#The joys of using a sketch as a basis for the final work...

[husbandohunter]

Moments of Despair #2 [Genshin Impact/Albedo x Reader]

Synopsis: "The alchemist who relished in his gifts only to fall from grace."

(A series of works where the boys deal with the passing of their beloved).

Diluc’s despair

Warnings: angst, tragedy, major character death and psychological horror (correct me if otherwise)

(A/n): I decided to take a slightly different approach this time. Regardless, it’s still killing my heart TwT.

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Out of the many wonders of Teyvat, one thing Albedo loved most was how you were so different from him. 

Difference ties to the unknown, one that must be discovered. He was drawn to you the first time he had laid his eyes upon your form standing at the heights of Mondstadt's cathedral. The Sisters scolded you from below, but all you did was reply with a wink amidst their chaos before soaring into the skies and letting the wind carry your glider. Reckless they said. For him, your recklessness was intriguing. 

As the sun's light blinded his vision, everything he saw seemed like a glass barrier. For the ground was where he thrived and chalk was his core, it became the basis of Albedo's very existence. Even the geo Archon granted him a Vision of the same element to affirm his identity. The earth will forever be attached to his feet as he will keep on his stride until every last truth of Teyvat have all been realized. You, on the other hand, hailed from a place where he couldn't quite reach. What lies beyond this glass ceiling? Albedo found himself gradually holding onto a string of curiosities, a string he could touch but was not able to feel. 

'Interesting,' he thought quietly, while the breeze slip between the fingers of his outstretched hand. 

He was a character of logic, possessing sharp eyes that could pierce through the depths of the most complex formulas and a mind to predict their outcomes-  as long as alchemy was still related. All impossibilities thrown in his way only paved a path for him to become the well known genius he was now. Whether it was alchemy or  investigations with the Knights of Favonius, Albedo never failed to deliver the answers. But despite it all, he always found himself endlessly contemplating over things that were considered intangible. He wonders why you smile when there was nothing to laugh about. How could you tell between the complexities of the human heart? Albedo can't seem to put a finger on it. 

'Why? What drives you? What are you thinking?' 

The Chief Alchemist couldn't resist being fascinated by your unpredictability. It reels him in similar to a fish being baited out of the waters. However, unlike those creatures, Albedo only tightened his grip on the strings as if they were a lifeline, determined to find out what they truly felt like to the touch. 

"I can't really say it's much of an answer," you hummed, clasping both hands behind your back before declaring with a grin, "To put it simply, you just gotta follow your heart."

'Follow your heart...' What does it mean to follow your heart? 

"I'm afraid I still don't understand," he replied in a thoughtful manner. The statement never really resonated with him and it certainly weren't the words his Master taught when he was in the early stages of being created, "But it does suit you very much." 

"Really? But still bring your head with you," a playful laugh escapes and you add while pointing a finger, "At least, it's what everyone tells me these days." 

"Hm," Albedo then affirms with a nod, "I can definitely see why they would tell you that." 

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" 

The days go by and his repetitious march towards the truth remains the same. However, there was never a dull moment when you were at his side. Perhaps that was the reason why Albedo became so attracted to your aura. The way you'd follow around his experiments, eyes so full of enthusiasm at every step of the activity. Sometimes the events can get a little too out of hand in which he needs to step in and save you from getting stuck in slime condensates...constantly. Albedo grew fond of your childlike excitement even when you weren't entirely sure what was going on. He normally distanced himself from socializing as it never sparked his interest. Frankly, he was too much of a genius for mundane conversations. Your presence was rather refreshing in this case. You were an oddball, just like him, and for once the alchemist felt like he didn't need to place that glass barrier between the two worlds. 

"You seem to be in a very good mood today Mister Albedo." 

He was a man of subtle expressions yet anyone could notice the small gleam in his eyes whenever he saw you walking in the hallway. Sucrose often remarked with a giggle after she noticed her teacher holding his documents upside down. But who could blame him? Joy, fun, laughter. He was able to experience those emotions all because of you; his beloved. You were the colour to his canvas and the meaning to his flower. You were a force of nature. Like a warm breeze gracing upon the terrestrial lands, you move him. 

Thump- thump- thump- 

Strings around his world began to weave one whole picture while they also tugged inside his chest. God had finally blown the breath of life into mankind's body, it was only a matter of time before Albedo came to follow his heart too. 

-------- 

"Alright, just one more detail aaaaand done!" 

You gave a small tap using the tip of your pencil and leaned back to examine your artwork. 

Masterpiece! 

On days when Katheryne had no commissions assigned to the guild, Albedo would accompany you to the Whispering Woods and conduct his sketches there instead. He was aware of the discomfort Dragonspine brought as the temperature wasn't ideal for anyone except for him. You eventually learned that your lover was not only intelligently different from the rest but physically too. Albedo, aside from the Cavalry Captain, was mysterious in his own way. He was hard to read yet never came off as intimidating, no one knew of his origins nor they knew how he came to Mondstadt. You wondered why someone like him would have wanted to get involved with your shenanigans. Rosaria often gave warnings regarding the alchemist's 'hidden intentions' in which you'd roll your eyes in response. The Albedo you knew was far from that. He was a big brother to Klee, a man passionate about his work, he was the one golden star among the many silvers in your sky. He was your lover. 

My Albedo. 

Brushing a hand upon the drawing you made of him, you glided down the lines of his cheek before resting your finger on the mark by his neck. You gazed at it with fondness. Truly a masterpiece indeed. 

"You do realize I'm still here?" 

The paper nearly flies out of your grasp and you snatched it back to your chest, "HUH A-ALBEDO, WHEN DID YOU APPEAR???" 

"I was with you the whole time," he states. The corner of his lip tug upward ever so slightly, "You said you wanted to sketch me." 

"A-Ahahaha, so I did," you reply while scratching your head bashfully. 'I thought I was looking at a sculpture!!'  You rushed to cover your face with the sheet. It wasn't that you forgot he was there, rather, you forgot he was still a living and breathing specimen who just witnessed your little serenade. As Lisa had once said, Albedo was easy on the eyes. His graceful features made him seem almost like an oil painting that could only be found in  halls of the most prestigious households. You made sure to capture everything, every detail, every curve just like he had done with your portraits. Only now you noticed the sun already began its descent below the lakeside, dusting the landscape with hints of bright orange as it marked the day's end. If only time could slow down. But duty calls upon your next journey and there was no telling when you'd return. At the very least, a simple portrait would suffice to fill in the temporary gap of his absence. 

"Can I see it?" 

You glanced his direction while keeping the drawing close to your nose, "Are you sure about that? It might not be up to your expectations." 

"I'm sure," Albedo affirms with a straight countenance, "I can already tell you've put a great amount of effort, otherwise you wouldn't have taken this long." 

"Yeeaahh I kinda lost track of time. I guess it's only fair that you get to see the finished product," you say and shoved the drawing in front of him, "Tada! I present to you, my masterpiece!" 

Albedo takes it out of your grasp and you watched the way his eyes expanded upon sight. 

"Well? Whaddya think?" 

Words could not describe the mixture of emotions that erupted within him. Was it distinguishable or abstract? Albedo spent his time pondering between the two answers as he examined the drawing closely. Despite the lines being slightly jagged and the unevenness in the placement of his eyes, he managed to make the shape of the entire image you were trying to convey. Perhaps it was all thanks to his well trained artistic vision which gave him the ability to do so. Or maybe he was simply biased. But there wasn't a shred of doubt that this was indeed your craftsmanship. 

"You even added flowers in the background," he pointed out with amusement. 

"It's the thing you make when using your elemental burst, I couldn't fit your hand in the picture so I decided to put it somewhere empty," you informed, "Out of everything, that one took me the longest." 

"And the rabbits?" 

"They resemble Klee's bombs!" 

He lets out a chuckle, "I see." 

Albedo kept his attention downward until he was mindlessly staring at the paper in hand. This was a memory made to be carried as you moved on to your next journey and it saddens him that he could not accompany you. If only time slowed down. Albedo wanted to hold onto the memory forever, because he knew once he gave it back, he wouldn't be able to see you for an uncertain amount of time. 

"Do you really have to go?" 

His voice was barely above a whisper. Guilt crept into your heart and you gingerly layed your fingers on his gloved ones, bringing down the paper that blocked his face. A pair of teal orbs held a reflection of your image as the sun's rays casted from the side. You returned it with a reassuring grin, hoping to soothe his worries somehow, "I just need to pay a visit to my father since he's been very sick lately. I'll be fine, so don't worry too much okay?" 

Albedo turns over his palm and gave your hand a squeeze, "How long will it take?" 

"I'm not sure but it will be a while. Snezhnaya is pretty far so..." you trailed off, "But my time in Mondstadt, with Klee and with you, I will never forget! I won't even if I tried." 

When you were met with no answer, a breeze came in to fill the melancholic silence. He too will not forget and he would ensure that it was the same for you. Slowly, Albedo brought your hand up, past the center of his heart all the way to cupping his cheek. He allowed himself to indulge in your warmth, tangling the strands of his hair with your fingers while closing his eyes. Sweet flowers. You always carried the smell of sweet flowers. 

"Albedo?" You gawked, "What's the matter?" 

"...There are certain aspects where drawings can't imitate,"  he says, grip tightening ever so slightly, "How I feel against your skin, the shape of my jaw, your warmth radiating with my own. These are the things I want you to remember." 

Breath leaves your slightly parted mouth. It was unfair how straightforward Albedo could be when showing his affection. Doing as he pleases without anyone's approval to the point it would even catch you off guard since he often absorbed himself in the arts of alchemy. But during times when Albedo did choose to express his feelings, you knew they came from a place of pure genuinity. The thought made it hard for you to tear away from him, "Did you ever find out what the strings felt like then?" 

Albedo returns his gaze, long golden lashes hovering them as he smiles softly, "...I have." 

As he began to reveal his stories, the dusk sky continued to flare across the landscape with colours of passion. Red, it was the thread that had led him to you, the same string that weaved him together as a whole. Albedo lays a kiss atop of your pinky, there was a reason why Mondstadtians called him the Chalk Prince. You didn't know the intention behind his sudden affection but he knew. It was a promise, one to ensure that the thread would also have you return safely back into his arms. 

Oh how he hated the colour red. 

"Al...bedo..." 

With speed he never knew he had, Albedo scoops you into his embrace and held you close. How did everything happen so fast? He curses his mind as it proceeds to scan your injuries, drawing a conclusion where he wished to be wrong for once: 

You were beyond help. 

"Ah..haha..." you managed to laugh through bitter tears, "You don't have to say it. I know." 

His breath hitches, trying to make sense of the feeling that was slowly tearing him apart from the inside. It's not real. Of course it wasn't, it couldn't be. What other possible answer was there to explain the numbness stinging his fingers? The reason for his shaking? Everything felt so cold. Your body hardly registered to his to touch, you were losing so much blood. You were losing. He was going to lose you. 

"No," Albedo shakes his head, "We still have time. I'll go find help." 

Please, hold on. 

He forced himself to think. The ruin hunter ran off shortly after it had ambushed you, by now the Knights would eventually noticed and apprehended it on sight. They couldn't be too far. All he needed was to carry you back to safety and everyone can go home. Albedo darted his eyes all over the place, breaths becoming shallower with each passing second. Where? Where to go? Which route was best to not overexert your wounds? Think. Think. Think. Why couldn't he think? 

"A..." You watched him in your helpless state. Every part of you throbbed with pain but it pains you even more to see the renowned genius who stood atop the pedestal of elegance and grace so utterly, undoubtedly lost. This was not the goodbye you wanted, though death already had you tight in their grasps. Not yet. Using the last particle of your strength, you tried to stay alive as long as possible. Just a little bit more time. 

Albedo freezes when a trembling hand extends itself to cup around his cheek. Every single thought he had in mind vanished and was replaced by a loud ring resonating in his ears. Dreadfully, mechanically, he turns his attention to where you lay. 

"Don't cry," you whisper, "I love you, don't cry- okay?" 

Albedo grimaces, shutting his eyes closed as he allows the pent up sadness to flow out of him completely, "I can't," he said in a shaky voice, "Please. Stay." 

"I'm sorry," Your vision blurs and he hugs you even more. Drawing your final breath, you relay your most cherished words through a broken smile, "But no matter w-where I go...I won't for..ge.." 

The moment your hand fell, Albedo finally understood the difference between death and loss. 

It was...suffocating. Having the air trapped in his throat, begging to release yet it hurts to speak. The never ending stabs that pulsed within his veins rushed forth like the scraping  blizzard of Dragonspine until his whole body lost all its senses. The world was shattering. He could no longer feel your weight. He could no longer feel. 

(Y/n). 

Albedo glances at his blood stained fingers where the thread had been severed, wide eyes drowning in sorrow. What a horrible feeling. Was this a warning sent by the gods? For stepping into the boundaries of knowing too much? Ah the curse of knowledge man must bear when eating the temptatious fruit. It was the result of choosing to love you. With life, death is inevitable and with love, it will eventually bring pain. Everything had a price to pay and as an alchemist, Albedo knew that better than anyone. 

"...Meaningless..." 

But he refused to accept it. 

Cradling your corpse, he leans in and places a kiss on your forehead, lips quivering as they lingered for a second too long before gathering the strength to stand back on his feet. Nothing will stop the alchemist from reuniting with you. If the laws wished to take you away from him then he will use everything in his power to fight against those laws. 

"This is not goodbye..." Albedo said to the sleeping girl, "And it will never be." 

When the sun sinks below the plains and the stars lose their light, the sky had been replaced with a palette of darkness. It was time to go home. 

------ 

"Have you all heard about the rumours?" 

A group of knights gather in the corner as they whisper about. Sucrose stops on her tracks and hides behind a wall, clutching the book close to her chest in an attempt to stay hidden. 

"Another criminal disappeared from the dungeons? Crazy..." 

"More like creepy. I was told that place might be haunted by some dead prisoner's ghost. Even the Church is hopping onto this case." 

"Well I hope it doesn't get any worse. So many of us started going on night patrols..." 

Their voices faded out of range as the anemo user backtracks her steps carefully. Several months passed since the news of mysterious kidnappings have been announced to the public. Rumours of their whereabouts swirled around the city and much to her discomfort, Sucrose happened to catch every single one of them. There couldn't possibly be evil spirits lurking in the Favonious Headquarters right? She silently shrieks at the thought, shaking her head furiously to stop her mind from going too deep. No, I have to find him. Without wasting another minute, the anemo user sprinted towards the stairs all the way up to the second floor before stopping directly in front of her teacher's office. Despite the adrenaline that occured at the same time, she made sure to knock. 

No answer. 

"Strange, he told me he would be here today..." Sucrose muttered to herself. But suddenly she heard the sound of objects shifting from the otherside, signaling that there was indeed someone occupying the room. Without realizing, she held her breath out of anticipation. 

"Come in." 

The door creaks as she opens them, giving her enough space to slip between the gap, "Mister Albedo?" 

"You're early today," The Chief Alchemist noted from his desk, "Is there something the matter?" 

"Y-You mean you don't know? There was just another case about a person disappearing from the dungeons," Her tone became more frantic as she rambled to herself, "The kidnapper never leaves a trace and no one knows how they were able to get out. Even when we ask the guards what happened, they can't seem to remember as if...as if someone casted a spell on them!" 

"A spell?" He inquires, "I suppose that could be a possibility." 

"I think so too. I-It's the only explanation that makes sense! I mean...ghosts don't exist after all," Sucrose nervously looks down at her shoes while giving her book a squeeze, "But why? Who could be capable of such advanced techniques? No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to understand their intentions." 

"...Yes. It is a very strange occurrence indeed." 

Noticing her teacher's withdrawn attitude, Sucrose couldn't help but feel flustered at her own behaviour, "Ah my apologies Mister Albedo, I didn't mean to go off track. Have there been any progress on the investigations so far?" 

Albedo briefly glanced at the various documents splayed across his table. His reputation as an incredibly intelligent individual had reached far and wide through Mondstadt. This led to the authorities requesting his assistance regarding the recent matters, despite him specializing in the alchemical field, he was also the Captain of their Investigation Team. Although, Albedo detested partaking in things he deemed irrelevant to his research; 

"I'm afraid I would need more evidence to draw a conclusion." 

"Eh? You still need more?" 

He could not deny that the given authoritative position had provided much benefits to his own accord. 

"My expertise lies in the subject of alchemy," Albedo reasoned and proceeds to intertwine his fingers in front of his mouth, "Humans on the other hand, are very unpredictable in nature. Even the essence of their existence is hard to obtain." 

"Essence of their existence?" Sucrose repeated softly. She wanted to ask what he meant but the blank expression was evident  enough to signal his impatience. At least, that was what she thought, "Nevermind! I have something that might help," taking out a slip from her textbook, she handed it to him, "It's the report Captain Kaeya gave me. He said that the culprit might be a traitor coming from the Knights of Favonius." 

He narrows his eyes. 

"I-I think he might be right! Just think about it, we haven't found anything at all for the past few months but when we do, I sometimes feel like we're just running in circles...oh what if it's becau-" 

"Sucrose." 

"Y-Yes?!" 

Albedo calmly looks at the flustered girl, not realizing how sharp his tone was, "You're overthinking again. Perhaps it's best that you take this day off." 

"But I came here to help," she insisted, "I know it hurts to lose someone you love! Don't you understand that we're all worried about you? And Klee, she..." 

"..." 

"Please Mister Albedo, if there's anything I could do-" 

"No need," he cuts her off once again, "Your stress levels are too high. We can't go any further if you continue to act like this." 

"Oh," her ruby eyes casted to the side, "I understand..." 

"Good. Now, if you would excuse me," Albedo bid her farewell and watched as the door clicked behind her, observing every detail until he was sure that the absolute silence had returned. He picks up Kaeya's document. Such remarkable handwriting. But of course, appearances are only meant to be displayed on the surface for the Captain was a sly man, wearing a mask to shield what lies underneath. Just like his letter, they were full of innuendos and condensed meanings, orchestrated together until the truth spoke loudly to Albedo himself. 

"So, that's what he thinks." 

Perhaps the alchemist should have been a little more discreet. 

-------- 

There was a certain place in Dragonspine that no one dared to enter. But those who have, they never return. 

"Hm, no response. Now as for the next step..." 

And he was the reason why. 

Taking the sword out of the transmutation circle, Albedo turned to the snowy hill nearby and activated his alchemy. A small portion of it dissipates, revealing a trench that went so deep underground that even warmth couldn't outplay the sheer cold. It was the perfect hiding place for the evidence to lay out of sight and an environment where only he could handle. The alchemist tossed the leftover along with the others before exiting quietly, summoning back the ice to bury his victims once again. Another day, another experiment, another stain goes to his title. The path he walked upon was one littered with corpses and the sins he committed. But despite the bones crunching beneath his feet and the weight of the dead hanging on his shoulders, the alchemist was numb to it all. Like an entity floating in space with nothing to hold, he became unable to feel. 

"I'm back," When reaching the center of Starglow Cavern, Albedo puts his hand on the icicle and caressed it's hard cold surface, "Did you sleep well?" 

The girl did not respond. Her eyes were closed and her skin was as young as ever. She was frozen in time. 

"You must have." 

Albedo felt the sword beginning to shake in his grasp as it resonated with his energy. Dust particles emitted from the hilt and slowly made their climb to the side of his arm. Still, Albedo's attention did not waver, "To this day, I've been thinking about what you told me the first time we met." 

"..." 

"Follow your heart. I couldn't understand it at first but after being around your presence, I believe I can finally recognize what that term means." 

He closes his eyes as he envisioned your lively form running across the landscape. Albedo, Albedo! The sound of his name was mixed with your laughter while Klee came into the scene and caught the dandelions with you. A content smile formed on his countenance as he watched from afar, even if it was just a memory, "It's everything. The breakfast we ate together, to the nights spent camping outside, and the silly moments we shared, they bring all these colours that I never knew existed." 

"..." 

Albedo curls his fingers against the ice as he continues to lament, "Perhaps that's why I began noticing the strings around me. The closer I was to answer, the more I felt it was necessary to discover what they are. All this time, you were the answer I was searching for," Moist begins to build up in his eyes but they freeze up once reaching the corners. How cruel. Despite what he went through, he wasn't even granted the liberty to cry, "Because with you, I'm able to feel them." 

He wonders what you would think if you saw him right now. Albedo peers at his reflection casted on the crystalline surface, the frame of his face had been decorated with streaks of purple and red, spreading out like tree branches as they both fought for dominance. The teal coloured orbs you once adored were beginning to transform to a colour that reminded him of his darkest days. This was Albedo's true nature- a monster, a being that wasn't human, the essence in which you never had the chance to see. 

"I know I may not be the same as I was before," he added, "But if that is what it takes to follow your heart, will you let me feel the strings again?" 

Would you still love me the same? 

"..." 

"If so, then please understand my actions," Albedo takes a step back as he held out the sword in front of him. At last, the preparations have finally been completed. He plunges the blade to the ground with full force and the surrounding area begins to shake under the power accumulated through many, intentional sacrifices. To revive the dead was a forbidden art as it came with heavy consequences. If it weren't for Albedo's talent and quick wit, the process would have consumed him long before executing the last stage. He winces, the pain was excruciating. It was hard for him to ignore the sound of his skin cracking below his ears and all the way to his nose as they fall off in the shape of small rock-like chunks. Everything hurt so much that even death sounded like a sweet dream but Albedo couldn't afford to give up. He had already come this far, his hands completely washed with sin and his reputation already broken beyond repair, Albedo had nowhere else to go. This was his last destination. 

"Soon-" he pants between choked breaths. Soon your eyes will open. He could drown in your embrace, one that was warm and not cold. Soon he will be able revive those cherished memories from a frozen past. It was all he could think of right now. Your existence was the reason why a part of him felt whole and your death made him realize how painful it was to tear away those pieces. Albedo refused to let go of those pieces, they had already become a part of him. And if this path ended up tearing him even more, then so be it. 

"I should have stopped you the moment you were born." 

The intruder snapped him awake and he swung around to where they stood. But before Albedo could make out who it was, they lunged past him with incredible speed, kicking the sword off the ground while severing his two arms once and for all. They flew to the side, blood dyed purple trickling from the edges of his joint as he struggled to stay upright. 

"Dains...leif..." 

Dainsleif watched the alchemist fall onto his back as the light around him slowly faded away. He turned his gaze to where the objective was and noticed a girl encased within the ice. The man sighs out of relief when she shows no signs of life, he came just in time, "So this is how it ends." 

Albedo weakly stared at the blonde man. He attempted to say something but the blood caught in his mouth prevented him from that. 

"Save your breath, you won't be having any," Dainsleif remarks in a cold manner and glared at his bloodied form, "The renowned Chief Alchemist of Mondstadt and an important member of Ordo Favonious. Hmph, what an interesting turn of events. Out of everyone, I never thought you were the type to act so foolish." 

Foolish...what a foreign name to be called as. He never heard anyone tell him he was foolish. 

"Truly a pity," With a flick of a wrist, Dainsleif brought his sword to Albedo's neck. It was unbelievable how he had the endurance to go through all that pain while still breathing at this point but what is there to be expected from a monster? "Remember that all actions have consequences." 

The alchemist watched as his life flashed before him, the weight of his sins had finally caught up. He had always seen the world as a platform for his objectives and results were merely a natural cause after attempting many experiments. But death as a consequences was an unbearble realization upon his final moments. He abandoned his title, his pupil and his dearest sister. In the end, he was still unable to fulfill his duty. 

"I just..." Albedo mumbled, his words slurring together, "wanted..." 

As the ashes turn to ashes and dust becomes dust, chalk returns to the earth, forever yearning a place that can never be reached.

[and-there-were-words]

A Spider Life: Slow days (Chapter 05)

I first wanted to write something out of the Spider Queen’s POV, but struggled to keep it within the narrative I am going for at the moment. I will write something for her after what’s show-canon though. A slow one with some more HCs, but I hope you still enjoy this chapter!

Also “Ask questions” had been enabled, I did not notice they weren’t before /o/

---

Taking place some time before “Minor scale”.

After the last two, rather smooth successes of gathering the artifacts, things had turned… slow. With everyone doing their best to busy themselves, Syntax makes some (for him at least) interesting observations. (Wordcount: around 2150)

---

With the mirror in their possession, the little lady had grown silent while working on the furnace. Aside from that whisper business of course, that had been a constant the last few days. And while nobody wanted to admit it out loud, it put everyone on the edge. Even the Queen.

However, nothing would stop Syntax from working on his spiderbots, even trying to improve the additional arms on his back. Not the easiest thing to do when you don’t have eyes on the back of your head, but making sure they just won’t snap in the heat of a moment felt rather crucial. The additional weight to this upgrade wasn’t exactly a worry to him at all, in the end he wasn’t one of the brawler types.

Something in the air changed, making him halt for a second.

“Yes Huntsman, how can I help you?”, he spoke without needing to look up. The other spider made a frustrated noise at being detected, he had been just mere inches away to give the scientist a poke. With an annoyed huff he turned around to stomp back to Goliath. Syntax would be lying to say if the other's frustration didn't plug on a string of satisfaction. This sort of interactions had been going on for a while now.

Leaning back, just to give his spine a proper stretch, the scientist couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud of himself. Just the progress he had made the last few days was satisfying, and not only the ones on his machines – but himself too. Huntsman had taken a sadistic joy in startling him whenever he could, and he was infuriatingly good at it. Though, Syntax started to pick up on the faint noises the hunter made when stepping on stone, the shuffling of clothes. Eventually he could catch him prior to a scare.

Which only goaded Huntsman to try even harder, becoming more and more silent and careful in his steps. Syntax had taken recordings to measure the changes of skill level (and for his own sanity) – by now, the hunting spider was so silent that even his gadgets could barely pick up the sounds anymore. Certainly a skill Huntsman had all along, but finally seemed to shake off the initial rust after his involuntary slumber. With the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to catch him on that anymore, the scientist tried to focus on other giveaways.

What had started as an obvious attempt on grilling his nerves, developed into a near playful banter. Just the wordless back and forth to get the other to try harder. In an odd way, it almost felt like Huntsman was training him, but he was careful to keep that thought to himself. Syntax knew better than to read too much into the hunter's actions, as chaotic as they were.

Nonetheless, the scientist found himself trying to imitate the hunter now and then. Since the guy was going on about smelling all kind of stuff, he gave it a try himself. At first not picking up much more than the damp air in the cave, the metal of the machines. It took him a while to find stronger differences, trying to casually walk past Goliath and the Queen. He found it rather surprising that they didn't seem to do much to hide their presence, but maybe it was simply the comfort of the cave that allowed them to do so.

Picking up on Huntsman was an entirely different beast. The man always seemingly on guard, always ready to appear and disappear. However with time, the scientist managed to actually pick up on Huntsman’s scent, as faint as it was. Kind of earthy, a little bit mildewed, and Syntax could swear there was the ever lingering hint of fresh blood. Did this guy ever wash that pelt of his?

Of course, he would never claim that his own sense of scent was as powerful as the hunter’s, but it was enough to know who was currently around the cave. The little lady didn't seem to have any telltales like these, which usually would've raised red flags in his mind but��� he didn't question it, nobody else did either. Anything else he came in contact with, the scents of the surface… became a mixed blend of too much too quickly. Maybe a task for another time.

Aside from that, scent and hearing weren’t the only senses he had noticed an improvement in! Their lair seemed to have become much less dark, he wasn’t as dependable on his goggles as he used to be anymore. What before had looked like chunky and random bits of webbing, now unveiled themselves as carefully crafted pieces with intriguing patterns, with uses he was still starting to understand. Goliath did his best to explain them in more 'common' terms, and it was always a pleasant surprise to see how excited the large spider became to share his knowledge. The more time Syntax spent within the Silk Web Cave, the more beautiful this place became to him. A pride welling up that he lived here.

However their hideout wasn’t the only thing that was much more layered than he previously thought. Turning around in his seat, he watched the other two henchmen going about their day. Currently sticking their heads together over something he couldn't see from his position. Still, he watched them a little, while he was sorting further observations in his mind.

...to no one’s surprise, when he wasn’t within the lair, Huntsman was hunting. Or at least, somewhere outside doing who knows what for days on end. Yet always coming back with some good pieces of meat, roots and berries (but mainly meat). The first time Syntax saw the hunter preparing food for dinner, he nearly refused to partake in it. Mostly because he couldn’t imagine his meals to taste anything but bland, or worse, be poisoned. Color him surprised, that stew was better than most dishes the Queen would concoct on a daily basis. Another thought Syntax would take to his grave before speaking it out loud.

When Huntsman wasn’t around for dinner, and everyone else felt too lazy to scavenge for some proper food options, Goliath and he would order takeout. The strong spider clearly intrigued by this concept, always wanting to try something new. Syntax often questioned the sanity of the cityfolk, considering that the delivery people didn’t had much care to come down near a spider den. The food from the surface world had something comforting to the scientist, as cheap and artifical as it sometimes was. Though he was really craving noodle soup as of late and he wasn’t entirely sure why. Syntax let out a little sigh while standing up.

This whole food thing had also shown an interesting side on Goliath. While the Queen and Huntsman didn’t seem to particularly care about human food (the latter even openly showing his distaste for it), the strong spider had taken a deep fascination. Especially sweets and candies seemed to have struck his attention the most. More than once did Syntax catch him just trying some new trendy food or colorful jawbreaker that he got from… who knows where. Goliath didn’t make any of this a secret, however he clearly wasn’t one with a rotten sweet-tooth as he barely finished anything. “For science.”, he once said with a wink and didn’t elaborate any further. Okay then.

“What are you two doing?”, Syntax casually asked as he wandered closer to the two. The strong spider looked up in confusion for a second before giving the younger man a smirk, “Secrets”. The scientist blinked owlishly, circling around them to look over the smaller spider’s shoulder. There were parchments of leather, deer if Syntax would have to guess, with Huntsman trying to draw squares and circles. Large black smudges here and there told the story of many previous attempts, letting the edges of the material look almost black by now.

"Get away from me.", the kneeling spider hissed, Syntax complying with an annoyed eye roll. Looking back at the larger man in an unspoken question. "We want to make a new robe for the Queen.", the giant almost beamed with excitement. Only for the big smile to water down in mild disappointment, "Buddy ain't good at designing though."

"If you wouldn't be just so damn picky!", Huntsman shot back, smudging away his latest attempt. "Just let me do what I do best, I know what I am d-"

"No!", Syntax flinched a little in surprise. It wasn't exactly an usual thing for Goliath to argue, or to even interrupt someone. "I want this to be special and you just can't get the patterns right! For the Queen's sake, just follow a plan for once!"

The scientist had to raise a brow. This was the first time he ever saw the two of them actually butting heads and… he had to admit, it was a little bit refreshing. Letting his eyes wander to some other pieces of leather, recognizing the sketches as copies from the patterns all over the cave. This one was a sigil of warding, as he had learned the other day, and a few were the Queen's own emblem. In case some other spider demon decided to come here, they would immediately know who's domain they dared to enter. The rest of those, he had not gotten an explanation yet.

"If I may.", mechanical arms shoved Huntsman unceremoniously to the side. Crouching down to pick up one of the charcoal, he started to draw. He was no expert on how to draw people by any means, but it certainly resembled the queen more than any of Huntsman's attempts. With careful strokes, he designed a fairly simple cut, working in the patterns on how he would think would look good on the Queen. It didn't pass him that the other two were watching with bated breath.

Once done, the scientist sat back on his heels, giving his creation a proper look. Not too shabby, if he may say so himself.

"Oh this is really good, Syntax!", Goliath cheered, looking like he wanted to touch the sketch but didn't dare to. On the other end of the emotional spectrum, Huntsman almost looked like he was about to explode.

"The fuck is your problem.", the elder hissed in dreadful silence, whole body tense and twitching. "What do you think you are!", he now became louder but Syntax did his best to just give him a neutral expression and not to budge. Which may not have been the best idea, as it only agitated the other further. The hunter was now standing, looming over him. "You really think you can just come in here and do whatever?! Think you can just be part of this??"

Large and sharp spider legs lashed out, in reflex Syntax let out a startled cry and raised his arms in an attempt of protection. But the pain didn't come. They hadn't aimed at him, instead… having shred the parchment with the sketches to bits. "I REFUSE TO WEAVE THIS."

Like an angry lion, the hunter had bared his fangs in a snarl. For a moment, Syntax was still prepared to be hit by the other, but the hunter suddenly turned around and just. Left. Goliath looked torn between the two men, mouthing a silent "Sorry" before hurrying after his friend.

A breath he didn't know he was holding, escaped his lungs. Syntax crumbled a bit to the floor, bitter thoughts flooding in. Just when he thought things were doing okay. Of course he had to step right into a sensitive nerve for the older spider. Heavy clicking pulled him out of his thoughts, but he couldn't care at the moment to look presentable before the Queen.

Spider Queen looked between the tired scientist and shredded pieces of leather, no apparent expression showing. But of course there was a glint of recognition in her eyes. "Why y'all causing such a ruckus?" Syntax sighed silently, giving a brief summary of the recent events.

The silence that followed was uncomfortable, the scientist not entirely sure how his Queen would react. To his surprise, she let out a little tired sigh. "Weaving is something quite personal to us. Especially if we do it for someone else.", she explained without really looking back at him. Instead giving the destroyed sketches another glance. "Just pretend this never happened. He'll get over it." With that, she simply left.

Syntax pulled his lips into a frown. Just ignore this all? If Huntsman got over it or not, it did not matter. His fists clenched a little, looking at the floor, choking and holding back bitter tears he could feel burning in hte back of his eyes. Syntax was more upset that he apparently wasn't allowed to be an actual part of this clan, no matter how hard he tried.

[falloutsketchysecretsanta]

Sketchy Secret Santa: THE HOLIDAY PROMPT!

Friends, fans, and followers-- it’s finally here! The time you’ve all been waiting for! The anon function is off, the request window is OPEN, and the prompt is HERE!

For those who have never participated in a Sketchy event before, let me break it down for you. Sketchy Secret Santa is a Fallout Fandom Event where you send in a sketch request to our group of volunteer artists to whip up a nifty gifty for someone else as an anonymous surprise! If you’d like more information, here’s a link to our info post.

And now, let’s get into the meat of THIS post. How to send a Valid Request, the Do’s and Don’ts, the Prompt List itself, and What to expect after you send a request in!

[Read more to keep dashboards clean]

To Send a Valid Sketchy Secret Santa Request, Please Send an Ask Including The Following:

WHOM the request is for. ---- At current, we are only making requests for people on Tumblr. We’ll need their username so we can @ tag them with the finished work when it’s posted. 

The character[s] you’d like sketched up ---- All characters welcome! Canon, OC’s, everyone is fair game so long as it’s Fallout! ---- MAXIMUM FOUR CHARACTERS PER REQUEST. Our artists are working on a volunteer basis, and more figures means more time.  ---- Is a request intended to be shippy? Let us know! We don’t read minds. ---- Poly? Found family? Hell yes! Just make sure to let us know the relationship context for the request. All genders and sexualities welcome, so long as everyone is a consenting adult. 

1 [ONE!] Item from the prompt list below ---- The prompt list is both to give the artists direction and to limit the scope of what can be requested, keeping things manageable.  ---- The items on the prompt list can be considered INSPIRATION, and what is drawn is up to artist interpretation of that prompt.  ---- Do not dictate specific poses, colors, or situations. These are freebies, not commissions. All specifics are up to the volunteer artist who takes your request.  ---- Do not dictate a specific artist to fulfill your request. Artists are operating on a self-directed basis and are, again, volunteers providing freebies to spread holiday joy. If you want work from a specific artist, might I suggest checking their commission status?

[OPTIONALLY!!] Tell us what holiday traditions the requested characters keep. ---- While there are various holidays on the prompt list, those are general AF prompts. Telling us what holidays an OC celebrates, or what holidays you HC a canon character to celebrate is additional character context and EXTREMELY ENCOURAGED, and does not replace the prompt. It’s like reference information-- telling the artist whom they’re drawing.

Please Do: 

Be polite! Say please and thank you, be kind to the askbox managers, ect. Everyone working on this project is doing so on a volunteer basis. 

Be patient. Depending on what kind of traffic we see right off the bat, it may take a hot second for your request to be accepted. 

Be present and ready to provide ref information! If you request an OC for a friend, we’re going to need reference material for our artists to work with! Have files ready upon request, and be prepared for one of our helpers to request that information through the Tumblr IM [check your blog settings and make sure you’re set to accept messages]

Be kind. We’re going to do our best to get to every request we can throughout the month, but please don’t be upset with us if we can’t serve everyone. 

Please Don’t:

Try to circumvent the rules. Just don’t.

Be an entitled jackass. This is a volunteer holiday event. We’re gonna do our best, don’t be a jerk if there’s mix ups or we don’t get to your request. 

Try to request for yourself. The whole point of this event is do something nice for others. 

Ghost us. Please, please don’t send a request in and then ghost the staff of the event. Nothing kills morale quite like a participant dropping off the map without a word. 

Okay, are we through all the rules stuff? Then onwards to...

THE PROMPT LIST!

The following is a list of words, phrases, ideas, and memories brainstormed by our team of volunteers to give the requests direction and verity. You may pick 1 [ONE] per request. 

Christmas

Hanukah

Kwanza

Samhain

Keeping Old Traditions

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Drifted Myths

Twisted Christmas Tales

Deck the Halls

Making Decorations

Repurposed/Reused/Recycled

Junk into Jolly

Improvised Christmas Tree

Nuka Cola Christmas

Santa Spotting

Holiday Clothes

Ugly Sweaters

Posing for Pictures

Gift Exchange

Present Scavenging

Firelight

Thawing out

Tending the Bonfire

Lights

Unexpected Kindness

Little Mercies

Rare Reunions

Community Celebration

Found Family

Oh Shit I’ve never had real friends during the holidays before

Holiday Meal

Baked Goods 

Potluck

Fireside Cooking

Kitchen Catastrophes 

Pound Cake

Feasting Aftermath

Holiday Mischief 

Brahmin Tipping

Stolen Pants

Pet Dress-up

Mistletoe Mishaps

Someone is kissing Santa

CUI [Caroling under the Influence]

Holiday drinks

Holiday drunks

Is that supposed to be glowing

Candlelight and Snow

First Snow

Noob in a Snowball Fight

Soaked Through and Freezing

Snowed in

Antlers

Pinecones 

Fire and Ice

Tropical Transplant

Ringing in the New Year

To New Beginnings

Celebratory Toast 

Watching the Clock 

Fireworks 

Reinvention

Hokay! So you’ve gotten this far-- you know WHO you wanna request for, WHAT you wanna request, you’ve picked something from the PROMPT LIST, and you’re ready to SEND IT IN! 

... So what happens after you send your request? 

The mods on this blog will add it to our list, and answer your ask PRIVATELY to confirm your request has been added. At the time of the confirmation, we may ask for additional OC reference information, if an OC was requested, or request clarification on relationship context between the requested characters if more than one character was requested. Be ready to correspond with us, and have reference material ready for OCs!

Once your request is confirmed, you’re all done! The rest is up to us. Finished requests will be posted on New Years Day, @ tagging the gift recipient and no one else, leaving the requester entirely anonymous. 

Thank you so much if you choose to participate. The request window is open until December 25th. We’ll be working hard until the very last day.

We wish you all a happy holiday, whatever you celebrate, and a happy New Year!

[trillian-anders]

amor de mi vida - 1939

pairing: bucky barnes x latinx!reader

warnings: slow burn, racism, prejudice, fluff, language barrier

word count: 5805

description: Bucky Barnes is a sweet young Brooklyn boy, just on the cusp of manhood, a hopeless romantic that falls in love with almost every girl he sees. when he sets his eyes on a young girl fresh off the boat from Cuba he finds out how hard love can really be.

for @cake-writes​ 1940s challenge.

Bucky loved Brooklyn, he loved everything about the borough. The Dodgers, the noise, the diner down the street from his house that made the best cherry pie he’d ever had, he even loved the way it smelled. The salty breeze from the that rolled in every morning and evening, the Statue of Liberty lighting up the bay. He was a Brooklyn boy through and through, even if his birth certificate said he was born in Shelbyville, Indiana. His parents moved here before he could even remember, Brooklyn was all he knew. 

He was on the cusp of manhood. The final years of his schooling before he was ready to take on whatever life threw his way. He didn’t have any expectations. To him it was so simple. Take up more hours in his Dad’s shop, find a beautiful dame, get married, pop out a few kids, have everything his parents ever had and everything they ever wanted for him. He felt so young, full of hope and ready. Ready for anything.

Munching on crackerjack he sat, feet swinging on the edge of pier five, his best friend sketching idly next to him. He tried to ignore the younger boy’s rattling breaths. He was fine, those breaths were normal for him, that’s all that mattered. Steve had recently had a pretty bad scare, when his Ma came down with TB and passed there had been a big concern that the sickly boy had caught it from her. There was quarantine and Bucky thought he was going to lose the best friend he’d ever had. 

Thankfully that wasn’t the case. 

The pair sat in a comfortable silence, the kind that comes with years of companionship. Just the company soothing them from their day. A test in math, the girl that just broke Bucky’s heart, another girl that wouldn’t pay Steve any mind. Bucky’s eyes drifted to his friend’s sketchpad, the Manhattan skyline taking shape slowly but steadily. 

It was warm, the beginning of summer. The switch from wearing sweater vests to short sleeve button downs, wool socks traded in for more breathable cotton. Bucky leaned back on his hands, feet swaying slightly over the edge of the dock watching the ship moving slowly in the water towards Ellis Island. 

“I wonder what it must be like,” Bucky said, “To leave your entire life behind and go somewhere completely new.” Steve’s pencil stopped on the page, looking over at his friend. 

“Must be scary,” Steve started, “Not knowing anyone I mean.” Bucky hummed in agreement. 

“Ma said she’s gonna make meatloaf tonight,” Bucky stood from the dock, helping his friend to his feet, “You’re comin’ to dinner right?” Steve nodded, stuffing his sketchbook into his bag. “Good, cause you really didn’t have a choice there pal.” Bucky’s arm swung over Steve’s shoulder, dragging the smaller boy behind him as they hopped into the junker that was Bucky’s pride and joy. 

The 11 year old Ruxton he’d found rusting away in a scrap yard last year, totaled in an accident and discarded. He’d only recently gotten it back up and running, but it was still a terrifying ride. He dared not take it farther than a few city blocks, but it was still nice to drive. They pretended like they were rich folk above it all, driving the recently painted sleek black car down the streets, wind in their hair only because the windows wouldn’t roll up. 

The next day Bucky fell in love again, and he couldn’t even remember who broke his heart yesterday. Dorothy Seeley. A beautiful blonde dame, bright green eyes, legs for days. She was in his english class. He could see a future with her, something Bucky always wanted. He could imagine loving her forever, her pretty pink mouth pressed against his in his car because he had one, and that made him special. Better than the other boys. 

He was sweet on her, doting, for days. A trip to Coney Island that left him broke, the drive-in, burgers and fries at the diner by his house. Steve in tow. Always. 

He was leant up against the side of his car, Dot pressed against his chest as they exchanged a soft kiss. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” He asked. She grinned, lips parting like petals around shiny white teeth. 

“You’re keen on me Barnes.” Holding his hand and stepping back, her skirt twirled around her legs. 

“Is that a bad thing?” He grinned, his own pearly whites showing. He could feel Steve rolling his eyes from inside the car. 

“Tomorrow then,” He pulled Dot in close to land one more cheeky kiss before she was skipping up the steps into her family’s brownstone, and out of sight. Bucky’s grinning face turned around to look at his friend, slipping into the driver’s seat. 

“I’m gonna marry that girl.” He said.

Steve rolled his eyes, “You say that about every girl.” 

“I mean it this time,” Bucky assured him, pulling the car away from the curb. 

Steve laughed, “You say that too.” 

Bucky’s family wasn’t rich, but they weren’t poor either. His Ma would always say, “We have just what we need.” And it was true. 

Bucky was the eldest of five, the only boy with four younger sisters, each spaced two years apart. The youngest being his favorite, but he’d never tell the other three. 

Rebecca Barnes was his partner in crime, the sweet girl looked most like him, at only nine years old she was a spitfire. Full of attitude and sass, almost always covered in dirt, and easily conned both him and his father into giving her penny candy on almost a daily basis. 

Susan Barnes was eleven and extremely smart, she’d often help her older siblings with their homework, studying. She almost always had a book in her hand and could recite Shakespeare off the top of her head. 

Ruth Barnes was thirteen and hated everyone and everything. It was just that age. She was experimenting with makeup, almost always on the telephone, and generally didn’t speak to anyone in the house unless she absolutely had to. Talking to her lately was just about as hard as pulling teeth. 

Lastly was Virgina Barnes, she was fifteen and much to her father and brother’s chagrin was a little boy crazy. Bucky was sure she was dating someone she wouldn’t bring around to the house, he’d often spy on her in the halls of their high school trying to catch a glimpse of who the punk was that had necked with his sister, but so far she’s been sneaky and kept out of sight. 

His parents were still very much in love. The two were always touching, kissing, slow dancing to music that wasn’t there. It was everything Bucky ever wanted. His mom, Winnie Barnes, came from money. Old money and his grandpa every rare time they saw him would be sure to make it known that he didn’t like their father. 

George Barnes had grown up pretty poor, very wrong side of the tracks. He’d fought in the War to End All Wars in the 107th, met Winnie Barnes when she was a nurse. Real classic story. One Bucky loved hearing. 

His Pops owned his own shop now, one of the only mechanics in Brooklyn which kept him pretty busy, but provided well for his family if their four bedroom brownstone was anything to say for it. Bucky parked the car outside the garage, men laughing, radio playing, he could see his Pops sitting in the back office, pencil behind his ear, looking over the books. 

“You gonna be good from here pal?” Bucky asked Steve. The smaller boy nodded, 

“Probably gonna walk around for a bit before going home.” Bucky wished Steve would take up his offer and come stay with them for a while, but the kid was too proud for that. He was currently living alone in a small apartment, selling funnies to the local paper. 

“If you need anything I’ll be here until seven probably, then I’ll be home.” Steve nodded, backing away.

“I’ll see ya tomorrow.” With a wave he was off, disappearing down the street. 

Bucky worked hard. As he was expected to. He was his father’s only son and George Barnes put a lot of pressure on his son to be a good example, not only for his sisters, but for the other guys that worked for him. He worked, and he worked hard. His hands had become calloused over the years, having worked in the shop since he was old enough to hold a wrench, he knew almost everything there was to know about fixing cars. 

His father believed that a good red blooded American man should know how to do three things. Auto work, Wood work, and wife’s work. He should be able to fix a car, fix the house, and keep his wife as happy as possible. It was ingrained into him since he could barely see over the hood, his father’s words ringing in his ears. 

“Keep your wife happy, the roof strong, and dinner on the table.” He said, “As long as you do those three things you’ll have a good life.” A life like his. Despite the hollowness of his eyes sometimes and the extra beers before bed. 

“It was the war”, his mother told him once, “Sometimes it just catches up to him.” Bucky wouldn’t understand that, not for a while. 

“Jaime.” His pops called him into the back office, a wrapped parcel on his desk. “Run this down to the post for me woulda? They sent us the wrong part, sendin’ it back for an exchange.” James nodded, 

“You need anythin’ else while I’m out?” His father’s eyes, blue like his, peeked up over the lenses of his readers, 

“Grab me a soda pop woulda?” A couple of cents placed into his hand and he was out the door, walking down the sunny streets to the post office three blocks away. There was a corner store next to it where he’d pop in and get his Dad a cola with enough change to grab himself one as well and he’d be on his way back. That was until his eyes landed on the girl peering into the store window in front of the said corner store, brows pulled tight in confusion. 

Her skin was beautifully caramel, dark hair and lips painted red. She was in a soft linen dress, buttoned front, low heels, roses stitched onto the sides. She was a sight. One that made his heart stop in his chest and his mouth drop open wide enough to collect flies. Her dark brown eyes and perfectly curled hair made his hands tremble. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his uniform pants, looking at himself in a car’s side mirror and fixing his hair before approaching. 

“Whatcha lookin’ for doll?” The young woman jumped, turning to face him, perfectly plucked brows raised in alarm. “Sorry,” He laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He saw the girl take a step back, he was blowing it. “It’s just not everyday that you see such a beautiful dame such as yourself.” You worried your bottom lip. “Sorry,” He took a step back from you. “That was corny I just…”

“Lo siento,” [I’m sorry] You said, “No puedo hablar ingles.” [I can’t speak english] His face dropped slightly and he took a step back. He didn’t know what to do here, he looked at the window and back at you. 

“James.” He said, pointing to himself, then pointing a finger at you, 

“Y/N.” You replied, figuring out what he meant. He pointed to the store. 

“Store?” You looked at him confused. “Uhm…” He put his hands on his hips and looked inside, holding a hand out to you and pointed at the sign of the shop, “Store?” You looked at him skeptically, taking his hand and letting him bring you inside. He’d walked to the ice box in the back, pulling out two cola’s as he watched you pick up a loaf of bread, looking at him nervously. He tried to smile at you reassuringly but you didn’t seem to feel comfortable still. He took the change out of his pocket, counting out the coins. He had just enough for his two cola’s, not room for much else as he walked you to the counter. If he’d had enough he woulda bought the bread too. 

The shop keep seemed to glare at you, which confused Bucky. He looked between the guy at the counter and back to you behind him, placing his two colas on the counter, having the guy ring him up. “Have a good day,” the man told him, Bucky watched as the girl placed the bread loaf on the counter. The man glared at her, not moving. “No sale.” He said. 

“What do you mean?” Bucky asked, you looked between the two nervously. “Here.” Bucky took the coins from her open palm, and tried to hand them to the shop keep. He glared back at Bucky. 

“We don’t take their money here.” He said sternly, pointing to the sign behind him. Bucky had been in this shop almost five times a week and never noticed that sign before. ‘WHITES ONLY’ in big bold lettering. Bucky looked back at you and while he figured you couldn’t understand english you at least could feel that you weren’t wanted here. Suddenly your nervousness made sense. 

“It’s my money then.” Bucky said, slapping the coins on the counter. “Let her buy the damn bread.” The shop keep stood from the stool he was resting on, leaning over the counter.

“Get out.” By the time Bucky realized he was talking to you and not him you’d quickly walked out of the store and back onto the street. He’d quickly grabbed the loaf of bread, coins still discarded on the counter and followed you out. 

“Wait! Y/N!” He called, catching up to you. “Here.” You looked at him, brows pulled skeptically together before taking the bread from his hands. “I’m sorry about that guy, he’s usually so nice I-” Bucky bit his lip, he was unsure what else to say. Nothing he said made any sense to you anyway. He couldn’t say anything regardless as you gave him a funny look and slowly walked away from him, turning your eyes away as you crossed the street. 

He stared after you longingly and confused. He’d heard people speak spanish in passing. Guys that worked in the factories near the docks. He wasn’t ignorant to that. He just never really gave much thought to them. They were in a different world than him, it didn’t matter as much. But you’d struck him. The way the shopkeep had treated you struck him. He’d never seen a pretty girl treated that way. Usually guys would bend over backwards for a girl like you, but to be fair, Bucky never had a reason to think about skin color. 

It’s not that he didn’t see it, he just never cared. He’d heard whispers of people being irritated at the growing hispanic population in Sunset Park, but never really gave it much thought. It never crossed his mind. He had other things to worry about at the time, a girl to love, a friend to protect. 

The sweating colas in his hands reminded him that he had somewhere to be, and you’d long since disappeared around a corner. Gone from his sight. He was quiet that night at dinner, suspiciously so.

He didn’t see you again for three months, the end of summer drawing near, the days just beginning to get shorter. He’d been walking around Sunset Park occasionally, looking for you, under the guise of a stroll. Steve thought it was strange, his newfound obsession. 

“I’m gonna marry her Stevie.” He’d said. He knows he’s said it before, 

“I mean it this time.” He said that before too. “But you didn’t see her Stevie.” He grinned as the pair walked around the neighborhood for the first time, “She was more beautiful than Aphrodite.” Steve rolled his eyes. He wasn’t sure how many times he’s walked this neighborhood looking for you, but he told himself he’d do it every night if it meant he’d find you again. 

School had ended, he was working full time at his Dad’s shop now, little time for extracurriculars, the dance halls missed him, his favorite waitress asked Steve about him all the time, and he hadn’t seen a movie since the last time he went with Dot almost 3 months ago. All of his energy had gone into working and on his days off with Steve, looking for you. He thumbed through the spanish phrasebook he’d spent a pretty penny on, pages dogeared with things he might try to say to you when he saw you next. 

If it ever happened. 

He was beginning to lose hope, truth be told. Maybe you’d moved away. Maybe you were in the neighborhood visiting someone and didn’t even live nearby. It wasn’t until he’d taken a street down in the factory district on his day off that he saw you again. 

You were just as beautiful as he’d remembered, hair pinned under a cap, lips painted red, you were wearing another linen dress, flowers stitched around the skirt and on the lapels. You were leaving a dress factory. That’s where you must’ve worked. He watched you twirl in your dress, laughing at something another woman had said to you. The gaggle of them speaking such quick Spanish that the few phrases he studied didn’t even make sense to him anymore. 

He swore his heart stopped in his chest when your eyes met his, a firm blush spreading across your cheeks. Bucky, the hopeless romantic that he is, would tell everyone that time stood still. There you were, he would say, his future wife. Pin Curled and sweet, dark lashes and rose petal lips waiting for your first kiss. Like you’d been made for him. He would say that in that moment the stars aligned and brought you to him. 

He was a sucker like that. 

Steve had stopped a few steps ahead of him, noticing that his friend wasn’t following, the group of girls you had been walking out with also stopped, looking between the two of you and giggling at the sight. One girl pushed you forward and you turned to glare at her saying something to her that Bucky couldn’t hear. He took one step forward and then another, thumbing through the pages of the book and swallowing heavily, hands sweating. He’d never been this nervous talking to a dame before, never. He raised the book to his eyesight, glancing at you before looking back down at the page, 

“Lo siento,” [I’m sorry] He said in just about the worst pronunciation you’d ever heard, the girls behind you giggled and you shushed them with a perfectly red lacquered hand, he smiled nervously continuing, “Eres tan hermosa,” [You are so beautiful] He flipped a couple more pages not being able to find what he wanted to say next when you gently grasped his wrist, smiling at him. 

“James.” His heart almost dropped out of his ass as you said his name for the first time, “Hello.” Very heavily accented and you bit your lip with insecurity. 

“Hi.” He breathed. He looked back down at his book, finding what he wanted to say next, “Te estaba buscando.” [I was looking for you.] His pronunciation was horrible and he knew it. But the thought was still there. 

“Uhm…” You looked at him nervously, the girls were sure to gossip about this later. This white man who was holding a Spanish phrase book telling you about how you were beautiful and he was looking for you. 

“Y/N!” Came a yell, Bucky watched an older woman approach, she looked so similar it had to be your mother, “Que haces con este hombre blanco?” [What are you doing with this white man?] The older woman gripped your arm, looking at the girls behind you, “Veta a casa.” [Go home.] She spat to the other girls, glaring back at Bucky as you looked at him apologetically. He caught a few words. He knew casa meant home, he also knew blanco meant white. But he was unsure about the rest. 

Steve stood awkwardly off to his side, a silent witness to this strange situation. “That’s her I’m guessing?” The little shit grinned next to him. Bucky turned to his friend, matching his grin. 

“Yeah.” His heart was still racing, “And now I know where she works.” He looked up at the tall factory building next to them. 

He looked around the flower shop, the various blooms staring back at him. He wasn’t sure what to get, what you would like. Roses were maybe too presumptuous and a little too expensive “Can I help you?” The older woman asked him. She was wearing an apron over her plaid dress, hands brown with dirt. Bucky smiled softly, 

“I’m a little lost here,” He admitted. The older woman smiled, 

“What’s she like?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets looking over the blooms. 

“Perfect?” He offered, laughing, “But beautiful, sweet…” His eyes scanned the arrangements around him, “I don’t have a whole lot to spare, but…” The older woman nodded, understanding. 

“You could always do a single stem,” The older woman plucked a beautiful red flower from an arrangement, “If she’s as sweet as you believe, she’d be more than happy with it.” A peony. Vibrant red. Like your lipstick.  

He waited outside the factory for you. Hair slicked down, he wore a tie, his work uniform stuffed in the backseat of his car. He hoped you wouldn’t notice that he smelled a little like motor oil under his cologne. He barely made it before the door opened and his palms immediately sweat in a Pavlovian response. The anticipation of seeing you. 

Your dress was yellow this time. Stunning against you skin, yellow and white plaid. He wondered if every color was made just for you. Your eyes immediately met his this time, a shy smile spreading across your face. He timidly stepped a foot closer, 

“Hello, James.” In your beautiful broken English. 

“Hola.” Your nose crinkled when you smiled. “Oh, here.” The vibrant red peony being handed over to you, you twirled the stem between your fingers as he pulled the well worn book from his pocket. “Uhm.. Te ves hermosa hoy.” [You look beautiful today] He looked at you for your response, a red dusting on your cheeks as you held the flower up to your nose. 

“Es guapo.” [He’s handsome.] One of the girls teased you to which your eyes widened and you turned to glare at her, shooing her away. 

“Has estado practicando?” [Have you been practicing?] You bit your lip knowing he probably wouldn’t understand that. “How,” You started, “are you?” He grinned, he could respond to this one. Flipping back,

“Muy bien, como estas?” [Very well, how are you?] It took him a bit too long to say four words, but the smile on your face was worth it. 

“Bien,” [Good.] You replied. 

“Away!” You mother was back, standing in front of you this time, looking into Bucky’s face. His cheeks flushed. “Go away!” Your mother’s english was worse than yours, the words coming out thick and accented he almost didn’t understand. “Mantente alejado de ella.”[Stay away from her] She was scary, your mother. He looked to you for help, fingers nervously moving against the spine of the book in his hand. 

“El es una madre inofensiva.” [Mama, he’s harmless.] You explained, but your mother’s face turned red, turning fully to you she said, 

“Él te arruinárá.” [He will ruin you.] Her voice was tense and Bucky couldn’t begin to understand what she said as he watched her drag you away again. But it was fine, he was back tomorrow to try again. 

And he tried again, and again. It became a constant. He was spending $1.30 every week on flowers, considering he was only making $25 a week working for his Dad it was a good chunk of his money. He’d show up with a red peony for you every day. The girls, he knew, were making fun of him but the five minutes in between when you’d get off of work and when your mother would get off of work were the best part of his entire day. He was showing up even on his days off, rain or shine. 

Today he felt victorious, your mother hadn’t yelled at him. She simply looked at him and raised an eyebrow to you saying, “El no se rinde.” [He doesn’t give up.] With a smile and laugh. She pulled you away a little more gently that time, taking a look back at him and shaking her head. 

“You know it’s going to be hard,” Steve said to him once. 

“What do you mean?” Bucky bit into the burger Frankie, the waitress, had just put in front of him. His favorite burger at his favorite diner, he’d have to bring you here. Maybe the two of you could split a milkshake. He wondered if you’d ever had a chocolate malt. Steve looked at him incredulously,

“I can’t tell if you’re dumb or blind.” He’d slipped a picture from his sketchpad over, a picture he’d sketched of you for Bucky. His heart fluttered at the sight, tracing your jaw. 

“She’s it for me pal, nothing complicated about it.” The temperature had just begun to drop, a hot August ending. Fall was sweeping through the city, Steve was just starting art school, Bucky was pulling overtime at the shop saving up cash to move out and start his life. Hopefully with you. 

“Buck.” Steve sighed, “You know I have no problem with it, but…your parents, literally almost everyone else… it’s illegal.” Bucky paused, a few fries in his mouth. 

“It’s not technically illegal in New York.” He knows, he looked it up. “Just not…”

“Not approved of.” Steve finished for him. He sighed heavily, sitting back in his seat. “It’s gonna be difficult, pal.” Bucky shook his head, 

“Nuthin’ could be difficult when I have her,” A sip of soda, “Nuthin.”

The next day when Bucky showed up with his flower your Mother was already waiting for him when he pulled his car up. He finally got the windows working. She knocked heavily on his window before he’d even pulled the keys out. 

“Come.” She said, grabbing his arm and pulling him over to a man, a scary one by Bucky’s count, who was standing where he’d usually wait for you. “Preguntarle.” [Ask him.]

The man was hispanic, but not old enough to be your father. Your brother maybe? “She wants to know what you keep doing here.” The guy’s English was perfect, his voice gruff and accented, but perfect. 

“I’m…” Bucky started nervously, “I want to date her daughter.” The guy scoffed, making Bucky feel like an idiot standing there with his one flower. 

“Él quiere llevarla a una cita.” [He wants to take her out on a date] The older woman scoffed as well. He smiled sheepishly. She looked at Bucky, studying him for a moment, “Dile que Y/N no es un juguete.” [Tell him Y/N is not a toy.]

“She’s not a toy,” The man said, he looked at the older woman before continuing on his own, “Look, Y/N is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s never going to happen. Your kind is not allowed with our kind.” Bucky felt anger rising in his chest. The man lay a hand on his shoulder heavily, “I’m saying this honestly, if you care about Y/N in any way you’ll back off. You’ll ruin her reputation with our people if you keep showing up here. The women are already gossiping about you showing up here everyday.” 

“This is about her being Spanish?” Bucky asked. 

“She’s Cuban.” The guy explained, “You are privileged enough to pretend not to care about race, but this is only an obsession, you’ll ruin her reputation and leave her when you find someone of your own kind to be with.” The man’s grip on Bucky’s shoulder tightened, a warning. “Get back in your car and don’t come back. If you do, our conversation may not be so pleasant next time.” 

Bucky looked to the older woman with pleading eyes, pulling the Spanish phrases book from his pocket, but before he could find anything the man across from him snatched it from his fingertips. “I said go.” 

Bucky wanted to pummel him. He wanted to punch the guy right in the jaw, but he didn’t. He’d find another way to see you. He’d figure something out. The flower in his hand dropped to his passenger seat as he sat heavily behind the wheel, staring out at the doors to the factory. You walked out just in time to see him drive away. 

Nueva York. That’s what your Mother called it. A new start in America where anything could happen. Your belly had never been that full before. There were no jobs in Havana. Less and less by the day. Your nimble fingers had always been useful as a seamstress, but the less money people have, the less money they had to spend paying someone else to fix their hemlines for them. Your Mother and you moved here in the beginning of the summer, hopeful for a new life.

And you found one. 

The neighborhood of Sunset Park had a growing Hispanic community the two of you had quickly nestled yourselves in. A small one bedroom apartment became your home. The two of you not needing much space. You’d quickly found factory work through a neighbor. Not exactly a seamstress, but you did spend 12 hours a day hunched over a sewing machine. Pennies saved and eventually you’d have enough money to live comfortably. You might even have enough to get a new bolt of fabric to make you and your Mother some dresses. Maybe. 

The only thing you had to look forward to every day were the few minutes watching a handsome man trip over his words, speaking broken Spanish to you and flipping, very endearingly through a book trying to have a conversation. 

It’d gotten a little easier lately, a boy in your apartment building helping you and your Mother learn English and with James practicing his Spanish you’d been getting a little farther past ‘how are you’s in the past week or so. The growing collection of dried flowers in your closet was becoming alarming, the row of dead peonies hanging by their stems, but you didn’t have the heart to throw them away. 

That’s maybe why it hurt so much when you’d exited work today, waiting to see the blue eyed boy that made your heart flutter in your chest, and saw him driving away. Your Mother and Mateo staring at the back of it. “Qué hiciste?” [What did you do?] Neither of them answered you, sharing a look. 

Your eyes met the back of the fading car once more, longing in your chest, eyes prickling with tears. “Vamos,” [Come on] Your Mother called, beginning down the street. You sent a steely glare to Mateo, turning to follow her away, his large footsteps following. 

When you first came to America almost five months ago both you and your Mother were enamored with Mateo. She’d teased that you’d found a husband the first day you’d moved in, but the more time you spent with him the less you liked him. He worked a taxi service, one his family started. They had a good amount of money, promising, is what your Mother had said. He could provide for you. But he was pompous. He thought because he had a little bit of money he was running the whole block. His ego soured your opinion of him. If it wasn’t for the fact he was helping you learn English you would have closed your door to him a long time ago. 

Your Mother didn’t want this life for you. Truthfully she’d brought you to America so you’d marry, find a nice Cuban boy and settle down. Let him provide for you. Take care of her grandchildren God willing. It wasn’t as though you didn’t want that life. You wanted to marry, you wanted love. You loved children and always wanted to be a mother but the most important thing to you was love. 

When James approached you that first time you were confused, yes. You hadn’t understood a word he said. But he was handsome and he made you feel butterflies in your stomach. You felt as though his blue eyes could drown you, like a siren’s call, you’d lost yourself in them. But you’d found yourself embarrassed at the counter when the man was angrily talking to him. James was animatedly arguing back, in words you didn’t understand. Taking the eight cents you’d had for bread and slamming them on the counter. 

You’d been surprised when he’d actually left successfully with the bread, you had been peering for the sign the shopkeeper had pointed to before he’d actually drug you in the store, and your stomach dropped when you’d found it while inside. You should have known you weren’t welcome in that part of town. A little too far outside of your little barrio. 

You’d like to think it was fate, God ordained. You’d thought about it again when you saw him outside the factory for the first time. He was nervous, but so were you. You thought it was cute, him flipping through the phrasebook trying to figure out what to say. It warms your heart and every day since you couldn’t wait to see him. He’d even ignored your Mother and kept coming. The collection of red peonies growing by the day. 

It broke your heart to see his car driving away from you. And you knew exactly who was to blame. 

“No tenes derecho.” [You have no right] You stomped up the stairs next to Mateo. “Deberías mantener tu nariz fuera de oso.” [You should keep your nose out of it]

“Te quiero, Y/N.” [I love you Y/N] His arm gently grabbed your hand, “Please don’t do this.” Your jaw clenched, heart still aching from the sight of James driving away from you. 

“I... hate... you.” His hand let go of yours, dropping his to his side as you returned walking up the stairs and entered your apartment, slamming the door behind you. 

Germany had just invaded Poland.

.

.

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taglist //  @corneliabarnes​ @bookish-shristi​ @saturnki​ @jennmurawski13​ @geeksareunique​ @albinotigerpython​ @cake-writes​ @iheartsebastianstan​ @000bananaclip000​

[artificialqueens]

Revelation Sunshine, Chapter 8 (Courtney/Vixen) - Veronica

A/N:  Look, sometimes a story has conflict and narrative tension. And sometimes you just want to write about characters you love wearing fancy clothes and having self-indulgent fun. Thanks as always to @theartificialdane for her help. Previous chapters are here.

Last chapter: Vixen got settled into her new life in LA, and Courtney enlisted Violet’s help for a Met Gala ensemble.

This chapter: A romantic weekend in Paris and a star-studded Gala both bring old friends back into Courtney’s life. 

***

The plan was for the Met Gala to be their first public appearance together. A sort of coming-out, as Adore put it.

But all of that went to shit in early April. Vixen had just wrapped up the last of her workshops in Chicago, her friends and family throwing her a huge going-away party, making her promise to visit often. Then, instead of flying to Los Angeles for the Spring term, she found herself sipping champagne on a flight to Paris, where she was meeting Courtney for a Met Gala fitting-turned-romantic-getaway.

And it would have all gone to plan, probably, if not for the crafty French paparazzi, who caught wind of Courtney being in Paris and began to tail them through the city.

It had been a gray, drizzly day, the clouds not breaking until early in the evening as the sun was setting, encouraging them to leave their little café and stroll across the Pont Neuf to Square du Vert Galant, hands clasped together, giggling about Courtney’s attempt to get oat milk in her coffee with broken French.

When Courtney caught Vixen’s face in the warm light, she couldn’t resist pulling her in for a kiss, hands stroking her cheekbones before brushing their lips together, tasting the perfection of the moment, overcome with joy and gratitude for her gorgeous, loving girlfriend.

The nearby paparazzi went nuts, and that’s when they both realized that they’d been followed.

“Oops,” Courtney whispered, biting her lip, still unable to let go of Vixen’s face, unable to tear herself away.

“Cat’s out of the bag, huh?” Vixen said. Fortunately, she didn’t seem too broken up about it.

“Yeah.”

“I guess there’s not much we can do about it now.” A smile played on her lips, and Courtney was overcome with the urge to kiss her again.

It wasn’t until they separated slowly that Courtney thought of a possible solution.

“We could beat them to it…”

She pulled out her phone, taking a series of photos, the setting sun and rain-washed buildings around them doing half the work of making the pictures glowingly beautiful. Vixen’s eyes were bright with happiness, and Courtney couldn’t help gazing at her with total adoration, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

She posted the pictures as they stood right there, captioned with a simple heart, and then put her phone away, taking Vixen’s hand and continuing on their walk like everything was business as usual.

***

Vixen wasn’t sure what to think when they finally arrived at Violet’s on Saturday morning, an ordinary-enough apartment building.

“You’re sure this is a legit designer?” she asked, and Courtney grinned at her, pulling her inside. She held a box of pastries and a Glimmer-branded reusable bag full of swag for Violet’s five-year-old daughter, Melati.

“One of the best I know!”

When Violet opened the door, Courtney greeted her like a long-lost sibling, pulling her into a fierce hug, kissing her cheeks. Violet seemed to tolerate this, but still let out a relieved sigh as Courtney let go.

“Violet, this is Vixen!” Courtney said excitedly.  

“Hello. Nice to meet you.” Violet stuck out her hand and shook Vixen’s, very formal and professional.

“Vix, Violet is basically a sorceress with fabric. I can’t wait for you to see her stuff in person,” Courtney told her, sliding off her shoes. She then let out a happy squeal, spotting a tiny face with big dark eyes poking around the corner bashfully. She bounded forward to greet Melati with a happy, “Bonjour, Melati!”

Melati’s eyes widened and she disappeared, hiding under a table.

“Sorry. She’s still processing that Princess Lucie is real, and knows her name. I’ve attempted to explain that you’re an actress, but Sutan keeps sabotaging my attempts,” Violet explained. “Something about keeping the magic alive.”

Courtney giggled, dropping to her knees and peeking at Melati under the table, singing, “Bonjooour, mon petit chou!”

Vixen had removed her shoes by this point, holding them awkwardly in her hands.

“You can put your shoes on the top shelf there,” Violet said kindly. “I’m afraid our dog can’t be trusted with anything. I’m still mourning the loss of a pair of Louboutins.”

Vixen chuckled, placing her shoes (and Courtney’s) carefully onto the shelf, and then followed Violet into the house.

Melati seemed to have gotten over her initial shyness, jumping into Courtney’s arms and laughing joyfully as Courtney swung her around.

“Courtney, not in the living room, please,” Violet said, then to her daughter, “Pas ici.” Melati obeyed, sliding down from Courtney’s arms and clinging to her side.

“Je suis désolé!” Courtney cried dramatically, and Melati giggled. She looked at Vixen and explained, “I know that from Madonna’s ‘Sorry.’”

“Impressive,” Vixen told her, while Violet rolled her eyes.

“Shall we get started?” Violet asked, guiding them quickly through the apartment and up a small flight of stairs.

“Where’s Sutan?”

“In London for the weekend. He sends his regrets.”

“Aww, bummer.”

Violet opened the door to her studio, then turned to them with a stern look on her face, addressing Courtney directly.

“Child rules apply in here. You may look, but don’t touch.”

“Oui madame!” Courtney said with a salute, then walked inside, immediately exclaiming over a bunch of intricate fabric flowers, picking one up to ask, “Did you make this?!”

“Courtney! What did I just say?” Violet snatched the flower out of her hand.

“Sorry. Can’t take her anywhere,” Vixen said.

“Ooh, I love this beading…” Courtney walked towards the wardrobe rack, Violet nearly diving in front of her to stop her from touching that, too.

She put her hands on her hips, making Courtney pout playfully, and then leaned down to tell Melati something in French.

“Viens,” said the little girl, pulling Courtney out of the room by the hand.

“Help, I’m being kidnapped by a tiny little person!”

“I told her to keep you out of trouble!” Violet called after them, then turned to Vixen with an apologetic look on her face. “I’m sorry about that.

“It’s fine,” Vixen laughed. “I live with her, so I’m pretty used to it.”

Violet chuckled under her breath, and walked to the wardrobe rack to unzip a few garment bags.

“If you’ll please disrobe, we can get started. I can give you some hangers for your things if you need.”

“Oh...that’s okay.” Vixen was wearing skinny jeans and a black t-shirt. Not really clothes she’d normally hang. She began to remove them slowly, feeling only slightly awkward.

“I’m sorry that we haven’t had a chance for more consultations, but with the distance, and my job, and my family…”

“Please don’t apologize! I’m so grateful for all the work you’re done.” Vixen turned around, down to her bra and panties.

“The top has a built in bustier, so no bra is needed.” Violet held it out, and Vixen nearly gasped.

The sketches had been lovely, but this was absolutely stunning, a flowing sleeveless top with gorgeous pearl and gold beading in cascading floral patterns. When you looked closer, it became apparent that the beads were in fact pearl buttons, gold cufflinks and other menswear elements.

“Given your desires, and my own aesthetic, it was a bit of a challenge to incorporate the menswear theme, but I did my best. I still have a bit of beading to do, but it’s mostly done.”

“It’s incredible,” Vixen said, unclasping her bra. “Really, so far beyond what I was expecting.”

Violet gave her a satisfied nod, hanging the top and lifting another garment from the rack.

“Shall we try on the trousers?”

‘Trousers’ wouldn’t exactly have been Vixen’s way of describing the bottoms: a pair of draped, beautifully moving pants, with a satin strip down the side reminiscent of a tuxedo. After showing her, Violet quickly turned them inside out and then held them out for Vixen to step into.

It was a very strange experience. This woman that she barely knew dressing her, something she hadn’t experienced since she was a small child and her mom helped her into her clothes for preschool. She tried not to be awkward about it, happy that she’d at least remembered to wear nude panties today.

Violet stepped back, examining her with a critical eye, before picking up a set of pins and kneeling. Vixen stood as still as possible, trying not to be self-conscious. This was Violet’s job; she probably dealt with people’s bodies on a daily basis. The fact that her tits were out surely didn’t faze her, so why should Vixen feel weird?

She worked quickly and carefully, getting up to examine the pants from multiple angles. Her long dark hair was pulled away from her face, into a high ponytail, and as Vixen studied her serious expression, she realized that what could be read as coldness was actually just deep concentration, a passion for her work that made Vixen feel right at home.

They tried on the top next, the heavy and intricate beading telling Vixen that it was by far the most expensive garment she’d even had on her body. It was amazing.

Vixen watched herself in the floor-length mirror, turning slightly, admiring how beautiful the whole ensemble looked. She started fantasizing about what she was gonna do with her hair, when Violet’s voice cut into her thoughts.

“Have you thought about shoes?”

“Oh, um...not really. What do you think?”

“I can give you some suggestions if you like,” Violet offered, and Vixen smiled at her.

“That would be great! Thank you.”

Violet was walking around the room, again examining the look from multiple angles, once in awhile stepping forward to place a pin here or mark something down on her notepad. At one point, she gave a thoughtful nod, then said, “You carry this look well. How do you feel about it?”

“Oh, um...it’s beautiful!” Vixen could tell by the thoughtful way she said it that a compliment like that from Violet must be rare and sincere. She felt comfortable enough to continue, admitting, “I’m a little nervous--not about the clothes! Just...I’ve never been to anything like the Met Gala in my life.”

“That’s understandable, but I wouldn’t worry,” Violet assured her. “The most nerve-wracking part is the red carpet, and you’ll be with Courtney, who I think might actually like it.”

“I know she likes it,” Vixen laughed.

“Right.” Violet shook her head. “I will never understand her.”

***

The rest of their time in Paris (well, the day and a half before they had to fly back to L.A.) was like a dream. Of course, their social media had been blowing up like crazy ever since posting those pictures, and Courtney did nothing to quell the wild speculation, posting more pictures, as well as tweeting mysterious, romantic things like “I get to wake up to her every morning. #gratitude” and “When she’s breathing beside me, I’m home.”

But for the most part, they ignored all of the messages, all of the questions, and simply enjoyed the fresh spring air and the beautiful city, doing their best to avoid the ever-present paparazzi until they realized that it was no use, and just rolled with it.

On Monday, Courtney woke up to clear, blue skies and sunlight filtering in through the gauzy curtains. She rolled over, brushing away a curl that had fallen across Vixen’s face, smiling at her eyes fluttered open.

“Good morning,” she said, placing a soft kiss on Vixen’s cheek.

“Morning…” Vixen rubbed her eyes, yawning, then snuggled against Courtney’s body, seeking out the warmth of her skin.

“You bummed to be going back home today?” Courtney asked, and Vixen shook her head.

“Mm-mm,” she said, voice slightly muffled against Courtney’s neck, then added. “How could I be bummed? I’m going back with you.”

Courtney inhaled sharply, caught off guard by her sleepy sweetness, and pulled her in tighter.

“I love you so much,” she whispered fiercely into her hair, and Vixen gave a small, adorable sigh.

***

There was really no reason to be this nervous, Vixen thought. It wasn’t like she was a real celebrity. The cameras and attention would be on Courtney and Honey, the actual movie stars, not on her.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t deny the rush of butterflies as she sat beside Courtney in the car. The ensemble Violet designed fit her perfectly, and upon her suggestion, she’d paired it with some Miu Miu stilettos, ruby lipstick and a jeweled hair clip in her brand new weave--long, rich, dark brown hair with chestnut highlights, styled in meticulous Marcel waves that made her feel like a goddess. She caught Courtney’s eyes, grinning at her.

Her girlfriend was stunning as usual, her black, high-necked, open-backed tuxedo gown just the right balance of revealing sexiness and teasing modesty. The full skirt had a slit almost the whole way up that you didn’t see until she was in motion, and her blonde hair was tucked under, giving her an almost masculine illusion. Her minimalist jewelry consisted of a simple diamond bracelet, the only splash of color her shiny, short, deep red nails.

“You look very classy,” Vixen commented.

“Yeah?” Courtney asked. “I don’t know how I feel about such an extreme lack of color.”

“No, it’s good.”

“Yeah,” Honey chimed in, from where she sat with her date across from them in the limo. “You need to give the rainbow explosion a break once in awhile.”

“Well...I do have pink and yellow panties on,” Courtney admitted, and they all laughed.

“Of course you do,” Vixen said.

“I mean no one will see them!” she exclaimed. “Probably. Unless the night gets real crazy.”

“Can we make bets?” asked Honey’s date, Michael, making Vixen giggle. She’d only met him a few minutes before, but she already liked him.

“Let’s not,” quipped a woman tersely from the front seat. She was a publicist from Disney whose name Vixen kept forgetting, instead just thinking of her as The Dragon.

“Oh, right,” Courtney said, reaching for Vixen’s hand as they approached the Met. “I guess since we’re here on Disney’s dime, I need to be on good behavior.”

“Only until we get back to the hotel, though, right?” Vixen asked, and Courtney shot her a naughty grin.

“We’ll see…”

Honey and Michael exited the car first, the photographers going nuts over her stunning white pinstripe suit, tailored to perfection.

“Ready?” Courtney asked, and Vixen nodded.

The Dragon was already shooting instructions at them. Well, mostly at Courtney, but it made her head spin a little.

Before they got out, Courtney leaned in and whispered, “If she pulls me away, stick with Michael. He’ll take care of you and make sure you guys stay close.”

Vixen laughed, steeling her nerves, feeling weirdly like she had back in junior high before a basketball game. Here we go...

***

Once Courtney was finally finished with her press obligations, she turned to Vixen with a happy, relieved sigh. She couldn’t help but once again think about just how gorgeous she looked: the cream and ivory ensemble Violet had designed made her dark skin glow, and she’d opted for an understated, barely-there look with her eye makeup--all lashes and just a hint of shimmer. Plus those lips. So red and full and kissable...Courtney could barely wait to get her alone later and just ruin it.

First, though, they had to get through this gala. Courtney took Vixen’s hand and led her inside, where they wandered around together. They looked through the exhibit, and exchanged pleasant, mundane small talk with a mind-boggling number of people. Vixen completely cracked Courtney up with her impression of one of the Vogue editors, and then for a little while, they played a game where they pretended to be museum docents, describing the various pieces to each other with the most pretentious language they could come up with.

While Vixen used the restroom, Courtney found one of the bars and got them a couple of drinks. Champagne always went straight to her head, but she figured that if there was ever a place to get a bit silly, this was it.

“Yes, you heard me. One champagne and a tequila sunrise,” said a familiar voice, and Courtney turned, a big smile on her face.

“Bianca!”

Bianca’s gruff expression melted into a grin as she reached forward to give Courtney a hug.

“Hey there! Nice dress!” she held Courtney by the waist to get a good look. “Siriano, right?”

“Yeah. And I see you really took the menswear theme to heart.”

Bianca was wearing one of her favorite silhouettes: a boat-necked, figure-hugging, floor length gown with a trumpet skirt. It was black and beaded and of course looked great on her, but had nothing whatsoever to do with the theme.

“Listen. Anna Wintour can’t fucking tell me what to wear!” she barked, and Courtney threw back her head with laughter.

“Never change, B.”

“Not much danger of that at this point,” Bianca said, accepting the drinks from the bartender. “I’m glad I ran into you. We found your date, but-”

“We?” Dread filled her stomach like a lead balloon as Bianca directed her gaze to where Vixen stood, talking to none other than Miss Fame herself. Seeing them, Courtney had a lightheaded rush of fear that she hadn’t experienced for almost ten years, and she inhaled sharply.

“What’s the matter?” Bianca asked. “You think Fame’s gonna eat her?”

“I…” Courtney couldn’t explain it. How the anxiety that she felt as a 21-year-old could still return in the presence of that woman. She knew that logically, everything was fine. In recent years, things between her and Fame had gotten downright friendly. And she appeared to be having a perfectly pleasant conversation with Vixen, clad in one of her signature 50-shades-of-white ensembles.

“Relax,” Bianca said, chuckling softly, forearm resting on Courtney’s shoulder. “Our brides are fine. They actually look cute together, don’t you think?”

A laugh bubbled up from Courtney’s chest; they did look awfully bridal, especially standing together. She turned to Bianca, a rush of gratitude coloring her cheeks, thrilled by her tacit approval. She pulled her in for a hug, saying, “They do.”

“Aww, look who else just arrived,” Bianca said, and Courtney turned again.

Raja and Raven, in complementary outfits of royal purple and gray, had joined the little group.

“Okay, now we really do have to save her,” Courtney said, rushing towards them, Bianca laughing behind her.

***

When they finally arrived back at their hotel, the first thing they did was kick off their hideously uncomfortable shoes and strip down. The hotel had sent up a huge basket of luxury bath products, and Courtney suggested filling the jacuzzi tub and dumping all of it in. The result was a fragrant tub with so much bath oil and moisturizing products that their skin immediately became slick and slippery.

Vixen relaxed against the side of the tub, one of the powerful jets aimed at her lower back, and another at her feet. Courtney leaned against her, eyes closed as Vixen’s fingers carded through her hair, slowly removing bobby pin after bobby pin until her hair hung down in stiff waves. She dunked her head under the water, scrubbing to remove the residual mousse and hairspray before coating her hair with a thick layer of conditioning mask and cuddling up once again.

“It was more fun than I thought it would be,” Vixen said, breaking the comfortable silence, fingers trailing up Courtney���s arm.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Less stuffy. Not that I’d want to do it often but, I had a pretty good time.”

Courtney smiled, leaning her head back to rest on Vixen’s shoulder.

“I did too…” she said, then added almost as an afterthought, “Bianca approves of you.”

“Oh yeah? Did you need her approval?” Vixen asked. It was a casual enough question, but it still seemed to make Courtney pause. Did she need Bianca’s approval? Vixen waited for her to respond, realizing that she’d be okay with any answer. After all, Bianca was an important person in her life.

“No...not exactly…but it was still nice.” Courtney smiled sheepishly, and twisted around slightly to tell Vixen, “I guess maybe I didn’t realize how much I didn’t need it until I got it.”

“Fair enough,” Vixen laughed, dropping a kiss to Courtney’s shoulder.

“So...I’m glad you liked it.”

“I did. Although I think I underestimated my ability to wear stilettos for that many hours without dying.”

“Aw, do your feet hurt, baby?” cooed Courtney. She slipped from Vixen’s arms to the opposite side of the tub, where her feet were.  

“They’re killing me…”

Courtney took Vixen’s feet into her lap, and began to give them a gentle massage. Vixen’s eyes fell closed blissfully, luxuriating in the warm water and tender caresses. Courtney began with her feet, but after awhile, moved up to her ankles and calves. Vixen nearly fell asleep three times, but finally blinked her eyes open, pulling Courtney towards her for a kiss.

“Can I do something for you now?” she murmured, and Courtney lifted her head to give her a heavy-lidded smirk.

“Let’s get out of here and see…”

“I was thinking like, helping you rinse this shit out of your hair, but...” Vixen touched her hair, still covered with that thick mask.

“Oh fuck,” Courtney giggled. “I guess we better do that first.”  

Vixen smiled at her, taking the handheld nozzle off the hook and turning it on. She tested the water with her hand, gesturing for Courtney to turn around, and then quickly rinsed her hair, fingertips scratching at her scalp. When she turned it off, she pressed a kiss to Courtney’s neck.

“Come on. Let’s go get bath oil all over those fancy sheets…”

“Sold!”

***

There was something different in Vixen’s eyes tonight as she hovered over Courtney on the bed. She was usually content to be pampered and guided--not submissive exactly, but certainly leaning in that direction. Tonight though, Courtney shivered in anticipation, looking up at her hungry brown eyes, shining dark in the dim light, every once in awhile catching a glint of gold.

They’d been at it for awhile, having tumbled into bed after their bath, Vixen’s mouth traveling all over Courtney’s heated skin. She’d lost track of time completely as Vixen made her tremble and whimper, getting her all worked up, only to tease her cruelly. Her fingertips now danced up Courtney’s thighs, light as a feather, making her breath catch in her throat. Courtney reached up towards her, one hand on her waist, another one her face, thumb stroking her cheek.

The corner of Vixen’s mouth twitched, becoming a smirk as she looked down at Courtney. One finger began to trace slow patterns along her collarbone, little circles getting bigger and loopier over her chest. Courtesy whimpered, back arching, trying unsuccessfully to pull her body down.

“Trying to tell me something, baby?” The pad of her finger circled one of Courtney’s nipples teasingly.

In response, Courtney arched up again.

“I want you,” she said, failing to suppress the pathetic need in her voice.

Vixen crawled forward slightly, pressing a thigh up against her pussy, giving her something to grind wetly against. It was good, so good that Courtney gasped in pleasure, Vixen’s thigh flexing against her as fingers continued toying with her tits. But soon, it wasn’t enough, and Courtney was pulling Vixen’s hips down, head falling back to expose her throat.

Vixen licked up her neck, layering kisses against her hammering pulse point. Courtney’s legs spread open, the gentle pressure of Vixen’s weight pressing her down into the mattress.

Courtney loved Vixen’s body. She had small tits that fit perfectly in Courtney’s hands, long slender limbs, and the most buttery soft skin she’d ever felt, especially fresh out of the bath. She loved to touch her, to feel her and taste her and kiss her all over.

She was painfully aware, though, that there were things she needed to be sensitive about when they were together. Even though she and Vixen had jumped into bed together on their first date, she’d spent a lot of their excruciating months apart asking gentle, probing questions about what she liked, what she didn’t, if there was anything that made her uncomfortable. Vixen was a bit shy at first, so Courtney didn’t push too hard, but every once in awhile, if she’d had enough wine, she would open up quite a bit, giving Courtney real insight into her fantasies.

And then of course, once they’d been able to really take their time and explore with each other, Courtney discovered a whole world of possibilities. Where she was most sensitive, how her fingers flexed and then curled slowly into fists when she liked something. How she was generally more interested in gentle, loving touches than hard, orgasm-focused penetration.

Courtney was careful to go slowly, and to follow her lead for anything below the waist. She didn’t want to make any assumptions about her body, or make her feel fetishized - but she also wanted to make sure to express how beautiful and sexy she found every part of her. It was a fine line, a balancing act that Courtney wasn’t sure she always got right.

She knew, for example, that Vixen preferred the term “girldick” and was partial to having it treated more like a clit - kissed and licked and rubbed and gently sucked. And Courtney was happy to oblige, loving the feel and the taste of her, how her cum had a faint sweetness to it. But recently, she’d surprised Courtney with a whispered confession in the dark that she wasn’t expecting.

“I’ve been thinking that maybe I want to try...topping,” Vixen said, hiding her face in Courtney’s hair, adorably bashful. “I mean, it’s so hot when you do it, and it doesn’t make me think of you as any less of a woman, and so…”

“You’re 100% woman. Every bit of you,” Courtney whispered back, but she’d also been a tiny bit nervous. After all, the last time anyone had tried penetrating her had been a bit of a disaster, and ever since then, she hadn’t wanted to revisit it. But on the other hand, she loved Vixen so much, and trusted her, and so maybe it was time to rethink her own boundaries.

“I don’t know if I can, though,” Vixen then added. “I mean, it doesn’t get hard the way it used to…”

“We can figure it out,” Courtney had said, kissing her, wrapping her up into a sleepy embrace. But the conversation never went any farther. Vixen hadn’t brought it up again, and Courtney didn’t really think any more about it. Until right now.

And tonight, there was something so fucking sexy about the way Vixen rutted against her, soft little sighs leaving her as she rolled her hips. Courtney grew wetter and wetter, fingers digging into her firm ass, pulling her closer. Vixen lifted her head, interrupting a deep, messy kiss to look into Courtney’s glazed eyes.

“Is this okay? Are you…”

“It’s perfect…You’re perfect.” Courtney could feel the soft tip of her girldick pushing against her, and she arched up, welcomed it deeper with her hand, loving the feel of Vixen getting closer and closer with every thrust.

It was so different from anything Courtney had ever experienced; so flexible and warm. It was a gentle kind of fullness, nothing rigid or demanding or painful like it had been for Courtney in the past. Courtney hugged Vixen’s hips with her thighs, hands sliding up her back, raking over her shoulder blades and back down to her waist.

“Baby, this is so hot,” Courtney whimpered, and then Vixen angled forward so that she was rubbing vigorously against Courtney’s clit, making her moan. “Fuuuck…”

Courtney could feel herself getting close, right on the verge. She captured Vixen’s lips in another kiss, sucking hard on her bottom lip and then tangling their tongues together. She panted into her mouth, snaking one hand down between her ass cheeks to stroke her, eliciting a little gasp from Vixen’s thoat, a familiar sound that told Courtney she was close too.

As Vixen’s hips pumped faster and faster, Courtney tried to hang on, but knuckles brushing over her stiff nipples was the last straw, and suddenly she was racked with ecstatic pleasure, wave after wave hitting her. By the end, she was barely moving, just clinging to Vixen’s body as her muscles convulsed, ankles locked together to keep her as close as possible.

The intense, messy kisses soon turned slow and gentle again as Courtney slowly caught her breath, bodies still sandwiched together.

“Wow…”

“Uh-huh...”

“That was different,” Vixen said, lips brushing against Courtney’s temple.

“Did you like it?” Courtney asked, fingers dancing up Vixen’s spine.

“...that might be an understatement.”

“Yeah, it was pretty...amazing,” Courtney giggled, nodding, catching her gaze. Her brown eyes shone softly in the dim light. “I love you so much.”

“Me too, baby.”

[worldbuildguild]

First of all, it’s never too late to start drawing again. Your capacity for creative expression doesen’t die with age. I know plenty of my own peers whose been away from art for some time and then return well into their late twenties or thirties. Some even pick up painting or writing as they retire and find they finally have time to work on these sort of artistic expressions.  I’ll say: head right back into it if you want to. Don’t bother with your parents if they give you heck for picking back up on art. Creative expression is incredibly healthy, and according to some experts- neccessary to facilitate a sense of individualism.  You’ll possibly find that starting back up can be a little harsh on your confidence, given how you may feel that you can be lacking behind the people who's been doing art their whole life, but once you get over the initial shock of “ oh no this teen is 20x times better than I will ever be “ ( which, honestly, even those of us who's been drawing non-stop their whole life - totally also feel on a regular basis ) and let go of public expectations to your art, you’ll probably find joy in it again. 

Now as for head angles; they’re difficult, why?  Because the head is one of the most complex parts of our body, and drawing it in all sorts of angles requires a solid understanding of the local anatomy, as well as demands that you know how to construct the many features properly. 

I personally use a /light/ version of the circle-and-cross technique. As in:  I mostly draw a very crude oval (circle used in this example though ) and then put two lines on it somewhere to indicate the angle and tilt. I suppose that counts as well, but I’ll have you know that my way around the method is incredibly guerilla and rugged. 

Typically - I deviate a bit from the methods intended use, by elevating the eyes somewhat above the middle line, while adding an extra line to nap out the bow. Although, when applying the method normally - the eyes tend to sit on top of the line going across the face’s width. This line typically sits between 2/4ths to 2/3rds up the skull ( confusing numbers I know, but for shorthand, assume that the line sits a just above the halfway point of the height of the skull). 

^like this. 

Now, the nose should sit somewhere on the lower half of the skull. Depending on your style and design, its exact position can vary. But my usual thumbrule for harmonious semi-realism is that there should be somewhat of an eyewidth’s worth of distance down to the nostril, where the centrum will sit nudged just a smidgeon beneath the nostrils. 

This means that you have about 1/4th of the face left for the mouth and chin ( if you’re working with a semi-realistic design ). Cartoons have long since broken with this thumb rule and shrunk noses to make more room for expressive eyes and dynamic mouths. But looking at some of the more “realistic” comic designs tend to still follow this set of proportions. 

The nose, in particular, can be a tricky one to really get right. Especially on angles that exposes the nose’s underside to the viewer, or hides all of it in a downward point. Observe your own nose, or the noses in your references to figure out what parts of the nose would be visible in a given angle. And if you need, don’t be afraid to get really nitty-gritty with building and understanding the nose you’re depicting. For me, an upward pointed nose could take forever to get right in early sketching phases, simply because I didn’t recognize that there was a plane to be considered underneath the tip of the nose; the nostrils and septum.  You can also read more here on how other people do face-angles. Your method comes down to how you work stylistically, so getting a good look at other artists’ ways of achieving a consistent look could help you in understanding your own. 

https://kananeski.tumblr.com/post/172740415297/some-of-you-have-been-asking-for-a-tutorial-on-how

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EPNYWeEf1U

https://www.deviantart.com/naschi/art/LearnManga-The-Male-Neck-586005491

- mod wackart ( ko-fi )

[afriendtokilltime]

Okay, fine. Let’s talk about parasocial relationships.

The term “parasocial” has been making the rounds as a very very smart sounding thing to say. It not only establishes that you know an unusual and complex word, but also that you are too smart to fall for marketing tactics, and that you are much too cool to show enthusiasm for anything!

So, what’s a parasocial relationship? It’s a one-sided relationship with a celebrity or fictional character--the entire relationship takes place in your head. You’re reading this on tumblr, which means you have lots of parasocial relationships. You’re very parasocially popular! Maybe you even have one with me. (Probably not, I stopped posting for a long time, so we probably don’t parasocially know one another at all.)

I first encountered this term being used as an inherently bad thing, something to avoid, as though the term referred to the negative version of itself. What I saw was not people explaining why it can be harmful, but speaking as if we all know it is (the way you’d use “alcoholism”).

I see people carefully watching themselves to make sure they aren’t engaging in a “parasocial relationship,” or referring to a behavior they don’t like as “borderline parasocial relationship behavior.” But, there is no such thing as “relationship behavior” other than closing the psychological distance between yourself and another person. “Parasocial relationship behavior” is doing this, but it’s one-sided. You get closer, and they do not. That’s it. That’s the only thing. Does that mean building a shrine to Kristen Stewart? Does it mean crying with joy at Hbomberguy’s Mermaids/Donkey Kong stream? Does it mean writing a 100k fanfiction about Hermione Granger, Vampire Slayer? Does it mean buying a David Bowie CD? Does it mean begging the show writers to finally make that queerbaity relationship canon? Does it mean killing the president? You decide! 

Becoming psychologically closer to people and characters is not inherently unhealthy, whether they know who you are or not. How you treat them and respond to that closeness, and how they choose to cultivate closeness, can of course be unhealthy...but so can reciprocal relationships.

What’s weird to me is that we generally seem to be aware that there are bad and good (healthy and unhealthy) relationships. I have a good relationship with @randomshoes because we support each other, are interested in each others’ success, spend quality time together, and communicate well. If I was to stalk her or kill a president for her, or if she was to abuse my trust and take all my money while falsely assuring me she loved me, our relationship would be somewhat less healthy. 

So, what’s so bad about parasocial relationships?

They don’t actually care about you and they are taking your money.

If a marketing team/a celebrity uses these relationships to prey on vulnerable people, that might be an abusive relationship...in the other direction. If I manipulate a friend I know out of her money, I’m the bad guy, right? But if I’m famous, and she’s 16, and I knowingly manipulate her out of her money, then she’s the bad guy, because teenage girls are dumb and they should feel bad for ever liking anything, forming identities, feeling attraction, or basically being uncool and childish in any way.

It is definitely a good idea to remember that transactions are a part of how art is usually consumed, and not to express your affection or deep identification with an art/artist by spending lots of money on tee shirts that depict them. However, even this type of interaction can be encouraged in a healthy, positive way.  Patreon seems to really make people mad, but it’s not the worst system for artists who Live in A Society and don’t happen to have any lembas laying around. “I’ll pretend to love you so you can make me a millionaire” seems kinda gross but “I appreciate that your support helps me continue making the art you love” kinda sorta does not.

Some people go too far and commit heinous crimes because they expect their parasocial affections to be reciprocated.

Those crimes would be heinous even in an already reciprocal relationship. (I  already mentioned this, but if I committed terrorism for my very real girlfriend who knows exactly who I am, that would probably make me no better or worse than Hinkley.)

You’re an isolated loser and need real friends.

Okay. Anybody pouring all their energy into one relationship is probably not doing life correctly, regardless of how parasocial that relationship is. But this is a point on which I simply do not agree. People engage in these behaviors regardless of how wide their friend circle is. If not with celebrities, then with fictional characters, or even historical or political figures (think more “little father” than “senator” though what you do with that Bernie Sanders picture in your room is between you and God). Oh speaking of God, relationships with religious figures might arguably have some similarities and speak to the same human tendency, but there is of course the difference that Justin Bieber doesn’t know who TF you are, but God does.

Uh, sorry, you didn’t address my point. Forming parasocial relationships stops you developing real relationships.

I actually think it encourages reciprocal socialization. I didn’t have many friends growing up. When I met two other kids who were obsessed with Harry Potter, we bonded over that, making up our own characters (next generation type of BS...still better than the book 7 epilogue), and this formed the basis of a friendship that lasted basically my entire pubescence. These parasocial relationships are generally part of a broader interest, and interests and hobbies help you meet people, break the ice, and uhm...form real relationships.

It’s not just interests, though. I was hardcore into dinosaurs as a kid. Literally every child likes dinosaurs, but that didn’t help me form any new friendships. The other reason I think parasocial relationships lead to better real relationships is...practice. You are engaging in social behaviors, whether or not you’re any good at them, whether or not you succeed. This is what’s required to learn any new skill, but it’s generally discouraged.

You don’t just learn about how to socialize, you also learn about yourself. You develop a sense of identity and learn what you like and dislike by associating yourself with favorite characters.

Children and teens often imitate their behaviors, and though that can be a bit annoying (why yes I do have the Spanish Inquisition sketch memorized but thanks for repeating it to make sure I got it), it also helps them figure out what kind of people they want to be (maybe you want to be funny, so you over time learn that what made Monty Python so funny was surprise, surprise and fear, and you develop comedic timing). Knowing what kind of person you want to be is important.

Right, but it’s selfish. You keep calling it “one sided” which it literally is. There’s no checks on your behavior.

Right. I think that’s good, though? I think it’s good for people to sometimes do selfish things. I think it’s good to cultivate parasocial relationships because they are a way to self-soothe, and get your own needs met, without burdening others. We are social creatures, and we absolutely need relationships, but nobody owes you a relationship. Nobody owes you affection or love. Having a way to cultivate that for yourself is actually incredibly valuable.

It’s worth commenting here that I think my strongest parasocial relationships are probably with characters I’ve made up myself. They are “a part of me” in that they are always there in my life, but unlike some writers, I do not base characters on myself or see them as reflecting specific parts of me. I relate to them in the same way I relate to Harry Potter, except that I was the one who made them up initially, and books I write about them can be published and I can make money off them. (On some theoretical plane of existence.) It’s pretty clear that I am the one doing all the work on both sides of this particular parasocial relationship, but it doesn’t feel super different to me than the fact I very intensely relate to certain characters not made up by me. I don’t conceive myself dating one of them, like I don’t have a Dorothy L. Sayers thing going on, but I don’t really think it would be wrong if I did.

What do you mean not being a burden on others? What about toxic fans putting pressure on creators?

Yeah...that’ll be in the “unhealthy relationship” category. But, okay, I guess where I am ending up here is I do think it’s good to recognize parasocial relationships exist and talk about them, because it reminds you that even if a relationship is not reciprocal, you do have responsibilities. If the other person is real, that means they are only human, and even if you have no choice but to stan, you should give them some breathing space. The Shinji Ikari ContraPoints in my head can be my super close friend, but if I expect the real Natalie Wynn to give me any more energy than she already does to her entire audience by making the awesome videos I enjoy so much, I’d be really rude, demanding, and honestly not worthy of her friendship if it was “real.”

Parasocial relationships are relationships which means, just like with reciprocal ones, you have to not be a dick. You have to respect the other person and recognize they are a human being separate from you. Even with characters, Harry Potter can’t be hurt by anything weird and demanding you do, but Rowling could, and so could other HP fans, so respect is still important. If it’s not already clear, I strongly disagree with people who suggest fanfiction is disrespectful, so.

If you understand that your relationship is abstracted, and that you do not deserve any kind of reward for all the energy and love that you pour into it...then enjoy your parasocial relationship, because it is absolutely normative, human, and can bring great joy and meaning into your life. In fact, almost all of what I just said applies to reciprocal relationships, too.

[no-gorms]

Your stories are so well constructed. If you have time and the inclination to do so, would you be willing to write about your plotting, planning, or outlining process? Inquiring beginners would love to know. :) Thank you for reading this ask.

Oooh! Thank you, that’s very nice of you, I appreciate it a lot. :))

I feel kind of self-conscious writing this out, but if it’s helpful to anyone, why not? I’m gonna use my recent Steve/Tony fics for examples (I preemptively apologize for my handwriting). This got long and messy, oops.

Plotting, planning and outlining! Is very useful, but not the first thing I do. 

First up is The Idea.

Most of my fics come about because of some single idea that captured my imagination. Eg. Role of a Lifetime is from an idea of Steve having a secret identity that enables him to see different sides of Tony. The basis is a single, simple idea that can be summed up in one sentence. Even the somewhat plotty Ticking the Moments Away comes down to a basic idea of 2023!Tony unintentionally tricking 2014!Steve into confessing his feelings to 2014!Tony.

Then, Brainstorming.

The idea is the central germ, and I let that germ roll around my head for a while, seeing what spins off from it – scenes that can happen, dialogue the characters can have, backstory for how the characters got to that point. There’s no plot structure at this point at all, just the fun of coming up with ideas.

I’m a notebook person. While all this brainstorming goes on, I note down the ideas as they come. I don’t worry about how these fit together yet, because it’s just about letting the inspiration flow. As an example, here’s a brainstorming page for If I were a Bell. My brainstorming pages are just brief lines of scenes, pieces of dialogue, or stream of consciousness ideas of things that can happen.

Not everything from this stage is going to make the final fic, but that’s okay! It’s just about letting the creativity flow, building energy and excitement about the story itself, and coming up with bits that you’re going to have fun writing down in fuller prose.

Brainstorming also helps coming up with backstory, which also may or may not be part of the story proper but helps create the setting before the “present” action starts. Like, here’s a page for Something Beautiful where I was figuring out the backstory and what’s different about the alternate timeline.

The thing about brainstorming a story like this is that it’s natural for us to focus on the Big moments. Most of my energy is definitely spent contemplating the BEST bit, which is usually the big reveal or confrontation about feelings, and the fallout from there. Because of that, it becomes clear where the story will end, and because I’ve figured where the story will end, I can roughly figure out what needs to happen in order to reach that ending. Eg. Steve & Tony’s relationship starts like [this] and needs to become like [that]. How do we get to [that]? By having Steve & Tony achieve [x] amount of emotional intimacy or address [x] issue, which is achieved through [x] interactions/dialogue/escalating scenarios.

Then I start Outlining. 

The magical thing about having brainstormed smaller ideas is that now there’s accumulated details ready to fill up the middle portion, which is (for me) the main challenge in putting an outline together. Most of the time we know where a story starts and ends, but what’s in the middle? That’s where all those smaller ideas come in, and I do that by listing out the various ideas I came up with in sequence. 

Sometimes the order of this sequence obvious, but most of the time it isn’t, so I usually list them semi-randomly and move them around as necessary. The brainstormed ideas are like puzzle pieces, and they don’t always fit, so sometimes you gotta keep brainstorming to figure out how it works as a whole story.

But once I have an outline at all, that’s a Go for me to start writing. I use the outline as a basis for what’s to happen and to make sure I don’t get lost, but you’ve still got to be open to changing things up as you notice shortcomings. Unless it’s a slice of life fic, there’s usually a tension that needs to be resolved, and you won’t necessarily “see” if the story is resolving it until you’re actually writing it. Eg. Steve and Tony aren’t together – why? What’s the obstacle? Why didn’t they get together before, and if there was an issue stopping them, is that issue dealt with by the fic’s end? These questions might seem obvious, but sometimes I can lose sight of it and need to come back to the outline to adjust it.

For example, here’s my simplified outline for Ticking Away the Moments, after the initial brainstorming was done. 

I knew where to start and where to end, but you can see the crossed out part where I changed things. As I was writing I realized that I needed more shippy moments and Steve & Tony had to spend more time together just the two of them, so instead of them crash-landing on Asgard and Steve being treated by healers there (as initially planned), Nebula brought them to another planet instead, where Steve & Tony had their not-date.

Brainstorming doesn’t necessarily stop once I start writing, either. Sometimes a story does flow 100% once I start writing, but that’s rare, and more often I still get stuck here and there. So, much like how artists do warm-up sketches before working on their main piece, I sometimes do brainstorming “sketches” to deal with this. Like, if I can’t figure out how to make certain things happen, or what the characters’ motivations are, I stop writing the fic itself and instead do stream of consciousness writing that’s more like meta instead of prose/dialogue to work out the problems. 

For example, here’s some character “sketching” for Splenditudinous Figment of Wonder, where I was trying to figure out Steve and Tony’s motivations: 

And some plot “sketching” for Ticking Away the Moments, where I was trying to figure out what 2023!Tony, Nebula and Gamora’s game plan should be:

This kind of sketching puts into words the problems I’m facing, and I can make a carefree mess in searching for solutions. It saves time to do it this way instead of trying to solve the problem while I’m writing the actual story, for that usually leads to having to delete whole chunks of fic which is VERY difficult because we tend to get attached to what we write! I find it better to sketch.

Basically, the goal of the brainstorming & outlining & sketching is to minimize the amount of actual writing of the story itself. Don’t get me wrong, writing is still labour intensive, but I find that by working out the story before sitting down to actually Write The Thing, it removes a lot of the struggle to figure out what happens next, and cuts down on cruft that tends to build up when you stumble on problems or are trying to work out the “middle part”. Plenty of writers can do the figuring it out as they go along, and that’s fine, too! But this is what works for me. 

Also, a general advice which might be useful! I used to push myself in my writing, but nowadays my philosophy (lol) is that writing fanfic is for Fun, so if the stress/difficulty of any part of it outweighs the joy/satisfaction, then I just don’t do it. This is totally subjective – some people like pushing themselves into new writing styles or topics, and I totally did, too, but nowadays I don’t want to do that.

What does that mean, in effect? It means that if I find any scene a slog or just plain boring, I drop it entirely or find a way around it, maybe by summarizing what happens or having it explained in flashback. If it’s not fun to write, I don’t write it, and I don’t stress out about it. I find this REALLY freeing. This doesn’t work for published fiction, of course, but I’m not talking about published fiction. 

I hope you find some part of this useful!

[cottontail20]

A Legend All Their Own, Chapter 40: Family Crest

Summary: In the midst of preparing for war, Wanda and Vision find a moment of Joy

Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16736589/chapters/44392297

The meeting with Odin delayed Wanda and Vision's plans, just a little. The King decided that nothing should be announced to the people, about Ultron's declaration of war or otherwise, until they could show that they well on the way to being prepared for what was to come. Showing that they had a plan, that they knew how to keep at least most of them alive, would be a comfort and limit any panic.

The news would be kept on a need to know basis- Wanda, Vision, Doctor Strange, the Avengers, the Asgardian Royal Family, and the top ranks of Asgard's army were the only ones made aware of Ultron's letter.

And so, the preparations began. --

Up until now, the battles that Wanda and Vision had fought in together had been relatively small in scale. They had been lucky to get by without any sort of armor so far, but now they were heading into real, all out war. Yes, Vision could make himself intangible with the Mind Stone, but could only do the same for Wanda if he was touching her. He liked to think that, as her protector, he would always be close enough to do so, but the reality was that a larger battle meant a larger chance that they could get separated.

So, armor. And, as it turned out when the subject came up, Wanda had already had some thoughts about this.

"What have you got there?" Vision, slightly surprised, looked up from a book on famous Asgardian battle strategies as Wanda sat beside him, laying a roll of parchment on the table.

"Armor designs" Wanda replied, unrolling the parchment so he could look at the plans. "For you. Stark helped me, and Thor offered a few suggestions. If you like it, we'll go give the designs to the armorer and get you properly fitted.."

Vision looked at the sketched plans. A few technical notes were scrawled around, probably Tony's input, and the armor seemed similar to Thor's, including a golden cape, showing off the heir to Asgard's influence. The color was clearly Wanda's idea.. She loved him in teal. There was a symbol in the center of the armor's breastplate that he didn't immediately recognize, but at a second glance seemed very familiar. It looked rather like the Mind Stone, surrounded by a scarlet flame.

"This symbol.."

"Ah.." Wanda blushed. "I spent a little longer on that than I probably should have."

"It looks like.."

"The Mind Stone.. and my powers. I was thinking it might work as a new royal sigil, or family crest.. Ours, maybe?"

"Wanda.." Vision felt a lump in his throat. Not so long ago, he had been nothing, no one. No real name, no family. Just an orphan, street urchin and a thief. Now he was the son of a Valkyrie. The keeper of the Mind Stone, Protector of The Scarlet Witch. Engaged to the Princess, with her wanting him to be her King.. Including him in her Family Crest.. Their crest..

"Vizh? If you don't like it, we can.. mph.."

Vision kissed Wanda, cutting her off. A soft, loving kiss, lips gently brushing over hers, and she returned the kiss, a contented sigh escaping her. Vision wanted to kiss her every chance he got right now, in case this war didn't go the way they hoped, and his chances to kiss her ran out. He would be kissing Wanda every waking moment if he could, but that pesky little thing called 'needing to breathe' stopped him, just as it stopped him now. Breaking the kiss, his forehead pressed against hers as they caught their breath. Wanda was sitting in Vision's lap now. He wasn't quite sure when that had happened, but he didn't mind. The Thief cupped his Princess's cheek, and she leaned into his touch.

"The crest is perfect, Wanda" He told her. "The armor is perfect. You are perfect. Thank you.. I was just.. I've never had a family before, so.."

"You do now" Wanda ran her fingers through Vision's soft golden hair, as she'd often dreamed of doing before they were together. "You have me."

"I am a very lucky man.."

"And I am a lucky woman."

They stayed like that for quite a while, enjoying the simple comfort of being in each other's arms, before Vision finally spoke again.

"We should take these plans to the armorer and get me fitted. I imagine these would take a while to make."

"Probably."

"And you need to be fitted for armor too."

"I know" Wanda curled closer to Vision, quite reluctant to move. "As long as they don't make it too tight around.." She paused, frowning, as if suddenly unsure why what she'd been going to say mattered. Armor was meant to serve a purpose, it didn't have to be comfortable. Still, she couldn't help feeling a little concerned about it, even if she wasn't sure why.

"Too tight around what?" Vision asked.

"I don't know.. I just think I might need a little bit of extra breathing room, that's all. I don't like feeling constricted.."

"Then we will make sure that you are not" He kissed her cheek, and Wanda couldn't help but smile.

"Thanks, Vizh." --

All those who knew about the coming war devoted much more time to training, in order to get themselves prepared.

Vision was currently training with Thor, who was going to teach him a few of his favorite tricks with Mjolnir, in case an opportunity arose where he would need to use it.

"How does it feel?" Thor asked him, rather excited. He had always thought he would be jealous if he found another worthy of his hammer, but for some reason, he did not feel that way at all with Vision holding it. There was definitely something special about the Mind Stone's keeper.

"It's strange" Vision gave Mjolnir a little test swing. "It seems like it should be heavier, but it's actually very well balanced.."

On the other side of the Training Grounds, Wanda had been working with Clint, practicing halting arrows with her power. Pausing for a short break while Clint retrieved his scattered arrows (harmless practice ones of course), Wanda glanced over to where Vision was training with Thor, carefully swinging the hammer. A small smile crossed her face.

"Proud of your boy, huh?" Asked Clint, returning with his arrows.

"I am, actually.. Aren't I allowed to be?"

"Oh, you're definitely allowed. I tried to lift that damn hammer and it wouldn't budge."

Wanda chuckled. Then she looked at the crowded training grounds, to Nat sparring with Steve a short distance away, Tony measuring Peter for something. Scattered among them were Sokovians training with various weapons. And suddenly, Wanda thought she might have a solution to her problem in helping everyone accept Vision.

"Clint, you and Natasha are good at gathering information, right?"

"It's our job, so, yeah, we are."

"How are you at spreading it?"

"We did a bit to get the good word out for the Avengers in the early days" Clint replied. "Why, something you need people to know, Princess?"

"Well.."

Wanda told Clint everything, about Vision's origins, what his eyes meant, that he was the son of a Valkyrie.

Clint blinked.

"That.. Is a pretty great story."

"It's all true" Wanda smiled. "Think you can spread it to the masses for me?"

"Yeah" Clint nodded. "I'll get the other Avengers on it too."

"Maybe add the story about how he saved me in the battle at Stanville?"

"Done" Clint saluted her, then rushed off to talk to Nat and Steve.

Vision caught Wanda's eye, waving to her across the grounds, and she waved back, grinning. Everything was coming together.

[doodlewash]

My name is Abey Zoul, and I spent a memorable childhood in a beautiful small town called Bachok, Kelantan, one of the states on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Full of sandy white beaches, Kelantan is also rich in unique cultural heritage that are still practised today by the current generation. For example, the mystical performances, namely wayang kulit, a traditional shadow puppet play and, Menora, a type of dance drama.

After graduating from an architectural school in 1999, I spent most of my life working in a few architectural firms in Kuala Lumpur. Every evening after work and during weekends, I used to find joy in riding big bikes. In 2012, I shelved my bike and started on my journey in watercolour painting.

In Malaysia, watercolour has always been considered as an inferior painting alternative to other mediums. Hence, my friends and I decided to set up a watercolor group called Gangstawatakala. Our vision is to bring back the glorious days of watercolour.

My love towards everything that relates to heritage and culture, traditional houses, quaint old shops and wooden fishing boats, becomes the setting in most of my watercolour works. Fishing boats, primarily Perahu Kolek, is a wooden fishing boat which can only be found in my hometown and in southern Thailand. Its long history of craftsmanship is my main interest.

Kampung Baru, the one and only village amidst the crowded city of Kuala Lumpur, is where my friends and I regularly spend our weekends together painting and sketching. The old wooden village houses give a rural vibe in spite of the modern and iconic steel cladding of KLCC and other modern buildings. My paintings try to capture the stories of people whose wooden houses are surrounded by Kuala Lumpur’s skyscrapers.

Painting is not just about producing a beautiful artwork on a piece of paper, it is about telling the story behind every image produced from the eyes of the artist. It is also about digging deeper through history. The more you see things to be painted, the more stories you know behind it. Hence, painters are, in a way, also storytellers.

Tools & Materials

Mistakes in choosing tools and materials often occur in watercolour. Being a fragile medium, choosing the right tools is of utmost importance. From the choice of paper, brushes, pigments as well as the surrounding temperature, all these affect the result in watercolour painting. I believe in the concept that the best tools will yield the best result in the right hands. If the best results cannot be achieved, it is you who have to improve in terms of technical skills, keen observation, level of taste and patience.

Pigments

I have proudly been appointed as Malaysia’s first independent brand ambassador for QOR Watercolor by Golden Paint USA, endorsed by a leading Malaysian arts and craft store, Scrap’n’Crop. This endorsement to QOR however does not prohibit me from exploring other brands and pigments as an artist. My palette consist of a majority of QOR pigments which I find to be very transparent. QOR’s vivid colours perfectly matches the colour tones on my mind. QOR’s Raw Sienna for example produces a very clear golden light brown tone on paper, not the muddy golden tones of some other brands.

My Skies – I now use Manganese Blue as a base colour for skies, replacing Cerulean Blue. It is a luminous and transparent blue as opposed to cerulean which is opaque with a greenish tinge.

My Greens – My favourites are Daniel Smith Undersea Green (Dark Green) and Olive Green. Avoid Viridian when painting foliage. I often come across students’ palettes with stains of Viridian. It has an artificial green tone. However, Viridian when mixed with Gamboge or Indian Yellow will produce a very cool greenish yellow tone suitable for the painting of paddy fields.

My Water – I used to mix Viridian with Cobalt Blue when painting water. Now, I use Cobalt Turquoise mixed with Viridian. For boats and other reflections, I mix Cobalt Turquoise with Raw Umber.

My Shadows – Shadows are not black so do not use any black, Ivory or Lamp Black. My advice is do not buy or keep black pigments. Instead mix Mauve, Magenta and Ultramarine in different proportions for the shadows. The next time you go shopping, opt for Daniel Smith’s Moonglow which has been specially blended to create shadow tones.

My Earth Tones – When I was younger, Yellow Ochre was the colour of choice for the earth tones. It proved to be my folly as it is an opaque pigment and can easily cause muddy colours. Now the wiser, I replaced Yellow Ochre with Raw Sienna, a pigment similar in tone that gives a transparent golden earth colour.

My Glazing – As I have always wanted my paintings to have a classic look, Aureolin (Cobalt Yellow) is a must for my glazes. It is a transparent and cool yellow.

My Jewelries – Opaque Cobalt Teal, Cobalt Violet, and Cadmium Red are used for clothings, signages, traffic lights and car lamps. These tiny but important final touch-ups make the paintings “pop”.

Watercolour Brushes

Brushes are more subjective than paper. Different brush shapes are made for different tasks. For example, you cannot make a broad sky wash with a small size 3 round brush. The best brushes are made of natural hairs and notably for watercolour, sable and squirrel hair brushes are strongly recommended.

I am against advising you to buy a whole range of these expensive brushes which can sometimes be more than the price of gold, ounce for ounce! Choose appropriately within your budget. As for me, yes, I do have a stable of sables, but I rarely use all of them. If you are an Edward Seago fan, where bold strokes and simple shapes are the order, then sable may be your perfect choice.

My impressionistic style incorporates a certain level of structural detail that requires me to go deeper. Synthetic round brushes with a sharp, stiff point work better for my style but I initially stayed away from them as I considered the nylon based synthetics to be inferior. It was not until I discovered Escoda Perla, used by the Master watercolourist Joseph Zbukvic, that I started using synthetics. Perla is the best synthetic with an excellent point. Personally I use Perla size 2, 4, 8, and 12.

For pre-wetting paper, I have a round handle Frank Clarke Goat Hair “Hake” brush. A large Proarte and Mary Whyte’s cat’s tongue squirrel hair brush helps me with painting the skies and impressionistic trees. My jewel in the crown and most precious brush is surely the Leonard extra long sable hair scripture brush. This brush works well for irregular shapes such as branches, leaves and foliage. It was bought during a trip to Paris in 2015 at the Sennelier Art shop, a few miles from the Lourve.

Last but not least, is my Rekab reservoir brush bought on eBay. A perfect size 4, I can freely paint wires, cables and masts with just a stroke from the brush. What a life!

Watercolour Paper

As a watercolour impressionist, I normally use Canson, Arches and Saunders Waterford 300gsm watercolour paper with a rough texture. Both are artist grade 100% cotton rag, mold made paper and acid free. Arches is in my opinion the best and most expensive paper today with Saunders Waterford a close runner up. Saunders is more forgiving than Arches whereby you are able to make more mistakes on it due to its better lifting qualities.

Additionally I use student grade 25% cotton Bockingford and Canson Montval paper for light works such as line and wash, watercolour sketches and thumbnail studies. Both are excellent cellulose-based paper and usually cost about half or less as compared to Arches and Saunders Waterford. My advice is do not use drawing paper unsuitable for watercolour painting. You will go nowhere.

Plein Air vs. Studio Work

Plein air in simple terms is open air or outdoor painting whereas studio work is the process of producing art works based on photo references or imagination inside the studio. Normally at the start of the season, I will work in the studio from subjects gathered from the previous season. On a daily basis, I will task myself to complete works based on specific themes or series.

If, for example, the series I am working on is fishing boats, all other subjects like buildings, flora or portraits will not be intermingled. Upon completion of each series and when I am out of ideas or subjects to paint in the studio, I will take a “break” for three to four months without producing any new work. During that period, I will gather ideas, think, sketch, read and do research on new subjects for the next part of the season.

Plein air activities commence and fill up the rest of the season with the break providing a fresh and dynamic mood whether to join in an urban sketching activity or going on a painting trip with friends to exotic places that I have not painted before in watercolour.

Plein air gives you the energy, mood, freshness, and also live interaction with what we are painting. In contrast to studio painting which is more relaxed and organised, plein air provides more challenges to the painter. A painter must quickly observe the mood of the subject, arrange the composition, light direction and the need to make oneself comfortable in whatever condition one is in with the tools available. We must also be strong-willed and confident when plein airing.

We need to interact with the surroundings and curious locals and onlookers that crowd around us while we are painting.

There will be those who will ask questions and others who are ever too willing to indulge with us through the long history of the subject in focus. We need to treat them nicely and become friends with them. A great painter has to be one who Plein airs!

Thank you, Let’s paint.

Abey Zoul Website Facebook Instagram Books

GUEST ARTIST: "Painters As Storytellers" by Abey Zoul - #doodlewash #WorldWatercolorGroup #watercolour #watercolor My name is Abey Zoul, and I spent a memorable childhood in a beautiful small town called Bachok, Kelantan, one of the states on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia.

[ill-will-editions]

THE YELLOW VESTS IN SAINT-NAZAIRE: “WE’RE RELEARNING HOW TO BUILD TOGETHER”

Reportback on the Second Assembly of Assemblies in Saint-Nazaire (April 5, 6, 7, 2019)

(Originally published in Lundimatin #188, April 23, 2019)

Last month, April 5, 6 and 7, the second “Assembly of Assemblies” of the Yellow Vests was held in Saint-Nazaire, after the first one in Commercy in January. The following article is a partial reportback on these meetings, offering an enthusiastic, albeit ambivalent, assessment. When “limits” and “disappointments” are mentioned, the author considers them despite everything as being part of a longer-term process: “democracy must be conceived as a painful learning process.” However, according to echoes reaching us from other sources, it would seem to be the forms of democracy themselves that are at least in part responsible for making those few days painful: obsession with voting, exacerbated formalism, massive presence of veteran activists, etc. While we think it is vital for the Yellow Vests movement to be able to organize nationally beyond virtual channels (Facebook, Telegram, etc.), it seems a bit sad that this process, in many ways, insists on using the same codes of the democracy that we are familiar with: elected representatives who vote on texts and get bogged down in conflicts that no one understands. Why not simply take advantage of moments like these to talk about different local situations, forge a sharper perspective on the state of the movement and its different parts, and even, perhaps, coordinate a few pertinent actions?  —Lundimatin

***

In late January, an initiative by some follks in the small town of Commercy in eastern France sketched out a basis for structuring the Yellow Vests. The idea was simple: to coordinate a gathering of delegates from local groups all over France, with the idea of working out a horizontal structure for the movement that would apply the principles of direct democracy. A wild gamble, and a response to skeptics.

Two months later at the second "Assembly of Assemblies" in Saint-Nazaire, the roundabouts seem to have taken up the idea, as nearly 250 delegations made the trip to speak on behalf of local groups in the debates. It signals a success for the Saint-Nazaire organizers, but also a logistical challenge. One after another, potential venues for the meeting replied with rejections. No matter! The organizers hit back with wild inspiration: why not hold the event at the Maison du Peuple (the “People’s House”), where popular assemblies have been held every night for months? Why not rip up the ground floor of the old sub-prefecture, knock down the walls and see if it works? As the organizers are well aware, the institution of the People’s House is a powerful symbol, one that has already captured yellow imaginations pretty much everywhere in France. There’s something dreamy about occupying an old seat of power (a sub-prefecture) on a whim and transforming it into a place of life and organization. To use it to host an assembly of assemblies, making it the capital of yellow dissent for a weekend, only sweetens the dish.  One power chases another.

Still, the context has changed. Two months have passed since Commercy. Along the way, that determination so common at the start of a struggle has had to come to terms, first, with fatigue, and then with doubts. The litany of “prefecture journalists,” combined with the banality of judicial and police violence, have worked tirelessly to undermine the struggle. For those who refuse to give up, Saint-Nazaire bears the vague promise of a new maneuver, a new front.

 “It’s going to be complicated;” “We’re going to experiment;” “Not everything will be perfect.”

Given the delegates’ impatience, the local organizers proceed cautiously. The magnitude of the task is immense, and the three days of discussion won’t be enough. Plenary sessions alternate with thematic working groups. Beneath the large tents and kiosks that line the building, the crowd divides and subdivides until it reaches a reasonable size. In a hurry, the most motivated among them push through the beating rain to move from one group to another. It’s a well-designed formula, leading otherwise strangers to relax and get to know one another. A new feature of this second meeting is that groups are able to propose their own topics for discussion: “Municipalism” for Commercy, a “Charter of the Yellow Vests” put forward by Montpellier, or “People’s House” from Saint-Nazaire, etc.

These small discussion groups place the emphasis on lived experience. The violence of the repression is countered with the relief of learning that one is not alone. Everyone narrates their actions, astonishing the person sitting next to them with their audacity or creativity. Blocking the economy, recreating local ties, producing for all, taking back the roundabouts, imagining a different way to organize life, targeting certain businesses, pressuring the authorities, developing popular education, fighting against bad housing, attacking the symbols of the disaster: everyone is pushing their emergency, hoping to win support.

Local experiences are mixed up in an immense melting pot of revolt and desire. Pages are covered in ink, meetings planned. Folks learn about practices they had no clue existed: blocked Airbus factories in the southwest; occupied tollbooths, liberating toll roads for several weeks on end; alternative “citizens’ markets” feature local, often organic, goods and services each week; etc. As one miffed delegate put it: “How did I not know? It’s weird that nobody talked about it. Shit.” The idea of a large platform for information is brought up again, to no longer depend on anyone. Of the 70 accreditations granted, a good portion of the red media badges adorn yellow vests: many Facebook Page editors, autonomous media crews and independent journalists and documentary teams are present. Criticism has turned into action: people telling their own stories, taking back control of their words, freeing themselves from all delegation. 

It’s in these smaller group that the pulse of the movement can be taken. More so than in Commercy, determination is on display and there’s nobody left who doubts the process. Four months of struggle have gone by and transformed even the most recalcitrant. There’s nothing left to do but get organized. Get organized, to believe again. The idea of a more thorough coordination is discussed at great length. An idea that wins support: remobilize, then attack simultaneously pretty much everywhere. The calendar promises its share of opportunities: April 20, May 1, the European Union elections, not to mention the G7 in Biarritz late August and the 2020 municipal elections.

But when all the delegates gather in the plenary assembly, the atmosphere is different. Here, they’re experimenting with the most complex, utopian aspects of direct democracy, and in Saint-Nazaire there are a lot more people present than in Commercy, maybe even too many. The first cracks begin to show in the assembly. The folks with the microphone try to be reassuring despite the time that flies by at full speed. Managing to agree on enough points to put out a call by Sunday evening appears complicated, but nobody wants to give up on it.

The first draft of a joint text is finally submitted to the assembly on Sunday around noon. Disappointing. A certain number of agreements from the working groups seem to have been left out. Some decry a scam, others commiserate in frustration. In fact, the text itself was intended to be minimal to get enough votes to pass, even if it means disappointing the more ambitious delegates. Other, more focused, thematic and concrete texts are proposed simultaneously that win votes more easily and are passed. Each issue has a different text addressing it: the European elections, repression and the cancellation of jail time, citizen assemblies and convergences with environmental struggles, etc. For the first time in three days, the rain stops — the sun gives smokers hope again.

Although the afternoon is well underway, the dream of a call from Saint-Nazaire still seems far off. Some refuse to give up on it, as a limited number of amendments are agreed upon. Do political prisoners need to be discussed? What about amnesty, or the annulment of sentences? A last-minute amendment is adopted without really any debate: the goal of exiting from capitalism. The text is adopted by a very large majority. Once more, the delegates’ voices can be heard rising in the main hall, “We are here, we are here…” But this time is different. Hundreds of sub-prefecture squatters vibrate with yellow fever. The call isn’t perfect, but it’s a symbol and it’s done, honor intact. A stubborn joy is palpable.

The consensus, however, lasts only as long as the chant. The last-minute amendment on capitalism doesn’t go over well: “a disgusting stab in the back,” according to one delegate. Poorly chosen words, too connoted, too divisive, not sufficiently representative of the yellow vests in their diversity. Others castigate the assembly for not formally putting concrete directions and strategic proposals into writing. In vain: the text has been voted upon, it’s final. But the memory of the consensus achieved in Commercy fades away.

This weekend of April 6, 7 and 8 was historic, but for those who placed their hopes in it, it served above all as a reminder: democracy must be conceived as a painful learning process. This is what the Saint-Nazaire team recalls a few days later in a message addressed to participants:

“Just like in Commercy, we can make these three days into something foundational, especially in the lessons to be learned, in the mistakes not to make again. This real democracy that we’re building and inventing happens in real time, in all its complexity, and over time, in all its lengthiness — not in the quickness of the time of those we’re fighting against. We only have four months of experience but what a long way we’ve come in such a short time!”

 Despite the disappointments, a plan is set in place for another Assembly of Assemblies in early June. Two groups have already offered to host and direct this third gathering, which promises to be decisive.  

[Edited 5.13.2019]

[starspangledbanner27]

Fandom: Saving Mr. Banks

Description: Don DaGradi’s musings about P.L. Travers.  Oneshot; may eventually include more chapters featuring different characters’ perspectives.

Characters: Don DaGradi, P. L. Travers, Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. Sherman, Walt Disney

Rating: K+

Genre: Drama

Language: English

Read on Fanfiction.net, AO3, Wattpad, Quotev, or below.

Many thanks to Laura and Dr. Riley for beta-reading this story, and to my mom for her constant encouragement and support.

A/N: This story was inspired by Ink Mage’s fanfic entitled “Saving Mr. Sherman” on FFN, so if you enjoy this, I would recommend that you check out “Saving Mr. Sherman” as well.  And, as always, please leave reviews! :)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Saving Mr. Banks, Mary Poppins, or any of the characters from those two movies.

Chapter 1: Don

A heavy, brooding silence hung over the dimly lit rehearsal room in the Animation building at Walt Disney Studios, where three men were working late into the night.  Don DaGradi, the animator-turned-screenwriter, slouched despondently in a rolling chair with his feet propped up on the end of the long table in the center of the room.  He’d spent the last twenty minutes staring with unseeing eyes at the sketchpad in his lap while his mind stewed over the conundrum that was Mrs. P. L. Travers.  

He should have seen it coming.  He’d been working at Disney Studios long enough to know that most authors jumped at the chance to have their stories make it to the big screen, as Mrs. Travers herself had put it, “in glorious Technicolor, for all the world to see.”  But she, the author of the Mary Poppins books, was less than thrilled about the opportunity, and had made sure to let them all know it.  Don pursed his lips in frustration.  He should have known.  A woman who, after denying Walt the film rights for twenty years straight, had finally accepted his offer only on the condition that she be given the authority of script approval—he should have known she’d be nothing but trouble.  But, despite everything, he had still held out hope that she’d at least turn out to be tolerably friendly and cooperative.  

It had taken her all of five minutes to crush his optimism.

“Good morning, Pamela!” he had greeted her as she stepped out of the car that first day.

“It is so discomfiting to hear a perfect stranger use my first name,” she’d returned with a coldness that belied the smile on her face. “Mrs. Travers, please.”

And things had only gone downhill from there.

Every time they came up with a new idea to show her—a new song, a new sequence, a new concept drawing—she immediately shot it down.

“No, no, no!”

“Goodness me, no!”

“It’s all a big mistake; it’s all wrong!”

Eventually, this routine had become as predictable as it was painful, like throwing one’s body against a stone wall in the pathetically vain hope of knocking it down on the hundred-and-first attempt.  Obviously, it hadn’t worked.  None of their attempts had; on the contrary, everything they did only seemed to make her more upset.  A few times—earlier that very day, in fact—she had even left the room in anger. And, try as they might, none of them could ever figure out what it was that had ticked her off, or why, or what they could do to fix it.  All they knew was that she seemed to hate the entire project.

After witnessing the ruthless way she picked apart his script—and it was his script, no matter what she said—Don had quickly concluded that this peevish author could give any Disney villain a run for their money.  “Whatever she says, don’t let it get to you,” Walt had encouraged him after the first day of fire and brimstone. “Remember, you don’t work for her; you work for me.”  But that assurance was small consolation when Don still had the woman’s venom to contend with on a daily basis.  His mind was exhausted; his nerves were shot; his head had been aching for the past three days . . . yet still he had to push through it and keep swallowing her barbs, because it was the only way this project would ever have any hope of completion.  

The last week had been a lot of walking on eggshells for him.  As the scriptwriter, he was more or less the head of this whole collaboration period, which made him responsible for keeping things running as smoothly as possible—a difficult task when he himself struggled to conceal his exasperation. But he had to press on, to keep doing and saying whatever it took to placate that woman—no matter the cost, no matter how distasteful—because, as they had discovered the other day, she still had the upper hand in the form of the unsigned rights agreement.  And now that they knew about it, she took perverse joy in holding it over their heads as a reminder that if any of them displayed even the slightest hint of “impertinence,” she wouldn’t hesitate to flounce back across the pond and throw all their hard work to waste.  

He remembered what it had felt like to watch that whole showdown between her and Walt.  Up until then, he’d been at a loss as to why Walt was letting her walk all over them.  It was completely contrary to everything he knew of the man—Walt, who always got what he wanted, who always had the last word.  That day when Walt had confronted Mrs. Travers about her demand that the color red not appear in the film, it had been clear that the man was at the end of his rope; and Don had fully expected to see him finally put the petulant author in her place.  But then she had pulled out those papers, and the two of them had stared each other down for several long moments . . . and then, much to Don’s surprise, Walt had drawn a deep breath and turned to his team in exasperated defeat.  

“All right . . . no red in the picture.”  

With that, he had stormed out of the rehearsal room; and Mrs. Travers had sat there, smugly fanning herself with the papers as she watched him go.  Bob Sherman had been the one to finally break the stunned silence.

“He doesn’t have the rights.”

“Quite,” she’d replied with a self-satisfied nod; and Don, from where he stood next to the window, had heaved a sigh and shaken his head hopelessly.  It was discouraging enough that Walt couldn’t simply win her over as he did everyone else with his trademark Disney charm. But now that they knew the truth, that Mrs. Travers had his hands tied . . . well, what was the point in even trying?

Suddenly he thought of the drawing he’d made the other day—a rough depiction of Mrs. Travers sitting primly in one of the rolling chairs in the rehearsal room, snapping “No!  No!  No!”—and he smirked wryly.  He might have to grin and bear it while in her presence, but at least no one could stop him from venting his frustration on paper.  In fact, after the “Spoonful of Sugar” incident—when she had bashed the lyrics to the nursery song and tossed a copy of the script out the window before stalking out of the room, as usual—Don had shown his snarky sketch to Dick and Bob Sherman, and the three of them had shared a hearty laugh.  He remembered thinking that in the face of all she had put them through, it hardly made sense to laugh—but then he’d realized that the moment they ceased to find humor in the absurdity of the whole situation would be the moment they might as well give up.

As he glanced up at Dick and Bob where they sat on opposite sides of the table, looking just as dispirited as he felt, Don couldn’t help wondering if they hadn’t finally reached that moment. There was certainly no laughter in this room now; only a heavy tension that hung palpably in the air—as if Mrs. Travers, though absent in body, were present in spirit, just waiting for something to find fault with.  

Don’s heart went out to the two songwriters, for he knew that Mrs. Travers’s constant criticism had taken just as severe a toll on them as it had on him, if not more so.  Dick, whose lively cheerfulness she had rebuffed at every turn until it was all but squelched; and Bob, whose outspoken annoyance at her ornery demands had led her to single him out several times as the object of her fits of temper—neither of them should have had to endure the treatment she dished out.  Don hadn’t been personally acquainted with the Sherman brothers for very long; but through working on this project, he had developed a sort of fraternal bond with them.  Not only did they live up to their reputation as legendary creative geniuses, but they were also good men and great friends.  And having to stand by and watch Mrs. Travers unleash her wrath upon them day after day . . . it was just too much.

Of all the insensitive remarks she had made to any of them, the singularly unforgivable one—to him and Dick, anyway—was what she’d said about Bob’s leg.  It was only the second day of negotiations; and after a long morning of her quibbling about petty details, the older Sherman brother had unwisely dared to voice his annoyance.  What had happened next was all too predictable: he and Mrs. Travers had gone head to head; and this time, in his frustration, he had pushed her too far. She’d sent him out of the room like a disobedient child . . . and as he limped out the door and down the hall, she’d asked, “What is wrong with his leg?”

“He got shot,” Dick had replied; and for a brief moment, Don had thought she might actually show some sympathy.  But instead, she uttered a little scoff.  

“Well, that’s hardly surprising.”

Don’s mouth had fallen open in shock; and he hadn’t needed to look at Dick to sense the fury radiating off him.  But all Mrs. Travers had to say was, “Can I expect any more drama from anyone else?”  The heartless witch.  How she had ever managed to write a children’s book series was beyond him.

He should have come to hate her by now.  In the face of such unyielding hostility, it seemed like the only natural response.  And yet he still couldn’t bring himself to—because, much as he hated to admit it, a part of him (albeit a very small part) sympathized with her. He was, after all, a writer . . . maybe not on the same level as she was; but still, he understood the protectiveness a writer felt for his—or her—stories.  And for a woman as set in her ways as Mrs. Travers clearly was, it couldn’t be easy to cope with all the modifications that necessarily took place between the page and the screen.  Don understood this; and he’d have been more than willing to work with her to make sure she was satisfied, if only she had given him the chance.  If only she had given any of them the chance.

But she hadn’t.  And now, there they all sat, at a loss as to how they could ever hope to pull this off.  The current state of things was disheartening, to say the least; in fact, they probably would have given up long ago if Walt weren’t so particularly invested in this project.  The company had put out many films over the years, but this one . . . this one was special. For it was the fulfillment of a promise that Walt, all those years before, had made to his little daughters: that someday, somehow, he would make their beloved Mary Poppins fly off the pages of her books.  And he was clearly determined to keep that promise, at whatever cost to his and his team’s sanity.  

Don sighed.  As fathers, he and the Shermans understood the necessity of keeping promises to one’s kids; but still, it seemed almost cruelly unreasonable of Walt to keep them working on a project that was so obviously futile.  After all, Walt himself had already battled the author and lost; what made him think their luck with her would be any better?

Just then, Don heard the door to the rehearsal room swing open.  Knowing that there was only one person who’d be coming to see them at this hour, he took his feet off the table and sat up a little straighter as Walt strode over, hands on his hips.  “Guys, we gotta fix this,” he stated.

“Easier said than done,” Don muttered.

“How?!” Bob demanded.  “How can we fix it when she hates everything we do?  What is there to fix, anyway?  She’s the problem!”

Walt heaved a sigh.  “Well . . . I don’t know.  I’m taking her to Disneyland tomorrow; if nothing else, that’ll at least give you guys a day to come up with something.”

“You’re taking her to Disneyland?” Dick repeated incredulously.  “How on earth did you get her to agree to that?  She hates that sort of thing.”

Walt smirked.  “Well, I don’t have to get her to agree to it; I’m the one who pays her driver.”

“So, what, you’re just going to kidnap her?” Don asked sardonically.  “That’s sure to go over well.”

“Hey, you never know,” Walt replied.  “They say Disneyland is the happiest place on earth; maybe a few hours there will soften her up a little.  I might even get her to try out one of the rides.”

Don gave a wry chuckle.  “Now there’s something I’d like to see.”

“Mrs. Travers on a Disneyland ride?”  Bob snorted.  “All due respect, Walt, I doubt even you can pull that off.”

Walt’s eyes twinkled mischievously.  “Really?  Care to bet?”

Bob’s eyebrows rose in disbelief; but when he saw Walt was serious, he laughed.  “All right.” He reached into his pocket, drew out a bill, and waved it in the air.  “Ten bucks says you can’t get that woman on a ride.”

Grinning, Walt looked over at the other two men. “Any more takers?”

Dick shrugged.  “Well, I hate to take your money, Walt, but since you offered . . .” He pulled two five-dollar bills from his pocket and held them up.  “I’m in.”

Walt then turned to Don, who regarded him skeptically. “Walt, how come you’re suddenly so confident about this?” he asked.  “What do you know that we don’t?”

Walt drew a deep breath and looked downward, thinking. “I’m not sure yet,” he answered after several moments.  “But what you guys told me about how she reacted to the bank song, how it seemed like she was close to tears . . . that got me thinking.  Maybe this isn’t just about her being ornery.  Maybe there’s something else going on, something we’ve been missing.”

“And you think you can find out what it is?” Dick asked.

“I don’t know,” Walt admitted.  “But if I can, then I think that’ll be our best shot at getting through to her.”

The three men nodded slowly in assent.  Then Don spoke again.  “So, what do you want us to do now?”

“For now?  Go home.”  Walt waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal.  “Get some sleep.  Goodness knows you’ve earned it.”

“And then what?” Bob pressed.

“Well . . .”  Walt sighed again and ran his fingers thoughtfully over his moustache.  “When you boys came to me earlier, you said Mrs. Travers seemed to be upset specifically about Mr. Banks.”

“Right,” Dick and Bob agreed.  Don nodded silently, thinking back to what had happened earlier that day.  

In retrospect, he realized, they should have noticed that something about her was off from the minute she arrived in the rehearsal room that morning.  Rather than lighting into them immediately with some biting remark as usual, she had walked in without saying a word, only giving a brief nod to acknowledge their greetings.  Then, after setting her purse down on the table, she had meandered over to the window—the very same window she had tossed the script out a few days ago—and stared out, silent and subdued, until Don approached her to ask if they might play her the Sherman brothers’ new song: “Fidelity Fiduciary Bank.”

Upon receiving her go-ahead, he had proceeded to act out a short segment of the scene leading up to the song—the dialogue between Dawes, Sr., and Michael Banks.  Mrs. Travers had given it a rare nod of approval; and Don, encouraged, had then turned his full attention to Dick and Bob’s performance.  When, a few minutes into the song, he glanced over at Mrs. Travers to catch her reaction, he had found her apparently distracted, with her gaze fixed not on them, but across the room.  Don had thought nothing of it in the moment, his attention absorbed in helping act out the song.  The men poured all their energy into it, Dick pounding out the tune emphatically while Bob pumped his fist and Don tapped his pencil in time with the beat, until at last they reached the end, and all three belted out the last line together with dramatic flair.  It was afterwards, as they were remarking excitedly on how well the song fit with the rest of the scene, that the storm had hit.  

“Why did you have to make him so cruel?!” she’d exclaimed, whirling around to face them.  “He was not a monster!”

The men, taken aback by this outburst, had stared at her in bewilderment.  Don had been the first to regain his power of speech.  

“Who are we talking about?  I’m confused.”

Ignoring his question, she’d asked, “You all have children, yes?”  Once they had all replied in the affirmative, she’d continued: “Well, and do those children make letters for you—do they write letters, do they make you drawings?  And would you tear up those gifts in front of them?”

They had remained silent, unsure how to respond.

“It’s a dreadful thing to do!  I don’t understand!  Why must Father tear up the advertisement his children have made for him, and throw it in the fireplace?  Why won’t he mend their kite?  Why have you made him so unspeakably awful?!”

Throughout her impassioned speech, Don and the Shermans had barely reacted except to blink in astonishment.  Her yelling at them was nothing new, but this . . . this they had never seen coming.  It wasn’t just another temper tantrum; no, this time there was real emotion behind it.  Her mask of cold severity had, for once, been stripped away, revealing tears of distress in her eyes; and the men, who had almost ceased to believe she was even capable of feeling anything besides irritation and self-importance, were flabbergasted, with no idea what to say or do.

“If you claim to make them live, why can’t he—they—live well?  I can’t bear it.  Please don’t.  Please don’t.”  

Those were the last words she’d uttered before leaving the room in a fluster—or at least, the last words she had directed at them.  As she was walking out, Don had thought he heard her mutter something else—something about having “let him down again” . . . whoever “him” was.  Don had called after her; but if she heard him, she ignored him, and neither he nor the other two men had made any attempt to follow her.

She hadn’t returned to the rehearsal room for the rest of the day, and they had later heard a rumor that she’d been seen sitting out on the lawn with her driver, making a peculiar little setup with twigs and leaves, or digging holes in the ground and pouring the contents of a paper cup into them, or some strange thing like that.  After everything else Don had seen of her, he was hardly surprised.  Meanwhile, shortly after she walked out, he and the others had gone to Walt’s office to tell him about the incident.  Walt had listened with folded arms and a furrowed brow that revealed him to be as perplexed as they were; and once they’d finished recounting everything, he took a deep breath.  

“All right,” he’d said quietly.  “You boys get back to work; I’ll see what I can do.”

So they had.  And now, here they sat, waiting expectantly to hear Walt’s next words. After a brief pause, he spoke again. “So, if it’s Mr. Banks that’s bothering her, then I think that’d be a good place to start.”

Suddenly, in a flash of insight, Don recalled what Mrs. Travers had said right after throwing the script out the window the other day.

“You think Mary Poppins has come to save the children, Mr. Disney?”  

Walt had merely given her a blank stare; and she had then stalked out of the room in disgust, leaving them all to speculate about what she meant.  It wasn’t until now that Don finally figured it out.

“It’s not the children she comes to save,” he murmured to himself as the realization dawned.

“What’s that?” Walt asked.

Don met his gaze, a wave of excitement bubbling up within him.  “That’s it!” he exclaimed.  “That’s what she meant; that’s what we’ve been missing!  Mary Poppins—she’s not there to save the children.  She’s there to save Mr. Banks!”

He looked over at the Sherman brothers, who nodded slowly.  “That’s why she was so upset earlier,” Bob mused aloud.  

Don grimaced.  “I guess we did make him pretty harsh.”

“Well, that is how he came across in the books,” Dick reminded him.

“Maybe, but—and, believe me, I never thought I’d say this—I think Mrs. Travers has a point.  Mr. Banks might be harsh, but he isn’t cruel, not really.  And I think we—I made it seem like he is.”  He sighed. “I hate to think about rewriting the whole script, though.”

Bob shook his head.  “No, you can’t.  We’ve come too far for that.  There has to be some other way.”

They all fell silent for several moments.  Then Dick snapped his fingers.  “I’ve got it!”

“Huh?”  Don and Bob looked up at him quizzically.  

Dick leaned forward eagerly in his chair.  “Mr. Banks is harsh in the beginning.  He has to be; otherwise there wouldn’t be a story.  The only problem with our version is that he never changes.  So, really, all we have to do is rewrite the ending!”

“A redemption arc.”  Don nodded thoughtfully.  “I can work with that.”

“And we could write a song for it,” Dick added, gesturing between himself and his brother.  “Something upbeat.”

“A happy-ending song,” Bob agreed.  “I like it.”

“What do you think, Walt?” Dick asked.

Walt, who had stood there in silence while the seeds of inspiration germinated, now spoke.  “Well, it’s an idea.”  He looked around the table at each of them in turn.  “You think you can pull this together in twenty-four hours?”

Don shrugged.  “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Well, all right then,” Walt said.  “I’ll stop in tomorrow afternoon to see how it’s coming along.  But for now, you boys should go home and get some rest.”

They nodded again; and once he had bid them good night and left, the trio rose from their chairs and made a cursory effort to tidy up the table before grabbing their jackets and heading out of the room.  As they strode down the hall, Dick heaved a sigh. “Just five more days, guys,” he said. “Then she’ll be gone, and we can get back to work.”

“. . . Following some drinks, a large bottle of aspirin, and a forty-eight-hour nap,” Bob amended, eliciting a weary chuckle from the other two.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, until at last they emerged from the building into the breezy cool of the southern California night.  There on the front walkway, they paused, and, as if drawn by some ethereal pull, tilted their heads back to gaze up at the heavens.  Although the smog and city lights of greater Los Angeles obscured the stars from view, Don found the velvety blackness of the sky to have a soothing effect upon his soul; and for a moment, he allowed himself to be lost in it, forgetting everything else.

At last, Dick broke the spell by inhaling deeply. “Ah . . . the sweet smell of fresh air and freedom.”

With a sigh, Don shook himself out of his reverie. “Enjoy it while you can,” he remarked wryly.  “We’re all going to be back here bright and early tomorrow.”

“Don’t remind me,” Dick groaned, then turned to nudge his brother.  “Hey, you think our wives are still awake?”

“Well, I told Joyce not to wait up for me . . . but I doubt she listened,” Bob replied, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Dick laughed.  “Yeah, it’s probably the same with Lizzie.”  Heaving a sigh, he laid a hand on Bob’s shoulder.  “And on that note, I’m gonna head home.  Tell Joyce and the kids I said hello.”

Bob nodded.  “Sure thing.  You do the same for me, all right?”

“You bet.”  Dick gave his brother a thump on the back, then turned to their friend.  “’Night, Don.”

“Goodnight,” Don replied.  “Drive safe.”

“Thanks.”  With that, the younger Sherman brother headed down the sidewalk towards the lot where his car was parked.

Don drew a deep breath.  “Well, we should probably get going too.  Goodnight, Bob.”  

He had just turned to walk away when he felt a hand on his arm.  “Don, wait a minute.”

“What is it?” he asked, turning back around.

Bob glanced over his shoulder to confirm that his brother was now a good distance away, then leaned in toward Don and lowered his voice.  “I didn’t want to say anything about this when Dick was around, but . . . what are we going to do if she finds out about the ‘Jolly Holiday’ sequence?”

“You mean the animation?” Don asked.  

Bob nodded.  

Don sighed heavily.  “Well . . . that’s just not going to happen.”

“Well, yeah, but . . . you know . . . what if it does?”

“It can’t,” Don replied firmly.  “Because we’re not going to let her find out.”

They remained silent for several seconds, staring across the street at nothing in particular.  Then Bob shook his head.  “I don’t like doing this,” he muttered.  “Mrs. Travers might be a pill, but I don’t like lying to her.”

“Neither do I,” Don replied.  “But Walt’s the one who insisted on the animation; and honestly, at this point, I just want to get this whole thing over with.”

“Yeah,” Bob agreed.  After another few moments, he turned to face Don once more.  “Well, you’re right; we should head out.”

Don nodded.  “See you tomorrow.”

“You too,” Bob replied; and with that, the two men parted ways.

She can’t find out, Don thought as he walked to his car.  A sick heaviness settled into the pit of his stomach as he realized, not for the first time, that everything they’d had to endure from her up to that point would be nothing compared to the wrath she would unleash upon them if she discovered the hidden truth about that sequence—that, save for Mary, Bert, and the kids, it was entirely animated, in direct violation of the terms of her contract.  

He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.  No, she couldn’t find out.  She wouldn’t find out.  And worrying about it would do nothing to help.  So, as he got into his car and drove home, he instead tried to focus on what tomorrow would bring.  Together, he, Dick, and Bob would somehow manage to come up with a new ending—one that, hopefully, would meet with her approval.  A happy ending for Mr. Banks.  And then she would be satisfied, and they would finally be able to move forward and bring this project to fruition.  Walt would be happy.  Mrs. Travers would be . . . well, hopefully the closest thing to happiness that she had the capacity to feel.  Anyway, she’d soon be headed back to England, and then everything would return to normal.

In just a few more days, Don would once again feel the relief of coming to work every day without a cloud of dread hanging over him, the pleasure of doing the job he loved without a constant stream of vitriol assaulting him.  He’d once again know the joy of going home at a reasonable hour and kissing his wife and having dinner with his family and saying goodnight to his kids.  As for Mary Poppins, she would eventually make it from script to screen, like every other Disney movie Don had been involved with . . . and then life would go on, and all this insanity would be nothing but a distant memory.

And everything would work out fine.  Because it had to.

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[solivar]

Rattling my tip jar again. This past month and change has been an absolute storm of financial hits. Any donation of any kind will get a ficlet, just message me here.

Also, for your edification: the start of something I was planning to finish before I posted but which you’ll see first now in thanks for your past and present support.

Code Talker:  D Is For Deadlock or Possibly Ah-Da-Ah-Ho-Dzah

It began, as many things involving Overwatch ultimately did, with an anonymous text message dropped in a tipline mailbox (“IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING,” the rallying cry of Homeland Security since at least the mid-Oughts, weaponizing the paranoia of random citizens being a thing that never truly went out of style). It ended, as did many things that eventually came to involve Blackwatch, with small arms fire and carefully orchestrated explosions and interrogation rooms under places not formally known as prisons. In between, there was a mystery.

And if there was anything that Commander Gabriel Reyes absolutely could not resist, it was a mystery. Particularly when the alternative was paperwork.

⧫

“A secretary.”

Gabriel did not look up from the screen he was perusing, primarily because he didn’t want to have to either see or acknowledge the look of supreme despair that he knew would be living on his commanding officer’s face at that moment. “What about him? And it’s ‘administrative aide.’ Get with the proper terminology, Commander.”

“Wait, you actually have one?” That sounded more incredulous than actively despairing and so he chanced a look and found Jack Morrison, Commander of Overwatch, staring at him with unvarnished astonishment naked on his face. Admittedly, the astonishment might have had more to do with the fact that every available horizontal surface in his office was covered in the neatly, precisely arranged by both chronological order and grade of importance stacks of hardcopy and their accompanying workpads that represented eight full months of only dubiously attended paperwork than it did with his actual possession of a administrative aide. Or a secretary. Either/or. “Where is she?”

“Right now?” Gabriel checked the schedule. “Down in the range improving his service pistol marksmanship qualifications to at least expert.”

“...Really. Really, Gabe.” Now there was the absolute despair he had grown to know and love. “Is the kid even field rated? Does he have to be in order to successfully serve as your s -- administrative aide?”

“He will be by the time I’m done with him.” Gabriel replied, evenly, and finished signing off on his segment of a report that might or might not have involved highly sensitive operations currently underway beneath the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica. “And he will also be perfectly competent to put a bullet or two in anybody who tries to walk into or out of this office with something they ought not to be carrying. Or anyone else’s office, once he gets tired of working for me and runs screaming into the night. It’s an all-around win for the organization.”

“You remain the world’s most dedicated troll. I love you, but it’s true.” Jack lifted a stack of something that probably constituted only dubiously actionable intel given its relative proximity to his desk, deposited it neatly on the floor, and pushed the hoverchair previously occupied over, handed a tablet across the desk to take the place of the one he’d just set aside. “I probably shouldn’t distract you from bringing joy to the hearts of filing clerks all over the northern hemisphere but I really think I need to read you in on this one.”

“Do tell.” Gabriel made some space on his desk by virtue of piling three things he absolutely did not want to deal with just then together, opening a drawer, and dropping them inside, where they would molder at least until his aide got back from the firing range.

Jack tapped the pad pointedly. “Two weeks ago, someone texted that to the US Department of Homeland Security office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The tipline mailbox.”

Gabriel inclined a single, are you fucking with me brow and thumbed the tablet open. The message was a precisely arranged block of alphanumeric text followed by twenty pages of increasingly baffled and irritated memos back and forth between the DHS field office, DHS HQ in DC, and, finally, the Overwatch field office just down the hall and three floors up. He paged through them, eyebrows migrating steadily in the direction of his hairline as he went and, when he was finished, he muttered aloud. “What the actual fuck?”

“Cryptanalysis tends to agree with the assessment that it’s a cipher of some kind -- the original thought was a relatively basic transposition variant. The frequency analysis suggested as much. But when they tried to decrypt it on the basis of that theory, not a single attempt produced a readable result.” A wry little smile. “Athena’s been running cipher tables for days and getting nothing.”

“So why exactly are we thinking this is something worth cracking and not just some intensely bored computer science nerd idly trolling the local DHS office?” He could see why they’d thought in that direction, as a part of his brain started working out the math and the transposition modifiers and, even then, saw exactly why it wouldn’t work.

“Because whoever sent the initial message sent it again -- three times in the last three days, a secured line that comprehensively defeated any attempt to trace it back to its source. I know, I know. It doesn’t sound like a particularly good argument in favor of this not being an elaborate snipe hunt to me, either.” He reached over and tapped the screen, pulled up a secondary file. “But the Agent in Charge of the Santa Fe office thinks otherwise -- said they had a similar attempt at communication early last year but the message got fumbled and now she’s wondering if it didn’t have something to do with an incident that went down out in the badlands wilderness area.”

Gabriel disengaged himself from his consideration of the puzzle with an almost physical effort. “What kind of incident?”

“A team of geoscience grad students from California found a mass grave full of relatively fresh corpses, ten in total. Local law enforcement took over and, upon investigating the site, found that the bodies were all members of La Muerte Roja, a local gang known for having not particularly cordial relations with another local gang -- “

“Let me guess! Deadlock.”

“In one. The AiC, Julia Alvarez, thinks someone was trying to tip them off on the location -- either of the grave, or whatever it was that caused those fine upstanding individuals to find their way into it.” A pause. “Admittedly, I’m not so sure I buy that, either. But, since Deadlock pinged the radar recently, I thought it might be worth investigating, if only to rule out the possibility.”

“The possibility that someone is trying to pass coded messages about Deadlock activity to the Department of Homeland Security.” Gabriel’s eyes slid, involuntarily, back to the screen.

“It sounds even stupider when you say it out loud.”

“It’s not stupid. Or at least not stupider than anything else it could possibly be.” He glanced up. “Is that an order, Strike Commander?”

“If you want it to be, Commander Reyes.” Jack stood up, and deposited a fresh stack of paperwork in front of him. “Far be it from me to interfere in any of your more pressing duties.”

Gabriel grinned up at him. “Asshole.”

“Slacker. Get to work.”

⧫

To give the actually and legitimately more pressing duties the full and undivided attention they deserved, he stuck the pad in the desk drawer that contained his current cross-stitch project, a random selection of knitting needles, sixteen legal pads full of random sketches, and every fiddle toy ever gifted to him by the rest of the Overwatch command staff, some of which he occasionally even used. Then he locked it, once the estimable young Master Kestenholz returned from the firing range still smelling slightly of cordite, so as to better concentrate on the things that really required his attention at that very moment. And for at least a handful of hours he was able to firmly push it out of his mind while they rediscovered what the top of his desk and the storage credenza looked like which, considering the sheer volume of crap that needed to be signed, sent, and subsequently filed, he thought was a perfectly adequate day’s work.

“Are you certain, Commander?” And he was so damn young and earnest as he said it, too, all industrious diligence with shining golden curls and huge blue eyes and a charming Swiss accent and Gabriel was briefly convinced that this kid had obviously been vat-grown and programmed specifically to act as his adjunct administrative functions conscience. “It’s only six.”

“Yes, I’m sure -- and you say that now but give it two months.” He grinned and waved off the ensuing objections. “Go home, Kestenholz. And I don’t want to see your face before 0900 tomorrow.”

Which gave him approximately fifteen hours to work on the really classified stuff occupying the futon in the corner, to which he applied a solid six before the itch in the back of his skull grew too insistent to ignore. The rest went into the blastproof, bulletproof storage locker for later and the irresistible puzzle-bearing tablet came out. “Athena.”

The holoscreen occupying the corner of his desk activated itself, displaying Athena’s stylized personal signifier icon, and her voice issued melodiously from the hidden speakers. “Yes, Commander Reyes?”

“May I see the transposition tables you prepared for this communication?” He sent the files to his personal workstation and opened them all in a fan spread alongside the main display, upon which Athena kindly pulled up the decryption attempts she’d prepared. “Thank you. Now...why do you look so familiar?”

And it was familiar, aggravatingly so, mostly because the reason for it danced mockingly just out of reach. It did so for the rest of the night, not a bit of which was spent sacked out on the now-accessible futon, and at breakfast, when he strolled into the officers’ mess with a fresh legal pad covered in scribbles for his first coffee and five thousand calories for the day, and continued itching relentlessly through the remainder of the morning, even as he reviewed paperwork and signed off on reports and piled physical documents to be archived into the arms of his exceedingly cheerful aide.  The bulk of the stuff that Kestenholz could have access to at his current security rating was sitting on a hovercart by just after thirteen hundred, leaving only the still-locked case he’d have to shoot the kid over and two greatly reduced piles of barely-qualifying-as-intel and the small part of his brain currently paying no attention whatsoever to any of it was forcefully dragging the rest away.

“Kestenholz, go and hand that off to Archives, take lunch, and -- “ He pulled up the daily schedule, made an amendment, “go hit the range. We’ll deal with the rest of this after you’ve had the chance to let your arms uncramp.”

“I am feeling a bit peckish.” Kestenholz admitted, with the same unflagging good cheer he’d had on display upon arrival that morning, and Gabriel made a mental note to seriously find out the provenance of that kid and, even if it was an amiable Swiss cloning facility, to write a formal letter of commendation both for his can-do attitude, his ability to keep pace, and his borderline saintly tolerance for terrible paperwork discipline from senior officers. “Would you like me to have the commissary send anything up?”

“Thank you, no. I’ll get something later.” His fingers twitched with the urge to open that file again. “Dismissed, Mr. Kestenholz. Eat a strudel for me.”

Two hours later, he was still gazing, eyes half-focused, at the screens spread out in the air before him, on which six different attempts to decrypt the message according to six separate and distinct methods had produced six different kinds of total gibberish. “I should send you over to Analysis and see what Icebreaker and his pale computer larvae can come up with…”

“Are you talking to me?” The voice was warm, richly amused, and came from the door; he looked over the top of the screen he was currently perusing and found Ana standing there, fist still raised from the knock that he hadn’t heard.

“To myself mostly. What can I do for you?” He rotated the non-solution solution sitting in front of him and spun it, nettled beyond endurance by its ongoing refusal to make sense.

“Oh, nothing really.” Stepped in, closed the door behind her. “It’s just my turn to remind you to eat.”

“I’ve had breakfast. A gigantic breakfast, I assure you, but thank you for your concern.” He laced his fingers together and gave her a Look overtop them; she was not noticeably intimidated.

“It’s fifteen hundred hours, Gabriel.” The gentlest of all possible reproof in her tone. “And it’s also my turn to remind you to sleep.” She came all the way around and very deliberately sat on the edge of his desk, blocking a set of screens from easy view. “You have been sleeping, yes?”

“...For certain values of ‘sleeping.’” Gabriel hedged and turned to face her. “I caught some rest the other day.”

“Which other day? Because it’s Wednesday. And, frankly,” Ana leaned in and smiled beneficently down at him, “you don’t look like you’ve been sleeping. At all.”

“Blame this.” He flicked the screen again and watched its contents spin. “It came in through DHS yesterday afternoon and it’s been eating my goddamned brain.”

Ana caught the edge of the display, considered, and frowned deeply. “A substitution code of some kind?”

“That’s what frequency analysis suggests -- the AiC who sent it seems to think it has something to do with gang-related activity in the southwestern badlands, but nothing I’ve done to spindle, fold, or mutilate it has yielded a coherent message. Not in English, not in Spanish.” He poked the screen again a bit more vengefully. “Even with the Latin alphabet I’m not sure….” It clicked together in his mind. “It’s a Latin alphabet. But it’s not made up of Latin phonemes. There’s more than twenty-six letters, that’s why a standard modular solution doesn’t work.”

“Gabriel?” Ana blinked at him as he stood up, took her gently but firmly by the elbow, and steered her back out the door. “Are you -- “

“Ana, I love you dearly, but get out. I almost have this.” He closed the door, also firmly but gently, in her face.

“I am having food sent up, Gabriel!” Ana shouted, kindly, from the hallway. “And if Athena tells me you haven’t gone back to your quarters by twenty-one hundred I am coming back with my rifle and a tranquilizer dart.”

“You do what you have to do, Ana!” He called back and got to work.

Four hours later, he activated his comm, requested a secure line to the Strike Commander’s office, and waited patiently while it went through. “Gabe?”

“Well, I’m going to tell you right now that the Agent in Charge there in Santa Fe might have been onto something about that earlier message, Jack.” Gabriel replied, by way of greeting. “And she’s completely right about this one.”

“You cracked it?” A pause. “How long have you been working on this? Jesus, Gabe. Have you even slept?”

“Look, I’ll sleep when I’m dead, okay?” He punched open a secure data connection and sent over what he’d found. “Also: whoever sent this is either a math genius, a historian, a linguist, or some combination of thereof. Take a look.”

The line was silent for some moments as Jack opened the file and examined it. “What language is that? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“It’s Navajo. Diné bizaad. The frequency analysis was pinging on the fact that the written language uses a modified Latin alphabet -- but with thirty-six letters instead of twenty-six, which threw any modular mathematical attempt to decipher it off by a factor of ten. It is a relatively simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher, at base.” Gabriel leaned back in his chair. “It’s the translation, in this case, that’s interesting.”

“You’re enjoying this entirely too much.” Jack informed him and he had to allow there was a certain amount of truth to that.

“The message was: Want to help. Text this number when this message is received.”

“...You already texted it, haven’t you.” It wasn’t actually a question.

“I have! And I received a very interesting response, too.” He forwarded the rest of the information: message, translation, satellite overflight maps, preliminary analysis. “In brief: the coordinates translate to a place in the hills near where Alamogordo used to be before the Crisis. I requested any recent satellite overflight images, ran some historical comparisons against archival data, and I do believe what we’re looking at here is a man-made structure. More specifically, it’s a drop point of some kind. And that word, right there, is Deadlock.” He pulled up the video feed so he could watch the information filtering into Jack’s head. “This is me formally requesting permission to detail a Blackwatch operations team to investigate.”

“I never should have given this to you.” Jack looked up from the documentation. “You think there’s something actionable on this? We can spin the DHS field office in Santa Fe passing this along into a de facto request for intervention, if necessary, provided we keep it on the down-low -- Washington’s been getting pretty hissy about having all the legalities tucked neatly in order before they’ll sign off on our involvement in domestic law enforcement issues.”

��The Central American Collective has already formally requested intervention on the issue of cross-border contraband smuggling -- and if the smugglers, and the contraband, originate north of the border, that means the issue has passed domesticity and into our remit.” He laced his fingers together to keep them from fidgeting. “And, yes, I think it’s something. There are roads coming in and out of that place that are visible from orbit, which means they’re traveled semi-frequently. Someone in a position to know where it was reached out about it and the means they used to do so argued that they’re also in a position of risk as well as knowledge. I’m not suggesting we go in guns blazing, but putting some eyes on the situation couldn’t hurt.”

“All right. Pick your team. I’ll cut the orders -- observation only, for the time being. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

[frankwallace]

On becoming a composer

 Customer Inquiry

A customer of Gyre Music recently ordered several of my more serious works for solo guitar. And so, being pleased I might have a new and serious fan, I wrote directly to him to thank him and ask what his plans were for the pieces. I was surprised, and also pleased, when he wrote back that he had not the ability to play them, but only wanted to study the scores as a budding composer. He continued that he admired my work and particularly loved my use of dissonance. Subsequently he asked if I would consider telling him more about my development as a composer. I answered with the following and thought it might be of interest to others…

Beginning composer

I never even dreamed of being a composer. I’ve never taught or studied composition. All I write comes from instinct on top of my education and decades of paying attention to what is going on in music. A very few frustrating attempts along the way, literally once a decade or so, led nowhere. Yet somehow in the mid 90’s at age 45 or so, my wife suddenly proposed that I record some of my own music. She was nuts! There was no music to record.

But the seed was planted. Sketches, that you now have, was a growing collection of short works for my young students. I was getting bored with the method I was teaching and I was bored with the business of a music career – finding gigs, students etc. So teaching young children was a new course of action for me and it was engrossing. Writing simple studies and fun pieces for them led to everything that followed as a composer.

Love every note

One day I was composing a simple blues piece for a student and I suddenly started going off in new and unexpected directions. This became the Prelude to Suite Ladyslipper. Intrigued and encouraged, I pulled out some old notebooks. Somewhat miraculously I was able to make sense out of a ton of old messy writing, and that became Quadrangle. That was it – I was hooked. Was I a composer?

The key seemed to be that I had nothing invested, no goal other than pure joy. I loved the sounds I was creating and I always loved making beautiful sounds on the guitar. Whenever I created a chord that I had never heard before it was particularly gratifying. I somehow trusted myself as a composer in ways I never had as a performer. It was all good! And I can say that I still feel that way – I love every single piece I have written and have thrown away very little.

Compose with trust

You asked about several pieces that happen to represent the beginning of my second period of composition. The first period had little chromatic dissonance. I was modelling a lot on Renaissance practice and molding dissonance within the scale or mode. It pleased me. But curiosity about what else I could do led to new sounds. Serial music had little attraction for me, but I knew the basics and so tried a few tone rows – Red Lion comes to mind from Song of Albin. The Elements was mostly a lot of improv with no special idea or concept of technical compositional goals. This emerging, more contemporary style certainly came in part from a great admiration and attraction to the “Bream repertoire” – Britten, Walton, Henze, etc.

In The Bells, however, I developed a technique of assigning notes to the letters of names. The second Bell is for Norbert Dams, whose name generated note groups from a simple chart. The opening chords literally spell his name. The notes I generated for Epitafio a un Pajaro seemed too boring – just an A minor chord arpeggio. So I made a chromatic version, then added the name of the poet for the song, Federico Garcia Lorca. I manipulated those notes into different chords and voicings/melodies and finally found something attractive. It comes back to trust that my ear could manipulate and mold that which I didn’t like into a new and attractive idea. Cool thing was, the A minor chord became the basis for the third movement and was perfect. It represented the peace of the butterfly [representing the soul] flying free and my ear led me to writing in the style of a Renaissance Agnus Dei.

Seed of chance

I have now written many pieces in this fashion. It’s kind of like throwing dice – there is an element of chance. But that only generates the seed and then I mold the growth of the germ to my satisfaction, like a Bonsai artist. I have no predetermined concept of form and try not to push a concept into the realm of intellectual boredom. You need to keep a visceral link to the process. You want your ideas to move and transform themselves. It’s time to return to the beginning of the piece when an idea gets boring. Go back and experiment with how it can be transformed or re-generated into a new related idea. This maintains continuity, but creates interest and excitement.

My second sonata, Timid Nightingale, completed a year ago, used a couple of names and a medieval melody that were woven together into a five minute piece. One three note melodic progression of F, E, D# ends the first piece and generated the beginning of the second movement, then maintains a presence throughout all four, 17 minutes in total.

Musical ideas come in many ways

A retired professor that lived around the corner gave me my only composition lesson. I asked him about the ear and the fact that I felt I could not generate musical ideas in my mind alone. If I do hear something in my head, I can’t reliably write it down. I asked him about this and he responded, “Do you like the music you write?” My enthusiastic affirmative response led him to say, “So what’s the problem?” It works – it ain’t broke – don’t fix it. I also once asked a brilliant composer friend if I should get a masters degree. He said absolutely not! “You already have an accomplished voice, why be trained to do it like someone else?!”

Friendly dissonance

Lastly, since you asked specifically about dissonance, I believe all dissonance needs resolution. I believe in the triumph of beauty. I don’t know how I freed myself from tonal thinking except by the process I described above. Well, there is this, a progression of dissonant chords, or polyphony creates its own language. Since there are only seven basic chords in a key, it seems best to limit the chords used whether they are in a key or not. Through repetition they will become familiar as the piece progresses, even if they are not tonal.

Lesson 1 done!

I hope that helps and inspires. Start simple – don’t be afraid to repeat, to experiment, to improvise. Last advice – start each day with an improv of any kind. If you play anything you remotely like, write it down, whether it be a melodic fragment, a chordal riff or rhythmic groove. I recall waiting for a class to begin many years ago with guitar in hand. My hands started playing a riff, repeating it many times. So I pulled out my notebook to write it down and figured out the riff was in 15/16. It became the basis for a song several years later called The Lady and the Bear. Don’t be sloppy if you want to be a real composer! Stimulate the whole mind by figuring out the correct rhythm and notes and that will inspire the creative process.

The Lady and the Bear

On becoming a composer was originally published on FRANK WALLACE

[imprecisemagic]

set theory (ACOTAR/azassigan fic)

1.   the intersection of two circles determine a line known as the radical line

notes: thank you @nerdperson524​ for helping me choose the tag #azassigan for this ship!! although i LOVE canon!mor’s revelation to feyre at the end of ACOWAR and usually sail the oceans on board hms nessian, there is a part of me that wished (prior to learning about Mor's sexuality, so please read this as an AU fic) that all those angsty glances between mor, cassian & azriel had just been resolved by the three of them getting together. and so…

Beautiful, brilliant morning sunshine. Golden rays slanting across the room through carelessly half-drawn curtains. Her skin bathed in glorious light, warmth and peace and muscle-memory of careless days under cerulean skies. Sunrise in the summertime, illuminating the reborn world for those fortunate enough to rise in time. Morning dew evaporating, vibrant colours filling the landscape like an artist adding pigment to a sketch, the hot, bright star with which there would be no world bringing its daily renewal of growth and heat and life to Velaris.

Just what she didn’t need after a late one at Rita’s.

Or maybe that should be an early one. Mor groped around the sun-drenched bedsheets, searching for a pillow or a blanket or literally anything to cover her face. Why hadn’t drunk Mor thought to close the curtains? There was no chance of her getting out of bed to do so now. Her fingers closed on soft fabric and she pulled snuggled her face into whatever it was. The cloth smelt vaguely of Cassian and she made a mental note to tell him if he wanted to get ready for nights out at hers, he shouldn’t make such a damn mess. It was probably a shirt he’d discarded for some banal reason like not tight enough on the upper arms.

Curtain arrangements aside, sober Morrigan usually trusted drunk Morrigan. Drunk Morrigan had good taste in bars, clubs, cocktails, drinking games and men. Especially men. Her memories of nights out were usually hazy, yet interspersed with exhilarating moments of clarity: spinning under enchanted lights, enticing her friends onto dancefloors, genius matchmaking and kisses which hinted somehow simultaneously at starlight and absolute darkness. She had two impressive wingmen, if you could excuse the terrible pun (she’d forbidden them from using that joke to make other ladies giggle about three hundred years ago, claiming she was sick to her back teeth of hearing it even if in truth it still often reappeared in her mind, an old staple she was deeply fond of), and amazing dress sense. Not to mention a figure moulded by half a millennium of working out. If you were going to do something, in Morrigan’s book, you might as well do it right. And that included flings, whirlwind romances and one-night stands.

Although a fleeting glimpse of a clock tower under a heaven of diamond stars which now graced Mor’s memory suggested it had been half three as she and her companions wove their way back to her house, the actual identity of whoever was laid behind her was currently eluding her. Hungover Mor wasn’t worried; she was pretty confident in drunk Mor. She adjusted her position slightly, feeling broader knees against the back of her own, the gentle pressure of a shoulder against her shirt-clad back. That was weird. She was still wearing a shirt… Her fingers found the hem of it, identifying it as one of her own, a simple wine-red shift… hang on a second, she was wearing her own pyjamas. Her decidedly unsexy “night in” pyjamas. What had happened between her and the mystery male that she’d ended up in cosy nightwear?

Keeping her eyes tight shut against the sunlight until she could turn away from it, Mor rolled over to face whoever lay beside her. Her head rebelled, the headache she’d managed to stave off by lying still now starting to demand in earnest to be let in. She liked the mystery, in a way: it was part of the fun. Eyes closed, she slipped her right foot between the male’s calves, tucking it in as she ran her hand down his ribs and back up towards his shoulder blades.

Wings.

Oh shit. Drunk Mor had brought home an Illyrian. Sure, some of them were drop-dead gorgeous, tan skin and tattoos and gleaming hazel eyes, but she tended to avoid them. Too high a chance that Cassian had beat them in a fight once decades ago and would take the mick out of her for sleeping with someone who’d lost to him.

Reluctantly, Mor opened her eyes to survey the damage. Hopefully he was some big, handsome character from a mountain clan he’d now return to before anyone heard. Although the likelihood that the boys hadn’t noticed who she left with was slim, given it had been the three of them out together the night before. Unless they’d paired off before her. But all hope of that slipped away as another lucid recollection came back to her, of the bar closing and Cassian half taking flight in indignation and being seized round the waist by Azriel as they were finally turfed out by an amused yet forceful bartender.

The tattoos were familiar. Mor felt herself tense immediately. To an untrained eye Illyiran tattoos might all look the same, but there were subtle variations and motifs unique to each warrior. Perhaps in a broader sense Mor didn’t know much about the patterns and whorls etched into Illyrian skin. There were three Illyrians, however, who she’d been seeing shirtless on a regular basis for the last five centuries. Her gaze flickered between elements she recognised, speeding up as she totalled up familiar constellations of ink, recognition hurtling into her mind at breakneck pace as she realised she knew each and every one.

She jerked her face up to see his, half-hidden by the pillow, his dark eyelashes softly closed against tan cheeks.

Azriel.

Her reaction put both of their battlefield responses to shame. Mor sat immediately upright, whipping her feet out from between his legs. The jerking movement woke him up, hazel eyes awash with emotion – joy? surprise? fear? – before they became unreadable again, the spymaster’s eyes. Shadows seemed to boil up from the floor, from the space the sun didn’t reach between the bed and the far wall, eclipsing most of his body.

“Oh Az,” she whispered, drawing in a sharp gasp. “Did we –,”

But the words fell away. She didn’t even know what words she’d want to use.

She moved across the bed, increasing the space between them by a small fraction which felt like a world of distance. Blonde hair fell back around her shoulders as she leaned away, tangles from the night before snarling around the points of her ears. She extended a hand out behind herself in a gesture of rarely-needed support. How had she ended up in bed with Azriel? In four hundred years, they’d always managed to skirt around the way he looked at her, to face every fear except the complex, tangled web which was her and Az and Cassian.

Cassian, who now made a decidedly unmanly noise as Mor’s outstretched hand, bearing the weight of her upper body, collided with his nose.

Cassian, whose also-shirtless body she spun round to recognise as he batted her away, rising from a sprawl of limbs that had been just low enough not to cast a shadow across her face in the morning sun.

Cassian, whose expression went from one of hungover man rudely awakened before lunchtime to one of shock, of confusion, of concern.

“Oh Cauldron,” Mor breathed, waking up fully between the two greatest Illyrian warriors of their age.

☆ more to follow ☆

This is a work of fan fiction & all characters are te property of Sarah J. Mass

☆ [ACOTAR fanstuff masterlist] ☆

☆ [ao3 link if that’s your jam] ☆ 

[nikifoorov]

Interview With “Yuri!!! on ICE” Creator Sayo Yamamoto

By Lachlan Johnston

Let’s talk about your latest animated series, “Yuri!!! on ICE”, and jump right into the deep-end of it. First off, in the credits there’s a section under the title of “Name (Rough Sketch)”, but what exactly entailed for this position? Both your name, as well as the established mangaka Misturo Kubo are both listed under this “Name” title, rather than the more traditional “screenplay”. Could you tell us why it is that you chose to work under this title?

Well, I originally sat down and thought about the structure and plot of the series; following this myself and Ms. Kubo worked out the details for episodes 1 – 5. From episode 6 onwards however, it was a totally different dimension (laughs). In the Grand Prix, we wanted to have at least six skaters go up against each other. The actual episode of the series ran for about 20 minutes and 10 seconds, with the actual short programs running for about 2 minutes and 50 seconds, while the free programs would run for 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

When we ordered the music, we reduced the length of it to about 2 minutes. In a bid to keep all of the elements from the skating program, we had our choreographer Kenji Miyamoto make adjustments to transitions and spins so it would all fit the cut. Even then, we still had to make it shorter; this is where we decided how many minutes each character would skate, we pretty much calculated absolutely everything. Then both Ms. Kubo and I decided on the key elements we wanted to incorporate into each episode, and would write them into the plot. After all these discussions, this was the point in which Ms. Kubo would start writing the names.

When comparing a “name” to a “script”, the sketches are kind of like stage directions. It’s as if each drawing or sketch represented a different movement or scene. As a matter of fact, these “names” were the script. Try not to overthink it though, it’s essentially just the same thing as a regular script… (laughs). Given the nature of “names” however, they actually helped a whole lot when we began drawing details such as facial expressions for the characters.

Generally when an anime is created, it’s based on a pre-existing manga series or light novel, making it a little easier to work with. With “Yuri!!! on ICE” however, there was no source manga to be used as a basis. So the thought of you bringing on board a manga artist to work with you on an original anime was quite revolutionary. Where was it this idea came from?

When I first thought of the project, I was considering working together with a screenwriter, thus taking the traditional route. I quickly realized however that screenwriters are typically working on multiple projects simultaneously, so I felt as though it would be difficult to find someone who could dedicate all their time and think about figure skating as seriously as myself (laughs). Right around that time, I was avidly listening to a radio show called “All Night Nippon”, which featured both Ms. Kubo and Mineko Noumachi. Even though I was just a listener, I always thought I could probably become good friends with Ms. Kubo (laughs).

Eventually I heard her talk about figure skating on the radio, and I thought her perspective was extremely interesting. I knew she had contributed to the 2011 film “Moteki” as a screenwriter in the same “name” format we utilized. However, after doing some further research, I found out she had been writing for “Shonen Magazine” here in Japan for quite some time. It was after this discovery that I started to picture her writing scripts for a TV series. Admittedly, it was also a huge bonus to know that she was experienced in making manga based on novels as well. I had this idea that she must be accustomed to collaborating and creating various projects with others.

Were you acquainted with Ms. Kubo from the beginning?

No, not at all. I had previously made a PV for Japanese singer/songwriter Yasuyuki Okamura, and at the time Ms. Kubo was writing creating special manga boards as a bonus with Okamura’s releases. At a later point, I was invited for drinks with Mr. Okamura, and I mentioned me listening to Ms. Kubo on the radio, where he then mentioned him having her contact information (laughs). I guess you could say that my first real contact with Ms. Kubo was through this discussion with Mr. Okamura.  

“Yuri!!! on ICE” has been met with much praise internationally, and not just because of it’s figure skating theme. It features a diverse cast of foreign characters throughout the anime, and whilst that isn’t exactly very special in and of itself, it’s believed that they were drawn and animated extremely naturally. It isn’t exactly something that is done often in Japan, so was this done with a certain demographic in mind?

Actually, we weren’t thinking about a market demographic at all (laughs). It’s impossible to write about figure skating without depicting foreign characters, which is how that happened. What I always wanted to do was recreate and depict the stories of the top class skaters in each seasons final competitions. So it was kind of inevitable that the setting would take place on a global scale.

I went to the Figure Skating Championships which was held in the Czech Republic this past January and happened to see a spectator in cosplay. They were minding their own business, but I saw them in the hallways dressed like Viktor. I accidentally yelled out “Wow! It’s Viktor!” and they ended up hearing me, so they asked if I wanted to take a photo with them. I answered yes, and we ended up taking a picture together. I asked if they knew “Yuri!!! on ICE” and they said they knew about the show (laughs). Later on I saw the same person at the station, but this time they were dressed as Otabek… waiting and sitting there, just like Otabek would. It was really cute honestly.

It’s almost like there’s a totally different feeling when interacting with foreign fans, right?

Exactly! It wasn’t like they were jokingly going to the tournament wearing an outfit that just happened to look like cosplay either. I was completely overwhelmed with joy when I realized that people were starting to take interest in the sport of figure skating because they watched “Yuri!!! on ICE”. I’m sure you’re aware, but I’m not necessarily promoting the wearing of cosplay at figure skating tournaments. We wouldn’t want to distract the competitors, would we? (Laughs)

Since this was the first ever anime to revolve around the world of figure skating, there must have been quite a few challenges. After all, animating figure skating would appear to be an incredibly difficult process. Did MAPPA know what they were getting themselves into right from the early proposal stages of the project?

You know, there’s no real guarantee that any original anime will be a success. I realize how difficult it can be just to get a proposal through, but I thought that if I ever made something, I would just throw it out there regardless of how reckless it may seem (laughs). I believe it’s important that when proposing such an idea, you take a moment to think and verbalize as many interesting ideas as you possibly can.

As for whether or not the production staff were aware of the difficulty of the figure skating scenes, we had already given the work orders for the songs and the choreography during the series construction stage, so I’m sure they were aware. There were moments however where I was asked to reduce some aspects during production when the team were struggling to get the work done.  

How was the planning originally decided?

It was around the year 2012 when I started having these desires to make an anime about figure skating. I was previously the director for a project called “Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine’, and it was during that process that I decided my next animated project would be about something I truly care about, which was of course figure skating. There were often times when people would approach me and ask if I had any original ideas, and when I would suggest a figure skating anime, they would typically reject the thought (laughs). Usually they’d simply shake their head due to the sheer difficulty of such a project. I’d also get a lot of questions regarding whether it would be a “student figure skating club”.

When talking about modern anime that share similar themes, such as “Yowamushi Pedal” and “Haikyuu!!”, it’s not often that you’ll see professionals of the sport being drawn, but I think that’s just the style of anime. With this work however, you flipped that convention on its head, and I think we all found that extremely interesting.

Thank you very much! When you’re in the process of planning an anime, you get a large amount of pressure to make the main characters young, and if the story is set in a modern time, they inevitably leads to the character being a student. I think that’s why a lot of the people who aren’t interested in figure skating thought this would be about a school club. On top of that, I feel as though people thought it would be easier to simply jump on the bandwagon of previous anime that have found success with amateur sports clubs. I also had a lot of people telling me that the series wouldn’t find success if it wasn’t based in Japan, and that nobody would follow it if the characters didn’t have Japanese names. But my usual reply was “Huh? What’s makes you think that?” (laughs).

Looking back now, I think that “Yuri!!! on Ice” was the result of me ignoring all this “advice”, and simply making an anime that I myself would enjoy watching — the story of a character who has already matured and is taking on their final skating season, not some story about a character who is just getting started. I feel as though that would make conveying my ideal image so much more difficult. So when I shared the idea of “Yuri!!! on ICE” with everyone, people said “If you have more matches, we’d have to draw more skaters and that’d make things even more complicated!” (laughs). I couldn’t even get a nod or a “That sounds interesting.”, but I was absolutely determined to create something incredible. If I tried creating something that people would simply “like”, it’d end up being nothing but commonplace and mundane.

What kept me motivated through the whole process was the inspiration I received from actual figure skaters while watching their matches. Even when their retirement could be just around the corner, they’d continue to keep fighting and challenging themselves — that compassion for what they loved really stuck with me. That’s why I first came up with the idea of Yuri and Viktor; a skater on the edge of retirement and a world champion who becomes his coach, all while remaining both his hero and rival.

It almost seems like you were on some sort of lifelong mission to turn your passion for figure skating into an anime. Was there any particular moment that triggered this?

During the production process for “Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine”, Japan was devastated by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, and then immediately after that, one of my relatives passed away. My mental state was a total disaster. Usually as a director, there’s a certain element that drives you to create something interesting based on what you’re given, but I’d lost any emotional capacity to do that. I started to think to myself that it would be impossible to pull anything great out of someone else’s idea. It was at this point I realized I needed to create something from the heart, and for me that was figure skating.

I’ve heard there’s a lot of writers and creators in the industry who are afraid to apply the things they truly like into their works.

I hear that quite often too, the belief that you shouldn’t bring the things you like into your work. I had actually forgotten all about this, but the reason it was important for me to turn my figure skating passion into an anime was that doing anything else would have been impossible. The process of creating anime has become a really tough operation for me as of late. It was like I was creating, yet at the same time I was beating myself to death over it. My hands moved slow, and I would force myself to stay awake just in order to finish a project on time. So I thought to myself that I needed to work on a topic that I would never grow tired of, something that would keep me awake all day. Otherwise, I don’t think I could have ever made another anime, all while thinking “Someday I’m going to make something I like” (laughs).

A woman talented well beyond her years, Sayo Yamamoto is a model example of just what the Japanese animation industry needs. We continue to expand upon this in the second part of the interview which will be made available in the near future. A preview of the second part is featured in our ‘Yuri!!! on ICE’ film announcement piece, which was made available here.

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