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Basics:
Name: Skye
Pronouns: she/her
Age: mid-30s
Location: Mid-Southern United States
About Me
I am a neurodivergent woman living at home due to mental illness. I earned a bachelor’s in creative writing, with a minor in film studies, several years ago. I have enjoyed reading books and writing fiction since childhood, and I also enjoy watching films and television when I have the time. Some of my other hobbies include working in various fiber arts (mostly crochet and cross-stitch, with occasional knitting), playing video games, and baking sweets.
I currently use this journal to update folks on what’s going on in my life. As such, most entries are locked to just my access list. If you want to make friends, that’s cool; just drop a comment on this entry and I’ll check you out!
One of the things I don’t generally post about very much is fandom-related stuff. I’ve been burned by toxic fandoms in the past (Danny Phantom and Doctor Who, for the curious), so I don’t count myself as an active participant in fannish activities these days. That said, I do still write fanfiction, and I enjoy rambling about my books and shows and movies from time to time.
My primary fannish interests lie in TRON these days, but I have written fanfic for Doctor Who and Pacific Rim in the past. I mostly just write TRON fic these days, though, and most of my fic from fandoms past and current can be found on Archive of Our Own (here is a [link] to my profile).
I don’t talk politics very often, but let it be known that I am a flaming liberal who does not truck with TERFs/SWERFs, Nazis, white supremacists/nationalists, misogynists, queerphobes of all varieties, antisemites, Islamophobes, racists, or general dickheads of any political stripe. Miss me with that shit.
Favorites:
Books
Authors: Robin McKinley (favorites include The Blue Sword, Pegasus, and Dragonhaven); Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small quartet, especially Squire); Terry Pratchett (Feet of Clay, Going Postal, Thud!); Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom series, especially Lirael and Abhorsen)
Books/Series: The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green; The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison; Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao; The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells (especially Network Effect)
Movies
Beauty and the Beast (1991), My Neighbor Totoro, Pacific Rim, TRON, TRON: Legacy, The Grand Budapest Hotel, WALL-E, Crimson Peak, Pride and Prejudice (2005), Children of Men, The Fall (2006), Chungking Express, Run Lola Run, Into the Spider-verse & Across the Spider-verse; Star Wars in general (faves include Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi)
Television
Live Action: Pushing Daisies, Doctor Who (2005), Jekyll*. I have enjoyed but not finished: Community, Parks and Recreation, Agents of SHIELD
Animation: Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, Steven Universe, TRON: Uprising. I have enjoyed but not finished: Adventure Time, Young Justice, My Adventures with Superman
* I like most of Steven Moffat's work that I've seen, including his run on Doctor Who. (More lukewarm towards Sherlock, honestly.) I do not want to hear about how he's Terrible, Actually; I know all the arguments and I'm aware of them, but I have no intention of justifying my likes to strangers.
Music
I listen to a wide variety of genres and bands. I have a penchant for soundtracks (movies, TV, video games, you name it), as well as some dance and electronica, and some pop and alternative, too.
Bands/Artists: Daft Punk, Janelle Monáe, The Glitch Mob, Florence + the Machine, Pomplamoose, They Might Be Giants, Caravan Palace
Composers: John Williams, Michael Giacchino, Thomas Newman, Louie Zong, Joe Hisaishi
Albums: Discovery, Daft Punk; TRON: Legacy soundtrack, Daft Punk; How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, Florence + the Machine; The Electric Lady, Janelle Monáe; WALL-E soundtrack, Thomas Newman; Cosmos, Louie Zong; Spirited Away soundtrack, Joe Hisaishi; Stardew Valley soundtrack, ConcernedApe (Eric Barone)
Video Games
For the most part, I play a lot of Animal Crossing (all New Horizons these days, but I also loved New Leaf) and Pokémon (Gen IV to present). I am also a fan of the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series, Stardew Valley, and Spiritfarer. I’m a big Legend of Zelda fan, but mostly by dint of watching other people play (I am terrible at fighting things, so… yeah).
So that's me. Again, if you want to make friends, just drop a comment on this entry and I'll check you out!!
The Problem with the TRON: Ares Teaser
Apr. 6th, 2025 02:42 pmOr maybe more accurately, the problems (emphasis on the 's' there). I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the teaser trailer for Ares (watchable here [link]), and all the little things it implies that the film will be about, but my primary issue is this: so far, all it is, is "cool". I know it's just a teaser, and that its primary function is to tease what's to come, but still.
If you watch the teaser for TRON: Legacy (watchable here on a Disney site [link], though it might not be viewable outside the US, sorry!!), there are more hints there of story and character elements than we get in the Ares teaser. The Legacy trailer gives us a semblance of a story--Kevin Flynn is missing, and his son Sam must find him in the digital world--and a little bit of character to Sam, who is clearly jaded and somewhat adrift in his life. There's at least something there to emotionally connect with, a reason to care about the film outside of its flashy digital effects.
In comparison, the only character I felt connected to in the Ares trailer was Greta Lee's character, and her few shots just show her staring in fear and running away. The voice-over dialogue from Leto's Ares and Jeff Bridges' cameo as Kevin Flynn is scant and lacks context. There's no reason to care about what they say, because we don't even know what they're talking about. The visual effects are pretty cool, but that's about the only thing the teaser offers as a reason to see this film. It's all style and no substance, and that makes me worry that the whole film is going to be the same way.
The only real story element the teaser introduces is "programs are invading the real world", which itself implies that programs want to invade reality. It portrays programs as a mindless invading force, which is a far cry how they have been portrayed in the previous films.
(On that note, I want to mention this: some of the casting announcements for Ares early on included a mini-synopsis that talked about Leto's Ares character being a "sentient program", which is utterly baffling for anyone familiar with the franchise. I will note that said mini-synopsis has apparently vanished from all those casting announcements, but I distinctly remember it being there, and I wonder if Disney made Variety, et al, remove it from their articles because it revealed too much about the film.)
Every piece of TRON media up to this point has portrayed all programs as sentient, all the way back to the original 1982 film. In TRON, Sark expresses doubts about the MCP's plans; Tron grieves the loss of Ram and Flynn; in a deleted scene, Yori has a secret apartment that she's decorated herself. Legacy and the animated series Uprising do the same thing--Zuse in Legacy goes from helping Isos to collaborating with Clu, and every character in Uprising is portrayed as a full person with their own thoughts and motivations. On the other hand, this initial teaser for Ares seems quite content to portray programs as mindless bad guys. There isn't a single program shown without red circuitry, which has been used as a shorthand for the antagonists in TRON stories ever since the '82 film, not to mention the color's villainous connotations in countless other properties.
Another worrying aspect of this teaser for me is the implication that this film will be entirely set in the real world. Everything we see is apparently set in our ordinary reality. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it makes me feel like the writers and or the studio have completely missed the point of the whole franchise.
The point of TRON as a universe is that the Computer World, while dangerous, contains a multitude of possibilities. The Computer World is both beautiful and strange, offering a view of things like nothing on Earth. The programs that populate it are beings with their own lives, with beliefs and desires and feelings and friendships just like humans have. And it seems to me that Ares is rejecting that idea completely in favor of a tired story about the dangers of technology and "artificial" "intelligence." Which is truly the opposite of what TRON is actually about.
And I'm aware that we don't know the actual story of Ares yet--as I said, the teaser offered hardly any hint of it--but from what little info has come out, the "technology wants to invade and or supplant us" story seems like a distinct possibility. There might be a dash of a Pinocchio-type story as well--a program (Leto) "develops" "sentience" and "becomes" a "person" (scare quotes here because programs are already sentient)--but that's just a guess on my part right now.
Those are the main issues I have with Ares right now. I have wanted a TRON 3 since Legacy came out, but I've been increasingly nervous about Ares ever since it was announced. The casting of Jared Leto has not inspired confidence in me, nor has the passing-over of Bruce Boxleitner for a cameo as Tron or Alan Bradley. I want to be excited about this film--there are going to be like four female characters! two composers I like are doing the soundtrack!--but there is just too much that's keeping me on the side of trepidation. And I'm very worried I might actually be right about some of this.
If you watch the teaser for TRON: Legacy (watchable here on a Disney site [link], though it might not be viewable outside the US, sorry!!), there are more hints there of story and character elements than we get in the Ares teaser. The Legacy trailer gives us a semblance of a story--Kevin Flynn is missing, and his son Sam must find him in the digital world--and a little bit of character to Sam, who is clearly jaded and somewhat adrift in his life. There's at least something there to emotionally connect with, a reason to care about the film outside of its flashy digital effects.
In comparison, the only character I felt connected to in the Ares trailer was Greta Lee's character, and her few shots just show her staring in fear and running away. The voice-over dialogue from Leto's Ares and Jeff Bridges' cameo as Kevin Flynn is scant and lacks context. There's no reason to care about what they say, because we don't even know what they're talking about. The visual effects are pretty cool, but that's about the only thing the teaser offers as a reason to see this film. It's all style and no substance, and that makes me worry that the whole film is going to be the same way.
The only real story element the teaser introduces is "programs are invading the real world", which itself implies that programs want to invade reality. It portrays programs as a mindless invading force, which is a far cry how they have been portrayed in the previous films.
(On that note, I want to mention this: some of the casting announcements for Ares early on included a mini-synopsis that talked about Leto's Ares character being a "sentient program", which is utterly baffling for anyone familiar with the franchise. I will note that said mini-synopsis has apparently vanished from all those casting announcements, but I distinctly remember it being there, and I wonder if Disney made Variety, et al, remove it from their articles because it revealed too much about the film.)
Every piece of TRON media up to this point has portrayed all programs as sentient, all the way back to the original 1982 film. In TRON, Sark expresses doubts about the MCP's plans; Tron grieves the loss of Ram and Flynn; in a deleted scene, Yori has a secret apartment that she's decorated herself. Legacy and the animated series Uprising do the same thing--Zuse in Legacy goes from helping Isos to collaborating with Clu, and every character in Uprising is portrayed as a full person with their own thoughts and motivations. On the other hand, this initial teaser for Ares seems quite content to portray programs as mindless bad guys. There isn't a single program shown without red circuitry, which has been used as a shorthand for the antagonists in TRON stories ever since the '82 film, not to mention the color's villainous connotations in countless other properties.
Another worrying aspect of this teaser for me is the implication that this film will be entirely set in the real world. Everything we see is apparently set in our ordinary reality. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it makes me feel like the writers and or the studio have completely missed the point of the whole franchise.
The point of TRON as a universe is that the Computer World, while dangerous, contains a multitude of possibilities. The Computer World is both beautiful and strange, offering a view of things like nothing on Earth. The programs that populate it are beings with their own lives, with beliefs and desires and feelings and friendships just like humans have. And it seems to me that Ares is rejecting that idea completely in favor of a tired story about the dangers of technology and "artificial" "intelligence." Which is truly the opposite of what TRON is actually about.
And I'm aware that we don't know the actual story of Ares yet--as I said, the teaser offered hardly any hint of it--but from what little info has come out, the "technology wants to invade and or supplant us" story seems like a distinct possibility. There might be a dash of a Pinocchio-type story as well--a program (Leto) "develops" "sentience" and "becomes" a "person" (scare quotes here because programs are already sentient)--but that's just a guess on my part right now.
Those are the main issues I have with Ares right now. I have wanted a TRON 3 since Legacy came out, but I've been increasingly nervous about Ares ever since it was announced. The casting of Jared Leto has not inspired confidence in me, nor has the passing-over of Bruce Boxleitner for a cameo as Tron or Alan Bradley. I want to be excited about this film--there are going to be like four female characters! two composers I like are doing the soundtrack!--but there is just too much that's keeping me on the side of trepidation. And I'm very worried I might actually be right about some of this.
and then I forgot to update. again.
Mar. 13th, 2025 11:25 amOn the one hand, it's great that I've been keeping up with those weekly writing updates! That's fabulous! On the other hand.... I kind of forgot to update here about literally anything else, which is... a Big Oops. On my part. Sorry about that.
...let's just dive right in.
Books and Reading: My last entry was on February 7, where I was worrying about finishing Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword before it was due back on February 9. Well. I went to the silent reading event at the library the next day, and managed to read a very large chunk of the book before I had to leave. And then I went home and... finished reading the entire book! So that was nice. The library's ebook collection also had the last book of the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, available, so I started reading that and finished it up on February 14!
After that, I dug into my next reading project of sorts: The Murderbot Diaries! Because of the upcoming TV show, they released omnibus editions of the novellas (and System Collapse, which is a short novel) in January. I bought the first two, which collect the four initial novellas that I've only had digitally, with some Xmas money. Since February 14, I have made my way through the entire series, finishing up System Collapse yesterday morning! I love these books so much; they're very comforting reads, in a way, and I really enjoy the characters and especially Murderbot's development as the series has gone along.
I'm not sure what I'm going to be reading next. I have tentatively pulled Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet off my shelf, but I haven't started it yet. I'm playing with the idea of sticking with sci-fi for right now, or else rereading Network Effect (one of the Murderbot books). I don't know, though.
(Honestly, I really need to pull all my books out of the bookcase and reshelve them. I finally got the motivation to pull down all my Neil Gaiman books and shove them in with my Harry Potters in a crate in the hall closet, so there's some sizeable gaps that need to be filled in. But... that's a project for another day, I think.)
Various Health Updates: So The Headache That Won't Stop is still an ongoing concern. At my follow-up with my PCP on February 28, she upped the beta blocker since it hasn't really been helping my high heart rate or the Headache very much. She also called in for an MRI of my brain/head, to see if anything was amiss that might be causing the Headache. I had the MRI the following Thursday, and not twenty minutes after I got home, I got the results.
It was normal. Because of fucking course it was. My PCP's note about it was "well it's normal, have a nice day", which I do not think is... sufficient, but what do I know. I probably need to get back in with her and see if there's anything else that can be done about this. I'm just. I'm so fucking tired of being in pain or just general distress (see also: the fatigue that comes and goes that's been an ongoing problem for the last several years), and then every test comes back like there's nothing wrong. Which. Yeah, fine, but the fact that I am still having problems speaks to the fact that something is obviously wrong with me!!!! UGH. I hate this!!!
Fiber Arts: I finished Sock #1 of my First Pair of Socks project on February 18! I started Sock #2 the next day, and I just finished it this morning!! I have a pair of socks! That I made myself!! I am very pleased about this!!! I still have to weave in all the ends from the various color changes, and then wash them and block them and everything but! Socks!!!! I made them!! Whee!!!
I'm not sure what I'm going to work on next, though. I have many extant projects in both knitting and crochet, alas, but picking one is so hard! I really would like to get back into crocheting on the regular--I have a couple amigurumi projects on the go right now (a wyvern that I started last year; and a unicorn I just started recently because I was bored), as well as a whole host of other projects I've set down for one reason or another. I don't know. I'll figure something out, certainly.
Fun Distractions of Various Types: On February 10, I did something I haven't done in a while: I sat down and watched an episode of a fictional TV show. The show in question was CBS's Sherlock Holmes procedural Elementary, which I had watched the first season (and some of the second) while it was still on the air, and have always intended to sit down and finish someday. By February 17, I had finished the first season, and by the 20th I made it halfway through Season 2 before life started getting in the way. (Life in this case consists of various responsibilities and other activites--looking after my nieces when they're over, watching figure skating with my mother (which I do enjoy, it just takes a LOT of time), working on my writing, reading books, and so on.) So I haven't been watching the show at such a fast clip the last few weeks. But I'm hoping I can maybe get back into it once the figure skating seasons ends, maybe? (Worlds are the last weekend of March.) It was honestly really nice, just sitting down and letting myself be absorbed by a show. I haven't done that in literal years, maybe almost a decade? (If you don't count last year's attempt to watch all of New Who, which honestly never reached binge-ish levels.) So it was a nice feeling. :)
I mentioned last update entry that my brother had bought me a video game (Portion Craft: Alchemist Simulator) that I had promptly become obsessed with. I managed to complete all the quests in the Easy mode game I was playing, which was very satisfying! I started a regular difficulty game not long after, but then I got absorbed by watching Elementary and fell off playing video games altogether. But on February 23, I noticed that Spiritfarer (a game I have hugely enjoyed playing on my Switch) was on sale on the Steam store. So... I bought it, and I have been playing it almost daily ever since. It's been fun, though some of the controls are a little difficult at times. It's a fun game, and I really enjoy the gameplay loop. I'm almost done with my first save file.
I also did something I haven't done in a while on this past Tuesday: I went to the movies! I saw Mickey 17, the new sci-fi film from director Bong Joon-ho, starring Robert Pattinson. I quite enjoyed it! Though it wasn't as outright funny as the trailers made it seem, it was still rather delightful, and the satirical elements were top-notch. I also really liked the creature designs; they were very cool-looking. And Pattinson was amazing in his dual roles; I've enjoyed watching his career trajectory after the Twilight movies, and this was another great performance from him. But yeah. I went to the movies! I had a good time!! I need to do this more often, but there are so rarely films I actually want to see coming out...
I think that's about everything that I've been up to? More or less? Thank you all for reading this novel of a post.
Hope you all are doing well, as ever. Best wishes to you all. :)
...let's just dive right in.
Books and Reading: My last entry was on February 7, where I was worrying about finishing Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword before it was due back on February 9. Well. I went to the silent reading event at the library the next day, and managed to read a very large chunk of the book before I had to leave. And then I went home and... finished reading the entire book! So that was nice. The library's ebook collection also had the last book of the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, available, so I started reading that and finished it up on February 14!
After that, I dug into my next reading project of sorts: The Murderbot Diaries! Because of the upcoming TV show, they released omnibus editions of the novellas (and System Collapse, which is a short novel) in January. I bought the first two, which collect the four initial novellas that I've only had digitally, with some Xmas money. Since February 14, I have made my way through the entire series, finishing up System Collapse yesterday morning! I love these books so much; they're very comforting reads, in a way, and I really enjoy the characters and especially Murderbot's development as the series has gone along.
I'm not sure what I'm going to be reading next. I have tentatively pulled Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet off my shelf, but I haven't started it yet. I'm playing with the idea of sticking with sci-fi for right now, or else rereading Network Effect (one of the Murderbot books). I don't know, though.
(Honestly, I really need to pull all my books out of the bookcase and reshelve them. I finally got the motivation to pull down all my Neil Gaiman books and shove them in with my Harry Potters in a crate in the hall closet, so there's some sizeable gaps that need to be filled in. But... that's a project for another day, I think.)
Various Health Updates: So The Headache That Won't Stop is still an ongoing concern. At my follow-up with my PCP on February 28, she upped the beta blocker since it hasn't really been helping my high heart rate or the Headache very much. She also called in for an MRI of my brain/head, to see if anything was amiss that might be causing the Headache. I had the MRI the following Thursday, and not twenty minutes after I got home, I got the results.
It was normal. Because of fucking course it was. My PCP's note about it was "well it's normal, have a nice day", which I do not think is... sufficient, but what do I know. I probably need to get back in with her and see if there's anything else that can be done about this. I'm just. I'm so fucking tired of being in pain or just general distress (see also: the fatigue that comes and goes that's been an ongoing problem for the last several years), and then every test comes back like there's nothing wrong. Which. Yeah, fine, but the fact that I am still having problems speaks to the fact that something is obviously wrong with me!!!! UGH. I hate this!!!
Fiber Arts: I finished Sock #1 of my First Pair of Socks project on February 18! I started Sock #2 the next day, and I just finished it this morning!! I have a pair of socks! That I made myself!! I am very pleased about this!!! I still have to weave in all the ends from the various color changes, and then wash them and block them and everything but! Socks!!!! I made them!! Whee!!!
I'm not sure what I'm going to work on next, though. I have many extant projects in both knitting and crochet, alas, but picking one is so hard! I really would like to get back into crocheting on the regular--I have a couple amigurumi projects on the go right now (a wyvern that I started last year; and a unicorn I just started recently because I was bored), as well as a whole host of other projects I've set down for one reason or another. I don't know. I'll figure something out, certainly.
Fun Distractions of Various Types: On February 10, I did something I haven't done in a while: I sat down and watched an episode of a fictional TV show. The show in question was CBS's Sherlock Holmes procedural Elementary, which I had watched the first season (and some of the second) while it was still on the air, and have always intended to sit down and finish someday. By February 17, I had finished the first season, and by the 20th I made it halfway through Season 2 before life started getting in the way. (Life in this case consists of various responsibilities and other activites--looking after my nieces when they're over, watching figure skating with my mother (which I do enjoy, it just takes a LOT of time), working on my writing, reading books, and so on.) So I haven't been watching the show at such a fast clip the last few weeks. But I'm hoping I can maybe get back into it once the figure skating seasons ends, maybe? (Worlds are the last weekend of March.) It was honestly really nice, just sitting down and letting myself be absorbed by a show. I haven't done that in literal years, maybe almost a decade? (If you don't count last year's attempt to watch all of New Who, which honestly never reached binge-ish levels.) So it was a nice feeling. :)
I mentioned last update entry that my brother had bought me a video game (Portion Craft: Alchemist Simulator) that I had promptly become obsessed with. I managed to complete all the quests in the Easy mode game I was playing, which was very satisfying! I started a regular difficulty game not long after, but then I got absorbed by watching Elementary and fell off playing video games altogether. But on February 23, I noticed that Spiritfarer (a game I have hugely enjoyed playing on my Switch) was on sale on the Steam store. So... I bought it, and I have been playing it almost daily ever since. It's been fun, though some of the controls are a little difficult at times. It's a fun game, and I really enjoy the gameplay loop. I'm almost done with my first save file.
I also did something I haven't done in a while on this past Tuesday: I went to the movies! I saw Mickey 17, the new sci-fi film from director Bong Joon-ho, starring Robert Pattinson. I quite enjoyed it! Though it wasn't as outright funny as the trailers made it seem, it was still rather delightful, and the satirical elements were top-notch. I also really liked the creature designs; they were very cool-looking. And Pattinson was amazing in his dual roles; I've enjoyed watching his career trajectory after the Twilight movies, and this was another great performance from him. But yeah. I went to the movies! I had a good time!! I need to do this more often, but there are so rarely films I actually want to see coming out...
I think that's about everything that I've been up to? More or less? Thank you all for reading this novel of a post.
Hope you all are doing well, as ever. Best wishes to you all. :)
Writing Updates 2025, Week 7
Feb. 15th, 2025 02:51 pmDays Written (This Week): 3 days
Days Written (This Month): 8 days
Days Written (2025 Total): 24 days
Words Written (This Week): 1,887 words
Words Written (This Month): 7,462 words
Words Written (2025 Total): 14,898 words
First Line (Written This Week): The same small shudder runs through her when Flynn locks her disc into place, and Tron sees the telltale blue flash in her eyes that indicates synchronization.
Last Line (Written This Week): Alan and Lora exchange a glance, and Alan’s gratified to see Lora looks as confused as he feels. He asks slowly, “Is that a bad thing?”
Favorite Line (Written This Week): “This isn’t a normal situation, though,” Lora says, still staring at Flynn. “This—the fact that we’re here at all—is beyond my wildest dreams. I would have gotten this far if you’d kept me at Encom.” She’s frowning now, and Flynn’s smile fades a little. “I mean—have you even been making usable notes about what you’re doing here, Flynn? About what’s happened?”
He winces. “A few?”
Lora shakes her head. “Of course. But—we’re in uncharted territory, here. Something like self-generating code isn’t possible at home, but what if it is? What if we just haven’t advanced far enough yet? This—situation, introducing organic life to a digital interface—you’ve been combining things that haven’t been combined before. When we were digitizing fruit, we always took it right back out again. But you’ve been… here. Over and over again.”
Other Stuff: Yay for the return of snippets!! I went ahead and included the first bit of what I wrote this week, even though it was pretty straightforward rewrite stuff. The latter two snippets (particularly the favorite one) are from the whole revision of the following scene.
I am hoping I can get more done next week, though. This week was kind of a bust on the Getting Stuff Done front. Mostly for video game-related reasons again (sigh). Also the eternal problem of not knowing how to rewrite the scene that needed serious rewriting. Sigh (again). But I feel like I'm mostly back on track, so. Here's hoping!
Days Written (This Month): 8 days
Days Written (2025 Total): 24 days
Words Written (This Week): 1,887 words
Words Written (This Month): 7,462 words
Words Written (2025 Total): 14,898 words
First Line (Written This Week): The same small shudder runs through her when Flynn locks her disc into place, and Tron sees the telltale blue flash in her eyes that indicates synchronization.
Last Line (Written This Week): Alan and Lora exchange a glance, and Alan’s gratified to see Lora looks as confused as he feels. He asks slowly, “Is that a bad thing?”
Favorite Line (Written This Week): “This isn’t a normal situation, though,” Lora says, still staring at Flynn. “This—the fact that we’re here at all—is beyond my wildest dreams. I would have gotten this far if you’d kept me at Encom.” She’s frowning now, and Flynn’s smile fades a little. “I mean—have you even been making usable notes about what you’re doing here, Flynn? About what’s happened?”
He winces. “A few?”
Lora shakes her head. “Of course. But—we’re in uncharted territory, here. Something like self-generating code isn’t possible at home, but what if it is? What if we just haven’t advanced far enough yet? This—situation, introducing organic life to a digital interface—you’ve been combining things that haven’t been combined before. When we were digitizing fruit, we always took it right back out again. But you’ve been… here. Over and over again.”
Other Stuff: Yay for the return of snippets!! I went ahead and included the first bit of what I wrote this week, even though it was pretty straightforward rewrite stuff. The latter two snippets (particularly the favorite one) are from the whole revision of the following scene.
I am hoping I can get more done next week, though. This week was kind of a bust on the Getting Stuff Done front. Mostly for video game-related reasons again (sigh). Also the eternal problem of not knowing how to rewrite the scene that needed serious rewriting. Sigh (again). But I feel like I'm mostly back on track, so. Here's hoping!
Writing Updates 2025, Week 6
Feb. 8th, 2025 03:39 pmDays Written (This Week): 4 days
Days Written (This Month): 5 days
Days Written (2025 Total): 21 days
Words Written (This Week): 4,896 words
Words Written (This Month): 5,575 words
Words Written (2025 Total): 13.011 words
First Line (Written This Week): n/a
Last Line (Written This Week): n/a
Favorite Line (Written This Week): n/a
Other Stuff: Once again not sharing snippets this week. The reason? I have started revising the TRON fic, and for me, revision means typing up the whole story again from the first draft. It's weird, but I find doing this helps me make subtle changes that help the clarity of the writing, as well as allowing me to catch any typos or mistakes I might have missed on my proofreading pass. Since there wasn't really a whole lot of new prose written this week, I feel like I don't have anything to share. That said, I should be getting to a scene that needs an almost complete rewrite next week, so hopefully I'll have snippets to share then!! :)
I wasn't sure I was actually going to get a lot of writing done this week, but I surprised myself. The Headache That Won't Stop has, for the moment, slightly abated, which is a relief. I'm hoping I'll be able to get much further into this revision pass as a result. That said, the first draft is 13k words long, so I don't think I'll be able to finish it until the week after.
Days Written (This Month): 5 days
Days Written (2025 Total): 21 days
Words Written (This Week): 4,896 words
Words Written (This Month): 5,575 words
Words Written (2025 Total): 13.011 words
First Line (Written This Week): n/a
Last Line (Written This Week): n/a
Favorite Line (Written This Week): n/a
Other Stuff: Once again not sharing snippets this week. The reason? I have started revising the TRON fic, and for me, revision means typing up the whole story again from the first draft. It's weird, but I find doing this helps me make subtle changes that help the clarity of the writing, as well as allowing me to catch any typos or mistakes I might have missed on my proofreading pass. Since there wasn't really a whole lot of new prose written this week, I feel like I don't have anything to share. That said, I should be getting to a scene that needs an almost complete rewrite next week, so hopefully I'll have snippets to share then!! :)
I wasn't sure I was actually going to get a lot of writing done this week, but I surprised myself. The Headache That Won't Stop has, for the moment, slightly abated, which is a relief. I'm hoping I'll be able to get much further into this revision pass as a result. That said, the first draft is 13k words long, so I don't think I'll be able to finish it until the week after.
Title: Caught Between the Sea and the Stars
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skye_writer
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 4,543 words
Summary: Ana spends an evening on the waves with her mermaid friend, Shae.
Notes: Written for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
getyourwordsout 's Build-A-Bingo challenge (prompt: "heatwave"). These characters are from my (currently unwritten) Little Mermaid Retelling. I hope you enjoy.
August has settled in the seaside town like a heavy winter coat. The thick, humid air sticks to people, drawing out sweat but offering no relief from it; what little wind comes off the ocean is not enough to keep anyone cool. Those who can afford personal breeze charms buy them in droves, never mind if the charm-maker is taking their cash in exchange for something that will work for two hours at most. The sky remains cheerfully blue all day, the few clouds far too thin and wispy to offer any respite from the sun. Even as the sunset paints the sky brilliant shades of orange and red, heat continues to rise off the pavement, turning the town into a slowly cooling oven. Tourists and locals alike make for the boardwalk and the pier, where proximity to the ocean offers at least a little respite.
Ana shoulders her way through the boardwalk crowds with practiced ease, her wavy hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. The crowd thins considerably at the access to the pier, and she continues on until she reaches the public docks, where the few people are boat owners, all of whom know Ana by sight. She nods at those who greet her, and continues down the docks to her destination.
She’s spent all day at her job on a whale-watching boat, keeping tourists from leaning too far over the side rail and offering food to the seagulls. It’s thankless work, especially on a day like today, but she survived. She’s been looking forward to tonight. As she walks down the farthest-out dock, she touches a jagged shard of sea glass that hangs around her neck on a carefully-made chain.
Anyone with a talent for seeing thaumic energies would know at once what was hanging around Ana’s neck: a charm imbued not with human magic, but with the esoteric magic of the seas. Said person might draw any number of conclusions about Ana with that information, but the truth is simple enough: Ana has a best friend, and that friend is a mermaid.
Ana reaches the end of the last dock, where a barnacle-crusted ladder hangs down a few feet into the water. With one hand still on the sea glass charm, she kneels and knocks on the last plank of the dock five times.
A few moments later, the water bubbles loudly, and Ana peers down just as a pale face framed by yellow hair and iridescent scales pops above the surface.
The mermaid smiles carefully when her sea-green eyes meet Ana’s, and Ana grins back. Around her neck she wears a necklace that is the twin to Ana’s, the sea glass the same color, and jagged in a way that suggests the two pieces would fit together. She puts a webbed hand on the lowest visible rung of the ladder, and says, “I thought you were going to be late.”
“Good to see you, too, Shae,” Ana replies, laughing. “Look, it’s been a long day, all right?”
Shae laughs. “I wasn’t going to argue the point! I gathered as much from your message. Are you ready to swim?”
“Oh, I’ve been ready all day.” Ana stands and peels off her work shirt, then unties the strings down the side of her skirt, revealing her bathing suit underneath. She kicks off her sandals, then folds her clothes and lays them neatly on the edge of the dock, her sandals beneath them. “I had to stay in the ticket office the last half of my shift, which would have been fine if the AC hadn’t broken the other day. It’s been so hot here lately, it’s ridiculous.”
“Well, the ocean’s always cooler,” Shae says.
“That, my friend, is what I’m counting on.” She starts down the ladder, and Shae swims aside to give her room. As her legs and then her torso enter the water, Ana sighs in relief. “God, that feels good. And it’s better farther out, right?”
“As always,” Shae assures her. As Ana lets go of the ladder, Shae offers her hand, and Ana takes it. “Let’s swim?”
“Let’s,” Ana agrees.
And without another word, Shae tugs her away from the dock, and together they set out for deeper waters.
Their destination this evening, like many other evenings, is the boundary stone, a lonely rock that juts out of the ocean about ten yards north-northeast of the town’s main pier. The stone is avoided by seabirds despite its closeness to the shore, for it serves as a magical anchor of sorts. The local merfolk village and the thaumic studies department of the local college use the stone as a boundary marker. It defines the influence of their opposing magics, and anchors that separation in earth and sea. As far as Shae and Ana are concerned, though, it’s a perfect place for a human girl and her mermaid friend to enjoy each other’s company.
As the sun makes its way to the horizon, Shae and Ana talk about their time apart. It’s been four days since they last saw each other, which seems like an eternity. Ana complains a little about her job, and Shae listens and makes comments here and there. Ana alternates between treading water beside Shae, and sitting up on the rock, her feet in the water. Shae stays in the water; they’re not so far from the pier that they can’t be seen, and sightings of merfolk always tend to draw curious eyes.
Eventually, the sun sets beyond the horizon, and the ruddy sky darkens to a bluish gray. The stars are starting to appear, slightly drowned out by the proximity of the town and its lights. The brightest of them are peeking out, though, looking down on Shae and Ana as they float near the boundary stone.
Shae steals a glance at Ana, admiring her dark profile in the dying light. They have been friends since they were children, when Shae saved Ana from a riptide, and the human news channel did a story about it. They practically grew up together, and for all that they are from utterly different worlds, Shae has loved her as a sister for all that time.
But it’s only in the last year that Shae has realized that her affection has become coupled with attraction. She loves Ana, yes, but those feelings have grown more complicated, more like the romantic love that humans can never seem to speak about directly. For all that it is impossible, Shae loves her.
(It is not impossible; that is perhaps the wrong word. There are ways for merfolk to assume human form, and possibly vice versa, but Shae does not know them yet. It is advanced magic, much more advanced than the magic she is currently learning from her village shaman. And so it might as well be impossible.)
Shae has not told Ana about this. She has barely told anyone at all. (Trishkel the shaman knows, and has told her she is acting exceedingly human about this, which Shae cannot deny.) She’s afraid. She doesn’t want to lose Ana as a friend if her feelings aren’t returned. And even if Ana did love her in the same way, Shae does not want her friend forced to choose between two worlds, when one contains the only family Ana has left.
And so she says nothing, and admires Ana in spare moments, when she will not be noticed.
“I wish we could see more stars out here,” Ana says quietly. Below the surface, her hand brushes Shae’s, and Shae takes it.
“Me, too.” Shae squeezes her hand, and Ana squeezes back. “They’re more visible out by the village, but…”
“It’s too dangerous for me to swim that far from shore, I know.” She sighs a sigh Shae knows well; this is a discussion they’ve had far too many times.
“Yes,” Shae says.
They float silently for a few moments, then Ana says, “Maybe I should save up and buy a kayak or something. I could paddle out to the village and we could stargaze out there.”
Shae smiles, though she knows Ana can’t see it. “That sounds nice.”
More silence. Shae glances at Ana again. Her profile is backlit by the lights on the shore, a slightly scattered silhouette. The long, perfect slope of her nose drops off like a cliff, and the full curves of her lips look like gentle waves below that height. She’s lovely, Shae thinks. As always, she’s lovely.
She squeezes Ana’s hand again, and returns her gaze to the sky.
“Did I tell you about that time I saw all the stars?” Ana asks.
It isn’t really a question, because Ana has told this story before, but Shae replies, “I can’t remember. Tell it again and refresh my memory.”
So Ana begins her tale, talking about driving cross-country with her parents and her brother, about being twelve years old and bored by the endless plains outside her window. The second day of the trip saw them through the desert. Her father kept driving into the night, and Ana couldn’t sleep. Finally, close to midnight, her father pulled off the interstate, parking the car in a dirt turnoff close to the highway’s entrance.
Her brother and mother were both asleep, but Ana asked quietly why her father had stopped. “I need to look at something else for a few minutes,” he said. “Why don’t we step outside and look together.”
They were in the middle of the desert, far, far away from any human towns or even a fueling station. Ana followed her father out of the car and joined him to lean against the back bumper. The redness of the taillights rendered the shadows deep and flat on her father’s face. He smiled at her, and pointed up. “Take a look.”
Ana looked, and she gasped.
The sky was full of stars. The cloudy line of the galaxy towered up from the horizon, giving the sky depth and distance like she had never seen back home.
“I saw every star,” Ana says. “And all the planets, too. There were so many of them, the sky could barely hold them all. And—Daddy put his arm around my shoulder, and he held me, and we looked at the stars until his eyes could see the road again.” Her voice is thick, the words wobbly, and Shae knows without looking that Ana’s eyes are full of tears.
She lets go of Ana’s hand, and puts her arm loosely around Ana’s shoulders. “Hey,” she says, “I’m here, all right? I’m—I’m here.”
Ana squeezes her eyes shut, her breaths long and shaky. Shae sees her look up, her eyes blinking rapidly, trying, Shae knows, to dispel her tears. “It’s been three years,” she whispers. “Three years, and—and I still miss them, and it hurts, and—why does it still hurt so much?”
“Because they were your parents,” Shae answers. “Because you loved them, and you still love them. And missing people when they’re gone is… what happens.”
“I know.” Ana sniffles, and reaches one hand up to wipe her nose and rub at her eyes. “I know.” For a moment, she leans into Shae’s shoulder, and Shae dares to pull her a little closer. But then she mutters, “Dammit,” and pulls out of the embrace, moving to climb out of the water, back onto the boundary stone that marks the division between their worlds.
Shae folds her arms on the rock beside her, and looks up at her friend. “You all right?”
Ana tucks her legs against her chest, propping her chin on her knees, but says nothing.
“Thank you for telling me that story again, by the way,” Shae says. “It gets better every time I hear it.”
Ana turns her head to meet Shae’s eyes. “Yeah?”
Shae smiles. “Yeah. I know I tell you this a lot, but you’re a magnificent storyteller. The way you make a place like a desert feel alive to me, it’s just… magical, almost.”
Ana snorts, but Shae can see the beginnings of a smile on her face. “You do say that a lot. I’d almost say you were trying to flatter me, but… I know you better than that. You always tell me the truth.”
Shae’s heart quickens, and she feels a wave of heat flow from her chest to her face. She’s grateful at once that’s it’s too dark for Ana to see her clearly; she’d recognize a blush in an instant, and Shae doesn’t want to explain why she’s blushing at all. She manages to keep her eyes on Ana’s face. “I just—tell the truth as I see it,” she says. Her voice wavers a little, but she covers it by clearing her throat. “At least, that’s what Trishkel is trying to teach me. To read the truth from the currents and the stars.”
Ana smiles, her teeth glinting in the semi-dark. “How is shaman training going? I forgot to ask earlier.”
“It’s… complicated,” Shae replies. “It’s magic, which is never simple, and ritual, which is always boring. Trishkel seems pleased with my progress, at least.” She shrugs.
“Well, I’m glad it’s going okay,” Ana says, amusement in her voice. “You always say that magic is complicated, but…” She reaches up to touch the sea glass at her throat. “I’m glad these things still work. You must’ve done a really good job with them.”
Shae touches her own sea glass shard. “Thank you. Trishkel says that they’re… feeding off the force of our friendship a little? Relationships are their own kind of magic, he says, and because I made them to connect us, the more we feel connected, the more they connect. Like, the charm stays alive because we feel connected. If—that makes any sense.”
Ana shakes her head slowly, still smiling. “Not really? But they work, right? And it’s a hell of a lot easier than what we used to do.”
“Oh, yes,” Shae agrees, laughing a little. “Much better than sending our parents to and fro as messengers.”
“Yeah.”
Silence stretches between them, more a natural lull in the conversation than the result of awkwardness. Eventually, Ana uncurls her legs, letting her feet dangle in the water as she leans back to look at the sky again, bracing herself with her hands. Shae follows her gaze for a few minutes, before letting her eyes drift down to Ana’s face, and then, to Ana’s hand on the rock in front of her.
She wants to reach out and put her hand on top of Ana’s, but she tamps down on the urge almost at once. It’s not a good idea, she thinks firmly. It’s not. Yes, they hold hands fairly frequently when they’re in the water together, but that’s more a habit of safety than of affection. It’s different from what she’s contemplating now. If she takes Ana’s hand now, after they’ve shared memories and had a heart to heart, it would be too intimate. Too much, too soon. Too terrifying to continue thinking about.
Shae knows (or fears, or worries about) what would happen if she took Ana’s hand. She might have to explain herself, and in doing so, her secret would be revealed, and Ana might reject her, and their friendship would be changed forever, and not happily so. Better to stay silent, she tells herself. Better to do nothing.
She feels another wave of heat flush her chest and face, and she turns her head to lay on her folded arms and hide her expression. No need to worry her friend. No need to say anything more.
She curls her hands into fists, and does not move but for the waves bobbing her gently up and down.
Ana is laying on the rock now, her eyes fixed on the sky above, when Shae says quietly, “It’s getting late.”
Ana sighs. “I know.” Without looking, she reaches one hand out, and finds one of Shae’s cool and slightly clammy hands. She doesn’t need to say anything more; Shae opens her hand from a fist and closes it around Ana’s. “I wish I could stay out here forever, sometimes.”
“I know,” Shae replies.
Ana squeezes Shae’s hand; Shae squeezes back.
“Is your brother—?” Shae begins, then corrects herself. “I’m sorry. Do you still have curfew to worry about, or has he… changed his mind?” Ana can hear the undercurrent of scorn in her friend’s voice; Shae’s opinion of Danny has only fallen lower since her parents’ deaths.
“He hasn’t.” Ana sighs again, then lets go of Shae’s hand and levers herself into a sitting position. “I don’t know why he thinks I need a curfew anymore. I’ve been eighteen for six months, I know how to be responsible.”
She sees Shae frowning in the corner of her eye. “I know you do,” she says. “He’s just—” She stops herself, shaking her head. “Never mind.”
“I’m not even working tomorrow,” Ana grumbles, ignoring Shae’s near-outburst. “He just doesn’t seem to trust me. I mean, I know he worries, but still.” She shakes her head. “Let’s head back.”
“All right.” Shae holds up one hand, which Ana takes as she eases herself back into the water. The ocean is still refreshingly cool, and as she positions herself next to Shae, she wishes again that she could stay here forever. Maybe not in the ocean, but… with her friend, with the one person who understands her and likes her for who she is.
With a few muttered words and a flick of her wrist, Shae summons a golden bauble of light above them, so Ana can keep track of her on the way back to the docks. She smiles at Ana, and then they start to swim, alongside each other so closely that Ana’s legs and Shae’s tail brush off each other every few dozen strokes.
They’ve made this trek together dozens of times, so often that Ana can keep an eye on Shae almost on autopilot. She lets her mind wander a little as she falls into the rhythm of her stroke, and she thinks, not for the first time this summer, about what she wants.
Her first thought is an impulsive one: she wants to spend more time with Shae. But that’s almost impossible, and not just because of her land-bound obligations. They’re from two different worlds. Neither could survive in the other’s world, not without the help of powerful magic that Ana knows nothing about and Shae only knows of a little. They can only meet at the boundary of their worlds, in between each one but not fully in it.
Besides that, Ana has the weight of others’ expectations to worry about as well. Many of her friends from school have already moved away, headed off to universities to continue their studies. Ana has thought about taking courses at the local college, but she hasn’t been entirely sure of that, either. It doesn’t help that her inheritance money has been tangled up in some kind of problem at the bank; Danny has told her he’s working on it, but he hasn’t made much progress in the last six months. That’s part of the reason why she has the whale boat job, because Danny told her she had to support herself while he figured things out with the bank.
Not that getting the whale boat job has made Danny stop haranguing her, or stopped him from telling their various aunts and uncles around the country that he’s “worried” about Ana’s future. Though to be honest, Ana is also worrying about her future a little bit. What she wants and what she’s capable of doing aren’t adding up into anything she feels could be useful (never mind what Danny thinks is useful). She wants to stay here, where Shae is, but it’s becoming clear that opportunities in this seaside town are few and far between. And while a good word from the merfolk doesn’t go amiss in certain professions (it helped Ana land the job on the whale boat), it wouldn’t help her get a job she could make a career of, not unless she wanted to go into something like marine biology.
That is what concerns Danny the most: having a career. And Ana still doesn’t have the slightest idea what she could do to make her living. As much as Shae (and even her human friends) compliments her on her storytelling ability, it’s not exactly a skill Ana can parlay into a paying job. Which leaves her back on square one, stuck between the things she wants and the things everyone else expects her to want.
As they near the docks, Ana pulls her focus back to her surroundings. Shae leads the way, keeping her pace slow to let Ana cool down a little. But all too soon, they reach the little dock where Ana left her clothes. Ana catches the ladder with one hand, rising out of the water a little as she places a foot on the lowest rung beneath the surface. “Goodbye for now?” she says, turning to Shae.
Shae’s face shines in the golden glow of her conjured light, the scales on her face and shoulders glittering brightly. “Goodbye for now,” she repeats. She looks how she always looks when they have to leave each other—a little sad, maybe a little forlorn.
Ana tries to smile, to be reassuring, but it doesn’t feel like a good effort. Her thoughts from the swim are still hanging heavy over her, and Ana is certain it’s written all over her face. Shae’s expression doesn’t change, but of course it doesn’t; they know each other better than anyone else, and Shae can often read her like an open book.
“I—I’ll let you know when I have another evening free,” Ana says, shrugging awkwardly. “It’ll probably be a few days from now, you know how Danny gets sometimes…”
Shae nods. “I do. Let me know when you want to meet. And… talk to me in the meantime?” She touches the shard of sea glass at her throat. “I like talking to you, you know.”
“I—me, too.”
Shae is about to turn away. Ana can see it, in her body language and expression. She’s going to turn away, and they’re both going to feel a little sour as they head home. And so Ana does the first thing that comes to mind: she lets go of the ladder and hops back into the water, then catches Shae around the shoulders and hugs her. Shae doesn’t react for a moment, but then her arms close around Ana’s waist, and they just float there, clinging to each other.
Ana wishes again that she could stay with her friend, just for a little while longer. But she has other obligations, and she knows Danny is waiting. For a second, she hugs Shae tighter, and Shae responds in kind. Then, Ana slowly disentangles her arms from Shae’s hair and pulls away, catching onto the ladder again. Shae’s embrace loosens, but she doesn’t let go until Ana says quietly, “I’ve gotta go.”
Shae’s arms drop away, and she drifts away slightly in the water. For half a moment, Ana sees her expression—all sorrow, like she’s about to cry (even though merfolk don’t cry like humans do)—and then Shae puts a hand over her face, and the magical light goes out, and Ana looks away, her face heating with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” she says, climbing up the ladder quickly and clambering onto the dock. “I—sorry. I’ll see you soon?”
Shae looks up at her, her face partly in shadow, despite the electric light that hangs over this end of the dock. The sadness is gone from her face, and she smiles slightly. “See you soon,” she repeats. And then she swims out of the halo of light at the dock’s edge, and a moment later dips below the water’s surface, gone into the night.
Ana sits with her legs dangling over the side of the dock for a couple of minutes, hoping the slight breeze will dry her skin before she puts her clothes back on. She always feels bereft after Shae leaves her, but tonight feels worse for some reason. She wishes that she hadn’t hugged her after all, but only for a moment. They don’t hug as much as they did when they were younger. As she considers this, Ana realizes that she’s missed the hugs, the feeling of her friend’s arms around her, and the affection they both shared so easily when they were children.
Maybe Shae misses it, too, she thinks, then sighs. Or maybe you’re just being sentimental. She shakes her head, then uses the lamppost to climb to her feet. She needs to get home, and she won’t have any idea of the time until she gets back to the boardwalk, where the clock tower on the arcade keeps time. Hopefully it isn’t too late, or Danny will bite her head off the moment she’s through the front door.
She slips on her sandals and ties her skirt back around her waist, then throws her t-shirt over her shoulder instead of putting it on. She walks up the dock and back towards the rest of town, trying not to think about Shae’s reluctance to let go, or the expression on her face when she floated away. Shae cares about her, that’s all. She cares about Shae, too, and that’s fine, isn’t it? They’re friends, and friends are supposed to care about each other.
Ana wishes she could do more than just idly wishing to spend more time with Shae. That she could say more of what she means, instead of bottling things up. Sometimes it feels like there’s a chasm between them now, some insurmountable distance that keeps them both from saying what they really want to say. Ana loves Shae more than any other friend, and occasionally (when they’re being particularly smothering) more than her own family. Maybe—maybe she doesn’t love Shae like that, but—a lot. But saying that out loud, even thinking it, seems like too much. Like if Ana said it, it would break something between them.
And anyway, Shae knows that Ana cares about her, that Ana loves her. What would be the point in saying it out loud?
Because then she’d know, Ana thinks immediately. And I don’t know what will happen after that.
And just what does that mean? Ana shakes her head, throwing the thought away before she starts overthinking it. It doesn’t mean anything. Shae misses her when they’re apart, just like Ana misses her in turn. They’re friends; friends miss each other when they’re not together. It’s normal. It’s totally normal, and there is nothing wrong about it.
Ana exits the docks to find that the day’s heat is still rising up from the pavement. She sighs again, and as she makes her way to the boardwalk, she starts to sweat, the slight ocean breeze no longer enough to dry her out or even keep her cool. The heatwave hasn’t broken yet, and she grumbles about the weather the whole walk home, not daring to think about anything else.
Author:
skye_writerRating: PG
Wordcount: 4,543 words
Summary: Ana spends an evening on the waves with her mermaid friend, Shae.
Notes: Written for
getyourwordsout 's Build-A-Bingo challenge (prompt: "heatwave"). These characters are from my (currently unwritten) Little Mermaid Retelling. I hope you enjoy.August has settled in the seaside town...
August has settled in the seaside town like a heavy winter coat. The thick, humid air sticks to people, drawing out sweat but offering no relief from it; what little wind comes off the ocean is not enough to keep anyone cool. Those who can afford personal breeze charms buy them in droves, never mind if the charm-maker is taking their cash in exchange for something that will work for two hours at most. The sky remains cheerfully blue all day, the few clouds far too thin and wispy to offer any respite from the sun. Even as the sunset paints the sky brilliant shades of orange and red, heat continues to rise off the pavement, turning the town into a slowly cooling oven. Tourists and locals alike make for the boardwalk and the pier, where proximity to the ocean offers at least a little respite.
Ana shoulders her way through the boardwalk crowds with practiced ease, her wavy hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. The crowd thins considerably at the access to the pier, and she continues on until she reaches the public docks, where the few people are boat owners, all of whom know Ana by sight. She nods at those who greet her, and continues down the docks to her destination.
She’s spent all day at her job on a whale-watching boat, keeping tourists from leaning too far over the side rail and offering food to the seagulls. It’s thankless work, especially on a day like today, but she survived. She’s been looking forward to tonight. As she walks down the farthest-out dock, she touches a jagged shard of sea glass that hangs around her neck on a carefully-made chain.
Anyone with a talent for seeing thaumic energies would know at once what was hanging around Ana’s neck: a charm imbued not with human magic, but with the esoteric magic of the seas. Said person might draw any number of conclusions about Ana with that information, but the truth is simple enough: Ana has a best friend, and that friend is a mermaid.
Ana reaches the end of the last dock, where a barnacle-crusted ladder hangs down a few feet into the water. With one hand still on the sea glass charm, she kneels and knocks on the last plank of the dock five times.
A few moments later, the water bubbles loudly, and Ana peers down just as a pale face framed by yellow hair and iridescent scales pops above the surface.
The mermaid smiles carefully when her sea-green eyes meet Ana’s, and Ana grins back. Around her neck she wears a necklace that is the twin to Ana’s, the sea glass the same color, and jagged in a way that suggests the two pieces would fit together. She puts a webbed hand on the lowest visible rung of the ladder, and says, “I thought you were going to be late.”
“Good to see you, too, Shae,” Ana replies, laughing. “Look, it’s been a long day, all right?”
Shae laughs. “I wasn’t going to argue the point! I gathered as much from your message. Are you ready to swim?”
“Oh, I’ve been ready all day.” Ana stands and peels off her work shirt, then unties the strings down the side of her skirt, revealing her bathing suit underneath. She kicks off her sandals, then folds her clothes and lays them neatly on the edge of the dock, her sandals beneath them. “I had to stay in the ticket office the last half of my shift, which would have been fine if the AC hadn’t broken the other day. It’s been so hot here lately, it’s ridiculous.”
“Well, the ocean’s always cooler,” Shae says.
“That, my friend, is what I’m counting on.” She starts down the ladder, and Shae swims aside to give her room. As her legs and then her torso enter the water, Ana sighs in relief. “God, that feels good. And it’s better farther out, right?”
“As always,” Shae assures her. As Ana lets go of the ladder, Shae offers her hand, and Ana takes it. “Let’s swim?”
“Let’s,” Ana agrees.
And without another word, Shae tugs her away from the dock, and together they set out for deeper waters.
Their destination this evening, like many other evenings, is the boundary stone, a lonely rock that juts out of the ocean about ten yards north-northeast of the town’s main pier. The stone is avoided by seabirds despite its closeness to the shore, for it serves as a magical anchor of sorts. The local merfolk village and the thaumic studies department of the local college use the stone as a boundary marker. It defines the influence of their opposing magics, and anchors that separation in earth and sea. As far as Shae and Ana are concerned, though, it’s a perfect place for a human girl and her mermaid friend to enjoy each other’s company.
As the sun makes its way to the horizon, Shae and Ana talk about their time apart. It’s been four days since they last saw each other, which seems like an eternity. Ana complains a little about her job, and Shae listens and makes comments here and there. Ana alternates between treading water beside Shae, and sitting up on the rock, her feet in the water. Shae stays in the water; they’re not so far from the pier that they can’t be seen, and sightings of merfolk always tend to draw curious eyes.
Eventually, the sun sets beyond the horizon, and the ruddy sky darkens to a bluish gray. The stars are starting to appear, slightly drowned out by the proximity of the town and its lights. The brightest of them are peeking out, though, looking down on Shae and Ana as they float near the boundary stone.
Shae steals a glance at Ana, admiring her dark profile in the dying light. They have been friends since they were children, when Shae saved Ana from a riptide, and the human news channel did a story about it. They practically grew up together, and for all that they are from utterly different worlds, Shae has loved her as a sister for all that time.
But it’s only in the last year that Shae has realized that her affection has become coupled with attraction. She loves Ana, yes, but those feelings have grown more complicated, more like the romantic love that humans can never seem to speak about directly. For all that it is impossible, Shae loves her.
(It is not impossible; that is perhaps the wrong word. There are ways for merfolk to assume human form, and possibly vice versa, but Shae does not know them yet. It is advanced magic, much more advanced than the magic she is currently learning from her village shaman. And so it might as well be impossible.)
Shae has not told Ana about this. She has barely told anyone at all. (Trishkel the shaman knows, and has told her she is acting exceedingly human about this, which Shae cannot deny.) She’s afraid. She doesn’t want to lose Ana as a friend if her feelings aren’t returned. And even if Ana did love her in the same way, Shae does not want her friend forced to choose between two worlds, when one contains the only family Ana has left.
And so she says nothing, and admires Ana in spare moments, when she will not be noticed.
“I wish we could see more stars out here,” Ana says quietly. Below the surface, her hand brushes Shae’s, and Shae takes it.
“Me, too.” Shae squeezes her hand, and Ana squeezes back. “They’re more visible out by the village, but…”
“It’s too dangerous for me to swim that far from shore, I know.” She sighs a sigh Shae knows well; this is a discussion they’ve had far too many times.
“Yes,” Shae says.
They float silently for a few moments, then Ana says, “Maybe I should save up and buy a kayak or something. I could paddle out to the village and we could stargaze out there.”
Shae smiles, though she knows Ana can’t see it. “That sounds nice.”
More silence. Shae glances at Ana again. Her profile is backlit by the lights on the shore, a slightly scattered silhouette. The long, perfect slope of her nose drops off like a cliff, and the full curves of her lips look like gentle waves below that height. She’s lovely, Shae thinks. As always, she’s lovely.
She squeezes Ana’s hand again, and returns her gaze to the sky.
“Did I tell you about that time I saw all the stars?” Ana asks.
It isn’t really a question, because Ana has told this story before, but Shae replies, “I can’t remember. Tell it again and refresh my memory.”
So Ana begins her tale, talking about driving cross-country with her parents and her brother, about being twelve years old and bored by the endless plains outside her window. The second day of the trip saw them through the desert. Her father kept driving into the night, and Ana couldn’t sleep. Finally, close to midnight, her father pulled off the interstate, parking the car in a dirt turnoff close to the highway’s entrance.
Her brother and mother were both asleep, but Ana asked quietly why her father had stopped. “I need to look at something else for a few minutes,” he said. “Why don’t we step outside and look together.”
They were in the middle of the desert, far, far away from any human towns or even a fueling station. Ana followed her father out of the car and joined him to lean against the back bumper. The redness of the taillights rendered the shadows deep and flat on her father’s face. He smiled at her, and pointed up. “Take a look.”
Ana looked, and she gasped.
The sky was full of stars. The cloudy line of the galaxy towered up from the horizon, giving the sky depth and distance like she had never seen back home.
“I saw every star,” Ana says. “And all the planets, too. There were so many of them, the sky could barely hold them all. And—Daddy put his arm around my shoulder, and he held me, and we looked at the stars until his eyes could see the road again.” Her voice is thick, the words wobbly, and Shae knows without looking that Ana’s eyes are full of tears.
She lets go of Ana’s hand, and puts her arm loosely around Ana’s shoulders. “Hey,” she says, “I’m here, all right? I’m—I’m here.”
Ana squeezes her eyes shut, her breaths long and shaky. Shae sees her look up, her eyes blinking rapidly, trying, Shae knows, to dispel her tears. “It’s been three years,” she whispers. “Three years, and—and I still miss them, and it hurts, and—why does it still hurt so much?”
“Because they were your parents,” Shae answers. “Because you loved them, and you still love them. And missing people when they’re gone is… what happens.”
“I know.” Ana sniffles, and reaches one hand up to wipe her nose and rub at her eyes. “I know.” For a moment, she leans into Shae’s shoulder, and Shae dares to pull her a little closer. But then she mutters, “Dammit,” and pulls out of the embrace, moving to climb out of the water, back onto the boundary stone that marks the division between their worlds.
Shae folds her arms on the rock beside her, and looks up at her friend. “You all right?”
Ana tucks her legs against her chest, propping her chin on her knees, but says nothing.
“Thank you for telling me that story again, by the way,” Shae says. “It gets better every time I hear it.”
Ana turns her head to meet Shae’s eyes. “Yeah?”
Shae smiles. “Yeah. I know I tell you this a lot, but you’re a magnificent storyteller. The way you make a place like a desert feel alive to me, it’s just… magical, almost.”
Ana snorts, but Shae can see the beginnings of a smile on her face. “You do say that a lot. I’d almost say you were trying to flatter me, but… I know you better than that. You always tell me the truth.”
Shae’s heart quickens, and she feels a wave of heat flow from her chest to her face. She’s grateful at once that’s it’s too dark for Ana to see her clearly; she’d recognize a blush in an instant, and Shae doesn’t want to explain why she’s blushing at all. She manages to keep her eyes on Ana’s face. “I just—tell the truth as I see it,” she says. Her voice wavers a little, but she covers it by clearing her throat. “At least, that’s what Trishkel is trying to teach me. To read the truth from the currents and the stars.”
Ana smiles, her teeth glinting in the semi-dark. “How is shaman training going? I forgot to ask earlier.”
“It’s… complicated,” Shae replies. “It’s magic, which is never simple, and ritual, which is always boring. Trishkel seems pleased with my progress, at least.” She shrugs.
“Well, I’m glad it’s going okay,” Ana says, amusement in her voice. “You always say that magic is complicated, but…” She reaches up to touch the sea glass at her throat. “I’m glad these things still work. You must’ve done a really good job with them.”
Shae touches her own sea glass shard. “Thank you. Trishkel says that they’re… feeding off the force of our friendship a little? Relationships are their own kind of magic, he says, and because I made them to connect us, the more we feel connected, the more they connect. Like, the charm stays alive because we feel connected. If—that makes any sense.”
Ana shakes her head slowly, still smiling. “Not really? But they work, right? And it’s a hell of a lot easier than what we used to do.”
“Oh, yes,” Shae agrees, laughing a little. “Much better than sending our parents to and fro as messengers.”
“Yeah.”
Silence stretches between them, more a natural lull in the conversation than the result of awkwardness. Eventually, Ana uncurls her legs, letting her feet dangle in the water as she leans back to look at the sky again, bracing herself with her hands. Shae follows her gaze for a few minutes, before letting her eyes drift down to Ana’s face, and then, to Ana’s hand on the rock in front of her.
She wants to reach out and put her hand on top of Ana’s, but she tamps down on the urge almost at once. It’s not a good idea, she thinks firmly. It’s not. Yes, they hold hands fairly frequently when they’re in the water together, but that’s more a habit of safety than of affection. It’s different from what she’s contemplating now. If she takes Ana’s hand now, after they’ve shared memories and had a heart to heart, it would be too intimate. Too much, too soon. Too terrifying to continue thinking about.
Shae knows (or fears, or worries about) what would happen if she took Ana’s hand. She might have to explain herself, and in doing so, her secret would be revealed, and Ana might reject her, and their friendship would be changed forever, and not happily so. Better to stay silent, she tells herself. Better to do nothing.
She feels another wave of heat flush her chest and face, and she turns her head to lay on her folded arms and hide her expression. No need to worry her friend. No need to say anything more.
She curls her hands into fists, and does not move but for the waves bobbing her gently up and down.
Ana is laying on the rock now, her eyes fixed on the sky above, when Shae says quietly, “It’s getting late.”
Ana sighs. “I know.” Without looking, she reaches one hand out, and finds one of Shae’s cool and slightly clammy hands. She doesn’t need to say anything more; Shae opens her hand from a fist and closes it around Ana’s. “I wish I could stay out here forever, sometimes.”
“I know,” Shae replies.
Ana squeezes Shae’s hand; Shae squeezes back.
“Is your brother—?” Shae begins, then corrects herself. “I’m sorry. Do you still have curfew to worry about, or has he… changed his mind?” Ana can hear the undercurrent of scorn in her friend’s voice; Shae’s opinion of Danny has only fallen lower since her parents’ deaths.
“He hasn’t.” Ana sighs again, then lets go of Shae’s hand and levers herself into a sitting position. “I don’t know why he thinks I need a curfew anymore. I’ve been eighteen for six months, I know how to be responsible.”
She sees Shae frowning in the corner of her eye. “I know you do,” she says. “He’s just—” She stops herself, shaking her head. “Never mind.”
“I’m not even working tomorrow,” Ana grumbles, ignoring Shae’s near-outburst. “He just doesn’t seem to trust me. I mean, I know he worries, but still.” She shakes her head. “Let’s head back.”
“All right.” Shae holds up one hand, which Ana takes as she eases herself back into the water. The ocean is still refreshingly cool, and as she positions herself next to Shae, she wishes again that she could stay here forever. Maybe not in the ocean, but… with her friend, with the one person who understands her and likes her for who she is.
With a few muttered words and a flick of her wrist, Shae summons a golden bauble of light above them, so Ana can keep track of her on the way back to the docks. She smiles at Ana, and then they start to swim, alongside each other so closely that Ana’s legs and Shae’s tail brush off each other every few dozen strokes.
They’ve made this trek together dozens of times, so often that Ana can keep an eye on Shae almost on autopilot. She lets her mind wander a little as she falls into the rhythm of her stroke, and she thinks, not for the first time this summer, about what she wants.
Her first thought is an impulsive one: she wants to spend more time with Shae. But that’s almost impossible, and not just because of her land-bound obligations. They’re from two different worlds. Neither could survive in the other’s world, not without the help of powerful magic that Ana knows nothing about and Shae only knows of a little. They can only meet at the boundary of their worlds, in between each one but not fully in it.
Besides that, Ana has the weight of others’ expectations to worry about as well. Many of her friends from school have already moved away, headed off to universities to continue their studies. Ana has thought about taking courses at the local college, but she hasn’t been entirely sure of that, either. It doesn’t help that her inheritance money has been tangled up in some kind of problem at the bank; Danny has told her he’s working on it, but he hasn’t made much progress in the last six months. That’s part of the reason why she has the whale boat job, because Danny told her she had to support herself while he figured things out with the bank.
Not that getting the whale boat job has made Danny stop haranguing her, or stopped him from telling their various aunts and uncles around the country that he’s “worried” about Ana’s future. Though to be honest, Ana is also worrying about her future a little bit. What she wants and what she’s capable of doing aren’t adding up into anything she feels could be useful (never mind what Danny thinks is useful). She wants to stay here, where Shae is, but it’s becoming clear that opportunities in this seaside town are few and far between. And while a good word from the merfolk doesn’t go amiss in certain professions (it helped Ana land the job on the whale boat), it wouldn’t help her get a job she could make a career of, not unless she wanted to go into something like marine biology.
That is what concerns Danny the most: having a career. And Ana still doesn’t have the slightest idea what she could do to make her living. As much as Shae (and even her human friends) compliments her on her storytelling ability, it’s not exactly a skill Ana can parlay into a paying job. Which leaves her back on square one, stuck between the things she wants and the things everyone else expects her to want.
As they near the docks, Ana pulls her focus back to her surroundings. Shae leads the way, keeping her pace slow to let Ana cool down a little. But all too soon, they reach the little dock where Ana left her clothes. Ana catches the ladder with one hand, rising out of the water a little as she places a foot on the lowest rung beneath the surface. “Goodbye for now?” she says, turning to Shae.
Shae’s face shines in the golden glow of her conjured light, the scales on her face and shoulders glittering brightly. “Goodbye for now,” she repeats. She looks how she always looks when they have to leave each other—a little sad, maybe a little forlorn.
Ana tries to smile, to be reassuring, but it doesn’t feel like a good effort. Her thoughts from the swim are still hanging heavy over her, and Ana is certain it’s written all over her face. Shae’s expression doesn’t change, but of course it doesn’t; they know each other better than anyone else, and Shae can often read her like an open book.
“I—I’ll let you know when I have another evening free,” Ana says, shrugging awkwardly. “It’ll probably be a few days from now, you know how Danny gets sometimes…”
Shae nods. “I do. Let me know when you want to meet. And… talk to me in the meantime?” She touches the shard of sea glass at her throat. “I like talking to you, you know.”
“I—me, too.”
Shae is about to turn away. Ana can see it, in her body language and expression. She’s going to turn away, and they’re both going to feel a little sour as they head home. And so Ana does the first thing that comes to mind: she lets go of the ladder and hops back into the water, then catches Shae around the shoulders and hugs her. Shae doesn’t react for a moment, but then her arms close around Ana’s waist, and they just float there, clinging to each other.
Ana wishes again that she could stay with her friend, just for a little while longer. But she has other obligations, and she knows Danny is waiting. For a second, she hugs Shae tighter, and Shae responds in kind. Then, Ana slowly disentangles her arms from Shae’s hair and pulls away, catching onto the ladder again. Shae’s embrace loosens, but she doesn’t let go until Ana says quietly, “I’ve gotta go.”
Shae’s arms drop away, and she drifts away slightly in the water. For half a moment, Ana sees her expression—all sorrow, like she’s about to cry (even though merfolk don’t cry like humans do)—and then Shae puts a hand over her face, and the magical light goes out, and Ana looks away, her face heating with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” she says, climbing up the ladder quickly and clambering onto the dock. “I—sorry. I’ll see you soon?”
Shae looks up at her, her face partly in shadow, despite the electric light that hangs over this end of the dock. The sadness is gone from her face, and she smiles slightly. “See you soon,” she repeats. And then she swims out of the halo of light at the dock’s edge, and a moment later dips below the water’s surface, gone into the night.
Ana sits with her legs dangling over the side of the dock for a couple of minutes, hoping the slight breeze will dry her skin before she puts her clothes back on. She always feels bereft after Shae leaves her, but tonight feels worse for some reason. She wishes that she hadn’t hugged her after all, but only for a moment. They don’t hug as much as they did when they were younger. As she considers this, Ana realizes that she’s missed the hugs, the feeling of her friend’s arms around her, and the affection they both shared so easily when they were children.
Maybe Shae misses it, too, she thinks, then sighs. Or maybe you’re just being sentimental. She shakes her head, then uses the lamppost to climb to her feet. She needs to get home, and she won’t have any idea of the time until she gets back to the boardwalk, where the clock tower on the arcade keeps time. Hopefully it isn’t too late, or Danny will bite her head off the moment she’s through the front door.
She slips on her sandals and ties her skirt back around her waist, then throws her t-shirt over her shoulder instead of putting it on. She walks up the dock and back towards the rest of town, trying not to think about Shae’s reluctance to let go, or the expression on her face when she floated away. Shae cares about her, that’s all. She cares about Shae, too, and that’s fine, isn’t it? They’re friends, and friends are supposed to care about each other.
Ana wishes she could do more than just idly wishing to spend more time with Shae. That she could say more of what she means, instead of bottling things up. Sometimes it feels like there’s a chasm between them now, some insurmountable distance that keeps them both from saying what they really want to say. Ana loves Shae more than any other friend, and occasionally (when they’re being particularly smothering) more than her own family. Maybe—maybe she doesn’t love Shae like that, but—a lot. But saying that out loud, even thinking it, seems like too much. Like if Ana said it, it would break something between them.
And anyway, Shae knows that Ana cares about her, that Ana loves her. What would be the point in saying it out loud?
Because then she’d know, Ana thinks immediately. And I don’t know what will happen after that.
And just what does that mean? Ana shakes her head, throwing the thought away before she starts overthinking it. It doesn’t mean anything. Shae misses her when they’re apart, just like Ana misses her in turn. They’re friends; friends miss each other when they’re not together. It’s normal. It’s totally normal, and there is nothing wrong about it.
Ana exits the docks to find that the day’s heat is still rising up from the pavement. She sighs again, and as she makes her way to the boardwalk, she starts to sweat, the slight ocean breeze no longer enough to dry her out or even keep her cool. The heatwave hasn’t broken yet, and she grumbles about the weather the whole walk home, not daring to think about anything else.
Note: this review is a little all over the place. I tried to cover the important stuff. Please let me know if this comes off as self-centered or whatever. Please.
Something is wrong in the city of Finetime. People are going missing, but the disappearances aren't really noticed. Lindy Pepper-Bean hasn't noticed, and it's only when she's contacted by the Doctor and Ruby Sunday that she begins to peek outside her bubble and find out what's really going on. Slug-like creatures are eating the people of Finetime, and it's up to the Doctor and Ruby to get as many people out as they can before the entire populace is devoured.
( SPOILERS, as usual; also discussion of my white cluelessness )
Something is wrong in the city of Finetime. People are going missing, but the disappearances aren't really noticed. Lindy Pepper-Bean hasn't noticed, and it's only when she's contacted by the Doctor and Ruby Sunday that she begins to peek outside her bubble and find out what's really going on. Slug-like creatures are eating the people of Finetime, and it's up to the Doctor and Ruby to get as many people out as they can before the entire populace is devoured.
( SPOILERS, as usual; also discussion of my white cluelessness )
Doctor Who Review: S1/S14E03 - Boom
May. 23rd, 2024 04:14 pmThis season's third episode marks writer Steven Moffat's return to Doctor Who, his first episode since 2017's "Twice Upon a Time." The Doctor and Ruby land on the war-torn planet of Kastarion 3, where the Doctor runs right into trouble: he has stepped on a landmine, and he cannot move without everything going BOOM.
( SPOILERS ABOUND, as usual )
( SPOILERS ABOUND, as usual )
The second episode of this season's double premiere, "The Devil's Chord" follows the Doctor and Ruby Sunday to 1963 as they go to watch the Beatles record their first album. But something has gone wrong with music, and the pair soon find themselves in a fight for the universe against the mysterious Maestro.
( SPOILERS ABOUND, as usual. )
( SPOILERS ABOUND, as usual. )
After a quartet of specials last year to ring in Russell T Davies' second term as showrunner, Doctor Who has returned for a regular season at last! With Ncuti Gatwa helming the TARDIS as the Fifteenth Doctor and Millie Gibson joining him as companion Ruby Sunday, Season 1 (or as I like to think of it, Series 14) got started last weekend with a double premiere, the first episode of which was "Space Babies."
( BE YE WARNED: SPOILERS ABOUND )
( BE YE WARNED: SPOILERS ABOUND )
NaNoWriMo Day 30
Nov. 30th, 2023 04:52 pmWords (Written Today): 291
Words (Total as of Today): 17,059
Mood: Decent, but also tired.
Treat: Gonna watch some Doctor Who or read some Murderbot (again).
First Line (Written Today): As the third week of training drew to a close, Tron was impressed by Flynn and Crom both.
Last Line (Written Today): Tron didn’t know what it could mean, only that it was significant.
Favorite Line (Written Today): As he went over the last few weeks in his mind, Tron could not help but be unnerved by the strange coincidences that had led to all this, all the strangeness that surrounded Flynn and his appearance here.
Other Stuff: So this is the end... at least for this current writing soiree. 30 days in a row is pretty dang impressive, right? Right. (And technically it's 34 days if you count the writing I did at the end of October.) I wrote 17k on a new story idea, and I like what I've been writing so far. I don't know if I'll continue with this story into next month; I have another TRON fic I need to update in January that I probably ought to be cycling back to before that time comes. But I think, by and large, I am going to be taking December off. I need a freaking break. Sheesh. I am proud of what I have accomplished this month, but I need to rest. Like, a lot. Ugh.
Words (Total as of Today): 17,059
Mood: Decent, but also tired.
Treat: Gonna watch some Doctor Who or read some Murderbot (again).
First Line (Written Today): As the third week of training drew to a close, Tron was impressed by Flynn and Crom both.
Last Line (Written Today): Tron didn’t know what it could mean, only that it was significant.
Favorite Line (Written Today): As he went over the last few weeks in his mind, Tron could not help but be unnerved by the strange coincidences that had led to all this, all the strangeness that surrounded Flynn and his appearance here.
Other Stuff: So this is the end... at least for this current writing soiree. 30 days in a row is pretty dang impressive, right? Right. (And technically it's 34 days if you count the writing I did at the end of October.) I wrote 17k on a new story idea, and I like what I've been writing so far. I don't know if I'll continue with this story into next month; I have another TRON fic I need to update in January that I probably ought to be cycling back to before that time comes. But I think, by and large, I am going to be taking December off. I need a freaking break. Sheesh. I am proud of what I have accomplished this month, but I need to rest. Like, a lot. Ugh.
NaNoWriMo Day 29
Nov. 29th, 2023 03:58 pmWords (Written Today): 367
Words (Total as of Today): 16,768
Mood: Tired. As usual. As has been the fucking theme this month. Sigh...
Treat: I went and watched the new Doctor Who again and also read more Murderbot.
First Line (Written Today): If it was allowed, Flynn could at least give Crom some of the skills he’d need to survive the first few rounds of the initial Games.
Last Line (Written Today): “It may be a bad idea, but I haven’t got the heart to sit back and do nothing.”
“You know what?” Ram replied, looking back at the pair. “Neither do I.”
Favorite Line (Written Today): “I don’t care,” he said again. “I can’t—I can’t do nothing. So…” He turned to Crom and held out one hand. “I’m Flynn. It’s nice to meet you.”
Crom hesitated before finally putting his hand in Flynn’s. “Nice to meet you, too.” He glanced over his shoulder worriedly. “I—I hope this works.”
“Me too,” said Flynn. “We might be about to die here in a week or so, but… better to die beside a friend than among enemies, eh?” He grinned.
Crom managed to smile back. “Yes. Yes, that sounds good.”
Other Stuff: (backdated again, woohoo) I can't say I've got a lot to say about yesterday? This was another short session of writing, about 15 minutes again. I am gonna do one last push, and then I can take a flipping break. December is going to be Relax-O-Vision central for me. Oof.
Words (Total as of Today): 16,768
Mood: Tired. As usual. As has been the fucking theme this month. Sigh...
Treat: I went and watched the new Doctor Who again and also read more Murderbot.
First Line (Written Today): If it was allowed, Flynn could at least give Crom some of the skills he’d need to survive the first few rounds of the initial Games.
Last Line (Written Today): “It may be a bad idea, but I haven’t got the heart to sit back and do nothing.”
“You know what?” Ram replied, looking back at the pair. “Neither do I.”
Favorite Line (Written Today): “I don’t care,” he said again. “I can’t—I can’t do nothing. So…” He turned to Crom and held out one hand. “I’m Flynn. It’s nice to meet you.”
Crom hesitated before finally putting his hand in Flynn’s. “Nice to meet you, too.” He glanced over his shoulder worriedly. “I—I hope this works.”
“Me too,” said Flynn. “We might be about to die here in a week or so, but… better to die beside a friend than among enemies, eh?” He grinned.
Crom managed to smile back. “Yes. Yes, that sounds good.”
Other Stuff: (backdated again, woohoo) I can't say I've got a lot to say about yesterday? This was another short session of writing, about 15 minutes again. I am gonna do one last push, and then I can take a flipping break. December is going to be Relax-O-Vision central for me. Oof.
NaNoWriMo Day 28
Nov. 28th, 2023 04:00 pmWords (Written Today): 247
Words (Total as of Today): 16,401
Mood: Tired. As usual. (UGH.)
Treat: reading some more Murderbot.
First Line (Written Today): He looked down, his expression utterly dejected.
Last Line (Written Today): Flynn already knew his way around the longsword, it seemed, and there wasn’t much left to teach him besides the basics of the other major weapons.
Favorite Line (Written Today): [Crom] tried to smile as he looked up at them. “I’ll figure out something. It’s—it’s fine.”
“No, it’s—” Tron began, but Flynn was quicker.
“No,” he said fiercely. “It’s not fine, and you shouldn’t have to walk into the Games blindfolded because your sponsors couldn’t be bothered to help.”
Other Stuff: Another 15 minute writing session last night. (Backdating again...) Not too bad for that amount of time, but I can feel that I am on my last legs, writing-wise, for this month. I've got two more days to go to get that 30 day update badge, and then I can freaking REST. And that'll be NICE. But for now... slouching ever onward.
Words (Total as of Today): 16,401
Mood: Tired. As usual. (UGH.)
Treat: reading some more Murderbot.
First Line (Written Today): He looked down, his expression utterly dejected.
Last Line (Written Today): Flynn already knew his way around the longsword, it seemed, and there wasn’t much left to teach him besides the basics of the other major weapons.
Favorite Line (Written Today): [Crom] tried to smile as he looked up at them. “I’ll figure out something. It’s—it’s fine.”
“No, it’s—” Tron began, but Flynn was quicker.
“No,” he said fiercely. “It’s not fine, and you shouldn’t have to walk into the Games blindfolded because your sponsors couldn’t be bothered to help.”
Other Stuff: Another 15 minute writing session last night. (Backdating again...) Not too bad for that amount of time, but I can feel that I am on my last legs, writing-wise, for this month. I've got two more days to go to get that 30 day update badge, and then I can freaking REST. And that'll be NICE. But for now... slouching ever onward.
NaNoWriMo Day 27
Nov. 27th, 2023 04:58 pmWords (Written Today): 362
Words (Total as of Today): 16,154
Mood: Very tired, as usual. (SIGH)
Treat: Watching the new Doctor Who special again!
First Line (Written Today): Tron frowned a little, his heart torn between two options.
Last Line (Written Today): “They’re supposed to be training you, though,” Flynn said, his brow furrowed in confusion. “That’s—that’s why they chose to sponsor you, to prepare you for the Games. If they don’t train you, they’re as good as leaving you for dead.”
Crom grimaced. “You don’t have to tell me twice,” he muttered.
Favorite Line (Written Today): They both needed to be at their best for Flynn, but leaving Crom to fend for himself seemed cruel, and Tron was starting to have enough of cruelty.
Other Stuff: (Backdating again) I wrote this in about 15 minutes when I realized I was taking too long to write my recap/review of the new Doctor Who episode. Not bad, honestly! I'm honestly kind of looking forward to the end of the month, though, so I don't Have To write every day anymore. I'll be writing in December, it just won't be nearly as often. And thank goodness for that.
Words (Total as of Today): 16,154
Mood: Very tired, as usual. (SIGH)
Treat: Watching the new Doctor Who special again!
First Line (Written Today): Tron frowned a little, his heart torn between two options.
Last Line (Written Today): “They’re supposed to be training you, though,” Flynn said, his brow furrowed in confusion. “That’s—that’s why they chose to sponsor you, to prepare you for the Games. If they don’t train you, they’re as good as leaving you for dead.”
Crom grimaced. “You don’t have to tell me twice,” he muttered.
Favorite Line (Written Today): They both needed to be at their best for Flynn, but leaving Crom to fend for himself seemed cruel, and Tron was starting to have enough of cruelty.
Other Stuff: (Backdating again) I wrote this in about 15 minutes when I realized I was taking too long to write my recap/review of the new Doctor Who episode. Not bad, honestly! I'm honestly kind of looking forward to the end of the month, though, so I don't Have To write every day anymore. I'll be writing in December, it just won't be nearly as often. And thank goodness for that.
NaNoWriMo Day 26
Nov. 26th, 2023 01:42 pmWords (Written Today): 170
Words (Total as of Today): 15,792
Mood: Pretty damn tired.
Treat: Going to read more Murderbot!
First Line (Written Today): “Yes,” Crom replied shakily, “and I don’t know where they are.
Last Line (Written Today): We’re supposed to fight to the death, and I don’t want to die, but they won’t train me, either.
Favorite Line (Written Today): “They said I was hopeless, though,” Crom said again. “And they’re right--I’ve never held a sword in my life! I was an accountant for the greatest merchant family in Makintos before, I don’t know how to fight!” He spread his hands, his expression desperate. “I only thought--they told me in prison I was going to the Games, and I know how these sorts of things go. We’re supposed to fight to the death, and I don’t want to die, but they won’t train me, either.”
Other Stuff: (backdated again....) At this point, I'm not really going to be writing much every day anymore. I'm still aiming for that 30-day update streak badge on the NaNo site, so I will be writing every day until the 30th. I just won't be writing large amounts anymore. And that's okay! I don't want to burn myself out when December comes! So yeah.
Words (Total as of Today): 15,792
Mood: Pretty damn tired.
Treat: Going to read more Murderbot!
First Line (Written Today): “Yes,” Crom replied shakily, “and I don’t know where they are.
Last Line (Written Today): We’re supposed to fight to the death, and I don’t want to die, but they won’t train me, either.
Favorite Line (Written Today): “They said I was hopeless, though,” Crom said again. “And they’re right--I’ve never held a sword in my life! I was an accountant for the greatest merchant family in Makintos before, I don’t know how to fight!” He spread his hands, his expression desperate. “I only thought--they told me in prison I was going to the Games, and I know how these sorts of things go. We’re supposed to fight to the death, and I don’t want to die, but they won’t train me, either.”
Other Stuff: (backdated again....) At this point, I'm not really going to be writing much every day anymore. I'm still aiming for that 30-day update streak badge on the NaNo site, so I will be writing every day until the 30th. I just won't be writing large amounts anymore. And that's okay! I don't want to burn myself out when December comes! So yeah.
NaNoWriMo Day 25
Nov. 25th, 2023 07:54 pmWords (Written Today): 745
Words (Total as of Today): 15,622!!!!! \o/
Mood: pretty good!!!!
Treat: gonna watch the new Doctor Who again because WHY NOT.
First Line (Written Today): “Now what do we do with that information?”
Last Line (Written Today): “C-Crom,” he stammered back. “They—they told me I could probably figure things out on my own, I just—”
“Who told you?” Tron asked, his brow furrowing. “Your sponsors? Where are they?”
Favorite Line (Written Today): The man startled so badly that he dropped his sword, and when he turned and saw Tron, he immediately got on his knees and started apologizing as he tried to pick up the sword again.
“I’m sorry,” Tron said, offering him a hand. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I didn’t mean to--I’m sorry,” the man repeated. He stared at Tron’s offered hand, then finally took it.
As Tron pulled him to his feet, he studied the man a bit closer. He had a round face that was splotchy with red, but the hollow in his cheeks spoke of a well-fed man who had missed more than a few meals of late. The hang of his clothes underneath the armor told the same tale, and Tron wondered for a moment what had pulled this man from such a comfortable existence.
Other Stuff: I met my goal I Met My Goal I MET MY GOAL!!!!!!!!!!! So that's definitely bringing the delight tonight!!! Now I have to meet my secondary goal of writing every day this month, which means 5 more days of updates here. But at least I don't have to go full bore on them, thank goodness. I need to start winding down my Writing All The Time mode anyway; I'm planning to have a much more sedate December. BUT I DID MEET MY GOAL FOR THIS MONTH. WOOHOO. \o/
Words (Total as of Today): 15,622!!!!! \o/
Mood: pretty good!!!!
Treat: gonna watch the new Doctor Who again because WHY NOT.
First Line (Written Today): “Now what do we do with that information?”
Last Line (Written Today): “C-Crom,” he stammered back. “They—they told me I could probably figure things out on my own, I just—”
“Who told you?” Tron asked, his brow furrowing. “Your sponsors? Where are they?”
Favorite Line (Written Today): The man startled so badly that he dropped his sword, and when he turned and saw Tron, he immediately got on his knees and started apologizing as he tried to pick up the sword again.
“I’m sorry,” Tron said, offering him a hand. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I didn’t mean to--I’m sorry,” the man repeated. He stared at Tron’s offered hand, then finally took it.
As Tron pulled him to his feet, he studied the man a bit closer. He had a round face that was splotchy with red, but the hollow in his cheeks spoke of a well-fed man who had missed more than a few meals of late. The hang of his clothes underneath the armor told the same tale, and Tron wondered for a moment what had pulled this man from such a comfortable existence.
Other Stuff: I met my goal I Met My Goal I MET MY GOAL!!!!!!!!!!! So that's definitely bringing the delight tonight!!! Now I have to meet my secondary goal of writing every day this month, which means 5 more days of updates here. But at least I don't have to go full bore on them, thank goodness. I need to start winding down my Writing All The Time mode anyway; I'm planning to have a much more sedate December. BUT I DID MEET MY GOAL FOR THIS MONTH. WOOHOO. \o/
NaNoWriMo Day 24
Nov. 24th, 2023 07:52 pmWords (Written Today): 444
Words (Total as of Today): 14,877
Mood: Tired. I got a holiday hangover, as it were. also a socializing hangover. (not a literal one, just... emotional spoons are low, as are the physical spoons)
Treat: Gonna go crawl under the heated blanket and read something or something else
First Line (Written Today): What had caused Flynn to change his approach to learning, Tron couldn’t guess.
Last Line (Written Today): “He’s done this before,” Ram said. “Has to have. He might not remember it, but--he has to have been a knight or a fighter or--something.”
“Agreed,” Tron replied.
Favorite Line (Written Today): What had caused Flynn to change his approach to learning, Tron couldn’t guess. Either their talk the evening before had awoken something in him, or something else had happened. He knew better than to think it was the result of one night’s prayer; he called upon the gifts the gods had given him, but he was not so naïve as to think they worked so directly. Something had lit an inner fire in Flynn, certainly, and he had been right: better to light one candle than curse the darkness.
Other Stuff: Another Big Day. Mostly family socializing today, the food's all done with, thank goodness. I am tired and I've got a headache nagging me, so I'm signing off.
Words (Total as of Today): 14,877
Mood: Tired. I got a holiday hangover, as it were. also a socializing hangover. (not a literal one, just... emotional spoons are low, as are the physical spoons)
Treat: Gonna go crawl under the heated blanket and read something or something else
First Line (Written Today): What had caused Flynn to change his approach to learning, Tron couldn’t guess.
Last Line (Written Today): “He’s done this before,” Ram said. “Has to have. He might not remember it, but--he has to have been a knight or a fighter or--something.”
“Agreed,” Tron replied.
Favorite Line (Written Today): What had caused Flynn to change his approach to learning, Tron couldn’t guess. Either their talk the evening before had awoken something in him, or something else had happened. He knew better than to think it was the result of one night’s prayer; he called upon the gifts the gods had given him, but he was not so naïve as to think they worked so directly. Something had lit an inner fire in Flynn, certainly, and he had been right: better to light one candle than curse the darkness.
Other Stuff: Another Big Day. Mostly family socializing today, the food's all done with, thank goodness. I am tired and I've got a headache nagging me, so I'm signing off.
NaNoWriMo Day 23
Nov. 23rd, 2023 07:43 pmWords (Written Today): 260
Words (Total as of Today): 14,433
Mood: [static noises]
Treat: Um. Food???
First Line (Written Today): Flynn nodded, and they walked over to Ram, who stood with one of the practice swords resting jauntily on his shoulder.
Last Line (Written Today): He made fewer comments as they spoke, instead nodding along to their explanations and asking questions when appropriate.
Favorite Line (Written Today): “Greetings and good morning, friends,” he called as they approached. “How’s the young novice?”
Flynn snorted. “I don’t feel that young,” he replied, “but I’ll grant you the novice part. What aches and pains will you be inflicting today?”
“A myriad of aches awaits, but you’ll thank me for them later, o novice.”
Other Stuff: It was a holiday yesterday. (huzzah for backdating.) I could not access my computer (had family using my "office" for its actual function, the guest bedroom), so I wrote this by hand, then typed it into GDocs to get a word count, then plugged that word count into the NaNo site. And then I ate a bunch of food and socialized and went to bed exhausted.
Words (Total as of Today): 14,433
Mood: [static noises]
Treat: Um. Food???
First Line (Written Today): Flynn nodded, and they walked over to Ram, who stood with one of the practice swords resting jauntily on his shoulder.
Last Line (Written Today): He made fewer comments as they spoke, instead nodding along to their explanations and asking questions when appropriate.
Favorite Line (Written Today): “Greetings and good morning, friends,” he called as they approached. “How’s the young novice?”
Flynn snorted. “I don’t feel that young,” he replied, “but I’ll grant you the novice part. What aches and pains will you be inflicting today?”
“A myriad of aches awaits, but you’ll thank me for them later, o novice.”
Other Stuff: It was a holiday yesterday. (huzzah for backdating.) I could not access my computer (had family using my "office" for its actual function, the guest bedroom), so I wrote this by hand, then typed it into GDocs to get a word count, then plugged that word count into the NaNo site. And then I ate a bunch of food and socialized and went to bed exhausted.
NaNoWriMo Day 22
Nov. 22nd, 2023 07:38 pmWords (Written Today): 393
Words (Total as of Today): 14,173
Mood: [footage not found]
Treat: bed???????
First Line (Written Today): Flynn stayed quiet and untalkative through early morning rations, which Tron felt was to be expected.
Last Line (Written Today): “Let’s go get started for today, all right?”
Favorite Line (Written Today): It wasn’t until they were out in the yard itself that Flynn caught up to Tron and touched his shoulder. Tron turned, motioning for Ram to go on ahead. “What is it, Flynn?” he asked.
“I just wanted to thank you,” Flynn said, not quite meeting his eyes. “For what you did last night. It… it helped. So thank you.”
“Of course,” Tron replied. He held out his hand, and was glad when Flynn took it. “We didn’t mean to frighten you last night in the mess. I’ve always found it’s better to face a trial like this with the truth at hand. But I can understand how it might have all been a bit much for you. So I apologize for that.”
Flynn squeezed his hand, and actually smiled. “Better to light one candle than curse the darkness, right?”
Other Stuff: (Backdating again, whee!!!!) (it is Friday now) (a whole Holiday has happened) I cannot honestly recall a single thing about how I felt on Wednesday night, other than utterly exhausted. I baked a pie on Wednesday. And other things. It was exhausting. Oof.
Words (Total as of Today): 14,173
Mood: [footage not found]
Treat: bed???????
First Line (Written Today): Flynn stayed quiet and untalkative through early morning rations, which Tron felt was to be expected.
Last Line (Written Today): “Let’s go get started for today, all right?”
Favorite Line (Written Today): It wasn’t until they were out in the yard itself that Flynn caught up to Tron and touched his shoulder. Tron turned, motioning for Ram to go on ahead. “What is it, Flynn?” he asked.
“I just wanted to thank you,” Flynn said, not quite meeting his eyes. “For what you did last night. It… it helped. So thank you.”
“Of course,” Tron replied. He held out his hand, and was glad when Flynn took it. “We didn’t mean to frighten you last night in the mess. I’ve always found it’s better to face a trial like this with the truth at hand. But I can understand how it might have all been a bit much for you. So I apologize for that.”
Flynn squeezed his hand, and actually smiled. “Better to light one candle than curse the darkness, right?”
Other Stuff: (Backdating again, whee!!!!) (it is Friday now) (a whole Holiday has happened) I cannot honestly recall a single thing about how I felt on Wednesday night, other than utterly exhausted. I baked a pie on Wednesday. And other things. It was exhausting. Oof.
