#I can write conversation in script form so easily but in prose it's such a struggle

[krenenbaker]

Stop the World - 2: Seize the Moment

Pairing: Malleus/Cater

Warnings/Features: Angst (eventually with a happy ending), mention of death, (somewhat?) posessive Malleus Draconia

Summary: Cater and Malleus have found a comfortable rhythm to their lives in their last year at Night Raven College. But as the threat of change creeps closer, their fears about the future do too.

Malleus: Clinging onto the present

Notes: I've been working on the third and final part of this (thanks mostly to Inky!!), but I realized that I haven't actually posted the second part here yet, only on my AO3! If you haven't yet, you can read the first part here, which can be read before or after this one. Now just to finish the final part... And I will actually post the third part here in a timely manner once it's finished, instead of a month later! ^^;

Tags: @dove-da-birb, @inkybloom-luv, @silvers-numberonefan, @azulashengrottospiano (if you'd like to be tagged, or not tagged, in the writing I post, please let me know!)

Part 1 | Part 3 | AO3 Version (ft. all chapters)

When Malleus made a commitment, he put everything he had into it. He was aware that this intensity could be off-putting to some. It tended to scare people away. Even more so with everyone already fearing him for his name, strength, size, and social position.

Everyone, it seemed, but the human sitting beside him that very moment, leaning into his side. The one who was brave enough to approach him with a smile and, curiously, gentle taunts a number of months ago. The human who slowly opened his heart, gifting everything from his tears to his name, and let Malleus - no, "Mal" - make his claim, finding true warmth, and laughter, and love within. The little human who became his most precious Treasure.

Despite their differing positions - and shared masculine identity - both of their families were generally supportive, as were his future subjects. Or they would be, were Malleus not the next, and last, Draconia in line for the throne. He knew that he was expected to marry and subsequently sire an heir. Or two. Or five. And though his people held no prejudice against same-gender love, his heart had been captured by someone who - as he was - could not produce children. (There were ways, of course, which would be discussed when the time was right.)

While there were also very few issues with marriage between nobility and other classes, the same could not be said for relationships between a fae and a human... especially a human foreigner.

(Perhaps it was time for that to change. For the kingdom to begin to heal from the past and enter a new era.)

Even so, another thought plagued his mind. Malleus also knew that time would continue to pass, and it would not be kind. He would see his partner, his Treasure, his Cater age and wither and die as he continued to live on. He would barely even reach middle age as moss would inevitably begin to creep onto a slowly weathering gravestone.

And even now, their time together at Night Raven College was passing terribly fast and was nearly through. In mere months there would be no more lazy afternoons at each other's dorm for tea. Visits into town to try spicy ice cream or the newest artistically prepared coffees would end. There wouldn't be any more weekends in the school library studying with their legs softly pressed together as they sat sharing a textbook. And quiet moments at dusk, watching the sun dip down over the trees in the courtyard, like this evening, would cease.

He would never wish to admit so, but it hurt.

Malleus just wanted things to stay as they were. No royal duties to fulfill. No judgements. No cruel time eating away at their bodies. Just him and Cater, sitting side-by-side as the stars slowly appeared above them.

He feels a slight tenseness from his companion. Well, the sun has set; it must be becoming cold for a human. He gently grabs Cater's hand, both to offer some warmth, and in an attempt to quiet his own worried mind.

In that moment, Malleus swore that he would keep Cater Diamond by his side. He was committed to his human... no matter what comes.

[pens-swords-stuff]

For Post-Script, what do you think is your favorite aspect of using an epistolary narrative style? (Bonus: How do you hone your narrator's speaking voice to make it feel as authentic [and relatable] as possible, especially given the absence of typical exposition that we might see in other more traditional narrative forms?)

Mina, thank you so much for this wonderful question! It’s really interesting and something I hadn’t outright considered; I really enjoyed thinking about it. You asked this ages ago, and I’m so sorry that it’s taken me so long to answer!!! I swear I appreciate it and I wasn’t ignoring it.

For those of you who don’t know, Post-Script is a WIP I write with McHaggis (@decantae) written in a letter-writing format. Here is the WIP page.

What do you think is your favorite aspect of using an epistolary narrative style?

I really just love the whole aesthetic of writing letters! Especially in this day and age where phone calls, DMs, and video chat is so prevalent, letters have become a bit more obscure and even more special than before. It has an intimacy to it, and it feels very personal. This is especially true in the case of love letters, which Post-Script will eventually evolve into.

Also, the entire reason why we decided to write together in an epistolary format is because McH loves the style, and they talked me into loving it as well. We’re both trash. Writing Post-Script also goes really quickly for us since there’s less exposition and prose to go through, and that’s a really nice bonus.

Writing wise, it’s quite interesting because in my opinion, the show-vs-tell is done really differently.

For example, in most traditional narrative styles, we experience what the protagonist(s) are experiencing. We are told what they feel, we are shown what they see, etc. However, in an epistolary narrative style, it’s all based on what each person is willing to write to the other — in other words, it’s mostly ‘tell’. When people usually write letters, they tend to be more straight to the point rather than layers of prose and description about what story they’re telling (of course, this isn’t always true, and that’s perfectly fine). Bishop and B.S., our two main characters don’t do that, at the very least.

Aside from the mystery and the conflict going on in the plot of Post-Script, one of the most important themes about it is the evolving relationship, and its eventual culmination into a romance. This is what we have to show via tell because neither of them will actually articulate it to each other until there’s a significant turning point, and there’s no way to add exposition, internal monologues, actions, etc., to help us imply it. So we try to do it tonally, by shifting how and what they talk to each other about as they get to know each other better. It’s a fantastic challenge, and has really helped us shape the voices for our characters.

Using an epistolary narrative style also allows us to experiment with what we choose to reveal and hide in a way that doesn’t happen in a more traditional narrative style. We have a plot and several subplots going on in the background, but they’re usually not described in detail — it feels like a grand experimentation with foreshadowing because you never know when that one minor detail in a letter dated several months ago will suddenly become relevant. There’s a lot of things our characters don’t reveal to each other; things they don’t think are particularly relevant or meaningful; purposely include or leave out; or just possibly are not aware of what’s going on.

I know that this happens in most people’s plotting and writing — I don’t think I’m articulating this properly haha. I guess what I’m trying to say is… We have to think about it differently because it’s very limited, so it feels very different.

I think Post-Script really benefits from it being a Harry Potter fanfiction. Unlike original fiction with its own lore, we can safely assume that most of our readers have an understanding of the Wizarding World — we don’t have to have our characters explain what the Ministry of Magic is like, for example. or what the Order of the Phoenix is. Both Bishop and B.S. know what they are, and we don’t have to force an explanation anywhere because our readers are already familiar with it. It may required more thinking if it was different.

How do you hone your narrator’s speaking voice to make it feel as authentic [and relatable] as possible, especially given the absence of typical exposition that we might see in other more traditional narrative forms?

First of all, I think the fact that two people are writing this really helps. McH writes for Bishop, and I write for B.S.; we can both focus on honing the voice of our own character without having to worry about differentiating, and nailing another character’s voice. We both have different writing styles and a very good understanding of what our characters sound like, so we don’t have to worry about them sounding too similar. I don’t know how much difficulty I would have in making sure each voice is distinct if I was writing this on my own.

And for me personally, I consider dialogue and characterization to be one of my biggest strengths in writing so it’s actually a lot easier for me to convey B.S’ voice in this format than it is in narrative prose. B.S. is especially suited for a format like this because she’s a very distinct character who isn’t particularly worried about formalities or holding herself back. She’s very honest and true to herself, so almost immediately right off the bat, I was able to start incorporating her authentic self into the letters by adding in dumb jokes that she thinks are clever and funny, and writing out exactly what she thought about their conversations.

Exposition is usually just B.S. updating Bishop on what’s happening on her end and because that would be very boring on its own, I take advantage of the fact that it’s filtered through her very opinionated perspective. No person is truly a neutral third-party, so it adds a bit of realism and character to every piece of exposition I write in Post-Script. What B.S. gets mad about for example and goes off on a rant helps characterize her by showing how she gets angry and what she gets angry about, while simultaneously filling people in on an important moment of the plot.

The small things are also really important; just a little extra detail that’s not necessary to the plot or to their agreement of exchanging information, because they do have a life outside of the plot, and every single thing helps paint a better picture of who they are. There’s also the added bonus of the small details illustrating the evolution in their relationship as the details become more personal, and more mundane as they get more comfortable with each other.

It’s also interesting to note: I’m by no-means mischaracterizing B.S. in Post-Script, but she’s a bit different in person than she is in her letters. You know, similar to how our online personas and personalities aren’t always congruent with how we present ourselves in real life. B.S. comes across as a lot more confident and smooth in her writing, because words are her strength — writing is her job, so she’s very good at conveying her thoughts, and has the courage to be bolder. In person however, she’s easily flustered and is a lot more emotional, so the way she reacts to Bishop in writing, is very different from how she would react to it if he had said those things to her in person.

This is so long I’m so sorry! I also rambled a bit really late at night, so many apologies if this doesn’t make sense.

[restlessmuseum]

nomen amen (or “paraphernalia”: back by popular demand)

                                    (where books compete for space with pottery)

We were already halfway through interminability. Away all redundancy of deficiency from the page, the tear from the past to mend us about to rampage. This far we had not said anything good but perfection required, in tone and content, inexplicable. (1) I found the crux in the posture to device, like an impostor happens in his tender, (2) a damage done like the wrapping paper of a ducked present. (3) Under the stance of unison, the shallower I read between the lines the further I'm improved from the time of my oversight, (4) the unison becomes the sound she phews down to my very being, like but the rest I forgot about... Sorry, got it wrong. Actually, I wanted to continue this something started spreads ago, but the prose screeches and cackles around its ineliminable inexactitude. I really don't feel like resuming anymore, or should I say, I'm done boggedly running after the end of my premises. Yes something happened, something to investigate in a whole other direction. So, gonna take all, this will be the first part. I wish I could express revolutionary philosophisms, I thought I could be a poet because I'm unable to be an essayist and a novelist. I'm not good at public speaking. I entered Tumblr to be found by publishers and make money: I had a system of truths and truly nothing else to say. Besides, what did this idea of klein Lebensdarbietung mean? Is the text doing its characters or are these ones setting out their own words? Text's abolition of today, which is nothing but "the sentences already written, the sentences that people say, the sentences yet to write; verses, words, spacings, texts' dissemination, whatever you want, about the purely sign-linguistic-textual" (cit.) verbatim et literatim, and here is another example of my strugglings to go on properly. In any event it is clear that we are moved when required, except the exempts. (5) It is always the most unexpected time to undergo the aha entanglement. In constant foresight I guiltily prepare to hindsee the neglect and with confambulatory prowess I succumb to the development in this underpass of construes. How much do we match with our sounds? — asking myself. In this respect I'm afraid to surprise me onstage like the surrenedered one (and here onpage, ah foolishness, as playwright). But if I leaf compulsively through hundreds of pages, that's to find my words not belonging to me, and the others to fight (me) with. As I am nearing the open conversation, I make up my mind never to read me. Tons of notes, reproaches and scratchpads. Tons of work to do. And I have to get rid of the old adjustments once and for all. (6) Electra the yet-signed. You like the simple words, the ones you recognize already written, the crystalline syllabification that enoculates the wholeness of an order babbling sibyllinity downstream. You carry on with the work of literature: how the body absconds at the risk of space and time with them. Imperfect doubling, mirror images, and repetition in her practice. Topical scratches. Interceptors sought in everyday life — like unspeakables — that she then distorts to create the straight path in reverse. Poetry will not touch her, because poetry is just the unwritten complexity going wrong side along the process of self-becoming, a recent installation, midway between marble and corporal desires in an ascending scale of hardness. (7) Listening to the closest friends, the process of self-becoming could only linger primarily in the sight of aesthetic, then morality, then religious status quo. But friends come always as a closer, blind alley, at the end of tears: a misunderstanding at first, then never read enough. (8) It is often the case that the practice of consensually agreeing to one's own mental performance and self-image by means of meddled languages and lineages may become a genuine bondage of freedom. The restrained partner can derive any drift in the set of possibilities so that we use to say the doing is more important than the outcome. (9) The doing is in uncomfortable or painful positions, for example as a punishment: then, easily it tends to be forgotten, because unforgivable. That's why the effect is the same as a verbal collage, but 1) rips are often behind schedule or on borrowed time, "out of sync with the fade" (cit.) hearth of what seems to be the Pentecostal tongues of fire; and 2) metaphors like "the rope of telephone charades" or "the coils of something wound in the form of a revolution to come is the licking of sugar injury, met since the starting point" are not allowed. "Real me is way more concerned with" (cit.) the Transcaspian line that follows the pattern of a crosswording of the desert. (10) Rather than holding on to me tight I choose to distance myself from what I'm being forced to watch daily. Dies irae dies illa desirable. Without prejudice to this last inescapable point, the first issue represents the Derridean crux of the matter, about which I will be saying something bad in the wrongest moments, since my voice is as effective as my unsuccessful rewrites. I just want, by using the instruction books, the border of this drama, accelerated and hence trespassed in time into ridiculousness, to be experienced as the comedy it is. There is a hour of the wolf and there is a hour the wolf is afraid of. When the time is right I'd like you all to be safe to be spared in my turn from this construction beyond good and better. (11) Here you shine white with noise. "Sonorous cobweb" (cit.) made of only one thread, the unbent line of homeostasis at long last kept in crisis. (12) This narration should have had a different common thread. "And yet", imprint, "it moves" (cit.) as sensible prose. Prose of proses. The dispelled thing, spilled on Tumblr, disseminated. The seedbed: descendants, everspring off, family. The planting postdisposed. All going as planned. (13)   When I know that I don't know where to start a carving, I start a list of synonyms or unyoke a fable from a series of rereadings. What excommunication if you can't subvert the strainer? (14) Once upon a time Electra, beloved only sign of her father, has a brother. Agamemnon possesses the actuality and practicality of the dead: he wants to see water circulate water in laminar rheumatology and freshness sculptures out of tempered air. [director's note: the Argolis' scene isn't even entitled to melt!]. She eats anise candies and unwarmed foods without a problem. She is so lovely when she urinates first thing in the morning, holding the head in her hands, graeaean ownership. Yes, I'm worthy of attending to the offertory on the altar of love. So many congratulations against my behalf that the opposite seems true. (15) "A woman with long hair is not a simple point of view" (cit.). She's got a prompt night's sleep and reasonable. We cling to angelic accidents. We are clung to our soundtrack. (16) Indeed love is not "the panic subsidence onto the body" (cit.) [director's note: can we let the body become finally soaked in real pornography and never mind, here?] but sheer faith for a symbolic subject who's shattered fully loyal. Intermediate sprint of a life midpoint crossroads that lead at the same destination to flee from. (17) Because, as it goes, her staple is such a volitive confidence meaning to me the wait of the powers that created us, the coincidence of both of us makes our skewness on my side of the derangement. Averted word, when addressed. I am a bad Greek at the time of Christianity and a bad Christian on such dysfunctional divertissements. Who knows how ethically important it is today? I retain it, ending up forgetting everything else, and am lookin' very bad. (18) Of course the movement is diminished in certain directions; the style more flattened upon my chosen sickness that we now have no use for, after the setting of the starting stances; I suffer from more severe erections. An acquired kurtosis distributes my monodimensional remarks as the fourth cumulants in order of precedence. Still a lot of exercise to get. Busy like the evermentioned forgettables I'm at that stage where it's difficult for me to even do difficult things. Wrongstaged, I can't compete. I only challenge. (19) Therefore coincident like the two norths of which one is sinking liminal in the perfectly unsaid of your perfect cues. In one fell swoop you pone the part and mastery. And in the next. And the apnea for the answer back. Teeth gouged by the opposite of words in formation for a smile. The winky face par excellence. Here's the real spectator of my vocalized character. I wedge the self with a puny malapropistic idioticon to spread now that I'm a simplex person. As long as I continue to improve in (furtive, it has to be) apprenticeship I'm losing abilities. Old mistakes reappear, no inspiration from mumpsimuses. (20) Where adults flutter, she, disemvowelled and free from frills, spoken by the plural to be inscribed in the Sophoclean, in the Euripidean, in the Hofmannsthalean, in the Yourcenarian script, lost in tv shows and blatant phone calls, is, for me, abused of notations but who am I to denounce such an effusive happiness? There's nothing she can't Netflix. (21) No banana peel on the slope of her singularity — reversible up to a point, interchangeable up to a point, genderbending up to a point from the same side of view. Slotting minims in the same tone as the main characters. That the same out-of-turness is imbricated. (22)

Virtuosity was painlessly flaying the secret from the kids. This is tragedy. We all know what everyone should have said, sorrows come only after. We see each other for sure and too well. Find your trace in the deep of your prompter's heart. Dimmable glow of ancient times. Under guillotine percentages, under curtain at half-mast, under the veils in the dance of the seven veils. What am I trying to say? (23)

In the floodlights' gloom, without changing the rules of the game, exit khorós. With whom would you listen to you speaking? (24) Woods of brightness wherever, it makes me want to expect your coming deaf-handed right therever, the braindomed untrodden order of phrases where roommouths around it are opening. (25) A substratum, but rather as two shadows they finally vest themselves without amendment, and just drag on this semi-detached ward where it just doesn't feel like our theater anymore. So that there may well be the laetum and lethean occurrence of a new polarization. (26) It is no coincidence that here you're always cold and pale. What a cutie! (27) But maybe that's just too much information. Now would be the time to shut up even more. Already being in the manner for that: being at one with the template versus falling back into the patient subjectivity to agency, to make war and to make love with the weapons of the unconditional surrender. The book is that inferring the timbre of each Klagesprache. (28) Like the current situation could return to equilibrium because of an indefinite vocabulary which is still fighting us pressurers. We come across the unilaterality of it every day. Its constitution. (29) But infinity alive doesn't exist. We can approximate it in the endless rummaging and musing. (30) Approximation is worth nothing. We get sick for the words that once beguiled us. The limits of infancy don't set. And now I just -ess the world in voluntary silence nonexperienced. (31) With plex I brux my certainty and centuries. Party time abounds. (32) Clause: applause. (33)

[maneaterwithtail]

A lot of people were acquainted with him through his prolific participation in News & Politics, but to me Aaron was always an author, one half of the team behind Hybrid Theory. That fic was a bastion of creativity, drama, and wry humor; a ludicrous and ambitious premise, played gloriously straight. It provided me with much-needed hope and entertainment in years past. His death comes as a punch in the gut, and takes the wind of optimism out of my sails.

I never knew him well, and now I never will. Rest in peace, Aaron. The world is lessened by your absence from it.

-orm Ember

I didn't want to write this. 

Not just for the obvious reasons, that nobody likes to say goodbye to a friend like this. I didn't want to make this about me, because it isn't about me. I wanted to say something about him, to tell his story, to express the tiniest part of the loss I feel in a way others could understand. 

But I came to realise that it wasn't for me to tell his story. I can't. That story was for him to tell, and unfortunately, he cannot. The only story I have to tell is the story of us. So that's what I'll do. 

I met Aaron Peori when we were both new in high school, about twenty-five years ago. Glace Bay High was the tenth of the eleven schools that I attended in my eleven years of schooling, and so by then I was almost as well-practiced in "meet new friends" as I was in "meet the new local pack of bullies". Walking home, I noticed one guy about my age that always walked alone, reading a book. In other words, a fellow nerd, a weirdo, an outcast. Like me. After a couple of days of spotting this lone reading fellow, he happened to be reading a book by Christopher Pike, an author I also had books by. That was, as the saying goes, an opening.

"Hey, isn't that a Christopher Pike book?" I asked this stranger, casually, as if I hadn't already known.

He looked up at me, not even showing any surprise that some weirdo had walked up and asked about the book his nose was in. "Yes," he said, peering at me owlishly from behind his glasses, then after a moment added, "He's a good author."

By the time we reached home that day, we were already good friends. From that point on, in fact, we were virtually inseparable, aided by the fact that he lived almost literally in my backyard.

From the very beginning, we were creative collaborators. At first, we were using GI Joes and a few other toys in elaborate setpiece dioramas that spanned his house's enclosed front porch, and sometimes spilled out to occupy part of the year as well. Factions, sacrifices, betrayals, and no doubt embarassing-in-retrospect dialogue were all a part of those first afternoons and weekends.

I think he first got a copy of the Marvel Super Heroes RPG from his cousin. Before I'd met him, Aaron and his cousin had both been drawing their own comics about a space-based superhero team called Sonis. Now, with a tool that you could use tell stories about superheroes, and rules to arbitrate - our new great dioramas were ones made of words, not toys. I quickly made my own "expanded universe", about a group of mercenary superheroes called Heroes For Hire. 

At that point, what turned out to be a very long-lasting pattern was set. Aaron was the GM, and I was the player. Aaron created the worlds, and I lived the characters in them. He did want me to be the GM sometimes (it's more fun being the player!), but I was always uncomfortably aware how much better at it he was than me, and so I felt intimidated to pit my own lesser stories against the epics he created.

As time went on, another pattern that would be long-lasting emerged: Aaron and I's stories became vastly greater in scope. He rewrote the resolution system of the game to account for much higher power levels than the original design used (Ochre feats!), and eventually we dispensed with the rules altogether, playing completely free-form with no set rules and only the occasional dice roll. I learned to handle multiple characters at once, and bored at the success easily reached by my insanely overpowered characters, learned to find more fun in getting them in trouble instead. Aaron learned to handle the narrative challenges faced by trying to craft stories about protagonists who had literal "I win" powers, and weren't very likeable to boot.

Very little of Heroes For Hire would be something I wouldn't be embarassed to show off today, but my former internet nom de guerre "Blade" comes from the most central and overpowered character of those days.

About a year before I left Cape Breton, Aaron and I discovered two things of lasting consequence: anime, via his having a comic adaptation of the movie "Project A-ko" in his huge box of comics that I would regularly raid, and fanfiction, which I had been introduced to via USENET by another friend of mine, Mark MacIsaac. After I left, Aaron had more free time, and thus he started writing a story that combined two of his favourite things: the then-popular anime Ranma 1/2, and Star Wars. 

Aaron wrote prolifically, longhand on sheaths of paper, in his inscrutable and typo-laden scrawl. My role in those first stories, for all they were credited under both our names, was just to type these up and edit them - but that wasn't a small task, to be fair. I can type 60wpm despite still pecking with two fingers instead of touch-typing, a skill that dates to those early manuscripts. 

That level of collaboration, though, wasn't enough. Soon we took to role-playing games again, and I took on various Ranma characters in lengthy phone conversations where he was once again the DM. Those games formed several of the plots for Ranma: Curse of Darkness, and the entirety of the plot of Kyoto Chronicles (sadly never actually finished), along with other stories both Ranma and non that never made it to the internet. Again, he would write the scripts and I would type them up, now with more creative control and editing. 

The time came when we once again lived in the same city, able to really collaborate with both of us writing scenes. All of this finally culminated in Hybrid Theory, our longer-than-Lord-of-the-Rings magnum opus, and something we were both pretty proud of despite the various flaws and that we totally botched poor Rei's character arc.

After writing something like that, we were sure, it would be easy to write something for professional publication. But unfortunately, it never came to be. Circumstances separated us again, several promising projects got stalled after a few chapters, and then the grinding workload he faced at his job hurt his ability to write consistently.

But Aaron never stopped writing fanfiction. His mind never stopped working. Most of what he wrote was "junk" in his words, and he wouldn't even show it to me, but he was still thinking up stories and worlds and his favourite thing of all: elaborate fight scenes. He once told me he could write in any series, no matter how crappy or derivative, "as long as the main characters can run up walls".

It frustrates me that I cannot prove to anyone here how brilliant Aaron was, because that brilliance was hidden behind the various flaws in his prose style. His prospensity for typos never did much improve, though he could at least spellcheck stuff he wrote on a computer rather than longhand. He never got hung up like me searching for the exact right word, and so he often just used the same words over and over. For those that read his last work, I can only explain that I took out a ton of "snaps" - "snapped her head back", "snapped his wrist forward", "the snake snapped out" and yet there are STILL that many in there. I was going to do a much more thorough editing pass when it was finished. 

But that is all surface-level. Where Aaron excelled was in his vision for a setting and story. He could take the ridiculous and make it somehow sublime - indeed, he often challenged himself with making ridiculous or cliche concepts work. He could keep track of a million dancing pieces and know precisely which should enter the stage, and from where. It's not that I didn't contribute meaningfully to our collaborative efforts, but I often felt like a child with crayons colouring in the lines of a sketch by Da Vinci. Even if my colouring was good, it wasn't the masterpiece.

His players knew, though. Another habit Aaron kept for the rest of his life was GMing (though he enjoyed playing, when the opportunity was afforded to him), even if he couldn't do it as much in recent years. Aaron was a masterful GM, able to coax out strong story arcs and dramatic moments from players of any skill level, able to make NPCs that the players hated or loved or both, able to coax rambunctious player parties into dramatic clashes and events that never felt railroaded. But perhaps even more than that, he was a master of making game rules work for him instead of against him. Aaron loved role playing game rules: one of his primary hobbies and uses of his spare cash was to buy new gamebooks, even if he never planned to use them for a game. He'd devour them, expertly analyse their strengths and flaws, modify and house-rule them to his liking, and even a notoriously tricky game to GM like Exalted flowed smoothly in his hands.

His set of replacement Dragonblooded charms are still the best and most flavourful charmset ever made for them. And he always maintained that the best game system to run Star Wars with was the pulp action game Adventure! - which was the very last game I'd play with him. He was, as always on these matters, completely correct.

In another world, even with the problems we had, I'm sure Aaron could have been a published author. The problem, if problem it was, was that Aaron's prolificness stemmed from his own joy in writing and creating. Ultimately, if he was more interested in writing about a magical self-insert Sakura than he was in something "professional", then that's what he did. He took note of criticism and changed things if he got it, but ultimately the only critic whose opinion he internalised was himself. He wrote because he enjoyed writing. If somebody else enjoyed what he did, great. If nobody did, he'd write anyway.

Aaron and I were so close that my father asked me if we were gay once. We weren't - I'm straight, and he was (unknowingly at the time) asexual. But we loved each other anyway. We had the kind of easy camraderie and understanding where we could nostalge and talk for hours upon hours, week upon week, and never get bored even when we didn't have really anything to talk about. We were never bored of each other's company. From that very first day we met, we understood each other in ways that nobody else ever did, or ever would. I never pictured my life without Aaron in it. I was going to be a writer, I knew at 15 years old, with Aaron. I was going to move back to Canada someday - and live near Aaron. 

There is a hole, and it cannot be filled. It hurts, and it will always hurt. And yet I am greater for having it. It is unthinkable to wish that I didn't have it. My life without Aaron is unthinkable. I'll have to think of it, maybe another day, but not yet.

Aaron's last few years were difficult in some ways. He stuck in a predatory, horrible job that left him perpetually sick and exhausted, the only thing in the 25 years I knew him that actually forced him to stop writing and GMing for any length of time. He was too proud to take help, too tired to look for an alternative. He nearly died of a perforated ulcer a few years ago, and that added "chronic pain" to his ailments, and being him, he would only take painkillers when it became unbearable. It was unsustainable, we knew it, but he was always reaching for that promotion that would finally bring the shorter hours he had been asking for. In the meantime, he'd always say "Don't worry about me, I'm fine." I wish he had been right.

And yet.

In those same years, Aaron discovered himself. He discovered that he wasn't the strange not-wanting-sex freak he had grown up thinking he was, that there were many people like him out there. He got in touch with the emotions he had suppressed within himself due to a traumatic childhood experience, and while he sometimes had difficulty handling his newfound sadness (he was striken by grief like I'd never seen over the death of his grandfather) or anger (political topics were verboten in our conversations over the last few years), I believe that for all the pain and overwork and lack of creative output he was still in some ways never happier than he was these last few years.

He told me once that he wanted to find a partner of either gender, who didn't need or didn't want sex, but could be with him and hold him close when he needed it. I cried, and told him I knew he could find someone once he was out of that job. He deserved it. He deserved that happiness too.

This forum (although not solely) had a lot to do with him discovering himself, and that is why I felt I had to post about him here. You meant more to him than you know, and to some of you, though I don't know your names, I owe a debt I can never repay. Whoever you are, thank you so much. You helped him in a way I couldn't. The joy and hope of his last years came from the help you gave him.

And that's the end of the story of us. Aaron was exhausted, pushing himself beyond what he ever should have - now, at least, he can rest. Aaron was in pain, but now the pain is gone. There was nothing good or right or kind or acceptable about it, but it can't be changed, it can't be helped. 

Goodbye, Aaron. I love you. Thank you for writing stories with me.

-Chris Mcneil addressing sufficient velocity forums

[amarketingautomation]

Gaming the algorithm: SEO and the battle between creativity and visibility

You can write something in the best way it can be written, or in the way it’ll get seen by the most people. These two things never align fully.

(Image: Unsplash/ Federica Galli)

My first proper, paid job was in a form of writing I’d consider somewhat a bastardisation of writing itself.

I’m talking about search engine optimisation, or SEO, writing. It’s writing that walks the tricksy line between sentences humans like and sentences Google’s algorithm likes.

Anything designed by humans will (perhaps inevitably) be gamed by humans, and the Google algorithm is no exception. To appear first in the suggested results for, say, “cheap haircut Melbourne” is prime real estate — over 75% of people don’t click to page two of Google results for any search they enter. Each subsequent page is visited by fewer and fewer people, and then by the time you get to page five or six, pretty much no one’s looking at all. On the World Wide Web, it’s easy to be rendered invisible by sheer magnitude of alternatives.

It didn’t take long after the advent of the internet for arms races to erupt for dominance in the results of popular searches on Google. The Google algorithm ranks websites on, amongst other factors, “relevance” to users’ initial search terms, so marketers and SEO specialists worked to inject “relevance” artificially into the text of their clients’ websites.

For a robot, even one as sophisticated as Google’s, the metric of “relevance” is largely constructed numerically. If you Google the word “helicopter” then a website where the word helicopter appears 0 times is irrelevant, and a website where it appears 50 times is much more relevant.

The daily nuts and bolts of my first office job were reverse engineered from that metric. I’d come into work with my $1 coffee from 7/11, sit down and write a website for a florist in Richmond, ensuring each page was full of the words “florist Richmond” so that when someone googled “florist Richmond”, this florist in Richmond appeared higher up than any other florists in Richmond.

It was a steep learning curve. Growing up as a bookish kid I had internalised the specialness of words; their magic properties. But now this job (and the internet generally) demanded I acknowledge an additional, mercenary purpose for the units of language. Online, sentences take on a dual function precisely because the internet is one big database — navigated through the function of search.

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Sentences are not simply sentences, no. They become vehicles for keywords, so that people might find, load and read the sentence itself. Keywords occur actively, in the case of optimisation, and passively, in the case of everything else. When you upload words, any words, you consent for the net to alchemise them into keywords.

You may not personally care if Google likes your prose, your tweets, your digital chapbook, your Medium rant, your dormant LiveJournal, your piece for Wheeler Centre Notes; but care or not, Google still has its opinion on your work.

When I started this job I was a screenwriting student (a form where concision is particularly important), and was soon alarmed to see how elastic my sentences could be to hit my keyword quotas; how the length between capital-letter start and full-stop end could accommodate two, three, four keyword phrases at a time, on and on to occupy a paragraph unto itself, brevity to be avoided, not embraced, with the aid from commas, semicolons, parentheses and — lazily — hyphens in place of em dashes.

I was even more alarmed when I noticed such sentence elasticity seeping into my scripts, articles, prose.

If you do it 9–5, five days a week, SEO writing retrains your brain to see sentences as vehicles — rather than simply units of expression. And once sentences become vehicles they easily become clown cars, stretching the confines of capacity with an impossibly large number of somersaulting keyword jesters; run-on sentences runneth over.

Maybe this piece reads as an indictment of the form that paid my rent and fed my stomach for years. But it’s not. What’s the alternative; to be unseen, unread? The only border separating writing from journalling is a reader outside yourself. Journalling is not without therapeutic benefit, of course. But also (and this is a question I ask myself every time I sit down to write) — who cares?

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? Or, more pointedly, if you write the most beautiful prose in known history, but no one reads it — who cares?

You can write something in the best way it can be written, or in the way it’ll get seen by the most people. These two things never align fully, and almost all writing that hasn’t been lost to history (or page 76 of Google) relies on a compromise of the two.

A conversation between creativity and commerce defines all art, but it might be more apt to call this a conversation between creativity and visibility — and this is a conversation amplified on the database we call the internet.

Even without a commercial stake in whether your words are read or not, we all write to be seen, don’t we?

This is what I mean when I say SEO writing is a bastardisation of writing. It’s an overt compromise between writing and marketing. My first proper paid job taught me to accept the marketing inherent within all writing, and the compromise. Even if I still have trouble with full stops.

Rather than be paralysed by complete devotion to the idea of writing to perfection, I concede, in small ways, that writing must be found in order to exist. I push on, I compromise, I finish. I upload. Maybe there is writing that isn’t marketing itself, in one way or another.

But I sure haven’t read it.

This article was first published in “Full”, an edition of Notes from The Wheeler Centre.

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