#Wheelbarrow Godzilla

[fromthedust]

[nuked126]

Chapter 4 - Android 11 Awakens!

After much walking, our heroes arrive in North City. This city amazes Pon and Maze, as they’ve never seen anything like it besides on television.

“It’s so big!” Maze exclaims. “Yeah. You know, I always wondered how they rebuild those things after they destroy them.” Pon asks. “What?” Maze replies confused. “When in movies like Godzilla where they destroy the city, how do they rebuild it so quickly?” Pon maintains. “You know godzilla is not real right?” Cliver says confused. “Of course I know Godzilla isn't real dumbass, he’s just an actor. I’m talking about the city, how do they rebuild it?” Pon asks, pissed off. The two just look in silence. “The city is just a prop set…” Maze says. “And Godzilla is a prop too.” Cliver says, exhausted. They look at each other in silence.

“Well, yeah, I knew that. It was just a joke, you guys take everything too seriously” Pon says to save face. They travel around the series, getting a few weird looks, they go to eat at a fast food place, and they buy matching shirts, chainmail for Cliver, leather for Maze, and just the shirt for Pon. “Well, what now?” Maze asks. “We go around the world, do errands, save people. Like the heroes we are.” Cliver says. They both nod in agreement and begin to leave the city to wander.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gero continues to work on his experiment. He begins opening up the pod to reveal Android 11. “You’re ready, wake up.” Gero tells Android 11. He looks at Dr. Gero expectantly waves its hand to say hello. “Listen, Your skills should be enough to find the dragon balls in at least 5 months, do so. If you get any resistance, eliminate them quietly and quickly, do you understand?” Dr. Gero says. “What is a Dragon Ball?” Android 11 asks, “Your “heart” has been made so that you’ll feel a Dragon Ball within proximity, so you’ll know when you need to.” Gero says frustrated. “Don’t disappoint me, if you do, I installed a bomb in your heart that I can explode remotely.” he adds. 

Android 11 looks at a remote in Dr Gero’s waist and shoots at it with their laser eyes, destroying it. “What is wrong with you?!” Dr. Gero screams angrily at Android 11. “I felt threatened. Do you not try to eliminate a threat when you feel threatened? I’m hungry, I’ll go eat something and then look for the Dragon Balls” Android 11 says as they leave the lab. Dr. Gero sighs and says “Another failure. I’ll have to reconstruct the remote and start all over again.”

Android 11 goes out into the woods and sees a deer. They point their finger at it and shoot a beam at it. She turns into small, chocolate elk and eats it. Android 11 suddenly grows horns, which they don’t like so they try to remove them with their bare hands. However, it’s too painful to do so, so she slams her head to the nearest mountain to remove the horns. She smiles, then sees a bird land on a nearby tree. She smiles devilishly as they shoot a beam at the bird as it turns it into chocolate. She eats the chocolate and then wings sprouts from her arms. She starts running and then jumps, soaring through the air at a high speed.

Going back to our heroes, they are traveling across the plains between North City and Central city, on the lookout for any danger they may find. They find themselves in a small village. Everything is abandoned, as nobody is out on the road. A wheelbarrow handled by two men with bags runs around the corner. They knock into each house, pointing a gun at them and asking for money from the citizens. They continue to do this until they notice our adventurers. “Hey, who told you to get out of your house? Get back in and wait for your turn.” one of the bandits says. “Wait a minute bozo, I’ve never seen these guys before.” The other replies. “Oh yeah, you’re right. Well I doubt it makes any difference, just add their names to the donation list.” He says. “What’s with people wanting to put our names on lists?” Maze asks. “I’m sorry, we don’t have any money to donate to your cause.” Cliver retaliates. The bandit aims with his gun as he says “This is not negotiable, put the money in the bag.”

The three of them prepare an Energy Barrier. “Fine, we'll give you something.” Cliver says as the three of them rush the bandits. The two of them shoot repeatedly at the heroes, with all of their bullets stopping in their aura. They knock both of them out with their fists. The townsfolk look out  their windows. “What have you done?!” one of them asks. “What? They were being unpleasant” said Pon. “Those were part of the Warthog raiders, if they find out what you’ve done, they’ll bring their wrath to our village. You’ve doomed us all!” an old farmer says. “Relax, I don’t think there is anything we can’t handle. We’ll take them” Cliver says. “Yeah! You guys have nothing to worry about!” exclaimed Maze.

And so they waited for the arrival of the rest of the Warthog raiders. Are our Heroes perhaps chewing more than they can chew?

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

[namesisfortombstones]

This above image is not, I repeat NOT of the Biogoji on set of Godzilla vs. Biollante or the Biogoji/Gidogoji being returned after it was stolen in 1992. This is a still of the Desugoji costume from behind the scenes of Godzilla vs. Destroyer in 1995. The dead giveaway is the blotches on the shoulder, neck, chest, stomach, and thighs where the lights are that create the “burning” effect. Not only that but the Bio/Gidogoji suit doesn’t look much like this (which is a modified Mogegoji suit from Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla). GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH:

GODZILLA VS. SPACEGODZILLA:

GODZILLA VS. DESTROYER:

As you can see, the 1989/91 suit has a boxier, more rectangular longer-snouted head. Meanwhile, the 1994/95 suit has a rounder, somewhat smaller head that matches the head in the wheelbarrow picture. Not to mention, you can see the glowing effect on the neck matches exactly the same marks on the neck of the suit in the wheelbarrow.

[lvmarston-blog]

The best possible outcome from the worst of situations.

Hi. I’m not sure who is reading, or who this will reach, but I want the infinite black hole of cyber space to hear me, hear my silent screams, hear my story. Maybe my words can reach someone else going through this somehow, maybe someone will stop by and think ‘poor woman’. To be honest, I don’t want your sympathy, move on.

I am not big. I am not brave. I am not strong. I am just dealing with what has been set out in front of me.

I am a woman, wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, friend and I am only human; I am not special, I am an individual, I am just trying to get by.

So how did I get here, talking to the big black hole? I entered my own black hole myself exactly 14 days and 18 hours ago (give or take a few minutes)

This is our Story.

I first found out I was pregnant on Easter Sunday, Chris and I had been together around 6 1/2 years, we’d been engaged since November 2014; although no relationship is perfect, I loved our little bubble. We’d spent years creating our home, building a furry family of 3 cats, knitting our family & friends around us. We were due to get married in around 2 months’ time. My job as a PA (or EA, it’s a posher title) enabled me to be what is probably the worst type of bride ever without becoming bridezilla (I think my mum and bridesmaids would disagree, I was the godzilla of brides) I knew what I wanted, eventually, and it had to be my sort of perfect.

On Thursday I’d had my dress fitting, I’d hit one of my many (many) weight goals, I was feeling fantastic, skinny, sexy, untouchable. We’d traveled to the Wye Valley with Chris’s wonderful family for an Easter break the next morning. Saturday I ate, ate more than I had in weeks and gorged on sweets. I felt like I needed to come on, I was waiting patiently for it, all whilst secretly hoping I didn’t. Chris and I weren’t ‘trying’ (I’m not keen on that word) but we weren’t being careful, we’d got it into our heads we’d possibly have a honeymoon baby, but we joked and talked about revealing a little bun in the oven when our wedding day finally came around. I never thought that could be a reality. Chris made a passing comment, I can’t remember what, about my sugar gobbling, I turned on him, vicious and angry and told him I didn’t want to see him. That night I sipped / glugged on a bottle of prosecco, indulging in a bubble bath and listening to my favorite songs whilst nibbling on Percy Pigs.

Sunday morning I woke up, mild headache, nipped to the loo and took a test, I still hadn’t come on, I was annoyed I hadn’t. My usual ritual was to take a test, it being negative, and then I’d release that afternoon.

Then two very vivid pink lines rocked up.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I sank, flabberghasted at what I was looking at, pee on a stick, my pee on a stick, with a positive reading. Shit.

I stalked back into the bedroom, flung the test at a sleepy Chris and said “that’s why I’ve been so ratty”. We sat in silence, staring at each other, a mix of elation and disbelief. How could we be parents, I still laugh at him farting in my face.

We mulled over our wonderful surprise all day, we enjoyed family walks with our excitable nieces and nephews, took in the day, drank in our surroundings before excitement got too much for us and we told everyone that afternoon, my sister in law guessing before I could get the words out, that made it even more special. The night we got home to our little cottage Chris turned to me and said “it’s a girl, isn’t it?” before we fell about in fits of laughter and giggled like excitable school children. Chris & Lauren. Married, husband & wife, parents!

We told my mum on the way home, we told everyone we could. We waited until my dad’s birthday until we told him - we brought him a wheelbarrow and a little ‘grandpa’ sign, took him a few moments to realise but he and his wife were elated when we told them. Everyone was elated, we were elated, we were excited, hopeful and petrified.

We promised to keep it quiet until the wedding, I’d be around 12 weeks then, but we ended up telling everyone, anyone who’d listen, everyone we loved, everyone we worked with. We were so happy.

We attended our first antenatal appointments, confirmed as low risk after a few initial tests and questions, it all started to feel very real. We attended our first scan, a little too early, 1 week later and 2 days before our wedding we watched our little pickle dance around on the screen, heart thumping madly, showing off little arms and legs for the radiologist. We cried happy tears, “hello baby pickle, we’re so pleased to meet you”.

On 9th June we got married, pickle safe & snug, dad walked me down the aisle to meet my husband, father of our little bubs. We had the most wonderful day, our little wonder dancing away the entire time. The next day we jetted off to Indonesia, we’d very luckily won business class upgrades, I was gutted I couldn’t try out the wine menu, Chris happily tested on both our behalves.

Our honeymoon flew, the next 8 weeks flew, I was growing a perfect home for baby, I’d piled on the weight I’d lost for the wedding, I craved tuna (and lots of it) and salt & vinegar snack a jacks. I wanted jacket potatoes - not only with tuna (Id have tuna on ice cream I think if I’d really wanted to) just a plain old jacket, I made Chris bake me one on one particular evening, I ate it like an apple.

I started feeling this little creature inside me, I’d sit at work and feel it tumble and dart across my tummy, often poking me when we were hungry then dancing around once I’d fed us. On the Sunday before, we’d attended our friends wedding and I’d been famished most of the day, we sat down for dinner and I ate super quickly; little pickle danced so hard I grabbed Chris’s hand and placed it on my tummy, pickle danced for her daddy, our V danced for daddy for the first and last time.

On Friday, 18th August I’d had a very busy day. I’d had a busy week, with lots going on in the evenings; I’d had a niggling feeling as the day grew on, I’d busied myself with preparing bits for my impending maternity leave, having a conversation with my boss about what we do without me there, I planned and prepped as I do best. By home time I was a little worried. I messaged my little sister (my go-to guru on babies, she’d blessed me with the perfect niece who I admit I am insanely jealous of, but in a good way) she told me to go to the hospital, but I brushed it off, thinking I was being silly. I was 22 weeks, baby hasn’t established a routine yet, I wouldn’t know until I was 24 weeks, I kept reeling off every baby book, mobile app and NHS leaflet I’d ever read. Lottie persisted, telling me I’d regret it if I didn’t. I hesitantly called the hospital, they advised me to pop in - it’s probably nothing. I then dialed Chris, knowing his reaction - he works at the same hospital we were being looked after at, he’d more than likely had a busy day, the last thing he’d want to do is hot foot it back to satisfy my hypochondria - Chris was grumpy, but eventually we popped to Queen’s Hospital thinking we’d be in and out in a few hours & would pick up his much desired Chinese on the way home.

We arrived at triage, got comfortable on the bed and waited for the friendly midwife to reassure my sensitive mind. The midwife came in from behind the curtain all smiles, promptly popped the Dopplar onto my swelling tummy and listened. Nothing.

She looked up at me with a big smile, said “I’m rubbish at these things, I’m just going to get my friend”, before fetching her colleague for another listen. They changed Dopplars, got a bigger one, before a lady in green scrubs emerged with a scanner. I turned to Chris and mouthed “she’s not here, baby” and received a that wonderful scowl of his as he replied “We don’t know that yet, bubs”.

The green scrubs lady looked intently at the scanner, looked up at us and mentioned she needed to get her colleague to take a look as “she couldn’t see anything”. My stomach turned, my toes curled and the back of my neck stood to attention. Before I could breathe we were asked to go into another room, I clasped my husband’s hand, legs of jelly and followed the now growing crowd of doctors into a strangely bedded room, with a birthing bed and another bed, all strung up with wires and equipment, confused I laid down ready to see our baby once more.

Another lady took the probe, she scanned, frowned, scanned, frowned and then turned. “I’m sorry sweetheart, there is no heartbeat”

I turned away from the crowd’s gaze, I felt Chris crumble, I felt the weight in my stomach harden, I felt the world I lived in come tumbling down around me, everything slipping into a vortex of anguish, confusion and despair. All I managed to whisper was “what now?”.

I was in a haze, I was given one option - give birth to your dead baby - it was too dangerous to have an operation. I was spinning, spiraling, twisting, falling, failing.

We called our parents, listening to their screams, their “Oh no’s”, their grief setting in, their “I’m so sorry’s”. They started rallying, before I knew it, our nearest and dearest were in that same room, joining our vortex and riding what we now call “the waves”.

A midwife came in, she was so sweet. She offered me a pill, she told me it would “start things off”

That pill.

That was the hardest pill I’ll ever have to swallow. My husband and my mum curled beside me, it took me a while to take it. For me that signaled the end, accepting our baby had died, accepting I’d have to go through what I feared most in this world. Accepting human mortality, accepting my baby’s mortality, accepting mine. I stared at that white dot for what seemed like eternity, wishing it would jump off the bed and roll away and wishing I was sat back at my desk at work, wishing I was back there feeling my baby wriggle, feeling the slight bumps against my hand. Why was they not moving? Why was their heart no longer beating? Why us? What horrific and nasty thing had I done to be sitting here, staring at that pill? I wanted to scream at the doctor, tell them they’re wrong, tell them to scan me again, tell them I can feel it moving again and walk out of that room, life and baby in tact.

As I took that pill and I felt my baby become stone.

We were told to go home and wait until Sunday at 3pm, by now it was 10pm. I had to wait 2 days to come back and deliver my child. I glared at these doctors in disbelief, how dare you send me home to live with this for 2 days? How can you be so cruel to not induce me now? Looking back I’m so glad I went home, as sick as that sounds.

Chris and I wanted to shut ourselves away, hide from the world, ignore our plight but our family wouldn’t let us go. They insisted on staying with us, spending time with these broken shells of the people they knew, I don’t know why. My reaction is to run, but our family rallied. That night we wailed, we cried, we fell apart, we howled at the world, then we laughed.

Chris and I made a pact in the car on our way home, we’d talk about this, we’d tell everyone, anyone who’d listen. We were not suffering this hell in silence.

If there is one thing I want anyone to take away from this rambling and lengthy post - I want you to know that laughing in grief is OK.

We laughed about anything, the good times, the wedding, my mum and sister’s jobs as carers, we laughed at the hilarious antics their residents got up to, we laughed at ourselves, we distracted ourselves from the horrors knocking quietly and constantly at our door.

By Saturday afternoon my anxiety was ricocheting, I was panicking, I convinced myself I was going to die, my soul way dying, my body was failing me, I wouldn’t come away from this alive, I secretly prepared to leave my husband, leave my family and leave this world, with my baby in my arms.

I decided I’d contact Facebook groups, I posted my fate, I reached out to other mums and discovered a world of Angel Mums, all lined up to greet me with open arms, I spoke with maybe a dozen ladies, just like me. They shared with me their stories, they told me it would be OK, they told me what it was like, they told me not to be a hero, to take every drug offered, to spend time with my baby afterwards and to try to take in those precious hours I would relive forever. A few ladies showed me pictures of their Angels, it made me less scared to meet our baby, it helped me prepare. I posted again and again “help, my baby died and I don’t know what to do” - these Angels appeared through the darkness, a glint of light in my dark and frightening world, they carried me forward, reassured and comforted me.

We brought our admission forward to 9am, that night was a haze of small bouts of sleep, rousing and letting The Waves crash over me once more, the reality of our experience showering and swelling around me, I struggled to breathe, I clung onto Chris, I wailed and pleaded with whoever I could. This can’t be happening.

That morning I don’t know how I walked, my mum and Chris guided me in, I leaned on them heavily. I couldn’t compose myself. I walked through the hospital fixated on a door, then onto the next, I remember walking past an elderly couple settled on some seats, I remember their eyes following me through the foyer, I wanted to tell them what was happening, I wanted to tell them my baby had died, I wanted to swap places, I wanted to do anything that meant I didn’t have to travel through the next set of doors.

Once we’d settled into our delivery room, we’d been introduced to our midwife - Donna. Donna - if you ever read this, you are incredible. You are amazing, I trusted you with my life and I owe you more than anything I can physically give you. The church where we’d been married at 10 weeks earlier visited to offer prayers, Chris & I took comfort in their words, but I struggled to listen, instead I focused on the gurgles my stomach was making, with each breath I prayed for movement. I prayed for an escape.

By the time I had been induced (by pessary, in case you’re after every tiny detail) the contractions came fast. Remember I told you to laugh in grief? Here’s why:

We were living out our very own horror movie, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t go to the Winchester and wait for this to blow over, I couldn’t close my eyes and wake up back in my bed like Final Destination, I was staring at my hooded figure, fixated with fear and wonder of the unknown. I had to escape somehow, to somewhere, anywhere but here. As the pains grew stronger, Chris and mum by my side we curled up on the bed I would deliver in, turned on the internet and watched episodes of Family Guy & Impractical Jokers. Each time anyone popped into the room to check on us, we swiftly paused the episode, wiped our weary smiles and become sombre. It felt naughty to be laughing, smiling at the stupidity these programs aired. Looking back we should have kept on playing, there is no book on how to grieve, this was our grief, this was how we were dealing with it.

Once I got onto the gas & air that’s when the real laughs started, I laughed at everything, I made my mum try it, I told Chris he was a pussy for not giving it a whirl, I joked at our situation, suddenly became ravenously hungry, inhaling congealed hospital mac ‘n’ cheese, then demanding a tuna sandwich. At one stage my contractions were coming every 15 seconds, lasting for 10, I held my tuna sandwich with one hand, gas & air in the other - alternated between the two and shouted TUNA at Chris through bleary eyes, noting that perfect wide smile etched onto his face.

By the time I was nearing the final stages of labour my mum, Chris & I had established the perfect birthing team; Chris & Mum working in unison to tend to my few worded demands of ‘WATER’ and lip pouting (smearing blistex onto my lips as gas & air made my lips very dry). By this time I’d had a wonderful cocktail of drugs, gas & air, diazepam, pethedine and PCP morphine (controlled by Chris). I was so. fucking. high.

To anyone facing this, take all the drugs, it makes you not care. I felt getting ‘out my tree’ helped me first hold my baby when she arrived, it helped me bond with her, fall in love with her and not care that I was cuddling my dead child.

At 6.28pm, our daughter arrived. Chris & I chose not to look at her straight away. My mum had asked if she could wash our baby when she arrived, I asked my mum to tell us what we had, even though in our hearts we already knew. Our baby Vera was here. I’d been in labour for around 4 1/2 hours, officially in active labour for 8 minutes.

Vera Maggie Marston, born sleeping, Sunday 20th August 2017 at 6.28pm, weighing 640grams (or 1lb)

Chris held onto me as if he was going to fall away, I held onto him just as tightly until mum placed the tiny human into our arms. I fell completely and utterly in love. I looked past her dark skin, her eyes squeezed shut and her tiny eyebrows and eyelashes perfectly formed. I fell in love with her button nose, noticing her pout that had so prominently shone in her scans just days before. I traced her lips, felt her tiny hands wrap around my fingernail, examined her legs until I noticed her big-ass feet - exact copies of Chris’s. I looked intently at the joints forming her limbs, counted the bones on her hands & feet and squinted to see the smallest of fingernails. My baby girl was perfectly formed, perfectly still, silently sleeping.

Our Little V met our family, I couldn’t say much except “I am so. fucking. high” but I wanted everyone to see her and cuddle her and love her just as much as I did. I knew people were scared, but I’d not thought to care like I did before and like I do now. Maybe it was the drugs.

We were transferred into the Snowdrop suite. Chris had been at a seminar just 2 days before, listening to a medical photographer explaining a particular harrowing time at the snowdrop suite, meeting devastated families. The seminar is designed for clerical employee’s like Chris reconnect with the environment they were working in, remembering they are working in a hospital with real people, real stories, real tragedies. We were now one of them.

Chris and I spent some hours cuddling our newborn, telling her all about our family, telling each other what Our V could have been, what she should have been, she would have mummies intelligence, with daddies competitive streak and stubbornness...! We then tucked her away into her cold cot - it should have been a real cot - and snuggled in bed together. I was still pretty high, I wished I’d hear some little snuffling noises coming from that cot, but was met with silence. I woke at every sound, wishing my baby to start crying for my attention, I wanted to pick her up, put her to my breast, change a dirty nappy, anything that would signify that she was alive and not sleeping so quietly.

Monday came in more Waves. Friends, family and colleagues came by, each taking their turn to say hello and goodbye to our baby, some cuddling, some looking and some fixating gazes on Chris and I. We spent that day laughing, I don’t remember crying until the medical photographer came in, delicately placing V’s hands and feet, getting a profile shot and our first and last family pictures together. At one stage he asked us both to look at the camera, I turned to him firmly declining, how could I stare into a lens, pretending to smile whilst holding our baby like this? All I wanted to do was stare at her, drink every inch of her being, remember every detail, every crinkle, every vein.

Chris & I tried to be positive throughout our story, we told each other it could have been worse, we read through a book of remembrance given to us in the Snowdrop Suite, we read others’ stories, of babies born at full term, not surviving the birth, babies born and ripped away from their mothers to NICU, to only pass away days later. Chris & I thanked ourselves that Vera never knew pain, she didn’t feel her death, she didn’t know how it felt to be sad or cold. We told everyone it could have been worse, I could have gone into spontaneous labour, I could have bled out, died, got an infection, not delivered my placenta in full, not been able to see our baby. We named our story the best possible outcome from the worst of situations. We were going through hell, but it could have been so, so much worse.

We gave ourselves until 6pm on Monday to get to know our daughter. By the time it came around I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t want to leave her, but knew I had to. We were offered to take her home, but I didn’t want to be chasing ghosts & I didn’t want someone to come to our home and take my baby away. I wanted to walk from my baby knowing she was sleeping safely in the arms of the incredible midwife team.

We asked the midwife to change her blanket, so we had Vera’s smell to cherish forever. I also loved the blanket she was in, and didn’t want it to go with her to the crematorium.

We held her one last time, we told her how much we loved her and how sorry we were that we we couldn’t keep her safe, we promised we’d always have her at the center of everything we did. We tucked her in one last time and we walked out, hand in hand, closing the book on our short family chapter, walking away broken, fragile and uncertain of where we were going next.

[itfeelssowrite]

1, 10, 17, and 24

1. describe the plot in 1 sentence.Two soulmates meeting later in life painfully prolong an inevitability that both are afraid to facilitate, knowing what all there is to lose.

(This question is insanely hard to answer. I could have a different one sentence plot for each major perspective, honestly.)10. what’s a line of dialogue you’re particularly proud of?Oh goodness. To find the ultimate one would take forever! I've already spent 20 minutes an hour and a half scouring dialogue. I'll just throw some lines out and then kick myself later when I find one I wish I added!

"Look . . . none of this is new information for me. You don't think I know what it looks like, Keiran? Looking at you is like looking in a mirror sometimes. I can feel my heart begin to race and see your pulse quicken simultaneously." - Serafina

"What hurts the most . . . what really just . . . just makes it feel like someone is wringing the air out of my lungs . . . is that the truth you chose to share with me was that you slept with Tony. Like . . . somehow . . . admitting that was easier than just telling me I was too much. Like you wanted me to kick you out, to hate you, to forget about you . . . because, because loving you is so terrible. Because I did it too well. Because I love you more than you love yourself." - Cadence

"I just saw Yance's penis and I really wish I hadn't, so excuse me while I black out the memory and congratulations on having a girlfriend that's ready to go." Beat. "TO FINALS. To Finals. Wow. Bye." - Serafina"I love the person you believe I am. I want to be that person." - Serafina

"Although I will say, it's the first night Thomas got drunk. Someone spiked the punch near the end of the night with vodka. And of course we, wanting our one-hundred and eighty bucks worth, pretty much camped the food table for the better half of the night. I didn't think anything of it until he was on his third cup insisting that I have some. The second I took a sip, I knew why he had been so giggly for the last hour. We must've walked about thirty laps around the football field before he sweated it out. Thomas was petrified his dad would find out, but when I had him home after one, his dad practically answered the door with party poppers and balloons." Serafina chuckled to herself, shaking her head. "He thought that Thomas and I . . . y'know . . . which meant that Thomas wasn't gay, couldn't be gay. Not if he slept with me, and boy was I a catch! He knew my father and my mother, knew me since I was small. The perfect girl for his perfectly straight son. Thomas had to have still been buzzed, because I swear he looked his father dead in the eye, face falling in exasperation as he said, 'I went twenty seven rounds for this?' and, no joke, walked past his father and up the stairs without another word. The look on Mr. Redenbach's face was priceless." - Serafina

"I've got to get a head start on picking my outfit if I'm going to win today, aren't I? I've gotten a bit soft since I became a lawyer, and you, my dear, have abs that would make Linda Hamilton consider wearing moo-moos." - Cadence (honestly I can't remember if I wrote this line or Rachel did, but either way, it's awesome)

"You do, don't you? You think the world is yours to smash about in. I'm a band-aid, Keiran's the prize and what, Cadence is the dirt path you get to walk on as you go valiantly forward in the name of love? Wake. Up. You're the stranger here. Everyone else? Patrons. Dancers. Stage crew. For Fluid. For years." - Tricia

"I don't want out. This is what I do, Keiran. You think you're the neurotic protagonist? Well in my book, I'm so self-absorbed I'm both the protagonist and the antagonist. Everything I've ever wanted -- really, truly wanted -- I've told myself I cannot have. Because it's risky, because it's frivolous, because I could make my life so much easier if I just wanted the readily obtainable. Somewhere along the line I let myself believe that obstacles were akin to warning signs, like life was meant to be the trodden path, complete with a map from beginning to end. If I see "dead end", I don't continue on to see if it's true, I just take the signs at face value. You say you can't guarantee me anything, but Keiran, I can guarantee you this; If I keep taking the road you're not on, I'm never going to reach a satisfying destination. I can't worry about Tricia anymore. I can't worry about Tony or Jamie or . . . or Cadence. I just can't. I'm not that person. I keep trying to be and I'm going out of my mind, Keiran. I want you. I want to be with you. I don't care how it ends, I don't care who we hurt, and if that makes me short-sighted and selfish, I just. don't. care. Because really, at the end of the day, every day, I ask myself how I can love you and you can love me and still find myself happiest only in dreaming." - Serafina

"Wow. You said Bethany's name like it wasn't laced with barbed wire. Like . . . casually." - Cadence

"As if Keiran wasn't busy enough on her own, taking on Tony's case has ensured we talk even less. And don't even get me started on Tony's case. I get the sense that Melissa is doing her best to sweat him out. She and her attorney ride every deadline like it's a bucking bull in a bar. I just feel so stuck. It's like I've got this fucking marathon ahead of me, but the starting gun keeps malfunctioning every time I brace to run. I'm so sick of seeing endless miles ahead of me and not being able to do anything about it." - Cadence

"I wouldn't miss it if Godzilla were wrestling our Lady Liberty." - Cadence

"Well I'm certainly not asking a damn thing about you and your relationships, you disgustingly happy couples." - Serafina

"If at any time you get excruciatingly bored, the window is right beside my wardrobe. Feel free to liven the evening with a jump." - Serafina

"She means is it alright if we break this weed out on your very dope coffee table, or would you like us to roll in the bathroom like crack whores?" - Cadence

I better stop.

17. pick a color to represent each character.Easy. We've been using color-coding on these characters since before Cloud Swing!Serafina - OrangeKeiran - GreenCadence - Purple (Lavender, to be specific)Tony - Gold/YellowThomas - Light BlueVan - Blue (though he's likely to be less important in the final draft)Paul - MaroonAlyson and Tricia are the only characters I don't believe have colors associated with them (though Alyson might? @itssofragile?) If I had to give Tricia a color, I think gray would fit best.24. which character is most like you? least like you?I asked @itssofragile's opinion on this one and tend to agree. I'm most like Thomas, Serafina's kind-hearted best friend who owns the third wheel better than most wheelbarrows. Patient, forgiving and private, Thomas avoids the limelight in favor of making quiet, meaningful impacts.

I'm least like Tony, Keiran's hot-blooded, flirtatious, high-energy best friend who would take the world in a fist fight just to protect the honor of those he loves. Reckless and fun-seeking, Tony doesn't observe boundaries, he pushes them.Thanks so much for the ask! I could talk about Cloud Swing for DAYS!