#westerfield

I was going through my files after my computer repairs and forgot I drew this a month or so ago! Inspired by a conversation @grimkipp and I had about our original stories and our main characters, Lucas and Magical Star Girl, if they ever met! 

"I thoroughly enjoy being a part of the Office of Technology Commercialization team. Every day when I walk the halls, I'm astounded by the positive impact we have on the lives of the children and families that come to Nationwide Children’s Hospital."

Weird time to be uploading this on my end, but I can’t sleep. At least it’s the perfect time to show off something I’ve written as a “rough pilot opener” to the series.

Don’t worry if none of this makes a lick of sense. I’ll explain the new characters and stuff later.

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It was a nice Autumn day in Wersterfield, Tenny-see. Rock Candy Lake glistened in the pale sunlight, the tourists’ cameras flashed at the Legendary Statues, and the older townsfolk laughed about the inside joke of calling their home state of Tennessee “Tenny-see” just to mess with people. …The author of this book included.

Apart from the author (who is still currently seething at old pronunciation habits), everyone went about their normal routines without a care in the world. Why, even Bell-Bottomed Bella had a peppier skip that morning! That little gloomy pretender!

In fact, Bella’s walk was so upbeat that a fellow schoolmate had to comment on it. “Something the matter, Bell?” an older girl asked as she joined her friend’s side. “You’re not doing your moody little stomp today.”

“Nope!” Bella smiled cheerfully. “I’m just so excited for Reading Time! Ol’ Jeb’s gonna be telling the Pretty Polly story!”

“Pretty Polly, huh?” Bella’s friend asked with a frown. “That can be one of two different stories to me. Is it the parrot of Goldbeard or the Pretty Girl of the Harlans?”

“The Harlans,” Bella quickly answered, thrill rumbling through her voice. “And you know what that means, Rem.”

“I have a guess,” Rem corrected casually. “Is it something to do with Rites of Passage?”

Bella only replied with a determined giggle.

Rem blinked slowly. “Look,” she purred lazily. “I’m glad you finally get your Rite of Passage to this whole treasure trove of local folklore, but I honestly would’ve gone for the parrot.“

“Because of the pretty feathers he might give out afterwards?” Bella asked with a wink.

Rem blushed underneath her black scarf. “Yeah,” she murmured. “Some parrot feathers would be nice for my collection..”

But before Rem and Bella could talk about more birds, they had arrived at Westerfield One-to-Twelve. Bella did a little bow and said “Goodbye until recess, my black cat rival!”, Rem simply waved, then both went to their respective parts of the schoolhouse. All pretty standard fare for the local Gothic Girlie and her quiet ‘style rival’.

Unfortunately, the classes in One-to-Twelve are less Westerfield standard and more… well.. actuallystandard. The English Teacher is not some Shakespearen-enthralled poet. The Mathematics Teacher only gets upset if one of the “slower” students is not accommodated properly. Even the Science Teacher only has incidents involving dissecting the methods of projection slides rather than frogs. So, in the interest of fairness on them (and on you), I won’t go into further detail about typical class shenanigans.

But Reading Time at the library? That is where things get interesting. There had been this cycle of storytellers hand-picked by both the school and the general public. The Westerfield Storytellers was the group’s name, and telling stories was quite literally a game to them. It became a competition to see who would tell the best stories, and their judges would almost always be the schoolkids. Jebidiah Buford—or, as most call him “Old Jeb”—was the popular choice this time of year. Something about the combination of his carefree attitude, his lumberjack-type appearance; and his weathered, rumbling drawl made him perfect for the spookier stories.

And, as the kids gathered around for the story of Pretty Polly, the sentiment still buzzed throughout the room. “He’ll scare my socks off with this one!” boasted a pretty tough-looking preteen. “I just know it.”

“Oh yeah? I think he’ll make it less scary for me,” piped up an elementary kid holding her teddy bear. “He always makes them less scary.”

“You think he’ll go into detail about what Billy Stakes did to Polly?” asked another kid still wearing a lab coat from Science class. “I can’t tell if she got the stitches before or after he k—“

“Hey, don’t spoil it!” barked a tall girl next to the over-observer. “Most of us don’t even know who ‘Billie Stokes’ is yet!”

In the midst of all this chatter and speculation, Bella kept quiet. She sat crisscrossed in the front row. Watching the closed door at the back of the “stage”. Waiting. Doing her best to remain stoic and unbothered as always.

It’s someone a few of you have heard about, but haven’t really seen.

The colors might be reworked to better match her description from the traditional Pretty Polly ballad (AKA my inspiration for this character).

7/10 love triangles!!

Tally is pretty and she has everything she ever wanted when she was ugly. She has friends, she goes to parties, she’s even pretty popular. But all that she went through with the Smokies make her anxious. She has this constant nagging from the past wherever she is.

Then she meets Zane. And he feels that anxiety too. For months before meeting her he’s starved himself to maintain the clarity from the fuzzy-headedness that pretties live with. And with one kiss they go down a rabbit hole that they can’t come back from. They take the “pretty cure” that the Smokies sneak in for them. 2 pills meant for Tally that she splits with Zane.

Special Circumstances is keeping a close eye on them and even have them permanently cuffed and tracked. It takes a lot of planning for them to break free and break out of the city.

They get separated outside of the city. And Tally finds herself in a sectioned off area of land that houses barbaric and savage looking peoples. They live without electricity or modern tech of any kind and they think of the Pretties as Gods.

Tally comes to realize that these people are caged like livestock for experimentation and breaks free from their reservation, vowing to come back to rescue them.

And finally reunited with Zane, she doesn’t have very long to appreciate him being alive. If at all.

It’s even more complicated with David there… but has he always been this ugly?

The book ends when an unexpected tracking device gets set off and the Specials are on their way. Tally must choose between Zane and David and ultimately chooses Zane.

The rest of the Smokies flee whilst Tally and Zane stay behind and get captured. And who shows up with Special Circumstances but Shay, now a Special herself. Her revenge for Tally’s selfishness through book 1 (I don’t think she acted selfishly in book 2) ?? She gets to turn Tally into a Special herself. Well fuck.

I love how the author made Shay her fre-nemy. Shay is a good friend. She shares her secrets and her friends and her knowledge. Shay trusts Tally completely (enough to have given her the location of the Smoke in the first book!). And Tally betrays that trust over and over. She treats Shay like she’s second rate. Ngl, Tally is a shit best friend. /Shay/ should have been the one to find Valentino 317 with Tally. /Shay/ should have been the first one she told about the cure! Just because things didn’t happen one way doesn’t mean Tally couldn’t have communicated better. Shit and selfish main character Fr.

6/10 dystopian reality

Tally Youngblood just wants to be pretty. Ultimately that’s the life goal of this world. At 16 you get the operation to make you pretty so you could join the New Pretties across the river in Nee Pretty Town.

Being so close to her 16th birthday, all of Tally’s friends had aged out of Uglyville. She’s lonely until she meets Shay. And instantly they’re best friends. They love to sneak out of the dorms at night and play tricks or wander the ruins of past society nearby.

And Shay is kind of odd. She’s not as excited for her upcoming 16th birthday as she should be. She makes a lot of snide remarks about becoming pretty. It’s almost as if she’d /prefer/ to stay ugly.

One day Shay tells Tally she’s leaving the city. She’s headed for a place where people don’t turn pretty. Following a mysterious David that Tally has never met.

Tally stays behind… and her 16th birthday comes…. And Special Circumstances hijacks her operation and tells her she’ll never be pretty unless she betrays Shay and reveals the location she ran away too.

So off Tally goes, with a tracking device that will reveal the location of Shay once activated.

Pretty quickly she finds her, living amongst a society of free city people. Old uglies that she can barely stand to look at.

Tally immediately through herself into the labor of their community projects. She even developed a close relationship with David (much to Shay’s dismay). And on one of the best nights of her life, she accidentally triggers the tracker.

All hell breaks lose and Tally is left with Davidto free the captured people of the Smoke.

By the time they locate their people, some are dead and Shay is… pretty?

David’s mother thinks she can reverse the effects of the “pretty haze”. But the cure is untested and Shay won’t try it.

So off Tally goes. To give herself up to Special Circumstances and become pretty. The end.

And I personally couldn’t get over how two-faced Tally was throughout almost the entire book. The truth didn’t come out until the absolute last second. And she couldn’t come clean from the get go. I was so frustrated with her lies.