atlas shrugged
kintsugi
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
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responses!
Which, granted, isn't a river going through the entire cave, but some creative license there. Atlas is running on the river banks because the idea of slow-moving bodies of water not having shallow river banks doesn't make sense to me.
Fixed the typos.
bugs think alike tbh
this is an actual plot point and I'm extremely glad that it came across in their characters this early
except the grammar errors those are gonna stay forever; you just have the benefit of reading after Pav and Flaze put me through the wringer
The original intent when I started writing was to have Nara be this secretive, walled off narrator who paradoxically is retelling her entire story while giving a ton of detail on everything around her except for herself (and maybe her surface-level thoughts, which typically amount to "I don't want to die" and "sarcastic quip #28"). I thought this would be a neat gimmick because she's inherently distrustful and only has even more reason to be distrustful after the story starts off, and while from a theoretical standpoint I still think that's an interesting concept, I never fully considered how utterly damning that is from a first-person narration standpoint. And there are a couple of details of her character that are completely critical, and the explanations for her ridiculous sarcasm quips/crippling fear of death are intertwined hardcore in the plot, but looking back on things now I do understand that they inherently aren't enough to carry a character this far. On some level I planned on relying on her team to make the story more interesting, but even then, I don't think it was enough.
Moving on from here, I dunno. I've also done a lot of thinking on this, but I'm not sure if I completely agree with you on your fix (adding more subtle details about her) -- I dropped some references to her schooling/past friends but I don't think they helped much, either. To me, the key thing is that she doesn't yet have any sort of motivation that lasts for more than a chapter arc -- get a halfway decent starter + make prize money from training gets scrapped for don't get killed in this instant gets scrapped for go undercover in the woods and hope no one finds me gets scrapped for don't die in Sprout Tower, with the vague underlying motivation of "gotta get back to Goldenrod to get back home" that at this point is so buried down that I don't think anyone would've even listed that as critical.
...I hope that that's a more accurate representation of your frustrations with her character, because those are the ones that I've been feeling, and the ones that I've been primarily rewriting this arc around.
Oh boy.
So we spent a lot of time talking to the man with the funny hair who smelled like he was sad. There was an old man next to him who smelled like he was dying of colon cancer but didn’t know it yet. I didn’t like that smell. Master spent the time glaring at them with her eyes all narrowed like she was trying to be fierce, so I puffed up the furs on the back of my neck to look bigger.
I do not think anyone noticed.
Now, Master huffs and storms away, muttering something, and Gaia flap-flips after her. Icarus and Rousseau start to follow.
I want to go too!
“No,” Master says sternly, and I freeze guiltily where I am. “Atlas, stay.”
We have practiced the ‘stay’ before. I do not like the stay. Nothing good happens when I do the stay. Last time, everyone almost blew up and a talking onion teleported me into a tornado.
{I will protect you!} I say, huffing out my chest to make it look very big. I like protecting people. I am very strong. Gaia is also very strong. She has freaky-freaky psychic powers now and hasn’t figured out a way to tell anyone. She told me once because she said she could tell that I was also very strong, and she wanted to know how I was so good at hiding it. I told her it was very easy; you just had to spend your time thinking with your heart instead of your head.
She said that didn’t help very much and asked me not to tell anyone. So here I am not telling anyone.
“Atlas,” Master repeats sternly. “Stay.”
So this is how I ended up sitting in the smelly-man’s house for a very long time.
Oh boy.
I spend the first chunk of time pacing around the house anxiously. The smelly man has a strange house. It is covered in tools and sawdust and little bits of wood shavings that smell like food.
I eat one.
It is not food.
I very gently deposit it back on the ground. Maybe no one noticed. I look up carefully and saw the man staring at me, so I pretend that I am just sniffing around like a good boy and that I absolutely had no tried to eat his not-food.
I think he fell for it.
Oh boy.
The smelly man has a workshop full of magical balls. They are magic because if a human picks them up and throws them, they are full of magical energy that makes them impossibly fun to chase.
Unfortunately I cannot throw them myself. Throwing is hard when you don’t have thumbs. Also I am not magic so they do not work for me. Making balls magic is a technique all humans have, just like all butterfree can fly and all sentret can puff up very big to tell me to leave them alone.
I wonder where the other houndour are.
Anyway. I tried convincing the smelly man to make the ball magical but he told me to go away.
Oh boy.
The next thing to do when you are anxious and alone in a house is to conduct a shoe heist. This is a very difficult endeavor because humans are very particular about their shoes and very good at finding them, but if it succeeds it is perfect.
The shoe heist has three easy steps.
First, you must find the shoe.
Then, you must hide the shoe.
Finally, you must pretend that you have not executed steps one and two. If the shoe heist is successfully orchestrated, the human will be unable to go outside ever again and therefore will never leave you.
I have thought through this plan and see no flaws in it whatsoever.
Oh boy.
Update on the shoe heist.
It does not work if Master has already left the house.
It also does not work if you are not staying in Master’s house.
The man named Kurt is very mad at me, but I cannot remember where I put his shoe.
Oh boy.
{Iris,} I say at last. {I have come to the only possible conclusion. Master is dead and she is never coming back.}
I forgot to mention. Iris is waiting with me here too! She is not one of the cool kids today. That is good. Last time she was one of the cool kids she got exploded out a window. This was before I got teleported into a tornado. She doesn’t like talking about it.
{Atlas,} Iris responds. {She’s been gone for five minutes.}
I don’t know what a minute is or why there have been five of them, but it has been long enough that we should all give up.
Oh boy.
I spent the next five minutes staring at the door. It was a very ugly door.
Sometimes I would hear people passing by outside. That was nice. I hope they had a good time.
I am not having a good time.
Oh boy.
I am having a good time!
The old man left a piece of food under the cabinets. This is excellent.
The cabinets are shorter than me and therefore I cannot fit all the way. This is less excellent.
{Iris, could you help me?}
{No.}
I like Iris. She is very smart.
I decide to turn my head sideways so that I can shove my snout under the gap and try to get the snack. I like snacks. Master gives me lots and would give me more if she weren’t gone forever right now. My favorite snack is peanut butter. Sometimes when Master is not looking I will sneak into her backpack and eat it all and feel guilty afterward.
Oof.
My snout is too short.
You win this time, cabinet.
Oh boy.
I had another great idea. I was going to burn the cabinet out of the way to get to the snack.
If you are smarter than I am, which Iris was, you may have already noticed the critical flaw in this plan.
Did you know that snacks melt when you light them on fire?
Kurt is very unhappy with me now.
Oh boy.
{Atlas. Hey, Atlas. Atlas.} Iris is sharpening her claws or something. I don’t know. When I look over there, she’s sitting on one of Kurt’s fancy workbenches, her tail flicking back and forth as she watches me.
{What are you doing? Can I join in?}
{Yes, okay!} She sounds so excited! She never sounds excited! {This game is called Standing Very Still and Making No Noise.}
{Okay!} I bound up to her and knock over a bucket of scraps. {How do we play?}
Her face contorts in annoyance but her voice is happy so she must be happy too. {First you must Stand Very Still.}
I can do that! {Okay!}
{And now you must Make No Noise.}
I can do that too! {Okay!}
{You just made noise. The point is not to make noise.}
{Okay!}
In the corner of the room I can see a piece of wood shavings that I must’ve missed the first time when I tested all the wood shavings to see if they were food or not. I need to go check it out.
{Atlas, are you listening?}
{Yes!}
{You aren’t Standing Very Still.}
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.
Oh boy.
I do not like this game.
Oh boy.
I stopped playing Iris’s game.
Oh boy.
I have had a very busy day today. It is time…
For a gentle…
Snooze.
Oh boy.
Sometimes when I fall asleep I go to a different world. This is called dreaming. You are supposed to dream about the best times of your life, so naturally when I dream I dream about what I do every day.
Oh boy.
Snoozing is a very good way to pass the time. I am sure that all day has passed and Master will be home soon to do more edgy things. Soon, soon! Imagine if all we did was hang around inside all day and talk to each other and have fun and get to know each other. I would get many belly rubs and maybe scritches beneath my ear the way I like them. It would be a very good time.
Maybe that’s what we will do when Master gets back! That would be nice.
{Iris, how long has it been?}
{A month.}
{What??}
{No, let me check.} Iris pauses for a moment. {Yeah, it's actually been more like a month and a half since she was back. That's awkward. She'll probably come back eventually.}
She does this sometimes. That's okay. I will be a good boy and she will come back.
Oh boy.
Soon.
soon my pretty, soon.I spotted every single one of those references and hate the fact there weren't more and that I didn't get a shitty reference.
Actually, nah, I did mean bodily; he's throwing his entire body into the wave / I swear this is a real wordDid you mean boldly?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh, well at least Atlas is finally getting the hang of some tricks, I wonder when he'll be able to play dead.
He is, admittedly, one of the only things I remember standing out in Azalea.I gotta say, I think this is the first story I've seen where Bugsy gets so much attention, he tends to be a smudge in every Johto story with most of them tending to keep him as a down to earth experienced trainer, that is otherwise just really dully and unremarkable when compared to every other gymleader shown, even the games kind of ignore him so it's interesting to see him being treated as such a renowned trainer and strategist here. The other thing that jumped at me is how much you aged him up, especially considering that one of Bugsy's gimmicks is how young he looks (and how short he is).
Rip. And with the description, Rip. I imagined them going through this part of the cave:Description-wise there's two things I can comment on, at first it's a bit hard to tell where the characters are exactly, maybe I just didn't read right but when I first started I thought they were in the forest by a lake or something, then I thought they were just resting by a lake in a cave before realizing that they were actually traveling on Lanturns. Also, I kind of forgot what a Lanturn was for a moment...I ended up confusing it with a lampent and had soooo many questions.
Which, granted, isn't a river going through the entire cave, but some creative license there. Atlas is running on the river banks because the idea of slow-moving bodies of water not having shallow river banks doesn't make sense to me.
yeah lol I added in a lot more since it's been almost a calendar year since I updated, but reading them sequentially probably makes that a lot less fun. Thanks, doc![/QUOTE]The other issue to bring up in that regard is that we're constantly reminded about the situation Nara is in. I'll give you a pass on this since this is the first chapter in over a year (thank you very much) and readers need a catch up, but it's just something for you to keep in mind.
ty senpaihaha I get two clauses fuck you fellow journeyfic authors
Fixed the typos.
HEH. Everyone gets a naming scheme and some of them get the badass water dancer.The First Bug of Azalea. You might have made a bit of a misstep, there. Much as I enjoy the reference I wonder whether I'll be able to take the scyther seriously now.
Thanks!Thought I'd just bring this up, but I do like the unusual language you use here and there. And no-one ever calls you loquacious for it, damn you.
this chapter was not a full chapter in my original outline -- I experimented with fleshing it out based on people's (/your) feedback that we only see the grimdark edgy parts of the travelling, and I agree with you that there could be more of that in this fic. Thank you for your previous advice + I'm glad you liked it here!Now onto the stuff that actually matters. First things first, I like the indulgence in some upbeat travelling - I've harped on about it before, but it's the good moments that ought to remind you of why you should give a damn about the world in the first place. To an extent that's what's missing from A Song of Ice and Fire, and from Breaking Bad.
<3And on that note I think it's worth pointing out how much I really do like Gaia. Not just because she's fundamentally nice and starts off very much the underdog and is the persistent warm heart of the story. She's unusual for one of your characters. In a way Bugsy reminds me of this all the more - there are moments to his speech that sound very familiar, with the casual threats and the tired, matter-of-fact tone. Whereas Gaia doesn't have a sarcastic cell in her chitin, takes the joys of life as they come, and seems determined not to let cynicism rule her thinking.
bugs think alike tbh
this is an actual plot point and I'm extremely glad that it came across in their characters this early
the good things i can tell you is that all of those things come backReview for the last two years:
This is all a fine story, really. I enjoyed reading it and I thought that it was one of the best fics currently active on the forum. So while this review might lean to the concritical, just know that it doesn't exactly reflect my feelings as a reader.
What the story has going for it most:
-Silver as either a horrifically cruel person, a self-centered asshole who doesn't consider anyone else, a scared kid or all three
-Possession plotline was fun
-Celebi was adorbs and I loved her
-There were no grammar errors to calmly point out.
My interest in Nara's starting to draw down. Don't get me wrong, she's a fun enough character and I think she has her quirks but. When she's not in mortal danger or dealing with someone more interesting, I can lose interest in the story. And I think that's because she's never /quite/ been humanized. Outside of her floor (more on that in a second), the most we really know about her (or that I remember about her at this point, at least) is that she's kind of sarcastic and has horrible luck.
I think this is entirely accurate, and it's something that's made struggle with writing SRBS a bit more as of recently.This is an interesting point ... and I could see some argument for saying that TUPpy's humanisation ought to be ambiguous, given developments in the Violet arc. But I at least agree with Athena in that it wouldn't be a bad idea for us to see more of what TUPpy was before the business with the Xatu, for basically the same reason that Gaia is a good idea. Her world has been turned upside down, but Athena's right, we don't really know much about what that world was
The original intent when I started writing was to have Nara be this secretive, walled off narrator who paradoxically is retelling her entire story while giving a ton of detail on everything around her except for herself (and maybe her surface-level thoughts, which typically amount to "I don't want to die" and "sarcastic quip #28"). I thought this would be a neat gimmick because she's inherently distrustful and only has even more reason to be distrustful after the story starts off, and while from a theoretical standpoint I still think that's an interesting concept, I never fully considered how utterly damning that is from a first-person narration standpoint. And there are a couple of details of her character that are completely critical, and the explanations for her ridiculous sarcasm quips/crippling fear of death are intertwined hardcore in the plot, but looking back on things now I do understand that they inherently aren't enough to carry a character this far. On some level I planned on relying on her team to make the story more interesting, but even then, I don't think it was enough.
Moving on from here, I dunno. I've also done a lot of thinking on this, but I'm not sure if I completely agree with you on your fix (adding more subtle details about her) -- I dropped some references to her schooling/past friends but I don't think they helped much, either. To me, the key thing is that she doesn't yet have any sort of motivation that lasts for more than a chapter arc -- get a halfway decent starter + make prize money from training gets scrapped for don't get killed in this instant gets scrapped for go undercover in the woods and hope no one finds me gets scrapped for don't die in Sprout Tower, with the vague underlying motivation of "gotta get back to Goldenrod to get back home" that at this point is so buried down that I don't think anyone would've even listed that as critical.
...I hope that that's a more accurate representation of your frustrations with her character, because those are the ones that I've been feeling, and the ones that I've been primarily rewriting this arc around.
there's a plot-critical reason that I picked this specific family dynamic. It doesn't help much for me to say that there's a reason without giving the reason, but I hope that it'll at least convince you that I didn't pick it for the easy pity points or somethingAs for her floor, there's a sort of a double-edged sword with going into the abusive parents backstory to round her out. To start with, it's... not particularly uncommon (Pixie/Skysong, Avis, Sai, Alaska (if we count severe neglect), Evelina Joy (if we're counting emotional/social abuse, etc.)) So, it's not really a particularly unique backstory in and of itself without more little details to support it. But it also can provide an emotional core if PTSD and whatnot are handled well, so there's that.
ilu mom thank youI'm tired. Might tell you more in chat later.
___________________________________________________________________________
if you know me at all you know this isn’t chapter xviii. atlas shrugs
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
So we spent a lot of time talking to the man with the funny hair who smelled like he was sad. There was an old man next to him who smelled like he was dying of colon cancer but didn’t know it yet. I didn’t like that smell. Master spent the time glaring at them with her eyes all narrowed like she was trying to be fierce, so I puffed up the furs on the back of my neck to look bigger.
I do not think anyone noticed.
Now, Master huffs and storms away, muttering something, and Gaia flap-flips after her. Icarus and Rousseau start to follow.
I want to go too!
“No,” Master says sternly, and I freeze guiltily where I am. “Atlas, stay.”
We have practiced the ‘stay’ before. I do not like the stay. Nothing good happens when I do the stay. Last time, everyone almost blew up and a talking onion teleported me into a tornado.
{I will protect you!} I say, huffing out my chest to make it look very big. I like protecting people. I am very strong. Gaia is also very strong. She has freaky-freaky psychic powers now and hasn’t figured out a way to tell anyone. She told me once because she said she could tell that I was also very strong, and she wanted to know how I was so good at hiding it. I told her it was very easy; you just had to spend your time thinking with your heart instead of your head.
She said that didn’t help very much and asked me not to tell anyone. So here I am not telling anyone.
“Atlas,” Master repeats sternly. “Stay.”
So this is how I ended up sitting in the smelly-man’s house for a very long time.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
I spend the first chunk of time pacing around the house anxiously. The smelly man has a strange house. It is covered in tools and sawdust and little bits of wood shavings that smell like food.
I eat one.
It is not food.
I very gently deposit it back on the ground. Maybe no one noticed. I look up carefully and saw the man staring at me, so I pretend that I am just sniffing around like a good boy and that I absolutely had no tried to eat his not-food.
I think he fell for it.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
The smelly man has a workshop full of magical balls. They are magic because if a human picks them up and throws them, they are full of magical energy that makes them impossibly fun to chase.
Unfortunately I cannot throw them myself. Throwing is hard when you don’t have thumbs. Also I am not magic so they do not work for me. Making balls magic is a technique all humans have, just like all butterfree can fly and all sentret can puff up very big to tell me to leave them alone.
I wonder where the other houndour are.
Anyway. I tried convincing the smelly man to make the ball magical but he told me to go away.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
The next thing to do when you are anxious and alone in a house is to conduct a shoe heist. This is a very difficult endeavor because humans are very particular about their shoes and very good at finding them, but if it succeeds it is perfect.
The shoe heist has three easy steps.
First, you must find the shoe.
Then, you must hide the shoe.
Finally, you must pretend that you have not executed steps one and two. If the shoe heist is successfully orchestrated, the human will be unable to go outside ever again and therefore will never leave you.
I have thought through this plan and see no flaws in it whatsoever.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
Update on the shoe heist.
It does not work if Master has already left the house.
It also does not work if you are not staying in Master’s house.
The man named Kurt is very mad at me, but I cannot remember where I put his shoe.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
{Iris,} I say at last. {I have come to the only possible conclusion. Master is dead and she is never coming back.}
I forgot to mention. Iris is waiting with me here too! She is not one of the cool kids today. That is good. Last time she was one of the cool kids she got exploded out a window. This was before I got teleported into a tornado. She doesn’t like talking about it.
{Atlas,} Iris responds. {She’s been gone for five minutes.}
I don’t know what a minute is or why there have been five of them, but it has been long enough that we should all give up.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
I spent the next five minutes staring at the door. It was a very ugly door.
Sometimes I would hear people passing by outside. That was nice. I hope they had a good time.
I am not having a good time.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
I am having a good time!
The old man left a piece of food under the cabinets. This is excellent.
The cabinets are shorter than me and therefore I cannot fit all the way. This is less excellent.
{Iris, could you help me?}
{No.}
I like Iris. She is very smart.
I decide to turn my head sideways so that I can shove my snout under the gap and try to get the snack. I like snacks. Master gives me lots and would give me more if she weren’t gone forever right now. My favorite snack is peanut butter. Sometimes when Master is not looking I will sneak into her backpack and eat it all and feel guilty afterward.
Oof.
My snout is too short.
You win this time, cabinet.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
I had another great idea. I was going to burn the cabinet out of the way to get to the snack.
If you are smarter than I am, which Iris was, you may have already noticed the critical flaw in this plan.
Did you know that snacks melt when you light them on fire?
Kurt is very unhappy with me now.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
{Atlas. Hey, Atlas. Atlas.} Iris is sharpening her claws or something. I don’t know. When I look over there, she’s sitting on one of Kurt’s fancy workbenches, her tail flicking back and forth as she watches me.
{What are you doing? Can I join in?}
{Yes, okay!} She sounds so excited! She never sounds excited! {This game is called Standing Very Still and Making No Noise.}
{Okay!} I bound up to her and knock over a bucket of scraps. {How do we play?}
Her face contorts in annoyance but her voice is happy so she must be happy too. {First you must Stand Very Still.}
I can do that! {Okay!}
{And now you must Make No Noise.}
I can do that too! {Okay!}
{You just made noise. The point is not to make noise.}
{Okay!}
In the corner of the room I can see a piece of wood shavings that I must’ve missed the first time when I tested all the wood shavings to see if they were food or not. I need to go check it out.
{Atlas, are you listening?}
{Yes!}
{You aren’t Standing Very Still.}
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
I do not like this game.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
I stopped playing Iris’s game.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
I have had a very busy day today. It is time…
For a gentle…
Snooze.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
Sometimes when I fall asleep I go to a different world. This is called dreaming. You are supposed to dream about the best times of your life, so naturally when I dream I dream about what I do every day.
___________________________________________________________________________
Oh boy.
Snoozing is a very good way to pass the time. I am sure that all day has passed and Master will be home soon to do more edgy things. Soon, soon! Imagine if all we did was hang around inside all day and talk to each other and have fun and get to know each other. I would get many belly rubs and maybe scritches beneath my ear the way I like them. It would be a very good time.
Maybe that’s what we will do when Master gets back! That would be nice.
{Iris, how long has it been?}
{A month.}
{What??}
{No, let me check.} Iris pauses for a moment. {Yeah, it's actually been more like a month and a half since she was back. That's awkward. She'll probably come back eventually.}
She does this sometimes. That's okay. I will be a good boy and she will come back.
Oh boy.
Soon.
___________________________________________________________________________
some cheerful crack; a real chapter is coming soon-ish
much inspire from the twitter THOUGHTS OF DOG, which is overall wholesome and lovely
also much inspire from my real dog, who is a real fucking goofball/
much inspire from the twitter THOUGHTS OF DOG, which is overall wholesome and lovely
also much inspire from my real dog, who is a real fucking goofball/
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