#using a lot of sentence fragments and plain word choice...

[boo-cool-robot]

Miserable WIP...

[cruzrogue]

The Letter

Bruce Wayne/Original character featuring Alfred Pennyworth

Sitting in a massive home office. The tick tock of a grandfather clock keeping the room from ever being silent. The shelves across a wall filled with hardcover books. Sitting upon the offered chair centered to the desk before her. The grandness is not lost on her.

Rich. Masculine décor.

It’s the small portrait of a couple that has her stand and slowly walk to it. Her eyes glued on their gazes. It’s as if they are with her as they promised they’d be. A practiced speech written by the once patriarch of this estate. She’s heard plenty say may he and his wife rest in peace since arriving in Gotham. Their deaths politicized as she heard it on a television set being broadcasted at the lobby of her hotel.

Her hand reaches up towards them. A nervousness of being here makes her forget to regulate her emotions. The woman she is becoming lost in the moment. Those very same eyes haunt her. A constant barrage of expectations. She’s back to being that eleven-year-old that woke up screaming only the arms of these two soothing her nightmares away. Now awake. A survivor. A witness.

With an intake of breath and the rhythm of the steady grand clock has her once again taking a seat. Her eyes keeping from viewing the Wayne portrait again. Trying to find a focal point. A fountain pen in its holder. Simple and elegant. Perfect chosen distraction. Waiting diligently for the very sought out man she came to take a meeting with.

The curt butler returns with a tray. Containing a cup and with its matching saucer. He’s placing the hot beverage by the extended side table as he says a few words that explain why his master is behind schedule. Amanda doesn’t show any sign of irritation for the man in question as he is beyond forty minutes late.  

The subject of why she is here is secretive as the channels to get this meeting were done between Wayne’s butler and the chamberlain of her own uncle. Two men that run their master’s estates. There is a brief wonder. Does the elite man behind the wealth of this family have an inkling why she is here? It is not common to have gossip between two houses run by duty, history, an unyielding tradition. Chatter is left to the lower level servants. Ones who know nothing but what is asked of them.

Alfred Pennyworth glances at the still woman who thanks him after taking the offered cup of tea.

Noticing that she is not dressed as a socialite stands out. Simple. Plain. Not a feature that he normal sees here at the house. He can’t recall of another niece of the mogul living now in Wyoming a former Californian. The girl he remembers is one laid up in a coma for years until she vanished around what would be her eleventh birthday. He thinks foul play. The girl awoke and simply disappeared.

She is not unattractive. Simply just basic. Not thin nor tall like the normal women associated with his careful pressed care. Alfred knows that they’re being watched. The woman is under surveillance as keystrokes in a cave work to discover all that can be learned.

Her frank words as Alfred excuses himself to take the tray and the few contains away, “It seems an audience with me is undesirable.” Her eyes don’t waver from the focal point. She doesn’t need any more silence of words. The tick tock of the clock strong as ever. “He has made it clear; my presence is not welcomed.”

“Ms. Alexandre, allow me to show you the gardens.”

“Thank you, Alfred.” She rises from her chair making sure not to look at the few personal items that make powerful statements. “I must decline. Taking your time would be rude of me.”

She takes the leather satchel she carried into Wayne manor and slightly squeezes it. Leaving it upon the grand desk. The contents within the bag are meant for Mr. Wayne’s eyes. She was hoping to at least meet with him once before he’d deny her request. It was not meant to be.

“Thank you for your hospitality.”

Alfred nods and dutiful replies in his stoic voice as he helps her to the front door and watches her get into the awaiting car. Watching as it leaves the grounds.

It is that precise moment Bruce makes his appearance.

“Standing her up is not a gentlemen thing to do.”

“Perhaps. She’ll get over it.”

“She is said to be the niece of ailing man worth fortunes. A man who mourned the loss of your parents.” Turning to continue bringing the tray to the kitchen adds one final sentence, “Also recently losing his only child to violence.”

Bruce approaches the laid-out leather briefcase. A simple envelop placed on top. Taking it. Unfolding the few stationary sheets, he begins reading her message.

Hello Bruce,

I figured you would not meet with me personally. I get your reservation on my reappearance. Who am I really? Where have I been? Why would you even care? Why am I here? What do I want?

I want to start off by saying how sorry I am. On the loss of your parents. How truly sorry I am. It may not mean anything to you but learning of the occurrence broke my heart.

I am merely a shadow of a girl of a massacred family. Lone survivor. Disappearing to the wind and never talked about until now. Now an adult woman who will enter your home and if I leave this letter it means you have abstained from taking this meeting with me. Even if I understand. The resolve it took me to come here is lost on an empty gesture. Yet, I still write needing for you to understand just a fragment of why I am here. I mean why I came here.

If you’re wondering why I have surfaced. Now of all times. It is in some detail within this satchel.

He looks to the leather satchel laying upon his wooden desk. Only the tick tock of the grandfather clock breaking the silence of the room. He knows Alfred will not disturb him for a great while. They both share a certain drive of keeping occupied within these old walls of his ancestral home.

Like you, I have started on a journey parallel to yours. With that famous quote: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step… I started off running. Running from the culprits who seemed to think my awaking would cause trouble. I ran and kept on running as reasons changed but my mission to find myself became a priority.

It was always just the beginning. What I do know is that I have stopped on many occasions not far from where you stood on your own voyage. That alone might be concerning to you. A stranger a continent away following similar steps like yours.

It is concerning he thinks. How would she even know about what he was doing. That would make no sense. Then he allows himself to continue to read. Maybe it will make sense somehow.

I hope you had many happy childhood memories to fall on when the days were hard growing up. I only have serene memories of my childhood. Like you before it all came crashing down. Where nightmares took their hold. I survived when my family didn’t. When I awoke from my coma. A lone witness to the faces of evil. I was alone for so long. Hidden in corners scared of the boogeyman.

He stops reading. Deciding to leave the bag here but he’d like to be more comfortable. Be able to check the computer systems of accuracies. There is a lot yet to read. He folds the simple yet elegant stationary she uses to write back into its intent indents. Holding it beside the envelop.

Passing a few quiet rooms until he reaches the family room where the grandfather clock waits for him to press the hands to have a passage slide open just behind the massive wooden structure. Climbing slowly down the steps he feels the weight of these sheets start to weigh more than the few ounces it really weighs. The woman he observed behind a screen seemed so reserved. A sadness he knows well radiating as she waits patiently for the master of this estate. To only be stood up and the woman’s facial features held no evidence of anger. She was already resigned for this outcome. This isn’t something he normally has dealt with. Anyone who has been in her situation has had a few choice words. Alfred the master of deflection promptly always leading the defeated individual off the premises. Yet, with Ms. Alexandre he offered her to a walk around the garden. The woman… he can’t yet say her first name. She declined the invitation. This letter is intriguing and holding some sappy dialogue. He remembers her enough. She and her older brother Collin. He was four years older than himself. Stopping at just shy of another five steps. Bruce exhales as a memory does permeate at how strong those emotions fill him. He had so much fun with this family.

Making his way to his chair in the cave he places the envelop on the console before sitting. Unfolding the sheets as a curiosity that is steadily developing. He needs to read more. Skimming the beginning parts that has been read but making sure to reread the last passage. She was on the run. He understands that the men who were responsible were never found and a lead into the investigation ended to another dead body. Doing the math, he finds that she was eleven when she disappeared from the medical institution that was caring for her. Making him a thirteen-year-old at that timeframe. Like she said, happy memories became living nightmares. He wants to know how she survived. A child alone in the world is no place to be. Beginning to read as he silences his mind allowing her words to speak for themselves again.

It took until I heard the from a radio on some ledge. A name I knew well from my early childhood. As much as a scared twelve-year-old could understand. I thought… I may not be so alone after all. Planning to meet up with the blue-eyed wonder. A boy of my dreams.

You left Gotham at fourteen to study abroad. You came back to England.

That is when I had my first tranquil dream. I woke up happy well as happy as a lonely child can get. As the eager me wanted to see a friendly face. It took some time. I found that academy. Looked for you. Kept from being noticed and I saw you from a distance. You were reading under a tree. I knew in my heart that was you. My nerves of introduction than faltered as I just watched. You have no idea how much of a foolish idiot I felt to be so close yet so far. That is when I heard those two boys taunting about you being an orphan. I fell to my knees to shed some tears. In my own anguish I didn’t see what happened next, but you weren’t sitting under a tree no more and I had to leave as it seems I brought unwanted attention upon myself. A few months later you transferred out.

She can’t be talking about… No. That is just nonsense. If this is true. He remembers a girl a few yards away crying into her hands. The taunting boys irrelevant because once an administrator came to the girl’s aid the boys left him with nothing but the usual taunt of being an orphan. He hated. The feeling of anger bubbling at the surface. He would have made things worse as fighting wasn’t permitted. She saved him the turmoil of getting into trouble. Her breakdown saved him and he didn’t even realize… he doesn’t know what he would have realized. Hindsight is that he’ll never know. Not until this moment. He thought she tripped and fell. He had better things to do than watch a silly girl get pampered for having two left feet. He had real pain to deal with. His reading session helped keep him out of his own mind.

He looks up records of an earlier time that connects to her. From waking up from a coma to her fifteenth birthday there is nothing. He finds that she is reunited with her uncle. Her education a priority. Records of her schooling pop up. No immediate pictures until… until she graduated medical school at nineteen.

Zooming the picture to take in her young face. She holds a smile but the smile never makes it to her eyes. She’s a doctor. He knows there is a lot more to read but he’s enchanted. Right now, he wants to see what medical field was her studies. He is surprised that she’s really focused on traumas. Saving lives in the field. This woman is becoming a pleasant enigma. Looking down to the unread sheets he picks it up again. He wants no needs more.

Since I knew I didn’t have the gumption I never tried to approach again. You seemed to prosper, and I seem to keep to the shadows.

I just lived in my dream recalling the few memories I shared with you. A time where I would gladly follow you and my brother around like some devoted puppy. That is until you pulled one of my pigtails to get a rise from me. I was around six and you were well it didn’t matter back then. I now know you are two years older. A concept a child like me wouldn’t factor in. It’s laughable as I look back at that timeframe. The young careless children we once were… I went to rebuff your actions for pulling my hair that is when you kissed me telling my younger self that I was to be your wife. Something silly that you must have overheard from one of our parents.

He huffs. Yet again. Placing the unread sheets down. His mind overactive as he can see one of those times as clear as day. Playing with Collin on the grassy hills of their estate. A beautiful English manor on top of hill. They were being followed by a bouncy pigtailed girl. She would follow them everywhere. Since learning to walk really.

He remembers a few tidbits of his parents talking about their close-knit friends in England. Telling him that Collin had a new playmate and how he was… he was jealous. Collin was his friend. They were going to visit soon and he’d have to fight for attention. Oh, that made him jealous. That is until he saw who his enemy really was. A pink little baby. A baby her mother softly placed into his two-year-old arms. He doesn’t remember much about it. He wasn’t angry or super happy for those memories to infuse deep in his mind. He just sees her as another member to the family. A happy family consisting of two loving parents with their young children.

He huffs again. How a letter can evoke emotions he has buried deep for so long? It is unbecoming though he is reveling on wanting more. He needs to see this through. He just hopes it doesn’t make him go through old trunks to find relics of his past. That would be too much. He snickers. He doubts that will happen. He’s beyond halfway through and taking a deep calming breath he continues on.

I remember a few visits to the Americas. You let me share your bunny until the last day of my family’s visit. You gave it to me. That is when I kissed you. I heard my daddy say he’d have to keep an eye on you. That was the end for me. An innocence lost. No matter how I try I can’t recall how many weeks or months from there before I became a statistic. A home invasion that made the headlines for some time. I will never recall those moments as I guess fighting for my existence was critical and I wasn’t meant to join my family in the afterlife. There are days I am jealous that they are free while I stay behind to mourn what I lost.

I wonder if you feel the same. They call that survivor’s guilt.

Yet again, he needs to stop. He has had many moments since the years of losing his parents that has made for some rough times. A sense of dread at the past he finds all these little breaks in-between reading has him cautious. The bitter sweetness of these memories. The still have a hold on him. Will always have a hold on him. He was an only child. He recalls it perfectly as they were leaving to go home. He looked at the bunny he adored. Glanced at the girl who he shared his prize with. Telling her how much this bunny meant to him. He handed it over because he saw how much it meant to her in such a short span and how she took to the stuffed animal. A nervousness in him at losing a cherished toy. He gave it to her. In a burst of happiness, she kissed him. Just a child kissing another. No harm of it. It’s the adults who mention a future.

A future he’s heard many times just from his father. That seeing her the mention of marriage was always over their heads. So much so that he may have casually called her his wife. It doesn’t help that Collin made kissy faces towards them. Childhood innocence pure and simple. Maybe if these two families continued to live on. Life would have… Life that was taken. There is no point thinking of what ifs. Only harsh reality exists. Bruce knows this well enough. He also knows by reading this letter so far. She knows.

I suppose there should be a point to this letter. To finally say why I am here and to get it over with what I’m asking for. Is that what you’ve probably been asking before even reading this letter? Memory lane is one thing but getting to the objective is what you just want.

You are probably aware of my cousin’s passing. He was a great guy. Good businessman but even better son and heck of a great cousin. Always going out of his way to connect to me. My uncle isn’t fairing well with his only child’s death. I am the only living heir now. He needs me to settle down.

I need a husband.

Oh, oh.

That’s right, what I am asking for is the sun, moon, and stars. It’s a huge request. One that I know you’d never take lightly. One I know you won’t accept.

My uncle agrees that the likelihood that my pick would not pan through. I still needed to ask. I hope you understand. Still in that satchel is my dowry. That is preemptive of what my uncle will also bring to the table.

I know it’s a lot to ask of you. To ask you to intertwine your fate with mine. If you got this far into the letter. Thank you. If not, why would it matter. I’d never know. You can rest assure you’d be free of me.

sincerely, 

        -Amanda Alexandre

He looks at the letter. Rereading about her uncle’s misfortune. Elliot was a good man indeed. They say the good die young. He is proof.

Hearing the power to the elevator he knows Alfred is on his way down. The young boy in his charge is still at prep school. Folding back the sheets of paper in a careful manner. It seems this letter is already a huge significance that isn’t something to tread lightly.

Turning to see the leather satchel in the man’s hand as he approaches.

“Sir, I though it be best to bring it down with me.”

“Alfred, I don’t know if I should open that.”

“Why not, sir?”

“It’s actually… It’s actually her dowry.”

“Master Bruce?”

“She wants marriage. Something I am not willing to even entertain.”

“I see.” Alfred still places the old leather holding what seems a dowry down before Bruce. “I should have it sent back though maybe its contents can share some light on Ms. Alexandre. She is a mystery after all.”

“I doubt that there is anything in there that will cast an interest.”

“I would believe that sir, if you weren’t holding that letter in that protective manner you seem to do with anything you consider important.”

Bruce shakes his head but looks down to how he really is holding the envelop holding the woman’s letter. Closing his eyes as if he has been caught being an indescribable child. Why does Alfred get to play him this way?

“I don’t see why she would need to show her worldly goods. The commotion of her being at her cousin’s funeral already stirred up an estimated net worth.”

Bruce flatly states, “Her being rich isn’t the problem.”

“You did stand her up. She may not be your usual taste. There could have been a spark.”

“Alfred.”

“I will not apologize for wanting more for you.” He taps the leather sack. “Are you not a little bit curious about why she would come here. Leave her finances with a practical stranger. Think you’d take a payout.”

Bruce shaking his head. He will put this subject to rest and open this bag and show Alfred that the woman is just the run of the mill socialite that wants a certain husband.

Pulling the tied buckles off and unzipping Bruce pulls out some notebooks.

“Not what I expected.”

Bruce placing a few on the console he flips through one of them and his eyes are wide. He also can take by Alfred’s intake of air that the man is surprised. Not in the wildest imagination would they ever think that this would be the conclusion. There are also some disks.

Alfred regaining his posture he looks at the younger man and clears his throat. He pulls out an invitation he carried downstairs with this leather bag. An invitation to a grand ball hosted by the man looking to see that his niece finds a mate. Bruce had no intention in going. This invitation was sent before… before she came here personally. Does her presence and the letter persuade him? If he weren’t the vigilante maybe he would entertain the idea. Now with this satchel opened to him. Not even that is an excuse he can use. She’s not just asking to marry Bruce Wayne.

“The gathering for this invitation is in three weeks. Do you want to RSVP?”

[alj4890]

Angst Prompt

This was a request from Anonymous to see how my OC does when the only two men she fell for, (Maxwell Beaumont and Thomas Hunt) have both fallen for someone else.

A/N Seems odd not to put my OC in a pair, so let's just claim the usual pairs of characters from the following Choices books: The Royal Romance, Red Carpet Diaries, and Perfect Match. I thought I would try something new and write it in first person. We’ll see how it goes. I know there are a ton of sentence fragments in this. It is on purpose. I thought it fit how her jumble of thoughts might go.

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Masterlist

Song Inspiration: You Don't Know Me

You Don't Know

Just one night. That's all I have to get through is one single night. I can do this. I've done it before...just not with both failures present.

It won't be easy. Who am I kidding? It will be the hardest few hours of my life. There's no escape from this.

I had to have the bright idea to host a holiday party.

I have to hide the fact that I am nothing but a hollow shell with shattered glass inside, waiting for the moment when I am allowed to crumble to the floor.

How have I not collapsed? Am I numb? I should feel something, shouldn't I? What if I only feel it when I see them? What if I break completely when I have to take their hands?

"I can't do it." I say to my reflection. My hands move as if they have a mind of their own to straighten my dress. I wish I could curl up in a ball on the floor and let the pain finish breaking me in half. Maybe if that happens, I won't feel anything ever again.

I can't be angry. It isn't their fault. They have no clue. No idea. I never told them. Never hinted. Never gave one single flirtatious look or suggeative touch. No, I purposely kept all that hidden.

I created my own prison, one where certain words are barred from leaving my lips. There is no nor ever was a revelation to what is in my heart. My mind. I did this. To me. To them.

I am what no one wants to be when deeply in love. I am the friend.

A knock at my door forces me to turn on the happy charm. "Come in."

"Guests have begun to arrive, your grace." My butler announces. His eyes seem to linger on mine. Does he know or simply suspect?

"Thank you Hudson." I smooth my damp palms down my dark blue gown. Quite fitting that my house colors are shades of sadness and lost dreams.

Why didn't I say something? Perhaps then...

There I go again, dreaming the impossible dream. They wouldn't have loved me like that. Not me.

Every step I take brings me closer to the stage where I must give my most convincing act. I must do it well. No one has yet to realize what I keep hidden. I look around and take my spot near the double doors leading into my ballroom.

Time to speak the expected words. It is my lot in life. The ever smiling duchess is ready to perform her role once more.

"I am so happy you were able to join me this evening."

"Your gown is exquisite!"

"Lovely to see you again."

"Please enjoy yourselves."

And on. And on. And on.

The pretending to be happy in having company in my home is unbearable. If they only knew how much I want to be alone. I want wallow in my heartache. Stare hopelessly out the window. Sleep.

My nerves are right at the breaking point. They will soon arrive and I will have to summon every ounce of my strength to smile happily. Laugh. Talk of how wonderful life is.

I hate this. I don't want to be the friend. I don't want to keep the facade up that I am fine and dandy with everything. I'm not! Shouldn't I be allowed to express this?!

"There's our favorite duchess!"

My first love. I look into Maxwell's deep, ocean blue eyes and feel that familiar sensation in my stomach that you get when going upside down. His dimpled smile is filled with joy at the sight of me.

Why didn't you feel something special for me? Why did you tell everyone that I was your best friend? That there were times you forgot I wasn't just one of the guys?

I smile warmly. I must say the proper words. "Good evening Lord and Lady Beaumont. It has been much too long since you were here." There. I did it. I should receive a reprieve for such composure.

"Formal huh?" Maxwell teases. "Well Lady Beaumont, shall we give her the news or make her wait?"

I turn to look at the one who holds the name I once dreamed of having. It's amazing how you can both love and hate someone at the same time. The hatred in this case has subsided some as time went by. Nadia is a genuinely sweet person and she loves Maxwell with every fiber of her being.

Shouldn't that be enough for me? To see the man I love be with someone who practically worships the ground he walks on, shouldn't I feel a sense of satisfaction in that? I don't know. Maybe.

Still...I wish it could have been me.

"Of course we tell our best friend!" Nadia exclaims. Her beautiful smile is practically glowing.

"What news?" I manage to ask with a delighted anticipation that I do not feel. Dread is more like it.

"We're pregnant!" They say at the same time.

I freeze. Pregnant. She is pregnant with my once perfect match's baby. "How wonderful!" I exclaim, hugging the woman who won my lost love.

Maxwell pulls me into a tight embrace. "If it's a girl, I want to name her Amanda."

So there will be an Amanda Beaumont in the world. I force myself to smile. "You're going to make me cry with talk like that." Ha! If they only knew how true that statement was.

Nadia hugs me again. "We will let you get back to hostess duties. I just couldn't wait to tell you!" They wave as they enter the ballroom.

I try and steady my breathing. I need all my wits about me. My childhood crush and love is completely and irrevocably gone. But the love I have for another, one born as an adult, has yet to arrive.

How hard did I fall in love with him? When compared to Maxwell, he is the exact opposite in terms of personality. He's serious, very dry sense of humor, rarely speaks especially to people he doesn't care for. He's passionate and intense, yet can be calm and collected.

Everything about him attracts what is deep within me. My heart yearned for him, still yearns for him to see me in a different light. So often I thought that perhaps he felt that emotional current that seemed to be between us, a current that could either be turned off or come to life with a single spark.

Why didn't he notice me? Why doesn't he see the love I have for him?

"Welcome to St Orella." I say to another group of nobles.

And then he comes in. My eyes, against my will drift down, taking in how handsome he is in a tux.

Then I see the woman on his arm.

Jessica Clark. Movie star on the rise. Young, Beautiful. Eager to please. Undiscovered depths of talent. And now the love of Thomas Hunt's life.

"Amanda," Thomas takes my hand, squeezing it affectionately. "It has been too long since last we met."

"Yes it has." There's a perfectly good reason for my avoiding him. I didn't want to witness his falling more and more in love with Jessica. I have to have some sort of self preservation.

"Welcome to St Orella, Ms. Clark." I choke out.

She laughs one of those tinkling like bells laughs. "Please, call me Jessica." Her smile is wide and friendly toward me. "Thomas has told me so much about you and your home."

I make myself smile and nod somewhat. "I'm glad you were able to come with him." As she responds, I notice something that fills me with even more heartache. Is that what I think it is?

Thomas notices where my attention is. His lips curve as he meets Jessica's eyes. "I know we said we would wait. Do you mind my telling her?"

No...this isn't happening! Not after hearing that Maxwell will be a father. Surely the merciful God in heaven would not let Thomas say--

"Jessica and I are engaged to be married." Thomas announces. "She accepted my proposal while we were in Hawaii."

"Oh!" Quick, think of something to add to that exclamation. "That's wonderful! I am thrilled for you both."

No. Don't. Please. Don't kiss my--

My eyes close as I feel Thomas kiss my cheek. How often have I dreamed of him kissing me in a lover like fashion? The feel of his firm lips and brush of stubble against my cheek sends goosebumps over my skin. There is no passion in his touch. Just simple friendship.

Jessica pulls him close for a brief heated kiss once he is back where he will be from now on...by her side.

I try and keep the tears from falling that suddenly blur my vision. Thomas never wanted me. Not like that. Not ever. Why would he think anything of me? I'm plain. Unexciting. There's nothing special or extradionary about me. I'm simply his friend and a geographically distant one at that.

"Congratulations." I say, pressing a kiss to his cheek and squeezing Jessica's hand. "If you will excuse me, I must greet some others that have arrived."

They smile and ask me to come find them later.

I briefly nod while watching them walk away from me.

And that's it. This is how my life will be from now on.

I am the friend that will cuddle Maxwell and Nadia's baby while the stray thought that this could have been my life comes to mind. I will imagine the holidays we would have spent with our baby and others that follow. Then I will snap out of it and return to my solitary existence.

I will be the friend that cries silently while keeping a smile on my lips as I watch Thomas marry Jessica in a beautiful sunset ceremony. My dreams at night will be me in the white gown before him, only to then wake to the lonely truth.

I will be the friend who returns to her empty house. Unloved. Unwanted. Heart shattered completely. For the rest of my life I will be tortured with the question: What if I had told him?

I did this.

I chose to keep my feelings a secret.

No one knows.

No one ever will.

[meta-squash]

Journal For Plague Lovers & Modernist Literary Style

So I’ve had this theory/idea/whatever in my head for at least a year now about Journal For Plague Lovers and Modernist literature. (Note: I’m talking about the full, unedited lyrics available in the deluxe edition booklet, which you can find my scans of here.) Basically, my theory is that JFPL reflects and uses a Modernist style of writing in order to express feelings and experiences. The Modernist writers really started experimenting with form and meaning and how each dictates or manipulates the other, and there are certain stylistic choices that Richey made in these lyrics that are really reminiscent of the Modernist techniques and experimental styles.

To begin with, JFPL is a notably massive leap forward in lyrical writing for Richey. Which, frankly, is amazing if most of it was written between autumn 1994 when he got out of hospital and January 1995 when the binder was given to Nicky. That means that his lyrical advancement occurred in about 6 months, between the writing/recording of The Holy Bible and Richey’s release from hospitalization, which is incredibly fast. Nicky is always mentioning how Richey’s mind was in high-gear around the time of writing Journal For Plague Lovers, how he was unable to switch off or slow down, which probably accounts both for the advancement and the overwhelming overload of references in these lyrics.

Anyway, I’m just gonna go through some of the main characteristics of Modernist literature/poetry, and sort of look at how JFPL reflects that or utilizes it.

Probably the most obvious is the “cut-up” word/writing style of most of the songs. The Beat poets took cut-up and really ran with it, but it kind of started during the later modernist period. Cut-ups are where a text or texts are cut up and rearranged to make a new text.

I don’t think Richey was literally cutting up texts, but the way certain songs, like Me & Stephen Hawking, Peeled Apples, and Journal For Plague Lovers leap from subject to subject or POV to POV very much seems to emulate that cut-up style. Me & Stephen Hawking is a really good example. In an interview about the album, someone mentioned the weirdness of the lyrics to the song and James responded, “Seriously, you haven’t seen the rest. Seriously, you wouldn’t fucking believe them.” The lyrics clearly have an ongoing theme, but it’s hard to make out at first. They’re very cut-up style, random and almost unintelligible:

Queen mother stuffed for exhibition Three strikes yr out – execution – pizza 2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion.

Peeled Apples, while clearly political, and Journal For Plague Lovers, clearly personal, also really use the cut-up style. Peeled Apples slams together political/history references with images of personal suffering and popular media as well as just plain bizarre phrases like “Canaries are always behind bars the day of deliverance lied.” Pretension/Repulsion also does this, as it’s just single seemingly unrelated words clustered together separated only by commas. The cut-up sort of style allows a ton of words to be put together where it might not have been so easy before. It’s hard to follow, but it manages to pack a LOT of information into a small amount of space, and creates a sensation of overwhelming reality and/or unreality.

Which brings me to another characteristic of modernism, which was the destabilization of reality, the realization that there is not central truth and that truth is provisional and reality is constructed by the “writer” and the “reader.” Jackie Collins Existential Question Time really utilizes that, as it warps reality into this bizarre sort of talk show asking relationship questions– but you don’t know if you’re the audience or not, or where you/the speaker is, or what the conclusion is meant to be, or what the questions really mean. It’s silly but also serious and you’re not really sure how to take it because it’s so weird. You get a sense of place, of what’s going on, but not enough to feel like your feet are on solid ground and that you’re understanding anything.

Facing Page: Top Left and Virginia State Epileptic Colony do this as well, but in very different ways. In Facing Page, you get the sense of a hospital or institution, flashes and fragments of moments and images from within, but there is never any clarity about what is going on, and the world constructed by the words is obscured from any conclusion or truth or central point, since images of institutionalization are interspersed with phrases like “The scum as jewellery,” “Pig bargaining,” “Christian fraternity meeting Pagan idolatry,” and of course “This beauty here dipping neophobia.” It’s comprised mostly of collections of short phrases, and none of these phrases coagulate or combine to clarify anything or to give the listener-reader any sort of intended message. Virginia State Epileptic Colony also presents a hospital scene, but it is much clearer. Instead, the destabilization of reality comes from spaces in the text, and the repetition. We only get about half an image in 13 lines of text– people (patients) sitting at tables drawing circles in chalk, given medication by doctors, waking to strange lights and being told that they are independent because they are allowed to learn domestic tasks. We have the repetition of “Piggy” (and those double asterisks) 5 times in the chorus, with no true explanation as to what it means, and with two verses, a repetitive chorus, and a two-line bridge, there is so much space in this song, so much emptiness. It is up to the listener to fill that space, that reality, making it something constructed not by the words, but by what isn’t there, the information that the listener has to create for themselves out of the half-image that’s given.

As an extension of the above, the use of stream-of-consciousness (and first person) writing became really popular during the modernist era. Most songs are sort of a form of stream-of-consciousness, but the lyrics on JFPL seem to do it more on a literary rather than lyrical level. More than any of the others, William’s Last Words does it best. It’s literally a Faulkner-style first-person prose monologue without line breaks or a verse/chorus/bridge structure. The original version is clearly a drunk character leaving or attempting to leave a party or show of some sort. It’s sad and nostalgic and self-deprecating but it’s all one unbroken monologue-scene of stream of consciousness speech. This is just a small chunk of the page and a half of text:

Goodnight all, you’re all my friends…remember my wedding day, should’ve heard ole Bill singing, we’ll have a good old ding dong tomorrow, you’re lovely all of you, goodnight godbless I’ll always remember you, hope you liked the concert. I’ll go nice and quiet, I’ll just say cherio, here I go on my way, till we meet again, wish me luck as you wave me goodbye. Yr the best friends I ever had, yes, no, no I’m not a clever chap, I made a balls up again, first, second, third time but not on your time I hope, you’re a part of the world….oo be quiet old Bill, no applause, sleeptight, isn’t it lovely when the dawn brings the dew and I’ll be watching over you. It was lovely singing to you, I won’t forget you.

It’s full of commas and run-on or unconnected sentences, but it is prose that connects to itself rather than lyrics. Still, it seems to start in the middle of a scene and fades away into not much of a concrete conclusion, so we get a moment of consciousness– perhaps the most emotional moment– before turning away. Facing Page: Top Left and Marlon JD do stream of consciousness to some degree as well. Facing Page is not a typical stream of consciousness, but more like a list of things or experiences or associations. In some ways again it makes me think of Faulkner, of the way he writes characters that don’t really know how narrate their thoughts/experiences in words. It never leaves its institutional location or changes the subject to something else, it just rambles about the situation it’s in through fragmentary phrases. Marlon JD is also very stream-of-consciousness, but because it’s already based on a monologue from a film that’s kind of to be expected.

Modernism was also characterized by a sort of “what’s becoming of the world?” reaction, in response to the speeding up of technological advancements and scientific discoveries etc etc, as well as the consciousness of the changes that came from the end of the 19th century and how the new 20th century was shaping up to be. Something that the band specifically notes in interviews about the Journal For Plague Lovers album is the emphasis on information overload, of the speed of technology and information/media consumption, as well as concerns about things like the environment, religion, and global politics/history and the end of the millennium.

Me & Stephen Hawking is the clearest example of this “what is becoming of the world?” anxiety, and the focus on information overload. The main body of the lyric –the verse(s)– never actually made it onto the recording, which just uses the bridge and the chorus. This is probably because the verse(s) are just jumbles of references to history and media and events and ideas. It’s also characterized by swaths of blacked-out lines. Whether the Richey did that or the band did it posthumously, we don’t know. If Richey did it himself, it certainly changes the interpretation of the lyrics, as it adds another layer of “information” (censoring) overload. But the words trip over each other, so many different references all piled in one spot:

2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion. 3/ Paisleyism and ecumenism and cenotaph bombers [blacked out] wearing policing Soviet labour medals sold for Coca Cola 82 million watch Gorilla Meets Whale

Peeled Apples does the same thing, piling political and historical and emotional and media references in one place until they’re so jumbled it’s hard to make sense of them, showing the anxiety of that information overload and speeding up of communication, creation, knowledge. I’ve always thought that All Is Vanity is a kind of reaction to that reaction, putting the anxiety succinctly into “It’s not whats wrong it’s what’s right / Makes me feel like I’m talking a foreign language at times” and the desire for control or some semblance of order and calmness in “I would prefer no choice / One bread one milk one food that’s all / I’m confused I only want one truth.” Which, again, goes back to that Modernist realization that truth is provisional, reality is constructed, and there is no central point because not only is it all relative, it’s also always moving and changing and growing and shrinking and twisting.

Another characteristic is that of an emphasis on the sexual (in the form of fetish or obsession, usually), and the visceral or grotesque. While JFPL doesn’t really have much of the former, it certainly has plenty of the latter. The most obvious are Journal For Plague Lovers and She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach. She Bathed Herself really contains the most visceral image in the title, which is, as Nicky calls it, “quite a shocking title.” Aside from the title, the more intense lines are “She thought burnt skin would please her lover” and “Love sat her in a bath of bleach / But salmon pink skinned Mary is still caring.” Even so, the title kind of dictates where the listener’s mind goes with these words, and so with the suggestion from the title, the imagination goes to more grotesque places that the words actually literally contain. On the other hand, Journal For Plague Lovers has some really grotesque imagery. The band sort of cherry-picked lines to record around the more intense parts of the verses. The verses altogether seem to be an image of a rotting self, whether physical, emotional or mental, especially when combined with the “dying relationship” of the bridge.

These perfect abattoirs these perfect actors Babies bones, dustbinned, shorn

Oh such love smeared stimulus Vacuumed pain slow suck luck Wake in hell murder one Troughs o’ bones wade in gore

Weep helpless skewered flesh Milky teeth soured and fetid PG certificate all cuts unfocused Sick in skin embarrassed within

The imagery is really intense but non-specific, creating a reaction of disgust and fragments of gross images without really knowing what we’re looking at or what we’re supposed to be disgusted by. It’s a shock factor that transitions into the bridge, which is a scene of a failing or failed relationship, so that the gross images overlay this moment of romantic collapse, making it even more visceral and pitiful.

Modernism also started really focusing on the meaning and history of words, and how they could be used to create an image without blatantly telling a story. Pretension/Repulsion is the best example of this, especially because James Bradfield specifically noted in an interview that the way the song was laid out meant it felt like Richey was telling him “Look at the words, James, look at the words.” Which makes sense, as it’s just a bunch of individual words divided by commas:

Explored, inclos’d, amaz’d, perturb’d Assum’d, annoy’d, ceas’d, unhinder’d Burden’d, gather’d, agonis’d, lock’d Mix’d, sear’d, receiv’d, unclaps’d 

Instead of focusing on a story, the listener-reader is paying attention to the sound of each word and thinking of the meaning behind it. Instead of a narrative, we get flashes of image/emotion for each word. Peeled Apples also relays on knowledge of words and historical references, with lines like “In SB’s Cistine Chapel inabilities wither / Boy smoking cigarette infront of Himmler’s painted ether” and “Nutrition is neuroses for a maelstrom of inadequacy.” Doors Closing Slowly relies on religious knowledge, and its references go very deep. It twists biblical stories and references, and expects the listener-reader to understand the origin and therefore the modified version:

I want your sin third day perfected Lazarus burning Jerusalem Blaspheme, cut dead, Isiah One day birds of prey Israelite 

But, like the Modernists, each of these lyrics uses an emphasis on the expectation that the listener-reader will have the literary or historical or vocabulary knowledge to understand the meaning/origin of the reference in order to create a specific image through the twisting or reinterpretation of that reference. It wants the definition and history to expand the story, so that it’s the effort of the listener-reader and not the speaker that will expand the story into something fleshed out and recognizable. Despite the cuts that were made for the studio recordings it’s clear when you read the full versions of the lyrics that every single word is important and researched and meant to be included. There is a history and meaning infused in every reference, and Richey’s brain was going so fast that some of the lyrics feel like they’re piled on top of each other, but at the same time, they seem to build on each other, each reference allowing the listener-reader to glean more meaning the more history or definitions they know.

What I found most telling was seeing the quality of modernist literature that my professor really drilled into us: that modernist lit (especially prose, but also poetry to a large extent) was not necessarily about the plot, and the plot was not the most important thing. Instead of a specific narrative, what was important was the impression or emotion evoked by the words. I always think of the novel Nightwood by Djuna Barnes when it comes to feelings/impressions being more important than the plot; there is a plot, but it’s just a scaffolding or a base for the emotion to build off of, for the reader to interpret and feel from. It’s basically what all of the above is driving to create and express. Instead of having a direct narrative within the lyrics (like 4st lbs or La Tristesse Durera or even, to some extent, PCP or Intense Humming…), it relies on fragments of scenes or references to create an impression or an emotion on the listener-reader. Faster and Of Walking Abortion do this as well, but JFPL manages to take it to another level.

The band, when being interviewed about Journal For Plague Lovers, often talk about how much this album seems simultaneously “of its time” and strangely fitting for the present. In his very last television interview, Richey mentioned that his dream was to “write a lyric which I think is flawless, that makes sense to me, not anybody else. That I think in 15-20 lines sums up exactly how I feel about everything, not just how I feel today, how I’ve felt all my life. Everything I’ve read, everything I’ve seen, everything I believe, that in those 15 lines you just say it all.” Considering the sheer amount of knowledge and imagery and information packed into just the 13 songs on the album (not to mention the 20 or so more in the binder that have never been published), I think that’s partly what Richey was trying to do with these words. We’ll never know if he thought he succeeded, but instead of being left with a clear-cut picture of his opinions (or accusations) like THB, instead we are left with impressions of experiences, feelings, and events created through the fragments of information all slammed together– everything, all in 15 lines.

Aside from one or two songs, the tracks on JFPL don’t really have a defined narrative. Instead, they rely on fragments of images, emotions, references, and ideas to form an impression in the listener’s mind. For example, Peeled Apples, the most reference-filled track on the album, doesn’t actually tell a straightforward story or clear opinion the way the more political tracks on THB did. Instead we get an opening line that is clearly political followed by a much more personal line: “Riderless horses, Chomsky’s Camelot / Bruises on my hand from digging my nails out,” and the rest of the lyrics that follow are a mass of references, from the bible to Japanese post-Hiroshima films to the Birdman of Alcatraz to George Orwell, intermingled with lines that are abstract and emotional. Yet somehow what the listener-reader gets out of is an impression of frustration, political anger, and historical/political/personal entropy. Me & Stephen Hawking is similarly reference-packed, and out of that comes the impression of overwhelming technological/information enhancement and concern for the survival of both the environment and the self.

Doors Closing Slowly is full of religious references, and leaves us with an impression religious and personal doubt, and the overwhelming feeling of rejection and dejection towards both. And they’re so twisted together there are some lines, like “Love the soul not the body / Let me forgive the word ruins / I wanted to kill but my tears love,” where you don’t know if it’s a personal reference or a religious one.

There’s a sense of desolation and loneliness, of overwhelming exhaustion at the uncertainty of truth. William’s Last Words, on the other hand, feels desperate, lonely but wishing not to be alone. As a prose monologue, it is more personal-sounding, able to sound rambling and drunken because of the amount of space the words are allowed to take up. Within the words there’s the impression of nostalgia and a sort of rainy quietness, a mental fading, and a sort of muffled personal mourning.

In All Is Vanity, there is a sense of desperation. For control, for understanding, for being understood. Especially in “I’m confused I only want one truth / I really don’t mind if I’m being lied to,” there’s an impression of simultaneous frustration with monotony and a desire for it, a frustration with and desire for beauty, love, a non-existent central point, a conflict of interest on the personal level. This Joke Sport Severed feels bleak, an impression of rawness or over-sensitivity being dealt with through rejection and repression, hiding or turning away from everything that hurts. It includes the odd bridge, “Repress yr emotion / Repression yr revenge / Stoic shitter nerve end,” which radiates anger as well as dejection and frustration. The song leaves an impression of being curled in a corner somewhere, barefoot, confused, frustrated and lost and nursing wounds and pretending nothing outside of your little corner exists.

As I mentioned before, Facing Page: Top Left absolutely leaves the listener-reader with an image of hospitals and institutionalization and the monotony of that existence. It also gives an impression of discomfort, a body seen in fragments rather than as a whole, and a loss of agency. It feels frustrated, searching, but also pointedly disgusted both with the self and with others. The final two lines, for me, pack all of those feelings in a short punch packed with words and images: “Dipping neophobia. Gillette Cuticura. Flak. PS. Recovery. Huh / Central dissolves. Exceed dosage. Subscribed. Cleansed. Boring.”

Journal For Plague Lovers also reflects that disgust, to a much higher degree. The grotesque imagery gives the listener-reader a distinct feeling of uneasy revulsion, but also a sort of pity or helplessness, both for the self and for others that seem to exist in the song. Especially because it’s difficult to make out who the speaker is and what they feel– which puts all the interpretation on the listener rather than the speaker. It makes the listener-reader feel conflicted, uncertain whether they should feel horrified or sad.

Again, most of the songs don’t really have an obvious narrative, just images you can kind of construct meaning out of. But on the off-chance we do get a narrative, it is left so vague and open-ended it’s barely a narrative at all, but a fragment left open at both ends. In Virginia State Epileptic Colony, we get a momentary picture of a hospital scene, but we leave it before we get anything but an impression. She Bathed Herself… gives an incomplete narrative of a mentally ill woman and her views/attempts at romance, a fragment of her thoughts and feelings and experiences, and a fragment of the speaker at the bridge demanding “Brush her hair, no one else will / Don’t hurt her anymore, stop hurting her.” Marlon JD is also fragmentary, but some explanations can be found in the film it references, because most of the lyrics are a monologue from Reflections In A Golden Eye, or descriptions of scenes from the film. William’s Last Words starts abruptly, practically in the middle of a sentence, and peters out into nothing without the narrator going anywhere or doing much. It’s a long, sad, drunken ramble with no central point (as there is no set or stable truth), in which the narrator seems to circle around whatever it is he wants to say without really saying it, and loses steam before he gets to it. Instead we’re left with this strangely contradictory set of ending sentences, (and, apt for the album and its circumstances) a conclusion without any real meaning or conclusion:

“If I sing a song I’m down a scale or up a scale. I’ve come a long way, really, even for a tone deaf singer, if you want to know.”

Nicky also tends to mention how the binder was filled not only with lyrics, but with paintings, scans of other authors’ literature, collages, drawings, prose, journal entries, and other sorts of clippings. He makes it clear that the binder itself was meant to be a work of art. Again, this places emphasis on the form and the importance of references and of the whole being seen to create an impression rather than each little piece being interpreted. This does make me wonder how much more to the lyrics and art within there really was, and if within the whole thing as a work of art Richey did somehow reach his goal of writing the perfect lyrics or the perfect album or the perfect piece of art expressing himself. Either way, I think the inclusion of Richey’s art and non-lyric writings and things in the booklet are a sort of attempt at allowing the whole to give an impression, because the inclusion of the drawn-upon diagrams of Dante’s Infero with the lyrics to Journal For Plague Lovers, or a Christ figure with Marlon JD, or Richey’s notes from therapy with Pretension/Repulsion, flesh the piece out into art as a whole, in which the visual aspect also informs the creation of the impression upon the viewer (or listener-reader).

In Journal For Plague Lovers, modernist style is used and reflected to talk about Richey’s own experiences and thoughts, but also to capture and express a very specific moment and emotion and idea without saying it outright. There is never any mention of that information overload, of apprehension about the coming millennium, no outward or straightforward reference to his time in hospital or his views on relationships or the self. Instead, each song leaves us with an impression, a feeling rather than a clearly defined narrative or message. There’s an internalization of meaning, of imagery, so that it must be sensed and pulled out of all the jumbles of words and emotions; this time, it isn’t the plot or the message that is important, it’s the impression and feelings of an experience and a moment in time that is simultaneously constant and passed, intensely, vividly present and faded away like a memory.

[willow-salix]

Mistakes Novice Writers Make - Day 5 Writing and Prose

Hi guys, and welcome back to our last day of common mistakes that novice writers make. Today we’re gonna talk about general writing mistakes and problems with prose.

The biggest thing that novice writers are guilty of is trying too hard. They might feel like their plain, everyday way of talking and writing isn’t good enough, isn’t clever enough or isn’t literary enough.

And so, they will try to be something they are not. This almost always shows to the reader and makes the writer look like an amateur.

A lack of clear and concise prose will turn off all but the hardiest of readers. Writing styles, much like language evolve over time. The days of big words and flouncy, poetic prose went out with Dickens. And while it’s nice to go back and read them sometimes, they are very much of their time and not to most modern tastes.

That’s not to say there is anything wrong with this style of writing, it has its place and can still be used today if it’s done right, but it’s a skill that takes practice and more practice to get it right. Often if you are writing a book in the style of someone else, you can market it as such and that’s fine, your readers will know exactly what they are buying, but for a modern, contemporary novel, it doesn’t work at all.

Not matching your writing style to the type of book you are writing. For example, if you have a rather old-fashioned style, with very proper sentence construction and a love of bigger words, you might be better suited to a historical novel where it will work better. Older writers who attended school in a different era tend to find this works for them. An historical novel doesn’t have to be set hundreds of years ago, it just has to be a time that is not now. So, if you grew up in the 60’s, were taught in those times and still have those kind of speech patterns to your writing, then maybe think about doing a novel set during that time period, where your langue and style will be able to flow and work to its full potential.

If you have a more modern style, then set your novel in modern times that reflect it. it would really jar with your readers if you used modern langue in a novel set in the 1940’s for example.

On the subject of historicals, let me add in a little warning about another problem that was brought up by another writer is asked about common mistakes. And that is lack of research.

Armature writers often get too caught up in the story and have an overly romanticised view of the time period they are writing about.

I’m a member of a few active writing forums and one observation someone made was how they were having to re-write almost all of their novel because their editor had said they had overly romantic, TV drama style descriptions. And because of this they had now learnt that the streets of 1850’s New Orleans would have been covered in horse shit as well as human waste, people would be pissing on the street without a care in the world, it was filthy, it stank and was not really a nice place to be.

Trying to write a book when all you know about the area or time period has come from Movies or TV shows will scream novice and showcase your lac of effort. Research is your friend.

This doesn’t just mean in the physical descriptions of the area itself, but includes the dialogue they would have used, the accents and slang words they would have used, the legal system of the time, how the country worked, and basically researching all aspects of the book, not just the obvious.

Another prose problem would be making your writing overly complex, again this is related to the type of book that you are writing.

Going into massive details about how a computer works and how they are built is fine if you are writing an article for a computer magazine, but not in a novel or gods forbid, a short story. Readers will have a hard time following it and will likely skip ahead or give up on the story entirely. It’s the same with science or physics, keep things as basic as you can while still giving the information that is needed. Don’t treat your reader like they are stupid and need to be spoon fed the ABC, but also keep the large, complicated scientific explanations in their place such as magazines, academic journals and dissertations.

Choppy prose is another example of amateurish writing. Choppy prose can make your writing feel disjoined, like it lacks flow (because it does) and construction.

While this will work in small does, for an action scene or a scary scene, too much will make it feel like a race, exhausting your reader and making it harder to read.

There are a number of culprits that result in choppy prose, the most common two being fragmented or run on style sentences.

Run on writing is when two or more scene points are joined without proper conjunction- like the use of and, but, or type of words- or without punctuation. It has an almost hurried pace and that isn’t always the pace you are trying to create. For example:

“Mona arrived at the bank only 3 minutes late she ran up the steps she banged on the door screamed at the people still inside she had to get inside to talk to them.”

Fragmented writing seems incomplete, lacking a real purpose, flow or structure. It can make the writer look uneducated, it can read in a really confusing way and give an image you don’t want. For example:

“Mona gave up and stopped. Cried. What would happen now? Ruined. All was ruined. She sat down on the steps. Because her legs gave out. maybe someone would help her? The next bank. Take pity on her.”

That was actually hard for me to write, because it goes against almost everything I know as a writer. But you’d be surprise how often I see it while beta reading, in online stories or in independently published books.

See how badly those examples read? But don’t despair, because both can be fixed with a little practice and work. Separate your run-on sentences with correct clauses, or into sentences of their own, adding more details when needed. Smooth out your fragmented writing with proper punctuation and build them into full sentences.

Here is an example of how to fix some of the structural problems.

“Mona missed the bank by 3 minutes, finding the doors locked. Desperate, she banged on the door, calling to the people inside to let her in. She needed to talk to them, to fix it. they ignored her, deaf to her yells. Giving up she stopped, bursting into tears as the reality of the situation hit home. Ruined, it was all ruined.

Her legs felt wobbly, incapable of holding her up and she sat down heavily on the steps before she fell down. Maybe someone else would help her, maybe another bank would take pity on her? she couldn’t give up now.”

That flows so much better, it explains the situation in brief detail and shows her mood, but also her determination to keep trying.

Check your word choices. Nothing screams amateur more than writing the wrong word or spelling.

Here is a brief example of this, I’ll give you a moment to read it. (show purple picture.)

Using the wrong word choice can make you look uneducated, like you are trying too hard and using words you don’t understand in an effort to look clever. When in fact it has the opposite effect.

If you are using a word that has more than one meaning, check its definition, check the spelling and make sure you are using it in the correct way. For example: bare and bear One, spelt BARE- means that something is naked, not covered, to bare all, or to be bare, something that is basic, the bare essential, without decoration or fancy features. Bear spelt BEAR has more than one meaning, it means a bear as in the animal that lives in the woods and likes to steal picnic baskets, other meanings include not being able to bear something, its unbearable, I cannot bear it. you can also bear something, as in, he was bearing a tray of snacks.

The same goes for any words that you do not use or hear in everyday conversation, check them, because you can quite easily misunderstand the meaning of a word or misspell it to turn it into something it shouldn’t be. If you are wanting to use a word that you have never checked before, check it. A thirty second google could be the difference between looking educated or stupid.

So many people think they know the meaning of a word only to confuse it with another that sounds very similar, for example, Synonym buns, and cinnamon buns. Most definitely not the same thing, and yes, I’ve seen this one on the internet, it’s a real thing.

Another thing to always check is a common saying. By that I mean when someone thinks they know what a common saying is, but they actually misheard it themselves and now just keep saying it wrong. One example I’ve seen of this is someone that wished everyone could just “barry the hatchet” I don’t know who barry is or why he’s a hatchet or what they are trying to do with him.

All of these little slip ups are sure fire ways of making yourself look bad when they turn up in your writing work.

If I read a comment or post by someone that uses the wrong words while trying to look clever, usually when someone is ranting or trying to make an offensive point, I will notice it, I can’t help it. and much as I would love to say that I don’t judge them, lets be real here, I do. I do judge, because I believe in education, and in continuing to educate yourself, to better yourself, for as long as you have left on this planet. By not looking up the correct words, using tools like spell check or even bothering to use the right spelling for a word, well that’s often just laziness in my eyes. Harsh but true. I can’t take someone seriously if they are trying to make a point when they write like that. And if I saw that in a novel, it would likely make me stop reading. If you want to be taken seriously with your writing you have to start taking it seriously yourself, and that means lots of time and effort.

Bad use of punctuation, or the complete lack of it, is also something that many will judge you on. It can also throw off the whole rhythm and flow of your writing. I’m not going to go deep into this as I’m planning to do a video on this subject. But what I will say now as a quick tip is to either read your work out loud or better yet, get a reading app to do it for you if you have trouble with knowing how punctuation works within your work. The difference between a full stop and a comma is huge, but many treat them as the same thing, almost interchangeable, but the misuse of them will change the whole structure of your sentence.

Repetitive words are another thing that novice writers may do. Now I’m not saying that you need to pull a Joey and use a thesaurus for every word you use, but you can mix it up a bit.

If you are describing something and you will need to make a point more than once, try to find a different descriptive word to use. I have a personal rule of never using the same descriptive word twice for the same thing in the same paragraph.

Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule, some things you can’t branch out on without looking like you are trying too hard.

A book is a book, sure technically you could say novel, opus, tome, volume, paper back etc, they all mean the same thing, but it would get pretty ridiculous if you used them all. In this case I would describe the book itself, “A paperback romance sat on the bedside table,” and then just refer to it as the book after that. “She picked up the book, studying the cover,” “she flicked through the book, starting to read at random,” “She threw the book at his head.” That is an example of keeping things simple.

When not to use repetitive words would be when describing something important, like a baby. You could use new-born, the baby, his son, her child, the infant, etc.

Picture the scene, there had just been a traumatic birth and now the baby is safely here and it’s the aftermath or even during the birth itself, just saying the baby all the time would become boring and repetitive.

If something is important it needs to be kept at the forefront of the action and that means that it needs more than one descriptive word.

Another example of this would be action words or ‘doing’ words if you prefer to call them that.

Here’s an example of one descriptive word getting overused and boring. “The crystals were placed in a circle, their pattern very specific, with a candle placed in the centre. Next, she took out a shell and placed that in the west of the circle, then came an incense cone which she placed in the east.”

Placed, placed, placed all the same descriptive word. Other words could and probably should be used to keep the writing feeling fresh.

“The crystals were arranged in a circle, their pattern looking to be very specific, a candle was then placed in the centre (our first and only placed) next she took out a shall, laying it carefully in the west of the circle and an incense cone in the east.”

Different words make the writing more interesting.

Another problem which I will just touch on as I did a bit about this in one of the previous videos and I plan on doing a more in-depth talk on them in the future, is POV, i.e. 1st, 2nd or 3rd person writing. Books are almost always in either 1st or 3rd person POV, 2nd is mostly ignored and unused, personally I hate that point of view.

Most novice writers fall into writing 1st person because they find it easier to relate to the character and to tell the story, but this can come with problems. It can be harder to create a more complex storyline as you are limited as to what information you can give and what you can show to the reader due to how much you character will actually know, see and experience.

You will often end up in the realm of telling instead of showing as a way of explaining, which isn’t that great.

Another problem can be lack of character voice as you might not have had time to develop your authors voice and style, therefore all your characters run the risk of sounding the same.

Lastly your characters can come off as whining, self-centred and a bit dumb as it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of too much information feeding.

As always everything with writing is takes time and practice. Read lots of tips, keep watching videos like this and keep writing.

Upcoming videos include dialogue, exploring the various POV’s in depth, how to edit your work and more talk on romance novels.

Until then, blessed be and happy writing.

[soontobeaqualifierako]

LANG PROF TIPS

Sections: 50 English questions + 50 Filipino questions (4 choices all throughout, no "None of the above" choice)

Time Limit: 50-60 minutes (di ko tanda)

Tips: Focus on composition. A lot of items begged for the correct use of words and phrases (contextually, at least), logical sequence, and grammar. Most challenging part saken ang tenses of verb (oo lito pa rin ako when to use had had been, has had been, etc.) I can't remember any spelling items kaya dont focus here masyado. Logical sequencing is a bit tricky rin kaya make sure to have your eyes work fast para kita nyo na agad kung anong words/fragments mauuna. Around three-five items lang vocab and one word na natandaan ko is "caustic." There's that usual context clue na technique but I dont suggest relying too much on this. Have your own sense and meaning of the sentence and then decide. Earlier I mentioned the use of words contextually and what I mean by this is may item ron na ang context ng sentence ay nasa barko ka ganyan tas pili ka ng dalawang pedeng food na pedeng makain ganon. Watching Pirates of the Caribbean helped me on this kaya naman I'll always reiterate this: visual entertainment media really help!!!!

As for the Filipino part, it's supposed to be easier but be careful na rin bc the choices are fraternal quadruplets. Same format lang din sa English pero mas mahaba usually mga sentences. All you have to worry about sa Filipino part is not what if u stumble upon a word na medyo malalim, but what if di na abot sa time kasi sobrang time-consuming ng Fil part.

Final verdict: REVIEW YOUR LANGUAGE PART AS IF IT'S YOUR FINAL WEAPON. Science and Math are relatively less challenging because sabi nga ni Candace sa Mean Girls, wherever you go, math (and yes, science) is just the same. May formula mga yan pero this part does not have any. There's always a rule to follow pero hep hep hep, ang dami ring exemptions!!!!! Also, American English is not the same with British English. Kaya make sure to remove temporarily from your brain cells words such as "towards" and "enrol." STICK WITH YOUR GUT. Choose to read articles na may readability ranging from Grade 9 to Grade 12.In answering the LangProf part, you have to be the most pedantic version of yourself! Maraming UP passers ang hindi qualifiers bc mababa LangProf score nila kaya pls, dont underestimate this part!

Apps/devices I used: Wordsworth bot sa Messenger, 3 new words I write on index cards per day (which went on from June till August lol), movies and books (which u can hopefully use for understanding context), The Guardian articles, and  hemingwayapp.com for you to check the readability of any posts.

Don't rely on: Blog posts from commoners, song lyrics (may instances nga kasi na may "he don't" sa lyrics hahaha), unverified FB pages, and ofc Thought Catalog and the like (bukod sa sobrang plain and cringe-worthy ng mga articles dito, poorly-constructed din sila kaya best to avoid na lang din.)

[bakurapika]

moon over goldsboro

The air seemed to nip at Wirt’s heels, spurring him on as he hunched over, watching his feet rhythmically plod forward as if they were someone else’s body. He told himself he was watching for black ice. It hadn’t snowed yet this year, but it was inevitably going to happen in the next few weeks.

When it did, maybe he’d have to stop these trips that had become a comfortable habit. He didn’t think he would, though.

There wasn’t even a good reason to be out tonight. What he wanted to do, he could do from the comfort and safety of home. Maybe it was something in the air. Maybe he wanted to be outside when the witching hour came. She’d told him a lot of things he was taking seriously now, even in such an unmagical place as Wirt’s hometown.

He would see her tonight. 

The thought made him shiver more than the nippy air did, and Wirt huddled over underneath the navy blue cape he was still wearing for some unfathomable reason. It wasn’t as though people at school made fun of him for it. He hadn’t talked to many other kids his age since the Halloween incident.

Wirt had been unconsciously heading towards the Eternal Garden, only veering off course when he saw its ominous gates looming in the distance. He took a sharp right instead, a few blocks past the historic cemetery and over a concrete bridge, no destination in mind.

His feet slowed their pace when he neared a gas station, the only one in town that was at least nominally open twenty-four hours, though he didn’t see any cars in it.

There was a noise in the distance, an echoing cheer and the discordant blaring of Wirt’s high school marching band. Right, the football game. Everyone was probably there. The idea made Wirt picture Sara; his heart sank, and he wandered to the back of the gas station, picking his way across dim-lit yellowing grass and weeds and briars.

There was an empty lot there, and though it was run-down and scattered with litter, it also faced the pond he and Greg had almost drowned in. The lot was on an overhang, separated from the steep drop by a flimsy four-foot wire fence that really wouldn’t stop anybody who wanted to climb it.

Wirt had been planning on sitting down, finding a place to sit among the broken beer cans and weeds, but he was already walking toward the fence. A foot found purchase against it and he heaved himself up, perching on top of the wires that only shakily held his weight.

He was living in two worlds, Wirt thought to himself as he stared at the moon. It was a half-moon, the same phase as it had been on Halloween, and there were two of them. The second one was only a reflection of the real moon in the rippling blackness of the pool of water below.

It looked so small from where Wirt was, like it couldn’t possibly contain an entire other world.

Wirt sighed, his breath fogging up and clouding the moon above him for a moment.

Which side was he supposed to be on? Was he living in the real world now, or only a reflection of it? And why did he seem eternally destined to stay on the fence between them?

Wirt stared at the moon until his eyes watered, pricking with pain. He didn’t feel as cold as he should. The memory of last night was too warm, and he was almost there now - could almost feel her arms around his as he leaned backward into the comfortable crook between her neck and shoulder. He smiled despite himself. He’d go home tonight and he’d be there again in the place they both called “home.”

The sooner he went to bed, the sooner he’d see her.

But also, the sooner he’d wake up in bed alone again. Wirt’s smile disappeared as if it were never there. He didn’t know how many times he could do that before something broke.

He turned away from the moon and hopped off the fence, stumbling on the dismount and lowering himself into a patch of weeds that seemed trash-free. Wirt had half a mind just to sleep there in the empty lot, overlooking the cemetery. He could almost be mistaken for a bag of trash himself, huddled against the fence and shielding himself from the north wind’s fury. But apparently he couldn’t fool mortals as well as he could fool himself, because with an almost inaudible flick, Wirt was bathed in harsh manmade light.

The gas station’s overnight attendant must have seen him. Wirt raised a hand, squinting at the buzzing lights that made it seem almost like daytime, and groaned.

He wasn’t alone out here. He’d have to head home.

It’s not like he was hiding anything, he thought in a grumble as he heaved himself up and trailed around the darker edges of the empty lot until he reached the road. He just wasn’t in the mood to be around other people.

Except for her, of course. She was always the exception nowadays.

He watched his feet again, though with more difficulty, since he couldn’t see much in between streetlights as he passed them.

“Lorna,” he finally said quietly, weakly pretending she could hear him. “This isn’t going to work. Not this way. I have to choose. Living with you, living at home, I can’t do this anymore. But I, I l-love you, Lorna. I just, I don’t know if it’s worth dying for. Do you… Do you think so? Do you want me here, or…? I can’t imagine staying at home forever without you. Would you even want me?” His voice faded at the end of each sentence, springing to life again at the next one, until he whispered, “What do I mean to you?” and let the night steal any subsequent words away.

Then he let out a frustrated noise, both hands tugging at his own hair before he buried his face in his hands.

It was silent tonight. No croaking or chirping or cooing, since it was getting too chilly for most animals to survive without hibernating or moving to warmer climes. The football game must have been over, because the only noise distinguishable was the low distant whine of a siren.

Briefly, Wirt irrationally decided that the siren was for him, somehow supernaturally sensing how he’d been teetering between life and death for so long, and ready to yank him back to the world of the living the same way the ambulance had the first time.

But the screaming siren died away again. Wirt kept walking. The sidewalk was frosting over already, the evening dew having collected and scattered itself into beautiful bone-white fragments that Wirt could just barely make out.

It was still snowy in the Unknown, he remembered, but it was a billowing snow that prevented travel. Lorna’s front door barely opened when he was there last night, the stoop having been covered in heavy white stuff that replenished itself continuously with thick grey snowfall.

Wirt had made her a cup of tea. He wasn’t sure how he’d brought the teabag across the boundary of their worlds but he’d had it when he arrived, and she had marveled at the invention and the novelty and the taste, though Wirt privately thought that her home-gathered pine tea was much better than any storebought stuff. It was comforting, warm, familiar.

The next morning, Wirt had awoken without any covers on and with his window cracked open. At this rate he’d die of cold exposure, and his choice would be made up for him.

The thought carried him to the threshold of his own home. It wasn’t too late, but the outside lights weren’t on. Greg was probably in bed already. Maybe Wirt’s mom and stepfather had gone to the game, or maybe they had an early night and didn’t notice Wirt’s absence. All the better.

Wirt tried to push open the door only to remember he needed the key that they kept in a fake rock beneath the porch. Lorna’s home - their home, ever since she and Auntie Whispers had generously offered that Wirt stay the night and never rescinded the invitation despite him involuntarily showing up every single evening - had no lock. He’d asked her about it once and she had seemed confused at the concept, then pointed out that if she could keep her doors shut against invaders, they never would have met.

Shutting the door behind him and turning the lock, Wirt felt fondness for her swelling up in his chest until it became unbearable. Mechanically, he took off his shoes and cape, then climbed the stairs to his room, not bothering to undress before he lay down on top of his covers. Wirt didn’t feel himself falling asleep. He only found himself in front of a familiar door, creaking it open without a knock and entering the run-down home. The cellar door was open for him, a flickering light beckoning him inside.

She was in there, a low-burning candle beside her cot. Her skin, more than usual bared in her plain white underdress, had the healthy pink glow that Wirt had become used to ever since he had banished her evil spirit.

Lorna cracked open an eye, drowsy but still awake enough to wave him over to the bed. Wirt, too, stripped off some of his clothes, the freezing air nipping at him until he slid beneath the blankets. Like he’d been gone much longer than a night, Wirt grasped for her, pulling her close until he could feel her hair tickling against his chest.

She could probably hear his heart. No, she could definitely hear his heart, based on the soothing circles she traced against his side, trying to get him to calm down. But Wirt was anxious now, thoughts from earlier bouncing around in his head and against his skull.

He very nearly opened his mouth. He very nearly said it. “Is this real?” he wanted to ask. “Is any of this real?”

But he was frightened of the answer, whether it be yea or nay, so he just held her, letting her calming patterns trace against his cold skin.

“Just a second,” he eventually said with a peck on her lips as penance for leaving her, and Wirt stood and left for the fireplace. He picked out a few deep-red coals with a metal rod, putting them in the little contraption Lorna had shown him how to use - a metal drum with a wooden handle, which he brought back to her and slipped underneath the sheets. Now they wouldn’t freeze to death, at least, as if that were possible here.

Lorna giggled and thanked him, taking his hand and pulling him back to bed with a kiss.

“Is this real?” Wirt kept thinking, over and over throughout the night until Lorna was asleep, face pressed into his back and knees behind his own, arms curled over him protectively. The bed was warm now, and the body heat moreso, to the point that he should have been sweating. But all Wirt could do was shiver and grip Lorna’s hand in his own, making her murmur in her sleep. “Is this real?”

He was still thinking it when he opened his eyes in his bedroom, cold, alone.

[supergrossie]

The Beautiful and Damned :: Book One, Chapter 2

Regretfully, I couldn’t read nor transcribe yesterday, having gone tete-a-tete with my dentist lady and then having to resort to painkillers afterwards. But today! And oh, what a chapter this has been.

To expound further on Fitzgerald’s abilities of description, I must talk about Gloria. In the sub-dividing chapters preceding the one titled The Beautiful Lady, much is spoken of Gloria by others around her, for her, and on behalf of her. This undoubtedly builds suspense in the reader anticipating her and Anthony’s first meeting (and of course, knowing as most of us know that they are to marry later, a double curiosity). In revealing her at last in this chapter, Fitzgerald peels back the layers of her ever so gradually, in fragments of dialogue with one or two sentences trailing after them, dropping hints at her likeness and character. This graduality and sparseness is in such contrast, again, to the writers of today, who prefer to introduce to us a character in one big, hefty block of description. 

One could argue that such a big, hefty block can often be dismissed or forgotten, and put in the back of the mind as inconsequential. But sprinkled around the action tactically like this, as she enters Anthony’s apartment, hands over to him her fur, and begins remarking on the decor of the place — Gloria becomes immediately a living thing. Hell, he doesn’t even mention that her hair is blonde until much later. (I for some reason interpreted her as a rich brunette, or deep russet, though this too is minor, inconsequential details when considering Gloria. Details which many contemporary writers hold of the utmost importance. But I digress—)

In describing her, Fitzgerald is indeed sparse, never weighing down the readers with many hefty and on-the-nose specifics authors often rely upon. And yet, I see Gloria as clearly as one would see her in a scene of a movie, for these sparse commentaries, made like brushstrokes on a painting upon her likeness and character, paint the most striking and vivid portrait of Gloria one could ever hope for.

Consider this:

On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold — but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.

“The most living person” is quite the quote, don’t you think? A beautiful punchline, at any rate. Here’s another most excellent description, relying once again not on the physicals, but speaking on temperament and character:

Carefully, Gloria considered several locations and, rather to Anthony’s annoyance, paraded him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room. Reaching it, she again considered. Would she sit on the right or on the left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naive was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.

Immediately tells you the kind of person Gloria is, doesn’t it? It’s uncanny.

And thus ends most of my technical analysis, now into the silly. I did mention at the start, how I saw myself in Gloria. Well, here are the forgotten fragments that basically make me Gloria:

“I wish you’d tell me how old you are.” “Twenty-two,” she said, meeting his eyes gravely. “How old did you think?” “About eighteen.”  “I’m going to start being that. I don’t like being twenty-two. I hate it more than anything in the world.” “Being twenty-two?” “No. Getting old and everything. Getting married.” “Don’t you ever want to marry?” “I don’t want to have responsibility and a lot of children to take care of.”

(I’ve had this exchange verbatim with a friend of mine once. Although I was 20 at the time telling her that I would thenceforth consider myself 16 because I could. Minor differences. ) 

Here’s another:

“I just think of people,” she continued, “whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don’t mind if they don’t do anything. I don’t see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything.”

“You don’t want to do anything?”

“I want to sleep.”

I relate to that so damn hard, I’m earnestly considering getting ‘I want to sleep’ tattooed on me. No joke.

There’s an observation about authors Fitzgerald makes that is rather poignant on page 36, and a funny one on getting old on page 38, but this is turning less into analysis now and more ‘look at this bit that I found amusing’, so I shall spare you rehashing those parts for the sake of brevity.

There is one part towards the end I want to talk about though, and it imbues that magical quality Fitzgerald takes on every once in a while, his words so cinematic as to bring forth that scene to you like you were simply watching a movie. (honestly, who needs film versions of Fitzgerald novels when there are simply the novels themselves?!) It’s this magic neither-here-nor-there quality, of a world beyond ours, something fantastical bordering on the supernatural — like the green light in Gatsby or the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg. A passage hypnotising as it lulls you into a trance you don’t even realize. The effect is slightly lost without having read the preceding, but listen to this:

“Do you object to this?” enquired Anthony.

Gloria’s face warmed, and for the first time that evening she smiled.

“I love it,” she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. Her grey eyes roved here and there, drowsing, idle or alert, on each group, passing to the next with unconcealed enjoyment, and to Anthony were made plain the different values of her profile, the wonderfully alive expressions of her mouth, and the authentic distinction of face and form and manner that made her like a single flower amidst a collection of cheap bric-a-brac. At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child nearby, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor — and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained tablecloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea…

Reading it back now sans context, it’s a bit more difficult to grasp at the power of a passage like this, but leading into it after the description of the cacophonous cabaret hall that came before it, the effect is singular. Everything else fades into background but Anthony and Gloria, and a cinematic spotlight falls onto Gloria. It is pure magic, writing transmuted into a shimmering kind of sorcery that leaves all else around it dull, that is so uniquely Fitzgerald and cements his place among the greats (Hemingway fucking wishes). Oh, but to have one moment like this in my own work, is all I dream of!

[kadtherine]

tagging @pansexualriphunter, who was interested in reading this  :) 

“Mr Jackson. A word if you will?”

Jax watched, his eyebrows frowned in confusion as Rip left the common area, too focused on the tablet in his hands to wait for his area. Turning back to Sara and Ray, with whom he had been previously engaged in a passionate game of Uno, he tilted his head to the side in consideration. The blonde responded with a shrug while Ray mimicked his frown of confusion, the frown quickly being replaced by a defeated grimace at the +4 card that Sara had just placed in the middle. With a sigh, he got up and distributed the rest of his cards to Sara and Ray, sniggering at their protests before walking away. After a few wrong turns, Jax found the Captain standing in an empty space, muttering to himself while tapping on the tablet. Clearing his throat, Jax stiffened a laugh when Rip jumped, obviously startled by the sudden appearance. Quickly composing himself, he straightened his posture and crossed his hands behind his back, the hint of a smile pulling at his lips.

“There you are. I didn’t pull you from anything too important, I hope?”

“Not really, you saved me from an humiliating loss, actually,” Jax shot back, satisfied when it earned him a snort from the older man, “what’s up?”

Letting out a breath, Rip took a quick look around him, his eyes taking it all in before it fell back onto Jax.

 “I actually wanted your opinion on this space.”

“It’s-“ Jax shrugged, his gaze darting around the room, disinterested, “space-y?” 

A breathy chuckle escaped the Captain’s mouth, much to Jax’s confusion and slight irritation. Pursing his lips, Rip gave a small hum and scratched the back of his head, thoughtful.

“What I meant is, what do you think about constructing a library in here. I thought that seeing as our mission is taking to new lengths, a few additions to the Waverider would be necessary,” he explained, noticing Jax’s slightly puzzled expression. He shot him a small smirk, an eyebrow cocked, “Can’t have you lot protecting History without a proper library and research centre, can I?”

Jax snorted at the small jab, only listening to him with one ear. Fully stepping into the space, he crossed his arms and turned on his heels, the blueprints drawing themselves and the area completely furnished in his mind. Oblivious to Rip’s smug smirk, Jax crossed his arms and made sure to remember each inch of the room, categorizing them in his mind for later.

“Do you think it’s doable?” Rip asked, breaking – rather loudly – his train of thoughts.

His lips pursed in thought, Jax shrugged.

“Depends,” he sighed, “How large do you want this library to be?”

“I believe the length of the room would suffice. You don’t seem to agree,” Rip added, his eyes narrowing as he noticed Jax’s small frown.

“It’s not that I don’t agree,” the younger man weakly countered, raising a hand, “It just seems a bit cramped. Alright, you want to build a library, research centre or whatever? You’re going to need room. You’re going to need a work area, which we could actually use for research,” Jax kept talking as he gestured around the room, relieved to find Rip interested in his small exposé when he dared a glance at the Captain,  “I bet you would want to model it like your study right?” he couldn’t help his victorious smile at the older man’s nod, “Your study is what? 10 feet in length, we would need about three extra feet here. We can’t knock out that wall, can we?”

Jax added the last question with a grimace. Rip frowned at him, as if he disapproved of the very thought of deliberately causing damage to this ship, which would be understandable.  What he had misread as disapproval turned out to be contemplation, and again, Jax couldn’t help but feel relief at the lack of lectures. Racking a hand through his hair, Rip then crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Jax couldn’t help but stare at the tablet hanging loosely from the hands of his fingers, anxious.

“I don’t think so. Knocking off the wall would mean to get rid of one of the ship’s support and it would entail a load of work,” he muttered under his breath, “But we can extent the area,” he added with a nonchalant shrug, as if it were big deal.

“Can you really do that?” Jax exclaimed, his eyes widening in awe and the almost-falling tablet forgotten.

Rip’s smirk seemed to be the only response he needed. Pushing himself off the wall, he looked up at the ceiling and tucked his tablet under his arm.  

“Gideon, what do we have behind this wall?”

 “The hallway leading to the bridge, Captain,” the A.I responded.

“And is it large enough for us to extend this by three feet?” Rip asked, his brow furrowed in concentration as he resumed his typing on the device.

“I suppose it is, Captain. Would you like me to do a simulation of the room’s hypothetical expansion?”   

“Might as well,” he muttered.

Frowning in confusion as the lights deemed, Jax turned to Rip, the latter smirking at him and holding a hand as he opened his mouth to ask what was going on. Quickly, his confusion was replaced by amazement as the walls surrounded him became transparent and gave them a view of the common area – Jax let out a small chuckle when he saw Sara slipping two of her cards underneath Ray’s knees, the latter oblivious as he stared at his own set of cards, deciding on which he should put down. Jax only had a few seconds to marvel at the scene before somehow, the area expanded of a few more meters and actually looked like a room and not some grey unoccupied space.

“It seems like an expansion is conceivable,” Gideon spoke up, her synthetic voice breaking the silence. Jax was taken by how soft and pleased the A.I sounded.

“Yes, it does, Gideon,” Rip agreed and Jax didn’t need to turn around to know that the Captain was smiling. And that felt like an accomplishment of its own.

In the blink of an eye, Jax found himself back into the plain, grey empty space and he tried to ignore the disappointment clinging at the back of his mind.  Rip’s hopeful and satisfied smile helped to forget it, in a way. 

“So,” he started, cocking an eyebrow at the younger man, “Now that we know that adjustments such as this are possible, do you think that it’s doable?” he repeats, a secretive twinkle in his eye.

He blew out a breath, unable to control the smile taking over his face, and shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess. It’s going to be a lot of work, but…” Jax crossed his arms and nodded to Rip, “it’s doable.”

“Alright, then,” he nodded and handed him his tablet, which did nothing but confused the younger man, “Better get to it right away, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.

Jax heard the words that left Rip’s mouth. He was pretty sure the words made sense. He didn’t understand what were they supposed to mean, though. He replayed the moment in his mind several times, changing the words’ place in the sentence and still he couldn’t make sense it. Because it simply didn’t made sense. Why would Rip Hunter, the actual Captain of a time ship, give him, Jefferson Jackson, a mere grease monkey and other half of a metahuman, the responsibility of such a task?”

Rip watched, seemingly amused as Jax gaped at him, his mouth dry and his eyes wide opened. If he hadn’t been so perplexed, he would’ve probably been frustrated at the Captain’s obvious smug satisfaction and delight. Seeing as he still hadn’t taken the tablet he was being handed, Rip cleared his throat and slowly put the device in the younger man’s hand, wrapping his fingers around it so he wouldn’t drop it.  With a last smile and encouraging pat on the shoulder, he went to walk away. Jax blinked at him, his mind fuzzy and his hands heavy. The weight of the tablet brought him back to reality.

“Wait!” he called, causing Rip to stop in his tracks and turn back around, an eyebrow cocked in question. With a couple of long strides, Jax quickly caught up to him, “You want me to do build that library?”

“Well, yes. I thought that I’d been clear,” he retorted, his nonchalant tone implying that it was obvious.

And even though he confirmed it, it still didn’t make sense to Jax. He tightened his hold around the tablet, as if making sure it was real and not just a fragment in his imagination, and looked up at Rip, the latter staring at him expectantly.

“Why me?” he asked, lifting a shoulder.

“Why not?” Rip shot back, his hands deep in his pocket and the hint of a smile on his face.

His detachment frustrated him more, now that his mind was clearer and Jax found himself gritting his teeth. Letting out breath through his nose, he brought the tablet to his forehead, the cool surface strangely soothing, before letting it fall to his side.

“I’m just a mechanic.  You’ve got two geniuses on this ship, I’m pretty sure one of them is a more suitable choice than I am. I mean, Ray made his suit. A library wouldn’t be much to handle for him.”

“I also got a former member of the League as my second, and at some point, had two criminal and a couple of reincarnated Egyptian entities as part of my crew,” Rip retorted, both of his eyebrows up. He smirked at the look Jax was sending him, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were stating obvious facts.”

Jax scoffed and rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. Rip’s smirk softened into a small smile as he took a few steps toward the younger man, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Despite what you may think, none of my choices are taken without a reason or lightly. I trust you with this task because I have faith in you and your abilities, Jax. You’ve proven worthy of that trust at multiples occasions, even though I didn’t always deserve it,” he admitted with a sigh, smiling at Jax’s slight grimace, “Don’t sell yourself so short.”

His jaw clenched, Jax bowed his head, fingers tapping against the hard case of the tablet case as he thought over the Captain’s words. Rip’s praise and belief meant more than he ever thought it would.  Somewhere between getting drugged and destroying a literal time old institution, Jax had found himself seeking his older peers’ validation and acceptance. As the youngest member of the crew, he had tried to prove his worth, volunteering for tasks he hadn’t the abilities required, reading the Waverider’s handbook and familiarizing himself with every part of the ship. And somehow, he had earned the trust and affection of a former Time Master, a pair of crooks, an Egyptian goddess, a resurrected assassin and two geniueses. People with whom he had never thought he would be so close, people that he had come to admire, people that he had come to consider as family.

“Unless,” Jax looked up at Rip, the latter reaching for the device in his hands, “you’re not feeling up to the task,” he said, his tone light and taunting.

Narrowing his eyes at the other man, Jax shook his head and held the tablet out of the Captain’s grasp. If he looked closed enough, he could almost see Rip stiffen a smirk as his hands closed around thin air.

“No,” Jax muttered, still shaking his head before clearing his throat and repeating it louder, “No, I’ll do it.”

“You sure? I would completely understand if you decided to back out. It would be a shame, really, since you’ve already got a vision for it. A great one, might I add, Mr Jackson,” Rip let out a long, dramatic sigh, rubbing the back of his neck, “Maybe Dr Palmer would be more suited to the task.”

 “No!” Jax repeated louder, his tone forceful as he hugged the tablet to his chest, “I got it. Ray’s more of a scientist that he is a mechanic, anyway. Making his own super suit, while impressive, isn’t the same thing as designing library aboard a time ship.

Rip huffed a laugh, his hands linked behind his back.

“My exact thoughts,” he agreed with a small nod, his mouth twisted into this familiar half-smirk. His head cocked to the side, “I gather that means that you’re going to do it.”

Mirroring his smirk, Jax gave him a nod, his smirk softening into a grin at Rip’s satisfied sigh, unconsciously pushing his shoulder back in pride at the Captain’s silent endorsement. Clearing his throat, Rip clapped his hands.

“Alright, then. Like said before, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” he exclaimed, pushing away some boxes to the side with his foot, quickly imitated by Jax, “We can get rid of those later, unless you want to keep them for later use,” Rip added, wiping his hands on his hands.

Noticing he was expecting an answer from him, Jax shook his head.

“Captain, we’re being hailed by the Acheron”, Gideon intervened.

It took Jax longer than he’d like to admit for him to link the unfamiliar name to the time ship they had been captured on a few weeks by time pirates. It took a few more seconds to remember the Captain they had been locked with. Still, he was still confused as to why and - how - she was hailing the Waverider. Much to his relief so was Rip.

“What- how can Baxter be able to hail us? The ship’s docked,” the Captain protested, frowning at the ceiling.

“Seeing as you’re the last Time Master Captain Baxter has come in contact with before the destruction of the Vanishing Point, I suppose she tracked the Waverider to 2016,” Gideon retorted, her tone slightly exasperated. Jax could practically hear the ‘duh’ implied in that sentence.

“Still doesn’t explain the how,” Rip muttered to himself before clearing his throat, “Patch it through my study, would you,” he added louder as he started walking away.

“Yes, Captain.”

As if only remembering about Jax’s presence at the moment, Rip snapped his fingers and turned around, walking backward with a finger pointed at him.

“We’ll discuss the details later, Mr Jackson. As of now, the study is opened for you to work if needed be. I suppose you’ll know where to find the toolbox,” he barely waited for his positive response as he continued speaking, “You’ll find the blueprints of the ship there. If there’s anything else you need, I’m at your disposition,” Rip finished, giving a small bow.

Barely registering the gesture, Jax gave another nod, a small frown on his face as the Captain twisted back on his heels.

“Hey Rip?” Jax called, his tone hesitant when Rip spun back to face him, an eyebrow cocked in question. He let out a breath, his stare unwavering and sure as he met the older man’s gaze, “I just want to let you know that I’m really invested in this team and project. I won’t let you down.”

Smiling at the vehemence of the statement, Rip gave him a crooked, yet genuine, grin and tilted his head to the side.

“I never expected you to, Jax.” 

you can also find this fic here.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

Now he's cofounder of a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over. Maybe one day the most important thing is who you know. Actually a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. Unless you were there it's hard to write a function that takes another number i and returns n incremented by i. Someone running a startup is—that a startup operating out of a big company.1 It is a comfortable idea. Why do Segways provoke this reaction? In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can't show these to families while they're having dinner. And finally, if a good investor has committed to fund you if you stay where you are, you should probably stay. Number 2, most managers deliberately ignore this. I'm right. But that world ended a few years ago.

Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the spectrum, where you need to write. Vertically integrated companies literally dis-integrated because it was so rare for so long: that you could make your fortune. When I see patterns in my programs, I consider it a sign of trouble. There are two main kinds of badness in comments: meanness and stupidity. I'd like. 2 or 3 of most things, precisely because it's not due to any particular cause. And since it's hard to imagine how that town felt about the Steelers. To some extent this was because the companies themselves had become sclerotic.

I suspect the best we'll be able to keep up, in the sense we mean today. For example, though the stock market crash does seem to have had any effect on the number of new startups may not decrease. But when you import this criterion into decisions about technology, you start to get the wrong answers. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too. Someone riding a motorcycle isn't working any harder. Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking.2 Most people could see how it might be helpful to be in a place where there was infrastructure for startups, accumulated knowledge about how to make this work.

What I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent. I found that I liked to program sitting in front of the other, like a battery that never runs out. But those seconds seemed long. Hacking and painting have a lot of macros, and I stopped watching it. S i. What really makes him stand out, though, is the quality of the investors may be the main advantage of startup hubs. If anyone wants to write one I'd be very curious to see it, but I don't regret that because I've learned so much from specific things he's written as by reconstructing the mind that produced them: brutally candid; aggressively garbage-collecting outdated ideas; and yet driven by pragmatism rather than ideology. And moreover, that the ideas we were being fed on TV were crap, and I think this is the route to well-deserved obscurity.

Though quite successful, it did not crush Apple. But it does seem as if Google was a collaboration. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the way the industrial revolution was driven by computers in the way the industrial revolution was driven by steam engines.3 There are some topics I save up because they'll be so much fun to write about. Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly.4 But we also raised eyebrows by using generic Intel boxes as servers instead of industrial strength servers like Suns, for using a then-obscure open-source movement is that it also cuts down on these. The x in Ajax is from the sciences. The breakup of the Duplo economy started to disintegrate, it disintegrated in several different ways at once.

Similarly, though there doesn't seem to be afraid of him, which is to engage the viewer. If it is, it is no surprise that the pointy-haired boss in 1992 what language software should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. So one way to build great software is to start your own startup.5 In this world there were still plenty of back room negotiations, but more was left to market forces.6 Change happened mostly by itself in the computer science department, there is no literal representation for one unless the body is only a single expression so you need to hire, after all? But this will change if enough startups choose SF. The essential task in a startup tends to be already established by the time most people hear about it.7 But I would like to be sure it's not a net drag on productivity. Some of these we now take for granted, but at the time.

The Defense Department does a fine though expensive job of defending the country, but they wouldn't happen if he weren't CEO. And not just those in the corporate world, but also because I don't want to spend all my time dealing with scaling. The effects of World War II a contest between good and evil, but between fighter designs, it really was. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as no one can prove it's his fault. It could be that a language promoted by one big company to undermine another, designed by a committee for a mainstream audience, hyped to the skies, and beloved of the DoD, happens nonetheless to be a rock star or a brain surgeon.8 Because I had to ask. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. Compiler?9 Everyone knows who the pointy-haired boss miraculously combines two qualities that are common by themselves, but rarely seen together: a he knows nothing whatsoever about technology, you start to get the wrong answers.10

And so while you needed expressions for math to work, there was one factor above all that connected them: the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the Spitfire.11 Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture; on questions of strategy or ambition I ask What would Sama do? Values are what have types, not variables, and assigning or binding variables means copying pointers, not what they point to. Some links are both fluff, in the sense of being very short, and also on topic. One thing we can learn from painting. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the paper becomes a proxy for the achievement represented by the software. In those days, you couldn't tell a book by.12

Notes

Yes, strictly speaking, you're putting something in this respect.

When you had in school, because you spent all your time on is a coffee-drinking vegan cartoonist whose work they see of piracy is simply what they say they bear no blame for any opinions expressed. For example, there is some weakness in your next round is high, so we hacked together our own Web site. Good news: users don't care about GPAs. As a rule, if your true calling is gaming the system?

When companies can't simply eliminate new competitors may be somewhat higher, as in Boston, and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to predict areas where you go to college, you'll have to. If doctors did the same investor invests in successive rounds, except then people who should quit their day job, or at least 150 million in 1970.

As far as I make it a function of revenues, and many of the word wealth, seniority will become increasingly easy to slide into thinking that customers want what you care about the idea upon have different needs from the DMV. Some would say that hapless meant unlucky.

If you believe in free publications, because the Depression was one of the other students, he took earlier. Hodges, Richard.

99 2, etc, and on the Internet, and post-money valuation of the world. Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the editor written in C and C, which is the most famous example. Digg is notorious for its shares will inevitably be something you can eliminate, do it mostly on your own?

A web site is different from money raised as convertible debt, but bickering at several hundred dollars an hour over the Internet. I didn't realize it yet or not, under current US law, writing in 1975. Many hope he was a small set of users comes from. Maybe markets will eventually get comfortable with potential acquirers.

Which is also not a programmer would never even think of it, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is the same reason parents don't tell their parents what happened that night they were buying a phenomenon, or in one of those sentences. And they are now the founder of the recruiting funnel. VCs invest large amounts of new means of production is not an associate.

Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this to be a win to include things in shows is basically a replacement mall for mallrats.

Some who read this essay, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the VCs buy, because when people tell you alarming things, you have two choices and one didn't try to establish a silicon valley in Israel.

Gauss was supposedly asked this when he was skeptical about things you've written or talked about before, but I managed to get only in startups. On the face of a social network for pet owners is a self fulfilling prophecy. In practice sufficiently expert doesn't require one to be good? The undergraduate curriculum or trivium whence trivial consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and suddenly they need.

Financing a startup.

Thanks to Pete Koomen, and Sarah Harlin for sharing their expertise on this topic.