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thecrystalquill · 3 years

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Unexpected Part 8

Fred Weasley x Slytherin!Reader

Summary: Everyone knew Fred Weasley, the cocky, confident, Gryffindor beater and prank extraordinaire. Everything was pretty damn perfect, until he meets a girl he can’t afford to be late for...

A/N: It’s Part 8 whoop whoop! What do you think of the new title picture? A little clearer with a white outline, no? Anyway, sorry this took so long to write but you would not believe these last couple of months I’ve had...

Masterlist Series Masterlist

"An' the' he panicked an' he threw it in the fire! An' when he realised wha' he did, he tried to--" "Ronald, will you stop talking with your mouth full! It's disgusting and I don't want any half-eaten chicken on my plate!" Hermione scolded, pushing her plate away from him. "Can't I just have one meal without you spitting all over the place?" "Well can't I just tell one story without you cutting me off for something?" Ron fired back, though he did swallow his food first. "You two really do bicker like an old married couple, don't ya?" Snickered George, sending a look to his little brother, who flushed almost instantly. "Shut up, no we don't!" Ron whined, obviously embarrassed as he cradled his plate closer, shoving a boiled potato in his mouth with a frown - he didn't even get to finish what he was saying. The group of Gryffindor boys laughed at his reaction, before breaking off into new conversation. It was dinnertime on a Sunday evening, exactly five days and fifteen hours before Fred's study date (if you could even call it that) with (Y/N) - he'd been counting. He'd woken up the previous morning and sat up with a brilliant bundle of excited nerves in his stomach and had been about to get ready when he realised he would have been a week early for his tutoring session, then crawled back into bed feeling impatient and disappointed. Why did she have to set the date for the next week? It only gave him more time to build up nerves - something he definitely wasn't used to. But maybe that was the point, he considered, to make him anxious and keep him waiting - to keep him overthinking and over-preparing his every planned word. He'd almost gone to the lengths of writing a list of conversation starters and topics to avoid - almost; he soon realised that that might have taken preparedness a little too far. But at least the extra time allowed him to brush up on topics that they'd already covered in class; he didn't want to seem too clueless, did he? Of course, he understood very little of what he was reading, but it was the effort that counted, right? He hoped she thought so... "It was well funny, right Fred?" George said, patting him on the shoulder. He'd gathered that his twin was explaining something to Lee, since they were both looking his way, and quickly agreed as if he'd been listening the whole time. He really needed to stop spacing out.

Time was going incredibly slow. Every tick of the clock on the wall seemed louder than the last, as if it were mocking him, taunting him with each second that passed. Ordinarily, the repetitive tapping noise would have lulled him into a sleep-like daze - but now all it did was make Fred increasingly aware of each second that went, serving as a constant reminder of what he could have been doing with that time. Dear Godric, was this what detention was like for everyone else? Fred and George had been caught red-handed setting up a prank near the potions classroom, and by none-other than Professor McGonagall. And so now there they were, sitting at opposite ends of the Transfiguration classroom as the professor marked some papers and kept a watchful eye on the pair. They had no idea how long they would be serving their punishment, which made Fred even more nervous; he had an hour until he was due to meet with (Y/N), and he desperately wanted to spend that time going over some things in his divination book, and checking his appearance (mostly the latter), maybe turn up a little early. His knee bounced erratically under the desk, the only outlet for his nerves, and his fingers tapped the wood while he stared at the clock, as if it could speed things along. "Somewhere to be, Mr. Weasley?" Fred's head shot up at McGonagall's voice, giving him a look over the top of her spectacles. "Yes actually, Professor," George answered for him, "Fred's got a date." He smirked, dishing out the gossip as if the two were old friends. Fred shook his head. "I don't have a date, I have a tutor." He corrected, although he wished it were in fact a proper date. Wouldn't that be something? George rolled his eyes. "Fine, a study date then. He's been all worked up about it really, actually got him to study." "Well, that is impressive," said the professor, half-sarcastic. Dipping her quill to mark another paper, she suppressed a smile. "And might I inquire who this tutor is?" "(Y/N) (Y/L/N)," Smiled Fred, feeling very accomplished that this information was enough to make McGonagall raise her brows. "Know her?" The woman nodded, taking the specs from her eyes in thought. "Yes, a good student, charming girl." She paused for a moment, and the twins thought she might reveal something else about the mysterious Slytherin, but she quickly placed her glasses back on her nose and picked up another piece of homework. "Alright, I'll let you leave now, but don't think I'll excuse you again." The boys beamed and stood from their chairs, grabbing their robes as they neared the exit. "You're the best, Minnie!" Fred shouted over his shoulder before he ran down the hall. George ran after him. "Don't go getting soft on us!" She laughed as he shut the door, reminiscing how the brothers reminded her of her last favourite boys.

Fred was rushing through his room in a panic, clothes were thrown across the floor, his bed was covered in scraps of divination notes (most of which were borrowed), and now he just couldn't find his comb. Thirty-four minutes until he had to be in the library, and honestly he felt a little light-headed. So far, Fred had tried on two different trousers, four jumpers, three shoes, and seven shirts, and now he was staring at himself in the mirror looking for any flaws in his outfit. "Fred, for Merlin's sake, you look fine." Said George from his own bed, sitting up. "What you worried for, anyway?" A look of complete bewilderment spread across Fred's face, as if his brother had gone mad. "Have you absolutely lost it?" He exclaimed, finding a hairbrush at the foot of someone's bed and trying to get his hair to sit right. "I need to look like I've made an effort at least- but not too much of an effort - but I need her to like me- I mean I want her to- I mean--" "I think you've already spent too long on this, Freddie," George stood up, glancing over the papers on Fred's bed, picking up a palm chart and dropping it again. "Stop fretting - I mean, she wouldn't agree to meet with you if you didn't have a chance, eh?" Fred didn't seem so sure, George realised as he stood in front of him. Sighing, he pursed his lips as he looked at his twin's hair, ruffling it up just so and swatting away Fred's hands. "Stop it, it's too neat..." Fred checked his watch - twenty-nine minutes. He nervously tapped his foot as he let George mess his hair, roll his eyes, and then mess it again. "Can-" "-Ssssh." George interrupted, eyeing him quizzically then squinting at his shirt in distain. "Really? This is the one you picked?" Fred frowned in offence and looked down at his outfit. "What's wrong with it?" "Too stripy, and it drains you." George answered, going to rummage through some draws. Huffing, Fred threw the shirt off and onto the floor, feeling rather hopeless. "Since when did you become such an expert?" Another shirt was thrown at him, a blue tee, which he put on without question. "Shush!" His twin shushed, pulling out a dark blue flannel shirt and throwing it over Fred's shoulders to put on. He took a step back to look Fred over, then threw his hands up with a grin. "There! All sorted, now c'mon because I'll never hear the end of it if you're late." George then went over to the bed and shoved some scrolls and sheets of paper into a satchel, hooking it over Fred's shoulder, and dumped his copy of 'Unfogging the Future' into his arms and pulled him out the door, barely giving Fred a chance to look in the mirror. Upon entering the common room, the twins were greeted by their brother and his friends sat by the fire. The warmth of Gryffindor Tower was much more inviting than the permanently chilly stone hallways of the castle, and Fred felt as if he were almost immediately recharged. "What're you doing here?" Ron piped up from the sofa, where he had been pretending to read his Charms book. "Thought McGonagall gave you detention till dinner?" "No I- uh... I've got a tutor..." Fred muttered, hoping to draw very little attention to the statement. "Tutor?" Repeated Ron with an astounded expression - apparently a statement like that doesn't go unnoticed. "Since when? What for?" Fred checked his watch; twenty-one minutes to go. "Since I got a tutor - if you must know everything, it’s for divination, so I gotta go-" "What's the rush?" Harry piped up, partially for genuine curiosity and partially for the distraction from homework. Twenty minutes. "It's a girl," George answered with a smirk, loving to stir things up a little, it seems. Each of the trio had a very different reaction; Ron nodded his head, muttering a long 'aaah...' of realisation - the only reasonable explanation for Fred's eagerness; Harry looked to be quite curious, and obviously picked up on George's teasing tone, he might have said something too, but was quickly interrupted. "How sweet," Hermione giggled, making Fred blush at the comment, "got a crush, have you?" Fred's cheeks flushed red, though he tried to hide it with a shake of his head. "No I- well-" "And she's helping you with divination, which is nice of her... bit of a woolly subject really, I mean, it's not exactly a science. And Trelawny..." Hermione went on a tangent, and Fred checked his watch again; fifteen minutes! "Yeah, look guys I've really gotta get going-" "Hang on- who is it?" Asked Ron - not exactly a topic Fred wanted to get on to with his little brother.

He gripped his textbook in his hand. "Doesn't matter, now I need to go-" "Why doesn't it matter?" Said Harry, long forgetting his Charms work. "Fred doesn't know her much yet," George replied, "you should see what he's like - gets all shy and blushy." The trio were shocked by that one. "Noo..." They muttered simultaneously. "Blimey..." Ron stared, anyone would think he'd seen a banshee by the expression he was wearing. "Yup, real sight to see. Honestly I never thought I'd see the day - she's a good one, i'nt she Fred?" Said George, turning to consult his twin, only to find himself looking at an empty space. "Fred?"

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idrellegames · 3 years

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Hi so if I wanted to make a game like you did, do you have any advice?

Hey hey!

If you’re new to creating an IF game, there are a few things to think about:

1) Interactive fiction is a huge undertaking. Even if you plan on making a small game (like, say, 30k per average playthrough), the amount of content you’ll have to create to account for player choice is going to grow exponentially depending on how many choices and different mechanics you include. You will want to be prepared for that. As you’re planning and developing, start small and allow for natural growth as you get more comfortable with your systems. If you choose a bunch of gameplay elements right off the bat, you’re going to get overwhelmed.

2) Play IF games. Like a lot of games. Check out different platforms and different engines; this will give you an idea of what’s in store, what your eventual game can look like, and what restrictions you’ll be working with.

For example, ChoiceScript offers very little control over what your game looks like; Twine allows you to develop your own stylesheet, so you can customize your game’s appearance to be pretty much whatever you want. If visual elements are important to you, that’s something to consider. (Inkle, Ren’py, and other IF engines are, again, all different).

3) Choose an engine and practice. Get accustomed to what the code is like; this will help you plan your gameplay mechanics and figure out how to execute them. You can see my post here which includes popular IF engines and links to tutorials for beginners.

You don’t need to make a full game just to practice; I usually keep what I call a “mess copy” in my Twine editor so I can practice different gameplay elements and figure out how to code them using placeholder text.

4) While you’re practicing coding, start developing your worldbuilding. Write down some thoughts about what world you want to set this in. If you’re doing fantasy, you’ll want to figure out the rules of your world (how your magic system works, how your supernatural elements work, the cultures, the people, etc). As you figure out your setting, think about ways you can implement that worldbuilding into your game mechanics (for example, Wayfarer’s ancestry option reflects the different peoples that inhabit the world).

5) Make a beat chart. I know there’s usually a big debate surrounding the benefits and drawbacks of outlining and some writers really do not like outlining, but if you’re making an IF game, at the very least make a beat chart of your entire game. A beat chart breaks down the overall narrative structure of your game into very broad building blocks. It maps out the process of how you get your characters from the beginning to the end of your story and account for any major variations along the way (for example: multiple endings). Though IF incorporates player choice, there is still going to be a roughly linear thoroughline. You want to know what this thoroughline is before you start writing, otherwise you are going to get overwhelmed with new ideas and variations and remember, content grows exponentially in IF.

If you don’t have a plan, you may back yourself into a corner where you it is physically and mentally impossible for you to create enough content for all of your choices and variations.

6) If you’re working in Twine (or another engine that allows you to import your own CSS stylesheet), spend some time researching web design. I started learning CSS because I wanted to use custom tumblr themes and pages; a lot of my love for web design comes from tumblr’s theme maker community. Seeing how designers have made designs I like has been a really good source of inspiration. I’m at the point now where if I have an idea I want to execute, I can usually google it, follow a tutorial and a functional version of that idea. It may take a few tries and it might be a little cobbled together (I’m still a CSS novice), but I can usually make something work.

7) Get involved in the IF community. Whether it’s on tumblr or on the Choice of Games forum or intfiction, spending some time researching common IF gameplay mechanics and reading how different developers have handled them is really valuable. I lurk on a lot of forums (usually when I’m researching a problem and Google has led me a random corner of the IF community) and the conversations on these forums are all very valuable.

#answered #resources #interactive fiction #game development #Anonymous #coding in twine

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ciaran-archive · 3 years

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Serious question. How do you write long stories? Is there a technique or advice for that? No matter what story I have in mind, I can't seem to tell it in anything longer than 1 to 2k. Writing 5k is tiring already, where do people seriously get that stamina to even do 50 or 100 or 200k? It's mind-blowingly amazing.

there is nothing less worthy or amazing about writing shorter fic - i know writers who struggle with it, and i’ve come to inhabit that position somewhat myself, though i’m determined to stay in practice. it’s a different skillset, that’s all. your fics aren’t worse for being shorter.

that said i will not deny that longer fics generate far more engagement from fandoms simply by virtue of updating more often → being on top of the ao3 tag when people first open it → getting more clicks and being considered less ‘frivolous’ (which is bullshit, but what can you do)

if you’re dead sure you want to write longer fic, i would first recommend reading this post about writing drabbles, which i promise is relevant to the point i’m about to make.

Because drabbles are about one moment. You don't need to know exactly what happened before this moment of dialogue, or what happens next, or what's happening around it. You don't have to do any of the planning you might do for a longer fic, but you also don't have the space to let the scene lead in and develop naturally. You've got 100 words.

a lot of writing a longer story is about establishing the scope of your story, deciding what beats you want to hit. there are a lot of ways to go about this; [some people like to outline. i don’t outline, ever, so if you want help for outlining you should look at the other sources on the internet. there are quite a few.] i’m going to talk about the way i’ve learnt to do it.

so when i’m writing a short fic, the thing i’m considering is one or two ideas, and one or two moments (short in this case being under 5k). this also depends on the style i’m going for - fics with sparser styles can fit more scenes, if i’m going for my usual style, each scene takes about 700-2000 words at least and therefore takes up more space. a lot of how i eased into writing longer fics was focusing on stylistic changes - you can push up the word count of a fic by going moment by moment. note the difference between:

They’d been standing next to each other as they spoke; now Felix turned to him in the rain, startled by the admission of weakness. He reached out clumsily, bumping his hand against Ryan’s until he took the hint and grabbed on.

and

The rain made it near-impossible to hear Ryan speaking, but the harshness in his voice would’ve been audible through a hurricane. “So you ran away,” he said, like he hadn’t expected this.

“Course I did,” Felix snapped. “What was I supposed to do? Stick it out and let her kill me?” I almost did, he added under his breath.

Ryan’s sensitive werewolf ears, of course, caught that. “I’m glad you did,” he amended, as though it pained him to admit it. “I would’ve - I did the same. It’s all you can do, sometimes.”

Felix turned to him, blinking through the curtains of water. Ryan was slouching in the downpour, eyes narrowed elsewhere. Mostly he was startled by the admission of weakness - rare in a person who prided himself so thoroughly on being reliable and independent. He reached out, struck by the urge to offer whatever clumsy comfort he was capable of; his hand bumped against Ryan’s, and he held it there until Ryan caught up and wove their fingers together.

His hands were wet and cold, and he gripped so hard Felix’s very human bones ached, but he wouldn’t have pulled away now. Not when he’d been the one to offer.

it’s not even that one is necessarily better than the other - they both work, and they’re working in different ways. they’re set in the same scene, conveying the same beat - reaching out to comfort someone in the wake of vulnerability. it’s just that one is longer, and therefore gives you more room to - set the scene (rain, being unable to hear each other) - use dialogue to show what is being told in the first example - convey extra information about the characters (actually, if this was a scene i was writing in a fic or novel, the stuff about ryan being a werewolf would already be known to the reader, so i would use that space to convey something else about ryan in that moment) - elaborate on felix’s internal state: the transition from defensive to curious/surprised to gentle - linger for a sentence or two on the moment of connection

this is about unraveling a scene and making it bigger than it was, breaking it apart into tinier beats and describing each one in the narrative. what happens when you do that and your fic doesn’t get much bigger still?

back to scope! we understand, as people who read and write and live, that the part of a story that you choose to depict in a narrative is not the entire story: events happen off-screen. some of them happened before the story started, and they will continue to happen after the story ends. the narrative is only showing you an arc, a particular series of events.

when you’re writing fic, you have in fact tremendous amounts of flexibility when it comes to the scope of a story. you can write something that is about a single moment in canon, and trust that your audience is following along because they have the context already. so you don’t need to waste time on setting it up, which often means - if you’re given to a certain kind of fic writing (canon compliant / small divergences / missing scenes / character studies) your fics will end up not being very long because you’re not reiterating what you don’t need to reiterate. your idea is small because it inhabits a small space, is squished between canon events, and so doesn’t ever get bigger. if this is what is happening, it’s good, and you should try to preserve this going forward.

people who are writing longer fic are, simply, working with bigger ideas*. they’re not just going “what if he said what he wanted in this scene instead of going home?” and writing the bit where they kiss immediately after - they’re also going “what if this changed everything in the future? what happens if they tackle all their problems together from now on? what new problems arise from this?”

*hopefully they are working with bigger ideas. i have seen longfics that are just incredibly fucking tedious because the author swallowed a thesaurus and had a tenuous grasp on plotting to begin with.

that’s for a canon divergent fic, presumably. you might also be writing a post-canon fic, with its own set of pre-fic events and a new set of problems to deal with. currently, for example, i’m writing a fic where akira and goro were dating after canon, broke up, and stayed together in a deeply dysfunctional way after that - and the consequences for them now that they’re forced to deal with the mess they’ve made of their lives, together and apart. so now they have to deal with: the catalyst for dealing with their old problems, which is a problem in itself, and their old problems, which have been festering for a really long time.

which forms the core of the scope i’m talking about. i have to go through a bunch of scenes to set this fic up - i need to show their old problems and their new problems, i need to explain why the old ones haven’t been dealt with already, i need to set up the potential for dealing with them and the necessity of doing so, i need to give them places to start, and also i want to allow them to fail so they can choose to start again. i know these things because i have some idea of the kind of story i want to tell. if i didn’t know this, my story would not go anywhere by itself, and i would have to start outlining scene by scene the way people who actually outline do it, and i hate doing that because then i never write.

if you can outline and it doesn’t make you want to chew wood, then i highly recommend picking up the habit. it’s very useful, and the methodical approach is a fantastic failsafe for the moments when you (me) get stuck on your fic (breakup au) and have to stop writing for several weeks in order to figure out a single fucking plot point that will let you move forward and

anyway.

so yeah! to sum up;

find a larger scope for your story

get in the habit of picking apart beats into discrete moments and guiding the narrative through them

learn to outline if you can

last thing - which is perhaps the most vital and least reliable - stamina.

you WILL lose interest in half the longer fics you write. it WILL suck. if you think you know pain because you have 700 words of a fic and can’t get through the last 400, i promise you it is like that but much worse because you have 7000 words now, or 17000 words, and you are stuck with no way forward. it will suck so BAD.

don’t beat yourself up over it. once you’re in the habit of writing something long, you will retain that habit, and be able to apply it elsewhere. the words aren’t wasted, they’re practice, and they’re worth what they’ve taught you.

but! all the scope and internal scene-building and outlines won’t help you if you do not (and this is not as bad as everyone makes it sound) actually write. you HAVE to learn to actually write. you have to figure out what you like about writing and make a longfic outline [/ scene beats notes chart / themes mind map / tumblr tag of inspiring quotes and photography] that consists entirely of stuff you love and then you have to sit down and write your fic. it is not terribly scary. it’s okay to fail, but you also have no way around this.

i hope this helped, and good luck!

#writelogging #ok 2 rb #anon #asks

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yeocult · 3 years

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ATEEZ as students studying

HONGJOONG:

king of self-care! but studies for 15 minutes then take a 2 hour break and calls it self-care (omg he thinks he’s me or smth)

has power naps every single day at least 30 mins because he’s Stressed

always thinking of ways to drop out during the middle of lectures

that one kid that talks to nobody & sits at the back of the class with his hood on to hide his airpods

doesn’t do it anymore bc one time it disconnected and “there’s some whores in this house” blasted out loud & now he’s paranoid

shows up to group studies but lets the group carry him,,, but he puts out One Really good idea to get his name on the paper

only cares about topics he’s interested in, other than that he’s just astral projecting

“yo can you send me your answers so i can compare mine?” but he copies it and says “we got the same answers” (all men do is lie</3)

calculates his marks; “ok so i need at least a 80 on this...oh wait no, a 95...damn okay...”

the type to arrives late with ice coffee

SEONGHWA:

wakes up at 5 am to study instead of staying up

scented candles and lofi music for the ~studying mood~

a linguistic learner

learns best by teaching others so he’ll do group studies often to help other people

teaches people without making them feel dumb

uses grammarly for his emails with 3 paragraphs asking 1 question with a proper greeting and a ‘sincerely, park seonghwa’

professor: ok - sent from iphone

you’ll never see him during exams week, he’s Gone

a loyal user of the outline method

his desk must be cleared at all times! a clean workspace makes it easier to focus

brings extra pencil just in case anyone needs them bc he’s the sweetest person ever (he’s fully aware that he’ll never get them back but it’s okay bc sharing is caring)

does his readings on time (you’ll never catch him slacking)

actually has his shit together for the most part 1/2

YUNHO:

writes “i love you” or “sorry” at the end of his tests (that he bombed)

the type to ask you to print “just one thing real quick” and it’s 15 page and at 2 am

uses emojis like :D & \(^o^)/ when sending emails to his professors

has a bad habit of copying word for word on the slide and he doesn’t actually understand/learn anything

goes to the library bc he thinks that’ll help him be in the ~studying vibe~

it doesn’t. ends up texting or watching youtube gameplay

has never heard of the colour-coding system in his entire life and ends up with a page filled with neon highlight

snacks breaks are the only thing keeping him Normal

leaves himself an encouraging note at the end of the reading page so when he’s finished he feels good !!

friends with all of the professors and uses all office hours

strongest points are his guessing skills in multiple-choice questions (process of elimination ftw!)

he tries his best, doesn’t care about marks that much because he knows it doesn’t determine him (and he’s right!)

YEOSANG:

probably runs a studyblr/gram

has the cutest note ever, his handwriting is so pretty!!

he thinks that buying an ipad pro & apple pencil will make him smarter

likes it bc he can doodle on it then erase them easily :”)

has to wear blue ray glasses because of how he looks at a screen so much

mildliners, muji 0.38 gel pen, 6 ring binder, minimal planner, washi tapes, you name it! he visits muji and daiso every other week

buys wayyy too many planners and notebooks which he never ends up using

only uses pastel mildliners because they’re easy on the eyes. cringes every time he sees yunho’s highlighters v_v

his flaw is that he spends 10 mins writing his header with brush tip pens

mutes the group project gc but gets his part done like the good classmate he is

sweats every time he gets an assignment back, takes a whole ten minute to mentally prepare himself

a visual learner; makes mind maps, flow charts, etc

actually has a working printer that he uses pretty often to prints lessons before class just to be Extra prepare

tells everyone he slept well but his bullet journal habit tracker for sleep says otherwise (plz rest!!)

exclusively uses college ruled paper like the sane person he is

SAN:

uses wide-ruled paper (unfortunately not everyone is perfect</3)

starts off very positive, motivated, and organized

then everything goes downhill by the second week

will definitely set byeol on top of his keyboard, take a picture, and send it to his professor as an ‘excuse’ as why he needs an extension (it works)

can’t sit still for any longer than 30 mins, his legs are always bouncing or fidgeting with pen

flashcard king! spends a lot of time on them but it’s worth it

a utensil chewer (always willing to share his pencil but when ppl saw the bite marks they’re like No Thanks >_>)

can’t study well with groups or himself bc he’ll be distracted,,, so he needs one person that can ground him bc when they’re in the zone, he will too be on his x game mode

sends his assignment at 11:58 pm hoping his professor will take the Hint (plz don’t be afraid to ask for help u_u)

prefers listening to ghibli studio soundtracks but then he either gets emotional or sleepy

sometimes forget to mute his mic and we just hear him groaning in frustration

“haha sorry i just stubbed my toe...”

then mutes his mic and goes back to his mental breakdown

MINGI:

the only person that studies every single day just to get his brain used to the information and running

probably listens to anime op or edm music for that Energy Boost

everyone either hates or love him because...

1. loves him bc he always comes clutched with study guides (and willing to share if he likes you enough)

2. he’s good at everything even if he’s not paying attention/doing it last minute

just naturally good at retaining information and applying them

asks Big Brain question that even the professors are shook

sometimes he gets super into the topic and wants to know Everything

“i’ve never failed an exam in my life” and he’s right! big brain mingi

fetal flaw is that he forgets easily (hence why the last minute) and has to write on his palm as a reminder

clicks his pens All the time so he switched to pens with caps just to keep others from jumping him

takes naps 10 mins before classes

actually has his shit together for the post part 2/2

“if no one got me, i know khan academy and quizlet got me. can i get an amen”

WOOYOUNG:

y’all know that one mf that doesn’t have a pencil?

yea he’s been using the same one someone lend to him before a test and never returned it

it’s been two months and it’s still working well and they’re never going to get it back

a minimalist,,,, but in a bad way</3 bc he carries his stolen pencil and paper that he spilled his energy drink over and that’s about it

just throw loose papers in his bag and forgets about their existence

doesn’t do binders or notebooks, just crumbled up paper

sometimes carries a textbook just to show everyone that he’s got his life together

really noisy for No reason, always wants to know other’s marks

a kinesthetic learner

hides his screen with he gets the kahoot questions wrong (you’ll never catch him slippin)

plays coolmathgames.com during class

doesn’t really know what to study/prioritize so he overwhelms himself with every single topic ever

thinks he’s god by pulling an all-nighter to look at the 60+ slides last minute

Swears he’ll change and do better next semester,,,</3

goes to the cafe, takes pictures of his notes & laptop, post it on his story, then leaves

JONGHO:

thrives off of red bull and ice americanos

gets notes and study guides from his upperclassmen because everyone loves jongho

an audio learner so he’ll probably work out or go on a jog while listening to lessons/audiobook

never pulls all-nighters bc it messes up his sleep schedule and says he’ll do it in the morning but he never does

doesn’t even own a highlighter, he’ll circle or underline stuff with a red or black pen

has never touched a textbook in his life

only the study guides and slides, his textbook is collecting dust rn

his notes are literally Only for him because his handwriting only makes sense to him

has questionable handwriting,,, it’s like decoding

multitasks a lot but it ends up taking a lot longer than he wanted to (bc it’s a myth)

very spontaneous; he’ll grind for 5 hours straight but sometimes he won’t even touch a pencil

works best when he talks about the work in groups and share information with each other, like having a convo about the topic

unmutes his mic Once after the lesson to say “bye”

does his work right after the lessons but then takes a short break & doesn’t even Look back for the rest of the night

a/n: tag yourself ! i’m a bit of hohong (i projected myself on all of them in some way lmaooo)

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fondnesses · 3 years

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roscoe’s notebook post

A while back I said I was going to write a post about the way I use notebooks for writing projects. This is the first of several posts about Writing Process I’ve been tossing around in my drafts for a little while as a result of conversations with friends, so bear with me.

I. Love. Notebooks. I genuinely would have to deeply overhaul my whole Process of writing anything on the longer side if I were to go paperless; I find physical paper pretty invaluable when I’m outlining, brainstorming, and researching, and I still probably write ¼-⅓ of all my actual content on paper first. (That proportion used to be a lot higher, but I’ve gotten better at being productive on a computer in recent years, which is great.) I’m a very visual person, so notebooks really help me visualize my ideas, story structure, etc. It’s very helpful to be able to use arrows and diagrams and physically strike things through, and the tactility is really soothing to me. If I show people my notebooks or talk about them, I often get a response like “this is so organized”, which is sort of true, but I have to stress that it’s “organization for a disorganized mind”; I can’t misplace ideas or notes if it all goes into the same physical object, vs. electronic notes, which are much more, like “Did I say that in a voice memo? PM it to myself on Discord? Leave it in a desktop sticky note? Write it directly into the Google Doc? Who knows! It’s lost to time!”. It’s very much an ADHD management strategy.

It helps that I’m a very neophyte stationery hobbyist and appreciate any excuse I have to use my pens, but I also will go off at any opportunity about how helpful I find them for writing projects, which is why I decided to just make a post about it. Right now I mostly use them for (fan and original) fiction projects, but I used a notebook for a very similar purpose when I was working on my undergrad thesis, and I have a slightly different but equally necessary-to-me approach to notebooks I use at work.

My typical structure for a notebook that’s devoted to one project only looks like this:

I always leave the first couple pages blank so I can go back and retroactively index bujo-style. I don’t always actually do the index, because sometimes I get too lazy, but I like having those blank pages there to give me the option. I also usually put epigraphs/inspo quotes on the first page.

After that, there’s often (but not always, I’ll talk about it) a couple pages at the start where I’m frantically jotting down loose brainstorming ideas before they've coagulated into a story structure. Just, like, vomiting into the void.

Stemming out of that, I usually write out about like 5-10 pages of outline-style notes in chronological order, laying out all the main story beats and charting out the story trajectory. This will inevitably get revised and rewritten many times, but I find the process of writing these wide-angle synopses really useful for dislodging ideas, making connections re: thematic threads, etc. from my brain.

I’ll devote a couple pages after that to specific things like "sex scene brainstorming", "random scene ideas/minor details that don't have a clear place in the outline right now but I'll turn to for inspo later" [this is what I refer to as “bits” in one of the later photos], "page where I just outline the Motifs And Themes", "research notes", "to-do list", "stuff to check on a second pass", "things to put in the a/n and AO3 tags", etc.--the specifics vary with the story.

Then, I skip ahead to approx. halfway through the notebook and cordon off the rest of the pages to be “free writing” space, AKA writing of actual content rather than planning, with the expectation there will be no internal organization and I’ll transcribe to laptop as I go. Writing on paper feels less binding than typing something on a computer; it’s like a little secret kept with myself, and it doesn’t need to go anywhere or be seen by anyone if I decide I don’t like it. Setting aside pages in the back half of the notebook means that, as more things come up re: planning, I can go back and add those in the rest of the pages that were intentionally left blank. This is how I avoid (for the most part) having the whole thing be a jumbled mess where there’s no separation between the notes and the actual story writing; I learned this the hard way via the first notebook I’ll show you in a second. I’ve recently gotten really into using Muji sticky note tabs to label any pages/sections of particular import that don't want to have to refer back to in the index and would rather just flip to instantly.

I do use notebooks that aren’t specific to any one project, but those are much less organized and less worth sharing.

Before I look at more recent stuff, here are some selections from my notebook for the project that got me into writing longfic, my Golden Kamuy canon divergence AU (with apologies for the bad photos, my phone’s camera is trash). I worked on this from Sept 2018-July 2019. It was a learning experience in a lot of ways, and notebook utilization was one of those. I’ve always used notebooks for keeping track of writing projects, as I said earlier, but before this it was largely without much organization or structure; just total chaos. Having a physical notebook became really important for this project because it was a sprawling multichapter story with rotating POVs and a lot of historical research. I also learned a lot about what not to do with a notebook, personally, or at least things that don’t work so well (for me). This was a college ruled spiral-bound Decomposition Book, for the record.

By the time I bought a notebook for it I already had a (very basic) plot outline in mind, so I wasn’t doing that very initial ground-zero brainstorming in here; I was copying out of my phone’s notes app, basically, and then going from there.

This is one of the first pages in this notebook; I wanted to visualize the relationship web between the four central characters in the story in terms of how they feel about one another. The two colours correspond to the POV characters (Sugimoto in orange, Ogata in pink), and I used this colour-coding throughout the notebook with highlighters, etc. to keep track of information that was more relevant to one character than the other. Tsurumi and Yuusaku aren’t POV characters, but they’re prominent in the story and their presence impacts the central relationship between Sugimoto and Ogata, and it was helpful to me to map out the emotional ecosystem, as it were.

(There are coffee stains all over this, because I wrote the vast majority of the story in coffee shops because I didn’t want to be around my roommates, lol. This is part of why I never do fiction writing in notebooks that are too nice, I get neurotic about needing to keep them tidy. I can’t use ones that are too shit though, either, so it’s a bit of a narrow window. I’ll talk more about brands and paper quality etc. later.)

As you can see, this is the first page of many I set aside specifically for jotting down different pieces of historical information relevant to my story. It’s about fictional characters who are members of an army division that existed in real life, and both the canon and my fic involve a high level of attention to detail with regards to which divisions were present for which battles, etc., as well as general historical details specific to the Russo-Japanese War setting--what did people eat in the trenches? What did they do to fill time? How did they get through the winter? What did third party observers have to say about the conditions? What were the specs of their weaponry (particularly important because one of the POV characters is a sniper and gun nut)? I did a lot of reading (and watching of antique gun collector Youtube videos... the things I do for love, eh), and it came in handy so many times, because it turns out it’s much easier to write trench warfare slice of life if you have factual details to pull from when you don’t know what to do with a scene! Imagine that!

This is the first of three “grid outlines” I made; this is a way I sometimes like to visualize a story outline all on one page, with the columns representing chapters and the squares within the columns representing sections/scenes within the chapters. As you can see, early on I was hoping to get this done in five or even FOUR chapters (whatmakesyouhaha.mp3), with POV switches happening internally within the chapters. This proved to be unwieldy for many reasons, so I revised the outline:

Here I’d come to terms with the fact this story was going to have a lot more chapters than I’d planned, and I rearranged things so that it would happen in ten, with each chapter belonging to only one POV character. This also needed revising later, and in the end the story looked a bit more like this (though it did in fact end up being twelve chapters, but only because Chapter Ten was like, 12k, and needed to be split in two chunks):

I must have remembered to bring my fineliners to the coffee shop this time, lol, because as you can see it’s properly colour-coded this time. This outline was made when I was already four posted chapters into the fic, which hopefully gives you a sense of the way in which I am sort of a planner and a pantser; I can’t get into a longer project without an outline, but the outline inevitably changes many times throughout writing and I often end up with a finished product that looks pretty different from what I was intending. My creative M.O. as always is Do The Maximum! Amount! Of! Work! Possible!

This is what a “free writing” page looks like, for me. In this notebook I didn’t set aside any specific spaces for free writing so it’s strewn throughout the notebook in a really disorganized way and I was constantly flipping through looking for bits I’d written and forgotten to transcribe, and I decided to be more organized in future as a result of that. If something’s crossed through, that means I transcribed it. As you can see, they’re often small sections, sometimes just a coupled decontextualized sentences. About 3/4 of what I write in a notebook makes it into the story, I’d say; some of it never goes anywhere, and that’s OK. I have less of an issue killing my darlings if they never make it off the paper page.

A very brief, top-down chapter outline, where the goal was not to get too bogged down in details and just to visualize the beats and pin down what they’re trying to accomplish. Chapters for this fic typically ran about 6k, and five or six scenes per chapter was pretty common, so the average scene length was about 1-1.25k words/scene. IDK why I called it storyboarding when I didn’t make drawings. (Margin numbers are to keep track of word count, since I was using a daily word count tracker while writing this.)

This page was, as titled, for keeping track of the various balls in the air when I was about 2/3-3/4 of the way through the story and really feeling the pressure with regards to tying up the various loose ends. This was... a struggle. I hadn’t ever written anything longish (this fic ended up just under 70k) that had an action plot before, let alone a canon divergence scenario where I had to engage with and explain away various canon plot elements so I could maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I learned various “things not to do” with my notebooks while working on that project. One of those lessons I learned is to be more realistic when assessing how big a project is likely to get, not least because I RAN OUT OF PAGES around the chapter 9-10 mark. In my defense though, that’s because I’d never written anything even half this long! But I know better now, and try not to be in denial. Finishing the notebook early was a way bigger problem than I’d anticipated, and was part of the reason the last few chapters took several grueling months to finish. The issue was that I needed to be able to use a notebook to maintain my workflow--attempting to do it only on a computer was dismal--but it seemed silly to start a notebook of a similar size to the one I’d finished (80pg, approximately B5 dimensions) when there was no way it would need that much space, especially since the reference pages, like the historical notes, didn’t need to be transcribed over. I was also pretty broke at the time and didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily, lol. I tried to get by using a Moleskine Cahier for a month or so because I had one lying around, but it was horrid; it was too small to be used comfortably, it wasn’t spiral-bound so it wouldn’t lay flat, the ghosting is terrible and I hate the way Moleskine paper feels, etc. Eventually I caved and went to Muji and bought a 30ish page A5 with closer to lay-flat binding, and I finished the story in there. I would take a comparative pic for you of the relative notebook sizes and include some of the scene staging diagrams, etc. I put in there, but I can’t find it :(

So I learned that specs really do matter, and it’s okay to be picky if the pickiness is going to make the difference between actually using a notebook or not. Things that are important to me in my notebooks:

Ruling (gotta have ruling, I can suffer through grid but blank or dot is a no-go)

Size (I can’t use anything smaller than at least a medium-large notebook, I find it claustrophobic and get miserly about page space)

Binding (twin ring is my preference because it looks and feels better than a classic spiral but has the same comfort of use with regards to bending the pages back to suit workspace size and laying flat with ease)

Paper quality and colour (I don’t like anything too slippery/smooth or with too much visible ghosting, and I strongly prefer an off-white paper to bleached paper--part of why I don’t use Decomposition Books anymore, the paper is scratchy and it’s too damn bleached!)

Pagecount relative to size of project

Portability (in non-COVID times; anything bigger than a B5 wouldn’t fit in the satchel I used to bring to work at my old job), etc.

But everyone’s taste is different in this respect, and the only way to figure out what works for you is through trial and error, I’m afraid. I also suspect I’m more neurotic and particular about the sensory experience of using a notebook than most people are, but I yam what I yam.

Now to talk about the notebooks for my current projects, where I’ve refined my approach somewhat. I’ve included less photos for these because they’re ongoing WIPs I don’t want to spoil completely, but I’ve tried to include some outline-type stuff to give you an idea.

My big bang fic is in the very ugly twin ring notebook on the right; I got it at a dollar store by my house because I needed something to work in and didn’t want to wait for an online order, but it’s been very serviceable for my needs. The paper isn’t even bad. The bigger notebook (B5) is my Sangcheng fic.

I wanted something with a lot of pages for this, because I knew it was going to be a long story, and for some reason the fact it’s smaller than my usual preference doesn’t bug me (I think it’s an A5?); it just fits this story, somehow. I’m not sure exactly how many sheets are in here but I’d guess about 150.

Because this notebook has upwards of 100 sheets, I made a lot of use of sticky-note tabs to label high-priority pages. The colour coding of these doesn’t mean anything, it was just whichever ones I had at hand at any given moment. These are those tabs from Muji I mentioned, I’m really obsessed with them--the shape makes them so much less obtrusive and more practical than conventional squares/rectangles OR flag shapes, IME.

My big bang story is nonlinear, so, similarly to what I did with colour coding for the two POVs for my GK fic, this story has two main colours corresponding to whether a given section takes place in the “before” or the “after” portions of the timeline, with blue as “after”, yellow as “before”. This is what the most current version of the outline looks like in there:

If you squint, you can see the alphanumeric notes in the top right of each section entry; I gave them each a code like “A3″ or “B5″ corresponding to their position in the story sequence (so, it goes A1, B1, A2, B2, etc., through to B9 and then the epilogue). [Unintentional that this schema overlaps with notebook size labeling and so is kind of confusing in the context of this post.] At first I was just keeping track of the sections via the highlighted titles, but it got confusing because I’d write down “Wedding” or “Yiling” in my notes and then refer to the notes later like “but there are multiple marriages?? and multiple scenes in Yiling??”. Stuff gets struck through with a straight line if it’s been written in a more-or-less complete form and crossed out with a squiggly line if it’s been cut from the outline or made redundant.

As I said earlier, I started out all the initial brainstorming for my Sangcheng fic in its notebook, instead of brainstorming it in someone’s DMs/my notes app/a voice memo/etc. and then transcribing it into the notebook in a somewhat more organized fashion, which is how my stories usually start out. Because of this, the first five-ish pages are basically just stream of consciousness rambling where I was trying to jot down every disconnected thought I had about the story concept. I don’t have photos for that because it’s too spoilerific for later developments in the fic, but I can show you some of the stages the outlines went through, once I was able to corral those initial notes into a story structure:

All the chapters in this fic have their own highlighter colour, so when I started trying to make sense of my initial brainstorm notes I just went through and highlighted stuff in the colour of the chapter it would make the most sense for, and then transcribed things more-or-less in chronological order into the relevant chapter outline. I later ended up rewriting all the chapter outlines AGAIN to refine them and divide them internally by the individual scenes, which makes them a lot more legible and less wall-of-text-y. They look like this now, with about four sheets per chapter:

Because this fic is on the longer side, I have some pages that are just for keeping track of other story elements, like this, where I refer back to whatever the fuck the “themes” are supposed to be whenever I forget what this fic is about:

It’s all about the visionboarding... Anyway, that’s most of what I have to offer, since most of these two notebooks is Forbidden Content.

With regards to brands/supplies, I really like this Kokuyo Campus Wide notebook that I’m writing Sangcheng in, it’s pretty perfect for me. I also like the B5 Muji twin rings, but those only come in 30 sheets, so I wouldn’t use it for anything above a ~20k project. The B5 Maruman Spiral Note 6.5mm ruled/80 sheet is another good one, though I wish it was twin ring instead of spiral. As you can tell, I like Japanese stationery brands because it’s easier to find decent paper quality and minimalist design without shelling out $$ than it is with American/European brands, at least IME. I like Rollbahns too. But honestly, I can usually find pretty serviceable random notebooks that aren’t brand-name from Asian dollar stores; it’s really not something where you need to shell out tons of money.

#notebooks #writing #idk how to tag this!

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toomanyocs-suggestions · 3 years

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Quell, you ass, if you're going to radio me at least say something so I know you're alive, Wren thought, hoping she'd followed the signal to the right place. The caves were easy to get lost in if you didn't know them well. Fortunately, she knew them better than anyone.

She turned around a bend, the signal strength spiking on her radio, and stopped dead in her tracks.

There Quell was, slumped semi-conscious against the cave wall, staring at her with one terrified eye. Their face was a mess. The skin on their right cheek was raw, almost flayed-looking, covered in deep burns and charred dried blood, as though the skin had been seared off with a hot knife. In the center of these already horrible burns was an even deeper wound, scorched and blackened skin in the shape of the letter M. It looked almost like her friend had been branded... which, Wren realized, they likely had. She had known that some factions still approved of that form of vigilante justice, but had never realized the implications of that fact. Oh, Quell, what have you done to deserve this? The skin around the burns was red and swollen, and the eye on that side nearly closed. Their dark brown hair, still longer on the left side than the right, was damp with sweat sticking it to their face. They were breathing in slow, pained gasps, trying to avoid outright sobbing.

"Quell... are you alright?" Wren signed, and then realized how stupid of a question that was. "No, oh stars, no you aren't."

They said nothing, still just looking up at her. Of course, she realized, they couldn't talk with that wound on their face, but she knew why they had called her - the same reason anyone did. They needed a ride. And, burnt too badly to speak or not, marked as a murderer or not, they would get one. Even if she had to carry them to her shuttle.

As Wren approached them, she noticed that their clothing seemed oddly shaped, the oversized sweater and loose pants tighter than they normally hung on Quell's wiry frame. She tentatively reached out and took their arm, and felt something hard under their sleeve. They didn't respond to her attempt to pull them toward standing, so she scooped them into her arms. She was barely able to lift them - in addition to being surprisingly densely built for their small size, they were clearly wearing some kind of tightly fitted armor, with spikes that almost poked through their (slightly bloodstained) clothing in a few places.

She carried them to her shuttle, and gently placed them in one of the seats, signing soft reassurances (to herself as much as to them) as she strapped them in. Then she pulled the one-way shades down over all the windows, strapped herself into her own seat, and began to chart a course toward her own home through back-tunnels and less lived-in areas.

From time to time she looked back at Quell, who seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness, or maybe of sleep. They seemed so fragile now. Wren thought back to the first time she'd met them. She had been afraid of them then, and not without a reason. Wren had never liked to judge people by first impressions, but in a job as dangerous as hers, and with her conditions that put her further at risk, she had learned to recognize dangerous people. And Quell had struck her as very dangerous indeed on first impression: dark eyes that flashed with what she had taken to be hidden anger, a name that seemed too strange to be theirs by birth and too unfamiliar in their mouth to be theirs by choice, the outline of a none-too-subtly concealed knife at their hip, and a strength apparent in their movements which gave her no room to doubt that - though they were a head shorter than her - they could easily overpower her if they chose to try. But she was forbidden from refusing strangers travel unless they actively made her threats, and Quell had done nothing of the sort, so she had adopted her usual nonthreatening persona and pretended not to see the warning signs. And maybe they had mistaken her projected warmth for actual friendliness, or maybe they had just been desperate for a kind conversation. Either way, they had confided in her, though never revealing the true nature of their actions. At first they had framed it as workplace grievances, an employer they feared and a job they hated, being forced to do things they were morally opposed to. But soon they had started to trust Wren, and revealed more to her - still not the full truth, but enough for her to understand that they were a weapon in someone's terrible scheme, and knew it, but couldn't escape. And as time went by and the details began to line up, Wren had started to guess who exactly "Quell" really was. But until this moment, she hadn't been certain, or even really realized what it meant for them, for her.

What did it mean for her, to have someone like this trusting her with their life?

#my writing #temporary tag for story name pending #trying to post this as a tumbl post see if it gets more views #Wren #Sterling #Shrike #[thats who 'quell' is]#burns tw #top ten fuckin uhh wrenshrike moments #sterling: oh god oh fuck she was nice to me once i can never let her know ive committed all these murders #wren: yeah no ok they definitely have killed a lot of people. but they like me and i wanna keep my job so ill just act like i dont notice #sterling has definitely told wren they would Kill For Her #anyone: shows sterling even a tiny bit of kindness sterling: hey so is there anyone you want dead

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nightimedreamersworld · 3 years

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Fic writer interview

Thank you so much for the tags friends @vampire-named-gampire @snowybank @effing-numpties @phoxphyre @caitybuglove23 @bazzybelle 💞💞💞 this is such a fun insight on your writing process!

Name: everyone calls me Sam!

Fandoms: just Carry on. Though I started dipping my toes in the She-Ra fandom. Needless to say my tbr list is longer than ever

Where you post: AO3! I don't usually post on Tumblr because it messes with my formatting and I have no patience for it lol

Most popular one-shot:

By hits: lightest touch

By Kudos: Hips don't lie

Most popular multi-chapter: From across the room, by a fair margin. It's the first thing I've ever posted, and though I still love it, sometimes it feels like nothing I post from now on will get close to it in terms of popularity. Which shouldn't matter so much, I know, but I admit it's a bit frustrating.

Fic you were nervous to post: All of them. I think You and I will not be shaken (which is now complete, btw) had my nerves in shambles. Which I didn't expect to happen, considering it was already completely written, but oh well. It's really different from everything I've posted before, and also a bit more mature, so I was kinda nerve-wrecked while posting this 😅

How do you choose your titles: Okay hmmm sometimes I just use a line from the fic?? Also song lyrics, because I write a lot of songfic. Also common sayings for no reason at all that I can fathom 😂

Actually, this reminds me of an alignment chart of sorts I made for my fics the other day:

Lyrics on the title, songfic: From across the room; Can I try again?; Little Talks & Visitor; You and I will not be shaken.

(Please notice that 4/5 of these are songs by Of Monsters and Men.)

Lyrics on the title, not a songfic: Hips don't lie, Lonely Rivers Flow, Let your colours bleed, Eat you alive, From Eden

That's almost half of all my fics, + "You've got a friend in me", that I stole from Toy Story's sound track. Because I like to amuse myself.

Do you outline: Hmmmmmm. Does making bullet point lists count as outlining? Because if so, yeah, I do!

Honestly, though, my "outlines" consist mostly of specific lines/details/scenes I don't want to forget. I usually keep the progression of events in my head. I tried to outline "Let your colours bleed" and it didn't really work out. I had no outline at all for "From Eden", because I wrote it so fast the story was just... Born directly onto the doc.

Actually... alright, all my attempts at outlining end in disaster lol. I started outlining a Megamind AU I still haven't started writing, and most of my one-shots don't need outlines because they're really short. Maybe I a) don't really know how to outline, or b) I'm... A panster. (Planster? I do plot beforehand. I'm just really bad at writing it down)

Do you take prompts: eh. Kind of? Occasionally. I wish I could tackle them quickly, but the truth is that I'm bad at writing short things. So I'm not sure prompts are really for me.

(Fun fact: as soon as I typed that, I thought of at least three prompt lists I'd like to reblog. Damn me.)

Complete: 18 out of 19 works.

In progress: Let your colours bleed? Though to be honest, that one's in an indefinite hiatus, so not much progress there, really. I told myself I'd just stop working on it for a minute, and now every time I open the doc, I just... Feel like crying a bit 😅

(I started listening to its playlist again, so that's a start, I think?)

Aside from that, I'm working on my snowflake fic, and I also started writing a weird Fae! Baz canon divergent AU during NaNoWriMo (you can thank @theflyingpeach for bullying me. It was the kickstarter), though that's on hold until January.

Coming soon: my snowflake fic ❄️✨ and also maybe (depending on how "soon" you consider soon) Fae! Baz. Though I'm taking my time with this one, so no promises as to when it will be actually posted.

That's all, I think? Gonna tag some folks: @arca9 @seducing-a-vampire @annabellelux @adamarks @theflyingpeach @waywardfangirl @palimpsessed @motherscarf @fight-surrender

#tag game

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primatechnosynthpop · 3 years

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It's A Sad Webisode, But We Film It Anyway

(Aka, the things I write when I should be doing schoolwork...)

It was a cold, gray morning. The coldness was due mainly to the fact that Neil had left his bedroom window open the previous night, and the grayness was due to the fact that he hadn't cleaned the house in a while, leading to his walls being covered in a gray film of dust. Both those oversights were due in part to his natural aversion to housework, but also to the deep depression that was hanging over him lately, much like motes of dust. And that particular morning, his cold gray surroundings provided the perfect backdrop to his sullen morning routine.

It had been a whole week already. That was hard to believe. The sound of screams still rang in his ears sometimes when he closed his eyes, and he couldn't pass by that old house without shuddering (that much was already true beforehand, but now it was a deeper shudder, often accompanied by the prick of tears in his eyes). Worse still, he was hit with an overwhelming sadness every time his gaze landed on that urn… which happened often, because the urn was sitting right there on the kitchen table. He would have put it away somewhere where he didn't have to see it as often, but that would feel disrespectful. It was so weird to think that the little pile of dirt inside that urn had once been one of his best friends. It seemed like too small a container to fit someone so brave, so kind-hearted, so loyal. But there it was--all that was left of the true-blue American hero.

Neil heaved a weary sigh which turned into a yawn halfway through as he trudged into the kitchen. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and pushed his bedraggled bangs out of his face, but his vision remained slightly blurry, so he took off his glasses and winced at the realization of how smudged they'd gotten. That wasn't even related to him being depressed about Kevin; he was just a mess that morning for no particular reason. But after wiping his glasses off on his pajama top and splashing some cold tap water on his face, he was all fired up for another day of wallowing in grief… just as soon as he had a nourishing bowl of stale cereal that just didn't taste as sweet these days.

As he was pouring his cereal into the bowl, though, something unusual fell out of the box--a little rectangle of shiny paper. Neil blinked, befuddled. His first thought was, did I just win a prize? He checked his cereal box for anything mentioning prizes or contests, but all he could find were nutrition fact charts. In fact, after tilting the box every which way, he finally found a line of text on the inside flap reading There are no fun prizes in here, just cereal. Eyebrows knitting together, Neil looked back at the scrap of paper tucked neatly amongst his cereal. Well, either the box was lying, or this piece of paper was something else altogether. Something like…

"It's a message from the studio!"

Neil's eyes were startlingly bright, and he had a grin to match. He was illuminated in the doorway by the rising sun behind him, which was just beginning to crest over the horizon. Did he usually get up and about so early in the morning? Moreover…

"They want us to make another webisode?" Ryan frowned as he examined the piece of paper Neil was shoving in his face. "Can we do that? I mean, you know, without…"

He trailed off, gaze dropping. Neil, naturally knowing exactly what he meant, sighed and scuffed his shoes against the porch. A moment of silence passed between them, during which they both thought of the missing member of their team. Making webisodes would be a lot different without Kevin, and probably not in a good way.

Then Neil suddenly brightened again. He stepped across the threshold into Ryan's house without an invitation--he didn't immediately object to it, so it was fine, probably--and shut the door behind him, not wanting anybody to listen in.

"Yeah, they want us to make a Greek mythology inspired webisode this time." He cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, and read out the note he'd received:

Dear New Kids on the Rock, sorry for your loss. We will be sending in a new team member to replace James sometime in the next month. In the meantime, you need to continue making movies if you want to keep getting paid. For your next webisode, we'd like you to make an adaptation of a Greek myth.

Sincerely, Plymouth Rock Studios.

"I see…" Ryan stroked his beard, eyebrows raising. "Perhaps we could adapt the myth of Erysichthon eating himself to death, or Lycurgus of Thrace being cursed with madness and mistaking his son for a plant, or…"

"No, no, don't you get it?" Neil interjected, shaking the paper furiously in Ryan's face. "This is our chance! We can do the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and that way--"

Ryan realized what Neil was getting at just in time for them to exclaim it in unison:

"We can get Kevin back!!"

"You go fetch the filmmaking equipment," Ryan told Neil. "I'll open a portal to the underworld."

"Alright!" Neil enthused. "Be right back!"

He scampered off, grinning wider than he had all week--which wasn't a high bar to clear, because he hadn't smiled whatsoever all week, except for in the fleeting moments when he forgot what had happened to Kevin, only for that momentary forgetfulness to come crashing down and plunge him back into misery at the sight of the urn on the table. But that was all going to change now. Heck, he may as well just throw out that dusty old urn, because he wouldn't be needing it anymore after this mission.

Somewhere far below the aboveground realm of the living, in a dark field of ash that stretched forever, a soul wandered amidst countless others. He couldn't remember who he was when he was alive. He couldn't even remember his name. And worst of all, he couldn't see a thing. In fact, the only reason he knew he was in a dark field of ash was because all the other souls kept moaning about it.

Time here didn't flow the same way it did in the living world. He could have been there for an hour or for a century. It felt like the latter. But he had no way of checking, because even if there were any clocks around in this barren field, he wouldn't be able to see them. And he couldn't hear any ticking, so probably no clocks. But hey, on the plus side, no ticking meant no pipe bombs either. At the very least, he didn't have to worry about dying a second time.

And he was definitely dead. That was the one thing about himself that he was sure of. The one scrap of memory that lingered in his mind was the sensation of a tentacle piercing through him, severing his major arteries. Although he couldn't look down at himself to be sure, it didn't feel like this hole was still there when he patted himself. But he didn't have a pulse either, so… yeah. Definitely dead.

He'd like to say it wasn't so bad, really. He had all those other souls for company, right? But all of them were a drag to talk to. Most of them could only moan and groan, and those he encountered who could actually speak were too caught up in emotional turmoil to carry on much of a conversation with. So it was just an eternity of wandering blind and aimless through a desolate field of his fellow ghosts, then. Great.

"Geez, this place is giving me the creeps," Neil muttered, trying and failing to suppress a shiver as he surveyed the barren wasteland. "It's so… ghost-y."

Ryan flicked a clump of ash out of his hair with a disgruntled huff. "I'll say. Who would have thought the land of the dead would be so dull and gloomy?"

"Yeah, our webisode isn't going to turn out very visually appealing…" Neil shrugged. "Oh, well, I guess we can edit it in post."

They lapsed back into silence then, with the only sounds being the ash crunching under their shoes and the low moaning of the pale ghostly figures that weaved here and there around them. Then, after a little more walking, Neil stopped, struck with a realization that was accompanied by a pang of dismay.

"Wait. How do we know which of these guys--" He gestured at the countless ghosts milling around them, all featureless save for the vague outlines of indistinguishable faces-- "is Kevin?"

"Oh, yeah…" Ryan turned to look back the way they'd come. Keeping the portal between worlds open was expending a lot of his energy, so he hadn't been paying much attention to all the ghosts… "Maybe we even walked past him already and didn't notice."

"W-well, he'd recognize us, wouldn't he? I mean…" Neil shook his head, unwilling to even consider the possibility that they could encounter their friend and have him not know who they were. That was the kind of thing that happened in movies when people got brainwashed, and it usually led to some kind of big fight. He didn't think he'd be able to take Kevin in a fistfight.

Ryan prodded Neil to snap him out of his troubled thoughts. "Hey, maybe you could get his attention by playing a song."

"Oh, that's right!" Neil held up his trusty keytar, which he'd been carrying with him the whole time. "That is how the myth goes, isn't it? Let's see…"

He ran his fingers along the keys, playing a scale. A cold wind stirred in the previously stagnant air, blowing clouds of ash around--Ryan coughed and swatted the dust away from his face--but most of the ghosts didn't seem to notice, with only a couple of them slightly raising their heads before carrying on their aimless trudging. Still, Neil was encouraged. He kept playing, eventually branching away from scales and into the basic pop song chords.

According to the myth they were adapting, that was how it was supposed to go: someone goes down into the underworld, plays a song, finds the person they came for, and then they leave. At least that was the gist of it. Neil was too eager about this mission to bother poring through any dusty old tomes of mythology beforehand. He knew the basics, and that was the important part; everything else he could just make up as he went along.

Ryan nodded, satisfied with this development. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out the video camera that he'd also been carrying with him the whole time, and started filming Neil playing his song.

"You're doing great," he called in encouragement when Neil's playing faltered. "Keep it up, and we'll lure Kevin out in no time!"

"I don't know…" Neil sighed, shoulders slumping. Looking around, he still didn't see any ghosts that looked like they might have been Kevin. "If this is where everyone goes when they die, then there must be hundreds of souls here--maybe even thousands. Do you really think we'll find him?"

"I'm sure we will," Ryan replied, but only because he knew that was what Neil wanted to hear. Truth be told, he was pretty skeptical about the prospect of them actually finding Kevin. And even if they did, he just had a bad feeling about this whole mission… he couldn't shake the feeling that there was some important factor they were forgetting.

Neil could sense Ryan's thinly-concealed pessimism, and it put a damper on his spirits, which were already pretty damp to begin with. Still, he wasn't ready to give up just yet. If nothing else, they had to complete their webisode so they could get paid. And so he straightened up, looked into the video camera, and launched into a bona-fide performance.

After an indeterminable amount of time spent trudging aimlessly around the void, music rang out through the ash-crusted air.

It was a rhythmic keytar beat, reminiscent of 80's synth pop. Surprisingly catchy. The lost soul raised his head and turned to face the direction the sound was coming from, and although he couldn't see, an image flashed through his mind. The mental image vanished before he could pin down what it was, but it left him with a sense of inner warmth--a sharp contrast to the desolate cold of the field. The music was good, then. He should go toward it.

At as brisk a pace as he could manage while maneuvering around the countless other wandering souls, he followed the source of the sound. A palpable excitement began to thrum through him as he ran. Somehow, this felt like coming home.

As he grew nearer, a voice spoke over the music--not singing, but a whisper edged with what sounded like concern.

"I don't know how much longer I can keep that portal open. Maybe we should leave."

Panic spiked through the lost soul, not unlike the phantom sensation of the tentacle piercing his body. Another mental image flashed through his mind: two men turning their backs on him and walking away.

"N-no!" he cried. "Don't leave me here!"

As soon as he spoke up, the music stopped. Disoriented by the silence, the soul staggered to a halt. If he still had a beating heart, he was sure it would be pounding frantically, and if he had lungs he'd be panting to catch his breath. As it was, he just stood still, staring sightlessly ahead and praying that he hadn't just been abandoned.

Then another voice spoke, quiet and shaky as though with disbelief.

"…Kevin?"

Well, you sure wouldn't know it was Kevin just by looking at him. He looked no different from any of the other countless translucent gray figures wandering around the field. The only notable difference was in his behaviour. Unlike all the other souls, only a few of whom displayed the slightest interest in Neil's keytar performance, this one was standing stock-still and appeared to be staring right at them.

"Is that… me?" The soul's voice was low and distorted. It didn't sound exactly like Kevin. But it didn't sound like someone completely different either. "Am I Kevin?"

Neil and Ryan exchanged an anxious look. What were they supposed to say to a question like that? After a moment, Ryan cautiously stepped toward the ghostly figure.

"I don't know… are you?"

"You…" The soul shook his head, his transparent outline of a face twisting into a pained grimace. "I know you, don't I?"

Looking at him up closer, Ryan noticed one physical difference that set this apparition apart from the others. Where all the other souls had the pale outlines of eyes, this one did not. Pulse picking up in excitement, Ryan glanced over his shoulder at Neil and waved him over.

"I think it's him."

"Really?" Neil made his way over to the soul and tried to pat it on the arm, but his hand just phased through it. "How can you tell?"

"Its eyes are missing, see?" Ryan poked his fingers through the empty part of the soul's face where eyes would normally be. "Just like what happened to Kevin."

"Oh, yeah…" Neil shuddered at the memory, which he'd spent the past week trying to put out of his mind. "Well, if it is him, then we should get him a new pair of eyes. He'll need them if we're supposed to keep making webisodes."

Throughout this exchange, the soul took in the achingly familiar sound of those two voices. He knew them, he knew he did! A series of mental images flashed through his head in quick succession, each vanishing before he could properly take them in. He clutched his head and shook it with a growl of frustration.

Then that last word stuck in his head. Webisodes… Yes, that was a familiar term. Another image flashed through his mind, and this time it lingered just long enough for him to identify it: two men--no, three men, himself included--hunched over a laptop, watching a little progress bar labeled "uploading…" tick slowly forward. He remembered drumming his fingers against the arm of the couch they were sitting on, chewing his lip, anxiously awaiting their newly made video to finish uploading to a certain website…

"H-hey, guys," he said slowly, incorporeal body trembling with the weight of the question, "What's that website called again?"

Eyes widening, Neil immediately snapped to attention, and began instinctively rattling it off.

"Http://--"

And suddenly the lost soul remembered, with the force of a tidal wave crashing over him, who he was. The three of them shouted it out together, in perfect unison.

"Hollywoodeasttv.com!!"

"Kevin," Neil gasped, tears of joy welling up in his eyes, "It really is you!"

"Yeah," he replied in a shaky voice, breaking into a grin. "It's me."

He flung his arms around Neil and Ryan, and although his ghostly form just phased right through them, he could feel their warmth, and it made him feel warm and alive as well. They stayed like that for a moment, huddled in a tearful quasi-embrace, until Ryan gasped and pulled back.

"Guys, the portal is closing. We've gotta run!"

Neil grabbed at Kevin's wrist. When that obviously failed, he got another idea. "C'mon, Kev, follow the sound of my instrument. We're gonna get you out of here."

They took off at an urgent pace, heading back the way they came. Ryan walked in front; Neil walked close behind, playing an improvised melody on his keytar; and Kevin took up the lead, only occasionally stumbling over one of the other spirits before righting his course and hurrying to catch up. When they got to the portal, it was still most of the way open, with easily enough room for them all to walk through. On the other side of that portal was the familiar interior of their clubhouse. Just a few more steps, and…

Ryan suddenly stopped walking, causing Neil to bump into him. At the sudden pause of the sound of his friends' footsteps, Kevin stopped as well. Neil prodded Ryan in the back with a puzzled frown.

"Hey, why'd you stop? We're almost out, we just have to--"

"…But that's not how the story goes."

"What?"

"We're adapting the myth of Orpheus, aren't we? He doesn't get Eurydice out of the underworld," Ryan said. Although he kept his voice level, a sharp pang of remorse squeezed at his heart as he spoke. "If we don't adapt the myth correctly, the studio won't be happy."

"Oh…" Neil gulped. "You don't think they'd fire us, do you?"

"I don't know, but we probably wouldn't get paid."

"What are you guys talking about?" Kevin asked, putting his hands on his hips. From his position a few feet behind them, he couldn't hear all of what they were saying over the groaning of the other spirits, but judging by their tones of voice, it couldn't be good.

Neil, beset by guilt at the prospect of leaving his friend behind, tried to glance over his shoulder at Kevin, but Ryan grabbed his head and twisted it back in place. If Kevin saw Neil looking at him with those plaintive puppy-dog eyes, he'd know something was up.

"Oh, nothing," Ryan said way too quickly and loudly. "Just saying how great it's going to be, you know, when all three of us are back in the world of the living…" He leaned in to whisper to Neil. "Listen, I don't like this any more than you do, but we can't take him back with us."

"But we came all this way," Neil objected. "Can't we just turn the video camera off now and edit it in post?"

"Are you talking about the video we're making this week?" Kevin interjected, walking up closer so he could hear them better. "What's it about?"

"It's, um," Neil stammered, "it's a--an inspiring sports movie?"

"Well, it's a good thing you guys came to get me, then," Kevin replied cheerfully. He slung an arm over Neil's shoulders, or performed as close an approximation to such a gesture as he could when he was still incorporeal. "What've you got so far?"

"O-oh, yeah, um… hang on, I've got it somewhere…"

Ryan tugged on Neil's sleeve and motioned toward the portal, which was now gradually growing thinner. "We should go," he reminded him in an urgent hiss.

"…Right, yeah… um…" Biting his lip, Neil gave a shaky nod of acknowledgement in Kevin's general direction without turning to face him. He couldn't bear to look him in the eyes (or lack thereof) just then. "Well, it's been nice seeing you again, Kev."

"Wait, what? You guys aren't taking me with you?"

The confusion and distress in Kevin's voice brought tears to Neil's eyes. Ryan drew in a sharp breath and held his head upright, forcing himself to retain his composure despite the crushing feeling of guilt pressing down on him. They thought back to the way they'd lost Kevin in the first place: running away from the ghoul without stopping to look back, thinking only of preserving their own lives, not realizing Kevin wasn't with them until they'd made it halfway down the block away from the manor, and by then it was too late. If they had stopped and looked back then, and seen that they were inadvertently leaving their friend behind, would they have run back to save him? Well, probably not. That ghoul was pretty scary. But they had another chance to save him now, and… well, they'd be a couple of real jerks if they left him behind again, wouldn't they?

They exchanged a glance, and the agreement passed unspoken. So maybe we won't get paid by the studio this week, Neil thought. So what? It'll be worth it as long as we've got Kevin.

"Of course we're taking you with us," Ryan said, and this time he meant it. He turned to address Kevin as he made this declaration, and Neil concurrently turned to face him as well, no longer ashamed to look him in the weird transparent eyeless face. "We came all this way to get you, didn't we?"

But as soon as they laid eyes on Kevin, a magnetic force took hold of him and yanked him backward. He yelped in surprise and tried to tug himself free, but was powerless to resist the supernatural pull. That was the very important thing they had forgotten--the reason for Orpheus's mythological failure. You weren't supposed to stop and look back at the person you were taking out of the underworld.

Realizing what was happening, Neil sprung into quick-thinking mode. "Ryan, hand me the video camera!"

"Alright, but what are you going to--?"

Neil answered that question before Ryan could finish asking it. In a fluid, decisive motion, Neil reached into the camera and pulled out the long roll of film from within. The film was instantly ruined upon exposure to the ashen air, but that was the last thing on his mind at the moment. He hastily tied the film reel into a makeshift lasso and swung it forward with all his might. Kevin just barely managed to grab ahold of it.

But the forces of the underworld wouldn't loosen their hold on Kevin that easily. He continued to be pulled backward, and holding onto the film reel lasso caused Neil to get pulled along with him. Just before the force either dragged him away or forced him to let go of the film strip, Ryan grabbed Neil around the waist. Steadier on his feet now with his friend holding him in place, Neil began reeling Kevin back towards them.

With their combined efforts, the three of them managed to break free from the pull of the underworld. As soon as Neil had pulled Kevin in close enough that it looked like they'd be able to make it, Ryan released his grip on Neil and darted through the portal. A moment later, Neil slipped through it himself…

And then Kevin stumbled through, just milliseconds before the portal closed. In a reality-defying ripple, his flesh resolidified, ghastly blue-gray transforming into skin flushed with exertion, short messy dark hair, and the slightly rumpled clothes he'd been wearing when he died. He gasped, filling up his newly reformed lungs with fresh air.

Then his legs buckled with exhaustion after such an ordeal and he fell forward. Neil and Ryan were there to catch him before he hit the ground. Kevin sobbed at the sensation of their hands grabbing hold of him--no more phasing; he could feel them, solid and tangible. And they could feel him in just the same way. Driven by the sheer ecstasy of the moment, he lifted them off the ground--prompting a yelp of surprise from Neil--and swung them around in a clumsy circle before setting them back down.

"Oh, man," Kevin half-laughed, half-cried. "I missed you guys so much."

"Aw, gee, we missed you too," Neil replied, patting Kevin on the shoulder.

"Say, you won't be needing that urn anymore, will you?" Ryan asked. "Can I keep it?"

"Of course you can. In fact, I'll throw in an extra one, on the house."

With that declaration, he clutched his friends close to his chest and made a mental vow to never die again.

"So, how are the new eyes holding up?"

Kevin blinked and experimentally rolled his eyes up and down and from side to side. His vision was about as good as he remembered, and they were staying in their sockets securely, so…

"Pretty good," he said. "Thanks again, Ryan."

"Oh, it's no trouble. I'm just glad I was finally able to put some of the eyeballs I've been collecting to good use."

Neil wandered in just then, holding up a blank check. "Well, we didn't get paid by the studio," he announced with a sigh of resignation. He flipped the check over to show them the stern note scribbled on the back. "In fact, they're saying we'll rue the day we dared to defy their orders."

It was two days after their underworld rescue mission, and aside from the aforementioned threat from the studio, everything was going great. It was safe to say that the status quo had been effectively restored, and although the lack of payment was a drag, neither Neil or Ryan regretted their decision, at least not enough to go back on it. Having Kevin with them was worth more than one week's salary. And now that they were a trio again, they'd be able to make more movies in the future, unfettered by grief.

"Let me see that." Kevin walked over and took the paper out of Neil's hands. After giving the note a cursory glance, he crumpled it up with a dismissive scoff and tossed it over his shoulder. "Ah, who needs them?" he said, voicing what the others had just been thinking. "As long as we've got each other, we'll be fine."

And it was true: going forward, they all made more of a conscious effort to look out for each other, and through this newfound devotion, they persevered. After all, mortals were only allowed one free trip to the underworld. It was a good thing they didn't waste it.

#yes the title is a hadestown reference. no i never actually saw hadestown. we exist.#anyway as you can tell i was making more of an attempt to capture the vibe of the actual series with this one #instead of veering into epic depression moments #does that mean my mental health is improving? who knows. let me know what you think #anyway. yeah :3 #hey did you know that i write stuff sometimes?

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khtrinityftw · 3 years

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Honest KH2 Critique

I wanna talk about Kingdom Hearts II since we're quickly approaching it's 15th anniversary. Ever since it was released, it's become a game that people irritatingly refuse to be moderate over, or at least when it comes to the vocal fans online. People who love it don't love it so much as worship it, while people who hate it don't hate it so much as despise it with every fiber of their being. I may technically fall into the "love" category (I share the majority fan and critic view that KH2, especially it's Final Mix edition, is the best game in the series), but I'm also willing to look at both its good and its bad, and do so in moderation rather than hyperbolically.

And I know, without a doubt - Kingdom Hearts II...has the absolute worst-written story out of the KH Trinity!

OK, that was said hyperbolically, but I did so as a joke!

It's so weird that the original Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories have narratives that are deeply and thoughtfully structured with such care and consistency, and then the trilogy is rounded out by such a messily-written rollercoaster of quality!

.....Well, all right, maybe not that weird.

When interviewed shortly after KH2's first public reveal at the 2003 Tokyo Game Show, this is how Tetsuya Nomura described the process for writing the game's story: "I'm writing the plot, the main story of Sora and co. Other people are in charge of the plots for the events that will happen in each Disney world. Combining that with Nojima, we're completing one scenario."

The "other people" in question are the Event team: Masaru Oka, Ryo Tsurumaki, Michio Matsuura, Atsuko Ishikura, Yukari Ishida, and Kumiko Takahashi. Daisuke Watanabe and Harunori Sakemi also assisted Nojima with scenario writing whenever the need arose.

The problem that this process caused isn't apparent at first glance, but it's actually right there in that interview excerpt: "I'm writing the plot". In KH and CoM, Nomura only wrote the initial plot outlines, which were very simple and ripe for being fleshed out by the actual scenario writer. There's a big difference between that and writing a full-fledged plot the way he did here.

Nomura wrote the story for what transpires in the KH-original worlds: Twilight Town, Hollow Bastion, the World That Never Was and Destiny Islands. It goes like this:

As far as plots go, I actually really like this one. It's a strong plot.

It's also convoluted as Hell.

I made a post saying the three one-word convoluted elements of KH2's plot are "Nobodies", "Data", and "Ansem". All three of those are literally the cornerstones of this plot that Nomura cooked up: they play a huge role through the beginning, middle and end! Because Nomura had more power with making this game, none of the more...out-there stuff that these concepts created could be curbed or removed. Which means that the scenario writer had better be in tune with Nomura when it comes to presenting them in a coherent way.

For the most part, Kazushige Nojima was....not.

Here is a tell-tale sign that Nomura and Nojima were not in sync. When asked if he planned from the start to make Kingdom Hearts be the heart-shaped moon seen on the cover of the original game, Nomura replied "No, I didn't. I asked Nojima-san to write the scenario and in his scenario it was written that the Kingdom Hearts Xemnas created is 'like a moon that floats in the World that Never Was'. When I read that, I thought ‘’Oh, this can be connected!’’"

Nomura just admitted that Nojima essentially had to make up how to convey Xemnas harnessing and trying to complete Kingdom Hearts, because Nomura's plot did nothing to convey it. It was a "wait, how the fuck is he doing that!?" detail. And you really get the sense all throughout the scenario that Nojima is struggling with trying to convey Nomura's stuff, and he has said as much in interviews: Nomura's plot and concepts confused him.

It also doesn't help that Nojima was the least major scenario writer on the original KH, mainly limited to the co-creation of Ansem with Nomura and writing the entire End of the World section. This is probably why Xemnas and Ansem the Wise are clearly the KH-original characters with the most confidence and complexity behind their writing in KH2's scenario. Nojima writes Sora, Kairi, their Nobodies Roxas and Namine, and Riku far more simplistically and trope-y, and the other Organization members and trio of Hayner, Pence and Olette are side characters so naturally they don't get much depth.

Then there's Masaru Oka and his Event Team. First off, while Masaru Oka is definitely on Nomura's wavelength and understands his vision to a fault, as Event Director he is superbly mediocre at presenting that vision, or Nojima's for that matter. He just isn't cinematically inclined the way Jun Akiyama was in the original KH, and that leads to the event scenes usually being the barest minimum of adequate at best, and laughably awkward at worst.

Secondly, Oka and his team were responsible for creating the plots in the Disney worlds (hence Oka's credit alongside Nomura under "Base Story"). But not only were they frequently lazy and just directly rehashed the movie's story but with Sora, Donald, Goofy and the Heartless shoved in, but half of the time they didn't even bother connecting the world plots to Nomura's main plot in any meaningful way beyond thematically ala CoM, and neither Nomura nor Nojima seemed keen on correcting this even when they really should have.

Here is a chart displaying the game's flow, stage by stage as set by world battle level. Stages where the main plot is progressed in some way are bolded, and stages of the main plot as created by Nomura have red borders around them:

Aside from Space Paranoids which was part of Nomura's plot from the get-go, the only time where correlation with the main plot occurs without any side factor to note is Beast's Castle, where both visits feature the machinations of Organization member Xaldin and culminates in the boss battle against him that leads to his demise.

Olympus Coliseum correlates to the main plot in the first visit but not the second, although the second visit is now made plot-relevant due to tying up loose ends from the first. Port Royal correlates to the main plot in the second visit but not the first, although the first visit is now made plot-relevant due to setting the stage for the second (it also has Larxene's Absent Silhouette in FM). There is technically a main plot correlation in the second visits to the Land of Dragons and Agrabah (the latter of which has Vexen's Absent Silhouette in FM), but Nojima botched the writing of them to the point where there may as well not have been, especially in the case of Agrabah’s which is "oh btw, an Organization XIII member came by off-screen".

And then there's the case of Disney Castle / Timeless River, which only acquires relevance to the main plot because it was decided that Maleficent should be resurrected and be Pete's boss in the present time. And unlike her appearance in Halloween Town, her role in this stage correlates directly to her role in the main story, revealing her resurrection to the heroes and establishing that she seeks a new evil stronghold from which to advance her return to power. Pete's backstory and connection to King Mickey shown here also receives a direct reference toward the climax of the World That Never Was.

While it could be argued that there's additional value in the first visits to Port Royal, Agrabah, Halloween Town and Pride Land due to the presence of Pete (Maleficent when it comes to Halloween Town), I would have to disagree because nothing they actually do in these stages end up mattering to the main story whatsoever - especially in Pride Land, where Pete just shows up in lion form to say “Ooga Booga Booga!”. Their presence alone just ain't enough.

The consequence here is that for the continuous stretch of Port Royal in the first go-round, Olympus Coliseum in the second, and Agrabah, Halloween Town and Pride Land in both go-rounds, it feels like nothing is advancing. And as bad as that sounds on paper, it's even worse when applied to gameplay because it means this lasts for several hours straight! The only main plot event that happens in either cycles is Kairi going to Twilight Town, which happens in a sudden cutscene between Agrabah and Halloween Town and is thus totally out of the player's control!

To sum things up, Nomura wrote a main plot that was good but too overwrought with confusing and complicated details. Nojima is a highly talented writer, but he didn't fully get Nomura's vision. Oka gets Nomura's vision, but he isn't a highly talented Event Director (and as seen in later games, he has even less talent as a writer) and often portrayed scenes that Nomura or Nojima came up with flatly. And none of these men were in sync when it came to how the Disney world plots and the main plot would connect, often simply not caring or else just not trying hard enough.

That is why KH2 has the weakest writing in the KH Trinity: the primary creative voices that shaped the story were completely out of sync with one another on a regular basis. You could say that their hearts just didn't connect on this project. And as a result, we have blatant inconsistences, bad edit jobs, pacing problems, mood whiplashes, missed opportunities, and dumbass moments galore.

However, on the occasions where things between them did manage to sync up, we were given some of the highest points in not only the KH Trinity but the entire KH series, and the input that was given from Daisuke Watanabe, Harunori Sakemi, and others like production assistant (and major Disney fanatic) Eri Morimoto surely helped the messy story become not quite as big a mess as it could have been otherwise. And that story still stayed true to the series' roots as a whimsical Disney/FF crossover project driven by relatable characters and emotional resonance, as opposed to a vanity project for Nomura that is driven by perplexing lore, plot twists and mystery boxes.

And that's why I and so many others love KH2, warts and all, and would gladly take dozens more narrative messes just like it over the different, far less enjoyable kinds of narrative messes that we've been getting afterward.

#Kingdom Hearts II #Anti-Nomura #Anti-Series Beyond

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intrepidim · 4 years

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— July 12th, 1845; OFFICER’S DINNER / OFFICIAL MESS ; open to all.

— Half of the night’s consortium had relied on whiskered, poorly shaven men outlining the brunt of their journey. At some point, Marc had took in the way dinner looked ( meager enough, with an artificial sheen to it ) and began to ram his knife through its contents. Veal cutlets, or so one presumes, though at this point dolphin haunches would not be too absurd a surmise, and a circle of glazed oranges to complement it. At least he caught on their origins soon enough, popping one into his mouth, licking his fingers expectantly. By sight alone, the sugared fruit could be any number of animal genitalia fronted in menageries throughout the world’s kingdoms, and it’s this whimsical thought which sustains him through the next hour.

The truth stands: he has nothing to say. There is no advice to be coaxed, no ends left loose enough for him to prod at, no platform on which to recount any number of his tales. There is, succinctly put, nothing to be done. The air is too stale for larking and not rigid enough to just whip out a map and chart your best bet at an itinerary. Not yet immunized to invisibility, it fits him poorly; and he’s smart enough to know it. If nothing more, at least he has that.

So he reckons it’s one thing to come out badly while sober, and quite another to muck it up under the influence. One is remembered, due to sheer plausibility, due to the risk that it might betray something subtle about your character—the other is both forgotten and forgiven. Written off as nothing but roughhouse sporting. So he drains the champagne decanter, the stein blessedly cool in the heat of his palm, and then immediately moves on to the smaller glass. It’s a thimble, really, but he’s not fooled; they filled it with Akavit, a Danish sort of brew of the highest caliber. The locals ran quite the trade on it, and insisted it was closest to what they called vodka in Europe, but Marc’s well drained his third and the resemblance is farcical. Vodka, even at its finest, chips against the back of your teeth - this one coats them, instead, and swivels down your throat like sweetmeats. The moment he puts it down, gently tucking it between his plate and the neighbor’s, he gives a smile to go with it. “There’s a good feel to the night, don’t you reckon? Something promising.” Utter bollocks; he thinks there would be a better feel having a go at a porcupine. “Not quite like... oh, you know. The last time. Not that I remember much of it, truth be told.”

The bon ton seems to have been established thusly, as much of a dichotomy as anything else on earth: among the higher ranks, silence relayed honor. It became its own code, in the past week: don’t lay it out overly much, don’t harp on what went on at the Carnivale. Among lower ranks: if you don’t have at least five theories on your name, you’re a cad, and I also fucked your mother raw. It’s only fair, Marc supposes - he certainly would rather hear a preternatural scenario now than a drawn out list on the benefits of boiler water.

#thqstarter #do y'all remember when i said i can't match length? apparently this only applies when i have to write SHORT thing #THINGS* i fucking hate myself #* ╰ [ tournesol. ] ⏤ interactions.#* ╰ [ entendre. ] ⏤ starters.

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nouveauweird · 5 years

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bullshit-free guide to actually fucking writing your wip

disclaimer: this isn’t a fool proof method. when it comes to writing advice and techniques for productivity I say keep an open mind, but take what works for you and leave the rest.

disclaimer 02: this is more or less for people who want to eventually publish, but there may be elements in here that benefit hobby-writers.

Where & When You Write

Some people will tell you that your writing routine needs to be sacred. I don’t quite believe that. You can absolutely curate a space for yourself that you aim to write in, but at the same time, focusing very strongly on the ritual of writing makes it hard to create an adaptable habit.

The Writing Zone:

Your desk or table should face away from your bed, my mother always swore by that and it stuck with me. If space doesn’t allow for that, consider putting furniture or some partition up so you can’t see your bed. For some reason, this makes focusing easier.

For those of you who may be bedridden or have limited space, a good bed-desk is absolutely just as acceptable (I am actually planning to get one).

If you have a space separate from your bedroom, the follow applies as well:

Eliminate as much distraction as possible from your desk. Your experience of distraction is unique so do what you gotta do to eliminate it.

Make sure your space is well lit. Background light is essential to avoid eyestrain when staring at a screen.

Your chair should be comfortable, and support your back. Scoot your ass all the way to the back of the chair and try sitting on your thighs as much as possible to take strain off your lower spine (my chiropractor told me this).

The Writing Time:

You need to make time for your writing. Summer means the sunshine is waking me up at 5:45 AM and it’s too hot to doze comfortably so my ass is up and writing or reading until 7 AM when I gotta start getting reading for the day. If I have to catch the 10:15 AM bus, I’ve for about 4 hours to work with between waking up and leaving.

I finished July 2019 Camp Nano by writing in the morning. And I’m not even a morning person, I swear.

Make time for you writing. If you can make a routine you can stick to, excellent, if you have a handful of 5-10 minute time-pockets— also okay! The 30 minutes your dinner is in the oven is just as good a time to write as any other.

How do you learn how to write in tiny time pockets, you ask, well here it is: Micro Writing Sprints and Macro Writing Sprints. The former applies to pockets of time under 15 mins, while the latter applies to pockets of time over 20 mins. All you have to do is set a timer and challenge yourself to write as much as you possibly can.

Another thing to keep in mind is knowing your personal limits. If your attention suffers and you start to wander after 15 mins, keep your sprints to 5-10 minute blocks, and give yourself 5-15 min breaks where you get up, drink some water, move your body and then come back to your writing.

How to Write More, Faster

You have to kill your inner editor. Or at least subdue them. You can fix a typo or whatever but that’s really it. The idea is that you need to allow yourself to get into a mindset where you’re only focusing on the writing, your prose is allowed to be a mess. Insecurity and doubt have no place here, only writing.

Your first draft doesn’t need to be clean. You get to clean it up when it’s done. Stephen King says you write your first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open, and I like that saying a lot. The revision process is actually way more fun than I thought it would be. I get to make fun of myself for my weird writing quirks— every single one of my “most common errors” in my Grammarly report is about misusing commas!— and restructure and improve upon the foundation I laid with the first draft.

If you come up with something that changes something significant to your story, write a note about it, and then continue on with your draft like it’s been that way the whole ass time. Do not go back and change things. Just keep writing.

Learning how to do Writing Sprints allows you to quickly get into the habit of putting everything down as fast as you can without overthinking it. Because the real thinking is for later, when you’re revising. Essentially these Sprints enable you to get into the writing zone much faster, so feasibly you could write in small time-pockets at the bus stop, in a waiting room, on the bus—anywhere.

Outlining will make you write faster.

Yes I am pro-outlining, please don’t click away because of that, because I also still think that you need to use what works for you, and if you’re reading this something isn’t working, so please keep your mind open.

The very least you should try is preparing or pre-planning what you need to write for your writing session (no matter how short). You will write more and faster this way. Most of all, you will be less likely to “wander” around.

I wrote out a small fragment-filled paragraph of what needed to happen in the first few scenes of my July 2019 Camp Nano project and got them out more easily and faster compared to when I didn’t. I wrote sustainedly in 30 minute time-pockets with a great deal of focus when I prepared my writing before actually writing.

Your WIP Outline

What if your outline was also actually super connected to your character sheets? Libbie Hawker makes this sound so easy in her book “Take Off Your Pants” in which she broke down some very interesting ideas on how to build your characters and your story that I hadn’t previously considered.

What I ended up with was something like this:

CHARACTER NAME Character: write down the basics; age, career, small relevant facts Flaw: what problem do they have that hinders them External goal: the thing they want that they can’t get unless they overcome their ‘flaw’ Ally: who pushes the character toward their goal when they stray Antagonist: who has same or aligned goal, but with different motives and execution Events:

Opening scene

Inciting event

Character realizes external goal

Display of flaw

Drive for goal

Antagonist reveal

Thwart 01

Revisiting flaw

New drive for goal

Antagonist attacks

Thwart 02

Changed goal

Ally intervention

Renewed Focus

Battle

Death

Outcome

End: success or failure or neutral result with regards to overcoming ‘flaw’

The stuff under the “Events” category is stuff everyone has seen before in narrative charts, and it won’t be the last time you see it either. You can use or discard or repeat them however many times you need to. I still think this plot chart that I made it great for figuring out pacing, so check that out if you need some help there.

You can also apply these to series, where the character’s “Flaw” and “External goal” change as the narrative progresses.

All of these parts are explained in Libbie Hawker’s book, but I’m happy to explain if you DM me!

I applied a central idea for my WIP “Hyacinth Stalks” and all the central characters share a common idea with regards to their flaws. Hawker recommends filling in this information for all central characters, and working in which events which characters will interact in.

The common idea is that my characters are “holding onto the past to feel more in control in the present”. Juliet Shain maintains habits of maintaining a “perfect athletic body” in the same way she did as a dancer five years earlier. She can’t exercise that same control over her mental health, which she struggles with, because of questions she has pertaining to the accident that lost her her leg remaining unanswered.

Juliet’s ultimate goal is closure about the accident, which she won’t be able to access unless she stops holding onto the past and in turn the idea that the accident “ruined” her.

I can apply the same things to Alana Murdock, another central character in “Hyacinth Stalks”, who, because she could only rely on herself after her sister’s murder while her parents grieved and her brother cut all contact, rejects her brother’s attempt to reconnect in order to protect herself in the present despite the stress of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Hyacinth Killer’s disappearance. Her goal, would be to make it to the Olympic Volleyball team, which she won’t be able to do unless she stops isolating herself.

I can now approach the Events sections with more clarity because I know what the characters’ goals are and what their hindrances are as well. I can apply the same ideas to the other central characters, as well as the Serial Killer and weave their stories into the narrative as well. When you have a strong character arc, you can build a strong story.

When you can answer the questions about your character(s) you can fill in those Event sections with far more ease, and begin to break those sections down into chapters, scenes, or beats, with as much or as little detail as you want. Libbie Hawker’s method involves writing out paragraphs worth of scene details before actually getting to the writing. She says this isn’t necessary, but that for her it eliminates “wandering” and any doubts about what needs to be put on the page.

Personally speaking, I lie somewhere in the middle, wherein my scene outlines involve small paragraph or bullet points for what needs to happen.

Hawker has written books in 21 days, so there is definitely some magic in her method. In her book, Hawker details that creating her outline took 4 hours. When I outlined “But a Monster” it took a week (5 days), and despite not having had her method then, the existence of the outline made writing the novel much clearer and focused, which my writing had not been prior to admitting I needed to give outlining a chance.

All writing advice is a tree of wisdom

Take what benefits you most and leave the rest.

I have fully taken the advice that I have attempted to explain here. I read in “5000 Words Per Hour” by Chris Fox and “Take Off Your Pants” by Libbie Hawker and felt incredibly inspired and motivated, but some of what they say or eschue doesn’t resonate with me or my craft. I have to do what works for my writing, and if I’m happy with the pace the work is going at then alright!

What I’ve written here is meant to give you new ideas on how to be more productive. I read the books that helped me come up with this because I felt like something was lacking in my writing routine and I had my eyes opened. I hope I have opened yours too and that your work benefits from this.

#outlining #writeblr #am writing #writing community #long post.#my resources.#resources.

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need-a-new-hobby · 4 years

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The Reckoner

Hotch watched the young boy on the swing set, swinging with a force that could take him to the stars. He was his mother’s son, absolutely, with short blond hair and blue eyes. But he desperately wanted his family back, practically ignoring the agent from Protective Custody with the US Marshals, simply asking how they were.

“He's real smart. Had us in tears. Great kid.”

“And Haley?”

“To be honest, we're moving them to a halfway house.” Hotch’s eyebrows formed a question but he answered it. “Haley made a number of phone calls to her mother. It's all good, but to be safe, we have to move them.” Hotch nodded, thanking him. The Marshal, Sam, left the little office and Hotch wished his son a happy birthday, wherever he was.

^-^

“Just stop being stubborn and go home, Spence.” Piper was exasperated with his obstinacy, watching him sink into a chair as she dropped her go-bag in the corner. “You’re being pigheaded.”

“Okay, that’s hurtful.” Piper narrowed her eyes at him as she sunk into her chair and she closed her eyes.

“Remind me to never drink alcohol again.” Spencer chuckled as she drank her tea.

“Only if you start listening to me.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming—” Rossi interrupted them.

“Hey, lovebirds, you seen Hotch?” Piper pointed to the tall suited man in the cabin watching the rain pour through the window. She watched him trudge across the corridor.

“He doesn’t look cheerful,” Spencer pointed out, but Piper shrugged.

“I’m sure it’s nothing. You know, sunshine is the most intimately tied to mood. Sunlight has repeatedly been found to boost positive moods, dampen negative moods and diminish tiredness.”

“Yeah, that study in Minnesota, right?”

“No, the French one.” Piper chuckled then winced. “Why does breathing hurt?”

Meanwhile, Dave stepped into Aaron’s cabin, knocking on the glass door. Hotch stepped away from the glass as his colleague approached. “A case just came in.”

“I'll be right there.”

“Actually, I need to talk to you. It's in Commack, Long Island.”

“That's your home-town,” Hotch recalled.

“Yeah. And if it's okay, I'd rather stay behind.”

“Why?”

“It was a different life, one I left 30 years ago. I'm in no hurry to go back.”

“Well... Any other day, I'd say stay, but I just became aware of this.” Hotch showed Rossi a medical chart and the latter simply scoffed before leaving for the conference room. Predictably, Piper was sitting between Spencer and Emily while Penelope observed from a corner. Hotch took his seat adjacent to Emily, opposite Derek while Rossi poured himself a cup of coffee, listening to JJ present the case. Ben Vanderwaal was killed in Long Island, his arm sawed off, with no kind of incriminating evidence. His wife, Heather Vanderwaal was still missing but presumed dead. But prior to these murders, they learned, were the murders of Rita Haslat and Bill Levington.

“8 months ago, she went missing from her home in New Jersey. 4 weeks later, she was found in a trash bin.”

“She went from that to this in under 3 weeks? She's totally emaciated.” Piper’s question was quietly laced with disbelief.

“Ligature marks on her wrists and ankles indicate she was constrained,” Emily pointed out.

“One in the heart, one in the head— same as Vanderwaal. Sounds more like an execution,” Derek added, drawing on his expertise. “Question is, why cut off Vanderwaal's hands post-mortem?” Derek looked to Piper.

“Well, it’s definitely not ritual. There’s no pattern there. It seems more like a punishment. Death by sawing was a method of execution reportedly used in different parts of the world, specifically medieval Europe.”

“Under medieval law,” Spencer explained, “dismembering the hand was punishment for larceny. What about the third victim?”

“Bill Levington,” JJ announced. “His appearance was certainly altered.”

“I’ll say. His genitals were missing,” Emily said, raising an eyebrow at Derek.

“Though the method of mutilation is different in each crime, clearly there's a signature. The question is, what?”

“Technically, there’s a distinct difference between— never mind,” Piper said, getting up as she caught sight of Rossi’s do-i-care-face.

“Wheels up in 20.” Hotch tossed a file towards Spencer.

“What’s this?”

“You told me you were cleared to travel. You lied.” Piper laughed, shrugging at Spencer’s face.

“Naughty boy,” Emily teased.

“Uh, no, I didn't. I am a doctor, so technically, I wasn't a lie.”

“Really? What was it, then?” Garcia asked him.

“Um...second opinion.”

“Hmm. You're my bitch now.” Piper made sure he got up okay before leaving to grab her go-bag. She sighed at the mess on her desk, telling Emily to go on and wait by the car while she cleaned up. In the rare quiet of the bullpen, Piper looked around to see Spencer making his way over.

“Hey, promise me you’ll be safe.” Piper plopped a quick kiss on his cheek.

“Only if you take care of yourself.” Spencer sighed. “I’ll be back before you know it. Trust me.”

“Can I at least drop you to the car?” Spencer pouted.

“Ever the gentleman but you really wanna trudge back up here?”

“Hey, I’m not gonna see you for days. It’ll be worth it.”

“Fine.” Piper beamed as they got into the elevator, Spencer leaning against the wall. It was just the two of them. And Anderson. But he got off on the 5th floor. Finally, alone if only for a moment, Spencer slid his thumb across her jaw before leaning in to meet her lips. She smiled into his mouth as she grabbed at his cardigan. His lips were warm and soft as they trailed across her jawline to her ear.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he whispered before pulling away. Piper grabbed her bag, using her thumb to swipe the balm that smudged around the outline of her lips away just before the doors opened. Spencer waved before pressing the button for the 7th floor. Piper dumped her bag into the SUV and slipped in next to Emily.

“Let’s go.”

^-^

Hotch ran through a summary of the case as Derek looked at the photos. “There’s no consistent MO.”

“Maybe he’s exploring his options,” Emily suggested. “What works for him and what doesn’t.”

“I’ve never heard of dismemberment being sexually stimulating,” Rossi scoffed.

“I’ve heard of worse kinks,” Emily sighed, and Piper squeezed her shoulder.

“Dismemberment and mutilation resemble ancient forms of punishment,” Piper murmured. “Medieval European law dictated the punishment for larceny was extra work and fines or the hands of the guilty were cut off.” Derek looked up at Piper.

“You think this is meant to be a civil service murder?”

“I just think we need to look into their backgrounds.”

“The other question is why take Heather Vanderwaal, instead of killing her?”

“Maybe she interrupted him, but she wasn’t part of the plan,” Rossi suggested. “If these are civil service murders, maybe she was innocent.” Piper nodded slowly from her seat.

“The only thing concrete is the M.O., which depicts an efficient no-nonsense murderer,” Derek noted.

“Well, then we need to figure out what each act of mutilation means to the unsub.”

“Or to the victim,” Rossi added. Hotch directed Emily to go to the Vanderwaal crime scene with him when they hit the tarmac, dismissing Piper to continue working on victimology at the precinct and checking backgrounds while Dave and Morgan would see the ME.

Emily noted there were no signs of forced entry as Hotch answered Piper’s call before asking the detective where the daughter was and learning that she moved to live with her real father. Ben and Heather Vanderwaal had only been married a couple of years. Meanwhile, Emily walked through the scene, putting herself in Heather’s shoes. She imagined coming home rather late, dropping her shopping bags, her cell phone, and her keys, but not her coat. She turned on the lights, but they didn't work, because the phone and the electricity were cut. Emily looked up and through the hallway. Something in that room had attracted her attention. She walked into the bedroom, looking over the mess of blood spatter on the floor. Except it had marks going through, 3 lines moving forward in a straight line.

“Marks in the blood look like a camera tripod,” she murmured to Hotch and the detective behind them who looked confused by this inference. Either that or disturbed, she noted.

“Serial killers, especially sexual sadists, often document their kill,” Hotch explained. “But sexual sadists usually torture their victims while they're still alive.” Emily’s cell buzzed and she went to answer it.

“Okay, thanks JJ. Stay on hold for a sec, I’ll ask Hotch.” Emily placed her hand on the receiver before updating Hotch. “Heather Vanderwaal was just found wandering the streets half hour ago. She's at Brookside General.”

“Tell Bishop to get there immediately. A killer this sophisticated doesn't leave a living witness without a reason.”

^-^

Piper murmured a thanks to the nurse as she walked into the ward, surveying Mrs Vanderwaal on the bed, her blonde hair carefully laid around to frame her face. She took a seat and introduced herself, recognising the unmistakable differences between her picture and how she looked now, her usually hazel eyes hidden under swollen eyelids. Before she asked anything else, Piper asked her how she was feeling, receiving a short bark in return. “I have some questions about what happened if you’d like to go through last night.” The woman nodded curtly, and Piper continued. “I’d like you to close your eyes and focus on my voice,” Piper asked, holding her hand softly. She’d gotten better at hypnotherapy after the incident in Las Vegas with Spencer. “It was dark, and you’d come home from shopping. You dumped your bags and tried turning on the lights.”

“They didn’t work,” Heather murmured.

“What did you do next?” Heather gripped Piper’s hand. This part she did not miss. “It’s okay. I’m right here.” Piper rubbed circles around her hand with a thumb and her grip relaxed.

“There was a light. A flash. I opened the door, and Ben was there, tied to a chair. I think he was dead. There was another flash. It blinded me for a moment.”

“Okay, so you turned the knob, opening the door. You see Ben tied to a chair. Did he attack you?” Heather nodded slowly. “Okay. You’re lying on the floor. It’s cold against your face. What do you hear?”

“Sawing. He’s cutting off his hand. No! Ben!” Heather’s eye flew open as she shrieked.

“Relax, you’re safe. He can’t hurt you. I’m right here.” Piper rubbed her arm. “Just relax, okay.” Piper stayed for a few minutes, until she was calm, before her cell buzzed. Piper couldn’t help smiling. Spencer. “Just give me a minute.” She walked over to the corner out of earshot before answering.

“Hey. This isn’t Garcia.”

“I know, feels weird for me too. Anyway, I may have found something.”

“We! We may have found something.” Piper’s stomach held in a laugh at Garcia’s outburst.

“Guys, there’s an injured lady right in front of me. Don’t you dare make me laugh right now. What’d you find out?”

“I can't tell you her favourite Beatle, but I can tell you she was living la vida unhappy,” Garcia spoke through the receiver.

“Her ex-husband took her daughter Allison out of school mid-term,” Spencer interjected. After that, Heather cut a check for $5,000 To a place called Lewis, Bell, & Peters 6 days ago.”

“Law firm?”

“Family law,” Garcia clarified.

“Thanks guys.” Piper returned to her seat. “Mrs. Vanderwaal... At mid-term you moved your daughter out of school?”

“Yes, I did.”

“After that, you filed for divorce from Ben. Why was that?”

“A few months ago, I found a picture of Allison on Ben's phone. She was naked.”

“Where was it taken?”

“I couldn't tell.”

“Did you confront him?”

“Yes. he claimed that Allison sent it to him by mistake. She meant to send it to another student at her school. It's called sexting.”

“What did Allison say?”

“She said Ben took it, but she— she lies. Allison, she's a liar. She caused us a lot of trouble; you know?”

“She wasn't lying about this, though, was she?” Heather closed her eye, shaking her head slowly. “Thank you for all your help. We’ll find him, Heather.” Piper left and updated Hotch as she took the elevator down to her loaned bike. Hotch directed for her to see Allison with JJ and the ladies left immediately.

“Have you handled sexual assault cases before?” JJ asked Piper as she unhooked her leg from around the bike as they stopped outside the house in San Diego

“A few when I was based in Massachusetts as a state psychiatrist.” Piper unstrapped her helmet as she spoke. “Since I started with child psychology, a lot of my first state-assigned patients were kids.”

“So, you have a strategy?”

“I didn’t bring my doll if that’s what you mean. I’m gonna have to talk to her alone.”

“So, I’ll distract the father?”

“Yep, just keep him occupied,” she said to the blonde agent as they rang the doorbell. “By the way, I like the bangs. They suit you.”

“Oh, thanks. And I though the doll was a TV thing.”

“TV isn’t all wrong. They’re only for under-10-year olds,” Piper smiled as she and JJ flashed their badges to the father. JJ took him into another room with minimal drama while Piper took a seat next to Allison. While they talked, Dave and Derek updated Hotch about the medical examination. Rossi explained how the dismemberment wasn’t surgical while Derek grinned at Spencer’s disappointed expression upon learning Piper wasn’t there.

“Ballistics can't match the bullets to a gun. There were no rifling marks on the bullet either.”

“And without the barrel being rifled, the bullets would have very little velocity,” Derek continued. “This guy's using a zip gun. Now, if you know what you're doing, a piece of plumbing or a kid's bicycle pump can be turned into a gun.”

“One in the heart, one in the head. Untraceable, expandable bullets tell me without question, all of these kills were strictly business.”

“A hitman?” Hotch seemed to mull it over. “What about the post-mortem mutilation?”

“A contract sometimes includes extras.”

“So, the camera isn’t for sexual gratification, it's for proof of death. We could be looking for two people.” Hotch looked over as JJ and Piper entered the room, a helmet tucked under her arm.

“We may have something. Ben Vanderwaal sexually abused his stepdaughter,” JJ revealed.

“Her therapist didn’t question it,” Piper said. “She wasn’t lying. Police were told but…”

“Allison wanted nothing to do with it. Case closed,” JJ continued.

“Just like the 380,000 cases of child abuse reported in this country each year. Less than one percent gets to trial,” Piper scoffed. “Makes you wanna even the odds.” Piper dropped the helmet on the ground before excusing herself. Hotch nodded at Derek to follow and check-up while Rossi said he could hit up some old contacts.

Derek found her slumped on a bench, tapping her sneakered heel on the concrete. He handed her a coffee which she accepted silently. He didn’t press the issue, just updated her on Rossi’s plan and sat there for a few minutes. “You know, when I started out as a psychiatrist, I thought I’d make a difference.” She scoffed, swirling her coffee before swallowing a mouthful. “But the more cases closed, the more came in. It was never ending.”

“You telling me you never had a good day?”

“That seems to be the problem doesn’t it? Cause those days are the best.” She shook her head. “But they’re rare. Every time I listened to a child vividly recount the abuse done at the hands of someone that they're supposed to trust... It's all I can do not to break down. It makes you lose faith in humanity.” He watched a small smile grow on her.

“But?” He pressed her.

“But some days it strengthens it. Some kids, they’re so resilient. Somehow they become stronger from it.” Derek smiled softly at her spreading grin. “They grow up to become leaders and scientists and artists and these beautiful human beings. That’s why I kept at it.”

“So, what happened?”

“Well, I was still getting my PhDs. Went from child to clinical, then abnormal.” She hesitated, taking in a deep breath. “The more I received, the more patients I received. Soon enough, I’d get patients from children to schizophrenics. But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t doing enough.”

“Piper, you did everything you could.” Derek placed an arm around her shoulder, squeezing her into a hug.

“Yeah, but something kept nagging me. I thought, what if I could stop it before it could become that serious?”

“Pipes, that’s impossible.”

“I didn’t mean curing it, silly. I meant that the earlier you catch signs of a major illness growing, the higher the chances of being able live with it better. And with my experience, I could do it. So as soon as I got my PhD in counselling, I moved bases. Started my own clinic with a little sofa and everything. Did that gig for about a year.”

“But?”

“Like I said when we met, there’s too much stigma. They’d come in with little things. Migraines, insomnia but as soon as we started getting into the deeper things, they’d bail, you know. Or worse they’d pretend to get better, but when I’d check with them, they’d slip back into their symptoms and they’d get worse. I wasn’t helping at all. That’s when your team found me in Texas.”

“And are you doing enough?”

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully, combing a hand through her hair as she stared at her cup. “I just know I have to be here.”

“Yeah, well right now, you’re not.” Piper looked at him. “You’re moping on a bench with a cold cup of coffee.” Piper grinned before she shoved him, getting up. As she walked away, he tackled her. She felt his arms grip around her waist and shrieked as Derek lifted her, carrying her into the precinct, setting her down in front of a laughing Emily. “Where’s Hotch?”

“Went to grab lunch. Hope you all like bagel sandwiches,” she grinned at Piper who threw paper balls at Derek. “We’re going through backgrounds once he gets back.”

^-^

Rossi pulled the SUV up to the pub and walked in through the familiar doors from his childhood. He walked in, file in hand, to see a bald Irishman watching football turn around, his voice gruff. “We don't open till 5:30.”

“I'm looking for the owner of that coat.”

“Is that right?” Knowing what would come next, he raised his arms, allowing the man to pat him down and pull out a gun. “Not with that, you won’t.” His accent was thick, and the man Dave was looking for silently approached from behind. “You're either a dead man or a cop. which one is it?”

“Right now, I'm just an old friend.”

“You lost that right when you became a fed.” The voice came from behind him.

“Ray.”

“David.” The man motioned for him to take a seat by the bar. “I thought you’d retired. Writing books and all.”

“What can I say? Some habits die old,” he said, staring pointedly at the crossword sitting on the bar.

“Some habits are hard to break. I try this damn puzzle every morning. Never gets any easier.” Ray passed the newspaper to Rossi before pouring two glasses of whiskey.

“Crater Creator. You know, I know a kid who can solve this whole thing in 5 minutes.”

“Must be smarter than both of us. So, what’s it been, 30 years?”

“33,” Rossi nodded.

“You know, I thought I’d at least see you at Emma’s funeral.”

“I um… I need to ask you a favour.”

“She loved you almost as much as you loved her. Hey, ambition's a bitch, ain't it?”

“I'm not here to talk about Emma.”

“What are you here to talk about?”

“You've read the news?” Ray scoffed, leaning back in his chair.

“You think I got something to do with that? You should stick to writing books.”

“This guy is real specific. He uses a zip gun and then throws in extras.”

“For a smart guy, your coming back here was a real dumb move.”

“Not as dumb as the one that Sean made. He's on trial for the transportation of weapons, no doubt for you. And what about the Rico beef hanging over your head? You help me, and you'll be assisting a federal investigation.” Ray chuckled.

“And what exactly is that gonna do for my reputation?”

“If you don't, you may not have one to protect. Our organized crime unit is very close to shutting you down permanently.”

“Keep talking.” While Rossi disclosed the case details to his old friend, Spencer and Penelope detailed their victim’s backgrounds.

“Bill Levington was involved in a serial rape case, all involving minors, and it never went to trial.” Spencer’s mouth was drawn in a line as Garcia spoke, interrupting so he’d still have something to say.

“Rita Haslat, a former social worker, attained said former status when she was fired from the DCFs for gross negligence. In one of her cases, a 7-year-old boy starved to death.”

“Which explains why Haslat was so emaciated when she was found,” Piper continued. “If all the victims were indicated in crimes against children, then we've found a connection.”

“One of the unsubs has access to the crimes of the victims and probably works in the justice system,” Emily surmised.

“All right, well, we know what the victims have in common,” Hotch said. “We just need to find out who they have in common.”

“Wait, this social worker and the suspected rape case,” Derek interjected. “Those were matters of record. Ben Vanderwaal's relationship with his stepdaughter is not.” Piper sighed, rubbing her temple.

“The therapist,” she sighed. “I should’ve seen this coming. Jerry Sorum. Allison told him everything.”

“Do you think he could have done this?” Hotch said grimly as Derek and the detective left to bring the man in.

“N—No. JJ and I talked to him.” Piper shook her head in disbelief. “God knows therapists don’t have the money to order a hit man.”

“We’ll get Derek to talk to him anyway,” Hotch ordered. “Emily, tell Rossi what we’ve found. And ask him what the hell is taking so long.” Hotch walked away.

“He’s pissed.”

“It’s Jack’s fourth birthday,” Piper murmured as she sorted the mess, answering her own cell while Emily made her call. “Dr Bishop.”

“Nope. I’m Reid remember?” Piper chuckled. “Hey, you know it’s not your fault about Sorum.”

“I guess. I just didn’t think he’d be the bad guy here.”

“I dunno. Garcia pulled a background check on him, he seems pretty clean to me, sorry, us.”

“Oh, yeah. You two have been going at it since I left you two. What’s it like being Garcia’s uh…”

“Bitch? Not fun. She won’t let me play with her toys.” Piper laughed.

“Sounds weird when you swear.”

“It does? Huh.”

“Sure. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you get mad.” She heard him chuckle over the phone. “Hey, listen. I’ve got to go. If Hotch sees me talking about something other than work, I’m toast.”

“Bishop! Reid have something for us?” Hotch announced as he walked back in.

“Speak of the devil. I’ll talk to you later.” Piper slipped the cell in her pocket. “Not much. Just that Sorum’s background looked clean to them. We still have to present the profile too.”

“Yeah, Rossi’s had a breakthrough with his contacts. One of them knows the hit man. Street name Bosola.”

“From the play?” Hotch blinked. “That Jacobean tragedy, right?”

“Uh…yeah. Anyway, he’s holding a meeting for us at midnight. We have 7 hours to prep.”

^-^

Piper stood on the roof of the pub, alone with the wind whipping her hair, the only light being the neon sign. She saw Prentiss and Morgan discreetly walk to the back entrance and Rossi in the SUV out front with Hotch. A dark sedan was parked out front for counter surveillance, looking out for Foyet and she was getting sick of waiting. The pub was large enough for her to stand without it being too noticeable, but soon enough she was sitting, leaning against a small platform jutting upwards. Usually she’d have someone to talk to, but with Spencer back with Garcia, that was impossible. She was about to doze off until she saw a flash. “Anyone see that?” she hissed into her mic. She saw the light again and started running down the steps, pulling out her gun. She saw the hooded figure run out the exit and she fired, her bullet lodging in the door. “Damn,” she sighed before sprinting after him. She wrenched open the door, running into Derek and Emily.

“What happened?”

“Did you see him?” Piper all but yelled at the two of them. They turned, staring into the darkness. “He’s gone. Finnegan’s dead.” She let them in with Hotch and Rossi storming in from the other end. Emily dialled Garcia, asking her to trace Finnegan’s calls, while Rossi stared at the slumped body of his old friend, blood oozing from a small wound in his neck.

“This whole place is swarming with cops. We had the streets, the building, even the damn roof covered. How the hell did he get through us?” Anger was emanating from Rossi.

“Garcia traced his cell, made one call to a prepaid at 4:38 pm, and one to you at 11.”

“We gave Bosola 7 hours to prepare,” Hotch murmured. “I think he was here before we arrived.”

“And he heard Ray call me,” Rossi continued before sighing. “This is all my fault. Now he knows we're onto him.”

“He's not the only one. Whoever he works for does, too,” Emily added. “Piper, you saw him, right?”

“Barely. He was wearing a hood and my shot went into the wall.” Piper rubbed her face.

“Let’s get some sleep. We’ll deliver the profile tomorrow morning.”

^-^

Piper dropped her bag in her meagre room, ignoring her urge to grab the small bottles of alcohol from the mini-bar. She dropped the bike keys on a nearby table along with her gun, badge and wallet before answering her cell. “Yeah.”

“Hey, Pipes. How are you feeling?” She felt her tension melt away at the smooth sound of Spencer’s voice.

“Exhausted. You?”

“Garcia just dropped me off. I’m on my couch. Dunno what to do with myself.” Piper smiled softly as she balanced the cell between her shoulder and cheek to take off her boots.

“You should read something.”

“Any recommendations?”

“Try Shakespeare. Merchant of Venice.” She heard him hum in agreement. “Listen, thank you.”

“For what?”

“I dunno. Calling? Being you? Take your pick.” She heard silence on the other end.

“Get some sleep, Piper.”

“Yeah. It’s gonna be weird delivering the profile without you tomorrow.”

“You’ll be great. Trust me.”

“Always.” Her voice hitched in her throat. “Goodnight Spence.”

“Night, Pipes.” The line disconnected and Piper felt more alone than ever.

^-^

“Each mutilation represents the crimes the unsubs believe these 3 individuals committed,” Piper started and a young woman with a pale green turtleneck asked her to clarify ‘unsubs.’ “Unknown subjects. 2. Both male.”

“Unsub "A" we're calling the planner. He works in the criminal justice system. We're looking at both defence and prosecution attorneys, judges, and even cops,” Hotch continued, passing on to Prentiss.

“We believe that the planner has experienced a devastating personal tragedy of some sort. And because of the sophisticated nature of the scenario, we believe unsub "A" is in his late 50s or 60s.”

“The planner likely met unsub "b", the enforcer, within the court system,” Rossi added. “He's been hired to carry out justice. Now, this type of justice does not come cheap. So, the planner has access to substantial cash.”

“Absolutely no attempt was made to hide the mutilation. This suggests the planner either doesn't care what we find, or he wants us to find it,” Derek elaborated.

“Now, the enforcer, on the other hand, has no such intentions. He should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Thank you,” Hotch finished, allowing the detective to dismiss the group. Rossi moved over to their monitor with Piper as Garcia and Spencer popped up on screen.

“I've concentrated on the last 3 cases. They've left the freshest e-prints.”

“Great,” Rossi remarked as Piper leaned over his chair.

“Not really. Over 100,000 cases pass through Long Island Court,” Spencer added.

“Well, who had eyes on those files?”

“Literally hundreds and hundreds of people,” Garcia spoke.

“Try focusing on the enforcer. Mob-related murder trials on long island the last 10 years. We're looking for a hitman.”

“Hey, there are 93 mob trials in the last 10 years.”

“Put aside any trials that resulted in a conviction. Focus on mistrials and arraignments,” Piper suggested.

“Uh, 19.”

“Were any of those on trial suspected of being hitmen or enforcers?” Piper saw Reid move to answer Rossi, but Garcia interrupted him, and he just glared at her.

“This totally slipped the net. Tony Mecacci--his case was judged a mistrial but check out his suspected victim. .22 calibre, right?”

“Bull's-eye. Cross-match our profile of the planner against all those connected with this trial.”

“Let's see--prosecuting lawyer Garrett Daniels, Judge Boyd Schuller, criminal defence lawyer Paul—"

“Hold on. Did you say Judge Schuller?” Piper looked down at Rossi who clearly recognised the name. Garcia sent them a picture of the judge.

“What's wrong? Do you know him?” Hearing the commotion, the rest of the team surrounded them.

“No. but I knew his wife. 2 years ago, she was driving home from work and she was killed by a drunk driver.”

“That could be the tragedy.”

“She was the love of his life, that's for sure.” Garcia’s voice came through the monitor.

“12 months ago, Judge Schuller took a leave of absence due to health issues. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He has 6 months to live. And that's when the killing started.”

“He’s got to be the planner. Fits the profile. And Tony Mecacci is most likely Bosola the enforcer.”

“Uh, he went off the grid after his last trial,” Spencer spoke.

“JJ, put out a state-wide APB and release Mecacci's photo to the media,” Hotch directed.

“Judge Schuller's a highly-respected man,” the detective reasoned with them. “We can't just walk in there and accuse him of serial murder.”

“Then I'll go to the attorney general and petition the chief justice if I have to.”

“Or maybe not,” Rossi added, staring pointedly at the real-life replica of the photo on the screen walked in.

“I believe you're looking for me,” the older man said, just loud enough for them to hear and Derek took the man into an interrogation room politely.

“Well, he’s dramatic.”

“He chats with a hitman named after a character in a Jacobean tragedy. His life sounds dramatic,” Piper scoffed.

“Piper, we’re literally FBI agents,” Emily laughed, stopping as she caught Hotch’s grim expression before he left to watch the interrogation. “Sometimes I feel like he glares at us as though we’re Foyet,” she murmured to Piper as they followed.

“If we were Foyet, he’d be doing more than just glare.” The group gathered in the interrogation room to watch Dave and Derek interrogate the judge.

“When you walked in here, you said, ‘I believe you're looking for me’,” Derek started.

“And I was right.”

“Your timing was impeccable. But how could you know that?”

“I knew it wouldn't take you long to find me. Not after what I've left behind.”

“So, you don't deny any of this?”

“Why would I?”

“What you see as a crime, I see as justice.”

“Ray Finnegan was a friend of mine,” Rossi stated firmly.

“Ray Finnegan was a criminal. You should choose your friends more wisely.”

“It must have really thrown you when Ray showed up at Emma's funeral.”

“How do you know about my wife?”

“You have absolutely no idea who I am, do you?”

On the other side of the glass, Hotch dismissed JJ and Emily to have Garcia hack into Schuller's files and track his financial records before everything got shut down and find out if his office made any calls respectively. Except the detective had already done the last task, reporting that he told them they were looking for 2 people. “He has to know we’re onto him,” Hotch told Piper. “Why would he show up otherwise?”

“Maybe he came to stall until Bosola can kill his last victim.”

“Last?”

“Well, we profiled him as a planner, and we know he only has 6 months to live.”

“So, he has a back-up plan.” They resumed watching the interrogation.

“Could we just get on with what I came here for?” He was irritated.

“She was born Emma Louise Taylor, 4th of July 1958.”

“You could get that from anywhere.” He was in disbelief.

“When she was 6, her dad John brought home a black and white homeless kitten.”

“If she knew you... Emma would have told me.” He was in shock.

“She named it Oscar, after Oscar Wilde. And of all Oscar Wilde's work, she loved ‘An Ideal Husband’ the most.”

“I don't know how you know all of this about Emma or what you hope to achieve, but we're done. You know the charges. Charge me.” He was in denial.

“Is that what started all this insanity-- Emma's death?”

“What started all of this was the 35 years I had to sit and watch as the system I swore an oath to protect failed the very people our justice system was meant to protect.” He was angry.

“I wonder what Emma would make of all this.”

“Every single person on that list deserves justice, and it's justice they managed to evade.” He was fuming.

“So... You do have a list.”

“I'm finished talking.” And now he was repentant. Not for the crimes. For coming to the precinct in the first place. For refusing a lawyer.

Piper couldn’t help smiling from the other side of the glass. “You have to admit, he’s good.” Hotch looked at Piper questioningly. “Rossi. I was obviously talking about Rossi.” He kept glaring and Piper nodded, leaving as her mouth drew into a line. Instead, she joined Emily who was conversing with Emily about financial traffic.

“Okay, Bosola didn't come cheap, so Judge Schuller had to have made some pretty substantial transactions.”

“Got wire transfers to a Cayman Island bank and that's where the trace ends.”

“How many, how much?”

“June, he debits numerations of $9, 999 every few days, total of 4, he takes a break for a few weeks until he makes his final transaction for the same magic number.”

“Anything less than $10,000 keeps the IRS off your trail,” Spencer explained.

“I know that, too,” Garcia exclaimed.

“So, the final payment must be for proof of death. That makes $50,000 the price of a kill.”

“He did that 3 times over a period of 12 months, but 2 days ago, he raided his account for $100,000 all in one hit. He also closed all his accounts and handed his entire estate over to a victims support group.”

“Someone who isn't suffering from too many brainiacs in the high-tech kitchen just bounced us out.”

“Good job. If our calculations are correct, there are 2 more names on that list.” Piper nodded, running to tell Hotch and Derek.

“There are. ‘Every single person on that list deserves justice’,” Hotch quoted. “He said deserves, not deserved. Now look,” he pointed to the man on the other side of the glass. “Right there. he looked at his watch for the second time. Whatever he's waiting for is about to happen.” Piper nodded

“I think I know who it might be.” Hotch looked at Piper, as if for the first time. “Look, this guy is all about poetic justice. For heaven’s sake, he walked in like this is an 80s mobster movie and said, ‘I think you’re looking for me’.”

“So?”

“So, he’s a full tilt diva with terminal cancer and 6 months to live. He will not go out quietly. He’s gonna go with a bang. Maybe even literally.” They stared at her. “Look, Rossi’s entire interrogation strategy hinges on Emma being more important than his value of justice. If we use that same logic against him, we’ve got 2 more victims, the last one probably being himself because of his cancer and before him, the driver that killed Emma.” Derek nodded to Hotch and left with Piper to check him out while Hotch resumed watching the interrogation. Garcia found the home and work address of Dan Patton. While Emily went to check the workplace, Derek and Piper took Dan Patton’s address.

Piper skidded to a stop behind Derek’s SUV on her bike, ripping her helmet off as they saw the first flash. Determined not to let him get away a second time, Derek and Piper sprinted for the door before he slammed his shoulder into the door, and they raised their guns to Bosola and he raised his hand, letting the zip gun fall to the floor. “Play’s over Bosola,” Piper said as she holstered her gun and Derek moved to handcuff him. Piper called Hotch to update him as she stood over the bleeding corpse of Dan Patton. “I’m sorry,” she whispered before following Derek outside. Derek pushed him into the SUV, taking him into custody, while Piper rode ahead.

Hotch and Rossi sat in the empty interrogation room while Boyd Schuller was taken away. Hotch watched his oldest friend look at Emma in Boyd’s pendant. “She was special to you,” he prompted.

“I was just thinking... When I first met Emma, I knew I would love her for the rest of my life. We were 12 years old. She always said we were doomed to be star-crossed lovers, destined to wonder what might have been. I never slept with her you know. That wasn't true what I said to Schuller. That was just to get under his skin, knock him off his game.”

“I understand.”

“I should have married her, though. When I left the marines, I was recruited by the bureau, spent a few years on the streets, got involved with starting the BAU. And before I knew it, a lifetime had gone by.”

“I hear you.”

“I missed a life with Emma because I became obsessed with the chase. With the hunt.”

“Dave, he's threatening my family.”

“And we'll get Foyet, Aaron.”

“Then what's your point?”

“You have a family. When all this is over, what are you gonna do to make sure you're not a lonely guy wondering why you let the purest thing in your life get away?”

The jet ride was one of the brighter ones than they’d had in the past month. With Spencer not there to constantly win, JJ and Emily played cards while Derek chilled, listening to his very, very loud music. Piper was in her favourite spot, curled up on the couch reading a translation of War and Peace. Meanwhile, Hotch replayed the video of his son swinging in a park as Rossi’s heart broke seeing his friend like this. He’d promised that they’d get Foyet, but with him in the wind, who knew?

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