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 Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2023 10:58 pm
Strictly speaking, Vanya didn’t know that the library would have anything to help him……mostly because so many of his problems lately felt like things there were not exactly For Dummies guides about. Sure, maybe there was one out there like “How to trick an actual decent guy into thinking you deserve even enough of his time to have sex, never mind to be a boyfriend—For Dummies” or maybe a different one “How to decide if living alone is actually right for you when you are terrible and everyone eventually realizes and leaves you but you’re selfish enough to waste their time regardless because you really are just that desperately ******** lonely—For Dummies.”
But Vanya seriously doubted that he’d find a guide about what to do when you lived in a town full of magical superpowered weirdos who kept doing their magical superpowered weirdo things all over your delivery routes when you seriously just wanted to do your job, and get your money, and not have to deal with ******** Hawkeyes draining your energy, or crazy redheads in short skirts who thought it was a laugh to threaten random delivery boys, or giant ******** monsters.
……In lieu of anything to help him sort his ******** life out, Vanya headed for his usual haunt: through the kids’ and young adult section, to the back corner where the city library kept the books about cinema and the art thereof. A perfect, straightforward plan, honestly. Go get himself lost for the umpteenth time in a giant artbook of Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematography that Vanya would never be able to afford, or one of the more obscure-in-America biographies of Akira Kurosawa, or the copy of Shock Value, John Waters’ memoir/reflection on his craft, which Vanya always hoped and prayed would go on sale, next time the library needed to clear off some shelf space and let people buy old books for super cheap. (Someday, he told himself, this would happen, and on that day, Vanya would take Shock Value home to his shitty studio apartment for keepsies.)
Today, though, he got distracted……by a frankly enormous man sitting in the kids’ section with a book.
The Half & Half Dog.
Vanya might have been skinny, but at 5’11”, he was not short……and this guy with the dog book, even sitting down, looked like he’d be a ******** skyscraper over Vanya when he stood up. All of Vanya’s good sense told him to leave well enough alone and just move on. But the part of him that was a stupid b***h compelled his feet toward the potentially very giant stranger.
“……Good book?” Vanya said, in a way that he hoped came across as mostly pleasant.
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Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2023 11:59 pm
Todd loved going to the library and curling up with books. Learning to read English was difficult, but he was making good progress. And reading the smaller books meant for children helped him just... process the English and the pictures and put the world behind him. At least, as long as he wasn't bothered. The librarians knew him just fine by now, but there were still patrons who seemed... annoyed by his existence. Didn't like seeing a strange adult man in the children's section for reasons he couldn't understand, reasons they wouldn't explain, just shout mean words at him until the librarians came to push them away and explain things in equally mean words (but he knew the nice librarians didn't mean the mean words; sometimes, they just had to say things in ways the really awful people would understand). So when someone approached him, he looked up, hunching in on himself more and giving the guy a very wary look. "Yes," he said slowly, glancing back down at the pages and up at the guy. Maybe... the guy was like him? He didn't seem like he was about to be mean to Todd... "Sad dog," he elaborated. "Doesn't fit in. People mean."
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 5:55 pm
……Oh, okay. Maybe the guy was ESL or something. Vanya couldn’t really tell if he had any particular kind of accent—and offhand, he thought that ESL adults had, like, more age-appropriate workbooks or something than The Half-and-Half Dog?—but……maybe this guy just didn’t like those things. Dropping words definitely made sense with trying to learn English as a second language, at least. Vanya’s personal experience with that mostly involved some of the neighbors in Shreveport whose first language had been Louisiana Creole, so their English tended to ramble on with only about half the words making actual sense with English grammar, or some of the extended members of his Mother’s family or their friends. The uncles and babushkas attached to the Russian side of Vanya’s birth family could drop words and end up with choppy sentences like this guy did.
Whatever accent he had, it definitely wasn’t right for Russian, but……the same principle applied, Vanya decided. Just—be polite and talk like normal. At least all of this guy’s words were English, instead of randomly Russian or some absurd mix of both.
Nodding at the guy’s explanation, Vanya carefully came closer. He kept his hands out in the open, where the guy could see them, since he seemed so nervous. “That sounds really bad for him,” Vanya said. “Not fitting in……it’s not always so bad? But only when you find other people who don’t fit in. People being mean about it just make everything pretty awful.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 10:32 pm
If Todd could have had his ears and tail out and about, he'd be perked up and wagging, just from the way Vanya treated him. Like a person. He was even keeping his hands out so Todd didn't have to worry about being pepper-sprayed or something. Maybe he could have a new friend. "Yes! Todd feel awful a lot," he said, trying to keep his voice low so his excitement didn't attract attention of other library goers. "People mean so much. This dog..." He ran his fingers over the cover the book, holding it mostly closed with his thumb of his other hand holding his spot for him. "Todd feel his pain. T— I have... friends. But... not always enough."
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 10:49 pm
Vanya nodded, listening carefully—partly because he needed to make sure he didn’t miss anything with this guy while interpreting his choppy sentences, partly because Vanya preferred to stay on his toes in general, and partly as a learned response to potentially explosive situations. Not that it had always worked in Shreveport. But what his parents said, how they said it, and every last detail of their behaviors had always seemed like a good way to check the temperature of any given situation, to maybe figure out which responses had a lower risk of Vanya needing to dodge flying bottles of vodka, dance around an empty wine bottle being wielded like a rapier, or bite the inside of his cheek while getting dressed down for everything about him that was remotely unsatisfactory.
Perching on the arm of the chair next to Todd, Vanya nodded again. “I’m sorry people are mean to you. Books are good for that, though.… For characters who go through things you identify with. Books and movies.” Internally, Vanya felt itchy about calling them movies instead of films—but “movies” was the word that Todd would probably hear more often. “Vanya doesn’t have a lot of real-life friends, either.” He waved “hi” to indicate that he meant himself, that he was Vanya. “But I have a lot of friends online. There are places like reddit and Twitter where it’s easy to make friends, though……”
Vanya cringed. “People on Twitter are mean a lot. You could write a post like ‘The sunshine was so nice today’ and a couple hours later, you’ll have people saying nasty things about how you having a nice day in the sun is so insensitive to, like……albinos, or people with sunlight allergies, or whatever. So……Todd probably wouldn’t like Twitter. But people are pretty nice on reddit.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 10:57 pm
Todd perked up further as the strange—as Vanya spoke, just a little, the way Todd spoke. He hadn't realized how such a little thing could make him feel so... warm. It wasn't like he had a problem processing the way everyone talked (generally), he just couldn't... put it out of his own mouth the same way. Still, to be imitated in a way that wasn't mocking, was more encouraging and... communicative? Ugh, big word. It felt nice. Like there was a gently burning campfire in his chest. "On...line?" He squinted a bit at that, bringing out his phone—he still hadn't managed to ask Soleiyu to change it, yet. "...Todd doesn't like it." He pawed at the screen, frowning. "No buttons. No good. Doesn't listen well, either. To— I... struggle. Like to read books more. But... You say...? Friends? On... red-dit? What that's like?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:06 pm
Oh, no. He was ESL and he had some kind of difficulty using his phone? Vanya didn’t know anything about neurology that hadn’t come from either movies or high school biology class (so, basically nothing of actual value), but it made sense to him that some kind of neurological problem would make using a phone hard. So many fine motions involved in all the typing and the swiping you had to do without buttons.… Ugh, modern life was always so tied to phones, that had to suck for poor Todd.
“Todd doesn’t have to look at reddit on his phone,” Vanya told him gently. “You can see it on the computer, too. If you want, Vanya can show you how? The library computers are free to use.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:12 pm
Todd cast a wary glance to the computers. "But they... online... like phone? Touch bad?" he asked, even as he stood up and went to place the book on one of the return caddys. He used to place them back on the shelves until the librarians kindly told him it was how they earned money to keep the library open. They could keep track of books better if the patrons put the books on the caddys and see which ones were getting used and how often. He thought that made a lot of sense—at first he'd been embarrassed and mildly angry that they might have thought he was too stupid to put them back in the right spot. "...If computer different, Vanya can show Todd," he decided. Maybe there was an explanation he didn't have—just like for the book caddys. "Please?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:27 pm
Vanya nodded, standing up to follow Todd to the caddy. “Computers are really different from phones. They have buttons, for one thing.” With the book put on the caddy to get reshelved, Vanya motioned for Todd to follow him. Fortunately, the long tables with the computers weren’t too far away. Over on the other side of the circ desk, sure, but not like, upstairs or down in the basement. Explaining while they walked, Vanya said, “So, with computers, they have screens like phones? But you don’t have to touch the screen. They have a keyboard that you use to type, and a mouse that you use to click things on the screen. It’s not like an animal mouse, though? The guy who invented it just thought the cord that attaches it to the computer looked like a mouse’s tail.”
Man, ESL with some neurological problem and maybe he’d been raised by Amish people or something? …They didn’t have Amish people in Europe or wherever Todd was from, did they? Well, maybe not Amish specifically, but some kind of, like, cult of off-the-grid people who hated technology for being sinful or whatever. If they’d been around for a few generations, then that might’ve explained the neurological problem, too. Inbreeding would do that, Vanya was pretty sure (based on knowledge that he’d gotten from movies).
When they got to the desks with the computers, Vanya pulled an extra chair over to one so Todd could sit with him. They’d need to get to the actual Internet part soon, but first, he took a moment to show Todd the keyboard (with big clacky keys) and the mouse. “See? Lots of buttons, right? Do you want to try typing on the keyboard to see how it feels?”
In case Todd did, Vanya opened up Notepad for him to type in.
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:36 pm
Todd made soft little listening noises as Vanya explained, sitting next to him and carefully memorizing the way he spoke about the computer. If it really wasn't like a phone... he wanted to try to see what all the fuss was about. "Okay..." He frowned, leaning forward and staring at the keys. They were in the same order as the ones on his phone... He started tapping away at them, first just writing his name, then Zac's, and Talia's, and Evan's—he skipped over Soleiyu because he wasn't sure how to spell it—and then, finally, he guessed Vanya's name spelling and hoped it wasn't too far off. "Mn... Good buttons. Slow, but good. I am... faster on this, than phone, anyway," he said, feeling encouraged. He looked over at the mouse and grasped it awkwardly in his hand, making a frustrated sound when his hand cramped up immediately and the mouse on the screen didn't move right.
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:00 am
As Vanya watched Todd work, he nodded and tried to make an encouraging sort of sound. Honestly, given everything that Todd maybe might have been through to get here (in Vanya’s increasingly elaborate headcanons that he sort of realized had probably long since become unrealistic), he was doing a pretty good job. And you didn’t get people to keep trying at things by treating them the way that Vanya treated people on Twitter.……or various assorted forums.……or in the Youtube comments sections.……
He tilted his head briefly at the last name that Todd typed: vahnya. “Oh, that’s very close to how you spell my name?” Giving Todd a small smile that he hoped would likewise be encouraging, Vanya explained, “My name comes from my mom’s side of the family. In their language, you can have an ‘ahhh’ sounding A without adding the H. So, it’s just V-A-N-Y-A. But it looks like you’re doing really good with the typing? I know the order they’re in is kind of weird, but there are games that can help you learn it, so you’ll go faster. Do the keys feel okay?”
The grip Todd had on the mouse……did not seem to be quite as okay. Vanya hmm’d. “You don’t have to hold the mouse so tight, though? The library only has these mouses, but if Todd wants to get his own computer, they make bigger mouses, too.” He pointed at the other names. “Are these Todd’s friends? Zac, Evan, and Talia? Maybe they can help Todd find a mouse that’s the right size for him?”
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:05 am
Todd loosened his grip on the mouse at the gentle direction, humming a bit when it felt more natural. Still kind of small, though, yes. Hmm. "Yes! My friends. Live with them," he confirmed, smiling widely. "Very good friends. Thank you, Vanya." He moved the mouse on the screen, squinting at it. Why was everything so small? But he managed to click on the little fox symbol he knew meant internet, but there he stopped, moving his hands to the keyboard and stilling. "Vanya... How spell red-dit?" he asked, tilting his head. "...And, once we're there... how make friends? Todd isn't... good. With writing. Words..." He frowned. "Words very, very hard."
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:45 am
Vanya’s smile got a little bit bigger at the confirmation that Todd had good friends, and a good place to stay with them. Yes, he’d only just met Todd, but……he liked Todd. Not a lot of people Vanya got to meet in real life regarded him as anything more than a minor inconvenience to be shoved aside so they could barrel through to wherever they needed to be, or the dutiful means by which their Japanese take-out made it from the restaurant to their delivery address. People like Todd—or like the coven of friendly neighborhood lesbian anarchists who collectively regarded Vanya as Their delivery boy—were rare.
Part of it made Vanya feel……a little bit guilty for what he usually did on the Internet (though he fortunately kept that off his main accounts). Mostly, though, it made Vanya feel like he wanted Todd to please stick around in his life and keep being his friend?
“You spell it R-E-D-D-I-T. Then a period. Then C-O-M.” While he had the idea in mind, Vanya grabbed one of the little index cards and golf pencils. Maybe the library meant them for people to write down the call numbers of books they wanted to check out, but Vanya used them to write down “reddit.com”, his main username (u/auteur_privilege), and his phone number. That way, Todd could find both the website and Vanya later (even if Todd didn’t like using his phone). “I can show you things more easily if you let me log into my account? Then maybe I can help you make one for yourself?”
That would be helpful, right? Helpful, and nice, and maybe an incentive for Todd to keep being his friend.
(He’d leave eventually. People always did. Someday, Todd would realize that Vanya was broken. That he had something wrong with him. Even Vanya’s parents couldn’t find it in their hearts to love him, and society nominally obligated them to do that, so why would anybody else. After he’d finished school and walked out their door, he’d lingered around Shreveport for three days to see if they’d call the cops to report him missing, or ask the neighbors for help finding him, or send Uncle Grisha to hunt him down and drag him back to their house by his hair [and incidentally reclaim his autographed vinyl copy of Queen’s A Night At The Opera].
Obviously, they hadn’t.
Instead, Margarita “Ritka” Mikhailovna Bulgakov-Renault had seen him, her own son, on a park bench across the street from her favorite overpriced liquor store—the one that had the sizable selection of imports, which meant she could actually buy ryazhenka, samogon, and Polugar Classic, instead of settling for Russian Standard and Stolichnaya—and had barely deigned to look at him, much less speak to him, before just going in the shop.
Which was why Todd would leave Vanya behind eventually, just like everybody else. But……maybe it would be okay for Vanya to enjoy having this friend in his life? Even just for a little while? Maybe? ………Please?)
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:53 am
Todd tapped at the keyboard, smiling at the clacky sounds as he went to the right website. Oh!! This was interesting. It looked like it had a lot of information... The comment about logins and accounts only half-registered at first, because Todd had to remember what on Earth that meant at first. Then, he proudly navigated himself to the login page and scooched so Vanya could log in. "Yes. Todd want to see first. Vanya very smart," he said earnestly, smiling gently at Vanya. "And very nice." He took the card and pouted at it a bit, taking out his phone and struggling with quietly adding the new contact. He preferred navigating by the voice magic, but that was rude in the library, and it only worked about half the time, anyway. He tried very hard to learn the commands correctly, but he just... Forgot, so easily. Especially when he was being casual with the use. But, he got it this time, concentrating extra hard. He didn't want to let his new friend down.
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:56 am
So many people probably would’ve argued with Todd calling Vanya “very smart,” but nevertheless, it was really nice to hear him say that. Vanya felt like he’d smiled more in this one encounter than he had in……a while. Like, probably since he’d heard that Brendan Fraser was finally up for a Best Actor Oscar. (People always wanted to talk about how Nicolas Cage was actually very dedicated to the craft of acting, and Vanya didn’t doubt that. But Nicki Cage née Coppola had enough acclaim for his deliberately weird style that he didn’t need for anyone to confirm that he was talented and hardworking. On the other hand, Brendan Fraser had gone chronically underappreciated until the past year or so—but Vanya had always stood by his argument that Brendan Fraser Was Talented, Actually, even before it was cool.)
Once he’d signed in to his Reddit account, he scooched aside a little bit, so they had a more equal sharing space. “So, this is what my home page looks like when I log in,” he said, and as he explained, he used the mouse to trace circles around the different things he pointed out. “These are all posts from different subreddits. Those are groups that anyone can join and post in, and they’re organized about things people want to talk about. Like, r-slash-aww here is for cute pictures and videos. Usually, it has a lot of animals, but you can see some human kids and babies, too.” The r/aww post currently on Vanya’s home page had a six-second video of someone’s stubby-legged little bulldog hopping up a staircase.
“R-slash-directors and r-slash-filmmakers are about people who make movies—or in this post? You have this guy asking for feedback on his work. R-slash-LGBT-superheroes is about superheroes who are gay or trans or nonbinary? Because you don’t usually see boy superheroes who like other boys in comics and stuff, or superheroes whose gender doesn’t match what society says they should be? So, people like to appreciate them, or get help finding the books with them in it.” The current post on Vanya’s homepage had art of somebody’s original character, so not as easy to explain as, like, Apollo and Midnighter. But that was okay. It kept the tour of Vanya’s home page moving along.
“R-slash-rare-puppers is mostly dogs, but you can get pictures of other cute animals sometimes too.” But it was, indeed, a dog on Vanya’s homepage—specifically, a very fluffy white one (maybe a samoyed or a Bernese mountain dog? Vanya wasn’t sure offhand) wearing a little hat that looked like a shark. “Then, you have a lot of groups where people can ask questions about stuff. For Todd, I think maybe stay away from R-slash-am-I-the-a*****e? The whole thing there is posting about real life things where people had arguments, or messy situations, or whatever, and asking if the poster did the right thing or not. Some of the posts there are funny, but a lot of them are really mean. But, like, r-slash-too-afraid-to-ask is pretty safe? People ask all kinds of questions there and folks in the replies are usually pretty nice about answering them. R-slash-ask-reddit can have some mean posts, but if you say it’s a serious post, people will answer seriously. R-slash-deciding-to-be-better is all about people wanting to learn things, and be happier, or be nicer people. So, there’s a lot of advice posts, or posts asking for advice.”
Vanya very rarely listened to any of said advice, but he liked to think that maybe, he might do that……like, someday.…… If anyone ever managed to delude him into thinking there was a point to it in his case for more than a few consecutive minutes.
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