#the period in his name is the bane of my existence
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In Sickness and Secondhand Embarrassment
seungcheol x reader
summary: what’s the best part of a terrible date? the end. that is, until a roommate catches covid and you’re forced to stay together
genre: fluff
warnings: swearing, food, SECOND HAND EMBARRASSMENT
wc: 5.3k
a/n: hello!!!! this is kinda based more on pandemic protocol from a year ago so it’s not quite the same as the current experience, but also covid is still very real!! anyways if you don’t enjoy second hand embarrassment don’t read.. I need to stop writing kiss scenes 😭
Seungcheol’s shoulder brushes against yours again. He isn’t doing it on purpose, but he thinks it might be his subconscious since he isn’t brave enough to ask to hold your hand.
“Nice night,” you say. Seungcheol doesn’t miss how you avoid his eyes, staring at your toes. Everything in his heart screams awkward as he tries to think of something, anything to say.
He thought it would be easy: he called Vernon about the friend he brought to the party, found out your name, and then found out you had asked about him as well. He got your number and asked you out to dinner. He likes you and you like him, so why is this so awkward?
“I guess this is goodnight,” you say. You smile and Seungcheol forgets what he was about to say.
“I guess this is goodnight,” you say. You smile and Seungcheol forgets what he was about to say.
“I guess this is goodnight,” you say. You smile and Seungcheol forgets what he was about to say.
“I… had fun today,” he sputters. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but he knows if he doesn’t do anything soon, this already-painful date will turn into a terrible memory that he’ll never be able to live down. He thinks about telling Vernon about this nightmare, or, god forbid, Jeonghan and Joshua find out. He’d never hear the end of it.
Maybe that’s why he catches your hand before you can turn around. In a spurt of his only confidence of the night, he asks, “Can I kiss you?”
You look startled at first, but your frown quickly turns into a smile, if a bit nervous. “Sure.”
Seungcheol leans closer, pausing over your lips and suddenly remembers the garlic pasta he had for lunch earlier. He swallows and prays it’s enough to hide the taste. He leans a little bit closer and your lips are touching and Seungcheol thinks they are warm and soft (and maybe a little bit chapped but his are too). Move, he thinks but the thought doesn’t travel to his muscles and his stupid brain can’t figure out what to do. The kiss lasts longer and longer and all he does is stand there with his lips pressed against yours.
Finally, you pull away. Seungcheol doesn’t dare look in your eyes as he takes a step back. He can already feel his face heating up with embarrassment. Maybe it’s not too late for him to catch the shuttle to the airport and get on a flight and leave somewhere and never come back, maybe go to Guam, or Canada, or really anywhere but here.
“Goodnight,” he mumbles, daring to glance at you once. Your hand is pressed against your lips as if you can't quite believe what happened either. Seungcheol turns down the sidewalk and walks away, hoping that he’ll never have to think about this again.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, a welcome distraction. Joshua’s face appears on his screen.
“Hey, is it too late to cancel your date?” Joshua asks. He’s in the apartment that Seungcheol, Joshua, and Jeonghan share, evident by the cardboard cutout of the Rock that Seungkwan gave Jeonghan for his birthday last year that is staring at Seungcheol over Joshua’s shoulder.
“Uh, yeah,” Seungcheol says, praying that’s the last question.
“Cool, how are you feeling?”
How to answer that? How does Seungcheol explain that he wants a comet to wipe him off the face of the earth, or maybe a time machine so he can go back and at least stop himself from that horrible kiss.
“Fine,” Seungcheol says, because he doesn’t want to deal with the teasing from the J’s. It’s the only way this night can get worse.
“No coughing? No sore throat?”
Seungcheol stops. “What’s going on?”
Joshua smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes and Seungcheol recognizes the anger burning behind them. “Well, the little asshat is coughing and he took an at home test and it may or may not be positive.”
“Joshua,” Seungcheol says slowly. “Are you telling me Jeonghan has covid?”
“Yes! I’m supposed to have a meeting with my thesis advisor tomorrow, goddammit. Well, if you’re feeling fine you should probably just find somewhere to quarantine, or come back here and take the L, I guess,” Joshua says. “This is so annoying, and Jeonghan is going to milk the shit out of this until we’re sick too.”
“Joshua,” Seungcheol says slowly. “Jeonghan and I ate breakfast together today. We shared a spoon.”
“Oh, then you should come back.”
Seungcheol sighs, remembering the kiss that would likely go down as one of the top five worst moments of his life. And he thought things couldn’t get worse.
Well, he can’t be too pessimistic. Maybe telling you that he may have given you covid will somehow make this night better.
.
.
He sits on the far end of the couch. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to invite him to quarantine with you, but you trust that any friend of Vernon’s isn’t a psychopath, and he looked genuinely upset about the entire situation. Besides, if he really isn’t sick, then there’s no danger.
Except for the fact that you cannot forget the horrible kiss that wasn’t even five minutes ago. It wasn’t your worst kiss (that title went to Jimmy at the ninth birthday party of your best friend, who thought the enclosed space you were crammed into together during an intense round of hide and seek was the appropriate time to confess his love and then force a kiss on your lips when you were mostly thinking about how much you had to pee), but it definitely wasn’t the best.
At least he seems to feel as embarrassed as you are. The few times you work up the confidence to look at him, he’s either staring at your carpet or fiddling with his thumbs.
“Thanks again,” Seungcheol says. “You really don’t have to do this.”
“Like I said, if you don't have it, we’re fine, but if you do, there’s a good chance you gave it to me, so you might as well stay here.” You tap your fingers on the arm of the couch.
“Well, thank you anyways,” he says. “And I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay,” you say. Not for the first time, you wish you had a roommate, or at least someone else in the apartment so you wouldn’t have to figure out how to deal with this all on your own. How does one properly host the person they went on exactly one (bad) date with and then possibly gave them covid? Offer tea?
“So, you want to play Mario Kart?” You ask.
“Are you sure you want to challenge me?” Seungcheol asks. “I should warn you, I’ve been trained.”
“I have too,” you say, thinking about how many times Jihoon had cursed you out playing the game throughout your lifelong friendship. He taught you curse words you didn’t know existed.
“Jeon Wonwoo himself trained me,” Seungcheol says, taking the controller as you hand it to him.
“Jeon Wonwoo?” You frown at him from the other side of the couch.
“He’s a streamer,” Seungcheol says. “And I thought a pretty popular one, but now I’m realizing I sort of sound like an idiot and should have kept my mouth shut.”
“I’m sure he’s really good,” you say. “He could be really popular, I really wouldn’t know.”
Seungcheol flashes a thankful smile and you remember why you asked Vernon about him in the first place. Not just because his smile makes your heart skip a beat, but because he’s so expressive that you think you can read every thought that comes across his face. As painfully terrible as the date was, you aren’t completely opposed to a second date, and his wide smile isn’t helping at all.
Though, the way things are going right now, you are a little worried you might be stuck with him for the rest of your life.
“Well, either way, we won’t know until we try,” you say. Seungcheol points his controller at you as if it were a sword, accepting your challenge. The familiar music begins and you select your character (always Shy Guy). Seungcheol chooses Bowser, which doesn’t surprise you. He chooses a kart while you choose a bike, and before long, the numbers count down.
3.
2.
1.
.
.
In hindsight, Seungcheol wonders if he was too competitive. Then again, the score is still 50-50 for first place after playing four rounds, so it’s not like you didn’t match his energy.
“This isn’t over,” you declare when he wins the final match and sets the score back to an even win rate.
“It’s almost midnight, I think it’s over for the night,”Seungcheol says. “Besides, it’s tied!”
“The last time I settled for a tie was Jihoon, and now he refuses to play with me,” you say. Seungcheol idly wonders if it’s weird that he finds the borderline violent look in your eyes attractive.
“Oh, believe me, I’m not settling for a tie,” Seungcheol says. “Wonwoo would kill me if he ever found out, he called me his protegé.”
“And you’re proud of that?” You ask, but you’re smiling. “Fine, I’ll concede for tonight, but this isn’t over.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Seungcheol says, grinning even wider at your fake glare.
“Are you sure you’re okay with the couch?” You ask, standing up.
Seungcheol is tempted to flirt and say, “Unless you want to share a bed,” but he decides with how badly he fumbled earlier in the evening, it would be safest to nod and keep his mouth shut. Besides, he is beyond grateful that you’re letting him stay with you; the couch might as well be a king-sized bed.
Unfortunately, it is not king-sized, and his feet stick off the edge when he tries stretching out on it. You return with a rather flimsy blanket and a giant stuffed dog that Seungcheol is afraid is his pillow for the night.
“I’m really, really sorry,” you say, “Nobody ever stays over so all I have are these.”
“It’s fine,” Seungcheol says, already preparing his back for a very long night. “Like I said, I’m the one intruding.” You hand him a spare toothbrush and point him in the direction of the bathroom.
Seungcheol understands why you never have people over: the apartment, putting things kindly, is shit. From his first step inside, he was shocked at the small size, with a kitchen that doubles as a dining room and living room (and where he would sleep tonight), a bedroom (that he assumes is tiny because you didn’t invite him to see and he figured it would be inappropriate to ask), and the bathroom. On top of the size, he was sure he saw a monstrous bug flying around that looked like some sort of cockroach abomination, but you didn’t mention it, and there was a strange smell coming from the sink drain. At least you were able to lighten the beige painted walls with what looked like handmade canvases.
There is no saving the bathroom. Seungcheol was scared to enter it earlier, and his fears are confirmed now. He thinks the tile might have been pink once, but it had seen so many years and so many… fluids, that it has become a sickening brown color. The walls have suffered a similar fate, though it looks like there has been a fairly recent coat of paint. There’s no bathtub, and the shower head looks like it hasn’t been changed in ten years, and doesn’t seem to be able to control the water heat or flow at all. The room mostly smells like lemon and bleach, and Seungcheol wonders how long you spent scrubbing before you realized it was a hopeless effort.
He brushes his teeth quickly, feeling a little guilty that he has to dig through your cabinets for your toothpaste. He tries not to look at anything, focusing on his reflection in the mirror. That’s when he realizes that he’s stuck with these clothes: his nicest pair of pants and a button down that Joshua insisted he iron before he left. At least he had a white t-shirt on beneath it, but he was stuck in these clothes unless he asked you for a change, which was not happening anytime soon. He could only pray that he didn’t get covid from Jeonghan and would be free in three days.
You’re sitting on the couch when he comes out. You don’t turn right away, and for a moment he catches a glimpse of you, back towards him, head facing toward the windows beside the door and staring outside. He wonders what you’re thinking, and hopes it’s not something along the lines of I hope this man leaves my apartment as soon as possible. He doesn’t want to be a nuisance, but he can’t help but feel that after the rousing game of Mario Kart, maybe the relationship between the two of you wasn’t completely destroyed.
You’re smiling a little when the bathroom door clicks shut and you turn to see him. You’ve definitely caught him staring, but Seungcheol doesn’t really care, returning your smile.
“Thank you,” he says. He trades spots with you as you stand and he sits on the couch. You linger for a moment, leaning against the arm.
“I’m really sorry about the lack of a bed,” you say. “But I’m very broke.”
“How about you stop apologizing and I’ll stop saying thank you?”
You laugh. “Yeah, that works.”
“Good,” Seungcheol says. There’s more he wants to say, but unlike before, it doesn’t weigh him down and make him panic. It’s a warm feeling that makes him think he has a lifetime to learn everything about you.
“Goodnight, yn,” he says, loving the way your name feels in his mouth.
“Goodnight,” you say, finally standing and crossing into your room, pulling the door shut behind you with a resounding click.
.
.
You wake up to banging noises in the kitchen. It takes a minute to remember that you aren’t alone in the apartment, and you aren’t being robbed. Though you want to go back to sleep, the banging is rather noisy, so you drag yourself out of bed and into the bathroom.
You just woke up, but you’re glad you went into the bathroom before confronting Seungcheol, because as your brain slowly wakes up, you realize your hair is a total mess and your breath is terrible. You brush your teeth quickly and try not to think about the boy in your kitchen because it only makes you more nervous.
Strange, how your feelings for him changed so much in such a short time period. You were nervous before the date, then disappointed after how bad it went, but then last night was so much fun, and you’re back to being nervous at the thought of him. You hate the butterflies that are fluttering around your gut.
They vanish when you see the state of your kitchen.
“I am so sorry,” Seungcheol says the second he hears your footsteps. “I wanted to do something nice for you because you’re being so nice and letting me stay, and the least I could do was make you breakfast, except I got lost in your kitchen, and then there was an incident with the flour, and then this giant bug flying around my face, and I was going to clean it all up before you woke up, but I guess I was being really loud, and this is a huge mess, and I’m really sorry.”
Seungcheol himself almost looks worse than your kitchen, between the frantic look in his eyes and flour covering half of his body. There’s some red sauce spilled on his shirt (which you have absolutely no idea where it came from since you don’t have ketchup in your apartment), and it’s clear he spent the last few minutes failing to get control of the mess of ingredients that spilled on the stove.
“At least nothing’s on fire,” you say.
“Yeah, I put it out pretty quickly.”
“You set my apartment on fire?”
“Only briefly!” Seungcheol grabs your shoulders, then lets go when he realizes his hands are still covered in flour. “Look, I promise I’ll clean everything up, just go take a shower, wait, no, I’m not saying you smell or anything, but give me like ten minutes and I’ll make it look like nothing ever happened.” He looks really desperate.
“I’ll order some food,” you say, walking dazedly back to your room. Your kitchen was falling apart before, but Seungcheol has made it unrecognizable between everything that he spilled and whatever he tried to cook. You think maybe it was pancakes, but whatever happened in that kitchen is between Seungcheol and the bug that might as well be your roommate since all of your attempts to kill it have failed.
“Yn?” Seungcheol says. It sounds like he’s standing right outside your door. It’s only been a few minutes, so there’s no way he’s finished cleaning.
“Is something wrong?” You get off your bed and pull the door open to find him standing in front of you, head hanging low like a puppy that knows he messed up.
He shakes his head, looking up at you with an exaggerated pout. “Are you mad?”
You can’t help but laugh. “No, I’m not mad. A little stunned, because I didn’t think there was that much flour in my kitchen, but it’s not like you did it on purpose, so, why would I be mad?”
“Seriously?” Seungcheol says. He looks almost hopeful.
“Yeah, it can be cleaned up, and you didn’t actually set the place on fire, so it’s fine.” You shrug. Seungcheol doesn’t look like he really believes you, so you add, “Seriously, I was just really surprised, but I’ll find the bleach and help you clean as soon as I change out of my pajamas.”
That’s when you realize a) Seungcheol is still wearing the clothes from the date the night before which b) are now absolutely covered in flour. You can’t believe that you didn’t notice earlier, but it’s obvious that he needs something to change into. You close the door to change, but dig through your drawers to find someone that suits Seungcheol and can’t seem to find anything.
Your phone rings, and you realize you have the perfect solution.
.
.
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but Seungcheol thinks the kitchen looks cleaner than it was before. It smells distinctly like lemon, and the black stains under the cabinet (that were one of the few spots Seungcheol didn’t create) were successfully removed. Maybe it smells so clean the bug/monster/demon would finally leave your apartment (definitely wishful thinking). He washes his hands again, but they still don’t feel clean; he doubts they ever will be again, since you didn’t have any gloves.
“It looks good!” You say. You insisted on working alongside him and refused to take no for an answer, which he was grateful for since Seungcheol had no idea where any of your cleaning supplies were. It was a challenge to use bleach without gloves, but Seungcheol is 90% sure you both managed to avoid bleach poisoning. Still, he figures it’s safest to usher you into the shower while he tries to figure out what to do now.
He can’t even sit down and relax since he keeps leaving flour behind no matter how much comes off him. He ends up sitting on the floor in the doorway since it’s the only place that isn’t clean. Though the door is solid, the large panels next to it are windows, and Seungcheol watches the empty street.
Here are his options: ask you for clothes to change into (mortifying) or live the rest of his quarantine life in clothes that are turning stiff from the mix of grease, flour, and cleaning supplies that have seeped into the fabric (possibly deadly). He strongly considers running away, but he decides it’s unethical to wander around while possibly infected.
It’s from staring out the window and longing for freedom that he first notices it. A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye so fast Seungcheol thinks he imagined it, but then it happens again. Black clothing, he’s sure of it. It’s moving so fast Seungcheol isn’t quite sure that it’s human. He stands up, now certain that whatever’s out there is real and a threat.
Are there any weapons? He does a mental checklist of everything he’s seen in your apartment, and all he comes up with are the kitchen knives he saw in a drawer while looking for the cleaning supplies. He wonders if he should ask you, but the water is still running, and he doesn’t want to scare you just because he’s jumpy. He is already beginning to second guess whether he saw anything at all, when there’s a little knock at the door.
Seungcheol inches back, hands feeling dreadfully empty. As much as he wants a knife, he doesn’t want to turn his back on the door now that there’s noises.
The knock comes again, a small sound followed by a soft rattling, as if something was rolling on the ground. Seungcheol freezes, not daring to get any closer to the glass, but trying to peer out and see what he can.
The knock comes a third time, except this time it hits the glass and Seungcheol realizes that it’s a tiny rock being thrown. He watches it land in the dirt, trying to determine if it’s from the yard or another planet. Seungcheol takes a step up to the door and realizes his hands have curled into fists.
He knows more likely than not, it’s probably some town kid that’s looking for an easy prank on poor college kids, but on the off-chance that it’s some other-worldly demon trying to steal his soul, Seungcheol braces himself for the worst. He rests his hand on the door, ready to tell off the kid (or die painfully), taking a deep breath.
Before he can pull it open, he sees another flash of movement. He turns to the window and suddenly the entire left side of the door is covered in black. Seungcheol drops to the floor, cowering back. He doesn’t realize that he’s screaming until he hears your voice.
He looks up to see you, hair dripping wet, glaring at the window, which isn’t populated by a monster about to pull him apart, but is just a boy, around his age, dressed all in black making silly faces. Seungcheol can feel his ears turning red with embarrassment as you crouch down next to him.
“Are you okay?” You ask, looking genuine.
“Yeah,” he says, accepting your hand to pull himself up.
“It’s just Seokmin,” you say, rolling your eyes. “He thinks it’s funny to try and scare everyone. You get used to it.”
“I don’t think I ever will,” Seungcheol grumbles but he follows you to the door and forces a smile on his face because he doesn’t want your friends to think he’s a sore loser, even if he is.
Seokmin is still laughing when you open the door, which annoys him even more since his laugh is infectious and Seungcheol can’t help but feel smile isn’t as forced.
“I got you so good,” Seokmin says. He backs away, keeping a safe distance, leaving a large plastic bag on the doorstep. “Oh my god, I’ve never heard a grown man scream like that, that was hilarious.”
“Very funny Seokmin,” you say. “Did you bring what I asked?”
“Everything is here!” Seokmin says, as if immune to your passive aggressive tone. “Breakfast, clothes, half the toiletry aisle from CVS, and two rapid tests donated from Jihoon because he said, ‘check and make sure yn hasn’t been murdered because I don’t trust some random man.’”
“You can tell him I’m fine,” you say. “And he should stop being a little bitch and apologize.”
“I’ll pass the message on,” Seokmin says. He turns to Seungcheol. “So, you’ve survived a night with yn?”
“Yeah, I don’t recommend the couch,” Seungcheol says. He doesn’t want your friends to think he did anything strange the night before. “Thanks for the clothes.” Seungcheol lifts the bag and frowns at the pattern that he can see through the opaque bag. From what he can see, he’s doomed.
“No problem!” Seokmin says with a grin. “You can keep them, I was going to donate them anyways.” He winks at you. “Stay safe.”
“Thank you, Seokmin,” you say with a sigh waving goodbye as the door swings shut behind you. You glance at Seungcheol and raise your eyebrows. “You need a shower.”
.
.
Putting it kindly, Seungcheol looks like a Christmas tree from the 80s that was left up year round and then left forgotten to rot in someone’s backyard. The sweater was once bright green, but faded to a strange color that you don’t think actually exists on purpose, and has a swirling bright yellow pattern that’s somehow withstood the test of time to remain neon. Because there isn’t enough going on, the sleeves have a plaid pattern in the same green and yellow, the hemming around the neck and at the bottom is faded red. You have no idea where Seokmin found it, or why a sweater like that was ever designed.
Still, you can’t quite say you regret asking Seokmin to bring the clothes, because as chaotic as it is, he still looks rather cute. His hair is wet from the shower, a mess of curls that seem to be just a little out of place, and you wonder how long he spends styling his hair each day.
“I’m hideous,” he says.
“It’s horrible,” you say, “But you look kind of cute.”
“You’re just trying to make me forget the fact that it was your friend who brought me the sweater,” he says but you see his smile.
“Maybe,” you say, crossing the room to stand in front of him. “Or maybe I think you’re cute.” The last time you were this close to him, he kissed you. A terrible kiss, yes, but you were very nervous, and you know he was too. Now you’re just curious if a second kiss will be as bad.
Before you get the chance to ask, you hear a rumbling sound from Seungcheol’s pocket. He grimaces and pulls out his phone, answering it before he looks at the screen. You take a step back and fold your arms, wondering if you should give him some privacy.
“Hey, what’s up?” Seungcheol says. You can’t quite make out the words of the voice on the other line, but after a moment Seungcheol frowns.
“You’re joking,” Seungcheol says. “How many tests did you take?” There’s a pause before he asks, “So what do you have?” A few moments later, he shakes his head and hangs up the phone, saying, “I’ll talk to you later.”
When he looks up at you, you are suddenly reminded of the night before, when he knocked on your door and told you that he might have given you covid. There’s this look in his eyes that says I’m sorry without him speaking a word.
“So, that was Jeonghan,” he says.
“Your roommate that has covid?”
“Yeah, so apparently he doesn’t have covid?” Seungcheol says, looking exasperated. “I’m really sorry about all of this, but he just called and said his PCR test was negative and he’s feeling a lot better today and he thinks it was just a cold.”
You can’t help but laugh. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, Jeonghan tends to be dramatic,” Seungcheol says. “Listen, I already felt terrible that all of this happened, and now it turns out that it was for no reason, so I really don’t know what I can do to make up for it.”
You tilt your head. “No idea?”
Seungcheol frowns. “No?”
You take another step closer to him, peering into his eyes. He really doesn’t know what you’re implying, so you ignore your pounding heart and smile at him, tentatively resting your hand on his shoulder.
“Oh,” he says. “Maybe a small idea?”
“You should at least try,” you say.
He leans a little closer, and you catch a whiff of his hair, which smells like your own shampoo. “Can I?”
You nod, and this time he doesn’t waste a second before kissing you. He doesn’t freeze like last time, and neither do you, molding your lips against his. After a couple seconds, you can’t help but smile, and Seungcheol pulls away with his own smile. Much better than last time.
“Does that make up for it?” He asks. At some point his hand found its way to your waist.
“It’s a good start,” you say, “But you’ve got to at least ask me out on a second date before you have a chance at fully making up for it.”
“I think I could do that,” Seungcheol says, almost sounding arrogant. It makes you smile. His smile fades after a moment and he sighs.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got to go back and save Jeonghan,” he says. “Joshua might actually kill him when he finds out.” He flashes a smile at you. “But I will call you as soon as we’re done and we can schedule that second date.”
“I like the sound of that,” you say. You nearly jump when he kisses your nose, dropping his hand from your waist and wandering around the house as if nothing happened. He doesn't have much to collect, so it isn’t long before he’s standing in your doorway, poised to leave (and avoiding the flour on the floor).
“I’ll call,” he promises. “Unless Joshua is in jail, then it might take a while, but I’ll call eventually.”
“I know a good lawyer,” you say. “Well, he will be, eventually.” He pushes the door open and walks out, but pauses before letting the door swing shut, turning back to look at you again.
“As chaotic as it was, I’m sort of glad that this happened,” he says. “I mean, obviously I still feel bad that I crashed on your couch for basically no reason, but I got to see a lot more of you, and I really liked it. Being with you.”
“I like you too, dork,” you say. “And if you didn’t crash on my couch I never would have called you back, that was a terrible first date.”
“Yeah, it really was,” he says. He still lingers.
“Don’t you dare forget that we still have a rematch for Mario kart.”
“Oh, liking you means nothing, I will take you down,” Seungcheol says. He smiles at you. “Goodbye, yn.”
“Goodbye, Seungcheol,” you say. He finally lets the door swing shut, walking down the sidewalk. He pauses at the end to wave a final time, then disappears around the corner.
You turn back to your apartment. Though you didn’t even spend twenty-four hours stuck here with him, it already feels emptier without him. You lay back on the couch, thinking about the whirlwind of emotions of the past day, and finally settling on the thought of seeing Seungcheol again. And you smile.
a/n2: I had to clown dk I’m sorry
#🌟 stars galaxy#seventeen#seventeen x reader#svt reader#svt#seventeen fluff#scoups#choi seungcheol#seungcheol x reader#seventeen fanfic#seventeen fanfiction#scoups fluff#Seungcheol fluff#scoups x reader#s.coups#the period in his name is the bane of my existence
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Hi em! Could you please recommend some Miguel O'Hara fics?🤤 (I've been watching the spiderman movie for the third time and omg each time I find him hotter than before
OF COURSE BABES!!!
one shots:
impatient - @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction
summary: miguel needs to see you in his office, immediately
thaw - @campingwiththecharmings
summary: being a leader isn't easy, and sometimes even spider-man needs someone else to take the lead
touch-a, touch-a, touch me - @dimepdf
summary: no matter how many times you try to convince yourself that Miguel is the bane of your existence, the way you react during training proves otherwise.
sex pollen - @xbellaxcarolinax
request (by my baby mona): okay but imagine sex pollen with miguel fucking you on your back and then even when he cums he just keeps going and it’s spilling out and refractory period who and you’re overstimulated and he’s like no no you’re not allowed to tap out and he — and he —!!!!!
honey-sweet - @fettuccin-e
summary: you're far too sweet for him. he's determined not to ruin you, despite the fact that he seems to ruin everything, and everything about you just seems to make his fantasies worse. but one night can change everything, apparently, when miguel finally sees how completely not sweet you can be.
size kink - yours truly
summary: miguel is so big, he could only slide against your pussy during the first few months of dating you 😵💫
(pumpkin) cream pie - most recent fic out
summary: miguel + whipped cream. what could go wrong?
ANGST + SMUT:
if you liked my (high key upsetting) angsty smut
check out this fic by @cherryberry-sugarandspice
series:
always yours, never mine [DARK] - @melodygatesauthor
summary: in every universe there's a version of you that exists. in some of those universes, you're in love with me; in others, you don't even know my name. none of it matters though, because when i find you, i will have you, i'll make you love me, and i will never lose you again.
halo pt 1 + 2 - @missdictatorme
summary: you are an AI designed by miguel. he gave you a unique voice, one he knew he would like listening to. he didn't really gave much thought to how you looked like when he made you a hologram form, he just choose a random picture of a woman from the internet. what happens when you ask for permission to design your own look?
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The Bane of My Existence
Pairing:Trafalgar Law x reader
Content: some spoilers for Sabaody arc (nothing major), enemies to lovers! strawhat reader, reader and law are both stubborn and argumentative smh, reader is more optimistic though, law is awkward and not great at understanding his own feelings <3
Word Count: 1.6k
A/N: part 1/2 for a little enemies to lovers fic! one of my favorite tropes but I almost never write about it... also I've been rewatching bridgerton and was very inspired by the relationship between Kate and Anthony, which is where the title comes from too! (can you guess what part 2 will be called?) anyway, enjoy and lmk your thoughts! :)
Part 2
Sabaody Archipelago is easily one of the coolest places you’ve visited so far. Not that Alabasta, Skypiea, Water 7, Thriller Bark weren’t cool too… but you’re a people person! And to get to see such a diverse mix of groups from all over the world converging here, on one island Archipelago, brings a genuine smile to your face. It truly does remind you of a theme park: from the attractions to the oversized trees and bubbles.
In fact, you’re so caught up in all the splendors of the carnival-esque grove that you don’t realize you’re being watched. Or, followed, rather.
The Heart Pirates, yet another crew from some vague corner of the world, have been tracking you for the better part of an hour now. Except, they’re only following their captain, who happens to be following you.
Hes not entirely discreet about it though, because at one point Bepo asks, “Um… Captain, why are we following them?”
Shachi responds unprompted, “Yeah, I’ve never seen their bounty poster so… what’s up?”
Law scowls, “I’m not following anyone.”
Though he is low-key following you, Law couldn’t give a good reason as to why. You walked past him and his crew on your way to meet up with the rest of your crew- the Strawhat Pirates- and he’d just sort of trailed after you once you’d gotten a safe distance ahead.
“Really? Because every time they stop for directions, we slow down. And we’ve turned at all the same spots, too… So it really does seem like we’re follo-“
“I am NOT following them.” He lies through (literally) gritted teeth.
Now, Trafalgar Law is in now way shape or form a believer in love at first sight. He’s never been in love period… but the feeling he gets from seeing you is something new and foreign. Like, he really wants to talk to you… he just doesn’t know what for. Law is still trying his best to come up with reasons to stop you and ask for your name when you overhear the brief argument between him and his friends.
With a quick glance over your shoulder, you spot a group of at least 10 on your trail. They’re in the middle of conversation, so they don’t notice you taking notice of them.
Your first instinct is to look around for your crew; but of course, they’re scattered across the groves of Sabaody Archipelago by now - as are you. “Sigh. I might just have to handle this in my own.” But, wait- who said they wanted to fight you? Maybe you should just approach them first, wouldn’t that give you the upper hand in some way? (It wouldn’t, but you can’t think of anything better than to try and charm your way out of a possible jumping with your friendliness and perfect smile.) So, you roll back your shoulders and take a breath before strolling back over the grass to your pursuers.
“Why would I be following some rand-“
“Because you have a crush on them!”
“Oh they’re cute, Captain, you should ask them to join!”
“Gasp! Yeah, then you can get to know-“
They all go silent (save for some quiet gasps) as you step toward the semi circle they’ve formed around one man- the only one not wearing a white uniform, who they call “Captain.” You tap him on the shoulder and he whips his head around.
“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help me?”
The man just stares at you for a moment with a frown. You fear that you might’ve been wrong about his intentions, until he blinks and mumbles, “Uh… Sure.”
Your smile returns- of course you weren’t wrong! Plus, he’s kind of hot, but you’d catalog that thought and come back to it on some lonely night in the future. “Great! I’m looking for grove 41, it’s where some of my friends are.”
You’d learned back in Water 7 that sometimes, it was best not to disclose who exactly you’re traveling with, nor the location of your ship. (At least, not when you’re infamous pirates.)
“Grove 41? I’m headed there too.”
The polar bear wearing who is also wearing a white uniform clears his throat.
“I thought we were heading to Grove 1, Captain?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to get in y’all’s way then-“
“Nah, I think Captain would love to show you the way.”
“Shachi!” The captain sneers. “We’ll meet back up at Grove 1 after I show them the way." Then, he looks you up and down. It's quick and analytical rather than flirtatious or intimidating. "Don’t cause me any trouble.”
You smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m y/n, by the way.”
“Trafalgar Law, and this is my crew, the Heart Pirates.” He gestures around the semi circle, then turns to face them, “You guys go take a break or something. I’ll be back shortly.”
“But Captain, we want to go with you!”
One of the men with red hair- Shachi, you’re pretty sure, elbows the polar bear.
“Hey!…” He looks down at Shachi then gasps like he suddenly had a revelation; “Ohhh. Sorry Captain, we’ll see you later!”
Law rolls his eyes. “See you soon.”
There's something about his dark hair and grey eyes that charms you, right off the bat. Or maybe it's his relaxed, confident demeanor. Possibly even his idiosyncratic style of clothing, and how he (and all of his crew) wore the same logo; so very organized and professional. But no matter the exact reason as to why, you find yourself quite happy to be in his company.
Alas, he’s not a very talkative man, so you make up most of the conversation with questions and your own introductory information. “-and that’s how I got here, to Sabaody!”
“Uh huh. And who did you say your crew was again?”
“I, ahem, I don’t travel with a crew.”
“Right.” He laughs dryly.
“What is it?”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“I- I’m not lying!”
“Look, you don’t have to tell me what crew you’re a part of,” Law explains, “but don’t lie and say you’re not a pirate at all.”
“Well… it’s generally not a good idea to tell strangers that you’re a pirate. Not even nice ones, like you."
Ignoring the butterflies in his stomach that unexpectedly appear when you call him nice, Law's burning curiosity is fed by your roundabout half-answer. “Ah, so you are one? What’s your bounty?”
“That’s not really any of your business.” Though you believe his intentions to be purely based in curiosity, you're second guessing allowing this man to lead you away on an island grove that you have never visited, nor know anything about. Still, your crew is nowhere in sight or hearing range, which worries you given just how loud they usually are.
“I’m paying you a favor by leaving my crew to escort you to where I’m assuming your ship is located- it’s the least you could do.” Law’s tone is more prickly than before.
“Well, I don’t need an escort, and you’ve already walked me halfway there and pointed me in the right direction.”
“Fine- then I’ll leave.”
His sudden change in mood from what you interpreted as shy to borderline aggressive throws you off. And so, having a similar moody temperament and stubbornness (though you’d never admit it after seeing it so clearly in him), you return the sentiment. “Fine by me.”
You continue walking forward while Law turns back, until he calls over his shoulder. “And by the way; you’ll need to find your way through the lawless zone up ahead if you want to get to Grove 41.” If condescending was a person, it would be him. You’re sure of it. “That, or I could’ve shown you a much safer shortcut.”
You pause, turn to face him, roll your eyes, and continue walking.
“What, you’re still not going to ask for my help?”
“Don’t need it!” Which, you really don’t. You’re plenty strong, but your bounty is small enough to not be worried. “I’m not scared of a law-less zone, if anything I think I’d welcome it.”
Your mocking words hurt his ego in a way he hasn't felt in years, taking him down several pegs.
You don't even stick around long enough to listen to him rebuke everything about you, from your high and mighty tone to your vain attempts at lying, ending his one sided argument with a very classy middle finger your way. So, Law grumbles all the way back to Grove 1 to find his crew, and hopes to never see you again. Meanwhile, you find your way to the other Strawhats. Your adventure with them continues, and you don’t have much time to think of your earlier encounter with a handsome pirate and possible-friend turned enemy (if you could even call him that.)
Law doesn't know if his ego (or wildly beating heart) could take another second in your presence- it just might burst if it had to endure any more of your witty comments or sly looks. It would, however, be an interesting theory to test further, should you ever meet again.
The prospect is both horrifying and thrilling to him at the same time.
#fanfic#one piece x reader#one piece#one piece x you#x reader#law x reader#law x you#law fluff#straw hat pirates#trafalgar law#law
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remember the nights | chapter six — stargazing
WORD COUNT — 1,772
WARNINGS — none
NOTES — ah yes, the iconic skeletal formula fic, which i taught myself how to write a skeletal formula and promptly deleted the info from my brain a week later
previous chapter | masterlist | next chapter
School was quickly becoming the bane of your existence. Between the economics test you and the others had all studied for last week — which you were extremely thankful for, as it helped your grade immensely — and the teachers grilling everyone about midterms, you were under more pressure than you’d ever felt, and were assigned more homework than you knew what to do with.
Along with that came the fact that college admissions had finally opened up, and you were entirely unsure as to where you wanted to go. There were good schools in New York City, and for a very long time you had planned to go to one of them with all of your friends so that you wouldn’t have to pay as much for a dorm or an apartment. Now, though, you’d have to do that wherever you went, and you hadn’t been talking to your city friends as much, and you just weren’t sure what to do anymore. No matter how far you went, you’d have to get a dorm or an apartment, and if you chose to go out of state, that meant even more of a cost.
Today, though, you were focusing on something that, overall, seemed small, but to you, was anything but. You invited Newt over to the house to help you attempt to understand the one subject that seemed to be out to kill your GPA — chemistry. He should be arriving at any minute, wielding his seemingly miraculous understanding of the science in order to help you with the ten homework questions that you’d been putting off since Thursday.
Dinner had long been eaten and cleaned up, Thomas and Chuck had retreated to Chuck’s room to play video games for the rest of Chuck’s night, and your dad and Maggie were watching a movie in the living room. You were with them, sitting in the armchair and barely processing the movie as you waited patiently for Newt to show up.
When the doorbell rang, you practically sprung from your chair, ignoring the chuckle your father let out as you did so. Newt greeted Maggie and your dad as you invited him inside, his school bag slung over one shoulder. He received a quick, warm welcome back from the couple as they kept their eyes on the movie.
Newt followed you upstairs as you led him into your room, keeping the door open — a rule firmly set by your dad when you told him about Newt’s coming over this afternoon, though you knew nothing that your dad was implying was going to happen between you and Newt.
“I still don’t get how you don’t understand chemistry,” Newt said, dropping his bag by your bed and taking a seat on it.
You scoffed, grabbing your textbook and homework supplies, sitting cross legged near the head of your bed. “Says the guy who was literally named after Isaac Newton.”
“One, remind me to punch Gally when I see him tomorrow for telling you that,” Newt rolled his eyes, “and two, Isaac Newton was a mathematician, not a chemist. You’re thinking of Marie Curie.”
“Oh, like that makes such a big difference,” you dismissed him, grabbing your pencils. “You’re still named after a freaking genius.”
Newt laughed, shaking his head before mirroring your position on the bed and diving into the material.
Half an hour passed by as Newt explained the homework and everything that related to it, but it seemed as though your brain simply refused to process it. You’d only gotten three questions done, and you were twice as frustrated as you were when you first started.
“How do skeletal formulas even work? I don’t get it.” You groaned, pressing the heels of your palms into your eyes. “Just write out the damn formula, give me a periodic table, and let me figure it out from there.”
Newt couldn’t stifle his laughter. “It doesn’t quite work like that, Y/n,” he said, writing something out on his piece of paper and showing it to you. “Writing out a skeletal formula is just taking an outstretched version of a molecule and breaking it down into its functional groups and carbon.”
He turned the paper back to him, writing something out, and underlining ‘2-butanol’ before getting back to work, explaining and showing it to you as he went along. “So, you see how I wrote out all the atoms connected to one another with these lines? C is carbon, H is hydrogen, and O is oxygen. The lines that connect the carbon together is the carbon skeleton, and OH — the oxygen and hydrogen — are the functional group, so they can stay, and so can the carbon.”
Newt erased some things on the paper before the lead hit the paper, drawing out something new. “Take out all of the letters except for the OH, connect all the lines, and viola,” he showed you the paper with a smile. “A skeletal formula.”
“Oh,” you nodded, “I still don’t get it.”
Newt sighed, dropping his pencil onto his paper. “Honestly, I’m starting to think you’re a lost bloody cause.”
“Maybe I am.” You shrugged, glancing around your room before an idea came to your mind. “How about we take a break, do something else, and come back to this with fresh minds.”
“Like what?”
You smiled, almost mischievously, nodding your head to the window across the room. “Wanna go look at the stars?”
Within minutes, you and Newt had pulled a blanket onto the roof of the garage, laying it out across the shingles in order to be comfortable. Newt had grabbed his jacket from where he put it on the back of your chair, and you brought out your comfiest sweater from your closet.
Newt was already laying down comfortably by the time you’d gotten onto the roof again, his hands tucked under his head. You laid down in the spot to his right, eyes trailing up to the sky, mesmerized by the view. The quiet of a town already gone to sleep settled over the two of you, washing away the stress of high school chemistry and replacing it with the tranquility of a quiet town and a beautiful sky.
“It’s so beautiful,”
“Yeah, it is,” Newt’s voice nearly caught you off guard, as though you’d forgotten he was even there.
When you turned to look at him, his eyes were already on you.
Newt sucked in a breath, turning his gaze back to the stars. “I used to do stuff like this all the time when I was younger.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen stars like this… well, ever.” You admitted. “Living in a big city, all that light pollution… The sky didn’t even get that dark at night. It just got sort of… reddish. It wasn’t even like it was really dark outside sometimes.”
“Really?” Newt frowned. “I can’t even imagine something like that. When I was young, I had this obsession with the stars and constellations and stuff. Every chance I got, I’d ask my mum to buy me books about them. I even learned how to point out the bloody constellations from my bedroom window.”
And, for the next little while, that’s what Newt did. For the better part of an hour, though it didn’t feel anything close to that long, Newt pointed up at the stars, rattling off star names, the names of the constellations that connected them, and some of the stories that people connected to them long ago. You watched him happily, soaking up everything he told you. You glanced at him more than you did the sky, though, as the look on his face was what had you truly enamored. The passion and joy gleaming in his eyes was worth the cold chilling you to the bone.
The chill of the autumn air mixed well with the cadence in Newt’s voice, soothing you until, before you knew it, you were teetering in and out of sleep, balancing very carefully on that dangerous tightrope.
When you finally found the strength to open your eyes, Newt had fallen silent, eyes locking with yours as a playful smile stretched onto his lips.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You fell asleep,” he laughed.
“I did?”
“Yeah, about twenty minutes ago, I think,” he shrugged, sitting up. “We might wanna go inside now, though. I’ve gotta go soon, and we still have work to do.”
You groaned, dreading going back to the discarded chemistry textbooks on your bed, watching Newt push himself to his feet and extending two hands to help you stand. You accepted the help and quickly got to your feet, ignoring how warm his hands were in your ice-like ones.
Still, you folded up the blanket and trudged inside after Newt, returning to your homework and doing your best to complete it within the half hour window you were left with until Newt had to go back home. Most of that time, however, had been spent joking around, mostly about how you were most definitely going to fail the class, until you decided to copy Newt’s homework, which is mainly what you’d been doing for most of the semester, anyway.
You walked Newt to the door at ten minutes to ten o’clock. Most of the lights in the house were off, and your main guiding light was the TV as your father lay on the couch, passed out with some history docuseries playing absently in front of him.
You opened the door for Newt, leaning against the frame with one hand on the doorknob after he passed through it and stepped onto the front porch. Just as he began to leave, you said, “Thanks, by the way,”
Newt turned, a playful smile on his face. “For what? Letting you copy my homework for the hundredth time?”
“No,” you scoffed a laugh, “for teaching me something, at least. I might not understand the shrouding mystery behind a skeletal formula, but I do know about the Greek mythology of Orion’s belt, and that’s gotta count for something.”
Newt shrugged, his smile growing softer with each second. “No biggie. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah. See you tomorrow.” You nodded, watching him descend your few stairs and head to his car, pulling away from the curb and heading home.
Long after his headlights were gone from your sight, you headed inside with a sigh, resting your forehead against the wood of the door as you closed it. And even though the day ahead of you was just going to be another boring, monotonous day, you couldn’t help but be excited for it to begin.
series masterlist: @heliads @ghostofscarley @badbatch-simp24 @virginia-peters @third-broparcelicito @lamolaine (open!)
#remember the nights#newt x reader#newt tmr x reader#newt x you#newt x y/n#newt series#newt tmr series#newt fluff#the maze runner fanfiction#the maze runner x reader#au fic#high school au
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BIRTH BY SLEEP, BEYOND THE DOOR
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, possibly even far more so than Kingdom Hearts III, is a game I dearly love and vehemently hate at the same time. Yes, its story is overall a poorly written, shamelessly unimaginative Star Wars Episode III ripoff, and the elements that got introduced into KH lore in this game are what just ate away at the series narrative and its universe for the next decade until there was nary a thing resembling what KH had began as remaining. I hate it.
What I still love it for is how dang good and effective the stupid Star Wars prequel story ended up being in execution as a prequel to the pre-existing KH Trinity, far more than it had any right to be, and we really have Daisuke Watanabe as largely to thank for this being so. The execution is so solid that it always gets me wishing to just leave the BBS-introduced characters and details where they fell by the end of the main story and let the prequel just be a nice, tidy prequel. And even among the game makers, I think this was the desire of some.
Big example of what I mean: back in 2007, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix Edition came out and truly, properly introduced the armored characters seen in KHII's secret ending as characters in the series lore. In fact, it added two more so there were now five characters we knew to have existed in what ended up revealed as the time period before the events of the KH Trinity - Terra, Aqua, Ventus, Vanitas, and Master Xehanort. Those are the key players in this footage.
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Ultimately, they all needed to meet their fates. And y'know that one tune that plays in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy whenever the main villain (Ras Al Ghul, Joker, and Talia Al Ghul + League of Shadows people RIP Bane) faces their ultimate defeat? BBS opted to do something similar with the OST track titled "Beyond The Door."
When we see Terra's fate at the end of his story:
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When we see Ventus and Vantias' fates at the end of Ven's story:
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And when we see Aqua's fate in the Final Episode:
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So Terra, Ventus, Vanitas, and Aqua got sent off set to this same musical theme. Who does that leave us? Oh yeah, Xehanort! At the end of the game, as seen in that video, he's still inhabiting Terra's heart and so Terra's body is still his, but he's lost all memory of who he even was save for the name "Xehanort", in essence having to start his existence over as a new person. And that's where the game leaves him. Because he's the one character where we already knew what his fate would be, as he goes on to become the overarching villain of the KH Trinity and the true Big Bad in KH1, whose turn into a Heartless birthed his Nobody, Xemnas. And when his time comes?
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(When you clicked the vid, you probably weren't ready for Sora's sudden puberty, my sincerest apologies if you got startled by that.)
Xehanort - THIS Xehanort - had his fate sealed in the first game, and adding the demise of Xemnas to the equation gives us the last thread of the BBS prequel narrative being definitively wrapped as of KHII. And to me, no amount of effort to cheat fate on Nomura's Xehanort's end could ever be more compelling and satisfying than that.
Silly Sora! Kingdom Hearts doesn't do "real characters" anymore!
#Disney#Kingdom Hearts#Birth By Sleep#opinion#analysis#Terra#Ventus#Aqua#master aqua#Master Xehanort#Xehanort#Vanitas#what could have been#they wasted a perfectly good character#they wasted a perfectly good plot#anti nomura#anti square enix
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Hello! I shouldn't be awake cause it's 12:24 AM BUT very quick question: do you have any advice or questions you ask yourself that help with character building, storyline, or worldbuilding? Cause I'm making a TMNT iteration and the struggle bus is crashing into a brick wall repeatedly 😔
Oh gosh. OU-- OKAY HERE WE GO
CHARACTER BUILDING
If you're going for your own version of TMNT, you can basically do anything you want with the characters. They can have whatever personality you like! They can be whoever you want them to be, however you want them to be! When you've got a group of four main characters, though, you want to make sure they're distinct enough from one another where they don't overlap.
Something I usually do to figure this out is like, what's their worst fear, what would they feel a perfect life would be like, what are their short-term goals and long-term goals, etc. and move on to smaller stuff like quirks. How do they stand for a long period of time? Do they eat polite or messily?
Another thing about character building is thinking about where you want your character to be at the end of it. What is the Final Form of your character? Now smack them back down the mountain because they gotta climb that shit themselves. Think of it like this; if you want a character to have character development during the story, you've gotta think about how you want them to be by the end.
I'll use Rise Leo in the movie as an example here because it's obvious. By the end of the movie he's selfless; he's sacrificed himself to save his family and has made peace with dying alone because of it. At least the world is saved. At least his brothers are alive. We go back a little, and we have Leo realizing that his selfishness, his need to be right and making reckless decisions without relying on the people around him and trying to do everything on his own, has all put the people he loves in danger. We go back even further and find Leo overconfident and sloppy because he believes it's not a big deal. He's not taking things seriously, he's more interested in being the center spotlight, he wants to be the best.
The good thing about TMNT is that you can kind of pick and choose personality traits and character arcs from other canon iterations, or you can mesh them together. If you get stuck, look at the other "versions" of that character and decide which traits you want them to have, or which traits you don't.
STORY
Story isn't something I can exactly give a whole lot of help on, because it's your story. HOWEVER, I can explain the snowflake method, which I feel is a good way to figure out what you wanna do.
The snowflake method is a way of outlining a story. First you write a one-sentence synopsis of what your story is about. I'll use Mystic Forest for an example; "Four teenage mutant ninja turtles live in the forest and fight to protect two worlds from the Shredder".
Then you make it into three sentences. "Four TMNT live in a forest and discover that their world is connected to another; the Yokai Realm. A man named Oroku Saki, moonlighting as the Shredder, wants to make a deal with an ancient Yokai to open the worlds to each other once more. The turtles learn how to master magical yokai weapons in order to defeat him."
Then you can take each of those sentences and expand upon them. Break everything down further, in threes. Explain more and more each time.
Basically, figure out your concept, you can go more easily from there.
WORLDBUILDING
Ah the bane of my existence and yet my most beloved. You can get caught up in worldbuilding SO easily. Make sure you're working on the stuff that really matters to the story. So, if your turtles are living in the city, maybe write a paragraph or two about what the city is like. Is it grungy and rainy with lots of shadows and the distant glow of lights, or is it bright and bustling with neon everywhere with a seedy underbelly?
Is the vibe of the story fantasy, sci-fi, a mix, something else?
If the turtles have powers, how do they work? What are their weaknesses? What are their strengths? What does it cost to use the powers? What stops them from using them all the time?
What are the locations your characters will go to during the story? What are those places like? Are they buildings or the outdoors?
There's a lot of worldbuilding resources out there, you can really go ham on stuff just looking up "worldbuilding questions" and get a ton of prompts to think about. When building up a specific location I like to think about the five senses; what's it look like, what's it smell like, what's it sound like, what's the taste in the air, what's the feeling of the buildings or the plants or the barren wasteland? etc.
Figuring out how the turtles came to be is usually something most people do, but it's not something that's a requirement. Also, some people do stuff in a different order; they'll worldbuild first, then figure out story, then figure out characters. I end up doing that a lot of the time. Sometimes it's story, then characters, then worldbuilding. Just depends on what you feel most comfortable with.
If you find yourself hitting a wall, maybe stop and ask yourself why you're smashing into a wall and not going around it. Maybe something isn't clicking right. Back up. Look at what's around it. Character not quite feeling like you wanted them to? Look over what role you've given them, check the other characters, see if they have the relationships you want them to have. Back up even further. Are they in the correct place in the story?
And uh, when in down, throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. :) thinking outside the box and being purposefully ridiculous can something help stretch that imagination muscle.
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😎 My nephew was born at 2:02 AM on April 12 ( so he is two days old) at 8 pounds, 2 ounces and 20. 5 inches. Both my sister and baby are doing great and are perfectly healthy!!!!!! It is important to state that my sister and her family live in a place that is 2 hours behind us so I woke up at 4 in the morning ish with the news that my Nephew was born ….. if I HAD to be woken up at 4 in the morning THAT is the reason I WANT to be woken up for . He has been brought home and their dogs have just FALLEN IN LOVE with him ( they have two dogs and a cat) .
Auto correct continues to be the BANE of my existence and continues to target ME SPECIFICALLY ( I KNOW my ass can’t spell but you don’t have to come at me ALL THE TIME😭) and makes dumb little mistakes in the posts . I know everyone knows what I mean but it still BOTHERS me ok !!!! Some thoughts turned into Soo thoughts. MCU was changed to MUC .
Of course I am giving you love for your fic , you deserve it and I am super excited for part two :)
It’s …… funny how this woman is doing and taking part of behaviors that do and act the EXACT same way as man ( being kinda of a jerk or kinda a asshole , for example CEO R! is doing things - sleeping with whatever moves and being that asshole or jerk - and acting EXACTLY LIKE Tony Stark ) but NO ONE bats an eye when a man does it. And R is CLEARLY an intellectual and talented woman but because she is a woman people can’t see her talent and strengths ….. they only see her flaws. I was talking with my friend and we were like ….. Yelena 100 percent helped Nat with her getup and makeup ( Yelena is a fashion icon after all ) . We also decided that Yelena wasn’t at the event, she was at home chilling in her pjs with Kate watching movies and binge watching tv. Nat planned and did everything out on her own and didn’t tell ANYONE ( ESPECIALLY her parents or little sister) about what she did that night.
SB 100 percent carried Nat( while she was still sleeping and they were able to keep her from waking up ) out of the chair with their in law following SB out of the hospital to let Sarah rest and sleep. Nat woke up in the car so the group of three just went out to breakfast for food and coffee. Yes Sergeant Romanoff was very impressed and feral for SB the whole time ….. poor golden retriever never saw it coming ( they were sleeping for a LONG TIME afterwards and Nat hooked them up with liquid IV ) . That brings me to my next point , I had a discussion with my friend and we were talking about . What if Nat can’t get pregnant ? What if she had an injury while she was on duty/ deployment ( that injury / the mission she was on was what got her the promotion and the rank she has now ) . She didn’t need to know nor cared about if she could kids then , but with SB ……
R has a lot of dexterity in her hands ( in more ways than one , one of which Nat is VERY HAPPY WITH 😏😏😏) and I did a quick history google search and found out ( from wiki so take this with a grain of salt) that nail ciphers were invented in 1881 . So she probably used a pocket knife ( think young victor in the Wolverine Origins opening except R isn’t making her nails into claws, she is just cutting them) for a really long period of time and if she didn’t have a pocket knife then she would use her claws. But yeah if Nat panic and stop R from cutting her nails with her claws , R just looks at her saying “ what ? I lost my clippers and don’t have my pocket knife…… I am not making my nails into claws . I am NOT a psychopath.”
Ps I hope I can see my nephew in the earliest time too . Whenever I talk about him for future reference , I will just be calling him “ Buddy” . Obviously not his real name but the name I will call him here . 
(I have to apologize for responding to your most recent message first when you sent this one before, my drafts are a mess lol)
Very excited and happy for you and your family, friend! 🥰🥰
Autocorrect has never been your friend here to be honest 😂
Thank you for the love, I am really excited to write a Part 2 for you all (didn't think I would, but I can't deny you all after that warm reception).
Yep! I honestly didn't even make that connection, I kind of just wanted to write R as a dirtbag lol instead of the typical dumb golden retriever himbo. And as I work on part too, we will definitely get to see a little bit of Yelena. :) Although yeah, she probably had no idea what kind of sins her sister was getting into that night.
SB loves to take care of Nat :) And they always have to take advantage of doing it when she's asleep or something because she won't stand for it if she's awake.
Honestly, that's a really interesting theory. I was actually thinking the same thing (since a lot of readers ask how come Nat hasn't gotten pregnant by now...what if she actually can't because of a previous injury or medical condition?). And you're right, Nat probably didn't care about having kids at all, but then she met SB and now she might have changed her mind...
Heehee. 😂 R has very sharp actual claws already, no need to shape her nails into them too.
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Lord of Lies Devlog #1
September 9th, 2023
Hey hey, it’s Joy! (Flowersforjoy)
Note: This Devlog is split into sections, so feel free to take it all in or skip to what you want to know. If you read any Devlogs at all, you’re a blessing (also you’re hot).
Without further ado let’s talk about my #Once Upon A Time VN Jam Entry:
(Credit to mikalogo for this gorgeous logo!)
What is “Lord of Lies”? A good question, but before we can talk about “Lord of Lies” we need to talk about:
Okay? What the hell is “Princess Poison”?
In short, ‘Princess Poison’ is ‘Lord of Lies’. In many ways they are the same story, but in many other ways they are two different things.
‘Princess Poison’ was actually my first full length novel I ever finished back in 2019 *gasp*- it is a 60k word, half dark fantasy/adventure, half lgbt romance novel. Written back when I was a young aspiring novelist.
‘Princess Poison’, was a story about Lawrence Bane, a 25 year old man born with a ‘witch power’ the power to track any living thing, given he has DNA to do so. He’s hired by the leader (who only goes by the code name: King) of a witch hunting group known as: “The Noble House Witch Hunters” hence, the code names for the members being: King, Queen, Prince, Princess… etc. Lawrence is hired by King to track his second in command “The Princess” and what they find when tracking her, changes Lawrence’s life forever. Sending him on a wild adventure full of danger.
The entire story is available here on AO3 (I was bold lol).
Note: I don’t actually like the original story nor do I think you should read it, unless you have way too much time on your hands and/or morbid curiosity. I posted it here mainly to prove that it does in fact exist. For me, this story only serves as a way to gauge my growth as a writer in the last 5 years.
The Problems with Princess Poison
What’s wrong with it? You may be asking.
Nothing especially egregious outside of just being the first full length piece I ever wrote. Most of it’s problems stem from the fact that it was an ambitious first attempt.
Princess Poison’s biggest problems were, (to name only the major ones):
Too many characters in the main cast
Villain was predictable and very cartoon-y
Too much dialogue and exposition
Poorly written fight scenes galore
No sense of time progression
Lackluster/nonexistent world building
A poorly explained power system
Complicated, jarring plot twists
Plot holes
Character arcs that amount to nothing
In short, it was a total mess. I had finished the story but, it was too much, and not enough. I was 19 when I wrote it originally (I’m 24 going on 25 for reference) it was a lot for a new author to write a story with so many moving parts.
I was proud of myself for finishing it, and finishing it in a 3 month period. But what I was left with was a mediocre end product.
Not to mention the actual writing for the story was lonely and torturous. I forced myself to get up at 5am and write, I forced myself through scenes I didn’t even like (but thought I needed). It was after I finished writing it that I had a bit of crisis in regards to if I wanted to write again at all because the experience was so miserable. And what I came back with wasn’t even worth the struggle. Worst of all, I was forced to face the reality that I may not like writing as much as I thought I did although I had known I wanted to be a writer since I was 8 years old.
In order for ‘Princess Poison’ to work it would have to be completely rewritten and twice the length.
RPG Maker, The Pandemic, and Mistakes
Okay, so after writing Princess Poison initially I took 3 months off before I decided to continue working on it. I still wasn’t sure if this was what I wanted to do. But I had convinced myself that writing is the only passion I ever had, and that this was just how it had to be.
How naive I was.
So I got to editing and enlisting beta readers. I actually have always enjoyed this process, it feels good to share your work with others (even if they are critiquing it. At least you know that you are making moves to improve your work.
And as we established this story definitely needed improvement.
The common feedback I kept getting were all the problems I listed before. My solution to these problems…I needed to rewrite it.
But I didn’t wanna rewrite Princess Poison, I didn’t want to write a whole other novel, because it wasn’t just a couple things that needed to be tuned, it had to be built from the ground up.
So…why not make it into something that wasn’t a novel?
Enter RPG Maker.
Why RPG Maker you may ask?
At this time in my like I’d been a humongous fan of Dan and Phil for many years. And one of my favorite videos on their conjoined gaming channel, one I would rewatch a lot, was this gem: 14 YEAR OLD PHIL’S GAME - Dan and Phil Play: The Mark Of Oxin!
Basically the video is the two guys: Dan and Phil playing a game Phil had made himself when he was 14 years old in RPG Maker 2000 (I think?)
Something that stuck with me about this video was how Dan was so impressed by Phil making a game so young and finishing it.
Phil’s game made me feel a little better about Princess Poison was it good? No. But, it existed, it was finished and best of all I’d done it all by myself, that alone was impressive.
Had Phil kept making games, he’d have gotten better. What mattered though, was that he had fun. He shared it with his school friends, then Dan as an adult, and then the world.
So again, why not make Princess Poison into a game?
I mean let’s go back to some of those bullet points.
Too many characters in the main cast
Perfect for RPG
Too much dialogue and exposition
If the dialogue was optional, it would add to the experience, not take away.
Poorly written fight scenes galore
Didn’t need to write any fight scenes, you could just play through it.
No sense of time progression
The time progression in game feels a lot more tangible.
Lackluster/nonexistent world building
The world I’d be forced to build, the environments, the people that lived there, the culture, etc…
A poorly explained power system
The power system could be the battle system!
There were still obviously plenty of story related problems that still needed to be fixed, but if I wasn’t being bogged down by descriptions of environments and the logistics of fight scenes, I’d have more time to focus on the characters and plot.
So I’d started learning RPG maker, somewhere in late 2019-and all throughout 2o20, the perfect time to learn it since a little thing went around, that you may have heard of…
COVID 19 and the pandemic! I had gotten my first apartment and had ample time to learn the program.
And boy did I! It became my hyper-fixation I put in easily 500 hours in the coarse of a couple months. I learned, and then it was finally time, nearly a year and half later to make-
Princess Poison: The Game or PP Game as I childishly called it…
At first when working on the game, I kept pretty much everything the same, whole scenes from the book put into game format. It was fun figuring out how to translate the world in my head, to a visual space. The environments especially. Then creating my characters in RPG Maker MV, developing their classes and fighting styles, etc…
I was having so much fun! More fun than I had writing since I was a middle schooler. I’d worked, and worked, rewriting a good portion of the story putting so so many hours into the game.
But I made a mistake, one many devs/game makers know to avoid.
Backup your builds.
I hadn’t, a file got corrupted, and just like that. All that work- POOF!
Gone.
All my hours, for nothing.
I was devastated. I was so angry, so tired. I mourned the loss of the game I loved so much.
I took another break, but- only for a month.
Because unlike novel writing, I did enjoy working in RPG maker, and though I’d lost basically a third of the total game. It wasn’t all lost.
I just had to work again, but this time smarter.
So I did. I somehow managed to push my grief aside, and work again.
I backed up every save, every time I made a huge addition.
I organized my maps better, I made the story more concise, I worked tirelessly until I was able to catch up where I was, and surpass it.
But another thing happened.
Not as tragic as before, but another thing all devs know.
Burnout.
I was exhausted, I got to the point where opening the build was enough to make me feel ill and I’d close my laptop. I couldn’t stand it.
Not to mention, had I not lost the initial build. I might have been done by now.
It was 2021, and I worked on it but very slowly. Almost not at all.
I wanted a change. I had to do something else.
While looking for assets for PP Game (yes we’re still calling it that), on Lemmasoft forums, I discovered some forum posts asking for visual novel writers. I’d applied, created discord, starting using itch, and fell into the world of VN dev.
I’d done some contract writing for other studios and solo devs, but nothing really ever came to fruition, frustrated I decided to join a jam, met a programmer, and started to make my own visual novels. A boy’s love story you may know as ‘Tattoos and Tulips’, something simple for Yaoi Jam 2021.
I failed initially with Tattoos and Tulips development and so put that aside, and turned my focus back to Princess Poison.
I worked slowly on Princess Poison for a couple more months, leading into 2022, before rebuilding a team for Tattoos and Tulips.
I’d finished writing TNT (a story with more words than Princess Poison somehow lol) in a 3rd of the time (I wrote TNT in 3 weeks). And the kicker… I adored writing TNT, and the final product (back when I only had the script). I had realized I did love writing stories in a novel format. It was possible!
So after I had finished writing TNT I continued running the team and when I had some free time I decided what Princess Poison needed was what I had with TNT- it needed a team.
So I started building one, a small one. Tattoos and Tulips had artists, composers, beta readers, etc… Princess Poison had only me. So I hired an artist, I got a co-writer, and I brought on a composer, and unsurprisingly I fell back in love with it. I was going to finish Princess Poison the game finally, and under my new studio! It was all going to work out.
But then one last thing I forgot to account for happened. I backed up my saves, I took needed breaks, and had others to share my enthusiasm and breathe fresh life into the project, but life happened.
My mental health took a horrible turn, (I’ve dealt with panic disorder since I was 6 years old and have been medicated since I was 17) I didn’t know it then, but I had stupidly avoided my medication for so long that I had started to go through withdrawals, very strong withdrawals. Leaving me anxious, depressed, and laying in bed most days for 3 months. In addition, my teammates had their own mental health issues, and personal life interferences and they had to abandon the project. I was all alone with Princess Poison again
I didn’t start to feel better until the start of 2023, I didn’t work on anything during that time other than my own health, and at that point I’d gotten a full time job.
It was starting to feel like, even if I wanted to work on my games, I didn’t have the time. This proved to not be true. I wrote all of Crabs and Cocktails in February. Then got really involved in the indie dev scene during Otome Jam 2023, releasing Tattoos and Tulips during in April.
I was finding my footing as a studio and dev for the first time.
I met other devs, played their games, and fell fully in love with the community. I was constantly inspired by those I spoke to and worked with.
My development with Tattoos and Tulips, Cassie, and Crabs and Cocktails just felt for the most part second nature to me. So the problem might have been that solo developing a game just wasn’t for me…or was it?
Once Upon A Time VN Jam
Then a little jam came to town sometime in 2023 and I knew immediately I had to join, mainly because it was ran by two extremely talented and wonderful friends of mine Chimeriquement and Len.
This jam’s premise brought up old feelings however, though Princess Poison was never a Fairy Tale or even a retelling, there were many allusions to Fairy Tales in Princess Poison, and a little seed got planted in my head. But I pushed it back, I’d tried so many times to make this project happen and it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t meant to be. So I wanted to participate but with my own new original fairy tale story.
But for some reason my brain would not leave Princess Poison. And I hated that.
That original fairy tale story got shelved, and I wondered if I was going to participate in OUAT at all…
But… I am the type of writer that goes where my heart leads me. I learned from TNT that if I wrote what my heart wanted, it would go well.
So I did a crazy thing. I decided, I won’t do something original for this jam.
I’ll give Princess Poison one last chance.
I work a lot. And my job is the perfect place to brainstorm and one afternoon I got a lot of stuff together.
It was as if all my years of experience writing, deving, living even- helped me develop a story that was much better than the original. Sharing a lot of it’s foundation, but with a whole new structure.
The ideas were firing on all cylinders, the characters were making sense, the plot was compelling, exciting! My playlist I made for the story made more sense now? What was going on?
The story changed, a lot. Some of the key things were the same, but so many things were different. Better.
The title even changed. Princess Poison was too juvenile, too edgy, too misleading- not what this project was.
I outlined the story, and though not perfect it was the best it had ever been.
The main thing that changed, and is directly responsible for the biggest changes in the story is the protagonists’: Lawrence’s power. Instead of tracking any living thing, he could tell verbal lies with 100% accuracy. It was the missing piece, after that everything just worked, and “Lord of Lies” was born.
Redemption Arc/Plans Going Forward
So why do you think its going to work this time? Put simply, I don’t. I am taking a leap of faith. I am solo developing this project, the only outside help is an artist I commissioned, and the support of my friends (and potential beta testers).
It’ll be the first project under Meant to Bee Studios that isn’t made by a team. And that’s terrifying for me.
I think I am a decent writer, I can cast voice actors, I can even market a game. But to have practically everything else be my responsibility. To be creating alone again…
Except I am not alone, I have so many dev friends, many of whom solo develop themselves: Snakkiez, Lacydigital, Chattercap… and so many more! They don’t feel alone, I can learn from them. I have what Joy of the past didn’t have.
Now that doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing.
I’ve joked on Twitter and among close friends that I feel like Lawrence- thrust into unfamiliar territory with a couple tools to guide me. I’m a young knight leaving their village to slay the dragon.
The jam is generous at 3 months, but this is a really big game. Even with all the stuff I have from last time, lots of it has to be rewritten or taken out completely so in some ways I am working from scratch.
The cast is still large, and I worry some of them may slip through the cracks.
I’ve never balanced and RPG before.
I have to make sure the story takes as much precedent, if not more- than the mechanics and gameplay.
It’s nerve wracking and I honestly question myself every day if this is the right thing to do but, something in me is just saying it is.
That this time will be different and that, if I just apply all I’ve learned from this journey I can finally put a cap on this project for good.
I can beat this boss.
I’ve succeeded with every other project I have worked on, but Princess Poison was the one that got away.
It has the most potential now than it ever has. I’ve spent so much time with these characters, so much time in RPG maker, so much time time managing, running teams, making/playing games, talking to people, living life.
If I felt like Princess Poison/Lord of Lies was beyond hope I’d have dropped it in favor of something else but I can’t. I have to see it through, I have to finish it for my own sanity.
((I do want to note that it’s fine to give up on projects- some you just outgrow and that’s fine.))
But this story has grown with me: this most recent outlining process came together in a way it never had and I loved it again. For the first time, in a long time I believed in this project! And the theme, which I cannot say for sake of major spoilers, is the biggest reason this project must see the light of day. This game has the potential to be my best story to date. And that’s saying a lot since all my stories are super near and dear to my heart. But Lord of Lies can outshine them all, only time will tell.
So here we are….
For the past month or so I have been working on this project, I have character concept sketches, in game maps, a full outline. Now I just need the strength, time, and willpower to see it through to the end. So I decided, let’s make a devlog, let’s document and make others aware of this project, let’s hold myself accountable. In addition, I’ll be reaching out to friends, streaming in discord servers my work process, and having fun with this project.
Because, in addition to some of the mistakes I had made, the biggest one dev’s make- is not having fun with what they are doing, myself included.
It’s good to get things done, there is a culture that is romanticized of ‘the grind’, and yes working hard is great! But it’s not sustainable, it’s not conducive to a project filled with passion. At least for me.
I cannot create my best when I don’t love my project. So I am going to love Lord of Lies in a way I never loved Princess Poison.
I’m going to have a memorable 3 months with this project and right my wrongs.
I hope you’ll follow my journey, and soon playthrough Lawrence’s journey on December 31st 2023 the official release day for Lord of Lies!~
Next Week’s Devlog Sneak Peak
For next week’s Devlog; we will be taking a closer look at what Lord of Lies is, now that I’ve talked about my journey with it’s predecessor: Princess Poison is.
Next week I’ll be talking about the cast, world, mechanics, etc… in a non spoilery fashion. Giving you a glimpse into what to expect from this LGBT Romance/Dark Fantasy/Grim Fairytale/Adventure Visual Novel/RPG.
If you like the sound of that please check back in every Saturday from now until December 30th for all devlogs during development.
Credit to the wonderful: Gisselle! My sprite and CG artist! You’ll be seeing more of this cast and her work next week!
Final Note:
Unrelated but still important! Crabs & Cocktails my yaoi/bl kinetic visual novel just came out! It’s full of sex jokes, beach puns, and a silly/flirty romance between a lifeguard and a bartender! Please go check it out if you’re interested!
Until next Saturday!~
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HARPER’S 2022 FIC WRAP-UP
WELL GANG, WHAT A YEAR IT HAS BEEN!
first off, i know i’ve fallen off A Lot on tumblr in the last year, so my deepest and most sincere apologies for that. 2022 was a chaotic, frustrating, and overall deeply transformative year (for both better and worse) for me, and with all the changes/struggles in my professional and personal life it’s been difficult to maintain a decent posting schedule along with like. continuing to talk to people and function as a human being lmfao.
alas, another year has come to an end, and though i considered not doing my annual wrap-up, it’s become something of a tradition for me at this point, so fuck it, we ball.
without further ado, let’s talk fanfic:
projects i updated/completed in 2022:
oceans between us (shiita; 38,737 words; complete)
it’s a testament to how heinously long and strange this year was that when i sat down to draft up this wrap-up i genuinely fucking forgot i finished this fic in 2022. wild!
like a lot of fics i write (or want to write, and then do not) this fic was born from an attachment to a particular image or idea that inspired inspiration and then i had to pull a whole plot out of my ass to justify its existence. this was very much the case with the first chapter of ‘oceans between us’ aka atonement au, where the spirit of doomed historical romances and period-typical repression and sexual tension possessed me like a ghost and caused me to cough up the first chapter of that fic in like two days. i also wanted to write something that was very different than the typical character interactions and tone that existed in my previous works, and even looking back on it now i still think it’s a really unique and interesting addition to the works i’ve published thus far.
like i’ve said before, originally this was going to be a oneshot that ended where the first chapter does, i.e. with shisui going to jail and the relationship between him and itachi purposefully left without resolution. but that idea reeeeally much did not go over well when i discussed it with other people (aka my wife), which left me with the very real problem of how to conclude this goddamn fic. and that’s where itachi came in.
hilariously, i feel like this fic ushered in an unofficial (and accidental) era of itachi pov takeover where nearly everythng i wrote last year (and definitely everything i published in 2022) was in itachi’s pov exclusively. that said, after the events at the end of the last chapter, it felt necessary to have itachi tell the final chapter because i knew i needed to have a good explanation for his lack of action at the conclusion of chapter one and i also needed to get people back on his side for the end of the fic to land successfully.
in terms of structure, the switching of tenses and time periods was both incredibly fun and incredibly annoying in terms of editing and consistently, but i do feel like it added an immediacy and level of fear to the fic that enhanced the reading. if you’ve read the original book, you know that the characters itachi and shisui are (loosely) based on (cecilia and robbie) both die and never have their happy ending in real life, only in fiction. so i wanted the reader to feel real concern that these two crazy kids might not make it after all.
overall, i ended up being really, really happy with how this fic turned out, and some of my favorite scenes i’ve ever written (namely, the reunion scene between shisui and itachi in the cafe) are in this story. more than anything, it was just nice to start the year by finishing something.
lazarus taxon (shiita; 38,256 words; in progress)
quite frankly, this fic was the bane of my existence in 2022 for a variety of reasons.
first off, this chapter was an absolute Nightmare to write. as many of you may remember, initially i had planned jurassic world au as a three-part fic, whereas now it is... not quite that anymore. having written and published the first two chapters within a pretty short timespan, when i sat down to seriously work on (what i thought was) the final chapter, it rapidly became clear that there was no way to successfully wrap this shit up in one more installment. and as i was writing, it was pretty obvious that i was rushing from plot point to plot point trying to get the fic finished rather than taking the time to make it a story i was proud of and would want to re-read. once i realized that, it became a guessing game of what i was missing, and once i thought about it, the answer was obvious: conflict.
(we will have this discussion again next year when i tell the tale of how, in january 2023, i ended up scrapping almost the entire (actual) last chapter of this fic because i had to learn this lesson all over again.)
narratively speaking, blue’s injury served a few important purposes. first off, it’s a chance to see shisui--who’s been something of a handsome and charming enigma--soften up and appear a lot less composed and in control than he’s previously been. that vulnerability was necessary if he and itachi were going to push their relationship to another level, and also necessary to motivate itachi to take a real, genuine stand against fugaku and all his fugaku-ery. (it was also, admittedly, a chance for me to continue to play in the sandbox i’ve created where i get to use a lot of my real world knowledge and skills--namely, animal behavior and veterinary medicine, the two things i do for a living.)
once i unlocked that piece of the puzzle, everything started to fall into place, and then i knew that i would need an entire chapter to devote to itachi and shisui as a couple--what their relationship would look like, how dating would change them, and if, given the differences between them, it was possible to even sustain a relationship in the first place. which is why i ended on the confession scene, so everything that came after would be something of a blank slate and the finale could just be the--pun intended--evolution of their bond.
all that said, by the time i was finished with this chapter i had spent so much time, effort, and energy trying to wrangle it into something readable i was kind of drained by it, and that fact along with the knowledge that it’s never been my most popular fic (and that the reception to this update was a little quiet) left me burnt out by fanfic for a bit. it also didn’t help that, as i’ve previously discussed, this was around the time my entire life was uprooted by losing my job so there were just. a lot of factors working against me that really zapped my inspiration. if only another project could have come along and truly inspired me...
pack up (don’t stray) (shiita; 63,923 words; completed)
hilariously, i had way more Profound and Meaningful shit to say about this fic, but tumblr ate a chunk of my post when i was trying to save it and i’m too annoyed at this stupid website to try and recreate all of my previous comments in depth.
what i will say is that, if there’s any fic that stands a chance of surpassing star trek au as the fic i’m most known for, i’m really, really happy it’s this one. i love this fic from beginning to end, i think it’s one of the strongest pieces i’ve published, and i’m honored that other people have become as invested in the sad, weird little world as i am. honestly, it’s been so touching to see how many people have connected with this story and how it’s gone from a piece i mentioned in my 2021 wrap-up as really loving but being kind of sad about the lack of traction to a fic that developed a really dedicated reader-base who provided some of the best comments and feedback i’ve ever gotten. and since the two updates were so different from one another (and the final chapter is so, so long) it only feels appropriate to give them each their own sections.
chapter two:
to be blunt, there’s a really good chance that the second chapter of band au is my favorite thing i’ve ever written, full stop. part of the reason i think i have such fondness for this chapter (besides the fact that that i accomplished all my goals for this section of the story with this chapter and i feel like the writing itself is pretty good) is the fact that i wrote almost all of it in the span of about six or eight hours like a madman. in doing so, it was really easy to stay focused, maintain a tight grip on the pacing and narrative, and let everything flow from there.
like i said in my 2021 wrap-up, part of the appeal of this story was to push itachi and shisui to the brink of likability and test how many crappy things they could do to one another while people still had empathy for them (the answer turned out to be: a lot!) i think part of why so many people have reached out to tell me that this fic affected them so much is because, in some ways, all the pain and misery is just so mundane. there’s no spaceships or magic ninjas or genetically-modified dinosaurs; it’s just two people breaking each other’s hearts, over and over again, the same terrible shit that happens every day and there’s something really relatable about that. (for more on this point, see my answer to this ask.)
(speaking of relatability--as someone who has struggled with substance abuse for the entirely of their adult life and is always working on their sobriety, the prospect of dipping into that well was incredibly daunting, and i’m happy that it felt authentic to people who were reading.)
i don’t want to gush over my own writing because that seems tacky, but man oh man. there’s just so many things about this chapter i love and i’m just so happy other people felt the same way. anyway, time for the finale!
chapter three:
in some ways, the final chapter of band au was one of the pieces i was most nervous to write. after spending two chapters taking a wrecking ball to the shiita relationship in this fic, the prospect of piecing it back together in a fashion that felt genuine and respectful of the trauma they both experienced seemed kind of impossible.
like most of my projects, i knew from the beginning what the end of this fic was going to be. i actually knew the ending to band au better than most of my other stories, because before i even finished chapter one i knew the last chapter would end with the airport scene and i knew the specific lines of dialogue that would conclude the fic itself. the problem was how to justify even the possibility of shisui and itachi considering getting back together after everything they did to one another in the last chapter.
the first step seemed to be presenting how much they’d grown (itachi is sober, shisui got married--and divorced!-- and had a kid, both of their careers had progressed in different directions, etc.) to show that perhaps they were evolving to a point where they could learn to be in each other’s lives again. i really enjoyed re-imagining this characters as, in theory, older and wiser and adding in newer characters and original details to flesh out the lives they had created when they were apart from one another. honestly, my heart is so soft for both millie and heather, and i’m genuinely so happy that my ocs--always a dicey prospect in fic--got such a warm reception. i also really loved getting to show the band as a functioning, familial unit and all the different relationships that existed amongst the four of them. and how can i not love mean little sasuke with his suburban chickens and burning hatred for shisui.
the second step, as it often seems to be for me, was making peace with the fact that this chapter was going to have to be approximately eight hundred thousand years long if i wanted to stick the landing. if i was going to trace itachi’s journey from suspicion and lingering mistrust, to warily allying himself with shisui, to realizing he actually enjoys being around shisui again, to realizing how much he still misses and loves shisui, to taking a risk and giving shisui a second chance despite literally every reason not to do so, i was going to have to take my time and earn that decision. even though writing this one chapter ate up the majority of my writing time this year, i’m really happy with the length of this chapter and the different locations and events it followed, because i feel like it gave the story a lived-in quality that was necessary given how over-the-top the second chapter was.
on the other end of making this reunion functional and believable, inevitably this chapter also had to be the shisui redemption tour. i’ve made it clear in the past that, as shitty as his behavior was post-break-up, i don’t think he’s entirely responsible for the nuclear end to he and itachi’s relationship. that said, i knew it was going to take a lot to get both itachi and the reader back on board with Shisui and Itachi: The Sequel, which is why we get to see so much more of him than we did in previous chapters: rather than itachi quickly summarizing events or the narrative presenting small bits of dialogue, we actually to spend a lot more time with shisui the flesh and blood person now that he’s not the idealized or villainized version that lives in itachi’s head. and it wasn’t until he was a fully realized person again that there was any hope of him and itachi making things work, which... let’s talk about that ending.
i knew from the very beginning that i didn’t want to end this fic with shisui and itachi officially getting back together. considering all the shit they’d gone through, it didn’t seem realistic to have them suddenly live happily ever after. this was always a messy story about messy people and i didn’t want to give it an easy ending. i always wanted to end this story on the idea of a new beginning, of a better future, rather than a tidy resolution to this relationship, because it seemed so much more authentic to their journey and, to me, more meaningful. and, though i’ve had people tell me they wish i’d written a better ending, it’s a decision i still stand by 1000000000000% as the right choice. that and i’m writing a sequel oneshot as we speak so it’s not even really the ending anyways
i really could talk forever about this au. of all the fics i have, published and unpublished, it really does stand out as one that’s special and so very close to my heart, and i’ve spent so much time thinking about these washed up losers that i think i could keep returning to this ‘verse again and again for as long as i continue to write fanfic.
so, that’s it! it’s kind of hilarious i had so much to say given that i fell far below my own expectations for 2022 in terms of writing, but what can you do.
in the spirit of being a little more productive (and certainly a lot more positive), let’s set some goals for 2023:
i’m finishing the last chapter of jurassic world au even if it kills me
I AM ALSO FINISHING THE NEXT STAR TREK AU CHAPTER EVEN IF IT KILLS ME
after, like, three years of hibernation i actually dusted off my pacrim au and yep, you guessed it--i want to finish that sucker, too
finally, since i’m hoping to take two (2) fics off my plate, i’d like to finally get serious about publishing the first chapter of the shiita enemies to lovers vampires and werewolves au i’ve had in the works, which i’m very excited to share with everyone
if you made it this far, thanks so much for reading! if you’d like to find me elsewhere, i’m a lot more active on twitter, so feel free to stop by and say hello.
see you soon!
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thanks to your post i discovered that nightmare disorder is a thing and i can now give my experiences a name (yay!), i thought i was the only one haunted by visions and demons.
yee, chronic nightmare disorder is a bitch, it can be co-morbid with ptsd but also a thing on its own or with other disorders, and it's the bane of my existence. the universe said "fuck your entire waking life", and chronic nightmare disorder said "and ye shall know no peace". I've had it my entire life - some of my earliest memories are nightmares, not my very earliest memory but I've been having them for as long as I remember and my family also remember me having them my whole life. I met a kid on the bus recently who told me he also doesn't sleep because his dreams always are horrible. it's a lot more common (and a lot more serious) than people think. it always pisses me off when shows want to make a character's nightmare sound serious so they call it a night terror, because nightmares are "just what kids get" and thus aren't serious (spoiler alert but they're serious for kids too, and night terrors are serious too), but nightmares and night terrors are different things - in a night terror you scream and flail and thrash about and stuff, but you wake up with no memory of doing so or of what you were thinking/dreaming at all, or very occasionally almost no memory of it (contrary to the misunderstandings of the writers of a particular show, that doesn't mean "some people always remember them clearly", because if you remember them consistently then you're having nightmares and just happen to also move in your sleep, what it means is anybody might occasionally have an individual night terror that they remember a teeny snippet of, the reason for this difference is that they happen in different sleep phases where memory is stored differently iirc), while nightmares are much less likely to result in as much movement while you're asleep, a little if you're prone to that otherwise, but nightmares are usually very vivid and you usually remember a lot more of them and clearly, in fact relatively often people struggle to "come back to reality" for a while (hence things like spending periods of time paranoid you're still asleep, or the time a family member of mine who also has it spent a while convinced their spouse had eaten our pet, because it happened in their nightmare). so when shows depict what is very clearly a nightmare, then call it a night terror to make it sound Grown Up and Serious, it bugs the hell out of me on every level, especially when they outright demean nightmares explicitly as "just scared kids" or whatever - it's wrong, it hurts kids struggling with this, it leads to adults with it not using the right language with doctors and/or shaming themselves and/or not even knowing it's A Thing, etc. so I am glad to have helped you find a name for the Visions and Demons, and I'm sorry to rant about the dumb people who don't have this issue and think it's silly childish shit and that we should just Grow Up and realise It's Just A Dream (gee whiz I wonder why the "vivid horrifying dreams, filled with agony, preying on your weaknesses" disorder makes "just a dream" not as comforting as it is to someone with "normal" dreams), so much so that they'll also misinform people on this and an equally serious disorder. then again, at least nightmares didn't become a meme like sleep paralysis, every time I'm lying awake frozen solid with my teeth crumbling painfully to bits in my mouth I'm like "damn sure is great that people know how serious and painful this condition is". sorry. I haven't taken my meds properly and I'm angry about everything. I'm as haunted by people not understanding that actually going through hell almost every time you fall asleep has Psychological Downsides, as I am by going through hell when I fall asleep, so us fucked up bitches gotta stick together and support each other, okay? your brain is a fucky bastard who is mean to you in ways you don't deserve, and anybody who acts like you're a pussy for being freaked out by the meat sack that knows all your weaknesses creating a torture universe for you can catch these hands. I'd fight the meat sack but that would hurt you so I can't.
#obviously nothing is totally black and white I can't diagnose you everyone's different yadda yadda#but most shows that depict what they call night terrors actually depict nightmares and it is ridiculous#and so many people are like wow I didn't know there was a name because I thought I was just being dumb#and that makes me really annoyed because it's easy to see why people feel so undermined regarding this
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CHAPTER ONE
| Series: The Glass Cage Epidemic | Pairing: Evan Peters OC x FOC | Warnings: Mention of death, Obscene language | Word count: 1,210 | Rated: Mature | Book mentioned: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke |
| A/N: Welcome to this medication-withdrawal-book-reading-binge-fueled concoction of long periods of insanity and sloppy writing speckled with some verbatim conversations I had with the love of my life, whom I lost to bad timing and mental illness. It was a voyage in visceral nostalgia for me and I hope it means something to you, too |
I met Atticus 10 months before he died.
It was a random Wednesday and I was having my eventide bear claw and coffee seated in my usual booth. The day began normal. Routine. Boring.
I was willingly losing myself in the labyrinth of words and the smell of my book, and it wasn’t something as mainstream as romance. I've come to be nauseated by the lot, especially in the last decade. It's just the same old personified stories genuflecting on a bloody altar of propaganda and worshiping an idol of toxicity and ingenuity, save for a few rarities.
Anyway, the reason I even considered looking away from my book was her voice.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't attractive in the least. On the contrary, it was so loud and grating that I couldn’t get through a single sentence without wanting to rip my ears out. And so I eavesdropped out of compulsion, wishing it’d be over soon.
10 seconds in and I wanted to say they were on a date, but it would sound mean. The conversation was painfully awkward. On one side, at least.
“So what do you do for fun?” said Pebble voice.
“I don’t.”
There was a palpably awkward silence.
“I mean what do you do to unwind?”
A sigh bordering on exasperation.
“Sleep.”
“No hobbies, then?”
“I like work.”
“What exactly do you do?”
“I can’t tell you that, it’s classified.”
More awkward silence.
I could hear the hesitation in his voice. “Uh, what do you do for fun?”
And then she went on about researching trends in fashion and diet and her ASMR mukbang, explained in unnecessarily gory detail about how she cleanses her gut before every video shoot. I believe the words she used were ‘douching’ and ‘scented’.
Yikes.
And I thought he was weird.
“I’m sorry, you only eat meat?” The man asked, the back of who’s head I could see if I peered over my book.
“Only if the meat has been fed grass exclusively.” Said the owner of the voice which was, and I don’t like to be dramatic, the literal bane of my existence.
“And that makes you . . .”
“The indirect vegan. That’s the name of my channel.”
I couldn’t hold it in. I giggled.
It was benign, you see. But the entire café just happened to be quiet at that very moment and I just happened to snort when I giggled. Quite loud, apparently.
Their eyes were on me in a flash.
I panicked and hid behind the book like a pussy.
Fuck.
The tension in the air wringed my gut into a dry heaping mess. She was going to throw hands, I could tell. And I avoided unwanted social interaction if I could help it.
“Aren’t you gonna say something?” Her voice screeched to him, instead. I let out the breath I was holding.
At the lack of a response, she scoffed with a “You’re an asshole,” huffed and walked away in her stilettos, while I still trembled behind my pathetic excuse for a cover.
What was I thinking?
I waited for what felt like an eternity before deciding to take a peek. Hopefully they were both gone and I would sneak out of here and never return.
What was I saying? Of course I would return, they had great bear claws here.
With a final huff, I closed the book in one motion. And there he was.
Since he had been seated with his back to me, I’d only been staring at the back of his head, but now there he was, standing at the other end of the booth with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed in a charcoal grey suit and peered into my soul. Not angry or annoyed like I’d expected. Just inquisitive.
I swallowed once, preparing an apology. I knew I didn’t really owe him one because she was being ridiculous, but his manner inferred one. Almost demanded it.
He had sharp features, and yet he did not. Sharp curves began at the corners of his face, but only seemed to blunt out when they reached the middle. It was symmetrical, yet it was not. And I needed to stop thinking and start talking.
“Giovanni Piranesi was a French artist who sculpted and etched. Is the book about him?”
I was thrown for a second. That was certainly not what I was expecting him to say. His voice was deep, yet again it wasn’t. Everything about him was dynamic. Confusing. Like the transition time inside a cocoon when the creature is both caterpillar and butterfly at the same, still growing, still figuring itself out. Schrödinger's cocoon.
“Uh, no. It’s fiction. And Giovanni Piranesi was Italian.”
Fuck.
It was good I had found my voice, but did I really have to show him up? In another shivery breath, I hoped he didn’t take any offence, but I thought I saw the sliver of a smile pass his lips before he unbuttoned his jacket and took a seat opposite to me, in a patch of filtered sunlight. His light brown hair glowed in the swarm of dust particles.
“So what is it about?” He asked, looking right at me again and resting one semi fisted hand on the table top. He seemed unbelievably comfortable. Suddenly, I was hyper aware of every little detail about myself. Was my lipstick smudged? Was my top slipping too low? Was I going to knock the cup of coffee over? Was something off about his hands? This was unprecedented, unwanted. Neither happened to be my strong point. I could riff for days in my head, but this was so out of context.
“W-Well I’ve only read half but I think it’s about loneliness.”
“How so?” His pointing finger tapped the table, very subtle like it was a habit. Was I being punished? Was this one of those ‘You were eavesdropping and that’s why you don’t know what you’re reading?’ public humiliation things?
“It’s about this man living in a surreal world with a companion who’s there sometimes and isn’t. He could be imaginary for all we know. But I think it’s about loneliness and how our mind perceives it.”
“That’s interesting.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands, and his face now entered the patch of sunlight.
His skin was ever so slightly dimpled, rebel tendrils in otherwise groomed hair falling across his forehead. And now I could see it. His hands were too big for his wrists. But not in a bad way.
Then came a moment of acute tension, and I uncoiled in response.
“I’m sorry I laughed, I didn’t mean to-“
“Yes, you did. And she had it coming,” he said quickly, before checking his watch. “It is now 2:35 pm. Do you think you could finish reading that by 7 PM tonight?”
“I suppose, it’s only 100 pages.” I replied, frowning. What did that have to do with anything?
“Great, then I will see you here at 7.”
He didn’t ask. He said it, like it was natural law. Like I was a vendor in his royal court. And then he stood up and was buttoning his jacket again before I could process it. And then he was gone without another word.
What had just happened?
#evan peters#evan peters smut#evan peters fluff#theglasscageepidemic#series#romantic#female reader#original character#fluff#masterlist#mental problems#possibly triggering#sad ending#tragic#Spotify#hot#books and quotes#literary#piranesi#rilke#yoko ogawa#memory police#depression#kai anderson#ahs fandom#reader fanfiction#poignantly#intimate#smut#lovers
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The entire first half of Primordium is Chakas and his two new friends (a young woman named Vinnevra and an old man named Gamelpar) walking around on a Halo.
This is less than it sounds like in Halo town, the Forerunner trilogy books are noticeably a lot shorter than is average for Halo. The publisher increased the font size to try to make it look otherwise. But still, that’s a lot.
I’ll take walking while talking about crazy Forerunner trilogy lore over walking while Troy Denning tells you how many kilometers and which guns, but “characters walking someplace for extended periods” is apparently just the bane of my Halo existence.
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8, 14, 15, 18!!
8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?
I actually already answered this one!! It's over here ^.^
14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?
Whenever the vibe strikes me. Honestly, it's completely and utterly at random - sometimes I'll name something when I'm like two sentences into it, sometimes it's not until I'm filling out the lil boxes on ao3 that I'm like 'oh shit it needs a real title better think of something'
15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?
Summaries. Absolutely summaries I hate them so much - how do people write good summaries?? I always end up sounding like a bad YA tagline like "Character A has done this thing! Character B arrives to see what's going on. What will Character C do when they find out?" like oh my god somebody stop me. Tags are bad enough and I am always afraid that somehow I've done them wrong (something that is both normal to fear and possible to achieve) but summaries are the bane of my existence and they want me to die
18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.
Oh yes absolutely! There's definitely way more of these in my unpublished multichapters (the Villainous Violet AU had so many ways I almost took it before I settled on how I actually want it to go. And don't even get me started on the unpublished and unwritten Post Series VFD one I periodically think about - pretty sure I wrote a whole book post about that one a while back) (I found the post here it is. I need y'all to know I've added more to the concept in my head but I think that post is long enough to get the point across) but just focusing on the fics I've actually posted, there's less - but mainly because I've only posted one shots. The biggest one I can think of (that I've actually posted) is from one of my wwdits october prompts from last year - the one that became Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here!
The prompt was 'Status Update' and while the final version took that to be 'an update on where all of the characters currently are in this newly post-season three world', my original idea was ENTIRELY fuckin different. The plan was that, as a new familiar, Guillermo had a twitter account and was out-of-context tweeting a bunch of random shit that happened to him, and now, ten years later, the vampires found the account and he had to try and talk his way out of the rather unflattering picture he'd painted of them. I even made a bunch of fake tweets and everything for it, but in the end it just wasn't working for me (probably to do with what I was saying yesterday about being incapable of writing anything that isn't sad) and so I scrapped it and wrote the actual fic. Which I am very happy with, so I guess it worked out! But I do now just have a bunch of fake Guillermo tweets sitting in my files that have never seen the light of day lmao
(Here is the writing asks list)
#thanks for the ask!!!!#the lesbian herself#writing asks#gray-zelle#i'm so glad you sent this i rlly wanted to do more#Fun adjacent fact for number 14:#all of my fics have a second secret title that I use in my files#usually it's just like a two word summery but sometimes it's dumb or random and on occasion it's an actual title#(but never the one I end up using lmao)#also it took me so long to find that post for number 18#i was scrolling for ages#and i was right about it bein super long it's like 3500+ words lmao#i have written fics shorter than that somebody stop me
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vtm original character information - uriel
uriel / nonbinary (they/them) / malkavian
full details below under the cut
(i thought I should post their information on my main blog as well!)
introduction
Uriel, or Uri for short, was born May 27, 1988 in a town outside Portland, Oregon. It’s not known if they were born with the name Uriel or if they chose it for themself, or if the name was chosen pre- or post-Embrace.
As a precocious child that grew up into a precocious teen, they eventually found their niche doing shows at the local community theatre throughout their youth and young adulthood, then began focusing less on acting than the analysis of texts and plays as they grew older. Uriel pursued English for their BA, with a focus in Literature and Shakespeare, and was in the middle of their Masters Degree in Theatre (Dramaturgy) at a university in New York when they were turned.
Scoping out job opportunities and visiting some actor friends in Los Angeles during Spring Break 2012 led them to being out at night a bit too late, and it all went downhill from there. They were 24 years old when Embraced, with a true age of 30 at the start of the LABN campaign (circa 2018).
Though everyone says they'd have been a great Toreador, as luck would have it, they were turned by a Malkavian. (Uriel can't exactly remember how it happened-- all they know is that they woke up in a cheap motel room near Santa Monica with a blood bag and a messy, chaotic apology note.)
Their appearance is eccentric— pale skin, short and messy hair bleached bone-white, large round glasses, an expressive heart-shaped face, owlish brown eyes with long eyelashes. They have a petite frame, only standing at 5”0. Uriel’s style can be best summed up as “2010s twee/hipster”, a product of its time—lots of layered clothing in earthy, autumnal colors, mismatching socks, accompanied by various charms/trinkets. They have 3 piercings in each ear-- one cartilage, two in the lobe.
unlife
The thing about being a Malkavian is that it comes part and parcel with mental illness as well as a host of other problems. Aside from the pre-existing anxiety and depression that followed them into the afterlife, Uriel’s Bane is unique—their longing and hope to work as a dramaturgy scholar and actor as a human was transformed into a form of echolalia, where they cannot verbally express words that were not used in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
While they work around this most of the time by augmenting their speech using sign language or writing, it can cause them significant trouble. (As they gain a better handle on their Bane, over the course of years they are able to essentially combine, cut and paste words and phrases together to create more understandable expressions. With significant concentration and effort, they can eventually isolate syllables from the text and use them to create words that don’t exist within the Complete Works, but this is an extremely rare occurrence.)
Due to this Bane, they have earned the often derogatory nickname, “The Mad Bard”.
Their version of Malkavian delusion comes in the form of “flashes of inspiration”(truly prophecies and future sight)—frequently inspiring them to draw, paint or create music. They can become obsessed and fixated on these flashes of inspiration, and on creating works based on them for varying periods of time. Sometimes, the flashes will leave them nonverbal or nonresponsive for a span of minutes to hours while they process what they’ve seen. It can depend on the substance of the vision as well-- though more often than not their visions are frightening and disturbing.
plot
Not long after Uriel is turned in 2012, they're discovered half in a hunger frenzy and searching for more blood at a Santa Monica drug test clinic—a Malkavian who sees something of himself in them comes across them, subsequently vouching for them to Baron Therese, who they do odd jobs for over the space of a few years. Uriel and the Malkavian who vouched for them become friends, but to his chagrin, Uriel ends up spending a lot of time around Toreadors in the hopes they can hang on to what they enjoyed in life—the arts, theatre, music.
Through years of attempting to ingratiate themself and gain an artistic mentor, they are continuously looked down upon for being of a lower clan and moreover, a Malkavian. Needless to say, their pursuits don’t end well.
One of the only Toreadors who grows to care about them is Gabriel, the wayward Childe of a major Camarilla player in the area. Uriel ends up finding no reason to cavort with anyone related to the Ivory Tower after eventually being publicly humiliated/ excommunicated for their attempts to assimilate.
By around 2018, Uriel has given up any hope that they will be accepted by most Toreadors, and they think back on that several year period mostly with bitter cynicism. One of the only bright spots was meeting Gabriel, and at this point, he has not yet left his sire for greater pursuits. While Uriel wears the moniker “The Mad Bard” with pride now, their time attempting to ingratiate themself into Toreador society left them with a distrust of said clan and other higher clans, (Ventrue, etc) for fear that they will be treated poorly.
At this point, they have returned to Malkavian-populated Santa Monica in the hopes they can carve out their own way of life, and have spent the better part of a few years there. They gain a haven of their own—an abandoned theatre on the area outskirts where it leads towards Los Angeles proper--where they lead a mostly quiet life; one dedicated to honing their artistic talents, reading, learning new skills, etc. They belong officially to no coterie--preferring generally to keep to themself-- but find kinship with other Malkavians and Anarch-aligned coteries in the area.
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The Curious Case of Mrs. Quaffles
I stand by my headcanon that James and Lily's pet cat was named Mrs. Quaffles.
I want to say it was Petunia's gift to Lily for her Third Year - a ratty old neighborhood cat the Evans family frequently had to shoo from their lawn, always curiously drawn to Lily - even though she knew Lily was allergic to cats (we need to start Aunt Petunia's passive aggressive gift ideas somewhere). Since James has known the cat when he helped Lily haul it on the train that year and it bit him, it has always been the bane of his existence, despite his insistence to get along with her. For a long time Lily only had tentative names for her, nothing that ever stuck properly. But James dubbed her Mrs. Quaffles, joking with her color and how fast she streaked through the Common Room, she resembled one. The name sort of stuck after that.
When the Potters died on October 1981, Remus was responsible for clearing out all his friends' homes of their valuables (James and Lily's, as well as Peter's (Peter's mum was heartbroken and could not stand the thought of doing so) and Sirius'). It was a painful process that took him weeks to complete. During one of his clean up visits at the Potters' home, he was violently surprised to find Mrs. Quaffles had survived fine, streaking through the air as he moved some things in the master bedroom aside. Except for being undernourished, she was perfectly well. Remus would take her under his care for the coming years.
When he departed England to travel for a bit in the intervening years before Prisoner of Azkaban, Remus hauled with Mrs. Quaffles everywhere. He'd thought of putting her in his father's care (alone now his mum had passed away) or even in Mrs. Figg's care (maybe Harry might get to meet her by chance, as Mrs. Figg kept an eye out for him on Privet Drive). But he decided against it, in the end (his father often dealt with spirituous and other ghoulish things and thought it might be too stressful for the cat; and he refused to feed Mrs. Figg's cat obsession any further). Over the years, moving from place to place, job to job, Remus would ensure he always had enough to sustain Mrs. Quaffles. In return, Mrs. Quaffles would watch out for him, too, helping him to come back from dark periods in his life or bounce back from bouts of desperation and depression.
They would make a good run together until they returned to England on Harry's First Year back to the Wizarding World, when she would pass.
It would always be the curious case of Mrs. Quaffles, if she had been a crossed magical cat or simply an extraordinarily ordinary one.
No one would ever know.
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this guy i sit next to in my 6th period is the bane of my existence. he looks like mattybraps. and like. hes just!! so annoying!!! i had to work in a group project with him and two other ppl and he threw my PENCIL AND PAPER on the ground so i smacked tf outta him 😹😹 i hate him “hates a strong word” okay i meant it 🤨
i would rather get stapled in the finger than go through this torture. HE LITERALLY DOESNT EVEN KNOW MY NAME YET HE STARTS THE CONVERSATIONS EVERY DAY.
i’m perfectly fine with being silent, matter of fact; i love quiet! i’m so quiet! but noo he just has to talk while the teacher takes roll LIKE STFU I HAVE TO HEAR FOR MY NAME
anyways i hope he stubs his toe at 8 in the morning lol
#i hate it here#school sucks kill me#back 2 school#i wanna cry#i hate him#i hate everything#l m a o#help 😭#he makes me wanna pull a stanley uris#or barber#idk#lol.
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