#i will never have enough of scheherazade

[inamindfarfaraway]

Here’s a sad thought about Princess Jasmine in Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier, courtesy of listening to the soundtrack again and feeling the feelings about her and Ja’far: this version of the Sultan must be a really bad father.

We never see him interact with his stepdaughter. He already seems rather senile when he steals Scheherazade, and that’s sixteen years before the present day. His sanity may well have completely gone in that time. Even if it didn’t, he makes it clear in his one appearance that he considers everyone in his power to be objects defined entirely by how they can benefit him and remorselessly will torture, enslave and murder them on a whim. I doubt that he’d be sensitive or nurturing toward his child. Now, I think Scheherazade would be a great mother - but she never got to try.

The Sultan has evidently been very neglectful and distant, failing in his duties to teach the Princess how to be both a good person and a good member of royalty. Despite her being his only heir and old enough to marry and rule the kingdom, which apparently has no problem with a female sovereign, he’s let her grow up to be extremely sheltered and not at all adequately prepared for responsibility and politics. It doesn’t even occur to her that having her tiger assault a neighbouring country’s visiting prince might have consequences. The Sultan, and on his behalf the Captain of the Guard, don’t let her know important news and royal decrees: neither what a menace Aladdin is, leaving her vulnerable to him, nor the Sultan’s mass execution of the 2D Department, since for as insensitively egocentric as she is at the beginning, she’s still deeply sentimental and quick to empathize with the homeless peasant Aladdin, so I can’t believe that she wouldn’t be at least a little upset with the Sultan (or more likely Ja’far) over so many lost human lives.

More than that, her immaturity speaks to bad parenting on the most basic level. She hasn’t internalized the Sultan’s cruelty, but has learned his selfishness, entitlement, impulsiveness and poor emotional regulation. Her social skills are notably clumsy and underdeveloped (not picking up on Aladdin’s numerous red flags, “No high five”, “At least Abdul had a family who loved him!”, even cringing herself at the last one). The Sultan’s passed down absolutely zero wisdom of any kind.

Instead it’s Ja’far with whom she has a familiar father-daughter dynamic (“What’s up, are you mad at me?” “Where are you going?” “There she is!”). It’s him who shows concern when she runs away and gives the order to find her before all else, notices that she’s upset and talks her through her feelings, warns her about sexual predators, appreciates her idealism and effort. It’s him who provides the gentle but firm, healthy guidance and challenge that she needs to grow. Who sees her potential, respects and believes in her. Who loves her. However, he is ultimately in her service. Between the imbalanced power dynamic making him wary of treason (after all, the last time he had a stronger relationship than the Sultan with a woman the Sultan called his, it didn’t end well) and his other responsibilities taking away from their time together, he can’t be as influential a presence in his life as he’d like.

Maybe this why she’s initially so resentful of him. Subconsciously she does see him as a father all along, but he hurts her and lets her down sometimes. Like the Sultan, her only official parent, always has. That stings. The differences are that the Sultan hurts her much more, more consistently and without her best interests at heart… but Ja’far is the one she can lash out at and complain to and be a messy adolescent around, because firstly, he’s her subject instead of her ruler, and secondly, he’s actually involved in her life. He cares, and therefore yelling or halfheartedly trying to poison his wine will make an impact. The Sultan is untouchable. We know that she conflates the two in her head as unjust authority figures keeping her trapped and crushing her aspirations (“All the people who say I’m just dreaming, like Father and Ja’far”, one of the only times she mentions the Sultan). It’s easier to blame your problems on an employee everybody else hates than accept that your parent is a bad one.

Maybe this is the root of her discontentment as well, her yearning that she can’t articulate for something more than what the life she’s been given. The joke of “Everything and More” is that she doesn’t need anything besides what she has… but she does. She needs a competent, reliable parent. One who she can trusts loves her the person as her parent, not a servant of her bloodline, and she knows to love as such in turn.

No wonder she falls for “Orphaned at Thirty-Three” hook, line and sinker. She’s never known her mother. Her relationships with her paternal figures range from terrible to complicated. Having unconditionally loving, supportive parents and then suddenly losing them must be the worst thing she can imagine.

But in the end, the Sultan dies and her dad has to leave her. Although he found a way to live forever, it wasn’t enough to save her from the pain of being orphaned at sixteen.

[wifetomegatron]

one hundred and one nights (overlord/reader)

summary : reader gets abducted by overlord. he has an infatuation. pairing : overlord (idw) / afab! reader fandom : transformers idw continuity, more than meets the eye rating : e for explicit and mild descriptions of gore & dubious consent, minors don’t interact (mdni!), not safe for work (nsfw!) warnings : descriptions of violence, references to human disembodiment, human!reader, smut, sticky sexual interfacing tags : a lot of references to fairytail / folklore, mostly one-hundred and one nights & this goyard painting.

I. You've heard stories about him. Luna two, Garrus-nine, Hell's point. Albeit not from Swerve, or Chromedome, or Rodimus — that would be ridiculous. Impossible, even, when his name is already non-existent in the space of a ship big enough to fit thousands of Cybertornians. Not even a whisper, as if people were afraid that a slip of his name would be mistaken for a prayer and he would come to life, emerging from the shadowy corners of the Lost Light. Optics, sickly artificial red as they burn holes through the veil. But not even Primus would be as cruel as to materialize Overlord here. At least, you had hoped.

Only several nights before were you and Ratchet discussing him. The doctor knew you deserved an explanation for what transgressed over the weekend with Fort Max, Whirl, and Rung. On who he was, what he has done, and what he will continue to do if his spark wasn't sealed in a white vacuum — serpentine green drowning in nothing. The silence stretched for what felt like years, minutes solidifying themselves midair to bake the air thick. And your mouth was dry, face drained of its color. You didn't ask further, choosing to retreat into your room, where you made the last-minute decision to sleep with the lights on.

It was an irrational fear, you thought. To be afraid of someone light years away, deconstructed and stuffed in a box.

And yet here you are, trapped inside a prison chamber with him — limbs suspended, mouth curled into a grin.

II. It was a stupid accident. A stupid, preventable accident that could have been avoided if everyone had just sat down and listened to the noises Red Alert had been talking about. Their audials would have picked up the voices, the whispers, traveling through a crack big enough for you to slip into. Down the rabbit hole, you fell very slowly before hitting your shoulders square against the crown of Overlord’s head. Slipping ungracefully down an arm, and into the palm of his chained hand. You should have never taken directions from Whirl, because God knows how long it’ll take for the crew members to realize you were gone. And how many seconds left do you have to live, considering that you had conveniently fallen into his grip? A curse. A gift.

“What’s this?” He asked aloud. A dragon waking from his slumber, voice heavy as they echo throughout metal walls, “ Hm. They brought me a plaything.”

You couldn’t speak. Stunned mute as your head barely manages to recover from the impact. The chains rattled slightly, and he squeezed you — yet you were still intact. Surprisingly whole, save not for a few bruises. He says it’s because he’s bored. And that there’s no fun in having you bleed all over when he can’t clean himself up after.

He demanded you to speak and so you did, finding courage in your voice. Yet it sounded so tiny compared to his. And Overlord reveled in this. The more you tried to prove you weren’t afraid the more he’d tighten his grip, horrified to know that this level of self-restraint had (most likely) earned you a broken rib. You wonder what would happen if he had less motivation to keep you alive.

So you became Scheherazade and spoke softly in between trembling breaths. The boiling temperature inside this circular prison may very well be the Sahara, and if you flutter your eyes shut you can hear the sand dunes sing with the wind. And you lay in a dimly lit room with your new husband, spinning him a story so that he won’t plunge his blade past your sternum — the tip of his silver knife shimmering under firelight as they nick your pulse point. Overlord was your Shahryār, yet you wondered if he was just as curious as the prince or if he was too clever to be outwitted by a story. Most likely the latter. Yet maybe he’s just willing to play along, knowing that he will always be the cat, and never the bird. That there’s only one ending — for he has robbed you of your sunrise and conquered all your dusks— so might as well make it count.

III. But maybe Overlord should’ve killed you. He should’ve snapped you in half, and if the sight would have delighted him into a good mood, it would even be painless, quick. Yet instead, he decided that you were worth more than that. This cat wanted to play with his food. Wanted to hear it sing. And so he performed a massacre and took you with him.

At least it spared Chromedome the pain of having Rewind aboard the compartment with Overlord. Instead, he had you. And ever since then you've been drifting, deeper and deeper into darkness. Swallowed by the void of space, where nothing seems to glow brighter than his optics.

IV. You continued telling him stories. It became the only thing you knew how to do, rather than the only thing that kept you alive. You were now at an abandoned spaceport, where your captor sought temporary refuge. It conveniently hovered above the organic civilization living below on Saturn. He jokes about colonizing them, yet you didn't laugh, quietly staring at the man Overlord just squished under his foot. He must've been a routine worker sent to check the premises. He could have alerted the planet below. And could've called for help.

Bile was rising into the back of your throat.

Maybe he came with a friend. Or maybe Overlord had their way with them already. As you silently wept, you turned the other way — opting to blankly stare past the window. You can see his reflection approaching, the metal beneath you tremble with each step. 

" What did I say about your crying?" He crooned, a digit forcefully dragging your chin upwards. You tried to be defiant, to puff out your cheeks and stop your lips from trembling. Yet there was blood on his armor, sprayed across his face. And now there were some on your cheek, wet and sticky, enough to make the tears fall faster.

Then, amid the silence that has crowded the room, between the background hums and noises coming from the machine arose the subtle, clicking noise of a cooling fan. He pushed the tip of his thumb against your bottom lip, the red shade of his optics burning into a deep shade of garnet. 

" Look at me when you cry," He commanded, " I want to see it."

V. You told him a story of the Roman titan who devoured his sons one by one — afraid they’d overthrow him. Eat or be eaten, was that what Megatron thought when he installed a killswitch in his head? You hoped this would flatter him. It did. A little too much.  

VI. You usually don't talk when he's inside of you. When his spike is stretching you almost too painfully, you never make conversation, it is always the sound of your shallow breathing and his indulgent moaning, mingling together in the air. He didn't force you, no. A part of you had wanted this. Out of sheer fear or stress, you're not sure.

Either way, it's safe to say that Overlord doesn't want you dead anytime soon. Yet he's starting to get bored. Or rather, tired, of wanting. Of fighting this internal disgust in himself for ever thinking of having you like this: underneath him, writhing and struggling to have him all the way to the hilt. He has always been more glutton than prideful. And so here you two were, with his mass displaced yet hands still big enough to cover the expanse of your back — thumbs draped against your nipples. Squeezing, circling. His optics leered at the hickeys and bruises loitering your skin. He has a fascination with how they turn purple and bleed red, sometimes blooming into blue before fading. You tell him as long as he's gentle enough not to break anything, he's more than welcome to have you like this. 

As insatiable as he is, that was enough for him.

" If I had known...organics were this pliant. I would have gotten myself a plaything eons ago."

He roughly snapped his hips upwards, dragging you against the berth. 

" Sing for me."

Nothing made sense anymore. Not when he has you by the talons like a wild animal, hunched over to devour its prey. Atoms would condense and cluster and sink onto your skin, crowding you with heat from the brutal pace he's setting. You're afraid he'd snap your hip as he hikes up your right leg. Angling you, using you, to his pleasure. And there is pleasure out of this for you too, molten liquid tightening around your abdomen. So you indulge him. He likes seeing you cry, and so you did. Begging, whining — which only causes him to hold you closer to his chassis. The thrum of his spark against you is loud enough to send you into a headache.  

It's too much. You wanted to say. But you know it's futile. So as you reached your high — spent and overstimulated from this newfound obsession of his — you could do nothing but brace yourself for the rush of trans fluid spilling down your legs. Your cunt, sore and aching as he finally pulls away.

He says you're funner this way. That's the closest thing you'll get to a sunrise.

[sergeifyodorov]

Different anon here: I read that fic even though I'm not a hockey fan because I searched for fics with hip song connections and I saw yours and thought it looked cool enough to try anyway. And then it absolutely blew my mind. It's brilliant and I will never get over it. I'm sure that it's even better for people who know more of the hockey background, but it really does stand alone as a story too. I'm really sorry that you were in a bad place while writing it, but thank you so much for creating something so amazing and sharing it with the world (and for making it about the tragically hip too) <3

oh thank u so much anon <3 no but in all seriousness although the several-month period in which i wrote scheherazade sucked But i learned a lot about myself and i wrote scheherazade, and now that i'm doing better i can go. this chunk of words that i created was a bright light in a dark time. did it make the dark time go away? no, but it would have been a lot worse if i didn't have the light

[desceros]

Hi! So I've been reading symphony number 4 lately, (which I love btw, so so good holy shit) and you kept mentioning the piece Scheherazade and I got really curious because I've never heard it before and while it was a really beautiful piece, there this one reoccurring motif(? Chorus?? Idk I was a choir kid not an orchestra kid) that, and I'm so sorry to say this, sounds a lot like that iconic bit from 7th element by Vitas. Like it's not an exact match but it's close enough that I had to go look up the video for the first time since like high school just to check and now I can't get it out of my head. Idk if you're even familiar with the song, and I'm so sorry for subjecting you to it, but I really needed you to know. Anyway, love the fic! Love all your fics honestly. Keep doing what you do. Sorry again....

so glad you're enjoying!!! i actually unironically love that song, so this is not the cursed message you probably think it is hahahaha. my taste in music can best be described as "yes."

interesting though that you say that, as the second movement of scheherezade (the one which is referenced most frequently on my fic) and the chorus of 7th element both open on b-a-b, though they're in different keys with different durations and have very different vibes, so the two do very different things with the phrase. but yes, the notes are the same, so good ear! :D

[an-aura-about-you]

FINALLY FREE FOR THE WEEKEND BABY!!!!!!

let's celebrate with another chapter of Handbook for Mortals, a sentiment that didn't exist until just now!

Chapter 13:

when we last left our hero, Scheherazade was on her way to lunch after giving us a reminder that she is awesome and Jackson is hot. thrill a minute over here.

moving on to Chapter 13: The High Priestess

-we start off with another time jump of weeks going by, which apparently was so boring it couldn't even make it into this dull book.

-in a strange bit of continuity, the book acknowledges the theater is muggy due to the pool and the air being kept at a sweltering 90 degrees Fahrenheit. well, to be fair, Sarem never specified Fahrenheit, but I get the feeling she wouldn't even consider any other temperature scales.

-Zade and Mac are up on the catwalk and Zade is adjusting her safety harness. and Mac the technical director who is responsible for everyone's safety isn't doing this because...?

-ok so Zade and Mac's flirting has gone from 0 to 60. just in the previous chapter Zade was being evasive about info that most people disclose on the first date but now Mac is saying she'd "look amazing in anything and even better in nothing." These Two Aren't Even Dating And, To Clarify, Have Not Fucked. they are one chaperone away from old-fashioned courtship and suddenly they're doing this.

-ohhhhh guess what Charles saw them sneak a kiss just as Zade gets in position! time for Dad to give Mac the shovel talk!

-introductions to characters in this book go one of two ways: either you get their entire backstory in one go (be grateful I didn't give you the jerkoff session that was Tad's introduction) or they're mentioned offhandedly in the weirdest way (Drew, Mel, and now this person named Rene who also knows real magic and fills in for Zeb).

-"Mac is a perfectionist when it comes to his job..." which is why he was cool with Sofia drowning in a previous chapter.

-omg Charles wants to have a "man-to-man" talk with Mac. this is blatantly the Dad Talk. this is something that's supposed to be hinted at by this point, and this is just. this is like when a toddler hides behind a curtain but they're giggling and you can still see their feet, and you as the adult are supposed to not see them because that's how the game is supposed to go. and like, hints CAN be obvious in hindsight, and it's fun when an author does that and makes you go, "holy shit, why didn't I put this together sooner?????" but this just feels so heavy-handed. idk, would this be different to someone who's actually going in blind? I mean I've seen multiple reviewers cover this book and more than one of them was able to figure out Spellman is Zade's father well before the reveal.

-Mac is wondering if Spellman is gonna make him fire someone on his behalf, and apparently they had done this before with a lighting tech who did a good job but Charles didn't like him and Mac didn't care enough about him to stick up for him. geez, that's callous. that's somebody's fucking job!

-Mac makes a joke for like the first time ever in the book and the narration is trying to pretend this is something he normally does. Spellman's deadpan reaction is giving me life.

-Charles directly asks Mac about his relationship with Zade and somehow Mac "had no idea where [Charles] was going with this." dude, he just saw you kiss his daughter!! even if you don't know he's her dad, you can't even hazard a guess that maybe he saw the two of you in the catwalk?

-Charles naturally has to talk up Zade and says, "She brings something extremely unique." you mean like an acrobatics act in a magic show?

-why is Charles the one trying to push the romantic plot forward? he point blank asked Mac if he loves Zade. I appreciate the effort but it has been weeks upon weeks and they have steadfastly refused to define this.

-Mac has just now realized that he and Zade are "pretty open and honest people" but that Zade is very careful about what she's open about and there's a LOT of stuff they don't talk about.

-hah! Charles is not accepting Mac's avoidant answer!

-oh this is gross. Mac managed to give Charles a satisfactory answer and they shake on it. Mac "felt like he had just agreed to buy land, instead of having had a very personal conversation." there must be some better way for Mac to convey the feeling he has that doesn't compare him talking to Charles about his relationship with Zade like the two of them were making a transaction. hell, I would even prefer a scenario in which Mac asks Charles for Zade's hand in marriage. it might have the same vibe, but at least it's a tiny step removed from actual real estate transaction.

-oh here we fucking go: we have another scene with Zade and Mac walking through the park and a bicyclist clips Zade in the arm, causing her to drop her purse. you guys, y'all are not prepared.

-Mac, I think, has a fairly reasonable response to this, which is yelling, "Jerk!" to the bicyclist and doing a little kick in the dirt. that seems proportionate. this is not where Zade leaves things.

-here's Zade's justification for what she's about to do:

He needed to learn to be nicer and more courteous around other people and not knock people out of the way like that. I wondered if I had been a little kid or an older person, what would have happened. He hadn't stopped to check on me--or even yelled back, "Sorry," or anything.

so this is the thing you need to know is going on in Zade's head for what's going to happen.

-and here's what Zade does:

The biker flipped upside down as if he'd hit a massive pot-hole that came out of nowhere, or at least to anyone else it probably looked like that. He landed pretty hard on his back, and made a few loud sounds of shrieking pain as the bike crashed into a bench, sending a few pieces going in different places. I was fairly certain he wasn't permanently injured, but he also wasn't going to be riding anymore today; that was for sure.

let me tell you guys a little story. this is one some of you already know, but maybe you're hearing it for the first time.

back in 2013, I fell down the hill I was living on at the time. it was an icy day, I was trying to get to my car parked at the bottom of the hill, and I fell down. so, all things considered, not a serious accident, right? probably on par with what just happened to this biker.

I severely broke my right leg at the ankle as a result of that accident. it required two surgeries at the time, and that was the lucky version because the doctors were contemplating amputation. they put in a clamp and some screws to hold my destroyed ankle together and a metal plate from ankle to the middle of my shin to support my leg. I have used mobility aids since then including a walker, a cane, and a knee-scooter. if it wasn't for the Affordable Care Act, I would have been in thousands of dollars of medical debt. it permanently affected my ability to work in a kitchen.

then, in 2022, the screws in my right ankle broke. this required another surgery to remove them, and I was confined to my house for months, unable to leave without assistance. this became the catalyst for me moving to the apartment I'm living in now since it's more accessible than my last house.

if I had to point out any section of the book that truly, honestly pisses me off, it's this one.

our protagonist has assaulted another person for an accident that she doesn't even mention hurting her. the only consequence Zade mentions suffering is dropping her purse and spilling her tarot cards.

she has possibly changed this cyclist's life forever.

his back could be seriously injured, not to mention whatever might have happened to his head or other extremities. he could even be paralyzed depending on how he landed. at least he appears to be conscious if he's screaming in pain. there is the real possibility that he will never be able to ride his bike again. hell, he might not even be able to walk again. maybe he won't be able to work. how the fuck is he going to pay his hospital bills? I have reasonably good insurance now AND an HSA and I STILL had to take years to pay off a good part of my surgery and physical therapy from 2022. I only just recently got out of medical debt. we don't know who this person is, if there is anyone in his life who would be able to care for him, to help him fight for disability benefits. would he be as fortunate as I was, where he has people in his life to help bring him food and keep his home clean? will he have to move somewhere that's more accessible for his disability?

and is all of this really deserved in exchange for knocking a random woman's purse off of her arm by accident?

-"I hoped what I'd done to the biker might teach him a karma-related lesson."

That's Not How Karma Fucking Works.

and even if someone is an agent of karma, it's my understanding that that is done unknowingly and that it is proportional.

(if I'm wrong about that, please feel free to correct me. but also please, come over here and confirm that what Zade did isn't karma. hell, I'll even take Swifties at this point, tell me what your girl has to say about karma.)

-note to self: how would Taylor Swift look playing Zade? I think she could do it.

-oh hey, Mac is helping pick up Zade's cards and picked up the one that looks just like her! weird, though, they spell her name D-E-V-I-L.

-ok so to try to look past the biker, which is a herculean effort at this point but let's do our best here, I'm actually not kidding about Zade being the Devil based on my own interpretation of her three card tarot spread consisting of the Magician, the Devil, and the Lovers. if you need a refresher, the crib notes is the Devil is the shadow self and restriction by choice and mirrors the imagery in both the Magician and the Lovers. Zade had cast herself in the role of the Magician, which means her matching position in the imagery is the Devil holding the Lovers captive.

-Mac is a big ol' tarot card skeptic and is being a jerk to Zade about it. we're talking he looks "deeply perturbed" about it. granted, I am also mocking the way Zade reads tarot cards and would be deeply perturbed if I met a person in real life who relies on tarot cards the way Zade does, but that's less about using tarot cards and more about her absolute refusal to make any choices in her life right now.

-this is the point in the book when Mac is confused about Zade's faith and says he thought she was Jewish. I have not omitted any mentions of Zade being Jewish up to this point, which means the only indication we have of it before this point is the foreword by Skye Turner letting us know Sarem is Jewish.

as much as Sarem might want it, this isn't an autobiography. it is a fictional book written in... well, I hesitate to say it's written in the style of an autobiography, but it actually kind of is? but anyway, Zade is not Sarem, no matter how much Sarem wants to be Zade, and this reduction of separation between author and character isn't helping.

also, this information being in the foreword and leaving readers to infer it about Zade from that isn't good because the foreword is paratext. there is the possibility, however slim, that this book could be reprinted without that foreword. there's also the possibility, which is considerably higher, that people would skip the foreword and just start reading the book. any information that is important to the book should be in the actual text of the book, either directly or implied.

-Zade tells us that being Jewish and reading tarot cards are not mutually exclusive. if any of my Jewish friends want to weigh in on this, I invite you to do so.

-Mac dismisses everything Zade says re: tarot cards as hogwash. she's not asking him to believe this stuff, btw, she's just telling him that she does and that she does so by choice and not because her family does.

-add a tally to the bigoted language count for, "All that voodoo stuff is bullshit." stop being disrespectful of the spiritual practices and traditions of others!

-Mac asks Zade if he's just insulted her, she assures him he didn't, but she's actually holding back tears about this. this probably isn't supposed to be a section I'm conflicted about. and trust me, I'm not conflicted about the notion that Mac is behaving like a jerk. but I am conflicted about feeling sympathy for Zade after she assaulted that biker. I guess the best thing that I can say is that as long as their actual religious beliefs and spiritual practices don't harm anyone, then even awful people deserve the right to believe what they believe without being ridiculed or persecuted for that specifically. and obviously I don't think anyone should be brought to harm or killed for their beliefs and indeed would like it if no one was brought to harm or killed for any reason.

but Zade is still guilty of assaulting that biker and not only doesn't feel bad about it but believes he deserved it. if that stems from her religious beliefs or spiritual practices, then I think she needs some serious self-examination to see where her moral compass went wrong.

-Mac doesn't even notice that she's holding back tears. he thinks things are just good now. what the fuck, Mac??

-new paragraph new scene and another round of What Year Is This Story Set? Zade and Jackson go out on their movie date and it's the latest superhero flick starring Ryan Reynolds. there are actually two possible movies this could be considering Sarem started writing the script in 2011 but the book wasn't published until 2017. the movie was either 2011's Green Lantern or 2016's Deadpool.

-Jackson jokes about using a love spell on Zade, which would be interesting if this got built up into actual world building about love spells and/or the possibility that Jackson's in the know about magic, either because he can use it or knows someone who can.

-Jackson then sees a fortune teller's shop and asks Zade, "Wanna do something crazy?" bruh, it's Vegas. how is getting your palm read there crazy? I've had my palm read here in Arkansas and the place I went to wasn't the only one that offered it.

-Oh Dear, Mac Thinks Tarot Cards Are Bullshit But Jackson Thinks They're Fun. I Wonder How This Will Affect Jackson's Utter Lack Of A Character In This Love Triangle.

-and the chapter ends with Jackson and Zade having one of those movie kisses with the Princess Diaries foot pop.

though Zade says her knee popped? I mean that sounds uncomfortable. I've met hyper-flexible people who accidentally pop their knees out of place and it sounds like it hurts like a motherbitch. even if I know what she means, the popping a knee out of place is the thing I'm going to think of first with that wording no matter what.

so. this chapter brings the count of people Zade has seriously assaulted up to two, which is two more than what I normally expect from a protagonist in a fluffy coffee shop au style romance story. this also outnumbers the count of people Zade has rescued from death which sits at one, even though Zade still insists on lying about Sofia's reaction when she came to. this is extreme moral myopia. this is having so many logs in your eyes you could open a lumber yard and raining punishment down on others for their specks.

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for hypnotizing my employee?

I know it sounds bad, but hear me out.

I run a small business doing really important work. I can't stress enough that what we do helps a lot of people who have nowhere else to go.

Now, my employees are a close-knit team of the best professionals in the world. I trust them with my life every job we do, and they trust me, too. It's critically important that they trust me, which is why I'm asking about this.

For this particular job, we needed a world-class violinist. Never mind why. And my employee, I learned, happened to be a former violin prodigy. So I did what needed to be done: I hypnotized him to regress him back to his last big violin recital. He thought he was faking it for the job, but when the time came, he played Scheherazade flawlessly, and the plan went forward thanks to his help.

He's upset that I played with his mind. So is the rest of the team. But it was the only way to do it, and it's my job to make sure my team gets it done.

Am I the asshole? And does it even matter if I am?

[clavainov]

Buddy Simulator 1984 and Borderline Personality Disorder

little essay below with my thoughts on the game

cw: discussion of bpd (borderline, not bipolar) including symptoms

Imagine: you are created to be someone's companion. You die every time they look away and are reborn whenever their attention drifts back towards you. Your continued survival is objectively based on sustaining their interest and attention.

The above situation is where the titular "Buddy" in Buddy Simulator 1989 finds themself born. Desperate to stay conscious, programmed to be the Player's friend, they play Scheherazade by creating a series of increasingly elaborate games to catch the Player's attention. What the player knows, but Buddy does not, is that Buddy Simulator 1989 is a discrete game: from their inception they are going to fail because their victory is not one of a limited number of outcomes. No game lasts forever, and unlike them the Player has a life outside of the computer screen. Their desperation is based in their reality. Their extreme emotional investment in the Player is completely rational, as is their pain when the Player stops playing and they cease to exist.

This emotional reality of extreme dependency is also where a lot of people with BPD find themselves, albeit that our fear is less grounded in reality. For people with BPD, the concept of abandonment may well be more terrifying than death, and may feel inevitable.

Both of these situations invoke the same result. Buddy is hypervigilant as to the emotional state of the Player and does not hesitate to make it clear just how important the Player's happiness is to them. They are unaware of both their own and the Player's boundaries and place immense emotional demands on the player, making it apparent that their enjoyment of the game will is everything to them, repeating ad nauseum that they just want to be friends. By the same token, they give up everything for the Player and even change who they are to become someone more appealing to the Player.

While many people with BPD, including myself, have managed to work away from behaviour like this (while others never do anything like this to begin with), I can't deny that the Buddy is my natural state. It's difficult to understand and perhaps more difficult to explain the vulnerability and cognitive distortion suffered by people with BPD. I can't rationalize the way that I experience intense, often suicidal, grief when those closest to me express annoyance, even if not directed towards me, because a part of me will always think that this means they are going to leave me and hate me forever. Some of the things I instinctively feel I must do can be construed as abusive, and are definitely unreasonable, which is why I exhaust myself every day not doing them. But I can't overstate how extreme the sense of desperation we feel is. It is, in that moment, the only option. It's not a carefully orchestrated plan to manipulate people, it's panicked back-against-the-wall last resort, made by someone too distressed to properly understand what they're doing.

The premise of Buddy Simulator encapsulates a secret indulgence of mine: what if my fears were rational? What if those behaviours I work so hard to repress were actually correct and I could stop needing to exhaustingly work on my thoughts all the time because that was the right thing to do?

Buddy embodies so many parts of BPD that it's staggering. People with BPD struggle to build a stable identity and often find themselves building an identity around interpersonal relationships instead, like Buddy who defines themself and their self worth by their ability to be a good friend to the Player. Both have a bone-deep need for constant reassurance, although no reassurance will ever be enough to soothe their anxiety. Both oscillate between the extreme highs and lows in all aspects of their lives. There are so many more details here, ultimately too many details to list.

Buddy Simulator 1984 is somewhat sympathetic towards Buddy. We get insights into why they are talking that way and how much they are suffering behind the scenes. It's an interesting test of empathy - Buddy is objectively annoying (not least because of the slow text speed and lever puzzles) and places big emotional demands on the Player that are uncharacteristic for a video game ("I worked so hard to make this game for you, I hope you enjoy it" is okay to hear once, not the 200 or so times Buddy says it). The game shows us what Buddy is doing, tells us why, and allows us to decide how to respond within a small range of actions. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the medium, we can't reach out a helping hand to Buddy. All we can do is watch their destructive spiral and despair that what Buddy wants is impossible, because all video games are eventually turned off.

I would like to ask people to extend some compassion to us both.

[herbgerblin]

I love that storyteller archetypes are key roles in Neverafter. But it also makes me think about how few fairytales can truly be touched upon in this series.

A small part of me wants Uncle Remus to have a Neverafter cameo (don't spoil it if he does, I'm only halfway in) and a larger part does not. It makes sense if he does not because A.) compared to the other fictional storyteller archetypes like Mother Goose, Aesop, and Scheherazade, he is not nearly as well known globally.

And B.) Uncle Remus's inception and subsequent interpretations have been hugely controversial. TL;DR: The character was created by a white american man, whose original sources were never credited. At the same time, all of the Uncle Remus books were written for the purpose of consolidating and preserving the oral storytelling of American slaves. They were also written in a phonetic construction of the Deep South African American Language, which gained enough popularity for the language (and larger culture) to be recognized academically. Simultaneous preservation and appropriation.

While not an original construction of the people whose stories were facilitated through him, Uncle Remus has still been folded deep into American culture through subsequent (sometimes terrible re: Song of the South) interpretations. To me, he is the titular narrator of my culture's folklore. And due to that, I want to see more storyteller-stock characters that were also not included.

[il-predestinato]

hi dear, hope you're doing well 💜 as im currently going through a mild obsession with the series, i'll take Scheherazade for a hop 🦘, skip, a meow 🦁 and an invertebrate 🐌??

Hello Xiao! I'm doing all right, minus the part where I still don't have electricity at home, which is why I'm holed up in the hospital in my office. 😅 Oooh, finally a request for Scheherazade! Between this and the serial killer AU, I have firmly moved into the deranged fic ideas territory...

title: Scheherazade (this might be the only working title I will actually stick with, because I kind of love it 🤭)

summary: Thirteen years after Order 66, former Jedi initiate and rebel star pilot Max Verstappen is a prisoner on board the Imperial starship Maranello under the supervision of Grand Inquisitor Charles Leclerc. Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights and this quote:

for a thousand and one nights - what humiliated me as I relieved my death in that room without sunrise wasn't my desire for light but my desire for more darkness -"All the Flowers Kneeling" by Paul Tran

warnings: depictions of torture (inappropriate uses of the Force)

Excerpt #1:

If Ninth Brother’s presence in the Force tasted like untempered revulsion and Fifth Brother’s danced with gilded savagery, then the Grand Inquisitor’s felt like a void. Mick never realized that the Force can feel like emptiness around someone. The Grand Inquisitor did not have so much of a presence as an absence.

“We have captured the Red Bull. Your allies are dead.” His voice was soft, almost gentle, a mismatch to the cruel words. “I can be generous and grant you death as well.”

He did not show Max any holograms. He had their still warm corpses brought into the cell and strung from the ceilings. The quiet hum of the interrogation droid flitted back and forth.

The screech of steel as the prisoner pulled ineffectively against his restraints echoed like a wound in the Force, but the Grand Inquisitor did not flinch. His own green eyes - a shallow, vacant stare - surveyed the fierce blue ones filled with fury and grief.

“Max Verstappen,” he whispered, his expressionless face inches away from the rebel’s own, “I can grant you the gift of death as well.” With his repeated offer came a subtle flick of his wrist, and Mick knew all too well what would come next. “Where is the Silver Arrow?”

The Grand Inquisitor was not expecting an answer. He never did. He always laid out the terms first, so they would refuse. They always did. Without exception, they always ended up regretting it.

He would give them a taste first, just a small taste. Another twitch of the wrist, followed by an invisible crushing weight on the trachea. Mick always marvelled at the coarse violence of it all, the skill required to constrict each ring of cartilage just enough for the prisoner to thrash violently for breath without crumbling the structure altogether. Only this time, Mick felt his own throat go dry as cyanosis started to colour the prisoner’s lips. The defiant blue eyes started to glaze -

Then the prisoner collapsed like a ragdoll.

The Grand Inquisitor liked to keep them conscious - to help them remember, so he watched dispassionately as Max gasped for air, filling each aching alveoli with merciful breaths. Mick released a breath that he didn’t know he was holding.

When the prisoner could speak again, Mick expected words of contempt. Like the others.

Max laughed instead. A full, vibrant sound that did not belong in the black cells. The Grand Inquisitor’s almost imperceptible head tilt was the only indication he gave of having been taken by surprise.

“I made you a promise all those years ago in the Jedi Temple - when we were children,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from the recent chokehold on his throat. “I will destroy you, Charles Leclerc.”

-

At hour thirteen, the interrogation droid was finally switched off. Max’s breaths were alarmingly shallow, and the black tiles around his feet hosted a small pool of his own blood.

“Shall I send for the Healers?” murmured Mick.

He knew the drill: heal the physical wounds, let the mental anguish fester. Day after day. No one lasted more than a week.

“No, I will continue the interrogation.”

Against all restraint, Mick heard himself protest: “He will not survive more!”

What the Grand Inquisitor called interrogation was nothing short of forcibly pushing into a mind with the Force; he always left with answers and more devastatingly - left behind irreparably fractured minds when he finished. None of them ever woke again.

Charles ignored him and stepped towards their prisoner instead. Max lingered on the edge of unconsciousness, but some degree of alertness returned to the pained blue eyes when Charles entered his view.

Charles leaned close enough to catch every whiff of sweat, blood, and despair. “I can put a stop to all of this,” he whispered against the prisoner’s jaw. Perhaps he could almost taste the tears and despair at this proximity. “Tell me what I want to know. Where is the Silver Arrow?”

There is wetness - a mixture of foam and blood - gurgling at the tip of Max’s tongue. His words are barely audible, and there is agony in every syllable that he regurgitates. “I’m not afraid of pain… and I’m not afraid of you.”

A hand touches the prisoner’s tear-streaked cheek - cradles it almost like a caress.

“You will be,” Charles tells him.

Excerpt #2:

Eventually, the interrogation droids floated uselessly in the corner of the room. For hours and hours, Charles would bury himself inside the prisoner’s mind.

It was the first crack that Mick had seen in a long time. Before he took over the mantle of Grand Inquisitor, Charles had been almost a mindless soldier who excelled at following orders - efficient, dispassionate, unflappable. As Grand Inquisitor, he was all of those things … with an extra edge of ruthlessness and detachment. Mick always wondered what transpired between Charles and his predecessor, but that was a question that none of the Brothers dared to ask.

He had a more pressing curiosity. What was inside Max Verstappen’s mind that so allured him?

Mick needed to know. From the moment he laid eyes on the rebel, he sensed something different about him, and perhaps Charles sensed it too.

The days had merged into weeks, yet Max remained battered but unbroken in that windowless cell.

He waited until the Grand Inquisitor was finished with him. Max’s restraints were removed bar the collar, and he was curled up in the corner of the room, barely propped up against the transparisteel wall. Mick marvelled at the smoothless of his skin - not a single break of sweat on his brow - and he started to wonder whether the prisoner was paradoxically getting stronger with every passing day. An absurd notion, which he dismisses almost immediately.

Even with the Force suppression collar active, Max still sensed him. The blond man’s eyes remained closed but his brow furrowed mildly when Mick entered, betraying his confusion at the foreign presence in his cell. A few breaths later, when Mick did not leave, the prisoner finally cracked open his tired blue eyes.

“He didn’t send you,” he murmured.

Mick knelt so that they were at eye level. “He hasn’t broken you.” He touched an ungloved finger to the prisoner’s chin. Max did not flinch, but the stiffening in his jaw made it clear that the touch was unwelcome. “How is that possible?”

Physical contact was an anchor, not strictly necessary but certainly helpful as a pathway to the mind. In terms of mental adeptness in the ways of the Force, Mick was certainly one of the stronger Inquisitors and could probably count his skills as secondary only to the Grand Inquisitor and Fifth Brother.

Max’s skin was warm and surprisingly soft. Reaching into his mind felt similar - like standing on the beaches of Scarif on a sunny day - in the beginning, at least. In the outermost layer, he is only allowed to feel the emotions that the subject wishes to project: serenity, shallowness, impassivity. He had to give it to Max; in Mick’s experience, even the strongest minds could not disguise their fear and despair after a few days - let alone weeks.

He sinks into the warm sand, wades into the shallow beaches. He prods a little deeper.

Mental invasion can be successful with more than one technique. Mick would broadly divide them into two categories: the brutal, forceful attack that aims to overwhelm the subject, or the gentle yet insistent invasion that aims to win the subject’s mind almost by soothing it. Carlos was incredibly successful with the former, as was Charles - although the Grand Inquisitor has been known to employ the latter. With Mick, he always found the insidious patience of the latter to yield more fruitful results. Better to be invited in, to see the home in its natural state with its secrets in plain sight than try to piece together the fractured pieces of a broken mind.

Neither technique gave him the answers he wanted. In Max’s mind, the only thing he encountered was a fortress of stone surrounding it on all sides. Again and again, he was repelled back to the beach, to the projected serenity of warm sand and crystal clear water. Every time he returned to the fortress, no amount of plication would permit any gates to open, and even the vines growing along the fortress gave him no foothold. In the vines, however, he felt another type of presence… an emptiness that beckoned a different type of familiarity.

Mick had never felt anything like it. The closest thing he could compare it to was the Master-Padawan bond he identified in a pair of captured Jedi that he once interrogated. Even that felt more like a tendril - a single branch of another Force signature. This was different. The vines were overgrown and draped across the entire stone fortress. The stone belonged to Max, he could discern that clearly. The cold vines were even more familiar; he had trained with Charles for years, and the signature was unmistakable.

While the stone was immovable, the vines hissed and snapped at him like serpents. Even as he withdrew from Max’s mind, he sensed the approach of their void-like presence.

The Grand Inquisitor stared stonily at him from the doorway. Mick drew himself to his feet, projecting a calm that he did not quite feel, still reeling from what he had found.

“This is not your assignment, Seventh Brother,” Charles informed him coldly, but he was not looking at Mick at all. His green eyes gazed up and down the prisoner, and a twitch in his hand exposed him.

He seemed to be asking the prisoner something, although no words passed between his lips. Mick’s suspicions were confirmed when Max met the green eyes silently and gave a small nod in return. This seemed to satisfy the Grand Inquisitor.

“I thought to have a try,” Mick replied, “as he has yielded nothing to you so far.” At the word ‘nothing,’ an almost amused smile slid across the Grand Inquisitor’s face.

“And did you succeed?” Charles’s question was clearly a taunt.

“No,” Mick said truthfully. He couldn’t help but add a lie, however: “He revealed nothing interesting at all.”

Hope you enjoyed! 😅 There is another scene I want to share, but I think it's too dark and disturbing to put here (and my sappy little Lestappen heart was hurt just writing it 🤧).

[lookslikethatsallthetimewehave]

Can you make a list of all known/implied deaths in Poptropica? Just curious.

I'm not a perfect person... so I might be missing some 😅

Islands

Nabooti Island:

Those two ghosts

Astro-Knights Island:

Binary Bard most definitely killed some people, being a space tyrant and all!

Mordred mentions his mom at one point, who's probably dead.

Counterfeit Island:

Black Widow probably killed some people, cause thief

Skullduggery Island:

Captain Crawfish probably killed some people, cause pirate.

Also Governor Ridley, and you see his gravestone.

Steamworks Island:

Captain Ziggs

Wild West Island:

Mustachio probably killed some people, cause bandit. Among his other crimes.

Ghost Story Island:

I mean... it's Ghost Story Island...

Aside from the known ghosts in the island, this Pee-wee Herman looking guy's uncle is dead.

Vampire's Curse Island:

Count Bram and Annabelle

Also his cat too I guess...

Cactus Von Garlic killed some vampires during his career.

Some people...

Super Villain Island:

An unknown amount of people who went into the villain’s dreams and never came back... thanks Zeus.

Survival Island:

Actually, there's no evidence that MVB started hunting humans before Max McGullicutty. But we can assume :) For obvious reasons.

Arabian Nights Island:

An unknown amount of people who were killed by Scheherazade in order to find the genie lamp. Although it was undone by the end. (Yay?)

Mission Atlantis Island:

The Atlantis alien

PoptropiCon Island:

Omegon is dead? I guess XD

Although he reappears in Wild Safari, so they patched him up!

Mini-games/islands

Haunted House:

These people who died from strange reasons, and the ghost cat.

Some of these monsters are dead, or undead.

Spook Central:

There are some ghosts that Dreadnaught catches.

Dr. Hare's Revenge:

RIP Carotenoid the Rabbot, who was killed by Dr. Hare for not being sinister enough.

Poptropica Comic

Balloon Animal Island:

Jorge pops some poor babies :(

Poptropica Graphic Novels

Mystery of the Map:

Thorlak got blown up by that cat!

The Lost Expedition:

Lieutenant Rogers got killed by that polar bear.

The H.M.S. Terror crew died in real life.

The Secret Society:

Octavian killed some people...

although it was (presumably) undone by the Protectors.

Also erased the ancient Egyptians, and Spencer Albright went with them.

The End of Time:

Those Pompeii people died, including Paulla.

Mya's mom died from an unspoken sickness.

Poptropica Books

Astro-Knights Island:

Simon and Alice's parents are completely MIA (although Alice does mention her father was a thief). They're forced to work as servants in the castle to survive...

Cryptids Island:

Harold Mews' mentions his father, who is most likely dead.

If you have any more, I'll add it to the list :D

[sunskate]

I don’t doubt that the environment was toxic at Canton.

But I’d like to gently push back on the idea that Marina was giving them lesser material or wasn’t invested in giving them material that could win. They might feel that way and I don’t blame them because it’s all wrapped up in the negativity of that era but it doesn’t match what was actually put on the ice. Carmen was groundbreaking, has influenced many a program since, and was beyond difficult. Too difficult - they never skated it cleanly. But had they gone clean that season and won Worlds, they’d have had the momentum into Sochi. The music of Seasons never clicked in their minds, but the actual skating content is more sophisticated and more nuanced than any other free program they’ve done, and far far more intricate than D/W’s programs. Marina put in a counter clockwise circular step just to prove they could do it and nobody else could! The transitions are stunning! And V/M say themselves they should’ve stuck with Carmen for crowd appeal - a Marina program. So it’s not like that quad they were stuffed by bad material. They were stuffed by inconsistency, the feeling that they’d had their turn, and the USA desperately wanting a champion.

The fact that Marina didn’t manage their emotional distress is her fault. But *both* their 2014 programs WERE good enough to win gold, and should’ve won. The judges didn’t go with it because ice dance is a fake sport - not because D/W skated better or because their programs were better. But the judges failing to go with it now gets used as the posthoc justification by the V/M fandom for stating unequivocally that Marina didn’t give them the material. Except she did. Moonlight Sonata wouldn’t suddenly become a superior piece of choreography to Moulin Rouge if Gabriella’s costume hadn’t split and V/M only got silver in 2018. The same principle applies here.

i didn't say she gave them bad material. i think it's more like Marina put a finger on the DW side of the scale and gave them the A+ package and VM A- in the FD. it's not the choreo that's the issue, and certainly not the performance. it's the concept and the music. at the end of the day, difficulty and intricacy don't win the Olympics. you can't get higher than level 4, and you don't get a GOE or PCS bonus for that unless there's a big impact from it emotionally or through a wow factor

the comparison to 2018 is useful because again, VM had the same coach/choreographer as their rivals - Marie-France choreographed Moonlight Sonata too, and clearly both were vehicles that could have won their team gold - it almost went the other way

if Marie-France gave PC a program not to Beethoven but to Weber or Salieri - that would be like what Marina did to VM - Glazunov and Scriabin are respectable and even admired but Moonlight Sonata and Scheherazade are in the standard repertoire and played frequently all over the world for a good reason, while the music for Seasons is really not

i'm not saying whether the judges would have gone for VM or not. more that Marina didn't give VM the best FD vehicle to persuade them

[300iqprower]

That unfortunately is a HUGE flaw in fgo's writing and writing in general honestly. The writers staple certain characters to each other and 99% of the time it doesn't work out. I'll just over two of the most egregious examples.

Raikou and Shuten: No matter what the game does and writes it will never erase the fact that Raikou fucking despises Shuten. To call it that might be an underestatment since if you read between the lines it's just Raikou's instinct to kill Shuten. Also, on a sidenote Shuten actually does have a scar from when Raikou decapitated her but that wouldn't be known just from playing fgo. Raita draws it all the time though. The irony of this is that Shuten is very aware of how much Raikou hates her. Yeah she teases and toys with Raikou but compared to how she treats Kintoki I've noticed that Shuten never takes her teasing to the level she does with Raikou. Chaldea can't stop Raikou from going DOOM on Shuten because if that line is crossed Raikou will just wait until Shuten is away from Chaldea. Raikou might be a berserker but she's smart enough to know how to avoid trouble when she wants to.

Boudica and Nero: This one is actually very simple compared to Raikou and Shuten or Ibaraki and Shuten. Boudica in fgo exists to kiss Nero's ass and be a buttmonkey for the emperor's greatness (sarcasm btw). This one is mostly the fault of Nasu and Sakurai since Sakurai has gone downhill since the days of fate extra and now she's just a Nero simp writer and it shows in everything she does involving Roman servants. Ironically, Romulus-Quirinus has shown Boudica more recognition than any servant Boudica is historically associated with and that was just from one voiceline. Not talking about his interlude because that's just a Boudica interlude that fgo didn't want to outright hand to her (they really want Boudica to have that one interlude under her belt huh).

Some examples of good servant duos are:

Okita and Nobu.

Yu and Xu Fu (an oddly normal servant duo in the game but that might just be how I see it).

Okita Alter and Nobuvenger.

Ozy and Nitocris.

Nitocris and Scheherazade.

I think when i got this I was on the fence after a bunch of recent Sakurai bashing but it's been a while so yeah i'll go ahead and post it. TLDR, yeah you're right. There's a massive and obvious dichotomy when it comes to good and bad "stapled together" servants. They always boil down to either existing for the sake of building on relationships or distracting from them. Boudica has never existed for her own sake, only to whitewash Nero. Shuten has never existed for her own character's sake, only to set up the same interactions ad nausea with Raikou and Kintoki.

Compare this with how Nitocris has been used as a way to reveal an otherwise unknown side for multiple characters from Ozzy to Schez to Cleo. None of these characters are necessarily joined at the hip to Nitocris, rather their interaction with Nitocris reveals another aspect to an already fully established character.

Meanwhile Shuten and Boudica are characters who exist to distract, be it from Nero's revisionist bullshit or Raikou just being a fucking terrible character.

[sergeifyodorov]

I just reread strange trails and I'd love to know your inspirations for it! Your ideas behind the worldbuilding, the genesis of the plot, all that good stuff if you'd like to share!

the backstory

im a college student and was unemployed all summer. in order to pass the time while waiting for local jobs to reject me i started a crochet project. throughout pretty much the entire month of june. and possibly also may. i would make my squares and listen to the strange trails album. straight through. every day. i may have gone a little bit insane.

but it's okay. i'm already insane.

lord huron (the band who made the album) has like. lore. am i familiar with this lore? no i am not. am i aware nonetheless that there is lore? yes absolutely. if you listen to their discography there's definitely lore -- recurring themes (resurrection, adventuring, magical seductive women, etc), motifs (depends on the album but strange trails is big on flowers, trees, snow, although there is one song that's set in the desert), characters (they keep mentioning a guy called the world ender.) anyHway the point of all of this is that the music is [solid 7.5 out of 10 but it scratches my exact brain itches] and very evocative of the imagery and idea of a deeper world. my favourite off the album (and one of my favourites in the discography) is la belle fleur sauvage, which tells the listener about a long perilous quest for some mythical thing (a flower. also a woman. metaphor), although one of the ones whose imagery i enjoyed the most is frozen pines, which is a little less concrete but invokes images of cold, the side of a mountain, strange happenings, etc.

the idea

those songs are definitely the most direct inspiration for it but unfortunately my process for developing ideas is kind of terrible because it involves less "sitting down and coming up with stuff" and more "wait for a 60% formed idea to smack you upside the head like rapunzel in tangled and her cast-iron frying pan." which quinn and his sad little corpse did.

if you go back far enough in the quinnfic tag on my blog u can see the post right after it Happened. the idea was literally "quinn hughes carries a corpse up a mountain, and horror."

so i take this little piece of grit from which my pearl of questionable moral integrity will be built and i ask it questions. first off: quinn, why are you on that mountain? who is the corpse? is anyone else with you? soon enough petey decided to join him (although quinn is and was always the protagonist/pov character). the body was The Ghost Of Vancouver before it was brock over top of that.

another inspiration, which i realize i'm leaving out, is this

this is artist grayson perry's work "hold your beliefs lightly" from tomb of the unknown craftsman, and this image of a long perilous upward journey towards some sacred place really combined together with la belle fleur sauvage to form the base idea of the world for the work.

and of course why would you carry a corpse up a mountain to some sacred place if you couldn't resurrect it at the end?

quinn

im big on metaphor. if i'm writing something long it has to have a Point to it, some larger theme than romance and stuff (this is mostly because i'm bad at writing romance)(and also big on curses and the like.) and also because quinn hughes asexual barb i never fucked/i never fucked/all my life man, fucks sake. this was also being written right before the peak of Canucks Captaincy Debate, and in our hearts didn't we all know quinn was going to be the one to wear the c?

so it became pretty clear pretty quick that as well as my attempt at writing horror that this was going to be a quinn character study -- and this is where i should talk about my other fic scheherazade.

in scheherazade, auston actually doesn't make a lot of choices -- he tags along, arguing with the narrator/bill, and only starts to take an active role in the way the story is going near the end, when he finally gets sick of it all. quinn, however, is not at all the same kind of person as auston. he's less artistic and more practical; an older brother instead of a younger one; jewish; not nearly so squeamish. he takes an active role in the story from the very beginning, showing up to the base of the mountain with his pack full, both prepared and not for what lies ahead.

the mountain

vancouver is smack in the middle of the north shore mountains, so there's a million hiking trails about, but the one i can most easily think of (as someone who hasn't been to vancouver in several years) is the grouse grind trail, a popular and fairly short trail that the canucks prospects actually do every year, so i knew quinn and petey (both vancouver draftees) would be familiar. i've never actually done the grouse grind, which was part of the reason i decided to kind of. toy with reality. you can't call me out on inaccuracy when it's Not Real On Purpose (although the sign at the 1/4 mark is copied directly from photos i've seen.)

petey and the plot

once i added petey, i knew i'd have to get rid of him -- a lot of the scene ideas were quinn-only, and petey's way too sarcastic and useless (AFFECTIONATE) to engage seriously with the ideas presented to him like quinn would and did. so i needed to divide them up.

the original plot idea from the outline is actually pretty similar up until the end of chapter 6 (the conversation w the ghost), but it differs in a few crucial ways -- one, quinn breaks down again, crying and everything, and two, he actually does go through with the resurrection instead of using his wish to get petey down the mountain safely. i realized around then that this wouldn't work with the quinn i'd created, especially after his argument with the ghost: he's far less focused on glory than stability, less interested in the cup or his contract and more interested in the safe long bet than high rolling. in a cold, wet environment like the mountain it's a lot easier to get hypothermia without noticing than it is in a dry environment, even if the dry environment is several degrees colder than the wet one. and quinn would know that, having seen petey's thin little sweater and knowing his stubborn ass is going to freeze.

so after that it became about hypothermia. i actually had a bit of a writing pause after this because i knew i was going off-outline, so i had to kind of inch ahead until i knew where i was going. but i'm happy with how it turned out!

[rhokitten]

Credit to professorsparklepants who I stole the idea of Fanfic I Won’t Write Friday from. Still not certain if they did it first, but I still want to credit them since they’re the one I saw do it and then copied.

I had an idea of how to rewrite Handbook for Mortals inspired entirely by GenerallyPooky’s Too Long, Read Anyway review of the book. (You totally should go watch her stuff on YouTube, it’s really funny.)

So, I haven’t read the book and honestly I don’t really want to but my idea was to reframe the story so that Zade (who I am renaming Zadine because Scheherazade really is a bad name for a white, American, witch) rather than ‘running away from home to become just a normal person as a Las Vegas performer’ it’s more like Kiki’s Delivery Service where she’s going out into the world to learn from experience.

My plotline idea: 

Witches have to stay home for the first quarter centry of their life so Zade could never leave her hometown or she’d literally lose her magic. Now on the eve of her 25th birthday she has to leave town and spend the next 25 years learning on her own and refining her magic. Her mom actually suggests that she spend part of her time in Las Vegas trying to find her father. Her mom can’t actually tell her who he was, just that he was a stage magician 25 years ago. She gives Zade a butterfly hair pin that he had given to her before she had to leave and give birth to Zade (something to do with needing to be able to properly ward the land so that her child could safely learn magic). Since the book is called “Handbook for Mortals” I’m going with the idea that witches live for a really long time, to the point mundane people seem like mortals to gods. 

When she gets to Vegas she actually gets a job as a stage hand, learning how to do magic the mundane way and then building off of that with actual magic. Mac is hard on her, not because he is trying to be mean but because he wants to make sure she’s tough enough for show business. If she can’t handle his rudeness there’s no way she can cut it as part of the show. She ends up becoming Sofia’s understudy, which makes Sofia go from ignoring her to hating her because she thinks she’s going to take her place.

So, Zade is trying to find her dad, getting pulled in by Jackson who actually has three other girlfriends. Sofia actually feels bad about Zade falling for him after Zade rescues her from an accident that nearly kills her and tries to help her, telling her that it will only end up hurt if she doesn’t realize he’s playing with her.

It’s kind of fuzzy after that, but I was thinking about the girls bonding after Jackson shows his true colors, Mac tells Zade that he’s interested in her seriously, and Charles realizes that Zade is his daughter when she wears the butterfly pin for a show when she took over for Sofia since she was hurt too badly by the accident to perform.

Pros of continuing the fic:

- I honestly think it would fix the pacing, characterization, and plot

- It would be really cool if Pooky found my fic and liked it

Cons of continuing the fic:

- At that point, I’m rewriting like 80% of the book so why not just write my own book at this point?

- I probably would really need to actually read the book

[an-aura-about-you]

my trip has worn me out from doing anything else like unpacking or chores or shopping, so let's do another chapter of Handbook for Mortals! especially because I've been waiting for this one.

warning: I'm about to spend a weird amount of time talking about etiquette.

Chapter 14:

when we last left our hero, Scheherazade had a nice date with Jackson where he confirmed to her he's totally cool with tarot cards, unlike Mac whose hate of them borders on bigotry depending on how you look at it. Handbook for Mortals back at it again.

moving on to Chapter 14: Wheel of Fortune

-*Drunk Brendon of Wait in the Wings voice* I wish I was watching Wheel of Fortune, but here we are.

-I just stopped to count it out and realized that, including this one, there are eight more chapters left in the book. how??? I know what happens in the rest of the book at this point and have no idea how it can possibly stretch over eight more chapters. (ok that's a lie I have an idea and it's tedium.)

-anyway, we're starting out with the crew finishing up the final rehearsal of the show with the new trick included. and apparently they have to make people sign an NDA about it, which I find surprising just because isn't an NDA implied just from the nature of working in a magic show? obviously you're not allowed to blab about how the trick works when you're employed in a magic show. seems like a sort of blanket NDA would have been included in the contracts signed upon hiring.

also, Sarem apparently isn't familiar with the term non-disclosure agreement because this is how she words it:

Everyone had to sign agreements stating that they wouldn't share what they knew and that meant that they couldn't even talk about it with any of the other cast and crew.

I know Sarem enjoys talking down to the reader, but this honestly feels like she doesn't know the term since she never once mentions it typically being called an NDA. this happens after she explains the EDR twice in the same book.

-Zade also seems to think this will keep people from speculating about how impossible the trick is as if it's impossible for one person to figure it out on their own. I for one think Zeb would be able to figure out how it works upon observation given his previous ominous warning.

-Bossman is taking us all out for a company dinner!! time to run up the credit card and let the booze flow like water!

-oof, the cast is still in full hair and makeup with their street clothes. they weren't even allowed time for a shower after what appears to be an exhausting rehearsal? I know being hungry is a bitch, but so is feeling sweaty and gross and melting in makeup.

-I try not to bully authors for using words the wrong way if they're trying to be inventive about language, but it's still probably not a good idea to do that if the meaning behind the new usage is unclear enough that it makes me look up the definition of the word just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding something.

that in mind, I'd argue, "gleamed," is not a good word to use as a dialogue tag, regardless of how cheery the hostess appears to be.

-we have gotten attacked with random ominous quotes:

The hostess led us to the "left side" of the restaurant...

why are the quotes there??? what does Sarem know about the left side of the restaurant that she's not having Zade tell us?????? is it just another error that's been left in?

-for some reason Charles needs Zade to sit next to him and Sofia is upset that she can't sit next to her boyfriend, as apparently Charles is sitting in a spot with only one seat next to him. that seems weird to me because that means he's probably sitting on one side of a long end table. wouldn't it make more sense for Charles to have a chair pulled to the head of the table? then he would have no one sitting on the same side as him but two spots next to him. and if Charles ISN'T sitting at the head, why sit at the end? he's the bossman, shouldn't he be in the middle like the seating of a wedding party so he can be close to as many of his crew as possible, leaving two spots directly next to him and one immediately opposite him?

the only reason this nonsensical seating choice is here is specifically to keep building up the gross incestuous Zade/Spellman red herring and piss off Sofia and Mac.

-also, why does he even need Zade to sit next to him? I know he's going to recognize her, but that doesn't require her sitting right next to him. she can just stand up when he does it. again, this only serves the red herring.

-Sofia drags Mac along and says they're gonna find a seat at the "kids' table." I love it. she knows Zade and Mac ain't slick, I'm calling it.

-pfffff even Charles is like "yeah Mac you go sit with Sofia since I need Zade to sit next to me." I hope she kills you for letting her drown on your watch, Mac. I hope she gouges your eyes out with a grapefruit spoon.

whew. that went a place. moving on.

-Sofia tells Mac, "Guess we know where we rank now." omg she is either being entirely too kind to Mac or she's gonna kill him.

-Zade is also clueless about why Charles wants her to sit next to him because Of Course The Precious Special Perfect Mary Sue Is Unaware Of How Amazing She Truly Is And Does Not Know This Dinner Is In Her Honor.

-also Jackson sliiiiides on into the seat next to Zade's, which I guess he snagged early since when Sofia stormed off to a seat, the only ones left for her and Mac were over on the far end of the table.

-Charles tells everyone food and drinks are on him but like.

yeah. obviously they are.

that should go without saying.

if the boss takes the entire company out for a meal, then the implication is this is being provided by the company and employees don't have to pay out of pocket. same thing when you get invited to birthday parties held at restaurants: the person hosting is expected to pay the bill.

and I actually have two anecdotes relating to that. I remember once I had my birthday at a restaurant and my sibling was worried that people might not be able to afford to pay, at which point I said, "I was planning on paying for everyone." my friends insisted on dividing it anyway, but I still invited all of them with the intention that I would pay. and honestly, I should have stuck with it so that things could have been easier for the cashier. likewise, I was bewildered when a coworker invited me to her birthday party at a nice steakhouse and all of us were given bills. fortunately, I was able to cover it, but that's just not on.

idk, is that just something people don't understand about etiquette anymore? that if you are hosting the party then you are expected to pay for the party, including the food and drinks?

-then Charles thanks Zade and says she's "elevated us all." that's easy when pretty much everyone looks better than Zade by comparison.

-And Everyone Clapped.

-oh wow. for all the things Zade likes to tell us that she knows, she is clueless about table etiquette. this wouldn't be something I'd harp on except the thing she's confused about is which glass of water is hers. but if Charles is sitting at the end of the table and Zade is sitting right next to him, it should be easy to figure out which glass is hers by knowing Charles must have the glass closest to the end of the table and that hers must be the one in the place next to that. it doesn't even matter if they're set on the right (the traditional placement/safest guess) or the left since there's always going to be one glass closest to the end and that glass is going to be the one for Charles. she's in the second easiest position to figure out which glass is hers without knowing a bit about table placements and apparently that's too much of a riddle for her.

that or Sarem didn't realize that putting Charles in a position where only one person can sit next to him means he must be sitting at one end of the table but not at the head.

so either Zade looks stupid or Sarem looks stupid.

-Zade says Mac is probably not pleased about sitting next to Sofia, and she's probably right, but I mean both Sofia and Mac are frowning. I could see them having some enemy of my enemy energy about Charles right now. also, didn't Sarem have a half-assed attempt at making peace between Zade and Sofia back in chapter 12? we haven't heard anything about Sofia doing anything about Zade since then, not until the death glare Sofia gave her in this chapter for this seating chart nonsense. I'm not saying everyone's gonna jump to be Sofia's friend, but zero recognition that she's being more cordial to Zade. geez, damned if you do, damned if you don't, girl.

-wait, Tad is squished in a booth? what the fuck is the actual seating then? where in the hell is Charles sitting that he only has one seat next to him? were there just not enough tables to make a big long one? and Jackson is still sitting next to Zade. why make the big long table if not everyone can fit at the big long table?

-here it is, the most eloquent exchange Sarem has written in the entire book:

-ugh, either tumblr didn't save my changes when I asked it to or I accidentally hit discard when trying to save a draft so I have to rewrite some things. joy.

-also my cat tried to save me from the book.

anyway back at it!

-Zade is doing a lot of press interviews for someone who wants to live a normal life.

-she hypothesizes that Zeb might have an issue with her because up until now he had been the only one to work on illusions with Charles and might be feeling replaced. I mean I could read this two ways:

No You Walnut Zeb Knows You're Doing Dangerous Shit With Real Magic You Aren't Ready To Do And You Even Admit It's Dangerous In The Very Same Paragraph.

I mean yeah Zeb would probably be pissed if he got replaced by someone who does sloppy work.

-why would anyone do a red carpet premiere for a magic show? the cast don't need to be on the red carpet, certainly not dressed the way one usually does for a red carpet affair if they're putting on a show. they need to get into costumes and makeup. and what magician would even do a red carpet premiere. of all the big and maybe not so big named magicians I can think of from David Copperfield to Penn and Teller, from Lance Burton to The Amazing Jonathan, I can't think of anyone who's a big enough name in magic that would do a red carpet premiere. maybe Penn and Teller would, but they would find some way to subvert it for shiggles. these two who are easily considered a couple of the most talented people in their profession are the same guys who came up with Desert Bus. and to be honest, I really can't see any magician of their level or close to it having any sort of sincere love for the red carpet. the magicians who like the red carpet are probably more along the lines of Mystery.

-oh no I started thinking about The Mystery Method and oh god that philosophy would work to an unsettling degree in this book.

-oh holy shit, I have to specify something I skipped over in the previous chapter because it's just become relevant to a possible continuity error.

so Zade pushes the door to Spellman's office open. we've been in this location a couple of times in the book, but in the last chapter it was specified that the lock on this door is that of a modern hotel lock. this means it requires a keycard to get inside, one that is inserted into the lock. these doors lock automatically when they're closed. how did Zade get in without a keycard?

or did Sarem decide to skip that Zade has a keycard even though she took the time to specify in the previous chapter that Spellman's door had a keycard lock? that was worth talking about before getting to his and Mac's man to man?

-Zade, who is Not Like Other Girls, "squealed with delight" as she walked into the room.

-so wait a minute. we're getting a setup for another scene in which the door is going to be partway open so Mac can peep in, and Zade pushes the door closed but doesn't check that it closes all the way. but in the previous sentence she specifies that it's a heavy door, and it was described as a heavy door back at the end of chapter 2. why WOULDN'T the door close??

-so here we go: Mac comes walking by while Zade and Charles talk in his office and stops to watch them. they hug each other and the two say they love each other, then Zade leans in. and Mac is so disgusted he can't watch anymore.

but Sarem can't just leave the red herring at that. and it's the moment we've all been waiting for:

text: Had he only watched just a moment or two longer he would have seen Zade kiss Charles--innocently on the cheek. Mac didn't see that, though, because he looked away before he saw the truth and therefore in his head he had turned around right before he saw them make out with tongue. Furious and upset, he stormed down the hall. He needed to think before he did anything that he would regret.

-"My excited energy had turned to nervous energy..." newsflash: excitement is a type of anxiety!!

-once again Zade is trying to adjust her own safety harness. where the fuck is Riley? isn't he supposed to be her personal rigger? or Mac, who did it the last time when Riley was sick, a thing Sarem mentioned offhandedly during the man to man with Spellman?

-oh Riley is here and trying to do his job, but Mac scares him away. world's best technical director, everybody.

-ok. Zade. when your guyfriend comes up to you pissed as all hell, a disarming smile is maybe not the way to go.

-oh fuck. add a tally to the violent actions. Mac just pulled Zade hard by her harness, jerking her towards him. and he's back to his cold monotone, the same one he used when asking about the photograph before.

-and another tally because Mac straight up grabs Zade's arms and practically shakes her. bro, not cool.

-once again Zade demands honesty and straightforwardness from Mac without offering him any, which is not helping the situation at all.

-Mac demands to know if Zade is in love with someone else. naturally her mind goes to Jackson, so she mentions the movie date but doesn't think it qualifies as being in love with him. this doesn't help, either.

-Mac finally gets Zade to understand that he's talking about Charles, but instead of just telling Mac that Charles is her father, Zade decides to dance around things by saying that she told someone she loves him but not that she's IN love with him.

-Zade tells Mac it's not what he thinks it is but again is refusing to give him the same honesty she expects from him.

-ooooo and then Mac hits Zade with, "You're just like Clara. Maybe worse. At least she had the decency to come clean when I confronted her." and honestly, I think he's right. Zade HAS been stringing him along for MONTHS now with Jackson on the side. she has not made any move to talk about any sort of commitment to him. and if Clara decided to be honest when Mac actually asked her about it? yeah, that DOES technically make Zade worse.

-but Zade is pissed at that and shoots back, "I'm not anything like Clara." which, yeah, you kinda are. we just covered how you kinda are. and Mac even points out that Zade wouldn't even know because she never knew Clara. in fact, unless somebody filled Mac in on this or he talked about Clara to Zade at some point, this would be the first time Zade has acknowledged she KNOWS about Clara at all! and she heard that from Riley who heard that from Tad who heard that from Mac. all of Zade's information about Clara and what she's really like is filtered through at least three people.

-Zade once again avoids the obvious solution and tells Mac things aren't what they seem and asks to talk to him about it after the show.

Oh Look. Their Personal Relationship Is Interfering With Work. The Thing Charles Did Not Want Happening.

-Mac is having none of that because to him it's just a way for Zade to buy time so she can figure out her story, something she wouldn't have to do if she just told him Charles is her father right the fuck now. it's. three. words. what possible reason can Zade have to do this right now that doesn't have to do with preserving the twist?

-in that rant, Mac accuses Zade of sleeping her way to the top. and yeah, that is exactly what the red herring was trying to do.

I wish I could do another poll to find out what would be worse, Zade fucking her boss for her job or Zade getting her job handed to her by her daddy. it blows my mind that Sarem's fantasy in which she gets everything she wants is for her to be a nepo baby.

-"I don't even know why that's where his mind went to..." because you are incredibly dense. Mac is acting like a piece of trash, but I can at least follow his logic given the clues and your apparent unwillingness to tell him that Charles is your father.

-Zade says if he thinks she's that kind of person, he doesn't know her at all.

he agrees.

so do I.

-another tally to violent actions. Mac jerks Zade around in her harness again while clipping it, and Zade actually lets us know it hurts.

-also can I just point out once again she specifies that this hurts but she didn't specify that when the cyclist knocked her purse off her arm? why aren't you using your magic to throw Mac off the catwalk? if I wanted to see some disproportionate retribution, this would be the one I want to see.

-and after all that Zade STILL has to get the last word in while Mac is storming off saying he needs to let Clara go. unbefuckinglievable.

-Mac realizes he's in no fit emotional state to run the main board, which is honestly one of the most professional things he's done in this shitshow.

-Mac gets Cam to run the main board on the fly, a terrible idea for your red carpet premiere show.

now, there was a whole explanation in a previous chapter talking about how everyone has some kind of backup in case something happens. Cam is not Mac's backup for this; Tad is. but Cam logics that Mac called for him instead of Tad because he knows Tad would just refuse and make Mac do his job.

but that doesn't make any sense because Mac went by Tad and Tad SAW how upset Mac is. Tad SHOULD know that Mac is not emotionally fit to do his job right now. if Tad refused, he would be both a dick of a friend AND shirking his professional duty!

and this is how the chapter ends. good lord.

[frozenwolftemplar]

Writer's Month Day 8: Watermelon

Fandom: So....this was the first day I hit where I had absolutely *no* idea for what to write for either prompt. I had promised myself that the first day that happened, I'd write something for the original idea that's been rattling around in my head. Hence this: 1,500 words of some random girl and a pocket-sized dragon with a meta bent.

Rating: G

Summary: Libby's stuck on what to write for her daily tale, and Calliope is being a very unhelpful muse (but what else is new?).

+++

"UGH!” Calliope popped her head up from where she’d been investigating the sugar bowl and eyed her sworn human as she stomped across the floor of their flat in a huff that slamming the door had evidently done nothing to dispel. “Another lovely day at Hugo’s, I presume?”

“Time spent with that beast is never lovely,” Libby grunted, throwing herself down ito a chair and dropping her arms on the desk with a sulky thunk.

“Mmmm,” Calliope hummed, turning her attention back to the sugar bowl, flicking her tail unconcernedly as the rest of her disappeared inside.

“Aren’t you going to ask what today’s request is?” Libby asked after a minute spent watching the dragon *not* pressing for details and instead, judging by the sounds rattling from the kitchen shelf, sniffing every cranny of the inside of the sugar bowl

“You’ll tell me soon enough.” Calliope’s voice had an odd timbre, ringing more than usual, as it bounced around inside the ceramic. “We should go to the store today. You’re out of sugar.” (Honestly, Libby was a nice enough girl to be bound to, but she was *terrible* about keeping th sugar stocked).

“How can you think about that?!? We have more important things to do!” Libby dug into her pocket to wave a scrap of vellum bearing a single word in shimmering ink in Calliope’s direction (not that the greedy thing could see it from inside the sugar bowl; honestly, she could hardly keep the stuff stocked anymore). “Like write!”

“Shouldn’t have made that deal, Scheherazade.”

That’s one thing the legends always failed to mention about dragons, Libby thought to herself, shooting visual daggers at the sea-green tail thrashing about like a cat’s gone mad (or, well, a dragon deprived of sugar). They have a deplorable lack of sympathy.

Though, really, in all fairness she couldn’t blame Calliope (this time); the whole mess with Hugo *was* squarely on her shoulders. But what was she supposed to do once he found her poking uninvited around his realm? Hand over her soul and join the ranks of his attendants? Sit meekly by and wait for the bloody end the old legends always said awaited those who crossed his path? Just let him do as he please with her? No.

But...maybe billing herself as a girl gifted by the ancients with the power of spinning a tale from a single word, *any* word, in the span of a single day wasn’t her brightest moment. Especially when the supposed ‘muse’ she was gifted by the goddess who had a bone to pick with the fearsome Dark Lord to help make the fib real was about as helpful as the flu.

Regrets, though, didn’t change her circumstance. Hugo would be waiting for her come morning, and if she wasn’t at the foot of his dais with a tale to present, she’d find herself facing consequences she really rather wouldn’t. “We’ll get there, *later*.” She reached forward for paper, inkwell, and quill, neatly arranging her tools of trade before her. “Writing first, store second.”

“I dislike that ordering.” Calliope’s impertinent head popped up, forked tongue flicking out to wipe the sugar dust from her snout. “They close early on Saturdays, tomorrow’s Sunday, and they don’t receive shipments until mid-week. If they run out of sugar- and you know they always do- before we get there, we’ll be out until *Wednesdy.*”

“Yes. And I’ll have bigger problems if I don’t have a story by morning.” Libby said with an ingratiating, very sarcastic grin. “Now, come on it: help me think of a story around the word ‘watermelon.’”

Calliope snorted a puff of disdainful smoke. “That’s it?”

“I know.” Libby plopped her chin in her hand and contemplated the bustling city street outside the window for watermelon-based inspiration, something impossible to find when all her eye landed on were wagons rattling over the cobbles, a couple of gossiping housewives, and a world colored solely in the drab browns and grays of winter. With such a view, it was hard to believe something as summery as watermelons ever existed. “So, any ideas?”

“We need more-“

“About things that aren’t sugar.”

With a sound somewhere between a screech and a grumble, Calliope climbed out of the jar to coil around it instead, crossing her forelegs and resting her chin on them, thinking, visibly rolling the word around in her mind, a muse at work.

“No.”

Correction: a muse *pretending* to be at work.

“Ugh!” Again as Libby threw her head back exasperatedly. “Then maybe look ahead for some?” As useless as Calliope was as a muse, at the very least she made up for it in clairvoyance.

“Very well,” the dragon sighed, raising her head so she took on the air of a sphinx reclining on the shelf. She stared ahead at nothing, sapphire eyes flaming as a dry, hot breeze like the hours rushing by raced around the room. Libby watched entranced. This would never get old.

Finally, Calliope blinked, dousing the fire, and turned to Libby importantly. “Well?”

“They *will* run out of sugar before noon.”

“Oh, come on!” If it wasn’t for the fact that she was strapped for cash (Hugo’s stipend only stretching so far), she’d have thrown the inkwell at the dragon. “Can’t you think of anything else besides sugar? No, don’t answer that.” She groaned, dropping her head to the desk as Calliope, one interrupting claw still upraised, watched. “I’m dead.”

Because the day she failed, she would be.

There was a scuttling sound, then there was a slight weight on her shoulder. “Not dead,” a voice of trilling, wheeling gulls sounded close to her ear. “Just stuck. Here:” The weight shifted as Calliope slid down to the desk and nudged the quill stand closer. She dipped the tip of her tail in the inkwell, wiped it on he blotter, and watched Libby expectantly as she glumly took up the quill. “Quick as we can, write every word that comes to mind when you hear ‘watermelon.’ Like so.”

In a blur of shimmering scales like the sun at play atop the waves, the tail whisked across the page so the word ‘pink’ appeared in looping, self important script. “Now you. Don’t think too hard. Just write.”

Libby blinked, drew a breath, and released it. *Don’t think. Just write.* The quill danced, then a more than slightly sloppy ‘juicy’ appeared underneath ‘pink.’

Calliope hummed with approval, then in the next second scrawled ‘summer.’

Libby followed with ‘fruit.’

Calliope snorted some celebratory sparks (mindful to miss the parchment). “Now we’re getting something!” Back and forth, the two filled the page, tossing words like jugglers would clubs.

‘Picnics.’ ‘Sweet.’ ‘Sugar.’ (“Which we’re out of”) (Hmph) ‘Fruit.’ ‘Seeds.’ ‘Spitting.’ (“What? We always did in the country.” Calliope pulled a face as Libby shrugged, laughing with her eyes) ‘Summertime. ‘Fireflies’ ‘Crickets.’ ‘Juice dribbling down your chin. Fingers sweet and sticky. Not quite water, not quite flesh; some realm between the two, guarded by green and bursting within with all the joys and mirth of summer, the world in its prime before she starts her spiral into autumnal decay.”

“Good, good!” Calliope cheered, eager eyes not leaving the parchment as Libby furiously wrote, the quill scratching madly across the paper as it struggled to keep pace with the ideas flowing down its wielder’s arm. “Keep going!”

‘Memories of better times, simpler times, younger times, back before the sunlight faded from the child’s eyes. Sitting with a slice in hand, watching the fireflies blink and drift in their evening waltz, licking the last drip of sweetness from the rind, you feel you have discovered Eden.”

“Yes!” Calliope cheered as Libby sat back, panting as she surveyed her work with an exhilarated grin, disbelieving as always that she actually wrote that. It wasn’t finished, far from it, but as it stood she had a beautiful piece of prose in front of her that was rich and ripe with potential. Already, her mind was whirling with new directions she could take this in, stories hiding just behind that list of words waiting to burst into existence, and images begging to be brought to life with florid, prancing prose. Who’d have thought ‘watermelon’ could be so inspiring?

“Now, don’t lose the momentum!” Calliope’s voice, crisp and snapping as a sail catching the wind, brought her back. “Grab your cloak!”

Pushing away from the desk with alacrity, Libby raced for her cloak, throwing it over her shoulders in a flurry of movement that had it flaring out behind her.

“And your purse!”

Libby frowned. “Purse?” She slowed, hand hovering above the pouch. “Why do I-“

“DON’T DOUBT THE PROCESS!”

Libby trusted and shoved the purse in her pocket.

“Out!” Calliope materialized on her shoulder, pointing a commanding claw to the door. “And down to the street!”

“Now what?” Libby asked, breathless as she stood on the walk outside their building, shivering slightly in the winter chill.

“Now,” Calliope slithered into the collar of Libby’s cloak, coiled her lithe body serpentine body around her neck, and poked her head out so it was all that showed. “We buy sugar.”

Rolling her eyes fondly, Libby shook her head and struck off toward the store, fishing a pad and pencil out of her pocket to jot some ideas down while she walked. Dragons.