#i worry i'm putting in too much nonessential detail

[justaradioguy]

Kain tries to imagine a full household for a moment.

What would sisters or brothers be like? He's got no idea, so anything he pictures would be just a best guess anyway.

"My house was always empty. Big, too - talking in certain spots made it echo off the floor. I didn't like it, so I didn't talk much and I stayed in my room or out of the house."

He's never spoken about his childhood, not really. This is the most detail he recalls ever giving someone, and it's... not even that telling of a detail, at least in his opinion. The conversation moves on, and Roy asks about Chicken. It puts a small smile on his face.

"Yeah, he's a chocobo. Just a baby one. A little guy, if you will. His name is Chicken," he explains, and upon hearing his name, the bird lifts his head briefly.

Just like that, though, the smile is gone as fast as it had come.

Is now the time to tell Roy that he's not sure if he will be tagging along?

'It's not like he'll be too upset about it,' he tells himself, and that's probably his biggest problem other than being branded a traitor.

"Yeah, I know Al," he replies, though his voice feels detached from himself now. All semblance of a tone and an expression have left. This happens sometimes nowadays, whenever he slips.

Another byproduct of a pointless war, he assumes, but at least being numbed out is better than being explosive. At least his brain is kind enough sometimes to shut down all the nonessential functions, all the emotions that make life so incredibly hard to navigate.

"Kweh?" Chicken calls, turning to tug at his owner's sleeve as if reminding him not to stray too far from the conversation.

He looks down, petting him with his other hand. It seems too big to belong to him, somehow, despite the fact he looks at it every day. "I'm alright, buddy. Don't worry."

Another second passes, or maybe it's a full minute before he puts a less-than-natural smile back on his face to look at Roy again. It isn't like small increments of time passing are easy to figure out even when he is entirely present.

Either way, he feels it irrelevant information to bother telling Roy, so he moves past it.

"What are the cats' names?"

They both creep back over to the bed, and he feels like an idiot. He knows why he doesn't have his cane, and he wouldn't change it, but damn does his leg want to protest.

He's not sure how much more he can lie about it not being too bad, but that's an issue for later.

Kain sinks onto the mattress as soon as he gets to it, watching as Roy fetches the cane for him and leaves it close by. Chicken patters around behind the alchemist until he's satisfied, then joins Kain to settle into his lap.

Roy stands off to the side, leaning against the wall. He's not sure if that's deliberate or if Roy just wants to stand there, but before he can ask, his first question is being answered.

And it, too, ends in a question.

Fuery thinks long and hard before he answers. It's difficult to not feel like Roy is playing mind games all the time - he's not easy to read and Kain's still trying to determine where they both stand anyway.

Mustang has a way of making him feel like he's being examined under a microscope, and he doesn't know why.

But this doesn't feel like a test. It feels like... some other thing.

"It makes sense... He's not the easiest to talk to, sometimes. Maybe if you just want to get straight to the point or if you're trying to be challenged somehow," he agrees.

Or interrupted, or spoken over - but Breda doesn't typically speak to Roy in the way that he speaks to Kain, and Roy didn't come to hear about how his master sergeant isn't quite as oblivious as many would be led to believe anyway.

"I wish I had a lot to say to fill space. I'm not the most interesting company. For being a communications expert, I'm a terrible conversationalist. You probably knew that, though." He laughs almost humorlessly, a bit awkwardly if anything. His hands are stroking Chicken's feathers, just to be busy. On the upside, the chocobo seems profoundly content with this.

"I guess I'm trying to say I don't really know what to say, so I'm sorry if maybe you were expecting something a little different."

It feels like he's talking to a stranger. It almost always does, though - he's never really had many naturally-flowing conversations in his life before coming here and talking to Kumo. He can navigate work-related friendly small talk with relative ease, but... this is uncharted territory. He can try though. Roy came for company, not a brick wall.

"Would you believe it if I told you that I never really talked to anyone before the military? Funny that I ended up operating phones so much, huh?"

[pricechecktranslations]

TTDS: The Ring of Evil; Chapter 1

Torture Tower Doesn’t Sleep: The Ring of Evil infomine under the cut

Scene 1

Scene opens up with Rack, cleaning the tower (and that she does it partially to alleviate boredom). She likes to clean most at night (because she doesn’t sleep anyway, and in fact feels more energetic at night, as do the rest of the girls). Maiden sometimes lectures her though, saying she misses things because she doesn’t clean when there’s light to see by.

Gibbet is out tonight. Rack hears someone scream upstairs, thinking it’s Maiden executing their last prisoner, who’s been there for a month. They’ve been getting less and less prey lately, so Rack has mostly been cleaning despite being a torturer.

Little recap on the girls, Beritoad, and why they do what they do. Rack actually has faint memories and sensations from when she was a torture device, apparently (things like Hank smiling as she tortured people, him cleaning the blood off her afterwards, etc).

She’s cleaning the dining room, that has the now-sealed secret passage. She notices that a cupboard has been moved a little. This brings her thoughts to the passage, wondering on who the original tower’s owner was and why they made it.

She sees an iron plate in the spot where the cupboard used to be. She tries to move it, or pry it up with her spikes, but it won’t budge. Her spike falls to the plate and then won’t come off, like it’s been glued down. She considers getting Maiden to help her with her powers of moving through walls, but she wants to find out what it is before anyone else. In the process of trying to break it open, she gets a spike stuck in the wall.

In getting the spike out, she breaks a hole in the wall. Moonlight gets in, and illuminates the iron plate.

A disturbance in the air forms above the plate, getting bigger and taking shape into the form of a person. It’s male, and about her height. She’s shocked, but pretends not to be for her pride. He greets her, and she demands he put some clothes on (as he’s naked, though still in a state between ghostly and corporeal).

He apologizes and immediately transforms to have clothing on, a white shirt with a black vest and necktie, and a yellow tailcoat. His outfit reminds her of a man named (kuramuzeru—Not sure how to romanize this) who came to the tower once (when Hank was still alive and Rack was just a rack). He was a servant of a General Carax (karakkusu). He was rugged, though, whereas the boy here is feminine in appearance.

The boy calls her “princess” (different word for princess than Riliane though). This is because, though, he thinks she’s the lord of the tower. She tells him to call her Rack, and that she’s not the lord here. She thinks he’s dangerous. He tells her she can call him Amo.

She asks if he’s a familiar of their “god” Beritoad, and Amo reacts strangely to that (basically, he knows of Beritoad, and not as his servant). Despite his polite manner he’s a little bit of a gadfly, it seems (ex, Rack asks him what he (Amo) is, and he says “I could tell you but I won’t”).

Rack gets annoyed and throws her spikes at him, but he doesn’t flinch or react at all when they sail past him. He’s a mere illusion, after all, and thus non-corporeal.

Rack declares he must be a ghost of someone who died in the tower. But Amo points out she’s never seen him before. He also denies being the ghost of someone from before she was made. He still refuses to admit what he is to her, though eventually relents and says he’ll tell her if she does him a favor.

He says a part of him (vague on what) is in the basement under the metal plate, and he wants Rack to take it out. She’s not sure how to get in there, of course, and so decides to take some time to think on it.

Amo departs, asking that they don’t patch the hole in the wall in the meantime, as it’ll stop him from being able to talk to her (he shows up when the moonlight shows through). Rack decides to go tell Maiden what happened.

Scene 2

Maiden is in the chapel reporting that she’d killed the last prisoner to Beritoad. They don’t notice Rack enter. They discuss how Rabiah and Gibbet have been having trouble due to outside interference, when it comes to gathering new prey. Maiden is having doubts, as they are torture devices who have hardly been torturing anyone lately.

Rack makes her presence known, and soon they get to talking about the outside world. Rack has no memories of when she was made outside the tower.

At one point after they were awakened, another wraith sealed (magically I think) the entrance to the tower (according to Beritoad). This lasted for fifteen years until “someone” (it doesn’t say who) arrived and unsealed the entrance. Then there’s a bit of recap on the stuff with Raymond and the others.

The point of the conversation is that basically this is not the first time the girls had a drought of torturing people, so Rack isn’t put off by it.

Maiden asks how close they are to restoring Beritoad. He says about 20-30 people (depending on how much they suffer first). He warns them that Raymond and Romarius (and Tsukumo) are sure to get in the way, though.

Rack brings up the situation with Amo, but Beritoad tells her to drop it, and get the hole in the wall fixed pronto. Maiden has one more thing she wants to ask, but Beritoad leaves for the day.

Scene 3

Maiden and Rack return to the first floor dining room, and she shows her the metal plate from before (with her spike still stuck to it). After a bit of inspection Maiden determines that it’s magnetic (which makes helping lift it tricky for her). Even if she used her ability to pass through things it still might draw her in.

While Rack puzzles over this, Maiden inspects the hole in the wall. Rack insists she not repair it, wanting to find out Amo’s secret. She says she’ll meet with Amo secretly when Beritoad sleeps. That still leaves the issue of the hole in the wall. Maiden has an idea, but wants to ask about something else first.

She had a letter addressed to her. Ordinarily the only letters they get are from Gibbet, but this is different. It says only: “I’m going to meet you soon”, from someone called Garnes (Ganes? Garneth?) Elsebert (gaanesu eruzeberuto).

Rack knows who he is, and is surprised Maiden doesn’t know (Maiden professes to have a bad memory). Rack tells her in exchange for her handling the situation with the wall, but the scene cuts off before she says who he is.

Scene 4

The scene is a large info dump on Benji, so there’s a lot to write. The “Kemp Clinic” was founded sixty years ago by Benji’s grandfather Olaf Kemp (oorafu), set in the northern region of Lion City, on Vinyl Hill (bainaru). Olaf is turning 82 this year, and four years ago he passed the director’s seat on to his son and retired (having suffered from an illness in his retinas). Benji and his father are the only doctors working there, but it wasn’t that big a clinic to begin with so it’s fine.

Benji’s great grandfather was a famous architect who worked in the royal capital, and apparently he worked on the large Sell Cross church (seru kurosu—I think it maaaay be a pun on kurosuseru, meaning “cross sell”?).

The clinic was originally founded to heal coal miners (coal mining being an extremely dangerous and illness inducing job)

Apparently, during the diamond boom his father and grandfather got depressed when more and more doctors from out of town (more educated than the country doctors they were) showed up and started taking their patients. Wanting Benji to become a better doctor than himself, his father made him study medicine very rigorously. Benji liked study and wanted to do his dad proud, and so eventually was allowed to attend college in the royal capital.

There, he became distracted by all the amusements there that he couldn’t experience in Lion City. He started drinking, and got a girlfriend (he didn’t smoke because she didn’t like it). He shirked his studies. Despite this, he was still top of his class—and there he realized he was a prodigy. Once he realized that he could achieve such high marks in medicine without even trying, he lost all interest and drive in being a doctor.

He even got tired of all the amusements in the capital city, wanting to find a way to challenge himself. He dropped out of college (not because he failed, but because he spent all his college money on nightlife amusements). Fortunately, you don’t need a license to be a doctor in this country.

Benji wanted to work in the capital, but his father forbid it, viewing him as a failure who wasted all the money that he’d worked hard to provide for him. As such, he wanted Benji to stay right where he could keep an eye on him. Hence Benji working with him now (which he doesn’t mind). He also broke up with his girlfriend on returning to Lion City (which he also seemed to take in stride).

The only problem is that Lion City is much more boring than the capital, and he doesn’t have the head to earn money to leave on his own. This is why he was able to tell there was something to Raymond when he first met him in Stella’s bar, that made him different from others. He became a fast acquaintance, wanting info on the disappearances and Benji having been reading up on them out of interest. Which led to the events of the first novel.

Benji is convinced there’s something else about the tower—that the wraiths and Beritoad only came in after the fact. He’s wondering why it was built in the first place. Apparently he did become an attendant physician on the Chamberlain family after all, and he’s used it to broaden the scope of his research on the matter (his father was very proud of him for doing that).

The Benji family has a warehouse to their name as well, full of various antiques and stuff. Benji’s room is on its second floor, as a quiet place to study. He also has a room in the clinic, but he doesn’t stay there because it’s too close to where he works.

Right now, in that room in the warehouse, Benji and several men and women are assembled for a secret meeting (one of whom is a wraith).

Scene 5

There’s a wooden desk in the middle of Benji’s room, and on it is a candle that is the sole source of illumination for everyone there. In the room is a blonde haired young man, a girl with short hair painting on nail polish (Luna, spelled runa), a muscular older man (Garnes), and a boy who looks younger than everyone present (Isaac, spelled aizakku). Romalius is also present (since the wiki’s seen fit to rename Romarius to Romalius fitting his name inspiration of Andromalius, I’ll refer to him as Romalius as well).

Benji begins the meeting by reporting on the current situation. They’ve hindered Gibbet’s plans in Mercerie City, but that doesn’t mean they’ve fully averted the tower gaining more victims. She’s just operating more carefully so as to not get caught.

The last disappearance was a month ago, the son of a Lion City council member. This brings up discussion of what happened half a year ago in the previous novel, where Gibbet made the mayor into a puppet to get more victims. The people here were the ones who stopped her by killing the mayor. Strictly speaking Isaac did it—he’d intended to kill Gibbet too, but she’d gotten away.

About a month after that, Lion City’s mayor suddenly died. There was an election for a new one—everyone thought Mr. Walt (woruto, as in ウォルト), who had long served as vice mayor, would be chosen. However, a young politician named Blood Asterisk (buraddo asutarisuku) who had recently appeared in Lion City stole the victory. Blood is originally from the Melbiland (merubirando) region to the north. According to Chamberlain, there was a fair bit of corruption going on during the election. And ever since Blood became mayor, Lion City has had more disappearances.

Isaac asks if he can’t just kill him like they did in Mercerie, but Benji points out that it was only with Romalius fixing things for them that they didn’t get caught last time.

Benji isn’t even sure that Blood is connected to the Torcia girls, but Romalius confirms he is. He wants them to meet with the man personally. Benji thinks he can set something up using Chamberlain, and Romalius offers to send Raymond with him to help.

The blonde young man steps forward, bringing up the topic of the mayor’s family—supposedly he has a wife who doesn’t come out in public, who they think might be Gibbet. He offers to investigate into that matter.

Luna says she is making preparations for the “performance” relating to Torcia Tower. (just a disclaimer it is hard to infomine this scene because the narrative is being really vague about who they are and what they’re doing so as to not spoil the rest of the story).

After some prodding, Romalius declares that whatever it is they’re preparing for, they’ll do it in a month. All the investigations and preparations should be done by then. Benji almost draws the meeting to a close (to meet again in two weeks), but Isaac demands to know what he should be doing, with Benji saying that while he doesn’t have much to do in the leadup, he’ll be essential for the “performance” itself. Isaac humphs and storms off.

Luna comments on how much Benji has changed (implying she knew him before). Benji brushes it off as growing up, and then closes the meeting.

Scene 6

Romalius is the only one to remain, looking at the tower to the south out the window. He knows who built it and why, all those centuries ago. He seems to be reflecting on his place in the world (how humans rule the land now instead of wraiths, how humans and wraiths are both pawns in the grand scheme of things, that he is a particularly frail pawn at that. He wishes to reject that destiny, etc).

His butler arrives to take him back to the castle. While on the road they discuss the meeting and Benji, Romalius mentioning that he doesn’t seem much like Will or Henry (wiru and henrii—in context I think he’s talking about Benji’s ancestors). Bateau is Romalius’ loyal and long-standing familiar, as a note (I suppose that makes him a wraith). Apparently, Romalius is involved partially because he wants to get at Benji’s documents on the tower, and is sticking with them because he finds them useful.

Romalius starts trembling (seems he’s actually a bit sickly, but hides it for appearances sake). Soon enough he recovers himself, and then switches topics to having Raymond sent back this way. Bateau wonders if Romalius might have any feelings for Raymond as an adoptive son, but Romalius brushes him off.

Scene 7

A new intruder has appeared before the tower, Beritoad’s powers having recently extended to seeing a few meters outside of the tower in addition to its interior. He has arrived at the tower’s back, and starts climbing up it using irregularities in the brick rather than walking inside. Beritoad recognizes him from this (apparently he didn’t recognize him at first because he’s gotten older). It takes some time for the narrative to get to it, but for the sake of clarity, this is Garnes. Beritoad doesn’t think it likely he’s out to kill him, so waits patiently for Garnes to reach him.

Garnes reaches the roof and goes down the stairs to where Beritoad is. He greets him like a casual friend, not seeming tired out from climbing the tower in the slightest. He has a hammer on him, but Beritoad knows he’s not a fighter. They banter a bit, before Beritoad gets to why Garnes is here.

Garnes has unfinished business (having put it off until hearing rumors of Beritoad lately). He’s here about the “Iron Maiden” that he made, having heard that Beritoad made her a person (which makes Beritoad suspicious, because not many people know that the girls are torture devices). They talk a little about Maiden, Garnes saying he’s here to fix a defect in Maiden.

At this point, Maiden drops an iron maiden on him, which he catches and tosses aside. Maiden demands he leave Beritoad alone. Garnes is ecstatic to see her, recognizing her as his creation even in her new form (amusingly, he asks if Beritoad made her a cute girl out of his own preferences, and Beritoad says, “No comment”).

Maiden realizes he’s the one who wrote her the letter, and he introduces himself (presumably, Garnes was employed by Hank in the past. Nonetheless, he is a torture device craftsman).

[lluvguts]

a lot of my fics are written inside notebooks. however they often have 'fill in later' parts or parts that are outlined rather than properly written (for ex. I'll write "They grab coffee, I'll write that later when I type this up") but when it comes to typing it into the computer I get extremely intimidated and put it off, partly bc I feel lazy about it but also I'm perfectionist-y and worry about obsessing and spending too much time on dealing w the 'fill in later' parts. what tips do you have?

i am the exact same. way. i feel ya there, don't worry <3

i'm the sort of writer that is pretty perfectionist-esque too, hence why i cannot do the "fill in the blanks" stuff. it irritates me and then i end up putting off whole chunks of a fic just cause i didn't initially sit down and write it when i was in the flow yk? (side note here, you write your fics in a notebook? respect. i just bullet point ideas or make fancy spreads/write dialogue in mine, you're coollll). okay okay i had a point to this: i guess my advice is, if you don't have the heart, or the right headspace to write some nonessential bracketed part of your fic, maybe just omit it with a little bar? have a time gap? this really helps me, because though i love details, i think my readers don't. or, put it away for x amount of time and let it breathe, think it over, and reread what you've already written to see if any inspiration for those bracketed pieces comes back!!! i hope this helps, i'm finally writing again

<3 see ya anon