Sometimes I feel so bad for giving updates in blog posts even though I hardly ever write on this webstie anymore, but honestly, I just love you guys so much, you're so fun to talk to, idek. There isn't much to update on right now, anyway haha. 

The main thing I wanted to announce is that I have started writing a quick one-shot or maybe a short EXO fic. I haven't listened to them in a while, but I heard the songs from their new album and they are pretty fantastic (especially "My Answer"!) and have kinda sorta reignited my interest in them. Also, my boyfriend is encouraging me to write fanfics again since he says that I seem way happier writing for my fandoms than I do working on short stories for class and stuff, and he's kinda right. I haven't written anything that wasn't for a class in such a long time, and I miss the freedom of writing whatever the hell I want.

The one I'm writing at the moment is currently a Sehun/OC, but it might change later since I am starting to get the feeling that Sehun is not best for this story. Did anyone see the last season of American Horror Story? It started out pretty great, but I wasn't loving where the season ended up at the conclusion of the show. I decided to take the concept of "freak show" and use it as inspiration. Therefore, the little story I'm writing is a bit of an AHS: Freak Show AU, and it's turning out a bit darker than my previous stories. It's a little over 2,000 words right now, but I am anticipating it will be longer, perhaps closer to 10k or even 12k. Here is a quick preview of the first couple paragraphs to whet your appetite.

Untitled EXO/AHS Short Story (29 March 2015)

He doesn’t talk that much.

That was how Kai and Baekhyun always introduced him to new people. No one was ever curious about why. They always just accepted it as a given, liberating Sehun from the pressure of speaking up in group settings. If they expected him to be quiet, then he wouldn’t feel guilty for his silence. And that was how he preferred it. Silent, like a house after a family moves away.

Sehun tossed his hair aside while he watched the performance from the shadows behind the stands. It was almost time for a haircut again; the fringes of his hair were getting long and poking him in the eyes. Up on the stage, Baekhyun the “Handsome Vampire” was breaking various hard-shelled items with just his teeth while the crowd ooh-ed and ahh-ed. Ceramic vases, walnuts, smooth skipping stones from the river bank, branches pulled from nearby trees, all snapped in half under the mercy of Baekhyun’s teeth, which had grown unnaturally sharp. The strength of his bite, however, was something that had to be cultivated on his own. 

“Come one, come all! Step right up ladies and gentlemen! Come see the Emporium’s very own Handsome Vampire, with teeth sharp as a shark’s and looks sharp enough to match. Gentlemen, grab a hold of your ladies, let them look, but don’t touch!” the Ringleader called from upstage, a young man in a ridiculously green get-up who was distantly related to Mr. Lee.

After his friend gave a bow and left the stage, it was the pinheads’ turn to perform. The twins had prepared a dance that was a cross between a tango and plain old wrestling. The crowd hollered with laughter.

Sehun smiled. In about a month or so, Sehun would celebrate his tenth year with the SM Emporium of Oddities, but he had never been once been on that stage. 

I was even thinking about taking the Freak Show AU a step further and having the story focus more on Kai. I was going to turn him into Evan Peters' character, the Lobster Boy who just wants to be a normal guy but is bound by his responsibilities to the Freak Show. And Sehun's story was just going to be a short little side-plot in the bigger story about Kai. But at the moment, I am really liking this Sehun side-story a lot more than the Kai one. But anyway, here's the preview. Read it and let me know what you think I should do. Also, let me know if you think, based on this preview, that Sehun is right for this story. I'm really, really anxious to write another long story like "The Siren's Cry", but I'm lacking in inspiration at the moment. That, and I'm buried under a bunch of coursework and internship applications (I'm looking for a summer placement). 

I also have another book recommendation for you guys! The sorority I joined is really into the promotion of work by amateurs authors and contemporary writers, and one of the books we've been discussing is Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mendel. This book is about a traveling troupe of Shakespeare actors and an orchestra that tour the area around the Great Lakes in a post-apocalyptic world. When I first read it, I was amused that one of the survivors of the apocalypse was a group of theater people because usually when we think about apocalypse-genre works, the survivors are usually big burly men with beards and machetes. However, one of the biggest things that stood out to me about the apocalypse in this book is how it portrays and handles this idea of "the end of the known world". Lots of apocalypse-genre works treat the apocalypse as a terrible ending that leads to darkness and death (i.e. The Road, The Walking Dead, Zombieland, etc.) However, in Station Eleven, when the world ends, there's a sense of calm, a sense of, dare I say it, relief. Like the things that used to worry people and the things that distracted us from life no longer exist and all that's left is quietness. Also, the prose is beautiful and although I normally hate the switching of POV's, I think it's pretty seamless in this book. My only critique is that it was a bit difficult to find a character to root for or it was hard to find a character to be fond of. Also, if you get the hardcover version, the page numbers are kind of annoying. But it's a great book and I totally recommend it!