#oitw

[xolotlcereus]

Let me self indulge myself on my own AU and fic with drawing sketches for future chapters lol. Yeah, one is blured out for a huge plot-ish spoiler. Whats going on?? Whooooooo knows!(You’ll know eventually as I work with the next few chapters lol.)

[ghostsofmemories]

I wanted to do an updated portrait of my main character, Arthur Benz, because I hate the old one and I think I've learned a bit about how digital art works in the past couple weeks and gained more control over my lines and such. So here he is!!

[magicalratboy]

IT HEALED. IT SURE DID HEAL.

JAMISON DID A MATING DANCE AND IT WAS SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL THEN HE KISSED MAKO ON THE CHEEK THEN MAKO KISSED HIM ON THE LIPS AND I'M SO FUCKING HAPPY RIGHT NOWEEE

[xolotlcereus]

It's been a long while since I've done an OitW illustration piece. This one is based on an upcoming chapter, which perhaps one of my absolute favorites/sappy writing as you will find out soon enough (Chapter 21 will be updated this month!)

[ghostsofmemories]

OITW and why it just isn’t working out

Before reading this post, consider checking out my friend and I’s shop where you can buy stuff and have 100% of the proceeds donated to the BLM organization, or check out the carrd to help in other ways.

Well, turns out I don’t actually want to write fantasy that bad. I think I’ve been trying really hard the past year or so to start writing novels again, and all of them have been fantasy or some variation thereof. That’s because I like fantasy, and I’ve had all of these fully fleshed out fantasy series ideas in my head since I was twelve. Back then, I didn’t think I was skilled enough to write them so I set them aside for an older, cooler me to write later.

The thing is, this older me doesn’t want to write fantasy anymore. I still like reading it sometimes, and I love playing with the concept of it, but it just isn’t my thing anymore. I wish the younger me who still wanted to write fantasy would have given these stories a go, because at this point there just isn’t any motivation there for them. I thought that going from poetry to prose was the problem, but I realized that some 5k words of the book (aka, the parts where the fantasy aspects have just barely been introduced and aren’t really involved in the plot) flowed pretty easily, and the prose was better, too!

So, as hesitant as I am to shelve yet another project, I think I’ve actually reached a point where the next one can be a keeper. Normally this is the part where I’d tag my taglist, but that feels kind of like mocking myself so I have opted to just... not do that.

I do know what I’m going to be writing next, which is a revived version of an old NaNoWriMo novel. Click if you want to read about the the project that’s been taking over my thoughts the past several weeks.

Pretty much the entire premise of it is changing, I’m just keeping a single scene and branching out from there. It used to be called There Was a Falling Out, and the premise is the story of a boy who grew up to become a serial killer, his first murder being his twin sister. Looking back now, though, I think the story should probably just be a chronicle of their childhood and what lead him to deciding to drown her at a lake near their house, and basically just explore their family’s fucked up relationships with each other.

He’s not going to become a serial killer, I don’t think? It makes the impact of him deciding to kill her a lot less significant, and I think I’d rather focus on their relationship as siblings than write about a bunch of super grotesque murders. My skin is not as thick as it was at fourteen.

It takes places in early 1980s and ends in the mid-late 90s, will be written in third person (from a weird omniscient kind of perspective), and the two siblings have an almost equal weight in the story, and is really focused on their constant push and pull. Their household is a really messed up place, with Robert (the main character) sort of being the scapegoat of the family and Ramona (I really do have a thing for siblings with similar names... sue me) seeming to have it a lot better than him. They have an older sister, Lori, who I’m not 100% sure what I want to do with yet. Seems cool though.

I’ll have a proper WIP intro to this at some point, once I figure it out a little more. I think it needs more planning than Ocean in the Woods because I know the climax but not much before then, since the plot of the old book was mostly murder and that doesn’t exist anymore.

[ghostsofmemories]

Ocean In the Woods: Character Portraits/Profiles

I hope everyone enjoys this because this has taken Forever™ and it's the reason I haven't gotten anything done all week. I drew some portraits in my comic sans presentation but I'm not very happy with them anymore so here's some better ones!!

Arthur Benz, he/him (MC)

I've already posted his portrait once, but it wouldn't be right to ignore him here! Arthur is 17, a trans guy, and a little impulsive. His family is very supportive of his gender identity (because I literally never see that in stories ever) and he has been on testosterone for just over a year. He has a tendency to feel guilty over things out of his control, is extroverted but distant, and is observant in terms of detail but oblivious in terms of emotions. He's not really a school kind of guy and can't wait to get out of there.

Anne Benz, she/her (older sister)

Anne is a 24 year old woman who still lives at home (by choice because she loves them). She's a programmer, family genius, considering giving her a secret girlfriend. She's extremely caring and closest to Arthur out of the rest of his family. Takes her responsibility as the oldest Very Seriously but still knows how to be a cool badass.

Aiden Benz, he/him (little brother)

Aiden is 14, in 8th grade. He is my baby, small and soft and even though he's a bit of an asshole at times, I still love him. He gets very good grades and listens to Bach and sort of thinks he's above Arthur because of that, but he's going to grow a lot over the course of the story. He's just an adorable child and deserves better.

Maya Bright, she/her

Maya is Arthur's best friend, who is also 17 but 12 days older and will let you know. She is absolutely fucking wild, and still manages to keep straight A's. Chaotic bisexual. She and Arthur feed each other's impulses. Would get into an ivy league school but get arrested for rioting and throwing bricks. I love her.

Lance Fisher, he/him

The other best friend! 18 and the only straight white person in the group, but he's still rad. Has gotten suspended from school and (temporarily) kicked off the soccer team because someone was messing with his friends and he was not having it. He's kind of an all brawn no brain at times, but he's not actually stupid and it hurts is feeling when people make fun of him (but he'd never tell them that).

Ollie Cook, they/them

Local freshman at 15, and basically got thrown into the friend group after coming out in the fall. They are feminine and Do Not Care what people think about it. Loud, fun, go-with-the-flow kinda friend. Unsure about their sexuality. They're always there for everybody but kind of insecure about their place in the group due to being younger and new to this whole thing. Very sweet, 100/10.

Vanessa Pierce, she/her

16, a sophomore amongst many juniors and a freshman. Dating Ollie, and the two of them are a very cute couple. Local lesbian (listen I don't wanna get into the gatekeeping stuff about nb people and sexualities, yeah? Let them exist) and lover of all things in shades of red. Probably secretly a goddess.

Ocean, she/her

Possible love interest from a parallel dimension (it's basically our world but set back 20 years and with monsters? I don't really get it either tbh. I'm just going with it) who accidentally brings a very scary monster/demon/whateverthefuck to our world. She's very desperate for approval in most things she does, as she's very unfamiliar with the technology and social dynamics here. She's very homesick and misses her family, but the portal back home won't open until the physical world is as it was before she got there (AKA no monster). Idk how old she is yet, but between 16 and 18. Mysterious. Unpredictable. Nervous wreck.

The Benz parents also play pretty big roles in the story, but I didn't include them here as I don't really have a clear picture of what they look like yet, so here they are (I basically just made some Really Awesome Parents because I don't think we see enough of that in fiction, especially YA):

Denise (mother) is very nurturing and careful. She wants to do everything as perfectly as possible with the fewest amount of repercussions. Her father is of Nigerian descent and her mother was born and raised in Mexico, but died when Denise was a young girl. She's trying to learn spanish as a tribute to her mother and heritage, but she's also juggling a career and her children, so it's a process.

Richard (father, who will always be Richie to his wife and in my heart) is also a programmer, and sparked Anne's interest in the job when she was young. He tries to spend time with all his kids and struggles to accept the fact that they're growing up. He does whatever he can to make them happy. He owns up to the mistakes of his past (spent some time in rehab when Anne and was a kid and Arthur was a baby), but does his best to move forward.

Overall, this is my favorite cast of characters ever!! I might have to slightly pair down some of the stuff I've got going in my head for them because frankly, there is Too Much Subplot (but. I love them so much) and there is not room for all their development and characteristics.

Taglist: @brooklyn-etc @coffeeandcalligraphy @my-lifes-one-big-critical-fail @kozyisa-tries-to-write

[ghostsofmemories]

Ocean in the Woods - Update #2

So, if you missed the first update or want a quick refresher (because it’s been over 3 months... wow), here’s the first update, which has a link to the WIP intro if you want to check that out.

Progress has been very slow, but hopefully now that I’m not in such a rut with a million things to do, it’ll move a little bit faster (no promises, though).

So basically, chapters 2, 3, and 4 are complete and I’ve worked my way up to 10k. It’s a little disappointing considering my original goal was 20k by the end of June and we’re already a few days into July and I only got halfway there, but I already knew that goal wasn’t realistic.

Chapter 2 is called Side Affects of Burnout and is sort of a bonding chapter between Arthur and his younger brother, Aiden. I like this chapter well enough, but I think I put this too early in the story and didn’t do enough to drive home the fact that Aiden and Arthur have a strained relationship before having them bond. However, I’m not all that worried about fixing that because no one is ever going to read this book. I was considering putting it on Wattpad in the beginning, but I’m actually perfectly content with, uh, not doing that. 

With that said, here are some fun little excerpts from Side Affects of Burnout, featuring Lance’s intro to the plot (not very many of the excerpts are well-written, I kind of gave up on editing as I went a couple weeks ago and have some passes to do before I keep going):

I had Lance in my first period, and I knew he wouldn’t notice that something was off with me. Usually, he was pretty oblivious to the rest of the world (in a very well-intentioned way) unless someone told him something was going on. He was the odd one out in our group of friends: the only one who checked the typical boxes. Cis, straight, and white. The rest of us were oddballs in school, but Lance was the oddball in our hearts.

He was folding paper airplanes out of post-it notes when I walked into the classroom. His hair was sandy blonde, uncombed, and he was wearing cargo shorts with a Darth Vader t-shirt. I was almost positive he had seen a maximum of two Star Wars movies.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s up?”

“The usual,” I said. “Sky. Clouds. Trees.” I sat in my chair next to him. Mr. Nelson didn’t assign seats, but everyone always sat in the same place. We were drawn to routine.

“That’s good,” he said, nodding, “if the sky is still up, then the world’s doing alright.”

I started out the story with Lance being somewhat of a comic relief, but I think I’m already beginning to feel some tension building up in regards to everyone labeling him as oblivious and stupid. He’s really sweet and I think he notices a lot, but just doesn’t say much about it. Here’s another section where everyone quips at Lance for being a himbo:

“Afternoon, lady and gent,” he said, sitting across from Maya and nodding at each of us respectively.

“It’s actually 11:30am,” Maya said, stealing another fry from my plate. “Labels and time in general are useless if you refuse to use them correctly.”

“Smartass,” Lance said through a bite of his sandwich. “I was just trying to be nice.”

“And I was just trying to spare you the humiliation of realizing you were wrong on your own,” she said. She started bouncing her leg after she was done stealing my fries, not knowing how to do nothing.

“He wouldn’t’ve realized on his own, Maya,” Ollie said, setting their tray down across the table from mine. “He doesn’t wear a watch or check the time.”

Vanessa, as usual, wasn’t far behind. “Lance, can you even read the time?” She was joking, of course. We always joked with Lance that way.

“Of course I can,” he said, sitting up straighter, “I just choose not to.”

And now, some of the Big Sad with Aiden and Arthur:

But the silence wasn’t horrible. I didn’t ask him to give back the water bottle I’d handed him, and I didn’t ask him why he’d been crying, and I didn’t ask him how he was tired enough to fall asleep sitting up (I also didn’t ask him to move when his head ended up on my shoulder). I wanted to be a good brother. I didn’t always need to know the details.

I love them so much and I’m kind of desperate to explore their relationship more, but so far all this book is teaching me is that I do not know how to manage all these subplots alongside the major plot of killing a monster. I’m pretty sure this’ll be the last fantasy book I ever write. Here’s a snippet of a one-sided conversation while the boys are waiting for water to boil so they can make mac n cheese.

“Hey, you can talk to me,” I said, trying to be gentle and quiet without letting my voice get pitchy. He didn’t look up, but he nodded again, his face lost in his sweater sleeves.

It was different, seeing him like this. I was so used to the Aiden that was always either smiling or sarcastic. I probably hadn’t seen him sad since he was a little kid, scraping his knees on the driveway and losing the watch he got for Christmas. He would breathe fast and panicky back then, when something went wrong. Now his breathing was slow and controlled, albeit shaky.

So yeah. At the end of this chapter, Aiden sees a girl out the window (who is Ocean, but he doesn’t know it yet) and he goes to talk to her and bring her water, and we move on to Chapter 3: River Runner. In which Ocean basically guilt trips Arthur into helping her fight the monster she brought there.

“I wasn’t mad about you not understanding my problems,” she said, standing up to follow me. I ignored her and kept walking. “I was mad at you for just sitting there and not knowing what to do besides ask stupid questions. I’m mad because you know there’s something wrong and you don’t care.”

“Why should I care?” I asked, walking faster. She would follow me all the way back to my house if she wanted to. “I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t know you and I don’t care, so handle this on your own.”

“I don’t know how to do it on my own!” she shouted, cutting around a tree and walking beside me. “I don’t exactly dedicate my life to putting myself in danger and fighting evil creatures and saving the world.”

“So why do you expect me to do it at a ten minute’s notice?”

“You’re impossible.”

“All of this,” I said between my teeth, stopping in my tracks and closing my eyes, “is impossible. You—I was never supposed to meet you. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.”

“Well it did. And there’s no taking it back now,” she said, stepping toward me. I opened my eyes, then. She was right about my height, maybe a little bit taller than me. “There is no supposed to. There’s only did and didn’t, do and don’t. And you have to decide which one you’re going with, because there is a right answer. And if you choose the wrong one, I’ll find someone else. You’ll be the boy who did nothing.”

I didn’t like how she could twist words and use them to make me do things. I didn’t want to help, but I didn’t want to do nothing.

“Fine, then.”

Pretty much all of River Runner is these two idiots yelling at each other, minus the part where Ocean is trying to open a portal. I won’t be putting an excerpt of that because it’s still extremely messy and that scene needs to be rewritten.

I only just started Chapter 5: Her and the Sun, but I’m liking it so far. There’s a lot of Maya in this chapter, including another mini description of her. Maya might be my favorite character in the book, honestly. I’ll leave it to Arthur to explain why.

She was crazy in the best way a person can be, I think. Where my mom would call me a little over the place, Maya would be in a thousand places at once. She was everything and everywhere and she could be everyone, too, if she could be.

For almost as long as I could remember, Maya and I were partners in crime. She led us into dozens of disasters and got us out of each one, too. Like when she helped me shave my head after I told her I was trans (but before I told anyone else) and told my parents there was a huge wad of gum in my hair.

“Trust me,” she told my dad, fourteen with huge eyes and hair that could compete in size with anyone else’s in the neighborhood, “my sister tried to fix it and this is a huge improvement.”

Maya’s sister is a hairdresser, at the time, but she had no idea what we were up to. Maya was just so convincing that no one bothered to check in with anyone else.

So, that’s pretty much it. Not my greatest writing, but at this point any words are good words, you know?

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Taglist (send an ask/message if you’d like to be added): @brooklyn-etc @coffeeandcalligraphy @my-lifes-one-big-critical-fail @kozyisa-tries-to-write​

[xolotlcereus]

Oddity in the Water: Chapter 22, Green Blotched Moth , is now up in Ao3 ! https://archiveofourown.org/works/11826267/chapters/56641108