Pruning Those Trees In July...

Pruning those trees in July...

and the Ents being unable to find Entwives because they were lost. One is a fictional story with so many truths about humanity. But the reality is tragic as well. Shame on the studio for cruelty against people and trees.

This was adorable and I mean it in a complimentary way. I wasn't certain as I began reading how the 'spellwork' would entertain me (meaning, that isn't something I'm usually reading) but it's engaging and the conversation the two leads share has that offbeat Spider-Man humor/gentle teasing that I adore. A part of TASM that I loved was how Spider-Man/PP would (as we often do in reality) change his tone/banter based upon the person with whom he was speaking. We were only given a little between Peter & Gwen, but it was enough to have a wee insight that she was not afraid to needle him any more than he was her but it was never mean. He was a little harder on the criminal types but even then, he kept up a wonderful dialogue that only disappeared when things got quite dark (such as with Harry Osborn in the fight scene in TASM 2).

You captured some of the levity and I would love to read further interaction between the main character and 'official' Spider-Man.

You're just trying to work, but Spider-Man always has to drop by and keep you company.

or, reader is a sort-of-hero doing small, meaningful work to keep the city safe. Spider-Man can't turn down the opportunity to keep them company (i.e. tease them relentlessly).

A/N: maintenance-type heroics are something i love, so this 'verse is very dear to me. no i don't know how they transition from reader knowing spidey to reader knowing peter to reader knowing spidey is peter, but that's a problem for another fic

WC: ~1.2k

(warnings: is this the first one with no warnings? i think it is. lots of pining and teasing)

Spider-Man drops down so close to you that you can smell him – cheap laundry detergent and hot asphalt, like he’s been hanging out on a sunny rooftop. You flinch and drop your tackle box of spell components, but Spider-Man leans easily into your space to catch it. Worst of all, he takes one of your hands in his and wraps your fingers around the handle again. 

Any chance of you maintaining a cool, relaxed exterior is lost when he squeezes your wrist – gently, so gently, achingly gently considering you’ve watched him juggle cars with those hands – before letting you go.

“Whoa, sorry,” he says, so good-humored it gives the impression he’s laughing even though he’s not. “Didn’t mean to drop in on you unannounced.”

“Terrible,” you announce automatically, shaken out of your love-struck stupor by his horrible pun. “Zero out of ten.”

Shoulders drooping dramatically, Spider-Man groans and lets himself fall backwards just to catch himself in a one-handed back handspring and pop back up in front of you with a flourish. You get the impression he might be grinning and raising his eyebrows at you behind the inscrutable mask. Biting down a smile, you try to focus on your spellwork again. 

You don’t have a real-hero job like his, but you like to think what you do matters. Almost every community has a little bit of magic, natural or otherwise, woven into it, and New York is no exception. Tens of thousands of people like you have been dripping little dollops of magic into sidewalks, trees, buildings, even the subway, for so long it makes your head spin if you look at the overlapping lines of spellwork too closely. After all this time, it’s a framework that keeps a lot of the really scary magical stuff to a minimum, but it takes some maintenance. 

Unfortunately for you, sometimes following the trail of decaying magic that needs some bolstering leads you to rooftops, construction sites, and other variously dangerous places for someone without superhuman agility. Even more unfortunate, Spider-Man swept you off a ledge exactly one time and decided he would be bugging – the first of his many horrible jokes – you every chance he got, which is insanely frequent considering how busy you know he is. 

It was nice, at first, having someone who could keep you company in some of the scarier maintenance locations or help you safely reach dangerous areas. The problem with Spider-Man is that he gets more likable with every second he spends in your general area, and the problem with that is you’re much too busy to be tongue-tied in front of a local superhero when you’re supposed to be working. 

Puffing out a put-upon sigh, Spider-Man jumps up to sit on the ledge next to you. “Yeah, okay, that one was pretty weak. Still made you smile, so I count it as a win.”

“It didn’t make me smile,” you say, smiling. You swallow your next words before you can add something stupid like, you’re what made me smile. 

“Sure, whatever you say, Gandalf.” He swings his legs a little and tucks his chin into his neck to, you’re guessing by the angle of his lenses, scrutinize you. “Hey, you got the stain out of those!”

You glance down at your favorite jeans. After a mishap while straightening out some tangled arcane webs in an abandoned subway tunnel, you ended up with splotches of nasty gray-green oil staining the denim. He had been almost as distraught as you were, immediately hooking an arm around you to escort you to what was apparently his most trusted laundromat. And now here you were, stains impossibly lifted by a stern-voiced and kind-faced woman behind the counter. 

Yet another thing that Spider-Man effortlessly saved.

“I didn’t do anything. Mrs. Marcus got the stain out.” Risking a glance up at him, you add a quiet, “Thank you for introducing us.”

“The way I see it, people who take care of the city should be taken care of by the city, you know what I mean? And you and Mrs. M are vital cornerstones of the city, so. Iconic team-up.”

You can hear the smile in Spider-Man’s voice. You wish you could see the smile, but that’s not really in the cards for you, is it?

“You’re so,” you start, shaking your head and finding that you don’t know how to finish the sentence. He’s leaning in awfully close, big blank lenses zeroed in on you. You settle on, “Silly.”

“I’m silly?” Spider-Man asks, delighted. 

“You are!” 

“Tell me about it, toots,” he says, affecting a really terrible old-timey accent.

Dipping the fingers of one hand out of mundane reality and into the whirring whimsicality of arcana, you hook around the frayed line you’ve been following all day and then pause awkwardly. Like he’s reading your mind, Spider-Man hops down and takes your component box from you. He flips the latch and then opens it, holding it out at just the right height for you to use your free hand to pick out the little bits of magical paraphernalia that you need. 

Despite his propensity for whip-fast conversation and endless teasing, Spider-Man is actually really good company when you’re working. It’s like he knows exactly when you need a few seconds of quiet to really focus on something, and he also has a preternatural gift for guessing what you need and providing it before you even really know what would help. It more than makes up for the way he makes you feel fluttery and flushed just by existing in your general vicinity. 

The world narrows in focus while you finish up your mending, but Spider-Man is still right next to you when you slip back into reality. His mask twitches a little near the cheeks when you blink up at him. 

“Hey there,” Spider-Man says, steadying you with a warm hand under your elbow. “All done?”

“All done,” you confirm, trying not to think about how he must give really incredible hugs. 

“Am I gonna get to buy you dinner, or are you cooking tonight?”

Just like that, he has you flustered and smiling again. Taking the component box from him and shaking your head, you resist the urge to shove at his chest like some high schooler just learning how to flirt. You’re trying not to flirt with him at all, but you’ll settle for not flirting badly. 

“You’re not buying me dinner, Spider-Man.”

He slaps a hand over his heart like he’s affronted. “Back to full-naming me? I thought I was officially your Spidey? Just for that offense, I should be able to buy you dinner.”

You had caved and started calling him Spidey, but you’ll die of mortification before ever calling him my Spidey. 

“That’s really not how this works,” you inform him, and then, sensing you’re not going to win, propose, “How about I buy you dinner, then? For helping and keeping me company.”

“Please, I should be paying for the pleasure of your company.” He holds out a hand and meets you in the middle. “Final offer, you can buy your own dinner, but I’m buying dessert.”

Even without dessert, you would be walking away with a rare treat – it’s not every day that you get to see Spider-Man roll up the mask and reveal his pretty mouth and lovely chin. 

You shake his hand and manage not to swoon at the way his fingers close around yours. “Deal.”

You're welcome. Tasm!spider/peter is my fave, but writing a lead with the 'tacklebox' and helper mindset, etc was what intrigued me to see where it was leading and it went somewhere rather nice. Also, thanks for responding to the ask, I look forward to reading more whenever you post it.

You're just trying to work, but Spider-Man always has to drop by and keep you company.

or, reader is a sort-of-hero doing small, meaningful work to keep the city safe. Spider-Man can't turn down the opportunity to keep them company (i.e. tease them relentlessly).

A/N: maintenance-type heroics are something i love, so this 'verse is very dear to me. no i don't know how they transition from reader knowing spidey to reader knowing peter to reader knowing spidey is peter, but that's a problem for another fic

WC: ~1.2k

(warnings: is this the first one with no warnings? i think it is. lots of pining and teasing)

Spider-Man drops down so close to you that you can smell him – cheap laundry detergent and hot asphalt, like he’s been hanging out on a sunny rooftop. You flinch and drop your tackle box of spell components, but Spider-Man leans easily into your space to catch it. Worst of all, he takes one of your hands in his and wraps your fingers around the handle again. 

Any chance of you maintaining a cool, relaxed exterior is lost when he squeezes your wrist – gently, so gently, achingly gently considering you’ve watched him juggle cars with those hands – before letting you go.

“Whoa, sorry,” he says, so good-humored it gives the impression he’s laughing even though he’s not. “Didn’t mean to drop in on you unannounced.”

“Terrible,” you announce automatically, shaken out of your love-struck stupor by his horrible pun. “Zero out of ten.”

Shoulders drooping dramatically, Spider-Man groans and lets himself fall backwards just to catch himself in a one-handed back handspring and pop back up in front of you with a flourish. You get the impression he might be grinning and raising his eyebrows at you behind the inscrutable mask. Biting down a smile, you try to focus on your spellwork again. 

You don’t have a real-hero job like his, but you like to think what you do matters. Almost every community has a little bit of magic, natural or otherwise, woven into it, and New York is no exception. Tens of thousands of people like you have been dripping little dollops of magic into sidewalks, trees, buildings, even the subway, for so long it makes your head spin if you look at the overlapping lines of spellwork too closely. After all this time, it’s a framework that keeps a lot of the really scary magical stuff to a minimum, but it takes some maintenance. 

Unfortunately for you, sometimes following the trail of decaying magic that needs some bolstering leads you to rooftops, construction sites, and other variously dangerous places for someone without superhuman agility. Even more unfortunate, Spider-Man swept you off a ledge exactly one time and decided he would be bugging – the first of his many horrible jokes – you every chance he got, which is insanely frequent considering how busy you know he is. 

It was nice, at first, having someone who could keep you company in some of the scarier maintenance locations or help you safely reach dangerous areas. The problem with Spider-Man is that he gets more likable with every second he spends in your general area, and the problem with that is you’re much too busy to be tongue-tied in front of a local superhero when you’re supposed to be working. 

Puffing out a put-upon sigh, Spider-Man jumps up to sit on the ledge next to you. “Yeah, okay, that one was pretty weak. Still made you smile, so I count it as a win.”

“It didn’t make me smile,” you say, smiling. You swallow your next words before you can add something stupid like, you’re what made me smile. 

“Sure, whatever you say, Gandalf.” He swings his legs a little and tucks his chin into his neck to, you’re guessing by the angle of his lenses, scrutinize you. “Hey, you got the stain out of those!”

You glance down at your favorite jeans. After a mishap while straightening out some tangled arcane webs in an abandoned subway tunnel, you ended up with splotches of nasty gray-green oil staining the denim. He had been almost as distraught as you were, immediately hooking an arm around you to escort you to what was apparently his most trusted laundromat. And now here you were, stains impossibly lifted by a stern-voiced and kind-faced woman behind the counter. 

Yet another thing that Spider-Man effortlessly saved.

“I didn’t do anything. Mrs. Marcus got the stain out.” Risking a glance up at him, you add a quiet, “Thank you for introducing us.”

“The way I see it, people who take care of the city should be taken care of by the city, you know what I mean? And you and Mrs. M are vital cornerstones of the city, so. Iconic team-up.”

You can hear the smile in Spider-Man’s voice. You wish you could see the smile, but that’s not really in the cards for you, is it?

“You’re so,” you start, shaking your head and finding that you don’t know how to finish the sentence. He’s leaning in awfully close, big blank lenses zeroed in on you. You settle on, “Silly.”

“I’m silly?” Spider-Man asks, delighted. 

“You are!” 

“Tell me about it, toots,” he says, affecting a really terrible old-timey accent.

Dipping the fingers of one hand out of mundane reality and into the whirring whimsicality of arcana, you hook around the frayed line you’ve been following all day and then pause awkwardly. Like he’s reading your mind, Spider-Man hops down and takes your component box from you. He flips the latch and then opens it, holding it out at just the right height for you to use your free hand to pick out the little bits of magical paraphernalia that you need. 

Despite his propensity for whip-fast conversation and endless teasing, Spider-Man is actually really good company when you’re working. It’s like he knows exactly when you need a few seconds of quiet to really focus on something, and he also has a preternatural gift for guessing what you need and providing it before you even really know what would help. It more than makes up for the way he makes you feel fluttery and flushed just by existing in your general vicinity. 

The world narrows in focus while you finish up your mending, but Spider-Man is still right next to you when you slip back into reality. His mask twitches a little near the cheeks when you blink up at him. 

“Hey there,” Spider-Man says, steadying you with a warm hand under your elbow. “All done?”

“All done,” you confirm, trying not to think about how he must give really incredible hugs. 

“Am I gonna get to buy you dinner, or are you cooking tonight?”

Just like that, he has you flustered and smiling again. Taking the component box from him and shaking your head, you resist the urge to shove at his chest like some high schooler just learning how to flirt. You’re trying not to flirt with him at all, but you’ll settle for not flirting badly. 

“You’re not buying me dinner, Spider-Man.”

He slaps a hand over his heart like he’s affronted. “Back to full-naming me? I thought I was officially your Spidey? Just for that offense, I should be able to buy you dinner.”

You had caved and started calling him Spidey, but you’ll die of mortification before ever calling him my Spidey. 

“That’s really not how this works,” you inform him, and then, sensing you’re not going to win, propose, “How about I buy you dinner, then? For helping and keeping me company.”

“Please, I should be paying for the pleasure of your company.” He holds out a hand and meets you in the middle. “Final offer, you can buy your own dinner, but I’m buying dessert.”

Even without dessert, you would be walking away with a rare treat – it’s not every day that you get to see Spider-Man roll up the mask and reveal his pretty mouth and lovely chin. 

You shake his hand and manage not to swoon at the way his fingers close around yours. “Deal.”

Ditto.

Perhaps if a term does not yet exist for a collection of commas, it could be called a 'waterfall' as in a *waterfall of commas. For example, "The passage was so eloquent, so riveting that the waterfall of commas describing the scene flowed across the page."

*From Coldplay's Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall. (2011)

Sometimes I cry when I read, sometimes I cry when I write. It seems to fit, ya know?

verity what are your thoughts on oxford commas ?

i am an oxford comma groupie

Wired In

Seeing the Tree Law posts regarding Universal Studios & the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike: someone ask Andrew Garfield to smash a laptop in front of executives. The amount of takes that occurred to get this shot ought to be worth the destruction of one more Apple device.

Hear hear. I reblogged this for a couple of reasons but I'll focus on the one that let's me ramble on in a similar fashion (re: to your tag below your post) because your anon's comment hit a nerve with me.

It is of great benefit to be invested in your local community. Without a doubt. Living, working, volunteering, contributing locally--building relationships, breaking bread with each other, and recognizing each other's special gifts and humanity is essential.

However, it is also of great benefit to expand those horizons. The term 'global' is sometimes used as a dog whistle (not going there), and in addition there are a number of people who prefer isolationist policy but in truth, we humans have been 'global' for centuries. We have explored, traveled, sought goods and services, trafficked in people, escaped desperate conditions, and fought over soil and commodities. Again, for centuries. To ignore the plight of others outside of our communities is to ignore all of us. Does it take time in our busy world to pay attention? Sure. But in ways both small and large, it enriches us. All of us.

The late Carl Sagan, in his essay from his book The Pale Blue Dot, said it quite well and I've never forgotten his words from the first time that I read them. I don't wish to violate copyright so I will only post the link, but when one looks at the photo (taken by NASA from the Voyager spacecraft) of earth and reads his words, it resonates. It resonates because we forget so much more than we will ever learn and sometimes we need to remind ourselves of that and be humbled by it and willing to open our eyes and ears to the world. Here is the link, and if you've never read it, please do. It's a short read; takes much less time than making a cup of tea or even trolling and scrolling on the internet.

The Planetary Society

A Pale Blue Dot

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.

As a side note, I am so excited that there is to be a film about *Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan coming out in the future. It may have to wait due to current events, but the humans who labor and love and create are much more valuable than the final objects we desire.

*Voyagers (Zach Dean, writer; Sebastian Lelio, director; Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones in the titular roles) Looking forward to what these talented professionals can do with this story.

Tag: @ridiculously-over-obsessed

Why do you keep going on about the strikes, they don't affect you, it's annoying you're not even american stfu

Pst anon, I have a present for you, are you ready??

Also if you think this strike only affects American writers/actors etc, then you're wrong. These strikes set an industry tone that will have reprocussions world wide, the ramifications that this will have for the future of AI alone is staggering. Plus, as someone who wants to one day be a member of the WGA/SAG-AFTRA because I recognise that that is where the majority of work in this industry lies, of course I'm watching it closely??

Normalise being interested and invested in the world outside your small bubble of existence