#at some point i will also do a chronological write-up of everything since these edits (although incredibly fun) are all over the place

[romulanslutempire]

Through a mirror darkly. And here the man who holds the glass is darker still. L’rell. Defeated in armed combat after a bioengineered virus decimated his Klingon homeworld. The Romulans. All (presumed) dead after committing mass suicide to prevent being subjugated by the Terran Empire. And Sarek. Ambassador Sarek. Decapitated on the steps of the Vulcan Science Academy in front of a crowd that included his wife and son. And all carried out by the same withering hand... the greatest general Earth has ever seen. The most bloodthirsty, merciless, ruthless tyrant to ever set out to conquer the galaxy. Khan Noonien-Singh.

—

My real name is La'an Noonien-Singh. My ancestor is Khan Noonien-Singh. And his legacy is genocide, torture… and me.

[morimakesfanart]

out of all the chapters you wrote so far do you have a favourite?

You can pretty much tell which are my favorites based on how much art is in them, but my absolute favorite has got to be is either [33] or [34] because I've been wanting to write those scene since not long after I started posting the fic :3 The flirting, the doming Sinbad, the 'oh' moment finally happening. I have a bunch of favorites for different reasons. They are more groups of chapters since I tend to write 2-3 chapters at a time and have to figure out how to break them up for posting.

My favorite chapters in chronological order:

Chapter [4] & [5] are special because it was writing that version that made me want to start posting. I already posted the Dead End version of ch4, and I'll be doing the same with 5 soon. I'm trying to figure out how I want to handle the art since it's very talk heavy.

Chapter [9] has to be listed because it's the start of the first arc I couldn't shut up about to my family. Writing about my health issues was a big deal for me. It greatly helped me in respecting my own limits and letting myself rest. I over a bit more metical trauma every time I write about Mori being sick.

Chapter [11] is the first chapter I felt the need to turn almost completely into a comic. It was very much about the joy of unmasking around my favorite characters and nerding out X3

Chapter [15] is also a fave for having some of my favorite jokes and references in it, and it's also nerding out. It was really fun all the way through.

Chapter [24] is super special to me because it is the first chapter where the characters changed my plans so far I basically went on hiatus. Sinbad and Ja'far doing that much math was not in the plans and honestly, it's part of why I take so extra long between chapters now. I'm having to pull plot points that weren't supposed to happen until after Sinbad comes back from the Kou Empire.

Chapter [25] is another that I was just so happy with because of the jokes and references. I also used it as an excuse to study Jojo's more in recreating that Rohan scene using Mori UwU

The whole Gender, Jewelry, & Flirting arc [28] [29] [30] is extra special to for it being my coming out chapters. I thought I was going to have to introduce the concept of transness to the world before I found the side comic that showed the okama (Japanese gay and trans stereotype) was more than just antagonists in the canon. So much of chapters 28 & 29 were things I didn't think I'd be able to explore for several more years. I did get a ton of hate comments on AO3 for saying the trans women are women and therefore Sinbad would be attracted to them. It's why ch 29 has the added reminder that this is my fic. Don't like don't read. Ch30 is one I reread often because I love how smooth I got the flirting, and it's when I finally got to give Mori Sinbad's choker :D

Since I already explained 33&34, I want to give [36] for being the chapter with the fewest about of drafts and edits. I got it in 1 and then just tweaked the wording. The way everything fell into place was beautiful and convenient. Chapters [35] & [37] were the hardest to write, so 36 being so easy between them was really nice -u- 37 was the hardest so far and took over 30 drafts -the average is 8-12.

Bonus: My Least Favorite part of the whole fic is the transition between [16] [17]. I was way too stubborn about keeping to the character count per ch limit I gave myself, and too stubborn about getting rid of certain moments to accommodate that. I tried to use Ja'far as a plot device to transition the chapters but it was a total flop. If I ever went back and rewrote sections that would be the first, followed by removing all references to my synesthesia. I've been considering doing that for a while, but I'm not sure what to do with the older versions. I don't just want to delete them. Posterity is important to me. I'll probably move the old versions of scenes being changed to the end of the chapter for those that want to (re)read them.

[corishadowfang]

Dandelion Seeds Fic Notes

So Dandelion Seeds!  It’s definitely been a journey.  Dandelion Seeds is an incredibly long fic, but one that also ended up being very fun to write and very close to my heart.  It ended up catapulting me back into fic writing after like...four years, haha, and was an amazing experience overall.

But now that the fic’s over, I have kind of some behind-the-scenes notes/thoughts, in case any of you are interested in that.  Threw everything under the cut to save people’s dashes.

First up—the playlist!  It’s, uh…a bit more haphazard than what I had for On the Edge of Daybreak, haha.  A lot of it was just random stuff I listened to that reminded me of the story (which was then thrown very haphazardly into an actual playlist for this…).  It’s kind of a mix of character songs and things that felt like they fit the overall themes; I tried to organize it into some sort of order, but uh…it’s still pretty loose. (The acoustic version of Wolves by Aviators is an honorable mention, and wasn’t added because it more fits my thoughts about Missing-Link Brain and/or Luxu than anything in Dandelion Seeds.)

The original idea for Dandelion Seeds came about in like…2019, I think? I say ‘idea’ like it was an actual original thing, haha, but it was more of, “Man, I wish we got to see more of the Union Leaders being friends and stuff.”  Days was pretty heavily on my mind, too, because it’s one of my favorite Kingdom Hearts games, so I ended up taking a lot of inspiration from that.

I mentioned this in the author’s notes of the first chapter, but Dandelion Seeds was basically meant to be something that was very easy and fun for me to write, compared to the relatively boring stuff I write for work and the much heavier stuff I write for my original stories.  That’s kind of why I went with a very episodic structure with no ‘official’ update schedule; that way, even though there was technically an overarching plot, I could keep it pretty loose and write whatever I felt like at the time, and I didn’t technically have to update at any point. It’s also why chapters had very little editing; if I was going to edit something, it was usually the bigger chapters (backstory and finale chapters) or because I just really didn’t like a certain character interaction or plot point, and even then, I mostly just focused on fixing character/story issues rather than prose problems.

I still ended up having a ‘pseudo update schedule’ because that’s apparently been ingrained into me.

Originally, Dandelion Seeds was going to be written in non-chronological order. I’d wanted to do it this way largely because then I could write whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted—and it was literally planned this way right up until I wrote the first chapter and decided, “No, I think it’d be easier for everyone to follow if I just did it chronologically.”  In some ways, the non-chronological version would’ve made things easier—since, again, I could just do stuff whenever—but I think doing things in chronological order was probably better in the end, since otherwise I would’ve had to keep a lot more careful track of character development and plot changes over a non-linear narrative. This…required less outlining and editing.

The first thing I ever wrote for Dandelion Seeds was the beginning portion of chapter 13!  It was written…a little over a year before I actually committed to writing Dandelion Seeds, I think?  Anyway, even though I played around with ideas for the story for a while, it took until the UX finale to give me that final push to actually write a full chapter, haha.

Speaking of ideas for the story—some character arcs and backstories changed a lot between my initial ideas and first contact with the story! Like—I’ve mentioned before that falling in love with Skuld and Brain’s friendship was unexpected, which is still true, but it’s not the only thing that surprised me.  For example: Skuld’s entire character arc changed upon writing the first chapter. Originally, she was outwardly not super affected by the Keyblade War, and internally she was kind of bothered by the fact that she wasn’t more distressed.  And then I wrote her line about the Foretellers in chapter one and went, “Oh, no—she’s angry.” And her character kind of developed from there.  Brain had a bit of a different backstory, too; originally, while he still had a strained relationship with his mom, it was less because she was a bad parent and more because the two of them had trouble connecting with each other as he got older.  He also had a stepmother and step siblings that he had similar trouble connecting with—though in this case, it was because he was already in Daybreak Town when his mom remarried—and ended up viewing Ava as somewhat of a surrogate sibling.

Because a lot of Dandelion Seeds was only very loosely planned, there were a lot of ideas that ended up on the cutting room floor.  For example: there was originally going to be a chapter where Skuld and Lauriam’s very different styles of interacting with siblings clashed with each other in regards to Ven.

For the finale chapters, I originally started writing out transcripts of some of the canon scenes (using Everglow’s videos as reference) to try and make adapting them easier.  I got through the stuff in Ven’s chapter, did a little for Lauriam’s chapter, and then just…kind of stopped and ended up rewatching the cutscenes a lot to grab the info I needed, haha.  The few transcripts I wrote are here in case anyone ever wants to use them.  I don’t actually know how useful they are—and it’s entirely possible actually transcripts exist somewhere and I just…made a lot of extra work for myself—but you know.  They’re here.

The title Dandelion Seeds is…well, probably pretty self-explanatory, but it kind of came about because I wanted something that both referenced the Union Leaders/Dandelions/UX in general and referenced the fact that it was basically a collection of inter-connected one-shots. And since one-shots are technically supposed to be small…like seeds…I don’t know, I also just thought it was a cute title.

This is officially the longest story I’ve ever written.  It also has the longest chapter I’ve ever written.  While I’m proud of just how much I managed to write—and had a lot of fun writing it!—I also hope I never write something this long ever again.

(Please refer back to this in x amount of years when I inevitably write something else stupidly long.)

Some people have said that Dandelion Seeds has made them love the UX cast more (which makes me so stupidly happy), but the secret is, it kind of did the same for me.  I was already attached to the UX cast, but something about living with these kids in my head for over a year made it like...ten times worse, haha.  

Writing the story also gave me a whole new appreciation for the story of UX in general—especially the finale chapters.  (Though if I ever have to write the confrontation with Darkness again, I will probably cry.)

Thank you to everyone who followed along with the story!  It’s been an amazing journey, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

[sekhisadventures]

Adventures in Azeroth

Table of Contents Version 2

SO! Because Tumblr decided to throw a hissy fit over my original table of contents getting too big, I have to break this into multiple ones now. -_-;

Forward

What follows is 100% non-canonical but anyone who plays the games should realize that pretty quickly.

This is the stories in my own personal headcannon for my characters in the online RPG World of Warcraft. I claim no ownership of the Warcraft franchise or any of the elements therein and this should be considered a work of fanfiction and naught besides. All elements in these stories, save for my characters themselves, are the intellectual property of Blizzard Entertainment.

I’ve been a WoW player since just before the launch of Burning Crusade, but I’ve been playing Warcraft games since the very first Warcraft Orcs and Humans on the PC back in the 1990s. Its safe to say that I consider Azeroth a second home at this point, for as goofy as some parts of the story can become its still a world I can’t imagine living without anymore.

Because of that my characters in the game have taken on a sort of life of their own for me, some of them have been around for years themselves, and thus I decided to actually give them some stories beyond just ‘today I killed fifteen kobolds and sold their ears for a tuppence apiece.’

Also, I tend to re-read this a lot and edit when I catch something I goofed up or something that bugs me. Don't be shocked if it really isn't the same the second time you read it.

Characters

This section is, of course, the characters of the story. They're grouped into four sections on the page:

The members of the Alliance Adventurer group, Avalon.

The members of the Horde Mercenary Company, Savage United

The independent Protagonists

The Antagonists, grouped by their own allegiances.

The Story

As follows, the story’s chapters are listed in chronological order starting with The Witch of the Blackwald. Simply start there and continue on from that point.

Early Story (Pre-WoW era to the end of Battle for Azeroth)

This part is piecemeal and mostly just short stories when I was hitting the road with everything, thus I'm condensing it all into a "Book 1" of sorts.

Shadowlands

This was where I started seriously writing the story. It all began as a way to kill time during the content droughts that Shadowlands had while the A Better ABK movement and the early days of the Covid pandemic were going and devs were either too busy fighting for better working conditions or trying not to die from Covid to make content for WoW. (That being said, such droughts were totally understandable in all that chaos and with both hitting at once I can hardly blame them. Glad to hear they're unionized and doing better now.)

Dragonflight

Dragonflight was where the fanfiction really went wild. I had a ton of ideas, the characters were established, and I dove in hard. This is easily the biggest section so far, and contains the prologue section known as "Three Years of Peace" marking the cannon three year time gap between the end of Shadowlands and the start of Dragonflight, as well as the story of Dragonflight as well.

The War Within

The Worldsoul Saga has kicked my imagination into overdrive, and I've got lots of plans. This one is currently a work in progress at time of writing, but I hope you all enjoy what I've come up with for it... at least I assume people are reading this. Tumblr doesn't show me pageviews.

It starts with "The Time Between" which is a short series focusing on the heroes teaming up with Chromie of the Bronze Dragonflight, then leads into the story of The War Within proper.

The Appendix

This is where I put just random tidbits of lore, stuff about the setting that isn't in the actual World of Warcraft game, and other such things I make for giggles.

[horizon-forbidden-sheesh]

Writing Process: Drafting

Sooooo, I started drafting Part 2 almost immediately after Part 1 concluded—and by now I've abandoned my Scrivener file entirely and am doing everything in Google Docs. (I talk about my switch from Scrivener to Google, here. ⚙️)

This time, I didn't have all the journal entries to work from, either. I was starting entirely from a blank slate. So at first, I just let myself WRITE. All the scenes I was most excited about, in no particular order, just to squeeze all the juice out.

I did that for like a month. And then, when I had about 15-20k words of random bits and bobs, I started to put them in order, and develop a through-line. That's where the draft docs & trackers came in.

✏️ Away from Scrivener, I needed some extra organizational tools to house my more general notes, research, & scraps. So, I built this li'l cutie with easy links to all my Google draft files, and included a brief summary that helped me greatly when plotting out the next set 10 chapters for Part 2:

*The chapter titles were updated as my outline changed, but the summaries did not! The descriptor for Chapter 20 is now, like, Chapter 23.

Keeping the descriptors short really helps me stay on task. If I have so much I need to cover in a chapter that it drops my formatting to the next line, I know I probably won't be able to cover everything in ~3,000-5,000 words.

✏️ Now, that's just the first page of the "Table of Contents." As of today, it's 13 pages long, and it also houses a TON of notes and working drafts and snippets of dialogue that I am saving for future, as-yet-unspecified chapters.

It's really messy—and sometimes when I'm out & about and my service is shit, I whip open my old Notes app, just to get a thought down. Here, have a taste of what's been rattling around in my brain...

Dialogue often starts as just the dialogue. I layer in tags & descriptors later, during the editing process. Most of the conversations I've written started with me talking to myself alone in the car, in the shower, or while washing dishes. (This works for copywriting too. My best ideas almost NEVER come to me while I'm sitting-down-looking-at-a-screen. Of course.)

For instance, that same conversation made it from the Notes app into a Google Doc and has since evolved to:

A li'l somethin-somethin from the upcoming Scorcher Season's Chapter 24 🔥

✏️ Once I've got all the major plot points written, I'll go back and write the "boring" stuff in chronological order. Okay, it's not really boring. It's just the filler information that helps a reader get from point A to point B, and I edit as I go. This ends up being like half of the total word count for the full 10 Chapters.

I'm currently hitting this point in Part 3—and you can see below that just writing my favorite parts here and there gets me pretty far on its own. Over the last 3 weeks, I've nearly exhausted my imagination developing the general story arc. Next up, I'll go back and start fleshing out each chapters one by one.

Wanna know something CRAZY?? Over the last ~year, I've noticed that I tend to write nonstop during Mercury Retrogrades. Like, I don't want to do anything else. I'm learning not to schedule any major projects for these ~3 week periods, so I don't blow my deadlines on account of being too obsessed with my fanfic to bother. 😅

After my decision to expand to 4 Parts total, my original ToC Doc got a bit... top heavy. (Also, I got really tired of manually calculating all the word counts.) So, instead of continuing in Docs, I added a tab to my spreadsheet:

*Hiding my chapter summaries so as not to spoil!! 😈

As you can see, I fill in the links as I create the draft docs... and I've already had to split a chapter in half due to scale, so the untitled <Scorcher 7> dropped to Part 4. I'm hopeful I won't have to split any more, so I can end strong on 'Ten Days.'

I don't usually start the finale until the very end, because I've learned that the wonderful comments I receive will sometimes give me extra ideas that I want to ensure make it into the fic!

✏️ Around the time I've fully completed the first 5 chapters, I'll give myself the green light to start posting. That leaves me just enough runway to finish out the rest of the season, and posting on a timeline helps keeps me motivated & accountable!

This is getting kinda long, so I'll write about Trackers & Timelines I've developed along the way in another post.

Thanks for being here! 🖤

xo, Sheesh.

[awiola]

Super late mass update

And the title rhymes.

While I don't suppose a lot of people will read this, I'm pretty much dead everywhere besides discord at the moment [and even there I plan on taking a break] so a, belated, update is in order.

At this point my bird app account is pretty much abandoned and I don't wish to bother with reviving it at all so it's just waiting to rot and disappear, hopefully forever. There wasn't a lot of stuff there to begin with. Unless I decide to move somewhere else, tumblr will be my main platform of contact with people that don't share servers with me. Though I think I'll try my hand at a side art blog…

Anyway, this is a dev update so let's focus on games. Within the months of my inactivity and total radio silence here, a few games were created. Considering I have no idea how far back it should go, I'll start with my bird jam entry that I was a terrible lead for.

BIRD GAME

My total inability to assume responsibilities of my own work aside, the team did their job well. The actual story is finished and working and the only reason why the build has its current name is because I never went around to finish the GUI and the last CG properly and then disappeared for months due to personal reasons. As it stands, the story lacks nothing to enjoy it mostly as it was intended, though I may finally move my ass and update it. Just not now.

After that I took part in the creation of two projects for the queer edition of O2A2. One being a sequel of sorts to Annur's story, featuring Azazel. The other a very rushed personal project. Rushed only because I felt like making it at the moment and its quality only confirms that.

I won't really say much about either of them as due to the nature of the jam, they're naturally very short. I think both have around 700 words each? It would be cool if you checked Azazel out, though. That 'saga' might eventually get a third part. It's also pretty different from Annur's story, less horny and with a different artstyle… Or maybe just medium.

The newest creation is my submission to Orifice jam. Despite how it might sound, or maybe exactly because of that, the entries [planned ones included] are pretty cool. Not a lot of them at the moment of writing this post, though.

Both here and in my O2A2 short I decided to use the style that comes the most naturally to me. Maybe it wasn't a good idea, it's pretty avant garde and bizarro leaning, if I say so, though at the same time pretty normal and grounded. But those are my standards of normal, don't trust them. They're also chock-full of reference, although this time, based on the previous feedback, I tried explaining the most important ones. Everything else is still a bonus most likely no one would get. I just can't stop myself.

After that comes Mushroom jam which I'd recommend to join if you have even the slightest interest in the topic. It starts in september [technically august in almost all time zones] and is supposed to be as crunch free as possible, lasting three months and all. You can read the details on the page. It's a spiritual successor of Bird Jam and in a way OH jam as I ended up hosting a jam each year, always with a different theme, and plan to continue doing so, even if there ends up being close to no interest.

This also relates to my planned projects. As of now there are two main ones, one that I help with and is still a secret, two-three that I'd either finish someday or not and multiple "maybe if I get inspired to actually write" ones. Generally as long as it's written by me, it's likely to be on an unpopular topic or written in a way most people don't seem to like but as I have the most funn with these, well ¯_(ツ)_/¯ No one pays me for that, might as well.

Since there's no reason to disclose anything on the "maybe" category projects and the secret one, let's focus on the two main ones and these that probably should get finished.

Going by the chronology of planned releases, the first would be a some sort of SF story for sunofes playing with the idea of Agartha, Wanderers etc. I can't even promise what kind of mood it would have but given my lack of science skills, it would be closer to soft SF, if that's even a term that's used. Think analogous to soft fantasy but SF. Probably "interactive fiction" [actually kinetic, no choices, linear] with illustrations more so than vn as I wanted to write something longer than usual that's still moderately low effort. Not getting the urge to create custom gui really lessens the workload~~

The other project is for Spooktober, Mushroom jam or both. I kind of feel like it would be cheating, given the insignificant amount of fungi in the story but we'll see. Due to Spooktober rules, it's still in planning stage, though I'm starting design sketches. No idea if I manage to pull it off but I wanted to try something different style wise, with isometric view that changes depending on MC's mental state. It's honestly a lot of work for one person so I'm not even deluding myself I'll finish it for Spooktober, it would be just free exposure at this point :') Especially important as the SEO is going to be absolutely terrible and horrendous, being a yet another reference [created from two of my ideas that mutated and merged]. At least the non game results would explain what exactly was I referencing lol

If I actually manage to pull it off, it's gonna be the coolest looking of all my personal projects. Not that there's strong competition but still. Hope it works out.

From the stuff to finish, there's the above-mentioned bird game, Argousze and Red String Theory. RST's development doesn't exactly rely on my so it either remains a demo or the whole team gathers again to finish it. In the meantime I can draw my pretty boi Adisa whenever I want. As for Argousze, it's been close to three or four years since its initial release. I feel like I should finish it eventually, being ad short as it is but I kind of dislike the ending of the initial idea + had problems with designing aliens I liked so it either changes or gets a sequel/part with alien's pov as comparison, not sure yet. The pov change would have a completely different tone but would help me with my SoL sentai later on and as such requires further consideration. Hopefully it's finished before the fifth release anniversary passes.

Other than that there's some art etc related stuff going on but as it's not strictly dev related, I'll omit it. The whole post ended up quite long, as expected but that's what happens when you update people once a year. See you[?] next time.

[titles-for-tangents]

Joe Farrell Sometimes Has  Supernatural Shenanigans Happen to Him

With not just one but two excellent collections of Peter S. Beagle’s works coming out, it occurred to me some of his novels and short stories take place in the same universe and sometimes feature the same characters, but I hadn’t really seen an online list yet of what order they’re supposed to occur in chronologically. I came to reading his stories in perhaps the right order for me to be introduced to them but also completely ass-backwards. Sometimes, between my scattered short story collections, years of life happening, and rare library hauls, I’d remember that some of these characters had names that sounded vaguely familiar. I don’t own everything he’s ever published, robust as my collection is at this point, so if I make an error or learn of a new story that came out, then I will edit my list here. This will be a Part I, and I will make a Part II for the world of The Last Unicorn under the same idea (wish me luck).

Beagle takes titling his stories seriously, and his ongoing adventures of Joe Farrell have no real umbrella title that I’m aware of. Perhaps they will get one and their own book collection one day. So without further ado (and more for my past, dumbass, novice self):

Lila the Werewolf - Lila Braun is one of Farrell’s first girlfriends as a young adult. It doesn’t go well. Takes place in New York City. First published 1974 and has seen only a few reprintings since then (The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle, Mirror Kingdoms, will be included in The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1). First appearance of Farrell’s best childhood friend Ben Kassoy.

The Folk of the Air - Farrell returns to Avicenna, California after having been away for a number of years and finds Ben, who also now lives in Avicenna, has both become a professor AND lives with an older woman named Sia. Sia lives in a nice, old house that just so happens to be a casual walk in the House of Leaves park, and sometimes she has goddess-tier powers. Seems to take place in the 1970s; is also the first introduction to Farrell’s longtime girlfriend with latent magic powers, Julie Tanikawa, and Farrell’s ancient Volkswagon bus, Madame Schumann-Heink. Farrell, Julie, and Ben get mixed up in the League for Archaic Pleasures where they playact at medieval chivalry, but sometimes the cosplay gets a little too real and reality starts to bend a bit. Your boyfriend’s shit, Aiffe, SHIT! Published 1986. Beagle notes in Mirror Kingdoms this one took eighteen years and four separate versions to write, and in We Don’t Talk About My Brother he describes Avicenna as a “shadow-Berkeley”. Note: this is the only entry here that’s never been properly reprinted to my knowledge. If you want to read this, you’re going to have to check if your local library has a copy or buy it second-hand. If Beagle’s Wikipedia page is to be believed, he’s currently rewriting it for an expanded re-new release. Hell yeah! Whatever happens in between here and the next entry, I’ve yet to find out.

Julie’s Unicorn (short story) - more than twenty years have passed between Farrell and Julie’s relationship “of picking up, letting go and picking up again.” Easily the sweetest of the four tales. Takes place in Avicenna and Farrell’s hair has gone grey by this point while working as a respected sous chef. Julie has a fantastic name for her black and white cat, “NMC”, short for “Not My Cat”, and somehow Madame Schumann-Heink has survived into the millennial age. I’m actually not certain when this was first published, but I first saw it in print in 2010′s Mirror Kingdoms, and it was later included in 2011′s The Urban Fantasy Anthology. Have you ever been so moved by a work of art it just makes you both heartbroken and fucking livid? Have you ever been so stirred by how well an artist captured their subject that you just needed to do something about it? Julie Tanikawa’s powers don’t always manifest, BUT WHEN THEY DO-

Spook - Takes place about five years later also in Avicenna (North Avicenna to be exact). Farrell and Julie have just moved in together into a loft and Ben heads up from Los Angeles to help them move in. Turns out the loft is haunted by a previous resident in the silliest way possible, and it sure as hell wants Farrell out. Farrell and Ben employ an old acquaintance to help with deciphering what to do about it, and Farrell has the idea to challenge it to a duel. The weapons of choice? Bad poetry. Bad poetry. It’s ridiculous and fun as fuck. First published in a 2008 3-story collection called Strange Roads and reprinted in 2009′s We Don’t Talk About My Brother. Beagle says he looked forward to recording an audiobook version, but I’ve not found any evidence that it exists, especially not post-Connor Cohran. Will be reprinted in The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume I and no audiobook is listed yet.  One of the nice things about these stories is that Farrell is such an ordinary dude, and yet he is alarmingly well educated in medieval music, mythology, and far more across that board. Farrell just owns a lute and knows how to play it, for example, and he can take any piece of classical music and arrange it for his lute. Farrell can be the best kind of pedant and is remarkably accepting and empathetic of other people and their situations, supernatural or no. And for as much as he tries to keep his head down and out of other people’s business, when their business comes knocking he’s thoughtful about where they’re coming from and just does his best to deal. Beagle also shines here in his knowledge of what people are like as they age and even though marriage in the traditional sense may not be the best fit for them, remaining life partners still is. I found Lila the Werewolf the toughest read, as it’s about toxic relationships with no easy answer, and Julie’s Unicorn easily the sweetest tale of the lot. The Folk of the Air takes a little while to get into, but once it gets going it keeps up that steam and all the characterization is handled memorably well. Spook is by far the most fun and we even get a little backstory into how Farrell and Julie met. Beagle tends to know when to come back to and touch base with characters he’s not quite done with yet, so if he ever writes more of what’s going on in the world of Joe Farrell it’s bound to be an entertaining ride.

[legacy-by-darkryuu]

Remaster: Step Toward the Future, Chapter 1

Summary: Set in BTN/MFOMT/DS: Jill ("Claire") is struggling to find a goal in life after high school. After her parents boot her off to her late grandfather's farm, everything around her is never quite the same as she struggles to find herself and her future. Remastered from original 2004 release. Jill/Cliff, minor Jill/Kai, minor Jill/Gray, minor Jill/Doctor. OC/Popuri, OC/Elli.

Also available on Archive of Our Own

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Blanket Disclaimer: I don’t own Story of Seasons, Harvest Moon, or Rune Factory.

Rating: M/Adult

Author’s Note:

2023 Notes: It is DONE. It only took four years because of flipping adulthood. I can’t say it was fruitless. Along with the full rewrite of Step Toward the Future, I completed the prequel stories! Originally, when I was gung-ho writing this in the 00s-10s, I skipped around and did not actually write how some of the characters got here. Especially the kids, my God. They just popped up in Yuki, the Sophomore fanfic following Step Toward the Future. And there’s mentions of the characters but like you never meet them. It’s been weird as hell but I fixed it! All characters are now accounted for.

I will be posting for a while, there is a TON of content. I do not believe I can get into Fanfiction.net for some reason, or at least it’s not loading for me (I promise you, it could have fully closed and I’d have missed it) so it will be on Archive of Our Own and on Tumblr…once I pretty up the site. My motivation for anything lately is crap. But it’ll be on legacy-by-darkryuu at some point. I will host the ‘Classic’ version there unless otherwise specified.

It stays true to form…to a point, then, if somehow you’ve read it between 2004-2016, it goes the FF7 route and goes complete revamp. Still chaotic, still pretty nonsense but I seriously cannot reformulate this whole series by rectifying that, lol.

It’s a trifle darker than the original? Just a wee bit. And while real world chronologically, this is the first story I wrote, in the series, Nomad falls before this and may be a good read for some elements but not required. But that’s all I’ve got. Happy reading.

2019 Rewrite Notes: So, I finally decided to stop being lazy since I am working on the original six’s stories (mostly Shin’s right now) and just edit this bad boy to fit where we are now. I have like 90 different versions sitting in this folder but we’ll call this the “Forever Edit” until I edit something else into the storyline.

It’s only necessary for some unsavory things that were ‘normal’ when I was fourteen. It did kind of strike me as funny that Cliff’s ‘gentlemanliness’ is a little gross to me now. It just didn’t come off naturally. Also, while Jill was a loner and aloof in the original version, while she’s not super friendly ‘everyone is my friend!’, I don’t get the idea she’d purposefully be that way so that’s gonna be played down. Also, since Koji’s our quintessential dark child, she may still dress darkly and have a few of the original stylings but that’s gonna be rolled back a little too. And just some general cohesiveness corrections. ADDITIONALLY, I hope I can truncate this disaster to make it a more reasonable amount of chapters.

I’m going to remove the classic version from FF.Net again but you can still access it on Archive of Our Own. I know a lot of my old time readers are nostalgic and the version over there was how it was ORIGINALLY uploaded.

New time readers, welcome to the series. It’s cray. I have literally been writing this thing for fifteen years. I have slowed down due to being a full-time employed millennial so I get in where I fit in now. This story is set in 2004. It’s an AU take on the game. There will be lore and Easter eggs toward the series but overall, just take the characters and throw them into a real setting. Be forewarned, some of your favorite characters may be portrayed as unsavory but this changes (now). I hope you enjoy! Happy reading~

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Jill was lost in her own world amidst the heavy metal and moshing as she walked through the concert of one of the local bands, shoving past the riled up fans, cursing them silently under her breath. Like clockwork, again, she wasn’t in a good mood. The screaming rhythm that she had come to love wasn’t numbing her dismay at all.

She’d been tasked to take care of her great-grandfather’s farm and she was leaving tomorrow morning.

It wasn’t like her but she whined for nearly three weeks. It wasn’t what she WANTED to do…but, her parents demanded to know her alternatives. She…had none. They assured that this was something for her to do in the meantime then. She had five other brothers, but she was chosen out of all of them. Most likely because, out of all of them, she was the only one not attending college aside from the oldest who already had a career.

Mumbling lightly, she started for the exit, seeing as the concert wasn’t providing her any joy and tomorrow was going to be a long day.

And the sooner she figured out what step she had going toward her future, the sooner she got to leave.

She heard the alarm beeping, but she didn’t want to wake up. She didn’t want to go. Why was she being forced to do this? What did she, someone who’d only known the city for eighteen years, know about farming?

She picked up her alarm clock and threw it across the room, burying her face into her pillow. Whose test was this exactly? “Well, good morning, Sunshine” said a sarcastic voice. She looked to the door of her large room to see her older brother, Yagami Koji, standing there, wearing dark colored jeans and a black button up shirt, an ever loving child of darkness with dark hair and dark eyes to match. Jill sat up and grumbled, “Shut up and kill me.” He smiled gently and came further in to sit on her bed, “Princess, you know I’d go for you if mom and dad weren’t so invested in seeing you do something.” “Can’t I take time to figure that out? I just don’t know! I’m not like you or Shin, I don’t know what I want to do!” she protested, referring to their oldest brother who had a full blown career now. “And you can do that while you’re managing the farm” he said warmly, “Hell, maybe you’ll have an epiphany in like the first year then one of us will come and run it the rest of the way until it’s sold. You have to admit, Jilly, you’ve been sitting around for not days or weeks or even months, but close to a full year, doing absolutely nothing. We have super lenient parents but they do not care for idleness. You already got to see they didn’t let it fly with your twin.” Yea, she guessed she was the spoiled one now, she did think she’d get a pass. She sat up and hugged his waist, whining, “Big brother…” He stroked her long blond hair and rested his chin on top of her head, “Mmm, tell you what: how about I come and help on my next break. Sound okay?” She sighed. “I guess...”

"Psh, you guess? Can you imagine Koji actually farming?” said a snickering voice. They both looked up and Koji glared back at him. “I’d do better farming than you can, punkass.” The other oldest, Yagami Nerimaru, known amongst their family as ‘Nelly’, gave Koji a large grin and placed his left hand on his hip. He shook a spatula at them. “The nerve. And after I got up all early and crap to fix breakfast. I’m hurt.” Koji stood and rolled his eyes at Nelly, his younger less gloomy twin “How sweet of you. Did you hit your head or something?” “Bah. I can’t do anything out of the kindness of my heart?” Koji raised an eyebrow, blinking innocently “Kindness? Is there any?” Koji laughed and ran down the hallway as Nelly threw the spatula at him. He glared in the direction Koji fled, most likely having missed as Koji was master at dodging. Jill groaned. Her brothers…her stomach flopped and she winced, biting her lip as nervousness suddenly overtook her.

“What if no one there likes me?” she whispered.

“What are you talking about? Does it even matter?” Nelly questioned.

“Yea, if I have to stay there for three or more years until we sell it or someone takes it over, it kind of does” she huffed. Nelly suddenly leered, looking back down the hallway, “Oi, Koji!” Somehow, she knew what direction this was going already when Koji reappeared. Nelly glowered, “She’s gonna be in ol’ country town without our supervision and probably meeting all sorts of shmucks.” “It crossed my mind” Koji assured. Jill groaned, burying her face in her hands. Here we go. She had maybe two boyfriends in her life because these two and, to a smaller degree, her other three brothers terrified anything identifying as male away from her. Hell, they might take this from her with that option looming overhead.

“But I’m leaning that Jill’s city sensibilities aren’t gonna be swayed by some country dude” Koji added. What now? Jill gave him a look as Nelly looked dubious. “I dunno, dude, country girls are hot, why are the dudes gonna be any different?” Koji mused over this and she groaned again, “Okay, while you two decide if you’re sending bodyguards with me, leave so I can take a shower.” She went into the large bathroom in her almost suite-like room and turned on the radio to Yellowcard, an American band. Undressing and climbing into her shower, she started to wash her hair and wonder...

Did they have showers? Oh God, she was going to die.

She wandered out after several minutes and pulled on her black shirt and a pair of red pants. Heading downstairs in the Yagami mansion to the kitchen, she found some of her brothers swinging pots and pans at each other, Koji and Nelly milling in the corner, probably still discussing her supervision while all that nonsense went on around them. She raised an eyebrow and shook her head. Well, one pro: She was leaving some of this insanity behind.

XXX

Shin, her oldest brother, glanced at her as she gulped heavily. He was driving her to the ferry station on Hondo, the main island where she’d lived her whole life, to spirit her to this farming island. Her father, Yagami Yamada, a big-time surgeon, was supposed to but got called in to treat a patient.

Her mother also was called to surgery. Fashion surgery, that is. Apparently, there were two models on opposite spectrums in a show, one gaining weight to wear an outfit and another losing too much. Her mother, the great Yagami Dana, went to fix it so neither of them lost the opportunity.

Nelly and Koji only came to the mansion this morning to see her off from there, they had to get back to college. Somehow, she was glad as Shin was always generally the absolute calmest of all of them. She needed that right now…

Shin smiled. “You okay, sweetie?”

“Of course not” she grumbled.

He gave her a warmer smile, “You’ll be fine, imoto.”

“Yahhh, if you don’t scare the living crap out of your neighbors first” said a drowsy voice.

She glared at her own male twin, Tony. Shin cut his eyes in the rearview mirror at him. “You’re not helping, Tony.”

Tony smiled, “She knows I’m kidding. But seriously, remember, these people probably don’t even know what a CD is so you might not want to be blasting your EMO or any version of alt-rock immediately.”

She gasped at this revelation then sobbed into his shoulder. “I’m gonna die!”

Tony patted her head, “You’ll be fine, Jilly. I’m not a huge fan of this idea either but, y’know, it’s something to do while you figure shit out.”

“And who knows? Maybe you’ll find a boyfriend too” said the final, and youngest, brother in the group, Shaun.

She leered behind her, “Well, if you and Tony weren’t so busy waging war, you’d know that Koji and Nelly expressly forbid it.”

“Yeah, you better not without any of us there. Men are shit” grumbled Tony.

She glowered at him, “Even if I was capable of getting a guy to talk to me, given not one of you loons has ever allowed me to truly get the experience, I wouldn’t want some back-country hick.”

Shaun laughed, “You definitely won’t get a boyfriend with that attitude!”

“She won’t get one at all!” snapped Tony.

Shin scolded them both to silence before he smiled again, “Just try to enjoy yourself, Jill. I…also am not a great fan of you pursuing anyone at this junction but, whatever happens will happen.”

“...If you say so, Shin.”

She didn’t know. Maybe this would be the worst experience of her life.

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It…was beyond rustic. It was…almost like she time traveled. Jill wandered slowly into…a square? The streets were cobblestones. There was no pavement. There were shops, sure, but…

She was alone. All alone. She’d had five brothers and two parents her whole life, the very idea of ‘alone’ was traumatizing. But she wasn’t exactly ‘alone’. She was amongst absolute strangers. Their electric eyes gave her suspicious looks as she slowly wandered through town, down cobblestone streets, to find a grocery store. She just needed food. Everyone needed to eat, right?

She had no idea where anything was. Jill watched them whisper and raise eyebrows at her. Chills ran up and down her spine and her stomach was twirling. So this was it, huh? Going from her comfortable cozy circumstances to Judgmental Town 101? It was…it was stupid high school again and she literally just graduated. She didn’t even feel okay asking these people where the damn grocery store was.

Her lips began to twitch and before she knew it, she had stopped to sit on a bench to cry. Everyone on the street looked positively startled and started to quickly walk away from her, disturbed. Why? Did she look that scary? She cried into her hands, wishing her brothers were there to help. How could she survive when everybody judged her before they even got to know her?

She choked on sobs, rubbing her eyes. What was wrong with her? She was having a nervous breakdown for what reason? This was not the Yagami way. They just struggled and fought until things leveled out. She was not going to be the one Yagami breaking down because she couldn’t get groceries, especially given her brothers survived pretty much actual Hell.

Suddenly, a shadow came over her before someone sat down next to her. She sniveled, very startled, and looked to her side, about to glare and question what they were doing? Everyone was ignoring her or hadn’t they noticed?

But her eyes widened and she had to keep her mouth from falling open. A guy was beside her, a concerned look on his face. But that wasn’t what got her…

She didn’t think hot guys would even be here.

He had golden dirty brown hair that reached a little bit down his back, past his shoulders, pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes were bright blue and full of something warm and captivating...and he had on a black shirt and ripped jeans...

One thing was for sure: this was not the average town person she’d passed.

He tilted his head slightly to the side and finally asked, his voice soft and gentle, “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Now could she really say to this rather extremely handsome young gentleman her reason for crying like a complete idiot in the middle of town? No, she couldn’t.

Then again. “I...I can’t find the grocery store” she sobbed.

He gave her a breathtaking smile and chuckled, “That all? It’s all right. This town isn’t set up very conveniently.”

“It’s just no one would help me...” she blubbered, instantly feeling silly.

He frowned, “You’re new here, right? No one offered to show you around?”

She shook her head. Even the mayor hadn’t asked if she wanted a tour. He just ran away as soon as he showed her to the farm. The guy continued to frown for a moment then gave her another bright smile.

“Well then, allow me the honor. I am Izumi Cliff” he introduced himself, standing and putting his hand out to help her up.

Izumi…? She reached slowly toward his outstretched hand and took it. So warm. “H-hi, Izumi-san. I’m Yagami Jill. I’m going to be running the Obinata Farm. Um, sorry for the random...breakdown. It’s probably not the best way to meet someone. Rather awkward, I’d say.”

He smiled pleasantly, “Why? I have them everyday. This town is about as fun as getting a root canal.”

”Eek” she winced.

“Indeed...” he smirked, watching some snooty woman go by.

“So...you’re going to show me the grocery store?” she asked hopefully.

“I’ll do more than that! I’ll show you where the few things that exist are in this town” he said in an almost haughty manner.

She smiled shyly, “I’m honored.”

“Believe me, the honor’s all mine” he replied, bowing.

He led her back to…“Oki doki, square one.”

She didn’t feel annoyed, in fact, she fought off giggling, “Um...my farm? I kind of got down where this is.”

“Well, I’d hope you’d know your way here, I guess” he grinned.

He led her upwards and stopped in front of an old looking building with smoke looming from it. “This is the blacksmith.”

She raised an eyebrow, “Blacksmith? For what? It’s the 21st century.”

“Here, it’s like the 19th century. Four channels of television and they’re still using books. I mean, who actually reads anymore? We have the internet and fanfiction for that” he mused.

She laughed despite herself, “I mean, I do still read books but what’s the use of the blacksmith then?”

“I think he makes tools and stuff. I think. I dunno, I don’t talk to these people very often. All I know is his grandson is like, quiet Satan.”

“What?”

“Well, maybe not Satan, but quiet Lucifer” he ‘corrected’.

She laughed, surprised at herself, but very amused, “Those are like the same thing!”

“Okay, okay, he’s kind of a nice guy once you get to know him but he’s tsundere to a tee. Don’t be too off put if he says something terrible but doesn’t mean it” Cliff snickered.

She chuckled and nodded. He led her forward a bit to another house.

“This is the house of Duke and Manna. They’re like, upper class to the max but they sell wine and grape juice” he said before breaking off, musing.

“Hmm?” she questioned, sensing he had more to say.

“Well, I suggest avoiding Duke. He doesn’t like youth.”

She smirked at that, “Sounds kind of…old.”

“Yea, he’s kind of weird.” Cliff led her forward to another house. “This is Anna and Basil’s house. They’re the local botanists. They also have a daughter named Mary. She’s smart and ‘I know so much more than you, loser’ and she works in the library. Not that I really go there.”

She groaned, “I probably won’t either. I have to learn to farm. I guess I’ll be reading ‘fanfictions’ if I do have free time.”

He waved his hand, “Damn straight! And that said place is right there. The library…also known as the Legion of Doom.”

She chuckled again and he led her around the bend. “This is the mayor’s house right here...he lives with this photographer named Kano. Kano came from the mainland too. I think he said he’s from Wasaba or something.”

“Oh my God, really?” Her dad came up there, maybe he knew him.

“Yep! The mayor lets him stay here for now until I guess he finds a Ms. Mayor. I mean, the guy needs someone to keep him warm at night. He’s not exactly a looker.”

She giggled as the mayor’s appearance popped into her head. “Yea, I have never met anyone wearing a top hat not as a costume before. I thought those went out of style.”

Cliff laughed, “Yeah, I was pretty blown away when I came here too.”

So, he wasn’t from around here either and Izumi…it could be a coincidence. What made him settle in these parts? Walking up a bit to the next house, Cliff smiled. “Well, this lady is pretty nice. Her name’s Ellen and she has a granddaughter named Elli and her grandson, Stu. She makes a nice apple pie for everyone during the holidays.”

Jill smiled softly, more at the look on his face rather than what he was saying, “At least someone pleasant exists, huh?”

“Oh, they are few and in between.”

The place next door happened to be… “Here it is, as promised: The grocery store.”

She groaned and blushed, “I feel so stupid...”

“Don’t, really. This place looks like all the rest of the houses.”

She smiled at his comfort and then noticed a random girl glaring at them from the benches nearby. She was wearing a white tube top, a pair of jean hot pants and a purple vest. Her hair was blond in the front and brown in the back and she had piercing green eyes.

“Why are you hanging out in front of our store? Get lost, losers!” she snapped.

“And that would be the store owner’s lovely daughter, Karen. Don’t worry. I find her mother Sasha to be rather kind. Wonder what happened with her daughter...” Cliff remarked.

Karen glared furiously at him and he grabbed Jill’s hand, quickly dashing by. She blushed at the little contact, her heart fluttering. He released it once they were a nice distance away from the angry Karen.

“Best not taunt that one” he grinned, shaking his head, “I mean, like Grey, she’s nice, just tends to get a little irritable about her circumstances from time to time.”

Circumstances? He looked around and then pointed at a white building.

“That is the doctor’s office. Note that everyone calls him ‘The Doctor’ but his name is Dr. Ishikawa though. Really nice guy, one of my closest buddies here.”

Jill frowned, that name ringing a bell too. Dr. Ishikawa…

They rounded another corner and he pointed up a walkway. “That’s the church. They have confession and services. Y’know, stuff like that.”

She nodded and they walked up the path a little more. He frowned and blinked a little. “This is the inn slash restaurant where I stay. Here is where Doug and Ann live.”

He looked upwards for a moment, as if thinking, then laughed, “Never mind. Let us continue!”

She stared at him as he passed her then continued to follow. He showed her everywhere that day and she felt so grateful to him. They went back to the store where they got a lot of dirty looks from fellow shoppers. Great. But Cliff smiled as if he didn’t notice them.

And she did the same. She wasn’t alone right now.  

They walked back to her house and she smiled at him, “Thanks so much. I’m glad I found someone in town that’s nice.”

He smiled sheepishly, “You bet. And no need to thank me. It was my pleasure.”

He then grinned, “Well, I’ll leave you to unpack and stuff. Hope to see more of you.”

She nodded and watched him walk off. Huh.

She was actually starting to look forward to this a bit more. Maybe…this was a step forward.

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End Notes: Yellowcard?! Who the hell is that?! This takes place in 2004, bruh! This was some nostalgic research here. And I am 200% going to the When We Were Young 2023 music festival! Koji, Nelly, Tony, and Shaun are the farmer from Back to Nature/More Friends of Mineral Town/DS. Just…not really. When we were kids, I played as Koji, my cousin sort of played as Nelly, my younger cousin played as Tony, and, just to be inclusive, we had one other cousin play in spirit as Shaun. Shin is the farmer from Save the Homeland/Hero of Leaf Valley. Jill is the blonde protagonist from Back to Nature: For Girls and DS Cute. I can find no real remaining evidence but, prior to “Jill”, the brunette AnWL character, ‘Claire’ was Jill. Thus, why I named her such…I don’t remember when or why the shift came. Just remember, this was written sort of before Another Wonderful Life came out (Crazy, right?). Mineral Town is way bigger in scope than it is in the game. It’ll be developed over the stories.

[arwamachine]

Heyyy! I am a fanfic writer and I have a problem, and since you're old and experienced (lol) I require your opinion...

I am currently writing a long fic, but I also have ideas for a future fic. Should I wait till I finish the first one or start the second one while still writing the first one? I'm afraid that if I start the second one I won't finish the first one (and I REALLY want to finish it) but I'm also afraid to lose the ideas and the freshness and impulse of the second one if I don't...

I'm under the impression that you write ALL THE TIME and that you've barely published a fic you're already publishing another (62 chapters? Seriously??? When did you even write that???)

It would be really nice and helpful to know a bit more about how you work. Thank you soooo much for everything!!!

Your Secret Admirer ;)

AAAAA thank you so much for this ask! I love talking about writing and sharing experience from my wizened and advanced age ;)

I am about to say so many words, but my response will boil down to this: do whatever you want! Anyone who tells you there are “rules” to the writing process is lying to you. Do whatever the hell works for you!

Any specific advice I have aside from that is idiosyncratic to my own process. Here’s my deal: I tend more toward planning than pantsing, I don’t start writing until I know the beginning, middle, and end of a story, I write (mostly) chronologically, and I NEVER start posting a fic unless it is 100% written and edited. As such, I personally wouldn’t start a sequel until I’d finished the first fic, but what I WOULD do is OUTLINE.

I call my outlines “murder boards” because they are a nightmare at first. It is a mishmash of random ideas, character information, research, and whole chunks of scenes/dialogues thrown together as they come to my brain. Eventually, an actual structure for a story will develop. This is where I’ll go if I randomly got an awesome idea for some dialogue when I was in the shower, or if I suddenly know what the last paragraph of my story is going to be. I throw it into the murder board with no real sense for grammar or perfection, and when it’s time to write the fic for real, my past self has already done a lot of the work for me. This will get your ideas out and documented while you finish up the first fic!

Other folks have completely different approaches to outlines or don’t outline at all. That’s all fine. For my goldfish brain, if I don’t write something down it is gone within minutes. Poof.

Note: the relationship of the sequel to fic 1 also impacts this decision. If the sequel is going to be a straight continuation of events that take place in fic 1 (i.e., the conflict in fic 1 is not fully resolved by the end of that fic but will be in the sequel), it might be good to at minimum do some heavy outlining so you know what plot points/events/themes/character development you need to cover in fic 1, when, and where you need to leave things off at the end. One downside to completing (and posting) fic 1 first is that as soon as it is out there for others to read, your decisions are locked in and you can’t make edits (at least, not without confusing the fuck out of your readers). All corners you have written yourself into cannot be unwritten once it is posted. BUT, if fic 1 is a complete story, the conflict is fully resolved, and the sequel introduces a completely different story and conflict with these characters, this is less of an issue.

Since you asked - for my own process, I start everything with a murder board and don’t actively start writing until I am confident I can take the thing from beginning to end. I usually have 2 active writing projects going at a time: 1 professional, 1 fanfic. I try to write at least 500 words a day in both. I am usually outlining and editing other works on the side as well. I have no problem bumping something to the back burner if there is a competing demand or I get struck by a LOT of inspiration. For instance, Storm got bumped for at least 3 different projects, but eventually got itself written! Keeping epic outlines is helpful for me when things get bumped—I know I can leave a project for a few months, step back in, and have notes to remind me where me brain was at and where it all was heading.

That is probably WAY more words than you wanted, but like I said—I love talking about this stuff! I hope at least some of this was helpful! I’d also love to read your fic once it’s all done, so let me know when it starts posting!! 😃

[writing-with-olive]

Developmental Editing - Rewriting!

Alrighty! It's been a hot minute since I've talked about developmental editing, but since I'm a pretty big proponent of helping people not fall for the "replace these 59 crutch words with slightly longer phrases and that's it you're done editing" I figured it's probably about time for another one. (to be fair, that was a bit of exageration, but I am serious that superficial/cosmetic edits probably won't cut it if you're trying to go from first draft to publishable work)

One of the biggest tips I can give is that at least once, it's a good idea to consider rewriting. I don't mean throw your current draft out and start over (I would hate that), but have a printed copy of your WIP or do a splitscreen and go through scene by scene and rewrite. 

(why this is, in fact, a good idea, and also how to go about doing it below the cut)

Why this is helpful:

It helps you make changes you need to make. Basically, if you're just editing the pieces you think are the worst issues from your book, then when you hit something you're not completely sure if you need to change, the impulse without doing rewrites is often "eh. I'll do it later/I don't need to do it." With rewrites, it's often "I might as well." Basically, you can get a much deeper level of change.

If you've moved around scenes, there's going to be instances where they're not going to fit perfectly. Maybe a character offhandedly references something that now happens after the scene but started out before. Or they come into the scene in a mood that is no longer explained by the preceding scene. Rewriting scenes will help keep things like tone and chronology consistant without having a giant mess to try and clean up later. 

Your writing abilities have almost certainly improved since you began writing the previous draft. A full rewrite is a pretty good way to make your style more consistant over the course of the book.

You've probably gotten a better sense of your characters and setting and overall vibe of the story. This is a pretty good way to make sure you can clear up inconsistancies from when you were still figuring them out and also the issues that cleanup may cause.

Knowing you're going to do a pretty thourough edit later can help get the words down. At least for me, I can stomach doing a horrific first pass at a scene or chapter because I don't have to worry about it staying bad. My priority is getting the words down so I can move on with the story.

How to go about doing rewrites:

Take a deep breath and don't panic

No actually take that deep breath. It's good for you.

Identify the core issue you're going to be working on. For me, it was adding in the necessary plotpoints I had missed the first time around and fixing some of the pacing (because 14-year-old me did NOT understand story structure when I started writing my WIP). There will be secondary issues that you will probably be fixing along the way (like awkward dialogue, etc) but the core issue should be the focus. 

Go through your manuscript if scenes that need ot be rearranged, added, or subtracted, make a note of them. Similarly, if you need to rearrange the content of scenes (maybe shuffling around when characters arrive at a place, or when certain catalysts happen), make notes of them too. Also note anything that you were particularly happy or unhappy with when you were reading through your work. If you have a chunk that's particularly tangled, it's usually good to figure out what you want to change when you're just in the edit-planning stage, because it becomes harder when you're trying to figure out what to do as you're actively trying to do it. Basically, don't worry if figuring out how to fix things takes a while. It's natural. For simplicity's sake, I refer to everything in this bullet point as "pre-edits"

Open up a new doc - it is NOT in your best interest to work on your original. For one, it's nice to look back and see how far you've come, but there's also the feeling of a fresh slate that can be really freeing. 

Go through scene by scene, or chapter by chapter, and rewrite it while regularly referencing your marked-up manuscript. If you decide on a whim that you should make changes that you didn't mark originally, go for it. At this point, you've got a pretty good sense of what should be happening in a given place, and sometimes you don't realize edits until you're really in it. If you get to scenes that you need to write from scratch - ie they weren't in the original, treat it like that section is a first draft. Don't worry if the quality of writing is lower than everything around it. Like when you were originally drafting, the most important thing is to get everything down on the page. There will be more editing rounds after this. 

Embrace that rewrites will take a while. It's fairly easy to break into small chunks though (scenes, chapters, arcs, etc), so it doesn't need to be daunting. Just take it one step at a time. 

When you get to the end, celebrate! You just completed a lot! 

Anyway, I hope this gives people a potential path forward for editing. If you have any questions or places you want me to go into more detail on, PLEASE send me an ask or put it in the comments. I love this stuff and will gladly tell you about any part of it!

++++

Taglist (sorry I keep forgetting to tag people - I'm working on it):  @bookdragonfanish @book-limerence

As always, if you would like to be added to or removed from any of my tag lists (found pinned at the top of my blog) just let me know!

[thosch3i]

Hi hi! So the lost tombs and chronology all super confuse me. So tlt2 ended on a cliffhanger that was not resolved by tlt3 which is ultimate note, but now there is another tlt3 that I am guessing is made by the same studio as tlt2 (but not UN) that actually follows tlt2? And it has the same WPZ as tlt2 (but sadly different WX, ZQL though I’m sure these guys are great). You seem to know what you’re talking about so I’m hoping you can help!

UN also ended on a cliff hanger so I’m wondering if they’ll get a sequel from their studio that comes before tomb of the sea.

ahhh hello anon! yes ahaha the dmbj dramas are certainly very confusing--because they keep switching the screenwriters/entire production team between dramas. huanrui did tlt1 (2015), tlt2 (2019), and the sequel to tlt2 (2021). they're also technically the production company for un (2020), but linghe did like all the directing/casting/writing so its significantly different in tone and quality from the other dramas huanrui produced. npss (dmbj author) did sha hai (2018) and tltr (2020), with sha hai being in collab with linghe, so you can see lots of parallels with un and shared cast. (gonna add that i dont know much about the m9 because that’s not what im personally interested in, so i’m only going by stories with wu xie & the iron triangle.)

unfortunately, the dramas pretty have no continuity as a result of all the weird shit and multiple studios doing different dramas and messy stuff going on behind the scenes. the author's production company currently has all the rights back for filming future dramas, which is......imo, a good thing for book fans who love the author but a 😬 thing for book fans who like the original story more than what the author is now doing with it. I'll uh avoid saying too much opinion stuff though so no more on that 😅

that aside! yes 云顶天宫 “explore with the note” part 2......is the direct sequel to tlt2 and done by the same studio. unfortunately the writers are different and im not sure how much of the production team is the same either. idk how much you know about the novels so brief summary here--for the chinese version, the main story has 9 parts split among 8 books (though the official eng tls have each part being a different book) with some important content being as follows:

official eng title “cavern of blood zombies” (first time wx goes into a tomb, first t3j meeting)

official eng title “angry sea, hidden sands” (xisha seabed tomb, introduce a-ning)

official eng title “bronze tree of death” (bronze tree in qinling, wx & lao yang solo adventure)

official eng title “palace of doom” (heavenly palace on the clouds, introduce bronze gate)

official eng title “deadly desert winds” (golmud, introduce hei xiazi, desert, rainforest, tamutuo)

official eng title “graveyard of a queen” (the rest of that arc, wu sanxing & xie lianhuan reveal, jade meteorite, amnesiac xiaoge and escape, sanshu vanishes for good--also i think the official eng tl covers a couple chapters of the beginning of the next part too)

阴山古楼 (searching for xiaoge’s memories in banai, miluotuo cave, i think introduction of wu erbai)

邛笼石影 (auction/hotel iron triangle fight, introduce xiao hua & xiuxiu, wx & xh on the mountains alone while pz & xg go with granny huo)

finale (rescue from zhang family mansion, changbai mountain goodbye, 10 years promise)

after the main story are the main sequels:

zang hai hua (tibetan sea flower; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie a few years after xiaoge has entered the gate, searching to understand xiaoge’s past

sha hai (tomb of the sea; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie’s plan to wipe out the wang family, after zhh

chongqi (reunion: the sound of the providence) covers wu xie’s lung disease and how he recovers from that, set after they pick up xiaoge again from the bronze gate. thunder city and everything.

灯海寻尸&万山极夜 (still updating on wechat) don’t worry about this one since it’s still a WIP lol

btw between sha hai and chongqi there’s also ten years later (a short story) that covers how wu xie and pangzi pick up xiaoge from the bronze gate and take him home

the dramas Do Not Connect To Each Other At All, which the exception of tlt2 & tlt2 pt2 somewhat, but they go in this order:

盗墓笔记 / the lost tomb 1 (2015): covers part 1 but with major OCs and filler, and includes the auction scene from part 8 for some reason, so introduces xiao hua early.

怒海潜沙&秦岭神树 / the lost tomb 2 (2019) technically “explore with the note”: covers parts 2 & 3 but with major OCs and filler, introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu (and hei xiazi briefly) early. last couple episodes also cover the beginning of part 4. not a direct sequel to tlt1 despite being done by the same studio.

云顶天宫 / heavenly palace on the clouds (2021) technically also “explore with the note”: covers part 4 with major OCs and filler (and the same changes carrying over from tlt2). some episodes are identical to the last couple episodes of tlt2. works as a direct sequel only if you ignore the last couple episodes of tlt2 that take place in the snowy mountains. (those episodes of tlt2 were filmed after this drama was filmed, and im still not sure why they dragged the wu xie and xiaoge from tlt2 back to changbai mountain to film those episodes.)

终极笔记 / ultimate note (2020): covers parts 5-8 with minor OCs and minimal filler, also introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu early. the only adaptation that resembles its source material most of the time.

沙海 / tomb of the sea (2018): covers the second sequel with major OCs and filler. includes some bits from zhh and the short story “three days of silence”.

重启之极海听雷 / the lost tomb reboot (2020): covers third sequel with major OCs and filler.

in addition there is the prequel series mystic nine (2016) and side movies for the dramas that the author produced. there is also a single standalone movie--time raiders (2016) that is....well it’s. very strange. it’s fully subbed on youtube if you’re interested?

the best way to watch the dramas is to assume each one is its own self-contained AU set along different points of the dmbj timeline because even the dramas the author himself worked on don’t have continuity LOL (and with the exception of ultimate note & sha hai most of the time, also assume most characters are pretty OOC from the novels).

i uh regret to inform you though, that ultimate note will not be getting a sequel unless the author magically decides to not care about making money anymore and sells the rights to film the finale to linghe or something ^^;;;; it’s....unfortunate bc un is the most highly-rated dmbj adaptation on douban by A Lot, but it’s an adaptation that the author had literally nothing to do with whatsoever.

more information on some of the side movies/stage plays/manhua/donghua here.

summaries of the main novel stories (currently through zhh) here.

edited mtl (some of which has apparently been looked over by native cn speakers) of the novels following where official eng tls end here. (there are many scattered extras as well.)

you can get the official eng tl books/ebooks on amazon or elsewhere(?), but if you have problems purchasing them or like you just dont wanna support amazon or something, dm me off anon. (also i dont want to be mean but frankly the official tls are kinda bad too ^^;;;)

a rough timeline (spoilers galore) for the dmbj novels here. (fair warning im not 100% sure how accurate all of this is--they put three days of silence as 1991 but looking at the info in zhh, it seems like it should have been before the 1950s...but it’s more than fine as a general overview.)

anyway i hope that was helpful in some way? dmbj is a Very Confusing thing to get into ahahaha, one of my twitter mutuals has made a few carrds if you think they might be helpful: book, dramas (slightly out of date bc it says heavenly palace hasn’t aired yet), ultimate note (got its own carrd by virtue of being the only adaptation aside from sha hai sometimes that most og book fans acknowledge lol ^^;;;)

also anon if anything wasn’t clear or if you had more questions feel free to ask again sorry ahahaha im kinda tired rn @.@ 

[cyancherub]

Omggg 57 pages?? That’s so freaking amazing - I cap around 10 pages KAHDOSNSSJ if you’re comfy w me asking (and I also apologize if you answered this before 😣) what’s your writing process like?? I absolutely adore your writing!! ☺️

HI FAWN !!!! THANK U !!!! OMG i have this problem where ... i cannot shut up LALSLKALK but YES yes i can talk a little bit about the process it's really kind of... intensive and detail oriented because i am incredibly nitpicky about my own work LOL so in order:

brain dump (bullet point form): brainstorming, me typing at the speed of light to get the plot on paper, usually looks very incoherent because im trying to get every basic detail out of my head and make sure i don't forget anything, usually out of order, just a bunch of thoughts in one place

rough outline (also bullet point form): working from the brain dump, also typing at the speed of light, putting all the details from the brain dump in chronological order and adding more details that i think up. a lot of brainstorming done in this part too

detailed outline (also bullet point form): more brainstorming, working from the rough outline, fleshing scenes out, adding details where they're lacking, making sure everything flows well

rough draft (...incoherent sentence form): i write directly from the detailed outline (so i'll usually have that open in one window and the rough open in the other). forming ideas into paragraphs. there are some full sentences here but most of them are messy and more like an idea of how i want the sentence to look or how i want the writing to flow

final draft: rewriting paragraph by paragraph from the rough draft, stylizing every idea so each sentence is something that im proud of. it's also kind of a proofread because i'll rework a paragraph as many times as i need to until i'm happy with it. in this stage i'll also leave bits and pieces in blue or red if i feel that i can't make them work (to revisit later)

final edits: a huge reread from the very beginning to make sure everything flows well, that there are no plot holes, no forgotten details, etc.. it's me trying to read from the perspective of the audience more like. i also use this step to revisit the pieces that i left unedited in the final draft step & work them out since this step is less work than the last

final readthrough: one more read for typos. basically me beta reading my own fic KLAKLSLK. sometimes i do this a few times so i dont miss things

[sesskagevents]

SessKag Fandom Appreciation Week - Day 5

Writer interviews - LadyGoshawk

@ladygoshawk was nominated by Anon.

What was your first introduction to SessKag?

It's been so long, I can't honestly remember for certain. I was coming up out of the worst depressive episode of my life, so my memory of that time is somewhat spotty. I do know that I was surfing the web, looking for distractions and entertainment. Probably, for anime-related topics. And I tripped over Dokuga! I had seen a few episodes of Inuyasha by accident back when it was first airing, dubbed, here in the US. It didn't stick to me at first, but the idea of a non-canon pairing like Sess and Kag, and a whole website dedicated to nothing but, struck me as intriguing. I believe the first fic I read was Nostawen Allesiel's "Laying Amongst Dokatsu" while it was still being written. It remains unfinished, but it lit a tiny little ember and I went on a researching binge. First, I inhaled the anime, start to finish. This solidified my interest in SessKag over the canon pair. I went on to voraciously consume everything SessKag I could find. The rest, as we say, is history! 

How long have you been a part of the fandom?

That may depend upon how you define "part of the fandom". I've been consuming SessKag at least since 2008/9, though it took me a long while to work up the nerve to make a Dokuga account and "identity" in the fandom. Dokuga says I joined 8 years ago, so 2012/13-ish. I probably started writing my own fics after I read LadyBattousai's "Seven Feudal Fairy Tales" in 2010 or so. I didn't start *posting* stories until 2019, with an abortive attempt to join in SessKag Week. 

What is your writing process like?

Overwrought chaos! I will often get a fic idea and jot quick notes down, then leave it alone for a while. Days, weeks, sometimes even months. If, at some point, the bug bites me to revisit that idea, I'll get started by writing whatever it was that first came to mind. I see my pieces as movies running through my head, so I do my best to describe them as they go. Unfortunately, that means I tend to give too much description and I generally wind up having to go back and take a machete to my work in the editing process. I usually write chronologically, beginning-to-end, from a very general outline of what I intend to happen in the fic. Sometimes a scene will come to me whole first and then I'll have to go back and write what comes before. Rarely, a story will give me bits and pieces that I write, and then have to figure out the connecting bits, plus start and end. Research is my favorite part of writing, OG or fanfic, so I lose a lot of time in doing research for historical context, or timelines, or what to call the particular piece of clothing I can see but do not have a word for. I also spend a lot of time reading things aloud to myself (the cat and dog are so tired of my shenanigans, they ignore me) to make sure wording and phrases read properly. I'm a professional copy-editor, so I always go back over everything at least twice before it gets posted. And sometimes, I find that typos have *still* gotten through to the post! Anxiety and depression, plus a fairly busy RL, mean that sometimes I just don't have the creative juices to write with. 2020 and 2021 have been pretty brutal where that's concerned. I'm learning not to feel guilty about that and to give myself permission to feel how I feel when I feel it and then move forward from there. It's difficult, but I'm slowly finding that doing so means that I end up with more creative energy more often, rather than less. It's hard to accept that's part of my process, but in the end, it's very worth the trouble!

If you could let your fans know one thing, what would it be? 

Be kind to yourself and to your fandom peers. We're a relatively small niche in a much broader fandom context, so a habit of kindness can go a very long way. Remember that we're all of us human, and fallible, and RL happens to everyone. We do this for fun as a hobby, and if it stops being fun, there's no shame in taking a break. If we all practice kindness for ourselves and others, the fandom will be here when we need it for a good, long time to come! 

Do you have anything you're working on right now that the fandom can look forward to? 

I *promise* that I am still working on "Dreaming On", and that I will never abandon any of my ongoing fics! It's been a tough couple of years for everyone, and I'm no exception. I have a new chapter in the works there, it's just taking its sweet time in speaking to me again! That said, I've also started the next installment of the "Traditions" series and have half my second SAFE fic still on the fire. It's a werewolf!Kagome AU, and even if I fail to get it finished in time for SAFE points (RL went wonky on me again right in the middle of the event), I'll still finish and post it for fun. Additionally, I'm working with ForgettableFox and crew to get the new Pink Moon Observatory site up and running, and I'm really excited about it! I'm slated to be a site mod and a blogger, so I'm working on cooking up some fun fandom-related blog entries to go live after the site does. We're working hard to make it a safe, inclusive, one-stop shop for All Things SessKag. Thank you so much for your interest! I'm looking forward to this fandom flourishing for a long time to come. Hope to see you along the way!

What are some of your favourite fanfiction tropes to read or write, and why do you love them as much as you do? 

For reading, I love Found Family perhaps most of all because it speaks to me on a very deep level. I'm part of my own found family, and reading it applied to the characters of Inuyasha gives me all the warm fuzzies. Especially when Shippou and Rin have been adopted and are being parented by SessKag. That's why this is also a big favorite for me to write, too. I also really adore reading Coffee Shop AUs. They're a fluffy, guilty pleasure I indulge especially when I want to go brain-off and just drown in floof. I've never written one, mostly for lack of an idea to grab me. Maybe someday! I write a lot of Hurt/Comfort, Friends or Enemies to Lovers, and Slow Burn, and I certainly enjoy reading them as well. I like exploring the sorts of possible scenarios that might bring our favorite couple together, and these are rife with possibility. Virtually everything I write is Canon Divergence of one sort or another, for fairly obvious reasons - SessKag ain't canon, but I like to write in the Feudal Era because I'm a history nerd at heart. I'd been seriously studying Japanese history with particular emphasis on the "Warring States Period" long before Inuyasha ever caught my attention. I also like Yakuza fics because, well...tattoos! Swords! Codes of honor outside the norm! This is where my "Traditions" series was born.

Inuyasha is a pretty old fandom, and SessKag one of its oldest, most prominent ships at this point. What keeps you going with your writing these days? 

Mostly, I haven't explored all the possibilities for this couple that I would like to, and the fun bit about that is that every time I think I've seen everything, someone throws something new on the pile for consideration! I write because, as WP Kinsella wrote in his book "Shoeless Joe": "I have to write. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk." It is in me to write, has been in me to write since I was a wee small thing (thassa loooooooong time ago, for those keeping track), and if I don't write down the things I see in my head, I think my head might just explode. If I can throw them out into the world and find others who like what I've written because I like it? So much the better! I have found my folks! All the rest of the fun is icing on the cake!

[stonefreeak]

I absolutely love your chancellor kenobi series and am so grateful that you've written so much of it, you have sparked much joy for me. I wanted to ask your advice as someone who has written & published a large AU with many moving parts. How do you choose what order to publish things in? Do you have an outline that you stick to, do you publish as you write it, do you go with the flow?

Hello! Thank you so much, I'm glad to hear that you enjoy it!

Now, I could probably tell a few horror stories about how I was structuring my files and writing early on before @veilofadyingstar clowned on me enough times to get me to not write more than 5 different fics in the same google doc, separated only by headers (yes really), but I don't think that's very conductive to your questions, so I'll leave it at that, lol.

Chancellor Kenobi (CK) started as directly-into-tumblr ficlets. As in, I wrote everything directly into the text post editor and then just tagged it and pressed save and that was that.

It was also, early on, sort-of-not-really a prompt fic. Basically, I started by writing a ficlet on an idea, and then people wanted more of that ficlet, so they sent me asks. Sometimes they did manage to hit on what I imagined would happen, sometimes they didn't (in which case I would tell them what actually happened). I have so many asks still that I planned on replying to with a ficlet but just forgot, which is why my inbox currently has 156 messages in it, lmao (sorry everyone who sent me an ask!)

Back when this was the format CK was in, back in December 2016, I posted ficlets in whatever order I wrote them. I updated daily back then, sometimes even twice per day. After 10 days of this (so on the 13th, with about 10ish ficlets to the story) I asked if people wanted me to collect everything in a masterpost, which they did, at which point I had to go back and actually double check the order of events.

This was all so early on in the story that I just posted ficlets as I wrote them, haphazardly adding them into the timeline where they belonged, without caring about posting order at all.

I had an idea of what would happen, and as it grew more complex and I got further into the story, I realised that posting things out-of-order wouldn't be feasible anymore. The ficlets were becoming far too context dependent (because of the complexity and details of the plot) so even though I was still writing ficlets in the order of "whatever strikes my fancy", I now had to wait with posting until it was actually the next bit of the plot, this is when my updates started to slow down a lot, because yeah...

I started writing down an outline of events, but I never finished that, and I've since lost it lmao. So the actual plot, the story, the details... all of that lives only inside my head. I'm mentally keeping track of everything.

Which, honestly, I don't think I recommend that LMAO

After all, keeping it all in your head means that if you forget something, lmao, it's gone. bye bye

However, I did mention fairly recently that I'd done some organising of my files where I properly placed files out in order and name them, which now kind of works as an outline, lol (I use a writing subscription service for a gamified writing experience called 4thewords). However, there are a few blank files in between the named ones because I know I need more stuff in there in between the named events so it's not really a proper outline either.

So. I still write the fic out of order, which is something I can easily do due to the format I'm writing it in: interconnected ficlets as chapters. This means that I have ficlets that are far in the future of what I have posted, but they cannot yet be posted for the simple reason that the plot is now so complex that things need to be posted in order, otherwise it won't make sense.

As such, I no longer publish as I write, though I used to. At this point, the fic has grown too large and has too many moving pieces for that to be feasible.

Generally, I usually like to finish a fic before I post it, because that means that I can go back into early parts and edit them if need be (say I come up with something cool I need to foreshadow, or I realise that I mentioned something too early, or I realise I introduced a plotline I dropped so it's better to edit it out etc etc). That's not really possible with CK anymore (though, I mean, I guess I could go back and secretly edit stuff and pretend like nothing's up, lmao) so it's entirely possible that this fic has some inconsistencies etc (though I do my best to ensure there aren't any, there's always the risk I've missed something).

Writing CK and sharing it with all my readers has been an amazing experience, and I dearly hope people are not only willing to stick with me to the end, but also that they will feel like the pay-off was worth it.

For some people, finishing a fic before posting doesn't work because they need engagement to keep going, which is absolutely valid! For that, I think having a more structured outline is very useful in order to keep things clear and avoid accidental plot holes. It's no guarantee of course.

Ultimately, how you post and how you write comes down to you as an individual writer.

For me, it's rather flexible. Sometimes I write things in a strictly chronological order from start to finish and that's it. Sometimes I skip around in the story and need to make sure I leave very large empty spaces (metaphorical or literal) so I know where there's missing content that need to be written before the story is finished.

All of this is of course very much personal to me, and what works for one writer might not work for another. But I hope it gives you some help and some insight, perhaps.

Happy writing, anon!

[kbsd]

not sure if you’ve answered this before, but what’s your process look like when you make an amv? i’m just curious and in constant awe of ppl who can make videos like you do :)

hello all!!! i have answered this before and i have a vid help tag with other asks i’ve gotten about stuff like this! but i’ve gotten several more messages along these lines so i’m just going to answer a bunch of them together (under a cut since i love to ramble about editing lol). i do just wanna say i’m definitely not the authority on video editing and obv everyone has their own techniques!

edit: i just finished typing all this up and it’s SO long so sorry in advance LMAO god bless anyone who reads this entire thing

so i work in news tv and we have a very specific workflow for writing scripts, sourcing video, producing, and editing. i’ve just applied that to making amvs! for every video i make, i copy the song lyrics into a google doc and adjust them to match the song i’ve cut (i often will trim songs for time and/or content purposes). then i start planning! i’ll mark down what clip i want to use for each lyric next to that line, and any sound bites i want to use (with episode numbers!). i’ll color code between video and sound bites and lyrics, so my scripts end up looking something like this (for my honeybee amv):

doing the planning ahead of time makes everything much easier when it’s a video that spans the whole show or involves a lot of sourcing, like honeybee or sports analogies. that way when i get to the actual editing process, i already know what i’m going to do and have a game plan. for videos like happy ending or believe it or not, where i’m mainly just pulling from a few episodes, i can just plan it in my head as opposed to writing it all down, and produce as i edit. obviously i do make in-the-moment decisions while editing—sometimes a shot doesn’t work the way i thought it would, or i go where the video takes me—but planning ahead definitely helps. i know some people use spreadsheets as well, with columns for lyrics, video clips, and sound bites if applicable. once you find a system that works, it actually goes pretty quickly.

as for sourcing clips themselves/finding clips within episodes, i talked about that here and kind of here. the short version is that transcripts are a must, and the supernatural wiki is hugely helpful by cataloguing all the hugs, prayers, phone calls, etc. in the show. gifmakers that tag episode numbers on their posts are your friends. it gets easier the more video you make—that’s another huge reason i make the google docs for each video (even the ones i plan in my head, i end up going back and making a loose script with episode notes just for reference). if i can’t remember where something is but i know i used it in another video, i can easily reference past scripts!

i also cut all my videos in the same project in premiere pro, so i can flip between them easily. instead of checking a past script, i can just go to the video sequence itself and copy the clip i’m looking for! this was especially helpful when i match cut together the 5x18 and 4x22 wall slam shots for my bestie video, and then stole it from myself for honeybee hahaha. at any given time i have at least 8 sequences open:

because of the sheer volume of videos i make, it’s worth it for me to download the entire show—i have all 327 episodes in HD, plus deleted scenes. if you think you’re only going to make a few videos, i’d start with scene packs. you can usually just google “destiel [or whatever ship/character you’re looking for] scene packs” and there will be any number of ones you can download. if you need other specific scenes, you can always download/torrent individual episodes or screen record netflix (that’s what i did before i got HD download links). i’m happy to share my links if you DM, but be warned it’s a lot of disk space (about 500GB on my hard drive). someone also compiled every destiel scene, downloadable here.

having every episode already loaded in premiere for all my projects also makes it a lot easier to source clips. once i use a clip in a video, i’ll put a marker on the episode file, so that after a while i have most of the important scenes/lines marked to easily find them. to give you an idea, this is my episode file in premiere for 12x10 lily sunder has some regrets (markers at destiel scenes, the car fight, hot girl cas, etc.). markers are the green tabs along the bottom:

premiere also lets you color code and name markers, so ONE DAY i will go back and color code them all. the ones above are all the same color, but in a perfect world, i’d have a myraid—for destiel shots like hugs, touches, looks; for important pieces of dialogue; for action shots; etc. but for now this works ok for me, so that’s a project for another time!

between detailed scripts, one giant premiere project, markers, the wiki, and my own memory, i have so many points of reference that i can usually find any clip i need in about 2 minutes max. sound bites are often harder to start out, or tiny specific shots i haven’t used before, and that’s when i turn to tumblr gifsets or beloved mutuals to crowdsource. but if you’re as obsessive about marking/keeping neat scripts as i am, it gets easier and easier with every video you make. that’s part of why i’m able to cut videos together so quickly. (also i want to stress i do this for a living and have to produce/edit a new piece for my show every day so i’m used to it. and compared to constantly updating content/sources and news that changes every day, 327 highly documented episodes that never change are much easier to handle hahaha)

this is all great for me since i make so many videos and plan to continue doing so, but if you’re only making a few, this level of work isn’t worth it imo. really it’s all about developing a system that works for you. whatever you do with episodes/sourcing, though, i cannot recommend planning things out in a script ahead of time enough. 

everything i just mentioned is producing, though. for the editing process, i usually do it in this order:

music first. any parts i want to cut, i make sure it all sounds smooth

then soundbites. i usually try to weave them into the lyrics—i have characters talk in breaks between lines or instrumental sections as much as possible. i’ll sometimes go so far as looped/extending an intsrumental part to make room for the soundbite i want there lol. if i do have dialogue over a line, i do the sound mixing/levels at this point as well to make sure everything is audible/one doesn’t overpower the other. (also i always include the video that goes with these bites when i drop them in, and decide later if i want to show the character speaking or have other clips cover the dialogue)

once i have all the audio locked in, then i bring in all my other video clips. sometimes i edit completely chronologically, sometimes jumping from section to section—it depends on the song or how i’m feeling

double check sound mixing. i usually listen to my videos through a few times, with headphones and without to make sure it’ll sound good no matter how people watch it

once i have picture and audio lock, i go through and color correct my clips. i’m basic and just use lumetri color in premiere, and usually just play with brightness, saturation, temperature, and tint until i like it

render and export! :)

i always have several audio tracks, but i try to keep my video tracks condensed. i’ll drop clips on a V2 level, and edit a section there, and drop the whole chunk down to V1 so i know it’s finished. that way when i leave and come back i can know where i left off/what’s done/etc. to give you an idea, this is the timeline for my what the hell video:

i always render as H.264 with high bitrate, and make sure to check “render at maximum depth” and “use maximum render quality” for the best quality. i’m sorry, but i don’t know what the equivalent options are in final cut, imovie, kdenlive, etc. i post on youtube mostly so i don’t have to sacrifice quality, but usually just using a lower bitrate will get you under the tumblr file size limit and it’ll still look good.

as for the anon who asked about “polishing”: first of all, thank you!! second of all, it’s in the details. all of this is a matter of taste and my own insanity, but here are some little things i always try to do:

after i color correct, i blur out any credits from the starts of episodes. i use gaussian blur for this, but really any blur tool works

as much as possible, i avoid clips where we see a character’s mouth move but don’t hear the words. in tv/film we call it “lip flap” and i just think it looks messy. also i’m trained to avoid it at all costs at work hahaha. it’s more for serious videos that this matters a lot to me (e.g. i think i did a really good job eliminating lip flap in my happy ending amv)—for comedy videos i don’t sweat it as much

i put audio fades on the start and end of every single audio clip i use, even if i don’t think i need it, to make sure everything sounds smooth

i use markers for timing, especially in action-y videos like what the hell. i’ll put a marker on the clip i’m using at the exact moment a punch lands, and in the song on the beat. if i have the magnet/snap in timeline tool on i can just easily snap them together instead of having to spend time finagling it

this is such a small thing but i dip/cut to black for a tiny bit at the start and end of every video. this way if i post with tumblr video player, there’s black between the loops, and it gives you a beat before the video restarts. i do this even on videos i post on youtube, just because i think it looks nicer/more professional

this is 1,500 words so i’m going to stop myself before i pull something. if you have follow-up questions feel free to ask and i’ll continue to add them to the vid help tag, but any more questions about sourcing clips or my process in general i’ll just link this post going forward. anyone who made it this far, i am sending to a telepathic kiss. thank you for reading and happy editing!

[luxshine]

The Great Supernatural Rewatch Project - Salvation

I started writting this in the middle of season 13 but RL and work and some mental health issues made me take a step back from fandom in general and well, I was also fearing this would be an unending job since the series JUST.KEPT. GOING.

However, now that the series is done (And omg, what a clusterfuck that was. My tallies are going to go insane if I get there) and thus there’s an ending in sight, I will do my best to finish season 1, and try and get the rest of the seasons in a more timely manner. Say, before they do the inevitable reunion and ignore the last episode completely.

(I’m going to be honest, part of the problem was that Supernatural used to be SO good back then, and when I see the new episodes I weep a bit inside. I can’t believe they were so much better at creating story arcs when they weren’t TRYING to create story arcs)

Of course, now we all know that Dean’s plots in general will not have a happy ending no matter what, and that makes that particular tally bittersweet. But there are STILL people who claim that nope, Dean was never mistreated by the writers and well, Jack damn it, I am not going to let that claim go without bringing numbers to the table. Hopefully, it won’t take me 15 years to finish (Because by then, I would be the only one caring I guess)

In any case, last lap for Season 1 and we begin with Salvation.

General stuff

A specific reason for me having rage quitted this episode in particular for so long: For some stupid copyright thing with Netflix, they don’t have Carry On My Wayward Son as the song for the final recap –at least in Netflix Latam. And Supernatural without Carry On My Wayward Son is no Supernatural. So I had to hunt my DVDs. Then my computer DVD player died. Then I decided to make 5 webcomics at the same time. THEN I decided to start doing illustration works, and three other projects and let’s just say I am a bit of a workaholic and leave it like that as the rest is not SPN-related.

Ahem.

Funny thing about the Road so Far –you know, besides being a LOT shorter than the ones we’re getting now- is that it focuses a lot more on DEAN at the beginning, while if you watch the show, well, we know most of those Dean scenes come from MoW episodes and not the actual mytharc. Another interesting thing is that if one believes those things to be chronological, it makes it as if the Colt had been with the brothers for a lot longer than half an episode, and that Sam’s issue with the visions is not that recent. Edition Magic everyone! Also, omg, they were babies when the series started, and how WEIRD is to see John looking at them with pride and smiling at Dean at some points.

Anyway, the recap and the epicness that is Carry On my Wayward Son ends and we start the actual plot.

Hello Pastor Jim. Goodbye Pastor Jim. And here Supernatural begins the long, long tradition of killing characters who could’ve been useful later on, and more importantly, that could’ve been the boys’s support system later on. While here it’s understandable since we need to show how dangerous and vicious Meg is –ah, irony that in about 8 seasons people will be rooting for her Redemption- it also makes the Hunters kind of useless. I mean, he has all that weaponry and only uses a knife? Sigh. Really, a waste. Pastor Jim as a concept was really intriguing –and I don’t think we’ve heard of any other hunter who was also a priest. Funny, when we have so many demons free now. There’s also the fact that when Pastor Jim claims that she can’t be in the church because it’s hallowed ground, she replies that “That might work with the minor leagues, but not with her” and I wonder… did we ever got a demon that couldn’t enter a church? Because right now out of the top of my head I can’t remember, and yet Pastor Jim was surprised but later no one seems to think it weird there were signs of demonic activity around his body. Another sign that, as engaging as the series was, once we start digging the world building, things fall apart very quickly.

Actually, if I may digress for a bit, here we have the very first look at Supernatural´s second biggest problem: killing support characters that may have been useful lately. Here it is because Kirkpe had this weird idea that Hunting would never be glamorized by the show/fandom and it would be a completely miserable and lonely existence. He also didn’t think that the series would survive past season 2. So, ok, killing the guy we only knew by throw away lines didn’t seem so bad. By season 13 every single recurring character had died at least once –and there were petitions to bring back I think every one of those who haven’t come back- it’s a big problem.

As I restarted writing, I also realized that the mere existence of Pastor Jim and his room of awesome research and weapons creates a problem in the future about the Men of Letters because… ok, so ONE member of the clerigy knew enough about demons and stuff to be a hunter and have THE Hunter as his main contact (John Winchester was sort of a legend back then. And he had also fell out of contact with many others so the fact that he and Pastor Jim were still friendly? Kind of interesting), but what about the rest? Did the Vatican have any contact with the British men of Letters or the American ones? And if so, what the hell did they think when suddenly ALL the Men of Letters disappeared? Ok, so that’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t matter right now as it won’t actually exist until much, much, MUCH latter, but see what I mean when I say that they didn’t plan anything and the lack of a series bible hurts the show more than it helped it thrive? I am realizing right now I could write a whole treaty on the Men of Letters and their non-relationship with hunters ONLY using this cold beginning and the Henry Winchester episode.

But this is not the time for that, so we get our title card and a very, VERY young Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

We move to John who is explaining off camera everything he knows about Yellow Eye´s plan. We can tell it´s not much as he thinks it came out of hibernation and that the whole attacking families is part of a cycle, but back then it was impressive how much he had managed to find out about this demon. We also know that it attacks exactly when the baby in the house is six months old, which brings us to this little jewel:

JOHN It starts in Arizona, then New Jersey, California. Houses burned down to the ground. It's going after families, just like it went after us.

SAM Families with infants?

JOHN Yeah. The night of the kid's six-month birthday. 

SAM I was six months old that night?

JOHN Exactly six months.

SAM So basically, this demon is going after these kids for some reason. The same way it came for me? So Mom's death...Jessica. It's all because of me?

DEAN We don't know that Sam.

SAM Oh really? Cause I'd say we're pretty damn sure Dean.

DEAN For the last time, what happened to them was not your fault. 

SAM Right. It's not my fault but it's my problem.

DEAN No it's not your problem it's our problem!

 Now, in the following seasons we will know that yes, it was ALL about Sam. But right now, the characters and the viewers don´t know that. We know that a lot of families were killed by the demon (That at this point was still “The demon” and wouldn´t become Azazael until later), and that he doesn´t take the children. So… how did Sam leap from “this demon attacks families with 6 month old children” to “It´s all about ME!”? He even ignores that Dean and John lost Mary for his last line, when he decides it´s his problem and not their problem. Also, and this is important for the “Dean is the most awful person to Sam” crowd… Dean immediately tells Sam that no, it´s not his fault. While he could harbor some ill feelings against Sam –and demon Dean, 8 seasons later, will voice them- at this point he is 100% on Sam´s side. There’s also a sideway glance from John to DEAN when Sam claims that everything is about him, and then I wonder exactly why, if John knew all about the fact that the demon chased six month old children specifically, he never resented Sam over it. One would think that given John’s love for Mary and deep desire to revenge, Sam would really be the outcast and the one only treated like a soldier (as he claims he was, but not really as we’ve seen), instead of Dean who was completely blameless in the whole thing.

(Also, this is the first time we see that Azazael´s plan didn´t make much sense IF we believed that Kirkpe had everything planned. But that´s a discussion for another time)

Anyway, John interrupts the argument to explain that while he has no idea what the demon is after (Another thing that later would be contradicted as he knew Sam had powers), but that he has managed to figure out his pattern of attack to the point that it even repeated it for Jessica’s killing (Even if much, much later, we’ll learn that it wasn’t Azazael the one who killed her, and Demons would completely forego the signs when attacking. Have I mentioned I miss the times when the myths made sense?) and the three of them pack up for their first real hunt together as they decide they will save the next baby on the demon’s list, in a town named Salvation.

Important thing to note: when John recites the demon signs, Dean immediately replies “that happened in Lawerence”. He remembers, quite clearly, what happened a week before his mother died even if logistically, at his age? He wouldn’t care nor notice. Sure, he remembers his mom’s death because that was traumatic. But random cow deaths before that? Weird show.

If Sam noticed or not the signs before Jessica died, we don’t know. John is the one who points out they happened.

After two gorgeous road shots where we see John’s truck being followed by Baby (yet another thing we lost, John’s truck. I know we needed to have the guys together all the time, but man, if Sam had inherited it, they would’ve been able to cover more terrain at times, have double the arsenal and maybe not being identified by everyone and their leviathan in season 7, but I digress), and just entering Salvation John stops, obviously spooked by something. As Dean stops behind him, they find out that Pastor Jim is dead, and John got a call from another hunter named Caleb to tell him. They assume it may be the demon they’re chasing, or maybe another demon that was looking for Pastor Jim specifically but that last theory is not very probable.

Here I have to pause to applaud Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s acting, as you can practically FEEL John’s despair at knowing an old friend of him died, and that HE was probably the cause for that death. A Winchester trait, of course, blaming themselves for everything bad that happens in their world, but unlike Sam’s early outburst, here it seems far more desperate. Of course, JDM had a lot more experience than Jared at that point, but I really wanted to make a note of it because we lost a LOT of that characterization for John, where he actually WORRIED about people and not just the hunt. Even as he decides the plan for finding out what baby the demon will take in a week, we can see him broken and confused. So much that while Sam calls him “sir” when receiving orders, Dean continues the conversation by calling him “Dad”.

John then declares that this ends now, obviously feeling responsible for what happened to his friend. A long shot from the flanderized man we’d hear about in future seasons who was infamous for letting his hunting partners die without so much as a second glance.

Also, and not to be mean to the writers, but in their endless accidentally making Sam unsympathetic, they made him say that there were too many children in the county that could be a victim and that it would take forever to check all of them. While I KNOW the intent was to make clear that they had a deadline of one week, it comes out weirdly as “I don’t want to do the footwork.” Seriously, writers should be careful with that.

Actually, let’s dissect that. Because I just thought of two ways they could’ve fixed it AND give us more info.

JOHN Now we act like every second counts. There's two hospitals and a health centre in this county. We split up, cover more ground. I want records. I want a list of every infant that's going to be six months old in the next week.

SAM Dad that could be dozens of kids. How do we know which one's the right one?

JOHN We check em all that's how. You got any better ideas?

SAM No sir.

So, first way to make Sam not look that bad: Give the line to Dean. I wouldn’t like it specially, but hey, he’s the sidekick, not the hero, and so far he has only wanted to bail on ONE hunt because he wasn’t sure it was a supernatural hunt so he’d be better standing than Sam in that regard.

Second way: Make Sam say that YES, he has a better idea. Because the brothers ALREADY faced Max, so he could say they could look for a baby that was a bit “strange”, like, with poltergeist stuff going around. John could not believe him, but at least Sam would be being proactive.

In any case, they separate as John planned and we see each of them get into the hospital records. We get a glimpse of John’s collection of fake IDs, that include one for a Morgue forensic doctor, then Sam getting a homely nurse giving him files and him taking notes, and Dean… getting flirty with a very hot nurse.

And I make a point of the “Oh, look, Dean is an irresponsible womanizer” trope because once again the writers shoot themselves in the foot by showing the opposite of what they were telling (And no, this time I can’t blame it on Jensen’s acting and refusal to look at his female co-stars without respect).

WOMAN Hi. Is there anything I can do for you?

DEAN (smiling) Oh God yes.

She smiles and looks down.

DEAN (Holding up his ID) Only I'm uh....working right now, so...

The writers here make us remember that a) Dean is AMAZINGLY charismatic, as the woman IS flattered and seems interested, and b) That he will NOT dump his work for a quickie. We don’t even get a “maybe later” that could make him look as if he was really into her. It’s just that he flirts naturally, or at least, this is what we can infer now, as so far he hasn’t had any one night stand fling. The one time we saw him have a sexual encounter in the middle of a hunt was with an ex-girlfriend.

And again I have to wonder what was Sera Gamble’s intention with those scenes as yes, this was written by the same team as Faith, another episode where Sam’s good intentions tend to have a darker side, and gave Dean some amazingly cool scenes.

We don’t know what Dean says to the woman, as we cut back to Sam, coming out of the hospital just in time to have a very convenient vision of a woman, a nursery and a fire. Thankfully, the vision also comes with the useful audio hint of a train passing by, so Sam gets out his map and starts checking where that could be, which leads him to the house in his vision.

And by this point, we know we’re in the right track and this is an important Myth Arc episode, because Sam only has multiple visions in Myth Arc episodes, and he has one the moment he steps in front of the house in said vision. The gods of convenience smile upon him as right then and there a woman pushing a pram comes by, and he manages to talk to her, all friendly like by pretending to having just moved. Then Sam learns the woman’s name is Monica, her baby is Rosie, and Rosie is just six months old, exactly to the day.

Also, that she’s a very quiet baby and that it sometimes seems as if she was reading your mind. Oh, and that Monica really is blind to suspicious men asking her about her family with a face that reads “Oh shit, this is bad”.

Now, HERE is where the whole “five year myth arc” story falls completely. I mean, we already knew it was pretty unlikely it was real, given Kirkpe’s original interviews, but the mere existence of Rosie contradicts every single future story beat. Because if SHE has powers before Azazael goes into her house, then it means that the babies he was hunting didn’t get powers because of him, just that his blood either connected them (hence Sam’s very specific visions), made said powers far more powerful (quite likely), or made them a little bit more prone to violence/prideful behavior. All of those possibilities match with the plan of “raising” a new King or Queen of Hell, that would be faithful to Azazael, but are a bit iffy on the “finding Lucifer’s vessel” thing. Especially since we later learn that the Angels were also helping, and all Hell knew that Lucifer’s vessel HAD to come from the Winchester/Campbell bloodline due to Cain and Abel being the roots of said bloodline, and later pretty much everyone knew Sam was Lucifer’s vessel so the whole targeting a ton of kids, in particular after Mary’s death, is kinda weird.

Oh, Lux, you will say, it is because he wanted to hide his true intentions! No one knew that Sam had been feed demon blood!

Except that the important parties, namely Heaven and Hell, did. Michael had Heaven convinced of his orders, so even if a rogue angel found out that they were speed running the Apocalypse, said angel could be killed. And any demon who was against getting Lucifer back on top would be smart enough to keep quiet so, why the secrecy?

And again, ok, I buy the original demon blood kids being important to “hide” Lucifer’s vessel but… Rosie? What good would it do to Azazael’s plan to have a psychic 4 year old when Lucifer rose? Was “little four year old girl” a good match against a grown up hunter? What was Azazel thinking, if that was the plan all the time?

Now, I want to make clear this doesn’t make THIS episode or the Season-myth arc bad. This original “Boy King of Hell” storyline WAS good. It had a lot of potential, made sense for Sam and since it was before the days of the eternal “What is wrong with Sam?” seasons, there was no boredom of a repeat. It also set a very good question of what made a monster a monster, which would be explored a bit more in Season 2. And it was long before we realized Dean having a myth arc was a pipe dream, so there was no issue there either. It made sense.

But the fact that the writers kind of forgot about everything I just pointed out with Rosie’s scene to try and weld this to the “Heaven vs. Hell” storyline in season 4, and then just promptly forgot because Sam’s powers were then firmly connected to Azazael’s blood so they never came up again and even worse, we never find another psychic kid that could’ve been feed blood by Azazael THIS year that John was chasing him? (Since we know there were no other survivors from Sam’s generation, and later we have a scene that proves that there were no previous generations to Sam’s), it's kind of weird. Personally, I dunno about you, but maybe a return to this storyline in season 6 would’ve been a lot better than we got. Maybe.

By the way, I am not counting the Boy King of Hell story arc as a dropped plot for Sam yet, as we’re going to keep with this at least until season 3. Yes, now we know it didn’t go anywhere, but at the time, and for these episodes in particular, it was THE myth arc of Supernatural. So it can’t be counted as dropped plot yet.

In any case, Sam goes and tells John and Dean about his vision and… oh, boy do we have to move John’s reaction to Emotional Violence.

It’s not good.

But before he can do more damage to Dean’s psyche, Sam gets a call from our favorite demon, Meg. Even if he doesn’t recognize her voice immediately which is weird because a) he did throw her off a window and one would think that makes a girl memorable, and b) it’s not as he knows that many girls who would call him, despite Dean’s best efforts to get him a new girl.

Meg dismisses Sam and asks for John. She makes clear that she is not playing, that she knows he has the Colt and that he will kill every single person who has ever helped John unless he gives it to her that same day at midnight. And to the brothers’ surprise, John accepts those terms (Unfortunately not before we loss Caleb too. I have a lot less interest in Caleb as a character given that he has exactly half a line in the whole show, but it’s still it’s sad to see a guy so defiant even in the face of death go so soon).

Meg also points out that John having the Colt is a “declaration of war” which is interesting as it sort of implies that if he hadn’t gotten it, then the demons would leave him and the brothers alone. And I find that incredibly funny since… no they won’t. And Azazael would’ve been ok if Sam kept the gun anyway, given why they really wanted and once again I am putting holes on the idea that this was planned from the start, aren’t I?

In any case, John declares that Meg is a demon “or is possessed by one” which… ok? First and only time we get the possibility of a demon not using a meat suit. I don’t think this is a mistake, because after all, this is back before the guys faced demons in a normal basis so they could believe that they had their own bodies besides the ones they possessed (And, more importantly, before there was a retcon that made the brothers face and know about demons since pretty much ever). To be completely fair, as much as I love Jimmy and the whole Lucifer arc once it started to make sense… I would’ve been ok if vessels weren’t needed. It added a lot of complications and ended up making the brothers actual serial killers.

Ahem.

After that little gem of wisdom that will be ignored forever, John declares that he will be taking the gun to Meg to avoid more killing and we get another questionable line for Sam. And I am curious as to how to tally it as it’s the opposite of him wanting to leave the hunt, but it’s not that nice either:

DEAN What do we do?

JOHN I'm going to Lincoln. DEAN What? JOHN It doesn't look lilke we have a choice. If I don't go, a lot of people die, our friends die.

SAM Dad, the demon is coming tonight. For Monica and her family. That gun is all we got, you can't just hand it over.

I mean, yes, it is true that the demon is coming for Monica (Well, actually, he’s coming for Rosie, the baby, but I will let that slip pass. Sam is not interested in married ladies), and that with the gun they can kill the demon but it’s not all they’ve got. By this time, Sam has already had his big hero moment when he exorcised a plane in free fall so they could do that, then chase the demon again and then kill it.

But what is jarring is how he hears “a lot of people die, OUR FRIENDS die” and he goes “yeah, whatever, we have a mission to fulfill”.

Which is precisely what later episodes will tell us John used to do, and was the reason why John was not exactly liked by the general hunter population. And at the same time, it’s an eerie reminder of Wendigo, where Sam is willing to let innocents die (his family friends, in this particular case, just as he heard Caleb choke on his own blood) in order to get his way (revenge on the demon that killed Jess. NOT revenge on the demon that killed his mom, since at this point, Sam is still on the “I never knew that woman” train of thought).

Sure, his mind is in the hunt, and that’s commendable because yes, in the long run, killing Azazael would save more innocents (And probably stop the Apocalypse, not that Sam or the writers at that time know it), but it is still strange to see our nominal hero simply not care for his friends’ lives. I mean, at this point WE don’t know about Bobby, so the closest to a parental figure that is not John that Sam had was Pastor Jim and he just DIED.

Worst part is, this could be solved really easy: Just have DEAN be the one who voices the complaint, and have “empathic” Sam mumble that there has to be a way to save everyone (Which, of course, John will mention in a second). It would make Dean look bad, sure, but we’ve been told once and again that Dean never, EVER goes against John plans. Which… not true, ut we will talk about that later. The scene continues, and John declares that he will go to Meg alone, with a fake Colt and while Dean thinks that that won’t work, Sam has a different complaint:

DEAN Yeah but for how long? What happens when she figures it out?

JOHN I just...I just need to buy a few hours, that's all.

SAM You mean for Dean and me. You want us to stay here, and kill this demon by ourselves?

JOHN No Sam. I want to stop losing people we love. I want you to go to school, I want Dean to have a home. I want....I want Mary alive. It's just....I just want this to be over.

And oh, boy. Do this four lines again hold so much weight.

First, once again, Dean seems to be worried for John (logically, he’s their dad), while Sam is making the weirdest line in the universe sort of work because he’s complaining that John is trusting them to kill the demon, something HE wants to do and not four seconds ago was saying they had to do, as if it was John shifting HIS job to Sam. Seriously, I don’t want to think the worst of Sam but when you take out Jared’s acting, the text doesn’t do the younger Winchester’s any favors.

And finally… John’s lines that encompass pretty much Dean’s philosophy in the following seasons. “I want to stop losing people we love” is pretty telling, but what comes next? He actually WANTS Sam to go back to college and not worry about the Supernatural. He actively agrees that Dean doesn’t have a home, and WANTS Dean to have one. It’s as close as love as we’ll see from John to Dean in Season 1, and it hurts. It hurts because we can tell he knows he won’t be there to see it… and now, in hindsight with the finale having aired, we also know Dean didn’t get that. (And to be fair, this is the John who did deserve Heaven. Not the flanderized version we’d get in the future)

Although, ironically, Mary got to be alive again, so… One out of three?

(No, seriously, it’s obvious the writers didn’t even remember this speech when Season 12 hit, much less Season 15)

Ahem.

Dean is sent to get a fake Colt, while Sam and John wait for him. If they talked about anything, we don’t know, but when they exchange guns, Dean voices what we all know is true:

DEAN You know this is a trap don't you. That's why Meg wants you to come alone?

JOHN I can handle her. I got a whole arsenal loaded. Holy water, Mandaic, amulets...

DEAN Dad... JOHN What? DEAN Promise me something. JOHN What's that. DEAN This thing goes south just...get the hell out. Don't get yourself killed all right, you're no good to us dead. JOHN Same goes for you. (There is a long pause) All right listen to me. They made the bullets special for this colt. There's only four of them left. Without them this gun is useless. You make every shot count.

SAM Yes sir.

JOHN Been waiting a long time for this fight. Now it's here I'm not gonna be in it. It's up to you boys now. It's your fight, you finish this. You finish what I started. Understand?

 Again, I wish they remembered all they had to get rid of demons before, you know, killing everyone willy-nilly. I mean, I don’t even think I know what Mandalac IS but hey, John says it works, it works. And once more, Dean gets a line that makes clear he is the empathic, loving brother, when it wouldn’t have hurt Sam to say it. In fact, it would make clear that no matter what, he doesn’t hate John. But nope, Sam only acts like the soldier we’re TOLD Dean is, while Dean makes clear that for him, family is more important than revenge (And boy will that come to bite him in the ass later, not in the series, but in this same episode).

Also, I have to admit. When I started this rewatch, John’s final line was just a good moment for John to start letting go of his anger. Now? After that horrid finale? It hurts so, so much. But it hurts more because I KNOW that there’s no way it was intentional. Obviously, Kirkpe didn’t know the series would last 15 years, and I highly doubt Dabb remembered this scene when writing 15x20. But even so, it ends up being Dean’s epitaph. OUCH.

In any case, the Winchester separate again, and we go into act three. Get ready for the feels.

John Winchester hunting alone is a thing of beauty. Seeing him scope the place, check the water tank and immediately think of a plan? Makes me wish Jeffrey Dean Morgan had stayed longer on the show. Sure, John became an asshole, but in this episode he’s still not that bad, we still have no episodes that make clear he didn’t care for Dean, and wasn’t textually abusive. And I am willing to bet that if JDM had stayed, John would’ve evolved more to be a Bobby-like character. But well, What ifs is not why you came to this meta for.

As John is hunting, the brothers are staking out the house were they know Azazael will attack. And while they talk and decide that they have no way to get the family out (In a nice callback to how none of their excuses ever work) we get to this little gem of an exchange:

SAM I wonder how Dad's doing.

DEAN I'd feel a lot better if we were there backing him up.

SAM I'd feel a lot better if he were here backing us up.

Where once again we see where the brother’s priorities lie, and I wonder why the hell the writers ever thought they were writing Sam as an empathic character.

Because yes, Dean is wishing he could be out there helping his Dad, proving that for him, it has always been about the family. Not the hunting, but the protecting. But Sam doesn’t want to protect John. He wants John protecting Them. And helping them in the revenge hunt, not trying to save others.

Sure, we know the brothers are there to save an innocent mother, but John is also saving a ton of hunters and people who, in the past, were nice and open to the family. And it would’ve been so much easier to make Sam look better if he instead had said “I’d feel a lot better if we hadn’t had to separate” or something like that, that proved he saw BOTH missions were important.

Seriously, I do wonder why the writers made these choices, and I wish someone had asked this at cons.

We go back to John, who, really, Is an amazing hunter even if he is a horrible father. Also, I wonder if he got ordained at a web church, in order to be able to sanctify water. That would be such a John Winchester thing to do, and I do wonder why the boys never did it too. ANYWAY, he hands the gun to Meg, and to her ally that came so that we could have a scene to prove the Colt is fake as the ally shoots Meg.

As John says, Meg was lucky the gun was fake. And once again, I do wonder what the plan was if it WAS the Colt. I mean, Meg was Azazael’s second in command. Why would nameless demon risk killing her? Or did he kinow the gun was fake?

In any case, this makes the moment where we can be 100% sure that Meg’s meat suit 1.0 was dead. I mean, she could’ve survived the fall in Shadow, but a bullet to the chest? No way.

We go back to the brothers, and Sam breaks every single law of a procedural show by giving this great speech about how thankful he is to Dean for everything, and how he needs to say that “in case” something happened.

Dean is definitely not impressed and reminds him that the only one dying today is Azazael.

As we see John temporarily escape from Meg and her muscle boy, we go back to the brothers who see the demon omens start up so they get ready for the final fight.

The brothers manage to save Monica and her baby, despite the very understandable interference from Hubbard, the husband (I mean, you would not react nicely to two strangers intruding in your house and yelling to your wife to not go into the nursery room), however, before Sam can shoot Azazel, he disappears into smoke (A really interesting question here is, WHY did Sam wait to shoot and then wasted a bullet, but I digress).

Going completely against M.O, Azazael makes the CRIB burst into flames, but fortunately Dean has already gotten Rosie out of it so the brothers escape the flaming house. While Monica cries her thanks, Sam notices that Azazael is still inside, and tries to go after him, but Dean stops him because he is not going to lose his brother to the fire. By the way, I am not counting “Dean stopping Sam from going into a burning building” as “Dean forcing Sam to do something” since, uh, he was saving Sam’s life and it’s something anyone in Dean’s place would’ve done.

At the same time, we see John getting captured by Meg and her muscle boy because he didn’t think about getting a third escape route (But honestly? That was pretty much a plot necessity. John was HEAVILY prepared for that fight)

Back in the hotel, Dean is worried that John is not answering his calls, while Sam is furious that Dean didn’t let him kill himself by running into a burning house. They have a nasty fight that mirrors the one they had back in the pilot, but since it IS a fight between the brothers, you know the drill. We’re examining it under Violence.

Once Sam calms down, he tells Dean to try calling John again. Unfortunately, it’s Meg who answers and she tells Dean that they’re never seeing their dad again.

And we get the first “To be continued” for the series (Which to be honest, despite all the little continuity mistakes I mentioned here? Is still pretty epic)

Violence

Well, we had to run out of episodes where the brothers don’t fight each other at some point, didn’t we?

This fight, over Sam wanting to kill himself in his search for revenge, is a very neat parallel to the fight they had back in the Pilot, over Sam NOT wanting to even involve himself in the family’s search for revenge. Which I know it’s supposed to be ironic and a show of character growth since now Dean is the one saying that revenge is not worth their lives but… it falls a little bit flat because the reason why Sam is so gung-ho in killing Azazael is, once again, a very selfish one and the way in he expresses it makes it quite clear. (Again, I do wonder if the writers stopped to think about the implications of Sam only getting really into hunting when it was about him or his losses?)

But let’s start at the beginning:

SAM If you had just let me go in there, I coulda ended all this.

DEAN Sam, the only thing you would have ended was your life.

SAM You don't know that.

DEAN So what, you're just willing to sacrifice yourself, is that it?

SAM Yeah. Yeah you're damn right I am.

DEAN Well that's not going to happen, not as long as I'm around.

This right here? Is a nice summary of the relationship of the brothers for the whole series. Sam wants to do something stupid, like, say, running into a burning building, Dean is there to stop him before he hurts himself.

Also, let’s make clear the use of first person by Sam. It’s not “We coulda ended this”, as in the family ending the hunt, but “I coulda ended this”. Again, at this point, not something that is a problem, but considering hindsight, we can see how the writers are completely invested in SAM as a sole main character, and write him as such, while Dean is more of the sidekick.

In any case, the argument continues, still not escalating to violence.

SAM What the hell are you talking about Dean, we've been searching for this demon our whole lives. It's the only thing we've ever cared about.

DEAN Sam I wanna waste it. I do. Okay? But it's not worth dying over.

SAM What?

DEAN I mean it. If hunting this demon means getting yourself killed then I hope we never find the damn thing.

Important thing how Sam apparently forgot he left for four (two) years and wanted out of the family business, now that he is angry and into the revenge thing. It’s not “You’ve been searching for this demon your whole life”, which would’ve been correct AND a logical counterargument against Dean. Before this episode, Sam was supposedly the brother who understood that revenge was a way of living, while Dean is the one who was Daddy’s little soldier. But here, when it actually would matter to the narrative, it is as if Sam’s wishes for a normal life are completely forgotten and it’s Dean the one who understands that there’s more to living than revenge (Which, btw, is consistent through the season despite everyone claiming that Dean needs Sam to keep hunting. All season, Dean has been giving Sam outs, telling him it’s ok to quit)

And of course, Dean here proves that Sam is more important to him than revenge for his mother, as he is willing to never get to kill the demon as long as his family, his brother in particular, survives.

Poor Dean.

SAM That thing killed Jess. That thing killed Mom.

DEAN You said yourself once, that no matter what we do, they're gone, and they're never coming back.

SAM Don't you say that, not you! Not after all this don't you say that.

DEAN Sam look. The three of us...that's all we have...and it's all I have. Sometimes I feel like I'm barely holding it together man...and without you or Dad....

Unfortunately, script doesn’t quiet convey the scene as there’s a LONG pause between “That thing killed Jess” and “That thing killed Mom”. Enough so that we can believe that Sam is using that second phrase not because he cares (in the Pilot he made clear he didn’t), but to make Dean get on board with the whole “I can kill myself if it means getting revenge” plan. In other words, once again, Sam is weaponizing Mary against Dean, and that is a really nasty habit the younger Winchester never quite shakes out of. Instead, Dean shows how he LISTENED to Sam back in the Pilot and repeats Sam’s words to him on the bridge.

Which is when Sam loses it and pushes Dean against a wall, Dean not defending himself at all, and yells that Dean has no right to say what Sam told Dean the very first hunt they had together after years of separation.

And of course, once Dean mentions their father, Sam starts calming down. NOT when Dean says that he’s barely holding it together, or that he only has them.   Just when he mentions their father who is, in Sam’s mind, the one who can help him get revenge.

The fight ends, but Sam never once apologizes for what he said to Dean, nor for the fight. Which, by the way, contradicts his claim that Dean “always has his back”.

Emotional Violence

Whenever we have John on an episode, we’re going to have to talk about emotional violence and I kind of hate that because on one hand, I get how John could’ve been a very tragic figure that loved his sons but still wanted to avenge his wife, and not being the abusive bastard we know and don’t love that much.

When Sam and Dean explain about Sam’s visions, and how they started as nightmares but have grown in intensity, his reaction is quite subdued, but clear. He is not happy, but the problem isn’t the visions –for a man obsessed with the supernatural, his outward reaction to his younger son being a psychic is quite calm- but that they didn’t inform him of what was going on:

JOHN All right. When were you going to tell me about this?

DEAN We didn't know what it meant.

JOHN All right, something like this starts happening to your brother, you pick up the phone and you call me.

DEAN dumps the coffee jug and cup back on the counter and strides toward JOHN.

DEAN Call you? Are you kidding me? Dad I called you from Lawrence all right? Sam called you when I was dying. I mean, getting you on the phone? I got a better chance of winning the lottery.

JOHN You're right. Although I'm not too crazy about this new tone of yours, you're right. I'm sorry.

And let’s be clear, John’s anger is not directed at Sam, it’s directed at Dean. “Something like this starts happening to your brother” is not “Something like this starts happening to either of you”. Which is also a show of how good an actor JOHN is in universe because WE know that he knew. Missouri TOLD him point blank that Sam was powerful and that he could have known that John was around during the Home episode. But here, he acts as if this was news to him when he could ALSO have told them what to expect if that happened. (Mind you, I am assuming that Sera Gamble knew or remembered about Home’s script when writing this and didn’t just forget or was unaware that John was supposed to know)

Now, all season, Sam has been complaining and yelling about how John doesn’t answer their calls, doesn’t seem to care what’s going on with them. So it’d be logical and in character for Sam to say something here. But instead is DEAN, Dad’s little soldier, the one we’ve SEEN obeying John without question finally have enough and talk back to his father with some truths. And it’s VERY interesting that his first complain is not that John didn’t care that Dean almost died, but that he didn’t reply when Dean called from Lawrence. One could almost infer that Dean expected John not to care if Dean died, but was honestly hurt that he didn’t care about a case that could’ve involved MARY.

John, surprisingly, sort of agrees. He does say “I’m sorry”, which makes him the Winchester who is quicker to say those words… but he still manages to make a threat against Dean “I am not too crazy about this NEW tone of yours”.

Making it clear that before? Dean never talked back. And John doesn’t like it when his soldiers talk back.

It makes it hard to believe John ever thought of Dean as his son and makes it very clear why Dean never understood Sam’s confidence that Dean was the favored one.

Speeches and Apologies

I considered not including this particular speech, but then I remembered that Supernatural is ALSO famous for their big emotional speeches, and this is Sam’s first, and also, Dean’s first time listening to someone he cares about give him the “I am saying goodbye because I am going kamikaze” speech and after all the drama in season 15, I guess it’s necessary to do some dissection.

It is important that despite all the things that Sam has done to Dean, the words “I’m sorry” are never uttered here.

SAM Dean...ah...I wanna thank you. DEAN For what? SAM For everything. You've always had my back you know? Even when I couldn't count on anyone I could always count on you. And ah...I don't know I just wanted to let you know, Just in case DEAN Whoa whoa whoa, are you kidding me? SAM What? DEAN Don't say just in case something happens to you. I don't wanna hear that freaking speech man. Nobody's dying tonight. Not us, not that family, nobody. Except that demon. That evil son of a bitch ain't getting any older than tonight, you understand me?

 This is not a bad “freaking speech”. I understand why Dean didn’t want to hear it, because it is like jinxing the mission (And, let’s be honest, it did), but it’s not a bad speech.

Except that, reading it again, it lacks one important part. Sure, Sam thanks Dean for always being there (Forgetting that, at least three times this season alone, he has accused Dean of not having his back and being unreliable. Which will ALSO be a constant theme in the series’s long run), but he never mentions the times HE did things that would be hard to back up. Which, again, I am not counting as a bad thing against him in this precise moment in time, since he is young, in his roaring roadtrip of revenge, and we’ve only know the brothers for a year, but it is the beginning of a series’ long crutch to make us forgive all of Sam’s sins without him actually doing the work to be forgiven.

On the other hand, it all goes to waste a bit later when Sam starts hitting Dean for the horrible sin of not letting him run into a burning building and kill himself so… it’s not really a “thank you for having my back” speech but a “You better remember, you never fight me and my choices are the best” speech in hindsight. Which… not good on Sam, no.

Double narrative standards

This episode is kind of balanced, except for that little moment where we’re supposed to think Dean is wrong for telling Sam that revenge is not worth their lives. So there’s not much to write in this particular segment.

Final Tally

Ok, back in the saddle. And after all that, I decided not to tally Sam’s little slip about not caring if their loved ones die as long as he gets to kill Azazael. Let me know if you disagree.

The count is still not good on Sam’s side, but as always, you are free to disagree with me, and dm me if you think I missed a tally or I should change one. If your argument is solid and canon based, I will listen to it and may change the numbers.

Numbers (or the TL;DR summary)

(Episode/Total so far)

Times Dean has lied to Sam or to a loved one: 0 / 0

Times Sam has lied to Dean or to a loved one: 0 / 3

Times Dean has been caught in a lie: 0 / 0

Times Sam has been caught in a lie: 0 / 1

Times Dean has hit Sam in anger: 0 / 1

Times Sam has hit Dean in anger: 1 / 4

Times Dean's lies or secrets have caused someone's death: 0 / 0

Times Sam's lies or secrets have caused someone's death: 0 / 1

Times Dean has abandoned (Or wanted to abandon) a hunt in the middle for his own needs: 0 / 0

Times Sam has abandoned (Or wanted to abandon) a hunt in the middle for his own needs: 0 / 7

Times Dean forced Sam to do something: 0 / 0

Times Sam forced Dean to do something: 0 / 7

Secrets kept by Dean: 0 / 1

Secrets kept by Sam: 0 / 2

Times Dean has blamed Sam for something: 0 / 0

Times Sam has blamed Dean for something: 1 / 4

Times Dean has apologized with words to Sam: 0 / 3

Times Sam has apologized with words to Dean: 0 / 2

Times Dean has respected Sam's boundaries and/or rules: 0 / 7

Times Sam has respected Dean's boundaries and/or rules: 0 / 0

Times Dean hasn't respected Sam's boundaries and/or rules: 0 / 0

Times Sam hasn't respected Dean's boundaries and / or rules: 0 / 13

Times Dean has made fun of something Sam does or has: 0 / 6

Times Sam has made fun of something Dean does or has: 0 / 31

Times we focus on Dean's needs: 0 / 1

Times we focus on Sam's needs: 1 / 6

Arc episodes dedicated to Sam: 1 / 7

Filler episodes dedicated to Sam: 0 / 6

Arc episodes dedicated to Dean: 0 / 0

Filler episodes dedicated to Dean: 0 / 4

Arc episodes dedicated to both brothers (or to none): 0 / 2

Filler episodes dedicated to both brothers (or to none): 0 / 2

Dean's Dropped Plotlines: 0 / 1

Sam's Dropped Plotlines: 0 / 2