Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 32

Book Review: Lesser Known Monsters | Rory Michaelson

Oh this one reads smoothly. I mean, it makes a pit drop in your stomach like it’s supposed to with the type of content it has in it, but the conversations between characters make sense. I get into some books and the conversations are author driven rather than character natural and then it doesn’t make sense. This one does. The character is relatable for those of us who have anxiety issues and are people pleasers.

I will say I did have a moment when the coffee shop happened and the gayvenger’s sequence with the LG and T where I suddenly had to go around in circles between the three main characters and try to rationalize who the T was. I was thinking Marcus was bi. And this is why some times, I get really lost on the uptake. This is my own fault, because there are most likely a bunch of hints explaining Marcus, but I missed them all and ended up having to back track and reread a couple times. Anyways – for ya’ll who are much more on the ball about recognizing people’s signals, this probably will be a complete non-issue. I tend to make my characters spell it out, only because I kind of need people to spell it out to me or I tend to just see a person as an androgynous asexual/aromantic npc until told otherwise. That’s my default setting for: introduce human, assign gender, assign preference, assign disposition. I know there is a big thing right now in people saying that others reading books will automatically characterize the MC as white and straight until told otherwise if the reader is white. I am white, and I’m pan/trans-FTM. Seems my go to is unknown heritage-ace.

The set up for the story does wonders for your anxiety. As in, it makes you anxious. Makes you anxious for the characters, and the situation, and definitely makes you go “they are going to get themselves into so freaking much trouble, I don’t want to be here” and yet like watching a train wreck, you can’t look away.

We do get into some heavy back and forth use of the words felt/heard/started into the river woman arc. This is a peculiarity of style to myself and I’m fully aware that not everyone is so preoccupied by the usage. It makes the story less immersive to me, like a passerby watching from outside the auditorium ring as a musician plays. Not the musician, and not the crowd, but someone watching both at once. I have to wonder if this was a stylistic choice by the author to set a time and a place.

The descriptions of Oscar’s panic – that sounds like what happens if I go into full overload. Jeez, I hate it. Also the splitting headache at the back of the brain and the black flashes – that’s bringing up me going “hey, ever thought of getting an MRI to check your ocipital lobe for a tumor or AVM?” I have a vague feeling that is going to be my fall back if anyone ever mentions that particular batch of symptoms.

Hmmm. Admittedly, the romance scene was being set up aesthetically well. However. I must say, Zara being left in need of a bathroom made the situation a bit…irritating to me? Also fade-to-black, but that specifically is a personal preference thing with me. The bathroom thing for a friend though wins top of the priority list over getting snogged by slightly ashamed nervous boy toy with a pheromone complex. Maybe I’m being judgy. I also have yet to find a specific quality within the MC to make the not-vampire moon-eyed over him yet by Chaper 15. Then again, I have most likely written this exact same type of set up where people will feel the emotional connect element to be worked out with more precision. I guess that is the difference between emotional romance and physical romance stories? Now I’m curious and might end up in some deep self-reflection for a while.

For the momentary deviation into frustration-relief territory (believe me, I get it, I tend to write those scenes first and then fill in the rest of the story, so no judgement, it just felt a bit disjointed in the priority list and then doing a fade to black on me, I’m not bitter, you can’t prove it) getting into the nature of the monsters and finally getting everyone on board is good. I can completely understand Zara’s character. Marcus I feel is fully fleshed out, but one of those types where I don’t want to be around them in the real world lest I end up falling through dark holes behind slightly less than human doctor’s houses.

I get Zara. I get Marcus. I’m still not sure, by chapter 18, of Dmitri or Oscar’s character. Panicked, apprehensive, anxious. Maybe that is what a character can be centered around. They don’t have to show the full range of emotions to be a complete character. It just seems the first time real decisions and actions by the MC were jumping not-vampire dude, otherwise, he’s being pulled along by an unseen current into the realm of monsters. Again, not a bad thing as a stylistic choice. Many anime and manga dealing in psych horror and yokai/ayakashi tend to have an MC who get’s dragged in kicking and scream who then has to navigate an entirely new world and has no freaking clue where to start, so they drift for a while before finding the ground beneath the waves and are able to propel themselves in a direction they choose. I’m fighting with one of those characters at the moment while writing Melancholic Harmony, so, again, I can’t judge, but more make an interesting observation as I dissect the story into it’s parts and figure out what the author is ultimately trying to say about not only the characters and setting, but themself.

*side note* Thank you for the graveyard/cemetery point out. I despise when that one is written wrong.

Also, for those who find written accents a bother, there is a character in here with a written accent and I am living for it. I love when people do this. It gives you some interesting stress and pronunciation and breaks up the monotony of forcing your brain to assign vocal ranges. I wish more people would write in accent. I really do.

Also, since reading The Graveyard Book by Gaiman, this is the second time I’ve ran into a reference in regard to a Graveyard and an Egyptian section. Is this a British thing? I’m thinking it is.

Hmmm…the interludes. Useful bits of side knowledge, a good way to bring in some breathing room. A bit of a shift in camera framing and scene cuts. Not a bad idea. Just a bit jarring to pull from one character to the other when the scene is about to get to a useful spot. Honestly, a bit irksome and hard not to just flip pages. I’m making myself not, but intel guy I could care less about. Also, referencing Marcus as the kid, and using his name in italics. It’s an interesting stylization to raise protective hackles and deeply wish the guy had gone over the wall and met the guardian. Alright, glad I stuck that chapter out. It dug into some emotions, and that’s what a chapter is supposed to do. You can hate disjointing a story all you want, but if the chapter achieves it’s goal of emotional development, it’s done it’s job for the story.

I should stop starting my paragraph addresses with sighed hmmms, but I’m back here again as I enter into Chapter 23. Just. Maybe that was the uncertain feeling I had when the storyline diverted into physical romance rather than development of emotional romance. That it would go into that kind of despondent category. I mean, the storyline itself calls for it. I just am not a personal fan of MCs and LIs entering into misunderstandings that can emotionally wound when they have no concept of lines and boundaryies. I’m more a – build the foundation and make them guard each other’s back – sort of person. Break them, shake them, melt them to the core, but in the end they have each other and the sky above their heads. This…this isn’t quite for me, the MC and the LI and what took place, but the timing and dialogue are correct for the situation. I will not say it is wrong or bad or poorly executed. I just have a different set of preferences. Let’s continue though, because the story is good.

Having the story set itself up the way it did, it makes for a good prologue into an emotional romance for a second book. But, maybe that’s what a happily ever after romance is supposed to do? Make you imagine the good that will come as the MC and LI take the time to really learn about each other.

It’s interesting, analyzing how other people write romance. Actually stepping back from my pre-conceived notion of what romance as a genre is from my almost two decades of reading the genre. This fits what I would call traditional publishing material, save for a couple aspects the traditional world needs to start incorporating very soon. Seriously. LGBTQ+ rep please and thank you. I loved the fact that action was decent front runner on the story line. Some romance books can focus a little too heavy on physical romance and not enough on either emotional romance or the action/adventure/scifi/etc genre that it is tagged into while still somehow escaping the label of erotica.

Decent rising action, well placed clues for the antagonists, enough info dropping to keep the overarching story relevant. Fade-to-black was spread out enough to get your gears started while leaving you space to fill in as you wanted. I think I’ve been too deep into my writing for a while to come up and check how most people are writing these types of stories now, so it felt foreign, but in hindsight, as I finish this, I must say, it is a good strong read. Especially if you like dark fairy tales and hot guys.

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Video Game Review Tuesday: Kingdom Hearts 1 (PS2)

Oh the memories.

Alright, I didn’t grow up with game consoles well up until my high school years. They were just too expensive. Even used. Libraries were cheaper.

So, I went to a boarding school for a short time. It was for gifted and talented kids. I found that the math course was way above and beyond my capabilities, where as the science, history, and Chinese classes I took were easy. However, you had get through a ton of math and you couldn’t graduate if you didn’t have like Calc 3 or something and no matter how hard I struggled and the multiple “math-help” extracurriculars I took, I just couldn’t grasp pre-calc 2.

So, for getting a 99% in Chinese and passing the rest of my classes with an A, I wasn’t going to be able to graduate. While there though, I had to take a PE class every other day. A kid brought his ps2 and ddr mats for the “off-days” and was allowed to set it up in the gym. I loved that thing. My folks noticed, because I was losing weight playing that over flag football and the other things. So, they buckled and bought a ps2 for me at the house when I finally came home from boarding school and returned to public school.

This was about the same time I came into possession of Kingdom Hearts 1 – I think it was used? That following April, instead of using the money my folks had set aside for my prom ticket and outfit, they let me use it to buy Kingdom Hearts 2 new and I played that all weekend. Best money spent in high school ever.

So, Kingdom Hearts has that special spot in my heart where I finally got to do the things my other classmates all seemed to have access too. It also wasn’t “violent” so I didn’t have to justify it. The number of music cds I had to give away to classmates because my folks figured out there was cussing or questionable content. (And yet they let me watch Logan’s Run, Hollywood Knights, Pitch Black, Alien vs. Predator, The Thing – all of which I loved) I’m still a bit pissed about a collectible Green Day disk.

Played the whole of Kingdom Hearts and loved every minute of it. I also died so many times in boss battles. Gummi ships are the freaking bane of my existence. I despise that feature. Space flight video games are not my happy place. Give me slap em, bash em, but don’t make me have vertigo, thanks.

Kingdom Hearts 2 was even better with the graphics. The one painful thing I distinctly remember though is getting to the final boss battle and realizing I had a couple side quests I wanted to finish. I figured I’d start a second game up and see if I could figure out where some of those hidden treasures were. I literally saved over the one file that would have put me into the boss battle with a level two character. I didn’t rage quit. I did cry though. I have not gotten that thing all the way through since.

Opening up Kingdom Hearts 1 way later in life. Oh. Oh that’s…hmmm, how do I describe pain in a way that makes sense? It’s really blocky. Actually, it’s kind of amazing how much better your memory makes things look in your head. I played through it once Wren helped me figure out how to get it sized to the screen properly (I am not proficient at the whole electronics thing).

Youtube is excellent for game play throughs when you get stuck.

That’s the thing. I don’t understand just how badly Kingdom Hearts could actually be until I got to Boogey’s house and quite literally went up and down that thing several times before buckling and going to the wiki and going “wtf where are all the things?”

How did we survive those years before youtube and wiki? Oh right, I borrowed someone’s book on how to beat KH1 way back. And that’s when I felt really old.

For the nostalgia and story line, it is still worth playing. However, if you’re comparing the mystery elements to modern games, this thing is actually a real pain to play. It’s scattered for being heavy on the rails. The freaking whale. OMG that place is infuriatingly annoying.

I love it and I hate it. It’s everything that was me finally having something I enjoyed doing that I could share with others, and finding it incredibly difficult to wrap my head around. Maybe that’s why I loved it though. I didn’t understand, but I had friends who would pat me on the shoulder at lunch and just nod going “yeah, mate, that spot just freaking sucks. Now, Halo with me.” – I was spawn camped so much with that game because the controls were completely different between an xbox and a ps2 and I was a newb, let’s not go into it.

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Manga Cafe Monday: Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari

Angry MC. Relatable angry MC. If you ever got bullied in school and could not for the life of you understand why you were being set up as the fall guy, this is that feeling all over. Maybe my school years were a bit messed up. Man, do I ever relate to the mood in this manga. I watched the anime when it was coming out and went and read this shortly after. A second read and it’s still just hitting every one of those justified angst feels I’ve got roaming around in my head.

It gets into dark psychology with an action/adventure flare. The aspects of being thrown into a situation you don’t understand, no one will explain, and then get blamed for everything. Builds up walls. Builds up distrust and wariness.

It begs the question of what the MC can do in the situations he faces. It digs into the reasons he does things that otherwise he might have never considered doing – buying Raftallia, contracting her when she had her freedom forcibly placed on her, saving the people who tortured him. It touches into my motto I love using in my own writing “make a bargain with the devil that lets you sleep at night.”

Art wise? Falls into my understood average. What I’ve come to expect of manga from the 20-tens and for action/adventure manga. Standard fare, nothing revolutionary, nothing atrocious.

This is one of those moments where the MC was designed to be an OP character, but he slides up against almost being a villain character. That’s what I mean by dark psychology. He doesn’t fall into the abyss. I’ve seen a couple anime that go way over that line and I just can’t stomach those characters. This guy, he’s willing to use underhanded methods rather take the straight and narrow because fighting fair will outright get him killed.

Suggest it? Oh hellll yeah. Love this series. Also – giant fluffy chicken-bird that pulls wagons.

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The Fire in My Blood: Why all the Latin?

Why all the Latin? I get a lot of that one actually. “The Latin is difficult…” “The Latin’s weird…” etc. etc.

So why all the Latin?

If it helps, the characters were originally named: Bark, Twister, Blackmoon, Saint, Doc, Molly, Pony, and Clerk. Urbs Aquarum was Tuloma, and this whole dang thing was supposed to be one massive Biodome set up over Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Tuloma was supposed to be a post-apocolyptic name for what is Tulsa, and it was supposed to have a Bioshock/Art Deco feel to it. So…the Latin came in after a lot of chapters and a lot of rehashing because I was wrapping up The Kavordian Library at the same time and one thing led to another and it became the planet that Corbin got the Subgalaxia to. The Feather on My Scale, The Wolf at My Back, and The Frost at My Feet are supposed to explain in more detail how Joiner Petroleum set up the domes, what happened to the Bai, what happened to the Glendwellers, and why people can use fire and other elements. I have the major ideas all up in my head and am working on The Feather on My Scale now. You’ll have to wait, but it will get resolved.

With that massive amount of info dumping out of the way, let’s look at the content and see what level of confused chaos I put in here.

Love in the Abyss is Love in the Light.

Chapter 1

I wanted Jesus and a devil. I wanted a broken savior. I wanted to be on the other side, where I could be more than my past. Where it was far enough and I had moved on enough that I could focus not on me, but on others. I wanted to write the flip side. I wanted to know what it was to be that person. I needed that.

Also, Wren had gone on a business trip for a week, the internet at the house tanked for four days, and I binged all of my post-apocalyptic sci-fi and fantasy movies I haven’t watched in years because kiddo finds them terrifying and I’ve been busy writing during the day. No access to my books because of downed internet meant I had paper and pencil and time on my hands. (Underworld, Dune, Children of Dune, Kingdom of Heaven, Soldier, Twister, Dante’s Peak, Constantine, Water World, Running Man, Total Recall, Collateral Damage, Van Helsing, Logan’s Run, Reign of Fire, Tank Girl, you’re probably getting the picture of what The Fire in My Blood is now.)

The Gangs are named after the various colors of fire. Blue being the hottest, usually the least flashy, the small flame. Orange and red are flashy and big, but don’t keep their heat as well. Purple comes from burning metallic salts. Green fire comes from burning boric acid or copper sulfate. Some of Blackmoon’s/Lunam’s symbolism comes from the concept of blackbody radiation in heating. Here, this might help: What are the Colors of a Fire & How Hot Are They.

To me, Lunam is the song Down to the River to Pray. I listened to that song on repeat for days as I wrote the first few chapters of the book and got a feel for who he was.

Actually, wait, here’s the playlist I made while writing the book if you want to get a better feel. Some people talk better emotionally through songs.

Clavis’s name was originally Wrench. Maria Mater comes from the song Let It Be.

The plight of the Ustor, the petroleum, the burn outs and the pipelines has to deal with watching America implode in the last few years under a treasonous president and a money grabbing political system. Had to deal with my fears when we left the Paris Agreement, and everything on the news was the environment collapsing on itself. People being subjugated because of the melanin in their skin, or who they loved, or who they are. Has to do with the fact I live in oil country and have watched people’s land get bought out from under them for the line expansions the same time the water crises was taking place in the Native American reservations up in the Dakotahs. To also reflect back on the coal mine disasters and the fact that so many people are dependent on fossil fuel acquisition for a job that pays crap, destroys their health, and risks their life because it’s the one job in town.

This book, I set out to write it as the one I would hand to my parents. Sam was supposed to be my birthname, but things changed. He, to me, was going to be my way of coming out. I gave them the book and they never have read it. This one symbol is the one I’m waiting on for them to read and go “hey, you know, we were going to name you Sam,” and I can finally tell them. Is it stupid and foolish and too subtle? Yeah. I know it. It’s what I’m doing, and what I’m waiting for. For them to be ready to talk.

Chapter 2

The meeting of the heads was written in way later. I wrote chapter one, and then the antichamber scene and bedroom scene with Sanctus and Lunam. I don’t tend to write my books in linear order any more. I like working out major scenes and then crafting breathing room and the subtle hints. In this moment, I needed to figure out who the villains in my story were. Honestly, I never did work out what Gemma’s power was, other than the fact that she was volatile and her Repercussion turned her from just angry, to an angry alcoholic. Coming up with consumption repercussions has not been easy.

Maria Mater really is the mother figure for Lunam. She and Medicus are sort of the mentor figure for Lunam. Prae and Ambulatio are loosely based on a pair of friends I have that are really publicly flirty with each other. Here’s the thing, I write scenes and I can run innuendo with the best of them. I’m super cuddly with Wren, but I can’t quite do the whole being in each other’s space kissy-huggy thing in front of people. It’s just foreign and weird to me. A reassuring touch, a quite word of support. Yes, I can do that in public. But the boisterous thing is so far from my personality, I find it fascinating to watch in other people. I also just don’t like making people uncomfortable with my presence, so I’m less likely to do things that I know would make people say something critical. Maybe it’s confidence, or really knowing your audience. I don’t know.

Chapter 3

The joker’s chair. That has everything to do with the fact I had a pair of rolling wooden office chairs from the ’40s. Every time Wren and I would host game night, we had to come up with enough chairs to go around the table for a bunch of people. There was one of the two chairs that had a cracked spring in it. The game group knew who ever got in last got to sit in the joker’s chair. Maybe a mean game of musical chairs. It wouldn’t tip anyone out, but it gave you that really nauseating experience that you were going to fall if you shifted suddenly. I did get rid of it eventually, but it did work for getting boardgames set up in a timely manner.

Chapter 4

The smell of lemon oil on wood paneling from the 70s. Metal cabinets that are rusting at the corners and a set of slightly dead potted plants in the massive window. Not sure why I have this memory, but it’s there. The soft shades of orange and yellow. Maybe it’s because most offices I’ve walked into where I live were built in the 70s. That slightly dusty smell to the HVAC system. The desks are all fake printed wood and there’s a grey tub perpetually filled with perforated print outs. That’s what the lobby and Requise’s place are to me. That slightly out of place nostalgia from a time I wasn’t born in to appreciate.

So. Cortex and Tempestatis. Cortex is hetero/cis. Temp is bi/cis. The two are best friends. Cortex is also one of those genuinely nice guys who goes out of his way to help people. Temp and Lunam have that weird semi-crush relationship where they respect each other more than their attraction. Yes. They’ve had a one night stand and realized they are much better as co-worker/friend type.

Chapter 5

Did I read another romance novel that pissed me off? How’d you guess? Was it the part where Lunam throws a coat around Sanctus, tries not to touch him in the car, or tries to give him a ton of room at the factory and Sanctus is scared and clinging? I’m getting sick and tired of knight in shining armor romance novels where somebody gets rescued and then, like three pages later, the savior is all over them in a way to show they person is still acceptable. It’s so freaking objectifying. People who’ve been through crap need time to heal, not get pounced. So, I took my frustration out on a bunch of gang members and then wrote what I wish people would just freaking write. You can construct romance without having to make them both salivate over each other in a hot second after rescue and not know each other. Time and a place. This is not it.

Hail Maria Mater – uh…did I do a Hail Mary pun? Yes…?

Does Lunam refer to Medicus as a silver fox? Yes…

Look, Lunam can find a ton of people attractive and not pounce them. Thanks. Been there. Done that. Live with it.

The conversation with Mater when she’s trying to reassure Sanctus? That’s constructed where she’s trying to be gentle. For him, having suffered at Gemma’s hand for five years, he’s absolutely terrified of Mater during this. It’s not that she convinces him, it’s that he’s in self preservation mode and will do anything to not have bad things happen.

Again. For those in the back writing romance. Rescuing a person does not immediately fix them. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

Chapter 6

Sudden noises can cause a dramatic startle reflex from hypervigilence. A lot of things startle Sanctus because he has hypervigilence from major abuse cycles. I wish people would actually acknowledge in their writing the prolonged psychologic damage and symptoms that occur with people who have gone through these things. It’s not just nightmares and fireworks when it comes to PTSD. He’s stuck in a long lived flashback in this entire chapter and is in complete mental shut down. It sucks. Immersive flashbacks suck so much, and the thing is, sometimes you have to be in one because you have to get through a situation that triggers it for your own health. Medical exams can put me there so fast it isn’t even funny.

Honestly, when I’m in flashback mode, having very short pointed directions can help me get something done rather than asking questions I have to think about. It’s hard, towing that line between having the ability to make your own decisions and your brain just noping out of rational thought for getting things done, like putting on your clothes.

Chapter 7

A bit of helpful backstory. Also a segment of me digging at romance novels again. For the love of all that is holy, if you’ve got someone with serious ptsd especially revolving around comfort levels of being dressed/undressed in front of others, would you freaking give them privacy and swing the camera focus away from them. Some of those scenes where the strong character goes into a changing room with the person having a shutdown moment and making them do the whole clothing thing with them there as a brute forced way of showing they are perfectly fine and lovable is just…stop it. I say that after writing up the medical scene in the chapter before. To me, there is a difference, where clothing and the levels of being clothed deals in intimacy, where as medical is medical and for a person’s health. So I wanted Sanctus to have somewhere where he could have privacy.

Beginning to wonder if I actually love reading romance or if I hate it and just hate read them to know what I want to do better. >_>

Chapter 8

Again. Another slap to the romance genre. This is quite literally one of those super prevalent tropes that I see written a lot. The abused one is in a situation that triggers them into actions out of self preservation and the “rescuer” will sometimes vaguelly dismiss it for a half hearted minute and then, in like the next page, the two are doing it and the abused person is somehow magically fixed, their walls come down and they know what love is.

No. No. No. No. No.

Lunam recognizes that Sanctus is doing something out of the normal AND DOESN’T POUNCE HIM because that’s what good moral people are supposed to do. Instead, he goes to try and find someone who can help. Because that’s what good people who don’t know what to do should do.

The number of vampire romance books where the vampire gets all licky to fix cuts. I specifically wrote Lunam the way I did to dig at this trope. Could he have licked Sanctus and taken this into that romance territory? Yes? I drafted it for a hot minute before backing up and going “but what does Sanctus actually need in this minute if he was real and this wasn’t some horney bit of cheaply written smut? So, Lunam has coagulant glands on his tongue and he doesn’t have to lick Sanctus.

Thinking I might just have a propensity at this point to smashing my head against romance tropes. Heavy, heavy sighing going on over on this side of the screen.

Also, Sanctus wincing isn’t because of the pressure. Lunam just doesn’t know that his coagulant stings like all get out until later in the book.

Chapter 9

One bed tropes. Oh how I hate those tropes. I’m sorry, well, no I’m not. I’ve gone on summer camps and long weekends where I’d share a room with a bunch of people. Guess who slept of the floor because sharing a bed with someone sounded a little too close for comfort? Let me just say dorm and locker rooms are hell. There’s only one bed, there’s only one bed. Feck that. Someone can go sleep on the floor. Also, just because someone crawls into bed with another person doesn’t mean they’re after a bit of nooky. Sometimes you just need that comfort of having warm contact and knowing you aren’t alone. Rant rant rant.

Sanctus needed to not feel abandoned, and I wanted to just kick the one bed trope to the curb. He had his own bed right next door. He didn’t crawl into Lunam’s bed to seduce him. He literally just wanted a feeling of safety. You can write that in romance. No, really, you can just freaking drop the one bed trope already.

I am very much a don’t touch me person with most people. I don’t like feeling like I will disgust someone if they find out I’m attracted to a lot of people and for them to go “oh, gross, you must fantasize about me.” I can get really awkward with people hugging me out of the blue because I have to deal with “are they one of those physical contact people, do they need comfort, what do they want from me?”

I will full on comfort cuddle someone though if they’re good with it and know I might find them attractive and not get creeped out. Massage is up there as something I will do as an expression of touch comfort, or playing with hair, or in general just wrapping myself around them until they warm up and calm down. It’s a way I express myself and I’ve repressed it so hard that I just get jumpy if someone touches me. I feel like they’ll know I’m weird and get hostile at me for existing.

I used to be more open to comfort cuddling back in high school. Might be why a lot of people asked me if I was a lesbian or if I was dating xyz. Nope, just sit down against a wall and pull whoever is balling their eyes out to me and just turn into a warm rock while they mutter problems into my chest. A bit of it is I have almost no energy for standing for long periods of time (AVM means blood pressure black outs) while people unravel, so that was a coping mechanism for dizziness while trying to give people what they needed.

I can turn the attraction thing off when I can finally work out what is going on and what the other person needs. It’s also in those moments when I can turn it off that I will get extremely defensive over the person. Nope. Someone’s let all their guards down around me and let me see them be real, DO NOT try to make them do that again. At that point, it’s loyalty. I have a very small number of people I am like this with at this point, the type where you say something negative about them, make them cry, make them hurt, and I will burn every bridge between you and me.

Chapter 10

A bit of backstory and acknowledging that Lunam isn’t perfect, for all his tough act. That he needs to work through some things too. Some real issues outside of just being able to be sad about little things.

Chapter 11

Scriba and the library. So many of us writers and dreamers can relate to the safety we felt going into the stacks of books and disappearing into stories. Sanctus is scared of Mater because she holds a position of power like Gemma and to him, women are scary. Scriba is supposed to be that element that slowly starts peeling back the walls, where he finds that he is safe. Someone other than Lunam to be at ease around.

This section is also where I get into Sam and Abby’s past. Where Sam comes out. Asks for his pronoun to be used correctly. Why do I not write other trans characters, make my MCs trans? I needed to admit I am trans FTM, but I don’t like the idea for myself of living under that label. If I’m going to write myself as an MC, I’m going to write myself in the body I want to be correctly associated with, which is male. I don’t want to write my struggles of being a guy stuck in the wrong body as some slice of life, an own voices autobiography. That just sounds depressing to me. I symbolize that struggle enough in my regular writing. If I’m writing fantasy, I’m going to be me, honest to the body fitting the soul.

Chapter 12

Okay, this little section has a lot to do with my frustration in “soft professions” and how a lot of jobs end up being devalued and seen as “women’s work”. Beg pardon, but some of the most well paid jobs in fashion were men. There is historic precedence for men being in and running embroidery guilds, tailor guilds, etc. There is current precedence for it. Just because something is considered “feminine” in America, doesn’t make the person feminine in the rest of the world. Get over your American assigned gender value already and let people just do what they find enjoyable as a job. I’ll get off my soap box.

Chapter 13

I needed to set up a bit of back story and tension for what I was going to do with Mercator.

Also, family ties and bond ties are a big thing to me. I have blood ties to people, but I can’t call them family. I will refer to them as “extended family” when it makes it easier for the flow of a conversation, but pretty much it just means “these people you don’t reproduce with or let your offspring reproduce with.” Literally, that’s all that means to me at this point. I wrote family ties and bond ties because I saw so many people in the twitter community talk about having friends they called family and wishing they could make them family. This one is for people who have chosen family, whose friends become brothers and sisters and moms and grandpas.

Oh, and dancing. I needed to torture my characters just a little bit. Give them a good moment because I was going to make them miserable in the next chapter couple chapters.

Chapter 14

Why father ties? You do know men can take care of kids right? Moms get the kids fobbed off on them so often, but there is an extremely underrepresented number of single dads, same sex parents, and men who want kids. Raising children get’s labeled as “women’s work” so often that it’s made us warry of anyone not in ownership of a uterus as predators. Grandparents can’t take their grandkids to the park without someone side eyeing them for being a predator. I know too many people who literally won’t take their kid or grandkid out on their own because they don’t want to have a cop called on them. I’m sick and tired of it. Let alone dads who go back into the dating scene. Lunam was all those frustrations balled into one.

He’s protective, and to him, to me, it made logical sense. Kids needed a protector and a parent, of course he was going to step up. Maybe that’s not realistic in today’s society. Maybe it should be.

Chapter 15 – 16

*ehem* these scenes just don’t get written very often and I would rather show that humans will be human.

Now, other than that morning moment, Mercator. Why did I? Well, A: I had to bury about five of my birds over the course of the summer and fall before writing the story because they were getting old, hawks got them, and needing to relocate a raccoon that took after two of my ducks. I was angry and tired of burying my pets and I needed an outlet.

I also needed a really good reason for Lunam to go from tolerant to volatile.

Lunam admitting that Medicus wouldn’t be normal after seeing in the box for a long time and talking about having done an autopsy on someone he was responsible for. She was his first love, before Sanctus showed up. In a way, it was also my way of acknowledging the pain I was seeing in the lgbtq+ community at the time I wrote that section. Some kid had walked out into traffic because her parents were going to send her into conversion therapy so she would get back to being a good little Christian boy.

Chapter 17

A good anime fight scene, a bit of revealing some reality of the characters, some preconceived notions. I loved writing this section. I also wanted Sanctus to have some strength, to be more than a ‘damsel in distress’ character. I get tired of reading romance books where the ‘strong’ character is really week willed and their whole character is dominated by the ‘savior’. I hate how these stories depend on romance between two characters who have almost had no conversations and they’re just supposed to become all steamy because what? There’s abs involved or something? No, if the character is strong, let them fight, let them own their choices, let them speak up.

Chapter 18

Okay, I was waffling here. I wanted to address Gemma and her villain character. However, I didn’t want to waste the better part of 3 or 4 chapters of minor plot and slow the book down for things that really weren’t going to contribute much to the characters. It would have been a lot of Lunam being enamored with Sanctus and him sitting in Vestitor’s shops watching him sew. So, I ran a time skip. I’m also not a fan of jumping into intimate relationships where the characters have only known each other for three days. That seems to be some weird thing romance novels depend on. I know people have one night stands and that stuff. But that’s physical satisfaction, not emotional romance. I prefer my characters have some time to get to know each other. Hence, I needed a time skip for a myriad of reasons.

Chapter 19

This is entirely me yelling at the knife to the stomach trope. Yo. I’ve had gallbladder surgery. I didn’t want to move for a good couple days while I waited for my body to absorb the gas they blew my abdomen up with. that crap gets stuck up in your shoulders and hurts like hell. No, no. You get stabbed, it ain’t just muscle that’s getting maimed. You’re gonna have major problems.

Chapter 20

Lunam kind of wanted Sanctus’s sibling’s’ blessing but was way too scared to admit it.

Chapter 21

I loved writing this. I channeled every single abusive girl in high school and college into Gemma for this one.

Chapter 22

So. This was supposed to actually involve a giant oak conference table, but then I had to check myself. Something about a knife wound and being realistic to the fact that both Sanctus and Lunam needed to see a medic. This is one of those moments that makes sense in the romance trope universe for them to totally get it on, and yet, realistically speaking, when you’re bruised and your stomach hurts you can handle horney, but doing anything productive can just not be pleasant. So, hello edgy frustration.

Chapter 23

On the same note of horney, I’m sick and tired of characters getting written in who almost immediately bang as soon as they get home from a stressful situation. Especially when it comes to novels involving characters who are in that dating segment of the populationa nd they have to go deal with the school principal about one of the kids being bulliesd. They come home and send the kid to their room to deal with repercussions and head to their own bedroom and frustrate feck. Like. No? You’re sitting down on the couch and talking it out.

This is one of those where I wanted for Lunam and Sanctus to both cool it and realize that they also had family worried about them and to stand up for that fact. Also, accounting for gut wound and Sanctus needing some decompression time.

Chapter 24

Thank you mentor Medicus and Maria Mater, thank you.

Chapter 25

I really wanted chapter 26 in here somewhere, but I also wanted timing. I had been seeing a lot of people in the writing community muttering about liking slow burn romance, but not wanting to read “actual scenes” because they preferred imagining. So, I could have ended it at chapter 24. I could have ended it here. But dang it I wrote in chapter 26 as one of the very first scenes I wrote, so I was going to keep it if I could. So the last three chapters of the book are kind of that “Here, stop where you’re comfortable.” thing.

Chapter 26

I wanted to be a bit honest here. I do write full intimacy in a lot of my books. I wanted to be realistic to who Sanctus is though. Some things you go through with abuse makes people not want to do certain things. For him, I made him strong enough to speak up. Not everyone likes certain acts. They should not feel obligated to do so. I wanted that for Sanctus, to be okay with saying he just didn’t, and to show that a good healthy relationship is where Lunam would say, “that is perfectly valid and we’ll go with that.” There needs to be more role models in the romance genre for accepting a character saying no, instead of coercion and nagging until the character does the thing they don’t want to and then “miraculously” they like it. That type of trope writing just makes me want to throw a book.

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Subgalaxia, an explanation

So, I have two sections in Subgalaxia – Chambers and Subgalaxia. I wrote the first three chapters of Chambers back in high school and then shelved the book for almost a decade. Had no idea what to do with a handful of pages. I wanted something fascinating, but was lost. It was just a little off shoot of Polaris Skies.

Back in high school I wrote a book called The Doubloons. It was pretty much a weird fanfic mash up of Dune and The Lord of the Rings – at least setting wise and a big group going on an adventure. That book had a library in it. The prologue and epilogue were written from the point of a monk who was studying the history of the Colga galaxy at the Kavordia college and he was writing a dissertation on the fall of the Empire. Kavordia kept all of the books of the last humans from earth who were transported off world when it imploded. The Polaris brotherhood helped run an underground in opposition of the Empire – a set of fugitives who had gotten on the Subgalaxia when it transported it’s cargo.

Now. That book, all 150K words of it is so full of major teenage angst, it needs to be shredded. Royally. Sounds good as a quick description. Actually reading it is freaking painful. Then again, that’s my opinion on all my other books other than The Fire in My Blood. So. Here’s what happened:

I shelved it, but kept the Kavordian Library. I finished Polaris Skies because I needed to and then came along Fyskar and Subgalaxia finally crystalized with Subject15. The Gods of Fire series that follows The Kavordian Library will address the name in more detail in The Feather on My Scale, the second book I am currently working on. That is going to be at least a four book series on it’s own.

I am debating on doing a Glendweller series, a set of historical fiction that involves the Glendwellers origin stories before Polaris Skies. I’d rather see some interest in the books before I go doing that though.

So, with some of that history, let’s look at Subgalaxia.

ChambersChapter 1

You might suspect that Ms. Teslanoviach was meant to be the MC of this story and you may or may not be correct in your assumptions. I also did an opener in Polaris Skies where I use a character to hand the frame of the camera over to the main character, so to speak. I prefer shifting intros like that, but it can be messy for most readers, so I’ve tried to stop with some of my other books. I ran with a fairly regular theme in historical romance books where you set up an intelligent young woman looking to better her career and instead just get’s patriarchied into the ground by a bunch of egotists. This is formulaic at best, and the set up with Corbin coming in as the protective element is normally how any regular romance would introduce the knight in shining armor love interest.

Its wrote and not impressive.

Chapter 2

Corbin realizing that he probably made a mistake and Ms. Teslanoviach being no more than a very minor side character is where I wanted to slap the romance trope into the next field. I wanted Corbin to have a goal and a love interest already. I wanted for him to just be a “good guy.” The type a lot of people say doesn’t exist. The one who literally will just save someone because it’s their personality and not to have some other nefarious reason thinly veneered as ‘romantic’ interest. One of those: “here is an example of doing good because you can.”

And he’s a grey villain.

Look. If you’re here, you’re after spoilers. Grey villains to me are people who mean well, but their actions are going to mess up EVERYTHING because ultimately, they’re being selfish, even if their actions look selfless.

Chapter 3

A preservation of humans, an intelligence bank. What would that look like? Would it be terrifying? Would it be eugenics? Would it be the one solution if the planet was dying? If you could time travel and you knew coming back to the present meant the world was imploding, would you try to preserve the human race by choosing who you could fit into a single spacecraft, 500 bodies? If you had the medical knowledge to make it possible, would you?

These were questions I was asking myself when I wrote these three chapters and then shelved it because I didn’t know where to take it. I didn’t know what the rising action was. All I knew was that they go from “hey look, I want to save humanity” to being on a space ship. I had the Point A and the Point B, but I had no path, no instigating tension, rising action, climax for the resolution.

The Fyskar happened.

Chapter 4

Was Mera and Corbin’s story mine to tell? From everything I’ve seen in the writing community go down in 2020, no. Most likely not. I can only say I hope I wrote it well.

Chapter 5

Don’t hate me. This is how history works. We forget about people. As they pass beyond living memory, it is through preservation of artifacts and documents that we have a modest knowledge of what may have occurred. I hated myself for writing this chapter. People complain about feeling sad they have to kill a character for emotional movement in a book. This was acknowledging the concept that Eoin lived a full life. I gave him the respect I wanted him to have in life. At the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that history will forget all of us. It is through our words and the things we leave behind that sparks of our soul remain. I write stories to leave myself somewhere, to not feel like I’ve made no impact on this world.

I also wrote it so you’d hate the Daleroch more for it. I wanted for the reader to get through the other three books and get to Subgalaxia, read through it and just be emotionally devistated that a series of actions meant with the best of intentions could completely ruin the world.

Chapter 6

The best of intentions. The most selfish and selfless of motivations. The ends to a means. Just one person. Just needing one person to preserve all of humanity. But what if that one person would have kept the whole world from imploding in the first palce?

Chapter 7

What if Bern had been there to watch Eoin grow up? In my head, so I guess it could be called cannon, the Daleroch would have not wiped out the last of the Fyskar. By trying to save the world, Corbin has stacked the dominoes and they are waiting to fall. When he realized he needed a bank of humans and had access to time travel, the path split between what would and what could happen. That little twinge on a thread in the universe.

SubgalaxiaChapter 1

Ah! No. See! I told you back in Subject15 not to hate me. Here’s Ishan and Fane.

Is Fane extremely hostile? Oh yes. Yes he is. A, he has loyalty attachments. B, Ishan’s family had just been targeted the day before by his measure of time.

Now, why did I make Fane one of Rory’s descendants? That way he wasn’t genetically related to Ishan.

Interesting, the name Rory. Red King.

Maybe I wrote the characters because I’m partial to white and red hair in my anime and manga. It becomes prevalent. I do own up to it, though it kind of gets glossed over. The Healers are the inner self. The Shaman are the outer self.

By splintering off one side, the Fyskar disintegrated, losing their whole. By sending away the Red Hare because they were afraid of their emotions, rather than accept them, they broke themselves. They White Horse subconscious desire though to preserve the whole drives them to seek out the familiar.

The void and the soul. This was a difficult construct to formulate, and yet, it felt so true and so right when I wrote Eoin’s and Bern’s. What of those who have yet to find their peace? Those who have had their souls scarred? What would that look like? People say, if only you could see inside of me, see the pain I’m in. This is a version of how I could represent what it would look like for a person caught up and strung tight within their problems. The inside and outside of them can be so different.

Chapter 2

And it can be scary, and exhausting when someone sees your soul in it’s entirety. When they see the scars and the hangups and everything that is barely keeping you together. You want them to forget everything. And yet, when you’re fighting with everything inside of yourself coming apart and people show a true desire to help, it can feel confusing, like you’re failing at being the expectation. You don’t know why they would genuinely care, rather than accept your mask when you put it back on and try to pretend nothing happened.

You have to start facing your demons when that happens. When someone gets mad for you. When they care enough to help. When they want to do everything they can to not leave you in misery.

Chapter 3

I mean, most of the rest of this book is really Ishan and Fane working on his mental image of himself, his triggers, the psychological damage he’s gone through and accepting himself. Removing the wires and hooks is a really heavy handed metaphor for Fane finally is getting therapy, and sometimes that has to start with the people closest first.

Yes. I realize that I have a habit of providing my characters with an older mentor. That’s probably not going to change any time soon. Everyone has moments when they go “okay, where’s an adult, a more adult adult than me?’

Hey look. You can forgive me for the ending in Polaris Skies now. Let’s throw in the Glendwellers to help explain some things, and because I didn’t have the heart to end the world without saving them.

Also. Ever got a fish hook embedded in you? Just. Ow. Ow from experience. Lots of ow.

Realistically speaking though, from this point on, a lot of things get explained in the book fairly well. I explained the red headed mummies and the Bai and that whole thing in a different post.

The story is about the soul, about psychology, about learning about yourself, accepting and changing and realizing that you can still have dreams and be something, even when there is a past. Some actions are far reaching. Sometimes history forgets, but it is with the actions in history that a person finds themself in the position they are in.

I hope, in the end, with the Kavoridan Library, that people are left at least with the question of who they are on the inside, where their dreaming place is, what they look like to themselves, the person they can’t hide from.

And here’s a pair of art pieces I did for the book when I was very new to Adobe Illustrator.

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Book Review: The Shield Road | The Tree of Morh

I decided to take on an ARC review of The Shield Road by Dewi Hargreaves because the description sounded interesting. I’m having a historic fantasy moment and the fact the stories in the tome were short sounded refreshing. Getting into a dense single arc piece of fiction sounds intimidating right now. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe its the virus. Who knows.

So, I got my hands on the copy and figured I’d do up four reviews for the next couple of weeks on what I thought of the stories.

The first one we’re starting with is The Tree of Morh.

Impressions

Usually formatting gets to me. However, after realizing that I opened up an already formatted doc into google docs to read the ARC copy, I had to let that hesitation go and ignore it. FYI, if you preformat a doc and send it, the recipient opening it might lose the formatting. It’s neither party’s fault, but it is something to be aware of and not fault the author for. I’ve seen enough people get on to others about bad formatting because of this exact reason.

Once I got beyond that and dived into the story, it wrapped me up pretty quickly. There were a couple turns of phrase that came off more as young adult than adult, but that noticeable issue faded as the story progressed. I don’t read a lot of YA, only reason it was more prevalent in my acknowledgment of the genre. Those are easily overlooked though.

For it being a short story, the author does a great job of twisting back and forth between points of view of the characters. It flows seamlessly in that regard. I can easily see this as a short animation piece in the same vein as Vinland Saga. Probably not the intention of the author. Maybe more suited to Kingdom of Heaven in the blue toned scenes of winter or the live action rendition of King Arthur. I like equating to anime and manga though, so that’s what you’re getting.

The first story reads like a person who stepped into a dungeon level in Skyrim and wanted to explore what it would be like to work over a mission on one of the mountains, wandered in, and decided to actually not make themselves an OP character. Rather a fun concept.

That, and there’s a hint of the animated version of Castlevania in here with Theod’s character.

Also. I have to love the ending for this short story. It’s endearing.

Now, if you want to actually know what happened, you’re gonna need to go read it yourself.

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Subject15 Symbolism Ending

Chapter 12

I mean. Food poisoning sucks. It sucks major. Me no likey.

The doctor was based off medical staff I’ve dealt with in the last few years. I’ve noticed a pretty big increase in diversity in the hospitals, mainly coming in from India. Everyone I’ve ended up being treated by have been really polite. Their linguist patterns are strung in an interesting rhythm. I rather like it. I prefer having them talk to me over all the old cowboys who usually saw to me up ’til recently, because they get to the point and don’t hem and haw and beat around the bush and you leave going “but, what is wrong with me?” Also, the guy in high school from the Punjab I had a crush on? Yeah, he beat me in chess a couple times in like three moves. Talk about frustrated.

Chapter 13

Everything I hate. People asking really pointed questions when I don’t know their motives in asking. Having my clothes judged. Being forced to go clothes shopping. Being told to keep my hyperfocus short.

Chapter 14

Ah, the ditch it in the potted plant reference. So many movies and cartoons make use of this. My mom used to keep a pair of fake trees in her office when she had one at work. Fancy digs. I think she had four really nice bookcases and, if memory serves some really nice chairs and a big L shaped desk. This scene to me was that office she had that I’d go to when school was out. I’d end up reading books for the whole day. Anyways, these fake trees. I could just imagine there being a fake potted plant in this scene where the food could get ditched and it would end up rotting. No one really seems to point this possibility out in books or even in movies. Like, post credits, the poor staff is trying to figure out why the plant is withering or there’s red wine seeping out through the raffia at the bottom of the basket.

Chapter 15

Ah. Haha. Hahahaha let me go cry in a corner, I hate meeting people’s family. It’s like “here, let me introduce you to why I’m weird and broken, maybe you’ll like them, maybe they’ll hate you, put on your performance face.” Like. Nah, man. I’m good over here in my little house plant nest. Wait, your dad grills? I’m in.

Compression gear. It’s in a few of my books. It’s comfortable and feels nice and reassuring. Binders, not so much. I get light headed and it ruins my blood pressure/anxiety thing. But running gear, that slight hug feeling makes the wirey energy thing stop. That and loose breathable clothing like tunics or cargoes are the best. Especially if the cargoes are good quality and heavy.

I had what a shop labeled “tunic” but was a plum embroidered shalwar kameez top, sans the pants back in high school and wore that thing threadbare oh my god it was so comfortable. Long sleeved, it was a thin weave that breathed and I could wear it in summer and winter and not feel like I had people judging my skin.

Chapter 16

This one. You know those people. The ones who try to set you up to fail so you look foolish, especially if it’ll make your friends also look like idiots. Abhi was that bully from high school. The one that made you into a sideshow freak and you just get pulled into the whole situation somehow. It was one of the best feelings when you could perform so well as to embarrass them, but that was mentally draining. Having pattern recognition down and a memory for textbooks, an ability to string together large amount of historical facts and a capacity to draw and being socially awkward just set me up for getting into these types of performance situations. I only really got a grasp on the exploitation when I got older.

Chapter 17

Vittoria. Um. Pictures might explain, I guess? I have an art history/history degree, but my focus was not in European art, save for my offshoot focus in the Impressionists and the influence of Ukiyo-e on mass production woodblock print methodology that worked for poster distribution. I just like Vittoria’s statues.

Chapter 18

Oh, let’s finally meet this little side step villain that is about to trigger Fane’s protective side. Also, here’s that kiss scene that kind of started the whole mess. And the gold and red. Wedding colors. Ishan might have been making some points about his interest in Fane but has a hard time actually communicating in a less round about way.

Chapter 19

This was where I started panicking. What was I going to do with Subgalaxia? I sort of wanted to just bring it into this book, but I had written the section I named Chambers as a seperate individual, like a really long prologue, to explain the time skip. I couldn’t quite figure out how to make that sporadic jump make sense. This is where I had to ask myself if this was a three book or a four book series. I needed to address the baron as the villain and create that kind of tension while coming back to the Grey Monster and everything just turned into a mess.

I had finished Fyskar and between it and Polaris Skies I knew where I was going with the ending in this book, I just needed a point A to point B and it took a dark path. Something people just don’t address in the he-man type action packed “save all the people” movies and books. What happens after? Some people aren’t able to just shrug off what they see. Often though the character ends up drowning themselves in alcohol or clamming up and acting tough and antagonistic. Hello. Not everyone can internalize that. So, I wrote the scene that not enough people show. Fane had to be a hero, but he also needed to be able to admit that it affected him doing it. Too many emergency service personnel see bad stuff during their shifts and put on a tough act until they can get home and process what they saw that day. He needed to process. I needed for that to be visible and okay and recognized.

Chapter 20

Seriously, why didn’t I space this chapter out a couple after that whole incident? Well. Initially I had three more chapters written in with Ishan’s parents betrothing him to a princess and him having to open up about his interest in Fane, etc. etc. and it felt pushed. It didn’t feel honest to the script. To me, this section was them coping. Trying to find something less alone in each other in the moment that Ishan realized he was the odd man out in his family. Alone in a moment of terror. Some people find ways of dealing with that realization.

I know there are people who write and portray “after an argument romance scene” but what about someone whose parents and family are all scattered, trying to take care of a complete upheaval to their system? Ishan needed in that moment a hug, honest enough. He needed that physical reassurance that he wasn’t floating lost in the dark. It feels like a disjointed scene so closely spaced unless you’re looking at the psychology of need and filling a void. Needing to be needed when everything just got turned on it’s head.

Chapter 21

As I said, I split up Subgalaxia for Subject15, so that would be the deal with the cliff hanger.

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Subject15: Is there symbolism?

Fane and the Grey Monster

Can we talk title? Subject15 is a bit of a side step nod to V for Vendetta and the person behind the Guy Fox mask. I haven’t watched the movie in forever, but the concept of being a nameless test subject who saves the world and stood up for those suffering was big for me. My dad and I watched it twice back to back because it was that freaking good and deep. Stephen Frye’s character and the Salt Flats scene with the sheets. That spoke. I don’t know what dad thought when he watched it then, but it was that weird spark behind my sternum. That moment where I felt like I was holding a faceted orb of crystal glass in my hands. Heavy, smooth, cold, precious, fragile, slippery. All the emotions that go with holding something like that. Protective, scared, burdened, honored.

That was a couple years before I went to college. It set up this running feeling in the back of my head that all the preconceived notions and prejudices built into me from years or religion were crumbling, and that I wasn’t terrible for existing. I was scared of admitting anything, but it somehow shifted me to being open and protective about other people having the guts to admit they were in the lgbtq+ community.

At that point, I only felt safe calling myself an ally. I admired those that said ‘screw it, I’m me’ and wanted to support them after that movie. It was timing. It was beautiful. It was stark and blunt and symbolic and spoke to me. It told me that people are people. They love and hurt and feel no matter who they are, what they identify as.

This was when the concept of Christianity in my head broke, when I could hear that crack send scurrying fragmentations through everything I was raised in. It wasn’t complete. It didn’t dissolve everything in that instant. No, but looking back, I think that was when I lost my religion honestly. I usually say I lost it when I divorced, but this movie I think was that seed. When I realized that love wins. That love is love and anyone who tries to take that away, tries to call it a sin, are truly broken.

I get a vague feeling that was probably when dad and mom started down that path too. It was subtle. Some things were still habit for them that I don’t think they thought about until I pointed it out. There were changes, but not large movements at that time.

really early concept art ~2015

Where did Subject15 the story start though? Like Fyskar, a dream. Ishan kissing Fane at the party and then wham giant grey tentacle monster. I wrote out that one five paragraph scene about the party and questioned the whole tentacle thing and left it sit for months, unsure what it meant, or who the characters were or what to do with it. Then I got Polaris Skies almost wrapped up and Fyskar written out and finally broke the Subgalaxia curse when I realized who Fane was to the whole story.

For those of you who are trying to escape the memories, Who are trying to become more than your past.

Chapter 1

Find Happiness.

Well, that’s not a subtle hint to where my mind was. I needed a point A to a point B story, point be being that moment in at the party. Why? Good question. I wanted something military, cyberpunk, gritty, elegant. I wanted something different from the grey of Polaris Skies and the sepia of Fyskar. Subgalaxia to me is a dark teal shade. I wanted red and gold. That’s the colors of Subject15 to me. Black, red, and gold. Filmed in a high def true to tone, a bit more in your face rather than history fic or apocolyptic wide frame.

Yes, I write like I think – in movie frames. How it would look with the camera, what filters you’d use, where the edits would be spliced. That’s probably why I head hop and my focus swings.

The woman at the beginning and how he pays? This wraps into the chapter about his sister, at least what he knows from his files.

Here’s the thing with Fane. I know he’s pansexual. It’s how I write all my MCs. I can’t not write that type of attraction. Trying anything else sounds feels foreign and misrepresented.

Why Ishan and not someone else? Blame that on the dream and me having a crush on a brother and sister in high school from the Punjab area and an Urdu girl who was friends with the sister. All of them were freaking pretty and really nice and with English being their second language they were very precise in how they talked with low idiom usage, so I could actually follow what they were saying. Idioms I’ve gotten better at over a lot of years of work. Innuendo I get a lot easier.

The brother-sister pair’s dad was in the states, but their mom and other relatives were back in the mother country where they were born. They had already finished school there and got transferred, so they had their high school degrees, but their dad wanted them to have exposure to the school system and a degree from here too to increase their knowledge or something. All I know is they had a slight British vibe to their accent and I was enamored. Did I ever tell them this? Hah, you’re funny. No. I was in a committed relationship and thought I just super liked pretty people, but wouldn’t admit to the liked-like type of like. We had long conversations about history and philosophical stuff. The brother and I were in a few different classes together because we were in the same grade level and the sister and other girl I had a class with for English that I was a level ahead on.

This was my first real go with photoshop for drawing back in 2016-2017?

Why did I set Ishan up to be a complete jerk on first meeting? The concept of enemies to lovers was blowing itself out of proportion in the Twitter writing community at that point and I was like “yeah, I can write that, why not?”

The long hair? I’ll address that in Subgalaxia. Patience. Patience. All things come to those who wait, right?

Chapter 2Illustrator art I did back in 2019

Ugh. Medical crap. I’ve had both knees done. I’ve had my gallbladder out. I’ve done the whole birth and tubal ligation thing. I can also chalk up the mris, ct scans, angiograms, and craniotomy to it. I’ve been poked and prodded and invaded enough times over the years. This was me just having a moment with it. The drug thing – no. I don’t get into that stuff. I don’t like the idea of losing my capacity to be responsible for myself. Only have to get drunk and taken advantage of once to figure out I don’t like giving people access to me. So, I did a deep dive on research about medical overdose and addiction drugs for the conversation.

Chapter 3

This one has a lot to do with an old movie, I think it’s called Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, or at least my memories of watching it when I was like 9? That and the 007 movies that involve the topographic maps with movable pawns. I love that aesthetic. I know. Weird.

I wanted one of these map element things. I sort of want a d&d basement room that is full blown cold war secret-agent theme just for that aesthetic alone. Everyone else in my gaming group wants the bard tavern look thing. I can’t DM to save my life. I got scared trying to DM a My Little Pony Curse of the Statuettes game.

Well, here’s my little cold war map room.

Chapter 4

Ok. This has to do with a documentary I watched on image recognition and processing time where they put subjects in a machine and watched how their brain lit up on images. At a certain point, they started inserting images that the person didn’t realize came up on screen, but the brain picked it up and correlated to different place. That was so freaking cool. Poor Fane.

Chapter 5

I suck at the concept of writing enemies to lovers. I can’t wrap my head around the idea. I really can’t. Enemies are evil. They don’t get forgiven. Everyone else is just not someone’s cup of tea. Maybe I’m really black and white on that. I say that and I wrote Corbin Ziphle to be a grey villain, but that’s getting ahead of myself. I had to yield to my heart and instincts and make the whole business between Ishan and Orlov a misunderstanding or else I couldn’t get into writing the story. So, coffee? That seemed like a neutral way of writing a making up over a misunderstanding thing. Though I really don’t like most types of coffee, hello self insert. Read *wtf how do you flirt with normal people when the MC(me) is super socially awkward?*

Chapter 6More art I did when fleshing out the story.

This was partly from attending business Christmas parties with Wren. That really weird awkward feeling where I don’t know anyone. I’m in a dress that doesn’t feel right. I have to have small talk with people I don’t know. I have to eat food that, though usually served fancy, is just raising the hair on the back of my neck. We get to sit through a greeting from the business owner and there’s karaoke and open bar and it’s all I can do wanting to go home.

Welcome to me not understanding how people communicate without communicating. I don’t get it. These types of conversations always feel one sided and people being angry at each other because of a misunderstanding is hard to wrap my head around.

Chapter 7The black outfit from the chapter.

Polaris Skies and Fyskar. I didn’t get my Hero’s Journey. I didn’t get my Hero. Like hell was I writing one more story where I didn’t get to be the hero. Fane is a short spitfire (read, I am short and I wrote everyone else about 8 inches taller than me up ’til now) and I was going to make him that overpowered god I wanted in anime and manga. I wanted someone who didn’t quite get everything. Someone who could fixate. Who could be really devoted. Who hyperfocused. I wanted all of that and I wanted him to actually have the guts to be himself. A bit lost about what was going on, but a “feck it, I’m doing this thing however the chips fall” attitude I was starting to develop as a come back to having defanged my last two MCs. I wanted a guy who’d seen crap and wasn’t going to let it rule him.

The Dermatographic uticaria seems really bizarrely specific. This one, I don’t have it. I do have keratosis pilaris though that made me super self conscious about my skin since I was in second grade when some girl made fun of me for having skin acne and told me I was disgusting.

I picked at it mercilessly to get rid of it. It became a self-hatred/anxiety outlet habit for two decades. That does not help and leaves behind scars. I have tons of white freckles from where my skin no longer produces pigment.

In the last six months I’ve been improving the texture with liberal amounts of lotion. Some aromatherapy lotions help me sleep and I was using it to train myself out of picking. It’s not something that can be cured, but I can control my reaction to it.

It was a promise I made to myself. If I got my anxious pain stimulation under control and got funding from my books, I’d pay for my red tattoo bands I have on my avatar and throughout my series. I wanted to not be embarrassed going into a tattoo shop and feeling like I needed to apologize to the artist working on me.

I have a type of Japanese samurai arrow I want on my left inner arm where the feathers merge into a set of black bands around my wrist that would be measurements of 3 blanks and 3 black bands in increasing size that I can use when I’m spacing a page during drawing sessions. The right I want a set of flowers – a blue bearded iris for myself, a pair of yellow daffodils for my MIL and a pair of red impatents for my mom that would blend into a pair of black bands on that size that would be a set of metric measurements. These are random wants though. I don’t see me ever making enough money from my books to even get the red bands, but hey, it’s in my head at least.

Chapter 8

Again, nothing too symbolic in this. I just let my mind go and see where it would take me for why my MC was the way he was. Got a bit dark. These types of moments I tend to draw, just see what comes out and then write the story based on the drawing. I had a pair I had done up early on for why Fane was volatile, what would give him nightmares, and why he had scars.

Chapter 9

Basic resolution so I could quit making these two fight in that half hearted trying to make them that enemies to lovers thing that I just don’t get.

Chapter 10

Shelly. If you’ve noticed, I tend to give my stories a short brunette as some kind of a side kick. Well. They tend to be me not necessarily trying to have an evenly gendered cast of characters. They are my way of expressing frustrations about how women are treated. I want there to be strong female characters that aren’t the pined over unreciprocal love interest, but instead are representative of an even power dynamic platonic relationship. Something that all genders can have with each other if we can just get over that infernal question “can straight men have women friends?” Hell if this pansexual ftm can crush hard on a ton of people and still treat them like I don’t know, real people who have real feelings and real opinions, you can have friends too. You just get to realize that no one is obligated to be your friend back and they sure as hell aren’t responsible for your feeling of being friend zoned.

*ehem* I’ll get off my soap box for a minute.

Chapter 11

Ugh. Textures. Textures can do some weird things. I am super not partial to silk. It’s…weird and does the whole electricity in the skin thing. When people go on about having silk or sateen bedsheets or robes or blouses, I’m just over here going “how do you survive?” Not much symbolism, just a personal observation I wrote in.

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Symbolism in Polaris Skies ending

Well, last time was a great deal of fun, shall we do it all again? This time with chapters 15-29? No?

Going in and unstringing a story and drudging up old pasts is painful. Worth doing every once in a while. It can be an interesting learning experience, in so far as showing me where I was and how far I’ve come.

I’ve been in a really good space for the last few weeks, post dealing with “major anxiety issues” and medically induced PTSD. I have some suspicions of being autistic; however, when I obtained a referral for a diagnosis, I found the one office I could go to films all interactions to use for training, conferences, and journals because they are “a teaching hospital” and that just set off a ton of red flags. Paranoid and anxious? Maybe. Not wanting my face to represent some issue where people can get hold of it and then I get to deal with ex possibly finding me…well, I made decisions I’m living with.

Been working with a therapist for the last month. Well. Not really working, maybe working? Not sure how talk therapy is actually supposed to work, so it doesn’t feel like I’m working on things in the session, but the fact my mood is getting better probably means it’s working. She asks about a lot of history that I’ve listed here, but doesn’t give me deep advice. She wanted to try EMDR therapy with me for the PTSD, but that can trigger seizures for me.

During the first interview I asked if she had any knowledge of working with people with suspected autism. Not a lot of therapists do, as I found in trying to get a test recommendation, so I did not go into it with expectations. She said I couldn’t possibly have it because I understood humor and could keep up with a conversation. I asked if her experience was with “male” or “female” autistic presentation. She admitted she had never seen or worked with a “female” autistic presentation, about what I expected.

Look, I’m trans FTM, doesn’t mean I’m not aware that some “biologic” things need to be taken in to account when managing medicine and therapy for me. Go through being religiously brainwashed for 18 years about your place in society. I’m a bit testy on this one.

This was one of the videos I found that I just went “ohhhh”

Last session I asked if she had any good pointers for coping with anxiety attacks and she switched to a different childhood history question. Sigh. I don’t mind working through that, but I sought out a therapist to help with the medical ptsd, not the rest of it that I’ve already worked through myself, thanks. So, I went and looked up how to handle anxiety vs. what an autistic overload looked like. Pretty much, with each session I have with her, I end up going through a weekend of decompression and looking up answers to my questions. Maybe that’s what these sessions are supposed to do is give me questions that I need to resolve for myself. I’m motivated and want to quit having immersive flashbacks because someone touches my wrists or I have too much weight on my legs.

(Had a pair of angiograms back to back in the week of my brain surgery. Second time around, being strapped to the angiogram bed and having the lidocaine needle hit bone and them go through the hand I asked them not to go through, and them dismiss the seizure I was having, it just all turned into a horror show for me. So getting tied down and subjected to pain is this lovely little flashback that likes to pop up and toss me into overload territory. Things happened in that week that shouldn’t have. I’m alive at least.)

For the last two weeks I’ve been using cool down techniques, fidgets, letting me stim as a test to see if the autism tricks work, because the anxiety fix ones can go freaking jump in a lake. I haven’t had any seizures or “anxiety attacks” in two weeks. If I feel like I’m dancing on overload, I say so to my family and I step away. Textures, sounds, smells, any of it.

I have a quiet space with all my houseplants and no one disturbs me. I use my fidgets. Usually my brain stops feeling itchy and my general sense of impending doom lets up after half an hour to an hour. Traveling can cause those same issues and having some of those coping fidgets helped tremendously the other day.

So, I think I might be on to something and that is extremely relieving to know what is going on and that I can control some moments. Being okay with speaking up about foods (texture heebeejeebees and bitter flavors) I don’t like – not something I really had the option to do as a kid. Being able to say certain clothes suck because they feel wrong and know I’m not insulting someone. Not being embarrassed for needing to burrow under a ton of blankets to keep me from getting all wirey-energy-uncomfortable. Letting myself be okay with not having to look at people’s faces because I’m “supposed to.” It’s weird, that freeing moment when you go “oh, I’m okay. I just need to process a bit different.”

I’ve had a song on repeat for weeks now for where my mood has been: Porter Robinson – Look at the Sky. I wanted to share that it’s getting better, seeing as the rest of the book summary is going to look super bleak in a minute.

Chapter 15

Okay. This is going to seem like a really odd thing, but the bungalow was home. It was comfortable. Probably because I grew up with my folks moving into a different place every 2-3 years until I was about 13. They liked remodeling. It was their thing. So, I remember ripping out nasty green carpet and helping peel walls of gold foiled wallpaper and that weird smell of mold. I remember the little cubby kitchens and mudrooms and built in pantries somehow being twice as deep as you expect. They always looked out on little backyards where a lonely tree and some low bushes sort of died. I lived for a time in an area where it snowed, and I was short as a kid to begin with, so the snowbanks would be as tall as me. We didn’t have a woodstove though.

When I was 17, we had one of the worst ice storms to hit our state in decades. Power was out at the house for several days and the temperature was like 10F. We had a wood burning fireplace, but the house, being built in the 70s, had no heat retention to speak of. Honestly, lighting the fire made the house colder. Eventually the school opened and I was able to go in to warm up. I walked to the community center where they had set up a homeless shelter after school. Called my folks and told them I’d come home when the power got turned back on. The power had been on since noon, they just didn’t think to call and tell me this and it was like 7pm at night when we had this conversation.

Wren grew up using a woodstove as the main heatsource for his house with his family. So when Wren and I bought our own house, we installed a woodstove. I never wanted to experience that cold ever again and he wanted the woodstove because it was safer than an open fireplace. To me, that woodstove in the book, and I know it sounds stupid, but it was safety. That silly bungalow in the book was the feeling of childhood and that woodstove was safety.

This whole section was, in some really weird way, me coming out to myself, to my childhood self. To being safe, in familiar territory. Where I had friends and love and safety and where I could actually talk about self-discovery. To be real. I needed to speak up, even symbolically before I could really talk to my in real life family. I needed to know there was someone who wouldn’t let me fall if I took the mask off.

Chapter 16

Uh. Well. Intense moment. If you’ve been following along with most of this book being my therapy, you’re probably going “the hell? Did your parents beat you, the fuck man?” No. My parents didn’t. They were trapped in some religious mindsets they were slowly getting out of. I grew up with my folks having some opinions about the lesbians who lived across the street. I came out when they were talking about them again in reference and I was sick of hearing them say shit. When they realized I was pan and I liked men, women, non-binary, undefined, they listened. They realized. A lot of what I fight with is my mental “childhood parents on religion” and the internalized homophobia and racism that was prevalent in their generation. They really have changed since my divorce and since I got through college, especially in relation to my degree.

At this point, we all are in preservation mode when it comes to extended family. I don’t know why they still try, but everyone has their own level of being able to let go of things. I still am uncomfortable with the idea of asking them to use my preferred pronouns and explain I’m a guy stuck in the wrong body. And yet, I keep my relationship with them. Most of this experience gets explained in Subgalaxia though, so I’ll quit with the tangent.

Nat and his dad. That was a very low level fear. One where I knew it wouldn’t happen to me. I’d walk out and go to a shelter and figure it out from there if that happened even once. The ice storm told me I could do that. No. Nat and his father had to do with watching other kids in high school come out and the abuse they went through. Teachers are supposed to say things, keep them safe if they notice.

Kid came in to school with his jaw wired shut for a month because his dad had shattered it. He sat next to me in biology. He was a mouthy brat with a major attitude problem, but seeing that happen to him. It…really affected me. We were by no means friends and he wouldn’t talk to me without belittling me for something, but no one deserves that.

I’ve seen a lot in the American public school system. Kid on my bus stopped showing up to school. A few months later his mom was arrested. They’d found his skeleton out in the desert because she couldn’t take the fact he was special needs any more. One of my best friends cut because she couldn’t handle being in yet another abusive foster house and her siblings had been sent to other people yet again. The one openly gay kid went missing over a summer and there was a group of us in a panic thinking he’d committed suicide, to find he’d moved to LA with his “way-older-than-him” boyfriend and had scored a job and was finally living his best life because he’d escaped hell.

Watch. Listen. You’ll learn a lot about people. And I had to process this, because, for some reason, a lot of people used me as their therapy. I spent senior year working with special needs kids with English. The crap they went through with their homelife. Worked with one who was volatile and I had to back out for my own safety. His dad used his arms as ashtrays. The rest of the kids in my English group used me as a sounding board for a week for processing all his horror stories when he was removed from the class.

Am I in a position to tell Nat’s story from the point of view of someone who lived in an abusive household? Probably not, but I did, and I’m not apologizing for it. I needed to process too many other people’s stories and this is where I unraveled them.

People suck.

Cashia turned into that strong, but not perfect, older been-there-done-that mentor I needed while grappling with the fact I was in the lgbtq+ world. I needed someone to not just say it was okay, we’re still friends. At that point, I needed someone to straight up say I was still lovable, and that they didn’t care what I was. I didn’t need it “to be okay”, I needed for someone to go “so what else is new?” That really brutally bland expression of love. The type where my hang up was less important than breakfast. I needed to know it could be the least of my problems.

eisteacht liom – listen to memas e do thoil e – pleaseta naire agus eagla orm – I am ashamed and afraid.mo run – my secretAbair e sin aris, le do thoil? Say that again, please?Chapter 17

Okay, so this chapter was me having a moment with romance books. The whole bit where people write in a male MC just taking over a woman’s independence entirely and not giving her the ability to safely make her own decisions. I wanted to address the fact that I had forced this whole “here, host my mate without your permission” thing I had written as a trope in romance novels. Consent. It’s a major sticking point for me. A lot of it has to do with having read romance books as my one instruction on romantic relationships and those damn things are BROKEN. They never mention clean up, after care, on a rare occassion they might address birth control. Seriously though, how often in a romance novel or even in erotica do the people literally sit down and discuss who they are and what everyone wants from a particular relationship? Most of them kind of just go with the whole “build up the emotion and tension to justify the actions.” This is probably why I hate when people say I write erotica and why I’m even leery of having romance applied to my work. A lot of writen romance is really jacked up and tramples all over people.

Romance genre is one of the first introductions to sex ed for a large segment of the population, at least in America, because our education system is crap. When all you’re fed is that women are subserviant and effeminate men are just women with penises and that as long as some strong guy can rule over them and get away with it because he has abs, it can really mess with your concept of what is a healthy relationship and what is abusive. My characters aren’t perfect, and neither are their intimate moments. I do make an effort at constructing those scenes to address some of these issues.

I fully realize, in releasing my books, that I might be someone’s first interaction with a romantic relationship, and I am desperately trying to be responsible about that. I wish more romance and erotica authors did that. Really, really wish. I think that’s why I’ve taken a liking to webcomics recently outside of publishing industry standards. More and more people are releasing self-pub and indie webcomics that actually address developing healthy relationships.

I guess that’s why I write the scenes I do. It’s my soap box. It’s something that I want to protect people from experiencing what I experienced by giving them tools and knowledge and an ability to know what they’re expecting and that they have a say in what is going on and if they don’t, it’s not a healthy relationship. I can go on. This is part of why this book has multiple scenes, where as the rest of my books have one-maybe two.

Also, I despise love angles and love triangles. Nope. Everyone in a room together. Don’t give me that pining crap. Another story from high school. (I had a lot of crushes just fyi). Guy I had a crush on was dating this girl I also had a crush on. They’d been together since middle school, so this was a really long crush. Yes, one of those couples. Again, I seemed to be the councilor in the friends group somehow. He calls in a complete mess one evening out of the blue during high school. Has no freaking idea what to do because he went and got laid by another guy while on a family vacation. A: not sure how anyone can escape family for five minutes to do that. Descriptions happened and hello moment of realizing I’m not normal here. Anyways, he’s having this moment of not sure how to explain this to his girlfriend back home. I told him to be honest. Explain what happened and let the chips fall. Don’t make up excuses. They both told me thank you a few days later, still all starry eyed with each other.

They dated for a few more years through high school before splitting for a different reason and she found a woman who loves her if I remember right and he’s had a couple different types over the years and I watched this whole thing going “Hello? Ya’ll left me hanging here?” Sigh. I know I told them I was interested, but when they said they weren’t, I backed off and we left it as friends. I wasn’t their type. Glad they found who they needed though.

So. Love triangles in my writing are a no. Everyone in a room or at least everyone isn’t jealous. Thank you.

Clarification time – Cashia, Tereza, and Nat are all pansexual. I’m still not sure what Hana is. She likes Tereza more, but I don’t think she’s lesbian. Weird how you can write a story and not actually know some things about your characters, huh? Maybe there’s a word for her. I don’t know what it is.

And pronoun switching when Tereza comes out. Just. Just shoot me. I went with what made sense in my head. I crafted over those instances very carefully as Nat and Tereza switch between each other and still have some moments with going “why brain, just why???”

Another trope that is freaking prevalent in romance books: confident men. Dude, no. Men can be shy about intimacy. They can be unsure of what they are doing. Writing every guy in like they’ve gone and done it with forty people before getting to the MC is just…? Look, people are clutsy and awkward and don’t know what they’re doing half the time. People fall off beds and trip over their trouser legs.

I just want to write what I wish people had written for what I was learning from. A bit of reality. A bit less golden and a bit more people being human.

Chapter 18

The whole bit with Zola and Sun Hee going after Yeller. That had to do with a bunch of gossips trying to get really friendly with the openly gay kid in high school and just not really getting the concept that he didn’t want to talk about his first time with them. They meant well and were trying to be inclusive. It was awkward for the rest of us watching him flounder and trying to get them to quit.

Chapter 19 – 20

Go to the end of the book. I have the poem for What the Wolf Howled Over Me there. I had an assignment in high school to write a history poem for my Senior English class. We had been analysing music about the Vietnam War and things like that as symbolism. So, I went with what I was familiar with. World War II. This one deals with the Navajo code breakers. Symbolism within symbolism.

I wasn’t suicidal in school. I did, however, hear more than once in quiet whispers behind doors kids who often went deer hunting about ‘plans’ they ‘joked’ about with regard to inviting along ‘other people.’ It was sick. I was too nervous to rat them out, but I know I warned a couple kids about not to be duped if the hunters ever tried to get chummy. Nothing ever happened that I was aware of, and maybe I was just being overly sensitive. This scene was that internalized fear. The one that really sealed my lips shut for years about coming out of the closet.

The summer of 2020 when I had my stroke, I did go in and out of major suicidal ideation a few times. Before that, there were minor floating thoughts about it, that sort of quasi-state unactive misery. Something about the cost of brain surgery and the stress and worry I was causing my family and self-worth. Those types of thoughts get really dark, really deep, and really scary, but they were thoughts, not active, not planned. I have to give respect to people who get help if they are planning, because that fight is extremely hard to admit to when it’s just ideation.

Chapter 21gra mo chroi – love of my heartta tu go halainn – you are beautifuldia – godtaim ag teacht ~ I’m coming (not quite accurate)Duil mo slat ~ Lick my *an bhfuil pain ort – Are you in pain?ta me go brea – I’m finebi curamach – be carefulRitheann tu Yeller. Sabhail an grupa. Beidh me a fhaigheann tu. ~ Run Yeller. Save the group. I will find you.ta tu a ghortu – you are hurtdean e – do itDiabhall – devilChapter 22

I also apologize for this chapter.

Some of this was fears I had about dark alleys and walking home on my own. About what could happen. When you’re raised to fear strangers, stuff like this haunts your mind. Getting kicked in the stomach, that’s more a personal history thing. Don’t really remember everything that led up to it, but I do remember it was middle school and I was on the ground on the school playground after school. Folks worked late, so this was a babysitting service the school provided. anyways, the monitor was off somewhere else and the one clear memory I have is pebbles under my finger tips and these three boys kicking the every living crap out of me. The monitor got to me and sent the kids inside. Nothing happened to them, no suspension or anything. There was that, and a different time when a kid in middle school brought a pocket knife to class and threatened to slice me when we got partnered for some group project if I didn’t go along with what he wanted. Let’s just add insult to injury. I’ve also been put into a pretty painful headlock that just about made me pass out. My throat hurt for a freaking week and I had vocal fry for a while. I was pretty nervous about my throat for a while. So, here, have fun. This was me dealing with middle school.

siad – theyta a fhios agam – I knowgo nimhneach ~ ow (hurts)Chapter 23

Info dumping as a melancholic coping mechanism and to give a breather between the rollercoast set of scenes. Also to make up for the fact the next 4 chapters are pretty much a bunch of intimacy and me working through what intimacy looks like to me.

This one came about because I was in the midst of a set of research papers on the Pacific theater, the Boxer rebellion, and a couple other wars that took place in and around China. So, I went all predictive pattern analysis for a bit.

Chapter 24

Yes. Still trying to figure out romance and intimacy and how the whole thing works. I feel like you’re probably getting tired of that analysis. I needed in these chapters to acknowledge that I had a past and going into a new relationship meant facing a bunch of fears again. That things could go in directions I couldn’t predict.

conas ata tu – how are youte – hotDijete – childtog go bog e – take it easy (I’m sorry)ta tu go halainn – you are beautiful (Yeller keeps saying this because I have a firm belief that any gender can be beautiful and should be told such)ta tu ar cheann chun labhait leis – You’re one to talkgo reidh, le de thoil ~ I’m ready, please.Ni feidir liom irracht a dheanamh ach. Anail, mo ghra. – I can only try. Breath, my love.Chapter 25

Okay. So, why did I think this was necessary? I could have left this scene out. Could have. But I left it in. Why?

Romance novels can really get under my skin. Just because a couple are intimate once doesn’t mean you’re fixed. It doesn’t make the whole world perfect. This was me having that conversation. The one that acknowledges that people can say yes and still have flashback. That some things will trigger. That sometimes you go along with doing things and say yes when you feel obligated, even if you aren’t entirely sure of a situation. That sometimes intimacy isn’t perfect, it can be messy and difficult. I could have faded to black on this, but that wasn’t the message I was trying to make. I wanted to point out that saying yes doesn’t always mean consent. Consent can only be given if there is a safe option of no.

Thing is, Cashia would have taken no. It’s how I wrote his character. This was that moment of pointing out that even if no is safe, sometimes the partner who says yes may not be in the mental position to feel like they can say no because they are internalizing a bunch of crap about themselves. To that person, in that moment, because of how their mind is working, no isn’t the option.

Too many romance novels gloss over this fact. That people will go along with things because they feel obligated. It takes a long time for people to be okay with saying no to lunch with family, to saying no to a party, to saying no when a coworker tries to fob their duties off on you. When a partner asks. When its safe to say no and it won’t upset anyone. They’ll still say yes. This isn’t healthy, and yet we do it.

Chapter 26

Okay, this I did up shortly after a trip to Dallas. Jeez, that city is huge. I ditched my manuscript for a good eight or nine months and turned over to writing Fyskar as a webcomic and Subject15 clicked into place at about the same time. I dived on those two books and got them written in that same span of time. This freed up some of my expectations for Subgalaxia. Long road trips give you thinking time.

I came back to Polaris Skies, sat down, and asked myself what I needed to do to resolve what I had done to my characters and why I couldn’t just delete that scene and move on.

I wanted them to acknowledge the interaction. To not brush it off and act like everything was fine. I wanted resolution. I wanted them to talk and really be open about what had happened. For Nat to admit that he recognized that he had issues that he wanted to address. I wanted to recognize that I had some dark spots in my history that I needed to come to terms with.

Chapter 27

I don’t think there’s much to discuss by way of symbolism here. Slow, calm, explanations. Things Nat needed. That relationships are dependent on people communicating. That people can still be uncomfortable doing some things in a relationship. That it’s still messy, even with the best of intentions. That actions and words and a frame of mind can help start building a foundation, but that happily ever after isn’t automatic. That its work, perpetual and changing and all parties involved need to be willing to be a part of that work.

Chapter 28

Hey look, I can actually not write intimate scenes, what a concept. No wait, this one is a ton of protective emotions. And we learn a bit more depth about the Glendwellers, the Bai, and the fact that Nat is psychic.

Chapter 29

Uh…don’t hate me. Go read Subgalaxia, I promise everything is okay.

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Anime Cinema Friday: Alice to Zouroku

I have to hem and haw about this one. I really do.

The storyline itself sounds intriguing. The set up on intro is structured to draw in the watcher and make them want to know more about the MC and the other girls’ superpowers.

However.

It has triggered my irritation card something fierce.

I want to like this. I really do. The idea of the protective grandpa figure and everything. The dresses and the flower shop. Way overpowered psychic girls.

Back to that HOWEVER.

Can we. Here, no come closer. Can we, just between you and me. Can we, like, maybe not have BS cgi animation in our anime? I love Land of the Lustrous because they did the whole thing in cgi and you got used to the animation style. Bombing a good anime with bad graphics should be condemned at the highest level though. Like Zombie Land Saga. The thing is good up until the dance sequences that are boarding in that uncanny valley territory that makes you cringe.

Please. Just. Don’t use trash cgi. It completely destroys the immersion.

I’ve watched Alice to Zouroku once before. It was good when I watched way back when it was just coming out. Watching it a second time though…No. Nope. Unforgiveable. I can’t even care about the storyline when a wrecking ball comes crashing through the scene and the shading on it is so crap it reminds me of watching Blues Clues from 2000. By all means, please don’t allow production to be treated like a mash up between a brilliant illustration team and a Blender intern two months into learning the software. This could have been done well without the bad graphics. Honest. Look at Blood Blockade, or Dorohedoro, or any other tripped out universe anime. If you’re gonna go with cgi, for the love of all that is holy, do it like Violet Evergarden or Black Clover. Those are understandable for why they produced them the way they did.

This one. Did they run out of time? Funding? Were they trying to be experimental in showing when something out of the ordinary was happening?

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