I've been writing since I was 8 or 9 (20 now and in my second year of college) and I'm always pulling concepts, characters, worlds and themes out of thin air but I want to apply that to actual projects instead of squandering them. I have no VN writing experience but I played quite a few to understand what I'm getting myself into.
I dabbled writing in the fields of slice-of-life, philosophical fiction, psychological horror, supernatural, light sci-fi and drama. More of my work is dark but I'm flexible. I'd like you to expand my palette and push me with whatever you've got.
My strengths are character development and creation (though I'm a tad weak at backstories) and dialogue.
Here are some original samples:
PROSE:
Stars had littered the sky by then in the way shells would litter the sand after a wave crashes upon the shore of a beach. The scent of expensive sake and perfume intermingled in the small quarters where I played the shimasen for a couple of boisterous and incredibly inebriated aristocrats who insisted on feeling up Meiko; she dared not attempt to bat their hands away. We were not essentially ‘famous’ as other Gion geisha. Average. We were average. It made the two of us ponder why men born of money and ‘prestige’ took interest in us but our excitement buried the tiny whisper of doubt that lurked in the back of our minds.
The disappointment in this lifestyle is immeasurable. The thin plucks of the bachi against the strings. The wry conversation between the associates and the younger geisha as she knelt forward and poured some more saki into a small cup for each at their insistence. Meiko had a serpentine tongue that forked through many roads of talent and impressed her guests who could not expect much with her normal, placid face and eyes of ice. But somehow, she bore a special presence that led her to become a valuable and specialized service to those who had come across her. We were friends. I thought we were. Knowing each other as children and never leaving each other’s side...would that qualify as friendship?
“Who is that dour woman piddling on the shimasen? Tell her to stop - she is dampening the spirits of this celebration!” That was all I needed to hear because right after, I had ceased my playing and bowed to the main guest in apology. “I am very sorry.”
The main aristocrat was a mild-tempered man and imbibed little; despite his class and wealth, he espoused a certain humility and grace that moved me. He raised his hand for silence from his compatriots and gestured kindly in my direction.
“Perhaps…something more festive can be played? Something with a faster tempo?”
His voice was as gentle as the wind and he treated me with courtesy. I could feel the thin veneer of a blush fall upon my cheeks; the white mask covered my indecent flush and I peered down at my shimasen to tune it.
“Sit close.”
I glanced up in his direction. The cloth of my kimono swept across the tatami mat and I settled down between him and Meiko, who was still flirting unashamedly with her drunken patron. How distasteful. She was still a novice. Uncultured and brazen.
I could feel his eyes on me. Probing eyes. Eyes that were involved in each single movement, hawk-like yet as passive as a flowing stream.
“Meiko-san, may you sing for us while Chiyo plays the shimasen?”
She happily obliged, overeager and overstated. My fingers were positioned on the neck of the instrument with my eyes closed in meditation before playing. A few perfunctory twangs echoed through the room and then my fingers and the hand with the bachi flashed across the length like lightning and stunned, Meiko looked on before realizing she was to sing. Her vocals were mismatched against the faster playing instead what I usually performed. The drunks clasped hands and danced together. Meiko struggled and frustrated, she huffed and hissed at me, “Slow it down, slow it down! You are making me look utterly foolish in front of them!”
‘You should have thought of that before you acted like a fool on your own accord.’ I thought. I slowed it down only because it was a required section to the song I was playing.
Meiko shot a glance of scorn at me before letting her high voice wail over the gently picked strings. My hands were taut, intense in their control, and poised over the instrument like a surgeon working diligently over his patient. After the bombastic start, it soon became the wilting, decadent rose petal as I play sparse solemn notes that rose over the volume of one another. I was so concentrated, so immersed, in what I was doing that I could not see nor hear anything else but the sound. The sound that was building. The sound that was rising so subtly and steady within my own throat as the each tense note built up into something majestic and mystic. I thought it was Meiko but no, she was staring at me and despite the impressiveness of her range, the swallow song that warbled wistfully as a wisteria branch in the breeze had silenced the room – along with her – and captivated all who dwelled within. It was if the internal lament that had been cultivating beyond the inexpression “dour” demeanor had been exorcised through a conduit – all I needed was an audience to hear my sorrowful complaint.
♪Yo no naka wa
nani ni tatoen
yamabiko no
kotauru koe no
munashiki ga goto
世の中は
何にたとへん
山彦の
こたふる聲の
空しきがごと♪
[“Our life in this world -
to what shall I compare it?
Its like an echo
resounding through the mountains
and off into the empty sky.” – Monk Ryokan]
There was an silence in which the poem was recited/sung and minimal notes lingered in the air then the playing became faster and faster and faster as if mocking the request and damning it in one ironic sweep before Meiko gathered her bearings and did her best to chirp out the rest to their liking. When all was said and done, I bowed low, as did Meiko hurriedly, as they lightly applauded. As I raised my head, I could see the man’s eyes. They were twinkling and just outside the window, the stars were out.
The patrons soon stumbled their way home. The house was dark. I could feel his lips on my neck, the shriek of the obi sash being undone, and the faint shedding of my kimono like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Lips – a sanguine blur. Skin – pale, celestial. He laid me down upon his futon and into his mouth, a seemingly endless void I stared, and he sung my praises and I sung my lament.
My shame. Outside, the stars were obscured by clouds.
And another one:
Chitose waited patiently in front of the Mayoi statue near the station. It was a packed, humid Friday in late May in Shibuya; teens ambled along the streets in packs, joking and laughing. Businessmen were either eating their lunches before returning to work or checking their watches, nervously waiting for something wicked they brought on themselves that would cost them later on. Chitose’s short, choppy hair was plastered to her face. She wore a simple white camisole, no frills at the bottom, and a short denim skirt with white sneakers that were streaked with peach. They like the childlike ones. The tighter the money, the tighter the snatch.
Chitose was tapping her foot, starting to grow slightly impatient; she slid up her sleeve revealing a plastic Hello Kitty watch. 17:00. Her client was thirty minutes late from their set time. An exasperated sigh left the girl’s lips. The sun was beating down upon her like the whip of an overbearing dominatrix. A few minutes later a man dressed in a white button-down business shirt, tie and black slacks with polished shoes approached where she stood. Forgettable. Instantly forgettable. She barely even remembered his name after he spoke it.
He bowed twice and loosened his tie, uttering apology after apology. Her eyes remained still like the tar black of two seemingly bottomless water wells and she waited out his explanations and apologetics. She did not care that his “bastard of a boss” kept him at his cubicle with backed up paperwork while the boss readied himself for the trip home. She did not care for the passive anger and distaste he was attempting to vent to her. Chitose cared for nothing relating to this man outside of their business. She just wanted to get the job done. A firm clasp of her sweat soaked hand on his wrist snapped him out of his tirade.
“Come.”
She did not wait for him to comply; she simply strung him along into the depths of Dogenzaka with a strange strength of grip and direction. There was usually an act involved on her part with commissions like this. It was usually facilitated by people who had done it before. Experienced men in the field of enjo konsai, “compensated dating”, glossed up media terminology for schoolgirl prostitution ; patrons pretend as if they were my father, or uncle, or perhaps a benevolent soul that lead lost children into their immensely troubled, though neglectful, parent’s arms. Chitose usually played the fey young daughter who lead the way in gay spirits as if she were actually a child. Chitose liked playing the actor but this time around, the girl could not bare to indulge the client she strung along through the humid alleyways and side streets. It was hot; he was late and took no responsibility for himself. The full service was denied.
“Because you came later than the agreed time, an extra will have to be paid for the inconvenience.”
The salaryman clearly appeared discontent but as he opened his mouth, Chitose cut him off with her measured, monotonous drawl.
“Furthermore, if you make this more difficult than this already has become, I will yell out that you are attacking me, that you agreed to use me as a prostitute and you will lose your job in a fell swoop along with ruining your family name by being in association with one of my kind.” An uncharacteristic smile came to her lips as she turned from the white collar’s rapidly whitening face. Placing her index finger to her lips, she spoke after a moment of reflection. “It’s interested how similarly we’re treated in this society and how differently it’s looked upon.”
The man peered towards her gently swishing skirt as she walked in front of him. “What are you going on about?”
Chitose snickered and closed her eyes. “You are just as filthy as I am; prostitution and the workforce...interesting.”
The salaryman regarded her with a weary apprehensiveness. “What the hell are you talking about? Look, girl, I didn’t come all this way for a schoolgirl’s naive and pretentious take on the world and how it functions. Don’t talk about things you don’t know.”
The girl, nevertheless, continued on, undeterred, in the same silky, enigmatic tone as before, as if his voice and presence were phantom to her perception of reality. She walked on with the same slow, venomous drag.
“How one can cast one’s dignity and sell value to the side to whore themselves out in the hope to be noticed for a promotion from the person that extorts them at a slave wage and hope to become as wealthy as the owner of them? Yet...they call their professions “respectable” and mine, degrading and a societal shame. A hypocritical world we live in.”
Chitose laughed and shook her head at her little diatribe. “But of what would a innocent child like me know about that? Now where shall we go, X-san...”
The man stood with his mouth half-agape but was dragged out of his stupor by Chitose’s hand slipping into his pocket, fondling his dick while they strolled down the alleyway on the way to a respectable, undistinguished hotel.
BASIC CHARACTER PROFILES
NAME: Riye Asano
AGE: 17
APPEARANCE: Riye stands at approximately 5'9 in height and weighs about 120. She's skinny and a bit bony here and there due to lack of proper nutrition. She has hazel/green eyes from her father.Her hair is neck length and originally jet black (Riye bleached it blonde.). She wears black lipstick, painted fingernails and her style of dress is very punk/emo though it doesn't quite reflect her personality, only her aesthetic tastes and interests.
BACKSTORY: Riye was born in late fall, in particular the month of November in the Ryukyu Islands to a Japanese mother and an American father as a result of a drunken one night stand. To this day, Riye knows not who her father is. Ryoko Asano, in all her dignity and self-dependence, had a 3 year old named Chiyo and resolved to take care of the children herself. Before Riye was born, they had moved to Hokkaido to a farm inherited from her father after his recent death.
Riye's childhood was a turbulent one; she was an emotional child prone to loud crying fits and shyness. Shaded glasses were worn by twelve years old due to budding anxiety issues, moderate in scope. She generally was close to her mother, moreso than the independent and ever distant Chiyo. Tension starts to build between sisters.
It was in the transition from middle school to high school that Riye began to change. She became associated with a crowd of outcasts within her town who were engaged in various shady activities. It was in this crowd that Riye achieved her now signature alternative aesthetic and experimentation with the drugs and cult religion (to coincide with Chiyo's blooming talent in her artistic field of choice: painting). Riye stayed out late mostly every night of the summer before her freshman year. Subsequently, she began to be romantically involved with one of the members of the outfit and eventually had sex with him, more than once. One time...the condom broke. By the end of the freshman year, Riye was pregnant.
Ryoko was angry but not to the extent of Chiyo's ire. She subsequently cut her sister off, completely removing from her scope of existence. The abortion and the utter disregard from Chiyo as well as the growing word about her spread around the community, caused Riye had a mental breakdown. She was hospitalized and kept in a sanitarium for the better part of a year. With time, especially with her dealings with Chiyo, who she tried to repeatedly tried to reconcile with, the seizures came of more and more frequency until one day she contemplated suicide at the northernmost point of Hokkaido, ready to fling herself into the icy seas. Instead, she came back home, took only what she deemed necessary and left on a pilgrimage. What she sought, not even she knew, only the impulse to wander with the questions: Is life worth it?, what lies beyond? and where did she belong?
PERSONALITY: Riye is a very emotional person, prone to crying fits when alone, despite her distant and stoic facade. She is often difficult and has a rattlesnake temperament when goaded too much. She dislikes talking with people, generally feels inferior towards others with a complex rooted in guilt and shame. Riye has a very "Catholic", self-defeating bent toward life, wishing to be released from life for what's after (if there was something to look forward too beyond the physical veil).
Again, I am VOLUNTEERING so as to get my feet wet. No charge, no strings, FREE. SHORT TO MEDIUM PROJECTS ONLY AT THE MOMENT.NAME: Myra Lee Kobayashi (née Ferreira)
AGE: 18
APPEARANCE: Tall, about 5’9”, with rich, silky midnight black hair that hangs down to her mid-back. She has a caramel complexion, leaning toward light mocha with eyes that are a glassy, onyx color that is as still and impenetrable as the deepest sea gloom. She is full-bodied and ample with natural curves due to her Brazilian heritage. A large scar trails across her throat from a switchblade injury she sustained from a fight between her father and stepmother. She was rendered mute since then and has used a metal voice-box to speak. She often wears a white, professional button-up shirt, a silver crucifix necklace, black slacks and polished professional shoes. A black vest sometimes adorns this outfit.
BACKSTORY: Myra was born in the slums of Rio de Janeiro to two factory workers, one of whom, the mother, died giving birth due to her extremely weak and malnourished state (mostly as a result of a bad infection from a factory injury as well as a lack of sanitary living conditions). Myra’s father wed his next wife after a few years when Myra was 3 years old. Her stepmother was a woman who secretly earned her bread by way of body sales during secret events in Rio, especially in Copacabana nightclubs that provided services to corrupt government officials, religious clergy and celebrities. During the day, the woman worked as a child sitter and housemaid with little pay to supplement the family (She kept large sums of money hidden in a safe in Leblon. She kept her illegal activities out of sight and Myra’s father assumed it was due to late working hours at another job).
Eventually, he found out and a large row broke out when she tried to lure Myra out of the house by force to auction her to prostitution. Myra was seven at the time. She cried out and woke up her father. The stepmother attempted to fight the man and do harm to him, threatening to get her employers involved. She eventually took out a switchblade that she kept in her back pocket and as she tried to slice at Myra’s father’s abdomen, Myra cried out and ran to him. The knife had cut her throat across with the girl passing out from shock and blood loss. In a blind rage, her father murdered the woman, choking her to death and breaking her neck. In the fast frame of events that followed, custody was revoked from Myra's father and subsequently, she was released to the custody of an orphanage run by the Catholic church after receiving much needed medical attention.
During this time from 7 to 14, Myra was subjected to awful treatment at the hands of the orphanage children and upper faculty. She had a tutor that came three times a week to help teach the orphanage children to read, write and do arithmetic. The woman took a special liking to Myra and secretly lent the young girl books which she read in earnest, one of which was the Children's Bible stories and, later, the Bible itself (which was a Portuguese translation of the Jeffersonian text). She took it upon herself to interpret the true words of Jesus Christ and accept him as her Lord and Savior. Myra believed the conditions that she had been put through prior and at the orphanage was a rigorous test to stand strong and fortify her waning faith (her father had long renounced his born religion so it was never taught).
It was during this time that a Japanese academic is in Rio doing a research thesis on class and cultural division in 3rd world countries, and has been living in the area for about five years. His name was Rei Kobayashi, a once leading sociology academic on class divide and apartheid at Tokyo University. He left from Japan to do hands-on research in Rio de Janeiro and complete his thesis on the subject. It was during a visit to the orphanage for research on youth in impoverished areas that he came across a recently beaten Myra after the tour, who immediately raced from the grasp of the head matron to the man, staring deep into his eyes and taking a tight hold of his hand. No one had wanted to adopt her prior to his coming there due to the ugly gash, muteness and dirty presentation of the girl who, by then, was crossing the threshold of puberty . Her eyes told a story to him right then and there but he had no intentions to suddenly adopt a random Brazilian child until he saw the bruises on across her body and the pleading in her eyes. That day coincided with the death of his wife and daughter in a train crash on the Chuo line. He took her in after a few weeks of visiting her, having caught the matron in the act of beating the child for wetting the bed, and filed a complaint of abuse for the unsanitary conditions and lack of child welfare in the institution.
Kobayashi finished the book at the end of that year and went back to publish it with Myra in tow. He taught her Japanese (written) himself along with a few supplementary outside classes to be able to get around and hold a somewhat advanced conversation. It also helped that the voice-box she acquired was one that had a translation function that translated dialogue that came to her, when she turned it on, by way of a miniature hearing aid-like device and then helped her translate her speech, as close as it can, from Portuguese to Japanese. Due to her strange mannerisms and the still present language and societal barrier, coupled with her inability to speak, she was sent to the consul of Kyoto University, who deemed her eligible to attend - Kobayashi, a native Osakan, would only be a whisper away to monitor her and assist her if need be.
PERSONALITY: Myra is a silent, opting to speak economically if prompted, person who mainly keeps to herself but does not mind a conversation with someone who can hold one and look past how she does it. She is a religious person, often seen praying during isolated periods of free time during the school day and has a strong moral core. Myra’s passive exterior hides the critical and scathing parts of her personality as well as lonely bitterness and contempt she has for modern society and its absurd trifles. She is deeply restless, a voracious reader, an eloquent and fiery speaker, highly intelligent and can be honest to the point of cruelty. If she is angered, one would take precaution and run; she will fight anyway she knows how if threatened as if fighting for survival. One can mainly intercept her in Nara Park where she usually lurks in the shade, watching the deer, the large oak on campus, the library where she spends a good amount of time, or her room.
Contacts:
Here (obviously) through PM.
Email: usmanmuy@gmail.com (fastest way you can get to me)
Skype: renathedemon (I'll check it at the end of the day)
