#I mean my outlines are p detailed but STILL

[mayorofcattown]

me: oh this fic idea is just a short oneshot, not that much even happens in it, I'll totally be able to get it done before Natsume we-

the fic outline alone:

me: oh

[multi-fandom-imagine]

Day 22: I picked you for secret Santa but I wrapped the wrong box so now I’ve given you a very festive sex toy, and oh my god this is so embarrassing

Fandom: Marvel: DareDevil

Character: Matt Murdock

Naughty or nice

Warnings:Teasing, Foreplay, use of toy, p in v

You were lucky to pick the man you happened to be in a relationship for the secret Santa but mistake's often happen and you couldn't blame Matt of course, he only grabbed the package you described, hell it was your own damn fault for even wrapping that gift in the first place.

Matt's fingers brush against the box as you told him to grab in his hand. He can feel the smooth surface under his touch, the slight weight of the box as he holds it. There's a sense of anticipation in the air as he carefully opens the box, his fingertips tracing the edges. He can feel the texture of the packaging, the coolness of the toy nestled inside.

His senses heighten as he lifts the toy out of the box, his enhanced touch allowing him to detect every detail. He runs his fingers along its length, feeling the ridges and contours, the silicone material that's soft but firm to the touch. "It's a... vibrator," he says, his voice a mix of curiosity and arousal. He can feel the pulsations of the toy, the faint hum of its vibrations. "Is this what you want me to use on you?" His lips curl into a playful smirk as he looks at you, his fingers still exploring the toy.

"What!" Your eye's went wide for a moment as you felt warmth grow on your cheeks. "I didn't...."

Letting his thumb glide across the toy he couldn't help but chuckle."It was not meant for me was it?"

Taking a deep breath, you rocked back and forth on the couch. "No."

Matt could not stop smiling, he wished he could see your reaction. "Can it be?"

With your eyes growing wide, you gave Matt a smile as your heart pounded in your chest. "If you like? I mean just foreplay of course....nothing can beat the real thing."

Matt can sense the heightened state of arousal emanating from you, your increased heartbeat and the subtle changes in your scent. It sends a thrill through him, knowing he has this effect on you. He smirks at your teasing words, his fingertips still lingering on the toy.

"I couldn't agree more," he murmurs, his voice low and husky. He leans in, capturing your lips in a passionate kiss, his hands moving to cup your face. His heightened sense of touch allows him to feel the warmth of your breath mingling with his, the softness of your lips against his own. He deepens the kiss, his tongue gently exploring your mouth, his fingers trailing down your neck, leaving a trail of tingling sensations in their wake.

"Matt, I want you to use the toy on me." You whispered.

Matt's lips curl into a devilish smile as he feels your breath against his skin, your desire palpable in the air. He takes a moment to savor the anticipation, his enhanced senses allowing him to pick up on every subtle detail of the moment.

With a gentle but firm grip, he guides you to lie back on the bed, his hands trailing down your body, leaving a trail of heated touches in their wake. His fingertips dance along your curves, teasing and exploring, as his lips find their way to your neck, peppering it with light kisses and nips.

His heightened sense of touch allows him to feel the way your body trembles beneath his fingertips, the way your skin heats up with each passing second. He positions himself between your legs, his fingers delicately tracing the outline of your arousal through the fabric.

Taking the vibrator in his hand, he flicks it on, the soft hum filling the room. He hovers the tip of the toy over your throbbing core, his eyes locked on yours for a moment, seeking your permission and desire. With a slow, deliberate motion, he guides the vibrator to your entrance, gently pressing it against you, allowing the vibrations to tease and stimulate.

Matt's free hand finds its way to your breast, his fingers expertly massaging and tweaking your hardened nipple, eliciting a gasp of pleasure from your lips. His lips descend upon your neck again tracing a path of heated kisses down your chest, his tongue flicking across your sensitive skin. His touch is a delicate balance of control and tenderness, his focus solely on your pleasure.

As he continues to work the vibrator against your slick folds, he leans in, capturing your lips in a searing kiss, his tongue tangling with yours in a passionate dance. His lips trail down your body, leaving a fiery trail of kisses and bites, his teeth grazing against your skin, leaving behind a mark of his possession.

Matt's skilled fingers continue their dance of pleasure, circling and teasing your clit, amplifying the sensations coursing through your body. The room fills with the symphony of your moans and gasps, mingling with the hum of the vibrator. He revels in the way your body responds to his touch, the way your muscles tense and quiver under his ministrations.

Driven by his own desire, Matt's own arousal grows, evident by the bulge straining against his pants. But he remains focused on your pleasure, his fingers and the toy working in tandem to bring you to the edge of ecstasy. His lips find their way back to yours, his kisses becoming more urgent, his touch more demanding.

In this intimate dance, Matt loses himself in the sensations, in the way your body writhes and shudders beneath him. And as your climax crashes over you, he revels in the raw beauty of your pleasure, his own satisfaction found in bringing you to such heights.

As the echoes of pleasure subside, Matt leans in, pressing soft kisses against your skin, his lips lingering on the marks he's left on your body. "I love you," he murmurs, his voice filled with a mix of adoration and gratitude.

Still catching your breath, your gaze softens as you then pulled Matt in for another gentle kiss. "I love you too Matt though your lips pulled into grin. "But I need you to fuck me now."

Matt's breath hitches as your words hit him, his desire for you burning hot. He returns your passionate kiss, his lips molding against yours, his teeth gently grazing your lip in response to your nibbling. The raw need in your voice only intensifies the fire within him, and he can feel his own arousal pulsing through his veins.

With a low growl of desire, Matt swiftly sheds his clothes, revealing his sculpted form. He positions himself between your legs, his hands firmly gripping your hips as he aligns himself with your slick entrance. His enhanced senses allow him to feel the anticipation radiating from your body, the way your heartbeat quickens, the scent of your arousal filling his nostrils.

Without hesitation, he thrusts into you, the feeling of your warmth enveloping him like a vice. A guttural moan escapes his lips as he begins to move, setting a rhythm that's both primal and passionate. His hips meet yours with a forceful precision, each thrust driving him deeper, filling you completely.

Matt's hands roam over your body, his touch possessive and demanding. He cups your breasts, his thumbs grazing over your hardened nipples, eliciting a gasp of pleasure from your lips. His lips find purchase on your neck, marking you with a possessive bite, his tongue soothing the sting with tender kisses.

As the intensity builds, Matt's pace quickens, his movements becoming more fervent. The sound of skin slapping against skin fills the room, harmonizing with your moans of pleasure. His senses are attuned to every detail, the way your body tightens around him, the taste of your sweat on his tongue, the symphony of your heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Driven by an insatiable hunger, Matt ravishes you with a mix of controlled dominance and unrestrained passion. He relishes in the feel of your body responding to his touch, the way your moans and gasps fill the air, a testament to the pleasure he brings you.

As the climax approaches, Matt's movements become more erratic, his thrusts more desperate. He groans your name, his voice filled with a mix of desire and adoration, as he loses himself in the shared ecstasy that washes over you both. With one final thrust, he finds release, his body trembling with the intensity of his orgasm.

Collapsing beside you, Matt pulls you close, his breath ragged as he revels in the aftermath of your passion. He presses a tender kiss to your forehead, his touch gentle and loving. "I need you too," he whispers, his voice filled with sincerity. "Always."

[someone1348]

K my friend! I just wanna do another request with the turtle boys! So uhhh what I'm thinking is that what if the Rise boys interacted with a very shy reader and the turtles just cheer them up by tickling them? (Ler!turtles lee!reader) I think this might be new for u, again sorry for disturbing. Thank you!♡

Hello my friend!! I apologize for how late this is but I still hope you enjoy regardless!

And you are never disturbing me! I promise! /gen /pos /p

Anytime anytime!

Tw: they are cheer up tickles so it might be a bit sad but other than that none! This is adorable!

With all of that being said Enjoyy!!

-K :]

____________~☆°♡°☆°♡°☆~_____________

Leo!:

-The BEST at cheer up tickles!

-Since he's more of a vocal/verbal teaser/teases are his THING his cheer up tickles consist of not only your favorite tease but a whole bunch of compliments

-From compliments on your laugh to how adorable you are, Leon's gonna say it alll to get that incredible smile back on your face again!

-He knows from personal experience, and from being twins with Donnie, that gentle tickles are more suited for cheer ups so thats what he'll do unless you say otherwise

-it really depends on the situation but regardless he's on top of everything!

-Making sure you're comfortable the whole time!

"Hey,,Hey what's wrong?" He immediately rushed to your side, his voice calm and soothing.

It was hard to explain at the moment but you just weren't feeling 100% and that's absolutely valid! He was absolutely understanding of course

"Here, if you're okay with physical touch right now, I can give you a Leon style distractionnn~" he giggled wiggling his fingers teasingly at you

After you give him the go ahead he wiggled his six didgets gently alll over your tickle spots as he complimented every reaction, giggle, sound, ect. That you made!

"Awwww look at that incredible smile! And might I add what adorable giggles you have! Ohoho did I find another tickle spott! I'm gonna getcha'!~" He continued to lift you up and getcha all giggly until you were ready!

And of course he gave you cuddles afterwards if you wanted them!

Donnie!:

-He's pretty great at cheer up tickles

-He won't tease or compliment per say but he will point out little details about your actions in a good way

-And will reassure you that everything is going to be okay

-He's used cheer up tickles on Mikey before so he has a pretty good understanding of what to do and what not to do

-He's extremely gentle though

-likes to trace and draw into your tickle spots to help sooth you when this happens

"I've got you, everything is going to be okay, are you comfortable with physical touch right now?" He asked you gently before doing anything.

If you give him the go ahead he's gonna draw circles and little shapes in your skin, outline things like your ribs or spine to "study" the human body some more, but really it's just to get you all giggly,

"There's that laugh I love so much" he'd say with his own smile "Say, you seem to be more ticklish here and when I trace, how interesting I do quite enjoy your responses though, like music to the ears"

He tells you how proud he is of you and continues until you feel better again. He will absolutely be getting you anything you want after that too! You deserve it!

Raph!:

-The GENTLEST ANGEL EVER!

-He's already gentle with his tickles but if you need cheer up tickles, he's on a whole other level of gentle

-He'll scoop you up, hold you close and tickle you all over your tickle spots until you're feeling better again

-He will absolutely use baby talk though so look out! /pos

-He can't help it! You're so precious to him and he's just gotta coo about how much you mean to him in the way!

"Come here, Raphies got you, you're safe with me I promise, are you okay with physical touch right now?" If you say yes he's gonna scoop you up and onto his lap, holding you close before wiggling his six didgets all over your giggle spots, so gently it almost feels like a feather with how light and soft he's being, unless you tell him otherwise of course!

"Raph's gonna getcha' Awww look at you! You're so precious I could listen to your laugh alll day! Coochie Coochie Coo~ awwww there's that incredible smileee! Tickle Tickle Tickleee" he would fawn over how adorable you are

"You're so important to me and this world, don't you ever forget that"

Mikey!:

-Whenever you are sad He will do whatever it takes to make you smile again

-It starts off with jokes and silly faces but then as you gave him the go ahead he would move to tickles

-His tickles are normally fast paced, and these ones are quick too but he's definitely more gentle then normal (of course unless you tell him otherwise :])

-He's gonna do everything he can for you to see you smile again

"Oh Sunshine, come here, are you okay with physical touch right now? Because if soooo I know a certain doctor who can helpppp~" He wiggled his fingers teasingly/playfully at you. If you give him the go ahead he is pulling you into the tickle hug of your lifetime!

"Doctor positive is going to tickle alll the sadness out of you!" He smiled as he wiggled is fingers gently and quickly over every tickle spot he can reach

"I've got you, I promise" He would reassure you before being teasy again "Tickletickletickletickle~ awww there's that smileee~" he adores you, and hearing you laugh and or seeing you smile especially after knowing you were upset is the best part of his day!

---------------------------------------------------

God I needed this,,, I hope you all enjoyedd! I loved writing it so much! Thank you for the request! Apologies on the lateness again!

I hope you all have an amazing day/evening/night because you truly deserve it! Know that I am so incredibly proud of you, existing can be tough but you are doing a great job! Give yourself a pat on the back today, you're doing a great job! Also please do whatever is good for your soul, you deserve good things!

-K :]

[rayless-reblogs]

For the author ask game, 5 and/or 11?

5: How do you know when a story is "done"?

Hm, that's a good one... I've often started projects without a strict outline, but I don't think I've ever gone into a long project not knowing how it ends. But that's not quite what the question is.

Even if you know exactly how things are ending, there's still the question of "When have I written enough?" And I definitely have trouble with endings! Like I said last week or so, I want a story to have closure, but I never want it to feel too pat. Having an ending too wrapped up and perfect feels very artificial to me, and I enjoy some elements of ambivalence and ambiguity even as things close -- this issue wasn't resolved ideally, this thing could still happen, A was solved but B was a byproduct of it. The fanfic-writer in me likes the idea of fairly open endings, because that gives the reader room to speculate and put their own interpretation on events.

I think for me, the ending comes when I feel like the mood is right. Obviously I need to clear up everything the story requires to be cleared up, but after that I want to make sure the tone feels right, then I can hopefully land on a memorable closing line and make my exit.

With Eola, the most recent book, I struggled with its ending for literal years. I wasn't sure what was bothering me about it except that in some vague way, I didn't know if it was enough. Without outside help, it can be hard for an author to figure out if a feeling like this is a real problem, or is it the usual creative angst of your work not living up to the unattainable ideal you saw in your head? Unfortunately, there's no measuring cup you can pour your story into to make sure all the measurements are right.

I remember talking about it to a friend whose writing sense I really trust, and they reminded me about climaxes and how somewhere, whatever's happening, the protagonist needs a moment of choice and agency. Looking back over Eola's climax, I realized I hadn't done that, meaning that not only was my protagonist's arc weaker, the climax didn't offer much catharsis, so overall there wasn't a very strong sense of the story even ending. So I went back to the climax and beefed it up.

When it came to Eola's epilogue, I'd rewritten it many times. I'd added and subtracted details, but never entirely changed the ending itself, and I'd always felt discontented with it. But because I went back a step and improved the climax, it improved the ending too. Which made me feel better about setting it down and saying, "Okay, this is done."

So the best I can say is -- it's done when it feels done? That's not useful, I know. Someone needs to invent that measuring cup. The mathematical side of writing the ending is making sure you've covered all the narrative beats you want to. But the non-mathematical, emotional side is ending when it feels right.

11: What punctuation do you love too much?

This is embarrassingly easy. The long hyphen, the em dash. I don't know why it started, or exactly when, but I do remember one of my high school teachers remarking to me, "I liked hyphens a lot at your age too." Well, I'm sorry, Mrs M, but I'm not that age anymore and I'm still drowning in hyphens. I'm making a conscious choice not to use any at this exact moment, but they fly in like darts most of the time.

I think part of it is that the em dash feels more expressive than a comma. If I write, "The Boxer heard a sound behind him, the evil pitterpat of Asher's cat," that works fine dramatically. The comma provides an adequate dramatic pause as you read. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I'm going to write, "The Boxer heard a sound behind him -- the evil pitterpat of Asher's cat." For me, it simultaneously pauses the reader for that dramatic beat and rushes them along, adding tension and energy.

And that's fine as far as it goes. But it goes too far. I will also throw that em dash into dialogue, and character descriptions, and onto the ends of paragraphs, and if I'm feeling really saucy, onto the front of paragraphs.

Reading my stuff over, I start to feel ridiculous. There's always a stage where I go through and try to kill as many em dashes as I can stand, making them boring little commas (ugh) or breaking lines into shorter sentences/fragments. Anything to stop there from being an Overdramatic Em Dash in literally every paragraph.

Maybe I haven't actually answered the question. Maybe I don't love the em dash. Maybe it's my greatest enemy.

Thanks for the asks!

Meme here.

[singlecrow]

For the fanfic ask meme: O and/or P?

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters?

Both! Actually, a story for me consists of the following:

the beginning;

the worldbuilding;

something decisive and transformative that happens at the 2/3 point;

the end.

there's this one mash story of mine, Samhain - a good example because the structure of it completely eluded me for weeks so I thought about it a lot. That story begins with a long, complicated set-up - the idea is that Hawkeye & co. live in a sort-of fantasy universe, full of ghosts and strange magics, although they are still army doctors in a small village in South Korea. All of that I had with me at the start.

Then: at the two-thirds point, we see something that indicate that Hawkeye's POV is not reliable. This strange fantasy world may or may not be real, but Hawkeye himself is definitely somewhere else in his head. That's the transformative point, the other thing that came to me when I first had the idea for this story. I needed more plot, to get Hawkeye from his gentle beginning to the point where it can't help but be obvious to the reader that he's not in his right mind; and I needed the character bit, i.e. what about him has made him susceptible to not being in his right mind. But I didn't have either of those to start with except knowing vaguely that they were out there somewhere.

(Brief aside into how much I love fanfiction as a specific form. If you were writing this as pro fic, you'd have to do so much work to show why this character's mental state means he's an unreliable narrator. But because we have this shared context, as fannish people; because we understand the way the genre works, you can just gesture at it, precisely but not in great detail. Why is Hawkeye Pierce an unreliable narrator? Oh. Yes. Right. And you don't need more than a handful of paras on it.)

And the end: I never have an idea for a story without knowing how it ends. So that's definitely plot (in this particular case, it's the revelation for the reader - if he's not living in a magical universe, where is he really) and also a little bit of character (how has the character changed in the course of living through this story) but I think of it in terms of both.

Was that useful/interesting? I hope so!

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

If I plan a story entirely in advance, it flattens it for me. I can't outline in detail, because that takes away the pleasure of writing. I have a 40k novella on my hard drive that I could send out, and never have because I outlined it first and now I hate it too much.

But I'm not a gardener (is this what you hear described as "pantser" elsewhere? pants in British English are not trousers. I digress). I like my stories, both reading and writing, to have very tight structure. And I think, also, my prose style isn't particularly helpful for being a gardener. As you and everyone else knows, I don't use a lot of words where a few will do. (A. describes me as "laconic", which I love.) And to use that economical style, I need to know exactly where I'm going and why. So it's helpful for me to build my barn with beams, and sort of do the thatch later. Which is I hope a meaningful analogy? It basically means, both. Some planning, some growth.

[dreamerinsilico]

for the end of year writing asks: F P O

What stories are you planning for the future?

*vibrates excitedly*

I've got two Sandman fics that are almost done, both Dream/Hob - a slightly silly, very nerdy, very porny kinkmeme fill and a self-indulgent hurt/comfort thing.

I signed up as a prospective author for a Hannibal 'zine recently, and if accepted, I've got a couple of ideas for that. The one that has the most traction, currently, is about Hannibal trying to exorcise his attachment to Will by more creative means than eating him.  (spoiler: it doesn’t work)

Other than that in Hannibal-land, I've got a post-canon longfic that's been sitting for two years that I direly want to get back to and finish, and if and only if I manage that, I've got a Hannibal-Wayward Children series crossover idea I've been percolating for over a year.

(Honestly... I probably ought to just go ahead and publish the little vignette I wrote as kind of a companion piece to the bigger idea. :P It's short, sweet, finished, and actually good. In case anyone following my tumblr actually knows both canons and cares, it's Hannibal's first therapy session with Jack Wolcott.)

What are your pet peeves in other people’s work?

I have several grammatical error pet peeves (lie/lay errors being the foremost, and unfortunately by-far most common, of those), but those just kind of make me sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose, at most. English isn't everyone's first language, and even if it is, the current state of public education in at least my anglophone country leaves much to be desired. Certainly won't ruin a fic for me.

I think the biggest pet peeve otherwise, aside from various "I vehemently disagree with this characterization" sort of things (which I think we all run into at some point), is when a story goes into a lot of depth... or "depth".... about a subject that the author clearly has no clue about, either from practical experience or research. Fics that go into detail about cooking when it's clear the entirety of the author's knowledge of the subject comes from having watched one or two Gordon Ramsay shows. Fics prominently involving characters being college professors where the author knows absolutely nothing about academia from any perspective other than maybe having been a university student at some point. That kind of thing. I'm never going to tell anyone to only write what they know, but like. Either do the research, or handwave it. Don't go into detail and then get every single detail wrong.

Do you believe in outlines? Show us one! 

I do believe in outlines, for anything more complex than one or two scenes! First relatively concise one I found that isn't for something I haven't finished yet below the cut (because it's still kinda long) -

This is pretty condensed, because I wrote it both for myself and to share with @stylishanachronism because we were doing a collaboration for a Pillars of Eternity minibang event. It's for I Recall (stylishanachronism's art embedded <3).

The nutshell version of what this fic is exploring is: In the present-day, in terms of the game's timeline, the protagonist is face-to-face with the trapped soul of her lover from a previous life thousands of years ago. 99% of the fic is about that past life, and how the protagonist unwittingly betrayed the love of her life.

Events timeline

Iovara leaves the missionaries; Nephele is torn, but declines to go with her

Nephele thinks on Iovara often, sometimes struggles with the desire to leave and join

Thaos sends Nephele off to infiltrate, which she is simultaneously sick and overjoyed over.  General intent to fade into the heretics and go dark with Thaos.

Reunited!  Yay!

...and then Thaos personally tracks Nephele down.  Whoops.

Shit starts hitting the fan, and Nephele ends up suggesting going to Ossionus due to trusting That Asshole way too much

Iovara is captured by the Inquisition and events play out as we see in the game

Actual scene outline

Establish both directly and indirectly an existing relationship between Iovara and Nephele, and a bit about what that relationship is like.  Iovara tells Nephele what she has discovered, and that she intends to leave.  They part with mutual regret.

Flashbacks to earlier time with Iovara

Flashbacks to background with Thaos

Nephele is sent to infiltrate the heretics.  Flashbacks to angst and indecision in the time since Iovara left.  Emphasis on mixed but mostly-optimistic feelings Nephele has about this situation.

Nephele is brought to Iovara and baldly confesses she was sent as a spy/infiltrator.  Iovara is surprisingly (to everyone except Nephele) okay with this.  They get to be happy for a bit.  Nephele’s still not completely sure about this whole atheism thing, but it makes a scary amount of sense and she’s glad to be where she is.

Thaos pops up personally and makes a go at convincing her that the movement is Le Fucked, but he still cares about dear Iovara, and the only way to really salvage things is going to be getting Iovara’s people to go to Ossionus.

The trap is sprung, and they realize it too late.  Nephele starts going into “holy fuck this is my fault” mode; Iovara verbally slaps her out of it and tells her to live, and to remember.

Epilogue: modern-day Acantha in Sun-In-Shadow, face to face with Iovara’s spirit.  “I remember.”

[call-me-quill]

Okay so your fic ‘WHOA, BATMAN: ARSON’ has been living in my head rent free. I was wondering if you would mind if I wrote a fic or series of one shots based on it around the ARSON meetings and the various worlds and different Talon Dick Graysons they adopt?

Obviously they’d be non-canon but I don’t want to step on your toes when you wanted to write some oneshots. So maybe I wouldn’t write anything specific about the Martian Manhunter verse or… the other one shot you had in mind?

Also I don’t know how much detail you know about the additional worlds unmentioned in the fic. I’ve been having a bunch of brainworms about potential additional families to adopt Talons (I love playing with the multiverse twists on the canon universe - I mean it’s not like DC doesn’t often do that itself and honestly half the time I hate their choices). And what the different Talon Dicks could be like.

Did you have firm ideas for all ten universes and Dicks or just more general vibes? I can run some of my ideas by you if you’d be interested?

Would that be okay?

PS. I’m drowningfire on AO3 but you can’t send private messages on that so I hope contacting you here is okay. Yes… I went from I need all the spinoffs to can I write all the spinoffs?

Hi!

It’d be really, really cool to see more of the ARSON universe! Also, WHOA, BATMAN: ARSON is based on Flightless Birds, so it’s kind of cool to think about chain reaction inspiration, as it were :) I currently have concrete plans and half an outline for the Martian Manhunter fic and somewhat more vague plans for a reverse robins fic. Personally I’d kind of prefer if people didn’t write about the martian manhunter au yet while i’m still cooking up that fic, but I’d be thrilled to see stories about the rest of the ARSON universe! Rescuing Talons is close to my heart and I always love to read it <3 I don’t have concrete ideas for all ten worlds in the ARSON Society, just some ideas and then the more developed plans for J’onn’s band of birdkids (i guess they’re not batkids with no batman?) and the reverse robins universe. I do love alternate universes, and saying “what if” with familiar characters and new plot lines. I’d love to hear your ideas, if you wanna share! It’s up to you :) Also, totally fine to contact me here! It’s one of the reasons I have a fic tumblr :) ahaha, big mood. writing spin-offs has been a slippery slope for me personally :P

[obscure-sentimentalist]

13, 22, 25 ;P

Fic writer asks!

13. How much planning do you do before writing?

Well, most of my stuff these days tends to be ficlets, so not a whole lot there. With fics like Old enough (the last time I published a chaptered work) and another idea I'm still trying to hammer out, though, I might actually do some semblance of outlining and bullet out some plot points. Sometimes they're incredibly detailed and full of sub-bullets and semicolons; other times, they're just a few words and as vague as "stupid shit."

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

You know, I'll try sometimes, but more often than not it'll change on me when I get down to work, even if I've already written a bit of the ending to start. I have better luck if I have a particular prompt I'm trying to fill, or the entire ficlet is built around some punchline, but I've gotten used to having an idea in mind and then having the characters drag me in a completely different (and usually better) direction as the story unfolds.

25. Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing?

When it comes to questions about emotional devastation, it's always the Old enough videos scene. I mean, it's probably one of my absolute favorites and was much-needed catharsis for the story, but it basically came about because I summoned the memory of flat-out sobbing at this one movie (not even a good one) I saw as a preteen and wrote with the intent of recapturing that feeling. Based on the number of people who've since informed me that they cried at that chapter, I'd say it succeeded in affecting more than just myself.

[tmae3114]

asking my favorite numbers off the cuff: 9, 27, 53, 57, 69, 72

Fic Writer Ask Meme

9. in an ideal world where you’re already super successful and published, would you want to see a tv or movie adaptation of your work? why or why not?

Honestly? Nah. I mean, in fic terms, absolutely not, no way, ever, my fics very much belong within their medium. In terms of original work? Still a no, mostly because I don't think there's a studio in the world that would let me have the level of creative control I'd want :p

27. do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished? And who do you share them with?

[wobbly hand motion] I quite often share snippets of rough drafts, usually to go "LOOK AT THIS THING I JUST WROTE", but a full unedited rough draft? That's For My Eyes Only. Even if I ask someone else to proofread, they'll be receiving, like, Polished Draft Four or thereabouts. And I usually do all the proofreading myself

53. when writing, do you have an outline? and do you stick to it?

Most of the time, no, no outline! A few bigger/longer ones I have bulletpoint outines, to remind myself of all the beats I want to hit and roughly what order, but mostly I sit down with an idea, a bunch of notes about it, and then I see what happens

57. what is the last thing that a fic made you google when you were reading it?

I had to think about this for a while because it's been quite a while since that happened but I'm pretty sure it was having to go look up if they sell drumsticks (the sweets) in the US because some characters in a fic set there were having some and I was relatively sure that Swizzles stuff doesn't get exported to the US

I was right, btw. They don't. 'twas a UK writer getting a detail wrong

69. how do you write emotional scenes? do you ever feel what the characters feel?

Mostly emotional scenes are just like any other scene for me! I focus on what I want the character to be feeling and what I'm trying to get the audience to feel about it and just go from there. I generally don't feel what the characters are feeling but I have been known to make myself cry on occasion XD That's generally because I wrote something really sad that's meant to make the audience cry, though

72. what do you do if a scene gets too serious?

Depends on what form of "too serious" it is! If it gets too serious for me to handle emotionally in the moment, I tend to get up and pace for a bit, or do a different task for a while, or reread lighter hearted bits of the story until I feel up to tackling it again. If it gets too serious in the sense of breaking the flow or tone of the story in the moment, I go back in the scene to figure out what happened and how it took that turn, and then revise as needed, either to make the scene less serious or to make the preceding events moreso.

[monsterkissed]

⭐⭐ literally talk about anything in BNGN you've been dying to talk about, but if it helps to pick: tell me about those egypt-era scenes in the recent chapters

oh Very good choice

so those scenes were in the outline from p much day one, but they've been moved a lot earlier than they originally were! there are a couple reasons for this including but not limited to one chapter getting split (the only time, miraculously, that i have ever done so) and a few technical re-jiggers in a certain very tech-heavy prologue, but also because i want to do something mean later and i didn't want it to be fighting for attention against those two scenes.

obviously the doppio reveal is star of the show, that's been percolating for a While and i was incredibly excited to finally put it down. there is a point with bngn where it crosses over from intuiting from canon backstory scraps into my own attempts to weave a whole Thing together and that scene is really the point of no return in that regard, it shuts down a lot of ambiguity. there are a lot of hints throughout the 2nd act that the very first chapter of the fic has been a cruel and sneaky trick, but it gets really explicit there (tho bc it's me i think the first line directly referencing the "real" doppio prologue is all the way back in chapter 9). i really liked taking a little break to focus on some comedy again in the midst of some more intense stuff. i wanted it to be very light and funny because you know how i feel about mixing the funny and the drama, but as a scene it also kind of closes the loop on doppio in a sense? kind of trying to cover a lot of aspects about him at once. we go back all the way to the beginning and see what he's about at the same time as we're getting his original canon ending, and later in that same chapter he's going choose to leave behind the new relationships he's been building over the fic and stick to those original guns, albeit with a little less passivity. so it's important to get the context for why this is the natural conclusion his life has brought him to. from here on out, his past isn't going to have the answers. it's forward or nothing.

but by kind of pulling the curtain back on doppio's mysteries we then have to pivot to diavolo's, because very fittingly it turns out neither of them has all of the pieces we need. diavolo's decision to go full crime boss is also a point that's vague in the anime, so we're straight into fresh material there. he's had little glimpses of his POV in the fic before but this is the first real extended shot of him outside of the side content and it's not him as the impressive powerful villain he becomes, but the man he was before that. which is, in short, a Mess. there's comedy there as well, i think being terrified of kc is entirely reasonable as an initial reaction, but it's also a good opportunity to demonstrate diavolo both getting entirely the wrong idea in his scrambling to jump to the right conclusion, and doing things with that faulty data that are not sensible or good long-term decisions. he's still the same person but he's rattled and paranoid and that's a rut he's not getting out of any time soon. he's also desperately isolated and trapped on an island between his various burned bridges, and if he stops to think for a moment he's going to have the weight of that fall down around his ears. so he's not going to stop and think about things very much. this is a minor spoiler i suppose but: while doppio's flashback scenes were very much out of order (actively reverse order, in several cases), diavolo's are a lot more chronological in some senses ("in some senses" because... well, you'll see). they are a lot more grounded and weighted in the past because he is a lot more firmly rooted in it than doppio was. i liked playing with that in his scene particularly, both in referencing spice girl's intro when kc first shows up, and a bit more sneakily by paying off a little detail alllll the way back in chapter 18. for a man who doesn't want to hold onto the past, he held onto that first letter for a Long time.

also, of course, that first egypt chapter lead to the first piece of bngn fanart i received, so obviously it was a triumph in every way.

[canmom]

영화 화요일 29 - Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy

Hey there again... I’m back in the UK. I don’t think that merits an explanation mark because this country sucks. (So do most countries but this one’s so much more personal). Final ‘America observations’ to follow soon!

Also it’s my birthday today! I’m 30. Apparently going by 2016 death rates, I probably can expect to live another 50 years (p=0.7); I might live another 60 (p=0.32), and I am pretty unlikely to get another 70 (p=0.027). My chances of making it to the end of this century are definitely slimmer yet! But who knows what developments in ‘climate crisis’ (-ve) and ‘medical science’ (+ve) and ‘rise of global fascism’ (-ve) and ‘collapse of the present economic order’ (?ve) will adjust those numbers in that time!

Anyway Toku Tuesday kind of foundered during my last couple weeks in California, but it is not dead, and today we’ll celebrate this birthday by watching Park Chan-Wook’s ‘Vengeance’ trilogy, consisting of 복수는 나의 것/Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), 올드보이/Oldboy (2003) and 친절한 금자씨/Lady Vengeance (2005). Of the three, I have so far only had the chance to enjoy Oldboy, which was screened while I was at uni. My impression at the time was to be kind of disturbed lol because I was kind of sheltered back then. I’m looking forward to seeing it again with more appreciative eyes!

Not so long ago on Toku Tuesday 21, we watched some films of Bong Joon-Ho, a director who occupies a pretty similar niche in both Korean film and well, film internationally. This is apparently situated in a ‘Korean wave’ of increasing international popularity of South Korean media since the 90s, although this tends to refer more to K-dramas and K-pop than film; for the current movement in film specifically we see terms like ‘Korean New Wave’ (here) and ‘New Korean Cinema’ (here)

Both directors (along with others such as Yeon Sang-ho and Hwang Dong-Hyuk) deal more or less directly with the harshly unequal social landscape of South Korea: you probs know at least the vague outlines of the story by now: to my understanding, South Korea saw decades of American-backed military dictatorship in the wake of the Korean War stalemate bifurcating the peninsula into two countries; more recently, after a successful protest movement made the dictatorship somewhat less overbearing (need to look into that more!), this gave way to massive growth of capitalist industry polarising society heavily between hyper-rich capitalists and a majority still in shitty housing, severe debt and limited work etc.

At some point I would like to learn a lot more of the details of Korean socioeconomic history and indeed its film industry; the articles I’m skimming talk about the Americans pushing the Korean government to lift restrictions on foreign film, which were replaced by a quota system in local cinemas that didn’t really do much to prevent domination by foreign films, giving this current wave of filmmakers a pretty international set of influences.

So [bearing in mind like I’ve never been anywhere near South Korea and I’m cobbling this story together based on what I’ve seen and Wikipedia], the film industry that’s grown up since the 90s - or at least, the side of it that tends to get shown internationally at film festivals and the like - is one which favours darkly comic, tightly edited character dramas with a lot of comfort depicting both gore and sexuality. Which is a kind of film I quite like, so we’re on our way back to South Korea!

I don’t think this is by any means an inevitable deterministic result of a society of any particular social factor: a somewhat similar story (of rapid and highly unequal capitalist growth) might be told of China for example, but the Chinese film industry seems to face considerably more censorship and place different emphases. We could speculate that the success of directors like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho established a certain idea of what ‘Korean film’ should look like, which led to similar films from South Korea getting 1. funded in the first place and 2. international releases... but that’s kind of speculation.

So let’s narrow in on the thing I do have information to hand to talk about: Park Chan-wook’s career. On Wikipedia we learn that he came from a devoutly Catholic family (something he briefly discusses in relation his vampire priest movie Thirst (2009) in this interview), and that he once hoped to become an art critic as a child, but decided to become a filmmaker instead after seeing Vertigo.

His first film came in 1992, a  gangster film 달은... 해가 꾸는 꿈/The Moon... is the Sun’s Dream about a man who attempts to elope with his boss’s secretary but fails to escape and ends up coerced into assassinating a childhood friend. Five years later, he directed Saminjo aka Trio (1997), about which I can find little information beyond that it centres a suicidal saxophonist. Neither film was very successful, and he mostly worked as a film critic through the 90s. One might infer given the content of many of his films that he was probably hanging out with anarchist or leftists of some stripe in this time.

The break came in 2000, when he wrote one movie, Anarchists, about a cell of anarchists fighting the Korean occupation through propaganda of the deed in 1924, and directed another, a political thriller called Joint Security Area, adapting a novel in which two North Korean soldiers are shot in the DMZ, and the two countries do not agree on how it happened. The truth turns out to be that soldiers from both countries became friends while patrolling the border, and the killings happened after they were found out.

This one was a hit, and enough of one that Park was afforded a lot more freedom on his next film, 복수는 나의 것 (2002), literally translated as Vengeance is Mine but better known internationally as Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. Here we really start to see his interests: it’s a film about a deaf-mute factory worker who after being fired, tries to exchange his kidney to a group of gangsters in order to get a matching transplant for his sister. The gangsters instead just rob him, and he is unable to afford the operation... but he knows an anarchist named Yeong-mi who proposes kidnapping the daughter of the CEO who fired him as a way to get the money. Naturally, it doesn’t go to plan, leading to a growing cascade of murders, suicides and accidental deaths...

This was not especially successful at the time, disparaged by critics at the time for being overly gory, although it’s subsequently been reevaluated more positively as the first part of the Vengeance Trilogy.

Park also wrote a film called A Bizarre Love Triangle in 2002, although once again there is less info to hand about this one. It seems to involve a twisty story about a three way bi love triangle recapped from a space station? But I really only have the imdb summaries to go on.

The next ‘Vengeance’ film (the trilogy is linked thematically rather than narratively) was Oldboy (2003), and this is where the Park Chan-wook train really got a ton of steam, since it went ahead and won the Cannes film festival that year. The plot has a lot of really quite amusing and left field devices that it seems almost a shame to write out in chronological order, but if you want to know (skip a para if you don’t):

It broadly involves a rich man’s very elaborate revenge scheme for being caught having sex with his sister, who subsequently committed suicide. To this end, he kidnaps and imprisons the man Oh Dae-su who witnessed him, giving time for Dae-su’s daughter to grow up, and then contrives an elaborate scheme to cause Dae-su to have unknowing sex with his now adult daughter (while Dae-su he finds newfound purpose seeking revenge on his captors). It is known for some really beautifully shot scenes of very gruesome things happening, like the long scrolling corridor brawl, Dae-su stuffing an octopus in his mouth, and the suitably vicious finale in which he cuts out his tongue after learning the truth.

This time around, critics judged the violence suitably thematic and purposeful rather than excessive, and Park achieved his promotion to ‘big name auteur director’ in the eyes of the criticism industry. Very cool movie that I remember a lot better than much that I watched that time, and I can’t wait to see it again...

Finally we have Lady Vengeance, also concerning an elaborate revenge scheme: a high school student who became pregnant and was imprisoned for killing a younger child, who in reality was exploited and abused by a teacher after she went to him for help with her pregnancy and coerced into falsely confessing after he kidnapped her baby. Securing an early release, she pursues her own elaborate revenge plot to kidnap and torture the teacher in question, who turns out to be a serial murderer. The reception was warmer this time around, though not quite on the level of Oldboy.

So three gory films about people seeking revenge, in the contexts of various systems of power. What is it all to say? For this we might turn to this master’s thesis by Se Young Kim, whose view is unlikely to be controversial:

At their core, the films are concerned with issues of gender and class, and in a broader context, society and history. The personal struggles for vengeance are allegorical for social struggles and this thesis finds that specific anxieties connected to a very specific period in recent South Korean history are expressed in the films. Those are anxieties formed in the wake of the processes of democratization and capitalization in the country. The Vengeance Trilogy is speaking to and speaking of Korea, and through that dialogue we can see not only discourses of popular nationalism prominent throughout this period, but also a response and resistance to that popular nationalism.

(...)

the protagonists of the films or the citizens are locked in constant struggle that ultimately turns out to be futile. Their resistance is in vain because their citizenship demands their blood, as does the nation. The construction of the national body (capitalism and democratization) demands it. Body parts are not only disconnected from the body, they are also used as commerce, traded in exchange for other services and/or items. This allegory of the body mirrors the argument that Korea’s current economic status came at the cost of blood – starting, perhaps, with Park Chung-hee’s sending of Korean troops to Vietnam in exchange for American economic support (Kwak, 2009). The characters’ bodies are representative of the national body, and allegorize the lack of integrity in the nation: while the hegemonic nationalism argues that the country is at its strongest – in terms of social unity and cultural cohesion – the films are pointing to the contrary. The country is economically strong and progressing, but at an enormous price.

It would be interesting I think to compare these films with movements like ero-guro, which also connect gory imagery with symbols of nationalism; Se Young Kim’s thesis briefly touches on the films of Takashi Miike who works in a somewhat different tradition of exaggerated splatter but I’m not sure if I agree with the reading he cites which takes the violence of allegorical of the incursion of foreigners into a weak Japan (like, seriously? that’s what you’re getting?).

On that note... my own general feeling on ~The Issue of Violence In Film~ is that it is necessary (and even if it weren’t, inevitable) to make art in a society as overtly coercive and violent as the ones we all live in which in some way processes that violence and its various psychic effects including fascination and even eroticism; films with a lot of special-effects gore is one approach which I think continues to be productive! So when Se Young Kim writes:

In no way do I intend for this study to be a validation of a disreputable body of work by an ultraviolent director. I am not studying these films and saying that they are worth study because they too have social commentary and historical value. Rather, I am saying that even these films that are indicative of a “bankrupt, reductive postmodernism” are worth studying for they do not exist in a cultural vacuum (Dargis 14). Even the most disreputable films are products of a society and a culture and are reflective of that culture that produces and consumes it.

I find it frustrating: I don’t think there is anything to apologise for here and the appropriate answer to “how do you justify the ultraviolence and sexuality in your films” is just a middle finger, because if you’re asking that question you do not have the appropriate perspective to get it. I don’t think anything is obliged to watch them if it’s upsetting, but the idea that such films are ‘disreputable’ when a Marvel imperialist vehicle (whose connection to actual, real-world warfare is so much more tangible) is ‘mainstream’ is... galling. This is what you get when you turn to academics for insights...

Anyway, all that aside, I’m very keen to catch up on what Park Chan-Wook was up to back then. We’ll definitely get on to some lesser known filmmakers before too long, but for now, those of you who saw these when they came out I hope you will be down to enjoy them again, and those who haven’t seen some of all of them, I look forward to getting to go into it together! If we’re sobbing shellshocked wrecks by the end of this I think I’ll have done something a little right.

Park Chan-Wook has gone on to direct many other extremely stylish and compelling films, of which I have sadly only seen The Handmaiden, so I’m certain we’ll be back to him soon.

Toku Tuesday will begin at 7pm UK time, about an hour and a half from this post! I’ll be streaming at the usual place, twitch.tv/canmom and we’ll watch the Vengeance Trilogy in order! And if time permits we might take the chance to catch up on Kamen Rider Revice as well...

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Hi! I have a writing question, hopefully it's not too vague. I was wondering if you had any advice for someone who has characters in mind, but no discernible setting or plot? I love writing, but have never dabbled in fiction, and recently I've had this cast of characters milling around my head: I spent hours picking out names, developing families, hobbies, quirks, voices. I even have ideas of what their respective character arcs would entail, but this is all very abstract. I have no clue on what to actually *do* with them. Or rather, there are so many possibilities I can think up that it's as useless as having none. I tried writing for whumptober (I'm not sure yet I want whatever this is to be fully whump, I just figured it would be good practice) but ended up with completely different settings for each prompt, and now I want to further develop each one, and then do the same thing but a little to the left... but it all ends up very shallow, and it's just so overwhelming! I thought the problem may be that most literature I consume is either academia or very character-focused novels -- which are great (I mean, I love a good 800 pages of pure dialogue and scenery descriptions) but I still feel like I need *something*. How do you go about this? Do you always know where a story is going when you start it (for example, with Danny's story, or Erase to Control, or Chris' vampire AU)? How do you come up with such elaborate worlds and timelines? They seem to come to you with such ease!

So I have a confession to make.

I never have any goddamn clue where my story is going when I start.

I am what they call a "pantser", as in "fly by the seat of your pants". If I try to plan or outline I lose motivation. So usually I work based on "scenes". I don't go into it planning to write Vampire Chris goes to WWI, I start with a prompt for "what if Chris was a vampire and had to suck Jake's blood?" and keep writing prompts and ideas and eventually just sort of end up with a whole WWI arc.

Basically I just write character + small scene and let the details build on each other from vignette to vignette, drabble to drabble, until a loosely organized sense of world-building and even an overarching narrative starts to come together.

So I would say... think about small-p plot. What do you want to have happen in that individual scene as you write it? Don't pressure yourself to build a world - instead, build a room. Then string those rooms - chapters, scenes, pieces - together into a house. A yard. A street. A city.

Let the world be built as you get a grasp on its parameters by dwelling within it.

Once you have that small-p plot, then take some time to think about what is happening and how the scenes relate to one another, what they tell you a out the world and where you might like to see things go.

I am immensely character-driven. I write a person first, then I write where they are, and I let the world they exist in be built from there.

I also do a TON of reading for fun and channel that into research. I referenced Chris having fought in WWI... then read a pile of books as I prepped for Whumptober to get a sense of how to adapt the world of the Great War to having a vampire within it. Chris being autistic involved a LOT of work and research too. And making sure vampire!Chris kept the essential autistic aspects of himself was very important to me, even though his understanding of himself and experiences are so different, the core of who he was remained the same, and that heavily affected what I did with individual scenes and then the larger narrative.

But. Yeah.

I start with a person, and a moment, and then another and another. The plot usually surprises me as much as my readers.

I hope this helps!

[vorthosjay]

Hi Jay! I've been following your blog for a while, and I've noticed that your answers have changed a lot since you started doing work for WotC. What do you find the most challenging/rewarding about engaging with the community in your new position?

That's a great question. Well, I used to speculate a TON, but I can't do that anymore, so I typically focus on being a resource for folks. The biggest change is that it's a job now, and ever since the fiction transferred back to Studio X doing web fiction, it's been a lot more regular work. In fact this year, between all my various projects, my pay has been equivalent to what I used to make doing emergency management in a year. Probably won't be the same next year, but it's a nice thing to have during a pandemic.

This is my first read more in a long time :) More after the jump.

So, it's a job now, and it's also a more frequent job now. For War of the Spark through Ikoria, I'd have some contact with the team and then get an outline or draft that I'd spend a week or two on all at once every three months or so - so plenty of time to recharge in between. From Zendikar Rising onward, I'm working on 5,000 word stories pretty regularly, so my time and inclination to do additional work on the side has dropped significantly. There's only so much brain space I can devote to Magic and most of that is taken up by work I'm paid for now. That's why my articles have dried up a little and my answers become less detailed here.

As for engaging with the community, I still enjoy it. I love helping people get into the story, and when people get excited about little lore tidbits, but on the flip side where I used to speculate or extrapolate, I need to be careful doing so for a variety of reasons. It's real easy to accidentally let something slip!

For instance, you might think 'your' (the general 'your') question about Urza was innocuous, but oops! I've known a Brothers War set was coming in some form for like three years, but I don't know exactly what tact they're taking. How do I answer this when something might flip between what I know now and what ends up happening later?

And people take my comments very seriously. Again using Urza as an example, I'm plugged in to a lot of discords and communities and will see comments like "oh the continuity guy retweeted the Brothers War announcement talking about Urza being a war criminal" (and he is) "that must mean that's how WotC is approaching it", or literally see an off-hand discord comment of mine cited on the wiki. So it can also be exhausting, haha.

But I've also gotten to write two books (so far) and (a handful of) people have been really excited by them, so that's been really rewarding. I was positioned in the right place at the right time to fall backwards into a great gig, but the downside is that at the extreme end, people actively hate you or think you're a villain. Or since you're accessible they take out their frustrations with WotC on you. And the community is really, really bad at real criticism, and so some story that was probably just okay becomes "the worst", you know? It gets really tiring.

So yeah, due to an accumulation of all of that, I'm mostly taking a step back from things and putting some distance in there.

Oh, and also I've got a second kid on the way next month so I'm not gonna have time for anything soon anyway :P

[dajaregambler]

HeliosR - Victor Valentine Card story ‘‘Seeking for what’s frightening’’

Translation of Victor Valentine’s 4* ‘’Gothic Halloween’’ card story from ‘Helios Rising Heroes’.

Gray: Uwah, amazing… Did you make this, Victor-san…?

Victor: Yes, this robot was built by me. I’m occupied with pouring all my time into producing these for the upcoming Halloween League.

Gray:  I had assumed you were leaning more towards biochemistry… But to be able to build robots too, that’s seriously amazing...

Victor: As you thought my area of expertise is chemistry, however if I had to be honest, I barely have the confidence to manufacture these… 

Victor: And on top of it, I had been also struggling with the design itself...

Gray: Eh… Wondering if it has enough punch to it, you mean… I already think it’s scary enough as is though....

Victor: Adding that pinch of “scary” has been considerably difficult. I’ve been making these as requested by Marion, but as far as the details go, I’ve only received how it should be thematically based on “evil spirits of Halloween”.

Victor: Naturally I have referred to literature to form a general outline on the matter, but what traits resemble an “evil spirit”, about it having a factor of “spookiness” to it...  No matter how far I go with investigating the matter, I simply cannot draw the line where it’d be most suitable.

Gray: Like evil spirits… spookiness….

Victor: What is your impression of it, Gray? Do you think it’s able to represent those traits of an “evil spirit”?

Gray: Eh? Eeeh… uh, um…

Victor: Please do not hold yourself back, and be as candid as you can.

Gray: Be as candid as I can… Right, right...

Gray: Whether or not it looks like one, I can say that it’s absolutely close but… Um… on the contrary, it might actually be a bit too scary... 

Gray: H-how do I say this… It’s like originally you were going for CERO A but ended up heading towards CERO D instead…?

Victor: CERO……? What may that be?

Gray: Ah… awawah, sorry…. I used a game rating system for scale… a Japanese one too…

Gray: The Halloween League is an event that children will attend, in terms of gaming that would be for an event for all ages...

Gray: But, as of now it feels more that it’s heading towards a more mature audience… So I was thinking all like, how about aiming for a younger one instead~... but please don’t mind it too much...

Victor: Hmm, I see…That is very interesting, or I should rather say an intriguing point of view.

Victor: I will do as you said and make an attempt to aim for a younger demographic, however with how it has been currently going, I don’t quite have the grasp on what I should do to change it.

Victor: If you don’t mind, could you tell me more about video games for all ages to use as a reference point going forward?

Gray: !! O-ofcourse…!

-

Victor: Hooh.... Even though it’s shortly summed up as for all ages, there seems to be quite a variety of video games.

Gray: For now I kept it limited and looked up horror games that came to mind… You’d come across even more games if you were to look it up

Gray: Uuum… if you’re looking for a game that has enemies that are “evil spirit”-like, then maybe this one…?

Victor: Yes, that kind of caricature is good. It gives an impression closely resembling the ones in animation for children. 

Gray: P-personally I think it’s good if it’s as scary as these enemy characters here but… That is for you to decide...

Victor: Hmm…. If I were to judge from your perspective, would this be more scarier?

Gray: Eh? Yes… it, would be….?

Gray: I feel, that the difference is pretty obvious but… you don’t seem to think so, Victor-san?

Victor: Indeed. Even though we’re going in a different direction, I don’t feel that any of them are frightening, thus making it difficult to judge.

Gray: R-right…

Gray: Uh… I’m just asking this out of curiosity but… Is there, something that you’re scared of, Victor-san…?

Victor: Something that I’m scared of?

Gray: Ah, aaah, uuum, it’s just… it’s okay if it’s too hard to answer, or if you don’t want to! I suddenly asked something weird anyway, I’m sorry….

Victor: Fufu, what are you apologizing for? I don’t believe it was odd by any means.

Victor: Something I’m scared of… you ask? I haven’t played any video games before so on that matter I have nothing to say, and in regards to horror movies I don’t recall being frightened once. 

Gray: Eh… so you’re like, totally fine with ghosts and demons and all that…?

Victor: More that I don’t believe in such things due to my point of view as a scientist, rather than being fine with it.

Victor: Well, realistically speaking “Ghosts believing scientists” such as Nova are not too uncommon out there.

Victor: I do want to believe in the possibility of it… Unfortunately, I have yet to see a theory that justifies it to begin with. 

Gray: Wah… you’re amazing, Victor-san…. Makes me a bit embarrassed given how I accidentally believe in anything...

Victor: No, I wouldn’t say that I am. I do occasionally envy those who are able to simply enjoy horror movies as is.

Gray: Is that so…?

Victor: Do you have any issues when it comes to horror and occult, Gray?

Gray: Aah, no… I’ve built up a tolerance for it because of games that are full of it...

Gray: Besides, I think… humans are scarier than any ghost or demon, 100 times more scarier even….

Victor: Human themselves…. For example, such as Asch Albright?

Gray: !! Eh, eeeeh…. yes… His name alone makes me sweat bullets, weirdly enough...

Gray: But, not just A….sch, but I’m scared of coming in contact with other people in general...

Gray: Even before talking to them actually, like what if they hate me…. what if they think I’m weird… that’s all I end up thinking about

Victor: Which means that you are currently feeling the same sense of dread when talking to me this moment?

Gray: T-that’s right… Aaah, but, you’re not scary Victor-san… Um, it’s just...

Victor: Yes, I understand. I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t believe there’s anything odd about you, Gray. 

Gray: V-Victor-san….!

Victor: My apologies for getting us sidetracked. Could you lend me your wisdom for a little longer? 

Gray: Ah, yes… yes of course!

--

Nova: Oooh, looks like you made a lotta progress~ Making ghouls and all♪

Victor: I was able to because of the advice I had received from Gray, and so I was finally able to see the light.

Nova: Good pals with Gray-kun now, eh? Well with Ren-kun too but, lately more people have been dropping by your lab. Lookit this celebrity here~♪

Victor: ...You’re surprisingly in a good mood today, aren’t you now?

Nova: Mmh, haven’t slept so I’m feeling somewhat all over the place

Nova: I’ve been absorbed into making these robots too, and before I knew it three whole days had passed~ That scared me real good, yanno

Nova: Wait a second, nobody came to see me in these three days….!? I wanna be a celeb tooooo~!

Victor: How about resting your mind and body, rather than dawdling around here?

Nova: Naaw~ The adrenaline’s coursing through my veins, not feeling tired in the slightest~ 

Nova: Whatever you say, making these robots is right where I belong. Had lotsa fun doing it too

Nova: Obviously I’m paying enough attention to safety and all that, but there’s more space to feel at ease compared to what I usually do for work….

Nova: Not that I’m forgetting substance research by any means, it’s just pretty nerve-racking when combined with making assets and tools for the heroes to fight with 

Nova: Didn’t mean to pay that much mind to it, still it’s a heavy responsibility to have one’s life in your hands... 

Nova: Makes me go all like, damn, this fear of failure and what to do about it sure is always growing ain’t it now!~ like some kinda realisation each time, yanno

Victor: ….., fear….

Nova: You’re always doing such a fantastic job, me~

Nova: A Summerfieldtastic job~....

Victor: …….

Nova: Eh, no response!? Here I was putting all my energy into being an idiot, and instead of straight manning me, you straight up ignore me!?

Victor: Aah, my apologies… There was something on my mind.

Victor: What did you say?

Nova: I-I didn’t say a word! Vic’s a dummy! I’m gonna go to my room and sleep! Good-NIGHT!!!

Victor: …..?

-

Fun trivia corner:

The Japanese game rating goes from CERO A to D, and Z. All ages would be CERO A, for 12 years old and above CERO B, for 15 years old and above CERO C, for 17 years old and above CERO D, and at last CERO Z for 18 and above. The European one is PEGI with age specific ratings (PEGI-3, or PEGI-18) and the American one is ESRB, with letter codes such as T for teen, M for mature, and so on. Helios is rated as 12+ on the Apple app store, that would be CERO A, PEGI-12 or ESRB T.

[whatmack]

Hi! I know it's been a while since you wrote it, but I recently re-read in Flanders Fields, and I needed you to know how much I love it. It's maybe my favourite piece of fanftiction ever, and it has a very special place in my heart. I read it first when it was still being published, and it's been living in my mind rent free ever since. I was wondering if there was anything you left out of it that you wanted to talk abt? Dw if you don't wanna respond to this, it's mostly to let you know how much I loved this fic (and also to try get myself some extra content ;p )

Thank you so much! That’s-- ah, this means a lot to hear. It’s fucking wild that IFF went up less than a calendar year ago, huh? The aesthetic choice to have Neil not wearing a mask in surgery did not age well  One of the things that I really enjoy about writing fanfiction is that you’re working with a reader base who already has a body of information about the characters, relationships, etc., and whatever you change, or don’t change, you can still imply things or have background interactions that don’t requrie as much in-text explanation, because it’s reasonable to assume your audience will pick up what you’re putting down based on what they already know. (It’s why, for example, in BAST from the year before, I was skimpy on the details of Nathan and Lola’s violence, and on Andrew’s abuse. The readers already had the relevant basics, and I tried to toss out enough details about what changed so that, hopefully, y’all’d get the picture.) That said, the reference to Kevin’s tattoo in the chapter with the wine cellar has never sat quite comfortably with me. The scene itself I kept in not just for the trivia (that’s based on a real event, one that I doubt was isolated, of soldiers being ordered to blow an alcohol cache and drinking themselves silly instead), but because I wanted to keep up with the narrative of Andrew protecting Kevin, and also how he protects “his” other people with Kevin as an example. The tattoo was an easter egg to myself, and to the readers, to indicate to us why Kevin was upset, though Andrew didn’t know the specifics. (More after the cut)

But I wish I had put a bit more buildup to that, a bit more backstory. In the fic as a whole I feel it sticks out as a random detail, and I’d have liked to either remove it and find something else to reference, or seed more of Kevin’s backstory earlier, so the tattoo, and Kevin touching it when remembering shit that upset him, wasn’t so-- weird? Incongruous? Because I didn’t include the backstory in the story proper, I had only a vague outline of what Kevin’s life had been like pre-Andrew’s Squad. Therefore this isn’t going to hold up to the level of fact-checking and forehead-creasing-late-night-museum-website searching that I tried and sometimes almost succeeded in applying over the rest of the fic. That said, what was in MY head while writing, was: Like in canon, the Moriyamas set Kayleigh up to be killed in an accident (likely horse-drawn-carriage, though there WERE some automotive vehicles around pre Model-T-Ford), and took Kevin to be, well, Riko’s. Instead of Exy, Kevin was raised to be Riko’s retainer, second, bodyguard...whatever Riko needed. Or wanted. I’ve shunted Riko and Kevin, at least, to England for this, because the US did fuckall in WWI. Kevin endured canon-typical abuse from Riko, including the paired face tattoos, but also excelled in the training and tasks the Moriyamas set him; he was in particular a very skilled shot. Riko did not break his hand (that big ol’ rock from the shell blast did that, whoop), but after a particularly ugly altercation on the eve of war Kevin made his defiant stand by running away and enlisting in the Irish army, not the English, out of loyalty to the mother he barely remembered. It took Wymack a while to track Kevin down after Kayleigh’s death. Once he did, he spent the following years attempting get Kevin away from the Moriyamas. Unfortunately-- though to his credit-- this garnered their attention. As a Filipino man in Britain, he already had difficulty finding work; as a Filipino man who had made himself a nusiance to a powerful crime family, it became impossible. He joined the army to keep from starving on the street, and found to his surprise that he was good at it. He gained a reputation among the enlisted men for being impossible to kill-- for being lucky-- something that provided him with a great deal of dark amusement. Despite continued trying, he did not manage to meet Kevin until Kevin wound up under Whittier’s command. By then he knew Kevin was his child; I haven’t decided how, or when, he found out. 

[wellimaginethat]

Runaway Love

Pairing: Jay Halstead x (female) Voight!Reader

Word Count: 3340

Author’s Note: Um...I’m not entirely sure what this is, but I know it’s not the best and the storyline is weird as hell. This is also definitely AU because I haven’t seen all of Chicago PD and I’m just going with what I know, so I might’ve messed up on some of it (sorry). Also, could I pick a more cliche title? Lol

Trigger Warning(s): Mention of sexual assault (but it doesn’t go into detail), stalking, running away, underage drinking, alcohol, mention of drugs, mention of prostitution (literally just the mention of it because of a case)

Disclaimer: I don’t owe nor am I affiliated with any of the Chicago shows, I just like to play with the characters

Summary: Reader ran away when she was seventeen. On her eighteenth birthday, she met Jay Halstead, who was just getting ready to leave for the Army. After a whirlwind romance before he deployed out, and after constantly sending letter back and forth, and him visiting her when he could, he asked her to move to Chicago with him after he was discharged. Only for her to turn him down, leaving him heartbroken and confused.

Y/N = Your Name

Y/EC = Your Eye Color

Y/HC = Your Hair Color

It seemed like it was a fairly average case. They were trying to track down an all around bad guy, he was involved in a drug ring, a prostitution ring, and had killed at least three people.

They caught him and were taking him in when Voight’s eyes landed on a bunch of photos scattered on the coffee table, narrowing in on one in particular. He walked over and picked it up, frowning at it before turning and storming out to the guy and grabbing him by the arm, pulling him away from the officers that were leading him out to the car.

“Why do you have this?” Voight asked as he held up the photo.

The man barely even spared a glance at the photo, scoffing.

“Why do you have this?” Voight asked more insistently, this time grabbing the man and shaking him roughly, shoving the photo into his face.

The man didn’t seem to be bothered much. “I don’t know, she was just another girl that my boss wanted us to snatch.”

This affected Voight, leaving him visibly distraught.

The officers led the man away.

Jay stepped over to Voight, frowning some as he took a look at the picture, which caused a noticeable reaction.

Voight looked at him and frowned. “What?”

“I know her.” Jay breathed out with a frown.

Voight matched his expression. “How?”

“I met her in Florida, before I deployed out, at a bar near the base.” Jay explained, looking at Voight then.

“When?”

“Right before I deployed out, a few years ago.” Jay frowned deeper.

“This girl has been missing for nearly eight years, and she’s my daughter.” Voight told him.

The rest was sort of a blur for the both of them, and when Jay got back to his apartment, he dug out the last letter he received from her, informing him that she couldn’t leave her life in Florida to join him in Chicago, and started to wonder if maybe the reason she couldn’t was because she was running from something. Then he started digging through the other letters that she had written to him that he still had after all this time. He pulled out one that had a phone number, it was when she had changed her number and sent it to him so that he could call her whenever he could while he was away, which wasn’t very often but still.

He then pulled out his phone, not even considering for a second that it might be a bad idea to reach out to you, and dialed the number.

Three rings.

“Hello?” You answered the phone, a confusion in your voice like you couldn’t understand why anyone was calling you.

Jay was shocked that you answered, and hearing your voice after all this time knocked the breath out of him.

“Hell-o?” You tried again, dragging it out this time.

“Y/N?” Jay breathed out, struggling to remember how to breathe.

There was silence on your end and he was terrified that you’d hung up. “Jay?” You sounded shocked, but pleasantly shocked. “What’s going on?” You asked softly, trying to figure out why he was calling you.

“I…” He didn’t know what to say. “I just needed to hear your voice.”

“Is everything okay?” You asked, the worry evident in your voice.

“Yes and no.” Jay admitted, leaving you worried.

“What do you mean?”

“I just...I miss you.” Jay told you honestly.

Silence on your end again, but he heard your breath hitch. “I miss you too.” You whispered into the phone.

He was left not knowing what to say again. “I still love you.” He figured you’d hang up at that.

“I still love you too.” You admitted honestly, quietly. “That’s not why I ended things.”

“Then why did you?” He honestly wanted an answer, to hear it from you.

“It’s just...complicated.”

“Is it because you ran away?” He asked abruptly.

You faltered. “Wh-what?” Your mind started reeling, you knew he was in Chicago but that was the last thing you heard. Did he somehow find out about you from a missing person’s poster or something?

“I’m a cop now, Y/N.” Jay told her, like that explained everything.

“I’m confused.” You told him, which wasn’t a lie.

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I’m not.” You answered him with a frown.

“Why did you leave town?”

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “It’s a long story.”

“I have time.” Jay answered quickly.

“Well I don’t.” You hung up on him then, starting to think about what you were going to do. If Jay knew who you really were, and where you were living, then he could get a hold of your dad and tell him, and you knew how that would end.

That didn’t stop you from flinging yourself onto your bed and thinking it through as you laid there. If you did go back to Chicago, you’d be with your family again. Maybe you could finally have a normal life. Maybe even fix things with Jay, he did say he still loved you.

~Flashback ~ You left home two months after you turned seventeen because of reasons you’d rather not discuss. You couldn’t believe you had actually gotten away with it, you were certain that your dad would at least be able to tell what you had planned, he was a cop after all. Or maybe that your mom would have noticed that you hugged her a little longer than normal. Or that maybe Justin would’ve asked why you called him that night and talked for what seemed like forever, like you would never talk to him again. Or even Erin, you stopped by her house before you left Chicago and gave her like three hugs before you left.

It didn’t seem right. Maybe it was because you were always the good girl, maybe that’s why they didn’t notice, because they didn’t expect it.

The more you thought about it, the more your heart broke. You didn’t want to leave your family behind. 

They should have noticed something was up. They should have noticed something wasn’t right with you. They should have noticed.

You had to pull over after driving for an hour because you were crying way too hard. You weren’t even out of Illinois yet, barely even out of Chicago, if you looked in the rearview you probably could’ve still seen the outline of the city.

You didn’t know what you were going to do with your life at this point, but you knew you had to get the hell out of Chicago.

You slept in the backseat of your car at rest stops for about two weeks before you eventually stopped in Florida. Within three months you were able to get a job as an exotic dancer and get yourself an apartment. You avoided getting caught because the owner of the club you worked at was kind of a shady guy, who didn’t care if you were under eighteen or needed to be paid under the table. You liked him because he didn’t ask questions, you didn’t trust him however because, again, he was a shady guy.

By the time you were eighteen, you were doing pretty well for yourself. You made good money, but you still stayed in a cheaper apartment because you didn’t want to risk getting caught and the landlord at your current building didn’t really care about background checks or making sure the name on the lease was your real name.

You celebrated your eighteenth birthday in a dive bar. It wasn’t a horrible place, but it wasn’t the kind of place your parents would want to find you in. And that’s when he walked in with a few other guys. They were Army, you could tell that, but they were newbies. They had to be, they were too fresh faced to have seen combat.

The three of them took a seat at the bar, about six stools away from you and that was when he noticed you watching him and made eye contact with you. You offered him a smirk before turning back to your drink and next thing you knew, he was beside you.

“This seat taken?” He asked

You looked at him, smiled, and shook your head. “Nope.” You replied, popping the ‘p’ for effect.

He slid onto the stool and leaned on the bar before turning to face you. “Jay Halstead.” He offered out his hand, which you shook.

“Y/N Samuels.” You told him, using the name on the fake ID you had that said you were 21.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Y/N.” Jay commented with a smile. “So what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?”

You laughed out loud. “Oh my god, is that what you’re really going with?” You asked, unable to contain the smile on your face. “Does that ever actually work as a line?”

He shrugged a bit before dazzling you with a wide smile. “I don’t know, did it work this time?”

You laughed softly this time and shook your head.

“You’re not charmed?” He asked you, teasingly.

“Not even a little bit.” You laughed.

He shrugged a bit, but his smile didn’t fade. “I am serious though, you don’t seem like the kind of girl who belongs in a bar like this.”

You gave him a half hearted shrug. “And what kind of girl do I seem like to you?” You raised a brow and smirked.

“A nice girl.” He replied honestly, the smile dropping some, being replaced with a seriousness.

You laughed but it was obviously fake. “Well you suck at reading people.”

“Do I?” He asked you, raising a brow himself.

Whatever quip you had died on your tongue and you shrugged, turning back to your drink and remaining silent.

He nudged your arm a bit. “I didn’t mean that as a bad thing.”

You shrugged again, stirring your drink with your straw. “So Army huh?”

“Is it that obvious?” He asked you, smirking, thankful the playfulness seemed to be coming back to the conversation.

You side eyed him, looking at what he was wearing. “Just a little bit.” You laughed softly.

He chuckled and ordered a beer when the bartender came over. “You want another drink?” He asked you.

You shook your head. “Nah, I’m a bit of a lightweight so I think I’m gonna stick to one tonight.”

He nodded. “So you came to a bar just to have one drink?” He asked curiously.

You smiled at him. “Well, you see, it’s my birthday and I don’t have anyone to celebrate with, and this place isn’t too far from my apartment.”

“It’s your birthday? Then we gotta celebrate.” He told you with a grin.

You watched him for a moment, slowly shaking your head. “I don’t know...I have to work tomorrow.”

“What time do you work?” He asked you.

“I have to be there at four.”

“In the morning?”

“No, afternoon.”

“Then you’ve got plenty of time to get rest.” He replied with a smile. “Come on, party with us until midnight and then you can be like Cinderella.”

You laughed. “I don’t know…”

“Okay, then how about you take it one drink at a time and leave when you want? I just think you should have a little fun on your birthday.”

You had to admit that it would be nice to have some fun, you had been kinda down before, missing your family and everything. So you nodded. “Okay, fine. Midnight and not a second later.”

Well midnight came and went and you were still partying with Jay, his buddies left sometime during this but you and Jay shut down the bar.

The next morning you woke with a pounding in your head, but it wasn’t as bad as what you’d thought a hangover would be like. You sat up and the world felt like it was spinning, and that was when you noticed that Jay was laying shirtless beside you.

“Son of a bitch.” You groaned out under your breath. Not only did you party with a complete stranger, but you brought him home and slept with him. What the hell happened.

Your movement caused him to stir and he opened his eyes, looking up at you, squinting because of the light coming in your bedroom window. “Good morning beautiful.” He murmured sleepily.

You huffed a bit. “Yeah, morning.” You grumbled as you looked away from him, you sincerely hoped that in your drunkenness you remembered to use protection.

He cleared his throat as he sat up, placing a hand on your shoulder. “Something wrong?”

You huffed again and rolled your eyes. “Is something wrong? Yes something’s wrong, I got drunk and slept with a total stranger.”

He pulled his hand off your shoulder at your tone and held both up, eyebrows raised. “Woah, we didn’t have sex.” He was quick to tell you. “Yeah I slept here last night but that’s as far as it went.”

You looked over your shoulder at him. “Really?”

“Well we did make out, but we didn’t have sex.” He added, nodding.

You sighed in relief. “Thank god.” You breathed out, then shook your head some. “Not that you’re not attractive and all, I just really don’t wanna have a one night stand with a stranger, is all.”

He nodded. “I can understand that.” He nudged you a bit. “You said you work at four, right?”

“Yeah, why?” You asked, raising a brow.

“Well it’s almost noon now, meaning you got time before you have to go to work, what do I gotta say to convince you to spend it with me?” Jay asked you with an adorable smile.

You laughed softly. “Why do you wanna spend time with me?”

“Well you’re pretty and you seem like a nice girl, pretty sure I said that last night.”

You pondered it over for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, okay.”

“Great, I got a change of clothes in the car, after I change we’ll go get lunch.” He got up and headed out of your room.

You got up too and went over to your closet to dig something out to wear, wondering if he was actually coming back or if that was just an excuse to get out of there without it being awkward.

A moment later there was a knock on your door, so you walked out of your bedroom to answer it.

“Didn’t wanna just walk in.” Jay told you, standing there holding what appeared to be a pair or jeans and a t-shirt.

You stepped out of the way to let him in.

“Bathroom?”

You pointed to the bathroom door and watched as he headed in that direction, you then headed to the kitchen to get something to drink.

You ended up spending the day with him up until right before you had to go to work, almost being late to work in fact. You got lunch together, then ice cream, and just hung out all day. It ended with him dropping you off at your apartment so you could get ready for work, and him asking for your number. You gave him your number, but you didn’t actually think you’d hear from him.

But you did, the next day. He called asking you to have lunch with him again.

And it went like that for a few days, the two of you hitting it off.

Eventually you slept together, and you figured that would drive him away. But it didn’t, again.

It was a whirlwind romance and in the span of two weeks he had told you he loved you, which you returned.

Everything was great, until one day something changed. It was almost three weeks after that fateful night in the bar, and a week after he let it slip that he loved you. It started out as a normal day for you, until he knocked on your door around eleven. You opened it and let him in, but he just stayed standing there, to which you raised a brow.

“I’m being deployed.” He finally told you once he looked at you, he stepped inside then, shutting the door behind him while sighing heavily.

You nodded slowly, knowing this was coming, he was at base training and whatnot and getting ready to be deployed, you didn’t know how long you’d have before he actually got deployed. You swallowed hard, knowing what was coming. He was going to end things. Or so you assumed.

The two of you stood quietly, a mere four feet apart, just inside the door of your apartment. You were staring at him, he was looking at his hands.

Finally you cleared your throat, which got his attention. “So what does that mean?” You asked quietly, not adding ‘for us’ although you knew it was implied.

His eyes met yours and he was quiet for a moment, still as a statue besides his breathing. “I don’t know.” He admitted quietly, still watching you.

You nodded slowly again, trying to keep the tears at bay but you could feel your resolve slipping.

He must’ve noticed because in a second his arms were around you, pulling you into a hug. “This doesn’t have to be the end of us.” He whispered to you, placing a kiss to the side of your head.

You clung to him like a lifeline, your hands gripping his shirt, tears slipping down your cheeks. “You really think you’re gonna wanna come back to a girl you’ve only known for three weeks?” You asked sadly, choking on your tears.

He hushed you, stroking the back of your head as he kept you locked in his arms. “And why wouldn’t I?” He asked softly. “I already told you that I love you.”

You forced yourself to pull away from him just enough so you could look him in the eyes. “You really mean it?” You asked quietly.

He nodded silently, a seriousness about him. “Of course I do.” He said quietly, bringing his hand up to wipe your tears.

You still had your doubts, but you nodded and sniffled. “When do you have to go?” You asked quietly.

“Next week.” He said solemnly.

You touched his cheek gently and nodded some. “Well then we’ll have to make the most of the time we’ve got left.” You said quietly.

And that’s what you did. You spent as much time as possible together, you even going so far as to take some time off from work.

And when he left, you were devastated. You kept in touch as much as you could through letters and the occasional phone call. Your love for him grew and his for you.

And then you didn’t hear from him, and you were heartbroken. Six months passed and you heard nothing, you were afraid that he had died and you hadn’t been notified because you were just his girlfriend. You even considered finding his parents in Chicago and calling them to see if they had heard anything, but you avoided doing that because you wanted to believe that he was still alive. And then you got the letter from him saying that something had happened and that he was given an honorable discharge from the Army. You immediately worried about what that could mean. And then you finally got a letter from him, assuring you that he was okay, telling you that he got out of the Army and how he hoped you would join him in Chicago.

You wanted nothing more than to go and live a life with him, but you couldn’t go back to Chicago.

~ Flashback Over ~

After fifteen minutes, you sat up in bed, your decision made. It didn’t take long to pack your bags, you could come back and get the rest of your stuff if you decided to stay in Chicago. You got into your car and began driving in the direction of Chicago, getting ready for the sixteen hour drive.

Chapter Two Coming Soon....