Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language, violence, and mature content.
“Those who dream by day are cognizant
of many things which escape those
who dream only by night” -- Edgar Allen Poe
(1809-1849)
Occult Wiki posted a new announcement: NEW RITUAL TO TRY!
Morgan stared at the phone with what appeared to be very little interest. Even if, in fact, Morgan was quite interested, he couldn’t very well check out the so-called “ritual” in school. If he was already going to be in trouble with the vice principal for having his phone out again during lunch, he didn’t want to get in more trouble for “meddling with demons” or some bullshit. Morgan swiped the notification to the left and set his phone down, listening to the vice principal’s stomps towards him.
“What were you looking at, Morgan?” the vice principal, Mr. Davis, demanded. The man grabbed Morgan’s phone and turned it on, looking suspiciously at the time and the Assassination Classroom background (Morgan slightly thanked God that the vice principal didn’t know any animes except for Black Butler, or else he would have gotten in serious trouble right then and there for having such a “blasphemous” background. He could imagine the principal’s face when she realized what Assassination Classroom was about).
“The time, sir,” Morgan lied, not turning around to face his vice principal. “I was checking how much time was left with lunch.”
“You swiped left,” the ever-observant Mr. Davis pointed out. “Are you hiding something from me?”
“No, sir. It was a text that I got from my friend in another school. I’ve reminded him several times that I can’t text him in school, but he keeps doing it anyway. I swiped it to ignore it.” It was true, to a point. He did have a friend from a neighboring school that had texted him, but it was earlier in the day. Hopefully, Davis didn’t know how to access times on an iPhone.
“And what are you doing with this friend of yours?” Mr. Davis implied. Morgan wanted to groan. He had forgotten that, even though he cut his hair short and told teachers to call him male, he still had the skirt on his uniform that told people he was a girl.
“We’re just friends, sir,” Morgan replied. “We met through my brother and were friends ever since.” He frowned. “Is it not okay to be friends with the opposite gender, sir?” Even if Morgan and his friend weren’t technically the opposite gender, Morgan decided to phrase his words carefully.
“It’s fine, but I don’t want you doing any inappropriate things with that boy,” the vice principal said sternly. “It’s against-”
“God’s will, sir,” Morgan finished. He pushed back an ‘I know’ at his vice principal and began to eat his half-eaten pizza, hoping that Mr. Davis would focus his attention on some other kid.
“Good, but don’t interrupt me again,” Mr. Davis said. The vice principal set the phone on the table gently, away from the edge. “You don’t want to end up in my office again, do you?”
“No, sir,” Morgan answered politely with a mouth half-full of cafeteria pizza. “I’m sorry for being so rude, sir.” He grabbed his phone with a greasy hand and put it in the skirt pocket of his school uniform as the vice principal walked away. As soon as he heard the vice principal yelling at some person named Jeeves, Morgan relaxed. He didn’t have to worry about Davis looking over his shoulder again.
Unfortunately, he did have to worry about a few people.
“Hey, dyke,” someone said, tapping Morgan on the shoulder. “Did you tell the vice principal that you aren’t going to be his girl slut anymore, or are you waiting until next semester?” His name was Dugal, and Dugal was the equivalent of a female bully—spreading lies, rumors, and insults like they were butter on toast. Most of the guys just beat Morgan up, but Dugal seemed to realize that Morgan was more affected by words than bruises.
“It depends if you told the principal,” Morgan shot back, his back facing towards Dugal. “Are you still going to be his guy slut or no?” It was pathetic, but it was the first thing that came to mind.
“Then what were you talking about?” Dugal asked, dodging the question. “How you’re finally going to leave this school for some liberal school with flowers and rainbows?”
“Your ass must be jealous about how much shit just came out of your mouth,” Morgan snapped, still not turning around. He gripped the table with both hands and held fast, knowing that Dugal was probably going to grab him... again.
“What did you say, dyke?” Dugal bellowed, grabbing Morgan by the collar and pulling Morgan to himself. There it is, Morgan thought ruefully, taking in Dugal’s sneering face. “I am the male here; you listen to me!”
“I’m sorry, my ears must be clogged. You just said that you’re the only male here,” Morgan growled. “If I recall, you’re the bitch who uses girl bully tactics to get what you want.”
Dugal formed a fist with his other hand, but didn’t punch. The vice principal’s stomps were getting closer. “We’ll talk about this later, after school. Got it, dyke?”
“Fine,” Morgan snapped. “If you can catch me.”
Dugal shoved Morgan down and faced towards the vice principal, who was so angry that there was practically smoke coming out of his ears. Davis grabbed Dugal by the shoulder and “escorted” him to the principal’s office, which really meant a lot of yelling and scolding while Dugal was forced along the hallway near the cafeteria. Morgan smiled after them, thankful that his bully didn’t haul ass before the principal, resulting in Morgan getting in trouble.
“Damn,” a girl’s voice said. “Dugal’s worse than ever. Getting physical.”
That was the only person that Morgan actually liked in this school. Her name was Raylyn, and she was different as well—she was the only non-closeted lesbian in Flying Dove Senior High. When she got kicked out of her old group of friends, she became best friends with Morgan and was the only person in the school who supported the trans community (as far as he knew). In her own words: “a so-called ‘tranny’ that is ‘manipulative’ and ‘constantly changes like their gender’ is better than a ‘cisgender’ that is fake and goes behind your back constantly.”
She didn’t really have a way with words, but Morgan knew her well enough to know what she was talking about and that she had good intentions.
“Nice to see you too, Ray,” Morgan replied with a bland tone. “I’m having a great day, thanks for asking.”
“Don’t be like that!” Raylyn laughed. “Sarcasm is not a good way to greet your friend!”
“Sarcasm, I’ll have you know, is the body’s natural defense against stupidity,” Morgan teased. “Closed mouths are closed minds.”
“Stop quoting crap you saw on the internet and eat,” Raylyn shot back, setting her tray down. Morgan guaranteed that, instead of getting her lunch, she was at the counselor again to talk about her ‘sinful behavior’ of being a lesbian. “I’m tired from the counselor’s...” she leaned in and said, in a whisper: “...shit.”
Morgan faked a huge gasp. “Raylyn did a swear! Not in my Christian household!”
“Shh, Morgan, Davis will hear you,” Raylyn giggled playfully. She had gone to the principal’s office so many times during the year that she didn’t care about going to the office. It was just a daily thing to her. “I’m going to get sent to the principal’s office. The horror!” She faked a heart attack and fell back into her seat, clutching her heart with everything that she had. “How would I bear the pain? I should die before going to that place!”
Morgan laughed. “My name is Morgan Valdis, otherwise known as The Sender!” Morgan cackled, but not too loudly. “I am known for sending people to the principal’s office. Mwuahaha!”
Raylyn gasped and pretended to faint dramatically. “No! Don’t send me to the principal’s office, Sender! Please, I beg you!”
They made eye contact, and burst out laughing. Morgan’s nearly-constant bad mood was always brightened by Raylyn’s jokes. For the rest of the lunch, they ate their disgusting pizza, chatting and making fun of the bullies that plagued Morgan’s and Raylyn’s every move.
/--\
NEW RITUAL TO TRY!
By witchsocietyofficial (admin)
American writer Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) once said that “the supernatural is the natural not yet understood.” In the Witch Society, we believe in that quote wholeheartedly. Members of the Witch Society pledge to give our lives to the cause of the supernatural; to make people understand what was previously not understood before. With this cause, we bring you a fully tested ritual to try out at home, if you’re willing to risk your lives.
My name is Agnes, codename Wartshobble. I entered the Witch Society through my grandmother, codename Blackfoot, who was also a member herself, bless her soul. She was quite a powerful witch as well—for a while, my town was influenced greatly by her magic in both good and bad. At one point, she was a part of the high council for the Witch Society, which is one of the greatest honors that a witch could have. She passed away a few years ago, but I will always have her in my heart as a great witch and hopefully I, as her successor, will be able to live up to her name.
Recently, I discovered an old book of Blackfoot’s, titled simply as: The Behaviours and Characteristics of Demon Rituals: a Study. It was an unpublished book that she had written herself; I recognized her loopy handwriting anywhere. On page 17, there was this ritual. However, it was not completed. I called upon my fellow witches and we tried many spells and variations, finally perfecting it. It was a demon summoning spell, it seemed. Of course, this resulted in many exorcisms on witches. Luckily, all exorcisms resulted in a surviving witch and I hope that they remain alive and well long after they cast the spell.
In exclusion to the witches that helped me perfect the ritual, most witches in the Witch Society performed the perfected summoning to get statistics and to test more variations. The statistics are as follows (and we give our sincere apologies and blessings to the witches that sacrificed their life for our cause. Rest in peace).
43% tried the ritual and succeeded (we did many exorcisms because of this. Always have a priest on hand).
40% tried and failed to summon the demon. Err with caution, as failing means death.
13% tried and saw strange things, but wasn’t able to summon a demon.
4% tried and saw and felt nothing strange. No demons and nothing strange, at all.
Because more people tried and lived than tried and died, I felt like it was my duty to post about this on the occult wiki. Most members of the occult wiki are young ones aspiring to be witches and experts about the supernatural. I feel like this ritual is the perfect opportunity to do so.
Make sure that you do this at a full moon and not a waning or waxing one. The ritual will not work if you don’t. We have tried, and the most that we experienced were strange noises.
It is also recommended that you do this away from civilization. If you do end up dead, other citizens won’t end up dead as well. That way, you could prevent any guilt about murder in your afterlife.
The ritual is shared in the pdf below:
I hope that you have fun and that you have success with your findings! Good luck, occultists!
Wartshobble, High Council Witch Society Member
End of chapter
Continue to next chapter ~ your old friend (part 1)Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
139,674 Literary Works • 672,647 Reviews
Hello! Yeah, this already has a couple reviews, and yeah, this was posted a while ago by YWS standards, but I couldn't resist. A little side note before I get into it, don't read this while listening to act. 1 of Hamilton, the tone's clash so spectacularly and reading about a bully pulling the MC up by his shirt collar while listening to Dear Theodosia is like mental whiplash.
Okay, I'm gonna do this, as usual, paragraph by paragraph from start to finish. Okay, opening line.
"Occult Wiki posted a new announcement: NEW RITUAL TO TRY!"
(I didn't count the Edgar Allen Poe quote at the beginning). Nice first line, I don't really have a lot of commentary on it, it's just pretty good. It draws the reader in, starts us off with a couple of questions. Well done.
"Morgan stared at the phone with what appeared to be very little interest. Even if, in fact, Morgan was quite interested, he couldn’t very well check out the so-called “ritual” in school. If he was already going to be in trouble with the vice principal for having his phone out again during lunch, he didn’t want to get in more trouble for “meddling with demons” or some bullshit. Morgan swiped the notification to the left and set his phone down, listening to the vice principal’s stomps towards him."
Okay, I've been to a private school, so this got me asking WHY IS THE VICE PRINCIPLE IN THE LUNCHROOM WITH THE STUDENTS?! Okay, it's not that big a deal, but still...granted, my school was REALLY small, like, there was a grand total of 1 kindergartener in the whole school and 5th-8th grades all shared one, still very small, classroom. I think there were three other either graders, not including me, so it's not like this was a really fancy place. But even with all of that in mind, I just can't imagine a vice principal of any kind of private Christian (I'll assume catholic) school with the budget for uniforms and everything, would be anywhere near the students on their 'off' time. So, a minor thing I went on a mini-rant about, moving on.
"The man grabbed Morgan’s phone and turned it on, looking suspiciously at the time and the Assassination Classroom background (Morgan slightly thanked God that the vice principal didn’t know any animes except for Black Butler, or else he would have gotten in serious trouble right then and there for having such a “blasphemous” background. He could imagine the principal’s face when she realized what Assassination Classroom was about)."
I UNDERSTAND THAT REFERENCE! Not that it was subtle, but as someone who does not (by no fault of my own) watch a lot of anime, I think I should get some credit for this. I've even seen both shows! Only one to completion, sadly, but I'll take what I can get. I am just full of mini-rants today, aren't I, MOVING ON.
"“And what are you doing with this friend of yours?” Mr. Davis implied. Morgan wanted to groan. He had forgotten that, even though he cut his hair short and told teachers to call him male, he still had the skirt on his uniform that told people he was a girl."
So here's the first, well, it's less a hint than a flat statement, that he is transgender. I think that you handled it...I wouldn't say GRACEFULLY, but you did alright. Your writing style is still kind of amateurish as of yet, and I've no doubt that it'll get better with practice, but I think that was the real reason it came off as a little too sudden. Don't get me wrong, it's good to treat stuff like this as constants, things that shouldn't be questioned in-universe. I do the same thing with the gods that my characters believe in, in my book, they just, are. But this topic is something that is immediately prevalent in today's politics, for some good and bad reasons, so maybe easing the readers into it would be a better approach? I'm just throwing stuff out here, there's really no good or bad way to handle it. Ignore me, I'm rambling again.
"“Hey, dyke,” someone said, tapping Morgan on the shoulder. “Did you tell the vice principal that you aren’t going to be his girl slut anymore, or are you waiting until next semester?” His name was Dugal, and Dugal was the equivalent of a female bully—spreading lies, rumors, and insults like they were butter on toast. Most of the guys just beat Morgan up, but Dugal seemed to realize that Morgan was more affected by words than bruises."
Okay, we have a bully character. Yes, it's a trope, and I'm trying to ignore that, but it was just so PAINFUL to read this intro to the new character. There are so many ways to introduce a bully and this was probably the worst. I'm going to stop trying to be gentle, please don't yell at me. Every other bully character in the history of ever is introduced with some variation of this scene. MC is at lunch, minding their own business, maybe having an expositional chat with their generic BFF character, when, suddenly, shock! Horror! The bully arrives! Some bullying ensues, usually in the form of some lazy insults or, if the writer is feeling really edgy, some punches. The MC delivers some witty comebacks to the verbal blows but is helpless against the physical ones. The scene ends with the MC's generic BFF, who will probably become either a third wheel or just kinda vanish later on, comforting the MC and affirming that the bully is, in fact, a bully.
If I were to write this bit, it would go a bit differently. The idea is to find a way to write the scene that would convey the same information, that Dugal is a manipulative-type bully who targets the MC for being transgender, without falling back on the cliches. I don't have time to outline the scene for you right now, but keep that in mind if you decided to do a re-write.
Onward!
"“What did you say, dyke?” Dugal bellowed, grabbing Morgan by the collar and pulling Morgan to himself. There it is, Morgan thought ruefully, taking in Dugal’s sneering face. “I am the male here; you listen to me!”"
I'm going to ignore the unnatural dialogue as I have been this whole time (it's a problem that you could address by reading it aloud to yourself or someone else to see how it actually sounds) and move on to the little continuity error here. First of all, there is no way in frozen heck that anyone would get away with this at all, especially not more than once as it is implied by the MC's inner dialogue, so the bully here is not as described in that regard, as well as another. The other is this, the MC thinks of the bully as a 'girl bully' (which is sexist as hell and something I personally take offense to, but I'll ignore that and just telly you to please change female to feminine at least, please) who manipulates others and spreads rumors and such, but here he is shown using clumpy, uncreative insults worthy of a middle school playground and physically assaulting the MC. You set up an expectation for an at least moderately clever bully who keeps with a 'hands-off' approach and possibly portrays themselves much differently to different people. This person can be interesting. Dugal is not that person. At all. Either change how Dugal acts or set up a different expectation.
Furthermore, we must trace our course! Remain resilient through the torment!
"Dugal shoved Morgan down and faced towards the vice principal, who was so angry that there was practically smoke coming out of his ears. Davis grabbed Dugal by the shoulder and “escorted” him to the principal’s office, which really meant a lot of yelling and scolding while Dugal was forced along the hallway near the cafeteria. Morgan smiled after them, thankful that his bully didn’t haul ass before the principal, resulting in Morgan getting in trouble."
Adding the 'which really meant' half of the sentence was unnecessary and kinda took away from the joke. Try making these two different sentences instead. Set up, punchline.
"That was the only person that Morgan actually liked in this school. Her name was Raylyn, and she was different as well—she was the only non-closeted lesbian in Flying Dove Senior High. When she got kicked out of her old group of friends, she became best friends with Morgan and was the only person in the school who supported the trans community (as far as he knew). In her own words: “a so-called ‘tranny’ that is ‘manipulative’ and ‘constantly changes like their gender’ is better than a ‘cisgender’ that is fake and goes behind your back constantly.”"
I would make this little info dump more scattered throughout the piece. Little bits of this information can be given away in dialogue, description, even in different chapters. If the readers absolutely must know about Raylyn being a lesbian, for example, and they have to know right now, maybe have a bit of banter between her and your MC. For example, Morgan could joke, "Got yourself a man yet?" or something of the sort, then Raylyn could mock gasp and say something like, "Did you just assume I'm /straight/?! What is it? Is it my shirt?!" then she could make a little show of messing with her school uniform as if to make it project gayness, or the like. But, your story your rules.
"NEW RITUAL TO TRY!"
Everything after this is really, really, ridiculously, boring. Maybe find a way to spice it up a bit, or be more to-the-point, so to speak. Just have a short bit about the spell, if the family history of the person who sent it is really that important then shorten it up and put that there, then list off the percentages and voila! A not-super-boring or at least not-super-long-but-still-kinda-boring bit has been created!
Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh, I really did like the piece, but there were a few problems with it that I had to point out. This got long, sorry, but my reviews usually do, so it's not like it's a NEW thing. Sorry if I pointed out stuff that someone already mentioned, I didn't have time to go back and read through everyone else's reviews before writing this up. My advisor aproaches, I must pretend to be productive.
Okay so I based some of the things off of stuff I saw at my school:
you're not the only one.
1. I've been bullied a lot, and bullies do actually do that. I'm usually just sitting there, eating my lunch, when some asshole comes over to me and smashes me in the arm (because I'm lesbian).
2. I'm also a feminist, so I didn't mean for that to happen lmao
3. The whole point of the article is that it is boring and ridiculously bad. It's not something readers would want to read, as per a normal wikia article.
4. At my school, the vice principal does wander around and check up on students, so I put it in. It's strange to NOT have supervision.
5. I am so aware that the bullying might come off as unrealistic and, not to be rude, but if you read the author's note you would know. It's just a first draft and I'm trying to get stuff on paper.
6. I'm tough on reviews too, don't worry
7. However, going from the sixth point: let me give a little advice as someone who has been on this site for nearly two years: comments like me being a amateur writer are not okay. I am very well aware that I am an amateur (I am 15, after all, and have only been writing for 2 years) and you're lucky that I take things like that fairly well (by the by, so so sorry this seems rude. I'm on a mobile phone so I don't have time to sugarcoat). You never know who's going to backlash with cyberbullying. It's happened to me a few times, and I don't want it to happen to you.
8: yAS ANIME bnha is the best
After those points, I want to thank you! And, if you're new (I'm guessing by the fact you only reviewed 30 times and that I've never seen you before), welcome to YWS!
Hey! MJ here for my first review in a long time...
Here, I think that the "female bully" doesn't really adequately describe Dugal like you mean it to. I would maybe say something about how his tactic is to spread rumors like wildfire, or you can keep your analogy if you want.First off, I wanted to say that, as someone who goes to a Christian school, this seems pretty dramatic. I totally get intending it that way, but while I'm sure that a transgender student at my school would face discrimination and maybe even bullying, the headmaster character seemed comically intense to the point where it seemed unrealistic. Besides, if this is a private Christian school, as I assume it is from the uniforms and the references to God throughout, then there wouldn't be any bullying as severe as this. I can't speak for a public school, and I also thought it would be worth mentioning that if this is a private school, students who get spoken to almost every day throughout the school year would almost certainly have been expelled by this point.
Also, I thought that the amount of "sirs" that Morgan used seemed excessive. I can understand a headmaster with control issues who makes students refer to him like that, and I think it's the basis of a strong character, but perhaps you could cut it down to one "sir" every time Morgan addressed him, at most.
Now for some quotes:
OH. SNAP. SON
Hopefully this was helpful; I just wanted to give you some quick pointers on how you could improve it from my perspective. The biggest thing I noticed was the setting, but again, I may have misinterpreted this, so either way, I hope this was beneficial to you in some way
~MJ
yeah, i'm aware that the bullying was unrealistic. that's why i said so in the author's note lmao
thanks!
oh yeahhh forgot that whoops rip
hi! i just want to get something out of the way quick:
this is my first time writing a transgender character. i decided to go all out and write a story from his pov instead of having him as a side character because,,, i felt like it,,, but please don't be too hard on me. i would normally say go right ahead but i definitely support the community in all ways possible and that i am not experienced in writing genderqueer characters yet. i'm also only 15, so there's that too.
also, i know that the bullying is not realistic. i will address that later
otherwise, please rip it apart! (oh, and this is a working title. any title recs i really appreciate. also tell me what you think morgan looks like since i don't have any vision for him but short hair and a black-and-white female uniform).
thanks!
~~ zami