a scrap of teeth in a blowjob, some nipple-havers enjoy biting of their nipples, and for some penis-havers and nipple-havers THESE ARE SOLID NOs. So, mix things up! And! Don’t be afraid during a first sex scene between two characters to have them “mess up” and learn what each other likes.

In either oral or penetrative or fingerblasting, don’t spend too much time thumb-twiddling over the number of folds and creases and veins and foreskin. It’s not the most erotic part of it to me. It could be for others! But like... you don’t NEED to overcomplicate things or overexplain. It begins to sound like interior design or fashion design at some point, though, with all the frills and folds and velvety and silky skin.

Don’t worry during the first draft about how many times you use the word slick or wet or slide or thrust or hips or clit or whatever, you’ll drive yourself crazy that way and you may lose the rhythm of the scene.

Rhythm! Just like in real life, keep in mind that the sex scene should have a sense of rhythm. Don’t get too hung up on all of the minute details.

That being said, try to keep track of how many hands and limbs everyone has. It is distracting when an extra hand appears.

I know this is weird to some people, but this happens all the time in published romance/erotica/etc. TRY to visualize the series of positions the characters are in if they move around. Luckily, if you’re going for missionary the whole way, you’re not in too much danger of this problem. But I have read SO MANY sex scenes where I cannot make any sense of what position they’re in after a transition and it takes me right out of the scene. Missionary is fine, because at least people know what’s going on. It’s way better than, “are they upside down now???”

If they’re going to fuck against a wall and the vagina-haver has on pants, please think about how they’re going to achieve penetration. I have never in my life met a vagina-haver that can keep their pants have on and just shoved down and have front-to-front sex. A penis-haver? Sure! But like...try to think about how the penis is getting in, and then think about how they’re going to do it comfortably enough to enjoy themselves, especially if one part is a lot shorter than the other. (Might I suggest the penetrated partner be facing the wall braced on their hands? That’s a good time! Just make sure it makes sense. Khal Drogo fucking Dany while she’s facing a wall and they’re standing is...a difficult thing to figure out just based on logistics)

Use the words you wanna use for the genitalia at first. Don’t worry about it until you go back and edit. I like the word cunt. I find it lovely and I find pussy SO MUCH GROSSER and so much sleazier in an explicit scene. But my experience isn’t universal and you can’t really worry too much about what everyone else likes. I mean, I would suggest avoid calling a clitoris a pleasure pearl. But like...you do you.

I’ve never in my life met a vagina-haver who had a sweet-tasting crotch. That’s just...not going to happen, and it makes me immediately bummed out to read it, frankly. It feels like one of those weird standards that ends up in romance that human beings can’t live up to? Like, somehow, even our vaginas have to be delicate and dainty and sweet. Like, no. Pussy tastes like pussy. If you don’t have one, just imagine what a crotch smells like on anyone. If it tastes sweet you might want to see a doctor about a yeast infection or diabetes. It’s just not great. (It’s also ... not floral? It’s musky down there. I’d avoid calling it MUSTY because that’s not great. But it’s a bit musky for sure.) But I also find it immeasurably sexier to be realistic about what the taste and smell are. It’s a very visceral thing.

Vaginal ‘virginity’ loss in a modern fic doesn’t need to be dramatic AF. It’s not always the hymen that makes things painful. Don’t be afraid to bring lube into the equation, include foreplay, and it doesn’t need to be either unrealistic or overly dramatic. Slow and steady wins the penetration race. I mean, it WOULD be deeply unpleasant if the penis-haver (or dildo-haver) just rammed it in there without proper prep, so, you do you. Obviously, this is about modern AUs. BASICALLY: the penetration isn’t ALWAYS the biggest thing about having sex for the first time. It’s like...everything else that leads up to it.

The odds of a vagina-haver coming from vaginal penetration alone is...not great, even if it’s their soulmate fucking them. Also, it’s fun to include clitoral stimulation!

Sex is messy and sex is fun and sex is awkward and sex is hot. And the best sex I’ve had is all of the above in one session. There are a lot of logistics sometimes, but that’s actually part of the fun of it. You’re all in the muck together having a good time. It’s like an obstacle course in the mud but with more erections or vulvas...probably.

Dick size is boring. Monster cocks aren’t everyone’s cuppa and also not terribly likely. Mini cocks never happen because people don’t think that’s sexy. If you’ve never been fucked by a monster cock, just bear in mind that for a LOT of people it’s ... not comfortable, much less a mind-altering experience. And frankly, getting into the details of everyone’s various specific sizes is... an odd way to approach a sex scene for me? I care more about the fact that someone has feelings about the person being naked in the first place, not about the dimensions of the cocks or vags.

Any position can be romantic if both parties are super into it and super into each other. But think twice about 69. It’s logistically awkward for many couples. (again, Khal Drogo and Dany. How is she gonna get her mouth on his cock and be close enough for him to get his mouth on her snatch, ya know? And ...to what purpose?)

Anyway! Those are just my notes about how I approach sex scenes.

#i write things #including a lot of sex #thoughts #thoughts about writing

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hellofastestnewsfan · 6 years ago

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ASTORIA, NEW YORK—Inside the Sesame Street studio in Queens, Elmo is playing “monsterball” with his friend, a new Muppet named Karli who has lime-green fur and two ponytails. (Monsterball, for what it's worth, appears to be the same as soccer, but with a furry ball.) Puppeteers, with their hands raised high and their heads cranked to the side to stay out of the camera’s shot, run around, making Elmo and Karli kick, laugh, and throw the ball.

Outside, it’s a chilly gray December Monday, but on set the monsterball park is brimming with plant life, and butterfly puppets held up on long metal wires flap their wings. Looking on are Elmo’s dad—yes, he has a dad now, as of 2006—and two of what Sesame Street calls “anything Muppets,” puppets with no particular character attached that are made as templates and can be adapted as needed. These Muppets—a fuzzy teal monster in an athletic jersey and a gray monster with pink and purple feathers for hair—have become Karli’s foster parents, Clem and Dalia.

In between cheering for Elmo and Karli, Elmo’s dad (whose name is Louie) asks Clem and Dalia: “How has everything been going, since becoming her foster parents?”

Clem hangs his head and sighs. “Changes like this can be really rough for kids. And for adults, too,” he says.

Next to me, Kama Einhorn, a writer and senior content manager at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, drops her head and mimics Clem. “Things are really rough,” she says in a deep, exhausted voice. This, apparently, is not exactly what Einhorn had in mind.

Between takes, she confers with the puppeteer playing Clem, and gives him a note to pep it up a little. He was being too morose, Einhorn explains to me. That’s not the vibe she wants this segment to have.

In the final version of this video—part of Sesame Workshop’s new set of materials on foster care, released today—Clem’s head is held high, and a measured acknowledgment that sometimes things can be tough gives way to excitement when it’s decided that Elmo can join Karli, Clem, and Dalia for “pizza-party Tuesdays,” because as Louie says, “everything’s better with a friend by your side.”

The foster-care resources—which include an interactive storybook and printable activities, as well as videos featuring Muppets—are the latest in a series of packages that Sesame Workshop is producing to support kids going through traumatic experiences. These online resources—which won't be featured on the television show—are intended for use by parents and caretakers, and also by therapists, social workers, and anyone else who works with such kids.

Sesame has been making various supplemental-resource packages for decades now, though they started taking their current, online form around 2010. Many of the packages on the site have nothing to do with trauma but are geared toward topics that affect every kid—healthy eating, tantrums, sharing, math. Starting in 2013, Sesame began to focus on tougher topics, starting with a package for kids whose parents are incarcerated. (All of these resources are available in both English and Spanish.) Over the past year or so, the organization has chosen three topics to focus on: family homelessness, the resources for which were released in December 2018; foster care; and substance abuse, the resources for which are slated to come out in October.

[Read: How uncertainty fuels anxiety]

Through its Sesame Street in Communities initiative, Sesame Workshop partners with organizations around the country that work with young children. Sesame picked these issues—homelessness, foster care, and substance abuse—because it heard from these partner organizations that they didn’t have many resources addressing these things from a child’s perspective, a spokesperson told me.

“Historically, I think we’ve tended to believe that young children won’t remember or don’t really have the ability to make sense of what’s going on, and therefore it doesn’t impact them. And that’s clearly not the case,” says Phil Fisher, a psychologist at the University of Oregon who studies child development under adversity, and who was not involved in creating the Sesame Street resources.

He notes, for example, that after traumatic events, children can experience changes in stress-hormone levels and have trouble paying attention. Even preverbal children, he says, understand when big changes are happening around them. “A 2-year-old is likely to be able to understand that their parents are having a hard time, or that their life circumstances are chaotic and unpredictable, even if they probably couldn’t articulate that on a verbal level,” Fisher told me.

Keeping the developmental level of the audience in mind,, Sesame Workshop puts a lot of work into conveying these concepts in ways that kids can understand.

Leaders at Sesame Workshop start by assembling a group of advisers, who work professionally on the topic at hand or who have a personal stake in it. The advisers get together with the Sesame team for a focus group and, as Einhorn puts it, “download to us what they know about the topic.” Writers at Sesame take the themes of these conversations and incorporate them into video scripts, activities, and a digital storybook. As the resources take shape, Sesame repeatedly sends them to the advisers for further comment, in a feedback loop that lasts up until the point of filming.

“We spend a lot of time fine-tuning language,” Einhorn told me. “How do our Muppets [portray] it? How do we make it playful? How do we have this light touch for a heavy topic without diminishing the topic?”

When talking to kids about any kind of traumatic experience, experts emphasize the importance of helping them name their emotions and understand that they’re normal. “Just like [how in order] to read you've got to know letters, if you’re going to talk about things that have happened to you, you’ve got to have feeling words,” says Ann Thomas, the president and CEO of The Children’s Place in Kansas City, Missouri, a treatment center for kids who’ve gone through trauma. Thomas consulted on both the foster-care package and more general traumatic-experience resources for Sesame Workshop. “They don’t know what this swirly uncomfortable stuff is. It’s like a knot inside of them. We have to start untangling that knot.” Sesame’s videos, Thomas says, not only give children those feeling words, but they model for adults how to help kids sort through their feelings out loud.

For example, in one of Sesame’s trauma videos, an adult named Alan, the proprietor of Mr. Hooper’s store, does just this for Big Bird, who arrives in the store looking upset. Alan asks how he’s doing, and he replies, “Not too good. I’ve got all these feelings.”

“Are they big feelings?” Alan asks. “Like sad, or angry, or confused? Anxious?” Big Bird responds “yeah” to each emotion. “It’s all those feelings, and they’re all mixed together, and I don’t know what to do!” the Muppet says. Alan goes on to teach Big Bird an exercise of imagining his safe place—his “comfy cozy nest”—in order to feel better.

The scene never states just what upset Big Bird, and this is not unusual, according to Daniel Anderson, a developmental psychologist who has consulted on many kids’ TV shows, including Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Blues Clues, and Sesame Street, though he was not involved in creating these resources. Writers often choose not to show the inciting event to avoid upsetting young viewers. Also, “you almost never see characters crying on a kids’ program,” he told me, “even though it would be far more realistic and gripping to the audience, but if you do that then the kids can get very upset.” And it’s true that in all the Sesame Street videos on trauma I watched in researching this story, I never saw a Muppet cry, though they hang their heads and speak sadly.

[Read: Mr. Rogers had a simple set of rules for talking to children]

For each topic, the Sesame writers boil down what they’ve learned from research and heard from advisers into bite-sized phrases such as “big feelings.” Avoiding overexplaining, Thomas says, is also key. For foster care, the takeaway phrases the writers settled on were: “You’re safe, you’re strong, you belong”—which the Muppets sing in song form in one video—and “for-now parents” as a kid-friendly synonym for “foster parents.”

Adriana Molina, an adoptive mom of two children—a daughter, 3, who was formerly in foster care and a son, 10, who is her wife’s relative—has learned to pay attention to the transitions in her kids’ lives. “When [our son] came into our lives, we thought he was going to come for a visit, and he ended up staying,” Molina, who is the director of a community mental-health organization for kids in Los Angeles called Project ABC, told me. “We didn’t know to give him as many of the words for This is what’s happening, or This is what’s changing. Whereas with [our daughter], she’d only been in one foster home her entire little life. We were able to ease into that process and do some visits in her space. Slowing things down was a very concrete learning” experience, she said.

Molina was an adviser for Sesame’s foster-care resources, bringing both her personal and professional experience to the process. “‘For-now parents’ is a lovely, neutral place to be,” she said. “The language of being in foster care is it’s where you are now; it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s where you will always be.”

But that concept of temporariness is often hard for young kids to grasp, according to Anderson. “Preschoolers have such a limited time frame and sense of past and future,” he said. “And something like homelessness, even if it’s temporary, it might be temporary in terms of months, which would seem permanent to a child. That’s a very difficult thing to deal with.” Ideally, he suggests keeping conversations with very young children in the realm of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The idea that things are a certain way “for now” and might be different in the future is “not a real reassuring kind of notion because preschool kids really crave stability and security.” But, he says, “it’s honest,” and for kids going through something such as homelessness or foster care, "I guess that’s probably as good as you can do.”

After all, uncertainty creates anxiety even for adults. And trying to shield kids from the uncertainty shaping their lives, Molina said, doesn’t work. "Part of what creates the anxiety is when they're being told one thing, but they have a sense of something else," she said.

Thomas adds that if grown-ups don't explain what's happening to children, kids will create their own explanations, which might make them feel even worse than the truth. “When bad things happen, it’s very natural [for young kids] to assume they caused it," she says. "It’s natural to have magical thinking at this age.” Her advice is similar to Anderson’s—don’t lie about what’s happening, even if you have to be ambiguous (telling them they’ll see their parents when they’re “bigger,” for example), and “grounding them back in what’s working today,” Thomas says.

The digital storybook about Karli addresses this magical thinking directly: “A lot of grown-ups are helping your mom,” Karli’s foster mom, Dalia, says in the book. “It’s a grown-up problem and it’s not your job to fix it. None of the bad things that happened at home were your fault.”

No character ever explicitly discusses why Karli is in foster care, but Einhorn told me that the Sesame Street team wrote the character with the idea that her mother is away getting treatment for substance abuse. Karli will be featured again in the substance-abuse resources that are slated to come out this fall, though they won’t reference foster care, and the foster-care resources likewise don’t reference substance abuse.

All the packages are self-contained, so kids won’t need to see both in order to make sense of Karli's story. Though as Einhorn put it, “trauma is trauma,” and there are some recurring themes in the content. Many of the resources emphasize the importance of relying on a broader community for support. And activities such as breathing exercises or artistic expression show up repeatedly. Karli draws out her feelings in the foster-care storybook, and colors a concentric heart in one of the videos to show that “a heart can grow” with love for her foster parents and new friends, even as she feels sad about missing her mom. In one of the homelessness videos, a Muppet named Lily draws dots on a chalkboard to represent all the people who love her, and connects them to form a heart.

Fisher, the University of Oregon psychologist, looked at the homelessness and trauma resources before we spoke, and said that “the messages that were employed were trauma-informed and evidence-informed, and have been found to be effective.” What’s less clear, he said, is if exercises that are effective in a therapeutic context will still work when delivered through a screen.

That’s something Sesame Workshop is studying—a spokesperson told me that the organization is currently conducting a randomized controlled trial on the effects of their trauma resources, but the results won’t be out until later this year.

“What seems to me to be the active ingredient here is the normalization of these experiences for children,” Fisher said. “[It can be] really ostracizing and isolating for children to perceive that their circumstances are different than others’. You have these familiar characters talking about it and normalizing that it’s something that can produce feelings.”

“The Muppets can often do what humans can’t,” Einhorn said. “They’ve got this special power.”

I met Molina and her son on set in December when the foster-care segments were being filmed. (Several advisers were invited to the taping.) Her son was shy when I asked him what he thought of the monsterball scene we had just watched. “It’s pretty cool,” he said. He perked up as his mom described to me the process of adopting his sister from foster care, and he interjected a few times to add details to the story. Still, the Muppets made an impression, it seems. Recently, Molina told me that when she and her son got home from the trip to New York, “he spent two weeks trying to perfect his Elmo voice.”

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2YBZE5p

#Blogger

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themyskira · 7 years ago

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Wonder Woman Annual #2

Previously in FUCKITY FUCK FUCK I FORGOT THERE WAS AN ANNUAL AS WELL: Diana prepared to face down her most terrifying foes yet: the Dark Gods.

Who or what are the Dark Gods? Dunno.

What do they want? No clue.

What is this awesome and terrible power that they wield? So far, mostly just the ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes and incite people to deliver badly-written villainous monologues.

Why are we supposed to be so pants-pissingly afraid of them? Because James Robinson told us so.

Last issue ended with the Dark Gods manifesting over Washington DC, at which point it was revealed that they are… giant floating statues, I guess? But, like, scary floating statues. With lasers. So scary.

And then moments later, a couple of Star Sapphires arrived to whisk Diana away so she could appear in this shitty annual.

Diana is teleported to the Star Sapphires’ home planet of Zamaron, which is heavily battle-damaged.

The two Sapphires who brought her here are called Miss Bloss and Miri Riam, who are apparently pre-established minor Green Lantern characters — something I had to figure out on my own, because Robinson just assumes we all known them, and that Diana does too (I’m reasonably sure they’ve never met). The one time his overexplaining might have actually been useful, and he couldn’t be arsed taking a panel or two to make introductions.

Diana yells at them that she’s too busy to help with whatever their deal is, and launches into a recap of last issue. But, you know, that was all of two weeks ago, so by all means, spend a page getting us up to speed.

She’s also still throwing around ‘crazy’ and ‘insane’ like they’re going out of style.

“…and although I’m not certain — the woman who told me was insane at the time--“

How about ‘possessed’, ‘out of control’, ‘somewhat incoherent’ or ‘compromised’? Any of these would be more accurate in this context, as well as not equating mental illness with dangerous and violent behaviour.

But anyway, essentially Diana says ‘my world is being attacked by the Dark Gods and it’s my fault’, and Miss Bloss is like, ‘well, if that was your fault, then our thing must be your fault, too’, and points up at the giant floating Dark God statue thing that Diana has somehow failed to notice until this exact moment.

Oh, goody.

Diana starts questioning them about what happened. Honestly, that’s really all she does these days. If she’s not delivering plot recaps herself, she’s setting up allies for flashback-exposition or allowing villains to monologue at her. Oh, sure, occasionally she fights somebody, but mostly she’s just a vessel for tedious exposition.

Miss Bloss describes the Dark God’s attack:

“Even to recall it now, it feels like a dream or vision from another world. Almost like we were looking at ourselves from outside of it all.”

The first time I read this, I took it to be a figure of speech. I interpreted it as an expression of Miss Bloss’s deep level of shock at the devastation she’d experienced, that it still felt unreal, as though it had happened to somebody else.

I was giving Robinson too much credit: he meant it literally.

As we’ll learn in a few pages’ time, one of the Dark Gods has some kind of power over people’s perceptions, enabling him to induce in others a sense of unreality and dreamlike detachment. We’ll learn that the Dark Gods have deliberately used this ability in order to confuse enemies and limit their ability to respond to or even comprehend attacks.

Frazer Irving — who illustrates the flashback, along with a couple of other scenes in this issue — plays into this well. His stylised art and colour work lends a somewhat eerie dreamlike quality to his pages, creating a sense of altered reality.

Unfortunately, Robinson can’t write dreamlike.

So what in theory should be an eerie, confusing, unreal flashback instead just turns into Miss Bloss telling us that her memories of the attack are eerie and unreal and hazy… aaaaand then proceeding to describe the attack, the enemy, his name, the concept he embodies, his powers and the precise reason why he was able to kill so many Star Sapphires, all in exacting detail.

The Dark God who attacked the Sapphires is called Karnell and he calls himself the god of love, but the love he embodies is dark and gritty and edgy and corrupted. He can sense any ‘impurities’ or ‘flaws’ in a person’s love and rub it in their faces. When he does this to Star Sapphires, something something their rings freak out and they spontaneously combust.

Diana asks, ‘yeah okay, but you didn’t know that this was my fault when you dragged me here, so what gives?’, and Bloss and Miri are like, ‘welp, our leaders are all dead, Carol Ferris is busy in another comic, we all frankly suck, and you were a Star Sapphire once in that Blackest Night crossover event.’

At which point I went, ‘wait huh what??? but that was before the New 52 reboot!’, before remembering that Geoff Johns’ entire preboot GL run survived the reboot for no other reason than because Geoff Johns gets whatever he wants.

Diana agrees to lead the Sapphires against Krakoom (I’m sorry, I’m not going to bother to learn his name, he’s not worth that kind of time), and the Sapphires respond by giving her the Nazi salute due to an unfortunate artistic miscalculation.

Diana: And if I am going to stand among you — fight alongside you — let me look the part. Sapphires: As you wish it, so do we, Wonder Woman… be a Star Sapphire once more.

And with that, they give Diana a makeover.

It’s not a bad costume, especially when you compare it to her Blackest Night design. That one tried to ape Carol Ferris’ hideous then-costume, which featured hip cut-outs and a plummeting neckline that ended around the crotch area, by giving Diana a bathing suit with hip-holes and a bared midriff. This design retains many familiar Star Sapphire costume elements — the stiff pointed white collar, the combination tiara/mask, the starburst symbol, the long gloves and high boots — without going into creepy male-gazey territory.

buuuuut it also looks like Diana is wearing a pink apron over her usual costume, and that is something I cannot get past. It also varies wildly across the issue, depending on which of the four credited artists is drawing it.

By the way, I say ‘makeover’ because despite violet blaze on her right ring finger, it took me several times flicking back and forth before I was certain that Diana had been deputised into the Corps as opposed to just being given a new costume in order to “look the part”, as she put it. I know this sounds like it should have been self-evident, but Robinson gives absolutely no indication of any deeper change in her. Not even lip service to the fact that Diana is connected, through the power ring, to the emotional spectrum and the violet energies of love.

Contrast this with Diana in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3:

“Extraordinary. All of them, in their way, have tried to explain it to me before. Hal, John, Kyle… even Guy, may Ares watch and aid him. But it defies all attempts. There is no way to describe it. What it is to wear a power ring, and feel emotion made manifest. To wear fear on anger or will or hope on one’s hand… To wear love. Too beautiful for words…”

There’s a lot about Wondy’s Blackest Night tie-in that’s flawed and frustrating and flat-out bad, but this page gets it right. If you’re going to make Diana a Star Sapphire — going to give one of the most loving hearts of the DCU the power to channel her love into tangible power — then you need to acknowledge the weight of that.

In this comic, it’s as insubstantial as a costume change.

Flying up to confront Kratakoa, Diana wonders if she could really have summoned the Dark Gods. Supergirl said she brought them into this plane with a careless wish, and… oh, come to think of it, she did inadvertently make a wish during the recent Dark Nights: Metal crossover, while coincidentally handling some magical wishing metal. But nah, that couldn’t possibly have done it!

She reaches the big floaty statue and a bloke with spiky wings emerges from it. It’s Klangalang, and he’s got his monologue cued up and ready to go!

He opens with a fairly standard ‘ahaha, I’ve been expecting you, hero!’, and the implications fly straight over Diana’s head.

Kibble: You came, Amazon! Sooner than I expected, too! Good… I’m going to love this! Diana: You’re some kind of seer, too? You expected me?

Let’s review: The villains Diana supposedly summoned, the villains who have been trying to kill or neutralise Diana before she can interfere in their plans, have attacked the Star Sapphires in advance of their invasion of Earth. Despite not knowing about Diana’s connection to their attacker, the Sapphires reached out to her for help, teleporting her away at almost the exact moment that the villains launched their opening assault. Now the one villain who hasn’t joined the invading force is cackling that he’s been expecting Diana.

Even a half-competent hero should be able to join the dots and realise they’ve been deliberately lured away. Not so Robinson’s Diana, who gazes at him wide-eyed and demands, ‘omg, u expected me? are u psychic or sumthin???’

After a couple more rounds of obscenely dense questions from Diana (along with another out-of-character ’crazy’ slur), Klunk ends up having to straight-up spell it out for her. He also explains how she summoned the Dark Gods.

Krunch: You wished for the gods’ return. Well, here we are. Here I am! Diana: Like a dream, but yes, of course. But I meant the Greek pantheon, not— Krump: Gods! That’s all you said.

Small nitpick: Diana would not think of her gods the “Greek pantheon”. She’d be more likely to call them “the Patrons”, “my gods”, “the gods of my people”, “the gods of Themyscira”, “the gods of Olympus”, “the Olympians” — she knew them as all of these things long before she knew Greece, or any world outside her island home, existed. The only reason she might refer to them as “Greek” is for the benefit of people in Man’s World, as a point of reference.

More importantly, are you friggin kidding me, the friggin layers of incompetence here from our supposed hero

accidentally makes a wish while wielding a weapon of magical wishing metal

manages to make the vaguest wish possible, opening a loophole for THE WORST GODS to infiltrate reality

immediately forgets she ever wished it

why would she even wish for that?! her gods haven’t gone anywhere!

To be somewhat fair, the reason she doesn’t really remember it is that “the God With No Name” (YES REALLY) made it all feel like a dream so that she wouldn’t realise she’d made an irresponsible wish and needed to immediately rally everybody together to resist the Dark Gods.

Except… that in itself doesn’t make any sense.

There are two possibilities here: the Horse With No Name could have clouded Diana’s memory of making the wish after the Dark Gods were pulled into this reality — in which case, why? How would she even land on the conclusion that she’d accidentally summoned some evil gods that she’d never heard of, when her intent was to call on her own gods and she’d had no indication that it had even worked?

Alternatively, he clouded her mind in the moment of the wish, to render her thoughts vague and imprecise and open the door for the Dark Gods’ invasion. Which doesn’t work either, because it turns out that the Dark Gods are pretty pissed off at being pulled out of their awesome reality.

King Koopa: War was declared the moment you dragged us from our home… our beautiful world — which you regard as the ‘Dark Multiverse’ — we see as a paradise… where we were more than even gods to our worshippers… we were everything!”

So basically their plan is to turn Earth into a desolate hellscape just like their home.

Diana, who has already been told that Kraig is a god of corrupted love, conveniently forgets this fact just so that Robinson can tell it to us again.

Diana: You call yourself a god of love. What kind of love wants to be feared? Love is unconditional. KHAAAAAN: Spoken like the addled naive romantic I expected. Love always comes with conditions. Sometimes, I confess, I question… am I god of that love, of those conditions behind it? But then I realise… I don’t care.

Cool story. Glad we can agree on one thing, at least.

He monologues for a couple of pages about how he’s going to open her eyes to the truth of how horrible and selfish and corrupt love is, then draws Diana into his mind so that he can monologue some more.

We learn that the world of the Dark Gods was forged by a group of divinities called Titans, “much like the reality of your own Greek pantheon” (incorrect, you’re thinking of the Protogenoi; the Titans were the second generation of gods). But because these Titans were hardcore, they did it by smashing five other realities together. And into this terrifyingly dark edgy metalscape came… +~teh D4rK g0dz~+

Robinson then undermines the super-extra-double-dark feel he’s going for with another embarrassing name and an accidental rhyme.

“We Dark Gods followed, as gods do. King Best and then the rest.”

KING. BEST.

But wait, we haven’t even gotten to Kalamazoo’s dark edgy totally original backstory!

In fact, this is so dark and edgy and original that I’ll throw in a quick content warning here for descriptions of domestic violence and shittiness towards sex workers.

“You’ll meet a boy — his mother broken by a wanton father who forced her to cheapen herself further with wraiths and under-beings. The mother died — beaten to death. When he saw her blood still dripping from the fists of his father, the boy ran, fearing the same fate. The boy loved his mother, but hated his father and the world. Both emotions — love and hate — burned so brightly that even from within the darkness of our world, their glow caught the eye of mighty King Best.”

Domestic violence! Sexism! Slut shaming! Fridging! It’s like a game of grimdark bingo!

After three goddamn pages of this, Diana suddenly twigs what we all figured out eleven pages ago, ‘oh now waaaaaait a minute, you didn’t lure me here so that your buddies could invade Earth while I’m distracted, did you?’

Klinger responds by almost murdering Diana, and is only stopped by the intervention of the Star Sapphires. They all retreat, and Diana proposes a new plan: all the Sapphires will channel their energy into her, something something, true love wins the day.

So Diana flies up to Kimberley, sword held aloft and blazing with violet energy, and announces, ‘boy did you make a mistake when you told me that you used to be a sad boy child! now I have only love in my heart for you!’

Karma Khameleon is like, ‘oh no, love! my one true weakness!’, and I’m like, “d… didn’t we just have this story?”

Then Diana straight-up stabs him with her love sword, and Korgo fades away with an ‘I’ll beat you next time, Captain Planet! Next tiiiiiime…’

Diana farewells the Star Sapphires, and Robinson shoehorns in this bit of virtue signalling:

Miri: Please… Diana, think of us as your sisters, too, for all time. Diana: Or “brother,” I notice. Miss Bloss: Love is love, no matter who bears the heart.

This is a welcome and needed change to the Star Sapphires. The fact that they have been portrayed up until this point as an all-women corps (with the exception of a few briefly deputised blokes) is bound up in ugly gendered ideas, exemplified by Geoff Johns’ comment in 2009 that “anyone can join, but most men are not worthy”.

But there’s something gratingly self-congratulatory in the execution of this course correction. Robinson’s doing the absolute bare minimum here — including one or two male background characters in a handful of panels — and flagging it as progress with a phrase associated with the LGBTI community. We haven’t even seen a single named male Sapphire, let alone one with a speaking part; I think it’s a little premature to be looking for kudos. And either Miri or Miss Bloss could very easily have been replaced in this story by a new male character.

The Sapphires teleport Diana back to Earth, where she finds DC a smoking ruin. And as the air clears, she sees—

—wait for it—

—this is truly shocking and terrifying—

THE DARK GODS MADE A MEGAZORD

THEY MADE A FUCKING MEGAZORD WITH THEIR DUMBASS FLYING STATUES

A GODDAMN MEGAZORD WHO WHAT HOW WHY.

Diana’s face does this:

#the james robinson shitshow #comics talk

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juleskelleybooks · 8 years ago

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TIPS #2 - Back That Dump Truck Up

Providing background is one of the areas where writing original fiction varies greatly from writing fanfiction. Most of the time in fanfiction, your readers are coming to the story with the same knowledge of the background that you, yourself, have. They know the mechanics of the universe. They know the character arcs. You don’t have to explain anything. You can just go on your merry little way and trust your readers to keep up with you. (If you’re writing a really ambitious AU, you might have to do a little more worldbuilding, but that starts treading the line of original fiction anyway so stick with me on this one.)

But if you’re writing original fiction, all that information in your head? Your readers don’t know it. And it might be tempting to tell them everything all at once so that they can get on the same page as you, but the thing is, almost nobody reads fiction to learn things, and after about two sentences, their eyes are going to glaze over.

So how do you provide the information you need the readers to know without boring them? You bake a cake.

Writing and baking are both a little bit like alchemy. You take small parts, raw ingredients (ideas, words, eggs, flour, etc.) and you mix them together in such a way that they become something bigger than the sum of their parts. And I don’t know if you’ve ever baked anything, but it turns out there’s a big difference between slowly adding one ingredient to another and just…dumping the whole thing together. The same is true for writing.

And the thing is, your book might be all right with a few info-dumps in it, but it’s kind of like biting into a cake and finding a little pocket of flour that didn’t get mixed with the other ingredients very well—it might not ruin the whole cake, but it’s an unpleasant bit of dryness that you honestly could have just done without.

So here are some simple do’s and don’ts to help you gently stir all that dry information smoothly into your other ingredients.

Don’t: Explain your world up front. In books with a contemporary setting, this isn’t as big of a deal as it is in fantasy or sci-fi, but it can still be a problem. I really, really don’t want to spend the first two paragraphs hearing about how your main character lives in a penthouse in San Francisco that he bought with the inheritance his great-grandpappy left him, or how the ancient kingdom was once peaceful and technologically advanced but now it’s war-torn and in ruins.

Do: Sprinkle little details here and there that paint a picture. Give them a purpose. Make them a part of the story. Use contrast to make them stand out. For the San Francisco penthouse, have him stress about the ever-rising property taxes. Have him examine the seams of his shirts to be sure they’re going to last until his next paycheck. Contrast this with a breathtaking view of the bay or the bridge or Market Street or whatever. Something doesn’t line up here; there’s a glaring mis-match between someone who is running out of money and someone who lives in a sleek apartment in San Francisco (because let me tell you how expensive SF is). Let that mis-match intrigue your reader. Let it pull them along. They’ll want to know why.

For the war-torn kingdom, have your main character come into conflict with leftover souvenirs of the peacetime technology that doesn’t work anymore. A state-of-the-art glass elevator is now just an empty cage blocking a shaft that could have been used for stairs. The railroad tracks are a great place for a horse to break a leg, now that all the coal is being used to make weapons instead of fuel train engines. Show the gap between two areas of contrast, but don’t explain how things got from Point A to Point D. Discovering what B and C are is going to be what pulls your reader in.

Don’t: Give me your character’s entire life story right up front. “I was born in a cabin in the woods to loving parents blah blah blah snore snore,” to borrow a quote. Nobody cares. Only people who consider themselves self-important think that anyone cares about hearing the minutiae of their lives, and it’s because only people who are self-important spend that much time thinking about themselves in that much detail! Your novel is not an interview with a biographer (probably…I mean, you could make that format work if you tried really hard). Your novel is a peek into a character’s thoughts and personality and daily life, and most people just do not think about themselves in that much detail on a daily basis. They think about the things they’re in conflict with. They think about the things that give them problems. And you know when they think about them? When they come into conflict with them.

Do: Just get right to it. Jump into the action of their lives. Give me the point of your story right up front. Maybe not the main point. Maybe just a teaser. What’s your main conflict? Your main conflict is an ancient race of sentient machines invading to harvest all organic life? (Listen, just go with it, I love those stupid games.) Don’t tell me about the damn machines. Tell me about the day they found something those machines left behind last time they were here. Why did they find it? Were they on an archaelogical dig? (Then I can surmise your character is an archaeologist.) Did they find it because they responded to a distress call from someone whose computer got fried by it? Etc. You don’t have to tell me on the first page that your character is an N7 commander or what that means. You can sprinkle that in somewhere along the way. “Commander Shepard! Dammit. Those N7 marines, always running off ahead of everybody else.”

Don’t: Stop the action to explain something. Please. Please do not. I mean, maybe, if you’re really good at prose, if you’re freaking Douglas Adams and you’re playing it this way on purpose, you might can get away with it. But let me tell you about the time I had to read “A Barn Burning” by William Faulkner in one of my English classes and write a “reaction paper” to it. And let me tell you about how my entire reaction was just how fucking angry I was about the stupid paragraph where Faulkner interrupted the pivotal moment, where Sarty is racing up the hill, lungs bursting, legs seizing—to tell me about how the fucking cows in the fucking barn remind him of his fucking sisters. I promise you I still want to murder William Faulkner over this moment and he’s been dead for years. (My English teacher found my paper hilarious and gave me the only perfect grade she handed out to anyone the entire semester. But Faulkner is still on my shitlist.)

Do: Bring up relevant details to remind the reader of something that might be easily forgotten. Make sure it’s something you’ve explained earlier in the story so that you don’t HAVE to stop and explain. Does your pivotal moment hinge on your main character being able to hit a small object very hard with a big stick? (Look, I don’t know why it would, you’re the one writing this story.) Don’t pick that moment to spend a paragraph on how hard she practiced to try out for the hockey team when she was a kid. Tell me about that earlier, and choose the pivotal moment to just mention it, briefly, in passing. Bring up one or two relevant details that bring it to mind.

Don’t: Overexplain.

Do: Let the reader infer some things. I don’t need to know what a womp rat looks like, their evolutionary development, or their life cycle to get the gist of Luke Skywalker saying, “I used to bulls-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home.” But does referencing a “womp rat” that’s “not much bigger than two meters” add some richness to the story? You bet it does. It also sure as hell tells me a lot about what a redneck Luke Skywalker was growing up without having to spend any time on that particular bit of background.

TL;DR – Make your background details a treasure hunt, scattered through your book. Use contrast and conflict to make them stand out when they’re important. Leave some things to the imagination. Readers like filling in a few blanks here and there. It’s engaging.

And most of all, do not pull a Faulkner and make me come kick your shit-I-need-to-make-my-wordcount ass.

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#writing tips #tips post #SORRY THIS IS LATE #i'm a literal idiot and forgot to schedule the post

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