Random Jordan's Blog, page 9

Episode Four: Roleplaying

The Magic in Writing Episode Four

Roleplaying

I’ve actually already been asked multiple times what tips I could give someone who might want to break into the novel or writing scene. And honestly, the amount of tips I could give, I could probably count on one hand (because chances are they have also been said). But this one happens to strike me as one that hardly ever gets mentioned, and I think it is because we are still in the age of technology and most of our writing tips come from authors who have been doing this since way before the internet was prominent.

So here’s my crappy contribution to go along with all those other writers out there who think they know what they are talking about.

If there is any one thing you want to do to prepare yourself (maybe from a young age, or when you don’t have much time to contribute to full novel-writing) for the extent of writing out hundreds of thousands of words in the forms of stories, that would be to roleplay.

No, I’m not talking about the kink (though that could work too if you want to write Erotica). What I mean is the kind of roleplay you write. This comes in a few forms, but my absolute favorite has always been forum roleplay games. These are a bit different from say a table-top roleplaying game, which for the most part is speaking your role, instead you are portraying a specific character that you have created in a pre-designed world.

There are all types of these out there on the internet and you can find many of them at RPG Directory. Most of these you will find are in particular universes that are established, like say a Dresden Files RPG forum will be in the world designed by Jim Butcher and will or won’t use characters from those novels. You aren’t guaranteed to find things like these for a particular universe you are looking for, but the common ones like Harry Potter and X-men are abundant and well populated.

Now you are probably wondering at this point what this could do for you? Sure, it gets you writing and regularly but here is the reasons for it.

1. You learn character driven story telling: This is one of the most series aspects, as all you have to go off of is a character you made in this world, and guess what? You need to learn to do stuff with that character, and have that character interact with other characters. This FORCES you to create plots and story-lines that are driven by what your characters can do and things in their lives.

2. You learn how to tell an interactive story: Let’s face it, the average novelist has the idea that they write their story and then people read it. But that’s not at all true. Any story, no matter what kind, is ALWAYS an interactive story. As a novelist, you are only telling half the story, and guess who has the other half? The Reader. With Forum RPGs you are writing part of a story, then someone else is taking over to continue that story by reacting to what you wrote then adding something to it. It’s collaborative and teaches you how to take other people into consideration when you write your stories. How will the reader handle what’s about to happen? What do you want the reader to know?

3. You learn to develop your characters: The majority of the forum roleplays I dealt with required an application of your character to see if you can even play that character properly (especially in the case of superpowers). This is important because it forces you to develop and think about who your character is and what they do and things about their history. Don’t settle for things like ‘they don’t remember’ or ‘they have no history’ flesh something out, and learn to match that history with who that character is. If anything, this one will teach you how to have actual three-dimensional characters that FEEL alive naturally when you write them, without even trying!

4. You learn how to write better: This is a huge one, and most people probably take it for granted. You might often hear someone say you should write every day, but just writing whatever every day, doesn’t do that much. If you join a forum roleplaying game then you will be writing at least once a week to keep up with the stories and threads you have with people, and you’ll be writing a story and learning new things about yourself and your writing, and you’ll even be having other people read your writing and many of them have NO problem giving critiques or especially telling you when something you wrote was just fuckin’ awesome. This lets you learn your strengths and weaknesses in writing FAST and adjust.

And these are just a few things that you gain from forum roleplaying. There is so much more out there, that might be specific to you. Maybe you aren’t that great at action scenes, so make a character that’s gonna get into that shit and LEARN to write your scenes. Even today I still occasionally participate in roleplaying on forums, in fact my main character for Beyond Ever After was built from a character I roleplayed with for around two years. I still have that character and go back to her when I get stuck on what I think Gnidori would do in my novels. Which is another point, if anything forum roleplaying will get your juices flowing, even if it is only for a while. Just be careful not to get carried away or you will burn yourself out and start saying ‘I just can’t find my muse’.

So, if you want to get into writing, dig in with some forum roleplay. And the best part, you don’t have to be good at writing to start with them. Most forums accept anyone at any level, and you’ll grow. You may not notice it at first, but I can’t point to specific pieces I’ve written on forums and then point to recent works and go… yeah I learned the HELL out of that.

Regardless the key with any of this is to actively be working on your writing, whether it is short stories, some random writings each day, a novel five hundred words at a time, or really anything. Just write. And with a forum roleplay, you’ll definitely have fun writing while you are doing it regularly.

Cause remember, if you aren’t enjoying your writing… why are you writing?

The Schedule Ahead

A lot of things have changed over the past year that this blog has been active. Originally when I had started it I was publishing new things each day, and that ran fine for the time I had to devote. But eventually I ran out of free time completely and then my blog wasn’t touched for a few months.

It happens, and I won’t say I ran out of free time actually, it was that I wanted to use my free time in other avenues, like at that gap when I wasn’t writing anymore on my blog I was also working on some novel stuff and short stories. But still this is a concern (for me) that I want to be able to address in some way, because chances are something like that could happen again.

This is where my serials come in.

I recently updated my serial page, and plan to do a few more updates to introduce the couple other books and pieces I’m working on. But as it stands I made this update to my serial page because of one major thing: Schedule.

I have tons of projects already going on with this blog, and even occasionally offer my ideas, opinions, thoughts and book reviews too. And that is all great stuff going on, you’ll even get to see some rough drafts of some of the areas of the novels I’m working on. But I still want to set a specific schedule that isn’t too labor intensive, which means I can get it done, and be able to supply content to the blog no matter what since I’ll know ahead of time what I need to have done.

So from now on, all my book reviews, random notes, and releases of chapters from the rough drafts of my novels will still be done at various random times. However, on the less random front I will now do a serial each week on Friday. This will be consistent, and always occurring except in a single rare instance: nothing will be posted on the fifth friday of each month.

So for now:

The First Friday of Every Month will be returning with my old serial Three Sixty-Six. Which will go on for many years now since it was originally meant to be a year-long project of a post each day.

The Second Friday of Every Month will bring back my oldest serial Love on the Rocks. And if and when this one ends I will be replacing it with another fictional serial.

The Third Friday of Every Month will bring in my new serial The Faerie Hour. I already have the first couple of fairy tales drafted and this one will run for a good five years before it runs out, so I’m not worried about replacing it soon.

The Fourth Friday of Every Month will bring another new serial in called The Shifting Scarf. I had originally planned this one to be a web comic, but I couldn’t come up with the ability and technology to run such a thing currently, so instead it becomes a series.

And Finally on the 15th of each month I will be releasing a new episode of The Magic in Writing.

And that concludes all the things that will now be scheduled on my blog. I’ll be making a note of this on one of the side panels whenever wordpress decides to flippin’ work for me.

I can’t wait to show all the awesome and fun stuff coming up and I should definitely mention that many of these will bring in tons of diversity in a variety of ways, such as race, region, religion, sexuality, gender, class, and how many times you pick your nose each day.

And don’t worry there will still be tons of book reviews going on, however many of them will end up falling on other sites than my own or only when I’ve actually got the time to sit down and really write some (considering my time for reading this month has slimmed to minimal).

I love writing the reviews and I even have a post about that coming up, but when it comes down to crunch months like this month, it’s likely the only thing you will find on my blog are the above serials and the occasional blog hop I’m involved with. Such as one that will be coming up later this month, and the one that happened a few days ago.

So thanks for reading this and I hope you’ll enjoy the serials. If you want you can catch up on two of them with the links above.

- Jordan

Book Review – Blind Sight Ana’s POV

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

This particular book review is in conjunction with a blog hop going on. You can find more of the blogs and reviews and information involved with the hop right here. This Second review will focus on the story told through Aniela’s eyes. You can find the first review told from Leo’s point of view here.

In the Shadow of Your Family

Once again we are taking a look at the world of Blind Sight, but this time with the author Eliabeth from the Ermilia team. I wanted to start with saying that there was more depth into the story-teller character’s life with this one, but it’s because Aniela doesn’t meet Odette for a while into the story and she’s also not living with her. So instead we see a lot of the life in this fictional island as it comes from someone who had lived there their whole life. This means you don’t start things off simple and get sucked into a world with Aniela’s story, you just get dropped into it. This isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean a lot of information gets lost, or it is information that Aniela has to mention herself in thoughts or otherwise.

This is why I’ve come to the conclusion that these two stories are best read as such: The first half of the story in Leocardo’s eyes and then the second half of the story in Aniela’s eyes. Why? Because the strength and pace of the first half of Leocardo’s story is powerful, effective, and works well to introduce the reader to the world since Leo himself has to be introduced to it. The same can’t really be said for Aniela. It’s clear there is some backstory being set up with her sister and brother and the way her family is. The thing is, this was all what the beginning of Aniela’s story was, backstory all over the place. You even get to see her as a young child and it’s all a lot of information that didn’t really need to be known for this particular story, which made it a slough to get through.

The story never really feels like it even begins until you finally meet Odette at the school, and even then it felt like a great moment of their interaction was completely robbed from that.

With all of that said though, the second half of Aniela’s story was perfect. It weaved the story between the characters, showed everything that needed to be shown (like the ending that occurs in both stories) and manages to make you feel like you are in the loop with what is going on, which isn’t always the case with Leo’s second half. You might miss a few details, like seeing Leo actually write their ‘date’ on the calendar. The only major detail you miss is the event of Leo seeing the bruised man’s hand, but even then Leo eventually tells the tale fully to explain what Odette had been doing, so it’s one of those things that you don’t need to account it first hand (or third hand technically).

Overall though, I found a few things amusing, like Aniela continually discovering exact proof that Odette is a seer, but then continually re-affirming to herself and others that Odette is just a Medium. It’s like she just can’t accept it, despite all the evidence, which was interesting, especially if you factor in the evidence that you discover in the first half of Leo’s story side (Like the seer woman who disappeared years back). This only affirms to me that the story is best read with Leo’s first half and Aniela’s second half though.

Also, I think the biggest thing is all through Aniela’s second half you actually get to see William, who becomes crucial to the end of the story on both sides, and that isn’t seen with Leo’s second half. A lot of that kind of meaning was missing with Leo’s second half, since, as one of the authors put it, Leo was more concerned with Odette being better than things tying up into a nice little bow called a plot.

Either way, with a sneak peek into the second book (also split into two parts) it was clear there was a lot of things being set up for later books, like a lot of the backstory in the first half of Aniela’s story. So it’s definitely something that can be looked over.

This was certainly an interesting way of telling a story and unique, as I actually find books that randomly switch point of views as you are reading frustrating to deal with, but this addressed a concern for two authors to write and explain points of views that at times were quite different. I can’t say it was an absolute brilliant success if I’m saying you could cut whole first or second halves of the stories out and still understand and get through all the story going on and know what’s going on, but it also managed to tell more than just one story and through radically different filters (the characters).

Once more for this story we are stuck at about four of my imps being interested. My last imp had a lot of issues with sticking around in the first half of the story and it was difficult to get her to come back for reading the second half, which she enjoyed more. Though all my other imps did mention redeeming qualities for the first half, like the non-toxic areas of the familial relationship, before everything went to shit. Also my fourth imp pointed out how drastically different the two characters viewed the world around them, which is a major plus. And finally, like Leo’s point of view, there was a good amount of diversity going on (though a bit less noticeable on Aniela’s end other than Odette and Leo).

Four out of Five Little Imps

Book Review – Blind Sight Leo’s POV

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

This particular book review is in conjunction with a blog hop going on. You can find more of the blogs and reviews and information involved with the hop right here. This first review will focus on the story told through Leocardo’s eyes. There will be a second review on Sunday of the story told from Aniela’s eyes, which will be linked here at that time. 

Does It Count as Kidnapping if you Kidnap Yourself?

This novel comes in a unique way that is something I’ve wanted to try with a few authors but never got anything off the ground as concrete. Really it is one book split into two parts, one part told through the eyes of Aniela Dawson and the other through Leocardo Reyes. This particular review will focus on the story told through Leo’s eyes by Ermisenda Alvarez, but there is the possibility of some of the story from Aniela crossing over as I’ve already read both.

Blind Sight focuses around the life of Odette Reyes, the sister to Leocardo. Though since it is told from the view of Leocardo you also see more of his life than tons about Odette. That’s fine though, since she spends the majority of the novels passed out or in a trance. The story begins with Odette drawing a picture of a lake, and then both her and her brother getting sucked up to land in a new country, completely disoriented, which is also how I felt when I first read it. It’s clear later on that the bizarre circumstances to how they go there are not the same for everyone else. Most people arrive by boat, not just suddenly materializing on the shore.

Regardless, that’s only the beginning to the bizarre-ness that occurs in this new land Edaion. You see, the land is actually alive and has something like a will in that it draws people to it that can develop ‘magic’. This included Odette and Leo, who each develop their own magical abilities. Unfortunately Odette’s ability is a bit more damaging to her body than the average, in fact most other magic for other people just exhaust them really. Odette ends up passing out multiple times in something like a seizure and eventually even goes into a coma. Not exactly an awesome gift. I leave Leo’s gift up to seeing it for yourself though, as his is at least cool.

When it comes down to it, there are a lot of things in this story that I liked in theory and application. You had the point of view of a Spanish man, with the focus on a blind Spanish girl, and then one of the girl’s Leo starts to like is not only also another Spanish girl, but she’s ‘doesn’t date men’, which is incredibly complicated and true to human sexuality. Those things offered more diversity than I see in most fantasy books, which was great to see.

That said, there were also things that were frustrating, like Leo’s relationships with girls, about the only one that he wasn’t trying to kiss was ‘Leila’ and even then he mentioned in passing that he wanted to after she had helped him figure something out (though I figure jokingly). This is something I see often in fiction with men completely dropping relationships with girls that they aren’t able to ‘hook up’ with. But that was more a personal issue, so the main concern has to do with the climax and conclusion of the story.

It was clear once I got around to the climax of the story from Leo’s point of view that this was the first group of books in what would be a series, which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just the issue came with there being a bit of an anti-climax when it came to saving the boy at the end, and then the boy woke up Odette after they saved him, and it’s not really ever explained from Leo’s point of view. It just happens and no one really questions it. I feel like the boy was a mcguffin that kind of appeared out of nowhere near the end, as that was the only time they were finally solving the mysteries.

With bringing that up though, if there is any story you should start this series with it would be Leo’s point of view. It’s not to say it is better writing or anything, it’s just more things get explained to you about the world without it being a bunch of exposition from Leo’s point of view because all the other character’s HAVE to explain to him since he starts the story as an outsider. But from having read both of these, you really only get the complete story and all the little extra minor details if you read both points of view, which is why I consider them one book still.

All around though, I found the story interesting, and I speculated what kind of ability I would develop on that island. It has a bit of an urban fantasy feel, since its more or less in the modern world just in a fantasy land in the modern world. There wasn’t any pressing cliches or really major or wrong concerns with the story, it does take a bit to get fully absorbed into the story as both sides kind of jar you at the beginning but otherwise it’s a story I would consider reading more of with the sequels. Also I’ll admit I’m not the audience for heterosexual romance stories so that probably off-put me a bit. This is why it’s probably not for me in the audience but I wouldn’t totally negate it just cause it has the het romance.

As for my imps, they enjoyed the diversity, the story that never really stalled and flowed well, and characters that were for the most part interesting (though Aniela is a bit bland). Almost all of them were for this, except one of them. My last imp lost interest in a few areas and had some frustrations with the way characters’ relationships were done. But it holds out as a decent story that anyone interested in fantasy should look into, especially with all the diversity floating around, which is always a plus for me and my imps.

Four out of Five Little Imps

Book Review – Red Hood’s Revenge

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

Can’t You Wash that Hood?

I originally wanted to save this novel for a review week of all Red Riding Hood stories, but the chances of me being able to get to some more Red Riding Hood stories any time soon is very slim and I really wanted to share my thoughts about this one before I’d have to go back over and read it again.

Red Hood’s Revenge is the third book in a series of four novels, all of which follow Danielle (Cinderella), Talia (Sleeping Beauty), and Snow (Snow White). The events that had made each of them famous for their names have already occurred and Talia and Snow were actually exiled from their home lands.

This particular story starts off fast with a reveal that Roudette (More known as Lady of the Red Hood) is coming to kill Danielle, although Roudette makes it sound like she is doing Danielle a favor, by bringing Danielle’s stepsister along (one of the same cruel stepsisters). Of course Talia and Snow won’t let Danielle meet up with Red Riding Hood, so they go in her place.

And that leads everything into a long spiral of events resulting in the entire group of four women (Roudette included) ending up in the deserts of Talia’s homeland, with some marks left on them. Now, I feel the loss of a nice twist plot I wouldn’t have seen coming near the beginning, since the twist was revealed on the blurb on the back of the book.

Still, the characters and back story for each of them was crafted well, particularly I liked the dual nature of Talia’s and Roudette’s background being similar but still resulting in entirely different outcomes solely because of how much friendship can impact a person, which is something everyone should recognize; friendship is immensely important and WILL change you and your outlook on life.

The story continues with Talia leading the group through the desert and faerie enclave-like places and finally into an epic battle. You really get to see a lot of the back story for Talia laid over the events occurring in this book, though a few times repeated in excess, but still done well to show who she was and the life she had after being ‘sleeping beauty’.

Really the whole story manages to shine so well because of the characterization and the interaction of those characters, the plot is decent, but the characters are what make the entire series worth reading. The coolest thing about this book series though is that it adds some diversity to a faerie tale series (which is actually rare). Believe it or not, most of the diverse fairy tales are short stores, novellas or a single novel. This series by Jim Hines is the only mainstream fairy tale book series that has LGBT characters, let alone ones of color. Seriously.

Unfortunately the majority of the diversity comes from Talia, making her not just the token ‘racially-diverse’ character, but also the token Lesbian, until her love interest is introduced in this third book. Regardless she has an Arabian heritage, which is not often seen despite a lot of mythology coming from them, and she does prefer the company of women, with a particular unrequited crush on Snow White. This is why I’m talking about the third book though, because the only real romance subplot for this book is a Lesbian one.

Also this one has a kick-ass Red Riding Hood, who I will forever pair with wolverine (from X-men) because there is one part where Roudette walks into the room after Talia and her love interest had sex. She sniffs the air and then winks at Talia and Talia blushes and shies away about it, going about ignoring her. It was such a great moment that has to be one of my favorites from this book.

It’s little moments and scenes like that which really had pushed me through this book and made it an overall fun read, and one of the few series I would definitely recommend to anyone. That said, there were some cheesy or cliche moments, but that only confirms to me that Jim Hines wrote this series specifically for me (or while he was channeling me).

As for my imps, they also had a lot of fun with this one, and two of them kept kicking me in the face trying to get a better view of the book and because it was such an enjoyable read my fifth imp gave some leeway on some of the weaker points, because as she put it: The whole reason you read fiction is to enjoy it. So…

Five out of Five Little Imps

The Concept of Tropes

This is a topic that has been pressing at me for a while, and I am by no means the expert on the concept of tropes, because honestly I’ve only just learned of them over the last year. I would have been perfectly happy to go never knowing about these trope things that lead to further generalize the worlds and characters that people go to make, and just seeing it makes me feel so much like there is not a damn thing in this world that is original, except in the original way in which we combine appropriate tropes.

So to begin, we should first declare what a trope is, as there are actually two very different definitions:

Tropes as we are discussing them are any commonly recurring literary device, motif, cliché, or really anything even remotely connected to a story or the characters in that story.

You can find a lot of these tropes discussed on Tvtropes.org and if you’d like to see a few that are specific to feminist issues then take a look at Feminist Frequencies set of videos detailing some harmful women tropes.

With all of that said I actually don’t have a problem with tropes, and I can recognize many of the harmful issues around a lot of them while many of them I don’t even pay attention to because they are clichés I avoid anyway. My real issue comes with the very concept of a trope. And it is my same issue with the concept of titles and labels on people and things and so on. A trope at it’s very core is literally a label. The same kind of labels we place on people all the time. The same kind of labels that hinder so many people because they don’t think they can be more than that label or they think that they are limited by that label when they aren’t really.

And the worst thing you can do is to force the same system on to fictional works. Fictional work is already bogged down by the concept of the cliché and how everything we do for a fictional work already has to be based in a word system we created to be able to understand our environment. Add on tropes and you can literally generalize every single thing in a fictional work.

Starting with that mentality though, there are recognizable helpful components to having tropes exist.

1. It makes people aware of a pattern that is occurring consistently within multiple works. Both the bad patterns and the good ones.

2. If you never make people aware of the problem then it can never be fixed.

For this very basis, tropes are a good thing. You can point out multiple areas where all these books and shows are showing a damsel in distress or an evil demon seductress. And show that it is still happening today, in an era that many men would want you to believe that women are already equal or even better off than a man.

Being able to point to these things in the same way we label people makes people aware of something that is otherwise entirely subconscious. Believe it or not, despite what many people might want you to believe, the majority of time an author or a writer isn’t purposely going out and writing a bunch of terrible women characters or writing only white characters for their benefit. It’s because of the writer’s subconscious. Because they grew up on stories about men saving women, suddenly when they go to write a story they are pulling from that psyche and the story they go to create is the same thing. It’s the same thing with race, sex and so many other labels in our world.

By making the authors aware that they are doing these things, they will think about it when they go to draw something from their subconscious. And it’s not just authors, but everyone. Some people have an advantage of being able to see these kinds of issues before they use them, but when it comes down to it, every single one of us is misogynistic, racist, sexist, genderist, and a few others I can’t even think of. Why? Because we have GROWN UP in a society that is all of those things. And when you grow up in a society like that, you too are that.

The only way to overcome it? By making yourself aware of those issues, and snuffing them out when they appear. Are you creating a new character for a story? Let me guess, you pictured them as male and white? Well does it really change the character to make them Asian? What about the character would change if they were female?

Chances are, if anything changes about the character based on those simple changes… you are holding a lot of baggage about what a female is and what an Asian woman is specifically. Because, this is the brilliant part, the race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and class of your character doesn’t even matter. In fact there is a word for it: Intersectionality.

The intersectionality of your characters DO NOT MATTER. Your character can be the same person they are no matter what their race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, ability, or etc is. You are simply holding to your own subconscious homophobia (or heterophobia), sexist, racist or genderist natures that have been ingrained in you from a young age.

Don’t worry, it isn’t your fault. It’s what happens with a society like this. What is your fault though, is continuing to hold to those beliefs and systems that were subconscious long after they have become conscious to you, long after you have become aware of them. Once that happens, it is most certainly your fault.

Bringing this back to Tropes, we run into exactly the same issue. All of what I said above could also be said for many tropes that exist (like the Damsel in Distress). These are all things that we have gotten so used to seeing in story-telling that we just naturally fall to them when we don’t know where else to go with the story, or if we need a story to go somewhere in the first place. But if you are aware of these, then you have NO excuse to still be using them. Start thinking outside the box. Do you want an old man character to be something of a mentor for your main character? STOP. Think about a little black girl as your main character’s mentor instead or someone their own age as a mentor.

One of the best ways I’ve seen this occur is with a part in The Fast and the Furious. The US Marshall part that ended up being played by The Rock was originally set to be a very cliché part that would fit Tommy Lee Jones (who has played numerous hard-ass marshalls/agents). But instead this trope was snuffed out with The Rock taking the part instead, and you know what? It made the movie so much more awesome by not following that cliché and trope.

So while tropes are great for being able to recognize this kind of issue, they also cause many problems as well. I’ve frequently seen people just completely write off really well done and interesting characters that stand on their own as a ‘manic pixie dream girl’ or ‘just another damsel in distress’. And it’s entirely possible that some parts of that character do fit that trope, but at the same time the character is also their own person and doesn’t just exist to move forward a plot. It’s because of these tropes we are marginalizing and generalizing a lot of really well done characters. This is especially done with female characters, who are then focused on more so than the writer who had created these characters (because in most cases it is a male writer).

When it all comes down to it, tropes may have a good component of showing people things they might not have been aware of (but usually only if they are open to see it), while also supplying just as many problems. Which is why I’ve given up on the idea of trying to avoid tropes all together and instead I flip them on their side.

Off the top of my head I can name a few tropes that is in my first book ‘The Real Folktale Blues’, but I flipped them around a bit.

Little Red Fighting Hood: This one tends to get a lot of shit because it is ‘updating’ the red riding hood story to be feminist, which isn’t true at all. The original red riding hood story (the one before Grimms) was actually feminist by nature. Regardless, my Red Riding Hood could be considered one of these, she hunts the wolf, has her cloak, is even an adult version. Except she isn’t also a Lady in Red and she doesn’t really take care of herself, in fact she has a lot of other people help her out, her friends.

Fractured Fairy Tale: I absolutely love the series ‘fractured fairy tales’ which I think is where this one came from, but it essentially would twist known fairy tales into something completely different. Generally, if you have a Red Fighting Hood, you probably also have a fractured fairy tale. And this one actually stays pretty similar, because I’ve never had a problem with messing around with past stories that we all know in fact its a common thing we see in ‘Urban Fantasy’ now.

The Fridged Woman: This one is a really terrible motif that often gets used for a male main character to seek vengeance or go after someone because their girlfriend or wife was killed (or even kidnapped to the underworld). As for my fridged character? Well… I make you think they were female through about half the book, then in a snap you discover not only was the fridged character male, but the person trying to avenge this fridged man is gay.

The Big Bad: This is the main villain of a series, the one behind all the problems. And I very much do have one of those, but honestly you kind of have to when handling a series. Without some element to tie all the bad stuff together you don’t have a coherent plot that will function. My big bad also comes with a couple other tropes mixed in that I can’t name specifically. Regardless I have not one, but two and both of them have been both bad and helpful to my main character. So I feel it is at least a little change.

These are the ones I can think of immediately, but I know there are plenty others I’m not thinking of. The point is, there is not a single book, show, movie, or piece of media out there that doesn’t have at least one trope and is more likely to have upwards of five to fifty, especially the longer the piece of media has been going on.

So while it is great to avoid these, also remember that you aren’t going to ever write something or make something that is completely lacking in these, and if you do it will probably quickly become a trope itself. That’s just the way people are designed. We are meant to recognize patterns. So all I can say is keep your eyes open and remember you can make the difference in the world, so stay aware of what you are doing. Don’t just half-ass things.

P. S. Based on my word checker, I apparently made up some of the words in this post. Like turning the noun fridge into a verb fridged, and Genderist, which is the equivalent of a racist but to genders.

Why the Imps?

A few people have asked me as to where the imps come from that help me review books and even one person asked me about why my email has to do with imps as well. Well there are a few reasons around this.

The first is to do with the imps that serve as my helpers for book reviews. These imps are a lot like that whole concept of an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other shoulder, except I have to deal with one imp on each shoulder, an imp on my head, and one clinging to each of my ears. So while everyone else is only dealing with whether something is good or bad to be doing, I’m getting five different grey area options that all tend to end pretty horribly.

This is what has always made my morals questionable on quite a few fronts. Each one of these imps even comes with their own voice and their predilections for particular things in the world. (not just books). My super special imp that likes every single book is also my imp that always wants me to use brute force for any situation. Let’s just say I have almost never listened to him. The others become increasingly vicious, with my third imp being the one I listen to the most, who suggests various means of playing a part or manipulation of people.

It can get pretty terrible. My fifth imp is the most terrible though; she laughs at people’s pain and loves to try to cause drama. I used to listen to her all the time a few years back, but I’ve since lost interest in her whispers.

Overall, they aren’t all bad though. Like I said they are pretty grey (or versicolor) when it comes to life and morals. So while my fifth imp loves causing drama, she also is all about letting people choose, and is the first to stand in line when it comes to giving people choice. She’s also all about being equal too, for anyone. So yes, my fifth imp is a total feminist.

The second reason around all this has to do with an anthology project my group of writers have been working on, and one of the things I wanted to do for the project, since it is a fairy tale and mythology anthology, was have every contributor be connected with a faerie creature. So we have trolls, pixies, wulvers, and sidhe. As for me? Someone said I was an imp, which at the time I had only heard of imps in cases of like World of Warcraft. I never really invested time to learn about them and as I read and saw them, they made a lot of sense.

Of course one of the most known pieces about imps is a little story called The Bottle Imp. It’s a really amusing and interesting story to read, and I might do a review on it, though I try to avoid reviews on short stories unless they are in collections. Anyway, one of my concerns about the bottle imp, that was never brought up in the story was: How did the imp end up in the bottle? And what did that imp do to end up in that bottle? Well, I wrote a piece about that, and while I’m not ready to release it, it will be a fun one to show when I can.

So, from reading all these tales, an Imp really made sense for who I was. They aren’t technically evil, but they often get a bad name for it, because they are tricksters, and usually do cause trouble. I mean, one of the main reasons I’ve been drawn to faeries and such is because they were the in between. Not angels of all virtue, and not demons all about sins, they navigated the in between, and imps fall along the same lines really. Except they can go one step better. You see most faeries are tied to specific rules. Like some can’t lie, and others can’t move from their tree, so on. Most of them also don’t have choices in matters, they just have to follow the rules that have been set by them.

Imps fall into an interesting category though, that is along the same lines as Djinn from Islamic mythology. In fact many people have speculated that Robert Louis Stevenson had gotten imps and Djinn mixed up, or that he wanted to make a similar story to Djinn but with a creature that was more known in European areas: The Imp. That’s why we get a bottle imp, which is very similar to the Djinn that get trapped in bottles as well. The bottle is actually one of the only few ways in which a Djinn or imp can lose their freedom of choice. Yes, Imps and Djinn from original mythology have freedom of choice, they were the only other creatures besides humans to get such a thing based on Islamic mythology.

This means imps aren’t just a moral grey area for their life, they are capable of choosing whether they want to be evil, good, neutral or so on, or any combination of.

Anyway, all of these facts led me to really connect with and enjoy imps, which is why the voices that make up my mind quickly took on the forms of imps and they’ve existed ever since. I might add, each of my imps are a different type of Djinn version too. My fifth imp (I really have to name them) in an Ifrit which is supposedly the most powerful type of Djinn. And really they are Djinn, they just like being called imps and taking the form of imps. They like the word and form better. That’s all really.

So because of all of this, I am clearly a creature that can commune with these creatures that are most often invisible to humans, which probably makes me part imp and part human. Somewhere between both worlds. So this is where I came in with the unbottled imp area, as I am an unbottled imp, with more power than I know what to do with and no one to command me to use it properly.

As a final note around this, I spent a few months in a relationship with someone where we referred to each other as an imp and a pixie. In a way by doing this we found our own way of circumventing gender and a lot of other stigma surrounding what a relationship is supposed to be like. We had a lot of fun during that time, and we were pretty balanced because we would keep making up random things of what an Imp was or a pixie was and that allowed us to remove a lot of the expectations from the relationship for a while.

It was probably because of that relationship that I’ve come to most identify with imps, and because I still do, it shows that I’m carrying something on from that relationship. And I like that.

The Worlds We Create (Real And Fiction)

So its been a while since I managed to get anything up on here, unfortunately. But on the up side, I am working on a few writing projects that I plan on unveiling over the next week, including a fairy tale and mythology anthology (with a kickstarter) and the rough drafts of the first chaptersof my next two books (one of which is a YA).

Until then though, I actually wanted to talk about my first book, The Real Folktale Blues. I never mentioned that it was now free for the time being, until I hear from Harper Voyager on whether or not they are going to pick up my series. You can find it on Smashwords free as a digital copy, unfortunately I can’t do physical copies for free due to publishing costs, but I don’t mind that, because honestly the only people have really bought physical copies are myself and people I know personally and like two other people who I don’t know at all.

Still it made me think recently about whether I wanted to actually go through with filing my book with the United States Copyright. I’ve already marked it as being copywritten, because it is, but if I ever had to prove that in court I’d be screwed. Not that I ever will need to prove that, because honestly if you can take my stories and make them your own and make it successful enough that it becomes an issue then fuck, you win.

But I was reading some things on Ksenia Anske’s blog about copyright and that she was going with a creative commons that let people use and manipulate her work in any way so long as it wasn’t then commercialized and as long as she was cited for the idea coming from her. Which is an awesome concept, and something I would totally consider, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m mostly looking toward traditional publishing directions (and at the same time not really). This means that if I went the same route, my books would literally be unsellable because you can’t make money off of creative common things. Ksenia Anske manages to get around this by asking for donations from her MASSIVE reader following. And she lives off of that. And honestly I’d be okay with that direction too, giving people my books for free, self publishing and asking for money. Hell, Amanda Palmer had recently done a Tedtalk on that; we should be asking for money from our fans, rather than demanding it!

The issue is, where do you start with that kind of thing? Ksenia already had this huge twitter following before she fully invested in writing her first book, she had tons of people willing to essentially invest in her in the same way crowdfunding worked. For someone like me though, who barely talks to a soul and occasionally interacts with a few people here and there on social media, going that route for me would get me in tough shit fast. And I just got out of all the tough shit.

That’s okay though. Because no matter what I eventually run with, which will probably come down to whether or not Harper Voyager actually wants to take a chance on me, I’ll still continue writing, I’ll still continue releasing my stories, even if they are free, and I never make a dime off them. Believe or not, I actually haven’t made a cent off of The Real Folktale Blues. I’ve given it away, and let people have fun with it, and I’ve actually spent tons of money on it that was my spending money. In a way, writing these books is more of my hobby than my job now, and if I can keep it at my books being free and taking longer to get around to writing, would it be better to keep it my hobby, and survive with a different job?

I’m not sure. I’d rather write what I want and have fun with my novels for my living, but it wasn’t until a couple of reviews and emails I had gotten from readers of my first book. Like… it’s so weird thinking that I have readers… me? It’s just kind of… wow. And not just people who are like… this was terrible, I’m glad I didn’t pay for it. It’s been positive, really positive. I enjoyed writing the book, and it showed with the people who have read the book, enjoying reading it. And honestly… I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.

Who knows later down the line, things will always change, maybe I’ll get a deal with someone, maybe I’ll just keep releasing these on my own and hell, running a kickstarter for it would be interesting. I mean, if I kickstart an entire series of nine books, which I have the first book done, and the second one well on the way, would that crowdfunding method really be any different from what Ksenia is doing? That might be an option I might really consider. I’ll have to hype it up before I run with it, but it’d be interesting to see.

Anyway, back to my readers though. I recently had one person email me and I wanted to share their emails because… this is honestly what every writer wants to see when they have written a book. If every writer could ever get even just one review for each book they wrote, this would be it:

Hey,

I have just finished reading “beyond ever after” and I had the need to track you down and thank you. I rarely if ever leave reviews despite being an avid reader but I am making an exception in this case to tell you what a wonderful read this book was. The plot is extremely well done, the characters are so well developed and I loved the humor! I have been searching for a good sci-fi/ fantasy lesbian book since forever and almost despaired of ever finding one until I stumbled on this gem. So thank you

And thank you for making it easy to obtain. I am one of the unlucky people who live in a country where being gay is against the law (yes sadly these still exist), so having access to such a good quality book online is quite the treat.


I’m surprised you weren’t aware people would like it that much. I even got that feeling, don’t know how to really describe it, you know the one you get after reading a good book that has a universe of its own… where you feel for a couple of days after that you’re still partially living in that universe. Wow 9 more books! I have so much to look forward to! 

As for living for a country where being gay is illegal, it sucks. Being homophobic is actually the accepted norm. Things are changing, but too slowly.But it is still much better than the surrounding countries. Weirdly, it felt relieving to hear someone totally unrelated condemn it.

I wish you all the best in your book series getting picked up. You truly deserve it. 

Please don t stop writing!

Now, under normal circumstances I would have mentioned the person who had sent these multiple emails to me, but due to keeping anonymity for this person who could very well be persecuted with a death sentence or any number of terrible things for simply having my book, I am all over making sure to protect this person’s freedom to go anonymous.

It’s because of things like this that create the very reason I write my stories. Continually I’m learning to express more and more diversity and variance with my characters and plots and I can’t say my writing is brilliant or that my stories NEED to be heard, because one: my writing is terrible, but I’m learning. And two: These aren’t my stories. I write these stories so that there can be a story out there for everyone to feel exactly like this person does. So that they have a story to go to and see that not everything is terrible, not everyone feels the same way as so many people around them do. These aren’t my stories. They are everyone else’s.

And thinking about that, only makes me wonder whether I should actually follow through with going toward a creative commons licensing and start doing the same thing as Ksenia Anske. It’d let me share even more stories and it would let me share them for free, for everyone, and for anyone to get access to them. I mean, that’s the same reason I’m interested in a big publisher picking up my book, so that everyone can get them, but through a big publisher the reach may be further, but it won’t touch the people who can’t afford these things or in the case of the reader above… can’t even buy these things or else they would be killed.

This is same reason Sarah Diemer had mentioned that the majority of people who buy her novels and sustain her are straight people, despite all of her works having gay characters as the main ones, if not all of them. Why? Because the people who want to read gay young adult books can’t always buy them, or even be associated with them. There are still people in America and even the UK today that are punished and persecuted for being gay, and if you’re seen with a book that is clearly a ‘gay’ book you are screwed in that sense.

And it’s a horrible notion to think of, but it is so true. If I’m writing stories directed toward all the ‘outliers’ in the world, how would they be able to get a hold of my book, when my book could literally be banned from that country or that home.

In the same vein, if my books somehow fell into the mainstream like with Harper Voyager picking this up, then would I be helping those people in the outlier areas? Would I be showing that characters that are gay, or trans, or racially different can get along, be friends, have good lives, and deal with all the same fucked up shit that everyone deals with in our lives, would that make a difference?

Fuck, I hope so. I used to say fiction is actually a large portion of what decides people’s knowledge and actions in the real world, especially fiction from a young age, like young adult literature. Don’t believe me? There was one book that incited a Philippine revolution, another (the bible) that has been the go-to literature to wave away human rights from anyone that wasn’t straight, white, male and Christian. Want more? How about the book that led to the persecution of thousands of people as witches and how you kill them.

Sure, you could argue that all of those books weren’t technically fiction, but most of them were about history (or what people consider history) and there is always some fiction when history is written. And I didn’t even touch on facts like how J.K. Rowlings books led to many Christians finally realizing it was okay to read a book about fictional magic, you wouldn’t burn for it. Then she went and tossed em a screw ball by saying the major, awesome mentor through the whole series was actually gay. Which was probably the biggest fuck you in mainstream media that still makes me laugh. And you know what, I’d love to do the same thing. No, I would want to do more than that. Because as long as my books aren’t able to be part of the mainstream then neither will being gay, or gender-non-conforming or whatever race you may be.

They will always be on the outlier, just like my stories. And I want to change that.

Finally, a note for the person above and all those who might fall in the same situation:

I love you. And no matter who you are, I will always love you, and I will always continue to write. Always continue to provide the stories that I know people out there want to read. But most of all, I hope the world changes. I hope the hate runs dry, and I wish so much for people to be able to just be people. No matter who they love, what they look like, or how they act. We are all people, and nothing can take that away from you, despite so many people thinking they can.

So keep loving, keep reading, and keep living. Because just by you being alive and living your life to the fullest, you destroy the power anyone else can have over you. Believe in yourself, and believe that no matter what, I love you. All of you. And best of, the reason I love Love so much… it is one of the few things that doesn’t deplete the more you give it away.

Love,

Jordan

Why I Will Never Pass (By Choice)

I feel like I still surprise people regularly when they ask ‘So when are you transitioning?’, probably because it seems like an odd question to me. I mean, here are am, sitting in a tank top that clearly shows what boobs I have, wearing size six jeans, talking about how I’m a girl in essence and yet I’m still asked when I’m transitioning. As if I’m already not?

There’s a lot of concern around this kind of thing. How many people do you know who say they could totally spot a transwoman easily? Chances are, they can in some cases. Usually transwomen that are just starting their physical transition and even up to a year into it can still in some cases look predominately male-ish (mostly the face because that’s how we generally judge gender). But this is because we as a society actually place more stress on masculine features, this is why you never hear about transmen having as much of an issue with ‘passing’ because it doesn’t really take that much.

For a transman, once you’ve been on hormones for a bit, you could go walking around with your boobs hanging out, but because you’ve got a beard and a deep voice, people will just think you are a dude. Now that is for transmen who have been on hormones, and even then sometimes they still get shit about it, because of those who kind of have the nasally or squeaky voice instead of a deep one (which is a VERY common occurrence), but when you’ve been hormones long enough, eventually you do pass for women and men. (with concerns to age and facial hair still).

But what about the people who aren’t women and men? There isn’t a concept of ‘passing’ for them because there is no ‘normal’ for people who are somewhere in between. We will always be gendered one way or the other, no matter what. I could be the butchest gal in town and still consistently be gendered male, or worse when you’re really feminine for a guy, but not gay, and you still get ‘fag’ yelled at you out the window of passing cars. I know, because I’ve experienced both of these.

So when people ask me, when I’m transitioning, I really can’t help but laugh. I have been transitioning, for years at this point. The problem is, my goal isn’t to be FEMALE or MALE. My goal is androgyny, so I can be female or male when I want. But this is an issue for everyone else. Being one and the other or neither isn’t an option. Plus, most people don’t really understand the concept of transition.

Transition is change. We do it every day, and usually, we do it without conscious thought to it. That’s the big difference between transition and change. A transition is something we want to do, a conscious thought is put toward the kind of change we want. The thing is, we change not just physically everyday.

I’ve already been transitioning, because I’ve been mentally and emotionally transitioning for years. Preparing myself for the mentality of the things I have to understand and embrace. Which is a whole bunch of jargon for saying that I had to be sure of myself that I wanted to consciously go through the process of being androgynous, in mind, body and more. It’s funny I say that, consider I have been androgynous for years in personality, but not much else. Which is why when I say my essence is female it’s something I have to say, because everyone assumes my essence is male, and because I have so much of the male aspect showing I over compensate by trying to affirm only the female aspect for the things that can’t be seen.

And this is why so many trans people actually feel like they have a ‘after transition or post transition’ period. They feel like they have finished. And really they have. They finished the transition, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still change and learn and grow, but there won’t be any conscious thought to it. And that’s disappointing. Which is probably why I’ll never finish transition. Or more specifically, I won’t ever ‘pass’.

Oh sure, there will be times that people will undyingly believe I’m fully female. And then other times people will think I couldn’t be anything but male. But there will also be times that I’ll have facial hair while otherwise completely ‘passing’ as female, or keep a deep voice despite looking female. Or maybe I’ll put my hair in pig tails while looking male.

Why would I do this? That’s actually the easy part. And I think the best way to explain it is through a story.

I once knew someone I was in the crazy house with. They asked me if I was female, why didn’t I wear female clothes, or make-up, or grow out my hair.

I asked them. How am I not already wearing female clothes? Don’t females wear jeans? T-shirts? Does make-up define what a woman is supposed to be? Long hair? Are these all things that women are supposed to be? Because if so, then maybe you should look in the mirror.

She wore pants, a t-shirt, even a hoodie, no make-up, and her hair was recently cut to nearly the scalp. And she laughed. Because for years she had been told exactly what a female was supposed to be, and continually defied it. And here I was, a person desperately trying to have people acknowledge my female side and yet I refused to not be myself. Wearing those things don’t define me, but not wearing those things don’t keep me from being who I am.

I’ll continue to be who I am no matter what, and maybe I’m stubborn, or I don’t know what I am talking about. But I feel like one of the major reasons women (like the womyn festival) have such major issues with transwomen is because the transwomen they are aware of simply embrace the beauty culture that most of these women have gone to great lengths to reject because it was something built by men, and here were these people who masqueraded as men for years suddenly embracing that beauty culture and changing to women.

And that sucks. For everyone involved.

That’s why, despite the looks, despite the fact that often times I might look like a man in a skirt, or a woman with a beard and unshaved legs, I won’t pass. But I won’t pass, because I choose to not pass. Because I don’t need to. Because I am exactly who I am, and embracing beauty, or the gender mentality of what I am supposed to look like is something I’ve been fighting my whole life. And just for the sake of being able to pass as female sometimes I’m not just gonna give into wearing make-up and being a girly girl. Because that’s bullshit. It’s not me, and just because it’s not me, it doesn’t make me any less of a girl. It doesn’t make me more of one either.

It just makes me a person. A person standing here, rejecting the social stigmas that are trying to be forced down my throat. And believe it or not, trans people have developed one of those social stigmas… and it’s called ‘passing’. And I reject that too.

Why I Will Always Love Illyana Rasputin

There is, no matter what, one character in all of comics that will never compete with any other characters for my heart. That is Illyana Rasputin or Magik or Darkchylde or Snowflake or her hundreds of other aliases. Sure, I do like plenty of other characters like Xi’an or Zatanna, but Illyana is not only me, she is my perfect story. And for me, it all comes down to stories.

You see Illyana is this sweet and innocent little girl when it all starts, who often never realized when she was causing trouble for everyone around her. She was in essence a very stupid kid, but with a lot of potential in her already. This follows my childhood background where I often put others at risk, though not my brother, but friends and family always got in trouble because of me. I’ve caused a lot of pain to people, much of which I’m not aware of.

For Illyana, her brother jumped in front of a tractor to save her, and then even went after her to save her in multiple different universes. And that was just the beginning.

Now from there Illyana is stolen away by demons to another dimension, where she is raised by people trying to help her and some trying to use her. This represents a really strong case for a lot of abuse by peers and adults of all types but with gentle urging that Illyana was still able to at least experience some of the beauty humanity had too over in such a hellish dimension (ironically by some not-so-human beings).

Because of this, she learns at a young age that she has a power deep inside her, a power born by the damage some of the people had caused her but still innately part of her. This sits well once again with my life as I was often bullied at a young age, suffered an era where I was pulled away from the only family member I consistently interacted with (my mother instead of brother) and proceeded to discover that I had a lot of power in my reactions and actions, but most of all my words and thoughts. It was after discovering this dark and good power in me that I looked to applying it in a manner that was all my own. I didn’t create a soulsword though, instead I manifested my persona, the first of many which would continue to grow on me in much the same way the soul armor grew on Illyana, even at times when I didn’t want it to.

With my first persona crafted, I could become anyone and I did. I took on one persona and overthrew the school bully, resulting in my month detention for standing up for myself and other kids. Much in the same way Illyana proceeded to use her sword to slay Belasco and take over Limbo. The next persona I took on at a new school, experiencing my first strong relationship with a girl and my first romance falls almost perfectly in line with Illyana then being brought to Xavier’s school where she’s new and keeps to herself, but ends up bonding rather well with one person… Kitty Pryde. Although the two don’t end up romantically involved with even a kiss, there was a lot of undertones that fall along the same line as the whole ‘college girl roommates’ kind of thing often getting marked up to experimental lesbianism. They were roommates and really close friends (though romantic was still possible), which still fits with my comparison as that girl was the only person I bonded with and strongly and we were classmates and deskmates (that school shared giant desks with two seats).

Unfortunately my time with ‘Kitty’ didn’t last quite as long as Illyana managed to get, and I was moving away once again. Which I could probably ramble on for hours about how the uncontrollable teleportation that Illyana possessed was incredibly metaphoric of the constant moving of my life, in fact I could probably make everything about Illyana a direct fictional metaphor for my life, which is why I’ll just move on to when Illyana is ‘killed’ and ‘reborn’ as a baby once more.

This can be accounted to a significant point in my life as well. I attempted suicide multiple times, most of the time by doing reckless things, but finally it got to a point where I just ran away from my life and embraced the fact that I needed to do things for myself and take control of my destiny rather than let it be controlled by everyone else. I was reborn from this decision. It will always be a defining moment in my life that I will forever be happy to have happened. I was reborn much like Illyana emerged from her soul armor as a child once more.

This rebirth didn’t last, in fact it died quickly because with that rebirth I tried to forget all who I was and become someone else, someone I thought I was supposed to be. Again, I hurt a lot of people around that time. And eventually this ‘persona’ of me died and I embraced a new one and then another new one, much like Illyana dying to the legacy virus and being reborn a few times until finally the most recent incarnation emerged. The final me that realized I’m an incredibly messed up and terrible person and I know it.

This is what makes Illyana so much of my heart. She’s a brat as a kid, learns her power and potential young, wields that power both in good and bad ways, then tries to forget herself, before emerging with the acceptance that she is both a terribly dark person and one who has a heart of gold. Illyana is the fusion of good and evil that not only I am, but everyone is. We are all fucked up people, and Illyana Rasputin is the queen of not just getting through life fucked up, but turning that brokenness into a strength.

Illyana Rasputin and her quest for revenge made me want to do so much more with my life. Illyana and her fall so far into the darkness and chaos and destruction that there was NEVER anyway of getting back out of it. So what does she do? She takes up all that darkness and burns it up inside her, using it as her power to keep on going. Illyana and her simple words that mean so very much to me:

“Everyone wants to come home. Even the worst of us.”

“You want to be Happy again? You want to live again? You need to learn to forget.”

It’s thanks to Illyana that I’ve embraced my life. It’s because of her that I can honestly say that I am alive today to be writing these books and words. A fictional character had that much of an impact on my life. She may be fictional, like many of the characters I make, but that doesn’t make them or her any less real.

It’s because of Illyana that I want to write a story for everyone. I want everyone to have a character that they can look to and go… that’s me. That’s my life. That is who I am. That is my story.

So thank you Illyana Rasputin. There is no way I can express how much love I have for you.

Which is why you’ll always just remain in my heart, right along the ‘Kitty’ I will never have, just like you.