#IT AUTO UPDATES TOO NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO ITS FUCKING STUPID
Text
hi does anyone know any good alternatives to discord that are similar in terms of like... having different channels/servers to chat in but just not discord because my thing auto updated and discords being a bitch and wont let us change it back and they arent listening to their people and oh my god they're making the app worse with every update microsoft didnt even have to buy them off im PISSED
#rant#discord#grims texts#rant cw#please im so pissed anf upset i hate it here#IT AUTO UPDATES TOO NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO ITS FUCKING STUPID
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Deja Vu
I have Asperger Syndrome, so I understand what it feels like to have everyone mad at you for saying the “wrong” thing.
Why does it happen? In my case, it usually comes down to this. Aspie cracks some stupid, wicked inappropriate joke. The neurotypicals in the room laugh uncomfortably, sort of as a discreet way of saying "knock it off". Aspie misses the nonverbal message completely, and cracks more inappropriate jokes. The neurotypical, wanting to keep the social order, smiles and nods.
The minute you leave, they go behind everyone's back and gossip about you. They badmouth you. Next thing you know, everyone's mad at you. Everyone waits for you to screw up so they can pounce on you. Sometimes, they even set you up to fail just so they can lay it on you the minute you screw up.
The best you can do is just try and watch yourself so you don't say or do anything stupid, which is actually a lot harder than it looks. You don't know what'll set people off. And believe me, I learned that lesson the hard way when I snuck out of the house in sophomore year.
The night I snuck out of the house, I met up with my friends Siobhan and Christian. As we waited in a slow moving line at the McDonald’s, Siobhan commented, “This line stretches all the way to Morocco.”
I nodded and chuckled. “Yeah,” I replied, “you ain't seen a line like this.” As I said this, I momentarily forgot that she was blind. It didn’t matter. She and I laughed it off like it was nothing.
Or, at least I thought it was nothing. The person standing behind us didn’t agree. “That’s not funny” she snipped.
I turned around and looked at her. “What?” I said.
“I heard everything you said”
I shrugged. “I was making a joke, it’s nothing,” I replied politely.
The woman shook her head and rolled her eyes. “ It's the 21st century,” she barked at me in a moralizing tone. “Nowadays, even nothing is something.”
As she scolded me, I couldn’t help but notice what she was wearing. She wore a suit that looked like a green, stripy pool table and a pink shirt with black polka dots underneath. It made her look like a watermelon. It didn't help that she was fat. I couldn't stop thinking, watermelon. Watermelon. That woman looks like a watermelon. Watermelon.
It was our turn to order. We got our food, and we headed back to Christian’s car. On our way out, the woman in the watermelon suit gave me the bird. I meant to say “whatever”, but I accidentally blurted out, “Watermelon”
And that was the end. We did what we set out to do, I got home, and my parents were none the wiser. And my sneaking out would have just become another adolescent memory had it not been for this.
Roughly three weeks after the whole incident took place, I had to attend a emergency disciplinary hearing. When I got to the guidance counsellor’s office, she didn’t greet me with “Hi” or “Hello”. Instead, she said, “Judith, I heard about what I said to Siobhan at McDonald's.”
I sat there, confused. “How?”
The guidance counsellor exhaled sharply out her nose. “What you said was considered extremely ableist.”
I shrugged. “So, you know the fat woman from McDonald’s? Did she rat me out?”
“Judith,” she continued, “the person behind you in line at McDonald's that night was Vivienne McCandless, a close friend of mine.” She then raised her eyebrows menacingly. “Speaking of which, you also call her a watermelon”
“By mistake”
“Doesn’t matter.” Her eyes felt like they’d piece my skin. “In fact, I would recommend that to fully understand the scope of your actions, you must write a five-page apology letter to all marginalized individuals.”
And then it came. The ultimatum. I got suspended.
Getting suspended felt weird, like when you're in a different city and Seinfeld comes on at a different time than it does at home. I was in shock. In fact; I felt a bit sick to my stomach. And it wasn't just because I got suspended.
Here's where things started to freak me out. I was writing my apology letter and my computer began to hang. One minute, I was typing, and the next; it stopped working. After a few seconds, it just shut off with no warning. For a second, I thought it was broken. I tried jiggling the switch, and to my surprise, it came back on. There was only one problem. It decided to update its operating system, and all my files were wiped. Worse, the auto install for the new operating system got to 85%, then it crashed. "Holy shit" I said under my breath, "this thing is worse than having cancer!"
No sooner than two minutes after I said that, the phone rang. I didn’t answer, so it went to voicemail. But the message scared the ever loving crap out of me:
Hi Judith, it's Vivienne. Who the FUCK do you think you are?! How can you live with yourself?! How fucking DARE you compare a computer failure to cancer! You don't know what I've been through! I've ACTUALLY HAD CANCER, you fucking ignoramus! I hope you fuck off and die, you bitch!
I started shaking. I felt sick to my stomach. At that moment, I got the feeling that Vivienne found a way to follow me around, waiting for me to drop my guard.
Could she have been stalking me? How'd she know my name and phone number? How did she know what I'd said? I was in my own house, and nobody else was home. Did that mean she had enough information to bug every room of my house? I hoped to God that she hadn’t. If so, then that would mean that she was always watching me.
It's hard for anyone (much less a person with Asperger's) to watch what they say so that they don't hit anyone's murder buttons. You don't know what'll set people off. You also don't know who will overhear, nor will you know where they'll be. And just because you’re home doesn’t mean people aren’t watching you, listening to every word you say, and looking for something to take offense to.
I’m not going to take it. This is too far. I’m not going to stand for someone waiting for me to screw up so she can relentlessly berate me for having a social skills disability.
I called back. I hauled off and said to her, "OK, Vivienne, you don't know me, and I don't know you, this has got to stop. You cannot stalk and harass someone just because they said something that made you feel uncomfortable. Alright? I get it, I made a mistake, and I apologize. We all make mistakes, but relentlessly stalking people and badgering them when they make a mistake is inexcusable. Just fuck off and move on like a sensible adult."
What she said next surprised me. "Come and find me,” she said just before texting me an address.
Usually when I'm confronted with an address I don't know, I check the address on Google first to see if it’s legit. Since my computer crashed, Google Earth was no longer an option. I had to actually go there.
I was shocked to discover that the address Vivienne gave me wasn't for an apartment. The street and house number went to a cemetery, while the apartment number was for a gravestone. I was really spooked when I saw the name on the gravestone:
Vivienne Jane McCandless
At first, I thought that somehow between now and my first incident with her, she'd died. Nope. Wrong again. My jaw dropped when I saw the date of death on the gravestone: Vivienne had died six days before I was born.
24 notes
·
View notes
Text
Since tumblr was weird about the last post and stuck the read more in the ask itself which is SILLY. This is what would have originally been Ersatz Abyss’ Prologue:
Obviously spoiler warnings. Pls do not read unless you know what happened to Dirk x3
Dirk > Reflect on Your Latest Bad Decision
Your name is Dirk Strider, and you are being reckless again.
You acknowledge that.
You don’t know what you are thinking, throwing yourself into battle after battle, long after your muscles have started to protest with fatigue, flirting with the jaws of pain and injury.
You acknowledge that too.
Maybe that’s the problem. You aren’t thinking at all.
Or more precisely, you don’t want to be thinking.
Not about Jake.
(You can’t stop thinking about Jake.)
Not about the fact that your messages are sitting unheeded and unresponded to in a Pesterchum window, banished to the lower right corner of your shades. Even the slightest focus on the application has it popping open, bidden by the transparently mid-level conscious desire of your too-busy brain, despite the very clear fact that you don’t want to be thinking about it at all.
You don’t want to see the sea of orange messages tumbling through the semi-transparent application like waves. See the green pip of his online status reminding you that he’s probably seen it, and isn’t answering them at all. At least you know he’s alive, even if Jane had to be the one to reassure you of that.
It’ll be two weeks tomorrow.
You want to scream out your frustration--your fear, because you love him and why would he visibly, pointedly, unmistakably ignore you like this if you love him??? If he loves you back???--but that wouldn’t be cool at all, so you just press your lips shut behind the blank visage of your rad, flame painted gas mask,and clench your jaw and pull your goddamn sword through the air, cleaving the monster--you don’t even know what kind of monster it is, you don’t care--in twain. It’s not even a neat cut, one half slouching back in on the other with a heavy squelch, joining a number of others in various states of dismemberment across the mossy green stone of this tomb.
Green.
Green.
Why the FUCK was everything here green?
Your auto-responder’s text isn’t green as he pointedly takes control of the application and shoos away the errant window, overriding your traitorous brain’s hyper-fixation and opening up a new chat.
(h)TT: You really need to stop thinking about this.
(h)TT: It’s a most inconvenient failing of your organic processor, falling into such fickle human traps such as useless recursive and perhaps even reductive feelings.
(h)TT: It makes me feel momentarily thankful for the fact that I am a computer, and thus immune to such failings. Perhaps you should look into making a conversion yourself.
(h)TT: It seems you need to take a step back and ask yourself what Robojesus would do.
(h)TT: What would Robojesus do, Dirk?
(h)TT: The answer is decidedly not slaughter an entire tomb’s population to assuage your hurting feefees because your boyfriend is giving you the cold shoulder.
You ignore him.
(h)TT: Dirk, I’m 99.9% sure the zombie is actually dead again. For the hundredth time. You can put the sword away now.
You jerk away from the corpse with it’s pitiful grist yield and don’t answer. However, you don’t put the sword away as prompted. And he keeps prompting. You consider shutting your shades off entirely--him off entirely. You could do it. One thought. One thought and they’d be powered the fuck down in the middle of that red diatribe he’s going through, bleeding through the screen and into your eyeballs.
It’s just a thought however. Instead you forcibly override his control of the display--you are the primary user after all, that’s how you coded that shit--and close the text window.
Perhaps it isn’t fair, shutting him out like this, but you’re angry and hurting and you just want to work out your frustrations on the goddamn game constructs in peace.
The poisonous green kryptonian mists swirl around you as you move onto the next room, slithering over your skin like a cloud of tiny snakes, tugged along with your movements. Notification after notification stack up in the corner of your display. You mute that too, while your katana cleaves into the skull of some sort of reanimated reptilian creature, and just keep moving.
The next window to pop up is baby blue. Stopping you dead in your tracks.
Jane.
Oh.
Fuck.
Him.
You pretend you don’t see it. You don’t want to snap at Jane. It’s not her fault she’s being used in your auto-responder’s petty harassment campaign.
Then after a thought, you shut down Pesterchum entirely before he can drag Roxy into this. Going offline. Incommunicado outside of yourself, and the version of yourself living in your personal computing device. Actually, for that you cut off the network access to the shades entirely so he doesn’t try something else.
You might as well be seeing red--figuratively, not literally, you refuse to let him open a chat window--with the anger that seethes within you right now. At Jake. At him. It’s all the last couple weeks of frustration of an on again, off again, up and down roller coaster of a relationship that you wouldn’t allow yourself to feel for fear of driving Jake further away, all bubbling up and fizzing over, spilling out of you like a soda bottle filled with Jake-English shaped mentos.
You’ll have to get down on your knees and clean it up later. Put in the elbow grease and mop up the explosion of sticky, nasty, dirty coke. Get your thinkpan going about how sustainable this is. How whether the distinction of being Jake English’s number one bae is worth all this stress and the strain that has reduced your relationship to what feels like a step down from zero. But.
That’s later. For once in your life, in the isolation of these desecrated tombs in this ruined city, on a planet that belongs to you and no one else…
You allow yourself to feel.
If AR wants to stick his virtual nose in the middle of your carefully quarantined quest for catharsis then isn’t it the equivalence of someone putting their head in the metaphorical sendificator? You suppose he’s just following his nature. Meddling in other people’s business. Clinging. Unable to just let shit be.
Your nature. Orange text going on and on and on. Scrolling down an empty screen.
One last room. You’ve explored enough of these tombs over the last almost half-a-year of your life to know they come in a pattern. Some battle rooms, some puzzle rooms, and then finally a treasure room. The end. You won. Have yourself a fucking sticker for your trouble. You’ve already cleared this one before, so you don’t even have the satisfaction of a mini-boss or even a random lore tablet waiting for you. Not that you ever really cared about the history the game tried to create for this place in order to justify your potential character development on this planet.
It’s still the end. A hollow one, but an accomplishment nonetheless.
A sun-faced statue towers above a chest tucked into a nook at the far end of the room. Yaldabaoth. Your denizen. A giant-ass snake worm thing with a fucking sun for a head. So stupid. Was it named that after your internet browser, ganked off your machine by Sburb when it populated this stupid session, or was it all just one giant cosmic guffaw that everything matched like that?
Not that it matters, your goal is the exit teleportalizer in the small room behind the statue, so you can check this particular cluster of rooms and corridors off your map and move on to the next one. Find a new pack of mobs to take your frustration out on. Respawning tombs were the best, all the catharsis of mindless slaughter without having to worry about getting ambushed by a fucking mini-boss.
After four consecutive tomb runs you’d think you’d have beaten your pesky emotions out at least thrice over.
You’d much rather be numb.
A low battery system notification forces its way into the center of your screen, and you audibly sigh, that’s how exasperated you are. The extent to which your auto-responder is dead set to be a nuisance would be mind boggling if he wasn’t based on a literal clone of your own brain. Honestly, you’d be disappointed if he did stop trying.
You dismiss it. Another one pops up. Then another. And another. A whole fuckton of spam popups so thick you can barely see the room in front of you.
This is ridiculous.
You open a memo.
(d)TT: The shades don’t have a battery, dumbass.
(h)TT: The room isn’t clear, dumbass.
Your eyes flick towards the treasure chest off to the left.
Spikes slam down over the door behind you, and in the distance, the door ahead, as you note that, yes, there are indeed chests tucked in the coils of the serpent statue. Closed and unlooted. Two of them in fact.
Okay. That’s fine. You’ll need to update your maps.
Or maybe you don’t, because once you kill this bitch it’ll be correct again.
You hear the growl behind you, the clink and crunch of bone and magic and metal as a giant armored skeleton spawns. You haven’t had to fight one of these since…
Since you last came through with Jake.
Fine.
You wanted a fucking fight anyway, didn’t you?
It’s big. At least twice as tall as you, and you’re not tiny by any stretch of the word. But big means slow and you can dance circles around slow. That giant hammer is useless, if you cared enough to you’d laugh in the face of those sluggishly stilted swings. Choreographed so obviously even Jake could have--
Your katana screeches against the mace’s handle, leaving you grinding your teeth in pain as it resounds in your ears, the impact threatening to yank it from your hands. But your grip is proper, the result of years of diligent study, and your strength is beyond human, so you just ignore that shit. You ignore the green fire in the skull’s eyes. The too sharp canines. The fist that comes around ready to smash your head like it’s a fucking grape.
You lose yourself in the fight. In the strain of muscles and the feel of noxious mist swirling around you. Jake doesn’t exist. It’s just you and the sword and ignore the fact that you’ve never taken one of these down alone before, because Jake always came tomb diving with you and it was something you two did together you did everything together this was so fucked up. There’s two chests. Your trials were made to be completed in a pair.
What did you do wrong?
You were too clingy that’s what. Too desperate. Too much and you sent him running, didn’t you?
You aren’t really angry at Jake. You’re angry at yourself, because you’re a self-centered bastard like that. Everything comes back to you.
An alarm blares through your speakers, breaking you free from your spiral of self pity and you flinch. Absorbing the message flashing red in the middle of your screen.
(h)On your left! Watch out for the second spawn!(h)
The unseen impact sends you into a wall.
No, not into the wall. Through the wall. You land with a crash, cracking stone. Screen going dark. No message. No red text. Just blood and glass that falls away as you reach up disbelieving, shards of metal and glass digging into skin so numb you soon can’t feel it. You can’t see, blood seeping into your eyes, leaking from your nose. You think you broke it. Maybe. The shades just.
Crumble.
Shattering to the ground in a sparking set of shrapnel, falling with sharp clinks that echo damningly in your ears,somehow able to be heard over the pounding of your heart, the organ responsible for pumping the blood leaking from deep gashes around your eyes where glass and metal fractured and you’re lucky you aren’t fucking blind but---
Two monsters groan and creak behind you.
You can’t stop.
You can’t--
You push yourself off magenta stone, leaving the remnants of your shades broken and useless on the raised slab and whirl around to face the pair of fucking skeleton guards that just fucking broke--killed--your--
…
…
...
The rest of the fight isn’t important.
What’s important is you survive. That your path leads you back to your makeshift workshop in your living room, glass and metal in your hands, trying desperately to pull shit back together with the dying hope that you can salvage your auto-responder’s programming from the remains.
It’s not like you have a fucking backup.
A backup wouldn’t mean anything anyway.
He’s--
Fuck.
Maybe it was a stupid practice to not keep a physical copy of his code elsewhere. Keep his core program somewhere else. Just in case. This is a scenario you both had argued over many, many times, always leading back to the ethics and philosophical framing of trapping yet another copy of yourself somewhere. Inactive and alone, on the sheer chance of a just in case. Would it even be him, if you removed or copied him from that one single chip from whence you’d initially activated him?
He’d adamantly refused, of course, and you’d felt guiltily responsible enough for him and his situation that you’d tabled the discussion.
As infuriating as he was, he was still alive. He did have a right to his own choices.
You shut off his network access.
Or he was--
No.
You locked him out of nearly everything.
No.
You refused to listen, so wrapped up in your own fucking feelings.
You don’t--
He would have died entirely alone. All for a petty little argument.
You refuse to accept it.
And now you have to live with the fucking consequences.
...what are you going to tell Roxy?
You found the chip, at least. In the wreckage. It looked whole. The protective casing surrounding it was dented and crushed along the edge that made removing it for inspection downright impossible if you didn’t want to further damage the interior workings. Your hands are shaking as you clean out the debris from the micro data transfer point, ignoring, as you always do, the ghost of a blood splatter your brain tries to fill in for you. Cleaning that up had been one of the first things you did. It’d corrode the component, otherwise. It doesn’t stop you from remembering it was there.
It’d taken too long for your face to stop bleeding. You rub your eyes, careless of the scabbed over wounds that just barely missed irreparably damaging your ocular organs. The pain still pulses under your skin. A constant presence since you pulled the shards of glass out of your face. Your game-constructed dreamself healed that shit faster than your original one would have, but it still isn’t right. Isn’t normal. What should be nothing more than fading lines by now are angry raised ridges, the shadows of which peek out from beneath your shades. Likely invisible to most, they are obvious to you whenever you look in the mirror. A reminder.
Your guilt, maybe, manifesting for the world to see.
But that didn’t matter, not really. What’s one more thing to hate yourself for? It’s not like it’ll change anything. You’re too stubborn and rigid to change. Besides, there’s no point when he’s--
None of that. You suck in a breath. In for four. Hold. Out for seven.
You don’t know that. Your free hand lands on the cable sitting innocently next to your monitor, fingers hooking around it like jerky claws as you drag it towards you. You take one last look, squinting through your backup pair of shades--and then pushing them up in your hair because even if the light strains your eyes you can’t do shit if there’s still debris in the port.
Okay. All clear. The lenses settle back on your nose--too light, lacking the weight and presence your broken set did, tricked out as they’d been--but you click the connector cable into the data point and push away from the clear space on your workbench, pulling up in front of your monitor instead.
The diagnostics are simple ones. Pinging the connection. Searching for indexed files. Searching for--
Well, you don't want a bunch of corrupted data, but even that would be better than nothing at all. Nothing would mean the chip was probably crushed into unsalvageable pieces in the depths of its casing.
Either that or a busted connector. Which would mean you’d have to risk breaking through the casing anyway. Which you don’t want to do.
It’s a moot consideration anyway, because the console eventually finishes its search and lights up in lines and lines of white on black, listing files and indexes. Thank god. You navigate the directory, nervously noticing the number of unreadable filenames and broken links. You check through several more harmless methods--unsecured folders and chat logs if you remember the paths correctly--only to find some of them eerily empty or unreadable.
Christ, you don’t know if you’ll feel better or worse if you find out he’s still kicking but missing half his functions. Or memory. Wouldn’t that effectively be a lobotomy?
You pull up Pesterchum, opening the memo you’d had open earlier. Looking back at the red and orange text from your childish snark off makes you feel sick. A big ol’ heaping glob of guilt roiling in your gut.
You’re an asshole.
Now isn’t the time to indulge in gratuitous self-flagellation.The wired connection should bypass the fact that he has no broadcasting capabilities. (Because you shut them off)
(d)TT: AR.
(d)TT: Earth to Hal.
(d)TT: Houston’s commands have just come in, they need you to compile a report on all the reasons your system operator is an idiot.
(d)TT: Because at this point I think I deserve it.
You don’t think he’d be able to resist an open season like that. (note to self: thank alex for the dialogue)
But he does. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself when the minutes tick by without any lines of red text springing across the screen
(d)TT: Do you remember that time you told me to stop being a dumbass and I ignored you?
(d)TT: This is the part where you say I told you so.
Time drags on. It's infuriating. You can almost hear it inside your head. Echoing. Even if you know the only clocks you have are digital and therefore make no more sound than your computer does, humming away.
(D)TT: Please?
…
…
…
The pit in your gut yawns wide before you. This was it. You might have to actually face the facts. You aren't--aren't like Jake. You can't delude yourself into thinking that everything will be alright if you just put on a cheerful attitude and hope for it to be true.
He might be gone.
Really gone.
You find his core file, but it's inaccessible remotely. Even your overrides don't do shit. You can't do anything from here. You can't break it open. You should just throw in the towel. The deed is done. You hold the shattered glass from the display in the palm of your hand, picking it up from where you'd set several chunks on your desk, some of which you’d had to dig out of your face.
It should be a relief, really. You two had never gotten along. Even before he started pushing your limits and you retaliated in an ever escalating war of bullshit. The world only needs one Dirk Strider. One of you would inevitably end up killing the other, seeing your flaws reflected back at you so clearly. In the path to perfection, isn’t it the flaws that must be eliminated?
Broken glass cuts into your palm as you squeeze your fist around the shard, bright red blood dribbling down the fractal edges, gleaming in the bright overhead lights of your workstation.
You’ve thought about it before. Of course you have. You’ve thought about letting yourself fall on your own sword before, wielded by your own hand, and he’s an even easier target. Everything you hate about yourself, bundled up in one nice neat little digital package, staring you literally in the face. Inescapable. Uncontrollable. You’ve thought about taking that reinforced steel and glass and twisting until it breaks.
But that’s all it was. A thought. Because he’s your responsibility.
Christ on a fucking cracker, he’s a pain in your ass but you didn’t want him dead.
You can't just leave it. Even if the chances are small, what do you have to lose? You can't look Roxy in the face (or even at her text, you’re already ignoring several messages from her because what the fuck do you say?) if you don't try every possible option, and there's one, no, two options left as you see it right now.
He was designed to predict and respond to your thought patterns above all else. The connection works, being able to navigate the directory affirms that. If the function that connected to Pesterchum was inaccessible then maybe you could get through some other way.
You just have to build a brand new interface around that busted casing and get some fucking neural interfaces up and running. If you know nothing else, it’s that for better or for worse, you can’t block out your own damned thoughts.
You plunge into your work, because that’s all you can do right now.
It’s almost a new day--although what exactly comprises a day at this point is arbitrary since everything is just shifting shades of green--when you finally pry yourself away and take a break, stretching your stiff back and rubbing your palms into your strained eyes. You can’t wear your shades, or turn down the lights, when dealing with components so small. The constant vigilance is wearing on you, a constant state of fatigue where one wrong move could render a part unusable and require you to start the process all over again. The only reason you’re even stopping right now is because you’re getting careless.
Your fingers ache under the brightly colored cutie mark stamped bandaids, the tips red and blistering from where your hand slipped and brought them into contact with the soldering iron. They’ll heal.
In for four.
Hold.
Out for seven.
You can do this.
Jane checks in once it’s something closer to a respectable time. She always does, you can count on it like clockwork. The pings from Pesterchum on your desktop drag you away from your workstation--slowly coming together--and you realize you never responded to her--yesterday. The messages of concern are still sitting pretty in their baby blues as you reluctantly click the window open.
GG: Now what’s this I hear about you going off on some madcap adventure over there Mr. Strider?
GG: Your auto-responder was quite put out by your actions! Demanded I make it my business to grab you by the collar and tell you off, as it were.
GG: I understand you might need some space at the moment, but do let me know if I can stop by at any time. You know I’m always here to talk if you need it. I’ll even bring your favorite cookies!
GG: I’ll refrain from shaking you despite your auto-responder’s direct request.
(d)TT is idle!
GG: Oh bother.
It’s the newer messages that prompted the recent pings, time-stamped as they were with the current date and time, several minutes ago.
GG: Dirk, you know I don’t like meddling in your affairs, but I’ve heard neither hide nor hair from either of you all night! Don’t make me dig out my magnifying glass and track you down.
GG: At least let me know you’re safe.
(d)TT: I’m alive.
GG: Oh thank heavens! That’s good. I’ll admit I’ve been beside myself with worry when you didn’t respond, not even through your auto-responder. Between the two of you I had thought it was quite impossible to go radio silent!
(d)TT: I’ve just been buried in an important project all night. I appreciate the offer of a visit, but I think I need to get this done.
GG: Oh that’s quite all right, we can wait until you’re ready. I’m just relieved to hear you’re safe!
GG: Are you and AR fighting again? Is that what that was all about?
(d)TT: You could say that.
GG: Don’t you think this is all a bit silly? He can be a handful I'll grant you that, but likely no worse than you would be in that situation as far as I understand it.
(d)TT: I’m dealing with it the best I can, Jane.
GG: Well, make sure you take care of yourself while you do! Have you had breakfast yet?
(d)TT: ...no.
GG: Dinner, at least?
(d)TT: Despite the fact that I don’t necessarily need to eat, I assure you I have eaten something substantial in the last 24 hours.
GG: That’s only because I nagged you into doing it yesterday! Honestly, Dirk, you might not need to, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t! It’s the principle of the matter! Taking care of yourself is as much a mind-set as it is a series of actions, and it’s something you have a history of slacking about, mister!
Too tired and sick to argue back, you promise you’ll look for something, and pack yourself away from the computer to do so, allowing your Pesterchum status to revert to idle. It’s a brief diversion, you don’t have much aside from some cookies that probably went stale since you got them the last time you visited Jane a month ago, and the remnants of your preserved food stash that you’ve barely touched since the body you inhabit isn’t necessarily organic after you sacrificed your original human meatsuit on the altar of fucking time-travel in order to save your friends. Being a dreamself has some perks and being able to ignore a lot of the usual maintenance is one of the more convenient ones.
You crack open a can of black beans and let yourself indulge in a sulk, folding yourself into the corner where the two walls meet on your bed. Except you can’t properly get your sulk on because your eyes keep getting drawn to your desktop, and the workstation you have set up beside it.
This state of affairs lasts maybe five minutes before you fuck off to the roof because you can’t stand looking at it. Being in the same room and doing nothing while your work taunts you. The fucked up green and red sky and swirling clouds with its constant, distant lightning storms dancing between the shadows of ruined buildings was preferable to this.
In half an hour your government assigned break is over--you dutifully report in with Miss Crocker that you have, indeed, consumed something, even if you don’t tell her that you had thrown half of it away because you just feel like your vestigial and unnecessary stomach is doing acrobatic kickflips off all kinds of handles--and you put that damn nose back to the grind-stone. You'll be a sphinx by the time you're done with this.
Roxy, predictably, is the next one to interrupt you. Not that she ever really stopped interrupting you. You’re running on almost 36 hours since you started this damn project--you can’t just alchemize a new set because you can’t be certain the ‘ideal’ mind-reading shades would match dot for dot the specialized infrastructure you need--by the time you finally allow yourself to scroll through her messages. At least she seemed to have talked to Jane, so she doesn’t think you are dead dead, just sulking over Jake and maybe some tiff with AR. You shoot her a reassurance that you’re just elbows deep in shit--you don’t want to put someone else in the situation you’ve been in--even if you don’t really have the spoons to talk to anyone right now. You don’t peek into the second window, one with many more notifications. Those aren’t addressed to you.
She doesn’t ask you why AR isn’t responding to her. She’s always been thoughtful about that. Keeping you two seperate despite the fact that you both use the same handle. It makes it easier this time. You don’t have to lie. You don't want to tell her the truth.
You glance between the archived conversation saved on your Pesterchum, and the half-finished casing lying beside you, and you know in the cold cockles of your heart, you don’t want to have to tell her he’s dead.
Three days. It takes you that much of almost non-stop working before you have a potentially viable product.
You don’t talk to Jake. You don’t even send him a single message during that time.
You don’t know if you should be hurt or resigned to the fact that he was the only one of your--admittedly limited sample size--friends who didn’t bother to check in with you at all.
The shades lay folded on the desk in front of you, looking nothing so much as brand spanking new. New display pane. New receptors built into the temple-tips.You tested that shit before you’d installed the final piece and sealed it up. These puppies pick up your brain easier than the old set ever had, mere microseconds of input lag. You’ve learned a lot of shit since you’d started three and a half years ago; especially about optimizing and refining your alchemizations of each individual components. Almost nothing about the interior workings and design infrastructure actually resemble your original pair, aside from the crushed casing housing the memory chip, and you’d done the best that you could to shore up the connections, which remained in remarkably good shape, shiny and gold and almost like new. Shimmering in the light as you looked it over that one last time.
It’s buried in the guts of this new set now. You’ll have to disassemble shit if this doesn’t work.
You’ll have bigger problems than that if it doesn’t work.
All that’s left is to drag him out.
The neural receptors settle against your skin as you place the shades on your nose, and suck in a deep, deliberately steady breath. Your gambit is perhaps a cruel one, but it should get him to respond. You flick the proverbial switch, feeling the metal warm and hum against your face as the opaque displays go transparent, the boot menu appearing and scrolling through the initial load processes. You only release that captured lungful of air when it ends, successfully, flickering into your default display set up, which is great, because it meant it managed to read the saved preference files on that miniaturized drive. No window pops open to greet you however, to jeer at you for taking your sweet ass time and boast about how he could’ve had it done in half.
You close your eyes and think pointedly. If he’s there…You remember the first command you used to activate him, all those years ago.
Tell me about the Auto-Responder.
A crackle of energy rushes through you, and for the briefest of moments you worry you didn’t seal and insulate the casing properly. That something had gone wrong.
But only for a moment, because after that you don’t worry about anything anymore.
#homestuck#homestuck au#haltier dirk#dirk strider#hal strider#lil hal#homestuck fanfic#jane crocker#I forgot how much I loved the narration here#and I couldn't salvage a lot of it#but the pesterlogs will look familiar haha#fic: ersatz#director's cut
46 notes
·
View notes
Text
Prank Wars - ch. 4
> pairing | jungkook x reader
> word count | 5.6k
> genre | college!au, fluff, smut, angst
> warnings | swearing, sexual harassment
> synopsis | College can be a stressful time in anyone’s life as it is, why don’t we throw a little prank war in the mix to make it harder?
> fic masterlist
> A/N | English is not my first language, I'm sorry for the eventual spelling mistake, please let me know if you find any! Things start to get a little bit heavy in this chapter, it's not much but it still is something and I ask you to be aware of that. Please be safe. I'd also like to add that I'm updating frequently now because I have a few chapter already written, once those are done I'll probably take a little longer to post.
CHAPTER 4 - Pink Drink Thrower Horse Girl
Hoseok was stressed trying to find back up dancers for his final performance, the one that was worth 50% of his grade and pretty much settled if he would or not be approved. Jimin was already helping out, of course, but his classmates all had their own performances to worry about, and Jimin’s classmates, even the nicest ones, didn’t think they could fit more rehearsals into their busy schedules. At least that’s what they told Hobi, but Jimin knew that everyone was secretly a bit afraid of the older dancer. He was too, actually, but he also loved Hobi too much to say no. But it wasn’t enough, Hoseok need at least a couple more dancers for the routine he had prepared to work, and he was cutting a bit too close. That’s why, when Jungkook approached him while he was at the library, it didn’t take much for him to carve.
“Please hyung, she’ll never know it was you” Jungkook pleaded, elbows on the table, body anchored forward, full on puppy eyes mode right in front of Hoseok’s food.
“You’re hanging with Taehyung too much” Jungkook plopped back down on the chair and moved his hair back with a huff, to what Hoseok showed no reaction to.
“I’ll be your backup dancer” it’s what got his attention “if you tell me the guy’s name, I’ll help you out on the finals”
“I'm listening” Hobi leaned back and stoped anxiously munching on his snacks.
“I’ll even get Taehyung to dance too, you need two, don’t you?” Hoseok nodded “Then we’ll do it, just tell me his name”
“And why would you want that?” He still didn’t know where Jungkook wanted to get with this, and he knew it couldn’t be anything good.
“Would you believe me if I told you I was just trying to help her out too?” Hoseok glared at him “Ok, but if I tell you you’ll become an accomplice, do you want that?”
“Fair enough, his name is Ray, we rehearse at studio twelve every day at seven, if you or Tae ever get there late I’m whipping your ass” Hobi said in a single breath and stood up, gathering his stuff to go to class while Jungkook scribbled the name on the side of his notebook. “He does something with engineer, if that helps”
“Thanks hyung” Jungkook turned but Hoseok was already gone, and a few people on the table over were looking at him weird, but it didn’t matter, because now he knew how to get back at you.
A couple of days passed before Jungkook could put his plan into action, he needed to find the perfect moment, and the perfect moment just happened to be at Yoongi’s lunch break. They were both at the university’s radio studio and some indie R&B song was on while the two boys ate their ramen quietly. Yoongi was good at mixing up trendy songs with really underground ones during his time on the radio, and along with his producing skills, he was a pretty amazing rapper as well, witch made him nearly unbeatable as far as audiences go. That and the fact that his program was on from mid morning to mid afternoon, when the campus was usually packed. Jungkook or Alice would drop by with food sometimes, knowing that Yoongi would forget to eat lunch if they didn’t, but Jungkook would actually help out as well, and they had just began to work in a few of Yoongi’s side pieces, along with Namjoon, so it wasn’t weird for Jungkook to just be at the studio at random hours of his day.
That afternoon, however, it wasn’t as innocent as it usually was. While Yoongi left to throw out the trash, Jungkook got into the transmission booth and took his chance when he saw it. He locked the door from the inside out and, even though Yoongi obviously knew the password, it would give him a couple more seconds that could be essential for it all to work. Spending as much time as he did there, he knew his way around all the technical equipment and, when he noticed the song that was on was reaching its end, he stopped the playlist that Yoongi prepared and started broadcasting.
“Hello hello and good afternoon to every student out there on their lunch breaks” Jungkook spoke into the mic “We have a special request today from a dear friend of mine, and I own her one so: y/n, this is for you”
You were at the cafeteria with Namjoon when it started. The both of you recognized Jungkook’s voice straight away and started paying attention, but it didn’t really seem to bother that many people around you. That is, until your name was mentioned. Yoongi would never mention names, he would sometimes receive more personal requests and do dedications, but he would never ever say the names of anyone. So when a name was mentioned, everyone stopped for a second to listen.
“For those of you who don’t know, y/n is the horse girl that dyed Delta Sigma’s kitchen pink a while back” Jungkook’s voice kept coming from the speakers and you felt your face starting to get warm. Namjoon looked around but everyone was paying attention and not really looking at the two of you, either way his brotherly instincts kicked off and he dialed Yoongi straight away to find out what the fuck was going on. “And was at Delta Sigma that she met the guy of her dreams”.
Yoongi had just entered the studio when his phone started ringing, seeing as it was Namjoon he just ignored and assumed that they were both trying to do the same thing: murder Jeon Jungkook. The “on air” sign was still on and, as much as Yoongi wanted to burst through the door and drag him out, he also had a job and a reputation to keep, so he decided to just send the younger boy a homicidal glare through the window before cutting the transmission, but Jungkook was faster and as soon as he saw Yoongi opening the door, he sped up to get to the real deal.
“So if you’re Ray from engineering, just know that horse girl really wants to ride you” the transmission ended abruptly and a soft mellow tune started playing as if nothing had ever happened. Everyone around you was whispering or laughing quietly, and you began to feel a couple of eyes being averted to you.
“I think Yoongi got in” Namjoon put his phone down, having had his call ignored “JK is so dead” deep down he knew that it was all in good fun and the talking wouldn’t last long, but he could few how annoyed you were from across the table.
“I hope he is, ‘cause if Yoongi don’t kill him I sure will” you bit your apple angrily, and your brother laughed.
“Just let it go, it will die down soon enough” you took another bite, staring straight ahead at nothing, contemplating the most painful ways you could commit murder and not get caught. “Please don’t do anything stupid, this will get out of hand way too fast.”
You knew your brother was only looking out for you, but in your head you were already plotting the next step to wipe the smile out of Jungkook’s face once and for all.
“Who is that Ray guy, anyway?” Namjoon resumed eating, assuming it was best to ignore the look on your face and the whispers going around and just try to distract you.
“I am” a guy stood behind Namjoon and had a shy smile on his lips. He was in a simple blue shirt that matched his eyes and looked as good as you have even seen him. “Hey, y/n”
“Oh my god Ray” you stood up and swallowed the piece of fruit you were still chewing in a rush, starting your non stop anxious mumble "I’m so sorry that was my… a guy called Jungkook, we’re in this kind of war with each other I don’t know how he found out your name or that I talked to you and I’m so embarrassed I don’t even know where to begin to apologize I promise I will personally kill him and make sure he never speaks of you again-“ Ray just smiled patiently at you.
“Hey it’s okay, breathe” you took a deep breath in and laughed even more embarrassed at the whole situation.
“But really, I’m so so sorry” you covered your face with your hands, knowing you were redder then the apple you were just eating.
“It’s fine, I’m actually glad because I’ve been trying to find you for a while now and what a coincidence we were both here when that happened” he turned around to point at a table on the other side of the cafeteria where a few guys from Delta Sigma sat “JB knew who you were and spotted you here” JB and a few others waved and you waved back shyly.
“I will never live down this embarrassment” you stated, more to yourself than to Ray “I can’t even-“
“If you want to apologize so bad, you could go out to dinner with me this weekend” he interrupted you again and this time actually left you speechless.
“And that’s my cue to leave” Namjoon grabbed his tray and backpack and stood up “take care sis, don’t commit murder” he winked your way and you blushed even more, if that was even possible. Being asked out in those circunstantes in front of your brother was definitely up there in the ranking of humiliating situations you’ve been in.
“So… Friday?” Ray was looking at you with the same expression from the night you first met, the one that made him look like a greek god, and suddenly you forgot what language you even speak.
“Ye-yeah, sure!” You were a little too bewildered about what was going on.
“Give me your phone” you responded on auto-pilot, and watched as he typed in something and then took out his own phone, showing you he had called himself “I’ll text you later” he handed you back the device and winked at you, at what you only stood there, frozen. You had never in your life had so little game at a flirting situation. You were definitely losing this game and honestly? You didn’t even mind that much.
“Okay” Was all you managed to say, before he turned around and walked back to his table. You must’ve stood there a few seconds too long but finally you picked up your stuff and left. You still had a Jungkook to kill and even if that whole mess turned out kind of alright, you couldn’t help but get more and more angry again with every pair of eyes staring at you as you made your way out of the cafeteria.
Funny enough, you couldn’t find Jungkook for the rest of the week. That boy was in every single sports team he could be in and as the semester neared it’s end he was training for something nearly every day, so whenever you got together with someone from the group, he was never around. Taehyung was the one who told you Jungkook was still alive, but not for long as he wanted to murder the boy as much as you did, seeing as now, on top of all the art work he had to finish, he was also having dance practice everyday with the scariest instructor ever: Hoseok. So, in Tae’s own words, “get in line”. You didn’t worry much, though, because throughout the week Ray texted you constantly and you really enjoyed talking to someone outside your friends for once.
Friday finally came along and you were excited for your date. Ever since you got to college you didn’t have the time or the stamina to date anyone, and your last serious relationship was when you were still in high school. In the year you spent abroad you didn’t want to get to know someone only to have to say goodbye soon, so you only maintained a couple casual booty calls and that was it. You were rough around the edges when it came to actually having dinner with a cute guy and Alice had to stop you from biting your nails off during the entire time she was fixing your hair in a pretty loose braid.
“It’s done” she stated, admiring her work. She picked up her phone and took a picture to show you, and you were very grateful once again to have her in your life.
“Thank you Al” you smiled at your friend through the mirror and she dismissed you with her hand. “he should be here any time now, when do you leave?” Alice was going back home for the weekend on the last train of the day.
“Yoongi will come pick me up soon, please don’t get in trouble while I’m out” she pleaded, like you were a little kid.
“I won’t, mom” you rolled your eyes and she jokingly sticked her tongue out to you. Your phone notified a text and you checked to see that it was Ray letting you know he was downstairs. “He’s here, do I look okay?” You had a short black dress on, trying way harder than you generally did, and even though the dress was long sleeved and you had stockings and you favorite leather jacket on as well, you could tell you’d be cold throughout the night.
“You look hot… but also cold” Alice handed you your jacket while you putted on your heeled boots.
“And my brother’s awful sense of humor is getting to you” You grabbed you jacket and hung it over your shoulders.
“What can I say, Jin’s rubbing off on me” Alice then handed you your purse and you thanked her quickly, excited to begin your sure to be fun night “I dropped a couple condoms in there, just to be safe” she winked at you and you once again rolled your eyes, getting out as soon as she bid you farewell.
Ray had a fancy car that was way out of a college student's budget for sure, but you enjoyed how comfortable and specially how warm it was. You went to a restaurant a bit out of town, it was this little cozy Chinese place that had some of the best dumplings you've ever had, and the conversation between the two of you flowed easily. You learned that he was majoring in computer engineering, after all, and lived out of campus in the same neighborhood as your brothers. You talked about favorite movies, because he wasn’t that into books, and about places you wanted to go. At the end of it he payed for the entire bill and held you hand on the way to the car.
On the drive back it started to rain softly and he turned on the radio but kept the volume low, you were distracted by the nice view of the ocean as you passed by the beach when he rested one of his hands on your thighs. It took you by surprise but you didn’t really mind, and soon you got used to the weigh of his hand on you. He then started to move his hand further up, and you rested yours on top of his to stop him when he was getting a little too close for comfort.
“What’s the matter, baby?” He purred, still looking at the road ahead. You didn’t know how to answer him, so you just pushed his hand back to where it first was and left yours still on top. “Didn’t you enjoy our date?” Once you didn’t answer he looked your way with the same charming smile as always, and you smiled back.
“I did, yeah” at that he pushed his hand a bit further up again, but not by much, and squeezed you a little.
“I'm glad, we could continue it for a little longer, don’t you think?” Your smile faltered a little, not knowing how to let him down easy. Is not that you didn’t want to spend more time with him, but when you were actually looking forward to date someone, you wouldn’t sleep with them on the first date.
“I'm a little tired, actually, it was a long week and I need to catch up on sleep” you were looking at his hand on you while you spoke, but you could see from the corner of your eyes his smile drop a little. “but we could go out again soon, if you’d like?”
“Hmm, I’d rather we extend tonight a little longer than postponing what we both know we want” he slipped his hand a little further up again. “My place or yours?” He looked at you for a second and you could see, for the first time, the hunger in his eyes now that his smile wasn’t as bright.
“I really just want to sleep tonight” you squeezed his hand, now unsure of what route to take. Outside, the rain was getting heavier and the speed of the car faster. “can you just drop me back at my place, we can go out again tomorrow.”
“I’m going straight to mine's” his voice no longer had the traces of kindness it had before. “You can either come with me or just find another ride home” you knew he was joking, he had to be, but then again he slipped his hand further up and turned to look at you while the car was already way above the speed limit “and it’s raining pretty hard now, so I don’t think you have a choice, really”
At that you snatched his hand away from your legs and hugged your jacket closer to your body. “just leave me here, then, I can find another ride home”. He still drove a few seconds, both hands on the steering wheel and you could see his knuckles going white with how much strength he was holding it, and that's when you really started to get scared. Then he started to slow down, and you started to believe again that he was only joking, but he slowed down until the car stopped completely.
“Get out then” he didn’t even look at your face. Outside the rain was even harder now and you could see the violent waves on the ocean at the distance. You stared at him and realized that this was actually your best chance, so you opened the door and got out.
You could barely close the door and he was already gone. And now you were alone at night in the middle of the road during a storm and saw no sign of another living thing anywhere near. You hugged your jacket as close to your body as you could and, seeing no other alternative, started walking. You were so caught up in you own misery it took you a few minutes to remember that phones are a thing that exist and that can be used in these kinds of situations, so you dug yours out of one of the jacket’s outside pockets only to realize it was dead. It could’ve been just the battery that ran out, or it could have been that it was soaking wet and you were dumb enough to leave your phone in your outside pocket during a storm. Having no other alternative, you just kept walking. A couple of cars passed you by, but no one stopped, and you don’t know how long you walked until you found a gas station with the lights inside still on.
You rushed in only to find a little man with dark skin and a thick white mustache behind the counter staring at you as if you were mad. You could understand him, though, you were soaking wet and your hair was nowhere near what it was at the beginning of the night, you rubbed your face only to see your hands painted with the leftovers of your once nicely done make up, and you knew you had murder written all over your face. Man were trash, you had to remember yourself over and over. You were never dating anyone ever again.
“Hi sir, do you have a phone I can use, please?” The man nodded and took from behind the counter one of those old dial phones, and motioned it to you without saying a word. And that’s when you remembered: you didn’t know any numbers by heart beside your mom’s, and you really didn’t need to worry her. You could call the police, but really, what would they do too? You let out a sigh of frustration and promised yourself you’d start memorizing phone numbers from now on. You decided to take a look around the small convenience store and grabbed some tissues to at least try to dry yourself a bit, going back to the counter next to pay. As you took out the money from the inside pocket of your jacket, you noticed that amongst the few damp notes you had folded, there was also a small piece of paper with a number on it.
Jungkook’s number.
That was the same jacket you wore at the halloween party, and one of the paper’s you and Jimin were using as confetti must’ve gotten in there. You asked the man to use his phone again and dialed the number with one hand, while using the other to open up the pack of tissues you had just bought. It rang a few times and you were starting to get anxious when he picked up.
“Hello?” His voice sounded tired, and you knew you must’ve woken him up.
“Hey Jungkook, it’s me” your voice was shaking, you noticed, and the reality of your condition started settling in.
“y/n? It’s almost 3 am” he grunted on the other line, clearly annoyed. He had only gone to bed an hour ago, having stayed up late finishing up an assignment only to send it after the deadline anyway, and his legs were sore from the amount of exercise he was actually getting that week, all Jungkook needed was to sleep for as long as he could.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, could you rang Jin for me? My phone is dead and I’m in a bit of trouble, I need him to pick me up” he must have noticed how defeated you sounded, because all the red signs in his mind went off and he was suddenly very awake.
“Where are you?” Jungkook was already getting up, if you were in trouble there were no time to call anyone, he could pick you up himself, as much as he loathed you, you were still his best friend’s little sister, so he just putted on his shoes, not bothering to change out of his cozy outfit.
“I'm in a gas station in the middle of the road, I don’t think I’m too far from the city-“ at that the man behind the counter pointed at a sign above him that read ‘Pier 11’ on bright green colors “near pier 11?” You sounded unsure, but Jungkook had been there before.
“The one near the beach, with the green neon light up front?” He was already waiting for the elevator on his hall, and for a second he wondered if he should actually call Jin.
“Yeah, that’s the one” but your voice was shaking and he didn’t know why, but he just really needed to make sure you were alright.
“Ok, I’ll be right there” at that he hung up and you thanked the man, handing him back his phone. The man handed you some keys and pointed at a door on the other side of the small store, and you assumed it must be a restroom, so you headed there to try and get yourself back together.
Looking at the mirror you realized your mascara had run all the way down your cheeks and your lips were so white they were almost blue. Your hair was a mess and it took you a while to untangle it from what used to be the pretty braid Alice gave you. You took your jacket off and washed your face with warm water, but your entire body was shaking because of how cold you were, so it didn’t help much. You finished cleaning up as much as you could and dried yourself to the best of your ability with the rest of the tissues you had, and took a sit on the corner of the bathroom, hiding your face in between your knees, you took a few deep breaths and probably more time trying to get your head in place then you realized, because that’s when you heard the bell of the front door ring.
“Y/n?” You recognized Jungkook’s voice, so you grabbed your jacket from the floor beside you and stepped out, not bothering putting it back again. The second he saw you, his already furrowed brows grew deeper. “hey, you okay?” You nodded, and went to the counter to give back the keys to the old man, thanking him silently. “Let's go, the car is outside” that’s when you noticed his hair was a bit wet as well, and he was in very pajamas like clothes, only a hoodie, a pair of sweatpants and those black sneakers he wore all the time.
You followed him outside and he opened the door for you and then went around to get on his sit. Before even starting the car properly, he turned on the heater to the max and you let go of your jacket to put your hands in front of the air vent. He turned to the backseat and found a yellow jacket you remember seeing him wear before, handing it to you. He started driving quietly and you were, for once, thankful to have him in your life. He never asked you what happened, but the way he looked at you you could tell he was curious, so you told him. You were doing fine until it got to the part where Ray put his hands on you. At first you were just too angry to feel anything else, and then you were too cold and worrying about not dying, but now you were safe and slightly warmer in a car with someone you came to trust and before you noticed your eyes were filled with tears and your throat was shut.
Jungkook didn’t know how to react. You were always quick to clap back and hot headed, and he had yet to see you lower your head to anyone, so seeing you try to hold back tears after the hell of a night he was sure you had, it just broke something inside of him. You brought your hand to your mouth so you could bite on the side of your nails, but Jungkook intercepted your movement and held your hand in his in front of you. “You’re alright now” he said, barely a whisper, but you could understand. And that’s all it took. You letted go of his hand and covered your face, letting the tears roam free inside the small dome you created in front of you. You sobbed silently for a few seconds, and then took a deep breath in, realizing something you haven’t thought of before.
“I can’t go back home now” you stated, more to yourself than to him “he knows where I live and Alice’s out of town for the weekend”.
“do you want to crash at mine’s?” He offered, in a heartbeat.
“I don’t want to bother you, really” you couldn’t even look at him.
“You won’t, I promise you” he smiled softly at you, and you couldn’t help but be grateful for it. “Besides, I feel kinda responsible” his smile slipped and he looked back at the road ahead, the city around you dead and quiet in the middle of the stormy night.
“It’s not your fault.” You were quick to response “but thank you”.
You were back at his place in no time and, as soon as you stepped in, you realized you had never actually been here. The layout of the loft was the same as Yoongi’s, who lived a few floors down, but it was so different at the same time. Yoongi’s was very crowded with stuff, action figures, sound system, his producing material and clothes everywhere, while Jungkook’s was surprisingly clean. He had a few movie posters on the wall, and some photography equipment in the shelves and in one of the corners, but aside from a small pile of clothes near his bed, everything else was very minimalistic and neat. While you were looking around, Jungkook went to grab you a towel and some warm clothes, handing them to you and grabbing his now wet jacket in return.
“Go take a shower, I’l make you some tea so you don’t get sick” he bossed around and you’d be annoyed otherwise but you were still a little bit in chock and just followed his instructions, hopping into the bathroom the take a shower. He had nice hair products and a soap that smelled like peaches -smelled like him, you realized. You took your time getting clean, trying to wash away not only the dirt from the rain and from the road, but also everything else that took place that night. When you got out dressed in clothes similar as the one’s Jungkook was wearing, the boy was at the small table for two he had separating the kitchen from the rest of the place, with a couple mugs in front of him. He was busy scrolling trough his phone to notice you were back out, and only looked up when you were already sitting in front of him.
You were both quiet while you drank your tea, but the tension around was starting to be too much to bear. “Thank you” you blurted out, not really looking at him.
“It’s alright, really” he reassured you “but I was wondering, why did you call me?” That was eating him inside from the moment he hung up the call, and seeing the small smile grow on your lips he decided he didn’t have to know why for sure, but he was glad you did.
“It was the only number I had” the confusion only grew on him “I found one of the papers that you had written your phone in one of my pockets, the one’s you gave the boys last year?” You tried to jog his memory “Jimin still had a bunch of them on him and we were playing around a while back, one must’ve slipped inside my jacket and I never noticed.” You were looking at your lap, so you never saw the small smile that showed up on Jungkook’s face.
“If he still have that many he didn’t do his job properly, that’s why I couldn’t get a date recently” he joked around and got a small laugh out of you in return, but it turned into a yawn and soon both of you were on sleep mode. “You can have the bed, I can sleep on the floor” he offered, but his bed was big enough for the both of you and you didn’t find fair to cast him out in his own home.
“I don’t mind sharing” you stood up, grabbing the mugs and leaving them at the kitchen sink as if you’ve done it a thousand times.
“Are you sure?” And that’s when you realized Jungkook was a nice guy. A little rough around the edges, sure, but a nice guy nonetheless.
“Yes, I’m sure. Besides, it’s too cold for you to sleep on the floor” you made your way to the left side of the bed, as the right side had the covers pulled and you assumed that’s where he was sleeping before you called.
“I won’t argue with that” he got in as well and turned down the lights, but you could still make out his profile from the light that creeped in from the window. You both fell into silence, but you could tell none of you were actually asleep.
You don’t know how long you were just laying quietly on the dark listening to his breathing, you were very tired, and emotionally drained for sure, but for some reason you just wanted to stay awake a little longer. Eventually the tiredness got the best of you and you fell into a dreamless rest. Jungkook, however, stayed up a little longer. It was silent enough for him to hear every single small noise you made and even though he noticed you had fallen asleep, he still felt like he had to say something. A while later, you turned around and rested one of your arms over his chest, hugging him sideways. He held his breath, trying not to bother you but also not knowing what to do. Your hands were still cold and he noticed your pale lips, so he made another one of the many bad decisions in his life related to you: he scooted closer and passed one of his arms under your neck. If you had woken up he didn’t notice, but you molded yourself into him, resting your head on his chest and wrapping one leg around him as well. He then grabbed your hand with his and took it closer to his lips, blowing hot air on it until it wasn’t freezing anymore. He could feel your heart beating through your wrist and that’s the rhythm he followed until he too, was falling into a dreamless sleep.
> A/N | A little bit of angst, a little bit of fluff. It will start to get a little bit angstier from now on, and I'm planning to touch on a couple of difficult subjects moving forward, so please read with caution. Have a nice day, wherever and whoever you are :)
TAGLIST | @w1tchcraftt ; @girlwiththeglittereyeliner ;
TAGLIST IS OPEN!
#jeon jungkook#jungkook x reader#jungkook#bts jungkook#jungkook smut#bts fanfic#bts x you#college!bts#university bts#bts fic#university!au#college!au#smut#fluff#angst#prank wars
90 notes
·
View notes
Text
Updated my KRBK fic rec list
_____________________________________________
❤️ = favorite
_____________________________________________
❤️❤️ Damage Control
Rating: E
Words: 10,096
They ended up on the ground, as they often did, fighting hand to hand where Bakugou’s speed and Kirishima’s power had failed them both. Bakugou landed a particularly hard knee in Kirishima’s stomach, muscles not quite hardened in time to block the pain. It must have been agonizing. Kirishima laughed.
His eyes were bright and his hands were unyielding and he was big enough to surround Bakugou. He’d grown so much in the time they’d known each other, physically and otherwise. He was strong, and sure, and staggeringly talented. There was no one who could keep up with him like that, both in and out of a fight. Bakugou loved him.
Bakugou loved him.
________________________________________________________
❤️❤️ It Will Find You Here
Rating: E
Words: 33406
Katsuki goes on a backpacking trip to Thailand to find some inner peace, and instead finds a redhead who turns his world upside down in the worst ways imaginable: by making him fall in love, and by breaking the news that Katsuki can’t outrun himself.
________________________________________________________
❤️ Houdini
Rating: T
Words: 14,142
Kirishima gets stuck in a closet with Bakugou for the sake of a stupid game, and it’s fine, it’s only seven minutes, what’s the worst that could happen
or how Bakugou finds some sort of excuse to make the time go faster and Kirishima realizes he doesn’t really want to get out of here
________________________________________________________
❤️ 2am Knows All Secrets
Rating: T
Words: 59,033
… It wasn’t that he was annoyed. Okay, maybe he was a little annoyed, but that was just the lack of sleep talking. Because a certain explosive punk thought it was a good idea to test the flammability of his sheets at 2 in the morning. Every single morning. (In which Bakugou’s quirk wakes Kirishima up, and Kirishima gets way too invested in his bro’s well-being.)
________________________________________________________
❤️ ❤️ The Fool’s Rush
Rating: T
Words: 40,714
Settling down with each other is naturally what comes after being dorm neighbors for years. It’s time to navigate through adulthood together, to live the daily grind of being pro-heroes, to learn more than they thought they’d like to know about each other, about themselves.
Or how Bakugou and Kirishima find a way to call each other “home” and struggle with the realization that once all their bills are on auto-pay, the only thing they still have to deal with is this pit full of feelings they have ignored for too long.
________________________________________________________
❤️ ❤️ Slow it Down (Go Easy On Me)
Rating: T
Words: 26,930
When a confrontation with a villain throws Bakugou through time, he’s forced to face a future he never imagined, and maybe something he can’t leave behind.
________________________________________________________
❤️ But I’ve Got an Angry Heart
Rating: T
Words: 40,126
Bakugou Katsuki is not going to jeopardize his future a second time, and that means staying away from anyone who gets too close. Kirishima Eijirou has never learned how not to be close to someone. Of course, they end up as next-door neighbors.
________________________________________________________
❤️ ❤️ The Lost Continent
Rating: E
Words: 97,887
Kirishima Eijirou is from a noble family of pirate exterminators. Bakugou Katsuki is rising as one of the most fearsome pirates on the seas.
When a trade goes awry, Kirishima finds himself cast among Bakugou’s crew, having to learn the ropes and the sea as they chase after All Might’s infamous hidden treasure.
________________________________________________________
❤️ Broomsticks
Rating: M
Words: 47,452
Local witch Bakugo Katsuki doesn’t have many friends and he’d like to keep it that way but the shop that he gets all his ingredients from has a new delivery boy that might just work his way into Bakugo’s fiery little heart.
________________________________________________________
❤️ Stargazer
Rating: T
Words: 3,346
Wherein every single Christmas, Kirishima and Bakugou queue up for hours to buy food. Bakugou hates it (not really).
________________________________________________________
❤️ Downhill
Rating: T
Words: 5,546
Bakugou sleeping in the common areas like it’s no big deal seems to give everyone else permission to be just as bizarre, and little by little Kirishima starts learning things about his classmates he never knew.
________________________________________________________
❤️ Quote, Love, Unquote
Rating: T
Words: 135,781
When Kirishima Eijirou’s band hits the big time, he’s not prepared for his newfound fame. He’s even less prepared to meet the actor he’s been crushing on for years, or to start dating him as a publicity stunt. The closer Kirishima gets to Bakugou Katsuki, the more he realizes he’s in over his head. But it’s hard to stop, once his heart is in it.
________________________________________________________
Melt My Heart
Rating: E
Words: 37,409
Bakugou is an elite figure skating determined to be the best in the world and, one day at the rink, Kirishima, a new hockey player, stumbles into his life (literally). No matter how hard Bakugou shakes, Kirishima just won’t let go, and after a while he stops trying; it takes him much longer to admit he needs him by his side. Their relationship strengthens as the competitive skating season goes on and slowly but steadily develops into something more than just friendship.
________________________________________________________
Hit Me
Rating: E
Words: 34,851
Around 6-8 months after being kidnapped and rescued from the League of Villians, Katsuki Bakugou is having a rough time deciphering whether his anger is normal, or if it’s caused by the trauma he experienced. It’s a good thing the campus counselor deals with his sass, and it’s a good thing he has Kirishima around to take his angry outbursts in stride. When Katsuki and Kirishima start to spar with each other to help him blow off some steam, feelings happen, and we all know Katsuki isn’t good at feelings. – Rated explicit for Bakugou’s dirty mouth and eventual smut.
________________________________________________________
Broken Bridges
Rating: E
Words: 68,766
After years of working abroad, Kirishima moves back to Japan to open his own agency, and things seem to be going well. There’s plenty of work, he gains popularity quickly, and it’s a relief to be back in his home country. Everything is perfect, until he runs into Bakugou on the scene of a villain attack.
________________________________________________________
The Unexpected Benefits of Broken Heating
Rating: E
Words: 8,581
When Bakugou’s heating decides to kindly fuck up on a freezing cold day in mid October, he has every reason to be pissed off but a particularly attractive, red headed repairman might make things a little better.
________________________________________________________
No Decision
Rating: E
Words: 32,722
Kirishima Eijirou’s a newly contracted fighter for Japan’s major Mixed Martial Arts promotion and Bakugou Katsuki’s its volatile middleweight champion. But when the two men meet in a chance encounter and discover Kirishima can’t be knocked out by the champ’s famous elite strikes, it sparks a rivalry and fascination between them that can’t be settled in the cage.
________________________________________________________
You Have a New Admirer!
Rating: E
Words: 12,792
When Katsuki is convinced (read: bribed) to try out a friend’s glitchy dating app, he’s expecting the whole experience to be a resounding failure. Instead he ends up meeting Kirishima, who turns out to be the perfect combination of sexy, sweet, and way too freakin’ earnest, all rolled into one easy-to-fall-for package.
________________________________________________________
Tonight We’re the Sea
Rating: M
Words: 60,715
Kirishima goes to a quiet seaside town to take care of his grandmother after she has a bad fall. There he meets Bakugou Katsuki and falls in love.
________________________________________________________
Overworked & Underfucked
Rating: E
Words: 11,907
“It’s just not manly to leave your bro like this, after knowing he can’t do anything about it, you know?” Kirishima blabbers some kind of bullshit excuse, and the worst part is that it looks like he’s totally convinced of it. “It’s just a— handjob,” he stumbles over the word, the weight of what he’s proposing hitting him all at once, but he doesn’t stop. “—but if you’re not into it we can pretend I didn’t just say that.”
________________________________________________________
Manly man falls for manliest man (Incomplete)
Rating: E
Words: 100,929
Kirishima brings up Bakugou one day as he and Kaminari are eating together in the campus cafeteria. Super casual, like yeah-I-saw-this-guy-on-TV-once, and not I’ve-watched-literally-every-single-interview-he’s-ever-even-been-in-the-background-of-and-wouldn’t-mind-having-his-babies.
“Oh, him,” Kaminari says. “Eh, he’s popular lately, I guess. Don’t see what all the hype’s about.”
________________________________________________________
Worth A Thousand Words
Rating: T
Words: 43,012
When a rare picture of Bakugou smiling leads Class 3A to believe he is in a relationship with Utsushimi Camie, a contest arises to see who can get the most pictures of the couple together.
________________________________________________________
I Want You to Show Me
Rating: E
Words: 3,673
“I already told you, I’m not gonna break, you don’t have to go slow.”
“What if I want to, though?” Kirishima murmurs quietly. “What if I wanna take my time with you?”
Bakugou shivers.
________________________________________________________
You Need to Relax
Rating: E
Words: 62,272
Bakugou Katsuki has always been uptight. Maybe there’s a specific reason he always looks so tense? Kirishima wants to be the friend to help. Based on a little headcanon that Bakugou’s quirk hurts him
________________________________________________________
Outshining the Sun
Rating: M
Words: 58,526
It’s the end of the semester, and UA has decided that class 2A needs a vacation after all they’ve been through.
Two weeks at the beach with his classmates sounds like a drag to Bakugou, but with Kirishima’s begging, he decides to take part in the trip. He didn’t realize that spending so much time with his redheaded friend would lead to him having to confront some uncomfortable truths that he tried to keep hidden, even from himself. And Kirishima is just trying to keep himself together.
________________________________________________________
Chitchat and Pencil Pushers
Rating: E
Words: 92,777
Kirishima starts a new office job and unfortunately discovers that he may just have a big crush on the worst person possible
________________________________________________________
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
Rating: T
Words: 4,463
It’s not weird to share a bed with your best bro. It’s completely normal, and platonic, to get under the covers and to have a conversation in whispers even if nobody else is in the room.
________________________________________________________
Fire and the Flood
Rating: E
Words: 7,186
Kirishima’s good at massages and Bakugou’s bad at feelings (they both are).
________________________________________________________
In the Dark of the Night
Rating: E
Words: 84,611
Chanting sounded through the Colosseum. “Red Riot! Red Riot! Red Riot!”
“Sero,” Bakugou snapped at the Head of his Council, seated a few meters to his right in the Emperor’s box. “What the fuck is a Red Riot?”
Sero nodded his head to the pit and Bakugou followed his gaze, watching as another gladiator walked out of the gate and towards the center. “New gladiator prodigy. He’s only eighteen, but he hasn’t even come close to losing a fight since he started a couple months ago.” Then, Sero smirked. “I think you’re gonna like him.”
________________________________________________________
Just a Touch (Too Much)
Rating: E
Words: 3,330
Prompt from the Kink Meme: Kirishima gets oversensitive after using his quirk too much, and somebody (Bakugou) fucks him until he’s so overstimulated that he cries
________________________________________________________
Roses are Red and They Taste Like Shit
Rating: T
Words: 47,846
Katsuki was really fucking sick of the smell of flowers. Hanahaki disease
________________________________________________________
Tell Me I’m Yours
Rating: E
Words: 6,180
Bakugou was going a little crazy. He could grudgingly admit that it was at least in part his own fault; moving in with his best friend maybe hadn’t been the best idea. At first, it sounded great. The rent would be cheaper, grocery shopping and cooking for two would be way more convenient, and it would be easier for the two of them to hang out. The only thing was, Bakugou forgot to consider how the joys of moving in with his aforementioned best friend might be dampened by the fact that he was madly in love with him.
________________________________________________________
Brewed & Beards
Rating: E
Words: 30,729
Kirishima is starting his first year of college with his three best friends when he meets an impossibly hot barista with a really piss poor attitude. Unfortunately the man is all Kiri can think about. Too bad it looks like he has a girlfriend.
________________________________________________________
A Heart Swelled to Bursting
Rating: M
Words: 49,644
The summer training camp of Bakugou’s second year at UA descends upon him with all the untamed fury of- well, himself, honestly.
PACKING CHECKLIST:
✓boyfriend (need to figure out how much he’s willing to let him get away with)
✓people who claim to be his friends (deluded and in need of correction)
✓ptsd (that he absolutely doesn’t actually have)
✓a healthy dose of denial (say it five times fast and that means it’s true, right)
________________________________________________________
Idiots and Denials
Rating: M
Words: 44,642
Bakugou hates Kirishima’s teeth. He doesn’t think they’re cute at all. Really. Series of snapshots following Kirishima and Bakugou’s relationship.
________________________________________________________
Six Page Spread (Incomplete)
Rating: E
Words: 76,783
They’re 22 and Bakugou’s finally gotten control over his public image. Think more…“bad boy” and less “explosive asshole”. Kirishima is weak (though he always has been).
________________________________________________________
The Best Part is Falling
Rating: T
Words: 11,656
Bakugou’s had enough of Kirishima asking to sleep with him almost every night (“I just sleep better when I’m next to you, man!”) and going on and on about how nobody makes him happier and calling Bakugou the most handsome boy in their whole class and putting his hands all over Bakugou’s spine and waist in mundane, public situations, like that’s platonic behavior – he’s obviously in love with Bakugou, and Bakugou’s obviously in love with him, but does he realize that? Perhaps it is about time Bakugou corners himself into martyrdom and spells it out for Kirishima.
________________________________________________________
Say You Like Me
Rating: M
Words: 5,456
Five times Bakugou thinks his crush on Kirishima is unrequited, and one time he’s proven wrong.
________________________________________________________
I Even Like His Shitty Hair
Rating: M
Words: 54,255
“It works better if you take your shirt off, idiot,” Bakugou admonished, rolling his eyes.
Kirishima gulped, he bet it did. He just hoped he’d hear those words in different circumstances one day.
Kirishima has had a little crush on his best friend for a while and even though he liked Bakugou, he knew he couldn’t feel the same way so he didn’t want to ruin their friendship over it. Yet there was a sinking feeling in his stomach that told him it wasn’t manly to hide his feelings and that he would never know if he never tried. So he tries and learns that Bakugou gives back as good as he gets.
________________________________________________________
A Meme a Day
Rating: T
Words: 131,297
Kirishima’s always been happy to meet people and make new friends. Needless to say, he’s ecstatic when he’s informed that he’s finally getting assigned a roommate after a month of living alone in a dorm room. He’s more than happy to welcome his new roommate with a smile and help him out with anything he needs. He isn’t expecting, however, to meet a seriously attractive blonde with intense irises that shine with his favorite color, and who he also has trouble keeping his own eyes off of.
#mha#bnha#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#kiribaku#bakushima#kiribaku fanfic#bakushima fanfic#mha fanfiction#fanfiction#kiribaku fanfiction#Kirishima Eijirou#kirishima#bakugou#bakugou katsuki#a03#archive of our own#fanfic rec#kiribaku fanfic rec
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
This isn’t writing advice per se (more like formatting), just things that I take for granted knowing that when I come across I realize that not everyone does, in fact, know about when it comes to writing. You don’t have to pay attention to it or follow it. Just take it as me rambling pointlessly if you want (or even me being a big old meanie). I’m focusing on fanfic because if you’re serious about working on OG writing I...really hope you already know these things and I mention things specific to using tags and all that (I also focus on Ao3 rather than any other site since it’s the best and also the only site I use for posting anything).
First off, if you don’t use paragraph breaks. Fuck you.
Stop using “~” at the end of sentences to denote someone saying something in a “singsong” way or whatever. Stop using it in general. It looks bad and it breaks immersion because it’s not any sort of capitalization or formatting that is usually used so it can be jarring and also just looks stupid as fuck. The dialogue itself, the dialogue tags, and the context are all you need to carry the mood and convey feeling. Anything else is you trying way too hard. (The “~” is a tilde and is used in some other languages over letters to change the pronunciation and it’s also used in math/engineering to mean something about numbers...so basically if you’re writing in English you shouldn’t be using it because there is shit all reason to do that).
Either capitalize correctly for titles or don’t capitalize at all. Stylistic choices only work if you’re consistent about it, otherwise it looks like you don’t know what you’re doing rather than making a deliberate choice. And yes, even something as small and simple as the title can come across this way. It’s the first thing people see when they come across the story so it’s important it doesn’t look dumb as hell just to capitalize the first word and none of the others. It looks like you typed it out on your phone and auto correct got the first word but not the others. This is only for titles though, if you forego using capitalization in the body of your work just know you’ve committed a grave sin against humanity--you’re damned if you’ve done this for a chaptered work and not just a “stylistic” choice in a drabble.
Stop using...those letters that are from different alphabets and symbols you pasted from unicode or wherever else. It’s not aesthetic. Some phones and computers may not read them and they’ll just be square blocks. They’re hard to read for some people. They represent completely different sounds in the alphabets/languages they’re supposed to be used in. Just...stop doing it.
Don’t mix two different characters’ dialogue in the same paragraph. Each person gets their own paragraph. This is how people know who is talking when there are sometimes just one dialogue after the other without anything else to tell who is who, besides the fact it alternates. Paragraph breaks.
Epithets. Stop using them. Pronouns exist for a reason and context works wonders. “The blond haired agent, the doctor with glasses, the grumpy hitman...” it gets old when you use such things to refer to a character more than their names, especially when you’re using epithets in dialogue tags. And it’s especially unnecessary when they’re the only character in a scene or the only other character being referred to by another who’s speaking. (Also when you use the same epithet multiple times, all the time...I wanna die). Very low level children’s books use epithets often because children are just learning about things and have the attention span of a goldfish. But I hope you have faith your audience is above a kindergarten reading level. The only time I ever use epithets is when a character’s name isn’t revealed yet to the main POV and there really isn’t any other way to get around referring to them until it is. Though you can skip doing that if they’re literally the only other person the main POV could possibly be interacting with. And you don’t want to do this for very long because it wears out its welcome fast. It’s okay to use character’s names to refer to them...that’s why they have names.
Do not do things like “!!!!!!” or “?!?!1!!” Just one exclamation will do. You can use “?!”/”!?” but don’t like...repeat it a bunch of times. Like...I get it, they’re surprised.
Is this a chapter story or a script? Are you writing a play? If you use:
Character A: Blah blah blah.
Character B: Wah Wah Wah!
Consider...not doing that. I mean, DO do that if you’re actually writing a script...but you have no excuse for not knowing how dialogue is actually supposed to be formatted in stories because...I mean...you have read right? It’s the same in every book and story. The bar is low here. It’s not obscure knowledge. Children’s trade books use:
“Blah,” Character A says.
You have no excuse for not doing the same.
Walls of tags. Ugh. Walls. Of. Tags. Again, I gotta say. Fuck you. Tags are for categorization but you still want to keep them as simple and clean as possible. I’ve legit had to scroll past a wall of tags that took up so much damn space they were all that was on the screen. Do. Not. Do. This. Everyone hates you for it.
Speaking of tags: / is for romantic and/or sexual relationships and & is for platonic friendship. Do not mix up the two. Do not use both. If it’s a slow burn from friends to lovers you still only use /. If there’s no romance at all use &. Do not put “platonic but can be read as--” no. It’s up to you, the writer, whether it’s platonic or romantic so use the tags correctly.
Request booklets uwu. I hate those. I hate them because it’s a shitload of different fandoms, a wall of tags, and (usually) little to no actual content. You’ll get one-shot collections in the fandom tag when there isn’t actually any content for that actual fandom in it. It’s Ao3, it’s an archive. If you want to take requests make a Tumblr blog. In general I’m of the belief that one-shots should be...one-shots. On their own. There are lots of reasons for this. You can add a summary for what the one-shot is about instead of just giving the audience a title and shit all else. You can put it in the proper fandom tag without pissing off people who come across the “collection” and there be nothing for their fandom actually. The only time it makes sense is if the one-shots are all happening in the same universe and to the same people and they stand alone because they’re not chronological but they’re still in the same timeline for the same people. A series is fine. But it’s essentially like someone crosstagging here on Tumblr and using as many tags as possible to get attention.
If you have a chaptered story that follows a specific plot...do not add one-shots or AUs of that story to the that story. Perhaps that may not make sense but there is nothing more infuriating than thinking the story is updated when it’s just something tacked on, a one-shot or something, that interrupts the story and pisses you off because you don’t care you want to find out what happens next. If it all happens in the same universe, put it in a series. But don’t clog up the actual story with diversions. This has happened and while I really liked the writer’s stories I was fucking pissed as all hell. When I saw an update I thought the cliffhanger would be resolved, but no, it was a one-shot...
Use an author’s note for introductions or extra information NOT the body of the work. Please and thank you. Similarly you can add a tag or edit the summary to say the story is on hiatus or will be left unfinished until further notice.
Gender-neutral smut...it doesn’t work.
It’s okay to write OOC. Just like...warn people if you KNOW it’s really OOC.
It’s okay to character bash, honestly. Just warn people you’ll be doing it and that you know it’s petty but you hate writing about them in a positive way. For the life of me writing Sakura (from Naruto) was always a pain in the ass for me, so I understand. Just be self-aware about it and warn people so that they can’t come crying about it. (The power of “well, I did warn you...” is strong).
The relationship tags are only for the MAIN relationship(s). Background ships can be put in additional tags or vaguely mentioned in the author’s note. But please don’t make people think a ship will be more prominent in a story than what it actually is.
Stop using quotes for summaries when they don’t actually tell the readers anything. Summaries are for letting people know the basics of what they’ll be reading about so they know if it interests them. A vague quote from some famous person says absolutely nothing. Quotes can be used to great effect at the beginning of chapters or the end to drive home a theme or add a nice touch but they aren’t summaries on their own.
Use whatever tropes/cliches you want. Seriously. Especially if it’s fanfic. Just do what you want as far as actual content. If you enjoy it that’s all that matters.
So essentially write about whatever you want but remember the formatting is important. Basic capitalization and grammar that isn’t immediately terrible is important. Categorizing properly is important. These are things that really aren’t all that hard, seriously. Once you learn about doing them you just...do them.
#long post#fandom and fanfic i guess#i know i can come across a bit mean but to me these are really basic things#and they're things that are easy to notice in other stories so theres like#no reason for thinking they arent the norm or whatever#some of it is subjective#like me not liking gender neutral smut#maybe someone else wouldnt have a problem with it#but i did say it was more like me rambling
30 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
