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all1e23 · 5 years

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Swallow [Epilogue]

Epilogue: Nearly Eight Years Later.

Pairings: Bucky x Reader

Summary: It was time to let go

A/N: It’s the end! Thank you for sticking with me. I love this so so so so much, and I don’t normally say that about my writing. lolol. It’s a bit long for an epilogue, but I felt it was needed. The friend Steve mentions in the letters in the first half is Phil, and when he says the garage, he means the club. Gotta talk in code. Prison, ya know? Send me love because I’m needy. No beta so read at your own risk. ;-)

***My fics are not to be saved or posted on any other sites without my written permission. Reblogs are my jam though! Thanks!*

Buck,

Of all the dumb things you’ve ever done telling Y/n you’re over, and she needs to move on has to be one of the dumbest. You know she’s been writing you? She tried to come up and see you and they sent her away, but I’m guessing you know all that since you have to refuse.

She won’t wait around forever, you know? Or, maybe she will. The two of you I swear…

I don’t know if you really thought about what you asked of her. Have you really thought about losing her to someone else? You keep pushing her away, and you might get your wish. She loves you. Don’t be an idiot.

We are good. Garage is doing good. We miss you.

I’ll write you soon.

Stay out of trouble.

——

I don’t expect you to write me a love letter or anything but at least let me know your smartass mouth hasn’t gotten you killed, okay?

Henry & Emma miss their Uncle. I was thinking about bringing them up to see you. Peggy thinks it would be good for everyone. You’re my family, no matter what. You’re my brother.

Everyone is good. Garage is good.

Y/n… is good. She misses you.

Bring the twins for the fourth? Might do you some good.

——

If you don’t answer me, Buck, I’m coming up anyway.

Don’t shut everyone out.

Everyone is good. Garage is good.

——

I’m not dead.

No. I don’t want you or the twins here.

Y/n will move on. Just takes time.

Tell her it takes time.

—————

Six Months

—————

You’re a stubborn ass.

Nice to get something back finally. I have to say, it hurt Y/n to know you’re writing me. She was visiting Peggy when I got the letter. Can’t you write her back once? It’s been six months since you went in.

Six months is a long time, Buck.

When are you going to let go of this bullshit and let me come see you?

Everyone is good. Garage is good. Thinking about a change.

——

Never. Stop asking.

Please stop talking about Y/n in your letters, Steve. Stop bringing her up. Stop telling me how she’s doing. I need to keep her out of my head if I am going to make it without her.

Tell her I stopped writing. She can’t move on if she’s waiting on me and she needs to move on.

A change?

——

You’re a bloody idiot James Buchanan Barnes. I don’t think I have ever met someone as foolish– Do you even know how a woman’s heart works? Or love for that matter? Are you really senseless enough to believe that Y/n could simply walk away from you? Forget you existed?

Stop being utterly ignorant and let her come see you.

Sorry about that. Peggy says, hi.

Okay, Buck. I won’t bring her up again.

Henry and Emma added some drawings. I don’t know if they will let you keep them. I hope they do. You deserve something for Christmas.

Yes, a change. It’s about time, I think. Tony is ready to retire, and I think the rest of the garage is tired of working on cars day in and day out after everything. We all want something new. Nothing is for sure. I’ll let you know if we decide to close the shop doors for good.

Merry Christmas, Buck.

——

Merry Christmas, Steve

————-

One Year

————

Hey, Buck.

Been a few months since I’ve heard from you. I know the longer you’re in, the harder it is. Don’t be mad, but I had a friend check up on you to make sure you’re okay. He said you’re staying quiet and keeping to yourself. I told him to keep an eye on you.

Bitch all you want. At least I know someone is watching your back when I can’t.

Twins are doing good. Ems is doing ballet now. You should see her in the little pink glitter tutu they make her wear. It’s adorable and I kind of hate it. I’m in trouble, Buck. Big trouble. Henry is good. Smartmouth. Takes after you. Always getting into fights. That one might be on me.

Everyone is good. Garage is good.

Write me back.

——

Six months and no word? Fine. I get it. You don’t want to talk, but I won’t abandon you. I won’t let you do this alone, no matter how determined you are to punish yourself.

Nothing has changed much. Henry started playing football. Emma is still dancing. Peggy says you’re still an idiot, but she loves you.

Sam is good. Pissed you won’t let him visit.

Everyone is good. Garage is good.

————–

Two Years

————-

Dance is a thing of the past.

Emma has moved on to cheer and, man, do I hate cheer. Hate it, Buck. Henry is still playing ball. Pretty good, I think. Peggy says too young to tell.

Everyone is good. We all miss you. Garage is good, but I think it’s time we talked closing up shop. Tony is retiring at the end of this year. Wants more time with Pepper and Morgan. I don’t blame him. Working all the time, I miss the twins.

They are growing up fast.

I miss you, Buck.

—–

I don’t even know what to say. I wish you would let me know how you are. Give me something here, Bucky?

Everyone is good. Garage is good for now.

I know you don’t want to know, but she’s okay.

—————

Three years

—————

Merry Christmas, Buck.

I sent you money to your commissary so you could at least get a few magazines and maybe some smokes. How are you doing? We miss you. The twins miss you. Sam misses you.

Got your outstanding debt paid off and gave your bike a tuneup. She’s purring real pretty, but don’t worry she’s still your girl. I’ll make sure she’s in good shape when you get home.

—-

Thanks for the smokes. I was about to lose my mind. Oh, and keep your ugly ass off my girl.

Miss you all, too. Don’t tell Sam I said that.

I’m glad she’s moving on.

—————

Four Years

—————

Since you’ve ignored my last ten letters, I’ll take it you don’t want to talk. Fine. I added pictures from the twin’s birthday, and before you get pissed, there aren’t any pictures of her. I didn’t think you would want them.

I made sure to throw in a couple of gifts from you into their mountain of gifts. Emma is over tea parties, but she’s really into make-up, so expect a makeover when you get out. Maybe your niece can get you to cut your hair?

You’re nearly there, Buck. Hang on a bit longer, and you’ll be home.

If you change your mind, about the pictures, just say the word. See you soon.

——

Just one. Please.

————–

Five years

————–

Don’t you have a wife and kids to take care of? A sam, too? Instead, you’re spending all your time writing to me. Sixteen letters is a bit much, Stevie.

I’m okay, punk. I’m alright.

Listen, I know you want me to come and stay with you when I get out, but I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t work for the garage after this mess. I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay at your place. I don’t want to mess up your life now. Drop it for now, okay, Steve?

I know I never said, but, thank you for the picture. I miss her. Just thanks.

——

If you would write me back regularly this wouldn’t be an issue, you know? I wouldn’t feel the need to check up on you several times a week. Now, what the hell are you thinking, Buck?

Where are you going to go if not home? This has been your home your entire life. You come home, stay with us, and figure out your next step. You will always have a place here so quit trying to get out of it punk. You’re family.

You’re welcome. She misses you, too. We all do.

——-

I hear there was an incident at the prison. Schmidt was found dead. In the one corner of the rec yard that has a blind spot from cameras? That’s a tough break.

——-

I was in solitary for mouthing off to some guard – Coulson I think. Wasn’t there. Too bad I missed it, but we are all better off.

————-

Six Years

————

It looks like the garage will be settled at the end of the year. I’ll save your share from the sale for when you get out. I talked to Fury, and he said one of us can be there to pick you up. I am guessing that it will be me? I won’t bring the kids or Peggy. Give you some time to get your head together before I bring you home.

Peggy is talking about getting the spare room set up for you. It already has all your things packed up in boxes from the garage. You can stay here for as long as you like. I”m sure the twins would love to have their uncle back and I wouldn’t mind having my best friend back either.

Let me know the date once you’ve got it figured out and I’ll be there with your girl. I haven’t touched her! I swear no one has touched your bike.

Y/n is okay, too. Stubborn, but good.

We will talk soon… Hell, I’ll see you, I guess.

Soon, Buck. Just a few more months.

——

Steve,

It’s good the garage settled.

It was time to let that go; time for everyone.

I should still go. I know I don’t have to. I know I can stay with you and Pegs. I’ll always be grateful to you for everything you’ve done, but I can’t.

We both know that.

A lot can change in seven years. You’ve got teenagers. Do the twins really remember me? Might be weird to have a stranger hanging around they have to call their uncle. You and Pegs deserve time alone, and you don’t need a third wheel hanging around.

To be honest, I don’t know if I can see… her. She’s moved on, and I’m glad. I really am. That’s all I wanted for her. I didn’t want her to waste her life waiting for me to show back up so I could fuck it up again. I just… I can’t watch that. I can’t handle seeing her with someone else, and I won’t make her leave town and leave her family again.

There’s no place for me here now.

Besides, I’ve always wanted to take my bike and hit the road. Go from coast to coast. See what shit is out there. Maybe this is my time?

I think Fury sent you the paperwork with my release date. If you could, bring my bike and my bag. Just drop it at the gate. I can’t face everybody. I won’t leave if I do. Thank you for everything and thank you for watching over her when I couldn’t.

I’ve only ever wanted her happy. Maybe now she can have the life she’s always wanted.

See ya around, Stevie.

—————————————————–

Seven years, three months and six days

—————————————————–

“Barnes! Let’s go!”

Bucky tucked his longer than usual hair behind his ears and ran his hand over his leather jacket, staring at the missing patch as he followed the guard in front of him. He was glad the club shut down last year. It was more than time to kill it. His father started the club to keep his neighborhood safe, but it has only ever led to more destruction. He should have shut it down when his father died, but what would he have done to support you? Yeah, it sounded stupid and old fashioned. He knew he didn’t have to support you, but he really did. That was just the man he was, and outside of being a mechanic and an outlaw, there wasn’t much to him.

Honey and amber-colored rays were barely peeking up over the tops of the trees. Bucky wasn’t sure where he was going to go, but he knew his place wasn’t in this town anymore. Everyone grew up and moved on while he was locked up, and it was time he did the same.

The gate slowly rolled open, and Bucky stepped onto the other side, his shoulders sagged in relief. It felt good to be out, but he still felt empty after everything he had to give up to get this… freedom. Bucky always thought when he was finally free of the club, it would be for you; he would have you. The part of him that couldn’t let you go, even after all these years, wondered what you were doing right then – getting ready to have dinner, taking your kids to see Clint, or having dinner with your husband, maybe? Bucky didn’t know if any of that was reality or a painful joke his head invented to hurt his heart. Truthfully, he didn’t know anything about you anymore, and he needed it to stay that way if he was going to live without you. He couldn’t bear to hear about the life you built without him, but he hoped you had all that and so much more.

He hoped you had everything you ever wanted.

The gate shut behind him, and Bucky could breathe again – as best he could without you anyway, it would take more than seven years to learn how to breathe without you. Bucky eyes scanned the parking lot until he spotted his bike in the far corner, and his heart dropped. He told Steve he didn’t want anyone to see him off. He couldn’t handle saying goodbye again, and of course, the little shit didn’t listen.

Because there you were.

You gently pushed off the bike and started towards him. Bucky’s eyes dropped to the ground, and he shook his head; as angry as he wanted to be, he couldn’t find it in himself to upset.

He was so relieved to see you.

Bucky stopped in front of you and sighed, “You weren’t supposed to waste your life on me. I told you to find some good ol’ boy and get married at the church and all that. What happened to starting your life?”

You shrugged and closed the gap between you, “You can’t tell me what to do. And who says waiting for you was wasting my life? I get to decide what my life looks like not you.”

“Stubborn,” Bucky huffed with a grin.

“Impossible,” You countered, grinning right back.

Bucky wanted to explain why he didn’t write or call, tell you why he wanted you to move on, but he knew you understood. You always understood. You knew his heart better than he did – you’ve held it for longer than he has.

He looked down, and the guns n’ roses t-shirt made him grin. Fourteen years later and you’re still wearing that old thing. It’s faded a bit since he bought it for you, but damn you looked good in it. In the middle of the rose, resting comfortably was your ring hanging from his old chain. Bucky licked his lips and hooked his right index in your ring, giving a gentle tug.

“Rings go on your finger, sweetheart.”

You reached back to undo the chain and finally parted the ring from the chain, letting it sit on his index finger but only for a moment. You held your left hand out, and he slipped the delicate band on. He never thought the first time he would get that ring on your finger would be as a convicted felon, standing in the middle of a prison’s parking lot. That didn’t matter he supposed. None of that bullshit has mattered for a long, long time. The only thing that mattered was you, and you were here.

You were really here and still his.

“I can’t go back.“ He tested warily.

One last chance. An out. He was giving it to you freely. He wouldn’t be angry with you for taking it. He understood the burden of loving him and what it meant for your future. He would never blame you for not being able to handle that weight. Bucky’s loved you for more than half his life, and he knew better than most, sometimes, loving you meant letting you go for a bit. You’re never really lost in the end.

Whether he had to let you go or not, he was going to go on loving you till his last breath.

A quick nod towards the back of the bike he spotted your bag strapped on top of his and that old wooden box of his dads tucked comfortably between them. You already knew, and neither of you was going back home. You were both starting over somewhere new just like you always wanted.

Bucky captured your lips in one quick swoop, and it was just as he remembered – sweet and sure, the only thing that has kept his heart beating these last twenty-odd years; your love and those sweet kisses. His forehead rested against yours, and his hands tightened around your waist. He just had to make sure you were real and not another dream. You tugged at his leather and took a deep breath, breathing him in after seven long years, and nothing at all had changed. You smiled and let your hands wander up his chest and wrap securely around his neck, tiny fingers finding their way into delicate strands.

“Can we start our life now?”

He grinned and dropped one more kiss to your lips.

“Yeah, baby, we can start our life now.”

A yelp echoed in the nearly empty lot as Bucky’s arms tightened around your waist and lifted your feet from the ground, carrying you to his bike and grinning the whole way. He had planned on riding off with no destination in mind and a heavy heart dragging behind him, but somehow he got another chance, and he wasn’t sure what he did to earn it. He certainly didn’t deserve it or you. It didn’t matter why he got it. Now that he had it, he was going to spend the next few decades making up for every secret and lie, every tear shed and every second spent apart.

You always find your way back to each other, and he was stupid to think this time would be any different.

The bike rumbled to life under you both and Bucky settled back against you for a moment, letting his hand rest on your leg – a little pause to be sure. His reassurance came as a lingering kiss to his cheek. He sat up and let your arms envelop him; one around his waist and the other draped over his shoulder. And, then, all you could see was a sunset glow and blacktop. Bucky pulled your left hand from his chest and placed a kiss to your swallow before letting it rest back over his heart. A stoplight and a soft whisper in his ear asking where you were headed and a simple answer, wherever you want, pretty girl. He could go anywhere as long as you were there. You didn’t respond or mention a destination, so he was going to drive till one or both of you got tired.

You’ve got plenty of time to figure out where you were headed, but he was stopping at the first chapel he sees. Maybe he would take you on out to California. That ring on your finger might sparkle different in that fancy west coast sunshine. Bucky wouldn’t mind finding out, but for now, he would just drive. Your weight melted against his back, relaxing into his warmth and it ignited a deep, hidden piece of his soul that’s only ever been meant for you. He met your eye in the small triangle-shaped side mirror and winked as his wrist twisted forward, lurching the bike ahead. The squeal that fell from your lips had him laughing, loud, and unbridled. Of course, his first real laugh in a decade was because of you and everything was just as it should be. You tightened your arms around him, and he placed a hand over your own, guarding his heart and yours.

Just like always.

Previous // Masterlist

#biker!bucky x reader #biker!bucky #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #biker!bucky au #bucky x you #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #MC!AU #mc!bucky #alternate universe #james buchanan barnes #james bucky barnes

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hqwkeyes · 5 years

Text

Blood Loss

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 2,290

Warning(s): explosions, injury and blood, language, a bit of angst, fluff, unedited (sorry, i’m tired)

Summary: When Y/N and Bucky are trapped during a mission, a rather odd topic comes up.

A/N: This little fic was so much fun to write. My best friend ( @cracked-perfextion ) actually gave me the idea for it a few days ago, and I decided to write it! I really hope you all like it!

Masterlist // Ko-fi

It was another mission involving yet another HYDRA base that landed them here in this situation. There had been about a dozen missions just like this one over the past three and a half months, so there shouldn’t have been any issues. Except this time was different. HYDRA knew you were coming, or at least they figured it out just before you arrived, giving them enough time to embed explosive devices in certain parts of the structure.

You and Bucky had just finished taking down a group of HYDRA operatives when Bucky used his comms to inform Steve that the two of you were making your way toward the nearest exit and would meet him and the others at the quinjet. Unfortunately, the two of you had unknowingly ran within range of one of the explosives, and the frequency from the comms set it off. The minuscule device had been placed at the very bottom of a door frame—easy to miss when not looking for it. It sent the two of you flying into the air as it blew out the surrounding wall and a large portion of the floor. You both landed in the basement below, surrounded by rubble.

“Y/N?” Bucky called out.

“Yeah?” You answered immediately so as not to worry him, but your voice was laced with pain.

“Where are you? Are you okay?” You could hear shifting in the rubble as he searches for you. It was dark, almost too dark to see him across the room, but you could just barely make out his shadowy figure from where you were lying.

“I’m fine, Buck, turn around. My leg is pinned under this beam,” you said through gritted teeth, biting back a wince as you shifted to look at him. “I’m about six paces in that direction. Just be careful not to trip over anything.” He made it over to you, then took out his flashlight.

“Are you okay?” you asked him, and then you were blinded by LED light.

You could just barely see the look of shock on his face before he composed himself.

“Shit, okay,” he mumbled as he ripped the sleeve off his jacket, then split it down the middle, leaving the ends attached.

“Y/N, you probably don’t feel it yet because of the adrenaline, but you’re injured pretty badly,” he said calmly, softly even, as he took out one of his knives. “I’m gonna use this as a tourniquet, but I need to slide it under you. Try not to move, okay? We don’t wanna make it any worse.” You nodded in agreement, and then he went to work.

Once he finished up with the tourniquet and made sure you were as comfortable as possible, he decided to take a bit of a risk.

“Hey, Steve,” he said over comms. “I know you’re gonna want to, but don’t respond to this. Y/N and I didn’t make it out. I think the frequency from talking over comms set off an explosive. It blew out the floor, so Y/N and I are in the basement, but she’s hurt pretty badly. I don’t think any vital organs were hit, so she should be fine for a little while. When you’re done, just come find us as quickly as possible.”

Which is why you’re here right now in intermittent silence with Bucky Barnes in the dark basement of a now-abandoned HYDRA base as you slowly bleed out.

“I’m really sorry,” he says for the seventh time in the past hour as he stares at his hands.

“Buck, the only thing more painful than this piece of metal in my gut is you apologizing over and over, so if you could not do that, that would be great.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, which makes you chuckle and then wince. Bucky stands up quickly and moves to sit beside you.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” you tell him, shooing him away, but he doesn’t budge. Instead, he checks your pulse, tightens your tourniquet ever so slightly, wipes some sweat and dust from your forehead, checks your pulse again.

“Barnes, quit it,” you finally say after about ten minutes. You know he’s only doing it to busy himself, to look after you, but you would rather attempt to make conversation with him.

“I’m-”

“Sorry, I know,” you cut him off.

A beat. Then, “You know, Steve used to talk about you all the time. Back in the old days, you know?” Bucky smiles a bit.

“Yeah, I’ve heard. Sam says he used to talk his ear off about me. Must’ve been annoying.”

“I thought it was sweet. Unfortunate, too. Steve’s ‘best friend, Bucky’ sounded like quite the catch,” you joke.

“Oh yeah?” A breathy laugh slips past his lips, and a little cloud of condensation forms in the brisk air.

“Yeah, he always talked about the guy who was with him through thick and thin, and always stepped in when he was getting his ass handed to him in a fight.” Bucky really laughs at that one.

“The kid never knew when to just walk away. Clearly he still doesn’t, but he doesn’t need much help anymore.”

“I can attest to that,” you say.

Another brief moment of silence comes and goes, and you begin to feel faint. You use the conversation to distract yourself from the growing numbness in your legs.

“You were quite the charmer too, huh? A natural ladies man, I heard.”

“Yeah, apparently. Not much of that going on anymore.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve seen men and women swoon just watching you jog down the street. And that girl in the coffee shop last week? She nearly passed out when you complimented her hair.”

“I was just being polite,” he says with a shrug.

“Exactly! Imagine if you actually tried to flirt with her. She would’ve gone into cardiac arrest or something,” you joke, earning another laugh from Bucky as he shakes his head.

“He really did talk about me a lot, huh?”

“Hell yeah. He even told me about your first kiss.”

“He did?”

“Well not all the details. Just that you told him the night that it happened.” Your lips—now pale from blood loss and a tad bit blue from the cold—tremble around the words.

“I- well it wasn’t really anything special. Granted, I was probably fifteen at the time, so I was excited about it nonetheless.”

“That’s sweet, Buck.”

“I guess so.” He stares at the floor for a moment, then lifts his head. “What about you?”

“What about me?” A thin smirk forms on your lips, and although you’re beginning to grow dizzy, you focus on Bucky.

“How was your first kiss?”

“Oh, well it wasn’t anything special. It kind of sucked, actually. I was 16 and he came up and kissed me out of nowhere, then told me his friends had dared him to.”

“I’m sorry, Y/N.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m long past it now,” you say before your head falls backward and rests on a piece of concrete that had fallen.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m just resting. Don’t worry about me.” He nods, taking your word for it.

“Anyway, you deserve better than that. He sounds like he was a real jerk.”

“You think little Steve would’ve beat him up for me?” you joke.

“I’m serious. But yeah, he probably would’ve if he were there.”

“Oh, I know.” You lift your head to look at him again.

“I’m sure your second kiss was better then.”

“Not by much,” you laugh, followed by a cough. Your head falls back again, a bit harder this time. Bucky turns on his flashlight again and notices that your skin is incredibly pale.

“Y/N?” There’s panic in his voice. “Shit, why didn’t you tell me? You’ve lost so much blood.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.” The words come out as a whisper.

“Worry? Of course I would’ve been worried. You’re literally bleeding out,” he nearly shouts.

“I was just enjoying talking to you,” you say as you strenuously lift a hand to rest it on his cheek. You feel warm tears on his cheeks, and he leans over you a bit before taking your hand on his cheek in his own, holding it tightly.

“I was enjoying talking to you too. I’m sorry your first kiss sucked,” he says, and then even more softly, “I wish I could’ve been your first kiss.”

A smile takes over your faint expression. “You weren’t my first, but you could be my last.”

“You’re not dying, Y/N.”

“You don’t know that. We don’t know when Steve and the others will get here.”

Bucky sighs, and a few of his tears drip onto your arm before he leans down and presses his lips to yours in a gentle yet passionate kiss. He runs his fingers through your hair, and when he pulls away, he presses his lips to your cheek.

“You’re gonna be okay, Y/N,” he whispers against your skin, and you tighten your grasp on his hand. You feel his warm lips against your forehead as you drift off.

Suddenly, you hear something beeping, and you open your eyes to a blinding light before immediately shutting them once again. You lift your arm—which feels much lighter—to shield your eyes before attempting to reopen them. Once you allow your eyes to adjust, you look up and find that you’re in a hospital room. The sound of something moving catches your attention, and you turn your head—a bit too fast, as you find yourself a bit dizzy—to find a sleeping Bucky Barnes shifting in what looks like a rather uncomfortable chair. A small smile finds its way on your face, and you sit up a bit.

“Bucky,” you call out to him in a quiet voice. You reach out and tap him, nearly falling off the hospital bed in the process.

He wakes with a start, nearly falling out of the chair. When he notices that you’re awake, he lets out a deep sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank God you’re finally awake,” he exhales. You notice tears welling up in his eyes.

“How long was I out?”

“Almost four days.”

“I- How did I get here?” You knit your brows together in confusion.

He calls to let the doctor know you’re awake before explaining, “After you passed out, I used comms again to tell Steve to hurry up or send someone to help us. He showed up six minutes later, said he had been on his way the whole time. He and Nat helped me get you out without moving you too much.”

“Six minutes? Isn’t that a bit specific,” you joke.

“I was keeping track of your pulse the whole time, actually, so he showed up just after I counted the beats in the sixth minute,” he says, his voice quiet as he speaks.

“You what?” Bucky lowers his head, stares at his hands.

The doctor enters a moment later to check your vitals and to tell you that the surgery to remove the metal was completely successful, as well as your treatment plan. Bucky sits through the whole thing, making a mental note of all of the important details.

When the doctor leaves, you speak up again.

“Did you stay here the whole time?”

“Um, mostly, yeah. I only left for an hour or two twice to go take a shower. Everyone else stayed with you then.”

“You slept in that uncomfortable chair for three nights? Why didn’t you just come back in the morning?” you ask, genuinely concerned.

“I didn’t want you to be alone,” he mumbles, scratching the back of his neck. It makes you smile, which has Bucky’s heart lurching.

“I- I don’t even know what to say. Thank you, Buck.” He nods and grins, although there’s a question in his eyes. Moments later, the question is on his lips.

“Do you remember anything before you lost consciousness?” There’s hope laced in his voice and anxiety in his posture.

“You mean the kiss?” Bucky’s eyes widen a bit, as if he hadn’t expected you to remember, and then he nods.

“Yes, I remember. Thank you for that too.” Both you and Bucky wear a matching rosy tint on your cheeks.

“Could we uh-” he stops to clear his throat, “Could we maybe do that again sometime?” You giggle at that, and Bucky flushes a shade of scarlet.

“That sounds nice. I’d like that a lot,” you tell him.

Bucky gets up and takes a seat on the edge of your bed, and you take his hand in yours. He presses a light kiss to the back of it, which has you grinning like an idiot. You sit up and lean closer to him, despite his protests. He gently pushes you back until you’re resting against the reclined bed before leaning in. He nuzzles your nose with his own before capturing your lips in a kiss, just as gentle as the first one. His vibranium hand cups your cheek while his other one still holds fast to your hand. The two of you pull apart only when you hear the subtle cough of someone behind you.

“Sorry for interrupting,” Tony says with a cheeky smirk, “but we heard that our lovely Y/N was awake.” The rest of the team is with him, even little Peter, who has a bouquet of your favorite flowers in his hands.

“We can leave you two alone if you’d like,” Nat offers suggestively, but both you and Bucky insist that they stay, which makes Sam and Wanda laugh.

Bucky reclaims his seat in the chair just beside your bed, still holding your hand as the team chats with you. He isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Masterlist

#hqwkeyes #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky fic #bucky barnes fic #bucky #james buchanan barnes #james barnes #marvel #marvel writing #marvel fic #fluff #angst #bucky drabble #bucky barnes drabble #marvel drabble #marvel drabbles

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douxreviews · 6 years

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The OA - Season 1 Review

By Billie Doux

(The first part of this review is spoiler-free. I'll discuss the ending underneath the adorable spoiler kitten.)

The OA is an eight-episode series currently available on Netflix that was created by Brit Marling, who plays the lead, and Zal Batmanglij. It tells the story of a young blind woman named Prairie Johnson, missing for seven years, who returns home unexpectedly.

Prairie, no longer blind and inexplicably referring to herself as "The OA," won't tell the FBI or her parents (the wonderful former Borg queen Alice Krige and equally wonderful Walking Dead alum Scott Wilson) what happened to her during the seven years she was missing, although there are physical indications that she was imprisoned and abused. Instead, she begins telling her story to five random people in an abandoned house at midnight. The story, and it's a wild one, is told in chapters on successive nights throughout the succeeding episodes, and it has a dramatic effect on the lives of the five listeners, all of whom are from the local high school.

The ending of this series, or possibly first season since there are rumors that there may be a second, is controversial and is generating a lot of discussion. For me, The OA isn't so much about the ending, although I'm one of the viewers who found it quite powerful. It's my opinion that The OA is about the strength and transformative power of storytelling. We've all read books that have changed our lives and made us see the world in a new way. That's what this story did for the OA's five acolytes, four of whom are high school students: Steve, a violent outcast who deals drugs; druggie Jesse; brilliant and disadvantaged Alfonso; Buck the youngest who is trans and struggling to make his parents understand him; and Betty Broderick-Allen, a teacher.

I'm not sure if I can wholeheartedly recommend The OA. Some are finding it utterly fascinating and well worth watching (like me. I thought it was), while others are pissed about the ending and think it was a huge waste of their time. Caveat emptor?

And now, some spoilers. If you're planning to watch The OA, go no further until after you do!

What was real?

It appears that Prairie Johnson was kidnapped and imprisoned for seven years. She was blind when she was kidnapped, and regained her sight before she returned. Her five acolytes indeed used "the movements" she taught them to distract the school shooter long enough to keep him from killing the children in the cafeteria. Were the five actually sending the OA through an interdimensional portal so that she could rescue Homer and the others, or was that all in her head?

Honestly, I was about to give up on this series while watching the first episode, until I got to the end when the "I was born in Russia in 1987" thing started, oddly coinciding with the title sequence. Who puts the title sequence at the end? It was like saying, the story actually begins here. Of course, her childhood in Russia and the way she came back from the dead was very secret princess. It was so unbelievable that this was the point where I started wondering if OA was making the whole thing up. Or if maybe she believed it, but was stark raving mad.

There are so many hints and parallels throughout that make it seem possible that OA is either lying about her past and her seven years of imprisonment, or that she is mentally ill and honestly believes things that are not true. Her parents kept her medicated for nearly her entire childhood because of her unbelievable stories. There were multiple references to her head injuries. After her return home, the doctors in St. Louis said she should be committed. In the final episode, she is again being medicated and has an ankle monitor. There are also many indications that OA is psychic, which could be true even if she fabricated the whole thing.

After I finished the series, I rewatched the pilot, searching for clues. The first thing she asked when she woke after jumping off the bridge was, "Did I flatline?" She said that she was trying to get back to where she'd been held captive, even though she knew that they were gone. She also said, "We all died more times than I can count." The first thing she did when she arrived in her childhood home was attempt to find Homer Roberts on her computer, and later, she did. Although why couldn't Steve and Alfonso find evidence of her story online, too?

Did Hap exist, or was his search for proof of life after death a way that the OA used to humanize her captor? During the series, we often see things from Hap's viewpoint, even to his trips to find other NDE survivors and that strange murder of his friend at a morgue. (What the hell really happened in that morgue? What was that other guy doing?) The OA told her five acolytes that her father was a miner, and Hap's house was situated at an abandoned mine. When the OA was little and her name was Nina Azarova, her father forced her into freezing water in order to cure her fear of her nightmares of drowning in an aquarium, and note the similarity to Hap repeatedly drowning his captive subjects. Plus, the series began when the OA jumped off a bridge, and the kids on the school bus in Russia went over a bridge. Note also the use of glass or plastic during the OA's seven years of imprisonment and in the final shooting scene.

The neighborhood that the OA and her acolytes lived in was outright creepy. It looked like a typical suburb on the surface, but it consisted of jarring and oddly naked tract houses and there were often strange objects in the street. And I dare say most suburban neighborhoods don't have a half-built abandoned house sitting in the middle of an empty street? There was also the weirdness of the OA's instructions to her acolytes to leave their doors open while they were at her storytelling seances, something I found uncomfortable in present-day America; was that because the FBI instructed the Johnsons that "doors should remain open at all times"?

Steve, the OA's first follower and the character who changed the most, was introduced with a jarring, explicit sex scene right in front of a picture window showing that strange neighborhood. A drug-dealing bully with rage issues, Steve was the one who chose the other acolytes — except for teacher Betty Broderick-Allen, who basically chose herself. Grief-stricken by the recent death of her twin brother, Betty at first appeared to be a closed-minded teacher parroting the views of a rigid educational system uninterested in connecting with children who are different. Phyllis Smith is wonderful as Betty, and I thought her developing relationship with Steve, and in particular, the night she gave away her inheritance to save him from the goons from Asheville, was one of the high points of the series. I also really loved the scene where the OA impersonated Steve's stepmother and talked Betty out of expelling Steve, especially the bizarre little detail of one of the OA's fake press-on nails popping off while they were talking. Note that the OA guessed correctly that Betty had just lost a sibling, another bit that made me think she was psychic.

So let's talk about the ending.

The scene where Alfonso found the books under the OA's bed was very Usual Suspects, but it was also ambiguous. Yes, the OA could have used those books to create the details in her story, but she also could have been reading about subjects that had a relationship to her life, couldn't she? Why did Alfonso look in the mirror and see himself as Homer? And here's the big one for me. What was FBI agent Elias doing in the Johnson home alone at night, and why was he so weird and unconventional in the first place?

After I finished all eight episodes, I checked out a lot of articles and reviews on the internet. What seems to upset critics the most is the insertion of a school shooting into the narrative, supposedly out of nowhere. (That, and the admittedly silly interpretive dance "movements" that were intended to open the interdimensional portal.)

Honestly, I don't think the school shooting came out of nowhere. The focus of the entire series was saving the lives of children, and the five acolytes were all from the high school. The OA's story began with the Russian children dying on the bus, and then focused on five youths trapped under glass and killed and revived repeatedly in Hap's basement. Plus, it seemed to me that Steve fit the profile of a possible school shooter, and even though he momentarily reacted to the OA with anger in the pencil-stabbing scene, he was the one who changed the most, and for the better, over the course of the story.

We're now hearing that there may be a second season in the works. I cannot imagine what a second season could be about. Almost anything they do to answer questions about what happened in the first season might ruin the whole thing. Then again, what if the OA really did go through a portal in the end? What if Homer, Rachel, Scott and Renata do exist and are still imprisoned, waiting for her to rescue them?

A few bits:

-- OA may have meant "original angel." I thought that it could have been an interpretation of the word "away."

-- I didn't notice it the first time through, but there is a lot of purple, the color of royalty (secret princess), magic and spirituality.

-- There's Braille, too. There are actually strips on Braille on Khatun's face during the afterlife scenes. Also, the OA kept touching her white bedspread that had knobby protrusions like Braille.

-- How on earth did the OA and Homer write the symbols representing the movements on their skin? They couldn't touch each other; could anyone physically do that? Was that the reason the OA was told to make her arms longer during that scene with the bill and the trench?

-- Why were there potted plants in Hap's underground prison?

-- Why did the OA's mother Nancy freak out in the restaurant?

-- Loved the tiny blue quail eggs in milk for breakfast, and the bit in the afterlife about swallowing a bird.

So what is this show? Is it pretentious arty crap, or is it a powerful story about storytelling, mysticism and life after death? Lines are open. What did you guys think?

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

#The OA #Brit Marlin #Prairie Johnson #The OA Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive

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knifeonmars · 4 years

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Capsule Reviews, October 2020

A few general thoughts on some comics I have read in the recent past.

Batman: I, Joker

Though it's sometimes considered one of the classic Batman Elseworlds tales, I'd long resisted reading I, Joker on the grounds that I'm very much not a Joker fan, but after a finally reading it I was thoroughly impressed. The premise sees a man brainwashed and surgically altered to resemble the titular archvillain in a futuristic Gotham so that he can be ritualistically hunted and murdered by "The Bruce" a descendant of the original Batman who controls a cult-like populace. It's a premise which has only gotten better with age, given that we're now 75 years in the age of Batman and the Joker has moved in the years since Ledger's portrayal in The Dark Knight and culminating in the recent Joker film, towards being a counter-culture symbol of angry populism. The presentation of an empty, cruel Batman satisfying a horde of bloodthirsty worshipers is an on-point as a piece of cultural criticism as it's ever been, and while it's not as vicious a parody as something like Marshal Law's City of the Blind, it's still a great skewering of Bat-fandom in general and what the character has become. It's also just a really solid comic: It's 50 pages, so it's tight and exactly as long as it needs to be, sets up and pays off everything elegantly, really well designed and rendered, well paced, and while I was left wanting more I was also satisfied with the story. I, Joker is a wonderful little gem that I think more people should read.

Fantastic Four: Grand Design

I've been a big fan of Scioli since American Barbarian, but I put off reading his Grand Design because I'd heard some unflattering things about Piskor's X-Men: Grand Design and feared similar issues here. I think Scioli's effort does have some of the same problems people have pointed out about Piskor's, but as a noted fan of him, I still mostly ended up liking this book. The nature of the Grand Design books is essentially skewed recaps, so this book is more than a little clipped and distant in the way it surveys the Fantastic Four's history, cutting out a lot of the emotion and nuance of many events in favor of wry humor.

Scioli offsets this to some extent by emphasizing the troubled relationship between Reed Richards and Sue Storm, choosing to make explicit the troubles which are generally left subtextual. Here Sue actively pines for Namor as she realizes that leaving Reed would mean loosing her whole support network and Franklin Richards is strongly implied to be Namor's son rather than Reed's, the kind of stuff which has never flown in the mainstream comics.

Those kinds of creative flourishes, the points where Scioli actually gets to write something rather than just recapping, is where the book comes alive, and so I have mixed feelings about the ending. Scioli essentially goes off the rail around the late 70's, abandoning established continuity in favor of his own inventions as he rushes towards the end. The results are refreshing and should feel familiar to followers of Scioli's other work, with Black Panther showing up in a Voltron-mech and Reed Richards becoming a Herald of Galactus, but there's a tangible sense that this is only happening because Scioli's not interested in Fantastic Four continuity past this arbitrary cutoff. To me, that was disappointing, given that I'd hoped to see an all-encompassing attempt to wrangle these character's' histories, and a lot of interesting characters and plots written after the 70's are dismissed to somewhat crotchety effect, and the actual ending is quite perfunctory. After most of the series has slavish recapped individual plot points, once Scioli is on the final pages of the book he skips over years of events and ends things without any sort of catharsis or emotional payoff.

All in all, Fantastic Four: Grand Design did not end up being my favourite Scioli book by a long shot. It's clipped and dry for most of it's length, and then when it finally gets interesting, it just... stops.

The Marquis of Anoan

A long held subject of curiosity for me, a well-timed sale on Comixology meant that I finally took the plunge on checking out this short Eurocomics series. In it, a young Frenchman journeys around and beyond early 18th century France, having encounters with seemingly paranormal events and confronting them with rationality and science. It's quite enjoyable. It's gorgeous rendered, and though each story is relatively short by North American standards, they're densely written and presented, so they never feel overly short. They're very European in certain respects, like their approach to romance and nudity, but never in a way that struck me as particularly offensive, though that's obviously a matter of personal taste. I was ultimately left disappointed that the series is dead in the water after five books, with a decade having passed since the release of the last one. One of the most amusing threads running through them was the development of the title character's reputation as a magician and exorcist, much to his discomfort. The ending of the third book in particular has a diagetic text piece and illustration from a contemporary paper which shows how the populace at large views the protagonist and I'd have loved to see that kind of presentation further developed.Alas, the series is ended, but it's well worth checking out for anyone interested in relatively low key and beautiful Eurocomics. Just keep in mind though, that this ain't Hellblazer, nor does it aim to be.

Elseworld’s Finest

A two-part, 100-page Elseworld's tale that I picked up out of sheer curiosity, Elseworld's Finest reinterprets the duo of Batman and Superman as figures from the pulp adventure stories which saw their brief heyday in the years immediately preceding the birth of the superhero genre. It's a world informed by Indiana Jones and Disney's Atlantis, or at least by the things which influenced them. Bruce Wayne is a roguish solder of fortune, Clark Kent is the survivor of a misty and forgotten space kingdom linked to Atlantis, it's all very pulp as it moves through an origin story for the pair which sees them being variations of their more recognizable superheroic selves. It's really quite fun, and an amusing genre shift for the proceedings, which should appeal to anyone who grew up enjoying latter day takes on such stories, by which I mean, if you like Indiana Jones or Atlantis you'll find this fun. The only aspect which irked me is that there are a few too many winks towards the DCU as we know it, in the form of characters like Hal Jordan and Carter Hall popping up in bit roles, but overall the whole thing is quite agreeable. I don't think it's resonant in the way that I, Joker turned out to be, but it's still a very fun Elseworld's story.

First Knife

Simon Roy and Artyom Trakhanov teaming up for a post-post-apocalyptic story revolving around an ancient cyborg waking in a post-lapsarian tribal far future Earth is extremely up my alley, so I was really looked forward to this series and was not disappointed. Anyone who's seen Roy's work on the first arc of Prophet or Habitat at Image Comics will find the vibe and conceits here familiar, but not overly so, and the series takes things in a different direction than either of those stories did. This is not a series about cyborg Buck Rogers awakening in the future and saving the day with the power of old fashioned, plain spoken American gumption; it's about a barely human soldier losing his grip on sanity as he's worshiped as a god, and the people who surround him dealing with that. It's very good. There's action, wonderfully emotive, textured, and distinctive artwork, and it's generally a pleasure to read. Highly recommended to fans of that strain of primitive scifi.

#comics #capsule reviews

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katvondworld · 7 years

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So proud to have been interviewed for the #GlennGould Foundation! I'm such a huge fan!

GGF: In some of your interviews, you’ve described yourself as an outsider. And that’s partly expressed through tattoos – the tattoos you have on you, and also the ones you create. But I think that’s something that people see about Gould as well, that he charted his own course. He didn’t crave a traditional style of sociability and social interaction. What everyone said was the successful path for a classical career, spending his life giving concerts and only making records on the side, he basically turned on its ear and you know, he gave his last public concert in L.A.KvD: Yeah, yeah.GGF: At the Wilshire Ebel Theatre. KvD: That’s amazing.GGF: So I think that’s something that you and he share in a way.KvD: Wow, that’s a great compliment. And I think, it’s natural to feel like an outsider. I mean a lot of people say, “oh, it’s the artist’s way.” But I don’t. I felt like an outsider before I knew what a tattoo was, that’s my own life experience. You can also practice and master anything but I think what makes you different from anyone is your experiences and where you come from, and how that shapes the way you apply it. And that’s also what makes music and art so beautiful and different. I guess my heart responds to the struggle. I can see that in Glenn’s music as well as other artists that I absolutely love, including Beethoven.GGF: Obviously something else that you and Glenn share is your love of animals which you talked about at the start, and it seems that that special communication or even communion that people have with the animals in their lives, that was very powerful for him and I take it that it’s really super-important in your life, too.KvD: Oh it’s a huge part of my life. Most of the time, I don’t want to say that I relate to animals better, but I definitely admire animals a lot more (laughs). You know, I just look at my cats. I’m just in awe of their spirit and their amazing ability to just be. My little cat, Piaf, who I named after Edith Piaf, he was the runt of the litter His mother abandoned him and he wasn’t even supposed to survive. He’s this sweet little baby . . . he looks like a bird to me. I look at him and go, wow, I have a fucked up relationship with my Mom and I’ve had to have therapy over it, and really work on issues, then I think, Piaf was abandoned and somehow has no Mom issues! He’s so enlightened that he doesn’t even need forgiveness; he just is. And I want to be like that. I can’t imagine I’d ever get there, but I admire that for sure.And I think, too, that the more connected we are to our environment, whether it’s animals, plants or whatever, the dirt, that clear connection of how we are nothing without them, it’s so important and it’s something that we’ve lost and becomes more blurry as time goes on. With technology, there’s great things that come from it but also, there’s such huge distractions. And it’s the same with music: there are great technologies that afford us the opportunity to learn and produce music in different and easier ways, but at the same time, I see fewer kids playing instruments. Even on my Instagram, you know, I always try to post videos of me playing the piano, whether it’s a Cure song or a Beethoven song. And it’s to show people, look, I’m just some chick that came from Mexico and didn’t even go to high school but if I can do this, you can do it, so let’s break it down. I want to live in a world where there’s tons of Glenn Goulds, you know? (laughs) That’s what I want.GGF: So did he. He said technology would allow more people to become artists. This was an interview I think he gave in 1967. He said, today we have stereo sets in our homes, we can can turn up the bass and treble but that’s nowhere near the power we’ll have in the future. Then we’ll be able to not have guys like me (Glenn) telling people how to listen to Beethoven; they’ll be able to get what he called a “box of takes” from someone else’s recording sessions and create the version that they hear in their own heads, with technology that everyone can afford. And of course, we have that now. But we also have a lot of what I call “background noise” and distractions, and that makes it harder in some ways . . .KvD: It’s so much harder to focus.GGF: With the overstimulation, to find those moments of stillness and inward tranquility – what Gould called the solitude that’s the precondition for spiritual enlightenment, which he found in the North. And I sense that you find that in the environment that you’ve created very meticulously and beautifully in your home.KvD: Yeah!GGF: You call it Kat’s Closet, and you’re surrounded by beautiful handmade things that you’ve assembled.KvD: Yeah. I’m super particular about conscious living. That’s my ultimate goal, and it hits all aspects of life. Some people from outside look in and say, “oh, she’s neurotic about certain things.” I am strict about what goes in my mind on a conscious level and an unconscious level. You know, I don’t have a television in my house. I do like to watch movies so I can watch them on my laptop. But I try to avoid screens as much as possible. You described it perfectly, it’s a lot of background noise. But I think that also, your surroundings, wherever you spend a lot of time, it’s important to treat every corner of it with intention. Nothing in my house is there by accident. I think when you start taking care of everything that you do, whether it’s how you eat, what you listen to, even.I’m relaunching some fragrance that I had launched years ago but is back in demand, and I remember that process was so amazing. We had to do all these blind tests where they put all these fragrances in bottles with no labels and I had to tell by nose what fragrances I liked and what I don’t like. And they take all these notes and then they can tell you what kinds of fragrance you actually do like. When I got the results back, you know what?- the perfumes I thought I loved, I actually do love them. Whereas, you know, you look at [names a famous perfume], which is one of that company’s top-selling perfumes, fails the blind test 100% across the board. Nobody likes it when it’s not in the package. But once it’s in the package, they love it. See, when I heard that story, I thought, wow! – I don’t want to be that person that thinks they like something and then realizes that they don’t. Or maybe, sadly enough, never really realize what they truly like and what’s important to them. Like, do you really love the music that you listen to, or is it just that you’ve been hypnotized by what’s forced down your ears? To me that’s really crucial. So I’m a stickler about that, and in the house, I look at every room and say, what’s the intention of that room? I’m not as fancy as people might think, you know, when you look at my house and it’s like, “wow! It’s so beautiful.” And I’m like, “I made that.” I usually try to make stuff. You know, like all the stuff that folks think is fancy, I assembled that. You know like pianos, I collect old, weirdo obscure instruments. I never really had a fancy, nice piano until nine years ago or so when my buddy was low on cash. He had a beautiful baby grand and so I bought it off of him for like a grand. That’s the first time I owned and played a beautiful piano. But it ain’t no Steinway. (laughs)GGF: Give yourself time – you’ll have a Steinway or a Bosendorfer yet, if you want one.KvD: I’ve been lucky enough to play those at studios and stuff, but my point is that there’s so many pianos on Craigslist and small pianos, too, that fit in your room that when people say, “oh, I wish I could play,” – dude, get a piano! Couple hundred bucks, man! I know a guy that tunes it for a hundred bucks, and then you’re set!GGF: I know, plus it’s the best piece of furniture you could ever haveKvD: Beautiful!GGF: If you have a picture or a piece of sculpture, stick it on a piano!KvD: Yeah, sure (laughs).GGF: But it strikes me that you have a real feel for things that are hand-made, that people have put their soul into, and that’s a kind of connection between you and William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement.KvD: Yeah, I’m a huge fan of hand-made things. There’s a certain quality that just cannot be replaced with the digital era. Photography is a perfect example of that. These digital cameras are amazing, that can capture something with such clarity, but . . . there’s a certain sentiment, I guess, a feel, a quality, that just can’t and won’t compare with film. That’s because there’s a human imprint on it. Etsy’s one of my favourite places to shop, to discover new Indie designers, because this is the voice of the people. When you look at huge corporations it’s not the voice of the people, it’s the voices of a marketing team interpreting what the people want – or think they want. There’s a certain magic that you lose. I do clearly see that difference and to me, when you hold something in your hand and think of another human being’s part to do with it, it’s an amazing thing. It’s a gem, it’s a treasure.GGF: There’s a connection between you and the maker that somehow transcends stuff made out of plastic and stamped out of a plastic extrusion machine.KvD: Yeah, most definitely. And I think, too, even on a subconscious level, people understand it as well, when they see something that’s hand made by an artisan. I always love when you don’t have a big corporation or a corporate approach, the freedom of creativity is still intact. That’s what I love about all these little independent designers is that, oh man! – this is so much more fulfilled than playing it safe. I wrote an album that I never released. When I sat down with my friends to write it, we just closed the doors and just turned everything off, and just played. We didn’t time it, oh, it’s gotta be under three minutes to get radio, and hey, we gotta add a hook . . . we said, let’s just create for the sake of creating, and it’s something that I can be proud of. That’s how it should be. That’s how Beethoven did it, and that’s how a lot of modern-day musicians that I love do it as well. I think there’s something liberating in that.GGF: Absolutely . . . plus there’s a connection. You know, when you touch a hand-made object I feel like my hand is touching the artist’s hand. It’s not perfect in the sense that it came out of a mold – it’s perfect in the sense that it came out of someone’s heart.KvD: Sure. My biggest gripe with humanity, I guess, is that we live in a world where a majority of people are just constantly taking. You take and take and take from the planet, from each other. And the more time that passes, the less it seems that people are actually producing and giving anything back. That’s why I think art is one of humanity’s most redeeming qualities, it’s the least we can do. When there’s more people like that, to me, that’s the hero quality. It’s not about ego, I resent these people who say, “I wanna be a legend, I wanna leave a mark.” You know, when you’re dead, you’re fuckin’ dead, it doesn’t matter what you did. And if climate change goes any further – which it will – and our entire environment collapses, none of this will have mattered. But during the time that you were here, what did you bring to the table? Or did you just take? I resent this very selfish way of living, it’s just not something that I admire. In fact, that’s something I love about animals, they do it by default – what they take, they put back. (laughs)GGF: You’re right. And I think you can describe it as selfish, but maybe it’s more of an illusion. A lot of Eastern religions see things in this way. We’re aware that we’re going to die, we can’t really deal with that, so we create the illusion of an eternity perspective, you know?KvD: Yeah. It’s the one thing we’ve never experienced yet.GGF: Well, all it’ll take is a great comet strike and that’ll settle that issue once and for all!KvD: Yeah, sure.GGF: We definitely live in a time that’s given us a lot of tools to make it – it’s always been possible – but let’s say that the barriers to entry have come down in a big way –KvD: For Sure.GGF: . . . and the ability to connect instantly with a larger community, obviously is something that never existed. That’s something that Glenn obviously thought and wrote a lot about when he gave up playing in public, but . . .KvD: Right.GGF: . . . but the sort of pressure to conform to what generally is regarded as a successful life . . .KvD: Sure.GGF: You know . . . you go through your schooling, you get your university degree, you get out into a profession,KvD: . . . and you get married and have kids and a house with a white picket fence, but you know, when we realize that that is super-illusionary, it’s quite liberating. I remember telling my Dad “Hey, Dad, I may not be the richest person,” when I was first tattooing, “but you know, I work at a tattoo shop, and that might not be considered quote-unquote a “real job,” but I whistle on the way to work every day when I walk over there.” You know, I’m not working my ass off for something I don’t believe in. And I think that’s just so crucial. And also that, to me, is so realistic.GGF: You remind of that line from Porgy and Bess: “Folks with plenty of plenty / Got a lock on their door / ‘Fraid somebody’s gonna rob ‘em while they’re out a-makin’ more / What for?”KvD: Yeah, that’s true. But you know, I think that is a social dynamic and it happens across the board. It’s not just with wealthy people, I think it happens in every social circle. We tend to be mesmerized by a false sense of what’s important – we tend to get dazzled by these goals . . . like Fool’s Gold, you know? And we treat people differently that way. To me, I find it refreshing when you feel the sincerity in somebody and you have a real conversation versus that feeling of, “what does that person want from me?” I know I’ve been really fortunate to be surrounded by good people. Even as I was becoming more quote-unquote “successful” and bigger and all that stuff, I just always hung out with my friends. I don’t have that many friends, but the ones I do are just solid and amazing – and my family, and I refuse to have yes-men around me. What’s the point of living like that?GGF: When was the first time you encountered Glenn Gould. What are your memories – do you remember which record it was?KvD: It’s a funny story because the person who introduced me to Glenn Gould was not somebody you’d think would introduce me to him. At the time I was writing music with Paul B. Cutler. He was the guitarist for a punk-goth band from the eighties called 45 Graves, and one of my favourite people of all time. We really, truly connected on music – not modern music: we loved Gregorian chanting and classical and medieval, you know? We loved the old stuff – not vintage! He knew how much I loved Beethoven, and my favourite Beethoven piece is the Sonata Pathétique. So he said, “have you heard Glenn Gould’s version of it?” and I’m like, “Who’s Glenn Gould?” “You don’t know who Glenn Gould is?” And I remember saying, “I have no idea!” And he was like, “You would love him!” and he introduced Glenn’s personality by describing him. Paul’s such a wizard with words, that I automatically knew I would love this person whoever he was, and so we went on a crazy Youtube binge, watching Glenn’s performances and things like that.Then I just began obsessively collecting as many records as I could possibly get. One of my favourite things about Glenn, was that every recording was so different. Different variations of the same song but played like – I felt like this was just like, the true spirit of that music. And for me it was so amazing to see somebody that was cool – you know, he was so cool! It’s shocking it’s like a sexy comedian, something you just don’t ever see, you know what I mean?And the more and more I learned about him as a person, the more it made me love and appreciate his approach to music. I say, man, I have been playing the same pieces from my childhood, you know, these masterpieces by the old Greats, and it never gets old. And isn’t that a trip that you spend your entire life trying to master an instrument, you can end up performing in front of a lot of people and get all kinds of crazy awards, and applause, and you can build a career playing somebody else’s music, whereas if you cover a Beatle’s song, you’re just in a cover band. And I think that’s the tremendous power of that type of music. And I feel that ‘til this day nobody has topped it. Of course, there’s still great music – I mean, the Beatles are great in their own right, too, but I feel nothing’s ever been as ground-breaking as the Beethovens of this world and I don’t foresee anything topping them either, and Glenn really celebrated that. So that was my introduction to Glenn. And it’s also kinda funny that the guy who introduced me is probably the gothiest punk rock guy that ever walked the planet, you know? (laughs)Kat von D talks about Music, Life, Art, and Glenn Gould

Celebrated tattoo artist and TV personality Kat von D is one of the true originals of contemporary popular culture. She has not only built a huge fan base including a vast following on social media, but launched a highly successful cosmetics line, Kat von D Beauty. While many associate her with punk and goth culture, her artistic interests are all-encompassing, starting with her childhood love of classical music, and particularly Beethoven. She is a dedicated vegan, a lover of Old Master painting, and as we discovered, a passionate admirer of Glenn Gould. We caught up with Kat and spoke with her from her home in Los Angeles in a wide-ranging conversation about her life and ideas about music, art and keeping it real in an increasingly consumer-driven world.

GGF: This is Brian Levine at The Glenn Gould Foundation and I’m very happy to be talking today with Kat von D, tattoo artist, fashion icon, makeup entrepreneur, musician, vegan, social media star, and very accomplished artist in her own right, and also a pianist and admirer of Glenn Gould and Beethoven. That’s a lot to fit in – you must be on the move all the time.

KvD (chuckling): Yeah, and on top of that, I’m a crazy cat lady, so . . .

GGF: How many cats do you have?

KvD: I just have two, but I love them a lot.

GGF: Glenn Gould would have been very happy to hear about that because as you probably know, he was a pretty passionate animal lover himself.

KvD: That’s awesome!

GGF: I think when he was five or six years old, he took his first stab at composing and he created a little kiddie opera in which all the people were extinct, and it was only the cats and dogs that were running things.

KvD: Oh, my god – I gotta get my hands on that! (laughs)

GGF: I understand you still play the piano?

KvD: Yeah, I started playing when I was five years old. My grandmother is a classically trained pianist, and she taught the three of us, my brother, sister and I. I was the only one that really stuck with it, and my first obsession was with classical music, particularly Beethoven. My grandmother herself was a huge fan, and so, I remember every week when we’d go over for piano lessons, she had this book, it was – I don’t know how to describe it – it was kind of a, like a scrapbook of articles and drawings and paintings. She was a painter herself, also, a really good one, and I actually should say she still is because she still paints and plays piano. I used to pore over this book and read everything. Of course it was in Spanish – my family’s from Argentina – there were clippings from the 1930’s and ‘40’s. You could see advertisements from back in the day. And basically my grandmother knew every myth, legend and story about Beethoven as well as all the other greats.

Beethoven’s story obviously was something that just cut to my core; not just the music, I mean, the music alone was enough, but just to hear that sort of physical struggle and to be able to compose and produce such an intense amount of ground-breaking music even with his physical ailments; that’s just something that just proves that human ability.

And when I later on discovered Glenn Gould I felt that same connection. Some of my favourite Beethoven recordings are from Glenn, all of which I collect on vinyl.

GGF: Let’s talk about your early experience learning the piano. What were some of the pieces you remember playing?

KvD: Yeah, well I remember falling in love with piano playing for the first time. I remember when it happened and it wasn’t in the beginning, I had very disciplinary folks. You know, we practiced two hours a day every day, by the clock, and I suffered through it, looking out the window, watching kids have normal lives, playing and whatnot. For us, you know everybody in my family played at least two instruments, so it was something that was nurtured and I look back at that and I’m ever so grateful. I think the best gift I’ve ever been given was those first few years of making me learn. But the first time that I ever did finally fall in love with playing the piano was when I figured out how to play Beethoven’s Sonata in G. It’s not one of his more popular, Romantic pieces, you know, it’s twelve pages of a lot of scales and frilliness. But I think it was more to me, I mean, I didn’t play video games, but I assume it’s kind of the same feeling where you’ve been hacking away at a level for a long time and then you finally win. And then you go onto the next level. That’s the high that I felt and it’s still the high that I chase anytime I’m learning anything whether it’s in my drawing or tattooing or painting or piano playing. I think I was about seven years old, and I just fell madly in love with it. And then without a timer I would practice on my own. And I just wanted to become better and better and better.

My family was quite religious growing up, so aside from classical music it was mainly religious music that was played in the household. Of course the religious stuff didn’t really sink in too much with me, but classical music always did.

Of late, I’ve been trying to build my memory repertoire, because unfortunately, because I was trained to read, I tend to use that as a crutch. Even when I’m writing my own songs I still get it transcribed and read it, and I’ve been trying to break away from that crutch and just try and build up my memory repertoire.

We really don’t have any more excuses. I think even in my generation – and I still consider myself young – you brought up this idea that being an artist is an unrealistic goal. When I first got into tattooing, same thing. I didn’t go to high school, I dropped out after junior high, ‘cause I started tattooing when I was fourteen, and I remember my parents being shocked, saying, “you have to get your high school diploma” and I remember, “but I’m living the dream! I’m doing what I want.” At times, I was even supporting my family to a certain degree with the money I was making, which was a lot for a sixteen-year-old, by the time I opened my first shop.

So I think that we do live in a world where it doesn’t matter anymore, with the success of the internet and everything else, we really have no excuses to not pursue the things we want to do. And if it means taking a pay cut, why not, you know? We don’t have to work 9 to 5 in a cubicle if we don’t want to, and if we do, that’s cool, too. I feel that part of being human is the amazing ability of making choices. And I feel that, as much as I do share with the world, through social media or Youtube or whatever, or even when I was on television, it was never about the gain of social status, or how many followers you have on Instagram. To me, it was always if I could sneak the medicine into the dessert somehow, and inspire people to actually create with their hands and with their minds and not settle for less, that would be fulfilling enough for me. I feel I’ve done that, in ways, and with music in particular, I’ve always been a fan of spotlighting, bands or musicians that a lot of people aren’t aware of, because I think that’s important because there’s a lot of stuff that’s shoved down our throat on a regular basis, whether it’s through radio, TV, all that stuff. But there’s so many great, amazing talented people that deserve that attention. And that changed my life tremendously, and I want to share that with people and inspire people to think outside the box.

I think that’s one of the reasons I love Glenn’s approach to life, as well, because he was very much about that. We do live in a really great, exciting time: I never in a million years thought I would have a makeup line, let alone be sitting here, talking with you, you know? Having this great opportunity to do this, it’s like, every day is a dream, because my family just came from, basically, a Third World country, where I was born. We came from nothing but I don’t feel I got lucky, I think some things were luck, but a lot of it was just dedication and making the time and also, well I did get luck with parents, who really nurtured music and art.

I think one of the things that bothers me the most is people who say, “oh, I wish I could draw, I can’t draw.” Well, sure you can, you can also play like Glenn Gould, but you’ve got to practice as much as he did! That’s pretty liberating, when you think, like wow! One-plus-one-equals two: all I have to do is input this many hours and time and I could actually play this, or I could actually do this. When I was practicing for this small performance, I got a piano teacher, and she told me a wild story about some wealthy man who had never played any instrument, bit he was totally moved by a classical piece that he heard at a concert and he got on a mission to learn this one song and he trained with her for months just to learn this one song, and when he learned it, he was good, and that was it. But that’s a great example of the fact that we can do anything we want. Just turn off that damn TV! (laughs)

GGF: We definitely live in a time that’s given us a lot of tools to make it – it’s always been possible – but let’s say that the barriers to entry have come down in a big way –

KvD: For Sure.

GGF: . . . and the ability to connect instantly with a larger community, obviously is something that never existed. That’s something that Glenn obviously thought and wrote a lot about when he gave up playing in public, but . . .

KvD: Right.

GGF: . . . but the sort of pressure to conform to what generally is regarded as a successful life . . .

KvD: Sure.

GGF: You know . . . you go through your schooling, you get your university degree, you get out into a profession,

KvD: . . . and you get married and have kids and a house with a white picket fence, but you know, when we realize that that is super-illusionary, it’s quite liberating. I remember telling my Dad “Hey, Dad, I may not be the richest person,” when I was first tattooing, “but you know, I work at a tattoo shop, and that might not be considered quote-unquote a “real job,” but I whistle on the way to work every day when I walk over there.” You know, I’m not working my ass off for something I don’t believe in. And I think that’s just so crucial. And also that, to me, is so realistic.

GGF: You remind of that line from Porgy and Bess: “Folks with plenty of plenty / Got a lock on their door / ‘Fraid somebody’s gonna rob ‘em while they’re out a-makin’ more / What for?”

KvD: Yeah, that’s true. But you know, I think that is a social dynamic and it happens across the board. It’s not just with wealthy people, I think it happens in every social circle. We tend to be mesmerized by a false sense of what’s important – we tend to get dazzled by these goals . . . like Fool’s Gold, you know? And we treat people differently that way. To me, I find it refreshing when you feel the sincerity in somebody and you have a real conversation versus that feeling of, “what does that person want from me?” I know I’ve been really fortunate to be surrounded by good people. Even as I was becoming more quote-unquote “successful” and bigger and all that stuff, I just always hung out with my friends. I don’t have that many friends, but the ones I do are just solid and amazing – and my family, and I refuse to have yes-men around me. What’s the point of living like that?

GGF: When was the first time you encountered Glenn Gould. What are your memories – do you remember which record it was?

KvD: It’s a funny story because the person who introduced me to Glenn Gould was not somebody you’d think would introduce me to him. At the time I was writing music with Paul B. Cutler. He was the guitarist for a punk-goth band from the eighties called 45 Graves, and one of my favourite people of all time. We really, truly connected on music – not modern music: we loved Gregorian chanting and classical and medieval, you know? We loved the old stuff – not vintage! He knew how much I loved Beethoven, and my favourite Beethoven piece is the Sonata Pathétique. So he said, “have you heard Glenn Gould’s version of it?” and I’m like, “Who’s Glenn Gould?” “You don’t know who Glenn Gould is?” And I remember saying, “I have no idea!” And he was like, “You would love him!” and he introduced Glenn’s personality by describing him. Paul’s such a wizard with words, that I automatically knew I would love this person whoever he was, and so we went on a crazy Youtube binge, watching Glenn’s performances and things like that.

Then I just began obsessively collecting as many records as I could possibly get. One of my favourite things about Glenn, was that every recording was so different. Different variations of the same song but played like – I felt like this was just like, the true spirit of that music. And for me it was so amazing to see somebody that was cool – you know, he was so cool! It’s shocking it’s like a sexy comedian, something you just don’t ever see, you know what I mean?

And the more and more I learned about him as a person, the more it made me love and appreciate his approach to music. I say, man, I have been playing the same pieces from my childhood, you know, these masterpieces by the old Greats, and it never gets old. And isn’t that a trip that you spend your entire life trying to master an instrument, you can end up performing in front of a lot of people and get all kinds of crazy awards, and applause, and you can build a career playing somebody else’s music, whereas if you cover a Beatle’s song, you’re just in a cover band. And I think that’s the tremendous power of that type of music. And I feel that ‘til this day nobody has topped it. Of course, there’s still great music – I mean, the Beatles are great in their own right, too, but I feel nothing’s ever been as ground-breaking as the Beethovens of this world and I don’t foresee anything topping them either, and Glenn really celebrated that. So that was my introduction to Glenn. And it’s also kinda funny that the guy who introduced me is probably the gothiest punk rock guy that ever walked the planet, you know? (laughs)

KvD: Yeah, yeah.

GGF: At the Wilshire Ebel Theatre. KvD: That’s amazing.

GGF: So I think that’s something that you and he share in a way.

KvD: Wow, that’s a great compliment. And I think, it’s natural to feel like an outsider. I mean a lot of people say, “oh, it’s the artist’s way.” But I don’t. I felt like an outsider before I knew what a tattoo was, that’s my own life experience. You can also practice and master anything but I think what makes you different from anyone is your experiences and where you come from, and how that shapes the way you apply it. And that’s also what makes music and art so beautiful and different. I guess my heart responds to the struggle. I can see that in Glenn’s music as well as other artists that I absolutely love, including Beethoven.

GGF: Obviously something else that you and Glenn share is your love of animals which you talked about at the start, and it seems that that special communication or even communion that people have with the animals in their lives, that was very powerful for him and I take it that it’s really super-important in your life, too.

KvD: Oh it’s a huge part of my life. Most of the time, I don’t want to say that I relate to animals better, but I definitely admire animals a lot more (laughs). You know, I just look at my cats. I’m just in awe of their spirit and their amazing ability to just be. My little cat, Piaf, who I named after Edith Piaf, he was the runt of the litter His mother abandoned him and he wasn’t even supposed to survive. He’s this sweet little baby . . . he looks like a bird to me. I look at him and go, wow, I have a fucked up relationship with my Mom and I’ve had to have therapy over it, and really work on issues, then I think, Piaf was abandoned and somehow has no Mom issues! He’s so enlightened that he doesn’t even need forgiveness; he just is. And I want to be like that. I can’t imagine I’d ever get there, but I admire that for sure.

And I think, too, that the more connected we are to our environment, whether it’s animals, plants or whatever, the dirt, that clear connection of how we are nothing without them, it’s so important and it’s something that we’ve lost and becomes more blurry as time goes on. With technology, there’s great things that come from it but also, there’s such huge distractions. And it’s the same with music: there are great technologies that afford us the opportunity to learn and produce music in different and easier ways, but at the same time, I see fewer kids playing instruments. Even on my Instagram, you know, I always try to post videos of me playing the piano, whether it’s a Cure song or a Beethoven song. And it’s to show people, look, I’m just some chick that came from Mexico and didn’t even go to high school but if I can do this, you can do it, so let’s break it down. I want to live in a world where there’s tons of Glenn Goulds, you know? (laughs) That’s what I want.

GGF: So did he. He said technology would allow more people to become artists. This was an interview I think he gave in 1967. He said, today we have stereo sets in our homes, we can can turn up the bass and treble but that’s nowhere near the power we’ll have in the future. Then we’ll be able to not have guys like me (Glenn) telling people how to listen to Beethoven; they’ll be able to get what he called a “box of takes” from someone else’s recording sessions and create the version that they hear in their own heads, with technology that everyone can afford. And of course, we have that now. But we also have a lot of what I call “background noise” and distractions, and that makes it harder in some ways . . .

KvD: It’s so much harder to focus.

GGF: With the overstimulation, to find those moments of stillness and inward tranquility – what Gould called the solitude that’s the precondition for spiritual enlightenment, which he found in the North. And I sense that you find that in the environment that you’ve created very meticulously and beautifully in your home.

KvD: Yeah!

GGF: You call it Kat’s Closet, and you’re surrounded by beautiful handmade things that you’ve assembled.

KvD: Yeah. I’m super particular about conscious living. That’s my ultimate goal, and it hits all aspects of life. Some people from outside look in and say, “oh, she’s neurotic about certain things.” I am strict about what goes in my mind on a conscious level and an unconscious level. You know, I don’t have a television in my house. I do like to watch movies so I can watch them on my laptop. But I try to avoid screens as much as possible. You described it perfectly, it’s a lot of background noise. But I think that also, your surroundings, wherever you spend a lot of time, it’s important to treat every corner of it with intention. Nothing in my house is there by accident. I think when you start taking care of everything that you do, whether it’s how you eat, what you listen to, even.

I’m relaunching some fragrance that I had launched years ago but is back in demand, and I remember that process was so amazing. We had to do all these blind tests where they put all these fragrances in bottles with no labels and I had to tell by nose what fragrances I liked and what I don’t like. And they take all these notes and then they can tell you what kinds of fragrance you actually do like. When I got the results back, you know what?- the perfumes I thought I loved, I actually do love them. Whereas, you know, you look at [names a famous perfume], which is one of that company’s top-selling perfumes, fails the blind test 100% across the board. Nobody likes it when it’s not in the package. But once it’s in the package, they love it. See, when I heard that story, I thought, wow! – I don’t want to be that person that thinks they like something and then realizes that they don’t. Or maybe, sadly enough, never really realize what they truly like and what’s important to them. Like, do you really love the music that you listen to, or is it just that you’ve been hypnotized by what’s forced down your ears? To me that’s really crucial. So I’m a stickler about that, and in the house, I look at every room and say, what’s the intention of that room? I’m not as fancy as people might think, you know, when you look at my house and it’s like, “wow! It’s so beautiful.” And I’m like, “I made that.” I usually try to make stuff. You know, like all the stuff that folks think is fancy, I assembled that. You know like pianos, I collect old, weirdo obscure instruments. I never really had a fancy, nice piano until nine years ago or so when my buddy was low on cash. He had a beautiful baby grand and so I bought it off of him for like a grand. That’s the first time I owned and played a beautiful piano. But it ain’t no Steinway. (laughs)

GGF: Give yourself time – you’ll have a Steinway or a Bosendorfer yet, if you want one.

KvD: I’ve been lucky enough to play those at studios and stuff, but my point is that there’s so many pianos on Craigslist and small pianos, too, that fit in your room that when people say, “oh, I wish I could play,” – dude, get a piano! Couple hundred bucks, man! I know a guy that tunes it for a hundred bucks, and then you’re set!

GGF: I know, plus it’s the best piece of furniture you could ever have

KvD: Beautiful!

GGF: If you have a picture or a piece of sculpture, stick it on a piano!

KvD: Yeah, sure (laughs).

GGF: But it strikes me that you have a real feel for things that are hand-made, that people have put their soul into, and that’s a kind of connection between you and William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement.

KvD: Yeah, I’m a huge fan of hand-made things. There’s a certain quality that just cannot be replaced with the digital era. Photography is a perfect example of that. These digital cameras are amazing, that can capture something with such clarity, but . . . there’s a certain sentiment, I guess, a feel, a quality, that just can’t and won’t compare with film. That’s because there’s a human imprint on it. Etsy’s one of my favourite places to shop, to discover new Indie designers, because this is the voice of the people. When you look at huge corporations it’s not the voice of the people, it’s the voices of a marketing team interpreting what the people want – or think they want. There’s a certain magic that you lose. I do clearly see that difference and to me, when you hold something in your hand and think of another human being’s part to do with it, it’s an amazing thing. It’s a gem, it’s a treasure.

GGF: There’s a connection between you and the maker that somehow transcends stuff made out of plastic and stamped out of a plastic extrusion machine.

KvD: Yeah, most definitely. And I think, too, even on a subconscious level, people understand it as well, when they see something that’s hand made by an artisan. I always love when you don’t have a big corporation or a corporate approach, the freedom of creativity is still intact. That’s what I love about all these little independent designers is that, oh man! – this is so much more fulfilled than playing it safe. I wrote an album that I never released. When I sat down with my friends to write it, we just closed the doors and just turned everything off, and just played. We didn’t time it, oh, it’s gotta be under three minutes to get radio, and hey, we gotta add a hook . . . we said, let’s just create for the sake of creating, and it’s something that I can be proud of. That’s how it should be. That’s how Beethoven did it, and that’s how a lot of modern-day musicians that I love do it as well. I think there’s something liberating in that.

GGF: Absolutely . . . plus there’s a connection. You know, when you touch a hand-made object I feel like my hand is touching the artist’s hand. It’s not perfect in the sense that it came out of a mold – it’s perfect in the sense that it came out of someone’s heart.

KvD: Sure. My biggest gripe with humanity, I guess, is that we live in a world where a majority of people are just constantly taking. You take and take and take from the planet, from each other. And the more time that passes, the less it seems that people are actually producing and giving anything back. That’s why I think art is one of humanity’s most redeeming qualities, it’s the least we can do. When there’s more people like that, to me, that’s the hero quality. It’s not about ego, I resent these people who say, “I wanna be a legend, I wanna leave a mark.” You know, when you’re dead, you’re fuckin’ dead, it doesn’t matter what you did. And if climate change goes any further – which it will – and our entire environment collapses, none of this will have mattered. But during the time that you were here, what did you bring to the table? Or did you just take? I resent this very selfish way of living, it’s just not something that I admire. In fact, that’s something I love about animals, they do it by default – what they take, they put back. (laughs)

GGF: You’re right. And I think you can describe it as selfish, but maybe it’s more of an illusion. A lot of Eastern religions see things in this way. We’re aware that we’re going to die, we can’t really deal with that, so we create the illusion of an eternity perspective, you know?

KvD: Yeah. It’s the one thing we’ve never experienced yet.

GGF: Well, all it’ll take is a great comet strike and that’ll settle that issue once and for all!

KvD: Yeah, sure.

GGF: We were just talking about the artist and eternity. A lot of the received wisdom, if you like, is that artists create a legacy, you know, vita brevis, ars longa – life is short, art is long or eternal. But your canvas is the human body. As much as the people who receive your tattoos may cherish them, they won’t survive them, except maybe in photographs.

KvD: Yeah.

GGF: Have you thought about that?

KvD: Of course! I remember the first time learning of a client dying. Tattooing isn’t the only medium I work with, so I understand the difference, obviously. There’s ups and downs to it. First of all, I could never take credit for any tattoo I’ve ever done, because it’s always going to be a collaboration . . . always. Never what I want to do - it’s actually what the client wants. And then using your skills and abilities, the goal is to surpass their vision, and create beautiful things that they’ll enjoy. I see it more as an exchange. Once I’m done, it’s gone . . . it’s not even mine anymore. I don’t even see my name on it. If you were to look at it on a trademark level, the person has more ownership over it than I do. So I think it’s kind of cool that there’s no attachment to it. Whereas a painting that has been protected for centuries can live for as long as possible on the walls of a museum and we can admire it forever, or for as long as we’re alive. It’s kind of like my album in a sense: I can write something and give it all I’ve got and be super-proud of it and then I can share it and it can live on, or I can just keep it to myself and it becomes almost more sacred.

I’m not knocking either approach because you can always toy with the idea of releasing it and it’s a different fulfilling feeling when you share, but at the end, like I said, when you die, you die. Like Caravaggio, I was always so tickled by stories of him having such a crazy temper and he didn’t leave a massive amount of work compared to Rembrandt and Michelangelo – he would get a bad critique and burn a painting, you know? And I just thought, how cool is that? He doesn’t give a fuck, you know what I mean? Because then the act of creating is even more at its truest form, like what you think of creating. Not to say that that’s what everyone should do, ‘cause that would be so sad if paintings got burned, but I feel that when people are driven by this idea of legacy, it’s really kind of distracting to the ultimate purpose of art, in a way. But that’s just my personal opinion. I think what’s more interesting and more important, like with Glenn for example, like his legacy – it isn’t even his music? The ability to inspire others, in that capacity is just so much more powerful, I think. Beethoven, exact same thing.

Music saved my life in so many ways, it’s been my best friend, moreso than drawing. I couldn’t live without playing music – if I had to choose. There have been dark times when music has just got me through, and I’m not the only one. Music has no equal . . .it helps you off that ledge. To me, that’s just so much more ground-breaking than any type of award or legacy or whatever you want to call it, you know.

GGF: Yes, because it’s a purely inner state.. You know, Gould in one interview was asked why he never played Scarlatti, since he played so much Bach, who was also a baroque composer, and he said, there’s more “spiritual nourishment” in any one of the preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier than there is in all 500 of Scarlatti’s sonatas.

KvD: I love that.

GGF: That phrase, “spiritual nourishment” – that’s what it’s all about.

KvD: – Yeah, Yeah!

GGF: I think there’s a lot to that. One of the things that strikes me – you call yourself “outsider” – I like the 19th century term “free spirit” in the sense that your view of the world isn’t shaped by the collective “wisdom” around you. So, in that collective wisdom, punk, metal, the world of tattooing, and alternative cultures of various kinds – and classical music: these things do not together go. But in your life they really go together harmoniously and in a seamless way.

KvD: But I think they actually do go together. You wouldn’t have Slayer without Bach. When you break down heavy metal, play heavy metal, the musical structure is, these guitar licks are the exact same scales played in the exact same tempo . . . it is classical music, whether or not heavy metal has the lifespan of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart or whatever. And you look at tattooing, regardless of all the stigmas that surround that culture or subculture, you wouldn’t have tattooing without the early engravings of the 1500’s, because that’s where it comes from. I mean, that’s where the machine came from. A tattoo machine was first patented at the turn of the 20th century and it was an engraving machine. And you look at . . . as the tattoo medium actually evolved we’re at a place where the tools themselves haven’t changed. It’s barbaric – they have the same structure as an old antique doorbell that was later patented byThomas Edison. Nothing’s really changed– maybe the pigments and formulations have. But not the technique. And now we’re able to do straight-up master reproductions on skin. I think these arts need each other. So whether or not people make that connection and actually fall in love with these different genres, it’s all really the same thing. I just got lucky being raised with parents that found importance in introducing the roots of all of it to us at an early age. I wonder what, nowadays, parents teach their kids. Again, my family’s from Argentina, we were born in Mexico and we didn’t have the luxury of money. We did have the basics, which are really the fundamentals of what makes me who I am today. I wouldn’t be able to write music the way I write now without all those years of playing classical music. And I also wouldn’t be able to draw at my level without having the inspiration of the Old Masters. And I don’t think that that’s ever going to change. You look at all the real painters today, their influences probably fall in line with the same greats.

GGF: There’s a lot of wisdom in that. So many of these things get “diverted” – by, social associations and pressures. Music is really interesting because the kind of music you listen to, for a lot of people, not only conjures up the music itself, which is just the notes themselves and how they’re performed, but also a whole set of peer group associations, social associations, value associations . . . KvD: Sure. GGF: You know you think of jazz and it’s so cool, in a skeezy dive with a lot of substances getting traded back and forth around the bar and a lot of smoke . . .

KvD: Sure.

GGF: You think about Goth, and certain kinds of people are into it

KvD: Yeah,

GGF: And you think you know what they’re like because they listen to that music. . . . . . and then you think about classical music, and for a lot of people the image is Margaret Dumont in the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera: some dowager in a tiara with a big string of pearls, unbelievably stuffy, and un-cool and obsessed with all sorts of social conventions. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the music. The music is just the notes that Beethoven wrote and how they’re played . . .

KvD: Sure. Well . . . do you know who Ali Helnwein is?

GGF: No, tell me.

KvD: Oh, my gosh. Well, Ali Helnwein is my favourite modern day composer he’s my age, but he’s a composer and plays all instruments and actually he comes from a family of artists and I got introduced to him after being a fan of his father who’s quite the Renaissance man, painter, photographer,– his names is Gottfried Helnwein. When you Google him your mind will be blown. When I first met Ali I was so taken aback because I had heard his music and to me he was like if Tom Waits and Bach had a baby, you know? (laughs!) I highly recommend you look him up . . . I keep telling Ali, you’ve got to start releasing more music. He’ll press vinyl for me ‘cause he knows how much I love his stuff. He’s managed to make classical music cool again. He has a cult following and the people that listen to him . . . they’re just like me. I don’t know if it’s in the melancholy melodies or just the choice of instruments, or just the compositions themselves, but he just has a cool way of composing and I absolutely love it. He’s one of those people who, I’m always, like, “I’m so grateful that you live! That you exist, that you consecrate this.” Anyway I’m just a huge fan of his.

GGF: You appear on a bunch to TV talk shows, nominally you’re in the world of celebrity culture which everyone naturally assumes is a vacuous world for vacuous people,

KvD: Right.

GGF: but it’s pretty obvious that you’re not that – that you’re a person really confronting the quest for meaning and beauty every day in your life and in your work.

KvD: Thank you.

GGF: Which is one reason why I believe Glenn probably would have really liked you. And by the way, just a tip of the hat to that beautiful drawing of Glenn that you did.

KvD: Oh thank you!

GGF: I’d seen the picture you had taken of your self on the Foundation’s Glenn Gould “park bench sculpture” . . .

KvD: Yeah! There’s actually a funny story about that because with my makeup line it takes me everywhere all over the world and . . some people would call me a workaholic. I’m always very disciplined: “OK, we fly in, we have a completely packed day, there’s no down time at the end of it – we either get the flight back or spend one night and fly back early in the morning.” But the last time I was in Toronto, it was the first time ever that I had asked my team, “hey, I know I never asked before, but is it OK if we make one personal stop?” And they were just so curious, like, “where does she want to go?” And I said, “It’s not what you think. . . you guys won’t understand, it’s fine.” And so we go there and this was like the first time I ever was like, “hey, will you take a picture of me with this, real quick?” Yeah, it was on my To-Do list, you know? So that was kind of a funny moment, my team was just laughing about it. But it made sense, because I had named an eyeliner “Gould”. It was this gold eyeliner and they didn’t know, like that all my shade names are music-related stuff, like the inspirations behind the shade names. Then it made sense to them, and I made them watch a clip from that, “on the road” documentary where he’s playing with his dog, and I said, “you guys have to watch this, it isn’t even human!” So I’m trying to explain to them why this guy is . . .this hero! And they were all blown away. So that was just a special little moment . . .I know it probably looked cheesy, but to me it was a big deal.

GGF: Not cheesy at all. You know a lot of people come from all over the world to get their picture taken, sitting beside Glenn Gould on that bench.

KvD: Oh, for sure!

GGF: And I don’t know if you know this, but when you were there on that park bench, which really isn’t a park bench, ‘cause it’s bronze, but you were about a hundred feet away from the piano that Gould was playing in that scene with his dog.

KvD: Really!!!! Ah, that’s so awesome!

GGF: Next time you come to Toronto, we’ll take you to Glenn Gould studio . . .

KvD: I wanted to go in so badly, but they just made that little pit stop for me. And then, funny enough, it was as a conference for Sephora and there’s a brand – it’s a Canadian brand called Bite Beauty – they make lipstick that’s from edible ingredients – a really, really great company. And I was talking to them . . .you know, anytime I ever meet anybody from Toronto, the first thing I say is, “oh, wow, you’re so cool, you live in Gould-town.”And if they don’t know who it is, they’re like, “uh-who?” But this lady, who was one of the heads of Bite Beauty, she said, “Wait! You know who Glenn Gould is?” And I said, “Yeahhhhh, of course! I named an eyeliner after him!” And she tells me she’s somehow related to him. And I said, “you just became the coolest person everrrr!” I got so excited.

GGF: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there’s a beautiful - it was just last year, graphic novel about Glenn Gould.

KvD: Or really?

GGF: Spectacular, yes. And it was artist from France named Sandrine Revel, and it’s called “Glenn Gould: Une vie à contretemps.” And it’s now been published in a Korean edition, an Italian edition and the English just came out.

KvD: Oh, gosh, you have to keep me posted on that.

GGF: Your drawing (of Gould) which is extremely beautiful,

Kvd: Aw, thanks!

GGF: It reminds me to ask you, are you a completely self-taught visual artist?

KvD: Yeah, I mean, I definitely didn’t have training – I didn’t go to art school. And when I did go to school, like junior high, I failed my art classes, mainly because I had a hard time . . . I really don’t like people telling me what to think. Especially with art. I think the schools tend to want to teach you all the history and certain genres of art that I could care less about . . . I’ve always been a huge fan of realism. Again, a huge fan of Rembrandt, and I don’t really give a fuck about cubism and whatever. I mean it’s alright if people like that stuff, I just didn’t care to waste my time on it. So I got, maybe a C-minus on all the art projects, but I think I would be lying if I said I was self-taught because I learn from people – everybody I work with. You know, lately I’ve been really struggling to learn how to paint, doing workshops with painters I admire – their style and design and aesthetics. So, in my own way – in my own ghetto way – I was self-taught, but not without absorbing the influence of the artists I have around me, and I’m fortunate to have a lot. And I’m my friends’ biggest fan, so of course, I would probably soak some of that up. I don’t think I’m sure that, if taken under a microscopic look, my drawing’s probably not at a level, you know, I don’t draw flawlessly, but I just draw the way I feel. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but I like it that way.

GGF: Well, that’s your own special style. It shouldn’t be anything other than what it is. What are your preferred media?

KvD: I absolutely love graphite . . . that’s something I’ve always, it just feels intuitive to me. But I’m not anti-charcoal or anything like that. I’ll draw with a mechanical pencil I find on the floor. You know, give me a pencil and paper and I’ll figure it out. (laughs)

GGF: And that gets you to Rembrandt and chiaroscuro and the illusion of depth in a flat medium. But you work in a three-dimensional medium, because if you’re tattooing somebody’s arm . . .

KvD: Yeah, it’s not a flat piece of paper.

GGF: Does that prove to be a bit of a drafting challenge for you?

KvD: Yeah, sure. It’s always the case, and especially when you’re looking at a portrait, I’m always looking for the flattest surface on a body to avoid distortion. But there are little tricks you can use to compensate for that, and whatnot.

GGF: Perspective must be a bit of a special challenge in the sense that if, let’s say, someone flexes their bicep and it changes shape, your vanishing point goes out of kilter.

KvD: Yeah, (laughs), it’s probably a wise move not to place an eyeball at the centre of someone’s triceps – you know, that’s gonna cause distortion. But I think when you’re in a neutral position, as long as it looks nice and even, you’re good. Sure – where there’s a will there’s a way. (giggles)

GGF: I’ve been meaning to ask you. You’ve got a beautiful Beethoven portrait on your right thigh. Would you ever consider having a Glenn on you?

KvD: Yeah! I’ve actually considered it. Like Glenn was just, ah, shockingly beautiful. (laughs) Yeah, I would definitely love to explore that. More than anything, I love pictures of hands, and he obviously had so many great photographs of his hands. And I did toy with the idea of getting a portrait of his hands, or something like that.

GGF: You know, classical music has its challenges, especially the forms that are more expensive to maintain, like the symphony orchestras. Have you ever thought of conducting an orchestra, or would you ever be interested in curating and programming an orchestral concert?

KvD: I would never flatter myself in conducting, just because I wouldn’t be that presumptuous, but I mentioned my friend Ali Helnwein, and hearing a piece come to life, and performing it live, and I remember when he was working on a violin concerto that I was able to commission, and that made me happy – to be able to fund something and not just to get classical music fans but the youth – young people who might not necessarily know anything about music, to come down and be a witness to that. I feel like I could be a good patron in that sense.

GGF: You can be a great advocate . . .

KvD: I would love that. Next time I come out to Toronto, I’ll ring you up and you can show me around.

GGF: You are absolutely guaranteed a guided tour

KvD: Awesome, man, thank you so much.

GGF: You’ve been so generous with your time . . .

KvD: No, you have.

GGF: Absolutely. OK, I don’t want to make you late, but I had so many other questions I wanted to ask you.

KvD: I could talk to you forever!

GGF: If you’re game for a Chapter 2, happy to do that anytime.

KvD: Awesome!

#kat von d #glenn gould #interview #music #passion #tattooing #life

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beast-bae · 8 years

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Sterek Fic Rec (last updated 21.2.17)

Stiles is used to selling himself to make ends meet. But it's getting harder to keep those ends meeting, and there's only so much of Stiles to go around. Until a too-fancy car shows up in his neighborhood, and he meets Derek Hale.All Derek wants is Stiles's time, someone to stay on his arm for events and smile for the cameras. It's the easiest job Stiles has ever had, the best-paying one he's ever had, and he's more than happy to sign up.Derek is everything and nothing Stiles expects him to be, with his tailored suits, sharp mind and his quiet way of caring. But it's just a job and Stiles never meant to fall in love.Hey :) because I’m always searching for new sterek fanfics on tumblr and I love seeing Sterek Fic Recs I decited to make a post with all of my favourite (can I get this word even bigger? bc I love those fics to death!) Sterek fanfics.

I will continue updating it ;) and I would really appreciate it if you could send me links to your favourite Sterek ffs <3

All of them are on Ao3! Also all of them are complete (except for Home by TheTypewriterGirl but there is only one chapter missing )!!

Also there is no specific order!

Also I try to find the authors on tumblr so you can visit them <3

This is gonna be a LOOooOOoONG post

Have fun reading :)

________________

Prince Among Wolves by tylerfucklin (Deshonanana) | 101k, Explict | kid fic |

Looking for full day/evening sitter. 2 twin boys age 4. Must have exp. w/werewolves. Must be human. No pedophiles. No teenage girls. Pay negotiable.

Home by TheTypewriterGirl | 160k, not finished yet 17/18!! | @stiles-and-the-sourwolf |

January seventh. Seven days since the start of 2015, and seven days since his father’s death.

The bastard, he thinks bitterly. The past year Derek Hale had made it blatantly obvious that he hated his scrawny guts, taking every given opportunity to shove him up against a wall, growl threats in his ears and roll his eyes whenever he stepped into the room, muttering some snide comment about how spastic or idiotic he was.

So why did he fucking volunteer to take him in?

Move a Mountain by ZainClaw | 69k, Explict | road trip/biker fic | @zainclaw |

Stiles goes camping with his friends in New Mexico after graduation where they befriend a biker gang led by Derek: a guy whom Stiles can’t decide if he will be either relieved or devastated to never see again once their week is up.

my wings a hurricane by kellifer_fic | 20k | dracon fic | @kellifer-k |

Stiles had been like any other kid growing up in the era of dragons. He'd watched the cartoons, the news stories, had the lunch box. When his screening at Beacon Hills High had come up negative, he'd been disappointed but unsurprised. His positive results were returned three years too late for it to be in any way convenient or cool.

Or, the one where they ride dragons.

Fly a Little Faster by mirrorkill | 32k | time travel fic | @mirrorkill |

Everyone knows when you go back in time, you shouldn't step on an ant, just in case you accidentally kill your own grandparent or something. But what happens when you go back in time and, uh, accidentally interrupt the one event that apparently made the Grumpiest Alpha in Town into a ball of mindless manpain?

Well, if Marty McFly can do it, so can Stiles Stilinski. All he has to do is get Derek and Paige to fall in love before he gets pulled back to his own time. And before he makes anything worse. That's easy as pie, right? Right?

Sweeter Than a Cherry Pie by kitsunequeen | 5k | pretend relationship | @stilesbansheequeen |

When Cora asks Stiles to be her pretend boyfriend for a New Year's family dinner, he figures he can do a friend a favor. When he hooks up with an incredible guy, Derek, the night before, only to wake up alone in the morning, he supposes he can handle that too. But when he shows up at Cora's house and Derek turns out to be her brother, well... that's a bit of a bigger problem.

Hale of a time by jamesm97 | 3k | halebait!stiles |

Stiles knows that his werewolf family are acting weird around him, not that that's strange they are werewolves after all but they don't know that he knows they are. They seem to be getting progressively touchy feely as his 16th birthday approaches.

HALEBAIT! STILES STILINSKI - where all the Hales are attracted to Stiles, but only one of them is insanely in love & lust with him

Settle down by wearing_tearing, whatthehale | 153k, Explict | mpreg!!| @hoechliniseverything ( whatthehale) @dylansneck (wearing_tearing) |

Stiles is a struggling author barely making ends meet.

Derek is a successful architect whose biological clock is ticking.

Enter a surrogacy agency, two packs, and a particularly sticky and toe curling heat week and you get a match made in heaven.

Stilinski’s Home for Wayward Wolves by owlpostagain | 35k |

“At least your puppies knock first,” Stiles snorts. “Here I thought their alpha raised them to be well-mannered.”   

“There’s a sign,” Derek responds stiffly.   

Stiles, whose curiosity outweighs even his hardest of grudges, abandons his chilly façade of nonchalance in a heartbeat. He jumps right up and all but pushes Derek out of the way in his effort to get to the window, and sure enough when he leans outside there’s a laminated strip of cardstock duct taped to the vinyl siding:   

DON’T FORGET TO KNOCK Stiles gets cranky when we scare him

---

Or, in which Stiles Stilinski moves to Beacon Hills for his junior year of high school and accidentally adopts a pack of teenage werewolves.

I Was Present While You Were Unconscious by CharWright5 | 19k, Mature | @kitstiles |

Stiles had often thought about how he'd meet his soul mate, the literal muscular man of his dreams. He just didn't ever imagine finding him on Facebook where a friend had shared a news article about a werewolf John Doe in a coma after a car wreck four hours out of town. And he also didn't expect to bond and fall in love with the guy's family before ever saying two words to him out loud.

But Not With Haste by uraneia | 21k, Explict | x-man AU |

It's been years since Derek escaped from the hunters who killed his family and bound him in his human form. He travels solo, never staying in one place, keeping under the radar--until a skinny, smart-mouthed kid stows away in the back of his truck.

Four months ago Stiles's first kiss put his best friend in a coma. His dad gave him a couple hundred bucks and a hug and told him to run. By the time Stiles witnesses the cage fighter known as Wolverine take out a shotgun and its wielder with his bare hands, he's got a plan. He knows there's a school in New York for kids like him. All he has to do is get there.

OR, in which Derek is the werewolf version of Wolverine and Stiles is Rogue and the plot of X-Men progresses accordingly, with a few notable deviations.

Cornerstone by Vendelin | 84k, Explict | @ljummen |

Suffering from PTSD, ex-Marine Derek Hale moves back to Beacon Hills to open a bookshop and find a calmer life. That’s where he meets Stiles, completely by accident. Stiles is talkative, charming and curious. Somehow, despite the fact that he’s blind, he’s able to read Derek like no one else.

just to know your name by bibliosexual | 3k | @bibliosexxual |

They're about fifteen minutes into the Skype call on Tuesday night when this guy wanders straight out of one of Derek’s wet dreams and into the frame, wearing nothing but black boxer briefs and a tight grey Guns N’ Roses tee. He’s lithely muscled, with a cute upturned nose and some of the most beautiful bone structure Derek has ever seen. Derek can see his nipples through his shirt. He feels all the blood in his body rushing to his dick.

“There should be a note about that on page nineteen,” Scott is saying, distantly, while Mystery Guy yawns adorably, nose scrunching, and runs a hand through his messy hair. He looks like he’s totally oblivious to Scott’s webcam, or to Scott. He looks like he just woke up. He looks like something out of an underwear ad, or softcore porn.

Mystery Guy bends down, thigh muscles flexing, and starts digging through Scott’s dresser drawers for a pair of sweatpants. Scott doesn’t ever turn around. He just keeps talking about… something. Something unimportant.

Mystery Guy has a mole high up on the back of his right thigh and Derek wants to lick it.

Bite Down Hard by KuriKuri | 26k, Explict | @authorkurikuri

For a moment, Derek can’t breathe.Because moles aren’t the only thing marring the pale skin of Stiles’ neck. Oh no, that’s –– that’s a bond bite. A bond bite which Stiles definitely did not have yesterday, and which appears to have roughly the same dimensions as Derek’s own mouth.Shit.

(Or: In which Secret Service Agent Derek Hale accidentally gets bonded to First Son Stiles Stilinski. Oops.)

Tangled Up In You by Morgana, Winchesterek | 105k, Explict | BDSM! | @sterekbros

Something is missing from Stiles’ sex life. Maybe it’s the fact that none of his partners share any of his kinks. While doing laundry over Thanksgiving break at Berkeley, Scott finds a flyer adverting, “WALK ON THE WILD SIDE! LET US TAKE YOU INTO THE DARKNESS AND BRING YOU SAFELY OUT AGAIN! EXPERIENCE PLEASURE AND PAIN AT THE HANDS OF ONE OF OUR EXPERIENCED, DISCREET PROFESSIONALS.” Stiles thinks it’s his kinda thing, but doesn’t have the money to pay for a session. Scott offers, only if Stiles refrains from telling him all about his kinky needs, so Stiles agrees. Enter Derek Hale, professional dominant. Stiles has his first session with Derek and can’t get enough (plus, Derek is HOT and Stiles just wants him all for himself).

It’s a Schlong Story by floatingstark | 33k, Explict | ex-porn star Derek |

"Do you like him?"

"Of course I do, he’s great!"

"Then what is the fucking problem?"

"My dick!"

-or-

Ex-Porn Star Derek Hale has a lot of issues but Ice Cream Parlor Owner Stiles Stilinski is not one of them.

I Might Be A Fool by prettylittlementirosa | 35k, Explict| College AU | @bisexualbcky

The thing about Stiles, though, is that for him, turned on and angry are not mutually exclusive feelings. He may be painfully hard but that doesn’t mean he’s not also ready to strangle Derek for having the audacity to act like this is something that’s happening to him, not something that is almost entirely his fault. So when Derek let’s out what must be his hundredth long-suffering sigh, Stiles snaps.

(or the one that was supposed to be a GRΣΣK AU but is mostly just a study in the gratuitous and inconsistent use of punctuation)

Expiration Dates by KaliopeShipsIt | 227k, Mature | mpreg! | @kaliopeshipsit

When 13-year old orphaned Derek Hale tests positive as a male carrier, his newly appointed guardian and uncle Peter uses his influence to make the test result go away, aware that in their deeply carrier-phobic society his nephew’s status could prove to be the downfall of the family company.

16 years later Derek is pressured into firing eight months-pregnant Danny Mahealani, creating a publicity scandal that, as the Equal Rights for Carriers movement gains more and more ground, results in an unprecedented media outrage targeted towards Hale & Argent Publishers.

A very reluctant Derek finds himself forced into defending his company’s prejudiced views on national television, facing off in heated debates against Stiles Stilinski, a guy he happened to have a one-night stand with months ago and has been pining over ever since. Stiles is a disgruntled former Hale & Argent employee, a staunch supporter of the ERC movement, he hates everything Derek stands for … and, courtesy of an expired condom, he’s also, unknowingly, the father of the child Derek wasn’t even aware he could carry in the first place.

Between Dusk and Dawn by impalagirl, wilddragonflying | 19k, Mature| vampire fic |

He's in the middle of a crowded bar when he smells it. For the first time in fifty years, Stiles Stilinski's mouth begins to water, and he's suddenly on high alert, twisting in his seat to scan the room with sharp eyes. Of course, it doesn't take long to spot him. He's as gorgeous as ever, tall and broad with dark hair and light eyes. He's wearing glasses this time, and damn, he looks good with a beard. Stiles had almost forgotten that; it's been so long since he's seen him with more than yesterday's stubble.

Marks and Mics by DLanaDHZ | 70k, Mature | Soulmate AU | @dlanadhz

Hale siblings Derek and Laura have been hired to run security for Stiles Stilinski's music tour. Business as usual, except someone is trying really hard to prove they're incapable and hurt Stiles. Derek finds himself curious about Stiles' bitter attitude and a strange illness that plagues the singer. And on top of that, Derek's soulmate remains elusive.

I Hunt For You With Bloody Feet by CharWright5 | 200k, Explict | SoulmateAU Stillinski Twins | @kitstiles

“Mates don't always mean happy ever after.”

When twenty-year-old born omega werewolf Stiles Stilinski received that cryptic email from his twin brother—who'd been missing for two years exactly—in a language the two of them had made up, his drive to find Stuart is doubled. The search leads him to Oak Creek, the most secured and heavily fortified city in all of California, where he finds that not only is his brother dead, but also the literal alpha of his Dreams in Derek Hale—who just happens to be his twin's Mate and the main suspect in Stiles' eyes. Despite an agreement to fight mutual feelings, the two are still drawn to each other as they try to solve the case themselves, uncovering a plot that goes deeper than the murder of just one wolf.

Hidden Omega by Akinasky | 107k, Explict | College fic |

As Stiles leaves for college, he must hide who he really is and then he meets his roommate and likes him ... a lot only there is no chance for him to fill the needs that Stiles has as an Omega. Then he also finds his Alpha, Derek Hale (of course) and they all struggle to find their way and learning more about the special aspects of being an Omega and trying to have a unique relationship that will never be typical especially with Stiles, pushing and bossy Stiles as the Omega.

Fucked Up Like You by damnfancyscotch | 38k | @damnfancyscotch

The boy was dirty. Very dirty. Most likely from the trap he’d been found in, the leg snare Derek figured, even though Peter hadn’t mentioned what type of trap it was. Mud dried and flaked off in patches on his left forearm, caked into the front of his sleeveless rough-hewn tunic and threadbare pants, up from his bare feet all the way to his knees, a dark streak painting the right side of his neck and continuing up into his clumsily cut brown hair - clearly he’d done it himself with a knife and perhaps no reflective surface, though judging by his appearance, a pond or puddle could have done just fine for him. Derek realized a lot of the spots he assumed to be mud were actually moles that dotted all along the boy’s skin.

Derek watched as the boy studied him back in silence, sitting with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. He stared hard at the crescent-shaped insignia picked out in silver and green sewn onto the dark gray fabric over Derek’s heart, a slight frown wrinkling his brow. The boy had to know about the Hales if he was part of the Argent pack.

“What’s your name?”

“St… Stiles.”

I Could Be Long Gone by idratherwrite | 26k, Explict | A/B/O-Dynamics | @ashleighblogs

Humans alphas and betas are used to treating human omegas like objects. Stiles and his father have managed to hide for years the fact that Stiles is an omega. When Stiles arrives at Beacon Hills he meets one Scott McCall and his friends and family, who are hiding an even bigger secret.

It's almost everything that Stiles wants.

Baking My Way Into Your Heart by theSilence | 178k, Mature | College AU | @effinlemon |

Derek is an uptight college student, all work and no play. His carefully scheduled life is thrown kilter when his regular barista is replaced with someone new.

A Princely Claim by kaistrex (weishen) | 40k, Explict | Royal Stiles | @kaistrex

In a world where werewolves die if they’re unable to Claim their mate and to refuse them is classed as murder, Alpha Derek Hale makes his very public Claim for Crown Prince Stiles of Beacon. The Royal Family are left with no choice but to accept, no matter the Prince’s imminent marriage to Princess Lydia of Kanima, to whom he’s been betrothed since birth. After having already faced the future of one loveless marriage, Prince Stiles is determined to make things with Derek work.

Kaleidoscope by Vendelin | 54k, Explict | @ljummen

Stiles spends a year before college working at the all-night coffee shop in town. It's nice and quiet, until one dark and brooding Derek starts coming in every morning, ordering coffee so strong that it should not be fit for human consumption. Ever. Stiles tries not to be affected by the mystery guy, but it's not like anything else happens around here, so really, what did you expect? And when he's already in too deep, he realises he might even be in way over his head...

Play Crack the Sky by WeAreTheCyclones | 122k, Mature | Rock Band AU | @wearethecyclones

Excerpt from “Hale Pulls the Plug on the Future of Rock,” Rolling Stone, Issue 1203 – Oct. 2014 “Fans and music industry vets alike are left reeling in the wake of bassist Derek Hale’s sudden departure from Smokes for Harris. At a time when the foursome from Beacon Hills, California seems to be on the cusp of rock superstardom after just one double platinum record, Smokes has everything to lose.”

Excerpt from “Smokes for Harris: Gladiator,” SPIN.com – Feb. 2015 “Smokes for Harris gives in a little to the pop punk of yesteryear in their sophomore effort, but rather than pandering to fans of a lost era they elevate the genre in a way that hasn’t been seen in quite some time. Frontman Stiles Stilinski works double duty as singer and primary songwriter and proves that he can handle the task even without former bassist Derek Hale."

Grey Rainbow by LoveActually_rps | 13k, Mature | @loveactually-rps

“Stiles?” Derek glanced at Stiles’ sleeping form. He didn’t even twitch. Derek continued. “If we…” his lips curved in a fond smile, fingers moving to smooth the creases of Stiles’ eyebrows, his voice coming as whisper. “... as in, you and me - If we get a chance someday… any day, to be together, y’know? I wouldn't mind you wooing me with flowers and all that cliched romantic shit. And you can even flirt with me. I approve.” He gazed at Stiles’ calm face for a long while before drifting off into quiet slumber with the sound of Stiles’ soft snoring in the background.

[aka, after pinning for his best friend for four years, Derek learns his teenage crush is easy, but his life isn’t]

Animal Instincts by BlueRunawayMoon | 262k, Explict | 2nd part is NOT FINISHED | @

Things are not going well for Stiles. Not only is he drifting from the pack, but he cant sleep and hardly eats, and its never been more clear to him that being a human leaves him at a major disadvantage. As if things weren't bad enough, he and Malia are on the rocks, and then there is the fact that Derek wants to kill him, of course. Derek, who he dreams about every night. Derek, who is losing control of his inner wolf, when said wolf seems to want Stiles dead.

But because Stiles is the universe's bitch, a new, terrifying and seemingly unbeatable monster arrives in Beacon Hills, and the pack have no idea how to stop it. When people start going crazy and attacking others, the Pack learn the creature is involved somehow. Now, with Stiles life in jeopardy, they must find a way to cure him before its too late.

Slow burn with lots of sexual tension and build up.

*There is a Stiles/Original Character pair up, but end game is Sterek. Pinky promise :) *

Strong Alpha, Strong Pups by Snare | 7k, Explict | A/B/O -Dynamics | @4fuxake

Omegas are weak. Stiles is an Omega, but Stiles has magic. Stiles is strong.

Stiles is strong, so Alpha needs to be stronger. Strong Alpha, strong pups.

Stripped & Polished by Morgana, Winchesterek | 77k, Explict |

Stiles is 17 and he’s sick of being a virgin. The last two and a half years of trying to get laid by every guy in the school (both straight and gay) haven’t worked out and the time he came onto his long time crush Jackson Whittemore blew up in his face. That was it. He was going to go out to a club and find someone to fuck him and they would be just as good as anyone else he was trying to have sex with. He goes to Jungle to scope out his prospects.

Just to See You Again by MellytheHun | 15k, Explict | @loserchildhotpants

A sterek college!AU where writing student Stiles specializes in love letters, runs a blog about it and can be commissioned to write love letters on behalf of lovers who are at a loss for words.

He makes some cash, he’s good at what he does (especially when he gets to be a little more explicit in his letters), it pays for his textbooks and that’s all he’s really looking for and life is fine. That is, until someone anonymously commissions him to write a love letter to mathematics student, Derek Hale.

Reach Out by weathervaanes | 20k, Explict | @weathervaanes

Or, In Which Stiles Falls in Love Twice...With the Same Person

-0-

Stiles sees the flyer on his very last day at Beacon Hills High School. It’s hanging, unassuming, in the hall near the front entrance along with bulletins and other flyers, advertisements, posters for free student concerts, but the fact that the word “sex” is written in a font two times larger than the rest of the page catches his attention.

It’s an advice hotline for a whole range of things, from teenage angst to how to deal with your parents telling you you’re adopted and a whole mess in the middle. Stiles thinks it’s funny, though, that they offer advice on sexuality and sex education. It makes sense on the one hand, since high school sex ed does jack shit for actual learning, but anyone who really wants to know stuff has an infinite source of knowledge right on their phone—the internet.

So it starts off as a joke.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation by grimm | 118k, Explict | @coyotoqueens

There's something weird about Beacon Hills that Stiles can't quite put his finger on. The way everyone in town knows his name the day he arrives. The way they insist the melancholic howling that echoes through the forest every night is just a dog. The way his dad denies getting a dog, even though Stiles comes home to find one sprawled across his bed, some big black thing whose eyes gleam red in the right light. The way that massive oak tree out in the woods vibrates under his touch, pulsing with sickly life.

There's something weird going on in this town, and Stiles is determined to get to the bottom of it.

One life stand by Vendelin | 84k, Explict | @ljummen

All Derek wants is Stiles's time, someone to stay on his arm for events and smile for the cameras. It's the easiest job Stiles has ever had, the best-paying one he's ever had, and he's more than happy to sign up.

Derek is everything and nothing Stiles expects him to be, with his tailored suits, sharp mind and his quiet way of caring. But it's just a job and Stiles never meant to fall in love.

Can’t rely on me by Littleredridinghunter | 116k |

Set at the end of season 2, Gerard beats Stiles up, but it's a lot worse than anyone knows.

The pack let him down, that's not really a surprise lately.

When Danny finds Stiles nearly bleeding to death the next day it's the start of a beautiful friendship.

Can the pack make amends before it's too late? Will Stiles ever forgive them for not being there for him when he needed them the most?

#Sterek fic rec #sterek fanfiction #fanfiction #fic rec #stiles stilinski #derek hale #derek hale x stiles stilinski #derek x stiles #dylan o'brien #tyler hoechlin #Scott McCall #werewolf #werewolves #Tyler Posey #lydia martin #Holland Roden

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thepdvblog · 6 years

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Dandelion - Chapter 2: Daffodil Bouquet

Dandelion Directory

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Summary: She gives him a bouquet of daffodils before they drive off, telling him these are his favourite flowers and that he now needs to move on. Isn’t this the meaning of daffodils? I think you once told me that when you picked them as your symbol or something.

Notes: I should precise beforehand this story (just like all my original work) is set in an alternative France where technology and society are more advanced than their IRL counterparts. This is why Florian has access this early to hormone blockers and hormones, when this story is set in anno domini 2003 for the moment.

AO3 version available here.

Finding a name to refer to himself is a life changer. Roxanne calls him “Flo”, Juliette, who is still struggling coming to terms with this but is trying her hardest, calls him insists on “Florian” because she is still not used to it. And yet, she gives him some advice to look more masculine, basing herself off things she has seen among male soccer players: how to make his voice sound lower, how to present as confident and self-assured when he truly isn’t, somehow provides him with brand-new male clothing and underwear he could not have wished for more.

Juliette once told me, when visiting me in this hospital years later, that her mother was a cashier at a local Carrefour, and that she could easily access unsold products that way. Barely legal, but I doubt much of my early transition was condoned by most of societal conventions.

Mrs Flamand tells him, during a session where she finally realizes this has been illegal all along, that she will only give him the green light for the next step once he is an adult in the eyes of the law. This makes Florian realize a few things, starting with what legally being an adult is going to allow him to do. He will finally be able to change his name to the eye of the world, go on what seems to be a dangerous therapy, stop being himself only around Roxanne and Juliette, stop being “Catherine” around the teachers and the classmates who know he is supposed to be a girl.

Florian makes a third friend who does understand who he is, but he is an online buddy. He lives in the south of the country, kilometres upon kilometres away from Colombes, living under the Mediterranean heat, near the Rhône’s delta. Their friendship is unlikely, considering this friend is already in college, yet feels natural: Lilian is trying to understand his little sister, Florian is just trying to get his voice somewhere where he won’t be targeted by the crude remarks of people reminding him, “you looked better when you weren’t pretending to be a boy”.

Yet, anxiety remains in his veins. The more his birthday nears closer, Roxanne swearing to buy him the best she can for this important occasion, Lilian thinking of a thousand ideas for a drawn present, the worst it gets. His dysphoria is rushing him to finally take the goddamn hormones before it threatens the remainder of his mental health, so he focuses on books and flowers to pass the time until it gets better.

He remembers an old thing his eighth-grade Literature teacher said once during a class, that there are birth month flowers just like there are birthstones, albeit there is no universal version of it. Searching in the local library on a free Wednesday afternoon where he does not feel like going back “home”, he finds out his assigned flower would either be a narcissus or a daffodil. The latter resonates so much, once he looks into the symbolism behind it: new beginnings, unrequited love, respect. The daffodil quickly becomes his personal symbol, the flower he likes to draw on science lessons instead of actually listening.

It is every time he goes home from school that he remembers why there is still so much fear inside his heart. He is not afraid of the decision to start HRT: it only feels like the next step on his journey. However, he is terrified of the reactions he will get when he will have to eventually come clean about it, about the fact he is a he and not a she, about how his parents are going to disown him quicker than lightning. Considering their rampant racism and internalized classicism, there is no way they will accept their daughter to actually be a son.

Phrased like that, I almost sound like I’ve once enjoyed being born to them.

Even then, Florian presses on. He has no time to lose worrying about his parents’ reaction when he can spend said time researching where to live in case the worst happens and he gets kicked out from home. He has no real way to gain money until he is out of high school, but he still tries: he applies for holiday jobs for the Easter and summer breaks, he sells some old belongings like most of his female clothes, he still abuses of his parents’ lack of concern and constant arguing to steal a few bucks every week after school. All flats he could possibly get in at the last minute are too expensive for him to afford until his first jobs, so Roxanne finds a solution of him: he can live in an abandoned flat the owner, a man living in Calais named Norbert Leeht, has forgotten he was still paying for.

When she brings him there for the first time, he discovers why someone that guy has forgotten they he was paying for it until it was rented: it is incredibly small, just enough for one person with a ridiculously tiny bathroom and barely any other furniture than a bed that was left there years ago and a small kitchen. It is still much better than he expected to get: at least, he does not have to pay for anything not additional furniture or food.

The premise being this eerily advantageous, Florian looks more into it and into its owner. Norbert Leeht is known online for his abandoned flats people love to occupy illegally when in a pinch, flats he has forgotten he owned and had not rented, too busy counting the amounts of money he gets from villas he actually cares about. In order to receive his mail properly, he decides to make his address Roxanne’s, the easiest option he has considering this flat will never have his name on it.

Furnishing the flat is harder than he wishes it was. He needs to move most of his room’s furniture without being spotted by his parents, for which the ideal time is on Wednesday afternoons where his father is at work and where his mother is out shopping for groceries. Roxanne, Juliette and he always strike around his time and, soon enough, only the bed and a dresser he plans on replacing anyway are out of there. After a while, the flat feels more like home than his supposed house has ever done. Everything is in place for the final revelation.

On March 20th, 2003, a warm Thursday where spring is just around the corner, he decides to let his plans finally play out, hoping for the best like the young and optimistic boy he has been ever since seeing things go forward. His therapist hands him out a strange box after his session of the week. Upon opening it, he sees a small recipient and a syringe. He does not need to read the label on the former to have a smile invade his face and his eyes tear up.

“I figured you’d be mature enough to handle these by yourself, Florian,” she tells him as she looks at the box. “And since I know you’re rather shaky on your finances, I’ve paid you the first dose and the syringe with it. You told me you didn’t mind needles, right? I can provide you with pills if you do.”

His voice catches up in his throat, and even he wants to be a man and not cry, his thankfulness eventually explodes.

“I… Thank you so much, I… I don’t know what to say…”

Dr Flamand then spends some time explaining him how to inject himself, and even if his fingers are shaking around the syringe as if it could break under his touch, it feels like the best piece of news in the latest year. It is finally in his hands, the way to break away from womanhood even more, to provide his body with what he is missing: his facial hair, a lower voice, a better repartition of his body fat.

Of course, he does not go blind into hormone reassignment surgery. He has researched its symptoms, asked high-school science major Juliette if she can clear up things, eventually blesses Lilian for being a medical student in an internship. He knows he will look very… teenage-y for a while, with a lowering voice, potential skin issues, possible hair loss, a risk to get excessive body fat he does not really want. After all, he is wearing a binder to hide his chest, no need for it to get bigger. And yet, he feels more than ready for it, already eyeing the syringe in desire.

I remember being terrified of this decision, when I first found out about HRT and what it was about. I kept asking to the mirror, “What if this isn’t what I am? What’s going to happen to me?”. I have to say, I regret not having started it before, even if I know I had to be mature to handle it correctly.

Everything is set in stone in his eyes when his eighteenth birthday rolls around. It is a time of truth, his moment to come out, to tell everyone “Catherine” is dead, to welcome Florian, the one he has been all along. It is exciting, it is terrifying, like his first rush of injected testosterone, the fear of the needle and the euphoria from the hormone he has craved for years. He already thinks of all the pros and cons of coming out, having studied the matter for the past months and having talked about it with Roxanne and Juliette for days on end. He prepares himself for school, gazes into the mirror wishing for facial hair to come soon, puts on his needed outfit and heads to school, both terrified and ecstatic.

I’d define myself as a careful and prudent man, but it wasn’t the same when I was a boy. It’s difficult to see what discrimination you are about to face when it’s invisible to most people due to how rare this all is.

For the first time ever, Roxanne and Juliette call him out by his real name instead of “Cat” as they are used to around his class. They help the anxious, now tetanized boy to ask his homeroom teacher, the Literature one, if he can make an important announcement. Of course, this makes the old lady be suspicious, but she accepts nonetheless, and he mentally prepares himself to break Catherine’s shell once and for all, never to be seen again, so ready to reject her for the last time and never look back on it. Looking at his entire class, all there for once, taking his proudest stance despite the sheer terror stacking in his throat, he takes one deep breath in, one out, and stares at everyone though his clear, “enticing” irises.

I remember by heart what I said on that day, fifteen years later.

Everyone, listen. It’ll sound weird, I know, but I’ve never been a girl. I’m a boy, a boy in a girl’s body. It’s a rare case, a mental disorder if you want to call it that. Please, even if you don’t believe it…

Don’t call me Catherine.

Call me Florian.

The surprise it drops onto everyone’s shoulders is mind-blowing. Most of them stare at each other, bewildered, and the fear rises inside his chest at an alarming rate. Roxanne is not in his class, and so is Juliette, so he is all alone in a class who barely knows him anyway. Some start to laugh, others seem to remember some sex education lessons provided by Planned Parenthood during their earlier school years, or by that one Biology class from last year, and in the end he is torn between people not taking him seriously and others trying to understand. The teacher stares at him, at loss for words, so she gulps and just politely, almost quietly, tells him “please take your seat again, Ca…” and she stops herself.

Acceptance does not come easily after this announcement. The mockeries start even more, saying he is just “playing pretend” and “a tomboy who takes it too far”. The jokes are common and start almost immediately, but some classmates really show empathy and a will to understand, so it is all fine. Well, the mockery does remind him of the risks he has read about online all that time and how dysphoric they all are, but it is nothing compared to the last straw.

His parents.

For the first time in years, Florian goes up to his parents as he wants to be, rather than what they would have him rather be so they would have no more issues.

It may sound strange to the outside ears, but I was an undesired child. They were just against getting an abortion for me and too uneducated to know they could put me elsewhere, although I have to give them kudos for trying to raise me and always feeding me. I suppose routine and familial allocations helped me being more helpful than they had expected.

In fact, he almost shows it heavily on purpose, binder on, hair freshly cut by Roxanne’s sister Solange, dressed in all dark blues and men’s apparel, in a spirit of provocation and spite he did not think he had before this day and preparing it for it. His heart still tries to break out of his ribcage, smashing itself against the bones in his chest, but he keeps it together and mans up.

The reaction he gets from them as soon as he says “Mom, dad, I’m a boy” is baffling at best. They stare at him, asking him why he is saying that, how it is “just a phase” and how “he’ll see that he’s gonna know he’s a girl soon again”.

What a joke.

Florian arguments back, pulls together all the ideas and explanations he has ever done, while not even hoping to get their approval. It seems counterproductive, he knows how this is all going to play out. He has nothing to lose, so he puts between his parents and him the paper officially diagnosing him with gender dysphoria, another with all the actions he has taken to “fix” the issue. The eyes of his father shoot through his irises, rage burning in that stare, barking following.

“You’re no daughter of mine.”

“And I’m no girl,” he replies.

“Fuck off, get out of here, you fuckin’ crossdressing fuck!”

“I guessed you’d ask me to do just that.”

“Why did you tell us then?!” his mother asks him through tears he can tell are fake, the way to bribe her way out of divorce threats.

“Because I’m no dishonest man. I waited for this day for so long.”

“Fuck off.”

“Farewell.”

Taking the remainder of his bedroom’s things, Florian sets off, leaving nothing behind him but a few unsold girly clothes and a rotting flower which died before seeing spring come back. Roxanne is waiting for him outside, a warm smile and welcoming arms he still loves despite the split-up. Despite how ready he felt he was before, tears come to his eyes and he abandons himself in his best friend’s embrace.

Eighteen-year old me would have liked to know how painful being rejected by your own family can be painful, even if you know the end result isn’t going to be pretty.

Roxanne invites him to come in her car, saying she would drive him back home, putting the last of his belongings into the chest of the vehicle. She lied: minutes later, she tells him she is paying him a good dinner in a not-so-expensive restaurant, “because he deserves only good things when he’s been that brave with this”.

She gives him a bouquet of daffodils before they drive off, telling him these are his favourite flowers and that he now needs to move on. Isn’t this the meaning of daffodils? I think you once told me that when you picked them as your symbol or something.

“Thank you so much” escapes in a sob from his mouth before he takes off his glasses and wipes them with his arms. To all the preparation he has made for this day, and to all the better days to come.

#DCMC #RC #florian moinot #roxanne roturier #juliette soissons #dandelion

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