#please fix the story
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Please Fix the Story- pt 27 The Higher Realm
Here it is guys, a new part! Not very long, but it's new and I'm happy. Thanks for everyone who waited.
Masterpost linked here for anyone who wants to re-read.
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*** Soul transfer 25% complete. ***
As the words formed in front of me, I felt a sudden surge of dark power from deep within my soul. It crackled just beneath my skin, an incredible, immeasurable force. I could feel it, knew it was there with a deep certainty I couldn’t explain. But while I could sense the enormity of it, I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t reach it or use it in any way. I stared down at my hand in frustration, wishing I understood what “soul transfer” meant, and how it was connected to this power within me.
“Umm… are you okay?”
A soft voice broke me from my reverie. I glanced up to see Liam staring at me with a look of concern. “If this is a bad time, I can come back later…” He was still extending a hand down to me to help me to stand.
How long have I been sitting here, staring at my hand, like a crazy person?
“Sorry.” I took Liam’s offered hand, sucking in a shocked breath once I did so. There was a sudden connection when our hands touched. Something deep within my soul that had felt empty and alone had filled the moment my hand touched his, like a puzzle piece clicking into place. The connection was strange to me, but at the same time achingly familiar. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the shock, and used his help to stand next to him. I was somewhat surprised to realize how tall he was, his thinner frame disguising his height. I tilted my head back, my eyes meeting his own quietly amused gaze.
“Sorry.” I repeated. “I’m just a little confused and lost.”
“Ah. No worries about that! You’re in good company, I happen to specialize in being lost and confused.” He answered with a smile.
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I’m Bel.”
“I know.”
I sighed with relief. “Good, I wasn’t sure, since we looked so different when we last saw each other!”
“You knew that was me?” He blurted out, obviously surprised. “How?”
I tilted my head. “You have the same name? We had coffee? You were the assassin who wasn’t a cat?”
“Ah… Yes! The assassin world. That’s definitely the time I was thinking of, and not any other lower realm.” Nodding enthusiastically, he avoided my curious look, but didn’t step away from our close position.
It was then I realized, somewhat uncomfortably, that I had not let go of his hand after taking it to stand up. With a regret I couldn’t quite explain, I released him, my hand feeling immediately empty and cold. Besides that, I felt a deep fatigue slowly settling in, an unexplainable tiredness as if my energy was slowly being sapped away. It had started from the moment I woke up here, and slowly became more noticeable over time. I looked over at Liam, who seemed unaffected by any similar exhaustion.
There’s something so familiar about him, I feel it even more so than I did in the assassin world. Which reminds me…
BAM!
“Ouch!” Liam rubbed his upper arm where I softly punched him. He looked down at me, confused. “What was that for?”
Avoiding his puppy dog eyes, I forced myself to scowl and explain. “THAT’s for poisoning yourself, you jerk!”
“Oh. That.”
“YEAH THAT! Do you know how hard I cried when I realized what you did? Just casually drinking poison and sneaking off to an alley to die?”
“I’m sorry, I…” He stuttered as he rushed to explain himself. “I didn’t think…”
“Didn’t think what?”
“Didn’t think it would matter.” His voice was neutral, almost carefree, which made the certainty of his words even worse. He truly didn’t think there was anyone who minded that he died in that world. “I’m the villain, Bel. I had to die if that lower realm world was to avoid being destroyed. I didn’t want you to feel sad or guilty, and that seemed the best way.” He paused. “Wait… why did you cry? Weren’t you happy the world was saved?”
I shook my head, resisting the urge to knock some sense into this man. “I cried because I thought you were dead! I thought I would never see you again!”
“You wanted to see me again?” His excited tone threw me off.
“Well… yes, but you’re missing the point!”
“You’re right, I’m sorry.”
“Do you even know why are you apologizing?”
“Because I made you sad when I drank poison and died in the lower realm. So I’ll try my best not to drink poison ever again.” He paused. “Is that right?”
I rubbed my forehead. “Not just poison, Liam, try not to get hurt at all.”
“That would be difficult.” He now had a solemn expression on. “Villains have to have a bad ending for the story to end happily.”
The villain? I felt a dull burning ache in my heart at his words, a memory just beyond reach.
“Why do you think you’re the villain?”
He shrugged. “It’s my role.”
“I don’t think you’re a villain. Villains don’t drink poison to protect a world from being destroyed.”
“I never said I was good at being a villain.”
I sighed at his amused words, and gave up trying to convince Liam for now. Turning away from him, I finally took a good look at my surroundings. The sense of fatigue was growing stronger, I felt dead on my feet, but curiosity overcame the tiredness as I examined my new location.
“Where are we?”
It was a forest, somewhat similar to the one that surrounded the castle in the Higher Realm, but a dark and twisted version. The sunlight around us was a muted, almost grayish light, piercing through the rotting branches, barely reaching the ground that was mixed dirt and dying grass. The trees pierced through the earth, tangled dark wood fighting each other for the slightest hint of light and air. The shadows were just a bit too dark, not matching the objects casting them.
“Is this still the higher realm?”
“…No. I’ve never seen that place, but I heard it’s beautiful. This place is different.” Liam looked around dully.
“It’s not a lower realm though, there’s no story or mission prompt. So where is it?”
“It a separate realm, with a specific purpose.” He was now staring at his feet, avoiding eye contact.
“What purpose?”
“It’s a cage, Bel.” His blue eyes met mine, and I could see the deep sadness within it. “And you can’t stay here.”
I was shocked at that. “You want me to leave?”
“What?!” He almost fell in shock at my words, stumbling over his words as he tried to explain. “No, that’s not what I mean at all! I would love for you to stay! Nothing would make me happier than if you could live here… I mean…” He seemed to realize what he was saying, and flushed with embarrassment. “It’s this place that’s the problem… watch:”
He reached out and touched a tree branch, which fell to pieces in his hand.
“This place destroys life, slowly draining the energy from everything in it until only death remains. Nothing good can survive here.”
That explains the tiredness I felt. For a moment I remembered Adonis showing me a blood red door. What had he called it? “A higher realm like ours. But a place of pure evil.” He told me something similar at the time, that nothing good could survive there. Looks like I managed to explore the scary portal in the end. But if what they are saying is true…
“What about you, Liam? How can you live here if it’s so dangerous?
“I told you.” He shrugged. “This world is a cage. And I’m the monster it’s meant to hold.”
“You’re not…” I wanted to protest his words, but I stopped at the look in his eyes. Changing tactics, I asked instead: “So how do we escape this cage?”
“I don’t know.” He frowned. “How did you get here?”
I thought about my last memory before I woke up, and then cursed loudly. “That IDIOT!”
“…I’m sorry?”
“Not you! That jerk who drugged me and tossed me in here!” My stomach growled. “And he did it before I could even eat BREAKFAST! He couldn’t wait until I had a chance to eat?” I shook my head sadly. “That’s almost as much of a crime as the kidnapping itself!”
The tree Liam’s hand had been resting on snapped like a twig, falling to the ground with a loud crash. Ignoring the carnage, he turned towards me, his face grim. “Who did this to you?”
“The kidnapping? He calls himself Adonis, I, however, have much more descriptive and fun colorful names for him.”
“Adonis…” Liam thought the name over for a moment. “Blonde fellow? Acts as if he’s the most important person in the universe?”
“That’s him!”
Liam growled under his breath. It was difficult to make out words, but I barely made out “Should have bit him harder.”
I raised an eyebrow at that, “You BIT him?”
“In another world. Wish I could snapped his neck, or at least ripped a limb off, rather than just take a bite...” He stopped, seemingly realizing what he just said, and looked over at me with an embarrassed expression. “Not that I’m normally biting people!”
I waved a hand at his distressed expression. “Don’t worry, I’d bite a few limbs off of the guy if I could right now. Especially with how hungry I am.” I laughed bitterly. “He better HOPE I get some food in me before I see him again!”
“Well, if Adonis the Great and Full of Himself was the one who put you here, then we have a bit of a problem. He’s the only one that I know of who has been able to open the portal to here.”
“Not that I want to go back anyways.”
“I told you, this place will kill you if you stay.” He shook his head at that. “First, we need to figure out food. Follow me.” He started walking deeper into the forest. I had to trot to keep up with his longer stride at first, but he quickly slowed down to allow me to walk at a regular pace. Even that was tiring, but I pushed forward. I looked at the forest, wondering what there would be to scavenge in such a dead place. Deciding to ask Liam, I tugged at his hand, noticing idly his ears turning red at the brief contact.
“What kind of food do you normally eat here?”
Liam blinked, seeming almost confused by the question. “There’s a few beasts… kind of. They should be edible for humans.”
“Okay. Cooked meat doesn’t sound too bad.”
“…Yes… cooked…because that’s how normal humans eat. I eat it like that too.”
Eyeing his dodgy appearance, I decided not to ask.
After a few minutes of walking, during which I became progressively more winded, we finally came to a large cave.
“Here’s my home!” Liam smiled proudly as we entered. “I carved it myself!” He proceeded to show me the fairly spacious cave with roughly made, mostly empty rooms, boasting about the thickness of the walls and the special rocks he had collected along the way.
I smiled at his boasting, the stared at the enormous claw marks in the carved stone walls, and silently looked away.
He pushed a roughly made stool close to me. “Here, have a seat.”
“Thank you!” I sat down, breathing heavily. “I’m beat!”
Liam’s expression was concerned as he watched me rest. “This place is already draining you, Bel. I’m worried what will happen if you stay here too long.”
“I’m fine!” I waved a hand tiredly. “Just need to catch my breath.”
He wasn’t reassured. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Maybe I’m just out of shape, have you thought about that?”
“Sure, that’s it.” Liam laughed quietly, almost seemingly in spite of himself. “Either way, while you rest, I’ll get you some food.”
“I’ll help…” I stood up, but my legs gave out beneath me and I started to fall. Liam, surprised, caught me, lifting me up in a careful hold. Silently, he moved deeper into the cave, entering one of the carved rooms. A single cot sat on a dirt floor, and he gently laid me down on it.
“Umm, thanks.” I looked up at Liam and paused saw an embarrassed expression, his eyes avoiding my own as he turned away.
“Rest here. I’ll bring you food.” He muttered quietly. “Cooked meat. Cooked.” He seemed to be reminding himself as he hurried out of the room, leaving me alone with just my thoughts and the sound of a rumbling, empty stomach.
I stared at the empty room for a few seconds, and then laughed. “What a cute villain.”
*** Soul transfer 28% complete. ***
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“Where are we?”
I looked up at the stranger who called himself Liam. His face was indifferent, his dark blue eyes cold as he shook his head slowly. “This isn’t a place for you. That’s all that matters. You should leave.”
“I can’t leave.” My voice cracked into a soft sob as I failed to hold back tears. “I’ve been betrayed, I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“You can do what you like, but you shouldn’t stay here.” He tried to laugh, but the sound couldn’t really be a laugh, it was far too sad and bitter of a sound to be called something so cheerful. “Otherwise, you’ll die, just like everything else.”
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“Bel, wake up.”
I blinked, the vision in my dream fading away as Liam’s face came into view.
I thought about the scene I had seen, similar to my recent interaction with Liam, but different. It felt real, like a memory. I’ve been here before. I’ve met Liam before in this place. It’s the same… but different.
But what is different? If I had to pin down what had changed from what I had remembered, it was Liam and I. The “me” in that memory was far more devastated by Adonis’s betrayal. I on the other hand, was more pissed than sad, wanting to save my mental energy towards plotting my revenge rather than mourning the friendship.
Anyone who is willing to stab me in the back doesn’t deserve my tears.
The Liam in my memory was different too. He was harsher, colder. The current Liam’s eyes were gentler, filled with a deep strength that hadn’t been there before.
We were both stronger, but it was more than that. There was a connection between us, not present in the brief memory of him from before. Something had changed in us. Something that had happened to bring us here again. I had a feeling that as the “soul transfer” continued I would learn more. If only I could figure out what made it increase!
“Bel, are you okay?”
I smiled at Liam, trying to reassure him. “I’m awake.”
“Good! So I made you some food…” He held out some charred meat that had been roughly cut up into bite sized chunks. It did not look very appetizing.
“I’m sorry.” He noticed me looking the food over and put his head down. “It’s my first time cooking it like this.”
I tried not to wonder how he usually ate meat if he didn’t cook it and took the burnt food from his hands. “Thanks, I’m starving!”
I ate it slowly, surprised at the not-terrible taste. Finishing the portion, I gave Liam a thumbs up. “It’s good!”
“Really?” He lit up with excitement. “I’ll keep working on my cooking and make it even better!”
Support spouse. The thought came and went, the words seeming strange and familiar at the same time.
“Hopefully I’ll be able to track down some fruit on the edge of this realm that are still alive and edible.” He said with a grin as I continued to eat. “That should at least keep you going until that Adonis the Jerkwad can come back to save you.”
I put down the meat in my hand. “I mean it Liam, I’m not going with him.”
“But you’ll die here.”
I didn’t hesitate, meeting his dark blue gaze with my own. “I’d rather that then agree to his broken idea of fate.”
The word fate seemed to twist within Liam, and for the first time I saw rage instead of amusement deep within his eyes. “Fate.” He spat the word out like a curse.: “… So you want to stay here?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Look you see we should talk about this before you say no…” I paused. “Did you just say ‘yes’?”
“I actually said ‘okay’ but essentially yes.”
“But… but…”
He was grinning again. “Did you want me to say ‘no’’? Or did you want to finish convincing me? Because I can pretend to say no if you want to say your piece.”
“Aren’t you worried I’ll get hurt?”
He pointed at me. “You don’t want to be under Adonis the Asshat’s control, under the control of fate.” His finger pointed at himself. “I happen to really really like having you around.” He shrugged. “So I guess we’ll just have to come up with a way to help you survive here.”
“Just like that?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
I grinned. “Then it’s settled. I’m staying with you AND not dying!”
*** Soul transfer 29% complete. ***
Eyeing the silent glowing words in the air, and curious about their meaning, I went back to eating the meat, which seemed to taste even better than before.
_________________
After eating I fell asleep again, feeling drained. This time I didn’t dream, but when I woke up, I still felt tired. Liam wasn’t kidding when he said this place would drain my energy from me.
…
Where is Liam?
Looking around, I saw that Liam, who had been by my side since I first woke up in this realm, was gone. I felt momentarily lost, and a bit lonely. Shaking my head in mild frustration, I forced myself to stand, bracing a hand against a claw marked wall.
Bel… you’ve been just fine being alone in the higher realm before this. In fact, you used to be excited when you could ditch Adonis the Buttface and spend time by yourself! How can you be so affected by just a few minutes without Liam?
…
…
… as the uncomfortable silence stretched on, I twiddled my thumbs, feeling a strange urge to juggle.
BAM!
A loud noise sounded out from a different part of the cave. “Thank goodness for that!” I didn’t even care if it was a deadly monster that broke into the cave, it was better than sitting bored and silent. I walked out, holding onto the wall for support, my feet shuffling oddly as I forced them to move. Taking short pauses to catch my breath, I continued to go slowly to the source of the noise. When I exited the room into the large open common space of the cave, however, I stopped, this time due to shock rather than exhaustion.
A glowing portal had opened in the air. It was similar to the ones in the higher realm, but different in several ways. The edges glowed a blood red, and the whole space gave off a malicious energy. As I watched, the tear in space closed, leaving only the feeling of unease behind.
And on the floor beneath where the portal had hovered, lay Liam.
“Liam!” I stumbled forward, half kneeling, half falling towards him. He was curled in a ball, his clothing damp with sweat. His face was paler than it had been, his face drawn in a silent mask of pain.
What had he gone through in a lower realm? I knew from experience that injuries from the lower realms didn’t follow you to the higher realms.
But the pain did.
Before I could investigate further, Liam turned over onto his back, his blue eyes still showing pain… but triumph as well.
“I got it!”
“You got what?” I asked. “Beaten up?”
“No! … I mean yes I did but that’s not the point!” he laughed. “I tricked Dumbo into slipping up and telling me what we need!”
“Dumbo… you mean Adonis?”
“That’s what I said, Adonis the Great and Mighty Dumbo.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle, having to sit down as even kneeling became too much. “So what did he tell you?”
“You don’t belong here… your very nature makes this realm reject you. Just as my nature, my energy allows me to live here trapped but fine. Which means you just need a different energy to survive in this world! One that won’t be sapped away. And who happens to possess an energy that this realm doesn’t feed off of?” His grin widened.
“You?”
“Yep!” He stood up, muttered “excuse me” and picked me up again, carrying me back to the cot in the other room.
“Wait! So if that’s the case why are you taking me back to bed? Can you just give me the energy? Also how do I get your energy? Do we have to do it on the bed?”
Liam turned a bright red. “No, it’s not what you think! I’m just letting you rest while I go prepare stuff…” He very quickly but gently set me down and rushed out of the room, as if afraid to hear anything else from me.
“Ummm…”I was asking in earnest, but my words seemed to make Liam misunderstand. Thinking for a moment, I groaned and covered my face in my hands, feeling the heat radiating off it “Stupid Bel.”
After what seemed like an eternity Liam returned with a cup. Still slightly embarrassed, I took it from him, looking at the liquid inside.
It was gold.
“What is this?”
“This?” He seemed confused by the question. “It’s blood.”
“No, it’s not.”
“What do you mean?”
“The blood of what? A magical creature?”
Liam laughed uncomfortably. “No, just my blood.”
“Why is it gold?”
He hesitated at that. “Normal blood is a gold color. That’s what regular human blood looks like. Yep. That’s it.”
“No… it’s red.”
“Maybe you’re confused?” He flinched at my expression. “Maybe everyone has gold blood and it just seemed red at the time? Because of bad lighting?”
I watched him bend his head uncomfortably, looking almost scared that I would ask further. My heart ached.
“Sure, Liam. It’s just normal, human blood.” I smiled as I saw him sigh with relief out of the corner of my eye. “Now what do I do with it?”
“You drink it. Thus, the cup.” Seeing my blanching expression, he continued to explain. “You see, it’s how to transfer some of my energy to you. It won’t fix everything, but it will help with the worst of it. I promise it won’t hurt you!”
I believed him. “Thank you, Liam.” I tipped it back and drank it. It was warm, but strangely sweet.
Yeah, definitely not “normal human blood” even if the color didn’t make it obvious.
As I drank it, I felt a good portion of energy return to me. I was still a little tired, but at least I should be able to walk without falling or passing out. I stood up, turning around, and gave Liam a hug. “Thank you!”
He stiffened in shock, but reached out to hug me back before stepping away, blushing. “S-sure… anytime…”
We smiled at each other, and for the first time that I could remember, for the first time since I had woken up in the higher realm, I felt at peace.
I felt at home.
*** Soul transfer 30% complete. ***
#writing#please fix the story#pfts#i wrote something!#mostly interactions between the two#but i'm happy to let them talk again!#hope you guys enjoy#I'm posting this shorter part as an encouragement to myself to keep going
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"because its hell" doesn't hold up.
When you create a setting from scratch, you have total control over it. You get to make the rules. You can't excuse a flaw in writing or presentation with "it is hell, it has to be this way!"
Here is one paraphrased example from Hazbin Hotel I've heard recently in response to a critique of calling the main characters too reliant on pinks/reds:
"All the characters have red in their color schemes because they are from the Pride ring and the rings are color coordinated."
While this gives an in-character/in-lore explanation for the color schemes, what it doesn't do is change the fact Hazbin Hotel's characters having a hard time standing out from the background. An in-character/in-lore justification should NOT be prioritized over the overall quality of a project.
As a writer, you have control over the constraints of your story. If you write yourself into a corner, you can't just throw up your hands and give up. You have to be willing to rework your lore and stories to make them stronger.
If excessive cursing is grating and making certain moments within your story less impactful, you should reel it in because it makes the presentation stronger. If your color based lore is causing the visuals of your project to suffer, it is time to reassess the lore.
Just because something is logically consistent within a world, doesn't make it a good writing/art choice.
A setting's rules should serve stories and characters, not the other way around.
#please... stop using that as an excuse. it is an admission that the writers could have fixed the issue by thinking through the-#worldbuilding/lore more... but they didnt. Anyway#that's my personal take/rant on how stories should be written.#hazbin critical#hazbin hotel criticism#vivziepop criticism#hazbin hotel critique#hazbin hotel redesign#helluva boss redesign#vivziepop critical#helluva boss critical#hazbin hotel critical#Dys rants
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Pierrot lunaire
#this is my offering to the gacha gods please give me the circus set early ;_;#the balloons here are a reference to ruis 3* side story iykyk ^_^#if only i could remove that weight....oooohhh im sick#every time i post i can see that the colours are different no matter the platform..idk how to fix it eh#anyway#tsukasa tenma#prsk fa#procreate#pjsk tsukasa#mr showtime#pierrot#project sekai#tsukasa pjsekai
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Plutonian Shore
Version 2.0
Now on the Twine engine, it features two different memory paths, two different endings, sound effects, and has been extended beyond just Angela's room.
Unfortunately, not all of the pictures in Angela's diary have been updated, and I just don't have that kind of time or patience at the moment (I want to share it this Halloween, not Halloween 3 years from now), but I will slowly work through and update everything.
CW: Blood, second person POV, music and sound effects.
Read @ ofthedark.org
#sims 2#ts2#simblr#pleasantview#angela pleasant#interactive fiction#sims stories#i will be continuously updating and tweaking it#please let me know if you come across anything that needs fixing#or if you need help figuring out how to trigger which path
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i have this really stupid idea in my head that im frankly a little obsessed with and the idea is this: trent crimm doing a drunk history episode on ted lasso's first tenure at richmond. is that how drunk history works? i don't think so. do i care? absolutely not. it's a special episode who cares because this image is not only hysterical to me but treasured. i treasure this image. i hold it close in my heart and also laugh and laugh and laugh.
#ted is played by what is very visibly a butch lesbian in a huge fake mustache.#roy is inexplicably played by himself in a wig.#ternt drunkenly and passionately explaining this whole thing. he says his own line and the trent actor (who also has a wig) gets to act it#trent waving his hands as he's explaining all this. the host being like 'not very often we get to have someone include the part where They#come into the story' and trents like [dorkiest finger guns]#also yes i said first tenure bc this scenario lives in post canon fantasy fix it land where ambiguously ted comes back to richmond#at some point. and also both bc my tedependent heart is obsessed and bc it's really funny#marries trent. just bc i want this to end with trent--hammered and pleased as punch--being like AND THEN I MARRIED HIM!!!!!#[falls back on couch happily] :)#also in the line of that great 5+1 social media fic#by jessjessthebest. a sequel thats just like a youtube video like#'we made ted lasso and trent crimm watch that episode of drunk history about them' and trent is just. head in hands the whole time.#ted is DELIGHTED.#anyway i rotate this in my brain fucking DAILY. it's so goddamn funny to me.#ted lasso#tedependent#tedtrent#trent crimm#the line in question being 'is this a fucking joke' i just realized i did not clarify that#no but really im obsessed with this it's so fucking funny#also any image trent had left of being a ruthless ex journalist is thoroughly ruined#all of his former colleagues have seen him and drunk and giggling and fully admitting what he was thinking at the time and oh boy#hes a disaster <3
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Akihiko Sanada from the hit game Persona 3?!
#persona 3 reload#persona 3#akihiko sanada#I was planning on drawing Shinjiro but his beanie is a fucking nightmare so I drew his boyfriend#ok so funny story#I just realized all these years I have been using the wrong setting on my tablet#and these types of brushes never worked...#but fixed it after 6 years!! ^_^#also I finished p3r so ye...#that was something#I think I should have played the portable version first#maybe I will in the future#art with actually working pen sensitivity?>?!?!!?@?@?>!#there's SOMETHING going on with the shading but please close your eyes
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post/734733274896809984/do-you-ever-worry-your-own-writing-might-come-off that makes sense. i was asking because i'm afraid of accidentally writing misogyny myself and i kind of admire what you do
Hmm... I wish I had better advice to give you on this front, but honestly, the only thing I can tell you is to consider the perspective of your female characters.
Women are people. They have thoughts and feelings of their own, so like... just let them have their own arcs. A lot of the worst misogyny in WC comes from the way that the writers just don't care about their girls (or, in the case of tall shadow, actually get undermined and forced to rewrite entire chapters), so they're not curious about their lives, or WHY they feel the way they do or what they want, or any direction for their character arcs.
Turtle Tail as an example. She'll often just end up feeling whatever Gray Wing's plot demands. She's gotta leave when Storm dumps him to make him feel lonely. She shows up again to love him in the next book. Lets her best friend Bumble get dragged back to Tom the Wifebeater, but is sad enough about her death to be "unreasonably angry" with Clear Sky, and then calms down and accept Gray Wing is right all along.
And then she dies, so he can have his very own fridge wife.
In this way, Turtle Tail's just being used to tell Gray Wing's story. They're not interested in why she would turn on Bumble, or god forbid any lingering negative feelings for how she didn't help her, or even resentment towards Clear Sky for killing her or Gray Wing for jumping to his defense. She isn't really going through her own character arc.
She does have personality traits of her own, don't misunderstand my criticism, but as a character she revolves around Gray Wing.
So, zoom out every now and then, and just ask yourself; "Whose story is being told by what I wrote? Do my female characters have goals, wants, and agency, or are they just supporting men? How do their choices impact the narrative?"
But that's already kinda assuming that you already have characters like Turtle Tail who DO have personalities and potential of their own. Here's some super simple and practical advice that helped me;
Tally the genders in your cast. How many are boys, how many are girls, how many are others?
And take stock of how many of those characters are just in the supporting cast, and compare that to the amount you have in the main cast.
If you have a significant imbalance, ESPECIALLY in the main cast, fire the Woman Beam.
It's a really simple trick to just write a male character, and then change its gender while keeping it the same. I promise women are really not fundamentally different from men lmao. You can consider how your in-universe gender roles affect them later, if you'd like, but when you're just starting to wean yourself off a "boy bias" this trick works like a charm.
Also you're not allowed to change the body type of any girl you Woman Beam because I said so. PLEASE allow your girls to have muscles, or be fat, or be old, or have lots of scars. Do NOT do what a cowardly Triple A studio does, where the women all have the same cute or sexy face and curvy body while they're standing next to dwarves, robots, and a gorilla.
Or this shit,
If you do this I will GET you. If you're ever possessed by the dark urge, you will see my face appear in the clouds like Mufasa himself to guide you away from the path of evil.
Anyway, you get better at just making characters girls to begin with as time goes on and you practice it. It's really not as big of a deal as your brain might think it is.
Take a legitimate interest in female characters and try not to disproportionately hit them with parental/romance plots as opposed to the male cast, and you'll be fine. Don't think of them as "SPECIAL WOMEN CHARACTERS" just make a character and then let her be a girl, occasionally checking your tally and doing some critical thinking about their use in the story.
(Also remember I'm not a professional or anything, I'm just trying to give advice)
#I wish I had more succinct and practical advice to give you besides the woman beam trick#Honestly I just kinda feel it out because I like telling stories about girls#I made it fun for myself by clapping and cheering and whooping and hollering whenever a girl does something#because it's not fun to write like a monk in a monastery#With the spectre of Brother Smockbimble looming over your shoulder telling you to Write Perfectly Every Time#Characters aren't real people. You can just fix it if you happen to fuck up or do better next time with what you learned.#Making mistakes is just part of acquiring skill#and writing is an art just like painting or drawing.#So don't make a fun OC project into homework! You should be enjoying making your own art! Express yourself!#Please understand that when I'm ripping into the series I'm being so harsh because it's bestselling corporate media#Read by HUNDREDS of thousands of kids worldwide#Raking in millions of dollars a year. Written by a TEAM of professionals.#So I have higher expectations of it than of a fandom rando on the internet. Or even a self-published author who's just One Guy.#Hence why I'm infinitely more charitable to Ratha than I am to Battle Cats#bones gives advice
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NOT A DRILL NOT A DRILL NOT A DRILL
THE OG STORY I USED TO READ DURING MY WATTPAD DAYS GOT COMPLETED. AFTER BEING LIKE NOT FINISHED FOR YEARS.
Avaleon u sexy one omg??
idk why i still have wattpad bc i never use it anymore but i opened it today for the first time in months and just seen that update??
i can't explain how much I used to and still love avaleons writing, i still think about her other story 'i can't eat love'.
I swear this story ended on such a cliffhanger likee. i am literally about to read this whole thing again.
i am COMING @screamingatanemptyroom
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After reading the tags on your latest post I was wondering if it would be possible for you to make a brief overview of the iffy tropes/details your sensitivity reader helped you pick up on? Of course it wouldn't replace doing research ourselves, but I'd love to hear about it regardless!
Have not run it by them yet because it is in no fit state for human consumption at this point; the tropes are just from reading their blog + others on Tumblr + general Internet research including the excellent "blind people walk you through normal activities from their perspective" videos on YouTube. But off the top of my head:
Face touching. Where the blind person gropes someone's face to see? Sighted people made that up. I rewrote a chapter in Towards the Sun when I realized that one. Which makes sense, because why would a blind person be any more inclined to run their hands all up in your facial juices. Eww.
Negating blindness with magic and pretty much ignoring the blindness henceforth. Which is why Zuko isn't going to learn to see with firebending. There are very interesting discussions on how Toph herself fits and doesn't fit into this trope; finding them is left as an exercise for the reader.
Token blind character, AKA only having one blind person in the narrative who represents All Blind People. Going to have a few blind NPCs running around, with various levels of sight and accommodations, to thoroughly negate this one.
Being Depressed and/or Overly Inspirational about the blindness. AKA character devotes a large chunk of the story to bemoaning their blindness, with bonus inspirational "overcoming" at the end. Think about how it would feel if the majority of characters like you spent vast word counts hating the thing that makes them like you. And then solving it, in a way you can't, so they don't have to have the tragic fate of Being Like You. ...So Zuko is not getting cured, and he's also not wasting much time wallowing in an angst puddle.
Etc.
Basically, I want this to be a story that low vision folks can read and go "that was fun and less offensive than 70% of actual media representations", and sighted people can go "that was fun and hopefully I internalized some positive things that will make me less likely to grab a blind person's arm and forcibly Help Them Cross The Road, Try To Pet Their Dog (and Get Huffy When Asked to Please Not), or Call People Out On Not Being Blind Because They Don't Fit The Stereotypes".
#I am never going to claim to be an expert on this topic#but I'm pretty sure I can do it better than 70% of writers actually getting paid to write a blind character#which says less about my research skills and more about how media favors sighted-friendly interpretations of blindness#worst story I've come across is the blind actor who didn't get a role playing a blind person#because they came off as too competent at navigating the set#surely no sighted person would believe that this actor was actually blind!#...yep#avatar the last airbender#atla#blind Zuko#no specification necessary Toph#actual low vision folks please feel free to correct anything in this post#or my stories in general#it was reader feedback that got me to fix that Towards the Sun chapter#and it is a far better chapter for it
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Twelve, Thirteen, and One
Words: 6k
Rating: G
Themes: Friendship, Self-Giving Love
(Written for the Four Loves Fairytale Retelling Challenge over at the @inklings-challenge! A Cinderella retelling feat. curious critters and a lot of friendship.)
When the clock chimes midnight on that third evening, thirteen creatures look to the girl who showed them all kindness.
—
It’s hours after dark, again, and the human girl still sleeps in the ashes.
The mice notice this—though it happens so often that they’ve ceased to pay attention to her. She smells like everything else in the hearth: ashy and overworked, tinged with the faint smell of herbs from the kitchen.
When she moves or shifts in her sleep (uncomfortable sleep—even they can sense the exhaustion in her posture as she sits slumped against the wall, more willing to seep up warmth from the stone than lie cold elsewhere this time of year), they simply scurry around her and continue combing for crumbs and seeds. They’d found a feast of lentils scattered about once, and many other times, the girl had beckoned them softly to her hand, where she’d held a little chunk of brown bread.
Tonight, she has nothing. They don’t mind—though three of them still come to sniff her limp hand where it lies drooped against the side of her tattered dress.
A fourth one places a little clawed hand on the side of her finger, leaning over it to investigate her palm for any sign of food.
When she stirs, it’s to the sensation of a furry brown mouse sitting in her palm.
It can feel the flickering of her muscles as she wakes—feeling slowly returning to her body. To her credit, she cracks her eyes open and merely observes it.
They’re all but tame by now. The Harsh-Mistress and the Shrieking-Girl and the Angry-Girl are to be avoided like the plague never was, but this girl—the Cinder-Girl, they think of her—is gentle and kind.
Even as she shifts a bit and they hear the dull crack of her joints, they’re too busy to mind. Some finding a few buried peas (there were always some peas or lentils still hidden here, if they looked carefully), some giving themselves an impromptu bath to wash off the dust. The one sitting on her hand is doing the latter, fur fluffed up as it scratches one ear and then scrubs tirelessly over its face with both paws.
One looks up from where it’s discovered a stray pea to check her expression.
A warm little smile has crept up her face, weary and dirty and sore as she seems to be. She stays very still in her awkward half-curl against stone, watching the mouse in her hand groom itself. The tender look about her far overwhelms—melts, even—the traces of tension in her tired limbs.
Very slowly, so much so that they really aren’t bothered by it, she raises her spare hand and begins lightly smearing the soot away from her eyes with the back of her wrist.
The mouse in her palm gives her an odd look for the movement, but has discovered her skin is warmer than the cold stone floor or the ash around the dying fire. It pads around in a circle once, then nudges its nose against her calloused skin, settling down for a moment.
The Cinder-Girl has closed her eyes again, and drops her other hand into her lap, slumping further against the wall. Her smile has grown even warmer, if sadder.
They decide she’s quite safe. Very friendly.
—
The old rat makes his rounds at the usual times of night, shuffling through a passage that leads from the ground all the way up to the attic.
When both gold sticks on the clocks’ moonlike faces point upward, there’s a faint chime from the tower-clock downstairs. He used to worry that the sound would rouse the humans. Now, he ignores it and goes about his business.
There’s a great treasury of old straw in the attic. It’s inside a large sack—and while this one doesn’t have corn or wheat like the ones near the kitchen sometimes do, he knows how to chew it open all the same.
The girl sleeps on this sack of straw, though she doesn’t seem to mind what he takes from it. There’s enough more of it to fill a hundred rat’s nests, so he supposes she doesn’t feel the difference.
Tonight, though—perhaps he’s a bit too loud in his chewing and tearing. The girl sits up slowly in bed, and he stiffens, teeth still sunk into a bit of the fabric.
“Oh.” says the girl. She smiles—and though the expression should seem threatening, all pulled mouth-corners and teeth, he feels the gentleness in her posture and wonders at novel thoughts of differing body languages. “Hello again. Do you need more straw?”
He isn’t sure what the sounds mean, but they remind him of the soft whuffles and squeaks of his siblings when they were small. Inquisitive, unafraid. Not direct or confrontational.
She’s seemed safe enough so far—almost like the woman in white and silver-gold he’s seen here sometimes, marveling at his own confidence in her safeness—so he does what signals not-afraid the best to his kind. He glances her over, twitches his whiskers briefly, and goes back to what he was doing.
Some of the straw is too big and rough, some too small and fine. He scratches a bundle out into a pile so he can shuffle through it. It’s true he doesn’t need much, but the chill of winter hasn’t left the world yet.
The girl laughs. The sound is soft and small. It reminds him again of young, friendly, peaceable.
“Take as much as you need,” she whispers. Her movements are unassuming when she reaches for something on the old wooden crate she uses as a bedside table. With something in hand, she leans against the wall her bed is a tunnel’s-width from, and offers him what she holds. “Would you like this?”
He peers at it in the dark, whiskers twitching. His eyesight isn’t the best, so he finds himself drawing closer to sniff at what she has.
It’s a feather. White and curled a bit, like the goose-down he’d once pulled out the corner of a spare pillow long ago. Soft and long, fluffy and warm.
He touches his nose to it—then, with a glance upward at her softly-smiling face, takes it in his teeth.
It makes him look like he has a mustache, and is a bit too big to fit through his hole easily. The girl giggles behind him as he leaves.
—
There’s a human out in the gardens again. Which is strange—this is a place for lizards, maybe birds and certainly bugs. Not for people, in his opinion. She’s not dressed in venomous bright colors like the other humans often are, but neither does she stay to the manicured garden path the way they do.
She doesn’t smell like unnatural rotten roses, either. A welcome change from having to dart for cover at not just the motions, but the stenches that accompany the others that appear from time to time.
This human is behind the border-shubs, beating an ornate rug that hangs over the fence with a home-tied broom. Huge clouds of dust shake from it with each hit, settling in a thin film on the leaves and grass around her.
She stops for a moment to press her palm to her forehead, then turns over her shoulder and coughs into her arm.
When she begins again, it’s with a sharp WHOP.
He jumps a bit, but only on instinct. However—
A few feet from where he settles back atop the sunning-rock, there’s a scuffle and a sharp splash. Then thrashing—waster swashing about with little churns and splishes.
It’s not the way of lizards to think of doing anything when one falls into the water. There were several basins for fish and to catch water off the roof for the garden—they simply had to not fall into them, not drown. There was little recourse for if they did. What could another lizard do, really? Fall in after them? Best to let them try to climb out if they could.
The girl hears the splashing. She stares at the water pot for a moment.
Then, she places her broom carefully on the ground and comes closer.
Closer. His heart speeds up. He skitters to the safety of a plant with low-hanging leaves—
—and then watches as she walks past his hiding place, peers into the basin, and reaches in.
Her hand comes up dripping wet, a very startled lizard still as a statue clinging to her fingers.
“Are you the same one I always find here?” she asks with a chiding little smile. “Or do all of you enjoy swimming?”
When she places her hand on the soft spring grass, the lizard darts off of it and into the underbrush. It doesn’t go as far as it could, though—something about this girl makes both of them want to stand still and wait for what she’ll do next.
The girl just watches it go. She lets out a strange sound—a weary laugh, perhaps—and turns back to her peculiar chore.
—
A song trails through the old house—under the floorboards—through the walls—into the garden, beneath the undergrowth—and lures them out of hiding.
It isn’t an audible song, not like that of the birds in the summer trees or the ashen-girl murmuring beautiful sounds to herself in the lonely hours. This one was silent. Yet, it reached deep down into their souls and said come out, please—the one who helped you needs your help.
It didn’t require any thought, no more than eat or sleep or run did.
In chains of silver and grey, all the mice who hear it converge, twenty-four tiny feet pattering along the wood in the walls. The rat joins them, but they are not afraid.
When they emerge from a hole out into the open air, the soft slip-slap of more feet surround them. Six lizards scurry from the bushes, some gleaming wet as if they’d just escaped the water trough or run through the birdbath themselves.
As a strange little hoard, they approach the kind girl. Beside her is a tall woman wearing white and silver and gold.
The girl—holding a large, round pumpkin—looks surprised to see them here. The woman is smiling.
“Set the pumpkin on the drive,” the woman says, a soft gleam in her eye. “The rest of you, line up, please.”
Bemused, but with a heartbeat fast enough for them to notice, the girl gingerly places the pumpkin on the stone of the drive. It’s natural for them, somehow, to follow—the mice line in pairs in front of it, the rat hops on top of it, and the lizards all stand beside.
“What are they doing?” asks the girl—and there’s curiosity and gingerness in her tone, like she doesn’t believe such a sight is wrong, but is worried it might be.
The older woman laughs kindly, and a feeling like blinking hard comes over the world.
It’s then—then, in that flash of darkness that turns to dazzling light, that something about them changes.
“Oh!” exclaims the girl, and they open their eyes. “Oh! They’re—“
They’re different.
The mice aren’t mice at all—and suddenly they wonder if they ever were, or if it was an odd dream.
They’re horses, steel grey and sleek-haired with with silky brown manes and tails. Their harnesses are ornate and stylish, their hooves polished and dark.
Instead of a rat, there’s a stout man in fine livery, with whiskers dark and smart as ever. He wears a fine cap with a familiar white feather, and the gleam in his eye is surprised.
“Well,” he says, examining his hands and the cuffs of his sleeves, “I suppose I won’t be wanting for adventure now.”
Instead of six lizards, six footmen stand at attention, their ivory jackets shining in the late afternoon sun.
The girl herself is different, though she’s still human—her hair is done up beautifully in the latest fashion, and instead of tattered grey she wears a shimmering dress of lovely pale green, inlaid with a design that only on close inspection is flowers.
“They are under your charge, now,” says the woman in white, stepping back and folding her hands together. “It is your responsibility to return before the clock strikes midnight—when that happens, the magic will be undone. Understood?”
“Yes,” says the girl breathlessly. She stares at them as if she’s been given the most priceless gift in all the world. “Oh, thank you.”
—
The castle is decorated brilliantly. Flowery garlands hang from every parapet, beautiful vines sprawling against walls and over archways as they climb. Dozens of picturesque lanterns hang from the walls, ready to be lit once the sky grows dark.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen the castle,” the girl says, standing one step out of the carriage and looking so awed she seems happy not to go any further. “Father and I used to drive by it sometimes. But it never looked so lovely as this.”
“Shall we accompany you in, milady?” asks one of the footmen. They’re all nearly identical, though this one has freckles where he once had dark flecks in his scales.
She hesitates for only a moment, looking up at the pinnacles of the castle towers. Then, she shakes her head, and turns to look at them all with a smile like the sun.
“I think I’ll go in myself,” she says. “I’m not sure what is custom. But thank you—thank you so very much.”
And so they watch her go—stepping carefully in her radiant dress that looked lovelier than any queen’s.
Though she was not royal, it seemed there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that she was. The guards posted at the door opened it for her without question.
With a last smile over her shoulder, she stepped inside.
—
He's straightening the horses' trappings for the fifth time when the doors to the castle open, and out hurries a figure. It takes him a moment to recognize her, garbed in rich fabrics and cloaked in shadows, but it's the girl, rushing out to the gilded carriage. A footman steps forward and offers her a hand, which she accepts gratefully as she steps up into the seat.
“Enjoyable evening, milady?” asks the coachman. His whiskers are raised above the corners of his mouth, and his twinkling eyes crinkle at the edges.
“Yes, quite, thank you!” she breathes in a single huff. She smooths her dress the best she can before looking at him with some urgency. “The clock just struck quarter till—will you be able to get us home?”
The gentle woman in white had said they only would remain in such states until midnight. How long was it until the middle of night? What was a quarter? Surely darkness would last for far more hours than it had already—it couldn’t be close. Yet it seemed as though it must be; the princesslike girl in the carriage sounded worried it would catch them at any moment.
“I will do all I can,” he promises, and with a sharp rap of the reins, they’re off at a swift pace.
They arrive with minutes to spare. He knows this because after she helps him down from the carriage (...wait. That should have been the other way around! He makes mental note for next time: it should be him helping her down. If he can manage it. She’s fast), she takes one of those minutes to show him how his new pocketwatch works.
He’s fascinated already. There’s a part of him that wonders if he’ll remember how to tell time when he’s a rat again—or will this, all of this, be forgotten?
The woman in white is there beside the drive, and she’s already smiling. A knowing gleam lights her eye.
“Well, how was the ball?” she asks, as Cinder-Girl turns to face her with the most elated expression. “I hear the prince is looking for fair maidens. Did he speak with you?”
The girl rushes to grasp the woman’s hands in hers, clasping them gratefully and beaming up at her.
“It was lovely! I’ve never seen anything so lovely,” she all but gushes, her smile brighter and broader than they’d ever seen it. “The castle is beautiful; it feels so alive and warm. And yes, I met the Prince—although hush, he certainly isn’t looking for me—he’s so kind. I very much enjoyed speaking with him. He asked me to dance, too; I had as wonderful a time as he seemed to. Thank you! Thank you dearly.”
The woman laughs gently. It isn’t a laugh one would describe as warm, but neither is it cold in the sense some laughs can be—it's soft and beautiful, almost crystalline.
“That’s wonderful. Now, up to bed! You’ve made it before midnight, but your sisters will be returning soon.”
“Yes! Of course,” she replies eagerly—turning to smile gratefully at coachman and stroke the nearest horses on their noses and shoulders, then curtsy to the footmen. “Thank you all, very much. I could not ask for a more lovely company.”
It’s a strange moment when all of their new hearts swell with warmth and affection for this girl—and then the world darkens and lightens so quickly they feel as though they’ve fallen asleep and woken up.
They’re them again—six mice, six lizards, a rat, and a pumpkin. And a tattered gray dress.
“Please, would you let me go again tomorrow? The ball will last three days. I had such a wonderful time.”
“Come,” the woman said simply, “and place the pumpkin beneath the bushes.”
The woman in white led the way back to the house, followed by an air-footed girl and a train of tiny critters. There was another silent song in the air, and they thought perhaps the girl could hear it too: one that said yes—but get to bed!
—
The second evening, when the door of the house thuds shut and the hoofsteps of the family’s carriage fade out of hearing, the rat peeks out of a hole in the kitchen corner to see the Cinder-Girl leap to her feet.
She leans close to the window and watched for more minutes than he quite understands—or maybe he does; it was good to be sure all cats had left before coming out into the open—and then runs with a spring in her step to the back door near the kitchen.
Ever so faintly, like music, the woman’s laughter echoes faintly from outside. Drawn to it like he had been drawn to the silent song, the rat scurries back through the labyrinth of the walls.
When he hurries out onto the lawn, the mice and lizards are already there, looking up at the two humans expectantly. This time, the Cinder-Girl looks at them and smiles broadly.
“Hello, all. So—how do you do it?” she asks the woman. Her eyes shine with eager curiosity. “I had no idea you could do such a thing. How does it work?”
The woman fixes her with a look of fond mock-sternness. “If I were to explain to you the details of how, I’d have to tell you why and whom, and you’d be here long enough to miss the royal ball.” She waves her hands she speaks. “And then you’d be very much in trouble for knowing far more than you ought.”
The rat misses the girl’s response, because the world blinks again—and now all of them once again are different. Limbs are long and slender, paws are hooves with silver shoes or feet in polished boots.
The mouse-horses mouth at their bits as they glance back at the carriage and the assortment of humans now standing by it. The footmen are dressed in deep navy this time, and the girl wears a dress as blue as the summer sky, adorned with brilliant silver stars.
“Remember—“ says the woman, watching fondly as the Cinder-Girl steps into the carriage in a whorl of beautiful silk. “Return before midnight, before the magic disappears.”
“Yes, Godmother,” she calls, voice even more joyful than the previous night. “Thank you!”
—
The castle is just as glorious as before—and the crowd within it has grown. Noblemen and women, royals and servants, and the prince himself all mill about in the grand ballroom.
He’s unsure of the etiquette, but it seems best for her not to enter alone. Once he escorts her in, the coachman bows and watches for a moment—the crowd is hushed again, taken by her beauty and how important they think her to be—and then returns to the carriage outside.
He isn’t required in the ballroom for much of the night—but he tends to the horses and checks his pocketwatch studiously, everything in him wishing to be the best coachman that ever once was a rat.
Perhaps that wouldn’t be hard. He’d raise the bar, then. The best coachman that ever drove for a princess.
Because that was what she was—or, that was what he heard dozens of hushed whispers about once she’d entered the ball. Every noble and royal and servant saw her and deemed her a grand princess nobody knew from a land far away. The prince himself stared at her in a marveling way that indicated he thought no differently.
It was a thing more wondrous than he had practice thinking. If a mouse could become a horse or a rat could become a coachman, couldn’t a kitchen-girl become a princess?
The answer was yes, it seemed—perhaps in more ways than one.
She had rushed out with surprising grace just before midnight. They took off quickly, and she kept looking back toward the castle door, as if worried—but she was smiling.
“Did you know the Prince is very nice?” she asks once they’re safely home, and she’s stepped down (drat) without help again. The woman in white stands on her same place beside the drive, and when Cinder-Girl sees her, she waves with dainty grace that clearly holds a vibrant energy and sheer thankfulness behind it. “I’ve never known what it felt like to be understood. He thinks like I do.”
“How is that?” asks the woman, quirking an amused brow. “And if I might ask, how do you know?”
“Because he mentions things first.” The girl tries to smother some of the wideness of her smile, but can’t quite do so. “And I've shared his thoughts for a long time. That he loves his father, and thinks oranges and citrons are nice for festivities especially, and that he’s always wanted to go out someday and do something new.”
—
The third evening, the clouds were dense and a few droplets of rain splattered the carriage as they arrived.
“Looks like rain, milady,” said the coachman as she disembarked to stand on water-spotted stone. “If it doesn’t blow by, we’ll come for ye at the steps, if it pleases you.”
“Certainly—thank you,” she replies, all gleaming eyes and barely-smothered smiles. How her excitement to come can increase is beyond them—but she seems more so with each night that passes.
She has hardly turned to head for the door when a smattering of rain drizzles heavily on them all. She flinches slightly, already running her palms over the skirt of her dress to rub out the spots of water.
Her golden dress glisters even in the cloudy light, and doesn’t seem to show the spots much. Still, it’s hardy an ideal thing.
“One of you hold the parasol—quick about it, now—and escort her inside,” the coachman says quickly. The nearest footman jumps into action, hop-reaching into the carriage and falling back down with the umbrella in hand, unfolding it as he lands. “Wait about in case she needs anything.”
The parasol is small and not meant for this sort of weather, but it's enough for the moment. The pair of them dash for the door, the horses chomping and stamping behind them until they’re driven beneath the bows of a huge tree.
The footman knows his duty the way a lizard knows to run from danger. He achieves it the same way—by slipping off to become invisible, melting into the many people who stood against the golden walls.
From there, he watches.
It’s so strange to see the way the prince and their princess gravitate to each other. The prince’s attention seems impossible to drag away from her, though not for many’s lack of trying.
Likewise—more so than he would have thought, though perhaps he’s a bit slow in noticing—her focus is wholly on the prince for long minutes at a time.
Her attention is always divided a bit whenever she admires the interior of the castle, the many people and glamorous dresses in the crowd, the vibrant tables of food. It’s all very new to her, and he’s not certain it doesn’t show. But the Prince seems enamored by her delight in everything—if he thinks it odd, he certainly doesn’t let on.
They talk and laugh and sample fine foods and talk to other guests together, then they turn their heads toward where the musicians are starting up and smile softly when they meet each other’s eyes. The Prince offers a hand, which is accepted and clasped gleefully.
Then, they dance.
Their motions are so smooth and light-footed that many of the crowd forgo dancing, because admiring them is more enjoyable. They’re in-sync, back and forth like slow ripples on a pond. They sometimes look around them—but not often, especially compared to how long they gaze at each other with poorly-veiled, elated smiles.
The night whirls on in flares of gold tulle and maroon velvet, ivory, carnelian, and emerald silks, the crowd a nonstop blur of color.
(Color. New to him, that. Improved vision was wonderful.)
The clock strikes eleven, but there’s still time, and he’s fairly certain he won’t be able to convince the girl to leave anytime before midnight draws near.
He was a lizard until very recently. He’s not the best at judging time, yet. Midnight does draw near, but he’s not sure he understands how near.
The clock doesn’t quite say up-up. So he still has time. When the rain drums ceaselessly outside, he darts out and runs in a well-practiced way to find their carriage.
—
Another of the footmen comes in quickly, having been sent in a rush by the coachman, who had tried to keep his pocketwatch dry just a bit too long. He’s soaking wet from the downpour when he steps close enough to get her attention.
She sees him, notices this, and—with a glimmer of recognition and amusement in her eyes—laughs softly into her hand.
ONE—TWO— the clock starts. His heart speeds up terribly, and his skin feels cold. He suddenly craves a sunny rock.
“Um,” he begins awkwardly. Lizards didn’t have much in the way of a vocal language. He bows quickly, and water drips off his face and hat and onto the floor. “The chimes, milady.”
THREE—FOUR—
Perhaps she thought it was only eleven. Her face pales. “Oh.”
FIVE—SIX—
Like a deer, she leaps from the prince’s side and only manages a stumbling, backward stride as she curtsies in an attempt at a polite goodbye.
“Thank you, I must go—“ she says, and then she’s racing alongside the footman as fast as they both can go. The crowd parts for them just enough, amidst loud murmurs of surprise.
SEVEN—EIGHT—
“Wait!” calls the prince, but they don’t. Which hopefully isn’t grounds for arrest, the footman idly thinks.
They burst through the door and out into the open air.
NINE—TEN—
It has been storming. The rain is crashing down in torrents—the walkways and steps are flooded with a firm rush of water.
She steps in a crevice she couldn’t see, the water washes over her feet, and she stumbles, slipping right out of one shoe. There’s noise at the door behind them, so she doesn’t stop or even hesitate. She runs at a hobble and all but dives through the open carriage door. The awaiting footman quickly closes it, and they’re all grasping quickly to their riding-places at the corners of the vehicle.
ELEVEN—
A flash of lightning coats the horses in white, despite the dark water that’s soaked into their coats, and with a crack of the rains and thunder they take off at a swift run.
There’s shouting behind them—the prince—as people run out and call to the departing princess.
TWELVE.
Mist swallows them up, so thick they can’t hear or see the castle, but the horses know the way.
The castle’s clock tower must have been ever-so-slightly fast. (Does magic tell truer time?) Their escape works for a few thundering strides down the invisible, cloud-drenched road—until true midnight strikes a few moments later.
—
She walks home in the rain and fog, following a white pinprick of light she can guess the source of—all the while carrying a hollow pumpkin full of lizards, with an apron pocket full of mice and a rat perched on her shoulder.
It’s quite the walk.
—
The prince makes a declaration so grand that the mice do not understand it. The rat—a bit different now—tells them most things are that way to mice, but he’s glad to explain.
The prince wants to find the girl who wore the golden slipper left on the steps, he relates. He doesn’t want to ask any other to marry him, he loved her company so.
The mice think that’s a bit silly. Concerning, even. What if he does find her? There won’t be anyone to secretly leave seeds in the ashes or sneak them bread crusts when no humans are looking.
The rat thinks they’re being silly and that they’ve become too dependent on handouts. Back in his day, rodents worked for their food. Chewing open a bag of seed was an honest day’s work for its wages.
Besides, he confides, as he looks again out the peep-hole they’ve discovered in the floor trim of the parlor. You’re being self-interested, if you ask me. Don’t you want our princess to find a good mate, and live somewhere spacious and comfortable, free of human-cats, where she’d finally have plenty to eat?
It’s hard to make a mouse look appropriately chastised, but that question comes close. They shuffle back a bit to let him look out at the strange proceedings in the parlor again.
There are many humans there. The Harsh-Mistress stands tall and rigid at the back of one of the parlor chairs, exchanging curt words with a strange man in fine clothes with a funny hat. Shrieking-Girl and Angry-Girl stand close, scoffing and laughing, looking appalled.
Cinder-Girl sits on the chair that’s been pulled to the middle of the room. She extends her foot toward a strange golden object on a large cushion.
The shoe, the rat notes so the mice can follow. They can’t quite see it from here—poor eyesight and all.
Of course, the girl’s foot fits perfectly well into her own shoe. They all saw that coming.
Evidently, the humans did not. There’s absolute uproar.
“There is no possible way she’s the princess you’re looking for!” declares Harsh-Mistress, her voice full of rage. “She’s a kitchen maid. Nothing royal about her.”
“How dare you!” Angry-Girl rages. “Why does it fit you? Why not us?”
“You sneak!” shrieks none other than Shrieking-Girl. “Mother, she snuck to the ball! She must have used magic, somehow! Princes won’t marry sneaks, will they?”
“I think they might,” says a calm voice from the doorway, and the uproar stops immediately.
The Prince steps in. He stares at Cinder-Girl.
She stares back. Her face is still smudged with soot, and her dress is her old one, gray and tattered. The golden slipper gleams on her foot, having fit as only something molded or magic could.
A blush colors her face beneath the ash and she leaps up to do courtesy. “Your Highness.”
The Prince glances at the messenger-man with the slipper-pillow and the funny hat. The man nods seriously.
The Prince blinks at this, as if he wasn’t really asking anything with his look—it’s already clear he recognizes her—and meets Cinder-Girl’s gaze with a smile. It’s the same half-nervous, half-attemptingly-charming smile as he kept giving her at the ball.
He bows to her and offers a hand. (The rat has to push three mice out of the way to maintain his view.)
“It’s my honor,” he assures her. “Would you do me the great honor of accompanying me to the castle? I’d had a question in mind, but it seems there are—“ he glances at Harsh-Mistress, who looks like a very upset rat in a mousetrap. “—situations we might discuss remedying. You’d be a most welcome guest in my father’s house, if you’d be amenable to it?”
It’s all so much more strange and unusual than anything the creatures of the house are used to seeing. They almost don’t hear it, at first—that silent song.
It grows stronger, though, and they turn their heads toward it with an odd hope in their hearts.
—
The ride to the castle is almost as strange as that prior walk back. The reasons for this are such:
One—their princess is riding in their golden carriage alongside the prince, and their chatter and awkward laughter fills the surrounding spring air. They have a good feeling about the prince, now, if they didn’t already. He can certainly take things in stride, and he is no respecter of persons. He seems just as elated to be by her side as he was at the ball, even with the added surprise of where she'd come from.
Two—they have been transformed again, and the woman in white has asked them a single question: Would you choose to stay this way?
The coachman said yes without a second thought. He’d always wanted life to be more fulfilling, he confided—and this seemed a certain path to achieving that.
The footmen might not have said yes, but there was something to be said for recently-acquired cognition. It seemed—strange, to be human, but the thought of turning back into lizards had the odd feeling of being a poor choice. Baffled by this new instinct, they said yes.
The horses, of course, said things like whuff and nyiiiehuhum, grumph. The woman seemed to understand, though. She touched one horse on the nose and told it it would be the castle’s happiest mouse once the carriage reached its destination. The others, it seemed, enjoyed their new stature.
And three—they are heading toward a castle, where they have all been offered a fine place to live. The Prince explains that he doesn’t wish for such a kind girl to live in such conditions anymore. There’s no talk of anyone marrying—just discussions of rooms and favorite foods and of course, you’ll have the finest chicken pie anytime you’d like and I can’t have others make it for me! Lend me the kitchens and I’ll make some for you; I have a very dear recipe. Perhaps you can help. (Followed in short order by a ...Certainly, but I’d—um, I’d embarrass myself trying to cook. You would teach me? and a gentle laugh that brightened the souls of all who could hear it.)
“If you’d be amenable to it,” she replies—and in clear, if surprised, agreement, the Prince truly, warmly laughs.
“Milady,” the coachman calls down to them. “Your Highness. We’re here.”
The castle stands shining amber-gold in the light of the setting sun. It will be the fourth night they’ve come here—the thirteen of them and the one of her—but midnight, they realize, will not break the spell ever again.
One by one, they disembark from the carriage. If it will stay as it is or turn back into a pumpkin, they hadn't thought to ask. There’s so much warmth swelling in their hearts that they don’t think it matters.
The girl, their princess, smiles—a dear, true smile, tentative in the face of a brand new world, but bright with hope—and suddenly, they’re all smiling too.
She steps forward, and they follow. The prince falls into step with her and offers an arm, and their glances at each other are brimming with light as she accepts.
With her arm in the arm of the prince, a small crowd of footmen and the coachman trailing behind, and a single grey mouse on her shoulder, the once-Cinder-Girl walks once again toward the palace door.
#Well this wasn't my first Cinderella retelling idea that I was excited about BUT -#since that one was turning into a tangle of Too Much Going On (though it's currently at 5k and maybe 70% done; I still plan to finish it)#I tried this one instead!#pros: I think I actually wrote myself out of writer's block? Which is AWESOME#And I feel like I'm starting to notice what needs fixed and mended about my writing; which is very helpful!#cons: due to having the additional pro of a very socially growth-filled few weeks IRL; I did not do much about that fact#please excuse the general lack of editing thus far#I have also learned that I may want to be at least a Level 5 Fairy Tale Reteller#before I tackle stories with hundreds of years of popular retellings and versions?#Although this one came much more easily than my first idea; it still felt more difficult to write than my Nix Nought Nothing story.#So another pro - I learned that I enjoy writing about lesser-known tales the most! Next time I might try a fun obscure one.#All in all this was a ton of fun!! Thanks for running the challenge! Apologies for being nearly late - I had a wonderful time!#I hope you all enjoy! <3#inklingschallenge#four loves fairy tale retelling challenge#love: philia#love: agape#Cinderella#story: complete#basil writes#salt and light
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Y'ALL WHO WAS GOING TO TELL ME PEOPLE SHIPPED AZULA AND URSA
#I MEAN I WANT THERE RELATIONSHIP TO BE FIXED AS MUCH AS THE NEXT GUY#BUT DON'T YOU THINK THIS IS A LITTLE TOO MUCH????#I MEAN I KNEW OF ZUKO X AZULA#(through a poorly tagged fic might I add)#(and a dare but that's a different story)#BUT LIKE AZULA X URSA????#Y'ALL PLEASE GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER#azula#ursa#zuko#atla#avatar the last airbender#AGAIN WTF THAT'S HER MOTHER#THE PERSON WHO GAVE BIRTH TO HER???#I MEAN I LOVE DELCIOUSLY FUCKED UP DYNAMICS#BUT SOME OF YOU GUYS ARE ACTUALLY LIKE RIDE OR DIE WITH THIS SHIP#AGAIN I SHALL CLARIFY THAT IS HER BIOLOGICAL HONEST-TO-GOD MOTHER
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Please Fix the Story - pt 31 The Void Between - END
Last part. (Although I do plan for at least one or two side parts. One definitely from Liam's perspective. Maybe one from Adonis if I feel like it).
Guys, I started this story forever ago. Took a huge break when my life fell apart. I picked up the pieces, and never really thought I would get back to doing the things I love again. But here I am. Finishing this story. I'm so excited.
Please enjoy.
Masterpost linked here.
________________________________
“System!” I shouted into the white void, one hand still holding Liam’s tightly. “Stop hiding!”
THUD
Adonis had fallen to the ground, released from my power that had bound him. He stood up shakily, wiping a small amount of blood from the corner of his mouth. “Where did you take me?” He demanded angrily. “Where is this place?”
“This?” I looked around with a slight smile. “This place is the End.”
“The End?”
I thought for a moment. “Or perhaps the Beginning? It depends on your point of view, I suppose.” I gestured around at the blank whiteness around us “This is the void between, outside of the lower and higher realms, outside of stories. There is nothing here... nothing except memories.”
Liam stood protectively near me. “Where is the System?”
“It’s here. It’s watching. It just doesn’t want to admit that it lost. It views me as weak, pointless…”
Blue flames streaked out from out of sight towards my head. Sensing the magical attack, I dodged and waved a hand, countering it with my own power.
“YOU MUST ACCEPT YOUR FATE” The bright blue words briefly appeared in the void, then disappeared just as fast, leaving nothing but an afterimage behind.
“BEL!” Liam had fallen when I dodged, and reached towards me, panicked.
“It’s okay. That was just a test.” With a grunt of pain, I stood back up again. “REALLY?” I spoke out again. “A sneak attack? Are you really that pathetic?” There was no answer, the System was hiding again.
“Hey!" Adonis had recovered from his shock, and resumed being a pest. “Bel! Tell me what’s going on, now!”
I didn’t even look in his direction. “No.”
“What?! What do you mean, no?!”
"I mean: 'No'." Still looking for any trace of the System, I cast a sympathetic glance towards Liam. “Poor guy.”
Liam caught on quick. “Don’t worry, Bel, I’ll help him!” He cleared his throat, turning towards the enraged hero. “’No’ is an English word used to give a negative response. In this case, the word ‘no’ would indicate a refusal to your request for more information. Similar sounding words, such as ‘know’ with a ‘k’ can sometimes be confused depending on the context clues, but that word is generally used to indicate knowledge rather than refusal. So if she had said ‘I know’ instead…”
“SHUT UP!” Adonis screamed, swinging at fist at Liam, who let him punch him in the chest without any apparent pain. Adonis instead withdrew his hand with a screech, one of his fingers clearly bent at a weird angle.
“Your chest breaks fingers?” I asked with a raised brow.
Liam pulled his collar down, showing off a coat of black scales with a grin. “Dragon skin is tough. Also known as the ‘idiot-tax’.”
During this exchange, I continued searching with my power, trying to feel the system’s presence. “Seems fair.”
“Why is it hiding?” Liam asked quietly.
“It doesn’t want to face the truth.” At my answer, Adonis stopped groaning and looked insulted.
“Why do you answer HIS questions and not MINE?”
“Because he’s my husband… and you’re annoying.” I turned to Liam. “Are you curious?”
Liam smiled at my question. “Very.”
“Then I’ll explain it to you as we go.” I looked around again, sensing that the System had hid itself. “It’s hiding within this space, and so I’ll need to force it out. Since it wants to hide the truth, I’ll show exactly that: the truth."
My power swept around us, filling everything.
"It all started here. In this void.”
The world around us changed, showing infinite portals, each leading to a new world, glowing with various degrees of golden light.
“There are infinite stories, and therefore infinite lower realms. Some are stable, filled with energy… some are unstable, collapsing, draining energy from the realms around it.” As I spoke, some of the weaker portals flickered and died. “Each time a world collapsed, the entirety of the lower realms was at risk, a collapse of a universe of worlds and people.”
The golden light of the portals coalesced, forming a vague being of bright blue light. “The System came into being. It's exact origin is unclear. Was it created, another product of the authors or gods beyond our existence that write the stories? Was it just a random event, too much energy organizing into a sentient being?” I stepped closer to the glowing blue figure, staring up at it. “It’s impossible to know. But I do know one thing:”
The figure peered into a portal as it flickered and disappeared. It stared at the empty space for a few moments before shrugging and moving on to the next. “The System isn’t human. It has no understanding of human emotions, motivations, or relationships. It can read the stories, it can see the unfulfilled wishes of the author, but it cannot truly understand why some stories worked and others collapsed.”
Adonis stared at the figure I showed them, a look of frustration and anger creeping across his face. Liam watched with curiosity. They both stayed silent, however, and the System stayed in hiding, so I continued the story.
“The system depends on the survival of the lower realms, but it could not figure out how to save the stories that were disappearing. So it looked for a human partner, someone who could help it figure out what to do.”
The world around us changed again, and we were standing on a college campus. It was a bright sunny day, with students milling about, chatting, laughing, carrying books. We stood in the midst of everything, unseen by the people around us, unable to touch or affect anything we could see. Adonis, recognizing the area, turned pale, trembling as he stood rooted in place. “No.” He whispered. “This is impossible. This isn’t real.”
I smiled at him, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. “Of course it isn’t real. This is a memory of the System. No one can travel to this lower realm anymore. It’s destroyed… thanks to you.”
“NO.”
As I searched the memory around us, I could sense the memory... and the System... nearby. “Let’s go.” I grabbed Liam’s hand and ran forward, rushing through the crowds, following the lead that only I could feel. After a brief hesitation, Adonis ran after us.
“The system sensed that someone had broken free from the confines of a story.” I spoke as we moved. All around us there were college students milling about, talking laughing with carefree attitudes. “What had been stable, had become broken, and it was all because of a single individual.”
I pulled Liam to a stop in front of two people, studying both of the figures in the memory with interest.
One was a handsome young man with a playful grin and long hair pulled back with a cord. He was facing another young man, who looked extremely angry.
The other young man was Adonis.
As we looked back and forth between the Adonis in the memory and the one that had followed us through the void, the Adonis next to Liam and I stepped closer, staring at his doppelganger with a weary, contemptuous expression.
“She loves me!” The memory Adonis spoke out. “Stop getting in the way!”
“You know that isn’t right, Adler.” The young man answered with a sigh. “Just because you two grew up together, doesn’t give you ‘dibs’ on her. You two are friends. Ara is my girlfriend.”
Liam raised an eyebrow as we watched the scene around us play out. “Adler?”
“His real name.” I glanced over at Adonis, who looked away. “He changed it to Adonis after he left this lower realm.”
“He CHOSE Adonis?”
“He thought it sounded more heroic.”
“Poor guy.”
“Save your pity.” I pointed back to the memory around us, where Adonis continued to argue with the other college student. Eventually, a young woman walked up, giving a hug to the other man and eyeing Adonis warily.
“Bel…?” Liam sounded concerned and confused, and I didn’t’ blame him.
After all, the woman looked just like me.
It wasn’t exact. There was a bright cheery innocence that this girl carried around her. A naivete, as if she would believe whatever someone told her. Nice, but gullible. She very much lacked my distrustful glares and heavy sarcasm. But the face, body, hair…. All of the outer features were the same.
“It’s not me.” I reassured Liam, who watched the girl with my appearance kiss the college student with a low disgruntled growl. “It’s Arabella. The heroine of this lower realm.”
Adonis stared intently at the woman, obsession in his eyes. “MY heroine.”
“Nope. Not yours. Because you weren’t the hero of your story, were you, Adonis?”
The argument between the three in the memory grew heated. Adonis… Adler… tried to grab Arabella’s hand, and she pulled away with a frustrated expression.
“You were the friend, the side character, the witness to the main romance of the story. But you were unwilling to play that role… to accept your fate.”
“IT WAS NOT MY FATE!” Adonis reached out, but his hand passed through the memory of Arabella. “I WAS THE HERO! I WAS THE ONE SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO LOVE!”
The Adonis in the memory had gone quiet. He reached into his coat, and pulled out a long knife, lunging forward, stabbing the young man and woman in front of him. Only when they were still on the ground, their bodies soaking in the blood pooling beneath them did he seem to recognize what he had done. He fell to his knees, screaming, as the world around his began to distort.
“You broke the story, killed the hero and heroine… and this caught the attention of the System.”
A glowing blue figure appeared in front of the blood-stained Adonis, words appearing around him.
"YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THE STORY."
I looked down at the dead body on the ground with the same face as me, letting out a quiet sigh. “The two of them made a deal. Adonis would be pulled out of the lower realm, become a higher being. He would help the System in fixing the broken lower realms.”
The Adonis in the memory considered for a brief moment, and nodded. As he and the System disappeared, the world they had left behind began to collapse.
“There’s always a cost, though. If you take someone out of a lower realm… the realm is destroyed as a result.” My eyes met Adonis’ as he watched the memory of the deal he made with a dispassionate gaze. All the emotion that had boiled over at the sight of Arabella had faded, and there was nothing, not even remorse. “You knew you were destroying the world if you left. And you did it anyways.”
“They did nothing for me.” His voice was quiet, but vitriol in it was clear. “I should have been the hero of that world… they didn’t deserve survival.”
“Just like Arabella deserved death for not loving you?” At my question his eyes flickered, but he quickly regained calm. “She didn’t die. After all, you’re here, aren’t you?”
“I’m not Arabella, Adonis. No matter the physical resemblance.” I smiled. “I’m something much more…”
Another blast of blue flames again came towards me. I pushed back with my own power, defending myself. My magic swept through from the direction the blast had came from, trying to strike back, but it had already disappeared once again.
“Oh you didn’t like that, did you? Are you mad enough to stop hiding, or should I keep talking?”
There was only silence in response. I chuckled grimly, continuing the story.
“Adonis was the one who thought of binding the lower realms to the higher realms. By having the heroes of the lower realms be connected to Adonis, by having him control them and their endings through these ties he called fate, he thought he could influence all of the stories at once, helping them reach a happy ending.” I paused. “How funny that the man who was chosen because he broke free of his fate, chose to bind everyone else even tighter.”
The portals showed up around us again, losing their glow and flickering out at a noticeable pace. “But it didn’t work. The lower realms were failing faster than ever. You contaminated all of the heroes with a part of you, they took on a part of your personality, your obsessive desire with being the center of the universe.”
I thought of all the heroes I had met in the lower realms, how they reacted with the story around them changed. Even kinder heroes like K’lliean in the elven world had shown signs… he almost cracked and tried to force me to be with him when he sensed me pulling away. They all had pieces of Adonis forced on them, tying them to an even worse fate then the broken stories once had.
“Out of desperation, Adonis suggested a new plan. It wasn’t enough to have a prototype ‘hero’ to bind everyone to. They needed a new prototype, a second higher level being.” I hesitated, seeing the realization and pain on Liam’s face but forcing myself to continue. “They needed a villain.”
The world around us changed again, and now we were in a beautiful green world with bright open skies. The System remained hidden, so I continued talking, hoping to goad it into showing itself once again.
“Adonis had always been a fan of fairy tales. Knights, princesses, and the evil monster that kidnapped her: the dragon.”
Dragons flew overhead with roars that shook the earth below. The world was filled with the mighty creatures, flying, fighting, sleeping. Simply existing in this beautiful realm. And right next to us was a large silver dragon, patiently teaching a smaller black one.
Liam stepped closer, tears running down his face. “Grandfather.” His hand passed through the larger form, his hand tightening into a fist.
“They searched though all of the lower realms with dragons, and within one found a young black coated dragon that they felt could be molded into what they needed.” I continued to speak, watching Liam closely. “The System tried to offer a deal, promising power and domination over all the lower realms.”
A blue figure pulled the small dragon away, obviously trying to convince it of something. The young dragon shook his head in response.
“But the dragon said no. He loved his world, his family. He didn’t want to leave, no matter what was offered to him.”
The dragon was enveloped in blue fiery light, disappearing with an inhuman screech of terror. The world around us, similar to Adonis’ world before it, crumpled into itself, fading away into nothing.
My voice dropped to a whisper. “The price of removing someone from the lower realms is always the same, whether they want to leave or not. The young dragon’s world… his family… was destroyed.” I reached out and hugged Liam, who was wracked with silent sobs as he watched his home realm disappear.
“I’m sorry.” I tightened my arms around him, feeling a deep pain within as he slowly composed himself. I was using this story to push the System, to make it angry enough to appear. But I had another motive as well. I wanted Liam to understand everything. To see this. He had the right to know the full truth.
The truth of what I was.
The picture around us faded, showing the young black dragon now in the Villain’s realm, surrounded by forest. He looked around, obviously lost and confused. Words appeared in the sky before him.
YOU ARE THE VILLAIN.
The dragon shook his head no.
YOU MUST ACCEPT YOUR FATE.
A portal appeared and chains shot out, binding the dragon and dragging it into a lower realm. The sight was heartrendingly familiar, and I had to take a deep breath, steadying myself to continue.
“They tried to mold the dragon into the villain they needed. The plan was to force the dragon into multiple realms, placing him as the villain of the story. If he refused to play his part? The realm would be destroyed. The dragon was too kind hearted, and eventually became resigned to sacrificing himself, story after story, realm after realm. Saving the realms but losing himself. The system tied the dragon to the villains of the lower realms, in the bonds of fate, but if anything, that made things even worse.”
The portals in the void reappeared, now most of them becoming unstable and flickering, even previously brightly glowing ones were slowly becoming dim.
“Your plans had brought this whole universe to the brink of destruction, and still Adonis refused to believe that his strategy was wrong. It’s just that the prototype story… the higher realm story… was incomplete.”
I turned towards Adonis, who was glaring at me with unbridled rage. “The knight, the dragon… and now you needed the princess. You were a hero missing your heroine. And so, you told the System to bring you your heroine.”
“Don’t…” Adonis finally spoke up again, but the word was forced out between clenched teeth.
“What? Don’t tell the truth?” I shook my head. “It’s not your secret to hide. It’s my truth to tell.”
“Stop!” He rushed forward, but my dark power wrapped around him again, holding him in place.
“Shush. I’m trying to explain my mysterious origins here.” I sat him down on the ground with my magic, and turned to Liam. I felt nervous, a desperation welling up within me. I wondered as I started to speak again if this is how he felt when I found out he was a dragon. It turned out he didn’t need to worry.
I wasn’t human either.
“Adonis would only accept one heroine.”
“Arabella.” Liam added, watching me carefully.
“Exactly. But that left the system with a problem. Arabella was dead. Even if she survived the stabbing, the entire lower realm had been destroyed by bringing Adonis out. It tried to convince him, but he grew only more desperate. He couldn’t accept the truth.”
I paused, taking a deep breath. “So the system did the only thing it could: it tried to make a new Arabella.”
“But that means…” Liam looked confused, but as realization started to dawn, I ran forward and tackled him.
“GET DOWN!”
The entire space imploded. There was nothing but blue fire, drowning everything. There was no noise, no heat. There was only magic destructive power. It lasted for what seemed like an eternity, and then slowly faded.
I lifted my head. An enormous being was wrapped around me, protecting me. Liam, who had shifted to his dragon form, continued to shield me, his dark blue eyes looking over me carefully, filled with concern, checking for injuries. I withdrew the magic I had used to protect us both, but I still saw a few burned spots in his scales here and there. Touching his scales with a regretful expression, I whispered. “Sorry.”
I had been goading the system, waiting for it to make its move, but as I told Liam the truth, my attention had shifted for a short moment. And in that moment, the System who had been biding its time, made its move.
“As long as you are safe.” Liam’s reply made me smile. We stared at each other for a few moments, both happy the other was okay.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU DESTROY HIM?!” Adonis’ voice destroyed the special moment. At least he's consistently annoying.
Liam rolled his eyes, the expression a bit strange on a dragon. “How did he survive the fire?” He asked me.
I thought it over, and winced. “My bad, my power was already wrapped around him to hold him down when the System attacked… I must have accidentally protected him.”
“It’s okay, we all make mistakes.” Liam nodded solemnly and comforted me.
“Yeah, maybe next time he’ll get burned to a crisp.”
“You know… I am a dragon… I could help us achieve that goal.”
“Tempting…” I started to respond, but Adonis started shouting again.
“System! Now’s your chance! Destroy the monster!” He pointed at Liam, his face triumphant as he commanded him. “And then we can fix Arabella, and start over with a new villain. We will make the story right, correct everything that is wrong, and retie the strings of Fate to save the universe!”
“…” There was something new that had joined us in this space between realms. A vaguely human shaped being made of blue flames. As it spoke, its voice was neither young or old, soft or deep, it was deeply disturbingly inhuman. The words it spoke appeared in front of us, scrawled across the sky, a reminder of its power.
“YOU MUST ACCEPT YOUR FATE.”
“System! Destroy it!” Adonis screamed impatiently.
“…” There was no response.
“It can’t.” I finally spoke up, calmly. “It doesn’t want to risk attacking Liam anymore. It had its only chance with that sneak attack and it failed. Facing me head on… there’s no way it can win easily.”
“I don’t understand. The System… it creates fate… it’s a god!”
“You are the one that doesn’t understand. I know what the System is, Adonis, much better than you do." I took a deep breath.
"After all… I’m a part of it.”
In the silence that followed I heard the soft sound of Liam’s sigh as understanding dawned. My heart beat nervously, but I continued to explain.
“The system couldn’t resurrect Arabella, so it split off some of its own power, a new entity that remained only with a limited connection. It used Adonis’ memories of Arabella as a template, but it could never be exact. From the moment of its creation, the created being would grow and change based on new experiences, meetings… to become something new, beyond the confines of what others wanted.”
“YOU WERE AN ERROR.” The system’s inhuman voice was cold.
“I was the only effective thing you’ve ever done to save the lower realms.” Was my even colder response.
“No… you’re Arabella.” Adonis was stuttering, staring at me with horror.
“You always knew I wasn’t her, Adonis." I sighed. "The only thing I can thank you for was that when the system used your memories of a template, it used data, rather than your perception of her. Rather than a perfect heroine deeply in love with you, it created a young woman with a thirst for adventure and learning… and no romantic interest in you whatsoever.”
The system stepped closer, and Liam’s wings spread out widely, protectively.
“THE DEAL IS INVALID. YOU MUST ACCEPT YOUR FATE.”
“The deal is already done, System. You lost.” I waved my hand, and my power formed into the shape of a sword. It always was my preferred weapon. “If you won’t concede that I won willingly… Then I’ll make you by force.”
As I circled closer, the System stood still, confident. “YOU CANNOT KILL ME. YOU ARE ME!”
I smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
My sword swung, and a limb fell to the ground, disintegrating into blue flame. I held my blade at its neck and it froze.
“I WAS you. But the deals we made changed everything.”
The world around us changed again. The System buzzed with energy, trying to fight it, but I pushed through.
It was time to finish the story.
Liam continued to stand guard, watching Adonis and the System carefully. As my power took over, the world I was showing became clear:
It was me. I was in the villain world, laying on the ground pale and sweating. I was dying.
“After I was created, I only tried to save the lower realms one by one. I refused to listen to Adonis' plans. In his frustration, he tossed me into the villain realm to force me to submit. It was his way of continuing the prototype story. The dragon keeping the princess captive. But Adonis and the System didn’t count on one thing:"
In the vision I showed, Liam in his human form knelt beside me, his expression despairing as he gently wiped the sweat from my forehead. I held his hand, my eyes focused on him and no one else. Adonis stood nearby, ignored by both of us in the memory, watching with a hateful, weary expression.
“I decided I would rather die in the villain realm, die by my husband’s side, rather than submit to the horrible fate you and the System had devised.”
The System in the memory appeared next to human Liam, pushing him aside, and approaching the dying Bel. Liam screamed with fear and rage, trying to return to his dragon form, but was frozen into place half-transformed.
“YOU CANNOT DIE.” The system’s inhuman voice was quiet, but deafening at the same time.
The memory Bel forced a smile. “Better dead and free than trapped by your chains.”
“I CANNOT LET YOU DIE. IT WOULD DESTROY ME, DESTROY EVERYTHING. BUT YOU REFUSE TO LIVE… WE ARE AT AN IMPASSE.”
“Then how about we make a wager?” The weakness in her voice couldn’t hide the determination of her words.
I looked at the System, still held in place at the point of my sword. “So, we made a deal. I would travel the realms, save them, gather the energy from each of the recovered worlds.”
In the memory, blocks of text appeared in front of the dying Bel. She read through the deal with a frown. I watched the vision, shaking my head in frustration.
“The stakes were clear. If I could save enough worlds… could build enough power, separate from the System, I would be able to break free from the ending of this prototype story. To write my own fate. But… if I failed even one… the System would take all the energy I gathered, and I would be forced to submit to the fate designed to me. To be a mindless, soulless heroine, playing her role and nothing else.”
“Foolish.” Adonis was standing, glaring at me with blood shot eyes. Liam growled in response, placing his enormous form between us, but Adonis ignored him, continuing to speak. “You just had to agree to be a heroine, and we could have saved everyone together. Instead, you risked everything, left an unstable universe to try to save it world by world.”
“I chose to remain free. To not enslave these worlds to fate.” The System sensed my distraction and tried to strike, and so I pressed my sword of magic forward, dripping flames from the cut in its shapeless neck.
“The deal was designed for me to fail.” Again the picture around us changed. It was still me, but in many different forms. A student. An assassin. An elf. World after world, flipping faster and faster until it was a visual blur. “You chose miserable roles for me. I had no memories, no knowledge of the story except what was provided for me. I was alone… or I was supposed to be.”
Another change. Now the System in the memory was talking with Liam. As he watched the memory, Liam beside me shook his head, as if trying to clear it.
“Liam had nothing the system wanted but his status as a villain. If I lost, he would play the perfect villain. No shortcuts, no mercy for the weak…become a puppet for the system. But the system wanted more.”
Text appeared in front of Liam in the memory. As the nature of the deal became clear, the real Liam beside me let out a moan.
“A sacrifice.” His voice was filled with pain, barely audible. “Every lower realm I had saved in the past by playing my role. How many worlds would that be? Countless lives. Innocents.”
“The System would absorb them for energy if we lost.”
“It asked for my soul. Saving those worlds by letting myself be defeated or killed in those realms was all that I could cling to when I was despairing. If I sacrificed them… “ He paused, his dragon eyes showing despair. “It wouldn’t have to brainwash me to become a villain. I would have already taken that step myself.”
“Liam would be given the chance to follow me. His memories wiped each time. He would have no idea who I was or how to help me. He would as always be the villain in the story. A bad deal.” The Liam in the memory agreed, and disappeared. “ I glanced at Liam beside me. “But you took it anyways, desperate to help me, to stay by my side. Even though you would more likely end up a mindless, soulless slave.”
“I would never abandon you, Bel. Not if there was any chance I could help you.”
"You did." I reassured him. "I had nearly given into despair by the time you joined me. You gave me purpose, helped me forward. I would have been lost, along with everything else." I glanced over at Adonis who was shaking in rage.
“Adonis made a deal too, of course, but much different from ours. He wanted to follow, but wanted his memories, wanted to know the full story. The System only allowed him limited access, into a few worlds. It worried that if Adonis followed me everywhere I would be motivated to resist longer, as I had in the higher realms before.”
Adonis in the memory accepted a deal, and disappeared as well. There was only the system left.
“You thought I would give up, or that I would fail to fix a world. I was supposed to accept my fate. Instead, I refused. I resisted. I fixed every single world I went to. I won. Which brought us back to the higher realm.”
“NO.” The system beside me pushed back with all of its power, erasing the memory I had shown around us. I tried my best to shield Liam and I, but as I concentrated on my own dark magic, I heard someone running up behind me.
“You ruined everything!” Adonis had a knife, trying to slash at my back as he drew closer. The System kept attacking, forcing all of my attention on it. I was helpless to stop the attack from the hero.
Fortunately I wasn't alone.
A dragon tail swung out, knocking Adonis a fair distance where he fell to the ground with a crunch. He lay still, his hand grabbing at the hilt of his knife where it protruded from his side after he landed on it.
“How…?” He touched the blood spilling from the wound, shocked.
“You brought it on yourself.” Liam growled. “Also, why is your only response to rejection stabbing? You seriously need better coping mechanisms.”
I laughed, but couldn’t lose focus on the battle at hand. I turned to the system, who had stopped attacking “Now that this story is done, all bets are complete.” I waved a hand, a wave of dark power covering the void around us.
Liam’s eyes blinked, and then cleared, a sense of timelessness within them. He rubbed his head against me. “Bel. You did it.”
I smiled. “Thanks to you.”
Adonis had changed as well. His face was pale, then red with anger, then pale again as he continued to lose blood from his side. “You cheated, System! You promised I would keep my memories! How did…”
“It wasn’t the system, Adonis.” I interrupted. “This last story, us repeating the Higher Realm… it was me. I gained power because I wanted a different ending to OUR story, and this is the ending I chose. Not one with me dying in the villain realm, with Liam and I accepting a terrible deal in a desperate attempt to save one another. A better ending.”
Adonis struggled to his feet, sneering. “So what? THIS is it? Your so-called happy ending? You become a villainess instead of a heroine and get to stay in the villain realm with that monster? Big deal.” He spat on the ground, the spit mixed with blood from the wounds on his mouth. “The System and I will find a real heroine. Not a FAKE one like you. We’ll restart the story, and fate will save us all, with the villain and villainess being destroyed!”
I laughed. A true, villainess cackle. It echoed in the vast emptiness of the Void, seeming to go on for ages.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Who told you my goal was to be the villainess?”
The System began flickering, like a candle going out.
“YOU MUST ACCEPT…”
“My goal was to be the new System.” I swung the sword in my hand, and the already fading system fell to pieces. “To destroy fate itself.”
The last of the blue flames fizzled out with a soft sound. If an inhuman machine-like existence could sigh with relief, I would have sworn that is what I heard. The System was gone.
There was only me left.
Adonis screamed at my actions. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
“I gained enough power in my travels to be fully independent of the System. That is why it feared me. Why it tried to destroy me in the end. But now its gone. As is your foolish fate.”
“Every realm will be destroyed! Without a prototype… without a guide… all of those worlds will be lost!”
“No Adonis.” I stepped closer to him, and he shuddered in fear at the power I wielded, moving backwards. “Those worlds will be free. Some strong, some broken and needing help. But I’d rather spend the rest of my existence helping worlds one by one then ever attempting what you and the System tried to do.”
“It’s impossible to save them all!” He hissed, his voice cracking with pain and terror.
“Doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying.” I shrugged, looking over at Liam. “I hope you don’t mind, dear. He’s not wrong when he says it’s an impossible task.”
“Traveling with you to different realms for all eternity? How horrible for me.” Liam laughed. “Now there’s fate I can get behind.”
I turned back to Adonis. “You see… he’s fine with it.”
“I’ll have to make a sling to carry future eggs if we’re always going to be traveling…” Liam muttered to himself. I ignored him, continuing to stare at the former hero.
“So what now, Bel?” He scowled. “Are you going to kill me? Torture me? Your villainous plans don’t scare me!”
“I don’t have to do any of that, Adonis… or should I say Adler?” A villain laugh sounded out again. “You have much to answer for: How many have you killed in your quest to be a ‘hero’? How many have lives have you destroyed in your desire to impose fate on the lower realms?" He shook his head, trying to deny my words, but it was too late.
"Killing you? No. I have a much better ‘fate’ in store for you:” Reaching out, my dark power curled around him, healing his wound from his side and lifting him up in the air
“You will be banished to a lower realm. To live out your days as an insignificant side character.”
His eyes widened with shock. “NO! YOU CAN’T!!!”
“By day, you will remember nothing… but every night, your memories of the higher realms will be returned to you, just enough so you can always live in regret for what you have done.”
“NO!”
I looked at the man I had once thought of as a friend.
“You always told me to accept my fate. Well now, you must accept YOUR fate, Adonis. Goodbye.” My power covered him, and he disappeared, forever.
Only Liam and I were left.
“Soo…” I looked up at the dragon. “No issues with me being a multidimensional being, whose origin comes from a homicidal fate-obsessed system?”
Liam’s serpentine face grinned, and with a brief covering of smoke he turned back into a human. “No problems here!” He reached out and hugged me. “So what now? We travel the lower realms? Save worlds?”
“Yeah, but Liam…”
“So many different weddings to plan…” He rested his chin on the top of my head. “I wonder if we can visit old worlds? I’d love to let the Blood Wolves celebrate with us.”
“I think that could be arranged… Liam…”
“Yes, Bel.” his deep blue eyes shining with joy as they met my own.
“Can you put on clothes, first?”
He looked down at his naked human form, and then back up at me, hugging me tighter. “Sorry, I don’t have extra clothes in the void.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Where did my shy and modest dragon go?”
“He remembers at least four different weddings we’ve had in different worlds.” His smile widened. “Now that we’re finally alone, no spying system, or stalking heroes… I feel like we have very important things to discuss.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Like dragon eggs?”
“Bel!” He gave me a fake shocked expression. “I was going to discuss the weather! But now that you’ve brought it up…”
I laughed again at the evil villain dragon. The villainous minion. The support spouse. My husband the dragon.
“Sure, Liam. Then when we’re ready… we’ll go travel the realms. Visit some old friends. Save some worlds.”
No more heroes.
No more villains.
No more Fate.
Just us.
________________________________
In a lower realm…
“Are you ready?” Adam, his tall form dressed up in a fancy suit, held out a hand towards me. He didn't look too different to how he had seemed in high school, his features more mature, his eyes wiser. The look of brotherly affection hadn't changed at all, however.
“Of course!” I grinned and took his hand, looking at his face. “Are you crying?”
“What? No!” He wiped his eyes quickly. “Just shocked at how much my little sister has grown up! Seems like yesterday you were a goofy highschooler chasing that bozo Jake around."
“You grew up too.” I smiled. “When is Jessica due?”
His expression grew soft. “Just 2 more months. I told her she should take time off, but she likes running the café. Says people watching is her pleasure in life." He glanced back at me. “Speaking of which, are they going to hire a substitute to teach calculus while you’re gone?”
“They’re going to have to. I’m not spending my honeymoon teaching math, that’s for sure.”
“I can’t believe you became a teacher… and a calculus teacher of all things… I thought you hated it.”
“I’m somewhat of an expert on the topic. Plus, I feel the need to spread the… joy… of learning calculus to others.”
“I feel sorry for your students.” he shuddered. "At least you don't spray them."
“Nope, that's only for brother behavior modification.” I laughed out loud, and Adam shook his head at my signature villainess sound.
“Good thing Liam likes your craziness.”
I shrugged. “He wouldn’t have me be any other way.”
We walked forward, stepping up to the beginning of the aisle. I grabbed the white skirt of my wedding gown in one hand, holding Adam’s hand with my other, as the wedding march played.
At the front of the church, Liam, dressed in a suit and looking slightly nervous waited. As I moved towards him, our eyes met. His dark blue eyes, the same in every world, lit up with joy, despite the countless weddings we’ve had before.
Different realms. Different bodies. The same souls. The same love.
Well… not everything was the same.
Wait until he finds out about my surprise. I laughed silently. The egg sling is finally going to be of use.
I took Liam's outstretched hand, and we spoke our vows once more, surrounded by our friends and family of this realm.
Promising to stay by each other’s side.
Forever.
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sorry chris my bitches do NOT look like this‼️‼️
#please fix this#new art now#new artist#bc wtf is this#i refuse to believe it#this is not what they look like#tlos#the land of stories#atom#a tale of magic#chris colfer#cry me a table bro
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I wish you could've heard the music when the sky growled overhead,
I finally felt enthusiastic, I finally felt ALIVE!
#My art#My ocs#Sharkies ghost story tag#Thaddeus#Rory#SUPER pleased with this one#This is more dynamic than i usually draw AND i dont often draw characters actually touching each other#now that its done i have some nitpicks that im too lazy to fix but MMM i like it#+ this song has been on repeat for me the past week its so them
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everyone so obsessed with kaladin going to shinovar and loving dogs that they forget a vital part of kaladin’s personality— he is afraid of soft, non-scaled, smart looking animals. 😂😂😂 kaladin is not going to go there and fall in love with dogs, kaladin is going there to find his own personal nightmare in the form of overly clever fur covered creatures whos eyes are even more unnaturally smart than horses 🤣🤣🤣
#im just here to say this#+ please don't reblog and try to 'fix' this headcanon so it fits with the dog loving one#i love both horses and dogs so it has nothing to do with that#you have to admit it'll be beyond funny if he's unnerved as hell by the existence of dogs#he loved them in a story but irl NOT SO MUCH#stomfaced.hc#kaladin stormblessed#kaladin#The Stormlight Archive
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One minute til' midnight (more design-accurate sketches below)
Yeah y'all know the drill by now, this fine specimen from this wonderful story by @patchwork-crow-writes
#i wasn't going to sleep until this was done#i didn't realize it was already two in the morning though good lord#i guess that means I technically missed my goal but oh well#i did it; and compared to how i was faring this time last week...#...that's more than what i can ask for#it's very messy please don't zoom in lmao i beg#it was a nightmare trying to fix the little mistakes my dying hand made earlier this week#so after a certain point i stopped trying haha#this is by no means my best work and has almost none of the stuff i learned last year in it#but the motivation for this was spite and i think just finishing it is good enough for now >:)#yippie#see i wasn't initially planning on drawing any more for this story buuuuuut#i started this on my birthday and had to put it away because of school#and i'd be damned if i didn't finish it before school started again
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