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narcjsistx · 3 days ago

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𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐃 | kaiser x reader

— part thirteen

plot: kaiser comforted you after a bad and slow breakup, but what will happen now considering what you two shared? is everything still unexpected or is there something you both simply have yet to realize?. fluff shit 'cause yeah!!

words: 2.9k (2996)

extra: it will probably become a multi part story, tell me if you're interested in a part fourteen!

𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ; take a look, trust me!. you can find the other parts of the story by searching in the section dedicated to bllk

The black jacket, elegantly finished with silver stitching, seems to be so tight right now. It's a paradox for you to be anxious about being the center of attention, given that for a good part of your life you've always been on a catwalk; but tonight, with an audience in front of you for the first time since the very first scandal, and the evidence that Gabriel has lied, it's a whole different situation. Since you came home last night, nervous but happy, you haven't had a second to rest: obviously Micheal had heard the audios he found on his chat, and had no qualms about picking you up from work earlier than necessary. It was evidence so important and incriminating that not even he knew if it was true or not, but seeing you so happy after so long was the confirmation that finally the nightmare was in its final stages. And that evidence had to be heard

And so now you're in the dressing room of the most watched and important television network in the country, ready to go on air. You had called some local TV stations saying that, if they wanted, you would make your first TV appearance after the scandal with them. Many had accepted, but you had chosen the biggest and most important one. And so now, agitated, you were about to tell the world the real truth after weeks of suffering, the real Gabriel

"You don't usually wear lipstick. Did they force you?" Kaiser says chuckling, leaning against the wall. You nod rolling your eyes, while you check yourself in the mirror once more "Sort of. They told me if I didn't let them put it on, they'd give me 25 seconds less time" you say, and his laughter gets louder "I don't understand the logic of this, but as long as I can see you with lipstick on, I like it" he says, running a hand through his hair. You raise an eyebrow at his comment, surprised "Does it look good on me or bad?" you ask. With a gentle push he pushes himself away from the wall, walking towards you “You could put dirty rugs on you and I’d be as in love as I am in my letters. Be thankful they put too much makeup on you or I would have kissed you” he says, taking your face in his hands, and you rest your cheek against his palm, a small smile appearing on your red lips "Too bad. Although I don't think they mind that much if I ask the makeup artists to put my lipstick back on" you ask in a suggestive tone, and he nods "You could. But what would you say as an excuse? That you drank too much water and everything was ruined?" he asks, closing the distance between you a bit "I could say that, yes"

It doesn't take much to have his lips on yours, a gesture you've become accustomed to since you returned to Germany. His hands leave your face to rest on your hips, holding you tight without letting you the chance to escape, something you wouldn't do even in your worst dreams. Squeezed between the wall and his body, you end up clinging to him while tightening your arms around his neck, not giving him the chance to move away. Aggressive as he is on the field, his natural habitat, Kaiser seems to go heavy as the kiss becomes more and more needy, his hands move to your lower back. You know what he has in mind when he does that, you know him all too well by now, but doing that here is definitely not an option, at least not before the interview. You regretfully break the kiss, noticing that the lipstick is now all over his lips; you giggle slightly at him in this state, looking down as he looks confused "You don't want to?" he asks, even though he knows the answer would always be yes, but right now it's no "Not now, at least. You've got lipstick on your lips" you say, still giggling "Imagine if Ness or your teammates saw you in this state" you say, and he lets out a sigh "Ness would be simping like usual and the others would be afraid to comment" he says, then runs his thumb over your bottom lip "But if this is the reward for getting dirty, I don't care. We could try on all the lipsticks you have at home, once we're done here" he says, and you nod, looking into his eyes "If you mean it that much, Mihya" you say amused

He holds you tight, but at the same time you can't be completely calm. You're about to do something extremely important for yourself, but who gives you the certainty that everything will go as you think? How do you know if Gabriel hasn't already predicted this step of yours too?

You're afraid. You can't not admit it, it would be lying to yourself. You're afraid of simply seeing all the effort go to pieces, without having a third chance to put everything back together, because if this time it goes badly, the pain will probably be too much. But you have to do it now, in less than twenty minutes you will be on TV in front of the whole Germany. So, other than taking courage on your own and finding comfort in your boyfriend, you can't do anything else. Just wait and see

"Anxious?" Kaiser asks, running his hand up and down your back. You nod, leaning against his chest. "It would be stupid of me to lie. I am and I just want to go home right now" you admit, and he seems to understand. "I know. It's a big thing, but you have to do it. You finally have the chance to send that monster packing for good, and you have to make the most of it. You finally have to show the world that you were never a traitor in the first place" he says, and you can't help but nod again "It's just that it's so important that I'm scared. No one gives me the security that people will believe me, once I tell the truth about the past. I could go back to how I was before I went back to Germany" you admit, then feel his hand stop halfway up your back "It won't all go wrong, you literally have everything to win this time. And then, even if it goes wrong, who cares? This time you don't just have a hotel room to comfort you, you have me in full. And if comforting you means I have to take you with me on my next soccer tour, I'll be more than happy. And if they find out we're in love, I'll be even happier" he says, and you look up at him "If it goes bad, I'm here. If it goes well, I'm here anyway. Stop worrying about sinking if you finally have someone who wants to grab you"

If you could cry now, you would, since it happened the last time you no longer feel ashamed if you do it in front of your boyfriend, but now there is no time to do it. Smile because it is the only thing you can do, because in fact you do not know how to express in words how much you really love this boy. It's not a given to be there for someone, especially when they're at their lowest point of life. But Kaiser wouldn't leave if you were the one at the lowest, and you wouldn't leave if he ever needed help, even if you've had the opportunity to comfort him in the past about his family situation. If this isn't love, the one what you dreamed of as a child, you don't know what it is. And if you had to do it all over again to get the same result, suffer and fall, you would do it without even thinking twice

"Will you watch me?" you say, while he has one hand on the doorknob. He has to go, you'll be on the air soon, it's finally time, your time

"You'll find me in the front row, Schatz"

Sitting on the sofa in the study, the anxiety you had before has completely gone away, leaving you only with a sense of boldness that you have rarely had in your life. You've been on the air for about minutes now, and beyond the usual questions, you still haven't talked about the reason why you're here tonight. The interviewer is polite, nice, quite friendly, and Kaiser is in the studio audience

"So... it's time to get a little more personal. We all know it wasn't an easy time and you even had a break from work before you entered the TraumLaufsteg. What happened, Y/n? Tell us" the woman says, as the camera pans solely towards you. You take a deep breath as you smile nervously, but it's time, finally. It's your time

"You know Ingrid, I think the whole world has a different idea of what happened to me. I don't blame them, I have to be honest, I would also have an opinion on such an interesting situation that was handled so badly by the media" you say, convinced "But it was a really bad time for me, I think everyone knows that. I changed house, country, fashion agency and above all I no longer have the same person by my side who remained by my side for three consecutive years. But now I only have to say that I should have made these changes a long time ago, a very long time ago" you say smiling, and the interviewer is surprised "What do you mean? Can you tell us better? You know, the whole world now sees you as the woman who betrayed the genius of Italian fashion" she says, and you nod "For many, if not for all, I am as you described me. But there is a small difference that only Gabriel and I know the truth, that now we are no longer a couple, as he continues to make people believe. I left Gabriel after three years because enduring yet another of dozens of betrayals had led me to a situation of continuous discomfort that forced me, fortunately I would say, to leave him" you say, and the studio audience and the interviewer burst into a surprised murmur. Kaiser smiles satisfied, while everyone doesn't seem to believe the words they just heard from you, the one who actually betrayed him in the man's story

"Cheating? Y/n, can you tell us more?" the woman says, and you nod happily "Of course. As you know, this is my first TV appearance, at least wanted and not forced, that I'm doing after the scandal. I've kept many things inside, things that have destroyed me to the point of exhaustion, things that I wouldn't wish even at my worst enemy. But now I want to tell everything and show the truth, because unlike Gabriel, I don't just talk, I also demonstrate. Please pay attention" you say, and your phone comes out of your pocket

"Gabriel started cheating on me two years ago. The first was the beginning of a long list of women who work in the same field as me, others who aren't in the fashion world and others whose names I don't even know, but I know they exist. I've always kept quiet about this subject, because I always thought that if he came home to me he didn't really love these women. It hurt me to think about it, but he kept me going" you say, and show some photos of the women Gabriel has cheated on you with over the years "I also suffered psychological violence. I was manipulated to the point of not even being able to see my best friend, Michael Kaiser, who has always been a point of reference for me. Gabriel also forced me many times to do things I didn't want to, like fashion shows with clothes I didn't feel comfortable in. After all, I was his star model, right?" you say

"I never had the courage to say anything against Gabriel, because I seriously loved him. So, how could I ever cheat on him? Think about it. He painted me as a monster because he knew he had the power to do it. But maybe I have to thank him, it's thanks to him that I understood that I couldn't continue to go on like this. So I took everything and came back here to Germany, a place that has had my heart for years. I thought I could start something different here, something that would finally bring me back to being well, but I didn't know that the second part of my nightmare was about to begin. When I thought about starting over, I just realized that my past was coming with me. I discovered things about Gabriel that I didn't even think were humanly possible, and yet I saw them before my eyes. Can I have a microphone? I have to play some audios" you say, and before you finish the sentence you already have your microphone in your hands. The recordings begin and slowly everyone becomes aware of what you have heard, of Gabriel and of Ursula. After eight minutes of recording, the studio is completely silent, while you clear your throat "This is why I asked to finally speak in front of everyone. I've had this thought for a long time, but I never had the courage to do it. And yet here I am, serving you the truth on a silver platter, and I should thank someone who is here, since it was he who gave me the courage to do so. Believe what you want, it is not my goal to change your opinion, but I ask you only to think about it, and not to make accusations that are hard to handle. I only speak when I have proof, unlike someone"

Silence. Pure silence. The studio audience stares at you in shock, and you think that more or less the same is true for those watching from their homes. Then a round of applause, another, until everyone ends up applauding for you, including the interviewer. And it is from this gesture that you understand that now it is seriously all over, that now you can really start to be happy. People believe you. People who were previously confused or against you finally know the truth. The truth, so hidden by Gabriel, is finally given to the public

"Wow. Just wow" the woman says, still paralyzed "That's really something to show. You must be so scared, and yet you did it. You have courage, you really have a lot of it" he says "And yet, in your speech you mentioned someone. Would you like to tell us about it?" he says, and you smile spontaneously "I would love to"

For a few seconds you turn to Micheal, looking at each other with a look that only the two of you can understand "This someone is the boy I've known since I was 16, famous as well as unpleasant, but he has a heart of gold if you know how to handle it. He's the point of reference I've had as a girl and that I will have for a long time, at least until the day I die. Everyone knows who I'm talking about, our relationship has been talked about since we were still two teenangers. He is someone who gave me so much courage in moments when I didn't know what else to do but let myself sink, and in other moments when I just needed support he was there. Micheal Kaiser, the pearl of Bastard Munchen, the one everyone loves and hates at the same time, the one many would kill themselves for to spend an hour with, is my point of reference. Kaiser Micheal is my... he's my best friend. Forever" you say, even if the last sentence leaves a bitter aftertaste in your mouth: you are much more than best friends, he is your soulmate, he is your lovely boyfriend. But the world, you believe, is not ready for this yet

The audience erupts into yet another round of applause, louder and more vigorous. Kaiser applauds, and you know he's thinking the same thing you're thinking. You would seriously like to tell the truth, you know he would too, but it's not the right time yet, at least not now and here

"It's nice to know that someone helped you. It's also nice to know what he means to you, since you just confirmed that you are best friends, practically the same status for ten years now. By doing so, you confirmed that the speculation of a possible romantic relationship between the two of you is not ongoing, right?" says the woman, and you are seriously in trouble

You want to say it, but not now

Kaiser wants to say it, but he'll wait for you

"Think of us as you like. Best friends? Couple? Whatever you want, we accept everything" you say, and for the umpteenth time the audience erupts in a scream of amazement. Michael, amused, glances at you, and you can't help but smile at him as if nothing had happened. You want to compromise, and something like this seemed like the perfect option for both

In the immense room of the television studio, you finally feel seriously free. Free to speak, to no longer be afraid, to go back to being the same person you have always been. Free to finally love Kaiser in a way he deserves. For the first time in your life, you seriously believe you've passed Gabriel, passed by kilometers ahead

tag(s): @rroxii ; @kittenish0 ; @bungoustraydogsno1fan ; @sabrina-senpai ; @vannilaa16 ; @kaz-0e ; @tamashithe2nd ; @x3nafix (if you want to be tagged tell me!)

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cirilla-fiona-riannon · 1 day ago

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Mitsuhide Akechi Sequel

Translations may not always capture the exact nuances or tone of the original text. Expect grammatical errors and inaccuracies.

Not a full translation. Not proofread.

Mitsuhide: "Let me hear that story as well."

Sasuke: "!"

(Mitsuhide!)

The moment I saw his face, my chest instinctively swelled, and a smile spread across my face.

Mitsuhide & Sasuke: "............"

(Wait, this isn't the time to be smiling!)

Mai: "Um, Mitsuhide, this person is my friend, and—"

Mitsuhide: "His name is Sasuke, and like you, he came from the future, correct?"

Mai: "Eh?"

Mitsuhide: "Apologies, but I overheard your conversation."

Without the slightest hint of guilt, he sat down beside me.

Mitsuhide: "Wearing such attire and sneaking into the castle must mean you're a member of a faction opposing the Oda forces."

(How could he deduce so much in an instant?!)

Sasuke: "Yes. I apologize for trespassing."

Sasuke: "Allow me to introduce myself properly. My name is Sasuke Sarutobi."

Sasuke: "And you are Lord Mitsuhide Akechi, correct?"

Mitsuhide: "Oh? You know my name, and you're still this calm?"

He narrowed his eyes, and the atmosphere suddenly grew tense.

Sasuke: "I understand I'm in a position where I can offer no excuses, but please allow me to say this one thing."

Sasuke: "Mai is my friend."

(Sasuke...)

Mitsuhide: "From the beginning, I had no intention of killing you."

Sasuke: "Huh?"

Mitsuhide: "Amidst a castle brimming with hostility, you risked your life to infiltrate enemy territory and rush to Mai's side."

Mitsuhide: "It would be foolish of me to use my sword against her beloved friend."

Mitsuhide smiled faintly and drew me closer.

Mitsuhide: "Thank you, Mai's friend."

(He seems to be stressing the word 'friend' a bit too much.)

Sasuke: "Being patronized by the famous Akechi Mitsuhide is one of the top five most miraculous experiences I've had since coming to the Sengoku period."

(Is Sasuke touched?)

Mitsuhide: "You seem like an interesting man, Sasuke."

After murmuring that with a laugh, his eyes sharpened once again.

Mitsuhide: "Mai, I learned about your condition from a letter from Kyubei."

Mitsuhide: "I'm sorry. I must have made you feel anxious."

Mai: "No, I'm just glad you came back."

(He must have returned to Azuchi immediately after reading the letter.)

Being this close made me realize how anxious I was when he was gone.

Mitsuhide: "Sasuke, would you mind continuing where you left off?"

Sasuke: "............"

Mitsuhide: "............"

(The atmosphere suddenly became heavy.)

As I watched them exchange wordless glances, my chest began to stir.

Sasuke: "From the looks of it, you may have reached the same hypothesis as I have."

Mai: "The same hypothesis?"

Mitsuhide: "............"

Mitsuhide fixed Sasuke with a piercing gaze.

Sasuke, accepting it head-on, nodded.

Sasuke: "First, I'd like to confirm the situation."

Mai: "Okay."

Sasuke: "The phenomena happening to you can be summarized in three points:"

Sasuke: "You're becoming invisible to others, your voice isn't reaching them, and the others can't touch you. Is that right?"

Mai: "Yeah, that's correct."

Sasuke: "However, you can still see others, hear their voices, and perceive them normally."

Mai: "Yeah."

(Hearing it laid out like this feels so surreal.)

Sasuke: "I believe these anomalies can be rephrased as follows: Mai, you are gradually losing the ability to interact with people living in this era."

(Losing the ability to interact...?)

Mai: "Does that mean I won't be able to connect with anyone around me anymore?"

Sasuke: "Yeah."

Mitsuhide: "............"

(That's almost like I'm a...)

Mai: "Ghost."

Sasuke: "............."

Mitsuhide: "Continue, Sasuke."

Mitsuhide, maintaining his composure, urged Sasuke to proceed.

Sasuke nodded and handed Mitsuhide the Travel Guide.

Sasuke: "Lord Mitsuhide, are you familiar with this book?"

Mitsuhide: "Mai has told me about it. It's a history book from five hundred years into the future."

Sasuke: "That's right. This book, however, has a peculiar flaw—the section following the Incident at Honnoji is completely blank."

Sasuke: "What happened that night was significantly different from the events recorded five hundred years later."

Sasuke: "The most crucial difference is..."

Mai: "That I saved Lord Nobunaga?"

Sasuke: "Yeah."

Sasuke: "That said, the cause of the historical alteration lies in the time slip itself. Mai, you're not at fault for anything."

Sasuke: "But if there's a significant difference between the original history and the current one, that would be it."

(He's right. Sasuke's explanation makes sense.)

Sasuke: "This might be an unscientific and utterly speculative hypothesis, but perhaps Mai is being rejected by this world as divine punishment for altering history."

(Divine punishment...)

Mitsuhide: "............"

#ikesen translations #ikesen jp #ikemen sengoku #ikesen #ikesen mitsuhide #mitsuhide akechi #cybird

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comikbook · 14 hours ago

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Hi! I absolutely LOVE the most recent painting you're working on! The composition is incredible and the colors are everything to me 🫶🫶 I absolutely love the way you draw faces like the piercings help map it out without showing too much and just !!! It's so good 🔥🔥🔥🔥 I was wondering if you would be willing to explain some of the symbolism behind it? Like the bleeding mouth, the house, or the dog? If it's a personal thing and you don't want to share, no worries!!

absolutely !!! this one is a little bit different story wise than some of my others but ill do my best to explain

this is the piece for those who dont know !

so lets start, why the armor and the sword ? well !

i wanted to do a piece referencing joan of arc. as someone who also has had the experience of hearing god talk to them/feeling like a messenger of god due to schizophrenia i have always felt a kinship with her. so i wanted to do a piece inspired by this iconic painting. that also goes into the composition.

however, that nod is the extent of that reference.

what about the house ? well, that is my childhood home.

here it is :,) the one with the bird over the door is the house i consider my childhood home. i no longer live here of course, the neighborhood got a lot more dangerous, abandoned, and not taken care of, i live in a city with a lot of violence, particularly gun violence and gang activity as well as heroin and fent being popular on the streets. there are houses in this neughborhood that have been destroyed by fire and were never fixed, most houses had infestation of roaches rats or mice, occassionally bedbugs. it wasnt a great neighborhood before, but its gotten worse over the years. despite that i hold some of my fondest memories here. i think its beautiful in a way, and i felt safer there than anywhere else.

the house represents my past, the blood trail leading from the door to the figure, who is me, after having slain some beast inside. this is representative of moving on, of leaving your childhood behind. It also represents the violence of where i live, and the horrid memories experienced by my father who lived there growing up as well. it was his home, but he inherited it from his mother. while that house was a safe haven for me, it was a bitter memory of horrific events for him. it was bittersweet to leave. for him, he was moving past that, for me, i was desperately trying to hold on. it was a needed sacrifice, which goes back to the blood.

the dog is a character in my work that represents god. he is omnipresent, always observing. he watched me kill a part of myself, that held on to memories i loved, and forced to move on. he watched this attack, and did not intervene. Perhaps I blame him for this, my relationship with god is not a good one, but that is the symbolism nonetheless.

lastly, there is the blood around the mouth, insinuating the beast inside had been consumed. I have killed it yes, but it stays with me. I consumed its flesh and it is now with me forever, even if it is gone. We are still one, me and the memories i shared there, even if separated by life and death.

this was a really long post, but i hope you find this explination interesting :,) !

#ask #my art

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tyrantisterror · 11 hours ago

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You're welcome! Thank you for being such a willing participant in the interactive side of this story!

And yeah I'll gladly answer some more questions.

So, as I said above, I realized in the process of writing the story that, from a narrative and thematic perspective, this story could not give Sailor a clear and definitive answer to what they are. Even in the ending where they chose to go back to the normal world, we get an answer that convinces Sailor, but still clearly has some holes to the audience. I think there are ways we could have skewed certain conversations to learn more about the hypothetical answers in-story, but it would have come at the cost of key moments of character development for Sailor and Calibani. And I also think it's possible we could have skewed the story in such a direction where giving a definitive answer to the question wouldn't have necessarily hurt the theme of the story, by dint of turning the story into a different theme entirely - a South-heavy story might have focused on Sailor confronting their own inherent selfishness and short-sightedness rather than questions of their identity, for example, while a West-heavy story might have been a more dense and wacky adventure full of foolhardiness where learning who/what Sailor is could happen quickly and definitively without fanfare in order to be pushed aside for more shenanigans. 58 choices - there's a lot of potential what-ifs here.

There would be no way to contact Earth in the story as told, no, just as there wouldn't be a map till the very end. But, like, Sailor is canonically living longer than just the nine or so days the story covers, the Sea of Monsters is big, and Sailor knows a mad scientist. It's possible Sailor finds a way to get a message back to earth at some point - but I guess we'll have to save that for a hypothetical At Sea Without a Map 2: Now With Map!

I generally tried to vote either for the answer I thought would get the most votes, or the one that would get the least, in hopes of not actually affecting the result too much (unfortunately tumblr doesn't let you see the results before the poll ends unless you vote, and for the sake of keeping to a more-or-less daily schedule, I kinda needed to keep an eye on it to know what I'd need to draw during my downtime moments). I think the TT-only version of At Sea Without a Map would have been pretty similar to what we got. We might have spent a bit less time with Calibani and bit more time getting into monster hijinks and drawing exposition about the setting from characters like Dr. Neptune, but otherwise it would have been pretty similar. I had more fun with the player-choices that contradicted my own instincts, though - it was fun being given free reign to just shoot the shit with love interest while ignoring the plot. Very indulgent I do wonder if Sailor might have turned out differently, though - I was very conscious of trying not to flavor things too heavily when Sailor was in my control in the narrative, i.e. when they had to make choices without a compass to set them in a direction. I didn't really start giving Sailor personality in-text until I got a feel for what we were turning them into together, and even then I always felt nervous about it - I never wanted it to feel like I was forcing you all to play a character that wasn't authentic to what you were choosing. This wouldn't be a problem if Sailor was just written by me and me alone, so they might have become something different by dint of me not having to worry about alienating voters with their actions.

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

youtube

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

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wintaerbaer · 10 months ago

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thinking about doing a teaser for twds 6 in the next week if people are still interested?

#i feel bad that it's taking so long lol #if people are not interested then that's fine too!#the story will get done one way or another because these are my BABIES #and it has been kind of nice writing without pressure so i appreciate the patience!#but if you're still interested in the story then let me know too #sometimes it can help the writer's block to remember that other people actually care and are waiting lol #writing update #fic: things we don't say

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crownedwille · 4 months ago

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Are there still Crown Prince!Wilhelm stans out there despite S3 turning it into the number one problem? Please report, we need to unite and no, that doesn't mean that I don't support Wille's mental health and happiness and that I love the monarchy, some people out there must get it

#young royals #prince wilhelm #any crown prince wille believers speak up please don't let yourself be silenced alskdjdh #i'mma be loud and petty and just obnoxious about loving crown prince wille in contrast to what else i see and what the show says #it just feels so alienating these days and like you're wrong in finding crown prince wille interesting and preferring it #and you're not allowed to even express different thoughts bc canon told you this is how it is and how dare you want this life for wille #I wish i knew about more fics too that write about crown prince wille. it feels like that's forbidden to do now unless he's unhappy in it #and it's just shown how horrible it is and how trapped he is and exploring a different alternative with him actually being a competent +#confident crown prince in the future and simon and him still working out and working together and bring changes to the system #but the show has made sure the fans can't come up with their own interpretation and that's completely 'unrealistic' now #and going against canon and exploring a different possibility is somehow impossible now #and means you're an evil spokesperson for the evil monarchy #god forbid i want him as the fictional crown prince in this fictional show reading/writing a fictional story #stories where he renounces (and that's all I see nowadays implied or otherwise) are just not interesting to me and i hate it #i even try to avoid reading most drabbles bc of the implied reality they portray and barely go through the yr tag on ao3 anymore #when i say it's alienating to be in the fandom these days i mean it. it's tough and frustrating #anyway...anybody else feeling this way?#let me know so i can follow some more i really hope there are more active blogs #mine

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caluupin · 9 months ago

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Father!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥

#caluuart #genshin impact #genshin #art #arlecchino #god she's just so. cool. pretty. ethereal. badass.#also I LOVE HER STORY QUEST SO MUCH!! I think it's definitely one of the best story quests in the game tbh.#wait uh arlecchino story quest spoilers below:#for one; the quest really gives even more depth to arlecchino's character. like yeah the whole thing is well. messed up.#it's an orphanage that raises orphans to be child soldiers after all. But it's also like. It's more.... humane? nicer? for the fatui anyway #which does bring me to the next thing. you know how arlecchino's like “if you're gonna leave the HotH you need to fight for it with ur life #I genuinely think that she's gonna just. straight up kill them. although it's not unlikely at all it turns out that (most of the time?) she #-just gives them a one trip to memory loss and set them free. which i do know it's kinda like death in genshin's lore but still.#I just find that pretty interesting.#also the cutscene where clervie says goodbye n stuff. It makes me cry EVERY TIME. ARGHHHH TRAGIC CHILDHOOD DOOMED YURI MY BELOVED :(((#clervie makes me so sad man. the fact that she just. accepts death. she really just let peruere kill her huh. crucabena when I fucking get #the hopelessness getting to her at that point. all attempts of freedom failed until that day..... GOD. and clervie finally getting closure-#-in the story quest as a spirit... I just..... man.........#on a lighter note :)#I got obsessed with a bloodborne OST LMAO. the uhh the lugwig boss theme. esp the sec phase one. it's SO GOOD. I first heard abt it in a-#-vid analyzing the ost musically. At the time i was like. woah. cool. what a cool sounding track. fast foward to like. a day before 4.6 #I'm watching a genshin theory video and I heard the music in the bg. I recognized it but I couldn't remember where I heard it from #UNTIL I REMEMBERED. and looked it up. And I have not known peace since. good music.#anw I've been rambling too much so yeah. gn my dear fellows!!

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swanqueen-is-the-story · 20 hours ago

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Okay, here's the thing... I've always LOVED the big coma theory from Operation Out...

BUT THIS RIGHT HERE makes the show MORE SWAN QUEEN!!

Like, I totally understand why people hate coma theories, I hate it too most of the time 'cause it sort of erases everything that happened in a show or a book, and makes it a dream.... But, that's not the case with OUAT, and I LOVE THAT! Like, yes, give me MORE TO CHEW ON!

All the emotions are not erased by this theory, and I love that the Swan-Mills family is still THE HEART OF THE SHOW!

This opens up the possibility of so much Swan Queen that we haven't witnessed but that's told metaphorically... Like, maybe in the beginning, Emma was not very responsive, but then she's kinda back and forth, so she isn't completely cut off from Regina and Henry.

She's sometimes moving and talking. So Emma and Regina are interacting, they just have to work super hard for it... like they're on opposite sites of the town line.

Or imagine Regina mocking an Emma who says weird fairy tale sentences... and a Regina who is so lonely that the only person she comes to talk to is a woman who is half-conscious... because it's safe. But then still being snarky about it like:

Sidney: The only thing I really learned was that she doesn’t like to sit still. Regina: Well, that appears to have changed.

Regina (to Emma): Well, you covered this room. I suggest you branch out.

And then, the half-conscious woman is completely in love with Regina against her own better judgment because this asshole is not being precious with her like everyone else. And Regina goes from little sarcastic interactions to starting to look at Emma and really seeing her... she's listening to the weird things she says, she's trying to go to where Emma is, understand what she's saying with all her fairytale adventures. She fucking likes her, in spite of being in different realms, and feels like she knows her... profoundly. And that's holy CANON.

Video: YouTube

Like, I love Swan Queen still after all these years, and the fact that analyzing this show with these new glasses still has the potential to give me new SQ squeal moments is just insane. I am now on the HUNT for hidden Swan Queen moments in other storylines.

Like, one thing I've already noticed is that from the beginning, Regina is "cast" as the love interest every time in the first season. I mean the fact that Sydney is "The Mirror"... literally a reflection of Emma, and he goes, "She's an amazing woman." and then Emma "You're in love with her? Ugh." Like, Emma's annoyed with herself for totally being into this woman... and all of this stuff seems fully intentional. Just when you thought this show couldn't get more gay, it really, really does. And that's an example that's not super evident.... because let's remind ourselves that Swan Queen parallels Snow and Charming ALL THE TIME!!! So where are the other hidden ones, you know? 👀

So anyway, all I'm trying to say is that we should hunt all the Swan Queen that's still left to discover.

SQ really, really is the story.

Analyzing Once Upon a Time

This can't be how the story ends

Since this blog is now as old as Henry in the Pilot, we thought this would be a good time to re-introduce this Once Upon a Time theory to the new kids on the block - and to the old kids on the block, because we have learned a thing or two during the decade we've been researching this concept.

The heart of the theory can really be summed up in one sentence:

"Everything that happened on Once Upon a Time also really happened in our world, and it is all a metaphorical retelling of Emma's life experiences in the past and in the present."

That's the part of the theory that we are certain about. Every episode has a deeper meaning, there is no fluff and together they all form one big story.

Does that mean that the story that we watched, didn't really happen? No, it's more like getting two stories for the price of one. The best metaphor we can come up with is that of lenticular cards.

Remember those little cards that you would twist and then the image would change? It doesn't really matter which one of those two images is real, because they both are. Someone had to draw and print both of them and use the right technique so we could see them both. Usually the images tell a bit of a story when you combine them, but they work perfectly fine as two standalone images.

So what we are doing is simply twisting the card, we're revealing our second story. We've really emotionally invested in these characters and now we're entering an Alternate Universe that was written by the same writers. And that's the real appeal of this theory, to get another story after the show's been off the air for so long, with the characters we know and love, because they are both.

Let's say the genre of the story we watched on television for 7 years is fantasy and the genre of our new AU is magical realism. So take a seat, suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride, because we're about to watch the official trailer of this new ABC show called Once Upon a Time.

youtube

If you watch the trailer, you see the idea of the two sides of the story being reinforced. You also hear the voice-over tell us that "someone from our world" needs to save the fairy tale characters while showing an unconscious Emma. This is the moment when the story splits in two.

Once Upon a Time takes place in what Jung called "The Collective Unconscious", or in this case The Enchanted Forest - a place where humankind's stories are real, where the fairy tale characters we know and love live - the world of archetypes.

A metaphorical curse is cast when Emma crashes her car. She loses consciousness and travels to her own subconscious mind. The fairy tale world and Emma's personal world collide and she gradually steals the fairy tale characters to work through her own issues and traumas. This is how the fairy tale characters actually get trapped in our world.

This is why this version of the story is "Magical Realism" - In magical realism, the underlying idea is that the world we currently live in actually has an undercurrent of magic, of intelligence, a magic that expresses itself through uncanny coincidences. We see this in the Pilot. Emma makes a heartfelt wish, and a second later, her long lost son rings the door bell. Unlikely, but possible in our world. When she slams her car door in anger, electric sparks fly and when she looks up at the clock, it's stuck on 8:15. August 15th. The date her long lost son was born. Odd coincidences, but entirely possible.

This magical world, however, is also a world of karma, because she violently knocks a man against his steering wheel earlier in the episode. Later that night, she hits her own head. This was the only way for the hidden magic of our world to grant Emma's wish and to restore her karma. The intelligent universe forced her to confront her demons with the help of age-old archetypes, so she could heal from her traumas, learn the life lessons she needs to allow people like Henry and Regina into her life.

Everything we saw on this show was Emma's real experience during the show's timeline, but the undercurrent of the world she experienced was created by her memories and by everything what's going on in the world around her while she is in different states of consciousness. Like Jefferson points out during "Hat Trick", even fictional stories come from a real place. They come from the writer's emotions and experiences, codified into story.

What we didn't know when we first started writing this theory, was how weird our consciousness really is. Real comas are nothing like movie comas where people just sit up one day. Maybe they need a little bit of physical rehab and then off they go. No, in the real world, people spend days, weeks, months or even years living in between their dream world and reality, trying to make sense of it all. Some people report having no memory of the months after they woke up and after they were up and somewhat functional. Many report strange dreams and remembering conversations that happened around them - except they thought they were participating.

Based on this newfound knowledge, we concluded that Emma was only in a deep coma for parts of the show's timeline. We think Emma's state in this theory closely aligns with what medical professionals call a minimally conscious state (MCS). Sleeping curse victims in an MCS are awake but show limited awareness of their surroundings. They may respond to stimuli, have brief moments of purposeful behavior, or even show emotional reactions to familiar voices or events. While their consciousness seems fragmented, they can form connections between external events and their inner experiences. The show uses David's coma story to tell us what's happening with Emma. He is able to grab Mary Margaret's hand, which he couldn't do if he was in a full coma. That means Emma is sometimes saying words and interacting with the people around her. They can connect with her in meaningful ways. And they do.

The show is peppered with hints that point to Emma's state in the land without magic. Jefferson is one of the characters who is used as a part of her subconscious that is trying to make Emma aware of her situation in the reality realm, but during the second episode, Emma herself gives us a description of the curse that she is now trapped in.

Emma: "So, for decades, people have been walking around in a haze, not aging, with screwed up memories, stuck in a cursed town that kept them oblivious."

What's very important about this description, is the "screwed up memories". The flashbacks about Emma's life that we have seen, are just as metaphorical of the other parts. They did happen, but they didn't happen in the way we saw them happen. The best explanation for how these 'new memories' are created is by looking at one clear example.

The "memory" of Emma giving birth to Henry is actually a metaphorical memory of Henry coming back into Emma's life, through parallels and visual clues. In this new memory, she expresses how she really felt in that moment, in so much emotional pain she could scream, and terrified to be asked to be a mother. This is how all the stories are created.

Much of the show works this way, except unlike during this scene, we haven't seen the original experience that the metaphor is based upon. So to decipher the rest of Emma's memories, all we can do is look at the recurring themes and storylines, as they show what Emma is wrestling with. Season 1 is full of car crashes, because crashing her car in the Pilot is a very recent trauma. Parents giving up children is a recurring trauma, because it matches both her story and Henry's story. This is the translation key to figure out Emma's story. Look at the patterns.

If we listen back to the show's trailer one more time, the theme song that was chosen to represent the show couldn't be more of an invitation to see the reality layer of the story.

Rescue me

Show me who I am

'Cause I can't believe

This is how the story ends

Fight for me

If it's not too late

Help me breathe again

No, this can't be how the story ends

This is Emma fighting for her life in reality. Asking Regina and Henry and the people around her to help her come back to life, because this can't be how the story ends. This can't be how she dies.

Ooookay... so where's the fun exactly?

You may be wondering, what is the appeal? Admittedly, this story is somewhat sad and dark at first glance, but remember when you watched the first season and you were trying to guess the characters' fairy tale identities? You get to do that again, except this time you are trying to guess the real world identities. You get to experience the curse from the inside and it really does feel like you can recapture some of the fun from the first time around.

Once you realize that the memories we saw were warped, many questions bubble up to the surface. How did Henry really find Emma? Who gave him the story book and why? How did he come to his conclusions? Is he the author because he is creating the fairy tales he is reading to Emma? Who are Emma's real parents? Why was she given up for adoption? What really happened to her in foster care? Is Neal really Henry's father or is there more to the story? What is wrong with Emma? Was there something fishy about the adoption? Why is she in and out of consciousness? How do Henry and Regina react? Did Regina really try to kill her? If Regina wasn't actually the evil queen, why did Henry think she didn't love him? Why is everyone suddenly related? Who is Emma Swan? Who is Regina Mills? Who is Henry? And Gold? And Hook?

It becomes a gigantic mystery, a fantastical true crime show. And the more people lend their ears and their eyes to it, the better our chances are to actually solve this very, very weird puzzle. Because as we said, the only part of this theory that we are sure of, is that everything we saw, is all a metaphorical retelling of Emma's life in the past and in the present. We report on the connections we find, the possible interpretations. The recurring themes. The meaningful parallels. We don't claim those are the correct interpretations, because they change as we dig deeper.

So consider this an invitation to take a bite out of the forbidden fruit of knowledge, join in and share your observations, because we would like to see the full picture once we tilt our little card to take another look.

#swanqueen #swan queen #this makes them canon #change my mind #operation out #ouat meta

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