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lucky-dreamfisher · 4 years

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The Illusion of Living Notes and Spoilers

I feel like enough time has passed for everyone who wanted to get the audiobook to get it, so here are all the notes I made while reading the book.

Please do NOT show these spoilers to anyone who didn’t give their explicit permission to be spoiled! And do not try to sneaky-spoil while being vague and pretending you’re not spoiling either!

TIOL was written in 1941 and published in 1942

Joey’s biggest dream is to become a God

Joey is explicitly not straight (reaffirms his distaste for dating women multiple times in the book, purposely avoids intimate gestures when meeting female friends, and reacts negatively to a straight couple kissing in his presence) but can be interpreted as either gay or asexual, and there’s evidence supporting both of these interpretations

Joey doesn’t think of people as real. He thinks of them as fictional characters in a show (well, he isn’t wrong)

He witnessed a murder at 10, but isn’t bothered by it, because everyone’s fictional anyway (watsonian perspective: little sociopath, doylist perspective: smartest character in the franchise). It was on that day that he started thinking of people as characters in a play, including his own parents.

He likes to throw peanuts in the faces of vaudeville performers he doesn’t like. Very proud of his aim

Joey’s dad sends him a pair of boots every year as a gift. Joey throws them out and buys himself better ones

Though it’s implied that the stories he tells about his parents aren’t true

While in the army, he was bullied for liking girl stuff, like reading romance novels and genre fiction

Nathan and Joey are very close. Nathan often gives him business advice and knows some of his secrets. Nathan looks down on artistic-type people. Joey is the only artistic-type person he admires, mostly for being business-oriented. Nathan is all about money.

Nathan wears a suit, has perfectly slicked back hair, and an elegant mustache. Smokes Cigars. Calls himself Nate

Nathan says that Lottie (the girl from the preview) isn’t real. It’s implied that there are more made-up people in the book. The epilogue implies that Joey intends to bring the made-up people to life one day, just like the cartoons

After leaving the army, and before starting an animation studio, he worked at a bookstore together with Henry for a few years

He took late-night art classes together with Miss Lambert

Bendy was named after Joey’s friend, who murdered a man to take a photo of his dying face for an award show. Joey finds it inspiring. In his words: "Thank god for dark paths, they lead all great artists to their greatest creations". Joey also likes the name Bendy, because it means someone who bends the rules

Nathan says that Joey had a genuine change of heart in his old age, and had “too much guilt and worry”. Nathan is not pleased with that

Abby Lambert is one of Joey’s oldest friends, and the one who introduced him to Henry. She and Joey used to perform vaudeville acts together. Joey played a Devil and Abby played an Angel

It’s implied that Henry created the Butcher Gang, and they were some of his oldest characters, even older than Bendy, Boris, and Alice

Henry left a year after the studio’s creation because he wanted “something that isn’t Bendy” (it’s either that he felt like his creativity was being stifled by being forced to work on the same project all the time, or that he wanted a real family, as opposed to the “studio family” that Joey was satisfied with)

Joey disses Henry a lot in the book. He paints him as untalented, unimaginative, boring, and a poor dresser on top of that. Nathan thinks that pretending to not care about Henry is Joey’s “greatest illusion”

Nathan hates Henry and thinks that Joey’s going too easy on him (if BATDR is Nathan’s world, Henry’s gonna be screwed)

Sammy used to play music at a movie theatre when he was a teen and Joey came to watch his performance every day

They met again a few years later and Sammy recognized him. Joey hired him and Jack on the same day

Sammy smokes

Sammy and Jack performed jazz songs at vaudeville together for some time before working at JDS

Jack gets upset when people ignore him and only pay attention to Sammy. He loves being the center of attention, and has a knack for showmanship. Very optimistic and good natured

Sammy was hired a year after Henry’s departure and has never met him (curious, given that he recognizes Henry in the game) Not true - turns out Sammy was hired in October 1930, so he still could’ve met Henry

As part of his deal with Joey, Sammy has full creative control over his department and people he’s working with (did Sammy replace Susie?)

Sammy hates being at the center of attention and is always very serious. Making jokes comes hard for him, but he plays along sometimes. His expression is very hard to read and he always seems suspicious of people he’s talking with. He’s dressed very neatly and appropriately (unlike Jack, who wears bright and flashy clothes), his hair is long and not slicked back. He’s a few years younger than Joey, but acts much older

Joey thinks that Sammy is his best decision and the man who comes closest to fully understanding him. He takes pride in the fact that Sammy sticks by him for all these years out of his own will, and not because Joey makes him. He thinks Sammy is a genius and deserves to be worshipped like a god (he doesn’t hesitate to tell him that). Asked him once whether there’s anyone Sammy worships, and it’s painfully obvious that he wanted to hear that it’s him (Sammy replied that a god of this magnitude hasn’t been invented yet, which is a nice foreshadowing)

Allison is already working at the studio at the time of TIOL. Before that, she was a Broadway actress. Joey likes to watch her recording sessions. It’s not confirmed which character she’s voicing, but Susie wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the book, so there’s a possibility that Allison was already voicing Alice Angel in 1941

Joey’s meetings with Jack Fain and Grant are just an excuse to have a coffee and chat with them

On his first meeting with Bertrum Joey got drunk and flirty with him. Bertrum told him he’s “not that kind of date” and Joey played dumb (the scene is played for laughs though, so idk if it’s supposed to be seriosuly indicative of Joey’s sexuality)

Bertrum returned from retirement to work on Bendyland

Disney exists in this universe, Joey wishes he could be able to achieve the same with Bendy

Nathan wants to prove “very soon” that he is limitless

The moving ink was developed as part of the Sillyvision film process at some point around 1941. The purpose of Sillyvision was to make corrections to images that have already been created, without having to redraw them from scratch. The ink is activated through contact with a special paper

Joey describes Bendyland’s conception, and the Dark Land sounds eerily similar to the studio world in BATIM & BATDR

Light Land is Alice’s Domain, and as the name suggests it will have many lights. It’s designed to create an illusion of being lifted up

Tiny Land is Boris’ Domain and it gives an illusion of getting shrunk

Big Land is Butcher Gang’s Domain and has giant airplanes and battleships

Joey hates the real world and wants to escape to a make-believe one. He was hoping Bendyland would be that for him. His greatest fear is being unable to create that perfect world, and creating only its dark reflection (ironic)

Joey feels like he won’t be able to truly die and rest his soul until his dream fully comes to life. He calls art his “doorway into immortality” (is Dapper Joey?)

Joey believes a soul is needed to make a lifeless artistic imitation of the world into a real breathing world. He says that he’s been looking for a soul for a long time (he means it metaphorically, but it feels like a foreshadowing)

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #batim #bendy and the dark revival #batdr #bendy: the illusion of living #dreamfisher certified

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fycarmensandiego · 3 years

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A chat with author Melissa Wiley

In 1996, HarperCollins published six Carmen Sandiego chapter books, featuring VILE villains from the then-current "Deluxe"/"CD-ROM"/"Classic" generation of computer games and a new lineup of Acme agents, headed by a Black female Chief (Lynne Thigpen ha impact), and focusing on kid detectives Maya and Ben.

The series included two books each by two writing teams and one solo act, Melissa Peterson. I got in touch with Melissa, who now uses the pen name Melissa Wiley, and she graciously answered some questions about writing the Carmen books and beyond.

To get you caught up to my knowledge before the interview, here's Melissa's website, and here's her bio as printed in the two Carmen books (accompanied by the caricature above):

Melissa Peterson is the author of several books for young readers. Born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, she has lived in eight different states and visited Germany and France. She has never ridden a dolphin, but she did eat a great deal of sour cherry ice cream outside the cathedral in Cologne. [Note: These are both references to plot points in Hasta la Vista, Blarney.] Her research for Hasta la Vista, Blarney included many hours playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? An official ACME Master Detective, she lives in New York City with her husband and young daughter.

FYCS: Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview.

Melissa Wiley: What a fun blast from the past! The Carmen books were my first professional writing gig and I had so much fun working on them.

That's so exciting to hear! With that being the case, how did you get involved with the books?

I was an assistant editor at HarperCollins, working for the wonderful Stephanie Spinner. I started out as her editorial assistant at Random House right after grad school and moved to Harper with her a year later, shortly after [my husband] Scott and I got married. Stephanie knew that I wanted to be a writer, and she often sent in-house writing assignments my way (lots of cover copy). When I left Harper in 1995 to have a baby, Stephanie recommended me for several book assignments, including the two Carmen Sandiego novels. That project had been underway for several months—Harper was doing a tie-in with the game and TV show. There were six books in total; two were assigned to me and four went to other writing teams [Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman, and Bonnie Bader and Tracey West]. I often joke that I got my first modem, my first baby, and my first book deal in the same month!

I loved working with my Carmen Sandiego editor, Kris Gilson. The two books were a blast to write and a great learning opportunity for me. Ellen Weiss remains a good friend of mine. She's a true gem of a person!

Have your experiences writing the Carmen books influenced your work since then?

With Carmen, I discovered how much I love writing humor. Before that (in grad school), my poems and stories were on the serious side. I had so much fun with the playful, sometimes goofy tone of the Carmen Sandiego books that I definitely shifted afterward to more of a focus on humor in my books. I still find writing from a place of playfulness to be my most satisfying kind of work.

Were you familiar with Carmen Sandiego before writing the books?

I loved the computer game! I'd seen several episodes of the show—it's all a bit blurry now and hard to say which I encountered first—and really enjoyed it, but I especially loved the game. Instant classic!

How much guidance did you receive from HarperCollins / Brøderbund? Were the plots your own, or were you given plot outlines?

We were given the basic descriptions for the two kid detectives, and I had a couple of meetings with the editors and the other writers to flesh out the characters a bit more—give them personalities. I don't think Mel was in the meetings, but Ellen was there, and Tracey and Bonnie.

Then I wrote outlines for my two books and the other writers outlined theirs. I was assigned one "Where in the World" mystery and one "Where in Time" mystery. I think I submitted several plot ideas for each—the big challenge was thinking up interesting objects for Carmen and her henchmen to steal. The Blarney Stone and cocoa beans were my favorite ideas and I was thrilled that they got picked!

How did you research the books?

Those were AOL days, and the web wasn't yet a place for intensive research, so I spent a lot of time in the library. For The Cocoa Commotion, I conducted phone interviews with staff members at the Hershey chocolate factory—lots of fun. But I never did get to visit the Blarney Stone!

What was your favorite part of working on the books?

Researching the history of chocolate! Naturally I had to do a lot of sampling in order to describe it properly. ;)

Your author bio in the books mentions that the scene in which Maya and Ben eat sour cherry ice cream in Cologne, Germany was inspired by an actual experience of yours. Did any other experiences of yours make it into the books? Have you had any other travel experiences that notable? (Note: I'm originally from Northern Michigan, so travel experiences involving tart cherries are a high bar to clear for me.)

Ohhh, that sour cherry ice cream! I hope I get to taste it again someday. Apart from eating a lot of chocolate, I can't remember any other personal experiences that informed the books. If I were to write one today, I'd make sure to set a scene in Barcelona. My husband and I spent a week there in 2008 and it was an incredible trip. The paella! The Gaudí buildings! Art on every corner! I'd love to go back someday.

The bio also features a caricature of you with your baby daughter...

That drawing was made by the brilliant comic book artist Rick Burchett, who was working with Scott on Batman comics at the time. Scott was an editor at DC Comics and Rick was one of his favorite artists to work with. When I needed a bio illustration for the Carmen Sandiego books, we commissioned Rick to draw it. I love that piece so much! The baby is my oldest, Kate, who was born right around the time I started working on the books. We still have the original art!

You've written over 20 children's books for a variety of ages, in a variety of genres. Do you have any favorites among them?

That's so hard to say—I'm fond of all of them and I dearly loved creating worlds and adventures for Charlotte and Martha in my Little House prequels—but The Prairie Thief and The Nerviest Girl in the World are extra-special to me. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado and had a summer job at a wildlife refuge on the prairie, a landscape that served as the setting for Prairie Thief. I loved getting to weave secrets into the prairie setting that means so much to me.

Your most recent book, The Nerviest Girl in the World, was published last August. Can you tell us a bit about why you wrote it?

I lived for 11 years in La Mesa, California, a small town just outside San Diego. While I was there, I learned that in the very early days of silent film, there had been a film studio in town. Eventually the studio moved to Santa Barbara, but it was exciting to discover that before Hollywood was the center of the American film industry, little old La Mesa was a moviemaking place. I began reading everything I could find about the studio, and when I learned that many of the cowboys in those early Westerns were real cowboys and ranchers, an idea for a book began to take shape—the story of an adventurous girl who stumbled into work as a daredevil film actress along with her cowboy brothers.

Of course, I'm legally compelled to ask the question that literally every interview currently includes: how has the pandemic changed your job?

LOL! Yes, it's the question right now, isn't it! Well, I've worked at home since the Carmen Sandiego days, and I homeschool my kids, so in the biggest ways our lives weren't hugely affected by the shutdown. But I used to do a lot of my writing in cafés, and I miss that like crazy! I had to think up all sorts of new strategies for staying focused at home this past year. I'm hoping to get back to the coffee shops this summer!

Something I found really interesting is that you have a Patreon, which you explain you started to help pay for medical bills. How has that experience affected your work as an author?

I've played with lots of kinds of content on Patreon and really enjoy having a space to share behind-the-scenes stories. It's a more intimate and personal space than social media, so I feel free to let my hair down and be really frank.

Thanks so much for these fantastic questions! I had so much fun reminiscing about the Carmen Sandiego adventure!

#carmen sandiego #melissa wiley #interviews #mine #csm

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artificialqueens · 4 years

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I Don't Know How I Know (But I Know) (Taywhora) - Ortega

fic summary: Tayce and A’whora have been friends for three years and the joke around school is that they’re joined at the hip. They started working there at the same time and they were both given the year two classes, so they planned together, filled out their assessment folders together and prepped for parent’s evenings together.

Tayce and A’whora have been friends for three years and Tayce has been a little bit in love with her for two of them.

(in which Tayce teaches year five, A'whora teaches Reception, Tayce hates Valentine’s day, and A'whora has a plan to change that.)

a/n: with thanks to my co-author, Lawrence Chaney. title from Intuition by LIZ, please listen to it it’s a vibe. happy valentine’s day everyone xo

***

Tayce has heard people say that teaching is a form of acting. She thinks this is true, for the most part. After all, there’s no way in hell she teaches her year fives the same way she would act around her friends.

She pretends she doesn’t know the TikTok dance to Savage Love and fakes ignorance at the memes her kids all communicate in. She’s impatient with her class when they run in the corridor and chew gum (because they’re almost the oldest in the school, and they should know better) but she’s patient when they struggle with area and perimeter and brings her chair over to sit beside whoever’s confused to explain it all again. She’s strict- she gets the girls passing notes to each other into trouble as if she didn’t do the exact same with her friends at the age of ten- and she’s built up a reputation for being one of the teachers that doesn’t take any shit. She expects a lot from the children she teaches, knows they’re a blank canvas and that they’ve got the potential to understand things that some adults struggle with, so she teaches them about racism, homophobia and transphobia, makes it part of her everyday teaching as opposed to one milquetoast lesson about Martin Luther King per year.

Some of the parents fucking hate her for it. She’d be lying if she said that wasn’t one of her favourite parts of the job.

It takes a lot for her not to drop that persona sometimes. When she has to tear through one of her boys for muttering “ah shit, here we go again” as she hands out a worksheet on direct and indirect speech instead of bursting out laughing as if it’s one of the funniest things she’s heard in years, which it is. It’s times like that when she wishes she could be more like A’whora.

A’whora with the blonde hair and the Disney-princess smile who teaches Reception. A’whora who does silly voices for all the characters when she’s reading picture books to her class and who sits and does colouring-in with them when they’re playing. A’whora who’s too nice to them all because she thinks they’re too cute to discipline, but her class love her so their behaviour is good regardless.

(A’whora with the completely inappropriate nickname only disclosed to Tayce five mojitos deep on the staff Christmas night out, which she’d earned herself at uni via her reputation. Tayce hadn’t asked for any further details.)

Tayce has never seen a teacher better suited to the youngest class in the school than A’whora. She’s constantly got specks of glitter on her face from the crafts she completes with them, she hums the silly little songs she uses to teach them their sounds when she’s at the photocopier without even realising. She turns up to work in immaculate outfits and finishes the day with them covered in glue, marker pen, and even (horrifically) a child’s snot once, but she doesn’t even mind, simply zips them up into little bodybags and puts them in for dry cleaning.

Tayce is never done telling her how she could never do what she does, she could never teach the little ones; her patience would snap, she’s too mean for them, she’d get bored having to teach the most basic of basic stuff. A’whora only ever brushes her off and says how she couldn’t teach Tayce’s year group either; they’d eat her alive, they’d walk all over her, she wouldn’t even be able to do the complicated maths she’d have to teach. Besides, she argues, drawing a glare from Tayce every time, she’s definitely goofy enough for the Reception kids.

Tayce and A’whora have been friends for three years and the joke around school is that they’re joined at the hip. They started working there at the same time and they were both given the year two classes, so they planned together, filled out their assessment folders together and prepped for parent’s evenings together. They worked well together, so when their headteacher sent them to opposite ends of the school Tayce almost had a meltdown. Still, they sit next to each other in the staffroom and at every staff meeting. They take turns making each other lunch every day and walk to the roll shop to get toasties every Friday. Tayce walks down from her classroom to come and sit in A’whora’s at the end of every day and they chat and bitch and sometimes cry and get absolutely nothing done for at least forty minutes. A’whora picks her up on the way to work every morning and terrifies Tayce with her bad driving and the way she almost causes road traffic accidents with only a “whoopsie!” of acknowledgement, but she’ll make up for it by taking them through the Starbucks drive-thru if they’ve got a meeting after school that night. She blasts songs by artists Tayce has never heard of but are all in the same energetic, poppy, Y2K-esque genre that A’whora seems to love.

Tayce and A’whora have been friends for three years and Tayce has been a little bit in love with her for two of them.

***

A’whora’s friends tease her and tell her that teaching five year olds must be the easiest job in the world. A’whora loves her friends, but she fucking resents them when they come out with that shite.

A’whora knows that she herself is not the brightest crayon in the box. She had known that she’d never be one of the girls in her year at high school that went off to study medicine or law, and she’d known she’d never graduate uni with a first class degree or write an award-winning dissertation.

(When she’s having a bad day she comforts herself with the fact that at least she’s not joined a multi-level-marketing scheme under the guise of being a “businesswoman”, and this helps her feel a little better.)

But what she lacks in academic ability she makes up for in spadeloads by being a damn good teacher. She’s big-hearted and silly and patient. She always picks up crisps and KitKats when she’s at the shops and keeps them in a drawer under her desk to sneak to the kids who come to school without a snack. She sits in the construction corner with her kids when they’re playing and asks them about the models they make, and pretends to die a gruesome, slow death when they shoot her with their little lego guns instead of trying to get them to make something less violent like she knows she should do. She reads books about unicorns that captivate the little shy girls in her class who come up to her afterwards and whisper in their tiny voices that they think unicorns are real, and A’whora agrees with them and watches their faces light up. She makes every day fun for her little ones; because the beauty of teaching is having the control to plan what happens every hour, so she makes sure that none of the six they have to spend in her care are boring.

The key to being a good Reception teacher is to essentially make a fool of yourself every day for the benefit of twenty-two four and five year olds, which A’whora has no problem doing. She doesn’t care what her pupil support worker thinks of her when she acts out The Gruffalo with soft toy puppets she borrowed from the library. She doesn’t care what the management team think of her when she turns up for World Book Day dressed as The Tiger Who Came To Tea. The only person’s opinion she does maybe care a tiny, ever-so-slight amount about, is Tayce’s.

Tayce is that teacher. Tayce is the cool teacher. Tayce is the teacher that all the children want to be taught by. A’whora hears the year fours whisper to each other in the corridors every June and watch as they cross their fingers and close their eyes before they open the envelope addressed to their parents, then give a screech of excitement and joy when they see the name Miss Szura-Radix on their class allocation letter. She wears heels all day without so much as a grunt of complaint and jumps in A’whora’s car each morning with a full face of makeup on at half past seven (while A’whora paints her face at quarter past eight at her desk in between shovelling a croissant down her throat in an attempt at ‘breakfast’ and sorting handwriting worksheets). The year five and six girls straighten their hair to a flattened crisp in an attempt to emulate Tayce’s endless shiny locks and she’s the only teacher that the rogue group of year six boys addresses with respect. She has the discipline of Miss Trunchbull with the heart of Miss Honey, and A’whora thinks she’s the best teacher she’s ever seen.

A’whora’s been friends with Tayce since she started working at the school but her heart still flutters in its chest whenever she sweeps in to her classroom to chat after work, or sits herself down next to her before a cluster meeting with two cups of tea in polystyrene mugs and two biscuits, or whenever A’whora mysteriously finds a packet of Percy Pigs on her desk hidden under a pile of marking with a post-it note stuck to it that says “u are a pig (but i love u)”.

She wonders if that feeling will ever go away. She kind of doesn’t want it to.

It’s that feeling that made her volunteer to help out at the year five camp last March. Tayce was complaining about having to go to a remote outdoor centre and supervise ten year olds completing various death-defying tasks for a week all in the name of character building, and A’whora had said she’d go with her. The smile it had put on Tayce’s face was worth every minute spent up to her knees in mud. Similarly every second she spent waist deep in freezing water was worth the moment Tayce fell asleep on her shoulder on the coach trip back to school on the last day.

(And she still hasn’t told anyone else about the moment she thought her heart might explode; on the last night of the week when temperatures had unexpectedly plummeted and A’whora had been trying to get to sleep but all she had been able to do was shiver and chatter her teeth and toss and turn, and Tayce had sighed dramatically, rolled her eyes, thrown off her duvet cover and patted the space in the bed beside her, with a “just get in quick, before it gets cold”. A’whora had spent the following hours until morning with Tayce’s body tangled around hers, in the most blissful sleepless night she’d ever experienced.)

There’s so many things that endear Tayce to A’whora. Her smile, her secretly chaotic funny side, the way she never, ever makes A’whora feel like an idiot. The way she’ll ask the questions A’whora’s too scared to ask in staff meetings. The way she cares so deeply and passionately about the futures of the kids she teaches to the extent where sometimes she’ll develop a little crease at her brow in front of her attainment spreadsheet and A’whora will have to gently pry her away from her monitor to reassure her that she can’t control the way her children’s lives pan out. The way she’ll sometimes call her Rory, which makes A’whora’s heart expand at least three sizes.

Something else that makes her heart expand three sizes is the way Tayce acts with the Reception kids, despite her insisting she could never teach that year group. It happens one day when A’whora’s marking literacy while letting her kids play and Tayce swings by her classroom without so much as a knock. They’ll do this to each other sometimes when one’s in class and the other has planning time; just drop by and check in to make sure the other isn’t having a meltdown.

“Hey bitchtits,” she murmurs quietly, smirking as she leans onto A’whora’s desk. “How’s your day going?”

“Terrible since you decided to show up,” A’whora cocks an eyebrow back, then jerks her head towards her distracted kids. “This lot are like sponges, y’know. You can’t be dropping that kind of language in this class, even if you think you’re out of earshot.”

Tayce sticks her tongue out at her. “Aw what, you gonna report me to management?”

“Report you to management and say you’re in my class annoying me during teaching time!”

“Piss off! I’m the highlight of your day and you know it.”

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“No. Just some very lucky ladies,” Tayce bites back with a smile, instantly rendering A’whora’s cheeks beetroot red as if she’s been slapped.

“You’re horrendous. You’re an actual deviant. Olly Murs without the Pringles can,” she rolls her eyes, trying to style out how flustered she’s become. She can see Tayce open her mouth to shoot a comeback her way, which is why she’s glad when one of her boys appears beside her desk holding a crumpled piece of paper covered in crayon blobs which are clearly meant to represent objects.

“Hi Archie! You okay?” she smiles brightly, turning all her attention to the little boy and trying not to cringe at Tayce getting full view of her Cbeebies-presenter voice.

“I made a picture for you,” he says, showing her the piece of paper and pointing out all the features of his drawing with a chubby little finger. “It’s a dragon that breathes fire and bombs, and he’s called Squish.”

“Wow! Thank you, Archie, I love it!” A’whora keeps smiling, blinking at the drawing the boy’s still holding. She points at some shaky rectangles with a pink acrylic. “And I can see he must be really tall because those buildings are tiny underneath him!”

Archie’s no longer interested in her or the drawing, though, as he’s looking up at Tayce through his glasses. “You’re my brother’s teacher.”

“Am I?” Tayce says, surprised that the attention is suddenly on her. “Who’s your brother?”

“Joshua. Joshua White.”

Tayce’s face instantly lights up in recognition. “Of course, you’re Josh’s brother! I should’ve known, you look so alike.”

“He’s ten and I’m five,” Archie adds, somewhat unnecessarily.

“See, I think you might be taller than him, though,” Tayce deadpans. A’whora watches affectionately as Archie’s entire body crumples up in a laugh and he splutters out a “nooooo!”. Tayce’s face breaks out into a smile- warm and genuine with her nose wrinkling up. It’s maybe the most adorable thing A’whora has ever seen.

“Josh is good at art as well. He’s not quite as good as you, but he’s good,” Tayce smiles, and as Archie smiles back A’whora feels her heart melting.

Archie turns to Tayce suddenly with the drawing still in his hand, and holds it out for her to take. “This is actually for you.”

A’whora gives a snort of outrage and amusement, which she quickly turns into a cough. She watches as Tayce accepts the drawing gratefully, giving Archie a little squeeze on his shoulder as she says thank you and Archie scuttles away back to his friends all bashful. There’s a second where Tayce smiles after him then looks down at the drawing with fondness, and A’whora’s feelings for her hit her like a tidal wave.

Tayce doesn’t notice (because of course she doesn’t) and as she straightens up she grins triumphantly at A’whora, holding the drawing in her face proudly. “Well. Guess Archie’s got a new favourite teacher then, doesn’t he?”

“He wouldn’t last five minutes in your classroom,” A’whora smirks, lying. The image of big-hearted Tayce with a class full of the littlest kids drying their tears and helping them get all organised for the day ahead is so unbelievably cute it makes A’whora want to squeal like an embarrassing teenager. She doesn’t, though. Instead she holds out a hand expectantly, raises her eyebrows at Tayce as if she’s one of her students. “Am I getting my drawing back or what?”

“Easy come, easy go,” Tayce winks at her, flouncing out of her classroom door just as the bell rings for break.

***

Tayce doesn’t really flirt with A’whora. Well, no, that’s a lie. She flirts and then immediately laughs it off, brushes it off as a joke or banter even though maybe if she’d taken flirting with A’whora a little more seriously she wouldn’t still be in this position two-bloody-years in.

Because she knows A’whora flirts sometimes. She’s positive she isn’t making it up. The way she’ll deadpan a “well, you look like shit” as she hops into her car in the mornings, the way she’ll sit close to her under her fluffy pink blanket if she’s round at Tayce’s for a movie day (because yeah, they hang out outside of work, because that’s what friends do). It’s always a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it raised eyebrow here, a laugh there, a touch of her arm and a squeeze of her hand and a smirk that bites back a thousand words Tayce wishes A’whora would just say.

So Tayce will flirt back because that’s probably just what A’whora does with her friends, and that’s all Tayce is to her. Maybe. Tayce is never sure if A’whora likes her back or not, and the risk of completely wrecking what is her only workplace friendship is too great to actually do something about it, so she’s happy being her friend for now. Every second she gets to spend with A’whora is a treat, so she can’t complain.

It would be easier if she was still labouring under the delusion that A’whora was straight, which was the whole reason it took Tayce so long to start slowly falling for her. A’whora had had a boyfriend for roughly the first six months Tayce had known her, so she hadn’t even thought of her friend in that capacity at all. Then one day on a rainy January she’d thudded her bag down on Tayce’s desk and told her they were going for drinks after work that night because her boyfriend was a cheating piece of shit and she’d broken up with him.

Tayce’s fate had further been sealed when they’d been sitting together for an inservice day on LGBT training and A’whora had turned to her and rolled her eyes.

“We don’t really need to be here, do we? We could just piss off to McDonalds.”

Tayce had laughed softly, fixing A’whora with a slightly confused glance. “Huh?”

“Well, I feel like we probably have enough lived experience of the whole thing to not need training. Still, we could always duck back in in time for the transgender part. But I mean we probably don’t really need to be told how to support kids struggling with their sexuality, do we?”

Tayce still remembers how A’whora had snorted at her, her face obviously looking as if she was searching for the last puzzle piece in the world’s most confusing jigsaw. “What is it?”

“I don’t get…what?” Tayce had said awkwardly, still unsure of what A’whora had meant.

A’whora had pulled a face, giggling a little. “Are you telling me that rainbow flag is on your desk for shits and gigs?”

“No…” Tayce said slowly, the pieces slowly falling together. “So…”

A’whora gave another funny little snort. “Tayce, did you not know I was bi? I’m sure I’ve told you this before.”

Tayce still thinks she deserves an Oscar for still being able to keep the conversation going despite the fact her entire world had been flipped on its head like a globe made of hourglass. “You’ve not! You’ve never. I mean, like, why would you need to? It’s not something that matters. I mean obviously it matters to you, but it doesn’t matter to me. You’re my friend either way. I mean it just never occurred to me because…your ex, and uh…you can drive.”

Mercifully, their headteacher had started speaking before A’whora could respond to her beyond a single raised eyebrow and a smirk on her face.

It’s been ever since then that Tayce has been looking at A’whora in a different light. How gorgeous she is at the start of the day with nothing but her laminated brows and lash extensions to pass for makeup and how gorgeous she still is at the end of the day with her mascara and eyeliner smudged a little at the edges and her lipstick all rubbed off. How she’s generous and patient and how she’ll go out of her way to help Tayce understand the new flavour-of-the-month resource their headteacher makes them use, pulling one of her kid’s chairs over to sit close beside her to see the monitor and bumping her knee against Tayce’s every so often.

It’s how she acts around her kids, though, that really highlights everything Tayce completely adores about A’whora. Tayce is on her way up to the staffroom with two tubs of chicken shawarma salad in her hands (one for her and one for A’whora, of course) and she makes it up one flight of stairs when she suddenly hears a cry like an air raid siren pierce the air, as well as a gentle, soothing voice muttering quiet consolations.

It’s the sheer hysterical nature of the crying that catches Tayce’s attention at first, and she looks over the bannister to see A’whora on the level below, sitting a little boy who’s bawling his eyes out down on the red squashy chairs outside the office. With a stab to her heart Tayce realises that it’s Archie, the boy who’d given her the picture all those weeks ago. Both his knees and the palms of his hands are torn to ribbons; he’s obviously had a fight with the tarmac and emerged the loser. Tayce knows he’ll be okay if an adult’s seeing to him, especially if that adult’s A’whora, so she knows she can leave. She doesn’t need to stay and watch the situation play out.

But she does. She watches as one of the ladies from the office comes out and reassures A’whora that she can take over, and as A’whora waves her away kindly and says it won’t take her two minutes. She watches as A’whora puts her hands on the boy’s shoulders and directs his breathing, talking to him calmly and softly. She watches A’whora rip into a packet of sterile wipes with grim determination, telling Archie how brave he’s being and that she knows it stings as she wipes quickly and carefully over his little cut hands. She watches A’whora peel the wrapping off four plasters, making it seem effortless even with her long acrylics, and the way she makes a joke about Archie being bandaged up like a mummy which brings a smile to his little tear-stained face and a smile to Tayce’s too. The other staff don’t get to see A’whora’s caring nature very often (given how often she whispers judgemental comments to Tayce during meetings) but Tayce sees it all the time. A’whora has the biggest heart of anyone she’s ever known, and the whole scene makes Tayce feel so endeared towards her that it almost frightens her.

It’s at that point when Archie looks up at Tayce on the bannister and makes eye contact with her. He flicks his eyes back down to his teacher.

“Uh, Miss Boyle? I think Miss Szura-Radix wants to talk to you, because she’s been there a long time.”

Tayce’s heart freezes solid at the same time A’whora turns around, who fixes her with a sort of funny smile, confused but not exactly unhappy to see her.

“Uh. Coming to the staffroom?” Tayce shouts down, under pressure to explain herself but simultaneously not having any explanation.

“Two seconds!” A’whora yells up apologetically.

“I’ll wait,” Tayce yells down, reassuring her.

Tayce is used to waiting for A’whora. She supposes another minute or so won’t make a difference.

***

This is the third Valentine’s day A’whora has spent with Tayce.

The first fell on a Monday and had been an abject disaster (or success, depending on how she looked at it). A’whora was still getting over her ex and Tayce had confided in her that she hated Valentine’s day and all its commercialised, capitalist tat with a burning passion, so they’d gone to the pub after work and got so outrageously drunk that the two of them were so hungover the next day A’whora drove them to McDonalds for lunch.

The second had been last year- a Tuesday, where Tayce had been subdued and a little down until A’whora had forced her into helping her choose new clothes for the roleplay area for her kids and the pair of them had collapsed into endless breathless giggles as they both tried on costumes made for five-year-olds, the memory of Tayce in a hi-vis vest, safety goggles and a tiny hard hat one that still makes A’whora laugh if she thinks about it.

Really she’s lucky that she gets to be one of the few people who’s spent the 14th of February with their crush for three years in a row, but not for the reasons she might want. Still, she can live in the delusional daydream she’s taunted herself with many times; how maybe today Tayce will turn up at her classroom door with helium balloons and a teddy, how she’ll say she’s been secretly in love with her for years and how she’s booked them a table at that fancy seafood restaurant in town that just opened up for an actual proper date (not a mate date and not some gal-entines or pal-entines bullshit).

And then Tayce hops into her car in a foul mood with her hair drenched from waiting for A’whora in the rain with no umbrella and a face like a cow’s backside.

A’whora tries to cheer her up. She blasts the R&B that Tayce loves but Tayce just asks her to turn it off, telling her that Kiana Ledé, Mahalia and Ella Mai are exactly what she doesn’t need to hear on Valentine’s Day, endless songs about being in and out of love. So A’whora blasts Charli XCX instead, which works well until shuffle puts on Forever, and then Tayce is in the huff again.

Teaching the year fives doesn’t exactly help her feel much better, A’whora thinks, as they both sit down to lunch together and Tayce turns to her with an incredulous scowl on her face.

“They’ve all got bloody boyfriends and girlfriends!”

A’whora stops eating the pasta salad Tayce has made for her and narrows her eyes inquisitively. “Who does?”

“All the kids in my class. They’ve been going around all day telling me who they’ve paired up with, who’s snogging who, the detailed dating history of these bloody ten year olds. They keep asking me what we’re doing for Valentine’s Day. ‘Are we making cards?’ No! We’re doing more work on decimals because none of you bloody understood it the first three times I explained it to you. Make a card in your own damn time,” Tayce rolls her eyes while A’whora snorts with laughter. Tayce side-eyes her, unimpressed as A’whora tries to defend herself.

“Oh come on, Tayce, you’ve got to admit it’s a bit funny.”

“Is it? Is it though? Is it funny that a ten year old boy can get himself a girlfriend but I can’t?”

Tayce’s words make A’whora’s heart jump a hurdle. She plays it off with a joke. “Yeah, but he’s got a ten year old girlfriend, Tayce. I’m assuming you don’t want that.”

“No, funnily enough!” Tayce shakes her head. She pouts uncharacteristically, tilting her head to the ceiling. “I just…I don’t know, I just want someone that’s there for me. Who’ll always listen to all my shit, someone that makes me smile when I feel like crap. Someone I can just be myself around and have a laugh with whatever the hell we’re doing.”

A’whora nods and doesn’t say what she wants to. We do that. We do all of that together already.

“But I don’t want all the shit of having to actually get to know people, having to go on dates and do the whole talking stage and get my hopes up only to have them let down. I wish I could just…” Tayce sighs, and A’whora’s on tenterhooks wondering what’s coming next. “…I wish I just already had that person, you know?”

You do have that person. I’m that person.

A’whora nods silently and the bell rings signalling the end of their lunch break.

Since she’s not as enraged by Valentine’s day as Tayce, A’whora has planned to get the sequins and glue out and get the kids to make Valentine’s cards. She loves planning tasks like this, mainly because five year olds don’t need much help when faced with a glue stick and a shaker full of glitter, so it means she can put her feet up and have a chilled afternoon. She explains to her class what they’re going to be doing, feels her heart burst with affection as they all get outrageously excited at the very notion of using glitter. She shows them how to fold their piece of paper carefully to make a card shape, and shows them the array of colours they can choose from (and has to explain to some disappointed boys that no, she doesn’t have any blue card so no, their Valentine’s Day card can’t be the colour of Crystal Palace football club).

She’s giving out the different colours of card to her kids and cutting them to size when one of her girls stops, peers carefully at the selection of colours, then looks at A’whora thoughtfully.

“Miss Boyle, are you going to give a Valentine’s card to Miss Szura-Radix?”

A’whora almost slices through her own hand in shock. She looks with incredulity at the little girl in front of her. “Bella! No, of course not. Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re best friends and you love her,” Bella shrugs, A’whora’s attempts to shame her into silence obviously having no effect. A’whora tries to scowl, tries to do her best ‘cross face’ despite the fact that the thought of giving Tayce a Valentine’s card sets her heart racing so fast it makes her genuinely think about driving to A&E.

“I don’t…” she starts, until Bella speaks again.

“You told us before that girls can fall in love with girls and you said that we can make our Valentine’s cards for our friends too,” she insists innocently. A’whora finally musters up a frown, thrusts a pink piece of card into her hand.

“Why am I even entertaining this conversation- go and get on with your work, madam!” she says firmly, and Bella walks away with her blank card in her hand, nonplussed.

But as her kids all begin to make their cards and they’re all too caught up in glitter and painting their hands with PVA glue to even need her help with anything, A’whora begins absent-mindedly folding a spare piece of pink card in half. She draws one, two, three love hearts on it, then takes one of the little glue sticks and carefully, neatly, fills them in with splodges of clear glue. She asks one of the little boys sitting at the table opposite her if she can borrow the red glitter when he’s finished with it and he nods his head, A’whora’s heart involuntarily swelling with pride at how good her children are at sharing. She tap-tap-taps the glitter shaker over the hearts on the paper, making sure each one is covered completely before standing the card upright and watching the excess fall off like sparkly snow. Opening the card, she takes the gold shiny gel pen from her desk and writes without really thinking it through.

Maybe if Tayce isn’t going to magically read A’whora’s mind and figure out what she’s been yearning for, A’whora just has to give her a little nudge in the right direction.

When she’s done she folds it back over, stands up, crosses the room to her empty yellow message folder and slides it inside. She asks her class if anyone knows where the year five classroom is because she’s got a message to send there. Fifteen tiny hands fly up and A’whora basically has to whittle the volunteers down to the only two kids who actually know where they’re going, and she gives them the folder and tells them to take it up to Tayce’s classroom.

She doesn’t think about the reality or the implication of what she’s just done, because if she does then she’ll start hyperventilating and not stop until perhaps June of next year. Instead she catches the eye of Julia, the little girl who moved from Poland in January. She can’t speak or write a word of English yet, but the way she’s looking at A’whora with a little smile on her face makes her genuinely wonder if she knows. Sometimes kids can pick up on these sorts of things. She shoots her a little wink and puts her finger to her lips in a “shhh” just in case, and the little girl breaks into a grin that shows two missing front teeth.

The thing about teaching is that it’s a great job for providing a distraction. A’whora can’t think about the card she made for Tayce when she’s cleaning up an entire pot of glitter that Jared spilt all over the carpet, nor can she think about what she’s written in it when she’s comforting Angelica because she didn’t get to finish her card in time for hometime. But the moment she’s waved the kids off and dropped them off to their parents she walks up the stairs from the front entrance with an impending sense of dread which only increases with every new step she takes.

“What the fuck have you done,” she mutters under her breath, earning her a weird look from one of the ladies at the office.

When she gets back to her classroom to find Tayce sitting on one of the tiny tables waiting for her, A’whora feels her heart freeze in her chest and the blood rush to her face, blushing just from seeing her there. Tayce looks in a better mood than she was at lunchtime, though, which is a good start. Maybe she never even read the card. Maybe A’whora’s reception kids took it to the entirely wrong class. Christ, that would be even more embarrassing.

“Hey, boo boo,” Tayce smiles gently at her, as A’whora crosses the room and elects to sit on the desk opposite her so they’re face to face and not too far away. “How’d your afternoon go?”

“Oh, uh, y’know,” A’whora stammers out, blundering her words in the world’s worst attempt at appearing nonchalant. “Lots of glitter, lots of PVA. In fact I’m probably sitting in a massive glittery splodge of it, as are you.”

Tayce laughs, checks the table comedically.

“How was yours? You seem a bit more cheerful,” A’whora continues, looking to the floor and not darling to meet her eyes. “Did decimals finally click with your lot, or…?”

“I am a bit more cheerful,” Tayce smiles, A’whora’s heart racing and soaring in anticipation at the same time. “But not really anything to do with decimals. More to do with the fact somebody made me a really very lovely Valentine’s card.”

Tayce reaches behind her back and produces her card- A’whora’s card- from the table behind her, and A’whora feels her pulse race at her wrists and her heart leap into her mouth to the extent that she’s rendered almost too shy to speak. What the fuck was she thinking? Tayce is probably about to rip the piss out of her for it, it was a huge mistake, and she’s probably thrown their whole friendship away for nothing.

However. There’s a little something in Tayce’s eyes, a little sparkle that makes the grey shine silver. So A’whora shrugs, fixing a carefree smile on her face even though she feels anything but.

“Well, I know you hate Valentine’s day, so…I thought maybe if I gave you a card you’d stop being so mardy about it.”

When she looks at Tayce again she can see there’s a little crack in her perfect armour, the sparkle in her eyes dulled slightly. When she speaks her voice is quiet and nervous, so stripped of its usual hyperactivity and energy that A’whora wonders if it’s even Tayce’s voice at all. “Is that, uh. Is that the only reason you made it?”

A’whora can practically feel herself clam up. She has no idea where Tayce is going with this; to clarify that it was a joke or to clarify that it was serious, and A’whora doesn’t know which one Tayce wants it to be.

“What you wrote,” Tayce continues, her gaze fixed on the glitter-covered carpet and making it even more impossible to figure out her intention. “Was that, like…some girly besties chat, or was it…did you mean it…like that?”

“Yeah, I did,” A’whora says instantly. It’s out before she knows it, a terrifying leap into a freezing cold conversational plunge pool with no life raft to help her climb out. There’s only one way out and it’s Tayce’s reaction, whatever the hell that might be. She snapped her head up the moment the words left A’whora’s mouth, and her eyes are wide in what could be shock but could quite easily be horror.

A’whora doesn’t think she’s ever been more hopeful and frightened all at once. The seconds tick by and Tayce is still frozen in position, and A’whora can literally feel herself inching closer to the edge of the desk in terrified anticipation.

“Jesus Christ say something, Tayce, before I cringe myself to death,” she says breathlessly, her blood feeling almost electric as it races in her veins.

Tayce leans forward, not giving much away as she brings a thumb up to A’whora’s cheek.

“You’ve got a bit of glitter on your face,” she murmurs.

When she leans in and closes the gap between them, A’whora feels herself melt against Tayce’s lips with relief. They’re in the middle of her classroom at quarter part three with the door open and she’s very well aware that anyone could walk in at a moments’ notice, but A’whora doesn’t care. A’whora only cares about the fact that Tayce is kissing her and she’s kissing back, and it’s so hard to believe it’s actually real and not some daydream come to life, and it’s happening on Valentine’s day which makes it even more far-fetched. But every time A’whora starts to think that maybe she’s dreaming she feels Tayce’s thumb stroke her cheek, or their knees bump together, or she brings a hand up to rest at Tayce’s jaw just to make sure it’s all real.

When Tayce pulls away and they smile at each other, giggling and blushing like one of Tayce’s year fives, A’whora only allows herself to properly believe it’s all actually happening when Tayce presses their foreheads together, takes both of A’whora’s hands in her own and murmurs quietly to her what A’whora’s wanted to hear for entirely too long.

“I love you too.”

#rpdr fanfiction #rpdr uk #uk2 #i don’t know how i know (but I know)#ortega #taywhora #tayce #a'whora #british au #lesbian au #teachers au #fluff

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toonytoodles · 3 years

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Random fun fact time! Ft. OCs! (Repost because I added more/ edited a lot of stuff)

Avery -

- Sneezes like a kitten, and most of the time she accidentally uses her fire breathe when she sneezes, so watch out

- Sleeps on a rock

- Is made uncomfortable by actual dragons, it's just... too weird for her...

- Has a strange and inexplicable extreme fear of eels

- Reacts to fear by singing/humming/speaking very loudly, and also by running and screaming (basically, how markilpler acts when playing horror games? yeah that)

- At least once a week her dad has to help her brush through her hair, he says they should get it cut but she absolutely refuses

- Owns a few pairs of gloves- most of which look nearly identical. Some are for different days, some pairs are for bedtime, and some are for special occasions, but she also has some different types and styles of gloves for different events

- Loves the holidays, dislikes the weather that comes with it

- Absolutely hates people touching/messing with her tail, even if it's by accident she gets kinda mad. That's hers- don't touch it. (Emma's the only exception to this simply because it can't be avoided- although Emma does try to touch it as little as possible)

- Slightly allergic to pollen

- She has a clicking-like purr

- If you scratch under her chin she'll purr and relax, but if scratch a certain spot on her neck she'll sleepily fall over

- Adopted as an egg and raised by her human father and fairy mother

- Has a Scottish accent

- Works as a Glazier (glass blower) and makes potion bottles, also helps with making the potions, and occasionally costumer service and boring stuff like stocking/inventory

Emma -

- Plays with hoodie strings and/or hair when upset or nervous (it happens often, her hoodie strings are sorta worn out)

- She's a big fan of animals! Especially bears, puppies, and unicorns, she thinks they're adorable! When she was younger she used to like dragons quite a bit too

- She's a protective friend and big sister, and she's a little over protective over people she cares about

- Tends to read into things; if your tone or demeanor is slightly different she begins worrying that something's wrong or that she did something. She also tends to believe that no one actually wants to be her friend or wants to be nice to her, but that they're only being nice because they're afraid of her or pity her.

- LOVES HUGS!!! Absolutely loves them, hugging other giants, hugging people smaller than her, getting hugs, giving hugs, she loves hugs

- Once accidentally ate a fake candy cane decoration, off someone's front lawn, because she thought it was real gigantic candy, left out for giants (she was like four, so it made sense to her then, but she still gets made fun for it a bit by her family)

- Loves snow and winter

- Her favorite color is probably blue

- Is surprisingly good at sneaking up on people, for someone 30ft tall she's quiter than most borrowers

- Is the second oldest of five kids, her older brother Rory is 23, her younger brother Richard is 15, and her youngest sisters Aroura and Tiana are 6 and 8, and they're all pretty close

- Her dad is a size shifter, and so are Richard and Tiana, the rest of the family are giants

- She's ambidextrous

- Very cautious of her surroundings

- Hates surprises/being scared

- Bi-romantic and ace

Sofia -

- Can write without looking at what she's doing

- Only wears slip on shoes or shoes with Velcro/zippers, she never learned how to tie them, she couldn't figure out what to do with her head or look at what she was doing

- She's an artist! She likes to paint!

- Has a hard time saying "no," so when she says it, she means it

- Hates surprises and people sneaking up on her

- Has a pet python named Albert

- Probably the only person on the planet who has worse anxiety than Emma

- Don't call her "Soph" or "Sophie," and she gets mildly annoyed when her name is misspelled

- Typically uses right arm to carry head and left hand for everything else

- Has a weird sense of humor

- Has a million stuffed animals, has like 20 on her bed, but Rupert the blue bunny is her favorite

- She has an enchanted scarf that allows her to wear her head when needed, she doesn't usually use it because she's not used to it & it gives her anxiety (she's scared of the scarf falling off/being taken off unexpectedly) but she has it and uses it on occasion, mostly at home

- She doesn't let anyone else hold her head, it seriously freaks her out, her dad is the only exception, but Avery held her once for a group photo (her body took the picture)

-She loves singing and has a soft beautiful voice but is too shy to sing around anyone 🎶

- She was bullied when she was younger and doesn't like to talk about it, she already gets emotional easily and those memories hurt

- She loves Avery's jokes and has a bit of a weird sense of humor

- She's adopted, she lives with her human father (another fun fact, her dad is one of Avery's parents best friends!)

- Unlike Avery, she wasn't adopted as a baby, she was about 6-7ish when she was adopted

- Loves vegetables

- Gets embarrassed easily

- Doesn't go out of her comfort zone, she only does stuff when Avery basically forces her to

- She really likes Emma, but is also sorta scared of her sometimes, she's just scared of people and being looked at, so she can be a little overwhelming without meaning to be, it's nothing personal and she knows Emma wouldn't hurt a fly, she's just scared of people and sometimes Emma is a lot of person

- Doesn't want Emma to hold her (Emma respects it, although sometimes they work it out to where Emma can give her a gentle hug)

-Her favorite season is fall

-She loves rabbits and frogs, but won't admit she loves horses (there's a stereotype that all dullahans love horses, she won't give in)

-Hates confrontation

-Loves vanilla cake

-Hates strangers and people she's not comfortable around being anywhere near her

- Pansexual

- Sorta has a voice claim, but it's weird and sorta difficult to explain?

Andie -

- Has a French accent (picked it up from dad)

- One of my only OCs to have a voice claim

- Plays the flute

- Mean, selfish, and self centered, but somehow also a good person

- Sings sentences sometimes

- Scared of turtles

- Works as a bard/waitress at the family tavern

- Unfortunately she is heterosexual

Andy -

- Somehow didn't pick up their fathers accent

- One of my only OCs to have a voice claim

- Plates the lute

- Genuine and kind hearted, but also a bumbling moron

- Dreams of being a song writer, wants to be a professional musician

- Works as a bard/waiter at the family tavern

- Bi, but prefers women

Clementine -

- A book worm

- Likes to sing

- Practices magic, knows a few interesting spells

- Sometimes her and Avery fight over magic usage vs. potion usage (they know it's a dumb fight, but they don't care, at this point it's a joke)

- She's a white tailed deer

- She has great hearing, and is usually very aware of her surroundings

- She wants to be a magic professor as an adult

- Demisexual, pan, but prefers men

Pond-

- Elementals don't really have gender, she chooses to present as female and use female pronouns

- Can't "see," but rather senses vibrations, since she's made out of water she doesn't have eyes, but based on other senses she can get around just fine

- She can't smell either

- Doesn't care for romance

- Has 4 pet fish she keeps with her, named Karl, Frank, Phillip, and Fish

- She has a baby sister, Brook

- She's odd and can be off putting unless you know her pretty well, then her weirdness is sort of endearing

- She can tell her friends apart by the way they walk and their gestures, and of course their voices, but really has no idea what any of them look like, she knows their species and the normal traits of those species, but not much outside that

- She doesn't eat or drink

- Smart, but sorta reckless

- Sorta hard to hug :( but the others still try

Sapphire -

- Has minimal size shifting abilities, but prefers to be her true size, she loves sitting on her husband's shoulders or in his pockets (She's about 5ft in her bigger form)

- Used to be an adventurer, at one point she was a pirate

- Met her husband on one of her adventures

- Has a Scottish accent

- She has a sword her size (no it's not a toothpick or a toy or anything, she has an actual tiny sword) 🗡

- Makes potions for the shop and deals with customers

- Grew up outside of Tradeskeep, her and Kal retired from their adventuring career and settled down there

Kalvin -

- Used to be an adventurer/ mercenary

- Huge, ripped, has all kinds of scars, but his 4" tall wife is scarier than he his, he's basically a teddy bear

- Makes potions, does restocking, inventory, and doesn't as much anymore, but makes potion bottles

- Has scars/tattoos from various adventures

- Used to have dragon scale armor, he once saved a village from a dragon, but has sold it and no longer tells the story, he now claims it was a bear

- He's a great dad ❤

- Loves ale & meat, but not as much as his girls

- I cannot overstate how much he loves his family, he LOVES his wife and daughter, like a LOT, it pretty much defines who he is, he's a family man

- Met his wife while on a quest

- He used to be a nomad while adventuring and getting paid for jobs, he'd wander from town to town, until he settled at Tradeskeep and put up a shop

Ok so i know that's a lot, but it's there for anyone who's interested in all that ❤ I have other facts too, so if you wanna know any more just look around on my blog or send an ask, Q&A for OCs are open, and I'm open to art/writing requests/ideas! ❤

#toonytoodlesocs #avery trowbridge #amelia mcconnel #sofia hodges #clementine moores #pond the elemental #sapphire and kalvin #andie & andy

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ambrosiaicecreem · 4 years

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93 fun OC asks because why not (PT 1/2)

i’m splitting this up cus its a LOT, but it’s gonna be all 93 LMAO. courtesy of @lazysunjade. this one’s for YOU!

BASICS:

1. What is their gender?

Cis Male

2. What is their sexuality?

Bisexual

3. What is the meaning behind their name? Do they have any nicknames?

Silas means “the youngest”.. which is ironic really since he’s the oldest. He doesn’t really have many nicknames. He’s either just referred to by his first name or last name.

4. Do they have any siblings? How many? Are they older or younger? Which sibling are they the closest with?

Silas only has one sibling: Marcus. Silas is older than Marcus by about 4 years, but despite the age difference they are incredibly close with each other. Marcus is Silas’ best friend, without a doubt about it.

5. What’s their relationship with their parents like? What about other relatives?

Silas was incredibly close with both of his parents while they were both still alive. His only other known relatives were his maternal grandparents, and he also had a positive relationship with them before they died. He had no other living known relatives.

6. What would they give their life for?

His family. No hesitation. Whether its for his brother or his kids, if he had to make the decision to sacrifice himself for their safety, he would do it.

7. Are they in a romantic relationship? With who? How did they meet?

Silas is/was(?) in a relationship with Miss Camellia Pineda. It’s a bit complicated at this point in time but you can reread how they met here!

8. What do they believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

Part of him still believes in the old Greek myths of departing to the Underworld. But another part of him believes that nothing will really happen, considering he already had his second chance to experience something out of death and all as a vampire. It’s unsettling to him, to say the least.

9. What is their favorite color? Favorite animal?

He really likes deep shades of red. His favorite animal has always been the Black-Winged Kite, a small bird of prey that’s native to Greece.

10. What are some of their talents/skills?

Silas is a master of the arts. Throughout his whole existence, he’s studied multiple art forms, but the one’s he’s perfected are painting and sculpture. Besides that, he’s very proficient with hand-to-hand combat, specifically Pankration which is the Greek form of martial arts. He has an almost perfect memory, which comes from his special talent of being able to project his memories.

11. If they could make a mark on history, what would they like it to be?

He honestly really wouldn’t want to change much, but maybe he’d like to be credited for a certain famous sculpture that he made that doesn’t have a “known artist”.

12. How old are they? When is their birthday?

Silas is 2,346 years old and his birthday is March 20th.

13. What do they do for fun?

Silas likes to create art, whether its painting or sculpting something. He also really likes to read history books. He was asleep for a good portion of it, so he likes to read up on what he missed.

14. What is their favorite food? How often do they get to eat it?

Silas is honestly really simple when it comes to human food. He likes freshly made loaves of bread. He doesn’t eat it often, simply because of how specific he likes it. Its more of a special treat whenever he’s in the mood to make it himself.

15. What was something their parents taught them?

Silas learned how to tie simple sailors knots from his father at a young age, meanwhile he learned how to bake bread from his mother.

16. Are they religious?

In a way, he is still. He does believe in the Greek pantheon to an extent. With his rebirth as a vampire, he isn’t 100% sure anymore, but he tries not to think too hard on it at times. When it comes to practicing his religion, he makes offerings to the gods with every new season that comes.

17. Where were they born?

Athens, Greece

18. What languages can they speak? Where did they learn these languages?

Silas can fluently speak Greek, English, Spanish, and Italian. He learned Greek from his human life. When he woke up from his hibernation, he learned English, Spanish, and Italian over a span of 100 years from traveling and attending university.

19. What is their occupation?

Technically, he has none. He doesn’t necessarily need to work, but he does take freelance art jobs from the city whenever they’d like something from him.

20. Do they have any titles? How did they earn them?

No titles.. yet.

PERSONALITY:

21. What is their favorite thing about their personality?

He likes how patient he can be. His patience has been a gift, really, in moments of high stress and it really could have drastically changed things if he didn’t have it.

22. What is their least favorite thing about their personality?

He’s got the good ol “Montolvo Hot-Head” trait. It takes a lot to get him genuinely angry, but when he gets mad.. he gets MAD. He’s almost blind to it and reacts entirely all on emotions, as seen when he punishes all three of his kids for something only one of them did.

23. Do they get lonely easily?

I’d say he does. Especially with how attached he’s gotten to Camellia in such a short amount of time.

24. Do you know their MBTI type?

I think Silas would be ISFJ: the Defender. Protective, warm, and caring.

25. What is their biggest flaw? & 26. Are they aware of their flaws?

He’s too forgiving, almost to the point of being a total pushover. He’s taken a lot of shit, specifically just from his ex-wife Serafina, but he still gave her the courtesy of explaining herself to their kids instead of just telling them himself. In hindsight, he shouldn’t be giving so many chances to people who’ve only proven to continuously fuck him over. He is WELL AWARE of his flaws, and he’s taken responsibility for them.

27. What is their biggest strength? & 28. Are they aware of their strengths?

His sense of loyalty. Whether its to his family or someone who he’d consider as family, if he’s needed, he’ll be there. He’s aware of it, but he tries to humble himself and doesn’t really focus his attention on it that much. He’d much rather focus on improving his flaws.

29. How would they describe their own personality?

“Loyal, Protective... and boring.”

30. When frightened, will they resort to “fight” or “flight”?

It’s sorta a case by case thing, but he’s more flight than fight simply because of how strict vampire rules are in New Brando.

31. Does this character ever put somebody else’s needs before their own? Who do they do this for? How often do they do this?

uh, ALWAYS. He ALWAYS does this. He’s always putting other people before himself. He does it ESPECIALLY with his family and Camellia now.

32. What is their self esteem like?

He’s got a pretty average level self esteem. He doesn’t necessarily consider himself all that good-looking or interesting. He’s only recently gotten a confidence boost ever since he started dating Camellia.

33. What is their biggest fear? How would they react to having to face it?

His biggest fear is losing his kids. If he even loses ONE of them, he won’t be able to handle it. His guilt would consume him, and honestly, he’d probably just lose himself in order to be with them again.

34. How easily do they trust others with their secrets? With their lives?

Silas doesn’t really trust others with his secrets all that much. I mean look how long it took just for him to reveal the truth about the divorce. He’s the same way with his life. He only trusts a select few with that as well.

35. What is the easiest way to annoy them?

Just by being overly obnoxious and in his personal space.

36. What is their sense of humor like? Give an example of a joke they would find humorous.

“Dad, did you get a haircut?” “No, I got them all cut!” He’s a dad. Dad humor is in his blood at this point.

37. How easy is it for them to say “I love you”? Do they say it without meaning it?

Silas will only say “I love you” to someone that ISN’T his family if he GENUINELY means it. If he doesn’t feel it from the instant spark, then odds are he’s not going to ever really come to say it.

38. What do others admire most about their personality?

He wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s extremely open to others and caring and protective.

39. What does their happily ever after look like?

Well I can’t just spoil that. It’s gonna be the ending!

40. Who do they trust most? Is that trust mutual?

Marcus, Angelina, and Camellia. That trust is all mutual.

PHYSICAL PROFILE:

41. What does their laugh sound like? Do they snort when they laugh? How often do they laugh?

Silas has this kind of hearty laugh. Its very warm and inviting. He’s been laughing a lot more lately with Camellia being a sort of light in his life.

42 & 43. What is their favorite & least favorite thing about their physical appearance?

He likes his hair. He thinks its the most interesting thing about himself, physically. He doesn’t really have a least favorite thing about his appearance? He just considers himself to be really average for the most part.

44. Do they have any scars? If so, what are the stories behind those scars?

He does not have any real noticeable scars.

45. How would they describe their own appearance?

“Tall, a bit on the skinnier side, and boring clothes.”

46. How easily can they express emotions? How easily can they hide emotions?

He tends to wear his emotions on his face really easily. He knows how to hide them though, but he chooses not to.

#sims 4 #ts4 #aic: the montolvos extras #silas montolvo #answered asks

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faedawayyy · 4 years

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A Useless Guide to the Carmichaels

DISCLAIMER: this is a bunch of headcanons that i’ve come up with. OBVIOUSLY since synn and katie and nadine and meg in a way have characters that are tied to their family...BUt these are my original headcanons for the family, so if things aren’t quite right or sound different, it’s bc they’re my most developed family and it’s the way i’ve written them in canon verse!

SYLVIA CARMICHAEL - GRANDMOTHER

sylvia’s family are russian and came over to england after the war. her father was a general and her mother was a seamstress and she was raised in a very, very conservative and upper-class family. she went and studied at st andrews in edinburgh and that’s where she met hank carmichael, who her father always pushed her towards from the moment he knew of him. sylvia carries a lot of her family values and clashed with her GEN X kids because their ideologies were so different. for example, she sturggled edwin’s sexuality and oliver’s more liberal mannerisms. it doesn’t stop her from trying to “guide” her grandchildren.

HANK CARMICHAEL - GRANDMOTHER

hank was born and raised in england. his father was an extremely wealthy banker, his mother died when he was young but he never really thought about her because his father never spoke of her. he was raised mainly by his aunt while his father worked around the clock. they were an extremely wealthy family and when he was old enough, hank attended boarding school. he never really had parental guidance and his creativity always ran wild. he was trouble at school, but smart enough not to get caught. after he graduated from st andrews and moved in with sylvia, he invested his entire trust-fund into a book publishing business, which is still successful to this day. he’s a huge family man due to not having one when he was younger

second generation.

EDWIN CARMICHAEL

edwin is the oldest of sylvia’s and hank’s children and always worked hard to be a people pleaser. he was often referred to as the golden child and the absolute brightest star in his mother’s sky. from an early age, he showed interest in entertainment which hank inspired and supported.

things changed for edwin in the middle of high school when he decided to come out about his sexuality. he was severely bullied and his relationship with sylvia broke down. he STILL hasn’t got the best relationship with his mother, especially after he married his husband, but they stay civil for the rest of the family’s sake.

he now works in property and lost his confidence in acting when he was bullied.

OLIVER CARMICHAEL

SYNN’S CHARACTER, BUT HERE IS HOW I INTERPRET HIM. oliver is the second oldest child of sylvia and hank. he was rebellious from the start. he never enjoyed trying to live up to edwin’s golden standard, he hated the events and the social climbing. he just wanted to be a regular kid and have regular experiences, but it never happened for him. when he was 18, it hit him that he was an adult and sylvia and hank have 0 influence over him. he took his trustfund, travelled and got the hell out of violet springs. however, just like with everybody else, age caught him up and he ended up settling in london with a woman he met while backpacking in australia. he likes his children knowing their family, so he reluctantly shows up to family events but you’d never catch either of them in violet springs if they didn’t have to be.

JAMES CARMICHAEL

james is the middle child and arguably the most successful of the carmichael’s. he was never the favourite and had a streak in him that caused him to clash with hank from a young age. he was a loveable rouge who grew into a loveable white-collard criminal. he was smarter than he let on and had endless ambition. like edwin, he attended university but instead of picking a profession that hid away from his true ambition, he invested his entire trustfund into a studio in los angeles where he planned to make amazing films...it paid off. he married his wife (patricia) who he met when she worked as a set designer on one of his projects, but it wasn’t all happily ever after. james played around with money a little too much and tried to take out his competition in shady ways. this led to things getting too much for him and he faked his death almost a year ago. all of his family beside mason believe him to be dead.

JOHNATHAN CARMICHAEL

completely synn’s character, the father of theo

SINEAD CARMICHAEL

sinead was the only girl of five children and completely used it to her advantage. she watched the way her brother’s and father knew how to dominate rooms, conversations and other people. she grew up with the mindset that she could have absolutely anything she wanted, as long as she worked (or cheated) hard enough for it. sinead dropped out of school at 15 and almost gave her mother an hernia. she blew most of her trust fund on a sweet 16 and then a sweet 18, anything that was left went on her 21st. she’s a very “live in the moment” woman and cares little for consequences. she actually ended up teaming up with james and starring in a few of his earliest projects before becoming an actress in her own right. she’s blacklisted by a lot of hollywood producers for her refusal to submit and listen to direction. she’s head strong and does what she likes.

third generation.

RUBY ROSINI - ADOPTED DAUGHTER OF EDWIN.

when ruby was adopted by edwin, there was all round excitement from every single member of the family; a little, brown-eyed girl from italy arriving on their doorsteps. she was so different from the majority blue-eyed children who filled the family tree. the cousins all immediately became protective of her and loved getting to know who she was as a person. now they’re grown up, she’s viewed as a cousin and it’s easy to forget that she was ever adopted or came from anywhere else.

THOMAS CARMICHAEL - SON OF OLIVER

thomas is the oldest son of oliver and like his dad, he’s a bit of a free spirit but unlike his dad, he’s a lot more laidback and less likely to clash or argue with anyone. as far as carmichael’s go, he’s quite wholesome and kind and oliver will 100% say that it’s because he was raised away from the madness of their family. however, growing up away from the others isn’t as good in his eyes as it is in his dad’s. he often feels boring and on the outside, he will always do his best to fit in with the other guys and is easily manipulated. as a child, he got into trouble so many times from listening to the shit brody and leo used to tell him to do. even to this day, he’s overly loyal and attached to them because he’s desperate to feel a real part of the family.

KATELYN CARMICHAEL - DAUGHTER OF OLIVER

katelyn is the oldest of the third generation and oliver’s daughter. she’s blunt, witty and doesn’t mince her words. unlike most of the women in her family, she cares little for appearances or staying in certain social circles. she’s a drama teacher in a high school and enjoys living a normal life, but does dip into the funds of her family name every now and then to have a bit of fun. she’s a blast at family parties and everybody is always excited to see what scandalous or stupid thing she’ll do next to annoy her grandmother.

ANASTASIA CARMICHAEL - DAUGHTER OF JAMES

the oldest of james’ children and undeniably the real favourite. she’s an overachiever and type of girl who was good at everything in school and still is; she’s athletic, artistic, academic, a good mother, an amazing business woman, she’s smart, she’s intuitive, she’s healthy and rarely loses in competitions with her siblings or anyone else for that matter.

anastasia has her daughter, darcy, and is engaged to ryder banks. there’s no love there but like her grandmother, she understands the importance of appearances. you’d have to be crazy if you thought she hasn’t had a string of affairs and STILL has them. however, she also has standards and is very selective over who she lets get close.

darcy is her #1 priority and she’ll fight fiercely to make sure she always stays that way.

LEONARDO CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES

leo is james’ oldest son and again, like anastasia, kind of set the bar in the early days for the rest of his siblings. when it was the two of them and mason, everything was about leo and anastasia, they grew up in constant competition; leo tended to always fall short of his sister’s achievements. however, as they grew and the two of them came into their own, it was clear that leo was never going to be one to be in the shadows for too long - starting with gaining the attention from girls as he grew through high school. even girls in brody’s and miles’s year were heart-eyes over him and he was a few years older. yet, just like with the rest of his siblings, he was promised and later engaged to somebody that his father handpicked for him to ensure the carmichael wealth wouldn’t dwindle out and fall into the wrong, new money hands. OOC//i could write more but it doesnt feel right bc he’s now katie’s character. obviously i have my own ideas/fiancee for original leo!

MASON CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES

mason broke the trend of extroverted, go-getter type kids and ended up being the quietest and youngest of the bunch until miles was born. he was a big momma’s boy growing up, and even though he’s never really felt like the favourite, he always enjoyed the company of adults and quieter environments compared to his siblings who would thrive around kids of their own age. mason is wise beyond his years and it’s a running joke that he was supposed to be born first. he is the only one that knows james isn’t dead and was trusted with this information because even though brody was the favourite by a longshot, james knew mason would keep it quiet and be less affected by the secret. mason both hates and loves being a part of the carmichaels. he loves his family but also hates the madness that comes along with it.

BRODY CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES

brody never really had to work to be the favourite of his parents - he just is. he had the right amount of intelligence, cockiness and charm to keep adults on side throughout his whole life. ironically, out of everybody in the third generation, he’s probably the biggest fuck up too but the adults turn a blind eye to it because it’s him. a huge reason he’s favoured by james is because he was clearly enough for charles to allow him to marry his oldest daughter, disney. this was such a big deal for james because charles has a LOT of connections (shady and not shady) in the entertainment industry and he knew the merger between the companies would keep the carmichael legacy in tact for generations. brody usually rises to being the favourite and is slightly smug about it, but he also cracks the most under pressure and has had dozens of meltdowns over the span of his life growing up.

MILES CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES

miles is the youngest...son...of james. james has no idea that patricia had an affair and that miles isn’t actually his son. miles has always struggled severely with keeping up with his siblings. he developed common but crippling mental health issues in his pre-teen years such as depression and anxiety. it started with acting out and being a “problem child” but quickly developed in being too scared to leave the house. he locked himself away and wasted away his young years not really interacting with anyone outside of his immediate family. on top of that, he had he achievements of brody, mason, anastasia and leo to remind him of what a failure is...eventually he just stopped trying. these days his siblings are supportive and aware of how he can get. his cynicism is literally his humour and he’s just taking one day at a time.

BELLA CARMICHAEL - DAUGHTER OF JAMES

bella was dubbed the next brody. all of her siblings adore her and so do her parents and grandparents. she’s the second child who can do absolutely no wrong in anybody’s eyes. bella was a young star and worked in hollywood making tv cameos long before she started school. she had two lives; her school and dance life, and her celebrity life. she grew up with more life experience than other kids and this made her painfully cunning. she knew exactly how to get people on side and had whoever she wanted wrapped around her little finger. she and brody were hit hardest by james’s death. bella was all over the place and gained a little weight - something she wasn’t familiar with after being petite her whole life. she’s now just trying to stable herself again.

THEO CARMICHAEL - SON OF JOHNATHAN

SYNN’S CHARACTER

HERA CARMICHAEL-RUSH

hera is the middle child of sinead. she too is inteligent and calculated but she’s also the opposite of the james’s girls. hera has never worked a day in her life and has no intention to. she’s a socialite and just like her mother, does what she wants when she wants to. she lives off of mommy’s money (because her dad bailed on them and honestly, fuck him). hera also came out as bisexual at a christmas party because she knew it’d make sylvia uncomfortable. she’s a wind up and enjoys getting a rise out of people.

OPHELIA CARMICHAEL-RUSH

ophelia is old enough to remember the messy divorce of her parents and adopted her mother’s bad-ass and care free attitude towards it from that day on. she hates her dad for what he did to their family but doesn’t let it hold her back and when she turned 18, she took him to court to keep her name on the inheritance of his million dollar winery business...and won. she’s the trailblazer for her quieter and more introverted siblings. she’s someone who knows she’s gorgeous and uses her looks to her advantage.

LUNA CARMICHAEL-RUSH

luna has always been shy and hid behind the bolder personalities of her sister’s. she used to feel boring because of it but has quickly accepted that’s who she is and she’s happy with it. as she becomes 26, she’s starting to feel extremely embarrassed and insecure about her lack of experience with anybody. yet, her father walking out makes her find it hard to connect with and trust people. she has high standards and no standards at the same time and is really lost in terms of her romantic relationships. HOWEVER, she is thriving in her career and mason has featured her as an actress in many projects. she currently attends rosewell and enjoys the french culture.

DAMUS CARMICHAEL-RUSH

damus is a pastiche of every criminal and calculated act a carmichael before him has committed. he actively seeks out trouble and due to not being able to find his “place” in the family, he seems to like to win the affections of his elders by getting involved in dodgy dealings that they’ve set up - particularly those of james and johnathan. damus gets a rush out of being in on his family’s darkest secrets but he also feels like a spare part - the one who gets put into dangerous scenarios because the others are too precious to do so.

third generation age order: - katelyn - anastasia - leo - thomas - ophelia - mason - brody - hera - luna - ruby - miles - bella - damus

fourth generation (work in progress): - darcy and wren, children of anastasia - fleur and dixie, daughters of brody - victoria and peter, children of mason - jacob and harlow, son of theo

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lavendersoft · 5 years

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My Soulmate’s Soulmate.

Part 4

Soulmate AU-

Synopsis: Before you meet your soulmate your world is black and white, without color. When soulmates meet, their world glows with vibrancy. The reality, however -as harsh and uncommon as it is- is that you are not always your soulmate’s soulmate.

Pairings: Jungkook x Reader, Taehyung x Reader, Jungkook x Taehyung (poly!au),

Warnings: N/A

Author’s note: jungkook is kinda dumb for the sake of plot. forgive pls.

Her mouth fell agape as she continued to stare at him. Taehyung started to get anxious, she looked like she had totally spaced out.

“Y/n..? Listen, I know it’s a lot to proces-“

“A lot to process? A lot to process?!” She immediately covered her mouth with the book she had been fidgeting with, her voice getting a bit too loud for a bookstore.

“I’m sorry. It’s just- yeah! Okay? It’s a bit more information than I had been expecting. I mean, I’m your soulmate and you’re my soulmate’s-” She places the book back in her lap and places a palm on her forehead, collecting her racing thoughts. Her voice was soft and her eyes cast downwards when she spoke again “It’s just that I know how you feel. I’m not my soulmate’s soulmate either.”

Another piece to the puzzle.

“He told me years ago, when we were still teenagers. I’ve always suspected he’d find his partner. Actually, I expected it. It just hit hard when it actually happened. It’s just difficult, I've been dealing with all this for so long.”

There was something in her voice, the way her eyes seemed glazed over, the way she lost herself in deep thought, the way her hands tremble as if she could break down right here, it was all Tae could do to keep from crying. This whole situation wasn't fair, they didn't deserve this. Especially not her.

“This is all new to me. I thought you were just ignoring me because you were already in a committed relationship, not because...” his voice died out as he realized what he was saying.

Not because you weren't my soulmate, too.

Her face contorted in what seemed like guilt or empathy for just a split second.

“I had no idea about Jungkook. To be honest, I wondered why he attached himself to me from the beginning, but I figured he was just friendly.” He was only half-joking.

She let out a genuine laugh and shook her head as if to say “that’s ridiculous, you idiot.”

“I just always assumed soulmate’s came in pairs.” He finished. Her giggles died down to a small, sad smile.

“Me too.”

After a moment of thought, she looked him in the eyes with sternness.

“I need you to be honest with me. How often have you seen him since you two met?”

“He’s scheduled at least six meetings with me.”

There was a flash of melancholy that crossed her face.

“He told me he was working overtime.”

She didn’t seem surprised, just a bit sad while she nodded her head and eyed the hardcover in her hands. Tae wanted nothing more than to reach over and hold her hand, to comfort her as much as he possibly could. But he knew that would be inappropriate, considering the current situation. So instead he studied her. Her mannerisms, the details of her face, the way her hair fell, the curve her neck that peeked out through her oversized nit sweater, the color of her fingernails, the twinkle in her eyes, the way the light from the window hit her features just right, making her look like a perfect muse for a painting. She was ethereal. And he was falling hard.

Taehyung searched her face as he contemplated confessing his feeling for her. To some extent, she probably knew. But she didn't know how he’s gotten but a wink of sleep since they met. She couldn't know that he can’t bring himself to bear the thought of never being able to be with her. There was no way for her to know how weak she made him, how he feels like sighing when she so much as speaks his name. She couldn't know. He felt like such an idiot, falling for someone he’s had a handful of words with. Then, he remembered his own soulmate-paired parents and the story of how they met. “Love at first sight,” his mother would always tell him, “It was like a light switch that could never be turned off. It was immediate and felt so natural, like breathing.” His mother had always been a hopeless romantic, that's where he got it from.

He took a moment before taking the chance.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that night we met at the restaurant, Y/n. I’ve wanted so badly to see you but something inside told me that I’d never be able to get over you if I saw you again. And I was right. You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”

She finally let out the breath she’d been holding. She looked overwhelmed, which was understandable.

She met his gaze and for the first time, it felt like she’d actually seen him.

“Taehyung,” Her voice was filled with sympathy when she reached over to ever so gently place her hand on top of his own, alighting his skin.

“I think the first step is breaking the news to Jungkook.”

—

*Two weeks ago*

Jungkook sat at the tiny little not-so-busy cafe with a warm coffee in his cold hands. The weather had been getting so chilly lately. He instantly thought of you and how adorably whiny you get when your cold.

He grinned fondly as he plans a sweet little movie night, with lots of blankets and warm snacks as the fireplace crackles. He just wants to snuggle up with you while watching horror movies.

He brings the coffee to his lips once again as his thoughts snap back to the current situation.

His company had given him free rein over the cover of his new album. It was the first time he’d have full control over the aesthetic points and he was ecstatic. He had so many ideas rushing through his head constantly ever since he heard the news.

So many ideas, in fact, that he thought it’d be best to meet with a professional to find the absolute right path to go down. He didn’t know if he’d get another chance like this so he had to make it count. It had to be perfect.

It took about two minutes to find the perfect person for the project.

He was a well-established freelance artist that had worked with many different celebrities before, and his portfolio was amazing. Jungkook was impressed immediately and made the first call.

Which turned out to be the best and worst decision of his life.

He heard the bell to the cafe ring softly but paid it no mind as he was so lost in thought.

“Jeon Jungkook?”

At the sound of his name, he looked up to find the most handsome man Jungkook had ever seen. Dressed in all black except for the leopard print coat he had slung over his broad shoulders. His hair was a dark silver styled in loose waves, longer at the nape. Several piercings adorned his ears and he sported a plethora of rings with a simple silver coin pendant necklace. The man had already moved to take a seat in the booth across from him.

“I’m Kim Taehyung, we spoke over the phone? Good to meet you.”

It was all Jungkook could do not to scream.

What the hell? What the hell? No. No way, this can’t be happening! No! This isn’t real!

Taehyung hadn’t been paying too much attention to Jungkook’s silence, going ahead and pulling out different works and sketches from his bag to show Jungkook as references.

“From what you told me over the phone, I kind of went ahead and made a few rough drafts, you know? This one, I think, is my favorite.”

Taehyung pushed a piece of paper with beautiful different colors on it. Jungkook had to blink away the tears from his eyes. Jungkook’s eyes couldn’t even focus, they darted around the vicinity.

“Come on now, it’s not that good. Don’t cry.”

It was so good, so good. He’d literally never seen anything like it before. This was the first object he was able to focus on in what felt like hours at this point.

“I- I’m sorry I have to g-go. Um.. I’ll uh.. call you.” Jungkook new he looked absolutely insane, slamming his laptop and packing up in a panic.

To his surprise, Taehyung hadn’t looked angry at all, just confused.

“Oh, okay. So rain check, then?” He asked.

“Y-yes, rain check.”

With that, he ran out of the building, with a migraine unlike anything he’s ever had.

That night he had told you about Tae. He’d felt your heartbreak but had convinced you to stay, yet again.

Right before you two had fallen asleep that night he made you a silent promise.

He would make this work. He’d find a way to keep you from leaving, and to keep you happy.

—Two days later—

He made a phone call to Tae. They rescheduled their meeting. He kept it as professional as he possibly could. But he felt it, the pull of the Bond. He would have given anything just to touch Tae.

But not you. He won’t give you up.

He wondered how Tae so seemingly effortlessly hid how much he wanted Jungkook. I mean, he must be hurting so much, too. Jungkook felt a pang if guilt.

This was a mistake.

He shouldn’t have rescheduled. He should have gone with another designer for his album cover. He should have deleted Tae’s number. It would have been less painful for everyone involved.

But that’s easier said than done. Ever since he met Tae, it was almost like he couldn’t breathe if Tae wasn’t there. And seeing him again just solidified the fact that everything is so much... so much brighter when Taehyung’s near.

Jungkook is completely hooked.

That’s why Jungkook kept seeing Tae. Throughout the next week or so he scheduled so many meetings with the beautiful artist.

He told you he was just working extra hours.

Jungkook he fell deeper each time he saw Tae. The meetings became less and less professional and more personal. Jungkook learned Tae was from Daegu, that his parents were farmers, that he is the oldest sibling, that he can sing, and that Tae had the most wonderfully weird sense of humor.

However, each time Tae would crack a joke and send him one of those lovely smiles, Jungkook’s heart would clench in guilt.

Tae reminded him of you. The same odd, sarcastic sense of humor. The same bright smile.

He kept thinking how betrayed you’d look when you found out about these secret meetings.

“Hey, Tae, I have someone I’d like you to meet. I think you’d like her.”

If only he knew back then how right he was.

-Present-

Jungkook sat at his desk finishing up the editing for his new single. He’d felt so guilty due to all the time he’d put into meeting Tae behind your back. He planned on taking you out tonight to compensate. But that was before he got the text that made his heart drop.

Please meet me as soon as you can. I’m at the little bookstore on the corner. It’s important.

I’m with Taehyung.

He didn’t bother shutting his laptop or even grabbing his bag when he rushed through the door of his office.

He had the most gut-wrenchingly terrible feeling about this.

Taglist: @ourwhispersbecomeouranthems @fantasyjoon @ally22042000 @ireadfanficsonthisleavemealone @embrace-themagic @lexi-tries-art @ccmemoirs @just-call-me-trash-can

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apprenticeofcups · 4 years

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PAPA CUPS HELP PLS!!! I can't stop writing angst and it makes me feel bad about myself. I guess it's because I have an easier time writing sadness than happiness? And I always include the good shit after the end; you know caretaking n stuff. But I just enjoy writing angst more than fluff. Ironically, it makes me happy. Does this make me a bad person? For partaking in excessive sadness in my writing? Answer honestly, I'm on anon for a reason lol

You don’t have to be on anon for me to answer honestly, but short answer? honestly? No.

For one, conflict is the lifeblood of story - so sad, angry, tragic, and all their cousins are a lot easier to write than happy, because things that are just happy or good don’t really have much story to tell. Even happy stories have a little darkness in them, because happiness feels hollow if we don’t “earn” it.

For another, writing something painful or sad to give it a happy ending is pretty much one of the oldest wish-fulfillment tricks in the book. Writing is cathartic, like any art form - whether you have angst inside, and it helps to put it on paper so you don’t have to carry it around, or you need something to have closure or a happy ending, and can’t make it happen in real life right now, writing is an outlet. (Also, if you’re a writer - of course it makes you happy to write something emotionally-charged. That’s the whole goal.)

I know I have a history of side-eyeing excessive angst (and if I’m the one who made you feel bad about this, I apologize), but I want to clarify: I don’t hate angst on principle, I don’t think people who write it are bad people, and I certainly don’t think all writing should be happy. I do think there are people who get off on writing the worst, most tragic, most fucked-up things they can imagine, and mistake that for sophistication or skill. I do think there’s such thing as too much tragedy, and I don’t trust anyone who says happy writing or fluff is “boring”.

But that’s because, in my opinion, writing, stories, and art in general are all about balance. Just like an artist has to worry about composition, writers have to be aware of and intentional with the emotional balance in our stories. Some of Shakespeare’s tragedies have the best jokes; some of the most sadistic and painful plot twists happen in otherwise light-hearted comedies and gooshy romances. Part of it is a tactic - if a story is just misery after misery from start to finish, the audience gets accustomed to it, and they either stop caring before the end, or they’re numb to it by the time you hit the really painful stuff, and it doesn’t have any effect. If you add some moments of levity, you re-sensitize them to pain, and the tragedy hits even harder.

The other part is suspension of disbelief. Most of the time, if I reject a prompt on this blog for being “too angsty”, it’s because it crosses the boundary of what’s, for lack of a better term, realistic. For instance, I won’t write the LIs being cruel in a way that’s not consistent with their character - because then I’m writing a different character. And when it comes to the tragedy-after-tragedy style of angst...y’know, after a certain point, a human character can only take so much bullshit before they do something about it, and if they don’t...they become a caricature 😂 You don’t want your character to keep going back to their toxic ex so many times that the audience stops thinking oh they’re so ensnared by this person and start thinking “ok, now they’re just stupid”, or a villain who comes back so many times your audience stops thinking they’re scary and unkillable and switches over to “ugh, this guy again”. Yes, real life is tragic, but if you don’t give the audience a chance to breathe once in a while, your angst becomes less an emotionally-poignant ride we love to hate and more “ooh look how dark I am”.

So no, you’re not a bad person for writing tragedy, or hurt/comfort, or seeing the tiny seeds of angst in canon and turning them into full-fledged fics. It’s cathartic, not just for you, but for your audience, and it sounds like you’re very conscious of keeping the balance you need to get that catharsis, so consider it not so deeply, and do what you love. 💕☕

#my writing advice #mod cups #angst #Anonymous

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pip-n-flinx · 4 years

Text

Among Us

So this is going to get long, this is going to get personal, this is going to be about prejudice and race and self-serving bad-faith arguments and flawed rhetoric. And for all of these reasons I’m going to leave the rest of this under the cut.

As a few of my friends will know, earlier this week I was delivered an ultimatum from my landlord/roommate. He disguised it well, telling me he was ‘concerned for my mental health’ that my ‘negativity was dragging the whole house down’ and that I was simply too filthy to live with. I won’t pretend I’m a neat freak, and I can honestly say that I have taken some pains to clean more since, to his surprise and delight, though its particularly hard to take coming from him.

“You’re always so down. It’s making you lazy and thin skinned” You know its funny you should say that, now specifically, because I’ve actually been on the up and up this last week and you didn’t mention this at all in January when I was actually at my worst, or February when I was afraid I was going to have to quit my job, or back during the holiday season when retail work was breaking my back... Only now do you think to check in on me?

“You left a pair of gloves, a letter, and a small wooden trinket on the table!” Indeed I have, as you have left your pair of gloves, well over 21 letters, and regularly set your packages on this same table, including today two packages to be returned to amazon. I didn’t realize I didn’t get to use the table the same way you do.

“You don’t do dishes! except that you did this week, which is cool I guess but still!” You do realize that I actually hand-wash every dish I use within 24 hours of using it, right? And that often the dishes you come to me bitching that I never cleaned are in fact your fiances, yes? Ok good, next question.

“You’re always complaining about work. I don’t mind that you vent, but its all you talk about anymore!” I have either lost or walked away from 4 jobs in this last year, and that has not been easy, or fun. I have worked essential retail jobs the entire pandemic thus far. Additionally, in the months leading up to you storming out of your 75k a year salaried sales job, I had told you to leave it because I could see that it was killing you. You got so fed up with the job that for 4-5 months before you left your grandma-paid-off-my-second-mortgage capitalism-knows-best-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-ass spent more time playing valorant and league of legends on the clock than doing actual work. Need I remind you that every time I stepped into your office, or simply stepped upstairs to get ready for work, you would complain about how awful your managers were, or how shitty someone had been to you over the phone? DID I EVER BELITTLE YOU FOR ANY OF THESE THINGS????

The real kicker was that the spark, the moment that started this (at least for him) was me trying to explain why racism and ‘cultural supremecy’ was bad. I had brought to him something I thought we could both agree on, that we could both laugh at. I brought him a series of tweets about how problematic Van Gogh was for studying and imitating traditional japanese painting techniques. He took this, and immediately turned into a piece of the culture wars. Now, I agree, this is an egregious example of trying to ‘cancel’ someone. How cancelling a long dead artist who couldn’t sell his art while he was alive is important is beyond my comprehension, its not as though the market value of these comes up very often, and almost no-one will ever have a chance to buy or reject a Van Gogh. But to him this was emblematic of ‘liberals’ cancelling Seuss and Rowling.

He even went so far as to say that Van Gogh probably ‘did it better’ than the artists he was studying/imitating. Now, this is a huge red-flag to me because this is straight out of the Nazi playbook. This is William Shenker, proposing a theory of music to proof ‘German cultural superiority.’ This, if you will pardon my language, is the real culture war: trying to supplant other cultures art and history with western figures and events.

Now, for those of you who don’t know who I’m talking about, this man is sexist. He doesn’t believe women are equal, complains about women’s sports, and rejects a woman’s right to choose. This man is a transphobe, questioning the logic of ‘safe-spaces’ and allowing people to change their pronouns. This man is a Trump supporter, and voted for him twice. And all of these things I found out years after we became friends. I have in the past contemplated what it would take to cut him out of my life wholesale. Despite our wealth of shared experience and our shared interests, we’ve been drifting apart as he drifts further and further to the right. And he has been drifting. He’s parroted more bad-faith arguments from Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson in the last 6 months then he ever did when I first moved in with him.

I have been trying to push back, especially when he says the quiet parts out loud. I try to let him know that it is not acceptable to say he would rather an unarmed black man die that risk that a police officer might be injured. When he compares the people in control of Seuss’ intellectual property and works choose to stop printing less than 6% of his published works to the book burnings in Mao’s china. When he says that its more important to protect teacher from students trolling them by changing their pronouns than it is to protect trans or NB kids. When he espouses his belief that trans and NB kids are ‘just mentally ill.’ Whenever he says any of this shit, I have pushed back. I have tried to halt, or at least slow, his descent towards eugenics and white supremacy and fascism.

It has been to no avail.

And to be honest its exhausting. I wanted to believe that he would trust me, not just to be a moral and thoughtful person, but to be educated and informed on these issues. We went to school together, spent countless hours solving homework and trying to crack games together. If I don’t know the answer to his questions immediately, he often jokes ‘C’mon, you’re supposed to know everything!” and has frequently told me that I’m selling myself short.

But apparently all that trust and all that respect goes out the window when I challenge him. Suddenly I’m ‘overly negative’ or ‘too sensitive’ or he’ll ‘need to look into that, but...’

And the thing is, he is capable of great acts of kindness. He offered to rent me a room in his completely paid-off house, no mortgage at all, simply because he could see living at home was killing my mental health. He offered me 50-75% off of market rate. He buys gifts all the time, has landed tenants job interviews, set people back on their feet, and refused to press charges for several major financial loses he’s taken on the determination that it would do more harm to the defendant than he could ever recoup from it.

But he does not extend this kindness, this generous soul, to everyone. And lately, his circle grows smaller, and his kindess has waned, and it’s been so devastating to see him slip further and further towards his own worst impulses.

I know there will be people who think I should have cut him out of my life years ago, who can’t believe we never talked enough to know that he voted for Trump in 2016. I think back then he was genuinely ashamed, or at least guilty, about that vote. Now? It’s almost a matter of pride for him. I can’t tell you the number of times in the last 4 months that he’s told me that Biden “couldn’t possibly” be as “great” a President as Trump.

And he hides behind this “praise them when they do good, cuff them when they do bad” line and I used to take comfort in it but now... Now it’s clear that it was just a front or excuse for liking these abhorrent people.

I’ve had a couple of hard conversations with some of our mutual friends about what this means for me, and how I interract with the whole group of friends as a whole, in the last 3 days. None of our mutual friends seem to take any of these things as seriously as I do, with my oldest friend even telling me that he ‘can’t imagine’ breaking a friendship off over politics.... I know I know, the caucasity of it all, yes ha ha. And it does make me genuinely worried that I’ll wind up losing the 5-6 close friends that I actually rely on these days over this horrible sonuvabitch. But all this personal venting aside, there’s something bigger here I want to address:

I sat down this evening to watch Last Week Tonight and I was struck by this piece about Tucker Carlson, because while I knew some of what was said on his show, he is remarkably confident for a man who spouts the quiet parts of racism/sexism/homophobia on TV. I have a hard time imaging a more blatantly racist thing to do then declare that a woman who suggested ‘dismantling systems of oppression wherever they are found’ wants to dismantle the American system...

And I have to say, we should go back to punching Nazis. I want these fuckers afraid. I want them to crawl back to the furthest reaches of the internet, relegated to be laughed at for their bigotry by pundits of every political ideology. I want their vile vitriol hidden away where it doesn’t embolden others. I want them to know that they are out of line, out of touch, out of time. I want them to feel ashamed, like the relics of a bygone and worse era that they are, and for them to quietly fade to an ignominious death. I’m tired of seeing them on National News. I’m tired of Pewdiepie’s channel and influence refusing to die despite all the horrible things he’s said and done. I’m tired of Ben Shapiro spouting off about a woman’s place and rights, as if he has any fucking authority on the matter. I just want these people to lose their platforms and their followers. And for me the fact that they haven’t yet is so incredibly discouraging.

I know I didn’t offer any answers here I’m just tired of being alone with this defeated attitude and I guess I needed to get this off my chest as I try to disentangle myself from the losing battle of trying to save a friend from alt-right radicalization.

#tw/ white supremecy #tw/ sexism #tw/ racism #tw/ transphobia #wooow this got longer than I expected #meta: alt right radicalization #and how they're reaching people my age #plus a lot of personal venting

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roses-of-rutherglen · 5 years

Text

Uniquely Normal- Chapter 1

-Dean-

Uniquely normal was how Dean's family described him. To his mother, three sisters, stepfather and possible little brother or sister on the way. He was always there, reliable cheery and seemingly completely normal. But as his mum and the only dad he'd known relied on him as the oldest there was something in the way he carried himself that was just so Dean, that no one could describe but everyone was incredibly grateful for. When he was five, just after his little sister Scout was born, his mum was amazed at how little things just seemed to be getting done around the house, the baby being hushed calmed and rocked to sleep among many other things when no one had been in all day. Dean would fess up but his parents could never quite figure out how he did it.

Like most other boys his age, he and his Dad shared a love of soccer and were loud and proud supporters of the West Ham Football Team. Every spare minute was spent in their back yard playing kick to kick to get out of the girl's hair. Somehow they always managed to get the best seats at any game they went to and even meet some of the players, who turns out were friends of Dean's friends. While confused at how all these wonderful things happened to them, Hernando, Dean's dad took it all in his stride and joked about his "uniqueness" that his wife kept harping on about. It became a family joke from that point on.

It came to his eleventh birthday and the family was gathered on a picnic blanket in their back garden, surrounded by the new life of spring. He had gotten several pieces of West Ham merch as well as some Doctor Who merchandise as the family had taken up the British tradition of watching through the series from the beginning on Saturday evenings. All of the gifts had been opened and Dean and his little sisters were just about to start a game of hide and seek with Scout, Teagan and Emily running around in the soft grass looking for a place to hide before Dean went to find them. Just as his count down finished a beautiful tawny owl flew out of the air towards the family and landed on Lauren's head "Dear, I do believe there is an owl on your head." Hernando managed to choke out after getting over his initial surprise "You think I wouldn't notice? Can you get it off me please!" The owl sat there contently hooting as the girls came running and started laughing and pointing at the "funny bird on mummy's head" after shaking her head and trying to find some way to unseat the bird Lauren gave up. "Dean can you help me here as your father appears to be struck dumb" Brough out of his staring at the gorgeous bird he slowly lifted his arm in front of him and the owl hopped straight onto it attempting to rub its head in his hand and nearly falling upside down in the process, this set the girls off giggling again. "I like the funny birdy can we keep it?" Tea asked as innocently as only a three-year-old could. Hernando and Lauren laughed but Dean was staring at the envelope he had removed from the owl's leg it was made of heavy parchment and addressed in emerald green ink

'Mr. Dean Thomas Only upstairs bedroom with a window 5 The Cherry Orchard Staverton Gloucestershire England' It was his address right down to his bedroom! He quickly opened the top as the owl hopped over to investigate Em and Tea’s fingers while Scout was looking through Dean's presents. His parents moved closer as he slid the letters out of the envelope 'Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards) Dear Mr. Thomas, We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find an enclosed list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September first, we await your owl no later than thirty-first of July. A member of the Hogwarts staff will arrive sometime within the next week to help introduce you and your family to the magical world. Also, the owl's name is Amanita we have been trying to rehome her for a while so if you want to keep her you may. I am sure your little sisters will love her. Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall Deputy headmistress'

The next page was a list of school supplies such as books, a cauldron, potion ingredients, robes and the thing that made Dean's heart jump a wand. "Mummy?" He questioned looking towards his two clearly befuddles parents "is this a birthday joke?" Both of his parents looked at each other slowly shaking their heads. It seemed that their little boy had magic.

A week later the family was spread out around the house Dean, Tea and Emily were playing Princess' and dragon in the back yard while Scout was working on her crayon masterpiece which was actually quite impressive considering her age and her choice of utensil but it looked like art ran through the family as her older brother was an amazing artist as well. Hernando and Lauren were sitting on opposite ends of the couch legs tangled together with books in their hands and everyone was content and relaxed on a Sunday afternoon. Then there was a complicated knock on the door, Scout leaped up from her spot on the floor scattering crayons everywhere in her rush to let the visitor in.

Professor Aurora Sinistra arrived at number five The Cherry Orchard at around midday on the Sunday after the letter had been sent. The house was set at the end of a culdesac and was half-hidden by a rather large hydrangea bush she walked up the concrete drive to the wooden front door and knocked several times. A high pitched cry of "I'll get it!" Came from within and the door was flung open by a smiling curly-haired six years old who looked her up and down before shouting over her shoulder "Mum some woman who kinda looks like Auntie Joan is here!" Then pausing before turning back towards the professor on the doorstep and in the most polite voice she'd heard out of anyone that age graciously invited her inside the house. It was cozy and homely, it felt well lived in. The little girl who had now introduced herself as Scout had taken her by the hand and led her into the living room where the curtains and windows were open letting in the rare spring sunshine and filling the house with light.

The two adults were sitting on the couch books hastily placed on the side table suggested that they had been reading just before she came in and seeing the crayons scattered over the floor she guessed Scout was the one responsible for the colourful night sky crayon drawing on the chair opposite. "Good afternoon ma'am, how may we help you this fine day." Started the man pushing his glasses up his nose "my name is Hernando and this is my wife Lauren, I see you've already met Scout who has just gone to get her other siblings." Aurora smiled at the couple who still seemed slightly uneasy. "No need to worry too much and thank you for allowing me to visit you on this fine day. I am professor Aurora Sinistra, I teach Astronomy at Hogwarts and I'm here to talk to you about your eldest son Dean's recent acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I know this may come as a bit of a shock, knowing that our world co-exists with yours but let me tell you we are not very different to one another and nothing about your son is going to change because of this."

At this point in time, Scout came trotting back into the room leading Tea, Emily, and dean at the back. Lauren seemed to snap out of her silence "Aurora, I hope it's okay to call you that" she paused trying to gauge the witches' reaction before noticing her nod visibly relaxing and continuing on. "This is Scout whom you've already met she's six then this" pointing to a little girl who looked around four years old "is Emily and this little ragamuffin here is Teagan or Tea as we all call her." They all smiled at the professor and she smiled back. There was a moment of silence just as Hernando was about to offer to make tea there was a slight thud and an indignant hoot. Dean chuckled "she never sees the glass door even though there is an open window right next to it she always tries the door" he shook his head in a joking fashion before turning to open the door the tawny owl fluffed her feathers indignantly before seeming to glare at the glass door and settling on Dean's shoulder. Aurora smiled "I'm glad Amanita has found a good home, she never really fitted in with the other postage owls at Hogwarts." Dean looked at her, 'its real?' He thought 'this isn't some kind of elaborate joke?' He shook himself out of his thoughts just as his mum asked the girls to go and play in Em and Tea's shared bedroom. They trooped out of the room and Dean turned back in as his dad came in with a tray of tea. "So this isn't a joke planned by one of my friends?" He questioned and the professor chuckled shaking her head and taking a sip of her tea before starting to explain.

All in all the visit took over three hours and Aurora ended up staying for dinner much to the delight of the three younger girls who seemed to have fallen in love with her and her stick that was holstered to her belt. They were given the address for the shops in London and told to ask the bartender how to get in, as well as being given a ticket for the Hogwarts Express on platform 9 and 3/4 which made Dean's parents laugh saying they had been there many times and never seen such a platform. But a weekend was planned so the shopping could be done as slowly as needed and Dean went to be that night more excited than he had ever been in his life.

Chapter 2 here!!

#writing #my writing #harry potter #harry potter fic #deamus #deamus fic #writeblr #fanfiction #fanfic

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froggybaek · 5 years

Text

| based on my “illusion” Netflix concept |

⠀⠀⠀ ↳ “yeosang grew up in an orphanage, not knowing what a real family felt like his entire life. he’s now moved in with a college student named yunho, only to soon realize that his new roommate has an odd habit of sneaking out in the middle of the night and not returning till sunrise. one night, yeosang follows the other boy - just to find a floating vessel outside their bedroom window.”

xx. 1.8k words

xx. angst / fluff

xx. no pairings

All his life, Yeosang had lived inside a lonesome orphanage. To be honest, he didn’t truly blame his mother for placing him upon those cold, wet steps in front of the looming doors all those years ago. He grew up to understand the cruelties of the world, the loneliness of feeling lost when, in reality, that’s what most people were; lost.

Even if you did everything right, the world could come crumbling down around you.

That was the scariest aspect of life in most cases. Yeosang himself suspected that he just happened to be the turning point in his mother’s life, the pebble in the road that made her stumble and scrape her knees. Blood pouring from the temporary injury, wet tears streaming down her cheeks, the woman had no other choice but to give her baby away. The baby, now a young man, didn’t dare hold a grudge against the woman he only knew as his birth mother. According to the oldest boy in the orphanage, Seonghwa, who had light blonde hair as bright as the sun, Yeosang got lucky.

Other boys and girls were forced to grow up in horrific conditions instead of the quaint orphanage they had the privilege of residing in. They grew up with little to no signs of simple love, or care. Their eyes would close every night in the hopes of a miracle happening, of some hero rescuing them from their sorrows and tattered clothes. For Yeosang and Seonghwa, though, they were lucky enough to be decently educated in the comfort of the tiny classroom down the corridor, just next to the dining hall where everyone gathered to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For holidays, the caretakers would try their best to decorate the bleak, beige halls with colorful spindles and homemade paintings.

When he was younger, Yeosang would eagerly scribble on printer paper with crayons and markers as his caretakers praised his artistic abilities – well, for a six-year-old. His own decorations, along with the other little ones, would be pinned to the halls and doors for everyone to see. Once he got older, though, other children his age began to leave. They were adopted and loved by real families. But Yeosang didn’t falter, as he still had an older boy named Seonghwa to help him pin the new kids’ decorations up for Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving.

If Yeosang could ever claim to have had an older brother, he would certainly point to Seonghwa first. The blonde with plump lips and a soft smile always had something intelligent to say. It was the older boy who taught Yeosang how to play baseball in the usually vacant backyard of the orphanage, it was he who showed the younger boy how to protect the younger ones from dangerous eyes when they did get the chance to go outside. It was always Seonghwa flicking the nightlight on just before bed, silencing the hisses of agitation from the other boys; as only he knew that Yeosang could not sleep in total darkness.

And then, on the night of Seonghwa’s eighteenth birthday, he vanished.

That night, Yeosang could’ve sworn he heard the window opening and closing at the foot of his bed. Assuming he was just dreaming, the brunette went straight back to sleep. When he woke up the following morning, Seonghwa was just… gone.

No one made a big deal about it, really. As he had finally become of age, Seonghwa would’ve been due to leave the orphanage a couple days after his birthday. The caretakers simply shrugged their shoulders, stating that it would be pointless to worry. If anything, they were supposed to silently cheer on the older brother figure of the building, hoping that he found a place to stay. Still, Yeosang felt a bit betrayed. Seonghwa was the closest thing to family he had, so why hadn’t he even received a simple goodbye? A hug? A promise that, one day, they would meet again?

“Yeosang, I think I burnt our pizza!”

The man visibly jumps from his spot on the chair, a slight squeak coming from the wheels due to the pressure. The frame he previously had clasped between his fingers nearly clatters to the floor, but he catches it just in time. Setting it back onto his desk, Yeosang lets out a disgruntled sigh.

“Yeooosaaang-“

“I heard you, Yunho,” he finally calls back, sleepily rubbing his eyes, “you did take it out of the oven, right?”

He was met with silence. “O-oh… I’ll go do that right now!” Yunho laughs nervously, sounding as if he had stumbled on his own feet in an attempt to run back to the kitchen.

Mid-groan, Yeosang lets out a quiet laugh of amusement. Yunho, his roommate, was a rather interesting man. He appeared tall and muscular, but he truly acted like a lost puppy in every sense of the word. When he was helping Yeosang move in, he had (somehow) convinced his new roommate to dye his hair with him. The plan was for both of them to go blonde because, well, why not – except Yunho had managed to grab a box of pink and teal hair dye instead.

Neither of them checked the boxes before they dyed their locks. So, now, Yeosang was stuck with what Yunho called “fairy pink” hair, while the other had teal colored strands. Usually, Yeosang probably would’ve been a bit upset, but seeing the college student’s pout and hearing his whines of apology; well, he felt a certain liking to his new hair.

Straightening out the picture frame on the desk, Yeosang gave it one last look. It was an old photo of himself and Seonghwa on Christmas morning, both of them smiling toothily and clutching onto plushies they had gotten from the caretakers. Thankfully, Yeosang had wept over the photo so often that, now, he no longer felt the need to break down and cry for his lost brother. Now, he felt the need to go into the kitchen and make sure Yunho didn’t accidently set something else on fire.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ---

“Are you sure the pancake wasn’t overcooked, or undercooked?” Yunho bugged Yeosang yet again, bottom lip jutted out in a persistent pout, “maybe I used too much butter – oh, you like blueberries instead of chocolate chips in your pancakes, don’t you? Di-“

Sighing yet again, the pink haired man throws a soft pillow at his worried roommate, who just barely caught it in his arms. “The pancakes were great, Yun, don’t worry about it. Better them than a burnt pizza.” He added on with a teasing grin, to which the other huffed and threw the pillow back at him.

“Hey! I swear the instructions said forty-two minutes, not thirty-two!” He insisted, slumping back into the gray beanbag. “I’m gonna stay up pretty late, I have a paper due tomorrow morning and I still haven’t finished. I uh, might be playing some music, just tell me if it gets too loud.”

Humming in understanding, Yeosang shifted from his position on the couch, hand reaching out to grab a book that had been resting on the coffee table. “I probably won’t notice, it’s fine. Just no sneaking out, eh?” He shot back monotonously.

Yunho visibly stiffened, his fingers latching onto the sides of the plush beanbag. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting that snarky statement from the other man. “Calm down, I’m just joking. I could give less shits about whatever you do in your own bedroom, Yun.” Yeosang continued, eyes subtly narrowing at the taller of the pair.

Of course, he was lying through his teeth; quite smoothly, though. For the past four weeks, Yeosang had been noticing something off about his roommate. In the middle of the night, he would hear a window open and close – then repeat just before the sun rose over the horizon. Yeosang already knew Yunho was, for some godforsaken reason, “sneaking” out to do something about every two nights. There was a certain pattern to it, so he didn’t suspect a secret lover or anything too crazy.

But tonight, Yeosang planned to follow Yunho. It was invasive, yes, but he was worried. The last time someone had snuck out, they had vanished without a trace – without a single goodbye. Truth be told, the man didn’t want to experience that feeling ever again. Over the past few months he’s been living with the student, he had started to feel a sense of comfort. Losing that would be yet another terrible memory to tuck back into the darkest crevices of his mind.

Bidding his unsuspecting roommate a quiet goodnight, Yeosang sat upright on the couch and kicked his legs up onto the table, book nestled between his thighs. He would wait, and listen – as long as he needed to.

Just as he suspected, about an hour and a half later, Yunho peeked out of his bedroom to check on the pink haired man. Yeosang, pretending not to notice this action, merely licked the tip of his finger and flipped to the next page in his book. When the door slowly closed, he silently placed the book on the arm of the couch and tiptoed over to Yunho’s bedroom. The music he had been playing wasn’t too loud, letting Yeosang hear pretty much whatever it was his tall friend was up to on the other side of the door.

At the faint sound of the window unlocking with a click, Yeosang slowly pushed the door open. An inaudible gasp flew past his lips, going unheard by Yunho, who was beginning to climb onto a thick spool of rope dangling outside his bedroom window. A sudden sense of urgency swept over Yeosang, urging him to go and stop his friend from doing – well, whatever the fuck he was doing, of course!

“Y-Yunho!” He shouted, speeding over to the window just as the other man was about to try and close it with his foot. Reaching out to grab onto the rope and the edge of the teal haired man’s shirt, Yeosang refused to let go.

“Yeosang? W-what’re you doing?” Yunho squeaked in pure shock, now hanging onto the rope for dear life so he and the man holding onto him didn’t crash into the bushes below them.

Ignoring the drop in his heart when he realized he’d almost lost his grip, Yeosang huffed and tried to pull Yunho back down through the open window. “Me? I’m saving your dumbass – why the fuck are you climbing a rope, anyway-?”

“Yunho, you’re taking too long, we’re pulling you up!” A new voice interrupted their arguing, making both of them freeze. In the blink of an eye, the rope was been tugged upwards by someone. Before Yeosang could try one last time to throw them both back into the bedroom, his foot lost its grounding on the windowsill.

Suddenly, they were going up into the air, Yeosang holding back a scream while Yunho told him to hold on.

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Text

Arthur "Harpo" Marx (born Adolph Marx; November 23, 1888 – September 28, 1964) was an American comedian, actor, mime artist, and musician, and the second-oldest of the Marx Brothers. In contrast to the mainly verbal comedy of his brothers Groucho Marx and Chico Marx, Harpo's comic style was visual, being an example of both clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish blond wig, and never spoke during performances (he blew a horn or whistled to communicate). He frequently used props such as a horn cane, made up of a pipe, tape, and a bulbhorn, and he played the harp in most of his films.

Harpo was born on November 23, 1888, in Manhattan. He grew up in a neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, on East 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue. The turn-of-the-century tenement that Harpo later called (in his autobiography Harpo Speaks!) "the first real home I can remember" was populated with European immigrants, mostly artisans—which even included a glass blower. Just across the street were the oldest brownstones in the area, owned by people like David L. Loew and William Orth.

Harpo's parents were Sam Marx (called "Frenchie" throughout his life) and his wife, Minnie Schoenberg Marx. Minnie's brother was Al Shean. Marx's family was Jewish. His mother was from East Frisia in Germany, and his father was a native of Alsace in France and worked as a tailor.

Harpo received little formal education and left grade school at age eight (mainly due to bullying) during his second attempt to pass the second grade. He began to work, gaining employment in numerous odd jobs alongside his brother Chico to contribute to the family income, including selling newspapers, working in a butcher shop, and as an errand office boy.

In January 1910, Harpo joined two of his brothers, Julius (later "Groucho") and Milton (later "Gummo"), to form "The Three Nightingales", later changed to simply "The Marx Brothers". Multiple stories—most unsubstantiated—exist to explain Harpo's evolution as the "silent" character in the brothers' act. In his memoir, Groucho wrote that Harpo simply wasn't very good at memorizing dialogue, and thus was ideal for the role of the "dunce who couldn't speak", a common character in vaudeville acts of the time.

Harpo gained his stage name during a card game at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. The dealer (Art Fisher) called him "Harpo" because he played the harp. He learned how to hold it properly from a picture of an angel playing a harp that he saw in a five-and-dime. No one in town knew how to play the harp, so Harpo tuned it as best he could, starting with one basic note and tuning it from there. Three years later he found out he had tuned it incorrectly, but he could not have tuned it properly; if he had, the strings would have broken each night. Harpo's method placed much less tension on the strings.[citation needed] Although he played this way for the rest of his life, he did try to learn how to play correctly, and he spent considerable money hiring the best teachers. They spent their time listening to him, fascinated by the way he played. The major exception was Mildred Dilling, a professional harpist who did teach Harpo the proper techniques of the instrument and collaborated with him regularly when he had difficulty with various compositions.

In the autobiography Harpo Speaks! (1961), he recounts how Chico found him jobs playing piano to accompany silent movies. Unlike Chico, Harpo could play only two songs on the piano, "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie" and "Love Me and the World Is Mine," but he adapted this small repertoire in different tempos to suit the action on the screen. He was also seen playing a portion of Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C# minor" in A Day at the Races and chords on the piano in A Night at the Opera, in such a way that the piano sounded much like a harp, as a prelude to actually playing the harp in that scene.

Harpo had changed his name from Adolph to Arthur by 1911. This was due primarily to his dislike for the name Adolph (as a child, he was routinely called "Ahdie" instead). The name change may have also happened because of the similarity between Harpo's name and Adolph Marks, a prominent show business attorney in Chicago. Urban legends stating that the name change came about during World War I due to anti-German sentiment in the US, or during World War II because of the stigma that Adolf Hitler imposed on the name, are groundless.

His first screen appearance was in the film Humor Risk (1921), with his brothers, although according to Groucho, it was only screened once and then lost. Four years later, Harpo appeared without his brothers in Too Many Kisses (1925), four years before the brothers' first released film, The Cocoanuts (1929). In Too Many Kisses, Harpo spoke the only line he would ever speak on-camera in a movie: "You sure you can't move?" (said to the film's tied-up hero before punching him). Fittingly, it was a silent movie, and the audience saw only his lips move and the line on a title card.

Harpo was often cast as Chico's eccentric partner-in-crime, whom he would often help by playing charades to tell of Groucho's problem, and/or annoy by giving Chico his leg, either to give it a rest or as an alternative to a handshake.

Harpo became known for prop-laden sight gags, in particular the seemingly infinite number of odd things stored in his topcoat's oversized pockets. In the film Horse Feathers (1932), Groucho, referring to an impossible situation, tells Harpo that he cannot "burn the candle at both ends." Harpo immediately produces from within his coat pocket a lit candle burning at both ends. In the same film, a homeless man on the street asks Harpo for money for a cup of coffee, and he subsequently produces a steaming cup, complete with saucer, from inside his coat. Also in Horse Feathers, he has a fish and a sword, and when he wants to go to his speakeasy, he stabs the fish in its mouth with his sword to give the password, "Swordfish." In Duck Soup, he produces a lit blowtorch to light a cigar. As author Joe Adamson put in his book, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo, "The president of the college has been shouted down by a mute."

Harpo often used facial expressions and mime to get his point across. One of his facial expressions, which he used in every Marx Brothers film and stage play, beginning with Fun in Hi Skule, was known as "the Gookie." Harpo created it by mimicking the expression of Mr. Gehrke, a New York tobacconist who would make a similar face while concentrating on rolling cigars.

Harpo further distinguished his character by wearing a "fright wig". Early in his career it was dyed pink, as evidenced by color film posters of the time and by allusions to it in films, with character names such as "Pinky" in Duck Soup. It tended to show as blond on-screen due to the black-and-white film stock at the time. Over time, he darkened the pink to more of a reddish color, again films alluded to it with character names such as "Rusty".

His non-speaking in his early films was occasionally referred to by the other Marx Brothers, who were careful to imply that his character's not speaking was a choice rather than a disability. They would make joking reference to this part of his act. For example, in Animal Crackers his character was ironically dubbed "The Professor". In The Cocoanuts, this exchange occurred:

Groucho: "Who is this?"

Chico: "Dat's-a my partner, but he no speak."

Groucho: "Oh, that's your silent partner!"

In later films, Harpo was repeatedly put in situations where he attempted to convey a vital message by whistling and pantomime, reinforcing the idea that his character was unable to speak.

The Marxes' film At the Circus (1939) contains a unique scene where Harpo is ostensibly heard saying "A-choo!" twice, as he sneezes. It is unclear, however, whether he actually voiced the line, or if he mimed it while someone said it off-camera.

In 1933, following U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union, he spent six weeks in Moscow as a performer and goodwill ambassador. His tour was a huge success. Harpo's name was transliterated into Russian, using the Cyrillic alphabet, as ХАРПО МАРКС, and was billed as such during his Soviet Union appearances. Harpo, having no knowledge of Russian, pronounced it as "Exapno Mapcase". At that time Harpo and the Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov became friends and even performed a routine on stage together. During this time he served as a secret courier; delivering communiques to and from the US embassy in Moscow at the request of Ambassador William Christian Bullitt, Jr., smuggling the messages in and out of Russia by taping a sealed envelope to his leg beneath his trousers, an event described in David Fromkin's 1995 book In the Time of the Americans. In Harpo Speaks!, Marx describes his relief at making it out of the Soviet Union, recalling how "I pulled up my pants, ripped off the tape, unwound the straps, handed over the dispatches from Ambassador Bullitt, and gave my leg its first scratch in ten days."

The Russia trip was later memorialized in a bizarre science fiction novella, The Foreign Hand Tie by Randall Garrett, a tale of telepathic spies which is full of references to the Marx Brothers and their films (The title itself is a Marx-like pun on the dual ideas of a "foreign hand" and a style of neckwear known as a "four-in-hand tie.")

In 1936, he was one of a number of performers and celebrities to appear as caricatures in the Walt Disney Production of Mickey's Polo Team. Harpo was part of a team of polo-playing movie stars which included Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. His mount was an ostrich. Walt Disney would later have Harpo (with Groucho and Chico) appear as one of King Cole's "Fiddlers Three" in the Silly Symphony Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

Harpo was also caricatured in Sock-A-Bye Baby (1934), an early episode of the Popeye cartoon series created by Fleischer Studios. Harpo is playing the harp, and wakes up Popeye's baby, and then Popeye punches and apparantly "kills" him. (After Popeye hits him, a halo appears over his head and he floats to the sky.)

Friz Freleng's 1936 Merrie Melodies cartoon The Coo-Coo Nut Grove featuring animal versions of assorted celebrities, caricatures Harpo as a bird with a red beak. When he first appears, he is chasing a woman, but the woman later turns out to be Groucho.

Harpo also took an interest in painting, and a few of his works can be seen in his autobiography. In the book, Marx tells a story about how he tried to paint a nude female model, but froze up because he simply did not know how to paint properly. The model took pity on him, however, showing him a few basic strokes with a brush, until finally Harpo (fully clothed) took the model's place as the subject and the naked woman painted his portrait.

Harpo recorded an album of harp music for RCA Victor (Harp by Harpo, 1952) and two for Mercury Records (Harpo in Hi-Fi, 1957; Harpo at Work, 1958).

Harpo made television appearances through the 1950s and 60s, including a 1955 episode of I Love Lucy, in which he and Lucille Ball re-enacted the famous mirror scene from the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup (1933).[19] In this scene, they are both supposed to be Harpo, not Groucho; he stays the same and she is dressed as him. About this time, he also appeared on NBC's The Martha Raye Show. Harpo and Chico played a television anthology episode of General Electric Theater entitled "The Incredible Jewelry Robbery" entirely in pantomime in 1959, with a brief surprise appearance by Groucho at the end. In 1960, he appeared in an episode of The DuPont Show with June Allyson entitled "A Silent Panic", playing a deaf-mute who, as a "mechanical man" in a department store window, witnessed a gangland murder. In 1961, he made guest appearances on The Today Show, Play Your Hunch, Candid Camera, I've Got a Secret, Here's Hollywood, Art Linkletter's House Party, Groucho's quiz show You Bet Your Life, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Your Surprise Package to publicize his autobiography Harpo Speaks!.

In November 1961 he guest-starred with Carol Burnett in an installment of The DuPont Show of the Week entitled "The Wonderful World of Toys". The show was filmed in Central Park and featured Marx playing "Autumn Leaves" on the harp. Other stars appearing in the episode included Eva Gabor, Audrey Meadows, Mitch Miller and Milton Berle. A visit to the set inspired poet Robert Lowell to compose a poem about Marx.

Harpo's two final television appearances came less than a month apart in late 1962. He portrayed a guardian angel on CBS's The Red Skelton Show on September 25. He guest starred as himself on October 20 in the episode "Musicale" of ABC's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a sitcom starring Fess Parker, based on the 1939 Frank Capra film.

Harpo married actress Susan Fleming on September 28, 1936. The wedding became public knowledge after President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the couple a telegram of congratulations the following month. Harpo's marriage, like Gummo's, was lifelong. (Groucho was divorced three times, Zeppo twice, Chico once.) The couple adopted four children: Bill, Alex, Jimmy, and Minnie. When he was asked by George Burns in 1948 how many children he planned to adopt, he answered, "I’d like to adopt as many children as I have windows in my house. So when I leave for work, I want a kid in every window, waving goodbye."

Harpo was good friends with theater critic Alexander Woollcott, and became a regular member of the Algonquin Round Table. He once said his main contribution was to be the audience for the quips of other members. In their play The Man Who Came to Dinner, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart based the character of "Banjo" on Harpo. Harpo later played the role in Los Angeles opposite Woollcott, who had inspired the character of Sheridan Whiteside.

In 1961 Harpo published his autobiography, Harpo Speaks!. Because he never spoke a word in character, many believed he actually was mute. In fact, radio and TV news recordings of his voice can be found on the Internet, in documentaries, and on bonus materials of Marx Brothers DVDs. A reporter who interviewed him in the early 1930s wrote that "he [Harpo] ... had a deep and distinguished voice, like a professional announcer", and like his brothers, spoke with a New York accent his entire life. According to those who personally knew him, Harpo's voice was much deeper than Groucho's, but it also sounded very similar to Chico's. His son, Bill, recalled that in private Harpo had a very deep and mature soft-spoken voice, but that he was "not verbose" like the other Marx brothers; Harpo preferred listening and learning from others.

Harpo's final public appearance came on January 19, 1963, with singer/comedian Allan Sherman. Sherman burst into tears when Harpo announced his retirement from the entertainment business. Comedian Steve Allen, who was in the audience, remembered that Harpo spoke for several minutes about his career, and how he would miss it all, and repeatedly interrupted Sherman when he tried to speak. The audience found it charmingly ironic, Allen said, that Harpo, who had never before spoken on stage or screen, "wouldn't shut up!" Harpo, an avid croquet player, was inducted into the Croquet Hall of Fame in 1979.

Harpo Marx died on September 28, 1964, (his 28th wedding anniversary), at age 75 in a West Los Angeles hospital, one day after undergoing heart surgery. Harpo's death was said to have hit the surviving Marx brothers very hard. Groucho's son Arthur Marx, who attended the funeral with most of the Marx family, later said that Harpo's funeral was the only time in his life that he ever saw his father cry. In his will, Harpo Marx donated his trademark harp to the State of Israel. His remains were cremated, and his ashes were scattered at a golf course in Rancho Mirage, California.

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