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thegirlintheswivelchair · 3 years

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More Than We Hoped - Ch. 2

Summary: The Daily Bugle drags Spiderman, Tony forces Peter to come up to the compound, and that black haired man packs a punch.

Word count: +6.6k

Warnings: violence, injury, blood, angst...to be honest I think that’s it for this chapter

A/N: OK so I am actually really nervous to put this chapter out. It feels a little different from what I usually do. It felt like the story took on a life of its own, and also...this is all Peter. Y/n is not in this chapter. However, I am gonna have her in the next chapter quite a bit, so hopefully that will make up for it!! Anyways...I hope you enjoy this!

(Oh and this starts off directly after chapter 1!)

series masterlist | main masterlist

——

Still Saturday

Peter sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone, “Hey, Tony.”

“Yeah, you’ve already said hello. Got anything else to say?” Tony’s voice deadpanned over the other line. It was sassy, but Peter could tell that he wasn’t necessarily in trouble...yet.

“I just woke up, what else did you want me to say?” Peter said off-handedly. He really wasn’t awake enough to handle where Tony wanted to take this conversation. Plus, he really did not know what was going on.

“I don’t know, you tell me? Why did I wake up this morning to see Spiderman’s name in a trending article from the Daily Bugle?”

“Would you believe me if I said, ‘I don’t know?’” Peter asked.

“Not really, no.” Again, Tony didn’t seem annoyed, but Peter couldn’t help but feel he might be getting a lecture somewhere down the line.

“Honestly, Tony, I haven’t even had time to read the article.” Peter responded evenly.

Tony let out a sigh, “It’s not great, Pete. Whatever you did on patrol last night—they’re spinning it like you lost control, and the guy is in the hospital because of you.”

“What?” Peter said in shock, “Hold on…”

Taking the phone away from his ear, he put Tony on speaker, so he could bring up the article to read.

The same twinge of foreboding that had hit him earlier came back as he read the headline again:

IS HE REALLY OUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDERMAN? Masked Vigilante involved in near lethal apprehension of defenseless substance abuser.

Clicking the article’s link to read more, he was greeted with a photo of his superhero alter ego. The photo showed Spiderman looking like he was being cornered in an alleyway. One of his hands was lifted urging whoever was in front of him to calm down, while the other was gesturing to the heaped form behind him. Anyone looking at it could see it was a body sprawled out on the ground, but the image was such bad quality barely any details were discernible.

His eyes went quickly to read the beginning of the article:

In the early morning hours last night, distress calls were phoned in by a number of residents of the Bright Valley Apartments. They were alerting authorities of a violent disturbance in the alleyway next to their building between Spiderman and a nondescript man.

The recorded calls are still not available to the public, but an eyewitness says the man seemed frantic and was lashing out. They said Spiderman struck the man a number of times until the victim was incapacitated.

When authorities arrived at the scene, Spiderman was still present before webbing his way out of the situation without properly debriefing the authorities that came to the site. It is unclear what the masked vigilante’s intentions were with the victim that has now been identified as Wayne Campbell, who has been known to use drugs. Campbell is now in the hospital with severe internal injuries and is in critical condition.

More was said underneath, but Peter had already seen enough. The feeling of foreboding deepened into a sloshing mess of worry, hurt pride, and a sense of sadness. There was too much misinformation and exploited truths in the first few paragraphs alone for Peter to say it was anything but what it was...

“They-They wrote a slander piece about me…” He said softly, switching the phone back to normal and bringing it up to his ear.

“Looks that way...Sorry, kiddo.” Tony said in a similarly soft tone before continuing, “Know anyone you’ve pissed off lately?”

“No one I can think of,” Peter responded in a sort of mumble after sitting quiet for a moment, thinking.

“Thought you might say that. That’s why I sent Happy to grab you and bring you back to the compound, so we can get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, how about you catch me up on what Spiderman’s been getting up to.”

“What? No—Tony, I can’t just make a trip out to the compound!” Peter exclaimed.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve got...” Peter paused. He felt he was needed here, but with his brain still stuck on the article he didn’t say that. Instead what came out was, “...homework.” He finished, closing his eyes knowing how lame that excuse was.

“Yeah, that hasn’t worked for the last 12 years, not gonna work now.” Tony said matter-of-factly.

Without missing a beat, Peter quipped back, “Technically, I didn’t get to use that excuse for 5 years. So really it’s only been 7.”

“Uncalled for,” Tony said. If they had been in the lab together, Peter could imagine that his mentor would be pointing a wrench at him and raising his eyebrows to emphasize the point that he was hurting the old man. A small smile tugged at the corner of Peter’s mouth at the thought.

“So, you gonna tell me what really happened?”

The question sobered Peter quickly, making him momentarily forget about going to the compound. He blew air between pursed lips, his cheeks puffing out. “Whatever is happening is so screwed up, Tony…” Peter said quietly.

“It always is.” Tony said this with such sincerity Peter could almost hear the memories coming to life in the retired superheroes head. Tony cleared his throat and spoke up again, “Just start at the beginning.”

“Yeah, Ok.” Peter breathed out, and he began telling the story of the last 3 nightmarish nights he’d spent patrolling.

It took 45 minutes before Peter was getting to the details of last night. To his surprise, Tony had let Peter talk without much interruption, only small clarifications here and there and a hum to show he was paying attention.

Once he finally went quiet Tony spoke up, “And you haven’t found any connection between the 3 victims?”

“Not yet, I haven’t had time—” Peter was cut off by another call coming in. Looking at the contact, he saw it was Happy. He’s seriously making me go to the compound? No questions asked?

Sighing and not hiding his frustration, Peter quickly said “I gotta take this, it’s Happy.” He didn’t wait for a reply before accepting the new call. “Hey, Happy,” he said, adopting a much lighter tone than a second ago.

“Peter, where are you? I’ve been waiting outside for the last 15 minutes.” Happy said in a familiarly gruff greeting.

“Crap, you’re already here? Sorry, Happy. I’ll be right down.” Peter said as he jumped up from his spot on the bed and hung up the phone. He began grabbing at random clothes around the room, hoping they were clean, and throwing them on.

Soon, all that was left for him to do was find his other shoe. Shouldn’t be too hard right? Wrong. He turned over everything. At one point he even stood on the ceiling thinking a new angle would help him—It didn’t. Just as he was starting to get really frustrated, he found it hiding in the corner of his room where he could have sworn he’d looked at least three times before.

“Ah-ha!” He cheered triumphantly. The victory was short-lived when his phone began to blow up with texts from Happy. Each one getting steadily more grumpy in how they said he needed to get his ass moving and down to the car right now.

So in a chaotic blur of motion, Peter grabbed his lone shoe, his backpack, a granola bar from on top of his mini fridge, and jogged out of his room with only one shoe on.

As he made his way down his hallway, his phone rang for what felt like the thousandth time that morning. He picked it up without looking at the contacts name, and answered, “I know Happy, I’m on my way down right now. Couldn’t find my shoe.”

“See, I keep telling you to put trackers in them, but do you listen?” Came Tony’s amused voice over the other line.

Even though he had not expected his mentor's voice on the phone, Peter smirked and shot back, “Says the old man that can’t find the wrench that’s still in his hands.”

“That was one time!” Tony’s voice said defensively before changing the subject, “So you haven’t left with Happy yet, I take it?”

“Just getting out to his car.” Peter said, walking into his dorm’s elevator.

“Uh-huh. While, you’re on your way up, try and think through what might be similar to each incident. We’ll use that while going through the info your suit gathered during patrol.”

“Speaking of—Tony, I need to be back by tonight to go patrolling again. I need to be there for the next person that gets affected by this thing.”

“Yeah, no can do, Underoos.” Tony said. It was said with a casual finality, even off-handed in a way, and it irked Peter for some reason.

“What do you mean?” He said slightly annoyed as he left the elevator.

When he neared the door leading outside, he realized he was still not wearing his other shoe having been so distracted by Tony. He put his granola bar in his mouth, and began moving in a way he knew was not even remotely graceful as he tried to keep forward momentum and put his shoe on at the same time.

“There’s too much heat around the situation now, Pete. You need to stay away for awhile.” Tony broke through Peter’s concentration of staying upright as he barreled through the door to the outside.

Once he managed to get the shoe on, Peter paused for a second to take a bite out of his granola bar before moving again. He answered his mentor with a hard tone, “I can’t just drop this, Tony!”

“The media has gotten involved. That automatically makes this trickier. It’s important to tread carefully now.”

“I know I need to be careful,” Peter groaned out, “But I feel really close to a breakthrough! I just need a few more nights of recon. Please—”

“You have any leads?” Tony cut him off before he could keep talking.

Peter faltered before replying. He really didn’t have any leads, and it was clear Tony knew that. He had just hoped that train of thought would work on Tony, and he would be allowed to patrol. “I mean—no, not really.” Peter said quietly, opting for honesty in this moment.

He heard Tony sigh, “We need to be smart. This isn’t a recon-then-action type of mission anymore.”

Peter had made it to the sleek black car that would take him to the compound. Pausing in front of the passenger side, one hand on the door’s handle, Peter started talking, “I know, Tony, but these people—”

Tony cut him off again, “The answer is still no. We’ll talk more when you get here.”

The annoyance that had been simmering under Peter’s skin throughout the whole conversation, sparked at that moment. “Fine,” He snapped, and hit the phone’s red ‘End’ button. Opening the car door with a particular amount of aggression, he slid into the seat with a huff.

Happy immediately began pulling away from the curb as soon as the door shut. A sour silence fell over the two figures, with Peter staying silent and glaring out his window. The other, usually more grumpy, older man glanced at Peter frequently as they made their way upstate. Peter felt the stare each time, knowing the older man was trying to get a read on him as he quietly brooded.

Over the many years they had been in each other’s lives both had gotten relatively good at reading each other. In this particular situation, it was obvious Peter was frustrated about something, but he knew Happy was trying to piece together what might be annoying him.

“Tony did something again, didn’t he?” Happy’s voice finally broke the silence.

“You could say that,” Peter muttered.

“Whatever he did, I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Peter had to resist the urge to roll his eyes, Happy didn’t deserve that. “Happy, no offense, but I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ok, fair enough.” Happy conceded easily. The rest of the drive was silent, only the soft sounds of music were heard.

When the car rounded the tree lined bend that led up to the compound, Peter’s emotions did a bit of a dance. He always loved seeing this building. It was a symbol of something so much bigger than himself, even bigger than him as Spiderman. Excitement always sparked in his gut as he thought about what and who it held inside and all the inner workings that even he didn’t fully understand yet. The weight of its purpose was inspiring while also being rightfully intimidating. Peter had yet to shake the feelings of being inadequate when thinking about it all. No matter how much he had wanted it, he couldn’t stop wondering if he was good enough to be an Avenger, of being a part of the moving pieces that title gave him power in, and what it meant to protect the world. He was just your friendly neighborhood Spiderman after all.

Today, though, that wash of emotions was dampened by his frustration over why he was here to begin with. He felt like Tony was calling him here to keep an eye on him. Like he didn’t trust him, and it stung.

After the car pulled up to the giant glass doors of the side entrance, Peter said a hasty goodbye to Happy, got out and slammed the door shut a bit harder than necessary. He bounded up to the door, and stepped into the building.

Almost immediately, Friday, Tony’s AI, greeted him with an even tone “Hello, Peter. Should I let Boss know you are here?”

“Tell him I’ll be down in a sec.” Peter answered, but instead of going directly to the lab, he made his way to the large communal kitchen to make himself a sandwich.

Friday’s voice came through the silence of the kitched “Boss is asking for you to come down to the lab.” The AI paused then added, “He says to just bring the food with you.”

Peter rolled his eyes, Tony knew him a little too well sometimes. Taking a massive bite his sandwich, he grabbed his plate and started his way down to the lab.

When he turned into the large state of the art lab, he was greeted with a view of Tony’s back.

Since Thanos, Tony had changed from what he had looked like during his active days as Iron Man. It wasn’t for the worse, he had simply changed, gotten older. His hair had gotten distinctly more salt and peppered, even more than when Peter had been remade after the snap. The wrinkles around his eyes had gotten more prominent, and they highlighted the smile he’d started wearing more often now that he was a father and genius mechanic rather than a superhero holding the weight of the world on his shoulders.

He also had a prosthetic arm, a constant reminder of the day he saved the galaxy. When you could see it, it was a surprisingly tame color—a dark charcoal grey. “You can wear it with anything,” Tony had joked when asked why it wasn’t bright red. It still held Iron Man’s trademark colors of red and gold in its details, with a bright blue light filling out the crevices or other details that the nanotechnology didn’t cover. The scars from the wound that traced their way across his skin came up his neck and stretched up around his ear and cheek. Anything else around his shoulders and chest was usually covered by a shirt, unless he was in his tank top fixing his cars, or swimming at his house in the woods.

The biggest difference for Peter though, was the softness that had taken over Tony. He was certainly still the cocky, confident man he’d always been, but he didn’t hold himself that way anymore as a suit of armor. Now that confidence was worn as a person slowly working on their monsters and ever so subtly finding hope in who they actually are. It was a softness that came with years of therapy and walking through it all with good friends and family. Peter was proud of Tony for that, and was grateful he got to be a part of it.

Currently, Tony was in a basic long sleeve black shirt pulled back to his elbows and his usual chop-shop jeans that were filled with grease and other stains.

With his back to the door, he was surrounded by three different holographic projections. One was the schematics and details of Peter’s Spiderman suit. Another was a news feed scrolling and continuously playing any news that might be relevant to his search, and the last one had numbers, graphs, and other data that Peter quickly realized was the data from his suit.

The suit, while being his, and even his own design, was still hooked up to the main Stark “cloud” that Tony had created for everything that held Stark technology. That meant Tony could bring up anything he wanted from Peter’s suit.

At any other time, this would have annoyed Peter, maybe even offended him. The two of them had talked at length about the Baby Monitor protocol, and over the last 4 years had slowly lessened it all so that Peter could be his own person, having complete control over the responsibility he had as a superhero. Tony had promised to no longer check the data or videos on his suit unless Peter let him, or asked him to. For this particular moment, even in Peter’s already frustrated state, he knew there had been an unspoken agreement that Tony would help. That meant he would look into these details. So Peter let it slide, and while taking another enormous bite of his sandwich, he walked up to Tony’s side and asked with a mouthful, “Found anything interesting?”

Tony turned his face towards him with both eyebrows raised quietly asking the parental question of ‘really? while eating?’ to which Peter gave a noncommittal shrug to say ‘yup’. Tony lips twitched with amusement, and he turned back to the projections, answering, “No, not yet. Was waiting for you actually.”

Swallowing the bite, Peter said, “I think we should get Friday working on whether or not the three victims have anything in common with each other. Then you and I can look through the surveillance Karen saved through my mask’s camera and see if there is anything we can see for clues or leads.”

Tony nodded, then said, “You heard him, Fri. Start seeing if there is anything to connect these people together, and please upload the videos from Peter’s suit so we can start watching them.

“What time frame do you want to focus on for the videos?” She responded.

“Let’s see, everything starting from Wednesday at the beginning of my patrol to the end of the last entry on Friday,” said Peter.

Friday didn’t respond. Instead, a new hologram popped up in front of the two men, and the first scenes of the surveillance videos began to play. They silently began to watch together while Peter finished his food.

Three hours later, the pair were now sitting in chairs, eyes slightly glazed from the amount of random footage they had already gone through. Peter tried not thinking about the fact they were still only on Wednesday night. They had fast forwarded through most of the early evening of that night, until right around when Peter remembered it all started.

When he heard Karen respond to something he said by saying, “You said never to call a night ‘calm’ because it tempts the universe,” he perked up in his chair and spoke out loud, “This is where my senses started going off before I heard the whimpering.”

The suit’s camera showed the vantage point on top of a building looking down at the still busy street below. “Pause the video,” Peter said. Getting up from his chair, he raised his hands to the image. With an outward wave from both hands he expanded the image to be twice the size it was before, essentially engulfing himself and Tony in the scene.

“My senses went off, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. It was too hard to tell with so many people staring simply because I had swung overhead, but I know someone was staring for another reason.”

Tony looked at him questioningly, “You know when someone is staring at you for another reason?”

Peter nodded and shrugged, “Yeah, there’s a difference in someone staring innocently, and someone that is staring for another reason. I don’t know why, but I can feel the difference.”

Tony nodded slowly, and his face briefly flashed a ‘huh, neat’ face before he turned back to the image. “Friday, start scanning the faces and see if there are any that stand out. Let’s start with criminal records or anyone that Spiderman has dealt with directly.”

“Certainly.” Friday responded.

In the meantime, both men were staring at the screen seeing if, on intuition and instinct alone, they could pick anything up. After about 2 minutes, Friday spoke, “There are three different faces detected that have misdemeanor records, none of which are connected to Spiderman for their arrest nor their crime.”

The 3 faces showed up with their records next to them, and it was clear right away that none of them were who they were looking for. One had a public indecency charge, another was a DUI, and the last had the only genuine criminal record for assault, but it was from over 20 years ago.

Peter sighed at the news feeling disappointed, while Tony leaned in. “Friday, run the video and see if anyone stays focused on Peter when we know the whimpering started.”

The time between where the clip started and when the whimpering began was only a few seconds and it was impossible to truly focus on the faces with the way the camera whipped in the direction of the whimpering when Peter had heard it. The audio itself didn’t pick up on the whimper—it being too faint for the microphone—but it was clear enough when Peter had heard it. When nothing could be seen, Tony called for the frames to be slowed down to a shuttering frame by frame pace.

In the blinking frames that could be seen right before Peter’s head moved, only a few people had remained focused on the superhero. An old man who had been tending to his store front, a child staying planted in awe until his parent tugged him along, and a tall slim man with black hair, suit, and...a silver tie.

“Wait!” Peter blurted, “That guy, right there. I recognize him! I saw him last night.”

“Him?” Tony pointed at the blown up image of the man.

“Yeah, he was coming out of the alleyway right before I went to help the last victim.”

“Friday, you know what that means.” Tony said to his AI.

The silence lasted for only a moment before Friday was speaking to the room, “His name is Everett Mercury, age 25, born and raised in New York City.”

“Ok, can you tell us anything else about him?”

“Actually, boss, his file and any subsequent information that is regularly available or traceable for the average person is coming up blank. This lack of data would normally suggest all information for Mr. Mercury was wiped clean or is purposefully untraceable in most technological databases.”

“Well, I think that means we found our guy, what do you think, Pete?” Tony said, snapping his fingers together and spinning on his heels to look directly at Peter.

Peter gave a small absentminded nod as he only kind of heard Tony’s question. He was still glaring at the face in front of him, thinking. “Is he anywhere near the second location?”

Again, the silence filled the room until the AI spoke, “Based on my recognition software, there is no record of him being at the location of the second victim.”

Peter groaned,”Dang it!” all though he used entirely more colorful language in his head.

“That doesn’t mean that wanna-be-young-Keanu-Reeves here isn’t our guy.” Tony said lightly.

“No, but it doesn’t confirm it either. Plus, we don’t know anything about him,” Peter shot back.

“They don’t usually make it that easy for us.”

Peter knew Tony wasn’t trying to goad him. He wasn’t even trying to be condescending, but after the week he’d had, the fear of the unknown and the frustration that was just sitting at the bottom of his stomach mixed and boiled quickly. “No they don’t. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t hoping our first lead might have been a little less vague. What are we supposed to do with this information, Tony?” Peter said heatedly, whirling to face his mentor with a glare.

Tony met his stare with raised eyebrows and a slight cock of the head. “I’m sorry, did I miss something?” He looked into Peter’s eyes for a second, “Are you mad at me?”

“How does this help people, Tony? How does me sitting here with you, finding out this guy's name, in upstate New York, help anyone?” Peter said, not answering the question.

“Pete, this is only just the beginning. We’ve only been here—what? 3 hours?” Tony said, checking his watch.

“Yeah, and by the time I get back someone might already be infected by whatever-the-hell this is and could even be dead!”

Understanding washed over Tony’s features at Peter’s words. “You’re upset I said you couldn’t go patrolling.” It wasn’t a question. He had said it as its own confirmation.

“Have you watched any of these videos, Tony?” Peter said with quiet intensity pointing back at the projected image, “New York needs someone out there protecting them, and right now, no one is.”

Tony remained silent as he looked intently at Peter for a moment, his lips pushed up in thought. When he finally looked away, he gave a heavy sigh, and his hands came up in a loose shrug before he said, “Ok. You want to go out and patrol. Then I won’t stop you.”

“What?” Peter said slightly shocked, “You’re gonna let me go?” He was not expecting that reaction. He thought he would need to put up a fight, argue a bit more. Even then, he didn’t think Tony was going to allow him to go.

“Yeah. You want to patrol. I won’t stop you.” Tony said lightly.

Peter looked at Tony for a second, hesitating. His brows furrowed as he searched the man’s face. Something about Tony’s reaction bothered him, but he couldn’t think why. Why was that so easy? The thought was momentary, a sparked instinct to push for more information, but as soon as it came, it was swallowed up by the new thoughts of getting back to the city. If he could patrol, maybe he could do better reconnaissance, maybe even find the black haired man himself and question him.

“Uh, right.” Peter breathed out, “Then I’m gonna go.” He turned and started to leave the lab. Right when he got to the door, he looked back and saw Tony had already turned his back on him and was looking at each screen he had pulled up. He had started playing the frame-by-frame video again. His arms were crossed, and it was clear he was thinking and assessing everything he saw. Again, something in the back of Peter’s head told him he should stay, but he pushed it back stubbornly.

A couple hours later found Peter atop the lone skyscraper on campus. It was a massive clock tower that used to ring every hour with a real bell, but it had since been turned electronic, telling the time silently as it watched the students wander below. On nights when he needed to just think Peter would find himself up here, especially when he couldn’t be bothered making it to his usual favorite perches closer to the center of the city. Tonight, Peter was watching dusk settle over the city, thinking of a game plan for the night’s patrol.

Somehow, the other incidents had happened right where he was, no need to search far and wide. That left Peter with little direction as to where to start, but he still had to get moving. The shadows were growing, and that meant more alleys to hide in and go unnoticed.

Standing up, he shook himself loose, and flicked out his hand. His two middle fingers came to the base of his palm, tapping his web shooter to life. It responded with a string of web flying over to the next building, and just as Peter stepped off the tower, he spoke to his AI, “Karen, I want you to monitor for raised temperatures, and scan every face you can for Everett Mercury. Let’s make tonight worth it.”

“Initiating scanning parameters.” Karen confirmed.

As Peter swung, he felt his senses open up and his nerves coil like springs. The anticipation he held for finding another victim was growing, and he hated how afraid he was. It wasn’t just the fear of these people getting hurt. Frankly, that he could deal with. He’s had to deal with it. It was a responsibility of a superhero to deal with the fear of people getting hurt. No, he was afraid of seeing the side effects of this thing again. The glowing eyes, the pulsing veins, the shrill cry that comes with each victim—it was haunting. He was also afraid of holding another person in his arms as they fought whatever it was they were affected by. He didn’t know how many more people he could watch seize and drop into a comatose state.

He was uneasy, and he felt a little ashamed this thing had dug its claws into him so quickly, but the apprehension he didn’t want was still there all the same. With each flick of his wrist that carried him farther into the city, he tried to think of a way to turn that fear in his favor, but all he came up with was a sour and shaky form of adrenaline.

Much later into the night, Karen’s voice came out clear in Peter’s ear,“My scans show a man that fits the description of Everett Mercury by the ATM’s on the corner.”

Peter swung to the nearest rooftop, and upon crouching and turning around to look out at the four-way intersection he felt his senses buzz lightly. That annoying warning was back, and his skin crawled at the feeling. He spoke quietly to his AI, “Where is he?”

Before Karen could answer, Peter’s eyes found a black haired figure in a sharp suit standing motionless at the corner. When Peter found his eyes, he felt his stomach do a flip. The man was staring straight at him, unflinching and unfazed as their eyes met. His eyes were cold and dark, set within a face of stone. Each second felt stretched in time as Peter looked at him. He stood expectantly, like he had known Spiderman would be there, looking for him. As if to confirm the suspicion, a small smirk began to play itself on Mercury’s lips before he broke eye contact, turned and in a few steps, seemed to vanish into thin air.

“What? What was that?” Peter whispered harshly as he stared wide eyed at nothing, “no no no no!”

In a panic, he shot out a web, and launched himself down to the other side of the intersection. As he landed lightly on his feet where Mercury had been standing, he looked in all directions only to catch a glimpse of the dark suited figure slipping down a darkened road at the end of the street. Peter sprinted in that direction, and when he turned the corner he was met with more empty space.

What the hell?!

Scanning the area, Peter saw that he had run into a large empty courtyard. It was rundown, with pipes coming out haphazardly from the walls, concrete benches spotted the outskirts of the central space where the ground had broken and the cracks were growing grass and weeds. It was lit by a solitary orange street light that shone weakly at the entrance making shadows fall over the far side and its corners turn black.

As Peter squinted in the direction of those shadows, he saw a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. Flicking a web in the direction of the movement, he knew he had caught nothing as it hit a pipe with a hard hollow sound.

He jerked his head in the direction of the movement, and felt his body crouch instinctively, muscles tightening, ready to launch into motion.

Another glimpse of movement, and another web that hit nothing.

“I know you're in here!” Peter spoke out into the courtyard. Still crouched with fists clenched, he felt his heart hammering in his chest, and adrenaline coursing through his body.

Peter tried to hone in on his spidey senses hoping to locate the man that way. He felt the familiar buzzing at the back of his head, but the warning felt like it was coming from more than one direction. There was nowhere that didn’t feel threatening, and his mind began to go fuzzy the longer he tried to focus on it. It was like white noise slowly getting louder as the threat started to close in like walls.

In the fog taking over his brain, Peter didn’t notice the air shimmering a few feet in front of him until Everett Mercury had materialized in front of him. The man stood towering over Peter’s crouched figure, a smirk still on his face.

As quickly as he had appeared, his body crouched and shot out a hand which connected with Peter’s sternum and sent him flying into the wall behind him. After the hit landed, he vanished into the darkness again.

A voice, low and smooth came from the dark, “I’m not the one you should be focusing on, Spiderman.”

The impact had knocked the wind from Peter’s lungs, and he slipped to the ground on all fours coughing. He tried to right his breathing quickly as he scrambled up and got into a ready stance again, saying breathily, “Oh, yeah? And your cloak and dagger thing is what, a party trick? Doesn’t exactly convince me you’re a good guy.”

Peter didn’t get an answer. Mercury appeared at his side and shoved him hard enough to make Peter stumble towards the center of the open space. Peter tried to correct his balance and figure out where his opponent might be coming from, but there was nothing but mental static.

“It’s not about me being good or bad. I just follow orders. You on the other hand...What are you doing to save all those helpless people?” The disembodied voice spoke casually. It sounded like it was circling the perimeter of the yard. “You’re wasting time, Spidey.”

Peter knew he was being baited, but that didn’t stop a spark of fear and anger to go through him at the thought of more victims. Fuck, please be bluffing.

“Why are you doing this?” Peter growled, trying to stay focused on the task at hand.

“Why am I doing this?” The voice answered, amusement laced its deep tone, “I’m not doing anything. They seek us out.”

With the white noise still muffling his senses, Peter didn’t notice Mercury come up behind him until he was whispering in his ear, “They ask for it.”

Peter whirled around to see Mercury standing right in front of him. With a knee-jerk reaction, Peter shot out his fist, but he hit nothing as Mercury smoothly ducked out of the way. Peter pivoted to counter the dodge, but the dark haired man’s eyes flashed with an intensity that charged the air. It felt like the split second between when a fuse runs its course and the firework finally erupts. Except, Peter wasn’t ready for the explosion.

Mercury lunged forward, and swung his fists at Peter. First a straight cross, then an upper cut, then another jab. Mercury’s fists were flying, and each hit was made with a trained precision. The ferocity of the attack caught Peter off guard, and each blow was thrown with such brutal speed and power that he felt defenseless against them as they slowly pushed him backwards towards the wall.

Finally, a particularly harsh punch came and hit his face. Peter’s body gave him no choice but to drop to the ground dazed. He felt warm blood flow from his nose, and in the back of his head he guessed his nose might have been broken.

The other man, barely breathing heavy, stalked closer to Peter’s hunched figure, and mumbled something under his breath that Peter didn’t catch over the ringing in his ears. Then he picked Peter up by his shoulders and slammed him into a mess of pipes jutting from the wall behind him. A loud crack sounded, and pain radiated through Peter’s ribs as one of them broke on impact. His head rocked back into a lead pipe, and he felt the edge of yet another pipe’s broken opening cut into his skin because of the sheer force he was being pressed into it. Weakly, he tried and failed to squirm out of the other man’s grasp.

Mercury glared into Peter’s masked face and spoke in a low menacing voice, “You might not believe this, but what’s happening is for the better.” He looked between the two bright white eyes with cold intensity and growled, “Don’t fight this.”

He let go of Peter, who immediately slumped to the ground, and stepped back. Shadow engulfed Mercury’s figure once more, and he was gone.

Peter sat on the ground, clutching his torso, and trying to breath through the pain that was currently coursing through his body. It had been a while since he had been beaten up this badly, or been so taken by surprise. Why wouldn’t my spidey sense work? His pain addled brain couldn’t think of a reason just yet, and his main priority needed to be getting back to the dorms.

“Hey Karen, how far are we from campus?” Peter whispered out.

“You are currently 2 miles away.” The AI responded.

“Great,” He said a little high pitched, “I can do that. No problem.”

Shakily, he stood up and raised his arm to shoot out a web. The broken rib screamed in protest, but gritting his teeth against the pain, Peter shot and pulled himself into the air.

He must have blacked out as he swung back because Peter would not have been able to tell anyone how he managed to make it back to his dorm room that night. All he remembered was waking up on the floor during the very early hours of the day with Ned shaking him awake.

“Pete. Peter! You gotta wake up!” Ned’s voice was full of worry.

He groaned as his friend continued shaking him. He reached up his hand and swatted clumsily at the arm connected to the hand shaking his shoulder.

“Oh, thank god,” Ned sighed, “Dude, you’re a fucking mess. What the hell did you do tonight?”

Peter couldn’t form coherent thoughts just yet with the pain and disorientation his injuries were causing him, and just mumbled, “Patrol.”

“Yeah, figured that much out myself. I meant what happened to you?”

“Everett Mercury.” Peter said briefly, still trying to stop the spinning in his head.

“Whose that?” Ned asked curiously.

Just then, Peter’s phone began ringing and buzzing on his desk. Ned reached over Peter’s head and handed it to him. The screen’s brightness bit into Peter’s eyes and he flinched while making out the series of texts coming in from Tony.

Tony: We need to talk.

Tony: Mercury is enhanced and highly dangerous.

Tony: Do not engage with him. We need to make a plan

Too late, Tony... Peter thought as he felt each injury pulse in time with his heart.

There’s chapter 2! Please let me know any feedback you might have! I’d love to know if there are things you are hoping to see, or if you have any thoughts about the story in general. All reblogs are so incredibly appreciated! 💙❤️

Taglist (Let me know if you want to be added)

@cocoamoonmalfoy @empath-bunny @storybookholland @kassey @touchmethomas @greenorangevioletgrass @emilyparkerholland

#more than we hoped #more than we hoped chapter 2 #more than we hoped series #peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x you #college!peter #college!peter parker #college! au #college au #spiderman #spiderman x reader #spiderman x y/n #spiderman x you #marvel #mcu #reader insert #angst

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kajsa-writes-sometimes · 3 years

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Chp. III: The Second Letter

When the morning post came around, the clicking sound of a typewriter being used at an almost inhuman speed filled Angelina's home. Outside the world was wide-awake, and the concentrated writer let the bustling sounds of the street lul her into a world of her own.

Maybe that was why she didn't hear the knock at her door. No matter the reason, the thick, cream coloured envelope that dumbed down into the light grey letterbasket on the inside of the door went unnoticed for several hours.

Around noon she rose to her feet and stretched as far as she could reach. Her neck cracked and there came a popping sound from her right shoulder.

"I think it is just about time for lunch," she mumbled to herself as she looked at the pile of papers that lay neatly stacked next to her typewriter. "This is as good a time as any and let's face it, you are not going to run off in my absence."

Had anyone been around to hear her, they might have found it rather odd that she talked to no one in particular - and even more odd that she sometimes led entire conversations with her characters or herself. But no one was around to listen and as long as she did not expect an answer, Angelina really didn't have any concerns about her sanity.

Trudging over to the corner that substituted for the kitchen, she found a plate and placed half the pie Amanda had insisted she bring home back in the bag. She would eat half a pie now and half a pie at dinner, and then she would buy groceries on her way back from the newspaper tomorrow. There was, afterall, a pile of letters with her name on it, and she had a week's worth of columns she had to turn in.

With the plate in one hand and a fork with bent teeth in the other, she turned around to walk back to the table. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of something laying in her letter basket, and then she bent over slightly to place the plate next to the half finished first draft of her newest novel. Grabbing the chair, she was about to move it half a foot to the right so she wouldn't risk spilling pie on the pages– and then she froze.

Turning her head her eyes landed on the cream coloured envelope that awaited her attention. Her blood ran cold at the sight of it. As she walked over and lifted it from the basket, she debated what she dreaded most: A threat of ruining her career, or the possibility that he would stick to insulting her in the privacy of their correspondence.

How many letters did it even take for one to call it a correspondence? This was the second letter she received and counting her own reply that made up a correspondence of three letters.

Whatever the Duke had written to tell her, the sheer thickness of the envelope told her it would not be a short letter. It was almost as thick as her pinky, but if he wrote on the same paper he had used the last time, it was probably only half the pages it would have taken her to get the same volume.

She carefully slid the letter open. She flipped through the pages before she started to read.

"How many pages does one need?" she murmured as she leaned back on the chair and stretched her feet out in front of her. "He might as well have sent me a novel. Now let's see– where to start…"

She found the first page and began reading.

Dear Miss Ravenloft,

Let me begin by putting your mind at ease. Your letter was as delicately formulated as your novels, and I dare say that only a brute would be offended by what you wrote on those pages. Hopefully this short paragraph has given you one less burden to bear, and I hope that by the end of this letter you will let me lift more than this one burden from your shoulders.

Reading over your reply I realise, my first letter must have been unclear on several accounts. Please forgive me, Miss Ravenloft, for the misunderstanding and the confusion my first letter created. I will take it as a testimony to why you are the writer and I, a mere admirer of your work!

On the following pages I will try to clear up any misunderstandings created by my last letter, and then I will try to calm your mind on the matter of the not entirely unrelated business you mentioned in your reply to my aforementioned letter.

You wrote that you do not feel deserving of the support I offered you — and I want to empathize that the support I'm offering is in no way restricted to financial aid — if all I got out of it was the measly pages of your books.

This is not true. Your books are by no known standard measly, as you like to call them. I enjoy your writings to such an extent that I have copies of them in my library both at my land estate, my champers at Hemwick University, and in my London residence.

Angelina stopped reading to do the math. If he had bought three copies of her previous publications that would mean he was responsible for– that couldn't be right! She did the math over in her head, but she did not get a different number.

"I'm just going to ignore how much of my revenue that adds up to," she mumbled. Before she picked up the letter once more, she stuck a piece of pie in her mouth and started chewing.

If my word is not enough to convince you that I would be satisfied to support you knowing that it would help you continue to write then this story must surely convince you. If you are still hesitant to accept my offer without doing anything in return, I will make you a second proposal: Continue to write your stories and let me read the novels when they are published. Apart from this I will ask you to spend a week with me in London in the summer, and a week at my land estate in the winter. On top of this you will agree to meet with me when I stay at Hemwick University. All of this will naturally take place under the supervision of a chaperone of your own choosing– it could be a lady friend of yours, one of your relatives, or maybe a young woman from my household staff.

I think we can agree that this arrangement will solve the problem of you not working hard enough to earn your keep. If there is something about my proposal, you find unsuitable or that you fear will reflect badly on your reputation, please let me know in your reply so that we can change the offending detail to your liking.

I will — in one of my coming letters — attach a list of possible dates for your first visit at my London estate. I know there is a little more than four months until the start of the season, but I will need to inform my staff that two extra rooms will have to be prepared for your arrival.

Now, before you start arguing about the amount I offered in my first letter, I will not budge. Before reaching out to you, I consulted my sources — in whom I have the greatest trust — who let me know how much a respectable pensionate costs nowadays. I know the amount I offered is somewhat higher than this amount, but I doubt you are able to live off of your words alone and surely you need money to spend on both paper and ink to create your stories.

If you have any concerns about whether or not the agreed amount will be enough to cover your expenses, you should write to me immediately. The same should be the case if you find yourself in need of covering unplanned expenses. I will set up a bank account in a bank of your liking once I receive your reply to this letter. If you have no preferred bank, I will set up an account for you in my preferred branch.

This part of the letter took far longer to write than anticipated so I shall try and make the following as short as possible.

I have reached out to some associates of mine who know the industry. They have let me know that there is a pall of scepticism when it comes to your work, but they do not see it as an impossible task to get your next novel published through a “publisher in the Empire” as you formulated it in your letter. It might take some convincing, but my associates assure me that it is nothing a well formulated letter will not fix. My associates have collected a list of publishers they feel would be possible to persuade. I considered sending it along, but I feel it is better we discuss it face to face so that you can have some influence on the discussion with a publisher of your choice.

I hope this letter has put your mind to ease and answered some of the misunderstandings and uncertainties left behind by my first letter to you. Please take your time to consider these new additions to our agreement and if necessary write for clarification.

I will be awaiting your reply,

Northern Hemwick

As she reached the end of the letter, Angelina resorted to stare blankly out the window. It wasn’t much she could see, but the soot covered, yellow bricks of the opposing building, and her eyes registered even less. She had been convinced, her letter had been easy enough to understand, but the rejection of the Duke’s offer to become her patron had apparently gone unnoticed– or at the least ignored.

“No, I can not handle this today,” she said as she stood. “I will send a note to Jean and get his opinion on the matter.”

She placed her empty plate and the fork on the stove. Still standing she grabbed a pen and scribbled a short note on a discarded piece of paper that she promptly stuck into an envelope. The door smacked close behind her as she went out to find someone who could deliver her message to Jean.

“If things continue like this, I won’t have to worry about a publisher; I will never get the chance to finish writing my story!”

A/N: I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I did. Please let me know by leaving a note, a like, or by reblogging this chapter - I'm grateful for all appreciation that comes my way

The entire story can be found on Wattpad or by following the links in this master post

#the true story of a poor writer and her unwanted patron #wip #write #writblr #writlr #writeblr #writing #kajsa writes #my writings #my writing #novel wip #original fiction #historical fiction #slow love #slow burn

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tothedarkdarkseas · 5 years

Note

For fanfic writer ask meme: E, J, K, M, P(for any fic or all your fics), R, T, X, and Y. (If that's too many questions, then you can split the answer into multiple posts. Also, no need to answer if you already answered these questions before.)

Thank you so much! I’ll put these below a cut just to account for the length, and I pray Tumblr works like it’s supposed to this evening! I appreciate you having an interest!

E: What character do you identify with most? Is there a certain fic of yours that captures these qualities particularly well?

I really do not identify with Gorillaz characters and thank god for it, or most characters I tend to prefer! Haha, I know that might sound a bit strange, but I can think of very few characters I’d call “my favorite” that I also felt were a reflection of myself in a major way. Of course that isn’t implying that representation isn’t important, but just speaking for my own personal relationship to media– I live with myself all the time, I like people who live very different lives! Having said that, of the characters I write (all two, possibly three of ‘em) I’d say I identify with some of Stu’s worst qualities over anything else: being unambitious but craving reward, self-centered yet lacking in a concrete sense of self, dumb about mostly everything, overcompensating (to be fair, this is Murdoc as well) and so on. Despite picking fun at him I definitely have an affection for an unlikable guy like Stu, I do have sympathy for being sorta pathetic because I feel like I can access that.

J: What’s your favorite fanfic trope? Have you written it?

Hmm! That’s hard to say! At the risk of being an absolute knob, I don’t tend to be a fan of tropes, or at least what I think is meant here by “fanfic tropes” like uhh… the heat goes out and we have to share a bed, or that kind of thing? Is that what this means, the sort of repeated setups for fics? There’s of course a place for everything so I’ve got no real beef with more innocuous stuff, but I wouldn’t say I ever pick to read something because it’s got a “classic” trope. I’m definitely rife with tropes in the broader sense though, I’m rife with things I like and clearly just repeat, haha. I do not smoke pot, but I have a real affinity for characters who do, and this is evidenced by having like… half my stories feature that, haha. If a scene where two characters creep up to being intimate via sharing a joint/bowl/bong counts, that’s definitely a trope I’ve done and would probably do again.

K: Do you have a guilty pleasures in fic (reading or writing)?

Does the above count? I’d certainly call myself self-indulgent, haha, I like what I like and I don’t stray very far from it. I think unsatisfying or incompatible intimacy is really interesting and I honestly never get tired of reading or writing that. (Er, as much as I “don’t get tired” of writing anything, which is not saying much as I’m very bad and undisciplined.)

M: What’s the weirdest AU scenario you’ve ever come up with? Did it turn into a story?

The only AU I’ve written is Coffin Dancer, which is a story set in the early 1900s about Murdoc being a reanimated corpse and Stu being a gravedigger who buries/exhumes him. Sexy, I know, nothing hotter than… long paragraphs about digging. I think the occult element makes that one a bit weirder than anything else I’ve come up with. I’ve kind of entertained other AU ideas but they tend to be a lot more mundane, to be frank I just really like the characters as they are and I don’t want to change their dynamic too much. As a joke I once suggested something about a riverboat casino (Stu working there, Murdoc trying to pull a money laundering scam via currency exchange, potentially convincing Stu to go in on the scam with him) and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still think about it sometimes and question how to make it work, haha. I think it might be fun to do an AU again, but I think there’s just too much of a gap between what I’d want to do or be capable of doing, and what people actually want to read.

P: Where did you find the most inspiration for your story ?

Oh gosh, this makes it sound so important and I feel like the biggest jag going to pretend I’ve made anything that great or with particularly impressive roots, haha. A couple came from prompts, so that’s a fairly straightforward answer.

I first began planning Coffin Dancer because I was playing Graveyard Keeper on Steam at the time, haha. If you load up this game, you’ll quickly see there is next to no plot and it is simply a crafting sim. I just sorta… liked the setting, I guess? It is the 1900s and it does follow a graveyard keeper! Following that, I decided it would be a story about Murdoc’s skin turning from tan to green as it does in canon, but giving it a bit of a morbid tint, as opposed to the vague canon handwaves of Murdoc being “immortal” with no clear explanation of what that means.

Ampersands was mostly inspired by me being a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and thinking it’d be fun to show a dynamic similar to Angelus/Drusilla/Spike, but heavily reworked to fit our characters. The first scene I imagined was the shoelace-tying one which has some resemblance to a shot of Angelus knelt at Spike’s feet while still mocking him, and that ended up being the very last scene I wrote (and probably one of the weaker ones.)

On Oysters and Black Water was actually the story that required the least research from me, as I already had an interest in oyster filtration and oyster reef restoration. By no means am I an expert nor is this story a genuinely educated look at this process (I am Genuinely Educated on zero things) but I definitely knew when planning a PB story that I wanted oysters to be used for a filtration system on the island, just as a little nod to something I find neat!

R: Which writers (fanfic or otherwise) do you consider the biggest influence on you and your writing?

This really puts me at risk of sounding knobbish, so to start with: I’m not really a writer. Fanfiction writer is already not the most impressive title, but even that I feel is a little generous for me. I’ve written things, but I struggle far too much and have too little dedication to pretend it’s something I feel “cut from the same cloth” as these folks to do. The writers I admire have “influenced” me in the sense that I’ve wished I could write that way, and I’ve probably/definitely ripped them off.

Some will find this laughable, but I’m a fan of Joey Comeau’s writing style. I’ve enjoyed every book he’s published, in particular the short novels Malagash and Lockpick Pornography, and especially his… err, non-novel collection of cover letters Overqualified. (I think I’ve read Overqualified more than anything else on my bookshelf, but this is saying very very little as you can sit down and read it in about 30 minutes.) The darkly comedic way he presents these ideas, how he’ll expand on these very offbeat details and veer so far from the topic, then take sudden sharp turns into something uncomfortable is just enjoyable to me.

Also somewhat cliched now, but Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is a beautiful book to me. Beagle’s writing style is ideal for the fantasy setting, the poetry in his prose does not tip over the “purple” line for me (but I’ve always been unclear where the line is, obviously) and I’d really… feel like I’d accomplished something if I could say anything half as powerful as this book.

Shirley Jackson, (famously) the author of The Lottery and (less famously) We Have Always Lived in the Castle springs to mind as well. The latter in particular has a gothic tone, an at times strange sentence structure and an unreliable POV, which probably influenced Coffin Dancer stylistically and everything else I’ve done in perspective/structure.

But as far as influences, nothing more directly influenced me than @elapsed-spiral‘s writing and characterization. Old drum I’ve beat before, but it’s simply the truth. I would not have tried to write fanfiction again (after… many, many years) if I hadn’t found Danni’s stories and felt that excitement of reading something truly special. Now, it’s important to note that Danni is British so they’ll come out in hives if I praise them too much, but sincerely nothing in recent years has made me feel a “passion” for reading or writing like Yearz did. The oneshots Fairy Vale and Beside the Sea also deserve special mention for just being goddamn phenomenally good character studies. “Influence on your writing” could be misleading, in the sense that Danni’s biggest strengths (namely Being Funny, Being Realistic and Knowing What You Are Talking About) are among my biggest weaknesses, and I don’t feel that stylistically we’re all that similar; on the flipside though, I think so much of my “improvement” is really owed to Danni, aaaand I don’t think you’d ever look at something I’ve written and miss the fact that it’s ripping off Yearz in one way or another.

T: Any fanfic tropes you can’t stand?

Ahaha, alright, this jogs my memory and I do remember stepping on eggshells to answer this before! I mentioned above that I’m just not a big fan of tropes in general, but that means nothing as I don’t… have good taste. I never have. Famously bad taste over here. I don’t have any interest in raining on anyone’s fun or policing fan content, but I think we’re all perfectly fine just co-existing without feeling obligated to anything. More than anything else, in Gorillaz specifically I’d say there are some portrayals of their relationship that I find a little dodgy and I tend to avoid, but I recognize full well that many people may feel the same way about me! I also just like the characters to be compelling and to be themselves, whatever your version of them is. Of course my characterization is bonkers and mostly made-up and I have no expectation that someone else’s should resemble mine, but even if we have different ideas, I don’t like to feel you can slot them out and anyone else in? Which is why standard tropes like “coffeeshop” or “fake dating” don’t tend to be my favorite. Oh, I’m also a fuddy-duddy and I don’t love the nicknames, haha.

X: How would you categorize your fanfic reading? Are you a voracious reader? Do you carefully pick and choose? Something in between?

I’m not a very big reader these days! I’d like to offer you a good excuse here, but I’m just picky, truth be told.

Y: What are your thoughts on your personal satisfaction with something you’ve written vs. the popularity of your stories? Do you tend to be most satisfied with your most popular stories?

In total honesty, it takes all of about a month to become completely unsatisfied with anything I’ve written. That’s not like, a plea for sympathy, it’s just being objective. I write comparatively little and comparatively slow, so whatever growth that may happen is still pretty limited and it’s a little disheartening, even if it’s also my own fault for having poor discipline. I would not call any of my stories “good,” at best “good for what they are.” There are definitely some I wished did better, I wished with a stupid amount of sincerity would hit some magical validating number that would Suddenly Mean It Was Good… but after a little distance, I can always understand why they wouldn’t.

Hoooowever, some are undeniably worse than others. Based on both hits and kudos, my most popular story is my first one (I Couldn’t Feel, So I Would Touch) and this is truly baffling as it’s garbage. I mean, with no exaggeration I just think this is bad writing through and through, it’s truly just the worst thing I’ve written over the age of 20. I hoped I’d get this question purely because of this, haha, I feel such shame every time I see this story at the top of my statistics page. If we consider that to be the “most popular,” no, I do not tend to be most satisfied with the most popular story. We could define that differently though; for example, I think the story that got the most notes here and I received spectacular fanart on (a thing I just… can’t believe can happen, how nice is that?) was Oysters, and at a time I did consider that my favorite, I was incredibly proud of it when I posted, and even if I’ve grown exhausted by my overwriting too much to read it again I do still rate it pretty favorably compared to the others. So it depends on what constitutes popular! But if we’re just talking hits and kudos, sadly my stats page puts some of the worst stuff at the top.

#i've got to head to bed so i apologize if there are any glaring errors in this answer!#Anonymous #thank you very much for the letters! that's a kindness!

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theliteraryarchitect · 7 years

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8 Ways to Improve Your Writing

I got a great anonymous ask last week from someone who wanted to know how to identify weak spots in their writing. One of the things that comes with time and experience is finding the language to identify, discuss, and address the feeling that something isn’t quite right or that a story is “missing something.” Not knowing them or their writing, of course I couldn’t help them figure out what specifically the problem was. But I did share with them a list of things I’ve done over the years to be able to identify weak spots and improve my writing.

1. Analyze your favorite writers.

Figure out why you like the writing that you like. Ask yourself: What are they doing here? What are they doing that I’m not doing? Why do I love their writing so much? Take notes on their stories. Plot them. Write in the margins. Read them slowly. Read their reviews—both good and bad. Did that writer you love once write something you hated? Great, even better. Figure out why that particular book was different from the others.

2. Analyze your own writing.

Do you have an older story you wrote that you love? Figure out why. What did you do differently in that story that you’re not doing in the current story you’re writing? Make notes. Draw maps. Reverse engineer everything.

3. Develop a language to talk and think about writing.

Read craft books, blogs, anything you can get your hands on. Learn about point of view, conflict, character development, dialogue, story structure, syntax, metaphors. Get your advice from good sources, and don’t believe everything you read. If something doesn’t sit right with you, throw it out. But be open to everything.

4. Journal and write about your writing.

Over time, you will identify consistent weaknesses that you have. Then, in the future, when you feel like “something is missing” from your writing, you can reference your notes and remember, for example, that you often have difficulty with your protagonist’s motivation, with theme, with dialogue, etc., and you’ll have a better idea about where to go looking.

5. Share your writing with someone you trust, ideally a more experienced writer than you or an editor or mentor.

Be very careful about who you share your writing with. Friends and family are not always the best choice. You don’t want someone who’s just going to throw around their uneducated opinion about your work, who has a big ego, or who won’t be honest with you. Remember: “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” are useless pieces of feedback. You want someone who can read your work and say, “Your protagonist’s passion for music made them really likeable to me. I was dying to know whether they would get into the conservatory or not!” or “My attention wandered on page two, when you described the couch upholstery for three paragraphs.”

6. Analyze the areas of your writing which are commonly problematic for new writers (and writers in general).

In my experience as an editor, the most likely culprits are unclear character motivation and lack of conflict. There are a lot of good resources (books and blogs) about this. Try a Google search for “most common mistakes beginning writers make.”

7. Trust your intuition.

Do you keep coming back to the same page or scene in your story, feeling like it isn’t right? You’re probably onto something.

8. Take time away from your writing.

You’d be amazed how much more clear everything will be after a break. Give yourself at least a week for a short story, 3-4 weeks for a novel. It could also be the case that your ambitions for this particular story don’t yet match your skills, and that you’ll have to wait even longer to successfully finish it. I’ve known writers who have given up on a story only to come back to it months or years later once they’d gained the skills and insight to complete it. And then suddenly writing that story seemed really easy!

#writing advice #how to be a better writer #writing tips #fiction #nanowrimo #writeblr #plot #character development #craft #self care #journal #writers #reading #books #op

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fmradio-johnnystation · 6 years

Text

Writing wrap up of 2018

Wooooooooah 2018 passed so quickly?? ngl when this year started, I just wanted it to be over. But this year I got back into writing around May and I’m so grateful that I did! So here’s a little summary of my writing year.

Stats:

List of Fics Posted:

The game begin ; NCT ; Jungwoo/Lucas.

Red as blood and green as seaweed ; Stray Kids ; Hyunjin/Seungmin Glow ; Stray Kids ; Hyunjin-centric Love is ; Stray Kids ; Hyunjin/Felix Storm and stars ; Stray Kids ; Felix/Jisung, Chan/Minho, Changbin/Hyunjin & Jeongin/Seungmin Of detention and makeout sessions ; Stray Kids ; Felix/Jisung Of locker rooms kisses ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Woojin Of studios and nose kisses ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Jisung Of palm kisses and chipped nailpolish ; Stray Kids ; Felix/Woojin Guess how much I love you ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Felix Of warm beds and morning coffee ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Minho Sharp fangs and blood stained hands ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Seungmin Dishes, vaccuum cleaners and soft kisses ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Woojin Twist and turn, moonchild ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Jeongin For as long as I am breathing ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Felix I’ll hold you as you bleed ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Hyunjin Take my hand and never let go ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Felix/Woojin Hocus pocus ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Felix Fuzzy socks, ugly sweaters and sweet ‘I love you’s ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Felix/Woojin 31 days of kisses ; Stray Kids ; multiple ships Twisted Souls ; Stray Kids ; Chan/Felix [Unannounced skz exchange fic]* ; Stray Kids ; TBA

*WIll update with tag and name later when the fic is announced.

Total number: 22 Total word count: 228.442 Ship/character breakdown:

I always try to vary the ships I’m writing to give content to all ships, even the small ones. But over this year I’ve come to love Chanlix a lot, so the ship I’ve been writing the most is Chanlix, Jilix being a close second.

Characters that had the main focus:

My top 3 of 2018 is: 1. Chan, who’s the main in 13 fics 2. Felix, who’s the main in 9 fics 3. Hyunjin, who’s the main in 6 fics

I’m obviously aussie line biased. Also I’ve realized that I really enjoy writing Chan for some reason.

Specifics:

Best/worst title?

Best: For as long as I am breathing. I have no idea why I like it so much, maybe it’s because I like the au so much but it just makes me happy when I see the title.

Worst: Red as blood and green as seaweed because ?? what ?? but since it was just a short thing I’m not gonna bother it hdhd

Best/worst first line?

Best: The moon was bathing the lush, green forest in its sickly white light as it slowly rose on the dark sky. - From Twist and turn, moonchild. I just really liked this one for some reason. It sets the mood really nicely imo. Worst: “You look nervous,” his father noted as their carriage was making its way towards the castle. - From For as Long as I am breathing. This is just... uGH like I don’t really hate it, it’s just that I wrote it just to get started with the whole fic and then I never went back to change it and it just feels kind of awkward.

Best/worst last line?

Best: The stories of the creature so twisted and the soul so kind. - From Twisted souls. I just really like this one, unclear why really. But I really enjoyed the last two paragraphs of this fic.

Worst: “Thank you for being my bodyguard.” - From Twist and turn, moonchild. Because... what? why and uGh no. I struggled with wrapping this fic up because I wanted to keep it short and I guess I just pulled smth out of my a ss to just end it.

Best/worst summary?

Best: This is the story about a creature so twisted by evil, who found their way home. - From Twisted souls. I really liked this one. Because it sort of gave some of the plot away, as a summary probably should do, but also kept to the more poetic vibe I went with for this fic.

I also really like: The sun rose, painting the sky a beautiful pink as it bathed the landscape in its warm light. In the comfort of his home, their home, Woojin awoke slowly, surrounded by nothing but love and warmth. - From Take my hand and never let go. Simply because this is one of few summaries that I actually wrote specifically to be summaries.

Worst: Vampire!Chan & Witch!Felix in a very domestic setting. - From Hocus pocus. I don’t really have a summary that I really dislike so I’ll just put this one here simply because it just stares the content and it’s pretty boring.

Favorite 5 lines from anywhere?

1. “You know what would be even better?” Felix asked and Chan hummed, lips still pressing against Felix’s skin and his hand came to rest on Felix’s thigh. “If you married me this winter.” - From For as long as I am breathing.

2. “I’ll chase the fear and the pain away, love,” he promised as Hyunjin let out a choked sob. - From I’ll hold you as you bleed.

3. “You’re no longer wilting away,” Felix’s whispered, stroking the back of his hand over Chan’s cheek. - From Twisted souls.

4. “And then they lived happily ever after,” he said, pressing his lips against Felix’s. - From Storm and stars.

5. But he was getting better. - From Glow.

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

Considering that I wrote 700 words last year, so for me to write over 200k... that was very unexpected.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

Stray kids because 1. I didn’t stan them last year and 2. I barely wrote anything last year.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

I don’t... I don’t really know. All my three longfics are special to me but I think For as long as I am breathing or Twisted Souls takes the prize as my favorite... I think I’m gonna have to say For as long as I am breathing.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

The most popular must have been Storm and Stars, but its also the oldest of my multichaptered fics. 31 days of kisses and For as long as I am breathing are both closing in on Storm and stars when it comes to the amount of hits.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

TWISTED SOULS. But also like, its just recently been completed (and I know some people dont read unfinished fics), its a pretty underrated ship (so I guess not a lot read fics about them) and the tags + the word count might be a bit intimidating.

Story that could have been better?

[Redacted] could definitely have been better. I didn’t manage to get a full grasp of how I wanted the plot until it was maybe a bit too late and it ended up super rushed.

Saddest story?

Twisted souls probably. It deals with some pretty heavy things and yeah, it’s the saddest thing I’ve written this year.

Most fun?

hM.... Most of my fics are pretty serious or just straight out fluff and not really funny in that way. But... maybe Hocus pocus ? Unsure but that’s the funniest of my fics lmao.

Story with single sweetest moment?

For as long as I am breathing has a bunch of insanely sweet moments and I just love that au.

Hardest story to write?

Twisted souls but that’s mainly because of the fight scenes. I’m pretty bad at action so that was a challenge.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

For as long as I am breathing... That was insane. The words just came to me like poOF and it was so easy to write for me... why is very very unclear.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

I don’t... think it did no. Not what I can come to think of.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I tried writing action, but that’s more of a challenge than a risk I guess. I don’t think I took any risks per say but I challenged myself a little with action. I’ve also tried to work on my descriptions, both nature and clothing. Not a risk, but a challenge.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Wips I really want to finish: - Sequel to For as long as I am breathing - “Suffer suffer scream in pain” aka a gore piece I’m working on - A new merboy fic

General goals - Get better at descriptions - Work on writing action scenes - Be a bit better at editing - Write around 300k - Start working on my own original piece

That was everything... I think! 2018 has been an amazing year for me, writing wise, but I’m a bit sad I didn’t get back to it earlier. However, the response I’ve gotten this year has been amazing and I don’t have enough works to express my gratitude.

Thank you!

#writing things #julia's writing #fic wrap up #wrap up 2018

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andseperand · 8 years

Text

thoughts

ive been sitting on this post for the better part of a year. i tried to read through it and make edits, but im going to have to post this as is. maybe ill be able to edit it someday. anyway, this is completely composed of spoilers.

tl;dr: i mostly wrote bitterness about “kung food,” “origins part 1,″ and “reflekta.”

these are my thoughts on what ive watched of the first season of miraculous ladybug (i have watched most of every episode except the last three).

i may be confused or misinformed on some points. some of this is not as serious as other parts, and the writing style is disjointed because i didnt write it all in one go. any links are formatted within brackets (as in [text]).

ordered by the order i initially watched (parts of) the episodes in and indicated by villain name somehow (english, korean, french, french translation, etc.).

stormy weather/climatika

why did alya just toss manon like that? she couldve hurt something just being thrown around with her tiny little bones and joints that lack any significant cushioning. not to mention that her neck is completely unsupported. safety, much?

the bubbler/le bulleur

so the record is fully functional but also survived getting smacked off a building on its edge? wow.

copycat/l’imposteur/the imposter

i get that alya is supposed to be that “go-getter” friend who pushes marinette to be brave, but honestly, if she had waited another minute for marinette to be more ready for making a phone call, this wouldve been less of a mess. yeah, i get the “pushing boundaries to build confidence,” but honestly we could have waited for marinette to stop stalking adrien, too.

i gotta say: marinette is truly fearless. my phone is so suspicious. i would not have the confidence to deliberately touch it with my face and risk contact with who knows what has been on it.

the “moral” or whatever of this episode is kind of unclear? steal someones phone and run into issues with security but then also somehow break into it and get what you want anyway? no, thats not okay. its not that funny that marinette legitimately stole someones phone, and she doesnt even get seriously reprimanded for this.

timebreaker/chronogirl

one of the most pressing questions i have for this episode is why no one thought of using pockets or a bag or something to hold this important watch. hand perspiration is pretty bad for a lot of older and newer mechanical objects alike. why is this clearly-important item treated any different? ive considered both the “tikki is in the bag” (doesnt mean it has to be marinettes bag) and the “girl pockets” (marinette designed her own clothes, though) possibilities, and im still stumped.

mister/monsieur/mr./m. pigeon

how did chloe know what the colors were or even what the embroidery pattern looked like from a pencil sketch? it looked like chicken scratch.

lady wifi

im not sure that “dont violate other peoples privacy” was very well stated, seeing as alya was landed with an unfairly harsh punishment due to corrupt politicians. and how did that get resolved, anyway? was she still suspended? was there even supposed to be a moral in this mess?

the pharaoh/le pharaon

the villain is a pharaoh, continuing the ages-long trend of pretending ancient egyptian culture is just ~so interesting~ and that its portrayal isnt exploitative at all. i cant really say much about this, but i dont like those special ancient egypt episodes of anything.

rogercop

a mess

im pretty sure that this was to save animation budget or something, but why was marinette picking up those croissants off the floor and arranging them so nicely as if it really mattered what she did with them besides cleaning up the spill? i guess ill let it slide if shes trained that way as an advertising thing (though advertising doesnt get a free pass by default just because its strange).

the evillustrator/evil artist/le dessinateur

off topic, but could that tablet also erase or create living beings?

dark cupid/le dislocoeur/heartbreaker

this was still technically a kiss without consent? doesnt really feel all that romantic and whatnot. i cant really get behind this as shipping material.

horrificator

side note: i really liked how chloes english voice actor delivered the lines mockingly announcing mylenes “award” in the beginning.

im not a fan of the “you must kiss as part of acting” plot point. it always gives off those peer pressure vibes from other people and opportunistic vibes from main characters who want to actually kiss the other person.

darkblade/le chevalier noir/the black knight

sabrina is honestly super lucky that marinette made her box have a hole big enough for super tiny animated character wrists or else she wouldve been in a world of more pain.

alya had a platform? im so confused about how this election worked. did they do ballots or some sort of “heads down” in-class vote thing?

the/le mime

seeing as people dont lose their memories of being attacked by the villains, i really dont see how tearing down the eiffel tower (even in an animated show where people are not in the structure at the time) is the best way to minimize traumatic experiences. i get that it was supposed to be a “wow” moment for the plot and just visual effects but not the appeal.

kung food

the second i ever laid my eyes on this name i knew it would be bad, i just didnt know how bad because there were just so many ways it couldve gone with that phrase and i didnt know what to expect until i actually watched the episode. more on this in a bit.

there was literally no point to having the famous chef be related to marinette other than contrived circumstances to get adrien into this episode. im using this as a launching off point for talk of other stuff.

why didnt marinettes parents do anything about a relative coming to their house? this really baffles me because they have their daughter meet an effective stranger with no help.

why didnt marinettes parents tell her what languages the relative spoke? honestly, it kind of seems like they just didnt even care if this would cause her extreme anxiety or anything. you would really think they would have at least discussed this as a family because it was made pretty clear that his visit was actually expected. i thought way higher of their characters until it seemed that they pulled this crap move.

i know it was supposed to be all cute and a bonding moment when adrien came over to translate, but it was even more of a disaster. why did they take a car literally around the corner to get to the hotel? why didnt the chef go directly to the hotel if it was so close? was that adriens car? who was in charge of organizing this event and making sure the contestants didnt end up in the wrong place? how in the world did the chef even get to the bakery? because of the close proximity of the hotel to the bakery, it doesnt make sense that he would go to the bakery instead from an airport or something? unless he was supposed to meet his relatives? which, in this case, was not facilitated at all? so many questions are raised.

i dont speak nor understand mandarin, but im pretty sure adriens wasnt good enough for him to actually be complimented for it. then again, its nothing new to see white people getting complimented for deigning to learn a ~foreign language~ while i get interrogated about my lack of “authenticity” for not speaking “my native tongue,” so i guess the writers were just being realistic.

he bowed...funny story, at least one time i went to a restaurant with other visibly asian people and the apparently-white waiter kept making this weird head bobbing motion every time they left the table and what im saying here is that i know adrien has presumably been learning about culture stuff, but i also know firsthand that creators really love to shove bowing into media whenever asian people show up. (that waiter did give us extra mints, so i guess that was nice.)

sarcasm alert: i love when ~asian~ people have ~asian~ accents. its not like this is a tired gimmick that i dont need to see literally everywhere i turn (oh, wait! according to the english version, it is! hooray for me! this is probably the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me ever! im not being sarcastic at all! or overly sarcastic to the point where im sarcastically putting in that everything ive written in this paragraph is sarcastic because im just so mad! or maybe it definitely is! it probably is all sarcasm!) [bonus sarcasm here]

the chefs english/default dub language fluency was either inconsistent or this was just a straight-up rude portrayal of a nonnative speaker of a language, because adrien didnt seem to wait five seconds (for the chef to even consider the question about what he was cooking) before talking to the chef (and naturally, being a polite person, the chef listened to what adrien was saying), and i feel like it was only for the sake of adrien being ~useful~ because right after that, he talks to the chef in english/whatever language? dont think i didnt notice that his english speaking got “better” after becoming a villain. you know, if they hadnt faked the accent in the first place, they wouldnt have had to hastily cover for the fact that their voice actor couldnt even execute it well.

im sure adrien and marinette tag-teaming to argue with chloe and her racist comments was supposed to be this whole “wow look at that team” deal, but it felt like adrien was shoehorned into this mess sloppily. woohoo for the white boy defending marinette because she cant do it herself or something! i do appreciate when white people help stand up for me, but in this context, it feels off.

i have such a big problem with the “pep talk” adrien gives marinette when she thinks the chef doesnt like her. first thing, white boy explaining things about a person of color to a person of color, and the two people are actually literally related? i think the bouquet misunderstanding was really bizarre, and when did adrien have time to gain all this extensive exposition? the interview when they first arrived was short, and i dont think that both adrien and the chef would be so rude as to exclude marinette from their conversation in the car on the way over. this just comes off as a way to have adrien ~encouraging~ marinette, and its not a very good one.

this supposedly super prestigious competition literally has no security to make sure no one is mucking around behind the scenes, let alone ensure that the contestants arent up to any funny business. because why not. and no cameras around either, because cooking-based television programs never show any cooking, just the tasting and subsequent subjugation by a villain (this is a sarcastic sentence). even if this is supposed to be a featured dish and thus one they dont want to showcase the recipe behind, they could still have those little soundbites interspersed with candid panorama shots (can you tell i have no idea what any of these words mean?). im just going to have to chalk this one up to animation budget and move on.

i know this was just a sort of (intendedly funny) visual thing, but i highly doubt that the objects chloe put in the soup could just go unnoticed, especially since i presume a chef would thoroughly stir (and taste) their cooking, and the soup didnt appear to have properties of decomposing things touching it. otherwise that tasting session would probably have turned out a little messier (i am completely kidding here).

why is the chef being upset about being sabotaged made into a ~cultural~ thing? why is a white boy telling marinette about her ~own~ culture? sheesh, its like you cant just be upset because your shot at a world title was ruined on live television and you have confirmation that you were deliberately sabotaged. yes, chloe did it because shes petty and racist, but the results of her actions could upset anyone! its not just because the chef is chinese! what is the point of saying that? its a pointless throwaway comment! why dont you just find some other way to get the chef alone so he can be become a villain that isnt a) nonsensical and b) making sweeping generalizations about people? (granted, i cant speak to the validity of anything said about cultures, but i sure can comment on why saying such things about them isnt okay regardless).

“kung food” oh my god. this is such a piece of crap name. it is racist. you can literally try to argue against this until youve gone far beyond oxygen deprivation and in a grave but itll still be racist by the time youre done. aside from the pharaoh, there arent a bunch of ~ethnic~ names (not that it would be okay for that to be the case anyway) running around, and yet we get one with this specific villain whose ethnic and national origin is talked to death? okay.

and ive seen this pointed out, but the villain appearance seems to have a kind of anime-inspired design, which is honestly a good laugh because who was just talking about not conflating china and japan again? weeaboos and sinaboos are often in the same boat.

okay, not related, but adrien just had to taste a suspicious substance off the floor. why. there are so many ways to figure out what a substance is before putting it in your mouth. or you could just not do that at all. before this point, they did not appear to suspect a food-related villain, so this couldve ended badly.

another side note: i dont know how that receipt retained its integrity long enough for ladybug to wrap the villain up after dipping it in the soup. do the magical items just have super special properties like extra toughness that allows them to defy the reality of paper receipts? i wonder how many of the things ive talked about in this post have been me marveling at the sturdiness of lucky charm items.

of course this turns into an ~accountability~ lesson for marinette. and chloe doesnt get reprimanded? yeah, she got booted off a panel she didnt even want to be on and no one actually clearly articulated to her that the things she said were absolutely unacceptable? then again, this is a “diversity episode,” so i dont know why my standards are so high.

wow, marinette really needed to have adrien encourage her before going to take a picture with her great-uncle? im going to be generous and allow that she wanted to make sure he would be okay with her ditching him for her much cooler great-uncle because she didnt want him to feel bad about how not-cool he is in comparison. there, you see what i mean about making up story elements? (though im really not much of a writer, oops.)

im so over people making fun of how others dress as a joke. before i realized that i am autistic and reflected back on my life, i didnt realize that i gravitate toward clothing i find comfortable rather than fashionable, and ive always gotten negative comments, ill-intended or otherwise. so i really didnt appreciate marinettes jab at chloe, even if it was to defend herself. it was just unnecessary.

i want to talk about the whole ~chinese representation~ thing in this show. yeah, i know marinette is one of the very few chinese and mixed main characters out there (and there are barely any that are both), but im going to be super honest about this: i dont think shes all that great. i am a big fan of her and this show, but that doesnt make it infallible. the fact that adrien of all people is telling her about her own culture is a huge failing in itself. i dont know everything about my own cultures, but its not cool to have a literal outsider being shown to be the expert on someones culture and be the one to guide them through that. theres barely any portrayal of sino stuff in the show as is, and i hate the way this is only shown as a kind of special episode topic. i would be way more fine with this if this wasnt basically the sole instance of discussion of marinettes heritage. and no, the fact that her mother wears stereotypical clothing doesnt count. at all.

okay, this has been a huge issue for me before and after this point, but it was in this episode that it was made abundantly clear just what we are dealing with. i know that it is completely possible, genetically speaking, for a mixed chinese and white person to have blue eyes. its also completely possible for a chinese person to have gray eyes even without being mixed (i say this because i dont know if her mother is monoracial). however, if you only have two confirmed recurring characters of chinese descent, and their eye colors are ~special~ colors...well, thats kind of iffy there. why is it that the minor chinese character has stereotypical eyes? theyre basically just expanded pupils for all intents and purposes, which is not the problem, because its possible to have irises that are so dark as to make figuring out whether they have a distinguishable brown tint to them really hard. anyway, i suppose i dont want to talk about things ahead in the season, but why is it that the background asian characters get the stereotypical eyes but the main characters who are asian get the special eye colors? (that was a rhetorical question. i know exactly why.)

im pretty that at some point in the creation of this villain name, someone patted themself on the back for being so ~clever~ like “haha kung food geddit? its like kung fu but with food because im actually not that creative and more racist than i would like to openly admit.” okay, i know im being a bit harsh. but its really annoying when one of the few things people “know” about sino people is that kung fu exists. and honestly, i kind of suspected this, but ive seen other people say that the villain more resembles a villain from anime, so...thats kind of disrespectful there...

the/le gamer

i really disliked marinettes combo move names. they all had ~asian~ words like lotus, jade, oriental, etc.

animan

i find the sniffing scene to be kind of creepy. personal space much?

the city has really high quality buses. i cant believe the bus didnt end up backfiring on their plan because if i know anything about buses its that the ones ive seen are probably way older and more decrepit than me.

antibug

how do the earrings work in this setting? as far as i can tell, it would make sense for chloe to have pierced ears and a pair of ladybug imitation earrings that she could put it, but how is it possible that ladybug was able to just pull the earrings off? because that could be a really, really messy situation if they are actually piercings with backings and everything, but is there an explanation for this? magnets, clips, anything?

the puppeteer/le marionnettiste

can that glowing bright red effect that comes from her yo-yo and the power cord being swung around just for the viewers, or can it actually be seen in-universe? or is that a null point because both items are generated by ladybugs magic?

reflekta

this show really didnt need any “haha look a ~guy~ in a dress” jokes. and honestly, this was ill handled (though arguably, its very existence was ill handled). first of all, im not the best judge of this kind of thing, but to me, ladybug felt out of character while mocking chat noir? honestly, marinette doesnt strike me as the type of person to find that kind of situation funny in the first place, so the premise doesnt really hold up in my opinion. i know marinette can make mistakes, but youd really think she would be more open to not thinking this way because she knows what its like to be bullied for other things. moving on... [though, to reiterate]

the way this was not addressed? at all? yeah, ladybug apologized for that one comment at the beginning of their conversation, but then she continued to make jokes at chat noirs expense, and it just wasnt as funny as it was probably intended to be?

i know the whole thing about ambiguous chronology, but there is no reason ladybug wouldnt take chat noirs opinion into account when planning for things anyway. it felt like that part was written specifically so he could “prove” his worth to the rest of the episode and ensure that, yes, he is still allowed to be in it after being turned into a reflekta lookalike, and the whole thing smacks of trying to write out of a corner...that was written into in the first place. if it hadnt gone the route it did with the mocking of appearances, i dont think it would have had to be as convoluted as it ended up being.

i personally dont care for high heels, but i dont get the kind of “fashion cracks” that were being made about them. like yes, high heels can be hard to move in? yeah, it isnt fun being turned into the appearance of someone who isnt you against your will? i just dont understand this gag.

guitar villain

did ladybug really honestly just full-on spray someone in the face with the contents of an aerosol can? im aware that the point was that the hair was in front of his face, but what if some had gotten into guitar villains eyes? dang, what if someone tries to emulate this in real life? ouch.

digital/numeric

kind of done with the spotlight on stalking behavior this show has.

marinette still shows no fear of suspicious screens. she continues to use parts of her face to touch one multiple times, never mind that she literally flings her yoyo all over the place.

stoneheart/coeur de pierre i

did marinette have pierced ears in the first place? shes not shown taking any earrings out, and we dont get that clear a view of her earlobes anyway. that might be deliberate for modeling budget and all.

master fu has brown eyes. so thats like four ~chinese~ characters that are in this show, and the main character and her mother have the special eye colors, and the minor character who is somewhat important to the plotline has non-black eyes, and the minor one-episode character has the black eyes. what a shining example of diversity (no).

anyway this is a good point to say that some things are just not for you. there are things that you just cant be a part of no matter how much you want to be because it just doesnt work that way. and the mess that is the miraculous “mythology” is definitely an example of this. i myself have very little knowledge of anything sino, but i sure as heck can spot that this...”history” thing is so off.

at this point i should probably mention i really dislike master fu as a character in general. just as a single point, apparently hes based off the teacher character in karate kid? i saw somewhere that the creator said he basically made marinette mixed because he was dating an asian person when he was thinking about the show and that marinette is basically his idea of their mixed kid? and back to the eye color thing (again), ive even seen someone with green eyes and blue hair suggest to him that they could be the child of marinette and adrien, and he said theyre like his grandchild? (im not really inclined to try to dig up an iron-clad, indisputably genuine source for this right now, but if youre honestly searching for completely serious, well-researched information in a really good quality post, this is not the post you are looking for.) i have no idea where i was even going with this paragraph.

stoneheart/coeur de pierre ii

why is marinette so invested in her crush on adrien? this couldve been a sweet crush, but no, she has to make it so creepy? leading up to this episode, i really didnt know what to expect because i really thought there would be some sort of explanation for just how extreme the lengths marinette goes to are, but from what i can tell, shes just being super invasive? the ambiguous timeline doesnt really help with this, nor does the fact that the origins episodes were aired at the end of the season. whatever characterization was supposed to be inferred from this feels choppy and unnecessary.

simon says/jackady/jacques a dit

i dont really blame her, but ladybug totally could have reduced the level of adrien distractedness going on here. shes previously shown signs of compartmentalizing ladybug and even having to face the fact that it isnt worth using up her power over adrien, but gosh golly, what gives?

princess/princesse fragrance

ive seen criticisms of how ladybug was written to be overly competent in this episode, which i think is fair since it keeps happening, and its so late in the season by this point that its gotten tired.

volpina

i try not to be too judgmental, but frankly, adrien is not that great of a prize.

anyway, from what i can tell about this episode, i think that there was too much on marinettes flaws, which i really think is a bit much to have in the last chronological episode of a season. its already been established that she makes mistakes with her decisions, but i just thought her unequal prioritization of adrien was too much. it just seemed contrived to squeeze in scenes that the creators wanted to animate regardless of overall context in the show, which is really unfortunate because of how the show becomes a little less chronologically ambiguous at this point.

#lt #kung food #this is a 'kung food' hate blog #wall of text #really long post with low readability #racism text mention (a lot of it)#transmisogyny text mention

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rebeccahpedersen · 7 years

Text

The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind?

TorontoRealtyBlog

Folks, it’s been a while.

Maybe I’m mellowing as I get closer to obtaining true “middle-aged” status.

Or maybe I simply reached a point where nothing in the world of real estate fazes me anymore.

But here’s something new: there are buyers in the market that didn’t know the price of real estate could fluctuate, and now they’re upset.

This is the p-e-r-f-e-c-t time for me to revive a classic TRB feature, The Friday Rant…

I don’t understand the world today.

And while I know that sounds like something an old man says, I just really, truly seem to have lost touch with the world around me.

The Prime Minister of Canada. Wow. This guy!

Interrupts a young speaker at a town hall meeting, who had the audacity to say “mankind,” to tell her that “we,” whoever we are, prefer to use the term “people-kind,” since it’s more inclusive.

The pendulum has swung so far one way, that it’s about to break through the other side of the universe on the way back.

Sorry, but I don’t like Mr. Trudeau. I think he’s of below-average intelligence, his low self-esteem, ego, and desire to be admired is at the forefront of every decision he makes on behalf of 33,000,000 people, and he has no experience, or ability, to lead.

This is a microcosm of where we’ve gone as a society, and while some think this is steering us in a better direction for peoplekind, I think it’s making us feeble, weak, and eventually we’ll all be incapable of self-care.

The public school systems have done away with “enriched” programs, such as the enriched English programs I took throughout high school that helped make me the writer I am today, so that “everybody can get an equal opportunity.” So in the race to the bottom that has become public education, we’d now rather have a so-called “level playing field,” than ever see an advanced child flourish.

We don’t keep score in children’s sports games anymore. Somebody might get upset to learn that in sports, as in life, there are winners and losers.

Cue the “December Seasonal Concert.”

Change the lyrics to “O Canada,” because it’s one of the worst things plaguing our country today.

Have we ever become softer as a society?

Many of you are already disagreeing, so I won’t go on, with countless more examples, and perhaps better ones, of where our municipal, provincial, and federal leaders have taken us.

But I fear it’s this “guidance” that has brought us to a point where most people in society today refuse to take any responsibility of their actions, especially when those actions are misguided, uninformed, or have consequence of any sort.

As it pertains to real estate, I’m seeing this more and more.

And how could it not transpire, with what we have inflicted upon ourselves?

Recall the story of the “Museum FLTS” condominium project in Toronto, which was cancelled back in November.

The newspapers picked up the story, and made martyrs of these poor souls who entered into legally-binding contracts with a developer who then exercised his right to terminate the project. I wrote about it on my blog, and I was extra nice:

Another Pre-Construction Condo, Cancelled. Who Is To Blame?

And despite being told by many that I was too nice, I still received hate mail from people who bought into the project – many of them who were obviously well-versed enough in contract law to not spend the $3,000 on a lawyer that might have educated them on the pros and cons of the stack of paper that was thrust upon them by a salesperson, representing the developer.

Oh, the heat I took! Wow!

I try to take the high road folks, I do. And it took every ounce of strength I had not to share with you the self-pitying, naive, wishful-thinking emails I received from buyers into the project, who read my blog, and took issue.

You wouldn’t believe it, if you tried.

But as bad as that example of “not taking responsibility for your actions” truly was, I think we reached a new low point.

Some of you pointed this out last week, so I know I already have your ear.

“What did the neighbours pay? Whitby homebuyers just found out the answer: a lot less”

This story first appeared on the CBC website on January 24th, and to attempt to read it without shaking your head at least once is a fool’s errand.

The very first paragraph tells you all you need to know:

Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago.

Right.

Sooooo……….what’s the story?

A person who can tell time, tie their shoe, and breathe in-and-out, could probably ascertain that the price of real estate, believe it or not, can fluctuate.

Prices go up, prices go down.

Like the stock market, or spot gold. Bonds, or treasury bills. Corn futures, or Bitcoin…

But the story here, folks, is that some of the buyers who purchased real estate last year, and who saw the value decrease, are, well, upset.

“It’s painful,” Astrid Poei said in an interview. (from the article)

That’s fair. Nobody is expecting this person not feel the sting of an on-paper loss, for a property not built, which in effect, doesn’t really mean anything.

“There are no building materials on site, there is no foundation poured, so I don’t understand how we are paying more than someone who bought a couple of weeks ago.” (from the article)

Here’s where things go off the rails a little bit.

The idea of there being “no building materials on site,” and “no foundation poured,” simply goes back to inexperience, and naivety. It’s pre-construction; delays are automatic. I’m not going to belabour this point.

But then somehow attaching the fact that the project hasn’t started building yet to the idea that “we’re paying more than somebody who bought a couple of weeks ago,” doesn’t make sense to me.

What’s the issue here?

That somebody who bought a couple of weeks ago paid less?

God help us, folks.

This is what we’ve done to ourselves, as a society.

By removing scores from children’s soccer games, automatically passing high school students who receive failing grades, and electing left-wing governments that promise everything to everyone, we’ve allowed people to believe that they can’t fail.

Failure is a reality in life.

And when you buy real estate, you should know that the price can go up, or down.

Again, from the article: “To come back a year later and see the same house that we bought is now $90,000 cheaper, that’s not cool,” Thompson, 52, said in an interview.

Not cool.

Is that an economic or legal phrase?

Imagine that, folks. The audacity of a developer to sell properties for prices, as they see fit.

The irony is, if the properties were selling for more money, these people wouldn’t be complaining.

But then what about the second-phase of buyers? Could they complain?

What if somebody said, “To come back a year later, and see the same house that this guy bought only 12 months ago is now $90,000 more, that’s not cool.” Would we accept that?

And now, the kicker:

“…Poei and Thompson, who are not looking forward to meeting their Phase 2 neighbours, knowing they paid tens of thousands of dollars less for the same homes.”

Ain’t it the truth, folks?

I remember once when my best-friend of 22 years bought a set of Callaway irons for $750, for which I had paid $1,000 the previous year. So I did what any normal person would do under those circumstances: I kicked his dog, and then never talked to that motherf*cker again…

I know, I know, I’ve said too much.

But guess what?

I’m far from finished…

The Toronto Star also picked up this story, for some odd reason, since I really don’t think it qualifies as news.

“Price drop crushes pre-construction home buyers’ dreams”

Important point here – I’m not faulting the writer. I think she’s awesome, I’ve done a ton of stories with her, and as I’ve learned over the years – sometimes, the story picks you.

But it’s the quotes in here that really get me.

And even worse than the CBC article – this one shows not only the absolute disillusionment of the buyer, but also the complete and utter lack of qualification!

Mariam Boni was among the buyers caught up in Toronto’s scorching property market last January. She says she got an email from Mattamy when the first phase of the development was released. On the appointed date, she waited three hours in line to get a ticket to return to the sales centre the following day.

When she went back, there were only two lots still available and Boni ended up spending $899,000, plus additional money for upgrades, exceeding her target price of $500,000 to $600,000.

Although she owns a home already, she said Queen’s Common would be a better place to raise her son.

Wow.

A lot going on here…

So first, we have a woman that stood in line to get a ticket to buy a home. Can you say, “mania?” I hear Bitcoin came down from $20,000, btw…

Second, she spent $900,000, with a budget of $500,000 – $600,000.

And last but not least, she already owns a home. This was a second property, and while she was probably going to sell the first one, it doesn’t remove the speculative nature of the adventure.

The woman added:

“I have a 3-year-old. I’m thinking about his future, I’m thinking this is a good investment. It’s going to go up in price, I’m going to do something nice for my child.”

Exactly!

You thought it was a good investment. You thought it would go up in price.

You thought.

That’s it.

That’s all you need to know.

There’s no guarantee, nor should there be. If the prices went up, as you thought, would the developer come back to you and cry foul? Would Mattamy Homes go to the Toronto Star to describe the hurt and anguish they feel about selling properties that went up in price, when all the while, they could have held them and made more money?

The developer offered this explanation, which is like explaining to a child how boys and girls are different:

“When (the market) is moving upwards, we obviously raise our prices and when it’s moving downwards, in order to continue to sell and to build and complete the communities, we have to lower our prices to a price point the market will bear.”

Yes, when the market goes up, prices go up. When the market goes down, prices go down. What’s that, Marigold? It’s half-past four?

I honestly can’t believe these stories went to print.

Our imaginations could run wild with the analogies. In fact, some of last week’s readers already beat me to it.

So tell me I’m wrong, folks.

Tell me that these stories were newsworthy.

Tell me that the buyers in these articles have a legitimate beef.

Tell me that peoplekind should be able to buy real estate with absolutely no fear of the price dropping, but with the full expectation that the price will rise.

But do so in the comments below, because I have to leave; I need to go find something sweet. This blog has left me really goddam salty…

The post The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from http://ift.tt/2nNRXsU

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theliteraryarchitect · 7 years

Note

I have a short story that I'm trying to edit- I feel like it's missing something, but I can't figure out what it is. I know this is super vague, but do you have any advice, for identifying weak spots?

Great question, Anonymous, and one that writers practice and study for years to be able to answer, so no worries about being vague. One of the things that comes with time and experience is finding the language to identify, discuss, and address the feeling that something isn’t quite right or that a story is “missing something.” Not knowing you or your writing, of course I can’t help you figure out what specifically the problem is. But I give you an idea of what I’ve done over the years to be able to identify weak spots and improve my writing. The list is really, really long, but here is the short version:

1. Analyze your favorite writers. Figure out why you like the writing that you like. Ask yourself: What are they doing here? What are they doing that I’m not doing? Why do I love their writing so much? Take notes on their stories. Plot them. Write in the margins. Read them slowly. Read their reviews—both good and bad. Did that writer you love once write something you hated? Great, even better. Figure out why that particular book was different from the others.

2. Analyze your own writing. Do you have an older story you wrote that you love? Figure out why. What did you do differently in that story that you’re not doing in the current story you’re writing? Make notes. Draw maps. Reverse engineer everything.

3. Develop a language to talk and think about writing. Read craft books, blogs, anything you can get your hands on. Learn about point of view, conflict, character development, dialogue, story structure, syntax, metaphors. Get your advice from good sources, and don’t believe everything you read. If something doesn’t sit right with you, throw it out. But be open to everything.

4. Journal and write about your writing. Over time, you will identify consistent weaknesses that you have. Then, in the future, when you feel like “something is missing” from your writing, you can reference your notes and remember, for example, that you often have difficulty with your protagonist’s motivation, with theme, with dialogue, etc., and you’ll have a better idea about where to go looking.

5. Share your writing with someone you trust, ideally a more experienced writer than you or an editor or mentor. Be very careful about who you share your writing with. Friends and family are not always the best choice. You don’t want someone who’s just going to throw around their uneducated opinion about your work, who has a big ego, or who won’t be honest with you. Remember: “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” are useless pieces of feedback. You want someone who can read your work and say, “Your protagonist’s passion for music made them really likeable to me. I was dying to know whether they would get into the conservatory or not!” or “My attention wandered on page two, when you described the couch upholstery for three paragraphs.”

6. Analyze the areas of your writing which are commonly problematic for new writers (and writers in general). In my experience as an editor, the most likely culprits are unclear character motivation and lack of conflict. There are a lot of good resources (books and blogs) about this. Try a Google search for “most common mistakes beginning writers make.”

7. Trust your intuition. Do you keep coming back to the same page or scene in your story, feeling like it isn’t right? You’re probably onto something.

8. Take time away from your story. You’d be amazed how much more clear everything will be after a break. Give yourself at least a week for a short story, 3-4 weeks for a novel. It could also be the case that your ambitions for this particular story don’t yet match your skills, and that you’ll have to wait even longer to successfully finish it. I’ve known writers who have given up on a story only to come back to it months or years later once they’d gained the skills and insight to complete it. And then suddenly writing that story seemed really easy!

Hope this helps, and good luck!

#asks

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rebeccahpedersen · 7 years

Text

The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind?

TorontoRealtyBlog

Folks, it’s been a while.

Maybe I’m mellowing as I get closer to obtaining true “middle-aged” status.

Or maybe I simply reached a point where nothing in the world of real estate fazes me anymore.

But here’s something new: there are buyers in the market that didn’t know the price of real estate could fluctuate, and now they’re upset.

This is the p-e-r-f-e-c-t time for me to revive a classic TRB feature, The Friday Rant…

I don’t understand the world today.

And while I know that sounds like something an old man says, I just really, truly seem to have lost touch with the world around me.

The Prime Minister of Canada. Wow. This guy!

The pendulum has swung so far one way, that it’s about to break through the other side of the universe on the way back.

We don’t keep score in children’s sports games anymore. Somebody might get upset to learn that in sports, as in life, there are winners and losers.

Cue the “December Seasonal Concert.”

Change the lyrics to “O Canada,” because it’s one of the worst things plaguing our country today.

Have we ever become softer as a society?

Many of you are already disagreeing, so I won’t go on, with countless more examples, and perhaps better ones, of where our municipal, provincial, and federal leaders have taken us.

As it pertains to real estate, I’m seeing this more and more.

And how could it not transpire, with what we have inflicted upon ourselves?

Recall the story of the “Museum FLTS” condominium project in Toronto, which was cancelled back in November.

Another Pre-Construction Condo, Cancelled. Who Is To Blame?

Oh, the heat I took! Wow!

You wouldn’t believe it, if you tried.

But as bad as that example of “not taking responsibility for your actions” truly was, I think we reached a new low point.

Some of you pointed this out last week, so I know I already have your ear.

“What did the neighbours pay? Whitby homebuyers just found out the answer: a lot less”

This story first appeared on the CBC website on January 24th, and to attempt to read it without shaking your head at least once is a fool’s errand.

The very first paragraph tells you all you need to know:

Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago.

Right.

Sooooo……….what’s the story?

A person who can tell time, tie their shoe, and breathe in-and-out, could probably ascertain that the price of real estate, believe it or not, can fluctuate.

Prices go up, prices go down.

Like the stock market, or spot gold. Bonds, or treasury bills. Corn futures, or Bitcoin…

But the story here, folks, is that some of the buyers who purchased real estate last year, and who saw the value decrease, are, well, upset.

“It’s painful,” Astrid Poei said in an interview. (from the article)

That’s fair. Nobody is expecting this person not feel the sting of an on-paper loss, for a property not built, which in effect, doesn’t really mean anything.

“There are no building materials on site, there is no foundation poured, so I don’t understand how we are paying more than someone who bought a couple of weeks ago.” (from the article)

Here’s where things go off the rails a little bit.

What’s the issue here?

That somebody who bought a couple of weeks ago paid less?

God help us, folks.

This is what we’ve done to ourselves, as a society.

Failure is a reality in life.

And when you buy real estate, you should know that the price can go up, or down.

Again, from the article: “To come back a year later and see the same house that we bought is now $90,000 cheaper, that’s not cool,” Thompson, 52, said in an interview.

Not cool.

Is that an economic or legal phrase?

Imagine that, folks. The audacity of a developer to sell properties for prices, as they see fit.

The irony is, if the properties were selling for more money, these people wouldn’t be complaining.

But then what about the second-phase of buyers? Could they complain?

What if somebody said, “To come back a year later, and see the same house that this guy bought only 12 months ago is now $90,000 more, that’s not cool.” Would we accept that?

And now, the kicker:

“…Poei and Thompson, who are not looking forward to meeting their Phase 2 neighbours, knowing they paid tens of thousands of dollars less for the same homes.”

Ain’t it the truth, folks?

I know, I know, I’ve said too much.

But guess what?

I’m far from finished…

The Toronto Star also picked up this story, for some odd reason, since I really don’t think it qualifies as news.

“Price drop crushes pre-construction home buyers’ dreams”

Important point here – I’m not faulting the writer. I think she’s awesome, I’ve done a ton of stories with her, and as I’ve learned over the years – sometimes, the story picks you.

But it’s the quotes in here that really get me.

And even worse than the CBC article – this one shows not only the absolute disillusionment of the buyer, but also the complete and utter lack of qualification!

When she went back, there were only two lots still available and Boni ended up spending $899,000, plus additional money for upgrades, exceeding her target price of $500,000 to $600,000.

Although she owns a home already, she said Queen’s Common would be a better place to raise her son.

Wow.

A lot going on here…

So first, we have a woman that stood in line to get a ticket to buy a home. Can you say, “mania?” I hear Bitcoin came down from $20,000, btw…

Second, she spent $900,000, with a budget of $500,000 – $600,000.

And last but not least, she already owns a home. This was a second property, and while she was probably going to sell the first one, it doesn’t remove the speculative nature of the adventure.

The woman added:

“I have a 3-year-old. I’m thinking about his future, I’m thinking this is a good investment. It’s going to go up in price, I’m going to do something nice for my child.”

Exactly!

You thought it was a good investment. You thought it would go up in price.

You thought.

That’s it.

That’s all you need to know.

The developer offered this explanation, which is like explaining to a child how boys and girls are different:

Yes, when the market goes up, prices go up. When the market goes down, prices go down. What’s that, Marigold? It’s half-past four?

I honestly can’t believe these stories went to print.

Our imaginations could run wild with the analogies. In fact, some of last week’s readers already beat me to it.

So tell me I’m wrong, folks.

Tell me that these stories were newsworthy.

Tell me that the buyers in these articles have a legitimate beef.

Tell me that peoplekind should be able to buy real estate with absolutely no fear of the price dropping, but with the full expectation that the price will rise.

But do so in the comments below, because I have to leave; I need to go find something sweet. This blog has left me really goddam salty…

The post The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from http://ift.tt/2nNRXsU

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