#This was intended to be more about the emotions than the actual solving but yea

[starculler]

Looped

Here’s my notes of that Young Justice death loop fic inspired by the Happy Death Day movies that I’ll probably never write. I didn’t get terribly far into figuring out how things go down in regards to solving the issue or solid motivations behind the actual murdering or anything, but if you want a rundown of how the loops were gonna go, then this is the post for you.

General premise: The Team is training with Black Canary who, unknown to them, is mostly just keeping them busy while some league business is going down (some Doctor Fate type magical issue that may or may not involve Klarion which results in .... A Time Loop!). At the same time, we’ve got movement from some villain(s) looking to make the best of a distracted JL by taking out a hit on Robin.

The idea was to use the idea of a time loop to mess with the fic’s format. So maybe the first two chapters are nearly identical and detailed but by the time you get to loop 54, you get something like a single word (or no word) update with only the word “Again.” on there or beginning to use chapter’s titles to help portray not just passage of time but also frustration among other things. Should each loop be its own chapter to drag out the suffering alongside Dick (a kind of compounded experience) or would grouping them work better to keep reader interest? That sort of stuff. Also the loops were generally a few hours long instead of a whole day, just to throw a wrench into Dick being able to detective his way out of it.

And now, onto the loops!

[Warnings for death, blood, violence, and injury under the cut]

(1) The first time he dies it’s unexpected. He rounds the corner on his way out of the training room, down the hall to the common room with the team trailing him, excited to thrash KF in a new fighting game Bruce let him buy when he feels the firey pressure of a knife sliding cleanly through his stomach and hears the wet squelch of it being dragged up up up until his insides spill out. It’s quick, brutal, and unexpected. A hand catches his shoulder as he blacks out, keeping him upright as the rest of the team comes up behind him. He hears M’gann scream and then nothing.

(2) Robin wakes up to Black Canary’s fist slamming into his jaw so hard his back hits the floor and the training room’s buzzer announces his defeat. He blinks black spots out of his eyes. He rubs his jaw, looking around, taking in the same scene and dialogue as before and wonders if maybe he hit his head too hard. Wary, but convinced it’s just some weird deja vu, he trails behind the Team as they make their way to the common room to play their video game. Swept up in the excitement, Robin darts forward to be first, turning his back as he rounds the corner to boast to the others when a knife slide neatly into his back. He watches the Team’s dawning horror as the knife pushes further before tearing out and plunging back in.

(3) The fist to his jaw hurts just as much the third time around. Robin shudders on the floor, ignoring the announcement of his loss and the others’ words until a hand lands on his shoulder. Robin startles, body reacting automatically as he grabs the hand and flips the offender over his shoulder. Kaldur lands with a solid thud and a huff of breath, shocking the room into silence. Robin stares, wide eyed, apologizing frantically and nearly hyperventilating because holy crap this makes no sense. It makes no sense and he doesn’t understand, nothing makes sense and his back hurts were the knife slid in and suddenly Black Canary is there telling him to breathe. He does. Ignores the sick feeling in his stomach and apologizes again. The trip to the common room is tense, Robin on edge still so KF tries to lighten it w/ a joke. This time, from the back of the group, Robin sees the shadow dart out from behind the corner and rushes forward w/ a warning for KF to watch out. He watches one arm pull back as the other shoves KF aside before the intruder throws a dagger. It hits its mark and Robin’s world goes dark.

(4) Robin grits his teeth, dizzy from Black Canary’s punch, and scrambles out of the training room, ignoring the others’ cries as he runs full tilt toward the same spot he’s dies thrice already. He pulls out 2 wingdings as he nears, throws one that blinks, bomb activated, and jumps when the shadow leaps clear of the concentrated blast. The light catches on an outfit, orange and black, and hair white as snow and Robin’s seen enough of Batman and the League’s files to know exactly what Deathstroke looks like. The confrontation is short, angry, and ends with a sword through his neck and no answers about why he’s the one being targeted.

(5) Robin reels from the punch and the burn in his throat left over from his last death. He chokes and spits out a glob of saliva tinted pink-red with blood. Black Canary and the team fuss, concerned enough that Canary calls Batman and leads him the opposite way to the infirmary. He watches, concerned, as the team heads towards the common room and is about to protest when he remembers the way Deathstroke shoved KF out of the way to get to him. They should be safe, he figures, and follows Canary with no small amount of relief. They don’t make it halfway there before someone screams. Canary and Robin turn, running to the source, only to find the team struggling to fend off Deathstroke and Artemis on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Robin feels sick even before Deathstroke’s eyes find him, but it’s fury that drives him into a mad dash forward. He feels his skull crack against the wall twice before he blacks out.

(6) Convinces the team to go elsewhere. Snapped neck. (7) Wally dies. Stabbed through the chest. (8) Tells the team what’s happening. Disemboweled. (9) Tells only M’gann the truth. Strangled. (10) Kaldur and M’gann are injured. Gunshot between the eyes. (11) M’gann dies. Used as a human shield, Conner’s punch snaps his spine. (12) Tries to leave Mt. Justice with the team. Disemboweled again. (13) Explosive in his mouth. (14) Calls Batman. Decapitation. (15 - 21) Stabbed. (23) Artemis dies. Slit throat.

(24) The punch to his jaw leaves him reeling for a moment before he’s overwhelmed by tears. He’s hysteric, inconsolable. Nothing he does works and it’s getting harder and harder to breathe and he can taste iron on his tongue. Canary and the team are startled, don’t know what’s wrong and are trying to help, but Robin can’t find the words to make them understand and just sobs, clutching at Canary like a lifeline. He takes long enough that Deathstroke, for the first time, stalks into the training room. Canary is shot while he’s clinging/crying on her, caught unawares. Robin can only stare, wide eyed in horror because it’s the first time she’s died in front of him. He dies from a bullet to the back of his head.

(25 - 32) pretty much the same as loop 24. He doesn’t last long in these. Death by gunshot. (33 - 46) He fights back. Horror and frustration and the ever present taste of blood in his mouth. He’s the last one left alive in each of these loops.

He stops trying to tell the others. All it does is get them killed and he’s sick of watching his teammates die.

(47) He hides. Up through the duct work after diverting the team until he reaches his room. He crawls between the sink and tub in his bathroom and curls up with his eyes closed, shaking. “Disappointing.” He whimpers when the gun’s muzzle presses against his forehead, but never hears the shot. (48) He hides in Superboy’s room and calls Alfred. Gunshot. (49) Hides in the hangar and calls Bruce. Beheaded. (50) Hides in the ductwork and calls Superman, begging for help. A sword spears him through the stomach midway through the explanation.

(51) He laughs. Crouched on the floor after the punch to his jaw, he laughs and laughs and laughs until tears stream down his face and his whole body aches. He laughs all the way to the med bay, as Canary calls Batman, as they strap him down to keep him from hurting himself. He screams, thrashes, and laughs some more. He’s an easy target when Deathstroke comes hunting. A sword through his chest leaves him choking on blood through his laughter.

(52 - 78) Mostly catatonic, following the day’s original script. (79) He passes out from Canary’s punch. His chest hurts as he wakes in the infirmary. He’s informed of damage they can’t explain. Scars and bruising that’s slowly killing him from the inside out. They give him a sedative when he starts ranting, frustrated and defeated. He doesn’t stir and the kill is too easy.

(80) He diverts the team away from their original plans, but goes back down the hallway to his original death. He pauses before the bend where Deathstroke hides and calls out. Curious, the man strides out from behind the shadows and sizes Robin up. “Who hired you to kill me?”

(81-85) More tries to get an answer out of Deathstroke. More failures.

(86) He takes Canary’s punch and throws up blood. The pain of his last death paralyzes him for a bit but he pushes through as it subsides, ignoring his friends’ concern. He doesn’t bother diverting their attention before stumbling out of the room and calling out to his would-be assassin. He doesn’t even wait for Deathstroke to show his face before going into the time/death-loop spiel, including mentioning a few ways he’s died. Before this death, Deathstroke gives him something like a password - more amused than serious in the face of a dying teenager.

Annnd that’s about as far as I got before my inspiration and interest petered out. Most of the inherent trauma of the death/time loop experience was supposed to come from the experience of being killed over and over again in short succession (versus the kind that comes from living a day/week/month over again for years). The end of the loop would have come in somewhere around the 200th time, so saying each loop was about 3 hours long then Dick would have spent 600 hours or 25 days (minimum) reliving the same few hours before dying pretty horrifically.

Another significant part would have been the compounded physical trauma of each death (an aspect of the Happy Death Day movies I really really liked and wanted to explore). That and the idea that Dick, in this instance and without outside cosmic interference in the form of probably Doctor Fate, was fated to die that die, in those 3 hours. Literally nothing he changes would have kept him from dying because it’s not up to him (it’s ... haha .... fate).

[bigsteeb]

this is gonna be a long post so bear with me, growing pains got a b i g emotional reaction out of me & I need to share my thoughts & feelings about it because jesus fucking christ.

ok first things first, someone hug this boy immediately. he’s sat in his room, still in his pajamas, in day time watching dog copter. this whole scene is just steven going “lol I’m sad, I’m gonna comfort eat & stay in my pajamas & watch a kids show I watched when I wasn’t as sad haha” & it’s not only upsetting, but relatable too fuck. his room is a mess along with him eating ice cream at what I assume is morning… making it his breakfast? geez steven. also idk if it’s just me here but in this shot he looks… bigger? like ignoring his body size shifting later on in the episode he looks a lot wider than he usually does when paul & drew board episodes to me, he’s rivalling etienne & maya’s steven’s wideness. did he… get chubbier from comfort eating? how much time has passed since together forever for him to put on weight if he has? this could literally just be steven slouching or his pajamas making him look bigger but as someone who is an advocate for the body positivity shown in su & suf it has me curious. I want to hug this soft, sad boy. It could also be due to how steven’s design fluctuates through the animation process, it’s never really on model all the time. 

the grunting noise he makes in this scene is very distressing, as are other moments from the episode too. a glimpse at the glow-bracelet he proposed to connie with is enough to physically pain him? fuck me man. is he leaving his room where there’s already ice cream… to get more ice cream? sobs. also the puns in this shot. I cant? slow burn?! you’re evil crewniverse. not to mention his body size changing throughout this scene, god this poor lad.

screams, this was when I started worrying. the boy is now in an environment he has never been in before & is feeling extremely uncomfortable & vulnerable. look at the lines under his eyes, his sad eyebrows & pout I hate it. also don’t even get me started on this part. the slight raise of a voice being enough to send him into panic?! fuck I hate how much I relate to that. 

here’s where I immediately broke, no god damn pun intended. seeing steven’s skeleton, steven’s fucking skull, like this pained me. that crack on his skull is from fucking jasper in jail break. I can’t express all of the visceral emotions that were going through my body at this. there was intense sadness for steven, extreme anger at jasper & the gems for allowing shit like this to happen to him. turns out he’s not as resilient as we thought he was. each hit he takes physically breaks him & then his gem instantly heals his wounds, my heart fucking broke at this. think back to everything that happened to him, everything that physically hurt him. it broke him I can’t deal with it! then there’s what priyanka says to steven next;

“you seem to of made a series of miraculous recoveries, but that doesn't change the fact that you experienced trauma. you’ve recovered physically but, have you recovered mentally?”

this part here along with her reassuring him that there’s nothing wrong with his brain, how childhood trauma can have an impact on how your body responds to stress & how you act in your social life, the usage of the word “cortisol” too. this stuff being in a children's tv show is incredible. the writing for priyanka describes trauma simply enough for kids to understand, but for adults to fully realise too. folks, steven has ptsd. there wasn't one bit of sugarcoating about it or nothing, this is canon fact & it hurts me. for so long have I wanted steven’s emotional issues to be alked about, to not only be brought to steven’s attention but to the audience’s too.

everything that has happened to him has built up to this moment. this moment where his behaviour & coping methods are finally making sense to a large majority of the fandom, & to steven himself. he’s hurting; physically, mentally & emotionally, & he isn’t coping well what so ever about it. his emotional support system is complete garbage, no one regularly checks in on him & folks just take steven at face value like “oh yea glowing pink? he’s fine it’s just steven” but he’s the bad person?! I hope a lot of you out there who genuinely believe steven is a bad person re-think yourselves after this. dealing with trauma is tough as shit. some days you even wonder if that one thing that fucked you up is really worth being labelled as trauma. I still can’t believe this is the route they’re taking, if he doesn’t get some form of therapy by the end of future I’ll be furious.

then things begin to spiral as he remembers what happened with connie. he clutches his chest in pain & begins changing size over intense amounts of stress & it was extremely distressing to watch. steven immediately reassures connie that this isn’t because of her, but because of everything else that happened to him. however. I believe that that’s a slight lie, he wouldn’t of spiralled if he hadn’t of remembered the proposal, steven you fucking himbo. he continues to reassure them both that he’s fine, just that he needs them to leave so he can calm himself enough to control himself.

then this happens.

“I. CAN’T. BE AROUND YOU RIGHT NOW!”

this was fucking intense. he means this literally in 2 ways btw. his body size shifting over the stress he’s feeling is a danger to both connie & priyanka in this moment, but it’s also because of how it started. being around connie hurts him. he’s not mad at her though let me make that very clear, just that thinking about what happened when he tired to propose to her is sending his head in a fritz. he did what he did full of confidence in together forever, for connie to then make him realise how silly he was being. these two are destined for each other, but that advice from ruby & sapphire has really fucked with him. he looks up to those 2, looks up to garnet, their relationship is so strong & stable. for them to give him that advice & to then scream “DO IT!” in his face is incredibly tasteless imo.

then greg gets here. I knew connie was calling for either greg or the gems when she was on her phone as she left the room, fuck yea connie I love you. the breathless, strained “thank you” from steven towards connie for calling his dad? g o d. connie telling him she’ll be there for him when he’s ready?! g o d. these next boards were done by rebecca, I knew immediately when I saw steven’s face. it makes sense that rebecca boarded these, because fuck. 

how do I move on from all of the stuff I’ve been through? how do I live life if it always feels like I’m about to die!?

I’m tearing up as I type this. when I first heard the leak of this audio I so badly wanted to believe it, but to also believe it was fake too. I was an emotional mess off & on for about 3 days over it because I couldn't stop thinking about how fucking distressing it was. like… shit steven. he seriously feels this. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain he felt just saying this in front of his fucking dad. he is hurting badly. this boy, this sweet sweet boy we’ve watched grow & develop into the person he is today is distraught about his future & life. it is… soul crushing to watch this. a group of friends of mine have found joking about the episode as a form of coping with the intensity of it & as much as that’s valid as fuck, any joke coming from this episode feels morally wrong to me. I can’t bring myself to join in it feels terrible even thinking about laughing at it to cope. I love them all, but I can’t bare myself to join them. this moment ending with greg comforting steven, telling him he’s here for him & all of his struggles, got me weeping. greg is possible the best father figure I’ve seen on tv, let alone a kids tv show. he’s amazing.

the final scene right here is lovely. greg making steven a hot chocolate & listening to him vent, reassuring him over his worry for his future. this right here is exactly what steven needs. someone to talk to, someone he could trust to talk about his feelings to. this the start of his support system, tag on peri from in dreams, bis in bismuth casual as well as connie from the past few episodes & it’s already looking great! even when greg eased him about being there for him steven still feels guilty about him leaving his tour, leaving his tour because he got a phone call from connie about his son being in need & steven feels guilty about it. fucking hell man. I did enjoy how the episode ended though, with that little moment between the both of them;

“just get some rest kiddo. you don’t have to solve all of your problems in one night.”

“yea. thanks dad.”

it’s a great message too, all of your struggles can’t be dealt with all at once. I’ve used a similar analogy before but it’s like removing a dead tree. you have to deal with all of the little things surround this issue first before you get to the deep, harder stuff. along side the message about trauma they’re both very important messages, I’m glad they exist in the show.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

one more thing before I end my thoughts & feelings over growing pains.

this ending shot;

as soon as I saw the frog mug my mind raced back to the promo for this scene, & this whole moment to come entirely. if you remember this moment has the first set of leaked audio within it, the audio of the gems basically cornering steven about him not opening up to them. christ pearl even gets mad at him for his gem building a wall behind him, protecting him from them. it’s common knowledge, I hope, that steven’s gem reacts to his emotional state. pearl herself has said this;

“I think your gem is reacting to your state of mind.”

his gem building this wall? it felt like steven was being threatened by them. this scene now has awful connotations with it. because since we now know what the pink mode is doing to steven, how actually painful it is, think back to these;

yea. fuck the gems. I’ll let it slide if steven, greg or priyanka haven’t told them about what happened at the hospital. but if they do know, if they know how much it hurts steven being in his pink mode & still press into him about it I’ll see red. with steven’s trauma & now ptsd being cemented into the show I fucking hope garnet, amethyst & pearl get held accountable for what they put on him as a kid. that shit will not slide with me if they don’t. do not condone what the gems put him through. do not condone the gems for making steven feel like he had to be his mum for them. just… don’t. please.

[douxreviews]

Lucifer - ‘Super Bad Boyfriend' Review

"Why do I hate myself so much?"

This episode made me think about why Lucifer is a difficult show to define.

Yes, it's fantasy; it's based on a comic about the Devil solving crimes in Los Angeles, after all. And yes, it's definitely funny, but it's not exactly a comedy. It's not a drama, either. The linchpin is a character study of Lucifer, and his struggle to define himself. Lucifer wants to be better than what he is. While strongly pulled toward hedonism and pleasure, Lucifer wants to right wrongs, to administer justice, which is what he does with Chloe.

Yet, much of this episode (that wasn't about Amenadiel, whom I'll address later) was about Lucifer finally realizing that he hates himself. It was never that he didn't like himself when he was with Eve – that was just a symptom. Throughout this episode, Lucifer kept expressing self-loathing. He finally admitted to Linda that God wasn't manipulating him; that he, Lucifer, brought it all on himself. I actually teared up when he asked Linda, "Why do I hate myself so much?" We all know his wings and his devil face are under his own subconscious control after all, a manifestation of Lucifer's self-hated.

At least this realization is progress. I want Lucifer to realize what we all know he really wants, which is to fight crime with Chloe, and to be worthy of her love. I don't think we're going to get that this season, though, because then the main emotional arc of the show would be over. Right?

Speaking of emotional arcs, Amenadiel's impending fatherhood made him realize that he's not just an ex-angel, he's an African American ex-angel. While DB Woodside did an absolutely marvelous job, it almost felt like this plot was too heavy and serious for a show like Lucifer, although I'd argue that it went well with Lucifer's realization.

That said, it was just like Amenadiel to try on fatherhood for size by helping Caleb, a young man who came to Lucifer for a huge favor – to get out from under a drug dealer named Tahir. Amenadiel is powerful and good, but he is still way too naïve about life on Earth, and he got Caleb killed. When Caleb told Amenadiel that he was going to crush being a dad, I could just feel the end coming. That scene at the morgue set to the powerful song "Take Me to the River" made me cry – especially when with a simple gesture, putting his priceless pendant around Caleb's neck, Amenadiel rejected God. I also really loved the moment when Amenadiel went after Tahir, and Lucifer knew immediately what Amenadiel intended, and backed him up. They don't always feel like brothers, but they did at that moment.

Eve had some wonderful moments this time. When Lucifer went all "bad boyfriend" in an attempt to get her to break up with him – beer and snack food, fantasy football, bingeing bad TV, kissing other women – she out-Lucifered Lucifer and did the same, right down to kissing the very same woman. The problem is, after all that, Lucifer still didn't want Eve. We're also getting the interesting message that Maze does.

Maze's little dating vignettes were really amusing and said a lot about what she really desires. Maze outright rejected the woman who looked and sounded exactly like herself, and then blew off a really hot guy with flowers to keep talking with Eve and telling her how awesome Eve is. It's clear as day that Maze is strongly attracted to Eve, while Eve is aware that Lucifer isn't good for her but isn't ready to let him go. Eve and Maze would make an interesting couple, wouldn't they?

And so would Ella and Dan. They had a couple of cute scenes together, the best of which was the two of them awkwardly reciting case details practically in unison. Will this turn out to be more than an awkward sexual encounter at work? I'm not sure how I feel about Ella and Dan as a couple, especially since I get this weird incest vibe because I can't help seeing Ella as a grown-up Trixie.

As usual, the case of the week complemented what was going on with the main characters. It was obvious from the beginning that Lexy "I got into Harvard" was the one to murder Ms. Baez. The point was that, like Lucifer, Lexy's boyfriend Nate allowed evil to happen because he wasn't being true to himself. Instead, he did what his super bad girlfriend wanted him to do.

Bits:

— The opener was really funny with a touch of sad, as Lucifer called in a favor with a doctor but couldn't tell him the truth about exactly what Lucifer wanted removed from his back.

— One of the strengths in this series is watching the unique female characters connect. It wasn't just Eve and Maze this time; Linda and Eve in couples therapy was great, especially since they connected around and despite Lucifer.

— Chloe always wears her hair confined at work, but leaves it loose when she tries to connect with Lucifer personally. Maybe this is where I should mention that I think Lauren German is stunning, even on television where everyone is gorgeous. Especially when her hair is out of the way and isn't softening the angles of her face, her eyes, eyebrows and cheekbones.

— Dan is feeling guilty about outing Lucifer to Tiernan, so he picked a fight with Maze so that she would hurt him, but she didn't. Another continuation of the self-loathing theme.

— Gold acting stars for both DB Woodside and Tom Ellis. They were both outstanding.

Quotes:

Chloe: "He told me about... a prophecy." Lucifer: "Right. What is it this time? Are frogs about to start falling from the sky or... perhaps winter is coming?"

Lucifer: "How does one specifically say nay to YEA?"

Linda: (to Eve) "You're the first woman ever. It's like meeting a dinosaur."

Amenadiel: "I know who did this." Lucifer: "I'll drive."

Four out of four celestial pendants.

---

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

[seesarahaccomplishstuff]

Therapy today helped a bit.

I told my therapist how I’ve been having intense breakdowns since Monday and haven’t been doing okay.

She asked what happened and I told her how I thought the childhood stuff wouldn’t bother me because it was so long ago, but it’s so frustrating to see how much my parents fucked me up. And now there’s this huge list of ways I’m broken that won’t stop growing. And it’s my entire personality. And more people are leaving and that triggered my anxiety, and someone that I’m trying to trust massively crossed a boundary that made my rejection issues even worse.

So she nodded and said “you have a lot to work on. And you really jumped all into it, which is really great, but you’re going to feel like you’re losing for a while. It’s going to overwhelm you a lot. And it’s going to feel easier to lock yourself in your room and off yourself.” (Which I didn’t expect her to say, but she’s right) So I said, “I just don’t fully see the point in trying to fix 30 years of broken.”

“What’s wrong with your personality?” “It’s all fucked up. Everything I do is codependent.” “Sure. Give me an example.” And I couldn’t think of one offhand, so I said, “the thing I realized the other day was I do something for someone because I care right? Which is fine. But also when people are stressed about their situation they get mad. And when that happens I get snapped at and shoved away. So I help to avoid that too I think.”

She was not sold on that. “You used to buy dinner for friends a lot. You did that so you wouldn’t get in trouble?” “No. I did it because I like when people do nice things for me and they don’t always make sure they can eat so I do it so they feel cared about and are healthy.” “That’s just being kind. When you would pay a bill for them they typically pay it right back. So is that codependent?” “No. They need help so I help and they pay it back.” “The times you did it when you didn’t have money to spare. (Which I argued and she called me out lol) The times you let them blow off repaying- that was codependent. You do have a lot of codependent tendencies. But kindness is inherently codependent. You can’t rip apart any time you’ve shown someone kindness. Your biggest codependency issue is not holding boundaries for yourself.”

“You need to repeat the phrase ‘People treat you the way you’ve taught them to treat you’.” “My friend used to say that to me at least once a week.” “Yea well, they’re smart and we’ve covered that you needed to listen to what they’d tell you more than you did. You also need to remember that you don’t control other’s emotions. And other people don’t control yours.”

“People think you’re manipulative and controlling. That’s what they’ve taken from your behavior. You can’t control that. You know it’s not what you intended. You know you’ve been improving for many months. I know you have. But you made them feel a certain way and their opinions didn’t change. You can look at that and acknowledge it and re-examine your behavior like you are. But you can’t change their minds. And their feelings don’t make you that person. So fixating on it doesn’t get you anywhere.”

And then she asked me if I was doing all of this for me or them and I told her I’m having a hard time prioritizing myself. That it pisses me off when people pull the “great pain means great growth. You’ll look back and smile” bullshit. Because the way this feels is terrible and I hate it. So, I know I can’t change anyone’s view of me, but I’m doing all this to try and be who I wanted to be for people who had to leave because of my behavior. And she accepted that.

I also have to start some EDM... pretty sure it’s 4 letters. It’s something to work through past trauma. She said she’d send videos to watch. My alanon group leader asked if she did that sort of thing last week so I guess that’s just where we are. Wait lol... edm is music lemme actually Google the acronym so I seem less ignorant. EMDR, damn dyslexia. Anyway. That.

But basically, I need to really work to not shred myself when I’m low. It’s gotten bad. I also need to start on my books that came yesterday. 2/3 are here. She wants me to try and list my codependent behaviors. I also need to start painting and journaling again. I like this outlet and it’s easiest for my brain, but the way I was doing it all in my watercolor notebook was really therapeutic. It’s just been a bitch of a week.

I’ll be fine and I feel less like having a breakdown or dying. I think I know another thing that is really fucking with me through everything, but I don’t feel comfortable posting it here right now I think. I also can’t do anything about it.

Last night in alanon a woman said “when one door closes another one opens, but the hallway is hell.” And like, yea. Fuck dude. I took a psych class once where the teacher had a gazillion psych type degrees and would open the class with us getting to ask about mental health shit. And one kid asked if it was possible to change personalities. And he said “sure, but you usually see it following a trauma where it rewrites your thought processes. Because it’s hell to do otherwise, and a lot of people can’t handle it.” And I get it now. I thought he meant habits and comfort zones. But it feels like being handed a pile of shards that used to be your brain and given a timelimit to reassemble it. But half the pieces are trauma copies and you have to figure out which parts are imposters, but they actually fit better than the pieces that should be there. And if you fail you lose everything.

Anyway, that’s where I am today. I queued a couple posts last night so you might see random downers, but what I’m thinking of doing is only reblogging positive stuff, and queueing negative stuff that resonated for like, 7am. And I say that because sometimes I rescroll my blog to recount the day or previous day to either feel good with the good posts again or reevaluate the things I’ve said the day before. Since with my mood they don’t always apply still or I may have a totally different approach at that thought. And I do that when I go to bed around 2. So at 7 I won’t be seeing negative shit right before bed. Cuz I’ve fallen asleep and woken up bitter the last few days.

We’ll see. I have lots to do today. I’ve been off twitter so no children have reminded me to do my taxes. I also have to get a new phone today so I’m fully out from under my mother. And I have insurance stuff and inspection cleaning to tackle. It’s only 1 and I’m ready to call it a day.

I hope what my therapist said helps anyone else who is struggling. I like hearing the lines that have stuck with patients and really helped them. So when it doesn’t fuck with me I’d like to be open about what I discuss in therapy. I always used to think it’d solve so many of my problems if I could send my friends zoom links of my sessions since I’m so bad at expressing myself lol. So this is also a bit of an exercise for me to be more outspoken about my feelings (if this bothers anyone you can send an anonymous ask) And therapy isn’t accessible to everyone so maybe it gives someone what they need to go forward a bit in their struggles. (Alanon and CoDa are free and on zoom now though! Definitely look into it if it applies to you!)

There’s a line in a bts song. Idk which one honestly, Ik it’s in the BE photo book though I can post a pic. It comes to mind because my friend would write it a lot when they first heard it. And it’s something like “sometimes we get to know that broken is beautiful”. My therapist today said “you are broken, everyone is. And no one is as broken as they think they are.” I hope one day this feels like a beautiful moment in my life and not the purgatory it feels like. I hope I grow enough for it to be worth it.

[destiny-smasher]

all wounds being how it is (very involved with alternative timelines and pretty long for a fanfic), how do you keep track of it all? do you have some huge flowchart document/wall to keep the story straight or do you just let it consume your mind? how much do you adapt versus plan on chapter by chapter basis as you write?

Looking back at all of the fiction I’ve written so far in my life, All Wounds actually isn’t the most complicated – it’s the second most. The most complicated was probably the crossover shit I wrote in high school, which spanned multiple fanfics which all fed into a single mainline one, where I had to be keeping track of political motivations of different factions in a war and all of this ridiculous shit. It was fun to ponder those sorts of things with regard to whimsical worlds and cartoony characters, but at the end of the day, even my adolescent self was all about character development – building narratives to pinnacles where the protagonists would have to make a difficult decision, typically involving the theme of “letting go.”

I ended up abandoning that project in college because it just got too complicated (basically I wanted to do some crazy-ass Homestuck levels of nonsense but no way I could manage it in my spare time) and I had to focus on other aspects of my life. All Wounds is the first time I’ve really revisited a weird, complicated narrative with an emphasis on building up toward plot twists and shit. Chapter 16 marks the “big moment” of the story – ideally, when readers finish this chapter, everything that’s happened so far will make enough sense to suspend disbelief through to the end. But given how the baseline story itself doesn’t really add up well…there’s no way it can all make sense, and I can’t really make even all of my own weird ideas completely line up. I do want to try, though.

In the end, however, what I’m really after is explaining enough of things to get the audience to buy into the characters’ motivations, to make sense of why they’re acting the way they are, what their goals are, and how they’re working toward them. Getting too caught up in a complicated plot can leave the audience full of apathy and indifference.

All Wounds isn’t really about time travel -- at least, not at its center. It’s not trying to do anything specifically groundbreaking or amazing with its time travel shenanigans. There’s not going to be a clever trickety-trick that resolves the whole situation – in the end, there will be time travel mystical whatever afoot, but it’s ultimately going to be about Max and Chloe each needing to make a tricky choice about how they’re each going to move forward with their lives due to consequences of things they’ve already done, choices they’ve already made.

Chloe’s struggles are much more human and grounded in earthly things -- mainly the people around her and her own insecurities regarding her place with them.

But Max’s problems are internal, and her situation with her Other self isn’t going to be solved with magic -- not really. Supernatural nonsense might be what gets her in a position to make her big, endgame choice, but that choice is going to be...I dunno, human.

A year and half ago, I did build a “skeleton” doc trying to line up the main plot beats of the story…but I always found the actual chapters would derail from this, and in some places actively disregard it.

This is because my style of writing is more the “gardener” than the “architect,” though it is a hybrid of the two.

When I try to actively plan ahead in detail, it…never really goes too well.

I don’t keep track of things in writing after I’ve sorted out the basic stuff. I use a music playlist to maintain some sort of “chronology” to emotional beats and in some cases plot connections (ex. three specific songs in a certain order helps remind me of how a certain chapter is supposed to have three specific plot things happen back to back). I also have a “quotes” doc where I dump noteworthy quotes that relate to the plot or the concept/themes I want to explore, but they’re never in a specific order. So whenever I start a chapter, I pick two quotes – one for the start, one for the end – and I use those to help build a point-A-to-point-B baseline of the general idea of the chapter. But there’s never been any formal outline or chart or anything like that, and very often, the story will take a turn on its own.

I can’t claim to have my plots planned out entirely when I begin – but I do pretty much always have an ending in mind from the start. Some main plot concept that everything should ultimately be building toward. With All Wounds, that has always been Chloe needing to come to terms with the people around her, Max needing to come to terms with herself, and Chloe ultimately needing to let others help her help Max, the way Max has helped her in the past. (ie Max helped Chloe grow up when she was lost in her own issues, now it’s Chloe’s turn to help Max do the same) They both have some serious baggage, and even if some of it is caused by supernatural shit, and needs to be resolved by supernatural shit, not magical elements of being a human being are at the core of everything. And those core human elements need to be what fuels the cause/effect of any big choices.

I construct a story like a garden. I try to set up the layout, the fertilizer, and I get to work planting seeds as I start writing the story. Some of those seeds, I start off knowing exactly what they are and what they’ll grow into. But more often, they’re seeds I don’t really know the species of. But my gut tells me to plant them where it does. So I just take faith in my instinct that as long as I give these narrative seeds water and sunlight and all that, that they’ll organically grow into whatever they are, and I’ll recognize what that harvest will be eventually. Usually, this works well enough. It’s not always perfect, so sometimes I end up needing to do a bit of ret-conning.

The most important example of this is Other Max and how she’s impacting the plot. You’ll notice that at this point, the entire plot revolves around her, where before she was functioning as merely a voice in the back of Max’s mind – now she’s like her own fully fledged character, an alternate persona. When I first started All Wounds, Other Max was just going to remain a ‘voice,’ she was never originally intended to evolve in the way she has – but when I decided to pursue the “time skip” concept and flesh the story out more (way back at the start, AW was going to end basically where Chapter 7 currently does), I had to consider what I would want to do with my own time travel story. What kinds of ideas could I incorporate that I hadn’t seen in a time travel story before – or at least not in the same combination? What could I work with given the ideas the canon story presented us with? Over the past year, these have gradually grown from those early seeds, germinated, and with Chapter 16, will hopefully bloom.

If I’m lucky, it will look like I planned it all from the start, even though I certainly did not. But I think I planned enough of it, early enough ahead to flesh things out as I got there. You’ll notice I keep using the word “enough” with all of this. I don’t believe in perfection, at least not with long form storytelling. But I do believe that there’s always a certain threshold, a certain level of balance where if you can achieve that with your plot, it’s what will give way to that magical “willful suspension of disbelief,” which is critical for any story involving supernatural, magical, fantastical things.

If your audience gets too hung up on the technical details – “Aw, why didn’t they just do this? That would’ve made more sense” – then your story has failed to get them to suspend disbelief.

On the other hand, if you pull a Kojima or a Square-Enix and you fucking overload your story with too much context, you’ll have a lot of confused, frustrated people on your hands, drowned in so much information that what was supposed to feel like an exploration of the human condition has become goddamn homework just to keep up with, much less seamlessly lose yourself in those big moments, those big choices.

Yea, I’m looking at you, Kingdom Hearts. Metal Gear. Gah.(and despite how much I may be referencing it in All Wounds, Chrono Trigger/Cross suffer from this shit, too, when they try to do overarching plot stuff)

I know nothing I write will 100% satisfy everyone, but my intent is to build a conclusion that gradually shifts away from “plot” and more toward a climax where everyone knows what the stakes are, and we get to see how the characters all deal with that. Because it’s the choices that are important, not necessarily what the technical details are. And yet, if those technical details are too complicated or too underdeveloped, it will distract from and detract from those climactic choices.

And when your main plot devices all have to revolve around time travel and alternate realities?

It gets tricky.

[+ image source +]

All Wounds in particular has been weird for me to work on because of the time travel, alternate reality nonsense – it makes me feel obligated to leave more bread crumbs than usual. More “seeds.” Some of which I don’t end up using, and ultimately don’t serve much purpose, as their seeds never germinate properly. You might notice I specifically will call back certain lines of dialogue, certain specific moments – relive parts of the story from a different characters’ perspective, or in a different timeline. This is partly to give things a cohesion and help the reader connect through that familiarity, making it easier to put things together, I suppose, but it’s also because it’s content I can literally just look up in an earlier scene and use as a point of reference for myself, and build from.

Time travel stories have gradually become one of my favorite things to explore, and I think a big part of it is how my own life has a “butterfly effect” moment that can be traced back to one seemingly innocuous choice, and yet for a fact I know my whole life would be different had it not been for that choice. This, combined with my intent belief in environment affecting more of a person’s development than inherent traits – yet not affecting it entirely – leads me to be attracted to stories that explore this idea. Lastly, “humans are temporal beings” is such a fascinating topic to me, and so with AW I wanted to really build a plot around this concept – if you take a person and remove them from the standard boundaries of space-time, how does it change them? Are they still “them” anymore, really, at that point? What if it literally broke them as a human being – but since we’re talking time-space, it’s not like breaking a coffee mug, it’s more cosmic and abstract than that.

This was the core idea of the plot stuff from Chapter 8 onward. And it wasn’t there immediately, from the start. It wasn’t planned from the get-go. It just found itself here as I began the process of actually trying to write the characters and what struggles they might face in their situation.

With some rambling about plot-construction out of the way, here’s the other huge element of this for me: the characters.

I let them act out. I let them drive the direction of things. Once in a while, like with Other Max, they end up growing and evolving and doing things I never planned on, and I let that happen if it seems promising. Other times, like most scenes with Victoria, the characters will kind of devolve a bit and start bickering in ways that are unproductive – and I need to ‘rewind’ and get their attention back on track to what really matters, where the scene is really going.

In a way, this means a lot of what I write almost feels like directing actors in a performance – only the ‘actors’ aren’t physical, separate entities, but…parts of myself. I think this is ultimately what fascinates me so much about stories about what I refer to as “The Other Self.”

I tend to stray toward darker plotlines and concepts with this, (I’d name some of my favorite stories about it but that might ruin the surprise) but that’s because I’m weird and love exploring dark stories to help me appreciate the light.And maybe this is related to my gender transition, too, but the idea of how a person isn’t necessarily just…a static, singular thing, but can function in pieces, parts, it intrigues me about the human condition. And to me, that’s what fictional characters are when you write them with your heart in things – they carry a piece of you with them, and that’s where their life comes from.

Thing of it is, life is like fire – it can burn and grow and get out of control if you’re not careful. But sometimes the way those flames change can be good – burning away the old, or being fueled by it, etc.

So, to more directly answer your question:

No, there isn’t really a document, a chart, a wall, a schematic. There’s a music playlist, and a collection of quotes. From the overall story structure, to the way a whole chapter is produced, to the way an individual scene plays out, I always go in with a plan of where it needs to end (or where I think it does), decide what the starting point is, and let the characters fill the rest in like actors interpreting a script. From there, if there’s problems, I “fix it in post.”

In the case of All Wounds, that’s even more the case, since there’s no-doubt some aspects I’ve overlooked, which I’ll need to “fix” later when adapting to a visual novel. In fact, I’ve already made a lot of drastic changes to the “prologue/tutorial” to reflect the evolution of the part of the plot which is connected to it.

People will give you shit if you don’t plan things ahead. And they should. But never expect yourself to have all of answers right away. You don’t know for sure, with certainty, what these characters really need, who they really are, what is really driving them and what they’re willing to do for it – you never really know any of this entirely – until, like a real person, you spend time getting to know them by writing them, working with them.

If you do your job right, the audience will feel like you had everything planned out when really you were just good at adapting and letting things grow organically, and being able to connect things together well enough. Being able to give the audience enough context, construct a plot that makes enough sense, have characters make choices that are plausible enough.

Stories, especially longer ones, can never be perfect, but if a storyteller finds their own unique, individual balance between planning/constructing and growing/evolving, they can create something that will really stick with an audience.