#sounds naturally like it comes from the character who said it. It can be meandering and pointless and rambly IF that matches the character.

[earlgreytea68]

the way you write dialogue is so good, it seems so natural and accurate. especially with Pete and Patrick. could I maybe get some dialogue tips from you, just in general? it's something I struggle with. I always either make it too silly or quippy and I end up deleting it because it sounds stupid, or it's like every line is trying to be the most serious deep important thing on earth. idk where the balance is, it's hard for me but you do it so well.

Some of it is honestly just practice. Years and years and years of reading and then writing dialogue.

But some of it is finding your style of dialogue that works for you. I consider myself, chiefly, a writer of dialogue. I'm never going to be huge into descriptions. I can do them every once in a while, but they're not really my thing. And that's okay! I'm not upset about that! I lean into what feels natural to me. So, with dialogue, I think some of it is finding the dialogue style that feels like it works for you, that you're comfortable with, that doesn't feel like it's artificial. I look back now at stuff I wrote years ago and it feels like I was trying to copy other people, which is fine! But it took me a while to find my groove, to be okay with things like saying flat-out "he says" a bunch of times. A lot of writing advice will tell you not to use "said" more than twice a page or something like that and I decided I didn't like that advice, it didn't work for me. The characters are talking too rapid-fire for me to want you to worry overly much about what verb they're using to communication. I don't always use "says" but I don't freak out if I use it more often than someone else would have said to, because honestly it's only there to make sure you don't lose track of who's speaking where.

Also, I will sometimes try my dialogue out loud. Like, I'll write the scene by acting out the parts in the shower. This requires me to remember what I said, but as long as I've got the rough shape of it, I'm okay, and I think that exercise helps my dialogue feel more natural and back-and-forth. If you're worried about remembering it, you could maybe record yourself doing this.

You talk about striking the balance, and I was trying to think of advice for this, and I realized something: Sometimes my characters have extremely deep conversations. Those are usually the scenes I've planned for and I know are coming from a long way off. "There needs to be a huge declaration of love," or "they need to talk about this problem they're having." Those scenes are kind of like their own things, because they have a very specific goal of some deep communication that needs to happen. Those are very different from the connective tissue scenes that I write to get to those scenes. And, because I don't outline or heavily plan my fics, often I have no idea what's going to happen in any given scene. Like, I'll start writing a scene, like the scene I posted in the Christmas fic tonight, and all I need to happen in that scene is: Pete and Patrick pick out a Christmas tree. Now I could have just skipped that scene, like, what's really happening in that scene? Really not much of anything. But to me I don't skip those scenes because I think those scenes are the important scenes where you really get a feeling for the relationship between the characters, you get to see them interact. So, in THAT kind of scene, it's basically all quips and jokes. And when I run out of quips and jokes lol, then maybe there will be a serious moment of self-reflection in there.

Again, because I don't plan my fics out very much, oftentimes I just let the characters talk to each other until some kind of point emerges. This means I have to actively come up with things for them to talk about. Random things, not story point things. And, because of that, I think the dialogue naturally feels more spontaneous and unplanned and meandering, because that's how the scene is unfolding. So I guess I would say that the balance is struck by knowing what the scene needs to accomplish. If it's a light, frivolous scene, then I just let them go where they want to go. If it's an intense scene, I have more of an idea in mind, and so there's less brainstorming through the dialogue.

I have no idea if this is helpful!!!! Another thing I would recommend is to find a writer whose dialogue you really like and spend some time with it, thinking about what you like about it, why you like it, and how you could keep that in mind as you write. I tell this story a lot but the first piece of writing I ever saw by Aaron Sorkin was "The State Dinner," which is an episode of "The West Wing," and it, like, took the top of my head off, the way he was writing dialogue. I watched a lot of Aaron Sorkin throughout my twenties, anything and everything he did. (I still watch Sorkin's stuff, because I can't help it, he taught me a lot of what I know, and even though his style has become highly mockable, it was really formative for me.) Anyway, I used to spend a lot of time trying to think about what about his dialogue made me so impressed by it, and some of it was the speed, and some of it was how he wasn't afraid to make it repetitive and confusing and silly and pointless. I mean, it's not like real talking because nobody REALLY talks like an Aaron Sorkin character but it FELT like this approximation of reality that really appealed to me. I remember the first time I wrote a character say something like, "I don't want to turn into one of those couples who's all like, 'We can't do anything solo.'" My beta at the time circled it and was like, "This speech is too informal." Because way back when in the twentieth century, that was how we thought about dialogue, that it had to be this more formalized thing, cleaned up from how real-life speech is. Sorkin kind of taught me that it didn't have to be. (I'm sure other people could have. He happened to be who I found.) So I used to watch a lot of West Wing to get its rhythm in my head, and then I would write my own stories, and as I did that, I found I sounded more like Sorkin. That wasn't actually my goal, and I think I sound less like him now, twenty years down the line, but it WAS my goal to really hone in on my dialogue the way he had. It made me not afraid to tell a story mainly through its dialogue, where I had been before him. Idk. This turned into a whole Aaron Sorkin thing and I didn't mean it to be but it was a huge turning point in how I wrote and I think about it a lot hahahaha. ANYWAY. Yeah.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2021 anime overview: Quick Takes

Now for my Spring 2021 anime thoughts! I’ve decided from now on if a season’s like, 20- to-24 episodes I’m just going to wait ‘til it’s done to review it unless I feels super passionately, so though I watched To Your Eternity (it’s good!) and MHA (eh), I’ll comment on them next time. Also, for the record, I watched the first eight eps of Joran: Princess and Snow of Blood but I dropped it because it had clearly crossed the line from entertainingly dumb to boring dumb. 

I will probably give Supercub and some other stuff a shot later, this was a stacked season! May give updates on all that later, but this is what I have for now.

ODDTAXI

Quick Summary: A mild mannered middle-aged walrus taxi driver is drawn into a case involving a missing girl, yakuza, Youtube clout-chasers, manzai comedians and idols with big secrets.

It’s rare to walk away from media and be like “that is a singular experience I will definitely never see repeated again” but ODDTAXI is definitely one of those. A tense noir thriller murder mystery starring cartoon animals that spends an entire episode detailing the one (cat)man’s very fall into darkness triggered by addiction to gacha games and an online auction for a novelty eraser? Also there’s a porcupine Yakuza who speaks entirely in rap? Also there’s tons of meandering conversations about stuff like manzai comedy and the struggle to go viral on Twitter?

Admittedly, I had a hard time getting into the first episode, the dry meandering humor not being enough to hold my attention while I was sitting still, but once I watched this while I was working out at the end of the season, I found it an easy binge. A ton of characters with dark secrets or dangerous ambitions, each with their own part to play in a tableau of intersecting events- and it all actually comes together really well.(As for the female characters, it’s a pretty dude driven story, but they do get nuanced characterization and even some good heroic moments from one of them.)

 It’s a great example of a carefully planned narrative paying off, with all the twists appropriately seeded and foreshadowed to reward viewers who paid attention. Even when it ended on a perfect “OH SHIT” moment and denied me closure, I couldn’t help but respect it. If you that all sounds interesting to you, definitely check out the first couple episodes and see if you like it- you’re likely to have a memorable, satisfying experience!

Shadows House

Quick Summary: Emilyko is a ‘living doll’ who’s told she was created to act as the ‘face’ of her shadow master, Kate. The shadows and their ‘dolls’ all reside on the mansion and are required to pass a ‘debut’ to prove they’re a good pairing. If they don’t pass, they might be disposed of. And so the mystery of the Shadow mansion grows...

This slice of gothic intrigue was my favorite of the season, tied with ODDTAXI. With an interesting premise, slightly tense undertones and a strong focus on character building and relationships, it kept me hooked the whole way through. And for any squeamish fans put off by the hype about it, don’t worry, while there are some suspenseful elements, I wouldn’t qualify it as horror. I thought the relationship between Kate and Emilyko might end up being a completely sinister one, but it’s thankfully a lot more complex than that and it’s really interesting to follow how both their characters and relationship grow. The focus of the show is, unsurprisingly, on the “dolls” slowly discovering their autonomy and personhood as they struggle under the rigid system imposed on them by the mysterious elders of this weird Victorian mansion. Can they develop a more equitable relationship with their shadow “masters” (who are also shown to suffer under this system)? There’s a lot to dig into there, and the show has the characters develop through learning to understand and appreciate each other, which is pretty heartwarming. Our hero, Emilyko, is the typical plucky ball of sunshine (they even nickname her sunshine), but she’s also shown to be clever in her own off-the-wall way and she bounces off the far more subdued and cynical Kate well, not to mention the other ‘dolls’ she ends up befriending. 

What’s more, the show spends plenty of time to developing several other character pairings and combinations, and they all have their own interesting dynamic that makes you want to see more of them. Same-gender bonds are at the forefront of this show, and many of them are ripe for queer readings (I definitely appreciated the healthy helping of ladies carrying ladies), but even outside that it’s nice to see a show where a strong, complex bond between girls is at the forefront. My only real complaints about the show are the anime original ending is noticeably a bit rushed (though it’s not too bad, and leaves room for a season 2) and I wish the animation used the whole “shadow” theme more strikingly (like the opening and endings do)- instead the colors are a bit washed out which makes the shadows blend into the background sometimes. The “debut” arc also drags a bit in places, but it makes up for it by having a lot of good character integration.

I hope to check out the (full color)! manga soon and see more of this quirky, shadowy story. There’s some physical abuse depicted, sad things happening to characters and naturally the whole “oppressive familial system” thing, but otherwise not much I can think of to warn about. I give this one a big rec, especially If you’re a fan of gothic fairytales and stories of self discovery.  

Zombie Land Saga Revenge

Quickest summary: In this sequel season, everyone’s favorite zombie idol group must claw their way back into prominence after a disastrous show- the fate of the Saga prefecture LITERALLY depends on it!

This was a fun follow-up to the first season- if you liked the first zombie-girl romp, you’ll probably enjoy this one. In fact, there were a couple areas it improved on- namely, Kotaro failed, ate crow and embarrassed himself a lot more this season, which made him more likeable (as did the fact the girls gained a lot of independence from him). This season also shed more light on what the ‘goal’ of this zombie raising project is and what kind of shit Kotaro got involved with to make this happen, and it’s appropriately off-the-wall and ridiculous. We finally got some backstory for Yugiri too! I wish it had focused on more of her interiority, but she got to be a badass in it, and it was a treat to see this zombie idol show turn into a period piece for a couple episodes (also her song ruled).

 Tae also got a cute focus episode and there was a particular SMASHING performance early on! Also That revelation last season that had the potential to turn creepy hasn’t yet, and hopefully never will. The finale was heartwarming with big hints of more drama to come- I’m definitely down for more zombie hijinks!

Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song

Quickest Summary: A songstress AI named DIVA (nicknamed Vivy) is approached by another AI named Matsumoto, who says he’s from the future and they must work together to prevent AI exterminating all of humankind 100 years from now.

This show is absolutely gorgeous visually with some really nice action scenes, but when it comes to the story my feelings basically amount to a shrug. It’s fine! I guess! Vivy starts out as an interesting layered character- and I guess still is by the end- with her stoic but stubborn determination bouncing off her fast-talking bossy partner Matsumoto well. She never listens to him, which is delightful. The way the show took place over the course of 100 years was an interesting conceit as well. However, it bought up a lot of themes and then sort of... dropped them. For instance, Vivy interprets her mission (PRIME DIRECTIVE if you will) as protecting humans at all costs, no matter how destructive said humans are or what their fate is supposed to be, and is perfectly willing to murder her fellow androids to do this, showing she inherently thinks of androids (herself and her own people!) as less worthy. Which is a little alarming! There’s a very dramatic point in the show where they bring this up as a potential conflict for her character but then it’s sort of...dropped. Pretty much.

Actually, despite the premise, the show doesn’t dip into the “AI rights” as much as you think it would with the main theme being more about Vivy’s search to find her own creativity and discover what it means to ‘pour your heart into something’. Vivy herself doesn’t actually care if she has rights or anything. Which is in some ways fine, because ‘AI as an oppressed class’ has been done to death, but IT’S ALSO KIND OF IN THE PREMISE, so that means that the show just shrugs really hard at a lot of the questions it brings up  basically just going “humans and AI should work together probably” and that’s it. There’s a lot that feels underexplored. The antagonists in the show also either have motivations that don’t really make sense or have boring hackneyed motivations. In the finale in particular, it feels like a lot of things happen “just because” and it falls a little flat.

I also have to warn that one of the arcs focus on a robot ‘pairing’ where the dude-coded robots actions toward his partner are straight up awful and rob her of her autonomy, but it’s played like a tragic love story. I suppose you could read it differently too, but it definitely made me go ‘ew’ the story seemed to want me to sympathize with this robo dude,

Overall, I wouldn’t anti-recommend this show, it’s an all right little sci-fic romp (and definitely SUPER pretty). My favorite element was definitely the episodes where Vivy develops an entirely new (an loveable) personality, because it played with the idea of of an AI getting “rebooted” really well and interplay between her two “selves” was done really well. But there are a lot of other parts of the show that just feel...a little underexplored and empty, making me have an ‘eh’ feeling on the show overall. It’s definitely an ambitious project, and while it didn’t quite stick the landing, there’s something to be said for a show that shoots for the stars and falls short over a show that just languishes in mediocrity.

Fruits Basket The Final

Quick summary: The final season of that dramatic drama about that weird family with a zodiac curse and the girl who loves them.

It’s very weird that after not cutting a lot out, they kinda sped through some material for, you know, the finale. I guess they thought they couldn’t stretch this final arc to 26 episodes? Or weren’t cleared for another double cour? However, though there were a couple places that felt awkward, despite being a bit condensed it mostly held together pretty well for a D R A M A T I C and ultimately heartwarming conclusion. I was really disappointed they kept the part where Ritsu cut their hair for the ‘happy ending’, I thought  their intro episode not showing them in men’s clothes meant the anime had decided their presentation didn’t need to be “fixed” but WELL I GUESS NOT. That was the only big upset for me though, otherwise the adaptation went about how I expected, sticking to the source material. Furuba has a lot of bumps, from weird age gap stuff to ...gender, but it also has a lot of important feels and great character arcs. It was a gateway shoujo for many and has its important place in animanga history, so I’m glad it finally got a shiny, full adaptation.

[mckennamayfairgoode]

Show Me the Foothold From Which I Can Climb [Part One]

Billie Dean Howard x Reader

Word Count: 6k

Request: i saw that your requests were open and i wanted to ask if you could do something for billie x reader, i LOVED your other one. -requested by anon

Warnings: Nothing yet, except minor character death, but it will get VERY heavy later on. (Future TW include: addiction, alcoholism, grief, depression, suicidal thoughts.)

A/N: I’ve spent too long working on this, so I decided to break it up into parts and post it instead of going back over the same scenes again and again. I’m not sure how many parts it will be. Probably three or four. A big thank you to @lucyintheskywithxanax​ as usual for being my plastic duck. You are The Best (no, really, you are). ❤

Song: Mountain at My Gates by FOALS. Also mentioned is I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers.

“Let’s take five minutes, okay? Sorry, everyone, they’re being stubborn today.” Billie smiles apologetically at the camera crew and the sight of it alone is enough to ease the mounting frustration in the room. Shoulders relax and tension melts away as if the atmosphere hadn’t been stifling just moments before. You call it ‘The Billie Effect.’

“Five minutes and we’ll try again,” the director agrees, giving the crew the go-ahead to take a break. There’s a spattering of pleased murmurs before everyone uses the opportunity to disperse around the house or go outside for some fresh air.

You adjust the camera on your shoulder and watch as the director walks up to Billie, his hands moving in animated gestures as he speaks. You can’t hear what he’s saying, but you can imagine. The long day has not made him any more pleasant to be around. The smile on Billie’s lips is charming as she attempts to sooth his ruffled feathers. It only takes a moment, one hand resting on his shoulder to make the interaction seem more intimate than it is, before he turns away from her with a satisfied expression that makes something inside you tug unpleasantly. Once he turns away from her, Billie’s bright expression falls and her brows pinch together. 

You wait for him to walk away before easing up to her side, eyeing his back as the distance between you grows. “Was he giving you trouble?”

“He’s the director of the show, Y/N,” she points out and when you turn to her, you see that her smile has returned, beautiful and real and just for you. Your heart seems to breathe a sigh of relief.

You shrug the shoulder not currently occupied by a camera. “Yeah, well, without you there wouldn’t be a show,” you remind her, annoyance clear in your tone.

Billie laughs, low and husky. “Easy, tiger.” She wraps a hand around your bicep and runs her thumb along the edge of your shirt sleeve, barely dancing across your bare skin and shooting tingles up your spine.  “Everyone has their part to play, even him.”

You roll your eyes. “It’d be easier if he played his part somewhere else,” you mutter.

She grins, her big brown eyes dancing with amusement. You watch that familiar teasing glint bleed into them like wine stains into a beige carpet.  “Careful there, sweetheart. I’m starting to get the impression that you care about me.”

“And I’m starting to get the impression that you want me to care about you,” you retort playfully, watching the pleased smile morph her beautiful face into something soft and sweet. No one gets to see her like this. No one but you. That smile only lasts a second before her shoulders tense, just barely, just enough for you to notice. Her gaze flicks to the side. You’ve been around long enough to know that she’s feeling or seeing something you can’t. Your voice softens into a soothing tone. “Everything okay, pretty woman?” 

Billie startles, her grip tightening on your arm as she steadies herself before she flashes you a comforting smile. “Just fine, sweetheart.” She raises a slender hand and with one long acrylic nail extended, points to a spot in front of you both. “I can feel them right here, but they won’t come out.”

You both look at the space like your combined staring power will overwhelm the spirits and force them to reveal themselves. You don’t realize how close you’ve drifted to one another until you go to nudge her shoulder with your own. “They will,” you say. 

The darkness in her eyes eases at the conviction in your tone. She raises an eyebrow. “And how do you know that?” she asks. “We’ve been here for eight hours and have nothing to show for it.”

You resist the urge to move a wayward curl back behind her ear.  “You’re Billie Dean Howard. No one can resist you.”

Her smile turns sly. “Not even you?”

You turn to face her and feel your heart stutter. She’s already looking at you, her eyes warm and tender. “Not even me,” you finally say, your tone leaving no doubt that you are dead serious. The space between you is so small your noses would brush if you tipped forward. There’s a split second where you think you might kiss her. If you weren’t in the middle of a haunted house surrounded by your coworkers, if you were alone, and if she was looking at you like she is right now, maybe you would lean in and wipe that sly smile from her face with your lips. 

“You ready, Billie?” A masculine voice startles you both out of the moment causing you to jerk away and take a step back from each other. Billie is elegant and composed as usual, but your heart thunders in your chest like you are a storm splitting open the sky. You glance at her lips. Had she been leaning in too? 

Billie gives the director a nod before turning back to you. The intensity hasn’t left her eyes. You search them for a moment, find the sincerity there and anchor to it with your heart. A slow grin spreads across your face and you nod to the starting marker on the floor. “Come on, pretty woman. I promise to get your good angle.”

She scoffs, an amused expression lighting up her face. “You always get my good angle.”

“It’s not the only thing I plan on getting,” you flirt. “Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll prove it to you later.”

Billie laughs and tosses her wavy curls back. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, sweet thing,” she purrs, trailing her fingertips along your shoulders as she passes behind you.

You watch her go and know your expression must be lovestruck. Her presence always makes you feel weightless, a bird’s wayward feather in free fall. You think you might be able to float to the ceiling if you tried.

“You don’t really believe in this bullshit, do you?” a voice asks over your shoulder. You glance behind you to see your new assistant standing there looking perplexed and bored.

You raise an eyebrow, shifting the camera on your shoulder. “Why are you working here if you don’t believe it?”

He shrugs, following you to the mark and standing behind you. “Needed the experience,” he says simply.

You look into the viewfinder, adjusting the angle and shuffling until the sunlight streaming in from the living room window carves highlights into Billie’s cheekbones. She looks like a marble sculpture, like she belongs in the Louvre and not this haunted house in southern California, like she will be cemented in time, beautiful and endless. “Stick around,” you tell him. You pull back, look over the top of the camera, and lock eyes with Billie from across the room. “She’ll get them to show. She always does.” 

--

“Holy shit.” Your assistant's voice comes out in a breathy whisper, barely audible over the rattling sound of wheels rolling along the pavement.

You grin but resist the urge to snicker, because you’ve been there before. Skeptical and unsure, drawn to Billie of course, in awe of her smile, but not a believer in anything you couldn’t physically see. Then she had brought a derelict house to life with light that was not natural and shadows that liked to play pretend and you had watched her speak to someone whose presence you couldn’t even feel. That moment had changed you. 

Once upon a time, you had been so very small and fearful of the things you did not understand. Locked in your castle and warned away from the room at the end of the hall, you were protected, but sheltered, and your world had been so very small along with you. Until one day, you met a princess with golden hair and big brown eyes, who was kind and good and could see things you could not. 

The princess had taken you by the hand and led you to the end of the hall where she cracked the door open so that you could take a peek into the room you were not allowed in. Inside that room was a darkness and in that darkness was a glimmer of something bigger than you. You’d tugged at her hand to ward her away from the things you feared, but she stood tall and faced the darkness head on.

“Don’t be scared,” she’d said. The princess turned on a light - you think it came from within her - and the darkness shrank back, twisting into shadows that held out their spindly arms but could not reach you no matter how hard they tried. She looked at you and she smiled. “I won’t let them hurt you,” she promised and you believed her. You were a mountain and you were not afraid of anything. 

“You’ll get used to it,” you say, reaching the studio van and gesturing for him to help you load the equipment cases inside. 

He doesn’t look like he believes you. In fact, he looks like he might lose his lunch right there on the sidewalk. He wouldn’t be the first who couldn’t handle a glimpse of the other side. Ignoring it won’t make it go away, but you don’t say that. Instead, you latch the doors behind you, bid him goodnight, and meander down the sidewalk in the direction of your car. 

You watch the van’s tail lights disappear around the bend for only a moment before Billie’s soul inevitably calls to yours and you turn to look for her. She’s still standing on the front porch speaking with the homeowners. Not surprising. Billie hates to leave a job half finished. She nods her head empathetically, places a hand on the man’s arm, and says something charming no doubt. The couple laughs in response, just as you knew they would. No one can resist Billie Dean Howard. You lean back against the hood of your car, tuck your hands into your pockets, and wait.

It doesn’t take long. A few minutes later, she struts toward you like she’s on the red carpet and not a cracked, chalk-covered sidewalk in the middle of the suburbs. Your heart flounders in your chest like a fish on the deck of a boat and you wonder if you will always be this helpless when faced with her presence. “Hey, pretty woman.” You nod to the road behind you. “Wanna go for a drive?”

“And where would you be taking me on a Friday night?” Even across the distance, you can see the mischievousness in her expression. Billie loves to play games, and you are more than happy to indulge her.  

You reach in your pocket for your keys, absentmindedly playing with them as you grin. “Sorry, I can’t tell you that. Try again.”

Billie slows to a stop in front of you and tilts her head, eyeing you with a barely concealed smile. She tries to look stern but the glitter in her eyes betrays her. “What are you up to, Y/N?”  

You shrug. “I’m just keeping my promises,” you say simply. You reach over and open the passenger door for her with a flourish. “Your chariot awaits.”

--

“We’re here,” you announce, stepping out of the car and shutting the door behind you. 

Billie follows you at a leisurely pace, her head turning this way and that as she takes in your surroundings. She looks out of place up here, like a beautiful porcelain doll left in the middle of the woods. She is your diamond in the rough, your supernova in an empty sky. She burns. You wonder if it’s for you.

“Sweetheart?”

“Yes?” you respond, already knowing the question that will leave her lips.

“Why have you brought me to a cliff?”

You laugh and hold out your hand. “Do you trust me?” you ask, serious despite the light tone to your voice.

Billie does not hesitate. She sets her well manicured hand in yours, looks you in the eyes, and says, “Always.”

You have to swallow the lump in your throat to respond. “Good, because I was going to drive us both off the cliff, but there’s a concrete barrier in the way. We’ll have to go on foot and just jump off instead.”

She chuckles, low and throaty in just the way that makes your spine shiver. “Oh, darling. I’m going to need some incentives if you’re going to make me do all that in these shoes.”

You smirk and, mindful of her expensive heels, begin leading her down the smoothest path to the cliffside. “I’m sure I can come up with something.”

“I’m sure you can,” she purrs. Her hand in yours is soft and warm. You have held hands before. Large hands, small hands, the hands of those you love and hands from a distant past that you haven’t held for a very long time but still remember. There had been fingers wrapped around a thumb bigger than yours, hands clasped palm to palm as your brother helped you cross the street, pinkies interlocked to cement promises that would surpass time and age, fingertips pressed together beneath the table in the library with the girl who always laughed at your jokes. They were not like this. Holding this hand felt like coming home. Like you were meant to hold it. Like you have held it before.

As you near the aforementioned barrier, you turn to her with an impish smile. “Close your eyes,” you say.

Billie quirks an eyebrow. “I don’t usually do that on the first date.”

Your heart jumps, excited, happy, hopeful. “You let me bring you to a cliff on our first date?” you ask, playfully appalled.

Her smile grows fond. “It’s starting to grow on me.”

You bite your lip to quell the grin forming and tug at her hand. “Come on, the incentive lies in what will happen after you close them.”

“Well, how can I resist when you put it like that?” she teases, shutting her eyes and trusting you to guide her the rest of the way. You do, one careful step at a time, until you are near the edge. You look out over the view and feel your soul untangle itself from your heart, but it does not leave, not yet. It wants to be free, but it doesn’t want to go alone. 

You glance back at her, just a moment, maybe just to check that she’s real and not a vision that lives in your head. “You can open them now.”

She does. 

From a bluff overlooking the city, you watch as the sun sets, a jeweled crown that settles itself on the head of a skyscraper, radiant and eternal. Just for her. For the princess in your fairy tale. Almost as if you had willed it into existence all by yourself, lights start appearing in the city. Streetlamps, headlights, lights from offices and businesses and apartments; all of them blink on, one tiny speck at a time, until the whole of Los Angeles is alight with stars of their own making.

You don’t say anything and neither does she. You don’t need to. Billie’s fingers slide between your own, more intimate than any night you’ve spent in bed with another woman, and she squeezes. Just once. Your soul follows the invisible thread between your hearts and entangles itself with hers. They float away together like flower petals on a summer breeze.

You turn to her as she looks off into the horizon. Your eyes follow the shape of her face, from her forehead to the gentle slope of her nose, the curves of her mouth to the jut of her chin, and you wish you were tracing it with your fingertip instead. The setting sun casts a glow to her hair turning it different shades of molten gold and pink and you think you have never seen a more beautiful sight.

When she turns to face you, your eyes meet and your noses touch, much like they almost had earlier that day. Only this time there is nothing stopping you from closing the distance. Your breath hitches, your heart thunders, you are a feather in free fall, but you will not be afraid. Billie would never hurt you. Not your protector, your safety, your light.

You tangle your free hand into her hair and pull her close enough to brush your mouth against hers. It’s soft and tender, flowers grazing in a moonlit meadow, the gentle fluttering of a butterfly’s wings, the ocean lapping against the sand on a lazy, summer night. 

Her other hand reaches for your cheek, pulling you closer. You melt against her, breathe her in, think maybe this is what happiness is, maybe this is what eternity would feel like as long as you are with her. She sighs into your mouth like she has been waiting for this moment as long as you have. Your soul ignites as her nails graze your cheek, gentle and revering, like you are precious, like you are important, like you are the flower petal that may float away.  Maybe you fell in love with her then. Maybe you have been in love with her all this time.

--

“Hello?”

“Hi there, sweet thing. Where are you?” Your tired ears perk up at the sound of Billie’s voice, a smile lighting up your face as if it had been waiting just for her. 

“Hi, baby. I’m at the studio going over the footage from yesterday. Are you still at the interview?” You glance out of the nearby window. Night has already fallen and rain pelts against the glass like a swarm of angry bees. “It’s late.”

“It ran over by two hours,” she explains, her voice tight and clipped. 

You furrow your brows. “You don’t sound happy about that. Did it not go well?”

You hear the flick of a lighter. “If you call four hours of talking in circles ‘well’ then one would say it went perfectly fine.” She sighs. “Maybe I was just impatient.” 

“For what?”

“For you.” Your breath catches in your throat. You almost trip going down the stairs but manage to catch yourself in time. “Y/N?” 

“I’m here,” you manage to say. 

You can practically hear the smirk in her voice. “I’d like to see you tonight. What do you think?”

Heartbeat thudding in your ears, you finally reach the main lobby and come to a stop in front of the studio doors. Thunder rumbles through the building, shaking the glass and seeming to bounce off empty corners to echo back at you. You can barely see the street behind the sheets of rain. Maybe Hell has finally frozen over and Los Angeles is in the midst of a hurricane. “I’m thinking it’s the perfect night for a movie and takeout,” you say once you’ve gained control of your vocal chords.

Billie exhales. The sound of it wavers; she’s smiling. “My place is closer; is that alright with you?”

“Yes, of course,” you respond and hope you don’t sound too eager. Even though you are. Even though all you want is to see her look at you with that exasperated fondness that makes your heart melt. You want her to push you away, to laugh, to pull you right back in before she kisses you senseless. You just want to be home.

“Good,” she pauses and you can picture that fond expression in your head as clearly as if it were right in front of you. “See you soon, sweetheart.”

You bite your lip, trying and failing to soothe your expression into something calm and collected. “See you soon, pretty woman.” You don’t even bother putting on your jacket before dashing outside into the torrential downpour.

--

Traffic in Los Angeles is always congested at best no matter where you go. Cars, taxis, and buses stay bumper to bumper until you get further away from the city and closer to Billie’s suburbs. The rain makes it hard to see the road, let alone other cars, so you keep your hands tightly gripped around the wheel and maintain a steady pace as you follow the bright yellow shape of the taxi in front of you.

Even with the storm raging around you, you feel invincible, like nothing can touch you. Thunder rumbles in the distance, lightning cracks the air, and rain pelts the roof of your car like lead bullets, but you don’t hear any of it. Your mind is a paradise and it is so quiet. Your thumbs tap rhythmically against the steering wheel as you sing along to the song on the radio.

“But I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more-”

You let the music sweep its way into your very being, washing over you and bringing with it a sense of peace. It makes you think of Billie and you realize you’re never not thinking of Billie, not anymore, not since she planted herself in your earth and lit up your night sky with a blazing sun. It feels like she has intertwined herself so closely to you, to your heart, to your soul, to your spirit, that you are no longer sure where she ends and you begin.

Captivated by her smile, enraptured by her kind heart, drawn to the passion that runs through her veins in lieu of blood, lovesick, lovestruck, love, love, love. Every little memory you make with her anew blinks on like a star in a sunset painted cityscape and you want to point your finger in its direction and tell her the tale of how a princess - with light embedded in her soul - saved you from your castle.

You’re thinking about her still when you notice the taxi peel off into the next lane. You don’t see him until it’s too late. 

A boy on a bike.

He darts in front of you out of nowhere or maybe he had been there the whole time and you just couldn’t see him in the rain. You see him now. Time slows down to a crawl - or maybe it never slowed at all; maybe you have been on the other side all along. 

He’s wearing a blue jacket. You notice it as your foot slams on the breaks, as you twist the steering wheel to the side in an attempt to swerve around him, as your car’s tires screech and slip against the rain-soaked street. It’s navy blue. You hear the sickening thump it makes when you hit him, feel the car jerk as you crash into a utility pole and the airbag knocks you in the face hard enough to make you black out for a second. Maybe two. You’re not sure. All you know is that when you finally summon the strength to open your eyes again, you’re assaulted by the smell of chemicals from the deployed airbag that burn your nostrils when you breathe. Your body aches from where you slammed against the seat belt on impact, your face, your chest - your heart, you think - but you can barely feel it. You are numb.

You blink rapidly to clear the dark spots from your vision, but all it does is serve to make you dizzy. Your head spins, feeling much like the inside of a snow globe after it’s been shaken up by an overeager child. With panic churning  inside you like a hurricane, you claw at your seat belt. Your fingers are shaking and clumsy and they don’t seem to work anymore and sobs well in your throat because this can’t be happening. It must be a dream, a nightmare, anything but what you know deep in your heart that it is: reality, the darkness whispers. A tendril of it slithers through the keyhole. It watches you. It is grinning.

“Come on, come on,” you mutter, or at least you think you do, before throwing open your door with one hand and scrabbling for the seat belt latch with the other. You manage to hit the release and go careening out of the car, landing on your hands and knees with a smack against the wet pavement. 

A man runs up to you, clutching your arm and pulling you up with large, gentle hands. Rain falls into your already blurry eyes, clinging to your eyelashes like tears as you look up at him and notice he has a full, greying beard. His mouth is moving but you can’t hear him over the ringing in your ears. 

You look away from him, searching, wild, crazed. Maybe you are crazy. Maybe you are a lunatic. A crowd has half formed on the side of the road, sporting parkas and umbrellas. Like anxious birds, they flutter around a slumped figure laying unnaturally still on the ground. It wears a navy blue jacket.

You push the man away, stumbling on shaking legs like a newborn foal as you attempt to cross the distance between you and the flock of people. Dread fills your bones, cements itself as a lump in your throat, but you don’t stop. You can’t. Someone on their cell phone tries to reach out to you, but you shove their hands aside. Rain soaks the thin cloth of your t-shirt causing the material to cling to you like a second skin. But you can’t feel it. You can’t feel anything. 

You fall to your knees before him, landing with a splash in the puddle beneath you. Your mouth moves rapidly as you speak words you can’t hear: a chant, a plea, a prayer. Wake up! Come on, kid, just wake up. I’m so sorry. Please, wake up. All my fault, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You beg - to gods, to monsters, to spirits and ghosts and the nature of things - but it falls on deaf ears as if you had never spoken at all. You feel for his pulse, for a sign, for anything. There is none. The darkness laughs. It is muffled behind the door but you can feel the vibrations of it running through your veins.

You hunch over yourself, fingers clutching at the wet pavement as you dig your nails into the asphalt, wanting to crawl inside your own body like a cocoon, wanting to feel something, anything. The ringing in your ears is so loud, so intense it fills your head and drowns out every other sound. The woman who has knelt down at your side and put her hand on your shoulder as she tries to speak to you. The thunder you can feel rumbling through the earth beneath your palms. The sirens from emergency vehicles you only know are there because the red and blue flashing lights cast a glow on his motionless form. You have never known another sound. It rings and rings and rings. It is endless.

You want to close your eyes. You want to block it all out, pretend that you’re still in your car, that you’re almost to Billie’s suburbs, and any minute now, she will greet you at the door. Well, would you look at that, she’d say. I don’t remember ordering dessert. Her eyes would glimmer and she would smile, beautiful, radiant, the light inside of her too bright for her to do anything but shine.

Billie- Your mind latches onto her like she is your buoy in the middle of the sea, and just the thought of her will keep you afloat even as the darkness uses its spindly arms to pull you under the surface. You reach for the invisible thread that binds your hearts together and, insistently, desperately, you tug. I’m so sorry, Billie. You force your eyes open. You force yourself to look at him. At the boy you did not see.

His bike lays in the middle of the road, bent and misshapen. The back wheel is still spinning.

From your open car door comes the notes of a familiar song. It echoes through the night, beneath the steady beat of the rain and the high, rumbling noise of thunder, and it is not beautiful anymore. It is haunting.

“Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles-”

You can’t feel anything.

“-to fall down at your door.”

--

“Will sh- b- okay?”

“Mil- conc-ssi-n, sh- in shock-”

“Try -alking t- he-”

Voices echo around you, so muffled and distorted that you can’t understand what they’re saying. They sound like they’re coming from very far away and the effort it would take to listen far outweighs the energy you have. You feel drained, like you’re sitting in the bottom of a fish bowl and the words bounce off the water to somewhere else. Not to you.

Not until you hear her.

“Look at me, Y/N.” Hands cup your face in a gentle hold, fingers tenderly stroking the skin of your cheekbones. The voice is so familiar. It cuts through the haze fogging your mind and you reach out as if to embrace it, to let it crawl inside your heart and warm you from the inside out. “Come on, sweetheart. Look at me.” 

You blink. Billie? Your eyelashes flutter as the world gradually comes into focus, no longer a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. With it, comes an angel. An angel with sunset hair and glimmering eyes and a kind smile. “Pretty woman?” you ask, and you wonder what happened to make your voice sound so raw and broken.

“There’s my girl,” she murmurs, ducking her head to meet your eyes. “Focus on me, baby.” You try to, holding her gaze like you would rather drown in it than face the demon you can feel hovering over your shoulder. She has a furrow between her brows, the one she has only when she’s truly upset. Why is she so sad? Why are you?

“Billie, I’m so sorry,” you whisper, but you can’t remember why you’re sorry. Only that you should be. Only that your heart aches, you smell like chemicals, and it feels like you just went a round with a boxer and lost. But it’s all a blur and you can’t remember why.

Billie reaches up and brushes your hair back away from your face. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be okay.” Her smile is forced and the implication behind it only stirs the panic forming inside you until it spins so fast that it feels like you’re standing in the eye of a hurricane. 

“Ma’am, we need to speak with her,” a voice speaks suddenly from the doorway and you snap out of your trance, out of the safety of Billie’s gaze, and find yourself in a hospital room, in a hospital bed with an IV in your arm. The walls are a stark white that hurts your eyes to look at. It’s bare and sterile and impersonal; it feels like you just woke up in a padded cell where you are gradually losing your mind.

Billie looks over her shoulder; you follow her gaze and feel your stomach drop unpleasantly. A police officer stands just inside the door. You become suddenly aware of a bone deep chill pervading your entire body. There’s a blanket pulled up around your shoulders but you can’t seem to stop shaking. Why can’t you stop shaking? 

“No,  you don’t,” Billie says, the words tense as they leave her lips. The edges are sharp and you know if you were to reach out, they would cut you just as easily as a blade. You have never heard her sound like that before. “She’s still in shock. She won’t be able to tell you anything you haven’t already figured out from the cameras.” Your mind falters. The hurricane intensifies, becoming a swirling mass of wind and rain. It threatens to swallow you whole.

The officer steps into the room and raises his hands in a placating gesture. “It’s just procedure, Ms. Howard.”

Billie frowns, standing up and sliding in front of you as if to shield you from him. “I don’t give a damn. You could drag the Dalai Lama down here for all I care. I’m not letting you speak to her until she knows what’s going on.”

“Well, I’m not the Dalai Lama, I’m an officer of the law and if she’s responsive, I need to take her statement,” he insists, not unkindly. He looks over Billie’s shoulder at you, his expression apprehensive and sorrowful. Something is very, very wrong. You can feel it in your bones. The hurricane lashes out at you, angry and scared. You wonder if the hurricane is you.

Their argument drifts to the background as flashing lights from the window capture your attention. Blue and red. Familiar. The colors start to blur as rain hits the glass pane and you can only watch, mesmerized, as one droplet becomes two and three and then thunder - it rumbles so loudly it startles you and your heart leaps, pounds, races in your chest - and, suddenly, as if it had been this way all along, the hurricane is not inside of you anymore. It is all around you, surrounding you, and you are stuck within, caged like a bird, trapped like a ghost in a haunted house, you are a lunatic in a padded white cell. 

And then you remember.

Rain. So much rain. Sheets of it that slick the pavement and thunder that shakes the earth. But you are going to Billie’s, where you are warm, where you are safe, and a little rain is worth it to see the look on her face when she opens the door and sees you standing on the other side. Well, would you look at that, she’d say. I don’t remember ordering dessert. And she would smile and she would shine and you would walk among the clouds like a god. 

Something inside you stirs, something troubled, something bigger than you. An exiled giant chained to the mountain pass, a forgotten creature locked in the depths of Hell, the darkness behind the door. For the first time since meeting Billie, you feel afraid.

A taxi, bright yellow, the color of sunflowers and sunshine and that knitted sweater Billie likes to wear in the summer. It veers off; you watch it float away, along the yellow brick road, maybe into the sky to Neverland, down the rabbit hole, it goes and goes and goes. And then a boy and a navy blue jacket and a bike with a misshapen wheel that never stopped turning.

The darkness pushes at the locked door, snaking it’s spindly arms along the edge, seeking for a way out, searching for a weakness. You can feel its eyes on you, watching you through the keyhole. 

A mistake, you didn’t see him, you tried to stop, to swerve, you tried to do anything else but what you did, it’s your fault and you know it, you did this. The road was so wet, you could feel it beneath your hands, flashing lights illuminate his body, blue and red, someone touches your shoulder but you can’t feel it, wake up, wake up, unnaturally still, a song, your ears ring, it’s endless, still, so still, blue and red, it casts a glow to his face, but I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk- You dig your nails into the pavement. You can’t feel anything. 

You did this. It’s your fault. It’s all your fault.

You can feel it the moment the lock shatters and the door swings open. It feels inevitable, like you have been staring into the abyss this whole time, and it has finally decided to swallow you whole. The darkness slithers out and you watch it with bated breath. You have never known a fear this great, the moment you stared into the darkness and didn’t have your light. 

Your soul calls for Billie, screams out her name, begs and pleads for her to protect you like she always said she would. You reach out for the invisible thread tethered between you and you tug and tug and tug but your hands are slippery and you can’t hold on. Your fingers brush her sleeve. 

The darkness seems to smile. You can feel its amusement, its maliciousness, its cruelty. You are frozen in place as it moves towards you, ensnared like a rabbit in a trap, you are a lunatic in a padded cell. It’s spindly arms reach out. I’m so sorry, Billie. It embraces you like an old friend.  

You let it.

[obeymeluv]

Signs they Love You

Back for my 1 post a week to prove school hasn’t totally killed me! When I get a semester break, I’ll post more often. In the mean time, feel free to leave me chats or PMs for stuff you want to see! :) Something nice and sappy for an okay Saturday

These turned out really long so I only did Lucifer, Mammon, Levi, and Satan. I have to get back to studying :/. Maybe I’ll have part 2 next week?

Lucifer

You wouldn’t be able to notice it because his pride wouldn’t allow you to. One of the brothers (or, to Lucifer’s extreme mortification, Lord Diavolo) would have to tell you

He’s not sure if it’s just the appreciation of you not being as totally chaotic as his brothers or genuine human naivete that has somehow worn off on him, but he loves you

Will be outed by sappy, soft stares that last 2 seconds too long.

Asmo and Satan are the first to notice and he LOATHES that

If he’s tasked with waking you up that morning, his knock will be firm but his voice will be gentle. Almost persuasive or commiserating

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by school workload, he may have a private conference with the teacher and grant you a minor extension. Will you know it was him? No. Is he happy to see you brighten up and refill with hope just a bit? Definitely. Is it worth the teasing from Lord Diavolo? ...Sure.

If he responds to texts in the wee hours of the morning when he’s still pouring over paperwork, he likes you.

Anyone who knows him can see how his eyes soften when someone else talks about you. There’s a fond slowness to his actions, how he glides his hand imperceptibly over his chest as if to feel where that emotion is coming from. Boy is whipped.

Should Lord Diavolo invite him out for a meeting, he will bring you back something small. Something he thought you’d like. Beel is upset. Levi yells “SIMP!” from the second floor and prepares for Armageddon.

Actually reminds you about assignments if you’re not already up on it yourself. Your success is his joy.

Is very keen on if/when you burn the candle too long and has a sixth sense for bad sleeping habits. Will put you on a stricter schedule for your own health

It may take almost all of the brothers to do it (or just help from Diavolo) but if he gets drunk on Demonus you’re getting a whole BOOK about why he likes you. He almost charms your memory away but everyone practically dog-piles on him not to because he needs to deal with his feelings.

You’re the only one he won’t chase out of his study when he’s doing paperwork. He’ll even set up a little fire if you like the fireplace.

How he confesses: tries to take you on a fancy date to Ristorante Six. Does not know that Lord Diavolo and Barbatos know about this (damn time-travelling butler!) and basically crash the date just to encourage him. Just long enough to encourage him.

Kind of an, “So you chose this idea, Lucifer? Admirable! I’m sure your date will be amazing! Enjoy your evening!” as Diavolo walks back to his table.

Does Lucifer deny it? Look and see how red his face is. If you’re really not sure, ask Diavolo. He will gladly yell, “I cannot lie!” across the restaurant.

Mammon

For all his talk, when he really, really decides he likes you, he doesn’t know what to say.

He can console himself with how obvious it is and how you made the best choice, but he has to show it! What to do?

Mammon’s kind of confused about it because he doesn’t really change how he behaves. You didn’t catch on already?! C’mon, human!

What, does he have to spell it out for you? Do an interview with Majolish?

His first tactic is to just be around you. Be subtle, and maybe cuddle a bit more than usual. Things to show he’s kittenish and at your mercy. Comfortable with you.

You don’t seem to be getting the hint so he throws the net a little wider by trying to find things you like or that you’ve been talking about. They mysteriously show up at your door.

It sends the others on a gossip train about who your admire could be and when they list off everyone BUT him, he wants to slam his head on the table.

Feeling tired? Coffee! Backpack heavy? Silly human, the BEST man can help you with that, OBVIOUSLY! Mammon jumps at the chance to do any little thing for you because he cares. His actions always speak louder than words.

Feeling kind of defeated and embarrassed, Mammon will go talk to the flock of crows that meander around the House of Lamentation’s yard when he really needs them.

For the next few days you’re accosted in the nicest way, birds chirping at you and dropping off various shiny things

You collect them, finally showing them to Mammon and he’s embarrassed that his representative animal has taken to courting you on his behalf.

He calls them to him, embarrassed and ready to rant or fall into the ground never to be seen again, when they start talking. Repeating all the things he’s practiced saying.

“Hey baby,”, “Hey human,” “Love you!”, “Silly! Silly!”, “Dummy, no, dummy!”, “My human.”

It’s broken and confusing, six or seven bird children cawing in your face and bobbing, but you get it.  

Levi

Levi’s not the best at expressing himself but it counts, right? As much as he hates to admit he’s some kind of shy tsundere, you know what that is, right? He doesn’t have to say it?

Yes. Yes he does. His brothers are getting too chummy with you and you don’t understand his signals. Time for Plan B.

If you get invited to stand in line for a midnight release, he hopes you take it. Then it’s just you two hanging out in line? What’s this? He brought snacks? Totally not for the two of you BUT you an have some if you’re hungry. It’s whatever

When he’s not doing boss raids and playing with online friends, he’ll ask if you want to play something with him. A Player 1 needs a Player 2, you know?

I headcanon that Levi knows how to play some unusual instruments like the kalimba or a real ocarina. I could see him making you a song on one of those. Or just playing it because you inspire him. He’s very good with a harp and will play it when he’s in the mood.

Boy also likes to draw and paint. Especially loves watercolors. Would it be weird if he gave you a painting of you as a mermaid? Just you and the ocean. Beautiful.

Was there a really cute plush or knickknack you liked? Levi has his ways, regardless of how rare or limited edition it is. It will be yours. 

He has a hard time understanding a passing comment of interest versus a genuine want because he genuinely wants everything he’s interested in, so if you hear a whisper about him almost securing something, stop and look it up. Make sure it’s not super expensive!!

Probably outed by Belphegor, who feels like Levi’s broadcasting all of his stress, frustration, and hope through his dreams. (”His dreams are weird. Just different ways of asking them out, and if he messes up it restarts like a simulation. My brain hurts.” he says to Beel)

 You’re allowed to come into his super-restricted bedroom haven when everything’s too much. It’s very exclusive since the Mammon incident. Be happy.

Might go swimming in his big tank and pick a seashell or rock to make a necklace out of. He hopes you like it.

If he’s not outed by Belphie, some of his online friends made a game demo they wanted him to try. They specified it was two player so he asked you to join in. While he’s in the middle of bragging about how he knows people, knows developers, he totally misses the dating-sim like dialogue and the big reveal.

Doesn’t really kick in until he realize the characters look like you two. You’re busy saying ‘Yes’ to “Do you like me?” as Levi absolutely threatens to rip them apart six ways to Sunday. Almost in full demon mode, too.

Everything falls out of his brain and quiets in his throat when he realizes the characters are kissing and ‘THEY SAID YES!’ flashes on the screen.

“Y-You like me?”

“Yep.”

It was that easy all along. Levi thinks he’s going to faint.  

Satan

Becomes aware of it pretty quick but ignores it for a looong time

Is it rude or foolish of him to assume you would also like him back?

Run away into books. A solid plan. If you don’t think about it, it’s not an issue

Oh, but it is an issue when you fall asleep after a mutual day of reading, forced in by bad weather. He finds his heart fluttering in a painful squeeze as he quietly whispers all the things he dare not say when you’re awake

It’s nervous poetry, and it’s beautiful

Satan tries to get himself back on track, to focus on reading, and he gets frustrated when he’s stuck on the same page almost an hour later

When you’re on the brain he just can’t do anything else

How does one show their affection? He’s swimming in books for a new reason now, as voracious as ever

He brews you a pot of Melancholy Coffee and is a bit disappointed you don’t know the meaning behind the bitterness. Wants to break the pot when Lucifer jokes about how it tastes exceptionally bitter to him as well.

Okay, so coffee didn’t work. What else do people do when they show their affections?

Asmo suggests a ‘not a date’ date and Satan sighs inside. Sounds like a lot of work and effort. It’s not that you’re not worth it, but he has a feeling that everyone will know and look at him the whole time.

Tries anyways. You guys go to a beautiful nature conservatory and take a tour of the plants and some indigenous animals

You’re starting to realize it now, he can tell. Satan tries to answer your question without saying it while you’re at school. You walk together, he offers to carry some of your books, and always requests that he be your project partner

Nearly there. If there was a single defining moment for him, he’d want it to be classic. He shows up at your door with a rose and asks you to go on a moonlit walk.

Mammon’s poking fun about how cheesy and cliche it is, Asmo’s gearing up to shut Mammon’s stupid mouth, and Satan just whisks you out the door with an aggravated sigh.

No matter what side of the house you’re on, Asmo throws up the biggest, gaudiest handmade sign that’s like ‘CUTEST COUPLE! 10/10!’

[docholligay]

Divided by Four: Nine

According to my OW character bible, today is Tracer’s birthday. I’ve been working on this...I don’t know exactly what to call it, for awhile now, and it’s my hope to get it all up before the week’s out, at least. 

The light through the leaves sparkled a bit, if you looked at it just right, a bit like a diamond of the natural world. Well, diamonds were a part of the natural world too, Lena, who was not yet even imagined Tracer, supposed, but they were cut, weren’t they? Made into something other than what nature intended them, really, and that didn’t quite count the way the light through the leaves did on such a splendid and sunny day, Lena thought. 

She had these thoughts as she lay back in the arms of the one tree in the tiny postage stamp that passed for a garden, patio, and lawn in the back of the Oxton residence. It was barely the size of a living room, and it was pure decadence, so far as Lena was concerned. Not everyone had their very own tree in the backyard, rumored to have been freshly planted by an Oxton after the backyard and the entire block behind it had been blown away in the Blitz. What luck, her family had said, finally we can afford something nice around here. They’d had roughly the same approach to the Wipe the omnics had put up all those years later. Lovely, neighborhood had gotten far too expensive for normal folk, what? 

And so, Lena had a tree, and Parvati didn’t have to share a bedroom with the brothers, and these things were only true because bombs had fallen. Nothing was all bad, really. A bit of light in everything. 

She did not fully encompass the luck of her tree just yet, nor the fortune of having a family that valued keeping things in the family over nearly everything else, nor the aggravation of trying to repair plaster that had fallen down without calling a workman that might not be related and thus charge a fair, too high, price for the repair. But she did have a general sense that her life was coming toward fortune, that she was born under a lucky star and the last few years had only been a a bit of rough travel. 

The light from between the leaves soften and sharpened as her mind wandered aimlessly about, her leg swinging back and forth as she simply let it happen in a simple drift on the stream of her own thoughts. She liked her new haircut. She’d be at a new school this year. The kids would be nice to her, she was sure of it. Well, they would or Ollie would have something to say about it--who would argue with a boy of thirteen--and she was in the same class with Parvati, who was popular with the other girls and wouldn’t let them treat Lena quite the way she’d been treated at her old school. 

A little smile came to her lips as she brushed a leaf along her cheek. Life wasn’t bad, all things considered. And it stood to be even better, this coming year. 

There was a sound, far off, as if through water, and Lena tried to pull herself back, even as her mind continued the soft-focus meander through the light in the leaves. 

“Lena!” 

It broke through all at once, in the way things sometimes did, like a rock through a stained glass window, and Lena jumped at the sudden loudness of it, grabbing at the branch above her to catch herself. 

“Steady on, love, didn’t mean to frighten you.” Her dad’s eyes were a little wide, his hands in the air, but then nodded as Lena adjusted herself safely, “You coming down anytime soon, or should I ‘ave your Uncle Teddy take the cake ‘ome?” 

It was her birthday today. She had nearly forgotten. Well, she hadn’t forgotten, she had remembered right when she’d woken up, and she was very excited, wiggling as she tried to eat a bit of breakfast, but she had forgotten as she had been sitting there in the tree not remembering entirely why it was she had climbed it in the first place. But then, there was the joy of remembering that it was her birthday, and that her uncle had made a wonderful cake for her. So nothing was all bad, really. 

Lena shimmied quickly down the tree, only half-hearing her father’s admonition to be careful, and when she reached the final y in the branches, she jumped into his arms with a giggle, wrapped up in an embrace and a peck on the cheek. 

“You’re getting too big for this.” He kissed her on the forehead and set her down. 

“Am not!” she shook her head. “I’m shorter than most every girl in class, except ‘annah Deavers.” 

“Well, I’m getting too old for it, and that’s the truth.” He chuckled, patting her shoulder and opening the door back into the house. 

A birthday. It was an exciting thing, to be all of nine, now, and next year she would be double digits, which was very old indeed, and from there it was only a quick jump to being a pilot, she figured. Her dad always told her she didn’t have to be a pilot just because there were so many in the family, but Lena couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather do more. 

She barrelled into the kitchen, nearly smacking her lip against the countertop as she ran up to her cake. Lena knew what it would be, coconut with strawberry and cream, just as she’d asked for, and she gave a little jump, clap, and a contented huff as she tried very hard to restrain herself. It was hard to be calm. It felt like she had a hive of bees inside of her, or fireworks, not unpleasant but a humming sense of vibration that made her itch to move and talk and basically make a bit of a nuisance of herself, sometimes. Sometimes she did things without quite thinking about it, and she was never still, and this was why other children thought her odd. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 

Lena was working on it, best she could. 

There was a hand on her shoulder and her uncle Teddy’s voice at her ear. “You go ahead and be excited today, love.” 

She turned around and smiled at him, tucking a hair behind her ear that was no longer long enough to do so, her mind not quite remembering that yet, bouncing on the balls of her feet. 

“Can we light the candles?” 

“Lena, you ‘ave to eat something of substance first, love, no filling up on cake.” Her father followed into the kitchen, “Small enough as it is.” 

“It’s ‘er birthday, Bert.” Teddy chided. 

“I don’t much care if it’s ‘er golden jubilee,” he chuckled, “needs to gain a bit of weight, and if they ‘ear I’ve only been feeding ‘er cake, going to get a call from some child safeguarding board.” 

It was true, Lena was a bit small, and she didn’t mean to be. It was only that there were so many things to do, and after the third bite or so, each bit of food tasted quite like the other, and sometimes she forgot in the midst of chatting and playing that there was meant to be a meal on at all, and she almost never ate her snack after school, as that would cut into her playtime. She wasn’t hungry, and so didn’t see the cause for concern, but her father had been lectured a bit by the doctor at her last exam, even though he tried to explain that the Oxtons were a fairly wiry bunch even setting aside Lena’s hyperactivity. He’d grown a bit red int he face, and that made Lena feel bad. 

And so she really should try to eat more often. Her dad tried hard. 

“Right, but,” Teddy landed back against the counter. He was unspeakably tall in a sea of Oxtons, broad shouldered from hauling sacks of flour, “Cake, I think, might ‘elp that, unless there’s something I’m misunderstanding about general nutrition.” 

“Sure don’t ‘urt you,” there was a pat at Teddy’s stomach, and her uncle Mark laughing. 

“Listen you.” Teddy scowled, but kissed him anyway. 

“Dad,” she looked up at him breathlessly, forgetting her promise of mere moments ago to eat a proper meal more often, “Can we please?” 

He looked around at his family, and back down at Lena, and shook his head, smiling. “All right then. I know when I’m beat.” 

He hitched her onto his hip and nodded at the cake. “You make a wish now, Lena my girl.” 

It wasn’t a particularly memorable birthday. Tracer, years later, wasn’t sure why she remembered it so keenly, the light through the trees and the crowd of her family in the little kitchen. She couldn’t remember what she had wished for, though she felt sure it had come true. She did, though, remember jumping down out of the tree into her dad’s arms, and the color of cake, how sweet it was on her tongue and how the creamy frosting melted over it. She remembered the certainty that everything was going to come right, though she couldn’t remember a single present. 

Mostly she remembered the brightness of the candles, how lovely they were and quickly they burned.

[septembercfawkes]

Using Character Arc to Create a Story

Lately I've been writing down and pulling together different approaches to brainstorming and creating stories. Some are more basic and some are more advanced, and some will work better for certain people than others. Today I want to introduce an approach to brainstorming a story that works off character. Well, the character arc (or lack thereof, I guess), specifically.

So if you are one of those writers who tends to favor character over plot (🙋‍♀️ #GuiltyToAFault #WhatIsPlot), this might be preferable to you. If not, it's still useful to have at your disposal. Every story needs to address character arc (or the lack thereof, obviously).

Okay, so if you are new to the writing world, you might want to know what I mean by "character arc." "Character arc" is just a fancy term for how a character grows or changes through because of the story. Most of the time, we are talking about the protagonist, since that is the most important character. (But technically any character can have a character arc.)

And that's who we are referring to in this post, the protagonist.

First off, not all protagonists arc. Some protagonists remain the same. To be honest, this can get pretty tricky, as like most things in writing, terms aren't always black and white.

For the sake of this post, I'm going to break down the protagonist options into two categories: "change" vs. "steadfast." (Because I've used this elsewhere and seen it used elsewhere.)

Change Protagonist vs. Steadfast Protagonist

A "change" protagonist will do a more or less a 180, from the beginning of the story to the end of the story.

A great example of this is Scrooge. He starts out miserly and through because of the story, ends up being charitable. Other examples of famous characters:

Harry Potter: Unloved and powerless --> Loved and powerful

Elsa from Frozen: Closed off/isolated --> Open

Jean Valjean: Hard, bitter, cold --> Loving and merciful

Generally speaking, these would be called "positive" character arcs.

But you can also have a protagonist that has a "negative" character arc, such as Anakin's descent into becoming Darth Vader.

In the other category, we have the "steadfast" protagonist. A steadfast protagonist will be more or less the same from the beginning to the end--however, this doesn't necessarily mean he or she doesn't "grow." (Remember how I said this isn't necessarily black and white? Yeah . . . ) Sure, a steadfast character might stay essentially the same from beginning to end (cue classic Superman or 007), but most the time, in modern times, the steadfast protagonist will grow by degree.

Meaning, instead of doing a 180 flip, he or she will gain a greater understanding or a greater ability or greater experience. He or she will become more of something.

This doesn't necessarily mean the steadfast protagonist never wavers or never has doubts or never meanders the wrong way during the story. He or she just doesn't do a direct flip.

It's hard to explain this, because it's really more of a spectrum (someday, someday, I will write that steadfast protagonist article ✊, but until then . . .)

Some more examples of famous steadfast characters:

The Little Red Hen

Job from the Old Testament

Jesus from the New Testament

Captain America

Generally speaking, these steadfast characters offer a "positive" example. Their steadfastness ultimately leads to positive outcomes.

But you can also have a steadfast protagonist that offers a "negative" example. This is what you may find in a tragedy, where the protagonist refuses to change. Their stubbornness ultimately leads to negative outcomes. An example of this may be the grasshopper in the "Ants & the Grasshopper" fable.

(Also, I hesitate to use the word "example," because it sounds too highbrow or judgy, but it conveys my point.)

Okay, so now that we have those defined, let's continue.

Considering Your Character

This approach to creating a story is about figuring out how your character is at the beginning of the story and the end of the story, and then filling in the in between stuff.

Because often when you know how your protagonist starts and how your protagonist ends, you can get a better idea for what needs to happen in the narrative. And in a well-told story, the protagonist doesn't really change or remain steadfast through the story, but because of the story.

Think about your protagonist and how they are at the start of the story. What will they be like at the end of the story? If you aren't sure, maybe throw around some ideas until you find one that sounds interesting or that rings true.

Worth keeping in mind is that the protagonist's personal journey will play into the theme topic, so consider if there is a topic or attribute that sounds appealing to you. Do you want to write about love (Harry Potter), isolation (Elsa), hard work (the Little Red Hen), or bravery and kindness (Cinderella)? What defining characteristic does your protagonist have? What defines him in this moment in time? And of course, if you are brainstorming, you can come up with more than one answer.

Just know (I wish I'd known earlier!) that the attributes you choose to highlight in your protagonist will also play into the theme. So in choosing that, you are also influencing the theme. (However, let's leave creating a story via theme for a future method.)

While some writers prefer to think about how their protagonist is at the starting of the story to figure out the end, others prefer to envision the protagonist at the end, first, and then use that to help them figure out how the protagonist is at the starting.

For example, if I know I want Harry to be loved and powerful at the end, I might realize that I want him to be unloved and weak in the beginning, so his personal journey is more dramatic.

If you are new to writing, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret 🤫: Most people in the writing world will agree that the easiest and most-likely-to-be-successful protagonist option is a positive change protagonist.

Steadfast protagonists tend to be more difficult to write, especially for beginners.

Negative versions of either are more difficult when it comes to pleasing the audience.

Obviously all versions can be and have been done successfully, but it's good to keep this in mind. And my article aside, you will also find it is more difficult to find resources to help you write the other options, unfortunately. (Come on writing world! Let's remedy that!)

Okay! So next it's time to categorize (if you haven't already).

Is your protagonist a "change" character? Or a "steadfast" character?

Is this "positive" or "negative"?

Arcing the Change Protagonist

If you are writing a change protagonist, the next thing to do is to list out potential challenges, events, or problems that are going to invite (read: force, often by baptism by fire) your protagonist to change. As always if brainstorming, try to come up with more than you think you need. Often the first things that come to mind are cliches, and you gotta dig deeper for the juicy stuff.

Don't be afraid to be mean. Sometimes character-focused writers are afraid to hit their protagonists hard. But remember, that all stories should be about some type of death--meaning, the stakes should get high enough, that it feels like a life or death situation, even if it isn't. This means that there will be things that take place that cannot be undone, cannot be reversed--things that are "final." Also worth noting, is that stakes do more to reveal character than almost anything else (another article I need to write).

Now, if the change is positive, this often means the protagonist starts with a flaw, misbelief, or weakness that needs to be addressed and overcome. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is way too miserly! So what is it gonna take to make Scrooge, the most miserly person of miserdom, to change? Well apparently, three supernatural visits, that end in his potential death.

Unfortunately, the average person doesn't want to make a drastic personal change--it's hard and uncomfortable! So chances are your protagonist is gonna need some serious crap to happen to kick him out the door.

On the other hand, if you are writing about a protagonist who wants to flip 180, then this is likely a want vs. need issue. As the story progresses, say the protagonist thinks she wants to be rich, but realizes, at the end of the story, she actually needed to be loved. Notice, however, that this is still a "forced" change--because in reality, she went from unloved --> loved. So just keep in mind that what your protagonist is gunning for, may not be the same as what he actually needs. (Sometimes in positive stories like this, once the protagonist gets what she needed, she is then able to get what she wanted, as well, ex. finding out the love of her life is actually rich).

In most “change” novels really, you'll be dealing with a want vs. need within the protagonist, but let's stay simple for now.

If you are working with a negative change protagonist, your list of problems, events, and challenges may perhaps have a different nature, because you are thinking of how the protagonist is going to descend to something less. What does it take for Anakin to become Darth Vader? How does a high-achieving high school student become a notorious serial killer? And why? What happens that brings in these thoughts and leads them to make these choices? What will harden their worldview? What myths do they begin believing?

Perhaps they became so obsessed with chasing their want, that they miss out on their need. Since this is a negative arc, this is often the case, to some degree.

Again, list out more ideas than you need. Hopefully in the process, some ideas will start to coalesce and connect, with a sense of cause and effect.

From there, pick out what ideas are most appealing to you, what ideas or most impactful and dramatic, and (if you are familiar with how theme functions), what ideas best embody the thematic statement you want to make (or at least a perspective on the theme topic you want to explore).

Keep in mind that there are some key events in every story: the inciting incident (what kicks off the journey to change--typically the climactic moment of the beginning), the climactic moment of the middle (sometimes called The Ordeal), and the climax itself. These are big turning moments, so we usually want to use our big ideas for them.

In any case, all stories should escalate--meaning the problems get bigger, not smaller.

It might be helpful to organize your list with these things in mind.

Also, note that in the beginning of the story, you'll need to show how the protagonist currently is. Meaning, if you are writing a positive change protagonist, the beginning needs to show us what flaw, weakness, or misbelief the protagonist has, and ideally, how it is (negatively) affecting his or her life. If you are writing a negative change protagonist, you'll want to highlight attributes that foil what he or she becomes. Maybe this person was kind, innocent, and full of potential--show that in the beginning scenes.

At the end of the story, you'll need to show, or rather validate or prove, how your protagonist has changed. So we need to see Scrooge being charitable to others. We need to see Anakin become Darth Vader. Think about how you may validate the transformation.

Testing the Steadfast Protagonist

Now, if you are writing a steadfast protagonist, this will be similar, yet quite different.

Because the point in here isn't to illustrate a flip-flop. It's to illustrate ultimately holding onto core beliefs, despite all heck breaking loose.

The biggest problem writers make with steadfast protagonists, is they make it easy for the character to be steadfast. And it's annoying.

Instead of using a steadfast protagonist to illustrate how wonderful or great it is to be honest, charitable, kind, long-suffering--or how clearly wrong it is to be selfish, power-hungry, and dishonest--it's a gazillion times better and more effective to instead focus on the cost of being steadfast.

That is what this journey is about. Because if you want to be kind to everyone, that ain't easy! I mean, is it really easy to be kind to the person who murdered your dad? And guess what, if you are kind to certain people, they will take advantage of you.

If you are writing a steadfast protagonist, the point isn't to come up with ideas that will flip the protagonist, but instead come up with challenges, events, and problems that make it very difficult and costly to remain steadfast (to put simply, because in another sense, one could argue these are two sides of the same coin). These can be bad things that happen that are difficult to deal with, but on the other hand, they can also be bad things that innately come about from being steadfast in whatever characteristic the protagonist is illustrating (ex. if you are kind to everyone, you may pick up stalkers).

List out ideas that are going to legitimately test how steadfast your protagonist actually is. When it comes to attributes, we often think in either-or, but in reality, most of us just have boundaries. For example, I don't steal stuff, but if I was starving, I might.

So what needs to happen to test the boundaries of your protagonist's core? Try to look for complex situations that don't have an easy or obvious out. Sure, it's easy to be kind when you are surrounded by loving people and life's great. But can you still manage to be kind when you live with your evil stepmother and wicked stepsisters who are abusing you on a daily basis? Consider how being steadfast in an attribute can actually bring more hardship.

In a sense, Job got dumped on because he was faithful to God. People tend to recall his story as one where he remained optimistic--but if you actually read the story, the costs got so great, that he became bitter and angry towards God. It was the cost of being faithful. But the point was, despite that, he was still steadfast in being faithful.

And again, don't be afraid to be mean. It's the struggle that makes the victory sweeter (or the defeat worse, I suppose).

If you are working with a negative steadfast character, you may consider what challenges and hardships could provide the opportunity to grow into someone better--while also fairly showing that there are believable, logical reasons for them not changing. It's helpful to consider dilemmas. Sure, she could be kind and associate with someone in the lower class, but if her father sees her doing that, she is at risk for losing the family fortune.

When it comes down to it, when it really counts, will your protagonist choose to be selfish or self-sacrificing? If it's a negative steadfast protagonist, he'll choose the selfish option.

More or less (I am simplifying some of this for the sake of the post).

Often the negative steadfast protagonist will ultimately illustrate the tragedy and damage of not taking opportunities to change.

The positive steadfast character will ultimately illustrate the benefits of holding true to good values.

And keep in mind, just because a steadfast character doesn't change, doesn't mean he doesn't grow. In the story of Jesus, Jesus was already a God, but by atoning for the sins of humanity, He also learned how to succor His people according to the flesh. He still grew, by degree.

I like to think of this as the steadfast character gaining more wisdom.

So list out ideas of what could really challenge your protagonist's steadfastness. If he or she is going to grow by degree, consider how and in what way--what events can lead to that? What else does he or she learn and master about X attribute? And what does it cost to remain a certain way? How do these events lead to the protagonist ultimately becoming more steadfast? What wisdom is gained from them?

Keep in mind, we still want a coherent plot of course. So look for the personal journey and for cause and effect.

Since the protagonist isn't flip-flopping, often either the society or another important character will--sometimes because of the protagonist's steadfastness. For example, by Jesus choosing to do His father's will, it has lead many people since then to do a 180 flip in life. So it might be helpful to consider that as well. How can you show that change?

Once you have your events, pick out what ideas are most appealing to you, what ideas are most impactful and dramatic, and (if you are familiar with how theme functions), what ideas best embody the thematic statement you want to make (or at least a perspective on the theme topic you want to explore).

Hopefully by this point, ideas are starting to coalesce and connect together into a natural order--the story. Keep in mind the plot needs to escalate--it needs to become more difficult to remain steadfast the more time goes on and problems build, not easier. And pick big or impactful events for key moments.

In Closing

By this point, a story should start to take shape. Or you at least have enough ideas to send you in the right direction.

From there, you can outline, start writing, or dig deeper into incorporating more story-creating techniques.

In the future, I'll share another.

[bluebellhairpin]

The Bane of Zeke Jaeger

Zeke Jaeger X Fem!Reader

A/N: It’s like an enemies to lovers but they’re both still enemies at the end. (Bonus to anyone who can spot the cameo btw.)- Nemo

Summary: You and Zeke have been at each others throats for years. A time comes when he takes it a little too far, and ever since then - with your new power - you decide to start plotting his downfall. 

Warnings: Blood. Violence. Character Death. Needles. Attempted Murder. Insanity (? idk, reader get’s a little unhinged). 

Listening to: ‘Beautiful is Boring’ by Bones UK - ‘Give me scars and stripes. It does not please me to be easy on any of your eyes.’ 

Masterlist 

There was something about Zeke Jaeger. From how calculating he was to how he simply existed. But whatever that something was - it never failed to piss you off. 

From the moment you both met in the Military, you were at each other's throats. You more so than he. The fact you were both candidates for becoming titan shifters sure didn’t help. He was always so condescending, he knew he was the smartest person in the room and he acted like it too - if only to just rile you up. His only redeeming quality in your eyes was the fact he was so useless in physical training. 

Many times in your younger years did you want to simply pop a bullet through the back of his head while you were out. 

No one would know it was you - that you were sure of. 

You see, that's the thing you always had the upper hand in. You never got caught doing anything - it was always Zeke tattling on you that got you into trouble at all. Bastard. 

And now that you were older - yourself entering your late twenties - that same child-like distaste for each other hadn’t changed. If anything it turned, rearing its ugly head to reveal spite, and resent in the form of a very large grudge. 

───────✱.｡:｡✱.:｡✧.｡✰✧.｡:✱───────

“I’ve been away for how long and you still haven’t removed the stick from up your ass, huh?” 

“Shame on you, Ezekiel.” you gritted, purposefully changing his name, grabbing a fistfull of his beard and tugging in down, “All that time spent alone to think and you still can’t speak to a lady properly.” 

He reached up a hand, squeezing your wrist hard enough to hurt, but you didn’t let go, only held onto his facial hair even harder. 

“Let go, you fiend.” 

“You let go.”

“I told you first.”

“And I told you second.” 

“Are you finished flirting yet?” Reiner said, his head resting on his hand from across the table. You immediately sent a glare over to him, your grip on Zeke as firm as ever.

“He started it.” 

“I was not talking to you, (y/n).” Reiner huffed. 

You whipped your head back to Zeke, now grabbing his ear and on it tugging it too.

“You asshole, you need to stop playing up so much!”

“Stop it, that hurts!”

“That’s the whole point!” you said, “Apparently having your ass handed to you by that Ackerman guy wasn’t enough!” He had the audacity to pout at you, and you let out a groan of disgust before letting him go. Finally. 

“Now that you’re both done, can we get on with it?” 

───────✱.｡:｡✱.:｡✧.｡✰✧.｡:✱───────

You felt very lucky - very, very lucky - to have such a prime spot for such a lovely show. 

While Zeke had grown between the boy back in training until the man he was now, he still lacked when it came to non-titan fighting. And right now, Reiner wasn’t. Even though the younger male was mentally struggling since he came back from Paradis, he had all that experience up his sleeves that Zeke did not. 

“Having fun?” Zeke said, only now deciding to take off his glasses and set them beside you on the bench. 

“The only thing lacking is the satisfaction I’d get in having my own foot in your face.” 

“Naturally.” he grunted.

“Reiner’s going to go for your face next.” You said, a sly smile creeping up the edges of your lips. Zeke squinted at you. 

“Sure he is.” Your smile only broadened when he turned. 

He didn’t trust you - even though you never once lied to him - and that only made it sweeter when Reiner had managed to kick Zeke’s face into the dust with just five moves. You meandered over to him, crouching next to him as he sat up. 

“Good thing you took those glasses off, hey Ezekiel?” Now he scowled at you, and you winked at him before setting off again. But you felt a hand wrap around your ankle and pull. 

You landed face-first in the dirt, palms grazed and nose now sore. As you sat up you saw as red as the blood that leaked from your nose. You faintly remember hearing Reiner call for Porco before you flung yourself back at Zeke, immediately clawing at his neck and eyes before someone tried to get behind you and pull you off him. 

“You’re such a pain,” Zeke spluttered, “No wonder you're not getting a titan.” 

The arms around you held even tighter as you thrashed and yelled about killing Zeke. 

───────✱.｡:｡✱.:｡✧.｡✰✧.｡:✱───────

A moment presented itself to you - much as it did every night. 

Sneak to the kitchen. Grab a knife. Loiter back upstairs to Zeke’s room. Cut his throat while he slept. 

You fantasized about that far too often to be considered healthy, but never in your life had it been as tempting as it was right now. 

Zeke had never once brought up your rejected application for becoming a real, proper warrior - one with a titan to call your own. Even he knew how touché that subject was for you. 

You made it so far as the kitchen, even picking out a nice knife, before being stopped at the doorway on the way out.

“Who’re you?” 

“I have an offer for you.” They said, stepping forward.

“No salespeople please.” You countered, even thought this clearly was not a salesman. He laughed.

“What I have won’t cost you anything. Much.” he said, “But I heard you want a titan.” 

“And?” you said, quirking an eyebrow up at him.

“I have one, just for you.” 

───────✱.｡:｡✱.:｡✧.｡✰✧.｡:✱───────

You thanked whoever decided you’d be this titan that this place was so far away from any city. But you also wondered why there was a proper viewing area. 

Across from you was a woman whose posture mirrored your own, however there were chains on her wrists and ankles, keeping her limbs stretched. Unlike you, she was also unconscious, her head lulled forwards and her long braid had fallen over her shoulder. 

You’d been given strict instructions to wait until the viewing box was full before you were to puncture yourself with the needle you were given. In passing they’d muttered something about a war criminal and a thief, and you wondered where exactly this woman had come from. Surely not Paradis. 

You glanced up at the box again, and decided it was full enough. But you did a double take. Zeke was here.

Of all the people, why him? 

You plunged the needle into your arm, and injected the serum. Then your mind blanked, and nothing. Nothing until you felt something in your mouth, and a warm dribble going down your throat. A jolt of electricity went down your spine, and you grew. 

Then you saw everything. 

Black steam clouded the edges of your vision, and you rose to stand on your new feet. You felt a yell rise in your throat, and as it let go you were met with a deafening scream - no doubt one heard from miles. 

There was another flash of lightning, and you turned to see a rather underwhelming version of Zeke’s beast titan. You felt yourself letting out a chuckle, the sound coming out much deeper and distorted than your proper voice. You bent down to his eye-level, almost needing to bend your knees properly to get a proper look. 

“Hey shortie.” 

“Hey big girl.” he said, “You going to stop being a bitch now?” 

“To you?” you asked, and he hummed a yes. You feigned thought for a moment before laughing again. “Of course not. Plotting your demise is much more fun.” 

And plotting his demise you sure did. 

[haberdashing]

A Name For You

Jon and Martin encounter their counterparts in the dimension they’ve found themselves in... and discover some significant differences between their pairs.

on AO3

This world wasn’t all that different from the one Jon and Martin had started out in, all things considered.

London was still there, for one, and Jon and Martin had managed to eke out a living there soon enough, even if the jobs they’d managed to find without any paperwork to their names weren’t quite as white-collar as the ones they’d held before. (At least these jobs didn’t come with the occupational hazard of being stalked by or becoming eldritch monstrosities... any Fear-hunting the pair of them were doing now was strictly extracurricular in nature.)

Just the same, however, it came as something of a shock when Jon and Martin caught a glimpse of themselves in a local park.

Jon and Martin exchanged a look and a few hushed words, unsure whether to approach the pair or simply linger and watch. This other Jon and Martin seemed close as well, holding hands as they meandered through the park. Jon noted with some amusement that his double was wearing a band shirt he himself had given away some years back, while Martin’s double was wearing a soft green jumper that Jon had stolen for his own use more than once during their time in the safehouse.

Soon enough, the conundrum of whether to approach their doubles was solved for Jon and Martin, as the other pair ended up walking over to them before the two of them had decided whether to do the same.

Jon caught the tail end of what sounded like a protest from the other him: “-bad idea, really, don’t you think?”

“Oh come on.” The other Martin said with a smile before looking away from his partner and towards Jon and Martin. “After all, how often do we come across a pair of people that look just like the two of us?”

Martin bit his lip for a moment, clearly considering his response carefully, but Jon decided to just plunge ahead.

“Actually, we don’t just look like the two of you. We are the two of you.”

Their doubles both made curious expressions at that, but it was Martin’s who finally said, “What d’you mean?”

“As you’ve probably guessed, my name is Jonathan Sims-”

“-and I’m Martin Blackwood-”

“And we’re both versions of yourselves from another dimension. The situation is... rather complicated, but rest assured that we’re doing all we can to keep this world safe.”

“That’s really not as reassuring as you seem to think,” the other Jon said, “Especially given all those scars you’ve got, I certainly hope I don’t end up the same way-”

“Hey, that’s my boyfriend you’re talking about!” Martin’s words made Jon’s heart flutter a little--even after all this time, after all they had been through together, hearing Martin affirm their relationship so clearly made him emotional every time. “And I for one think he looks wonderful as he is.”

The other Martin made a show of looking over Jon. “The scars aren’t bad-looking, it’s true. I think my boyfriend here just meant he doesn’t want to go through whatever caused them in the first place.”

Jon let out a dark, bitter laugh at that. “You’re right, he really doesn’t want to go through all that. I would know.”

The other Jon glanced between Jon and Martin for a long moment before speaking up. “So you’re saying that you’re us, but from another world?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“A world where I went with the name Jonathan, of all names?”

Jon blinked rapidly for a moment, not having expected that reply. “...what’s wrong with the name Jonathan?”

“Nothing really, it’s just... it’s a bit old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

“I like that about it. And I put a lot of thought into that name, I’ll have you know. It’s not likely to raise any eyebrows, there’s a few different nicknames you can get from it-”

“It was my- your- our father’s middle name, too, wasn’t it?”

Jon nodded. “I thought that family connection was a bit fitting. Why, what did you go with?”

Jon’s counterpart broke eye contact, his hands shaking slightly. “Well, I, I didn’t put as much thought into it as you seem to have done, I just wanted to pick something and be done with it-”

A smile worked its way onto Jon’s face. “How bad is it?”

“It’s not, really! It’s... Jason. The name’s Jason Sims.”

“You’re right, that’s not as bad as I’d thought based on your protestations there.” Jon hesitated for a moment. “Jason as in of the golden fleece, or Jason from that mediocre thriller novel I read when I was twelve?”

Jon could see Jason’s face color at the mention of the novel. “...a little bit of both, honestly.”

Jon tilted his head to the side as he considered this. “...could be worse, I suppose.”

“Thanks for the ringing endorsement there.”

“While we’re talking about this...” Martin’s counterpart leaned forward slightly, looking Martin in the eye. “You kept the family name, huh?”

“Yeah, I did. Thought about ditching it, but... well, nothing else felt right. And Mum was peeved enough about it without me ditching my second name as well as my first. Guessing you didn’t, then?”

Martin’s counterpart shook his head. “I didn’t change it entirely, but I didn’t want it to be quite the same, to be traceable to... well, to all the family I’d rather not think about. Went with Woods, in the end.”

“Martin Woods? I do like the sound of that.”

“Oh, no, I went with Mark actually, though Martin was a close second. So it’s Mark Woods.”

Martin looked at Mark with wide eyes. “If I had to guess names my other self would go by, I’m not sure I ever would have guessed Mark Woods.”

“Well, if I’d heard of one ‘Martin Blackwood’ out of the blue I’d figure it was just some distant cousin I’d never met, so.” Mark shrugged. “Suppose the feeling’s mutual.”

“But you believe us, then?”

Jason and Mark exchanged a long glance before both nodding.

“I think if you were trying to prank us or pull the wool over our eyes in some way, you would know enough to use our actual names along the way.”

Martin snorted. “You’re not wrong there.”

“So, we have a lot to talk about, obviously, but first things first...” Jon let out a long breath before speaking up again. “That novel was not nearly good enough to name yourself after its protagonist! And that Jason isn’t even that interesting of a character--what were you thinking?”

“Look, Nan asked me about it when I was in the middle of the book, and I might have panicked a little-”

Both Martin and Mark giggled a bit at that, and as Jason continued to explain his decision-making process, the smile on Jon’s face just grew wider and wider.

[writingquestionsanswered]

hi! i was wondering if you have any advice for writing that feels juvenile at times? when i write action scenes/serious scenes i feel my writing is fine but when i have slower chapters where my characters are bonding, etc. i feel like my writing makes the scene come off childish. do you have any tips for that? i’m not sure if it’s just in my head honestly. thanks!

Help for Writing That Feels Juvenile in Places

Here are some of the things that commonly make writing feel juvenile:

#1 - Scene Problems

1. Scene is Aimless - If you don’t know where the scene is going or what it’s trying to accomplish, you’re going to end up with a meandering jumble of moments that isn’t fun to read. What is the purpose of your scene? Why does it absolutely have to be in the story?

2. Scene is Unbalanced - Every scene should be a balancing act between exposition (explaining things), dialogue (characters speaking), and action (someone does something.) If your scene is mostly exposition, mostly dialogue, or mostly action, the balance will be off and it will feel amateurish.

Read more in my post: Balancing Dialogue with Action and Narrative 

3. Scene Doesn’t Accomplish Enough - Scenes need to do double, triple, or even quadruple duty. They should accomplish at least two of the following: world building/setting description, development of characters and/or character relationships, delivery of back story or other important information, setting things up for future scenes. If you have a whole scene focused on just characters bonding, that’s going to be boring which makes it feel amateurish.

4. Scene Starts Too Early - One hallmark of amateur writing is scenes that start way before they should. If the bulk of your scene takes place in your character’s 10 a.m. biology class, do we really need to see your character wake up that morning, brush her teeth, put on her clothes, and walk to class? Unless anything story critical happens during that period it shouldn’t be there. Start with the character walking into biology, not the moment she opens her eyes that day.

Read more in my post: Beginning a New Scene or Chapter

5. Scene Has Weak Transitions - Scenes work best when you transition into them from the last scene and out of them into the next scene. For example, if your scene ends with your character sitting at home thinking about an upcoming trip to Mexico, and you know the next scene begins with your character boarding her flight, you might end the scene with her looking at her flight confirmation e-mail and thinking about how she can’t wait to get out of town. Then, the next chapter begins with her standing in line to board her flight, looking around and thinking about how she won’t miss her town, then handing the plane ticket to the gate agent. This makes the transition from one scene to the next less abrupt and more refined.

Read more in my post: Subtle Scene Transitions

#2 - Dialogue Problems

1. Too Much Dialogue - Even if you have a good balance of dialogue, exposition, and action, it’s still possible to have too much dialogue. Look at every line and ask whether it’s really necessary. Make sure every line is as straight and to the point as possible. Determine whether something said might work better as exposition.

2. Overly Realistic Dialogue - We want dialogue to feel real, but real dialogue also looks terrible on paper, so it’s important not to go overboard. Avoid a lot of interjections like “um,” “uh,” “ugh,” and “hmm.” (Use them sparingly.) Watch out for “small talk.” Don’t write five lines worth of back and forth about your character’s experience in a coffee shop unless what happened is somehow critical to the plot. Don’t go overboard with idioms, wisecracks, and one-liners, and as tempting as it is, don’t have your characters say each other’s names all the time. We typically only use names in dialogue when we’re really trying to get someone’s attention.

3. Stilted Dialogue - Sometimes dialogue sounds stiff and overly formal, which makes it sound amateurish. For example: “I do not know what you’re talking about! We have been dating for over a month. It is not as though we are perfect strangers!” Most people in modern times don’t speak like that. We use contractions and we don’t use words like “thus” and “must” unless we’re being silly. But, there are reasons why a character might speak like that. In my book, one of the characters comes from a super upper class society where using contractions is considered to be vulgar. That’s fine, but don’t do it unless you have a good reason. 4. Misuse of Dialogue & Action Tags - This is a really big one. Dialogue and action tags are what let the reader know who’s speaking: Dialogue tag: “Let’s get out of here,” Harold said.   Action tag: Harold stood up and jutted his chin toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.” 

Every line of dialogue doesn’t need a tag, and you should also alternate between no tag, action tags, and dialogue tags.

Also: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using “said” as a dialogue tag. In fact, you should be using “said” most often. Replacing “said” with words like: “yelled,” “posited,” “offered,” “whispered,”  “demanded” once in a while is fine, but doing it too often makes your writing sound juvenile.

Read more in my post: Avoiding Repetition with Dialogue Tags

5. Dialogue is Unnatural - Dialogue can be a great way to deliver information to the reader, but you have to be careful about how you do it. For example, let’s say you want to describe the dress your character’s friend is wearing. 

But: “Oh, wow, Rosie! You look so great in this green floral print dress. These spaghetti straps are so cute, and I love the matching green shoes!” 

That’s just now how we speak in real life. You would never say that to someone. Instead, it would be better like this:

Rosie walked in wearing a green floral print dress with matching shoes. “Wow! Spaghetti straps? This is a new look for you. I love it!”

Any time you include important information in dialogue, read it out loud. Act it out if you have to. Ask yourself if it sounds natural. If not, keep it outside of the dialogue.

#3-  Other Common Problems

1. Too Many Cliches - Remember, tropes are good, cliches are bad. Cliches are tropes that have been used the same way over and over again. It’s fine if you want to use a trope like love triangles or “the chosen one,” just find a way to put a fresh new spin on it.

Read more in my post: Tropes, Clichés, & Finding Which  Clichés to Avoid

2. Tense/POV Switching - Make sure you know what tense and POV you’re writing in and stick with it. Yes--there are times when you might choose to include both tenses or first and third person in your story as a storytelling device, but generally speaking you shouldn’t be falling out of third-person into first-person, or going from past tense in one paragraph to present tense in the next.

Read more in my master post: POV & Tense

3. Head Hopping - If you’re writing in first-person, your POV character can only know what they already know, can observe, or are told. If your character is people watching at the mall, they can’t know what another shopper is thinking or what’s happening at home right now unless they’re psychic or there’s some other reason why they know that. If you’re writing in third-person and we’re in Susan’s POV, we shouldn’t go from what she’s thinking to what John right next to her is thinking in one paragraph.

4. Telling vs Showing - Yes, sometimes you need to tell, but a lot of the time you should be showing. “The moon hung high in the sky” isn’t as interesting as “moonlight scattered on the surface of the lake.”

Read more in my post: When “Telling” is Okay

5. No Structure - Good stories fall a general structure beyond just “beginning, middle, and "end.” Stories that are devoid of structure feel disorganized and pointless, which can be another hallmark of amateur writing.

Read more in my post: Basic Story Structure

————————————————————————————————-

Have a question? My inbox is always open, but make sure to check my FAQ and post master lists first to see if I’ve already answered a similar question. :)

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Title: The Secret History of Science

Author: Charles Seife

Rating: 3/5 stars

Despite some of Seife's obvious qualifications to write about science (an undergrad degree in biology and a master's in biochemistry), his book is very, very, very dumb. I don't think you will come away from it with a more accurate view of science, or a greater awareness of the scientific enterprise's failings or errors.

He opens his book with a discussion of evolution by natural selection, and, rather than try to come to any conclusions, simply talks in this style about a lot of things (like how it is hard to explain the process to someone who has never seen it) for a lot of pages, with no real sense of where his narrative is leading. He writes like a scientist would, in a way that gives the book a strong, sort of breezy -- if only in its self-assurance -- vibe (it is the sort of book that is supposed to go great on your IKEA bookshelf, for instance). But the tone is very broad and unacademic, and it doesn't really go to places that are very interesting.

The book is organized thematically around the concept of "bias," and this is one topic he treats extremely superficially -- or, sometimes, not at all. To some extent, this is in character with the breezy tone I mentioned above. Like so many writers, Seife finds that it is a very easy and popular thing to do to begin every chapter with a summary of the previous chapter's "central insight" (e.g. the fact that "we cannot be certain of anything, not even what we know"), and so you get this kind of meandering, "breezy" "science" stuff, without any real sense of direction or purpose, where the "central insight" just keeps popping up after every chapter and you are supposed to nod your head and say "of course, I knew that" in some half-remembered way. Or maybe you did nod your head in that way at some point but can't remember. But that's not how most scientists actually talk about their work.

(This is very much not the tone of the famous Richard Feynman's lectures on science, which are more like a series of lectures that tell you about a bunch of cool experiments and the results of doing them)

The "bias" is a general sort of thing that science is, well, biased towards. If it sounds as if you are getting into an argument over this point, you will be, but the idea here is that, because of the bias of science, we're all missing all kinds of cool stuff that's just there in plain view, because we can't look at everything. I'm sure you've all heard that. "The great man theory of history," etc.

It's easy to get carried away with this: just, say, think about the fact that when someone was once asked what the most famous mistake in Western history was, he said it was the one in which Newton -- supposedly the greatest genius of Western history -- predicted the orbits of the planets, yet did not know that the earth goes around the sun. (Seife gives a bunch of examples like this one, which are interesting and illustrate some of the "bias" points I'm going to talk about.)

Or, say, remember that "Darwin was wrong" type idea that's become popular on social media, and which Seife talks about at some length. If you think about it a bit, it's a really easy way to try to come up with a "counterexample" to some bias in science. What do we know about that guy? He predicted the existence of a fossil that didn't turn out to be a dinosaur after all -- isn't that a big counterexample? Well, the thing is, we don't know enough to have confidence in that counterexample either way. He could just have had it wrong and predicted a dinosaur, etc.

So you get this sort of argument, where one person says "Darwin said that because of bias, the theory of evolution doesn't work, and he was completely and totally wrong" and the other person says "yeah, I think Darwin was wrong because evolution doesn't actually work," and you can keep going in the same vein, because the theory isn't "inherited from Darwin" but it is based on ideas that all of us (or most of us) believe, so you can have an argument that is not about any individual's opinion but about the way science actually works.

To be clear, I don't think that Seife's book is a terrible or especially wrong book, or at least not one that I would expect people to read all the way through or get a lot out of. And I guess I'm glad he's trying to do this sort of book -- I'm sure it could be done well. Just, as it is written, there is very little to it that I would expect any given reader to come away with. For instance, I don't know that one will come away from the book more aware of the difficulties of scientific discovery, or aware of the dangers of some of the things that science can lead to.

(I mean, the main idea is about the dangers, but as it's written it is presented as mostly like talking about a certain sort of "bias," rather than pointing out things that we're wrong about that could have bad consequences. You could think about this in a more consequentialist way, but there's not much in the text that addresses that -- I guess at one point there's a bit of a mention of "The Bell Curve.")

[foxghost]

Joyful Reunion, Chapter 18

Translator: foxghost @foxghost tumblr/ko-fi1 Beta: meet-me-in-oblivion @meet-me-in-oblivion tumblr Original by 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang Masterpost | Characters, Maps & Other Reference Index

Book 1, Chapter 5 (part 4)

“Will there be war?” Duan Ling asks.

Wanlibenxiao looks down from where it is stopped halfway up the mountain. Huaide has already become an ocean of people; an endless stream of refugees are still heading west from Huchang and near Decheng.2 Their goal is to get through the Altyn-Tagh, either heading into Shangjing, or escaping through Yubiguan.

“There will be,” Li Jianhong replies.

“Then what will happen to Batu and his father?”

“The Mongols have been maintaining an army for a long time. They weren’t fighting beneath Mount Jiangjun before, but I reckon they’ve started fighting right around now. Even if you didn’t save Batu, this war would have started anyway.” Li Jianhong tells him, “The two of them would have simply paid for it with their lives without just cause, that’s all.”

It’s the first time Duan Ling has ever seen a spectacle like this. “Who will win?”

“Hard to say. Who do you want to win?”

Although everyone in Shangjing is Khitan, Duan Ling has been living there so long that it’s like a second homeland to him. From the bottom of his heart he hopes Liao doesn’t lose, but when two countries are at war, who wins and who loses isn’t something that can be decided by the power of a person’s wish.

“Dad, do we have to leave too?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll have an answer very soon. Let’s go.”

Li Jinghong turns the horse around, and Wanlibenxiao canters swiftly along the mountain paths, disappearing between the mountains. Soon, Duan Ling hurriedly says, “Dad!”

Li Jianhong turns to look at where Duan Ling’s finger is pointing. The morning mountain streams are thick with fog, and a squad of cavalry is meandering through the mist towards them. Duan Ling and Li Jianhong keep moving for a bit longer, and come upon a few Khitan soldiers’ bodies — a violent encounter has clearly taken place.

“How long has it been since we left?” Li Jianhong asks.

“Nearly two hours.” Duan Ling asks anxiously, “Why is the Mongol army here?”

“Hold this.” Li Jianhong tosses the Khitan soldiers’ quivers, crossbow, and longbow to Duan Ling before mounting the horse again. He checks the bow’s weight. “They’re an advance squadron, probably planning to detour around the Altyn-tagh to mount a sneak attack on Huaide. Come on, this is for you. Make a headcount and tell me how many of them are there.”

“Five, ten …” Duan Ling makes the count while Li Jianhong adjusts the crossbow, and answers, “One hundred.”

Li Jianhong instructs Duan Ling how to use the crossbow, and lets him take a few test shots before putting it on his back. Then he shoulders the long bow himself. “Yeah, running into the enemy’s advance troops on the road. Mustn’t panic.”

Duan Ling gives him a nod, and Li Jianhong continues his explanation. “First we must conceal ourselves, then weigh the strength, terrain, weather, and manpower between us and the enemy. When they’re out in the open and we’re in the shadows, we can risk mounting a raid if we’re six-tenth’s sure of a positive outcome.”

“But there’s only two of us.”

“King Wei of Qi asks Sun Tzu,” Li Jianhong says, "D’you remember how it’s laid out in the book or no? Is there a way for one to attack ten?”

“Yes there is!” Duan Ling’s read this section before. “Attack before they’re ready, take them by surprise!”

Li Jianhong gives him a smile.

“Gup!”

Li Jianhong squeezes the horse’s flanks with his legs, telling it to go as fast as it can; Wanlibenxiao treats the mountain range like level ground, passing through forests as quickly as it crosses the plains, approaching the enemy as fast as lightning.

“You steer the horse,” Li Jianhong says.

Duan Ling takes the reins. Li Jianhong says, “Turn!”

Duan Ling pulls at the reins, and Wanlibenxiao turns swiftly on the mountain path. Li Jianhong steps on its armour, his slender figure leaning out as he draws the longbow to its fullest and lets the arrow loose!

A light sound rings out; Li Jianhong comes back down to drape himself flat on the horse’s back. “Turn again!”

Duan Ling shakes the reins and Li Jianhong takes three successive shots. Soon, a scream comes from beneath them as a Mongol soldier falls off his horse, followed by three consecutive screams, one after another.

“Between the first and second sneak attacks, you must be fast, fierce, and accurate.” Li Jianhong gives Duan Ling instructions by his ear, “Only then will the enemy become paranoid, unable to figure out the other sides’ numbers. If it’s just one arrow, they’ll be able to guess that there was only one person.”

“Got it.”

Li Jianhong and Duan Ling cross the stream and follow the army at arm’s length. As expected, the Mongol army does get suspicious and get into formation, unwilling to rashly advance any farther.

“What do we do now?” Duan Ling asks.

On horseback, Li Jianhong reaches inside his lapel for flint. “Good timing and favourable weather conditions are less useful than favourable terrain, and favourable terrain is less useful than people working for a common purpose. Who said that?”

“I think it’s Mencius.”

Li Jianhong focuses on striking the flint. “That’s right. One must use the terrain to its fullest. Since they’ve set themselves up in the forest, naturally we’ll be smoking them out.”

In the present moment the forest is overgrown with heather, leaves have fallen all over the ground, there is a thick spring fog above the shrubs — and the understory has been built layer upon layer, from wet to dry, piling on top of each other. Li Jianhong ignites the dry leaves beneath his feet, setting it crackling, and the fire borrows from the force of the wind; burning, it gives off a great deal of white smoke, and the wind takes it towards the forest.

“Pay attention to the one who dresses differently than the others,” Li Jianhong says, “he’s the centurion.”

The Mongol soldiers cough loudly but their formation does not waver the slightest degree as they withdraw from the forest, hooting all the while. And yet with the smoke spreading everywhere, visibility has been vastly limited, and now a warhorse brazenly charges out of the smoky haze. Duan Ling steers the horse into the enemy’s formation. With one long handle sword in each hand, Li Jianhong brandishes them with dizzying speed and suddenly there is blood spraying everywhere in a spattering trail as they gallop off!

“Throw the lasso!” Li Jianhong says.

Duan Ling throws the lasso, and it loops right over the centurion’s neck; a soldier’s hundred-eighty catty3weight nearly pulls him off the horse, but Li Jianhong’s eyes are sharp and his hands are deft. He grabs the rope with one hand and Wanlibenxiao takes the two of them out of the circle of surrounding soldiers through a hail of arrows.

Duan Ling is still panting. The centurion is bound at the neck, gripping firmly to the rope as he’s dragged along the mountain paths.

“Yuan military is strictly regulated. If the centurion dies, his second-in-command in charge of fifty will take his place. So don’t even think about catching a hostage. It won’t work on any of the soldiers.”

“Then what … what did we catch … catch him for?” Duan Ling is still in a state of shock. He keeps looking behind him.

Li Jianhong pulls at the rope and using the horse’s momentum he coils it around the top of a tree a few times, tying a knot to keep it in place so that the centurion hangs from the tree. The two then gallops off, stopping their horse at higher ground to watch the centurion at a distance.

“This is called ‘guard the corpse and attack the reinforcements’. Watch closely.”

The Mongolian army charges out of the jungle, wishing to save their centurion. Li Jianhong nocks six arrows on the bow, and as the enemy makes it to the centurion’s location, he lets all the arrows fly in an instant!

The six arrows fly off like meteors, killing more of them; the other party is in utter disarray. The centurion, red in the face, is kicking wildly at the air, and the Yuan formation is a complete disaster. They immediately discover Li Jianhong upon the hillside, but alas Li Jianhong is standing with this back to the wind, and arrows can not reach him — all they can do is retreat.

As they retreat Li Jianhong again fires off one arrow after another, like a scythe through rice stalks he kills ten-odd more.

Duan Ling’s heart beats wildly in his chest. Li Jianhong asks, “Do you understand?”

“I … I understand.” Duan Ling nods, his eyes filled with fear.

“Don’t be afraid.” Li Jianhong lowers his head, and gives Duan Ling a quick kiss next to his ear. “We’re killing people, but we’re saving people too. If you’ve ever seen a Mongolian army capture a city and massacre everyone inside it, then you’ll know that there’s no telling how many lives these few arrows have managed to save.”

“I know.” Duan Ling has heard about the horrifying sight of a Mongolian army slaughtering innocents before, but what he’s seeing right now has given him too much of a blow.

“Don’t be afraid to kill. So long as you believe that you’re in the right.”

As he speaks Li Jianhong shoots another two arrows, taking down another two Mongolian soldiers. The other side dares not advance again, riled in their grief beyond measure, but can only retreat beyond the reach of his bow, looking on helplessly as their leader is hanged to death bit by bit until his last breath.

Li Jianhong continues to speak to his son, “None of these people are without blood on their hands. The reason we’re hanging him by the neck is to make sure he can’t talk — that way he can’t warn them, and he can’t sacrifice himself and tell his brothers-in-arms to evacuate.”

Duan Ling acknowledges this with a trembling hum.

Now that every Mongolian soldier is red-eyed from anguish, but none of them dare take another step, Li Jianhong fires off a single arrow that strikes the rope dead-on from a hundred paces away. The centurion falls ten feet from the top of the tree, and thereupon Li Jianhong turns the horse around, disappearing behind the hilltop.

The Mongolian soldiers charge forward to rescue their leader. Duan Ling is about to ask, are we going to leave just like that? when Li Jianhong spins around on the spot and reappears from behind the hill. This time, he uses the string of pearls technique to fire off arrows that rain down like torrential downpour, casting a shroud over the soldiers who’ve come to rescue their leader. Screams ring out from them all at once; corpses litter the ground and blood pools into streams beneath their feet. Losing all desire to fight, the Mongolian army rapidly retreats.

“That’s called ‘deceit’.” Li Jianhong says, “There can never be too much deception in war.”

Duan Ling looks on wordlessly.

Finally, Li Jianhong shoots one last arrow; it flies toward the centurion, thoroughly ending his life. “Let’s go.”

The Mongolian army’s one hundred men vanguard has somehow been misled and raided by Li Jianhong until he has managed to kill nearly half of them. For now, they’re nervous as a bird who’d fly off at the twang of a bowstring, no longer daring to make any rash moves.

Wanlibenxiao vanishes into the mountain’s forests, crisscrossing the jungle. Those pained dying screams from earlier are still echoing in Duan Ling’s ears.

“Dad doesn’t want you to thoughtlessly slaughter the innocent.”

“But dad really doesn’t want you to waver indecisively in the face of danger, to completely lack the strength to fight back. Sometimes the reason you can’t make up your mind is not because you’re unable to, but because you don’t want to.”

“Kill those who ought to be killed, save those who ought to be saved, even if a million should stand against you, move bravely forward.4 No one else on this here earth can declare you guilty save for yourself.”

Li Jianhong’s voice is deep and resonant yet gentle, driving away the screams echoing in Duan Ling’s ears.

The sun has risen; sunlight dapples through the canopy, flickering over them, sweeping past them like a million shooting stars in a tranquil night, gone in the twinkling of an eye.

“My son, you need to use your eyes and see clearly.”

“Life is bitterly short. If you live in this world then you have no choice but to face a lot of horrifying and cruel things.”

In the blink of an eye the scorching sun is shining down on them like a ball of flame. They have charged out of the woods into a wide clearing. Radiant sunlight surrounds them, and shockingly, a sea of clouds is beneath their feet, rolling in like the waves as they hold up a mountain top. Their one horse carrying the two of them seems like a small skiff crossing the sea.

“When you can stand high enough,” Li Jianhong says calmly, “everything will be left far behind you. The only voice you have to heed is right here …”

Holding a horsewhip, he places his hand over the left side of Duan Ling’s chest, and tells him earnestly, “Listen to your heart. Don’t be afraid.”

Duan Ling’s eyes reflect the mountains and the stratus folded layer upon layer like waves rolling towards them. He feels the moment like it’s a tangible thing; he is tiny and insignificant under his father’s protection, but he’s standing on the highest point of the world. All living things are nothing more than an ebbing reflection on the cloud sea beneath them.

Li Jianhong slows their horse to a trot and they proceed slowly along the coiling paths at the mountain’s summit.

“I’m not afraid,” Duan Ling says.

“I know you’ve killed before. That was for the sake of protecting Lang Junxia. But you haven’t understood that sometimes killing is more about protecting those you’ve never met. Those people won’t know how much you’ve sacrificed for them, in a place far, far from them. It may even be that in their entire lifetime they will never give you a word of thanks.”

“But dad thinks you’ll still do it. Will you do it?”

“I will.” Duan Ling nods.

They take a turn past a mountain top, looking into the distance. At the end of the unbroken mountain chain, they can see a monastery, and here beneath the sun it’s alightwith raging flames that roll up into the sky in a persistent fire.

Duan Ling says, “It’s burning!”

“Damn it, we’ve come too late,” Li Jianhong says to himself.

“Are we going to help?” Duan Ling.

“Let’s hope we’re not too late … gup!” Li Jianhong spurs the horse to a gallop, and winding through the coiling footpaths, they tear off towards the monastery.

I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎

There is something very odd with these directions, the original text was pretty ambiguous, so if you’re confused, check the map on the ref page. I don’t have Decheng on the map since there isn’t enough hints here to let me know where it is, but Huchang, Huaide, and Shangjing are there, as are the mountain ranges. (Roughly) ↩︎

~108kg. ↩︎

From Mencius. Full quote: Reflect on your reasoning, and if your reasoning be sound, then even if a million should stand against you, move bravely forward. ↩︎

[thewritinggrindstone]

Who Is Your Main Character, Anyway?

Over the last six months, I have noticed a recurring problem in every fiction manuscript I’ve edited and a few other nonfiction projects to boot. It’s a problem that’s both made editing significantly more difficult than the task otherwise might be and it’s killed all of these potentially entertaining novels dead, so permit me to ask you a question:

Who is your main character?

No, really. I’m serious. Do you know who your MC is? Can you point at a single character and definitively say, “Yes, this is my MC”?

If not, you—and your story—might be in trouble.

For reference’s sake, some of the novels I’ve edited since June 2019 include:

A collection of sci-fi short stories tied together with alternating chapters of an extremely and alarmingly abstract, philosophical variety

A contemporary novel revolving around health problems, corrupt management, and struggling teachers in a NYC school

A contemporary novel set in a heavenly courtroom that functioned as a soapbox for the author’s opinions on the current state of the US government

An urban fantasy set in modern-day NYC with trolls, fairies, dragons, and other fantastical beasts

I also edited a memoir about life in Crete during WWII that was told via a progressing series of anecdotes.

All five of these projects, which sound so different from the outside, share the same issue: The author didn’t understand the need for a main character.

But why is a main character important? In fact, isn’t it possible to have more than one MC? I hear the arguments: the MCU doesn’t have a single MC, and look at how utterly lucrative that series has been.

Fair point, and I’ll touch on multi-POV later, but for now, bear with me and treat the idea of a main character as one of the fundamental storytelling rules. And like all rules related to writing, you need to know how it works before you can effectively break it.

So what is a main character?

The typical main character in a novel is, at their very core, the character who both:

Has the highest stakes in the story’s climax

Goes through the most dramatic change themselves (positive/negative arc), or has the most dramatic change on the world around them (flat arc)

If either element is missing from the character, chances are they aren’t actually the MC.

Why is this important?

It’s important because if you don’t consciously determine who your MC is, you’re far more likely to be swayed by other characters who pop up and their respective stories. Suddenly one character has severe anxiety due to a crummy upbringing and all but vanishes after they begin recovering after a failed suicide attempt. Another is stealing medication from the locked nurse’s office to deal with a problem that isn’t quite important enough to actually receive mention in the novel. Yet another character becomes a mouthpiece for a topic the author is passionate about but doesn’t actually tie into the novel’s plot or theme. Suddenly there are characters crawling out of the woodwork, all interesting and unique and playing important enough roles that the author becomes distracted with the shiny and the tantalizing and doesn’t quite realize that they’ve completely failed to mention a character isn’t a human at all and indeed is a troll until page seventy-three. Oh, and there’s no climax to the novel either. Huh. How did that happen?

One consequence of an author failing to identify their main character is that failing to do so often leads to an unfocused story. POVs hop from character A to character B to character C to character D, and somehow we find ourselves at character M before finally circling back around to character A, whose story... I no longer quite remember—or care about, because character G was fascinating and I want to get back to them.

Another consequence is that POV oftentimes is distributed unevenly throughout the story. A concurrent issue I’ve noticed cropping up is the use of omniscient POV in these troubled manuscripts. While that’s a topic for another post, I will say that a lack of main character + omniscient POV = stories that are notoriously difficult to edit effectively because it’s one thick layer of confusion on top of another thick layer of confusion. Trying to determine what the authors want out of those stories requires a frankly outrageous amount of effort compared to a story with a single main character and a limited POV because the editor has to spend so much time and energy guessing what the author truly wants.

On top of that, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that most authors don’t want to tell an unfocused story. Sure, we might want to obscure some facts, might want to leave the occasional little mystery for the reader to enjoy puzzling out, but we want our writing to be understood. We want it to resonate. And it’s difficult for a story to resonate when half its notes are atonal and the other half are outright missing.

Step 1 is to identify who your main character is. Step 2 is to determine what characters are masquerading—temporarily or completely—as the main character. In the contemporary novel set in the school I mentioned above, there were at least eight initial contenders for the role of main character, all with their own unique stories and all with significant POV time, but only one character had any bearing on the climax, and it was a character who didn’t appear until almost a third of the way into the novel but got less POV time than several other characters. This doesn’t work.

This doesn’t work because the reader assumes, particularly in genre novels (excepting romance), that:

the first character we meet, and

the character whose POV opens the novel

is going to be the main character. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, and there are absolutely exceptions—such as The Great Gatsby, in which the MC and the narrator are two totally separate characters—but this post is about identifying MCs in particular. Narrator vs MC is a topic for another day.

(In conventional romance novels, the POV is split fifty-fifty between the two love interests. This post doesn’t really apply to conventional romance, but it’s still not a bad idea to check yourself once in a while to make sure you don’t have any characters who are trying to worm their way into being the MC when they shouldn’t be.)

Some of the problems I’ve encountered in the five projects I mentioned above include:

A POV that skitters from character to character, even to characters who have no arc or bearing on the overall plot whatsoever

An unfocused climax or a total lack of climax

Numerous subplots that never resolve and/or never have any bearing on the climax

Significantly lowered chances that the reader will bond with or care about any of the characters

Unsatisfying character arcs and/or plots

Plots that wander to places they never should have gone

Subplots of subplots that have nothing to do with the main character and/or climax at all

Painfully boring scenes that serve no purpose

The author bending the characters and plot to A Message rather than allowing either to exist naturally

The author not understanding what is truly important or interesting in their story

Stories that try to cram way too much information into a single book

The exclusion of details that are vital to understanding the overall story

Before throwing the unfinished book aside, the reader asking the two deadliest possible questions: So what? and Who cares?

That’s a rather terrible and terrifying list, isn’t it? All because each author never chose a single main character for their novel.

So I ask again: Who is your main character? Are they present from as close to the beginning of the story to as close to the end of the story as possible? Are they the most changed (or do they cause the most change around them) of all the characters in the story? Are there other characters around them who have plots or subplots that don’t tie into either the climax or the main character in any way? Is there another character who has more of an effect on the climax than your current labeled MC? More POV time or overall focus?

If you don’t have a main character to anchor your story around, the chances of it wandering, drifting away on every little eddying breeze that comes along, stumbling into dead ends and boring climaxes and unsatisfying character arcs grow with each added word. So challenge yourself to nail down a single main character. Wrap the entire plot around them, tight enough to choke them if you must. Get your facts straight; tie every detail back to them. You might find extraneous loose threads you can pluck out, be they characters or plot elements—but you might also find areas that are weak and need building up. You might even find both coexisting in the same story, because writing is sometimes just like that.

And once you know how to identify and use your main character, you can begin adding other elements to your story, elements that can create a bit of breathing room wherever necessary, all without the story losing its focus or meandering away from you into an area that leaves your reader—or editor—baffled at best, furious at worst.

 That said, of course it’s possible to have more than one MC, but with each MC you add to a single novel, the more work you’re creating for yourself, because each MC needs to have equal stakes in the climax and, preferably, an equal amount of attention throughout the story. Conventional romance, with its lack of a single MC, works because the climax hinges on the two characters who have received equal attention (via POV time and word count) up to that point. They both stand to win—and lose—the same thing, namely their mutual happy ending. Adding in a third main character is possible but tricky. Four? If you can do it, you’re a better plotter than me, friend, and I salute you.

A note: yes, subplots are a great way of adding extra characters or situations to a story that don’t necessarily run through the main plot. Ideally, though, most subplots should be resolved as close to the climax as possible to give the entire climax that added oomph. Again, there are exceptions, and it’s often a per-story situation, but a story can only handle so many notes being played before the sound of it gets muddy. Plot accordingly, and don’t lose sight of who the main character is.

Another note: yes, the MCU doesn’t have a single main character. Even some of the MCU films don’t have a single main character, particularly the Avengers flicks, and discussing how to handle a story that has multiple MCs is not really what I wanted to focus on today. Summarized, those stories are possible but tricky. Please notice the way very few of the MCU main characters get introduced in the big team-up films. Most of the characters get their own films or get introduced as side characters in those films so the audience has to do less work initially investing in them when there is more than one main character present.

[nagdabbit]

🥺👉👈 pwease? 🥺🥺

okay okay, but like, be gentle? it's just bones right now, and a really good ending, if i say so myself, but, like... bones. it's bones with rules, because i like them. and it's about four dumbasses playing dnd, so obviously i gotta.

anyway, here's a lil bit. not quite the beginning, i guess? i dunno, i've forgotten how to do writing on the internet. be gentle.

~~~

D&D was weird.

It involved a lot of sitting around, trying to stay focused as Heather narrated at them. A lot of trying to be clever, trying to be smart. A lot of trying not to fuck up entirely.

The biggest problem with it all was that, sitting directly next to his highschool--and current--bully, it was damn hard not to feel like he was breathing wrong. Hell, Billy had shown up and rolled his eyes at Steve's presence, so he was clearly existing incorrectly, too.

"Alright, you've made your way from the college library to the very outskirts of the city," Heather said, eyes scanning her notes, while her arms made wide, sweeping gestures. "Almost an hour on horseback through the busy, winding streets. There are no street signs directing, but you see a path breaking away from the main road, and disappearing into the trees. The path is dense and quiet and dark."

"Is it weirdly quiet?" Steve asked, then shrank a little as Billy whipped his head around to glare at him.

But Heather just looked a little proud. "Yes! The sounds of the city have disappeared, but it's that same oppressive quiet that you rode through on your way to the city. Musty and still and quiet."

"Do I notice the same thing?" Robin asked.

"Go ahead and roll…" Heather tilted her head back and forth as she thought about it, "Gimme a nature check real quick."

Robin eagerly rolled her die, and then groaned. "That's a seven."

Heather chuckled. "You don't notice shit," she joked, but her smile was teasing. He liked that about her, the way she could ease tension and soften failure. She was easygoing and kind, just about the only person he'd trust his best friend to. "No, you don't notice anything out of the ordinary. The wood has grown so dead, and quiet so steadily that you haven't even noticed it happening."

Robin made a face, and scribbled that down. "I don't like that one bit," she muttered.

"As you make your way through, you come to a small clearing, and in the middle of it stands an ancient temple," Heather said, hands still weaving the story out in front of her laptop screen. "It's small and crumbling, but the thick vines and moss-covered roots that cover the intricately carved stonework looks like the only thing holding it upright. This is the home of Ash, the cleric. And, Billy, why don't you introduce yourself."

At his shoulder, Billy straightened up a little. "A tall tiefling steps out of the door as you ride up." Steve very carefully didn't laugh at Billy making his character tall. "He is a mottled grey-brown color, almost like tree bark, and his dark hair is pushed back away from his face. He has horns pushing out of his forehead that curl back over his head. He's wearing old, but sturdy leather armor, decorated with oak leaves, the symbol of Silvanus. He's carrying his wooden maul, and he looks very angry."

"Great, who does he see riding up?" Heather asked, turning her attention back to him and Robin. "Althea?"

She nodded, eagerly. "On the first horse, you see the elf that you've been dealing with. She's got her hair braided back, and she's wearing the dark robes of the college, with the crest on the front. You don't see any weapons on her, but she has several books strapped behind her."

Heather smiled, sweetly, and Steve had to wonder just how often they'd get distracted flirting in the middle of a game. But then Heather looked at him, expectantly, "Ront?"

Right, fuck. He shoulda probably thought ahead while he had the chance. "Uh, following behind her, you see a large half-orc, about seven feet tall. He's wearing just simple clothes, no armor of any kind. He has a carved, wooden amulet of a hawk, hanging around his neck, and a battleaxe strapped to his back."

"Perfect!" Heather clapped her hands together, excitedly. "And our party has gathered! Althea and Ront, you arrive in the clearing surrounding the temple of Silvanus. It is late afternoon, the forest around you beginning to cool as evening draws closer. Ash steps out to greet you, and--"

"And walks forward toward them, very annoyed, like he's been waiting. And he says, ah, she finally leaves her tower to visit the peasants," Billy greeted in a gentle accent, almost Irish, maybe. He gave Robin a mean grin.

"Shut up, I finally have something helpful," she snapped, going for haughty and posh. "The village of Oakville--"

"Oak Pointe," Steve corrected.

"--was wiped out," she finished, unperturbed. "Only one villager survived."

"And how is he useful?" Billy asked, and Steve got the feeling he wasn't exactly in character.

"First, he's the only living person who has seen how these monsters operate," she reasoned, just as annoyed.

Billy turned his sharp gaze toward Steve, and it cut just as deep as his words. "And why are you so important to all this?" he asked, in a mocking tone. "Why not run for the lawmen in their castle? Why go to the librarian?"

"My entire village is gone," he said, slowly. "Everyone I have ever known, just gone. My family, my friends, everyone. If I can stop this from happening to others, I'm going to. Guards with swords didn't do a damn thing to help when this all started, they won't help now."

Billy--Ash, whatever--gave him a long look. Not impressed, definitely not, but maybe surprised. "Then why didn't you come sooner?"

"I had to be sure they really were dead, and that I wasn't sick. It spreads so fast, I needed to wait it out," he reasoned. "Someone brought that death to my home. I wasn't going to risk bringing it here."

Billy studied him for another long moment, expression a little more searching than judgemental. But finally he nodded. Maybe not acceptance, yet, but close. "And you, why are you finally here?" he asked and rolled his gaze toward Robin. “I have been sending my concerns for months, and you and your books have ignored me at every turn. So why are you finally here? We could have made so much more headway if you hadn't waited for a witness.”

“Because I might have finally found a clue," she said, triumphantly, expression a little more fiery than she'd worn the week before. "And I'm gonna open up the book to the weird pictures and things that I've been working on."

"What is this?"

"A book I'm trying to translate," she said, jamming her finger against the page as if she had an ancient book in her lap. "I have yet to get very far into it, but it speaks of a temple, deep in the Rootwood," Robin said. "And monsters like the ones we've been hearing stories of. And then I wanna explain the--well, everything that you gave me, so here," she added and handed over her notes. "I'm gonna explain all of that."

"And once she's explained it all, I wanna see if anything she's said fills in any gaps in what I've already learned," Billy said, absently, as he scanned the notes and scribbled notes into his book. "Or, like, if I can piece anything new together from all this."

"Great, whenever you're done reading, roll a history check," she said, and turned back to Robin. "Are you telling him everything?"

Robin smirked, "Of course not! I don't trust him, so I'm only giving him what I've gathered from the book, not the scrolls I've been using to translate it." As Billy glared at her, she held up another set of notes as proof.

Heather had been good about that, helping them figure out what their characters would know about the world that she'd created for them. Gave them pages of more and text for them to use. Steve had his own print out and the notes he'd taken as Robin had explained everything she'd learned, and he pulled it out to follow along. Or, rather, he intended to. Heather beat him to the punch.

"While they begin to compare notes, what's Ront doing?" she asked, easily.

He blinked, felt his cheeks go hot. "Uh, Ront is just looking around the temple."

"Meandering?"

He shrugged a little, "Exploring."

"Poking things?" Heather suggested, innocently.

He saw Billy pull a face, and walked himself back a little. "Only stuff that doesn't look breakable."

Heather narrowed her eyes, lips quirking up in amusement. "Roll a--hm, roll an investigation check for me, please."

"No," Billy said, firmly.

She gave him a wicked look, "Yes."

And Ront's intelligence score had a pretty little negative one above it. Which meant he was pretty dumb. Which meant Heather wanted to cause a little trouble. Meant she was going to let him have fun in order to terrorize Billy a little bit. Get a smidge of revenge for all the shit he's spewed the week before. Which, honestly, Steve could really get behind.

So he hoped, and he prayed--just a little--and threw the die into the little tray in front of him. The math wasn't too hard, thankfully, despite the distracting groan from Billy and snickers from Robin. It was a perfect roll, really. Better than anything he could have hoped for.

But, fuck, it was so hard to keep from breaking, to keep from laughing loud enough to wake the neighbors, that his eyes threatened to water. At his side, Billy had already slouched back against the couch, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Calmly, he folded his hands in his lap, and gave Heather a serene smile. "Zero."

[meetthetank]

Starved

Rating: General AudiencesArchive Warning: No Archive Warnings ApplyCategory: F/M Fandom: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse) Relationships: Steve Burnside/Claire Redfield, Steve Burnside & Alexia Ashford (kind of) Characters: Steve Burnside, Claire Redfield, Alexia Ashford (kind of), Jill Valentine Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved, Post RE Rev2, Therapy Group - Freeform, Read A/N for more context, Steve is a sad sad man who missed out on A Lot, Angst, Subtle love languages Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29232369 Summary: Months after being rescued from his second island prison, Steve Burnside tries to adjust to a normal life while dealing with the scars left both physically and mentally. Luckily, he has some help. Notes: Sooooooooo here's the thing. There were worms in my brain. Real bad. So this is like... a manifestation of a longfic that I want to write later down the road. Some things to know before going in. 1) Steve revived on an island meant to store "failed" B.O.W. experiments that was left abandoned. He was there for a year and some change. 2) Allie is a child clone of Alexia who was in the same facility and befriended him. They live together and Steve is her legal guardian. 3) Jill runs a victims of B.O.W. experimentation which includes Steve, Manuela, Sherry, herself, and some others. I think that's everything but if yall have anymore questions feel free to ask. This is incredibly self indulgent to write but I hope you guys enjoy it too. 

“Please stop pacing,” Allie sighs, “You look like a caged beast.”

Steve glares at the child, a clone of the insane woman who killed him, as she sips her tea at the other side of their flat. She glares back, her hazel eyes sharp as ever. She’s waiting for him to retort so she can shoot him down with a smart ass remark like a shark circling a drowning bird. When all she gets is an indignant huff she sips her tea and rolls her eyes.

“You do this every time she comes over. If she didn’t run away at the first sight of your ghastly visage she’s not going to run now.”

Steve sighs, “Yeah, but-“

“What absurd thing are you putting in your own head this time?” Allie snaps, setting her dainty pink teacup next to her stuffed dragon, “You’re going to stink up the room if you think too hard.”

He tunes out the insults with a scowl, but Steve knows the kid is right. He’s thinking way too much about this. Claire didn’t run away screaming the first time they met since he came back, she’s not going to do it for the seventh.

Even still, as Steve passes by the mirror in the front room he jumps at his own reflection. The person inside doesn’t look like him, it doesn’t feel like him. Their ginger hair isn’t wild and tangled, it’s washed, brushed and tied up in a small ponytail. Their shocking green eyes aren’t sunken into their sockets, and there’s a splash of red sunburn on their skin. He can even see a smattering of freckles across their nose and cheeks. They look like a stranger, but the deep, ragged scars across his face remind him of his past. The biggest and ugliest of the marks starts well above his hairline, drops down over his right eye and curls over his lips. A few smaller ones run across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, but they aren’t nearly as deep.

He always thought scars were sexy when he was a kid. Manly. The marks of some action hero or badass. Now they just… Make him look tired and scared.

A small hand grabs onto one of his. “Did you take your medicine today?” Allie asks without a trace of her previous vitriol.

Steve shakes his head. “I’m out of the anxiety pills. Ms. Valentine said she’s going to bring them over when she comes to pick you up.”

“Okay.” Allie says with a curt nod.

“You got everything for your field trip?” Steve meanders over to the kitchen again, eager to change the subject.

“Can I have some spending money?”

He raises an eyebrow, “How much and what for?”

“Fifty for museum books.” Allie puts her hands on her hips and glares up at her guardian with defiance sparkling in her eyes.

Steve crosses his arms over his chest, “Twenty.”

Allie lifts her chin, “Forty-five.”

“Thirty.”

“Forty-five and I buy you a cool rock from the Natural History Museum.”

“Deal.”

With negotiations done (and Steve down forty-five bucks) the only thing left to do is wait. He switches the tv on to drown out his own thoughts. Some hockey game. It’s not his team so he doesn’t care too much, but it’s a comforting familiarity. At least sports didn’t change too much since ‘98.

Steve let’s himself zone out as much as he can to the game. At one point he thinks about getting a beer but decides against it. He’d probably have one or two with Claire at dinner. That, and his meds don’t mix well with alcohol if he hasn’t eaten. So instead he bounces his leg, bites his nails, and busies his hands with whatever he can reach.

Did he used to be like this? It’s hard for him to remember past his awakening and even harder to think past Rockfort. He was a neurotic mess out of necessity on the Storage Facility Island, a place where any sound could be death, and Rockfort was a similar story with the addition of his teenage bravado, but before he was taken? He barely remembers what his parents looked like, let alone what social masks he had to put on. Steve lets out a long, quiet sigh. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s like this now, and that’s all he needs to know. At least now he has a support system.

Just as Steve starts to calm down, the doorbell rings.

He jumps out of his chair and bolts to the front door, heart in his throat and stomach upside down. His hands begin to shake as he reaches for the knob-

“Hi, Steve.”

“Oh,” Steve sighs, a bit too loudly judging by the way the visitor raises an eyebrow, “Hey, Jill.”

She gives him a warm, knowing smile as she fumbles with her shoulder bag. “Claire coming over today?”

“Yeah.” Steve scratches the back of his neck, “That easy to tell?”

Jill laughs, “Careful now, Redfields can smell fear.” She hands him a paper bag from the local drugstore, “Here. I know you said you were out of the anxiety meds, but I got everything refilled for you.”

“Oh! Uh, thanks!” He tosses the bag across the room to the chair he had just left. “So what museums are you hitting today?”

“All depends on our little cruise director.” Jill says with a small laugh, “Speaking of-”

Allie brushes past Steve, the charms on her backpack jingling with each step. “Air and Space and Botanical Gardens! Oh, and Natural History too. I promised I’d buy Steve a cool rock.”

“Easily bribed, I see.” Jill smirks at him quickly, then turns her attention back to Allie, “Sounds like a deal, kiddo.”

Eager to get on her way, Allie all but jumps out of the door and runs to where two more members of their little therapy group, Manuela and Sherry, wait. Both women greet her with smiles and hugs, and she wastes no time in launching into sharing things she had learned since the last time they had spoken.

“I’d stick around,” Jill says as she backtracks to the group, “But I feel like if I wait any longer there’s going to be a mutiny.”

The rumbling of a motorcycle echoes down the street, and Jill turns back to Steve with a quick smirk.

“Besides, you have company.”

Jill darts over to the group, casting a wave back to Steve and over to the biker before motioning to the ladies to begin their trek. Steve watches with wide eyes and a thundering heart as the biker dismounts and pulls off their helmet, revealing short auburn hair and stunning blue eyes. She gathers up a few plastic bags from her bike before jogging over to him, while he stands there like a deer in headlights.

“Hey, Steve!” She says with a bright, radiant smile and shoves some of her bags in his hands.

“W- Hey, Claire.” He fumbles with the grocery bags, “What’s all this?”

“Dinner. Figured making our own burgers would be better than ordering out.” Claire explains and shuffles inside the door as Steve moves aside for her. “And more fun.”

Though Steve can’t deny her claim, he also can’t fight the apprehension that coils in his stomach. He can cook, sure, he had to or die on the island, but he has no idea how to use any of the kitchen gadgets Jill’s group and Terra-Save set him up with. None of it is as simple as a slapdash firepit and some scraps of metal. Maybe if he’s lucky Claire will know what to do and he can just chop vegetables or something. The last thing he wants to do is make more of a fool of himself.

“Uh, sure!” He blinks his thoughts away, shuts the door and retrieves his bag of medicine from the chair.

By the time Steve turns back towards his kitchen, Claire is already busy setting up groceries and making herself at home. He watches her take off her heavy bomber jacket, revealing a thinner red and black flannel, and set it on the back of a chair at the kitchen table. She drops her plastic bags on the counter and grabs a beer out of his fridge; she looks like she’s been coming here for months. Something about the image before him makes Steve’s chest tighten. He’s not sure if it’s a bad feeling or not.

“-Steve?”

“Huh?” He snaps out of his stupor with a jolt.

Claire wiggles the opened bottle in her hand, “Did you want one?”

“Oh, uh, sure.” He stammers and rubs the back of his neck but walks across the room to take the beer. Maybe he did need something to settle his nerves after all.

Claire smiles at him like she’s known him all his life, like she knows what’s going on in his head and she understands why he’s so awkward and nervous around her. What was it that Jill said before? Redfields can smell fear? He knows it’s a joke but the way Claire seems to understand his fidgeting and hesitation leaves him wondering if there’s some kind of truth to it. A few gulps of beer (technically a hard cider, his first beer made him vomit) gives him enough bravado to at least go into the small kitchen with her.

Thankfully, she doesn’t ask him to work any of the gadgets. Claire’s hands glide over buttons and knobs, setting temperatures on his stove and placing pans. She directs Steve to break the ingredients out of the bags. Ground beef, cheese, brioche buns, vegetables, and a myriad of spices.

“This is a lot for just burgers, isn’t it?” He asks, mouth full of stolen tomato.

“Come on now, you know I wouldn’t do just burgers.” Claire laughs a bit, a sound that makes Steve’s heart stop. “This is an ancient Redfield family recipe.”

“Should I be worried?” Steve can’t help but smile back. She has this way about her that makes him feel lighter, like everything takes a backseat to just… being around her. He can joke, come out of his shell a little. She won’t hurt him.

Claire giggles at him, “It’s the way our dad used to make them. Chris held onto the secret ingredient till he was… Thirty something I think. I basically had to interrogate him for it.”

He raises an eyebrow and grins devilishly, “So...what’s the secret?”

“Oh, just a blend of spices.” She shrugs, “Nothing that inventive. But it’s special to Chris, so don’t go telling him I told you.”

Claire winks at him then turns back to mashing the ground beef into patties, leaving Steve to gawk at her. She’s delightfully impish when she wants to be, he can see himself getting into all sorts of flirtatious teasing matches with her… if he weren’t so weird. She directs him to chop up the tomatoes and onions after she catches him staring, again with a playful smirk and slug to his shoulder.

Something he had to become good at while on that remote island, alone aside from Allie and the wild B.O.Ws, was how to observe. The more he watches Claire out of his peripheral, the more she reveals to him. He watches the way her face falls as she focuses on the burger patties, as if she gets lost in her own thoughts and forgets where she is for a split second. It isn’t hard for him to see the sadness she hides from the world, it’s the same kind as one he carries. The reason Steve still roots for his hockey team, or even still watches the sport is because it reminds him of his dad. It’s the last connection he still has to his late father, and of a time mostly lost to him. He feels more special than he should that Claire would choose to share something like that with him.

Suddenly a sharp pain shoots up Steve’s arm. He drops the knife, now streaked with red and pulls his hand close to his chest with a hiss. His heart races and his eyes dart around, searching for other dangers in the area. Anything might be lurking in the shadows waiting to take advantage of his weakness. He scans back and forth for threats, eyes wide and alert. Nothing catches his attention except-

“Steve?! What happened?”

Claire drops her own knife and rushes over to him overcome with worry, but stops in her tracks when Steve backs away from her. He looks like a frightened animal, eyes wild and darting to anything that moves even the slightest bit.

“Did you cut your hand open?”

Her voice is soft and gentle as she approaches, hands low and outstretched to him. She doesn’t step closer, she waits for him to bridge the gap. Steve can see the caution in her face. Like she’s trying to coax a stray kitten out of hiding.

It works.

“Y-yeah,” Steve says, dropping the tension in his body a little. “I uh, wasn’t paying attention and… I guess it slipped.”

He opens his hand enough for Claire to see the small streaks of red that pool beneath his thumb. It’s superficial, barely deep enough to scar. The virus would already be hard at work stitching the burst blood vessels together, but he should still clean and bandage it. He has a bad habit of picking at the scaly scabs that form over wounds.

“Are you okay?” Claire asks, taking a small step forward. The gap between them is barely a foot wide. “That looks like it’s bleeding a lot.”

As Steve starts to relax further, Claire’s fingertips brush against his hand for a split second. The shock is enough to send him reeling back, his heart leaping into his throat. His instincts tell him to run and hide or fight his way to a safe place. Somehow he finds the self control to speak.

“No!” He yelps, loud enough to startle Claire. He lowers his voice but takes another step back. “No, I got it. It’s fine.”

He doesn’t stick around long. He can’t bear the worried, somewhat hurt, look on Claire’s face. Steve hurries into the bathroom around the corner and shuts the door before the fear and guilt tear him to pieces from the inside out. With trembling hands he turns on the sink faucet and lets icy water run over his open wound. It stings a little, but nothing he can’t endure. The excess blood trickles down the drain and vanishes in seconds. Just as he thought, the cut isn’t deep at all. That eases his anxieties somewhat, but not enough to stop the oncoming panic attack. Before it overtakes him, he wraps a washcloth around his hand to contain the blood as best he can.

Steve sinks to the floor and puts his head between his knees. It’s a struggle but he forces himself to take deep even breaths, just like Jill had taught the group. Though his head still spins, it helps to calm his heartbeat enough that it doesn’t feel like he’s about to have a heart attack. The trembling stops once he lets his consciousness fade to survival mode; he only thinks about his breathing and that he is safe.

Claire isn’t going to hurt him. No one is. He’s safe here. He’s safe with her.

Claire isn’t going to hurt him.

The world slows down, finally. Steve isn’t sure how long he’s been here but it can’t have been too long. Claire hasn’t come knocking on the door looking for him yet, and the savory scents of meat and spices being seared drifts in from the kitchen. His stomach tightens at the smell, helping to distract him further. Though his whole body feels heavy and drained of energy, Steve finds the strength to push himself to his feet once again. He cleans the now dried blood off of his hand, sloppily wraps his hand with a bandage, and dumps the rag he was holding into the wastebin before leaving the sanctuary of the bathroom.

When Steve returns to the kitchen, he expects Claire to rush at him and assault him with questions, but the only question is in her eyes. Wide, blue, and deeply worried about him. She doesn’t say anything or move to approach him, she only watches and waits for him to be ready. The way her brow creases and turns upwards at the ends make her look guilty, and that sends a pain through his gut he can’t identify right away.

“All good.” He announces, showing off his slapdash bandages. “It’s not deep. Just wanna keep it from getting dirty. And keep myself from picking at a scab.”

Claire looks at him with such intensity that Steve almost shrinks back from her gaze. It’s like she’s staring right through him.

“You sure?” she asks, keeping her voice low and gentle.

The genuine worry throws Steve for a loop. “Yeah.” He flashes her a wry, lopsided smile full of false confidence; as if he didn’t just have a panic attack. “I’ve had a lot worse.”

Claire studies him for a moment, then scoffs and shakes her head. A small grin finally appears on her face and it takes his breath away. “Yeah, I was there for some of those.”

She turns back to finishing up dinner. A shadow crosses her face as she grills the burger buns as a final touch, but it’s gone in a flash. Steve busies himself with getting drinks and plates, and thinking of something to say that might distract Claire from whatever sadness is eating away at her.

“You’ve had a lot worse than that.” He says with a grin, and immediately regrets it. Why did he think it’d be a good idea to bring back those kinds of memories?!

But Claire turns around and smiles broadly at him. “Oh you have no idea.” She drops a plate of burgers and a plate of toppings on the table, then as if to give Steve another heart attack, she props her leg up on the chair and rolls up one of her pant legs. A long, wide scar follows the length of her toned calf. Tan with age and wear, it stands out against her pale skin.

“This was from the Tyrant in Raccoon City.” She smirks, almost proud of her scar. “I was lucky it didn’t hit bone with how deep it was.”

There’s an edge to her voice, testing him. Teasing him. Steve grins. If Claire wants to have a scar battle, then he’s more than happy to show off.

He points to the largest scar on his face, “I got this from-...” Shit, he can’t tell her it was from falling down a mountain. That’s not cool. “...I got it from this big… Turtle thing.”

Claire raises an eyebrow at him, “Turtle thing?”

The lie spins out of control in his head, faster than he can stop. “Yeah! It was like...a big armored reptile B.O.W. Had these nasty claws for diggin’ in the ground. I got too close to it and it swatted at me. I’m lucky I didn’t lose this eye.”

He puts his hands on his hips and puffs out his chest a bit. He can’t pinpoint why showing off his trauma like this makes him happy. Maybe he’s just happy to share it at all. It doesn’t matter to him now. Claire is smiling. He’s smiling.

They go back and forth, showing each other their scars and places where bones were broken while eating homemade burgers and fries. Claire shocks Steve with just how many scars and injuries she suffered over her years of fighting bioterrorism, and he astounds her with his stories of his misadventures on the B.O.W. storage island and his encounters with all manner of beasts. Watching her listen to him with such fervor and interest almost makes him forget how horrific it all was. It helps in a weird way.

But that changes in an instant.

When it’s his turn to point out a scar and tell a story, he stops thinking. He lifts up his shirt, exposing the most gruesome scar on his body with an excited grin. A scar that stretches from his collarbone and disappears beneath the waistband of his pants, with dots alongside it on either side. Instead of a jagged outline like the scars left by accidents and B.O.W’s, this one is straight, clean. Surgical.

“This one was from when they autopsied me.” He explains, far too excited about the grim display he presents Claire. “It still itches like hell where the staples were-”

Steve snaps to reality once he looks up to see Claire’s awestruck face. Instead of excitement, it’s horror. Her hands cover her mouth and her eyes, brimming with barely restrained tears, lock onto his stomach and a wound so old he had almost forgotten about it. Beneath the autopsy scar, beneath the scars from man-made beasts, there’s a circular mark a similar color to the scar on Claire’s leg. It’s old, faded, but still aches from how deep the tissue reaches inside him. The gravity of the old wound may be lost on him, buried under the countless others that mar his body, but it’s fresh and raw to Claire.

He hastily pulls his shirt down, “Shit- I’m sorry, I didn’t-... I forgot that…” There’s nothing he can say that will ease her mind. He reaches out to her with one hand, stopping just by her arm before pulling back and sinking back into his chair. Another muttered apology falls from his lips as he hangs his head in shame.

He doesn’t notice Claire get up and cross the gap to him. Not until she takes a knee in front of him and brushes his unruly hair out of his eyes.

Claire’s touch is feather light and tender, but even that sends shocks through his skin. It jolts him out of his shamed stupor, and Claire pulls her hand back a few inches. Her expression is something he can’t make out. Somewhere between pity, sadness, and guilt. Before Steve can properly figure out what she’s thinking (something he’s never been good at) Claire runs her thumb across the large scar on his face, slowly and gently. He doesn’t flinch away from her this time. Then, something mundane yet earth shattering to this broken man out of time happens. Claire cups his scarred, stubble covered cheek in her hand.

Something breaks within him. A dam he didn’t know existed anymore that kept everything back, every trauma, every broken piece of him; some of which he didn’t even know were broken. Claire’s hand, her warm hand marred by callouses but still soft despite it all, molds to the contours of his face. There’s such tenderness, unrestrained kindness in her eyes and her touch and he can’t fathom how it can be directed to him. He doesn’t notice the tears in his eyes until they spill over.

Steve tries to calm himself with deep breaths but they come out stuttered and shaking. His shoulders heave, a lump in his throat chokes him. He screws his eyes shut, trying to shut out the vision of someone caring about him that deeply, but she’s still there. He can still see those piercing blue eyes boring into his soul and reading him like an open book. The moment Steve opens his eyes he sees the blurred outline of Claire Redfield wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

He wants to yell at her to leave, to tell her that he’s a lost cause and there’s no helping him. He’s too damaged, too broken. He’ll never have a normal life. He’ll never be able to pretend he isn’t a monster. He will never be able to have meaningful relationships. But all that comes out of his mouth is a broken, choked sob. Someone is touching him, someone cares about him. And he can’t understand it.

Despite himself, Steve pulls Claire into a tight embrace and sobs into her shoulder. Her fingers run through his hair, while her other hand rubs his quaking back. Steve can’t stem the tears, that’s a feat that even a mighty Redfield can’t achieve, but he can’t deny that simply being in Claire’s arms replaces despair with a strange warmth. For the first time he can remember, he feels...safe.

Eventually, the tears stop, and Steve is able to breath easily again. Claire doesn’t let him go for a minute and for that he silently thanks her. It isn’t until he begins to pull away that she too lets her arms down and pulls back from him.

“I’m sorry…” he mutters, wiping the stray tears from his eyes, “I don’t-”

“Shut up.” Claire commands and takes Steve’s hands from his face. “You have nothing to apologize for.” Darkness crosses her face for a moment. “I should be the one apologizing… I know you-... It’s hard after a while, not being… Not having human contact like that for a while. It’s not something they tell you about in therapy.”

Steve shakes his head, “I needed it. I really… Really did.” He sighs, “I...I didn’t know how much I...everything… still hurts.”

With that same kind smile, Claire leans forward and kisses his forehead. “It takes a lot of strength to admit you’re hurting that much. Give yourself some credit.”

“Maybe…” he says with a sad smile. “... Thank you, Claire. For everything.”

She takes his hand in hers, tracing the callouses and scars with her thumb. “Thank you for coming back.”

[otakween]

07-Ghost - The World (Part. 2)

Episodes 11-20 of the 07-Ghost radio show. I’m really enjoying listening to this. It makes me want to investigate which other anime have radio shows. The only other one I know of is Zetsubou Sensei. Pretty funny that the lesser known shows would be popular enough to be on the radio. Links below for anyone who wants to listen (raw Japanese only). 

Episode 11

This episode kind of feels like the beginning of a new season because they got a new opening and ending theme. They’re nice to listen to but not something I would want to download or anything. They have a cheesy mid-2000s vibe to them (gee, I wonder why?) This episode was cute because they had Hakuren’s VA as a guest. It’s fun to imagine Teito, Hakuren, and Mikage all hanging out together since that never happened in the series. 

This time around they discussed “what would you do if X happened to your best friend” scenarios and read a lot of fan mail. As usual Mikage’s VA lost every game lol. I think Jun (Hakuren’s VA) said at one point that he thinks of Mitsuki (Teito’s VA) as an “ikemen” looool. I just googled her name and she does look really androgynous. 

Episode 12

More of the same, more teasing of Namikawa (one of the fanmails was just asking if he got bad grades in school lol). This time around the beginning conversation was about “who would make a good brother, sister, mom, etc. in the 07 Ghost universe?” It kinda bugs me how surface-level and basic their answers are. They never really mention side characters or manga-only characters so they really only have a tiny amount of people to shuffle through again and again. On the other hand, Namikawa never read the manga so...

They played two games: “which thing is smaller?” and what’s in “Pandora’s box?” Saiga flat out said she didn’t want to do the second game lol. She’s getting bored with the formula. I do think the show is stronger when they’re just chit-chatting or bouncing ideas off listener mail, but the games are easier to understand language-wise so it’s good to have a mix of the two. 

Episode 13 

This episode had Kuroyuri’s VA on as a guest which was a nice change of pace. They discussed grades again (you can tell a lot of the listeners are very young based on the listener mail) and played shiritori using dialogue from 07 Ghost. I feel like they’re getting pretty creative with the games they come up with. 

This episode and the previous one had a lot of ads at the end for 07 Ghost content (DVDs, drama CDs, manga, etc.) They mention the “upcoming live event” which I’m guessing is the same one that was released on DVD. Are live anime events still a common thing? I know the Tales of series has an annual festival so I guess they must be. -sigh- why can’t I live in Japan :( 

Episode 14

This episode was fun to listen to, Namikawa and Saiga crack each other up a lot and have great chemistry. I feel like I’m enjoying this radio show more than I enjoyed the entire series? Loool 

Anyway, in this episode they spent a long time talking about and giving each other nicknames (they settled on “Wada” for Namikawa and “Ouji” for Saiga). Namikawa got roasted by the listeners a bunch, as usual, and they had a “dad joke” competition. Two listeners wrote in about their worries, one was worried about his sore neck and the other’s husband was mad at her for spending too much on anime (lol). I guess this episode came out around the mid-point of the anime’s broadcast because they referenced the Frau dolls and the weird noises they make, which was funny. 

I think I need to listen to more Japanese podcasts cuz this is fun and great practice. If anyone has any reccs, please let me know! 

Episode 15

Sho Hayami (Ayanami’s VA) returns!! His voice is sooo dreeeammy. One of the listener mail’s mentioned his fan club and I totally get it lol. I would join if I could. Anyway, this episode was cute. They talked about their first crushes (Hayami’s was a boy!) and played a game where they had to read some exposition from 07 Ghost and pick out what was wrong about it. Honestly, I struggled to understand that part because fantasy world vocabulary is tricky. Namikawa lost as he always does and his punishment was that he had to talk like a baby for the rest of the episode. He did a really good job lol. 

They did a “last supper” segment again where they ate pudding (flan) with soy sauce, which apparently is supposed to taste like sea urchin...ew. 

Episode 16

This episode was decent, a little meandering lol. They had Hyuuga’s VA on as a guest and he seemed surprisingly shy compared to the character he plays. He was very quiet and didn’t contribute much to the conversation. I was a little nervous when he lost one of the games they played and had to speak “rabbit language” (basically adding “pyon” or “usa” to the end of every sentence) for the rest of the episode, but that actually was exactly what was needed to spice up his debut lol. His awkwardness plus the vocal tic was pretty hilarious. 

This episode took place after the live event because they had some fan mail about it. One girl went with her mom which is so cute (I can imagine dragging my parents to something like that lol). They discussed what it would like to be a twin and played a game where they had to read a bunch of tricky words (mostly katakana) really fast. It sounded really hard! I kinda wish I had the script so I could try for myself. I really like reading katakana 

Episode 17

This episode felt really short, the nico nico video is only 38 minutes long! Castor’s VA guest starred this time and was way more energetic than Hyuuga’s VA in the last episode. He was hamming it up a lot. They discussed sleeping positions and played a game where they got a list of 3 07 Ghost characters and had to figure out what they all had in common. I had fun playing along (although I didn’t do very well lol). Namikawa lost and had to use “zamasu” language? I’m not really sure what that is. 

At the end of the episode they read some listener mail and gave love confession advice lol. Almost made it a third of a way through the show! 

Episode 18

A nice, simple no-guest episode. This time around they discussed what pets would suit them and played family feud basically (and failed miserably). Saiga and Namikawa both got “punished” for failing the game and had to speak like the opposite gender. They both really struggled to do so lol. Masculine/feminine speech is so weird to me. I’m sure English has some, subtle version of this, but if someone told me to “talk like a guy” I wouldn’t know what to do. (Lower my voice? Say “bro” a lot?) It’s always interesting when other languages have a quirk that there’s no real English equivalent for.

This episode felt kind of lazy. They spent most of it just chit-chatting and didn’t seem like they wanted to do the regular corner. They ended up running out of time for the final fan letter reading. I’m not complaining really, it was just noticeably less professional than some other episodes. 

Episode 19

Not gonna lie, the Japanese was a little tricky for me in this one. Haruse’s VA made his show debut and I didn’t recognize his voice at all lol. Haruse barely talks in the show so I was like “???” They asked him what kind of character Haruse is and he was like “...nice?” Lol poor Haruse. Not much to say about him anime-wise. 

This definitely felt like a “we’re running out of ideas” episode. The game they played was really weird. Basically it was “what do you do when X natural disaster occurs?” with 07 ghost characters illustrating what to do vs. what not to do. Haruse’s VA lost and his punishment was to speak in broken Japanese (like annoying foreigner characters do in anime). It was really obnoxious lol. The episode ended with a “Last supper” segment but I had trouble following what they were eating :/ Almost to episode 20!

Episode 20

Another Hyuuga episode, although I felt like he didn’t talk as much this time. These episodes are really starting to blend together. This one was recorded in October so they discussed autumn and things they like/dislike about it. Practically every fan letter was about Namikawa (either bullying or praising him). I finally understand the “Wada” joke (namikaWA DAisuke), it took me a few episodes.

Unfortunately I didn’t really understand much of this episode, especially the game they played. It sounded like they had to pick a symbol to represent a character from 07 Ghost, but I’m not sure if that’s the gist of it. Namikawa lost as usual and his punishment was to speak like an old man. I thought he did a great job! Sometimes I forget I’m listening to voice actors instead of regular radio hosts. It makes sense that all of their punishments would be impressions related. 

[seiin-translations]

2.43 S1 Chapter 2.3 - Dracula and Princess Briar Rose

3. GIRL’S MIND

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Seiin High School was located on a slope at the foot of a mountain, and it took twenty minutes to walk there from the shopping district in front of Nanafu Station. That was why the height difference between the school building and other facilities was so severe. The mountain behind the school building was flattened, and the first sports ground and the slightly narrower second sports ground were arranged like terraced fields, and the outdoors court was on the slope that ran beside those two grounds. That slope was about a hundred meters long, and it was the perfect course for hill running.

The dirt road, which had absorbed the sweat and curses and vomit from thousands of athletes since founding and was trampled down firmly by them, was bone dry from being exposed to the scorching September sun. The regulars were holding game-centered finishing practice for the Spring Inter-High volleyball qualifiers coming up later this month, so during that time, we first-years were assigned to do basic strength training. Our second-year senpais who weren’t on the bench were in charge of it, but these second-years were far stricter than the third-year captains.

“Ayano! Who said you can rest!? Get up and run!”

Our senpais’ angry voice flew at Ayano, who was sitting down halfway up the slope. Somehow, she managed to get up and unsteadily meandering up to where we were, before covering her mouth with an “Urp” and sinking down again. Without giving Ayano time to rest, they scolded, “If everyone’s here, then go down now!” We didn’t even have the energy to complain and came down the slope with our faces hanging down like exhausted slaves. Ayano, standing up while wheezing, was on the verge of tears. Ah, she might throw up… When I saw that, I felt like I was about to puke too, so I decided to not to look back at her.

I didn’t have it in me to reach out my hand today. In terms of physical strength, I was just as exhausted as Ayano, but it was just that I refused to sit down out of pride. I felt gross. My hips felt heavy. Sometimes my vision would suddenly go red and black. I think…that is coming. It was supposed to be still around four days away, so I got careless. Once I became possessed by that thought, I couldn’t stop worrying about the inside of my underwear. How many more times did I have to go up? Do I wait until club activities were finished? What would I do if I run to the washrooms right after and it really comes?

…It was no good. I had to tell them.

“Senpai…”

I called out to my senpais in a fidgety whisper, which was startling for me. Though it shouldn’t be something embarrassing because I saw other girls coming forward about it from time to time, I had to muster up all my mental strength to broach that topic.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

When I told them, I was unexpectedly readily allowed to leave for a short period. Apparently I looked sicker than I felt. Because I, who never whined like Ayano did, told them about it with a ghastly pale face, and it actually made my senpais panic instead.

I was strangely embarrassed about that certain time of the month that every girl had, and even in places where there were only girls, I was afraid to talk about it. Being afflicted with heavy menstrual pains didn’t suit a masculine girl like me if I do say so myself, and I felt like if people knew, they would judge me or be put off.

“Long hair doesn’t suit Ibara-chan.” —I felt like I was letting that kid down, the one who determined my character with an innocent smile. They would probably be picturesque when they fell asleep with menstrual cramps because they were so small, dainty, and fragile.

My motto was to stand up straight and walk with big steps, but I was currently slouching slightly and my stride naturally narrowed. While praying that I didn’t run into anyone, I hurried to the club room building. I was able to get out of club activities, but my crisis hadn’t actually gone away. I recalled not bringing my pouch with me because I didn’t think it was coming yet.

It would be bad if I just rummaged through Ayano’s backpack without asking her…I don’t want to go back now and ask her either…What should I do, what should I do…

There were several boys taking a break in front of the drinking fountain of the club room building. Crap, this was bad timing… I straightened my spine that was bending forward and casually walked past their backs. As I began to walk up the stairs, feeling gravity pulling at my hips ten times more than usual, I ended up slouching again, and right then,

“Suemori Ibara-saaaan. Please show us your panties again today!”

Hearing jeering voices from below, my hands immediately went to my butt. Four or five boys with stupid grins on their faces were looking up at me on the stairs, forming a weird cluster like giving each other neck locks. Were these the same idiots who told Ayano to show her panties last week?

Should I try to run upstairs and escape to the club room? But turning one’s back to the enemy is out of the question! Or should I run down and try to bring down divine punishment to these middle school-looking stupid boys—my head didn’t know what to do, so my body was at a loss, and my left and right feet twisted in a weird way and I ended up missing a step. My legs opened wide and one leg plunged through the gap between the steps, hitting the inside of my thigh hard. This impossible dullness from Suemori Ibara of all people!

“Woah ho, Suemori’s so lame!”

The boys laughed, but they too were indeed a bit flustered. The shame was more unbearable than the pain, and tears welled up in my eyes. The pain of a bruise was nothing compared to the shameful sight of spreading your legs above boys’ heads on the day your period arrived.

And then, someone from behind grabbed me by my arms and pulled me up.

“…Are you alright, Ibara-chan?”

A somewhat gloomy voice came down. The first thing I saw as I craned my neck, half suspended in midair, was red lips and a thin chin, so close that I panicked and pulled my face away.

Kanno, with a sports towel covering his head, was looking down at me worriedly.

“Don’t, don’t touch me!”

I pushed Kanno away without thinking and clung to the railing of the stairs. Kanno awkwardly withdrew his hands, which had lost their place, and apologized as usual. “I’m sorry…” It seemed like I had refused to let him help me up, but I simply didn’t want my body to be touched by Kanno right now… The stupid boys were still looking up at me from below the railing, so I squeezed my throbbing thighs together.

“Oh, okay…Ibara-chan.”

Right after Kanno looked like realized something, he pushed me to the back and stepped forward. My body, which had been hidden in the shade of the eaves, was now exposed to the sun, and I almost shouted, “Ah!” Right at that moment…

Bang!!

A metallic roar pierced my eardrums. My heart shrank, and the sounds that were about to come out of my mouth and the tears that had welled up in my eyes receded.

Kanno had kicked the railing. The towel had fallen, exposing his pale face.

As the shaking of the metal lasted faintly…

“Sorry, but please don’t tease people too much.”

That was said by a voice so meek and subdued that it made you wonder what was that outburst right before. It was directed at the boys who had stiffened in a mass below the stairs and were openmouthed, probably having braced themselves for an angry voice.

“Ibara-chan, come here.”

As though nothing happened, he dejectedly went into the shadows of the eaves again, called out to me and climbed up the stairs. I was rooted on the spot from amazement, but Kanno beckoned to me with his hands behind his back with a “Hey” and I crab-walked up the stairs, mindful of my bottom. Kanno went straight past the girls’ volleyball room that was second from the front and nimbly passed through the outside passageway that was already narrow but crowded by the junk overflowing from each room.

Relegated to the very end of the second floor, in a spot where it was a hassle to get in and out of, was the boys’ volleyball club room. This was just my own impression, but aura of losers was leaking out from the door gap.

“No one’s here right now, so feel free to come in. I just came here to get my stopwatch because I forgot it.”

Kanno said, opening the door and going in. There was no way I could just walk into the boys’ club room and say “Pardon the intrusion” if I was told “Feel free to come in.” As soon as I cautiously peeked in from the door, an indescribable smell of sweat hit me. It was completely different from the scent of the girls’ room I was used to smelling. It wasn’t mixed in with artificial smells like antiperspirant spray, just the smell of bare sweat. It couldn’t be called neat and tidy by any standard, with equipment, personal belongings and trash lying around, but I wondered if it was because we had three times the number of members that it looked emptier than the girls’ volleyball club room. Or, maybe it was simply because girls had more stuff.

Kanno opened the door of one of the lockers, rummaged around, found something and handed it over to me. It was a rectangular object with a short edge of about ten centimeters and long edge of about twenty centimeters, with a colored plastic bag wrapped around it. Its shape, size, and tight packaging, as well as the drugstore logo printed on the bag. A girl would recognize what it was right away, but—why was it coming out of Kanno’s locker!?

“C’mon, take it.”

Kanno said in a muffled voice, sticking his head halfway into his locker. Vividly reminded of a vampire who felt safe being in his own coffin, the picture was strangely familiar.

“And please close that door when you’re done. People will think I’m a pervert if they see this, so…”

“No, you’re enough of a pervert already…?”

Kanno awkwardly tossed it at me, like he was unable to bear its weight, and I had no choice but to yelp and catch the thing that flew. Hmm, there was no mistake about it, this feeling and lightness. There were probably about twenty-four inside to use for many days.

“I didn’t have it because I wanted to have it. I was sent to buy it before…They were probably betting on something, but when I came back, the guys who ordered me to do it were getting yelled at by a third-year and it ended there, then I wondered what I should do with these… I couldn’t have anyone see me have them, I couldn’t throw them away, and if I brought them home, my mom would probably faint.”

“They even made you do that…? When was that? Why didn’t you tell me? I did warn them to stop it.”

“I guess June…? I know you aren’t very good at talking about things like this, Ibara-chan, so I thought it would embarrass you if I talked about it…” June meant that Kanno had this in his locker for three months.

“So, please, use this.”

Kanno said, poking a third of his face out from the other side of his locker. Oh, I’m saved. For a moment, I was simply grateful, but——

I belatedly realized what this offer meant, and my face instantly turned hot.

“Wait, h-how did you kn…you, you really are a pervert…”

“I am not a pervert. It’s unfortunate. It’s rather obvious when you see it, you know? I’ve been practicing with girls since middle school… Don’t girls feel tired and look sick?”

“Yeah, but even other girls don���t know.”

“Huh? Really? But even when I’m there, they say things like, ‘Do you have that today?’… You always look like you’re in pain from the twentieth to the twenty-third…Wait, today’s still the sixteenth.”

“Just wait a minute and be quiet. How did you grasp my…you know…”

The important words wouldn’t pass through my throat, and I turned bright red, my chin wobbling. For me, it was a disgusting, taboo word to even say, something that would force me to transform into an unclean creature I didn’t want to be.

“That’s because I’m always watching you, Ibara-chan…”

“So you’re a stalker, creep!”

“No, you have it all wrong! Don’t call me a creep.”

When I cursed at him unthinkingly, Kanno hurriedly added to what he said with a hurt look on his face.

“I’ve always been your fan, that’s what I meant by always watching you…ah, it does sound kinda stalkerish, but I’m not…um…Ibara-chan, you always saved me, and that’s why I’m here in the girls’ club. If you weren’t here, I would have quit a long time ago, and I might have even quit school…My parents are just overjoyed that I’m going to high school, but they’re shocked that I’m joining the volleyball team again, and that’s all thanks to you. Volleyball is fun. You were also the one who taught me the fun of volleyball…You were the best at volleyball, you were always cool, confident, someone who I could never be on par with. But, lately, I’ve been wanting something more, and, um…”

He retreated into the shadows of the locker once again while restlessly shaking his gaze left and right, and he was coughing so much that I was wondering if he had trouble breathing. No, how should I put it…if someone who didn’t know him saw his behavior, he really would seem like a pervert, but…Kanno, who didn’t talk a lot normally, was earnestly talking like he was scraping up the fragments of words scattered all about his body. Unconsciously overawed, I was unable to interrupt. When he calmed his breathing and faced forward like he had resolved himself, his wandering eyeballs had settled, and his gaze was fixed on my face. He straightened his body that seemed like it was going to snuggly fit into the locker at any moment, and ah, that was when I was reminded that he had overtaken me in height a long time ago.

“Um, I like you, Ibara-chan.”

Right after he said that while looking me in the eye, fire erupted from his face with a thud and he covered his face his hands, exclaiming stuff like “Uwah.”

While Kanno found himself in a fix all by himself, I…

I was so calm that it was uncanny. It was not the time for going into raptures over being confessed to by a boy for the first time in my life.

So it’s like that…

While I was listening, something got stuck in my mind. It was in past tense, all of it. In other words, in Kanno’s head, I was no longer an existence that was cool, confident and the best at volleyball. It meant that the current me was “something I could be on par with.” Even I was very well aware of that, but the fact that I was told that from Kanno’s mouth when I was supposed to take a little more time to come to terms with it within myself was a shock that was like having my head chopped off by a guillotine, and with that shock…

The feeling of something somewhat warm sliding down my inner thigh finally overwhelmed me.

“Ibara-chan…?”

Kanno cautiously raised his face.

The me who was a supreme existence for Kanno had nowadays fallen to the point where I could be obtained if someone wanted me. No matter how much I aimed for the top, I would never be able to jump higher than I did now, but Kanno was undoubtedly continuing to nimbly soar higher and higher at this very moment. Instead of attaching extra fat to his chest and buttocks, he would be covered in more and more supple and strong muscles.

I guess you don’t remember anymore…

“Long hair doesn’t suit Ibara-chan. You’ll look more handsome if it’s shorter.”

That was something said to me. From the smallest and most delicate kid in class. Putting a spell on me to shun being a girl and be cool and handsome, he became independent from my protection before I knew, and on top of that, confessed to me, like I was a clown.

It was now clear that the scratchiness that I felt within me every time I saw Kanno was jealousy and hatred.

“…Sorry, but no.”

Kanno’s eyes widened for a second, and then his shoulders slumped in disappointment.

“The only thing I feel for you is jealousy. You were lucky enough to be born a boy, and without using much effort, you were able to snatch what I want so bad but could never get. You grew a lot, I see… Did you know? I haven’t grown a centimeter since a year ago. My jump power is dropping. I’m gonna be less and less able to jump, just like Ayano. I don’t want that… I don’t want to be Ayano. Being so heavy and shameful-looking, just lumbering around close to the ground…”

“Ibara-cha…don’t…”

When I said Ayano’s name, Kanno suddenly interrupted me with an accusatory voice. I was irritated, wondering if he was finally going to talk to me like he was condescendingly admonishing me. I was very on edge.

I noticed that Kanno’s gaze was directed over my shoulder towards the outside hallway. When I looked back, sure enough, Ayano was standing there. She was holding a sports drink and towel, and her eyes were wide.

What did I say just now—? I was horrified at the words my own tongue wove together.

“Oh, um, Ibara-chan didn’t come back, so I came to check on her, but well, I half did it because I wanted to skip,” Ayano was speaking quickly with a shocked look on her face, and then forced an “…Aha!” like she just remembered to do it. “Ah, haha…that’s right, that’s why I’m useless. I get fat too quickly and it’s no wonder that Ibara-chan hates me, so, so don’t worry about it…”

She suddenly cast down her face with the whitish smile and spoke in a small voice.

“They, they’ll get angry if we don’t back now…I’ll go on ahead...”

She said and turned on her heel. Without looking anywhere but forward, she ran past the girls’ volleyball room, swinging the big butt I had shamed just now and disappearing down the stairs. The sound of squeaky footsteps stamping down the steps became distant.

“Ibara-chan, you have to go after her.”

Kanno grabbed my arm. I, who was frozen, jumped, but my legs didn’t move. If I took even a step forward from here, my blood will…

“It-it’s fine, it’s fine, we’ll meet in practice soon anyways, and she’ll understand once I talk to her… It wasn’t like I was talking about Ayano, just girls in general…”

Of course I was lying. It wasn’t about girls in general or anything like that. While I was blathering to Kanno about stuff that was just me taking out my anger from the ends of my prejudiced mind, it was definitely Ayano who I had been picturing in my mind with contempt.

***

When I returned to practice, Ayano, who was supposed to have gotten back before me, was nowhere to be seen. When my senpais asked me with concern, “Ibara, are you alright?”, I subconsciously put on a tough front and said, “Everything was completely fine. Sorry for all the trouble,” and despite worrying about Ayano, I did the rest of the regimen with the same enthusiasm as everyone else.

When practice time ended and the outside court, which had been roasted by the late summer sun, was finally in the shade with a somewhat comfortable wind blowing, Ayano returned.

She was with Kanno. No way, did he go searching for her…? She whispered something to Kanno, and then came to inside of the fence while awkwardly shrugging her shoulders. Kanno was seeing Ayano out and he himself didn’t go inside, just watching from outside the fence. The sports towel was once again snugly tied around his head.

Ayano first ran over to the captain, received a scolding, and then joined us as we were putting away the net.

“Wh-where did you go? Ayano…”

I made my face up like nothing had happened and called out to her, but she didn’t meet my eyes. I wondered where had she been until now—the tip of her nose was red from being sunburnt. “Ayano, Ayano, what happened?” “Why did you come with Dracky?” Immensely curious whispers immediately surrounded Ayano, and I was shut out of the circle.

Apologize, apologize, apologize, apologize… Just chanting that in my mind like a prayer to Buddha didn’t lead to action. Was I such a dawdling coward? In the end, I wasn’t cool or confident when it really mattered.

Clang, the fence shook violently.

On the inside of the fence, all of the girls’ team ducked their heads as they turned around, and then there was a sudden stir. Kanno gripped the fence with one hand and crouched down like he was hanging from it.

“Kanno!?”

I immediately ran over to the fence. I changed my mind on the way there and turned ninety degrees, rushing out the gate and went outside the fence. I rushed up to him and got on my knees, and when I touched his shoulder, it was hot—!? Kanno’s five fingers, which were still caught on the fence, slipped off and hit the ground. “Kan…” When I pressed his shoulders and tried to look into his face, the towel he covered his head with came loose and exposed his face.

The other members who belatedly gathered at the inside of the fence cried out.

From the bridge of his nose to his cheeks, a dense, closely-packed rash had emerged, and his skin was flaming bright red like he had blisters. Ayano’s slight sunburn couldn’t compare to it. The members in the front row were being pressed against the fence by the pressure from behind and blatantly trying to move back. “Hey, stop pushing!”  

“Don’t…Please don’t look…”

A feeble voice leaked from Kanno’s mouth. He fumbled for the towel and pressed it against his face, curling his back and cowering. The rash also appeared on the back of his hand, peeking out from his long sleeves. Ibara-chan, his small voice entered my ears, and I unconsciously brought my drawn back face close to his.

“…I’m sorry for getting carried away…I know, I’m a total disgrace, and I’m nowhere near equal with you, Ibara-chan…So please, don’t…don’t go saying silly stuff like that…don’t say things that will make you lose your friends because of me…”

There was no one to make fun of, but without knowing what to do, and me and the rest of the team could do nothing but stay frozen in place from confusion. While we had been told that he had a health condition, it didn’t mean we could truly imagine the reality of it, so we thought it probably wasn’t as serious as everyone said, so that was probably why we could mess with Kanno so lightheartedly.

The only one who moved was Ayano. She went around the fence and ran over to our side, thrusting me away and switched places with me, putting the unfolded bath towel on top of Kanno’s head.

“I’m sorry, Dracky, you were with me the whole time, I’m sorry, and thank you… What should I do? Should we go inside the school? Can you walk? Senpai, please call the teacher!”

Ayano at that moment was not slow and sluggish in the slightest. She was quicker and braver than anyone. As though her voice released them from their paralysis, everyone regained their movements. The third-years ran to get their phones to call the advisor. Some came over to help Ayano while others carried over a cooler box.

Amidst all of that, I was the only one who was unable to take any effective action, just sitting on my butt in a daze.

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