Life After Sylv

Well folks... I only went 'n did it. Finished Sylv Vol II. Nbd 🤷

I actually finished it three days ago, about an hour and a half after telling everyone I was gonna take the rest of the day off and finish it tomorrow, and I didn't then tell anyone I'd finished it. It's... Every time you finish the first draft of a novel, it's... Sure something. I remember feeling underwhelmed the first time, especially because I'd been writing it in secret for years, and I distinctly recall that I finished it on Christmas Eve at my dad's house sat on the sofa opposite my aunt, who asked what I was doing and tried to start a conversation, only for me to quietly rebuff her because I was extremely keen to finish this f*cking novel. I feel quite bad about that in retrospect, and I no longer write novels in the corner of family gatherings while ignoring everyone, although I think sometimes my family wishes I would. I don't remember finishing the next few, except for maybe the first draft of Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum, which was upstairs at the house of a friend's family I think, who were hosting me while I visited other friends where I used to live. Generally... Yeah, there's never been much fanfare to finishing novels.

My anxiety is really bad at the moment, which isn't helping. I've been trying to be more positive with, y'know, everything, but especially celebrating my achievements and creations, but it's... Hard to write this post in a celebratory tone while my gut has been clenched so tight I can't take a deep breath for five days and counting. It's why I haven't really told anyone. I occasionally get a burst of excitement, the realisation that I did an amazing thing and I can be so proud and happy, but it's like my brain automatically shies away from it before it can properly fill me up with happy chemicals because any strong emotion is dangerous when you're in survival mode.

Plus, finishing and letting go of Sylv is... Well, it's a fairly big thing. The Red Prince and Seeking were both hugely personal; in comparison, Each Separate Dying Ember... It's still a very good story, and I love the characters and world, but it was a step back from personal writing if that makes sense. It was about bird people and death-VR and social justice, an exploration of a cool world idea with some moral preaching. It wasn't... For me.

Sylv is different. It feels cheap to say that it's the ~novel I've put most of my soul into~ because I feel like I'll say that again every time I write something bigger, but... Like, it is. It started out like Dying Ember, just a big story me and a friend had come up with that I wanted to write because I was lonely and bored and had nothing else to write, but it became so much more. I've never been as supported by friends writing something, never had so many people I'm excited to share it with, never known that there was an audience waiting who love this character and this world. I was going to say that Sylv means a lot to me despite having only been with me for x years...

But I wrote the first chapter of the first draft of Sylv in November 2014.

Nearly six years.

And I made him and wrote for him on the original website that was Anteria before that, I don't know exactly how long but most likely 6-12 months.

So, six years.

I guess I need to take a step back and re-orient my position. Until I checked just now, I genuinely thought I'd had Sylv for 3-4 years. Not six. I started writing him at the end of high school, and wrote him consistently through sixth form, three long complicated years of uni, and my first year of post-education adulthood. Sure, Rheimer has existed for eight years, but I write a few thousand words of Red every two years; I've been actually actively thinking about and writing Sylv through all of that. First kiss, first love, first heartbreak, sexual assault, suicide attempts, getting into uni, graduating uni, drunk blackouts, hangovers, moving time and time again, new jobs, volunteering, travelling... And he's always actively been there. And so much of that has bled into him and how he's written, his story. I want to talk in detail about the ending of Sylv, and especially the changes made from original story to first draft to final product, but I'll hold off on that until after publication at least - but...

Damn.

Okay, yeah, I'll say it sincerely this time: Sylv is the most important and personal character I have ever written. A 40 y/o ancient Roman man who has been with me, influenced me and vice versa, through the most formative and tumultuous six years of my life.

And now he's dead. No, that's not spoilers, it happens in the first chapter of Vol I. In fact, that first chapter - re-written more than anything else - is the first thing I had. Everything about it has changed, except for the simple certain fact: Sylv dies at the end.

I don't know what the future holds for him. I feel like I had Tas, North, Kiah, Dany, etc. all with me low-level while I wrote, while they were on my mind, but after I'd finished their stories, they faded away, locked between the pages. Rheimer, in comparison, has been growing and changing, with me but always in the background. I don't know what's going to happen to Sylv now. I don't know. He's been at the forefront - the first thing I think about when my mind drifts, the first comfort I turn to in uncertainty, the first face I try to put to every cool new song I hear - for a long and impactful time.

There's still a long way to go before Vol II is published. I had anticipated a late 2021 publication date, now we're looking at early 2021 because being on furlough and having all day to write has coincided with desire and inspiration to write, so I've blasted through the latter half of the novel three times as fast as I expected to. There's still a lot to do - countless re-reads and edits, the entire cover design and formatting and proof copy ordeal, publication, marketing, pre-orders... But before any of that, it needs room to breathe. The first step after finishing a novel is to put it away for a few weeks, work on something else, then come back with a fresh mind and pretend you're starting from scratch to take it apart critically. That's like, a genuine writing tip I stand by. And that's where I am at the moment, in those few weeks, waiting for it to sink in that...

I did it. Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise is done, and therefore so is Sylvestus as a whole, and therefore so is... The entire chapter of my life where Sylv was with me. Which is a bigger chapter than I realised.

In one of my first counselling sessions in high school, I mentioned how anticlimactic finishing The Red Prince was. As I have mentioned many times before, it was a problematic badly-written garbage fire, and none of the friends I asked to read it could get into it, and I felt like a failure and was getting more and more frustrated and upset - the counsellor compared it to another of her students who was upset her One Direction fanfic wasn't popular, which I tried not to take offense at (or rather, I took offense at the time, but now I'm like, that's fair), but then did make a very good point. I had been using The Red Prince to channel my insecurity, anger, anxiety, trauma, and creativity for eighteen months. Practically, this had involved hours of writing every day where I now just went home and sat on my beanbag staring at the wall lost for what to do, which worsened my dissociation and depression, but emotionally it had also provided a huge important service where I didn't have other outlets. I would learn to channels these in other ways, but in the meantime, she gave me a single important task:

Write something else.

So, I picked up Seeking (i'd already done like five chapters a few months before, but nothing really substantial). Finished Seeking and went straight to Dying Ember. Finished Dying Ember and had already been a year deep into Sylv. I have two stories that are hanging there, both with ~20,000 words to them waiting to be picked up as the next main project, and I still don't know which I'm running with. Neither of them... Well, neither of them is a Sylvestus. But that's okay, because they can still be an outlet for creativity and emotions. Just... Not yet.

Like y'all, writing Sylv Vol II has been exhausting. Y'know how I said a few posts ago that it's been way easier than Vol I? True. But also bullsh*t. Sylv Vol II has more personal... Experience and care and meaning in it than anything I've written before. It's emotional and heavy. Still funny in parts, and the slog of editing going forward is going to be making sure that there's balance of dark and light, drama and chill. There's a part that I hated writing both times, because from a storytelling perspective it's extremely good, but from an emotional perspective it's harrowing. There's two not insignificant sections that I planned and first clumsily wrote in ~2016 when I had not experienced those circumstances, and have now personally experienced and as such devoted a large amount of emotional energy into writing in the most powerful and sensitive way possible. Sylv Vol II doesn't pull punches, which is A Lot to write.

Frankly, I need a break from Powerful and Heavy and Emotional and Harrowing. And although both of my other possible projects feature adult themes and content, they're much less personal than Sylv. But again... I'm not in a place to get properly into those now. I frequently dip in and out of other stories and projects while writing my main novel at the time - hence why Sylv existed long before Dying Ember was finished, among other examples - but it's different when you start writing something with the knowledge and intention that this will be The Next Thing. It'll be like... Well, it'll be like acknowledging that I'm done with Sylv, that he is dead, and that it's time to move on. Which is scary and I don't love it. I still plan to write and write and write, but I need a hot minute to get my feet under me again, y'know?

So, what am I doing? I'M GLAD YOU DIDN'T ASK. This was what the post was originally going to be about, before I realised how old Sylv is and got all emotional.

• I re-watched Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency s1, and watched s2 for the first time (Netflix). 11/10 recommend. I don't typically watch much, given that both when I was studying and when I'm working in a restaurant most of my time is occupied by those, and the remainder of my time is typically split between gaming, housework, and writing f*cking novels, but oh boyzy there's only so much you can write and clean the bathroom every day
• I'm now watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time, because I never watched it as a kid and everyone touts about how it's amazing and it's been on UK Netflix for a few months. Everyone's right, it is amazing. I love Zuko too much to be healthy. This is all
• I'm watching Community, because it's easy and doesn't require much attention and is good in the background of doing art and other stuff. I watched sixty episodes in the space of a few days and then decided to take a break lol. It's not groundbreaking hilarious, but it's had a huge meme cultural impact and it's definitely funny. The meta jokes get me in a good place. I'm very worried Jeff x Annie might be endgame couple though, which I don't love, although admittedly it's better than Jeff x Britta. Obviously Troy x Abed is the best couple and OG bromance, no competition
  
• Speaking of "in the background of doing art", I blitzed through Polygon's content on YouTube long before lockdown started because I was off work with a broken foot for a month before that, and Gill & Gilbert, Monster Factory, Unraveled, and the Video Games, Explained series got me through tbh. I've now started Awful Squad because I didn't expect to like it but I wanted familiar Polygon voices and now actually I love it. Hard to focus on for extended periods exclusively, but good as background
• Speaking of "in the background of doing art", lots of art! My fine-point black pens are all nearly run down to nothing, which sucks because I use those constantly, and several of my more-used colour markers are running out, which also sucks because they're very difficult to replace (want to support my art/creating? remember i have a ko-fi!), so I'm focusing on digital art at the moment. Trying to be more positive and constructive rather than constantly tearing myself down for everything not being perfect. I've done some really neat Sylv pieces recently, which can be found exclusively on the Sylvestus Facebook page!
• Podcasts. Podcasts. Obviously podcasts. I live and breathe by podcasts. I have genuinely listened to almost everything ever produced by a McElroy or a Smirl (Sawbones, MBMBaM, TAZ, Shmanners, Wonderful!, Still Buffering, Besties, The Empty Bowl...) but also am currently on My Dad Wrote a Porno and Hello From the Magic Tavern. Taking a break from Critical Role because it turns out I tended to listen to it while doing specifically work-related activities, and... Lockdown. Furlough. Sigh.
• D&D. Love it. Ran a one-shot loosely based on the Dalish origin of Dragon Age Origins, now playing in a game every week which I haven't done in years, bangin'
• Not really been reading tbh, it was one of those periods where nothing new I read could really hold my attention and I just wasn't enthused about re-reading old stuff - just before lockdown I breezed through both The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear in just over a week, and then my reader-brain crashed from overuse so I gotta wait until the next big thing restarts it
• Gaming! I re-played Dragon Age Origins, and I've just bought Awakenings so I can do that before I re-play DA2 and Inquisition yet again. I also bought Stardew Valley which I've played to death, and continued Hollow Knight, which I started in January but then kind of lost touch with just through life interfering. I also started Mass Effect 2 the day after I finished Sylv, so that's holding my obsession at the moment. Before that, the best thing I was enjoying was Avatar: The Legend of Aang for PS2, which was far more entertaining than it had any right to be

That's... About it. For the past few months, my life has been writing from when I wake up until about 4pm, then either gaming for a few hours then putting on Community or Awful Squad while I do art until bed, or watching something properly for a few hours then gaming until bed. For the past few days, I've had a non-stop migraine so it's mostly consisted of trying to ignore that as much as possible to play ME2, or trying to nap it away. For the future... Who can say?

Sylvestus is done. I may re-read a thousand times, edit, re-write a few scenes, and continue to think about and do art of him, but his story is done. Concluded. He's dead, Jim. I want to reference the "He's dead, go away, he's dead!" bit of Bob's Burgers but I don't think there's enough of an audience who'll get it.

Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum would die on Anteria. Nothing Sylv hadn't done before.

Nothing I hadn't done before. But forreal this time.

Six dang years of my life, and I finished it on a Monday afternoon, then ate pasta and watched The Last Airbender.

Sure is something.

Removal of my Books from Amazon

Hey y'all, this ain't a fun one, so I'm gonna get straight into it.
After much consideration and debate, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw the sale of physical copies of my books from Amazon. This wasn't an easy choice to make; as I've outlined before, Amazon warehouse is my largest source of sales, though I was never happy about this. Now that I am removing my work from there, I can be more blunt, and say that when copies of my books are bought on Amazon, I get literal pennies per copy, compared to almost the full price of sale when you buy from another retailer. This sucks not just for me, but for you too, because it drove up the price of my books! If I was selling exclusively from Lulu.com, Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall and Each Separate Dying Ember would have been up to £2 cheaper for you, which I know can make a huge difference in a tight spot. I intend to drop all copies from now on to that price as soon as possible, though it will take some time as I do not have 100% control of everything on that end (Lulu is very good and i maintain most control, but as my distributor, they have management on how long it takes prices and distribution to change, nothing sinister). I have always been acutely aware that my books are a little more expensive than most people are comfortable with - if I'm in a book shop, I still make a face if a 400-page paperback is more than £11.99 - and would have had a lower price before now, except that if Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall had been any lower than its current price (£12.49), I would have been making a loss on every copy sold on Amazon. Comparatively, I will still be making a decent profit by dropping the price to £11.99 for copies sold on Lulu.com. Amazon is able to manufacture paperbacks at a lower cost than Lulu due to unsustainable ecological practice and unsafe work conditions, yet insist on taking at least £7 from every sale just in profit. This drives up the prices because they won't allow me to price my books lower on other websites (i would if i could), and allows Amazon to encourage people to buy from them rather than independent retailers because it's a "trusted household brand" and because they can offer free shipping and faster printing/delivery.

So, that's a positive of this change, and positives are good to focus on! By going completely independent, I am able to reduce the cost of all my books, past and future. I'll be blunt, I am emotionally exhausted right now from having this debate; I recently made a post on my personal Facebook page about it and I don't really want the same soapbox negativity on my writing blog, so I won't be going into much detail.
Amazon keeps unsafe work practices, drives out independent retailers to crash the economy, and its CEO is soon to become a trillionaire, paying no taxes on that whatsoever, while millions of people around the world are starving on the streets and dying in hospitals due to artificial scarcity created by the rich. Etc. etc. Shitty and negative.
If you're feeling shocked and confused right now or think I'm exaggerating, I encourage you to take a quick search online for Amazon human rights violations, unsafe work practices, warehouse deaths, etc. And I don't mean "well this article that Amazon pays for says that's not true", I mean actually look for a few different sides of the story. And if you can't be bothered, then just take my (and millions of other people's) word for it, and shop elsewhere. It takes little to no effort on your part and has a huge positive impact on other people's lives. Buying my books direct from myself or Lulu, for instance, gives me a huge step up and the chance to actually use my writing to supplement my income and be a happy person who doesn't slave away under capitalism because the only jobs available for a disabled working-class Zoology graduate are minimum-wage... Well, you know. I haven't used Amazon in almost a year, and it has had no negative impact on my life since to take that extra twenty seconds to find the same video game in CEX, household appliance in the local small-business market, and book from a more ethical retailer. However, I know that with every purchase, I am supporting the second-hand technology industry, putting food on a local person's table, or promoting sustainable book manufacture.

You might be questioning why, up on my grand soapbox, I have not made this change sooner. It's something I've grappled with myself. Part of it is moral, part of it is practical; although I make more money selling one book on Lulu than I do five on Amazon, I generally still sell more on Amazon due to its wider reach. While my books are available on such a large retailer, it can be reviewed and found randomly, whereas people never just "stumble across" Sylvestus while browsing Lulu. Every potential sale is a chance to break big, as it were, so maybe it's better to lose some money in the hopes of maybe one day a film executive coming across it in the Amazon "you might also like..." section, right?
Further, Amazon's stranglehold on book distribution described above means that I cannot remove my books from Amazon without also removing them from Barnes & Noble and Goodreads, among others. This is bad. This is bad and not fun or good. I am fine with my books being on there, and I wish they could stay there, and for a while I reasoned that it wasn't like Jeffrey Bee's-arse is actually profiting from my books so much as I am losing money...
Except that, like, he is. While my books are available on Amazon, and I promote that, Amazon is getting £7 straight to untaxed offshore accounts for every copy sold of my work. Hence, as memes go around on Facebook and Instagram about how he's making a trillion dollars while people literally die in his warehouses trying to get people's make-up and fairy lights sent to them on one-day delivery, I have made this decision.

There is a small compromise to balance the two sides I've presented, which I'll again be blunt about. Amazon Kindle currently has a stranglehold on ebooks, and like with the physical copies, I cannot make my books available to its competitors - Kobo, iBooks, and a few others - without also making it available to Kindle. Using my Kindle and buying books on it is something I am still guilty of, for cost and efficiency and to reduce carbon emissions by book manufacture etc., although I am trying to reduce that and buy second-hand physical copies or borrow from libraries where I can, or find other ways to support authors.
So, while I am removing all of my books' physical copies from Amazon (and, by unfortunate extension, other retailers except Lulu.com), all of them will still be available in ebook format for Kindle as well as iBooks and Kobo. What's my moral stand on that? Well, I look at it this way. While the issues of unsafe warehouses and human rights violations is no longer valid when it comes to digital copies of books, some money still will be going straight to the CEO's profit. But it's significantly less money than from the physical copies. Amazon still takes its significant cut, and my ebooks would be slightly cheaper if they could be sold only on Lulu, but it's way less of an issue than for the paperbacks (like £1 difference per copy sold, rather than £6). And... I get it, y'know? While it has been far easier than you'd expect to cut Amazon out of my life in most ways just by altering my shopping habits (if i can't buy in person in the ways listed above, i just go to ebay or straight to the retailers' websites and can always find the same items at the same price, knowing that the profits go straight to the business now), I just can't afford to buy a Kobo Reader right now and start using that instead. So, honestly... I haven't been comfortable with people buying physical editions of my books on Amazon for a long time, but I'm okay with people going there for ebooks. And it allows my work and name to still be available for that fantasy film exec one day to stumble across.
A jackdaw can dream, eh?

Tl;dr - due to Amazon's Just Entire Thing Right Now, I am removing the paperback editions of Each Separate Dying Ember and Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall from Amazon, and the paperback of Vol II: The Rise, anticipated to come out early 2021, will never be made available on there. As an unfortunate side effect, this means they will also be removed from other distributors. Paperback editions will now only be available direct from Lulu.com, or by emailing myself at emberfell@outlook.com. However, the ebooks of all my books will still be available on Amazon Kindle, as well as other distributors (and Lulu.com). This is a good thing for everyone, as it means that you will have to go to a different website for your paperbacks, but you will pay less money and I will get more money and the economy will be happy and we will get into The Good Place.

The only other note I have is that removal of distribution from Amazon will take 6-8 weeks from time of writing, and the price changes for my books a little longer as a consequence.

So, it's a happy thing overall! We just had to skate through some negativity to get there. Stay safe, enjoy your sustainable shopping ✌️

The Story Behind the Worst Joke in Sylvestus

There were a lot of gems in that first ill-fated draft of Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum that didn't make it into the final product; some were simply lost among almost a hundred chapters that were a special kind of hell to trek through to try and find what was worth keeping, while others had to be sacrificed in scenes that had changed order or vanished completely, context that was lost, and characters who would no longer say that thing at that time. A few of them I was genuinely sad to lose, but honestly I can't even remember any of them now, while Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall is full of new quips and one-liners (and there's a fair few in Vol II, though we'll see how many survive the editing process; many darlings must be sacrificed at the altar of pace and tone).

I am still inordinately proud of "purus powder enema", mostly because I was devastated when I had to cut it because the three stages of the gag just didn't fit together any more - only to, on a later edit, manage to slide it back in before anyone could notice and tell me not to. It's probably not even something anyone has noticed, but I deeply enjoy it as one of the few relics of that first draft to survive. But this isn't about that. That's a good joke.

This post is about a bad joke. Really bad.

It's early in Vol I; we've just been introduced to Aemilius Germanus, owner of the town's largest brothel and absolute lecher. Sylv is an extremely opinionated narrator, both giving us insight to how he judges people, and leading us to join him in his conclusions - the entire first paragraph about Aemilius tears him down (in mirror of the first paragraph about Modius Capito, which establishes him as Sylv's charismatic equal), and for the remainder of their encounter, he slaps and gropes and slurps at women and wine until our loathing for him is beaten only by Sylv's. Then, casually, he offers one of his workers to Sylv. When Sylv politely refuses:

 

  

... Listen, I'm not proud. Let me explain: it's 2011, maybe 2012. I'm, idk, fourteen. Whatever age that establishes that all parts of this story are acceptable, which probably isn't any age tbh. It's English class.

Yep, trust me: you have no idea where this story is going.

Let's say fourteen. English class. F*ckin' nerd. You see, when I started high school, I had a lot of brains and very little social skills. I was quiet because being loud got me bullied. People saw brains and they made a judgement: boring, a prude, a snitch, no fun, stick up their ass. In class activities where we were asked to write a nice thing about everyone else in the room, my name just had forty lines of "smart" written underneath it, while everyone else had "funny", "kind", "pretty", "nice hair", "good at football", "good friend". By the time I left high school, I was an absolute menace: I could get away with anything, I bled charisma, I had a furious temper, I was pretty much the first person to come out in the entire school and I was determined to make my sexuality everyone's problem, I was vastly depressed and anxious and absolutely certain that I could overcome these things by being as loud and opinionated as possible. I started high school with 0 friends and left it with 1.5, but at least I was infamous, which in my opinion at the time was better than popular. I was well-known for escapades such as claiming it was acceptable to eat babies (... there was context), throwing up in Miss Sagar's bin in front of the entire class, and biting Juliet in netball so hard that I drew blood and got banned from anything except badminton for two years. I used to read supernatural porn- sorry, adult romances in class because I was allowed to read a book if I finished the work early (which i always did - remember, i was actually still smart) and I was always seated with the ~disruptive kids~ at the back of class (in the hopes that i'd be a good influence, LOL). In Years Seven and Eight, people thought it was funny to hit me on the back of the head in the corridors, because I always jumped out of my skin - the only way to stop them was to turn around and deck them in the face, an instinct that I still have to fight today whenever someone makes me jump. Because I looked weird and I was overweight and ugly, I wasn't even allowed to exist in peace in those early years; my classmates just thought of me as the teacher's pet goody two-shoes, but total strangers from other years would physically hurt me while yelling insults, usually about my gender. Ahh, transphobia :)

The person who left that school was the same person who started it in a lot of ways, different in a few others: the main thing that changed was people's perceptions of me. It took five hard years of mental breakdowns, slapping boys full across the face in Year Eight Art & Design, and calling someone a c*nt at full volume in Geography because I had no fear of God nor teachers, but I did eventually manage to overcome that initial snap-judgement of "oh, this one is ugly and smart, they're gonna be a kiss-ass who only likes classical music and Shakespeare".

... Though it's also worth noting that I didn't shy away from my smart-ass reputation; I did profess vocally my love of Shakespeare and my perfect 100% on both RE GCSE exams, I just made sure everyone also knew I only listened to heavy rock.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that there is a very vast difference in those perceptions. And there had to be some middle-stages, where people were slowly coming to realise that I wasn't just a prudish smart kid; I was an asshole prudish smart kid.

... I wasn't even prudish, I've had some slutty periods, I just didn't appreciate boys literally trying to sexually assault me when I was thirteen in the name of "being cool", which was generally considered to be the same thing. Ahh, rape culture :)

One of those key moments, though, came in what I am now certain based on hazy memories was Year Nine. We were our English teacher's first class since she graduated. I had the biggest gayest crush on her I've ever had; I'd just watched the lesbian sex scene in Black Swan and I had some Very Significant Confused Feelings, and I mostly expressed these by being a sassy sh*t to her, a flirting technique I maintain to this day.

We were learning how to write... Travel articles, maybe? We were put into groups of three, sent to the computer room (do schools still have those?? One computer room per building where only about 50% of the computers have, at any one time, a chair, working monitor, keyboard, and mouse? The teacher never knew how to fix stuff and there were two techies for the entire school who were constantly on call so you either learned how to troubleshoot basic computer issues yourself or just sat for an hour doodling in the back of your book because there were no free working computers? Did i just go to a really, really bad school?), and told to pick a travel destination we'd been to or wanted to go to, research it, and make a brochure for it in Microsoft Publisher.

I was put in a group with two girls who were close friends who I knew vaguely and wanted to like, one of whom I would later bite in PE. I was at this point used to being gently mocked in group projects, and until now had been fairly willing to take it in silence, if it meant that, even if I ended up doing all the work, we would at least hand in a decent project.

The girls looked at each other slyly as we found a mostly-working computer and crowded around it. I knew something was coming and braced myself to smile through it.

"So, where do you think we should write about?" I asked politely, keen to just get on with the dang thing.

"How about the Red Light District?" one of the girls asked. They both erupted into giggles which said clearly that they had planned this in advance.

"Sure," I said, opening a fresh Publisher document and typing RED LIGHT DISTRICT in the title.

I will never forget the look on their faces as I did that. Awe. Terror. The realisation that their bluff was being called by the person they had least expected to have any cards. Recall, I hadn't done most of the things listed above at this point; they still considered me to be quiet, intelligent, boring, and easy to pick on. They had expected me to squawk and blush, or maybe gasp and clutch at my crucifix and say a quick prayer for their souls - and instead, I had run with it? Even typed it onto the document?

I was daring them to back down, and they tried, spluttering, "Wait, no - we can't--"

"Why not?" I asked, turning away from the keyboard to look them dead in the eyes, first one, then the other.

Silence. If they admitted they knew how inappropriate it was, then the entire affair fell apart: they couldn't be considered more prudish than this ugly motherf*cker. So they had to go through with it and hope that I backed down first.

Heeeere's the thing. I... Didn't actually... Know. What the Red Light District was. Ahem. I knew it was something inappropriate and dirty because of the way they reacted when I agreed, but honestly, in the moment she said "How about the Red Light District?", I had no idea what I was agreeing to. My poker face was entirely sincere.

Of course, I did later figure out what it was - maybe I picked it up in our discussions, or when we tried to search for images to go into the brochure and all of them were blacklisted by the school's censors, or I might have just Googled it when I got home that night, I don't remember.

But I was also drunk on that feeling, the moment their faces had frozen and then fallen as I agreed and typed it into the document. Like them, I couldn't back out now.

So I didn't. We returned to the computer room next lesson, and I boldly opened up the document, and while they sat there aghast, determinedly typed out three columns of absolute cringe-worthy filth. It was a masterpiece of innuendo. Nothing was explicitly mentioned, but it was bold as a 14 y/o whose sex education was Game of Thrones could write. I don't remember most of it - in fact, I only remember one line of it. The end of the opening paragraph.

"Whatever your schedule, the Red Light District has something, and someone, to offer; you can spend a whole day on these streets, or you can be in and out... As fast as you can be in and out!"

It was simultaneously the best and worst thing I had ever written - and I was already most of the way through The Red Prince.

Then, of course, came the moment of judgement: this was a class assignment that we still had to print off and hand in. At the start of Year Seven, I had forgotten a piece of homework and been literally screamed at by a maniacal History teacher until I had cried, and had proceeded to have nightmares about her that woke me with panic attacks for the rest of the year. By the end of Year Eleven, I would be walking into classes and loudly declaring that I hadn't done the homework so don't bother asking. This was... In the very middle of those.

Which is to say, when the English teacher walked over and asked how we were doing, the two girls managed to do remarkably accurate impressions of the computer room carpet. I turned with a wide smile and said we were doing great, a low sick nauseous weight in my chest. Could they suspend me for this?

"Let's have a look..." she began, leaning forward - and froze.

To be entirely fair, I think most other teachers would have given me detention at that point, at the very least. Thankfully, in an event that would become pivotal in my growth as a student, she was determined to be a cool teacher, she was in her first teaching job, we were her least problematic class, I was (at that point) not an especially problematic student, and she already been marking my work for several months, so she knew what I was capable of.

"Do you think that's appropriate?" she asked, voice cracking with a badly-concealed laugh.

"You told us to review a place," I pointed out pragmatically.

"Yeah! But not-- UGH! 'In and out... As fast as you can be'-- YOU CAN'T WRITE THAT!"

"It's not explicit." My voice was confident, but my stomach was butterflies. Were it any other teacher, or in front of any other students, I might have dropped to my knees and wept for forgiveness, but I was caught in a perfect storm of gay feelings, bravado, and the two girls' awe-struck expressions. "None of it is explicit."

"Are you seriously going to hand that in?"

A trap? Maybe, but no time to back out now. Angelic polite smile time. "Yes."

"Would you let the headmaster read it? Are you just doing this because you think I'm a ledge?* Or would you hand it in to any teacher? Would you print that off and hand it in to me right now if you knew I was going to show it to the headmaster?"

... do or die. No backing out now. If you break, your blossoming reputation is in tatters. What do you value, your education or your reputation?

"Yes."

She groaned again, threw her hands in the air, and walked away, muttering, "You're going to get me fired..." as she did so.

We finished it in silence as I tried not to cry. We printed it out and shyly hid it between other people's work on her desk. It mysteriously found its way into the shredder and never saw the light of either the headmaster's office or indeed anyone else's eyes ever again.

I remembered, always, what I had done. I held it in my heart, that moment, all the promise it had held, the birth of the person who was willing to stick to a joke even when it got them in trouble. This attitude would earn me plenty of scoldings and marks lost later, but right then, it was worth it. I am no longer the kind of person who gets into such p*ssing matches, who will wreak their revenge on wrongdoers and bring violence to the netball court in the name of reputation. I will tear down a f*cker when they need it, but on the whole, my values are those of forgiveness and good intentions. The winner of a p*ssing match is not the one who p*sses hardest, longest, or most accurately, but rather the one who sits patiently on the sidelines, takes a photo of all the people p*ssing in the street, and sends it to the council so that they can all be fined.

But that person needed to exist before I could grow. My tongue needed sharpening before I learned to sheath it except when necessary; my jokes needed to be tested before I could find the right audience. I may now write sarcastic prose and scathing poems about entitled men, but at the time the only thing that stopped a fifteen year old boy from grabbing my breast was to bite him until I drew blood.

So I snuck that line into Sylvestus. As a reminder of the person who wrote The Red Prince very badly so that one day they could write Sylvestus very well. As a shout-out to the person who suffered and snarled so that they could grow. And, of course, as a tribute to an English teacher who definitely should not have had to deal with that shit for three years, but who did, and nurtured a young writer as she did so.

May we all forgive the people we were before, and shape the way for the people we will become.

* early 2010s uk school slang; ledge, short for legend, a teacher who lets you get away with anything, brings in unhealthy food as reward for good behaviour, or is liable to perform "cool" stunts in class; high praise usually reserved for science teachers with access to bunsen burners and explosive chemicals