#i will freely admit that i prefer older eight these days because i’m that much older now myself

[silverfoxstole]

I finally started listening to In the Bleak Midwinter earlier while I was wrapping some presents and I think I would have enjoyed 24 Doors more without the structure of announcing the setting for each scene. I appreciate what John Dorney was trying to do but it kept taking me out of the story and made it seem like things took forever to get going. It was a nice little idea but for me a bit underwhelming.

That said, it’s lovely to hear Charley again and Audacity is much less aggravating, but I am concerned that having her there at this particular juncture will undermine the relationship between the Doctor and Charley, especially given what’s around the corner for them. Would they have got so close with someone else in the TARDIS? I’m not sure.

I’ll listen to the other two stories tomorrow and Friday but in the meantime I do agree with Audacity re Roy Wood and Wizzard: anyone who wishes it was Christmas every day is mad.

#i have misgivings about going back and adding extra companions like this when what’s going to happen relies so much on existing dynamics #i’ve also always liked the fact that with the eighth doctor there’s no need to shoehorn stories into gaps because he can keep going forward #until night of the doctor at least! #the charley and lucie sets were fine because they didn’t change anything just added adventures where there was a sensible gap #but with neverland/zagreus/scherzo looming this just doesn’t feel right to me #plus paul’s performance as the doctor has matured over the years and his voice has deepened #so it’s pretty much impossible to imagine him as younger eight in these stories #doctor who #eighth doctor #big finish #i will freely admit that i prefer older eight these days because i’m that much older now myself #so these sets probably aren’t for me

[mostlycompetentwriter]

You Can STAY- Part One

M/F Main Pairing: Y/N x Lee Felix (M/F side pairings: Y/N x Stray Kids)

Genre: Fantasy AU, Scarlet Heart AU, OT8 SKZ

Word Count: 6K

Warnings: Language?

Summary: Loosely based on the K-Drama Moon Lovers Scarlet Heart Ryeo, a beautiful, but deadly, magic-user is invited to be the royal Mage to the King. It is a great honor for a young lady to accept, but she does not anticipate the deadly game of court politics awaiting her arrival. Not to mention eight young princes who all begin vying for her affections.

The sky is exquisite at its rare setting caught between the fall of the sun and the vast expanse of an illuminated horizon. I could admire it for hours, feeling the soft breeze tangle the strands of my hair while I counted the glistening stars adorning the rapidly darkening sea of black. In these moments of solitude, I can reflect back on all that has led me to this point in my life. An endless tournament of fights to prove myself as the strongest, competing against some of the greatest magic-users to ever cross the grassy high plains of the Clè Kingdom. Yet, in the end, I was the one who emerged victorious, accepting the honor of positioning myself as the Court’s chosen Royal Mage solely responsible for protecting the King and his people from potential threats to the North. 

It was the kind of status that every able-bodied magic-user strived to achieve in some capacity. Notwithstanding, it was often difficult and dangerous work, but I knew in my heart that I wanted nothing more than the privilege to serve my people. Because a kingdom was only as strong as its weakest soldiers and I was determined to accommodate any weaknesses detected amongst our people. For this reason, I have bravely trekked far away from my home village, arriving at the gate point to the Royal City just before Nightfall. My plan was to make camp here in the forest overlooking the castle, taking advantage of one more night’s sleep of freedom before I relinquished my complete servitude to the Royal family.

I shivered just thinking about it, wrapping my arms tighter around my torso to imitate the warmth and comfort of my mother’s embrace. Sadly, the only considerable disadvantage of my position is the fact that I am meant to serve alone, leaving my family behind for the next step in my journey. But I could rest easy knowing that I would be sending them a sizable income back home to allow them the life of luxury they deserved. Especially for my youngest sister, who was suffering from a rare sickness that required immediate attention and my monthly allowance would easily accommodate her expenses. It brought me a sense of pride knowing that I could take care of my family now as they have done for me all of my life. 

Ironically, I knew very little about the Court I was meant to serve. Such trivial politics have never served me any use in my life as I often dedicated my time to learning new magic as opposed to memorizing Royal names. All I knew for certain was that the King was much older now and he had married various wives with whom he had sired many children. Eight of them to be precise. Otherwise, I was completely ignorant of the castle itself, a foreign entity that provided countless occasions of deep pondering on my part. I would frequently think about the people here: what they were like and how I was meant to serve them. 

But deep in my heart, I knew that the most righteous path was seldom the one most familiar and worn. Instead, it was the mysterious path, full of twists and turns, that provided the greatest benefit in life. This is why I stand on the precipice of the unknown, prepared to start over again as I contributed my magic to the King and his Kingdom. It was everything that I had dreamed about since I first realized that I possessed magical influence, and I was determined to succeed.

With such promising potential for my future, I was finally able to succumb to a necessary sleep under the peaceful watch of the intimate stars. Thereafter, I dreamed of many great things like standing at the front of the King’s army, facing enemies with pride and unmatched skill. Because I was determined to become the greatest magic-user to ever serve the Kingdom.

Consequently, by daybreak, I felt well-rested enough to conquer the remaining miles to my destination with unrivaled enthusiasm, arriving at the vast front gates by noon. Unsurprisingly, two guards awaited my arrival dressed in Royal colors of black and yellow, swords poised at their sides and helmets vibrating beneath the influence of the sun. It was an imposing sight, and I remembered to steady my nerves before approaching the guards. 

“Greetings, friends,” I said. “My name is Y/N. I am expected by the King to accept my new post as the Court’s Mage.”

My words were met by initial silence until one of the guards bowed low at the waist as if finally understanding my claim. I continued to wait patiently while he retreated behind the great doors barricading the castle. In the meantime, I took a moment to admire the elegance of the enormous fortress; a patterned wall of symmetrical stone pieces held together, undoubtedly, by a useful combination of magic and hard-work at the hands of my predecessors and an array of talented craftsmen. In any case, I recalled the circulating rumors from my home village that the walls were impossible to penetrate and provided ample security to those who dwelled inside.

It certainly paid no favors to someone like myself who stood on the outside. In fact, the sun was hot against my body and I resisted the urge to fan my flushed skin when the guard finally returned accompanied by an elderly woman whose bright green eyes appraised me with clear disdain. “The Royal Mage?”

“That’s me, ma’am,” I said politely, maintaining my manners even when it was clear that this woman would not extend the same courtesy.

“I am the head of the house,” she explained. “You can call me Ms. White if it pleases you.” 

“It would ma’am,” I said. “I enjoy the honor of addressing the recipient of my conversation.”

“Well,” Ms. White sniffed, head held high as she nodded to the guard. “Come inside quickly. Your room has been prepared.”

I offered another bow, rising only when Ms. White turned her back to me, fully expecting the new Mage to follow her as she led us inside the castle for the very first time. With a shiver of anticipation, I held my head high with newfound pride as we walked through the wide halls together, lit by the elegant candles from the gothic wall sconces. It provided the castle with an air of intimacy, compelling me to gaze around at my surroundings with a sort of childish wonder that I had not experienced in a very long time. 

Ms. White ignored the way I gasped at the brilliant chandeliers, concerned only with attending to her courtly duties which somehow involved introducing me to a rather young woman who waited outside the door to my new quarters. “This is your handmaiden,” Ms. White said, reaching over to adjust the collar of the poor girl’s shirt. “She is at your disposal.”

“Thank you,” I said, offering the girl a pleasant smile. “It’s nice to make your acquaintance.”

I received a small smile in return before the girl bowed her head and held the door wide to allow my entrance with Ms. White. I fully expected time to recover from my journey, but Ms. White was busy flitting about my new quarters while rummaging through the impressive wardrobe filled with an unexpected amount of new clothes. “Your gown is here for tonight, Mage. The King expects to meet with you later; however, I invite you to stay in your quarters until orders for your arrival have been sent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied smoothly, offering a gentle curtsey as Ms. White passed with a tired sigh. Of course, such mannerisms held no regard in my opinion, but that didn’t mean I wanted to disrespect the ones who cared about them. Otherwise, I would definitely face scrutiny from the ones I was now meant to serve and obey. “She’s quite something,” I remarked to my handmaiden once I was completely sure that Ms. White was gone. “Have you worked here long?”

The girl was eerily silent, head-trained down as she stood in front of me. I recognized the submissive tendency because my mother once practiced similar restraint when she was forced to serve a harsh landowner to repay our debts. “Please don’t take such formalities with me. I really have no need for a handmaiden. You can speak freely in my presence.”

The girl seemed to evaluate my words, appearing doubtful that I was being genuine. “Thank you,” she finally whispered and I sighed into the room. 

“I’d rather us be friends,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be more appropriate?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted shyly. “Your position is higher than mine in the castle.”

“I care nothing for ranks,” I reassured her, stepping closer to the sole window overlooking the castle’s vast grounds. “Is there a good place to walk?” 

The girl startled at my sudden question. “But Ms. White ordered you to stay in your quarters.”

“The day is too beautiful for that,” I said, already set on a new destination. “Come and walk with me for a while.”

“If you must insist,” she nodded with some reluctance. I wondered how often the poor girl took liberties to test the limits of her given orders.

“And do tell me your name,” I said. “I’d prefer to address you that way.”

“Anna,” she offered kindly.

“Anna,” I repeated with conviction. “It’s a beautiful name, and I’ll be sure to call upon you often.”

“You’re too kind,” Anna replied. “I wasn’t sure what to expect from my new charge.”

“Consider me a friend,” I said. “That’s all I want from you, especially during my walks. I enjoy pleasant company.”

Anna blushed at my statement but appeared far more relaxed. In the meantime, I tightened the belt of my sweater to act as an appropriate barrier for the slight chill I detected outside upon my arrival. Ergo, Anna was next to my side in an instant, offering to fetch me a variety of sweaters and jackets which I appropriately declined, looping my arm through hers as we prepared for our trip outside to explore the beautiful castle grounds.

“The gardens are my favorite,” Anna remarked, settling into her designated role as my self-proclaimed guide, leading me around the defined boundaries of the castle borders. “My father once worked tirelessly to ensure the viability of the flowers which bloom every spring.”

“It must be gorgeous then,” I proclaimed. “Since it receives so much care and attention.”

Anna nodded enthusiastically, pulling me along with a generous grip on my forearm. “If you enjoy the outdoors, then I highly suggest taking your walks through the gardens.”

“At your insistence, of course,” I nodded. “Tell me more about the castle. I’d like to know about your life here.”

“It isn’t always easy,” Anna revealed. “There are hardships when the soldiers go away to war. The servants are the first to make great concessions in surrendering the things we take for granted like sugar or cloth. After all, the Royals are the priority of the Kingdom, and we must serve them as dictated.”

“That sounds insufferable,” I groaned. “I do hope war isn’t possible anytime soon.”

“No,” Anna agreed. “The King has made favorable treaties with the other kingdoms. He made special agreements to secure our borders.”

“Special agreements?”

Anna shifted uneasily from next to me. “Perhaps it isn’t my position to gossip about such things.”

I nodded in understanding. “What about the Royals, then? I know the King has many wives and children.”

“The Royals are fine if you obey them,” Anna said. “I don’t intend to speak ill of anyone, but the younger sons can be a handful.”

“But they’re still only children, I presume?”

“For now, but they ought to take their lessons more seriously. The youngest Princes Seungmin and Jeongin are notorious for playing pranks on their tutors.”

“As to be expected from those who feel entitled and privileged,” I remarked, ignoring the small gasp Anna allowed at my comment. “Does the King bother to help raise them?”

“The King insists that he is not responsible.”

“Which explains their mischievous behavior.”

“But they can be such good boys!”

“Yes, I’m sure they’re more than capable, as long as their mothers ensure their well-being without the assistance of the King.”

“The King is quite busy with other affairs.”

I paused next to a rose bush, plucking a random stem from the array of vibrant reds and pinks. “He should never be too busy for his children.”

I lifted the flower to inhale its scent, watching Anna fidget nervously as she glanced around to survey our surroundings. “Life is much different in the castle.”

“I’m gathering that for myself,” I agreed. “How much acreage does the garden cover?”

Anna seemed relieved to change topics, talking in great detail about the tenuous process of ensuring the garden’s elegance. Meanwhile, she continued to escort me further back into the maze of elaborate greenery, pausing every so often to remark on a passing display. It was quite nice, listening to her passionate explanations while taking in the fresh blooming flowers.

I only grew distracted when, up ahead in the distance, I noticed two young women standing together next to a large basket full of what I could only presume to be flowers from the bushes. However, something seemed amiss given the passionate way they spoke to one another, voices carrying over to where Anna and I were slowly approaching. “Girls,” Anna said with a stern tone. “What seems to be the problem?”

“The Queen requested these flowers,” a trepid reply offered. “We’re not sure what she’s expecting.”

“Queen Seo-Yeon frequently demands fresh arrangements,” Anna briefly explained to me before addressing the timid housemaids in front of her. “Let me assist you.”

The girls seemed grateful, offering their words of gratitude to a visibly annoyed Anna who only huffed in response as she snatched a pair of cutters from one of the handmaidens. I stood to the side, tilting my head when I heard something peculiar from the other side of the hedge. “I’ll continue by myself,” I said.

Anna turned around, eyes wide as she shook her head aggressively. “There’s no need for that, Y/N! I’ll only take a moment or two with the girls.”

“Take your time,” I insisted. “Don’t feel obligated to accompany me when it isn’t necessary. Help your friends with the arrangements, and I promise to stay close.”

Anna hesitated, glancing between the sharp cutters in her hand to where I waited patiently. “Okay, but I’ll proceed with urgency.”

I nodded once, sparing no further thought to Anna’s situation before retreating down the maze path, following the noise of what sounded like a potential argument. It definitely required investigation, and there was a part of me that desperately wanted to intervene if necessary since my magic often proved reliable in conflicts. With this in mind, I arrived promptly to witness the fight unfolding right before my very eyes. 

I paused as I took in the scene, anger rising in my chest as I watched a young boy shove an innocent handmaiden to the ground, her fabrics falling from the basket she had been carrying. At this point, my magic was vibrating against my fingertips in response to the shameless act of aggression. I swallowed hard and immediately started for the young boy who only noticed my presence once I was close enough in proximity. “Who are you?” he growled, dark eyes arrogant.

“Apologize,” I said, not bothering to answer his question. 

The younger boy chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”

“Does it matter?” I returned with equal ardor. “It is impolite under any circumstances to treat a lady with such unkindness.”

“Who are you to talk down to me?” the boy snapped, reaching for the scabbard around his waist to retrieve his sword. The point was aligned with my chest. “Speak again, whore!”

I narrowed my eyes, flexing my fingers to summon a familiar spell. The younger boy froze when the sword vanished from his hand. He gasped, surprise evident across his features as I dared another step closer, summoning more of the impregnable magic to send the boy falling onto his back, air leaving his lungs with a harsh exhale. “Do not call me such names with a loose tongue,” I said, leering down at the boy who only returned my gaze with one of clear shock.

I was completely focused on the issue at hand, concentration unwavering, which probably explained why Anna was able to find me without attracting my attention. “Prince Seungmin,” Anna squealed, coming to a halt next to me. “I’m terribly sorry, your highness. My mistress must have been unaware of your identity.”

“Be it so,” I glowered down at the younger boy. “It doesn’t matter if he’s a prince or not, you will show respect to the women who serve you.”

Seungmin scoffed, a challenge evident in his eyes. “She’s nothing but a peasant girl and I am of Royal blood.”

I narrowed my eyes and Seungmin cried out again when I increased the pressure of my magic at his throat, fingers struggling against the invisible force. “You could use a lesson in manners, young man,” I told him, relinquishing the hold only when his pale skin started to glow in a deathly blue color. “Take this as a push in the right direction,” I said, ignoring Anna’s protests as I walked around his body with every intention of returning inside the castle.

Later on, Anna decided to remain mute on the subject of our encounter with Prince Seungmin. Despite her simple reprimand, Anna refused to elaborate on why I should treat the Prince with respect when he had none to give in return. Nevertheless, the issue was more or less forgotten by the time night had once again darkened the gentle fields of the Clè Kingdom.

“Tonight is a very special occasion,” Anna informed me as she helped me change into my dress, flitting about my new quarters with practiced ease. “The King is expected to name his immediate successor.”

My eyes widened at the announcement. “Is it so? Are there any rumors concerning the new successor?”

Anna considered my question as she pulled a gorgeous evening gown from the wardrobe. “It might be Prince Changbin,” she said at last. “His mother is the King’s favorite wife, and he’s also the third oldest.”

“I see,” I nodded, having no experience with such selection. “What about the oldest Prince?”

“Prince Chan?” Anna scoffed. “That’s doubtful. The King was very displeased with his marriage to a common lady.”

“Was it not pre-arranged?” I asked, mildly astonished because I knew that such formalities were an important tradition in the Royal Family.

“Chan married her secretly,” Anna whispered. “And she’s very ill these days which only makes the situation worse.”

My eyes widened at the revelation. “Is it truly so? I can’t imagine that such actions went unpunished?”

“Of course they didn’t,” Anna nodded. “Chan will have no claim to the throne and his mother was cast aside as the King’s favorite.”

“Such a harsh punishment for someone who had no part of the decision?”

“The King considers it entirely the Queen’s fault. After all, his wives are responsible for ensuring that his sons represent their Kingdom well.”

“I suppose the ways of the Royals are foreign to someone like me,” I admitted. “I can’t understand the justification for such exile, but I dare not question the ones I am meant to protect.”

Anna nodded solemnly. “The King’s children have very strict expectations. Oftentimes, their actions and behaviors reflect back on the Kingdom.”

“Understandable,” I allowed, turning to look in the mirror once Anna proclaimed she had finished my alterations.

“What do you think?” she asked, beaming with a mixture of excitement and relief. She was probably glad to be finished since I made such a big deal out of the tight corset currently suffocating my poor lungs.

I studied my reflection with a bored gaze. The idea of playing dress-up for the Court Royals was unappealing, even if the colors of the gown were rather beautiful. “When am I expected?” I asked instead.

“My mistress informed me to escort you downstairs as soon as possible. Apparently, the King will introduce you formally to the Court before the choosing ceremony is set to commence.”

I offered my reflection a reassuring look before fussing over the lace of my dress sleeves. They were unexpectedly uncomfortably, scratching at the tender skin of my wrists. “Well, I certainly don’t want to keep them waiting.”

“Shall we?” Anna asked, opening the door to my quarters wide to invite my immediate exit. I grinned at her meticulous organization, deciding it was better to entertain her desire for timely attendance.

However, I eventually discovered why Anna was so insistent when we found Miss White waiting for us at the entrance to the throne room. I could tell that Miss White was furious at our tardiness, directing a reprimanding look in the direction of my handmaiden before addressing me formally. “You’re late.”

“It’s my fault,” I said with a bow. “Forgive me, ma’am. I insisted on taking extra time to prepare myself for the King.”

Miss White sighed. “I suppose we can make an exception. However, it’s best not to keep his majesty waiting any longer.”

“Of course,” I said, holding my breath when Miss White signaled for the guards to finally open the heavy doors of the throne room.

Once inside, my eyes were immediately attracted to the enormous throne cathedra directed in the center of the room. It was immense in size, and I was shocked when I realized that it was made entirely of gold, decorated in an elegant pattern of swirls and ancient lettering. Unsurprisingly, its current occupant, who was adorned in a gorgeous traditional hanbok, was my new King and he appeared every part of the infamous Royal I had heard about since I was a child in my small village. He was much older now, but his stern features served as a reminder of his immense power; and standing next to him were three beautiful women who wore gentle floral arrangements as delicate headpieces. A clear symbol of their status.

“Your highness,” Miss White greeted the king with a generous bow, encouraging me to do the same with a fierce look in my direction.

“Rise,” the King said, but his tone was not as aggressive as the kind smile he offered me. “Greetings, Mage.”

“Your majesty,” I replied before clearing my throat. “I am honored to have been chosen for this rare honor.”

“I am pleased to accept your generous words,” the King said. “After all, you are the one who is willing to protect my Kingdom.”

I nodded. “It is my duty now, your majesty, and I accept full responsibility.”

“Very well,” the King nodded and he now stood tall as he pointed in the direction of the three women I noticed from before. “Let’s make introductions. These are my wives, Queen Seo-Yeon, Queen Hyun-ae, and Queen Eun-Jung.”

I studied the three Queens carefully, taking in their feminine features, before offering a bow in return. From just a simple glance, I had already discerned that Queen Seo-Yeon was clearly displeased with my presence while the other two shared similar looks of distrust. Of course, this could be considered a trivial matter until I had proven myself worthy in the eyes of these powerful Royals.

“Squire,” the King spoke again, directing his words to a well-dressed man whose arms were crossed over his chest. “Please introduce my sons.”

The squire offered a polite nod in return. “Prepare for the entrance of our Kingdom’s Princes!”

On the opposite side of the room, a new pair of doors opened and two guards stepped inside before retreating to their posts, allowing a neat line of young men to enter with cordial posture and matching hanboks painted with colors of yellow and black. The King’s sons were clearly on their best behavior, acting to their appropriate status as they kneeled before the King. “Rise, my sons,” the King said. “As you are called.” 

The squire cleared his throat. “The first Prince, Chan.”

The elegant young man stepped forward into position. His hair was practically golden beneath the harsh lights of the candles simpering in their stations along the base of a brilliant chandelier. It made him look almost like an angel, blue eyes wide and considerate as he bowed politely to his father who only briefly acknowledged the existence of a son he probably scorned...Speaking of which, I couldn’t help but notice that Chan’s wife was not next to him. In fact, the only women currently present in the room included the King’s three wives, myself, and Miss White.

“The second Prince, Minho.”

The elder son stepped forward promptly and I immediately noticed the way the King’s gaze lingered on the man who bowed before him. Minho was surprisingly youthful given his age, dark brown hair curtaining the softer features of his countenance coupled with dark eyes that remained fixed to the floor before he stood proudly. It reminded me of the way the warriors in Ancient Times would behave when they addressed their superiors, quaint and old-fashioned in their strict natures.

“The third Prince, Changbin.”

I frowned at the arrogant smile adorning the sculpted lips of the King’s son. He was obviously very sure of himself, striking in appearance because of his long, silver hair and the dark eyes that greedily drank in the sight of the empty throne in the background. Changbin definitely stood out, but my initial impression led me to believe that his appearance might not necessarily be as deceitful as I wanted to believe.

“The fourth Prince, Hyunjin.”

A kind soul, timid in nature as he took a hesitant step forward. One hand combed through the dark strands of his silky hair, eyes searching the presence of the King’s wives before he bowed. I realized only a moment later that Hyunjin was the only son who even bothered to acknowledge the other women, which certainly demonstrated the respect he obviously felt for the beautiful Queens.

“The fifth Prince, Jisung.”

His mischievous leaning was obvious in the dramatic way he leaned forward, bowing low at the waist before scrambling into position. It drew a laugh from Queen Hyun-ae who I could only assume must be Prince Jisung’s mother. In any case, it was obvious he didn’t take these proceedings too seriously, outfit slightly disheveled and blonde hair messy in wavy strands.

“The seventh Prince, Seungmin.”

I swallowed hard, remembering my encounter with Prince Seugmin in the gardens with Anna. Despite the way he treated the handmaiden, he now appeared to be the picture of goodness, bowing politely and adjusting the collar of his well-pressed shirt. An outfit likely made for him by the very handmaidens he showed little appreciation for, especially when it came to exerting his influence.

“The eighth Prince, Jeongin.”

He was the picture of childish innocence with a smile that was impossible to ignore. There was a stumble, quickly rectified by the Prince’s emphasized posture, attempting to stand as straight as possible. Still, a chuckle could be heard from Prince Jisung and Queen Seo-Yeon had rolled her eyes in obvious exasperation. It was a curious reaction, considering the boy was extremely young and did not possess the same finesse as the rest of his siblings. 

But then again, perhaps most curious of all was the absence of the fourth Prince who was never acknowledged alongside his brothers. It generated many questions; most importantly, where was this mysterious Prince? Was he busy in another Kingdom, or maybe he had been sent away for a special assignment?

“Before the ceremony begins,” the King announced, beckoning me forward. My eyes immediately dropped to Seungmin whose accompanying smirk was positively devilish. “Our new Court Mage arrived this morning.”

From his side, the King’s three wives also bowed again in my direction and I noticed they were also dressed appropriately to fit their status. “It’s a pleasure to serve my Kingdom,” I said with a simple nod, glaring back at Seungmin who seemed to enjoy my attention far too much.

“Y/N is one of the most powerful magic-users in centuries,” the King continued, offering me a gentle smile. “She will make a worthy successor to those who have come before.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” I said, bowing once again to the King who seemed content with my humble expression of gratitude.

The King turned back to address his sons, several of whom visibly faltered under their father’s attention. “Now that my sons are here, I’d like to explain exactly why we’re gathering on this fine evening. You see, currently waiting in the ballroom is a room full of distinguished guests who have gathered in full anticipation for the announcement of the next successor to the throne.”

There was an array of distinctive reactions from the King’s son, but I couldn’t help but notice the way Prince Changbin stood taller with a visible smirk that sent a shiver down my spine. “I want everyone to behave for tonight’s proceedings, regardless of the outcome.”

A monotonous chorus of agreement came from the seven sons who each offered some version of a polite bow. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice a strange scuffle from behind the closed doors of the throne room...

The barrier was abruptly disturbed upon the haggard appearance of a royal guard who entered the room without approval. “Your highness!” the distraught voice shouted above the white noise filtering inside the room. The guard was panting hard, helmet askew as he frantically glanced back over his shoulder. “I tried to stop him...” His words trailed off with a wince, the door slamming further back against its hinges at the behest of another unanticipated arrival.

“The invitation was lost in transit, I assume?”

A cold despondency took over the previous jubilance masking the King’s countenance. “Prince Felix,” the King growled.

I shivered at the hostility in the King’s tone, turning my attention to the young man walking rapidly in our direction. Felix carried an immense dark aura, hair a gorgeous burnt orange color that glowed with the fiery temperament masking his words. His eyes were a vivid green that glinted with his obvious disdain for the King I was now meant to serve. But the most charismatic feature was the dark mask obscuring the skin around his left eye, accentuating the sharp profile of his jawline. “Your majesty,” Felix snarled. “I’m offended that I was not called to partake in the choosing ceremony.”

“Why are you here?” the King returned with equal hostility. “You’re meant to serve the Northern Kingdom.”

“Consider it a temporary arrangement,” Felix offered cooly. “How could I possibly miss this occasion?” He turned around, hands behind his back as he offered his seven brothers a shallow bow. “Forgive my late arrival.”

“Only if you’ll tolerate my confusion,” the King practically growled. “I hardly think the Northern Kingdom gave you permission to leave their court.”

“I took special liberties,” Prince Felix replied with a cool smile. “His majesty found no fault in an obedient son wishing to celebrate the crowning of a cherished sibling.”

The King snorted at Prince Felix’s blatant sarcasm. “I suppose there is little I can do now that you have arrived.”

“You could forbid him from attending the ceremony,” Queen Eun-Jung said, glaring at Felix with an intensity that only highlighted just how similar the two opposing forces appeared according to the delicate lines of their features.

“Yes, but we both know that Felix has a way of disobeying orders,” the King replied, regarding his wife with a dismissive shake of his head. 

“How generous, your majesty,” Felix said with a smirk. Thereafter, his gaze suddenly rested on me with suspicion. “Who is this?”

“Our new Court Mage,” the King replied.

“A pleasure,” I managed, refusing to break away from Felix’s gaze.

“The guests are waiting in the ballroom,” the King sighed. “This issue will have to be resolved later.”

I frowned at the King’s willing compliance, seemingly sedulous as he ordered everyone to put on their best behavior for the castle’s guests. Accordingly, the King slowly led the way, followed by his sons and three visibly frazzled Queens who shared matching expressions of bemusement. Felix was the only one who remained out of place, trailing behind everyone else until he paused in the entranceway to look back at me with obvious distrust. Thereupon, despite the King’s command, I still waited until Felix broke our intense stare to proceed with the other Royals.

The ballroom was flooded with elegantly dressed Royals adorned in their neat hanboks and flowery gowns sweeping across the floor with grace and poise. It was almost too glamorous, and I felt slightly out of place considering my status and position in the castle. Instead of socializing, Anna and I lingered around the perimeter of the dance floor, keeping an eye on Felix because I had a strange feeling about the wayward prince.

“What can you tell me about him?” I asked Anna and she quickly followed my gaze.

“Prince Felix was obviously an unexpected surprise,” Anna told me. “He was sent away when he was a very young boy to satisfy our closest neighbors in the North.”

“Why does he wear the mask?” I asked her, ensuring that nobody was overhearing our conversation.

“There are rumors,” Anna said. “But none I can confirm. I’ve heard many stories about Prince Felix and some of them are rather horrible.”

I considered Felix from afar, watching as the young prince took a preference for the shadows of the room, eyes watchful as he considered the other occupants. For a brief moment, our eyes met from across the room and I stood taller, meeting the challenge in his gaze with one of my own. Felix smirked, apparently amused by my actions, turning away to speak to a passing guest who was visibly startled by the young prince’s attention. “He must be very dangerous,” I remarked to Anna. “Everyone seems afraid of him.”

“I’d imagine so,” Anna shivered. “I would certainly never want to cross paths with Prince Felix.”

At that moment, I decided to take it upon myself as the castle’s best line of defense to pay close attention to the movements of Felix. I would study him as he interacted with the other Royals, and watch him closely for any suspicious activity. If he so much as breathed the wrong way, I wouldn’t hesitate to unleash the magic demanding to make itself known from deep inside of me.

“The King is about to make his announcement,” Anna whispered to me, perhaps sensing I was distracted.

I reluctantly pulled my gaze from Felix, finding the King standing at the foot of his thrown with a welcoming smile. “Ladies and Gentleman of the gathered court,” the King began, enchanting the gathered crowd who all broke their conversations to focus on their revered leader. “Tonight, we are celebrating a very special occasion.”

The guests broke into applause, polite and reverent, stopping in synchrony as the King waved his hand. “You’ve been very patient with this old King, and as much as I love serving this kingdom, I must now face the inevitable. As such, I want to name one of my sons before my gathered friends to shadow me from this moment until he wears the crown that we all cherish.” The King paused for a moment, waiting for his eight children to line themselves by order of age before their powerful father. Behind them, the Queens waited patiently, but I easily detected the flicker of anticipation behind their indifference. “I now have the honor of naming my son, Prince Minho, as the successor to my crown!”

There was an audible gasp from the crowd as several of the guests exchanged gestures and expressions of shock at the announcement. Even Prince Minho appeared startled by the revelation, only moving to accept the King’s invitation following a push from his mother, the beautiful Queen Hyun-ae who was beaming with pride.

“Your highness,” Prince Minho replied once he managed to kneel at his father’s feet. “I am at your disposal.”

“My son,” the King smiled, touching his fingers against the side of Prince Minho’s blushing face. “I know you will serve your people well.”

The King’s words seemed to have a positive effect on the other guests who started to cheer and applaud for the chosen successor. The ballroom was filled with the sound and Prince Minho was blushing, hanging his head sheepishly as he experienced the effects of such reverence and adoration. Of course, not everyone shared the same exuberant attitude, and I watched Prince Changbin carefully, noting how the younger boy was refusing to celebrate with everyone else, glaring at Minho with dark foreboding.

#stray kids #stray kids fanfic #stray kids imagines #stray kids fantasy au #stray kids scenarios #bang chan #bang chan fanfic #lee minho #lee minho fanfic #seo changbin #seo changbin fanfic #hwang hyunjin #hwang hyunjin fanfic #han jisung fanfic #han jisung #lee felix #lee felix fanfic #kim seungmin #kim seungmin fanfic #yang jeongin #yang jeongin fanfic

[melodiouswhite]

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde rewritten Ch. 13

13. Dialogues with Mister Hyde and Doctor Jekyll

When Utterson went to see, if Hyde had calmed down, he found him curled together under the covers, with only his dark brown hair being visible.

“Mister Hyde?”, he asked gingerly.

The pile of covers moved and two sunken-in, bilious green eyes peeked out. “Hm?”

Oh good, he's calmed down.

“Are you ready to talk?”

“Depends”, Hyde muttered, “What do you want?”

“There are just a few things I want to know. Don't worry, it doesn't involve your criminal record”, he added, when Hyde's eyes narrowed.

“I brought you something”, he changed subjects and put the plate he was holding onto the night table next to the bed. “Lanyon and Lady Summers said, that you've healed up enough, so it's alright.”

The patient crawled half out of the covers to see what was on the table and gasped in surprise. “Solid food! And pomegranate seeds! How did you know?”

“Lady Summers dropped a hint”, the lawyer told him.

Utterson couldn't help but smile at the way Hyde's eyes sparkled over the fruit. It was almost cute.

For a few minutes he watched, as the young man practically inhaled the seeds, as if he was starving, before Hyde paused and looked at him.

“Didn't you want to ask me something?”, he asked.

Utterson shrugged. “I'm waiting until you're finished.”

Predictably, the other ate a lot slower now, but the lawyer had time today.

“I'm glad you liked them”, he stated, when the young man had finished.

“They're my favourites!”, Hyde cried enthusiastically, “Juicy, sweet …”

“And messy”, the older man finished, nodding at the other's white covers and night-gown, which now were sprinkled red with pomegranate juice.

Hyde didn't seem to care about the mess he had made, just cleaned his face and hands with a napkin, before hiding back under the covers.

“Your name really suits you”, Utterson commented. “Did you choose it yourself?”

“No, Jekyll did.”

Then was silence again – Utterson had to recall, what he had meant to ask the other.

“How old are you?”, he remembered then.

He was surprised at how torn Hyde suddenly looked.

“That depends …”, the brunette replied hesitantly, “Do you mean how long have I existed as Edward Hyde or how old am I according to my papers?”

Utterson had to admit, that he hadn't thought of that. “Why not both?”, he finally decided.

Hyde shifted a little and drank some of the water on the night table.

“Well”, he finally spoke up, “I was created eight years ago. Don't you dare joke about my age”, he added with a menacing growl, that sent shivers down the other man's spine. Even a calm, wounded Hyde could be frightening.

“Don't worry, wouldn't dream of it”, Utterson hurried to reassure the younger.

I have a self-preservation instinct, thank you very much.

This seemed to mollify Hyde, who continued: “But according to my papers, I'm twenty years old.”

The lawyer was surprised.

He had expected Hyde to be a teenager, he looked and acted so much like one. Then again, this was only a number that Jekyll had made up on paper. Probably so Hyde could legally …

“Wait … so you were only a few hours old, when you started to … uhm …”

Hyde laughed, catching on: “Oh no! I needed a while to even become aware of myself. The first night I wasn't quite. The first times I was more Jekyll than Hyde, despite always looking like this. It took a few times for us both to become fully aware of me.”

He stopped laughing and stared up to the ceiling pensively.

“It was really odd”, he mumbled, “I just suddenly … was. I wonder, if that is what being born feels like.”

Utterson thought for a moment. “I don't think so”, he finally replied, “But it's probably similar.”

“What's your favourite colour?”

Hyde stared at the other man incredulously. “My favourite colour?”

Utterson nodded. “Yes. Your favourite colour. I asked you that question once, remember?”

The young man shook his head. “Can't say I do. And I don't know, what my favourite colour is. I never bothered to think about that.”

The lawyer had to chuckle: “That's not something you think about. It just happens at one point, that you decide, that you like one colour more than the rest.”

Hyde shrugged. “Never happened to me. I focus on other things.”

“For example?”

“On every precious minute that I'm not caged inside Jekyll's bleeding mind.”

Utterson tried to suppress the wave of pity that washed over him. Hyde had made it clear more than once, that he didn't want pity. And honestly, who did?

“Mister Utterson?”

“Yes?”

“Speaking of colours, which one is your favourite?”

Utterson thought for a moment. “I have several. Brown, yellow …”

Hyde interrupted him: “That's too vague! Be more specific!”

The lawyer kept himself from rolling his eyes and clarified: “My favourite colours are wheat yellow and chocolate brown. Happy?”

The brunette seemed to be, as he smirked triumphantly. “Jekyll's hair and eye colour”, he observed.

When Utterson gave him a look of horror, he laughed: “I'm his alter ego, I see him all the time, I know what colour his hair and eyes are. Besides, I already know of your feelings for him, so no need to panic!”

The lawyer tried and failed to fight back the blush, that was threatening to colour his face. “Of course”, he muttered, “I know you do.”

Then something else occurred to the lawyer: “What else do you know about him?”

Hyde looked pensive, as he answered: “Hmm … almost everything, really. Not quite everything, but almost. We have memory in common, you see? I share his entire knowledge. Everything he remembers I remember as well.”

I must test that!

“Do you remember, how Henry and I first met?”, Utterson challenged.

The younger one snorted: “You bumped into each other. It was his first day at the boarding school and you helped him up. He asked you for directions to the lab and you brought him there. He was blushing like crazy. That's so cliché!”

The lawyer had to admit defeat and the other man snickered gleefully.

“You amuse me, Mr. Utterson, you really do!”, he laughed, like so many other times.

And like so many other times, Utterson couldn't decide, if he should be flattered or offended.

Hyde found himself enjoying his talks with Utterson more than he let on.

The lawyer was unobtrusive in his curiosity and gentle in his prying. As promised, he didn't address his criminal record once during their talks.

At one point, the young man caught himself wondering, if the black-haired man would be willing to be his lawyer too. Oh, who cared if he was willing, he had no other choice! He knew their secret and if he knew what was good for him (which Hyde doubted, but that wasn't the point!), he would keep close to them.

He couldn't help but be impressed as well. The lawyer seemed to be sincere in his intent to get to know him better. There was genuine curiosity in his eyes, which was interesting.

Hyde wasn't blind, he could tell that Utterson still disliked him, but it appeared that the older man was willing to work past that dislike and that was new to him. Of course the fact, that Utterson was mostly putting up with him for Jekyll's sake ruined it a bit, but Hyde took whatever positive attention he could get. Even if it was just a bunch of stupid questions.

The young man wasn't willing to answer all of them freely, especially, when it came to more serious and important matters, like his relationship to Jekyll. That was none of Utterson's business, even if he strived to be Jekyll's lover.

What did they see in each other anyway?

Hyde felt jealousy well up within himself, every time his other half interacted with the lawyer, the way he could feel Jekyll's happiness and hear his thoughts, even in his cage inside their head.

He hated, that his creator should prefer someone else over him. Him, who knew the blond doctor like no other! Jekyll was so ungrateful! That old, miserable, hypocritical …

“Mister Hyde?”

Utterson's calm, gentle tone yanked him out of his thoughts.

He blinked. “Huh? Were you saying something?”

The lawyer shook his head. “No, I just noticed, that your mood was deteriorating and that worried me. You weren't having too dark thoughts, were you?”

Hyde shrugged: “That depends. Does being annoyed at your other half count as too dark?”

“No, but you were making a face like you were plotting someone's imminent demise. That's why I spoke up. I hoped that this impression was wrong.”

Hyde laughed. How typical of people to assume that he was plotting the worst! But it was really adorable, that Utterson tried to see something good in him.

“I do give that impression, don't I?”, he snickered, “I could be having tea and cake and be talking about the weather and everyone would still think the worst of me.”

When he returned home after their conversation, Utterson couldn't help but feel guilty. He too had thought the worst of Hyde and he remembered, what his cousin had told him once, when he had recounted that one time Hyde had trampled a girl. The inexplicable urge to hurt the young man, the feeling of loathing and distortion.

But now, that he was trying to work past his dislike, he found the brunette's presence to be less revolting that it had seemed to him at first. No longer did he feel the sense of malformation around the young man, that had horrified him at first. He was getting used to that pale face, those bilious green, sunken-in eyes and the scratchy, high-pitched voice.

Maybe he had felt that way before, because Hyde was so thin. Or because of the fact, that he had the tendency to duck his head, when he crept through open streets at night.

Currently, the lawyer was bothered by different things.

One thing was Hyde's refusal to give clear answers, especially when it came to Jekyll. As if he wanted to hide something, no pun intended. Alright, maybe that pun was totally intended. When it came to his relationship to his other half, Hyde's expression became aloof and closed-off. And then his answer was either complete silence or deliberately suggestive remarks, that made the lawyer's skin crawl. That left him to speculate and the conclusions he came to didn't make any sense.

Another thing was how often he caught himself confiding into a young man he still didn't like. How did Hyde do that? It didn't seem to be difficult for him to pump one personal information after the other out of the lawyer. That scared him.

He also didn't like the sultry purr Hyde spoke with sometimes. That too didn't seem difficult. Hyde's voice was naturally husky and borderline feminine. Utterson could tell, why Jekyll gave into his darker half so easily. Hyde just had to sweet talk him with that seductive tone. Knowing Jekyll, it would be enough to make his knees go weak. Utterson wasn't as weak-willed, but he found it uncomfortable, when Hyde talked to him like that.

Nevertheless, he was now certain, that Hyde was not a monster, not a demon in human shape. Maybe he wasn't even really evil, although he was definitely bad.

Maybe Lady Summers was right and he was just extremely twisted. Of course the Lady would now say that of course she was right, that she was never wrong, when it came to the human mind. But he wanted to be sure about this one, before he agreed with her.

There was no doubt to the lawyer though, that Hyde was mad. He suffered from extreme mood swings, much like Utterson had seen it in pregnant women or in Lady Summers, when she was having one of her bad days. Edward Hyde could be calm and calculating one moment and overly emotional and irritable for no reason the next. What he hadn't seen yet, but what Lady Summers had told him about, were the frequent mental breakdowns the brunette seemed to suffer for no known reason (or at least none the Lady was willing to tell).

But Utterson was a perceptive man. Something bothered Hyde, even when he was acting carefree and relaxed. He sensed some underlying anger in the young man and deduced, that it had something to do with Jekyll. And that both scared and worried him.

So, when he came to visit the next day and found Hyde instead of Jekyll sitting on his bed (by now he was being allowed to get up for a while), he took the opportunity to confront him.

“Mister Hyde, we need to talk about something personal”, he prepared him first.

His conversation partner's bilious green eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“I don't know why, but I have given you a lot of private information about myself-”

Hyde interrupted with a snicker: “Yes, you're very talkative! You're lucky blackmail isn't my thing!”

That is quite fortunate indeed.

Utterson swallowed his fear and went on: “It's only fair, that you give me information about yourself as well. And by that I don't mean trivial things, like the ones I have asked about so far.”

The brunette looked at him with a strange mixture of misgiving and boldness, as if he was silently challenging him to ask, while dreading it at the same time.

“With pleasure”, Hyde consented finally. “What is it that you want to know?”

“I have two questions, Mr. Hyde”, Utterson elaborated, “The first is actually a fairly simple one: why are you so angry?”

For a few full minutes, the young man was staring at him in confusion and surprise.

“What do you mean?”, he finally questioned, when he had found his speech again. “I'm fine.”

Utterson contradicted: “No, you're not. I'm a lawyer, Mr. Hyde, I know subliminal anger, when I see it. I ask again, what is it that upsets you so?”

Hyde hesitated and avoided the lawyer's gaze.

“You don't have to tell me immediately”, Utterson accommodated him, “I have time, so there is no need for pressure.”

“No, it's fine”, Hyde muttered, “I owe it to you, I suppose. And I hate to be in debt. You want to know, what my problem is? Fine, but you won't like it. First off, I have several, but for the last four months, Jekyll has been the biggest one.”

Utterson thought back. Four months. That was roughly how long he and Hyde had known each other.

“Does it have to do with me?”, he guessed.

“Partly”, Hyde admitted, “After you accosted me, Jekyll didn't let me out anymore. The longer I was locked inside our shared conscience, the more agitated I became. Then something happened, that made me livid.”

He took a deep breath, then he finally faced the lawyer.

“Perhaps you remember the dinner, when you confronted Jekyll about me?”

Utterson dug in his memory, then he nodded. “Oh yes. I do.”

“Do you also remember, what he said to you?”, Hyde probed.

The lawyer frowned. “I assume, you mean a certain sentence, but you have to be more specific.”

The other man rolled his eyes and began to quote: “'The moment I choose …'”

“'… I can be rid of Mr. Hyde'”, Utterson finished together with him.

“Of course!”, he realised, “You heard that and assumed-”

“I didn't assume!”, Hyde cut him off sharply, “I knew! He wanted to get rid of me! He still does, now even more so than back then! He wants to get rid of me! He wants to destroy me!”

He was talking himself into a rage and Utterson smelled trouble.

“Mister Hyde, please calm down”, he pleaded, “I'm sure he didn't really mean-”

“Oh, he meant it!”, Hyde snapped, “I'm a part his damn soul, I know when he lies! He meant every word of what he said in that moment! And to top it all off, he threatened me, that he would never take the potion again and confine me to his head for the rest of our life! Of course, being the weak bastard that he is, he lasted only two months, but do you have the faintest idea, how that feels?! To not only have your creator and other half talk about you like that, but also be caged, like an animal?!”

Suddenly it dawned on the lawyer. The pieces fell into place and in this moment a lot of things began to make sense.

“Mister Hyde”, he began gingerly, “Was that the night, when-?”

“Yes! It was that night! After being caged for two and a half months, I was so full of anger and hatred, I just wanted to hurt someone! Can you blame me for wanting to vent my anger on the first person that crossed my path?! And if it's some random old man, what do I care?! It was his fault for even coming near me, when everybody else knows better than to! I didn't even know what I was doing, until that woman intervened! I just had that one thought: that Jekyll wants to be rid of me!”

Hyde's pale face twisted into an ugly grimace, he began to tremble with fury and gnash his teeth.

Right in that moment, he looked more fearsome than when the lawyer had first met him and Utterson was struck with fear of being attacked at any second.

“Rid of”, the young man repeated quietly, before suddenly leaping from the bed, seized the older man by the collar and shrieking: “RID OF! HE WANTS TO GET RID OF ME!!! RID OF, RID OF, RID OF!!!”

Again and again.

Fearing for his (and both Hyde's and Jekyll's) life, Utterson acted out of instinct. He grabbed the smaller man by the arms and held him in a vice-like grip. The madman in his arms thrashed around, shrieked, howled and roared profanities endlessly, while his captor endured the kicking and screaming and refused to let him go.

“Mister Hyde, please calm down-”

“I'M NOT A BROKEN TOY HE CAN JUST THROW AWAY!!!”, Hyde shrieked with rage.

“Oh course not, but please, calm down! You will hurt yourself-”

Suddenly the door flew open and Lady Summers barged into the room, armed with her sword cane. “What is going on here?!”, she yelled, then frowned at the scene.

It had to be a disturbing sight, but she didn't seem all too fazed. Apparently realising, that she wouldn't be heard, if she talked aloud, she spoke to him mentally.

“Mister Utterson, do you think you have the situation under control?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Alright, I trust you. Make sure, that he doesn't hurt himself. I'll come back later.”

After instructing him this way, she left calmly.

Hyde proceeded to thrash about in his arms for a while longer. After an eternity, it seemed, he had finally exhausted himself, went limb and his screaming and shrieking turned into wheezing and whimpering. He continued to claw at the lawyer's clothing, but was too exhausted to put any force into it.

Utterson continued to murmur gently into the brunette's ear, until he stilled completely, apart from the muffled sobs into his own shoulder.

“I hate him!”, Hyde sobbed, “I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!”

It sounded so broken, that Utterson had the impression, that the young man wasn't entirely honest – perhaps not even with himself. But before he could say something, he felt something wet leak through his waistcoat and shirt.

The black-haired man was overwhelmed with compassion. How long had the boy bottled up his anger and grief like that? Had he never been able to confide into someone else before? Not even in Jekyll, his own creator? The thought made the lawyer sad.

No wonder he is so messed up. As if being Henry's dark side incarnate wasn't bad enough.

He tightened his grip around the smaller man, even though they had been in this position for a while already. Although Hyde couldn't weigh much more than eighty pounds, he was growing heavy and Utterson's entire body hurt from the struggle.

After what seemed another hour of crying and wailing, the brunette finally went silent. Then he muttered: “Put me down.”

The lawyer decided, that it was safe and complied. “Are you feeling better?”, he asked worriedly.

Hyde smiled. Not the cold, twisted smile that sent shivers down the lawyer's spine. A small, genuine smile. It only lasted for the split of a second, but long enough for the lawyer to notice.

“Temporarily”, the young man breathed hoarsely. Apparently, his voice was gone from all the screaming. “It never goes away completely. But it's gone for now.”

He sat back down on his bed. Utterson poured him a glass of water, which Hyde drank greedily.

In that moment, the brunette looked so fragile, sitting there with that too big hospital gown hanging loosely down his small, slight frame, holding that glass with both hands and looking completely drained. If Utterson hadn't known who he was speaking with, he would have thought the other to be a helpless child. Of course he knew better. Edward Hyde was anything but helpless.

“What was the other question?”, the young man quietly asked all of the sudden.

The black-haired man blinked. “I'm sorry?”

“You said you had two questions”, Hyde reminded him, “One you asked already. What was the second one?”

“Oh.” Now Utterson remembered. He awkwardly scratched his neck. “To be fair, you already answered it. I was going to ask you about your relationship with Jekyll, but that's no longer necessary.  So-”

“Ask me something else, then”, Hyde offered.

The lawyer considered, then a question popped into his mind. “Why are you so light?”

Hyde frowned. “You mean, why am I so thin, don't you? No need to be all flowery about it.”

Utterson frowned back: “Mr. Hyde, you're just saying that, because no one has ever been kind to you before. Am I right?”

The brunette snickered throatily: “You have me there. Well, unless you count the Lady of course. But to answer your question: I've always looked like this. I don't know or care why, but that's just the way I came out.”

Hyde lay back down and looked up to the ceiling, while Utterson stretched his sore limbs and bent his back to get rid of the ache. He would have so many bruises tomorrow …

The door opened and Lady Summers stepped in.

“Oh, good, you have calmed down”, she said and entered with a tea ensemble. “I was concerned, because I didn't hear anything for a while, after all the screaming, so I thought I should check.”

“Don't worry, it's fine”, Utterson assured her. Then he remembered something else.

“What time is it?”

“It's half past midnight”, she informed him, shaking her head. “You gentlemen stay up far too long. Mr. Utterson, I'm not allowing you to leave the house to go home at this hour. Don't worry, I already let your butler know that you will be staying here tonight. It took me two full minutes to come up with a suitable excuse. Two minutes!”

“Well then”, Utterson consented, not remarking about her treatment of two minutes as if they were two years. “Does your personnel know that I must be woken at exactly six in the morning?”

“Of course they do. The second guest-room is ready for you. Also, both of you should go to sleep soon”, she added with a glare, before leaving once more.

Hyde looked at Utterson. “Is that what a mother acts like?”, he asked.

Utterson sighed: “Probably. At least how most mothers would act. I wouldn't know. Mine was never there”, he added bitterly.

“Does she have children?”, the brunette asked.

Utterson shook his head. “No. But she treats her clients like they are, even if they're as old as or older than herself.”

Hyde looked up to the ceiling pensively. “She sure is something”, he mumbled, “The first person not to be scared of me. Although she did have the sword cane.”

Utterson chuckled: “People tend more to be scared of her.”

“She's quite domineering, isn't she?”

“She's Prussian. That's just how they are. They have the attitude that everyone should comply to their demands and don't take 'no' for an answer.”

Hyde laughed hoarsely: “A lot of English people are like that too.”

Then, all of the sudden, he yawned.

Utterson smiled. Looks like it's sleepy-time for our little demon here.

“I'm leaving to reins to Jekyll now”, said little demon informed him, much to his surprise. “I'm more tired than I have been in weeks.”

“Sleep then”, the black-haired man replied and sat back down on his chair.

Hyde didn't scream and wind in agony this time. The transformation went by more smoothly, maybe the two had got used to the pain or it was getting less.

A minute later Henry Jekyll was lying on the bed, blinking and feeling around like a blind man.

“Hey there”, Utterson whispered tenderly.

Jekyll looked at him, recognised him and smiled serenely. “Hello.”

God, how he adored that smile! How long had it been since he last saw it!

Jekyll gripped his hand with his own and the lawyer relished in the touch.

“I transformed back into myself without the potion. You … you actually made him relinquish control. How did you do that?”

“I didn't do anything”, the lawyer pointed out, “It was his decision to let you take back over.”

“But you calmed him down”, Jekyll contradicted, “You calmed him down enough to- Gabriel, he has never been this docile before. What did you do?”

Utterson shrugged: “I allowed him to let it out. I listened to him.”

Maybe you should try it, Henry. You have no idea, how badly he needs you to listen.

“Just that?”, the blond queried doubtfully.

The black-haired man nodded. “Yes. Just that. Henry, you need to learn the benefits of listening and talking to others.”

The doctor groaned: “Not you too! Lady Summers tells me that all the time!”

“Well, she's right”, the lawyer insisted.

Jekyll huffed: “I'm too tired to argue with you.”

He gestured to the edge of the bed. “Come here”, he bade.

Utterson sat on the edge of the bed and was surprised, when the patient grabbed his hand again, brought it to his lips and kissed it with devotion.

“Gabriel”, he whispered, “Thank you so much.”

The lawyer smiled. “Anything for you, Henry.”

“I love you.”

Utterson felt his heart race. He could have kissed him then and there. Instead, he smiled and caressed Jekyll's face. “I know, Harry. I know.”

Your alter ego practically spelled it out to me, after all.

He could see the longing in the doctor's eyes and knew they were thinking the same.

But he had made a promise and he would keep it.

(A/N:  Yeah, this one has angst and some fluff. The ending of the chapter might be kinda cheesy, but I was having a sentimental moment and it demanded to be put into writing. Also, I just wanted to finally finish that chapter. It took me an eternity to write.)

#The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #Dr. Jekyll #henry jekyll #Mr. Hyde #edward hyde #utterson #mr utterson #Gabriel John Utterson #oc

[fayewonglibrary]

China diva, Faye Wang, changes her Ice Queen? (2003)

Things are going swimmingly for the China diva, who is more talkative these days. But her string of generalisations reveals nothing.

Lesser beings would have looked like a silly Cirque du Soleil clown in that Yohji Yamamoto lime-green ensemble with candy-coloured wraparounds for neck and limbs.

But Faye Wong is no mere mortal - at least judging from the extent of fuss over the 1.72m-tall China singer-actress.

The ballroom in the glitzy Portman Ritz-Carlton in Nanjing Road is done up like a queenly shrine.

Posters of her divine image are plastered all over, and a huge screen plays the chic music videos for the singles from her new Mandarin album, To Love.

As for the star herself, she strolls in alone on time, very tall and imperturbable, in the way that only the truly blessed would be able to pull off.

Her doll face clear and framed by bangs, the 34-year-old looks as unreal as a mannequin.

But what’s truly unreal? That she talks more than usual, albeit in a string of generalisations.

‘To begin with, I never felt I was aloof,’ she says, when a journalist comments that she sounds warmer and 'more approachable’ on record these days.

Then, she actually laughs.

'I don’t have a certain image, that I should be cool or aloof. But there are many sides to humanity. Maybe you only see one side of me. I can only explain this way,’ she says.

Her forthrightness is - pardon the pun - a godsend.

Maybe it is because she is more at home (literally and mentally) with the 60 journalists and cameramen who have converged here from all across China. Maybe, she is a great actress.

Or maybe she is really, really happy.

WHY wouldn’t she be?

She has apparently reunited with Hong Kong bad boy of pop, 23-year-old Nicholas Tse, who has penned a song called MV, which she says is 'my personal favourite’.

Her 19th studio album and her first on Sony has sold more than one million copies in Asia alone within a week of its release on Nov 7, with half of those in China.

She will soon wrap up filming for the eagerly awaited Wong Kar Wai movie, 2046, where she plays a robot opposite such stars as Japan’s Takuya Kimura and Taiwan’s Chang Chen.

She will also be staging eight concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum next month. Along the way, she set a record in Hong Kong for selling 30,000 tickets via telephone booking within three days.

Just last Saturday, the whole Shanghai Stadium, packed with 80,000 compatriots, sang with her at the 2003 Asia Superstar Anti-Piracy Concert.

Later, after the press conference in a small meeting room, I ask her how much she thinks she has changed over the course of 14 years since appearing on the Hong Kong pop scene as starlet Shirley Wong.

'Well, I’ve gone through a lot… Well, not that much, but you know, it’s more than a decade,’ she says in lilting Mandarin.

'I’m getting older, and I guess I’ve seen through things. I don’t deliberately plan things.’

Loving it: Wong’s album To Love sold more than one million copies in Asia within a week of its release. She goes on to downplay her sense of mission in music - 'I don’t have any’ - and lets on that 'music to me is a form of interest, a leisurely pursuit’.

She hastens to add: 'But then there is nothing wrong about having a mission. Some people have their own pop missions. Everybody has his or her own way.’

By now you realise that for all her new-found loquacity, she is not one for specifics.

She still speaks in a merry-go-round of non sequiturs and fortune-cookie aphorisms, correcting herself along the way in a sort of abbreviated speech, not unlike a Zen master or a shadow boxer.

NOT that you detect any put-on act.

Sad but true: It is the Herculean task of a journalist to crack a celebrity within a brief span of 15 minutes, to sum up an artist in quick-bite pop psychoanalysis, but with Wong, that modus operandi does not cut any glass.

It is not that she is particularly media-wary.

It is just that she comes across as a person who needs years and plenty of trust for her to open up.

For armchair shrinks, it helps that for To Love, she has penned four songs, including a trip-hop number called Leaving Nothing. It has an intriguing line that goes: 'I’ve given you my heart and I’ve given him my body.’

Those lyrics were the subject of a reporter’s query at the conference: So, is this an accurate reflection of your love life?

Her answer, delivered placidly, is candid: 'Actually, even if I give a yes or no to your question, you wouldn’t exactly understand what I’m trying to say.

'I don’t mean to be difficult. However which way I explain, your comprehension and my explanation aren’t going to be the same.

'But, of course, the song is a reflection of my love life. But if you want to know what this 'you’ refers to, and what 'him’ represents,’ she says, and pauses for a laugh, 'it’s not something I can say.’

She confesses she is more of an instinctual kind of person; that she has always followed her heart, but 'most importantly, it is to make oneself happy’.

By way of example, she says she does not mind letting her seven-year-old daughter (her child with ex-husband musician Dou Wei), Jingtong, 'try’ the music scene when she grows up - if she has the talent and interest.

More beguilingly, the singer admits freely that she does not like the songs she sang 10 years ago, although she will sing her early Cantonese hits at her Hong Kong concerts.

'It’s to cater to my fans who still want to reminisce. In music, I’m not one for reminiscing. I like new things’ is her matter-of-fact take.

SUCH an honest answer may rile other people’s fans, but this is one diva whose disciples adore her precisely because she displays such brazen individuality in a pop scene filled with manufactured nymphets mouthing rehearsed lines.

Asked how she feels that Chinese censors have banned one of the songs, In The Name Of Love, because it contains the line 'Opium is warm and sweet’, and she says blatantly she has 'no strong opinion’.

'After all, it’s a Cantonese song, and the lyrics are by Lin Xi. I didn’t write them,’ the Beijing-born native says without missing a beat. 'Personally, I like my own original Mandarin version with my lyrics.’

Not surprisingly, she says she prefers singing to acting because 'it’s more natural and individualistic’, even though she did win raves for her performance in 1994’s Chungking Express.

She describes how director Wong would play a song by Norwegian neo-classical pop duo Secret Garden for her on the set of 2046.

'It’s a very, very sad song. Sorry, I can’t remember the title. It’s for a crying scene. He would play the song to let me cultivate the right feelings for the scene. In that way, it becomes easier. Yes, that’s the way I get into the mood, through music.’

Talking about 2046, does she know that her co-star Tony Leung Chiu Wai said she is a great actor during a recent interview on Taiwanese TV?

Her reaction is immediate and out of the blue.

'Ahh… who did he say it to?’ she yelps, catching her breath.

It is entertainment doyenne Chang Hsiao-yen on her talk show Swallow Time.

'Tony would say the same about any other actor. Don’t believe him. I don’t believe him,’ she says, girlishly embarrassed.

'I really don’t think I can act.’

To Love is out in the stores.

Faye in Her Own Words

ON PACKAGING

'I believe that if people like my albums, it’s not because of my packaging. All the clothes and make-up are only accessories. They don’t matter, really.’

ON WHY THE TITLES OF ALL THE SONGS IN HER NEW CD CONSIST OF TWO CHARACTERS

'It’s the habit of modern people. We like to abbreviate in our everyday speech. It’s just fun. Names and titles aren’t important.’

ON HAVING NO CAREER GAME PLAN

'You can’t deliberately set out to find something. If it isn’t there, it isn’t there.’

ON HER ACHIEVEMENT

'If I have any achievements, it’s a combination of my assets as well as luck. Not many people can accomplish what they want, so I’ve been fortunate. Whatever you do, you will be most confident if you follow your own feelings. As for the rest, it’s fate. You know what fate is?’

------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCE: THE STRAITS TIMES

#2003

[ihfsttinuf]

Screw It, I’m Making a Webcomic

So, as I made it abundantly clear on Twitter mere moments ago, I have a real honest-to-Glob New Year’s Resolution for 2017.

I am going to create a webcomic.

I am going to write a sequential art narrative which I will draw and provide various artistic accoutrements to and post it on the Internet. This is going to happen by the end of this year. I am doing this.

Perhaps this sudden outburst and declaration of artistic intent seems a bit out of left field, both in its overtones of grandiosity and relative lack of context given what most of you guys know about me. So let me provide some of that much needed context, both to show you why I am doing this and what I am really saying, which is probably even more ambitious (and maybe pretentious) than you think it is.

I’ve been writing weird little stories and drawing accompanying illustrations for them since I was a wean, as most of us did at that age, but since that point I’ve never really stopped. At a very young age I encountered not only excellent children’s books ranging from the charming and heartwarming to the downright mind-bending—Peter Sís and Henrik Drescher were big in my household—but also illustrated works whose contents and subtext were far too old for me yet entranced me nonetheless, particularly the works of the great New England illustrator and satirist Edward Gorey. By the age of six or seven, I had memorised “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” and would recite it with morbid glee to anyone who would ask (or didn’t). I discovered books through Gorey’s cover illustrations, first accidentally discovering the alternate history genre through his work on Joan Aiken’s Dido Twite series, and was only drawn deeper into John Bellairs’ junior Gothics when I discovered that Gorey had provided the frontispiece and dust jacket to every one of the entries in the series he’d written up to his death—which I mourned, with a mix of vague incomprehension, sorrow, and creeping disappointment. I was eight at the time.

Parallel to this, I spent a lot of time at my town’s local art centre, which provided free classes in all sorts of artistic endeavours. I took most to theatre and improv in particular—I was a wee ham; now I am a large ham—but what stuck with me was drawing and, to a lesser extent, animation. As I fixated on Gorey’s superficial techniques and aesthetics, the simple sunken eyes and odd little triangular noses, I’d also more subtly acquired his less obvious techniques: The way he used cross-hatching and simple, intense linework to suggest different textures entranced me, and indeed still does. I am told that a very strict art teacher, who I thought disliked me and of whom I was somewhat afraid, freely admitted that a sketch I’d done of a horned figure playing a flute on a rooftop by the light of the moon had taken her breath away.

Which is not to say that I was, or am, some prodigy of form, or that I lacked for more prosaic influences. The former, I will get to, but the latter is best expressed in the fact that a recurring scene which I have since revised and transfigured many, many times began life as... well, thinly veiled Darkwing Duck fanfiction, minus the duck part, given a sound twist of Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter”. I was maybe eleven or so at the time.

It was in one of these classes that this weird little scene deep beneath a ruined graveyard was born. It was also there that I made plans for an elaborate series of beast fables, set in a world quite unlike our own.

It is perhaps worth noting that one of the handful of these early sketches which sticks in y mind to this day was a tale of two young male lizards falling in love only to be torn apart by a disapproving society. Even at an age when I was functionally unaware of homosexuality and bemused or outright repulsed by what I knew of sex, a queer romance was perhaps the most emotionally intense thing that I had conceived of up to that point. But I digress.

The setting in question and certain characters in it would perennially re-emerge in my other writing, which I was quite certain would be my career path throughout late elementary and middle school. In seventh grade, I was part of an experimental programme where middle and high school students were allowed to enrol in a creative writing course at a nearby university. Only two students wound up attending: Myself, and a classmate of mine who had skipped a grade and would later become known in my high school as something of a mad and insufferable genius. (We got on pretty well.) After several semesters of studying poetry and short fiction, there was a presentation. One of the selections I made for my reading was a list-poem, from the perspective of an older character trying to live day by day with the memory of his deceased wife hanging over him, with the distinction that the final entry was a reminder to keep his claws neatly filed.

It was around that time that I began to come under the influence of Thomas Ligotti, and it was with this exposure to the refiner’s fire of such elegant horror—the kind that brought the same sort of visions into my mind that Gorey brought to the page—that I realised what form my true opus should take, at least in plot. I took it with me into high school, and beyond into the wilderness of these past six-and-a-half years of confusion. The polestar of this mad endeavour formed here.

I had been thinking a lot about epic high fantasy at the time—I was eleven when The Return of the King hit theatres, and I had read enough in the genre and in styles adjacent to it to be aware of the tropes—and it occurred to me that the moral framework and cosmology of a lot of such works rang a bit hollow to me, not because right and wrong did not exist, as certainly people do good and bad things to one another all the time, but because there was always this sense of certainty that the side one was meant to root for was indubitably in the right and some great objective force of Good deemed it so, blessing their struggle against a force similarly ordained by some great objective Evil. It was that last dimension which particularly irked me. It felt reassuring in the most painfully reductive and philosophically trite way possible. And so often the battles were so... literal. I never much cared for war films to begin with, and by putting such struggles in a fantastical framework, you subtracted the one thing that made war films kind of neat: The recognition that these were people doing the fighting and the killing. Not symbols, people.

Very middle school analysis, yes, and unfair to some things I quite enjoy, Tolkien included, but the ultimate conclusions were the important part.

Which is where Ligotti comes in. Much has been made of his non-fiction opus The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, but in terms of his philosophy and its influence on my thinking at the time, I’d rather stick to his fiction, as that was what I was reading and that is what made me. In brief, Ligotti is not a reassuring writer. The universe of his stories reflects his views of our own, which are, in essence, a wholesale rejection of the commonly held notion that human consciousness and life in general are good things that we should all be even remotely enthused about, instead proposing that the very idea that we are aware of ourselves and that we should think of ourselves as individuals for whom some higher power might just be watching out is more likely an obscene and sadistic joke on that hypothetical power’s part or else, more likely, a horrible accident. His stories are filled with personal totems and surreal motifs, the fates of his characters determined by blind chance or the detached malicious prankstery of a party with whom they cannot bargain or reason, the sadistic frenzies of Poe’s maniacal villain-protagonists writ large, often on a cosmic scale. There is the feel of a nightmare and yet also of the sleepless hours after, alone in the dark, thinking, where wakefulness and dream bleed between one another and all the world is a nightmare to which the hells of sleep might well be preferable.

If I’ve lost you, well, I’m sorry; but you and I probably have something to talk about if your first reaction to all this was, “I’ve certainly had *those* days.”

And if you’ve had enough of those days, the rest probably follows easily enough.

Wouldn’t it be interesting, I thought, if one took that quest narrative key to so many epic fantasies, and put it through a world where the rules of the game were so utterly reversed? If our well-meaning hero—of course, as in Tolkien, basically some poor backwater schmo, by no means stupid nor necessarily naïve but very, *very* far from the classical man of virtue—were to bear with him some artefact of power that could, perhaps by its very existence, rend the veil of normalcy that should keep all of the sane and happy citizens of this world from confronting what writhes beneath all that they see, what might he choose to do with it, particularly if he were, say, by some inexplicable invisible bond, *tied* to it?

Now, what makes a fitting antagonist for such a tale? What sort of character provides the ideal foil for a kind-hearted soul confronted with all the horrors of what may be in a neat little package? Rather than some cosmic sadist intent on throwing us all under the bus, why not something a bit scarier: Another kind-hearted soul. Someone who has seen behind the veil their whole life. Someone who has seen the truth and the agony of this world and seeks nothing less than perfect closure

And there it was.

And then it began to get complicated.

For every character that I created to flesh out the story, another came into being, and I wanted to know more about them. A side-plot salvaged from some other silly project merged seamlessly into the new whole, and suddenly there were whole new plots, full of new characters with motives that I wanted to understand. Characters grew, changed, lightened and darkened as my thoughts steeped. Exposure to other writers through classes and forums and variably disastrous shared writing projects made me realise what I did and did not know, what I could and could not do.

It was also in high school that I began taking music seriously, first toying around in Garageband and singing in the school choir and then as part of a band with several close friends. I wrote a lot of poetry, and I sang a bit, so we had lyrics; I still drew sometimes, so we had art when we needed it, although we rarely needed it. I was always ambitious with my lyrics: One of our most successful songs was structured to simulate one character murdering another during a snowstorm in a glade where they had played and hidden as a child. Morbid character studies were common; I was always taking grim little vacations in people’s heads, my own or otherwise. Informed by my middle school studies of haibun and my lyrical adventures, my prose grew more experimental, collapsing into poems or switching into strange persons and tenses. My mind was full of images, yet where to go with them?

My path to sequential art was an odd and rocky one. As mentioned, I loved picture books and illustrated stories as a child, and while I failed to touch upon them earlier (mea culpa!), Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side were pretty important in their own right. I even attempted to create something of a running series at around the time I was in that poetry programme, mainly for the amusement of myself and a very affable art teacher who found the premise amusing. It was only a year or two later that I would read Doom Patrol—the first superhero comic that I would ever admit to liking, and still one of the chosen few—and realise that Grant Morrison, the bastard, had stolen my idea before I’d even been born: Of killing one’s own imaginary friend, only to be tormented by their vengeful spectre years after the fact at the least appropriate of times.

But the comic idea sort of fell by the wayside for the longest time, for the simple reason that I am, to my own mind, an atrocious draughtsman. I cannot reproduce figures to save my life. Hilarious, seeing as I can draw you a teeming alien cityscape, or a perfectly detailed mosquito in flames, but in terms of doing the same thing twice, I’ve spent years hanging my head in shame and self-loathing.

The secret is, though, not that I couldn’t learn this, but that for such a long time, pride had kept me from allowing myself to be bad at things until I was good. As someone to whom a lot of fairly complex ideas just come naturally, someone who just absorbs information like a souped-up Dyson vacuum, the idea of having to draw the same damned thing ten thousand times just to get decent at drawing that same damned thing was a horrifying prospect. It still is.

I got pushed into it. My own fictions put a knife to my throat and told me, “This is what needs to happen.” But it took two different interconnected experiences to understand how, both courtesy of my boyfriend being a huge dork.

The first was his recommendation that I read LAMEZINE 02, at that time the latest salvo from the wonderfully deranged comic artist Cate Wurtz, then going by the moniker Partydog; the second was his use of a Bec Noir avatar on a forum we’re both on, which got me to finally bite the bullet and read Homestuck.

Wurtz’ Lamezone comics are a trip. Her art style is by most technical standards fairly primitive, but it’s a very *refined* jankiness, part and parcel to her overall embrace of scuzzy punk ‘zine aesthetics, immediately recognisable and all-around immediate. Her approach to story and tone is just the same, at once surreal and ridiculous and incredibly emotionally potent, ranging in tone from giddy B-movie absurdity to crushing Carver-esque sorrow, composed of as many little side-stories that flesh out what sort of world these characters live in as of its “meat” and all the better for it. The way that her comics are often framed only adds to the ambience: DVD menus of hit TV series that never existed, tales from the everyday lives of people living on the precipice of madness (and/or suburban Kansas), the wild Lynchian adventures of a man who talks to the spirit of the good ol’ USA through Twitter while traipsing through other people’s comics and the comment sections on furry porn sites. She was even working on a video game at one point about a woman trying to battle her way through deformed iterations of her past selves while maintaining a sufficient ganja supply. I have no idea if that’s still happening. It looked awesome.

Homestuck has already had much said about it, so I’ll keep it brief. Comparisons to Pynchon are not unwarranted. It takes the hypertextual potential of the webcomic to the next level, and is longer than many novel series. The art is, quite intentionally, all over the place, and uses collage surprisingly effectively. The story is a beautiful mess that is, fundamentally, about the process of storytelling and how “things that happen” become “stories” in the first place. It’s very oblique about this, and generally quite funny.

And so I looked to the story I was writing.

I looked at the multiple plotlines growing out of one another, intersecting, snakes devouring their tails, thematic parallels on parallels, spirals of mental imagery with bits of torn wallpaper making the fabric of waistcoats and cathedrals made out of lines of scripture and trees bearing watches like fruit, and I went: “This should be a comic! A hypercomic, in fact, McLuhan-style! This should be a wondrous blend of visuals and text and...

“I...

“I can’t draw. Fuck me. I should stick to prose, like a good loser. Get rejected that way instead.”

So I waffled. For months. And then for years.

But you know what?

I’m done waffling.

Limitation is power in its own right. Ever since I learned of Oulipo in that long-ago three-person poetry class, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of innovation through defining what you cannot do, or what you must do, no matter what. Of forcing yourself to start from a set place or end at one, no ifs, ands or buts.

I am limited. Within that, I am omnipotent.

I am going to draw this comic. I am going to write it and I am going to draw it even if it starts out looking like total shit and the process drives me half-insane. If things that I love, in sequential art but also in music and painting and writing and animation and all sorts of other forms, can make a perceived deficit into a key strength, I can do it, too. Even if I can’t be a classical master, I can be the best at that crazy thing I do.

I guess this is also my grandiose way of saying “fuck last year,” where I made so much progress that felt so thwarted by external circumstances and my own failings, and where so much went wrong for so many of us. So I’m embracing this year as a year of progress. Even if everything else sucks, I’ll be running up that hill.

And just so there’s no mistaking it, I will still be making music and probably writing at least a smidgen of prose fiction and poetry on the side. In the former category, I might even start a band.

Oh, wait. We’re not doing half-measures any more.

I’m starting a band, too.

Tell your friends.

Happy 2017, everyone, and have a lovely rest of your night.

#Writings #my artwork #New Year's resolutions #important #rant #so many words my laird #DOING THE ART #comics #so many tags

[giantsfootball0]

Oklahoma State Cowboys have best offense in the nation and it’s not close

Mike Gundy is making this look too easy.

On Friday, Sept. 8, his Oklahoma State Cowboys laid waste to South Alabama on the road in Mobile, racking up 505 yards of offense and 44 points. They barely broke a sweat, sitting the starters the entire fourth quarter. The next day, as the rest of the college football world spun on, Gundy left the office to go turtle hunting with his son.

He wasn’t distracted, mind you. Gundy’s eccentricities make the Oklahoma State head coach who he is. The very next weekend, the Cowboys went to Pittsburgh and scored 59 points, scoring touchdowns on each of their first seven possessions. It was a barrage of offense that should feel familiar to anyone who pays attention to the Big 12.

Mike Gundy’s Oklahoma State team is off to a flying start. Scott Donaldson/Icon Sportswire

“Gundy has been doing it a long time,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said afterward. “He’s got what he wants there.”

Boy, does he. He has a Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterback from SEC country, he has a first-round-caliber receiver that no one paid attention to playing 1A football in a tiny Texas town, and he even lucked into a four-year starting center who simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. Gundy threw them all in a pot, let them stew for a few years and got this: an offense with the experience and firepower capable of setting records and crashing the College Football Playoff.

It’s a no-huddle that also shifts gears.

It’s a spread that also goes vertical.

It’s a quarterback who executes run-pass options by reading the front seven and the secondary.

It’s the convergence of speed and efficiency, strength and elegance. Every piece fits just so, as if tied together by a string, working in concert to average 35.7 points and 430.3 yards per game — in the first half.

“You’re not going to stop them completely,” South Alabama coach Joey Jones said. “You’re just not.”

“You’re searching for answers,” Pitt safety Dennis Briggs said. “You really can’t figure it out.”

Maybe slowing them down isn’t possible. But maybe we can better understand how and why the Cowboys’ offense came to be so devastatingly good.

It started, of all places, at the end of a five-game losing streak in November of the 2014 season. The location was Waco, Texas, and the final score was a doozy: Baylor 49, Oklahoma State 28.

It was just one week after the lowest point of the season, according to Gundy, when unranked Texas came into Stillwater and beat up on the Cowboys, winning 28-7. Losing by three touchdowns was tough enough, but it was the offense’s ineptitude that hurt most.

Watch out for weird things in Week 4. It’s possible we’ll have very interesting — and unlikely — 4-0 teams after Saturday’s games.

Almost 10 years since his epic rant became college football’s earliest viral sensation, the man who was 40 is a decade older. And wiser. How his outburst and everything after came to define and change Mike Gundy.

1 Related

“There was nothing we could do,” Gundy said. “It’s like being 200 [yards] out from the green, you got to hit it up on the green to putt to tie it, and all you have in your bag is a 7-iron. It’s going to be hard.”

So, before facing the seventh-ranked Bears on the road, Gundy emptied his bag. He looked around his locker room and decided to make some changes. It was time to go all-in on the future.

That included freshman walk-on offensive lineman Brad Lundblade. Eight months earlier, Gundy and his staff had made the difficult decision to not offer Lundblade a scholarship. He was a smart kid who loved Oklahoma State, visited campus often and got along well with everyone. But at around 6-foot-4, 280 pounds, he was a tad undersized to play offensive line in the Big 12.

Thankfully for Gundy, Lundblade’s father had a heart-to-heart with his son. “Don’t worry about the money,” he told him. “Go follow your dream.” Lundblade said thanks but no thanks to some lower-tier FBS offers, walked on at Oklahoma State and made the team out of camp. Then injuries hit and a few offensive linemen underperformed. Lundblade, who was on the scout team, was surprised when coaches told him he’d start traveling with the team.

Then the implosion against Texas happened.

“It was a tough year for us,” Lundblade said. “They were looking to make a couple changes, so they gave me a shot.”

The other change was at quarterback.

Gundy was planning to redshirt true freshman Mason Rudolph, a four-star prospect from Rock Hill, South Carolina, but after talking it over, they decided to give him a shot. At that time, Rudolph wasn’t quite the Louis Vuitton-backpack-wearing, record-setting quarterback he has become, but he had confidence.

Mason Rudolph was thrust into the starting role as a true freshman in 2014. Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Rudolph and Lundblade both started in that game against Baylor. In the second quarter, trailing by three touchdowns, Rudolph dropped back and found David Glidden for an 8-yard touchdown. It was instant comfort after that. In the fourth quarter, Rudolph really let loose with a 68-yard touchdown pass to fellow true freshman James Washington.

It wasn’t a pretty game by any means, but according to Gundy, the Cowboys started looking like an offense again. Looking back, it was the start of something special for Rudolph, Lundblade, Washington and the rest of that freshman class who are seniors today.

“We made our first start together, and we’ve been together ever since,” Lundblade said. “We knew that we were young. We knew that any time you play that many young players, there’s going to be a learning curve. So obviously, it was frustrating, but we weren’t too worried about it. We knew it was going to pay off eventually. It was just a matter of time.”

Most Career Pass TDs In OSU HistoryTDsSpanBrandon Weeden752007-11Mason Rudolph662014-pres.Zac Robinson662005-09

The next week against archrival Oklahoma, Rudolph threw for 273 yards and two touchdowns in a 38-35 win in overtime.

That offseason, Washington remembers waking up at 6 a.m. on Friday mornings to meet at Boone Pickens Stadium to run up and down the bleachers.

“Coming off of that year, we decided that we needed to actually work,” he said. “We worked hard every single day, and that’s really what set us up for these past few years. I feel like that gave us that drive.”

For Washington, who grew up in Stamford, Texas, with a population of fewer than 4,000 people, working hard and running stadiums were nothing. If it weren’t for football, he said he would be running a ranch putting in grueling dawn-to-dusk hours.

In fact, he chose Oklahoma State because it had a top agricultural program.

James Washington has 367 receiving yards on 13 catches through three games. Joe Sargent/Getty Images

But if all goes according to plan, he won’t have to plant seed or herd cattle for money anytime soon. The 6-foot wideout has NFL written all over him, with one coach calling him a potential top-10 pick.

Lundblade said he has never seen anyone run as fast as Washington. Through three games, Washington has three touchdowns, and all of them have been for 40 yards or more. He currently ranks 12th nationally in receiving yards (367), despite catching just 13 passes.

It doesn’t matter that he isn’t that tall, according to his quarterback.

“That’s what you’re seeing today isn’t your Terrell Owens- and Randy Moss-type height,” Rudolph said. “You’re seeing the Odell Beckhams, the Antonio Browns and the Edelmans of the year that are smaller and change direction really well and are extremely fast. I don’t think it’s a problem. It’s who he is and what he does.”

But what’s truly scary for opposing defenses is that Washington doesn’t have to do it alone. Ask around, and Washington might not even be the most explosive receiver on the roster. That honor could belong to former LSU transfer Tyron Johnson, whom Washington called a shifty, “make-you-miss” player.

Most Career Rec TDs In OSU HistoryTDsSpanRashaun Woods421999-03Justin Blackmon402008-11Hart Lee Dykes311985-88James Washington292014-17Dez Bryant292007-09

Johnson didn’t even play against Pitt. Against the Panthers, four Cowboys had at least 100 receiving yards: Washington, Marcell Ateman, Jalen McCleskey and Dillon Stoner.

In a bit of premonition, Narduzzi was asked before the game how he felt about his defense’s ability to give up big plays.

“I don’t feel good when I look at James Washington out there and Mason Rudolph,” he said. “Just go put on Oklahoma State [film]: big, explosive passes and runs. … As soon as you start playing Cover 2 and trying to put two over that guy, it’s out the gate going 98, and that’s not good, either. So it’s pick your poison.”

Washington scared him, Narduzzi said, “but I’m scared of them all.”

That is music to Rudolph’s ears. What might be seen as a problem to some — too many receivers, not enough passes to go around — is a solution to the senior quarterback, who said he prefers that his receivers be a little angry at one another.

“That’s healthy,” he said. “Not necessarily angry, but competitive angry. That just makes them run their routes harder and 100 percent effort every snap.”

Said Washington: “When it’s your turn to get the ball, make it happen. Because you don’t know how many you’re going to get.”

It’s the combination of talent and experience that makes Oklahoma State’s offense special.

Offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich is a taskmaster, according to Gundy, and Rudolph is a “workaholic.” He compared Rudolph’s work ethic to that of Peyton Manning and freely admits that he won’t be able to hide the brilliant mind of Yurcich on his staff much longer.

That is probably true, considering his offense is second in points scored, third in total yards and fifth in third-down conversion percentage among FBS teams. Oklahoma State is first in expected points added on offense, which factors in things such as down and distance, field position, home-field advantage and time remaining. The Cowboys are doing this with incredible balance (104 passes to 109 rushes) and speed (29th in time of possession per play).

“I’ll be honest, and I mean this as humble as possible,” Gundy said. “I have no clue what people are going to do.”

Tulsa tried to stop the pass and lost 59-24 as running back Justice Hill rushed for 132 yards and a touchdown.

South Alabama went with a Bear front to try to stop the run, only to lose 44-7 as Rudolph completed 25 of 38 passes for 335 yards and three touchdowns.

ESPN Stats and Info

“We felt like we always want to stop the run,” Jones said. “But that guy, the quarterback, obviously had a great game.

“It’s kind of like damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Tulsa coach Philip Montgomery said he thought his defense could get pressure on Rudolph and create turnovers. On one play, he had two defenders get to Rudolph.

“And he still dropped a dime and threw a touchdown for about 50 yards,” Montgomery said of the QB.

The spread, RPO concepts Oklahoma State is able to use are more advanced than most, Montgomery said, and it’s a direct testament to how experienced and well-versed Rudolph is in the offense. When he gets to the line of scrimmage, he has three different checks he can make within a single formation.

The best you can do, Montgomery said, is make a stop on first down and hope for the best.

“If you want an opportunity to get after Oklahoma State, you have to play really good defense on first down, get them behind the sticks, and you have to do that continually throughout the game,” he said. “They’re going to get their chunks of yardage, they’re going to make some plays, but if you can get them in a situation where they’re struggling on first down and having to really make yards on second down, to me that’s where you put pressure on them. If you can’t do that, if they can do whatever they want on first down, they’re going to eat you up.”

It sounds painful, if not outright unfair, from the other side of the field.

But ask the Cowboys, and it’s a blast.

“It’s crazy,” Hill said. “It’s really fun. Just being out there with your teammates, you don’t have to do much besides your job. And then you look up, and you see James and Marcell and somebody else are out there running for a touchdown.”

Hill makes it sound easy, marching up and down the field at will, but it didn’t start out that way. You’ll have to forgive him because the sophomore is something of a newcomer to the party.

In fact, this offense was years in the making.

But now that it’s all pieced together, it really is something to behold.

The post Oklahoma State Cowboys have best offense in the nation and it’s not close appeared first on Daily Star Sports.

from https://dailystarsports.com/2017/09/21/oklahoma-state-cowboys-have-best-offense-in-the-nation-and-its-not-close/ from https://dailystarsports.tumblr.com/post/165580692201

[footballleague0]

Oklahoma State Cowboys have best offense in the nation and it’s not close

Mike Gundy is making this look too easy.

On Friday, Sept. 8, his Oklahoma State Cowboys laid waste to South Alabama on the road in Mobile, racking up 505 yards of offense and 44 points. They barely broke a sweat, sitting the starters the entire fourth quarter. The next day, as the rest of the college football world spun on, Gundy left the office to go turtle hunting with his son.

He wasn’t distracted, mind you. Gundy’s eccentricities make the Oklahoma State head coach who he is. The very next weekend, the Cowboys went to Pittsburgh and scored 59 points, scoring touchdowns on each of their first seven possessions. It was a barrage of offense that should feel familiar to anyone who pays attention to the Big 12.

Mike Gundy’s Oklahoma State team is off to a flying start. Scott Donaldson/Icon Sportswire

“Gundy has been doing it a long time,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said afterward. “He’s got what he wants there.”

Boy, does he. He has a Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterback from SEC country, he has a first-round-caliber receiver that no one paid attention to playing 1A football in a tiny Texas town, and he even lucked into a four-year starting center who simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. Gundy threw them all in a pot, let them stew for a few years and got this: an offense with the experience and firepower capable of setting records and crashing the College Football Playoff.

It’s a no-huddle that also shifts gears.

It’s a spread that also goes vertical.

It’s a quarterback who executes run-pass options by reading the front seven and the secondary.

It’s the convergence of speed and efficiency, strength and elegance. Every piece fits just so, as if tied together by a string, working in concert to average 35.7 points and 430.3 yards per game — in the first half.

“You’re not going to stop them completely,” South Alabama coach Joey Jones said. “You’re just not.”

“You’re searching for answers,” Pitt safety Dennis Briggs said. “You really can’t figure it out.”

Maybe slowing them down isn’t possible. But maybe we can better understand how and why the Cowboys’ offense came to be so devastatingly good.

It started, of all places, at the end of a five-game losing streak in November of the 2014 season. The location was Waco, Texas, and the final score was a doozy: Baylor 49, Oklahoma State 28.

It was just one week after the lowest point of the season, according to Gundy, when unranked Texas came into Stillwater and beat up on the Cowboys, winning 28-7. Losing by three touchdowns was tough enough, but it was the offense’s ineptitude that hurt most.

Watch out for weird things in Week 4. It’s possible we’ll have very interesting — and unlikely — 4-0 teams after Saturday’s games.

Almost 10 years since his epic rant became college football’s earliest viral sensation, the man who was 40 is a decade older. And wiser. How his outburst and everything after came to define and change Mike Gundy.

1 Related

“There was nothing we could do,” Gundy said. “It’s like being 200 [yards] out from the green, you got to hit it up on the green to putt to tie it, and all you have in your bag is a 7-iron. It’s going to be hard.”

So, before facing the seventh-ranked Bears on the road, Gundy emptied his bag. He looked around his locker room and decided to make some changes. It was time to go all-in on the future.

That included freshman walk-on offensive lineman Brad Lundblade. Eight months earlier, Gundy and his staff had made the difficult decision to not offer Lundblade a scholarship. He was a smart kid who loved Oklahoma State, visited campus often and got along well with everyone. But at around 6-foot-4, 280 pounds, he was a tad undersized to play offensive line in the Big 12.

Thankfully for Gundy, Lundblade’s father had a heart-to-heart with his son. “Don’t worry about the money,” he told him. “Go follow your dream.” Lundblade said thanks but no thanks to some lower-tier FBS offers, walked on at Oklahoma State and made the team out of camp. Then injuries hit and a few offensive linemen underperformed. Lundblade, who was on the scout team, was surprised when coaches told him he’d start traveling with the team.

Then the implosion against Texas happened.

“It was a tough year for us,” Lundblade said. “They were looking to make a couple changes, so they gave me a shot.”

The other change was at quarterback.

Gundy was planning to redshirt true freshman Mason Rudolph, a four-star prospect from Rock Hill, South Carolina, but after talking it over, they decided to give him a shot. At that time, Rudolph wasn’t quite the Louis Vuitton-backpack-wearing, record-setting quarterback he has become, but he had confidence.

Mason Rudolph was thrust into the starting role as a true freshman in 2014. Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Rudolph and Lundblade both started in that game against Baylor. In the second quarter, trailing by three touchdowns, Rudolph dropped back and found David Glidden for an 8-yard touchdown. It was instant comfort after that. In the fourth quarter, Rudolph really let loose with a 68-yard touchdown pass to fellow true freshman James Washington.

It wasn’t a pretty game by any means, but according to Gundy, the Cowboys started looking like an offense again. Looking back, it was the start of something special for Rudolph, Lundblade, Washington and the rest of that freshman class who are seniors today.

“We made our first start together, and we’ve been together ever since,” Lundblade said. “We knew that we were young. We knew that any time you play that many young players, there’s going to be a learning curve. So obviously, it was frustrating, but we weren’t too worried about it. We knew it was going to pay off eventually. It was just a matter of time.”

Most Career Pass TDs In OSU HistoryTDsSpanBrandon Weeden752007-11Mason Rudolph662014-pres.Zac Robinson662005-09

The next week against archrival Oklahoma, Rudolph threw for 273 yards and two touchdowns in a 38-35 win in overtime.

That offseason, Washington remembers waking up at 6 a.m. on Friday mornings to meet at Boone Pickens Stadium to run up and down the bleachers.

“Coming off of that year, we decided that we needed to actually work,” he said. “We worked hard every single day, and that’s really what set us up for these past few years. I feel like that gave us that drive.”

For Washington, who grew up in Stamford, Texas, with a population of fewer than 4,000 people, working hard and running stadiums were nothing. If it weren’t for football, he said he would be running a ranch putting in grueling dawn-to-dusk hours.

In fact, he chose Oklahoma State because it had a top agricultural program.

James Washington has 367 receiving yards on 13 catches through three games. Joe Sargent/Getty Images

But if all goes according to plan, he won’t have to plant seed or herd cattle for money anytime soon. The 6-foot wideout has NFL written all over him, with one coach calling him a potential top-10 pick.

Lundblade said he has never seen anyone run as fast as Washington. Through three games, Washington has three touchdowns, and all of them have been for 40 yards or more. He currently ranks 12th nationally in receiving yards (367), despite catching just 13 passes.

It doesn’t matter that he isn’t that tall, according to his quarterback.

“That’s what you’re seeing today isn’t your Terrell Owens- and Randy Moss-type height,” Rudolph said. “You’re seeing the Odell Beckhams, the Antonio Browns and the Edelmans of the year that are smaller and change direction really well and are extremely fast. I don’t think it’s a problem. It’s who he is and what he does.”

But what’s truly scary for opposing defenses is that Washington doesn’t have to do it alone. Ask around, and Washington might not even be the most explosive receiver on the roster. That honor could belong to former LSU transfer Tyron Johnson, whom Washington called a shifty, “make-you-miss” player.

Most Career Rec TDs In OSU HistoryTDsSpanRashaun Woods421999-03Justin Blackmon402008-11Hart Lee Dykes311985-88James Washington292014-17Dez Bryant292007-09

Johnson didn’t even play against Pitt. Against the Panthers, four Cowboys had at least 100 receiving yards: Washington, Marcell Ateman, Jalen McCleskey and Dillon Stoner.

In a bit of premonition, Narduzzi was asked before the game how he felt about his defense’s ability to give up big plays.

“I don’t feel good when I look at James Washington out there and Mason Rudolph,” he said. “Just go put on Oklahoma State [film]: big, explosive passes and runs. … As soon as you start playing Cover 2 and trying to put two over that guy, it’s out the gate going 98, and that’s not good, either. So it’s pick your poison.”

Washington scared him, Narduzzi said, “but I’m scared of them all.”

That is music to Rudolph’s ears. What might be seen as a problem to some — too many receivers, not enough passes to go around — is a solution to the senior quarterback, who said he prefers that his receivers be a little angry at one another.

“That’s healthy,” he said. “Not necessarily angry, but competitive angry. That just makes them run their routes harder and 100 percent effort every snap.”

Said Washington: “When it’s your turn to get the ball, make it happen. Because you don’t know how many you’re going to get.”

It’s the combination of talent and experience that makes Oklahoma State’s offense special.

Offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich is a taskmaster, according to Gundy, and Rudolph is a “workaholic.” He compared Rudolph’s work ethic to that of Peyton Manning and freely admits that he won’t be able to hide the brilliant mind of Yurcich on his staff much longer.

That is probably true, considering his offense is second in points scored, third in total yards and fifth in third-down conversion percentage among FBS teams. Oklahoma State is first in expected points added on offense, which factors in things such as down and distance, field position, home-field advantage and time remaining. The Cowboys are doing this with incredible balance (104 passes to 109 rushes) and speed (29th in time of possession per play).

“I’ll be honest, and I mean this as humble as possible,” Gundy said. “I have no clue what people are going to do.”

Tulsa tried to stop the pass and lost 59-24 as running back Justice Hill rushed for 132 yards and a touchdown.

South Alabama went with a Bear front to try to stop the run, only to lose 44-7 as Rudolph completed 25 of 38 passes for 335 yards and three touchdowns.

ESPN Stats and Info

“We felt like we always want to stop the run,” Jones said. “But that guy, the quarterback, obviously had a great game.

“It’s kind of like damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Tulsa coach Philip Montgomery said he thought his defense could get pressure on Rudolph and create turnovers. On one play, he had two defenders get to Rudolph.

“And he still dropped a dime and threw a touchdown for about 50 yards,” Montgomery said of the QB.

The spread, RPO concepts Oklahoma State is able to use are more advanced than most, Montgomery said, and it’s a direct testament to how experienced and well-versed Rudolph is in the offense. When he gets to the line of scrimmage, he has three different checks he can make within a single formation.

The best you can do, Montgomery said, is make a stop on first down and hope for the best.

“If you want an opportunity to get after Oklahoma State, you have to play really good defense on first down, get them behind the sticks, and you have to do that continually throughout the game,” he said. “They’re going to get their chunks of yardage, they’re going to make some plays, but if you can get them in a situation where they’re struggling on first down and having to really make yards on second down, to me that’s where you put pressure on them. If you can’t do that, if they can do whatever they want on first down, they’re going to eat you up.”

It sounds painful, if not outright unfair, from the other side of the field.

But ask the Cowboys, and it’s a blast.

“It’s crazy,” Hill said. “It’s really fun. Just being out there with your teammates, you don’t have to do much besides your job. And then you look up, and you see James and Marcell and somebody else are out there running for a touchdown.”

Hill makes it sound easy, marching up and down the field at will, but it didn’t start out that way. You’ll have to forgive him because the sophomore is something of a newcomer to the party.

In fact, this offense was years in the making.

But now that it’s all pieced together, it really is something to behold.

The post Oklahoma State Cowboys have best offense in the nation and it’s not close appeared first on Daily Star Sports.

from http://ift.tt/2wC5MRw from http://ift.tt/2w9DMk8

[aiikko]

Him

He loved using the Chatly app because as he himself admits, he’s too shy to meet girls in real life. The anonymous interactions that the app provided excited him even more than the possibility that somewhere in the world there is the right girl waiting for him. It was not an addiction he insists, but more of a basic human need for communication. “Then why don’t you ever go outside the house?” his mother frequently asks him and always, the replies are variations of how they live in a small town that boasts no excitement whatsoever. “Plus the girls in this town are either taken or ugly- and I’m not about to settle for personality!” he’ll say. The principle of the app is simple, you sign up, type in facts about yourself (gender, etc), and it automatically pairs you for chatting with someone whom the algorithms of the app determines as your perfect match. Whether or not it works for the both of you is outside the app’s control; it’s up to the people involved if they decide they liked each other enough to stick around. Otherwise, you can simply opt out by ending the chat.

He’s had instances when the girl on the other end would abruptly end the conversation without saying goodbye. He hates to confess it, but when they do that it stings on the inside as all rejections do, even anonymously. It was during the nth time playing around with the app that fate brought him to a girl named Jen. “I love Dystopian fiction.” This for some reason was Jen’s introduction. “1984?” he immediately typed in and Jen replied with “Totally!” It was love at first chat. The conversation went from books to the personal, spanning topics from favorite ice cream flavor to their shared Atheism. “There is no substantial evidence to prove that there exists a God. Man created the concept of a god as an excuse for his imperfections.” This was according to Jen and in his mind, this was a sign that he found a potential friend. Jen is a self-confessed introvert like him; she says she prefers staying at home as she’s “allergic to other people’s bullshit.”. And this information was the go signal for him to move to the next step.

“So, Jen, are you seeing anybody at the moment?” He typed on his phone, hoping that it didn’t sound too obvious his intentions. “Hmm…I’ve had some from the past, but at the moment? No.” Jen replied. He almost gave himself a high-five. Now having more confidence, he uploaded on the screen the best picture he could find in his photo album. He captioned: “This is a fairly recent pic of me. See, I’m not some pervert living in his mom’s basement, I’m just a regular guy albeit on the skinny side.” Again, he hoped that by uploading his picture Jen would be encouraged to do the same. “You kinda resemble David Foster Wallace when he had short hair, glasses and all…cute!” Then a pause. After a few awkward seconds Jen told him that she needed to run errands for her mom and that she had to end the chat. “Goodbye for now. You’re a cool dude to talk to. We’ll chat again. Bye!” Disappointed, he typed in his goodbye. However, there was no doubt in his mind that they will talk again through the app the next day.

When tomorrow came, he waited all day for Jen’s online status to light up. He ceased from his normal daily activity of sitting on his bed reading books just so when Jen does appear online, they’ll be able to chat. He waited all afternoon until his mother called him for dinner. At the table, his mom noticed that he won’t stop checking his phone instead of eating. “Mind your manners young man!” She told him in a sing-song voice. She only took her eyes off him when he tucked his phone in his shirt pocket. “By the way, your Grandma Janis and Uncle Ted will visit us tomorrow.” His mother informed him as she mushed her potatoes with a fork. He gave her a slight nod but it was obvious he wasn’t interested in any of that. Later on, lying on his bed at midnight, he patiently waited for Jen on the app. It was about an hour later when the screen showed him that Jen is finally online. Immediately, he tapped her name and typed in “Hey!”. Several moments passed before the word “SEEN” was displayed underneath his message but no reply came. He tried another approach: “I hope you’re not having any trouble with whatever. Even if you have, I’m here to listen.” Again, the word “SEEN” and nothing. He sighed. Did he come off as too upfront about his intentions? Perhaps the glasses made him come off as too nerdy? But she loves reading books and staying at home, surely she won’t mind hanging out with a nerd? Such are the questions that whirled inside his mind. In the end, he gave up. She was probably one of those girls who pretended they did the same things as smart people do so boys would take them seriously. And by boys, he meant the good-looking ones. He took it as a slight against his person but his defence mechanism retorted that by not uploading a picture, it was obvious that Jen was ugly. “And possibly fat.” He thought to himself, nursing his inner hurt by thinking the worst of the girl who hurt him. In the end, he got over it and slept in the wee hours of the morning.

He dreamt about a girl named Jen. In his dream, Jen was a pretty brunette with big breasts and a small waist. They stayed on his bed all day reading books and mocking religion with the occasional sex here and there. As he pounded her from behind in his dream sex scene, he kneaded her butt cheeks and slapped them hard until they turned red. In the dream, Jen stopped gyrating on his penis to turn her head to look at him; without warning, she transformed into a giant burrito. The dream ended here. He woke up to his mother’s voice and an aching erection.

His relatives visited them that day. Grandma Janis was lively for her age and as usual, uncle Ted was weird. He can’t help but imagine his uncle eating glue at a young age, uncle Ted certainly looked like someone who’d do that. With his uncle obese, balding, and smelling like moist fart, he had every evidence to assume so. Uncle Ted ignored him for the most part. While eating, uncle Ted made porcine sounds as he gorged on the meal prepared especially for their visit. After their lunch the four of them went to the front porch to have tea. Grandma Janis reminded his mother that she accidentally left a scarf on their house on a prior visit. The two women got up to go inside the house to look for it. Which leaves him alone outside with his uncle Ted. A bunglesome silence passed between them for neither would break the ice. More silence passed until the air suddenly smelled like rotten eggs; he looked sharply at Uncle Ted who shot him a glance before clearing his throat and looking up at the sky. He was about to cuss about uncle Ted’s unethical farting when his Grandma called from inside the house: “Ted! We’re leaving, say goodbye to your nephew and sister!” But uncle Ted did nothing of this. When uncle Ted got up from his chair, his nephew saw that he had left a phone behind. Still pissed off, he decided not to tell his uncle about it.

Later, when the visitors left, he got curious about his uncle’s phone. There was no passcode in it (he sort of expected it that a buffoon like his uncle would not think twice about security) and he could freely navigate all of its contents. Suddenly a familiar blue logo caught his eye. It was the Chatly app. He gave it a tap and inside were the details of his chatting history. He scanned the names until he saw HIS.

We all have our quirks. Some put the milk first before the cereal, and some like cats more than humans. If you think about, it’s pretty normal to be unique. But even if you are self-proclaimed nonconformist, there are simply standards we have to maintain when dealing with society such as not breaking the law for example. While it is not wrong to have that bit of weirdness in you, too much of something is never a good thing. Especially if you’re a fifty-eight year old obese, balding, smelly, virgin pretending to be a young woman half your age to lure unsuspecting boys on the internet.

Uncle Ted’s chat history showed that he is pretending to be a girl named Jen and that he has engaged in what they call nowadays as “sexting” with several young men. It suggested that he started the chats off with bold statements about himself to gain the attention of his victims. On one of these chats he introduces himself as a redhead with Irish heritage- “Kiss me I’m Irish!” uncle Ted says. He felt his stomach turn upon reading the threads wherein some of the young men uploaded pictures of their private parts for uncle Ted’s predatory eyes to claim. Some of these boys are not even older than fourteen according to what he has read.

He recalled the dream. The brunette. The burrito. The balding oaf who still lived with his mother. HIS uncle Ted.

Then he thought about himself. Rarely going outside the house. Living with his mom. No friends. Lurking the interwebs for potential sex-partners.

He put two and two together: what if I become like HIM? He lost it and went to the bathroom to throw up.

The very next day, he applied for a job that had the most possibility of human contact with it. Not that all the introverted and awkward are like uncle Ted, but still.

With anonymity being a key feature in most online experiences, one can never tell who is who these days. He needs to log off now, and likewise, the hour is nigh for a proper introduction of himself— this time to the real world.

#first draft