#it's officially longer than some published novels!!

[crguang]

wasted with longing, part 4

In the face of such deep hurt, you have no choice but to come to terms with your feelings.

friends with benefits, f!reader, 6k words

A/N: don't really like this chapter cause it feels like a nothingburger but there it is... i swear i didn't mean to end it like that but the next block would have been too long to be in the same chapter so i had to chop it in two, forgive me 😞

also, it’s definitely still the weekend on the west coast so i am not late!!! we’ve officially written like 20k words for this series when it was supposed to be a couple crack fics, what even is going on

part three

Every so often, tremors travel through your legs to reach your twitching fingertips like a hundred tiny earthquakes along your limbs while you sit there, passive and morose. You stare at your open palms and observe the natural disaster occurring beneath your skin. Past the white walls of your apartment, the sun continues its ascent among the clouds but its warmth is fought off by the thick curtains of your living room and the heaviness settling inside of you. The blow of previous revelations has made your organs twice as heavy and has brought an ache to your trembling hands, birthing a sense of lethargy only the lost are familiar with. Not for the first time, you don’t know where you’re heading. For the first time, none of it matters; there is just the weight of your body rooted to the couch and the lines of your palms staring back at you, forming crooked letters that disappear with a blink. Your thoughts are a mess devoid of rationality focused on the sting of betrayal that you can feel at the corner of your eyes. She doesn’t deserve them, your tears. Then again, there is a lot that she didn’t deserve that you still gave willingly: your time, your attention, the flutter deep in your abdomen at the sound of her genuine laughter or the naive hope that you mattered more to her than you believed. Your mind is a whirlwind of possibilities that will never come to be and feed the dejection in your bones until your vision blurs at the edges from tears you refuse to let fall. 

You recall the nonchalance with which she addressed her actions, the excuse of destiny as if you were all merely pawns in the hollow of its cold and detached hands. Some things are inevitable and all possibilities are already written. You wondered once what kind of life she must live to be so carefree, you understand now that it stems from a lack of responsibility and a distance between herself and accountability. Her nihilism reduces her to a footnote in a published novel, a droplet in the raging ocean; it takes away enough of her to make her believe that whatever she does is not a choice she fully makes herself. It feels like an excuse to justify not only her existence but everything she undertakes, blaming consequences on fate will always be easier as it relieves her from the pressure of guilt. In a way, it’s not so much carefreeness as passivity. You swallow to soothe the tightness of your throat. Some part of you pities how she lives and you wish you could choke it out with a pillow. Even now, you can’t snuff out feelings that have taken months to develop and solidify within you, and they feel like stones obstructing your blood vessels. It hurts this much because you unknowingly carved a seat for her inside the walls of your heart with her pocket knife, the same one she used to cut you. You can no longer differentiate then and now, whether you started falling for her the last time she left your bed or the first time she kissed you. However, you can’t deny that you’ve got her under your skin and the realization could not have happened at a less opportune moment.

This sucks. You don’t count the minutes you spend staring at your hands like they hold answers to questions you won’t get to ask in the future. At some point you find yourself laying on the couch again, looking ahead while your phone lies on the coffee table, undisturbed for the time being. Hours pass and your eyelids eventually grow heavy, each blink slower to come than the last. Your mind, perhaps to torture you, replays some moments you didn’t remember before this instant; falling asleep as she lights up a cigarette on the balcony outside your bedroom, moonlight stroking her hair and smoke blurring her face; nimble hands undressing you layer by layer with a patience that borders on reverence. The first time you met, your impression of her was that she took care of appearance and found it very important how she presented herself to the world. It was because of her clothes, partly, but mostly the confidence she radiated. She didn’t say too much or too little, and looked at you with a smile you selfishly wished was just for you. Her attention felt like a treasure not many were deserving of and her taste in fashion matched yours, she helped you pick out some clothes then you exchanged phone numbers in front of the store. You went your separate ways after that, but receiving a text from her an hour later turned you into a schoolgirl with a crush. 

You thought you were making progress yesterday, that her seeking you out meant something more than a refusal to see a medical professional. The look in her eyes when she stared up at you in the bathroom… you wish you understood it, but something screams that it wouldn’t have changed a thing. You reminisce and ruminate until your eyes close and unconsciousness generously gives you a reprieve from the assault of your mind.

It’s almost 11 in the morning when you wake. Your neck is stiff from the armrest and your legs beg to be stretched after staying bent for hours. You rub the drowsiness out of your eyes with one hand and sit up slowly, brows furrowed and lips in a frown. It takes you a moment to do anything else, your phone buzzes with a notification three times in a row but you only look at your lock screen blankly. You don’t feel like doing anything, and after remembering the events of earlier today,  you dread checking up on work. Still, your concern for the colleagues you get along with eventually wins out. You pick up the device and sift through the messages that were left unanswered yesterday, replying to your friends to assure them of your safety. Your thumbs travel across the screen mechanically, like you’re writing a professional email you have no interest in, but you are genuinely relieved to find out that they’re fine. You hesitate over Himeko’s contact name. She surely hasn’t heard of what transpired yesterday unless there was an IPC broadcast about it. You hope she hasn’t. You want the truth to come out of your lips, not some news network. Worry makes you bite the inside of your cheek as you stare at her last text from the evening before. Himeko is one of your best friends, she’s understanding, compassionate and an expert at comforting others. You’re not worried that she’ll put the blame on you, just that your feelings will come to the surface once you start relaying everything that’s happened in detail. 

You steel yourself, swallow once, and press the call button under her contact name. You bring your knees to your chest. The line rings a couple of times in your ears before the call connects and Himeko’s joyful voice sounds through the phone. 

“Hey.” she greets you with a smile you can hear, “are you okay? You hung up on me yesterday.”

Your suspicions are confirmed, Himeko has no idea what went on the previous night.

“Sorry,” your own voice is strained from sleep and you cringe before clearing your throat. “Something… came up.”

“Is everything alright?”

Your stomach churns uncomfortably. You look at the floor and inhale quietly to calm the unease slithering up your trachea. “There was… an incident at work,” you say hesitantly. “A serious one.”

Himeko picks up on your tone and hers softens with her next question. “Are you alright? What happened?”

The words spill from your mouth all at once and Himeko doesn’t interrupt you as you give her a retelling of what you read in that article this morning, Kafka’s identity as both a Stellaron Hunter and the woman you’ve been “seeing”, how she showed up at your door injured yesterday and the moment you found out the truth just hours earlier. The line is silent save for your sometimes faltering sentences. Your eyes fall shut in the middle of your story and your fingers clench the phone in your hand, the knot in your throat tightening near the end of it. Saying it out loud, you realize how stupid you’ve been even if the clues weren’t obvious; you should’ve been more suspicious of her absences and deflections, shouldn't have been blinded by her attention and the way she made you feel, should’ve… You feel like an idiot in the face of Himeko’s silence. She digests the information you dumped on her before it’s even noon, and after a minute of quiet she finally speaks.

“Where are you now?”

“Uh, home,” you stammer, blindsided by the question. You half-expected her to lose her mind at the situation you find yourself in considering she was the one who tried to discourage you to enter a friends-with-benefits relationship, and now people have died by the hands of the woman you have feelings for. You pointedly omit the romantic feelings part for now. 

“You should stay at a friend’s house, to be safe. The Stellaron Hunters are very dangerous and you could easily get wrapped up in their dispute with the law and the IPC. Take precautions and be safe, please.”

“Is that all you have to say…?”

“What do you want me to say, ‘I told you so’? You were manipulated, that’s what Kafka does. She bears all the blame here. And I’m sorry you were caught up in her schemes.”

You pause, staring at the coffee table in front of you. Her reassurances bring you no comfort. Your reply sounds small in your ears, “...A lot of people died.”

“I know…” You can almost picture the soft look in Himeko’s eyes. “But it wasn’t your fault. Whatever they had planned, they planned it long before you were brought into the picture. You couldn’t have stopped anything from happening.”

You nod slowly even though she can’t see you. You do your best to internalize that, but guilt still swirls within you and makes you nauseous. You stand from the couch to make your way to the bedroom, footsteps quiet along the wooden floors. You let the morning light envelop you once you reach the glass doors of your balcony and slide them open so the fresh air can enter your lungs and chase away the unpleasant feeling. 

“No wonder you didn’t know anything about her,” Himeko continues, an edge to her voice, “it’s easier to play mind games when you’re kept in the dark. She’s truly despicable.”

You think of what Kafka said this morning about the source of her injury, how she got it looking for you amidst the chaos. You lean on the railing, observe the circulation of cars and pedestrians down below, but say nothing. 

“I hope she never contacts you again. Did you block her number? Is it even her real one?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“You should block it anyway.”

She’s right. You put Himeko on speaker and let out a breath as you open your contacts, scrolling through the list and finding Kafka’s contact among it. For a few seconds you feel weak for your hesitation, thumb hovering over the “block caller” button, then you shake your head and press the red letters. You won’t make yourself available for her anymore. 

“I did it,” you tell the woman on the other line and redirect your gaze to the buildings on the horizon. 

“Good. What are you going to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you… eventually work there again?”

“Ha. Not a chance.”

You don’t know what you’ll do, you haven’t planned this far ahead and were still on the fence about quitting your job before everything went down but there’s no way you’re going back to doing office work after today. In a way, the incident gave you the push you needed to do it. The price to pay for it was far too high.

You talk to Himeko for another half hour before she has to bid you goodbye to take care of the Express. She reminds you to pack a bag and go stay with a trusted friend, and she makes sure to be certain that you’ll take care of yourself before hanging up the phone. She’ll call again when she can, but in the meantime, you’re on your own. You don’t tell her that you don’t think Kafka means to put you in harm’s way and that you don’t feel comfortable leaving your apartment now. Knowing that you could have been one of yesterday’s victims if you had simply gone about your daily routine worsens your anxiety, and even if Kafka’s been inside your apartment countless of times before, you still feel safer within familiar walls. 

You spend the day in low spirits, half of it sitting on your balcony with your knees to your chest and the other half laying face down in bed. You tell yourself that your free time will be dedicated to finding out what you want to do with your life. Then another day passes you by and when the third one comes around you still haven’t gotten out of the gray bubble you’ve unconsciously created for yourself. Your thoughts are repetitive and oppressive, so you sleep for hours to escape them. You avoid going out by ordering food or groceries. Your phone is constantly on ‘do not disturb’ because you can’t handle the grating alerts about funerals and financial compensation, you only pick it up to talk to Himeko once a day. She encourages you to see your friends, to not let yourself be swept away by the waves of negative emotions, and you don’t have the heart to tell her that you’re just not in the mood anymore. You make promises you don’t intend to keep in order to alleviate her concern and the guilt nesting in the pit of your stomach grows bigger with each one. You’re not helping yourself, you know, but it feels like all you can do is sit in your feelings as they ripple around you and you stare at the disturbances for hours, crestfallen. 

In the evening, you await the takeout you ordered 30 minutes ago. You’re laying on the couch despite the TV not being on and feel drowsiness creeping up on you from doing absolutely nothing all day. Who knew inactivity could be so exhausting… You reach for your phone on the coffee table and tap the screen to see if your driver is nearby. He’s parked in front of your apartment building, so he should reach your door soon. You close the phone and wait some more until you hear firm footsteps on the other side of your door. You only stand up after a couple of minutes have passed to make sure he’s truly gone and won’t see you bringing your food inside. Opening the door reveals an unexpected find; the takeout bag lies next to a rectangular package that wasn’t there in the morning. You pick up the bag but stare at the box with a crease between your brows. Outside of food, you haven’t ordered anything else from the internet. You wonder if it’s a misplaced item and bend down to check the postal information. There’s no return address, but yours and your full name are written black on white. You decide that you must look like a weirdo, inspecting a package in the hallway with takeout in one hand, and you pick up the box before retreating inside. 

Putting down the brown bag on the kitchen counter, you think perhaps the package is from a colleague or a friend, maybe even from Himeko since her return address is hard to find. You look for scissors to cut the tape holding the box shut and lift the lid. A pair of black velvet gloves lie on a similarly coloured coat, the inside of which is a dark shade of blue. The material is expensive judging by the gentle  sheen on the fabric in the light, and you blink in confusion. It’s beautiful and a piece you would definitely feel compelled to buy if you saw it in a store, which means it must actually be meant for you. You pick up one glove to find that it fits perfectly with the size of your hand. It’s soft to the touch, you bring it to your cheek to feel the material against your skin. You spot a small card sticking out from one of the coat’s front pockets bearing only three words written in curvy letters: ‘Thought of you, K. <3’

The glove falls from your hand like it burns your palm and lands on the floor without a sound. Suddenly, the clothes aren’t a thoughtful gift but a mocking gesture meant to get a rise out of you. You tear the card into pieces. If anything, one could admire her limitless audacity, not you, but someone out there. She’s playing with you, taunting you to see how far she’s allowed to go before you lose your mind completely. That, or she deludes herself into thinking that she can buy your forgiveness with meaningless peace offerings. Either way, her obvious lack of care for your feelings hurts more than it should, and you’re once again reminded of your own weakness. You know that she doesn’t care, there’s no need to twist the knife in your already infected wound. Does she only see you as a toy for her entertainment? Is she incapable of even a bout of empathy or do you simply mean that little to her? The thought rotates in your head endlessly until you put everything back in the box and throw it in the trash. 

Two days later, you find another package on your doorstep; two expensive pairs of slacks and three tops that are all exactly your size and your style. The note has only a handwritten K and a slim heart on it. You donate the clothes to a thrift store in the afternoon. It's the first time you’ve left your house since you learned the truth about Kafka’s identity.

Next Thursday, you accept a friend’s invitation to go out for drinks. Kafka’s stunts made you internalize what you've been telling yourself for weeks; you won’t pull the brakes on your life for a broken heart, certainly not for her. Being hung up on somebody who isn’t thinking of you at all is embarrassing enough, to allow her such a place in your mind after what she’s done is just pathetic. Despite your heart still not being it in, you dress up in clothes that always make you feel pretty and let your friends drag you to a bar where they dance for three hours and flirt with strangers for two more. The loud music makes it impossible to hear any words that aren’t shouted or whispered in your ear, its bass reverberates uncomfortably through your chest like a second heart. The night goes by with a drink in your hand that is replaced by another the instant its last drop lands on your tongue. Inebriated and surrounded by sweaty bodies, you forget all about the world beyond the cheers of your friends as you make out with a woman on the dance floor and the flavored liquor on your lips. The events that occurred between midnight and 3 AM are a haze when you wake up before lunchtime the next morning, body halfway off the couch and head throbbing so intensely you think you might pass out before you reach the bathroom for some aspirin.

You stumble into the room, squinted eyes barely seeing two feet in front of you, and fumble with the small plastic bottle of what you believe to be your magic pills. You swallow a couple of them and bend low to take a few sips of water directly from the running faucet. Your skull feels like it’ll split open with any strong enough stimulus. You sink to the cool floor and close your eyes, breathing as steadily as you can through your mouth to relax a little. You think you fall asleep for a while, leaning against the cabinets while the medicine does its job of reducing your headache to a dull pulse. Three firm knocks on your front door wake you up abruptly and you jerk away from the sink in surprise. You wipe the corner of your mouth. Blinking away remnants of drowsiness, you shakily stand on your bare feet and run a hand over your face as you walk to the entrance of your apartment. You hope you don’t look as bad as you feel, but you know that’s likely the case. Still, you adjust your clothes and your hair before opening the front door. 

A mailman is waiting for you with a package in hand and thrusts a form in yours after a disingenuous greeting. You sign the paper confirming whatever delivery you just received, a little out of it. He leaves once the small square box is given to you. You walk back inside, turning the package over in your hands before tearing it open. A glittering necklace lies inside, nestled in suede. The gems embedded into it easily catch the light and would make a strong statement resting on any person’s collarbones. You stare at the jewelry, puzzled. Checking the package again reveals no return address, and if your mind was less hazy from this hangover, you would have guessed who the gift was from immediately. Your cell phone pings with a text, bringing you out of your confusion long enough to find it on the floor in front of the couch. You press the message to open the private conversation. The recipient has no caller ID and is texting you like you’re supposed to know who they are. You lay the jewelry box on the coffee table and reply quickly.

“Who the fuck is that…?” You slowly ask no one in particular, brows twisting in a frown. 

You type in a text and send it. The reply you receive sobers you up like an ice cold shower. You rub your eyes with one hand and hold your phone a bit farther from your face as if it poses a threat to your safety, disbelieving. The nerve… There’s a familiar flutter in the depths of your belly but the sensation is uncomfortable now, eating at you and forcing you to take a deep breath.

You block the number before another message can pop up. Frustration bubbles up inside your chest, Kafka’s dedication to remaining a part of your life like a coffee stain on a white tablecloth is seriously messing with you. Make amends? She can’t be this dense. The gifts, her promise to send more— is her image of you so shallow that she believes you can be bought with fancy clothes and jewelry? None of these have been thoughtful or paired with a note that contains more than three words. She’s hurt you more than she understands, clearly. Your issues with her behavior are evident, you don’t believe the idea of them not computing in her mind, she’s smarter than that. She’s kept key details of her life from you, lied to you and caused over a dozen scientists to lose their lives for a component that could surely be found elsewhere, not to mention her treatment of you afterwards and her lack of remorse for the emotional damage she’s inflicted on you. Your feelings are more than justified and run deeper than petty grievances. You don’t understand her at all, and at this point, you don’t care to.

An offended scoff escapes your lips and your first reflex is to tell your best friend about the situation, looking to vent your irritation to a person that’ll stand by you no matter what unlike Kafka’s fickle attitude. You video call Himeko’s number and wait until she picks up at the last ring. Her fiery hair is slightly disheveled, held up tightly in a ponytail. She’s not wearing her usual elegant clothing and is instead clad in overalls with a plaid shirt underneath. Motor oil stains her cheek and fingertips as she waves at you through the screen. You think you can see engines and steam behind her, you can definitely hear hissing noises in the background. 

“Uh… Are you busy?” You ask, taking in the dark stains on the front of her overalls. “Are you working on the Express?”

Himeko makes a sound of agreement. “Don’t worry, I always have time for you though. How are you?”

“Hangover. What’s wrong with the train?”

“Nothing as of three minutes ago. I just finished fixing some issues but it wasn’t anything too serious. I’m due for a shower. You said you’re hungover? You do kind of look… disheveled.”

“I appreciate the euphemism,” you sit cross legged on the couch. “I woke up not too long ago and immediately popped some over-the-counter medicine.”

“So you went out last night? Or were you drinking alone?”

“I went to a bar with some friends, took your advice and drank until I passed out.”

“That was not my advice.” Himeko’s frown makes you smile. “At least you left your house and returned safely. I told you it’d be good for you not to stay cooped up in here.”

You hum absentmindedly. “I don’t remember most of the night, honestly. I think I made out with someone for like… twenty minutes, four songs. But that’s not why I called— I got something in the mail today.”

Before Himeko can ask what it is, you reach for the jewelry box on the coffee table and hold it up to the camera so the necklace is in full view. You tilt it this way and that, the outside light reflecting prettily on the clear-cut gems. You watch Himeko’s eyebrows raise as she moves from her spot in the engine room, likely headed to her room for that shower she mentioned a few minutes ago.

“Wow, that’s gorgeous. Did you try it on?”

“No.”

“Is that a treat for yourself? You deserve it, you had a really rough week and it’d look good with that fancy low-cut top you have— the silk one?”

Maybe it would, too bad you’ll never wear it. 

“I didn’t buy it, I got it as a gift,” you put the necklace down next to you and close the small box, making sure to put an emphasis on the last word.

“Oh? It must have cost a small fortune. From who?”

“Kafka.”

The easygoing smile Himeko wears disappears in an instant. She stops moving somewhere in a hallway, near panoramic windows that show the galaxy beyond them. Tiny creases form along her brows and she stares at you intently, worry and affront clear in her gaze.

“Kafka sent that to you?”

You nod. “She’s been sending me stuff all week, clothes mostly, but this one really took the cake because she texted me from an encrypted number afterwards.”

“Why won’t she leave you alone?” Himeko looks vexed on your behalf and you shrug, relieved that your feelings are validated by her anger. “What did she say? Please, tell me you blocked the number immediately.”

You hesitate a couple of seconds too long, Himeko’s shoulders slump and her lips part to reprimand you but you interrupt her readily, “I blocked her! I swear. She said she wanted to ‘make amends’ and it pissed me off so bad, I blocked her number again. Can you believe her ego? Does she think my world revolves around her, that I’m just waiting for her to make it up to me before I take her back with open arms? We didn’t even have anything. We used each other for sex and despite the semblance of good-natured relationship we had, she still chose to betray me!”

Himeko studies the hurt in your eyes at your outburst and pauses, her gaze flitting across your face for a moment. You exhale, willing yourself to calm down. Your heart rate has picked up a few paces and you despise how easily Kafka gets a rise out of you without even being in the room. The redhead leans on a nearby wall.

“You have every right to be as angry as you feel,” she starts, meeting your eyes with a knowing look in her golden ones, “but… You’re this angry because you have feelings for her, don’t you?”

“W-What?” Your stutter sells you out and Himeko tilts her head in a silent gesture to not lie to her. 

“I had my doubts. You talked about her a lot, I don’t even think you noticed. And your word choice just now; ‘betray you’?” You wanted to trust her and hoped she'd let you in, but she manipulated you instead. It’s normal to be hurt, and while I have… opinions about that, you can’t help what you feel.”

You look away from the screen, lowering the camera in resignation. There’s no use in arguing Himeko’s point because you both know the truth already and you’re too out of it to fight the obvious. You don’t say anything so the line is silent for a while, Himeko resumes her walk towards her cabin and gives you a moment to gather your thoughts. You didn’t know you talked about Kafka this often but the information doesn’t surprise you, she made your days exciting and you genuinely liked her for more than sex. You used the latter as an excuse to justify the former countless times. From the beginning, you were attracted to more than her body, and from the beginning, you were more attached to her than she was to you. Even though these are facts that you’re aware of, your throat tightens at the reminder. 

“I hate it,” you say quietly after a while, facing Himeko’s figure in the camera.

“I know, sweetheart. Nothing’s easy about what you’re going through right now, but it’s not the end of everything. I’m here to help you through it and you have your friends that are there for you too, just don’t isolate yourself while we figure out a path forward, okay?”

“What if she contacts me  again?”

“Then you tell me immediately.”

“What, you’ll come to beat her up?”

Himeko laughs softly. “I don’t resort to violence without at least a conversation first, but….”

Her long pause brings a white toothed smile to your face and Himeko’s eyes crinkle at the corners at the sight. 

After assuring you that she’ll text you in the evening, Himeko hangs up the call. You run a hand over your face, chest heavy. You’ll donate the necklace once you feel less like a wet rag that’s been wrung until no moisture is left. Someone will probably be happy to stumble upon a find like this one, and if Kafka’s ill intentioned gesture can bring happiness to one person then perhaps that cancels everything out. 

The next afternoon, you find yourself in a clothing store that resembles the one you first met Kafka in months ago, browsing the racks for whatever catches your eye. Shopping for clothes relaxes you; feeling the different fabrics and textures under your fingertips, finding a piece that resonates with you, admiring the craftsmanship and creation process of the items on display are all things that take your mind off the mundanity of your life. You’re not that well-versed in fashion, not really, even if it interests you. You’re approached by one of the store’s consultants and it’s as you politely decline her help that you realize that this is something you could do. You could take classes about a subject that actually matters to you and work in that domain afterwards— maybe you’ll learn how to make your own clothes and sharpen your personal style. The idea makes you smile among elegant blouses. You can deal with your parents’ expectations of you if it means you won’t spend another day in an office researching mechanical components for projects you don’t care about. 

You pass by your local thrift store to donate the necklace, but they won’t accept it. The employee’s eyes widens after one look and drags her manager to the front, who in turn adamantly refuses to take such a precious item from you. They wouldn’t know how to price it and its value is a few zeros too many to belong in a thrift store. You leave the place a little dejected, you don’t want to make any money out of it or it’ll feel like Kafka did you a favor in the end. You look at the box in your hands for a minute, then make up your mind. You’ll pawn it and give the money from it to the families who lost their loved ones during the incident last week. It won’t bring them back, it might not alleviate their families’ grief at all, but at least they’ll be set for years in the future and that’s something, right? That’s one thing Kafka would have (indirectly) done to make amends. 

You decide to pawn the necklace after doing a bit more research about it to make sure you don’t get ripped off. You put it back in your bag for the time being and make your way back to your home, shopping bags around both of your wrists. By car, it takes less than half an hour to reach your apartment building. You carefully park in the designated spot and struggle to carry all of your bags to the elevator. Maybe splurging on clothes wasn’t the best financial decision when you plan to return to school and are currently unemployed. You repeat the phrase “I deserve it” like a mantra all the way to your floor. Standing in front of your door, you’ve almost completely deluded yourself that you do, indeed, deserve five new pairs of pants, nine pretty tops and two jackets you’ll wear at most three times in the next year. You’re not too sure about the pairs of shoes you bought afterwards… 

You free one hand to turn the key into the hole and push the door open. Picking the shopping bags back up, you step into your apartment with a sigh, wondering how you’ll begin to start this new chapter of your life. The door hasn’t fully closed behind you that you freeze where you stand, assaulted by the various colors and fragrances of flowers resting on every surface of your home, some in bouquets twice as big as the other ones and all of them transforming your apartment into a disorganized greenhouse. Your mouth opens, bewildered. You can’t count the different kinds of flowers that are there, you only recognize a handful of them. You’re so shocked by the sight that you don’t notice the figure stepping out of your kitchen until she speaks and a sharp scream of surprise flies from your lips.

“Hey– It’s just me,” Kafka lifts her gloved hands in a gesture she means peaceful.

Stupefied, the bags in your hands fall to the ground with a soft thud. Your heart races wildy in your chest and you cover your mouth with a palm, eyes closing with the next shaky exhale that you let out. It takes you a minute to slow the drumming of your heart enough to utter words that aren’t strained. 

“How did you get in here?”

“You didn’t change the locks. Seriously, it’s like you wanted me to show up again.” Her joke lands flat and her smile falters an inch at your glare. “Not in the mood for jokes, alright.”

She walks to the couch and picks up an item your eyes previously skimmed over. It’s an intricate hexagonal vase with a soft brown tint, clearly meticulously made. The glass looks very fragile judging by the way she carries it and outstretches her hands towards you, presenting it to you like a gift. 

“For the flowers you want to keep,” she says. 

You’re going to break it over her head. 

[amtrak12]

After a conversation with a friend about this weird trend of fic readers who only want epic length fics (and also what seems to be a massive misunderstanding between parties on terms and their definitions), I went searching for the fandom sources I cut my teeth on. I don't have much bookmarked from those days anymore, but googling got me to this fiction length/terminology breakdown from a Livejournal blog. (Which also has good fandom definitions for other terms like A/N and fanon too, so if you're super new to fandom, go check that out.)

The definitions come from the publishing world (hence the page counts), but fandom and fanfic has always borrowed heavily from official publishing terminology. Flash fiction (aka, anything less than 1k words) is called a 'ficlet' within fandom. We call everything else a fic until it reaches the novella mark -- which may start at 20k words but as synecdochic breaks down on their Dreamwidth blog, there's a lot of overlap between short stories and novella word counts. Because, when you're not constrained by physical page counts, the real dividing line between short stories and novellas are the number of plots and themes you're using. (Seriously, go read their meta on this topic. It's fantastic!) Either way, once you're hitting tens of thousands of words, you're in longfic territory. And then if your fic is even longer than that -- 100k+ like shown in the screenshot above -- it's called an epic fic.

And these terms, longfic and epic, are important because they're used to differentiate these stories from the average fic. Because, at least in the 2000s up until the 2020s, the most common fic lengths you ran into were between 1k-20k words. "Fic" made the reader assume only a few thousand words at most. It's only when you changed the term to drabble or ficlet or longfic that they would realize 'oh this is going to be shorter or longer than normal'.

I don't really understand why that baseline assumption has changed amongst the newer demographics (and maybe amongst some long-running fandom members too?). I've seen a lot of theories and 'tiktokification' complaints, but I honestly don't know what's true. And I don't want to start a fight or even try to change anyone's minds if they are dead set against reading short story length fics. You can do what you want!

Just maybe shift your attitude about it a little bit? Remember that it's a personal preference the same way tropes are, and that one story length isn't better than another. Just like tropes, each story length serves its purpose. Some stories are best told in 1-2k words. Some are best told as 100 word drabbles -- or even a single sentence! And then, yes, some stories do need to be 100k+ in order to be told properly.

But that's not every story. And it shouldn't be expected of fic writers to pad a 1500 word plot into some sprawling epic just because they left it on a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger is probably the point of that fic! Short stories are an entirely separate art form to novels and as such are able to cover different topics than novels can or cover the same topics differently. And that's what makes them special!!

And look at that word count breakdown by genre! That's mainstream publishing standards! Now, go back up there to the definition of a novel and notice that the average published novel is 80k words long.

Let me repeat that:

The average length of a published novel is 80,000 words long.

Could a novel go longer? Sure! And if you're dipping into adult sci-fi or fantasy, absolutely it will be longer! But does your fic need to be longer than the average novel in order to be good? In order for you to feel satisfied when you finish reading it? Why does the length of the fic matter more to you than the content?

idk just some rambling food for thought, but I guess too long, don't read:

~✨~ Every story length is valid ~✨~

It just depends on the plot you have and the structure you want to use to tell it.

[no-where-new-hero]

omg I need your thoughts on the terminally o line author culture bc ngl it makes my eye TWITCH, there are authors I deliberately avoid even tho I've heard their stuff is good bc they're like that 🙈

HHHHH oh good lord, okay, from how I see it, there are two angles on this, both aggravating and sad: the official decree one and the spontaneous ecosystem one.

The officious one is that the nature of publishing nowadays demands an author have an online presence. You need Twitter/X. You need to let every potential reader know your book is coming out. You need engagement through reviews and pre-orders incentives (if you buy now you’ll get a special keychain!!) and word of mouth assurances from your peers that yes your book is as cool as you say it is. You need a newsletter with links (more buying! more voting on lists that are simply popularity contests!) and promises you’re still working on the next thing, don’t forget about me in the morass of everyone else doing the same thing. You need an Instagram and TikTok now to post pretty pictures and videos because one or two authors made it big off this kind of promotion and now everyone thinks it’s the ticket to the bestseller list (sadly, it seems to be working). You need an OnlyFans (a joke but I do recall a twt spat that was a joke/not joke about how rupi kaur will always be more beautiful than her critics and people who took issue with the conflation of beauty with talent). At the end of all this, you’re basically an influencer, a content creator creating content for the content you should be focusing on creating, the finished novel. And the novel itself seems to be disappearing behind the masks used to promote it (fanfic-style tropes, moodboards, playlists, memes) until I now no longer trust the book that I’ll pick up to have any resemblance to the enticements that brought me here. I’ve seen an author or two complain about the stress all this self-promotion generates, but it’s become such an entrenched part of the industry, I think people just accept it. And thus spend too much time online hoping that if they tweet just a little more, produce just one more reel, maybe that’ll be the difference between a sale and no sale.

The other side of this, distinct but obviously connected, is the ecosystem created by this panic of being perpetually visible coupled with the fact that so many of the new authors came of age during the rise of internet fandom culture. That opinionated community mindset that blurs the line between anonymity and friendship is the lens they bring to their own work. I mean, it makes sense I suppose—if you love yelling about characters and words, why wouldn’t you do that once you start to produce your own? This really came home to me hearing about that reviewbombgate “scandal” and how people involved were in reylo circles and that was used to provide receipts. You’re interacting with your readers and peers about your intimate work but they are also all strangers. They will not always give you the benefit of the doubt, and now—as opposed to the past when maybe the worst that could happen was a handful of bad reviews in newspapers—you will either be tagged in hate reviews, sub-tweeted, explicitly called out, demanded to atone for your sins. It’s no longer the morality of consumption but the morality of production. Of course, the easy answer is just log-off, touch some grass. But that can work only when you and everyone else are separated by anonymous accounts or when you have no platform to maintain. As an author trying to make your livelihood from this, suddenly it’s do or die. We’re in a strange moment of authorship bringing the Internet’s echo-chamber and claustrophobic into the real world (this is a lie: publishing now is no longer the real world. But it looks like it) and thus you can kind of no longer escape things.

Will the average reader who isn’t aware of all these machinations care about reviewbombgate? Would a reader browsing at Target think about the controversies around Lightlark? Very likely not. But the impression I’m getting more and more is that the average reader isn’t the one buying all the books. Or shall we say—a bestseller’s status relies on bookstore stock. Bookstore stock is only huge when they know a book will be a good investment. They’ll only know a book is a good investment if it and its author has street cred based on booktokkers, bookstagram, bloggers and reviewers (have you noticed how many books out these last maybe 1-3 years have these kinds of accounts thanked in the acknowledgments? Yeah), and THESE are also chronically online people who will Know. And decide the cast of fate.

Honestly, @batrachised, I see why you avoid these kinds of writers, though I wonder how long it’ll be before the disease becomes epidemic.

[samsheughan]

Confession I guess?

I figured it's time I was honest with y'all. (below the cut; feel free to skip if it's not your preferred cuppa)

I know I don't owe anyone an explanation of any kind, but as I've always said and stood by, I hold what audience I have with the highest regard and respect and I feel y'all deserve more from me than just the occasional "thanks for reading!" you know?

That being said, I want to let everyone know that, it's official: I am writing an original novel that I do plan to have published as soon as possible. I am planning on this novel being a trilogy of sorts, so there will be multiple books coming from me! :D

I have been writing fanfiction since I was 12 years old. What started on a floppy disk has flourished into a passion that I will always be proud of and grateful for. Writing fanfiction has spared my life more than once, and in the process of writing fanfiction, I have made friends that I know I will have for the rest of my life. I am so SO so grateful to y'all.

However, as time has gone on, and especially in the last few years or so, writing fanfiction felt more like an obligation rather than the hobby it's supposed to be. And that's no fun. But trying to bridge the gap between fanfiction and actual fiction (aka, the kind you can get paid for) has also been a struggle. I had a hard time trying to detach the ideas I had for fics from their respective fandoms and convert them into something that could be an original novel.

I have tried to adapt some of my more popular fanfiction stories into original ones, but a lot of the fandoms I've been in just don't make that an easy prospect (even my Modern AUs are hard to adapt since what makes them Modern AUs is deeply embedded in their respective fandom). But lately, the fog from that cloud seems to have lifted, and I am currently working on the manuscript for my very first novel!

All that aside, you might be wondering: "but Liz! You promised us you'd finished your fic! You promised, you promised, you promised!!" And you're right. I did promise. A promise I still intend to fulfill. I am a woman of my word. Sutures will be finished.

Someday.

But the timeline for that finale is now offcially on an indefinite hiatus. I could wake up tomorrow morning and finish it all and then post it that evening. Or it could be 10 years before I'm able to get back to it. Who can say? I sure as hell cannot. And while I hope I won't have to make y'all wait that long, like Claire, I have a glass face and cannot lie. But I also have to live in reality: I am my family's primary breadwinner. We are all disabled in some form and I am no longer capable of working outside our home. Wolf hasn't been for some time, so us staying home with The Pup just makes more sense now that we have officially pulled him from public school to homeschool him ourselves. Doing something working from home is now my chief focus, and I have to do what I need to do to facilitate that. We are good for the time being though (so much so that I closed the gfm I started a few months ago, so thank you to everyone who helped us out in our time of need 💜)

It has been a lifelong dream of mine to become a published author. A writer of love stories, in every romance genre I can get my wee fingers on! xD I am now in a position to chase that exact dream, and I cannot wait to be able to share what I've been doing!

To the Outlander fandom: my heart is yours from the moment I saw y'all. You've held my spirit with your two hands, and kept it safe (hey, jammf would be proud of me for channeling him here, be quiet :P) I have had many ups and downs with fandoms but I am eternally grateful for the love and appreciation this fandom has showered me with and I hope y'all will continue to stick around to see what else I got up my sleeve!

Stay tuned! Good shit is coming xx

[yes-i-read-sappho]

So you want to read "No Longer Human"

One of the things that fascinates me most in this world is translation, and when it comes to reading literature not originally in English I always wonder how accurate what I'm really reading is, especially seeing how much a work can vary from translation to translation.

With this in mind, I set out with a friend to read all three official English translations of Osamu Dazai's Ningen Shinkkaku (best known in English as No Longer Human) in order to figure out which one was the best.

DISCLAIMER: I do not read Japanese so my ability to comment on the actual accuracy to the original text is limited, so most of what I am saying here is based in the readability in English etc. (That being said, if you know more about the original and the accuracy to the original of any of the translations below PLEASE let me know I would be so so interested.)

With no further ado, here are the translations in the order I read them:

1. No Longer Human, trans. Donald Keene (1958)

This translation is easily the most familiar to English speakers (for BSD fans, this is where you can find "page 21, 'Mine has been a life of much shame.'") The main pro of this translation is that is very easily accessible in the literal sense. On top of this, the writing style is relatively easy to understand, if a bit antiquated (see: published 1958).

Unfortunately, while much of the vagueness in this book is almost definitely a consequence of Dazai's own writing, this translation is far from perfect. When discussing it with my friend, we realized that a confusing scene (pages 153-154 in the paperback) actually appears to be a consequence of a mistranslation, as both of the other translations we read presented the same contrary interpretation.

Overall, Keene's translation is fine but can feel incomplete.

2. A Shameful Life (Ningen Shikkaku), trans. Mark Gibeau (2018)

New title alert!

Gibeau's translation felt more complete than Keene's (and I may have gone a little insane using my limited Japanese knowledge to see if a single detail was accurate which it did appear to be). The only real downside to this translation was the lack of italics used within the text, which made it a bit more difficult to follow at times when it came to the character's inner thoughts. That being said, I actually like this as a literary device, especially given that the framing of the novel is in the form of personal journals.

What really made this version stand out to me, however, wasn't necessarily the translation itself, but how the translator addresses it. This book provides a translator's afterward (rather than an introduction as in the other two) where Gibeau gets into the historical and cultural context necessary to really understand the novel, including the I-novel literary movement and Dazai's own life. This really helps readers (especially those less familiar with Japanese history and culture) to really understand some of the nuances of the novel, while the placement at the end - pointedly - first allows the text to stand on its own. Also, in addition to the afterward, Gibeau also provides a brief "Note on the Current Translation," where he explains the merits of multiple translations and a bit of his own process/experience translating, which I enjoyed reading.

3. No Longer Human, trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter (2023)

(I don't know why this cover image is massive but oh well.)

Most of what I remember about this translation is wanting to like it more than I did. I was excited to read a translation by a woman because of how female characters are treated in the novel, but I do not remember there being a distinct difference. (The only notable difference was in the specificity of the language used at one point in the first journal, but this wasn't related to gender and I'm not going to get into it here.)

This translation initially endeared itself to me by directly referencing Bungo Stray Dogs in the introduction for its role in increasing the popularity of the novel among English speaking fans (even though Winters Carpenter somewhat misrepresents the series), but the introduction as a whole does very little to contextualize the novel, especially not compared to Gibeau.

Broadly speaking, I found this translation forgettable.

In conclusion,

I would recommend Gibeau's translation over the other two. However, each translation has its advantages and disadvantages, and you will still get the story from all of them if that's what you care about most.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

What ages do you think each GP member was shipped out?

I have a headcanon that the older members (Oliver, zack, Paula) are neurodivergent because they were shipped at a young age and probably didn’t do well at standardized testing of grand valley because they have been at goldy pond for years

(rather than months compared to some newer members. I think Pepe was the most recent?)

You're right about Pepe!

(Chapter 69 & 70 Extras | Mystic Code Book Chapter 3 Q&A)

He's the only one whose shipment age is officially confirmed.

My guesses:

1. Adam: 14 at most, but probably younger (shipped in late 2045) 2. Gillian: 7 (2037) 3. Nigel: 8 (2037) 4. Oliver: 7/8 (2036; confirmed to have been at GP the longest) 5. Paula: 8 (2036) 6. Pepe: 16 (2045) 7. Sandy: 12 (2040) 8. Sonya: 8 (Early 2037) 9. Theo: 12 (Late 2045/January 2046) 10. Violet: 10-12 (2042-2044) 11. Zack: 9 (2036)

Without exact dates, the ages and years might be a bit off because I'm mostly focusing on their birth years, but within a year of error hopefully for everyone except Sandy and Violet, for whom I have the least amount of information to go off of so it's just personal vibes.

Reasoning under the cut:

Oliver, Paula, and Zack have been a part of the most recent incarnation of the Goldy Pond Resistance the longest, with Oliver being there the longest out of the three per the chapter 69 extra. We also see flashbacks of them together.

(Chapter 85 | Chapter 95)

From here, all we have to go on is the "Two Wills" story of the third light novel that focuses on Gillian and Nigel.

In this conversation with Emma on January 29, 2046, Nigel says it took him eight years to create one of the guns they use in their plan.

I'm assuming the ages provided in the extras are their ages on the day they met Emma, so a few months later on March 27 of that year Nigel turns seventeen. 2045 (when he's sixteen) minus eight is 2037, when he's eight years old.

Depending on how long it took Oliver and companions to recognize his technical knowledge, which probably wasn't more than a few hunts in.

Similar to how it didn't take long for Gillian's sister to be recruited for the cause.

Gillian and Nigel arrived at Goldy Pond within a few days of each other, if not on the same day, for the two of them, Nigel's younger sister Lala, and Emilia to all experience their first hunt together. Gillian is a year younger than Nigel, so she's shipped to Goldy Pond when she's seven.

"A boy a little older than [Nigel]" is referring to Oliver, who's already shown an aptitude for leadership for him to start taking on the duty of announcements to the new arrivals, couldn't have been there for too much longer than Nigel, so my guess is he arrived at Goldy Pond in 2036 prior to his October 25 birthday when he turned eight.

Sonya is also shown to have arrived before Nigel and Gillian, yet she arrived after Oliver, Paula, and Zack, as she's not featured in any of those early flashbacks with them, so my guess is she also arrived in the first half of 2037 before she turned nine on June 3 of that year.

This only thing that throws me off with all this is this page from chapter 77 because of how small and young Lala looks at the time of her death while Nigel looks like he's the same as he does in the present.

And shortly after she's murdered is when Gillian and Nigel go off on their own to try and kill Luce with an unfinished gun and fail, but the description makes it sound like it's near completion with the damage it's able to do to Luce's mask. It's hard to say, but with the light novel being published in October 2020 and the Goldy Pond arc being published in 2018, it's possible they retconned Lala into being older, or that there was actually a much larger gap between then and Nigel finally perfecting the weapon and ammunition.

But whenever this incident occurs, Sandy has also been around long enough to be integrated into the Resistance.

As this is the only time he's mentioned throughout the entire light novel. Violet's only mentioned during the conversations in the present day when Emma's talking to Gillian and Nigel about their pasts, so it seems safe to say she's the newest member of the Resistance after Pepe and has probably been with them for at least a year, so she was shipped out in 2044 at the latest.

My arbitrary designation for her shipment is sometime between 2042 and 2044 because of my personal headcanon that she only realized she was a trans girl after being shipped out, but she's had enough time to settle into her identity in her new environment surrounded by the new friends who support her. With the farms being symbols of oppression, I like the symbolism of kids coming into themselves once they've been removed from the farm environments they grew up in when they were unaware of the reality of their world.

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 3)

Your headcanon of neurodivergence being a factor in determining which kids are shipped out early before 17 at Grand Valley could also fall into this, which I think is cool. Thrown away due to narrow, arbitrary metrics of success, and becoming the menace that dismantles them thanks to the very reasons they were discarded.

Back to Sandy, he has to arrive sometime before Violet, so 2040 when he's 12. Just because.

Finally, there's Adam, who was at Lambda at least until November 2045 because he sees Norman there.

(Chapter 75)

But he has to have been at Goldy Pond for a bit for him to become the doorman for the resistance, so he was probably sent there in November or December of 2045.

(Chapter 72 | Chapter 73 | Mystic Code Book Chapter 3 Q&A)

Lambda 7214 did not exist fifteen years ago when James left this message, and the timeline in the mystic code book doesn't provide us with a date for when it was completed, though it's probably in the 2030s.

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 5)

With the experiments that take place at Lambda resulting in Hayato and Jin being born two days before Conny's shipment on October 12, 2045, and having them look as old as teenagers in October 2047 when Emma's group meets them, Adam could be anywhere from one to fourteen when he arrives at Goldy Pond. I go with eleven if I'm indulging in the Adam and Norman are twins theory.

[i-sveikata]

hii!

I’ve been a semi-silent reader since graveyards was first published but I cannot be silent any longer! I absolutely love this fic and I don’t have enough words to describe what a pleasure it has been to read it. According to ao3 I’ve visited it 59 times already (I’m on my 4th official re-read and frequently go back to chapters when I randomly think back on a specific scene).

I’m currently on the scene where Vegas briefly wonders what it would be like to raise children with Pete and I have to ask, are we going to get Venice at any point? And what would Vegas be like as a father? I think Pete would be a good parent because of how practical he is, that and his patience with Macau and how he makes sure to consider his feelings when communicating with him. Vegas on the other hand, I think he could be a good parent especially if he was doing it with Pete but maybe his perception of himself being evil and destructive would get in the way of that?

p.s. after reading the first chapter of graveyards I went back and read all your other fics and all I have to say is chef’s kiss. The barbarian sterek and the one where Stiles thrifts Dereks clothes are two of my favourites.

Hey anon!! Thanks for coming to say hello!! Wow omg that’s so many times to visit a fic I hope you enjoy the fourth reread!!

I’ve actually answered this one a few times before but this fic is based off the show- I’ve never read the novel. So while I do know of Venice vaguely from what other people have mentioned in the fandom he’s not going to appear in this fic.

Tbh I think they would both make very good parents- they both already have clear examples of what kind of upbringing did not work for them so it would be them both trying to walk down a new path together. That wouldn’t make it impossible for them to recreate trauma in new ways of course but I do think they’d both be very good at pulling each other up on things if they thought one of them went too far or if they disagreed with how the parenting was being done. I think the environment would work against them a little- being in a mafia family and constantly in danger would make things feel a little less secure and they’d both be insanely protective of their kid but I do see them making the necessary sacrifices to enable their kid to live a moderately stress free life- I.e stepping away from high stakes/ chaotic situations or not pissing off people enough that they’re making lots of enemies to deal with etc.

I think if things ever got too bad they’d take off together for a fresh start somewhere else in Thailand and find new jobs that wouldn’t bring as much attention on them just to keep their kid safe. Their kid would easily come first before the family empire no question. But meanwhile you could 100% guarantee they’d be teaching their kid how to fight and use weapons and protect themselves as they grown up. Like as soon as their kid was old enough theyd be a little bit more dangerous (would be hard to avoid with those two as parents)

I think Pete is helping a lot in reshaping Vegas’ understanding of himself so by the time they did get around to talking about/deciding if they wanted kids Vegas would feel much more settled in himself and have a stronger foundation for his self esteem than he does currently. And they’ll both be better equipped by then to reassure one another’s doubts/uncertainties so while I do see them occasionally butting heads/ struggling, they’re the types who find their footing very quickly. And when they’re together the other person wouldn’t let them lose their footing for very long if that makes sense. How they started as a couple has forced them to figure out how to communicate properly and establish good boundaries and mutual respect so those would be some of the biggest factors working in their favour for when/ if they did have a kid.

Omg thank you so much for saying so that’s really sweet! Im so happy to hear that you liked them. Lmao yes that was my biggest fandom for years I’ve written so much sterek (and still have many open wips for them haha) thank you 💛

[very-bad-poetry-captain]

TOS novel book review McCoy edition nr 4 - Planet of Judgment

I knew there was a TOS novel where McCoy's wife was called Honey and she divorced him because they hadn't been intimate in three whole weeks, but I didn't remember it was Planet of Judgment. And I am judging this book.

Link to the previous review

Title: Planet of Judgment Author: Joe Haldeman Year published: 1977 (this was one of the very first trek novels ever published)

Content warning: a few descriptions of dying and wounded people, a bit of body horror

Plot summary in two sentences: A pretty large landing party including Kirk, Spock, and McCoy get stuck on a planet where natural laws don't seem to work and they have a few very bad no good days playing "stranded on a planet trying to kill us" before the aliens make contact, and then they are experimented on but like, it's clearly for a good reason so it's all fine (it's not). This book seemed like it could have been a TOS episode but mercifully it wasn't. Official plot summary: Never before had the Enterprise been betrayed by its own technology. Never before had their systems, instruments and weapons failed to respond. And never before had Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew faced a total breakdown of science and sanity... until they stumbled on the mysterious world that couldn't exist... A world orbited by a black hole ruled by chaos - where man was a helpless plaything for a race of beings more powerful than the laws of the universe. A brain-bending voyage into the unknown with the Starship ENTERPRISE.

This book is for you if you:

Kinda like the classic 70s scifi plot style

Want to read every novel that has McCoy in it (his parts are fun)

Enjoy philosophical questions such as "Is experimenting on aliens ethical if the constant 'clatter clatter' from their brains is really annoying? Like, super annoying. Honest." and "If Spock has read romance novels and knows about fake dating, does that mean every fanfic on the subject where it's Spock's idea is no longer out of character (asking for a friend)?"

Want to read a really detailed description of the scene on Vulcan in Amok Time minus the part about Jim's shirt being sliced open because that was apparently not important

This book was 50% not very interesting and 50% wow, he really wrote that huh 🫢

The ultimate McCoy questionnaire under the read-more (some spoilers):

1. Is McCoy in it?

Yes! More than I excepted at the beginning of the book!

2. Is McCoy in it a lot?

If you can get through the first part of the book, McCoy gets lots of time to shine. If you cut out most of the book and keep the McCoy parts I'd say it was a really good book.

3. Does he get to be concerned over whatever angst has befallen Kirk lately?

Well, yes and no. He's befallen with the same angst. Mostly. He gets to sneak in a "heh I really don't envy you having to be captain, Captain" in there. And there's a few hours where he thinks Jim is dead. The book doesn't linger too much on his anxiety but to be fair the book skips ahead quite a lot and isn't too keen on explanations.

But in a memorable scene he cuts down a tree and it falls right on top Jim 🤨

4. Does he get to have silly little arguments with Spock?

Read these excerpts from the book and tell me this isn't potentially the weirdest exchange of words he's ever had with Spock.

There was a really classic exchange though between the three of them that hit their dynamic just right (after Spock and McCoy join Jim to be stranded with him on the planet because they missed him):

Spock: You volunteered for the mission, Doctor. Surely there must have been some thread of logic to support your decision.

McCoy: Only intuition, Spock. Worked out the same.

Kirk: Whatever your reasons, I'm glad to see both of you but sorry we put you in the soup.

5. Is he the damsel in distress?

Not at all :/ But he does say "Good God. I wish Jim was here." so at least he was feeling like a damsel in distress.

6. Does he suffer, preferably a lot? Physical and/or psychological torment.

Mostly psychological, there's the experimenting of course and an injured crewmember that disappears and comes back all wrong and of course he blames himself for it for a while. And he gets to re-live when his wife left him. Because they, uh, haven't been intimate since March 3rd (three weeks ago). Presumably that wasn't the only thing but his immediate reaction to her taking their daughter and leaving the apartment is seeing an ad for Starfleet in a magazine and going "oh yeah I'll join Starfleet, that'll show her". Show her what? I have questions, Mr. Haldeman. And I think he could have suffered a bit more but I suppose there needed to be enough room for Kirk to have a sword-fight against pirates.

7. Does he get to whine and complain and be right about it? Even better, is he wrong about it?

Both he and Jim have these weird little rambling half-asleep thinking sessions that take up a couple of pages of unstructured and barely legible writing. He does complain about the experimentation though, and he gives Jim a really dirty look once. Most of his complaints are very reasonable in this one.

8. Does he get to throw some of that southern charm around?

There's a throwaway line that he's interested in one of the women in the landing party, but it really is thrown away and not used? He's always charming, though. Why is this even a question. Even Spock agrees in this book.

9. Does he get to do some medical malpractice?

Well now. He has to do stitches and use a knife, not even a clean one. And you know he hates such medieval practices but the medical instruments aren't working. I'd say that counts as medical malpractice. He also gets to kill a guy? I think that goes against his oath or something.

10. Does Spock call him illogical or similar?

Only a little bit. This is one of those missions where they finish each other's thoughts etc. so like. They're besties<3

11. Is he forcibly put through his arch nemesis the transporter? Or the dress uniform?

He has to go in a shuttle (not shown but I assume he didn't like it) and then he gets telepathically beamed through space by aliens with pretty bad aim several times :3

12. Does Kirk call him handsome (joke or not this happens more than you’d think)?

No but he complains that McCoy knows all the ship's scuttlebutt about who's sleeping with who and so on. McCoy was so ready to read out a list to Jim but I think he decided that as captain he's better off not knowing. And he tells McCoy not to get into mutiny-territory which, when you think about it, is kind of the same as calling him hot.

13. Bonus points if his accent is pronounced and his speech is full of befuddling southern expressions which make Spock question McCoy’s sanity (and me wondering if I need a dictionary)

He calls Spock "weirder than a whistling fish" and it took me forever to realize it wasn't some southern expression (or is it?) it's just that if a fish whistled it would be pretty weird. Anyway Spock is like yeah okay fair enough.

McCoy calls one of the aliens "ugly son of a bitch" so at least he got to swear in this one.

Criticisms/things I’d change

I'm sure this book is a product of its time so I won't be too hard on it. But if I could, I'd definitely elaborate on the scene where Spock asks McCoy to help him get rid of Chapel's interest in him. Like, I just think it has so much potential. Just trust me on this I'll make it really normal and not at all weird (it was already weird). Jokes aside I think they spent too much time playing "help we're stranded on a planet trying to kill us" and in the end no one even explained how all the science around the planet worked, just chalked it up to "oooh powerful aliens". The ending was interesting though. Being experimented on is enrichment for Starfleet officers.

Highlights:

To be honest the best part was where the aliens beamed everyone back to the ship using their mind powers only, except for Jim and Spock, and then after ten minutes they were like hey actually we made a mistake we're bringing McCoy back. They put my poor wife through something worse than the transporter twice when they could have just kept him on the planet all along, and said hey how about you help us save the world against evil scorpions with your will power, no pressure but we start in ten minutes and you'll probably die :D Also he sleeps on a bunch of cardboard boxes? And gets to cut down trees with the scifi equivalent of a chainsaw? And he gets to play mind poker in some kind of gangster movie setting... Fun times all around!

Final McCoy meter: 8/10

[justforbooks]

Everybody is happy now

A world of genetically modified babies, boundless consumption, casual sex and drugs … How does Aldous Huxley's vision of a totalitarian future stand up 75 years after Brave New World was first published, asks Margaret Atwood

"O brave new world, that has such people in't!" - Miranda, in Shakespeare's The Tempest, on first sighting the shipwrecked courtiers

In the latter half of the 20th century, two visionary books cast their shadows over our futures. One was George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its horrific vision of a brutal, mind-controlling totalitarian state - a book that gave us Big Brother and thoughtcrime and newspeak and the memory hole and the torture palace called the Ministry of Love and the discouraging spectacle of a boot grinding into the human face forever.

The other was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), which proposed a different and softer form of totalitarianism - one of conformity achieved through engineered, bottle-grown babies and hypnotic persuasion rather than through brutality, of boundless consumption that keeps the wheels of production turning and of officially enforced promiscuity that does away with sexual frustration, of a pre-ordained caste system ranging from a highly intelligent managerial class to a subgroup of dim-witted serfs programmed to love their menial work, and of soma, a drug that confers instant bliss with no side effects.

Which template would win, we wondered. During the cold war, Nineteen Eighty-Four seemed to have the edge. But when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, pundits proclaimed the end of history, shopping reigned triumphant, and there was already lots of quasi-soma percolating through society. True, promiscuity had taken a hit from Aids, but on balance we seemed to be in for a trivial, giggly, drug-enhanced spend-o-rama: Brave New World was winning the race.

That picture changed, too, with the attack on New York's twin towers in 2001. Thoughtcrime and the boot grinding into the human face could not be got rid of so easily, after all. The Ministry of Love is back with us, it appears, though it's no longer limited to the lands behind the former iron curtain: the west has its own versions now.

On the other hand, Brave New World hasn't gone away. Shopping malls stretch as far as the bulldozer can see. On the wilder fringes of the genetic engineering community, there are true believers prattling of the gene-rich and the gene-poor - Huxley's alphas and epsilons - and busily engaging in schemes for genetic enhancement and - to go one better than Brave New World - for immortality.

Would it be possible for both of these futures - the hard and the soft - to exist at the same time, in the same place? And what would that be like?

Surely it's time to look again at Brave New World and to examine its arguments for and against the totally planned society it describes, in which "everybody is happy now". What sort of happiness is on offer, and what is the price we might pay to achieve it?

I first read Brave New World in the early 1950s, when I was 14. It made a deep impression on me, though I didn't fully understand some of what I was reading. It's a tribute to Huxley's writing skills that although I didn't know what knickers were, or camisoles - nor did I know that zippers, when they first appeared, had been denounced from pulpits as lures of the devil because they made clothes so easy to take off - I none the less had a vivid picture of "zippicamiknicks", that female undergarment with a single zipper down the front that could be shucked so easily: "Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deflated on the floor."

I myself was living in the era of "elasticised panty girdles" that could not be got out of or indeed into without an epic struggle, so this was heady stuff indeed.

The girl shedding the zippicamiknicks is Lenina Crowne, a blue-eyed beauty both strangely innocent and alluringly voluptuous - or "pneumatic", as her many male admirers call her. Lenina doesn't see why she shouldn't have sex with anyone she likes whenever the occasion offers, as to do so is merely polite behaviour and not to do so is selfish. The man she's trying to seduce by shedding her undergarment is John "the Savage", who's been raised far outside the "civilised" pale on a diet of Shakespeare's chastity/whore speeches, and Zuni cults, and self-flagellation, and who believes in religion and romance, and in suffering to be worthy of one's beloved, and who idolises Lenina until she doffs her zippicamiknicks in such a casual and shameless fashion.

Never were two sets of desiring genitalia so thoroughly at odds. And thereon hangs Huxley's tale.

Brave New World is either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite, a dystopia, depending on your point of view: its inhabitants are beautiful, secure and free from diseases and worries, though in a way we like to think we would find unacceptable. "Utopia" is sometimes said to mean "no place", from the Greek ou-topos; others derive it from eu, as in "eugenics", in which case it would mean "healthy place" or "good place". Sir Thomas More, in his own 16th-century Utopia, may have been punning: utopia is the good place that doesn't exist.

As a literary construct, Brave New World thus has a long list of literary ancestors. Plato's Republic and the Bible's book of Revelations and the myth of Atlantis are the great-great-grandparents of the form; nearer in time are More's Utopia, and the land of the talking-horse, totally rational Houyhnhnms in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and HG Wells's The Time Machine, in which the brainless, pretty "upper classes" play in the sunshine during the day, and the ugly "lower classes" run the underground machinery and emerge at night to eat the social butterflies.

In the 19th century - when improvements in sewage systems, medicine, communication technologies and transportation were opening new doors - many earnest utopias were thrown up by the prevailing mood of optimism, with William Morris's News from Nowhere and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward foremost among them.

Insofar as they are critical of society as it presently exists, but nevertheless take a dim view of the prospects of the human race, utopias may verge on satire, as do Swift's and More's and Wells's; but insofar as they endorse the view that humanity is perfectible, or can at least be vastly improved, they will resemble idealising romances, as do Bellamy's and Morris's. The first world war marked the end of the romantic-idealistic utopian dream in literature, just as several real-life utopian plans were about to be launched with disastrous effects. The Communist regime in Russia and the Nazi takeover of Germany both began as utopian visions.

But as had already been discovered in literary utopias, perfectibility breaks on the rock of dissent. What do you do with people who don't endorse your views or fit in with your plans? Nathaniel Hawthorne, a disillusioned graduate of the real-life Brooke Farm utopian scheme, pointed out that the Puritan founders of New England - who intended to build the New Jerusalem - began with a prison and a gibbet. Forced re-education, exile and execution are the usual choices on offer in utopias for any who oppose the powers that be. It's rats in the eyes for you - as in Nineteen Eighty-Four - if you won't love Big Brother. Brave New World has its own gentler punishments: for non-conformists, it's exile to Iceland, where Man's Final End can be discussed among like-minded intellects, without pestering "normal" people - in a sort of university, as it were.

Utopias and dystopias from Plato's Republic on have had to cover the same basic ground that real societies do. All must answer the same questions: where do people live, what do they eat, what do they wear, what do they do about sex and child-rearing? Who has the power, who does the work, how do citizens relate to nature, and how does the economy function? Romantic utopias such as Morris's News from Nowhere and WH Hudson's A Crystal Age present a pre-Raphaelite picture, with the inhabitants going in for flowing robes, natural settings in abodes that sound like English country houses with extra stained glass and lots of arts and crafts. Everything would be fine, we're told, if we could only do away with industrialism and get back in tune with nature, and deal with overpopulation. (Hudson solves this last problem by simply eliminating sex, except for one unhappy couple per country house who are doomed to procreate.)

But when Huxley was writing Brave New World at the beginning of the 1930s, he was, in his own words, an "amused, Pyrrhonic aesthete", a member of that group of bright young upstarts that swirled around the Bloomsbury Group and delighted in attacking anything Victorian or Edwardian. So Brave New World tosses out the flowing robes, the crafts, and the tree-hugging. Its architecture is futuristic - electrically lighted towers and softly glowing pink glass - and everything in its cityscape is relentlessly unnatural and just as relentlessly industrialised. Viscose and acetate and imitation leather are its fabrics of choice; apartment buildings, complete with artificial music and taps that flow with perfume, are its dwellings; transportation is by private helicopter. Babies are no longer born, they're grown in hatcheries, their bottles moving along assembly lines, in various types and batches according to the needs of "the hive", and fed on "external secretion" rather than "milk". The word "mother" - so thoroughly worshipped by the Victorians - has become a shocking obscenity; and indiscriminate sex, which was a shocking obscenity for the Victorians, is now de rigueur.

"He patted me on the behind this afternoon," said Lenina.

"There, you see!" Fanny was triumphant. "That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality."

Many of Brave New World's nervous jokes turn on these kinds of inversions - more startling to its first audience, perhaps, than to us, but still wry enough. Victorian thrift turns to the obligation to spend, Victorian till-death-do-us-part monogamy has been replaced with "everyone belongs to everyone else", Victorian religiosity has been channelled into the worship of an invented deity - "Our Ford", named after the American car-czar Henry Ford, god of the assembly line - via communal orgies. Even the "Our Ford" chant of "orgy-porgy" is an inversion of the familiar nursery rhyme, in which kissing the girls makes them cry. Now, it's if you refuse to kiss them - as "the Savage" does - that the tears will flow.

Sex is often centre stage in utopias and dystopias - who can do what, with which set of genital organs, and with whom, being one of humanity's main preoccupations. Because sex and procreation have been separated and women no longer give birth - the very idea is yuck-making to them - sex has become a recreation. Little naked children carry on "erotic play" in the shrubberies, so as to get a hand in early. Some women are sterile - "freemartins" - and perfectly nice girls, though a little whiskery. The others practise "Malthusian drill" - a form of birth control - and take "pregnancy surrogate" hormone treatments if they feel broody, and sport sweet little faux-leather fashionista cartridge belts crammed with contraceptives. If they slip up on their Malthusian drill, there's always the lovely pink-glass Abortion Centre. Huxley wrote before the pill, but its advent brought his imagined sexual free-for-all a few steps closer. (What about gays? Does "everyone belongs to everyone else" really mean everyone? We aren't told.)

Huxley himself still had one foot in the 19th century: he could not have dreamed his upside-down morality unless he himself also found it threatening. At the time he was writing Brave New World he was still in shock from a visit to the United States, where he was particularly frightened by mass consumerism, its group mentality and its vulgarities.

I use the word "dreamed" advisedly, because Brave New World - gulped down whole - achieves an effect not unlike a controlled hallucination. All is surface; there is no depth. As you might expect from an author with impaired eyesight, the visual sense predominates: colours are intense, light and darkness vividly described. Sound is next in importance, especially during group ceremonies and orgies, and the viewing of "feelies" - movies in which you feel the sensations of those onscreen, "The Gorillas' Wedding" and "Sperm Whale's Love-Life" being sample titles. Scents are third - perfume wafts everywhere, and is dabbed here and there; one of the most poignant encounters between John the Savage and the lovely Lenina is the one in which he buries his worshipping face in her divinely scented undergarments while she herself is innocently sleeping, zonked out on a strong dose of soma, partly because she can't stand the awful real-life smells of the "reservation" where the new world has not been implemented.

Many utopias and dystopias emphasise food (delicious or awful; or, in the case of Swift's Houyhnhnms, oats), but in Brave New World the menus are not presented. Lenina and her lay-of-the-month, Henry, eat "an excellent meal", but we aren't told what it is. (Beef would be my guess, in view of the huge barns full of cows that provide the external secretions.) Despite the dollops of sex-on-demand, the bodies in Brave New World are oddly disembodied, which serves to underscore one of Huxley's points: in a world in which everything is available, nothing has any meaning.

Meaning has in fact been eliminated, as far as possible. All books except works of technology have been banned - cf Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451; museum-goers have been slaughtered, cf Henry Ford's "History is bunk". As for God, he is present "as an absence; as though he weren't there at all" - except, of course, for the deeply religious John the Savage, who has been raised on the Zuni "reservation", where archaic life carries on, replete with "meaning" of the most intense kinds. John is the only character in the book who has a real body, but he knows it through pain, not through pleasure. "Nothing costs enough here," he says of the perfumed new world, to where he's been brought as an "experiment".

The "comfort" offered by Mustapha Mond - one of the 10 "controllers" of this world, direct descendants of Plato's guardians - is not enough for John. He wants the old world back - dirt, diseases, free will, fear, anguish, blood, sweat, tears and all. He believes he has a soul, and like many an early 20th-century literary possessor of such a thing - think of the missionary in Somerset Maugham's 1921 story, Miss Thompson, who hangs himself after sinning with a prostitute - he is made to pay the price for this belief.

In a foreword to a new edition of Brave New World published in 1946, after the horrors of the second world war and Hitler's "final solution", Huxley criticises himself for having provided only two choices in his 1932 utopia/dystopia - an "insane life in Utopia" or "the life of a primitive in an Indian village, more human in some respects, but in others hardly less queer and abnormal". (He does, in fact, provide a third sort of life - that of the intellectual community of misfits in Iceland - but poor John the Savage isn't allowed to go there, and he wouldn't have liked it anyway, as there are no public flagellations available.) The Huxley of 1946 comes up with another sort of utopia, one in which "sanity" is possible. By this, he means a kind of "high utilitarianism" dedicated to a "conscious and rational" pursuit of man's "final end", which is a kind of union with the immanent "Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahmin". No wonder Huxley subsequently got heavily into the mescaline and wrote The Doors of Perception, thus inspiring a generation of 1960s dopeheads and pop musicians to seek God in altered brain chemistry. His interest in soma, it appears, didn't spring out of nowhere.

Meanwhile, those of us still pottering along on the earthly plane - and thus still able to read books - are left with Brave New World. How does it stand up, 75 years later? And how close have we come, in real life, to the society of vapid consumers, idle pleasure-seekers, inner-space trippers and programmed conformists that it presents?

The answer to the first question, for me, is that it stands up very well. It's still as vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it.

The answer to the second question rests with you. Look in the mirror: do you see Lenina Crowne looking back at you, or do you see John the Savage? Chances are, you'll see something of both, because we've always wanted things both ways. We wish to be as the careless gods, lying around on Olympus, eternally beautiful, having sex and being entertained by the anguish of others. And at the same time we want to be those anguished others, because we believe, with John, that life has meaning beyond the play of the senses, and that immediate gratification will never be enough.

It was Huxley's genius to present us to ourselves in all our ambiguity. Alone among the animals, we suffer from the future perfect tense. Rover the Dog cannot imagine a future world of dogs in which all fleas will have been eliminated and doghood will finally have achieved its full glorious potential. But thanks to our uniquely structured languages, human beings can imagine such enhanced states for themselves, though they can also question their own grandiose constructions. It's these double-sided imaginative abilities that produce masterpieces of speculation such as Brave New World

To quote The Tempest, source of Huxley's title: "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on." He might well have added: "and nightmares".

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[colleendoran]

Hello Colleen! I just have a few questions about the new Good Omens graphic novel. Is there a limited amount of copies of it? And when you order a novel, it says it would arrive in July 2024. Was just wondering if that’s true or not.

thank you!

Hi, thanks for asking.

I don't know if there are any plans to limit the number of copies. As I wrote before, I'm not running the show here.

Yes, the project won't be out until next summer.

This may seem like a long time, but really it's not. If you've already considered this, my apologies for explaining, but others may appreciate the info.

While I've been working on the book for months - way before the Kickstarter was announced - there is still a lot to do. We need a cushion of time in there so if anything major goes wrong, there are options.

I will be working on a number of pages which will incorporate faces of Kickstarter supporters in certain scenes. This will not interfere with the look or feel of the book in any way, but it is going to take some time.

We are adding more story pages to the book. This is going to take time.

There are a LOT of extra products to manufacture and package. This is going to take LOTS of time.

The final printing and shipping will take months. It's not at all unusual to require a 6 month lead between final production and arrival in bookstores, especially with paper shortages.

If this book were being produced by a major publisher, it would take even longer to come out.

At a major publisher, the book sits in editorial for what seems like an age, then gets put into a catalogue for the next season solicitations where orders are taken and print runs are set based on those orders.

And a lot of that time would not necessarily be given to the artist to write and draw the book: you can find horror stories from many graphic novelists working for big publishing companies where only a small fraction of production was allowed for the artist to write and draw the book: the rest of the time was eaten by negotiations, administration, and editorial. I've done the vast majority of more than one graphic novel in just a few months. It's not fun.

Thanks to Kickstarter support, this is also going to be a deluxe hardcover with gold and red foil, slipcase, bookmark ribbon, etc. The time and expense for all that goes up.

While a major book publisher would have produced this book and put it in a big catalogue to take orders through distributors, Dunmanifestin is a small book publisher which has gone around the process to take book orders directly from fans and bookstores via Kickstarter.

Thank you so much for your question.

[jayahult]

A Brief Announcement About Heresiarch

When I started Heresiarch several years ago, it was my baby. It was maybe the best idea for a story I had yet, and I quite enjoyed writing it and people liked it. Unfortunately and fortunately, the former two points are no longer true. I think the real point of decline was when I got COVID a bit over a year ago. I experienced severe aftereffects from it, not enough to be what is called "long COVID," but long enough to severely affect both my ability to write in my off-time and my abilities in academics. I also had to transfer colleges during that time, so there was very little time for my hobby horse.

What this resulted in was a downward spiral. I slipped further and further in my schedule, and felt more and more ashamed that I was unable to keep up with the demands of something that I felt so passionate about. Furthermore, on rereading to keep myself from losing the plot, I kept noticing flaws in the story - places where I was overly cute with the dialogue, or left plot threads hanging without much meaning, things that wouldn't be woven back together because plans changed and because I was trying to meet the deadline more consistently than keeping things coherent. And the worst part was and is that I still quite love Heresiarch. It is still my baby. I love the characters, I love the setting, I love that it landed the way I wanted with audiences by and large. But in order to fix those flaws, major re-writes would be required, from the bottom up. Compounding this is a major issue with site infrastructure - I've never been the most technical person, but I felt like I could handle WordPress, until suddenly I was attacked by a level of anxiety and annoyance that was kind of unprecedented when I tried to improve my workflow and make it easier to get a chapter out.

When it's all taken together, I think it's best that I put Heresiarch on an official and indefinite hiatus. I do intend to finish it, in some form or another - I want very much to put Ana and Edam's story to a proper end - but it's not a story for me right now. To all those who were hoping for a swifter conclusion, I hope I have not disappointed you too much. This also isn't the end of writing for me. It probably isn't even the end of web serial writing for me - I've been seriously considering just starting a different story while Heresiarch is on the backburner and I hone my skill further, and I've actually been drafting a novel for traditional publishing, so you can keep an eye out for those. I would also like to thank you all for your support. Your kind words about Heresiarch mean all the world to me. Before I was publishing Heresiarch I was deeply afraid that I was not a competent writer, not able to resonate or reach other people with my art because of how idiosyncratic it could be at times. Seeing otherwise has helped me immensely as a writer.

Thank you all again. Keep tuned for more news. Remember - this isn't an ending, just a pause to let something new grow.

[imagination-overreaction]

I haven't done an official intro post, and I have no idea what to write here, so...

Hello!

I'm Shrub! I'm an adult, and I use it/he pronouns, no particular preference

Here's some stuff about me!

Things I like, in no particular order:

Team Fortress 2, drawing, Undertale, Deltarune, Blue Eye Samurai, Faith: The Unholy Trinity, FNaF (to some extent), embroidery, Buckshot Roulette, The Arcana (I love to hate it), Will Wood, plant symbolism, SCP (kinda) (mostly just the idea of it), Gravity Falls, Stardew Valley, Empress Theresa (I love to hate it)

How many OCs do I have?

143 147. If you ever wanna know about one, just give me a number and I'll be more than happy to share about that one (or the one after that if that one is boring). I have been coming up with fake guys for about 5 years now, and with all my works-in progress there is going to be more.

Characters are tagged as #oc-name

What am I working on?

The biggest ones are tagged on this post, but if you want more detailed descriptions...

A short story based on "Cabinet Man" by Lemon Demon, from the perspective of the maintenence man that looked inside that thing.

My longest official project that I'm still not 100% sure what format I'll be publishing in: A choose-your-own adventure set in the realm of the fae where you play as Mina, who just tripped into this world and has to get out alive.

Another longer project: A (hopefully) novel titled The Faceless King. It's lower priority, but I have a lot of characters crafted and a lot of setting made, so I might show off some of it.

Short stories (or a long one? Haven't decided) about my OC Chase, a bold and stubborn idiot that bought a really, really cheap house. The house is a demon. Near-death shenanigans ensue, but he is too bull-headed to let some peeling paint get the best of him.

An AU about the same stubborn idiot becoming a Fazbear franchisee. Near-death shenanigans ensue, but with enough duct tape and common sense, anything is possible.

A shorter, personal, sorta-vent-y project utilising the Software Automatic Mouth, as well as a couple of other projects using SAM.

A series of short stories about my OC Abe, an android created by a deity, and how he interacts with himself and the world around him.

The longest silly goofy project that can and will never be finished, where I take my OC Xavier, toss him head-first into whatever media I like at the moment, and make his celestial partners go find him in a sadistic game of cat-and-mouse. Might post some of this if I have parts I really like.

Any questions about the above things are welcome, and I have so many more characters that I'll probably talk about eventually too! I'm still getting the hang of actually posting to tumblr instead of watching and spam-reblogging from the sidelines, but I do plan on posting at least semi-regularly once I can properly wrangly my executive dysfunction.

If you read this far, thank you! I hope you have a good day :]

[orphicpoieses]

December 20, 2024

Hi and welcome to my small blog about writing and creativity 🥰

I am finally doing a life update again, because I got some writing news for you. But first, let’s get into today’s topics.

————— 🍂 Topics

A general update on my life (besides the news you already got)

Project Rosary Updates

Future Plans

————— 🍁 General

So, before I dive into my writing project, I want to say thank you for all your kind words in the last few weeks. I read the comments and even got inboxes from you guys (which I could sadly not answer due to my mental state at that time). You are so sweet and thank you for sticking with me.

A special thanks goes out to @yourfriendlywriter and @mirrorthoughts 🫶🏻 your messages were so sweet 🥰

Anyway, I don’t know if I already posted this or not: I got a job 🥳

No, I did not quit university. I just expanded my point of view. I am now working for a large research Company in Germany, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, where I help people in diverse medical treatments with the so called “Life Sciences”, aka Computer Science solutions for medical problems.

For anyone sticking around for a longer time, you might remember that I quit my mathematics studies and changed to computer science? Yeah, I’m back in math there 😂 but the people are great and I could attend my very first Company Christmas party 😎

University is also going fine. I passed the hardest exam this year and I can finally start preparing for my Bachelor’s Degree, since I am nearly done 🥳

————— 🥀 Project Rosary

Do you remember Project Rosary? My dark fantasy novel series? Yes. It still exists. And I finally came back to it, after a whole year of not writing! (Another thing that I should have noticed sooner, that I lost my creative spark while I was together with my ex...)

I am currently working on the first in the series (though I am not quite sure if I publish until everything is written...) and while I want to write something new for it again, I still need to digitize my handwritten chapters from my notebooks. I managed to fill the first whole notebook this year (yay! a small creative spark!), so I am finally onto writing that into my Scrivener project.

The best method for me is switching between dictating and typing. Sometimes I find it more convenient to just read my writings to my computer and edit the mistakes afterwards and sometimes I just want to have that typing feeling... 😅

But dictating on a Mac is way better than on a Windows! Holy!

I have a Windows Desktop at home and a Macbook as a Laptop. When I first tried dictating my writings, I started at my desktop and it wasn't too bad, just a little bit annoying to have every fullstop and every comma spoken out. But okay, I thought, it will be better with time. Then I tried on my Mac a few days ago and boy was that different. It not only realized when I wanted to ad a comma, but also if the sentence was a question or not. A real game changer!

The only thing I need to get myself to, is the names, because it will not always recognize the name I was saying (okay, they are not quite easy to write but also not the most difficult ones).

As a little welcome back gift to myself I treated myself to some nice Scrivener Themes from Etsy. Now, writing is even more fun. 🥰

I am officially halfway through the first draft with this book, which means that I can go on to the most fun part to write: the climax and the turning point!

————— 🌾 Future Plans

I don't like making assumptions about how often I will update you on my ongoing writing journey, but I hope to at least write here and there a little update.

I hope to get the notebook done this year and maybe start writing the turning point (I hope so).

I also saw that Tumblr now has Communities, which shows me, how long I haven't been on this website...which was quite too long.

I also hope to take you all with me on the journey of creating an epic fantasy pen and paper campaign, which I will write for some friends of mine to play next year.

I guess, more frequent updates will be on Instagram (my profile is linked in my bio), so if you want to know more, hop over there. Otherwise I will try to post more regularly on my writing process.

————— 🍄‍🟫 Outro

If you read until now, thanks for sticking with me.

Let me know in the comments, what you think about the communities that pop up now and which one is your favorite. Give some communities a shoutout and spread a little love 💕

Thanks for reading and see you in the next blog!

————— ✨ Taglist

I don't have a tallest right now (should I do one again?), but I want to tag some people for visibility. Love you guys 🫶🏻

@yourfriendlywriter @thetruearchmagos @enchanted-lightning-aes @kaatiba @mirrorthoughts

[ghostinthegallery]

One Year Fanfic Anniversary!

It is officially one year since I posted my first 40k fic on AO3 and really started putting myself out there in the online community (parts of it anyway). And I wanted to do a bit of a retrospective. Some stuff I learned about writing, fanfic, fandom etc.

it is much easier to start writing once you let go of wanting to get everything 100% “correct.” Characters, setting whatever. People don’t care nearly as much as your inner critic thinks. Or if they do…you can just disagree. It’s fanfic, playing around with ideas and interpretations is the point

i started writing with original work so transitioning to fanfic was a shift. But the things i learned about pacing novels are still invaluable. If you really want to level up your writing, definitely study how novels and short stories are structured

that said structuring a long fic is different from structuring the novel. Chapter releases mean each section almost becomes a short story in and of itself. This also means things get way longer than you expect (rip my word count)

referring back to the original texts often is 1) fun 2) helps you notice things you didn’t before and 3) helps prevent the spread of fandom misinformation. Cite your sources! Especially in Warhammer, our fandom infosphere is a mess

I don’t let the comments drive where my story goes in the broad sense, but they do influence certain details. It’s fun being surprised by what/who readers latch onto. And occasionally a comment has reminded me of something that exists I totally forgot about/didn’t even know. So I look super smart if I pretend that was my intention all along :D

Something should change between the beginning of the scene and the end. Internally or externally or both, something should be different

people did not bash me in the head with the judgement hammer when i decided to publish smut. This has been very liberating. Perhaps too liberating XD

smut is a great way to practice writing short stories. Sex has a clear arc (set up, build up, climax, come down), it is a great space for character exploration, it necessarily involves relationships between characters. and you only need a few scenes (often only one scene) so it stays short. This has been great practice as someone who could not write a short story to save my life

idk if this has mattered but i feel not allowing anonymous comments on AO3 has saved me a lot of grief.

carving out a small fandom space is the way to go. Curate your feed. Block liberally. Don’t engage with people who annoy you, it is not worth it

reblogging and interacting in the comments has been an awesome way to meet people. Highly recommend

Encouraging other people (especially newer creators) to create gets you more art so definitely do that (kindly of course)

robots really are sexy

[banneriscarried]

Hopelessly Devoted To (using) You (but you're using me too) has officially reached 64,000 words in length!

This fic is over three times longer than the longest project I've ever completed, and just under three times as long as the longest fic I've ever worked on (incomplete and will never see the light of day).

This is genuinely a huge accomplishment for me, and something I'm incredibly proud of.

When I started working on this fic two and a half months ago, I knew it was going to be the longest thing I've ever made, but actually reaching such a big milestone is mindboggling.

I'm in novel territory. My incomplete fanfic is long enough to count as a fucking novel. That's big news!

Thank you to everyone who has read what I've published so far, and to everyone who will read it, and to everyone who has read a bit but decided it wasn't for them. I genuinely wouldn't have written this much without each and every one of you.

Special thanks to my beta reader. I don't know if you follow me on Tumblr, or your username here, but you've truly made an absolute difference in this. I know I wouldn't have gotten this far without you. I'm really glad you commented when you did, not just because of the help you've given me for this fic, and some of the other ideas I've got knocking around my head, but for the friendship you've offered. Thank you so much Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius on AO3 if you wanna check them out. They write a lot of Ace Attorney stuff, and there's an in progress Hallmark Christmas Movie inspired AU there as well.

The reason I chose to make this special announcement at 64,000 words is absolutely because I'm a Minecraft nerd. Gotta celebrate a thousand stacks of words, right?

[cute-girls-from-vns-anime-manga]

I already sent you an ask on this and then FORGOR but any recommendations on where to start with majikoi? Is there a "best" version etc? I am stupid and unsure what's just a release vs different version etc

WELL NOW THIS IS A DAMN GOOD QUESTION AS MAJIKOI IS A LONG SERIES!!!

But unlike some vn franchises (Fate) there is a clear starting point and the quality doesn't drop like a fucking rock! But the naming conventions they ascribe to with Majikoi are somewhat annoying cause yeah their titles dont really scream "THIS IS A SEQUEL WITH ALMOST TRIPLE THE CONTENT" not to mention how "Majikoi" is not actually the name of any of the visual novels but a shortened title given by fans as the actual name is annoyingly long to say

So the order to play is simple:

Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai! <-(Commonly refereed to by fans as Majikoi or Majikoi O)

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! S <-(Commonly refereed to by fans as Majikoi S)

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A-1

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A-2

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A-3

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A-4

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A-5

NOW while Majikoi O and Majikoi S are very much Sequels to each other there is not a true route in O that S's plot hinges off of, S actually ends up giving six short after story routes just going into more details about the circumstances and events (but mostly more CG's and HCG's of the main 5 girls from O). But S's new content does hinge on you having played O before as it expects you to already know the characters of the story so it spends little time introducing them in favor of spending its focus on the characters added in S. S is also INSANELY longer than O like I havent actually verified but going by my gut I would say its double or triple the length

On the subject of Majikoi A-1 through A-5 those five vn's are SIGNIFICANTLY shorter than O or S being only three routes each (I think one of them might even only have two routes) now these are full routes and the writing is on par with even in some surpassing a lot of the original two's route writing there. Good thing is Minato soft were gracious enough to release Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A Set which is just all five A games packaged together!

Quickly I will also touch on Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de which shares characters and is set in the same universe and timeline as the Majikoi games but as it is quite old an no fan or offical translation exists I wouldnt go seeking it out. Mostly is just neat trivia as some characters fro Kimi do get a cameo in Majikoi S and the A's

As for obtaining these visual novels so far only Majikoi O has gotten a full and official English translation and release with a downloadable version being purchasable on Steam and Jast (apparently jast is a publisher never heard of them befor this)

For the rest of the series I personally Imported the Japanese copies cause im an absolute crazy person who likes this visual novel series way way too much, I believe they are purchasable outside of Japan on Minato Softs store (Of course there is also ☠️ if you so choose that option) you can get the Unofficial translations which are all but indistinguishable from an official release TL over from Majitranslations