Take Tetra for Trilly-- Word Thief

[Robyn]

-is loving absolutely all of this-

new life goal: kick someone in the sternum so hard it propels them off a gondola

[Jayeee]

Prospero is so much fun to read about!! =D I'm really enjoying the excerpts you're posting. This sounds like it's such an awesome story both to read and to write. YaY! =D

[Trilly (18426 words)]

Nov 4, 2011 8:05:32 GMT -5 Robyn said:

-is loving absolutely all of this-

new life goal: kick someone in the sternum so hard it propels them off a gondola

I'm really glad people seem to be enjoying this. ^^ It makes me feel a lot better about the entire self-indulgent shenanigan this is in actuality. XD

I think that is a noble goal to have in life. =)

Nov 4, 2011 17:42:19 GMT -5 Jayeee said:

Prospero is so much fun to read about!! =D I'm really enjoying the excerpts you're posting. This sounds like it's such an awesome story both to read and to write. YaY! =D

I am really enjoying this story, so I'm glad that you are too! ^^ (And I'll admit I do like picking out excerpts to post as well!)


... So speaking of self-indugence, here's a sketch of Giovanni Giovanni and Antonia de Luca I drew some months ago. =) I did introduce Gio yesterday, and I have scanner access right now, so here they are. My lovely not-so-bad antagonists.

I admit that I have a soft spot for them. Particularly for Gio.

SPOILER: Click to show

[Trilly (18426 words)]

Oh, dear. I have a conversation here in which relatively minor points are established and there's not a lot of other meaningful content. It's kind of awful, but sort of funny so here...

SPOILER: Click to show

They had been seated at a table at one of Gina’s favourite restaurants, out on a raised patio overlooking the canal and the square they had just left. At this height, the smell of the water could not be detected, and there was a fresh, cool breeze that kept the air from feeling too stagnant.

Too bad the company was so awful.

Before the three of them had so much as ordered their drinks, Prospero had decided that he would definitely swing Rue around by the hair and throw him off the patio the first moment Gina looked away.

Prospero and Rue had been positioned across from each other at the table, and they had been collaboratively working on forming a professional sport based on trying to kill a man with death glares.

“See, isn’t this nice?” Gina said, examining a drinks menu while keeping one eye on her companions at all times. Prospero had always so admired her talent for multitasking. “I’m sure we’ll be able to get this little misunderstanding straightened out in no time. Order whatever you’d like-- I’m paying and money is certainly no object. I suppose it’s only fair, since a great deal of responsibility for this little altercation falls to me.”

“I assure you that most of the blame should rightfully fall to the gondola-tipping terror sitting across from me, but I do appreciate the thought, Gina dear,” Prospero said, earning himself an extremely nasty look from Rue. “Although I would like to know what you’ve been up to consorting with this little monster and not breathing a word about it to me.”

Gina rolled her eyes. “Yes, Prospero. I have friends other than you. I feel like I shouldn’t even be talking about this because it shouldn’t have bearing in our conversations, but you do not need to know everything I do and everyone I do it with. Don’t you dare pout, either--Lord, I never imagined I’d have to explain this to you past the age of thirteen. Sometimes, Prospero, there are things people just don’t want to share with absolutely everyone they know.”

“Oh, but I beg to differ,” Prospero flashed a vaguely carnivorous smile. “You know that my job is going to look for the things people don’t want to talk about? How could I possibly resist finding out the identity of your mysterious love interest?”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost my appetite just listening to this idiot,” Rue said, pushing his chair out. “Can I go now?”

“No, you can’t,” Gina snapped, and Rue slid back into his chair. “And Prospero, why do you automatically assume that Rue and I are a couple?”

“Darius said--”

“Oh, Darius said . I might’ve known. How many times in the past have you flipped out and gone on an ill-advised and potentially massively humiliating wild goose chase that began with the words Darius said?” Gina asked. “For the record, Rue and I are just friends. We talk to each other while I’m painting and he’s on break from his gondola work. We’re both not from Fierezza originally and Rue’s pretty new here, so I’ve been kind of helping him out where I can.”

“You did neglect to mention your boss was actually the worst man alive though, Gina,” Rue said with narrowed eyes.

“Yes, well. You never asked, did you?”

“Gina, why are you agreeing with him?” Prospero asked balefully, and was sadly ignored.

[Rikku]

I forgot to say how awesome that last snippet was. xD That last snippet was awesome. I'd kick Prospero out of my gondola too.

And it was Rue that did that? Even cooler if it was. <3 And hee, that's fun. Group interaction! Bickering! Spiteful bickering! <3 People insulting Prospero! I think I love people insulting Prospero. I mean, I love Prospero, so I don't know why I love people insulting him. But I so do.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

Eee thanks, Rikku! =D Yes, it was Rue who kicked Prospero off the boat, although he isn't mentioned by name until the third chapter.

I'm glad you like the bickering, since there'll probably be a lot more of it. ^^ I admit I like people insulting Prospero too, since he's so full of himself and needs to be knocked off of his imaginary podium once in awhile. He pretty much deserves all of the insults, too.

But I love Prospero.

Another snippet! This one won't make sense without a bit of background, but suffice it to say that Rue used his knack to help "jog Prospero's memory" about what he did wrong in the past. So now we get to see little!Prospero and little!Rue antics.

SPOILER: Click to show

Were his eyes deceiving him, or was his younger self wandering off in the direction of a younger-looking cliff-dweller? The other child--a boy--was reading a book on an ivy-covered half wall a little bit away from the general bustle of the crowd.

Prospero stumbled off after him, stomach clenching a bit.

Suddenly this was all seeming a bit too familiar.

“Hey,” young Prospero said, approaching the other boy and hopping up on the half-wall next to him without being invited. “What are you doing?”

The boy regarded him with a pair of increasingly familiar grey eyes set in an increasingly familiar expression of disdain. “Reading.”

Prospero knew that nothing good could possibly come of the situation and kind of wanted to go up to his past self and shake him, telling him that he could probably save himself a dip in the canal and hours of humiliation in the future by cutting his losses and not annoying the creepy-eyed kid. Unfortunately, Prospero had already established that he couldn’t contact the people in this... hallucination? Memory?

So as much as he’d like to do something, there wasn’t really anything to be done but keep calm and watch this thing play out.

His past self, the stupid kid, was clearly not prepared to take no for an answer. “I’m Prospero. Prospero de Luca. Bet you didn’t know that the de Lucas are almost the most important family in the city.”

“That’s nice,” the dark haired boy said without looking up.

“We’re also really really rich,” Prospero added hopefully. “Daddy says we’re actually richer than the Duke,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “So the Duke is jealous but he can’t show it because he needs it to look like he’s friends with us for sol... solideriety’s sake. Or else there would be trouble and people might die.”

This time, the boy didn’t even bother to respond. He just turned a page, looking vaguely annoyed.

“Someday, though, I’m going to be the head of the family, ‘cause I’m the oldest boy. My big sister Antonia had a big fight with daddy a couple of weeks ago because she thinks she should get to do it, but it’s stupid and she can’t because she’s a girl,” Prospero said, summoning all the superiority in his ten-year-old body. “I have a brother too and he’s jealous of me but he can’t be the leader either because he’s stupid and a crybaby. But I’d be a great leader for the family. We could beat the Duke if we wanted to, when I’m the head of the family.”

Still no answer.

“So...” young Prospero said, looking slightly unsure now that he’d apparently run out of worthwhile things to talk about. “Do you want to be my friend?”

The boy finally looked at him, but it was with a somewhat incredulous look on his face.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

So I totally miss writing yesterday, and spend today reading all about the marvels of arsenic poisoning.

As it turn out though, the arsenic poisoning stuff was exactly what I need for the next part of my story, and as a result I now kind of have plot-related ideas. It even almost makes historical sense, how crazy is that?

Really crazy, considering this story. XD Ah, well. Time to write some more, I guess.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

Bluh, two days with no new words, and I won't have a lot of time today, either. And today we're also supposed to hit the halfway point, argh. It's not happening.

But I will work on it today when I go home, and hopefully I'll at least have today's worth of writing done by the time I have to go to my night class.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

I so ridiculously far behind that I'm going for something like five thousand words per day or more. >__> Don't really know if I'll finish anymore. I just got stuck in the scene I was working on and I stopped enjoying writing it and I got caught up in other things instead. I'll try, though. I still really like the idea and the characters so maybe I'll get lucky and hit a spot where the going will be easier.

ALSO ART. This is what I ended up doing during one of the times when I should've been writing.

SPOILER: Click to show

[Rikku]

I forgot to mention that super pretty people yay. <3 That's just so lovely! The faces and the clothes and the nice clean lines and the flow of it. Squee.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

Eee, thanks! (Although the lines could probably stand to be a little cleaner XD )

Hey. Guess what I'm going to do today?

I'm going to write 15,000 words.

This is totally a thing that is happening.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

So... since Nano is over now, I figure I should post how it went down here for posterity's sake.

I made it to 50k words only with the help of numerous writing assignments and plan sheets from school and even some detailed comments I made while peer editing a friend's biology paper. I also approximated the word count of a number of handwritten assignments that were not on my computer.

And even then, I barely made it. I dunno, it feels a bit like a "fail" this year, since I didn't even finish the plot for the first time in my Nano history. Hopefully I will finish it in December, but I won't be able to work on it today.

On a bit happier note, I did write ten thousand words yesterday of real story, without having to resort to randomly typing words I'd have to delete later. And I think it's okay so far-- it's probably better writing than I do, but it's really different and I've only read it once so I couldn't tell you more about it. ^^;

Oh, and I finally got my first last-minute Nano disaster yesterday as well. With ten minutes to midnight, my typing program conked out (probably in protest of the nine hours it had been used with literally no breaks) and I had to force shut down my computer to get it running again. My changes were saved, thankfully, although I hadn't known they were at the time.

So yeah. Stressful.