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 Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2023 11:20 am
The one sitting at the picnic table looked…a little older, but they had very pretty hair, a blue that was more vibrant than the sky itself…and if Genevieve was being honest…she wanted to touch it and see if it was as soft and silky as it looked.
She didn’t though, she wasn’t rude and that was clearly not how to behave as a human on Earth, so instead she walked slowly up to the stranger and held her bag of candy out, shaking it slightly to get his attention. “Hello! I’m…trying to brighten days, and you look as though you could use some bright! Your hair is very bright though, so I could be wrong, but on the off chance that I’m not, would you like some candy? I was advised that sharing it would bring more joy to me and the world than just eating it myself, and that candy alone would…”
Wrinkling her nose, Genevieve tried to remember just what Todd had said. “...Fill the void inside of me? So I’m hoping that sharing some will! Would you like some?”
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2023 11:18 pm
Vanya got precious few days off as it stood, and it sucked that so many of them recently had coincided with rainstorms. Or had involved him being so dead tired, between work and trying to learn his way around Senshi Things that he barely left his bed. Today, he’d managed to get out of bed and go to the library, at least, and he was pretty sure he’d checked out everything they had on the moons of Saturn.
……A lot of the books seemed like only either seriously outside of Vanya’s usual depth (very heavy on the science, forcing him to look up words on his phone practically every other sentence, etc.) or only slightly better Baby’s First Science Book About Space. Still, Vanya felt like he had a duty or something? To read about the different moons of Saturn? Because he was apparently the senshi of one of them now, and the only things he knew about Farbauti were, uh. Distinctly not about the planet……moon……whatever it was. A moon, formally, Vanya supposed.
Mostly, the things he already knew were about how the mythological Farbauti had been Loki Laufeyson’s father, and how some fanfic he’d read about Marvel Loki once had made Farbauti the mother for Vanya’s Favorite Character because Marvel had already ******** up the genders by making Laufey a male Jötunn.
It took a moment for him to notice the sound of something shaking beside him. He was trying his best to understand the heavy science going on in this particular book, but even if he had been smart enough to justify going to college, Vanya had definitely never been very science-minded. Still, a distraction was more than welcome, so he turned to look……and found himself facing a girl? She looked pretty young, with long, pink-ish hair and a bag of candy.
……And an awful lot of very serious words.
Though, being fair, Vanya supposed that he had also been, uh. More than a little bit edgy when he’d been fifteen.
Giving her a small but earnest smile, he nodded. “That’d be really nice, actually? Thank you.…” Holding out his hand, he added, “My name’s Vanya, uh? If that might help with the void problems?”
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2023 12:40 pm
When this human accepted her offer, Genevieve was nearly over the moon about it. Her grin split her entire face and seemed to light it up and she held the bag out to Vanya…this one had given his name too!
“I’m Genevieve, and it is very nice to meet you, Vanya!” Reaching out with her free hand she took his and shook it just as she had seen on the different movies she had watched. This was how this was supposed to go…and perhaps that other boy had just been…too sad and upset for candy to work...that could be it.
Well, he didn’t matter now. Right now it was only Vanya. “I hope that it does. The void problems are very all encompassing! It’s difficult to find ways to deal with them, at least for me…but I am so glad that you are kind!”
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2023 1:08 pm
Huh.… This particular teenager-probably really was kinda into whatever she was doing with the edgy void feelings, wasn’t she? As he shook her hand, then took some of her candy, Vanya mulled that over.… The part of him that had thought to ask Todd if he was from outer space like Daedalus—and had subsequently gotten to know Todd as Fang—briefly wondered if this girl was anything like them? But……statistically speaking, it was probably more likely that she was just kind of a weird Earthling teenager, not that she was another alien senshi.
“Do you want to sit with me for a while, Genevieve?” He offered, patting the picnic table bench beside him. “I don’t know, we could talk if you want? And—I don’t know everything there is to read, or all the films out there to watch? But if you want recommendations, I might have some? Maybe they could help you with the all-encompassing void feelings?”
Vanya’s brain was already screaming SYLVIA PLATH!!! over and over and over again like an air-raid siren. All of the pretty, artsy, intellectual girls with problems he’d gone to school with in Shreveport had loved The Bell Jar and Plath’s collected poems. If Genevieve wanted some recommendations, maybe she’d enjoy Sylvia Plath, too?
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2023 3:31 pm
Genevieve nodded, looking pleased to have the opportunity and sat down on the bench across from Vanya. “I would like to do that, yes. I would also like to hear all of your suggestions! Please do not take all of the candy, I still wish to find and share with others…but thank you for being kind and accepting my offer…it means a lot. The last person I met was not eager to speak with me or share…though he did talk about a festival that was coming up which I may have to partake in…it…I’m new to the city so…that was interesting to learn about.”
…He hadn’t been friendly while talking about it…and perhaps…
“Could you tell me about it? There was something about a tree where you can grant people’s wishes?”
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2023 12:05 pm
Vanya nodded back, taking only a few pieces of the girl’s candy. “Well, thank you for offering in the first place,” he said with a small shrug. “I wouldn’t have had anything to accept if you hadn’t been so nice in offering, y’know? And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry that people haven’t been kind to you about it.”
What she had asked made perfect sense, as an idea, her wanting to share with more people and not wanting Vanya to take too much candy. Outside of that, though, the whole situation still felt a little bit strange? But……maybe Genevieve was simply one of those girls who was strange and unusual. Plenty of them existed in the world, and especially in Destiny City. Why couldn’t Genevieve be a strange and unusual girl, too? Without it necessarily meaning anything?
(Vaguely, it occurred to him that a fifteen-year-old girl wandering around a park, trying to make friends with random strangers by sharing candy……might have been something to get, like? Concerned? about? Or possibly indicated that something Not Okay was going on for her? Possibly sort of in the same way that Jacob Renault and Margarita “Ritka” Bulgakov-Renault had once yanked Vanya out of his elementary school and shoved him into a different one because one of his teachers had gotten concerned about how desperate he was to please her, and had started asking questions about whether or not his parents and Uncle Grisha were doing anything right by Vanya at home.
But……that was honestly a ******** lot to assume from just one meeting with this girl. So, Vanya tried his best to shove the thought aside.)
Much easier to focus on things Vanya could actually speak on, he thought. “Yeah, the City’s Star Festival didn’t make sense to me when I first moved here either,” he said. “But it’s really fun, if you want to check parts of it out. It’s all just about celebrating the city and making life nicer for people. Like, the Wishing Tree thing is……there’s this one tree, in a different park? And people write down wishes that are supposed to be about making life in the city better—like wanting stray cats to find good homes, or wanting people to be nicer to people who work in service jobs, like cashiers and office assistants and so on? And when you put a wish up on the tree, you’re supposed to take down someone else’s wish so you can work on granting it for them.”
Flipping to a new page in the notebook where he’d been writing down details about the moons of Saturn, Vanya jotted down some names as he told her, “If you like poetry, or might be into it? Sylvia Plath is a poet who wrote a lot about some of the feelings you’re describing? Wanting to connect more with people, not always knowing how, feeling like something was missing in her life and wanting to get it back, that sort of thing? She also wrote a novel called The Bell Jar that gets at a lot of similar feelings, and shows a lot of what she was dealing with in her period of history? It’s based on her own life and……not a very happy book? Plath had a really difficult life, and a lot of what she went through is really unpleasant to read about? But a lot of girls I went to school with liked it because reading about Plath’s struggles and her sadness, they felt like they were less alone in going through rough times and being sad.
“But,” he added quickly, “I can also recommend some happier or nicer things? If that’s not what you think you’d like?”
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2023 7:44 pm
“That sounds very nice…I think that making things nicer for people is just…how things should always end up being. People should simply be kinder…that would solve so many problems…” Genevieve glanced away for a moment, her expression growing rather remote but she turned back to Vanya, putting a smile back on her face as she listened to his recommendations. “I would love all of it, please! Thank you. I…I do not mind hardships. They’re just…what people have to go through.”
People died. Time moved on. She was learning to pick up the pieces and…was just doing her best.
“I do enjoy happy things though, if you have any suggestions for something happy…”
Even if it was nothing but lies…happiness was always so much easier to stomach than anything else.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2023 4:54 pm
Considering what she said, Vanya tapped his pen against his cheek. It was honestly unfortunate, he thought, that one of the book series he’d met earliest in life left such a bad taste in his mouth anymore. On top of that, the fundamental outlook that the world-building showed off wound up being pretty cruel (at least, Vanya had listened to a couple podcasts about this while he’d been making deliveries recently, and they’d had some compelling arguments), which wouldn’t match very well with Genevieve’s desire for people to be kinder.
So, he couldn’t in good conscience recommend the wizard school books or the film adaptations—not even the one by Alfonso Cuarón, which was so unfortunate, in light of Cuarón’s brilliance as a director, and the brilliant performances out of Gary Oldman and David Thewlis—but there were some other options out there for things Genevieve might like that.
“Well, there’s the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan,” Vanya offered, jotting down the names of the first two books before needing to check his phone for the other three. “The first two, The Lightning Thief and Sea of Monsters, got adapted into live-action versions, but a lot of fans of the books didn’t like them very much? The story’s about the title character, Percy Jackson, finding out that he’s descended from one of the ancient Greek gods, then having to get involved in saving the world from destruction. Then, Rainbow Rowell wrote Carry On and Wayward Son, and then there’s the third one, Any Way The Wind Blows, but I haven’t gotten to read that one yet.” Shrugging, he explained, “Every time I look for it at the library, somebody’s already checked it out, y’know? But for some things to watch to go along with the books, maybe……hmm.”
Really was unfortunate that so many of Vanya’s personal feel-good films made people look at him like he was crazy for liking (because apparently, it was “weird” and “unsettling” to so much enjoy a movie where one of the funniest scenes, in Vanya’s opinion, featured one of the main characters pouting that it wasn’t fair that his mentor was allowed to assassinate him but he wasn’t allowed to kill himself, or for anyone to prefer Apocalypse Now to The Godfather). On the other hand, you had films like The Shape of Water, which definitely wouldn’t have been appropriate for a ********, what animated shows did Ricki and Blake at work like to talk about? (Well, “at work” in the sense that Ricki and Blake regularly smoked weed and came into Nagisa’s to order an obscene amount of sushi while talking about cartoons with really intricate plots, but that counted, didn’t it? It regularly happened while Vanya was on-shift, after all.)
“These next ideas are some shows, not books? But Avatar: the Last Airbender is a good one; I remember watching it when I was a kid, and they just got it on Netflix. Then Netflix also has She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which has a pretty good balance of struggling and happy endings, and ‘People should try to be kind to each other’ is one of the central themes of the story? Then, The Owl House—I haven’t watched it personally, but I’ve heard good things about it?” From stoners who liked to tip really well after ordering their body weights in sushi rolls, but whatever, Vanya had heard it at work, therefore it counted. “Oh, and Steven Universe has a lot of good stuff. The music from that one is really top-notch, in addition to the stories and characters being fun.”
Through it all, Vanya kept writing down the names of what he recommended. After he finished, he carefully tore the page out of his notebook along the perforated edge. “Hopefully, there’s something in there that you’ll enjoy? And, uh. If there is, I definitely don’t know everything, but the people at the Destiny City Library are great and could maybe help you find more?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2023 9:51 am
Genevieve took the paper and studied it for a few moments, nodding slowly, a smile beginning to spread across her face as she realized that this Vanya honestly was trying to help her…and that was just…so kind...it gave her hope.
Sure the other boy hadn’t reacted well…but now she had made a friend of this person and that could only mean…that sharing candy really was bringing joy into the world.
“I appreciate this more than you can know, Vanya! I will look up all of these things, especially the shows that you have recommended! I like the sound of all of them, and I think that owls are very, very cute creatures!”
They were one of her favorites, honestly…and the idea of seeing a house filled with them? That sounded like the perfect kind of a show.
“I hope that we will meet again, if you are ever sad just come here and perhaps I will have more candy, okay?”
She stood up and brushed off her bottom, half worried that the bench might have left some residue, but whens he was up, she moved over to Vanya and hugged him tightly for a moment. “Thank you for being so kind!”
With that, she skipped off, clearly in search of someone else to spread kindness too…there had to be others in this park who could use some cheering up!
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