LJ doesn't love me either. So sad. :( What do you think of the following:
“Hullo, Logan,” Xavier says. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Free food,” the man says, turning around. “How you doing, Chuck?”
“Fine,” Xavier says. He looks like he’s having the time of his life; his cheeks are flushed from a combination of the heat of the room and the beers he’s already had, and his smile is threatening to take over his entire face. Erik huffs a laugh; of course Xavier would be old school in his use of “fine.” “I wanted to introduce you to Erik,” he continues.
Logan grabs a beer and pops the cap with the enormous metal ring on his finger. “That’s nice. Have a beer,” he says, passing the beer to Erik. He opens two more, passing one to Xavier and keeping one for himself.
Xavier takes it as he completes his introductions. “Erik Lehnsherr, Logan. He only has one name that I’ve been able to discern.”
“Like Madonna,” Erik says, baitingly.
He’s eminently satisfies when Logan bares his teeth at him. “Right. Well, this has been fun,” he says insincerely. “But now I have free food and beer, and I’m leaving.”
“Oh,” Xavier says, startled. It’s probably the first time in his life that someone hasn’t fallen for his charm. “All right.”
Logan waves a hand at them and lumbers off.
“Well,” Xavier says finally. “That was Logan.”
Erik nods, not particularly interested.
“He’s been here for a few years now.” Xavier takes a few pulls from his beer bottle, looking at Erik expectantly.
“That’s nice,” Erik says eventually when it becomes clear that he’s actually expected to participate in the conversation. “How’d you meet him?”
“It’s actually rather fascinating,” Xavier says excitedly. “You missed the meeting on fostering cross-disciplinary work—”
“I deliberately chose not to go to the meeting,” Erik corrects him.
“But there’s some fascinating work that’s going on now, particularly in the smaller programs. And Logan was there as an example of some of it. He’s thinking of changing his thesis a little and devoting more time to the Roman Empire. He started out studying ancient Syrian languages, but he’s recently become interested in the cult of Mithras, both in and outside of Syria.”
“Can he do that?” Erik asks.
“Probably. He did a fair amount of independent research during some personal trips to Rome.”
“Couldn’t he get funding?”
Xavier shrugs. “Possibly. He didn’t mention it. Anyhow, it’ll most likely just mean another year or two of extra work and maybe some more work abroad.”
Erik snorts. “Just. Right.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, blinking in confusion.
“I mean it must be nice to not worry about finances when planning an academic career.” He downs the rest of his beer. “Not all of us have that option.”
“Right.” Xavier laughs shortly. It sounds a little strange; Erik looks over at him, but he’s looking at the ground.
Still hating the "fight," but I can't think of anything better with which to replace it. :(
There are things for me to do! Which I am doing and also trying to Google things to read for title ideas whilst I have to wait on our systems to finish uploading.
One of our recycling bins here is apparently named Melvin. This seems like the kind of vitally important information about my life that I should let you know. :D
Yes it is!!! Vitally important to my health and happiness :) I told you that our car is named Leviathan, right?
I LOVE the suggestion of title but I can't remember what we decided about using Latin in the titles. I might be kind of against it? Though I could be talked out of it? It just seems kind of inaccessible--although if we're writing this for us, I don't know if we care about that :) The bottom like is that I would be happy doing either buy have a slight preference for calling it "Either I shall find a way." and leaving out the rest of the quote because I am pretentious like that. And then using the full quote in latin for an epigram?
What do you think?
(Also meeting is finally over! Will be able to respond much more quickly--until phone dies at least!)
before moira, can we discuss erik's roommate again? so i know we discussed having him have this really quiet roommate, and i like that, but maybe that was his roommate for his masters? and then his roommate for all of college was this really loud, really fratty guy who wasn't in the room a lot, but when he was, he tried to teach erik perfect english and get him to join him, etc. but because he was gone a lot, erik never asked for a transfer. still very different from charles in many respects, but sort of a friend of his. mostly because i think of his americanisms as being a result of rooming with him. something like:
"Your funeral," Erik says. It's something he picked up from his roommate in college, along with a near-native ability to curse, a working knowledge of American slang, and a talent for shotgunning beer.
Err, can we also discuss Moira? I'm pretty certain I don't have a clear grasp on what you want to do, based on the snippet you sent today? I can reply to both things when I'm not on phone.
For Moira, I was working off the following backstory, which I've copied and pasted from our email exchanges:
What if they were set up by mutual friends, and he went on dates with Moira and got to know her as they dated, and so Raven points out that he's done this before? And Charles is like, no, no, we were already dating first. ... Moira was a few years older than Charles and doing a study abroad at Oxford or getting a masters there, perhaps during his second year at Oxford, and when she went back to the states, they couldn't make it work but stayed friends. ... [They] dated for a little while, but then maybe they broke up mutually and they were out of contact for a little while, but each got over it healthily and so now they have no problem being good friends with no kind of lingering history (but Erik still is a little jealous irrationally, because he's Erik?).
There are no lingering feelings, and they're both fine with the breakup, and they've communicated (probably a lot, once it became clear Charles was going to join her there), but only via email, never in person. The weirdness that I see between them is simply the fact that they haven't seen each other in person since they broke up. So it's going to be a little weird, but when Erik returns, they're talking about some bar in the area that she recommended to him, and he's asks her if it's the one that some guy took her on their first date, so it's clear that most of it was just that they hadn't gotten together in person? And I'm happy to make it explicit it via Charles' conversation with Erik after she leaves, how he says that he's so glad the first meeting awkwardness was out of the way, because they're such good friends, and it's delightful to see her here, etc.
I just think that there's always going to be some weirdness when you first start spending time as friends with someone you once dated, no matter how platonic the relationship now is. Possibly based on my own experiences, but I really can't imagine it going any other way. And it'll wear off quickly, but I wanted a recognition of that.
Do you have problems with the entirety of the backstory we created for them?
I will admit that I kind of forgot about that and now I'm not sure I'm still on board with it, since it poses some problems. (I also feel like I said something different while we were watching Penelope [wanting them to have dated briefly but be close/fine with each other at the time of our AU beginning].) So, kind... of? or well, upon thinking about it there are ways it's problematic for me with some of the other character adjustments we've done?
Anyway, the first thing that comes to mind is, if Moira's older than Charles by that degree, is there a reason why she's just starting to get her Ph.D. at the same time now? I see her as being really focused and driven, so I'd want there to be a valid reason for her being a first year doctoral student at the same time as Charles. (and if she's not a first year, then when does the keg race take place/would she be graduated at that time/near graduating etc).
It also seems extremely bizarre to me that Moira would confront Erik at the second mixer, but she and Charles don't actually interact face-to-face until the birthday party. Would they be aware that they'd be going to the same school? If so, and if they are fine with each other, why wouldn't they just get the first meeting out of the way sooner than that, especially if they're going to be working in the same department?
And I agree that awkwardness can be there (putting aside personal experience, because for me it's been the opposite, unless the break up was horrible), but if it's just "I haven't seen you in person in a while" awkwardness, I'd want it addressed why they put it off (because I could see Charles putting it off, I guess, but I feel like Moira would want to be direct about it, knowing that they were going to be working together).
I also don't really like that part of the exchange between Charles and Raven the more I think about it, so I'm probably going to rework that majorly once I get to it. :/
I'M SORRY. I know I'm being difficult about this, I'm just not totally in love with the idea and can't entirely decide if Moira would actually want to date Oxford!Charles/I like the idea of Charles being arrogant at Oxford more than I do the ex angle, and I have trouble reconciling these two things.
I kind of have mixed feelings about that. Is there a reason why loud fratty guy wouldn't be living with his frat? (I will state Erik in a frat does not work at all for me.) How long would they have been roommates? Is there a reason why he would try to teach perfect English to Erik? If he did, would Erik want to go along with that? (idk, maybe it's the phrasing of teaching him perfect English, but it sounds kind of condescending to me and I can't really see Erik being a willing student.)
Picking up slang and cursing feels like more of a teenager thing to me (which yeah, I know he'd still be a teenager starting, but I guess on the more juvenile teenager end, like being fourteen and all, haha, let's learn swear words) and possibly the sort-of thing that could have happened while he was at Gymnasium. IDK, just a thought.
erik in a frat definitely doesn't work for me, either. i used fratty to mean the type of guy who stereotypically would be in a frat, not necessarily someone who is in a frat. so big drinker/partier, a little crazy, etc. (not that i think erik is like this either.)
the perfect english thing is my phrasing, not theirs. just that he'd correct erik if he made a mistake or fix his idioms, etc. i think at the end of the day that erik would think that knowledge is knowledge, particularly since it wouldn't be his roommate sitting down and actually teaching him these things in any sort of formal way. and that erik is smart and cares about his fluency and would make a mental note of these things and not do it again.
i suppose it could happen in gymnasium, but i see erik as still fluctuating between being withdrawn and aggressive in Gymnasium, mostly as the result of shaw, whom i see him viewing as a surrogate older brother. as a result, he didn't have close friends then, certainly no one from whom he'd pick up slang. i also think that the ability to curse properly is one of the biggest distinctions between native and non-native speakers, and erik would take care to learn it.
i picture erik's roommate as some big, blond all-american type who drinks and parties and is a womanizer and likes a good time. he's not in the room that often, and he doesn't throw parties there, and he doesn't bring girls back, and he probably couch surfs a lot with friends after a night of heavy drinking. but when he does come back to the room, he kind of likes his quiet, somewhat geeky roommate and likes to shoot the shit with him. erik doesn't think about him a lot, because while they were roommates for two years, he wasn't around all that often, but he picked up a lot from him.
i think the reason they lived together for that long is for the reason that lots of guys that i know had the same roommates from freshman year on: for a lot of them, as soon as you find someone that you can live with, it's just not worth it to find someone else. so they lived together freshman and sophomore year, and then ask soon as erik was able to find a single, he moved into a single, and his roommate moved into a huge party suite with some of his friends.
Haha, as you can see, I'm really nitpicky, but I just wanted to clarify to make sure there isn't like, misunderstanding? :D?
and I'm okay with it being that way. it just didn't entirely sound like it was that way in the first mention? I can see Erik being okay with that; I couldn't really see him being okay if his roommate was just like, you speak English weird, let me teach you the right way?
properly howso? I'm just curious since my roommate was taught how/what context to swear in Germany by her German speaking friend before she could actually converse in normal conversation. then again, I swear a lot and so do most of my friends, so that could be it, too. (really, I clean up my internet conversation a lot, haha.)
I'm good with all of that, I think. I think the other thing that slightly confused me was the original phrasing about how his roommate would try to get Erik to join him a lot or something and it confused me why Erik would be friends with that guy but be annoyed at Charles being around all the time etc.
it's all :D no charles raised eyebrows of doom here!
sometimes i forget that other people don't live in my brain and automatically know what i'm thinking when i say things. words are a very imperfect medium; i'm going to have to develop telepathy. :)
oh, i don't mean properly like when it's appropriate. i mean properly like saying things like "what the fuck?" which isn't something you'd pick up in school. or "what the hell is wrong with you" or things like that. how to use curses in normal sentences, rather than just as expletives.
in terms of his roommate trying to get erik to join him, i just meant that he'd probably be like, "hey, man, come out for a beer with us tonight," and erik would make a face, and say "no, thank you," and then his roommate would mimic him and say, "no, thank you," with exactly the same intonation, and so erik would throw something at him and say, "fuck off," and the roommate would cheer and hold a hand out for a fist bump and say, "that's more like it!" and erik would roll his eyes and go back to ignoring him, and the roommate would leave.
YAY. :D :D I am too! like I said, I don't want it to seem like me being intractable means I don't like the way our story is going, because it means the opposite? :D?
GOOD. That's the important part. :D :D
as terrible as I am? because I am just like IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER? :D?
it does! i mean, i'm with you, if you mean, it's awesome now and keeps getting better? because that's basically where i am. i'm so excited for charles' feelings during move in! and erik's feelings during charles' birthday! and halloween! and thanksgiving! AND FEELINGS OKAY SO MANY MANY MANY FEELINGS.
yes! exactly! that's what i mean. :D :D I AM SO EXCITED TOO. <3 <3 FEELINGS EVERYWHERE. (and you're really fine with me like, wanting to undo the backstory? It won't be a problem for the birthday story or the bowls or??)
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Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-13 09:45 pm (UTC)Still hating the "fight," but I can't think of anything better with which to replace it. :(
Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-13 10:42 pm (UTC)(Maybe take out one of the fascinatings?)
:/ Hmm, I will go through the fight more later tonight with how it fits with the story?
Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-13 11:03 pm (UTC)How's work going?
Phones are such an amazing invention: I am texting right before my meeting starts :)
Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-13 11:09 pm (UTC)Aww, yay! :D :D
Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-14 01:02 am (UTC)Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-14 01:13 am (UTC)I LOVE the suggestion of title but I can't remember what we decided about using Latin in the titles. I might be kind of against it? Though I could be talked out of it? It just seems kind of inaccessible--although if we're writing this for us, I don't know if we care about that :) The bottom like is that I would be happy doing either buy have a slight preference for calling it "Either I shall find a way." and leaving out the rest of the quote because I am pretentious like that. And then using the full quote in latin for an epigram?
What do you think?
(Also meeting is finally over! Will be able to respond much more quickly--until phone dies at least!)
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Date: 2012-02-13 11:01 pm (UTC)Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-13 11:06 pm (UTC)Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-13 11:10 pm (UTC)Re: Logan suggestions
Date: 2012-02-14 01:56 am (UTC)Re: Logan suggestions
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Date: 2012-02-13 11:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-15 09:25 pm (UTC)before moira, can we discuss erik's roommate again? so i know we discussed having him have this really quiet roommate, and i like that, but maybe that was his roommate for his masters? and then his roommate for all of college was this really loud, really fratty guy who wasn't in the room a lot, but when he was, he tried to teach erik perfect english and get him to join him, etc. but because he was gone a lot, erik never asked for a transfer. still very different from charles in many respects, but sort of a friend of his. mostly because i think of his americanisms as being a result of rooming with him. something like:
"Your funeral," Erik says. It's something he picked up from his roommate in college, along with a near-native ability to curse, a working knowledge of American slang, and a talent for shotgunning beer.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-15 09:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-15 09:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-15 10:02 pm (UTC)For Moira, I was working off the following backstory, which I've copied and pasted from our email exchanges:
There are no lingering feelings, and they're both fine with the breakup, and they've communicated (probably a lot, once it became clear Charles was going to join her there), but only via email, never in person. The weirdness that I see between them is simply the fact that they haven't seen each other in person since they broke up. So it's going to be a little weird, but when Erik returns, they're talking about some bar in the area that she recommended to him, and he's asks her if it's the one that some guy took her on their first date, so it's clear that most of it was just that they hadn't gotten together in person? And I'm happy to make it explicit it via Charles' conversation with Erik after she leaves, how he says that he's so glad the first meeting awkwardness was out of the way, because they're such good friends, and it's delightful to see her here, etc.
I just think that there's always going to be some weirdness when you first start spending time as friends with someone you once dated, no matter how platonic the relationship now is. Possibly based on my own experiences, but I really can't imagine it going any other way. And it'll wear off quickly, but I wanted a recognition of that.
Do you have problems with the entirety of the backstory we created for them?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-15 11:25 pm (UTC)Anyway, the first thing that comes to mind is, if Moira's older than Charles by that degree, is there a reason why she's just starting to get her Ph.D. at the same time now? I see her as being really focused and driven, so I'd want there to be a valid reason for her being a first year doctoral student at the same time as Charles. (and if she's not a first year, then when does the keg race take place/would she be graduated at that time/near graduating etc).
It also seems extremely bizarre to me that Moira would confront Erik at the second mixer, but she and Charles don't actually interact face-to-face until the birthday party. Would they be aware that they'd be going to the same school? If so, and if they are fine with each other, why wouldn't they just get the first meeting out of the way sooner than that, especially if they're going to be working in the same department?
And I agree that awkwardness can be there (putting aside personal experience, because for me it's been the opposite, unless the break up was horrible), but if it's just "I haven't seen you in person in a while" awkwardness, I'd want it addressed why they put it off (because I could see Charles putting it off, I guess, but I feel like Moira would want to be direct about it, knowing that they were going to be working together).
I also don't really like that part of the exchange between Charles and Raven the more I think about it, so I'm probably going to rework that majorly once I get to it. :/
I'M SORRY. I know I'm being difficult about this, I'm just not totally in love with the idea and can't entirely decide if Moira would actually want to date Oxford!Charles/I like the idea of Charles being arrogant at Oxford more than I do the ex angle, and I have trouble reconciling these two things.
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Date: 2012-02-15 10:24 pm (UTC)Picking up slang and cursing feels like more of a teenager thing to me (which yeah, I know he'd still be a teenager starting, but I guess on the more juvenile teenager end, like being fourteen and all, haha, let's learn swear words) and possibly the sort-of thing that could have happened while he was at Gymnasium. IDK, just a thought.
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Date: 2012-02-15 10:38 pm (UTC)the perfect english thing is my phrasing, not theirs. just that he'd correct erik if he made a mistake or fix his idioms, etc. i think at the end of the day that erik would think that knowledge is knowledge, particularly since it wouldn't be his roommate sitting down and actually teaching him these things in any sort of formal way. and that erik is smart and cares about his fluency and would make a mental note of these things and not do it again.
i suppose it could happen in gymnasium, but i see erik as still fluctuating between being withdrawn and aggressive in Gymnasium, mostly as the result of shaw, whom i see him viewing as a surrogate older brother. as a result, he didn't have close friends then, certainly no one from whom he'd pick up slang. i also think that the ability to curse properly is one of the biggest distinctions between native and non-native speakers, and erik would take care to learn it.
i picture erik's roommate as some big, blond all-american type who drinks and parties and is a womanizer and likes a good time. he's not in the room that often, and he doesn't throw parties there, and he doesn't bring girls back, and he probably couch surfs a lot with friends after a night of heavy drinking. but when he does come back to the room, he kind of likes his quiet, somewhat geeky roommate and likes to shoot the shit with him. erik doesn't think about him a lot, because while they were roommates for two years, he wasn't around all that often, but he picked up a lot from him.
i think the reason they lived together for that long is for the reason that lots of guys that i know had the same roommates from freshman year on: for a lot of them, as soon as you find someone that you can live with, it's just not worth it to find someone else. so they lived together freshman and sophomore year, and then ask soon as erik was able to find a single, he moved into a single, and his roommate moved into a huge party suite with some of his friends.
is any of this working better for you? :D
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 12:09 am (UTC)and I'm okay with it being that way. it just didn't entirely sound like it was that way in the first mention? I can see Erik being okay with that; I couldn't really see him being okay if his roommate was just like, you speak English weird, let me teach you the right way?
properly howso? I'm just curious since my roommate was taught how/what context to swear in Germany by her German speaking friend before she could actually converse in normal conversation. then again, I swear a lot and so do most of my friends, so that could be it, too. (really, I clean up my internet conversation a lot, haha.)
I'm good with all of that, I think. I think the other thing that slightly confused me was the original phrasing about how his roommate would try to get Erik to join him a lot or something and it confused me why Erik would be friends with that guy but be annoyed at Charles being around all the time etc.
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Date: 2012-02-16 12:15 am (UTC)sometimes i forget that other people don't live in my brain and automatically know what i'm thinking when i say things. words are a very imperfect medium; i'm going to have to develop telepathy. :)
oh, i don't mean properly like when it's appropriate. i mean properly like saying things like "what the fuck?" which isn't something you'd pick up in school. or "what the hell is wrong with you" or things like that. how to use curses in normal sentences, rather than just as expletives.
in terms of his roommate trying to get erik to join him, i just meant that he'd probably be like, "hey, man, come out for a beer with us tonight," and erik would make a face, and say "no, thank you," and then his roommate would mimic him and say, "no, thank you," with exactly the same intonation, and so erik would throw something at him and say, "fuck off," and the roommate would cheer and hold a hand out for a fist bump and say, "that's more like it!" and erik would roll his eyes and go back to ignoring him, and the roommate would leave.
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Date: 2012-02-15 11:05 pm (UTC):D? :D? :D?
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Date: 2012-02-16 01:02 am (UTC)seriously. i'm just rereading and having so much fun :)
it's so awesome. how terrible am i? :D
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Date: 2012-02-16 01:04 am (UTC)GOOD. That's the important part. :D :D
as terrible as I am? because I am just like IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER? :D?
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Date: 2012-02-16 01:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
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