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konjkitkatty · 1 month

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Your ocs are all so interesting! What was the thought process behind them?

Ah you’re so sweet!!! I rlly do try to make my characters interesting and likeable, i’m v glad u enjoy them!! As for my process behind them, SURE! None of this is going to be coherent but i’ll try to walk u thru it! It’s a long read so it’ll all b under the cut!

I’d been meaning to make COTL ocs for a while ever since i saw just the VAST amount of variety in follower forms, but I wanted to make them meaningful, yknow? Not just a random follower but smthn w story, intrigue! Inspo didn’t strike until I’d reached the post game and found out abt the bishops’ quests. And i was very disappointed with it. OKAY. I GET why they’re unguarded, they’re hidden away in the deepest crevasses of their respective realms, and I GET IT. I do, i swear, I SWEAR i get it. I do. but cmon, its so underwhelming and I hate it so much. That’s when I thought up of the guardians as like an entire concept, and thus the time to create COTL ocs was upon me!

Kitty was first- they were easy as the design was just my sona in the COTL style give or take a few minor details. OBV I updated them and made them more unique (the spikes, the tail, the eyes, and the massive personality shift to that of an envious follower desperately searching for approval from SOMEONE) but using my sona as a template helped out tremendously in the process. I don’t recommend doing so…

Bat, Dove and Bear- unlike Kitty- were all created with their enemy forms in mind, The Archer, The Summoner and The Guardian. Kitty just kinda fell into the awkward scamp/swordsman role naturally, and it was fitting. First guardian meant they wouldn’t b too strong normally.

Next was Bat because I was REALLY excited to draw the summoner enemy. They were kind of made to be Kitty’s opposite, youngest/oldest, become bug/reject bug sorta thing. Bat’s first draft was a moody bug with big red eyes and a few screws loose upstairs, if u catch my drift. I thought they were too much like Chemach in their expressions, the way they spoke and regarded the lamb, even the way they hung and thrashed about in their webs. so I kept playing around until I remembered BATS exist, and then had the phenomenal idea of making the spider’s guardian a bug eating wrathful BAT instead. I still got to have the cool head limbs in his final form, but NOW instead of just making them bug arms which is eh, i could make them SKELETAL WINGS. With their many eyes and wings he gives the vibe of an angel to me, which I think is pretty cool all things considered.

Next I did was my prideful Bear, and I always knew she was gonna be exactly like Kallamar in the sense that she would have the LEAST changes design wise from boss to guardian to follower. She was the only actual GUARDIAN enemy to be a guardian, and given how actually agonizingly tough those fkers are to fight i figured she deserved it. Originally she was a brawler who utilized hand to hand combat to directly contrast with Kallamar’s many weapons, but once the sailor theme got thrown in I figured giving her a weapon would b better. I decided on a pirate’s sword made out of the crystal growths in Anchordeep- a pretty and sparkly object a pirate would love, but a weapon that’s honestly probably not great against another aword, but she’d never say that out loud. Her sword is better because she’s the more skilled fighter. She also got to use the mask as a shield because I wasn’t sure what to do with her hands OR the mask. Dove was the only other one with one of them and uhhh… well….. yknow…..

Dove was the last and honestly the biggest migraine i’ve ever had designing an oc for a game in a WHILE. She’s very simple, she’s just a chubby Morning Dove- that’s so easy to work with actually. I’ve drawn birds, but not COTL birds. so she. was. a. NIGHTMARE. Bird followers are honestly just so awkward looking in this game, I really couldn’t figure her follower form out until I used OTHER birds for reference (Clauneck, Kudaai, Chemach, Klunko, and especially Haro.) I’m still not entirely happy with her, but given the circumstances I think she turned out the best she would ever be. I just wish smthn more was going on w her… everything, yknow? Feels like smthn’s missing w her. I still find her boss form incredibly cool though- I love how all the gold and stuff she’s overindulged in gets stuck in her throat/chest and makes all these gross lumps, it’s my favorite visual thing about her. I try to do lots of visual storytelling, and that sucks bc its no fun to just tell people what to look for and what it means, so you kinda have to hope these details get noticed and are interpreted right. Anyways yap session over.

That’s all my thoughts!!!

#ramblings of a kitkat #their first drafts were all on paper aside from kitty #if i find them i’ll show them here!!!

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vroombeams · 29 days

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"nOt WoRtH dOiNg CoMmEnTaRy On" with love, shut up. i would love any kind of commentary on sweet talk because my brain leaked out of my ears when i read it today and i will never be the same again 💖

"with love, shut up" is just the Emy Albonoooo Catchphrase huh. love it

anyway hi 😭

so to talk about sweet talk i guess we gotta roll it back a bit to the loscar kink exploration anthology in general? i actually got the inspo for the series thru a kinkmeme prompt that i subsequently lost and for whatever reason could never find again so that's the lore there! but yeah, i'd started on like three or four different pieces meant for that series all at once (music to breathe to being the first), and i really had no intention of adding any other?? characters?? to the mix???? this was also SO not the first piece i was intending to post in the series

and then the alex heckling from the cuck chair tumblr post circulated and i was simply helpless in the face of inspiration and also hysteria? many such cases

i feel like probably i went through every stage of grief w this one, like i hammered out the draft SO fast and then the editing process nearly killed me. threesomes are fun to write! except that there are three people to keep track of. and that is one more than i typically have to deal with. so that's, you know. much. that last day of editing was like... i was prepared to scrap it entirely because i was just so frustrated with trying to bend the words the way i wanted them, but eventually just said ok we're doing one more editing pass and then we're posting it and we're walking away from it. and we did that

obv as i said in the notes for it, alex was absolutely meant to STAY in the damn chair but just refused to? the whole thing spun entirely out of control if i'm being honest like i had zero say in what was happening next at any given time, pretty much. i had the start (alex in the cuck chair what will he do!) the vague middle (logan is experiencing deeply horny mortification!) and the vaguest end (oscar's a puddle of goo!) but otherwise they all just kind of did what they wanted

anyway. wrote the threesome. intended to wash my hands of the whole thing because three people, as mentioned, more than two. but there is a sequel in the works because i have no sense of self-preservation and there will be more cucking! more goo-puddle oscar! all the hits!

MAN IDK IS THIS COMMENTARY. IS THIS ANYTHING. should i have talked about how my favourite bit was oscar drooling everywhere because that was my favourite bit. probably. actually i guess i could have talked about how there were points when i was writing where i started unconsciously making the faces that i imagined everyone having. in the fic. luckily no one was there to see that

i guess the last thing i can say about it is like... i had no idea that it was going to get the reaction that it did? like f1 as a fandom is always so kind and generous with comment quantity + quality but i just really was not expecting the absolute landslide of kind words that were DUMPED in the comments on ao3 for this one 😭 just very honoured and flattered and humbled to see that people enjoyed this doof-ass horny meme fic!!! (and i will one day get around to replying to the comments but every time i look at them i start getting all worked up and lose any grasp on coherency)

I HOPE THIS IS... ENLIGHTENING... or something ,

THANKS!!

director's cut ask game

#asks #ask games #kee.txt #abt.fic #keerector's commentary #that's a wretched tag i will be using it though

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einfalls-los · 3 years

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I am not okay.

Listen, I don't usually get emotional over anime, especially not wacky anime like sk8 (that is not an insult, btw, I love sk8 for what it is). Maybe it's because I had a very emotional and exhausting 2021 so far but sk8 has quite literally been my comfort anime this whole year. And I expected it to get a little angsty like most sports anime. But I was not ready for the gut punch that was episode 9.

So I'm gonna rant about / process the whole thing under the cut (so spoilers, obv). Also, I'm using this as a scream-into-the-void kinda thing but feel free to comment your thoughts if you have any.

Alright first things first - I don't really care for renga. I do think they're super cute and I want to see them together and happy but over the last few years I get less and less drawn towards ships involving high schoolers. It's probably only natural, the farther I get from my school days the least interesting high school romances are getting. Therefore I don't have a lot of thoughts on them this episode. But their moment on the track was just so sweet? And so gay??

To get it out of the way: I hate Joe's skating style.

I wasn't really into the race between Joe and Langa, it felt like something they had to get out of the way to let the plot progress (and get to the Cherry/Adam race already).

I actually really like the route they seem to go with reki. It was set up as that trope of someone realising they're better suited for the support team instead of going to the front lines because they're surrounded by prodigies and while pretty good just not ... well, a genius. We saw it in how amazing the boards he makes are, we even got the "inspirational interview he by chance sees on tv". But this episode he clearly states - no, he does not want that. He wants to skate! Not being a genius be damned! And I think that's really neat iff they continue this correctly. I can see this going multiple ways - him achieving what he wants through hard work and not talent. Or even him not getting as amazing as the others AND THAT'S OKAY. Because that's not the important part, the important part isn't skill but fun.

Now about the big fish - the whole Kojiro/Kaoru/Ainosuke backstory and the Cherry vs. Adam race. Okay, let's see if I can organize my thoughts enough to form coherent sentences.

I am not used to canon lgbt characters in anime. I tend to not like most bl series because of their stereotypes and a lot of them have issues with portayal of consent and outside of those gay characters are so so rare. There are a few examples of course but it's pretty much always subtext.

Now, I know what we got here was also hardly more than subtext but hear me out. I was fully ready to read anything gay happening in this series as fujo fanservice and go on with my life. I had fun ready matcha blossom fics and scrolling through the tag but I expected literally nothing to come out of this. I was super surprised by the "Langa confessing to his mom" scene last week but was still prepared for it to be ignored or to be told "in a bff kinda way" later.

But somehow it feels like this episode crossed a boundary. I can't define why. But it feels too much to be fanservice-y anymore. When at the same time it still isn't canon. Not in an explicit way like I want.

Also, funfact - there is a post sitting in my drafts from last week. I didn't post it because I got distracted by other stuff but it said (paraphrased): a little angst-y headcanon but what if kaoru was actually in love with adam in the past. That's why he is so obsessed with skating against him. And him and kojiro are either already a couple and kojiro is worried he isn't over adam or ko is pining for him and doesn't think kaoru is reciprocating his feelings (and is right about it???). --- and this is pretty much literally what happened this episode???? I don't know how to process that, how am I supposed to feel about that?

And last but not least: For a long long time I haven't hated an antagonist in the way I hate Adam. I was already iffy about him in past episodes but more in a "oh look at this creep ha ha" kinda way. I hate his aesthetic and his whole drama schtick and I am super creeped out by the way he treats langa. And when we got a bit of his backstory last episode I was like - I get it. I will not forgive his actions, I still want to see him in jail but I get it. But again, I feel like he has crossed a line this episode. This may be a very personal line for me but I just got so genuinely angry at him and I don't know what to do with this emotion. Especially since I am about 90% sure adam won't have to answer for his actions in the way I want him to. I am just so disgusted and angry with his character and his actions and knowing it will not be handled like I want it in-universe.

I don't want Langa or Reki to skate against him I don't want to give him the satisfaction and I want those kids as far away from him as they possibly can be. I want Kaoru and / or Kojiro to deck him in the fucking face, I want him to know this is not fucking okay, I want him to suffer and rot in jail without ever touching a skateboard again. (And if he has to lose a race I still want it to be against cherry as my baby deserves.) And I want matcha blossom happy in each others arms, kaoru healing from his feelings and disappointment in adam. I want everyone to be as happy as possible except for fucking adam. FUCK.

#i am not proofreading this so read at your own risk #sk8 #sk8 the infinity #sk8 episode 9 #sk8 spoilers #sk8 episode 9 spoilers #matcha blossom #renga #kaoru sakurayashiki #kojiro nanjo #fuck adam 2021 #langa hasegawa #reki kyan

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cuubism · 3 years

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I’m tiny and curious and have no self control SO, might I ask, could you talk about how you wrote Dissolution - how you initially conceived the idea, how you came up with the “monster of the week” for each chapter and magnus and Alex’s responses/reactions, what some of your fave/most proud of moments are from the fic, whether your plans for it/plot evolved as you were writing it, how much of the day you would spend thinking about it and/or writing it, or anything else about it you would like to share. ur brain fascinates me 😬❤️🌊

ALSO where your epigraph (“And I could not believe that I would hurt you so terribly by going.”) comes from, and whether you had it in mind from the start as you write the fic, or whether you found it at the end, or something else. Fucking love epigraphs and this one just fits poor magnus perfectly in dissolution ❤️😭

oh anon you don’t know the door you’ve just opened 😂 opportunities to rant about my fic? don’t mind if i do....

dissolution originated from a much shorter fic i was writing about magnus’s difficulty admitting he’s struggling and accepting alec’s help. i don’t remember exactly but i think it was originally supposed to be part of a 5+1 with Two Hands? which is why those are in the same series. that was a more lowkey and lighter fic, but in the process of writing it i started to write this part from ch. 6:

And then he was falling forward into Alec’s arms, unable to stop his momentum once he had started—reaching, clutching at Alec’s shirt, at his skin, feeling his bones snap back into place at the contact and immediately shake apart again. His heart skittered in his chest, and he reached, he reached, and Alec reached back, tugging him in closer, his hands in his hair, his scent all around him, his hot breath in his ear, murmuring, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, it’s okay, I’ve got you.

which is obvs different now than in the original draft but the idea is the same. and then i was like ‘well that angst needs more setup than it’s getting’ so i started rewriting from the beginning with the idea of building toward that breakdown at the end. so that moment of release was always the guiding light for the fic.

(then i wrote ch 1 and 2 in one feverish weekend neglecting all other responsibilities. those are almost unchanged from their first draft version loll)

that must’ve been where monster-of-the-week came from, i had so much fun writing monsters for those chapters that i just decided to make that the thing. i wish i could explain the specific inspiration for the various monsters but most of the time it was just “wouldn’t it be cool if” or “wouldn’t it be fucked up if”

those first chapters were pretty intuitive, but ch 3 and 4 gave me literal hell, i had to rewrite them like 50 times, kept swapping the order, moving scenes around, overanalyzing scenes, overanalyzing the characterization... the scene in 4 where they confront each other after the ‘ritual’ got torn apart so many times i wasn’t even sure it was coherent anymore... i couldn’t get the time travel to make sense in 3 (lowkey it still doesnt)... twas a struggle... that’s when the fic consumed my every waking thought cuz i was so stressed about it being right 😂

... dissolution is still my favorite fic that i’ve written but by god did i suffer for it. learned a lot though.

5+6 was originally one long-ass chapter. 5 went through a lot of iterations of figuring out the whole fight scene. then i literally rewrote like half of chapter 6 at 4am the day i posted it cuz i wasn’t satisfied with it... i reread it the other day as a reference for the sequel and was like ‘i have no memory of this place’

another fun fact: the original title was ‘a thousand years of water’ which came from a cut line in the original draft that was something like ‘a thousand years of water could wear down the tallest mountain, and magnus had been out in the rain for a very long time’ (which actually works rly well for the sequel... HMM THOUGHTS)

some things that i like from it....

pretty much all of chapter 1 and 2, i wrote them pretty stream-of-consciousness letting my instinct take me where it would, and i like how they kind of unfold and how they’re paced.

but particularly, everything involving the creature in ch 2.

magnus and perry’s conversation on the rooftop in ch 3. logically that probably should have been cut to streamline the chapter’s emotional arc, but i liked it so much i left it in.

these lines from ch 5 & 6:

Magnus had been through a lot, but no more. Belial was not going to take his fucking husband away from him.

But he didn’t want nothingness. He wanted his husband.

He looked at him. His husband, who always held him like it was the most important thing his hands would ever do.

He looked radiant, almost glowing from within, sunlight captured in human form, and for once, Magnus wasn’t afraid of the brightness. “Hold me?”

the epigraph is from Book VI of The Aeneid, Robert Fitzgerald translation:

Dido, so forlorn, The story then that came to me was true, That you were out of life, had met your end By your own hand. Was I, was I the cause? I swear by heaven’s stars, by the high gods, By any certainty below the earth, I left your land against my will, my queen, The gods’ commands drove me to do their will, As now they drive me through this world of shades, These mouldy waste lands and these depths of night. And I could not believe that I would hurt you So terribly by going. Wait a little. Do not leave my sight. Am I someone to flee from? The last word Destiny lets me say to you is this.

Dido is a queen who falls in love with Aeneas, only for him to leave her to follow his duty. She kills herself after he leaves. They reunite when Aeneas is travelling through the Underworld, where he learns of her fate (the above scene).

i think (?) i came across this pretty early on when i was writing, and kind of used it as an emotional lodestone? i don’t really remember anything else from this book, this passage just really struck me, especially that line.

i’ll stop rambling on now 😂 thank you for your interest in the process, i really appreciate it! ❤

#Anonymous #Ask #my writing #dissolution

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starlightshore · 4 years

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im kinda want to get into this sort of thing so is it okay to ask u a few questions? if not just delete this, but here goes? would u reccomend game maker studio 2, and how hard is it to use in ur opinion? and is there anything u wish u knew at the beginning of making ur fangame?

aw anon you’re so sweet! don’t worry about asking about this, its really exciting to make games and trying new things! i would not say i’m an expert, and i wouldn’t even say i know gml like. at all. i just understand a how the code is used, but now what the code itself is or what to type exactly. like, i understand the theory more so than actually doing it. which is, eh, fine? i’m getting by, and i’m still learning. i’ve only been using gms 2 for 2 months now.

also, i’m using a fangame engine! i feel its kinda like cheating lmao, but its just meant to be a framework to build your own thing off of. and i still need to learn gms2 to use it, and i plan on doing more advanced and complicated things (ie: changing how battles even work structurally.) so. i’m not good at gsm2 yet, but uh, really once you understand coding its not any harder than i’d imagine w/ other professional game engines. compared to unity, i like this better because it seems built on the idea of making 2d sprite games. its SO much more simpler and the userface (while. i’m not a fan of how it has its workspace but whatever) is simple and easy to grasp.

i can’t say for certain if i recommend game maker. its very pricey and doesn’t go on sale often. (big sales i mean, it goes on 15% somewhat frequently) i really, really recommend doing your research first.

so here i talk about what game engines i’ve used over the last year. (also i hear Godot is good!)

at the end of that post i said this: “TLDR; figure out what kind of game and story you want to tell/make. i could of saved a year’s worth of work if i just sat myself down and realized i wanted to make a completely new fangame separate from my old blog stuff. and that i wanted to make an rpg specifically.“

and so! past me has good advice. figure out the scope and what story do you want to tell. with AL, I know it has 2 chapters, and rn i’m only concentrating on chapter 1. chp 1 has 7 nights and one area where you fight enemies. its very story/character driven and is more so like. a deconstruction of the rpg genre than an actual rpg game. (i know that the word deconstruction is over used as hell, but it is what this is.)

it builds off the themes of the original, while focusing on things that i want to focus on and develop. ut, at it’s heart, is about stories and grief, i’m just taking it to a different extreme and angle.

uh, anyway, i really wish i knew what i wanted to make and understood the source material more and what i wanted to make. i’ve. thought really really hard over what UT means, what message toby was trying to convey, how he did it and what I thought about it. understanding what YOU want from and for your project is the most important thing. WHY do you want to make this? WHAT do you want people to feel and think about when playing? or even, after playing? it doesn’t have to be super deep either.

so, figure out what you what to make, and then you can work on the how. really plan your story, but honestly i wouldn’t recommend planning it in super big details right off. also, super helpful to have a friend help you brainstorm and plot check things for you. (shout out to my friend the sniffer

anyway, don’t plan things TOO detailed because things are GOING to change no matter how well you plan! just try to get get an outline done, then rewrite it 5 more times and then MAYBE you’ll be ready to tackle a more detailed version. then write it 5 more times. i can’t stress enough how important planning is, and how you shouldn’t expect everything to work out even on draft 10! things will work, and when they do, draft 10 is going to look like bad awful nonsense cause you’re at draft 20 now and everything is much more coherent and better. games aren’t written or consumed all at once on the fly. its not a piece of fanart, a fanfic, a comic. its not updated more than once. its out, and then its just out. plan for it.

and real quick, don’t worry about art assets! depending on how you do the art, that’s most likely going to change and its going to be polished LAST. i could go more into how you should think of art when game developing, but thats another topic. just. honestly use shitty art assets and worry about it later.

kris’ place holder sprite for deltarune ^ it don’t need to be pretty, it needs to be practical.

second advice: start SMALL!!! i feel i should of done this, and frankly i probably will have to sit down and do this lmao, basically, you should make boring small games to learn the basics. I know, i know, nobody really wants to recreate asteroid when you got big ideas of making stories and animations u wanna make. but like. you really need to figure out how the program works and how the code works in theory and practice.

ok so like, think of coding like this. i got this from a skillshare video series, so uh. i’m going to retell this but in a shittier and likely less nuanced way. sorry

ok so imagine. you’re telling this guy who is trying to get to Gary’s house. now, Gary’s house is just down the road, few houses down, now, you can tell this guy that and he’ll likely find the house just fine. but if you’re telling a robot it’s not going to understand what “down the road” means. what road? how long? it needs instructions that are simple and work in a language it understands.

so you tell the robot “go down two houses, stop at sign until x seconds pass, turn right, go forward 1 house, turn ect. stop at house, ring doorbell. IF Gary answers, go inside; ELSE: do not go inside, wait;

so this what i mean by understanding the theory behind the code rather than the code itself. yes there’s complexities and differences in each language, but they’re ALL based on the same concepts. different program languages are less like different speech languages, but rather different dialects of the same. (uh, like us english vs uk english) its just different rules and “spellings” of the same core concepts.

next advice: don’t be afraid to ask for help! but also! do so within reason! if people are OPEN for helping, be sure do so in the right environment and within what time works for them. compensate people for the time and effort if you can. ALWAYS try to figure out the solution yourself first. often with coding, it can be a simple solution that you could of thought of yourself if you took the initiative to. google is your friend, youtube is your friend! (ok, youtube isn’t, but in this case! yes!) the answer might not always be easy to find, and its perfectly fine to look for help but its good to at least try on your own first!

speaking of which! LEARN LEARN LEARN! be ready to devote A LOT of time to watching and reading about game development. this goes to every game making program, not just gms2. i watch. so many videos on gms. i rec having the video play at 1.5x or 2x speed to cut down time. obvs you still need to retain the information, so speed might be not a good idea then. and its REALLY GOOD to pause and type out the code and follow along. but its also good to just understand the concepts, and theres no harm in rewatching once you’ve understood it better at a different speed.

things WILL click and work out for you, and its going to be a very time consuming and long journey to get there. i LOVE making this game and telling this story but I also had no idea what i was getting into! and i probably will have more advice once i’m further in, (i’ve only used gms 2 for 2 months!) but thats the best i can say for now! i hope you pursue your dreams and start making things!!! you can do it!!!

the best time to start is yesterday, the second best time is right now! even if you put a little effort into it everyday, you’ll build up progress and you can learn SO MUCH over time and theres this whole world of possibilities out there! the world NEEDS your story and your perspective, and i think creating it in anyway you can is necessary for humanity! your work will mean something to someone someday, and i am so excited for you to start your journey!

#i know u probs meant gms2 specifically but this got a little out of hand lmao #long post #personal stuff #sams replies #Anonymous

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fourteenacross · 6 years

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okay, i have comments to give on "everyone must breathe," but in the meantime: the section from "communicable" (which i've read 500 times, btw,

Don’t worry about comments, I GET IT I am super behind on a) answering comments and b) reading and commenting on other people’s fic. Such is the holidays, etc.

COMMENTARY! YES! Here are some unfiltered thoughts on this section of fic! Please feel free to ask for elaboration if there’s anything in particular you were curious about that I didn’t hit on!

It takes John four buzzes to realize someone is calling him and a fifth to actually fumble for the phone, see it’s Alex, and pick up in a panic.

“Alexander?” he says breathlessly, his heart hammering, a million worst case scenarios screaming in his mind. It’s the middle of the night–full dark, with the heavy, still silence that means the rest of the world is dead asleep. There’s no earthly reason Alex should be calling him.

So this was one of the first scenes that I wrote in this fic. I knew really early on, when everything before the fall of their second year was going to be quick flashback scenes and nothing more, that there was a point when everyone got sick a lot and Alex had to stay with the Washingtons to avoid contaminating John. I really liked that kernel of an idea, this image I had in my head of Alex being miserable in bed and John being useless because he was too busy visiting Alex whenever he could to get anything done. That sort of morphed into the idea of Washington or Mrs. W coming in to check on Alex and finding John asleep next to his bed, which led my brain down the road of, “Okay, but why/how does he get there?” and this immediately popped into my head after.

“John?” Alex sounds slow and tired, not quite himself. “I woke up and you weren’t here and I had–I had a dream.”

He doesn’t actually sound awake, his words mumbled and slurred and quiet.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” John asks. He’s already sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. “Are you okay?”

So, we’ve already established in this verse that Alex has recurring nightmares that he sort of blows off. They’re enough to wake him up and rattle him, but he never remembers what they’re about (he never really tries to remember what they’re about) and he’s generally very dismissive of them. John (and, hopefully, the reader) has sussed out that they’re most likely to do with Alex’s abandonment issues and fear of being alone. However, because he’s so quick to brush off his dreams, I needed to make it reasonable that he would actually call John. Having him in an unfamiliar place without John when he’s ill and upset seemed like enough of an impetus to actually imagine him calling John in the middle of the night out of that disoriented mix of fear and confusion and desperation. I think Alex probably reached for John when he woke up, was confused to find himself alone and somewhere he didn’t recognize, and too sick to call out in more than a whisper. Thus, picking up the phone.

“I’m…okay?” Alex murmurs. “I just–”

Silence.

“Did you have a nightmare?” John asks.

“I–maybe? I don’t–I think I did, I don’t…remember now. I just–you weren’t here, and I couldn’t–I thought–”

About…fuck, three years ago now? Four?…I got pneumonia and bad. Not like, hospital bad, but “ran a fever for six days” bad. It’s the sickest I’ve been in memory and whole fucking days passed in a weird fugue state. I could not think straight, I couldn’t hold conversations, I disassociated, I forgot where I was. It was really fucking weird. So, that’s where Alex is here. His brain is scrambled from fever and he knows what he wants (John) but holding onto that thought takes up all of his cognition right now. He doesn’t have enough brain power left over to answer questions or even parse them, really.

The more Alex speaks, the more confused he sounds. John slips out of bed and grabs a pair of jeans from the floor, fumbling into them one-handed.

“Sweetheart, it’s okay. You’re okay,” John says. “You’re at the Washingtons’, remember? You’re sick.”

John and Alex are a lot more traditionally affectionate now than they were in early drafts of this verse. In a deleted scene from a later story, something happens to John and Alex calls him “sweetheart” and everyone else is mute with surprise because they usually just called each other names as a form of affection. That’s sort of eroded now, to a degree–they still call each other names a lot, obvs, but they also sort of embrace some more treacley, affectionate pet names. There are still lines, though–Alex calls John “sweetheart” in a sort of exasperated way at some point in, I think, i saw the whole story unwind, and John makes fun of him. Similarly, he calls John “honey” in exasperation in the story about getting an award and John makes fun of him there, too. But, when the chips are down and John starts feeling protective, that’s where his mind goes automatically–being as genuinely soft and careful and gentle as possible, including embracing that sort of sappy pet name stuff.

“Right…right…okay.” He sounds marginally less frazzled and spacey. “I just–right. I’m sorry. I’m–why did I call you, did I wake you up? Why would I–”

“It’s fine,” John says quickly. “Do you want me to come over there?”

Alex hesitates. “No, that’s stupid,” he finally says. “I’m fine, I just–I just–woke up and…I don’t know, I’m…used to having you, and I just–” He shudders and makes a quiet, frightened noise, and John’s heart breaks.

“I know sweetheart, I know,” John says. “I’m almost dressed, I’m going to drive over, okay?”

John was not like, super cool with leaving Alex on his own at the Washingtons’ to begin with and now Alex needed him and he wasn’t there, and the logical part of his brain is saying, as he tries to pull on his jeans and listen to the phone at the same time, “You dummy, he’ll be fine, he’ll fall asleep in a second,” but it’s drowned out by the panicked part and the part that takes his loyalty to Alex super seriously. Alex is his family and he fucked up pretty badly taking care of his blood family, but he’s not going to fuck up taking care of Alex.

“You don’t–I just…woke up and…I can’t remember….”

“You don’t have to,” John says. “Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to remember. It was just a dream. You’re okay and I’m okay and it was just a dream.”

This is honestly more to himself than to Alex, at this point.

“I’m not a child,” Alex says. He says it more to himself than John, which settles the issue. John grabs a hoodie from the top of the dresser. “I just–I was scared.”

“I know, baby,” John murmurs. “It’s okay. I’m leaving now, I’ll stay on the phone with you in the car, okay?”

“You don’t have to,” Alex mumbles. “You don’t have to come, I just–I don’t know why–I shouldn’t have called.”

“No, no, no,” John says. “You can always call me.” He walks out into the living room and grabs his coat, struggling into it one-handed as he continues to hold the phone to his ear.

“It’s…late,” Alex says. He yawns. John grabs his bag and his keys and leaves the apartment. “I just woke up alone. I hate waking up alone when I’m sick. I woke up alone and I was scared.”

In the original draft of this scene, Alex was much more coherent. I had to go back and make him a little more scattered so that it would be believable that he would forget this entire conversation come morning.

Also, the “I woke up and you weren’t there” is about as clear a window into Alex’s psyche as we’re likely to get, at least when it comes to this part of him that desperately needs other people and refuses to acknowledge it. There’s a reason he keeps repeating it.

“That’s okay,” he says. He locks the door and starts down the stairs, trying to go as quietly as possible. It’s the middle of the night–he doesn’t want to wake up the whole building.

“I should go.”

“Don’t bother, I’m already up, I’m already coming over,” John insists softly. “You don’t have to go anywhere, Alex, you can stay right here on the phone with me.”

“I don’t have anything to say,” Alex says. He still sounds dreamy and soft, not entirely awake for the conversation. John starts walking faster and finally hits the ground floor.

“I don’t have anything to say,” the true sign of Alex being sick XD

“It’s okay,” he says as gently as he can manage. “You don’t have to say anything. You can just sit there, and I’ll know you’re okay and you’ll know you’re okay.”

“Mm.”

John is not super great at taking care of other people, especially when he’s so panicked. He’s also beating himself up for not being there.

It’s cold as dicks, so John doesn’t dawdle in the parking lot. His engine is loud in the frozen silence of the night, and he hears Alex startle over the other end of the phone.

There are a lot of references to how cold it is during this story. Winter 2015 was THE. WORST. in the northeast and in Jersey, too. I have like…legitimate trauma from that winter. We had a record snowfall in Boston and like 90% of it fell over less than 30 days. It snowed every weekend. There was nowhere to put it because none of it melted because it was also record low temperatures. By the end of it I was literally crying every day because I couldn’t stand it anymore. New Jersey didn’t get quite as much snow as we did, but it was just as bitterly cold.

“I’m starting the car,” he tells him. He puts the phone on speaker and rests it on the seat next to him. “That’s all. I’m on my way to you now.”

“Okay,” Alex mumbles. “Okay. You don’t have to.”

“I know,” John says, “but I’m going to. The car’s already moving.”

Silence on the other end. In fact, it stays silent as John pulls out of the parking lot, as he turns down their street, as he turns onto the main road.

“Alex?” he asks again.

No answer, save for a soft snuffling sound. Alex, he assumes, is asleep again.

He reaches across to his phone one-handed and ends the call. He’ll be there soon enough, and he trusts that nothing will happen to Alex in the five minutes it will take him to finish his drive across town.

I like the idea of John not even taking the time to put his phone in the dash clip or hook it up to the AUX cable–he just hits the speaker button and drives.

The other big motivating factor for him, outside of his own panic and need to take care of Alex out of familial responsibility, is how small and scared Alex sounds through all of this. I’m a really lazy writer, so this is a construction I use in the text a lot (though I haven’t used it yet in this section, I think), but John and Alex are both big obnoxious personalities and thus, when one of them is acting quieter and more timid than usual, they always make note of how out of character that is. They don’t like to show weakness, so when they’re too tired to hide their weakness, it’s a flashing red light to the other that something is really wrong. Here, John knows what’s wrong–Alex is sick–but it’s still eerie and unsettling enough that it spurs him to move more quickly.

The Washingtons’ house is dark when John pulls up outside, and for the first time he realizes how crazy this whole thing is. He’s breaking into his mentor’s house because his boyfriend had a bad dream. This is…not normal. It’s possible John is majorly overreacting. Alexander is an adult, he can take care of himself, he doesn’t need John rushing to his aid in the middle of the night.

But John remembers how lonely and needy and touch-starved he was when he was sick, and that was in his own bed. Alex is alone in an unfamiliar place. And Mrs. Washington gave him a key. So this isn’t…totally weird.

Probably.

Another construction I use a lot because I’m a lazy writer–John and Alex are low-key self-aware that their relationship is really more intense and obsessive than is healthy, and convince themselves that because they’re self-aware, it makes it okay.

He sits in the car for another minute after coming to that conclusion, weighing his options, trying to decide just how crazy and clingy this makes him. In the end, he can still hear the soft way Alex said his name over the phone, and that answers the question for him. He would do anything for Alex on a normal day–he doesn’t stand a chance at resisting when Alex is sick and scared.

Just hitting you right in the solar plexus with the image of Alex’s quiet, scared voice over the phone. You’re welcome.

He closes his car door as quietly as he can manage and walks swiftly up the front walk. He tries to act casual–he’s very aware of the fact that he’s a latino kid in a nice neighborhood in torn jeans and a black hoodie, and while people in Jersey are more likely to call the cops than shoot on sight, the only thing that could make this more embarrassing would be having to explain it to the Washingtons and a police officer at two in the morning.

I try to walk a line between a realistic amount of thought and reference to how race impacts these kids and keeping it from distracting from the story at hand. I’m very aware that I’m a white lady with wildly different experiences, but I don’t want to erase that aspect of the characters.

He unlocks the door and opens it as softly as he can, slipping inside and locking it behind him. He hears a rustling in the hallway and winces, preparing an explanation in his mind, but it’s just Nelson, who trots over to him and head-butts his leg looking for pets.

“Hey, buddy,” John murmurs to him. “I thought I told you to look after my guy while I was gone.” Of course, even if Alex had been awake when John left, he’d probably have kicked Nelson and Blue out of his room–John will never in a million years understand Alex’s universal disinterest in animals.

I’m more of an Alex than a John, tbh. I’m a little more accepting of animals than Alex is, but I really don’t care for cats and I’m not like, crazy about other animals. (Except bunnies. I love bunnies.) I tend to love dogs I know and am vaguely aware of dogs I don’t know.

Anyway, GWash’s dogs are named for his horses because even though he had a trillion dogs IRL, it was easier to find the names of his horses than his dogs and I am, as I have mentioned several times, quite a lazy writer.

(Also, Alex totally would have kicked the dogs out of his room.)

But Alex is why he’s here, so he scratches Nelson behind the ears one more time and then walks quietly down the hall to Alex’s room. The door is open a crack and John nudges it the rest of the way open, peering inside.

“John?” Alex whispers. He’s lying in bed, propped up by half a dozen pillows. He’s also half asleep, with the blankets pulled all the way up to his chin. There’s a nightlight plugged into the corner, letting off a faint blue glow. Just enough to allow someone unfamiliar with the room to navigate their way to the bathroom, John figures, but it’s also enough to see how pale Alex looks, still.

“It’s me,” John confirms. “Just me.” Nelson nuzzles his hand. “Me and Nelson,” he amends.

“You didn’t have to come over,” Alex says. He sounds more Alex-like, now. Still tired and a little distant, but he doesn’t seem as scared or lost as he did on the phone. “The whole point of me being here is so you won’t be around me and get sick again. You didn’t have to come over.”

“I wanted to,” John says. “I needed to make sure you were okay.” He puts his bag on the floor and toes off his shoes, then gets gently into bed next to Alex, lying on top of the covers. Alex is immediately pressed to his side, arms around John’s waist and clutching him more tightly than John would have expected given his current state.

Alex talks a good game, but he was pretty desperate for John. I think, while he’s mostly over connecting every sickness to his mother’s death–he gets sick enough that it would be nearly unmanageable to think of it every time he has a sniffle–these particular circumstances of being separated from someone he loves are digging into that same place in his heart. He’s exhausted and he can’t think and he’s miserable and he just wants to be held and loved and while he understands why John is elsewhere and, in fact, wants him to stay there and be well instead of getting sick again, he’s also sad and sick and desperate.

“This sucks,” Alex croaks.

“I know,” John says. Alex’s hair is stringy and sweaty and tangled, but John smoothes it out anyway, brushing it back from his face. “Just try to sleep, babe. You’ll feel better if you can sleep for a little while. And if you have another nightmare, I’ll be right here.”

“I don’t know if it was a nightmare,” Alex mutters. He yawns against John’s chest. “I just woke up.” He yawns again, and when John looks down, his eyes are already closed. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”

“I know,” John repeats softly. “I know, baby. I’ll be here this time, okay? Just sleep.”

John feels super, super guilty about not being there.

And that seems to be all it takes. Alex is back to breathing deeply and evenly just moments later, still wrapped around John in sleep.

That should be John’s cue to ease himself out from under Alex, tuck him in, and head back to their apartment. Leave Alex here to sleep the rest of the night in peace, get some rest of his own away from Alex’s germs, swing by again tomorrow morning before work, maybe….

But, he should wait a few extra minutes, just to be sure he doesn’t wake Alex up. Just long enough to be positive that Alex is truly and deeply asleep. A few more minutes won’t hurt.

And Alex’s desperation is mirrored in John. He also understands why Alex is quarantined and doesn’t want to be sick again and knows this is for the best, but it’s cold and it’s fucking February and he hasn’t slept alone in months and he wants to hold Alex as badly as Alex wants to be held.

Nelson gets up from the floor near the door and walks over to John’s side of the bed, looking up at him curiously.

“Sorry, buddy, I’m not here for you tonight,” he says. Nelson noses at his leg and, when John doesn’t push him away, jumps up onto the bed and settles himself at the bottom, his head resting on John’s feet. “He’s not gonna like that,” John tells him, but he doesn’t make any move to discourage him.

Asleep in a warm, soft bed with Alex in his arms and a dog on his feet is pretty much John’s ideal fantasy.

And it would be mean to shove him out of the way when he’s just gotten settled. So, really, John is doing everyone a favor by just snuggling with Alex for a few more minutes….

Yeah, he knew he wasn’t moving after that XD

It’s midnight now and my brain is mush. If there are any PARTICULAR QUESTIONS you have about this, plz feel free to ask for elaboration!

#commentary meme #the-everqueen #they call themselves the trash of the thing

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