In Medius Res

All the episodes of Galavant are on the Internet Archive!

Do all lovers feel they're inventing something? I know the gestures. I imagined it all, waiting for you.

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

If you have several connected ideas that don't quite work as a regular multichap story but also don't quite feel like a series, a 5+1 style of fic might work for you.

In general, the fic is six chapters long (although you can format it however you'd like if that doesn't work for you). It chronicles 5 times that one thing happened and 1 time that something else happened instead.

For example: 5 times A and B didn't kiss... and one time they did.

It's an easily recognizable structure for many and it's a handy way for writers to get to "the good bits" without agonizing over transitions etc. in between. Each chapter hits with the power of a oneshot, but you still get the build up and release of a multichapter fic.

You don't have to follow the numbers exactly. 5+1 is just the most common format.