Serafima Malachit

📕Click here to read Echolite ❤️ 29, writing a superhero lgbtq+ action/romance Can't stop playing Monster Prom

[bad-serafima]

Announcing my new project: Echolite!

A battlefield is no place for a musician. Yet, to Jin-Haru, Vanguard Academy is a last hope for his lyrical phenomena. The idea of weaponized singing seemed insane-until he meets Mason. Stupid strong and ridiculously fast, among other talents, Mason has the perfect set of phenomenas to become the next hero of Santa Monte. Driven by a desire to help, he pushes himself and Jin-Haru towards greatness. Meanwhile, Jin-Haru is driven by a more primal desire. When things take a dark turn, these desire becomes their downfall, as the two are forced onto opposite sides of lines neither of them meant to cross: the line between hero and villain, and the one between love and resentment. The streets of Santa Monte echo with songs of heartbreak, rage and yearning.

It's happening. I am coming out of the closet.

I meant the writer's closet. I'm sharing the first draft of my novel with people. The other closet stays shut for now.

It's kind of a crazy book to debut simply for the fact that I am incorporating original lyrics and singing into the narrative. It's experimental and it's why I love it.

I'm uploading and updating weekly online. Read chapter one already on Wattpad and Inkitt or Patreon.

Read more about this manuscript on my Patreon.

[bad-serafima]

In the middle of a writing panic; I know what to write, know exactly what's next, I have the urge to write, but my body is hitting breaks.

The act of typing, writing by hand or even speaking out loud seems wrong. What is it brain? What's wrong fingers? Why are you terrified of my creative energy?

[bad-serafima]

Meanwhile I've been typing like crazy because I realised last minute that I had like a week left to finish 3 more chapters out of 8 for the Wattpad competition AND Inkitt Competition. Phewh. I made it, and added a major twist, at its all a total of 27k words so far.

Oh and, link to my superhero mlm because Wattpad said I also have to promote it on top of submitting.

🤞 fingers crossed because I submitted a half-decent pitch to Wattpad along with those chapters.

[bad-serafima]

Your new favorite superhero MLM story just got updated 🌈🌶️

Inkitt says I should promote online more to get noticed for the competition, and I just submitted it to Wattpads editors, so...

early birdie readers, flock to meee

Read Echolite for free on Inkitt

Also for free on Wattpad 🧡 ...

(In fact I love the reading UI there much more, but don't tell Inkitt)

It's got that friends to enemies to lovers, hero x villain that you love 💕

Today I updated the latest chapter, where we come into contact with the criminal underworld...

[bad-serafima]

What did I miss?

Also, I'm so greateful I didn't start posting my chapters online starting chapter 1, but that I had 10+ chapters written ahead, which gave me the opportunity to just post weekly and have a break, disappear, come back, still have something to post.

But.

My stash of chapters is slowly ending.

So, I really need a good writer's huuuzzaaah of a weekend to at least finish act 1 (chapter 17ish?) and then take a little break after that is posted, and focus on, well, reading and socializing <3

[bad-serafima]

My autistic ex who likes brains digs in people for entertainment like a vampire, and when she thinks she has them figured out she loses interest and finds a new target. And it's like, I get it, but it made every interaction we ever had feel like she's using me and not actually valuing what I say...

Guess I was honoured she found me "infinitely interesting" a "deep" but I had trust issues and was secretive and tried to tell her nothing because whatever I told her felt binge-consumed and not appreciated at all, no empathy or genuine interest, I'm just "stimulation" for her.

So, cue my toxic behavior as a response, where I "call her out", as I think, on what a surface-level, unfeeling, fake person she is. I should have set my boundaries better instead of lashing out, especially if I believed it all to be one-sided. She got tired of me telling her everything she does it "wrong".

I guess that's the short version and I'm still trying to understand whether my mistake was assuming from the start that she was evil and never giving her the benefit of the doubt, or whether my mistake was getting close to her anway even though I thought like that... sigh.

I miss her but I don't.

[bad-serafima]

The training scene from chatper 3 where Mason wants to test out Jin-Haru's echolocating powers aka how I incorporate our voice-based-powers character's singing into the story.

A song I don't really know starts playing. Jin-Haru, blindfolded, takes a deep breath and says he needs a few seconds. He starts swaying, then bouncing, head bobbing, shoulders rocking, as he gets into the beat. It sounds early 2000's, and when the synthetic melody pauses with a dramatic ba-dum-dum, the lyrics kick in.

He points right at me with choreographed smoothness:

     "Saw you standing there,

     Across the room,

     Came closer

     Just to get a taste of your perfume."

Okay. Sidewalk Saints. Cheesy. Never heard this song of theirs.

My cheeks hurtning from grinning at his sharade, I throw the first ball. Jin-Haru flinches a millisecond before it hits him in the shoulder. The ball bounces back towards me as he swears. 

He's bouncing on the balls of his feet now, looking like something between a kickboxer and a hip hop dancer about to go down. He keeps going with that moany boyband voice:

     "Your smile's so white,

     Lights up the night,

     I can't help but feel you might just be my 

     Missus Right."

The song is oddly catchy, and I have to force myself to throw the tennis balls without waiting for the next verse. I throw two at once. Jin-Haru stylishly jives to the side, away from the left ball, but gets the second one in the hip. I don't know if he intended to thrust it back my way, but that happened. I caught it and immediately threw it at the wall behind him.

      "Oh, ba-by," he hiccups as he twirls away from the ball, and cracks a smile, realising he survived it.

     "Can't you see?

     You and I were meant to be," he wails, his confidence and groove dialing up after that evasive manoeuvre.

♫

You can read Echolite on Wattpad, Inkitt or Patreon for free.

[bad-serafima]

Me, writing Character Interviews for my behind-the-scenes for Echolite on Patreon:

Serafima: Jin-Haru has read most of the script ahead already, but you don't do that, do you? Mason: I like to discover things about myself as I go, yeah. Serafima: Funny how that works, because interview-Jin-Haru likes to analyse the whole journey from start to end, thought story-Jin-Haru is caught up in the now, or the past, with no forward sight whatsoever. Meanwhile, story-Mason is taking the long-term into consideration all the time, yet he you are, going with the flow...

Me, staring at what I just wrote: "The heck is this fifth-wall breaking meta shit?"

[bad-serafima]

I'm writing Echolite to tell a story through an autistic/adhd character with powers in a superhero world to explore my own evolution of:

♫ hating myself for being "broken"

♫ anger at the world like it owed me something

♫ being a villain in someone else's story

♫ clarity about what I can or can't control

♫ trying to do better

♫ getting frustrated that the same things keep happening even after my epiphany

♫ self-acceptance

♫ and it's all wrapped in this superhero setting to explore the conversation between what some call a gift and others a disability & the weird way it's both.

And maybe by the time I finish the story I too might finally realise it...

[bad-serafima]

I logged back into Wattpad and Inkitt to get catch up with writing and editing, and it just hit me that, with 3 chapters out, I have people discovering my stuff, reading it, reacting to it, reviewing it??? I am not speaking into the void!!?? I can't let people down now can I!!??

[frederickchiltonsdivacup]

I'm gonna go check on my WIP. just in case it wrote itself while I was gone. You never know.

[bad-serafima]

...aight time to get back to my secret second life of an aspiring author and catch up on some writer stuff. Hello, it's me, I'm back.

[bad-serafima]

I'm upset and ranting but you know that chunk of western white men who think of themselves as "intellectual" who, in a span of 30 years, went from "religion is for idiots, I believe in science" to "bUt WhaT abOUt basic hUMaN ValUeS tHe BIble tAuGht uS??" just because the prior stopped serving their interests. I personally know dudes like this and it infuriates me because they used one excuse to put their boot on my neck, and then a total opposite "logic" ten years later to put a boot on my neck.

(those kind of) Men: "We will no longer be oppressed and abide by some power being pushed upon us like something as nonsensical as church, religious "morals" or a non-existent God!"

*accidentally liberated women, queer people, other faiths and people of colour in the process and gave them equal rights, therefore lowering a chunk of cis male default privileges*

(those kind of) Men: "shit, what I meant to say was—"

It's those kind of men that I don't respect; the kind who don't have their own core humanitarian values and just jump on the next "cool boy" trend, listening to what the loudest "cool boy" in politics or in their podcasts has to say (or who ARE the "cool boy" trying to hold power.)

I'm not saying people can't evolve and change their opinions, but when your only source of motivation for "change" is "I want to get forward in life by all means possible and I'll blindly follow the "leader" who tells me I'm not getting forward in life because it's someone else's fault" then that's not your own character growth, that's being a spineless ameba fitting into someone else's shape. You don't see the rest of us being this bipolar. We just kinda want everybody to get along and we friggin know what our actualy values are. Those-kind-of-men absorb other people's rants as their values, and only actually "value" their own agendas.

Be your own leader. Align with your own soul. Build your own values. Listen to all sorts of people and sources first, and then make your conclusions based on how you feel; not by being in a cult bubble. Meditate or something. And if you come to that conclusion on your own, at least you're true to yourself I guess.

But. yeah, in the first example, if you rejected religion because you didn't want it to have power over you, only to turn around and realise it gives you power over others, you're pretty selfish and not "religious" at all.

[bad-serafima]

Me and my kinda toxic homoerotic best friend ex-frienemy (okay she's sweet I'm the toxic one)

[bad-serafima]

Me going through my drafts for post ideas and looking at past Fima's notes like "girl u asking me? i thought i knew" lol

[cupid-sins]

pin me down n fuck me till i'm sore n barely here. i wanna be fucked so stupid that all i'm thinking of is you.

[bad-serafima]

Reposting for writing-related research purposes I swear.

[bad-serafima]

Currently writing lyrics to a Chase Atlantic inspired vibe for my novel. Imagining my character listening to the track while rollerskating on the beach to cool off and disassociate from reality after a shitty start to a day that had him nearly sensory-overload-meltdown (a day in the life chapter depictict "I'm not okay") and he finds comfort in listening to "Casey Vegas" (my in-world stand-in for CA)

[bad-serafima]

[a distant humming base, hazy reverb]

♫ [1st verse]

It’s quiet when you’re lying next to me

But when you're not around

my brain won’t shut the fuck up

City bleeding through my blinds again

I taste regret when I wake up

Yeah yeah yeah—

[a ticking beat picks up]

♫

Snuck out of my room like a thief

You're blowing up my phone

Like I don’t already know

Got a hand on my neck, babe, release

If you wanna end it, make it loud

I’d rather burn up than fade out

Yeah yeah yeah—

♫ [bridge]

Tell me lies

Make it cinematic

Falling for you, babe

It's automatic

Yeah yeah yeah—

You say that you're toxic

I'm venom

We've had harder shit inside our veins

Yeah yeah yeah—

♫ [chorus, if there were one :)]

[Thanks for singing along. I love writing lyrics but I can't sing or play instuments, so I have NO IDEA how this sounds. You're welcome to try and sing or play it, I'd LOVE to hear, but remember to credit me cuz copyright]

[Written for Echolite Chapter 5, the superhero bl story I'm writing where, yep, we have lots of signing because the main character has singing powers. Check it out HERE.]

[bad-serafima]

Today's writing session included:

❤️‍🩹 MC obsessing over a crush

💸 an overdue rent

😩 the constant anxiety of being in survival mode, perpetually under the poverty line

📦 delivery gig hell

🏙️ a noisy, overstimulating city

🎵 dissociating from his problems because music is a safe place from his shitty reality

🚬 just to spend that hard earned money in a hookah bar with your crush because fancy Turkish pillows, nicotine and this hot dude numb the pain away

In other words, "a day in the life of" chapter.

Quote of the day:

Happy poets don't write good prose, I guess. 

Updating the story with this chapter soon on Wattpad and Inkitt.