god i hate you i could kill you

So I have known about this "idea" for awhile, but I guess I'm just now dorky enough to try it? idk. But texting in-character. Sounds fun. I wanna do it with someone. Any volunteers? What characters? XD

no dawn no day i'm always in this twilight in the shadow of your heart

The boy was pinned up against the wall before he could finish. Nick held him with one hand at his throat, the other reaching down to where Byron’s shovel was leaning against the wall. He picked it up and held the flat side against the boy’s cheek. “Do you know what this is?”

“B-Byron’s shovel?”

“Yes. It is. He’s hit me twice with it. He also nearly knocked out Chase when we challenged him. Byron was very animated with this shovel of his. And you know what?”

“What…?” the boy squeaked.

“He will never be able to do that again, will he? Byron will never be able to lift his shovel again and smack sense into younger trainers. He won’t be able to hand out badges. He won’t be able to give advice on continuing on with a training journey. He won’t be able to admire the up-and-coming young trainers. He won’t be able to challenge the next generation. He won’t be able to test trainers to see if they deserve their Pokemon. Are you seeing what I’m getting at here?”

The boy only stared at him, eyes rolling in terror.

“You, who are using Pokemon to bully others—no, it’s not even that tame anymore is it?! You are all using your own Pokemon to kill others! Do you know how stupid that is?! You don’t do that! You don’t have the right to pass judgment on anyone! You are the ones who don’t deserve the Pokemon that follow you!” Nick roared, dropping the boy and turning to the room. He swung Byron’s shovel against the nearest window, shattering it. Glass rained over the fallen Gym leader’s body. “You all claim to be my followers, right?! So you should know what’s coming next!”

Nick grinned at them all, arms spread, waiting for someone to answer him. The other two trainers in the room didn’t dare speak, and the Pokemon cowered before him. Nick stomped over to them, still swinging the shovel beside him, and beamed at them all.

“You don’t deserve these Pokemon, so that’s why I’m going to take them away from you! Chase, Flamethrower.”

He didn’t kill anyone himself until he found the burning warehouse with thousands of lives trapped inside and two starry-eyed girls responsible for it. For the first time, it wasn’t his Pokemon doing the dirty work; Nick still had Byron’s shovel, and was beating their faces in until the blood soaked the ground around them. They deserved it. They deserved it so much and so much more for doing what they were doing. They were killing not only innocents, but all in the name of their twisted judgment call on all of Sinnoh. They were trying to imitate him and decide who deserved what—so he just gave them a hand with a shovel and a parting Flamethrower just to make sure they got the message.

So what if he was screaming at them, too. “You don’t do that! You don’t attack other trainers, you’re stupid for trying to follow me! You’re as bad as I am! Why are you doing this?! Why did you try this? Why, why?!”

-------THIS IS A BREAK-------

“Is he always this shy?” Lenore asked, still trying to coax Emil toward her.

“Oh yes. Terribly timid. Though he’s got a nasty streak if—”

“Bevriedera ors,” Emil said with a fierce pout.

Aminov sighed. “If you happen to be from northern Lanne. And I know that you’re not, but with the dark hair and eyes, you could pass for it.”

“Technically I’m a quarter Lannish. On my mother’s side.” Lenore straightened up and smoothed out her dress, looking severely put-out. “Still, what has that have to do with anything? What did he say?” Allen had been wondering exactly the same thing.

“I’m currently teaching him more of our language. He knows the basics, and he’s picking it up quickly, but these daily meetings with him are still a bit of a pet project of mine. He’s the only southerner we have right now in the program, and I haven’t spoken to one in years, anyway…” he trailed off wistfully.

“…He’s in the Inven project?” Lenore asked brightly. Allen rolled his eyes. And just like that, child-loving Lenore was back.

“Yes. Actually, the accelerated program. Within a year, he should be out in the field on his own. I hope to use him as a key to further missions and negotiations with the southern half of Lanne,” Aminov explained, patting the boy on the head. Emil flushed at the attention and ducked out of it rather hastily. He completely scooted around the scientist in an effort to further evade Lenore—though eventually she got fed up and chased after him, much to Aminov’s amusement. By the time Emil figured out he was being pursued, she had caught up and had her arms around him, picked him up, and carried him rather awkwardly back towards Allen. He was reminded very strongly of a child with a puppy. Complete with pathetic whining and squirming.

“So a little Lannish Inven. Look at his hair, though…” she crooned, setting him back on the floor—though not allowing the poor boy to escape her grasp—and ran her fingers through his wavy hair. “Look, Allen. It’s even paler than yours is.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m Lannish, though I always thought they had dark hair and eyes. Like you or Maria,” Allen replied, eyeing Emil with equal parts curiosity and pity. The boy looked ready to burst into flames, judging by the redness of his face. “So, he looks new. He acts new. Who brought him in?”

“B-Be-Bevridera ors,” Emil stammered, repeating the same odd phrase as before. It didn’t elicit any sort of response from Lenore, however, much to his obvious confusion and irritation.

“One of the new pairs. Actually, a Tego from your graduating class, unless I’m gravely mistaken,” Aminov said, chin in hand. Lenore and Allen exchanged a look. Allen, for his part, figured it was one of two people. “Loar, I believe his name was. Your age, with orange hair and brown eyes. He also had this spicy little Inven with silver and brown hair, oh, and glasses. Do you know them? I think they mentioned you…”

“Yeah, we know them,” Allen replied with a sigh. Nathan had been his first guess, anyway. It wasn’t as if he expected anything less. “Nathan Loar and Sonya Karahalios.”

“They’re good friends of ours,” Lenore added, still petting Emil.

He perked up at the name, however. “Shachelle? Capelleau halon, beli oei lilietta na?” he asked, gesturing vaguely. Allen literally felt the words fly over his head once more. Thankfully, risking an embarrassed glance to the side, he found that his Inven was in the same boat; she stared down at the child in her arms blankly, as if he had just spoken another language—oh wait.

don't call my name don't call my name roberto

Got a Twitter for my writing because sometimes I can't be halfassed to post on this. XD; Though I have a feeling it'll start to turn into a character profile eventually.

I've worked out some ideas in my mind (well, most of them are lulzy and crack and will be put into comics/drawings instead of the actual stories, but still, they are ideas) lately and while I meant to donate tonight to writing - faaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiil - at least I have these things in my mind. I just don't know when I'd get the chance to put a lot of them onto a word document. >A> I have work for a lot of tomorrow, saturday I've donated to Mark, and my next free day off after that is for an eye appointment / new glasses. Yeah. Lookit how exciting my non-writing life is.

But back to my yes-writing life! Looks like we'll have a Pedestal update next week. As for WHIPLASH!... damnit I gotta work on that. BUT THE ROOK. YES. I made a Rook doll to go with my Mister Beggar doll, but I'm not sure what I'll be doing with him just yet. Wifey's claimed my Ram doll that I'll make at some point. I wanna do WHIPLASH! characters (Nick and NamNar are a given), but I'm not sure how I'll do the crazy hair colors and, well, hair for that matter. Lenore and Sonya's spring to mind as being rather complicated. Heaven forbid I attempt Sara Grace.

Yeah I'm done now so I can actually WRITE GASP.

she got a halo around her finger around you

OH GOD GUYS

NO TIME FOR WITTINESS NOW JUST GO BUY MY BOOK OKAY THANKS

power is not what he craves my friend it's just a means to his electro end

There are upsides to being sick! Who knew!

Upside 1: I finished proofing The Rook, updated it on createspace, and sent away for the finalized proof. I got the email notification saying they shipped it today, so in a couple days, I'll have it, and then I'll look over it once more (look over, not read) to make sure there are no spacing errors or anything. And then. Sale. aka the phase where I'm all like "GIVE ME YO MONEY HO" and beat people with my pimp cane.

Apparently a couple of my readers are making posters to hang up in their school, and quite a few have recommended it to their friends. ;w; This is so touching, guys. Now if only you were that cool with WHIPLASH!. But no, seriously, you guys are great, fantastic, wonderful.

Upside 2: Writing time! This is actually because I have missed three days of work now (and I'll probably miss part/all of tomorrow too, due to an appointment), but still. It gave me time to finish up with TR, mess around a tiny bit with WHIPLASH!, and write almost two chapters of Pedestal thus far. I hope to make a buffer again, even if it's just one chapter. It'll help tremendously. Plus it seems like the plot is moving ahead speedily now, especially since I only have one more planned competition and then the end. How does that work? Well, just watch and find out. Er, read. You know what I mean.

Oh, I also already pimped this out in the Pedestal-TeamAwesome group on deviantArt, but Pedestal has a tvtropes page. It makes me lol hardcore and is definitely something every pedestal reader should check out.

I was also playing chess the other evening with my brother, and we named all of the pieces after characters in The Rook. Dorky, but fun.
Rook = the Rook.
Bishop = the Rabbit.
Knight = the Mockingbird.
King = the Owl.
Queen = the Ram.
Pawns = the humans. All little Tuesdays and Michaels and Stephens and Silvermins.

Skitty out.

hello there the angel from my nightmare

So looks like next up is Lanne, mmyep.

It's technically pronounced "layne" (rhymes with "spain"), but mentally I've sorta been calling it "lan". I might change it. Or I might just leave it up to the readers' collective imagination. WHO KNOWS IT IS A MYSTERY OOOOOOOH~

Lanne is, very technically, the southernmost country in the "world" of WHIPLASH!. Why is this? Because no one actually knows where the southern border is. Most northern countries regard it very vaguely and hesitantly as the large canyon that cuts through the bottom half of the world (and serves as part of the southern border of Bauk), but the southern countries know better. Especially the northern Lannish. They may not like the southerners, but they know that many groups have traveled a lot farther south than the canyon.

Oh! Let's just jump right into the two groups then.

We have the northern Lannish, and the southern Lannish. This has already been introduced as a concept in chapter five (remember, I don't count the prologue as a chapter), but here's a quick recap: Two groups who are very opposite and hate each other to bits and pieces. They get along like a house on fire. Even Maria, who was born and raised in Sovine, and Emil, a young boy who probably never met a northerner before in his life, were about to come to blows over it. People outside of their culture can't really grasp it, but look at it this way. They have been warring for forever and a day. They currently aren't now, since they see the outside war as a bigger threat and are not stupid enough to weaken themselves, but it doesn't mean they have any sort of alliance. In fact, it basically means that the southerners went into hiding in the deserts and left the northerners to work it out with the political bullshit flying every which way.

Another note: southern Lannish are very skittish, simply put. They do not socialize well and are perfectly content with letting the northerners run the politics with other countries. They very rarely trade with certain Baukish companies, but that's about it. They are nomads who travel around the desert and basically just chill there for all their lives. They also only make up about 15% of the Lannish population - and that's a very rough and generous guess, since it's not like there's a census bureau down there. There's been talk lately (by the northerners, granted) that they've been dying off lately. Why? It's a mystery...

Anyway, geographically speaking, Lanne is separated pretty cleanly into two sections: the southern desert (about 40% of the region internationally known as the country) and the northern mountains. There's some plains in between, making a neat little belt in the middle, but no one lives there because while it would make for a temperate climate and nice farmland, neither the northerners nor the southerners would have anything to do with them and they'd probably die in a civil war battle, anyway. The mountains in Lanne are high and cold, but only the northernmost are snowy all year round.

Northerners have dark hair and dark, angled eyes, and usually have stockier and thicker figures. They traditionally hunt, but that's not to say they're uncivilized; they have cities, and roads, and while it's too mountainous for a train system, they know all of the safe passes and can get around pretty easily. They like hunting, and have an equal society; anyone who can hunt, will. Anyone who takes down large prey will be celebrated, male or female. They don't like the stereotype of wearing furs and sitting around fires, and won't take kindly to the implication, either. (but they are known for their very nice fur coats and have several companies who sell various kinds. they're considered a luxury in other countries, but everyone and their grandma has one in northern lanne.)

They wear dark colors and thick clothes. On the western border, Baukish fashion is not uncommon, too. Other than that, they don't really get into other cultures that much.

Lanne is technically neutral in the war, which is partly because they genuinely don't want to mess with that can of worms up north, and partly because they are nestled between Bauk and Kyym and enjoy their peace with both. This does not mean that they are neutral in action, however. Both Bauk and Kyym have recently taken more aggressive actions against them in order to sway them to their side of the war, and most refugees to the badlands are from Lanne. Bauk, without a guarantee of an alliance, won't let very many through their country up to Sovine, so going to the badlands is their best bet. Where they go from there is a mystery. A fair amount do end up in Sovine, though rumors state that the rebels have a large amount of Lannish in their ranks...

Southern Lanne is a whole 'nother beast, though. Emil is pretty typical of their kind. Thinner, darker skin, pale blond or brown hair, and light blue eyes. Whereas northern Lanne is staunchly atheistic as a culture, southern Lanne is polytheistic. (We'll learn more about that with Emil later on.) They wear long sleeves and long cloaks and tunics, but they're light and airy (and surprisingly comfortable). Camels are practically worshiped, since it's the easiest mode of transportation in the desert, not to mention the food aspect. Some groups have also taken to raising other domestic animals for food, though not in any large number.

Southern Lannish don't fight with technology or sheer number like northerners tend to do; instead, they are all built wiry and tough. They are used to scorching sun, freezing nights, sandstorms, poisonous insects, animals, and arachnids, and have on more than one occasion slaughtered "peaceful" groups of Baukish or Kyymese negotiators coming to, well, negotiate with them. No one but they know whether or not they actually have some sort of unified system of government between them or are simply a bunch of groups traveling around. They've also, due to their nation's proximity to both Bauk and Kymm, created their own fighting style that is a haphazard mix of the two, but somehow, it works for them. (Sadly, we don't get to see that, because Emil never learned it.)

Lanne as a whole speaks one language, though dialects naturally vary between northern and southern. And as a whole, the culture is based upon the Spanish, French, and Basque cultures. It's sort of touch and go at this point, though, haha. It is only one of two of the countries in the "world" that are based on existing countries/cultures.

And that's about it! From here on out, these things will probably be shorter, since I don't have as much planned for the other countries (nor do I need that much...). Still! What country should come next? (paronene, bauk, kymm, avle, escaia)

waterloo i was defeated you won the war

It looks like Lanne is going to be the next country to get a "story" thing here, which'll be fun, since it's the country I have the most figured out about, aside from Sovine. XD It won't be this post, but it should be the next one.

So I've gotten an xbox for all those who don't already know, and it's been eating up my time. It's not as if WHIPLASH! is gone from my mind - far from it. All this has created is doodles of Nathan and Allen in assassin "uniforms" running around and doing stuff. Oddly enough, expect a couple comics featuring various WHIPLASH! characters to things to ABBA songs. (seriously, go listen to "Does Your Mother Know" and try not to think of Sonya.)

I also keep meaning to do a Get Down thing for Pedestal. SHHHH DON'T TELL ANYONE IT'S A SECRET.

So basically the point of this was to inform my writing-blog-readers of three things: Lanne will be the next country up, I am distracted by video games, and I am sending The Rook back for one last proof. I'm slowly working through it, though, and it shouldn't be too much longer. D: It's just going a little more slowly with le work. *le sigh*