A Year in Media

It's a post about all the sh*t I made and did this year. Idk, I thought it would be interesting.

Like, you don't have to read it.

I would I guess like to preface that if you didn't get anything done this year, that's more than okay. You survived! You made people smile! And those are worth infinitely more than a wordcount or new job. But even if I repeatedly failed at stuff like "reply in a timely manner to important emails" and "do the washing up", I did make a fair amount of sh*t, and watch and read and play stuff too, so I'd like to celebrate those. It was a pretty phenomenal amount of stuff, too, more than I've done since I was in high school, which conclusively of course proves that capitalism stifles creativity and innovation.

Anyway.

Compared to all the artists I know, I barely made any art, which is one of the reasons I think it's important to gauge and celebrate only yourself, without comparison. Especially considering that I recently tried a bit of the ol' self-flagellating woe-is-me "I'll never be as good as you" on an artist friend I admire, and he retorted with the exact same thing at twice the intensity about his own art. It really do be a pointless circle of comparison and imposter syndrome. So here's a thing everyone was doing in like November: all of the art you did this year, and how you felt about it (obvi, red is "oh bad", yellow is "yeah that's aight", and green is "this is an acceptable piece of art" (jk, green is "this is good", but that's still a thing i struggle to accept)):

ID: a watercolour of a magpie in flight with a red squiggle over it; a digital painting of an elf's face with a green squiggle over it; a digital painting of a an elf with a bow with an orange squiggle over it; and a digital painting of a qunari and dracolisk from Dragon Age (a tall grey-skinned person with horns, and a creature the shape of a horse with a dragon's head), with a green squiggle over it. End ID

ID: a watercolour of Sylv from Sylvestus, a white man, in a bath with a tiger leaning around him, with an orange squiggle over it; a marker pen drawing of an orc's head with an orange squiggle over it; a marker pen drawing of three elves and a tiefling walking, with a red squiggle over it; and a marker pen drawing of Sylv illuminated by firelight seated on a throne, with an orange squiggle over it. End ID

ID: six marker pen drawings of Cillian Murphy, with a red squiggle over it; a digital painting of the She-wolf from Sylvestus, a white woman in a pink dress and long brown hair looking down onto the camera, with an orange squiggle over it; a digital painting of Sylv with contrasting shadow and light huddled in the dark, with a green squiggle over it; and a digital painting of a man's torso with the heart replaced with a moth, with a red squiggle over it. End ID

ID: a digital painting of Sylv and Lavi, a southeast Asian woman, from Sylvestus back-toback, with a green squiggle over it; a digital painting of Romulus from Sylvestus, a cream and brown dog, running, with an orange squiggle over it; a digital painting of a gnoll, a hyena-person, stabbing a sword into a giant heart, with a green squiggle over it; and a digital painting of a tiefling, a person with grey skin and gazelle horns, holding a flame, with "have you heard the news that you're dead?" written behind them, with a green squiggle over it. End ID

ID: a digital painting of a bald dwarf woman wearing heavy grey armour and black tattoos on her face, with a green squiggle over it; and a digital painting of an elf woman looking over her shoulder, with an orange squiggle over it. End ID

Overall, I'd say I'm happy with how my year in art went! It feels like it's been slow progress, but also I do feel like I made a breakthrough in like... technical skill in the middle of this year, developing my style and stuff. I'm excited to continue and try and develop more skills and create more art. That can definitely be seen as the general vibe moves from orange interspersed with red, to green interspersed with orange. Even if my art doesn't look like all of the "artsy animal paintings" artists I follow on Instagram, or the ten minutes of fanart in the Critical Role streams, doesn't mean it's not good, it's just different and mine. Someone called it a "unique style" and I took it as a compliment.

Of the pieces of art I've done this year, therefore, eight were related to Sylvestus, five were related to D&D, four were related to Dragon Age, and one was... literally just a bad painting of a magpie.

Obvi, the big one is next: a year in writing.

This year, I wrote just over 90,000 original words of Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise, as well as about 10,000 stray words in other projects. I also re-wrote and edited large chunks of Sylv, but that's much more difficult to quantify. I've also read it more times than I care to think about.

This is phenomenal compared to previous recent years; I have less of a clear division, but I believe I wrote about 55,000 words in 2019 (just over half of this year), and maybe 30,000 in 2018. Before that it gets shaky as I was spread across a much greater range of projects over multiple platforms (now I write almost exclusively on BigHugeLabs' Writer software, which is perfectly minimalistic for my needs, but before that I skipped between dA Sta.sh, Word, physical notebooks, and more).

In poetry, I've actually gone down from the two years or so previous; I think I moved away from novel-writing into poetry in a big way 2018-19, but have since migrated my focus back to novels, though I still retain love for the format. I'm going to avoid word counts for this one, but I believe I produced nine original full poems this year, which isn't bad going, even if half of them were about the same thing (see: the entire previous series under the "actual poem" tag on this blog). More than volume, though, I'm genuinely quite happy with how my style has progressed and become cemented. Compared to what I had previously considered my best work, Churchyard, my more recent pieces have, I feel, a more... Like, the format looks better without sacrificing flow. They retain my narrative style and colour without being just sprawling trains of thought like my earlier work. I like that.

Finally (for the creative side), I published 23 (including this one) posts on this blog, the first one ironically when first lockdown hit and everyone was publishing new creative stuff, and somehow managing to keep up almost to that pace even when I started working again. Four were readings from Sylv or Dying Ember, eight were poems (though several of them had been written in 2018-19 and only published this year), three were housekeeping/life/Sylv updates, four were fun Sylv things, and two were general unquantifiable talking to myself about myself. One was this, obvi.

This is up from four posts in the entire of 2019 and three in 2018. Lmao. We ignore 2017 bc even though it had even more posts than this year, they all like... Sucked.

Onto stuff I did when I wasn't working or creating!

According to Roll20, I played just over 160 hours of D&D this year, although that doesn't account for the fact that one time we played a non-D&D game. Including the one I'm gonna be playing on NYE, this was with five characters (an elf cleric, a gnoll warlock-ranger, a tiefling warlock, a tiefling cleric-rogue, and a goblin artificer, for those curious) across two campaigns and three one-shots. I also ran five one-shots and one campaign which is still ongoing. I wish I had like... Been counting how many dice rolls I did and how many crits I got. Might do that next year cos that'd be pointless but joyful, innit.

Further, I played about: twenty hours of Mass Effect (one playthrough); 45 hours of ME2 (two playthroughs); forty hours of ME3 (one and a half playthroughs (second ongoing rn)); ninety hours of ME: Andromeda (one playthrough); forty hours of Dragon Age: Origins (two playthroughs plus Awakening); 25 hours of DA2 (one and a half playthroughs); and like ten hours of DA: Inquisition (dipping back into my third playthrough of 2019). Stepping away from BioWare, I also put about ten hours into God of War (2018), five hours into Amnesia Rebirth (i wanna go back but too spoopy!!), fifteen into Dream Daddy, nearly a hundred into Stardew Valley, and maybe twenty hours into Among Us and Jackbox Party Pack 7 with friends. There were also negligible amounts into a dozen PS2 games and bored forays back into games such as Hollow Knight and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, that I have previously blitzed but couldn't quite pick back up when I was so dang busy with BioWare RPGs.

Spotify Wrapped had, as usual, its time in the spotlight, but I do not desire to share the intricacies of my listening habits with everyone, so you can just have my total listening time:

ID: a blue square with "minutes listened: 30,534" in green, with the Spotify logo in blue against a green rectangle below. End ID

This is much less important to me, however, than my Podbean listening stats:

ID: a screenshot saying "Listening Level" along the top. Below, it says "2014h 46m, Total play time" and "3h 5m, Intelligent speed saved" in green. End ID

... yeah. That's all since December of last year. I like podcasts a lot. In case you're curious, that amounts to about 5.5 hours a day. This year, I wanna say those were mostly Sawbones, My Dad Wrote a Porno, Hello from the Magic Tavern, The Besties, This Week in Parasitism, The Adventure Zone, Wonderful!, My Brother, My Brother and Me, and very recently, Dungeons & Daddies.

Watching is less quantifiable, so I'm gonna go for impact rather than volume. My biggest associations for watching habits this year are Community (all of it, twice), Critical Role, Awful Squad, Gill & Gilbert, Taskmaster, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Aggretsuko. I really moved into YouTube and back into Netflix this year, having never been huge on YouTube before, and not having really touched traditional ""telévision shows"" since like 2016.

Finally, I read I think seven and a half books in the entire year: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss in the space of eight days (which lemme tell you is a helluva feat); Tevinter Nights, a collection of short stories from the Dragon Age franchise; The Sight by David Clement-Davies, which I read over and over again as a kid but couldn't finish this time around; A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering of Shadows by VE Schwab (i love them but this was my third re-read so i lost steam before hitting the last book in the trilogy); The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, also by VE Schwab; and Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers. I'd say that I kinda wish I had read more, but in truth I tried to and just couldn't get into it (as evidenced by getting halfway into The Sight, and two thirds of the way through a trilogy by one of my favourite authors).

And I think that's the thing with rating a year by how productive or whatever it was: it's always subjective; and it's never enough. Many people, including Younger Me, would count reading seven and a half books in a year as an appalling display of anti-literary laziness; just like many people can produce a piece of art like the ones I've rated as my rare I'm-actually-happy-with-this pieces as a warm up sketch every day before doing their real art; and many people play a diverse range of games rather than seven RPGs by the same company over and over again; and many people count 100,000 words in a year to be the low side of average...

But many more people read no books, because it just isn't their thing, or produced no art in 365 days, just looked at other people's and wished they had the talent, or are kind of ashamed of how many games they played and TV shows they watched, or wrote 10,000 words in the entire year and are still happy they managed to write any at all.

And those are good too.

'Cos you made it. Even if all you did was play Animal Crossing for 400 hours, showered eight times since January, and play D&D once a fortnight. Even if you didn't get out of bed, or get a job, or do the dishes. Like, I'm kind of proud of listening to over 2000 hours of podcasts in twelve months, even if objectively it's Not Really an Achievement. Despite the fact that most people would count it as much more important, notice that I haven't yet mentioned I got two jobs this year, as well as passing an exam and doing most of a professional qualification. I'm not really proud of those, they just kind of happened because they had to, because capitalism. I enjoy parts of my job and it's important and stuff, but my year for me has been defined by it being the one where I got back into D&D, and made a breakthrough in my art style, and played ever so many Mass Effect and Dragon Age games.

So, what did you do this year? It doesn't have to be "an achievement". It doesn't have to have advanced your career or been impressive. You're alive, so it was enough. Go forward with kindness. Try playing a podcast in the background.

Poem: Hands

CW: mention of suicide, mention of self-harm, dementia

 

This is my most recent poem, dated 14th October 2020. The previous series of poems all about the same theme/person is over, and I wanted to post something more recent before I go back to old poems. This poem contains one brief mention of suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

 

Hands:

Children, famously, ask awkward questions,

especially when I never know where to draw

the line between my policy of gentle honesty

and what their parents want them to hear.

I’ve only known her for a day and a half when

the little girl puts her hand happily in mine and

asks me what I think the point of life is. Unlike

with her other forays into an eight year-old’s

philosophy, I don’t hesitate before my answer:

It is to be kind.

I can’t blame her for her quiet dissatisfaction;

it’s a boring answer, but in this case at least,

it is truth. I’d say I wish someone had told me

when I was her age, but in the same lines of

truth, I don’t think I would have believed them.

I went to science for my answers, decided that

if I could determine why the first cell transferred

ions with its neighbour, I would understand why

I had wanted to die since I was eight years old.

She leaves my hand for a moment, running

to a tree to pluck the seeds from its branches,

and I pull my coat tighter instinctively. We are

teaching her to feel the ground beneath her

feet, the wind on her face, to savour the cold

of each indrawn breath; I know all too well how

easy it is to become lost when the injustices of

childhood shake through her tiny body, and I

do wish someone had taught me this before.

I once wept for all the pillows I had punched,

though I never cried for the bruises I left on

my own skin. I have learned to let anger pass

through me, to take injustice from the air and

metabolise it, break it down in my lungs so

all the exhale offers is calm. I want my walls

to say, They were kind to us, my floors to feel

no stamp but the warming of cold feet. There

is a time to fight, and there is a time to grow.

Love, that overused poem, does both, and I

have fought enough times, been my own tiger’s

claws when cornered, to know that the greatest

act of love can be taking up a sword. But I have

also lost so much of myself to the bonfire of

fury that I will always choose gentleness where

possible, forgiveness when that is a braver act

than violence. I want even my decay to be the

fertiliser for flowers to grow beneath my feet.

She comes running back, takes up my hand

again, and I am humbled by the easy trust of

it. I am eight years ago or so, on a school visit

to an old people’s home; we drift, bored teens,

between the senile elderly, muffled giggles and

awkward mumbles, when a woman’s fingers

twine in mine from nowhere. I still remember the

texture of her hands, delicate, soft wrinkled skin

over bones, guiding me to kneel like a knight.

Time stops as I smile and, with the wonder of a

newborn child, she smiles back. She touches

the pin on my blazer, an owl, coos and pats,

fascinated. Our time is too short; in moments I

am called away, and her face falls as this brief

connection wavers – unpinning the owl and

folding it into her hand is the first time I have

felt absolutely at peace in this world. I think now

I knew God for the first time in her joy just then.

This hand, equally fragile, at the opposite pole

of life, brings me back, letting go to point out a

robin on the near fence with glee. I truly believe

that we were put on this earth to make others’

lives better. When I am gone, I do not hope that

people will say I was kind, but rather that I was

simply kind, without want of reward. I never want

my careless fault to be someone’s last straw;

intentional kindness can be all the difference.

One time, I stood in the rain for six hours with

a woman I had never met before because she

had asked me, sobbing, for help. On the phone

with charity after charity, they kept asking who I

worked for – unable to believe that someone

would be so generous for free. I don’t know her,

I kept repeating. She just needed help. Time and

time again she begged me not to leave, and I

won’t pretend it didn’t occur to me, but I stayed.

When finally she was safe, she clutched my

hands for twenty minutes, repeating again: you

saved my life, thank you, thank you, I can’t

believe you stayed. We had been pushed out

from doorway to doorway, denied and turned

away all day, and every time, all I thought was,

Good God, what is the point of life if not to be

kind to one another? All my friends asked me

why I did not walk away, and all I could say was:

She just needed help.

I cannot fathom a philosophy that is not rooted

in simply being kind to one another. Fuck! What

purpose do you have if not making the world

better for your being there? I want the mark I

leave on this world to be a wildflower meadow

fertilised by every worm I picked off the pavement

and moved into mud with my bare hands. What

even are we doing with every step we take, if not

making the path easier for the next person to walk it?

As the path winds back toward home, her steps

slow, the offer of a hand turned down as she climbs

to balance along a low wall. She is of an age where

independence is the greatest gift, yet I hope she

learns before I did how to say, I need help. There is

a lot I hope she learns, of course, but above all else,

this: that the greatest gift of all is simply to be kind.

Look after yourself when you must, but offer your

whole heart to the world every single time you can.

On the bus home, an insect from the bush we

brushed against rounds my sleeve. I cup my hands

like a cradle for the whole half-hour ride, release it

onto grass first chance I get. It will never know the

kindness, but regardless, a kindness was done. I

think of the woman in the rain, of the hundreds who

walked past without pausing, of the pin badge, of

bruises, of hands. I look around at the people looking

for answers in their phones, and pray that they know:

It is to be kind.

Poem: After August

This poem has no content warnings and is dated 16th September, 2020.

 

After August:

 

Eight months later, you're still fresh enough

that my heart tries to turn the calendar

back to March every morning; maybe a

global pandemic alters everyone's perception

of time this year, but we burned so bright

my eyes still aren't convinced it's been

dark for this long, your silhouette a ghost

on my skin I swear has always been there,

in the same breath as doubting it was there

at all. We had that effect - togetherness so

natural that closing the door after my rigid

goodbye unwound the years of therapy

that had finally taught me I was complete

on my own.

When the love of my life left, I counted

every day of a year, so certain was I that

I could not survive twelve months alone.

Compared, eight months has raced by,

as perhaps appropriate for a few weeks of

explicitly-not-a-relationship, but in truth,

I've only felt human skin on my skin a

handful of times in the past eight months,

so for all my scolding it as weakness, I

think I can't be blamed for feeling your lips

brush my eyelids still some nights when

I close my eyes.

I blocked you on social media one week

ago, after writing three poems about why

I couldn't block you on social media; it

finally hurt less than the alternative, and

only when a new city did what eight months

couldn't. Typically, I can't stop writing

poems about something until my heart finds

a new anvil to shatter on; I know it isn't

healthy to look for one, but I'm sick of

writing about you, and my new paycheque

doesn't cover therapy. Perhaps this is your

final appearance, or perhaps I'll see you

in another few months' time. Either way,

best wishes; eight months has at least faded

my anger.

Oops! All Poems!

Yaaaaa apologies for the fact that every single dang post since like September has been as a poem; I queued them early on expecting to have other content to post in between, and then... life. Y'know. Everything.

 

So I figured I at least owed an update on everything, if nothing else than at least to space out the ding-dang poems.

Except not really. 'Cos y'know. My life is kinda private and stuff. So just some things. We'll see how it goes.

 

Poetry Corner

 

I recently performed in a poetry event organised by the awesome Sierra Moulinié, of Poems from My Hospital Bed. Check them out on Facebook and Youtube; I adore their work and had missed seeing them perform regularly at my local poetry evenings, so it was great to reconnect. Their Poetry Corner event also features a bunch of other great writers! I perform first in the video below:

 

Poem: #Maggots

CW: gore, body horror, death imagery

 

Went through a lot of drafts, and this is also a rare first posting. Dated about 14th March, 2020.

 

#Maggots:

 

Social media is an overpriced mortician putting

make-up on the dead, or so they tell me.

It certainly felt that way building a relationship

out of the contour you showed to the world while

pretending I didn't exist seven days of every eight -

relationship in this sense just meaning, of course,

that you told me my chest was the chest your

heart beat inside, and we had really great sex a

couple half-dozen times; and just in this sense

meaning, Don't worry, I never wanted to call

myself your girlfriend, in the same breath as

your promise that it didn't have to be a lesser

thing, just because; but, as always, I was defined

by the just.

 

If I saw you, I think I'd say, I hope you're doing

okay, by which I'd mean, I hope it kind of sucks

right now; it in this sense meaning... I don't know.

It. You seem happy on social media, one day

in every eight, which I assume means you haven't

changed at all; the mortician knows its job too

well, knows how to gut me like a supermodel's

ugly when every eighth day rolls around. I could

bury you six feet under and never think about

you again - by which I mean, block you, and

never think about you again - but I promised to

keep things civil between us, and my soul's

cemetery is not well-versed in manners. I'd

pretend I'd never known you if I saw you on the

street, and I'd do it so well you'd wonder how

you ever touched me without getting freezer-burn -

by which I mean, I'd have a panic attack after,

but better that than letting you see the grisly

mess of my corpse's smile, which is the primary

alternative. Historically, I don't look good with

maggots oozing between my teeth - but, then,

some might say it's hypocritical of me to

criticise the way you let social media lie about

your scars while I play mortician for my own.

And by all this, I mean, I'd never sink so low

as to ask you why you still check my snapchat

story every day, whether it means as little to you

as any stranger's, or if you check it like a double-

rum and lemonade on a Thursday afternoon -

by which I mean, my carefully manufactured

smile to get you through the day, while the

sting serves as reminder of the last hangover

I gave you.

 

I want to be the ground in which flowers

grow. I want strangers to feel the sun on their

face when I smile. People have told me I was

a ray of light when I was in love with you; it's

this concept of heartbreak which breaks my heart,

the truth that years of working on myself can't

hold a candle to the sunlight happiness of three

weeks of just with someone else. I endeavour

to love myself on purpose, to tend to my heart

like a bonsai - pruning branches to make the

trunk stronger, by which I mean, loving no-

one until I can love everyone, by way of loving

myself. The concept of a forest could not

exist until two things evolved: first, that plants

should hold themselves up by a husk of their

own dead cells, by which I mean bark,

enabling anything taller than a fern to ever

grow; and second, that something could turn

death into feast, by which I mean microbes

turning wood into soil. See, every time I see

your name every one day in eight, I do not feel

like wildflowers could grow from my chest.

But I think maybe I am not to blame for the

maggots making feast of my flesh. I am ugly

when I hurt, but the purpose with which I aim

to love myself is to put away the mortician's

make-up, to lay to rest the foundation of civility

which turns my grief into a #glowup six months

from now. One day, I will wear my old hurts as

my spine, but I must prune the branches of my

unrequited devotion first. One day, a wildflower

meadow will burst from my chest, but I must let

the maggots make ruin of me before then. You

did not mean to hurt me, by which I mean you

hurt me, by which I mean I will wear you as

bark, by which I mean I have lost count of the

excuses I have made for you - by which I

mean, ignore me; this is merely the blowflies

dancing on my tongue.

Poem: How To Go Through Heartbreak

Super short one. Date is, hysterically, about two weeks after the previous poem posted, so I'll call it 13th February, 2020.

 

How To Go Through Heartbreak:

1) Be human.

2) Bleed.

3) Become stone.

4) Crack.

5) Become steel.

6) Melt.

7) Become diamond.

8) Cut.

9) Become human.

10) Bleed.

Poem: Jay Feathers

This is a weird'un. This poem is linked very closely to both the most recent one posted, and to the another few which are scheduled; they're all about the same person, almost documenting the course of a few months in a way that... Brings an energy I don't love. But they're also some of the best poems I've ever written, especially this one. It went through more drafts, and was shared with more people, than any poem I'd done before (and tbh since), and, annoyingly given later context, is still pretty much hailed as the best I've ever written.

So. Weird energy. But also, they're my feelings and my words and my great poem, so like, f*ck 'em.

Date is hard to pin down because unlike most of my poems, there's no single document conveniently dated with the finished product; there were a lot of drafts in a notebook and in DMs to poetry friends scattered across apps over the course of a few weeks. So I'm dating it 16th January, 2020, as this was the date I performed it at HOWL open mic in Swansea.

Jay Feathers:

I don't believe people can be made for each other;

I used to, but there's a lot of things

I used to believe and don't anymore.

I used to believe that I was easy to fall in love with

but hard to love, the same way I used to believe

stars are just suns who need too much personal space.

I used to believe I could never be drawn to someone

without blistering them when I came too close.

It's not that I think we were made for each other -

it's just that when you kiss me, it feels like all the stars

in my hollow chest finally remembered the sky they came from.

You ask me if I am a dreamer, your voice hungry

for what I brought back, fingertips dancing feather-light

across flickering eyelids. I draw back, hands

clutched tight, so certain it was ugly that I stutter

over my warning to stay back as you reach

for my shaking hands with yours. I do not want

to vomit my trauma onto your bedsheets

when you have trauma enough of your own already.

So when you coax them open, and all

that falls from my fingertips are the bright orange feathers

of a jay, I have your lips on mine, hungry and wondrous,

before they've finished settling around us;

I know you'll keep them, weave them into a cloak;

I want those dreams to keep you warm from your own night terrors.

 

You tell me you have never liked your own name

until you heard it gasped from my lips,

and I remember that your name was the first one I ever

called myself, the first time I ever called myself

a boy. I hold it between my teeth, test my tongue

around the edges, always knowing it was never right for me

but always drawn back to the sound. For the first time,

it feels right to hear; maybe you can love your name

because I formed my lips to speak my own, and they chose yours.

 

You point out that our bodies fit together perfectly,

and I want to tell you that my freckles are just

the sparks from where the stars in your eyes landed.

You ghost your fingers across them, lips tracing, teeth dragging,

and I am reminded of feathers falling from the sky

to settle a cloak across my shoulders. I want to close your eyes

and run the gentlest thumb across your eyelids,

to wonder what stars flicker and burn there;

I press the skin of my chest to the skin of your back,

hoping the galaxies in your chest can feel the galaxies in mine,

can remember the sky they came from, like I learned

to find home in my own empty heart, like I learned

jays nest only in the most solid oaks; sometimes,

you have to know the ground you are rooted in

before his feathers will fall from your fingertips.

I do believe that peace only comes from accepting that

the gaping hole in your chest will never be filled,

but can be painted by the light of sunsets.

I do believe that every breath is a miracle

of holding myself together on all the nights I learned

no-one else would ever love me like I had to love myself.

And I do believe that stars are just the sparks

of a bonfire rising into a black night's sky.

That your night-sky eyes looked into my bonfire heart,

and you aren't afraid of being burned.

That jays can be bright orange, even when the

textbook calls them brown. I don't know

everything I believe in, but for the first time

in a long time, I want to learn with you.

On Sylv, Spoilers, and Triggers

Yet again, I find myself preparing to start a post along the lines of "This seems like a dumb excuse to write a post, but..." but...

 

Okay, I got nothin'.

 

Sylvestus Vol II is currently undergoing a beta-read by a good friend and fellow writer. It's weird for a couple of reasons, all of which kind of come down to this being the first time in a long time someone with investment in the characters and world has read something I've written pre-publication, and as such has creative and editorial input... as well as just being able to yell "OMFG THEY DIDN'T" and spam me with exclusive memes sometimes. Friends used to read chapter-by-chapter as I wrote and vice versa, but as we all grew up this became impractical, and the last few times I've asked a non-professional to do a formal beta-read, things have gone badly (mostly in terms of them making promises and never coming through, which we all do sometimes, but it puts a strain on relationships and creativity, and made me hesitant to ever ask anyone i cared about to do it again). I'm glad I did, because she's great and it's going to be really healthy for the final product, but it still has weirdnesses.

 

For one, it's nerve-wracking as f*ck; I care deeply what she thinks as someone who I know has investment in the world and characters, and also as another good writer. The first time she sent anything approaching a negative piece of feedback (pointing out that a paragraph i already knew was sh*t was, though she phrased it much more politely and professionally, sh*t), I had to sit motionless and regulate my breathing for ten minutes so I wouldn't throw up with anxiety. I still have to manage that response every time it happens though it's gotten easier, and that's in no way a criticism; I wouldn't want someone who pulls punches, because sometimes as a writer you need to be punched out of your annoying foibles and punctuation habits (listen, i know i overuse the "mid-sentence ellipses to indicate a thoughtful or hesitant pause in the narrator's thoughts", but consider sylv makes a lot of thoughtful or hesitant pauses altho i will concede, yes, yes that is far too many, you could turn it into a drinking game and be unconscious by chapter 10).

It's also exciting, and the best feeling when she picks up on exactly the hint I was laying down, and amusing when she picks up exactly the red herring on the next page, and perplexing when she points out a character's response I barely thought about when writing it, and frustrating when she questions something I thought was obvious...

All of which are super important and the exact reason for a beta-read of someone who understands and cares about the story and characters. It was definitely the kind of care that was missing from Vol I, but there was just no-one I trusted who also had the time, and while a professional paid editor can point out your ellipses obsessions, they just don't have the same dedication to the story as a friend and, dare I say, fan.

That feels weird to say. Fan. Do I have a fandom?? It has like four people and a German shepherd in it if so, but I'll take it.

Anyway, there is one specific weird thing I wanted to highlight because it's relevant at the point she's at, and also kind of... where I'm at in the write/edit/publish/live journey. As the title says: Sylv, spoilers, and triggers.

Writing Vol II was triggering as all hell at points. It's triggering to read. In a couple of different ways. I want to talk about it when I'm on the bus listening to the Sylvestus playlist. I want to talk about it when I'm writing those parts. I want to talk about it when I re-read them. I want to talk about it when she reads them. I want to talk about it when a new reader mentions the allusions in Vol I.

Buuut it's all huge spoilers for late-game Vol II, so I've kept my mouth shut for about four years, because precisely one (1) person knows the full story of Sylv, and it's not fair to overload them every time you listen to the playlist on the damn bus. And I'll have to keep my mouth shut for another four months or so, or basically as long as I can last after publication. I've considered writing something and just saving it as a draft to publish when the time is right, but it doesn't feel appropriate because things change so much; I could have done that dozens of times in the past four years, and my views and feelings now are different to what they were then. Yet I also want to capture how I feel about it now, y'know?

I don't have answers, which is why, yet again, I'm writing a rambling blog post with a roundabout point on the subject.

I'll be very honest, too; another reason I'm writing this now is that I encountered a fairly big trigger in my regular life, and Sylv is a big refuge for me from that. I've gotten into the habit of re-reading the chapters I know are triggering for me when I already feel bad, because together they form a cathartic arc. But I did that like two days ago and I didn't want to saturate myself by reading them again because that way lies madness and "every word i write is incomprehensible garbage" - aaand she's about to hit that point, which means that in the next two weeks or so I'm gonna have to go through them all in deep discussion/edit/ellipses-removal anyway.

And I wanted to tell her about it and what was going through my head, because it was very personal but also interesting in relation to him and the story, but I... didn't, because... it was spoilers. And it kind of reminded me of everything around this *gestures to previous paragraphs* which is weird for me.

I think it will be good to eventually be able to talk about Sylv in all the full truth of his story. Both books are, but especially Vol II, about openness, with oneself and others, with becoming known, with vulnerability and its rewards. Yet ironically, I've been uncharacteristically careful with guarding his secrets, perhaps because everyone I would want to tell makes up the biggest base of people whom I want to experience the story without spoilers or preparation. Sylv has become a huge intersection of coping mechanism, personal project, and professional interest, and the boundaries are hard to define and maintain. And it has been interesting, to see what people pick up on and miss, bring up and skirt around, but it will be good to be able to finally talk openly on this blog about Sylv and, idk, sh*t like the ending of the book.

Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise is going to be extremely good, and it's going to be in no small part because of this experience and the person behind it. But it's also going to be good for me, I think. I said when I was racing through the second half of the novel in April-ish that I was terrified of the end and what that meant - letting go of Sylv - but as that approaches, I see the catharsis it will bring. I am Sylv sinking into the blood-tinted water: he seems at peace, but in Epilogue, we do not know why, cannot yet understand what brought this man to this point.

By Prologue, we understand. Or, I hope we do. I guess I'll find out when she gets there.

Until then, it will keep being weird. That's nothing new, though, for me or this book.

Poem: Love Reading

Actually, that's not really this one's title, 'cos it kind of doesn't have a title, I never settled on one - but this dang post has to be called something. Further, despite my intention to start uploading my older poems and work forward, after reviewing the past two years or so of my poetry, I decided to do a little run of my more recent ones while they're fresh (because they all kind of follow one narrative) then go back on quieter months when I run out of other sh*t to upload.

Regardless, this poem is dated 23rd December, 2019.

Love Reading:

Past:

The Star –

Remember when you had so much hope?

In a sky full of clouds,

You could look up,

Point at your own breath misting in front of you

Zoom in to every crystal of ice forming in the frozen air,

Smile and say,

See? Every collapsing lung is a hundred new constellations.

You didn’t come to me last time,

Or the time before.

Why?

What did you think I would tell you?

Caution? Rejection?

You have always loved above a safety net,

So certain of being dropped that you will never

Commit to the full swing.

Metaphors fail, because

If this were a real cliff, you would sprint to the edge,

Leap into the abyss,

Without hesitation,

Desperate to say that you did,

Willing to trust any rope to catch you.

But the rope is someone’s hand.

Someone who promises they love you.

Promises they would tear down the sky for you,

Rip open the night, write your name in stars –

And you have been left falling too many times

To trust anything other

Than your own grip

Burning your skin on rough fibres as you fall.

 

Present:

Ten of Wands –

You cannot see a way forward.

The journey has been so long.

You do not see what holds you back; you have been fighting

Through a thornbush, and it hooks

And tears, pulling you back, pulling you back,

And they say that the only way out is to lie still

Until someone’s loving hand reaches in to save you,

But who would come for you?

Who could you trust,

When it was the hand you loved most in the world that

Led you in, promised you stars,

Slipped away between the cracks in the earth?

Why do you come to me now?

Is it because you can feel the thorns,

Want to see their face?

Or is it because you know that the thorns

Are just your own clumsy fingers

Hooked around your collar

Pushing you back?

Do you want me to preach caution? Promise rejection?

You have promised never again so many times;

A warm hand closes over your own, a thumb tracing lightly

The chapped skin of your knuckles,

A promise held in breath mingling just inches apart –

Sprinting toward the cliff edge, pulling yourself back,

Scared maybe of offending with a misread signal,

Or maybe of lips meeting, of leaping, of falling,

Of hands being caught.

 

Future:

Two of Wands –

A way forward, pointing, a once-certainty once-broken.

There. That’s where I will be.

But this is where you are. You promised you would learn

How to stay. You are Here. The only place left.

Fingers slipping on the thick green moss,

Sinking in, boots on uneven stones rippling

With water, every drop of light a star

In a cascading galaxy,

Every breath green and certain.

Certain. Certain like a beating heart under your hand,

Skipping as you shift your thumb.

Certain like gravity. Like the dawn.

Certain of everything except a hand to catch you,

No hand except your own ever there.

Fear never held you back

From climbing a tree, from jumping

A creek. But it puts its fingers to your lips

And pushes them down, back to resting,

Shoulders tense now, guilt in the entertained thought:

To be loved; to be known.

You are a bonfire. You came to me to learn this.

Never forget what you are, my love.

You are a thing of ambition, of certainty,

Of burned-away regrets and the knowing of Here.

You say I do not advise,

Merely reveal what is already realised but

Not yet accepted.

You are waiting for me to tell you

You are too broken, too stuck,

Too wanting, too heated,

Too much.

All I can do is show you the stars you once made

With the outbreath of a hoarse,

“I love you,” sobbed to a back as it walked away;

All I can do is say,

If this were a cliff

Would you not already have jumped?