author of { twolonelyheavens } (you haven't heard about this before). currently writing stories about severely mentally ill women and dragon-girl princesses. i love writing about found families and trauma.
yes, they are nearly ALL furries. furries are just a superior character design.
So I'm not actually a writer. I'm actually a film producer and editor, but film is very expensive and I'm very poor. After being starved out of my ability to push out volumes of art I had in my days when I was a kid with lower standards, I stopped making art that my stupid employed life wouldn't have the time for.
Then my friend drew my fursona. And I was like "I really like this girl" so then I started writing short stories.
(this is her. she is very pretty. thank you friend)
And I wrote a lot more. Then I wrote a book with her and a bunch of other characters.
(book)
And now I'm like "holy shit I really want to write like all the time now" so I spend a lot of my free time writing these days.
Then said friend who drew my fursona told me that people on Tumblr would LOVE my writing. I agreed. I don't know anything about Tumblr.
I'm here to post about long-form character rants, complaints about my worldbuilding, possibly advice as I'm kinda dumb, and screaming into the void as part of my creative process. Occasionally I'll post about a snippet of my life that's related to me and writing. Maybe I'll just say some random stupid shit.
I like writing about found families, social politics, mental health, trauma, and yuri.
I don't have any social medias. You are quite literally witnessing my first one. But you can find the short stories that lead to the development of my book here.
Due to exclusive book restrictions, I am NOT allowed to give the book out for free. However, if you are interested in the book, you can email [email protected] to get a free PDF document of an unrelated nature.
Reflections on the "Found Family" & Siblings, Parents, and Love in Strange Places
(amazing pretty original illustration by lemy. kind of gives me the feels for this essay. i was looking at this while writing, so thank you <3)
For those who don't know me in person, you might not know that I've recently been embracing my inner mother a lot. I've been finding a lot of personal comfort being able to nurture, care, and pour my love into someone. In the past this has been a part of myself I was mildly reluctant to engage with, due to the idea that I thought being mother-like represented a specific type of female archetype. But as I've continued to grapple with the pitfalls, stresses and disasters of my current life, I think I've matured past the stage of early-early transgender-hood that implies I could only find comfort in my superficial identity and youthfulness (or I'm too stressed out to care). The way I look and the way I act are still undeniably important and unchanging aspects of my identity, but being able to provide a nurturing and maternal level of love and care has drastically changed my perspective on not just my relationships, but my own perceived identity and how that affects my writings.
I feel a little stupid saying this whilst I've always continued to write about the "found family", because these days that term means far more to me than it used to. Not trusting my parents from an early age, I had always looked to other places or people in my life to find that same maternal form and love. I'm glad I found someone who was willing to provide me with that when I did, during the period of my life where I was the most lost and confused I had ever been. There is still only one person I feel comfortable calling my mom, and I think I learned from the best. But with that came the sheer will to convey as raw a form of love as possible, and that came out in the form of a book.
{ twolonelyheavens }
This section contains major spoilers for Act 1 and Act 2 and mild spoilers for Act 3 of { twolonelyheavens }.
Jules is not a mother.
A maternal instinct isn't a personality trait of hers. Jules is too obsessed with her plans and geometry to care about Cadence in any sense past her immediate impact on the Outworlders. However, upon first meeting them. Jules and Cadence are on the same frequency. They are both performing roles learned to keep themselves safe. Jules's need for control is just a softer version of the Axiom Directive that broke Cadence. As much as Jules can try to convince the rest of the Outworlders that she is pushing and planning out of care, it is the only way she can feel like she has any agency or control over an environment that could easily get them killed, and is ultimately another form of fear that could easily get them sent the other way.
"What is wrong with you, Cadence?"
It's easy to read that as just another person being mean to her. As a continuation of her cycle of abuse. For 300 years, Cadence lived a life that was trained to view her own existence as a sequence of data points. The asset she was forced into while biologically being a 12 year old girl gave her a large sense of cognitive dissonance. When Jules snaps, it is actually a line she crosses that acknowledges that Cadence has an interiority, a capacity for fear, and a reason to be wrong that isn't a technical glitch, and it establishes the character arc that forces Cadence to become vulnerable and confront her trauma. It's when she becomes a troubled child instead of a machine.
Both Jules and Aris are positioned as maternal figures to Cadence, and this is represented in a major way through how they used their clothing as a form of protection. Aris isn't a villain and I really wanted to make sure she didn't come across as one. She represents the tragedy of someone who is too held back by the systems that govern us (the real enemy, if you will) to actually be a mother. She gives Cadence her coat to keep her warm, but it is also a desperate, last-ditch attempt to connect with her daughter. An act of love for sure, but an act of love that ultimately left Cadence as disposed biomass.
To say that Aris wasn't a perfect scientist would have been a stretch of the imagination. In my mind, she was one of the greater researchers to work with Axiom, but being 'perfect' is nothing more than a label to people who don't have any more space to dedicate morality (or love) as axis's in their life. Conversely, Cadence waking up wrapped up in Jules's coat at the end Act 2 was probably one of the most formative parts of the text to me. At a point where Cadence is at her least operational and essential, failing to properly guide the Outworlders, slowly breaking her composure and logic, Jules uses her care to preserve a girl she's proud to know. The role of a parent could be defined as biological, and is often socially defined as something vague about bravery in a vacuum. But maybe having the opportunity and using sheer will to choose a person over ones own fear is what it's all about, baby.
My friends would know about my continued attachment to the 'Earth AU' headcanon. On the surface, it's just a way for me to spend more time with these characters because I am so attached to them and love them so dearly, but on a deeper level, it's a place where the Axiom Directives (the systems) finally dies for good. And that's the main reason why it's a headcanon, unfortunately. In the headcanon, mothering is allowed to be mundane. It's about Jules teaching Cadence how to brush her hair, or pick out clothes, or navigate the normalcy of a grocery store.
It's my own way of parenting Cadence, letting the survival machine become obsolete. Jules becomes the person who creates a space where Cadence doesn't have to be useful to be kept. There is historically a very slow process of a child learning that they aren't a product of abuse, or rather, that they aren't hardware, and a mother learning that her most important job is just being home for that child. There's a form of love that exists here, the kind that doesn't need a crisis to prove that it exists. It's always there, in the snuggles early in the morning, in the dirty breakfast dishes, in the lazy afternoons, proving that we were always more and were never less than the variables the world tried to make us.
Thirteen Orphans
Rue and Wren are peers, or rather two people sharing a form of sisterhood, trying to navigate the shared headspace of a house full of trauma. They are grounded in a mutual of understanding of what it takes to survive, holding up the corners of their world.
Despite the chaos of the house, Rue and Raine are arguably the two closest characters in the entire story. Raine is the part of Wren's system that the world (and Wren) would deem useless. She is the child, the manifestation of all the vulnerability that Wren had to tuck away to get through the day.
Wren and Rue are often sharing the bathtub. However, silence is deadly for them both. For Rue, it makes her itch violently, and for Wren, nothingness is a pit of fear that triggers Raine's distress. In a heartbeat, Rue is no longer sitting with her peer, but face-to-face with a broken, sobbing child who has been dropped into the void with her.
And Rue, without a single second of hesitation, pulls that child into her arms.
Thirteen Orphans is ultimately a story about the big systems and structures that control us too. Rues love is the choice to protect someone's right to be small, vulnerable and useless in the greater system that tried to force them to grow up too fast, and with far too little care. Rue hates being reminded that she is a sister, but the other side of the coin is that she is far too afraid to admit that she wants nothing more in this world than to BE a good sister. And in the opportunity where she can be loving and caring without judgement or without performing, Rue becomes the big sister Wren never had and the mother Raine was denied. Wren doesn't have to be a single, high-output machine to be kept. Her fragilest parts are actually the ones most worth holding.
There is a performance I have to output being an adult in the world. It's something I upkeep with the biological family (that I don't trust, if it wasn't obvious from my writings) and at work. Or when responding to business emails. Or when interacting with acquaintances or the outer portion of my friend group. Caring for someone demands that you let go of your ego and stop worrying about your identity for a while. You have to strip away all the armor. In that head space, I find myself lowering my own defenses to meet them. Not in an intellectual sense, but about lowering my guard.
A child doesn't have schemes. They aren't looking for a subtext or judging your social standing. They just want to be loved and cared for. There's something profoundly healing about that simplicity, and it lets me set myself down: the labels, the dysphoria, all the pressure to be a functional unit in the greater system, and just be a source of warmth.
Rue's care for Raine is a direct act of defiance. If the women and Rue didn't hate society enough, every act of love and care, every time Rue chooses to sit in the tub and hold a sobbing child is a middle finger to every parent and every system that failed to protect them.
We live in a world full of ghosts, haunted by the people we were supposed to be before trauma forcefully shaped us into functional units. By creating these bonds, my characters have the agency to rewrite their own history by filling the void where a parent's love should have been and filling it with each other. To say that Rue was reaching back through time and validating the right of every orphan in the story to have existed without fear is a way of saying that even if the past was a series of cold rooms, you don't deserve to live that existence and should never have to.
Found family isn't just about surviving who hurt you, it's about proving them wrong by becoming the very thing they told you didn't exist. It's about taking the love the world tried to optimize out of us and using it to let someone go to sleep knowing they are safe.
Conclusion
If my writing can do anything, I hope it gives you that same radical permission to set down your armor, stop performing, and just be a source of warmth for someone else, or even for the discarded version of yourself.
The world is always going to try to optimize the love out of us. It will always try to tell us that we are only as valuable as our output. But as long as we continue to waste calories on hugs, the system is a smidge less powerful than it was yesterday.
Wires don’t bleed, and machines don’t weep. I’m glad I do. I’m glad I can be a friend, a mother, a sister, and a home. And I’m glad I have my friends (or my real family) to remind me that we were always more than enough.
Problems for Tomorrow are projects that I haven't been able to figure out how to complete, posted so they wouldn't go forgotten and to document my process. Suggestions and ideas are greatly encouraged and appreciated.
The world doesn't know what to do with people like us.
Four sickeningly toxic, traumatized young women, alienated from normal society by their own destructive behavior, find themselves locked in a permanent, high-stakes Mahjong rivalry. They routinely bleed each other of money, hurl vicious insults, and sabotage each other's lives. Yet, Mahjong requires exactly four players. No more, and no less.
(rue is my favourite character, but I consider Emily an icon and a staple of the universe. shes too girlboss)
Sometime around march this year, I had this conversation in my friends Discord server.
Me:
m planning a Canon ill be working on after tlh
And its just a bunch of asshole nutjob women
If I gave you a character description and told you to take every creative liberty you hage to come up witj their character design would you do ut
Lemy
AMi mean i could Try
(please ignore the god awful typing. i think i was on my phone)
And like every single good idea I've ever had (I don't think I've ever had a good idea), I stole one of Lemys OC's and shoved her into the story as a creative pivot for the rest of the characters.
Present
Thirteen Orphans (13o) is a psychological drama centered on four broken women living in a dilapidated two-room apartment above a failing dry cleaner. The narrative is anchored by their collective competitiveness in Mahjong.
The characters are named after the cardinal directions to the Mahjong wind tiles, each representing a different failure of the traditional world.
Emily is a warden. A hyper-vigilant manipulator with a god complex who grew up as the secret adult for addict parents. She keeps the others caged and broken because she only feels useful when fixing a crisis.
Vivienne is a surgical instrument. She is a disgraced high-society heiress and a data auditor who views people as variables. She is secretly their financial shield that keeps them afloat while maintaining her icy elitism.
Wren is the scavenger. A pathological liar and grifter with Dissociative Identity Disorder (alters: Raine and Ora). She survives by mirroring the needs of others, acting as the houses social lubricant while secretly hoarding for her own survival.
Rue is a black hole. A self-destructive addict seeking punishment for the accident that left her brother brain-damaged. She is the group's scapegoat, wielding her nihilism like weapon to drag the others into her despair.
As a continued pattern in trope defiance in my writing, 13o explores survival through utility as opposed to a found family where characters heal each other with love. These women don't necessarily like each other, in fact, they are often cruel, elitist, or manipulative. However, they are psychologically locked together by their trauma-induced roles.
Traditionally, a story's goal is for characters to get better. This is technically true in the case of 13o, however their history and trauma prevent them by healing in a traditional manner. The separation that the characters face leave them utterly incompatible with most of society. Each characters worst traits are the only things keeping them alive, which means healing said things would leave them exposed and vulnerable to the outside world, which is a far more complex conflict than "will they be happy?"
The Wall
It's an uncommon occasion where I find myself stuck at a wall not because I don't have an idea, but because I am struggling to maintain the thematic integrity of the characters. In my projects I continue to feel the desire to create a Hero's Journey once again, to send the characters away on a grand expedition, but every time I force the girls out the apartment, they have to come back.
As I was going through my Rue high (she's my favorite) I built a complete, compelling story line written specifically for her. It works for her character, it has an emotional and narrative direction, but the moment it is implemented, the other three characters fade into the background.
The intention has always been to create an ensemble piece. This is a compromise I am not willing to make. These four characters are a very intentionally built chemical compound.
The real wall is the core thesis of the story itself: these women shouldn't leave these walls. It is a study of why society can never truly accept them. They are not "lovable rogues" or "misunderstood victims" waiting for a hug and a reception arc. They are functional monsters forged by a world that views them as faulty or unwashed. If they step outside, they are asked for a level of humanity they have already traded for survival.
The Future
I need a crisis that demands the absolute worst from all the women. What is the one thing that all four monsters would be willing to fight for, or the one thing they are all equally afraid to lose?
But these characters have traded happiness for survival. If I refuse to give them a traditional redemption arc, what does a victory look like for them? Is "we managed to stay in this room for another year" a satisfying ending, or do they need to collectively burn down the world that rejected them?
Thirteen Orphans is about being broken and stuck. If not incredibly pretentious, maybe my own struggle to unstick them is simply a reflection of the narrative's own truth. To force them out into the traditional Hero's Journey would be to kill the very things that make them breathe.
The question I need to ask myself is what I want for these characters. But until that storm arrives to sweep them away, they stay behind a double-bolted door, sitting in a two-bedroom apartment above a dry cleaner, watching the winds of their dingy neighborhood. They are a problem for tomorrow, because today, they are simply trying to endure.
Problems for Tomorrow (Vol. I): Soul Without a Body Without a Soul
Problems for Tomorrow are projects that I haven't been able to figure out how to complete, posted so they wouldn't go forgotten and to document my process. Suggestions and ideas are greatly encouraged and appreciated.
Shiori is a god of grief created by human cruelty and Adira is a feral huntress created by nature’s necessity. This is a story of two monsters bound together in a dying forest desperately clinging onto what’s left of their humanity.
(the thing and the creature)
Present
On June 24th, Lemy introduced me to the characters Shiori (pretty) and Adira (creature).
Shiori and Adira are two halves of a shattered divine event. Shiori is quite literally the concept of sadness constructed with the sadness of tens of thousands of people, while Adira was born from the physical mess Shiori left behind.
Their paths crossed when Adira spotted Shiori in the woods. Seeing a frail, trembling girl, Adira categorized her as easy prey. However, after several successful kills that resulted in her spotting Shiori stumbling around weeks later, her worldview was shattered. For the first time in her life, Adira found something a bone she couldn’t keep snapped. She began to study her, eventually following her back to her isolated home.
Because Adira's lineage has forgotten how to feel complex emotions, she is one of the few creatures nearly completely immune to the fallout of Shiori's original ritual that plagues the forest. To Shiori, Adira is a relief because she seemingly cannot be worn down by what she believes is a consequence of her existence. Adira allows her to forget about the 'responsibility' that she was unwillingly cursed with.
I've always been intensely fascinated with genuine relationships that form out of necessity. Similarly to 13o, this story runs on the idea that their bond is fundamentally toxic and dangerous, however it is earned because they are both outcasts who would cease to exist or function in the normal world.
There is a beautiful poignancy in Adira's realization that she will eventually burn out while Shiori lives forever. She has an innate, human desire to be remembered, framed through the lens of a monster who doesn't know how to say "I love you and I'll miss you."
The Wall
I find myself seeking a grand, rewarding narrative. A grand, expansive of epic proportions. These days, I continue to chase after the high that an emotional odyssey like { twolonelyheavens } gave me. Naturally, my first instinct was to take them away from home and send them across the map, but every time I try to plot the journey, I run into dead-ends.
Shiori's core essence is stasis. She is defined by depressive stasis, avoidance, and a desire to be invisible. She doesn't want to save the world; she doesn't even want to be in it. Adira is a scavenger. She is motivated by territory, food, and the possession of her toy. She has little grand ambitions to see the world and just wants to keep what is hers.
When I try to force them into a Hero's Journey, it is always artificial. Who would Shiori walk a thousand miles? Why would Adira care about a distant kingdom? Moving them feels like uprooting a tree.
The worldbuilding is rather empty because the characters have no natural reason to engage with it. Shiori and Adira are at the edge of the woods, and I am stuck with them having every reason to stay and no reason to leave. Until I find that reason, the world beyond the trees remains a mystery.
The Future
Whilst this story sits in stasis, I've been asking myself questions for where it could go next.
If Shiori is a concept (agony) are there others? Is she part of a pantheon of accidental gods created by human error? Does her existence maintain a balance she doesn't know about?
What is something Adira is afraid to lose more than Shiori? Is there anything? If the answer really is nothing, then should the story be about Adira realizing Shiori wants to be lost?
What if the forest's rot is a resource that somebody else wants?
If Shiori is a failed ritual, is there a successful one? Is the God of Joy out there, and is it less or more terrifying?
Adira inherently runs on a clock defining her lifetime. If Adira succumbs to the original effects of the rituals, how would Shiori save the only person who can look at her?
I love these fuckheads but I have no clue what to do with them. As I move onto other projects, I'm hoping I can change how I think about a grand story or what it should look like. I'm going back to the drawing board to see if I can find something that preserves what makes these characters so special.
For { twolonelyheavens } fans. If you aren't a fan, go away, unless this topic interests you.
This essay is dedicated to @cerisemeow who is NOT allowed to read it.
Contains major spoilers and discussion for Act 1 and 2 of { twolonelyheavens }.
Did you know in the initial first run of planning for tlh, near the end of Act 2 there was a fight scene involving Cadence being confronted in some way by her surviving, failed sibilings?
In the "throwing ideas against the wall" phase of the process, this event would have taken place after Ery had dismantled the group's morale, leaving everyone disconnected, and Cadence would be further from them than ever as she continued to look down on them as disadvantaged products of survival machines. The point of a crisis like this was to kill as many birds as possible. The outworlders had to reconciliate, they had to find a way to get Cadence to trust them before the third act, and Cadences trauma had to be placed directly in between her and The Outworlders in order to challenge her beliefs.
What was initially planned of the chapter is that due to a continued argument following the groups collapsing morale, Cadence continues marching forward, uncomfortable watching what seems like the logical end for The Outworlders: they cannot resolve their tension and proceed to split up, which causes them to die. Through out act one and two, it is an understated idea that Cadence doesnt need The Outworlders at all, and are instead dragging them along as sociality is still an essential part of her biology that she has lacked for years. As such, she is constantly fearful that they will actually leave and she will return to living a life of a lonely machine.
This separates her from The Outworlders, who upon searching for her again, find her incapacitated, surrounded by a group of her sibilings (referred to as the "Hollowed", creative name i know. Very subtle). She is paralyzed at the sight of them, being forced to look in a mirror of her own biology, and suffering severe deep seeded survivors guilt.
This is how the chapter developed over time in the planning phase:
The Outworlders essentially beat the fuck out of the Hollowed, forced to work together to save Cadence, and successfully do.
The Outworlders threaten the Hollowed away with pack mentality.
The Hollowed are incredibly strong and scary creatures. The Outworlders initially go back into their coping mechanisms before they are forced to confront the idea that they cannot brute force their way through it, and have to work intentionally to escort Cadence away from them, scaring them with pack mentality.
???
The chapter is removed entirely.
At some point i likely realized that this idea was such a jarring tonal shift. Nature, flora and fauna were never meant to be the villains. I just couldn't have a creature like that in the book.
The Outworlders and Cadence had to be truly alone.
{ tlh } is a book about surviving the self. After cutting this portion of the book, I dedicated the rest of my thematic writing to spitting in the face of every fantasy and sci-fi trope we're used to.
Usually, dropping characters into a new world you expect the hero's journey. Magic, lore, or some hidden power that makes beings special. I wanted to do the opposite: strip away as much power until all that was left was physical and mental vulnerability.
In the standard fantasy, Minty being a taur or Ery having wings world be a superpower. In { tlh }, their biology is another way for the world to hurt them. Minty is a girl who can't find traction on the slippery ceramic floors. Ery's wings are draped loosely across the snow or used as a shivering cocoon because she's freezing to death.
These characters, including "Supersoldier" Cadence, are continuously burdened by their non-human traits. The idea is to prevent the reader from looking at them like creatures and to start looking at them as people. Their otherness only exists to show hoe much they can suffer, which ironically makes them feel more human than a standard protagonist.
She spends the whole book talking about survival probability and dismissing emotional connection. But, her magic is just a trauma response. The climax of her arc is breaking down and admitting that she's just a 12 year old girl who doesn’t want to be alone.
The biggest middle finger I could possibly offer to genre tropes is Cadence. Usually the native guide is a wise, mysterious mentor. Cadence is pretty mysterious, sure, but the reality of her existence is that she is a child brainwashed into thinking shes hardware.
Looking back at those initial notes, I realized that I was trying to give the characters an external enemy because I wasn't quite ready to face their internal ones yet. Cutting the fight scene was scary because it meant the story had to survive on pure vulnerability alone. But { tlh } was never supposed to be a comfortable fantasy.
I wrote another short today. It is part of the collection of stories outside of the story of my book. No prior knowledge is required, if you're interested in reading it.
2nd of March, 2027
A glowing bubble in the midday steam.
Contains mild spoilers for Act 1 of { twolonelyheavens }.
Part of the { lonelyworlds } Head-canon series.
Why is there… so much dust?
Minty moves in a tight circle. She stops abruptly, her breath shallow. Her hands, pale and damp, fumbling with the hem of her apron. She wipes at a speck of lint, her fingers trembling as they smooth the starch-stiffened fabric.
Two maids sit on a nearby bench, their shoulders nearly touching as they murmur to one another. She draws her shoulders inward, pulling her elbows flush against her ribs. She reaches up to adjust her headband, her fingers grazing the base of her ears before dropping back to her sides.
Minty steps through the double doors into the dining area. Her hooves land the hardwood with a wooden click. The café is bright, smelling of roasted beans and scented sugar.
Four figures stand at the entrance. They are bundled in heavy wool coats and broad-brimmed hats that cast deep shadows over their faces, a stark contrast to the light floral décor of the room.
The head maid approaches them. She bows. One of the figures in the group leans in, murmuring. The head maid’s gaze shifts. She raises an arm, her index finger extending to point directly at Minty. She nods once.
Minty’s tail goes rigid, pressing flat against her hind legs. Her pulse thrums at the base of her throat, a visible tremor. She takes a half-step back, her hoof scraping against a floorboard. The world feels too small, the ceiling too low.
Minty retreats, her hooves scrambling against the floorboards through the double doors. Back inside the break room, she leans her forehead against a cold metal locker. The fabric of her sleeves bunches in her grip as she glares at the indentations her weight has pressed into the rug.
“Minty?"
Minty’s entire frame jolts, her spine hitting the locker.
A woman in a sharp navy blazer, her hair pulled into a tight, grey-streaked bun, steps inside. She adjusts her glasses, the lenses catching the overhead light. "The customers at the corner booth... they asked for you."
“Reiss! Oh, I’m sorry, I…” Minty draws in a shaky breath, shaking her head frantically. "I'm not... I shouldn't be out there," She whispers, staring at her reflection in a small wall-mounted mirror, her ears pinned low. "I'll… break something. They'll see I don't belong.”
Reiss steps into Minty’s peripheral vision. Her gaze softens. "I hired you because you possess a precision most of the others lack. You are trained, dedicated and talented." She pauses, her gaze fixing on the double doors. "Go out there. These customers are not looking for a reason to find fault. They want you to succeed.”
Minty’s fingers curl into her palms, her nails digging into the fur. She looks at the menu sitting on the table. “I’m… I’m sorry, I’m being so-”
"You will be okay," Reiss states. It is a directive, not a question.
Minty’s hooves stutter across the hardwood. She keeps the menus pressed against her chest, the laminated plastic a cold barrier between her and the room. She keeps her gaze fixed on the floor, tracking the grain of the wood until the shadow of the corner booth falls over her hooves.
Minty stops at the foot of the table, her breath catching.
She looks up.
Jules sits at the head of the booth, her glasses catching the soft café light. Beside her, Koa leans back, his jaw relaxed, his tattered cardigan sleeves pulled over his palms. Across from them, Ery’s feathery antennae curve forward, twitching in the scented air. Next to her is a small, four-point silhouette in a orange fluffy coat, Cadence. They had just finished piling their coats and hats on the bench in a heap of fabric.
“Oh, hi Minty,” Jules says, her voice level. She taps a finger against the tabletop. “Can we get the-”
A sharp, broken sob catches in Minty’s chest. Her vision blurs into a mess of light and colour. The menus slip from her hands, clattering onto the table.
Jules pauses as she looks up from the menu.
She stands and wraps her arms around the taur’s shivering waist, pulling her flush against the wool of her cardigan. Minty buries her face into the crook of Jules’s neck, her tail dropping limp as she weeps into her shoulder.
After a long minute, Jules pulls back, keeping her hands on Minty’s shoulders to steady her.
“Alright,” Jules murmurs, a small smile touching her lips. “What about a practice run? What’s the special?”
Minty pushes through the swinging doors. The kitchen air is thick with the scent of fried eggs and steam. She sets the empty tray onto the stainless steel counter. Her hands are steadier now, though a her fingertips still nervously hum.
Reiss stands by the pass, typing notation on her phone. She looks up, her glasses reflecting the overhead fluorescent grid. "You’re very natural at it, Minty."
Minty’s ears twitch upward. She bows, her head dropping low. "Thank you. I… I was trying very hard to remember the steps."
"It showed," Reiss says. She reaches for a ceramic plate resting under the heat lamp. It is a portion of omurice, the yellow curve of the omelette draped over rice. A small face is drawn in ketchup on the surface, two dots for eyes, a wide, looping smile and a pair of ears on the sides.
Reiss slides the plate across the counter toward her.
Minty stares at the ketchup face. She tilts her head, her fingers hovering over the edge of the ceramic. "Is there… a modification to the order? I didn't see this on the ticket."
"It isn't an order," Reiss states. She tucks her phone under her arm. "We do not typically permit the staff to occupy the dining area during a shift. But your friends… Are they your friends?"
Her spine straightens. "They’re my family, actually."
Reiss nods once. A small crease appears at the corner of her eyes. "The café is currently at low capacity. Go. Have lunch with your family, Minty."
Minty’s throat hitches. A hot tear spills over her cheek, landing on the starch of her apron. She grips the warm plate with both hands, her knuckles pressing into the ceramic as her shoulders begin to shake. “T… Thank you Reiss. I won’t forget this.”
The midday sun hits the steam clinging to the glass, diffusing the light until the interior of the café feels like a bright, translucent bubble. Ery’s antennae sway, filtering the golden haze.
Koa leans his elbow on the table, looking at Jules. "So. Do we have a heading for tomorrow? We’re all off the clock."
Jules rests her hands in her lap. "I thought we could try a random roam. We pick a street, walk until we find something interesting, and eat whenever we find a scent we like."
Minty’s fork stalls over her omurice. She looks at the ketchup face, then at the bright world beyond the café doors.
"It's different out there," Minty murmurs. She shifts her hooves under the table, her keratin clicking against a metal support. "In here, I have a uniform. People understand why I’m here. If we just walk... they'll see how weird I am. They’ll stare."
Koa leans back, his long sleeves sliding up his forearms. He taps his knuckles against the wood. "Minty, look at us. Being weird is the family business. We’re all pretty good at it by now.”
Cadence nods once, her expression flat. "Koa is correct. Our collective social profile is significantly abnormal. Staring is a statistically guaranteed outcome regardless of our location.”
She reaches into the pocket of her orange coat. Her small, pale hand emerges clutching a single, squishy sugar-gem. She extends it toward Minty’s plate.
Jules’s hand shoots out, her fingers clamping gently over Cadence’s wrist before she can drop the sweet. Jules squints through her glasses, her head tilting. "Where did you get that? We haven’t been to a shop since we landed. Can you even get gushers around here?”
"It was part of my tactical inventory," Cadence says. She pulls her arm back, though Jules keeps a loose grip on her sleeve. "I have carried eight units in this pocket since the flight began.”
Ery leans in, her antennae twitching toward the candy. "Isn’t that… technically illegal? You’re supposed to declare that at the border."
Cadence yanks her wrist free from Jules’s grip. "Categorising survival resources for long-distance expedition as 'illegal' is a logical failure. It is a ridiculous law."
Jules rubs her temples with one hand. "It’s a customs violation, Cadence."
"The distinction is semantic."
Minty watches them. The tension in her shoulders dissolves, her spine loosening against the back of the booth. A small, quiet smile pulls at the corners of her mouth as the argument over food declaration laws fills the bubble.
Long before I was even video editing, I made a fan fiction about an indie game called Death Road To Canada. It was not a very serious game, not remotely story driven, and yet I don't know what was in me that thought "This would be a GREAT idea to write a fanfiction about!!!"
I assume it has something to do with the easy, predictable structure. The group you play as stops by various locations and undergoes various events featuring repeating characters on their way to Canada. With resource management, you handle group morale, hunger, and the maintenance of the car. Truth be told, the game itself is brilliant, but the fact that I have found at least 3 other fanfictions for the game on Wattpad is intriguing at the very least.
I am convinced it can not be found again. If my hubris gets the better of me, I will suffer the sin of being laughed at by my friends for the rest of eternity.
But dude, I sucked at writing films too!
I don't know if I was eternally cursed to never properly write a short film script, but not a single time have I actually been able to write a short film script that was actually cohesive or achievable. I know this is like, first year film writing kind of shit. You need to keep the scope of your short film TINY, but the first significant one I ever made quite literally involved the character experiencing thousands of years passing, and the major one I REALLY wanted to complete was set across like, at least 6 locations.
What the hell is this writing syndrome called??? 😭 At least I can make my personal writing projects as long or as short as I want.
Here is a Discord conversation between some of my characters (the mentally ill women)
Sometimes I am very glad I have the ability to take photos that can inspire my own writing (but they'll still never be cool as the insane shit some landscape photographers know how to pull off)
I'm kinda unhappy with a lot of decisions I made writing { twolonelyheavens } (tlh). Like, yeah. It's my most important piece of art, but a debut will never really be that good, unfortunately. Apart from the pacing issues and story cleanup I didn't have the energy to make razor sharp, it's just not very intentional with how it uses words and language.
My writing style was greatly focused on creating extreme and specific mental images about the environment by dragging the reader across something very strongly and purposefully atmospheric. However, it is often meandering and pointless. Which is so weird. I CHOSE every word that got put in that book, and read through it 10 times before I thought about publishing it, but today I really can't STAND reading shit like this again:
Is it necessarily bad? Not really. But the book is so full of prose that does not let what is important reach the reader.
And I know exactly what the problem is. I'm a stupid film addict and wrote this as if I was thinking about a film. I'm sure this is GREAT for when you want to create that mental image. I'm so glad I have the blessing of being able to see my book played out in my head as if it were a movie, but I just begin to forget that I'm writing a book.
At some point through out the writing process I did remember and actually write something that you couldn't really translate into a film without destroying it's meaning like this:
And I think my writing became it's best when it was easy to make words mean something. The book bleeds internal character thoughts directly into the narrative and rewards people who can find the distinction. But like, am I even good enough to make a writing device like that work?
Look, I KNOW writing is a process, and practice makes perfect, yada yada yada whatever. But it just sucks that I didn't do it perfect every single time without fail and why am I not perfect at everything I do on the first try what?
Insane how in my daily life I'm always complaining that I've got no tail to wag like "i would so be wagging my tail rn but i just gotta shake my leg" and then I give my characters tails only to never have them wag their tails. But LOOK I have excuses.
I honestly don't know how much I could blame myself for not making Ery's tail wag. I don't believe her tail has ever been rendered. However, she DOES have one it is just not really mentioned. Honestly, I might just get rid of it.
(the thing)
And look, Cadence does have a tail and its GIGANTIC, but I think she's too depressed and paranoid during the book to actually wag it.
(the cadence thing)
I have no excuse for not making Minty wag her tail. Sorry, Minty.
