Specs wasn’t really an engineer. Their friends took him to be more of the theoretical sort, someone who could crunch numbers but was never seen in the lab for more than the minimum amount of time. He could be relied on for knowledge, but anyone who’d been in group projects with him had heard he preferred working with people, and that splitting work with him and expecting it done was a lot less productive than sitting him down in a work space on campus and bouncing the work between you.
His flatmates knew he wasn’t in the flat that much, and assumed he spent the rest of the time with societies and work. If anyone had checked, they would have noted that there was always a two hour gap in his schedule, but since he seemed to be perfectly ordinary (or as ordinary as the majority of EU student body were, at least) no one paid it much attention.
The shop students knew him as the guy who’d borrow their time to get little things done on their machines. A pinch of solder and iron to fix a wire, a small bit of the forge to cast some metal bits in the unused space of a bigger project. The chemistry students knew him as the guy who’d drop liquids in the liquid waste bin. Never more than a glass, a good way of disposing something you didn’t want to drink or keep nearby. The physics students knew him as the guy who’d request a few minutes with some of their meters. Strain gauges were the most common, but voltmeters and pressure gauges were close behind.
He always had an air of detached interest whenever gossip about the Gentry passed around the lecture halls. It was always another student who’d had a run in with a shadowy figure down by the lot, or had met Jimothy to trade beads, or had carefully not looked too closely at their flatmate recently.
Specs remained a guy with a few good friends who was a nice enough person to chat to throughout his first year. Then, in his second year, his sister came to EU.
Frizz was a drama student, eccentric, always ready with a smile and with a temper that was righteous in its fury. She wrote her own plays, sang her own little songs and drew in her spare time. She and her brother met up every other day for a quick hug, her drama friends quickly becoming acquainted with the smaller group of second year chem eng students who accompanied the elder sibling. When Frizz began dating, in as quietly dramatic a fashion as always, her brother was the one who looked her partner in the eye and stared for half a minute before calmly patting them on the shoulder and giving them a grin when he felt them shaking.
It was only a few months before Frizz had racked up a substantial number of encounters with the Fair Folk, as the liberal arts students tended to. One of Specs’ friends caught the occasional glimpse of worry beneath his usual friendly demeanor, but since Frizz had seemingly taken her brothers words of mild caution to heart she’d not come out of any of them the worse for wear.
Then, halfway through the year, Specs went backstage after a production had finished, he and the rest of the group of friends who’d come to support those of their number involved, to find Frizz’s partner running to him, terror in their eyes.
“They took Frizz!”
Specs face lost all emotion, and the rest of the group took a step back to give him space. A couple of them followed him as he left the theatre with a steadily quicker stride, and lost him as he began sprinting out into the grounds. They hoped he would be alright, knowing that the loss of a sibling would be heartbreaking. One or two of them resolved to go to his flat to comfort him the next day.
What they didn’t expect the next day was for Specs to be sitting behind a table on one of the main university paths with a selection of gadgets and items in front of him and a big digital timer counting down.
The first person to approach him was met with a fake, friendly smile and asked if they’d like a free sample. When they asked him what on earth he was doing, he took a yo-yo from the table in explanation.
“I’m starting off with the smallest stuff. Wholly iron and steel, six metres long wire string. Get it swinging at two and I guess you could even wrap someone up in it. Time goes on, I’ll start getting rid of the bigger stuff I’ve got stashed around. There’s a spray paint system I worked on the other day, it’s got a lovely red finish at up to twenty metres. I put some red iron-based paint in it, easily replaceable.”
Of course, most people steered clear of his stall, afraid of angering the Fair Folk, but there was always someone desperate, and soon he’d given out about thirty of the smaller things. There were several people who observed a tall man, lines of red rising on his skin in a manner that suggested something had coiled round him, stride over to the table.
“You will stop,” he said in a sibilant, angry tone.
“Huh?” came Specs disinterested reply. “Oh, you’re right, two hours have gone past and still my sister hasn’t turned up. Time to move on to the next batch.”
The man seemed to grow taller, hands becoming more pointed. Specs pulled a hula hoop from the stand and tossed it over the man’s head, breaking a catch and allowing a spool of chicken wire to spring from within, encircling his interrogator. After a couple of minutes, he pulled the chicken wire down, taking a small water pistol from the table instead. The tall man glared and retreated.
After half a day, Specs was seen walking to several iron electric boxes and pulling out things stashed within, before returning to the stand to place his unearthed stash on display. Unlike the steadily grander toys he’d been selling, these things didn’t hide what they were made for. An ugly looking thing with springs held several iron bolas. A mass of batteries were strapped to a couple of electromagnets with a supply of iron filings to feed between the two. Swimming goggles with lenses and rocks. Flashlights with reticules and chemical warning labels. Ball bearings and a hand cranked handheld self reloading catapult.
For those who were desperate, the rumours that had spread around campus were enough to bring them in. Each piece of equipment was explained, warnings about not firing this through a glass window, it could put someone’s eye out, that shouldn’t be aimed at the legs in case it trips someone up, this should be handled with a paint mask and with no-one in the immediate vicinity.
In the evening, as Specs handed out the last of the things he hadn’t been holding onto for himself, a group of assorted people with burn scars, pocks of red and faces in assorted angry expressions that looked near inhuman came towards him.
“You’ve made a lot of people angry.”
“They can join the club. I still haven’t seen my sister.”
“You have no more threats to hand out. You will be sorry.”
“Oh? No, I’ve got a whole wardrobe full of these things. Then there’s the emergency stashes I made, just in case. Then the stuff I’ve left half finished. And, of course, I might start handing out copies of my designs, I had a bunch of people interested in what I offered today and I’m sure some of them would love to know how these things work, try a hand at making their own-”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I? I don’t see what the problem is. I’m just putting my frustration into something productive. If only my sister were here to calm me down…”
The next day a girl with Frizz’s face approached the stall. She left when Specs offered her a wire Chinese finger trap to try out.
It was midday when Frizz herself appeared, wandering drunkenly over to Specs stall and hugging him as though she’d never let go. Specs brushed her hair with a hand covered in iron rings, murmuring in her ear. He kept one arm around her as he packed up the stall, hefting the duffel bag and stall with difficulty with one hand before the siblings’ friends arrived from class to help.
That evening, in Specs flat, with Frizz lying exhausted on the couch in the kitchen, one of his friends quietly asked why he’d had all that stuff prepared. In the course of one and a half days he’d handed out enough anti-fae tools for a small mob, and he’d been hinting he had even more. One of Frizz’s friends, the one who never wore iron and smiled all the time, looked slightly scared as she asked why he hadn’t used it.
“My family have always been creative,” he said. “You can see my sister’s talent. My dad paints, my mum sings. I imagine things. And some of those things are not very nice.”
He looked at his hands. After two days of being either clenched or solid as a rock, they were shaking now.
“It was fun to imagine solutions to a problem I’d never faced. To make something cheap, effective and that I’d never need to use, but should have around just in case. Heck, I even said to myself that it was alright to design bigger, because it wasn’t as if it’d be used on anyone nice.”
Note to self: in order to write, you have to actually do more than stare at a Word document rereading what you’ve already written. For example, maybe typing new words would be a good strategy.
Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.
Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.
writing is great but it’s also insanely tiring because like
writing is frustrating
not writing is frustrating
wanting to write and not being able to is frustrating
not wanting to write but knowing you have to because deadlines are a thing is frustrating
also
not wanting to write but wanting the satisfaction of having written is frustrating.
writing thousands of words while suspecting they are all garbage and knowing you won’t be able to tell for sure until at least a month from now is frustrating
Writing out of sequence, so you’ve produced a ton of words but can’t share any of them because you haven’t written the scenes that lead up to them… also frustrating
It is important to
Midorima that Takao knows he is not ashamed of him. He doesn’t know the full
specifics, but he understands that this was (in varying degrees) a factor into
why Takao’s previous two relationships ended.
“Yamamoto is a good
guy,” Takao explained once, “And it was probably unfair of me to break up with
him. I just didn’t want to be someone else’s dirty little secret again, you
know?”
Midorima still
remembered the night Takao explained about how his middle school romance ended,
and how furious he’d felt about that. He didn’t know how Takao could talk about
it so easily now, how he didn’t seem to wish any of them harm, despite the fact
that Midorima was all too happy to hurt them. It bothered Midorima a whole lot
that anyone could do that to Takao, to the point where he still wishes
he could hurt everyone who had hurt his boyfriend.
But that’s not what
Takao wanted. What Takao wanted was to make sure it didn’t happen again,
and Midorima will make sure it never happens again.
He’s just not sure if
he’s doing it right.
*
They don’t tell their
parents. First because Takao had said, “Oh God, Mom is going to gloat forever
if she finds out,” and Midorima had pictured having this conversation with Dr.
Kishitani and it had all seemed far too embarrassing.
(Then it became clear
that Dr. Kishitani was dating Takao’s mother, and all things considered, maybe
it was best if they continued to not tell their respective parental
figures about their relationship).
And this is something
they mutually agreed upon but it still makes Midorima wonder if Takao feels
like Midorima is hiding his relationship from his guardian. He worries a lot
about whether or not this is something that bothers Takao.
*
To compensate, they
don’t hide it at school. Not that they do anything different at school than
they ever did before they started dating (although, since everyone seemed to
think they were dating before they started dating, maybe they didn’t need to do
anything different), but if anyone asked, Midorima made sure to always respond
truthfully that they were dating.
“You’re usually such a
tsundere, Shin-chan,” Takao teases after the first time he hears Midorima
declare, “Yes, Takao and I are involved romantically,” to someone’s question. “I
can’t believe you just came out and said that.”
“I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” Midorima says, “I am always very open about my
feelings.”
He’s not quite sure
why Takao laughed at him.
*
They go everywhere
together, with Takao often driving Midorima in his rickshaw, and that doesn’t
feel like they’re hiding anything although Midorima is not entirely sure how
much of a couple they look.
But it is important to
him that Takao knows that Midorima would never hide him, would never make him
his secret, so one day they’re out in the mall and Midorima decides, To hell
with it, and he kisses Takao right there where everyone can see.
He does not expect
Takao to pull back, beet red, sputtering, “Shin-chan! Wh-what—?” and then eyes
him suspiciously and says, “What’s your sign?”
“Pineapples!” Midorima
says, indignantly, remembering their long ago code, “Exactly when would I have
been switched out for Kise or a clone?”
“I don’t know but I’m
not ruling anything out,” Takao says, still blushing. “What is with you?”
Midorima scowls
because this is all incredibly unfair. “I just wanted you to know. That I’m not
hiding you. Or anything.”
Takao buries his face
in his hands and Midorima wonders if maybe he did something wrong but then
Takao looks up and says, “OK, my boyfriend is adorable. Also, not hiding does
not mean making out in public, we are Japanese, not Americans, come on,
Shin-chan. Further also, we need to go home right now where I can make out with
you properly and maybe take off your clothes.”
“Don’t be so
shameless, Takao,” Midorima says, his turn to blush.
“Oh, you never get to
accuse me of shamelessness ever again, stud,” Takao says, dragging him by his
collar.
Congratulations, genius. You convinced your best friend, the Protagonist, not to marry the story’s Love Interest, and instead go off and have awesome adventures with you forever. But in doing so, you pissed off the Author.
After the third bandit ambush, the Unnecessary Character waits until the Protagonist falls asleep to turn an accusing look at the sky.
“Hey,” the Unnecessary Character says, jabbing a finger stupidly at the non-sentient array of stars, “you quit it. You quit it right now.”
The Unnecessary Character, henceforth known as TUC so as not to waste too many letters on them, looks rather rough. Their hair is a tangled mess from the swallows who’d mistaken the horrendous strands as nesting material.
“I know that was you,” TUC hisses. “Swallows use mud and spit to make their nests, not twigs.”
TUC is unaware that they actually look like dirt, just terrible, smelly dirt.
“This is a lot of unnecessary anger,” TUC says to the sky. “You’re the one who thought Ally needed a friend and now you’re mad that I’m being a friend to her? Josiah was a creep, you know. Maybe you think he was charming, but he’s borderline abusive. No, scratch that. He was straight up abusive.”
TUC’s main weakness has always been the inability to see the big picture. They don’t know that the Love Interest would do anything for the Protagonist, up to and including battling the dragon that would inevitable be coming to the castle.
TUC pales until they begin to resemble watery porridge. “The what?!”
Their voice is shrill and stupid. The pitch of it nearly wakes the poor, exhausted Protagonist who’s had it rough these past few nights with TUC waylaying her with their idiocy.
“Let’s…let’s swing back to the dragon later,” TUC says. They pinch the bridge of their nose, trying to ease the headache thinking so hard has given them. “Look, Josiah wanted to keep Ally in the castle, okay? Like, all the time. She’s an adventurer, dude, not a stay-at-home wife. And have you already forgotten how Josiah locked her in the dungeons when those rebel forces tried to break in? And then just forgot about her in the aftermath until she broke out?”
It’s not surprising that TUC has misinterpreted that lovely and gallant action. Ally is a lady, forced to work hard all her life to support her mean family. She needs someone to take care of her so she can finally be happy.
“Her mean–they were poor!” TUC says, missing the point completely. They direct a hideous look at the sky. “No, I’m not missing the point! Everyone in her family was worked to the bone, not just her! They all had to work insane hours just to pay taxes! Taxes, may I remind you, that Josiah and his father set!”
A friend of mine on FB wrote this and, with their permission, told me that I could share it. I got more than a bit choked up reading it. Enjoy.
I’m 6 years old, and I’m Luke Skywalker, blowing up the Death Star in his X-Wing and using the Force… until I go outside to play Star Wars with the neighborhood kids, and I’m told I can’t be Luke because I’m a girl. I have to be Leia instead. Nothing wrong with Leia, but she’s the girl. She’s my only option, otherwise, I’m not allowed to play.
I’m 7 years old, and I’m She-Ra, with a pegasus and sword and… and no one wants to play She-Ra, because He-Man is better, stupid girl, duh. No boy wants to play a girl character. Duh. Stupid girl.
I’m 8 years old, and I’m Liono, with the Sword of Omens, telling me the future and defeating my enemies… until I can’t, because I’m a girl. I have to be Cheetara, even though I don’t like to run around really fast. She’s the girl. She’s my only option.
I’m 10 years old, and I’m a Ninja Turtle. I have these cool weapons and know martial arts… until I can’t be, because I’m a girl. I have to be April. She doesn’t get to do much, but she’s the girl. She’s my only option. If the other girl wants to play, she gets to be April, and I’m out, because she’s prettier.
I’m 14 years old, and my father yells at me again to stop being such a girl. Stop being weak. Stop being stupid. Stop being you.
I’m 17 years old, and set foot in a comic shop for the first time, only to be told girls don’t read comics. I must just be trying to impress my boyfriend. I don’t even get to ask if they had that book I read part of, with the beautiful woman who was Death, who saved a teenage boy.
I’m 24, and I’m Jean Grey, the powerful Phoenix, but turned into some weird Scarlet Witch hybrid who must die at the hands of Wolverine, because Logan just needed a little more angst.
I’m 28 and I’m Commander Shepard at the helm of the Normandy, but just having the OPTION of a female player character sends hordes of men into a blind rage, intent on stamping out any joy I might derive from this. I have to mute tons of keywords online and play in friends-only groups if I want to avoid being called a cunt for the sin of logging into multiplayer with a female avatar.
I’m 32 and I get a job running a comic shop. I tell my boss I’d like to have ladies nights. He asks, “But when is men’s night?”
I’m 33 and I’m Rey, facing down Kylo and digging deep to survive, despite being terrified. I’ve been fighting my whole life, though, and I manage to get out of it alive. I spend the next 6 months listening to every other guy who comes into my shop informing me that she’s a Mary Sue and how stupid it was to crowbar her in just for the sake of appeasing the females and pandering to feminazis.
I’m 34 and I get to be a Ghostbuster! My heart sings as I dual-wield proton guns, but when the battle’s over, I have to listen to all these guys trash it and talk about how women just aren’t funny and should stop trying.
I’m 34, and I am NOT MCU Black Widow, who categorizes herself as a monster because she can’t have children, who laughs as her male coworkers make rape jokes at the office party. I am NOT MCU Scarlet Witch, who is a problem for the men to deal with, who has to stay home and cook dinner while they take care of business, because she’s just too emotional.
Today, I’m 35, and I’m Diana of Themyscira, striding across a battlefield as everyone follows her lead. I’ve been waiting for this battle my whole life. Going into the movie, I had yet to see a single bad review, from anyone, regardless of gender. I had heard no one saying the movie was pointless or stupid or just another instance of women ruining everything. There is this tall, powerful, beautiful female hero, and no one is acting like it’s their job to tear her down. I look at the trending topics today, and everyone still loves it. The naysayers are a fringe minority. There is valid criticism, as the movie isn’t perfect. It has some problems, but overall, it’s GOOD. Finally. This is what it feels like. So yeah, I cried. I cried a lot. I’ll probably mist up a lot more times when I watch it. Everyone should get to feel like that.
(this wants with all its heart to be a multichapter fic but i need instant gratification sooo)
He likes to read.
He likes to read and Kent likes him, and he really doesn’t know what to do about this fact.
Kent ran into him – well, ran past him, really – on a morning jog, in a usually deserted area of the community park where trees have been planted and are carefully watered to give the appearance of a verdant, lush grove in the middle of sunny, dusty Nevada. He was standing against a tree and reading, and when Kent jogged back to ask what he was doing, the man laughed and pointed to his book. Walden.
Kent’s never read it. The man shrugs. “It’s about a man who gave up his whole life to go live in the woods,” he says. “I used to go to Walden Pond and re-read it once a summer. But now I’m here and, well… this is as close to the woods as I can get.”
His name is James. He’s a high school English teacher. He shakes Kent’s sweaty hand and asks his name, what he does for a living.
Kent blinks at him hard. “You…” he starts. He was about to say, you don’t know?
“Me? You do me?” James cracks a smile. “Is that a pick-up line?”
His smile is sunny, and Kent breaks a little bit inside. He finds himself quickly enough to say, “Would it work?”
Part 1, 7k, zimbits, homophobia warning, generally fluffy though, Samwell Men’s Hockey Team
Okay, so back to this Dan Erikson guy.
It’s three years after he wrote his article on Jack Zimmermann’s college experience and, look, he’s generally too busy to obsessively stalk one hockey player because his day job involves roaming the country and doing all the feel good stories that go on that last page of Sports Illustrated, but every once and awhile, he takes a night to watch Jack’s interviews and he’s not looking for clues, per se but…
Well, he is a journalist. And the answer to the unspoken question of the Blond boy in all the photographs itches at him. Because… journalist.
So for three years now, he sort of drawn his own conclusions. He notices how Jack never brings a date to events and he finds the blog of a certain Southern Baker and notes how there is an abrupt shift from sadness to ‘barely contained glee’ after graduation. And he notices that the “friend’s kitchen” Bitty shoots his most recent videos at is very nice. Very spacious. And so when Dan Erikson gets told that the Falconers want to meet with him (and that they asked for him by name), he has a flash of “they know I have been stalking Jack Zimmermann and I am about to be sued,” which, frankly, makes no sense but he still shows up to the meeting in his best suit and manages to look like a nervous idiot in front of all the publicity interns and if he thought it was bad then, it’s nothing compared to when he is shown into a conference room.
Because Jack Zimmermann is already there. Like… in the room.
It’s a good thing 50% of a journalist’s job is acting neutral in the face of anything because that’s all that keeps Dan from freaking out. But he manages. Admirably if he does say so himself. He shakes hands with George and then with someone from the Falconers legal team and then with Jack Zimmermann and they all sit down.
And the legal person- Michelle, he thinks her name is – she jumps in and starts talking about how this information cannot leave the room until written in an official article and they’ve already discussed this with Sports Illustrated and – honestly he sort of stops listening because Jack Zimmermann looks like he does when the Falconers have just won Game 1 of a playoff series. Aka he looks intense and focused and it’s not that he’s unhappy, per se, but he’s not celebrating quite yet.
Also, his fingers drum once against the table before he stops them and that reads as nerves.
Dan wants to tell him he already knows. That he saw the pictures three years ago and he’s suspected and this proves it and he still has no idea what he’s doing here.
Finally, Michelle goes quiet and there’s a beat of silence before:
“I’m gay,” Jack announces. “I’d like you to write the article.”
Dan blinks once because that makes no sense. For good measure he does it again before managing to push a word out. And then that word is simply:
Okay, I’d like a fic where a reporter, maybe for a smaller online publication or maybe someone used to writing Sports Illustrated’s more “personal interest” pieces decides to go back and examine Jack Zimmermann’s college years through his assignments and by interviewing his professors.
So, first and foremost, he has to ask permission because Samwell – well, they’ve never really had this situation before, but professors do keep student’s work on file and they decide that if they get permission from the student (in this case NHL superstar Jack Zimmermann), it is fine for them to show this work to outside parties. (real talk: no idea if this is how this would work, in fact, for thesis papers i think they are automatically available to the public… ANYWAY)
So this reporter (lets call him Dan) asks for Jack’s permission and, honestly, Jack is a little confused by the request but also a little bit excited because no one seems to take his time in college all that seriously and it drives him crazy. So he says yes without thinking about it and figures that the man will get to read a beautiful 30 pages on sports during WWII and maybe there will be a little blurb about it and that will be that.
That is not that. Because Dan here is thorough and after he reads Jack’s thesis (which was much better than he expected and if he’s being honest, he expected some stupid jock paper that passed only because well, what college is going to fail Jack Zimmermann??)- after he reads the thesis, he is interested. He chats with Jack’s thesis advisor who has nothing but great things to say (”Always turned in his drafts on time, took great notes and listened to suggestions, hard working kid, I hear he’s playing some sport now?- oh! you’re a reporter, is he doing well then?”) (sorry, this is a history professor, he probably had no idea who Jack Zimmermann was while he was advising him and less of idea who he is now that he is gone… ah, spacey nerdy history professors, my fave, ANYWAY) and so Dan decides to go seek out more of Jack’s work and talk to more of his professors and this means–
He finds the Photography professor.
And, more than that, because Jack had given him permission (he has the paper and everything!) he is supposed to be allowed to see Jack’s projects. Aka the pictures he turned in for a grade.
And, for the first time, a professor gives him a hard time about letting him see Jack’s work.
just moving along like everyone else 