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alexaplaysgames · 3 years

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Pairing: Felix Escellun x GN!MC

Fandom: Fictif (Last Legacy)

Rating: T (swearing, dorks making out)

Words: ~2600

Description: Felix and his barista explore his childhood home.

Notes: Felix has all my uwus 🥺 did not post five fics in one day (yet) but I might if convinced.

Thanks to @callioops for the inspiration :)

Please go easy on me I am in no way a fanfiction writer by nature but my love for Felix has evidently overpowered my insecurities ;)

Edit: Uhh.... I was debating between settings for this and realized I made it super ambiguous, so I’ve edited it now!

Warning: This is heavily canon divergent now. Oops.

I’m not even sure how I ended up here, to be quite honest.

But I would’ve had to be crazy to have predicted such a thing- a portal to another dimension (is this another dimension?), a towering manor overflowing with stuffy furniture and servants, a raven-haired goth (although he would protest to such a description) with a bird skull strung around his neck. Honesty, his fashion sense is questionable, though admittedly charming, but I nonetheless can’t seem to get him out of my head.

No, this is the stuff of fantasies born to the insane, of perhaps just the slightly deranged.

I’m not protesting, however, quite the contrary. As I pull Felix through the winding corridors of his childhood home, trying not to thing about the smooth softness of his cool hand in mine, I can honestly say that I haven’t had such fun in a very, very long time.

“Stop, stop!” Felix laughingly protests between laboured breaths, tugging on my hand. I gradually slow to a halt, our footsteps echoing in the large, surprising empty corridor, and Felix slips his hand from mine to brace his hands on his knees as he pants. I try to ignore the resulting disappointment that pangs in my chest and grin.

“You doing okay there, bird boy?”

Apparently, he still has the energy to raise his head and glare.

“My apologies, dear barista, that I have not your physical endurance.” He rolls his eyes, then pauses and smirks. “My being a magical prodigy has spared me the effort of such trivial things as exercise.” He spits the last word out with a scoff.

My grin widens as I saunter closer, placing a finger under his chin to raise his gaze to meet mine from where he is still bent over and panting.

“Perhaps we’ll just have to work on your stamina then, won’t we?”

Felix’s cheeks flush that pretty red that I know has nothing to do with exertion as he ducks his head. I smirk as I turn to examine the nearby wall, giving him time to collect himself. How fun it is to make him blush.

A row of framed paintings lines the wall, all of the equally bizarre. I try to make sense of the faces in them, but the harder I look, the more blurred they become. They are all covered in a discernible layer of dust, indicating that this hallway is rarely used. A peculiar sort of coldness rolls off of the strange pieces, one that has me averting my eyes from the freaky, obviously magically concealed paintings.

“Do you think anyone will find us here?”

I question as I turn to see Felix straightening and running a hand through his hair. I try not to let my eyes follow the motion, choosing instead to meet his icy gray gaze.

He seems perturbed as he looks around, biting his lip. It’s as if he’s just realized where we are. His fault for letting me lead him through the monstrous maze that is his home.

“No. Escell has not entered this corridor in years. I’m surprised he has not blocked it off. He rather enjoys avoiding all things that make him uncomfortable.”

“And what makes him uncomfortable about this wing?”

“Too many memories, my dear. Memories he would prefer to keep locked up.” Though he says it with a smirk, tapping one black-painted fingernail against his temple, it comes out only as sounding rather sad.

I open my mouth to reply, but am interrupted by a sharp-

“Master Felix! Enough with your foolish hiding!”

Felix’s eyes widen as he visibly flinches. “Great goddess, have mercy.”

The voice of Madam Usoro, an angry, mean, lump of a woman, sounds like it is coming from just down the long hall. I cringe inwardly, and probably outwardly, at the thought of meeting her again. According to Felix, she was one of his many childhood nannies (the only one that actually managed to survive his torments), and judging by her scowl, she hasn’t had a “me day” since then.

Unfortunately, Escell also assigned her the task of watching over Felix.

“Ridiculous,” he huffs, “it is as if I am nine years old again!”

My gaze darts frantically between the doors lining the walls, not sure where any of them lead.

I grab Felix’s sleeve and tug, though his eyes stay trained on the end of the hallway, his expression resigned.

“Felix!” I hiss, “which of these goddamn doors will get us out of here?”

He merely sighs. “Why bother? My inevitable capture fast approaches, thus I have decided to be accepting of my fate. I will remain here as a prisoner for the rest of my days while Escell continues to treat me like a babbling infant.”

Great. Now really isn’t the time for his dramatics. I lunge forward and lock my hand around his wrist, tugging him once more down the endless corridor of doors. I feel Felix stiffen as I go to open the first door that catches my eye, but I yank it open and pull him inside before he can protest. The door shuts with a satisfying click and we are alone in a strange, dark room.

“Felix?” I cannot see a thing.

A flash of light, and then Felix appears, a green

orb of light glowing in his palm. I suck in a breath as I take in the captivating way the light hits his features, highlighting his long eyelashes and silvery eyes.

“Apologies! I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

I shake my head, unable to divulge to him the truth. I can’t have him knowing about my strange infatuation. Though I often indulge in what I consider to be harmless flirtation, I know Felix obviously isn’t interested in me. Just days ago he was crying over me, thinking I was someone else! The thought is sobering, and I shake my head.

“What is this room?”

“Ah,” he appears uncharacteristically lost for words. “This is... nothing. We can wait here, I’m certain she’ll cease her endless badgering soon enough.”

I send him a thumbs up before I turn to examine the room. I might as well look around, if there’s nothing else to do but sit around.

“Wait!” Felix’s sharp cry is especially harsh in the quiet of the strange room.

My head jerks up. “What is it?”

“I simply think it best not to carelessly voyage through the uncertainties of the dark. You haven’t a clue what you could stumble upon.”

Something about his tone sounds off, but I sigh and move back towards the door anyway. I have learned that there is no use arguing with him.

I’m almost near the safe haven of Felix’s orb of light when my foot slips on something. I manage to catch myself, but lean down and pick up the offensive item out of curiosity.

It’s a bound, leather notebook. It looks worn, from what I can tell in the faint light, and I flip it open to the inside cover, ignoring Felix’s faint protests in the back of my mind. On the right page are lines of scrawling, messy and unintelligible handwriting. But that’s not what catches my eye. On the left, the page reads:

Property of Felix Iskandar Escellun

I lift my gaze to meet Felix’s guilty visage.

“This is yours?”

He cringes but attempts to hide it with a shrug. The movement does not at all look natural on him.

“You are aware I was raised here?” He snatches the journal out of my grasp with his free hand, then quirks a brow. “Why are you surprised to find an object previously in my possession?”

Felix is an atrocious liar. I glance around the room and suddenly it hits me where we are.

“This was your bedroom, wasn’t it?”

Although Felix is, I assume, currently staying somewhere else, his reaction leaves me with no doubt in my mind that this used to be his room.

Felix bites his lip (he really needs to stop doing that lest I get distracted) then slowly nods. With another sigh, he presses his palms together, then spreads them apart until green light flows throughout the room, the night vision goggle-like effect making it look like we’re on an episode of ghost hunters.

“I would rather not spend time sifting through old memories,” Felix says quietly from beside me as I observe my surroundings.

The room is relatively sparsely decorated. In the centre of the opposite wall is a large, canopy bed, the sheets tossed to the side and the curtains haphazardly thrown about. A large desk is pressed up against one wall, overflowing with notebooks and stacks of parchment, and a bookcase on the opposite wall is spilling over with messily arranged books. A large, elegant armchair is piled high with odd boxes near the middle of the room, and an open armoire is empty save for a pile of clothing laying at the bottom. The whole place is a mess, and though the furniture is very fine, Felix’s attempts to hide that fact are quite obvious. The few windows are boarded up, the curtains surrounding them singed. In fact, there are several odd burn marks on the floor, and I don’t think they’re due to the large stone fireplace.

“Wow.” Very eloquent of me to say.

“Ugh. I despise this room.”

I drift curiously about making note of the objects in the room. Aside from the pieces of writing, there is very little here to signify that the room was Felix’s.

I walk over to the window and am pleased to find the the large wooden board covering it is relatively easy to dislodge. Behind it, there is a window seat, and I glance out the window to see a view of the rolling hills that stretch far and beyond, illuminated by the moonlight.

Felix flops onto the window seat with a sigh. I sit beside him and try to ignore the fact that our knees touch.

Felix squeezes his eyes shut. “I apologize for my theatrics, dear barista, but I would truly rather leap off the highest tower of the castle of Porrima than suffer through living in this room again.”

I refrain from telling him that I did, in fact, almost leap off the castle’s highest tower, and it is not as fun as he makes it out to be.

He hardly ever speaks of his past without flippant disregard for true emotion. “Will you tell me why it was so bad, Felix?”

His eyes shoot open and he scoffs, though his eyes glisten in the moonlight which shines through the window.

His voice is small as he replies. “I was forced every day to live a life I hated in hopes of pleasing a father whose love I already knew I would never earn. I have never felt so useless, so pathetically desperate, as I felt here. And here I am, back again. All my work to escape this place has been for naught.”

My heart aches for him, the expression on his face causing a physical pain in my chest.

“Felix...” I say softly, and before I even register what I’m doing, my hand is grabbing his.

Felix meets my gaze, eyes wide. Every time I touch him he gets so surprised, and I wonder how often he has been touched lovingly in his life.

“I would never think you useless, Felix, never. You are so extraordinary, so brilliant, and it’s a shame that you can’t see it. You have done so much for me and... I need you. Not just to get home, I don’t even know if I care about that anymore, but because you’ve make me so happy, Felix. Being with you feels like being able to breathe. I know that everyone else has left you, but I promise you, I never will. Never.”

His lips part in shock at my words and this time I can’t stop my eyes from flickering down to his mouth. He is so beautiful. I would do anything to kiss him, even just once.

Felix raises his hand and his fingers draw lines down my cheek, making me shiver. Then he leans forward and presses his forehead against mine, closing his eyes.

“Thank you.”

The words are said so quietly that I barely hear them, but I don’t need to with the gratitude that seems to roll off of him in waves.

“Felix?”

“Hm?”

A pause.

“Do you ever think about me?”

“I... I- of course I do. You have consumed every aspect of my waking life.” I can hear a slight teasing in his voice.

I lick my lips. “Do you ever think of me like you think of Rime?”

I can feel him flinch at the name and am about to apologize before he speaks.

“Rime is gone. A necromancer knows better than to waste energy attempting to recall what has been truly lost.”

“Oh... I-“

He sounds so incredibly sad. Whoever Rime is, I’ve no doubt that Felix loved this person. Though I know I shouldn’t feel jealous of a dead person, envy ripples through my stomach all the same.

“I... do. Think about you.”

And the meaning has changed. He pulls back with a shaky breath, cheeks bright red. “I know I am not the most naturally affectionate person, but I-“

He thinks about me. My heart does a fluttering little happy dance at the thought.

Screw it. If I leave this world, I don’t want to have any regrets.

And that’s the thought that propels me forward as I crash my lips into his with a longing I have never before felt. Felix gasps against my mouth and stiffens, and I panic. What the hell am I doing? But no sooner has the thought left my mind then he relaxes and kisses me back. He kisses me back! And I’ve never felt anything more wonderful.

His hands come to set at my waist as mine cup his face, feeling his jaw work as he kisses me and that makes it all the more real that he is kissing me and this isn’t some sort of fervour dream. I pull his hair free from its tie and tangle my fingers in the silken locks of his hair, and god, it’s just as soft as I thought I would be.

Felix kisses like he talks- a little hestitant, full of passion, and enough to make your head spin. It feels like I’m falling, I don’t know which way it’s up and which is down, just like when he rambles on about spells I could never hope to comprehend, but the drop is thrilling because I’ve wanted it so badly and for so long. At first it’s slow, soft, but I want, so I press myself harder against him in effort to let him know that’s it’s okay for him to let himself take from me what he needs.

HIs hands tighten around my waist as he pulls me closer to him, hands drifting over my sides, and I smile against his lips at his momentary display of forwardness. I retaliate by tugging on his hair that flows between my fingers like water, causing his lips to part against mine as he gasps, the perfect opportunity to slip my tongue into his mouth and I’m worried that I’m moving too fast but he moans. I sling a leg over his thigh and we’re grabbing at each other like horny teenagers now-

Felix pulls away with a gasp (I knew we had to work on his stamina). We’re both breathing hard, echoing in the quiet of the large room, and he blinks rapidly; he looks rather like someone hit him over the head with a brick.

I smile at him, running a thumb over his lower lip, and he lets out a pained noise somewhere between a whimper and a squeak.

“I liked that,” I whisper.

“You- you did?”

I nod. “Of course, Felix. I’ve been wanting to kiss you for so long.”

“R-really?”

I roll my eyes, responding by leaning forward and pressing another chaste kiss to his lips.

“Me too.” He whispers it like a secret, one that I’ll gladly hold forever in my heart.

Felix tentatively reaches and takes my hand in his, flipping it over and drawing little patterns into my palm as he turns to stare out the window again. It’s soothing, and I don’t really pay attention to the patterns. But after a while I think he starts inadvertently drawing hearts into my skin. It’s rather cute; I didn’t take him for a romantic.

“Master Felix!” The voice sounds from not too far outside Felix’s bedroom door.

“Shit.”

I’m afraid I don’t possess his way with words.

Our eyes meet and we both burst into a fit of giggles as the sounds of Madam Usoro’s footsteps gets louder. Trapped as we are, she’s bound to find us soon. Somehow, I’m not worrried. Nothing could ever take Felix from me.

And he knows that I will never leave him.

#Felix Iskandar Escellun #Felix Escellun #Fictif #Fictif Last Legacy #Last Legacy #Last Legacy Fanfiction #fanfiction #interactive game #Felix Escellun x mc

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paullicino · 3 years

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Ten Years

Taken from my Patreon.

Ten years is a long time. It’s long enough for many things to change, but also long enough for everything to remain the same.

I remember ten years ago as if it were yesterday, as if it passed by in the blink of an eye, with light and shadow, textures and taste all as familiar as ever.

A morning after. Shocked faces. A phone call. Events barely believable, yet all too real.

Ten years ago, my then partner and I were living in a top floor flat off Tottenham High Road. It was sweltering in the summer and the downstairs neighbours played dance music at four in the morning. But the views out the back bedroom window were of valleys of rooftops, sprouting television aerials and summited in the winter by the briefest dustings of snow.

The sun was for the front of the flat. The moon shone into our bedroom.

I remember that sunlight in the afternoon, sparkling through the shifting foliage of the tall trees outside. And I remember summer most of all. August.

We had a tap. A faucet. A great, overwrought thing that our landlady was obsessed with. It was the best tap ever, she said. It was large, curved and heavy, the pharaonic headdress worn atop a newly-fitted kitchen of which she was so proud. Wasn’t it exciting that we had such a good tap?

We just wanted our bed repaired. Our home wasn’t finished when we moved in and we slept on the sofa for weeks. When the mighty tap was finally installed, it was too heavy for its fitting. It teetered. Along with poorly-mounted cupboard doors with handles that prevented other cupboards from opening, its practicality was an afterthought.

The walk up Tottenham High Road took me to the only two locations I ever really visited, the supermarket and the job centre. The supermarket provided us with affordable food (though I’d watched the price of many staples almost double over five years) and the job centre provided me, an unemployed person, the money with which to buy that food.

The job centre, which was now extra special and had been rebranded Job Centre Plus, did not provide anyone the means with which they could get a job. It spent almost all of its time providing people with unemployment benefits. Most of the thousands of Tottenham residents who poured through its doors would’ve taken a job if they could’ve found one, but the listings at the centre itself were usually out of date, irrelevant or in some other way misfiled. Most employers don’t want to list their vacancies at the Job Centre Plus because they don’t want to employ the kind of people who go there.

Out of the Job Centre Plus and the supermarket, which one do you think burned that August?

I have written before about my strongest memory of the Job Centre Plus, but here it is again. It was of an old foreign woman and her daughter trying to speak to a clerk. The old woman didn’t speak English, so her daughter was attempting to explain that the woman was looking for work and thus registering as unemployed to gain unemployment benefit. The clerk was trying to explain that the woman was too old to work and should also be on disability benefit. The daughter was trying to explain that they had tried to navigate those systems and that they were obtuse and broken. Her mother just needed money. To live.

(Ten years before, in the summer of 2001, I’d first looked at the cost of moving out. I looked at rents around my Hampshire town, at the cost of housing and at the wages I needed to earn. England was expensive, I decided. It sure cost a lot just to live.)

Everyone was trying to explain everything. The job centre mostly wanted to give people their money and get rid of them, because there were many more lined up behind.

My strongest memory of the supermarket was of the man outside with no legs. He sat there panhandling in his wheelchair almost every day of the year. Britain had just launched its latest Astute-class nuclear submarine, each of which costs over one and a half billion pounds, but it was still a country where a man with no legs had to beg outside a shop.

I thought about that man long after I left Tottenham. I think about him here, now, ten years on.

My partner went abroad to see family and I spent some of the summer restarting my career as a freelance writer. I was fortunate with the connections and opportunities that I had, none of which would ever be found at a job centre, and I spent a lot of my time writing either to find work or simply for practice. I was writing on the night my street burned.

It began before dusk and I came home to find enormous police vehicles parked outside, the sort that are mobile command headquarters. Chains of armoured riot vans surged north. I heard there’d been a protest outside the police station and that a car or two had been burned. I checked the news occasionally. It didn’t have much to add.

Police vans kept coming, though all other traffic had stopped. The roads were closed, blocked by the police, and the latest news told me that petrol bombs had been thrown and a bus set alight. The reports were sparse.

The police in England are really good at responding to riots. They turn up in great swathes, on horses, in vans, or on foot and armed with batons and shields. They have all kinds of exciting equipment to help them. A year before, they’d kettled schoolchildren protesting the huge increase in university tuition fees, surrounding and slowly crushing hundreds of them in Trafalgar Square and on Westminster Bridge. Footage emerged of them beating the shit out of kids or dragging people out of wheelchairs. Here they were now in Tottenham, ready for more.

I kept trying to find news. The police had cordoned off most of the High Road, which meant the journalists that were arriving had no ability to find what was happening inside the riot. Distant footage of fires was the best most of them could provide. As I remember it now, the BBC had one van inside of the police cordon and couldn’t broadcast out because its dish had been damaged. I also have memories of a single journalist, almost in the thick of a mob, asking rioters to give them a moment to explain why they were protesting, or wondering why on earth they might want to block a BBC camera crew who were trying to film them.

What an inane question.

I found the news I wanted. I found it via Twitter and social media. And it was terrifying.

Broadcast news had described a riot not unlike any other. But the still relatively new sphere of social media was overflowing with witness statements, photographs and the kind of low-quality video that phones captured back then. People across Tottenham were panicking as they described growing crowds on the High Road burning not only vehicles, but also shops and businesses. They were breaking into commercial properties. They were looting. They were starting more fires. This had begun half a mile away from my home and it was spreading outward. The post office burned. Landmark businesses burned. Local shops burned and, with them, the flats and homes located above.

The updates kept coming and it’s almost impossible for me now to try to describe to you not only the sheer volume of panic and distress that waterfalled down my feed, but also the sense of utter hopelessness that came with it. People beyond the High Road described not just the violence spilling into their streets, the fights and the hundreds of looters, the fires and the damage, but also how there was no one who could stop this. No emergency services responded. Their phones went unanswered or the lines were jammed.

I read update after update that echoed the same, basic fact, something which I still struggle to comprehend even now, something I’d describe as barely believable: No help was coming.

But the social media updates kept coming. Looters were turning up with empty vans and loading them up with everything they could take. Buildings were being destroyed. A whole estate was being evacuated.

The news provided by the BBC and its peers remained limp and languid, so I spent all night reading these updates, discovering more nearby shops were being gutted, or how the retail park near me was looted to the point of emptiness, and I watched as even my own view out the window became broiling crowds of countless restless and angry people. I remember one man walking off into the darkness with brand new flatscreen televisions under each arm, the police vans now long gone. The night was regularly punctuated by shouts, screams, thumps and sometimes what might have been explosions. The sirens were always distant. The helicopters came and went.

I don’t know where the police cordon had gone. It felt almost as if they had given up and let Tottenham run rampant.

The sun came up and from that back bedroom window I saw smoke rising. I hadn’t slept. The news was full of irrelevant speculation and so, at five-thirty, I put on my shoes and walked the High Road. What I saw was barely believable. Sometimes I met the stunned gazes of other people doing the same, sometimes I avoided any eye contact. I have kept a diary for a long time now and this is what I recorded (slightly edited):

“This morning at about 5:30, as the sun rose, I tried to wander through Tottenham to take some pictures. It became one of the scariest walks I've ever taken.

The atmosphere was tense and unpleasant. Columns of smoke snaked upwards and the High Road and several other streets were blocked off or packed with police vehicles, many more of which were endlessly arriving, some from as far away as Kent.

The nearby retail park was littered with debris and many of its shopfronts were smashed. Groups of people, perhaps gangs, loitered everywhere. While some areas were busy with police officers, others were neglected and patrolled by hostile looking young men.

I didn't end up taking many pictures. I kept moving. Depending upon where you walk, Tottenham looks like a cross between a blitz bomb site and the mess after a chaotic festival.

Something still feels very different. Tottenham has hardly been rosy at the best of times, but today the sunshine can't seem to dispel a strange chill in the air. I myself can't stop thinking of all the homes that burned last night. It might not be immediately obvious to many people, but above a great deal of those shops set ablaze were flats, often family homes for very poor people. Many of those who had little now have less.”

A day after those first riots hit Tottenham, they went nationwide. London wasn’t done and, for a week, many major cities in England played host to their own riots. Tottenham was totally locked down, but it was far too late. The disorder had moved elsewhere.

I remember telling a colleague I worked with that I wouldn’t be finishing something that weekend. He laughed at the news and imagined it would all blow over. He was from a much wealthier background.

Then, everyone started trying to explain everything.

The BBC caught up with events the way a great-grandparent catches up with technology, fumbling and frowning. Goodness me, they said, in their middle class, broadcast-trained voices, and they joined in with the three broad lines of discussion that emerged. One asked how this could happen, one asked why this had happened, and one was about how this would never happen again, because the law would be firmer than ever, the punishments and prosecutions authoritative and absolute. The police were ready for more. They were going to get water cannons. I imagine those work particularly well on kids and wheelchairs.

There was a lot of talk about punishment, including from the Prime Minister, who decided to stop being on holiday in Tuscany only after England’s third night of rioting. I wonder if he had imagined it would all blow over.

Sometimes there was talk involving the people of Tottenham themselves, but it was more likely to be talk about them. A lot of people in Tottenham are Black and have families that trace back to the very first Windrush immigrants of the late 1940s. One Black Labour MP said it was important to talk about their experiences in London, their economic situation and their history of treatment by the police. After all, the spark that had set these riots alight was a protest outside the police headquarters, subsequent to the suspicious shooting of Mark Duggan, a Black man, something that called to mind a similarly suspicious death of a Black woman that also precipitated Tottenham’s 1985 riots.

For some people, the discussion became about how Black people had started the riots and been the chief participants. This wasn’t reflected in anything I saw either on social media or with my own eyes, in person, on the night. But nobody was stopping to ask me what I thought or what I saw.

Not long after that first riot, my partner called me to check I was okay and to ask if those barely believable things she’d seen on the news were really as bad as they seemed. They were. I rode the bus up the High Road on my way to Wood Green, then later to Walthamstow, both of which offered me temporary job centres that took the overspill from ours, thoroughly gutted by fire and then looted of all of its copper piping. The bus crept past burned-out shops and homes. I don’t know where those people have gone.

Later that year, my partner and I discovered that our income was low enough that we were eligible for housing benefit. It took us so long to try to apply for it that we moved home before any progress was made. When I found enough work to support myself, I visited the job centre to sign off, as we called it, to close my file. I asked a woman at reception what I needed to do. “Nothing,” she said, as the line behind me wound down several stories of stairs and out into the grey autumn street. “Just stop coming. Stop coming.”

Winter came and things rustled in the walls. There was a long, tall hedge along the High Road and I would look out the window to see men using it as a urinal. I only had to live in Tottenham for around a year and a half and I have good memories from that flat, but I also remember a stifling and sad place to live, from which I was lucky to move on. Tottenham was never my home and I never had to stay there, but I certainly feel that I came to get a sense of the place.

After moving out, our ex-landlady complained that we hadn’t left the oven as clean as she would’ve liked. She hiked the rent 9% while we were staying there. She never fixed anything that broke and provided excuses instead of solutions.

I found more work. I taught games and narrative for a semester at a small institution in East London. One of the things I asked my students to consider was the stories and the experiences of people who weren’t like them. I asked them to share how often they had been stopped and randomly searched by airport security. “Not just at the airport,” one student reminded me. “On the tube. On the street.”

My life continued to improve in many ways, but I still remembered the man in the wheelchair. The BBC and many other media outlets continued to talk about poverty and race, but not always to poor people or to people who weren’t white. In 2014 I wrote On Poverty and one of the most surprising responses I repeatedly received from people was “I had no idea that it was like this.” A friend of mine tried to apply for support for chronic health problems and documented her many struggles, including being required to explain exactly how many times a week she suffered from migraines (“You said it was two or three times a week. Well, is it two, or is it three?”). The news regularly reported growing homelessness, rising use of food banks and the inevitable deaths of people who weren’t just failed by broken systems, apathy and a lack of understanding, but also simply too poor to be alive.

I feel like some of the people I knew didn’t like how I kept returning to these topics. I feel, even more, that they didn’t at all understand. I remember some of these people waiving off the Brexit referendum as it approached, certain the country wouldn’t vote to amputate itself from the European Union. I don’t think they understood and I don’t think they’d seen the unhappy England that I had, both as a child and as an adult. I think they’d only seen, and been, very comfortable people.

I think these people would call themselves open-minded, progressive and keen to make the world better. I’m sure they could explain those views. At length.

If I think of those people now, I’m quite sure they are all still very comfortable, ten years on. I also think there is still a good chance that man is sat in that wheelchair outside of that supermarket, though he could also be dead by now, again simply too poor to be alive. No longer able to watch the sun sparkle through tall trees, see roofs dusted with snow or catch the moon peeping through his bedroom window.

Such things aren’t for poor people. We still get frustrated when we give them benefits or find out they own mobile phones.

---

Ten years on, Tottenham is almost a dream, a memory where the details have faded and the edges have softened. I have moved countries, had the privilege of travelling through work, enjoyed many different creative opportunities and benefited from free healthcare that has addressed difficult, long-term health issues. I have rationed my life according to a tight budget, but I’ve never had to face the overwhelming, unending hardships of others that I’ve shared neighbourhoods and postcodes with. I cannot ignore these people because they have so often been one street away, visiting the same shop or riding the same train. They are not an abstraction, they are right there, ready to tell us all about their lives.

Ten years on, Tottenham has one of the UK’s fastest-growing rates of unemployment, the latest statistic in the region’s long history of joblessness and poverty. Many of its residents, like poor people across the country, live paycheck to paycheck, at risk of financial ruin should they experience a single upheaval. Ten years on, the most reliable predictor of success and financial stability in the UK (as in many developed countries) is now considered to be the circumstances of your birth. The idea of social mobility is more irrelevant than ever, with much of your destiny decided before you are even born. Ten years on, almost a quarter of the population of the UK lives in poverty.

Ten years on, continued austerity, government apathy and cuts to social services has meant that, yes, ten years really is enough time for everything to stay the same. Without change, the problems people face become generational, systemic. Some people tell me that the 1980s were like this for certain families, regions, populations. I didn’t know. We were doing okay. Perhaps I didn’t get it, didn’t notice it, didn’t want to think about it.

Ten years on, Mark Duggan’s family filed a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police and were awarded an undisclosed sum, after his death was officially ruled a lawful killing in 2014. Lawyers for the Duggan claim commissioned this in-depth report on the shooting, which illustrated many problems with the official police version of events.

Ten years on, the UK government is trying to curtain the right to protest. It commissioned a review that concluded that the country has no systemic racism. It wants to limit the powers of the Electoral Commission and has considered conflating the concepts of whistleblowing and leaking with spying, meaning those who leak information could be treated as criminals. It is increasingly intent on punishing those who might express dissatisfaction.

And ten years on, as we all know, wages have not risen to match the rising costs of rent, food, utilities or transport. It sure costs a lot just to live.

Finally, in 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty and Human Rights visited the United Kingdom and did speak with many of its poor. The resulting exhaustive and damning report concluded that “statistics alone cannot capture the full picture of poverty in the United Kingdom” and that “much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.” It described harsh, ill-conceived and out-of-touch support systems devised and doubled down on by a government that not only failed to understand poverty, but that couldn’t even measure it accurately. It also predicted that these things would only get worse, and without any consideration of the effect of extraordinary events, such as a global pandemic.

The government described the report as “barely believable.”

I don’t think any help is coming.

---

There’s a question that sometimes bounces around social media and it asks people this: “What radicalised you?” As if there was some moment that changed a person’s political beliefs and rearranged their perspective on the world.

Here’s the thing. I feel like my perspective is from the floor, skewed and sore after I fell between two stools, always unable to find an identity amongst wider British culture. I grew up too comfortable, too spoiled and too well-spoken to call myself working class, but I was easily alienated by schoolfriends with multiple bathrooms and university-educated parents. My interests and my sentiments aren’t supposed to be working class, but many of my life experiences and even philosophies are. I know what it’s like to memorise Shakespeare and to explain themes in Romantic-era art, as much as I know what it’s like to fight government systems that are ostensibly supposed to help, to be unable to afford your own home, to walk into a supermarket and look at staple foods you still can’t afford. You think about Descartes and then you think about which dinner provides the cheapest way to keep your body alive.

When I was a kid I remember going to friend’s houses where they were too poor to clean the carpet, or seeing them lose a parent to lung cancer, or the time someone showed me a gun hidden in their brother’s car. As an adult I wrote to my politicians to ask them what they were doing about poverty, about education, about the cost of living. I went to protests and signed petitions and supported charities both practically and financially. I suppose I was trying to articulate some of the skills I’d learned from in some situations to articulate the experiences I’d had in others. Surely you have to do something.

I both resent and appreciate aspects of both classes and I imagine I’ll never work out who I am or what I’m supposed to call myself. But I do know there are vastly different worlds and vastly different experiences within British culture and that many continue to be overlooked even when in plain sight. And it’s what I find most frustrating.

If there was one thing I learned, if not one thing that radicalised me, it wasn’t simply that poverty never goes away, it’s that it always needs to be explained. There are always, always people who don’t get it, who don’t notice it, who don’t want to think about it or who will puzzle over it from a distance as if it were some transient mirage they can never hope to touch. Those in power will continue to make decisions about poverty that they do not experience, in spite of the fact that making financially comfortable people the authority on money is like making able-bodied people the authority on wheelchair access, like making men the authority on women’s bodies, like making white people the authority on racism.

And so, ten years on, here I am again, writing about Tottenham, about class, about poverty and about ignorance, and only from a slightly different angle. I will write about these things more, not least because I’ve already started another work on these themes, but mostly because I will always need to. I don’t imagine that, during my lifetime, the explaining will ever stop. I don’t imagine that our societies will give up on punishing people for being poor in a world where it is so often simply too expensive to be alive. And I don’t imagine I will have any more patience for people who imagine it will all blow over.

I refuse to let you middle-class your way out of this.

I don’t have any solutions to these enormous and complex problems. I don’t have exhaustive lists of who exactly to blame or where precisely everything has gone wrong. But here’s what I believe: If we don’t talk about poverty, and if we don’t listen to those caught inside of it, it will never go away, and there will be infinitely more Tottenhams.

#Tottenham #Tottenham riots #Mark Duggan #poverty #London #England #writing #2011

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echoes-of-realities · 6 years

Text

but I can hear my heart pound (and it's reaching out to you)

* * *

Summary: “Writing your number on a piece of paper?” Santana teases softly, “A little old school don’t you think?”

It’s not until Brittany’s left the cafe that she realizes that the paper in her hand isn’t paper at all. It’s a polaroid, new and shiny and glossy; the photo just smudges of freckled skin and bright, bright blue eyes, crinkled and sparkling in amusement. Santana’s heart thuds as she flips the polaroid over and finds, instead of the digits of the desired phone number, loopy script in purple pen that reads Find me.

Notes: The kinda-sorta-Amélie — A New Musical AU No One asked for but that kicked my writer’s block in the butt so I’m posting it anyways (basically I just took the premise of “Thin Air” from the musical because I’ve had this tiny idea for it for months).

Also I know Almost Nothing about NYC and Tisch and I didn’t feel like researching That much into either just for the sake of a fic that cured my writer’s block so ignore that.

Title from “Thin Air” from Amélie — A New Musical.

[Read on ao3]

[Read on Fanfiction]

Santana shows up to the coffee shop fifteen minutes early. Not— Not because she’s nervous or anything, but because it’s Sugar who set her up on this date and Sugar is often in her own little world and forgets the little things like the time (the fact that Santana’s stomach churns just a little as the minutes change on her phone and creep closer to ten o’clock means nothing). Santana loves the girl, she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have made it through orientation at the record company without her, but it’s because of that she knows Sugar and she knows to show up early.

The only problem with showing up fifteen minutes early is that she ends up awkwardly hovering in the doorway until an impatient man in a too nice suit coughs rudely behind her and brushes past. Santana tries not to get irritated because she was blocking the door, but men in suits have always irritated her starting all the way back in elementary school when her father would hole himself up in his office all throughout dinner, his suit just as pressed and clean as it was when he left that morning.

Santana takes a deep breath and follows the impatient man into the cafe, surveying the shop until her eyes land on a small table tucked in the corner with two bar height stools on it. She heads immediately for the spot and hopes the stools are more comfortable than they look. She fiddles with her backpack once she gets there, trying to look busier than she is so no one questions her for not getting a coffee yet (and to do something with her hands because they’re jittery and trembling even though she’s so not nervous). She hangs her bag over the back of the stool and watches the impatient man from earlier reach the front of the line; the barista at the cash register subtly rolls her eyes at the man and Santana has to assume he’s one of the belligerent regular types.

She doesn’t actually know anything about the girl she’s supposed to be on a date with beyond Sugar being certain they’ll fall in love and telling Santana that this girl is beautiful and one-hundred percent her type; Santana wasn’t even aware she had a type, but sometimes Sugar can be surprisingly intuitive about these things. She doesn’t even know what the girl looks like though, despite her nagging Sugar about it for a week; Sugar liked the mystery and the romance of it all, Santana would much rather like to at least know who to look for but Sugar was insistent.

She studies the cafe from her corner, it’s Sugar’s favourite cafe and Santana’s been here often with her; despite it being midterm season at the universities, it’s not even ten yet so the cafe is pretty sparse. There’s a couple businessmen at the end of the counter waiting for their coffees, a group of moms sits at the longer table bouncing infants and wrangling toddlers and expressing their loud gratitude at their older children being back in school, there’s some university students scattered around the cafe (Santana can tell from the dullness to their eyes) either standing zombielike in line with rumpled clothes and tangled hair from the night before or huddled with their laptops pressed together to make room for the notebooks and textbooks on their table.

The scent of coffee fills the air and Santana can feel her nerve-endings come alive just from the smell; she isn’t sure if it’s rude to get a coffee before her date gets here, but she waits and scrolls aimlessly around on her phone just in case. She’s been on dates before, but she’s never been set up on one before, and despite the fact that she trusts Sugar (more or less) she feels just a little bit unbalanced. It’s not really her style to wait around for her friends to set her up on dates when they think she’s been single too long (it’s not like she goes on a lot of dates, because, as she’s known about herself for a very long time, she’s actually kind of hopeless when it comes to girls, but she’s been on her fair share of them, and it’s really lame when her friends think she needs to be set up, and also just the tiniest bit sweet).

She’s just opening and immediately closing her solitaire app for the third time when a voice interrupts her. Santana starts, banging her knees against the bottom of the table and hissing out a quiet curse as pain throbs along her legs.

“Santana?” the voice asks and Santana looks up into the brightest pair of blue eyes she’s ever seen, crinkled a little at the corners with a hint of amusement but mostly widened with concern. Soft blonde bangs fall across her forehead, the longer strands swept carelessly behind her ears. Her sweater looks warm and soft, the dark teal sleeves falling down past her wrists. She’s smiling politely at Santana, her lips twitch and start to waver down into a slight frown the longer Santana remains silent. “You are Santana, right?”

Santana’s pretty sure her heart stops beating. (Goddamnit Sugar is right, Santana definitely has a type.)

“Brittany?” she manages when she’s sure she’s not going to swallow her tongue.

The girl — Brittany — brightens and relaxes and her smile eases and Santana’s heart starts beating again, but at about twice the speed as before. Her lips are pulled thin and up by a genuine smile as she looks at Santana. Her gaze is warm and it makes Santana’s stomach swoop and her skin prickle. Brittany holds out her hand and Santana quickly shakes it, feeling the subtle strength in Brittany’s clever fingers as muscle shifts bone.

“I’m really glad I guessed you on my first try,” Brittany says, fiddling with her book-bag, “Sugar didn’t tell me anything about you besides your name and that you were my typ—” Brittany cuts herself off and her eyes go wide, pink blooming in splotches like crawling ivy across her cheeks. “Sugar didn’t tell me anything about you,” she repeats.

Santana’s smile softens and she elects to ignore Brittany’s slip up in the hopes that it will ease her embarrassment. “You wanna go order?” she says instead.

Brittany nods quickly and continues to to avoid Santana’s eyes as she plops her book-bag down on the seat angled beside Santana’s, quickly digging through it until she produces her wallet, slipping it into her back pocket. She shoves the sleeves of her sweater up to her elbows and gives Santana a small smile as she leads the way to the counter. Brittany wears slightly faded jeans with splotches of dark ink speckled across them and rips that look more from wear than fashion, her sneakers are well worn and scuffed along the white edge lining the bottom, bright flowers patterned across the fabric. Santana inwardly smiles as she follows Brittany to the line up; Brittany is put together and attractive and graceful and has a smile that could make flowers grow and is, supposedly, completely her type.

They make small chat while they wait in the short line; how much it sucks that it’s getting so cold these days, how awful midterms are, how that one homeless guy who’s always outside of the Wendy’s across the street from this cafe deserves a new winter hat, how much they’re going to miss that tiny Japanese noodle restaurant on fourth avenue when it shuts down, and before they know it they’re at the front of the line.

Brittany orders and when the barista asks is that all? Santana steps up beside Brittany and places her order, quickly handing a ten dollar bill over despite Brittany’s protests. Santana just grins up at Brittany and shoos her to the pickup section of the cafe, collecting her change from the barista before joining Brittany at the other counter.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Brittany scolds once Santana gets there, but there’s a brightness in her eyes that negates the tone to her voice.

Santana just lets her grin widen and Brittany’s eyes drop to her cheeks and Santana knows that her damn dimples are probably peaking out; she’s always had a vague dislike for them because it completely ruins her whole tough persona, but with something bright and warm in Brittany’s gaze she doesn’t immediately try to bite down on her smile and hide them. The barista calls her name and she quickly steps up to take the two coffees, turning and passing one to Brittany. She takes her coffee from Santana with a murmured thanks, her fingers stained with dark ink right at the tips, and a smile warm enough to send heat flaring under the skin of her cheeks.

It takes a little bit to get comfortable with each other, but before Santana realizes it she’s laughing and talking with Brittany as if they��ve been friends forever.

They both know Sugar from the weird electives they’ve had to take over the years with Sugar switching schools and everything, and they both laugh at how they arrived fifteen minutes early to the different times Sugar told them. Santana finds out that Brittany came here on a math scholarship but dropped out of the program in her second year to pursue photography so she’s technically in her first year despite being a third year student; she find out Brittany is funny and witty and silly and smart. She tells Brittany about being a music major and how there’s only really been two people in her life who believed she could make it; and she’s never felt as funny or witty or silly or smart as when she manages to coax a smile out of Brittany.

Brittany tells her about the math program that barely let her eat or sleep and laughs when Santana tells her she’s glad that Brittany’s not a math monkey anymore, and Santana tells her about the band she was in for a first year class with people she thought were her friends but who really weren’t. She finds out that Brittany isn’t a morning person, and Santana tells her about the first time she got up on stage and how she just knew what she was supposed to spend the rest of her life doing. Brittany tells her about how her step-dad raised her as if the step part wasn’t even there in the first place and how she’s always preferred kimchi and rice over green beans and potatoes, and Santana tells her about the dumb group project she has coming up. Brittany tells her about her best friend since she was five and how they sometimes find buskers in the park and start dancing along to the music to draw a crowd, and Santana tells her about her best friend from first year and how she probably would have dropped out long ago if it wasn’t for her. Brittany tells her about her little sister, and Santana tells her about being raised by a single mom. Santana finds out that Brittany scrubs at the ink staining her fingers when she doesn’t know what to say next in the same way Santana fiddles with her hands when she’s nervous, and every time Santana’s eyes are drawn to those clever fingers as they start rubbing at the dark blotches.

“Do you have some of your photographs?” Santana asks the next time Brittany starts scrubbing her fingertips. Brittany hesitates and Santana offers her a small smile, feeling her lips tug up higher on one side than the other. “C’mon,” she coaxes, “You gotta have at least one album on you at a time. You said you take polaroids mostly, right?” Brittany’s eyes dart to hers and search Santana’s face for something before her expression eases into something awed and sweet and Santana can feel her heartbeat in her fingertips when Brittany nods slowly. “Well you gotta have an album on you then, right? Where else would you put them so they don’t get wrecked in your bag?”

Brittany giggles and shakes her head a little. “You’re right, you’re right,” she concedes, twisting slightly in her chair to swing her book-bag up onto her lap. Brittany rummages through her bag and Santana catches a glimpse of a polaroid camera; not one of those new ones, but one of those old black and white ones with the overlarge flash unit at the top and the picture slot at the bottom. Brittany pulls out a decent sized album and scoots her chair over; Santana moves closer too until her elbow brushes Brittany’s where it rests on the table. Their eyes shoot to each other and meet before they smile and quickly glance down at the album, Santana can feel her cheeks burn and when she glances at Brittany out of the corner of her eye she can see that pretty pink colouring the peaks of her cheeks.

Santana forces herself to focus on the photography album but she can’t help sneaking glances at Brittany every time she goes quiet with thought or launches into a story or explains some of the techniques she’s used or just, you know, breathes. Santana finds it fascinating to study Brittany’s profile, the slope of her nose and the curve of her lip, the way her cheeks scrunch up her eyes and the way her mouth curls around her words; more than all that, Santana is captivated by the brightness on Brittany’s face and the passion in her voice as she talks about her work and Santana can’t help but admire how much more beautiful Brittany becomes when she’s lit up with her love for what she does.

Santana spends as much time studying Brittany’s face as she does the polaroids (okay, probably more time staring at Brittany, if she’s being truthful), but the polaroids are just as interesting as Brittany’s face, and show just as much of her personality too. Most of them are in shades of blue or orange, and all of them are carefully careless in their composition. There’s ones of emotionless skyscrapers stretching for a sky that’s always just out of reach and ones of houses falling apart that remind Santana of her childhood home; there’s ones of people sprawled out and laughing on a boat and ones of stoic businessmen with the crinkle of amusement in the laugh-lines creasing their eyes; there’s ones of a fat cat that Brittany laughingly says is Lord Tubbington and there’s ones of a songbird caught mid-hop; there’s ones underwater of a young girl with a dark halo of hair around her that Brittany explains is her little sister and there’s ones taken of an man in the reflection of a magazine that Brittany explains is her best friend Mike; there’s ones of tiny toys made to look like a real scene and there’s ones of Brittany in a dark room hanging pictures up and silhouetted in red light.

“Which one is your favourite?” Santana asks quietly, studying the way Brittany’s face is open and just a little bit longing as they flip through the album.

Brittany doesn’t even hesitate like Santana expects her, she flips to a picture in the first half of the album and points to it. She glances up at Santana and her face is a little guarded for the first time as she searches Santana’s eyes; she must see whatever she’s looking for because her eyes soften and she looks so young for a moment. “It’s this one,” she says and Santana holds Brittany’s gaze for a moment that’s just a little too long for her to play it off before she follows Brittany’s finger.

It’s a picture of the city painted in the gold and pink of sunset, the buildings cold and dark against the life of the purple sky and the orange of the setting sun, the hint of a spruce tree in the top corner and the river in flashes of pink and violet and blue. Thin clouds converge on the city in white and yellow, the faintest dusking of indigo where the skyline meets the farthest edges of the city. There’s also a smudge of beige in the bottom left corner that must be the edge of Brittany’s finger and a long, thin strand of blonde hair cutting through the picture across the top half. Compared to some of Brittany’s other pictures, it’s amateur and careless, but there’s something beautifully truthful about the flaws in the picture.

“Why’s it your favourite?” Santana murmurs.

Brittany shrugs and ducks her head a little. “When I was going through all that stuff with my math scholarship and whatever, I used to walk around the city a lot and— And think. It was easier to pretend I wasn’t just a— A math monkey,” she says and gives Santana a quick smile, and Santana’s lips curl up in return before she even realizes it. “Anyways. Um, long story short, but my grandpa had given me his polaroid camera when I was in high school and I always took it everywhere even though I didn’t really use it.” Brittany’s gaze drops from Santana’s and she looks at the photograph, studying it with critical eyes, a faint hint of pink blooming across her cheeks and obscuring her freckles. “There’s this bench in this park on East End Avenue overlooking the city and I just— Something about that sunset over the city I was growing to hate made me just stop, I guess, and for some reason I remembered the polaroid I had and I just. I took my first picture and everything settled in me. I backed out on my scholarship, much to my parent’s horror, and applied to Tisch the next day and I haven’t looked back.”

Brittany suddenly bites down on her lip and her eyes widen. She resolutely avoids Santana’s gaze even when Santana ducks her head to try and catch it. “I— It was— It was kind of where I found myself, I guess,” she finally admits sheepishly, her eyes averted to where she digs the edge of her thumb nail under the laminate edging of the table.

“It’s beautiful,” Santana whispers, her eyes on Brittany’s face.

Brittany’s eyes dart up to Santana’s and she seems surprised to find Santana’s dark eyes already on hers. “Yeah?” she breathes.

Santana smiles and nods softly. “Definitely.”

Neither of them notice that over three hours have passed until Santana’s stomach starts growling and she feels her cheeks heat up. They finished their coffees ages ago, and after looking through Brittany’s photography album neither of them had moved from their spots, their elbows still mostly pressed together and their shoulders sometimes brushing with laughter. Brittany stops scrubbing at the ink on her fingertips and Santana doesn’t feel the urge to fiddle with her hands anymore.

They’re both reluctant to leave, but Santana still has a paper to work on and a midterm to study for, and Brittany has some film she needs to develop and they stand to part ways. Santana feels her stomach churn and she asks Brittany to watch her stuff so she can run to the bathroom before she leaves for the subway, and Brittany easily agrees.

Santana crosses the cafe and slips into the single stall bathroom and moves in front of the mirror to stare at herself. She doesn’t actually need to use the bathroom, and besides her apartment is maybe ten minutes away, but she needs a few moments to herself to work up her courage. It shouldn’t be so hard to ask a girl for her phone number, especially when that girl is Brittany with her bright blue eyes and her adorable smile and her ink stained fingers on Santana’s arm when she laughs, but somehow the thought paralyzes Santana’s insides.

She breathes deeply for a couple moments and critically studies her reflection in the mirror before she washes her hands and exits the bathroom, heading back to the table in the corner. Brittany stands with her book-bag slung over her shoulder, scrubbing at her fingertips and Santana takes a deep breath before she greets her.

Brittany smiles and Santana can feel her heartbeat in the tips of her fingers again as she swings her backpack up onto her shoulder. She fiddles with the strap for a moment before gathering her courage in a deep breath and looking up; she finds Brittany’s gaze already on her and when she meets those blue eyes something sharp and aching shoots through her chest. “I had a really good time,” Santana says and her voice feels shyer than she’s ever known it to be.

Brittany’s smile spreads slowly across her face, starting at her eyes and spreading to her lips. “So did I,” she murmurs, “Sugar has good taste in blind dates.”

Santana lets out a surprised laugh and watches as Brittany lights up even more. “So, uh, maybe,” Santana stutters and she curses herself for tripping over her words so much, even as Brittany’s face softens and looks more wonderstruck than before, “Maybe we could do this again?”

Santana watches as Brittany swallows thickly before she takes a tiny step forward. “I’d really like that,” Brittany whispers and something blooms under Santana’s sternum until she worries she might float away.

“Yeah?”

Brittany catches her bottom lip between her teeth but it does nothing to contain her smile. “Yeah.”

Santana finally lets the smile she feels aching in her cheeks spread across her face and nods quickly, not caring how foolish or overeager she looks. “Cool,” Santana says, and with the way Brittany’s eyes slip catlike and teasing she knows it’s more than cool, “Do you— Can I have your number then?”

Brittany’s smile widens and she twists slightly and goes digging through her bag, producing a small piece of paper and a pen, turning to the table and quickly writing on it.

“A piece of paper?” Santana teases softly, “A little old school don’t you think?”

Brittany’s lips curl into that mischievous, enticing smile. “I think it’s romantic,” she says easily, the blue of her eyes only slivers of colour through her eyelashes as she glances up at Santana, and Santana’s breath catches against her teeth. “Don’t you?” Brittany teases, and her tongue pokes out just a little bit as she bites down a smile and Santana feels off kilter and dizzy in the best way possible.

“I mean, I guess,” she manages, and Brittany’s smile escapes her attempts to hide it until Santana can see amusement in her eyes and in the tiny dimples at the very corners of her lips.

Brittany straightens and hands Santana the paper with her adoring smile still lighting up her face, and Santana just knows her own dimples are showing and she doesn’t feel the least bit embarrassed about it. “Thank you, for the coffee,” Brittany murmurs, “And for a perfect first date.”

Santana wants to say something charming like the first of many but instead all she manages to do is gasp a little when Brittany leans close and brushes soft, soft lips over Santana’s cheek right where a dimple creases the skin, pulling back with an even softer bye before she crosses the cafe and leaves, Santana stuck staring dumbly after her, the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine still lingering in the charged air around her.

Santana only then realizes that the paper feels thicker and glossier than a scrap of paper should. She runs her thumb over the centre of the paper before bringing it up to her face and belatedly realizing it’s not a piece of paper at all. It’s a polaroid, new and shiny and glossy; the photo just smudges of freckled skin and bright, bright blue eyes, crinkled and sparkling in amusement.

Santana’s heart thuds as she flips the polaroid over and finds, instead of the digits of the desired phone number, loopy script in purple pen that reads Find me.

Santana blinks blankly and stares at the letters, flipping the picture back over to find those blue eyes again, still as bright and amused as they were the first time she caught them.

She stands there dumbly until a college student hustles her over and Santana realizes that she’s just standing at an empty table. She shuffles over with a sarcastic sorry as the college student punks his stuff down on Santana’s table. She weaves through the crowd, the picture clutched protectively in her hand, as she stumbles out the door. She huddles by the front window and restudies the picture thoughtfully, shivering in the autumn air.

There’s darker violet rimming the outside of Brittany’s irises, and the tiniest flecks of gold like splattered wet paint surrounding her pupils, cobalt blue streaking through the cerulean like forks of lightning. The corner of a blonde eyebrow is caught in the middle of the top edge of the photo, right where her forehead smooths into her nose. Her cheeks scrunch her eyes up, catlike and amused, a small collection of freckles gathered at the inside corner of her right eye and spreading out like constellations, mapping faintly across her nose to gather again at the opposite corner of her other eye.

The picture gives Santana no real hints other than to prove what Santana already knew from the first moment she met Brittany’s eyes, which is that Brittany is really, really, really pretty. She flips the picture back over and rereads the words that should have been a phone number and feels even more stumped than she did in her calc midterm last week (the fact that a liberal arts degree requires math is absurd and ridiculous and Santana hates it).

Santana probably shouldn’t be laughing, but her face breaks out into a wide smile anyways. She’s always liked puzzles, ever since her mom used to get her those dungeon crawler games when she was really young, and the polaroid in her hand sparks the same flare of curiosity and determination. She should probably just write Brittany off for this. She should assume this is Brittany’s creative way of turning her down. She should be pissed that Brittany’s probably just leading her on or something. She should be irritated because she’s busy and doesn’t really have time to go on a wild goose chase around the entire goddamn city with nothing more than a polaroid picture and knowledge she’s learned in the past couple hours.

There’s all these things Santana should be, but instead, Santana’s pretty sure she just found the most interesting girl in the entire city.

She picks a direction and starts walking. The city is huge, but Santana’s pretty sure Brittany wouldn’t be in a different borough simply because she can’t have gotten that far yet (or, Santana hopes Brittany’s not in a different borough). She hopes she’s walking the right way, but she’s always had a pretty shoddy sense of direction, and she doesn’t have a clue what direction Brittany lives in or what direction she might have started walking in or even if Brittany wants her to find her.

She opens Facebook as she walks and has Brittany typed in before she realizes she has no clue what Brittany’s last name is. She narrows the search results down the city and the school, but there’s still hundreds of Brittanys of various spellings, none of them with that soft blonde hair or electric blue eyes or beautiful smile, and Santana doesn’t even know if Brittany has her school or city on her Facebook, or even if she has a Facebook. Santana grumbles and shoves her phone back in her pocket, shivering a little in the autumn air. The sunlight is weak but still glints off the front windows of shops and Santana gets whiffs of coffee and soap shops and Korean food as she dodges people on the sidewalk. She thinks back on what she’s learned about Brittany in the past couple hours, but nothing comes to mind about where she would go after a coffee date, and then Santana is rounding a corner and seeing the purple flag of Tisch flapping in the wind. Santana grins and feels the slight bounce to her step as she heads for the building but does nothing to try and contain the sudden wave of hope that fills her.

There’s students hurrying back and forth across the side walk and Santana searches the crowd before setting her sights on someone. “Hey,” Santana calls to the woman approaching her from the front doors, “Excuse me. I was wondering if you can tell me where the photo—”

“No I’m not coming to your little punk rock, hip hop, pop concert or whatever it is you kids are into these days,” the woman snaps and Santana blinks quickly.

“What?” Santana says blankly, “No. What? No. I’m not asking you to come watch my band play. I’m not even in a band. What the hell gives you that idea?”

The woman’s eyes trail down Santana’s body, taking in the leather jacket and ripped jeans and leather boots and, okay, maybe Santana sometimes dresses like she’s about to catch a concert but still. That doesn’t mean she’s in a lame-ass band or something.

The woman turns away walks down the street, her gaze answer enough, and Santana curses under her breath. “You make the mistake of joining a shitty college band once and suddenly you’re pegged for life,” she mutters.

She eventually manages to manoeuvre her way inside the school and then manages to find someone to point her in the direction of the photography department. Santana wanders the halls of the school, eyeing grey lockers and exposed brick walls as she finds her way to where the photography department is located, somehow managing to get lost a couple times and cursing as she sees a couple people dressed more or less exactly like her, toting bass guitars and drum sets around and she tugs self-consciously on her leather jacket, thankful for the beanie she threw on this morning both for the cold and for the fact that it means she’s not dressed exactly like other music majors.

Santana can tell when she reaches the photography department because there’s framed photographs lining the hallways now and Santana wanders around, studying abstract pictures and lifelike stills equally, searching for something without really knowing what.

She’s not quite sure what tips her off, whether it’s the use of blue and orange or if it’s the life embed into the photo despite its still subject or how it feels like if Santana studies the photo long enough it will come to life, but she slows to a halt in front of one of the photos near the middle of the hallway. There, in the corner of the blown up photo, is a scribble of a loopy signature that looks like the beginning of Brittany.

“She’s good isn’t she?” a voice says over her shoulder. Santana glances to the side and finds a shorter Asian woman standing behind her, arms full of art supplies and a wide smile on her face.

“Brittany?” Santana asks, and her suspicion is confirmed when the woman nods her head. “How do you know her?”

The woman laughs. “I took a couple years off before university and she switched programs halfway through her first so we were both a little older than the first years. We had, like, all of our first year preqers together and we got a long really well. Plus, I’m sorta dating her best friend so there’s that too. I’m Tina, by the way.”

“Santana,” Santana answers absently. “Does she have classes today?”

Tina shakes her head and shifts the art supplies in her arms. “Nah, she made her schedule so she had one day off, the lucky jerk.”

“Do you know where I could find her then?” Santana asks eagerly, and Tina seems to waver a bit and Santana tries to clamp down on her enthusiasm. “I’m not— I’m not like some crazy person,” Santana promises.

“That’s exactly what a crazy person would say,” Tina quips.

Santana shakes her head quickly even though Tina’s right. “It’s not— I went on a date with her but I didn’t get her number and now I don’t know how to get a hold of her.”

Tina’s eyes brighten and start to glow with amusement. “You must be Sugar’s mystery friend,” Tina says around a smile, “She refused to tell us anything about you except that you were apparently Britt’s type.”

Santana ignores the heat that flares in her cheeks. “So you have Brittany’s number then?”

Tina looks at her calculatingly for a long moment and Santana can’t help it when she starts to play with her fingers. “Why didn’t Brittany give you her number?”

Santana shakes her head and reaches into her pocket, pulling out the polaroid she placed along the back of her phone; she glances at those blue eyes again and can’t help the smile that threatens to spread. “She gave me this instead,” she says and offers it to Tina.

Tina is studying Santana’s goofy smile with a curious, unreadable expression and Santana fights to bite down on that floating feeling inside that’s making her a little giddy. Tina’s eyes only drop from Santana’s as she juggles her art supplies around a little to free one hand and take the photo. She glances over the blue eyes before flipping it over and reading the words with a fond shake of her head. “She’s always had a little bit of a flair for the dramatic,” Tina says, handing the photo back. Santana takes one last look at it before she carefully places it against the back of her phone and slides the phone back into her pocket. “I don’t know where she would be though,” Tina says, “And unfortunately I left my phone at my apartment this morning and I don’t have her number memorized.”

Santana sighs and tries to ignore the ebb of disappointment in her stomach. “Thanks anyways,” she says.

Tina continues to study Santana with that curious, unreadable look before something in her eyes clear. “Maybe try the Alumni Sandwich Shop,” she suggests kindly, “It’s Brittany’s favourite place for lunch. It’s like a ten minute subway ride south and then a fifteen minute walk.”

Santana lets her smile spread unabashedly as she thanks Tina and turns back down the way she came. She gets lost another couple times on the way out of the university but takes the time to search up the sandwich shop on her maps app, eventually managing to make it back out onto the street. She weaves through tired university students and manages to stumble her way to the nearest subway station, filing down the stairs to the train station. It doesn’t take long before she’s squished between a screaming baby and a homeless man’s backpack on the train, and she braces herself with an arm around one of the poles as the train lurches forward. The sound of the train travelling the tracks booms through Santana until it echoes in her ears and she carefully slips her phone out to study the polaroid until her stop comes up; the booming doesn’t stop even when Santana exits the train and emerges back into the chilly autumn air and that’s when Santana realizes it’s her heartbeat echoing throughout her body. She slips her phone out of her pocket and studies the picture one more time before she slips that back into her pocket and follows the blue line on her maps app.

It’s past four by the time Santana’s stomach grumbles even louder than it did two hours ago when she was still with Brittany as she scans the storefronts and searches for the sandwich shop she’s looking for. With a start she realizes she’s been wandering around the city for over three hours, looking for a single pair of elusive blue eyes, and she doesn’t even feel frustrated by it. She’s eager to find Brittany again, and she’s a little nervous about what will happen when she does, and she’s more than a little hungry as she finally finds the sandwich shop Tina suggested.

The warm air blasts her face when she opens the door and she takes a moment just inside the entryway to stomp some feeling back into her toes and huffs hot breath into her palms, wiggling her fingers until it feels less like her joints are aching with cold. There’s hope leaping under her sternum that she can’t squash even when she doesn’t catch sight of any heads of golden hair. She heads to the counter and places her order, and spices and fresh bread fills her nose and makes her even hungrier. Belatedly she realizes that, aside from a hastily eaten granola bar from this morning and her coffee, she hasn’t actually ate anything all day, and her stomach grumbles loudly at the thought. Thankfully it’s loud enough in the shop that she’s sure there’s no way anyone heard, but her cheeks heat up anyways. She waits at the other counter, watching three people get up to retrieve their late lunch or early supper, impatiently listening to the numbers count up towards hers.

She calls Sugar a couple times while she eats but only gets her voicemail, and her text messages stay on read, and she wants to be frustrated but it’s just so like Sugar to be sitting somewhere laughing at Santana, so, she can’t really stay mad for too long. She tries Facebook again but realizes she forgot to figure out Brittany’s name from her signature because Tina interrupted her, and she mutters a curse under her breath but keeps scrolling through the hundreds of Brittanys on Facebook. After half an hour of finally filling her grumbling stomach and downing a bottle of water, she detours to the bathroom and then exits the shop, feeling refreshed again. She picks a direction and starts wandering, because it worked out well last time.

The sun is starting its descent and it feels almost like winter in the shade of the buildings around her. She shivers and cuddles closer into her jacket, fingering the picture pressed against her phone as she wanders the streets and desperately tries to figure out where to find Brittany.

She comes across a small park and she smiles briefly, crossing the street to enter it. Almost all of Brittany’s photographs were taken outside, and based on what Brittany told her of her habit of walking to clear her mind Santana figures the park is as good a bet as any. The paths are paved and winding, sprinkled with the gold and orange leaves of autumn. Fake cobwebs hang from some trees and sport sloppily carved pumpkins under them; children shriek as they chase each other through the leaves while parents watch on and call out exasperated warnings that are never fully followed. Dogs bark and stretch their leashes to the limit to sniff at strangers and the hint of an acoustic guitar fills the air from the other side of the park.

Santana wanders through the park slowly, chewing on her lip before pulling out her phone, carefully tucking the polaroid back into her pocket.

“This is a fucking long shot,” Santana mutters darkly as she scrolls through her contacts.

Mercedes picks up after the second ring and there’s a bright laugh in her voice. “Santana, who knew the blind date you were dreading would go on for hours and—”

“It’s not— I’m not with her right now,” Santana interrupts.

Mercedes grows quiet and sombre. “Geez, Santana, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“The date went perfectly,” Santana interrupts again.

Mercedes hesitates. “So,” she trails off and Santana can hear her confusion over the phone.

“It’s— It’s a long story. She— I’m trying to find her but I don’t have her phone number,” Santana explains, running her thumb over the polaroid in her pocket. “Her name’s Brittany and since you and Sam know, like, everyone I was wondering if you, you know, know her?”

Mercedes hums and Santana knows she’s still confused but she answers with a “Hold on a sec,” anyways. Santana waits impatiently as Mercedes’ voice grows distant and muffled. “Sam knows of a Brittany Pierce,” she says within a couple moments. “Is that her?”

Santana’s heart makes the leap from her chest to her throat and she stumbles over an invisible crack in the sidewalk as she tries to force it down. She shouldn’t get her hopes up, but she does anyway. “Blonde hair, blue eyes? Freckles and dancer’s body? She’s taking photography at Tisch?” she prompts frantically, “She has smile that could make flowers grow?” Santana bites down on her lip hard enough to ache as that the last descriptor makes it through, and she can practically hear Mercedes’ smug smile through her phone. “Please forget I said that,” she begs, “You can make fun of me later but I need a lead on this girl ‘Cedes.”

“Aww, Satan,” Mercedes coos, “you sound like you’re blushing.”

“Oh fuck off, Wheezy.”

Mercedes laughs and her voice gets muffled again for a moment, the rustling of cloth against the speaker filling Santana’s steps as she crosses the park, waiting for Mercedes to come back. She takes the polaroid out of her pocket and her heart leaps again as she looks at those blue eyes; she doesn’t know if it’s Brittany’s photography skill or if it’s just Brittany herself, but somehow Santana thinks if she keeps staring at the picture those eyes will start blinking and moving with life. “Yeah,” says suddenly, “Sam says he thinks Brittany Pierce definitely is your girl.”

“Does Sam know anything else about her? Like were she might be right now?”

There’s another muffled pause as Mercedes talks to Sam and Santana doesn’t even realize how fast she’s walking until she almost trips over the back of someone’s shoes. She forces herself to slow down and presses her phone more firmly to her ear. “Sam says he doesn’t have a clue,” Mercedes continues suddenly. “He knows there’s someplace out of the way that she goes when she needs to think but he has no clue where it is. Or where the heck you’d find her in general.”

Something deep in Santana wakes up at that and she suddenly stops walking, people grumbling as they dodge her frozen body in the middle of the pathway but she can’t find it in herself to care. She glances down at the photograph in her hand and catches on those blue eyes again as her mind races and her heart pounds.

Find me.

“Santana? Girl, are you still there?”

“Yeah,” Santana says absently, “I— I gotta go. I think I know where she is.”

The place looks exactly as Santana remembers from the polaroid: a city painted in gold and pink, the buildings dark against the purple sky and the orange of the setting sun, the river flashes in pink and violet and blue, thin clouds converging across the sky. There’s a spruce tree beside the bench overlooking the city and Santana smiles as she crosses the stretch of grass, red and orange leaves crunching under her boots, completely ignoring the breathtaking cityscape in favour of watching the way the wind plays with the golden strands of hair of the lone occupant of the bench.

“You, Brittany Pierce,” Santana greets once she’s close enough, and the figure quickly turns with a gasp, “Are one hard woman to find.”

“Santana!” Brittany says, and the blue eyes Santana has been chasing down all day land on hers and Santana feels warm and bright on the inside. Her lips curl into a smile that makes Santana’s breath catch, but it’s the pure, unfiltered joy in Brittany’s eyes that makes her heart pound throughout her body until her fingertips start tingling again; Brittany’s smiles always start at her eyes, and the knowledge that Brittany’s happiness is currently directed at her makes something tremble deep in Santana’s being.

Santana rounds the bench and sits down beside Brittany, far enough to be respectful but a little too close to be completely friendly. Brittany takes a long moment and searches Santana’s face, her smile never wavering as her eyes dart all over, lingering on Santana’s own dark eyes and Santana’s lips and those damned dimples.

“How’d you end up finding me?” Brittany finally breathes.

Santana smiles wider even as she feels her cheeks flame under Brittany’s warm gaze. “You told me to find you,” she says and she runs her thumb over the picture in her pocket. “So after running around the city all day without a clue I thought back to what you told me.” Santana glances away quickly and gestures at the view in front of them. “You told me to find you,” she repeats, “And so I went to where you found you.”

Brittany’s smile softens and sweetens and the heat continues to creep under Santana’s cheeks. “Why the wild goose chase?” Santana finally asks.

“I wouldn’t call it a goose chase, unless you found some geese today. Then, maybe.”

Santana’s lips curl up without her permission and she leans over and bumps her shoulder against Brittany’s. “You know what I meant, you goofball,” she teases. “Why the set up? Why all this?”

Brittany gestures to the cityscape with her chin. “It’s a romantic view,” she answers without really answering at all. Pink splotches her cheeks as Santana remains silent, studying Brittany steadily and, for the first time, she looks a little nervous. Her teeth bite down into a pink lip and Santana’s eyes are drawn to the worrying movement. “You don’t hate me or something, do you?” she whispers.

Santana can’t help the giggle that escapes her. She shuffles a little closer, shifting her hand along the bench until it bumps against Brittany’s, pinky to pinky. “It was an unconventional day, yes. But no, I definitely don’t hate you for it.”

Brittany relaxes and lets her pinky press more fully against Santana’s; it sets off something fluttering and warm in Santana’s chest. “I saw it in a movie once,” Brittany explains. “Kind of.”

“Why?” Santana prompts softly again when Brittany trails off.

“I thought it was— Like it was fate, or something, I guess. Or a series of coincidences, maybe. But it seemed like the thrill to the chase or something and it,” Brittany trails off again and a small frown line creases the skin of her brow. “I know I’m rambling but I don’t really know why I did it,” she eventually continues, voice quiet and small. “I really, really like you, I think,” she admits and that fluttering thing erupts in Santana’s chest again, she thinks it might be butterflies. “I think I wanted to know if, if it were left up to chance instead of Sugar if you would still— If we would still— If chance would put us together still.”

“I get that,” Santana says softly, and there’s a long charged moment where blue eyes catch on brown.

“Why’d you go looking for me?” Brittany eventually murmurs.

Santana can feel her heartbeat in her fingertips again as she glances away before catching Brittany’s eyes again and something swoops deep in her stomach. “I thought you might be worth the chase.”

Santana can see Brittany’s breath catch in a small gasp and blue eyes dart down to Santana’s lips for a moment before meeting dark eyes again. “And was I? Worth the chase, I mean.”

Santana smiles and nods softly. “Definitely.”

“Okay,” Brittany says, and nods quickly as her smile starts in her eyes and creeps across her lips. “Okay,” she says again, and if Santana didn’t know any better she would think Brittany’s face was getting closer to hers.

It’s not until warm breath tickles her face, alighting her nerves and faintly stinging her cold skin, that she realizes Brittany’s face is getting closer to hers, blue eyes darting down to Santana’s lips before catching back on brown eyes and Santana’s pretty sure her heart stops beating all together.

She should be worried that she doesn’t really know Brittany all that well. She should be pissed that she wasted an entire day scrambling around the city trying to find a single pair of elusive blue eyes. She should be wary that Brittany’s some kind of serial killer and just lured Santana to this bench overlooking the city and the sunset so she had a private spot to murder her. She should be concerned at how fast her heart is pounding and her her hands are sweating like she’s stepping up on stage for the first time all over again.

There’s all of these things that Santana should be, but instead, she tilts her chin up slightly and lets Brittany press soft, pink lips to hers. It’s only a brief press of their mouths, a chaste brush of lips, and still Santana’s soul trembles at the feeling, immediately yearning for more in a way Santana’s never felt before.

Brittany’s eyes flutter open and she searches Santana’s eyes for something, something she seems to find with ease as she slowly pulls away. Santana immediately misses her warmth, and she knows there’s no hiding her dimples as a smile starts to spread across her face, mirroring the one spreading across Brittany’s face too. They settle into the bench again and look out across the river, shoulder to shoulder and pinky to pinky, and Santana soaks in the serenity of the sunset for a moment before she turns her face to Brittany’s, waiting until Brittany’s looking at her. She grins cheekily and haltingly takes Brittany’s hand, sinking into the warmth blooming in her chest when Brittany immediately twists her wrist and tangles their fingers together. “So,” Santana drawls, lolling her head towards Brittany and failing to keep the laughter out of her voice, “do I get your phone number now?”

Brittany’s laugh carries across the cold autumn air and settles warmly in Santana’s chest as she shifts and sinks into Brittany’s shoulder, ink stained fingers squeezing teasingly around hers as she soaks in Brittany’s warmth and the orange sunset.

#brittana #brittany pierce #santana lopez #glee #brittana fanfiction #glee fanfiction #my writing #story: but I can hear my heart pound (and it's reaching out to you)#me two days ago: I have absolutely No Inspiration to write even though I want to #me yesterday after talking to Tilly and writing 8000 words: oh nevermind

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peppy-pilot · 5 years

Note

Do you have any tips for new roleplayers on Tumblr?

//It really depends on just how new this RPer is. Are they new to RPing in general? New to the Tumblr community? New to RPing canon muses? Or OCs? Because any advice to these that’d cover all these bases wouldn’t be anything more than

But okay, I’m going to assume the person is just new to Tumblr RP in itself but has had some RPing experience prior. Feel free to request tips for something more specific if this isn’t what you’re looking for.

Include an About and Rules page among your blog links. This is extremely important because not everyone interprets your muse or RPs the same way you do, so this gives other RPers a headsup on what to expect and how to approach you. Rules also puts RPers at ease on what to avoid and how to make your RPing experience smoother.

Make sure your blog is accessible and readable. Sure, folks would die for aesthetic, and others would be turned off by someone who only uses the extremely basic Tumblr blog formats. All won’t matter if content is absolutely unreadable and your About/Rules/other important links are inaccessible upon visiting the blog. Make sure important links, if they have a custom coding, are at least intuitive in access (as in people can guess where they are without spending hours on searching for it).

A major reminder: Some Tumblr users (such as myself) have vision problems and would rather not want to squint just to read extra-flowery or super tiny text. If you’re going to customize the body of your writing, keep the font simple, avoid cursive, and avoid super-tiny font sizes. Anything smaller than Arial 9 would be unbearable.

Icons aren’t as important as most blogs make them seem to be–a good chunk of us actually don’t mind iconless threads at all! However, if you will be using icons, and canon material is sparse on rendering them in an expression that can be useable, you can definitely borrow other artists’ art–but ask permission first. Do not steal art, and especially do not steal someone else’s icons–even if it’s just screencaps of official media. Making icons even from screencaps is still a lot of hard work and often involves a lot of hours into editing and formatting. Just make your own.

And if you’re going to draw your own art, quality isn’t that important. JUST DRAW. A good chunk of us artist-RPers, in fact, use RP as an opportunity to practice and improve on our abilities to portray expressions and scenes, regardless of quality–especially because they tend to just be fast 10-minute sketches anyway. In fact, that’s the kind of art I would recommend over something far higher quality. Believe me, trying to produce high-quality art for your RP threads all the time will bring in artist’s block faster than you can say “perfectionism”! Be loose, love what you’re doing, and have fun!

You can borrow from other RPers’ headcanons, but be wary of outright using them. Just like art and writing, many writers and RPers aren’t too keen on someone outright stealing their headcanons. With that said, if your headcanon is, coincidentally similar to someone else’s, or happens to be fanon or fandom-accepted (e.g., “I headcanon Fox and Falco are in love!”), then I highly encourage you place your own take on that particular headcanon. People are more than likely to love and appreciate headcanons that diverge a little differnt from others as long as there is a lot of thought into it.

Trim your posts. Trim your posts. Trim your posts. This isn’t even a suggestion or a tip, this is just Tumblr RP ettiquette. If you don’t know how to trim your posts, I highly recommend grabbing XKit and the Editable Reblogs extension for easier trimming. This method helps too.

Don’t stress over replying right away. Tumblr RP is not real-time RP, and a scenario that ought to be taking place within a span of 5 minutes could take 5 weeks to accomplish. A lot of RPers are students and workers with stubborn muses, and even if someone is up at night replying to threads, they may not get to yours on time before they get tired or writer’s block. Remember: RP is a hobby. You are in no obligation to always reply right away, and the same goes for your partner. Be patient with yourself and them.

Last, but not least: Always communicate with your RP partners. Even if you’re a shy bean and not very chatty, being in communication with your RP partner is extremely important. Naybe you want to ship. Maybe you have a great thread idea! Maybe there was something about their reply that made you extremely uncomfortable and you have a right to express it. Maybe you feel your thread isn’t going anywhere and you’d like to start a new one. Maybe RP is just not working out. Don’t leave your partners hanging! And if your partner isn’t approaching you for something, you can always approach them too. But remember: be courteous, be kind, be civil, and be polite. RP acquaintances and partners do not always automatically mean becoming super close friends where you can scream obscenities at each other and everything will be okay. Talk to each other like you would to their face.

And that’s all I got so far! Sorry this got wordy and a little TL;DR, I just hope to cover my bases regarding what to bear in mind for Tumblr RP! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask, though I highly recommend @fuckyeahroleplayadvice more regarding RPing on Tumblr!

#[OOC]#Anonymous

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samuelpboswell · 5 years

Text

Less Is More: Time to Cut Content Bloat & Create Content Connections

When it comes to the craft of writing, my favorite luminary is the late William Zinsser. His book, On Writing Well, is — in my opinion — the definitive work covering its stated subject. On Writing Well is an essential read for anyone who wants to elevate their prose. Zinsser’s primary focal area is word economy. “Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly,” he implores. “Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work?” That last question is especially pertinent to B2B marketing writers. The reader should always be our top concern when penning copy, but in this case, the stakes are even higher. Attention is at a premium with business professionals, so wasted words are especially costly. Content bloat leads to audience abandonment.

via GIPHY In the spirit of Mr. Zinsser, we’re offering up tips on trimming down your writing to make it more punchy and concise. And to do so, we’ll curate advice from top wordsmiths in the marketing game, with a key emphasis on overcoming the most prevalent pitfalls for today’s content creators.

3 Keys to Concise and Compelling B2B Marketing Copy

Rigid formats, giant blocks of text, and unnecessary filler words are banes of succinct writing. Here are some pointers from the experts on conquering them.

#1 - Nix Stringent Word Counts

So many writers are at the mercy of word counts, and it’s a tragedy. We’re told we need to produce at least 1,500 words, so we inject a bunch of unnecessary filler to get there. Does this serve our audience in any way? Hell no. The conundrum is that numerous studies show higher word counts correlating with higher SERP placements. However, this is misguided thinking. Long-form content is fantastic and it’s certainly part of our mix here at TopRank Marketing, but it needs to be valuable. Don’t take my word for it; here’s what Rand Fishkin — co-founder of Moz, and one of the planet’s top authorities on SEO — has to say: “700 more words will not help you reach your goals any more than 7 more words. Create content that helps people. Do it efficiently. Never write an ultimate guide where a single image could more powerfully convey the same value. Trust me; your audience and your bottom line will thank you.” [bctt tweet="700 more words will not help you reach your goals any more than 7 more words. Create content that helps people. Do it efficiently. @randfish" username="toprank"] According to SEMrush’s hierarchy of ranking factors, content length falls below time on site, pages per session, bounce rate, and backlinks in SEO importance. In other words, if excessive wordiness is turning readers away, the number doesn’t really matter all that much. Delivering a quality experience is vastly more valuable. To see what high-performing short-form content looks like in action, check out these examples from IFL Science, courtesy of BuzzSumo.

#2 - Use Every Bit of Space Intentionally

It might not be a writer’s first instinct, but visualization is a helpful practice. Take a step back and look at your content — how it really appears on the page. Are you making the best use of your digital real estate? Ann Handley suggests we take a page from the lead character in Charlotte’s Web, who she says might be the best content marketer in the world: “Think of how Charlotte was able to save a life with just [a few] words,” Handley said during a session at Content Marketing World a couple years back, as relayed by our own Caitlin Burgess. “How can we use our words more intentionally? How can we make a difference?” [bctt tweet="How can we use our words more intentionally? How can we make a difference? @annhandley @MarketingProfs" username="toprank"] Think of each page on the worldwide web as a finite spider web. You only have so much space, and so much thread, to get your points across. Make it count. You might not be saving the life of a radiant pig, but you will be more likely to delight and connect with your audience.

#3 - Banish Buzzword Banality

To celebrate the NCAA Tournament earlier this year, our friends and clients at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions* put together a lighthearted marketing madness bracket, calling out the most overused jargon in the profession. If you find yourself leaning too heavily on any terms listed there, you might want to rethink. It’s not just marketing buzzwords that drag down our copy, though. Content Marketing Institute (CMI)* recently published a rundown of 25 words and phrases to avoid. “Stuffing your sentences and paragraphs with filler and fluff — words and phrases that add zero meaning to what you’re trying to say — is the opposite of clear writing,” author Julia McCoy writes. Many of the items she includes are extremely common, and the types you’re likely to summon out of sheer habit and routine. For instance:

In order to

Really

That

Then

Just

They seem harmless on the surface, barely taking up space. But this is exactly what makes them so insidious. Most often, you can make the exact same point while deleting these words, and you’ll provide a much more crisp and efficient experience for the person on the other end. Here’s an example: In order to write great copy, you’ll really want to avoid using words that you don’t need. If your goal is to be efficient, then it’s just the best choice. We can pare that down to: To write great copy, you’ll want to avoid using words you don’t need. If your goal is to be efficient, it’s the best choice. Six words removed, zero substance lost. Over the long haul, you’ll save readers a lot of time — and keep them more engaged — by adhering to this mindset.

Writing Well (Usually) Means Writing Less

To be clear, long-form writing isn’t always unnecessarily drawn out. In many cases, exploring the full breadth of a subject requires it. Recently I wrote about the example of Backlinko’s Brian Dean, who puts together massive power pages spanning thousands of words. These posts rank and perform so well not because of their word counts, but because of what those words accomplish: they comprehensively break down important topics and provide credibility-building best-answer content for his audience. If you scan through one of these pages, you’ll find the copy is actually quite sparse in its arrangement, divvied into small chunks and broken up by plenty of visuals.

The Final Word

Forget word counts — maximum or minimum. Write as much as it takes to deliver a satisfying best answer, and no more.

Be mindful of space on the page. Keeping in mind that a majority of users don’t make it very far into online articles, consider leading with your most critical points, or even offering a brief summary atop each new piece of content.

And before you hit publish, challenge yourself to delete every single word throughout that isn’t tied to a specific, tangible purpose. You might even consider printing out the jargon lists from LinkedIn and CMI as references for your cleaning.

The three guiding principles above might sound simple, but they don’t come naturally to even the most seasoned writers. And overthinking word economy during the drafting process can badly hamper creativity and productivity. Focus first on getting your thoughts on the page, clearly and coherently. Later, you can go back and — as Zinsser puts it — prune ruthlessly. “Writing is hard work,” says Zinsser. “A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.” Indeed it is. But in the immortal words of Jeff Bezos, “You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” You also earn trust, authority, and — ultimately — business. So, grab your shears and let’s get to work. Pruning and optimizing your content can happen post-launch, too. Check out our piece on why refreshing existing content is great for your audience and results. * Disclosure: LinkedIn and CMI are TopRank Marketing clients.

The post Less Is More: Time to Cut Content Bloat & Create Content Connections appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2019/05/writing-concise-compelling-b2b-content/

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endlessarchite · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

I realize how pretentious it is to both ask myself a question and answer it, but it did seem like I should in this case (maybe). It might seem like a random decision, which would then be fair to question. The answer has many personal reasons (that’s one of the answers, actually, ha!).

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

The first reason is that mainly, from time to time, I get busy with a project that I am working on, but I have nothing worth posting about it until it reaches the next step. Or a project gets interrupted by something unexpected, like a plumbing problem, and while I’m putting out that fire (dude, I hope not literally), I have nothing to say (both because the frustration of it has made me silent/drunk or I’m internally panicking). Or for the first time since deciding to run the blog full-time, I am planning a vacation that will involve totally disconnecting from the backend duties of running the site (I tried to take a vacation last year and it was a disaster; I was gone for two weeks but didn’t really get more than a couple of true days “away”, and the mess I had to juggle when I got back added more stress than I relieved… pretty sure the site actually crashed, too, but I’ve blacked it out).

As a control freak, I also want to keep a somewhat regular flow of content on this site. When I first started blogging, there weren’t things like Instagram or Pinterest, so it made it less odd to have really short posts mixed into the longer tutorials; that doesn’t fit as well now. And simply being the nature of DIY home improvement tutorials needing to be somewhat long to go through steps properly (especially home repair), I spend a good deal of time whenever I work on the lengthier pieces (trying to make sure I’m accurate with instructions, if I have to look up manufacturer’s recommendations, etc.). The only way to make both sides of that coin happy (in my opinion), is to add a few more small DIY projects in advance. I could go ahead and try to create those myself for rainy days, and I am to a degree, but having enough of that requires a little more time than I seem to have anymore (someone, please tell me how I managed to renovate, go to grad school, run this blog, and have a regular job??… I can’t seem to remember how all that space existed). So, the simple solution is to add a great blog contributor (or two) who have some awesome ideas of their own to share. Thankfully, they’ve agreed to do that, and you’ll see these projects about once a month as long as I keep my shit together (I fully anticipate that this will be a learning process for me).

I like to experiment.

(My brain is already going to weird places; I’m tired.) Throughout this blog, I’ve thrown random things into the mix to see what works. I like trying new tools, new designs, new trends, new products. My writing style pretty much always reflects those moods. Doing these things is really the only way the blog has ever grown or kept me motivated to try again; some things work, and some things don’t. But I learn, and that’s fun for me. This is one of those things where I think it could be cool to add to the blog and see what happens… out of plain curiosity.

(I also wrote about a similar concept a long time ago, when I was in grad school; I read a book that really resonated with me that was all about taking these small steps to see where things go. Through experimenting, you can find momentum in the strangest places and build on it. I’ve tried it before, and that led me to invest time in my blog, to starting my own business, and more. It’s taught me to not be as afraid to try something and see if it works — paint my countertop: why not? turn a bowl into a light fixture? let’s see what happens!)

Also, on any given day, I will come up with an idea for a post but don’t have the time to research it well enough, such as a new design trend. That’s where my pal Caroline can come in. She will find cool design ideas, or a new artist, or take a new twist on a craft idea she did with a friend. Just seeing what she picks out of the same concept versus what I do has been really refreshing.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

As an enthusiastic home improvement addict with slight nerd tendencies, I love getting to do this. Every day. It’s ridiculously fun and cool. Even when it’s hard or things in my house break or it seems a lot more like a job than I ever realized (conference calls, signing contracts, constantly learning new tools as an entrepreneur, Facebook and Pinterest changing their rules or algorithms again, etc.). I don’t plan on jumping ship or totally burning out, but that’s not really a thing you can plan for either. In my heart of hearts, I’m a writer. I love storytelling. I love the journey this house has taken me on. I love connecting with people who are nuts for DIY like I am (both bloggers and non-blogging readers alike, despite how awkward I am to meet in person!). But writer’s block is a thing that still happens regardless of your efforts sometimes, and I’ve never found a successful way to avoid it completely. I can sense a difference in myself, my writing, and my creativity when I’ve had a chance to take a break and refresh. I need to feel inspired and sort of flush out the bad blockages that occur from time to time (ok, that metaphor was just plain gross and probably made you assume I was talking about plumbing again — mental blockages is what I mean).

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

I know. Hell hath frozen over, and I bought an Instant Pot. Or the plain reality is that I’ve been wanting to save more money by cooking at home, and scrambled eggs on toast will only be delicious for so long (who am I kidding — it will be awesome, always). I have a few quick recipes from when I was in college and studied abroad — I had cravings for food I couldn’t find anywhere, and it created some things I still eat for dinner to this day when I am short on time. I have old recipes from my family, handwritten and handed down, and I’d really like to start learning them all, too. It was one of the things my Granny loved to do most when she was alive. And since I’m doing all of this anyway, why not share it from time to time?

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

This blog has always been a very personal one, where I share a lot of ins and outs about what’s going on in my life. Cooking is something new I’ve added to that mix, but since it’s so new, I offered for one of my blog design clients to contribute some of their recipes as well (since my new Recipes page will be quite sparse by comparison to the 1200+ posts I have written so far about DIY). This will just give people who come to the site looking for food ideas to have a little more substance.

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

Plus, she’s also giving me some new cocktail ideas to try. You know… for when that unanticipated renovation problem happens and I just really need to solve it with something other than beer or wine (or you know… throwing things).

To make room.

I guess in some ways, this is a way to try to bring some “balance” into time I’m at home for work/DIY versus time I’m at home to just enjoy my home. I’ve been setting annual goals with similar intentions and this is part of realizing that. Working from home is awesome, except when you have a really difficult time pulling yourself away from work. I’m pretty bad at shutting the computer off.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

As my home and each room reaches more and more of a completed state (and no longer needs as many huge overhauls from where I first started), I’m going to be looking for the next big project. It’s on my mind a lot. I expect that this will also mean new homes to renovate, or investment properties, or maybe even something a little more unconventional than that. But I need room to do those things, to think about these things, both as a business and for my own sense of what the future holds. So, adding contributors is one of the ways I can make that space and breathing room to figure out what’s next (it’s more of a mental thing than anything else).

What this doesn’t mean…

There are marketers, PR email lists, and freelance writers who email bloggers in droves to ask to “contribute helpful articles” as a means to advertise for free. This isn’t what I’m intending to do with contributors. I consider that “fluff” content and hate reading generic info guides; I am a blogger, but also a blog reader, and I don’t want to put things on the site that I wouldn’t want to read myself. You’re only going to see the small number of people I have personally hand-picked to contribute their own trend posts, DIY tutorials, or recipes, similar to how I post things from my own point of view.

What this means for you

I know I’ve said it before, but it really can’t be said enough: I really like you guys (*virtual hug* – or if you’re not the hugging type, *awkward side-hug and a dorky high five*). As much as writing a blog like this is a very personal thing, I also know that this blog wouldn’t be successful without your support and encouragement. It means a lot. A kind comment has the power to make my whole day/week/month. So, I also decided to add contributors to give you guys more inspiration and give you guys more great content. And I hope you’ll enjoy that and embrace these folks who are adding their awesome DIY and recipe ideas to the mix at the UDH. You rock. And they do too. Y’all should meet.

What this means for the site

In the coming days/weeks, you’ll be seeing posts that introduce these folks to you as well as their first posts that are getting rolled out. You’ll also see a new link at the top in the menu bar to add Recipes as its own thing and one of my favorite recipes that I may even be eating tonight (it doesn’t make much sense to have it in the Project Gallery, anyway). You’ll also be able to discover a new Contributors page when that gets finalized (I still need to add a few links and then you’ll see info on everyone), which will have contributor bios and links to their blogs. This will be a way to organize posts for each person (so that you can see the posts that belong to a specific contributor if you decide you like them and want to see more of what they’ve done).

That’s all for now… I have a coffee pot with my name on it and some dogs who need snuggling. I’ll have some new DIYs for you very soon (including the bathroom mood board!) and hope you’re having a wonderful and productive week!

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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Announcing Contributors to the UDH! published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

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chocdono · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from mix1 http://ift.tt/2vNO8X5 via with this info

#mix1

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primaryideasuk · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

via Primary Ideas http://ift.tt/2vNO8X5

#IFTTT #Primary Ideas

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sherlocklexa · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from car2 http://ift.tt/2vNO8X5 via as shown a lot

#car2

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prolistsite · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

Read more http://ift.tt/2vNO8X5 Areas served: Winston-Salem, High Point, Yadkinville, Mocksville, Advance, Clemmons, Kernersville, Greensboro, Walnut Cove, Statesville, NC, North Carolina Services: House painting, roofing, deck building, landscaping, Carpentry, Flooring, tile, hardwood, remodeling, home improvement, interior, exterior

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darensmurray · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

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petraself · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

Announcing Contributors to the UDH! published first on http://ift.tt/1kI9W8s

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garagedoorsbrighton · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from The Ugly Duckling House https://www.uglyducklinghouse.com/announcing-contributors-udh/

#The Ugly Duckling House

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bespokekitchesldn · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from The Ugly Duckling House https://www.uglyducklinghouse.com/announcing-contributors-udh/

#The Ugly Duckling House

0 notes

endlessarchite · 7 years

Text

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

I like to experiment.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

To make room.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

What this doesn’t mean…

What this means for you

What this means for the site

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

Announcing Contributors to the UDH! published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

0 notes