#as you can maybe tell from the notes i guess

[clockwayswrites]

The Birdritch's Nest part 25

masterpost

“That is a lot of plants,” Jason said. He swept his eyes over the space as he slipped his lock picks back into their little pouch.

“He has a botanist friend, apparently, and she keeps giving him plants,” Dick explained as he squeezed past Jason and into the apartment.

“Why are you here again?”

“Because I have a car which is better to carry all of Danny’s stuff in than your bike,” Dick explained. He went over to the wall of plants in front of the windowed corner and squinted down at something on his phone.

Jason pulled out his own phone to glance at what Tim had sent. “You say ‘all Danny’s stuff’ like the list was long. The guy hasn’t exactly been demanding.”

“The ‘guy’ expects to actually go home in a few days,” Dick pointed out.

“And is an adult and so can, you know, actually go home,” Jason retorted.

“Damian’s attached.”

“…I concede to your point,” Jason said once that thought sunk in. “Double the clothing asked for?”

“Basically. Make sure that he has a weeks worth, Alfred can always do laundry,” Dick said before letting out a little noise of triumph and doing something over by the plants. “There, watering system turned on.”

“Congratulations, you’re a genius,” Jason drawled. “Now go get his medication gathered up and snoop a little while you’re at it.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be snooping,” Dick, words a teasing sing-song as he passed by.

Jason flicked him off. “Like you wouldn’t anyways. I just want to know what you find.”

“Only if you tell me what you find in the bedroom.”

“Deal.”

The bedroom was almost startlingly normal after the plant filled living main room. It didn’t look like Danny really spent much time in it beyond sleeping. The bed was absentmindedly fixed, a black down comforter over pale blue sheets. There was a paperback on the nightstand next to a lamp and a pocket sized notebook with a pen clipped onto the bent and battered cover.

It was the first thing that Jason picked up.

The notebook was obviously where Danny made notes when he was already settled in bed. As Jason flipped through the pages there was everything from to-do lists to invention ideas to… a lot of thought about wings. Jason turned the notebook in his hands. That page wasn’t in English. The language felt like it was on the tip of Jason’s tongue but he just couldn’t get it out.

Maybe some sort of dialect?

Jason couldn’t actually read it, but there was enough to piece together from similarities that tugged on his memory. Enough to understand it was about the wings. Something about the process of change? Aging?

“Hey Jay?” Dick interrupted, scattering Jason’s thoughts. “Can you read the label on these bottles? There’s some serious printing issues happening, I can’t even tell what language it’s in.”

The pill bottle felt oddly cold in Jason’s hand when he took it from Dick, but maybe the bathroom just had shit heating in this place. It would be just like Gotham builders to mess that up.

“Oh, that’s the same thing Danny is writing in here,” Jason said passing the notebook to Dick. “It’s something about wings and getting old, I think, but I can’t really read it.”

“Read it? I don’t even know what it is. Gives me a headache just to look at it,” Dick grumbled as he flipped through the notebook. “The whole bird thing has really been on his mind, hasn’t it?”

Jason gave a little huff. “Do you blame him? The guy has wings now. It would be on my mind too.”

“Yeah… guess I really can’t,” Dick said and snapped a picture of the page with the unknown writing to send to the group chat. “Any idea what it is?”

“Nope. It’s like it’s a distant dialect or that it uses some of the same alphabet of something I learned some of once. Like how Chinese and Japanese use some of the same characters, you know?” Jason explained as he opened the side table drawer and then quickly closed it again. That was more than he needed to know about Danny. “Maybe something from when I was catatonic in the league, who knows. There were a lot of languages in that place.”

“Cass or Damian might now it then,” Dick said as he eyed the drawer Jason had now moved away from.

“Don’t, trust me,” Jason said. “Did you get the medications you needed to grab?”

“Yeah, they’re in the bag. Just a standard bathroom, really. Though he keeps his toothbrush in this old mug with a hero I don’t recognize on it, someone called Phantom.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but it sure sounds like a hero name. Add it to the list,” Jason said as he started on gathering up the requested clothing and extra enough to last a week. “Check the closet to see if there are any shits in there that work around wings.”

Jason rolled his eyes as Dick threw the closet doors open dramatically and focused on his task. Jeans, sweatpants, underwear, what he guessed was pajamas were all added to the bag.

“So, nothing that looks like it was made for wings,” Dick said and tossed some normal shirts and a few sweaters into the bag. Jason sighed and folded them neatly. “Maybe he hasn’t had time to find any yet? It hasn’t been that long since the bird thing and seems it all started there. Or maybe he’s just always home when he’s had then?”

“Better let Alfred know then. He’ll want to get something as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, good point,” Dick agreed.

While Dick stepped out of the bedroom to call Alfred, Jason took the time to double check the list. It really was pretty basic. Jason didn’t know if Danny was just trying to not be demanding or if the guy didn’t need much, but Jason went ahead and put the bedside paperback and notebook in the bad too. Jason slung the duffel bag Dick had brought over his shoulder (he totally could have ridden his bike like this) and took a little bit of time to snoop through Danny’s bookcase while Dick finished the call. Sci-fi, horror, old text books, and a ton of notebooks filled the shelf with knickknacks and a few figures. Jason at least had to give Danny points for having some of the sci-fi classics, even if the range of works was pretty limited.

“Okay, Alfred is on it,” Dick said. “Anything else we need to do?”

“Nah, I think we’re good,” Jason said. Something made him not want to look through the notebooks, like they had already done enough snooping. It was an odd feeling. “Let’s get going, I’m hungry for whatever dinner is.”

“You’re always hungry,” Dick said.

Jason shrugged rather than dealing with how true that statement was. “I’m a growing boy.”

“You’re a trash pit.”

“Yeah, you want to go there, cereal boy?”

“Leave my cereal out of it!”

---

AN: I do love writing Dick & Jason so much. Can you tell I have an older brother? Also sorry for the mistakes I'm sure are abounding. Guess who turns out to be anemic? This critter! Maybe getting that fixed will help...

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

book 7 part 11 thoughts! (nov 22nd update)

***THIS POST CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR BOOK 7 PART 11 OF THE MAIN STORY!!*** This spans part 192 to part 211, covering Jack and Ruggie’s dreams.

Please note: this is NOT meant to be a summary or a translation; these are only my initial thoughts on the events that roughly unfold. There may be details overlooked or misunderstood in this post, so PLEASE do not use this as a translation.

Please also note: The part 11 update is split into TWO parts. There will be a separate post made on the 29th when the second part (centering on Leona) is released.

xbsbdkshwkw AZUL FAINTED WITH HIS EYES OPEN FROM THE FALL… This guy keeps taking the Ls early on in this update cuz he also got reminded that Idia recorded him in his own dream shouting “KRACKEN SHOT” which is very embarrassing.

Silver and Azul are able to change into their school uniforms without Idia’s incantation. Apparently Silver mastered the magic of changing clothes because he was so often oversleeping for class and had to prepare quickly for them. This shocks Sebek, who has yet to master this kind of magic. (Maybe it’s also a consequence of him being a first year?? 😂)

They briefly discuss how Silver looks like a prince when he’s riding his horse; Azul saw him in a Magicam cut of the Equestrian Club. Previously, we knew from Riddle’s Ceremonial Robes vignettes that the brown horse he rides is named Vorpal. Here we get confirmation of Silver and Sebek’s horses—Samson (a white horse, sharing the same name as Prince Phillip’s steed) and Tempest, respectively.

They have landed in front of the gates of NRC and run into Jack there. He seems to be rushing to the colosseum��? Let’s follow him!!

OKAY

OKAY

OKAY

JACK HOWL YOu’RE oN MY ShiT LiST OTL YOU KNOW Ehat tHIS GUY DREAmed ABOUT???????!!!?!?!!?! It’s the year after their instaloss to Diasomnia in the interdorm tournament (don’t ask me why Malleus and Leona aren’t off at their internships at this point, dream logic I guess???). Dream!Leona has gathered all odds Savanaclaw in the colosseum to train so this year they can take Malleus and beat Diasomnia head-on, no tricks. HE EVEN GiVES A N OPTIMISTIC SpEECH AbOUT THE POWEr oF TEAMWORK TO RALLY EVERYONE… and declares he’ll be the next “king” 💀 Such overwhelming confidence… JSCK DRWAMED Of a DORM LEADER thAt PLAys BY THE RULES AnD IS 💯 ConFidENT IN THEMEKvES…

Grim is so grossed out seeing this version of Leona that he wants to wake Jack up right the fuck now 😭

AzUL YOU ASSHoLE???? He acts all fake surprised about “the incident” that happened at the intetdorm tournament and like bro had no part in instigating that stampede.

They start to formulate a plan to wake Jack up, but are worried about dream!Leona since Leona irl is a very strong mage, the darkness posing as Leona could be even stronger than usual. But at the same time we can’t risk casting a spell that’s too strong ourselves or it might call Malleus’s attention. They suggest to use Azul as a clincher since he would theoretically have access to all the magic he stole irl in the dream. Surely one of those could help?

Jack scores against the defense, Ruggie. While the Savanaclaw students are going over his play, Yuu and friends stroll up (including Idia vis a full body projection). Grim tells Savanaclaw they’re Team Ramshackle here to play them!

Ruggie says there’s no point; their team is made up of weaklings! But then Azul gives his OWN speech about how Octavinelle and Ignihyde are always dead last in magift tournaments and this time they really trained hard because they wanna be better 🥺 and besides, isn’g magift a game of wits and not brute magic/physical strength??? This catches the attention of dream!Leona who agrees to the play. He considers fellow dorm leaders worthy opponents, and also had a bone yo pick with Sebek and Silver. (Also??? Sounds like Ignihyde got their asses beat by the Pomefiore team in this year’s interdorm tournament.)

HEKP THIS mAn HE’S SuFFERINNNNG 💀 Azul is really out of it so he calls for a time out. Idia takes this opportunity to make fun of him again for being tired now when he was the captain of Golden Trident in his own dream. At least Sebek is nice and offers Azul some water.

Sebek messes up and the frisbee goes out of bounds?? WYat THE FuVk dream!Leona goes over and helps Sebek up after he’s fallen… “Oh, so Jack has made a senpai he can truly respect.” “Oh, the REAL Leona wouldn’t do something so noble like that.” GROSS GROSS GROSS GET IT OUTTA HERE 🤢

Oooh, interesting?? Ortho reasons that when you’re excited, you’re more likely to be influenced by emotions when making decisions; they’ll take advantage of the exercise high everyone on to break through to Jack. He and Jack end up flying out to space as they’re squaring off in magift; when Jack realizes how far he has flown up, he’s shocked. Don’t they need oxygen to breathe here?! It’s here that Ortho reveals this is all a dream to him.

Jack is so shocked by the news that he wakes—and then falls out of the sky?! Silver immediately runs to protect everyone. Idia uses the Dream Form Change to forcibly swap Ortho to his Cerberus Gear and Jack to his Dorm Uniform, which help to cushion the blow of their crash landing. Then dream!Leona comes over to check on Jack and decides to bench him.

The darkness tries to deceive Jack, but he actually punches back and refuses to be tricked. bcdbbsksks He cries a little and goes on about how he was so inspired by watching Leona play on TV he’d watch it over and over… only to be disappointed by reality. Jack goes a little overboard though, he starts attacking US too, thinking we’re fakes as well.

Jack quickly comes to see reason and stops trying to deck us. Sebek still seems salty at Savanaclaw for what they tried to pull in book 2 and again reminds Jack of those injustices, saying he won’t forgive them. To his surprise, Jack admits wrongdoing and says it’s only natural some people would still hold grudges and choose to not forgive them. Sebek is so shocked by the fact that honest people like Jack exist in Savanaclaw. Aw… baby’s having his prejudice challenged…

Mentioning this for the Jack lovers: Jack pets Grim on the head and praises him!

LMAo????? Jack grabs Silver’s arm to travel with them and is shocked by how it looks slender but actually you can tell he has trained a ton by feeling it!

They land in Sunrise City in Sunset Savanna. Everyone tells Jack about Dream Form Change, which he says is a spell that looks like it’s from an anime his kid sister watched before. Jack has a had time saying the spell because he finds it embarrassing, but he’s eventually goaded into it (especially by Sebek, who tells him to chat it with his whole damn chest).

Beastman lore!! Apparently beastmen are considered a genus and all beastmen come from Sunset Savanna; over time, they migrated to other parts of the world, especially to some colder locations northward. Jack’s family is included in this, as well as Sebek’s. His grandfather apparently used to live in the wetlands of Sunset Savanna. I guess it just goes to show that no matter how different their individual practices and beliefs… they have common roots.

While they’re admiring the statue of the lion prince in the center of Sunrise City, they notice no hyenas are among the gathered animals. They suggest that maybe the statue was made before the King of Beasts united all animals; the hyenas used to live in their own place called the Land of Shadows.

They review some Sunset Savanna lore, including how difficult it is to unite beastmen of different kinds and how there's a pushback against development due to many beastmen wanting to respect nature. Sometimes the disputes can become violent, and it's all over the news. SHOCKINGLY, Idia has a moment of clarity and realizes that this must be why Leona chose the internship he did at a mining and energy company 😭

Everyone begins to suspect the dream is Leona’s but right then Ruggie rushes by them, declaring that he’s late for school. Jack is surprised that Ruggie is in glasses because in Savanavlaw he would brag about having good eyes.

Ruggie cuts through the market to get to school on time; he seems friendly with the folks and many of them offer him free food. Jack remarks that Ruggie is seen as a hero in his hometown, so maybe this explains the NPCs’ behavior. Apparently he is also an honors student in this world.

Anyway, Ruggie arrives at Ivory Cliff! It seems this school doesn’t exist irl; it’s only in Ruggie’s dream. Most of it is beastment, and over half are hyenas.

Grim watches Ruggie and mobs A and B eating food and leaps in to get some!! (Azul apologizes and lies that Grim is his familiar, lol) Sebek chides Grim for doing this, but then his own stomach growls, giving his own hunger away. He of course denies his hunger—but Ruggie says it’s okay and invites them all to eat!! The local children come to their campus just to have food too. Ivorycliff Academy was built in honor of the three hyenas who served the King of Beasts. They used to be do starved that they could cry, so the school is dedicated to feeding the hungry in the spirit of solidarity.

BRUH 😭 YOu’RE KIDDING ME… In his dream, Ruggie’s dad never left him… He came back for his son with a fortune he made from working. Ruggie also bought a new car for his granny and never has to be hungry again. Jack wonders if it is really right to take away happiness like that, but ultimately he decides he doesn’t want to see his senpai living a false reality.

Ruggie shows them to a school donut stall with all-you-can-eat toppings. He dumps everything onto a single donut and calls it the "Ruggie Special". The owner drops the lore that in the universe of this dream, apparently LEONA built the school.

According to donut lady, Leona graduated last year and came back after graduating to strengthen his country. He has established several schools and even magift teams. Among young people in the Sunset Savanna, Leona is supposedly also more popular than the crown prince.

Ruggie runs off to class and we stay behind to eat. Donut lady turns to darkness and attacks us, so we beat it back.

Everyone thinks it will be hard to wake Ruggie since he has never met Leona in this reality and doesn’t have any memories of NRC, his club activities, etc. There isn’t much for him to emotionally react to.

WHAT THE HECK is this a Mufasa movie reference in Twst 😭 Ruggie and some mobs talk about a sequel (that’s a live action prequel, I think??) about two characters who are enemies but were actually friends in their youth. Or maybe they’re just talking about some other Lion King prequel I’m not aware of???

J kb bajabakan ahaGayatwHAT

Azul tosses coins of different values which attracts Ruggie’s attention. He has the unique ability to tell the value of a coin just from the sound of it, a skill which Azul learned about from observing Ruggie when he worked part-time at the Mostro Lounge.

Anyway, Ruggie tells mobs A and B to go home without him so he can hunt the coins in peace.

Azul carelessly tosses 500 madol (~5 USD) into the fountain. Ruggie wants it so badly he dives in and starts digging around wildly in the water for the coin. AND AZUL JUST KINDA STANDS THER E TAUNTING HIM LIKE, "OoOOoOoOoh you want that coin so badly, Ruggie, your body moved on instinct BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF, BE GREEDY, GET THAT COIN" (NOT AN ACTUAL TRANSLATION, but in the spirit of what Azul actually says).

I assume this is what the Ivorycliff Uniform Ruggie groovy depicts... Bro's tripping and having a cosmic experience all because he spotted A COUPLE DOLLARS.

Nooot sure how to feel about this as a narrative device. On one hand, it's funny and definitely demonstrates Ruggie's shamelessness. On the other hand, I can see why some may see it as distasteful or humiliating because Ruggie is already so destitute irl and yet here they are using him scrounging around for a few dollars as comedic bit.

Mobs A and B return to check on him. Ruggie starts obsessing to them about how you can buy extra or fancy food like the shrimp gratin set for 500 madol!! Which confuses the mobs because all the food at Ivorycliff is free.

On instinct, Ruggie starts reciting what I assume is true of NRC: basic buffet foods are free, but extra foods are an extra cost… uniforms are free but if you ruin the first set then you need to pay for extra ones… etc. Ruggie points out that Ivorcliff uniforms are sucky anyway, with a light color like this, even a little bit of dirt stands out! Night Raven College uniforms are black, so it’s so convenient! Wooow, what a callback to book 2 💀 Ruggie complained about the RSA uniforms being hard to clean back then too…

We beat the mobs up~

Ruggie falls ot his knees and has a good little cry 😭 but then he recovers and says he’d better be paid a good hourly wage for all this trouble cnbdjssbjsks He agrees to join us because “Well, I wake up Leona-san every day so this is literally no different than my usual routine” though he also admits his success rate is like 60-70%.

dnensjsbahsjajw RUGGUE’S On MY shIT LIST TOO. HOW daRE HE… Bro says he’s going to wake up OUR king now, that he doesn’t want to follow a false king.. ARE YOU FR 💀 JE’S TAlKING AbOUT zbsvsjabskshFd;,,,/;~~\4!’ansnjahVb,dDDGfgGJjkJSDgabakaojrr a kKNBD gbmmkojnkFSAAQWVNmkoggDFFHvjkkp OTL

PAUSE TO STARE AT RUGGIE'S CRYING FACE BECAUSE WHAT THE HELL I FEEL LIKE I'M STARING AT A KICKED PUPPY

And so…! They’re off!!

This update ends up Ruggie’s dream concluding. Next time (on the 29th), it’s time for us to wake up Leona!!

asdbkhlfbyofqeyg80eg8qegppf OKAY. I WAS NOT EXPECT THIS AMOUNT OF LEONA GLAZING IN THIS UPDATE 🤡 Like, GOOD LORD was there a lot of it... I sort of expected it in Jack's dream since he idolizes Leona, but I was not expecting it to come up in Ruggie's dream too. Even though it doesn't seem like Ruggie has met Leona in the universe of his own dream... the dream world still created lore about how Leona successfully graduated and made the decision to come back and better his country, especially for the destitute hyenas like himself 💀💀💀 WHICH JUST GOES TO SHOW THAT EVERYONE IN LEONA'S DORM RESPECTS HIM AND BELIEVES HE CAN LEAD THEM TO A BRIGHTER FUTURE IN THIS ESSAY I WILL--

ASDBKLHABIYOFAYFQEIBAF STFU ME, THIS UPDATE ISN'T ABOUT HIM.. .. . . . ....... . . . ... . .. . . . . . . LET'S TALK ABOUT JACK AND RUGGIE.

I think this update was one of the funnier ones by far. I'm on Grim's side, it was very unnerving to see a helpful, reliable Leona that plays by the rules and is a good sportsman... but at the same time, it's only to be expected of Jack. Since book 2, he's made it clear he looks up to his dorm leader and wants to be able to put his faith in him. It was nice to see everyone acknowledge how a Leona that doesn't hold back is a genuine threat and how this is the version of him that Jack wants to see realized. It's cute how Jack has this pure want to play with Leona and wants to see him as an idealized leader... Definitely puppy-coded behavior.

Something else I really appreciated about Jack's dream is the logic that went into waking him up. It was really a tag-team effort by Azul and Ortho and, unlike previous updates, I felt like the previous OB boy's presence was a Nothing addition to the cast and didn't contribute much. But Azul uses his smooth talking to convince dream!Leona to play against them, and then Ortho isolates Jack to knock some sense into him. I liked that Ortho, the robot, used cold, hard facts to reason his way to a situation where Jack was more likely to react with strong emotionality. Azul becomes useful again in Ruggie's dream, where he single-handedly wakes the guy up with some spare change he had on hand www

The exchange between Sebek and Jack was great, but I wish it had been extended... It feels like they added it to help with Sebek's character arc of overcoming prejuidice about non-fae, which is fine! But I think it should have been carried over into Ruggie's dream (in that section where they talk about different beastmen in the savanna). Like... it would tie together so well if Sebek had a moment of just "............." in indicate that he's thinking about what was just said, about how different beastmen, despite their differences, all originated in the same place. It would show us that he's slowly realizing, little by little, to accept non-fae.

I think Jack attacking us was an interesting beat to include, especially with all the theories swirling about how the Savanaclaw update will be the one to shake up the formula. Perhaps this is a preview of what's to come in Leona's section??? It proves Ortho's point that you're more likely to think and act with your emotions leading you rather than logic if you're already hyped about something. (In Jack's case, he was still coming off the caution and the high of beating back dream!Ruggie and Leona.)

I felt very similar to Jack in Ruggie's dream, doubting whether or not it was morally right to rip someone away from their happiness--especially considering all that Ruggie has gone through. Little guy was so devastated to find out the truth too... When I think about it, he's gone through so much tragedy in his life. His mom's dead, his dad left him, he grew up destitute and having to scrape by, he had to get LITERAL GARBAGE (depicted in the manga adaptation) to survive some days. It's no wonder why the people in his hometown call him their hero, it's a miracle that he lived this long and managed to get into a prestigious school. I think Ruggie's dream also highlights that he's not JUST greedy because he's greedy. Ruggie clearly cares about other people living well too (something alluded to early in book 4), because why else would Ivorycliffs casually offer free food to everyone and anyone? Why else would he spend tons of cash to buy his grandma stuff? He's thankful for what he has and wants to give back to the community that supported him. The supportive community is also generally reflected in his dream, specifically the market he passes on his way to school.

Ultimately, I do think it's for the best that Ruggie was roused awake because um... HEY, THE WORLD IS GOING TO END. Coming to that conclusion also speaks a lot about Jack's character: above all, he values honesty, even if the truth hurts. Excellent carry-over from book 2 (where he was the whistleblower), honestly.

One thing I wished they had expanded on was the relation of hyenas to other beastmen. It’s implied they are second class citizens, but it’s never clearly stated why that is other than “oh they live in a place that lions didn’t rule”. I would have liked more historical context for that discrimination; it would have helped to flesh out the world.

Overall, liked this update a lore more than the previous ones. I don’t know if I can still say this after the second part comes out (because I’ve usually had the most criticism for how the OB boys’ dreams ate handled), but so far I’m surprised by Jack and Ruggie (in a good way). Fingers crossed for the 29! 🤞

[humanelemental]

Ok but picture this, Agatha goes on a life death?changing field trip with Billy. Probably they find Tommy and Wanda, and Wanda restores Agatha’s body since she kind of saved both her kids.

Rio expects Agatha to run as soon as her feet physically hit solid ground again, but she just…doesn’t. Like Rio shows up and is all, “what’s it going to be? Where are you going to run this time coward???”

And Agatha just looks at her, looks around, looks at her and is like, “did I not tell you to fix my damn yard?”

Rio is stunned. Like of all the responses. And Agatha is being (mostly) serious. She clearly expects Death (capital D) to do her damn landscaping. And before Rio can figure out how to react, Agatha is like, “that includes my door and sink. Who tf throws the actual kitchen sink at someone. It’s supposed to be a figure of speech, you overgrown hipster!” And just throws her hands in the air and starts towards the house. Rio is so flabbergasted that she just leaves for a bit. But not before fixing the door. Every time she comes back she expects Agatha to be gone, but nope, there she is, inexplicably hanging out in New Jersey. Sometimes she’s teaching the boys. Sometimes she and Wanda are having philosophical arguments (aka she’s also teaching Wanda but neither is willing to admit it. Rio refuses to leave until Wanda does on those occasions.)

Occasionally she takes trips to other places for various reasons. She nails a note to the door specifically for Rio with detailed instructions for Señor Scratchy and a plea to leave her damn azaleas alone. (Rio does not, and Agatha often comes home to a well fed bunny and man-eating flowers. How one makes azaleas man-eating is anyone’s guess, but Agatha’s money is on semi-divine spite.) Every time she returns to find Rio sulking on the porch. Which is odd because sometimes she has to rush out of the house to get in position. Like Agatha has started to walk up her driveway and seen Rio fling herself out the door and onto the front steps to glare at her. (Señor is a very relaxing bunny and sometimes Rio loses track of time ok.) Neither of them discuss this beyond Agatha rolling her eyes and inviting her back in for a drink or dinner or what have you.

This continues for a truly obnoxious amount of time until Rio finally decides that Agatha is done hiding from her and decides to become the biggest nuisance in existence. Agatha is always annoyed but she never sends Rio away. The worst she does is bitch and moan, and occasionally throw something at her ex-maybe current-wife. If she’s doing something truly important, or, more often, if it looks like Rio is thinking a little too hard about murdering the twins, she’ll tell her to go play somewhere else for a bit. Rio always snarls and growls but she usually heads off for a couple of days. The problem is almost always that she’s either bored or stressed. She always finds herself back in Westview to annoy Agatha eventually. (Sometimes if she’s in a very good mood, Rio will help with the twins’ lessons. But don’t tell anyone.)

Eventually they settle into what everyone else can tell is a relationship, but which they both firmly deny is anything more than a convent arrangement. They make this everyone’s problem, in true agathario fashion, but no one seems to really mind.

Idk, just something I have rattling around in my head.

[vole-mon-amour]

2x09, part 2. Jayvik edition.

i love him and his soft smile, and how gorgeous he is. damn dude, you gave Jayce that Hextech dream all those years ago. "our dream."

well, Jayce. are you happy now? :)

partners in crime, partners in misery, I guess.

ooohh, the new height difference. i hope they have some fun when they off into another universe or whatever.

i hope they have freaky mental sex or whatever while they're gone after this.

siiigh. pretty, though.

And where WERE you? Oh, i'll tell you. You were fucking Mel while Viktor was working.

And you haven't kissed even ONCE. Maybe then you'd be more or less okay.

Oh, they're having a moment. I wish there was way more Ekko this season. :(

his design is so pretty :(

"now, all I want..."

#married

hey, seriously, can they pls kiss?

Viktor saw Jayce and though, "This one. I want THIS one. He's going to be my best friend, my lover, my partner."

CANON!!!!!

The way Viktor pushes himself away from Jayce 'cause he's overwhelmed and it's too much, too intimate, and their minds are intertwined. CANON.

"We finish this together."

s c r e a m i n g.

hey. that's forever. MelJayce? i've never even heard of them. this is their destiny. to be together forever. in all timelines.

nothing like holding hands with your eternal husband.

that's not what I expected, but I'm not complained. Jayvik keeps winning, I guess? for once in their life.

i REALLY hope Ekko's device didn't undo all the talk of "let's finish this together". i'd watch another season/show just for these two. because, while I think the ending for the sisters is incredibly weak, these two? ooohh. i liked how they found a way to kind of end it on a promising note? it's not all death and suffering.

i mean, look at all the jayvik scenes we have this episode and what their final moments are like. amazing.

[tinylongwing]

Vide Noir's dual narrative structure

All right, here it is, me making good on at least one of my meta threats. Lord Huron's album Vide Noir can be interpreted as an album with two parallel, contrasting narratives - that of the lead protagonist Buck Vernon, as well as that of Johnnie Redmayne.

Disclaimer: this is an interpretation I think is pretty sound and well-reasoned, but I make no claim to any of this being proven canon information.

---

For those unfamiliar or who need a reminder, the primary narrative is this: the year is 1967, and we start near the end of Buck's journey, as he awakens from being black-brained (Lost in Time and Space). Having just suffered an overdose on the drug vide noir, his memories are slow to return to him, but return they do - his fiancee, Leigh/Lee Green (from here on Leigh but both spellings have been used), left him without a word one night, and he decided to follow, heading west to Los Angeles from their home town of Detroit, Michigan. He's been struggling to find her, checking every bar in the city in case she was booked to sing at one as her move was the result of her chasing her dream of becoming a singer. He doesn't remember a lot about himself, really, after that overdose, but he remembers her, and his love for her makes him desperate to find her.

We're then taken back to the night he left to find her (Never Ever) and his journey is mostly linear from there - he meets a fortune teller, Lady Moonbeam, who tells him that pursuing Leigh will end in his ruin, but he refuses to accept her advice and pushes on (Ancient Names I & II). He laments that he's been some kind of fuckup, that maybe he chased Leigh away through his own behavior, but that he still loves her and begs for her to return (Wait By the River). At some point around here he also learns of the drug vide noir and contemplates using it himself for clues.

(Note that unlike in the movie, in the album, nothing suggests that Buck suffered from a murder attempt by Z'Oiseau's henchmen but that instead he may have overdosed himself in an attempt to find Lee. However, there's plenty of reason to suspect that the film is the canon interpretation here anyway and the henchmen kidnapping Buck just doesn't make for a song I guess.)

One way or another, he winds up black-brained, where some deep existential truths of the universe are revealed to him (Secret of Life - namely that everyone and everything dies in the end, and that a human life is brief, fleeting, and ultimately meaningless within the context of the universe as a whole). He somehow reawakens rather than dying (Back from the Edge) and, again, understands that nothing he does will ever matter, has never mattered*, but that *even though* he's suffered greatly already on this quest, he's still committed to trying to find Leigh, pitting himself against that careless universe (The Balancer's Eye).

So he keeps searching (When the Night is Over) until he finds a clue, or a helping hand of some sort, that leads him on the right path to his beloved Leigh (Moonbeam). We get one more reminder of the forces at work here - vide noir is some awful stuff, it nearly killed him, Leigh herself is hooked on it now, it shows you terrible truths and nightmares beyond human comprehension (Vide Noir) - and when all is said and done, as Buck thinks he's about to "rescue" Leigh from her fate and bring her back to his fantasy of a perfect happy life together, she rejects him. He came all this way through time and space, and she doesn't love him at all in the end (Emerald Star).

---

I consider this the primary narrative here because it makes use of all the songs on the album, it has a clear start and ending and a mostly linear structure, and the album basically serves as a soundtrack to Buck's fool's errand. The film agrees - every scene is centered around his journey, after all. But we have context from Lord Huron's other albums, as well as the lyrics and musical stylings of multiple songs on Vide Noir, that show us that Buck isn't necessarily the only narrator on this album. Strange Trails, of course, came out three years prior, and features songs by multiple fictional bands performing songs which serve as narration for a diverse cast of characters. Unlike on Strange Trails, where each track has a writer or band specifically named and assigned to it as well as a character narrative, Vide Noir does not give us such conclusive information, but we can still put clues together to understand at least some of who the in-universe performers might be on Vide Noir.

Most likely, multiple of these songs are by the Buck Vernon Band - this is pretty obvious. Buck's semi-autobiographical music is all over Strange Trails, usually referencing a girl he loves, sometimes referencing that the girl left him, often giving her different names, all starting with L (Fool For Love's "Lily", and "Louisa").

But the other band that we can easily identify as performers on Vide Noir are the Phantom Riders. For those who need an introduction, this is the band composed of four members of the World Enders gang, with Dale Redmayne at the helm as lead writer. They were seen previously on Strange Trails as well, with banger surf/rockabilly hits like Hurricane, Until the Night Turns, and The World Ender. As a storytelling tool, they are primarily brought in to tell us about the man-turned-undead horror entity known as The World Ender himself, and then otherwise mostly we get their songs about Dale's brother Johnnie Redmayne, who is introduced to us in Strange Trails as a fun-loving and presumably fairly young guy, a thrillseeker and hedonist, who lives for the moment as if the world could end any day. The Buck Vernon Band jumps in between some of these songs with an interjection to tell us that wait, Johnnie is dead, or was, but he got back up. In Dead Man's Hand, Buck speculates that Johnnie could have been murdered or may have killed himself, accidentally or intentionally, upon first seeing him. It's in Vide Noir that we actually learn more about the circumstances of Johnnie's death.

Before we get to that, let's first identify which Vide Noir songs are by the Phantom Riders. This isn't all that hard to do. Any song that references The World Ender is presumably theirs - that gives us Secret of Life right away ("I sit alone in the dark, and I try to remember the words you spoke when you summoned the Ender"). This is reinforced in the Alive From Whispering Pines webseries, episode 423 - Secret of Life, when played, shows a skeleton prop the band has jokingly referred to as Cobb Avery on their social media posts in the past, and after the song ends in this episode, the tune continues in a slowed and distorted fashion through a clip of a WBUB movie version of Dead Man's Hand showing Johnnie rising from the pavement when Buck is about to bury him.

Ancient Names Parts I and II are presumably written by the same band as a two-part song. In the Vide Noir film, the Phantom Riders are performing Part II in the underground club. Additionally, in Alive From Whispering Pines episode 426, after Tubbs Tarbell is done reminiscing about the band and their nihilism, Ancient Names Part II is the next song covered - and often in this series, the structure of the segments between songs are intentional and related to either the song they precede or the song they follow, so it's likely that the placement of the Phantom Riders' appearance followed by a track they're associated with is meant to help confirm them as the performers. In addition, Ancient Names Part I references a fortune teller, and we know from the film that the fortune teller in question, Lady Moonbeam, is associated with the World Enders and knows the Redmaynes.

The last track on Vide Noir that is most likely theirs is the title track, Vide Noir. We have two points of evidence for this - one lyrical ("Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys" which feels like a pretty direct reference to the World Enders' nighttime violence) and one musical - the main melody of Vide Noir is identical to that of Ancient Names (and Fortune Teller's Theme, actually). In Strange Trails, using the same melody for multiple songs was an easy way to tie Frankie Lou's songs together, and here we can see that it ties two Phantom Riders tracks together directly, indicating that not only are they both by the same band, but that Vide Noir is a followup to Ancient Names part I, in which our fortune teller did warn us things would go very, very wrong.

(And besides all of that, the Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir all tend to be similar in musical style - psychedelia-flavored garage rock with a heavy bass line, in contrast to other songs on the album.)

With those songs identified, we should also be aware of just how much Lord Huron seem to love their dual narratives. In Strange Trails, we have a really concrete example of this with The Night We Met. This song was in-universe written by Frankie Lou, presumably about her doomed relationship with Z'Oiseau and how much she wishes she had never met him to begin with (as she echoes in her dialogue in the Vide Noir film when speaking to Buck in her dressing room). However, the music video for this song shows not Frankie and Z'Oiseau, but instead Buck, driving west, while reflecting on his own failure to keep Leigh, wishing he could go back in time and fix things, and meanwhile kind of hallucinating her as he goes. In the album Long Lost, we get another dual narrative in I Lied, which is performed by Donny and Midge but is also sung by Leigh in Vide Noir, foreshadowing her breakup with and lack of love for Buck. There are certainly other dual narratives in both of those albums to be found as well - so what we should keep in mind here is that often, songs can be written and performed by a character or band in order to narrate for themselves or someone close to them, but that just as in our real-world movie soundtracks or our favorite character playlists on spotify, those songs can be applied to other characters in different (but somewhat similar) situations than the ones they were written for.

So! We have four Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir, all of which were presumably not written originally in-universe about Buck Vernon, because why would they be, Buck and the World Enders only briefly cross paths and at the very least we know that Ancient Names Part II was written well before he ever met them. Instead, it makes the most sense if like the bulk of the Phantom Riders songs, these tracks serve Johnnie's narration instead.

---

If that's the case, what does that give us? Winding around and through Buck's journey is this second storyline. Johnnie Redmayne, having used and enjoyed vide noir himself abundantly ("I had a vision tonight that the world was ending" as one probable example), decides it's time to get his hands on bulk quantities so as to get the Enders in on controlling the flow of the drug in LA rather than letting Z'Oiseau maintain a monopoly, thereby also increasing revenue for the members of the gang.

It's Moonbeam who warns him to knock it off first. We know, thanks to the film, that he'd spoken to her at some point about his plans to investigate the source of the drug at Tobey's arcade and try to get his hands on some to sell. Whatever his exact plan was, in Ancient Names Part 1, Moonbeam warns him that pursuing this is going to get him killed. Vide noir isn't just a drug, it's something extremely dangerous, tied to dangerous people, and he needs to get away from "her" (and note that frequently throughout music history, drugs have been personified as a "her" or an unnamed lover, whether for poetic reasons or to evade censorship that might come from talking directly about drug use - and Cursed, off Strange Trails, is one more in-universe example, where "her" refers both to Leigh Green and to drug use, specifically vide noir).

Immediately afterward, Ancient Names Part 2, in addition to serving as a very classic sort of World Enders nihilism anthem, can easily be interpreted as Johnnie saying "fuck that, I do what I want, you only live one life anyway and even if it kills me, I want to make my mark before I go out." Death is something hypothetical - sure, it'll get him some day, it gets everyone, and maybe Moonbeam is even right, but he isn't going to let her warning stop him.

On Strange Trails, Buck and Johnnie cross paths at Dead Man's Hand. On this album they only cross thematically, and the pivotal moment of intersection might be Secret of Life. This song may be the point at which Buck learns some forbidden secrets revealed by taking vide noir as discussed above, but its lyrics speak a lot more specifically to Johnnie's experience, implying some connection between him, vide noir, and the World Ender.

It may be that as we see with Buck in the film, perhaps Johnnie too has suffered the effects of being black-brained prior to taking it due to the time and space-bending effects of the drug (notice, for example, in Strange Trails we get Johnnie's story in a scrambled chronological order) and here he's confronted with the harsh truths of what those past visions of his possible future mean for him: he has been set on a path that is no longer avoidable due to his eventual future overdose. So perhaps it's at this point that he acknowledges that he is going to die sooner rather than later and that his life and death will not have meant anything to the greater cosmos, but this information, which was new to Buck, is not something Johnnie fears. Johnnie is hardly new to this point of view. He's seen past echoes of the knowledge imparted by vide noir throughout his life, both in his future visions of the end of the world (again see Until The Night Turns) and in the knowledge passed on through other World Enders, including their own motto ("The fair, the brave, the good must die", or in Secret of Life here, "The darkness comes for all of us").

(As an aside, there's still a lot to unravel with Secret of Life that I haven't touched on here. It's a fascinating song with some really mysterious lyrics. I've speculated at length in the LH discord about some additional interpretations this song could yield but won't veer off topic here.)

And yet despite what looks like a very certain and dire end, Johnnie maintains hope that perhaps he, too, will live past this. Because if Cobb Avery did, why can't he? This is part of the gang's core mythos - their founder is a dead man. He clawed his way back out of the grave for revenge, they thought it was just so fucking cool that he was unkillable that they had to join him, and together they dismantled the Winthrop Corporation, one murder at a time. When the police finally caught up to him, they lynched him - but the noose did nothing, for he was already dead, and now in the form of a skeleton, he called the gang to his side (see Strange Trails: The World Ender comic book). In the ensuing chaos, he flees, the gang heads west and relocates to east Los Angeles, and in the time contemporary with the events of Vide Noir, he is still present among them but this appears to be unknown to the public (Daily Trails prop, by Kim Berens, used in both Vide Noir and Alive From Whispering Pines where it was modified to Ten years later).

Whether The World Ender is readily visible to and known by most members of the gang at this point is unknown, but we know that those who were black-brained can see him (in the film, Buck sees him approaching, bumps into him, plunges into a hallucination of his own future, and when he comes too, the Ender is gone). Given the Secret of Life lyrics, it's reasonable to guess that Johnnie at least can see the World Ender just fine and one way or another, in speaking with him and in conjunction with consuming vide noir, has learned enough secret knowledge to make some kind of choice - and this is what later enables him, too, to drag his way back to the world of the living.

Fate catches up to Johnnie and as we learn in the film, his death was at the hands of Z'Oiseau's henchmen for trying to gain access to dealing in vide noir. Like Buck, he is black-brained - forced to swallow enough of the drug to kill him. And so the track Vide Noir opens with the Fortune Teller's Theme previously heard in Ancient Names Part 1, and that tune is woven through the track - Moonbeam's "I warned you, I told you so" to both of these fools who disregarded her advice. Although, again, the lyrics are clearly meant primarily to narrate for Johnnie - "Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys, getting high on a pure black void" sounds a lot more like what Johnnie gets up to than Buck. We are given a glimpse of his last words and final thoughts as life slips away and his consciousness is sent straight to the final edge of the cosmos.

---

So ultimately, this is what we're left with:

Vide Noir is an album that tells the story of Buck Vernon, whose fiancee has left him. His journey culminates in a near-brush with death, in finding Leigh, and in learning that she does not love him and that he's nothing, his life is worth nothing more than dust and that none of it mattered or will ever matter, that once he eventually dies he will vanish and be forgotten in time.

Vide Noir also tells the story of Johnnie Redmayne, who for once tries to do something that isn't just for his own hedonistic pleasure but that might actually help bring in money to support his friends and family, but he's too headstrong and impulsive to listen to the warnings he's given, and is killed in the attempt.

One lives who probably shouldn't have and comes out at rock bottom and now has to work out how to move on from here, and one dies a nihilist who should presumably just accept the inevitability of death, but has the knowledge and absolute stubborn determination to enable his eventual return, following in the footsteps of Cobb Avery.

And what happens to both of them afterward? Well, we don't know. Hopefully some day (SOON?? BEN PLEASE) we'll get the opportunity to find out!

[bullet-prooflove]

I've just found your work and I'm obsessed 😭 I never usually ask for things - too scared lol but feeling brave. For Dr Archer Chicago med and the three things prompts please can I request: cat + whiskey + socks 😂

Tagging: @kmc1989 @mandy426 @mysticcandymiracle @sweetdaytimedreams @cosmic-psychickitty

Dean does not want a cat, he has never wanted a cat but apparently he now has a cat, one that likes to nap in his sock drawer and yowl him awake when he sleeps past seven am.

“That’s because he likes you.” You tell him when he complains to you about it. You have  the whisky coloured kitten snuggled up close to your chest and you’re depositing tiny kisses on the top of its head. “He knows who his Papa is.”

“Isobel.” He says firmly. “I don’t want to be it’s Papa, we need to rehome it.”

The look on your face, it makes Dean feel like a monster.

You don’t speak to him after that. You spend the evening playing with the kitten on the floor until it curls up on your lap and falls asleep and he just watches the Cubs game, pretending that there isn’t an icy cold chill between the two of you.

This whole thing started when you were cutting through the park on your way home a couple of days ago. You’d heard a persistent meowing coming from one of the trashcans you walked past and when you’d looked inside, you’d found a tiny bedraggled kitten, thrown away as if it were trash. You’d bundled the thing up in your coat, brought it home and it’s been living here ever since much to Dean’s discontentment.

When he wakes up the next morning, you’re already gone from the apartment but the cat it’s still there. He observes the note on the coffeemaker telling him it’s been fed asit lingers by it’s bowl looking hopeful.

“It’s nothing personal.” He tells it as he takes a couple of the cat treats you bought out of the pouch and places them in the bowl. “I just like my space.”

The cat brushes up against his hand, rubbing it’s cheek across his knuckles. Dean scratches it behind the ears and it begins to purr under the attention, stretching out as his palm lightly caresses over its back.

“Maybe we can come to arrangement.” Dean tells the kitten, scooping it up and escorting it to the fluffy grey cat igloo that now resides next to the sideboard in the living room. He sets the kitten down in front of it and it brushes it’s face against the fabric. “You stop finding your way into my sock drawer and actually go to sleep in the cat igloo she got you then maybe you can stay.”

The cat delves inside, padding it’s paws on the pillowing and Dean takes that to mean they’ve come to an accord.

It’s late when you get in that night, it’s been a bear of a shift. There’d been a pile up and you’ve spent the past few hours trying to find space for your additional guests and work their autopsies into your already busy schedule. You still haven’t had a chance to find a new home for the cat, part of you is hoping Dean will change his mind but you know the likelihood of that.

When you step into the living room, Dean’s sitting on the couch watching an old war movie, the kitten is resting on a cushion in his lap, his palm lightly stroking over him as they both stare at the screen.

“Are we keeping him?” You ask, trying as hard as you can to keep the excitement out of your voice and Dean sighs as he looks down at the kitten.

“I guess we are.”

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Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[xxplastic-cubexx]

waiting for marvel to take you up as their comic artist so that we can have amazing art with cherik official storyline

marvel hire me to draw professor x and magneto making out sloppy style for forty issues straight you will get a BAJILLION dollars i promise

[medicinemane]

Should make a pain killer that actually kills (or even touches) pain

[wolpatinga]

[todayisafridaynight]

is there anyone you ship ichi with? 👀

dragon quest collection for the nintendo switch 🥰🥰

[coquelicoq]

fascinated to see that this dico calls no especial attention to the fact that you're not supposed to make elision with the words onze or onzième (i.e., you say le onzième rather than l'onzième). i was curious to see if they would take the same route as my english-french dico, which puts an asterisk before the pronunciation like it does with words that begin with an aspirated h, but the only thing this one does is include the example sentence Il est le onzième.

[nostalgia-tblr]

If I could do Fics With A Plot I'd probably attempt An AU Where Lauffey Dies And Odin Goes "Oh Hey, Frost Dudes, I Had Your Heir All Along :D He's Urs Now :D" Except Because This Is A Shit Plan It Does Not Go At All Well. Because it does bother me. Because I worry too much about fictional monarchies having the 'wrong' rules. D:

[threewaysdivided]

hi 3wd. i’ve tried to write before and i’ve never gotten far in the process, despite having many ideas im enthusiastic about. all your blogging about being a planner-writer has got me thinking i might have the same style of writing as you l- and a lot of the reason im struggling to put words on paper is because i don’t have a direction or fleshed out emotional/plot beats to write towards. what would be your advice to any fledgling planner-writers that don’t know where to start? how did you start writing with this writing style?

Hey nonnie 💜

It can be super frustrating to have a bunch of pieces you want to play with but not have them come together in a way that maintains traction.  Outlining could definitely be a potential tool to help sustain momentum, so let’s see if I can get some gears turning for you.

For me personally, the outline-approach is one I just sort of fell into naturally.  Part of it comes from my school days; we were encouraged to write dot-point plans to structure our arguments/ research/ storytelling for assignments ahead of drafting (some teachers even counted evidence of it towards the final grade), which set it as a habit early.  Fun fact: I actually outlined this answer before writing it; I do it for most long posts.  Another part of it is that I tend to come at writing from a very analytical angle - there’s a degree to which I try to solve or understand stories as I consume them.  One of my earliest casual jobs was working as an English/Lit tutor for high-schoolers.  I find a lot of joy in picking narratives apart, figuring out how they work and finding ones that hold up through several layers of examination, so as a writer I like to construct stories that way.

Part of it is also that, when I want to write something for release, I’m conscious of the fact that it will have an audience.  A question that hangs around in the back of my mind is “if I found this story and wasn’t the writer, would I enjoy reading it?”

There’s another aspect that has to do with respect, in a way.  I love the worlds and the characters that I use in my stories, and for me that means writing things that feel true to their spirit, giving significance to the times when that changes and making sure they have a meaningful journey (even if it’s not a happy one).

For me outlining suits this ethos, since having a map of future directions makes it easier to place foreshadowing fairly, identify themes, build character arcs and keep explanations/ lore consistent.

I’m also going to admit that I just got lucky with Deathly Weapons. There was a very specific emotional idea that I wanted to centre a story around, and the inspiration happened to come with both a starting premise and a concept for the ending.  Then I also had wish-lists; some tropes I wanted to play with, and some existing series whose storytelling structure I wanted to emulate and pay homage to.  Something I realised a few years after starting DW is that I’m a very project-and-output-oriented person.  In a way, Deathly Weapons’ came to me as a project brief where I already knew the end-goal and a lot of what I wanted to work towards.

With that said, let’s talk outlining:

The value of having a plan

To me, an outline is a bit like having an itinerary for a road-trip.  It gives you an idea of where you’re going, how long things will take, what key things you want to do, how much it might cost and it helps you anticipate potential problems.  But, like an outline, an itinerary isn’t binding.  There might be some things that take more effort to change (distance to travel, bookings you need to cancel/ reschedule/ extend - key plot points that a story hinges around or that need more preparation/ payoff to be effective) but you can adjust as you go; take extra time to explore an interesting spot, add a detour based on local recommendations, skip things that turn out to be less compelling than they first seemed, take a shorter route to get to a key destination faster, extend the trip to see a few more sights or decide to cut things short because something came up.   The itinerary gives you the security of already knowing where you’re headed, letting you put down the mental burden of having to work out each stop as you go and enjoy the moment more. 

Ways an outline can help:

Reassurance: if you have a tendency to be anxious/ self-critical/ have high standards about characterisation, plot holes etc. then an outline can be a good way to workshop the story and get ahead of potential challenges, as well as to concept-test whether this is a project you feel like committing to.

Scoping: blocking out an overview can help you get an idea of the size and complexity of the project, and how much time/resources/teamwork it might need.

Motivation: having a plan of future story moments that you’re looking forward to can provide a goal to help you push through the less exciting parts (e.g. connective scenes) and/or help you re-find your enthusiasm if you’re returning from a break or are feeling creatively flat for reasons outside the story itself.

Iteration: if you tend to come up with stories primarily by exploring and assembling ideas, then an outline method can be a way to quickly put a concept on paper, examine it and then decide if/how you want to use it, without the restriction of needing to write it all out as polished paragraphs first.

Splitting up the steps: useful if you tend to think faster than you can type full sentences, find that you move between ideas non-sequentially or if prose-writing/ sentence construction is something that takes a lot of mental energy or stop-and-starting from you.  An outline can be a way to separate the processes of story crafting and story telling into more-distinct stages rather than trying to juggle both at once.  Find the story first, then write it.

Non-sequential writing: having a roadmap of your story’s structure and direction can give you more freedom in how you choose to approach it, letting you jump ahead to work on planned future sections/scenes where the inspiration is flowing rather than waiting for the next scene to “come to you”.

For a more direct comparison, Screenwriting Bibles are a form of outline for professional TV/Film production.  These “bibles” are key reference documents used by writers for information on the premise, characters, settings and other project elements, as well as to plan future episodes and seasonal arcs.  (This podcast transcript, article and template are good starting sources if you want to learn more about TV Bibles.) 

Much like a series bible, an outline can help you keep tabs on:

Consistency and continuity: this can be minor stuff like names of background characters or small details (running gags, item descriptions, character trivia) but can also be major stuff like character motivations, who has what abilities, event timelines or story-themes.

Direction: your outline can capture the overall arc(s) and conflict source(s) of your story and their intended resolutions, as well as mapping out how those conflicts are progressing.

Causality: whether planned events and character choices feel consistent and reasonable within the internal logic of your story.

If any of this sounded helpful to you then you might benefit from experimenting with an outliner/ planner approach.  There are a bunch of different planner techiques (here’s a link for some) as well as hybrid “plan-tser” methods that you could try. But for now let's talk about the general process, starting with a focus question:

What is it that makes you want to tell this story?

This might seem like a daunting place to begin but it can help with figuring out the core of your story and what you find compelling.

It’s okay if you don’t have a neat-and-clean answer straight away.  Sometimes inspiration just strikes out of the blue, and that’s fine.  Sometimes you have a vague directional pull but you’ll need to do some story-work before you can identify what’s calling to you.  However, if you did have a specific itch or passion that drove you to write then thinking about what and why that is can help you understand what you want from the story – and in turn what might connect with other people.

I also want to be clear that this is not about judging your motivations or their “artistic merit”.  I had a specific story to tell is fine, as is I wanted to explore this concept/theme/emotion/issue, or this was a gift/commission for someone else, and so is I wanted to try writing a specific genre, or I wanted to experiment with a specific medium, or I wanted to do my own version of [existing idea] or I am fascinated by this character/relationship/world or I needed some vicarious catharsis, or I was horny.  And a whole bunch of other things.

Knowing what you’re trying to get out of a story can help you decide what type of story you want to tell, as well as the overall scope and what medium/format/genre to tell it in.  Maybe it’s a single-scene character/aesthetic study, or a one-shot vignette.  Maybe it’s one long story, or it could be series of connected stories, or it could be a story-anthology centring on a common idea.  Maybe this story would work well as a comic, or art piece(s), or podcast, video, or something interactive like a choose-your-own-adventure or a videogame.

Understanding where you’re coming from can also help you answer the questions of what is your story about? and what happens in your story? which are related but not the same. 

What is your story about concerns the themes and thesis of your story, which can help you figure out the story’s tone, main emotional or thematic conflict(s), and how you want them to resolve by the ending.  Put simply, it’s the message.

What happens in your story is the synopsis of planned events, character actions, worldbuilding and other content.  Put simply, it’s the stuff your story has in it.

Let’s take my Deathly Weapons fanfic as a case study:

What made me want to write this story? Deathly Weapons started with me being unsatisfied with what felt like a gap in the Danny Phantom x Superheroes crossover fanfic space at the time.  There was a trend where stories would kill Danny’s friends and family to justify placing him with the crossover’s other hero team but very few of those stories felt like they acknowledged the emotional consequences of doing so; the ones that allowed him to grieve frequently using it for nonspecific angst about Loss™ or mourning the generic archetypes of A Love Interest™, A Sister™, Parents™ or A Best Friend™ rather than the specific characters and bonds from the series.  There were also some smaller itches around plot construction and mysteries that I couldn’t find many stories to scratch.  I wanted to try writing something to fill those gaps. What is this story about? Thematically Deathly Weapon’s central emotional arc is about grief and healing: in particular the uniqueness of the bonds between people and how grief reflects the specific hole each individual leaves behind, as well as the process of finding closure, making new connections and moving forward in the aftermath of loss. What happens in this story? A lot.  In my youthful hubris and overambition I planned out basically a half-season of a TV show.  For the sake of not dragging this section out by a mile, here’s an arc/mission plot teaser list I made a little while ago.

Since Deathly Weapons Arc II is deliberately structured to emulate a TV show, you can sort of see how that summary has accidentally ended up mirroring parts of a top-down Pitch Deck.  But, of course, that’s not the outline I actually use when writing.

Different levels and types of outline

Like a lot of creative terms, “outlining” covers a pretty broad umbrella’s worth of stuff. 

Methods-wise there are plenty of different approaches: from specific story-writing software (Scrivener, Campfire etc.), to word documents, to binders and notebooks, to honest-to-goodness sticky-notes, thumbtacks and string.  Personally I alternate between a documents folder on my computer and a physical notepad/sketchpad for when I’m on the go, but you should pick whatever format feels most comfortable for how you process/visualise information.

Functionally, I think it helps to conceptualise three main levels of outline: Brainstorming, Structural and Detail.  To be clear, you don’t have to do all three.  A short story or one-shot might be served by writing directly from a brainstorming or light structural outline.  You also don’t have to keep them strictly separate.  A brainstorming document might cover some early structure notes or test paragraphs.  A structural or detailed outline might have some brainstorming or research sections as you uncover and solve smaller questions.  Heck, you can have detail notes inside your initial drafts if they help you keep the story flowing.  These are tools you can use, not prescriptions you need to follow.

Let’s talk about the levels:

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is the least structured.  Like the name suggests it’s mostly about getting concepts down and coming up with ideas – this could include early notes for plots beats/ scenes/ character interactions, sketches, screenshots/quotes and possibly research questions for stuff you want to confirm or find out about (e.g. checking source material, or researching systems and potential setting-locations).  You could consider this like early research notes for a class essay – where you know what your subject is and might start with some initial thoughts or focus questions but are still learning and figuring out the broad strokes of your content and stance.  

Despite that comparison, brainstorming is probably the most creatively fun step in the process.  This is not where you worry about things like “quality”, “cohesiveness”, “accuracy/canon compliance” or “cliches” – this is the time for rolling with whatever inspiration strikes you, pouring out any idea you find interested/compelling/cathartic, asking questions, going down internet rabbit holes and generally just enjoying unabashed creation.  This is your raw material: you’re going to cut and shape it later.

Structural

Structural outlines probably have them most utility in giving your story shape and form, especially if your story is long or has a lot of components.  If you were doing an essay, this is the part where you’d figure out your thesis and start grouping each main argument and its supporting points into planned body paragraphs.  For a story, this is where you start sorting your ideas and putting them in order; deciding on your arcs, conflicts and resolutions, working out the order and causality of events, your character motivations and dynamics, where to place key foreshadowing, major scenes and the like.  This is the level where you’re going to try and solve potential story problems – to come up with in-universe explanations and identify possible plot-holes before you write yourself into them.  You’ll likely do extra brainstorming or research in this phase too but it’ll be more targeted – aimed at filling gaps, connecting dots or serving specific needs. 

For longer or more complex stories you might have multiple structural outlines tracking different levels of granularity; some providing an overview of the whole story/ series arc, while other focus on specific characters/ subplots or break things down into individual plot beats and scenes.  You might also spin some of your initial brainstorming into reference or meta documents – content that you aren’t going to directly cover in-story but that will inform or add depth/consistency to other elements.  If you enjoy puzzle-solving then this can be a very satisfying part of the process: there’s nothing quite like hiding a subtle piece of symbolism/foreshadowing, coming up with a sneaky red-herring or finding a rock-solid explanation to make you feel extremely clever.

It’s also worth repeating that you are not beholden to whatever structural outlines you first come up with – your outlines can and should evolve with you as you develop your story and come up with new or alternate ideas.  (Just last year I re-ordered two major subplots and added an extra character arc for Deathly Weapons).

Some stuff to think about for structural outlining:

Remember that, as the storyteller you have full control of the narrative and what happens inside it.  Like I said at the start of my case study on YJ: Invasion’s writing, even the rules of a fiction piece are made up: there is nothing physically stopping you from making the sky be a different colour every five minutes if you felt like it.  If you want something to happen then you can work backwards to reverse-engineer a specific scenario where those things would reasonably occur.  Start at Scene B and figure out what needs to happen to get there from Established Starting Point A.  If you need a character to act a certain way, then you can tailor a situation to trigger that response based on their established personality/ insecurities/ flaws.  You can manufacture specific story problems whose solutions play toward or against the skills and abilities of different characters, or create scenarios which situationally discourage characters from using skills/abilities/tools that might otherwise be overpowered. You can also make the call to deviate from what has been established in order to facilitate a scene or plot point - temporarily imposing a trait for narrative purposes (sometimes referred to as carrying a ball) or Rules Lawyering your worldbuilding to create a technical loophole.  This risk here is that this can feel artificial, jarring or unfair if not reasonably justified within the story logic.  There’s also a limit on how often/ how far you can push this before it risks breaking the story.  If things start to contradict or situations arbitrarily turn on a dime then your audience can lose trust that the characters and world will follow the expectations set by the narrative – they can start to feel narratively unsafe, until it reaches a point where the only way for them to reconcile the dissonance and inconsistencies in the story is to acknowledge that it’s all an artificial construct being externally steered by the hand of the author.   You can do whatever you want… provided you do the work to make audience to believe it.

That being said, try not go get too wedded to the specifics of your early ideas.  Sometimes an element is just not going to fit with the direction your story ends up taking; whether because it’s not compatible with the eventual trajectory of the characters/events/lore or simply because it would be hard to include without disrupting/diverting/distracting from the flow of the story at that point.  In some instances you can take the core of an idea and modify it to find a new place in the narrative; for example by repurposing a scene or piece of dialogue, repackaging information, rescheduling a conversation, fusing concepts together or deconstructing them and integrating the component parts across other scenes.  But in other cases you may decide that the potential problems (whether structural or narrative) introduced by including an element outweigh the value it could add – in which case it’s time to lovingly set it aside.  This is what they mean when they say kill your darlings.  Having a designated document for future story ideas and/or outtakes can help with this (or you could do what I did with Defining Moment and turn an idea into its own side-story).

This can be also a good place to consider more technical story elements, like pacing.  Think about the peaks and valleys of intensity (suspense, intrigue, action, character drama etc.) across the beats of your story; where you might want to ramp things up or down, and how you might use scene and/or chapter breaks to space out information, create breathing room or hold the audience at a certain level of emotion/anticipation.  (For a good short primer, try these videos about Pacing and Tension Cycles in games).

You may also like to use the structure overview as an opportunity to take stock of Tropes and Patterns.  Not to avoid them – you can’t really avoid tropes – but just to see if any are showing up and what they might be saying, even if you didn’t intend for that to happen.  (For a topical example: consider what tropes are showing up around different minority/minority-analogous characters - either in their depictions or how the story treats them - and what message that might be sending.  There’s a lot of bias to the way certain groups and issues have historically been portrayed in media, some of which have baked themselves into now-common stock plots and archetypes.  That isn’t to say you should never use them; just be conscious and careful, especially if your story intends to make some sort of commentary on those topics.)  On a more positive note, this can be another way to learn about what story mechanics you like, both in your own writing and others’.

Detail

Detail notes are the most granular level of outlining, getting down into the specifics of an individual scene or conversation.  These are the least strictly necessary – depending on the length/ complexity of your story, the granularity of your structural outline(s) and your personal writing preference, you may prefer to jump directly from a structural outline into a first draft.  That said they can still be useful, especially if you want to hammer out the fine details of action, dialogue or information-flow while staying a step back from specific prose.  This is where you get things like a bullet-point breakdown of each line/action/piece of narration (for when you have a detailed idea of what’s going to be said/done but not the specific words to describe it) or script-style notes (for when you have the character voices and lines but not the narration or action surrounding it).  As mentioned earlier, you can blend detail notes and rough drafting together – writing some sections out in prose as the words come to you, then breaking into note-form to keep the ideas flowing in sections where wording might be starting to stick. 

An example

Let’s look at my outlining system for Deathly Weapons:

Now, I want to make it clear: this is not the standard.  This is not even the standard for me.  Deathly Weapons got a bit out of hand, ballooning into a half-season of a TV show: it’s more a series of 12+ self-contained stories in a trench coat than your standard fanfiction.  However, it is a decent example of complex outlining.  I have multiple levels of structural outline – some covering the entire story arc, some covering the individual missions.  I also have quick-notes that I made as a consistency-reference from canon, and some worldbuilding meta I did as a thought exercise to develop one of the character-backstories (the one shown ended up published here on Tumblr).  You can see how I blend the outline types together in my detailed notes, as well as how my approach to outlines has evolved from more brainstorming-focused to more structurally-focussed as the story has solidified.  Again, this is not the standard, but hopefully it gives you an idea of what you can get up to with outlines for a complex long-term project.

Okay, so that’s the basic breakdown of outlining as a process (at least the version I use).  Hopefully it’s got some gears turning. 

However, I also know that it’s more of a framework through which to approach story-building; it’s an organisational tool that helps you set out current and future-planned content in a way that lets you take stock, identify things that need attention and keep track of important details.  On its own it’s not necessarily going to be able to help address the challenges it reveals; in the same way that knowing how to plan an essay won’t necessarily teach you how to research one effectively. 

In Part 2 of this series (yep it's a series now) I'm going to go over some concepts for story-building and editing that might help you during the structural phase. Click here to go to the next part >>

[sea-jello]

i think it’s an issue when i’ve listened to the recordings so much i can tell if similar sounding songs are from 2r or bway from the first couple bars and/or lines, who’s singing what background part, stupid insignificant details, etc etc

[h377b7iss]

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[osaemu]

GOJO SATORU: ❛❛ CAN I PUT YOU ON HOLD? ❜❜

.ೃ࿐ he picks up the phone in the middle of fucking you. NSFW

contents: fem!reader. cunniligus, lil' bit of dirty talk and more... i'm too tired to type it all out </3

author's note: idk personally i wouldn't take that.. but i guess i would if it was satoru. anywaysss enjoy

satoru's a busy man — balancing his responsibilities as a teacher and as a sorcerer is no easy task, but he finds a way to make it work.

anyone who's known him for longer than a minute can easily tell that satoru's committed to his line of work. as much as he complains about it, the truth is that it's one of his top priorities. maybe even the first one.

and you get a taste of just how devoted satoru is when he picks up the phone in the middle of fucking you. 

"hello?" satoru cooes, eyes focused on your indignant expression as he holds a finger to his lips. "yeah, i'm free to talk. what is it?"

"free to talk?" you mouth at him incredulously. satoru replies with a wink and grins, enjoying the show. you're still pinned underneath him, bedsheets haphazardly strewn across your body, and satoru savors the sight of you all needy and pouty.

"yeah, take your time," satoru says amusedly to whoever's on the other side of the phone after a moment. when you reach up and swat satoru's chest indignantly, he uses his free hand to pin your wrists above your head, a clear warning in his eyes.

after a couple of mhm's and of course's, the conversation still isn't over. your patience is waning — who is satoru to just stop in the middle of fucking you to pick up a phone call and say that he's free to talk?

you try to distract yourself by thinking about the mindblowing sex you were having just minutes ago. the longing, glassy stares; the red scratch marks down satoru's back; and of course you couldn't leave out the words.

"fuck, you're taking me so well, sweetheart." "atta girl, you're a natural slut, aren't ya?" "your pussy was made to be fucked by me, wasn't it?"

how did that turn into "yeah, make sure the higher-ups know about this, otherwise they'll give me hell for it. mhm"?

after another bland minute, satoru rolls off of you and sits up with his back against the headboard, sheets falling to expose everything from his waist up. 

you whine in impatience, glaring at him like a sullen child. satoru basically just edged you — one second you're about to get to best orgasm of your life, the next you're forced to watch your boyfriend chat on the phone nonchalantly as if he wasn't just moaning your name like a slut three minutes earlier.

satoru shoots a glare at you and pats his lap, pressing a finger to his lips as a reminder to stay quiet.

well then, he shouldn't have picked up the phone in the middle of fucking you.

you scoot yourself into his lap, purposefully positioning yourself so that your pussy just barely rubs against the head of satoru's still-dripping cock.

it's so worth it when you hear satoru inhale a sharp breath and start to squirm under you, somehow both trying to push himself inside but also trying to inch himself away. it's like he can't decide, but the way his face flushes red speaks volumes.

his voice is breathier than normal as he squeezes his watery eyes shut. "yeah yeah, that's perfect. you mind if i put y'on hold for a sec? alright, thanks."

you glance over at satoru as he retracts the phone from his ear and puts it on mute. not even a second later, he's back on you, manhandling you into a position where he can comfortably eat your pussy, a cheeky smile on his lips.

"you think you're so fucking funny, don't ya?" satoru cooes, looking up at you as he eats you out sloppily. a mixture of his saliva and your essence drips down his chin, and the lewd sounds slipping from his lips are pornworthy. the wail that slips out of your lips when satoru bites down on your thigh hard enough to leave a mark is anything but appropriate, especially when he presses his lips back to your pussy and laughs in the middle of tonguefucking you.

"fuck, you're so lucky my phone's on mute right now," satoru groans, still buried in between your thighs. "god, if my old man could hear you now—"

"your dad's on the other end of the phone?!" you gasp, swatting satoru's head and frantically reaching over him to check if the phone was actually on mute — knowing satoru, it could've just slipped his mind. intentionally.

satoru scowls, muttering a reminder for you to stay still while he eats his dessert before rolling his eyes and grumbling "what does it matter?"

"uh, that's embarrassing!" you whine. when satoru nudges his nose against you again, you reluctantly spread your thighs for him so he can continue his meal. satoru mumbles a thanks, but he doesn't respond beyond that.

"satoru!"

"what??"

"don't you have to finish your call?"

satoru sticks out his bottom lip, fixing his cerulean eyes on you and pouting. "you were just complaining about the call and now you want me to go back??"

"it's your dad, satoru," you groan, pushing his shoulders away from your legs and ignoring his protests. "you don't get any more pussy until you finish that damn call."

"i hate you."

"love you lots, baby."

satoru sighs dramatically and unmutes the call, not bothering to respond to his dad's questions with answers longer than a word or two. after another minute of this, his dad finally hangs up and satoru lets out an elated cheer.

he turns to you with a mischievous smirk. 

"now, where were we?"