#memoir structure

[lilyionamackenzie]

Suzanne Sherman offers great advice on structuring memoirs!

Story Structures for Memoir American films tend to follow a three-act story structure with a key turning point at the end of the first and second acts. Memoir has no single formula like that for its structure, though it’s not a free-for-all. There are options to choose from. When I started writing a memoir a few years ago, for the first draft I used a standard narrative structure, telling the…

[muppetminge]

"i'm just a girl-" mary shelley published frankenstein at twenty.

[tavina-writes]

oh i just saw your chapter lengths excel and as someone who’s wishing they could write longer chapters, do you have any tips for how you write/outline? like how did you decide the projected word count and stuff?

Hi nonny!

I'm not entirely sure I have good suggestions for this since my chapters have always tended towards being long, and my outlining is uhhh "well, it happens?" but I do have several thoughts that might be helpful!

The thoughts got really long, so they're now under a cut!

I only really think about the projected length as a benchmark, based on how "big" a story idea I think I have. For the fic that you're referring to, I knew that it was a setup I really enjoyed (arranged marriage) and that it would cover a number of years (so stuff has to happen in those years), and I thought it would work better in a four act structure (in the beginning) so I thought like "oh it'll probably be four chapters with 10k per chapter, so that'll be a 40k fic!"

As things progressed this obviously became not the case given the absolutely giant status of the chapters and the fact that three act structure worked a lot better with where I saw the ending going so there's four parts in each "act" as it were hence 12 chapters. (Originally I was going to do a fairly long epilogue type situation focused on Xichen and Ningning's descendants in "act four" but I've since yeet that into the sun bc I didn't like it lol.)

I adjust the projected length based on having finished chapters since my chapters tend to be pretty evenly split length wise (give or take a few thousand words), so since the first act was ~90k it's probably going to be closer to 270k than 250k but I'm currently in denial about that bit lmao, so really! after you have the first couple chapters, and you have a forecast of how many chapters it's going to take, projecting a project length is fairly simple math to do!

Okay that said, how do I actually project/outline/do the writing process? This is complicated because I'm very much a chaos writer who uh, doesn't write in order and doesn't finish scenes and doesn't start scenes at the beginning or finish at the end (I tend to write scenes in thirds or parts and then stitch them together so, that's the state of affairs here lolsob. I don't think that helps anyone very much.)

BUT: I find it really really helps to have goals, sometimes multiple per scene and to check back on those after I think the scene's done. The goals can be:

plot related -> introduce character A, introduce motivations for character A, provide a transition from setting A to setting B, further the conflict between character A and character B, etc

character emotion related -> establishing that Character A has changed since a previous scene, Character B introspection, filling in background on why Character A or B believes x or y or acts in a certain way

details and research related -> this for me is generally related to time period, setting, time of day, time of year, what the characters are physically doing in each scene and how they're oriented in relation to each other, etc which I find really important to like, decreasing white room syndrome and grounding the characters in a real place as they talk or fight or have a sad cry in the bath or whatever, so after the plot and character emotion related goals are through I also check like "hey is his bathtub floating in some undisclosed location or?"

So basically I "outline" by breaking each chapter down into "okay: where do I want all the characters and their various subplots to be by the end of the chapter vs the start of the chapter?" and I go backwards and fill in all the scenes I think would make sense to get characters from A to D or however, and then after I do that (or tbh as I'm writing) I shove in more scenes that explain how characters get from like, A.5 to A.7 which I didn't initially think needed explaining and back and forth until A->D has been achieved. This also means (for me and how I write) normally if all the other chapters have been 21-24k and I "finish" a chapter that's only 19k I've dropped a plot point somewhere and need to go back and spackle it back in.

Another really helpful longfic tackling thing that I have going on is where I keep a "notes" or "character index" document where I periodically update with like: new OCs and their details, new setting details, that one nice source I found about incense burners, the music I was listening to for x or y vibe, my meta thoughts about how or why a certain character might be acting a certain way...etc etc.

For example, my most recently completed novella-length fic (after court, returning to different doors; 39k) had this as its original "outline"

Then, after I got a fair ways into that I made a new set of notes about what I wanted to achieve based on what was going on with the scenes I'd written and what I still needed to fill in:

and then while I was writing the mountain ghost thing I stopped to type this down about WZL:

And then I filled in the situation at the Yunmeng Discussion Conference with Hints Of A Past, etc.

Basically I think your outlining should be whatever you think will help you remember what goes where, and it's really helpful to have goals about what you want to get done every chapter rather than "I need x amount of words per chapter." Some fics want long chapters! some fic want short chapters! some fics are long! some are short!

[curiosity-killed]

Would love to hear your thoughts on atfots… the plot really surprised me given how the last book ended but overall it felt like a mixed bag to me

*cradles ur face tenderly in my hands* babycakes u have opened a can of worms

I'm not even going to pretend that this will be short or coherent so tl;dr: if I'm looking for a fun AU, I turn to ATFOTS; if I'm looking for canon compliant, meaningful sequels to HOTE, I turn to fanfiction.

General disclaimer that here be spoilers for ATFOTS and that while I don't intend this to be lambasting ATFOTS by any means, it's not the most positive review. So like, don't read below if you a) want to avoid spoilers or b) enjoyed the book, probably?

I think there are roughly 2 main categories of critique I have for ATFOTS, with a third just being the catchall for anything I miss and/or me yelling about the things that matter most to me lol so:

I. Sequel Sins

I am generally not a fan of sequels primarily because I think they tend to fall into a lot of similar traps such as overexplaining, inconsistent characterization, and undermining their own themes. This may be a product of growing up in love with sprawling series that all wound up basically having the same formula. ANYWAY.

Overexplaining: ATFOTS starts off by reintroducing Cliopher Mdang. My good sir. The POV character for the other doorstopper novel that came before (& which I love). I get the desire to make a sequel accessible to people who haven't read the first book but ATFOTS feels consistently like it's holding your hand very gently and bending down to make sure you're getting its full sincere eye contact and talking very slowly. I don't have a copy of the book on me to pull quotes, but it's especially flagrant in the first couple chapters.

Inconsistent characterization: WHOO BOY. Cliopher is so old! No he's young again! Now he's middle-aged! I have mixed feelings on the characterization overall—Rodin, for instance, came a bit out of left field—and most of it comes down to the way I loved the characters in HOTE and then in ATFOTS they all felt...a bit flatter and a bit caricaturized and a bit less true.

Undermining themes: The character thing comes in hard here IMO. One of the major threads of HOTE is Kip shaping his own path of success and receiving acknowledgment from his loved ones for his unique, uncommon route. And then ATFOTS comes in and is like ACTUALLY we're going to overwrite that with this GRAND and MYTHOLOGICAL story that also conveniently follows closely the story that will be familiar to your family. This isn't to say there isn't value in that type of story, but it definitely cheapens (imo) the thematic value of HOTE. And this is true for...kind of a lot of the stories' themes. ATFOTS seems to want to be "HOTE themes but bigger and better" and in doing so, kind of falls flat in delivery imo.

II. ATFOTS-Specific Pro/Con

Alright now onto a little more specific issues. This will be brief bc I think they're pretty self-explanatory lol

Con: Overall, I think ATFOTS tries to do too many things. I love a good book with many plotlines (see: erha my beloved) but ATFOTS' structure felt borderline episodic rather than building together into a satisfying reveal/culmination.

Pro: I'll get into Kip's sexuality below but do love the concept of fanoa

Con: It felt like a lot of tidbits of "oh ACTUALLY this was happening all along in HOTE I just didn't mention it"—see the comment that started this all around humming Aurora—in a way that felt less like a delightful little revelation and more like VG retroactively trying to incorporate things she hadn't decided on till that moment. Also feel this way about Ludvic's fam reveal but I'll get into that below.

Pro/Con: While I think the writing structure was a little tighter than HOTE (I'm sorry, I love Kip and I love HOTE but there were like 200 pages of having the same conversation over again) (maybe not actually 200. possibly 20. still.), girlie REALLY needed a copy edit. Like. I will copy edit ur book Ms. Goddard for u (I am cheap) but please let me fix the errors.

III. Getting My Grubby Little Gay Hands All Over this Book

aka personal preference shit that is entirely my opinion without critique for the writing quality but nonetheless are part of my critique

I love HOTE and I love HOTE principally for three four main categories: The Household (and Them), civil service, being The One Who Left, and ASEXUALITY BABEY. There are other aspects I love, of course, but these are kind of the big non-negotiables for me and four that ATFOTS kinda...did dirty imo.

In terms of the Household, HOTE gave us these middle-aged dudes who are pretty much defined and fulfilled by their dedication to their job to the exclusion of most other things. Kip has family but it's not family that really understands him most of the time and it's family that is very far away (*this will come up again). The rest of them don't have family outside of the household. They are very sincerely found/forced thru work family in a way that feels both very natural and blessedly free of nuclearization. They love each other and understand each other** in a way that none of them really have access to outside of this group.

And then ATFOTS (and admittedly RPA) comes along and is like "Ludvic has a dad! Conju's sister and boytoy are alive! Rodin has a devoted penpal!" in a way that feels a BIT like pairing off everyone so that the main couple can be together. Which like. I love Kip/Fitzroy, don't get me wrong, but I love the household and their weirdly intimate and formal and seemingly smooth as clockwork but internally messy vibe. I was so looking forward to reading about the retirement house and how that unspools (or at least thinking a lot about it in the way of the blorbo in the microwave) before ATFOTS.

So much of the heart of HOTE is the idea of community and connection (or isolation) and ATFOTS mostly veers away from that both thru the pairing off and through the things like Kip's solo adventures. It also, in some ways, sort of undermines some of the characters' core traits, such as Ludvic's devotion. Ludvic being a stout, unflinching companion for HR because he believes in him and sees the true man behind the Serenity is imo very different from Ludvic being an unflagging companion because he views HR as his uncle. Idk about y'all but family duty and personal devotion from choice are two different things in my experience.

On their own, they aren't bad but they are disappointing when compared to the aspects of HOTE I loved and would have hoped to see expanded upon in the sequel.

Kip's experience in civil service is also really important to me (literally made me more patient and cheerful at work when I was actively envisioning setting a plague of frogs loose upon my supervisor's house so like. Significant Importance to Me.)! This will not be articulate (I've legit been starting and deleting this sentence for like 5 min) bc it's very near and dear to my heart but the ideas of a) choosing to take a harder path, that is outside your community/family's conception of "normal" because you believe it is good and worthy, b) trying to improve a shitty system because you believe it can be made to better serve the people, and c) learning from both systems—are! just! very important to me okay. And not something I see a lot in fiction, but especially not in my most beloved of monstrously large fantasy novels.

And then ATFOTS is just JK time for an epic fantasy romp! and that's cool but that's not why I loved the first book! that's not the right tone at all!!! if i wanted an epic fantasy romp I would pick up Iron Widow but I wanted the bureaucracy D: (shoutout to ao3 user alfgifu for giving me the bureaucracy and also sorry for all the nonsense comments)

This is also super closely tied to Being the One Who Left tbh because well. Me. But one of the core elements of HOTE—the part that actually first snagged me and pulled my attention in—is that Kip is the one who left his community behind for no good reason to chase a weird dream instead of settling down and following the normal path to success.

*eyeing my high school classmates who are all settled down with 2.5 kids and starting photography businesses on the side while living within 20 minutes of where they grew up* Huh I Wonder Why This is Relatable

At the heart of being the one who left is this tug between guilt and desire/love/duty/curiosity/whatever pull factor. In HOTE, Kip is pushed to stay home by his duty to his community, his love of his family, and his family's own pressure. He's pulled to stay in the service by his duty to the world/government, his love of his found family, and by the urge to do more, to make things better as much as he can. In both places, he's not fully understood and when he's in either location, he misses the other. The importance is the tug, the dual identity, the sense of always being partially understood and partially misunderstood in different ways depending on the ground you're standing on. I could...very literally, write essays on each of these last items but I am trying to wrap it up bc I should actually be coding rn whoops

ATFOTS blots this out by transforming his Solaara experience into, basically, Just A Job. A job he cares about and can be proud of, sure, but just the job. It really...kind of aggressively, ignores the relationships and life Kip has made there in favor of focusing solely on this glorious return to home while conveniently giving everyone else people to be with instead of the household. which I'm sure my mom would like but ANYWAY

and now, last but decidedly not least OR clearest *drum roll pls* ASEXUALITY BABEY

okay so I will caveat this by saying different rep serves different people, there are infinitely many ways to be asexual, etc etc that all being said ATFOTS' handling of Kip's sexuality just left me a little...dissatisfied? And tbh I struggle to articulate it because I feel like it probably comes down to "this isn't the rep I would like but I can see where it's meaningful to others."

Like I can justify it—a lifelong commitment as fanoa is described is different than a romantic or sexual relationship, it's entirely fair to have a character want that commitment without risking it by mixing in romance/etc., it's good to have a devoted and platonic relationship at the core where normally a (straight) romantic/sexual relationship would be

and yet. I caught myself making faces at the book half the time when dealing with their relationship. Some of it feels a little like trying to Do All The Rep in one go—Kip's tingly fuzzy feelings and (mostly) lack of romantic attraction, neutrality around sex and aversion to sex in this relationship—in a way that almost definitely describes actual humans out in the world but feels a little...off in a fictional character? My general wish for asexual characters is getting to be in devoted relationships where the allosexual partner(s) is willing to not have sex and still be committed but I caught myself being like "y'all just fuck already" in ATFOTS which is uhhhh not the norm

tbf my ideal Kip/Fitzroy retirement relationship is basically just them (and the household) all living together and everyone on the outside kind of being ???? is it a sex thing???? while they contentedly carve out their own life yet again but this time with more touch and laughter and song.

Actually having gotten to this point, I feel like my main sticking point with ATFOTS sexuality is that Sex Is A Big Thing in the book while never being super effectively resolved imo and also not actually being a big thing to the characters in HOTE. Like one of these dudes has been celibate for 1000 years or so and another one has had like 3 brief lovers across the same amount of time. I think there are some other things we could focus on here

[nozomijoestar]

Reading 'Storm of Steel' & it kills me hearing people complain when war memoirs use dry or semi dry prose, like the people that wrote this shit are literally reliving the memories of watching people get turned into hamburger or die having their guts coming out their asshole or something, and you're upset they didn't make that sound more flowery and pretty to be 'engaging' shut up

[literaryvein-references]

Writing Notes & References

Alchemy ⚜ Antidote to Anxiety ⚜ Attachment ⚜ Autopsy

Art: Elements ⚜ Principles ⚜ Photographs ⚜ Watercolour

Bruises ⚜ Caffeine ⚜ Color Blindness ⚜ Cruise Ships

Children ⚜ Children's Dialogue ⚜ Childhood Bilingualism

Dangerousness ⚜ Drowning ⚜ Dystopia ⚜ Dystopian World

Culture ⚜ Culture Shock ⚜ Ethnocentrism & Cultural Relativism

Emotions: Anger ⚜ Fear ⚜ Happiness ⚜ Sadness

Emotional Intelligence ⚜ Genius (Giftedness) ⚜ Quirks

Facial Expressions ⚜ Laughter & Humour ⚜ Swearing & Taboo

Fantasy Creatures ⚜ Fantasy World Building

Generations ⚜ Literary & Character Tropes

Fight Scenes ⚜ Kill Adverbs

Food: Cooking Basics ⚜ Herbs & Spices ⚜ Sauces ⚜ Wine-tasting ⚜ Aphrodisiacs ⚜ List of Aphrodisiacs ⚜ Food History ⚜ Cocktails ⚜ Literary & Hollywood Cocktails ⚜ Liqueurs

Genre: Crime ⚜ Horror ⚜ Fantasy ⚜ Speculative Biology

Hate ⚜ Love ⚜ Kinds of Love ⚜ The Physiology of Love

How to Write: Food ⚜ Colours ⚜ Drunkenness

Jargon ⚜ Logical Fallacies ⚜ Memory ⚜ Memoir

Magic: Magic System ⚜ 10 Uncommon ⚜ How to Choose

Moon: Part 1 2 ⚜ Related Words

Mystical Items & Objects ⚜ Talisman ⚜ Relics ⚜ Poison

Pain ⚜ Pain & Violence ⚜ Poison Ivy & Poison Oak

Realistic Injuries ⚜ Rejection ⚜ Structural Issues ⚜ Villains

Symbolism: Colors ⚜ Food ⚜ Numbers ⚜ Storms

Thinking ⚜ Thinking Styles ⚜ Thought Distortions

Terms of Endearment ⚜ Ways of Saying "No" ⚜ Yoga

Compilations: Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ Worldbuilding ⚜ For Poets ⚜ Tips & Advice

all posts are queued. will update this every few weeks/months. send questions or requests here ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[writer-logbook]

How I improved my writing style... without actually writing.

Intro : It's just a clickbait title to talk about theory and side techniques - before actually practicing, of course.

LINGUISTIC ISN'T GRAMMAR - AND IT'S BETTER TO KNOW ABOUT BOTH. It's useful for writing impactful dialogue and giving your characters depth. Your characters' language should (ideally) take into account: their social position (rich or poor), the locality (local expressions?) and sometimes their age (different cultural references). And this is best transcribed with linguistic knowledge. In short: linguistics is descriptive, grammar is prescriptive.

The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences),  semantics (meaning),  morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). (Linguistics, Wikipedia)

Literary theory isn't as boring as it sounds. Learn more about internal criteria of the text (figure of speech, style, aesthetic...) and external criteria of the text (the author's persona and responsability, the role of the reader and what is left to interpretation...). I refer you to the French Wikipedia page, which you can translate directly via your browser in case you need more information. (Make sure you translate the page not switch language, because the content isn't the same).

Listening to Youtube Video about the analysis of film sequences and/or scenario. Remember when I told you to read historical fiction to learn how to describe a castle properly ? Same vibe.

Novel adaptations of movies. = when the movie exists before the book, and not the other way around. e.g : The Shape of Water ; Pan's Labyrinth. In line with tip n°3, it allows us to see how emotions, scenes and descriptions have been translated into writing - and thus to better visualize concepts that may have been abstract.

Read books about authors' writing experiences. e.g : Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Everyone's different, but they can provide some insightful tips not only on the act of writing itself, but on the environment conducive to writing, planning… Comparing completely different authors' experience could also be fun (this video of King and Martin is actually one of my fav)

Ah and many thanks for your ❤ and reblogs on my latest post ! UwU

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Self-Editing

Editing writing draws upon different skills than creative storytelling, which makes self-editing difficult for many writers. If hiring an editor isn’t an option, you will want to improve your own editing skills to increase your writing’s readability and overall quality.

Tips for Editing Your Own Writing

Print it out. Reading your words on the printed page can help you find spelling mistakes, sentence fragments, and run-ons more easily than trying to track them down on a bright computer screen; you can even change the formatting of the text if that helps you look at it differently. Use a red pen (or any other vibrant color) to track changes or edits along the way.

Read aloud. Hearing how your writing sounds can also help you listen for lines that don’t sound right, like wishy-washy sentences, overuse of particular phrases, and unnecessary words. Sometimes a writer doesn’t realize that their sentence structure is poor or that their main point isn’t clear until they hear it read aloud (you can even use a text-to-speech program or ask someone else to read it back to you while you jot down things you notice).

Take a break. Walking away from your writing project for a period of time and coming back to it with fresh eyes can help you gain a fresh perspective by creating an emotional distance between you and your work. If you’re finding it hard to be objective, give it space—when you return to your own writing, you may find yourself with an entirely new outlook.

Keep your voice active. With active voice writing, the subject of a sentence is performing an action. That action is represented by a verb, which is the part of speech that anchors all complete sentences. While passive voice isn’t completely forbidden in a piece of writing, it’s usually a good idea to keep your tone energized, as it keeps your readers reading.

Edit line by line. A good editor will systematically go through a piece of writing line by line, and that is what you should do as well. It may take time and be a painstaking task, but if you’re editing your own work, you’ll need to look closely at the words you’ve written to find any outstanding issues like grammatical errors or typos.

Get familiar with style guides. Professional editors may come equipped with extensive editing skills, but it’s possible to learn what they know. Look up which writing style guide applies to your writing (if you’re copywriting, you’ll likely want the AP style guide, whereas fiction writing will use the Chicago Manual). Follow the proper guidelines laid out and add them to your editing checklist: Are all the commas where they should be for this particular piece? Are words properly italicized or quoted? Knowing what to look for can not only expand your editing experience but help you become a better writer.

Avoid clichés. While they appear in good writing every so often, clichés are mostly boring unless you have a unique spin on them or can integrate them in a way that doesn’t seem tired.

Embrace re-reading. Editing isn’t a one-off process, and chances are you’ll need multiple read-throughs in order to find all of your weak sentences, grammar mistakes, punctuation errors, and spelling errors.

Mind your syntax. Be on the lookout for issues with grammar and word choice. Certain words can change the whole mood or feeling of a piece, and using weak verbs and weak adjectives will only exacerbate that. Make sure your writing feels strong and clear, and use a thesaurus with caution. If you’re not exactly sure how to use a word, don’t.

Save the proofreading for last. Whether you’re copy editing for content marketing or writing the first draft of a memoir, proofreading is the very last step you should take when self-editing. As you go through your piece, you’ll be re-writing sentences and paragraphs, so searching for grammar errors or doing a spell check before your final draft will only waste more time. It’s okay if you spot errors along the way (you don’t have to ignore them), but don’t make it the first step you take when tackling your own editing.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Editing ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[specialagentartemis]

What queer Asian sci fi authors would you recommend?

Yeah, to put my money where my mouth is, here are some queer SFF writers from Asia and the Asian Diaspora in the Anglosphere that I really like and highly recommend:

Nghi Vo: probably doesn’t need an endorsement from me, hah, her The Empress of Salt and Fortune is one of the most perfect novellas I’ve ever read and well deserved its Hugo win. The whole Singing Hills cycle is great. It’s a fantasy world strongly inspired by Imperial China and Vietnam, and does clever things with fantasy, folklore, storytelling, and memory. Her novels are standalone historical fantasy set in 1920s-America-with-magic and are very much about Asian immigrant/diaspora experiences in the early 20th century US. With Magic.

Yoon Ha Lee: I love his Machineries of Empire. Would love to finish that trilogy someday. But seriously it’s creative, intense military sci-fi in a magic-science space empire and is very interested in what it takes to uphold such a system.

Simon Jimenez: The Vanished Birds is sooo heartbreakingly good and I need to read A Spear Cuts Through Water soon.

Isabel J. Kim: Short story writer. Runs the gamut of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and the weird stuff in between. Creative and vivid in really compelling ways. Her first novel is in the works and I am SUPER interested. She does funky and creative things with perspective and structure in her stories. Has several stories now that are about turning popular tropes or other iconic stories around like they’re in a kaleidoscope, but her first published story “Homecoming Is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self” is probably still the most affecting to me.

Michelle Kan: Has a trilogy of novelettes called Tales of the Thread, self-described as “aromantic Chinese fairytales” that take a deliberately aro approach to fairytale retellings and fairytale style fantasy. I recommend them. (Also has a superhero novel I haven’t read.)

———

Haven’t read yet but they are on my TBR:

Aliette de Bodard: Her Xuya universe novellas, and the relationships between humans and AIs and spaceships, sound super up my alley.

Kai Cheng Thom: Author of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir is a less traditionally sff entry but is a fabulist/surrealist take on the Trans Memoir… which I feel like I have to be in the right space for, but I do want to read it.

———

Also he’s not out as queer or anything but I can’t not recommend Ted Chiang because he writes some of the best short stories In The World and has THE most interesting and unique and compelling ideas.

———

There are also so many more authors out there I don’t know and haven’t read! But! Someday!!

[fixyourwritinghabits]

FYWH Tag Masterpost Part 1

Wait a friggen second, I can just make a rebloggable version of my tags list and call it a masterpost. I'm a genius. Don't ask how many cups of coffee I'm on.

General

Writing Advice

Writing Tips

Story Process

Genre Writing

Literary Writing

Research

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Grammar

Words / Language 

Sentence Structure

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Titles

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Show Not Tell

Writing Mistakes

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Writing Tools

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Young Writers

Beginning Writers

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Fiction

Short Stories

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Poetry

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Fanfiction

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Personal Writing

Memoir

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Dystopia / Dystopian Fiction

Horror

Flash Fiction

Essays

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Pronouns

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Description

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Emotion

Body Language

Hair

Facial Hair

Postures

Clothing

Fashion

Fighting 

Smoking

Time

Characters / Character Aspects

Characters

Diversity In Writing

Names / Naming Characters / Naming Places

Realistic Characters

Manipulative Characters

Traits

Characterization

Children

Teenagers

Inhuman Characters / Alien Characters

Flat Characters

Heroes

Antiheroes

Relationships

Supporting Characters

Mental Disorders

Disability

Muteness

Abuse

Depression

Robots

Amnesia

Pirates / Piracy

Insomnia

Bullying

Gender

Stay tuned for Part 2.

[neversetyoufree]

Every time I revisit the end of VnC chapter 8, I can't stop thinking about how it's basically like. the ending of chapter 1 in miniature.

Vnc chapter 1 ends with two pages of narration by Noé, and that narration introduces the story we're about to hear in subsequent chapters: the story of his relationship with Vanitas. Then we get one final splash page in which narrator Noé tells us how Vanitas will die at the end of that story.

Vnc chapter 8 ends with a fade into a page of narration by Noé, and that narration introduces the topic of the story we're about to hear: the story of Noé's relationship with Louis. Then we get one final splash page in which narrator Noé tells us how Louis will die at the end of that story.

The art pushes the correlation even more, as the two death announcement pages are framed/constructed in the exact same way. Even the expressions are similar.

The Louis/Vanitas parallel has always been fairly evident, given they both fit the role of "dead guy Noé was in love with (or at least extremely close to and fascinated by) who asked him to kill him," and that's just scratching the surface of their whole deal. But something about this particular connection really gets to me. There's a something about it that forces you to look at the cyclical, nested nature of the manga's narrative.

Like I said, the structural parallel turns the ending of chapter 8 and its subsequent flashback into the manga (and chapter 1) in miniature. Noé begins his memoir by saying, "this is the story of Vanitas. He died at my hand." Then he pauses the main story of the memoir for a moment to say "this is the story of Louis. He died at someone else's hand." It's a recitation of grief within a recitation of grief.

And the Louis flashback ends with us seeing exactly what grief does to Noé. He fails to kill Louis, has to watch him be beheaded in front of him, and it breaks him down to such an extent he falls physically ill. He is haunted by that grief for the rest of his life. And by showing us the ending of that smaller framed story of grief while we're still in the middle of the larger one, it primes us to think of how the ending of the story of Vanitas will compare.

Will grief make Noé crumble again the second time around? Will he be haunted to the same extent if he makes the kill?

The matched framing of these two introductions tells us that not only are these characters similar to one another, but the structures of their stories are the same. Or at least, the structures of their stories are similar enough to be worth evoking a connection between them. They start with Noé's first meeting with someone and build toward the moment when that someone dies in his arms, slowly building up throughout just how much Noé's someone wants to die. Both are doomed to die by their own feelings and their physical circumstances (curse, Mark). Both are doomed to die because Noé tells us as much from the very beginning.

Noé doesn't know Vanitas is doomed when he meets him, and he doesn't know Louis is doomed when he meets him, but Vanitas and Louis both know the whole time that they're not well or long for the world (especially in Vanitas's case). The structure of starting both stories with an announcement of the ending captures something of Vanitas and Louis's emotional states as much as it captures how Noé feels when he recalls those memories in grief.

"This is Vanitas. We were together. He died." "This is Louis. We were together. He died." This is how Noé starts to tell both stories. And since Noé, per a watsonian reading, chooses this structure in-universe just as Mochijun chooses it irl, perhaps future Noé writing his memoir is choosing to liken Vanitas and Louis to each other on purpose. Maybe he sees the similarity between them, and introducing both suicidal boys with the threat of death hanging over their heads from jump is a way to capture what he thinks was in their heads.

[starlightshadowsworld]

It's important to recognise that what's happening in Palestine, what we are witnessing and what people are experiencing, are not isolated to Palestine.

You may hear people talk about the war in Sudan, the silent holocaust in Congo.

It's because these and so many more atrocities in the world are linked. They are preperuated by the same systems.

[Video Transcript:

So as a Palestinian when I say Free Palestine, I am not just talking about Palestine. I started nursing school in 2015 at Saint Louis, just a few miles away from where Michael Brown was killed by police.

Being in that city at that time, watching Black Lives Matter being born, stirred up a lot of feelings for me as a Palestinian.

I saw a country justifying a child being murdered by the state, in the street. I saw the people protesting that murder being vilified.

Standing there, protesting, watching a militarised police force with tear gas and rubber bullets matching towards me.

And I thought, this is that.

As a Palestinian to understand what is going on in Palestine is to understand the de facto aphartied that black Americans experience here in the states.

It's not an accident that when my grandfather came here, he was told to sit and the back of the bus. And it's not an accident that he marched with MLK.

It has been black and Palestinian solidarity, and it continues to be black and Palestinian solidarity.

Because yes, Free Palestine is about Palestine ceasefire now and the military occupation of the Palestinian people. It's also about resisting the global colonial hegemonic structure.

Because the shit happening there is happening here. If it isn't Palestinian women and babies being killed by bombs in Gaza, it's black women and babies being killed in American hospitals.

If its not Palestinian girls missing in the rubble. It is missing and murdered indigenous women here in the United States.

The rage I feel when I hear the names Michael Brown and Treyvon Martin is the same rage I feel when I hear the names Shireen Abu Akleh and Ahmad Manasra.

That's not to say that allyship is transactional, it is to say that the only thing we have is each other.

There's a reason that when people ask me about Free Palestine, I will point them to books on Black Lives matter.

When I say Free Palestine, yes I mean Free Palestine but I also mean Black Lives Matter, I also mean abolition now. I also mean reparations, I also mean land back.

This movement cannot lose steam, not just because there is currently a genocide being perpetuated against my people. And every minute we don't do something Palestinian lives are being lost.

But because this is a global struggle for justice. It does not start and end with Palestine, we will not be free until all of us are free.

The world is waking up, there has never been global solidarity for Palestine like this.

And we have them so scared. The violence is so disproportional because we are challenging a global power structure. Don't let the momentum die because this is about all of us.

Ceasefire now.

End the occupation.

But know what I mean when I say, Free Palestine.

End Transcript.]

Books shown in the video:

"When they call you a terrorist a black lives matter memoir" by Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele.

"Freedom is a constant struggle. Ferguson, Palestine and the foundations of a movement" by Angela Y. Davis

[w1w2]

Messy

Previous part | Part 2 | Next part

Rosé x Fem!Reader

Word Count: ca. 7k

English isn’t my first language so I apologize in advance for any mistakes.

♡ Enjoy! ♡

They didn’t talk every day, but they didn’t not talk either.

After Paris, the air between them stayed charged, not tense, not heavy, just quietly alive. Like a room where someone had recently been, where the scent of their perfume still lingered, where their warmth hadn’t yet left the cushion.

It wasn’t constant, what they shared. It didn’t have structure, no good morning texts, no promises. Just a slow orbit, light, steady, magnetic.

It started with a DM.

A photo from Rosé, no caption, just a neatly framed shot of a bookstore shelf. A hardcover memoir by a retired F1 champion wedged awkwardly between an issue of Vogue and a music theory workbook. The message beneath it was a single black and white flag emoji.

Y/N saw it in the backseat of a car, the rain still drying in her hair. She smirked. Didn’t respond right away, waited until morning. Then sent back a screenshot of a Spotify playlist titled “rose colored nights” and a message “Too on the nose?”

From there, it started.

Not a flood, just slow momentum. The kind you didn’t want to interrupt.

DMs turned into an inside language of their own, photos of cities from high hotel windows, grainy selfies in airport bathrooms, one line music recommendations. Rosé sent a video of her dog sitting in a suitcase. Y/N replied with a snap of her training suit laid across a hotel bed, captioned “Little black dress, racing edition.”

Voice notes came next.

Rosé’s were breathy, usually recorded on walks with Hank or late at night from her kitchen. Her voice softened by whatever mug she was nursing between her palms, the clink of ceramic, the hum of a distant washing machine, shoes against tile. Sometimes she’d hum a line between thoughts, unfinished melodies, sentences that faded into quiet.

Y/N’s arrived at odd hours, from beneath stadium lights, from airport lounges, from the inside of gym lockers. Her voice had more gravel to it, more casual texture, often punctuated by laughter, interrupted by the metallic squeak of a barbell, or the quick breath of someone who had just run far enough to stop thinking.

Then, the calls.

Always late, past midnight, or right before sunrise. Time zones blurred. They spoke in the low, unguarded tones reserved for when the day is done pretending.

They talked about everything. About press cycles and creative blocks, about how Rosé sometimes felt like her songs stopped belonging to her once they were released, about how Y/N missed the silence in her helmet more than she missed the roar of the track.

They swapped stories of home, ones they didn’t tell on camera. Y/N mentioned a scar on her ankle she got as a kid racing someone barefoot through a wet driveway. Rosé told her about the time she locked herself in a rehearsal studio for six hours just to cry.

Some nights they didn’t talk at all, just stayed on the line, breathing. Together in the quiet, letting it stretch.

Neither of them mentioned the hotel room in Paris, at least not directly. But it hovered, in the rhythm of their messages, in the timing of their replies. In the way Rosé paused sometimes, just before hanging up, in the way Y/N’s voice dropped, almost imperceptibly, when she said her name.

They didn’t define what they were doing, they didn’t try to, but something had begun. And it was unfolding the way real things do, not in declarations, but in repetition. In consistency, in return.

The off-season gave Y/N something rare, space that wasn’t borrowed, time that wasn’t someone else’s. For once, there were no countdowns, no grid calls, no sponsor brunches or debriefs at dawn. Her days belonged to her again, even if just for a little while, and with that came a kind of freedom she didn’t entirely trust but took anyway.

She didn’t use it loudly, she didn’t book a villa or stage a romantic gesture in neon. She simply moved, quietly, intentionally, choosing where she wanted to be, and more often than not, that place was wherever Rosé happened to be standing.

The visits never arrived with an announcement, no press trail, no photos from first class, no name on any public list. Flights were booked under her middle name. Check-ins handled by someone else, a hoodie pulled low over her brow, sunglasses swapped out for a borrowed cap, one that didn’t belong to her, but already smelled faintly like someone else’s perfume.

She didn’t ask permission, only sent the same message each time “Where are you this week?”

Rosé always replied. Sometimes with a city, sometimes with a time, and sometimes with nothing more than a dropped pin and the words  “Come. Bring nothing, just you.”

She was usually in motion, rehearsals stacked against fittings, filming squeezed into travel days, meetings in buildings with no signs and schedules that folded back in on themselves, but she never said no. Even when she should have, even when her days didn’t have the space, she made it.

And so Y/N went.

Not every week, not always for long. Sometimes only for a single night, a sliver of time tucked between two obligations. But she showed up. She learned how to navigate studio back doors, how to slide past assistants and choreographers and sound techs without disrupting the current. Once, she stood at the edge of a rehearsal space for almost an hour, watching Rosé run the same verse five times, barefoot and breathless, never once breaking eye contact with the mirror. When the music finally cut, Rosé looked up, as if she'd known exactly when Y/N had arrived, and offered a smile that said she didn’t need to say anything at all.

Another time, Rosé appeared at the track just as Y/N was peeling off her gloves, two iced coffees in hand and a small paper bag tucked under her arm. She didn’t wave, just sat cross legged on the concrete near the pit wall, sunglasses sliding down her nose, humming faintly to herself until Y/N walked over and muttered “You’re late,” to which Rosé only shrugged and replied, “You love snacks more than punctuality anyway.”

They never posted, never tagged, never left digital fingerprints.

It never felt secret though, not between them. It was something else, something soft, suspended, deliberately unspoken. A shared space that didn’t ask for a name or definition, only presence, only return.

Rosé started playing music out loud in the mornings, soft, wordless tracks while she cooked in whatever kitchen they ended up in. Y/N teased her about her playlist titles but saved them anyway, tucked into her phone under private folders no one else saw. Y/N liked to fall asleep with one hand barely touching something, a wrist, a hem, the line of Rosé’s hip beneath the sheet, not possessive, not needy, just tethered.

Their lives didn’t change to fit each other, but somehow, the edges had softened, shifted, and adapted. Schedules remained, but they bent, not toward obligation, no. Toward want, toward each other.

There were no declarations, no late night confessions whispered into pillows, but there was rhythm, there was return.

They never said they were together, not once, not even in passing.

There were no whispered labels, no drunken confessions in the dark, no text messages hung with ellipses, waiting for one of them to be braver than the other. They didn’t talk about it, not because they didn’t care, but because they both knew how dangerous the answer might become once it had a shape.

There was always something between them, not like a wall, but like a glass pane, impossibly clear and impossible to ignore. Timing, distance, the weight of two public lives. The kind of careers that asked for everything and still demanded more. And beneath it all, a quieter truth neither of them said out loud, that the spotlight could make beautiful things cruel.

But the silence didn’t stop them.

They kissed, softly, then not so softly. In quiet apartments, in hotel rooms, once against a stairwell wall when Rosé had exactly four minutes before hair and makeup were due. Y/N’s hands in her hair, Rosé’s fingers curled tight in the collar of her jacket. Breathless, desperate, and still careful. Always careful.

They touched in ways that weren’t performative, fingers brushing under tables, a thigh pressed close in the backseat of a van, a hand resting over a heartbeat like it was trying to learn the rhythm by touch alone.

They fell asleep in each other’s spaces.

Again and again.

Rosé would wake with her forehead tucked against Y/N’s neck, her body curled close in a way that didn’t make sense unless it had happened more than once. Y/N would stir in the early hours and find Rosé’s arm still draped across her stomach, her breath steady, her body trusting.

And still, when morning came, there were no questions.

They didn’t ask what this is, didn’t dare, because there was no clean answer. No version of the truth that didn’t come with risk, or cost, or a hundred other voices trying to make sense of something they barely understood themselves.

The connection was undeniable, rich and real and already rooted in places neither of them had prepared for, but so was the silence that followed.

It wasn’t empty, it was intentional.

A holding pattern, a mutual waiting room. Both of them pacing the same space, quietly hoping the other would be the first to reach for the door.

But for now? They stood there.

Unnamed.

There was no clean beginning to the unraveling.

It didn’t start with silence. It started with too much, too many feelings pressed too tightly into a space neither of them had made room for. It started with closeness that felt like a promise, but never got spoken aloud, with longing disguised as restraint, with intimacy measured in minutes stolen between schedules that left no room for softness, let alone surrender.

They were careful, until they weren’t.

Y/N canceled a trip at the last second. Not because she had to, not because of a race or a meeting or anything she could point to with clean hands. She just couldn’t go, couldn’t walk into Rosé’s world again and pretend it didn’t terrify her, the press heat, the sheer machinery of someone who was watched even in the moments she most wanted to disappear.

The message came cold “Can’t this time, sorry. I’ll call you later.”

But later came thick with hours, then a full day, then silence that wasn't accidental.

When she finally reached out again, two days later, maybe three, she sent a joke. Something dumb, a meme Rosé had once said reminded her of Y/N’s sense of humor. There was no apology, no explanation, just a soft reentry, the digital equivalent of a hand brushing the edge of a door it wasn’t sure it still had the right to open.

Rosé responded with laughter.

But not quickly, and when she did, it came with no punctuation. No emojis, just enough to say I’m here, not enough to say I’m okay.

That was the shift.

Y/N pulled away first, not out of cruelty, but panic. Because for all the warmth she felt with Rosé, for all the grounded safety in her presence, there was something too exposed about it. Too bright, too known. And she'd spent too long building her life in the safe echo of helmets and closed circuits, to know how to stand still and be truly seen.

Rosé followed, but her retreat came quieter, deeper. It wasn’t withdrawal, it was defense. She knew how to close herself off with grace, how to meet the space with silence instead of demand. She didn’t ask questions, she didn’t call. She waited, but her voice, when it finally came back into the thread of them, was just slightly more formal, just slightly more careful.

The rhythm that had once flowed so easily between them began to stutter.

There were nights when they still stayed on the phone for hours, curled in their respective corners of the world, breathing each other in through bad signals and unfinished stories. And then there were days where the silence came heavy and full of edges, where a message went unanswered not out of cruelty but because neither of them knew how to break it without bleeding.

They began to miss each other while still speaking.

One of them would send a song, no caption, just the link, and the other would reply with a heart three hours too late. Rosé posted a photo of a lyric scribbled on hotel stationery, Y/N replied with a fire emoji. It wasn’t banter, it was begging, styled as casual.

When Rosé couldn’t sleep, she would scroll through her camera roll and stop on a photo she hadn’t taken, one Y/N had sent her without thinking. Knees up in the passenger seat of a rental car, sunset behind her, hair windblown, sunglasses on. The kind of photo you only send to someone when you want them to see you, not just look.

Y/N, alone in apartment, would stare at the last voice memo Rosé had sent. Not play it, no, just stare. Her finger would hover over it for long minutes, wondering if it would sound different now, if the voice on the other end would still feel like home, or like a house she no longer had keys to.

They weren’t fighting, they were flinching.

Flinching from what it meant to be honest, from what they’d already said with their hands and mouths and the way they fell asleep in each other’s arms like it was sacred.

Because the truth was, they were already in it.

They had already gotten messy. The way Rosé’s voice broke when she said I miss you without saying it, the way Y/N went quiet when Rosé brushed her hair back too gently, the way they both refused to say what they’re feeling, but couldn’t go a day without thinking about it.

And they didn’t know how to let it burn without setting themselves on fire. So they pulled, and then they came back, and then they pulled again.

Over and over.

It became a pattern, a song neither of them wanted to write down, because writing it would make it real, would make it harder to pretend they didn’t want more.

But still, they didn’t let go.

Because the mess wasn’t the problem, the mess was the proof, and they’d both take the ache of almost love over the silence of nothing at all.

The desert didn’t cool after sunset the way it promised to. The heat didn’t leave, it just changed form, thinning into the kind of weightless warmth that clung to bare shoulders, carried on the pulse of music. Lights painted the air in swells of pink and violet, bass lines rolled like thunder. The world, for a few hours, felt suspended in a dream made of smoke and sound.

Rosé was somewhere in the center of it, not onstage, not hidden, just there. The kind of presence that didn’t announce itself but still turned heads.

Lisa was radiant beside her, skin dewy under the lights, still carrying that vibrating afterglow of performance. Jennie stood to Rosé’s left, cool and poised as ever, her expression unreadable behind sunglasses even at night. The three of them moved like one memory, loose, laughing, weightless. Girls who had grown up under floodlights and still managed to carve out moments that felt untouched.

But Rosé wasn’t fully there, not entirely.

She laughed when she was supposed to, swayed when the rhythm asked her to, let her body fall into the curve of a song that wrapped around the crowd like silk. But something else moved beneath her skin. Something unsettled, something waiting.

Then Lady Gaga took the main stage.

The crowd’s energy snapped into place instantly, a tidal pull forward, collective breath held tight. Then mid-through the show, the intro swelled, the first chords heavy with anticipation. The lights strobed once in red, then white, then gold, and then? The opening lines of Die with a Smile began, quiet at first, like a confession whispered into the dark.

That’s when Rosé started to move.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t signal, she simply unlinked her arms from the others and stepped back, like gravity had loosened its grip on her for a moment and she needed to be somewhere else, not far, just away.

One step, two, then another.

She stopped just a few steps behind her friends and reached for her phone. Her thumb moved with no hesitation, scrolling to the top of her recents, tapping the name that had lived there quietly for weeks. The call connected before the second ring.

And then she saw her.

Y/N, somewhere across the world in a hallway with cheap tile floors and too bright lighting. Hair still wet from the shower, face flushed from exertion, McLaren’s hoodie sleeves bunched at her elbows. She was sitting against the wall with one knee up, the other stretched long, a half-drunk bottle of water pressed to her collarbone like it was the only thing anchoring her to the moment.

Her expression changed the instant she saw Rosé, not surprise, not even confusion, just the kind of slow, quiet light that only ever appears when something right enters the room.

Rosé didn’t say anything, didn’t have to.

The song was already playing, weaving between them through the speakers. The beat rising, the crowd singing, and beneath all of it, that single voice that had somehow found the language both of them had been avoiding.

Rosé smiled, faint but real, the kind that didn’t reach her mouth, but settled in her eyes.

Y/N’s lips curved in return, and she tilted her head slightly, just enough to mouth, barely above a whisper.

“Wherever you go, that’s where I’ll follow…”

Rosé blinked. Once, and then moving her phone slightly, angling it toward the stage, just enough for Y/N to see the lights, the flash of Gaga’s silhouette moving across the wide arc of sound, just enough to let her feel the moment from thousands of miles away.

Then she brought the camera back to herself.

Her face was lit by the glow of the screen, her hair gently mussed from the breeze, eyes soft, open.

She didn’t speak, she just looked.

And as the next lines came through, she began mouthing the words, carefully, deliberately. Like every one of them meant something only Y/N would understand.

“If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you…” “If the party was over and our time on Earth was through…” “I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile.”

Y/N didn’t breathe for a full measure.

Her body stayed perfectly still, except for the way her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of her hoodie, a grip she didn’t seem aware of. She didn’t look away, didn’t blink, just let the words hit.

And Rosé? Still mouthing the lyrics, still watching her like the entire crowd had faded to static, didn’t hold anything back.

Not in her gaze, not in the tremble at the corner of her mouth, not in the tiny inhale between lines, like the music was starting to feel too close to bone.

The camera wobbled once, and Rosé shifted her grip. Y/N leaned forward slightly, her mouth forming a soundless word, one Rosé didn’t hear, but felt.

Stay.

She didn’t say it out loud, but it was there, hanging between them.

Seconds passed, and it was long enough to burn something into the air. And when the song reached its final chorus, Rosé didn’t sing along this time. She just looked, like she was trying to memorize Y/N’s face from the inside out, like she was afraid she might forget the shape of this feeling if she moved too fast.

Then Y/N said quietly, “You look happy.”

Rosé nodded, not big, just once.

And answered, just loud enough to cut through the noise, just quiet enough that it felt like a secret.

“I am.”

No goodbye, just the call ending in silence.

The screen went dark, the stage lights flared gold. Further in the crowd, Lisa and Jennie were still dancing, unaware that something far more personal had just unraveled under their noses.

Rosé lowered the phone slowly, chest rising once in a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Then, without looking back, she slipped into the crowd again, but something had shifted.

She’d never mouthed words like that to anyone before, and this wasn’t a performance. It was a confession, one that Y/N had heard, and hadn’t run from.

It wasn’t meant to be seen.

That was the thing. It hadn’t been hidden, not exactly, but it hadn’t been offered, either. It wasn’t content, it wasn’t for the crowd. It was for one person, one screen, in one suspended pocket of time carved out between verses and noise.

But even still, Coachella had eyes everywhere.

The fan hadn’t been looking for drama, she wasn’t hoping to start a rumor, or go viral. She just loved her.

Rosé had always stood out in the chaos of festivals like this, not by being louder or flashier, but by not needing to be. There was something about the way she carried herself that made the space around her feel calmer, more magnetic, like gravity turned slightly toward wherever she stood.

That night, from a few rows back, the fan spotted her, recognized her instantly. She wasn’t front and center, she was tucked just to the edge of the VIP zone, chatting and dancing with Jennie and Lisa one minute, then stepping away the next.

The fan, heart racing with excitement, raised her phone. Just a quick video, nothing long, nothing invasive. She wanted to share a slice of it, just to show the others, the stans, the casuals, the ones who always missed her between official appearances, that Rosé was here. Living, dancing, happy.

She recorded ten seconds, maybe twelve. Framed Rosé in profile, just as she moved a little farther from her friends. The music swelled, Die with a Smile had just started. The bassline hit deep in the chest, stage lights rolled in warm flashes over the backs of the crowd.

Rosé paused.

Not dramatically, not like a performance, just gently. She stepped near the barricade, where the bodies thinned, pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, and raised it to eye level.

The fan thought nothing of it at first, everyone took videos during sets. Maybe she was filming the stage, checking something, texting someone. It was only later, after posting it, that she saw it differently.

Because Rosé wasn’t facing the stage.

She was facing the screen, and her face, even from a distance, even caught in motion, looked different.

Focused, still, present.

And then her lips moved.

Softly and deliberately, the kind of mouth movement that wasn’t speech, wasn’t reaction. It was too intentional, too steady. She was mouthing the lyrics, not toward the stage, not toward the sky, but toward the phone.

The video was short, slightly blurry, lit in flickers of gold and crimson. But it didn’t need clarity to land.

She posted it a few hours later, back at the tent, fingers still buzzing with excitement. The caption was harmless, simple, meant to be sweet.

“Rosé was calling someone during the Gaga set 🥺 she looked so soft here”

She went to sleep thinking she’d shared a warm little moment, something sweet for the fandom to coo over.

She woke up to chaos.

The comments had flooded in overnight, starting slow, just excitement, hearts, people thankful to see her. Then the questions started.

“She was on FaceTime?” “Omg wait WHO is she calling???” “Y’all notice she’s mouthing lyrics? LOOK at her eyes.”

And then someone slowed the video down, brightened it, cropped in. Rosé, head tilted, eyes soft, lips forming something clear. “If the world was ending, I’d wanna be next to you…”

It didn’t take long for the speculation to spark. Because that wasn’t a selfie cam, that wasn’t documentation. That was a confession, whispered through someone else’s words.

The fan hadn’t meant to start it, but the moment had slipped past intention and into something bigger. And the internet? Always watching, always hungry, had already begun connecting the dots.

It started, like these things always did, with someone squinting at pixels.

The video of Rosé had already made the rounds, not front page viral, but trending worldwide, reposted in fan group chats. Watched, then rewatched, not for spectacle but for something else.

Because it didn’t look like just a call, it looked like something meant.

And then someone slowed the video again, not to watch her face this time, but to watch her screen.

It was barely there.

A sliver, a corner, a reflection caught in the glare of Rosé’s phone, just as she adjusted her grip. One frame, frozen, brightened, scrubbed raw by a user with too much free time and too good an editing app. And in that corner, the outline of something specific.

A hoodie.

Dark grey, with a narrow stripe down the shoulder, a flash of orange piping across the collar.

It shouldn’t have meant anything, but someone remembered.

Two days before, Y/N had posted a photo on her intagram story, gone within the 24-hour window, from the edge of a racetrack somewhere. Training mode, no makeup, ponytail, water bottle balanced on her thigh.

And that hoodie.

Same stripe, same cut, same quiet signature, the one fans of her team would recognize instantly.

A user on X made the connection.

They didn’t shout, they didn’t theorize, just posted a quiet side by side. On the left, a cropped frame from Rosé’s FaceTime screen, the corner of the hoodie, blurred and barely visible. On the right, Y/N in the same hoodie, from the training post earlier that week. The caption was short.

“I think we just solved the call mystery. Hello???”

No emojis or hashtags, just that. And it was enough, within the hour, it exploded.

The quote tweets lit up first, then replies, then rewatches of the original video with new eyes, as if everyone had missed something sacred the first time and were only now seeing the full frame.

“WAIT. WAIT. WAIT. You’re telling me Rosé FaceTimed Y/N???” “Why do I feel like I wasn’t supposed to see this 😭” “She was mouthing the lyrics to her. This isn’t casual, you guys.”

And underneath all of it, the real realization.

It wasn’t just speculation anymore, it was evidence, small, incomplete, but undeniable. Something had been shared that wasn’t meant to be. And somewhere, a boundary had quietly ruptured, not loud enough for a headline, but deep enough to ripple.

Rosé didn’t sleep.

The video was still cycling through her mentions by sunrise. Reposts, stitches, messages she didn’t open, mentions she didn’t read, even when her fingers hovered over them. Everyone had something to say, and none of it was theirs to speak.

She had known the risk, a short call during a live set, a moment she hadn’t meant to give away.

But Rosé hadn’t planned to regret it.

She had just planned to forget, at least for a little while. To shift her focus, and move on to the next thing, that was what she was good at. She could compartmentalize with the best of them, she could breathe through noise.

Except tonight, the noise felt different, not louder but heavier.

By the time the black SUV pulled up to the corner of Southbound Las Vegas Boulevard, she already knew the street was closed. It wasn’t a surprise, it just didn’t feel like it belonged to her anymore.

The night was warm and windless, the Strip buzzing just outside the barricades like an animal being held back, neon strobed against glass towers and casino facades. The traffic lights blinked yellow over an empty intersection, and above them, the stars were blotted out by a lighting rig.

There were no fans, no press lines, but people had still gathered. Tourists trapped on the other side of the barricade, heads tilted, phones raised. Drivers honking behind redirected valets. Bystanders asking “What’s filming? Who’s that? Why is the street shut down?”

And then they saw her.

Rosé stepped out of the car in silence, no entourage, just her. Short black dress hugging the shape of her body, an oversized bomber jacket thrown over it like a shield, hair loose, makeup worn, the weight of the week written into the lines of her posture.

She didn’t wave, didn’t nod or look at anyone.

The cameras were already rigged, one set low to the ground, another held steady by a lone cameraman tracking her every move with quiet precision. No cranes, no sweeping mechanical movements, just a human eye behind the lens, close enough to catch a breath shifting, distant enough not to interrupt the stillness.

The lighting had been tested and retested. The script had been burned days ago, tonight wasn’t about precision. It was about feeling, and they all felt it.

Rosé stepped into the middle of the closed street and exhaled.

The pavement still radiated heat from the day, her boots made no sound on the asphalt. A light wind pushed the hem of her jacket aside, revealing bare knees, one hand clenched at her side.

They called for quiet,  though there wasn’t much to begin with. Vegas doesn’t go still, not really. But tonight? For this? It bent, slowed, held its breath.

No one knew it was Messy. No one knew she had written the second verse the same night Y/N fell asleep beside her with one hand tucked into the hem of her shirt.

And now the world was starting to guess, posts flying, screenshots compared, voices rising like smoke. It was all circling too close, too fast.

But here, on this closed off stretch of street, with the city blinking around her and the camera watching like it already knew the ending, she didn’t have to pretend.

She could give herself over to it, let the ache show, let the performance bleed.

The first take was supposed to be a warm up. Something to shake off the nerves, a pacing run, the kind of footage they’d splice between more polished moments later, a glance here, a walk there, her silhouette in motion against the heat stained asphalt.

That’s how the director framed it when he called, “Rolling.”

But Rosé didn’t pace herself.

From the moment the track began, muted through the wireless earpiece, barely audible beyond the reach of the camera, she was gone. Not distracted, not disconnected.

Gone.

The camera tracked her from a low angle, the lens steady in the hands of the lead cinematographer, a man who had filmed idols, actors, and the occasional politician, but never like this. Never a scene where the energy shifted the second she stepped into frame, never a shoot where you could feel the weight of what hadn’t been said.

She stood still for several seconds at the top of the street, as the instrumental thread of Messy began to unfurl around her. The city blinked behind her in long, slow strobes, hotel marquees flickering, traffic lights echoing in green and gold.

And then she moved.

Not fast, not deliberately, just enough.

Her arms, wrapped tightly across her chest, stayed there longer than anyone expected, it wasn’t a gesture she’d practiced, and no one had told her to do it. Her stylist had even warned against it “makes you look closed off, makes you look guarded.”

But in that moment, she didn’t care how it looked, she wasn’t performing for the lens, she was holding something in.

She walked forward, slow, careful steps in heeled boots that didn’t echo, her breath shallow but even, her eyes pinned somewhere just past the camera. She didn’t lip sync. Didn’t mouth a thing, not yet. She just breathed, and let the music pulse through her until the first verse hit.

Her movements were minimal, almost hesitant, her hands drifted down, fingertips brushing the fabric of her jacket, as if unsure whether to let go or hold tighter, her shoulders dipped forward slightly, her chin tucked in. It wasn’t choreography, it was a woman caught mid-thought.

And then the chorus arrived, that’s when everything shifted.

Rosé’s arms fell to her sides, limp for a beat, and then slowly lifted again, folding across her torso, but this time in something looser. Something closer to comfort than defense, she held herself with a kind of reverence, head tilting just enough to let her hair fall over one eye.

It was in that precise second, when the lyric hit “Then you know it’s really love, love…” that she closed her eyes.

Not dramatically, not for effect, just long enough to let the words land where they’d always belonged.

The camera kept rolling, the DP said nothing, no one called cut.

She opened her eyes slowly, lifting her gaze until it met the lens, not searching, not pleading, just looking. And what lived in her expression wasn’t vulnerability, it wasn’t sadness, either. It was surrender. The kind of quiet ache you give no one except the person who already has everything, the kind you only allow when you’ve lost the words to explain what stayed behind after they left.

She didn’t blink, she didn’t flinch, she looked straight through the camera, and for a second, just one, she looked like she wanted it to see her.

All of her.

The mess, the hope, the raw, beautiful wreck of a girl who hadn’t been able to say what she needed to say in person, and now had to say it here.

When the song ended, there was no cut, no applause, just the sound of breath in a headset and the gentle whirr of a lens refocusing.

The silence felt like an aftershock.

And when Rosé finally stepped back, the street behind her swallowing her shadow in long, uneven strokes of light, the director stood frozen with his hand on the walkie, eyes wide but quiet.

“She’s never done that,” someone whispered behind the monitor.

The director nodded, still staring at the playback, his voice came slower than usual, as if the words were struggling to catch up.

“I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

The compliments came later, quiet and stunned. One of the lighting assistants said they got goosebumps, the sound engineer murmured something about how even the air around her had changed, everyone praised the take. They used words like “raw” and “real” and “brave.”

Rosé nodded through it, offered polite smiles, pulled the bomber tighter around herself. But she wasn’t listening, not really.

All she could think about was Y/N. The moment her voice said you look happy, and how she hadn’t known what to say in return that wouldn’t break her.

All she could think about was whether Y/N had seen the post. The theories, the side by sides. The song she hadn’t heard yet, but was already threaded into the world without her consent.

Rosé wasn’t proud of the performance, she didn’t really care about the movie, she just hoped it reached the only person it was meant for.

The desert sun had dulled to a cooler hue by Sunday afternoon, but the heat still lingered in the air like perfume, dry, heady, impossible to ignore. Coachella shimmered with that kind of curated chaos it had perfected over the years. Every angle was a backdrop, every drink an accessory, every outfit a quiet negotiation between effort and ease.

Rosé had done this before, enough times to know how to disappear into it while still being seen.

She arrived with Lisa, just the two of them this time, their presence was exactly what people expected. Cool, collected, just enough undone to look effortless.

But it wasn’t the same.

Not for Rosé, not after last night.

She’d barely slept, not because of nerves, or because of the shoot, but because of the message she hadn’t expected and the silence that followed.

Y/N’s text had come early, while the world was still dark and she still smelled like asphalt and adrenaline.

“Do you want to tell me why you're trending on TikTok for shutting down the Las Vegas Strip in a bomber jacket?”

It wasn’t accusatory, it wasn’t teasing either, it hovered somewhere between amusement and something quieter, something she couldn’t name without unraveling.

She’d stared at the message, alone in her suite with makeup still on and the dress hanging from the back of a chair. The street below her had already been cleared, the crew had gone home. Her phone buzzed again, not from Y/N, but from the rest of the world. Mentions, posts, comments filled with guesses she couldn’t correct.

But the only message she could see was Y/N’s, and she had no good answer for it.

So she sent what felt safest. “You’ll see soon enough.”

She didn’t say what she meant by see. Not the video, not the lyrics, not the way the light caught her face when she mouthed the line about love being real when it’s messy.

Y/N hadn’t responded.

Rosé waited.

When she couldn’t take the silence anymore, she sent something gentler, trying not to sound too careful, too small.

“About the rumors.. if you want to talk about it, we can.”

Another pause, it didn’t feel like rejection, but it didn’t feel like comfort either.

Finally, Y/N replied “Let them talk. Ignore it.”

That was all.

No emoji, no warmth tucked inside the wording, just space, just distance, just the kind of message you send when you’re not sure where the line is anymore.

And Rosé knew what it was.

It was selfprotection, it was a shield, it was the exact kind of message she would’ve sent months ago. Back before the first touch, before the hotel bed, before the calls and the coffees and the lyrics she hadn’t even told her she’d written yet.

It should’ve hurt more. It should, but what hurt worse was the fact that it didn’t surprise her. Because they’d built this on omission, on silence, on everything they hadn’t said aloud.

They had touched like lovers and spoken like friends, they had occupied each other’s time, each other’s thoughts, each other’s routines, but never claimed the word. Never made it real. And now? That the world had turned to look, neither of them knew what to do with the pieces.

So Rosé had put the cap on her head, and climbed into the car with Lisa like it was any other day.

Now, front row at Jennie’s set, she stood clapping on beat, smiling when the camera panned too close, laughing at something Lisa whispered between songs. She jumped, she sang along, she lifted her arms for a crowd shot that would make its way into a TikTok within the hour. The world would see her and think unbothered, but underneath the practiced coolness, there was a pulse of something slower.

Not sadness, not confusion, a kind of quiet mourning.

For the way she used to look at Y/N and feel nothing but possibility, but now all she felt was pause.

Jennie’s voice echoed through the crowd, strong and sure. The beat dropped, and Lisa whooped beside her. Rosé tilted her chin toward the stage, lifted the corner of her mouth, kept her hands moving.

But inside?

She was back in the hotel hallway, back in the passenger seat of Y/N’s rental car at midnight, back on a silent phone screen, watching the girl who made her feel like love could exist in the gaps, the in between spaces where neither of them had been brave enough to say, this is more than temporary.

And now, she wasn’t sure if she’d already lost the right to say it at all. Her eyes were trained on something far past the stage.

On something unnamed, on something she might’ve already missed.

It was a week later when the post came.

It wasn’t posted from the paddock, it didn’t appear the night of the win. It wasn’t part of the media blitz that followed Y/N’s Grand Prix victory, a clean, blistering run through the corners of the Jeddah circuit that left the world stunned and her team speechless. She did the interviews, held the trophy, smiled for the cameras with champagne in her hair, said all the right things about performance and pace and pressure, and then disappeared.

It was a day later.

There was no announcement, just a single image uploaded in the middle of a quiet afternoon, tucked between news cycles. The kind of post that would normally get buried.

Except it didn’t.

The photo was taken somewhere behind the garages, far from the podium, far from the crowds. A part of the track where everything felt a little older, a little more forgotten, the gravel was clinging to her boots, the shadows stretched long behind her.

She stood half-turned toward the camera, helmet tucked beneath her arm, her suit peeled halfway down her frame and tied around her waist, the black sports bra beneath it was damp from the heat, clinging to her skin without apology, her hair was messy, loose at the ends. There was sweat on her neck and dust streaked across her cheek like war paint.

She wasn’t smiling, she didn’t need to, she looked unshakable, wild and real. Like a girl who knew exactly what she’d just done, and who she wanted to know it.

There was no caption. Just a single emoji “🏎️”. That alone would’ve meant little, another moody post race shot, maybe, or something for the sponsors, or the fans.

But the music under the post?

Die with a Smile – Lady Gaga.

No remix, no cut, just the original version, raw and undiluted, slipping beneath the photo like a memory being replayed. And suddenly, it wasn’t just a post.

It was an answer.

The lyrics started in silence, but the message was deafening “If the world was ending, I’d wanna be next to you…”

The same line Rosé had mouthed just before the internet caught fire, the same song she’d called Y/N to hear live, not as a fan, but as someone reaching out, quietly, completely.

The comment section was chaos in seconds.

“OH THEY’RE NOT SUBTLE ANYMORE.” “This is the song. THE song.” “So we’re just soft launching a global power couple through Instagram, huh?”

There were edits within the hour, fan cams layered with the chorus, split screens of Rosé at Coachella and Y/N at the track. Theories spiraled, timelines matched, lyrics parsed, every angle analyzed down to the bend in Y/N’s elbow.

But the truth was simpler than any of it.

She’d missed her, and this was her way of saying so. No press statement, no name drop, just a song, a photo, and silence heavy with meaning.

Later that night, somewhere in a different city, Rosé’s phone buzzed against her bedside table. She had tried not to check it, tried to ignore the DMs, the headlines, the flood of mentions dragging her name back into the conversation she’d tried to walk away from.

But when she saw Y/N’s name, there, in the notifications, her heart stuttered once, sharply.

“Really? You’re the one who said we should ignore the rumors, and you’re out here fueling it like it’s race day?”

She could’ve teased, could’ve deflected, but she didn’t need to. The reply came quickly.

“I miss you. When can I see you?”

Just that, not a challenge, not a retreat.

A question, quiet and steady, asking for nothing but presence. The first real thing either of them had said in days that sounded like something close to love.

Rosé didn’t answer immediately, she let the words settle, and somewhere behind her ribs, the part of her that had been braced for distance finally began to soften.

[drdemonprince]

yeah, like. you're inspiring, and give some good ideas and stuff. but so does the homeless guy sitting next to me talking to himself. And he's actually physically there. It's not some unique unreachable quality for you to have the ideas and understandings you do. You're cool, your ideas are worth reading and thinking about, but people really need to be able to talk to the people in front of them too, or at least listen. Wisdom doesn't just come from a special class of people reigning on high and the world gets better the more you look for it in your day to day.

We dont need individuals on pedestals, but equals in a forum.

yo yes exactly thank you -- and half of my good ideas literally come from homeless people. like Laziness Does Not Exist! that comes from Mik Everett, who i met when they were a homeless parent with disabilities posting on Tumblr!!!

(Mik has a great book called Memoirs of a Homeless Bookstore Owner, and buying it lends them real material support they could use. and it is a fantastic piece of writing. I adore it. please support them!)

the Values Based Integration process in Unmasking Autism that readers find so moving is all credited to Heather Morgan, a physically disabled and neurodivergent coach. Her advice shaped the structure of the book:

so much of my freaky sex positive writing is informed by ace eroticist Ana Valens!:

and my work has so many many other influences, those that im conscious of I take great care to cite and promote. celebrate these wonderful writers, who often need the support far far more than me!

[my-darling-boy]

Hello Alastair! I hope everything is going well! First of all, Iay I really, really love your name! It is one of the best names I have ever heard. Second, I was would like to s wondering if you might have any book or resource recommendations for someone who would like to know what it was like to be a gay soldier in WWI and WWII. Sorry for this weird ask. Wish you all the best! L

Thanks! And don’t worry, not a weird question at all. While I have broad knowledge, I can really only answer particulars for the British forces as that’s my forte. It’s also difficult to find comprehensive WWI sources on this because being gay in the forces and during the Edwardian era is so poorly documented compared to the 1920s onwards. I thought of these off the top of my head for a broader look:

(WW1 + WW2) Fighting Proud— Stephen Bourne

(WW2) Men at War— Luke Turner

(WW2) Queen and Country—Emma Vickers

(WW2) Coming Out Under Fire— Allan Bérubé (American, there is also a documentary under the same name)

(WW2) My Buddy: World War II laid bare—Dian Hanson (this one also has a LOT of pictures and is apparently kind of expensive or hard to find but it’s a fantastic book if you can get your hands on it)

(WW1) The Sexual History of the War—Magnus Hirschfeld (this one was written over 80 years ago and is both quite clinical and quite a challenging read I think if you’re pretty new to the subject because imo it requires some wider period-relevant knowledge to fully grasp the info but the full text is online if you’re interested)

I think when uni is finally over I’ll do a masterlist type post for way more sources! Because personal exploration and social reception of sexuality is such a complex subject, to have better framework to understand it with the backdrop of the wars (if you haven’t already) I would also recommend looking into:

Civilian life outside of being gay to learn more about the existing social and political landscape, especially class structures (The Age Of Decadence—Simon Heffer, Lost Voices of the Edwardians—Max Arthur)

Being gay in Edwardian life (I weirdly enough cannot think of a comprehensive non-fiction book on this? What exists is usually centred on upper class men whose class afforded them more freedom to be out, comprehensive works on middle and working class perspectives are kind of ignored, which is why there is more documentation of gay officers and not other ranks. I’d probably recommend going down the diaries, memoirs, family historian route here, so probably on E.M. Forster or Siegfried Sassoon and other gay people who lived during the era)

Looking into insular military life and the social and class structures within it, it wasn’t only smelly trenches (Old Soldiers Never Die— Frank Richards, We Called it Passchendaele—Lyn MacDonald, pretty much any collection of diaries or personal memoirs)

“Rough trade” (A Class Apart—Stephen Gardner, probably also The Sins of the City of the Plain—Jack Saul <it’s slightly older that one and is a bit graphic ngl)

Effeminacy/sexuality related cowardice and anti-patriotism accusations (the Eulenburg Affair, court martial cases, homophobic army propaganda)

Social impacts of the Wilde trials on men at the turn of the century (also can’t really think of a good book on this)

[gatheringbones]

one of the reasons I love Augusten burrough’s memoirs so much is that he wrote like four or five of them before he realized he had been faking being in love with his piece of shit husband for decades.

the false structures he attached himself to got him out of the danger zone, kept him from dying, kept him from flaming out as an alcoholic, but they still trapped him in a stagnant prison he had to fight like hell to break out of.