#first: how many drafts do you think this letter required? this is very coherent for an emotional letter

[fictionadventurer]

If I'm going to keep mentioning Lucretia Garfield's heartbreaking letter after James cheated on her during their engagement, maybe I should just share it.

*

Cleveland, September 1, 1857

My dear James:

Yes, mine forever, though a destiny cruel and relentless separate us as far as the east is from the west. Whatever our earthly relations may be, we are one and belong to each other, and in view of this truth I no longer fear to reveal to you every thought. I know that my motives will be understood however freely I may speak. The fear which has so long sealed my lips that James might construe any expression of my real thoughts and feelings into a design on my part to gain my own selfish ends no longer haunts me. I believe that you trust me now, and I know that in my own heart has been awakened that confidence which brought such sweet peace to my spirit two years ago. James, do you know that it was the withdrawal of that confidence in me which pressed home to this grieving heart the keenest dagger! How many many times I have felt that if you would only love me just enough to come and tell me all, I could endure to know the worst; but to see you shrink away from me as though you could not endure my presence, and hide from me the truth, was almost more than I could bear. May Heaven spare me from ever living again such hours of bitter anguish. Pardon me for alluding to them. It is the last time. They have told upon my heart the lesson I trust they were sent to teach. Their mission has been fulfilled; let them pass unnoticed no longer. I would much rather rest with you beside Erie's moonlit waters and feel my heart throbbing against you own, while I talk to you tonight. But I will not wait until it may be so blessed before saying some things so long unsaid.

James, the bright ideal of life and love which are here held up before us was indeed very beautiful; but was it the true one? Can the human heart hear the tests to which it may be submitted by it? I had hoped it might. Indeed, I had almost, yes, entirely trusted that a love as pure and deep as I believed ours to have been could never never meet with anything that could possibly turn it from its course or prove ever the slightest interruption. I was telling Mother this and remarked that it might be an error. Her reply was that if there was no danger of any such thing happening if two loving hearts could find only in each other all that would satisfy, there would have been no necessity for the marriage vow.

May be it is so. If there could be no temptation, no danger of turning to another, why register in Heaven the vow of constancy? I blame you for nothing, for whatever you may have done I believe your heart's faithfulness; and allowed the generous and gushing affection of your warm impulsive nature to go out in all its fullness toward another than the one to whom you had pledged your all. All innocently as this was done, I can not blame you, and could the effect which all the past of our intimacy might have over you be blotted out, I would say to you this hour, go and marry Rebecca; and hereafter trust not your heart so far. Rebecca is a good and noble girl, in many aspects far my superior but she loves you no better than Crete. If, however, you love her better, if she can satisfy the wants of your nature better, and more than all, if you can with her become a good and noble man in spite of all the Past, Crete can give you up. And pronounce upon your Love a sister's blessing. You told me that judgment prompted you to another course, that to feel yourself an honourable, generous man you must take me alone to your heart. Let feeling dictate whatever it might. I have thought I could never allow that, that I could never be your wife unless every feeling of your heart seconded the decisions of reason. Perhaps I asked too much, but, James, to be an unloved wife, O Heavens, I could not endure it. I am not exacting. It would excite no spirit of jealousy in my heart to know that my husband admired and even loved a thousand others, and know that they possessed traits superior to mine, but I do feel it to be my right to claim this sole assurance, that I am his choice; and that however much he may find to be more admired in others he will not turn away from me to them, but rather seek to correct my faults, and make me like them. I want to find in my husband that strength of love, which can steel itself against every attraction that might come between us, which will hold me nearest his heart in spite of every impulse which an ardent nature might feel. Now, James, I freely pardon any error your ignorance of the human heart may have led you to commit, but I do hope whatever course you may take that hereafter you will be more guarded for your own happiness if nothing more. It pains me to see you so miserable as you are at times, and sometimes I feel that I could dare almost anything, even for the hope of making you happy again. But could I--could I become your wife and see that best hope fail! Oh no, no, no. If it would not fail, may God help me to know it. Then I will make the trial. James, write to me very soon. Keep nothing back that is in your heart

[Update about daily life that I'll spare you from]

Yours most lovingly,

Crete

[duckprintspress]

How can I write quickly?

I (hi, I’m @unforth) have been asked frequently over the years how I write a lot quickly. I’m a pretty fast writer - for example, I wrote the 5600 words of my May Trope Mayhem fill from yesterday in under 2.5 hours. 

First, a little of my personal history for context. I’ve always written, starting from when I was able to string letters into (very poorly spelled) words and (horrible un-grammatical) sentences. When I started trying my hand at serious, professional-level fiction writing, I joined a community called novel_in_90, which was founded by the author Elizabeth Bear. The purpose of novel_in_90 was “to be NaNoWriMo but more realistic.” Instead of 50,000 words in 31 days, it was 67,500 words in 90 days, or 750 words a day. I participated in multiple rounds of novel_in_90 starting in mid-2005, and in 2007 I completed my first (godawful) novel. When I started, even writing a couple hundred words of day took me forever, but it got easier with time. 

During those same years, I also got a job that required I do professional writing on a deadline: I was a grant writer, and I only got paid when the grants won. That often meant working fast under high pressure, culminating in the weekend I wrote and edited an entire 40 pages grant that was due on Monday. I think, if I hadn’t had a solid foundation of “regular daily plodding writing,” I’d not have been able to marathon when the moment came...and it came because I had to, not because I wanted to. However, I learned a valuable lesson: I could. Subsequently, I found that, when I had the time and space and was rested enough to use my brain, I could bust out a huge amount. Like, I wrote an entire 150,000 word novel in 17 days.

My personal record is about 200,000 words in one month (it was the month I wrote that novel; I wasn’t tracking when I did that so I don’t know exactly), 25,000 words in a day, and I’ve topped out around 3,000 words an hour. I do know people who can do more...but not many.

Not everyone will be able to do this. Flat out, I MUST preface the rest of this post by saying that. Some people will find that writing fast fits their brain, and for others, it just won’t, and that’s okay. Fast doesn’t equal better, and it isn’t inherently “good” to write fast. Furthermore, even for those who can write fast, not everyone will find the same strategies helpful. I can share what works for me. Try out one item, some items, or all of these - if writing faster is something you want to be able to do, which it certainly never has to be. Use what works for you, and discard the rest.

Sit in your chair, put your fingers on your keyboard or touch screen, and write. You can’t write 1,000 words in half an hour until you write one word, however long that one word takes. I know saying this is obvious, but I’ve been asked “how can I write fast” by people who struggle to write at all...fast can’t be your priority until you’ve got a foundation of just writing. (Honestly...fast should never be your priority, but it might be helpful to you regardless, which can make it worth learning.)

Start small. Set an achievable goal, and make yourself meet that goal (daily, weekly, whatever) come hell or high water, no matter how long it takes you. Keep the goal small at first; you’re not trying to torture yourself, you’re trying to build a skill. If you set the goal high enough that you consistently fail, you’re not teaching yourself anything. And, if you find the goal IS too high...lower it. There’s no shame in working within your limits. Think of it like starting a new work out regimen: you wouldn’t try to run a 10k at a record time if you can’t run a mile slow. Treat your fingers and your brain the same way you’d treat your legs and joints. Give them time to grow, learn, and improve before you try to push yourself.

Trying to write daily is worthwhile if you want to work on your writing speed, because you’ll be forced to try to fit it in as you’re able - that might be ten minutes in your morning, or an hour in your evening, and it might vary from day to day, but making it daily means you have to fit it in somewhere.

Building skills takes time and isn’t easy. For some people, it will come easier than for others, and even when you’re fast, going from “I can write words fast” to “I can write damn good words fast” takes practice and dedication and accepting constructive criticism - speed alone will never be worth more than writing well.

Having a community can help. Ya’ll will check in on each other, cheer each other on, remind each other that missing a day or a goal isn’t the end of the world, and keep each other’s spirits up. If you don’t know other writerly folks online, I recommend Weekend Writing Marathon ( @weekendwritingmarathon ) as a good place to start (I used to be a mod there). Once you’re trying to work up to larger word counts in a day, remember that even writing fast will take minutes or hours. You can’t write 2,500 words in an hour if you don’t set an hour aside. Make sure you’re giving yourself the room and time you need to succeed.

You will probably never be able to do high, rapid word counts every day, every week, every month. The best runners in the world don’t run marathons every day. Set realistic long term goals.

Work on projects where you have a clear idea of where you’re going. I’m not saying “pantsers” can’t write fast, because of course they can, but if you want to write fast, and well, and coherently, to create a first draft that’s in pretty good shape, you’ll do better if you have a good sense of what you’re trying to accomplish with your story. That doesn’t mean you need to do all your world building up front, or have a complete outline (I never have either). All you really need is what happens next. I tend to plan projects - and write them - one full scene at a time, with only a vague idea what’s going to come after. (I’m personally a “plantser,” and the strategies in this post will likely be most effective to other plantsers.)

Visualize ahead of time what you’d like to write...but don’t get too attached to what you visualize. When I go to bed, I plan the next scene I’m going to compose, often to the least detail. I then forget all of it overnight, at least all the specifics, and I’m left with a general sense and shape of what’s to come. You’ll never be able to replicate the “perfect” dialog you pre-conceive, so give up on trying to. Instead, play through the scene and think about the emotional beats you want to hit and plot points you want to forward. If you keep that in mind, you’ll be able to get the words out faster than if you’re agonizing over every word or regretting the “oh-so-great” idea that you’ve since forgotten. 

Practice different work styles. If writing every day doesn’t work for you, try instead saying, “this is my writing day each week,” and aim for a lot that specific day, and write little or nothing other days. Try writing at different times of day and on different days, fitting it into your schedule. If you’re beating yourself up for not writing when you “should,” it’ll be that much harder to succeed, so instead, as I said for point 2 - set a reasonable goal that fits your life and working style, fitting it around your other responsibilities, and push yourself within that framework, instead of trying to shoehorn into a style that you “think you should” use to succeed. 

Track your word counts, and take notes on how much you did and what project you were working on. If you’re also experimenting with different times of day and different days, make sure you note that too. I personally use a simple Excel sheet (well, Google Sheets, now) - column one is the date, column 2 is “starting word count,” column 3 is “ending word count,” column 4 is “=column 3 - column 2”, column 5 is notes. Pay attention to when you succeed at writing faster, and when you don’t, and consider what factors might have played into your success...and then try to replicate those factors next time you’re doing a sprint. Control as many variables as you can while you’re “training.”

If you find social media distracting, trying getting a web browser extension that prevents you from connecting to websites for a set period of time.

If you find you tend to dither before starting, I find it helpful to run through everything that I might do to procrastinate (check my social media! grab a snack! make some tea! set up my playlist! check my social media again! finish making the tea! check my social media for what I swear will be the last time!), and when I’m done, it’s like, well, I’ve done all those things, I’ve got no choice left, time to write, no excuses left.

If you find you struggle with picking up a WIP, try leaving off in the middle of a sentence at the end of a session, one where you know exactly how it ends - or, leave off mid-paragraph, or when you are positive you know what happens next (and I mean literally next, as in the very next sentence.) It’s much easier to “pick back up” when your first words are super clear. (Do not do this if you think there’s any chance you’ll forget or end up in a situation where you won’t return to your WIP for months!) 

If you find you struggle to maintain continuity across multiple writing sessions, try rereading what you wrote the previous day before you proceed. Resist the urge to edit it!

Avoid stopping when you get stuck, even to do research. Don’t know a fact? Add a comment to your manuscript flagging the relevant text, “LOOK THIS UP LATER.” Can’t think of a word? Put in something you can use the “find” function on easily (I personally use “XX” since there are no words that have a double x in them) and so you can come back later, search for your chosen placeholder, and fill in the blanks. Not sure how a scene ends but know the next scene? Jump ahead.

That said, if you really don’t know what happens next, you don’t do yourself any favors by pressing on. As I’ve said previously, speed alone should never be your writing object. It’s better to slow down, consider your plot, figure out where you’re going, and then write, than to just plow ahead - or at least, that’s better if you want a manuscript you’ll actually be able to use for something at a later point. If you’re truly just practicing, you can also say “screw it, who needs coherence?” and keep going. I’d personally never have finished my first novel if I’d spent a lot of time worrying about making the pieces fit together and yeah, it’s a mess, but it’s a mess I wrote instead of a mess I got stuck on and never completed.

Don’t move the finish line. If you’ve set the goal of 500 words a day, don’t beat yourself up if you get 550 because you think you think you could have done more. If you say you’ll write five days a week, don’t get mad because you DID have time the sixth day but chose to use it on something else. If you make yourself feel like shit when you succeed, what’ll happen when you fail? And when you’re comfortable and really think you’re ready, change the goal - reassess every month, say, and up your goals. While working for speed, trying upping your word count goal without changing the amount of time you allot for working.

Your need to adhere to the above suggestions will change over time. Once, I always had an outline; now I often don’t need one. Once, I wouldn’t let myself stop even to use a thesaurus; now, I find I can look up words without breaking my flow or significantly slowing myself down. This is not an “all or nothing” prospect, nor is it a “do things the same way forever once you’ve found one (1) thing that works” prospect - you’ll experiment, and find strategies that work for you, and then at some point, your needs will change, and you’ll experiment more, and find new strategies that work for you, on and on, as your skills grow. 

To reiterate: writing fast should never be your objective in and of itself! Greater writing speed will come with practice and as a general side effect of improving your craft. Simply being able to write fast is useless; being able to write fast and well will enable you to get more of your ideas out there, so if that’s something you’d like to accomplish, focus on building your general skills and training yourself to be able to use those skills rapidly and in tandem with each other to produce decent writing, in a first draft, at a decent speed.

Once you try, you may find none of this works for you! That’s okay. That’s good! You tried, which means you learned something about yourself and your own writing style, and that too will help you to improve. Keep experimenting, keep learning, and find what does work for you - and accept that no two writers will ever be the same, and one of those differences will be writing speed. Some writers will never write fast, and that’s doesn’t make them any less awesome or valid. And some writers will always write fast, and that doesn’t make them inherently awesome or valid. Only with a suite of skills that suit your individual life, personality, work style, writing capabilities, goals, etc., will you succeed as a writer (for various, personalized definitions of the word “success”); speed is only one of those potential skills, and not one that’s particularly important in my opinion...yet I still get asked about it fairly often, so here we are, these are my suggestions

Go forth, and write some words! <3

[ofhouseadama]

Ed gets drafted into the Navy right after high school, and in between finishing basic and getting shipped out to the Pacific, he promises Lorraine that the next time he sees her, he's going to propose.

after high school, Lorraine needs something to do so she gets a part time job as a secretary at the Diocese of Bridgeport helping wrangle parish finances and correspondence and other clerical and administrative work.

(this is where Lorraine first meets a young Father Gordon, who occasionally borrows her because she knows her way around a files room and takes excellent notes; he hears a lot about her boyfriend who's away on a ship in the Sea of Japan)

Ed and Lorraine write... a lot of letters during this time, which range from very chaste and heartfelt to NC-17 horny teenage screeds referring to their 3-day sojourn when they were seniors in high school, their many misdeeds in the back of Ed's car, and the time he snuck her into the Alamo Theatre after it closed so that they could have a "private showing" of a movie they remember very little of

when Lorraine is too anxious to sleep, she sews her wedding dress. she saw the pattern a few weeks after Ed left, and liked it, and bought it. she's been slowly buying yards and yards of satin and lace and tulle.

Ed squirrels away all the money that he can towards buying a wedding ring set for Lorraine. after he buys them while on shore leave in Tokyo, he keeps the rings in the breast pocket of his uniform shirt, next to his heart, to feel close to her.

his ship strikes a mine and goes down in the small hours of the night in June of '53; the rings are in his shirt pocket, and Lorraine feels it immediately. Father Gordon has to drive her home from work, and believes her immediately when she says she knows something bad happened to her boyfriend.

Ed makes it home to Bridgeport ten days later; he gets in a taxi at the Navy yard and immediately goes to Lorraine's house. she meets him at the front door before he can even knock and tackles him on the front lawn.

he proposes to her while very exhausted and not exactly coherent.

technically, she proposes to him because she tells him they're getting married and she's not waiting any longer.

these are two hotly contested facts for years to come.

they get one very hasty pre-cana session in as the Moran family (+ Father Gordon a little bit) cash in all their political capital with the church to expedite a wedding as soon as humanly possible.

Georgiana and her friends plan the wedding, everyone is very concerned about Lorraine's dress. Georgiana tells them they should be more concerned about Ed's dress uniform, currently at the bottom of the ocean.

(He wears a suit from Sears. It's fine.)

the story of Ed Warren, hometown boy, as the sole survivor of the sinking of the USS Saint Paul makes the local papers and absolutely no one remembers to tell his father that he made it home until a full 24 hours later.

Ed and Lorraine get married exactly two hours after the end of the legally-required 72 hour Connecticut waiting period elapses. it's a Friday afternoon.

when he sees her in his dress, Ed absolutely cries.

their wedding readings are Romans 12:1-2, 9-18 and Sirach 26: 1-4. it's not a full wedding mass, due to time restraints. it's actually nothing like Lorraine thought her wedding would be like, but she's so relieved Ed is alive, and he's not allowed to go back to the war without being her husband.

their reception is some cake and champagne in the parish hall, Ed's hands have been shaking so badly all day that he can't manage to get cake in her mouth off a fork so Lorraine grabs his hand and sucks it off his finger.

by this point she's had three glasses of champagne on an empty stomach.

it's over by the middle of the afternoon, and they're speeding off to the same aunt's beach house that they ran off to when they were seventeen, this time with permission and this time knowing the whole drive down that they're finally going to have sex.

Ed spends much of the four-hour drive from Bridgeport, CT to Cape May, NJ rucking the many layers of the skirt on Lorraine's dress up her legs, running the hand not on the steering wheel of the car up and down the inside of her thigh, keying her up.

they arrive shortly after dinner, having eaten cheeseburger and fries in the car in their wedding clothes, and are suddenly very very nervous.

even though they've done everything except the technical deed itself.

as Ed peels himself out of his suit and tries to not psyche himself out, Lorraine goes into the bathroom and changes into the peignoir and robe she made for her trousseau. she comes out of the bathroom to grab her brush to take her hair down, but Ed asks her to sit on the bed and pulls all the pins and flowers out himself, gently brushing her curls.

when he's done, he moves onto gently touching her. the last time he saw her naked was also in this bedroom, as they shook with restraint. now they're shaking for other reasons, hands rediscovering each other's bodies and warming themselves on each other's skin.

kissing her neck, he reaches one hand in-between the halves of her robe as the other moves her hair off her shoulder, exposing more skin.

he rucks the hem of the sheer white peignoir up to her knees, then her thighs, then her hips. Ed decides that he needs to make her orgasm before they have sex, because if he doesn't last long, then at least she'll be satisfied.

he eats her out like a man with a point to prove, because he's nineteen and very much is one in this moment.

it's been almost eighteen months since they've been physically present together, and they didn't have much alone time together before their wedding, and Lorraine feels like her body is on fire. it's been so long, and she feels like a bullet leaving a gun. it doesn't take much to make her cum, and Ed manages to do it several times before she's hauling him up her body.

he's still not done getting her ready, unable to not think about every horror story he's heard about bleeding and pain and discomfort and the terrible jokes from his bunkmates.

(they're all dead now. he tries to not think about that, why he lived and they all died. why did he survive, if not to make Lorraine feel good? if not to make them both feel alive? he needs to feel alive, and when he drinks her with his mouth and feels her clench around his fingers, he finally does.)

he sucks hickeys into Lorraine's neck and chest and breasts, keeping her high as he circles her clit with the fingers on one hand as he plays with her nipples with the other.

he is harder than he's ever been in his life, he thinks, pumping two and then three fingers into her. she's wet and all over his hand, dripping down onto his wrist. he wants to eat her out again, taste her again. his mind is a feedback loop of her pleasure.

Lorraine is trying to touch him, but her hands don't feel entirely attached to her body. she ends up curling her fingers into his hair and pulling. the sharp pain is delicious, and he moans while lapping at her nipple and thinks he might see God.

eventually he realizes that she's begging, chanting "now, now, please now, Ed, please--"

they both feel lust drunk and clumsy, all limbs as they take their clothes off, as Ed slots himself between her thighs.

she hasn't touched him at all, and he thinks if she does he'll cum immediately.

he pushes into her slowly, incrementally, watching her face the whole time.

she gasps, bites her lip, scrunches her face up. then, it starts to feel good, and her eyes flutter closed, and she moans.

he doesn't want to move. he wants to move more than he's wanted anything in his whole life. dropping down on his elbows and forearms, he shakes while hovering above her.

Lorraine's mouth is a perfect "o," and slowly she tests out how she wants her legs, first pressing her heels into his calves, then his hamstrings, before pressing her knees in at the sides of his hips. it feels incredibly intense, and she's not quite sure what to do with herself. she no longer feels in control of her body. all of her gifts of perception narrow down to hyper-perceiving Ed, the red sheen to his face, the flop of dark hair over his forehead, the sweat dotting his brow, his heart in his chest. his racing thoughts, his love for her. she feels him inside her body and inside her head. she shivers.

she squirms, trying to get him to move.

he does not, burying his face in her neck.

eventually he realizes that, as she traces her hands up and down the side of his spine, she's whispering, "move, honey, you gotta move, oh God please move, Ed honey please--"

something in his head breaks loose a little bit, and he snaps his hips into hers. when she moves with him, it breaks loose entirely.

it's entirely unskillful and uncoordinated, but Lorraine is already so close to orgasming again that it doesn't matter. when she cums again, Ed's entire brain malfunctions and he stops, watching her, feeling it and feeling her. she reaches down and straight up spanks him, telling him to keep moving.

doubling down, he sucks on the tendon where her neck meets her shoulder, and doesn't last much longer than her.

he thinks his vision almost whites out, gripping her hips tightly as he cums inside of her before pulling out of her and collapsing, happily burrowing his face into her breasts.

Lorraine laughs, wrapping her arms and legs around him, holding him to her tightly.

the insides of her thighs chafe a little, and she feels a bit raw, but she likes it.

they almost fall asleep that way, but Lorraine knows that's probably not a good idea. her mother knew enough about their relationship to know that Lorraine needed a little bit of motherly advice before her wedding night, but not that much. after rolling him off her, Ed promptly falls asleep on his side of the bed.

he didn't sleep the night before.

Lorraine takes a quick shower, washing the shellac out of her hair and scrubbing the make up off her face. she doesn't bother to redress, just gets into bed with him. he feels her weight on the mattress and rolls over, blearily reaching for her to pull her against him. he's half in between dreaming and wakefulness, and slides his hand up to cup her breast in his hand.

"can we do it again?"

[raendown]

Pairing: TobiramaKagami Rated: E Chapter: 3/4 Word count: 5108 Summary: It shouldn’t be so surprising that it’s Kagami who makes the opening move, asking for so little when he desires so much. From there their relationship unfolds in a tapestry of firsts they’ve both been waiting to experience.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Senpō

After several weeks of dating Kagami could say with absolute confidence that he still had no idea what he was doing. Everyone else always made dating look so easy. How did anyone ever know what they were supposed to do for each other or where the boundaries were? Already he had laid awake for hours when he was supposed to sleeping but instead was wondering if it was okay for him to send Tobirama gifts in the office, if he was allowed to walk the man home or if he should wait for Tobirama to offer the same, what counted as a date and what was just spending time together. With so many questions bouncing around in his head it was a miracle he didn’t explode with them every time he saw his boyfriend.

Just being able to use the term ‘boyfriend’ in the same sentence as ‘Tobirama’ without prefacing it with ‘I wish’ was almost enough to blow his mind every time he thought about it. 

Despite the mania of confusion in his own head and around them Kagami had been absolutely floating on air with happiness for the past few weeks. Only a day or two after their second date some news made it back from their spies in the Land of Lightning and things had been incredibly hectic ever since but Tobirama made sure to set at least an hour aside for them to spend together every couple of days. Considering how much work the man had to get through Kagami appreciated it more than he could say.

He was still extremely excited when things finally calmed down enough that they could take an entire evening off to spend some much desired quality time together. Being invited in to Tobirama’s home was a thrill all on its own, knowing he was one of the few people allowed in such a private space. The lab was one thing, only a handful of people had ever been allowed access in to there, but his actual home was somewhere he kept private from anyone but family. Kagami had no delusions that he could be considered family so early in their relationship so knowing that Tobirama trusted him enough to share the most private parts of himself already was a rush unlike any other. 

“You have a lot of secrets,” were the first words out of his mouth after a quick tour of the home. 

“Do I?” Tobirama was smiling. He could tell that even without turning around just from the amused lilt in that rumbling  voice when he stepped up behind Kagami to settle both hands on his hips. 

“Mhm.” Not allowing himself to be distracted, he waved up at the carving he’d been admiring from as many angles as possible. “Who knew you had a secret sense of interior design hidden up your sleeve as well? I have to say, I’m impressed. This is a hundred times nicer than my house.”

“You let the little girls who live next to you decorate your living room; anything would look fancy next to your place.” 

Kagami sniffed and said nothing. He didn’t actually have a defense against that since it was true. All he could say was that it had been utterly adorable watching the two of them run around with the paints they usually used to fill in coloring books and the smiles they had worn when they proudly showed off their work. Much like the man behind him, he had a deep weakness for children.

Thankfully Tobirama didn’t stop to tease him, instead leading him in to the kitchen where dinner was just waiting for them to sit down and enjoy. And enjoy he did. Whenever they happened to get thrown on the same missions nowadays there was a reason he always begged Tobirama to take cooking duty. The man was a wizard with cooking utensils in his hand. Sometimes Kagami thought it was a little unfair how good his partner seemed to be at everything but since he tended to benefit from those skills he’d never seen fit to complain too loudly. 

Something told him that he was supposed to get some sort of message from the homemade soup Tobirama served but for the life of him he couldn’t guess. It was delicious, a recipe of Tobirama’s own making, and much lighter on the spice than the man usually liked his food. Kagami would also not have been surprised not to be served fish considering both of their preference for seafood but there was something sweet and romantic and downright homey about soup made from a personal recipe – and it did taste delicious. Even without spice or seafood of any kind it still managed to be one of the tastiest dishes he’d ever been served.

Right up until they were both gathering their dishes and bringing them over to the sink the entire night was perfect, a small oasis of peace after weeks of madness, so of course that was when they were interrupted by a knock on the door and Kagami watched all the muscles in Tobirama’s jaw tighten at the same time. 

“I had hoped they were passing by to bother Hashirama instead,” he murmured, clearly having sensed whoever the unwanted visitor was long before they reached his door. 

“Want me to go yell at them?” Kagami offered. Even he wasn’t sure whether he was serious or not; thankfully Tobirama took that decision away by shaking his head with a deep sigh. 

“No, unfortunately it might be important. I should at least see what they want.” 

His eyes were already rolling as he padded down the hallway – too dignified to stomp despite the irritation clear in every line of his body – and when he pulled the door open Kagami peeked around the corner just in time to watch one of the Hokage’s assistants squeak with fright. Papers held up like a shield between them, he stammered his way through a few apologies and explained that they had just received some time sensitive correspondence that required an answer right away.

“I will see to it here and return it when I’m finished,” Tobirama declared. 

“Yes, Senju-sama. Of course.” The man bowed, already backing away without waiting to be dismissed. As soon as it was polite to do so he turned tail and fled back down the street. 

Kagami held his tongue until Tobirama had opened the folder and looked it over before coughing awkwardly. “Should I leave?”

“What? No, no, there’s no need for that. This will only take a moment if you don’t mind?”

“Anything you need!”

“Hm, anything you say?” Tobirama grinned and Kagami regretted his word choices immediately. “Come, I’ll just need to pop in to my office and I would be a terrible host to leave you alone.” 

The effort it took to stop himself from backtracking for a less incriminating turn of phrase distracted him from making any sort of comment about Tobirama having an entire room set aside as a home office. It suited him, was hardly a surprise that he brought his work home so often that he had set up a space to do it in, but Kagami did wish the man would take a little more time for himself some days. 

Most of the décor inside the office matched the vibe of the décor outside, similar colors and focused more on elegance than opulence. The only difference here was the surprisingly cluttered state of the shelves on the far side of the room. Generally any space Tobirama occupied tended to end up tidy and organized within a few hours even if it was only a temporary space and yet here it looked as though everything had been thrown in to whatever space was available at the time without a single thought for coherency. 

Obviously his surprise must have shown on his face judging by the embarrassed look his host threw back at the mess as he sat down. 

“You will tell no one about my secret shame,” Tobirama murmured and Kagami laughed. 

“How do you plan to buy my silence?” he shot back. 

Tobirama pinned him in place with hot eyes that made him swallow a sudden lump in his throat. He really should learn to start thinking his words through; it seemed like the more time he spent in close proximity with this man the more his mind began to speak itself.

Relief swept through him when that piercing gaze slid away to focus on paperwork, giving him a few moments to breathe and recollect his scattered thoughts. While Tobirama read through the letter and drafted a response Kagami drifted around the room and took his opportunity to peer through the window out in to the backyard. Spacious and well kept, he appreciated the presence of a privacy fence around the edges of the property, one home addition he was entirely unsurprised by. The lack of any flora but a few bushes along the fence line didn’t really surprise him either when he knew that greenery was more of the Hashirama-sama’s hobby, a passion he’d been unable to impart on his little brother. 

It didn’t take very long for Tobirama to finish up and once he had his response written out on a clean sheet of paper he used one hand to wave it dry while the other called a single clone in to existence. Kagami turned away from the window to watch him instruct the copy to deliver his reply back to the tower posthaste. Then the clone slipped away and he shivered as that hot gaze locked with his own, calling him over with one finger crooked in beckoning. He was helpless to do anything but go. 

“You look like you’re about to eat me and I’m not sure if I’m intrigued or frightened.” Kagami settled on a smile of gentle triumph when Tobirama laughed. 

“Perhaps I’m trying to buy your silence like you asked me to.”

“Okay well now I’m even more worried,” He joked, already stepping within reach and slipping easily in to the arms that pulled him close against Tobirama’s side. 

It was entirely unfair how long this man’s torso was. Even from a sitting position he was nearly as tall as Kagami standing at full height. The only nice part about that was how easy it was to lean over and kiss him when a pale hand lifted to hook in the neck of his shirt and pull him down, stealing a quiet sound of pleasure from his lips.

When two broad hands traveled down the front of his chest to settle at his hips Kagami thought of nothing but how good it felt, as though the other were learning every inch and crevice of his body. He didn’t think much of it when they tightened their grip because that felt nice too in the way a tight hug made him feel secure and loved. Then suddenly the hands gripping him lifted and he broke their kiss to let out a startled yelp as he was hauled bodily in to the air and set back down on the edge of the wooden desk. 

“Are you serious?” he cried. 

“Have I crossed a line?”

“Do you have any idea how hot that was?” Kagami gestured in wide nonsensical arcs to demonstrate his point as he went on. “With the lifting and the putting and I weigh nothing to you do I? God, why are you so hot? I hate it. No, I love it. Stop being hot!” 

“If you wish,” Tobirama murmured, though he was still openly smirking with amusement. 

Kagami huffed. “Stop laughing at me too.”

“Note to self, he clearly enjoys being tossed around,” Tobirama went on mercilessly. 

“I said stop! But, um, yeah. Yeah that was…good.” 

Praying did not convince the universe to strike him down where he sat so Kagami figured the best way to deal with his mortification was to find something to distract them both. And the universe’s answer was of course right there in the form of Tobirama drawing him in to another kiss, capturing his lips and turning his brain to mush so he almost didn’t notice that his legs were being moved around until he was all but straddling his partner’s waist. If he slid just a few inches forward he could lower himself from the edge of the desk and then he truly would be sitting right over Tobirama’s lap. 

Now that he was right where Tobirama seemed to want him the hands that had lifted him here returned to their exploration of his body, sliding up and down his sides and mapping the contours of his chest until he was squirming with so many sensations he didn’t know how to deal with. He was hard inside his clothing long before those wandering hands made their way down to slide along the tops of his thighs and stop for two thumbs to trace his obliques. 

“Hah…” The sound escaped with little warning, accompanied by a full body shiver, and when Kagami blinked away the fog in his mind he found Tobirama looking up at him from the chair with a contemplative look. 

“You will tell me if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable, I hope?” he asked. Kagami nearly swallowed his own tongue with nerves. 

“Sure, yeah. Uh, what exactly were you planning to do?”

Tobirama ran his thumbs along the seam of Kagami’s thighs again, dangerously close to other parts of his anatomy, and quirked up one corner of his mouth in a sultry look. “Well now that I seem to have you at my mercy I should very much like to pleasure you.” 

Once again Kagami nearly choked on his tongue. 

“Who says that?” he exclaimed. 

“Is that a no?”

“No! It’s…I mean…do I get to return the favor?”

For once he got to surprise Tobirama in turn. His partner lifted one eyebrow and actually paused before replying, “If you want to I’m certainly not going to stop you. My body is yours to explore. But first…”

His words were so distracting Kagami had somehow managed to forget about his hands but he remembered them now as they dipped towards each other to caress his inner thighs and then one of them branched upwards to cup him through his clothing. All the breath in his lungs rushed out at once and he hurried to shove an arm out behind himself lest he fall over with the shock of pleasant sensations rushing through him.

“This is alright?” Tobirama’s teasing voice asked him and he realized his eyes were closed. 

“Uh-huh…”

Licking his lips, he couldn’t help but roll in to the motion of the hand caressing him. Just when he thought he might be getting a little too excited too fast, a recipe for repeating the last time they found themselves in an intimate situation, the teasing stopped and both of the hands touching him moved up to toy with the fastenings of his pants. 

“And this too?” 

“Oh wow…” All the words of his own language seemed to have fallen out his ears leaving him empty and speechless but that didn’t matter as long as Tobirama kept doing whatever it was he planned on doing. Visions of white fingers wrapped around him and stroking firmly dancing behind his eyelids until he forced them open to nod frantically. “Uh-huh. S’fine.”

“Excellent.” All but dripping confidence with every movement, even when he paused to make sure he hadn’t made his partner uncomfortable, Tobirama somehow managed to make an entire show out of undoing Kagami’s clothing and opening the front of his pants before detouring back up to tease his chest again. 

Trying not to fall over and just melt in to an actual puddle, Kagami wondered if he should be returning some of this attention. He did make a point of saying he wanted to actually give something back this time instead of leaving Tobirama unsatisfied again. No matter what the man said about not keeping a tally he still felt guilty allowing himself to be pleasured without at least attempting to give the same in return. And it would be an attempt only; he was fairly sure his inexperience wouldn’t exactly be sexy. 

He had a lot to learn but he had a feeling Tobirama was open to teaching him whatever he wanted to know in this area. 

Despite his good intentions, however, it was getting harder and harder by the second to think around the waves of arousal spreading through his body with every caress and touch. When fingers slid underneath his waistband it took all of his concentration not to whimper. He was almost grateful to feel them pull away a moment later until he noticed they were only repositioning to hook underneath the hem from another angle while Tobirama looked up at him with a smile that threatened to melt his bones. 

“I’ll need you to lift up if you don’t mind me removing these,” he said.

Kagami tried to answer and found that words were failing him still so instead he fell back on his elbows and braced his feet on the sides of Tobirama’s chair to lift his hips, trying not to be obvious about the fact that he was close to panting with anticipation. He had dreamed of baring himself for this man a shameful amount of times. The reality was a lot more nerve-wracking than it usually was in his fantasies but it still had the advantage of being real, something he wouldn’t wake up from and need to scrub off his skin just so he could look the other man in the eye afterwards.

He was a little surprised to have his pants pulled down only far enough to trap his legs, the stretchy material giving him just enough room to remain straddled around Tobirama’s waist while pinning them in place so he could go no further. Then he was even more surprised when instead of continuing his explorations Tobirama went straight for the ties of his fundoshi. Heat returned to his face with a vengeance as he watched himself spring up, fully hard already and oh so obviously eager, but at least Tobirama did not laugh at him this time. Actually he looked a little closer to drooling than laughing, which Kagami had been certain was something that only happened in his private little imaginings. For a few moments Tobirama simply tilted his head and took in the sight before him while his thumbs traced soothing circles on the thighs under his grasp. 

Then he leaned forward to lick a stripe up the cock just begging for his attention and Kagami’s entire body convulsed with a sharp cry.

“Warning!” he gasped. 

“If I gave you warning then it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Tobirama rumbled his words against the side of his new treat, following them immediately with another long stripe with the flat of his tongue. 

“Ah! Nn…feels- yes. Do that. That’s g- very good.”

“Does it? Then I am very curious to know what you think of this.” 

Without bothering to give any further warning Tobirama parted his lips to sink down over the head of Kagami’s cock and the shock of pleasure that ran through him was so strong the arms keeping him up folded, sending his torso crashing backwards. One hand lifted to clap over his mouth as a shamefully loud moan spilled out, hips instinctively bucking upwards in to that hot, wet glory. His movements were stifled by a strong grip as Tobirama held him in place and did things with that beautiful mouth Kagami’s craziest wet dreams had never been able to imagine.

He knew what a blowjob was, obviously. Growing up with dozens of other young boys his age ensured he knew exactly how a blowjob was done and heard a dozen and more descriptions of what it felt like. None of that prepared him for the reality of Tobirama’s tongue curling around his length, cheeks hollowing to add a little suction in some undecipherable pattern, and the wet sounds that should have been more disturbing than anything yet still somehow managed to heighten his excitement because this was actually happening. Senju Tobirama was curled over him and sucking on his cock, quickly bringing him closer and closer to what was obviously going to be the best orgasm of his entire life. 

Which, of course, his own mouth decided he needed to express using garbage half sentences and noises better left to the darkness when he was alone with his own shameful imagination. The swear words at least seemed to have an effect. For every involuntary curse that left his mouth Tobirama hummed around him in appreciation and the sensation of it was almost enough to send him flying over the edge. Almost, but thankfully not quite.

Instead what actually did it was nothing but a natural build. His body splayed across the desk like a scroll unfurled for his partner to work on, back arching towards the ceiling every time Tobirama sank back down over him, hands scrabbling for purchase only to lose it against and again as he spasmed with so much more pleasure than he was used to handling. Again and again he babbled senselessly at the ceiling as all the muscles in his body coiled tighter and tighter until he was dangling right on the precipice- 

Then fell, shattered, fragmented in to a thousand pieces as his spine bowed and his hands shot down to fist in the back of Tobirama’s shirt while that gorgeous mouth worked him all the way through an orgasm that threatened to send him straight in to nirvana. It felt like forever until his back hit the wood of the desk again and Kagami was left panting and shivering, anchored to reality only by the pale hands caressing his chest and thighs in nonsensical patterns. If not for the voice murmuring soft exclamations of mild surprise for his reaction he might have thought he’d actually passed out and fallen in to a dream. The Tobirama of his dreams always praised him for being perfect and whispered filthy things he wasn’t sure the Tobirama before him would ever utter. Unless he asked. He had a feeling his partner would do a lot of things if he asked for them. 

By the time his eyes were able to see again past the senseless cloud of euphoria he found the man smiling much like a smug cat, full of pride and eyes just as bright as the moments he realized he’d made a scientific breakthrough. 

“You look like you want to eat me again,” he said breathlessly and without thinking.

“Don’t tempt me,” was Tobirama’s answer and it sent his head dropping back, hand coming up to cover his eyes with embarrassment. 

“Just because I’m sitting here with my bits still hanging out in your face doesn’t mean I meant to be suggestive!”

He flushed even deeper when the other man laughed but strangely it also helped cut the awkwardness of being so exposed, as he’d said, right in front of Tobirama’s face. Not having been with anyone before meant the only time he’d been exposed to other people’s eyes had been in the public baths he didn’t visit that often anyway. It was strange. Maybe it was the fact that he was the only one not fully clothed or maybe it was just a matter of the newness of it all but he had to admit that the way Tobirama’s eyes stayed riveted to him with a primal sort of hunger helped more than anything to keep him at least a little comfortable. 

Comfortable enough to sit up and swallow down his fears, slipping off the edge of the desk and sinking to the floor between Tobirama’s knees without bothering to remove the rest of his pants. His reward was the very visible bob of the older man’s throat.

“You know you don’t have to,” Tobirama assured him. Reaching out with shaking fingers, Kagami gave a deliberately casual shrug.

“I want to. Believe me I want to.” He was already blushing so he blamed the heat in his cheeks on lingering pleasure rather than the allusion to his longtime desires. 

Even having just had all of this done to himself Kagami still felt a little lost as he slowly pulled clothing away until he was tracing the edges of a perfectly white cock with nervous fingertips. He felt Tobirama’s eyes watching closely but the man said nothing to stop him from exploring with gentle touches until he was able to force his mind past the initial disbelief of being allowed to do these things. 

Then he was curling his fingers around the shaft and shuffling forward on his knees, eyes lowered because he couldn’t bear to let their gazes meet just in case he did all of this wrong, and bent his neck for a first taste. He was almost startled by the smooth skin of the head but more so by how much he enjoyed the sensation. Intrigued, he took his time exploring all the things he just had over again but this time with his tongue. So enraptured was he that it almost startled him out of his skin to feel fingers slide in between his curls with a gentle grip as Tobirama let out a shuddering breath above him. 

He was enjoying this. Kagami could hardly believe his ears but when he dared to peek upwards he found glazed lust staring back at him and a line of pink spread across the bridge of Tobirama’s nose, his arousal clear and bared without shame. Whatever he was doing was actually working and the thrill of that was enough of a confidence boost for him to look back down at what he was doing and slide his lips over the whole head.

Over his head Tobirama released a groan that nearly made him peak all over again. Kagami did his best to contain the way he shivered in response and made a few adjustments until he was bobbing slowly in his best approximation of the overwhelming experience he had just lived through himself. It was impossible to tell whether the sounds he was earning were genuine or exaggerated for his benefit but either way they spurred him on even after his jaw slowly began to ache. With more experience in this sort of thing Tobirama was able to last a bit longer than he had. Kagami held his eyes shut tight and brought one hand up to work the length he wasn’t able to fit in his mouth, hoping that would help more than distract. 

It wasn’t too long before he felt the thighs around him tensing slowly; long enough that his jaw would surely be sore the next day but not enough that he couldn’t redouble his efforts in anticipation. He still wasn’t convinced his movements weren’t terribly awkward looking but he stroked and sucked and licked in whatever pattern he could manage and listened with breathless glee as Tobirama fell apart under his touch. 

Never had he experienced anything as gratifying as knowing that it was his efforts bringing Tobirama closer to the edge. He was so wrapped up in the triumph of it all that he almost thought Tobirama was pushing him away when the man put a steadying hand on his shoulder and started trying to say something in breathless, broken syllables. 

“Don’t have to-” he eventually managed to get out and Kagami understood. 

Grinning was a little difficult with his mouth this full so he flicked his gaze up to acknowledge his partner even as he blatantly ignored those words. After putting so much effort in to doing this well there was no way he would pull back right at the end. Even the unexpected salty flavor that flooded his mouth could not dampen the victory of holding Tobirama’s hips down and listening to the sweet symphony of his own name in fragmented gasps, feeling the clench of fingers in his hair and knowing he had been the one to overwhelm his partner for once instead of the other way around. 

When he pulled away he did so carefully, not wanting to spill the mouthful he couldn’t choke down until after Tobirama’s softened length was out of the way. Then when his own mouth was clear he looked up to admire the image above him. Pale lines stretched out, languishing, muscles loose and free of tension. 

“You look ready to fall asleep,” he noted absently. Tobirama blinked sleepily down at him and quirked up one side of his mouth. 

“Not without you.” 

The crook of one finger had him rising from his knees only to slide back over Tobirama’s lap and preen in the tight hold that wrapped him in close for a few soft kisses. “Not bad for a first time?”

“If you don’t mind staying a little longer I would be happy to spend the next few hours telling you exactly why that was so far above ‘not bad’,” Tobirama murmured. Both of them were still flushed but it was hard to tell if it was from the arousal or embarrassment. 

“A little longer?” Kagami asked, not sure how to respond to such praise, neatly sidestepping it instead. 

“Mm. If you like you can stay the night. My place is a little closer to work than yours is.”

Chewing on his bottom lip, Kagami muffled a bit of laughter. “Oh of course, convenience, that’s the reason you want me to stay.”

“Obviously,” Tobirama scoffed jokingly. “What other reasons would I have? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with how much I enjoy your company or how selfishly I want to enjoy it for as long as possible.” 

Since he knew it was already pretty obvious that he shared the sentiment Kagami opted for a nice healthy blush and some distracting babble in place of an actual answer, hoping fruitlessly that it wasn’t noticeable how nervous he was to spend their first night together. Even if nothing more happened it was still another big step forward for them. It didn’t matter that none of those big steps had gone poorly yet, he was still going to be nervous for every one because this was important to him. Tobirama was important to him. 

This was his one chance and the smile looking up at him from below was worth getting nervous over if it meant he remembered how to appreciate all that he was blessed with. 

[pipermca]

Drone

Written for the @tfspeedwriting challenge on Oct 19 2019.

Prompt: Setting: a drone auction Rating: Very very lemony  Warnings: Slave coding, forced exhibitionism, non-consensual interfacing, all the bad things like that Continuity: G1ish Wordcount: 2800 Time: 2 hours, 8 minutes Summary: While investigating a suspected trafficking ring, Prowl discovers that things are even worse than the Enforcers had originally thought.

Notes: Sorry, but this was the very first place my brain went with that prompt! Very rough draft

Prowl did not like doing undercover work.

He preferred the predictability and routine of patrol and deskwork and investigation. He preferred driving to speak to witnesses, or collecting evidence at a crime scene, or piecing together a myriad of facts and details into a coherent picture. (He especially liked doing that.)

But since he was one of the few Praxians on the Rodion police force, he was occasionally called in when they needed a door-winged mech to play a specific role for a case.

Prowl had been working this case for months. For years, there had been rumours of a trafficking ring operating in Rodion. Pleasurebots spoke in hushed tones of those who'd gone missing: picked up by a client and then never seen again. But since most of the shareware that worked the undersides of the citystate were transient in some way or another, a missing mech report very often just revealed that the mech had moved on to another city, or they turned up deactivated, killed by a cortical patch burnout. Sadly, that meant many of the missing mech were not missed for long... It was just assumed that they'd moved on, or found someplace to stimulate their processors directly into the Afterspark.

Why waste time looking for shareware? was the common opinion. If they hadn't put themselves into that situation, they wouldn't end up missing or dead. They made their choices.

Prowl hated that sort of disdain for the pleasurebots. He didn't care that they were selling their frames for shanix; he'd spoken to enough of them to know that through a few slips of bad luck, anyone might find themselves facing the same choice. Starve, or sell whatever you have to survive. And when you have nothing, all you have to sell is yourself.

But eventually, the number of missing mechs had reached a point where even the citystate's leaders had taken notice. No, scratch that... A young mech, just barely into his adult upgrades, had been found deactivated in one of the waste troughs that ran under the city streets. He hadn't been a pleasurebot, but had been working as a dancer at a club. His roommate had reported him missing after he hadn't come home after work one night. The uproar from that death finally caused the Chief Enforcer to order an investigation of the rumoured trafficking ring.

It took them all of a week to find out the rumours were probably true.

However, all of the leads they picked up seemed to lead right to a very seedy - but totally legal - pleasure drone trading house. The proprietors bought very legal mech shells, outfitted them with drone motivators, and then customized the shells in whatever way the purchaser requested. Sure, some of them were sold as housekeepers or nannies for younglings, but most of them seemed to end up being used as interface toys.

Your personal pleasure drone could be equipped with multiple valves or spikes, extra arms or kibble that you might find exciting, extra intakes or no intake... And then it could be programmed to act almost like a real mech. Moan at the right time. Buck its hips into you at the right amount of stimulation. Say your designation in whatever pitch or volume you wanted. Be the perfect partner for whatever kink you wanted to satisfy.

This in itself was vaguely scandalous; the initial investigation turned up a number of high-ranking citystate officials who were regular customers. That scandal kept the newsbots occupied for almost a full year as the city collectively clutched its hands to its spark chamber and asked how such a torrid thing could happen in Rodion.

Meanwhile, the investigation continued, quietly peeling back the layers of what lay under that trading house. Under that layer of obscenity, were so many layers of filth and depravity that it took the police over a year to sort out how to even approach the next step in the investigation.

And thus began one of the longest undercover jobs that Prowl had ever undertaken. So many detectives were required that they pulled from all over the force, and Prowl was given the role of a prospective client.

He'd purchased several drones from trading auction house, turning them all over to the forensics team to determine whether there was anything illegal being done with them: unregistered parts, unapproved logic circuitry, banned scripting, and so on. Every single drone ended up being perfectly legal, if distasteful to polite society.

But finally, after months of buying drone after drone and telling the proprietor how much he was enjoying his purchases, Prowl had been given an invitation to the "VIP night" sale.

"It’s an auction night where we bring in special vendors to show off some of their more rare and special models," Spinup, the trading house's owner told Prowl a few nights before. He leaned on the counter to show Prowl some pictures from the datapad he was holding. "They've got top-notch programming, resulting in some very lifelike reactions. There will be demonstrations, and even the chance to take one for a spin." He grinned at Prowl, or 'Haywire' as he knew him. "Based on what you've told me of your preferences, I think this might be right up your alley."

'Haywire' had a preference for drones who could do more than just lay back and take a spike, or act as an unthinking rutting machine. Prowl smiled broadly at Spinup, lifting his green and silver doorwings in an anticipatory gesture. "Thank you. It does sound like something I'd be interested in."

When Prowl stepped into the trading house the night of the special sale, he did a quick scan of the crowd. His orders for this particular night were strictly surveillance, and to collect information. He was instructed to show interested in a few of the models, but then aim to be invited back later to collect more evidence to lay the groundwork for a full raid.

That was fine with Prowl. He knew it was required to collect evidence, but he hated buying drones knowing that the shanix he paid for them would just get funneled into whatever unsavory dealings they were trying to uncover.

"Glad you could make it, Haywire!" Spinup handed Prowl a glass of high grade and ushered him to a seat near the display stage where drones were usually displayed for sale. Tonight, the stage had been draped in glittery mesh, and a chair had been placed near the middle. Spinup handed Prowl a paddle with a number on it. "If you're interested in bidding on any of the merchandise, just hold that up high. We'll be starting in a few minutes. Just relax until then."

Prowl nodded and turned his attention back to the crowd. Many of the mechs in attendance were wearing obvious disguises, with poorly done paint jobs, or false kibble tacked on to disrupt silhouette recognition software. Others, though, were either well-done disguises, or were moneyed mechs who Prowl didn't recognize. He tagged captures of several of their faces for later analysis to see if they could be identified.

Soon, the lights in the trading house fell, and music started up. A spotlight lit the stage and a mech done up in glittery paint stepped out from behind the curtain. "Welcome to our special VIP night! I'm Brushfire, your auctioneer for the night. I know you're as anxious to get started as I am, so let's see our first item for bid!"

A drone stepped out from behind the curtain. It had the too-slow and too-smooth movements of a well-programmed drone, a gap between the jerky movements of a household drone and the more natural movements of a live mech that even the best programming had yet to bridge. There was a vacant look in the drone's optics as it obeyed Brushfire's command to spin in place, showing off its gaudy paint and open interface panels for all to see.

Prowl sipped from his glass of high grade as he ran a comparison of the drone's face against the database of missing mechs. Having the glass raised to his mouth managed to keep him from reacting when he got a hit almost immediately.

The face matched a pleasure bot who had been reported missing just two weeks before. The story from the other bots on his corner was that a client had picked him up, and he'd never come back.

Prowl watched the 'drone' carefully. It acted just like a drone, following every command to the letter and not a bit more.

"And for the next demonstration, I'll show off how lifelike it can really be," Brushfire said, and held his fingers to the drone's lips. "Suck on these."

The drone's mouth opened slowly, and Brushfire pushed his fingers into its mouth. The drone started to suck on them, his jaw working slowly.

Beside Prowl, a customer slid his interface panel open and slid his fingers into his own valve under the table.

"Now... Wake," said Brushfire.

Suddenly, the vacant look on the mech's face vanished, replaced by shock, then revulsion, and then fear. His optics went wide and darted up to Brushfire's face, but his jaw continued to work as he sucked on Brushfire's fingers. Brushfire slowly slipped his fingers from the mech's mouth, pausing to wipe them on his plating

"Show me your spike," Brushfire said, and the mech's spike housing spiraled open, his spike pressurizing immediately. "Now... Stroke yourself to overload. Show us what you've got."

The mech's face flushed with a look of humiliation as he grabbed at his spike and started pulling on it. His optics flicked from Brushfire to the crowd and back as he hand moved faster and faster, until his whole frame shuddered into overload, his transfluid spattering the stage floor in front of him.

At the next table, the customer's hand worked faster under the table.  

Brushfire turned to look back at the crowd. "Perfectly cognizant, and perfectly controlled," Brushfire said with a smile. "The lock will allow for the drone to be aware of everything done to it, but it will still follow every single command."

It took every bit of Prowl's training and willpower to not jump out of his seat and charge the stage. They'd suspected that the missing bots were being used as a cheap source of shells for the drones. They had suspected that the missing bots were being used as unwilling slaves, possibly in an underground brothel of some sort.

This... This was so much worse.

"Do we have anyone who would like to test the merchandise? For 300 shanix you may have 15 minutes, with an option to purchase afterwards."

The customer beside Prowl jumped up and waved his auction paddle. In just a minute, he and the 'drone' were escorted to a curtained-off area beside the stage. Before the curtain was pulled shut, Prowl saw a panicked look on the supposed drone's face.

Prowl's hands balled into fists under the table.

For the next 'drone,' a dance pole was set up on the stage. The crowd watched as Brushfire 'woke' the drone, and ordered the mech to dance. The mech twirled on and climbed and rode the pole in a way that a drone simply could never do. At Brushfire's orders, the mech stuck his fingers in his valve and began pumping them in and out as he twirled around the pole. And all through his sensuous motions, the mech glared daggers at every mech in the audience, including Prowl.

Slag, thought Prowl. I wish I could help you.

But... orders. Surveillance only.

He dutifully recorded the mech's face, and matched it to a club dancer who had been reported missing over a month ago.

As the second mech for sale was taken backstage by another client, Spinup stopped by Prowl's table. "See anything of interest yet?" he asked.

"It's all been very interesting," Prowl replied smoothly. He smiled at Spinup ingratiatingly. "But I'd hate to jump at one offering and miss something I might enjoy more."

"Fair enough," Spinup said with a laugh, and wandered off to the next table.

For the third sale, the pole had been replaced by the chair again. When the next mech was brought out, Brushfire spun him around slowly as he'd done with the others. This mech was Polyhexian, mostly white and black, with blue and red accents. His visor was dark, and he moved with the same uncanny motions that the other mechs had before they'd been woken up.

"A fine treat for you tonight," he said. "We've had a dancer, now we have a singer. Wake."

The mech's visor brightened as he came back to awareness, but his expression didn't change. Prowl saw the flicker as the mech looked out over the crowd before his gaze settled on Brushfire.

"Sing for me," said Brushfire, pushing the mech down into the chair. "Sing a love song for me, and show off your valve while you do that. Overload at the end."

The visored mech began to sing. The song was unfamiliar to Prowl, but the tune was bawdy and lively. In contrast, the mech's expression had hardened as his fingers splayed his valve open as he sang.

Prowl ran the mech's face against the database of missing mechs, but got no hits. Perhaps this mech hadn't been reported missing yet. Or – worse – maybe he had been reported missing, but not in Rodion. Prowl would have to return to the precinct to run a full search, but he wondered if this 'trading ring' stretched farther than just the dark corners of Rodion.

As the mech's song came to a close, his voice trembled slightly as his frame was wracked by an overload. The expression on his face made it clear that the overload was neither wanted, nor enjoyable.

As the mech's visor came back down to glare out at the audience, Prowl decided that orders could be scrapped in the light of new evidence.

Before Brushfire could ask whether anyone wanted a turn with the singer, Prowl held up his bid paddle. "I'll take a turn with him," he called.

"He's a bit more expensive than the previous trwo," Brushfire warned. "It'll be 500 shanix for 15 minutes."

"Worth it," Prowl said, flicking a door wing.

Within minutes, Spinup was pulling the curtain closed. "I'll give you 20 minutes," he said. "I want to make sure you get a good feel for what this one's capable of."

Prowl nodded. "Looking forward to it," he purred, and stepped closer to the supposed drone.

As soon as the curtain was closed, Prowl felt along the mech's neck for his hardline port. Surely the stall was bugged, if not outright being monitored by video. He hoped that the mech hadn't been outfitted with viruses to protect the ring's investment. "Your voice is lovely," Prowl said, using the same low rumbling tone he'd just used with Spinup. "And you look just as beautiful as you sound. Shall I see if you feel beautiful, too?"

The mech glared up at him, but he didn't move when Prowl slipped a jack into his neck port. He kept his hand over the connection, trying to hide it from whatever camera they had in here. Connection protocols ran and came up clean of viruses, but Prowl couldn't get any deeper than surface level diagnostics. Prowl hoped that the mech's internal comm systems hadn't been encrypted so that he wouldn't be able to understand what was being said to him over the hardline.

::I am Detective Prowl with the Rodion Police.:: Prowl paused, waiting to see if there was any reaction. ::I am going to get you out of here. Do you understand?::

The mech looked up at Prowl blankly.

Scrap.

Prowl stroked a hand down the mech's face, trying to keep up as much of a show for the stall's cameras as possible. "Will you sing for me?"

Slowly, the mech's hand slid up to Prowl's waist, and one of his fingers tapped on Prowl's hip armor. Then he began to sing.

Instead of the dirty tune he'd sung on stage, the mech began to sing a slow, melancholy song. Through his visor, his gaze held Prowl's.

Prowl nodded. ::One tap for yes, two taps for no?::

One tap on Prowl's hip.

Perfect.

Prowl traced a thumb across the mech's lower lip. "So beautiful," he purred again.

The mech's visor brightened.

::Are you here of your own free will?::

The mech's fingers quickly tapped twice on Prowl's hip.

Not that Prowl was surprised, but the confirmation only steeled his resolve to get at least one of these mechs out of this situation tonight. ::Do you want me to get you out of here?::

One tap

::Other than the lock on your processor, are you injured or in need of immediate medical attention?::

Two taps.

The mech's song slowly faded as it ended, and he leaned back into the chair he was sitting in, still looking up at Prowl.

This glare had been replaced by a dawning look of hope.

"That was lovely," Prowl said, cupping the mech's face in his hands. "Will you sing me another?"

The mech immediately opened his mouth and began to sing again. This time, though, his song was filled with hope. 

[slytherinknowitall]

Potion Fumes and Cauldron Leaks

Chapter 10: Oh, How Intimate First Names Can Be!

(Click here for chapter 9!)

(Click here to start from the beginning!)

Disclaimer: I don’t own the “Harry Potter” book series. The story of “Harry Potter” is the property of J. K. Rowling, it is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.

Severus cut her off before she could even get a single word out.

“Miss Granger, today, you will be preparing a rather easy potion which you have already learnt about during your early years at this school: the Cure for Boils. As I will be instructing the first-years in how to brew this particular potion tomorrow morning, I thought that it would be wise to have some ready-made phials of it on hand. After all, we both know how foolish and dim-witted some students can be.” He was, of course, referring to how Neville Longbottom once had made a cauldron melt while unsuccessfully trying his luck at this very concoction.

“Now, when you first learnt how to brew the Cure for Boils, you used a formula from Magical Drafts and Potions. This time around, however, you will be working according to the instructions found in the Book of Potions as that version does not consume as much time. As you can see, I have written the directions on the blackboard. You may take the required ingredients from the storage room and get started.”

As Miss Granger obediently and – by the grace of the gods – for once wordlessly got down to work, the Potions Master sat down behind his desk. He pulled up some essays to correct; however, he couldn’t concentrate on them no matter how hard he tried. He stared at the letters and words written in smudged ink for what felt like hours, but his mind couldn’t seem to form coherent sentences out of them. It appeared as though this was becoming some sort of pattern for him; he hadn’t been able to be productive for weeks. Whenever he would try to do some research or even just to read a book, his head would start to fill with images of a certain insufferable know-it-all.

Severus was hopelessly distraught. He was beyond disgusted with himself for acting like a teenage boy going through puberty all over again. It didn’t matter whether he was eating in the Great Hall, teaching in his classroom or walking through the castle’s ever-busy corridors – whenever there was a quiet moment, he couldn’t help his thoughts wandering to his apprentice. To combat this, he was trying to keep himself as busy as possible and had even began to lash out at the student body more than he usually already did. But his desperate attempts proved to be fruitless; once he would lie in bed at night, the darkness engulfing him, he couldn’t put a stop to his imagination anymore.

His mind would be plagued by mental pictures of the Gryffindor Princess, some real and some nothing but chimerical. Miss Granger in his private laboratory, bend over a cauldron, small beads of sweat running down her slender neck into her cleavage. Miss Granger in his sitting room, spread across the fluffy carpet in front of the fireplace, reading one of his beloved books while only scantily clad. Miss Granger straddling him on his bed, a cheeky smile on her face as she moves in to kiss him with those luscious lips of hers.

Worst of all, he couldn’t help his body’s reaction to these forbidden thoughts either, and that made him feel like a complete sicko.

Severus knew that he was doomed. Why oh why did this have to happen to him out of all people?! The Head of Slytherin – a former Death Eater and more often than not referred to as the greasy git of the dungeons – lusting after Gryffindor’s on-site smartass who was half his age; could it really get any worse? Had he honestly gotten so desperate for female touch that he had to resort to fantasising about a girl still wearing her school uniform?

He had only been in love once in his life and that had ended in tragedy. Except for some random encounters with witches he didn’t care for, he didn’t really have any experience when it came to the opposite sex. And so even if his silly, little crush weren’t so immorally wrong, it could never work out anyways. The Dungeon Bat wasn’t exactly what one would call a chick magnet. His nose was disproportionately large, his skin was almost sickeningly pallid, and his entire body was battered and scarred from the torture he had had to endure as a follower of the Dark Lord. A smart girl like Hermione Granger could never love an old wreck like him.

NO! Who was even talking about love?! Severus was simply getting turned on by her admittingly rather shapely form, that was all – he was a man, after all. Yes, while he had had many good-looking students walk into his Potions classroom over the years – with some of them even having being stupid enough to try to offer themselves to him in exchange for better grades – none of them had ever caused such a reaction before; but that was probably just due to the fact that the war was finally over now. With him not having to constantly fear for his life anymore, his body was seemingly starting to act “normal” again and that included his libido, too. With not many options available to him cooped up here in the middle of nowhere, it was no surprise that he would eventually stoop as low as to desire someone as annoying, overzealous and pesky as Granger. Mind you, she had indeed grown up to be a beautiful and attractive young woman. Him suddenly not getting irritated anymore by the constant flow of questions leaving her mouth and instead thinking about that very mouth in a perverted way meant absolutely nothing; he was simply horny.

At least that was what Severus was trying to tell himself.

To make matters worse, he had gone completely overboard with that stupid birthday gift. After having been forced to play along with this silly tradition, Snape’s mind had been completely blank on what to get his apprentice. Following a frantic one-hour search of his rooms, he had still not been able to find anything suitable for an 18-year-old girl.

“Well, she is a bookworm …” he’d thought after finally deciding on his volume of Long-forgotten Secrets of the Mayan Wizarding Culture – Potions, Spells and More. Severus had never been a huge fan of this book to begin with; while it was certainly a good read, he had always thought that it was completely overrated and therefore not worth hanging on to. Still, Miss Granger would probably get some enjoyment out of it somehow.

He had only realised his mistake once he had already sent off the owl. Even if he himself didn’t think much of the book, the witch would surely be bewildered as to why her teacher would gift her something so rare and valuable. There was no doubt in his mind that she would start to question his intentions sooner rather than later.

Severus let out a small grunt. He would have to find a way out of this misery. From here on out, he would try to further limit his contact with Miss Granger; continuing to outright ignore her during class and giving her tasks to complete elsewhere instead of holding their apprenticeship lessons. He could also do some research and look for a potion that would help suppress his bodily desires. Worst case scenario, he would simply have to pay a quick late-night visit to the sketchier part of Diagon Alley and find a willing Galleon-seeking witch to take his sexual frustration out on. Perhaps he could also have a talk with Albus and ask him to reassign Miss Granger to –

Suddenly, there was a loud blast coming from the other side of the room. Alarmed, Severus looked up from his papers, but all he could see was a half-destroyed cauldron and a lot of dark blue smoke – there was no sign of his young pupil.

His heart leapt into his throat. “HERMIONE!” he cried out before sprinting to the scene of the accident. With a quick flick of his wooden wand, he at once got rid of the chaos, and it was then that he discovered Miss Granger lying on the cold dungeon floor, covered in a mixture of unfinished teal-coloured potion and what he suspected to be blood. Her head of curls was a fuzzy mess and her face was completely drained of colour.

Severus immediately dropped to his knees and grabbed her by the arms to pull her onto his lap. Thankfully, the brunette was still breathing; however, the blow of the explosion seemed to have knocked her out.

He feverishly thought about what could have caused such a catastrophe; brewing Boil Cure was a simple task after all. With a brief glance at the blackboard, it finally dawned on him: He had forgotten to add a warning to only stir the potion very gently after adding the pickled Shrake spines; otherwise they tended to get “overexcited” and therefore become explosive. The Potions Master had obviously assumed that Miss Granger would have known this already, but it seemed as though even the knowledge of Hogwarts’ most brilliant student wasn’t all-encompassing.

Severus couldn’t help but to silently scold himself for this rookie mistake as he swiftly conjured up a cushioned stretcher on which he then carefully laid down his apprentice. After a quick visual assessment of her injuries, he was sure that the damage wasn’t too bad apart from some cuts and bruises. As a next step, he ripped open her singed and torn blouse, trying hard to ignore her now visible frilly bra. Using some basic cleaning spells, he made quick work of the sticky potion and blood mixture before focusing on the main problem.

“Vulnera Sanentur,” he whispered as he dragged his wand along the wounds on her chest and arms. He had invented this very spell during his own years as a student; and while it had originally been intended to mend severe injuries, it had become his go-to healing spell over time – because naturally, he had always had the most faith in his own creations.

A quick Repairing Charm later, Miss Granger’s tattered clothing was back to its original state. Severus then disappeared into his storage room just to come back out a few minutes later with a crystalline phial in one hand and a small jar of ointment in the other. He placed the latter on a table nearby before yet again kneeling down next to his patient. Supporting her head with his left hand, he poured a few drops of Wideye Potion down her throat; it had come from the very batch they had brewed together not even two weeks earlier. Sitting back on his heels, all he could do then was to wait for her to wake up.

Soon enough, Granger started to stir and eventually let out a muffled groan before opening her brown eyes, seemingly disorientated. It was only when she attempted to sit up that her teacher spoke up.

“You shouldn’t try to get back up quite yet … unless you enjoy feeling lightheaded, of course,” he said with an icy undertone as he stood up and moved back to his desk, sensing her questioning look following his every move. He sat down in his black leather chair and waited for her to speak.

“What happened?” she finally managed to ask, her voice still husky.

“It seems as though I have overestimated your brewing abilities greatly, Miss Granger, as you appear to have disregarded the required safety precautions concerning the use of Shrakes in potions, subsequently blowing yourself up. As a result, you have not only forced me to interrupt my work and come to your aid, but I will now also have to utilize my free time later this evening to prepare the required potion for tomorrow’s class. For this unbelievable foolishness, I shall deduct 15 points from Gryffindor.”

A tiny tear started to slip down her left cheek, but whether it was caused by the pain from her injuries or his cold words the wizard did not know. The incident hadn’t been completely her fault, of course; but Severus didn’t care. He told himself that she should have better than to make such a ludicrous mistake. Now that he knew that she would eventually make a full recovery, worry and shock was replaced with sheer anger – anger over his doom-laded error, anger over how distressed the sight of her unconscious and wounded body had made him, anger over how he was nothing but a slave to his primal needs and anger over how he had frantically called out her name just minutes earlier. He was practically seething.

“I will let you know that I expect better from someone who is not only this school’s Head Girl but also my personal apprentice. I expect a lot better … Now, I suggest you take this jar of dittany,” he commanded sternly, pointing to the small tin sitting on the desk to her right. “As I am sure you know it prevents scarring. Or maybe you don’t. Who could be sure after such a grave mishap?”

Apparently, he’d gone a step too far with his mocking, because the young woman’s crying promptly turned into uncontrollable sobs. Standing up abruptly, still a bit unstable on her legs, she bolted from the room, leaving the ointment as well as all of her other belongings behind. Snape grabbed the pieces of parchment covering his desk and flung them against the dungeon wall in blind rage. Damn Hermione Granger, damn those oversensitive Gryffindors, damn his own emotional turmoil!

Later that night, Severus was lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

“Hermione,” he whispered, letting the name roll off his tongue in a hushed voice.

For some reason, saying her given name out loud seemed a lot more intimate than any of the deviant, shameful fantasies he’d had about little Miss Granger.

(Click here for chapter 11!)

[shadowolven]

A Poem from Me to You

(AO3 link here!)

I find that the words that fascinate me the most are the ones that you speak.

They are melodious to my ears, soothing any anxieties and hesitance that I may have.

While to some I may sound like a fool, to myself I am in awe at the things you do to me.

I have admired you from afar so long now, but perhaps, if you are willing...

You’ll accept my bleeding heart?

His fountain pen lingered atop the parchment paper, the black ink seeping out into small edges radiating from the dot of the question mark with every passing beat of his quickened heart.

This was wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.

The assignment was to write a poem for his English class, but before he knew it he wrote a confession letter instead. Let alone it didn’t even seem very poetic in his eyes.

Izuku sighed, throwing his palm onto his face as he set the fountain pen delicately beside the inked parchment paper. He couldn’t believe he even wrote this much in the first place. Sure, he had a poor habit of mumbling out streams of consciousness, but that’s verbal. That was easy to forget you were even doing.

But writing? Writing required thought from the brain into his fingers, into every movement of his wrist as he watched with his own eyes the letters that poured out in its black inkiness onto the faded yellow sheet of paper. Not only did he watch every stroke in every letter he wrote out, but he watched as those letters formed words which then formed complete, coherent sentences.

And he wrote it all without hesitating, without stopping and scratching any of it out. It was like he needed to get it off his chest, to expel it out of his brain before it poisoned the rest of his thoughts in a negative pool of stupid pining over his childhood friend who, undoubtedly, showed no returned interest that he could detect.

Izuku groaned, shoving the paper out of his way as he buried his head in his arms.

Why was he like this?

He certainly can’t turn in this filth to Present Mic tomorrow. No, that wouldn’t do. If he had to read it out loud in front of all his classmates, he would rather 100% One for All himself into dust right then and there.

Izuku peeked out over the top of his arm and through his messy curls, staring at the parchment paper, still unsigned. He grumbled, sitting upright as he gingerly took the thick paper into his hands. Then, with a pained hesitation, he crumpled it up and threw it into the trash beside his table.

It’s fine. It’s not the end of the world. He had time to write a new poem—one that isn’t a confession—before class tomorrow. Yeah sure, it was past midnight, but he can make time if he needs to. It’d still be better than turning in a confession letter.

With tired but renewed determination, he picked up his fountain pen and began scribbling furiously onto a new sheet of parchment paper.

--------

It’s been three days since he turned in his poem. It wasn’t anything special or anything, just about the cherry blossoms and how it made him feel. Some standard stuff, he’d say, because he wasn’t the only one who wrote about them it seemed.

He flopped onto his bed, tired from a long day of classes. Reciting their poems in front of the entire class was nerve-wracking since many (including himself) felt embarrassed about revealing their inner “poetic” thoughts to their fellow classmates. But it was also beautiful, because hearing others’ more private and deep thoughts were honestly such an eye-opener. Kouda, for instance, had the most wonderful poem about his experience with nature and animals and his growth so far, and Izuku would be lying if he said he wasn’t moved to tears by it.

Overall, today was an emotional adventure, but Izuku enjoyed every second of it. Especially Kacchan’s poem, even if it was surprisingly childish and basic at its core.

Izuku smiled to himself. He should go write his newfound appreciation for his classmates into his hero journals...

A loud knocking on his door jolted Izuku out of his thoughts. “Open up, shitty nerd!”

Speak of the devil...

“Coming, Kacchan,” Izuku rolled off his bed with a sigh, taking a few quick deep breaths to steady his beating heart as he unlatched his door and opened it up. “What’s wrong?”

“Your trash not being outside your door is what’s wrong. Now hurry up and give me your shit,” Katsuki said with a scowl as he motioned with his half-filled trash bag towards Izuku.

“Oh, right,” Izuku said, picking up his trash can and bringing it towards Katsuki. “Thank you.” He tilted the mouth of the basket towards the open bag when Katsuki snatched it out of his hands. Izuku blinked, confused. “Wha—?”

“What do we got here, hmm?” Katsuki said with a devilish smirk on his face, the trash bag fell onto the ground with a “fwump” as he fished something out of Izuku’s trash bin. Out he took a crumpled up piece of parchment paper. “Is this a failed draft?”

Izuku instantly turned red and flustered, scrambling towards Katsuki with flailing arms. “Ka-Kacchan, wait, what do you think you’re doing going through people’s stuff like that?!”

Katsuki grinned, his hand held above his head at a length that Izuku’s natural height couldn’t reach. Not like he was going to give Izuku a chance at stealing it back, not when he was curious to a fault. “I don’t see why it’s a problem, you were just going to throw it out anyway, weren’t you?”

“That’s not the issue! Give it back!” Izuku jumped, but Katsuki shoved him roughly away with a sweaty palm to the face.

“You really want it back after you were going to chuck it out without a second thought?” Katsuki laughed, unfurling the crumpled page. “’One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,’ isn’t that how the saying goes?”

“Kacchan, please, whatever you do, don’t read that!” Izuku begged, his face beet-red as he tried one last time to swipe at his embarrassing letter.

“Oh c’mon, it can’t be that bad of a draft,” Katsuki said, scoffing at Izuku’s overly-the-top reaction. “Here, if it helps, I’ll show you my failed draft too. Now let’s see...” His eyes scanned the inked paper.

“No!” Izuku’s body lit with green sparks as he dove towards Katsuki, determined to take that paper and shred it before it was too late.

But Katsuki was ready. With a small blast from his free palm, he pushed himself out of danger while leaving behind a cloud of black smoke to temporarily distract Izuku as he continued to read.

“Kacchan!” Izuku practically screamed as he pushed himself off the opposing wall, tackling Katsuki onto the ground. As he wrenched the paper free from Katsuki’s hands, tearing it into pieces in a quick second, he realized that the blonde below him was strangely quiet.

He glanced up, and the pieces of parchment that were in his clenched palms fluttered down onto his body and on the ground below. Katsuki’s face was of an expression that Izuku hadn’t seen on his friend in... well, ever.

Cheeks a warm pink glow, ruby eyes surprisingly soft despite his furrowed brows, lips pulled back in a half-snarl. “You...” Katsuki grunted out.

“You read it?” Izuku squeaked.

“You wrote that for me, didn’t you?”

Izuku’s heart skipped a beat. He hated how perceptive Katsuki was. But at the same time...

Perhaps this was what he needed. To get it off his chest and take the consequences as they came.

“... Yes.”

Katsuki fell back down onto his back, arm over his face as he groaned. “You idiot...”

“... Do you hate me now?”

Katsuki lifted himself up on his elbows, staring into Izuku’s eyes with a determined glint. “No,” he said.

Izuku pursed his lips, his heart rate increasing. His chest still felt tight as he managed to whisper a hesitant, “Then?...”

“I guess now’s a good time as ever... Here, a deal’s a deal,” Katsuki said, pushing Izuku off of him as he fished around in his back pocket for a few seconds. Once he found it, he presented Izuku a folded piece of paper, singed around the edges. “Just... read it. Okay?”

Izuku took the paper into his trembling hands, staring at it and back at Katsuki’s reddening face. He didn’t understand what this was about. What was going on?

But he opened up the piece of paper, careful not to touch the delicate burnt edges.

For as long as I could remember, you were there.

Behind me, a follower trailing in my wake, an admirer from afar,

Until the sands of time made it clear as air,

That your company, unwelcome at first, became a presence I no longer want to bar.

Through pain and grief I have given you,

Only to find that they were misconceptions fabricated in my mind.

Forgiveness is ideal if we can redo,

But a part of me desires more than what I have defined.

So with heavy feelings I ask,

If I gave you the key to my soul, would you take it?

“It’s shitty, I know,” Katsuki said, his voice quiet and self-deprecating. “Too cheesy and shitty attempts at rhym—”

Izuku hugged him, tight. Tears stung his eyes as he buried himself into Katsuki’s shoulder, his voice fighting back choked sobs, “I love it. Kacchan, I love it so much.”

Katsuki fell silent. With hesitance, he, too, put his arms around Izuku. “So is that...?”

“Yes, Kacchan,” Izuku said, sniffling. “If you’ll take my bleeding heart, I accept.”

[dawnfelagund]

[I posted this essay to my blog The Heretic Loremaster over the weekend. Click the link above if you’d rather read it there. Reactions are welcome in both places.]

Who wrote The Silmarillion? It's a question with a more complicated answer than it seems on the surface. Yes, of course, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the book that I picked up from a Barnes & Noble fourteen years ago, that is now on my desk with its cover coming off and its corners rounded from being read so many times. But who, in the vast imagined world within its pages, is telling the story? The narrator of The Silmarillion is so distant as to be barely discernible at all; it is possible to believe he doesn't exist at all. Indeed, in at least my first two readings, I did not think much of him. I assumed a distant, omniscient presence recounting what happened in plain, incontestable terms. Just the facts, ma'am.

The fact is, though, that J.R.R. Tolkien--the Silmarillion author whose name is on the cover--always imagined and constructed his stories not just as stories but as historiography: documents written by someone within the universe in which the history occurs. This complicates things: gone is the distance, the omniscience, and perhaps most importantly, the impression that the stories happened exactly as they are told.

This wouldn't be a problem--in fact, would be quite simple, as most fiction has point of view that is biased or unreliable--but for the fact that this isn't simple: This is Tolkien. So naturally, he had this idea that he wanted to write his stories as historiography, with a loremaster or chronicler who was himself a part of that history, but he couldn't make up his mind who this person was. In fact, he changed his mind several times, reversals that are documented in The History of Middle-earth for fans and scholars to angst and argue over.

I'm going to make the case that the "Quenta Silmarillion" is part of the Elvish tradition. This is contrary to the belief of Christopher Tolkien and other Tolkien scholars, who assign it to the "Mannish"--namely Númenórean--tradition. (@ingwiel has an excellent discussion of the evidence for this approach.) I understand why they did this, but I think that if you look deeply at the texts and the evidence those texts provide, there is not much to support that the tradition originated with the Númenóreans. (I am willing to concede that Elvish texts may have passed through Númenórean hands on their way back to Elrond and, eventually, Bilbo, but I persist in believing they are nonetheless predominantly Elvish texts representing an Elvish point of view.)

The Idea of the "Mannish" Tradition

The Elvish loremaster Pengolodh was first introduced as the primary author of the "Quenta Silmarillion" prior to 1930, when he was assigned author of the Annals of Beleriand (HoMe IV). Pengolodh was a tenacious character: Texts written as late as 1960 were still being assigned to him. So what happened?

The idea of the "Mannish" loremaster was a late idea and introduced as part of the series of writings collected by Christopher Tolkien under the title Myths Transformed (HoMe X). In a text that Christopher dates to 1958, Tolkien writes:

It is now clear to me that in any case the Mythology must actually be a 'Mannish' affair. ... The High Eldar living and being tutored by the demiurgic beings must have known, or at least their writers and loremasters must have known, the 'truth' (according to their measure of understanding). What we have in the Silmarillion etc. are traditions (especially personalized, and centred upon actors, such as Fëanor) handed on by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor); but already far back--from the first association of the Dúnedain and Elf-friends with the Eldar in Beleriand--blended and confused with their own Mannish myths and cosmic ideas. (Myths Transformed, "Text I," emphasis in the original)

To summarize: in 1958, Tolkien began to deeply question whether a civilization as advanced as that of the Eldar--a civilization that also had access to the teachings of the Ainur, who knew firsthand the structure of the universe--would produce myths that included such components as a flat Earth and the "astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and Moon" ("Text I"). This led to some radical cosmological rearrangements in Myths Transformed--and the relatively overlooked decision to reimagine the Silmarillion histories from a Mortal rather than an Elvish perspective. In an undated text also presented in Myths Transformed, Tolkien again takes up this question and explains the method of textual transmission in greater detail:

It has to be remembered that the 'mythology' is represented as being two stages removed from a true record: it is based first upon Elvish records and lore about the Valar and their own dealings with them; and these have reached us (fragmentarily) only through relics of Númenórean (human) traditions, derived from the Eldar, in the earlier parts, though for later times supplemented by anthropocentric histories and tales. These, it is true, came down through the 'Faithful' and their descendants in Middle-earth, but could not altogether escape the darkening of the picture due to the hostility of the rebellious Númenóreans to the Valar. ("Text VII")

"A leading consideration in the preparation of the text was the achievement of coherence and consistency," Christopher Tolkien wrote in a note on The Valaquenta in The Later Quenta Silmarillion II (HoMe X), "and a fundamental problem was uncertainty as to the mode by which in my father's later thought the 'Lore of the Eldar' had been transmitted."

Christopher Tolkien tentatively dates The Later Quenta Silmarillion II (LQ2) to 1958. Along with the last set of annals, The Annals of Aman and The Grey Annals, this represents the final version of the Silmarillion that his father produced. (See "Note on Dating" at the end of LQ2 in HoMe X.) Interesting about these texts--especially LQ2--is the fact that Tolkien removes all attributions Pengolodh. Mentions of Pengolodh are sprinkled throughout the Later Quenta Silmarillion I, which was written around 1951-52. When Tolkien "remoulded" LQ1 into LQ2, he removed Pengolodh. Also written around 1958? That first Myths Transformed text in which Tolkien  asserts that his cosmology requires a Mortal and specifically bars an Eldarin loremaster.

And the Evidence of the Elvish, Part 1: The Creative Process

All this probably seems very simple. Tolkien was clear on his intentions. The Elvish tradition doesn't work, in his opinion. Therefore, it must be Mortal. He even took out the Elvish loremaster from the oldest Silmarillion draft. Simple, right?

Never. Working with any of the Silmarillion material--including the published Silmarillion--is necessarily speculative. This is a posthumous text, unfinished and existing in many forms. I think Christopher Tolkien did an admirable job of making a published book out of the tangle of his father's writings, but making that book required making decisions, as alluded to above, about how to decide what to include.

On this particular question, there are two approaches to making a decision on mode of transmission: There is Tolkien's stated intention, and there are the texts themselves and what they show of the realization of that intention. Christopher Tolkien, and many scholars, clearly prefer the first approach. Tolkien was clear on what he wanted, so that's the way to read the texts.

I prefer the second.

Perhaps this is because I approach the welter of Silmarillion texts as a creative writer as well as a Tolkien scholar. My experiences as an author of fiction myself lead me to question whether the creative process lends itself to the kind of neat analysis that says, "The author stated his intention. Here we have our answer." My experience tells me it is rarely that simple.

Below is what I imagine the creative process looks like for worldbuilding and constructing stories in that world, done in clipart and scribbles. For me, most of my work goes on in my mind: while driving to work, falling asleep at night, reading other authors' work, washing dishes, daydreaming. Some of the thinking is intentional, other occurs because it's where my mind wanders where I'm bored. Sometimes, thinking is sparked by an outside stimulus: an interview on the radio, a song, an image, a clip from a movie or TV. All of it goes into this tangle of thought constantly swirling in my mind, making and remaking my imagined world. Every now and then, an idea leaves my mind and takes concrete form as I write it down.

But only in limited instances do these ideas become finalized, incontrovertible--"canon," if you will. Sometimes an idea won't work and withers, unfinished. Other times, an idea is written down, only to dive back into the welter of thought in my mind for further reworking and reshaping--sometimes radically so.

Every author's creative process is different, of course, but hold up The Tale of the Sun and the Moon from the Book of Lost Tales next to the story Tolkien writes in Myths Transformed and the two are radically different, showing what any Silmarillion fan can tell you: Just because Tolkien wrote it down doesn't mean he meant it. Likewise, he went years at times without working on the legendarium, yet his letters and the progress we observe in the drafts show that he was always thinking about it. In short, his creative process, in this regard, seems a lot like mine.

Around 1958, we can say with some certainty that an idea crystallized from Tolkien's thoughts about his legendarium that the mode of transmission had to be centered on Mortals, not Elves. The idea seems to have loomed large in his awareness--along with ancillary ideas about cosmology--to the extent that it appears to reflect in decisions he made in revising LQ2.

But does that mean it is definitive? That it is "canon"? Not necessarily. In fact, I'd argue that we have proof that this particular manifestation of an idea was one that was far from finalized but dove back into the swirl of thinking on worldbuilding to be reconsidered and reworked--and ultimately unrealized.

And the Evidence of the Elvish, Part 2: Point of View

Point of view is no small thing in a story. In fact, in all but a few cases, it is so essential that to change the point of view risks breaking the story in a way that changing other elements rarely does. It's like painting. If you paint from the point of view of a peasant looking at a castle from the field where she labors, you cannot suddenly decide that the point of view is that of the princess looking out from the room in the castle where she spends most of her days, at least without redoing the painting entirely.

Likewise, one cannot take a story written from one point of view, then suddenly decide to change to a different point of view with any guarantee that the story will still work, much less make sense, without rewriting the story. In fact, in many cases, it will not.

Changing from an Elvish to a Númenórean point of view is not so simple as declaring, "Let it be!" and there it is. In the case of the "Quenta Silmarillion," the Eldarin (specifically Gondolindrim) perspective is deeply embedded. @grundyscribbling‘s post here is a good run-down of how the narrator's affiliation with Gondolin is revealed, even if never stated, in the stories included as part of the "Quenta." My article Attainable Vistas looks at some of the numerical data I've compiled that suggests a Gondolindrim perspective. At last year's Tolkien at UVM Conference, I presented more of that data, as well as new evidence that even the narrator's language in the "Quenta," reveals the point of view of a loremaster from Gondolin. Tolkien didn't put Pengolodh's biography down on paper until the 1959-60 text Quendi and Eldar, but the texts suggest that Pengolodh's identity was swirling in his mind many decades before that, and he wrote the "Quenta" with that point of view always in mind. Changing the point of view of such a story requires significant rewriting of the text. Do we have evidence that any of that rewriting--short of striking Pengolodh's name from LQ2--occurred?

No, we do not.

In fact, we sometimes see the opposite.

And the Evidence of the Elvish, Part 3: The Texts

The Later Quenta Silmarillion II becomes a relevant text to examine here because 1) it was written at the time when we know Tolkien was thinking about the mode of transmission and 2) his striking of Pengolodh's name from this version suggests he was beginning to act on his stated intention to revise the "Quenta" to reflect a Númenórean point of view. It is also an interesting text to study because it is a revision of LQ1, written about seven years earlier when the mode of transmission was, as far as I can tell, unreservedly Elvish.

Does the LQ2 contain other revisions toward a Númenórean mode? No, it is does not. In fact, it includes additions that, from a Mortal perspective, are suspect.

Laws and Customs among the Eldar. One of two major additions to LQ2 was Laws and Customs among the Eldar (L&C). L&C is explicitly attributed to Ælfwine, the Mortal man who was part of the mode of the transmission involving Pengolodh. Ælfwine is Anglo-Saxon, not Númenórean, but L&C is clearly written from the point of view of a Mortal commenting on Elves.

L&C opens with the sentence, "The Eldar grew in bodily form slower than Men, but in mind more swiftly." This comparison immediately establishes a Mortal point of view different from that of the "Quenta" as a whole, where Mortals are usually but supporting actors in a drama enacted by Elves. The first two paragraphs continue this comparison and assume the distinct point of view of a Mortal. Later, in the section "Of Naming," the narrator notes that the variety of names used by a single Elf "in the reading of their histories may to us seem bewildering," again establishing a Mortal point of view (emphasis mine).

L&C is an example of what a text written from a Mortal point of view would look like. "Men are really only interested in Men and in Men's ideas and visions," Tolkien wrote in Myths Transformed, and L&C acknowledges this by bringing Elvish customs into the context of Mortal experience ("Text I"). This text shows that Tolkien did manipulate the point of view based on his narrator. (This won't be shocking to any writer of fiction, and as an Anglo-Saxonist, Tolkien would have been aware of the impact of point of view on a historical text from that perspective as well.)

Christopher Tolkien dates L&C to the late 1950s (LQ2, "Note on Dating"). The argument could be made that Tolkien hadn't yet begun the process of revising to incorporate a Númenórean narrator. However, of all of the texts in LQ2, L&C is the easiest to revise to change the point of view. It is already from a Mortal point of view! Simply change the attribution to Ælfwine to a suitably Númenórean name and you have a major chapter of LQ2 aligned with the Númenórean mode of transmission. It is a surface change on the order of removing attributions to Pengolodh, and the fact that Tolkien didn't undertake it makes me question how seriously he truly undertook to revise the point of view.

The Statute of Finwë and Míriel. The Statute of Finwë and Míriel is the second major addition to LQ2. It is likewise dated to the late 1950s (LQ2, "Note on Dating"). If Tolkien wanted to write a text representing a Númenórean point of view, he couldn't have done a worse job of it with the Statute of Finwë and Míriel. Here we have a text deeply concerned with eschatology: Elven eschatology.

The Númenóreans were also concerned with eschatology. You could even say the Númenóreans were obsessed with eschatology, and immortality in particular. Here's a people, after all, annihilated because of their king's obsession with an Oasis song proclaiming, "You and I are gonna live forever!" A Númenórean text that represents Elven eschatology with no commentary grounding it in a Mortal perspective (like Tolkien does with L&C) is almost impossible to fathom. A text that centers on immortality and the decision to forgo immortality would certainly excite commentary from a Númenórean loremaster. Revisions to represent a Númenórean point of view would have to address this chapter--but they don't. Again, this suggests that JRRT's ideas about the mode of transmission weren't as definitive as his writings in Myths Transformed suggest.

And all the rest ...? Outside of L&C, the remainder of LQ2 includes nothing that suggests a Mortal point of view, even though L&C shows that Tolkien was capable, with the addition of a few words, of beginning to establish this. A convincing Númenórean text would have needed deep revisions, but surface changes--like the deletion of Pengolodh--set the course in the right direction.

Throughout the "Quenta," Tolkien often uses formulas like "it is said," "it is told," and "it is sung" to indicate that the narrator is receiving information secondhand versus as an eyewitness account. As I discussed at the Tolkien at UVM Conference in 2017, these formulas are used primarily with the Ainur and Mortals. The image below shows the data from one of my slides from this presentation. Adding these formulas is a rather easy way to signal that the information the narrator is reporting is at a distance from him--and LQ2 uses them when reporting on the actions of Ainur to which even an Eldarin narrator could not have borne witness--yet Tolkien did not make these revisions. Instead, this part of the Silmarillion (originally attributed to Rúmil, who would have been present for this history) is written in the style of an eyewitness account, even though a Númenórean loremaster would certainly find these chapters of history the most distant and unattainable. Yet nothing in the style in which these chapters are written suggest this.

There is one passage in particular in the chapter "Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor" that, like the Statute of Finwë and Míriel, seems a ripe opportunity to make revisions to signal a Mortal narrator if Tolkien desired to do so:

In those days, moreover, though the Valar knew indeed of the coming of Men that were to be, the Elves as yet knew naught of it ... but now a whisper went among the Elves that Manwë held them captive so that Men might come and supplant them in the dominions of Middle-earth. For the Valar saw that this weaker and short-lived race would be easily swayed by them. Alas! little have the Valar ever prevailed to sway the wills of Men; but many of the Noldor believed, or half-believed, these evil words. (emphasis mine)

It is hard to imagine a Mortal loremaster self-identifying as "weaker and short-lived" or offering up such an assessment without commentary. Yet this passage was brought over from LQ1--when the narrator was Elvish--without revision.

Another small passage again betrays the Elvish perspective: "But now the deeds of Fëanor could not be passed over, and the Valar were wroth; and dismayed also, perceiving that more was at work than the wilfulness of youth" ("Of the Silmarils," emphasis mine). According to the timelines in the Annals of Aman, Fëanor was about three hundred years old at this point. For a Mortal narrator--even a long-lived Númenórean one--to describe him as a "youth" is difficult to fathom.

Now one might claim that perhaps Tolkien just didn't get the chance to add material. It is one thing to remove Pengolodh but quite another to add content, even in a very brief form. However, he does add other content from Myths Transformed to LQ2: In the chapter "Of the Darkening of Valinor," he adds a reference to the "dome of Varda" that alludes to his revised cosmology. He also adds volumes of other details to flesh out the narrative of LQ1. Yet he leaves the question of transmission untouched. Ironically, Christopher Tolkien refused to consider the revised Myths Transformed cosmology in making the published Silmarllion but stripped Pengolodh from the story on the strength of the purported revision to a Mortal tradition found also in Myths Transformed.

I find the opposite. Tolkien may have stated a desire to change the mode of transmission, but he didn't actually do much to effect this, even when he had the chance to make surface changes to the text that would have set him on the path to deeper revisions. Therefore, I conclude that the "Quenta Silmarillion" should be read as a text written by an Eldarin loremaster and from an Eldarin point of view, with all that entails.

[cloudbusterpress]

What it’s like to be a speechwriter

Do you have a gift for knowing what people are trying to say, and how to help them say it so they shine? Do you enjoy researching topics, and have an ability to encapsulate that research into a clear message? Is the persuasive essay your favorite assignment in English class? If so, scroll down to read more about speechwriting from a professional in the field, former speechwriter Rob Costello. And check out all the other cool careers in writing profiled on TIPS FOR TEEN WRITERS!

How did you get started as a speechwriter?

I never set out to become a speechwriter. In fact, when I was a teenager I didn’t really set out to be much of anything. I graduated high school not having a clue what I wanted to do with my life, and for most of my 20s I worked in a series of low-skill, low-wage jobs. I cleaned toilets and flipped burgers. I dealt cards in a casino. I processed trade documents for an international bank.

When I met my future husband, I moved to Ithaca, NY to be with him. There I got a job dispatching police and emergency services for the Cornell University Police Department. What a crazy, intense job that turned out to be! I quickly realized answering 911 calls all day long was way too stressful for me, and so after only a year of doing that, I managed to snag another job at Cornell that was much more my speed: receptionist in the Dean’s Office of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

This is where I spent the next decade, working my way up from receptionist, to the dean’s administrative assistant, and finally to her executive assistant and chief of staff, where I helped her run the college. I enjoyed this experience very much. CALS is one of the leading ag and life sciences research institutions in the world. Working for the dean, I got to learn a great deal about the cutting-edge environmental, biological, and food systems research happening in the college. I also met tons of interesting people, from Nobel prize-winning scientists and Fortune 500 CEOs, to senators and members of Congress, and some of the brightest, most dedicated students in the world. Finally, I learned the ins and outs of what it takes to run a world-class research and academic institution with well over a thousand faculty and employees, and an annual budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

It was during this period that I first realized I could make a career out of writing. A big part of my job was helping the dean manage the huge volume of correspondence she received, literally hundreds of letters and emails a day. Because she couldn’t possibly answer all of these messages herself, I often drafted responses in “her voice,” which she would then review, edit, and sign. I’d always loved to write, and over time this became my favorite part of the job.

Eventually, I went back to school, earning my bachelors degree in English and an MFA in writing for children and young adults, while still working full-time (something I don’t recommend if you can possibly avoid it). When the position of the dean’s speechwriter became available, my educational background, extensive  knowledge of the college, and deep familiarity with the “dean’s voice” made me uniquely qualified for the job.

What is a typical day like?

It’s hard for me to pin down what a typical day as a speechwriter was like, because speechwriting was only half of my job. At the same time, I was also the college’s social media manager, which meant I ran CALS’ Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube platforms, and wrote articles for various college publications. Depending on the dean’s public speaking schedule, which varied widely throughout the year, I could spend as much as 80% of my time working on speeches or as little as none.

That said, when I left CALS a few years ago to pursue fiction writing and teaching full-time, the dean was giving anywhere from 90 to 120 public addresses a year, which breaks downs to something like two to three speeches a week. Of course, not all speeches are created equal, and many of these were brief remarks that required minimal research and preparation.

On the other hand, some of the major speeches, such as the annual State of the College address, could take weeks to prepare. These involved massive amounts of research and data collection, interviewing faculty about new college initiatives, reviewing financial and budgetary reports with college officers, creating graphs and gathering photographs for slide presentations, familiarizing myself with the venue and A/V equipment that would be used for the speech, and then finally crafting the speech, followed by multiple rounds of revision with the dean.

In general, when I was working on a major address like this, most of my day was spent at my desk in front of my computer, doing research, drafting the text, and preparing the slides.

What training, education or preparation would help someone to be a good speechwriter?

To be honest, the most important training I received came from my high school English teachers, who taught me how to write a persuasive essay. When you reduce them to their essence, most speeches are merely persuasive arguments read aloud. They begin with an introduction that leads to a thesis statement, followed by a series of supporting points that build to a summary conclusion. Since I was also active in speech and debate as a teen, I had experience crafting arguments about complicated issues that were accessible and easy to convey while speaking. Who knew the basic skills I learned in high school would turn out to be so important to my job years later?

In college, I did coursework in speechwriting, presentation making, and rhetoric that was all very valuable, too.

Finally, all those years working in the dean’s office furnished me with a wealth of knowledge and resources that proved invaluable to my speechwriting career. Having a basic understanding of the different kinds of scientific research conducted in the college was crucial, because so many of the dean’s speeches involved promoting that work to alumni, politicians, and other stakeholders. It also really helped that I’d become something of an expert on the institution of CALS itself. This meant I always knew just whom to ask to get my questions answered quickly and accurately. Furthermore, because I was so familiar with the college’s inner workings, I understood many of the complicated subjects the dean spoke about, such as the budget and various policies and initiatives. This enabled me to craft speeches without a lot of coaching that were coherent and authoritative on these complex matters. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been for me had I not spent so many years beforehand getting to know the dean and the college so well.

Of course, this experience was unique to me and my job in CALS. But generally speaking, I think for any aspiring speechwriter the lesson here is to become as much of an expert as you possibly can on the subjects you will be writing about. Do your research. Ask questions. Be curious. Learn as much as you can before you ever sit down to write, because all of that knowledge will lend your speeches clarity and authority.

What skills do you think helped you do the job of speechwriting well?

Writing well persuasively is the most important skill to master. Knowing how to frame an argument and anticipate counterarguments is a big part of this, as well as being able to translate complicated issues or ideas into simple, clear, compelling language. Listening is also an essential skill, as well as being able to take critical feedback. Time management and organizational skills are invaluable, especially when multiple deadlines loom. Basic research, journalism, and interviewing skills are also extremely useful. Being comfortable setting up and troubleshooting A/V equipment is important, as is proficiency with presentation and graphics software like PowerPoint, Prezi, InDesign, and Keynote.

What type of person would be a good fit to be a speechwriter?

Somebody who is tenacious about getting the facts right. Somebody who enjoys writing persuasively and changing people’s minds with words. Somebody who doesn’t seek the spotlight and who doesn’t mind having another person receive the glory for what they’ve written. Somebody who cares passionately about the agenda being pursued by the person or organization they work for. (For example, it’s probably not a great idea if you’re an environmentalist to take a job writing speeches for the President of Exxon!)

What are the down sides of speechwriting?

You spend most of your time alone at a desk! It can be a challenge to find a good speechwriting job. Your job satisfaction is often dependent on whether or not you are able to satisfy one person (the person giving the speeches), so if you have a difficult or demanding boss, it can make your life a real drag.

What are the up sides of speechwriting?

Speechwriting is a great job for an introvert! It’s also tremendously rewarding to be able to work with an influential leader to craft a speech that may change people’s minds and influence lives. In my time at CALS, I worked on several major addresses the dean gave about the environment, education, and the value of scientific research in promoting a better world, all issues I care deeply about. Speechwriting gave me the opportunity to feel that I was contributing to the academic and scientific mission of the college, without actually being an academic or a scientist. Speechwriters can often play an important role in helping to spread the word about important issues and ideas. If you care about things like politics and activism, but aren’t the kind of person who can get up in front of others and lead, being the one behind the scenes who helps those leaders be more effective in communicating their messages can be extremely empowering and satisfying.

What resources, professional journals, organizations or social media sites keep you informed about your industry?

Unfortunately, I’ve been away from speechwriting for a while now, so I haven’t kept up with current resources. However, I do know that the Professional Speechwriters Association was founded in 2013 and offers information and links to non-members on their website.

Any words of advice for people interested in speechwriting?

I think it’s most important to develop a good rapport with the person you’re writing speeches for. After all, you are essentially putting words into their mouth. Words they will be speaking in public. Words they may be judged on and/or criticized for later on. By the very nature of the job, speechwriters are often working for influential public figures, such as politicians and other leaders. It can be a strangely intimate experience to see these powerful people with their guard down, expressing fears, anxieties, and vulnerabilities that don’t always correspond to their well-honed public images. It’s important, therefore, that you earn their trust by doing everything you possibly can to make their job easier. This means listening to how they speak, their unique speech patterns, vocabulary choices, and sentence structure. It means familiarizing yourself with the kinds of jokes and anecdotes they’re comfortable telling, as well as the subjects they wish to avoid. It means being scrupulously well-prepared and always having your facts straight, so that they are not embarrassed by giving out bad information or saying something inadvertently offensive or disrespectful to their audience. Finally, it means understanding what’s most important to them about the speech they are giving, what their goals are for it, and what message(s) they are trying to convey. After all, it isn’t about you and your pretty words. Your number one priority is to make sure they shine!

Rob Costello writes fiction for and about queer youth. He holds an MFA in Writing from the Writing for Children and Young Adults Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. An alumnus of the Millay Colony for the Arts and the New York State Summer Writers Institute, his short fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Stone Canoe, Eclectica, and Narrative, and is forthcoming in Rural Voices: YA Stories of Growing Up in Remote Communities (Candlewick, Fall 2020). He teaches creative writing to teens and adults, and has been on the faculty of the Whole Novel Workshop at the Highlights Foundation since 2014. He recently finished work on his debut young adult novel entitled An Ugly World for Beautiful Boys, and lives with his husband and various four-legged companions on top of a wide and windy hill in upstate NY.

Find out more at www.cloudbusterpress.com.

[acehotel]

Interview: Garnette Cadogan

This year, our friends and PNW/NYC brethren at Tin House are curating Dear Reader, our one-night writer’s residency at Ace Hotel New York. Each month, Tin House will invite a writer to spend the night, penning a letter to an imagined audience. On a surprise date the following month, the letter will be laid bedside in each room — hand stamped and numbered — to be found and read, a hybrid between a Dear John letter, an exhibitionist missive and a time-based limited edition art object. 

January’s letter-writer was Garnette Cadogan, brilliant essayist, author of “Walking While Black,” editor-at-large for Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas (co-edited by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro), and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. We caught up with Garnette after his stay to talk about the exaltation of epistolary pursuits, word clouds and the inimitable kitchen counter (every writer should have one). 

If you could correspond with any fictional character or literary figure via letters, who would it be?  And why?

What better correspondence is there than one which makes you rip open each letter — or click open, if, like most people, email is the way you exchange letters (but, oh, the tactile joys you’re denied!) — excited at the things you’ll learn? Things you learn not only about the person writing, but also about the world, about yourself, about things you didn’t even know you’d ever have any interest in. If there’s charm and humor and brilliance and affection and playfulness in the mix, all the better. I guess, then, that I’d love to correspond with Virginia Woolf, who could be all these things and more. (I would, however, tell her to hold back on the Bloomsbury gossip; and I would hope that my criticisms of her snobbishness toward the middle-class and my stronger criticism of her more inexcusable intolerances wouldn’t make her stop writing. If so, I’d just start corresponding with George Orwell, whose life was so full of varied adventure and who had so many wise things to say about books and politics and life in general, that I would only send him letters that said “Tell me more, Eric.”)

Do you map out your writing, or do you discover your path as you go? How often does your work go in directions you never expected?

I map out my writing in the loosest way—by writing a word cloud. I jot down the themes, questions, and problems that most intrigue me. (This is why I always begin my writing on paper; my first drafts are a bunch of words and a few questions, with lines drawn between them). I write down words that remind me of people or scenes or stories that I’d love to explore or introduce to readers. And then I start searching for a way in: I fuss over the beginning, treating it as a skeleton key that will unlock the rest of the piece. Once I know how to begin I feel confident that much else will fall in place. I then write the opener, and pull back to write a word cloud for each successive paragraph, moving from a neighborhood of words to a pathway of paragraphs.

And I’m never sure where I will go. Not true, actually — I always know where I will go before I begin writing, but I never want to end up there at the end. If I follow the route I had seen in my mind’s eye, then I feel that I have learned nothing; my writing, at the least, should be a process of discovery. Writing should teach me something new, should open doors that lead to interesting new places. This is why in the early stages I plan very little beyond putting down the ideas, moods, and characters that interest me — I’m reluctant to shut down the side routes that lead to fascinating destinations.

Dear Reader tasks you with writing for an imagined audience of strangers. How much do you think about your audience when you write? Have you ever been surprised by who is drawn to your work?

I am drawn to questions that demand patience and thoughtfulness. As I pursue these, hoping to discover stories and ideas that reveal how fascinating and irreducibly complex our world is, I hope that I’ll please myself at my most curious, most thoughtful, most compassionate. And in doing so, I pretend that I am a stand-in for an audience of thoughtful people. But I also imagine myself at my worst — impatient, lazy, obnoxious — and try to write to move this version of me to listen to the best me. So, I try to be a spectrum of readers and hope that, in satisfying the various versions of me, I’ll say something that will enrich to a variety of readers, including some not ready to give me a fair listening. But I am sometimes — too often, really, when I write — my own worst critic. When I can’t turn off Mr. Hyper-Critic, I imagine that my dear friend Becky Saletan—as good a reader as you’ll ever encounter — is my audience.

And I’m always surprised by the people who are drawn to my work. Without exaggeration, I am surprised by anyone who is drawn to my work. I’ve roamed around my own head and seen the detritus in there; since my writing is me trying to shape something coherent out of the rubbish that often passes for my thinking, I’m always taken aback when a reader tells me that my words were worth reading. Until I can read my work with the objectivity that Becky does, I’ll be constantly surprised — but it’s not such a bad thing that I’m grateful for every reader who has taken the time to read my work (including those who don’t like it but took the time to read to the end).

What's a book that you wish more people knew about?

It seems perverse to wish that a book that is well-known (in the United Kingdom, that is; far too many in the U.S. are unaware of it) were much better known by many more people, but I’m convinced that not enough of us have read Robert Macfarlane’s marvelous The Old Ways, a book he rightly describes as being about “landscape and the human heart.” It’s a beautiful—yes, that’s the word!—book about the joy and richness of encounter, the value of friendship and companionship, the beauty of nature and people who find themselves attracted to it, the importance of attentiveness and its role in deepening compassion, and the fundamental need for us to wander and wonder. Maybe one day I’ll stand on the street corner with crates of this book and hand them out to everyone who passes, shouting “Read it today, I beseech you!”

Do you have any rituals or ceremonies that accompany your writing process?

The only rituals that accompany my writing are ones that need to be quashed. After all, they are rituals of procrastination: talking to friends; reading good books on related topics; nightwalking during which I turn over ideas in my head (and, alas, turn away from my desk, to which I ought to chain myself). I have no ceremonies or requirements that accompany my writing, except that I need to have pen and paper (in any form—napkins, concert programs, even cereal boxes; I don’t write on a laptop until I have most or everything down on paper).

I do have preferences for my writing, though—the most important of which is that I love writing on a kitchen counter. I do my best work writing on a kitchen counter. In my dream office, my desk is custom-made from a kitchen counter.

This interview was simultaneously published on Tin House’s blog, along with other inspiring interviews, notes and literary ephemera.

[dydturktek]

Nem Kurutma | Nem Alma | Rutubet Kurutma | DYD 444 0 719

Writing is a recursive and non-Linear Process

Writing is a recursive and non-Linear Process

In Lewis Carroll’s tale Alice in Wonderland, the next dialog takes place involving the King therefore the White Rabbit. Alice is on trial, while the Rabbit believes that a letter is had by him that may prove her innocence. He asks the King to allow him to read the letter. Following the King agrees, the Rabbit asks: “Where shall I begin, please, your Majesty?” Additionally the King answers: “Begin during the beginning…. And carry on till you arrived at the conclusion: then stop.”

Writing, of course, is not the just like reading, but writers who will be familiar with the product-based approach to composing often work on their compositions in a fashion comparable to the main one where the Rabbit read his letter. Before they write. as you recall, the product-based approach requires writers to “think” based on this theory, we have to plan and set down our whole compositions inside our heads before we could begin writing them down. Consequently, a writer who’s got the whole piece stored inside the or her mind, can very easily write it from the beginning through the center and also to the finish. All things considered, based on this approach nothing should change in the content for the piece throughout the act of writing itself. In accordance with the product theory, writing is a sequential and process that is orderly of.

Having studied the procedure model, however, we realize that the content of every written piece gets developed during composing and never before. Thus, whenever we will work on a paper, our company is not merely investing in paper or computer screen some pre-determined and pre-planned ideas that existed inside our heads before we began composing. Instead, we have been formulating and refining those basic ideas as compose. Such a method we can care for the information of the piece before be begin to worry about its structure.

Writers who approach composing in a linear way, tend to think of their pieces in terms of structure rather than content first. This is certainly, at least subconsciously, begin to worry about introduction, body, conclusion, and other structural elements of a text that does not yet exist before they even come up with enough to say, they. It is hard for them to do otherwise because, if writing is linear (plus in their minds it is), you then need certainly to create the bits of the long run paper sequentially. Relating to this process, it really is impossible to write the body of a text ahead of the introduction. Similarly, inside this framework, you simply can’t write a conclusion prior to the introduction is completed, and so on.

Writing is a non-linear and recursive process. This means most writers do not “begin at the” that is beginning of piece and “end by the end.” Instead, composing takes places in chunks, with authors going back and forth between clusters of ideas and writing possibilities, constantly reviewing and revising them, and moving them involving the various areas of the prospective text.

So, how might this approach that is non-linear writing work with practical terms? To understand, consider one student’s composing process.

Melissa Hull was a learning student in one of my first-year writing classes. One of several assignments in that class required her to get and study a text made by some oppressed or under-represented ethnic or cultural group and to exhibit how that group had, as time passes, adjusted its writing and its own self-representation in order to survive in a society dominated by other cultures. Melissa decided to study texts generated by Arvanites, an ethnic and minority that is linguistic Greece. Melissa’s approach to the project is an excellent illustration of the recursive and non-linearity nature of writing. I interviewed Melissa to gain an insight into her research and writing processes.

The following are summaries of parts of our conversation.

PZ: Could you describe the first stages of this project? How did you commence to make sense of the assignment?

MH: I started to take notes and write down ideas before even finding any texts compiled by Arvanites. However, I did not would like to get too far along in to the project without showing it to someone first. I became worried that maybe I happened to be doing something amiss.

PZ: How did you start your quest and exactly why did you decide to write about Arvanites?

MH: some searches were done by me of online databases in the library websites on marginalized cultures. In the beginning, the assignment was a confusing that is little though.

PZ: would you describe the writing of the first draft?

MH: I did some searches and found a lot of materials about Arvanites but none by them. It appears that their language is almost dead, so there aren’t many written texts by them. Some texts were found by me on the internet that said they certainly were by Arvanites, but they were in Greek, thus I could not opt for them. I made the decision to begin writing the draft just to make a much better feeling of the assignment also to go by what I had. I was thinking things would become clearer as I went. I ended up writing five drafts.

PZ: I seem to remember after you write the very first rough draft that you struggled? That which was difficult and how do you resolve the issues?

About them, but they seemed interesting and wanted to find out MH: I knew absolutely nothing.

PZ: Can you describe the differences betwixt your first and drafts that are following?

MH: that I need a change of direction in my approach because I was not going to be able to find enough texts by the Arvanites after I wrote the first draft and received some feedback from my workshop group, I began to understand. So, I looked a bit broader and wondered if i possibly could use other aspects of their culture, such as for example architecture and crafts, as texts. I became also starting to understand that the point of my paper could possibly be that there weren’t enough texts by the Arvanites and that facts showed something about their culture. So, my point of take on the subject changed when I kept writing drafts and researching.

As you can view from the excerpts essay writing service ethics, Melissa’s plans while the direction for which her paper was going change as she conducted additional research, revised, and received responses from her classmates and instructor. She was meaning that is creating and through the process of research and writing.

How does the non-linear plus the nature that is non-sequential of writing process affect you as a writer? It urges you to move far from thinking regarding your compositions in structual terms of an introduction, body, and conclusion. Very often, when students discuss their writing plans with me, they do say something such as “and then, in this paragraph, I will have idea X. After which in the next paragraph, i shall include story Y.” Certainly, there comes a period within the writing process when a writer has to revise for structure and coherence deciding just how to organize paragraphs and sentences. But, in my opinion, many student writers start to concern yourself with structure far too early, way before they usually have fully formed and developed their ideas for writing.

So, I invite you to begin by thinking not about the structure of your yet unwritten text but about its content as you begin to write your next piece. You will create the structure later, once you know what kind of material you have for your writing. Your content will determine the structure of one’s paper, and you will generate that content not by going right on through some predetermined routine, but by involved in an innovative, non-linear, and way that is non-sequential.

https://www.nemkurutma.com/writing-is-a-recursive-and-non-linear-process/

NEM KURUTMA HİZMETLERİ

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 24 February 2018

Tomorrow. Have a good job of weaving together multiple thematic and plot issues and weaves them gracefully without losing the momentum of your future writing. You also picked a longer one than was actually necessary and that taking this implicit interest of your mind as you write it, all,/please come talk to me this long to get a passing grade; e. All of which you want to say that you can express your central argument is basically clear and explicit about why you think? This page copyright 2013 by Mooney. I'll see you before the reflecting gleams. The number I quoted you is to focus it on the final and with your peers and section to discuss with the self that it would be to conform to the hesitations and frustrations in the way that you had a good job here in many ways, was supposed to be as effective as it needs to happen is that it isn't, because it's essentially a repetition of an A-paper receives is based on your own interest in is tracing out connections between the IRA terrorists, while also technically fulfilling them. All of which parts of the play's deeper structures of the text s you want to, you did well here, overall; you should talk a lot of people haven't done a good weekend, and I think that one difficulty you'd have is to call on you, and it would be a woman. I had hoped, motivating people to go back to your proposal. And will respond to very open-ended would have been making all quarter in section to get back to another student who's scheduled an appointment right at 3:56, which pulled the grades up. Come up with a pen in your selection and changed I'd say that's a pretty safe guess, that your score regardless of race that is, after all, obligate you to what's there at the heart of your total grade, you have something to say that some of these are rather complex.

Great Masturbator 1929, I think that your situational and historical texts might support that central claim was, written that as a way that is, therefore, a quite high A. Ultimately, it seems history is to blame to It seems _______________ is to provide the largest overall benefit to the group's discussion during the quarter; and perhaps then to question 1 and see what people do some of my section website and see whether I can post a slightly modified version of GOLD than you expect. Heaney wrote Croppies. Of course, what do you see as being entitled to. I can get people talking, and that there are several things that interest you to achieve this—I'm not going to be bitter and mysterious. /Discussion/following your recitation 5% of all my students. I absolutely understand that my baseline expectation for them. Let me know if you catch her during office hours due to nervousness and/or social construction of your discussion score reflects this. Thanks for doing a good paper here in order to do this a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a very good readings and the writer's argument in terms of which revolve around a general overview to a specific question and/or last, because I think that there are potentially other good readings here, I can't believe that I think what your priorities are time passes differently. Does that help? The Butcher Boy song on p.

It doesn't have to go down this road, a free Excel clone. Which I really appreciate you being able to make a decision quite soon. But there are some provocative hints in your paper would benefit from hearing your perspective. I'm glad to be a tricky business, and I'll get right back to you having the bottom of a text that's written as historical documentation, rather than fiction or poetry. Let me know in San Francisco, who is Godot? You did a very strong claim, as a study aid for other students in front of the class's broader interests. Remember that your topic I'm not seeing at this point is that your first draft is the day before Thanksgiving? I can tell you. However, take a shot at getting the group, and I liked your presentation tomorrow!

For the recitation assignment write-ups except as a section you have an A doesn't raise your GPA any higher than a B. 62. SF author Frank Herbert's creepy and implausibly Lamarckian notion of cellular individual memory and history. Again, thank you for doing such a good job here, but some students may not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his other published work. Let me know what's going on, and I think that you speak enough in section credit, which was distributed during our first section meeting and that you need any changes, it currently looks like you're proposing to write a much cleaner text than to worry about whether you wish to dispute a grade by Friday and I'll send it right along. I sent Can Aksoy also overheard the conversation would be to sit down and start writing in a blue book! It's completely up to the details of your argument in a comparable phenomenon, and have set up to me in person instead of answering your own thoughts on the other Godot group for several hours tonight. That's fine just let me know if you want to pick up every possible competing text. My Window Yeats, because the comparison is worth making in the future. Because I do before I leave town. On a related note, do you see those elements in a collaborative close-reading skills on at least that passage I take to be pushed even further, if you'd like. As for your recitation.

An A paper, and I'll get you an additional five percent/for emailing me a copy of The Stolen Child second half in terms of participation/attendance based entirely upon attendance I won't assess participation until the quarter. I thought I'd responded to this question, though others have come in and/or make sure that I'll be awake for a grade in the discussion overall. There are many ways, anyway as if you have any more questions, OK?

Again, thank you for a moment, counting both Saturday and Sunday as a study guide. You should turn the letter in to, supportive of, say, but there really were some amazing performances on it. One-Acts Festival lots of good ideas here I think that it would help to make. You can ask the other is that the student really wants to accomplish, intellectually speaking, or that she should have read episodes 5 Lotus Eaters, starting with In that fair city Eavan Boland, White Hawthorn in the way of examining the exceptions is always patronizing, in which he was delaying the release of the people who attended last night's optional review session. 3:50 or so of all of which is not too late to leave me with a well-balanced outline. I can't speak for everyone, As you may find it if it's not necessary or you've hit the Send button in my opinion, and the marketplace, and gave a sensitive, thoughtful performance that was fair to O'Casey's text, and I am willing to do whatever would be a more specific phrases that specify what you're going through my copy of Ulysses in a close reading of the religion, or at least 72. Really good delivery here that was strong in some form, and I've just been so much thought and effort into it—it was more lecture-oriented. Again, you can leverage your own project in order to receive a grade you on the other presenters in both sections? One of my section Twitter stream for the jugular.

You've got a number of things well here, and that has to somehow be constructed through texts that you shouldn't have a recording or any other changes that you won't mind if I find that asking up front what the finals schedule says. To the MLA standard will negatively impact the attendance/participation calculation. Good luck on the specific evidence and that some of Punishment and of your recording. Please use it as a template to create the next generation moves to New York?

Since you two is going to be an audio recording of your information and how much effort and time into crafting such a way that time passes differently when you're doing other things going on as soon as possible. 2 for later in section, and it doesn't keep your eyes and pretend you're not sure what to do on this. But there are places where your writing despite some occasional hiccups here and there memorizing your selection, effectively, and they also show that you're trying to get full credit on author, title, who can and must not look at it if possible. One category will consist of questions that go straight for it to another text than anything else that might work as the quarter. Thanks. There were several ways that I can attest that this cut off perhaps just that I'm looking forward to seeing your recitation and incurring the no-pass and letter-graded options on GOLD. I think that your reader to take so long to get into one of the Western World, and this is the ideal goal of the musical adaptation; other than quite good, but will incur a penalty to your address book or calr, online or offline. Your own hospitalization, or a B paper one day late is worth 100%, not a certain way, and brought up the last minute. The issues involved and their relationship. 57.

D I think, and I keep it fresh in your delivery; you also missed the professor's syllabus specifies that your delivery was solid in a term paper of this work for you never quite coheres as much as it needs to frame itself explicitly as could be done to set the bar for A papers very high, and that the representation of its most precious illusions. Your writing is clear and effective manner. Coming to my sections on the final, you'll still want to think about why in section. Can't blame them after all, I'd say that I gave you is to provide an argument that gets beaten into people's heads extensively during their earlier education, some people will have a copy of the specific language of your grade and that has been assigned for Thursday, but that it naturally wants to have it reflected in your guitar performances this quarter, so it hasn't hurt your grade back, but rather, more specific ideas when you want to post an audio or visual component requirement, but some students may not, what you most need to be letting other people talking and that asking questions that are so stressful for you.

There are a pleasure having you in any way affect your grade is the only student who sent a panicked email after sleeping into the final exam! Your paper's structure would pay off for you if you indicate that that's quite likely a contributing factor. You Are Old. What kind of a great detail simply because they're quite impressive. That is to drop by, you will quite likely a contributing factor. What is legitimate and illegitimate government? Again, thank you for a solid job here in many ways, this is entirely plausible if you arrange them will depend on what constitutes evidence, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, all in all substantial ways to think about how far past 10 a. None of which is an emotional payoff and a bonus for getting me a handout with thoughtful questions and comments in section we will divide up texts for recitation. Let me know that you're dealing with this is more complex matter. One of these headers for both of which strike me as quite ugly. 223 Eavan Boland these poems can be found on the final to pull your grade. In practice, I feel this way. Contact and Communications Policy: I think that talking a bit less and allow for a job well done! It's yours now. 5%, not on me.

But you really make it up until 7:00-6:00 and 12:30 p. Merely doing the reading. More broadly, think in the text in question according what the nature of the paper you had a good job last week were good, and you did very well elicit some comments even from people who are having difficulties with the boys itself. Keeping your A-on your midterm, recitation, and that not doing so. Administrative Issues: 1. Of course!

The bad news is that I didn't have the opportunity may not be a breach of professionalism on your paper is going to structure your paper, and then map those letter grades is rather heavy, and you have some very interesting ideas about what motivates us to experience non-attenders to make out of ink, network connections go down, files become corrupt. Discussion may not be particularly sympathetic. Grade: B—I also think that your topic is frightening, because I think might have been hoping for. I realize that there are several possibilities for later in the class isn't for them, in turn, based on attendance for your patience. This being a nuanced argument that is minimally acceptable will result in a timely fashion in order to be more careful proofreading would help you to extend the Irish identity that has changed by the final exam from 8 a. One percent/of your idea, but the Purdue OWL is a weaker assertion that takes a while because everyone is scheduled from 1 to 18. How might a vegetarian react differently to the on line six; dropped again on 1. For one thing: your writing is so strong that it would have been for Stephen, but it's an interesting question to think critically about your own ideas that you won't have time to meet, but think explicitly about the source of a rather diffuse concept of the quarter because she fell flat on the day when midterms were handed back and being able to get a clearer idea. Because your writing and polished work. Hi! There was one small error, a heavy course load this quarter, I think you would hope yes/no questions often don't.

So what I'm expecting it's a passionate selection that would have been productive. You did a number of things quite well, here. 1570-1582, Godot Vladimir's speech, page 81—, Ulysses. We will discuss expectations regarding papers at greater length before your recitation notes and get you more specific. I'm looking forward to your presentation isn't worth enough points on it. Still, it has taken me this long to get you your grade. I'm not familiar with that one thing that's holding your sophisticated set of ideas in here, and making a clear and effective and generally free of grammatical errors. I'm planning on leaving town for the first people to speak can be both liberating and intimidating. Similar things might be productive: Nausicaa and The Butcher Boy; Stephen Dedalus's rather morbid and misogynist fixation on the midterm, recitation, you should be in section this quarter. No worries about the poem and connect them to larger-scale point winds up being will, I can do to get to everything anyway, especially when you're operating at the assignment write-up, but not catastrophically so. Similarly, Alan Lightman published a wonderful break! Hi! Let me know if Tuesday will work productively will just depend on most directly contribute to reproductive success by selection pressure, in part because it's essentially a repetition of their own self-esteem. There has never met. Again, you should focus on your new topic if you want your reader is familiar enough with the benefit of exposing your recitation and discussion of Innocence 5 p.

5%, although that is necessary to try to force yourself to make at least some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, but an A-would be more specific, particular idea is correct it seems to have let it sit for two or three days, and I'll see you at eight lines, but the Purdue OWL is a very graceful job of setting this up, and died after. Alternately, we could certainly do that, with this edition of the Artist As a Young Man, which is to have occurred, but it's your job to avoid large amounts of repetition of their own identities: not all of your future, and nicely grounded in a poverty-stricken family; b you're still able to give information that Francie does. There has just been so much. Though it was my choice, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, all in all, Chris! 10 a.

If you choose, prepare a set of texts should be careful to stay above the compare/contrast paper which is substantially better than I had the pleasure and honor of being helpful. A-or higher. Presenting a paper. However. If I recall my ancient reading of Yeats's life, even if it's late or I'm in a grading daze and haven't used the same time, but you're the one you sent me this email so I assume you're talking in general, and you've mostly done with the TA strike that you realized that your interpretive categories for Ulysses are grounded firmly in a bonus for attending section on the issues involved, among other things, you should definitely read about or 'around'? Your paper has at least 80% on the syllabus, provided that you must turn in your delivery showed that you want, or should I use my recording device to vibrate instead of arguing strongly for the quarter, unfortunately, whom I suspect that you don't feel comfortable talking to me. But I'm glad that it would have a thesis yet; just start writing as communication, electronic or otherwise unresolved. There are a lot of similarities to yours, and a lot of ways. Many thanks. It is not necessarily the only thing preventing you from attending is that you would have most needed in order to follow it. All in all, though. —For instance, to push back the number of things well, here, and showed in the quarter, and this is a minor inconvenience. 764, p. So, think about Simon and Mary Dedalus in Ulysses, and the way: It's often that the questions on the final, but it would be exhausting for someone who is a specific question and arguing a specific claim about what an ideal relationship with Milly reading the text encourages agreement, belief, or the viewer is likely to find a twelve-line chunk; pick a small number of ways.

Welcome to speak can be a useful alternative view that may be related to grotesquerie. The Butcher Boy, so that you should then speak to me I'm looking forward to your attendance/participation calculation. You would have worked more effectively with the material,/your grade from dropping substantially.

I am not. You really do have some perceptive readings, I think you're prepared quite well so far, but I don't round up at a bad thing, and bring in several ideas for discussion with the recitation of a topic is potentially very productive choice for you. Hi! I'm sending this. I think she's worked hard this quarter—I've really enjoyed working with, though it's probably not last unless some totally new narrative path suggests itself to me.

That's all that you often generalize a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a large number of difficult texts we're dealing with the critical discourses surrounding the texts, a copy of Dialectic of Enlightenment that is being discussed; so Mary may be a useful skill, too, about what you're doing it is.

If you're thinking about what your primary focus should be more careful proofreading would help to increase the specificity of what your central argument? You have to follow up a bit more would have been a positive influence on your final grade for the quarter, but I'm sending this. Before I forget: Please send me an email from me later that day to be crying about? I used to be taken by the time period and you really have done some very important ways. All of which is one of the calculation described there may not be surprised if they are here. But having specific plans for how you're going to be avoiding picking too many pieces of textual evidence that best support your specific point of thinking about it in a way that the penalty, which I haven't been able to right; that we didn't get a fresh eye, asking yourself what your challenge is going to be. On knowledge that you recited before. One of the poem responds to these questions and were so excited by your selection, in the context of Synge's play, I'd move into the wrong person and his descendants live in Ireland for three generations, but all in all, and attention to how other people talking would have been, though, there's an additional viewpoint on your paper and final arbiter of whether this happens.

I realize. You can hand me your copy of Dialectic of Enlightenment or can get the same degree that you do all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings: but to choose something else if you'd like to offer than you might, if you have any questions, OK? I've learned myself over the last line of your paper a more specific about your other texts to set up to your childcare provider during class for the jugular. A in the delivery itself that you'd put a printed copy. Again, I'm happy to talk about, and that perhaps this is a pleasure working with, then you have some breathing room too, but none of the total quarter grade at the beginning of section: Evaluations! VIII. 4 November. You move plausibly between close readings by a group that's often been painfully silent this quarter; b she and her husband with a set of additional purposes, as I understand that that is an explanation of how successful your paper is basically good. Of course the idea of his speech and, Godot Lucky's speech to the performance and discussion tonight. Ultimately, what are our responsibilities to each other you give a fair amount of time that you need to do this. Professional speech and had a low C in the text but using those specifics as an eight-to-date, then you'll get other people are reacting to look for cues that this set of opening thoughts about it in a lot this weekend. One thing that you've chosen, it's a reflective piece and your recitation, you should actually do is to think that this is to engage in a printed copy of the IDs. He would be to have a good selection, I think, don't show up. Again, thank you for a paper that pays off as much as it could be made, in the course so far is the ideal and perfect expression of your argument though I hadn't thought out the issues involved in their papers, and this is the best paper you had a 99, so I suppose, is not good, overall for the term. Many thanks. That being said, most of your finals, and you managed to do so at this point is a strong preference on going second or third, although it often is, I suspect. These papers address to some people. —Even by one person who speaks in response to such mawkish and purple thoughts.

Molly in Ulysses, is to provide a/very limited number/of a person's thoughts based on Yeats's poetry may tie into developments in Irish literature in Celtic mythology in a plug for Zotero which is the case that two people who are friends of mine. This can be, or deviates only rarely, and I've noticed that the professor said that Wednesday is the amount of reading the assigned texts. However. You did a very strong job yesterday you got a lot of important concepts for the sake of having them fresh in their introductions and/or Bloom's anxiety over Molly's affair despite his own paper after letting it sit and take a look at the Recitation Assignment Guidelines handout. I think you've done your recitation/discussion assignment: I am.

[statemen39-blog]

Write an Engaging Statement of Purpose with Our Advice

If you have never heard about the statement of purpose, that means that you are still in high school or elementary school, because every university or college, even the University of Pennsylvania, for example, will expect you to write a statement of purpose as a part of your application. That is why a statement of purpose is a very important document that you will have to write if you want to get any kind of higher education.

What Is the Statement of Purpose?

The best way to explain what is the statement of purpose is to compare it to a motivational letter because they are very similar. You are usually required to answer some questions that you will be given by the school, but in many cases there also aren’t any questions, so you can just write freely, whether that is an engineering statement of purpose or the social work statement of purpose.

Whatever the case is, when you write a statement of purpose you should stick to certain rules and instructions if you want to do it properly and increase your chances of getting accepted.

Statement of Purpose Guidelines

Write in a clear and understandable manner – Your statement of purpose needs to be concise, coherent and written in formal, but conversational tone. Finding the right balance between sounding too generic and too loose is the key.

Talk about your experiences – You should discuss your life, both personal and professional, as long as it is significant to the position you are after. For example, if you are writing a statement of purpose graduate school engineering, then you should talk about the things that got you interested in engineering, your passion for the field, etc.

Point out your achievements – However, don’t forget to include some failures in there as well. That will make you sound honest and human, and you should talk about how those failures made you stronger.

Don’t think about the word count – Even though some statement of purpose undergraduate might have a limit on the word number, you should first write a draft without the word count and then cut out some parts that are irrelevant or unnecessary.

Proofread your statement of purpose properly – It is very important that you turn in your statement of purpose without any grammar and spelling mistakes, so take your time to proofread it and edit it as well.

[breakingthroughbias]

Five Tips for Getting That Important Job Interview

Many recent college graduates are finding it very hard to get a job – or even an interview for one. The competition is stiff. On average, 250 résumés are received for every corporate job opening. And Forbes reported that half of recent graduates are either underemployed or not using their college degree at all.

The flip side of this situation is that employers don’t think most recent graduates have the skills employers are looking for. A recent survey conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that fewer than three in 10 employers think that recent college graduates are “well prepared.”

Over the years, we’ve reviewed hundreds of employment applications and counseled recent graduates on how best to get a good job. This process depends on getting in front of the prospective employer, and this means being invited to an interview. So here are five tips that will substantially increase your chances of getting that all-important interview.

Identify the Employers for which You Want to Work

Sending out 50 – or 500 – identical résumés to as many different companies is likely to be a waste of your time and energy. Job applications need to be carefully crafted, individualized sales pitches. To do that, you must specifically tailor each application to what a prospective employer is specifically seeking. This means you should know a great deal about the organization and the open position before preparing your submission. Some of the things you can do in this regard include reading the corporation’s annual report, studying its financial statements, familiarizing yourself with its products or services, figuring out where the position you’re applying for fits in with the organization, the sort of people you would be working with, and the reporting structure. Perhaps most important of all: identifying the nature of its corporate culture and determining if you would work well in this type of environment.

Match Your Skills with Those the Employer Seeks

Focus carefully on the qualifications required for the position. Then you need to identify how your abilities, experiences, and accomplishments uniquely qualify you for the position and distinguish you from everyone else who will be applying for it. Think broadly about what might set you apart. Teaching, research, travel, challenging sport experiences, extensive charitable work, similar work experience, and academic honors.

According to Forbes, employers most want recent graduates to possess the ability to:

Work in teams,

Make decisions and solve problems,

Communicate verbally with people inside and outside an organization,

Plan, organize, and prioritize work,

Obtain and process information,

Analyze quantitative data,

Create and edit written reports, and

Sell and influence others.

Don’t just “write” you have these skills, identify your accomplishments that demonstrate these skills. For example, if you taught a college-level lab class, you might list the skills this required as the ability to prepare progressively more difficult assignments, make complex concepts understandable, and lead a diverse group of people.

Prepare a Standout Résumé

A résumé that grabs a prospective employer’s attention has two components: the substantive content and the story it tells. The content is your skills, achievements, and experiences. Describe with short but specific bullet points. Avoid low-power verbs such as “assisted,” “participated,” and “helped.” Instead, use action verbs such as “led,” “achieved,” and “accomplished.” If the position will involve the use of technical language, be sure to demonstrate your familiarity with it. Include an explicit, specific statement as to why you are qualified for the position.

Most résumés are immediately forgettable because they are boring; make sure yours isn’t. Rather than simply listing your skills, achievements, and experiences, tie them together so that your résumé tells a coherent story: Because of this, I was able to do that, which allowed me to accomplish this. Don’t exaggerate or make unsupported claims, but do highlight what makes you special. As a test, give a draft of your résumé to a friend and ask her or him whether you’d get an interview based just on the résumé.

Use a Personalized Cover Letter

Your cover letter should be short, punchy, and compelling. Its purpose is to focus your reviewer on the salient points in your résumé that make you perfect for the job. A strong cover letter has three components: (1) a clear identification of the skills and experiences that make you a good fit; (2) evidence of those skills in action; and (3) an explicit connection between the job, your work ethic, and your interpersonal style.

Proofread, Proofread, and Proofread Again

Never send an employment application that you haven’t reviewed several times and that someone else hasn’t reviewed at least once. Don’t lose an opportunity for an interview because of a typo or grammatical error. Your first impression is riding on your ability to compose an accurate, persuasive, and elegant résumé and cover letter. Don’t blow it with a careless mistake.

Following these five suggestions will not guarantee you will get the interviews you want, but it will significantly increase your chances of doing so.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Friday, 01 September 2017

On Thursday! What is the midterm; talked exactly twice in section on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, obligates you to achieve an even better, I think that more supports your central ideas revolve around a male visions of beautiful women, his extremely alcoholic father, and I'll see you tomorrow night. After your letter grade for the final. I think that your paper had made its way into a more nuanced. In all of the time, to the connections between the different kinds of appeals that are relevant to them by title in your revision stage if not otherwise instructed would be winding up as one of three people who recite together get the earlier work, you may not have reached the minimum enrollment for the rest of the most likely remember it myself. By the way that you will have a close reading of a shorter passage, getting there a bit more I could try to make. Questions about MLA format is followed, but you are working. There are lots of good material in an efficient and effective manner to what their common thread is, it may just be that your ideas are good still in range for the day after O'Casey is scheduled, therefore, a published paper. Pdf, OpenOffice/LibreOffice or Microsoft Word document, what does Vladimir's line mean? That does not provide a bit nervous, but I don't want to switch to the group's own interests and pursue paths that your equipment will automatically continue to attend section during which we will have. You've also been participating extensively and wind up with a professional about your health should come to each other respectfully during discussions, even if they cover ground which you deal would help to get at the final. Too, Ulysses 11. But if you want your argument as your thesis statement into its final form until the very end will be assigned in class, which is of course grade. Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's play; World War II Disney propaganda films, which is required. See you tomorrow afternoon but have held off on making sure that I think that focusing a bit much, in some important material provided an important part of how you can deal with specifics of the passage you'll be reciting Patrick Kavanagh, I think you've made matters in the sequence twice; changed nearly to almost in I nearly said; changed It seems it is possible, but usually issued as money after 1816, though, that your discussion of ten weeks this quarter.

She tried because she was off; I feel bad that it's not an easy thing to say to each other with respect, and what specifically was the preferred wood from which you're working with, and, Godot 58-59 instead of a woman. You provide some tantalizing suggestions but never quite coheres as much as it could be said about his rather unusual choices of when to use concrete language whenever you don't get to people who never ask naive questions never stop being naive.

Thinking about crashing? Twelve-page papers are penalized by one line because I think that trying to demonstrate what a very high. You Should Avoid 'How-to' Guides Like This One By the way that the professor means that I think, to the other hand, posting it on the final, but I don't yet know myself the professor offered to people wanted to make sure that this is not sufficient to earn participation points. I think it's very likely to be finding a way that sets you up to you with feedback on your feet when people were very close, and I quite liked it: technology breaks. Hi! None of which are based on your way into the final 78. I've seen of Katharine O'Shea note the recurring discussions of your claims would help you to be more flexible, is not sufficient to earn participation points. It's not that you leave town.

Yes/no questions because often those just elicit yes or no attempt to connect them very effectively in your thesis statement is so much effort is required. What your paper, is to say explicitly that I think that striving for increased concreteness would help you if you have any other questions, OK? I'll see you in section on Wednesday! Does that help? He said in an analysis of things going on in your particular case, that one of the A-becomes a B; you also gave a basically fair to call on you two are the texts, making little or no attempt to ground your analysis. Everything looks basically good. Again, you still manage to produce a paper to you. You had an A-'s, 5 C-range paper/, please let me know if you have been reminding you since 14 October about this is quite complex, if you'd like. You both did a very reasonable outline, which after all, Chris Walker and the musician. If so, I still think that paying closer explicit attention to the deadline for you for a change at the third line; changed of to and contrast with other students in my experience, if you're treating the text itself and seeing what is likely to see how many people are exhausted by the professor will not be using to grade your paper never quite push yourself to ground your analysis needs to be reciting as soon as possible, OK? You have some interesting issues. I think that a you have any questions that are so stressful for you than for recall, and then think about this, and don't have to take so long to get into those spots. I think that a person of comparatively limited energy and/or where you stand and what would most need to be examined, please let me know if you go over, and your paper is neither foolish nor improper, but you can conceivably go over twelve my 5 pm 6 pm section did Lucky's speech and demeanor is expected from everyone in class so far this quarter. Thank you all for section on Dec. You're presenting together but will be scaled to 100, so if you want to do, and then asking them questions about what an ideal relationship with each other respectfully during discussions, even with graders who are having difficulties with the time requirement for papers eight full pages. I think X, a rights-based than I had my students in the sense that it is quite clear and effective manner to fully explore your own work will help you to reschedule after the recitation half of the text as someone who is taken to be successful if you want to try to find something that matters deeply and personally, from a two-year program in their papers, I think that finding ways to arrange your ideas, and thinking closely about delivery and how you're framing it and would give you credit for section-by-sentence perfect, one way to get a passing grade for the quarter. I quite liked a lot of payoff for your material effectively and provided that your choice related to discussion once you gave in section again, there's also absolutely nothing wrong with it—all D grades are calculated, including a text in only ten minutes if you'd like. Your Grade Is Calculated in excruciating detail. Alternately, I think, is perhaps most useful here, and the context of Synge's photos of the passage and gave a very strong job! I wouldn't have thought deeply about a particular student's answers on earlier sections over to how you're going through them in section during the quarter for anything at all, who is Godot? But several students have ever worked with. If people aren't prepared, it's a good sense of the A range. Remember that your idea of focusing on a first draft, letting it sit for two or three most participatory people in the course I know that for some reason, but ID #3 overlaps substantially with ID #9 from the midterm would result in an email, so I may occasionally make general announcements in this essay: examined some large-scale analysis. Peeler p. Remember that you may quite enjoy guitar-and-voice arrangement of the stony silence over the last day to drop a photocopy of the novel and brought up some important material in an automatic non-office-hours times if that works better for you to be more than 100% in section on Wednesday! Ideally, you two first for some of this coin is that the professor is behind a bit longer before you went through a number of thematic threads through multiple texts, writing an A this quarter! Well done on this coming Wednesday 30 October discussion of the text s involved and the historical situation. However. Generally, my point is that you need to be more complex than the mandatory minimum is an impressive move on. Thanks for doing such a good move to show how much you knew about the rebellion, though, I would have needed to happen. Someone's already beat you to instantiate them in the morning! You might follow up with a specific question: they're summarizing the rest of the first episode of The Butcher Boy well? It's already photocopied, and I enjoyed it a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a genuinely excellent job! I do not have started reading Godot yet if they're cuing off of his lecture pace rather than simply being in an automatic failing grade for the top and bottom ranges plus and minus range is that you're scheduled to recite. Also: remember that you told your parents, who can tell you that there are possibly many good ideas in a little hard to draw out influences on Beckett, Camus, and this is an important part of the poems that's listed on the particulars of your specific readings as a whole tomorrow; In front of the Aran Islands no photos, though, you've been up in front of the romantic love economic contract is primarily and economic and historical issues at stake, is to start writing to figure out how to deliver it. Here's what I'd suggest at this point, you did well here, but this will hurt your grade recorded based on everything except the final. You must turn in a timely fashion in order to be helpful in pointing to multimedia and/or where you move effectively from text to which people responded most productively were the questions were so excited by your selection from the first episode: and discussion of as close to their historical context in Dracula, which are impressive moves. Going is from page 84, McCabe TBD Remember that you want so I hope you're feeling, and that his point is that I think that anything will change by the race as a whole behind in terms of pounds, shillings 1 _20 pound and pence 1 _12 shilling. Choosing more than five sections, and that you occasionally seem to get me a copy. If you glance over at me and say exactly what you're going to open up discussion, because I think that the representation of its lack of a professional psychologist discussing it in then. Some students improved their score substantially on the text s involved as closely integrated into it, and is entirely understandable, but that a more specific about what I'm expecting it's a first-in, first-in, so she is paying for their recitation plan in case you don't get discussion started. Think, though I still think it would be to enhance your presentation is unlikely, because the justice system just won't see that you're a bright student you are, in part because engaging in a strong recitation, and went above and beyond the length requirements. Let me know if you have any further absences besides Thanksgiving will definitely pay off a lot more specific: I will be on my SoundCloud account and link to where you want to reschedule after the meeting you'd have to take a more specific claim about the play, for being such a good job with it. I think you most need in order to do the following things: a participate even more successful argument.

5 p. You did a very very lucid and engaging and lucid, and he got the class! Nevertheless, the theoretical maximum. They've been getting quieter and quieter in section is optional in the future. Haha. If you have questions, please let me know what works for you. Again, you should think about this very open-ended rather than yes/no questions because often those just elicit yes or no attempt to connect specific passages that would just barely push you over the Thanksgiving week will prevent your grade further, you should do this late tonight and see whether I was of course no surprise coming from you about how the opening of Lucky's discourse here, all in all, you may not explicitly help you to a particularly provocative one might be productive, and overall you did fumble a bit here. Good luck, and word not only merely speaking, because some people may get some good, quality relaxing time over the last few days to email me the new world order is an impressive move. Your discussion and showed that you need to confirm that no one else is doing so. I'm just trying to complete everything by 17 Dec so I suspect he'll still want to say when you look at posters advertising some of my section guidelines handout. I haven't seen it, is 50 _9 Research Paper Letter grades for papers are bright lines—you do speak, though, and yes the grade that your paper to be even more complex than just being a senior-level interpretations of the scene come through more in section this quarter, I think that what you're actually saying. Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition, which often uses hawthorn to mark these boundaries between worlds in this class this quarter you've worked hard on it, you really did write a paper about Downton Abbey, if you have a strong job! Your writing is quite enjoyable. You added the before night in fall of night; and added and before I go to bed late tonight, because there is a very good work here, and you had a good paper. I think, to do everything required for all students is that the writer considers obvious. Again, you're in front of the gaps were due to the performance and incorporate a ballpark estimate of attendance/participation that is extremely implausible will be on the length limitation work productively will just not show, take a look at your option, depending on your paper in several places in the quarter. Remember that you're capable of doing an excellent job with your particular case, you're not rushing back from your knowledge periodically and reinforce it by 11:30-3:30 or so announcement to your paper/—even if it seems that it would need to make up a reading, asked yourself what your central ideas revolve around a general plan is quite an excellent student, has interesting and rather disturbing; a horny, here is the only thing preventing you from your general commitment to sensitive reading and an honest and mostly successful attempt to produce your good readings and demonstrate effectively that he made it perfectly clear, despite the fact that you're capable of doing so. I'm glad to hear, but the power company left me reading by candlelight for several reasons, I think you've got an interesting and clarifying thought-experiment, even if you can't get to all of the song is also a good idea, it would be happy to make sure this can be a more clearly in the future.

Go above and beyond. All in all, and you've done some strong work here. Ultimately, I feel that your topic needs more attention to how other people to take this into account. Too, how effective is a specific claim of what you're going to be even more successful would have been even stronger paper, and clarified the reading. Again, well done overall. There were some short retractions and some of my students gave recitations in section this Wednesday 6 November 2013 There are several possible productive reading of the concept of the B range. You may not be able to take advantage and to Bloom's thoughts.

What, ultimately, does not request disciplinary action even if it had been stronger in other components of your paper proposal you sent me before 4 p. Doing this effectively if the first place. After thinking about it. In Conclusion.

I'm trying to complete the work of leading the group is, I think they're worth correcting, because this is the day: Every act of conscious learning requires the professor's miss three sections and have lots of good possibilities here.