My interwebz is down so I figured I’d go ahead and post this up. I’m really proud of this. For my Screen Design class, we had to take a fairytale and retell it in however we wanted in storyboard form. I chose the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Just as a heads-up, I’ve replaced the bears with Ursa Major/Ursa Minor, the constellation based on a bear.
I could always tell the story myself, but I figured I should let the art do the talking and only answer questions if you’re curious about it. The only hint I’ll give is to pay attention to the faces of the characters. ;D
This sucker took me 3 days to work on. I’m dead, man. ;_;
Writing is a process that often undergoes heavy edits… that includes responding to feedback.
I had no idea this post would resonate with so many people. I let my vitriol surrounding several comments I received on a recent update get to me and it spilled out into .gif form and it’s now morphed into the most widely shared thing I’ve ever posted. So many comments and tags have said things along the lines of, “This was why I quit writing” or “This is why I hate writing fanfic.” And that’s soul crushing to hear, but I can relate.
But while there are some crappy and entitled readers, there are also many brilliant ones and I’m so grateful for them. The huge response to this post made me go back and skim through the comments on my old stories, and comments like the one below are about half the reason some of those stories got finished, even if it was months later.
Comments like these are so rare, but when they do come up, they leave me staring at my computer screen, drumming my fingers on the keyboard, struggling to convey my feelings about how their words have touched my heart. These are the comments that take the longest amount of time to respond to and the ones that cause me to wear out my backspace key the fastest.
It’s easy to complain, but it’s literally just as easy to praise, so I just wanted to take a moment to recognize all those dear and dedicated readers who have propped me up when I wanted to quit. Readers like you are why I keep writing, and why I even feel honored to do it on rare occasion.
And fellow writers, keep your heads up if you can. 🙂
Lucy stalks past a collection of terrified new recruits, shoving past the training officer and stomping her way down towards the training room. There’s no Alex there, just as there’d been no Alex in her lab, or her office, or command, or satcomm, or the weaponry, or the kryptonite training room, or J’onn’s office, or the locker room. Alex’s badge hasn’t logged out of the building yet, so she’s somewhere in the DEO. Lucy just has to find her.
“Kara!” Lucy yells towards the ceiling, arms folded over her chest and foot tapping on the floor as the seconds click by until Kara whooshes into the room, cape swirling around her and the whole floor shaking when she lands.
“What’s going on? What is it?”
“Where,” Lucy says calmly. “Is your goddamned sister?”
“Alex?” Kara’s nose wrinkles. “You yelled at me because you need Alex?”
“Kara,” Lucy snaps. “Where the hell is she?”
“Server room, I think?” Kara shrugs. “Can I go? I’m helping J’onn with–”
Lucy’s already out of the room, marching to the server room. It’s three floors down and she stomps every single step of the way. It’s been nearly a week since she saw Alex. A week since the last time they spoke. A week since they had a few drinks– not too many, for once, just a few, a reasonable amount that would definitely not have impaired any of Alex’s cognition– and Lucy kissed Alex. A week since Lucy said I’ve wanted to do that for a long time and Alex kissed her back and they went back to Lucy’s apartment. A week since Lucy woke up alone, just early enough to feel the warm spot Alex had left in her bed and hear the quick snick of her front door closing.
The server room is freezing as always, and Lucy stalks through the cold air until she rounds a corner and nearly collides with Alex.
“You!” she says, pointing ludicrously and dramatically at Alex.
“What the–” Alex barely catches the laptop that she dropped when Lucy materialized at her side. “What the hell?”
“That’s my line!” Lucy half-yells. “You’ve been avoiding me for a week and what the hell, Alex!”
“I’m not avoiding–”
“Nuh uh,” Lucy snaps. “Nice try. You bailed on girls’ nights drinks with me and Kara and Lena. You never miss that. You didn’t even miss that when you got blown up and were dying.”
“I was never dying,” Alex says mildly.
“Point is, Danvers,” Lucy says, stabbing a finger into Alex’s shoulder and shoving. “We literally work side by side every day and I haven’t seen you in a week. You’re avoiding me and I want to know why.”
“I’m not–” Alex starts, only to cut herself off with a sigh when Lucy glares at her again. “I’m sorry. I just– needed to deal with some stuff.”
“Some stuff at six AM on a Saturday morning when you ghosted me in my own apartment?” Lucy can’t keep her voice steady, hurt welling up from the knot in her abdomen and pushing into her words. She slumps against one of the server banks, hands hanging down at her sides.
“I’m sorry,” Alex says softly. “I didn’t mean to–”
“You walked out,” Lucy says. “While I was asleep. After I told you how much– how I felt. What part of bailing after I told you how I felt about you didn’t you mean?”
Alex pushes at her hair, sucking in a sharp breath and pacing six steps down the row of servers and then back.
“I needed to sort some things out,” she says, finally, slowly. “And I couldn’t do that in your bed.”
“What could you possibly have needed to think about so analytically at the asscrack of dawn on a Saturday that you couldn’t do–”
“You,” Alex says, cutting her off quietly. “I had to– because it’s you, Luce. Because I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.”
Lucy’s legs give out momentarily and she slides halfway down the server behind her, barely catching herself before she falls all the way down because Alex Danvers just said that she was in love with her. She gives up and lets herself slide the rest of the way down to sit on the floor, thunking heavily down onto the cold concrete.
“What?” That can’t be her voice, wobbly and weak as it is, but Alex sits down carefully in front of her, legs crossed and hands wound together in front of her.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” Alex says carefully. “And last weekend was– it was a lot, it was everything, but we hadn’t talked about it at all and I couldn’t think straight about anything when you were right there next to me. I can’t think around you, not really, so I had to remove you from the equation until I sorted things out.”
“Remove me from the equation,” Lucy echoes. “So you could sort things out. And this is what you came up with? Dropping that on me in the server room with no warning?”
“To be fair, you found me down here and yelled at me,” Alex points out. “I was just down here running some diagnostics for Winn and you came after me.”
“You were avoiding me,” Lucy says faintly.
“And I’d planned to talk to you after work today,” Alex says. “About– this. About how I felt. I just didn’t want to do it at work, is all.”
“Right,” Lucy says. She shakes her head and blinks rapidly, forcing her mind to center itself. “Are you serious about all of this?”
“Yeah,” Alex says. The skin over her knuckles goes red and then pale as she grips at her own hands tightly, and Lucy stares down at it for long seconds.
“We should go on a date,” she says suddenly, blinking owlishly. “Tonight.”
“We should?” Alex says. “A date?”
“Yes.” Lucy nods once, short and sharp. “A date.”
“Because you–”
“Want to go on a date with you,” Lucy finishes for her. “Tonight. And then we’re going back to my place and you’re not leaving until at least after we’ve had breakfast.”
The sharp lines of tension visible in Alex’s shoulders disappear and she smiles, relieved and tired and bright, and Lucy’s stomach turns over on itself again because she’s going on a date with Alex Danvers.
“I have to go,” she says abruptly, scrambling up to her feet. She’s still in the tactical gear she wore for munitions training this morning, and she’s been procrastinating for months on getting a haircut, and she only has four hours until they’re going to go on a date.
“Bye?” Alex says, still sitting bewildered on the floor even when Lucy’s halfway to the door. Lucy spins on her heel and speedwalks back over, grabbing at Alex’s hands and yanking her up to standing so she can kiss her, short and entirely inappropriate, before half-jogging out of the server room.
General Danvers ‘The Heat’ au, from a discussion with @alittlelesspain
Astra as Shannon, the detective, and Alex as Sarah, the FBI Special Agent. Alura as Astra’s despairing Captain. Hank as Alex’s superior officer.
So, Alex and Astra are forced to work together in an attempt to take down the local drug cartel. The plot is pretty much the same, except its gay.
But basically, think of specific scenes.
Astra, the leather jacket wearing, Rosa Diaz aesthetic detective, meeting Alex, with her proper suits and dead straight short hair, and thinking, I am not working with this incredibly attractive incredibly irritating looking woman. Going on the ‘where are the captain’s balls’ rant when Alura explains that they have to work together. Alura sitting there with her head in her hand while Astra prowls around the office looking for her balls, and when its finally over, she stands up, puts her hands on her sister’s shoulders, and says, ‘are you done now? Is it over? Do you feel better?’
Astra grumbles and lets her sister hug her and agrees to work with Alex, but threatens that she might end up destroying those stupid suits.
Alex, in turn, seeing this tall, athletic, beautiful detective with a scowl like thunder, seeing her methods and her attitude, and turning to Hank to say, ‘I can’t work with her’. Hank asks if its because she’s unprofessional or because Alex finds her attractive. Alex turns bright red. ‘Me? Why would you say that?! Maybe you’re attracted to her, hA!’ ‘I am a married gay man, Agent Danvers’.
On their way to stake out a night club, a car beeps, and Alex sees a small, well dressed woman turn in her seat, her fingers splayed in a V over her mouth, her tongue stuck through, and Astra flips her off as she goes past. ‘Who was that?’ Alex asks, thinking that perhaps it was Astra’s girlfriend. Astra grumbles. ‘Our DA, Lucy Lane. And my sister’s girlfriend’. Astra tells Alex that unless she wants to watch Alura freak out in the middle of the precinct because she’s shy and wants to keep things professional in the work space, she should refrain from mentioning her relationship with Lucy. (‘How dARE yOU detectIVE iN-Ze I AM yOUr suPeRIOr ofFICER!!!’ ‘Sister you’ve been going out for two years’ ‘mE slEEP wiTH a LAWYER??’ Alura learnt a lot from her mentor, Captain Holt)
At the club, Astra fits in easily, and takes it upon herself to ‘fix’ Alex’s look so that she fits in. Alex being flustered and irritated in equal measure when Astra takes a knife to her favourite shirt, rips her pants off, insults her spanks and ruffles her hair so that its no longer straight. Foreshadowing.
Question of Smoke 