#narrative fiction

[clumsycatstudio]

Roswell’s visual development vs. Their final sprites ❤️

[doublefreegames]

Travel DevLog 2 - Working with the devil on my shoulder.

Week 2 of development has been going well on Travel Devil 2. We’re setting it straight after the first game so you get to see how the dynamics of Tornacense and Kirby are changing as they get used to being around each other.

Tornacense and Kirby facing an unhinged street preacher in the first game.

It’s great returning to these characters. I’m trying to make their drawings more exciting and dynamic. I’ve got a lot more time to make the character drawings now as I’m not working to game jam timeframes. I’m also going to learn to use the Renpy Action Editor to add more options to the movements in the game.

I’ve been working on many different aspects of the Travel Devil 2 to keep things interesting and motivating. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Many more concept sketches were drawn. Now I need to get them looking swish on the computer.

Backgrounds and video footage of Amsterdam have been sourced to showcase in the vlog parts of the game.

Set up a Bluesky profile – now I just have to learn to use it :S

Spent a lot of time updating software – yay!

Planned some fancy menus for 1st game recap, unlockables and character profiles

Coded some of the game framework in Renpy

Drank a lot of tea (Woo rock and/or roll!)

I've been using the plot outline to build the framework for the game. Robert has been working away on the writing. He's already written the recap of the first game and the opening scene which we’ve been hammering out together.

We’re hoping to get Travel Devil 2 out this year if we can. However if you can’t wait, you can pop on the old humask and check out the (short) first installment here on itch.io.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope March is treating you well!

[cthulhumystery]

We're thrilled and chilled to have been nominated for TEN NJ Web Fest awards across both the #ActualPlay and #NarrativeFiction categories!! 🙀 Thanks so much for recognizing our uncanny genre fusion and the talents of our incredible team! #WeGotNominated

[innocenceinyourarms]

Some more fiction

Perhaps it’s a stretch, but I typed this out from the prompt that @lestatdelioncoeur gave a bunch of us. The one about the window.

This draft was sitting in my notebook for a couple days, but I revisited last night. Its still a little rough around the edges, but I think it’s worth giving y’all a peek.

I’ve called it “Some words we shared one night”, It is written from the perspective of Penelope in the present day.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I do believe that I am the culmination of everyone I’ve ever loved,” Ezra said into the darkness, his voice so quiet yet there was none of the horse strain that I associated with his whispers. I almost didn’t even think he had truly said anything until he continued, the words kind of melting together as he slurred  “You know, Someone said that to me once. I didn’t believe them then, but I do think now that they’re right.” 

“Who did?” I rolled onto my right side, towards his voice. In the blackness, I fumbled to find him, his waist, any part to touch and reassure that I was here. His left hand met mine. He was freezing, no doubt hungry. My Poor baby, let me help you. For a moment, there was a flash of a scenero. He takes me up in his arms and purrs against my throat, kissing and nuzzling tenderly as he always does before finding his favorite spot just above my clavicle and then…

“Katie” another woman’s name fell out of Ezra’s mouth. 

“Katie?!” I couldn’t hide the tinge of disgust that colored the name. 

“Yes, my maker, you know” Ezra didn’t seem to detect anything strange about my tone. The benefits of having ingested half a bottle of pure ethanol. I couldn’t help but laugh. 

“You’re drunk,” I say. 

“Yes,” 

I laugh even harder, which makes him start to laugh, too. It’s not long before the two of us are barking like sea lions, tears stream from my cheeks as I shout “It’s not that funny, it’s not that funny,” between the lulls of hilarity, which only serves to get us giggling like idiots again. 

After the laughs have died away, I roll onto my left side. My heart is still pounding from the excitement, but it’s time to settle down. Time to sleep. I look up, my eyes intently focused on the window that I can’t see, but I know is there. I imagine the piece of pressboard covering it. Thick, large, and taking up a huge chunk of the wall, it was drilled into the cinder blocks with far, far too many long, black screws. 

I find myself remembering a conversation. The one we shared the night he showed me his sleeping arrangements:

“Go on, inspect my work,” Playfulness mingled with the modest pride coloring his voice. 

I stood on the edge of his bed on tiptoe, walking my fingertips along the screws as I fingered them, counting in my head One, two, three… I couldn’t help but wonder about the logistics of how he managed to do it. I’m a head taller than him, and it still took some effort on my part to reach the highest point on the board. All the while, he stood below, offering his outstretched hand to me, though I didn’t need it. 

“You sure are thorough,” I said at last

“Did I do it wrong?” He was wearing a look on his face that I’d only seen on guilty basset hounds wear. So I said:

“Well, Like my momma always told me: There’s no kill like overkill” 

The comment elicited a dark little chuckle. 

“Come down,” he said “ I don’t want to see you get hurt,” 

I told him I was going to paint it, so he had something nice to look at, but that was weeks ago. I still had no idea what he might like, or if I could even make something worth looking at in the first place. I never was the artistic type. Not that way. 

Just then, I felt Ezra’s cool arm snake around my waist, finding the dip where I'm at my narrowest with no effort. Muscle memory I smirked.

 He scooted closer to me, so close that our heads were sharing the same pillow. I felt his breath, as cold as if I were lying just millimeters away from an air conditioning vent. It smelled like alcohol. I didn’t mind. 

I relaxed into him, easing back like he was a favorite chair, sliding down so that I came to rest on his chest. He liked to feel taller when we were like this. His heartbeat was slow, slow, slow. His breathing has an easy rhythm. He’d be asleep soon. 

I placed my hand over his, wrapping my fingers around it gently. I gave it a light squeeze. 

“But it’s true, is it not?” I could hear the sleep in his voice and had no idea what he was talking about 

“What is?” 

“About love.” 

“I’m sorry, tell me again,” 

“That I am the culmination of everyone I’ve ever loved.” 

“Babe, I don’t know. I never met those people,” again, my voice betrayed me. There was a clear annoyance expressed that I immediately wished to take back the second it left my mouth.

“Oh… Right” It was like listening to someone letting the helium out of a balloon. “And I suppose you never will,” 

What am I supposed to say? My mouth felt terribly dry all of a sudden. 

“I’m sorry” were the only words I could find 

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, heart.”

No more words were spoken after that. 

We just lay there in the pitch dark, holding each other, our breaths coming and going in tandem. Slow, easy. I was cold, and yet still my cheeks burned. 

 I don’t know which of us fell asleep first.

[sluggishdawn]

LEO REID

THE CONSCIOUS

physical description: green eyes, half bald (buzzcut) but when his hair grows out it is curly, abnormally large hands, very tall, lanky

personality: he is chill and smart, often being the rational person and telling his friends to calm down, he is not afraid to be mean but will never go too far

oddities: enjoys many types of mythology, claims to not watch any tv or movies, loves bushwalking, walking around as a coping mechanism

goal: to protect and care for his friends, lover

sexuality: straight male

age: 13/14

height: 6’

[noknowshame]

always a fun time when real life people are doomed by their own narratives. like guys you know it doesn’t have to be like this right? this isn’t a stageplay the foreshadowing isn’t real until you make it real

[cindy326]

The Radio

The Radio. Fandango’s Story Starter #103

Fandango’s Story Starter #103 When Ida discovered that she could hear the voices of the dead speaking to her when she tuned into a certain radio station, she decided to live. She had been planning on killing herself for the better part of a month and felt a sense of relief for the first time in years. She’d been taking care of her mother most of her adult life and now she was gone. She’d lost…

[makingqueerhistory]

I’m actually serious about this, if at all possible, right now is a very good time to request queer books from your local library. Whether they get them or not is not in your control, but it is so important to show that there is a desire for queer books. I will also say getting more queer books in libraries and supporting queer authors are pretty fantastic byproducts of any action.

This isn’t something everyone can do, but please do see if you are one of the people who has the privilege to engage in this form of activism, and if you are, leverage that privilege for all you’re worth.

For anyone who can’t think of a queer book to request, here is a little list of some queer books that I think are underrated and might not be in circulation even at larger libraries:

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco     

Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals by William Wright    

The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley   

God Themselves by Jae Nichelle

IRL by Tommy Pico        

The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers by Mark Gevisser

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages             

The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom          

Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Snow              

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser

Queer Magic: Lgbt+ Spirituality and Culture from Around the World by Tomás Prower            

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam   

Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon 

Hi Honey, I'm Homo! by Matt Baume      

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Homie: Poems by Danez Smith

The Secret Life of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw  

The Companion by E.E. Ottoman 

Kapaemahu by Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu

Sacrament of Bodies by Romeo Oriogun     

Witching Moon by Poppy Woods 

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt    

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman    

Disintegrate/Dissociate by Arielle Twist           

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi             

Peaches and Honey by Imogen Markwell-Tweed      

Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color by Christopher Soto

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Shape of Story

by Christina Wodtke 

Start with Conflicted Characters

The character needs a goal, a motivation and a conflict.

The goal can be alien to your audience,

but the motivation must be shared by them, and

the conflict creates struggles that increase engagement.

Paint a Picture

Details transport you into the story.

The world disappears and you have a story play in your head.

Even though there are no literal pictures.

But be careful—Too many details and the story gets bogged down.

Make the Protagonist Suffer

“Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” (Kurt Vonnegut, How to Write a Great Story)

And when it can’t get any worse, make it worse before it gets better

The two key moments that create the peak of excitement in a story is the darkness before the dawn, and the dawn. 

The climax is the moment when the protagonist is either rescued or rescues themself.

In older tales, we saw a lot of Deux ex Machina (the hand of god) rescuing the hero. A hero could be rescued by luck, a partner, another hero…but modern audiences strongly prefer stories where the protagonist helps themself.

Resolution is Boring, Keep it Short

Interest grows with every additional conflict, but once the hero figures out the solution, our fascination collapses.

Don’t natter on while the audience’s mind is drifting.

Also Consider:

You need a good inciting incident to move your protagonist to action.

A setting is more than a place, it’s a situation and a moment in time. A vivid place has details.

Modern audiences prefer “return home changed” to “return home the same.”

EXAMPLES: ARCHETYPAL PLOTS ALONG THE ARC

Boy Meets Girl

Internal conflict is always satisfactory (e.g., she believes love interferes with his career, he believes love interferes with his beer.)

The crises usually revolves around betrayal — lying, cheating — and the climax shows it was a misunderstanding or we get atonement.

The struggle is always about them being separated.

The resolution is about binding them more tightly together than ever.

The Quest

You seek things, and find yourself.

Return home changed and don’t pass go.

Common elements include companions, a mentor, great losses and extreme character arcs.

The Underdog

Even though they do not have a shot in hell, the underdog wants something. They want it so bad.

Common elements include an enemy who blocks their path, and a coach who helps them forward.

In this case, they do not return home changed but rather move into a new life that fits their changed self.

Coming of Age

Naive person has the world teaches them a hard lesson, and they become a better person for it.

Struggle revolve around life sucking and then sucking more.

The hero grows and becomes better because of it, and via new understandings becomes competent.

In some tragedies, the world breaks them.

They can return home changed, but more often they move to a new life they have earned.

More Examples. Justice & Pursuit:

Weaving Multiple Plots:

Weaving multiple plots together to make subplots can further increase tension.

Multiple plots woven together makes the whole story not only unique but very compelling.

[thatdamnokie]

i love you fairy tales i love you folklore i love you myths i love you stories as old as humanity itself i love you oral traditions i love you characters carried through time on my ancestors’ tongues i love you story i’ve seen a million ways and want to see a million more i love you archetypes i love—

[blacktabbygames]

hey did you know that slay the princess is out now? did you know it's on sale with a 10% launch discount until november 2nd? do you want to spend several hours getting sternly lectured by and annoying jonathan sims?? well this is your game i think it's good and you should buy it but don't listen to me look at that 91 metascore—and for us, just a couple of lil guys make a game with no gameplay other than click dialogue options! idk must be fun

“An existentially horrific visual novel, with an incredibly well-written plot, a beautiful score and graphics that will enrapture all senses. One of the best narrative games of 2023.” 10/10 – Voxel Smash

“There isn’t a single thing I don’t like about Slay the Princess. The presentation is beautiful, the story is fantastic and moving, the voice acting of amazing characters is done phenomenally well, and the branching paths of the story give you what feels like unlimited possibilities.” 10/10 – Try Hard Guides

“Slay the Princess will stay with you for a long time, I think. It’s absurdist and dark and haunting in a way that not a lot of games are. If you have an itch for something that’s spooky but also morally confronting and you will be thinking about it for days to come, it’s impossible not to recommend this.” A- – Player 2

Anyways more seriously truly from the bottom of our hearts thank you all so much for making this launch a world-shifting experience for us! We can't wait to share more games with you, starting with Episode 5 of Scarlet Hollow 👀

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Against Lore

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

One of my favorite nuggets of writing advice comes from James D Macdonald. Jim, a Navy vet with an encylopedic knowledge of gun lore, explained to a group of non-gun people how to write guns without getting derided by other gun people: "just add the word 'modified.'"

As in, "Her modified AR-15 kicked against her shoulder as she squeezed the trigger, but she held it steady on the car door, watching it disintegrate in a spatter of bullet-holes."

Jim's big idea was that gun people couldn't help but chew away at the verisimilitude of your fictional guns, their brains would automatically latch onto them and try to find the errors. But the word "modified" hijacked that impulse and turned it to the writer's advantage: a gun person's imagination gnaws at that word "modified," spinning up the cleverest possible explanation for how the gun in question could behave as depicted.

In other words, the gun person's impulse to one-up the writer by demonstrating their superior knowledge becomes an impulse to impart that superior knowledge to the writer. "Modified" puts the expert and the bullshitter on the same team, and conscripts the expert into fleshing out the bullshitter's lies.

Yes, writing is lying. Storytelling is genuinely weird. A storyteller who has successfully captured the audience has done so by convincing their hindbrains to care about the tribulations of imaginary people. These are people whose suffering, by definition, do not matter. Imaginary things didn't happen, so they can't matter. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet were less tragic than the death of the yogurt you had for breakfast. That yogurt was alive and now it's dead, whereas R&J never lived, never died, and don't matter:

https://locusmag.com/2014/11/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/

Hijacking a stranger's empathic response is intrinsically adversarial. While storytelling is a benign activity, its underlying mechanic is extremely dangerous. Getting us to care about things that don't matter is how novels and movies work, but it's also how cults and cons work.

Cult leaders and con-artists know that they're engaged in mind-to-mind combat, and they make liberal use of Jim's hack of leaving blank spots for the mark to fill in. Think of Qanon drops: the mystical nonsense was just close enough to sensical that a vulnerable audience was compelled to try and untangle them, and ended up imparting more meaning to them than the hustler who posted them ever could have dreamt up.

Same with cons – there's a great scene in the Leverage: Redemption heist show where an experienced con-artist explains to a novice that the most convincing hustle is the one where you wait for the mark to tell you what they think you're doing, then run with it (scambaiters and other skeptics will recognize this as a relative of the "cold reading," where a "psychic" uses your own confirmations to flesh out their predictions).

As Douglas Adams put it:

A towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Magicians know this one, too. The point of a sleight is to misdirect the audience's attention, and use that moment of misattention to trick them, vanishing, stashing or producing something. The mark's mind is caught in a pleasurable agony: something seemingly impossible just happened. The mind splits into two parts, one of which insists that the impossible just happened, the other insisting that the impossible can't happen.

You know you've done it right if the audience says, "Do that again!" And that's the one thing you must not do. So long as you don't repeat the trick, the audience's imagination will chew on it endlessly, coming up with incredibly clever things that you must have done (a clever conjurer will know several ways to produce the same effect and will "do it again" by reproducing the effect via different means, which exponentially increases the audience's automatic imputation of clever methods to the performer).

Not for nothing, Jim Macdonald advises his writing students to study Magic and Showmanship, a classic text for aspiring conjurers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/11/13/magic-and-showmanship-classic-book-about-conjuring-has-many-lessons-for-writers/

There's a version of this in comedy, too. The scholarship of humor is clear on this: comedy comes from surprise. The audience knows they're about to be surprised when the punchline lands, and their mind is furiously trying to defuse the comedian's bomb before it detonates, cycling through potential punchlines of their own. This ramps up the suspense and the tension, so when the comedian does drop the punchline, the tension is released in a whoosh of laughter.

Your mind wants the tension to be resolved ASAP, but the pleasure comes from having that desire thwarted. Comedy – like most performance – has an element of authoritarianism. You don't give the audience what it wants, you give it what it needs.

Same goes for TTRPGs: the game master's role is to deny the players the victories and treasure they want, until they can't take it anymore, and then deliver it. That's the definition of an epic game. It's one of the durable advantages of human GMs over video game back-ends: they can ramp up the epicness by "cheating" on the play, giving the players the chance to squeak out improbable victories at the last possible second:

https://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/03/behind-the-screen.html

This is so effective that even crude approximations of it can turn video-games into cult hits – like Left4Dead, whose "Director" back-end would notice when the players were about to get destroyed and then substantially ramped up the chances of finding an amazing weapon – the chance would still be low overall, but there would be enough moments when the player got exactly what they'd been praying for, at the last possible instant, that it would feel amazing:

https://left4dead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Director#Special_Infected

Critically, Left4Dead's Director didn't do this every time. As any showman knows, the key to a great performance is "Always leave 'em wanting more." The musician's successful finale depends on doing every encore the audience demands, except the last one, so the crowd leaves with one tantalyzing and imaginary song playing in their minds, a performance better than any the musicians themselves could have delivered. Like the gun person who comes up with a cooler mod than the writer ever could, like the magic show attendee who comes up with a more elaborate explanation for the sleight than the conjurer could ever pull off, like the comedy club attendee whose imagination anticipates a surprise that grows larger the longer the joke goes on, the successful performance is an adversarial act of cooperation where the audience willingly and unwillingly cooperates with the performer to deny them the thing that they think they need, and deliver the thing they actually need.

This is my biggest problem with the notion that someday LLMs will get good enough at storytelling to give us the tales we demand, without having to suffer through a storyteller's sadistic denial of the resolutions we crave. When I'm reading a mystery, I want to turn to the last page and find out whodunnit, but I know that doing so will ruin the story. Telling the storyteller how the story should go is like trying to tickle yourself.

Like being tickled, experiencing only fun if the tickler respects your boundaries – but, like being tickled, there's always a part where you're squirming away, but you don't want it to stop. An AI storyteller that gives you exactly what you want is like a dungeon master who declares that every sword-swing kills the monster, and every treasure chest is full of epic items and platinum pieces. Yes, that's what you want, but if you get it, what's the point?

Seen in this light, performance is a kind of sado-masochism, where the performer delights in denying something to the audience, who, in turn, delights in the denial. Don't give the audience what they want, give them what they need.

What your audience needs is their own imagination. Decades ago, I was a freelance copywriter producing sales materials for Alias/Wavefront, a then-leading CGI firm that was inventing all kinds of never-seen VFX that would blow people away. One of the engineers I worked with told me something I never forgot: "Your imagination has more polygons than anything you can create with our software." He was talking about why it was critical to have some of the action happen in the shadows.

All of this is why series tend to go downhill. The first volume in any series leaves so much to the imagination. The map of the world is barely fleshed out, the characters' biographies are full of blank spots, the mechanics of the artifacts and the politics of the land are all just detailed enough that your mind automatically ascribes a level of detail to them, without knowing what that detail is.

This is the moment at which everything seems very clever, because your mind is just churning with all the different bits of elaborate lore that will fill in those lacunae and make them all fit together.

SPOILER ALERT: I'm about to give some spoilers for Furiosa.

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FURIOSA SPOILERS AHEAD!

Last night, we went to see Furiosa, the latest Mad Max movie, a prequel to 2015's Fury Road, which is one of the greatest movies ever made. Like most prequels, Furiosa functions as a lore-delivery vehicle, and as such, it's nowhere near as good as Fury Road.

Fury Road hints as so much worldbuilding. We learn about the three fortresses of the wasteland (the Citadel, the Bullet Farm, and Gastown) but we only see one (The Citadel). We learn that these three cities have a symbiotic relationship with one another, defined by a complex politics that is just barely stable. We meet Furiosa herself, and learn something of her biography – that she had been stolen from the Green Place, that she had suffered an arm amputation.

All of this is left for us to fill in, and for a decade, my hindbrain has been chewing on all of that, coming up with cool ways it could all fit together. I yearned to know the "real" explanation, but it was always unlikely that this real explanation would be as enjoyable as my own partial, ever-unfinished headcanon.

Furiosa is a great movie, but its worst parts are the canonical lore it settles. Partly, that's because some of that lore is just stupid. Why is the Bullet Farm an open-pit mine? I mean, it's visually amazing, but what does that have to do with making bullets? Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal – the solarpunk Green Place is a million times less cool than I had imagined it. Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal and stupid: the scenes where Furiosa's arm is crushed, then severed, then replaced, are both rushed and quasi-miraculous:

https://www.themarysue.com/how-does-furiosa-lose-her-arm/

But even if the lore had been good – not stupid, not banal – the best they could have hoped for was for the lore to be tidy. If it were surprising, it would seem contrived. A story whose loose ends have been tidily snipped away seems like it would be immensely satisfying, but it's not satisfying – it's just resolved. Like the band performing every encore you demand, until you no longer want to hear the band anymore – the feeling as you leave the hall isn't satisfaction, it's exhaustion.

So long as some key question remains unresolved, you're still wanting more. So long as the map has blank spots, your hindbrain will impute clever and exciting mysteries, tantalyzingly teetering on the edge of explicability, to the story.

Lore is always better as something to anticipate than it is to receive. The fans demand lore, but it should be doled out sparingly. Always leave 'em wanting more.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/27/cmon-do-it-again/#better_to_remain_silent_and_be_thought_a_fool_than_to_speak_and_remove_all_doubt

[zan0tix]

Any general thoughts on/relating to the Brobot?

Have my half awake scrawlings...

I really love the brobot!!!! People really misconstrue it and also leave it out in a lot of dirkjake talk? Its a big player in not only how dirk expresses his affection/desire towards jake but also in their multi year spanning unspoken game of gay chicken 😭😭(all of dirks splinters are but Not about them rn)

It was sent yknow under the pretense that jake loves wrestling and wished so bad to have somebody he could wrestle with. But at the same time it protects jake from the horrors of hellmurder island (seen before they strife), pushing jake into the Damsel in distress role he wasnt expecting to play even before all the shit in the game, with Dirk being his hero.

Jake says he keeps it on a high difficulty because apparently in the Novice mode he says their interactions become "too tender" and doesnt want to elaborate, Friendly reminder! His convo with jane on the SAME DAY dirk pulled off that big romantic overture and the kiss happens and him and dirk begin "dating".. is the same day he asked jane if it didnt make him weird for wanting to date dirk. And he also says hed joke around with dirk about how theyd soo make a great couple if dirk were a girl haha.

I imagine the brobot and well. Getting physical like that with a robot that supposedly looks like dirk probably gave jake his internal gay awakening at 13 but he just never wanted to actually confront it and instead just wanted to brush past everything 😭😭 (See: every single time sexuality or romance comes up in relation to jake he is literally always thinking about dirk somehow and he never directly talks about his attraction to men or how that reflects/contradicts on his self image of the Movie Star Hero guy)

and jake doesnt actually hate the thing either, he tells jane he thinks it genuinely did improve his fighting capabilities (Which we see it did in collide! he beat basically the whole felt with guns and fisticuffs alone, no hope powers.) Which serves as a pretty evident parallel to dave who also is good at fighting, even if he doesnt want to be. (see dirk + dave convo)

This one comes from hussies authors notes in the aradiabot and equius scene (which equius imagery being invoked with dirk. something i could totally rant about another time haha) but yeah. Jake was being selfish asshat in that log forcing jane into a corner and wringing what he wanted to hear out of her, and also not giving a shit about the brobot (Which served as his protector and only other semblance of human connection since he was 13 and was a BIRTHDAY GIFT FROM DIRK) KILLING ITSELF? But hes so preoccupied talking about dirk. THE REAL DIRK. And immediately after jake loses the dirk splinter that protected him, HE (AND DIRK) CREATE A NEW ONE FOR HIMSELF USING THEIR COMBINED POWERS/?

Hussie is lying.. somebody Does care about dirks feelings. a whole lot to the point they activate their powers unwittingly Because of it. and its jake. but jake just cant admit that himself. (He cannot admit his real feelings until given permission to, dirk would have to concede the game of gay chicken first using his words and not just actions)

ANYWAY. hussie is so right its so easy to get sidetracked times one million talking about this comic. BUT AHH!! BROBOT. his existence.. tragic.. Jakes really smart in knowing that all of dirks splinters enlighten aspects of himself he doesnt oft share, and the brobot served as another dirk action on the pile of dirk actions he engineers to signify his deep immense care for jake, where he lets these grand gestures and implications sit out in the open without ever actually saying what they mean and where his feelings lay.

EVEN IF ITS SUPER OBVIOUS. The d man cant use his big boy words to actually describe his feelings despite how much a yaps! so jake doesnt know if hes even allowed to say anything about his own. Fellas: Is it gay if you labour for supposedly an extended period of time to create a custom robot in your own image to ship in pieces to your best bro guy crush who is HUNDREDS OF YEARS IN THE PAST because you cant be there yourself?

I think this hal message says enough about how bad dirk wished he could visit jake 💀💀

[crocrubies]

May you feel the jaws of the beast at your throat every time you swallow

[sluggishdawn]

the click // chapter 2

—this is a work of fiction, by me —i worked on this with a partner, you should read her version here —master list (the click) —enjoy!

The massive crash startled everyone, but gradually, the shock wore off. Throughout the halls of the school, the lawless students ran wild. Freyja and Elizabeth, within half an hour, had managed to clear three classrooms of their desks and chairs and were in the midst of constructing an elaborate castle. The canteen had been emptied, leaving a plethora of processed food and energy drinks to decorate the schoolyard floor. Leo could see disorder brewing. A wall of empty watermelon-flavoured gatorade bottles was lined up in the walkway; a path leading to the desk-castle his friends had united to build. He had ignored them earlier when they savagely chugged the bottles and had continued to walk the halls. It surprised him how much they would advance in the span of him walking from one side of the school to the other. 

He did a double take. Their castle was growing precariously tall. He didn't want his friends to be hurt. Still, he continued. He walked, giving himself a chance to breathe. 

Leo came to the end of the hall. The final classroom. He turned around, again, beginning another lap. This time, he noticed the faint sound of music. It was soft and blurred; far away. Curiosity crashed over him like a wave. The unvarying pace he had kept began to increase. And soon, he reached the homespace of the music. It was a song he had heard before but he couldn’t remember what it was. It played loud, pleasing his ears. The music boomed from the speakers within the classroom, drowning out any voices inside. He could only hear the song, and the faint laughter from far away from his friends. 

The curtains of the classroom had been pulled shut, concealing the people inside. He opened the door to see music connected to the projector, glowing to give the room a small amount of light. In the darkness, the projector light illuminated the single person inside, who flew across the room. The figure spun around on her foot over and over again. But even as she stopped spinning and leaped, she did not notice him. Leo was curious, but he felt like he was intruding. He watched, engrossed in the performance, as the girl's hair band slipped out and her hair came free. The recognisable, bright locks tumbled around the figure's face. Something about her was so graceful, and Leo wondered how she did not get dizzy. 

The room had been emptied by Elizabeth and Freyja earlier, in order to construct their castle. It gave a perfect opportunity for Delia to dance, distract herself from their terrible situation. Delia flipped upside down onto her hands and then back up again. Leo watched in awe. The music reverberated around the room, quiet singing in harmony with an emotional piano. Delia’s dancing felt like the song. The song, which was slowing, ended. Leo mustered an awkward applause. Delia turned to see him, her face red despite the white projector light but he could not tell if it was from the dancing, or being embarrassed that he was watching her. She bowed, a small smile creeping up her face. They stood there for a moment just looking at each other. The faint noise of laughter still chimed in the background. Neither Delia or Leo said a word. Delia broke the painful silence. 

“Um, how long were you watching?” She asked, breathing heavily.

“I started watching when you flew across the room. How do you do that?” Leo said, curious. He had seen her dance before, laughing and joking with their shared friends. But never like this. 

A relieved sigh left her mouth just as a great thunder came from outside the room. A crash, though much different to the one before, made Delia shudder. She didn't want anyone else to disappear. The duo left the empty room, quickly bounding through the hall and down the stairs. On ground level, tables and chairs scattered the courtyard. An elaborate wall of tables almost reaching the height of the staircase, still stood. Leo scanned the scene studiously, quickly finding a huddle of people. He strode over. Elizabeth was laying, back to the floor, breathing harsh and quick. She was winded. Freyja kneeled beside Elizabeth, his head down in sorrow. Standing around them was a growing crowd of people. There stood Riley, who was busy laughing and joking about Elizabeth’s fall from the castle. Leo fought the seething urge to glare at him. She could have been hurt! Breanna and Darcy were talking in hushed whispers, standing further away than everyone else. Elliot, who had only made Leo worried since the crash, gazed towards his injured friends, no comments leaving his usually eager mouth. And then Delia and Leo, who had just arrived, both scanned over the group, assessing the situation. 

Elizabeth stood up. She stumbled and used Freyja for support. Her hands held her face. 

“That was fun.” Regaining her balance, she began to pick up the fallen chairs. 

“We can't finish the castle.” Freyja, an unlikely voice of reason, spoke up. “You could have really badly hurt yourself.” He moved to Elizabeth, confiscating the chair. 

“But I’m not hurt.” A weak argument. Elizabeth had been laying on the floor dying less than a minute prior. Leo stood back, allowing Freyja to begin the deconstruction of the castle. Generally, Freyja would be the person to continue doing something stupid, even after someone had gotten hurt. But he must have realised the extent of the situation. If someone got badly injured, there were no doctors around to heal them. They, the 17 kids, were reliant on first aid. 

Elizabeth was still building, a feeble attempt at continuing the castle. She looked younger as she persistently placed the chairs. But Freyja was faster at removing the chairs than Elizabeth was at placing them. Standing beside him, Delia had begun offering advice. 

“Elizabeth, it’s not a good idea. If someone gets hurt badly, the doctors are gone!” There was a sense of urgency in her voice that Leo had only heard once before, when one of her and Breanna’s friends, Aurora, had gotten her fingers slammed in a door. They had walked Aurora to the first aid, as she screamed and wailed, a trail of blood dripping behind them. The realisation that there was no one else but them seemed to be setting in. 

Elizabeth stopped building. Freyja continued. Breanna spoke up. 

“What's so bad about the castle? It was almost done.” Leo looked at her, dumbfounded. Either she had missed the last 20 minutes or she was wishing death on Elizabeth and Freyja. 

Freyja walked over to Breanna, “Are you an idiot?” Breanna was put off by the comment. They stared at each other for an excruciatingly long time. 

“Of course not.” Breanna returned to Darcy's side, her face set in a deeply offended expression. The tensions had risen exponentially since everyone had disappeared. There had always been some apprehensiveness amongst the group, but people knew to keep it to themselves. With stress levels high, and without consequences, peoples opinions slipped out easily. Opinions, Leo knew, could be the downfall or the uprising of a group. It all depended on which opinions were kept and which ones were shared. 

More people joined Freyja in deconstructing the castle. It was more of a hazard than a fun game. Pitied frowns were sent towards Elizabeth, who stood beside her great fortress, with a pout and her arms crossed over her chest. Though he felt bad for Elizabeth, Leo was glad the keep was being dismantled. He felt strongly for all of his friends, and never wanted to see them hurt. They needed to reorganise. Elliot Bell had done the right thing ushering everyone back into the school after the crash, but the group needed to work together, to ensure that they were all safe. 

“We need to have a meeting.” He announced. Taking apart the castle was paused. A few unsure agreements broke off from individual conversation. “We need to get everyone at the same place at the same time.” 

“I can go to admin and send a message over the speakers.” Delia offered. She gestured to the office building on their right. It sat perched beside the staircase, as if it were waiting eagerly for them to explore. He thought visiting the loudspeaker was a grand idea. They could use it to gather everyone's attention from all over the school. 

  “Can we check the cameras?” Elliot asked, “We might be able to see what happened or where everyone went.” It was the first time since the crash anyone had expressed hope. All afternoon, Leo’s friends had expressed two moods. The first one was an extreme, utter doubt and daunt and the second was being childish and reckless whilst still maintaining ‘normal’ behaviour. Leo latched onto Elliots hope. 

“I’ll go with Delia to check on the camera’s and to use the speaker.” There were a few nods of agreement amongst the group. Leo watched Elliot, who stood with a teasing grin. Even if he didn’t enjoy the notion that Elliot had just made, Leo was happy that despite the circumstances, the good friends were able to keep inside jokes and secrets in their subtle body language and conversations. 

“Ok then. Leo and I will go to admin to send a message over the speakers and then we’ll check the security cameras,” Delia decided. No one objected, returning to the disassembly of the castle and the pair left. They walked the corridors of the school silently. 

Leo spoke. “You know I used to think this place was like a second home. It doesn't feel right now that everyone is gone.” 

“Yeah. But hopefully we will figure out what happened to everyone once we check the security cameras.” Delia agreed. They continued to walk in silence. It wasn’t an awkward silence, however. Leo was comfortable with Delia. He felt easygoing and confident. They walked up the stairs, and turned into the large admin office. They walked in at the student entrance, which meant that they needed a keycode to unlock the door for the office. 

“Oh shit. We need an access card.” Leo exclaimed. But before he knew it, Delia had hoisted herself onto the admin desk, sliding the paper onto the floor and landing on the desk chair. Leo stood, shocked. He had not expected her to climb over the desk. He thought of how he could get over (all while seeming cool in front of Delia) but she had appeared beside him, having opened the door from the inside. 

“What? No one is here.” She said. Leo knew his mouth was gaped open. He recovered from the small shock quickly, and followed Delia as she glided down the hall. 

Leo was deeply grateful that Delia knew her way around the office. Her mum, Mrs Woods, had taught most of their friends at one point, and was often used as a tease to annoy Delia. Since her mum had taught at Wolfhole, she not only knew her way around the admin building, but also knew which teachers resided in which desks–and where the cameras were. 

The cameras could be logged into from any school computer (as long as you had the information), but there was one room where it was always set up. Going to the camera room meant that the kids did not need a login, and could access the unusually large hard drive, where all of the video footage from around the school was saved. The pair sluthed the halls, Leo feeling lost as Delia whipped around corners eagerly. 

They reached an abnormally large door and Delia began a conversation. “Have you ever been in here?” She gestured to a closed door beside them. 

“No.” He replied.

“It’s the door to the teachers lounge.”

“Oh. Ok.” Leo felt bad for giving short answers, but Delia made him nervous. 

The door swung open and a gust of cold air hit Leo. When everyone disappeared, air conditioning had been left on. This, and the absence of people's body heat would cool the place down greatly. Leo was a smart kid. 

The teachers lounge featured many rows of small cubicles, each with a desk, a set of drawers and a wheely chair. There were blue accents on the walls but the furniture and rest of the room was dull. Like every classroom, there were ample amounts of brown, grey and white cascading over the walls and floor. Leo could hear the whirring air conditioning unit, and loud squawks coming from birds outside the window. He could also hear Delia and his squeaking shoes as they travelled through the maze of teachers desks. 

The pair passed the fifth office, nearing half way. Delia fell. Her shoe slid on her loose shoelace, but just as she was about to hit the floor, Leo grabbed her around the waist. It was a spontaneous response. He held her above the floor, as she looked up at him, staring deep into his green eyes. She looked away. Delia shuffled in his hold, and he pulled her up to standing. 

“Thanks.” Delia said. Her face flushed a deep red. Her arms crossed her chest, and she did not meet his eyes. 

“It’s all goods.” He replied, suddenly aware of how awkward they now were. 

The duo continued walking down the corridor. Neither one spoke.

thanks for reading <3 the next chapter should be up soon (3)