#i just really wanted to transcribe it to personally draw from later and figured i might as well share it with anyone who might be intereste

[stochastiz]

i recently came across a scanned image (at this website) of an essay written by Theodore Sturgeon, published June 1967 in Cavalier Magazine, where Sturgeon describes his 'signature mark' and the ethos it represents for him. i decided to transcribe the article for future reference, and figured that people who follow me might also find it insightful and inspiring.

especially when it can be so easy to take something that has been presented as a fact at face value, i think we can always benefit from a reminder to ask the next question.

the symbol being described is an uppercase letter Q with a right-facing arrow striking through it. in my transcription i chose to represent the symbol with (-Q->). check out the scanned image of the essay to see how it was originally printed.

⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

I give you this symbol. I want you to wear it between your eyeball and your eyelid and look at the world through it. I want to do this, and I want you to do what I say, because you are not the crawling blob in that big bucket of ooze which, down deep, you think you are: you are Mankind. That isn't the best thing in the Universe to be, but it can be. It can be. It will be, if you do what I tell you. All I ask of you is that you hear me out.

Here is the symbol: (-Q->)

What it means is: Ask the next question.

Every advance this species has ever made is the result of someone, somewhere, looking at his world, his neighborhood, his neighbor, his cave, or himself, and asking that next question. Every deadly error this species has committed, every sin against itself and its high destiny, is the result of not asking the next question, or of not listening to those who do ask it.

That next question, (-Q->), is nothing more than a signboard which points toward the truth; the absolute, furthermost irreducible truth. there are not many absolutes, but we know one thing about them all: they are not complicated. More on that later.

First, an example of (-Q->) in action. Let's take something that has filled countless thousands of newspaper inches, in computable hours of argument and temper, a rich crop of injustice and stupidity, and has wasted a great deal more time than it is worth - the pornography question. We'll start with the warcry "we've got to get that filth off the newsstands!"

This is quite enough, in many communities, to gain a majority support right now. "Right-thinking people" gather up their axe-handles and burning torches and rally round what looks to them like the ultimate and self-defining truth. Now we ask that next question:

(-Q->): Why? A: Because it can get into the hands of young people

At this point, for many people, doors close, shutters bang, and all the lights go out inside. But that answer isn't an answer, as you can discover by asking the next question:

(-Q->): What happens if it gets into the hands of young people? A: It might arouse them.

Slam. Bang. Click... but wait. Isn't there another question? Sure!

(-Q->): What happens if they get aroused?

This will probably get you a variety of answers, and you'll forgive me if I don't pursue them in this question-and-answer format, because I haven't much space and I mean to pack it as full as I can. But you get the pattern: every time anyone answers that next question, that (-Q->), see if there isn't another one which can be asked. In this instance you can run the thing down until you find out on the highest scientific (and morally ethical) authority that it doesn't harm anyone to get sexually stimulated with no outlet; that it happens all the time to virtually everyone; that the list of things which stimulate one person or another at various times are by no means limited to what one finds in the girlie books, but include such things as pieces of string, wash on the line, sunsets, music, dogs howling, and a thousand other things, and if you got rid of all that filth you'd find yourself on a desert or in a cell - where, probably, your imagination would do a whole heap worse than any professional pornographer; further, that if the young person is stimulated to find an outlet it is, in a vast majority of cases, masturbation, which does not make green hairs grow in the palms of your hands, which does not cause pimples, and in the case of hyperactive individuals leaves them less likely to commit rape than more - especially if they are free of guilt about it. How do I know all this? By getting my questions answered, and by unfailingly asking that one more. If you do the same, you'll find the references, the carefully performed and documented experiments, the careful analyses and cross-checked conclusions. Let me here caution you never to abandon the (-Q->) technique when it leads you to a conclusion you like. Ask that one more question again, and ask it again... really, the only time you won't be able to ask it will be when you're up against a truth so basic and so simple that the question can't be asked.

And I've never had an answer that was that close to the truth - not ever. But in looking for it I've gotten rid of an awful lot of well-known facts that just ain't so. It makes you very light-hearted, very sure, and rather hard to hurt.

Now about basics and simplicity: complicated and subtle things can be overwhelming and they can change your whole life and the face of the world, but if they are complicated they are not (in the most important sense) important. Now here's a simple basic: living things change. Growth is one of the many kinds of change; what you can be sure of is that anything that has stopped changing has stopped living. Got it?

You are alive. Your family and your town and the county and state and nation are, each in its way, living things. All living things want to feel secure. Human beings are accursed with something that makes most of them, at one time or another in his life, seek security by stopping. He wants things stable and permanent and unchanging, like a pyramid. But there is another kind of stability - dynamic stability - the steadiness of a gull's flight. It's something that cannot happen unless the bird is in motion.

And by and large, friend, gulls outlast pyramids.

This is the kind of conclusion that the (-Q->) process leads you to, and armed with it you can look about you with a kind of Man from Mars astonishment. Living things (nations, cities, towns, families, people) trying to be dead. Trying to stop - stop time, stop change, stop thought, when they could spread their wings and rise it... Listen:

Laws are always late. Usually in the past, and certainly in a faster-and-ever-faster moving future, by the time a law is passed the circumstances which brought it about have already begun to change, which is why so many of them rule us by "the dead hand." As far as I know, no human group has ever tried to establish a whole body of laws with tenure - laws which would expire on a certain date unless the community voted to continue them! How much public apathy do you think you'd find in a democracy like that? Listen:

(-Q->): What is the function of the incest taboo? No - wait - don't give me those answers that "everybody knows," because nobody knows. If you start out on that recessive defective gene bit, with the idiot children of first cousins and all that, I'll only refer you to animal breeders the world over, and hope you enjoyed those idiot pork chops last night, and have fun with the loot you picked up at the $2 window, courtesy of the dark horse who paid 83 to 1 and who is the result of a dozen generations of inbreeding. Men are different from hogs and horses - but biologically they are not all that different. Listen:

Olaf Stapledon, bless his memory, wrote a book called Last and First Men which traces the history of Man through the next couple of hundred billion years. He speaks of something similar to what I call the (-Q->) process, and calls it "the precious insight." Through the generations, he says, it appears repeatedly and is repeatedly struck down by accidents large or small (well, we can't do much about that) "or," he says, "by an access of racial imbecility, or by the mere cowardice and vertigo that dares not look down the precipice of the fact."

I think we are in such a period of "racial imbecility" as he describes. I think that there are a few people around - you, for example - who can cure it because they are not afraid to look down the precipice of the fact, no matter how deep the pit, no matter how different.

All I ask of you is that you look at what is there, and ask that next question. In exchange I offer more than those who claim that this act idea, or that, will save this species from extinction. I offer this species its maturity and triumph.

I just heard a voice from one of you:

(-Q->): Just who the hell do you think you are? A: That's it. Don't stop there.

-- TheodoreSturgeon, 1967

[velvet-games]

I finally finished the piece for @prince-liest's OC, Tzafael! this really reminded me of how fun character design is (and also that I've completely forgotten how to make digital art, but that's besides the point...) <3

credit to @hogbogglerspirits for the umbrella design! I kind of butchered it so please look at the original and throw lots of love at them

LOTS of notes, draft sketches, brainstorming, etc. below the cut. enjoy!

(note: a lot of what I'm talking about is based on posts prince made under their #tzafael tag, so take a look at those if you haven't yet!)

thanks for joining me below the cut! here's the sketch without the colors as a treat (in case you want to color it yourself or something, idk).

notes about making the digital drawing:

holy shit this took me forever -- I was not kidding about forgetting how to make digital art lmao. I forgot how much less forgiving digital lines are and genuinely lost the spoons to even attempt lineart, hence just a sketch below the colors.

some of you might've seen the original sketch I sent to prince, which the digital version diverges from just a little. it's mostly the halo which I'll explain later, and I finally caved and drew the sixth eye (you can tell I drew and erased it multiple times in the sketch lmao -- still don't know if I prefer it with or without)

here's the original color ref by the lovely @gendermeh! my color scheme ended up looking really different, so some notes about that:

I was looking at references for magpies like this

and I wanted to basically follow that color scheme while also being somewhat similar to the original -- dark head/shoulders --> dark top of the jacket, bright blue wings --> bright blue bottom of the jacket, greenish tailfeathers --> green pants, hints of purple --> purplish sleeve and pant ends

I also tried (and mostly failed, let's be real) to capture the iridescence of the feathers -- they look like oil spilled on the pavement or iridescent hematite to me! I think the key ended up being adding bright greens/purples and roughly blending them into the blues or vice versa but I didn't really figure that out until I got to the pants lol.

I'm gonna be honest; I don't remember why I went with this shape for the tailcoat. I just remember being unhappy with the sketch and then trying a bunch of different shapes that mostly looked worse lol -- I think I landed on this because a split tail kind of looks like wings?

KEPT the shoes -- absolutely magnifique. I wish I knew how to color gold better.

added lots of jewelry! they like shiny things :)

ALSO PLEASE LOOK AND APPLAUD ME. I FINALLY REMEMBERED TO LABEL MY LAYERS!! NO I DON'T REMEMBER WHY THE HALO HAS ITS OWN LAYER.

alright, time for some more design notes/explanations + draft sketches!

but first, a couple disclaimers:

I want to make it very clear that I LOVE everything about the original design. I made a lot of changes based on personal preference/the way I interpreted the character. I was actually planning on making a digital piece that was more faithful to the original design too, but I was just out of spoons for it cause of life stuff.

you probably shouldn't try to read the notes I made in the sketches I'm about to show you unless I say otherwise. most of it is incoherent brain vomit in illegible artist handwriting and I'll transcribe/explain the stuff I think is important :) (the stuff in quotes are direct transcriptions of my notes)

I know my sketches are very messy lol. I only draw for fun, so I usually don't force myself to make stuff any neater than necessary unless it's supposed to be a formal piece. try to bear with me.

1:

my first few sketches of them! (I think?) this was before I sent prince a laundry list of questions so I was still trying to get a vibe

"magpie -- beak lips?" -- you'll see this in a few sketches; I considered giving them the lipstick design that velvette has since it looks like a beak. I still kind of think it's cute, but 1) I'm pretty sure velvette is the only character that has them, so I didn't want to make it seem like they were related somehow and 2) I thought it might be distracting with how much other crazy stuff I ended up including in their head/face

also, sidenote since it's relevant to what I said about vel: something I realized was important is how one character's design relates to the designs of the rest of the cast. I wasn't sure how much I should've gone for what looked good in a vacuum, how much should be based on what other characters looked like canonically, or what other characters would look like if I also designed them. it ended up being mostly the second option, but it was honestly still a struggle. should I take away some of the tumblr-sexyman-ness (no shade to tumblr sexymen; I love them) because there are other characters that already have it? should I relate their design to sera's and emily's in the show or should I think about how I would've designed sera and emily? should I follow some of the design philosophy of the original show and just throw stuff on there because it looks cool (the answer is yes btw)? decisions, decisions ...

I don't think this showed up really well in most of the drawings, but they actually have a black line down their nose! let's take a look at sera:

since they're siblings, I wanted to include some similar facial markings. the nose line ended up being the only thing I kept though -- I was going to include freckles, but I have a compulsive need to give every character giant bottom lashes so there ended up being no room T.T I like that the magpie's hints of purple kind of match hers tho!

the wingification of the hair begins! I was still unsure of it at this point, but it was an idea I had since I was kind of struggling with how straight the feathers were in the original.

"maybe the ones on their head count as wings (so only one main pair)" -- I originally just had the 2 pairs of wings on their head, so I was thinking of just giving them 1 pair on their back so there would be still be 6 total. also this middle drawing of them is meant to be their exorcist outfit (I wanted it to be a cross between what the other exorcists wear and sera's outfit)

at this stage, I was thinking of giving them more magpie-like characteristics, so I looked at some references and tried to emulate them in a more human design. this ended up being really awkward so I scrapped it, but I still like the idea that their exorcist mask looks like a bird (kind of like a plague doctor's)

2:

peekaboo! I love the idea of them using the wing hair to cover their eyes lol. (ended up using that idea for my own seraph OC since that's their biblically accurate purpose: to cover their eyes/faces in reverence/humility -- doesn't really fit with tzafael tho lol, so they show their face most of the time)

an eyeball in the bowtie -- pretty self-explanatory. the eyeball motif is important.

the one in the middle is just me practicing drawing the original design, and the one on the right is another exorcist outfit I think. I wanted to include the diamond motif/points that sera has on her dress (the diamonds on the bottom turn into eyeballs, which is why the final design also has eyeballs on tzafael's sleeves/pants)

3:

lots of notes on the side based on what prince said in response to my ask

"localized omniscience (power of sight) -- cool + ironic that their sight was supposed to serve God but made them see Heaven for what it really is instead"

another exorcist outfit, this time including the feathers

I was also experimenting with the halo; I was trying to make it look sort of like sera's crown, but that didn't feel right ...

some practice with eyes -- my style is pretty flexible with eye shapes, so I try to make them suit the character. I drew lute's eye and also an actual magpie's as references -- lute's because of the exorcist background and also because they looked appropriately sharp, magpie's for obvious reasons. once again, my compulsive need for giant bottom lashes strikes

there was honestly a lot to balance with the eyes -- I wanted them to look condescending/bored (lowered top lid) but also amused (raised bottom lid) and like a magpie (round) but also harsh/mischievous (sharp, maybe slit pupils like a snake) and similar to sera's (but not too decorated -- also does it make sense for them to look like sera's if emily's don't even look like sera's?)

considered having wings on the shoulders -- the magpie pattern is super cool, so it would've been nice to have that somewhere more explicitly in the design. I still think that might fit in an outfit they would wear in heaven (maybe for formal occasions)

the introduction of the sweatervest! honestly I kind of love this for the way it captures more of the preppy, spoiled old-money upper-class vibe some heaven residents have, but it was scrapped since I couldn't imagine them wearing that while trying to scare the denizens of hell. maybe something they wear casually though.

"yes nictating membrane (on every eye!)" -- AHH I'm so sad I didn't end up putting this to use. I just feel like the whole effect is based on actually seeing them blink, and I don't animate lol.

4:

ugh, the nefarious laughter one ... don't worry I tried harder on a sketch later on lol.

"like the diamonds on Sera + Em" + "diamonds turn into eyes?" -- I draw the diamonds on the sweatervest turning into eyes later.

tried an actual bow instead of a bowtie -- very cute but didn't fit the vibe.

a skirt! I think they would wear a skirt sometimes.

5:

"FUCK ASS BOB" -- asghdk the wingification of the hair continues. unfortunately, I'm realizing at this point that the silhouette of the hair is starting to look a lot like alastor's. I gave a very half-hearted attempt at mitigating this, but it goes back to the thing of how much I am obligated to the original show's designs and what looks cool to me -- I think the wing hair fits them and I didn't want to change it because of alastor, plus my alastor design actually has completely different hair anyway. I did add a third pair to the back to look like a ponytail though.

introduction of the scarf! I was actually going to include this in the final design but uh,,, I forgor. are you starting to see a pattern.

the reason for the scarf is that the "tzafael going to places they know they'll draw attention/can incite chaos" reminded me of that scene in avengers where loki walks into a fancy building looking pretentious af and just casually stabs a guy's eye out. not really the same thing but I felt like the vibe matched. hence, loki's funny little scarf fit.

6:

uaoughdfjh it was SO FUN to draw the wing hair, and it was at this point that I realized they had to stay even though I wasn't sure if it was too different from the original.

gossiping with rosie cause that's the first person I thought of -- tzafael also summoned a pearl necklace to clutch because of the sheer drama of it all (your ex-husband did what??)

also started drawing the rings on their hands. magpie like shiny.

7:

lots of notes cause I was trying to compile the things I still needed to think about/incorporate into the final (I thought this was gonna be the last draft ... haha)

trying to include more bird/eye motifs

"fish ... purse?" -- ha! I forgot I was gonna give them a fish purse. I think I drew that in a later sketch, but not them wearing it.

"picked up Hellish traits bc of extended stay -- existential crisis?" -- I asked prince about the sharp teeth, and their answer implied that they became sharp as they stayed in hell longer, which got me thinking ... I feel like that's actually a great body horror concept. lucifer falling and looking like a normal angel at first, eventually waking up to more and more devilish features and feeling more and more like he's lost his home and his past self ... spooky.

another exorcist outfit -- I actually really like the eyes on the ribs! I never made a final draft for the exorcist uniform, but it would probably look close to what I drew here.

the one on the bottom was meant to be similar to the feathered shoulder pad idea, but this time with the whole magpie (with giant eyes). tried putting the "freckles" (really just dots in this case) over their brows, but that ended up looking kinda weird.

the eye is pretty close to the final design

the one on the right was supposed to be the full final design, but I was totally off lol -- the long trench coat really doesn't give off the right vibe at all

8:

playing around more with the loki vibes of the scarf, also added an eyeball to the chest

I never got happy with the design of the back of the coat -- I think it should probably just be blank at this point. but the sketch here is meant to look like wings/tailfeathers.

yet another exorcist outfit, this time with more magpie motifs. I actually like this one a lot, but I probably should've added the eyes on the ribs from the last sketch. I think I also considered giving them actual tailfeathers at this point.

9:

thanks for sticking with me! I promise we're almost done. have a trans dinosaur I saw while I was travelling as a treat <3

10:

this is after I finished the sketch for the final piece and realized I didn't like the halo design. I drew lute's, sera's, em's, and adam's as refs. (honestly I love the show's idea that each person/people of each rank have a different kind of halo -- I wonder if they can switch them out?)

my main inspiration ended up being the exorcist halo, but I made it look more like an eyeball -- since it always points toward heaven, we can say it's always "looking" at heaven.

(also sera's feather lashes! they're so cute)

11:

EVEN MORE EXORCIST DOODLES

12:

tzafael shooing away my fox demon OC

13:

these are actually sketches for my own seraph OC (raguel), but I wanted to include it since it has even more wing/feather hair variations. I also think the idea of the eyelashes being feather-like could've been cool for tzafael.

14:

some more OG design doodles

tzafael and raguel together because self-indulgence is the name of the game babey (also wanted to draw tzafael freaked out with their wings flared)

(raguel's blind btw, hence asking for eyes -- tzafael has so many!)

you can probably read the dialogue here so give it a shot. I believe in you.

15:

you know what? the fish purse deserves some doodles

16:

putting them in Situations! I was reading over prince's posts again and I realized there were some funny things I could draw them doing/saying

again you can probably read the words here

angel dust also loves fish (but is apparently bad at taking care of them, hence the suffocating blobfish), so tzafael shows him their aquarium (complete with live fish and flora ofc)

I thought alastor was 8 ft but apparently he's 7.3 ft? so tzafael is enjoying the .2 ft they have on him

trying and failing again to come up with a design for the back of the jacket lol

THE crowley quote

apparently the halo still sends signals from the exorcists -- thought their reaction to the battle at the hotel would be funny

the nefarious laughter (take 2) that I promised -- based on a doodle of alastor viv did that I found

them being sad and curling up in a pile of shiny things like a dragon

OKAY I'M DONE. huge, huge thank you to prince for sharing their OC! this was a lot of fun and clearly inspired me a lot haha. please check out their writing; it's literally so good that I can't read anything else these days. I am chewing on their thoughts constantly.

this was an absolute monster of a post, so if you're still reading, I am both impressed and bewildered at your patience. I hope you enjoyed! (I certainly did!)

[demonslayedher]

Any Kny character you've grown to love/appreciate more??

Thanks for waiting, Anon, I have been trying to really, really hard to narrow this down, but the answer remains: the vast majority of the cast. The only character I loved right away was Tanjiro and that love kept me watching, as with almost every new character I was like, "ugh, I hate this guy. Here I was, having fun being emotionally invested in a high quality anime, and this might ruin it for me." But then the instant I see a different side of their character, I'm like, "...Oh." To go into some examples...

Zenitsu: I could not stand him right away, I hate womanizers, and his conniptions would go on so long that they held up the story. But Gotouge/Ufotable strung me along perfectly, the first glimpse of Thunder Breath made me immediately pay attention and think, "oh, that was cool. I want to see more of that." Seeing him protect the box pretty firmly put him in the "I need to protect this child" box in my heart. And then the spider demon happens, and I'm sending desperate reaction messages to a friend like "NOOOOOO!!!! BABBBBBBBBBYYYYYYYY!!!!" And then he annoyed me all over again at the start of Functional Recovery, ahaha. It's hard to remember how annoyed I was because I'm such a Zen Stan now, and he was a very firm favorite of mine by the time I finished binging the anime up to the last couple episodes, which I waited for as they came out. Inosuke: He was one of the reasons I was curious about the series, I saw some promotional art and was super curious about Nezuko's muzzle (I was one of the people who thought it was some ancient scroll or something, haha) and the kid with the boar mask. The art I saw showed his face, and I assumed he'd be some kid with a cracking voice performed by a female seiyuu. As much as I love Matsuoka's performance now, initially, since I knew what his face looked like, I found it grossly off-putting the moment I heard it. Then every chaotic thing Inosuke did dug a deeper hole; I very quickly decided I hated him, especially when he started beating up on the kid I was starting to like. As his chaos subsided he just became a character I tolerated, and then this happened:

Images you can hear, am I right? This immediately flipped the "BABY" switch in my heart. It was also a lot of fun to understand the Inosuke memes I was seeing everywhere. So by the end of the anime, I loved, loved, loved, loved the Tanjiro/Zenitsu/Inosuke interactions and desperately wanted more (still didn't like how Zenitsu bothered Nezuko, though). I was so impatient for more, but the manga art looked disappointingly off-putting. I figured the anime was successful enough that there'd eventually be more of it, and I wanted to be patient, but then I poked around, read some spoilers, got back into Tumblr to look at fanart and memes, saw a spoiler image of Tanjiro affected by Muzan's poison and the binge-read began. (That's kind of a lie, but I'll get to that.) Let's back up a few episodes. There I was, having a great time, the guy who I forgot about from Episode 1 was back and haha, I guess everyone hates him, and the chick who I figured was going to be a medic who saves Zenitsu in the nick of time turned out to be savage, awesome. I was sending reactions to my friends who were ahead of me, and then we left off seeing the Pillars staring down Best Boy. And I...

Well. Uh. Here, I've dug up an old convo for you, my comments are in blue.

Immediately followed by a passionate vocal rant, which I have transcribed here:

“I feel like what happened was that the mangaka was sitting around with his assistants and was like, ‘welp, gotta make this whole cast of characters, they gotta be so-o-o-o many more levels of extreme than all the other characters I’ve had so far, which isn’t hard, because all of the background characters are cannon fodder and I’ve just gotta leave them all with black hair and no personality traits. So! Gotta go to the opposite of the spectrum with the BIG! POWERFUL! People so no-o-o-body can be normal.’ And so he and his assistants sat down, and they all wrote down just random words or traits, and them put ‘em all in a hat. And then for each character, they pulled out a few of them and said, ‘OK. We’re gonna put these things together, now we have a character.’ And he was probably also like, ‘Iiiiiiiiiiiii’ll flesh them out later. For now, they just need t’… be there, and make an impact. How do we make an impact? By making sure it’s super, super clear what their character traits are. Here, we’ll have this guy repeat the word //HADE//…. ////HA DEEE//// over and over and over… to show that he’s a /showy/ person. Because he /cares/ about that. And he //should// care because that is his character and that’s why he’s powerful.’ OH MY GOSH, it’s so dumb.”

......orz I feel like Genya looking back at how he acted at the end of the Final Selection. I'm sorry, Gotouge, I had not even encountered your love for these characters yet in your little alligator form. Nor had I encountered the yet unseen-sides of these traumatized dragons and tigers. ...*coughs* Um. So. I was pretty harsh.

So this was my mindset, I went into the manga not caring about most of these characters and just wanting more Kamaboko squad interactions and wanting to hurry up and catch up to the battle with Muzan. And it's worth stating that I didn't mean to read it at first. I encountered a few spoilers, and just wanted to look for the context surrounding those parts, and then hunt for the (non-existent) build-up to those parts, and so... uh.........

I read a lot of the manga out of order, and yeah, that did affect how much I cared about what was going on. I didn't actually properly process a lot of it until later re-reads. But to try to state some things simply about each Pillar:

Giyuu: He was just 'ok' to me for a long time, I could see the appeal for why people I knew were fangirling over him but he didn't do it for me. His soft spot for Tanjiro was indeed endearing, though, and I firmly liked him by the time chapter 200 came out and I was properly heartbroken on his behalf.

Shinobu: She was intriguing, and then I liked her as soon as I saw her savage side, she was one of the characters I went hunting for spoilers for.

Rengoku: That stare really put me off at first, but I fell for him over the process of Tanjiro falling for him. When I first finished the train arc I sat back and said, "wow! That's going to make for a good movie!" and then in psyching myself out for the movie several months in advance, I fell hook, line, and sinker and was totally excited for him each time I saw the trailers. And then the movie was *stunning* and I love him even more. Uzui: He was the Pillar I hated most upon first meeting them. I blame the repeated use of his catchphrase. But then when he let his hair down to sell the kiddos the change in design helped warm me up more to him, like, "oh, there was a human in there." It took a long time for him to become more interesting to me, and an uncharacteristically subtle journey to becoming a character I liked. I am currently getting more and more psyched out for him and eager to see how much more I'm going to like him with the shiny Ufotable treatment. Mitsuri: At first I didn't remember her name, I had code-named her as "Boobs." But I kinda had a feeling she was going to grow on me quickly, and I was right, she's one of my easy favorites now. Muichiro: Who? Oh yeah, that kid who always kinda fell to the wayside in my attention. I'd see a lot of Muichiro-themed blogs and hear a lot of little girls looking at merch and showing a clear favoritism of him, and I'd like always react like Muichiro and just be like, "...", and then when I read his major battles I was more emotionally invested in things going on concurrently with other characters, and I was still like, "...", and then two days ago I revisited a Muichiro scene and was suddenly like, "......OH!!! MUICHIRO!!!!!" Himejima: I never really hated Himejima, even if I found his first impression kind of wimpy (haha... oh, I was so wrong). I had a pretty easy acceptance of him too, so I would generally count him among characters I like, but if you were to ask me why, I'd draw a blank. It's kind of a weirdly mature, subdued appreciation for him rather than passionate fangirling. But weirdly when I was daydreaming the other day I found myself thinking, "if I had to marry someone in the KnY cast, it would be Himejima." So like, not a fiery romance, but I see him as my dependable, sturdy rock to grow old with??? What is up with you, sub-conscious?? Iguro: My interest in him rises and falls. Being a Mitsuri fan helped warm me up to his character in the first place, which was the emotional tie I needed since his backstory didn't grip me much (I found it a frustrating distraction while I was desperately reading weekly updates). Reading more subtle details about his character in the fanbooks has brought me around and made me more curious about him, like I'd really like to be a fly on the wall for the conversation he had with Uzui one day about their pasts.

Sanemi: Hahaha, wow. He was so unlikable in the beginning, wasn't he? His character design (yeah, the eyes) was really off-putting too. But then I got to know him and there was no going back, I got totally played. He's a character I'm pretty fond of now and one of the characters I've enjoyed delving into most in fanfic. To keep this answer from getting too long, for the vaaaaaast majority of the cast, I was initially like, "meh" or "OK" or "ew" but now am like, "EEEEEEEEE, I LOVE THIS TOTALLY RANDOM UNIMPORTANT SIDE CHARACTERRRRRRR" so you know... times change. And the more time I spend obsessed with Kimetsu no Yaiba, the more I like them all, so even the characters I'm lukewarm on will probably have their eventual days when they take over my heart and smash it.

[preservationandruin]

Rhythm of War Liveblog, Part One Part Three (Chapters 9-11)

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Alright, sorry for the long wait--I have notes through Part Two, but I’m going to transcribe them without too much commentary on events that happened later, even though now--putting it on a computer--I’m further in the book. Anyway, let’s get this going!  Kaladin continues to have a bad day, Navani gets a pen pal, Shallan and Adolin read someone else’s diary, Kaladin is forced to take a vacation, and we check in with Venli and the Long Con. 

The epigraphs confirm that pewter continues the pattern of fabrial cages working like allomancy, so that’s just A Thing.  Meanwhile, Kaladin is not taking things particularly well. Syl and Teft both try checking in on him, but he rebuffs them; Syl notes that this feels worse than his usual depressive episodes and that it seems like he lives for stormlight, which led me to theorize that Odium was doing some influencing of him and that Stormlight--and Urithiru, when he’s there--disrupts it. Syl also asks how Moash knew about Honor Chasm, which is a good point--Kal says he probably mentioned it around the fire, but that doesn’t seem likely to me. Of course, I could be forgetting things, but Kaladin was always very tight-lipped about that moment in particular. Kaladin also notes that his memories of the good times with Bridge Four seem muted and less distinct, and again it’s hard to tell if that’s mundane depression or the influence of something More.  Meanwhile, Navani is in her Floating Research Orb, which is the best thing ever. it’s just an orb with points on the ends that she can use as a study while flying and I want one immediately but with windows. She’s speculating on how Soulcasters work, because they break a lot of the conventional rules of Fabrials--they don’t have a trapped spren visible in the normal world, although in Shadesmar they appear to have inert sentient spren attached to them. Which...uh....is troubling, to say the least.  Just a theory here, but could those trapped spren be inkspren? It would explain some of why Ivory’s people are so against bonding Radiants, if at some point humans captured a lot of them to make Soulcasters. Also, they’re one of two spren linked to orders who can Soulcast, and I feel like if they were Cryptics someone would recognize them.  Anyway, Navani notes that the depowering fabrial uses the same four-garnet design as the pillar in Urithiru, and we get some of how she’s trying to figure out how to make the pillar work again.  (also, it must be noted, Dalinar is being flown by one of the Windrunners and has to wear a mask to stop his face from freezing off, and that’s just a very funny mental image. Navani also apparently tried to convince the windrunners that flying feet-first would be more aerodynamic).  Anyway this is about when she notices the gem for a spanreed stuck on the bottom of her desk and flashing, and when she hooks it up, she gets...an interesting message, in cramped handwriting: 

You are the monster Navani Kholin. You have caused more pain than any living person. [...] You capture spren. You imprison them. Hundreds of them. You must stop. Stop, or there will be consequences.

GUYS, WE MIGHT BE GETTING INTO FABRIAL ETHICS AND I’M SO EXCITED. Navani points out that the sentient spren don’t see the captured spren in fabrials as being hurt, instead more as animals of burden a la chulls, and even the honorspren agree--to which the mysterious pen pal replies that the honorspren can’t be trusted. 

So, that’s ominous, and really interesting. When getting into the ethics of fabrials we get some really interesting places--what rules do spren have for sentience? Do they have a standard? Do humans of Roshar have a standard? After all, the parshmen were considered almost nonsentient, and that wasn’t true at all. I’m very excited to see where this goes.  Meanwhile, Shallan and Adolin are cuddling in a carriage and discussing what happened. Adolin, understandably, has trouble differentiating between the various underground organizations on Roshar--Ghostbloods, Sons of Honor, Skybreakers, etc. That’s very fair, there are a lot of shady bastards running around. He also knows that Shallan is still hiding things, but trusts her to tell him eventually. 

Guys, I just really love Adolin and the way he’s just. A caring and good person. Adolin Kholin appreciation hours are all hours, always, on this blog.  Anyway Shallan goes on to explain some of the deal with the Ghostbloods--that they have inscrutable goals, that they sunk the ship back in Words of Radiance, and that they killed Ialai, meaning they have someone in Shallan and Adolin’s people. While she’s saying this, though, we get that there’s something else going on inside Shallan--she’s terrified that if she tells someone her entire background, they’ll leave, and around those fears is the potential for another alter--Formless--who scares all of them, even Veil.  Also Shallan shows Adolin Ialai’s notebook, which he cannot read because he remains illiterate and that remains hilarious to me. The only illiterate Kholins right now are Adolin and the five year old and Gavinor has the excuse of being a five year old. Anyway, we get this interesting bit of notation: 

“Like this page--a list of terms or names [Ialai’s] spies had heard. She was trying to define what they were.” Shallan moved her finger down the page. “Nalathis, Scadarial, Tal Dain. Do you recognize any of those?” 

This is hilarious because while Adolin doesn’t recognize them, that quote is a direct nod to the fans, who will recognize those names--even transliterated to better match Alethi name structure, they’re the other planets of the Cosmere. Adolin and Shallan try to connect Nalathis to Nalan, which makes some sense but mostly just has me very amused. Can you imagine Nale on Nalthis? He would hate it. He would HATE it. 

In any case, it’s only after the entire conversation that Shallan realizes that while she meant to tell Adolin she was a Ghostblood, she hadn’t done that at all, which is...interesting, again. I’m keeping note of these times that Shallan does something she can’t explain. 

We go over to Kaladin for the next chapter, where we open with Kaladin informing one of the honorspren--the only one they have who isn’t bonded--to try to work with Rlain, who none of the spren have worked with so far because...spren racism. I mean, I get the hesitance, but come on. Come on. 

And then we get the real meat of the chapter, because Dalinar takes Kaladin off of active duty, and Kaladin takes that about as well as could be expected. 

Dalinar cites Kaladin’s “battle fatigue”--I’m fairly sure we would call it PTSD--as the reason to pull him off the line, and he’s completely right in terms of his logic. Kaladin very clearly has the initial reaction that is also inspired by trauma, because this is yet again a ilghteyed person of power taking Kaladin’s decisions and agency away from him, but--and he even recognizes this the more the conversation goes on--Dalinar, unlike the ones before him, is doing this out of genuine concern for Kaladin and also because, as a commanding officer, he has to take Kaladin off of the field. 

There’s no real good call in this situation, and I think Dalinar made the best one. Taking away what Kaladin sees as his only purpose while he’s relapsing is bad--but leaving him on the field when it clearly isn’t good either for him or for the force he’s working with, and could lead not only to Kaladin’s death but the deaths of other people around him. 

We also get more Kaladin introspection, and the fact--stated explicitly now, although it’s been inferrable for a while--that Kaladin thinks there’s something broken about him because he couldn’t swear the Fourth Ideal. 

I swear to god, the Fourth Ideal is going to be something about accepting that you can’t save everyone. It’s the only thing that thematically makes sense--it would be a very difficult ideal to swear, particularly given that Windrunners are so dedicated to saving everyone; the Fourth Ideal seems to most likely be the one that gives you Plate, and accepting that you can’t save everyone is the mental step needed to defend yourself from the exact burden Kaladin is breaking under right now--if you feel like you have to save everyone you are going to break, sooner rather than later, and you have to accept that that will sometimes be impossible. 

We’re going to see him swear this this book, I am confident we are going to see that this book. 

And then we have our first Venli POV! We get a brief description of the hierarchy of the Singers--Singers are lowest, and then Regals like Venli who have Forms of Power, and then Fused, who kill their hosts as they take it over, then thunderclasts and Unmade. 

Because everyone is at two degrees of separation at most, Venli is working as the Voice for Leshwi--working in these unsteady, tall watchtowers that have been constructed around Alethkar for the Fused to live in, although only the strongest get rooms at the top of the towers. Leshwi is one of those strongest, not only because of her power but also because she’s kept her sanity mostly intact, unlike many of the Fused. 

Venli’s in envoyform, still, which is interesting because it lets her not only speak many languages, but also to understand full intent from the briefest notes of what Leshwi is saying, which is cool. We also get what her goals are, for the moment--she wants to build a dissident group of Singers, a group who could rebuild the Listeners and become a separatist group who follow neither the Fused nor the humans. 

Which is interesting. I don’t think it’s going to work--this war is all-consuming, and it’s going to be very hard to fit yourself into a neutral position, especially because Odium and his side are looking for total control. They’re not going to allow people to just walk away. 

But I respect Venli for trying. We get some more insight into her powers--she can use stormlight and voidlight, although if she does too much she draws the secretspren who discover Knights Radiant, and she can peer into Shadesmar without drawing their attention. 

And then Leshwi barges in to say that something has happened, drawing the war to a new and dangerous point. 

[syncogon]

[QZGS TL] Butterfly Blue 2015/08/15 Taiwan Q&A

Hello! Bringing another Butterfly Blue fan Q&A translation here today. This one is from August 15, 2015, for an event he was doing in Taiwan. 

This is a translation of a transcription of a recording. Because it was spoken, there’s some filler words and awkward phrasing; I focused more on getting the gist of what he was saying. A few notes have been included in [brackets]. Also, the transcriber said that they lost the recording of the second half of the talk, so this is only a portion of the event.

The transcription was originally found at this link, http://sinstar529.lofter.com/post/3330e5_7e8c0e7, but the Lofter seems to have been purged. To keep a record and some accountability, the Chinese is included in this post. As always, let me know of any major errors.

past BB translations here: /tagged/bb-interview

Please enjoy! As always, BB has some fun and interesting insights.

********

提问：虫爹我想请问，孙翔当年是怎么被发掘的呢？是在网游里被发现的、还是自己报名训练营的？

虫爹：孙翔他是比较有天赋、比较有才华的，我其实没有想过（全场笑），这样有天赋的选手大家都会比较关注的

Q: Bug Dad, how was Sun Xiang discovered back in the day? Was he discovered in game, or did he join a training camp himself?

A: Sun Xiang, he’s rather talented. I actually haven’t thought about this (audience laughter). People will always pay attention to such a talented player.

提问：王杰希的接班人高英杰是怎么被挑选当选手的？

虫爹：这不是跟上一个问题一样吗？ （全场笑）因为表现得比较有天赋就会比较让人看重

Q: How was Wang Jiexi’s successor, Gao Yingjie, chosen to become a pro?

A: Isn’t this the same as the last question? (audience laughter) Talented performance will always attract attention.

提问：虫爹你觉得杜明追得上唐柔吗

虫爹：我觉得难度可能会比较大一点（全场笑）而且他还只是暗恋，还没有比较主动地去表现出来，所以这样看起来……嗯、我觉得��应该是……追不到（全场笑）←小明不哭（Ｘ

Q: Bug Dad, do you think Du Ming can chase down and get together with Tang Rou? 

A: I think it’d be relatively difficult (audience laughter). And plus it’s still a secret crush, he still hasn’t even taken the initiative to express it. So from that… mm, I think he… couldn’t (audience laughter)

提问：那个，孙哲平和韩队都是那种、硬派的、呃、男人（不然是什么Ｘ），所以我想问，谁感觉比较、爷们一点？

虫爹：他们俩个吗？差不多吧，性格上没必要拿出来比较吧

提问：那如果ＰＫ的话，会感觉谁比较有胜算呢？

虫爹：你说真人ＰＫ吗？ （全场笑）

提问：真人ＰＫ也是可以的

虫爹：真人ＰＫ就不要讨论了吧（笑）不过如果是赛场上的胜负的话是很难说的，那怕是叶修这么强的人都没办法保证百分百能胜过哪个人，所以谁强谁弱的这个，我觉得、恩，不太会有结论。因为打得越多胜负出现的次数也会越多，大概是这样吧

Q: Um, Sun Zheping and Captain Han are both that sort of, strong-willed, uh, men. So I wanted to ask, who’s more, manly?

A: Those two? Probably about the same, there’s no need to compare personalities

Q: Then if they PKed, who do you think would have a higher chance of winning?

A: Are you talking about a real-life PK? (audience laughter) 

Q: Real-life PK is fine too

A: Let’s not talk about real-life PK (laughs). But if we’re talking about the outcome of a match, that’s hard to say. Not even someone as strong as Ye Xiu can 100% guarantee victory over another person. So who’s stronger or weaker, I think there isn’t really a conclusion. Because the more matches played, the greater the number of victories and losses, it’s something like that.

提问：虫爹我想请问一下，莫凡以前是做什么的？怎么有办法说来就来兴欣，然后一直被拐带留在那边都不用回家（全场笑）

虫爹：喔你说他现实里的工作是吧？呃依照设定来说我想就是游戏里的那种职业玩家吧，就拾拾荒啊、卖卖装备啊，然后每天换点零花钱这样子，因为他年纪还不算很大，还比较年轻

Q: Bug Dad I want to ask, what was Mo Fan doing before joining Happy? How could he just drop everything and come to Happy, and then get abducted without needing to return home? (audience laughter)

A: Oh you’re talking about his real-world work? Mm according to what I had in mind, he was just a pro in-game player, scrap picking, selling equipment, and then trading this for some spending money every day. Because he’s not too old, he’s still relatively young

提问：请问台湾有可能出巅峰荣耀吗？

虫爹：台湾啊？如果是出版的话还是交给出版社，因为他嫌我现在的字数还有点少（笑）因为大陆那本现在应该是七万七千还是七万八千字左右，但我们这边说至少要到十几万字才有可能出版呵呵

提问：那虫爹可以多写一点番外吗～补上去嘛～

虫爹：这个可能要慢一些，因为一次写两本还是有点吃力，那我写现在的连载，有的时候还是不知道该写什么（惊）所以可能会慢一些

[Q about prequel release in Taiwan - unlikely because too short for the publisher]

Q: Then could you write a bit more prequel content ~

A: This would probably have to be a bit slower, writing two books at once is still a bit of a struggle, and when I’m writing the serialization right now, sometimes I still don’t know what I should write. So it would be slow

提问：虫爹我只是纯粹好奇想请问，沐秋的身高到底是多少？因为我是他的粉丝，所以说很希望可以知道他的身高

虫爹：沐秋啊？这个设定我还没有做到欸，因为我角色设定只做到一半，现在还在做后面的设定，所以这个还没有做到

Q: Bug Dad I’m just curious, how tall is Muqiu? Because I’m his fan, so I really hope to know his height

A: Muqiu? Eh this I still haven’t figured out, I’ve only done around half of the character profiles so far. I’m still working on the second half, so I haven’t done this yet 

提问：那网游时期第一代的大神们有在现实世界中见面过吗？就是在游戏之前，因为有的时候我们在游戏里熟识到一个程度的时候会出来见个面啊、吃个饭啊、聊个天啊什么的，他们有这样行为吗？

虫爹：这个……因人而异吧，我觉得初代的……因为他们后来打到比赛的时候就会见到的，这些活动……我来考虑吧，比如说叶修应该对这些不会有太大的兴趣呵呵

Q: Did the first-generation gods ever meet in the real world? Because sometimes when we’re somewhat familiar with people in-game, we’ll go out together, meet up, get a meal, chat, etc. Did they ever do these kinds of things? 

A: This… probably varies from person to person, I feel that the first generation… Because they’d meet later when playing matches, so these kind of activities… I’ll think about it. For example Ye Xiu probably wouldn’t be very interested in these things haha

提问：虫爹我想请问叶神大大是什么时候开始染上烟瘾这个坏习惯的？

虫爹：呃……这个可能就是在长期熬夜的过程中……这个你问得太细了我没有想过，因为我看我写番外的时候、呃、他十五岁的时候我应该没有写到他抽烟的画面吧？那就是在后面的……离家出走以后吧？

提问：那他有没有考虑要把烟戒掉？

虫爹：我不知道欸哈哈哈哈哈哈

Q: Bug Dad I want to ask, when did God Ye pick up his bad cigarette addiction?

A: Uh… He might have picked it up after many nights of staying up late… Your question is too specific, I haven’t thought about it before. Because when I was writing the prequel, hm, when he was fifteen I don’t think I described any scenes of him smoking? Then it would have been later… after he left home? 

Q: Then has he ever considered quitting smoking?

A: I don’t know hahaha

提问：虫爹我想请问，因为很多人对后面世界邀请赛的部分感到很好奇，那我想请问虫爹会写这个部分的番外吗？

虫爹：嗯我暂时没有想写后面的番外，因为这个结局我个人是觉得非常满意的，如果现在写了我觉得就是个画蛇添足的举动吧，所以我暂时不想写后面，所以我现在写的番外都是之前的，可能把他一些过去的心情啊什么的让他补的更完整一点，那未来的我暂时没有想过要写

Q: Bug Dad I want to ask, because many people are curious about the later world championships, will you ever write about this?

A: For now I haven’t thought about writing any sequels, because I’m very happy with the ending I have. If I write it now, it’d be like drawing feet on a snake. That’s why the extras I’m writing now are all prequels, so I can fill in more details about their past feelings and such, but right now I don’t want to write about the future. 

 提问：江波涛是怎么知道周泽楷在说什么的

虫爹：呃这个问题昨天刚好也有人问过，就是如果大家有玩过网游的话，比如说一些比较常一起玩的朋友，就会比较知道你接下来会有一些什么举动，就会比较有默契，你知道的、呃、默契（全场笑）

Q: How does Jiang Botao know what Zhou Zekai is saying?

A: I think someone asked this question yesterday too. If you’ve played an online game before, for example if you have a few friends you play with often, then they’ll tend to know what action you’re likely to take next, you’ll have that tacit understanding, you know that, uh, tacit understanding (audience laughter) 

提问：虫爹我想请问因为有些同人创作有在写衍生，那我想请问你对衍生的看法是什么

虫爹：因为……衍生可能就是大家对于正篇所产生的脑补，我个人的话其实没有看过，所以我不好评价，没什么可介意的，大家开心就好，我不会太介意的

Q: Bug Dad I want to ask, there are a few fan creators writing derivatives of your work, what is your opinion on that? 

A: Mm… Derivatives tend to come from everyone’s thoughts and ideas about the original work. Personally I haven’t looked at them, so I can’t give a judgment, but there isn’t much to object to. As long as everyone’s happy that’s good, I won’t mind too much

提问：虫爹我想请问一下，孙哲平退役期间有跟张佳乐联络吗？

虫爹：退役、呃、我个人觉得，应该是不会有太多联络的，因为他的退役在我们来说是比较呃、难过的、比较无可抗拒的，这种是最无力的嘛，所以我想他可能会……不太会想继续联络

Q: Bug Dad I’d like to ask, during the period of time Sun Zheping was retired, did he ever contact Zhang Jiale? 

A: While retired, hm, personally I think there wouldn’t have been much contact. Because his retirement was rather sad, as we’d describe it, it wasn’t something he could fight against, it was the most helpless kind, so I think that he probably… wouldn’t really want to maintain contact

提问：老师当初是什么契机之下会想要写《全职高手》这部作品

虫爹：全职这个嘛，我在近战法师写到一半的时候就有想写一个、呃游戏类的小说，但是写一个人整天在那里玩游戏好像有一些、呃、不务正业嘛，唯一的办法就是把他变成职业的、比较正经的，那就是电竞，像体育项目一样的事情。所以我当初就想写一个电竞类的，然后我就加了一点网游的部分，因为这样过渡得比较流畅比较自然一点，也不会像一直打比赛那么枯燥嘛，

Q: At the time, what drove you to come up with this work The King’s Avatar? 

A: When I was about halfway through writing Close-Combat Mage, I wanted to write a gaming novel, but writing about a person playing games all day felt a bit, mm, like neglecting honest work. The only way around that would be to make him a professional, relatively official. That’s esports, like normal sporting events. So at the time I wanted to write about esports, and then I added sections about the game, because this kind of transition felt a bit smoother, and it wouldn’t be as monotonous as just having endless matches.

提问：那如果要用一段话形容王杰希的话，你会怎么写？

虫爹：一段话？我在里面写了那么多字你要我用一段话讲ＱＡＱ我写那么多干嘛ＱＡＱ

提问：那最深的印象呢？

虫爹：呃我一时想不出来，但我想他应该是一个责任心非常重，然后对战队有非常非常高的憧憬，怎么说，就像他对微草战队的期许吧，所以有很高的责任感和（？？？？？？没听清楚

Q: So if you were to use one sentence to describe Wang Jiexi, what would you say?

A: One sentence? I wrote so many words in the book and you want me to use one sentence to describe him? Then why’d I write so much?

Q: Then what’s your deepest impression of him?

A: Mm I can’t think of an answer right now, but I feel that he’s the type of person to take responsibility for things, and then he has an extremely high vision for his team’s future - how to put it - like his hopes and expectations for Tiny Herb, so he has a very deep sense of responsibility. [transcriber’s note: “??? Didn’t hear clearly”]

提问：我想问叶修的家庭到底是怎么样的，让他会那么怕他的爸爸

虫爹：呃我觉得会怕家长这是尊重吧，因为不好、太忤逆所以他干脆不敢面对就离家出走了

Q: I’d like to ask, what is Ye Xiu’s family like, for him to be so scared of his dad?

A: I feel that this “fear of parents” is just respect. Because he wasn’t good, too rebellious, so he just didn’t dare confront them and instead ran away from home 

提问：想请问虫爹在写文章的时候会听音乐或同时做其他事情吗？比如说吃东西

虫爹：呃、呃我没有吃东西，听音乐嘛……就是……尽量写吧（？

提问：那请问在写战斗画面时是想像然后就直接打出来吗？

虫爹：你说我、自己还要、打出来吗（惊）当然没有啊（？）只是脑补而已你想太多了←虫爹好像误会了www

Q: When you’re writing, do you listen to music or do other things at the same time? Like eating? 

A: I don’t eat while writing… listening to music, I… guess I try to focus on writing [transcriber note: “?”]

Q: Then when you’re writing battles, do you imagine it and then directly hit it out? 

A: You’re asking me if I – myself – fight out the battle? Of course not? I’m just imagining it, you’re thinking too much 

[transcriber note: “BB seems to have misunderstood”] 
[translator note: I think it’s a pun-misunderstanding of “to type” vs “to hit/fight”?]

提问：那想请问因为听说会拍成电影，那因为有很多游戏的战斗画面，虫爹有想过有怎么表现这一块吗？

虫爹：这个版权已经卖出去有点久了（？！）不过现在还没有到实际的创作阶段，游戏画面的表现的话就是用特效啊，大家看电影都会知道有一些场景实现不了就是用特效

[Q about potential movie, irrelevant now that it’s released]

提问：老师为什么你不会想要写那种、草根少年崛起之类的，就是为什么他是从大神再从头爬起，为什么没有想要写他原本就是默默无名的人

虫爹：因为我之前写的几个故事大体都是这样的，为了做出区别所以，呃比如说武侠小说，像金庸就是你说的这种嘛但我是比较喜欢古龙呵呵呵（嗯？）就这样出来就比较无敌啊哈哈哈

Q: Why didn’t you want to write a story about grassroots youth rising to the top? That is, why is he a god starting over again? Why didn’t you think about writing his origin as a nobody?

A: Because many of my previous stories were all like that, so I wanted to do something different. For example, wuxia stories like Jin Yong’s stories were like that, but I prefer Gu Long’s hehe, where they’re rather invincible from the start 

[T/N: both famous wuxia novelists]

提问：因为刚刚提到孙哲平所以我就想到魏琛，想问魏琛退役之后是真的没有跟黄少天连络吗？因为黄少天是他从网游带进去的，算是他的徒弟了，那他就完全不会想要联络吗？

虫爹：这个嘛，退役就好像退休一样嘛，就要换一种生活嘛哈哈哈，所以虽然他还是在玩荣耀，但网游跟职业圈两者还是不太一样的，所以就不太会再有交集 

提问：那黄少天没想过要跟他连络吗？

虫爹：如果他不见了要怎么联络哈哈哈

提问：但是叶修找到他了ＱＡＱ

虫爹：叶修只是偶然碰到而已哈哈哈，因为叶修有时间玩网游哈哈哈

Q: Since Sun Zheping was mentioned earlier, I thought of Wei Chen. After Wei Chen retired, did he really never contact Huang Shaotian? Because Huang Shaotian was the one he brought in from the game, he was like his apprentice. Did he really not want to contact him at all?

A: This… it’s retirement, you’re changing your way of life, haha. So even though he was still playing Glory, in-game is still quite different from the pro circle. There wouldn’t be much intersection anymore

Q: But wouldn’t Huang Shaotian want to contact him?

A: If he’s vanished, how is he supposed to contact him? Hahaha

Q: But Ye Xiu found him!

A: Ye Xiu just happened to run into him by chance, because Ye Xiu had time to play in-game haha

小编：那接下来还有同学要提问吗……噢有男生欸！

虫爹：噢终于有男生了！

提问：虫爹你好，我想请问《近战法师》的韩家公子和叶修喷啦叽话谁会赢呢？

虫爹：噢，只是言语啦，韩家公子应该会更胜一筹，噢呜，叶修是吧（惊讶脸）叶修哇，我刚刚当成顾飞了，这个不好讲啦哈哈哈哈，而且叶修可能会用键盘打字哈哈哈哈，这个就……回答不了哈哈哈，不好意思我刚刚当成顾飞了，顾飞的言语……他就是用行动的哈哈哈

[the host?]: Then are there any more questions… Oh, a guy!

A: Finally, a male! 

[Q about Close-Combat Mage] 

提问：虫爹想请问你创作的这十年来有什么特别印象深刻的吗？

虫爹：这个要追溯到最一开始的时候，我一开始是先看了一本网游小说，不过他到一半就没有了，当时我不懂说……那不是后面没有了，而是后面是要付费的哈哈哈，然后我就不看了，但是我想……就觉得很委屈嘛，然后我就看到他的第二篇文，就觉得……怎么不写个完呢？那时候我才刚要上大学，我的同学就常常去网吧玩嘛，我们就泡在网吧里，他在打游戏嘛，但我那时候就在旁边开始写小说，就同学就整晚不睡觉在打游戏看影剧，那我就在那边打小说嘛，然后他们就看我在那边努力写，像看白痴一样的看我，那时候比起辛苦我倒觉得写作是一件很高兴的事这样，也没有想到其他太多的东西，印象最深就是最初的这段。

小编：那原先启发你的那篇文你后来有去储币看完吗？

虫爹：噢那时候因为他写到一半就出道了，所以我也不知道他后面还有，那后来因为他是有付费嘛，那我想那我就不要看了哈哈哈哈哈（抓头）

Q: Bug Dad, over the course of these ten years that you’ve been writing, do you have any particularly deep impressions?

A: For this, you’d have to trace back to the very beginning. Back then, I was reading a gaming novel, but after reading half of it there was no more. At the time I didn’t realize, it wasn’t that there was no more, it was that the rest was paywalled hahaha. And so I didn’t read any more, but I was thinking… I felt wronged, you know? And then I saw his second work, but I felt… why not write a complete story? At that time I was just about to start university, my classmates were often going to play at internet cafés, and so we’d hang out in the internet café. They would play games, but I would stay off to the side and start to write novels. Similarly, while my classmates were playing games and watching movies late at night instead of sleeping, I would just be writing off to the side, and so they would watch me working hard at writing, as though I were a total idiot. At that time, it was very hard work, but I felt that writing was a very happy thing for me, and so I didn’t think too much about other things. This early period left the deepest impression on me. 

Q: Then did you ever go back to read that first story that inspired you?

A: Oh, back then it was because he made his real debut after writing half of it, so I didn’t even know that there was more. Later I realized that it existed but was paywalled, then I just figured I didn’t want to read it anymore hahahaha

提问：虫爹虽然这个问题很多人问过了但我就是想知道ＱＡＱ就是张佳乐能拿冠军吗ＱＡＱ

虫爹：这个在现有的情节里是没有拿到的，未来嘛因为我没有写所以也不好回答，就知道你们会这样问哈哈哈，所以大家就不要再问这种未来的，因为我没有写啦哈哈哈

Q: Bug Dad I know many people have asked this question before but I want to know – can Zhang Jiale win a championship QAQ 

A: In the story as it currently stands, he hasn’t won a championship. As for the future, I haven’t written it so I can’t answer either. I just know that you guys are like this haha so everyone please don’t ask me these kind of “future” questions because I haven’t written it haha

提问：那因为虫爹一直都很擅长写这种网游类的小说，那想请问虫爹有没有参考过什么网路游戏或玩过什么网路游戏？

虫爹：我是有玩过因为以前在上学的时候有玩DNF，那全职前面有一些职业都是从那个来的，那职业的设定有一些就是参考这个，因为那时候大陆最红的就是这个啦

Q: Because you’ve always been good at writing these kinds of gaming novels, have you referenced any online games or played any online games?

A: I’ve played before, when I was in school I would sometimes play DNF (Dungeon Fighter Online), so a few classes in The King’s Avatar are from there. The design of the classes was influenced by this game because at that time it was the most popular game in the mainland 

提问：虫爹我想请问因为你是从台北吃到高雄那你最喜欢什么

虫爹：我没有一路吃下来（澄清）呃、每一顿都要叙述一下吗？因为我口味比较重一些喜欢吃辣，感觉台湾口味就是会混搭一些吧，但我个人的话其实我不太喜欢这样，混搭的时候我会觉得很奇怪，但吃习惯了之后其实也还好，那因为很精致，而且分量很小，所以一次可以吃很多种哈哈哈哈，我们家去吃饭你最多最多就是点两个菜，不然你就会吃剩下很多，但在台湾我可以点四五个都还没有问题，就分量会比较小，这点我觉得很好

Q:  Bug Dad you’ve eaten your way from Taipei to Kaohsiung, so what’s been your favorite food?

A: I didn’t spend all my time eating! Uh, do you want me to narrate every meal? I’ve always liked spicy foods, I feel like Taipei’s flavor is a mix of a lot of things, but personally I’m not a huge fan of that, I’d think it’s strange when you start mixing things together. But it’s still pretty good once you get used to it, it’s very refined, and the portions are small, so you can eat a lot of different things at once hahahaha. When my family goes out to eat we usually order two dishes max, because otherwise you wouldn’t finish and there’d be a lot left over, but in Taiwan I could order four or five without a problem. The portions tend to be smaller, which I think is very nice

提问：虫爹我想请问今天有没有更新

虫爹：啊、啊昨晚啊，昨晚昨晚昨晚因为我躺到床上就起不来了哈哈哈哈，今晚回去再写吧

Q: Bug Dad I’d like to ask, did you update today

A: Ah? Last night… last night last night last night… I was lying on my bed and couldn’t get up hahahaha, tonight I’ll go and write

提问：那个我想问跟同人创作有关，因为有满多是女性向的作品，那虫爹有什么想法吗？

虫爹：呃、呃呃，这是大家的脑补嘛，那我也只能说……耽美吧？你说的是耽美，那……大家就是喜欢这样脑补嘛，其实也没有办法说什么，大家喜欢，但其实我要强调原著没有那个属性啦哈哈哈哈

提问：那虫爹对这个有什么看法吗？

虫爹：这个……以我个人来看，写成这样的话其实就不太能算是这个角色了，因为他们就是没有这个属性啊哈哈哈哈

Q: I want to ask a question about fanworks, because most of them are targeted toward a female audience, Bug Dad do you have any thoughts on that?

A: It’s all everyone’s own ideas, right, so all I can say… Danmei, right? You’re talking about danmei? Then… People just like these kinds of ideas, I can’t really say anything, everyone likes it. But I want to emphasize that the original work doesn’t have any of these characteristics haha

Q: Then do you have any opinions on this?

A: This… my personal opinion is that, if you’re writing the characters like that, I don’t really think they can be considered the original characters anymore, because they just don’t have any of these characteristics hahahaha

提问：那那那我想问，叶修喜欢怎样的女生（全场暴动）

虫爹：我……叶修他现在还专注在工作上，还没有时间考虑这个问题哈哈哈，我觉得���应该不会太关心这个问题吧呵呵

Q: Then then then I want to ask, what kind of girls does Ye Xiu like? (audience goes wild)

A: I… Ye Xiu is still focused on his work, he hasn’t had the time to consider this question hahaha, I think he wouldn’t care about this question too much right haha

提问：虫爹你好我想请问一个假设性的问题可以吗？

虫爹：什么性？ ！

提问：假设性。

虫爹：噢噢假设性，那你问吧，问完再说哈哈哈

提问：如果苏沐秋还在，跟叶修组成搭档，他们会拿几个冠军？

虫爹：这个至少开始的三个是万无一失的啊，这个我觉得就不好说得太多，因为其他选手也很强，也不是说有什么人就……因为比赛是不可预期的嘛，可能当天晚上拉拉肚子啊隔天就……所以这种假设嘛我觉得不好回答，回答了也是对其他选手不尊重嘛

Q: I want to ask a hypothetical question is that okay? […] If Su Muqiu were still alive and partners with Ye Xiu, how many championships would they have received? 

A: Well, they at least wouldn’t lose the three at the beginning. But I feel that I can’t say too much about this, because the other competitors are also very strong. You can’t just say that “because they have this person then this would happen…” Because matches can’t be predicted, maybe someone had a stomachache the day before and then… So I can’t really answer these kinds of hypotheticals, and moreover, answering would be disrespectful to the other competitors.

提问：虫爹我想问在写作的时候会不会突然写不下去或遇到瓶颈什么的，如果有的话会用什么方式来解决这个困扰

虫爹：呃这个可能……经常会有啊，因为我每天都要写每天都……那写不下去的话这个就是……断更啊不然要怎么办哈哈哈哈哈，有时候就是花多一点时间啊，有的时候……写不出来就没有更新啊，这个没有什么技术上能够解决的

Q: Bug Dad, when you’re writing, do you ever suddenly find that you can’t write any more, or run into writer’s block or whatnot? If you have, how do you solve this struggle?

A: This… I often do, because I have to write every day, so every day… If I can’t write anymore then I just take a break from updating, otherwise what else can I do hahaha… Sometimes I spend a bit more time, sometimes… if I can’t write then there’s just no update. There isn’t really anything technique-wise that can solve this

提问：蓝雨假如喻文州和黄少天都退役之后是确定小卢会接队长吗？还是会选其他比较有经验的队员来当队长呢？

虫爹：队长的人选他们现在还没有开始做选择，因为小卢……就是卢瀚文，主要是培育来等黄少天退役了之后接手黄少天的夜雨声烦的角色，那队长还不一定是他，也许后面还会有更合适的人选，他还小，他还年轻呵呵

Q: In Blue Rain, after Yu Wenzhou and Huang Shaotian both retire, is it for sure that Little Lu will become captain? Or would they pick a more experienced team member to become captain?

A: They haven’t yet begun to choose a next captain, because Little Lu… that is, Lu Hanwen, he’s primarily being raised to take over Huang Shaotian’s account Troubling Rain after his retirement. So he wouldn’t necessarily become captain. Maybe later there’ll be an even more suitable choice. He’s still small, he’s still young haha

[roswelldetails]

Episode 202: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space - Details

EPISODE SUMMARY:

Liz (Jeanine Mason) is forced to put her latest experiment on hold after Rosa (Amber Midthunder) begins to struggle with her new life in Roswell. Reluctant to face the truth about his mother’s past, Michael (Michael Vlamis) turns his attention to helping Maria (Heather Hemmens), who is dealing with her own family crisis. Elsewhere, Isobel (Lily Cowles) agrees to join her mother for a day of spiritual healing to keep herself distracted. Finally, Rosa turns to Kyle (Michael Trevino) to learn the truth about what really happened the night she died. Tyler Blackburn and Trevor St. John also star. Lance Anderson directed the episode written by Eva McKenna (#202.) Original airdate 3/23/2020.

DETAILS:

Secret lab is in an Indian Boarding School that was shut down. The Air Force bought it. It's been empty for 40 years (i.e., since approx. 1979). Part of Alex's job is to monitor it.

Security was set up by Alex’s team. They follow orders and don’t ask questions. (But that also means other soldiers know about it.)

Max's password was password. 🙄

Liz lies to Rosa. "It was beautiful. The whole town came. Everyone joined in the rosario. Mom sang Las Golondrinas. Dad wanted you in a white dress but I insisted on your Live Through This t-shirt."

According to: https://blog.sevenponds.com/cultural-perspectives/tradition-spanish-funeral “Nine days after the death, the family holds a ceremony known as a “rosario.” It consists of candles, flowers, prayers and sharing memories of the person who has died. The rosario also takes place every year on the anniversary of the person’s death.”

Las Golondrinas

Rosa Nightmare #1… unclear when it started since it flowed directly from her on the couch, doing graffiti around town, seeing her dad. Assuming it starts when she goes to the Wild Pony, pours herself a drink, hesitates, and then Max appears.

Max and Rosa's exchange:.

"What are you waiting for? You have to stop Liz. Tell her she can't bring me back, Rosa."

"Why? Why don't you want her to save you?"

"I can't take it anymore. Just end it."

"They'll figure it out. They'll save you."

"I can't wait that long. It's like burning alive from inside."

"She's never going to stop trying."

"Then you have to stop her. Please!"

Rosa wants her sketchbook from the bookshelf in their room. (Later in the episode when she breaks in we see that the bookshelf is empty. Liz cleared out Rosa's things in 1x07.)

Rosa's old email everunclear@yahoo.com (90s music reference to the band Everclear).

Michael is experimenting by blow torching a piece of alien ship.

Apparently it was Lindsay (of Hank and Lindsay) that Michael made out with. Seeing as it's only been a month since Hank died (2 weeks passed in 2x01, Maria says in 2x02 that her mom has been missing for 2 weeks), and the big guy was pissed about Michael making out with her, she moves on pretty quickly!

Maria is meeting with a private detective.

Science babble! "Human tissue can obviously regenerate from stem cells. With the right methodology I could use your blood (Isobel) to make adjustments for alien physiology. I have to monitor exactly when cell degradation begins, down to the second. I can't miss it. Eight hours before I need to be back.

Michael is developing nanotechnology to make the transplant possible. "It's like replacing parts in a broken machine."

They harvested all of Noah’s primary organs. "I have his body parts in jars."

Isobel steals what looks like an empty syringe. But at the end of the episode she has the serum in it.

New brand of fake beer! (Last season it was always Copper black lager. Now it's Hunks and Heroes Lager! Broken bottles were on the ground in the cemetery, Wyatt Long is carrying a bottle at the beginning of the scene when he and Michael fight (which could tie him to the graffiti on Rosa's grave), and also has a bottle in front of him on his YouTube video.

Michael is holding a bag from Milikan Value Hardware Store.

Flint's report on Caulfield: "Shepherd Protocol was activated. Bodies were disposed of without incident. Local papers ran an item confirming that the long-scheduled demolition of the prison was a success."

Exchange between Jesse and Flint:

"Dad, I don't think we should have covered it up. People should know."

"Do you have any idea what would happen if we confirmed that alien specimens were once housed at Caulfield but are now suddenly gone? It'd be dismissed as fake news. Buried by a racist tweet within seconds. No, we need to make a bigger statement."

"'Cause justice can't be served until after disaster has struck."

"That's right."

Really don't want to transcribe the racist rant from Wyatt Long that Rosa watches, although I will if y'all demand it. I don't think it's relevant beyond Rosa learning the truth. However as a detail I want to note, the video is titled BUILD THE WALL! IN MEMORY OF KATE LONG and it's dated September 3, 2010 (so 2 years and a few months after they died). Amusing side note. The comments on the video. Great fake usernames:

fayhuman: Kate Long didn't deserve what happened.

Curious Murphy: I just donated to the cause!!

thecyberwitch48: is this really the best solution?

Isobel’s baby is at 5 weeks, the size of a lentil.

Isobel calls Ann "Mama". Good note for fic writers! 😉

Maria's class: "Woman as Warrior: Strength Training for the Mind, Body, and Spirit."

Under the Bridge - same location as in 1x03 where Liz finds Rosa's paint canister.

Maria's cards:

Maria DeLuca

Psychic Reader

Spirit Leader

Social Media Revitalizer

Great line: "The infinite reservoir of strength and healing within us all" 😂👏

Rosa's chart…

"What's this error here?"

"Must be a contaminated sample."

"No way. I'm meticulous."

Steph says regarding the error on Rosa’s test “Congrats. Looks like you just discovered a protein never before found in the human body. Or you didn't get the Flamin' Hot orange dust off your hands when you scrubbed in. Whichever's most likely."

Michael to Liz, "I was working. I went home to find formulas I worked out years ago…"

Rosa is reciting Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer, which is commonly used by AA and other 12 step programs.

Noah was struck by lightning directly in the heart.

Isobel’s moment of epiphany:

"Using your newfound goddess strength I want you to get up and throw your fear into the fire. Set yourself free. You're a warrior. You aren't afraid of anything. Draw upon your feminine power. Why are you hesitating, Isobel? The sooner you throw your paper in the fire the sooner you can leave."

"Look, it's not that simple, okay? I can't just throw this into the fire." Maria gasps and rubs her chest, similar to how she did when she realized her necklace was missing at the beginning in 1x10) "I'm trapped.

Ann: "This is my fault. I put too much pressure on you."

"It's nobody's fault. It's just here."

Maria: "Whatever it is, you can choose to set yourself free. Say it. 'Say I choose to set myself free.'"

"I choose to set myself free."

Maria: "Louder."

"I choose to set myself free."

Rosa breaks into the Crashdown. It mirrors her first nightmare in 2x01, but it's not a dream. She goes to her room, sees the empty bookshelf, goes to the closet, and snags a hidden bottle of tequila.

Camera lingers on Steph stuffing a bottle of nail polish remover in her purse. Note: she was actually doing her nails.

Michael and Alex's conversation mostly mirrors the information we learned from the file in last week's episode. She wasn't caught until October 1948 and the crash was June 1947. She was the last alien captured and admitted into Caulfield. Alex thinks people in Roswell might have known her.

Liz says that the accident never made sense to her because when Rosa was 12, Mamma Ortecho drove drunk with Liz and Rosa in the car, hit a bike, and flipped the car. Rosa told Mamma Ortecho that she would kill her if she ever drove drunk with Liz in the car again.

Rosa's tequila brand: Blistering Rose.

Rosa’s 2nd Nightmare: Rosa runs into the cave and starts beating on the pod. When she hits it, it sounds like metal (which doesn't seem like it would make sense given what we know about the pods).

Her conversation with Max:

"Leave me alone, you dick!"

"I am so much pain, Rosa."

"Oh really? So is everybody. Man up."

"Have some mercy. I saved your life."

"My life is gone. My mom bailed, I can't talk to my dad, my entire town hates me, and my sweet little sister is somebody that I don't even know. But I do know that she'll save you. She's gonna fix you and until then, leave me alone."

"I'd Liz won't stop then you have to do it. Go to the pod, pull me out, and walk away. You won't be killing me, Rosa. I'm already dead."

"I said no. Leave me alone."

"As long as that handprint is on you I can reach you."

"Fine. I'm an expert at quieting voices."

"No. Rosa, wait. Don't do anything stupid."

"I never dreamed when I was using."

MUSIC:

1. Oasis "Wonderwall"

2. Gord Bamford "#Rednek"

3. Hamish Anderson "Trouble"

4. Radiohead "High And Dry"

[zmediaoutlet]

in support of Black Lives Matter, @mystifiedgal donated $30, and requested Tony Stark/Stephen Strange pre-slash. Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts)

It’s a real busy month. The superfriends break out of supermax, with the help of a blond beefboy who flings frisbees at the security cameras and doesn’t care who sees his face; the UN goes ballistic and demands Tony help; Tony gets extremely, extremely drunk like he hasn’t in years and sends Ross a manip video of Tucker Maxx getting rawed by a donkey dressed as a colonel instead of responding; the superfriends crash back into America, and Natasha--traitor--lets them back in to the Avengers compound upstate; Tony, still drunk, decides to let them stay instead of incinerating the damn thing from space; Wanda gets kidnapped by a wizard; Tony and Steve have to go save her. Tony and Steve. No, Tony’s not bitter.

“I’m struggling to come up with a reason why I shouldn’t have my house nuke your house from orbit,” Tony says. Steve gives him a bitchy look. Yeah, what else is new. He lifts his chin, looks at the wizard through his green glasses. Everything’s better in green. “Anything? Mister Wizard?”

Said wizard gives him an unimpressed look. Tony doesn’t know why. His facial hair is even more ridiculous than Tony’s, and Tony cultivates this shit. “Strange.”

“Yes, you are,” Tony says, and Steve sighs and cuts his hand through the air before Tony can continue.

“Doctor,” he says, polite. Tony rolls his eyes. Wanda, in stasis halfway up to the skylight in this weird-ass mansion, pulsates in angry red, trapped in amber. “You have to understand that things were--different. The Avengers have no desire to go to war with the--Sanctum.”

“The Sanctum has no desire to go to war with the Avengers,” the wizard says--and, jesus, what is his name? Blue eyes, good hair, cape that seems to float in magic wind. Fancy Bastard isn’t something that should go on a birth certificate. “However, you are harboring a magic user who could cause extreme damage to the innocent people of this plane if left unchecked.”

Steve frowns. “Now, look--” he says, and the wizard’s eyebrow cocks and he waves a hand, and in the circle of amber that appears midair (how?) there’s a perfect 4k, 3D view of the deaths of innocents in Lagos, of the devastation of Johannesburg after the Hulk was enraged there, of a man with red light crawling up his neck and the terror filling his eyes before his neck snaps.

Above, Wanda’s silent fury goes quiet as the red dims. Steve looks constipated, which Tony can admit inside his own head actually means he looks grim and upset and heroic. The wizard looks between the two of them. “This is a problem. It would be wisest to transfer her to an alternate plane, or at least to have her abilities removed.”

“They’re part of her,” Steve says, immediately. Tony looks up. Hard to see, from down here, but he can see that Wanda’s eyes are closed, inside her amber prison, and her face--he looks away. “You can’t remove them without killing her.”

“Well,” the wizard says, and doesn’t look even remotely regretful--who is this guy?--and Steve’s shoulders square up in that muscular way that presages a truly stupid fucking fight that’s about to ensue, and Tony opens his mouth without a single iota of a plan and says, “Wait a minute,” and the wizard and Steve and Wanda all look at him, and oh, for fuck’s sake. That means--

*

Doctor Stephen Strange. Brilliant surgeon. Incredible asshole. Drama queen, and the worst kind of all because he pretends not to be. No one has that beard without wanting to cause drama. Tony would know. Unfortunately--Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, and Stephen Strange, super wizard, and Stephen Strange, taking over a wing of the compound, coming and going as he pleases in a whisk of amber light, and Stephen Strange, Tony’s lab companion for the foreseeable future.

He misses Bruce.

The compound isn’t comfy. The various wings are divided into factions. Steve and the superfriends, hiding out from the UN and all of the other dozens of countries that want to prosecute them, are on the east side where the sparring rooms are. Tony’s set up on the west side where the labs are, and he didn’t think to put a bedroom in the lab because he thought this place would be all kumbaya, superhero summer camp, and figured maybe they’d actually want to talk to each other when they were all here. More fool him. He sleeps on the couch in the lab most days, when he sleeps at all, and it means he’s got a great view every time there’s a swirling mind-bending circle of amber light and all of a sudden there’s a fucking wizard in his house, ready to work with Wanda on how not to accidentally kill thousands of people.

This morning, for example. Morning? Tony drags a hand over his face, smears drool and engine grease. “Good morning, Mr. Stark,” Strange says, and Tony mouths it back at him schoolyard style--what he assumes normal kids did in schoolyards--and Tony lets Friday speak the room into brightness, telling him the time and the weather and whether the world’s blown up, while he’s catnapped.

“How’s the scarlet terror?” Tony says, knuckling his eyes. Christ, this sucks. 69 degrees and he can’t even make a joke about it.

A pause. “Progressing,” Strange says. He’s still wearing that stupidass cosplay outfit. Cape and all.

Tony squints at him, slumped back on the couch. “You know, if you were a real wizard, you’d magic me up some coffee.”

Strange looks at him. He always looks stern. Like Tony’s failing some test. It’s tiring from the rest of the supercrew; it’s not better from some rando in a RenFaire uniform. Strange gestures, with his left hand, and unfurls the fist of his right at the lab table, which--abruptly becomes a coffee table, in that there’s a pot of steaming coffee and toast and what Tony thinks is--fucking lox?

“From that deli on 44th,” Strange says, matter-of-fact. “You know, when I’m not a sorcerer I’m a doctor. In my medical opinion, you could look less like shit.”

Tony staggers upright, fetches up against the table. His head gongs like a--like a fuckin’ gong. It’s too early for metaphor. He pours a cup of coffee and ignores that his hands are trembling. “In my layman opinion you can suck my dick,” he says, friendly, and Strange rolls his eyes but he--he smiles, too, and he--doesn’t look like nearly so much of a dickhead when he smiles. Cape or no. Tony holds the cup (finest porcelain, like Tony has drunk coffee at Buckingham Palace in less-nice china than this) and squints, brain still offline, and Strange shakes his head and says, “Good luck, Tony,” and whisks away to deal with their little magical terror, and leaves Tony to think of what the hell. Just--what the hell.

*

Turns out there’s a big difference between kinds of magic. And here was Tony, just thinking that physics were physics. “No, no,” Strange says, impatiently. “There is of course the physics of our plane, which follow their own laws. Then, naturally, there is the magic of Asgard, brought forth from Yggdrasil the world-tree and the belief therein, which is the sort that Loki and Odin may perform. Then there is the magic of the Infinity Stones, which perform their own miracles, and of course there is our problem with Miss Maximoff.”

He’s drawing a chart in the air with his hands as he talks, marked out in amber light. Tony says, “Friday, take that down,” and the house grabs the image of whatever magic Strange is doing and transmutes it into data, neatly transcribed in cells and manipulable forms for Tony to grab and hold and think about, and Tony grips Strange’s leatherette-and-cape shoulder and says, “Buddy, I could kiss you,” and Strange rolls his eyes but his cape swirls up and pats Tony on the hand in a brush of woolly affection, and Tony doesn’t really think about that because he’s locked into the possibilities and sees a lot of sleepless nights ahead, but that’s okay. He’s got time to think about it, later.

*

Strange won’t give up much info about the rest of his little magic crew. Numbers, attitudes, location. “I am the representative on Earth,” is all he’ll say, and--jeez-us, what a statement.

“I am the representative of the Avengers in Oneida County,” Tony says, in exactly the same tone, and then pauses, flicking armor designs from one ephemeral bin to another. “Shit. Am I? Maybe it’s Steve. Okay. I am the deposed representative of the Avengers in--”

“You’re the one I’m talking to,” Strange says. He’s still sitting in the antique armchair he magicked up for himself, sipping tea. Seriously. Like every single thing he does is for the hashtag-aesthetic. “Mr. Rogers is certainly impressive, but it’s you who has had every actionable idea on streamlining Ms. Maximoff’s abilities. Don’t undercut yourself.”

Tony raises his eyebrows, lowers his hands. “How dare you,” he says, lightly, even if his chest feels--some kind of way. “I have never, in my life, in my entire existence, undercut myself, and in fact I think I’m going to set the StarkTech legal team on you--Friday, call up Pepper, see if we can sue the entirety of the Sanctum Sanctorum and also magic itself, and throw David Bowie in there too--”

Yes, Mister Stark, Friday says from nowhere, lightly amused just like she should be--good girl--and Strange rolls his eyes. “Don’t bring Bowie into this,” he says, mild, and Tony grins and Friday cues up Fame without even needing to be asked.

“Oh, very good choice,” Strange says, looking up at the ceiling, and Tony waves the armor out of existence and says, “Okay, Mister Wizard--dinner, and we’re talking Bowie and we’re talking King Crimson and we’re talking Yes, and you’re putting in an opinion about those star-and-moon pants Page used to wear, let’s go--” and Strange says, “First, they’re incredible; second, only if we’re getting Thai,” and Tony--Tony could just--

*

A bad night. Tony lays on the couch in the lab and hugs a bottle of very good, very rare, very expensive scotch against his ribs, and doesn’t drink it, and wants to. Above he’s had Friday peel away the armor of the ceiling and the sky’s a patchwork quilt of stars. Enough sound baffling and he can’t hear whatever might be going on in the rest of the compound; if Steve and the others are training; if anyone’s even here, but him. It’s peaceful. It sucks.

A swirl of amber. “You look ridiculous.”

“Yeah, well.” Tony shrugs. “Sometimes you get sued by grieving parents for your technology being used in exactly the way you intended and you think, fuck, they sure have a point. And then you want a ham sandwich and no one will get you one. It’s tough.”

He thinks he maybe sounded more bitter than he needed to. He maybe should’ve tried harder. He watches a satellite track across the sky, feels his body. Even now, when he breathes deep, there’s still a twinge where the reactor should be. He wishes sometimes--but it’s stupid. The reactor didn’t make him him. It wasn’t any more accountability than any other pain could’ve been.

There’s a sinking sensation, by his feet. Strange, sitting on the couch. “I could get you a ham sandwich,” he says, quiet. “But I suspect it wouldn’t do the trick.”

“Clever man, Doctor,” Tony says, acid. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to be acid. He imagines--the armor--dissolving slowly, the facemask melting into a broken sizzle of empty gestures. He maybe should’ve had less to drink.

“We are making progress, Tony,” Strange says. “Every day. Time... isn’t always on our side. But we do what we can. That’s all there is. What we can.”

Tony stretches his legs out. His shins bump Strange’s back. He’s not wearing the whole ensemble--cape and leather and whatever the hell. He’s in a sweater, and jeans, and he looks like someone Tony can actually touch. Something that obeys the physics Tony understands. Something real.

He puts the bottle of scotch on the floor. “Maybe a ham sandwich wouldn’t hurt,” he says, finally.

Strange--Stephen--touches his knee, lightly. He smiles at Tony, in the dark. “Mustard?” he says. “I can do whatever you want.”

Tony breathes deep. Settles. He says, “And you better add a pickle, cheapskate,” and feels Stephen squeeze his knee, and feels--well. Some kind of way.

[motherhenna]

Writers Rants: Backstory

How to Smoothly Integrate a Character’s Past into the Narrative

---

If you are even remotely interested in the process of writing, then you’ve probably heard this phrase at least a hundred times over: show, don’t tell.  Such a vague sentiment, but hell if it doesn’t pack a punch. In fact, it’s probably one of the only “rules” of storytelling that ought to be followed as closely as possible and as often as possible—at least in my opinion. But what, exactly, does it mean? In layman’s terms, show don’t tell is a simple recommendation: that authors should actively illustrate a concept rather than passively explain it. Why? Simple. One leaves the reader more room for interpretation and draws them deeper into the action at hand, and the other just…well, tells them what to see and what to feel in the same way a set of DIY instructions describe how to make a quirky set of kitchen lights out of mason jars. While yes, you got a straightforward idea of what to expect, did you actually have fun reading it?

These basic concepts are important to understand if you consider yourself a writer of any kind, as they function as the foundation for a) improving your prose, b) strengthening your characters, and c) forming a flowing narrative that will catch and keep readers’ attention.  And naturally, this also applies to the art of exposition.

Most people with even a cursory knowledge of telling a story know that characters should never be blank slates. If you have any desire to portray even a facsimile of real life, you have to put at least some effort into fleshing out the main characters. And when I say ‘flesh out’, I mean do more than just describing what they look like, a laundry list of personality traits, and what they’re wearing. I’m not going to go into this process deeply, as that’s a matter for another think-piece entirely, but it’s a starting point for the more convoluted parts to come. What I’m building up to is that your characters need a backstory, especially if they’re the one(s) through whom we, as readers, experience the story, i.e., the point of view (POV) character. This applies to both first- and third-person limited narratives, unless you’re going for a more anonymous / incidental narrator, like Mr. Lockwood in Wuthering Heights.

Now, these backstories don’t have to be a strict, detailed, chronological transcription of every year in that character’s life (though doing so certainly doesn’t hurt!) Rather, you should write it much like you would describe your own life if you had to plot it out on a timeline. At first, just stick with the most essential elements: where and when in history they were born, whether they have siblings or present family, and a simple list of significant events from various periods in their life. What specific things have most influenced who they are as a person, for good or ill? Next, it’s time to look at the family, since nothing impacts an individual more than how they were raised and how they were treated during their formative years. Were their parents present during their childhood? What was their parents’ relationship like before and after your character’s birth? Are they natives of the country in which the story is set, or did they immigrate—and if they immigrated, why did they do so? All of these and more are, to me at least, vital to developing a well-rounded and realistic character. I’ve even gone so far as to type out entire timelines for each character as well as their parents. Personalities, quirks, trauma—these are all just as hereditary as one’s genes, though this doesn’t mean that this inheritance has to be through blood. Nature vs. Nurture: they’re both equally important in the formation of an individual.

…So, what to do when you’ve finished all that? Do you dutifully transcribe it into the first chapter of your story? Absolutely not. Copy it into a separate document window and keep it there. A large chunk of this is for your benefit: most likely, less than half of it will make it into the written canon of the novel, and for good reason. All of that detailed history isn’t for the reader, it’s for you to use as a framework. Some of the most powerful elements to realistic characters are the unseen, the implied: all the hidden little things that lie just under the surface, but are never fully visible to the naked eye.

What a lot of inexperienced writers may not realize is that everything doesn’t always have to be stated unequivocally through dialogue or info-dumps. How often, in real life, do acquaintances explain upfront that this specific behavior they often exhibit is a result of how they were abandoned by their father and raised by an emotionally distant mother? Most people don’t psychoanalyze everything, nor do we ourselves do it to others—at least not often! Plus, it’s boring. Getting to know characters over the course of a story should be comparable to meeting a new friend. You find out the surface things at first, but pick up bits and pieces along the way that hint at what lies deeper inside. Little by little, you learn about their family, their hopes, dreams, fears…not always directly, and sometimes even in spite of their desire to keep up a front of normalcy.

With all this said, I think it’s become clear where I stand on backstory: it should be subtle, woven gradually into the narrative rather than stated by the character themselves or described by an omniscient narrator. Not only does this make the process of reading about it flow better and progress more naturally, it’s also far more interactive. Instead of being told why a character acts the way they do, the reader can catalogue said character’s actions, motivations, dialogue, and the way they interact with their surroundings, gradually putting the puzzle pieces together for themselves. In a sense, it’s almost a reward for those who read with a careful, inquisitive eye, and can be just as satisfying as solving a mystery before the detective does in a murder mystery.

I’ve used—and will continue to use—a lot of metaphors in this section because it’s the most thorough way I can to explain this process and why it’s so important. That being said, I approach backstory in the same way I might organize a scavenger hunt. It’s not about a treasure map, but rather an ongoing set of little discoveries without which the ultimate prize can never be found. But in keeping with this analogy, why would anyone want to take part in this if a) they’re just given the prize’s location outright, or b) don’t really care about the prize anyway?

When you’re straight-up told about character’s backstory within the first few chapters, there’s no groundwork for investment. Why should I care about this character’s history if I don’t even know them yet? Investment is a gradual process, and ought to be an interactive process too. One of the best strategies of implying backstory without stating it directly is illustrating how a character reacts to specific triggers. Yes, you can tell the reader in the character’s introductory paragraph that he was almost killed in a house fire as a child, which still haunts him to this day—but how else can you impart this information more effectively and poignantly? For some examples, he might…

Be too frightened to turn on the stove.

Avoid any type of matches or aerosol at all costs.

Get anxious when filling up his car at gas stations.

Constantly check and re-check the smoke detectors throughout his apartment

Panic when he smells her neighbor’s lit fireplace.

Why would we need to explain to readers what made him this way when we have all the evidence we need to figure it out for ourselves? Of course, there’s nothing wrong with, later on down the line, this character actively opening up about this trauma to a friend or therapist, as this is only natural and also supplies us with details we would have never known otherwise. This just shouldn’t be the first way we find it out.

Another efficient and interesting approach to gradual backstory incorporation is through dialogue. The way a character responds to nosy questions, criticisms, or simple observations tell a lot about the kind of people they are and how they’re coping (or not coping) with potentially painful parts of their personal histories / insecurities. For example, Character A can ask Character B, “Why don’t you want to go out tonight?” In truth, B is trying to back out of these plans because she can’t fit into a dress she was supposed to wear for the party, and is trying desperately not fall back into the pit dug by the various eating disorders she has suffered from since adolescence. She is afraid her friends will want to take group pictures, or remark on what’s she’s eating or not eating, or notice the extra pudge in her stomach. She remembers how her mother would chide her for eating second helpings when she was young, or all the times her ex called her fat. But B is not going to be capable of explaining all of this to her partner. So how does she respond?

1.     “I just…feel tired all of a sudden…but don’t let me keep you from going.  I don’t want to spoil your night.” Implication: saving face—she doesn’t want to reveal her real insecurities, so she uses a physical illness as a cover story.

2.      “What’s it to you? If this stupid party so important to you, then you can just go without me!”  Implication: defensiveness—she is uncomfortable being vulnerable, and lashes out instead.

Now obviously these are just two examples of a plethora of different responses a person might have to a question like this. But what matters is that each answer should give the reader some sort of information as to why said character reacts the way they do. And these reactions don’t have to have traumatic roots, either! Perhaps, because Character C’s older sister always encouraged them to stick up for and respect themselves, C is able to take that positive reinforcement and pay it forward, inspired to protect others who may not know how to protect themselves.  Positive change ripples and spreads just as much as negativity, and should never be discounted just because a character has gone through their fair share of tragedy, too.

 ---

In short, there is nothing simple or easy about creative writing—there is so much nuance involved in every aspect, though that shouldn’t discourage newcomers from experimenting and taking everything step by step. There are no absolutes in writing, and every rule can be challenged, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But still, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of backstory when developing strong characters, nor how much more natural a narrative will feel when these things are integrated with subtlety and grace. Your characters should never be objects, concepts, or a means to an end: if you want to make them seem real to your readers, then they must first seem real to you.

...And real people all have their own stories: to find them, all you have to do is watch and listen.    

[fmdxsujiarchive]

summary: it’s another suji song about something non-romantic that gets disguised as a love song anyway date: various dates throughout 2020 word count: 2,590 words, excluding the lyrics notes: creative claims (full lyrics, full composition, partial production) for when we were two! mentions of duri and jae since they’ll be a part of the song.

“what’s with all the rapping features in your songs?” 

suji’s in the middle of scribbling down a sudden thought that had popped into her mind because she’s certain it could be transcribed into some thoughtful lyrics later on when minwoo’s voice interrupts her thought. the pen in her hand stops moving, and she looks up from the notebook to give him a look. a look that reflects that she hadn’t realized that her songs so far have been rich with rap features. 

“isn’t that how a lot of female ballad songs go when it’s not being sung completely solo?” she does not have a solid answer for minwoo’s question and instead hums to herself before sketching out some incoherent drawings at the corner of her notebook. why does she have so many rap features in her songs? she begins to wonder if it was a conscious choice or if it was more along the lines of suggestions being thrown out to her about how a rap feature would sound nice in her songs. it’s most likely a good combination of both. 

a familiar beat is playing in the background, and it’s only then that she notices that minwoo is going through a mock tracklist that suji had come up with for her next album. though it’s a tad bit early to be sure whether or not all the songs will be confirmed or not, she likes to think that she at least has a good ear when it comes to her own albums. humming along to the melody of one of the songs, she goes silent when the rap feature comes on. 

“what about a vocal feature? have you ever done that before?” 

“just last month, i released that portal.” it’s not meant to sound defensive, but suji can’t remember if she’s done anything beyond loveship when it comes to any type of vocal duet. 

for a moment, minwoo doesn’t say much before going onto the next song which also was written with a rap feature in mind. he presses pause on the computer before pulling up the other computer chair in the studio and sitting right across her. “i think a vocal duet would be nice for this next album since you have a lot of songs with raps on it anyway. it might even be easier to write. this way you don’t have to wait around and just write the lyrics on your own.” she wants to say that she doesn’t mind waiting for her featuring rappers to send their raps for her to confirm, but it has been a bother in the past especially if the featuring artist was busy which they usually were. with a purse of her lips, she simply nods once before pressing the space bar once more to play her tracks.

// 

with fuse and individual schedules, suji had found it difficult to find the time to write. it’s been a couple of weeks since her last time at minwoo’s studio, and this time she seems to be alone. the lights are off as she punches the passcode and lets herself in. the notebook that she’d left behind from last time is exactly where she left it, and she can’t help but smile at how minwoo just seems to leave her things where they are though she’s told him over and over again how he can push it to the side during the days she has to leave in a hurry. 

sitting down, she looks at the notebook in which she had scribbled down some notes. she couldn’t finish it that day as her thoughts were occupied by minwoo’s words, but she remembers where the inspiration came from. it’s typical suji to get inspired by movies and dramas. just from her notes, she can replay the scene she got inspiration from in her head: the female lead looking out the bus window and wiping away her tears as a smile starts to form on her face. 

for someone with not a lot of love experience, suji has a tendency to write songs about love and relationships. not particularly a choice seeing that a lot of songs out there pertain to such topics, but sometimes she surprises herself with how often she finds herself writing about such things. it’s what prompts all those questions in her interviews about whether or not her lyrics are personal or not. they are personal, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s one hundred percent something she’s been through herself. 

her life’s not that interesting enough anyway. 

looking back at her notes, she remembers the story about how the female lead had tried again and again to get back with her ex-lover, hoping to reconcile things between them. the constant flashbacks to their happier moments and the warm feelings that would seep through her body whenever she thought of him. or at least that’s what she thought. 

it took meeting someone that actually cared for her and listened to her for her to realize that it wasn’t the person that she missed but the times. that’s something that she can relate to. there’s a couple of friends that she remembers from her childhood, and they were the ones that are always lingering around in her childhood memories. the afternoons at the park or lunches in the school cafeteria. a couple years ago, she’d look back at these times and wonder what those same friends are doing now but now, she came to the realization that they weren’t really that great of friends. they stood around when their other classmates would point out how different amelia was from the rest of them. thinking back to it now, they really weren’t that great of friends. but the childhood nostalgia is real, and the moments she shared with them aren’t incredibly terrible. 

suji simply misses the time when she was an innocent child who could do lots without much consequences. however, she doesn’t miss them. 

perhaps that’s why she started scribbling down these notes as soon as she finished the scene, and why she’s come back to it. the emotions come pouring out in a moment of black words onto the white piece of lined paper. 

in a few moments, the lined paper is filled up with verses and a chorus. it’s something that looks more like a cry of mixed up nostalgia disguised into a song of a romantic relationship. suji takes pride in being able to write lyrics that people relate to, and it’s the perspective she takes in making things vague but specific enough so that a larger amount of people can find them worth relating to.

there’s still some revisions to do especially when it comes to the way the words fall together, but she’s got a story. a story that began from a television drama but was completed with a spark of memory. 

when we were two is what she writes at the top and though she’s unsure if the title will stick, she’s satisfied with what she’s written.

// 

“suji-yah, sometimes you write like you’ve been through two divorces.” 

it’s not the feedback she expects, but it’s typical jaehyuk talk. he’s always straightforward and has an odd way of expressing his reactions to her work. but he’s also super helpful. if minwoo’s like her little fairy godmother that snaps his fingers and figures out exactly what she’s looking for, jaehyuk’s like a harsh captain that makes her pull the sails herself though he was steering the wheel into the right direction the whole time. 

either way, she doesn’t know where she’d be without both of them. 

like a good amount of her songs, the basis begins with the piano. it’s basic and simple, but she believes that it is always a nice place to start. everything gets built off of chords anyway, and the sound of the piano is what seems to go well with her voice anyway. though the backtrack is still bare, suji can already tell that the key signature isn’t going to be the happiest. the lyrics aren’t about some spring outing or a walk in the park. it’s all about looking back at what used to be and realizing that the times were great even if the person wasn’t. it’s about this deep feeling of regret that’s not actually regret but rather nostalgia. she thinks it’s a difficult emotion to express through an instrumental, but she’d like to try her best. 

the melody for the chorus comes to her first which is quite common when it comes to her working process. a strong chorus is important to suji, and so she usually ends up coming up with it first. however, unlike some of her previous songs, it doesn’t come right away. she has to sing the words to herself a couple of times, rewrite some of the bending and work on the way she wants the lines to flow until she settles on something that she likes. looking over, jaehyuk is working on something on his own, but the moment she figures out a chorus melody she likes, he gives her a thumbs up, and it feels like she’s floating on cloud nine. 

she’s interrupted for a moment when her phone lights up. it’s an excited text from minwoo telling her that one of her songs have been confirmed for the album, and how he’d received the rap recording from the featuring artist. biting down on her lip, she’s reminded of minwoo’s words a couple of months ago. 

“oppa, you mind singing this for me? any key works for now,” she asks before singing the chorus a couple of times so that jaehyuk can revise it to fit his own voice. but jaehyuk’s quick, and he’s been listening in to her working on the song that he figures it out in no time. 

almost immediately, a smile spreads across her face before she pulls his chair over to bring him in front of the mic that she’s been singing in front of. she asks him to record it for her and soon she has the chorus in her voice and jaehyuk’s. 

“don’t tell me you need me on this song or something.” there’s a scrunch of jaehyuk’s nose, but she knows that he’s not too bothered by it. it’s just the way he is. 

“no, but you’d work as a nice guide vocal.” admittedly, she already has one or two voices in her head that she thinks will work well with her own and she makes a mental note to herself to reach out to them when she can. hopefully the timing and song will work out in her favor. if not, she’s gonna have to adjust things again to fit some other voice. 

things go rather smoothly from there. suji sticks to the sound of the piano in the beginning of the track, preferring for the vocal line to be more prominent than the instrumental. it’s cliche, but she’d like the song to build as it is highly emotional. the most emotional part of the song should be the last chorus, and so she needs minimal instruments in the beginning. 

by the time the first chorus comes by, all she’s added was the synth and drum along with the piano. the second verse minimizes the piano and includes a few strings and guitar. something different but not too different that the instruments overpower the vocals. 

time flies when she’s in the studio, and she doesn’t realize that she’s spent pretty much all day working on the song until she’s done. she saves the file three different times all with three different names so that she can send them out to the people she had in mind.

jaehyuk is sleeping on the couch in the back since she had him record the guide first before she went ahead and added her own voice onto the track. he tells her that he’ll email the respective companies tomorrow since she has schedules. 

she’s not sure what she’d do without him.

//

luckily, things do work out in her favor, and she ends up getting the okay for both duri and jae to be on her track. unfortunately, they’re all too busy to meet up and record the track together. although she doesn’t really sing a whole lot of the song, it’s still technically her’s and will be on her album, and so she’s the first to record. 

the gold star recording studios basically feel like home now as she does some vocal warm ups to soothe out her vocal cords. jaehyuk and minwoo are both outside, but they tell her that they’d like for her to guide them the way she wants the song to sound. though she’s taken back by the sudden proposition, she does have quite a clear idea of how she wants the vocals and overall song to sound so it doesn’t sound like too much work. 

with jaehyuk and her vocals coming through the headsets in the form of a vocal guide, she simply starts singing the whole song. one, because she’d like to warm up her vocals a little more before officially getting into recording and two, because it also helps build her own emotions when it comes to the song. 

after a few recordings, she gives them an okay sign which indicates that she’s ready to begin. it takes a couple of tries before she gets the sound she wants out from her own voice. jaehyuk’s quick to replay it for her, and she bites the inside of her cheek—something doesn’t feel entirely right. 

“i’m gonna try that part again, oppa. i think i should tone down my vibrato and go with a straight tone instead.” jaehyuk doesn’t bother responding before turning the track back on. suji goes back to think about her initial thoughts when it came to the song. the song’s not some sad breakup song like some of the ones she’s sung before. it’s not meant to be overly sad or regretful. it’s meant to be more along the lines of acceptance. acceptance that one realizes that they’re allowed to hold onto memories despite not missing the person involved in the memories. the vocals should be calm and composed but still strong. 

so that’s exactly how she records it this next time. 

“i think that sounds really good.” she hadn’t realized it, but she’s closed her eyes and sang the whole song in one take with those thoughts lingering in her head. minwoo’s voice is what exactly makes her open her eyes again, and the faces of her helping producers tell her that it’s a sound that they’re all going to be satisfied with. 

they replay it for her, and she likes the calmness that her voice holds. stepping out of the studio, she gives them high fives and goes to sit down beside jaehyuk to hear it once more. her thoughts don’t change, and she concludes that her recording session is over. 

“do you mind telling bc and dimensions that i’d like duri oppa and jae’s voices to sort of mimic mine? you know, collected but strong. as if they’re speaking to an old friend and retelling their memories. as jaehyuk oppa said about me, maybe tell them to imagine that they’ve just gone through a clean and mutual divorce and are reminiscing on the times that were once good and not too regretful.” 

that gets her a laugh from both producers, but they say yes anyway. 

she can’t wait to hear the completed song.

[cateringisalie]

FFVII Halloween Week (Day 6) (Aerti)

Written for today and possibly (clearly) inspired by Terry Pratchett...

Aeris Gainsborough was a witch. In the classic sense; broomstick, black hat and magic. Not that magic was a particularly note-worthy skill or anything. The availability of materia allowed any in the population with the knack (and a sufficiently deep bank account) to conjure up fire, ice, lightning and, in rarer cases, dragons and lancers and Chocobos.

Aeris’s magic was different – though it shared a common source. Materia was crystallised Mako, drawn up from the depths of the Planet and rendered into spheres, the knowledge of the Ancients, of the Cetra, solidified. Aeris got her skills more directly. There were more spells in the Planet, in the Lifestream if one had the skill or patience to hear them. To spend year after year training, meditating, reaching out with one’s being. Mom had taught her before the tragedy took her; her protégé Elmyra took Aeris in in the aftermath, continued her training and became her surrogate mother.   Reality diverged sharply from popular depictions of witches; while magic might be easy for Materia users, drawing on the voice of the Planet required effort, more training and work. Short-cuts – some resembling mathematical formulae were transcribed into tomes to speed up the process on repeat uses. The call and response to invoke a spell became second nature and Aeris excelled at her studies – though it would be so much easier to obtain materia. Easier but less effective. No Materia yet identified or catalogued could allow the flight her mother’s own spell provided, the enchantment cast upon a broomstick (why avoid the obvious? Even in the era of airships and powered flight, a person was unable to move as freely and quickly as she could upon her broom).   Elmyra already had a reputation in the slums of Midgar and Aeris helped perpetuate; many were wary of the two women who could invoke spells no one else could and with apparently few restrictions. There was a whole cocktail of reasons for the distrust, the occasional insulting word. But these never came to prominence and always swiftly subdued. Elmyra and Aeris were essential for the community of Sector Five.   Mom’s knowledge expanded well beyond magic from the Planet. Detailed medical texts, drug experiments, anaesthetic, all penned by her hand. All of use to the ails of the people of Sector Five. Aeris accompanied Elmyra from an early age, tiny black hat perched on her head; the pair went to each house, visiting the pregnant, the ill, the elderly. Keeping an eye on them, providing for them. Much of their work involved no magic at all; simple chores left undone, shopping brought home, free health checks as opposed to the uncomfortable prices in the less than reputable doctors down here or the naked profiteering of the Upper Plates.   Despite the other spells; levitation, deeper insight, visualisations of a patient’s internal injuries, there were no spells to wave away maladies. Pregnancies had to be brought to term or else alleviated at the mother’s request. Missing limbs could not be restored, and age was a remorseless drag on everyone. It was never merely one visit to someone in the Sector. Time after time, Elmyra letting Aeris assist in more and more instances.   Deaths were something held back for a while – one of the few situations Elmyra took the longest to let Aeris participate in. A shock the first time; waiting on a knife-edge as hours ticked away with a patient on their deathbed, waiting to be there. The need for their presence only became clear after the first time. The moment of death, the sudden knowing that the person lying in the bed had returned to the Planet and breathed their last. For most, the last moments as they faded away were the last imploring’s of love, devotion or sorrow for someone left behind. Distressing but nothing Aeris could not cope with. Later she would encounter the situation Elmyra wished to avoid; the vicious, angry discomfort of a return, the fading voice lashing out at those around them.   Being a witch had been Aeris’s life for so long that she thought little of how other people her age might be. She was a witch in training – soon to be a witch herself. Not that she intended to move anywhere else. Mom’s house in the slums had become home and moving away felt wrong. So much of her dealings were with grown-ups; women giving birth, the old and infirm – until the unremarked point when attending to a pregnancy made clear that the patient was younger than Aeris.   Children, teenagers, young adults in Sector Five did not especially like Aeris or Elmyra. They respected (and to an extent feared - based on older rumours of those who crossed or brought peril upon Mom) them both. Neither had many friends. Other witches certainly, though few enough were Aeris’s age and none close at hand or with a similar mindset. Aeris was okay on her own, but eventually Elmyra intervened.   “You need...” She cast about, removing her hat and cloak. “Someone else.”   Aeris blinked at her. “A romantic partner.”   “Well. Yes, if you would like to pursue that.” Not something Aeris had thought much about. That kind of thing seemed to extend mostly to how one wound up pregnant or how one ended up weeping beside the bed a partner lay dying in. “Though even just someone your age. Someone for you to talk to or...”   “The people my age keep their distance.” Aeris placed her hat on the stand. “I could try a different sector?”   “Maybe.” Elmyra approached holding the paper. “Though I was thinking maybe a penpal?”   “A penpal?” Letters? But any conversation would be delayed.   “It’s not ideal.” Elmyra sighed. “But maybe if you can start talking to them so they get to know... you, before you worry about mentioning the Witch bit.”   “You always said it was nothing to be ashamed of!”   “I know, I know.” Another sigh. “But I don’t want you to miss out-“   “Would taking off the hat help?” Aeris clutched the brim.   “It might.” She smiled. “That might be better. And wear something more colourful if you try.”   Absolutely the idea, but now the notion was in place, who were these people who wanted penpals? Still odd seeming given the availability of phones. But- A skim read. Men looking for romance. Men looking for someone to talk to about... sports. Less than compelling. On and on and- One stood out for no particular reason. This was familiar enough; the Planet suggested at times, highlighted something mundane or made them aware of significances.   T. Lockhart. Resident of Nibelheim. Likes Martial Arts, piano, cooking and writing.   Another name in amongst so many others, but- Aeris fetched the writing paper and penned a first letter. Careful introduction. She was Aeris Gainsborough, resident of Sector Five in Midgar. Interests included- A quick cast around the room to figure out the best way to no precisely lie, but not outright admit her situation. Gardening. Caring for the elderly. Research. Or perhaps reading? Her first letter became a mass of re-worded and crossed out changes. What did T write? She wrote the letter all out again and sent it off the next day, rapidly forgetting all about it.   A month later the reply arrived. This lead to an awkward moment of trying to remember what had been said in the first letter. How much had Aeris implied and how much was carefully couched to avoid controversy? T was Tifa – and glad to have an answer from her. The caring for the Elderly threw her – Aeris penned a better explanation even before she was through the letter. Her writing was all oriented around a TV programme; Aeris made a note to tune in and see what it was all about.   That was how Aeris wound up watching Seeds of the Garden – a dubbed soap opera from Wutai about a group of teenagers in a military with magically augmented powers. Fun enough. She asked Tifa for some of her writing out of curiosity.   The letters accelerated to the point Aeris would receive a reply every two weeks; about the fastest expected between so distant settlements. Tifa’s writing encouraged Aeris to try her own – sending it back for critique and review by Tifa. Tifa’s she carefully kept along with the letters, but she would return to that time and again for enjoyment. Letters became augmented with phone-calls; Aeris volunteering Elmyra’s number first. Thrilling to hear Tifa’s voice – however distant and crackly it was thanks to distance.   Tifa was easy and fun to talk to. But always on edge. Always something that did not sit right with her. Two years from the initial contact and Tifa let slip what it was:   “I think I hate my Dad.”   “Oh.” Aeris shifted the phone from one ear to the other, twisting the cord between her fingers. How even to respond to that?   “I mean. I love him and I don’t want anything to happen to him. It’s just me and him at home. No one my age is here and people are leaving the town. He refuses to even consider leaving. No one comes here anymore. No one needs me to guide them across Mount Nibel and...”   “Tifa...”   A loud sigh from her end of the phone. “I wish someone could help me get away. Just swoop down and carry me off. I can’t afford a transport ticket out of here-“   “I will.” Aeris bit her lip. “I mean. I would. If I could.”   Tifa chuckled. “I know. Thank you. That at least gives me something happy to think about.”   Was it idle conversation? Or did Tifa really wish for something like that? She was down, depressed and unhappy in her situation. And Aeris could – absolutely could – get to her. Flying to Nibelheim would be all kinds of exhausting. The drain of magic to keep the broom air-borne, not to mention the weather and finding somewhere to say. Navigation. So many reasons not to. But a big reason to. Tifa herself.   A few more conversations had Aeris convinced. She would apologise to Elmyra and strike out. Sail her broomstick across the sea and to Nibelheim. Swoop down to the town and find Tifa. Let her know everything obviously and- And what happened next was up for debate. If Tifa wasn’t serious it could be an arduous, unfulfilling trip. And that might damage their friendship.   But if Tifa was being honest, perhaps Aeris could offer a way out. Sit Tifa behind her on the broom and return to Midgar with her. Still unsure up until the day; her deadline, to set off and (theoretically) arrive in Nibelheim for Tifa’s favourite holiday. The time when the world at large seemed to celebrate the old magic and witchcraft. And the decision was made. Aeris would go to say in person “Happy Halloween”.

[spnfanficpond]

September 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @manawhaat today! Thank you so much for joining us, even though you were busy!!

Today, a bunch of us got together and talked about inspiration and writer’s block! We all had good ideas that were discussed! A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

To start us off, Mana shared a link to this ask that was recently presented to the Pond. The question was that a professor said that there was no such thing as a muse or writer’s block. The answers given by some of our Big Fish are terrific! All seem to agree that the ideas of a muse and writer’s block are valid, no matter what you call them. Digging beneath the surface to ask what is causing the writer’s block or the inspiration can help to get you past what’s stopping you and get you writing, again.

@mrswhozeewhatsis (Michelle)shared a link to a tweet by Robbie Thompson. She had asked him for tips on getting inspired or getting past blocks when the words just don’t want to flow. He responded by saying, “write from emotion: what scares you, angers you, etc. and make writing a habit. sit down once a day, same time if you can & just get to work. got nothing? write until it comes. inspiration is great but not always reliable.”

When looking for ideas from other famously prolific writers, this post from Neil Gaiman came up. In it, Mr. Gaiman says that blaming writer’s block gives you something to blame, but it’s usually a combination of laziness, perfectionism and getting stuck. He goes on to encourage writers to not accept writer’s block as a insurmountable thing and figure out the cause so you can get past it.

@mostly-shawn (Maayan): My professor's take on writer's block is that writer's block doesn't exist because there's no such thing as "not knowing". What we call "writer's block" is simply being distracted by other things like shopping lists and to-do lists and everything else, so in order to overcome "writer's block" you just need to sit and write everything that's in your head and clear out your brain space to allow yourself access to the idea. And in terms of muse, she doesn't believe in muse because no work is perfect on the first draft and because it's not perfect, you can't have had a muse.

If anyone wants to read her book it's called "To Tell The Truth" and it's about how to write creative nonfiction. Obviously, that's not what we're all in the business of, but it's a good read for all genres.

Everyone seemed to agree that this professor has a strange view on muse, but she’s got a point about writer’s block. A muse can be anything that inspires you to write, and nothing anyone ever writes is perfect right out of the gate, so her perfection theory makes no sense to us. Mana disagreed with part of her thoughts on writer’s block, though.

Mana: I think she has a point of clearing your head in order to get into your 'writing groove' but insisting that there isn't such a thing as 'not knowing' sounds ridiculous to me, specifically, a person who has not known what she wanted to do with a certain rpf fic for over 4 years.

@katehuntington mentioned that sometimes she feels like she knows exactly what she wants to write, but when she sits down, the words just won’t come. She can’t get them down. Michelle said her Fibromyalgia sometimes causes similar cognitive difficulties. The words just aren’t there. (If anyone has read Rob Benedict’s chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood, the feeling is described there beautifully.) 

Michelle: Physical and mental issues can definitely affect creativity. When you're struggling to do the basic activities of daily living, creativity is not your body's priority.

Q: So, what do you guys do when you hit a block?

Kate: Accept it. LOL. I take a lot of inspiration out of what I've written already, if that makes sense. I revisit stories, go over what made those work. And I read back on the feedback I had from readers too. Those can be super inspiring.

Maayan: Yeah, I basically just say "alrighty then" and continue on with my life and push the work as far out of my head as possible.

Mana: Write some flaming garbage. (Michelle added, “Crap makes good compost.”) I get through as much as I can, plot wise. if I'm stuck between point b and c, but know where I'm going from point d to e then I just put down anything I might want to happen between point b and c and then move on. There is no rule that says writing needs to happen in a linear form so if I get stuck, I move on.

Michelle: I once heard Robbie Thompson talk about writing at a seminar, and he said that if he's really stuck, he'll take a walk, get outside, get some fresh air, clear his head. Just change his scenery, really. Did you know that when you move from one room to another, your brain kind of ties off the thought you had in the first room and opens up another thread in the second room? It's why so many people arrive in a room and then forget why they're there. (This is why carrying something from one room to the next can help you remember why you're in that second room.) Sometimes, that's what you need. Make your brain jump out of the rut it was in. Write in a different room, on a different medium (paper instead of tablet, tablet instead of computer, etc)

Mana: I haven't tried writing on a different medium, unless you count someone else's computer instead of your own, but the change of scenery does help. listening to different music instead of your usual tunes helps. 

Maayan: I think better when I pace so when if I'm trying to figure out a storyline I pace, but when I have the storyline but I can't make my fingers do the word thing on the magical typing box I'm just stuck for good usually. (A suggestion was made that she could try speech-to-text software to help her get past that!) Mana records voice notes to her phone to be transcribed later.

Kate and Michelle both said that having ideas isn’t the problem for them, most of the time. The problem is usually having the focus to sit down and translate them to paper.

Mana: Watching a movie you know well enough to tune in and out of is a big one for me. Literally any time I NEED to do something in my life, I put on Pride and Prejudice bc I know the film so well and love the score, but it's my ultimate focus movie. I can tune out and write or file taxes or whatever the fuck and tune back in for him to hold her hand helping her in the carriage and then tune back out and repeat this process while the movie plays 6 times in a row.

Michelle: I can't have anything else playing. No music, no TV, no nothing. However, I've discovered that a lava lamp does wonders! When we lived in our apartment in Chicago, I had a great view of the planes coming into O'Hare, and it was an east-facing view, so I saw the sunrise after a long night of writing so many times. My creativity dropped way down when we moved and I no longer had a view to stare at. So, I bought a glitter lava lamp. I love staring into that thing. And then I put up twinkling fairy lights over my desk. Something about that got me going, again. 

Maayan: I use my fish and snail as a lava lamp with the same effect.

Q: What do you do when you’re in the flow, and everything is going great, but you suddenly just stop? You know where you want to go, but you’re suddenly just stuck for no clear reason?

Michelle: I've discovered, and this may not be true for anyone else, but I've discovered that it usually means I've screwed up a little ways back. If I go back to where I last felt like everything was going well, and rethink everything I wrote since then, I've usually made a mistake in that section, and it needs to be rewritten. Whether I've made a character do something that's not in their character, or I've added something (or taken something away) that isn't right, whatever it is, it's in that section. If I just delete it and start writing from the previous good spot, I get going again.

Kate: Yeah. I've read somewhere that when you're stuck, you should go back at least 5 lines and start over. Put those lines away, pick it up again.

Mana: I think that's a big difference between us, Michelle. You can pinpoint a spot where things go awry and back up, cut off what isn't working and restart. I am a stubborn bitch so even if I see that something isn't really working, if I like it even the slightest bit, I refuse to get rid of it or change it. And those are the instances where I 'pick fights' with you and resist your input when you're beta reading for me. Am I the only one that does that? And if so, how are you all able to justify letting go of something that doesn't quite work but you've grown attached to?

Michelle: It’s perfectly okay to set bits aside and use them in other fics! Timestamps. Put it in another fic. Make it a one shot! I cut SO MUCH from Non-Trad, but I loved those parts SO MUCH, and that's how the Timestamps were born. They really didn't fit into the story well. They made it bloated. So I published them separately. Now, finding that I've gone off the rails entirely makes it easier for me to go back and get rid of something.

Q: Tips that we haven’t mentioned, yet?

Kate: Ask for help. Have a beta look it over, or whoever is interested and might be able to add to it.

Michelle: When looking for inspiration, always go back to the source material. It's not lazily, obsessively binge-watching the same show over and over, it's RESEARCH.

Mana: Someone asked what I do to get over it and I said: when I experience writer’s block or when the character I’m trying to write isn’t cooperating with me and I can’t get my brain to function I try to distract myself with something else or another character. Try watching an episode with your character in it, get a refreshed feel of how they move, talk, interact with other characters, draw from the episode or scenarios that you can fill in where the ep didn’t. Or, take ques from other characters, write about someone else for a bit so your mind has a break and time to sort itself out, then go back to what you were working on. 

Another way to get past it is to read other’s work. It may inspire you, make you realize that the story you wanted to tell this way can be told a different way, or give you the kick you need. 

My best answer to this: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

When the block hits and you have zero inspiration or motivation, write about anything and everything. Start reading and watching new things to see if it’ll spark something, check out Tumblr and users you don’t follow to get your eyes on some fresh content, write a dramatic scene of you sitting on the couch to hear the doorbell ring and let the suspense grow until you open it to find a pizza man there when you specifically did not order a pizza. Writing through it may spark something, and if not, my best suggestion would be to read. Read your old stuff and that of others, read a new book, read an article on how to beat writer’s block, read through the writer resources tag at the @spnfanficpond…

Mana also gifted us with these lovely links:

Writer’s block app that won’t let you do anything else until you’ve reached your goal.

A lovely gif beautifully encapsulating exactly how writer’s block feels.

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: Not much, at the moment, since everyone is busy, so we’re just trying to keep up with the day-to-day at the moment! Our to do list is still long, though, and will not be neglected forever!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Challenge - Even though season 15 is just around the corner, these prompts will still always be open for you to use! Remember, there’s no deadline for submissions! Just tag the Pond and @mrswhozeewhatsis in your post!

Say hi to August’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the Skype chat room/discord general channel and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for October’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!

[hannahmcne]

Can You Hear Me?

Ben is only seven when he is diagnosed with meningitis. He wakes up one morning with a high fever and a headache and can’t keep anything down the entire day. The servants and his parents in Beast’s Castle assume it’s flu until his mom comes in the following morning and discovers that Ben won’t wake up. A doctor is called in, and they get him on a small weekly prescription to see if things will get better by week out. On a Saturday, two months before he turns eight, Ben is rushed to Auradon Central Medicare and formally diagnosed with meningitis.

At the time of his admission, the two outside layers of the meninges that protect his brain have swelled up and fluid is gathering inside his skull, leading to him not being able to stand light and having trouble keeping conscious. The nurses and doctors arrange a set of IV’s that send a steady range of antibiotics straight into his veins, an oxygen mask to regulate his breathing throughout the night, several dozen steroid and anti-inflammation medications he has to take by mouth during the day when the oxygen mask is off, and many other things. Meningitis isn’t a surgery-fixable case, so Ben is left to fight it off by himself.

Looking back, Ben can’t remember the exact specifics, but he does remember waking up one morning, squinting around the room as nurses rushed in with water, food, and medications, and thinking that things sounded rather fuzzy, as if he was underwater or had earplugs in. Then, suddenly, if his mom says something to him, he can only hear half of it. Doctors quickly catch on to the problem and bring in Ben’s first audiologist, who tests his ears and declares that Ben is almost 100% deaf in his left ear and steadily increasing towards deafness in his right. By the time he’s eight, his ears are no longer working.

Ben slowly recovers, but his hearing doesn’t. Those first few nights back home are horrible. People forget, try calling to him, get angry when he doesn’t answer, and then are embarrassed when they remember. His parents get someone to come and teach him sign language, but for the first weeks, he struggles to write what he wants to say to his parents as they wait, fidgeting, for him to express his thoughts. Many times, Ben finds himself sitting in the quiet of his room, tapping silently on the windowsills and walls, hoping by some miracle he’ll hear more than just the memories of what the sound was.

The years pass. He learns to read lips. Exhausting? Yes. Necessary? Equal yes. He slowly starts to make friends again. At first, people are nice to talk slowly while he tries to associate movements to meanings, but soon they start talking just as fast as ever, and Ben’s head spins, trying to make sense of everything everyone is saying. He learns to follow conversations by following people’s eyes when they turn to listen to someone else speak and practices daily in front of a mirror with a transcribing device, making sure he can still be understood even though he can’t hear anymore.

People say he’s a great speaker.

His friends describe him as a great listener.

He guesses he’ll never really know for sure.

He’s Auradon’s future leader, born to listen to the kingdom and fix their problems, and he can’t even hear anything. He wonders if his future wife will have a problem with the idea he’ll never once hear her muttering to herself or singing to anything. He wonders if his future kids will make jokes to their friends about how their dad never listens to them or something.

At the age of sixteen, Ben makes the decision to bring over villain kids from the Isle of the Lost in order to start a re-integration process that will start to heal things between the Isle and Auradon. And yeah, there is lots of fear in doing something like that. What if he picks wrong? What if they start to destroy Auradon? What if they just plain don’t like him? He picks four to start with, figuring it’ll be easier to connect with a smaller group first, and sets about work. Soon enough, the first four names are down. Mal, daughter of Maleficent, Evie, Daughter of the Evil Queen, Carlos, son of Cruella De Vil, and Jay, son of Jafar.

Arrangements are made, parents are notified, and the new students are set to arrive on a Tuesday to the Auradon Prep front circle. Fairy Godmother invites the band(Which is a division Ben appreciates a lot more than the other students, given he can’t hear the horrible beginning practices) down to welcome the new students and Audrey gets herself excused from her class to come down and be with him as he welcomes the new kids.

On the day of, Ben can feel cold sweat dripping down his back as he stands, baking in the mid-afternoon light, waiting for the limo to appear down the road. Audrey’s arm is looped through his, his suit is sticking to his arms, and his hands are shaking. She leans her head on his shoulder serenely and then he sees her start moving her lips out of the corner of his eye. He whips his head around to follow her words as best he can.

“…be nervous,” She is saying. “They’ll love you. Everyone does.”

“I didn’t catch that first part,” He tells her with a sigh. He hates how she likes to talk with her head on his arm. It’s hard to see her. She can’t expect him to know a word she said if he can’t see her, right?

Fairy Godmother puts a hand on his other arm gently and points down the driveway. Ben sees a glimpse of a black hood and his breath catches. He pulls his arm out of Audrey’s and takes a deep breath, rubbing his hands on his suit.

The limo comes to a stop; the door opens. There’s a minor scuffle, but then all four stand in front of him, and then Ben is relaxing because he can see teamwork here. He can see curiosity and wonder and chocolate smeared on Carlos’s cheek. There’s definitely hope. He picked right.

“It’s so, so good to finally meet you all,” He declares, stepping forward with a smile. “I’m Ben.”

All of the VK’s eyes rest on him, and he can see their expressions softening just slightly before their eyes jump to the person next to him and he can see walls going back up again. He turns to see what’s wrong and watches Audrey’s lips form the words: “soon-to-be-king!”

He lets out a nervous laugh, mentally kicking himself in her behalf, and adds: “This is Audrey!”, which is another mistake as Audrey stops the conversation to declare that she’s a princess.

Evie steps forward, and she’s mumbling. He has no idea what she’s saying. She’s barely moving her lips as she speaks, and he’s at a loss. He turns to Audrey, hoping she’ll have caught on(Fat chance, because out of all his friends, Audrey is the one who ignores the fact he can’t hear the most) to the fact he is clueless, and he watches her mouth curl into a sneer as she replies: “The Evil Queen has no royal status here, and neither do you.”

Oh. Oh. Why, dear lord, would she say that?

“Audrey,” He grits out, turning to the side. “Can you just… chill?”

Audrey blinks in surprise. “I am chill,” She protests, wrinkling her brow up.

“No, you’re not,” He shakes his head. “So just stop.” He turns back to the villain kids and moves forward, out holding a hand. “I’m Ben, I’m going to show you around and I’m going to be here to answer any questions you have. You can come to me for anything – anything at all.” He shakes the hand of the first villain kid, who he suspects is Jay from the insignia on his jacket, and then the next in line, who stands slightly forward as if she’s the leader. The wing applique attached to her shoulders make him suspect this is Mal, daughter of Maleficent. Evie is obvious. She has apple jewelry and recently declared herself a princess if he suspects correctly. And that means the last boy is Carlos de Vil.

There’s a short introduction of the area by Fairy Godmother, and the band heads out. Ben turns to Audrey. “I think I’ve got it from here,” He tells her as clearly as he can. “I’ll come to find you later.”

Probably to break up with her. He’s sick of her attitude.

As he leads the Villain Kids into the front of the building, he keeps turned around so he can keep track of any conversations they’re having. They don’t say much, which is good, and the first time Carlos moves to ask something, he raises a hand that immediately draws Ben’s attention and has him mentally sighing in relief.

As they pause in front of the Beast’s statue and the four watch him turn it from a man into Beast, Mal turns with a little smirk pulling at her mouth and asks: “Does he shed much?” And even though he can’t hear her voice, he can tell it’s filled with sarcasm and humor. His response pleases himself too.

“Yeah, Mom won’t let him on the couch,” He replies. And Mal’s expression catches because she clearly didn’t expect an Auradon boy to get her Isle sarcasm. All of the Isle kids exchange little looks as he smiles, and he can already tell that this is the start of something great.

The boys immediately get in with tourney, which is great, because it’s something he gets into as well. His teammates have to tap him on the shoulder and relay any direct instructions that are for him, but overall it doesn’t require lots of communication and is fun for him. Lack of communication is another reason he enjoys swimming. Meanwhile, Evie debuts a few Isle designs, slowly starts letting people buy things off of her, and then suddenly she’s the number one fashionista in the school and people are commissioning her for outfits and accessories. Mal draws a lot, he notices immediately, except she doesn’t sign up for art class until he convinces her to do it with him. Then, eventually, she becomes top of the entire program and the teacher sends one of her Isle-inspired pieces to a country gala where Ben’s parents actually text him a photo of it to get his opinion. Ben, meanwhile, learns how to use a dot to make a 2D picture.

And so he and the VK’s are friends. When they come up to talk to him, they clap him on the shoulder so he knows they’re there and he tells Evie to speak up so he can always understand her, and things are good. Really good.

Until suddenly they’re not.

________________________________________________________________

“Ben!” Mal raises her voice and her hand to wave across the room as the young King enters the lunchroom(He’s the king now, and neither Mal nor her friends really felt like ruining his big day to steal the wand, so now their plans have become a ‘Distant Maybe’ (Aka, probably not)). She keeps her hand raised for a few seconds and then brings it back down when Ben doesn’t reply. She stares at her fingertips numbly as Evie, Jay, and Carlos duck their heads a little in confusion.

“That’s not the first time he’s done that,” Evie mumbles, pushing her plate away and setting her mirror down on the table.

“Maybe he’s getting annoyed with us?” Carlos suggests in a hollow tone, setting his elbows on the table and his chin on his elbows.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Mal murmurs as she watches Audrey raise an

arm from a different table and call for Ben. He sees her arm out of the corner of his eye and turns to smile and wave before he goes to sit down beside Chad Charming, who Mal doesn’t like, Lonnie, who Mal only likes a little, and Audrey, who Mal could watch burn alive and not care. Audrey looks over at Mal with a little smirk as Ben starts to talk with them, and Mal averts her gaze, acting as if she doesn’t care that he’s not sitting with them again. Acting as if it doesn’t hurt that he’s ignoring them.

Jay pushes his plate back too and stares at the table for a few seconds. They all completely miss Ben turning to search around the room from his table and trying to wave when he sees them.

________________________________________________________________

Mal is standing at her locker when she hears footsteps approaching from the other side, which the door is blocking. She closes her eyes. The footsteps are light, so she knows they are not Ben’s, but it is the fact that someone is trying to impersonate Ben that has her heart aching. Nothing good can come out of this.

She shuts her locker door and meets the eyes of Princess Audrey, the King’s girlfriend. And then she leans against the lockers and keeps her face blank as she waits for the girl to state her case or scoff and leave, as she usually does.

“Aren’t you going to say good morning?” Audrey demands after a while.

Mal raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you?” She asks.

Audrey scoffs. “It’s never a good morning when you’re around. Ben really is just too trusting.”

Mal slumps internally. She really doesn’t want to hear this right now, but she can’t turn and walk off without showing Audrey she’s getting to her, so she stands there without a single flinch.

“I mean, sure, his mom fell in love with the big nasty beast who turned out to be a prince, but with my mom, the evil fairy was just the evil fairy. Your mother, remember?” Audrey sneers. “Doesn’t look like there’s been much change between generations.”

An arm appears out of nowhere, separating Mal and Audrey, and Mal looks up to see the very cross face of the king himself as he pushes Audrey away from Mal. Audrey’s face falls away into shock. “Ben,” She squawks. “How much did you-”

“I saw it all,” Ben snaps, dropping his backpack on the ground and taking his girlfriend by the shoulders. “And that’s it. I’m sick of your attitude towards me, towards everyone else, towards the people I like… everyone. We’re not your doormats, and I hate how you think you’re entitled to brathood because you’re my girlfriend. This is it. We’re done, Audrey. I’m breaking up with you.”

Audrey crumples, tries to grab at his sleeves, but he’s turning away, already gone. He turns back to Mal with a concerned expression, reaching to put an arm around her shoulders, and Mal can’t bring herself to meet his eyes.

“Are you okay?” He whispers, tugging her chin up a little so he can see her face. “Listen… it’s not true what Audrey said.”

Mal pushes him away. Something about this isn’t correct. He can’t ignore them and then swing around full circle to try and fool them that he cares about him. “Just go back to ignoring us,” She snaps. “We already deal with everyone else hating us – we can deal with you too.”

Though it’s disappointing… he seemed so genuine and funny.

Ben’s arm drops from around her and he repeats: “Ignoring you,’ as if it’s astounding to him. Mal rolls her eyes. She doesn’t understand why he’s pretending now, of all times. She turns her back to him and strides off with her shoulders back and her chin held aloft. She can hear Audrey starting to cry behind her and thinks, at the very least, Audrey is finally getting what’s coming to her.

________________________________________________________________

There’s a light knock at the door that evening. Carlos has mastered his game and is searching on the internet for a new one to begin while Jay cleans his tourney stuff off in a corner and Evie sketches her heart out in a design book, trying to find her next big creation. Mal is reminiscing Ben’s arm around her shoulders and squeezing her eyes shut as she recalls what it was like to hear Ben break up with his girlfriend. And since she’s the relatively least busy, she’s the one who gets up to answer the door when the second knock comes, more persistent and meaning it’s not Ben behind the door.

She slides the lock and uses her toes to swing the door open. Over the threshold is Doug, who is probably going to end up being Evie’s boyfriend, she thinks. Evie stands up with a smile when she sees him and waves. "Doug!” She greets. “I didn’t know you were coming over today.”

“Hi, Evie,” Doug smiles and waves a little. “I, erm, am actually here on Ben’s behalf and – wait! No, don’t close the door!” He jams his foot into the frame as Mal moves to swing the door closed at the mention of the King’s name. Evie sits down with a scowl as Doug opens the door with a sigh, steps in, and closes it. Mal goes to sit back in her place on Jay’s bed without a word or a flicker of emotion. Everyone else looks away with similar expressions of disdain as Doug takes a deep breath against the door.

“Ben said that the four of you think he’s ignoring you. I’ve, ah, come to clear things up with you in case you don’t feel like talking to him.” He swallows, and then Jay speaks up from across the room.

“Man, we get it, he doesn’t like hanging around the villain kids. We get it.” He sighs, sounding dejected. “It’s just a little disappointing because he’s the one who brought us over.”

“Ben is deaf,” Doug corrects with a shake of the head. “He hasn’t been able to hear anything since he was eight years old. So, if you’re trying to get his attention from across a room or walking by him in the hallways, you need to make sure he’s able to see you so that he can read your lips.”

The room is silent. Then, slowly, Jay straightens up, looking mystified. Carlos looks like the heavens have reopened. A revelatory light comes into Evie’s eyes, and Mal gets up and turns to stare at Doug. “He… can’t hear us?” She repeats.

“100% deaf,” Doug confirms. “That’s why he has to have people speak slower or ask them to repeat things. He doesn’t even know what he sounds like. He practices speaking with a transcriber in the morning so he can make sure people can understand them. So, he hasn’t been ignoring you, he just had no clue you were trying to talk to him.”

“But he went to Audrey’s table when she called him,” Mal frowns, recalling Audrey’s smirk as the king joined them. “And he didn’t look at us at all.”

“Were you sitting somewhere he could see you?” Doug asks. The four VK’s fall silent again. Mal leans back into the wall. Ben is deaf. He can’t hear. That makes so much more sense.

“Why didn’t anyone tell us?” Carlos asks, running his hands through Dude’s fur at his side.

Doug shrugs. “I don’t know. We all thought you knew. I was actually pretty surprised when Ben asked if I could come to explain things on his behalf. I didn’t know that you didn’t know.”

The silence stretches out with each of them taking in the revelation. Then Jay, across the room, heaves a sigh and goes: “Oh,” and the other three chuckle in relieving humor.

________________________________________________________________

Mal makes the first attempt at conversation with Ben the next day, as she spots him down the hall, walking with Chad. She pauses at her locker, screws up her courage, and then sticks out a hand and waves it. Ben doesn’t notice for a second, so she keeps her hand out, and then suddenly his head snaps in her direction. He blinks for a second, taking in the fact she’s trying to get his attention, and then his entire face brightens. He claps Chad on the shoulder, bids him goodbye, and hurries over to her with his entire face beaming, completely happy that she’s speaking to him again.

“Hi!” He greets her.

“Hi!” She smiles a little in spite of herself. He goes to open up his arms for a hug before he appears to remember that the VK’s aren’t as open to affection as the Auradonians. But Mal accidentally opens her hands up and so they stand there awkwardly before he puts a hand around her and gives her a hug from the side. She kind of… lets her arms fall into place around him and he laughs, a bubbling sound that she feels rise up in his chest and it makes her feel a lot happier than she’s been lately.

“I saw you trying to get my attention,” Ben smiles. “Do you need anything? I’ve missed talking to you.”

“I’ve missed talking to you,” Mal smiles, shutting her locker even though she still needs to grab her textbook and head to class. He keeps an arm around her, which makes it hard to draw away the arm she has around his back, but she does let her left arm drop. In her hand is her sketchpad with her pencil stuck into the spiral ring. They start wandering down the hall aimlessly together. “Doug explained… things to us. We’re sorry that we thought you were ignoring us.”

Ben ducks down a little to continue watching her mouth as she looks to the ground, and the thought occurs to her: if Ben is to read lips, he has to see said lips move. She brings her head back up, allowing Ben to straighten his neck as well. “Sorry,” she apologizes.

“No, I’m sorry,” Ben shakes his head. “I honestly thought you guys knew. I was a little concerned when you all stopped coming around to hang out and Carlos and Jay would break off during tourney practices, but I just kind of hoped you were starting to feel a little more at home here and were trying to branch out.”

Mal shakes her head. “We had no idea,” She sighs. “I do think, in hindsight, that Audrey realized we didn’t know. There were times we’d try and get your attention and you wouldn’t notice, and she’d try right after us and look over to make sure we got the memo.”

Ben frowned. “I’m sorry about Audrey,” He shook his head. “She got bad leading up to coronation, but after it was over, she was just insufferable. I’ve been meaning to break up with her for a while. When I came up to talk to you and saw her saying that stuff… it really was just the last straw.”

Mal hums and suddenly, she’s not sure how, they’re out on the grounds and their arms are still around each other’s backs, and they’re just chatting like two old friends. He gestures down at her sketchbook. “Have you done anything new recently?” He asks.

“Loads,” Mal affirms, holding it up. “I’m almost out of room. Having you gone gave me lots of angst time.”

“Oh, we can’t have that,” Ben laughs, rolling his eyes. He holds his hand out for the book. “May I?” He asks.

She hands it to him and then watches his face grow brighter as he opens it and starts flipping through from where he last saw her working. He stops to flip back at some of his old favorites – a rose is, notably, one he is always enchanted by – and she can see in his eyes how impressed he is with her recent work.

“You really like art a lot, huh?” She asks. He doesn’t answer, and Mal mentally kicks herself before she waves a little hand in his face, waits for him to rip his eyes away, and then repeats the question.

“I do,” Ben affirms, glancing back at the picture as he speaks. This one is of Jay on the tourney field, diving into a catch in what feels like slow motion. “Art needs no words.” He glances back at Mal to make sure she isn’t saying anything else before they stop beside a tree and take a seat at the base of the trunk. She wraps her arms around her legs and watches him flip through.

No words, meaning he doesn’t have to follow the conversation. Mal watches him continue looking through her work. A little bell goes off in the back of her mind. You have class, something reminds her. Your textbook is in your locker.

She can be late – it won’t be anything anyone wouldn’t expect from a villain kids, after all.

Ben puts his finger down on a self-portrait she’s been working on, with different parts of her personality and the Isle itself detailed into her outfit and features. In her eyes is a curling dragon, under her arm is a spellbook, her friends have images on her arms, and the Isle skyline is worked into the base of her jacket and into the hemline of her jeans. “This is amazing,” He breathes. “You are so incredibly talented.” Ben looks up to see if she’ll respond, but she doesn’t, she only shrugs, and he goes back to admiring the portrait.

“I want to commission you to do anything we ever need ever in the palace,” Ben breathes, leaning back into the tree. Mal laughs a little and then waves her hand a little. His gaze snaps back to her as she starts to speak.

“Is it okay for me to ask what being deaf is like?” She asks. “I mean, you seem to fit in really well – we seriously had no idea you were deaf – but what do you think about it?”

Ben frowns. She can see a little hurt in his eyes, but something tells her that it is not her fault. He folds the pages of her sketchbook back over the binder, leaving her portrait visible so he can keep stealing glances at it, and takes a deep breath. “It’s hard,” He admits. “By this point though, I’ve been without my hearing for half of my life, so I’m used to it.”

“What don’t you like about it?” She asks.

“Trying to listen to other people is hard,” Ben confesses. “Especially when there’s more than one. I get massive headaches trying to figure out what everyone is saying and jumping from person to person. And then there’s the fact I can’t be called. My parents and I use sign language at home, but almost none of my friends know any, so I can’t use it here.”

“Is sign language easier?” Mal asks.

Ben nods. “Yeah. Reading lips can get exhausting. Especially when you have people who have their faces hidden or when they mumble or even if they have lots of, like, braces stuff in their mouth. It’s hard. I couldn’t understand what Evie was saying the first few times she talked because she was trying to do that thing where you talk without moving your face.”

Mal bursts into laughter. That annoys her when Evie does it – she can’t imagine how Ben refrained himself from slapping her. Ben smiles and leans back into the tree. “There are also the things I miss that make me sad, you know? Like, I haven’t heard the national anthem in years, and whenever it’s played, I just have to stand there awkwardly, waiting for everyone else to indicate it’s done. I can’t hear waterfalls or birdsong or everyone screaming at the end of a tourney match. When I grow up, I’m never going to hear my wife sing or my kids cry or anything.”

Mal’s smile fades and she touches her ears lightly as if to make sure they still work. “That’s awful,” She mumbles, trying to imagine a world of complete silence.

Ben leans forward, looking confused. “Did you say something? I couldn’t catch that.” He squints at her mouth.

“Oh, sorry,” Mal takes her hand away. “I said 'that’s awful’. I wish there was something I could try. A spell or something…” She trails off, thinking of her mother’s spellbook in her locker. The chances of her mom having something in there seem minuscule, but she can always check.

“I’ve learned to live with it,” Ben shrugged. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask me, or can I finish looking at your drawings now?”

Mal gestures for him to go on, and he looks down and continues examining her portrait, completely blown away by the small details she’s included into herself. Mal smirks a little as she watches him trace the pencil markings with his eyes, and then slowly reaches over the uses her nail to flip a few pages forward. She pulls the pages up and Ben gasps when he sees the picture that she’s shown him. It’s of himself, though it doesn’t have much detail, yet. She’s doing one for all her friends. This one has Auradon Castle running along the bottom of the page as Ben stands in a tan shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, looking over his shoulder a little. One eye if shaded and detailed with a little library swirling around his pupil, but the other is just circular markings that will determine the placement of his other features.

“Woah, I look good!” He exclaims, tracing a finger down his sleeves. “You make me look really good!”

Another laugh spills out of her throat. She can’t help it. He just makes her laugh. All the time, whenever she’s with him, she’s laughing.

Ben puts his arm around her and she leans into his side as he flips back and forth between her portrait and his, occasionally glancing through the other three. “When these are done, I want them,” He declares, and doesn’t look down to see if she’ll protest.

Evie finally messages her a 'where are you?’ and Mal knows the gig is up. Ben begrudgingly hands her back her book. “I’m going to have to get you a new one,” He declares, leading her back to her locker for her book.

“I’ll just get one from the school,” Mal shakes her head. “You don’t have to do that.”

“No, I’m going to get you a really good one with lots of high-quality paper,” Ben decides, moving his hands to accentuate his words. “And then we’ll have to get you a lock so no one comes to steal your artwork.”

She’s laughing, again, as she opens her locker and takes out her textbook and spellbook and a couple of other books. Then she shuts it again and they stand there in the sunlight for a little while. Ben’s eyes flicker from her face, checking to make sure she’s not talking, down to the sketchbook, and she knows he’s thinking about those drawings.

“I better get to class,” She finally says, heart falling a little. “I’m already late.”

“Are you free on Friday night?” Ben asks, eyes drifting up to meet hers.

Mal tilts her head to the side. “I think so,” She affirms. “Are you hoping to come around and see everyone?”

“Do you want to go on a date?” Ben asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the lockers.

Mal’s mouth goes a little dry before her smile grows even wider. “Yeah,” She agrees, nodding her head in case her words somehow don’t travel over to him. It’s entirely possible, as her face feels a little numb. “Yeah, I’d love that.”

“I’ll make some plans and come talk to you about them later,” Ben decides. He puts an arm around her one more time, and then they bid each other goodbye, and he goes one way, and she goes the other.

________________________________________________________________

Mal, Jay, and Carlos slam a torrent of books down in front of Evie and Doug as they sit in a hidden corner of the library with completed Chemistry Homework and advanced theory books open in front of them. Evie looks over, startled, as the table rattles a little and a passing librarian pops her head out to frown at them. “What are you doing?” She demands in a whisper.

“Look,” Mal gasps, holding up the thinnest manual of all the various books they’ve dropped onto Evie and Doug’s workspace. It’s a manual depicting how to perform basic conversations in sign language. “Ben knows sign language, and he said almost none of his friends know it. If we learn it, then not only will it be easier for us to talk to him, but also no one will know what we’re saying. It’ll be like Isle code, but with Ben.”

“Oh!” Evie’s eyes light up and she begins to skim the stack of various sign language dictionaries. “That’s completely brilliant! So, is it a surprise?”

“Yes,” Carlos nods, picking up one about various foods in sign language and opening it to a random page. “We’ve got to make sure we don’t botch it first.”

“Guys,” Doug tries to break in carefully, but Jay cuts in.

“This stuff is like, super easy, too. To say 'hi’ you just wave. Simple!” He exclaims, searching through the manuals for one he likes.

“Guys!” Doug calls for their attention. They turn to look at him and then watch as he rattles off a complicated pattern with his hands. Mal’s mouth drops open. “I’m Ben’s only other friend who knows sign language. My dad taught me it. And, by the way, you aren’t going to be able to remember everything in all of those manuals just by reading through them and practicing once or twice. What if you start with conversations, and we can all practice together, and then generally add in things like sports and families and food?”

He has a point, Mal concedes. Jay and Carlos and Evie are all nodding along to his words, so Mal sighs and picks out one large dictionary and the one manual about basic conversation. “So, start here?” She asks.

Doug puts his hands in the air, palms facing outwards, and shakes them back and forth. “Start here,” He instructs. “This is the sign you use to get someone’s attention.”

Helpful, Mal immediately pegs it. This is very, very helpful. They all look a little strange, shaking their hands at each other in a corner of the library, but she feels a little accomplished already because this is something she can use besides holding her hand out forever and hoping he’ll notice her from a distance.

The journey has begun.

________________________________________________________________

Evie walks into the girl’s room a week later to find Carlos sitting on her bed with Dude and Mal finishing her homework on hers. She shuts the door behind her and flips the light on and off twice to get their attention before holding her hands up, fingers splayed and facing the ground, and flipping them upwards. 'What’s up?’

Carlos stretches his shoulders a little before he responds by flexing his index finger as if he’s trying to grab something in front of him, rubbing his knuckles together like there’s something in between them, and then touching his middle finger and thumb together before snapping. 'I need to wash the dog’.

Mal flexes her fingers on her left hand before tapping her wrist against the back of her right hand. 'Homework’. She says. Then, shaking her finger in the air and pointing at Evie, 'Where were you?“

Evie spells out Doug’s name and holds up a new manual out of her bag. Mal smiles proudly. That qualifies as a conversation. They’ve just completed a basic conversation. She balls her fists up and gives them a little shake of triumph before turning her eyes back to her homework. She feels so, so close.

________________________________________________________________

Eventually, it gets to the point that they’re all in remedial goodness together, and they’re signing across the desks instead of talking verbally when the Fairy Godmother gives them a 'discuss this’ assignment. The headmistress watches from the front of the room as Evie, Mal, Jay, and Carlos all move their hands and faces with dramatic, yet silent expressions. Mal recently learned the signs for 'be quiet’ (Crossing one’s hands a little underneath their chin and then moving them apart) and she’s overusing it a little bit as Carlos insists that the answer is 'C’, not 'A’.

"Did you guys know that Ben also knows sign language?” The Fairy Godmother asks when they all settle down. Carlos is fuming in his seat.

“We know,” Mal nods, looking down at the portrait she’s almost finished of him. Hers is done, so is Jay’s, Carlos’s she has to fix Dude, and then Evie’s is falling behind just a little as she works on putting Ben’s parents into his sleeve and them – his friends – onto the other.

“He’s kind of the reason we’re all picking it up,” Jay explains, kicking his feet up on the table. “Now we can talk to him without his other friends being annoying.”

“Oh,” Fairy Godmother blinks in surprise. “I don’t think anyone’s ever learned for him besides his parents. That’s very kind of you.”

She turns back to the blackboard and Mal feels another surge of pride. She can’t wait to see the look on Audrey’s face when the Core Four get to talk to Ben without her knowing a word.

________________________________________________________________

One would assume that Family Day would be an extremely unpopular event for a bunch of teenagers, but everyone seems to get pretty down on the idea that their parents are allowed to visit. Ben tries not to talk about it very much at first because he’s afraid that they’re upset their parents won’t be there, but to be honest the four have kind of given up on their lives back on the Isle and are liking their Auradon lives much, much better.

Ben’s parents, the former King and Queen of Auradon, arrive in a polished carriage that Mal could spot from a mile away. Ben meets them at the gates and she watches as they greet each other with shaking hands and 'how are you’s that she can understand. After exchanging pleasantries with his parents, Ben turns and gestures her forward. She steps up, and Ben introduces her as his girlfriend (Bringing a thumb down from beside his cheek and then linking his index fingers together twice with either palm facing down.)

Belle and Adam’s eyes widen with shock and a little worry. After all, girlfriends either turn into exes or wives and having the daughter of Maleficent as either could get a little messy. But Ben is confident, explaining briefly about her, and she smiles as she pretends she can’t understand 70% of what he is signing.

Finally, Ben turns back to her with his bright smile and re-translates the entire conversation for her. She shakes hands with his parents and then his dad points Ben’s attention to where the Fairy Godmother is calling for him behind his back, trying to get someone to tap on his shoulder. Ben leaves, walking for the Fairy Godmother, and Mal makes eye contact with the royals before she lets loose a few signs of her own.

She touches her fingertips to her brow in a light sort of salute, holds a fist up with her thumb on the outside, then crosses her thumb over her first two fingers, and finally makes an 'L’ shape with her hand. 'I know Auradon Sign Language.’ Then, crossing her arms across her belly, making a motion as if she were flipping a word out to someone from her chin, and turning to point at Ben’s retreating back a little. 'Don’t tell Ben.’

Belle’s mouth drops open a little bit more and Adam straightens up in curiosity. “It’s a secret,” She whispers, leaning forward a little. “My friends and I are all learning to surprise him.” She points back to her boyfriend with a meaningful eyebrow quirk, crosses her arms again, and then touches the top of her head in that same salute. 'He doesn’t know.’

Queen Belle’s eyes fill with tears as Adam nods in the heaviest sort of approval he can muster. Belle gestures to them both and makes the motion to seal her lips closed. 'We won’t tell.’

________________________________________________________________

Mal can’t deny that she is very nervous as she, Jay, Carlos and Evie all sit at their lunch table together, but Doug has pronounced them mostly fluent and they haven’t spoken in each other’s company in a week straight now, so she figures it’s time to put their skills to use. She points to each of the four of them with a questioning look on her face. 'Who will start?“

Jay, Evie, and Carlos all point at her before Carlos signs, pointing towards her and then closing a hand by his forehead before linking his index fingers together in the same way you do for 'girlfriend’ and 'friend’. 'He’s your boyfriend.’

Mal acknowledges this with a deep breath and a nod and then looks up to see the person in question enter the room. She watches as he’s caught up in a group of other friends – Chad Charming, Lonnie, Jane, Doug, and even Audrey. She watches him get caught up in the conversation, looking a little dizzy as he follows everyone’s eyes to figure out who is speaking. Her hands are shaking a little, and that’s not even a sign.

"Go on,” Jay whispers. It’s actually a little weird to hear his voice after just listening to him sign the last few weeks.

Mal hesitates a second longer, and then puts her hands into the air and shakes them a little. Jay, Evie, and Carlos all turn and mimic her motion, and immediately, Ben’s eyes have left his friends’ and he is staring across the room at the table trying to get his attention. After all, that is the sign for getting someone’s attention, and he is the only deaf person in the area.

Evie beckons him forward with a hand. 'Come here.’

Jay gestures to the group, makes claws with his hands and brings them closer to his chest, taps his fingers on his lips, and then points to Ben. 'We want to talk to you.’

Carlos takes up the 'Come here’ sign as Mal puts the tips of her fingers together and curls them outwards at her sternum, a little like she’s presenting a gift, and points at her boyfriend. 'How are you?’ She asks.

Ben stares at them like he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing for several seconds. Chad starts trying to talk to him, but of course Ben isn’t looking; he’s staring at their group and slowly bringing his hands up to cover his mouth as they all repeat their signs, trying to urge him to come over so they can really try out their skills. His eyes fill with tears and he stumbles a little. The rest of the group finally follows his gaze over to the VK’s, who start asking if he’s okay by flicking their index fingers out in concern. Mal gets a great sense of pride when Audrey’s eyes bug out and her entire left side of her face twitches. She’s probably seen Ben’s parents using sign language and knows exactly what she’s seeing, even if she doesn’t know what any of the hand symbols mean.

Ben brings his hands down and then starts his own signs. He points at them, brings a hand up to his face and spreads his palm out like something that blew up in front of him, and then repeats the signs for ASL. 'You learned sign language?’ He asks.

The group all signs 'yes’ as one and it’s at that moment when Ben absolutely breaks down. He has to sit down on the steps of the lunchroom as tears fill his eyes and fall down his face. People go absolutely silent around him as they watch the King of all Auradon wiping his eyes and trying not to make any sound as he cries because he has no idea what he sounds like when he’s sobbing this hard. Mal’s hands feel cold, and she’s not sure what to do, but Doug gestures them all forward and they slowly leave their seats to go crowd around him.

“Are we going to get in trouble for this?” Carlos hisses under his breath as they approach the area where Doug is awkwardly patting Ben’s back as the rest of his friends stare, dumbfounded, at what they just witnessed.

“I think he’s just blown away that we did it,” Mal whispers back. She sits down on the ground beside Ben, chewing on her lip a little, and makes the sign for 'okay?’. Ben watches her through his fingers and then sniffles and takes his hands away from his face to make an arc from his mouth outwards with one hand. 'Thank you’.

He repeats that sign with all of them, several times, and the lunchroom just kind of stays quiet despite the fact most of them have no idea what’s going on. He signs it until Mal finally puts her hand on his. Jay shakes his hands from side to side on her behalf. 'It’s nothing.’

“Did you all… learn sign language?” Audrey asks, dumfounded above them. “You know he can just read lips, right?”

Mal rolls her eyes at an angle so that she knows Audrey can see. Because it’s ridiculous that Audrey is the one pointing this out after she took advantage of Ben’s hearing to tease and mock the villain kids. She presents her palms, face-up, points to Ben, then pretends she’s tapping a flat surface with both hands, taps her fingers against her mouth, gestures to each of her friends, and finally holds one hand steady as she brushes the other past it in a small circle several times. 'Now you can talk to us easier.’

Ben watches her hands move and then buries his face in his knees, giving up on holding his sobs in and breaking down on the pavement.

None of them are quite sure what to do. Audrey looks absolutely offended that this is having such a big impact on Ben while Lonnie, Jane, and Chad look enchanted and a little impressed. Doug looks on proudly as the four villain kids exchange glances, trying to figure out how to comfort Ben. Gradually, Evie pulls some makeup wipes out of her purse for him to wipe his eyes and blow his nose with, Jay awkwardly claps Ben’s shoulder while Carlos continues signing for 'Okay?’. Mal wraps a single arm around her boyfriend’s back and pats his side carefully until he starts to calm down.

Ben tries not to shower them in affection because he knows they’re not used to that kind of stuff but he’s such an affectionate guy that it’s hard. He presses a couple of kisses onto Mal’s hairline and gives Evie, Jay, and Carlos more hugs than they’ve ever had before in their lives as students gradually rip their eyes away and go back to their lunch.

'You’. He points at each of them. 'Didn’t’. He brings a fist down from under his chin with a thumb up. 'Need’. He flexes his finger like he’s trying to scoot something in front of him forward a little. 'To learn’. He repeats the motion of something blowing up in his face with his palm.

Mal reaches into her pocket and unfolds the portrait of him, looking over his shoulder with Auradon around him and tourney bats sticking out of his chest pocket and she and her friends opposite from his parents, and this she presents to him by popping her hands out from her eyes into 'L’ shapes. 'Surprise!“

Ben uses the wipes Evie offered him to wipe the last of the tears away and then turns to Jay, on his far right. He points to himself, makes a heart shape over his heart, and then points to the star tourney player. Jay’s face falls away to amazement as Ben turns to Evie, who is next to Jay. He points to himself, makes the heart, and points to Evie, who sits down with a tiny thud and looks like she might tear up herself. Then to Carlos, whose hands start shaking at the motion. It’s something they’ve never been told before, really, all their lives.

Mal is last. She keeps a little sweet smile on her face as Ben repeats the motion one last time. She kind of wondered when would be the first time they would use this phrase for each other, and she thinks she likes this scenario much better than any of the cheesy things she’s been passing back and forth in her head. It’s a little inefficient to sign out the whole phrase – there’s an easier hand motion for this one – but she repeats it back to him with a smile. Pointing to herself, making a heart over her heart, and then pressing the tip of her finger into his chest, right over where he’s been making all his own hearts.

I love you.

(Bonus Scene)

She flips the light on and off three times when she walks into the study area to get his attention, and also because it makes everyone else jump and complain when their concentration is broken. She ignores the complaining as she walks across the room to him and puts her spellbook down on the table and signs 'How are you?’

As she finishes bringing her hand back down, he brings a flat hand down from his mouth at an outward angle. 'Good.’

She gestures to herself, presses her thumb and pointer finger together in a circle and flicks it upwards, points at Ben, then shakes a pointed finger beside her head, towards the ceiling. 'I found you something.’

Ben spreads his palms, face-up, and brings them towards and away from himself with a confused look on his face. 'What?’

Mal sits down in the chair beside him and begins flipping through her spellbook. It’s a little easier than signing because she’s not as fast as Ben and her hands aren’t quite as attuned to making the symbols yet (Also, she doesn’t know the word for 'spell’ yet). She quickly finds the page she thumbed down about twenty minutes ago and plants her index nail into the page before she scoots the book over across the table to show Ben. He wrinkles his nose in distaste, and yeah, she understands why. But then she points to the side note, which reads ’*Temporary for five minutes*’ and watches him relax a little. He clearly doesn’t get what she’s thinking at this moment, but his expression does lose the concerned edge.

She makes grabbing motions towards her chest, then uses two fists facing foward with the thumbs out to make a motion of knocking against something, and then gestures to the spell. 'Want to try it?’

He shrugs, clearly not sure what to think about it, and so she holds her right hand up. He takes it in a firm clasp like they’re about to have an arm-wrestling match, and then Mal guides him through the series of claps and snaps that completes the second part of the spell. "Cambia Corporum Meum Corpora Sua Nominavi.” She declares, and then there’s a dizzy rush where all the lights in the room seem really intense and she loses the feeling in her fingertips, but then all is normal and she’s still blinking over at Ben, not daring to hold her breath as he leans forward.

Ben’s brain is busy. She stays silent as she listens to him examine himself, make sure nothing bad happened to either of them, and glances suspiciously over at her to see if it worked. She can hear his thoughts just like if he was speaking, but his mouth isn’t moving at all. 'Did it work?“ He thinks, furrowing his brow.

'I don’t know,” She replies, making sure she’s not moving her lips along to the thought so there’s no mistaking it. “Did it?”

Ben’s. Brain. Shuts. Off.

She gets it, on some level. This is the first time he’s 'heard’ anything outside of his own thoughts, and it’s a very, very real and intense moment for him(for both of them, really). But it’s still odd to watch everything behind his eyes die and his mouth fall open as he stares at her, wondering if he really heard anything after all.

'You’re cute,“ She tells him, trying to prod some feeling back into his numb existence. 'I like it the most when you smile. When you smile and you’re in the sunlight, it’s like you’re the literal embodiment of sunshine. I don’t know why you’re going for someone like me, who likes shadows and hiding away from people, but I’m always going to be grateful for you.’

Ben takes his hand away from hers carefully and feels his ears, making sure they’re still off and useless and deaf. Mal decides to try something else. She tries to remember what his parents, Belle and Adam sound like, and as she replays little snippets of things they’ve said in their tones and voices to Ben, she watches his eyes fill with, again, more tears.

She doesn’t have many good things that Audrey has said, so she carefully skirts around Ben’s old girlfriend while replaying Chad talking to Lonnie about a school project, Doug whistling 'Heigh-Ho’, Carlos shouting in joy as he completes a level, the rush of the crowd after Jay won the last tourney match, Evie singing in the shower, and she even takes care to replay several things that he’s said to her so that now he knows what he sounds like. He doesn’t think a single thing to her as he sits back, taking it all in and trying to memorize everything she presents as she does.

She tries extra hard to remember what the national anthem sounded like when it was played at the tourney game last week but can only remember a few bars since she’d been busy talking to Evie and Jane. Next time, she promises herself, she’ll pay extra close attention so she can share it with him.

The five minutes ends. Mal knows when it does. She can see Ben listening harder and harder as he gradually goes deaf again and is left to his own thoughts. She lets her own mind go slack and stops trying to feed him sounds and voices and then they both sit in silence while he processes everything, wiping his eyes occasionally to keep tears from falling. It’s just a really long, comfortable silence where neither of them moves and he’s just kind of staring off into the distance

Finally, his hand twitches on the table. Mal reaches over and puts her hand on top of his. He swallows, and it’s like the spell of silence is broken. She brings her other hand down from her mouth, and then popped her hands out from her eyes into "L” shapes. 'Good surprise?“

He gestured to himself and then, pressing his index and middle fingers together, rolled his wrist up by his forehead. 'I can think-hear you.’

She struggles with all of the signs for her next sentence; not all of the words she knows the signs for, and so she ends up mouthing a little as she moves her hands. She tips her hands up and down like scales, points to her spellbook, shakes a pointed finger beside her head, slams a fist into a palm facing up, and then taps the side of her ear. 'Maybe there’s something to help – like a hearing aid.’

Ben takes her hands to keep her from signing anything else and leans forward to kiss her cheek. "This is already fantastic,” he whispers slowly, focusing on the feel of the words in his mouth now that he knows how he sounds saying them. “Thank you for showing me.”

Mal smiles a little and then makes a bold motion, acting like she’s grabbing something from her chest and presenting it to him. He laughs, and she relaxes into this perfect portion of her life.

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 4

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1, 2 and 3. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1-3. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Loghain sequences, where it jumps out of the HoF’s point of view to let the player see what Loghain is up to, were added quite late on in development. Some of the dream sequences (like the HoF’s dream of the Archdemon) were also probably added quite late. Those sequences were added as they felt that they needed to have more indication of the larger goings-on in terms of what Loghain was up to, since they had cut some stuff that was meant to have shown this. Cutting things can be funny like that as you’re then left trying to explain the holes.

An original Archdemon concept drawing had them as a lot more demonic as opposed to draconic, with blank all-black faces, a giant ornate crown, smoke, tentacles and a Cthulhu-esque feel. Things change a lot during the concept phase however. At the time, DG wasn’t sure if he liked the changing of the ‘demon’ into a ‘dragon’, but over time he digs it - it sorta implies some things about the nature of dragons in the world that they later decided “yes, that is probably the case”. They then worked that more into the lore so that dragons weren’t just there to be huge lizards. Given the difficulty the team had modelling things like tentacles and snakes, the original Archdemon concept would probably have been iterated on and would’ve had to become something else eventually anyway.

Having the party camp was probably always part of James Ohlen’s plan. Originally, there was going to be different camps in specific places around the map. They then made it a sort of ‘pocket area’ that the player always ‘took with them’, but here they had problems figuring out things like what would happen if the player rested while in an interior location as opposed to somewhere out in the wilderness, “like, does that change it?” For a while there was a complicated system where the party members would do things in camp that would give the player items and help out in such ways - like a party member who made potions, ones that could be interacted with and asked to craft, a whole crafting system relating to that, etc (this all got cut). This was supposed to act as a reason for the player to return to camp and have more interactions at camp; they didn’t want the camp just to be ‘the place you go just to talk to followers’. A good portion of the team considered dialogue to be boring and not an activity that was engaged in.

As soon as hair/beard hair came past the ‘clipping plane’ of the neck, they had real trouble getting it to move due to lack of proper cloth physics and the troubles they had with hair. Beards were rectangular strips that dangled from the chin with the beard texture attached to it. Sometimes certain points were connected to the chest which is why there’s the weird stretching if models move in certain ways. This happens with robes as well. The reason they did this is so that there’s no clipping. For some reason the BW animation team was so averse to clipping compared to other games from elsewhere which sometimes have a bit of clipping that they’re actually not fussed about. At one point they had a big fight on the DA team because the art team said “We need to make every entrance and doorway [including tents] about twice the size that it is, about Shale-size specifically, because of Shale” because they were worried that there would be scenes where Shale would clip through the wall, and about how this would look to players. Others responded that it’d be rare where Shale would be seen going through a door and also that nobody really cares (as in it’s not a big deal). DG half-seriously suggested that instead of making every door bigger, have it so that after entering the door’s texture at the sides and above it would look cracked and have an outline of Shale’s arms and head as if she’d just barreled her way through the stonework. In the end Shale’s size was reduced as a solution to this (so Shale was originally intended to be a lot larger). This is an example of a place where different parts of the team had different priorities in development. It was pointed out that in the end having giant doors may not have made much difference, as every interior in DA is massive in terms of floor and ceiling-space, as well as items (huge jugs of ale etc) anyway.

Weapons and staves hover on characters’ backs due to the team’s aforementioned aversion to clipping. Originally there were plans for scabbards and straps, but they didn’t have the resources for these and they were also concerned about staves clipping through straps, especially when being ‘drawn’ for combat, even though that would just be a second or so. So this is why we instead have floating magnetically-attached-looking weapons.

DG wrote Nature of the Beast including all of the Brecilian Forest, it’s possibly his favorite plot/questline out of the ones he wrote for DAO. It’s one of the plots that survived best from first inception to final result. One of the prominent cultural features of Ferelden is the werewolves, and so DG had to make ‘the werewolf plot’. All the initial plots were split up like that (the werewolf plot, the dwarf plot, etc). Originally there was a separate ‘elf plot’ but it got joined together with the werewolf one. DG had an idea for a being that was like male and female, terrible and kind, beautiful and horrible and so forth - both at once, like the way nature is. This was the vague initial idea from which this plot grew. The nature spirit encountered is the flipside of the being. The spirit of the forest is both male and female, or something akin to being bigender (both rather than neither). There’s not much difference between the Lady and Witherfang. DG finds it so weird hearing the DAO Dalish elves’ American accents (since their accents were changed for the next game). The American Dalish elf accents bugged DG enough that when they got to DA2, he said to Caroline Livingstone “can we just retcon this” and she was like “yeah”. “I think we underestimated how weird prevalent American accents in the game alongside the British ones would be”. Zathrian is voiced by Tim Russ (Tuvok from Star Trek).

The Cammen-Gheyna plot is a fairly ‘nothing-y’ sidequest relatively speaking, but is so complex in terms of how many options and paths through it that it has that DG got a big of a finger-wagging for it and some people were not happy. LE commented that this quest is “an extremely Gaider plot”, as the player can ruin everyone’s lives in it. Gheyna’s pronunciation of Andaran atish'an is incorrect. This phrase is one of the ones that got mixed up in the pronunciation guide and one of the ones that when they got to DA2, DG was like “ignore what we did before, here’s the new pronunciation files”. One of the first ‘images’ the team had of the Dalish was that they had reindeer-like creatures that pulled the aravels. In DAO aravels look more like standard wagons than the ones in the ‘images’, and they weren’t shown properly. Aravels are wagons but they’re supposed to have big sails (not naval-style sails on top) all over the place to catch the wind, so that they look like a bunch of ships being drawn across a field. They got closer to how they’re supposed to be in DAI. At one point the artists sat DG down and asked him what should set the Dalish apart visually. “Funny you should ask, I have some very specific ideas about what the Dalish should look like that have just never been done”. [I think here he meant hadn’t yet been implemented in the franchise] “Oh, we just thought they were ‘people with wagons’.” “Nobody reads documentation...”

The lamps in the Brecilian Forest are a bit random. They put light sources everywhere and it seems like the Brecilian lamp thing was art-asset use that boiled down to “guess it’s an elven forest?”. The Deep Roads were supposed to be properly dark. The team had a lot of conversations over how dark they could or should make the Deep Roads. They constantly had beams of light coming from above and it was like “this is supposed to be like a mile underground, why are there sunbeams coming through cracks in the ceiling” - the answer is it looks good and they didn’t want to do proper darkness. By DAI, they got closer to the ‘look’ the Deep Roads are supposed to have. This is a recurring theme in the DA franchise lol. “This was a weakness in our team and processes, that it took two titles before we got on board with each other and with the vision.” But they had plenty of good strengths too! DG wishes they had iterated a bit more on the werewolves’ look.

“Evil options” was always one of the big conversations that they had. DG wasn’t a fan of the evil options because they mostly boiled down to being a big jerk. The reason for this is a lengthy design discussion that relies on interface - proper, smart evil usually implies some kind of deception, and how do you indicate to the player that the option they’re about to take has a more cleverly-sinister aspect to it (as opposed to simple Intimidate options)? They didn’t really enjoy just letting the player run around being an asshole to people, “do we have to service this hyuk-hyuk-hyuk, particular type of enjoyment?” DG wishes they had figured out how to do the evil stuff a little better (feeling that in a game, doing good has less merit unless there’s temptation to do evil, and that evil paths should be more materially rewarding). 

DG wrote The Dawn Will Come with some help from PW and Karin Weekes. It was the first song he wrote. Trevor Morris sent him the tune and he listened to it many times and wrote out the lyrics. PW and KW helped him make it “less awkward and cringey”. “They’re very good at that”. PW is good at poetry, KW is more musical and knows more about music. “If you get something which is as ridiculous as it is memorable, it’s probably Sheryl. If you get something that’s beautiful prose, it’s probably Mary. Something in-between is probably PW.” The DAI bardsongs were written by an external party brought in specially to do so. This required a fair bit of review and revision to make sure they followed DA lore. “It’s a problem we’ve always had trying to work with third parties, they tend to think that anything that falls under the umbrella of ‘medieval fantasy’ would fit in DA”. (Here DG groaned a bit thinking about Orson Scott Card.)

On the Grand Oak and co: “After I finished writing this I totally regretted it. It’s a big dialogue and there’s a lot involved in this quest. Do you know how hard it is to make somebody rhyme in a way that’s not completely cringey for the entire dialogue? I was three quarters into it and I so wanted to stop but I was past the point of no return. But I did it! And it worked out.” The Grand Oak should have been a LotR-style ent-like being in terms of animations and presence. When DG sees the Oak’s stationary pose he’s reminded of Silence of the Lambs. When he finished the Grand Oak and hermit quest he was like “I make way more trouble for myself than I should”. The Hermit cycles through random animations outside of conversation because he’s supposed to be twitchy and weird.

The haunted empty camp side encounter was a pain for the tech designers to make work because there’s no NPC to talk to. It was a pain whenever companions had to offer critical information like in these sorts of parts in fact, as they had to write 9 versions of each ‘line’ (1 for each companion).

There are certain spells/abilities in D&D that can make a GM’s life frustrating, such as teleportation, telling the future, resurrection. The fact that death is not permanent, for instance, should be a huge thing that affects society and how the people in it view death. This is why they were thinking stuff like “If every low-level mage in the setting had a skill like ‘Charm Person’, what would non-mages make of that?” This ties back to discussions in previous part/s where there are lore rules like no teleportation. DA was originally envisioned as a low-magic setting, but this didn’t last long [this subject is also covered in previous part/s]. The rules of magic didn’t really change though, they just weren’t really communicated that well to the other teams in the early days. They slowly realized that it was incumbent on the design team to explain and sell to the other teams the vision, not just expect them to read documentation. They were also constantly fighting against their own presuppositions of “DA is like D&D”.

Desire demons were supposed to be genderless. DG isn’t a fan of how the Fade turned out in DAO. The quests themselves were too long; they couldn’t do all the original plans they had for them so there was a lot of iteration, “then we ended up settling for something not very exciting”. Another big fight the team had was about whether they should have permanent death since DA was a more realistic world? One side’s argument was that ‘if you don’t allow for resurrection then we can’t have death in combat’. DG wondered if there was a different dichotomy they could get to but didn’t want to dictate how combat should work or tell combat designers how to do their job, as he wasn’t the one doing that work.

One of the best moves they made when working on DAI was the concept artist consulting cosplayers. This was good work not only in a fashion sense but also in that it led to making outfits for characters that someone could actually wear (contrast those with Sebastian’s outfit, which DG remembers cosplayers having trouble making functional/wearable and putting together). DG really wasn’t keen at all on Cole’s hat. When designing the clothing-clothing in DAO, the artists were trying to get the most variation for clothing out of assembling pieces. For the sake of variation they allowed pieces to go together that really shouldn’t go together. This allowed for a larger number of clothing options to be made out of a smaller number of clothing models/textures.

In Neverwinter Nights they added a “jiggle mesh” to the engine, it was used in only one place (Aribeth’s cleavage).

Writers are the first ones that jump onto a project, so when last touches and polish is being added to a game they’re often not aware of it. Once the writing is more or less locked down for a game, they start working on the next project. On every project at some point they had to have what they called the “profanity meeting”, where they decide what types of profanity exist in that world, what level of profanity they’re accepting, establishing the standard on this front, etc. This leads to fun meetings where they go through every profanity that they know and try to create new ones. “Maker’s breath!” and “Void take you!” are some of these kinds of things. They needed exclamations akin to “Goddamnit” but which made sense in this fantasy setting (“Goddamnit” implies the context of God, and the concept of damning, for example, so it doesn’t hold up) and weren’t just word substitution like “frack” instead of fuck or something.

The Grey Wardens gained their trademark blue and silver uniformed look for DA2. When the new art director Matt Goldman came on before DA2, he wanted to re-approach a number of things such as the darkspawn (mentioned in previous parts) and the Wardens. He wanted factions like the Wardens to be more uniform and easily identifiable at a distance by silhouettes and colors. He wanted factions to be more visually distinct and to introduce more color in general, as DAO was very brown and muddy. This was something of a standing mission of his when he came onto the project. He disliked the idea that there wasn’t anything unifying or distinct or ‘easily identifiable as a DAO screenshot’ about DAO screenshots, other than that brown muddiness. 

Deciding how to design the Lady of the Forest was a long conversation due to the potential nsfw elements. It was a long haul to get her to look a certain way.

The thing DG found easiest/least painful to write was probably Zevran’s dialogue. He felt less pressure about it and had a bit more fun with it. Zevran has a certain story about trust that DG found pleasurable to build on; Zevran had grown up with a certain expectation of deceit and trauma, and when confronted with earnest feelings, that was the more puzzling part for [Zevran] to process. “When you expect everyone around you to deceive you, you’re kinda like, okay, this is life. But then to figure out, ‘oh, I guess it doesn’t need to be that way’, well how do you even... not?” DG remembers straight male players complaining on the forum after accepting Zevran’s massage tent-invite and not clocking that that was an invite of a certain nature. Overall Zevran was a more relaxed piece of writing for him. Shale came later but writing Shale was also a lot of fun. Like HK-47, “you can string together a few quirks that you find amusing and people will still treat that like a character and love it”.

In DA2 there was an entire subplot centered around the Carta and Varric. It spanned all three Acts. Mary Kirby had written it to completion and it was good. DG had to tell her it was among the cuts they needed to do because it was written a bit later relative to other stuff and because cutting it offered the most return according to the schedule and resources/subsequent downstream work. In cases like these they sometimes take the cut plotbeats and put it in a ‘box’, in the hopes that they may be able to use it for DLC or something later on. In practise this doesn’t happen very often at all. On DAO it did happen once with Shale. Shale was cut from DAO and had to be moved to become Day 1 DLC. Work on Shale therefore took place after most of the game had been finished. If they hadn’t done this, she would have been cut completely. It also sort of happened on DAO with Loghain. It originally had a whole plotline in Denerim involving him which had the player figuring out his background, motivations and interacting more with Anora. All of that got cut (requiring the cutscenes mentioned at the start of this post being added), and this is where the idea came of writing a novel (The Stolen Throne). This occurred in the period when the game had been delayed and DG particularly regretted that particular cut. He thought, “I could take this story that you were going to learn about the history of Loghain and his relationship with Cailan, and rescue it in a way.” [source]

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

[survivingart]

STORY IS EVERYTHING

Be it online or in person, there’s a lot of competition in the arts. And the fact that the art world is much smaller compared to the world of business, law or medicine, only makes it harder for any one artist to succeed. While everybody online is telling us to “niche down”, and explaining why it’s so important, usually no specific tactics are disclosed, and the how is left for us to figure out for ourselves.

 This blunder is intended for anyone who wishes to find their focus and stand out in today’s oversaturated creative market by understanding the immense power of storytelling — especially when positioning ones creative skill and aspirations in the market.

Regardless if you paint, sculpt, make experimental video installations or are a political performance artist, the main goal for all of us is to express ourselves. 

We do so not because it’s the quickest or easiest way of making a living, but because it’s who we 

are. Most of us love our craft in some form or another and follow some internal aspirations that guide our interest and consequently the kind of art we make. 

But while creativity is a general term, it could not be describing a more colourful and rich abundance of personal motifs and ambitions of why we do what we do. 

For example, I could be selling skilfully crafted portraits because of my passion for creating narratives about beauty, intimacy and connection. But it could also be that I just really enjoy painting figures and fabric and am good enough at it to charge for my work. 

Both are great reasons to make a portrait and market ones skill, but even if the end product looks similar in both cases, their target audience couldn’t be more different.

So, let’s put the “art” in artwork.

I’d like to open this conversation with one of the hardest, but probably the simplest of all questions to answer, because we need to get it out of our way to really get the point of why story matters so much. But to find the answer we will have to go all in and drop the proverbial A-bomb. 

We’ll have to ask the big question. The one you can read about in 50€+ books, written by prominent and knowledgeable art historians and theoreticians, whose answers are mostly written so thoroughly, so extensively, that one needs a dictionary to find their point.

Ready?

What is Art?

Boom.

Unlike most other questions like: “What is carpentry?”, “What is music?”, even “What is philosophy?”, we artists and other creative souls appear to have an enormous problem — none of us really seem to know what the heck we are doing in our lives. Not because we are confused, undisciplined or too spontaneous, but because no-one actually seems to know what art is.

If you ask most academic professors, they will usually give you an academic answer. If they’re more on the liberal side, it will surely have to do with the freedom of expression and the lyrical power of images in the fight against social injustice.

Ask a person in the street — anyone you want really — and they might tell you it’s something pretty, something that looks good. And probably also something that is quite expensive. For a wealthy collector it might be freedom; a way of expressing themselves without the need to actually learn how to paint or draw or sculpt. 

A tattoo artist will tell you it’s tattoos. A barber will tell you it’s an exquisite haircut. An IT technician might even tell you it’s a perfectly sorted and laid out collection of ethernet and electrical cables in the server room. 

Just don’t ask an aesthetician — the branch of philosophy that researches art — and they might tell you a lot. Truth be told, they might tell you too much while saying very little. A wonderful example is Tiziana Andina’s prominently titled book: “The Philosophy of Art: The Question of Definition: From Hegel to Post-Dantian Theories”. Read at your own peril.

Art seems to be everything. And we all know that something that is everything is consequently nothing at all.

We have to take a closer look into the production of art; the making of paintings, sculptures, videos and maybe even haircuts and tackle the question by investigating the process of making something an art piece. 

So, let’s see if we can’t fix this mess of tattoos, pretty pictures and ethernet cables into a more workable definition by asking a better question: What makes something art?

In the 1960s the art world had a small crisis, caused by none other than the famous pop artist Andy Warhol. The root of the crisis was his artwork, titled simply: Brillo Box.

It looked exactly the same as a normal Brillo soap pad box, albeit being made out of wood. The question: What made Andy’s Brillo boxes art, but at the same time dismissed the original boxes made by James Harvey (the creator of the design) as mere industrial design?

Surely it wasn’t looks, and it couldn’t have been materials — the prestige of using silkscreen on wood instead of printing on cardboard was not the deciding factor after all. The only real difference that one could discern was the name associated with either product. 

You had Andy Warhol superstar and the other guy.

Apart from being a marvellous posh object to own, Andy’s Brillo box shines light onto an immensely important topic in art, namely that when push comes to shove, the classification of an artistic piece does not have anything to do with its physical composition — be it medium, motif, size, you name it…

This is immensely important, because if we distill the factors that make up art, we can get a pretty rough, yet quite precise equation, that looks a bit like this:

ART = Viewer + Art Piece + Artist

But why does it now seem like the art piece, the central point of the equation isn’t really important? Well, there’s another surprise coming up.

The artist has been regarded as a genius ever since the invention of the cave painting about 40.000 years ago. The master painter, listening to the whispers of his or her muses and transcribing the messages of the gods into reality, for all of humanity to experience the righteous powers of the divine.

As humans, we couldn’t have been more proud of the lineage of artistic mastery that our planet had created over the years, and we had every reason for it. From the Ancient Greeks to Giotto and Titian, then Caravaggio, Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso … all geniuses in the craft, that shaped how we perceive reality itself. 

But then came the trickster. The black sheep, the snake, the devil himself. Then, came Duchamp.

In 1917 as part of The Society of Independent Artists’ exhibition at the The Grand Central Palace, he unveiled his biggest joke of all — a urinal. And even though the organisation of the exhibition had promised that each and every art piece that was entered in the application stage would be shown, they decided to remove The Fountain (as Duchamp named his vertical toilet) from the exhibition. 

It was serious.

But the problem that Duchamp’s art piece created was minuscule compared to the big issue that was yet to come. His simple question : “Is this art?” didn’t just create a revolt inside The Society of Independent Artists, it started a revolution.

Thus, conceptualism was born.

The point he was trying to make was simple: Art is an internal human experience, not an invisible aura imbued into an object by some artistic genius.

The art world though, instead of getting his point, concluded that Nietzsche was indeed correct; the gods of art, beauty and aesthetics truly did perish. The murderer’s weapon was finally found — fully drenched in nothing but bloody ideology, the Fountain stood as proof.

Now, more than 100 years later, this narrative is still the bedrock of many institutions, both commercial and educational. And I feel it is about time we change this. 

Not only could more people start to appreciate art — instead of thinking of it as a pretentious playground for the rich, filled with expensive junk and weird intellectuals — but by removing some of the misconceptions that either artist or artwork are the origin of the artistic experience, we could actually improve the status of us artists in society.

How?

By educating the viewer. By making our artistic process visible to all via social media and other means. By not trying to overcomplicate our work descriptions and artist statements and ending the need to feel like we have to defend our right to paint, sculpt, dance or make videos, with big words and complex explanations.

By connecting with our audience and being strong, sincere and genuine people. And with social media exploding in a constantly connected world, the timing just couldn’t be better.

Art is a multitude of stories, each different from another and all created by every one of our viewers. 

And like good spelling and a decent vocabulary are the bedrock for any novel, we visual artists have a bunch of tools that we can use to build our narratives too.CREATING YOUR STORY (CONTEXT AND CONTENT)

In 1976, artist and critic Brian O’Doherty published his essay Inside the White Cube, that not only created lots of buzz in the art world, but gave this popular mode of displaying art in museums and commercial galleries a catchy new name.

While his wonderful critique of the White Cube is better to read in the original form, I would like to focus on one psychological factor that made his essay become so well known.

People experience things instantly and as a whole, rather than a collection of individual parts. When looking at a red triangle, we can’t just decide to see it as a triangle or just as something red — we always see both of its features at the same time.

Similarly with music; we can’t decide to hear just the tone of a note, while zoning out the colour of the sound (for example hearing the same note being played on a drum compared to a double bass or saxophone).

We as beings need context for just about everything in our lives — even our ability for differentiating object sizes and various temperatures is done by creating context from the surrounding environment.

Ok, but what does this have to do with art? Truth be told — everything.

As art is subjective, we can never really take full control over how a viewer of our show or a customer who bought one of our pieces will understand the work’s narrative. 

A description of the work might help, but some actually prefer to make up their own mind about what a particular art piece means to them on a strictly personal level, rather than listening to the artist describe what it should mean. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that in my opinion. 

But, while we aren’t able to control everything our viewer will experience, there are many aspects of our work that we absolutely can and should be thinking about. Because understanding them makes our job of finding potential buyers or getting a place in an exhibition incredibly easier.  

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Choose materials carefully, not just as a means to an end but as building blocks of your work’s narrative. 

A marble sculpture and a wood carving of the same motif tell different stories. Both may be a portrait of someone, but marble will always communicate prestige, longevity and may form subconscious connections to Ancient Greek and Roman statues of prominent individuals, making the portrayed look even more respectable and important. Wood on the other hand is softer and warmer in appearance and more suitable for creating intimate portraits emphasising emotion rather than status.

Evoke emotions, then seal the deal with a well prepared concept.

Nothing is worse than a conceptual piece that doesn’t also work on an emotional level. The appearance of your work will make or break its ability to convey your message, so regardless of how brilliant your idea may be, if your work doesn’t first captivate your viewer and make them curious enough to step closer, all is lost.

Presentation is really important when exhibiting your work. 

Adjust lighting, surrounding objects like tables, chairs, plants … to compliment your work, or at least not to distract your viewers attention.

Impressionists used a lot of green leafy plants to compliment the vibe of their paintings, modernists decided to completely remove everything (including the frame of a painting or plinth of a sculpture) to maximise emphasis on their work — hence the White Cube principle.

When showing work online, it is imperative to get it right.

Show your work not just as a clean, shadowless and speckless photograph with good colour correction (because the images should look identical to the real thing), but incorporate it into an environment — even a generic architectural shot of a living room will be better than nothing.

Give your online images enough context and help your visitors understand the colours, size, textures and other features of your work by providing enough visual information; a few detail shots, a side view and maybe even the back of the work (if it’s 2D). For spatial works, maybe make a 360° GIF by stitching together multiple angles — nobody wants to buy a sculpture only to find that they don’t like the rear end of it.

The venue is a big part of your exhibition. 

If you paint a picture of an apple being picked by a woman somewhere in a forest and hang it in an office of a juice company, people will probably see a nice lady picking apples. But hang it in a church community centre and people might see the highly complex concept of Ancestral Sin. 

Same painting, same communication, immensely different results — just by changing the context.

So whenever you have the chance — for example if you are invited to create a show in a certain gallery from scratch — work with the space in mind, or change it if you can to make it a better fit for your work.

Regardless of what kind of art you create, if you make a thorough examination of the materials you use, the message you are trying to tell and the environment you are telling it in, you can use all of this information to reverse-engineer your work to find your target audience. 

It should never be the other way around.

from Surviving Art https://ift.tt/2mSC2Mu via IFTTT

[luminoustico]

For End of the Year Writing Meme: All the questions sound super interesting so just use this as an opportunity to answer whatever questions interest you most

So funny story I put this in my drafts to complete in the quiet time of New Year’s Day, but then I forgot about it completely. BRACE YOURSELF.

A. If you could rec a piece of music to accompany one of your fics, what would you pick? Why?

Lies by Marina and the Diamonds, to accompany the latter half of Valse Melancolique. It’s a really good song to show Irene’s POV at that point, especially her reluctance to accept that the webs she’s spun are basically collapsing around her.

“I just want it to be perfect / To believe it’s all been worth the fight,” is the most relevant set of lyrics, IMO.

B. Who’s your favourite side-character from something you wrote?

I really enjoyed writing side characters like Rose and Finn, though Rose just edges it because I’ve been enjoying writing her in Don’t Complicate It. Finn runs a very close second.

C. Get any good comments on your stuff this year?

Sure! All comments are good comments, let’s be real. Unless they’re an obvious troll comment or those “update now!!!” kind of comments. Those aren’t so good.

D. Any drawings or pictures that had a big influence on your writing?

The artwork of the late 18th century and Roberto Ferri definitely influenced the tone of Valse Melancolique. Many scenes from certain stories were driven by a single image I had in my head as well.

E.  Who’s your favourite main character you’ve written?

Though I do enjoy delving into Ben/Kylo’s psyche, I enjoy writing Rey more – she’s more enclosed, and I love chipping away at characters to get to their truths.

G. Where do you think you grew the most this year?

Towards the end of the year, I began to realise that writing can actually be fun like it used to be. I’ve been so aware of the way the world is currently that I’ve been convincing myself that my writing must have a message, or it’s not ‘worthy’. I need to understand that I started writing not to pass on any morals or messages, but as a release and a way to find enjoyment in the constant buzz.

H.  How do you write? Paper, pen, computer? Music, no music?

All of those. I write on my phone, on my computer, on pen and paper. Music and no music, it depends. Most often I’m listening to a playlist/album which then stops and I cease writing an hour or so later realising I’ve been writing in silence.

I.  What’s your favourite work you did this year? Why?

I’m always tempted to answer this kind of question with my most recent story. But I’m going to be really honest and say that star among the stars is a personal favourite. And it’s not just because of the pegging.

J.  What are the best jokes you told this year? Any jokes you thought were funny that people didn’t catch? Vice-versa?

I’m completely blanking on this one.

K. Who have you killed this year? Why did they have to die?

Qui-Gon Jinn (to match with canon), Molly and Sherlock (hey it was a story based on Dangerous Liaisons, and I was reading classical Russian literature at the time of plotting) and Kylo Ren a bunch of times (metaphorically).  

L.  Which character did you most write about this year, and why do you like ‘em?

I wrote more about Rey. As mentioned before, it’s because I like chipping away at a character’s surface but also it’s because I really relate to her, especially in regards to her feelings of loneliness and her tendency to put on ‘a brave face’. Plus I really admire her compassion and her strength. I envy it.

M. Meta! Have any meta about a story you’re dying to throw out there?

Not particularly -- just headcanons and reasons behind why I write what I write. (I’ve never been very good with meta anyway.) I really like it when other people meta my fic, or pick up on something I didn’t! That is an AMAZING feeling. 

O. Do you believe in outlines? Show us one!

I do indeed! I love my outlines. For some projects, I’ve got whole folders with docs labelled Initial Ideas, Plot Summary, Chapter Outline, etc. etc. I’ve got my notes app on my phone stuffed up to the gills with mini-outlines. I frequently use my story structure template, which is technically more for screenplays, but the breaking down into acts thing helps my brain figure things out. 

P. What are your pet peeves in other people’s work?

When an author relies too much on UST and ruins the pacing. Like, an author drags out the first getting together because they believe that the anticipation is the only thing generating comments. If it’s right to have them bang, have them bang! The awkward morning after is a delicious opportunity for UST -- just a different kind. 9 times out of 10, your readers are there not for the smut because they’re invested in the story and like your writing.

Q. Quote three bits of writing you read this year. Can be your writing, or not.

Let’s mix it up.

“ “Why did you do that?” he demanded as they ducked into a side alley. “What part of ‘keep a low profile’ is difficult for you to understand?”

“I’m a good haggler,” Rey said through a full mouth. She didn’t have any idea what she was eating, and she didn’t care. It took so much effort to chew each bite instead of gulping it down whole. “He was trying to cheat us.”

“You didn’t haggle. You pushed.”

“I did not. Why would I knock him over in the middle of his stand?”

Kylo just stared. “You need a teacher,” he muttered. He watched her eat for a moment, his expression somewhere between thoughtful and disgusted, before taking a bite from one of his own skewers. Disgust won out. ” -- Symmetry and Black Tar by audreyii_fic. (Grumpy smuggler Kylo Ren, spunky scavenger Rey, canon divergence. Excellent.)

“ "Ben," Rey breathes once Kylo's mere inches away. It's the name Luke introduced him with, the only name she knows him by, and he's never bothered to correct her. Why hasn't he corrected her? The question flees from his mind as she closes her eyes and he leans down into the space between them, kissing her full on the lips. It's not gentle, he doesn't know how to be, but she opens for him the way the flowers she loves so much bloom in the sunlight. ” -- the surface of last scattering by diasterisms. (It’s the apocalypse, it’s exactly the right time to meet the love of your life, right? Read for utter devastation.) 

“ Rey could spend hours in the Falcon’s inner workings. She’d spent so much time in the belly of hollowed-out Star Destroyers, which were horrific remnants of old worlds, cold and grey. The Falcon is alive, speaking a strange language she’s just about half-deciphered. Sometimes, on days where she misses the connection most and dreams of a boy reaching across the stars to find her, it feels like the Falcon doesn’t want to speak to her. It shuts down. Sparks spit at her, and mechanisms develop odd faults.Today, a jet of steam blows directly in her face, not harmful, but almost like a snarl of 'go away'.

Rey climbs out of the hatch, fetching tools. She works with that fault first.

“I’m not thinking about him,” she promises to no-one but the ship she’s looking after. ” -- If I was born as a blackthorn tree, by me!

R. If you had to rewrite one of your stories from scratch, which one would it be? What would you do to it?

Going to cheat here and head back to 2017. I’d rewrite Two Stars Aligned. What I’d probably do is make it a post-TLJ fic, where Rey and Ben decide to run away after getting involved in a secret relationship, but get shot down by the First Order -- after landing in Giaca, they become embroiled in Game of Thrones style politics and the ruling families, while the Resistance and the First Order conduct searches for them. I’d cut out the weird Force shit and make the redemption arc thing more organic by giving the whole story room to bloody breathe. Two Stars Aligned is actually the reason why I now try to stick to oneshots for exchanges and any anthologies I get involved in.

S. What’s the sexiest thing you wrote this year?

Sexiest thing written in 2018... It’ll have to be the pegging in star among the stars.

T. Themes, motherfucker, do you have them? What are they?

Feminism. Females being allowed to be as fucked-up and broody as the men they love, and perhaps, even broodier. Make women afraid of commitment, 2k19.

U. Any stories that took an abrupt U-turn from where you thought they were going?

If I were a blackthorn tree took a pleasing turn away from the initial outline. The initial idea was lots of secret trysts and stuff like that, but I much prefer the quiet romance with a note of hope at the end that it turned out to be.

V. Which story was the most viscerally pleasing to write? Tell us your narrative kinks.

Huh. Hm. Don’t Complicate It is turning out to be kind of fun to write; when I’m not allowing myself to be crippled by the brain goblins that is (they’re strong lately). It’s a combo of writing a trope/kink I’ve been wanting to write for ages -- A/B/O -- and remembering that it’s okay to have fun with it.

W.  Who are your favourite writers?

@kylo-wouldnt-like-those-chips - @conchepcion (every time I think I’m out, she pulls me back in *shakes fist*) - @introspectivenavelgazer - @audreyii-fic - @kylorenvevo - ambiguously - @fettuccine-alfreylo and SO MANY MORE (this post is long enough already!!)

X.  What’s your least favourite work of this year?

My least favourite has to be In Cars. It was an ambitious idea, which I didn’t really fulfil, I feel. Curse of being a perfectionist. I want something to be amazing. World-changing! Tear-jerking! I want Vestal virgins to weep golden tears over my words, already delicately transcribed onto ancient parchment by monks. Obviously, that’s an impossible standard, but I can’t help being cross when I don’t reach it.

Y. Why did you write? For fun, for a friend, for acclaim?

During 2018? Mostly for acclaim. It made 2018 a very difficult year for writing, and just a difficult year in general. I’m trying to make sure I have fun during 2019 with this stuff. Striving for perfection is a punishing task that no-one can ever accomplish because perfection doesn’t exist. Contentment does, though. As does happiness. And those should be more important.

Z. If you could choose one work and immediately finish it, what would it be? How would you end it?

I’d finish Sanctum, my priest Kylo fic. I’m split between continuing or rewriting anyway (the rewrite would include relocating the action to the medieval era, around the time Luther wrote that damned essay and pinned it to the church door). But I do know the exact image I want to finish on, which will remain whether I end up rewriting or not. It involves a name, a scrap of material and a rather fetching colour scheme. 

Ooh. Cryptic.

[ontheperiphery]

to cure a sunspot

jung hoseok x reader, fantasy!au brief adventure and fluff word count: 2k

To look for a magical cure-all was less like finding a needle in a haystack and more like finding a pixie in the vast expanse that was the ocean.

Where?

High and low he looked, in caves and crevices, rivers and streams, dense underbrush and open meadows at yet…

Where?

A boy stumbles through the forest uncertainly, not unfamiliar with it’s twists and turns and filtered light breaking through canopy leaves, tricks of the mind that had a tendency to lead the naive astray when they forgot to stick to the faintly trodden paths. It was a small danger he was willing to traverse, had done so time and time again in search of herbs and other resources. He catches himself on a branch after tripping on a root and it reminds him of his mother’s scoldings.

Don’t forget to take breaks, Hobi, for all your fancy footwork you sure lose sight of your surroundings easily.

Reminds him of the way his heart aches, the image of her lying bedridden, unable to tend to her apothecary he helped out at. There was the slight pressure that he’d have to take over the shop one day, but the lingering thoughts that truly weighed him down was the dark feeling in the pit of his heart that told him his mother was not recovering well on her own.

And losing her scared him more than anything else.

Hoseok looked down at the bags at his waist and belt, taking brief stock of what he’d already gathered, sage, feverfew, fairy’s foot, clover drops. It was a decent variety for brewing general stock but he despairingly wanted a medicine to cure whatever ailed his mother. He’d have to stop by a few shops for advice and additional ingredients on his way home later.

A faint rustling in the bushes startled Hoseok out of his thoughts and he quickly turned to identify it’s source. Ahh, it wasn’t good to space out like that in the forest, nevermind that it was broad daylight. He was deep enough in that the canopy made everything seem a little darker and daylight didn’t matter so much in deterring the more sneaky creatures.

Cautiously stepping neither closer nor further from the location of the rustling, he hoped to get a better view, but a snarl and blurred movement sent him running a heartbeat quicker than he’d even form a coherent thought. Hoseok let a hysterical screech die in his throat and truly wanted to cry in despair, but the most important thing was to get away unscathed, without attracted more unknown creatures and focusing on the branches and roots and bushed and slopes that all seemed to conspire against him.

Where?

Where, where, where?

Was searching this deep in the forest for a fabled magic herb even worth it? Now? Fleeing the unknown with the faint hope what he had gathered wasn’t being crushed in the process.

Hoseok looked over his shoulder in fear, hoping dearly that whatever was chasing him had lost interest or at least not on his heel. But it was hard to tell when, oomf!

He lost his footing and tumbled forward, arms reflexively reaching out to catch and soften his fall, but he still slid on his shoulder roughly.

Flipping over so that he would face his pursuer, Hoseok quickly drew a dagger from his belt, poised for confrontation. All was still, silent except for Hoseok’s heavy breathing and his own heartbeat ringing in his ears. Caution still controlled his nerves, so he stood slowly, dagger still held at the ready, and stepped back carefully to lean his back against a tree.

Either his pursuer lost interest in him or still lurked nearby, ready to ambush. In most cases it was the former, but there’d be a price to pay if he assumed too quickly. Straining to hear any hint of rustling, twigs snapping, movement, but finding none, Hoseok moved quietly, slowly, keen to put more distance between him and any beast.

As Hoseok continued on in the forest he came across a faint trail and breathed a sigh of relief that he had not wandered too far in his prior escape. Leaves and dirt dusted his skin and clung to his hair and he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d a few scratches from thorns and branches either. Being lost on top of all that and Hoseok doesn’t know what he’d do. Cry probably. Apologize to his mother and pray his gut feeling was wrong and she’d recover well on her own.

If Hoseok was honest with himself though, he still could very well be lost. Forest trails were often overlapped with animal trails and with his brief run off trail, he may have wandered off to who knows where. But the possibility makes him nervous and so he keeps walking until he curiously finds a series of lanterns by a haphazardly tiled path. Huh. That was new.

“Hello?”

At that Hoseok let out a small yelp and a jump, turning to the sound of the voice.

Eyes widening, he made eye contact with you, softly giggling and holding a basket of greens, “pffff, sorry, are you okay?” You’d a sprig of bright flowers tucked in your hair and faint twinkling wisps that trailed behind you.

“I…are you Fae?”

Hoseok cursed inwardly and very much wanted to slap himself for blurting out such a question when you were only being polite. He was out of line to ask something personal and he didn’t even answer your question. “I-I mean. I’m fine, thanks.” Heated embarrassment filled him but he continued, “sorry. I’m Hoseok. Are you from around here?”

You watched the struggling boy, bemused with his flustered state. He didn’t seem to mean any harm so you humored him, “It’s alright, I’m not Fae. The forest just accepts me a little more that it does most other people.” Approaching Hoseok now that he seemed a little more calm, you gestured you the uneven tiled path, “not a lot of people venture this far in to the forest, but I live just around that bend of trees.”

He seems to still have an expression of curiosity and confusion in the furrow of his brow so you try to figure out what else you can add to answer his questions…ah. You notice his eyes following the movements of the floating wisps behind you and nod towards them, “and these are forest wisps. Not quite as substantial nor as willful as spirits but they’re harmless.”

Only able to muster a thoughtful, “huh” in response, Hoseok only nodded absently.

You giggle again at his expression, “yeah, sorry to burst your bubble but I’m not a Fae. This isn’t really their forest, if you were hoping to find them.”

It takes Hoseok another moment to gather himself and he tries to shake out the soft wonder that overtook him, if only to stop acting like a fool and properly respond to you. “No that’s alright. I was just out gathering herbs when something….spooked me and I took off running until I wound up here.” He sadly remembers his lack of success in coming any closer to medicine for his mother. “My mom’s sick and I’m worried she won’t get better.”

The softness in his voice strikes a chord in your heart and you quiet for a moment in sympathy. Patting his shoulder in comfort, you take a step towards your cottage and beckon him to follow, “hey, follow me. I’ll make some tea and maybe we can figure something out for you.”

As you approach a quaint little cottage, you slow your pace to let Hoseok take it all in, fondly remembering the intense time and effort it took to remodel and build it up to the home it was for you. Herbs grew along the edges while you had a vegetable plot to the side, a small chicken coop for the willful birds a farmer gifted you a while back, a bird bath and pond towards the back. You still wonder of its previous inhabitants and how long the cottage went unoccupied but as long as the forest allowed you, you were happy to stay.

Hoseok trails a pace behind you and as you turn back to keep an eye on him you notice he still holds a flicker of nervousness and unease, probably from the unfamiliarity of your place and concern for his mother, you think. It’s a sentiment you strongly relate to and you’ve made up your mind, determined to do what you can for him.

You sit him down at a small wooden table and draw conversation out of him while you busy yourself with refreshments. Listening intently to Hoseok’s story, you agree with him that a magical all-cure sort of herb doesn’t exist and he’d been chasing after a dream, but his situation wasn’t hopeless. His mother’s ailment sounds familiar to you and after pouring some chamomile tea for both you and Hoseok, you pull out a reference journal you copied from your mentor and had added pages to yourself.

“Aha!” you exclaim in relief. Your excitement draws Hoseok closer and you begin reading the symptoms aloud to which he then begins nodding in affirmation to.

“Yeah I think that’s all right,” Hoseok replies with a hopeful tone from beside you, “is there any mention of treatment?”

You nod and pull out a loose sheet of parchment and ink to transcribe relevant information for him. “You said your mother runs an apothecary? I can give you the directions and ingredients list and you should be able to brew it up yourself. It’s most potent fresh with minimal exposure any shaking so it would be best that way.”

Hoseok smiles at that and leans his side to touch yours to express thanks. But as you write and he reads, his bright grin soon fades into a worried frown.

Given that he’s so close, you notice quickly and bump your shoulder with his to ask what’s wrong. “I hope my writing is legible,” you try to add on lightheartedly.

“I’m grateful for these directions….it’s just that….a lot of these these are very expensive back at the town,” Hoseok says with a strain in his voice, “and very difficult to come by”. He mentally goes through the numbers and figures he’d have to go through his stash of savings and ask if any friends or neighbors would be willing to loan him a pouch of coins or so, or go through who knows how many hurdles to collect some of the ingredients himself. Crushed kirin scales? Feather dust from a clearwing moth? The only thing he had access to was dust from a common soot sprite.

You stop your scribbling for a moment and gently place a hand over Hoseok’s as a comforting gesture, hoping that you aren’t overstepping any boundaries. “Hey,” you begin softly, “it’ll be okay.” You didn’t collect odd trinkets and baubles in your little cottage for nothing. “What would you say if I had most of the hard to get a hold of stuff here? That you can have?”

Hoseok looks at you as if starstruck and you continue before he has a chance to insist coins or refusal on you, “I’m favored by the forest, remember?”

He seems in a daze the rest of his brief stay at you cottage and you finish your transcription of information he needed to know, securely bundled the ingredients you had on hand, and sent him on his way with the faint glow of the guidance of forest wisps. Hoseok tries to snap himself back to his senses as you gently usher him out and he turns to look at you sincerely, taking your hands in his and puts all his feelings into genuine thanks.

Accepting Hoseok’s thanks with a smile, you gently push him out your door so he’d make it back safely before sundown. The light catches on the faint orange-pink hues in his hair and his boots hardly tap with his careful steps down your tiled path and you firmly impressed onto the forest wisps that always followed you to protect Hoseok on his journey out.

-

Hoseok shows up at your doorstep two weeks later with a colorful arrangement of flowers and herbs and when you answer with an equally bright smile, he plucks one to tuck behind your ear, grinning with a brightness that rivaled sunshine.