#and believe it or not I cut like a whole page of exposition from this

[saturdaynightghostclub]

Leander Mason, Prince of Chicago

Leander Mason is late. Which is not necessarily unusual, but for the fact that he’s late to his own engagement party. Which consequently has made you late to your own engagement party.

You wouldn’t normally mind, you swear. Honestly, this party wasn’t either of your ideas. It came about three months after Leander’s hurried late-night proposal, after which you’d both sworn to keep the news under wraps from your respective families, at least until you’d ironed out the important details of the wedding. The date, the venue, the catering—these were things you wanted to take care of yourselves, refusing to leave the door open for family interference of any kind. Naturally, though, an eagle-eyed uncle of Leander’s spotted your engagement ring in a photo his too-thoughtful nephew had sent alongside some holiday card or other, and then the entire Mason clan knew, which meant you had to tell your parents, and then the combined force of your two unhinged families became too much to bear and you buckled, both of you, allowing them this one concession in exchange for a (theoretically) peaceful wedding-planning process. So really, you wouldn’t normally mind if you missed a few minutes of this whole ridiculous affair, only it happens that Leander Mason is late because he procrastinated picking up his dry cleaning, neglecting to consider that the dry cleaner is closed on Sundays, and cannot possibly think of a better solution than driving all the hell over Chicago in search of a suit jacket that matches the trousers he plans to wear. He called you from a phone booth an hour ago to let you know. If you’d left an hour ago, you might have been a few minutes early. If you leave right this second, you’ll be twenty minutes late.

It’s not that you’re in any rush to fraternize with your estranged family. On the contrary, you’d rather never see them again. But being that they’ve invaded Chicago like cicadas and are unlikely to leave without torturing you for at least an hour or two, you think you’d better just get it over with.

The crash of a gangly frame through your front door sets you alert, and you’re met with Leander, haloed by the glow of the hallway light, panting from exertion. No suit jacket to be seen.

“Hi, darling,” he breathes, crossing the room to kiss you on the forehead, “I’m sorry, I thought I could make it, but then Saks was closed, and I hit every red light on the way here, and—my god, you’re beautiful.”

You can’t help the smile that crosses your face. You do look stunning, if you do say so yourself. “Next time you send yourself on a wild goose chase to avoid our families, take me with you,” you reply.

“Roger,” he says, smiling apologetically before he bolts into your bedroom. When he comes out, his hair is artfully tousled and his dress shirt is pressed within an inch of its life. “Ready?” He asks, taking your face in his hands and examining it as if for signs of regret or apprehension. Both of which you feel in spades, for the record.

“Ready,” you confirm in spite of yourself, unable to keep the nerves from your voice. Leander kisses you hard.

“No matter what happens tonight,” he murmurs, eyes locked on yours, “we’ve got each other’s backs, deal? You are my priority, Professor.”

“Deal,” you nod. And then you’re in the car, and then you’re in a small hotel ballroom with, like, one million rich Midwesterners and twenty or so of your own confused family members, most of whom (yourself included) have never experienced an opulence of this magnitude.

Leander sticks close to you as you enter the party, long fingers stretched across the small of your back. Where you have complete tunnel vision, he’s scanning the crowd like a hunter in search of game. “Come here,” he mutters suddenly, pulling you gently but firmly toward him with a nasty look over his shoulder. You glance behind you to see which of his family members he’s shielding you from, only to lock eyes with your own father. Jesus, here we go.

You turn fully to face your father, ignoring Leander’s insistent tugging and efforts to pull you away. “Dad,” you say, keeping your voice impressively neutral.

“Hi, sweetheart!” Your father beams, moving as if to hug you. You take a reflexive step back, feeling Leander’s hands on your shoulders as you do. He knows the hell your family has put you through; hell, he’s probably angrier about it than you are at this point. Your father’s smile falters for a split second, and you instinctively fear the rage that will follow if he’s made to look foolish in public. “This the man who’s stolen you away from us?”

“This is Leander,” you say, refusing to indulge his comment which, though delivered with the cadence of a joke, is certainly intended to bite. Cool, calm, collected. Measured and calculated, even.

“How do you do,” comes Leander’s voice, deeper than usual, as he leans into your back to extend a steady hand. Your father shakes it evenly, Pan-Am smile firmly back in place. Before he can say anything though, Leander speaks again. “Love, we’ve got a lot of people to greet, yeah? Let’s do a lap, maybe catch up with Dad later?”

“What are you doing?” You hiss as Leander sweeps you away.

“Trust me, Professor,” he murmurs in response, face carefully neutral as he navigates the crowd, “I know men like him. He’s angry, right? He’s miserable, he’s mean?”

“Sure,” you say.

“Then let him be angry with me,” he says. You’ve reached the corner of the ballroom now, his fingers gently circling your wrist as he attempts to maintain a facade of casualty. “Let him think I’m keeping you from your family, or whatever he wants to tell himself. Better me than you.”

You’re formulating a response, trying to decide whether you want to start an argument or fall into his arms and sob, when a bony, manicured hand lands on Leander’s shoulder. He spins to face the woman trying to get his attention, who you recognize after a moment as his aunt Livia.

“You two are just adorable!” she exclaims in a frankly impressive misreading of the situation.

“Thank you,” Leander replies, exasperated once again. You can see the frustration rising in him, as it so often does when dealing with his family, and suddenly you’re a fish out of water. Actually, you’re a fish in the razor-sharp beak of an eagle, and the eagle is soaring over the city at warp speed, and you knew it would be intense, but you couldn’t have predicted how completely overwhelmed you’d be when it really came down to it. His family and yours. Clueless and cruel, two sides of a really, fantastically stupid coin.

Jesus, girl, you think, you raised yourself better than this. So you roll your shoulders back, inhale (cigarette smoke, whiskey, heat) and exhale (pure unadulterated rage), and enter survival mode. If Jerry Cantrell was born to wail on the guitar and Leander Mason was born to be a (beautiful, wonderful) thorn in your side, then you were born to navigate the psychic minefield of family dysfunction.

The next few hours pass–or maybe they don’t–in a haze of “Good to meet you” and “Yes, we’re very happy” and “Sure, I’ll call more.” You can feel Leander’s anxiety spiking, too preoccupied with your own to do anything about it. And then, like magic, you’re back in his car. His forehead is on the steering wheel, his entire body curled forward in an impressive display of defeat.

“Leander,” you say softly, laying a hand flat on his back. His response is a low, guttural groan that you think wouldn’t be entirely out of place in a medieval torture chamber. “Want to run away to Iceland?” you ask, only half-joking. The poor man has been needled within an inch of his life tonight, by his family and yours alike.

He barks out a surprised half-laugh, righting his posture to look at you. “Yeah,” he says. His voice is raw. “But we’re not going to, right?”

“I mean, I don’t see why not.”

“Alright, give me your elevator pitch.”

You grin in spite of yourself. “You, me, and a little apartment on a river. No family to speak of.”

“Well, we don’t exactly need to go all the way to Iceland to have that, do we?” He asks, lifting your hand to his lips from where it rests on the center console. You raise an eyebrow. “If it’s a river you want, we’ve got a perfectly good one right here in Chicago.”

“And our families?”

“Fuck ‘em,” he says, eyes steady on yours, “You and me, my love. We’re more family to each other than all the people in that ballroom combined.”

You lean into your seat, letting your head fall back. “Yeah,” you say softly.

Part of you always sort of wondered if you’d eventually regret cutting off your parents the way you did. But wouldn’t it have happened by now? It’s been almost a decade, and you’re just as angry with them as you were at eighteen. The only person in the world who’s managed to make you feel sane about the entire thing is sitting beside you in the driver’s seat, and if that makes you both assholes then fine, you’ll be assholes together. God, fuck ‘em. You’ve got your family. And you’re definitely fucking eloping.

[queens-nightmare]

Writing is an interesting process. Sometimes you manage to write something on the first try and besides maybe a few adjustments, it's pretty much the final draft. And then sometimes you write something that doesn't fit (anymore after a while), so you have to scrap it.

I was talking to some friends on some RP server about my writing and told them how Step 24 was rewritten into 4 new steps (which pushed the steps after that back). It was a mess because rewriting them meant I had to rewrite the steps coming after the pushed steps.

...This might sound confusing, let me draw something quickly, lol

Quick info: Step 24 was the original end of what I call "The third floor (mini) arc". But with the rewriting, Step 27 became the actual ending.

Okay, and how was the stuff rewritten? :) Let's look at the scrapped Step 24 for this (under the cut. Also long post)

Read it? Good.

When I write stuff, I have a problem with exposition. I love giving it, and explaining stuff so that hopefully everyone understands what I try to convey. Probably comes from the fact that I have a harder time understanding subtext often, so this gets mirrored in my own writing ^^;

The panel with Snatcher explaining #76's backstory was a response to an ask I got ages ago. Which... in retrospect wasn't a good move on my part. I shoehorned it in, so that I could answer something about this Minion. And just, the whole page feels just "a speedrun of clearing the problem between Snatcher and Moonjumper."

No.

No, no, no, no! Snatcher had gotten a burst of uncontrollable emotions after learning that the letters from his family are still intact. He wouldn't be this calm menace who just tells Moonjumper his reasoning. Even it maybe could make sense that Snatcher is calm about it because, well, it's been 300 years, and he probably got calm about his own death and everything surrounding it...

But on the other hand, everyone and everything in Subcon must be in a more emotional and irrational state currently, because it's been only like 2 - 3 weeks since Vanessa was rescued and it's been only a day since Moonjumper appeared.

There is tension in the air.

======

So, with scrapping this calm conclusion to the "third floor arc", I wanted these steps to be an emotional rollercoaster between the characters. After all, Snatcher as quite a lot of bottled up emotions, and so does Vanessa too.

After making Snatcher and Moonjumper have an actual physical fight, and also making it as long as it felt natural for Snatcher wanting to get that steam out of his system, I wanted to give Vanessa a little bit of an emotional spotlight too.

But there were two options how to go about it in Step 26.

In the scrapped version, Vanessa is delusional about it. She doesn't want to believe that the issue of the freezing isn't just easily talked out with some snacks and tea. So, she, as a naive young woman who was friends with a dream being for 10 years, thinks during the fight between her "BFs" (Best friend and (former) boyfriend) that all this must be a bad dream.

Right? She probably is just dreaming all this and Moonjumper here could change it to a good ending, where everyone gets along. But this isn't a dream, this is reality and so Snatcher has to swoop in and bring her to her senses.

However, I felt that this version took something away from Vanessa, which is something that is important to all this:

Vanessa is selfish.

She is selfish for wanting that Snatcher just accepts Moonjumper and gets along with him. And also getting potentially back into a relationship with her since she was trapped for 300 years in her mind, so she technically is still the Vanessa right before the freezing (plus like 2 weeks of slowly adjusting to the new Subcon).

But Snatcher wasn't. He had a mindful journey of 300 years of experiences that changed him. He is Snatcher now, not that naive young man anymore named Phoenix Burnbright.

So, to give the hint for this, I shifted the text so that Vanessa is aware of how selfish she is. And Snatcher knows this too because he uses Moonjumper to stop Vanessa from turning the room into a fridge.

Not himself, or the Subconites, or anything else. He chose Moonjumper to stop this as quickly as possible. Oh and of course, Snatcher acknowledges that it technically makes sense from Vanessa's POV to have these wishes.

Who wouldn't wish that everything can be solved that easily?

Wait, I just realize that Vanessa isn't as delusional about life as you maybe think now. It's true that she probably has a false sense of real life because of Moonjumper allowing her to have beautiful dreams each night, but she also had to dance around her mother Elizabeth for 10 years, so she knows not everything can be just solved with the snap of a finger.

Also unbeknownst to Elizabeth, she technically prepared her daughter for the harsh would of the nobles, lmao. Y'know, putting on a mask around other people to keep your real thoughts a secret.

But yeah, Vanessa isn't screaming for Moonjumper to stop this bad dream but instead states very clearly that "If you [Snatcher] can have an emotional outburst, that I should be allowed to have one too."

And so I shifted it to exactly this. At least I think I did. I know my writing, but it always depends on the readers if the author managed to get their point across.

Thanks for reading, hope my text wasn't a tangled mess :'D

[jamesnelsonart]

Chapter 4 writing breakdown

I'll post a bit about my writing choices of the latest Puffer and Clarissa chapter. Read more if you’re interested.

A fun little smash cut to show how much of a terrible parent Sharon is. Her explanation does provide some reason for this: She assumes everyone is just like her. Granted, if she didn't go around raiding villages with her robots, such animosity probably wouldn't exist.

I wanted to wait a good while until I revealed the state of the world and what exactly is going on with it. Since all these characters have lived here all their lives there's no reason for them to exposit such info unless they saw something that would prompt that conversation.

I wanted to wait a good while until I revealed the state of the world and what exactly is going on with it. Since all these characters have lived here all their lives there's no reason for them to exposit such info unless they saw something that would prompt that conversation.

As a result of being raised by her genius mom, Puffer knows the scientific names of lots of animals. ALSO a result of her mom-- she has no self-confidence, despite obviously being intelligent and strong from everyone else's perspective.

After the beginning, Killer Whale doesn't have a lot of scenes to show his personality. With this fake-out where he pretends to have a sense of honor for 5 seconds, it's pretty clear he's just a sadist who really revels in his work.

With Puffer and Clarissa back in a position of relative safety, they go back to arguing. But a certain submarine puts an end to that. Also you can see here that Puffer is not exactly skilled at delivering sick burns, because the only person she usually talks to is Sharon.

Killer Whale's first scene in the story features him getting beaten by Sharon. But Sharon herself is a dangerous opponent. Against ordinary people, the reader can see he's actually very threatening. Also, murder being his first option shows that he is not one for negotiation.

...But despite him being a murderer, he's also a little bit funny, due to how committed to his persona he is. The fact that orcas were attacking ships in real life as this chapter went up was interesting, haha.

Puffer is really naive. Being raised by Sharon will do that to you. Clarissa is more or a people person and can tell Killer Whale is joking. She also uses Puffer's idolization of her mom to boost her self-esteem some. So she's good at talking.

After fighting Killer Whale decently, Puffer gets enough confidence to think up a plan. Side note- Killer Whale manipulating wildlife to attack people for him shows a lot about Lord Jel's army. Everything is a tool for them to either use or discard.

Puffer actually manages to do some very successful trash talk here. So good that Killer Whale gets PTSD from being bullied by Sharon when they were on the same team. Impressive stuff.

A lot of readers were like "wow they sure became close real fast" but that wasn't my intention here. Puffer is not mourning Clarissa so much as she is mourning her self-image. In Puffer's mind, coming up with a plan only to believe she screwed it up does confirm a lot of what Sharon thinks of her. It's like the rug got yanked out from under her.

And with this final page, the townspeople call Puffer a hero. Despite working under her mom her whole life and believing in her cause, the first time she gets called a hero is when she's here with Clarissa. What will this mean? Wait for the next chapter to find out. That's all!

[signalwatch]

80's Watch: Action Jackson (1988)

Watched:  02/04/2023

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Craig R Baxley

Well, 13-year-old-me that wanted to see this, we did it.  We finally got around to watching Action Jackson (1988).  And what a strange, strange movie this is.  

There are moments where you think "this movie had a $5 budget" and then you think "well, there are lots of explosions and stuff."  But you also know the star here was Carl Weathers, who is charismatic and cool, but he hadn't carried a ton of stuff or big action movies.  The director is the stunt coordinator from Predator, and the film includes not just Weathers but Bill Duke as the cranky captain calling Jackson into his office and a brief appearance by Sonny Landham (Billy in Predator).  

But that's not all!  Craig T. Nelson plays the Mr. Big corporate villain, a fresh-faced Sharon Stone is his dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks wife, Vanity is our deeply complicated love interest/ MacGuffin, Tom Wilson (Biff from BTTF) is a cop,  Robert Davi gets five minutes.  But most remarkable, it's just full of "that guy!" character actors in almost every scene.  

The basic plot, which is rendered almost incoherent by the film, is (I think) that Jericho "Action" Jackson once took down the son of a prominent businessman (Craig T. Nelson) but was demoted for police brutality in the process.  Now Craig T. Nelson has a secret goon squad that is bumping off people who could mess up him taking control of the American Autoworkers Union, which he sees as his path to controlling American politics (which seems wildly dubious in 1988, but okay).  Despite having Sharon Stone as his new trophy wife, Nelson is also bedding heroin junky and pop singer, Vanity.  

You know what?  This movie makes sense only in that I *could* belabor myself with relaying all the twists and turns, but it ends in a completely insane scenario at Nelson's house (which is also the house used for the exteriors of Stately Wayne Manor in the 1960's Batman TV show) with Jackson driving a car through a house.  

But, yeah, the movie is just weird.  It takes like 10 minutes to get to Jackson, showing us these weirdly over elaborate murders of people who seem like they could be killed by just walking up to them with a gun and then walking away.  There's a whole pointless detour where we meet pool-hall thugs who cut off dude's balls as a thing they do.  They clearly realized the movie was making no sense and added in a barber we named "Lady Exposition" because she basically both gives Jackson all the info he needs and explains the plot to the audience.  

There's a whole set up for how mean and bad-ass Jackson is that takes so, so much time.  But Carl Weathers always seems... really nice.  And the movie seems to forget that everyone is afraid of him immediately after the start.  For whatever reason, the movie also doesn't allow Jackson to use a gun.  He's forbidden to have one because of his prior actions or something?  He's also supposed to be a Harvard Law School grad we're supposed to believe decided to use that wildly lucrative degree to become a cop?  It's just such a weird movie.  Like - you can do 1000x more with that degree as almost anything else if you want to help out your hometown.  

But he also doesn't really do anything "actiony" until the 38 minute mark of the movie.  Y'all...  that's really late.  They could have opened on him kicking ass.  They could have done a lot of things, but they don't.  We have a whole musical number tucked in there.  There's a plot-driving murder that should be the page 30 twist that happens like 45 minutes in.  It's insane.

There's just so much stuff in the movie that makes zero sense.  Pretty much everything around Vanity was just weird.  Her reason for being a MacGuffin is that she supposedly knows something that can put Craig T. Nelson away, but I have no idea what it was supposed to be - and I don't think she knew either.  But whatever it was, it was hot enough that he tries to kill her by blowing up her phone?  And despite the fact Vanity is a heroin addict who spends the length of the film looking like the healthiest junkie you've ever seen, at the end, she's clearly hooking up with Jackson.  It's so, so weird!  She's gonna clear out his apartment and get back on that horse.  But just look at that poster.  That is one smashing-looking heroin fiend!

Anyway, it's a fascinating watch.  I don't remember the last time I couldn't follow a movie that was pretending like this was all straight forward.  But, holy shit, it is not.  

Oh, and the title track is something called "He Turned Me Out" by the Pointer Sisters.  Which, last I checked, that's slang for being put on the street to turn tricks.  So, I don't even know.  I'm sure that's not what it is.  But I don't know what it is.

I did notice HBOmax categorized it as a comedy, and it made me wonder if I was missing something while watching, because to my eyes, which VERY much remember cop movies of 1988.  Someone help me out here.

https://ift.tt/R9rc3Hz

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/VQvAYj7

[globin--goblin]

I'm gonna write here a bunch of complaints about Super Paper Mario because I wholeheartedly believe it's the worst Paper Mario game, if not the worst Mario game in general. So if you like this game uh don't click read more because you're not gonna enjoy this.

Ok, starting with the core gameplay. The platforming is just awful. The 2D-3D mechanic is a good concept but it's ultimately ruined by The execution. The first issue is that you can't make a 3D platformer with a sideways Wiimote. The D-pad just isn't cut out for this, the game asks you to position yourself precisely but the D-pad and timer conspire against you.

The camera doesn't help, it's parallel to the direction of movement so seeing where you're going is a bitch sometimes (there's a reason Color Splash changed that when referencing this game). It also does that thing where it won't scroll upwards until you step on a platform, which makes vertical levels hell.

And then there's the Pixl and character system, which also doesn't work with a Wiimote. I shouldn't have to open up a menu to do something as basic as a ground pound.

The locales are treated as super exotic and creative new worlds, but most of them are actually very normal on anything other than a superficial level. "Heaven and hell" isn't an interesting area theme when you're stealing shit from Classical and Christian mythology without adding anything interesting except a coat of paint.

But let's talk about the plot. It's the most praised part of the game, with some saying that it's the best story in any Mario game. Please.

You know the storytelling maxim "Show, don't tell"? Well Super Paper Mario does the exact opposite, it LOVES exposition. The love story between is told almost exclusively through black screens and plain white text.

Lore about different characters and elements is narrated by Garson and Carson through basic dialogue. When you beat a level, you just get narration explaining how Mario got to the next area, and you get placed there without a real transition. Mind you, this isn't extra tidbits of info, it's the bulk of the villains' backstories and the emotional crux of the plot.

See this? This is how you learn about the tragic backgrounds of the villains, some lore about the area, the people who created this game's artifact of doom, and a whole ass subplots about why the gameplay tools that talk once and never again were locked in chests. It's all here, Carson just explains everything. Read the MarioWiki page with is dialogue while looking at this picture and the place's theme in the background, and you'll get the full experience.

The actual main storyline is a tragic forbidden romance. Or should I say THE tragic forbidden romance, because it's so generic that it might as well be all of them at once. No, adding new characters and names doesn't make a story more creative and interesting on its own.

The bulk of it, as I said, takes place in flashbacks, where most of the action is "Oh I love you but our families hate each other, we shouldn't be together." The difference is that, instead of killing himself, Romeo here decides to bring everyone with him when he learns of his Juliet's "death."

Thing is, during the actual events of the game, the only part of this whole plot we see is that he's waiting for The Void to do its work while his minions try to stop the heroes in solving unrelated problems to get the Pure Hearts to stop him.

The actual original stuff in this love story is the period of time where Bleck is studying the Dark Prognousticus, recruiting minions, and generally transforming into a villain. But that gets sidelined to the barista that talks for coins, while the basic-ass lovey-dovey forbidden romace gets all the spotlight in the chapter intermissions and mentions of Bleck's past.

But enough about his past, let's talk about his present. His plan to eradicate all worlds. You see, he believes that, without Timpani loving him, existence and life are meaningless. Everyone's life and existence are. So he'll kill everyone. Standard genocidal villain behavior, genuinely no complaints there.

The issue is that, at the end of the game, the story doesn't even disagree with him. He doesn't get redeemed because he realizes taking everyone out because of his issues is bad and that people not loving him doesn't mean love doesn't exist in the universe; he gets redeemed because his issues are fixed, people do love him, there's no reason to destroy the universe now.

And his redemption isn't him actually standing up to his mistakes, it's him using his new love to stop an even eviler villain who hijacked the plot at the last minute. The eviler villain whose whole backstory is that he showed up one day, might have something to do with the Dark Prognosticus, and just acts mysterious in general. The minion who has a much less defined personality than Mimi and O'Chunks despite being much more important. Whose main character traits are "manipulative" and "talks like a dramatic magician showman." He just hijacks the plot in the middle of the ending to be heroic sacrifice fodder for Bleck to save everyone from. He was 100% willing to kill everyone but he got a happy ending because he sacrificed himself alongside his wife who never did anything wrong.

And I could go on and on about shit like the tedious 100 Sammer Guys whose reward is meaningless if this is your first Paper Mario game, the fact that you have to go through the second Pit of 100 Trials twice, the five minutes of grinding to earn enough Rubees to buy the safe password, the gameshow that has no bearing on anything whatsoever and won't give you any penalty for losing unlike every other gameshow in the series, the fact that you have to type "please" pointing a Wiimote towards a keyboard three times (And it's CASE-SENSITIVE. You have to type "please" even if it's grammatically correct to say "Please" because that asshole Jasperoid told you to "say please" instead of "say Please". Except it's not even that because for the third time he says "Please" but you have to type "please"). The many, many, many pieces of tedium and bad game design scattered across the game like LEGO pieces on the floor.

I'd rather play a quaint, simplistic story that knows what it's doing and sticks to working with it instead of a bombastic mess that keeps adding more and more new stuff as if that made it deeper or more thoughtful.

[theskeletongames]

How did you make other people gain interest? My friend's making this awsome comic but is losing motivation because its getting no attention whatsoever....

Honestly, if your content is good, it'll get noticed. I actually get lectured by other artists because I post my stuff at the worst times in the middle of the night and don't try very hard to get seen. People will do the work of passing your stuff around if it's good. Extra tricks can help, I think, but I've never really relied too heavily on them, so I can't tell you how to do anything besides believing in your own content. As far as the content, perhaps the struggle and lack of engagement is coming from the story telling side. I see a lot of comics with interesting concepts but bad exaction. Have you ever tried to tell a funny story to someone, only for it to fall flat? Is the problem that the story isn't entertaining, or is the problem how you're telling the story? In my experience, you can make any story entertaining so I'm apt to think it could be the way in which the story is being told.

Without seeing the comic, I can't really say for sure if that's why it's not getting engagement online, but I always double down on the basics. -Write a solid script.

-Make sure the dialog is good and flows nicely without being too wordy.

-Pick panels that have interesting angles that heighten the action or emotional state of the characters.

If you have any trouble doing these things, know that I practiced for a few years before before doing my comics, and I'm still constantly learning. I'd suggest researching other comics you like and figure out how they make their stories engaging using dialog, panels and angles, ect... (Seriously, read them with the intent of breaking the pages down bit by bit) Don't reinvent the wheel, learn from the masters (People you like) and seriously look at your work and ask yourself if you are fully engaged and interested at all times. I've rewritten or cut out entire sections in both my writing and comics because they were boring. The idea was fine, but if it's told in a bland way, people are going to skip it, or even worse, stop engaging with the media.

Sorry if this is not the answer you are looking for... Some other advice is that maybe there just isn't enough there. People like stuff they can binge and really soak into, so if you only have a few pages that hardly get into the meat of the thing, people aren't going to be engaged. The other thing to assess is the hook. If people have to read exposition from the beginning they'll get bored. Give them a good hook, a real attention grabber that makes them want... no must, turn the page. Hell, if the page is missing or out of order, they'll hunt across the whole internet for it because they have to know! Start mid action if you must, then go back and do some exposition later if you got explaining to do.

[semper-legens]

63. Unwind, by Neal Shusterman

Owned: Yes Page count: 335 My summary: The abortion debate sparked outright war, until a compromise was reached. Babies need to be born - but between the ages of 13 and 18, a child can be retroactively aborted, technically alive as every part of their body is used for transplants. Three teenagers are running away from this fate; Connor, a troubled delinquent, Risa, cut from her government-funded home for being superfluous, and Levi, a tithe gifted by his religious parents. They need to survive until their eighteenth birthdays...but the world wants them unwound, and won’t take no for an answer. My rating: 3.5/5

Long-time readers will be aware of my love for Neal Shusterman. Despite the fact that a lot of his ideas are wacky as hell, he writes with such originality and passion that even when not all of his concepts hit, it still makes for a wildly entertaining YA novel. This, however, is one of his weirder ideas - as it turns out, the solution to the abortion debate in this world is retroactive abortion of teenagers so long as every part of their bodies are used in transplant. Which, sure. I’ll talk about that last under the cut. On the whole, though, this book is still a fine example of Shusterman’s work, with an incredibly detailed world and believable characters.

Speaking of, characters! Connor, Risa, and Levi provide a perfect spread of Unwinds. Connor is a troubled kid whose parents give up on him, Risa is an overachiever who is still undervalued by the state, and Levi is a deeply religious kid whose parents believe sacrificing him is God’s will. One thing I always like about Shusterman’s writing is how he gets teenagers. All of these kids are credible teenagers, reacting in understandable ways to the world around them and the situations they find themselves in. Levi grows bitter and angry about his brainwashing as a kid, Connor steps up to a leadership position and tries to save as many people as possible, Risa finds in herself a capacity for learning and helping people heal. If I have one critique about them specifically, it’s the fact that Risa’s character seems to largely fill the YA role of ‘girl’ - she’s smart, she’s a healer, she acts as a support to Connor, and I feel like her character sometimes takes a backseat to the boys. Still, it’s not so much that I didn’t overall like her.

The worldbuilding of this book is interesting. I admire Shusterman’s level of detail in the world he creates - he clearly puts a lot of thought into the implications of the concepts he is writing about, and what the sociological impact of each would be. As well as Unwinding, this society is a little futuristic and contains things like genetic modification for fashion or race categories being different. There’s a character Levi meets, Cy-Fi, who is a black (called umber) kid dealing with having another kid’s instincts in his head. See, he had a transplant of a frontal lobe from a kid who was Unwound for his kleptomaniac instincts, and this has carried over to Cy. (I...have no idea if this is biologically feasible, but the technobabble around it was convincing enough.) Cy talks about how he is viewed in society, how he’s judged for being black when he steals despite the irony that the Unwound kid was white, and that’s where he’s getting the kleptomania from. It’s interesting, if a little simplistic.

So let’s talk about The Abortion Thing. The solution proposed here is ridiculous. I don’t think this is ever something that people in the real world would agree to do - it’s mentioned later that it was initially proposed as an extreme thought experiment, and they were surprised that both sides of the fight went for it, but this exposition comes too late to paper over the cracks of how batshit this premise is. Still, if you can suspend your disbelief a little some of the points the book raises are interesting, though it’s a little judgemental in the wrong places sometimes, I feel. For example, unwanted babies can legally be ‘storked’, left on a doorstep where they have to be taken in by the homeowner, but the narrative is weirdly judgemental to a woman we see doing this in one chapter, despite the fact that she’s perfectly in her rights to not want this baby. A lot of the arguments presented feel a little too cartoonish and out there to be a cogent examination of the real-life abortion debate...but I can’t help myself, I kind of love it as a YA dystopian premise. Maybe because I read this first as a teen, but I still enjoyed it immensely, despite how objectively odd it is.

Next up, more short stories - I got a new Junji Ito collection!

[hazel-light]

Chapter Word Count: ~7,500

Total Fic Word Count: ~30,000

Genre: (Wedding) Fake Dating, Friends to Lovers, lots of bed sharing and every self indulgent fluffy trope possible.

Warnings: None? Lots of fluff? Occasional cussing? Some suggestive themes, moments, and jokes I guess. No smut or anything!

Disclaimer: I am not Daniel Sharman, and I do not pretend to know how he would act, speak, etc. This is fiction okay, there’s a lot of creative license, and potential to be OOC. Ricky isn't mentioned because I started writing this before we knew he existed, so apologies for that. Also, if you’re DShar himself, please do us both a favor and don’t read this, okay???? Same if you know him 🙈

Title taken from the song Yellow Lights by Harry Hudson which suits this story quite a bit!

A/N: Okay okay here it is— the wedding fic I’ve been writing for literally six and a half months! I'm nervous and excited... this is the first fic I've written and posted in maybe 8? years. I asked you, and guys said you preferred chapters, so that's how I'll be posting. This first chapter is mostly exposition and fluff, the good stuff is coming I promise! I will be posting a part every day since the whole thing is already written. If you would like to be tagged, let me know. I would like to thank Rowena @heyrowena for being such a good friend and motivating me to be brave and get back into writing. Without you, this probably wouldn’t exist. Your motivation whenever I hit a roadblock or plot crisis was fundamental in helping the ending come together. I would also like to thank Tori @cavillsharman who spent countless hours talking out plots with me. Henry & Claire would not exist if it wasn’t for you! Thank you for bringing them to life with me. Thank you BOTH for helping me figure out how the heck to write kissing and ~romantic scenes. I think I hopefully found my way in the end. TLDR; Thank you Rowena and Tori, thanks for believing in me and helping this fic become a reality. ALSO! Thank you to my bestie Becka @kirklandhouse for giving all 100 pages of this a final proof/beta read with me to make it as smooth and shiny as possible. I love you! Okay. No more notes. I hope you enjoy it. Bye <3

—-

I sit in Daniel’s apartment, watching some new indie movie on Netflix. When he’s in town, we dedicate Wednesday nights to watching Netflix and playing some kind of card game together. It started originally as a group thing with board games, but eventually our friends' schedules fell apart, leaving it to just us most of the time.

My phone lights up and starts playing the typical FaceTime music, and I look down to see my cousin Ryan calling me; I decline the call. Daniel looks at me over his cards, knowingly.

“Is that your cousin? We can pause it,” he nods towards the TV.

Ryan and I are a good decade apart in age but really close. When I had to move across the country for work, I was heartbroken. Ryan was like the little brother I never had, and I’d lived with him, his mom — my Auntie Kim — and his sister Rachel nearly my whole life. I was worried the distance would change things between the two of us. Thankfully, it hadn’t.

I shake my head, watching the “missed call” light up on my lockscreen.

“No, it’s fine… I can call him later. He’s calling about his sister’s wedding.”

“Oh right, Rachel’s getting married this summer.”

I smile that he remembers, granted it would be hard not to. I have a tendency to talk about my family a lot, some might say too much.

“That’s coming up this summer, isn’t it? When is it — July?”

“Yeah, only two—” I’m cut off by my phone lighting up again, Ryan’s face once again on the screen. “God, he needs to stop. Sorry — let me text him.” I decline the call and start texting him, but before I can hit send, FaceTime is ringing again.

Daniel laughs, “I really think you should answer. He’s rather persistent.”

I shake my head, “Sorry.” I apologize before reluctantly answering the call, “Ryan, why are you—”

“Lauren!”

“Yes, hello.”

“I have been trying to reach you.” I look up at Daniel who has an amused smile on his face.

“I realize that, yes. I am doing something though, so is this an emergency, or...?”

“I was talking with Rachel and my mom, I guess the final guest count was due today.”

“Okay? That’s... nice. Is that… it?”

“Don’t worry, I told her you made a mistake on your RSVP; I fixed it just in time.”

I frown. “What do you mean? How did I make a mistake?”

Ryan rolls his eyes, and looks like he’s trying — and failing — not to look smug.

“You forgot to put that you were bringing a plus one.”

I laugh at that, “Yeah, I didn’t forget that, I don’t have a plus one.”

“I know.”

Silence.

“If you know that, why did you tell her I did? Your mom is going to be really mad if they pay for a plate of food for someone who doesn’t exist.”

Daniel’s fidgeting with his cards, but looking at me curiously.

“Because, Lauren. you need to find a plus one.”

“Uh —”

“No, no, no… listen. I’m bringing my girlfriend, and Rachel, who’s younger than you, by the way, is getting married. You’re, what? In your late twenties?” He takes a deep breath, “It’s time to find a mate.”

I visibly cringe at the messed up teenage boy logic. Daniel strategically places a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing, and I feel my cheeks start to heat up.

“A mate? Ryan, this is. Okay. That is, first of all, a really weird word choice. Second of all, thank you so much for your input. I really appreciate it, but —”

“No, Lauren. Listen. If you show up to this wedding without a date, you owe me fifty bucks.”

“That is NOT —”

“But, if you show up with a date, I will give you a hundred bucks, PLUS my mom won’t be mad at you.”

“Ryan. Seriously. This is not cool — do you even have a hundred bucks?” I feel the panic setting in, and the secondhand embarrassment of this occurring in front of, arguably, the most good-looking man on the planet. Daniel wouldn’t have any idea what it was like to be made fun of by your entire family for never having a boyfriend — or even a date to anything. I feel my face getting hot, and I know anxious tears are in my future. I take a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves, to try to calmly explain to my cousin, yet again, that I couldn’t just make someone enter my life by sheer will, nevermind someone who would be willing to fly across the country with me in less than two months. “Plus, Ryan, I don’t know how to tell you this, but —”

I feel a hand on my arm and look up to see Daniel looking at me so seriously, I stop midway through my sentence.

“Lauren? Tell me what?”

I’m still looking at Daniel who shakes his head ‘no.’ Confused, I make the mistake of asking out loud, “What?”

“Lauren? Who are you talking to?”

I look back at Daniel who is still trying to tell me something with his expression, something I didn’t understand. “Sorry, Ry, I was just —”

“Can I talk to him?” Daniel asks softly, but definitely loud enough for Ryan to hear.

I watch Ryan’s face go through shock, “You’re with a guy right now? Was that an accent? You’re with a guy with an accent?” He starts laughing, but I’m no longer paying attention, I’m still looking at Daniel who is looking at me expectantly, a half smile on his face.

“Sure? Ryan, hold on.” I say, handing the phone over to him with blind trust. I watch as Daniel smiles and waves at the screen.

“Hey Ryan, nice to meet you. I’m Daniel… Lauren talks about you all the time.”

“Uh, hi?”

“Hey. I know this is weird and sudden, but there hasn’t been a good time to really tell you this— Lauren and I are dating,” I feel my eyes widen in shock, but Daniel just glances at me and smiles. “I asked her not to tell anyone — I’m actually an actor, and — ”

“Wait a second, you were in that show! She’s mentioned you before, she said you guys were just friends…” Ryan interrupts skeptically.

“I know, I know, and to be honest, we were friends first. I just didn’t want her to say anything to anyone until...” He pauses, taking a deep breath, and I watch, bemused at this performance. “Until we knew things were really serious, and that they’d work out.”

“Uh huh. Well, I have a lot of questions about that —”

“I’m sure —”

“But the first one is, if you guys are really dating, are you going to be her plus one to the wedding? Or are things not ‘serious’ enough for you yet?”

I roll my eyes; even in his skepticism, Ryan is still as overprotective as ever.

“No, no, I — I had to check my filming schedule first, but I actually don’t fly out to film my next project until the end of August, so. This works out nicely, and I’m excited to meet you, and everyone, in person.”

It’s quiet a second, and I can almost hear the wheels in Ryan’s head turning.

“Are you covering for her so you get my 100 bucks? You really have to be dating, if you come as her friend it doesn’t count—”

“I know. Trust me. I’m not in this for the money.” He grins, finally looking at me to gauge my reaction which is still one of perplexed fascination. He picks up my hand and kisses the back of it, turning back to Ryan. “You’ll see.”

—-

Daniel and Ryan have a bit of a relaxed chat before Daniel finally gives the phone back to me. Pleasantries firmly pushed aside, Ryan asks me why I didn’t tell him sooner and I double down on the story that Daniel had come up with. I’m a little worried that I look guilty — my face usually betrays me — but if I do, it seems like Ryan just assumes it was guilt from keeping a “secret” from him. When we go to hang up, he smiles at me and says he’s happy for me, and that he hopes I enjoy the rest of my night, winking playfully before hanging up. Once again my cheeks are flushed red.

I let the hand holding the phone fall into my lap, turning my head against the couch to look at Daniel. Not knowing what to say, I shake my head.

He smiles, “Are you mad at me?”

I laugh, “Why would I be mad… are you mad, in the head? Are you really going to fly back to Massachusetts with me?”

He shrugs, smirking, “I do have a lot of miles to use.”

I shake my head, “This isn’t just... this is a commitment, though. If you thought Ryan had questions, wait until you see the rest of my family.” I frown. “They’re going to ask to take pictures with you to post on Facebook.”

“Are they?” he muses, “You think they’ll recognize me?”

“Well, to be honest, they might not… but if you tell them what you do, it won’t even matter. It’s like….” I struggle to find the words. “Clout chasing.”

He shrugs, “Okay.”

“Okay? That doesn’t bother you?”

“I mean, we are friends, we’ve been seen together before, I think it will be fine. Plus, I’ll be on my best behavior.” He puts on a mock serious tone. “No PR scandals.”

I laugh, “Right, because that’s my real concern here.” I pause, thinking it over in silence.

“Why’d you do it?” I don’t need to explain what ‘it’ is. He looks at me for a second before fidgeting with his cards he had previously discarded to talk to Ryan.

“You, uh, get really upset — I know you joke about it, being ‘undateable’ but…” He trails off and after a moment he starts again. “You looked really upset. And if I could help, I wanted to, I guess.”

I scoff. “You didn’t have to volunteer to be my fake boyfriend because you felt bad for me.”

He gives me his signature cheek: “For the record, I’m an actor. I’m a fake boyfriend professionally.”

I laugh, fueled by nerves. “I never thought about it like that.”

“It’ll be fun to meet your family.”

I bite my lip. “Well, get ready, I guess, because this may be your hardest role yet!”

He pretends to weigh the idea in his head, tilting his head to the side. “Mmm, somehow I don’t think so, but don’t worry, we can hold extra rehearsals just in case.”

“Alright. You let me know what that entails.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

We smile at each other. All of a sudden, I realize that the movie’s still playing, and neither of us have paid any attention to it for the better part of an hour. I check the time on my phone.

“We’re going to have to start this movie over next Wednesday. We missed the whole first half, and it’s getting late. I should probably get going.”

“Oh, okay. You know you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, but I know you have an early morning.”

I get up and start gathering my things, moving towards the door. “You’re sweet. Thanks.”

I move to hug him goodbye.

“What are fake boyfriends for?”

I feel myself blush again. “Well. You’re sweet for even agreeing to be my fake boyfriend. I forgot to say thank you.” I look him in the eyes, hoping he can sense the sincerity. “Thank you.”

He smiles softly, “You’re welcome. It’ll be fun. I’m looking forward to it.”

—-

The following Wednesday, Daniel has some Skype meetings about the project he’s starting in August and our schedules don’t align for the rest of the week. We still text here and there, and I don’t know if or when we’re going to talk about the wedding. He seemed so nonchalant about the whole thing, but I’m still nervous, and I have a lot of questions swarming in my head. I’m sure I could have texted them to him, but I don’t know how to word things, and I figure it’s best just to discuss in person, where I can read him better.

I knock on his door, pizza box in my hand. A moment passes before Daniel opens the door, looking particularly cozy in an oversized sweater.

“Hey,” he smiles, pushing hair out of his face. “Come on in, sorry — I got a bit caught up in the script my agent just sent over.” He leads me over to the couch, where I see lots of printed pages scattered across the coffee table. He starts piling them together, making room for me to put the box down.

“That’s okay, no worries. Is it a good project? One you’re interested in, I mean?”

It’s no secret that Daniel is sent more projects than he bothers to audition for. At this stage of his career, he’s particular about the projects he signs on for. The character and the premise have to be something he believes in, something he cares about.

He glances up at me from where he’s organizing the pages.

“Yeah, I think so. There’s a lot of... sort of psychological conflict in this one, which I like.” He picks up the last of the pages before putting them in a folder and walking off in the direction of the kitchen. “Let me just put this away and then I’ll get plates and napkins — do you want anything to drink?”

“Water is fine,” I call after him, finally placing the box down on the table, sitting down in my usual place on the couch and shrugging my bag off my shoulder.

He comes back into the room carrying two glasses and two plates, a piece of notebook paper tucked between his fingers.

“So, uh, I hope it’s okay, but I put together a list.”

My eyebrows furrow in confusion. “A list for what?”

“Things we’ll need answers for, for your family. Like character backstory… things like when we started dating — so our answers match.” He says it very matter-of-fact, like this was just everyday conversation and not something I’ve been silently obsessing over for the better part of a week.

“Oh! That’s really thoughtful,” I smile. “Good idea.”

He shrugs, handing me a plate and opening the pizza box, “I do it for every role.”

“Right,” I nod. We take a few minutes to eat and talk over our week, and then he wipes his hands on his napkin and picks up his list again.

“Alright, so, how we met, I figure we can keep the truth, that’s fine.”

“Yup, you came to see your friend in the community play, which I also happened to be in, you came to dinner with us after the show, and our friend group melded shortly after that.”

He gestures to the pizza box, “And now we’re having dinners of our own.”

I laugh, “We are.”

“So that’s when we met, but when did things change?”

I sit thinking, and Daniel does the same.

I’ve probably had a crush on Daniel since I saw him that first night; he’s the kind of person it’s hard not to feel drawn to right away. He has a way of making people feel seen, and his comments on the show were so thoughtful. I valued his compliments before I even knew he was an actor professionally. I wonder if I could say the truth out loud in a way that was nonchalant, make it seem like a concept that wasn’t based on real experience.

“Well,” I begin, clearing my throat. “I probably liked you from the word go, but I wouldn’t have done anything about it. So that would have had to come from you.”

“Huh,” he scratches his chin. “Leaving it all up to me. No pressure.” He chuckles. “I— hmm. I would need to know, or at least think you liked me before doing anything.”

“Oh, so you decide who to date based on who likes you, I see,” I tease.

“Fuck off, obviously I like you— would like you if I was going to date you, but I mean. I don’t want to be one of those guys creeping on his friends who aren’t interested.”

“Sure, Sharman, sure. So…?”

“Alright. Well, realistically, how long could you have been hiding this from your family? You talk to them all the time.” I roll my eyes but know he’s right. “So a month, maybe? That brings us back to April… . Got it— my birthday.”

“Happy birthday, I’m your girlfriend now!” I fake cheer.

He looks me dead in the eyes, replying with mock sincerity. “The best present I could have ever asked for.”

“Oh, shut up! So ridiculous. What happened on your birthday? What changed, as you say?”

I watch him think, curiously, thinking back to his birthday myself. It was a low key get together at his house with a bunch of his friends, some of whom were our mutual friends. He was grinning the whole night, and I loved to see him so carefree and happy.

“When you brought out the cake,” he starts, still staring off into space, “your face was all lit up by the candles, and everyone was singing, but all I could think about was how beautiful you looked. I realized I had to tell you how I felt, so I did. I pulled you aside at the end of the night and we talked, and then I kissed you.” He looks up at me. “What do you think?”

“That’s beautiful,” I compliment, trying not to think about how much I wish that really happened, that he really thought that when I brought out his birthday cake. “Who knew you were such a romantic deep down?”

He laughs bashfully. “I think you knew.”

“Maybe I had an inkling,” I smile. “What’s next on the list?”

He looks down at his list. “Have we said the big L word yet?”

“For sure. That same night.”

Daniel laughs and gives me a strange look. “You were ready for that one.”

“Well, I don’t know— you don’t confess to ‘kind of like someone’ when you’ve already been friends as long as we have.”

He smirks. “Right, well, when you say it like that, who could argue?”

—-

It’s another Friday when I’m lying down on Daniel’s couch with my eyes closed, when I feel him come and sit next to me, perching on the edge of the cushion. He laughs quietly to himself before I feel him start twirling one of my rogue curls around his finger. I open my eyes to see him smiling down at me, newly topped off drink in his hand. We’ve been playing a drinking game to one of his old favorite movies, and we’re both sufficiently tipsy.

“Hi,” I say, looking up at him.

“Oh hello.” He stops playing with my hair, smoothing it back into place. “Fancy meeting you here.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re always so funny, have I told you that?”

“Mmm,” he pretends to think. “Probably, but I always love when you remind me.”

“I aim to please,” I say, pulling myself halfway up to lean back against the couch cushion. We look at each other for a minute before I feel self-conscious and look away, reaching for my glass of water on the table. “What’re you thinking about?”

He watches me take a sip and says nothing. I quirk an eyebrow up at him, and put my glass back on the table. “Hello?”

“Just trying to figure out if now’s a good time.”

I frown. “Good time for what?”

He says nothing again, still looking at me. I narrow my eyes at him. “Just a reminder, I have anxiety, so if you could hurry up, that would be so very excellent.”

He laughs at that, taking a sip of his drink. He pulls a face after he swallows and leans forward to put the glass on the table.“Bad mix, that.”

“Sharman, honestly. Focus, please.”

“Sorry, sorry. Alright.”

I look at him expectantly.

“There’s one thing we haven’t really talked about— for the wedding.”

My stomach turns, as I try to think of what we could have missed. “What is it?”

“The, uh. Like, the physicality of it.”

I don’t say anything for a moment, the words slowly processing in my head through the fog of liquor.

“That sounds… very technical. Please elaborate.”

He runs a hand through his hair and I can’t tell if he’s nervous or exasperated. “Like kissing, holding hands— that sort of thing. I just thought, maybe it would be less awkward? To talk about this, uh, slightly inebriated... for you, I mean.”

“Uh huh, for me. I see.”

“Well,” I see the playfulness in his eyes. “You are the self-proclaimed nervous one.”

I bump my shoulder against his. “And I don’t kiss people for a living.”

“Mmm, I don’t think that’s my entire job, but,” he smirks, “lucky for you, I have had lots of practice.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

It’s quiet for a minute.

“Anyways, I was going to say — we should practice. Kissing, I mean. If the first time we kiss is in front of your family, that could be problematic. And extremely uncomfortable.”

I laugh, blushing, and blurt out the first thing I think of: “Oh, so you got me drunk not to talk about kissing me, but to actually kiss me.”

He shrugs, “I didn't want you to overthink it.”

“Mmmm,” I muse. “How thoughtful.”

He smiles at me. “Well,” he says, bringing up a hand as if he’s brushing hair behind my ear and keeping it there. “As your fake boyfriend, I have to be, don’t I?”

I smile, not saying anything. I feel him shift closer, and my heart starts pounding in my chest. “Can I kiss you now?” he whispers.

I nod, my heart still pounding.

He gently presses his soft lips to mine before pulling back for a second. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, my hand gently moving up his bicep as he leans back in. This time I follow his lead as our lips slowly move together. He kisses me more purposefully and my breath catches in my throat, my hand wandering to his chest. I feel his hand move to my hip, his fingers mindlessly reaching just under the hem of my shirt. His hand is cold, but his touch burns my skin and sends a shiver up my spine.

“C’mere,” he murmurs against my mouth, maneuvering me into his lap effortlessly. I don’t even have time to feel self-conscious about it because his hands, his huge, warm hands, are holding my face tenderly as he kisses me like I’m his prized possession.

His tongue glides along my bottom lip, subtly asking to be let in. Almost too eagerly, I open my mouth, and he hums low in his throat, deepening the kiss. While I don’t want to think about it, I force myself to remember that while this is something I’ve dreamed about, Daniel’s an actor— and he’s acting.

I savor the moment before we pull apart, both breathing heavily. Daniel’s eyes are still closed, his face flushed, lips a warm pink. I admire the freckles sprinkled on his cheeks and feel myself begin to blush furiously. I tuck my head into his neck as I feel one of his hands stroke my hair.

His voice is soft and slightly hoarse as he asks, “You alright?”

I nod, breathing him in deeply before pulling back to look him in the eyes.

“Yeah, are you?”

“Yeah,” he bites his lip. “I think… I think we have that down.”

I can’t help but laugh from nerves, and then he laughs too. Flustered, I smooth my hands over his shirt where it wrinkled when he placed me in his lap. I carefully get off of him, his hands falling to his sides as I resume my spot next to him on the couch. I already miss his warmth and I have no clue what to do with my hands now.

I can feel Daniel’s eyes on me, so I look back at him. His face is unreadable; I shoot him a reassuring smile, and after a moment he seems to snap back to reality and he smiles back at me.

I wonder how I’m supposed to go back to just being his friend when this is all over when I now know how it feels to be desired by him, wanted by him, even if it’s all just for show.

“So!” Daniel says, clapping his hand on his knees. “What time am I meeting you tomorrow? Or are you coming here first? Do you need me to pick you up?”

I laugh again. “We never decided! Do you want to carpool? Because we definitely can.”

“Yeah, let’s do that so I can control the music—”

“Excuse you—”

“Besides, we’re going to my stylist, so I know how to get there.”

“For your suit. I told you I can just get a dress at the mall —”

“But that’s unnecessary since we’re going to match, and we’re going to my stylist already. I already had Alicia grab a bunch of dresses for you to try.”

“Which are probably going to be approximately eight million dollars —”

“No. They aren’t. And if they are —”

“—If they are, I am going to buy a dress at the mall.”

“—Then either I can pay for part of it, or I can have her pull some other options —”

“You’re not going to pay for it, I’m serious —”

“—It’s not a big deal, Laur, you need to relax.”

“That’s annoying, don’t tell me to relax.”

“Okay, sorry…”

I sigh dramatically as I swipe my phone open to get an Uber home, and he bumps his shoulder into mine to get my attention.

“But seriously, what time?”

“What time did you tell Alicia we would be there?”

“2:30, I think?”

“Okay, then if we aren’t going to the mall first —” Daniel grins triumphantly. “— then do you want to grab me at like 1:45?”

“For you, I can do that.” he smirks as my phone chimes, alerting me that my ride is approaching.

I stand up to gather my things as Daniel follows me to the door.

“Lauren,” Daniel calls, lightly grabbing my wrist as I go to step out. I turn to face him only to be greeted by his lips on mine. As soon as they’re there, they’re gone.

Daniel keeps his face an inch from mine as he says, “You’re going to have to get used to that.” He smirks. “Text me when you get home safe.”

I shake my head. “See you tomorrow.” And this time, I catch him off guard, kissing him quickly before I turn around, walking out of his place to the sound of his laughter.

—-

I climb into the passenger seat of Daniel’s car, finding him snapping his gum, one hand on the steering wheel and sunglasses on. He looks good.

“Good morning LaurLaur,” he grins.

“Good morning to you too,” I laugh. “You’re in a good mood.”

He shrugs, pulling away from the curb. “Am I? Just pleased you’ve given up on going to the mall. It’s bloody awful over there.”

“Are you sure Alicia is okay with styling me? She’s not my stylist.”

He laughs, “Are you kidding? She was over the moon. Says styling me is boring, and girls are much more fun.”

“Ironic, since she’s your stylist. This seems so fancy for one wedding.”

I can’t see it, but I know he’s rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. “It’s really so much easier. Plus this way we’ll match, and be cute and shit.”

“Oh yeah, ‘cute and shit,’ that’s us.”

Daniel grins, reaching over to thread his fingers through mine. “Not yet, but it’s going to be, darling.”

My stomach dips at the nickname even though I know he’s just teasing me.

I roll my eyes and try not to blush, turning to look out the window, trying to ignore the way his thumb traces the back of my hand.

When we walk into Alicia’s studio, we’re surrounded by mirrors and good music.

Alicia lights up right away when she spots us.

“Well, well, well, look who it is. Daniel Sharman and his lovely mystery guest.”

I shoot Daniel a look and he rolls his eyes. Alicia must see the exchange because she laughs.

“I’m teasing, he told me you were coming. I just was starting to think I’d never see the day I got to style Sharman and a lady friend.”

“Alicia, I don’t pay you to embarrass me,” Daniel jokes, leaning in to give her a hug.

“Yeah, because I do that for free.” She winks at me.

“I’m Lauren, it’s nice to meet you,” I reach out to shake her hand, but she pulls me into a tight, warm hug.

“We’re huggers around here, especially since you’re letting me style you on this guy's dollar—”

“Oh no,” I interject, “I’ll be paying for all of my things—”

“No can do, chica, this guy’s already made me promise to send him the bill.”

I turn and glare at Daniel. “Daniel Sharman, you promised me—”

He waves me off. “It’s easier this way. Can we just worry about that later? Let’s see what Alicia put together for us, shall we?”

I cross my arms, vowing to get back to the subject once we’re back in the car, and turn back to Alicia, who’s walking us over to some racks and tables she has set up.

“Okay, well, Daniel didn’t really give me a lot of details as to what colors or styles you like, but he did show me your Instagram, so I got an idea of your coloring and made some guesses as to your sizes. You’re so pretty in person, by the way—”

“I, uh— thank you.” I stammer, unsure if it’s a compliment or a suggestion that I don’t photograph well.

“So I kind of compared your coloring with his, and I figured you guys could have either a blue moment, or we could have Daniel in grey and accent one of these other colors I pulled for you.”

I look over the table and see some green, some pink, and some purple.

“I have a bunch of styles too, not sure if you wanted sleeves, strapless… I figured you could try some on and we could go from there.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling slightly overwhelmed. “Thank you.”

“No problem, honey! Daniel, I obviously have suits for you to try, too. Let me go get those.”

She wanders away for a minute and I turn to Daniel. “This seems way more focused on me than you— also, still extremely annoyed about that paying-for-everything stunt you pulled.”

“I told you that guy fashion is boring, and really, you can just Venmo me after, it’s not a—”

We both hush as Alicia returns, wheeling out another rack with gray and navy blue suits on it.

“Alright, so Daniel, you know where the fitting room is if you want to look through these and take some options with you. Lauren, I’m just going to do some quick measurements on you if that’s okay, so I can narrow down your dress size.”

“Oh, um, sure.”

As Daniel leaves the room, Alicia leads me to a circular pedestal in front of a three tiered mirror. She takes out her measuring tape and takes a few different measurements, writing some things down on a notepad.

Once we finish, Alicia walks over to her table and the dress rack, reviewing her options. I stand there quietly watching her pick up dresses and fabric swatches, look at me, and either put them down or add them to an empty rack. Daniel comes waltzing back into the room in a light grey suit. It sits a little wide through his torso, and the sleeves are a little too long, but he still wears it well.

“Thoughts on this one, ladies?”

Alicia gives him a quick once over.

“I was hoping you’d like that one! The grey will be nice and cool for the summer, but I want to tailor it in some. Make it a bit more fitted.”

I smirk. “Make sure he has enough wiggle room to dance.”

Alicia laughs. “That I can absolutely do.”

Daniel looks at me expectantly.

I smile. “You look really good, D.”

He nods at me and smiles back.

“Have you tried any dresses on yet?”

“Not yet, Alicia was just pulling the ones she wants me to try.”

Daniel walks over to the table, looking at the pieces Alicia has hung up on the rack.

“These jewel tones are going to look lovely on you.”

“Oh, thank you.” I blush, not missing the slight elbow that Alicia gives Daniel. Alicia walks over to me, three dresses in hand.

“Why don’t you try these three on and we’ll go from there.”

She shows me over to a changing room and hangs up the dresses for me, telling me to come out and show them when I’m done.

I take a second to admire my options. The first dress I pick up is a deep ocean blue green in a soft, silky material. It dips down into a modest V in the front, with a flared skirt.

The second is a muted bubblegum pink, strapless and fitted in the bodice, with a thin tulle skirt that brushes the floor.

The last is a periwinkle with lavender undertones, and is a bit more flowy with ruched fabric coming over the shoulder and defining the bodice in a deeper V-neck — but still respectable for a family wedding. Alicia knows her stuff.

I decide to try the blue-green dress first, as I’m drawn to the color right away. It’s maybe the simplest of the options, but that’s what I like about it. I’m a bit surprised that it seems to fit so effortlessly. It seems like I’d be able to wear it all day, dance and not have to fidget too much. I smooth my hands over it and peek out of the dressing room, where Daniel and Alicia are waiting.

“Okay, option number one,” I announce.

“It might be one and done,” Alicia shakes her head. “That looks really gorgeous on you.”

“Beautiful,” Daniel chimes in from next to her.

I smile. “Thank you. I really like this one.”

“Try on the other two just for fun,” Alicia suggests, and I nod, heading back to try on the pink dress.

The chest on the pink dress is a little big on me for a strapless, but I hold it up as I head back out to show them.

Alicia narrows her eyes. “A little big in the bust… I could bring that in. I think it might look a little more prom-y on than I anticipated. We could take the skirt up, but I don’t know. I don’t like it as much as the first.”

Daniel hums from next to her, and I look at him expectantly.

“It’s up to you two, but I agree. That first dress is going to be tough to beat.”

We laugh and I head back in to try on the last dress. This one is extremely elegant, and I feel very glamorous. I like it much more than I thought that I would. I step out to show them, and Alicia whistles.

“Okay miss thing, where're you going? The red carpet?”

Daniel smirks and nods. “I really like that on you.”

“I like it more than I thought I would. It’s probably between this and the first one for me.”

Alicia nods. “I have more options, but since we have two we like, I don’t see the sense in complicating the decision more.”

“I’m going to need you guys to help me choose.”

Daniel looks at Alicia, who thinks for a moment before pulling her phone out of her pocket.

“Let me take a picture, and then can you put the first dress on again?”

“Sure.” I smile as she takes the picture, before quickly changing into the ocean-colored dress again. I twirl in front of them playfully while we deliberate.

Daniel speaks first. “I like this one. It’s just… you. You seem comfortable in it, and the color looks amazing on you.”

I blush and look at Alicia, who’s nodding in agreement. “I agree. The other one is very pretty— you look like a star, but I think for the wedding, this is the way to go.”

“I think so, too. This one is just… easy, but still pretty.” I turn to Daniel. “You didn’t try on the other suits— are you sold on the grey one?” He looks down, like he forgot he was wearing it. “Yeah, I think so, especially with your dress. I wouldn’t want to wear navy with it.”

“All very good points,” I nod.

Daniel turns to Alicia, who’s writing something down in her notebook. “Do you have ties or something that would match her dress?”

Alicia raises an eyebrow. “Going for the matching look, huh?”

Daniel looks at me, smirking. “Yeah, we have to be cute.”

I roll my eyes at him and Alicia snorts.

“I did pull some accessories for you, so let me look.”

Alicia wanders off in search of a tie and a pocket square and Daniel grins at me.

“This?” he gestures between us, still in our outfits. “Cute as shit.”

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

feedback welcome!

tagged; @rogershoe

[shirtlesssammy]

15x19: Inherit the Earth

We’re down to the end, and guys, I’m not ready. :(

Then:

THEY’RE IN LOVE

Now:

The world is empty.

Sam and Jack wander the empty streets. Dean pulls up in the Impala (still wearing his jacket with Cas’s bloody handprint. BRB CRYING.) Everyone’s gone. Dean tells the others that it’s Chuck that did this. Jack asks the IMPORTANT question: “Where’s Cas?” Dean looks down and hesitates, but eventually says, “He saved me.” He tells them the cliff’s notes version of what happened while shoving down A MILLION feelings of regret and loss and I want to hug him. “Cas is gone,” he finishes, and hahahahahahahahah NOPE. Sam, in disbelief, calls his side-ship Jody. No answer. 

They head to an empty sports bar (AND WHAT I WOULD DO TO GO TO A BAR WITH FRIES AND TVs AND BEER RIGHT NOW). Jack stays outside and prays to Cas. He gets nothing and starts walking. All the flowers start to wilt as he passes them. WHAT IS HAPPENING? 

Sam blames himself and is done. They decide to meet with Chuck.

They tell him that they’ll play his little game. They’ll kill each other. Dean demands that they put everything back to normal first, though. “The people, the birds, Cas.” All of it. (WEEPING.)

Dean, DEAN, Cas doesn’t want to be in a world where you don’t exist. 

Yeah, Chuck doesn’t care. He’s really into the brothers' suffering alone story. “That’s deep, that’s sophisticated, that’s a page turner.” Oh, Chuck, you dumb bastard. 

Cut to the bunker where they’re all suffering on their own. Jack wallows in his room. Sam wanders the halls, and Dean lays passed out on a bottle of liquor in the library. Sam finds Dean in the library, and Jack soon joins them to tell them that he’s sensing another presence in the world. 

They head to a gas station. Dean heads for the bathroom, and hears a whimpering. IT’S A DOG. And Dean’s so happy to have found him. He names the dog Miracle. 

Dean brings the dog out to show Sam. He tells him that Miracle is coming home with them. I AM DYING. Sam is shocked. Dean tells him not to worry because he’ll only let him ride shotgun if Sam is cool with it. Lol. 

Of course, all good things must end. And Miracle dusts like everything else in existence. Dean looks around and sees Chuck giving him a smarmy salute. F U C K  O F F,  C H U C K. Dean doesn’t even like dogs, so there. (The patented Robert Singer ZOOM tells me that Dean does indeed care about dogs.) 

(Sidenote: The dog is Cas, right? Dean’s beyond happy to see it. And is ready to let it sit shotgun, but only if Sam’s okay with it. And he’s REALLY upset that they can’t “save a dog”. Just thinking thoughts.) 

They head to a church. 

Once they’re in the church of very dangerously burning candles, they’re greeted by Michael. 

Michael tells them that he’s been chilling here to avoid Chuck’s notice. Adam is gone. (RIP Winchester brother that never got a chance.) Michael monologs a bit about humans and stuff. Dean recognizes a little soldier when he sees one. Michael wants to help though. 

Back at the bunker, Sam shows him Death’s book on God. Michael tries opening the book with no luck. (Sidenote: The DRAMA of the lights being lower is killing me.) 

*Dean is In Love Alert*

The brothers take a moment alone in the dark kitchen. 

Dean gets a call. 

Dean takes the call and because he’s a precious bean that actually believes what he’s hearing. Cas is at the bunker. He’s outside. He’s hurt. 

Dean takes off like a rocket AND I’M DYING. BBY BOY. NO. 

It’s not Cas. It’s Lucifer. 

UGH. 

(DOUBLE UGH.)

(INFINITY UGH.)

Yeah, Lucifer totally sees what’s between Dean and Cas and gains access to the bunker because of that. Coolcoolcoolcoolcool. 

He tells the brothers that the Empty kicked him out to finish Chuck. He brought a reaper to prove to the brothers that he’s good people (NOT.) 

Betty is bound and gagged. (Because WHY NOT DO THAT TO A WOMAN, Buckleming.) Lucifer then kills her. (Because WHY NOT DO THAT TO A WOMAN, Buckleming.) 

Betty is the new Death! 

(Sorrynotsorry for the lack of pictures. I think we all know why.) 

She asks for the book. If they give it to her, she can read it. 

They set her up in the dungeon reading room, and she doesn’t need helpers. 

Meanwhile, Lucifer is playing cards and there’s ZERO interaction with Jack and him. AND I AM LIVING. Like, it’s 100% clear that Jack isn’t his son and he does not see him as a father. Jack’s father is dead. AND I AM LIVING. (But also sad because Cas is dead.) 

Lucifer does interact with Michael though. Michael does not trust his brother.

Betty pops up with the book and the end of God. Lucifer ashes her with a snap of his fingers. 

(HOW?!>!>?)

Wherps, he grabs the book from her and reveals his hand. He’s working with Chuck.   

Lucifer and MIchael battle it out. Jack watches. Lucifer tries to convince Jack to join the losing team.

Michael stabs Lucifer with an archangel blade. Mercifully, there are no haughty speeches or further peacocking between these two. Lucifer sparks out, gone at last. GOOD RIDDANCE.

Later, Dean has a heart to heart with Michael in the kitchen. Michael’s reeling that Chuck brought Lucifer back from the dead instead of seeking him out. But he’s definitely NOT BITTER, NOPE. 

Dean reveals that Chuck’s book is open and full of mysterious Enochian symbols. Sam’s going to translate those, and figure out how Chuck dies, so they can start knocking down some dominoes!

In the library later, Sam reveals that he’s uncovered a spell to stop Chuck. (Jack was researching nephilim on the computer! Jack bby) When complete, the spell will unleash an “unstoppable force” against Chuck. They head out to a special location, light the spell, and it sends three bright beams of power into the sky.

But the spell explodes. They look up to find Chuck standing there. Chuck...chucks the Winchesters and Jack away. He thanks Michael for tipping him off. “It’s always been my destiny to serve you,” Michael tells him. But that’s not enough for Chuck to forgive him for siding with the Winchesters even once. Chuck fractures Michael into light. The last archangel bites the dust.

He turns his attention to the Winchesters. It’s time to finish them. He’s canceling the show. At the last minute, he decides it’ll be more fun to beat them to death instead of snapping them out of existence. It’s……..YIKES PRETTY BRUTAL TO WATCH. “Just stay down,” he counsels them - practically begs them. But they won’t stop. Broken and bleeding, they hold each other up against him.

Sam laughs at Chuck’s confusion. “You lose,” he tells him. Behind Chuck, the camera pans to Jack. 

Chuck tries to snap Jack dead but his snapper isn’t working.

Jack lays his hands on Chuck and golden power streams from Chuck into Jack. Jack snaps his fingers once, and the Winchesters are healed. As they say in the industry...suck it, Chuck. 

Sam drops Death’s book in front of Chuck, but the pages are blank. Only Death can even SEE anything in the book (making the whole “can’t open book covers” thing into nothing but a drama llama move). The Winchesters came up with a plan B and spout this in a quick exposition dump.

Michael was jealous of Lucifer being “chosen” by Chuck

They made up the story of a spell, so Michael would tell Chuck

Jack’s “bomb” quest turned him into a power vacuum - thus the dying plants

When Michael and Lucifer fought in the bunker, the power exchange charged Jack back to full nephilim strength

Chuck killing Michael and beating on the Winchesters allowed Jack to absorb god-power

“This is why you’re my favorites,” Chuck gasps. He doesn’t know what happens next, but he’s ready to die “at the hands of Sam Winchester. Of Dean Winchester, the ultimate killer.”

And. Babies. Sweeties. I know that there are lots of people who have problems with this episode but THIS! THIS. This next line makes it all worth it. Because Dean tells him, “See, that’s not who I am. That’s not who we are.” He took how Castiel sees him and he planted that damn seed in his own heart and watered it even in the depths of despair and now it’s so mighty a force that he just walks away from their lifelong tormentor. GUYS. I LOVE IT. I’m so emotional right now.

Jack confirms that Chuck won’t get his powers back. “It’s not his power anymore.” And AGAIN I am emotional thinking about fanfiction and fanart and giving this show to us when it’s all done. Ahem. Anyway. Chuck’s gonna grow old and die and be forgotten like every single human. (Ooookay that got a little dark, but I’ll allow it. This is a “to the pain” speech, after all.)

Chuck begs for them not to leave him, reduced to sniveling panic in the Impala’s dust cloud.

The Winchesters head back to a small, empty town. Jack closes his eyes in the sunshine as “Get Together” by the Youngbloods croons across the scenes. People return to the world and it’s gentle and beautiful - everyone returning to their day-to-day. “Come on people now, smile on your brother!” the song implores. 

Love is but a song to sing Fear's the way we die You can make the mountains ring Or make the angels cry Though the bird is on the wing And you may not know why

Come on people now Smile on your brother Everybody get together Try to love one another Right now

And look. I know this is just a song, and this is just a show. But this is my hope for this show and these characters - steeped in darkness for so long. And this is my hope for our actual real world too. It’s hard for me to separate the two so YES I’M CRYING AS I TYPE THIS. May this song lead us into the next episode and destroy me in a fountain of hopeful light.

Erm. anyway. Miracle the dog runs into the scene! It IS a damn miracle! Dean and Sam are so proud of Jack! Jack confirms that Amara is with him and they’re in harmony. I’m so happy that Amara got a happy peaceful forever after with her nougat nephilim grand-nephew. Dean assumes that Jack’s coming back to the bunker with them. He’s top dog, “he can do whatever he wants now.” (And readers, I like that Dean says whatever “he wants” and not whatever the Winchesters want. I think it shows personal growth!)

Jack declines. He’s already home - he’s everywhere and everything. “I’ll be in every drop of falling rain. In every speck of dust that the wind blows. And in the sand, the rocks, and the sea.” Jack doesn’t want to lead people, or be prayed or sacrificed to. He wants to let them discover the truth in their own hearts, in their own time. “Chuck put himself in the story. That was his mistake. But I learned from you and my mother and Castiel that when people have to be their best - they can be. And that’s what to believe in.” I have to say, I was fervently against Jack-as-God until it happened. But just like everything to do with Jack, once it happens I just go...okay, cool. I’m on board!

In the bunker, Dean and Sam drink beer and comment on the quiet. “To everyone that we lost along the way,” Dean toasts. Sam realizes that they can write their own story now. “Just us,” he says (and it sounds like a bleak echo in the empty bunker). Behind them, the table has SW, DW, MW, Jack, and Castiel engraved and...MY HEART.

The Winchesters leave to go find out what freedom feels like and we get a montage of past scenes from the show, and characters we loved or loved to hate. Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” plays us off in sweet, mournful nostalgia.

The Winchesters drive into a sepia-tinged world. This episode is like my Thanksgiving plate mid-meal - all mashed together for faster plot consumption. But on a rewatch, there’s a lot to like too! It’s a goodbye to one story...

And we leave nostalgia behind. It’s time for them to figure out their own story and I AM SO EXCITED to see what happens next! (Lays some nougat candy bars on my altar for Andrew Dabb for one last vigil.)

WHERE’S THE QUOTES?

Where’s Cas?

Who’ve thought finding a dog would feel like a miracle? C’mon, Miracle!

What’s an ending?

Eternal suffering sounds good on paper, but as a viewing experience it’s just kinda...meh

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive! 

[chenoehi]

Thoughts on Kirinmaru, Setsuna’s “death,” and Sesshomaru’s Rite of Courage and Cowardice (sp? I’m tired)

Working together:

First of all, we STILL need to know how Setsuna came to repeat those very words Sesshomaru has uttered now twice, but that lingering mystery aside,

It seems obvious to me that Kirinmaru and Sesshomaru are working together for some goal, perhaps to push the Yashahimes to their limits to see them grow. One thing that needs to be cleared up (among many things) is why Sesshomaru gave the girls pearls in the first place, especially now that Kirinmaru mentioned they had relied on them too much (relied how? how did they even work exactly?). Clearly we’re not done with the pearls storyline since they’ve been scattered gain so I’m at least hopeful we’ll eventually get some answers.

In this episode, Sesshomaru and Kirinmaru never once fight and they only seem to disagree on what to do about Zero. Kirinmaru clearly has disdain for Zero and doesn’t like what she’s doing, and it seems he doesn’t actually WANT to kill the girls. But, he does want to test their limits and he does that by bringing them to the edge. He laments that Setsuna cannot be brought back now that Tenseiga is broken and he lets the other two live. He has always been depicted to have honor, and he ends the fight by praising them (as he did the whole way through). Kirinmaru clearly acts like a teacher of sorts by explaining their powers to them and what to call them, and if we tie this back to Osamu Kirin’s role as Towa’s teacher and how he lets her off easy for being late to class, it draws a clear picture that Kirinmaru is not the actual villain of the series.

While Kirinmaru does not want his sister to die, Sesshomaru is finished with her games and is now pursuing her openly. Kirinmaru doesn’t want his sister to die supposedly so he tries to stop Sesshomaru, but otherwise they seem to be on the same page about other things. Specifically, we have the pinwheel issue which we still don’t know much about yet, and then we have this rite of courage and cowardice.

I think Sesshomaru is saying to Kirinmaru that he considers their battle to be something necessary for them to grow. We know that Tōga also wished for Sesshomaru to grow into a more powerful being but that he also wanted him to learn compassion; this was his struggle and only when he overcame it did he gain the power he sought. Sesshomaru clearly sees these events as necessary for their growth, or so it seems. Kirinmaru still does not feel like a big bad even though he axed Setsuna, and it’s really hard to tell whether she’s actually dead or just sleeping in stasis.

Setsuna’s death:

Setsuna “dying” is misleading, I believe, because we see the Dream Butterfly dissipate and give her the ability to dream back.

I think this clearly means that Setsuna had to “die” in order for the chord to be cut, meaning that she too was tied to Zero like Rin is which means that if Zero died Setsuna would be in danger too. That part could be debunked by ep.23, but, Rin didn’t actually die yet when Zero died. She was still in stasis and was only declared to be in danger. That doesn’t mean Setsuna could not also be tied as well. Only, Rin cannot be brought back with Tenseiga. We even got the callback with the line about how Tenseiga can only revive a person once. Tenseiga has never been used on Setsuna so she can still be saved. This appears to be where we are going with Season 2 and this new heavenly Yuwari sword.

So I think Setsuna had to die in order for the chord to be cut, meaning Setsuna was tied to Zero either like Rin or that she would have to die for the Dream Butterfly curse to be lifted (more likely). We still don’t know how Kirinmaru and the Dream Butterfly are connected or Zero even, but obviously it was used on Setsuna to remove her ability to dream FOR SOME REASON and we now see that when she “died” it looks like her ability to dream again was restored. So I don’t actually think she’s dead dead just like Rin isn’t dead, she’s in stasis. But, she may appear dead to others. I’m sure Rin would appear dead to others if she wasn’t secured in the tree. I’ll be curious to see if they perform a burial for Setsuna or not, I wouldn’t think so because I have no belief whatsoever that she’s gone forever and not coming back.

Her return seems to be clearly tied to Towa’s mysterious “heavenly” abilities she displayed early on, which will tie in nicely with this new sword coming into play.

This new heavenly sword:

The sword that Sesshomaru gives Towa could be the broken Tenseiga, and since Towa can wield a broken sword already using her energy maybe there’s a way she can still wield it. Or, the sword she’s being given is this new Yuwari (sp?) sword. We can speculate it’s the sword she’s holding in the Season 2 promo, but I think it’s just Tenseiga and that we haven’t seen Yuwari yet, but I could be wrong.

The Yuwari sword looks eerily similar to Kirinmaru’s sword, which btw harkens back to his comment to Sesshomaru about how the heavens and earth resound when their blades clash. This Yuwari sword is referred to as a Heavenly sword by Totosai, and of the three Yashahimes it would be the clear choice for Towa to be the wielder of that kind of sword. We’ve already seen her purify/release souls/whatever it is exactly she’s done in the past with people like Tokotsu which is similar to what Sesshomaru did for those souls in the Underworld in FA, when he sent them to heaven I believe.

It may be that Setsuna’s soul has left her body after all (dying for good to lift the curse) and by the time Tenseiga is reforged or Towa finds a way to wield it Setsuna may be unable to return. This could usher in Towa’s training with the new heavenly sword soon to be created or forged. Totosai says he is coming to see it’s birth (I can’t remember his exact words) so it seems like it could have been born from the clash between the Yashahimes and Kirinmaru or specifically from Towa’s body maybe ala Bakusaiga style.

Kirinmaru brought them to space somehow. Maybe that was necessary to bring about the conditions for the birth of this heavenly sword. We know from the past with both Tessaiga, Tenseiga, and Bakusaiga, certain conditions must be met in order for the wielders of those swords to either create them, wield them, or learn unlock new techniques. Maybe this sword had to born from a clash in the heavens sort of thing, literally.

Tdlr; if Towa learning how to wield a broken Tenseiga is one plot thread, and the other is her learning how to use her spiritual powers to wield the new Yuwari sword, then she could bring Rin back too if Rin also dies to cut the chord and lift the curse, because then it won’t matter if Tenseiga can’t bring her back. Towa won’t need it.

So many things are up in the air, but I think a few things are definite:

Zero is related to Moe, based on several things.

Towa’s Yuwari sword will allow her to get Setsuna (her soul?) back.

Sesshomaru gave Towa Tenseiga.

Towa will be able to wield a broken Tenseiga.

Kirinmaru is not the bad guy.

Sesshomaru and Kirinmaru are not and have never been enemies but have been on the same page from the start.

Sesshomaru was always trying to help Inuyasha (obviously) by whisking him away and Kirinmaru may not actually have wanted to kill him (that whole thing with Sesshomaru showing up and saying “hey you wanna kill Inuyasha” then saving him was too odd to just be what it appears to be on the surface, we never see what happens after the twins birth for a reason).

EVENTUALLY we will find out what the hell happened after the girl’s birth (and maybe before) that set this shitstorm in motion. Season 2 has got to start focusing on more of the personal drama and unraveling events than exposition and monster of the week shit. We’ve got to be past that come next season because too much is still unclear to have more fillers and BS. Which means S2 could be meatier, a good thing. Yashahime has to start giving us the goods, it’s only given us a nibble.

[bellaslilpapercut]

Oh boy New Moon! I've got some Thoughts a brewin' babey:

1. Smeyer: you do not need to remind your audience what happened last book, they aren't stupid. Imagine if SC started catching fire with ANOTHER explanation of what the hunger games are and that's the vibe of the first chapters of new moon. We remember james, we know what vampires are, we know that Bella is white, stop reminding us!

2. Bella has the worst self esteem of all time. Every bad thing that has happened to her since the Van Incident has been Edward's fault but she still blames herself and idk if this is Intentional Insecurity or if smeyer is protecting edward's "character" or both but gdamn it's depressing.

3. The reason I said Jasper was Inconsistently Written jumped out at me again. Smeyer dedicated a whole paragraph to pointing out how terrible jasper is at the diet or whatever but in the guide, smeyer tells us jasper actively tried to starve himself in the past because of how difficult his gift made feeding. He was one of only two Cullens to show bella empathy, he smelled her blood before, why does he attack her? The weakness of this decision is pointed out in the exposition: if it really were likely that Jasper would attack Bella, she wouldn't have needed a superfluous paragraph dedicated to telling us how bad he is at self control. If the story had convinced us of that beforehand, we would have believed the attack without the addendum.

4. The party is my least favorite part of the whole series and I will die on this hill: edward should have attacked bella. Bella should have tripped into something glass and edward should have lost it because he tasted her blood before and couldn't help himself. That way: edwards self loathing makes sense and he's forced to recon with his superiority complex from the ending chapters of twilight AND bella's self blame makes sense. A vamp who was able to starve himself before he even heard of the cullens should not have lost it around someone he spent days in close quarters with, building rapport and friendship. Edward got too high and mighty after he fed from Bella in Twilight, that should have had real consequence.

5. The writing is getting a little better as we near Edward leaving. "Better" isn't a good word actually but it's getting closer to the prose in twilight (which was flowery and annoying but at least it didn't constantly feel like being spoonfed exposition every paragraph). Hm wrote this blurb while I was still on chapter 3 and the vibe of being spoonfed reminders has not really dissipated lmfao.

We remember Sam Uley, smeyer, you introduced him four chapters ago. Just quick question: did anyone proofread this?? I think it's fair to say: when she isn't reminding us of things that we remember the prose is more similar to twilight. A little annoying but interesting enough to forgive the errors (or at least move past them easily enough lol).

6. I'm on chapter 8 now (I'm gonna break this up into three parts so I don't forget stuff like I did during the twilight reread) and there's a very heavy Vibe that smeyer is setting Jake up to be a parallel for twilight-era Bella. This line here is a pretty clear parallel for Bella telling Edward not to hold his breath in Twilight when he tells her she might get tired of him.

7. This line here "almost happy in a shallow kind of way" really jumped out. What Bella's narration says about Jacob versus her conversations with him (and her one paragraph about his happiness being effortlessly contagious) are at odds. It doesn't read like shallow happiness when she's with Jake. However, Smeyer is also a bad writer, she thinks the story she's telling us is literally what the narration says and not what the action shows and I think she realizes this in Eclipse (but obviously I'm not there yet so I can't say for sure).

8. I really can't get over the drop in writing quality. I know that she had already mostly finished Forever Dawn by the time Twilight was published (or was halfway done, I think her website said she had over 300 pages of forever dawn complete when she found out Twilight was getting published). I think the writing quality really reveals that she was not prepared to write New Moon. It's sloppier than Twilight in a way I'm not able to articulate (by that I mean I personally have a more intuitive than technical understanding of grammar and syntax so I don't have the language to break down the differences). Twilight itself is ripe with technical errors and plot errors and awkward exposition so it's not an overt drop in quality but I think it very much reads like a rushed writing job. She was committed to forever dawn, her publishers wanted New Moon, it shows.

9. I think New Moon was when I first started physically editing my copies of the saga lol. Even reading it now I'm so tempted to open up a word document and cut half of the useless shit out and fix all the grammatical mistakes. I can't even talk shit because I am also a comma-abuser but I hoped an editor would at least catch the errors before publishing. Guess not! Brevity is very clearly not meyers strong suit and this would have been a much stronger sequel if she had been able to reign herself in a bit. New Moon isn't supposed to be as narration heavy as twilight, there's already more action in the first seven chapters than the there was in the first 19 of twilight but she always delivers exposition via awkward dialogue or Bella's narration. Again, we already got a lot of the exposition in twilight, we know how vampires work et cetera. You can show us how bella feels instead of making her tell us and the story would run a lot more smoothly.

10. I'll end on a nice note! Little treat!

This is my favorite part of the book so far. I whited-out the useless dialogue tag because the line reads better without it ( line originally ends with "I emphasized" but she could have been brief and just ended the dialogue with an exclamation point for the same effect). The dialogue is natural and shows the J/B relationship that lives in my head way better than anything else I've seen on the page at this point. Like, I literally love this line more than any dialogue that preceded it (including twilight) lol.

[lady-plantagenet]

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n5): Wife to theKingmaker

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even before I had an account I had a tendency to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic novel. Certain books are either severely underrepresented where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others that are talked about enough - something more can still be said. So for my quarantine fun, I had decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Ok swear to god this book was written by two different people. The ending was actually heart-wrenching, but so much had annoyed me throughout that I swore to myself to never again touch this genre for my own health. Twas an odd tale, and tbh the fact that it was odd probably elevated it from the 2 stars (or hell maybe even 1 if it was going to get any more richardian) to 3. Honestly, quite glad I read it in the end. Not the most historically informative, but some of the character arcs were actually quite neat (however extremely farfetched). Spoiler Warning: I’m going to divulge a lot on here because I know no one who follows me is going to read this book.

Plot: Ok, the plot... It was only after I placed my order that I realised this is the Sandra Heath Wilson of ‘Cicely’s King’ fame. I cringed and didn’t know what to do. For all you innocents out there... her Cicely series is a saga wherein Cecily of York pretty much bangs everyone who is male and from the house of york (minus her father and uncle George) and Even Henry VII(!!). She then has this kid by Richard III, calls him Leo and the rest is history(this is what I gleaned from goodreads). Nevertheless it had already shipped and honestly I had it coming; the synopsis does say she has an affair with her brother-in-law John Marquis of Montagu. Whatever, I couldn’t resist buying the only novel about Anne Beauchamp, and since it was published in the 70s/80s I knew it would at least be flamboyant and go all out. It delivered enough for it to have been worth reading.

So the novel follows Anne Beauchamp!(Nan) from when she is a 13 year old girl to 1478 when she finally leaves Beaulieu to go live at Middleham with her (as you guessed it- favourite) daughter Anne and her oh so belovéd son-in-law Richard Duke of Gloucester - You see? Since now finally the Great Other (Mr George) is finally vanquished England has its peace. Of course this is not true, Nan historically left the abbey in 1473 for Middleham and while I wanted a possible explanation from the author (who I would assume is better researched than I) for whether she went to Middleham out of her own volition or simply because the King trusted Gloucester better than Clarence... alas I got none. It was all pinned on the fact that the evil George (who as per usual alternates between omnipotent mastermind to absolute drunken himbo at the turn of a page) would not have her free for as long as she lived (for whatever reason). I really think the real historical explanation was because Edward trusted Gloucester - because after all Warwick Castle was Nan’s patrimony not Middleham. I doubt Nan had a choice in the matter but, the point is, Isabel was alive in 1473 and since there’s zero historical record or suggestion that Nan and Anne had ever seen her again, it would have been nice to have had a depiction of the conflicted feelings or a final meeting written for the three women. I’ll let it slide I guess, after all, one needs to cut some slack when it comes to books written pre-internet age by non-historians. And unlike Sunne in Splendour, this book does not purport to be completely accurate or a representation of the truth.

Christ some sub-plots were truly unexpected. One that made me groan at first was the whole arc between Nan and her niece Eleanor Butler. In this book she’s her ward (not historically true) and little Eleanor is all sweet and innocent and virtuous and, hell, at one point we get more Nan-Eleanor interaction than even between Nan - her own daughters (particularly Isabel who would have been the right age and a better substitute for Eleanor in their dialogue, but alas, who cares about Isabel right?). Eleanor even is the one to accidentally discover that Margaret of Anjou slept with Edmund Beaufort, siring Edward of Lancaster.

Ok. You’re probably thinking, god how trite eugh the Richardians are at it again, right? Yeah ok the Richardians are at it again, but it turns into something really neat at the end. Essentially, as I said, Nan has an affair with John Neville Marquis of Montagu (long story that I will expand on in characterisation) and she and him come upon Edward and Eleanor (overhearing them nothing more). So Edward and Nan then have this mutually assured destruction between them, because Edward divulges that he saw Nan and John years later when Nan confronts him (by this time he is married to Elizabeth Woodville) that she knows about the pre-contract with the intention of telling him off. He tells her that if she dares tell Warwick about the pre-contract he will tell Warwick about John, so she then agrees (also because she promised her niece that she would keep it quiet for the safety of her son by Edward). Years later when they meet again, Edward realised how much is at stake for Nan (especially since it turned out she loved Warwick all along and Edward figured that out), and so, during the period of John’s back-and-forth loyalties (we know he was disgruntled by the loss of the Northumberland Earldom)... Edward returns and tells Nan that if Montagu abandons him he will out her to Richard and cause a massive division between the brothers (militaristically speaking as well) and he knows he can do that because he figures out Nan will not out him because she blubbs about her promise to her niece. This madness then becomes bittersweet when (as history would have it) Montagu does end up fighting for Warwick, nevertheless, Nan is releaved during the whole time because there’s nothing in Warwick’s letters that give any indication that Edward ended up exposing her. Warwick dies in the battlefield, Nan is deeply aggrieved but happy he never found out at least. But then... years later when Edward comes to Beaulieu (1478 as this story would have it) to inform Nan that she may depart for Middleham, he tells her that he in fact did expose her to Warwick... but that Warwick didn’t believe him and laughed in his face because he thought there was no way she could be unfaithful because he knew she loved him. This sounds silly but it got to me a bit when I read it. Of course, we also have Edward saying he regretted his handling of the pre-contract affair because apparently Elizabeth Woodville had since lost interest in him and he’s hurt by how she shows no reaction to him having mistresses and he’s kinda given up, whereas Eleanor would have been more of a lapdog. This was essentially the centrepiece of the plot.

Look, I don’t really read these types of novels as a habit so I don’t know if bizarre plot lines like this are commonplace. Not going to lie though, it threw me and it was pleasantly enjoyable. This is basically what is to be said about the plot... the rest goes into characterisation. Nevertheless, this novel too often fell into the exposition trap (like telling us what is happening politically instead of showing us). While I appreciated the refresher of what happened 1445-1461 and I understand that the target audience of this book aren’t Wars of the Roses experts, I’ve seen it done more smoothly in many other more literary novels (eg Hawley Jarman’s or Lytton-Bulwer’s Last of the Barons). I’ve often said Sunne in Splendour was terribly dry and exposition-heavy, but at least it had historical detail so I could sometimes switch off and treat it as a non-fiction account for battles and character locations. But with this one I a) don’t have faith that the author paid attention to detail; see what I said earlier about the years 1473-1478, so I won’t take this as information and b) know that if she had done this with the years I know more about: 1461-1478, I would have gotten annoyed because of my familiarity with those decades.

Characterisation: Well we have lovelorn saintly Dickon here - always a pet peeve of mine. Look, I don’t have strong opinions about the man but it just innures me how whenever Richardianism rears it’s ugly head the plot suffers massively and it’s always favourite figures of mine that suffer the most. George Duke of Clarence... oh god, what can I say? Wife-beater, alcoholic, is disgusted by his wife when she is ill (you know, unlike the historical Clarence who had resided in the Abbot’s home near the infirmiary for the last months of his wife’s lying-in and after to be close to her and thereafter stuck with her until she passed away and two months after that as well), is stupid yet somehow still devious, is the indirect cause of her death... the list goes on. Welp, at least this Clarence unlike the Sunne in Splendour one has an elegant bearing, sense of fashion and is a great dancer. The Sunne one had NOTHING. It’s also odd that they make his attitude towards Isabel undergo a complete 180 as soon as he realises this marriage will no longer make him king. This makes no sense as the book has them want to marry for love, like YEARS before 1469, so this sudden attitude change makes no sense. Authors really need to be reminded that crown or no crown that marriage would still have made him the greatest magnate in England. There was also a ridiculous handling on the circumstance of his death, and this was the most factually wrong part of the book. Between Ankarette being aged down by 4 decades and the whole shmaz with Stillington, I don’t know where to begin. I bet most of you can guess how it was handled. Isabel is as per usual constantly depressed and without a personality because, well, we can’t have her compared to our shining heroine Anne Neville. 3x more beautiful, 5x more vivacious and 20x more significant than her doormat of a sister who complains all day- that is when she isn’t crying. Gahhh. Of course Anne Neville also cries but it’s for her beloved Dickon who she pines for constantly. Look, I have no qualms with romanticising this pairing, but authors need to keep in mind that Anne was like 13 at most when she became estranged from Gloucester. You. Need. To. Stop. Writing. Her. Like. A. Woman. . I don’t care what anyone says, no matter the time period, you can’t make me visualise a 13 year old that could feel romantic love of that deep a devotion and maturity and not send me laughing across the floor. But want to write a strong childish infatuation coming from a place of deep friendship? Fine by me.

Ok, onto more positive characterisation points: I liked Nan, quite a lot actually (I mean blatant daughter favouritism aside). A lot of authors attempt to write the proud noblewoman and great lady character but few pull it off. This is always how I have seen the real Anne Beauchamp and I’m glad to see it here. For a novel so insensitive towards certain figures, the author wrote Nan with great empathy. She was very intelligent but not in that artificial girlboss way, she loved her daughter(s) but in that medieval mother type of way (so no baby brain here), she may have not gotten along splendidly with all the women around her but there was none of that demeaning cattiness. About that, I want to say I was shocked by what a turn her relationship with Margaret of Anjou took. Since the whole Somerset-bastard child plotline was a thing... Nan was initially revolted and lost all her respect for Lancaster, but when the two women find themselves joined by fate they gain this strange mutual respect for one another. They butt heads a bit initially but Margaret of Anjou rises above it for her son’s sake and eventually strikes up an agreement with Nan on when they are to set sail. Margaret first won’t listen to Nan because she thinks she’s a fool but when she eventually slips by to tell Nan that she had thought about her plan and that maybe she’s right, she doesn’t apologise and Nan doesn’t need her to and it’s this weird telepathic understanding from then on and I certainly did not expect to see something like this in this novel. After the landing in England and news of Warwick’s death reaches the party, Margaret doesn’t gloat but diplomatically relays the news and when Nan says she wants to take sanctuary because she lost all heart and can’t fight on, Edward of Lancaster gently says something like: well if you come with us, you’ll at least get your revenge and that’s at least something (paraphrase). You could just tell this was Edward’s way of offering condolences, the type of way a child like him raised through war and promises of vengeance only could, and it was oddly powerful. Shame it couldn’t have happened as Nan and Margaret and Isabel all travelled at seperate times. The whole theme around Nan was that she wasn’t very partisan but only followed her husband as a magnate and then as a man, which I believe and it was great to see Team Lancaster understood Warwick was a seperate entity from York, and for all intents and purposes they were all in this together. Cool-headedness is much needed in this genre I realise, god how low flies the bar ~

Now onto the characterisation most people are wondering about. What of Warwick? He was the saving grace of the novel. He has the common touch yet he is sophisticated, he is idealistic yet he is shrewd, he is impassioned yet collected, he is dramatic yet subtle, he is ... I can go on and on. What is all the affair plot point about then? It doesn’t diminish the bond between the two main characters; to tell you quite truthfully the relationship the author wrote was bizarre yet still really touching. They used to hate eachother because Nan thought herself above him (after all the Warwick earldom was far more valuable than the Salisbury one- remember it was briefly a dukedom at one point), but then she sees what he made of himself and becomes proud of him and falls in love with him. However, he starts to get carried away with his ambitions, gets all-consumed by the legend of Warwick that he had cultivated and essentially becomes impersonal without wanting to (and realising). Nan feels she has lost him to the people of England (which are apparently all hypnotised by his presence, which ok is a fact grounded in history) and because of her wounded pride she starts seeking comfort in his brother (although, it makes little sense how this would work as I would gather he would also be away, especially at the Scottish boarders). When he refuses to support Warwick over Edward later on, she loses all feelings for Montagu and thinks him a coward, and when Warwick apologises for being amiss she realises that this whole time it was him she loved all along and is racked with guilt. I found this exploration of what it is like being wed to a man of such public standing quite interesting, the idea of losing him not to another woman or such but to his cause (which in this book is a mixture of belief in the french alliance, the common weal and subconsciously his own wounded pride brought on by an extreme adherence to inflexible chivalric values on his part and Edward IV’s actions), I confess, is not something I saw portrayed in this particular manner anywhere else. I mean it’s not like I’ve been searching for this particular motif, but this was a refreshing depiction of a medieval couple and it was a poignantly written relationship which the author had me invested in. The relationship was heartfelt because it was very distinct, Nan and Warwick weren’t just some stand-ins for a cash-grab but some consideration was paid to the real historical figures. The John plotline, sure I would in principle protest against something like this but it seems to have had two plot purposes: To illustrate the strain caused by the aforementioned issue and to kick off the whole Edward-Eleanor Butler-Montagu-Nan arc, which bizarre and unbelievable as it was, kept me on my toes. I’ll let it slide. Also, Edward IV was portrayed as quite a chilling villain in this, beholden of this weird mix of indifference, charm and wickedness.

Prose: This is what made me briefly wonder if this book was written by two different people. It failed to engage me in the first half, the descriptions were trite (except for the natural scenery bits), there was very little variety in sentence structures which gave it the stilted heaviness that thus afflicted The Sunne in Splendour (and most modern literature). There was a lot of redundancies eg the type of stuff like ‘whispered quietly’ or ‘yelled loudly’ and the author’s misunderstanding of certain period fashions drew me out eg references to bodices (not a thing then), calling the henin veil a silk scarf etc. She didn’t pull a Penman: exposit emotions to us, making me feel like I walked into a therapy session, but it was often heavy-handed. It first felt very much like an uninspired debut novel. A bit try-hard and I was wondering if this was the way of the bodice ripper... I wouldn’t know, I never read one before (though I’m unsure if this qualifies as it’s really not graphic and the focus is really not on sex nor is there much of it).

However, out of nowhere, the prose suddenly changed a little before half of the way in; colours, emotions, thoughts and the like started to blend masterfully. The sentence structures started varying to convey the way Nan was feeling. It became very show don’t tell, and it drew me in emotionally a bit (I must confess). Of course, that’s also around the point the plot had sort of started redeeming itself. Nan’s grief at her husband’s passing was particularly well conveyed - how she became a husk of her former self... I could read fifty pages of that. Her realisation that it had been him all along was also well written, and you could feel all the urgency and regret she felt at all the time she had wasted disregarding him as the plot grew nearer to Barnet. The mutual longing was also subtle yet strong, and it really was down to the effective use of sentence structure and waylaying of inspired thematic details. The mingling of past memories with present day in her later years was also very well done and with flow, and the adjectives etc used were no longer becoming distracting as before. My favourite part by far was the very last scene when she rides ahead of her escort to Middleham and she imagines a horse riding beside her caparisoned with the Neville standard; you can really feel how this is the first time that she had felt joy in years and she lets the ghost follow her.

... In Conclusion, this novel gave me very mixed feelings. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much as I did had it not been for the fact that I entered it with a massive pre-formed love for the figures. It’s a bit like my experience with ‘Death Be Pardoner to Me’ (review #2 on this tag), was the book actually good or do I just have an affinity for the protagonist (Clarence in that case)? As such, I don’t think I would reccomend it. Indeed I wrote this spoilerish review because I was sure no one would fly off to Amazon after seeing this post. I can’t say if it’s above commercial historical romance in standard as this is the first time I’ve ever read a book from this genre. I think I’ll take a loongg break from historical fiction (after I finish with Jarman) because the Clarence portrayal was a bit of a nail in the coffin for me and I don’t want to continue upsetting myself for no reason. As I have now truly lost hope in reading a balanced depiction of him and if the literature isn’t absolutely expemplary why bother? Nevertheless, Warwick’s portrayal was a saving grace and made it impossible for me to give it two stars - it wasn’t perfect but still the best I’ve read (minus Last of the Barons Ofc). This is also a bit sad when you think about it, Warwick is also due some fictional justice. Even scholarly if you ask me.

The experience was educational as I learned a valuable lesson in what to avoid and include in my writing, what pitfalls/clichés not to fall into etc. I think I can draw another valuable lesson from this: Dear Histfic authors, if you happen to not be historians, heavily-researched in this time period, objective or literarily talented etc don’t take yourself seriously by publishing some tome of a work but just go nuts like this novel. At least this way you’re not sharing misinformation, inducing people into error and your work still gets to be engaging as opposed to a repetition of the previous amateur historical novelist. Yeah. For all the Sunne in Splendour’s superior quality, I must say I prefer this one better.

Tagging @pythionice who I have recently discovered has also read this book! Welcome fellow fan of Warwick <3

[aiden-png]

Heyy, is there any way for you to possibly share your planning/outlining process? I’m having a lot of trouble myself figuring out how to write my fic, it’s all just out of order and all over the place, and I feel like knowing what you do might help a bit

omg sure!! I know how to outline a few different ways and jump between the methods depending on the story, length, and how much planning is actually needed to achieve my goal. I don’t typically outline unless I’m setting out to write something over 20k words or I have an idea that relies on a series of interconnected scenes (like a 5+1 for instance)! I’ll continue below the cut...

when I’m ‘outlining’ for a multichapter fic below 20k, my notes are pretty simple and typically look like this (example from “5 Times Wild Did Something Wild”): -collecting bomb arrows while it’s raining -electrocuting a group of enemies during a lightning storm -deflecting guardian lasers with his shield/cryo-launching a guardian and sniping it midair -riding a Lynel and killing it from close range* -setting up a trap and killing a Yiga in disguise elaborately* -getting stabbed/shot and pulling the weapon out of himself to finish the fight

these ‘bullet outlines’ are really good for laying out scenes, story beats, or chapter summaries for multichapter fics. when I write a short oneshot however, my notes are 1-5 sentences that summarize the entire plot or the prompt, and I add more notes if necessary when I sit down to start writing. for example, the prompt outline for “Hero Through the Ages” was this: Wild is reverted back to a child and everyone expects him to be rowdy and impossible. Instead he’s entirely mute, very stoic, extremely well versed in swordsmanship, and acts like he’s a knight.

however, when I’m outlining a longggg multichapter fic, I have two methods I really enjoy using and tend to pair them together. first is the summary method, where I write out an overview of what I want the story to be like in paragraph form. it ends up looking like a Wikipedia summary for a book or film when it’s done, but the reason I like this method is because it allows me to brainstorm on the page and develop my ideas where I can reference them again. these methods are supposed to be rough at first and get developed further later, so the next two examples are plans for a fic that ultimately went in slightly different directions by the end! here’s the beginnings of a paragraph outline for my BotW fic “A Major Test of Strength”: Link has been training for a few weeks since defeating Vah Naboris so he has all the supplies and strength he needs to take on Calamity Ganon. He learns of a Spring of Wisdom (or smth actually not in canon) that is said to have healing/restorative properties and it’s suggested that he travel there to try and regain the last of his memories. Sidon decides to tag along to help/see if he can finally work up the courage to confess his feelings to Link. When they get there Link not only gets his memories of this life, but of all other timelines restored at once along with his abilities. Every Champion had a power, and Link always thought the swordsman didn’t. It suddenly makes sense why everyone has believed in him without question since he awoke: Link is the strongest Champion, and he’s just now reached his full potential. Before Link can begin to train his new powers the Yiga stage a plot 100 years in the making, putting Link, Sidon, and the whole of Hyrule in danger. Link has a time limit to face Ganon before the barrier breaks now, and he’ll need all the help he can get to make it there in time.

from the paragraph-style outline I can make a scene-by-scene or chapter-by-chapter (or even act-by-act) outline which is the second method I like, though I have a hard time writing things I know the endings of. I typically outline as I go after the midpoint of a fic so I don’t lose interest, and will place filler estimates for how many chapters will be in the climax and resolution. working from story beats in this case is a lot easier for me, so I’ll make a bullet list where I describe the exposition in quite a bit of detail, summarize to the midpoint, more briefly summarize to the climax, and then stop outlining. it looks sort of like this (same fic as above): 1- Link hears about a Shrine* that is said to help connect those to their past or smth and it’s in the Laynaryu Mountains. He decides to go for it, as he’s still missing a lot of his memory (he’s not super distressed by this, he knows himself and he’s content, he has more important things to handle, but he hopes that the final piece in his puzzle may help him defeat Ganon). He travels to Zora and Sidon insists on traveling with him, it’s not far after all 2- they travel to the location and become close along the way 3- when they arrive the place is surprising and Link emerges from the Shrine with far more than he expected. A Yiga had tailed them, and upon seeing Link’s powers, quickly teleports back to their base 4- Link spends some time training to grasp his new powers and finds himself drawn to Sidon more and more. The Yiga commune with Ganon 5- the Yiga stage an ambush on Link as he travels, kidnapping him and Sidon. The Yiga preform a ritual in front of Hyrule Castle where Link was knighted at the blood moon to rend Link of his powers and Sidon rescues him too late, the Yiga and any information they had disappearing 6- Link and Sidon travel to visit the Great Deku Tree as Link looses his strength, hoping to reverse the spell 7- Link and Sidon make it at the last minute and are shown the secret location of the Temple of Time, where Link completes the ritual, and is sent back in time to before the kidnapping so he can continue his training 8- Link prevents Sidon from being kidnapped with past Link and they journey to Satori Mountain to stakeout the ritual site so they can disrupt the ritual before it’s too late. they talk and share secrets and both realize how they feel 9- Link and Sidon successfully intervene and the two timelines collapse, merging, until Link awakes in the Temple of Time in a fixed timeline with the triforce and knowledge of his powers and his love for Sidon. He confesses instantly 10- epilogue? Link and Sidon share a peaceful day months after calamity ganon’s defeat, Link training future soldiers and running errands for citizens of Hyrule while effectively retired, Sidon and him officially courting, and everything right in the world

there are a lot of different outlining strategies beyond these that you can use too! there’s a flashcard one, where you write out important events and scenes on cards and organize them in whatever timeline you feel works best. there’s the in depth outline, where you summarize the scenes and events in every chapter from beginning to end (this one helps a lot with keeping consistent chapter lengths and maintaining plot threads). when I use an outline, to make sure I don’t forget what I’m supposed to be writing for each chapter, I’ll write myself notes at the end of the doc that I can glance at as I’m typing. I’ve also used the editing method, where I’ll read and edit the previous writing session before starting the current one so I don’t lose track of where I was. when writing a long piece, it can be helpful to stop in the middle of a scene that excites you, so you have the motivation to return later to finish it! it also works well to finish an entire scene or chapter before stopping so you don’t have to read back to start writing again, but since I tend to write every single day until a fic is finished I don’t have a lot of issues picking back up where I left off.

just remember, the outline is only a tool for you to use! it’s not set in stone, it doesn’t have to be neat or completed--the only thing that matters is that it helps you better write your piece. it’s perfectly fine to diverge from the outline when writing, or to edit it as you go! and outlining definitely isn’t for everyone, I rarely use one because I feel it limits my own creativity in some regards. flying by the seat of your pants when you write is a perfectly valid method too, so stick with what makes you comfortable and what works for your style--and remember to have fun! I hope this helped answer your question! :D

[morannon]

Concerning The Hobbit trilogy.

First of all, it’s not like I don’t have my own criticisms in this regard, so it’s not that I automatically reject everything that might be said about Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations. But this doesn’t mean I don’t reject a lot of the criticisms thrown at it that seem to overlook the fundamental nature of The Hobbit making it impossible to compare it to LOTR.

The Lord of the Rings is in this respect a separate matter entirely, so I choose not to deal with that here. With that said, I am so very over the negativity still being aimed at The Hobbit trilogy especially, regarding the adaptation. Some of the things people say make me feel like they haven’t actually read the book at all.

I do agree that it could have gone easier on comedic relief, for example. But I think much of the reasoning for this, and for much of what the critiscism is aimed at is a fundamental fact that sadly goes overlooked a lot of the times.

The Hobbit is not The Lord of the Rings. The world it is set in and the narrative and chronological connections it has to TLOTR make this hard to ignore, I agree. But the fact itself remains unchanged. The Hobbit was written as a children’s tale, Rayner Unwin assessing the target audience between 5 and 9 years old. 

One might not concsiously pay attention to it when immersed into the story, because we have loved it throughout our lives without feeling like we have lost something in our connection to it as we ourselves age. So it easily becomes a smooth narrative landscape reading it now, but if you were to pay attention to the storytelling itself, you would begin to notice the many ways it is unlike The Lord of the Rings.

One of those things being big jumps in the story. Now they’re here, now they’re there and two weeks have passed. You may also notice that most of the dwarves who make up the majority of the company don’t have any dialogue in the book. But still it tells us about Bilbo finding the One Ring, and characters such as Tom Bombadil and Beorn, and takes us on a great journey and brings us along to the Battle of the Five Armies.

I personally have three copies of The Hobbit in two languages (one being ‘pocket-sized’, one the annotated version) and if you excluded the illustrations, introduction/preface etc and used a regular layout in terms of page and type size the story itself would total less than 300 pages. Which is not a lot. Especially given how much it covers.

When it comes to how this affects a film adaptation... I hope you can agree that it would be strange to watch a film that cuts from one scene to the next which may be chronologically weeks apart, with no exposition whatsoever. Or much of the screen time being devoted to characters majority of whom never speak or are only distinguished from other characters by what color cape they are wearing. Would that have been the film you wanted to see? I assume not. It’s that people reject the way in which the films differ from the book without thinking why. 

Tolkien’s work is not some run of the mill formulaic YA fantasy that’s written in a way that if you’ve read 5, you’ve read all of them. It’s not without reason that he himself believed it would be impossible to adapt his works for the screen. And I seriously doubt that what was possible in terms of visual effects was the main reason for it. It was always about structure and complexity and the impossible depth the world he created possesses. 

A popular complaint is that a whole trilogy was made out of one not-that-long book. Well, do people think that it would have somehow been better without the added detail and exposition and with all the jumps. My guess is that they would have been just as unhappy with that because staying completely true to the book would have been been very underwhelming, especially given the bar that The Lord of the Rings trilogy set.

Now, coming back to another complain in terms of a major difference that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The Hobbit is not The Lord of the Rings. In more ways than a few. It is at its core and anventure story told to children. And I saw the meaning because my brother fit into that age bracket when the An Unexpected Journey premiered. This was a story told on the screen in a way that is accessible to people that the story was originally intended for, not that it ever meant to exclude anyone older. But it’s approachable to children in ways that LOTR is not. Of course there are those that are exceptionally mature and beyond their years, but we’re talking about most children.

My mother read The Hobbit to me when I was 6 and then when I was 8 it was the first full length book I read on my own. The trilogy does reconnect me with my young self and I think that it was always about that. And I don’t think the Professor would disagree with me on that. 

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but I do feel some of the critique is missing the mark and is a bit unjust. Especially as this is something that has brought the younger generations to read and discover Tolkien for themselves. These films are made with much love and I think at the very least deserve informed critique which still allows us to appreciate them for what they are.

[fingaudioart]

Hill House, and Audio Horror vs Film Horror

I got to thinking about this when an audio producer on Twitter asked what people thought the scariest parts of Haunting of Hill House, other than the jump scares. What struck me while reading the responses were almost all things that depended on the visuals, and would be very hard to move into the realm of audio.

I feel like many/most people think of horror movies as a template to build off of for horror audio fiction...which is fair, because for many of us, horror audio fiction wasn’t a thing we could find to listen to until recently (myself included). And it’s not uncommon to hear a successful, talent audio producer say something along the lines of “An audio drama is like a movie, without needing a million dollar budget.”

I agree with the thought, generally: audio fiction does have many similarities to film, but if you stretch it too far, it can be a dangerous approach. And it can be especially dangerous for Horror.

Let’s think about how we could move the Bent Neck Lady into audio (spoilers ahead). Except for one scream, she is silent and unmoving. To move it into audio, we’d either need a narrator (or someone to tell us what’s happening), or to make Bent Neck Lady move around. The first option would keep the nature of the ghost intact, but we would be robbed of having it happen in front of us. The second option would change the nature of the ghost entirely. This is before we even talk about the twist, that hinges on Bent Neck Lady largely being a silhouette, which obscures information without feeling like anything.

Horror is a genre that is especially dependent on craftsmanship, regardless of the medium. It’s a genre where--and you’re going to murder me for saying this--you don’t need a good story to be scary. You need a scary situation/scene, told with skill, but even if the scenes/plot/characters around it are terrible, you can still make the audience feel afraid (Looking at you, Argento).

That’s not to say the story doesn’t matter. In fact, a large part of what makes Haunting of Hill House so good is that it’s part horror, but also part family melodrama (and it actually spends more time on the melodrama than the horror), blended together so the ghosts have meaning. Bent Neck Lady is disturbing the first time you see it, but it’s the story behind it that makes her stay with you long after you’ve finished the show.

But if we set aside the story, and focus on the scary moments...they are pure filmmaking. Every aspect is working to create fear: the sets and art direction, the creature design, the pacing, the blocking, the editing, the sound design.

The same way a horror movie uses every weapon of filmmaking, a horror audio drama should use every weapon of audio to create dread/fear/suspense. But the flip side is, just as Haunting of Hill House isn’t using the tools of horror literature, your audio drama shouldn’t try to be a movie.

But I think we also need to own up to something: many of us (most of us?) have more experience watching horror movies than listening to horror audio dramas. So let’s get analytical here. What are films strengths? Audio’s strengths? Weakness? And how do these work in service of horror? Any tips for the audio drama producer?

Filmmaking’s Unique Gifts

Before I get into the list, I want to be very clear: I’m not to saying you can’t do versions of this in an audio drama. In fact, when these are successfully used in audio, they can be outright amazing. But they take a lot more work, either by carefully setting up signature sounds*, or by having narration, or some other creative way no one has done yet. The point of this list is that film does these things easily.

There are some obvious things, like, ya know, visuals. I don't think there's any amount of words or sounds that would allow me to imagine Giger’s Xenomorph. Some things just need to be seen.

One of film's special talents is it gives the audience an understanding of a location without even trying. I don’t mean the layout of a house (that can be confusing), but present an audience with one shot of a bedroom, and they’ll instantly understand where the bed is, the window, the door, the closet, the bedside tables. Films communicate small spaces so easily, they don't even need to stop to do it…a character walks in the room doing whatever, and as long as the space is seen by the camera, the audience gets it.

In horror, this is vital when the fear you're trying to create is that of a physical threat. Where is the killer? Behind the bookcase? Walking towards you from across the lawn?

Related to this idea of a physical space, films also have the ability to makes things appear--and disappear--quickly and unexpectedly. This is moments like Mike Meyers appearing in the closet in Halloween, or later, when Dr. Loomis looks over the edge of the Balcony, and Michael Meyers has vanished.

Perhaps film’s most famous strength is the montage. You can easily cut between different scenes and settings, without the audience ever getting confused.

There is one tool of film that I am very frustrated won’t work in audio: the Title Card. I don’t mean the title of the show, I mean those cards that say things like “Burbank, CA” or “CIA Headquarters” or “3:23pm.” Text on screen is a painless way to give the audience information without tripping up the storytelling.

Finally, let’s talk about one of film’s most powerful tricks...patience.

A film can stretch moments out, sometimes with slomo, but often with editing between close-ups. You can also have moments where nothing happens, you just linger in the mood/ambience/characters reactions. 

A great example is the “Spielberg-Face”, those shots when the characters are reacting to something the audience hasn’t seen yet. In Jurassic Park, we spend a full 30 seconds watching jaws drop before we see the first dinosaur. This is pretty nuts, when you think about it. The true stars of the movie aren’t introduced with a speech, or a title card, or a curtain pulling back, but by the characters just staring in the distance for half a page.

Pausing the action, or even just stretching it out, is one of the fundamental tools of horror movies. It’s a way to create the mood: Show the spooky location, play the spooky ambience. It’s a way to create suspense in a scene, think of the long POV shot scanning the room for that noise. End the moment with something suddenly appearing, and you have the basic recipe for a jump scare. Even if you decide to be an artsy horror story, like Haunting of Hill House, silently drawing out the action is your primary weapon. Done well, the audience will be rapt, knowing that something could be about to happen any moment, even though as far as the plot goes, we haven’t moved much at all.

I’ll be honest, if I could go back in time and tell the younger version of me who hadn’t made an audio drama yet that you can’t draw out a moment the way you do in film, I probably would not have believed me. In my work as a TV Editor, it’s been one of the tricks that has really elevated my pieces...it feels like magic. But I’ll never forget editing my first audio piece, having a character fumble with a doorknob while trying to escape someone who was chasing them. They grunted at the door as the footsteps got closer and closer, and it was lousy. It felt like the manipulation it was.

Audio’s Unique Gifts

The thing that audio does better than any other media--and this is controversial--a narrator feels like they are talking directly to you, the listener (a narrator in a film feels more like they are talking to an auditorium). Now, here are people who find that narration is jarring and takes them out of the story. They aren’t wrong--you can’t argue someone’s experience--but that’s certainly not what happens to me. If you are one of these poor souls, I hope you take some time to listen to some narration and reprogram your brain, because you’re missing out on some magic.

The other great thing about sound is it activates the imagination. Films can also do this, of course, but audio does it be default.

Sound is also very good at evoking a sense of touch. Texture. Clothing. Almost anything you can feel in your hand.

While sounds is great at telling us about what’s very close, it also tells us about the world in the distance, i.e. ambiences. The sound of a forest transports us to a forest that exists in all directions. Distant traffic can tell us if the city is awake or asleep.

Audio also does an amazing plot twist that I’m gonna call the “Pull Back to Reveal” twist (yeah, that’s a film term). This is when, deep into a scene, something is revealed to the audience that the characters understood was there the whole time. While a movie can usually only sustain this for a minute or two, audio dramas can push this for a really long time. The Truth’s classic “The Dark End of the Mall” is a great example, as is the episode “Have You Seen My Mom?” It’s use in horror is more limited though...suspense works the best when the audience knows as much or more about the situation than characters (a.k.a. Audience Superior), and this is a twist that is Audience Inferior.

And, not for nothing: It’s way cheaper than a film. That’s not say the money doesn’t matter, but it doesn’t matter in the same way. 

Film’s Failings

The hardest part of film is the flip side of its strengths: it’s so easily grounded in reality, it’s very hard to step out of it. That’s more of a problem than you think.

Take the sentence, “Andy called his sister-in-law.” While it takes just four words to write in a book, in a movie, you are going to be contorting dialog or some other clever trick, to get the audience to understand “that’s his wife’s sister.” (Non-narrated audio dramas also have this problem with exposition.)

Same goes for backstory. In the middle of a scene, a book can say things like “She’d been working on this for ten hours now, and was ready to scream.” One sentence. A film would have to lay out exposition, or clues for the audience to put it together.

Film also has a hard time conveying senses other than sound or sight. During scenes where a character walks into a place and says “Ugh, what’s that smell!”, I never really imagine the smell, I just see an actor pretending to smell something.

Visuals can be too intense. Gore or nudity are the first things that come to mind in this category, and are often alluded to in a film for exactly that reason. But even if they are merely hinted at, the film audience may spend a scene wondering “Are they going to actually show it?”, which knocks you out the movie a little. 

Films are complicated to make, at every level. Casting is tougher---the actor needs to both sound and look the part. There’s the expense of sets and lighting, the effort of just getting a crew to a location can be monumental. And once it’s all shot, film editing is more complicated and time intensive than audio editing, and not just because it involves audio editing.

Audio's Weakness

The biggest: There's a big Blindspot right in front of the audience. Without some careful context, raw audio recording from real life is disorienting at best, intelligible at worst. Most sounds that come from the blank spot are descriptive, they generally tell us if someone’s shoes are wet, but they won’t tell who is walking around the room in wet shoes.

This blind spot can be especially dangerous to a producer, because in real life, our brain attaches sounds to the objects it sees, and when you understand what a sound is, it’s easy to place it. Because a producer knows what sound they are placing in the piece, it’s easy to think your sound design is intelligible. Sounds we don’t understand are also hard to place in the space. I personally find that while stereo and ambisonics can help make the sounds be more distinct from each other, they don’t really locate them precisely.

Another weakness of audio, characters are hard to tell apart. This can especially affect women's voices, who don't tend to have as much variation. This isn’t as true if the audience has seen the face of the actor talking, something about that seems to lock in our understanding of a voice (video though, not just a headshot). But without a face, it’s tough. EDIT: So I wasn’t very clear with that last point. To be clear, it’s not that you CAN’T cast people who sound different, or that you can’t direct people with similar voices to give different performances. It’s that you need to make a point of doing so. And while I have personally found that women’s voices are more likely to sound alike, that’s not the main idea. We remember face’s very easily, and names relatively easily (unless you’re me, I’m terrible at names). Voices without faces are easily confused.

This character confusion especially applies to large casts...I have a hard time imagining an audio only version of OCEAN’S ELEVEN, for example. Put twelve characters in a room for an audio drama, and it’s gets confusing for the listener really quickly.

If you aren't using a narrator, making time pass can be hard. A Rocky montage needs to be carefully setup.  "Cut To: Five Minutes Later" is damn near impossible without narration.

Sound Effects need to be more meticulous. THE AVENGERS can sweeten a superhero punch so it hardly sounds like a punch at all, and the visuals on screen will lock it into place. Without a picture to give a sound context, they need to be much more realistic for them to be understood correctly.

So let’s put this all together.

Lets turn it into an “approach,” and design some scenes that work easily in the medium. 

Ambiences are a strength, so we’ll pick a setting that has an interesting one, and avoid things like quiet rooms. We’ll have a small number of characters, let’s say four or less, and to make it easier for audience to remember who is who, we’ll cast actors with clearly different voices, and we can help on the script level by making sure they all have different motivations/goals/emotional states. To get that intimacy of the voice, we’ll have at least some of the characters close to each other (and the mics), and not shouting across the room.

The physical setup of the room will be straight forward, and our characters’ movements though the space will be clearly motivated and direct (“Does this key unlock this door?”), if a character has busy work that moves them through the space, the details won’t matter (like they are doing dishes). We’ll also want to have some moments that play on that sense of touch. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll want to paint some clear visuals for the listener to imagine.

For a horror scene, you really want to work your ambiences to make them add to the tension, vs just adding realism. We first want the monsters in the distance, say on the other side of a door or outside the house, or somewhere in the woods. Make our scared characters really close to the listener, play the sounds that you only hear when you are right next to them, like their breathing, swallows, adjusting the clothes or their make-shift weapon.

When the monster enters the room, have it spend as little time as possible in the blindspot, so avoid things like fist fights and fast-paced footchases. Instead get the monster right inside our character's personal bubble. If you’re aiming for a startle, instead of having it leap out in front of the hero like in a movie, you’d want to skip the blindspot, and have the monster pounce onto the hero--using those touch sounds that are so intense.

To me, that sounds like a scary scene.

It’s Not a Formula, and All of This is Nonsense

In fact, you probably wouldn’t want every scene in your piece to follow this, because a) it’ll get repetitive, and b) when you go against the medium, you’re more likely to make some magic (if you pull it off). But I do think it’s important to realize when the big moment of your piece is resting on some of the weaknesses. When this happens, you may want to make sure you’re leaning on something really strong to carry the weight. Other times, you may want to toss around some other ideas, make sure that it’s actually working, and to see if it could be improved.

Also, even though I’ve written a lot of words here, I fully expect someone has already proven every one of these rules wrong. But I also think it’s a good exercise to go through this and figure out why I’m wrong.

The medium matters. And I hate writing conclusions, so I’m ending it here.

*Signature Sound: A sound that the audience understands to mean something specific, such as a doorbell or a gunshot.

[pokkop15]

(Ok so I was a fool and had had a lot of this meta written up yesterday and instead of saving it as a draft while I watched critical role, I, like a fool, just left all the tabs open and then went to bed after the episode. Then firefox crashed in the night and everything was lost. Press F to pay respects I guess cause here I go again.)

First off, Aradia is best girl and I am so happy she's RELEVANT again. I had a whole preamble the last time I wrote this post, but I can't remember what it said other than mentioning that this is gonna be a long post beneath the cut and that I have other metas that will kind of overlap with what I'm saying in this one so I will try to keep my discussion of the narrative styles of the The Prince and The Muse to only what is relevant to this post and to what is RELEVANT. Also previous metas should be reblogged directly before I post this to make it easier to check them out before hand or to reference them more easily.

The main points of focus will be: The differences between how the two Time gods interact with The Muse and her narrative, as well as the general level of metatextual awareness of characters within Candy. | The juxtaposition of the Knight and the Maid. | The possible suppression of the Ultimate nature of The Knight, and by extension The Seer. | The Muse's unique state of power and presumed Awakening | I swear there was more but I flat out don't remember what they were.

One last thing. I am a rambly motherfucker so if you haven't read my previous metas, here's your warning to expect a very long and very chaotic mess of a post beneath the cut. Also for anyone confused anytime I emphasize someone as 'The Class' it's referring to their actions as a potential narrator and as an Ultimate Self. For example, the difference between The Muse and the Muse is that 'the Muse' would be for character moments like when the dead cherub possessing Jade's corpse in Candy is just talking with Davebot and Aradia, while 'The Muse' is for when talking about her influence over the narrative. (There's a lot of different ways I put emphasis on words or phrases, but “The Class” was the one I felt really might need clarification)

I find it interesting how Davebot acknowledges and shows distaste for The Muse interjecting her narration and thus inhibiting his ability to live in the moment. I find this interesting because as an Awakened god of Time, he is simultaneously living in every moment but as a Knight, and as The Knight, he is also intrinsically separate from those moments as he is the Ultimate One who Wields Time. Aradia on the other hand is the Maid of Time, who while almost assuredly having reached the pinnacle of her god tier after the hundreds of years we now know her to have lived, is not ascended to her Ultimate Self. As a Maid, Aradia literally embodies her aspect. As such she doesn't worry about living in the moment because she is the moment. Because of this Aradia is more prone to just accept, agree, and repeat the sentiments The Muse dictates in her constant exposition. However, despite acknowledging the narration, Davebot still ends up being incredibly passive in the face of it. Even though he has an Active class and is a dreamer of the Active moon, Dave himself has always come off as an incredibly passive character to me in a lot of ways. (Even the aspect of Time itself and its heroes are specifically denoted as incredibly Active in the {official and Canon} extended zodiac test [which means its contents are NECESSARY, RELEVANT, and TRUE]). Always acting under the direction of other characters, subject to The Lord's rule over Time, and constantly struggling with his seeming lack of control. Here, even after reaching his Ultimate Self, he still only makes passive-aggressive remarks instead leaving the flow of the story and the big decisions to others. (In my last post I went into deeper detail about the nature of, and relationship between Aradia and Dave's classes and how that affected their sessions, but I can't remember what the tie in was unfortunately so for now I'll leave it at this and move on)

Among the human players of sburb, the Strilondes have always been the most genre savvy and possessed the most awareness of the narrative and its' influence, (although Dave was never near the levels of Dirk and Rose). But up until this upd8, direct interactions with the narrative have been few and far between in Candy (at least as far as I can recall). I mentioned this in my previous meta as being a result of The Muse being the type to inspire characters to action whereas The Prince is far more heavy handed in is dictation and rarely attempts to hide his presence in the narration these days. But we see here once again, that not only is The Muse bad for the people under her influence, she's also just really not good at constructing a story. She relies too heavily on tropes and cliches, on plot contrivances; she tells too much and doesn't show enough, (something that should literally be her greatest strength as a Muse). Yet despite this, Davebot and Aradia are seen multiple times to interact with her dictations directly and Aradia even points out on page 284 that she is aware of The Muse “observing (their) every action and noting its relevance : )” (the emphasis on 'relevance' being mine). As such we can infer that it doesn't take an Ultimate Self to recognize The Muse's narration. But if not that, then what? If it was just pre-disposition of character that let them notice, then between her own abilities and self awareness, surely Candy!Rose would have by now, but she hasn't. Then is it proximity? Maybe The Muse is getting complacent and starting to unknowingly imitate The Prince and his methods? Or is it because both Davebot and Aradia are Heroes of Time? The aspect opposite The Muse's. After all, The Muse did express that the way (either Aradia specifically or that the both of them) experience time is “woefully unfamiliar” to her. Perhaps that makes it difficult for her to write a story that resonates with them fully. Whatever it may be, all the information up until this point doesn't come to a head so much as it is something that I believe to be RELEVANT.

With that, let us switch gears while keeping the previous information in mind. As I said before, in spite of all the active components of Davebot's Mythological Role, his character has often been passive. And the precise story beat I want to focus on right now is his Awakening to his Ultimate Self. Candy!Dave was out on patrol with a wife who he loved, but who also had very much always been the driving force of their dynamic. He was pulled to the ancient bunker by the narrative where a hologram of Obama expertly guided him through a conversation like a true politician, somehow knowing a lot about Dave while at the same time withholding “classified” information as if that word had any meaning without a country or government holding Obama accountable. (Unless of course Obama was still answering to someone... *Cough cough*the authors*cough cough*). Look, all of this is me saying that Obama was a leftover contrivance of The Prince that The Muse utilized for her own means. Dirk was a skilled programmer and engineer. He had a deep understanding of how to build AIs that could easily impersonate someone. He had an even deeper grasp of how to manipulate Dave. Dirk built the bots. The Bots. The bots that are supposedly NECESSARY for one to Awaken to their Ultimate Self and survive. And yet even if that is TRUE, it isn't true. The Prince claims he was a special case but his powers are of the soul, not the body. And it is the body that breaks down. And we know that Rose really was suffering in her path to Awakening, but I will remind you that her poor condition was first established through narration that we know was under the control of The Prince. Further more it happened prior to the Meat/Candy split, in which the Canon still possessed TRUTH, which is why it still remained RELEVANT in Candy (and it was obviously NECESSARY in Meat for reasons about to be discussed). Both Rose and Dave ultimately played a passive role in their Awakenings, guided to their Ultimate Self by another even though they are both Active players. I believe that The Prince established these rules about Ultimate Selves and built the robot bodies as a way to give him an upper hand against the two characters most likely to overtake him. Because to reinforce a point from a previous post, Rose is the only full on published author among the players and Dave himself has written comics and presumably screenplays for his films, making them the two people who might not only do a better job than The Prince or The Muse, but just do a flat out GOOD job. The Seer especially, which is why The Prince went through the extra effort to disrupt her sense of self as she was coming into her Ultimate Self. If these two had played an Active part in their own Awakening and without The Prince’s influence I think they both would’ve been quite capable of giving The Prince a run for his money. But the humans are not the only players in this game...

As I've already alluded to, Lord English (The Lord), was almost certainly his Ultimate Self. Awakened and Empowered by the treasure (a juju so powerful that it enabled John to retcon things in a way that overrides the timeline instead of splitting it, and it did so without even granting him its actual power). When The Knight awakened, The Muse described it has having all of Time flow through his consciousness, allowing him to experience every instance of his own self. Conversely Jade described that her Ultimate Self would be “like... one ultimate self distributed across multiple bodies. so in multiple places and states at once. every jade that exists is like a light being shined through a thousand cracks in the timeline.” (Hey remember those cracks in the universe that had light peaking through them? Idk, seems RELEVANT if you ask me.) So if we reasonably assume that ones aspect heavily affects how one's Ultimate Self first Awakens and how it operates than that means there will be similarities between those who share aspects. If Awakening for a Hero of Time is an experience of everything that ever has, is, or will happen to a version of themselves, and Lord English possessed a juju that allows one to retcon and not split, than the combination of those powers would make it so he could be the singular instance of himself while at the same time always be “Already Here” than there is truly no difference between Lord English and the theoretical Ultimate version of himself. And since the Muse consumed Lord English at the end of Candy, granting her the power to punch a wormhole in the black hole. This is also presumably where she gained the power to “...exist in several narrative structures at once” (pg 286) (also see the above explanation of Jade's Ultimate Self for why that is RELEVANT). Because of this, we can assume that The Muse is just as indistinguishable from her theoretical Ultimate Self as The Lord was. But these powers and this simultaneous existence is not without consequences because the Muse's collapse at the end of this chapter is almost assuredly a result of Meat!Jade's rebelling against The Muse in chapter 6 (specifically the action on page 167/168). And finally, to tie this back to the imposition of bodily destruction to those who Awaken their Ultimate Self, it is worth noting that The Muse does not possess a body of her own to be destroyed. Instead inhabiting the body of various Jades.

Alright, so once again sorry if you thought there would be some big culmination to this post, and hey, what pumpkin?