#because i do not keep my stories anywhere else except my brain

[strooples]

Slice-of-life stories

SOL stories or other genres (but with elements of SOL/a SOL feel at times) tend to be my favorite thing to experiment with when coming up with a lot of my stories. Whether they’re upbeat or depressive, more adventurous or more day-to-day realism etc.

So I thought about some of the story ideas I have plans to make one day or just like to think up! I have basically a billion different story ideas and more OC’s than I could count (IDK if I’ll ever post/talk about them here one day?? might have to do something separate there). Some of which have been planned for years — though never written down.

Off the top of my head we have:

A small story revolving around 3 young adult friends who live together in the top floors of a flower shop. The shop is located in the city center of a big city, where usage of public transport is common. The main character being a girl named Juniper, who gets taken in by 2 roommate friends named Pandora (whose family owns the flower shop) and Ainsley when Juniper’s family kicks her out. The story is just a series of the 3 helping Juniper navigate her first few years as an adult, Juniper playing catch up from not being able to learn how to do a lot of things under her parents’ care, as they all explore the city together.

A comic I have in one of my old sketchbooks from 2019 about a girl who does art but is the struggling-to-stay-motivated type (LOL, I guess this is relatable) and works at a sandwich shop. Basically just some small tidbits of her trying to find her place in the world as she introspects through her job, place in the world, future, and self-comparisons. Some goofy scenes happen too, like bumping into old high school classmates at her job or meeting an artist she’s both admired/compared herself to and becoming good friends in an ironic-kinda way.

Another comic idea of a girl who works in a tea shop but has a gigantic pink pterodactyl friend… it’s supposed to be random and on the humorous side here (but I suck with writing humor sometimes, so I’m figuring this one out). The pterodactyl basically gets the tea shop worker girl out of a ton of hijinks in their crazy/chaotic city, where some new customers or a new recently-hired worker tend to draw strings of crazy events that pile up into some more surrealist randomness. *TBH I sort of like having characters in service jobs of big city environments ((not necessarily food or drink places; it could be something random like a librarian bc of the observations they can make of a diverse range of people)).

Some series of short stories of a happy family I wanted to get down. Exploring a 3-generational household that includes: The grandparents, their daughter (the mom) and her husband (the dad) who marries into the family, their 2 kids, 1 of the kid’s friends who stops by often (as their household becomes like a 2nd home to him), and a single mom + her child residing in their extra room — a friend of the 1st mom and whose kid has been friends with the siblings for most of their life. They’re kind people who help others (which explains why the single mom + the siblings’ friend is integral to their family as one of their own), and everyone looks out for each other. TBH, this is probably a story intended to stay happy + wholesome since it’s a bit of an escapism to see everyone have such a happy place together, no one abandoned or left behind. So my intention was to create stories that abound. Like how the quieter sibling has always struggled to fit in at school, the parents’ past love story, the 1st mom’s childhood as the only child, the single mother and her daughter’s story (+ their previous struggles with a living situation), the friend who comes by often and his feelings, how the grandparents are coping in old (etc etc). I guess I also love weaving stories by understanding people in layers, remembering real life people I’ve interacted with, and trying to understand and envision those characters’ lives similarly.

I have one more that’s kind of a nod to Gary Paulson’s “Paintings from the Cave: Three Novellas” — a book I read in schooling that’s stuck with me for a long time. So basically, it’s 3 separate stories in the same book with a common theme: How the companionship of dogs and art have helped characters cope in difficult times. The first story being a kid who copes with a hopeless life by ceramics, the second a girl who never belonged at home or in school by the friendship of dogs, and the last, a guy whose hope in life is both drawing and dogs.

My own idea was generally theming it around sleep problems that pour into your life, and how kids similarly cope with cats and art. But like “Paintings from the Cave,” it’ll still have a bit of a depressive/somber undertone.

So you get sleep issues like:

Insomnia due to anxiety + trauma for the main character of the first story, whose semi-nocturnal cats and sketchbook keeps them company in the moments awake before dawn. I haven’t planned this part out a lot.

Narcolepsy, as a medical condition that screws with a girl’s life (cause community college + work always sucks if you get sleepy in the day but are utterly unable to sleep at night). Because of her situation, she’s almost flunked a few times and a lot of her employers sadly had to let her go. So she decides to use her imbalanced sleep cycle to volunteer at a local shelter that needs night volunteers — where friendly cats help her regain a sense of confidence. You can’t fail at cats or get rejected from them like in a work environment — so long as they’re given space, care, food, and adequate shelter. So their lack of judgment soothes her in such a way.

Being a self-taught lucid dreamer who often uses sleep to escape reality. That leads to their hospitalization later on. But after being let go, they’re guided by a social worker who’s now organized to come by + help plan their life. They decide one day to use some of their dreams’ events and adventures as the springboard to draw out stories. I guess in a way, using art as a new coping mechanism and way to experience joy while awake.

There was a last story I made for a project in my last year of high school that’s also primarily late night-based and involves a sleepless protagonist (IK this is kind of a running thread — unintentional here). I haven’t really taken it seriously or planned in-depth, but it’s also one that crossed my mind ever so often. The plot basically goes:

A young adult lady works as a translator whose job is to travel between countries to work on translation projects. Her company of employment has bases in tons of different countries that work to transcribe anything from newspapers, books, or subtitles on screen. They have different departments for stable work vs. freelancing, and she’s somewhat 50/50 an office worker and a freelancer (tho the freelancery bits take her all over). She’s fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and English — partaking a project that requires her Mandarin + Cantonese skills. But upon the journey, she meets someone who eventually shakes up her quiet, lonely life between countries.

All in all, each of these stories takes the day-to-day situations and pacing. SOL is sorta what I use as a tool to explore different people’s life situations or see through different lenses for a day. Every now and then, I get ideas for new SOL-themed stories but it’s mainly these in my mind right now. I have many that aren’t in this genre though… but explaining my magic-fantasy-adventure-worldbuildy stories will take forever in comparison lolol.

Maybe one of these days, I can motivate myself to act upon my ideas?

[systlin]

So, to explain my little adventure I just got back from, it is necessary to set the scene by explaining a few things.

My dog is a Great Pyraneese. She weighs 90 Pounds. It is mostly muscle.

My neighbors a quarter mile down the road have chickens. They like to let them free range.

Now, this is not a problem at all, EXCEPT for the fact that whenever Tyr sees them something deep in her little livestock guardian breed brain goes "Oh, I am supposed to be Responsible for this Livestock." She will attempt to plonk her 90 pound furry ass down as far towards their yard as her leash will permit and want to sit there and simply stare at the chickens. She is not aggressive towards them, she simply wants to lie down and Keep An Eye On Things, the way a good livestock guardian dog is supposed to. It is the same reason she would love to fight the foxes that live under the falling down farmhouse down the street to the death and is very upset that I will not let her.

The PROBLEM is, well

3. My neighbors also have a miniature poodle. She is convinced, in every cell of her 15 pound body, that No Other Dogs Should Come Anywhere Near Her Fucking Yard. She has no concept that Tyr outweighs her by 75 pounds and is absolutely convinced that she could win this fight.

Normally if she's outside she is out in the fenced backyard and this isn't a problem. I also don't let Tyr wander into other yards, because it's rude to let your dog pee on the neighbor's grass unless they've said they're fine with it and also I live in Fuckass Nowhere. There's plenty of county owned grass on the roadside for Tyr to pee on. Still, even if I'm coaxing her along past the chickens, she will want to slow down and drift over to that side of the road to look at them.

TODAY, however, the mini poodle was NOT in the backyard. She was in the unfenced front yard, and as soon as we walked past she saw another dog not ON her yard, but heading TOWARDS her yard, and she hurled herself into battle with no thought for her own safety.

Now, Tyr is not aggressive towards other dogs. There is an exception to this, though, and it is 'unless an off leash dog comes running full speed in the general direction of one of Her People while snarling and barking'. If this happens, I suddenly have 90 pounds of Great Pyr ready for mortal combat on the end of the leash.

This brings us to item 4

4. I broke my left arm in April and while it is healing and good for light use now, 'Light Use' does not include 'restraining 90 pounds of furious livestock guardian dog convinced her person is about to be attacked by a reactive dog'

This means that I looped up the leash short and controlled her one armed. I did not think about this twice particularly. I know I can do it and just. Did it. I wouldn't walk her if I couldn't control her, after all. Once she figured out that no, the poodle was NOT going to attack me, she calmed down, but was still growling.

But I did this as a panicked neighbor dude came running out to try and get his dog, convinced that his kids were about to watch their beloved pet get turned into Great Pyr chow.

Oh and

5. I did this while wearing a Wonder Woman tshirt

So, long story short, his 4 year old daughter is convinced now that I actually AM Wonder Woman, because "She's Strong Like Wonder Woman!" and my neighbor learned that his poodle dug out from under the fence, how's everyone else's days going.

(All dogs unhurt)

[wayfayrr]

Ohhhh! I really like the people pleaser idea, especially as someone who has been called out as a people pleaser before...

Something that comes to my mind is the people pleasing coming from not just the need for approval but also for survival. Like, there's being 'fight' or 'flight' responses, there's also 'fawn': pleasing and appeasing the needs of someone else in order to avoid conflict and to establish a sense of safety.

<3<3<3

You pulled an accidental isekai and landed into Hyrule with nothing but the clothes on your back and maybe a few personal items.

You don't know where you are. You don't know who or what snagged you away, except for that, it had red eyes and that it might come back to tie loose ends. It'll come back to finish you off in a place that wasn't home.

You'll eventually find a group of men. Maybe you had eventually pass out, and they found your body? Maybe you happened to accidently stumble upon them, immediatly tense at the sight of their weapons.

When your story is spilled through shallow breaths, being pulled from your home because of a red-eyed beast, you’re met with quiet speculation and suspicion. Because Why — why were you taken in the first place? You weren't someone that had faced enemies born from hatred, nor did you have the hero's spirit; could you even be considered a threat with how you intentionally made yourself small in their prescence. Too afraid to take up an ounce space. Too afraid to do something that'll be considered out of line, something that could leave you bleeding if you weren’t careful.

It was agreed upon that you would join their group. It's not like you had anywhere to go.

You would struggle trying to keep up with them. You’re not used to so much walking or the monster encounters. (Especially the monster encounters) After a particulary close call that left you in the healing hands of Hyrule, you quickly realized how much you genuinely lacked compared to the others. Not in a self-deprecating way, but in a sense that you are, objectively speaking, dead weight.

You can't fight. You can't strategize. You get tired too easily. It felt humiliating when the literal child could find the courage to hold up his sword while you flinch at your own shadow.

You couldn't do anything without the chain. You couldn't survive without the chain. You’re dead without chain. The only words that fell from your lips was a simple “Thank you” to the traveler. Your wounds were healed but your heart felt heavier than it ever was before. Thankful, you were truly thankful to them for everything.

There was a new found hesitancy in your actions and words. Every sentence was carefully constructed, but your go-to would be silence, sometimes it felt better to not speak — speaking could cause conflict. And you couldn’t afford to cause conflict with the men that are keeping you alive. You also couldn’t afford leeching off of their kindness like a parasite, so you tried to find ways to be useful to them. You have to show them you can be as helpful and useful so there wouldn’t be a need to leave you behind. Try to stay in their good graces, and to make their more happy moods stay a little longer — keep an eye on the slightest change in demeanor, the subtle hints of anger and minimize that immediatly.

You couldn’t afford to lose their approval when they’re the only hand that kept you alive.

Anon holy shit your brain, I love all of this. it's so perfect.

it's so natural for reader to act like that as a defence mechanism too, they don't know the people they're with - or why they seem so intent on letting them travel with them when they're 'useless'. I'd love to see more of your take on it too because the fawn reaction was something I'd overlooked when rambling earlier and 👀👀 it's a good one

[essential-oils234]

Writing 101: Tips and tricks for experienced authors to novice ones, or just a little reading for anyone who wants to learn something new.

Have you ever gotten into a slump where writing feels like a failed career and nothing you write ever seems to turn out well? (I know I have). Maybe you're itching to write something, it's been so long since you've looked at your notebooks of inspiration or google docs of madness. Maybe you just don't know where to start, and it feels like you've failed before you even begun.

Well, I have a few tips that just might remedy that!

(I'm in no way an experienced writer. I've read a lot of books, watched a lot of character analyses on Youtube, but I'm only at the start of my writing journey. So please don't take this to be expert advice and don't feel disheartened if my methods don't work for you. Everyone has a unique style of writing, and it's only through trial-and-error that you can really begin to find yours too.)

So, without further ado, here are some tips and tricks that helped me organize my thoughts and plan out chapters, develop my characters, and resist the call of procrastination.

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"What do I want from this story?"

It's a question that sounds elusively simple, but it's one that's more tricky to answer. For me, at least, it's hard to pinpoint a few ideas that manage to encapsulate what I want the readers to feel or understand from my story. It's even harder when I try to summarize my thoughts into broad themes/ideas, such as love, compassion, hard work, etc.

I usually start a story on the basis of something really small, and then I work out from there. For example, I'm currently working on a Genshin Impact fic that I only started writing after watching an animatic. An animatic. (The link will be at the end of this post, if you guys want to check it out and show some love to the creator.)

A whole freaking story started on the basis of an animatic that is 1 minute and 41 seconds long. It's kinda crazy how that worked out. But in a way, it makes sense. The biggest creations start from small, simple ideas that slowly grow over time.

What I'm trying to say is: don't disregard those silly little ideas that you think don't hold much importance over trying to figure out the big, important plot. Oftentimes, it's those silly little ideas that make up the big important plot. So I'd advise you to turn to a blank page or start a new google doc and write that question at the top. "What do I want from this story?" Your answers could be anything, from little details like "he goes back to his birthplace to confront his family" or more broad ideas like "they have a conversation about loss and how to cope with that". Bullet points or sentences, whatever you choose, this is your dumping ground for all the stupid ideas you have that might not ever make it into your story. The point of the question is to exercise your mind and get it thinking about the main plot, as well as a helpful organization tool for all those scattered thoughts that don't really fit anywhere else.

2. "What if I can't start writing a story because I just don't have any ideas?"

That is a harder question to answer, since writer's block has a multitude of solutions that work for some people and don't for others. My advice is, keep focusing on the small things, since it essentially forces you to start minimally and branch out from there. Inspiration is all over the internet, and those small ideas can help jumpstart your brain into creating something new. If you see a few posts about 'cottagecore' on Pinterest and that inspires you to write a fantasy story about witches, then go for it! If you read a book and want to write something similar, except with a different ending, go ahead! (Except if you're posting it on the internet, please credit the original creator.)

Don't feel guilty for "stealing someone else's idea" or mad at yourself for "not being able to come up with anything original". We all have to start somewhere, and it's okay if what you write isn't completely novel. (That's what fanfiction is for, after all!)

Oftentimes, our brain puts us in a corner where we convince ourselves that we just can't write anything because we don't have any ideas. Maybe that's true, but the thing about writer's block is that you really won't have any ideas unless you start actively thinking about potential plots or characters. Searching up 'writing prompts' on Tumblr will no doubt feed you with a slew of interesting ideas that you can build off from there, and Pinterest is a gold-mine of creativity. The main thing, of course, is to have fun in the process. In the end, the person who you're really writing for is yourself.

3. "Okay, I have a few ideas and plot points, but what about organizing it? How do I go about organizing a multi-chapter story?"

This question is from people who are mainly like me, who like organizing their chapters out before they actually write them. It's good to have a reference point to come back to if you take a writing hiatus, and it's just nice having everything jotted down somewhere I can easily find.

I'm not going to get too specific here, since everyone has their own way of writing notes, but after I have a bunch of main ideas that more or less make up the whole plot, I start narrowing those ideas down into chapters. I have sections of bullet-points for each chapter, which have general ideas that aren't too specific, since I tend to figure out the specifics as I'm writing. (ex. He has a flashback that shows his past before switching back to the present) If you're a person who's pretty gung-ho about these things, you might lean towards the idea of "figuring it out as you go along". If you're super organizational, your chapter notes might go down to the most minute detail before you actually start writing.

I also have a few 'braindump' sections that are pretty much like the "What do I want from this story?" notes, except they're a bit more relevant to the plot instead of just random details and dialogue I want to insert sooner or later. I also have sections where I write about important themes in my story that require further elaboration (ex. the concept of morality, what it means to be human, etc.) It's important to flesh out these ideas beforehand so you have a good idea of how to show these underlying themes in your actual story.

Last but not least, please, please, please flesh out your characters before you start writing a story. It's honestly my least favorite part of writing, but it's incredibly important because your characters are what makes up your story. A good story is known from it's good characters. I, personally, create lists of traits/flaws for my main characters so I can, as a writer, understand them better and know how to show their personalities in writing. I also write lists of attributes before and after they go through ✨character development✨ so I can understand how they've changed and grown and start formulating ideas on how to show that in my writing.

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So, we've reached the end! Yay, that took way too long and I didn't even get to talk about procrastination!!🎉🎉 Hopefully, this will not be the first and last 'Writing 101', since there's plenty more I'd like to talk about and plenty more to learn. If you have any questions or anything you want me to talk about next, don't hesitate to drop a comment or ask me anything! I'll try to answer to the best of my abilities. If you liked this post, please leave a like or a comment. It's really motivating and just feels great to know if people like my content.

(Here's the link to the animatic I mentioned earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REBxGWSMRn4. It's been a huge source of inspiration for my writing and art, and the person who made it is insanely talented. If you're into Genshin Impact or just want to see some good art, go check out their other animations and comment/leave a like!)

I hope your writing journey is nothing short of spectacular and creatively amazing, and I'll see you in the next one!

[firecoloredwater]

Ask meme: 6, 7, 22, 30

...I had the answers 99% done and then my computer froze and I had to restart and lost all of them. So OKAY, TRYING AGAIN

6. Are there any fics from others you reread all the time?

Not really! I wish I did. I am apparently very weird in that a fic (or anything I read) needs to be a certain amount of unfamiliar, or my brain won't engage enough for me to enjoy it. If I've reread something too much then my brain will go 'oh I know what's happening, I don't need to pay attention' and wander off and get distracted. Making myself focus deliberately just means being bored and annoyed. I am also really good at remembering stories (and like nothing else) so I can read a fic twice, maybe three times if it's especially long/complex, before I have to put it down for anywhere from some months to a few years to let myself forget enough details to make it new enough to read again. (For related reasons, I basically never read my own fics for enjoyment. I'll reread to refresh my memory before writing more, or while rereading comments, but I know my own fics too well to really ever approach them as a reader. I might get enjoyment from 'oh I actually pulled that alliteration/foreshadowing/etc off well' but not just from reading the story.)

7. How many ideas for fics do you have right now?

Uhhhhh somewhere in the range of infinite. Depends on how you define ideas for fics? If you mean fics I'm actively working on/hoping to write in the near future, that would be... about 6-8, probably? But if you mean fics I'd like to write even if I don't actually expect to have the chance, that gets up into several dozen immediately. If you include ideas that I haven't specifically thought about how I'd write them, then we're probably into the hundreds. I am an endless font of ideas and it does not turn off.

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

Usually vaguely! But it ranges from 'and then everything is good the end' to like, a two-sentence bullet point of the ending scene(s). I don't plan ahead in much detail, because I do a lot of discovering and adding things as I write, and what I throw in that way will affect later scenes. So if I had a lot of detail planned for the end, I'd just have to replan/rewrite anyway when I got there, and probably be annoyed about losing lines I liked. So it works out better for me and the fic if I keep my plans minimal. There is an exception for very short fics. If I'm writing a fic that's basically just one or two scenes, and the entire momentum of the fic is writing toward the end, then I can know exactly what the end is. But that's fairly rare, partly because I also need to be able to write it all in one shot, and I rarely have that much time.

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.)

.......................well I was going to dump a scene from one of the self insert AUs here, but it turns out two years is enough for me to no longer love the writing in that. So uhhhhhh guess I'll just. Write a new thing real quick!

(@executeness and @denialcity, enjoy)

Every clan has their own way of finding soulmates. Some are more reliable than others, and most are closely guarded. That's never mattered to Takami: the Uchiha's tradition is reliable, so any uncertainty that other clans live with isn't his problem.

He is fifteen and it is the first dawn after the winter solstice. The fire in the center of the Uchiha compound has burned all night, built steadily larger until it roars, and the flames dance as high as his chin.

Takami is not the only fifteen year old with a sharingan, but he is the clan heir, so he goes first. The entire clan sings as the first rays of dawn break through the horizon, and Takamii steps forward, sharingan burning as he shapes chakra and breathes a thin, precise stream of his own fire into the core of the flames.

He's thought before about how it would look, whether he would see his soulmate's form made of ashes and embers swirled within the flame, or if the flames themselves would twist into the right shape for only his eyes, or....

It's clearer than he imagined. As if he's looking through a window, tinted gold and shifting in the breeze, but otherwise the overlapping images are perfectly clear, as if he were looking at reality directly. But there are so many people--the fire shows the watcher's soulmate, but also everything around them, and there are so many overlapping forms. Takami prowls around the fire in a circle, watching the shifts within it, tracking which faces stay in focus.

He can hear. The longer he watches, the more sound grows. It's still thin and distant, but seems to come from deep within his own ears, so even the whole clan singing together can't quite drown out what his soulmates hear. A song, of course, and orders....

There is one flaw in the Uchiha method of identifying soulmates, Taka realizes: it's public.

He finishes a last circle of the fire. The song hasn't faltered despite the time he took, and it continues as he stops, and turns to face his father.

His whole family: Father and mother and four younger brothers, even Kunimi, who drank enough tea to keep anyone else awake for a week and is standing in his proper place with his face screwed up in determination. But Tajima is the clan head, so Takami faces him first.

Tajima's voice is pitched to carry over the song. "Have you seen what you are looking for?"

"I have," Takami says, steady as if this were any ordinary year. "There were a lot of faces, I had to move to be sure which one is mine. We should make people dance, next year."

"Then your soulmate is within the clan?"

Takami grins. "Hako's mine," he announces.

Several voices falter then, and people in the crowd shift, and surprise makes it through even Hako's near-perfect composure.

Takami is the heir, but Hako is beloved, the most beautiful and the most perfect and the most wanted. No one in the clan had even bothered to pretend they were more interested in learning Takami's soulmate now than Hako's next year.

They're not wrong, all those people chasing after Hako's every glance: Hako is the best and they should all be honored to have his sight fall on them. But he's Takami's brother first, and now no one can ever try to interfere.

In the firelight, so subtle than only the sharingan could catch it, Hako relaxes. Beside him, Madara sneaks a thumbs up, and his grin distorts his singing for a few lines.

It's not this easy, Takami knows. They're soulmates, so they won't be separated now, or expected to put anyone else first. But they'll still be expected to have friends and get married, and the whole clan and half their allies will chase Hako for both of those. Some of them will remember that some people have multiple soulmates, and keep hoping for another year that Hako will claim them even though Taka hasn't.

At the same time, it is this simple. Takami and Hako belong together, and no one will ever question it again.

Takami steps away from the fire, and goes to stand beside Hako instead of in his proper place. He takes up the song as the others look for their soulmates: one outside the clan, and one within it.

There are more traditions, more celebration, and Takami goes through them gladly with Hako at his side. Even so, Hako can read him like no one else.

It's late morning before they get even a few seconds out of everyone's sight, but the instant it's possible, Hako has Takami out of sight and hearing.

Out of sight like this, Hako isn't perfect either: his forehead is creased and worry bites in at the corners of his eyes. "Nii-sama, tell me you didn't lie."

"I didn't."

Hako frowns, his forehead creasing more, but it's true. They're soulmates. Takami didn't lie.

"Then," Hako says slowly, "why are you bothered?"

"I saw you." The images are still in Takami's eyes, hovering with sharingan clarity. The whole clan singing around the fire, centered on Hako, posed and perfect. And overlapping, a training field, four boys and a man with a voice Takami knows, barking harsh orders. "I also saw a Senju. Butsuma's son. One we haven't seen on the field yet."

"He has enough sons," Hako says harshly, then catches himself. "What did you think?"

Takami didn't think. He just watched, and knew better than to reveal anything like that. And Hako was right there to smooth things over, as always. "It doesn't matter. He'll probably just die anyway."

"You don't need him anyway," Hako says. "You have me."

"Yeah." Takami grins. "Always."

"Always," Hako promises, even though there's no need to, and then he moves on to batting a wrinkle out of Takami's clothes and herding him back out to the celebrations.

The next year, Hako looks into the fire and sees Takami alone.

Six months after that, Senju Kawarama arrives on the battlefield. He's grown, but Takami still knows that face.

He puts a scar on it.

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 32 and 33 of Harrow the Ninth

I wonder why Augustine keeps accusing Mercy of doing stuff with Cytherea's body. And Ianthe... lol. Since John established that he couldn't detect her body anywhere on the station, why do they all still think it's there somewhere?

I mean, you already did something to you brain to rewrite a large number of your memories, but that isn't exactly what lobotomies used to be used for, back when they were actually being used in psychiatry

You know, there are a (relative) lot of characters in this story who seem to have fertility issues: Magnus and Abigail, Harrow's parents, entire Houses seem to rely at least partly on test tube babies, etc. I guess exposure to lots of thanergy is just not great for reproductive abilities. I remember when I was growing up, I was exposed to all sorts of almost conspiratorial ideas about how ordinary activities would damage my reproductive organs - being in the hot tub for too long, standing in front of the microwave, what have you. There's a large swath of medications that pregnant women just aren't allowed to take because they might interfere somehow with the pregnancy. It's like somehow women's reproductive abilities are still considered so sacred that we literally have wild superstitions about what breaks them. But in this society, they completely embrace a power source that is well-known with documented evidence to cause infertility and just say, that's ok, we can just have babies artificially, no big. What a world

Although unlike Harrow I'm not wondering why Camilla is alive, I am dying to know how she is here. Also curious about what Harrow thinks she recognizes about her, since according to the rewritten memories, Harrow never saw her with her head intact. She must have some residual memory of the actual events if she recognizes Camilla, I think, but maybe isn't consciously aware of it?

That was good of her

The skull is described as being six months old here, and then Harrow later tells Palamedes that he's been dead for eight months. Which is it? Or is her "eight months" based on her false memories, and not on her analysis of the skull? This part of the story is labeled as "two months before the Emperor's murder" which should be seven months after the start of the book, which started not long after the end of Gideon the Ninth. So he should be seven months dead, right?

Is she talking about the message that Gideon relayed to her, or some other, less substantial message?

I'm guessing this was the Cohort that was on board the Erebos? Back at the beginning of the book, it did mention that there were some pieces of remains in Palamedes' coffin, so I guess that's what they did with them?

Right, so here's the actual book's explanation of why they are not attacked by ghosts when they go in the River they way they were when they took the shuttle there

And then we go to Palamedes' dream bubble. No really, the River bubble is just 100% a Homestuck dream bubble, that's exactly what it is. I've literally read a Homestuck fanfic where they are in a dream bubble and get attacked by a monster from Karkat's memory and have to quickly remember something different, this is exactly the same thing, except that I guess no one has actually gone there when they were asleep yet

If Harrow's false memories are taking place in the River as well, I wonder if they are also in a dream bubble?

I see Muir found another use for the name Abella after she decided not to give it to Ianthe. Actually, except for the hair, she does sound not dissimilar to Ianthe

Is this... a book that Palamedes actually read at Canaan House and then re-imagined with perfect accuracy because of his memory abilities, or did it come from somewhere else? Was this one of Cytherea's romance novels?

This is a good point, because Harrow couldn't have predicted that Palamedes would be back after the events of Gideon the Ninth - Gideon told her he had died and didn't tell her what Camilla had said about that, so she would have had no way of knowing there was a contingency plan. I wonder if Palamedes' continued existence is going to interfere with pre-Work Harrow's plans

Is this meant to be a reference back to Dulcinea's bible quote about three strands?

Palamedes is stuck in a dream bubble for eight months with a bad romance novel, so he writes fanfiction of it on the wall to pass the time, I love it, I wonder if someone has taken a stab at writing Palamedes' fanfiction yet

What is her false memory of learning the Lyctor theorems, and her memory of her reaction to that? So far in the false memories we don't have any memories about the challenges or about the theorems, other than the account that Judith was killed doing the Imaging/Response room. So far no one in the memories has discussed Lyctorhood at all. She says "that was always the plan" but she has contempt for her fellow Lyctors for killing their cavaliers, she does seem to feel that it was wrong on some level. I wonder what her false memory of becoming a Lyctor is actually like, and why she says this here. Is she just saying it because she considers Palamedes a stranger now?

Palamedes is like, it's horrific that you did this, but I'm dying to know if it worked. Also, I think he was like this close to using the "wrong" pronoun for the cavalier and maybe causing Harrow some Issues

Makes sense that she wouldn't tell him it didn't quite work (or that she thinks it didn't quite work), though

So I gather Palamedes is going to become a talking skull, that's cool

More darkened corridor metaphor. And a first-person pronoun from the secret narrator who is probably Gideon

[lordisitmine]

TTNBD BLOG PART FIVE

Covers chapters five and six of Though the Night Be Dark

These two chapters were originally supposed to be one, but I split them so I could keep the posting going faster and because the scenes shook out into two neater separate sections. But I’m doing the commentary together because my brain still has them linked.

CHAPTER FIVE: HOMECOMING

Back at it again with the Abberline POV. I started using his perspective for situational observations in TTEOE and got a little addicted to it tbh… I love a good outsider POV. Something about a character who has no idea the true gravity of the situation seeing bits and pieces of the main character’s story- delicious.

Nice day for a funeral. I’ve actually never been to a funeral in the wintertime, but Abberline’s observations about death seeming more natural during the colder months are in line with my own thoughts. When the earth is slumbering, and the trees are feigning death until spring, death itself seems less absurd, if not any less saddening.

I had a ball writing Francis Midford in this scene. As we know, she’s usually very calm, bordering on cold- a level-headed somewhat stern woman who isn’t at all prone to wild displays of emotion. However, all bets are off when one has lost a child. They say it’s the worst kind of grief a person can experience. I think that warrants an outburst or two.

Of course, it’s not Abberline’s fault, what happened to Edward- and Francis knows that too- but anger is natural, of course, and I just like a good shocking slap across the face moment. Too bad it was at Abberline’s expense. He blames himself, even though he shouldn’t, and Francis’s whole freak-out certainly hasn’t helped. Thankfully, Lizzy is much more reasonable. Probably because she knows a little bit more about the situation than her mother does, though she’s not ready to share that information with anyone just yet- except maybe Sybil.

Poor Abberline will have to remain in the dark for a little while longer, it seems.

Back to the boys- coming ‘home’. It’s not really home anymore. I don’t think Ciel ever had a home, at least not one that was a place. He thinks it himself- that Sebastian is more of a home to him than anyone or anywhere or anything else. They’re two halves of a whole.

Sebastian reverting back to butler mode and taking care of everything when he can sense that Ciel is uncomfortable or overwhelmed has been checked off the sebaciel bingo- I have a running mental list of tropes and lines that I want to write for them, and this was one of them.

I’ve read some really great fics where their dynamic is so much more hostile and yet equally as romantic- I might try my hand at it some day. I know the way I write Sebastian and Ciel may seem out of character to some, but I really can’t stop, and I won’t apologise for it! I trust my gut and if I can hear the words in the character’s voice, I’ll write them. I can’t resist the idea that Sebastian is only really capable of genuine love and tenderness when it comes to Ciel and no one else 🥹

Time for my favourite scene in this chapter! It’s Benjamin the paper boy! Have you ever seen Newsies? The Disney musical about newsboys in 1890’s New York? You should, it’s a cute little story about kids unionizing to fight the corporate man and get better pay for their work *insert long rambling talk about socialism and how I love it so much*. ANYWAY, I needed a minor character for plot reasons, and a newsboy seemed like a perfect fit. And it gave me an excuse to write Sebastian and Ciel interacting with a kid, which I love, for some reason.

(source)

I had to learn about how money worked in Victorian England. Well, I didn’t have to, I could have just bullshitted the few lines about them bribing the kid, but I wanted to have a tangible sense of how much money was actually worth and how the pound breaks down into shillings, sovereigns and guineas etc. I hope all the values work out and make sense because Holy Shit is this the most insane way to break down money. It hurt my head just thinking about it. Not to sound American (I’m not even American) but I’ll stick the good old 21st century 100 cent dollar, thank you very much 🤣

More cutesy stuff in the hotel- I’m writing this in April, four months after the chapter was written, and reading it back for the first time in quite a while is fun. I was giggling at my own writing lol. I love these two so much. It’s a problem.

Poor Lizzy!!! Thinking Ciel died for nothing when he didn’t actually die at all. Imagine basing your entire grieving process on a lie. Oof. It’s gonna be one Hell of a shock for her when she finds out she’s spent the last four years operating on false assumptions.

Thankfully, she has Sybil, who has some secrets and false assumptions of her own.

And last but not least, the meeting of the Evil Dudes. These scenes are so hard to write because I don’t want to describe characters too vividly or put names to any of them, it’s like building a model plane or something, you have to be very intentional and delicate about what pieces (words) you use and where you put them. All of writing is like that, to an extent, except for those moments when it flows super smoothly, but even then you have to be deliberate with your editing. Writing is hard work! I love it so much, though.

CHAPTER SIX: DESPERATE TIMES

Let’s talk briefly about Frederick Abberline!

A portrait of Frederick Abberline, 1885. (Wikipedia)

Fredderick Abberline, as you may or may not have known, was a real historical figure! He was born in 1843, which would make him about fifty-seven at the time of TTNBD. That’s not how I picture him at all, of course, because in the Kuroshitsuji anime he’s depicted as a much younger man than he would have been at the time, as he often is in film and television shows.

I choose to keep a slightly aged version of the anime Abberline in mind when writing, but I like to think of him as having some variation of the facial hair that he does in the picture above- such an undeniably Victorian mustache. And I think with his promotion he wouldn’t want people to think of him as being so young, and he has such a little boy face without it 😌😆

Abberline is of course most famous for his work as the lead detective on the Jack the Ripper case, which is why he’s usually featured as a character in television shows/movies about the Ripper. Though the Ripper was never caught, Abberline was known to have many theories in his time on the case, including the idea that the killer might actually be a woman. *side-eyes Madame Red* 👀

The real Fredderick Abberline was married twice in his lifetime- he married his first wife, Martha Mackness, in March of 1868, though she died of tuberculosis two months after the wedding. Then, in 1876, he married Emma Beament. They were married for over fifty years until his death in 1929 at age 86. Emma died three months after he did, and was buried with him at Wimborne Road Cemetery, in Bournemouth, England. They never had any children.

His grave is marked by a headstone erected in 2007, and I think it’d be neat to visit his grave some day, if I ever get the chance to go to the United Kingdom (it’s at the top of my list of places I want to go).

I’ve referenced Abberline’s personal life a couple of times- he mentioned Emma in his diary entry back in chapter one, and it’s walked about how he likes to spend mornings with her on the weekend. Obviously, not much is known about the details of the real man’s personal relationships, but I like to think he and his wife loved each other very much, because there’s no evidence to the contrary and it hurts no one for me to believe that. Abberline works hard and he’s a good guy, he deserves happiness.

Quite rude, then, for someone to make him get up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday to solve a murder. Even worse, Alois and Claude are here! So we get some more wonderful outsider observations from Abberline, and he of course can’t help but compare their dynamic to Ciel and Sebastian’s, which means I get to vicariously get to wax poetic about my thoughts on the matter.

Meanwhile, Sebastian and Ciel are perched on a rooftop, quite literally eavesdropping. Imagine their surprise when a young lord shows up- with his demon butler in tow.

Ciel: That bitch stole our look!

Sebastian: We wore it better.

😂😆

Unfortunately, Ciel decided he was going to follow Claude and Alois around- but he isn’t as good at staying hidden as Sebastian is- he doesn’t have the experience, and I personally think he doesn’t have the same affinity with the shadows that Sebastian does- so Claude catches his scent rather quickly.

And Claude is a thirsty hoe. It makes my skin crawl, writing the things he thinks about Ciel. But that will make his inevitable demise all the more satisfying, I hope. I took his obsession with Ciel straight from the anime and just cranked it up to ten. I don’t know if everyone reading this story has seen season two- I know a lot of people don’t like the liberties it took with canon. Alois and Claude are characters completely made for the anime, and I think that makes them perfect to muck around with. There’s so much less established canon for them, I can just chop and screw and remix it however I want. It’s a fic writer’s dream.

After finishing To the End of Everything, and describing Ciel’s grave, I realised that as a member of the nobility, it’s more likely he would have been buried in a mausoleum, a stone building with niches in the walls for the caskets of the dead, where members of one family are interred. But I had the idea for Ciel’s tombstone and the engraving on it from the time I first decided to write TTEOE, so I wouldn’t change it even if I could.

And maybe an in-universe reason for it was that Ciel had decided to do things differently, maybe putting in his will for him to be buried like that was a final act of rebellion. And in the end, there was no body there anyway. Humans and they death rituals, putting markers on empty graves. I find it fascinating.

Changing topics: one thing that I hade to get used to was Sebastian calling Ciel by his first name. you’ll notice he doesn’t do it super often. He can’t call Ciel my lord or sir anymore. I mean he could, but that would be worse in my mind. He’s not really Ciel’s servant anymore. But I have Sebastian use Ciel’s name sparingly. Partially because it still feels a little weird and because I find it WAY more likely that Sebastian would be hitting Ciel with the terms of endearment, which you’ll notice I have him to constantly. A: because he loves Ciel and is stupid about it and B: because even though Ciel is used to it, and even likes it, it probably does still annoy him Just A Little, and that’s also too tempting for Sebastian to pass up.

Sebastian is no stranger to committing crimes in service of Ciel’s investigations- now he’s going around stealing records from the government, which is probably the least of his illegal actions. The Public Record Office is a real place, and in 1900 it was indeed located in Chancery Lane, in London. It was established in 1838 to house and catalogue all kinds of court/government archives, documents, things like that. I don’t think it had any archive specifically for newspapers, but let’s just all collectively pretend it did.

“I can’t believe I married a criminal” will forever be one of my favourite lines to ever have written. Ciel’s romantic side is very suppressed, but it’s there, so the times when I get to make him verbally reference Sebastian as his lover, husband, mate- those are particularly sweet to me. Even if he does immediately follow up by calling Sebastian a dog and a scoundrel, which, to be fair, are also accurate things to call him.

Writing a sex scene is the most intensive part of the craft for me. The thing I spoke about earlier, about being surgical and methodical in word choice and grammar- that’s dialled up to eleven when I’m writing a sex scene. So sometimes I fade to black. Although, that can be nice too- leaving things to the imagination. Also, it means I have the option to come back some day and write them out huehuehue 😏😌😉

I have never attended a séance. I was raised in a rather conservative Christian household (and look at me now) and I was always taught never to mess with that stuff, that it might invite evil into one’s life. Due to personal experiences among other things, I still have a belief in the spiritual aspect of existence- maybe not demons and ghosts per se (though I do have stories of ghost encounters in my past), but that there is such a thing as the soul, and life beyond death, and forces beyond what we humans can fully comprehend or control.

Though I’ve left behind almost all the beliefs I was raised with, at least one remains: I don’t fuck with séances or Ouija boards or anything that could accidentally bring something bad into my space. You would never catch me in a horror movie scenario, is what I’m saying  😆

However, the realm of fiction is fair game. Especially for the sake of the narrative.

Séances in film always seem to be done slightly differently- usually there’s a table, and a candle or something- I kind of just set up my own scenario.

Someone asked me why Lizzy and Sybil didn’t just try to summon Edward’s spirit right away- to be completely honest, it’s mostly because it didn’t occur to me 😅. But I also think that Lizzy wasn’t ready to confront whatever truths he might have to tell her- or that the grief was still so fresh, she wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing him- or not seeing him, if it hadn’t have worked for whatever reason.

Instead, I chose to tug on a different heartstring entirely and chose to have them summon Tanaka. Tanaka is beyond old, and I think after Ciel died and the manor burnt down, he finally allowed himself to put down the burden of being a steward to the house of Phantomhive. He deserved a rest. I think his death would have been painless- he probably went in his sleep. The Midfords would have taken good care of him.

And of course, he would be against what Lizzy is doing. Not angry with her, but worried- he would want her to move on, to put everything behind her and live a normal, happy life. But she doesn’t really have a choice at this juncture- desperate times and desperate measures and all that. I knew from the beginning that Tanaka wasn’t going to be alive in this story, but I still wanted to give him a cameo, however bittersweet it may have been.

I do hope the séance scene was sufficiently eerie- I don’t really write horror, or anything that’s meant to be all that scary, but I did try to give this scene a little bit of a spook factor. One of the ways I try to do that is by limiting descriptions of things until the moment after they happen, and

More

Paragraph

Breaks

As a way to control the pace and rhythm of the scene. Prose is like a rollercoaster, or a run on a treadmill. You must have moments when your heart rate spikes and in between periods to cool off. I try to do that- I’m not sure how well I always achieve it, but that’s the idea.

One of my favourite things I like reading in readers’ comments are the reactions to the revelation of new information, i.e. that Sybil’s mother was a witch. The burden of being the writer is knowing things ahead of time, and not getting to discover them at the same moment your audience does. Coming up with the idea and executing it is its own reward, but sometimes I wish I could read my own writing like it was something I’d never seen before. That would be so cool. So know that as a reader, the best thing you can do is comment your reactions on stuff because it’s the closest that authors can come to that feeling!

Lizzy and Sybil trying to summon Ciel and not being able to because he isn’t dead was another idea I had right from the inception of this story. Since Ciel is a demon, however, and is therefore connected somehow to hell, or the afterlife, or the supernatural world in general, I imagine the séance would have some sort of pull on him, which is why the interjection of him waking up in bed feeling like someone was calling his name.

Lizzy and Sybil complete each other- they have the idea of summoning Sebastian at the same moment, and even if they hadn’t, one of them will always end up enabling the other. Heaven help anyone who gets in their way, they just won’t be stopped 😆 😆 Even if it does eventually get them in over their heads. But that’s another chapter for another blog.

See you next time!

[pesterloglog]

Dave Strider, Karkat Vantas

Page 291-293

DAVE: i dunno who the flower is in this case

DAVE: shit what if im the flower

KARKAT: SO

KARKAT: DAVE

DAVE: no hold up that makes no fuckin sense i gotta rewind back to the beginning

KARKAT: ARE YOU GONNA KEEP MUMBLING TO YOURSELF OR CAN--

DAVE: oh shit sorry what

DAVE: i was just thinking through some really convoluted metaphorical horseshit

KARKAT: YEAH THAT WAS PRETTY FUCKING EVIDENT.

DAVE: my b bro

DAVE: what were you saying

KARKAT: I WAS SAYING I THOUGHT WE MIGHT GO, I DUNNO, ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE ENTIRE SHIP WHILE THE CLOTHES WERE WASHING.

KARKAT: SEEING AS THIS DECREPIT MACHINE WE WERE SO BLESSEDLY PROVIDED WITH MAKES A WHIRRING SOUND SO PANCHAFINGLY ARHYTHMIC THAT IT THREATENS TO ERADICATE THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF TEMPO FROM THE UNIVERSE.

KARKAT: AND YET SOMEHOW BASICALLY ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE WE STARTED THE LOAD IS THAT YOU’VE BEEN USING IT AS A FUCKED UP BEAT TO WHISPER TO YOURSELF ABOUT FLOWERS TO.

KARKAT: AT THIS POINT I'M EITHER GOING TO NEED YOU TO SPEAK UP OR FOLLOW ME THE FUCK ON OUT OF HERE, BECAUSE THIS IS EXCRUCIATING.

DAVE: ok fine ill do the first one

KARKAT: GREAT. TURN UP THE FLOWER TALK VOLUME.

DAVE: so uh

DAVE: kanaya was telling me this kids story the other day about this dude who didnt cherish a flower enough until it peaced out to do flower stuff idk its not pertinent to the story

DAVE: except the flower was a person

DAVE: because it was a metaphor

KARKAT: YEAH LIKE YOU SAID,

DAVE: really convoluted metaphorical horseshit

KARKAT: REALLY CONVOLUTED METAPHORICAL HORSESHIT.

DAVE: yeah

DAVE: anyway what goes down in the story is that once the flower lady is out of the picture

DAVE: the main character goes around making all these connections between her and everything else in the universe until every damn thing feels like a symbol for how much he fucked up and how much he will never see her again

KARKAT: THIS SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING INTENSE FOR A KID'S STORY

DAVE: yea thats pretty much what i said

DAVE: but i guess its not so much what the story was technically textually about but more like the version of it kanaya internalized and then told me when we were talkin about how she misses rose

DAVE: so like now im taking the story she told me she was projecting her feelings onto and projecting my feelings on top of that

DAVE: this is just one big game of emotional projection telephone so feel free to go paraphrase it to roxy later and make it about whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing

KARKAT: YOUR ABILITY TO GET TO THE POINT

DAVE: gotem

DAVE: anyway you’re not gonna have to miss that skill of mine for long

DAVE: get ready for this shit because i am about to slap you with the point so hard youll fall ass first into the washer

DAVE: just scrambling around in there getting all sudsy

DAVE: but your brain is gonna be so blasted from the mindfreak of a point im about to make that there wont be anything left to clean

DAVE: are you ready

DAVE: karkat you havent made any kind of comment about how youre ready in a few seconds so

KARKAT: YEAH DAVE DROP THIS FUCKING BOMB ON ME.

DAVE: ok thanks

DAVE: so its genuinely cool that kanaya can go around creating meaning that may or may not be actually present in every little thing

DAVE: connecting every feeling she has to the idea of her wife existing out there

DAVE: so i told her she should keep that shit up

DAVE: but im having the opposite issue where im struggling to find anything to be that kind of tether because every single thing i could possibly consider about what it is were doing just reminds me of yet another thing to be afraid about

DAVE: so if you were looking for a more concentrated point

DAVE: the real point thats that point simmered in its own juices into a perfect point reduction

DAVE: here it is

DAVE: everything fuckin sucks huge cosmic donkey sack and im terrified

KARKAT: OK, SO I FEEL LIKE YOU SKIPPED A COUPLE NECESSARY STEPS IN YOUR POINT CLARIFICATION PROCESS.

KARKAT: I’M GOING TO RESIST THE URGE TO CONTINUE YOUR REDUCTION METAPHOR EVEN THOUGH I HAVE SOME INARGUABLY GOOD SHIT LINED UP FOR IT BECAUSE I’M AFRAID OF US GETTING TOO FAR OFF TRACK, HERE.

DAVE: ok but were you going with sweet or savory please give me that much at least

KARKAT: YEAH IT WAS GOING TO BE SUNDAE-BASED.

DAVE: nice

KARKAT: YEAH.

KARKAT: DO YOU WANNA WATCH MORE GBBO AFTER THIS?

DAVE: absolutely

KARKAT: GREAT. ANYWAY, LIKE I WAS SAYING, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET HUMAN CHRIST, PLEASE BACK UP TO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU’RE ACTUALLY SCARED OF.

KARKAT: ALSO COME HERE, IDIOT.

DAVE: ok yeah this is a better position to unleash all my inner fears n anxieties from

DAVE: so uh

DAVE: like i said i talked to kan about it some

DAVE: and its not like weve not talked about it either but i dunno

DAVE: those times its like my mouth was saying words about the situation wherein our friends are AWOL and maybe dead but my brain wasnt fully letting me experience the emotion that goes along with them

DAVE: man its like i cant even start genuinely thinking about how afraid i actually am for rose and john without my brain flippin its wad and whiting out

DAVE: like haha fuck i hope theyre ok

DAVE: now i better make a fuckin joke before i succumb to the gaping mouth of despair waiting for me to fall in it as soon as i look down and acknowledge that its there ogling how juicy my ass looks as it trembles with terror

DAVE: and then if i think about either of them then its only a matter of time til i have to think about dirk too

DAVE: its an if you give a mouse a cookie situation but instead of more snacks its just another layer of fear about my loved ones

DAVE: and with dirk its

DAVE: whew

DAVE: i guess im just fucked up about how to worry about dirk and be angry at him at the same time

DAVE: because if i get as unholy pissed at him as i sometimes wanna be i also gotta admit to myself that maybe i coulda done something different there

DAVE: like if wed kept up better maybe there woulda been a point along the line where i could have said the right thing somehow and hed idk

DAVE: not stolen rose away on some nightmare family trip

DAVE: forcing us to accept the fact that hes our enemy now and chase after him for an unreasonably indeterminate number of years

DAVE: also like

DAVE: and this by the way adds a whole other layer of guilt on there that i dont really know how to fuckin reckon with but

DAVE: even with all the shit hes pulled and the fact that we are more or less heading toward having to take him down

DAVE: whatever that is gonna mean and whether or not he planned it like that

DAVE: i just

DAVE: me and him had come so far with each other and it was really cool for a while to have him and i

DAVE: ugh

DAVE: i dont WANT to hate him

KARKAT: IS THAT ALL? I’M POISED ON THE PRECIPICE OF REASSURANCE WITH MY COUNTER-RANT LOCKED AND LOADED BUT IT FEELS LIKE YOU’VE GOT MORE SHIT YOU’RE HOLDING BACK ON.

DAVE: yeah i got another thing

KARKAT: WELL THEN QUIT FUCKING PICKING AT THE SEAM ON MY SHORTS AND SPIT IT OUT. THEY'RE BARELY HANGING ON TO THE DEFINITION OF "SHORTS" AS IT IS.

DAVE: ok fuck its just

DAVE: ...

DAVE: the part i mentioned before about how we really have no goddamn clue how long this trip is even gonna take

DAVE: i cant help but feel like its barely getting revved up

DAVE: and for me and roxy and jade and callie and kan thats normal shit at best and boring at worst but we all have our immortality to thank for that

DAVE: we can just dick around in space for near-eternity waiting to catch up to our friends who may or may not be our enemies now and itll be fine

DAVE: i mean no itll be categorically miserable

DAVE: but well survive it

KARKAT: HOLD THE FUCK ON.

DAVE: but you

KARKAT: DAVE.

DAVE: no lemme say this

DAVE: we dont talk about it much and i got shit to say about it

DAVE: its not like i never thought about how youre mortal before but i just thought wed be able to figure it out before it mattered

DAVE: come up with some kind of plan

DAVE: i was just distracted being happy with you i fucking guess and so i didnt think up a way to fix it

DAVE: and now thanks to dirk we have to work it out right the fuck now

DAVE: because i cant spend this trip just sitting around watching you get old and die

[galedekkarios]

mx galedekkarios dot tumblr dot com may i please have some gale and/or bloodweave hcs from your big beautiful mind 👉👈 (or honestly just any longform post of bg thoughts at all bc ur tags keep inflicting me w gory stickmen disease and wanting to read more ;;)

oh anon whadda hell.. u flatter me. 🫶 i unplugged my brain real quick and gave it a shake and this is all what fell out (some are mature):

in a modern au, gale's second favorite cuisine (after greek ofc) is east asian! he loves to both eat it and cook it from scratch. chinese, korean, japanese, etc. he's even good at other asian cuisines like thai and vietnamese. he's gotten very familiar with a lot of recipes and actively tries to learn more. when he doesn't feel like cooking that night, he opts for takeout. he's been a loyal customer of a handful of restaurants for so long that they already know his tastes too.

the only reason why gale's students don't try to flirt with him is because he's too much of a "my wife" guy. he's always wearing his ring, always talking about his partner, and has portraits of them in his office and everything. there's just no way you don't know that he's happily taken. you could be talking about the most random thing ever and he'd be like "omg! this reminds me of how my partner blahblahblah—" and everyone else is just like 😐 because he's already told this story five times before. not even tara is safe from this (and she was probably present for whatever story it is this time, too!). [this is assuming his students are older / uni prof]

i think gale would be the type of person to have a very Intense gaze without meaning to. the kind where you can feel it whenever he's looking at you. or when he's gazing at you lovingly, or even just looking you in the eye as you speak, it's almost too much. it's just so earnest, so sincere, so... intent on witnessing you and really paying attention, that it's like. whoa man. whoaaaaaaa now let's fucking chill before i blink and realize i've fallen in love with you alright 😳 (and, of course, this Greatly unsettles astarion in the beginning bc he's someone that can't afford to be seen.)

i know in my heart that mr "mine was a popular hand at the annual blackstaff's ball" + bagged a goddess + with the way i talk you can't be surprised i'm a generous munch + wyll, is it true that ppl think wizards don't fuck? :( bc i assure you we absolutely do!!!!! + mystra had pleasure domes dekarios was a hot girl once and his pussy still does pop severely. he's just in his depression era rn 💔

wyll calls gale elegant, minthara calls him dashing, shadowheart says he smells like a wealthy dowager, lae'zel assumes correctly that he had many tutors in his youth, and gale frequenting the temple of beauty in waterdeep all make me feel like gale x astarion are very the lady and the tramp coded. after they get married, they're old money x new money.

gale is always eager to teach astarion new spells, but astarion only gets excited about the ones that either help him be a better scoundrel and/or that spice up their sex life. which like. is still a win for them both either way

um. throat goat. that's it that's the headcanon sorry except it's also not really a hc bc he alludes to this but it's important to me tht we repeat it. but also maybe it shocks astarion the first time he's on the receiving end of it like boy WHAT!!!! you didn't tell me you was a freak like that!!! literally that damn shawty ok meme. gale gives him such wet sloppy glizzy gluck that it makes astarion feel like he has to wipe his ass afterward smh

neither of them want to get anywhere near bugs, but in any au gale would be the type to take it outside and astarion would just kill it using one of gale's 39304308309 books laying around

gale struggles to catch sarcasm and astarion loves to rile him up and take the piss out of him for it. lovingly ofc. whenever gale does understand astarion's sarcastic comments, he feels very proud of himself.

astarion sometimes drops things on purpose just to watch gale bend over. sorry (i'm the one that's sorry, not him btw)

[secretlywritingstories]

I’m 27. It’s an age I’ve heard about as a pivotal and explosive age, an age where celebrities crack and crash and they are lost. To themselves and to the world. The ones that had been in the limelight from a young age and have problems pile up so high that it buried them.

I’m not like that. I’m an ordinary person. And yet I’m also kind of lost.

I’ve got so many good things. I’ve got my loving and suportive family. I’ve got friends that I’ve grown up next to. I’ve found more friends online than I could ever have imagined. I’ve got my horse, still after a decade and a half together. I’ve got the family dogs, not just one but two. I’ve got a master’s degree, through more struggle than I’d admit. I’ve got a good office job with a nice boss and colleagues. I’ve got a flat of my own, though I go to the family house a lot. I’ve got a car that can take me anywhere. I’m able bodied and strong enough to run and jump. I’ve written millions of words across hundreds of stories and shared them for others to enjoy.

Listening off all of the good things I “have” in my life messes with my brain a little, because I’ll look at a list like that and know that I am extremely privileged and lucky. I see and acknowledge that and then the guilt sets in. I’m so freaking fortunate, in so many aspects of life. Ticked off so many boxes (one could argue most of classic goals - except on the relationship front), and yet I’m still lost an unsure.

I feel shitty writing this down, it’ll make it seem like I’m whining over nothing. But if I couldn’t whine here on my own blog, reserved for my stories and to spill my thoughts, then where could I?

I feel like I’m simultaneously doing what’s expected of me and keeping up quite well, while also running on a track entirely different from everyone else. Do I even want to head down the paved road? Part of me does. It’s safety and it’s security and I’ve always needed that.

For when my brain got a little too loud and I got a little too unsure. Because it does. It still does. There’s the once or twice a year panic attacks when everything builds to be too much, I pop off and then try to regulate and stabilise again. I manage, but it always builds back up. But then again, what’s that in the grand scale of mental health issues? It’s minuscule compared to how bad it could be. Doesn’t mean it’s not important, but still.

I think it might be the perspective that’s fucking me over. I hate the idea that my life can be boiled down to what I’ve done, what I’ve “acquired” through my twenty seven years living on this floating space rock. How none of that reflects the nervousness, the thoughts, the figuring myself out part. I am still figuring that out, perhaps that’ll be a long life journey.

27 is old (from the perspective of a teenager) but it’s also young (from the perspective of a normal human lifespan). It’s a weird age, or I’m just in a weird stage of my life. It could be both. I’m leaving the age behind in less than a month. I am not sure it’ll shift anything, but perhaps I will.

We live and learn, after all.

[theimaginatrix27]

AU August: Given the Chance—Deltora Quest

So several of my beloved Mutuals, all of whom are in the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom, do this thing called AU August every year, where they semi-casually discuss various AUs that are floating around their brains.

And I have a lot of fic ideas that float around my brain a lot, and although many are not strictly new, as AU August ideas often are, I thought I'd spend some time this month rambling at length about AUs and Crossovers that become AUs, which I have not yet posted anywhere or written down very much of. Some of them are older than my Tumblr account, but I haven't talked about them in years.

For the sake of brevity, though, Magina will not be discussed in this month of ramblings. Magina is altogether too complex for a single month to adequately summarise it and I wanna talk about other ideas.

So today, we'll be discussing the newest of my AU ideas, one that popped into my head when I was dabbling in Infinite Loop fics again (I'll get back to the Sevenwaters Loops eventually, I promise). I mentioned this on the Deltora Quest/Roddaverse server, but hardly anybody goes there so I'm putting it up here. There's not terribly much flesh on the bones of this idea, but it does have potential, and even though I didn't need this addition to my ever-expanding warren of plot-bunnies, they will insist on breeding when I have my back turned.

So the premise is, Doom dies of old age after a long life of wanderings, surrounded by his family.

He awakens at the beginning of DQ1, in the body of his teenage self, with all the memories of his life as after leaving the palace. And because he's not an idiot, he decides he'll keep a low profile, and figure out a way to kill Prandeen before he can do any more harm, and explain the whole mess to Endon after the fact.

Except he doesn't need to. Because as soon as Prandeen gives Endon the belt and it shines for him, the new young king refuses to give it back. When Prandeen tries to take it from him by force, in front of a whole audience, Endon whips off the belt and snaps it onto the Chief advisor, and the entire population of the palace watches him go up in smoke.

Endon then spins a story Doom is sure is a fabrication, about having been told by Adin in a dream that his family had been deceived for centuries, and that things had to change before all was lost.

Of course, as soon as possible, he goes looking for Endon, and finds out this whole time-travel thing is partly his fault, but was also an offer he was given by someone as-yet-undecided. Ancient dragon spirits or Opal the Dreamer, or someone else made up for the story out of whole cloth.

But regardless of who did it, Endon watched Lief's struggles and his peoples' suffering through Deltora Quests 2-3, and couldn't bear it any more, so when the offer was made to prevent all of that, he jumped at it, though he did ask for Jarred, and maybe their once and future wives as well, to be in on the memory transfer. The offerer is only too happy to send Jarred when they can, though the other two will have to consent to being given the future knowledge via the Belt.

Basically it's sorta kinda a Peggy Sue, but also Jarred/Endon and their prospective spouses are going to solve all the problems in the three DQ series before they happen, with a few exceptions (Thaegan is still a thing after all), all so Lief doesn't have to suffer and Deltora doesn't get quite as messed-up as it did in the hopefully-to-be-averted future. Also lots of people who died in canon don't die here, like Min and most of the Jalis and many of the slaves who didn't make it. And Endon goes down in history as the saviour of Deltora, though it does take many of the people a looong time to actually trust him. The Sister of the South is destroyed first in this AU, though, so that's one way to endear the people of Del to you.

Like I said, this one doesn't have much meat on it, and it's one of those ideas I've not really written down as a result. Other ideas have more substance to them and a few scenes sketched out at least. But I do rather like it.

And yes, I know it's the 2nd in Australia, but it's still the 1st in the US, and also I might not post every day. I'm bad at consistency, or didn't you know that?

[hexenmond]

slowly gearing up to writing again

I want to dump all my thoughts somewhere, and what else did I reactivate this tumblr for? I'm going to ramble about the beginnings of this long form Witch Door fanfiction that has some 90k words already. If you're curious about how a comparatively old, fandom-disinterested, fanfiction-baffled person (aka me) came to do that, there are Many Words below the cut.

I haven't really read much fiction books in years, mostly because it can take such an emotional toll on me, and I've never really been interested in watching anything. I don't have the patience for it. That's just how it was for me, for most of my life. With one notable exception: webcomics.

Webcomics work uniquely well for me because of their format – the updates are spaced out, and while I will readily admit that I've been in agony over some cliffhangers (I am side-eyeing several comics so hard right now), the simple fact that I have at least two days to just, like, integrate the latest page, no matter how hard-hitting, keeps me from getting overwhelmed. And my long-term memory is excellent so I have little trouble keeping tabs on the plots of twenty different comics.

So I've been reading webcomics for 15+ years, and I knew about the existence of fanfiction thanks to my oldest child. I didn't get it though. Never had any desire to read any. Never was so obsessed with fictional characters that I needed someone to share that with. And maybe that was just because I wasn't surrounded by that subculture? (I was on tumblr specifically to follow a small number of blogs religiously, and kinda lost that thread completely sometime in 2019.) It just never was a thing for me.

Then in January 2023 I stumbled across The Witch Door, at the end of chapter 9. Did my damnedest to pace myself but I gobbled it up within a week. And reread it, in parts and as a whole, more than once. One day I wanted to look it up on my phone (as opposed to my desktop where I usually read comics), and I'd forgotten the actual URL, so I did a web search – and the first thing I found was a 22 page bonus/side comic on itch.io. By the actual author.

So that was the most wonderful coincidence since Anni never really advertised the thing anywhere, and then I read and reread THAT comic, oh, dozens of times I'm sure. And one day my brain came up with a short scene (2.5k) of how that comic might have continued. A oneshot, if you will… 😄😄😄

And I also hadn't written any prose, or even poetry, in many years, but I do love it so I thought why not. Wrote it down (on pen and paper!), typed it up, edited it a bit, reread it a couple of times, I was pleased. Proceeded to put it on AO3 because I knew from my child that the platform existed, and was excited to discover there was actually another fic in the fandom (a drabble sequence, a term which confused me back then).

Well, and as all seasoned fic writers know, oneshots sure can be some tricky little beasts. My brain did not stop coming up with the rest of the story. It kept going till the very end! I woke up early one Saturday morning, crying, because I made myself sad with how the story ended.

So that was kind of a wild trip. But the actual writing made me so happy, I was basically flying, for months, returning to my story at every opportunity. (I'm self-employed. "Opportunity" is very relative.)

Then I stumbled across Anni's Dreamling comics on Pinterest, which was another wild coincidence. And those reminded me of the Sandman comics which I'd read, uh, decades ago? and with that came reading Dreamling fanfiction. Which I consumed at a most alarming speed, I stopped writing, I stopped working, basically I fell into a hole and my life got jumbled for a while, back in September last year.

But by now I've dragged myself out of that hole, I'm back to working, and I am ready to get back into writing. This story is still dear to me, and I still love to write, and I will see it finished. Not least because even though I love the Dreamling fanfiction and fandom folks, and I have even consciously and by myself decided to watch Dead Boy Detectives and LOVED it – I do not feel like writing about any of these characters. They just don't tickle my brain that way. Only The Witch Door characters do that for me, and right now this feels like a precious gift.

(Honestly I am amazed at how many people are able to take the same two blorbos and put them in situation after situation without getting boring or getting bored. You are so wonderful 💜💜💜)

Has anyone actually read all of that? Well if so, you're in for yet more words 😜 because all the reading on AO3 has given me plenty more perspective and understanding, and I've decided to put all my original thoughts about wanting to write this story here instead of also on AO3, where I've kept them along with my progress tracker. I'll put some detailed content warnings there instead, for people who would rather have spoilers than no clear idea of what they're about to read. So here are my thoughts from, uh, April last year?

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

My thought processes, in case anyone’s interested

So I found The Witch Door in January this year, at the end of chapter 9 I think, and then by pure coincidence Anni K.’s wonderful side comic about Jousia and Jesse. That ignited a creative spark, and now I find myself adding on to this every day. Originally I’d written one chapter, was pleased with it and posted it, done. And then my brain just said, “guess who knows what happens AFTER that?” and now I’m writing thousands of words.

The thing I am very conflicted about is: I would LOVE for this to be canon compatible. Ideally it would be a side story that happens on all those days where the canon plot isn’t doing anything (or possibly after the current adventure arc). And that worked for the first chapter I wrote, but it just doesn’t work for the rest… partly because there simply isn’t enough canon material yet for me to know some important world building details, but also largely because I quickly ended up writing stuff that has actual plot. And plot means character development, otherwise what’s the point. But Anni’s plot is going to take the characters on a different route, and that’s just how it is.

In short: I am not writing this because I want to change a single thing about The Witch Door. Quite the contrary! I am writing because I so dearly wish there was more of it! And it’s one of those hard facts of life that 2,000 words are written much more quickly than even one full page of comic is completed. :-\ So if you will take the characters as they are at somewhere around chapter 10 in canon, and you find them to be well represented here but just having different adventures, that's all I’m hoping to do.

Addendum:

I decided to fudge the canon timeline a bit, just so the side comic event would fit in nicely with the state of relationships in chapter 10. I'll give an in depth explanation of that in the actual series. And also… I am now entirely happy that this will NOT be canon compatible.

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

Now that I've dumped all that the next post shall contain an actual story snippet! 🙃

[lethepancake]

Hey guys I wrote/drafted the first chapter of a story because I have too many thoughts in my brain and I never take the time to bring them to life so I desided to today for whatever reason. Okay here it is (no name for the story yet)

Summary for the whole story: Boy goes to magic school, and no, it's not like Harry Potter.

Summary for the chapter: Normal human boy finds out he might not be so normal after all.

Chapter One: Am I the Chosen One?

Jason Hart was a normal human boy. At least he thought he was. And he was right, he is normal. Except for the fact he could do magic. But that’s normal, because this story isn’t on Earth, it’s in a world called Rencantun. And in Rencantun, pretty much every sentient being could do at least a little magic. So yes, Jason W. Hart (his middle name starts with a W) was a normal human boy.

It was a normal sunny day in the neighborhood, except for the fact it wasn’t sunny at all. It was actually kind of gloomy out.

“Kinda gloomy out, huh?” asked Mr. Hart. “You know, cloudy weather is one of the worst weathers. No sun nor rain. It’s just boring and sad.”

“Dad,” responded Jason, looking up from his waffles. “Are you trying to make small talk with me?”

“Maybe.”

“…”

“You know, school is starting soon, we should probably get you some school supplies.”

“Dad, I don’t want to think about school. It’s the Summer Festival!” exclaimed Jason. “Actually, I might go out again today.”

“Yeah, in this sad weather?” Mr. Hart responded. “Y’know what, do whatever you want as long as you tell your mom as well.”

Mrs. Hart poked her head out of the bathroom. “I overheard you two. Sure Jason.”

“Nice!” Jason began to get out of his seat.

“Jason, finish your waffles!”

“Dude, how do you even get all that silver? Are you stealing or something?”

Micha, Jason’s best friend, joined him a lot during the Summer Festival. Well, he joined him on a lot of things, like the Winter Festival.

“I keep telling you, selling candy at school is a huge money maker!” Jason said. “The only thing easier than stealing candy from a baby is selling candy to babies!”

“Where did that saying even come from? Did someone steal candies from babies back in the day?”

As they both walked through Market Street (real creative there, Mr City Founder) a small dart of color whizzed past Jason’s pocket, and it felt much lighter than it did a few seconds ago.

“Oh what the heck! Some jerk just hexed all my coins!”

“I don’t think hex is the right- there! That sprite looking thing is going off with your coins!”

Jason whipped his head around to see a small, glowing figure, carrying what should be way too many items for it. “After it!”

As Jason and Micha ran after it, the sprite darted around passerby, forcing Jason and Micha to weave through the people who just wanted to do some shopping.

“Sorry!” Jason panted. “It’s going into the stupid forest!”

Micha caught up to him, all out of breath, and said, “Look dude, I think, this is a lost cause. It’s just some coins, it’s not worth getting lost for the whole day.”

Jason ignored him, and started jogging towards the forest.

“Jason, you can’t be serious! It’s just a few coins! Look, I’ll buy what you want, don’t do something stupid.”

“It’s not about the coins, it’s about the fact that some lazy, greedy, thief, steals a kid’s money, and thinks they can get away with it!”

“Ugh, Jason- Fine, I’m coming with you!”

“Damn it, I can’t see the stupid thing anywhere.” Jason exclaimed as Micha caught up to him at the edge of the forest. “I learned a tracking spell, so I’ll track my coins.”

“Good plan, but there’s probably a few coins people dropped. Maybe it’s better to try and track the sprite itself?”

“Micha, if I knew how to track organic beings, I would have done that! Also, why are you so confident it’s a sprite?”

“What else is small, flies, and does other’s bidding for them?”

“Okay, fine, I’ll give it a go! But if this forest sets on fire, I’m blaming you!”

Micha rolled his eyes and Jason pulled out his wand. It was a pretty simple wand, the type you’ll give to an apprentice, which Jason wasn’t, but he was pretty good at magic, so his teacher gifted him it. Jason mumbled a spell as he swished the wand, then pointed it to the sky. Two small, dim, beams of white light shot out in two different directions.

“Uh, either there’s two sprites or I messed up. I probably messed up; I’ll try again.”

Micha sighed as Jason did the whole thing all over again, and once again, it shot out in two different directions.

“Okay, so, just to make sure, I think I should try it again.” But before Jason could redo the spell again, Micha interrupted him.

“Jason, there’s two of us. If we split up, one of us will find it.”

“Weren’t you the one who was worried about getting lost? Whatever, we should probably follow it before it disappears.”

As the two of them split off, with Jason following the beam on the right and Micha on the left, Jason got too distracted jogging to where the beam was leading him to notice that the beam was linked to his wand, and therefore, Micha wouldn’t have an easy time following his beam. (It’s not easy to follow a moving line.)

Jason never went this far into the forest, and at first, he really didn’t notice. But eventually, he realized that he might have screwed up, and that Micha was right, it was just a few coins. But he wasn’t about to let Micha get one over on him, so he continued, even though he was really worried that a bear or a wolf was going to come eat him (don’t tell anyone that though). But the beam was getting brighter, and if he remembered correctly, it meant he was getting closer. It was also at this moment when he saw that the beam Micha was following was linked to his wand, and he had been moving it the whole time.

Just as he was about to start following the other beam to find Micha again, since he didn’t want Micha to get lost because of him, he heard the sprite in a small forest clearing.

“Wha- hey! Get out here and give me my coins!”

What Jason expected was a small, little sprite, not a tall elven wizard. But that was who came out of the bushes.

“Were you talking to me?”

Jason knew something. A very good piece of advice given to many young people. The ancient provibe of “stranger danger.”

“Oh, I, uh- I was, sorry, I’m just playing pretend. I’m going to go-”

As Jason was stumbling over all his words (like an idiot) the wizard pulled out a small sprite out of his pocket, along with all of Jason’s coins.

“Wha- hey! Those are my coins! Why did you steal my coins?!” Jason yelled, finally not stumbling over his sentence. “You look like you’re 100 years old! Why do you need to steal from a kid?!”

“Aww, you think I look 100?” The wizard put a hand to his cheek. “Last time someone told me that I was 70! But about your coins, yes, I did summon a sprite to take them, however, I was not planning on keeping them. I simply took them so you’ll come over here so I could tell you something.”

“Yeah, not falling for that one. You probably want my organs or something. Bye dude.”

“Your name is Jason, right?”

Jason froze in his tracks. “Yeah, what about it?”

“First, take your coins back. Second, there’s something special about you.”

As Jason took his coins, he saw a beam of sunlight shine on the wizard, who was standing in the center of the clearing. Time slowed down, and something about this moment felt like the start of an amazing journey.

“Am I the chosen one?”

The wizard stared at Jason.

“What, no!”

[translationandbetrayals]

Identity, mommy issues and slice of life: Skip to Loafer’s Shima Sousuke

Skip to Loafer is, no doubt, one of my favorite finds of this year.

It all started on Twitter of all places, where I saw a clip of the opening with the two main characters dancing to the beat of a very lively song. It was so adorable it activated my cuteness aggression, and I had to tap in as the anime was airing.

SKIP TO LOAFER OPENING — “Mellow” by Keina Suda

Skip to Loafer was only three or four episodes in by the time it came into my radar and, being on a one-week long university break and also a little wrong in the head, I spent that time binging what had already aired and then reading the manga (also reading the almost 300 chapters of Kaguya-sama wa kokurasetai, but that’s a story for another day). I think it’s obvious I was pleasantly surprised.

Skip to Loafer is going into my favorite discoveries of this year, and one of its main characters, Shima Sousuke, is becoming an all-time favorite. He scratches an itch in my brain that I didn’t even know I had, and the conflicts he presents are something that I have not seen before portrayed with so much love and honesty anywhere else.

He’s what they’d call an ikemen: attractive, easy-going and people can’t help but look at him when he walks into the room, meaning that he becomes popular almost as soon as he enters high school. However, he’s kind of indifferent to people around him even though he plays along, and he can even be rather cruel when talking to others if they push him to the edge—however, he doesn’t lose his perfectly-constructed fake smile. He’s verbally punching you in the gut with the most calm expression he can muster, and it’s kind of unsettling.

Except, of course, when it comes to the heroine of this story, Iwakura Mitsumi.

Their meeting was a chance encounter. The stars aligned, the gods made up their minds, whatever: the thing is that she was lost in the city on the first day of school and he found her, helped her get to school, and then also let her ruffle his hair like a dog for some reason. Oh, and Sousuke immediately started calling her Mitsumi-chan, by the way, and told her she could call him by her family dog’s name—which she declined, obviously, because that’s a dog.

EPISODE 2

Mitsumi kind of idolizes him at the beginning of the story, considering his maturity and level-headedness an admirable trait and she hopes she can become more like him. He’s confident, friendly and, as she saw first hand, also extremely kind. Both of them find themselves drawn to the other, and so the story begins.

And, honestly, Sousuke looks, at first glance, like your typical romcom main lead. He has that vibe. He’s tall, he’s blonde, and he���s a little aloof. One might even think he’s a spiritual cousin of Kazehaya Shouta from Kimi ni Todoke without the blonde part, of course

However, as the story progresses, it’s unveiled he has things to hide that don’t stay hidden for long—at least from Mitsumi, anyway. He opens up to her in ways he’s never done with anybody else, and she accepts him as he is—she even protects him, posing like an anteater in front of someone from his past just to keep them away from him. It’s the little things, isn’t it?

EPISODE 12

Sousuke’s aloof nature is revealed to be something more than that: it’s a complete disconnect from his own emotions and environment. He simply plays along, fulfilling the role that has been assigned to him—if he’s meant to be a status symbol, he obliges; if he’s meant to be a tool, he puts himself to good use. It’s kind of shocking when his personal reveries start to be shown to us as readers, because that’s not usually what you’d expect from a guy like him.

CHAPTER 46

Turns out he used to be a child actor who had a little bit of a fall from grace when he was in middle school—that’s one of his secrets that Mitsumi finds out about without meaning to but swears to take to her grave. So far, it’s not known why he ever started acting, but we do know why he stayed there for as long as he did: his mother.

His father was a cheater with an affair, leaving a horrible idea of romantic love on Sousuke, and his mother was kind of desperate with her marriage falling apart. So what did Sousuke do as a little kid with no control over his situation? Stick to acting. For her. He devoted himself to his job as a kid playing various roles despite not being happy with it. And when he started to let his discomfort be known, his voice fell on deaf ears—his mother thought him giving up acting was an inconvenience, and so he simply lowered his head and agreed.

CHAPTER 42

We realize he’s not just someone who goes with the flow: he’s a chronic people pleaser, unable to say no when the people around him expect something of him. He smiles, nods and waves, completely removed from his own desires and ambitions to the point where he has none, and he doesn’t even question it. Quite the opposite, actually—he embraces it. He knows he’s not there to make decisions, that people have already made up their minds about the kind of person he is before they even get to know him, so he doesn’t bother nurturing traits that make him worth knowing and simply agrees with what everyone else says. He is a pawn.

He’s also severely distanced from his little brother, Keiri: a three year old boy who technically is his half-brother, because he is the son of his mother’s second husband. He doesn’t know how to act around him, so he hides from him. And his little brother shadows him from afar.

Sousuke knows he’s attractive and that, instead of giving him an ego boost, makes him even more passive—people flock to him, people orbit around him, and he does what he thinks will satisfy them without them even having to ask. Truly, too much of a people pleaser for his own good.

And that leads Sousuke to never doubt what people he admires say, and that includes Mitsumi. He has her on this pedestal, where he thinks she can do no wrong and can never be mistaken, so he treats her words as obsolete—if Mitsumi believes something to be wrong, it must be wrong; if Mitsumi thinks something isn’t working, then that must be the case. It takes him way too long and basically a peer-review of his situation for him to realize that she isn’t perfect and he never should have believed her to be. And that he has to reap what he sowed.

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

When it comes to his emotions, he has no understanding of them at all because no one ever cared enough before to ask. Not until Mitsumi showed up. So whatever thought or feeling that’s more complex than a giggle is something that he cannot comprehend—he doesn’t know where to start, how to decipher the mess that’s his head, and it’s clear that his emotional maturity is severely undeveloped when he finds himself in a conflict where he has to take a stand.

However, slowly but surely, he realizes he can’t figure out certain things alone, and that he needs to ask for guidance from the people he trusts. Because they may not have the answer to his problems, but at least they can help him walk through it, and that’s better than bottling it up and praying it goes away or gets solved on its own.

Sousuke’s imperfections are portrayed in a way that feels refreshing to me. I haven’t seen any character this emotionally incompetent due to being abandoned by his guardians written in a way that can move me this deeply—you can feel his vulnerability and your heart aches a little bit when it dawns on you the extent of his detachment and the reasons why.

The manga never tells you directly, but it leaves the hints in front of you to pick them up and put them together. Understanding Sousuke and creating the timeline of events is not something that’s given to us easily; it’s slowly revealed with the little interactions, with his thought process, with his reactions. And solving the puzzle is fascinating to me.

Basically: Shima Sousuke, you will always be famous. and you’re never beating the shoujo boy allegations

Francisca Salgado. ☆

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2023

#73 - This Life or the Next, by Demian Vitanza

Rating: 2/5 stars

It's difficult for me to review a fictionalized biography/novel the same way I would a piece of regular fiction. Is it a criticism to say the plot is often boring and wanders aimlessly, when that might be the truth of what happened, and from a certain perspective, the actual point of the story?

Because this is the tale of a man who was radicalized without being devoutly religious to begin with; the tale of a man who was imprisoned for terrorism despite being an ambulance driver who never directly harmed anyone; the tale of a man who struggled to do good without knowing how best to do it because he didn't feel like he belonged anywhere.

I've read other sources (articles, personal accounts, and so forth) about the radicalization process, and it almost always centers on creating a feeling of belonging, the division between in-group and out-group. And the most unbelievable part of this tale (whether this is the true part or not) is that the protagonist managed to stay independent, without pledging loyalty to any one group. But narratively, that's heavily lampshaded, and from a fictional perspective, no one writes about normal people having utterly normal lives, they write about the exceptions, because the exceptions are interesting.

I found the style, presenting a novel as a one-sided conversation, to be off-putting at first, then natural and engaging for a time after I got used to it, but eventually wearisome. I could only get through so many sentences starting with "Yeah," as a response to an unheard question before my brain gave up trying to imagine the other half of the conversation. The style lost its charm when taken as a long ramble, and especially toward the end when a great deal of violence went on, I found the conversational style flattened the action. I would hope the opposite would be true, that the perspective would make it seem more personal and immediate, but the way the protagonist spoke about it sounded like it was happening to someone else, even though he was describing himself.

In fairness to the author and story, a contributing factor to my assessment of the plot as aimless and wandering may be that I had difficulty keeping track of the various terrorist groups involved; as an American who didn't pay close attention to the unrest in Syria at the time, I only ever heard about the biggest news and the most major factions, and knew those factions by their American designations, which weren't the same designations used in this story, as it's not framed from an American perspective and I wouldn't expect it to be.

I don't regret reading it, but I can't honestly say I enjoyed it, either.

[c-is-for-circinate]

For a long, large part of my life, being queer in a media landscape--finding queerness in a media landscape--has meant theft.

I'm a Fandom Old, somehow, these days, older than most and younger than some, in that way that's grown associated with grumpy crotchetyness and shotguns on porches and back in my day, we had to wade through our Yahoo Groups mailing lists uphill both ways, boring and irrelevant anecdotes from Back In Those Days when homophobia clearly worked differently than it does now, probably because we weren't trying hard enough. I've seen a lot of stories through the years. I've read a lot of fanfic. (More days than not, for the past twenty years. I've read a lot of fanfic.)

When people my age start groaning and sighing at conversations about representation and queerbaiting, when we roll our eyes and drag all the old war stories out again in the face of AO3 is terrible and Not Good Enough, so often what we say is: you Young Folks Today have no idea how hard, how scary, how limiting it was to be queer anywhere Back In Those Days. Including online, maybe especially online, including in a media landscape that hated us so much more than any one you've ever known. And that is true. Always and everywhere, again and again, it's true, we remember, it's true.

We don't talk so much about the joy of it.

Online fan spaces were my very first queer communities, ever. I was thirteen, I was fourteen, I was fifteen--I was a lonely, over-precocious "gifted kid" two years too young for my grade level in an all-girls' Catholic school in the suburbs--I lived in a world where gay people were a rumor and an insult and a news story about murder. I was straight, of course, obviously, because real people were straight and anyway I was weird enough already--I couldn't be two things strange, couldn't be gay too, but--well, I could read the stories. I could feel things about that. I would have those stories to help me, a few years later, when I knew I couldn't call myself straight any more.

And those stories were theft. There was never any doubt about that. We wrote disclaimers at the top of every fic, with the specter of Anne Rice's lawyers around every corner. We hid in back-corners of the internet, places you could only find through a link from a link from a link on somebody else's recs page, being grateful for the tiny single-fandom archives when you found them, grateful for the webrings where they existed. It was theft, all of it, the stories about characters we did not own, the videotaped episodes on your best friend's VHS player, one single episode pulled off of Limewire over the course of three days.

It was theft, we knew, to even try and find ourselves in these stories to begin with. How many fics did I read in those days about two men who'd always been straight, except for each other, in this one case, when love was stronger than sexual orientation? We stole our characters away from the heterosexual lives they were destined to have. We stole them away from writers and producers and TV networks who work overtime to shower them in Babes of the Week, to pretend that queerness was never even an option. This wasn't given to us. This wasn't meant for us. This wasn't ours to have, ever, ever in the first place. But we took it anyway.

And oh, my friends, it was glorious.

We took it. We stole. And again and again, for years and years and years, we turned that theft into an art. We looked for every opening, every crack in every sidewalk where a little sprout of queerness might grow, and we claimed it for our own and we grew whole gardens. We grew so sly and so skilled with it, learning to spot the hints of oh, this could be slashy in every new show and movie to come our way. Do you see how they left these character dynamics here, unattended on the table? How ripe they are for the pocketing. Here, I'll help you carry them. We'll make off with these so-called straight boys, and we only have to look back if somebody sets out another scene we want for our own.

We were thieves, all of us, and that was fine and that was fair, because to exist as queer in the world was theft to begin with. Stolen time, stolen moments--grand larceny of the institution of marriage, breaking and entering to rob my mother's hopes for grandchildren. Every shoplifted glance at the wrong person in the locker room (and it didn't matter if we never peeked, never dared, they called us out on it anyway). Every character in every fic whose queerness became a crime against this ex-wife, that new love interest. Every time we dared steal ourselves away from the good straight partners we didn't want to date.

And: we built ourselves a den, we thieves, wallpapered in stolen images and filled to the brim with all the words we'd written ourselves. We built ourselves a home, and we filled it with joy. Every vid and art and fic, every ship, every squee. Over and over, every straight boy protagonist who abandoned all womankind for just this one exception with his straight boy protagonist partner found gay orgasms and true love at the end.

Over and over, we said: this isn't ours, this isn't meant to be ours, you did not give this to us--but we are taking it anyway. We will burglarize you for building blocks and build ourselves a palace. These stories and this place in the world is not for us, but we exist, and you can't stop us. It's ours now, full of color and noise, a thousand peoples' ideas mosaic'ed together in celebration. We made this, and it will never be just yours again. You won't ever truly get it back, no matter how many lawyers you send, not completely. We keep what we steal.

.

Things shifted over time, of course. That's good. That's to be celebrated. Nobody should have to steal to survive. It should not be a crime, should not feel like a crime, to find yourself and your space in the world.

There were always content creators who could slip a little wink in when they laid out their wares, oh what's this over here, silly me leaving this unattended where anybody could grab it, of course there might be more over by the side door if you come around the alleyway (but if anybody asks, you didn't get this from ME). We all watched Xena marry Gabrielle, in body language and between the lines. We sat around and traded theories and rumors about whether the people writing Due South knew what they were doing when they sent their buddy cops off into the frozen north alone together at the end of the show, if they'd done it on purpose, if they knew. But over the years, slowly, thankfully, the winks became less sly.

A teenage boy put his hand on another teenage boy's hand and said, you move me, and they kissed on network TV, in a prime-time show, on FOX, and the world didn't burn down. Here and there, where they wanted to, where they could without getting caught by their bosses and managers, content creators stopped subtly nudging people around the back door and started saying, "Here. This is on offer here too, on purpose. You get to have this, too."

And of course, of course that came with a whole host of problems too. Slide around to the back door but you didn't get this from me turned into it's an item on our special menu, totally legit, you've just got to ask because the boss throws a fit if we put it out front. Shopkeepers and content creators started advertising on the sly, come buy your fix here!, hiding the fine print that says you still have to take what you've purchased home and rebuild it with your semi-legal IKEA hacks. Maybe they'll consider listing that Destiel or Sterek as a full-service menu item next year. Is that Crowley/Aziraphale the real thing or is it lite?

And those problems are real and the conversations are worth having, and it's absolutely fair to be frustrated that you can't find the ship you want on sale in anything like your color and size in a vast media landscape packed full of discount hetships and fast-fashion m/f. It's fair to be angry. It's fair to be frustrated. Queerbait is a word that exists for a reason.

There's a part of me that hurts, though, every time the topic comes up. It's a confusing, bad-mannered part of me, but it's still very real. And it's not because I'm fawning for crumbs, trying to be the Good, Non-Threatening Gay. It's not that I'm scared and traumatized by the thought of what might happen if we dare raise our voices and ask for attention. (Well. Not mostly. I'll always remember being quiet and scared and fifteen, but it's been a long two decades since then. I know how to ask for a hell of a lot more now.)

It's because I remember that cozy, plush-wallpapered den of joyful thieves. I remember you keep what you steal.

Every single time--every time--when a story I love sets a couple of characters out on a low, unguarded table, perfectly placed to be pilfered on the sly and taken home and smushed together like a couple of dolls, my very first thought is always, always joy. Always, that instinct says, yay! Says, this is ours now. As soon as I go home and crawl into that pillow-fort den, my instincts say, I will surely find people already at work combing through spoils and finding new ways to combine them, new ways to make them our own. I know there's fic for that. I've already seen fic for that, and I wasn't really interested last time, but the new store display's got my brain churning, and I can't wait to see what the crew back at the hideout does with this.

Every time, that's where my brain goes. And oh, when I realize the display's put out on purpose, that somebody snuck in a legitimate special menu item, when the proprietor gives me the nod and wink and says, you don't have to come around the side, I know it's not much but here--there is so much joy and relief and hope in me from that! Oh, what we can make with these beautiful building blocks. Oh what a story we can craft from the pieces. Oh, the things we can cobble together. Look at that, this one's a little skimpy on parts but we can supplement it, this one's got a whole outline we can fill in however we want. This one technically comes semi-preassembled, and that's boring as shit and a pain to take back apart, but that's fine, we'll manage. We're artists and thieves. I bet someone's pulling out the AU saw to cut it to pieces already.

And then I get back to our den, which has moved addresses a dozen times over the years and mostly hangs out on Tumblr now (and the roof leaks and the landlord's sketchy as fuck but at least they don't charge rent, and we've made worse places our own). And I show up, ready for joy--ready for a dozen other people who saw that low-hanging fruit on that unguarded table, who got the nod and wink about the special menu item, who're ready to get so excited about this newest haul. Did you see what we picked up? The theft was so easy, practically begging to be stolen. The last owner was an idiot with no idea what to do with it. The last owner knew exactly what it could become, bless their heart, under a craftsman with more time on their hands, so they looked away on purpose at just the right time to let me take it home. I show up every time ready for our space, the place that fed me on joy and self-confidence when I was fifteen and starving. The place that taught me, yes, we are thieves, because it is RIGHT to take what we need, and the beautiful things we create are their own justification. We are thieves, and that's wonderful, because nothing is handed to us and that means we get to build our own palaces. We get to keep everything we steal.

I go home, and even knowing the world is different, my instincts and heart are waiting for that. And I walk in the door, and I look at my dash, and I glance over at twitter, and--

And people are angry, again. Angry at the slim pickings from the hidden special menu. So, so tired and angry, at once again having to steal.

And they're right to be! Sometimes (often, maybe) I think they're angry at the wrong people--more angry with the shopkeeper who offers the bite-sized sampler platter of side characters or sneaks their queer content in on the special menu than the ones who don't include it at all. But it's not wrong to be mad that Disney's once again advertising their First Gay Character only to find out it's a tiny sprinkle of a one-line extra on an otherwise straight sundae. It's not wrong to be furious at the world because you've spent your whole life needing to be a thief to survive. It's far from wrong. I'm angry about it too.

But this was my den of thieves, my chop shop, my makerspace. Growing up in fandom, I learned to pick the locks on stories and crack the safes of subtext at the very same time I learned to create. They were the same thing, the same art. We are thieves, my heart says, we are thieves, and that's what makes us better than the people we steal from. We deconstruct every time we create. We build better things out of the pieces.

And people are angry that the pre-fab materials are too hard to find, the pickings too slim, the items on sale too limited? Yes, of course they are, of course they should be--but my heart. Oh, my heart. Every single time, just a little bit, it breaks.

Of course the stories are terrible (they have always been terrible). Of course they are, but we are thieves. We steal the best parts and cobble them back together and what we make is better than it was before. The craftsman's eye that cases a story for weak points, for blank spaces, for anywhere we can fit a crowbar and pry apart this casing--that's skill and art and joy. Of course we shouldn't have to, of course we shouldn't have to, but I still love it. I still want it, crave it. I still thrill every time I see it, a story with hairline cracks that we can work open with clever hands to let the queer in.

That used to be cause for celebration, around here. I ask him to go back to the ruins of Aeor with me, two men together alone on an expedition in the frozen north, it feels like a gift. And I understand why some people take it as an insult. I understand not good enough. I understand how something can feel like a few drops of water to someone dying of thirst, like a slap in the face. If it was so easy to sneak it hidden onto the special menu, to place it on the unguarded side table for someone else to run off to, why not let it sit out front and center in the first place? I know it's frustrating. It should be. We should fight. We should always fight. I know why.

But my heart, oh, my heart. My heart only knows what it's been taught. My heart sees, this thing right here, the proprietor left it there for you with a nod and a wink because they Get It. It's not put together yet, but it's better that way anyway. It's so full of pieces to pull apart and reassemble. I bet they've got a whole mosaic wall going up at home already. We can bring it home and make it OURS, more than it was ever theirs, forget half of what it came from and grow a new garden in what remains.

And I go home to find anger, and my heart breaks instead.