#i wrote it years ago yet i still had to write it in novel form so it felt like a drag!

[britishchick09]

after 4 years, 3 months and 27 days i've finally finished book 3 of my sibling story! :D

[elizabeethan]

Not With Haste

An Overboard Conclusion

Oh hi, where the hell did this come from? I'm wondering the same thing. in reality, @donteattheappleshook talked to me about oarfish maybe 2 years ago and I started writing something stupid. I always intended to finish it and post it for @the-darkdragonfly's birthday, but I never found it in me to complete it. Then tonight I found that stupid thing and I finished it. You never know when that funny little creativity bug might bite, I guess.

I've always wanted to write some form of conclusion for Overboard because it's one of my favorite things that I've written. I first published Overboard way back in May of 2021, and looking back, I've grown and learned a lot and there are things I would probably do differently if I started the story over again, but I can't see myself ever editing it because I love what I wrote. Would I rewrite it into a novel and really flesh out the story and the characters? A girlie can dream, never say never, you never know when the creativity bug might bite, etc.

I hope everyone here is well, I know I am for the most part, and I'll never stop being grateful for this little community that I found all those years ago. More than that, I'll never stop being grateful for the feeling of being able to come back after a time away. It's been fun to log back in to everything and pick up where I left off as if no time has passed. (It's been so long since I've done this so if the formatting is all messed up, I'm really sorry, but I barely knew what I was doing.)

Long story short, this story is finally complete. It's barely edited and it's not beta'd, so thank you for giving it a chance.

Rated T I think

~2300 words

Read on Ao3

Read my Other Stuff

~~~~

Even after sixteen years of marriage, Killian often finds himself wondering what on earth could possibly be going through his wife’s head. 

  The thoughts of wonderment and confusion strike him at the oddest of times, always in response to something she’s said or done and never with any sort of answer. The first time he knew he was in trouble was fifteen years ago, when he returned home from a trip to find she had adopted a rottweiler. Still, Ripple refuses to retire from her post as the Jones’ Harbor Tours’ mascot, and Emma often tries to convince him that it’s because she’s as stubborn as her father. 

  In truth, Emma Jones is the most stubborn person he has ever met in his life, a fact which will likely never be contested. 

  He finds himself confused so often that he can barely recount any examples of her free spirited nature. (She calls herself a wild child, although she often shouts at him whenever he uses the term in bed.) There was the time she impulsively began tearing up the tile flooring in the bathroom after watching three whole YouTube tutorials (her words), only to sob into his already sea-soaked sweater when she realized how physically taxing reflooring an entire room is without any experience, general tiling knowledge, materials, or help. Then there was the time she randomly asked him if he would still love her if she was a worm, and then became irrationally angry when he found himself unable to answer without first asking clarifying questions. And the incident when she questioned his loyalty to her when he refused to hunt down and kill the person who bumped into her parked car and drove off. He later discovered that the question came after she had finished some romance novel about the mafia. He chose not to dig any deeper into that one.

  All this to say: Killian’s wife is a free spirit, a wild child, a confusing, strange, barely-readable woman who stole his heart in one breath and has yet to give it back almost two decades later. 

  And, he has no idea what the bloody hell she’s talking about more than half the time. 

  He wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Emma (Trophy Wife): have you ever see this??? In the wild??????

  Emma (Trophy Wife): Attached: 1 Image

  Killian: What are you doing?

  He shakes his head, as exasperated as he is filled with a warm sense of comfort, just like he always is whenever he sees the name she gave herself the moment their vows were exchanged pop onto his phone screen.

  Emma (Trophy Wife): they inhabit the atlantic ocean. *vomiting emoji*

  Killian: Stop watching National Geographic if it’s going to make you nauseous. 

  Emma (Trophy Wife): that’s where you worked!!

  Killian: That’s also where we live.

  Emma (Trophy Wife): you never saw one in your sexy fisherman days? LOOK at that thing. 

  Killian quickly discovers that she’s referring to an Oarfish. They’re the longest known bonefish and inhabit very deep water, are rarely seen or caught alive, and are thought to be generally harmless. Still, he knows that these facts will not prevent his wife from overreacting, so he chooses not to bother. 

  Though she’s always hidden it well, Emma has a strange fear of creatures of the deep, as she often calls them. She’s told him that the tuna he used to pull onto the deck of his boat didn’t bother her– even though they were often almost twice her height in length and weighed upwards of 1,000 pounds– because they were no longer in the water. But the thought of running into one of those slimy bastards while swimming gives her panicky symptoms— her words. He hasn’t bothered to point out the absolute impossibility of her ever running into a giant bluefin tuna while swimming, either. After sixteen years of marriage, he’s learned which battles are better left unfought. 

  Of course, there are times when his correcting her drives her absolutely mad, often to the point of her feeling compelled to kiss him in order to shut him up, and he navigates those moments very carefully and with a smirk on his lips. 

  Killian: They aren’t known to be predatory.

  Emma (Trophy Wife) disliked “They aren’t known to be predatory.”

  Killian: Attached: 1 Image

  Killian: You see? They have small mouths and no teeth. Harmless.

  It’s unlike her to wait so long to reply, as she’s often glued to her phone at least when she’s mid conversation. But it’s almost a full two minutes that he finds himself standing in front of the display of pasta sauce, looking like a complete fool and blocking the path of an elderly woman, breath bated as he waits for a response from her. Bloody hell, he thinks to himself as he shakes his head. He’s known the woman for eighteen years and he still can hardly breathe in anticipation of whatever adorably inane thought leaves her mouth without any sort of filter. 

  Emma (Trophy Wife): Attached: 1 Video

  Lovely. Even as he watches the attached video of her silently dry heaving, he’s desperately in love with her. He watches it again. 

  Her blonde hair has gone lighter over the years, streaks of white coloring through the gold in a way that makes her look somehow even more sexy and playful than when he first laid eyes on her. There are soft creases beside her eyes as she squeezes them shut, her mouth open and her tongue out as she pretends to be so violently offended by the image he sent her that it’s made her ill. 

  Emma (Trophy Wife): expect consequences when you get home. even if you get the good mac and cheese. 

  Emma (Trophy Wife): you KNOW how i feel about serpents and sea monsters. 

  Killian: I do. 

  Emma (Trophy Wife): … and????

  Killian: I’m sorry for traumatizing you with my serpent. 

  Killian: And for how that just sounded. 

  Emma (Trophy Wife): if you’re not home in 34 minutes i’m not touching your serpent for two whole days. 

  Killian: Well, now that I'm familiar with your gag reflex… 

  Emma (Trophy Wife): 33 minutes. 

  ~~~~

  Ripple is the oldest dog Killian has ever known. Her silver snout and eyebrows catch in the setting sun, and it’s painfully obvious from her gait how sore her joints are, but still, at his arrival home, she hurries her way towards him with as much enthusiasm as she can muster. 

  Their vet has told them that she’s the healthiest dog he’s treated in a while, considering her age, and Emma uses that as a point of pride for their perfect child. 

  “Hi, darling,” he says when she finally reaches him, her soft smile lighting up her face once he drops the reusable grocery bags in order to give her a scratch behind the ears. Killian’s getting up there in age, too, but he still manages to squat down to her level and kiss her nose. 

  The two of them make quite the pair while Killian struggles back into a standing position and then they both hobble towards the front door. His fishing career was lucrative and rewarding, but dammit if it didn’t lead to stiff joints that his wife pokes fun at. She’s never met a “my husband is older than me” joke she hasn’t loved. 

  “I’m glad you both made it,” she happily chortles from the kitchen, making him smile. He’s never smiled more widely than he does with Emma. 

  “The abuse I’m subjected to,” he mutters as he drops the bags on the floor for her to peruse. It’s a deal they made years ago; Killian does the shopping because the grocery store makes Emma too itchy, and she puts the groceries away in exchange. 

  She snorts when she pulls out the bag of goldfish, sending Killian a playful smirk. “Looks like a good haul.”

  “Aye, love. I thought you might enjoy a fishy treat after our conversation.”

  “Always so thoughtful,” she murmurs as she makes her way to him. The kitchen is small, but they’ve always had just enough space for the three of them. 

  “It’s a difficult cross to bear,” he nods, catching her wrist as soon as she’s close enough to pull towards him. “But anticipating your needs is one of the many responsibilities I take very seriously.”

  Emma’s hands land on his neck, fingers tangling with the silver hair at the back of his head while her thumbs trace along his jaw. She likes to call him a silver fox when she’s feeling playful. “My perfect husband,” she says softly, voice syrupy sweet in that way that still manages to get him excited. 

  “I couldn’t be a perfect husband without my perfect wife,” he answers, earning a beaming grin that he barely catches before her lips press to his. 

  It never ends. The way he wants her has been an inferno so intense since the day they met, and it hasn’t been snuffed out in all these years. The moment she’s near him, his blood starts to simmer, and once she touches him, kisses him like she is now, he’s a goner. 

  Her tongue is soft as it sweeps over the seam of his lips, lazily working to deepen the kiss they share. She kissed him with urgency, but not with haste, never rushing but always desperate. It’s enough to have him pushing her backwards, her lower back softly pressing against the counter before he lifts her onto it. Emma’s legs part seemingly without her even thinking about it, and before either of them have a chance to put the rotisserie chicken in the refrigerator, he wonders if he should just carry her to their room. Part of him has this never ending need to show her just how desperate he still is for her. 

  But then, she speaks. 

  “Wait,” she breathes, chest rising and falling rapidly as her warm breath fans over his mouth, her forehead still pressed to his and her fingers clinging to the collar of the light sweater he wears. 

  “Yes, love?” he asks, perfectly prepared to answer whatever silly question she likely has as long as he can have her after. 

  “About the oarfish…”

  He fights a groan. “I promise you, there is absolutely no chance of you ever seeing an oarfish for as long as you live.”

  “I know, I did plenty of research while you were gone.”

  He breathes out a soft laugh, his smile growing when she kisses it. “What’s wrong, then?”

  “Would you still love me if I was an oarfish?”

  His world stops for just a moment. Just a second, really, as he tries to right his mind and will a tiny bit of blood back to his brain so that he can answer this very unimportant and yet somehow very vital question correctly. 

  “If you were an oarfish,” he starts, hand sliding up from her hip to her ribs before finding her cheek, “then I would be an oarfish. And we would be married and have a pet… eel, perhaps. Named Ripple. And we would live in a tiny oarfish cottage and be happy and in love for as long as oarfish live.”

  Emma sighs, the softest smile on her perfect lips making him crazy as her arms wrap around his neck in one of his favorite hugs. 

  “I love you,” she whispers into his ear. He’ll never tire of this. Of the soft, almost unfathomable way that the love they have for one another strikes at the most random times. 

  “I love you, too, Swan. Always. No matter what species we are.”  

  “And I love you, no matter how much older you are than me.”

  He grabs her then, hoisting her against him to the best of his ability as her ankles cross at his back. “Disrespectful,” he murmurs, carrying her from the kitchen and happily forgetting about the frozen broccoli florets, not cuts she made him buy. 

  “You better teach me a lesson, then,” she taunts with a smirk, as if that isn’t exactly what she was after. 

  “Don’t act like that isn’t exactly what you want, love.”

  “Don’t act like you don’t get off on giving me exactly what I want.”

  To that, he just returns her smirk and offers a quick smack to her ass before dropping her onto the bed they share, because he knows she’s right. For the rest of his days, he’ll be happy, as long as he has his family. 

~~~~

I'm using my old tag list from 2 years ago. If you don't want to be tagged, I'm real sorry and let me know if I should remove you

@kmomof4 @stahlop @klynn-stormz @laschatzi @emelizabeth88 @lfh1226-linda @timeless-love-story @captain-emmajones-blog @gingerpolyglot @ebcaver @ilovemesomekillianjones @teamhook @superchocovian @tiganasummertree @gingerchangeling @jrob64 @onceratheart18 @winterbaby89 ​@ultraluckycatnd @love-with-you-i-have-everything @shireness-says @snowbellewells @hollyethecurious @the-darkdragonfly @donteattheappleshook @jonesfandomfanatic @wefoundloveunderthelight @qualitycoffeethings @batana54 @sailtoafarawayland @deckerstarblanche @zaharadessert @pirateprincessofpizza @killianslefthook

[michellemisfit]

WEEKLY TAG WEDNESDAY - FIRSTS!

Tagged by @suzy-queued @deedala @darlingian @heymrspatel @lingy910y @energievie @mybrainismelted @blue-disco-lights

Name: Michelle

Age: Currently getting a kick out of telling people that I’m nearly 40 and having them go ‘NO WAY!!!’ - It’s funny and flattering :)

First Pet: Siberian gerbils called Tom & Jerry

First Word: No idea. Turns out my parents kept a baby book for my older brother where they painstakingly recorded all of that stuff. I found mine a few years ago and it’s got a grand total of 3 entries, one of which is talking about how chubby I am, and how I am yet to find a food I’ll say no to, and let’s hope that’s not a sign of things to come… after which it was abandoned. Thanks mum.

First Celebrity Crush: Leonardo DiCaprio

First IRL Crush: Dominik. We hung out basically every day after school. I would go round to his house and he would play me the latest Michael Jackson tape and show me new dance steps that he’d taught himself. I thought he was so cool.

First Kiss: Age 14 with my first boyfriend. He was 20 years old. We were in a relationship for over a year. Shit was fucked up. At the risk of repeating myself… Thanks mum.

First Car: Bebop 🚙 He’s my baby and I bought him this year and I love him! He’s a turquoise 2013 Toyota Yaris Hybrid.

First apartment/house/dorm/whatever away from your parents: Heh. I moved straight from my childhood bedroom to a different country. If you’re gonna do something, do it right! lol

First Time on a Plane: I was… 18 months old? Parents went on holidays to Florida. I have about 3 memories from that trip.

First Cellphone: Nokia 3210 😎

First Concert: David Hasselhoff. I was maybe… 6? And I got very tired and slept through the second half, but my parents woke me up for Looking for Freedom, which was my favourite song of his.

First Foreign country you visited? Italy or France most likely. Pure proximity, and most of our family vacations were done by car from Switzerland so…

First sport you ever played? Hmm. I did competitive swimming when I was very young. And then gymnastics. And after that… about five minutes of football (the only sport I to this day do not understand. How do I run AND kick a ball simultaneously?!?), then 3 years of tennis, 2 years of basketball, 8 years of roller hockey, and a whole smattering of other sports on and off.

First career aspiration? I mean… I basically wanted to be a Disney Princess, purely for the Animal Best Friend aspect! And then any form of Animal Whisperer would have done the trick. I watched all the TV shows and movies where characters had magical bonds with animals, and I wanted that. And then I realised that the characters in the shows and movies aren’t real, but the people training and handling those animals *are*. However that wasn’t something realistic to aspire to, being Swiss, so instead I became a bookseller (somehow that made sense at the time… 🤷🏽‍♂️). And then 15 years later, in a different country and a different life, I did end up training animals for TV and film. So that’s kinda nifty.

And finally… tell me about the first time you wrote/drew/created/whatever something that made you think “wow”

Hmmm. I dunno. I thought I was really fucking talented when I was about 12. I wrote a novel and sent it to publishing houses and literary agencies. One of them invited me for an interview, because they thought my writing was great and they wanted to meet the kid that had sent them a manuscript aged 12/13. They ended up giving me a job, working as a admin/secretary/slush pile reader. They also gave me lots of feedback and constructive criticism on my writing. I scrapped the novel I had sent them in favour of writing a different, better novel. I still think that novel was pretty fucking good. I tried to get my mum to proof read it and give me feedback so I could do any necessary corrections before I spent my pocket money on photocopies, C4 envelopes, and a whole bunch of stamps so I could attempt to get it published again. She was dragging her feet and I tried to explain the urgency, because I was clear that it needed to happen before I turned 14. That was the goal in my head. I had huge ambitions and dreams. I was also convinced that if it happened after I turned 14 it wouldn’t be special anymore. Like anyone could do it after 14… 🙄 In response to this my mum told me that she’d had ambition and dreams, too, when she was my age. But not to worry, that’ll go away, and once you’ve put away the fanciful notions of being talented then you can just get on with your life…

Not sure if this actually answers the question, but that was kinda the first and last time I remember feeling uncomplicatedly good about and proud of something I created. After this anything creative I did was always immediately followed by the doubt of ‘is this actually good, or is this just a fanciful notion I have about being talented, when in actual fact it sucks?’ 🤷🏽‍♂️

Wow. Ended that on a downer, didn’t I?

…

Erm… I wrote Tell me we’ll never get used to it,

They’re the only two people left that know what it’s like to have loved and to have lost a Lightwood.

And it’s a good story.

There.

I said it…

Tagging @crossmydna @palepinkgoat @too-schoolforcool @vintagelacerosette @heymacy @loftec @mikhailoisbaby @rereadanon @the-rat-wins @tsuga-of-mars @ian-galagher @andthatisnotfake @francesrose3 @faejilly @jrooc @creepkinginc if you fancy playing? I’m just very exited I’m actually posting this on a Wednesday still! Whoop!!

[strangefable]

i have some strong feelings about nanowrimo. (edit: and i'm putting it all under a readmore now, since I had a lot to say actually.)

i was there in the early years. i was an ML for a few years. i had a very strong community, and many friendships, and even one of the most important romantic relationships of my life, (as well as one of the worst) because of the community i found there. it fueled so much of my creativity while i was in college and in the confusing years afterward. i wrote SO MUCH because of nanowrimo. i found a home among other weird writers.

then baty stepped away. others stepped forward, and i watched year after year, as the entire organization slowly shifted to... something else. something without the heart or purpose or vigor or soul that the was the whole point of the exercise. some were good things, at first. attempts to expand spaces for younger writers. outreach with schools and libraries. and some things were never good. there became more and more focus on SPONSORS and 'prizes' in the form of endless adverts for said sponsors as 'coupons' for their products. some of this was good, actually, i got scrivener because of one of those early deals, and it changed how i wrote significantly for the better. but that was when there was only two or three 'sponsors' involved, and they were very much also indie projects at the time.

then things started getting sketchy with how MLs were treated and community functions were mishandled. then there were rumors and whispers about things being a bit... off in the YWP. and the sponsors were everywhere. tons of them. constantly. the people i'd known forever started to leave in trickles and then in droves. the community was gone. the MLs left were unsupported and struggling to get communication from hq. it was readily apparent that the head office had become a fucking shitshow.

then came the truth about what was going on in YWP. which was horrifying. and yet. they did nothing. tried to sweep it under the rug. pretended it was just a misunderstanding, same old bullshit. and i cried, because i saw what had become of a once wholesome beautiful thing, now marred by greed and people with ill intent and no interest in the craft whatsoever.

and now everyone is talking about this AI touting from them as if it's a shock. a surprise. it's not. this has been the path chosen for years. by people who took over a nonprofit that was never meant to be a large unwieldy organization in the first place. they treated it like a business. they're running it like a corporation. they have been for a while now.

those of us who were there, we know this. we watched it happen, year after year. this isn't a surprise. it is a betrayal, but it's not a surprise. this was never the spirit of nanowrimo, that was lost long, long ago.

the spirit was always the mad, unfettered joy in the act of creating. of shutting out the world, of shutting out all the voices in your own head telling you you couldn't do this, and just. doing it anyway. for the joy of it. for the challenge and love of it. and you can still do that. any damn time you want. with any people you wish to include. you don't need corporate overlords for that.

baty started this whole thing by getting a bunch of friends together, and essentially double-dog daring each other into 'we're each going to write a whole novel in 50k words in this month, and we're gonna cheer each other on as we do it'. and they just did that. at coffee shops and bookstores and each other's dining rooms all over san fransico.

so. like. just do that. fuck whatever those chucklefucks are doing with the name on it. they're not necessary. they never were. just do it. make it your own. that was always the point anyway.

[nudiscoturkey]

My personal project: Nullite Chronicles

Alright. Where do I start with this. Those who have known me for a while - long before I made a tumblr account - know that I've been working on a novel series on and off for several years. However, it's better to think of it as just a story that's primarily told in novel format for the sake of convenience.

For those not in the know, however, here's some essential information on the state of the project:

The general concept has been a thing since 2013, and while much of it has changed since then, there are still some core aspects that have remained.

The reason why the ideas changed drastically over time is because I have been, and still am, guilty of letting ideas stew in my head and never really write them down in tangible form. Even now, I procrastinate on writing a ton and so there's plenty of things at risk of growing beyond their intended purpose.

Regardless, the first entry of the series took me about 2.5 years to complete (on and off, as usual). Long ago, I wrote nearly 3/4 of an entire novel that had a vastly different story before abandoning it. Long before that, I tried making a graphic novel of that same story before realizing how time-consuming the process would be.

As expected for a story written in first-person and has existed (to me) for over 10 years, it has a lot of personal meaning to me, though I will admit that there are some aspects that are undoubtedly personal yet I don't fully understand how. Perhaps the process of continuing the story will help me find out.

Now on to the concrete details. What is this story actually about and where can one even read about it?

As you have read, the series is called Nullite Chronicles. Still a working title, but it's what I've got for now. A sci-fi/fantasy series that, in very short summary, is about a goddess that decides to fuck around and give a few modern day humans reality-bending powers to see what happens, just because. The story follows these humans and the things that happen because of them.

The first entry was titled Crisis Inheriting. It should be important to note that this story begins from the perspective of some (relatively) ordinary humans and builds off from there. The story begins when a mad scientist passes away, allowing his inventions and research to be stolen. His son organizes a team to reclaim the stolen items.

The second entry, currently in progress, is titled Chaos Two Fold, following two of the aforementioned empowered humans right after the events of Crisis Inheriting.

To see archived art I've made related to the series, check out the deviantart gallery here. I may or may not update it in the future, it's there for the sake of archiving older art.

To read Crisis Inheriting, well... it's just a pdf on Google Drive. I really don't know of a better place to host non-fanfic writing right now, so it will do.

Chaos Two Fold can be found here, I simply update the file each time I release a chapter. I'll also try to announce new content here so you'll see this link again

Honestly, the real reason I made this post was because I've recently finished some art related to the story but I'd much rather give context to everyone before I start launching my art into the void. It's been many months since I last worked on the actual writing, so only time will tell if I'll pick it back up again. Besides, I'm sure many artists know the pain of drawing their beloved OCs so much yet not having enough motivation to expand on their lore :) you know it's serious when i actually write with proper capitalization and punctuation lol

[chthonic-cassandra]

Congratulations on finishing your series!! That must be such a dizzying milestone after being with it for so long! A couple celebratory questions: what are you most proud of about the stories? Were you always planning to make it thirteen parts specifically? How long have you known what you wanted the ending to be? Also do you have any plans for what to work on next?

Thank you so much! It is indeed dizzying; I'm still going through waves of feeling about it.

I appreciate the questions! I'll try to keep this free from spoilers since I don't think you've read the whole series yet.

What are you most proud of about the stories?

Probably the continuity of the series, and its broader arc. I haven't finished many longer-form writing projects, and even though this one isn't that long (58k words, I think), the slow and halting pace at which I wrote it means that maintaining the continuity - of narrative, theme, character - across that time feels like a big accomplishment.

I loved getting to plant thematic seeds that only came to fruition much later. Especially over the process of writing the second half of the series since my crazily long hiatus 2016-21 I was constantly going back over the whole work to make sure I was holding all the threads of the story and bringing images and symbols and phrases back to echo, and I'd never really done that as a writer before across a long time frame.

Were you always planning to make it thirteen parts specifically? How long have you known what you wanted the ending to be?

Answering these two together!

I initially wrote the first part as a one shot. It was during a time in my life (2008-09) when I was writing a lot of these Dracula AU one shots that were all different variations on related themes about coercion and captivity and situations with no good choices, just sort of putting these pieces together in different configurations and playing with them. But something about Compromise always felt more vivid to me than the others and it lingered with me.

Several years later, in 2013, there was another story about vampire transformation that I wanted to tell, and when I thought about it I realized that it was the sequel to Compromise. From there I started spinning the narrative out and gradually the larger shape of what it had to be became clear. I had a rough sense of what the full story was by the time I wrote Adjust (part 5), but for various reasons stepped away from it (and all my vampire writing) entirely for several years.

When I came back to it and wrote Acculturation I was subsequently much more intentional about planning out the rest of the series, and I knew at that point that I was roughly midway through the story that I needed to tell, though I didn't know exactly how long it would take to get there. I thought that I was going to finish it in 12 parts until this past spring, when I realized that the events of Intransigence and Concession needed to each be their own story, and that there was structural and point of view stuff there that had to be split.

Also do you have any plans for what to work on next?

Next up is my Yuletide assignment.

After that I am not totally sure, because I have a lot of potential projects. I am working on this collection of thematically linked one shots about concubine themes in Xena (find a more me sentence than that one; I'll wait), so that might end up taking my focus. On a very different tonal note, I have all these half-finished projects about the women from various Sade novels, which are incredibly unpleasant to work on but which I also have a lot of I want to say with.

I also have several different Penny Dreadful story ideas that I have been circling around in my head, because I think there are stories I can tell with them that I really want to work on telling, but it's taking some time to feel out where I am as a writer in that canon.

Other possibilities: unfinished Dracula one shots from years and years ago that maybe ought to get cleaned up and put into the world; experimenting with another vampire canon; any of the million wildcard fic ideas in my head. The disparity between the things I want to write and the time and energy I have to do it remains very large, but whatever I do write next it's definitely going to be on these same thematic preoccupations of mine.

(The crazy Dracula fic series I just finished is here, I'm still taking questions about it if you want to give me more opportunities to ramble.)

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 3/14/2023

one of the good things about the tuesdaypost series is that it reassures me i did actually do things in a particular week, even if the week felt very much like an unmemorable gray blob

listening

Aretha Franklin's Chain of Fools this came on last night as i was making dinner. two (three? let's not think about it) years ago i found the las vegas jazz station bc i wanted something on in the background while i wrote cowboyfic. and now (when i remember internet radio exists) it's in the rotation of things keeping me company while i tend to my databases

-

reading

it's been just over two weeks since philip marlowe has burrowed his way into my brain. i have read through most of The Simple Art of Murder, which contains the titular essay and eight novellas/short stories. if you enjoy reading and thinking about criticism as its own genre/art form, this seven page essay is well worth reading. chandler had extremely strong opinions about his colleagues that he kept to himself with varying degrees of success. aside from a brief catty snit at what we now call "cozy" mysteries, it's a very level look at the challenges and limitations of detective fiction as a genre.

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. There has been so much of this sort of thing that if a character in a detective story says, "Yeah," the author is automatically a Hammett imitator. And there are still quite a few people around who say that Hammett did not write detective stories at all, merely hardboiled chronicles of mean streets with a perfunctory mystery element dropped in like the olive in a martini.

i had a tremendous amount of fun reading through the novellas and picking out elements he reused and expanded upon in later full novels.

im yoinking this example from wikipedia but this sequence in The Big Sleep:

The room was too big, the ceiling was too high, the doors were too tall, and the white carpet that went from wall to wall looked like a fresh fall of snow at Lake Arrowhead. There were full-length mirrors and crystal doodads all over the place. The ivory furniture had chromium on it, and the enormous ivory drapes lay tumbled on the white carpet a yard from the windows. The white made the ivory look dirty and the ivory made the white look bled out. The windows stared towards the darkening foothills. It was going to rain soon. There was pressure in the air already.

first appeared in the short story The Curtain:

This room had a white carpet from wall to wall. Ivory drapes of immense height lay tumbled casually on the white carpet inside the many windows, which stared towards the dark foot-hills. The air beyond the glass was dark too. It had not started to rain, yet there was a feeling of pressure in the atmosphere.

when you are an exacting self-editor who will spend five months on one short story i imagine it's quite easy to go back and expand on a previous framework? it is fun to see how the sausage gets made

-

watching

the westerner (1940, dir. Wyler). really had me thinking about the Types of westerns i like. this is a perfectly adequate, well-acted little open range vs. homesteaders film with an impressive prairie fire sequence. walter brennan (a guy i love to see) more than deserves his oscar. gary cooper is great as a quick-thinking drifter who scams his way out of a noose. our heroine looks very much like olivia de haviland around the eyes. the original nyt review points out that cooper is very much overshadowed, and cooper only did the movie under duress bc he was worried about this very thing (p. 138-140).

between the fact that the movie thinks cooper should be the lead but brennan steals every scene he's in, this movie does not grab me by the lapels and shake me like some others i could name. part of it is that i do not like brennan's character. he is a self-appointed judge with a 100% hanging rate. i also think this is a totally different movie if you are not a woman, bc his character is INCREDIBLY weird about women. the ending tried very hard and failed to make me go "aw he was all right deep down anyway huh".

the other part of why this movie does not work for me: it starts off as my favorite genre "Some Guy has an incredibly fucked up day" but most of it is about good bible-thumping homesteaders enacting the american dream. what if we all got along??? america's big enough for everyone isn't it?? this movie really pulls its fuckin punches re: any sort of a theme, and i do not like cooper as an actor or brennan's character enough to say i had a good time. this movie does not delve into an aspect of the cowboy western mythos i am particularly interested in, but it is on kanopy, and it is part of my goal to watch every western on kanopy in order to convince the boston public library to add more westerns.

-

playing

man i wish fallou/t 4 was good. ive really got to fucking suck it up and start rdr2 even though i know it will consume my life in a time where i do not have a ton of time to spare

-

making

chicken fajitas. no pics all gone.

also: 6/10 baby blanket repeats. im trying to get this out by midapril so if i decide to fly down and look at apartments in person i can deliver it in person. so far i am happy with this rate of progress. i am going to frown about the edging for a while when im done knitting the body but that's a problem for future kay

[hopetorun]

tagged by @bropunzeling and @postoperation 💕

Rules: Go to your published works on AO3 and list the first fic you ever published there, the last fic you published, any fic that you wrote for a fandom/ship only once, your favorite fic you wrote in the fandom/ship that has the most works, the fic you wish more people read, the fic you agonized over the most, the fic that sprang fully formed from your mind without any effort, and a work you are proud of—for whatever reason.

first fic (on ao3): perspective, a star wars (legends) eu rarepair fic that i wrote for yuletide in 2011 that honestly was like pulling teeth at the time and i don’t think i’ve ever reread. i crossposted and then deleted some social network fic but i honestly don’t remember if i ever backdated any of it correctly anyway so this is probably the first one regardless since i got an ao3 specifically to participate in yuletide in 2011

last fic: make a better mistake, the brady/quinn home by now timestamp i put on here the other day. i don’t have much to say about this really except that it was fun to write out one of the bits of their backstory, which i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about

fic for a fandom/ship i only wrote once: don’t read the last page, broadchurch pornography i wrote in the year of someone’s lord 2021 after rewatching because my mom hadn’t seen it and wanted to. i wrote so much het porn in 2021 and yet i still can barely bring myself to write any of the common slang terms for vagina 💀

favorite fic in the fandom/ship with the most works: well in the summer of 2012 i was possessed by demons and wrote two then-avengers/now-mcu fics but i can’t say i like either of them. i guess i think this one is better, if pressed. honestly i don't feel a need to delete them but i am glad that no one ever seems to read them lol

fic i wish more people read: the sky is big enough, which i feel like i've said before! i really like how it came together but dropping 15k unannounced and unheralded on a medium-sized fandom and peacing out isn't exactly the best way to attract readers 😂 at least it exists for me to pretend is part of the game of thrones canon

fic you agonized over the most: this is kind of a toss-up. on the one hand, it took me the better part of six months to write preference, which clocks in at a not actually all that long 37k, because for mysterious reasons it was just a really slow story for me to pick through and i had to put a lot of thought into what i could do with each scene since the structure (which i imposed on myself btw. i made this problem) is so limiting. on the other hand the actual writing sessions for home by now were easy and productive but the story took ten whole entire months of my life, a major characterization revision just under halfway through, and a major pacing evening-out three quarters of the way through. both involved a lot of crying about whether the story was actually good.

fic that sprang fully formed from my mind without any effort: okay this is a throwback and also such a rarepair as in the only fic in the tag but years ago i wrote jt compher/his college teammate kevin lohan and it was just such an enjoyable story to write because i had a clear vision of the arc and it came together neatly and the non-linear structure meant i got to play with some fun juxtaposition. anyway: instructions for dancing

a story i'm proud of: this is not the end. was this a ridiculous thing to write in any year, much less the year 2020? sure. but write it i did, and it was the first novel-length story i ever successfully wrote, much less completed and edited and posted. and i think it's a nice story! proud of myself for getting over the long story hump and proud of myself for doing it while also doing graduate school. and proud of myself for finding something to do with my time so that my entire life didn't just become work and grad school in 2020.

[divinivy]

a list of hobbies to try when you need something new!

me personally, i always want something new to try and love finding new hobbies that i feel will really help me mentally! i had many hobbies at one point and ended up falling out of them but i'm making this as a reminder to get back into them! so here's a list of hobbies that i take up currently and that i want to get into that you can try too! 🏹

journaling -> writing down my feelings and my interests and just fun things in general has really helped me a lot! i find myself always feeling better after spending a good amount of time writing things out and genuinely love going through my writings and comparing my mindset now to how it was at the time i wrote it to see a major difference!

painting -> this was a hobby that i enjoyed doing years ago and even though i wasn't the very best, i still really enjoyed taking the time to get creative and paint!

baking -> if you're like me and really love sweets, baking could be a really great hobby for you! i love making sweet treats and letting my mind relax and only focus on what i'm making to feel at ease. this is another hobby i had years ago that i'm finding my way back to and i'm even leveling up and trying to make really cute designs on my treats!

reading -> an all time favorite hobby of mine! i love the feeling of curling up with a good book and letting myself fall into the story and my imagination! it's a really great escape if you're feeling stressed and it was one of my stress relievers during school. once you find the genre(s) of books you like and let yourself be captivated by the story, it's a really amazing feeling!

gardening -> if you're like me and love plants and flowers and want to be surrounded by them and their beauty, try gardening! it's one hobby that i've wanted to try for years and i feel as though it's something that will also do wonders for your mental health! caring for plants and watching them sprout and grow just seems like something i would genuinely love.

photography -> i have always wanted to try this one!!! i'm someone who loves to take pictures and capture beautiful moments so i always felt like this is something i would love to do! you could even pair it with scrapbooking if you also like to preserve all the pictures you took of your special memories! i also feel as if this would definitely aid in improving creativity!

writing -> whether it be short stories, novels, poems, etc, writing is also a really great hobby! yet another hobby i tried years ago and fell out of but i found it to be really fun and another form of escapism!

pottery -> i tried to do this years ago but could never figure out how to work my little plastic pottery machine so i never really tried it but it's still something i would love to do!

meditating -> another really great tool for improving mental health and also your sleep if you're like me and you have a terrible sleep schedule! it's really relaxing and you get to take 5-15 minutes to yourself without any distractions to put your mind at ease. a great stress reliever as well!

[venillopewrites]

Hiii !! Firstly let me ask, How are things going? is everything alright with you? (you don't have to answer)

Also, again Only if you can or don't mind answering. When did you first get the idea for your IF? Was it something you had on your mind for a while, before creating your intro post? or was it like a quick idea that popped in your mind and you decided to start trying to bring it to fruition right then and there lol?

Everything's perfect for me right now, thank you! Hope you're doing fabulously too! <33

The universe where TEP takes place is super old in my mind, I think the first story I wrote within it (kinda, considering the universe didn't have a name yet) was back in?? 2010?? Ish? I remember being enthralled by Mass Effect back then (still am!) so this basically began as an attempt at fanfic that just went off the rails and became its own separate world sksbdvdk

It wasn't a fleshed out world back then and was sadly forgotten for a good while until it came back to me in a dream some odd years ago, in the form of ✨ inspiration ✨ for this story!

It wasn't an IF back then though, just a little experimental novel that helped me work out the setting, world, and factions at play. The only characters back then were the parasite, a nameless roommate (now Shiba) and the hunter (now Vale). Our Host was nothing but a pathetic little meow meow, just a wet rag who wanted no part in the whole being a host to the first alien humanity ever encountered, and they pretty much died in the end 😶‍🌫️

I decided to try my hand at this IF thing after blindly bumbling my way onto the CoG forums and being smitten by the games there. Took a long time to gather the courage for the intro post too, since have you seen the writers on here? Oh mama they be writing. (Pls get my vine reference or I might cringe myself to an alternate dimension)

Thank you for the amazing ask <33

[mayainwritingland]

i I say I don't write non-fiction, but I don't know what this is but the unraveling of my soul. I read a quote the other day about the power of vulnerability. The willingness to be seen. But what if I don't ever want to walk boldly into the arena? What if all I want is to hide in a cabin somewhere and write books?

I did not realize how much studying creative writing would require talking about writing. It's excruciating. I had to give a presentation about my novel idea last semester and I could barely form one coherent sentence. I felt like crying for the rest of the day. (I still feel like crying).

To the workshop, I brought a chapter from a fantasy novel I had started writing at eighteen. Whenever someone praised me for knowing the world I created so well, I wanted to tell them I know nothing. That this story had been in my drawer for so long that it doesn't feel mine anymore. That I have to trick myself every morning into thinking I can do this.

ii My life writing professor said my writing was cliche. This comment came sometime after she had said I have a good ear for rhythm, and before the actual grade she gave me for the assignment- the highest one I ever got on a paper, and yet, this is the part of the email my brain chooses to latch onto. I took my nineteen-year-old self's heart out for this assignment, cut it out of our body, and served it on a nice word document (That's probably another cliche, right?) Those were her word, not mine. Her feeling. Her pain. The cliche metaphors she wrote in her journal when she had no one to talk to. It didn't feel right to edit her voice. She is mine, bad metaphors and all. It didn't seem right to be judged for it. (But what if all I have in me is cliche?)

iii There is a broken key on my keyboard. The pink, expensive one I treated myself to less than two years ago. Now every time I want to use the letter T, I have to copy and paste. It feels like a metaphor for something.

iv My fiction instructor said parenthesis was one of his pet peeves. It's a problem because I love using them. (Em dashes just don't hit the same way). My peers use all those big words and make every little assignment into a five-page monologue, but I always preferred the kind of writing you don't need a dictionary to understand. (I still feel small and insignificant next to them). I have other people in my head. Their voices loud and overshadowing. I keep trying to be brave and tell them to go away. I keep reminding myself that my life is mine. My writing—mine. My dreams—mine. But I'm not sure this feeling of constant terror is ever going to be worth the fleeting moments of joy.

[arandomperson5647]

Me attempting to fix Edward strikes out

Soooo, this is my first ever post (not including the anniversary thing).

I've considered posting this here but I never officially decided until now. Y'all know the infamous "Edward Strikes Out" episode? Well, about 2 years ago I did a small rewrite of it. Back in the day, for some reason, I used to write in a transcript form, so that's why it looks like this. I've also considered rewriting it in a "novel" style (idk what it's called), but I haven't done it (yet??). I actually posted this on the Thomas wiki when I first wrote it so it might be familiar or smth, idk. I'm gonna tweak it a bit but it's mostly the same as the original.

*One day, Edward was going to pick up some pipes at Brendam Docks, but then he noticed Thomas admiring a new breakdown train. James and Gordon were there too.*

Edward: Who’s that?

Thomas: That’s the new breakdown train. He looks very strong, strong enough to lift you up Gordon!

Gordon: *scoffs* Really? He looks useless to me.

Edward: How come?

Gorden: Can’t you see? He doesn’t have an engine. He can’t go anywhere.

Edward: So? That doesn’t mean anything.

Gordon: It means an engine would have to waste time collecting him.

Thomas: And how is that any different to the other breakdown train?

Gordon: Well, Umm...

Thomas: Haha, looks like I got you there. *then he puffs away*

Gordon: Still, he’ll just get in the way. There's no point in two breakdown trains. Besides, Judy and Jerome are two cranes while this guy is only one. He's probably not as strong.

James: I agree with Gordon, there’s no way he can be really useful.

*Edward then chuffs to the breakdown train to introduce himself.*

Edward: Hello, you’re the new breakdown train, right?

Rocky: *sadly* Yes, I am.

Edward: Is something wrong?

Rocky: I over heard what those two engines said, they don’t think I’ll be really useful.

Edward: Don’t listen to them, they’ll change their mind once they see you in action.

Rocky: Thanks, I’m Rocky.

Edward: And I’m Edward, nice to meet you. I’d better get going, I don’t want to be late.

*Edward was delivering his pipes, but couldn’t stop thinking about Rocky.*

Edward: *to himself* I’m sure Rocky is very useful, he’s probably just as useful as the other breakdown train.

*Edward was so busy thinking about Rocky, that he almost passed a red signal!*

Edward: Oh no! *Puts his brakes on.*

*Edward braked so hard, it caused his pipes to fall all over the track.*

*Then James arrived.*

James: What happened here?

Edward: I braked too hard and my pipes fell onto the track. We should get Rocky.

James: We can’t get Rocky, he’ll just get in the way, we should get Harvey.

Edward: Are you sure?

James: I’m 100% sure.

*James’ crew calls for Harvey. A few minutes later, Harvey arrived.*

Harvey: Wow, that’s a lot of pipes, it will take me a long time to get these back on the truck.

James: Just do what you have to do.

*A few minutes later, Thomas shows up behind James.*

Thomas: What’s going on?

Edward: Harvey’s getting the pipes back onto my train.

Thomas: Wouldn’t it be faster if we used Rocky?

James: We’ve got everything under control, you just need to be patient.

Edward: What if we use the breakdown train?

Thomas: We can't, I saw Percy on the way over here and he's using them.

*Just then, they heard a whistle.*

Thomas: *gasp* That’s Gordon’s whistle!

*Gordon was thundering down the line. Everyone was yelling “stop!!” But it was too late. Gordon had crashed into the pipes.*

Harvey: Oh dear, I’m not strong enough to lift up Gordon.

James: But weren’t you able to lift up Percy?

Harvey: Yes, but he was a tank engine, not a big tender engine.

Edward: That’s it, I’m getting Rocky, he’ll be strong enough to lift Gordon onto the tracks and be able to put the pipes back even faster.

*Edward goes to the docks to get Rocky*

Edward: Come Rocky! It’s an emergency! Gordon has come off the rails!

Rocky: I'm ready. GO GET 'EM, EDWARD!

*Edward couples up to Rocky and heads to the accident. When he got there, Rocky went right to work. Everyone was amazed on how strong he was, even James and Gordon were impressed. Soon, Rocky had gotten all of the pipes back into the train.*

Gordon: Thanks Rocky, I’m sorry I thought you wouldn’t be really useful.

James: Me too, you’re really strong and you got those pipes up really quickly.

Rocky: Thanks guys, and it’s okay, I’m just glad to be really useful.

[writingwell]

I have read all your Castle fic, some multiple times and need something new to read. I was wondering if you had any favorite Castle fics or authors you love/would recommend?

I'm bad about remembering fic I've read, but I do have some faves marked on my ffnet page, if you want to suss that out.

But authors! I will always hold a few especially dear:

Jennifer Egan (Visit from the Goon Squad, The Keep, etc) - Each of her novels have affected me in different ways, but the consistency of the quality of her writing is what sucks me in each time I start a new one.

NK Jemisin, Naomi Novik, Tracy Deonn, Rachel Yoder - a quick run through of some women in sci-fi/fantasy whose books are STELLAR and who don't get enough play in the usual round-up. For me, I'm not always gonna talk about them because I don't know how formative they've been yet, but damn they have some awesome story-telling, and I am SUCKED IN.

Mary Stewart (Touch Not the Cat, This Rough Magic, Merlin series) - Gothic romance for most of her career, MS wrote a Merlin series which I read grudgingly: they were the last books of hers I hadn't read. And I adored them, lol. She's easier to read than Daphne DuMaurier (Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel) but if you want to jump in, then I would suggest her short stories which are deliciously Gothic.

Edith Wharton (House of Mirth, Glimpses of the Moon, etc) - Gillian Anderson was going to be in HoM, I think, and she was interviewed in Entertainment Weekly magazine back in the day, and she quoted this book. I was perhaps 19? and I snatched it up the first chance I could get, wrote a paper for college, kept reading Wharton. As my twitter and ffnet handles show, Lily Bart, a woman fighting against the strictures of her society, absolutely had my heart. Want to know the quote GA used? "What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath." Holy shit, how can you not be immediately caught?

Madeleine L'Engle (Wrinkle in Time et al, Certain Women, A Severed Wasp) - What most people don't know is that L'Engle wrote adult fiction as well as what is now termed YA (or Children's, depending). Her adult stuff is poignant and devastating and just as hope-filled as her literature written for younger audiences, and I don't think even those books can be said to be just for children. A Swiftly Tilting Planet still makes me think about how righteous is pacifism in this day and age (ie, maybe it's not, and that's horrendous) plus A Wind in the Door is this really beautiful grappling with childhood disease/death/mental health. It's very lovely to have a gentle-handed author shape elemental Truths around your imagination and plant the seeds for both questioning the world and also loving it, flaws and all. And that both of those things can exist.

Chaim Potok (The Gift of Asher Lev, Book of Lights) - I realize I have a lot of women on this list, but Potok is a man who gets the creative experience inexorably tangled with the spiritual one. If you're not of some kind of seeking orientation, I don't know that Potok would resonate with you as it did and does with me, but there's something wholesome and agonizing about a man who knows he is put on this earth to create and yet everything in the earth is an obstacle to that calling. Even God, who ostensibly called him. It's really quite impressive a theme.

Colette (The Vagabond, Cheri, Claudine series) - Like I said, a lot of women, but these are the authors I go back to. The Vagabond, when I read it over again just a few years ago, was this huge light bulb moment for me: oh THIS is why I'm like this. I read it the first time in SF, plucked from my aunt's shelves (she was, I thought, so very cool, and if my aunt had this book, I should be reading it). It was both a book about a single woman writing a book, but also a book about a woman determining her own selfhood, and I latched onto both those concepts. Made for me. This led me to many of her others, but also to Anaïs Nin (also on my aunt's shelves), at about 18 years old, also formative. Delta of Venus is her erotica, and I will admit I skip some of the body violence/horror shorts and the child molesting stories, but others are expansive and sensual forays into women's sexuality that I just had never read before. Not outside of fanfic, anyway. Nin has some short novels that are also in that vein—a woman exploring herself—but I think you'll have seen mostly quotes from her letters and diaries. If you want nonfiction, and something of an epic read, go there.

Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down, About a Boy, High Fidelity, Funny Girl, Just Like You) - I've been reading him since early college, and I can't even remember what got me started first. High Fidelity? Because it was a movie about music and starred John Cusack? Who knows. Anyway, I think his novels stand up against time, and I met him at a book reading once and he was both hilarious and deep. I'd been working with a boy with autism at that point, and I had just read A Long Way Down, and it was evident to me that this author knew what it was to Suffer™ and sure enough, I found out later that he has a child with autism. He just seemed to understand, in both speaking and in print, that life isn't easy for anyone, that we all have a story, and books/stories/music are often the only ways we get any relief. Also he's hilarious. I said that, but it bears repeating. And if you want to understand Brexit at all, Just Like You was eye-opening for me about that. (Being American, I got it in the way of like, oh shit we elected This Cheesehead, but I didn't get it in the way of like, culture and national health care etc).

John Scalzi (Old Man's War, Locked In, Kaiju Preservation Society) - Sci-fi standby. I mean, if I want to read science fiction and I want to laugh and also Get Something Out of It, then I pick up Scalzi. He has a funny twitter presence and a blog and all that, but I don't have much to do with it. I just read his books and laugh and feel like I've managed to escape while also not ingesting something totally bullshit patriarchal. He's aware, he's looking around at the world, and he's imagining a future where that shit, yes, does happen, because we are people, but also like, more and more people or aliens are striving to eradicate that shit. So I like that. Becky Chambers is doing some really good, captivating sci-fi as well, if you want less humor in it (not that she's not funny, she's just not as tongue in cheek or expressly sardonic as Scalzi) and I have one of hers on my TBR shelf.

Ungggg, I feel like this is getting TL;DR and so I need to rattle off a few more names and go: Howard Thurman (meditations), David Maine, Neal Stephenson, Toni Morrison, Larry Niven, Ben Bova, Lucille Clifton (poetry), CS Lewis, Rainbow Rowell, Flannery O'Connor, Maggie Stiefvater, James Baldwin, Celeste Ng, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Richard Castle (lol but not lol, I seriously love those books).

[openstorygames]

TTRPGs as Literature

So a long time ago, there was a guy named Horace. And he had this idea about literature. (Actually, he had a bunch of ideas, but we'll just focus on this one.) He said that literature should "instruct and delight," and people kinda liked that.

Stuffy literature professors like it, but they lean on the instruct side. Pulp fiction authors think it's great, and they stick to the delight side.

We need both sides. But lasting literature, the stories that stick with us, do both. They teach us something about the world or about ourselves, and they do so while drawing us in as connected and compassionate people.

That doesn't mean good literature always has happy endings!

One of my favorite plays is Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, which has a horrifying ending. But it resonated in ways that have impacted my writing and reading ever since I saw it performed.

Good literature connects us. It draws us in, both mind and soul. It engages our thoughts and tugs on our feelings. Good literature requires our whole selves to encounter other (constructed) selves through narrative.

We typically think of literature as falling into certain genres: poetry, plays, novels, film, etc. And if you're sitting in a college lit class, you might start to believe that those are all the genres you'll ever find.

But literature is so much more.

Heck, only a few hundred years ago, the novel was still in early days. Novels were considered unserious and pejoratively feminine. They were not, in the literary eye, important or lasting.

Yet some of the novels from that early era are considered classics now. They're not always interesting or exciting; Moll Flanders literally contains mundane shopping lists. But they are doing interesting things with story and literature. Jude the Obscure would never have sold in an earlier climate; who wants to read about someone whose epithet is actually "obscure"?

Video games are another revolution in literature. Feature-length commercials, like the Barbie movie or The Lego Movie are another. Think about how many people are talking about Barbie still! And having deep, important conversations that engage their thoughts and feelings because of a movie about a plastic doll.

Similarly, games—particularly TTRPGs—serve as an innovation in literature. It's not even that TTRPGs are new (though in the history of literature, they are).

TTRPGs actually return us to the old way of things.

Oral tradition is the oldest form of literature that humanity has. Before we wrote things down, we told each other stories. From Homer to childhood bedtime stories, the practice of speaking story into other lives has been how we've communicated values, shared beliefs, connected with others, and grown communities.

Stories were told again and again, containing the same root but a million variations. They grew into mythic figures and wild adventures, some of which contradicted each other. But they were the stories that grounded and connected whole peoples.

TTRPGs give us the chance to do that again.

When a GM picks up an adventure book, they have the root of the story. They are the bard, the guide, the soothsayer, who leads the others into the realm of story.

But unlike the ancient bards, who told the story in their own way, over and over again, a GM gives the story over to their audience, who becomes co-authors with the GM.

The root of the story is there, but TTRPGs are an experience of telling the story together. In doing so, we get the most delightful and instructive form of literature. It's interactive!

We make choices that sound like the most fun story to play out. We dig our fingers into the soil of creativity and root around, feeling how the earth inspires our decisions.

We learn how to be more complete people, more connected people, as we try things out and discover how those things make other players (and other characters!) feel.

If you've ever played a TTRPG with a child or teen, you know that they push boundaries adults might not. They tell the story they want. Adults do this too, but kids and teens are still learning. But starting the collaboration young helps attune these kids' hearts and minds to the people around them. They learn that they are not alone in their story.

We are not alone in our story.

And if that isn't the most important lesson that literature can teach, I'm not sure what is.

[serendipitous-mythicality]

With ever-lasting madness Gazing through empty, flashing eyes Golden wheat sounds fill my head Over something seldom sung  Wandering with broken feet Over hills in distant sands While white birds battle black In thunder-strewn winds  Drunken mercies shattered, From screams, escape desperate times Still, outlawed hope beats with heavy wings Amongst tombstone-blackened minds   Winding maze concealed With parting drifting seas Finds poets’ dying whispers Over abandoned love’s remains Buried deep without compassion Crazed within the storm Lost without redemption Will it all be mourned?

Years ago, I used to write poetry. I keep meaning to pick the habit back up. It's been somewhere shy of twenty years now since it was a regular habit. Couldn't even begin to guess at how long it's been since I've written anything. The first one on this post was completely outside anything I'd ever done. I was inspired by Paul McCartney of all people. This was when I was really researching The Beatles. I used to come home from school (high school and college) and listen to music, write, and play solitaire. All day long, I'd fill notebooks full of my favourite lyrics and write story ideas, poetry, etcetera. Been going through various past writings of mine looking for loose papers I wrote in regards to the novel that has been in my head for most of my life. It's funny that I thought I had majorly changed the plot as I finally sit down to write it instead of only researching mythological lore. Instead, I'm finding scraps from many, many years ago with these same plotlines in them. It's been with me for a long time. I'm been finding various things as I go. Such as: Butterfly playing skip rope with the dog's tale A wrinkly hound With a long nose of butterscotch And: A day without days is like a moment without moments. Broken wings flutter sobbing on the wind while lopsided suns salute frivolously from a grey-bent sky. All the while, tears well within the dusty cracks of civilization proving to be too much for the sinner to hold fast in trembling hands. You can't escape them and the moments become moments as the grains of sand join the tears. Sighs lament over lost words and broken hearts as brooding trees echo the wind's rage over being left to face the truth. Really not sure WTF was going on in my head as I wrote some of this stuff. The first line makes no sense.

Then there's this:

THE BLACK ROSE

Faded yet vibrant Its beauty cuts like a knife A haunted, forlorn quality Its darkness shimmering Like the water's reflection Reflecting nothing Its thorns hold a sacred price Forsaken life A single cut rose - in black Mistaken Wild darkness A commitment made unaware Beware 

I was certainly moody back in the early 2000s on. It's an interesting time capsule. Really got going on haikus and their 5-7-5 form for a while there too. Should pick that habit back up as it's a simpler way to be creative throughout the day.

The only writing I've done since is Rhett and Link fan fiction. Was reading some of it today (a couple of years old now) and was tempted to tinker around and fix them up better. Still have a chapter to go on the one. However, this is how I always lose track of my novel. Not pausing it. Need to get a good schedule going.

[carewyncromwell]

“Good day, everyone. It seems that we, once again, are on the cusp of that most wondrous time of year -- the Feast of Christmas. 

“I am called Bartholomew -- or more commonly just ‘Bat’ -- Varney...and this time of year is by far my favorite of the lot. To mark this occasion, my ‘mundane’ has once again given me access to her ‘Askbox,’ so that I may discuss aspects of this wonderful holiday with you, her followers, whether through historical lectures, editorials, or even lively debates. She encourages you to consult the ‘Bat Comments on Christmas!’ tag to see my previous entries to this series, to like and reblog these posts if you find them engaging and interesting, and to send in other holiday-related Asks to me, if you wish to see more. I was born in the mid-18th century and currently occupy what my mundane calls the ‘HPHL’ and ‘Fantastic Beasts’ timelines, but I have also been given access to the Fourth Wall, so that I can discuss aspects of Christmas Yet to Come as well.”

The single best aspect of Christmas is the fascinating way it has changed and will continue to change.

[Bat replaces the spent Blood Pop in his mouth with a new one with a grin that shows off his sparkling white fangs.]

“...Our subject today, appropriately enough, actually regards Christmases Yet to Come, as well as those of the Past and Present. Yes, my friends, it is time we discuss my favorite novel of all time, which arguably changed how Christmas is celebrated more than any other piece of text ever written -- Charles Dickens’s immortal classic, A Christmas Carol.

“Now, for those of you who have grown up with Christmas as a holiday, and even for many who haven’t, it would be silly to go into a full summary of the tale. It’s such a popular and well-adapted story, even back in my own era, that even those who haven’t read Dickens’s novel are familiar with it, simply through cultural osmosis...and from what I understand, over time, it’s only become more widespread. But truly, we’re not going to delve too deeply into the story of miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who initially scoffs at the thought of giving back to his fellow men and treating his employees and associates kindly around Christmas, before he’s haunted by three spirits who teach him the true meaning of the season. Instead, I’d like to talk more about the book’s publication, its themes, and ultimately why it both is a perfect time capsule of the up-and-coming Christmas fads of the mid-1800′s and ultimately came to popularize and set in stone customs we still associate with Christmas today. 

“Charles Dickens was a celebrity of his day. Originally the man had no concept of what he wanted to do with his life -- he even once considered a life on stage as an actor -- but writing truly ended up being his calling. First finding success as a journalist, Dickens then became famous across Britain when he wrote The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. Even her Majesty the soon-to-be Queen Victoria was purportedly enamored with them. Unfortunately Dickens’s success ended up being a double-edged sword. John Dickens would frequently use his son’s fame as leverage to borrow money, only for Charles to have to frequently come to his rescue when John couldn’t pay the lenders back. And with his family still growing (three going on four, at that time), Dickens had to keep the money rolling in, in order to pay for his family’s lifestyle. They were part of what was called the ‘middling sort,’ or the ‘middle class,’ as I’ve heard it more frequently called, which had only just started to form about a century prior, as education and land ownership became more widespread in Europe and America. Just a century ago, that ‘middle class’ had been the main force behind the American and French Revolutions and the Enlightenment ideals that argued against the superiority of kings and nobles over the common Man -- now most of their members were trying to find comfort and contentment in their new status as the ‘petit bourgeoisie.’ But there was still activism and fresh ideas to be found in their ranks, if one were to look carefully.

“The wide publication of books via printing presses and that subsequent increased access to education and knowledge fueled a new appreciation for history in 19th century Europe. Not too long ago, as I’ve discussed previously, Christmas had been banned in England, only for that idea to blow up spectacularly in the Puritans’ faces. And well, with England having lost their foothold in the American colonies and having spent even more years and money warring with France under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte before finally defeating him soundly at Waterloo, there was a new sense of nostalgia in England for when their country was great and prosperous...namely, the Renaissance, under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I. The arts became more reputable and profitable again after the likes of Oliver Cromwell had tried to shut down theaters en masse; investment in new technologies and sciences were promoted, sparking an Industrial Revolution in England; and holidays of the Tudor era were reinvented for a new generation, including -- you guessed it -- Christmas. 

“But Christmas, as celebrated in Tudor England, was a very bawdy, raucous, messy affair. A public outdoor festival punctuated by drinking and debauchery didn’t really suit the ‘proper’ attitudes of the Victorian-era middle class. So, just as we always have with Christmas since the beginning, old traditions were attempted, adapted, and -- in some cases -- flat-out made up. One such tradition I’ve discussed previously that was likely completely fabricated around this time is the act of kissing under mistletoe. Other fads that were ultimately discarded was putting fruitcake under your pillow -- replaced with just eating it at holiday gatherings -- and wearing animal-themed costumes -- which I would argue was just shifted over to our celebration of holidays like Halloween. Even the idea of electing a ‘Lord of Misrule’ -- an aspect of the holiday I always enjoyed as a boy, which was also very popular back in the Elizabethan era -- didn’t last, under the Victorians. But still, these new twists on old traditions -- caroling at people’s doorsteps; hosting parties with friends and family; playing parlor games; exchanging presents; decorating the house with mistletoe, holly, and evergreen trees; eating lots of good food -- would become very fashionable among this new middle class and how they celebrated Christmas. And with the arrival of more Romantic ideals in Europe at the turn of the 19th century, the concept of children being evocative of innocence rather than sin became much more mainstream. This then prompted middle-class parents to want to make the old bawdy Feast of Christmas more family-friendly and to use some of their new wealth to give both themselves and their children some joy during the holiday season. 

“Dickens, like many members of the Victorian middle class, loved Christmas and the new fashionable ways it was being celebrated. Considering the man also greatly disdained organized religion, as well, it’s not entirely surprising he enjoyed the secular trappings that encouraged joy and extravagance without making it too focused on the church. But Charles Dickens didn’t just think Christmastime should be a time for the middle class to indulge for themselves. The true inspiration behind his novel A Christmas Carol ultimately ended up being Dickens witnessing the horrific conditions child workers suffered through in the new Victorian factories he saw in England, including the Cornish Tin Mines. He became convinced that something had to be done to combat the poverty and injustice he saw in the streets, and he ultimately thought that a story about Christmas might be a more palatable way to deliver that message to the mass public, including other members of the middle class, than a mere article would. And so Dickens partnered the Victorian fad of indulgence with social activism...which, ironically enough, perfectly adapted another tenant of Christmas back in my day, as well as its progenitor celebration of Saturnalia -- the redistribution of wealth. Whether Dickens realized it at the time or not, he had adapted the core of Christmas for a new generation -- this time, not by the poor having to beg or threaten the rich at their doors for their best food and drink, but by the new middle class and the wealthy being compelled by civic duty to give back to the needy willingly. 

“A Christmas Carol was an instant success. Thousands of copies were sold all over England from the moment it first hit shelves on December 19th, 1843, with the entire first run being sold out by Christmas Eve of that year and twelve more editions being published by the end of the following year. It is by far Dickens’s most well-known, read, and beloved novel, and it has only become more popular over time. And yet, in his day, Dickens didn’t enjoy the profits he probably should’ve from A Christmas Carol, after all his efforts. Part of this is because of how much money he invested into the publication of his manuscript. Dickens envisioned his book as something that should be bought and given as a Christmas present, and so spared no expense in making each book a work of art. The books were bound in red cloth, printed on gilt-edged pages, with hand-painted illustrations. All of this took a big chunk out of Dickens’s profits. Another problem, however, was that this expensive binding was the only way the book was published, which made it so that many poorer people who wanted to read this new book written by the great Charles Dickens about the virtue of giving to the poor didn’t have the five shillings needed to buy it. And this is why a lesser publisher ultimately plagiarized the novel, condensing it somewhat and printing it much more cheaply without permission, so as to cash in on those who couldn’t afford the full, official manuscript. Dickens later took that publisher to court for copyright infringement and won, but the whole affair still hurt his profit margin. 

“Even so, A Christmas Carol’s legacy is undeniable, and many of the Christmas traditions we love most today -- mere passing fads of Dickens’s era -- were popularized because of this very well-received and circulated little book. Christmas cards and gifts. Games and toys. Caroling. Childhood innocence. Christmas trees. Eating turkey, pies, and warm chestnuts for Christmas dinner. Giving to the poor. Even just the concept of the ‘holiday spirit,’ of ‘good will toward men’ -- of hope and charity, in the midst of the cold and hunger of winter. The ritual of taking time off work specifically just to celebrate at home with your loved ones, rather than go to church or go out drinking in the streets. All of this is what Christmas is all about in the minds and hearts of so many...but it wasn’t, until Charles Dickens wrapped all of these ideas up in a neat little package and gave it to the world, in the form of a manuscript he had to finish in less than six weeks and yet clearly put so much heart and soul into.”

[Bat removes the spent pop from his mouth. He reaches into the inside of his waistcoat, taking a sip of blood from his pewter flask. Then, clearing his throat, he puts the flask down and then reaches into the other side of his waistcoat, out of which he fetches out a very small, leather-bound copy of A Christmas Carol -- a present from someone, no doubt.]

“...And so...to close this out...let me quote one of my personal favorite sections of the novel. It’s a part of the story far less quoted than the infamous ending, but it’s a passage I’ve always found so striking, and one I think similarly embodies the beauty of Dickens’s work...”

[Bat opens his tiny copy of the manuscript and reads:]

“‘A small matter,’ said the Ghost, ‘to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.’

“‘Small!’ echoed Scrooge. 

“The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said, 

“‘Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?’

“‘It isn’t that,’ said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. ‘It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ‘em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.’”

[Bat looks up from his book with another fanged grin as he takes another sip of blood from his flask.]

“...Happy Christmas to you all.”

((OOC: HAPPY BATMAS!! 🎄🥰 Yes, friends, for all this month and next, Bat had free reign over the Askbox to chat Christmas with you all! Please consider sending in Asks, or of course, just liking/reblogging my entries to this series! It’s truly so much fun to work on, and I’m so thrilled to do some more fun installments to it this year!))