And into the massive abyss

I fell.

A world within a mind,

a universe untouched.

Reality is all my own –

this is now a dream awakened.

Those men come marching –

their faces of ticking clocks,

though backwards with time,

spinning wildly.

They open their mouths to me.

And, like fireworks,

out erupts a flock of songbirds,

carrying with them a tune that ignites the magic from within my soul.

A serenade for me.

Then –

the great eagle descends.

Watch how the oaks bear their arms

for his perch.

And I revel in this mastery,

this mystery.

The giant bird sits –

he watches my pondering,

and stares at my thoughts.

The limbs of those trees

extend far beyond their own capabilities now

as they strip me bare

to this fantastic, colorful land.

A liveliness in nature.

A parade of faceless images appear –

and under the ashen smoke, the navigate their dance so precisely.

So uniquely. The intrigue stroking at my sanity.

The luminescent soldiers come forward now,

touching me.

But what a wondrous surprise in their cuff to my flesh!

Making me quiver

in only what I could imagine a great holiness to be.

A metallic, 4-dimensional rainbow bursts alive –

oh, how it streaks about so confidently

along the innocent blue skies.

Its glowing spirit of essence

illuminating the mossy earth below my feet.

I feel it awaken -

a childhood memory to everything the universe has eyed upon,

all it had ever felt,

and it covers me.

A warm, safe blanket.

Security. Peace.

I am not afraid,

sheathed in a gloss of an ever-living dream.

And, oh, how so tenderly it cradles me in its arms –

I can taste upon the breast,

and of the life inside,

as those distant, soothing melodies venture towards my ears.

I can feel the swell

of a new evolution begin.

A renewal.

A birth.

The wings of the eagle spread –

and how exquisitely they are seen,

displayed bravely,

as they shine of a peacock’s dandy nature.

I see.

Falling down upon me,

twirled sensually in an emotional vision,

is a dimly lit brightness lost in the freedom of a feather’s flutter.

Painted.

Artistically captured

though its intensity to never be shown face.

It surely is a vision to behold!

I stand,

and with newfound eyes I see,

the beauty in me.

As the festive dance of a perfect season’s day expands,

and ever so cheerfully,

a bewilderment that lays in the anarchy of happiness reincarnates –

and how that old and mutated cocoon shed itself

from the pricks of my skin!

For I now have wings!

The eagle calls to me –

I follow.

This place is now my own;

a belonging.

Am I a good person, or am I trying to be? Is there any difference between the two? Or am I, after all, a bad person?

At the end of every chapter, it is for you to judge. Forget everything you think you know about me. I need your judgement to be objective and free of any bias from the assumptions you might hold. I want you to discover who I truly am. And thus, I want to try and understand myself and what I'm hiding from. Let's begin.

The experiences I will reveal throughout these chapters are mostly specific to my life and is not, in any manner, generalized. But I hope I can leave enough ambiguity to these posts so that you can meanwhile judge yourself to some extent. Why judge? Because we are fundamentally judgmental creatures. Because no matter how perceiving we believe we have turned over the years, our judging mindset rarely fades into inexistence; so does every stigmatic belief we are born with.

For the first chapter, I assumed it would be best to provide you, the reader, with details you can cross-check from my profile. Because at the end of the day, every little thing we do, every little thought we bare-- it all invariably points to who we truly are. (Also, good liars always build their version of the truth on a foundation of lies.) I had enough reason to suspect my protagonists over the years did the same. I discovered that I hid within their hearts a piece of my soul. A fine quality in a writer would be to lose all consciousness of self when creating a character, but one of my fatal flaws was always being a self-absorbed narcissist, no matter how many steps I took to alter myself.

The Dark Alley featured an unnamed protagonist who upheld his newfound love for a girl he had befriended above all his friends, who he considered muppets to his threads. From being alone with no connections, he finds friends who, he believes, are tolerable. The teenage protagonist adds and subtracts these muppets according to his will to find a suitable social circle. In addition, he values himself for having something special from the so-called nerds who lacked the social skills he comparatively had in abundance. And even so, when I narrated the story from his perspective, a part of myself rooted for this unbearable egomaniac, which led me to convince the readers to do the same.

The Constrained Journey featured an irritable toddler gathering her courage to leave her loving parents, all because they neglected her compulsion to be bought a bicycle. And yet again, I narrated the story from her perspective, almost justifying her actions, only to leave the readers with a conclusion with barely any change in her personality but only in her immediate needs. In the Needs & Wants Theory of Character Design, I deprived every protagonist of mine of meeting their actual need. In fact, I left them devoid of even realizing a transformation is essential to their character arcs-- as any person who neglects to confront their necessary evils would.

And in A Day in the Life of a Kleptomaniac, yet another unnamed young protagonist with recurrent stealing tendencies gets away with their acts of mischief. And subconsciously, I rooted for him to be safe, and I inflicted the same evil will on the ones who read the tale.

In The Mysterious Lady, Susan, an obnoxious and overly curious teenager, is gifted with the power of invisibility, and she uses it solely for her personal desires, including beating up a fellow student she hates and stealing from a roadside store. Only towards the end, when she is faced with an individual, much more in the lack of self-control, does she finally have an opportunity to learn what she could have done with her powers. But instead, she regrets being at the wrong place at the wrong time and is only affected by her fear of death.

In Out of Love, we meet Harry, an ageing widower and retired advocate, in the last proceedings of adopting a child. Towards the end, he realizes the child he was about to adopt was his granddaughter. But no details whatsoever were revealed on how the adorable grandfather loses touch with his daughter, so much so that he is unaware that he even has a granddaughter. And the fact that he is in no condition to raise a child is emphasized countless times in the story, and even being aware of it, Harry decides to proceed with the adoption. He places his want to cure his loneliness over the need for his granddaughter to be raised by someone capable of handling the pressure.

David McKenzie was an outright criminal and a brutal assassin, fuelled only by the instructions he received from the higher-ups and his perfectionistic love for his field of work, and later vengeance. 'Vampires are Made' featured a protagonist who never recovered from a regret so early on in his life and thus drowned himself in the ocean of his fears and regrets. Andromeda featured a protagonist who never returned to her normalcy after her parents died in an accident, only to be solaced at the magical return of her deceased mother.

'Has Anyone Seen Jo?' featured an arrogant guardian angel who boasts of his superiority and devoted purpose and regards any mortal being as inconsequential and worthless in the grand scheme of God. Sabrina was narrated as a helpless woman in the clutches of a carnal society when nothing, in reality, substantiated that there was nothing to incriminate her with.

Something Wrong featured a bold female law enforcement officer who is unable to put her mind at ease after receiving a call which she was unsure whether a prank or not, only to leap into action regardless of the consequences when massive protests challenge the very State because she was selfishly unwilling to live with more regrets after the death of her supportive mother. And Blaue Augen attempted to humanize the actions of the most notorious, wretched dictator of all time, only to end with a malicious sneer, once again denoting nothing has changed throughout the story.

There, a myriad of flawed characters shying away from their actual needs only to meet their immediate wants-- or even worse, gain zero insight from the tainted events that held enough power to transform their lives. There, individuals with unique strengths and sometimes a strong awareness about themselves neglect the need to confront the necessary evils in the voyage of life.

There is no objective good or bad. But when a character realizes their flaws and attempts to act on them, it forms a positive arc. And when a character doesn't even realise their needs or refuses to redeem themselves, it leads to a negative arc. Is it not possible for us to choose the journey we would traverse in our lives?

But it is far easier to identify the needs and wants of a character built within the bounds of a story scape. On the contrary, our lives are multi-dimensional, and our personalities multi-faceted-- a tapestry of intertwining elements forming intricate yet delicate patterns, hard to untangle.

So what is that you want? What is it that you need? Are you like one of my questionable protagonists, shying away from the life you're meant to explore? It sure would be impossible to comprehend every last thread woven into the fabric of our personality, but does that mean we should never attempt to understand what makes us who we are? In a life bounded within the chains of time, finite, isn't it one of the best explorations we could go on? To go on an adventure exclusive to ourselves which might even answer the much larger-in-scale questions of free will, fate, purpose and belief?

At the end of every chapter, it is for you to judge. Forget everything you think you know about yourself. I need your judgement to be objective and free of any bias from the assumptions you might hold. I want you to discover who you truly are. And thus, I want to try and understand myself and what I'm hiding from.

So are you a good person, or are you trying to be? Is there any difference between the two? Or are you, after all, a bad person?

#####

1400 words, exact (: Hey everyone, um, lemme know what you think about the post! I know this one feels a bit distorted. I was unable to convert the post to exactly what I had in mind, so... And also, with the upcoming chapters, I'll try to be more general instead of being this specific, and try and present the underlying ideas in a better manner too (:

Also, check out Controlling Madness by @booklover_2020! It has this almost-dystopian world featuring a bunch of very intriguing characters with their own agendas, and everyone seems to hold so much depth! Action, mystery, family ties, secret agencies, military control, prison systems, insiders-- it has everything required for the making of a good thriller! Do check that out! Love y'all <3 <3

The fading fire of a dream

It would seem could blaze anew

In the hearts of beaten men.

Prophets again spoke words true

Of a son of the dragon

Who would gladden and inspire

And rouse the people from sleep,

No longer sheep. Filled with ire

They sharpened sword axe and spear,

For ’twas clear the hour had come

Of the once and future king.

Bards would sing and beat the drum,

Pluck the harp and trumpet sound,

Declare found the anointed,

The one who would wear the crown,

Bringing down disappointed

The servant of the false king.

They would bring the captive lord

Before his throne. ’Hail Owain!

For ’tis plain steel’s in thy sword

My warriors thou didst route:

Without doubt you are the One

Whom God has blessed. Noble heir

Of Arthur’s chair, thou hast won!’

Thus Mortimer bent the knee

That all might see foe made friend.

Bolingbroke quaked, and fear felt:

This friendship spelt his near end.

Unless…Was hope to be found

In one who clowned with Sir John?

Could Hal a soldier become

And find wisdom yet, newborn?

Mortimer, Lord Percy too,

Henry knew, could spell his doom.

If with the Welsh they joined arms,

With what charms could England bloom?

So Shrewsbury, it was to be

Where Destiny played His part.

Hal met Hotspur, won the day,

And thus the play found its heart.

Not Cymru’s bards, but Avon’s:

The ravens, alas, are black,

And bleak the outcome for Wales,

Though the tales will e’er come back

To keep the fire of a dream

Alive. A gleam of maybe

Of a once and future king

Still we sing, yearn: to be free.

Commentary:

A slice of history… In the 13th century, Welsh independence came to an end, with the conquests of Edward I of England. Over a century later, in 1399, Henry Bolingbroke became King of England, overthrowing Richard II, and reigning as Henry IV. Bolingbroke’s claim to the throne was tenuous; and many of the English and Welsh lords regarded him, with some justification, as a usurper. In 1400, Owain Glyndŵr, a Welsh lord, a descendant of several Welsh royal dynasties, and a supporter of Richard II, quarrelled with a Bolingbroke loyalist, his neighbour Baron Grey of Ruthin. Glyndŵr’s grievances were ignored by the English parliament, and led him into open revolt, declaring himself the true Prince of Wales. The revolt spread quickly, and Welsh bards viewed him as heir to the legacy of King Arthur (the Once and Future King of prophecy) and the pre-Conquest princes of Wales.

Early Welsh successes included the Battle of Pilleth in mid-Wales in 1402, at which the English lord Edward Mortimer, one of the most powerful of the English barons, was captured. Mortimer changed allegiance, and entered into an alliance with Glyndŵr, as did Lord Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, the most powerful northern English Lord. The three allies agreed to divide England and Wales between them (the so-called Tripartite Alliance): Percy would rule in the North, Mortimer in the South, and Glyndŵr in Wales and the Welsh Marches. The political situation was grim for Henry IV. However, his son Prince Hal (the future Henry V), despite having spent his younger years as an impressionable and dissolute wastrel under the influence of Sir John Falstaff, turned out to be an excellent field commander. He defeated and killed Henry Hotspur (the son of Lord Percy) at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1405, preventing the three opposing armies from joining up, and turning the tide against the rebellion.

Despite having lost his English allies, and having seen with the support he’d garnered from the French also coming to naught, Glyndŵr continued the rebellion for more than a decade, establishing a Welsh parliament, and making plans for the first Welsh university: but eventually the English crown regained control of Wales. An outlaw and a fugitive, Glyndŵr refused the offer of a royal pardon after the rebellion had finally collapsed. His date of death and exact burial place remained unknown: like Arthur before him, Owain Glyndŵr became a figure of legend. Yet the dream of Welsh independence he had rekindled never entirely died. Welsh nationhood, and the survival of Welsh culture and language to the present time, owes more to him than perhaps any other individual.

As for ‘the Bard of Avon’: William Shakespeare gives Glyndŵr a small role in his Henry IV: Part One. Together with Richard II, Henry IV: Part Two and Henry V, these history plays tell (from the English perspective, almost two centuries later) the story of the events leading up to and in consequence of Henry Bolingbrook’s usurpation of the English throne.

Beyond comprehension is

sunk in malice, a small fly.

The buzz of its feeble wings…

Memory rings, tough to die.

Beyond compassion, behold -

A tree, old, never gives way.

Bark sturdy, branches pulled taut,

A lone thought flits through the day.

Beyond my narrow vision

An incision in a mind

Serves well - reminds, remembers,

The way embers neatly lined

Glitter; sparkle; shimmer still

Yet until this fire quenched

dies at last, deceptive is

their beauty’s virtue, entrenched.

My fingers, violent, tremble

An ensemble of dead leaves

Follows the rue and regret

I forget the path he cleaves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwdL_Zn5nCE

Dear Alice,

Sit tight a moment, before you go chasing after that rabbit and your meeting with the Hatter. There is something you need to know.

The hole you're thinking of crawling down? It's a trick. No one is late to anything, because there is nothing to be late for.

The tea party is a dream.

But the Queen, she's very much real.

The beheadings? Real, too.

And they aren't at the bottom of that warren you're so desperate to explore.

They're right here, on this side of the looking glass.

Besides, you know what else is found in rabbit dens?

Snakes. They sleep together in knotted bundles at the bottom, and the rabbits avoid the whole thing like the plague, if they have any sense about them. Any hare that would go running into there is the mad one, hat or no. You have sense about you, girl. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.

That hole is all wrong.

Choose a different adventure, Alice. Find a new garden to explore, this one is overgrown and toothy; burs and briars and grasping vines are hungry for you.

But most of all, just know that there is nothing there other than a hole in the earth where you throw your hopes. They get swallowed up and eaten by shadows; that corner you'll be crawling towards, that bend in the warren, it just leads to a drop-off where the snakes sleep. There, it is nothing but rabbit bones and rattlers dreaming of sweet little girls stumbling and bumbling.

But you won't take my word for it, girl. I know you won't.

By the time you realize that I was right, you'll be swimming in tears at the bottom of that hole, feeling too small to matter.

Just remember that snakes can swim, girl, and they eat little girls and doormice, too.

Let that rabbit be, Alice. Just sit with me here on this bank, and let's enjoy what is.

Don't go chasing that dreamy nightmare.

With Pragmatic Love,

Your Sister

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Alice%27s_Sister

Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t always this way.

Environmental factors froze my heart into place—

my demeanor turned cold with the likes of another ice age.

Eventually all slowly melted, never revealing to be the same.

For this world‘s devilish antics & violence, turned my views into fire & my eyes filled of rage.

Not a single infant, then turned child ever knows the feeling of hate.

Not until they’re pushed around, berated & blamed.

That’s when it happened, too many times I seen blood shed & no shame.

Similar to an hourglass, my innocence, my trust, that love—

fell like grains of sand, over & over with lack of escape.

Villians aren’t born, but monsters exist.

Turning the softest of souls into the harder of stones—

quickly to throw right into glass homes, so you bare the guilt and not them.

Looking back, it’s not hard to see why I am, how I am.

Sunday morn, skies that mourned,

wrinkled blankets, undone laundry,

notes that piled, lectures paused,

plates and bowls, last night meals.

Seasons changes, fall and rains,

falling apart, piece by piece.

Save me, please, screamed to the skies,

begged and hurt, lone in a crowd.

Deep inside, something changed,

life felt different, so did I.

What once was, what now is,

what would be, all blurred in one.

Barely human, days all same,

can't be machine, feelings clawed.

Bewitched in a maze, no way out,

dark that stayed, lights that frayed.

Would I leave, this game of hurt,

or would I stay, forever and frail?

Shall I try, when all things fail,

or just let go, as fate may plead?

But I will wake, to another day,

for dawn may break, and the sun may rise,

birds may sing, and the rains may pour,

nights may fall, and the cold may creep.

I will wake to another day.

The handle burns my fingers, I curse, wrap my hand in my shirt and kick the door open

Who the FUCK

gets a metal door

in South Carofuckinglina?

The fire-hot handle interlocks with the knob of a poorly placed coat closet, I wrestle it free with misaligned angst

Who built

this place-

Pablo fuckin’ Picasso?

I scan the house, some sense of duty or obligation suffocates the grooves of my brain, God there’s shit everywhere, it’s all trash, I’m calling it now

Corridors of crap-

Graveyard of coulda,

shoulda, woulda.

Post-war children, they say ‘just in case’, but case never comes, never did, never will

No pictures hung-

No, of course

THAT’D be too much.

The bedrooms, bathroom, basement, dusty and covered with mold, bet I could make an asbestos angel in the attic, maybe I can fix this, maybe there’s hope, maybe I can save our souls

The hell-?

Are the doors

fucking MELTING?

No no no no no no what kind of sick Stephen King bullshit is this

I swear to God I’m not like them, I actually like to dust the blades of fans, I would never use plastic this long, I loved Marie Kondo’s book, you’re never supposed to use plastic that long, WHERE ARE THE GODDAMN TRASH BAGS, I swear I can stop it I can make it better GODDAMN IT DON’T LEAVE ME HERE, THIS DOES NOT SPARK JOY

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT FOR ME

There are so many people in here but not enough room,

there is an empty trash can too, but no trash bags or a broom.

Someone put their coke cans in the sink

and now the small room begins to stink.

I hear an awful song in my head that appears to be stuck on repeat

and I'll be damned- someone just turned up the heat!

It's hot and humid and spiders are crawling up the wall

I do not like this room so much, I'm not fond of it at all.

There are bingo numbers never called and cake that's never made

As I come to realize this, my smile begins to fade.

Sitting next to a talkative Know-it-all

I get what I believe is a spam robo call-

All of this has happened before my day even begins,

I cannot help but wonder what fresh hell I'm in.

These hands, she fills them.

Delicate china,

held by the bull.

Hummingbird feathers

and hollow scrimshaw

decorate the labyrinth,

But she remains unbroken,

bending, instead,

lifting, pulling, pushing us

ever skyward.

The burden too heavy,

clouds too far,

slipping grips and crushing

weights, I fell and I'm fallen.

She moves up,

she moves on,

and I mourn.

I will welcome my Theseus.