LJ Idol Season 9, Week 23: The Fiction of the Fix -- and to be safe: Trigger warning for rape.

[theun4givables]

The smell of fresh cut grass hit him first -- probably because his face was buried against the earth, Saito realized, as he moved his neck and felt the grass brush against his cheek. His body felt off, like his legs weren’t quite connected to his torso. Light filtered through his eyelids -- which felt completely wrong.

Comments

[dmousey]

God kid... you scare me. LOL. This reminds me of a Koan. :) Wonder where you get you're 'darkside' from! Bwahahaha <3

[theun4givables]

Look, okay. Saito is... I don't even know where he comes from. But he's there. And he's somehow a mainish character for this particular book, and I aim to somehow make him sympathetic.

Yeah. And then readers are going to reach this chapter about 3/4ths of the way into the book and they're gonna go O.O. Sigh.

Thanks for not being all omg my daughter wrote this lolol

[dmousey]

The only way I would have that reaction would be if you had written it poorly! LOL ;) <3.

[theun4givables]

=p =p =p

<3

[millysdaughter]

Sad to think there is no redemption possible...

[theun4givables]

Actually, as Saito repeats his punishment, he remembers more and more of his previous attempts. Whether he's truly capable of being redeemed, I don't know, but in the book, he certainly has...issues to deal with, when it comes to the Challenge.

[halfshellvenus]

I vaguely thought I remembered the Stellar Challenge from another of your stories, but it doesn't matter. This story was complete and dark on its own, and the slow revelation of what Saito is and why he's in Limbo worked really well.

[theun4givables]

You've seen bits and pieces of it in Idol, yes. :) Jordan's Story got me the first Gatekeeper round in S8, Saito's Story has actually been written twice for Idol -- this piece above, and the one I previously wrote for "In Your Wheelhouse." I changed his story a lot. Or rather, the book's evolved since my participation in S8. Saito was originally just another, regular Challenger, not one that's been more or less forced to do it for all of eternity. I showed the story of his death in S8.

I aimed really, really hard for making this stand-alone. The "Stories" for each of the Challengers lend themselves to that -- but I still had to explain the mechanics of the Challenge in this piece, too, for those who wouldn't know what they were already (like you would in a novel -- I imagine this chapter's somewhere about 3/4ths into the book).

Thank you. :) I am honestly surprised I got this piece down on paper at all, so I'm glad that the slow reveal of who he was and why he's in Limbo worked. <3

[halfshellvenus]

This one really worked as a standalone. There is all the context we need, and perhaps a bit of intriguing mystery about the rest... but we can accept it on faith and enjoy the story.

I definitely prefer that approach to, "My setup, let me exposition it for you in excessive detail." ;)

[theun4givables]

Yay! lol

Oh my god, you should have seen the original second section I scrapped. That's basically what it was. And I was like hold up, you can place these details in bits and pieces and not all at once, woman *slaps hand.*

This is why I need as much time as possible to write and rewrite for Idol when I'm working, because my brain goes, "OH THIS IS AWESOME," and I start writing, and I realize later upon rereading that it's all expository and boring and bogged down, bleh. lol This is actually why Clarissa was "born," because she originally did not exist when I conceived this idea. She helped me pull back on the exposition and make it more natural. :)

[jexia]

Totally worked for me as a stand alone. Nice work.

[theun4givables]

Yay, thank you. :)