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fixyourwritinghabits · 2 years

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Interview with Jess Mahler, Part 1

Today's interview is with Jess Mahler, writer of serialized queer SFF fiction! You can find them and their work at the following:

Substack: https://jessmahler.substack.com/

Webserial catalog: https://jessmahler.com/webserial-catalog/

Author page: https://books2read.com/ap/nAEEOn/Jess-Mahler

A pre-sale for upcoming release: https://www.smashwords.com/books/presale/1154035/DJNG3G

Part One can be found under the cut, Part Two will be posted tomorrow!

You write serial queer SFF fiction. Why does that kind of fiction interest you, and how did you get started in it? Did you know Dickens – Charles Dickens, 'A Christmas Carol' Dickens, why the fuck are you making me read this hundred-year-old 'Classic' Dickens, wrote his books as serials? Serials fell out of fashion when novels became affordable. For a time, they were replaced by newspaper comics. The old comics like Prince Valient and the Phantom are some of the last survivors of the time when most long-form fiction was newspaper serials. When I started planning this 3 years ago, almost no one had heard of serials. You sometimes saw serials on Amazon where each chapter was published as a 99c ebook, and there was Tales of MU and other free fiction folks had shared for ages. But incredibly niche and nothing subscription based.

A few years ago, I had several problems:

I was struggling with long-form fiction – I kept having ideas for short stories that spawned sequels, so I tried to just write novels, and that… didn't go horribly but didn't work well either.

I had accepted that I was shit at marketing and needed to do something different if I wanted people to hear about my writing.

I needed a new blog topic.

I cannot work on one story at a time. I need at least two stories to bounce between. And after 3 months of focusing on a storyline, I need to take a break.

A friend and I were talking the mess over one day when something in the convo reminded me that Dickens' stuff was all first written as newspaper serials. One thing became another, and I launched Jess Mahler's Serials on January 1, 2021. Amazon announced its subscription serial service, Kindle Vella, a few months later, and I still say they stole my idea. wink

Why did you decide to focus on queer SFF?

Why queer fiction? Because I'm queer, and I like to queer shit. I never actually set out to write queer fiction. I originally described the serials only as SFF. But at one point, I realized that while most of the stories are SFF (there are two exceptions so far), all of them are queer.

As for why SFF – well, there's the fun reason and the practical reason. The fun reason is that I grew up burying myself in myths and legends and folk tales. Then in 7th grade, we read The Littlest Dragon Boy in English class. I asked my teacher where I could find more like it – I never looked back.

The practical reason is that I'm not that good at research. I tried doing a historical fiction story once and gave up a month in after realizing I'd never be able to get the setting accurate enough to suit me. I reworked it as a 'lost colony' sci-fi bit. It was one of the first serials I wrote, and it's on Smash and Amazon now as Bound by His Oath.

Me+worldbuilding? Amazing stuff happens Me+research? Sad face So I play to my strengths.

How do you go about planning a serialized work of fiction? What helps keep you on track with a regular schedule of updates?

Once I decided to go with serials, I wanted to have a firm word count goal for each episode. I aim for 1000-2000 words, which I figured is a good length for reading on a lunch break or waiting for the bus. I have several friends who are often frustrated with not being able to read because of a lack of time or trouble focusing. So keeping it short seemed like a good way to make the stories accessible.

Because of my own attention span, I decided to break stories down into 'seasons' of about 3 months long. ~1500 word episodes, for 12-14 episodes gave me a rough goal for each season. Two episodes a week, because most of the time I can write 3-5000 words a week, which meant (I figured) that I could write, edit and post 2-4000 words a week without too much trouble.

Some stories, like How NOT to Save the World or Planting Life in a Dying City, I have an idea for a full novel-type storyline. I'll sketch out the overarching plot and break it into sections and subplots that will work for season-length story arcs. Other stories, like Mighty Hero Force Epsilon or Last Lady of Lună, I have an idea for the characters. "What if this happened to these people?" I try to at least have a general idea for how a season will end.

I knew I wanted the first season of L3 to end with Nastasia and her sotii having a solid start to their new relationship. But I swear Epsilon's season 1 ending surprised me as much as any of my readers. I use a spreadsheet to track what's written, what needs to be edited, what's scheduled, when I expect to finish a season, so on and so forth.

On an episode level, I've learned not to plan too far ahead of my writing. What I expect to be 13 episodes always ends up being 12 episodes, or 14. But for stories and seasons, I've got a rough schedule worked out through the end of 2024. And a list of 7 stories waiting to join rotation after that.

Sadly, because of my health problems, I do tend to miss updates. This year I've missed about 8 updates, which works out to less than one a month on average. That wouldn't bother me, except they tend to come in chunks – when I'm healthy I try to write enough to create a buffer. Then I use up the buffer a bit at a time until it runs out. I have a 'snippet month' in September/October where I share story ideas and mini-fics. It gives me time to catch up or rebuild the buffer, but so far I've been running out of buffer around July. Which means there are often several misses over July and August.

How do you approach writing a second season of a serial story? Is that something you plan from the beginning, or do you figure out you want more to the story as it goes along?

I guess I got ahead of myself in question 2. ;-) But regardless of if I have a full story planned or not, I do have a feel for how many seasons a story will run. Epsilon has to be at least three seasons. The first had to introduce the characters and the world, the second will… well, I won't spoiler, but fix the mess the characters find themselves in, and the third will either resolve or extend the story. One is written, I have a very general idea of how two will go, and three… well, there will be a season three. Past that? There be dragons. (Figuratively, in this case.) Other stories I know will only be a single season – or even a mini-season. First Came Trust, I knew going in wouldn't be more than 8-10 episodes. It actually ended up shorter than that! It's something like an odd meet-cute. Sort of. You don't get a long story out of two people meeting and deciding to take a chance on each other. No matter how unconventional the meeting. (If you want a break from Christmas-everything, First Came Trust is out in ebook on Dec 21.)

If someone wanted to get into serial fiction, what advice would you give them?

Well, definitely stay off of Vella. Amazon is evil, but beyond that – if you go through Vella you give Amazon control of your writing and audience. Don't give evil people control of you or your career. You need to know yourself as a writer – how fast do you write, how often, and how quickly do you edit? It does no good to commit to writing three episodes a week if you can't reliably write more than one. Think about what audience you are writing for. I know, I know, trite advice. But here, we're coming from a different direction. Remember what I said before about how I know folks who don't have time to read, so I stuck with short episodes? I went with a newsletter format for the same reason. Quick and easy reads in your inbox. I went with multiple stories running concurrently so new readers would always have a story they could jump into without a huge backlog. What are the reading habits of your audience? Do they want to curl up with a long chapter each week? Do you think they care how consistently you update? (Long-term fanfic readers won't care about consistency, mainstream readers probably will.) Will they prefer to read on a website? Email? App? "Fast, Good, and Cheap, pick two" is the business maxim. I think the serial equivalent is "Frequent, Good, and Word Count." You can post good stories frequently. You can post high word counts frequently. You can write good stories with a high word count per episode. But posting good, high-word-count episodes frequently? Not so much. Put your writing habits and audience together, and pick two. I picked frequent (twice a week) and good. I know of folks doing serials that only post once a month, but when they post, it's a lot at once. You can do whatever works for you – but unless you are a full-time writer, you can't do all three.

Can you tell us more about some of your favorite stories you've written, and why you decided to write them?

Oh geez, I have to pick? Tell you what, let's talk about the 2023 schedule instead of making me pick between my babies. I've got 4 stories I'll be posting in 2023. The Bargain and Planting Life in a Dying City are two of my older stories. I started them both as novels and actually published the Bargain. (Please don't buy the ebook, it wasn't properly edited, and I'm embarrassed. The publisher is supposed to pull it soon.) The Bargain – so, I'm aro-ace, though I didn't even know the words when I started writing this one. I'm also kinky. The Bargain began as me writing the kind of kink story I wanted to read. It's got heavy queer platonic/chosen family vibes and focuses on the bond between people in a power exchange relationship. With fae, magic, a bit of court intrigue, self-discovery, and a few other things. Planting Life is a world-building project that spawned a story. Hopefully several stories. The original idea was 'how would tech and society have developed if magic existed as a kind of natural force.' So, of course, I had to define my magic, build my world, etc. Planting Life is set in a Bronze age society before anyone has learned to control magic. In fact, magic barely exists in the story. Instead, the story is about a group of traumatized individuals creating a new family and a new start in a stagnating society. But there will be spin-offs and sequels. The next story will focus on an Archimedes-like character who is one of the first to begin understanding and harnessing magic. Last Lady of Lună is my newest story and grew out of my finally understanding and accepting that I am aromantic. I just don't understand WTF romance is and that comes out in my writing. See, I write a lot of love stories, but while they meet the technical criteria for romance stories (stories about love and relationships with an HFN or HEA ending), they don't register as romance with a lot of people. So… I challenged myself. I love romance stories, especially paranormal romance stories. Last Lady of Luna is me making a conscious effort to write a why choose romance story. It's about a vampire and the humans who agree to be her companions, food, protectors, and (eventually) lovers. Slow burn, but I'm told that so far I'm nailing the burn. Mighty Hero Force Epsilon started as a dream. Literally. There's this one scene, about halfway through the first season, where the Big Bad's lieutenant– anyway, yeah. So I dreamed that scene. And when you read the scene, you'll understand why I had to figure out what happened after. Which meant I had to figure out what came before. Which is how we got here. Folks familiar with the genre will recognize it as a sentai story (think Power Rangers if you aren't familiar with anime).

When it comes to writing serial fiction, finding a place to host it can be a challenge. Why did you decide on using Substack, and what advice can you give others who want to check out that platform for themselves?

I went with Substack because it's a good newsletter platform. It doesn't make me pay to have a subscription set up when I have less than 50 subscribers and allows 'adult content'. I'm looking at alternatives because the navigation is a pain. (New readers should start on the website to get caught up.) And I'm hearing things about the folks running it being transphobic. Turns out my web host, Dreamhost, has built-in newsletter functionality now. So that's a thing I'm looking at. But yeah, finding hosting can be a challenge, which is why I'm still here. Just… try not to stress the stats. I've had days where Substack told me I had 0 views, 1 like, and 1 comment. I've had it tell me that I had a like from a subscriber who supposedly has never opened a single email. You should never take numbers (other than number of subscribers) too seriously if you can help it – you never know how they're calculated. But extra don't take Substack numbers seriously.

Part 2 to follow!

#writblr interviews #interview wednesdays #serial fiction

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musicalhistory · 4 years

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Europe in 1808 vs. Europe in 1893- A Comparison Between the Time of the Tucks and the Time of Winnie Foster

A little while ago, @luluthecatprincess requested that I explore the differences between the social, political, and cultural situations in Europe in 1808 (the Tuck’s original time) and in 1893 (Winnie Foster’s original time). Thank you so much for being patient with me as I collected and organized my sources to write this frankly massive post, and thank you so much for your help in providing me with some of those sources! I hope you (and everyone else) enjoys this.

In 1808, Europe was in the midst of what is now commonly known as the Regency period (often called the Federalist period in the US). In England this particular period is also often called the Georgian period, due to the fact that King George III was on the throne (although not for much longer- his son George IV became regent in 1811 due to his suffering from mental illness and he eventually died in 1820).

This period was characterized by relative simplicity in terms of fashion, as well as a desire for the natural among affluent members of society. It was also a time of great artistic achievements, however, as several famous composers, artists, and authors were in their heyday. Beethoven was probably the most famous composer of the time, but many others including Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s son) were prolific in their writing and publishing of music. As for painters, Joseph Mallord William Turner and Marguerite Gérard were two who had met with great success by 1808. Famous authors included Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth, and Samuel Richardson. Jane Austen would come along a few years later, publishing her first book (Sense and Sensibility) in 1811.

Despite all this, however, much of Europe was in the midst of turmoil. The Napoleonic wars were raging, and England had only just outlawed the slave trade in 1807. Meanwhile, in Russia Tsar Paul I (son of Catherine the Great) had been assassinated in 1801 (as an interesting side note, the capital of Russia in the early 19th century was St. Petersburg and not Moscow).

The Regency/Georgian/Federalist period was a time of great political upheaval in Europe, and much of that bled over into the new United States and would have directly affected the Tucks. The War of 1812 was a direct result of both the Napoleonic wars as well as England’s kidnapping of American sailors and forcing them to work on British ships, and it eventually led to British troops storming Washington DC in August of 1814 and burning most of it (including the White House) to the ground. Miles, Jesse, or Angus might have indeed fought in the war, and it certainly would have been a defining moment of this period for them regardless.

In the decades following the Tucks becoming immortal many, many things happened in both Europe and the United States. Most prominently, the industrial revolution swept across both Europe and the United States, turning what had been primarily agrarian (farming) communities into more urban, industrial societies. This is clearly visible when looking at the populations of the largest cities in Europe in 1808 and comparing them with the populations of the largest cities in Europe in 1893.

Factories were a major contributing factor to the rapid industrialization taking place all over the world (but particularly in Europe and the United States), and Jesse or Miles probably would have likely worked in one for at least a little while in order to make money while traveling the world.

The 1890s marked the end of both the Victorian era (Queen Victoria became queen in 1837 and died in 1901) as well as the end of the “Gilded Age”. The decadence and opulence favored by the upper classes during this time stands in stark contrast to the relative simplicity of the Regency era, although the two periods did have similarities in that major social reforms and political upheaval occurred during both. Striking workers pushed for labor reforms not only in the United States but also in much of Europe, growing resentment among the people of Russia (who in 1893 were under the rule of Tsar Alexander III, although he would die in 1894 leaving the throne to his son, the now-infamous Tsar Nicholas II) would eventually lead to revolution in 1917, and the first entrance of the US onto the world stage caused tension which would eventually lead to the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Despite this (or perhaps because of it) much like in the early 19th century the fine arts were alive and well in the late 19th century. Composers like Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (who died in 1893) produced famous songs still well-known today, artists like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Vincent Van Gogh (just to name a few) created many of their most famous paintings, and authors like Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, and Louisa May Alcott (who died in 1888) wrote classics which are still widely read and enjoyed today.

We can only imagine what it must feel like to live through all that the Tucks had lived through by the time they met Winnie Foster, and what it must have felt like to live on after her. Certainly, their immortality was a curse, but they lived through one of the most interesting periods in history and I, for one, find that to be extremely compelling to think about.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJi5LcWpznw&t=735s

https://www.artsy.net/gene/late-19th-century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century_in_literature

https://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-1812

#tuck everlasting #tuck everlasting fanfiction #jesse tuck #miles tuck #angus tuck #mae tuck #history #european history #1800s #1890s #winnie foster

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junker-town · 4 years

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24 great books for quarantined sports fans

From ‘Ball Four’ to ‘Out of Sight’, here are a few books you can come back to over and over again

I love my books. They have traveled with me across the country and back again, prominently displayed in cheap bookcases throughout dozens of apartments around the Northeast. Currently, they are stretched out behind me in my home office where they will stay until the time comes to move off the grid. They will follow me there, as well.

I have read all of them at least once and several of them dozens of times. During periods of my life when I was without human companionship they were literally my only friends. That’s not said for sympathy. The life of a newspaper sportswriter in the 90s and early 2000s involved shitty hours and weekends, which pretty much negated any hopes of having a social life.

Through it all, my books were there for me. They demanded nothing but my time and gave me hours of entertainment.

I’m not particularly proud of my collection. There is very little literature to be found and only a handful of what one might refer to as great works. It mainly comprises sports books, rock star biographies, and a nearly complete set of Elmore Leonard novels.

Most of them are several decades old because I had to stop buying books at some point when I began to run out of room. I’m not linking to them because you can hopefully find an independent bookstore near you that would be thrilled for the business. Do them and humanity a favor.

Here are some of my favorites.

BASKETBALL

The Breaks of the Game: David Halberstam

This is the monster of all sports books, the one against which every basketball book is competing with in one way or another. If you know nothing of the NBA pre-LeBron James, this is where you should start. It’s a window into what feels like another universe, when pro basketball was a cult sport struggling for survival.

Loose Balls: Terry Pluto

I wrote about this one at length and won’t belabor the points I made back before the world came to a screeching halt. If you can’t get into the stories contained within these pages, I frankly don’t want to know you.

The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: The FreeDarko collective

It’s an exaggeration to say every person who heard the first Velvet Underground album went out and formed a band, just as it is to suggest that every writer who consumed FreeDarko wound up writing about basketball on the internet. But almost everyone who did was influenced by them.

The Miracle of St. Anthony: Adrian Wojnarowski

Long before he was the great and powerful Woj, the author spent an entire season with Bob Hurley’s St. Anthony Friars. It’s a masterful bit of storytelling that for my money is the absolute best of the surprisingly robust sub-genre of books about high school basketball.

Other contenders include The Last Shot by Darcy Frey, Fall River Dreams by Bill Reynolds and In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais.

The Jordan Rules: Sam Smith

Judging from the early reactions to the gigantic Bulls documentary, it’s quite clear a lot of you should get familiar with the source material. Smith’s book was shocking upon its release because it dared show Michael Jordan as he really was, without the buffed out Nike shine. It holds up, clearly.

Halbertsam’s Playing for Keeps picks up the story in 1998 and provided much of the narrative structure of the first two episodes.

Heaven is a Playground: Rick Telander

An all-time classic set on the courts of mid-1970s Harlem during a long, hot summer. There are a lot of books that tried to get at the soul of basketball, but this is the standard bearer. I’d really like to know whatever became of Sgt. Rock.

Others in this vein include The City Game by Pete Axthelm, Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew and Big Game, Small World by Alexander Wolff.

Second Wind: Bill Russell

The best athlete autobiography of all time.

BASEBALL

Lords of the Realm: John Heylar

The inside story of how baseball owners conspired for almost a century to suppress salaries while refusing to integrate. It’s shocking how buffoonish management acted during the glory days of the national pastime. Required reading.

Marvin Miller’s A Whole New Ballgame is a worthy companion piece, as is Bill Veeck’s delightful, Veeck as in Wreck.

Ball Four: Jim Bouton

Scandalous upon its release in 1970, Ball Four contains the best line ever written in any sport book: “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

I read Ball Four for the first time in fifth grade and immediately taught my classmates the words to “Proud to be an Astro”:

Now, Harry Walker is the one who manages this crew

He doesn’t like it when we drink and fight and smoke and screw

But when we win our game each day,

Then what the fuck can Harry say?

It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro

Seasons in Hell: Mike Shropshire

There is nothing more soul-crushing than spending an entire season with a bad team. Shropshire covers three hilariously inept campaigns with the Texas Rangers, who as then-manager Whitey Herzog noted: “Defensively, these guys are really sub-standard, but with our pitching it really doesn’t matter.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: Jonathan Mahler

An underrated late addition to the pantheon that tells the story of the 1977 Yankees amid the backdrop of a city gone to hell.

You will notice there are few books in my collection about modern baseball. There’s a reason for that. The vast majority of them are peans to the wonders of middle management and therefore boring as hell.

FOOTBALL

Playing For Keeps: Chris Mortsensen

The incredibly bizarre — and largely forgotten — story of how the mob tried to gain influence in pro football via a pair of shady agents named Norby Walters and Lloyd Bloom. Good luck finding it.

Bringing the Heat: Mark Bowden

You may recognize Bowden from such masterworks as Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. You probably don’t remember that he spent a year with the Eagles after the death of Jerome Brown. As honest and unflinching a look at pro football as you will ever find.

North Dallas Forty: Peter Gent

The only piece of sports fiction on my list is not so fictional at all. Gent’s thinly-veiled account of his own life as a receiver for Tom Landry’s Cowboys is shocking and brutal and sad and poignant. I make time to read it every year.

I used to have more football books, back when I cared about the sport.

MEDIA

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: Hunter S. Thompson

The Vegas one is more popular and Hell’s Angels is a stronger work of reportage, but for a dose of pure Gonzo insanity, this is the book I come back to more often than not.

The Boys on the Bus: Timothy Crouse

The companion piece to Thompson’s lurid account, Crouse plays it straight and lays bare the bullshit facade of campaign reporting. Almost 50 years later, we have still learned nothing.

The Franchise: Michael McCambridge

Details the glory days of Sports Illustrated, reading it now feels like an obituary. It was fun once, this business of writing about sports.

MUSIC

Heads, a Biography of Psychedelic America: Jesse Jarnow

My favorite book of the last few years, Jarnow takes us on a bizarre trip through the byzantine world of psychedelic drug networks connecting it through the career of the Grateful Dead and into modern-day Silicon Valley. I’m waiting for the followup on Dealer McDope.

Not music, but as a companion piece, Nicholas Schou’s Orange Sunshine tells the even-crazier tale of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, who took over the LSD trade and invented hash smuggling by stuffing surfboards with primo Afghani hash and shipping them back to California.

The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones: Stanley Booth

Reported while on tour with the Stones at the height of their powers circa Let it Bleed, Booth took 15 years to write the damn thing. By then the Stones were already an anachronism. It’s all there, though. Sex, drugs, more drugs, and unbelievable access to the biggest rock ‘n roll band in the world.

This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm with Stephen Davis

In which Brother Levon disembowels Robbie Robertson and exposes the lie at the heart of The Band. Robbie took the songwriting credit and all the money.

Satan is Real: Charlie Louvin

Astonishingly good read that is best consumed with Charlie and his brother Ira playing low in the background.

Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader

Lester is an acquired taste and not all of his ramblings hold up. I will always love him for despising Jim Morrison and completely nailing what made Black Sabbath important. Spoiler: They were moralists like William S. Burroughs.

Please Kill Me: Legs McNeil and Gillian Welch

The definitive oral history of punk rock, an essential document of a scene that launched a thousand mediocre bands and the Ramones, who ruled.

Shakey: Jimmy McDonough

A tour-de-force biography of Neil Young that loses steam toward the end when McDonough makes himself the subject. The stuff about Neil’s bizarre 80s period and his relationship with his son is heartbreaking.

Our Band Could Be Your Life: Michael Azerrad

Pretty much everything you need to know about bands like Mudhoney, Black Flag and Mission of Burma who wove together the musical underground through a patchwork collection of local scenes back when something like that was still possible.

ELMORE LEONARD

You can’t go wrong with anything Leonard writes, but Out of Sight is as good a place to start as any.

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berevityandquiet · 7 years

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the breakup

i’ve been talking about this fic off and on on twitter.

i was really, really inspired by Obsession by mcgenji on ao3 - i looovvee that fic, it’s got such an amazing grasp of emotion. it’s a real breath of fresh air in writing in my opinion.

this is, of course, an unedited drabble bc when have i ever finished a fic.

He tells him “it's over” over lukewarm cups of coffee.

Time doesn't really stop as much as it does slow. It's late evening, there are a few clouds in the sky. It may rain soon – the weather's been fairly temperamental lately.

“I'm sorry.” Genji says quietly. He won't look Jesse in the face – eyes studying the grain on the wood table, tears dripping down his cheeks.

Jesse hears the reasons why. The standard “it's not you, it's me.”, the “I still want to be friends”, the “I just don't think this will work.” He hears ten dollar words that just scream “boredom” and “dull”, and christ it hurts and yeah, in his brain, he knows that's not what Genji's saying.

But it's what it feels like.

“Please understand-” Genji starts again, starting to look up, but it's all Jesse can do to not just walk out.

So he puts his hat back on his head and slaps on the biggest grin he can and says

“Aw, it's all right – I gotcha.”

“You do?” Genji continues to cry – Jesse wants to. Wants to curl up in bed and bury his head in his dog's fur and cry until he's bled dry, but he doesn't. He grips the back of the chair and pushes it slowly back in place.

“'Course I do. Friends?”

Genji actually smiles. Soft, watery-eyed, and miserable, but he does smile and says, “Yes. Yes of course.”

And Jesse takes his leave under the guise of “Gotta run, gotta go to an appointment.”

He walks home in a daze, enters his apartment, and doesn't leave for three days.

- - -

“I'm sorry.” Sombra says softly – there's no mockery in her voice. Instead, it's...sad , “You guys were so-”

“Somb. Please.” Jesse grits out, gripping her thigh. He's got his head in her lap, staring at the ceiling, his beard wild and unkempt, “Please just...don't.”

And so she doesn't – she turns on Netflix and they spend the night quietly watching crime documentaries and eating greasy pizza.

- - -

The first few days are hell.

The next month is hell.

Genji wants to be friends, so they stay friends. A week after The Incident (so-dubbed by Sombra), Genji texts him hello.

It takes him half a day to respond. But eventually, he replies “Hi!” with a smiley emoji. All he wants to be is left alone, but Genji was part of his life for years.

He's still in love, he repeats every night, staring up at the ceiling and running the moment over and over and over in his head. So many things left unsaid, so many loose ends. In his dreams he drops to his knees and begs and as he brushes his teeth, he daydreams lines: “That's fine, fuck you too” or “Yeah, I was getting bored too” or even “Please, please don't let this be the end for us.”

He sits in his room and listens to more Mahler than his healthy. That is, until Fareeha storms his apartment, steals all his cd's and tells him he's not allowed to listen to the “sad stuff” anymore.

And then he listens to Debussy.

And Davis.

And Frank – and Parton. And Collins and Gabriel worms their way in, calling to the Solsbury Hills and the Odds respectively. His house virtually becomes a museum to music, because that's what he's always clung to in times of hardship. Clung to it when his parents divorced, clung to it when his dog died, clung to it when he lost his arm and he clings to it now, as he throws away pictures of Genji and him, deletes them off his phone. He can't stand to look at them anymore, can't fight the metallic-y, blackberry taste in his mouth. Dolly sings about Jolene and here he is, sobbing about a lost love – the irony is palpable.

- - -

The first month is bad. And then it becomes... okay.

- - -

“Look, you've been stuck in your house all week.”

Lucio stands in the doorway, a crutch wedged in the space between. He won't go away, no matter how many times Jesse tells him he doesn't want to go out, “It's not healthy man. You're gonna die in there and stink up the joint.”

“Thanks.” Jesse grumbles, half hidden behind the door.

“You know what I mean.” Lucio frowns (and wow, it looks so...unnatural) “I know you're in a bad place, but you've gotta walk outside sometime.”

“I walk outside.”

“Walking back and forth to work doesn't count.” Lucio rolls his eyes, “As your friend, I'm giving you fair warning – you either come with us, or I send Jamie in here and you'll have to fend him off.”

“You are such an ass.”

“You'll thank me.”

The threat of having Jamie “Junkrat” Fawkes rolling into his apartment is enough to make him toss on some jeans and join his friends for a night.

And so they paint the town red.

First by going to the all-night grocery shop and pushing Hana in the cart through the isles, laughing amongst each other at the bizarrely overpriced items and buying way too much candy. And then sit at the towns square, hanging on the fountain, shooting the shit, and throwing pieces of candy at one another. Hana turns out Queen too loud and a passing police officer frowns at them, but it's summer and the entire town's outside enjoying the clear sky.

Sitting with his friends, watching the stars crawl across the sky, the ache goes from a sharp stab to a dull ache. He almost feels normal again – Jamie falls into the fountain and they get yelled at by the same passing officer who tells them “Act like adults!”

They all snigger behind their hands as he storms off – he's on one of those roomba things, what are they called again?

(“A segway, dummy.”

...he'd had that fight Genji.

It was entirely in jest – but it was their second date. They were going to this high-end Italian place that Jesse had to fight tooth-and-nail to get a reservation at. Jesse couldn't remember the name of the machine, so he juggled between “them scooter motherfuckers” and “them roomba fuckermothers” and Genji...

Genji had laughed so hard he had to stop and catch his breath.

In the end, the Italian food was so bland they'd left the restaurant and got McDonalds and sat in the booths and stole each other's fries)

It...didn't hurt as bad to remember that. Stung, just like an old paper cut stings when you turn it wrong but...not as bad. Jamie shakes the water off and gets drops everywhere and Jesse takes a moment to look down at his phone.

Genji S. - 10:45 PM

You guys look like you're having fun.

Jesse looks up, looks around and catches Genji's eye as he walks out of the bakery across the way. He's out with Angela, both of them ladened with brown paper bags.

(Probably full of those donuts he likes so much, Jesse thinks briefly)

Genji smiles and waves at him.

Jesse forces a smile and waves and turns back to the group, trying to swallow down the lump in his throat. He doesn't invite them over – neither do his friends, who all wave and yell “Hi!” and Genji...

Genji waves back and follows Angela back to his car.

It's an awkward moment – they're all friends, technically, all part of one group. They're not taking sides – neither Jesse or Genji would want that.

(But deep, deep down, Jesse hopes they would pick him. Genji probably thinks the same.)

Lucio swipes the phone from Hana and tells them that he's been working on a new tune and quickly turns to his youtube page, blasting his music.

The papercut sting spreads.

But Jesse's okay.

- - -

“You sure I can't drive you home?”

Jamie's boyfriend is tall and intimidating, but his voice is soft as he speaks to Jesse.

“Naw. I only live five minutes 'way, I'd be wastin' yer gas.” Jesse waves him off, plopping his hat back on his head, “'Sides, it's one hell of a night. I wouldn' wanna miss this for the world.”

Jesse sees Hana and Lucio's car pulls out of the parking lot and Jamie is dozing in Mako's passenger side seat.

Mako nods and then Jesse's alone once more.

- - -

On the walk home he pays Pearl Jam and walks around his neighborhood until all the lights in his apartment die down.

- - -

The one thing they never tell you about a breakup is that it's really no different them coping with the death of a loved one.

It's the death of a relationship. The death of something you grew and cultivated for a significant amount of time – of course you would need to grieve.

And just like grief, you don't just go through each step in a row. Occasionally, you go back and forth, ping ponging as your brain struggles to cope.

Jesse's finding himself in anger now – that bitch, that whore, after all he's done, all he's given up. He storms around his apartment and throws books off of shelves, grabs a bottle of whisky and slams it on the floor.

He curls on his couch and clutches his pillows as his dog slinks up to him, terrified, and licks his bare arm. In one motion, Jesse reaches out and grabs the pup up, burring his face into Soldier's fur.

It's one of those lines that play in his head over and over and over, until he can't take it anymore.

We can still be intimate.

Like that's all Jesse wanted in the first place. Like that's all he cared for when they were together. Like that was what Jesse wanted from Genji in the first place.

We can still be intimate.

The idea makes Jesse sick.

And moreso, it makes him angry.

Was that really all Genji saw in him? The entire time they dated, did he really think that's what Jesse cared about? Not about his family, not about his hopes and dreams, no, just his ass?

Jesse cries into Soldier, falls asleep with the dog licking his tear stained face.

And in the morning, he gets up slowly, opens his window to the sounds of the street, and cleans his apartment up as best he can.

#mcgenji #i'm keeping my line separators here bc i've noticed when i added a horizontal line in this theme it won't show up #gotta find a new theme i guess?#i wanted to post this so i could work on other fic #just gotta wipe a little dust off this blog brb #unedited drabbles

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topbeautifulwomens · 6 years

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#Josh #Pais #blackandwhite #bookme #eyes #makeupideas #modelling #musically #paris #smile #studio #youtube

In the late 1980s, Josh Pais began appearing on television in an episode of NBCâ€s hit sitcom “The Cosby Show” and CBS’ Emmy Award-winning sitcom “Murphy Brown.” After playing a tiny part in the made-for-TV movie Teething with Anger, he made his big screen debut in director David Hugh Jones’ take on Stephen Metcalfe’s play, Jacknife, starring Robert De Niro and Ed Harris.

Entering the fresh decade, Pais secured a recurring role as medical examiner assistant Borak (1990-2002) on NBC’s police procedural and legal drama “Law & Order.” During that time, he was too cast in writer-director Anne Flournoy’s romantic comedy How to Be Louise (starring Lea Floden) and portrayed the aggressive Raphael in Steve Barron’s 1st film in the franchise, the live phase version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (both in 1990). Afterward, he returned to the small screen in the television films The Second Greatest Story Ever Told (1994; starring Mira Sorvino and Malcolm McDowell) and On Seventh Avenue (1996).

Pais spent the slumber of the 1990s in Herb Gardner’s film adaptation of his own Tony Award-winning play, I’m Not Rappaport (1996; starring Walter Matthau), Robert Bella’s comedy about love, death and rock ‘n roll, Colin Fitz (1997; with Matt McGrath and Andy Fowle), and Darshan Bhagat’s dark comedy Karma Local (1998). He was also seen in writer-director John Hamburg’s crime comedy Safe Men (1998; starring Sam Rockwell and Steve Zahn), John Dahl’s cult hit Rounders (1998; starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton), Steven Zaillian’s Oscar-nominated adaptation of Jonathan Harr’s real life-based book, A Civil Action (1998; starring John Travolta), and Wes Craven’s Oscar-nominated biopic about Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras, Music of the Heart (1999; starring Meryl Streep).

Meanwhile, TV audiences may catch him in the syndicated sci-fi series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” NBC’s highly-acclaimed police procedural series “Homicide: Life on the Street,” HBO’s popular drama/comedy “Sex and the City” and the Sci-Fi Channel’s “The Crow: Stairway to Heaven.” From 2000 to 2001, Pais also appeared in three episodes of NBC’s police procedural drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,â€ť playing Robert Sorenson. During that time, he also guest starred on Foxâ€s drama “The $treet” and ABC’s single-camera comedy series “The Job.”

He also continued to contribute to his film-acting resume with roles in Wes Craven’s third installment in the successful satirical horror films, Scream 3 (2000; with Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courteney Cox Arquette) and Robert J. Siegel’s coming-of-age tale Swimming (2000; starring Lauren Ambrose). He also appeared in Billy Morrissette’s dark comedy Scotland, Pa. (2001; starring James LeGros, Maura Tierney and Christopher Walken), based on William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Macbeth,” and in Ron Howard’s Academy Award-winning film A Beautiful Mind (2001; starring Russell Crowe), which was inspired by the schizophrenic Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash.

After appearing in the comedic TV movie Porn ‘n Chicken (2002), he went back to the big screen in Joel Schumacher’s drama/thriller Phone Booth (2002; starring Colin Farrell), writer-director Thomas McCarthy’s BAFTA-winning indie The Station Agent (2003; with Peter Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson), and Fred Schepisi’s light-hearted family comedy starring numerous generations of the Kirk Douglas family, It Runs in the Family (2003).

Meanwhile, Pais also stepped behind the camera to direct and write the documentary 7th Street (2003), which he also starred. His work later won an award at the Boston Independent Film Festival.

Returning in front of the camera, Pais appeared on NBC’s police Procedural drama “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and the ABC sitcom “Hope & Faith.” He was then cast in the 2005 films The Reality Trap, a satirical caper-comedy by writer-director Michael Bergmann, Little Manhattan, a romantic comedy film directed and written by husband and wife Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, and Confess, a political thriller by writer-director Stefan C. Schaefer. He followed it up with roles in Sidney Lumet’s comedy-drama based on the longest Mafia trial in American history, Find Me Guilty (2006; starring Vin Diesel), and Bradley Wigor’s drama comedy, Unconscious. On television, he was spotted as a guest in an April 2006 episode of HBO drama series “The Sopranos.”

2007 saw Pais in writer-director Paul Soter’s directorial debut, the comedy Watching the Detectives (starring Cillian Murphy). He also appeared in two films that premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival: writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s independent dark comedy horror Teeth (starring Jess Weixler) and writer-director Mike White’s drama comedy Year of the Dog (with Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, John C. Reilly and Peter Sarsgaard), in which he portrayed Shannonâ€s stress-prone boss named Robin.

Pais has completed writer-director Noah Buschel’s upcoming film, Neal Cassady (starring Tate Donovan), a biographical drama about the inspiration for the character of Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s classic On the Road. He will quickly wrap up writer-director Peter Himmelstein’s drama thriller, The Key Man, alongside Jack Davenport and Hugo Weaving. He is also set to become a regular in the upcoming TV drama that will debut on ESPN in July 2007, “The Bronx is Burning,” adapted from Jonathan Mahler’s bestselling book, “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning.” In the show, which will star John Turturro, Oliver Platt and Daniel Sunjata, Pais will portray Reporter Phil Pepe.

Name Josh Pais Height 5' 7″ Naionality American Date of Birth 21 June 1964 Place of Birth New York, USA Famous for

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