#everyone knows someone. sometimes its a subsection of your own family

[volturialice]

and thou art distant in Humanity

welcome to an edbella thing feat. vampire!bella and human!edward and a bookstore. it’s @cullen-collective‘s birthday request! title from Isabella, or the Pot of Basil by John Keats. 

rating: gen 

pairings: bella swan/edward cullen

length: 1.4k words 

part 1/2 

        Bella has never minded being alone. It’s being alone among other people she can’t seem to handle.

   This time it was Emmett’s fault, of course. Things often are. Sometimes Bella wonders whether the whole bear incident was as entirely unprovoked as her brother claims, because his ability to attract trouble is every bit as formidable as her own.

   Usually, it’s fine. It’s not as if you can get into too much trouble as an immortal, indestructible vampire. At least Emmett has just enough sense not to cross the Volturi or pick a fight with another coven. And he has Rose to keep him in line.

    And content as she is with solitude, sometimes Bella wonders what that would be like. She loves her family, but it would be nice to have someone who was all hers. Someone to hunt with, talk with, share with, spend eternity with. The usual stuff.

    And yes, all right, someone to have sex with. It’s awkward, having to sequester herself in the library all night every night until the others zip downstairs at dawn, all giggly and handsy or mellow and blissed out. Bella’s library is probably the most well-stocked and beautiful one in the country, but sometimes it feels more like a self-imposed prison than an escape. Still, she makes the best of it. Lonely cell or cozy burrow, it’s her space.

    Which is why it feels like such an affront when Emmett trespasses. Most of the time, Bella doesn’t mind being the perfect victim for his pranks—just stuffy enough to get offended, just cool enough to forgive. But Emmett can’t always tell when he crosses a line. Bella hides hurt feelings so well that probably no one can, except maybe Jasper. She doesn’t know why it’s so hard to admit when she’s been hurt—maybe some buried thing from her human life, an enduring desire to please everyone all the time, to never be a burden. That sounds about right for a girl from 1918.

    So she doesn’t say anything to Emmett about the ruined copy of Little Women. What would be the point? It’s not as if she can’t replace it. They’re billionaires, for crying out loud. She swallows back the little twinge of grief, the voice that protests, Renée bought me that book in 1909, a birthday present, we read it aloud to each other on summer evenings by the open window—and accepts the post-it note Alice hands her, with the address of the closest used bookstore—Masen’s Books—in elegant, looping scrawl.

    Bella should check it out, anyway. It’s always the first place she goes whenever they move to a new town. A way of getting her bearings. She loves the old-book smells, the quiet shuffling of feet and pages, the way the towering shelves seem to swallow up sound and make her feel like the only person on Earth—insulated, small, safe. Most of all she loves the link to the past, the tangible history in her hands when she picks up an old volume that someone else might have loved, once.

    Masen’s Books is about as close as Bella will ever get to being in heaven. Its two labyrinthine stories are divided into careful subsections, so many genres and special interests competing for attention that Bella almost doesn’t know where to start. She finds Little Women immediately—not a 1909 edition, but 1929 isn’t too bad, and at least it’s a sturdy copy, with its simple teal-blue binding in pretty good condition for something nearly as old as she is.

    But why stop there? There’s so much to look at. Anthologies and literary criticism, philosophy and religion, books in a host of other languages—French, Spanish, German, Vietnamese—and even a section of antique travel guides. Esme would love the Baedekers.

    She’s flipping through an Icelandic translation of Pride and Prejudice when she hears the human approach. Even after all these years of living the charade, Bella still has to remind herself not to look up until it’s appropriate, until she hears his polite cough.

    It’s a boy, probably somewhere in his late teens or early twenties, with glasses and an untidy mop of bronze hair. Bella watches his green eyes widen as he takes in her appearance. So much for dressing down and blending in today.

    “Um. Pardon me, miss, but I just wanted to let you know that we closed five minutes ago,” he stammers. Bella bites back her smile. He’s blushing. It’s kind of cute. (She ignores the stirrings of thirst low in her throat.)

    “I’m sorry—I lost track of time.” She explains. A quick scan with her senses tells her she’s the only customer left—how embarrassing. This poor kid probably wants to lock up and go home, and here she is, head in the clouds, forcing him to stay late.

    “It’s fine,” insists the boy. “I don’t mean to rush you. I just didn’t want you to be alarmed that the door is locked.”

    “No, no, I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll just pay for these, if that’s okay,” says Bella, feeling the odd urge to blush herself. Is he always so accommodating, or is he making an exception for the pretty stranger?

    “Of course. It’s, um, right over here.”

    Bella follows him to the register, the one area of the shop she hasn’t explored yet. Now she sees her folly—she should have started here. There’s a great glass-encased shelf behind the cash wrap, locked, full of what look like the oldest and best-preserved volumes in the store. All the special, exceptional books must be here—a store this meticulously curated is bound to have some signed copies, a few first editions. Just looking at the ornate spines and gilded pages sends a shiver of greedy excitement down Bella’s spine. She’ll have to come back sometime for a closer examination.

    The human boy rings up her purchase. Bella likes the way he packs her books into the bag—gingerly, as though each one is a rare exotic fruit he and mustn’t allow them to bruise. He slides a bright green flier into the cover of Little Women.

    “Your shop is beautiful,” offers Bella as she hands him her credit card.

    “Oh, thanks.” He fumbles the credit card swipe, tries again. “It’s my parents’ shop, really,” he admits, eyes downcast as if it’s crucial that he watch the machine print her receipt. His eyelashes are the same red-bronze color as his hair. “I just help out Tuesday through Friday, and run some of the programs.”

    “Programs?”

    “Book clubs, mainly. They’re all listed on the flier.” He tucks Bella’s receipt into the bag. “I’m Edward Masen, by the way.”

    “Bella Cullen,” says Bella. She bites her lip and holds in a wince as she takes his proffered hand. It’s always a little disappointing to watch humans flinch from her cold skin.

    But Edward doesn’t flinch. “Is that short for Isabella?” he asks, passing her the bag of books.

    “Yes,” says Bella, letting her arm sag as if it’s heavy. “But no one’s called me that in a century.” She grins at her little joke, and though Edward can’t possibly understand what’s so funny, he smiles crookedly back.

    When Bella gets home and opens Little Women, the flier almost falls out. It’s such a lurid shade of neon that she has to stop herself from comparing it to the calm, sea-glass hue of Edward’s eyes. What a strange, errant thought.

    The list includes a study group and four different book clubs. Bella’s eyes are drawn to the last one:

New this fall!

Come read and discuss Romantic poetry

Thursday evenings from 6-8

BYO refreshments

    She thinks of the well-worn copy of Keats’  Realms of Gold, and Other Works that has never left the end table in her bed-less bedroom, and of the time she tried to discuss it with Carlisle and was interrupted by Emmett and Jasper crashing through two walls and a dining table. It’s a stark contrast with the memory of Edward, handling each of her books with fastidious care.

    Maybe it would be nice to have a reason to leave the house once in a while (the high school charade definitely doesn’t count.) And maybe it would be nice to hear some new people’s opinions. Maybe a book club is exactly what she needs.

[whetstonefires]

I have wandered into your tumblr and I want to know absolutely everything about your ideas for Earth 3 Impetus and Motion. EVERYTHING. Possibly the least relevant part of that is the family line, as Earth 3 often has really skewed versions of the characters. Would the first Johnny Quick even have a speedster grandson when he was killed and his blood used to power his successors?

Oh, cool ask! Thank you!

😄 I’m very happy to talk about this but I’m afraid you may be disappointed, because I’m Doing It Wrong. I’ve been working off and on on a bespoke Earth-3 for the past…several years. Production has slowed but not stopped. It’s up to over 300,000 words on AO3 at this point.

The issue that set me off was that tendency to skew; I didn’t like it. I found that, most of the times DC had built into Earth-3 before rebooting again, there were two countervailing currents leading writing decisions. On the one hand to make things As Wrong As Possible compared to the main timeline, and on the other to just make them…arbitrarily different.

Lois Lane is Superwoman, evil counterpart of Wonder Woman, for some reason, woop-de-do; this fits under both categories.

This process worked neither according to the ‘timeline that diverged into a Bad Timeline at some point in the distant past but somehow contains versions of the same people in the same place’ premise of the original Star Trek ‘Mirror, Mirror’ episode, nor does it work according to any direct cosmic principle of inversion, although some of the early versions claimed to.

(See: Mirror Christopher Columbus discovered Europe and then later Evil George Washington conquered England for the American Empire, what even guys. 😩)

Also Earth-3 so transparently existed almost every time it was reinvented as a place to get villains from, and to look bad in comparison to the main timeline, without any attention to making it work internally, which I thought was a damn waste of a cool concept. ‘A damn waste of a cool concept’ drives a lot of fanwork lol.

So for my world, I had the slightly conflicting goals of working as close to that amorphous thing ‘canon’ as possible, and of making the setting stand on its own, as a superhero setting, with internal causality and more or less the usual sort of hero-versus-villain logic. So I inverted the alignments of only superheroes and supervillains, and kept as much as possible of their backstories intact.

This means my stuff doesn’t map onto any canon Earth-3, especially not the one from Forever Evil because that came out after I’d already gotten all the big things pinned down. 😅 Some people get upset about this and come yell at me about how i.e. Owlman is Thomas Wayne Junior. But since I always saw that particular concept as a huge cop-out from looking at how few alterations it takes to turn Bruce Wayne into a spectacular villain, I was like ‘nuts to that’ from the start.

If you’re cool with my relationship with canon, on we go.

-&-

So, Impetus and Motion! I don’t remember what I said on that one post where I remember blathering about it, so forgive me if I repeat myself. ^^

Lineage is the same as canon, technically. I’ll go over it; if you don’t care just skip ahead to the next subsection. 😄

Mirror Barry Allen, the Dash, got his villain name for his signature kill technique of grabbing someone, hyperaccelerating them, and then letting go at the right moment that they get dashed against something immovable and go splat. He dashes people against things.

(His eventual sidekick, Blaze, got his for liking to make things combust by accelerating their molecules. The combination makes them sound like a pair of racehorses, which they did not intend and are very annoyed by when it’s pointed out.)

The Dash is pretty scary, especially because most of the ways he abuses his speed for profit are so low-key nobody even notices (i.e. screwing with the stock market) and he doesn’t need to be a supervillain. He just likes it.

His public villain profile is relatively low for the level of danger he poses, tho, because his town is infested with really dumb superheroes who beat him embarrassingly often, when he actually turns up to fight or is successfully ambushed. And with the occasional exception the scale of his crimes is fairly small compared to i.e. Ultraman.

Keeping him imprisoned is ridiculously difficult, tho. He can’t be completely depowered (because the Speed Force is external to him and all the power dampeners that are used assume they’re trying to shut off something generated internally) and he’s really smart, so it took years of battles to keep him long enough to transfer into a proper cell even, and longer to get an unblurred look at his face.

His secret identity survived so long that Barry Allen was there to comfort Iris West after she was targeted by the Dash on several occasions, and they were married by the time he got ultimately unmasked.

She left him after that and moved back to the future, which she was still from because that’s hilarious, but he eventually tracked her down and promised to reform if she’d take him back. This obviously fell apart eventually, but not until after the twins were born.

I haven’t mapped out the mirror Thawne line. I assume the Thawnes with healing powers who inadvertently adopted Barry’s twin were much nicer in this timeline but idk if he ever became Cobalt Blue or what. I hope he lived to old age. Apparently there have been multiple Cobalts Blue? Idk idc, Flash continuity what even are you.

Everyone thought Eobard Thawne was nuts, but he actually did go back in time and stop the Dash from destroying the world with nukes in a fit of rage, his historical analysis, method of giving himself speed powers, and time machine were all successful. He may additionally suffer from some degree of psychosis, but he wasn’t wrong. (His little brother still exists in this universe because good!Eobard wasn’t the type to manipulate time to erase inconvenient family members. He also doesn’t have the title Professor because he never got tenure, so he just goes by Zoom.)

-&-

Bart is still Don and Meloni’s kid. Frankly I don’t understand those two in the normal timeline, so it’s hard to construct their mirror versions in any depth or even decide whether they should get mirrored. (Probably not tbh.) But I don’t exactly need to, because the resulting Bart is very much the same and thus doesn’t really know them. He was still born with his weird speed glitch that caused him to be raised in a simulation, and eventually time-traveled to un-glitch him.

The difference is that he’s not a nice kid. He’s a two year old who looks twelve and has received all his socialization from reasonably good AI in a world that was not real. Where nothing had consequences. Where nobody was real.

He’s very frightening, is Impetus. Impetuous, wildly powerful, selfish–oddly sweet, occasionally, in the ‘gay and innocent and heartless’ way of Peter Pan, but probably even more likely than Peter to knife someone. He’s so delighted the first time he eats actual ice cream, as opposed to a simulated version, but the ice cream stand is now on fire.

Mirror Bart isn’t so much cruel or even un-empathetic as solipsistic. He’s arrested in the state of an intellectually advanced toddler playing, what’s that game called, the one where the objective seems to be getting in car chases a lot? When was the last time they made a new one, I feel like I haven’t heard it mentioned in ages, it’s a dead franchise isn’t it I’m old. Grand Theft Auto! That’s it. He doesn’t just not understand that danger is real, the way Impulse started out. People aren’t.

Impetus is easily bored and surrounded by NPCs. It gets ugly, sometimes.

He also time-travels a lot more frequently than normal Bart, because he doesn’t really get attached so he doesn’t try to maintain a normal life of any kind, so he pops up all over the timestream.

Jason Blood hated him personally long before Bart had any idea who he was; they have a villain rivalry plagued by causality issues and closed time loops that is alternately epic and stupid as fuck.

And then there’s Thad. Thad’s had a less awful time than he did in canon, I think–President Thawne is not technically a supervillain so he’s probably about the same as in the original timeline, but even assuming Meloni and Don are still out of the picture (probably it’s Barry’s fault in this dimension?) raising a kid as a ‘defense mechanism against a supervillain’ calls for less extreme brainwashing fuckery than raising one to hunt down a superhero.

So he probably behaved a bit more like a reasonable grandparent, simply because the context incentivized him to emphasize concepts like duty and loyalty more, and hatred less. He might even have been able to go public with Thad’s existence, depending on the spin he came up with. Among other factors.

But it was still a depressing, isolated, dehumanizing way to grow up, and it went on a long time, because as per canon Thad has the opposite problem from Bart in terms of how he passes through time. Motion is a 40-year-old man with a 12 year old’s body and approximate life experience.

Thad was already So Tired when he finally got out into the world on his own, and once he encountered Impetus he learned pretty quickly to both pity and fear him.

Even when Thad tries to avoid Bart and just have a life, Bart always crashes back into his existence again, and in the meantime he feels guilty. Because even if he could completely shake off having been raised to see countering Impetus as his whole reason for existence, he’d still feel a lot of personal responsibility to try, because he has the ability to stand up to him in a way almost no one else does, and he knows Bart’s out there resulting in casualties.

Due to all the time travel involved, even having just defeated Impetus doesn’t mean he’s not still out there at an accessible point in the timestream, needing to be stopped.

Impetus results in Motion the way Inertia resists Impulse. They’re very much locked into an action-and-reaction framework that does not even a little bit help with Thad’s clone identity issues.

Except for how the amount of time Thad spends saving people from Bart has slowly created a fairly large body of people over the course of history who know them as distinct entities, and like Thad a lot better. 

Good feels good. ^^ It’s not necessarily the case that this happens, obviously, but with their alignment swap they also ultimately exchanged who’s defined by isolation. It takes Bart a long, long time to even understand that he’s lonely.

[xxmisty]

Funny how someone who made fart fetish porn thinks he has a right to badmouth men

Oh boy, anon, you’ve really overpacked this suitcase, haven’t you??

Look, let’s just start by pointing out that there’s a contradiction between you having respect for my pronouns and yet an apparent prejudice against sex workers. I just don’t get that. Thank you for being more respectful than most and actually using male pronouns here, I think the rest of your message is seriously betraying the kind of person you are. Build on the good. You’re already head and shoulders above most people I know in that respect.

I was trying to work out what could have come across as badmouthing men and I found that two posts about Captain Marvel had come out of my queue. So that’s it. Anon, i’m not badmouthing men. But I will call out toxic masculinity where I see it, and there was a whole lot of it around the launch of that movie. Toxic masculinity hurts everyone, no matter who you are. It’s the kind of attitude that makes men feel they have to behave a certain way or they can’t be true men. As a trans guy that went a long way toward being terrified of coming out, and still goes a long way to not being accepted. It is also a master force behind the kind of behaviour that has left women vulnerable, scared and abused throughout history. I’ve been on both sides of that. I’ve had men roll down their car windows and cat-call me from the age of 14 upward. When I was 13 I took a term of piano lessons and quit because the piano tutor kept holding my hands and asking me if I ‘painted my nails red when I went out at weekends’. I’ve had parts of my body groped and touched in public because someone was drunk, being egged on by their mates or just thought it was their right to do it. I’ve had a z-list celebrity slide his hand into my crotch blaming ‘the train’ with a huge grin on his face. I spent twenty years blaming myself for being sexually assaulted by my cousin’s husband because I was wearing a dress the night I met him. No, not all men are like this, but if you’re offended by someone discussing it then perhaps there’s a reason why. Maybe you see a little of that in yourself.

I’ll reblog posts about captain marvel until my fingers are sore because Brie Larson took so much abuse in the run up to its launch, most of it from a subsection of the population. And i’m not blindly backing it as a marvel fan, nor as a perceived ‘man hater’ - I didn’t think it looked that good from the trailers, but boy was I wrong. I still think the trailers were pretty bad and did the movie a huge disservice. The point is, I waited until I watched the movie to make up my own mind. Brie Larson spoke up on the press tour about how she was sick of looking out and seeing nothing but white men, and a whole lot of those white men took that very deliberately in the wrong way. She spoke of wanting diversity. She didn’t want to look out there and see no white, male faces, she just wanted to see a mix of them with POC and female faces too. You’d have to be extremely over sensitive to take that in any sense other than the one she’d intended it.

People flooded Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews, days before the movie even came out. They hadn’t seen it, they just wanted to try to make sure that they stopped as many potential viewers from seeing it as they could. And that's why it’s so important to people who aren’t of that small subsection of the population to share the movie’s success. I’m so damn proud of Brie, and of everyone involved in the movie, and of everyone who has stood up for Captain Marvel when in doing so they’ve also opened themselves up to abuse.

The truth is, the world has been run by straight, white, cis men for countless years and that’s starting to change. The world is becoming a richer place for that. We need to hear all kinds of voices, especially as the world grows smaller. Anon, the world has changed more in the last twenty years than it had in centuries before it. But that means the truth is going to hurt sometimes.

I’m white, and i’m learning more about what that means from people of colour who share their experiences, their stories and their views. I understand a little better every day that it isn’t enough just to not be an actively racist asshole and that I need to use my privilege to speak up when I see it happening to others. I need to open my ears and listen to people from different countries, of different colours, of different religions, and hear about the struggles they face every day that i’ll never truly understand as someone born into a white family, in an area where there were very few people of colour as I grew up. I want to learn. I want to listen. I hope that the more POC speak out, the more that we can learn as people who haven’t faced the same prejudice. I’ll still never know what it’s like to walk in those shoes but i’ll be a little more mindful every day of what needs to change and how I can help.

It’s a similar thing existing in a predominantly cishet world. Something I realised recently is that, as much as I know it can take years, decades, sometimes a lifetime to really discover who you are, the cold hard fact is that when I was five years old I knew I wanted to marry a woman and call myself John but it’s taken decades to reverse the programming that a predominantly cishet world tried to write into me. We’re getting there, little by little. The world is changing, but a big part of that is from having the courage to find our voices and share our experiences as people of a gender and/or sexuality not defined as cis and heterosexual. I think trans folk have a unique point of view when it comes to gender wars since we’ve seen both sides of the coin to some degree. I’m just as scared of toxic femininity as I am of toxic masculinity. Both are dangerous and destructive, and they hurt everybody. It’s time they began to die and allowed people to be themselves without a gender-approved bar they have to reach to be a ‘real man/woman’.

Lastly, anon, I would really like you to rethink the way you view sex workers because most that i’ve met along the way have been the kindest, most genuine, most open individuals who work harder than you’ll ever know. Making fetish videos put food on the table, a roof over our heads and bought our boat when we were faced with being homeless. My health wouldn’t allow me to work a job outside the home any more and I wanted to make a living as best as I could. I feel like you would be just as critical if I lived by benefits alone. Plus making videos was a very important step in my own life. It helped me to love a part of myself that i’d always resented and felt ashamed of, and gave me confidence to appear in front of the camera which I could never have imagined some years ago. Plus I made a few wonderful friends that way.

Anon, you have a good heart, enough to not misgender me. I can’t and won’t apologise for reblogging posts that talk about subjects that affect me personally. This is, after all, my blog, and it’s important for people to see how many others have been affected by the same issues. It helps when you don’t feel so alone. If there’s something that triggers you about those posts then perhaps there’s something you recognise in it. This is a really good time to identify what that is and to work out why it upsets you so much. We can all learn to be better people, and listening to our discomfort is a good first step.

[arthistaery]

kindred spirits | bts fluff

summary/excerpt: There’s a new contemporary art exhibit at the gallery you conduct tours at and despite an overwhelming dislike from your group, one man makes his liking for the art–and you–very noticeable.

pairing: artsy!namjoon x reader

warnings: a lot of heart-wrenching fluff

word count: ~2900

notes: This is inspired by namjoon’s trip to the Coarse exhibition/gallery in LA but is imagined to take place in a gallery similar in setting to the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA, USA. All artist names and artworks in here are parody names of real artists and artworks for fun. All art is linked though so you can see it as you read.

And thank you to @otsevenstyle for igniting my love of writing this stuff again !!

You’d spent weeks preparing for The Human Torch traveling show to come to your museum and his Contemporary masterpieces were finally being hung and set-up right in front of you. You could feel the excitement well-up inside of you as you anticipated the first tour of the day at noon. It was always thrilling to show off an exhibition to groups that paid a pretty penny to hear you talk about it. Sure, it took a lot of work to learn the artist’s inspiration and story behind the works, but the weeks of preparation were always worth it when you saw at least one gaze of amazement when one of your speeches hit home with a participant in the tour.

But something was bugging you that couldn’t be avoided. In a majority Expressionist and Impressionist museum, people on tours were often impatient when they came across Contemporary works in the east wing. While you were always excited for new shows, there was dread that did come with Contemporary pieces. Sometimes it was difficult to get that glimmer of amazement from museum-goers when completely abstract and sometimes controversial pieces were presented to them. The Human Torch exhibition was all of those.

But noon came early and you had to tuck away those bothersome thoughts to focus on the group of fresh faces in front of you. You walked in your flats–that was a requirement since heels were far too noisy–from the lounge on the hidden third-floor to the front desk on the first where your group would meet you. It was five minutes to noon and most of the time, none of the group would be ready–everyone always seemed to be late. But this time, there was a boy in dark-rimmed glasses checking in. 

“I’m here for the tour at noon,” he whispered to the secretary at the front desk. She quickly checked him in and motioned to you who had just taken a seat at the front desk.

“She will be your tour guide for today–she’s one of our very best.”

You blushed at the secretary’s comments and thanked her. It paid off that you two were friends and had drinks every couple of weeks together. Because of that, she usually pumped your tires to guests. But it also wasn’t a lie, even the most disinterested museum-goer could notice your passion and understanding of art.

“It’s nice to meet you,” the man said, extending his hand out to you. ‘What a formality,” you thought. “I’m Namjoon.”

You smiled, shaking his hand, “I’m Y/N, but you can call me ‘art snob’ for short. One of my previous tourers said that to me, so I thought I’d wear it rather proudly.”

The man laughed, but still tried to keep his voice down, to which you assured him no one could hear either of you inside the gallery. “So I take it your job can be rather hard sometimes?”

You shrugged, “It’s neither here nor there,” you admitted. “When you’re surrounded by art, you can’t really complain.” 

“Well from what I can see, the art is rather gorgeous here,” he smirked, his dimple making itself rather obvious. ‘That shit ought to be illegal,’ you thought–it was a great look on him.

“It is isn’t it!” You smiled, “I’m a big sucker for Impressionism and Expressionism myself, so you can imagine my heart eyes when I see this stuff.” The man laughed, looking down at the front desk. He sighed to himself quickly as if something bad had happened. You turned around to see if someone behind you had taken a nasty fall or if there was any crooked paintings or fallen sculptures. But there was no art there. No art at all. 

‘How would he have known how beautiful the art is here?’ you asked yourself.  “How did you hear about us?” You asked him quickly.

“Oh,” he said raising his head, “I’m new in town and saw it on my taxi ride from the airport. The architecture of this place is amazing in itself, so I knew I had to stop by.”

You asked yourself the same question as before in your head again. “So I’m sure you went to your place and looked us up eagerly,” you added.

“Actually, I didn’t want to spoil anything for myself, so I just came in as soon as I could.”

You smiled but mentally smiled to yourself even more. ‘This sap called me the artwork’. Never heard that one before.’ You rolled your eyes and frankly, didn’t care if he noticed. His comment was tacky in the least, but at least he wasn’t horribly out of place like most men that came here and hit on you did. There were only a small handful of men who had done so and all didn’t seem to know a lick about art. And as far as you knew, Namjoon could be just like them–but at least he looked the part. The glasses, the floral patterned blousy button-up, the bleached hair: he was the whole nine yards.

You really didn’t think you found him immediately attractive or charming and to die for, but you noticed you were rather disgruntled when an elderly couple that had just arrived, who was also on the tour, pulled you away.

“Is it true you have Edgar Degrassi’s paintings of ballerinas on display here?” the woman asked. Her husband laughed heartily, confessing his wife was once a ballerina.

You laughed, “Well now I can’t go ruining the surprise now can I?”

It was 12:06 when the last member of the tour group burst in, sweating. He was one minute late but tagged onto the group as you led the now group of seven to the gallery.

The first room was decorated with early Impressionist works. It was the real grassroots of the movement. You could see heavy defined brush strokes, but each artist was obviously leery of breaking from the form of realistic painting that had been so tightly held onto since the Renaissance. You gave your speech, pointed out a few key paintings (since sculptures at this time were few and far between) and let the group disband for fifteen minutes and explore the paintings on their own. 

This part of the gallery was old hat to you. You’d run over this section more times than you could count in the couple years you’d been there. Old pieces had moved out and new ones had moved into their place but the story remained almost the same for many. French painters were inspired by the Realism movement and started painting more abstractly with softer and gentler colors to contrast Realism, yadda yadda yadda. So it was at this time that you usually observed your guests the closest to see how they’d react the rest of the tour. The man who was late looked completely disinterested. The family of three looked worn out. The father was interested and the mother was trying to get her 11-year-old daughter to appreciate the history of the art. The elderly couple was anxiously awaiting the Degrassi section, glazing over the plaques by each painting and stood too close the artworks. Security guards had to tell them to step back several times.

Then there was Namjoon. He had strong shoulders that would conceal most of the painting he was looking at. ‘I would hate to browse a gallery with him in the way,’ you thought. He looked strong, but he was slender, almost like he’d come straight out of a Mannerism painting, minus all the awkward parts like in Long Neck Madonna. He rested his fingers on his lips as he leaned forward and read each plaque before stepping back and admiring the painting. He’d tilt his head sometimes. He looked the most interested of them all. You sighed deeply, his thoughtfulness was a hard trait to find in people. A hard trait to find in men. 

While it was fun to watch Namjoon observe the paintings, you had to reassemble the group and lead them to the next room. The 11-year-old had started to whimper and hint at a tantrum oncoming. The elderly couple kept asking about the ballerinas.

The next room was the ballerinas. It was Impressionism at its height. Because of the broad topic, it was split into several small subsections with walls dividing up artworks by major themes. You giggled, watching the elderly couple reminisce about the good old days when the man met the woman at one of her performances. You swooned at the thought of falling in love with someone over art.

“Excuse me,” you heard from over your shoulder.

“Hmm?” You turned to see Namjoon standing there. He smiled, asking about a specific painting in the other room. You followed him over to the painting: Arrival of the French Train by Claude Bonnet. “This my favorite permanent piece in this gallery,” you muttered.

“I really love this one as well, can you tell me about it?”

“Of course. Bonnet is known for his landscapes but before that, he was into urban scenes, like many Impressionists are. He did several versions of this scene to capture the changing atmosphere–as he was known for. There’s something I love about him moving on to landscapes after this. It’s almost as if industrialization had bored him and he went to look into the simpler things in life.”

You looked at the less than 2-foot by 3-foot painting with wonder as you spoke, but Namjoon didn’t. He was wrapped up in you. You turned to him after your schpiel to see him with his head tilted and his eyes smiling along with his mouth.

“I agree,” he said in a breathy tone, trying to keep his voice down. His voice sounded soft like his silk button-down top. “The earthy tones really tie into that don’t you think?” You didn’t even turn to look at the image but nodded in agreeance. To be fair, you’d seen this painting a million times over. “And the smoke, it looks like clouds.”

It was hitting you all at once. You couldn’t tell if you were whipped over only Namjoon’s knowledge and thoughts, but suddenly he was looking very handsome. It had only been just under an hour and you felt like you were going to lose your mind. ‘I have to focus,’ you thought, ‘I’m here for art’. 

“Y-yes,” you stammered quickly, “I think that is also a nod to dreams and following dreams? Clouds usually are associated with dreams so...” You got nervous and lost your train of thought. 

“And industrialization takes away from that. Maybe Bonnet thought man was too interested in building bigger better machines than looking within the natural world for their own aspirations.” 

You smiled, “That was well articulated Namjoon.”

He blushed, covering his mouth to hide his smile, “Well, I try. You’re very knowledgeable about art so I can’t let you down now can I?”

“It’s about the art, not me,” you quipped before leaving to assemble the group as the fifteen minutes were up. Your head felt heavy and dizzy. It was official, no man had ever had a conversation about art like that with you. He made you nervous–very nervous.

The next few rooms were a blur. You wound up interfering with the viewing of many paintings by trying to make small talk with the other members of the group, but they weren’t having any of it. The elderly couple grew disinterested in the anguish in the Expressionist movement. The mother was completely distracted by her misbehaving daughter (who had somehow still not broken out into a scream fest) and the father didn’t want to talk. The man who was late had now completely disappeared. You didn’t care. After all of it, even though you were doing everything to avoid him, Namjoon was still there and you were pleased.

Sometimes the two of you would steal glances at one another while browsing, but you’d always duck away. Namjoon took the hint and never tried to impose his presence on you. But at the same time, he understood you were interested. And he was interested too.

Before long, the hour and a half tour was winding down and you were at The Human Torch exhibition. You gave little explanation and let the group decide for themselves what the art meant. 

As predicted, most everyone was displeased. 

The elderly couple openly complained to you about what a poor excuse of art the exhibition was and blamed you for letting it be put up. You had no say but you took the blame anyways. The daughter had then broken out in a full tantrum and the parents did nothing to stop it. Other people in the gallery were also wandering around and looked visibly displeased and you heard snippets of their conversations criticizing the museum and the artist. It angered you when people didn’t understand or appreciate art that was beyond them. Hell, contemporary art was the easiest art to understand in your eyes because it could mean anything. You almost whimpered at some of the comments, dreading your next tour in at two o’clock. Your eyes started to water a bit, taking the blame for the displeasure of everyone in the room.

But then you heard your name called over your shoulder. Of course, you knew who it was this time. “Y/N? I got it right...right?” It was Namjoon.

You smiled weakly, “It is. What is it?”

“I... I want to let you know how much I love this part of the gallery.” Your heart jumped. “You see, previous art movements are so objective, but this... this is art. This is subjectivity and emotions and true human experience.” You both paused, looking each other in the eye. You both stood looking emotionless, but you were both bursting with it.

“Can I show you my favorite work?” he asked. You nodded. He put his hand on your upper back gently, leading you over. “Pardon me if I’m overstepping boundaries,” he muttered, “It’s just a bit crowded here.”

“You’re fine,” you said, ignoring his excuse of a crowded gallery since it was not crowded by any stretch, “Very chivalrous of you.” He blushed. He led you over to a mini-reconstruction of Love by The Human Torch. ‘Of course he chose this one,’ you thought.

“Very romantic isn’t it?” you hummed.

“Tragic too, wouldn’t you agree?” You nodded. “Reminds me of Romeo and Juliet.”

You snickered, “My favorite Shakespeare play. Well, besides that of the Scottish play, but that star-crossed romance always holds a place in my heart.”

“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is,” he recited from the age-old tragedy. “The love of these two wire figures contrast them so much that it doesn’t appear to be anything they understand.”

“They’re kindred spirits,” you add, “They share the same heart, the same soul, but they don’t understand what it means. Love is a lot like Contemporary art, don’t you think?” You tilted your head back to look at him. He smiled slightly, the dimple showing itself once again. His hand hadn’t left your back, so you were able to lean into his body just slightly. He was warm and smelled like a freshly lit candle.

“And we both have quite a passion and understanding for contemporary art, don’t we?” He raised an eyebrow, making it apparent the feeling was mutual between you two. Your heart raced.

He dropped his hand down off your back and you felt is dangle by your thigh. His knuckles tickled your knuckles. You grabbed his hand and intertwined your fingers. His palm was sweaty. So was yours.

You two squished your shoulders up against one another as if he too knew you weren’t allowed to show PDA while you were on your shift. You couldn’t tell if breaking the rules or being next to him made you more nervous. 

“I’d like to... take you out to the park tonight and do this, if that’s alright,” Namjoon whispered, turning to you.

You smiled sheepishly, “Gosh, how can I say no to a face like that.”

“I love to see some of the art outside the museum,” he winked.

You rolled your eyes, releasing your hand holding so you could push him playfully, “At least buy me dinner before you throw tacky pick-up lines at me.”

He sighed, but followed it up with a laugh, “I’ll see you later tonight Y/N, you get off work at what time?” You told him 5pm, to which he said he would be on the doorstep to whisk you off. He leaned in. “Can I... kiss you goodbye?”

“Please.”

He leaned in quickly and booped your nose with a peck. His face completely flushed and he laughed. “Thank you for the tour miss,” he hummed before he waved and headed out the door.

[heardrpc-blog]

SECRETS MASTERLIST

i think we’re all tired of having our characters have the same dirty little secrets. so here are some realistic secrets you can use for your characters. i am putting an overall trigger and mature warning on this. they’re in the sections of: lighthearted, hardcore, family, involving others, criminal, embarrassing, sexual, romantic, and other..

scared your secret isn’t creative - change it up! it mentions drugs? change it to sex or alcohol. something mentions family? turn that into a romantic secret! the options are endless if you change details.

lighthearted: these secrets aren’t very harmful, but they’re still secrets. they’re for characters you can’t exactly imagine being bad human beings on the side.

hardcore: these are very hardcore secrets. these are your dirty, life ruining secrets. these could be the ones to get someone accost from their friend group and family.

family: these are family secrets, etc. these are the things nobody outside of the home is supposed to see. 

involving others: these are secrets you could request a character for or get another character involved with the secret. these are any group secrets, etc. THIS HAS SUBSECTIONS OF ROMANTIC & PLATONIC.

criminal: these are for those types that love to do illegal things. there definitely are illegal things in the hardcore and maybe some other sections, but this is where the real root of illegal activity is.

embarrassing: these are for the personal dirty little secrets. these are mostly harmless, but embarrassing. this is more for those who still have silly little habits rather than life ruining secrets.

sexual: this is anything involving sex, sexuality, kinks, and everything in between. this is definitely by far the most nsfw. 

other: this is anything that doesn’t fit into the above categories.

LIGHTHEARTED:

i cheated on every test i’ve ever taken.

i cry out of fear of going to hell every night.

i troll people online constantly. i have nothing better to do.

i never give my real name at any stores/starbucks/etc.

i tell people i donate all the time, but i ever have.

i cry whenever i have to leave my pets.

i inherited a lot of money, but haven’t told anyone.

i make fake ouija boards that move on their own.

i pretend not to speak english constantly to avoid being bothered.

i go to car shops constantly & take cars out on a test drive for fun.

i have to google how to do everything for my job.

i read peoples texts over their shoulder constantly.

i dropped out of college, and never told my parents.

anytime i do drugs i pretend its my first time doing them so people will pay attention to me

i work in IT & know everyone’s secrets because i can see what they do at work.

i lie to people about what i’m doing all the time so i seem more interesting.

i only do basic courtesy things when non-strangers are around (hold doors open, say thank you, etc)

i lie about my first kiss to make it seem more excited.

i pretend to be colorblind to seem more interesting.

i buy 2 movie tickets so the clerk won’t think i’m going alone.

i cry constantly over problems that aren’t even mine. i’m scared i’m too soft for life sometime.

i text people in the middle of the night & say its because i can’t sleep, but i’m really just scared they died

i can never “stop” in the middle of a fight and decide to talk later because i’m petrified of the person or myself dying in between now and then

i lie about voting because i’m scared i won’t know how to work the machine.

i run an anonymous tumblr blog about something i’d never tell anyone irl.

i pretend to like things all the time just because other people do. 

i got plastic surgery, but haven’t told anyone because i want them to think its natural

i’m starting to form religious beliefs, but i’m scared my atheist friends won’t approve.

i go to aa/na meetings to make friends. i don’t excessively drink or do drugs.

i go to a pet psychic whenever my pet is in a mood.

HARDCORE:

i know the killer in a murder, but i’m too scared to say.

i pretended to have a mental illness to fit in.

i forged my transcripts to get my current job.

i accidentally killed someone by not properly fixing their carbon monoxide detector like i said i would.

i tried to kill myself. i’m blackmailing my parents/ex-friend/ex-partner/other family & have been for two years.

i took the fall (or had someone take the fall) or a crime i/they didn’t commit.

i run an anonymous hate site/hate blog/gossip blog.

i ratted out a criminal so i wouldn’t get in trouble for the drugs they sold me.

i found a dead body when i was a kid, but didn’t know it till later in life.

i was the person to clean my dead friends things & found out he was addicted to drugs/a murderer/etc & never told anyone.

i knew someone was going to kill themselves, and didn’t stop them.

i paid someone to beat this girl/guy/person up because i hate them.

i falsely accused someone of assault.

i lie about everything all the time. everyone thinks i live a completely life then i do. i lie about my likes, interests, hobbies, and history. i don’t want to seem boring.

i gambled every cent of my savings away.

i tell people my family are very rich, elite people but they’re actually drug addicts.

while everyone else was going through normal teenage drinking rebellions - i was extremely violent.

i’m 200k in debt.

i break into hotel rooms to sleep some because i’m homeless. 

i have a mental illness, but completely lie about it to my friends and family. i’m seen as someone who is strong and capable, and i don’t want people to know i’m really not okay.

i pretend to be blind so people will give me their seat on the train.

i go to random peoples funerals constantly for the free food. if people ask - i make up some vague connection to them based on what i see around their funeral.

i tell people that my mom died from cancer. i just don’t talk to her anymore. i’m ashamed at how awful she is.

i found out one of my friends died. so the first thing i did was go to their house, into their room, and stole a bunch of their stuff. 

i pretend to be sick and hurt all the time to get the attention of those around me.

i started something as a prank, and its gotten out of control. i spray painted weird symbols on the road, and now everyone in town thinks it has something to do with the random murder on the other side of town.

i lie about being wealthy so i can hang out with rich people. i use buy resold fancy clothes online.

i stole money from a homeless person.

FAMILY: 

i pretend to have religious beliefs because i want my parents to love me.

i didn’t tell my parents i’m in recovery from drugs/alcoholism.

nobody talks about my relative that is special needs. we pretend they don’t exist.

i want my family dead.

i found photos of my parent(s)/sibling having sex and put them on the dinner table during Christmas for everyone to see.

i almost let my younger sibling get killed by setting them on a ledge of our balcony. i caught them moments before they fell. 

my parents had me drop off my sibling at a fire station. i’ve never heard from them again. i barely remember them.

my parent is a serial killer. i know. i haven’t told anyone.

my father committed a hit and run when i was in the car. this was ten years ago. i never told anyone.

my distant family is in a cult. i didn’t find out until a year ago when i pushed to ask more about my non-immediate family.

my dad/mom is gay. i caught them with someone of the same sex. my other parent has no idea.

my parents don’t know i’m gay/bisexual/a lesbian/pansexual/etc.

one of my parents is living with a double life. i found out about their other life, family, kids, etc. i haven’t told them i know, and haven’t contacted their other family.

my mom shot my dad. i pretend to not have seen her cleaning off the gun.

my uncle was accused of rape, and left the country. 

my grandfather didn’t die years after my grandmother. he died two minutes after he shot her, and then shot himself.

i saw my mom had a kink party. i ran out before she saw me.

my parents used to be drug dealers. i found out when my friends parents wouldn’t let their kids hang out with me....because their parents bought drugs from me.

my parents killed their animals growing up when they annoyed them.

i wish my family was less perfect. i feel bad when they talk and i can’t relate at all.

i constantly feel in debt to my mom. i was an awful child.

INVOLVING OTHERS:

i catfish people frequently.

i check my partners phone when they’re in the shower.

i made my best friend/partner hate me by acting awful because i knew they’d leave me first.

i will never love anyone as much as my first love. they’re second best.

i cheated on a past partner.

i’m cheating on my current partner.

i only hate my enemy because people expect me to now. 

i keep all major secrets from my partner so they don’t leave me.

i hate my partner. they’re a pain on my life, and drive me nuts constantly.

my best friend is a compulsive liar. i just ignore it because i love her so much.

i know my best friend runs a hate/gossip blog. as long as she doesn’t talk about me - i don’t care.

i only stay with my current partner because i don’t want to be on the dating market again.

i stopped dating with someone because they wouldn’t hold the door open for me.

you know how when talking about best friends you talk about which friend would help you bury a body? my best friend kept that secret.

i’m secretly unhappy with all of my friends success. i feel left behind.

i really dislike most of my friends. they’re all annoying. i just need people to talk to so i deal with them.

my partner buys so much useless shit then forgets about it. i sell it all online.

i have sex with my best friend.

i’m secretly in love with someone else.

i’m crushing on my best friend super hard. i don’t know how to tell them.

i love my straight best friend.

CRIMINAL:

i used a prostitute to lose my virginity.

i do drugs.

i hired a hit on someone i hate.

i steal non-necessity stuff constantly from stores despite being able to pay.

i committed a hit and run.

i hack for fun. i don’t do anything malicious. i just like finding out secrets.

i broke out of prison.

i steal from grocery stores all the time. i do the self checkout, click ‘cancel’, and walk out.

once my friend was speeding 80 in a 65. when i got pulled over - i forced myself to throw up so he’d think my friend driving was speeding because i was sick. we got out of the ticket.

when i was a kid i used to steal cars - drive around them for a bit, and then just dump them somewhere. they almost always got found.

i’ve stolen from every national park i can.

i used to rob graves.

i embezzled a few million dollars.

i’ve never paid property tax.

the only reason i have a “normal” job is to cover up my illegal job.

i’ve stolen from a church.

EMBARRASSING:

i go to a psychic for every decision, but don’t want to tell anyone about it.

i’m scared of the dark.

i spend all day on neopets/gaia online/etc.

i cried when club penguin shut down.

in my head i still pretend inanimate objects talk to me.

i still run up the stairs whenever i turn a light downstairs off.

i sleep with stuffed animals because i’m scared not to.

SEXUAL:

i run a very popular nsfw porn blog.

i’m addicted to masturbating/porn

i pretend to have sex all the time, but haven’t in a year.

i’ve participated in a glory hole multiple times.

i fuck people constantly for validation that i’m pretty/handsome/great.

i post nudes on reddit all the time so people will send me compliments.

my parents tried to hire a hooker for me when they found out i was asexual.

i go to kink parties semi-frequently for fun.

i’ve hooked up with more people than i can count.

i’ve only slept with one person, but i feel everyone it is more.

[lifewaters]

Struggle On

I have struggled mightily with the results of this election.  I have felt fear and disgrace, disbelief and the profound sense that we have lost our way as a country.  And sometimes, I have wondered if it is not that we have lost our way but that we never truly found it in the first place; the bubble in which I was living has been shattered by the reality that people in this country have turned to Donald Trump as their champion. 

Mostly I have struggled with how I will treat the 45th president of these United States.  For eight years I have stood firm in my belief that as much as you disagree with the man you must respect the office. I have argued that it is inappropriate to belittle, insult, or otherwise demean President Obama and that I refuse to listen to what may be salient points while you do so.  I have become enraged when conservative outlets called him Mr. Obama as a subtle sign of disrespect by denying him the title he deserves, if for no other reason than it has been bestowed upon him by virtue of fact.  He IS the President.

Now, tomorrow, our President will be Donald Trump.  And I have struggled with the idea that I have to live up to my own belief and show him a respect, in my opinion, he has done nothing to deserve.  Part of me screams that my own high minded ideal may have been naïve, that there are some people so undeserving of respect.  It wails and rages that when you call an entire nationality "rapists," when you advocate grabbing women by the pussy, when you refuse to denounce the leader of the KKK, when you tweet childish responses to every perceived slight; then truly you are undeserving of respect no matter what job title you may hold.   But there is another, quieter part of me calmly reminding me that if I cross my own line in the sand, then I cannot defend myself against those who follow me.  If I say that all of the above entitles me to disrespect the office of President, then how can I defend when someone says that something Obama has done makes him deserving of disrespect.  It becomes a fight of degrees and opinions.  And I'm learning quickly no one can win those fights. 

I think my solution is to navigate the ground between actively showing respect to the office and actively disrespecting the man.  I will not disrespect the office, I will not disrespect the man, but neither will I give him my respect until that day that he deserves it.  I understand, mostly agree with, and am sympathetic to those who protest with #notmypresident.  But to them I say this; he is your president, by virtue of fact, and no hashtag can change that.  He is not the person I voted for and I disagree with him, vehemently, on most things.  But he is, or will be tomorrow, the President of the United States.  He is MY president and I will make him hear MY voice.  He is MY president so he must represent ME.  He is the president so I will call him by that title when I must.  He is the president and any act that embarrasses him for the sake of embarrassing him only harms us as a country and a people.

I was abroad when President Obama took the Oath of Office in 2009.  I watched proudly with the other students in my study abroad program.  I celebrated by doing the most American thing I could; going out to eat at McDonalds.  And sitting there, eating what they called a Big Mac, a man came up to our group of about 10 and told us we had a great new president.  That he was as excited as we were to see what President Obama could do for our country, and the world, because we cannot deny we are a global community now.  I need not imagine how the world thinks of our current election.  I've seen it all over social media.  My own family in Italy has shared their thoughts with me.  So I have no delusions that there is not already some embarrassment to be felt for the election of this man. 

That brings me to this point, we do not need to further embarrass this country by embarrassing the man for the sake of it.  If the allegations in the dossier prove true, if he did engage in non-conventional sexual acts with prostitutes in Russia, if the Kremlin has proof and is using it as blackmail, then by all means the American Public has a right to know and a right to demand he answer for that.  But if it proves true and there is no blackmail, no relevance to the revelation other than embarrassing him, we need to stop talking about it.  Because his personal sexual history is no more important than yours or mine and pasting it on every magazine cover helps no one.  Insulting the size of his hands, the color of his spray tan, the style of his hair serves no purpose other than to embarrass and enrage him. It is its own form of bullying.  Bullying a bully to be sure.  But bullies respond to disrespect by lashing out and we cannot have a bully in power lashing out.  We must face him with strength and facts, with reasoned arguments, and when those fail, with a refusal to be silent and put our heads in the sand when he does something unacceptable.  But insulting his hands brings us down and we are so much better than that. 

I go to sleep tonight secure in the knowledge that the President of the United States for the last eight years cares about making a better world for me and for everyone in this country.  That he has worked tirelessly to improve life for any number of marginalized people AND that he has worked tirelessly to improve life for the unmarginalized, mainstream, middle class American. Because he has represented us all, not just one group. Tomorrow I am afraid.  Tomorrow I am no longer secure in that knowledge.  I do not know who Donald Trump is working for.  Probably himself.  Possibly for some subsection of this Country that I have never been, and will never be a part of.  But just as I am afraid because the man taking power is a man who cares not at all about me; I know there are others throughout this country who are going to sleep tonight excited that a man they believe cares about them is coming into power and a mistake of eight years is ending.  They are as steadfastly in support of Donald Trump as I am opposed. They are as convinced of the rightness of their position as I am afraid of what will happen now. We are a country divided. 

So I say this.  To every person who voted against Donald Trump, should you be willing to stand and fight for what you believe it, I welcome you.  To any person who voted for Donald Trump, should you one day come to believe you made the wrong choice and want to oppose him, I welcome you.  To any person who voted for Donald Trump, should you still believe you made the right choice but think some of his actions are wrong and want to oppose them, I welcome you. To any person who voted for Donald Trump, should you believe he is doing right and good and want to help me understand why you believe that, I welcome you to try. We don't have to agree on everything, but we do need to try and understand each other. 

We may be a country divided. But we ARE the United States of America. So you grab your bootstrap and I'll grab mine and lets pull this damn thing back together.