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#what if I just wrote about the vaguely weird coming-out you do when you spend most of your time in queernormative spaces
laundrybiscuits · 1 year
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(wait for the season to come back to me tag)
It gets less strange, as time goes by. Eddie doesn’t make any kind of noise about him moving out at some point, and neither do Steve and Robin. Turns out they don't need to store any bodily fluids in the fridge, and in fact if Steve didn't know better, he wouldn't be able to tell that Eddie's drinking blood at all. Steve assumes he's getting animal blood from somewhere on a regular basis, but as far as either Steve or Robin can tell, he never takes it inside the apartment.
Anyway, it turns out Eddie can still technically eat human food, but about half of it tends to come back up afterwards. They’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Robin made a little chart with smiley-face and frowny-face stickers, which Eddie has been gleefully filling out. He’s drawn little fangs onto the stickers with a Sharpie.
That’s another thing: to Steve’s mild surprise, Eddie and Robin have been getting along like a house on fire.
“I really wish I’d known him in high school,” says Robin, slicing bell peppers for dinner.  “I think it would’ve made Hawkins a lot more bearable.”
Steve doesn’t really remember Eddie at all from school, which is probably a really good thing.
He can’t imagine the guy he was back then being this obsessed with Eddie. Well, no, that’s not true. He can imagine it, but he’d have been such a jackass about it. Probably would’ve fucked a few girls about it. Maybe would’ve even bullied Eddie about it.
“Did you come out to him yet?” Steve asks Robin.
Robin leans all the way out the kitchen door, practically horizontal. Steve grabs the back of her belt so she doesn’t overbalance. “Hey! Hey, Eddie!” she yells.
“What, Buckley!” he yells back.
“I’m gay!”
“Cool, me too!”
She lets Steve’s grip swing her back in, grinning. “Your turn, dingus.”
Steve’s going to. He is. The longer he waits, the more awkward it gets. He’s got nothing to lose. He—
Robin takes him by the shoulders, spins him around, and pushes him out into the living room.
“Uh,” he says. “I’m—bisexual.”
Eddie actually does, like, a full-body twitch; his eyebrows climb practically to his hairline for a second, and he sets down his book.
“I’m…very proud of you? Thank you for telling me?”
“Why are you being weirder about me than Robin,” says Steve, annoyed.
“Because you’re being weirder about it than Robin was! I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of practice with, uh, this. Also, Robin was a band geek who dressed like Annie Hall, and you were—popular.” He draws out popular like it’s got three key changes in it, waving his hands in the air.
“Yeah, okay,” Steve huffs. “Sorry I wasn’t, like, alternative enough to be a real queer.”
“No, c’mon, Steve, I didn’t mean it like that. I accept you! Buckley, get in here and accept Steve with me.”
“Ste-eve Harrington,” Robin sings out, wandering out of the kitchen to wrap her arms around Steve’s waist. “We accept you and your beautiful bisexual soul.”
“Thanks,” says Steve dryly.
Eddie points at him. “Feel accepted.”
“I feel accepted,” Steve says; daring, he holds out an arm, and Eddie hops up to let Steve pull him into the hug too.
“Good,” says Eddie into Steve’s shoulder. “You should be.”
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deanstead · 2 years
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Could Never Forget
Pairing: Kelly Severide x Reader
Requested: yes, by @enchantedblackrose
Summary: When Kelly doesn’t seem to remember Y/N’s birthday, she spends the day a little confused and worried.
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Word Count: 1,469
Tags/Warnings: Established Kelly x Reader; vague mentions of explosion/arson
A/N: Hi Ashley, I wasn’t 100% sure what to do with this lol so sorry if it's no good, but I hope you like it anyway! I wrote a similar drabble before but this was still fun to write!
KELLY SEVERIDE MASTERLIST
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“Alright, I have to go.” Kelly glanced at his watch before giving you a quick kiss. “I’ll try to be back early. Have a good day.”
You waited, but Kelly didn’t say anything else, practically flying out the door.
You glanced back at the date on your lit phone screen, almost like you needed confirmation that you hadn’t gotten your own birthday wrong.
Blowing air out from your lips gently, you finished the coffee in the cup in front of you.
“Happy Birthday, Y/N.” You muttered quietly under your breath before you grabbed your laptop and headed out of the house.
You were kind of glad you’d decided to spend the day out of the house, even more glad that your work was mobile. But even so, as you glanced at your phone from where you sat in the café you usually were in, you realized that today, not even writing seemed to be able to distract you from the fact that Kelly had not once mentioned your birthday.
It wasn’t like you and Kelly ever had a big thing going on for either of your birthdays. It was usually just a dinner, a small celebration with friends. You didn’t even want him to spend money on flowers or gifts, you were happy just to have him.
So you weren’t exactly upset. More confused and to be honest, maybe a little worried.
The thoughts swept through your head as you glanced at your phone which had no notifications. Was Kelly okay? Was the OFI case he was on right now overly worrying him? Was something happening at the firehouse that he hadn’t told you about?
You glanced back at the blank document on your laptop screen and closed it with a sigh.
Just as you were getting restless, your phone rang. “Hey girl, happy birthday!”
Sylvie’s bright voice hit you even from over the phone and you smiled. “Hey Sylv, thank you.”
“Everything okay at the firehouse recently?” You couldn’t help yourself.
You heard the confusion in Sylvie’s voice when she answered. “Yeah, why?”
“Nothing.” You answered, quickly changing the topic.
“Wait, you’re alone?” Sylvie asked.
You nodded even though she couldn’t see you. “Yeah, Kelly had some business to take care of today, so I thought I’d get some writing done.”
“Nuh-uh, I’m coming now.” Sylvie answered, hanging up.
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Kelly glanced at his watch.
It was bad enough that he had to make the decision to follow up on an OFI case on a day he wasn’t on shift, today had to be your birthday.
Kelly knew this case was urgent, and if they didn’t catch this bastard soon, another place was gonna be blown up. It was starting to piss him off because it felt like they were always one step behind him.
So he’d left the house in a hurry, only realizing that he hadn’t wished you a happy birthday before he’d left. It felt kind of weird to do it over the phone and technically he hadn't exactly forgotten. Everything for that evening was already ready, so he figured he'd make it up to you when he got home but…
This day was taking way too long.
He’d gone to interview one of the victims at Med and came back to OFI with a big fat nothing. So, partnering with one of the OFI investigators he normally worked with, they’d visited a few of the crime scenes and by some stroke of luck had found new evidence that they’d missed, which had pointed them right to the culprit.
At least we got him.
So he was now on the way to close the case but things had gone much later than he’d planned for. And he felt his heart give a small twist as he looked back at the reply you’d sent to him within just a minute after he’d told you he’d be late.
Ok. Be safe.
Kelly exhaled, just as they pulled up in front of the address they’d been heading for.
Kelly stuffed his phone back into his pocket, nodding to the investigator and climbing out of the car.
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Sylvie had taken all of ten minutes to accost you at the café, taking your laptop hostage to make you go with her to shop, eat, have more coffee. It had been a much needed distraction so you were glad she’d done this.
Kelly, on the other hand, had sent you a few messages, as he usually did on any other day, checking in with you to make sure you’d eaten, to ask where you were but still, nothing about your birthday.
So when dinner time came around and you got a message from Kelly saying he would be late, you’d already stopped anticipating anything from Kelly today. Maybe he’d just genuinely forgotten, maybe he was worried about something that kept his mind preoccupied, but whatever it was, you just wanted Kelly to come home safe and sound, and you just wanted the day to end.
By now, you were pretty sure Kelly was dealing with something serious enough to keep his mind occupied so you weren’t really upset. Disappointed, sure. But you were just looking forward to seeing him, like any other normal day.
A normal day.
You’d dozed off on the couch while waiting, your eyes opening again when you heard the keys at the door.
You glanced up to look at the clock. 9 at night wasn’t that bad.
You got up to greet him, pausing as you saw what he was holding. A cake box and a bouquet of flowers.
“Happy Birthday, babe.”
It took you another second to process it.
“What?”
Kelly frowned, spinning back around to glance at the clock to make sure he was indeed home before midnight before he looked back at you.
“Okay, I swear I didn’t forget, alright? I could never. ” Kelly had barely finished his sentence when the bell rang.
Kelly turned back to open the door, taking another bag from whoever was at the door before the door closed again.
“Will you at least take the flowers?” He half-pleaded with you and you let out a smile, taking the flowers from him before Kelly moved towards the table.
Kelly glanced up at you as he pulled out food from the bag that had just arrived. “I had a plan, but I had to change it because of you know… OFI. And I’m sorry about this. I wanted to take you out for a nice meal but…”
“Kelly.” You interrupted him.
Kelly glanced up at you, trying to read you to see how mad you really were. “This is perfect.”
You stepped up to him now, putting the flowers on a chair, before you looped your arms around him. Kelly leaned down, his palm resting against your jaw like a habit before he pressed his lips onto yours, deepening the kiss.
“I don’t need anything. Just you.” You whispered, as he pulled away.
Kelly looked you straight in the eyes. “You’re not mad?”
You shrugged. “Worried is a better word.”
Kelly frowned in confusion and you explained. “I thought something might have been bothering you. That’s why you were preoccupied and all, you know?”
Kelly sighed, leaning forward to envelope you into a hug. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to worry about me either.”
You smiled. “I’m always going to worry about you.”
Both you and Kelly stayed like this for a while more, until Kelly broke away, turning to take out the steaks he’d ordered so that the both of you could have a nice meal.
It was actually a perfect night, probably more perfect than Kelly could have imagined. This was all you really needed - a nice dinner with just Kelly, followed by a little cuddling on the couch, some cake that he’d brought back. And then to top it all off, he’d taken you for a night ride, the wind blowing your hair backwards as he sped through the empty Chicago streets before finding a quiet place by the river where the two of you could take a small stroll, breathe in the cool air, and just be by yourselves.
“Sorry I was late.” Kelly whispered, his arms encircling you from behind as the both of you stood looking out across the Chicago river.
You reached down for his hand. “Kelly, this was more than enough. It was perfect.” You paused. “Did you finish what you’d meant to?”
Kelly nodded, nuzzling your neck gently from where he was standing behind you. “Yeah, I did.”
“Good.” You whispered, turning to face him now.
“Happy Birthday, Y/N. I love you.” Kelly whispered.
You reached up to put your arms around his neck now. “I love you too, Kelly Severide.”
Kelly smiled, reaching down to give you another deep kiss.
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THANK YOU FOR READING!! PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THIS!!
If you want to support me, buy me a coffee!
Character taglists are open!
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skzwife-02 · 8 months
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☁️Cuddles and Kisses☁️
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[Lee Minho x Fem!Reader]
summary: reader is on her period, so Minho does the only sensible thing: give her kisses and cuddles (and orders her favorite food but that’s a surprise)
genre: fluff
warning: weird writing, idk i wrote this at 1am. tooth-aching sweet Minho, y/n speaking in another language(?), mentions of cursing god(s) lmao
note: okay so I know he doesn’t understand tagalog, but that diff breed filo skz stan in me kicks in and I have to make you speak tagalog😌💚 (it’s not really a warning but just an additional tag idk why it’s in warning lmao)
Masterlist
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“Babe? Can you get me a soda from the fridge, please.” Minho’s shouts are muffled by the thick wooden door of his office but Y/n understood it nonetheless.
She takes small steps, her abdomen aching. She opens the refrigerator door, softly humming a song that pops in her mind. She vaguely remembers a gas station, two annoyed younger siblings in the car, and a steaming engine.
She chuckles, her warm hands touch the cold soda and she shivers. She takes a mental note not to leave her blanket anywhere on days when 40 millimeters of blood is gushing out of her vagina because of her uterus shedding some stupid lining that was prepared for a dumb fetus.
Y/n grumbles when she nears his door, wiping her numbing hand on her shirt then reaching for the door handle when it bursts open and she crashes with an excited Minho.
“Baby- oof!” He squeals, left hand finding her waist while the other grabs the falling soda can that’s about to crash to the floor.
She thanks the gods who gave Minho good reflexes, but curses the one who made him have a habit of not paying attention when opening doors.
“Oh dear, are you okay, hun?” He stabilizes her, his right hand tucking a stray hair that fell to her face. He cups her cheek and she melts to her boyfriend’s touch, leaning in.
He’s soft and passionate with the kiss, despite her neediness. Y/n lets out a whimper, the feeling of a sword stabbing and jabbing right on her abdomen and through her lower back engulfs her senses.
These cramps are messing her up, and yet again she takes a mental note not to miss her monthly chamomile tea before the ‘red’ curse enters (more like violently exits) her body.
“Hah, just peachy.” She huffs out before kissing him again, now biting gently at his lower lip.
“Nngh.” A soft noise slips out of his lips before he can stop it and Y/n stops kissing him, instead staring at him with disbelief etched on her face.
She stifles a laugh, preventing a gush that threatens to stain her pants. “Min?”
He smiles, laughing. This is her first time hearing him being vocal from a kiss, after all that’s always been her job. “Oh come on. You were biting me!” He defends and the look he has is enough to send her to the ground cackling.
“You’re too cute.” She manages to choke out as he pulls her up to carry her, settling her down on the couch. “Mmh, are you spending time with me instead of doing work because of my period situation?”
He nods, rushing to his office, she hears him shuffling around. Probably looking for his phone she thinks, turning her attention to the tv and realizing she doesn’t know where the remote is. “Min.” She calls for him, not wanting to move from her spot on the couch. “Lee Minho, where did you put the tv remote?” She finally shouts, head lifting to go look at what he’s doing in the other room.
He suddenly pops up behind the couch giving her a mini heart attack.
“Oh yeah.” He chuckles apologetically, “I left it in my room, here.” Minho holds her hand in his, giving her the remote.
Y/n smiles, patting the space next to her. Her boyfriend mirrors her, his lips tugging upwards. He lets his bunny slippers fall off his feet as he snuggles beside her, his back on the couch, his chest pressed against her own.
“Good?” He asks, running a hand through her ruffled hair.
“Mmh, as long as you’re here.”
10 minutes later she sees the doorknob of her front door turn, panic digs its claws on her throat and lungs, until she sees Hyunjin by the door. “Uh… Minho hyung, here are the things you asked for.”
[honestly switch to second person pov, im struggling af]
He sheepishly grins, demeanor shy from intruding your cuddle time. “I hope you feel better, Y/n noona.”
After Minho thanks him, Hyunjin bows a few more times before exiting your apartment and locking it with his, seemingly, own set of keys.
“Did you give Hyunjin your keys? Is that why you’re always locked out of your own home?” You tease and he playfully pouts.
“Oh, come on. You know you love helping a damsel in distress.” He jokes, cupping your face and leaving butterfly kisses all over.
You shy away, shifting your attention to the plastic of food Hyunjin brought. “Let’s eat,” you say, eager to taste Hyunjin’s cooking after not having his dishes for a long time.
Your boyfriend nods, standing up to get the plastic, two plates, two pairs of silverware and mugs. “Want the imported tea or the, uh,” he pauses, reading the small writing on the tea bag but not finding the name of the actual tea.
“Chamomile babe, thank you.” You answer, pulling the blanket by your feet over you. “Lamig naman, kakaiyak.” You sigh, complaining about the cold and half expecting him to turn the temperature a bit higher.
“What’s that, baby girl?” He hums from the kitchen, “You know I don’t understand the language, sorry.” He apologizes genuinely, feeling a bit guilty you’re learning korean but he isn’t making an effort to learn your language.
“It’s alright, Min. I’m sorry I didn’t notice, I said I’m cold.” You reply in a nonchalant tone, you don’t care at all, it’s not like he’ll be going to the country, and besides you only learned korean because you were going to the country.
When he finishes fixing you a cup of tea, he brings it to the table in the living room. Setting up everything else for your comfort, and not letting you do anything.
“Alright let’s watch that movie you keep talking about!” He starts excitedly, caressing your cheek before turning to the food and tv.
You relax the rest of the day, receiving absolute princess treatment from Minho. At the end of the day you’ve been pampered with kisses and lulled to sleep with cuddles.
Minho truly is a treasure.
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Find all my works under #skzwife-02
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slocumjoe · 1 year
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⚠️Request rules⚠️
1; Be specific and unique
For example, the prompt "Sole dies". All characters would be sad, or angry. But the prompt, "Companions travel through a haunted forest and lose each other" has a lot of ways it can go. Vague prompts can be difficult for me to write, as there's often not much to write. Or if there is, it ends up feeling samey, or too short. There's only so much I can write about Sole dying.
Some prompts are answered in canon, and don't need to be answered. For example, Companions react to Sole speaking like the Silver Shroud. You can easily go on a wiki or find a compilation video on YouTube.
Also, I prefer to write about the companions, not Sole. So, requests about the Sole Survivor are likely to sit in the inbox for a while.
2; Be mindful of dark subject matter
Guys. You know miscarriage is a real thing, right? A horrible, traumatic thing that fucks up entire families? And same with rape, or abuse, or anything like that. Use your best judgement asking about heavier topics. These things aren't scenarios to generate angst. They're traumatic events. That real people go through.
I'll never forget following a react blog who was asked to write about miscarriage, only for them to apologize and refuse, as they had suffered multiple miscarriages themselves.
Rule 3; No fetishes or second-hand embarrassment prompts
So, I said be specific and weird...not with your own fetishs, please.
For non fetish stuff, I really do not care for toilet humor. Or anything meant to evoke second-hand embarrassment. This is another 'use best judgement'. I'm very easily grossed out by body fluids/excrement and there's no prompt that I'm willing to do with it.
Rule 4; I don't do Fallout 3 or New Vegas content
Masterlist
Newest first
Reacts V
Freaky Friday Episode
Sole vanishes, oh nooooo
Beach Episode
Companion at the zoo
The Oberland Alien
Sole gets their name tattooed
Sole finds a baby and wants it
Companions play Minecraft
Gage only; Come to the Galactic Zone if you want an asskicking
Companions and a magpie of a person
Sole with bad motor skills
Companions react to a synth of themselves
Companions as Roommates
Modern!Companions and Halloween
Sole just kisses them already
Sole sick but refusing to rest
Sole who cries when yelled at
Sole gets hurt saving their life
Touchy Sole
Overhearing Sole realize they love them
Sole breaks down crying in their arms
Companions work at a grocery store
Companions react to the Scorched Plague
Companions on Social Media
Headcanon posts V
Religion and stuff
Grab bag 4
Drinking habits
Coming out
Who they'd end up with
Losing their virginity
Modern au
Sexuality and ideal partners
Dreams and nightmares part 1
Companions' tells that they love someone
Companions' fursonas
What they'd eat in general
NSFW grab bag 3
Companions and stress
Companions spend time at a settlement
Gage fluffy-shippy-sad headcanons
Interior design
Companion Headcanon Grab‐bag
Gage Catchup Lightning Round
Favorite songs on the radio
NSFW Gage Headcanons
NSFW; Libido/sex drive
NSFW; Intensity in bed
Variety NSFW headcanons 2
Variety NSFW headcanons
Comfort food
How often they bathe
What they do/wear on days off
Danse headcanons
Laughing headcanons
X6-88 Headcanons
Physique headcanons
2 headcanons per companion
1 headcanon per companion
Meta stuff V
Synths as trans allegory for pride month
Polyamory and infidelity in games
Curie's quest is pretty dumb
A bunch of mini-essays on all the companions
Danse and autism
Oc appearance meme
Isadora ramblings and lore drops
Cait breakdown and critique
Minutemen Questline Rehaul
Florence, Isadora, and Gage
Wasteland creatures i want
Gage Name Meaning
The Gage Essay I wrote while baked on leftover lasagna
Thoughts on Piper, Strong, and Codsworth
Strong Character Bingo/Rant
My thoughts on Porter Gage before playing Nuka World
Peer-Reviewing "The Synthetic Truth"
Piper rant 2
I swear I am normal about Piper
Things I love about the companions
Biggest complaints about each companion's writing
Meme stuff V
Getting Hulk smashed by a baby (game clip)
How id compliment them
Sole gets a pet-claw
...hi (game clip)
Bad timing, dude (game clip)
Who smokes weed
Cat X6-88
Shaun gets a pet-claw
Cannibal perk
Companions as video games
War-shta-sure
Four frenchspeakers screamingn in a room
Danse's favorite shirt
Egg
muppets
dickless nickolas
mall cop
Memes 2
Memes 1
What the companions get canceled for
AITA For trying to blow up my crush's blimp?
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cafeaulaid · 4 months
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would pay money to hear that fourth wing rant tbh!! tried to get into them due to the hype and dropped it by chapter three but i can’t imagine they improved much from there
oh my god let me collect my thoughts.
first off, rebecca yarros is pro military and has a military husband (that’s how she started writing. while her husband was deployed she wrote books.) and posted a really vague post about palestine while her husband is VERY. PRO. ISRAEL. fuck them both.
second - the book could’ve been so goddamn cool. dragons, romance, high stakes! sounds like any normal persons cup of tea! but oh my god both books are written so poorly it’s genuinely insulting. not one single plot point is fleshed out - seriously, what is either book about??? QUICKLY! and there is so much character death it’s almost pointless to get attached to any of them. the twists were bland and book 1 and 2 could’ve been the same book. but since rebecca yarros is such a shitty writer, they had to be two. THIS IS GONNA BE A FIVE BOOK SERIES YALL. what the hell else is she gonna write about???? this could’ve been at least a trilogy and still made sense. but the amount of hype it got told the publishers they had something to sell.
third - the book is fucking SHEIN quality. Iron Flame has so many goddamn misprints it’s pathetic. AND THEYRE GETTING AWAY WITH IT bc ppl think misprints make the copy RARE. GOODBYE. Red Tower Books should be ASHAMED at the mishandling of the Iron Flame release.
fourth - alllllll of the characters are flat. how am I supposed to believe that Violet and Xaden have any chemistry whatsoever and love each other soooooo much when Violet is a whiny immature idiot???? she spends the whole entire second book being shocked that Xaden is the leader of a revolution and that he won’t tell her anything about it. then she turns around and SPILLS HER GUTS whenever she has a secret!!!!!! Violet’s mother literally dies and it’s only given one page. ITS HORRENDOUS. fourth wing and iron flame is such an amazing picture of what publishing SHOULDNT DO or BE.
fifth - rebecca yarros is an ex mormon. this is clear through her sloppy and awkward “smut” scenes, as well as her weird use of cuss words. it’s like she just starting learning to cuss. this book also has Violet wearing armor under her clothes all the time to protect her, and it sounds mighty similar to Mormon Garments.
sixth - this book is an ugly conglomeration of every single romantic fantasy book that’s ever come before it. if you’ve read any popular romantasy lately, you’ve likely read them all. the genre is tired now. and trust me, I love a steamy fantasy book, but I’m just not impressed with what’s popular these days.
so, FUCK REBECCA YARROS AND FUCK BOOKTOK FOR HYPING HER UP.
that’s my rant. if you’ve made it this far, I’m kissing you on the mouth.
I also am not taking criticism at this time, you may argue with the wall. ok kisses bye
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unicorncoalition · 8 months
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number 9 for the fanfic writer ask game
five people asked for number 9, "What’s your favorite line(s) or scene(s) that you have written?" so i'm picking five lines/scenes lmao @bitterleafs @solomonara @kennexara @justtoarguewithyou @inqorporeal 
1. bucky and steve spend their honeymoon in northern quebec during winter and see the milky way and the northern lights from don't threaten me with a good time.
As they emerge from the forest, the sky opens up. Bucky inhales so sharply his breath freezes in his lungs. The rich night sky touches every corner of the horizon, yawning infinite above them. Bucky can’t chance another breath, fearful of disturbing the aching silence. The sky is choked with them, more stars than Bucky has ever seen, dense clusters of light spilling across the heavens. “Oh,” breathes Steve, breath condensing in the cold air. “Wow. Never seen it like that before.” He gestures vaguely at the expanse. “The milky way.” Bucky thinks maybe he has. Real or photograph, books, the internet, he’s—it’s familiar. The staggered stars, the deep awe, the tight squeeze on his heart that isn’t just the clear, cold winter air filling him up; it’s a beloved sight. When he looks up from wherever he is, the sky offers release and comfort. Different angles, maybe, from different places, but when he doesn’t know anything else, he knows the sky. It’s better like this, Steve shoulder to shoulder with Bucky, mittened hand clutched in his. This is the best view he’s ever had in his life. Standing together in this muted landscaped, muffled soft by thick blankets of snow, Bucky is full to bursting. He’s warm, overcome, eyes prickling with tears. “Okay,” Bucky says shakily, sniffling. “It’s not the worst honeymoon destination you could have chosen.”
2. I've always loved dick and jason's argument from chapter 5 of hate that you know me so well. the whole fic was building to the angry kiss that comes after this.
"I'm giving you the chance to bow out gracefully, birdy," says Jason. "Before you make us both regret this." "I don't," says Dick. "I don't regret anything. I don't regret anything with you, Jay." Something terribly sharp and vulnerable flashes across Jason's face before his expression hardens. "I regret everything with you," Jason snarls. It's such a typical response that Dick wants to laugh. Jason always takes what Dick offers, weaponizes it, and throws it back at him like a grenade. It's so transparent that Dick is surprised he never clocked it before; Jason doesn't mean a word of what he says. "You know what I think?" says Dick. This time, when Jason advances on him, he holds his ground, parrying the jab Jason throws at him. Jason huffs and redirects his aggressive posturing, trying to use his weight to push through to the door, but Dick blocks him again, grabbing him by the front of his suit and pulling them nose-to-nose. "I think you're jealous."
3. slade using a decade-old phone and dick mocking him for it in see your sadness, share your pain.
"I need to borrow your phone," says Dick. His voice only wavers a little. The trucker doesn't look at him as he extracts an honest-to-god Motorola flip phone from the pocket of his jeans and hands it to Dick. A fossil, Dick thinks. He didn't know they still made these things. "Thanks," he says dryly. "You sure you have enough minutes on this brick?"
4. i'm very fond of the claustrophobia i wrote into the opening scene of if you want me, let me know.
"Why aren't you on patrol?" Jason's expression sours further. "I had a weird feeling." "So you decided to bring that weird feeling here?" Dick scoffs. "To weird feeling central? Fine, don't tell me. Keep icing me out. I know you don't want to talk about what happened, but—" With the heavy clunk of the breakers flipping, the lights go out, plunging them into darkness. Dick goes very still. "Shit. Of course. Backup power should kick on in a second." The generators do not kick on. There is nothing but darkness, thick and impenetrable, pressing down on Dick like a physical thing, and suddenly Dick is not sure Jason is still beside him at all. Was Jason ever here? Did Dick make him up? "Jay?" Dick says quietly. "Are you there?" "Where the fuck else would I be, Dickhead?" Jason's voice is gruff. Relief inflates Dick's tight lungs like a balloon. He holds it for a second, then exhales slowly. "Just checking."
5. i miss disaster hawke from here comes the spark. there's lovely art of this scene, too.
“Good night, Hawke,” says Fenris. He’s wearing a worn sweatshirt over his pyjama top, now, and the sleeves are too long, Hawke notices. They cover his hands. Unbearable. “Not unless I successfully hibernate like a bear for the next six months,” says Hawke cheerfully. “But thank you. I appreciate the sentiment.” Fenris’s eyebrows are so mobile. Very expressive. “You’re welcome,” he says flatly. Then he turns away and continues on to the bathroom and Hawke lets out a slow breath. “Marry me,” he whispers. “What?” says Fenris, half-turning. “What?” Hawke practically yells. “I said good night!” He slams his bedroom door and leans against it, heart pounding. Smooth. So smooth. Hawke is a walking disaster.
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whenthechickencry · 4 months
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Umineko EP4. Replay Part 3
Oh man, you gave Maria TWO cool drawings in a day? Damn. To be honest I always felt it was a little weird they could get so close from seeing each other like... twice or thrice. But also they are both deeply troubled and lonely people and I can feel from these interactions the few times they got to spend together were pretty magical to them.
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Protected heavily by Beatrice, who understands her true value. 🥹
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I think it's important to understand that this is party Ange's perception of Maria, Ange!Maria is clearly a bit more mature and developed in her way of thinking than 1986 Maria.
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I always kind of wonder how much Kinzo's obsession with the cult is real and how much of it was his family exaggerating one of his creepy interests once he started to go kind of insane, but I guess we have a bit of proof that it was actually fairly big.
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I wonder.... if only that message bottle was found instead of several would people have assumed it was just the truth? was it only the particular chain of events that led to the legend of the witch?
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I wonder if this lead to some crazy theories at the time - Himamaizawa was in the same spot after the events of several fragments and that WAS a government conspiracy.
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I think this lead to the Eva theories dying down in favor of other theories, too... after all, if the murderer wrote this, someone who planned to kill Eva wrote notes detailing that.
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Well the vagueness was needed to create the catbox Ange - if there was only one truth it wouldn't really be a catbox.
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Oh, Ange just figured out what I just pointed out, lmfao.
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Not exactly the most refined version of the concept, but it does guide you into the idea that witch = wanting power + victimization.
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She's being mean here but also this man just spent like 30 minutes telling her how fascinating her family's murder is so, deserved.
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Well, they say this but she's perfectly able to summon Maria in any case... but I assume having a book where she can fill in the Maria gaps in her brain helps have her as an imaginary friend in a way she doesn't have for Battler...
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The bitterness Mammom feels from Ange is pretty interesting and it's probably from Ange's complicated feelings towards magic by now.... She wants once again to believe in magic in order to cure her deep loneliness but the disappointment and powerlessness she feels even with them hasn't gone away...
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Why not just admit you want to imagine a vibrant scene where you are surrounded by friends, then? Humans really are difficult.
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It's kind of funny how different the relationships the stake have for Beatrice!Stakes and Ange!Stakes, they are clearly very friendly with each other but they torture each other with Beato.... with them being based on her colleagues as a servant I imagine Yasu got satisfaction from lording over them and them harming each other, Ange just wants friends.
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Oooooh yeah, I think my analysis of Mammom's relationship toward Ange reflecting her relationship with magic is right on the mark, the line about sadness and loneliness proves it.
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Well... it's more complicated than that. But yeah no one really has any right to judge Maria for how she tries to find happiness.
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Eh ah? Hahahah Okay Maria. I guess she's kind of pouty sometimes.
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Aka don't make fun of your friends OCs, asshole.
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I think Ange's relationship with Mammon might say something, too, it's similar to the concept of miracles, but framed in a different way here, I think.... Such as Ange's greed caused her to always cling to the miracle of her family coming back and leaving her unable to move on.
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To be honest, when I was in high school mostly I tended to do this a lot.... not with imaginary friends (kind of) but I would conjure people I knew irl in my head and have them act as, basically, understanding therapists in my head.... obviously it didn't actually do anything but it scratched my itch to be understood without risking having people think less of me. I can relate to Ange here.
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Wait, without telling Dad? That is kind of interesting... Kyrie obviously hates Battler but I guess she was willing to suck it up for Ange, we know she was willing to do it for Rudolf (or at least enough so Battlers little brain can't comprehend he's a target) but doing it for Ange is interesting... especially since I imagine it was easy for Kyrie to go "we can't do that"
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For his sake, huh? I guess Ange's under that pretense for her own sake.
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Lambdadelta's language here is really cruel - I think what Ange is struggling with here is the fact that her trauma will never be removed. She feels the correct and untraumatized Ange was destroyed in 1986 and she's a fake ruined one. Lambda is forcing her to confront the fact even if Battler comes back she won't be able to get rid of all the trauma that happened. Her saying Bernkastel went through this is echoing Rika's realization that being a witch has fundamentally changed her and she can't truly go back from Saikoroshi.
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Haha.... well that isn't really true. It won't take even more than one extra game for you to break her determination... Lambdadelta went on about how Battler can never win without Ange's help, which is probably true. He probably wouldn't have committed to denying witches and Beato completely if Ange hadn't encourage him...
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To be honest I wonder how much those days were mostly wonderful for Ange alone, I mean I imagine Rudolf and Battler were awkward with each other and Kyrie Battler is a mess....
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Man, the school failed Maria so hard too... the bullying and refusing to help her develop her talents and instead just telling her she's doing it wrong.
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I haven't written anything in a while because it's hard to comment on this scene, it's really painful to read.... all the comments about how thee teachers and the student council let this happen even knowing what was probably going on...
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The use of Golden Slaughterer and the general cruelty of the scene is obviously meant to get you thinking of this scene as analogous to many other of the murder/corpse discovering scenes so far... we saw what drove Ange to both magic and violence so we should be looking at Beatrice in a similar way.... Also Ange's setting herself as the villain even in the scenario she cooked up because she hates herserlf.
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“8 May.—I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse; but now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy.” 
Jonathan Harker, Full-Blown Solicitor: At first I felt like talking about how everyone in the entire country feared for my life if I came here, and half the people in the country actively tried to stop me from coming here, and how I almost got eaten by wolves on the way here, and how the coachman is a wizard, and how my host literally never eats around me but spends the whole time I’m eating staring at me like a creep was making too big a deal out of things and complaining for no reason, but now I’m sure of it--this place has bad vibes.
So Jonathan is getting a little antsy because, uh, everything that’s happened to him and also Count Dracula is a complete night-owl who won’t ever let him go to bed before dawn because he’s too busy asking all sorts of questions about England and mysteriously telling Jonathan about his adventures as a merciless warlord for the past thousand years and then laughing it off like “Oh my family just keeps really good records of these things lol namaste :).”
We’ve finally come to the infamous Bermuda Shave Scene where Jonathan’s like:
Count Dracula didn’t show up in the mirror. What the fuck?
He startled me so badly that I cut myself a little.  Boo.
When he saw the blood he went for my throat like a gotdamn murderer. D:
I was like “AAAAAAH!” and jerked away, and he grabbed the crucifix instead, and he was back to normal.  Pretty sure I didn’t imagine that, though?  This whole thing is so weird.
Count Dracula threw my mirror out the window, and it broke.  How am I going to shave now? :(
Guess I’ll have to use the bottom of my shaving pot.  It’s metal, so if he throws that out the window, at least it won’t break. :( :( :(
I mean, for real.  Jonathan is sitting there like “But there was no reflection of him in the mirror!” followed immediately by “This was startling, and, coming on the top of so many strange things, was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which I always have when the Count is near.” He discovers this guy has a mysterious Won’t Show Up In Mirrors Syndrome and is like “I’m really beginning to think this guy is sketch.” Who can really blame him for not following up on it, though? Our man’s on a mission to find himself a band-aid. 
Count Dracula: Take care, take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous than you think in this country. And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man’s vanity. Away with it! *yeets shaving mirror out the fucking window as hard as he can*
Shaving mirror: *shatters into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below*
Jonathan: I was… using that?  To shave?
Naturally after all this, Jonathan is like, “Well, a man still has to eat.  Not Count Dracula, which is so strange!  Ha ha, he’s such a weirdo.  I’ve never even seen him drink!  Anyhoo, breakfast time.”
He goes exploring in the castle after breakfast and finds that he can’t get out, and also that it doesn’t really matter if he can’t get out, because they’re in the middle of nowhere.  He goes completely bonkers at discovering this, with all the built-up panic about wolves and sorcerers and staying with Count Dracula finally breaking through his Berlin Wall of denial, and just tears around the castle like a cat with the zoomies trying to open all the doors and windows.
Meanwhile, Dracula is cleaning up the breakfast dishes, making Jonathan’s bed, and planning lunch.
I mean, on the one hand, this is Count Dracula we’re talking about.  On the other hand, this guy is basically running a bed and breakfast with one guest by himself, while trying not to let on at all that he’s the one doing everything, and he’s only done the costume quick-change trick the once, so the rest of it really is involving some ‘60s French farce nonsense where he’s ducking into random rooms and booking it down hidden passages and sticking to the ceiling with half a roast duck under one arm to keep Jonathan from noticing. 
Also he’s spending like 8 hours a night doing nothing but monologuing at this dude, which really eats into your whole cooking/cleaning/shopping time, and you know the brides certainly aren’t going to be helping out with any of this shit.  
Did any of them become the immortal blood-drinking hellwife of the devil to sweep the floors and wash the windows so a twenty-something English idiot would think they had servants?  No, they did not.
Sidebar: Can you even imagine the reaction of the poor peasants to Dracula needing normal people-food for the first time in centuries?  Even if you assume he went out and bought it, it’s something out of a nightmare.  
You’re a 19th century small-town grocer, minding your 19th century small-town grocer business, when in walks Count fucking Dracula wearing the shittiest disguise you have ever seen in your entire 19th century small-town grocer life.  He pulls out a wooden box with dirt still on it, snaps open the rusted-ass lock with his bare hands, starts plunking fucking Roman coins down on the counter like it’s nothing and is all “Hello yes I am a normal person having a normal guest for a few months and need… food.  Normal food, for one normal person.” while refusing to break eye contact.  And if you take more than a few seconds to recover from the aneurysm this induces, he starts helpfully listing foods that you vaguely remember your great-grandmother talking about having when she was a kid, and you have to have another aneurysm about that.
More likely the dude just rolled up to the nearest farms’ storehouses and grabbed anything that looked plausible, and the peasants who lived there were like, “I swear to God and the Virgin Mary and all your favorite saints that I saw Count Dracula legging it out of the barn with three of my chickens and my last bag of coffee beans.  Maybe he’s decided to stop eating people?” Which of course leads to another mass gathering in front of the inn while everybody debates over what this means and starts blessing everything in sight, and somebody gets the priest who’s like, “He’s feeding the Englishman.  He has not decided to stop eating people, he’s a vampire, he can’t just decide to stop eating people.  Biting someone who’s just drank a pot of coffee is probably the closest thing he can get to an espresso, God help us all.”
Anyway, eventually Jonathan reverts to form with “I’m definitely getting murdered, but maybe if I pretend I don’t know that, I can squeak a few more hours out of this.” and also “If I confront him and he denies it, everything will just be really awkward.”
Which, in his defense, it would be?  Imagine that conversation, between these two idiots.
Jonathan: You’re keeping me prisoner here.
Count Dracula: I have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s preposterous.  I would never.  You are my honored guest, not my prisoner.
Jonathan: So I can leave whenever I wish.
Count Dracula: Of course.  There’s the door. *gestures to series of locked doors*
Jonathan: They’re all locked.
Count Dracula: No, they’re not. *sits back, steeples fingers, stares at Jonathan like a muppet until Jonathan just gives up and eats dinner like another muppet*
“I need, and shall need, all my brains to get through.”
Jonathan: I was utterly and completely doomed.
At this point Jonathan goes sneaking around the castle like a creeper and manages to watch Count Dracula fluffing his pillows and fussing with the table service and presumably basting the chicken with a little chef’s hat on, and all Jonathan can think is:
“This gave me a fright, for if there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the Count himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here. This is a terrible thought; for if so, what does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand in silence. How was it that all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me?”
Like, I don’t know, my dude.  We could consult, for a moment, your Fun List of Foreign Words everyone in the town was throwing around when they found out you had a coach ticket to Castle Dracula:
“Ordog” (Satan)
“pokol” (hell)
“stregoica” (witch)
“vrolok” and “vlkoslak” (were-wolf or vampire)
Sure sounds like your dude might be some sort of shape-shifting warlock or some shit!
“What meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash?”
Meant they didn’t want your ass to get ate, Jon. 
“In the meantime I must find out all I can about Count Dracula, as it may help me to understand. To-night he may talk of himself, if I turn the conversation that way. I must be very careful, however, not to awake his suspicion.”
Jonathan Harker really looked at this situation and went, “If only I can get a lonely egomaniac nobleman talking about himself…”
8-10 hours later: He’s that Dracula, all right.
Dracula: The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.
Also Dracula: My desire to go to England where no one knows I’m a fucking vampire has nothing to do with the British Empire kicking the shit out of Russia two doors down from here and my subsequent discovery that the British Empire is pretty much never not kicking the shit out of somebody, somewhere, to the extent that another thirty or forty war crimes per week could go completely unnoticed if I play my cards right.
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Ok I have a small free time window in between exams which can only mean one thing:
MY PERSONAL PARACOSM - MASTERPOST
(An almost complete list of all narrative projects I've ever done in my life + personal commentary as I think back on my own writing. Documenting my personal evolution as a writer. From oldest to newest per each category.)
COMPLETED
NOVELS
Aside from my 3 chapter attempt about a year or two previously, I never wrote a novel until the age of 12 and a half, going on 13. It was one of the biggest milestones I had ever hit, and I wouldn't have gotten the confidence to start if it weren't for my mentor who encouraged me, using The Book Thief (1st the movie and then I read the book too) as a prompt. Alexandra, whatever you do, write, write, write! And so I did.
The Image through the Thick Glass (ITTG) - September 2013 - summer 2014 (aged 12-13)
My very first novel ever. 53k words.
The plot revolves around a certain Kaito Hayashi, whose life is genuinely miserable from start to finish. First he's an orphan, then he's bullied (because he's a weird kid, but also a child savant or something), then he suffers in love as it were, aka feels very rejected, he is in poor health and almost dies of pneumonia at some point (hiking trip gone wrong??). He eventually gets with the woman he loves (whose name is Kata but that's not an actual Japanese name)))))) but she kind of stops loving for some very arbitrary reason again relating to his health (ableism???). At this point they have a young kid so it's very sad too like the kid is like wants to spend time with his dad but his mom is like no, and at the end he dies... but it's not completely tragic I guess because some people do mourn for him namely his son and his brother.
The side characters are interesting too like Kaito's older brother, Chang (again that's not a Japanse name but ok) is very protective of him and generally a likeable character, though a stereotypical aloof type etc. And he even has a "meet an adventurous girl and learn to have fun" arc so he's got that going on for him. Kata has a sister, Miku (you can see my inspiration) who is married to an American guy, who is Christian which is a plot point but also kind of not. Like the Japanse characters are vaguely non-religious. Kata and Miku's grandpa is a recurring character; he lives in the mountains but for his granddaughter's wedding he does come to the city, and quite dramatically while he's at it.
Kata also has a neighbour kid who has a weird relationship with her as in... the kid remembers her fondly but Kata literally treats the kid like some sort of ghost because due to some misunderstanding she thought she had died (instead what happened is she got into a car accident and was hospitalised for a while... poor girl...). This was supposed to show how Kata had a crippling fear of death, which would be why she left her husband when he was at his worst health wise. But that's still very selfish??? But I think the other characters do call her out for it. Anyway she herself was disabled (had a severe accident as a child and her legs never healed the right way and she alternatively uses crutches or a wheelchair) so I don't even get where her attitude was coming from.
Kaito himself was my personal blorbo for my entire preteen section of my life. Although in retrospective he's just... sad. Like literally just miserable all the time except select scenes. In the first draft I remember having written him attempt suicide but my parents were like what! You know nothing about things such as depression and the such. And yeah they were right. So I didn't have him do that anymore. But he was still... depressed? And his only support was the fact that at least his brother cared for him, but even said brother, being a responsible adult TM didn't have much time. And Kaito had a job too I guess. He was supposed to be an architect. And as a hobby he was an artist and was a very creative person in general.
Some things I'm still pleased with to this day: the scene in which his bullies, now adults, randomly meet him again and see him spending time with his son, and they straight up apologise to him. And they even socialise in a friendly way with the kid. They had jobs and stuff etc. I like that it was neither the "bullies remain nasty abusive people forever" trope nor the "bullies are punished by fate by becoming homeless jobless deadbeats etc" trope. They just moved on with their lives, happened to meet the kid they used to bully and apologised. I think I wrote that because especially at that age, being bullied a lot, I secretly desired to have that kind of closure.
Another scene I like to this day is the "vacation" episode in which Kaito's son comes to visit him and they play in the snow and have an overall good time together, bonding time etc, but a shadow of sadness looms over because Kaito thinks to himself that he's getting worse with his health etc, but at least for the moment he is happy etc.
Another scene I find wholesome is Chang's date with Yume (that's the name of his girlfriend). Very nice dynamic between him who is very serious and stoic and her who is, to put it this way, office worker by day, adrenaline junkie by night. Her hobbies are very sporty and she even takes him out for a parachute ride of all things! The other side characters all have good relationships too. Miku and her husband get along great, and have a nice peaceful scene together (he comforts/ encourages her about something?? She is a doctor so it might've been her stressful job?). Only the main couple is kinda toxic. Though back in the day I liked drawing them together a lot.
The relationship between the main couple felt very much like. Him trying his best to win her love and her... straight up not doing the same. Like sure during the hiking trip gone wrong episode, she has one of those "Oh no you're hurt so now I realise I've loved you all along" moment, and there are times when they genuinely get along. And she even apologises to him at some point towards the end of the story (for not having been by side during his hospitalisation and other issues etc). But the lenghts he goes to just to impress her and... not even that... just to make her notice him, are quite staggering.
One very painful such episode is towards the end, when she's distancing from him a lot. She's doing laundry etc and some dress or whatever just flies off the window onto a tree or whatever. And here we have a (contrived) chase scene, in which he is very dramatically running after a flying piece of clothing, tripping (and hurting himself in the process) until he finally retrieves the dress. And she's like smh my head, it's dirty now. And man the book is full of such tear jerking scenes. (Another example is a scene in his childhood when he falls face first into the ground but it's treated realistically and he ends up splitting his lip open... which man why friccin describe how he was bleeding like that dude...) Like see how miserable this dude is? Even when he has what he wants it gets taken away from him, nobody loves him and he's dealing with chronic illness on top of it all!
And genuinely. What, girl... Like I appreciate the fact that it was my first novel, and I'm always glad I wrote it. I'll always cherish it and treasure the memories. But the story is not good, though. Or at least not as whole. The message at least is pretty messed up if you try to extract one. Like what is even the message? Fate is cruel? Life is meaningless? Or idk maybe some people live good lives but there are some particular people that literally nobody will love and that's just the way it is?
Thinking of it in a meta way. I think the message, subconsciously, was the last one. In life there are certain people that people arbitrarily will never love, or even outright hate. And yes this story was heavily influenced by the media I was consuming at the time, namely anime and more specifically very dramatic tear jerking anime like Clannad (after story was my main inspiration I think, especially for the latter scenes in which Kaito spends time with his son, but is also slowly dying etc). But even deeper in my subconscious than just my immediate memory of what I was consuming, there was the desperate cry of unloved unloved unloved. That's plastered all over this story. In September there'll be 10 years since I wrote this. It'll be interesting to see the retrospective. A mentor figure I had at the time told me this story feels like it was written by a very lonely person. At the time I rejected such "criticism". But girl that was NOT criticism. It was the truth. The whole story reads like a cry for help. No wonder my parents didn't want me writing this dude contemplate suicide.
Overall self assessment: nostalgia value because it's my very first long form original work, my first novel, my writing debut as it were. There are individual parts of the story that are really beautiful, but as a whole, it's a hopelessly bleak story without much of a purpose than venting, subtly crying unloved unloved unloved from between the lines.
The 5 Books of the Immortals - June 2015 - February 2016 (aged 14-15)
My second ever novel. 73k words. My beloved!!!! The characters from this work were my absolute blorbos, and sometimes still are. This is genuinely a monumental improvement over the 1st novel.
Debriefing. This is not a fantasy, despite the title. It was meant to be an illusion. Start as a fantasy and slowly fade into the real world as the "game"/ innocence of childhood faded away and was replaced by horror. The concept of course is great, and it still lives rent free in my head. One day, I hope to execute it in a way that does it justice. The fact that I didn't manage this is one of the biggest flaws of the novel ofc. But let me talk about the positive things because I genuinely loved writing this so so so much.
The story starts in a college in what we later learn is late 1930s Britain. The main character, Len (should more accurately be Lev but you get the point) is an extremely ambitious chemistry student, the "wizard" among his peers. Except for the dean's son, Zephyr, who is also a genius, but more serious, a foil to Len's rambunctiousness. They become besties tho, and as you can imagine Len gets his friend into trouble a lot. Zephyr has a tense relationship with his dad, which is explored later. Len also meets a girl, Eyline (supposed to be Eileen but bear with teen me and her name giving habits lmao), with whom he is soon quite smitten, and tries a lot of wacky magic tricks to catch her attention (magic tricks = chemical reactions and stuff. On the hallway????????) She's a med student. This info is a tool that we will use later *winks*. She's quite the introvert and a very serious person but she does like him too and find things in common with him. And they become friends which inevitably means wacky shenanigans, and fall in love over the course of the following college years. The scenes between them are just adorable, like one day they stay up late in the library and she just falls asleep with her head on his shoulder etc.
There is one scene at this point which I would totally change now because it went too far in terms of stakes. Len's hubris gets the better of him and he accidentally sets the friccin lab on fire????????????? And it's a very dramatic scene and apparently his sister (coincidentally his lab mate for said project) died?????? And he survived but... he got away with that like. 1 legally and 2. without crippling trauma?????????????? By all accounts this makes no sense and if I were to write this again I would never. I'm not saying he was not affected at all. He's very distraught and gets his own come-to-Jesus moment but... why have such a situation in the 1st place given the drama that is coming for these characters outside college. Anyway. What I was trying to show is that yeah Len is very wacky silly and fun as this over confident character, but his self confidence can get the worst of him and make him do stupid and dangerous things.
At the end of college he marries his beloved Eyline and they have a nice little 1st year of marriage, which to this day I love that montage I did. And now comes the "fantasy fades away" moment. Not by them falling out of love ofc. The fantasy is actually violently ripped away from them as Eyline sees Len, holding his head in his hands, burdened, looking at a letter. He was drafted!!!!!!!!
Because it was actually 1939 all along. Yeyy? And so he prepares for war but Eyline pulls a Mulan and is like no, I'm going to fight alongside you, I cannot be separated from you etc. And he's like nooooo that's very dangerous etc honey you don't have to do this for my sake but she, the original girlboss, is like no, I'm coming because I want to be by your side. If you're going to die at least we die together (or something along those lines). So they went together. And they meet up with Zephyr too ofc. And then another character is introduced, Glinda, who registered as a volunteer out of personal conviction. Later down the line they meet a teen boy who totally lied about being 18 and now they adopt him. I don't make the rules. Adopt as in the found family sense, you get what I'm saying. They're on the battlefield still.
A lot of battles and stuff go down. There is this recurring character Gus who has a vendetta on them for whatever reason and honestly I would remove this character if I wrote this nowadays. This creep follows them around sometimes. Anyway I guess his whole spiel was to be the type of person that views war as licence to kill but... it doesn't really go that well idk. At some point they meet some girl who used to have a crush on Len and she works in the factory to produce weaponry now (which would be the 1st genuinely historically accurate detail so far lmao). But again why is this girl meddling like. This guy is taken. And also this drama has no place during... a war....
Anyway at some point Len catches a stomach disease and is bedridden for a while, which is very much treated as an almost death. Like he has a sort of going-to-Heaven type dream too. Anyway it is during this time that the others get to meet war veterns from ww1, who just so happen to know Zephyr's dad (also a vet). They get some neat little backstory with this occasion. It is also during this time that they meet the teen boy, named Günther (he is half German; he ran away from home for a yet undisclosed reason).
One interesting episode is when Günther meets a girl his age. But as it turns out, she had been coerced into becoming a spy (for the Germans that is), so this was all a ploy. Except she genuinely likes Günther and is friends with him so now he wants to protect him. But she gets caught by both sides as a spy. Günther is helpless to rescue her and she is killed off screen. Again I would write this differently nowadays. It was meant to be a shocking scene like oh no, this is what happens to a double agent. But poor girl was genuinely a victim of circumstance here. Günther is understandably extremely distraught by this.
One of my favourite episodes: Christmas time is coming, which means the soldiers stop by some village and camp etc. They are intent on celebrating. Zephyr meets his cousin, Miles, and they just so happen to stop by his hometown so they stay at his house. Miles is a skilled piano player. The gang has a bit of a breather moment, they play with snow like little kids and have an overall great time. Then ofc the scene gets dramatic real fast but the way I imagined it was always so cinematic. I even imagined using this scene as the trailer for the movie adaptation!!! Miles is playing a familiar Carol on the piano, the camera as it were zooms in on his hands and its almost silence and then BOOM. They actually get bombed, which is supposed to be this shocking scene but also one that (for the purposes of the trailer) sets the tone. Everybody survived except Miles, because that's the part of the house that collapsed. Ok again I would not kill him off if I wrote this today. After finding shelter from the raid etc the characters basically immediately have to go into battle again. It gets dramatic real fast.
Eyline is seriously injured and remains in the hospital for a long time. Len sulks, extremely worried, for a while, but at some point he gets the opportunity to volunteer to fight I'm Stalingrad.... being an ally and all... but remember he himself was Russian (yeah. See the above comment that he should be named Lev for accuracy). So it gets kinda personal. The chapter in which this happens is named... drumroll... the Land where winter never ends. Sound familiar? I thought so. Anyway my dude fights until a heavy snowstorm overcomes him and he gets lost. He remembers a lot of stuff, in a sort of life flashing before his eyes montage? He remembers a lot about his childhood etc. Anyway he survives this ordeal because his (not elderly enough not to fight) uncle was also there, in time to rescue him.
He spends some more time there. Meets a boy about Günther's age named Ivan, to whom he becomes a bit of a mentor figure. Ivan gets killed before his eyes which again is supposed to be for shock value bit dude this is a bit much. Len eventually returns, and, much to his delight, Eyline is alive and also managed to heal in the meantime.
Günther finds his hometown completely wiped off the face of the earth which is understandably very traumatic for him. He assumes both his parents died and deeply regrets having run away from home. He had run because he failed 10th grade + was expelled?? and was too ashamed to face his parents ever again (and he had been a problem student for a while already). I'm not sure I actually wrote this but in an adjacent comic I hinted that his getting failed was more or less due to his teacher being Antisemitic (in the actual text his mother is hinted to be Jewish. But like living in Britain I guess). But the real twist is that his father had gone away from home the night his son was gone in order to search for him.
Guys this is hands down my favourite arc in this story. Like I really like the wife so loyal she'll join the army arc too ofc. Chefs kiss. But father travelling the war torn country, putting his own life in danger to find his son who he has no evidence is even alive anymore? Crying on main my friends... Anyway his dad is crazy dedicated to his pursuit. One day he searches through a forest and falls into a valley, but a lumberjack living there rescues him in time, and takes care of him until his broken bone (arm??) heals. The lumberjack tells the story of how he isolated himself from society once he discovered his wife just up and married somebody else as soon as he was (falsely) declared dead back in the day. And now he's a miserable old man etc. But he is genuinely inspired by this father searching for his lost son, and examines his cynicism a bit.
Zephyr receives a letter from his dad which explains a lot about his own experience during ww1 and basically serves as an attempt to reconcile with his son. There is a nice moment in which Len and Eyline hide from the elements (it's raining hard etc) and have a moment to reflect on the past few years, how they met, how they ended up both going to war etc. It's maybe cheesy with the line delivery but I love the moment itself. They're just genuinely just grateful for each other. There is an interesting callback to a very early scene. Len is all like yeah falling in love is literally just chemical reactions (at the beginning of the story) and now he's like but staying in love that's a choice right here. And he is just genuinely so grateful that she chose to come with him. And she's just glad to be by his side through thick and thin. Guys I'm telling you, one of the couples of all time.
The war eventually ends. Len and Eyline go back home and have a cozy life for a while. They visit his parents (which again is weird in terms of historical accuracy because it wouldn't be very safe to just go to 1940s ussr but ok...). They make several plans for the future etc. Eyline is pregnant etc. Günther is staying with them and tries to find work etc (just what I was saying about them essentially adopting this kid). And everything is normal until suddenly that minor character Gus from earlier comes back with a vengeance and... out of nowhere, stabs Len when he sees him. Eyline and Günther try their best to get some help in time but Len dies and quite dramatically too. Eyline has to deal with the completely unhelpful doctors, and has to assert herself, because they don't take her seriously at all until they learn she was no ordinary doctor but a war medic veteran too. There's an extremely sad flashback/ dream sequence she gets immediately after dealing with his death, with of course the added stress of being ignored like that by the doctors etc. The following scenes are very sad too but I think I at least managed to show the mundane ways in which the characters deal with Len's absence in a meaningful way. The funeral scene is also very sad and Eyline's speech at the end is quite emotional etc. Zephyr crying over the death of his friend, too. But all is not bleak because it is during this event that Günther finally reunites with his dad, and honestly this scene is probably the most emotional of all.
The other characters move on with their lives step by step. Eyline gives birth to a daughter and raises her alone etc. Günther gets a job and takes care of his father as he ages etc. Glinda I think ends up travelling the world or some such. Zephyr reconciles with his father and continues his studies in order to become a professor. There's this moment of parallels between the old generation and the new one (and its more or less the same structure between Zephyr's friend group during the war and his dad's own friend group during the previous war, including the one of the friends dying tragically etc).
Overall assessment: in retrospective, this story was needlessly dark at times. Why kill off characters so quickly and just for shock value??? If I wrote this today I'd change many things, including never even making Gus a character in the 1st place. If Len has to die, it would be in battle. But I'd tend towards him not dying at all tbh. Because I remember quite clearly my mindset as I was writing this "it's not realistic if nobody dies, or if all main characters live". So I was equating tragedy with realism, as well as basically feeling pressured to write a sad ending to make my story more "meaningful". No man it was meaningful enough with its having a group of friends who genuinely love each other a lot, a main couple who are very loyal to each other and a father relentlessly searching for his lost son.
There is so much love and beauty in this story, and it didn't need to stoop to the common denominator of haha sad ending smart. Come on. The meaning is not in the tragedy, it's in the love. What I appreciate is that this story is by a large order of magnitude better than my first in terms of overall feel and message. The plot is more complex and interesting. It's an extremely dramatic story too. It wouldn't be a story written by me if it weren't. But it doesn't feel meaningless anymore. It still does reflect a very key flaw in my minset though, namely the believing that happy endings are too good to be true and in life you just have to get the rug pulled from under your feet just when you're the happiest. Also that happiness is unrealistic and tragedy is realistic. This is a mindset that I'm still trying to unlearn a lot, and it's obvious through the way I used to write and maybe even through the way I write now that I'm an extremely pessimistic person. But overall, this story was a beautiful one. Obviously it had its flaws. Just now I cringed at the sheer teenage way of wording my stuff. I understand that many parts are written immaturely, but hey I was literally 14-15. I love the characters first and foremost. The ideas for the plot could use some work but it's something to start from, its workable etc. I'm extremely happy I wrote this when I did.
My main inspirations were the sheer volume of war movies watched with dad as a child and teen. So any cliche present in those was here too. Also The Book Thief, my beloved!! I loved that book so so much. Generally I was quite happy at that age and I think that translated clearly into the overall tone of the work, as well as the choice of main character (very extroverted, confident, playful).
The Land of Eternal Winter (draft 1 - December 2019 - July 2020 - aged 18-19)
Anatoliy, a prince, namely the king's middle child, takes revenge for his father's death, but he kills an innocent person. This sends him completely spiraling, and he becomes desperate to fix what he did, and also to receive forgiveness from God and the people he's hurt)
Draft 1 available on deviantart and my sideblog in full (written directly in English). Main inspirations: draft 0 (yes, it's a self fanfiction as it were lmao), Hamlet, Crime and Punishment (but at the time I wrote these I basically only knew the sparknotes ver, not having read the actual books until later 2020). My mental space at that time was one of recovering from my depressive episode and finding hope, happiness, peace again etc. And also not having as many horrific intrusive thoughts and constant guilt. Especially my very recent experience with crippling guilt helped me write a guilt torn and forgiveness starved main character. 100% convinced my psyche always heavily influences my writing a lot. That's OK though. This book is very hopeful actually, not hopeless, and sends a good message. I'm currently working on rewriting this from scratch aka draft 2.
NOVELLAS AND SHORT STORIES
With the caveat that short stories is what I've been writing since the day I learned to write, buy actually even earlier because I think oral tradition counts too. As a small child, most of my storytelling was play-based, of course. In about 2009, aged 8, aka about the 2nd semester of 1st grade, I got my first notebook, on which I wrote my very first original pieces. Most of them are very very short but I want to mention a few that were more significant in my development as a future writer.
Short stories from my very first "writer notebook"
Very whimsy page long tales, usually about the "secret life of animals" (anthropomorphic bears, storks, insects and some are just random and others try to mimic a fable structure - mirroring the texts I was reading at school mostly. Many stories are blatant self inserts- a spy story which is just me and my baby brother, or one called "The Storyteller" which is about dad, which I find sweet (irl dad would always tell me and my baby brother all sorts of wacky insane stories that he just made up on the spot and we remembered them and it was a whole cinematic universe as it were). Many stories are very very very closely inspired by stuff I read or watched, like a longer story (3 pages))))) about mini planets which was a lot like Little Prince. Gradually I started doing actual fanfiction, long before I knew what that was.
Vasile Moldovenescu's life story (around 2012 - aged 11)
This was my second attempt at writing a play. It was a comedy. Basically this dude, who talks very much like a Moldovan stereotype (sorry guys I was 11 don't cancel me, love you). But Vasile, despite being seemingly dumb, is a very lovable character. He randomly runs into a pair of spies, Violeta (Romanian) and John (British), who are searching for Anonymous. Vasile is kind of clingy to them and they're annoyed at first but they let him follow along eventually. They also meet a woman only written as "the blonde" in the character list (she later introduces herself as Miruna, and she is rather stereotypical too, but not so much in the dumb sense as much as very tacky.
Vasile gets approached by his "ex" (woman he used to have a crush on) and she tells him he is literally wanted (in the way a criminal would?) in his home country. Vasile talks at lenght about his personal life, some details being inadvertently relevant, but the others assume he's just speaking nonsense. The man seemingly had a million different jobs in the past (he swears he never caused that inundation oh no! And also he is also doing translations from Chinese).
I'll take this moment to mention that John speaks fluent Romanian, but at some point another character enters the scene, tagged first as "The American", (and he later introduces himself as George; he is a fellow spy and works with John and Violeta) and he speaks in English. I was quite good at English even then lmao. George came to announce that Anonymous escaped and they have to catch him etc, with a sense of urgency.
Vasile annoys them one last time and they want to kick him to the curb, and Violeta, in a grand reveal, yells at him that they were secret agents all along. To which Vasile casually replies, oh I was in the FBI once, I have a timed bomb in my cellar btw.
Suddenly Vasile is reunited with his brother Ștefan, who he intentionally avoided all this time etc, they throw a random party (?) and play pocker etc but the brother leaves again. As if that wasn't enough, Violeta mean spiritedly tells him that if she were him she would just go far away such as Egypt, and he, with his bags already made, promptly does so. Violeta hurries to catch up with her teammates to catch Anonymous etc but suddenly receives a letter.
It is literally a letter of complaint on behalf of literally all citizens of Moldova, saying that, because of her, they lost their president, who was none other than Vasile. Curtain falls. Etc.
It is funny, especially by 11 year old standards lmao. But ofc more than that it's a charming story, because it's obviously written by a child. I had much fun rediscovering this one. I was also surprised by how much comedy I was trying to write as a child and how much I just... stopped. That says a lot about me I think.
Oh and see below for my 1st attempt at a play. Yes I did try to make my classmates act it. It didn't work out.
___
The next big step in my development as a writer was a shared imaginary universe between my boy cousins and I, which we used as a backdrop for our stick fights. So basically a sort of DnD. But the cousins only provided very basic details of the plot and their respective characters, while I actually took it very seriously and started writing actual narratives about it. My cousin called our paracosm The Immortals and he even designed an admittedly sick logo, and I kept that name. I was very into FF at the time so I was daydreaming about creating a never ending RPG game franchise. That is why the following are called just The Immortals + their respective number. Only a few have I actually completed, though I had planned like 20 entries for this franchise. At this point I barely took input from my cousins.
The Immortals 3 (summer 2013 - aged 12)
A story I wrote integrally on a sketchbook. A general, named Marshall, is sent out on some sort of rescue mission for a lost princess, which turns out to have been a scam, which annoys him very much. He is, however, stuck with the random girl he mistook for the princess, and they continue their journey together. She, named Barbara, is very much a sort of manic-pixie-dream-girl, and he very cold etc. Also I think there was quite the age gap between the two which... yeah. The two have a sort of enemies to lovers arc but not enemies, more like annoying strangers to lovers. The core conflict is less between the main couple, as between the two students (subordinates), one of them being his ally, and the other having rebelled against him and become the main villain (who lured his old mentor into a trap in the first place, and now intended to kill him). The last scene is a battle, and the heroes get injured etc but survive. The main character is like very regretful about the whole situation, feeling somewhat responsible. But other than that, he and his love interest basically live happily ever after.
The Immortals 4 (August-September 2013 - aged 12)
A stereotypical vampire story that I had very very much fun writing approximately late August - early September 2013. The story centers around a rebellious vampire prince, Vincent. His grandfather is the king, and he is evil. One day the grandfather captures a human girl, Ivy, and has her do menial tasks I guess. Vincent and Ivy have a bit of an enemies to lovers arc but again not at all enemies, they're actually each other's only allies, but in the sense of she doesn't trust him at first due to prejudice against vampires etc. He did like her from the first meeting and was kinda flirty from the start.
Anyways the two gradually become friends as they interact more. And ofc discover that they are allies against the evil grandpa. There are several "funny scenes" such as one day Ivy practices her combat skills aka shooting an arrow and Vincent volunteers to be a target - with an apple om his head. He was ofc overconfident etc. He promptly gets shot and Ivy nurses him back to health as it were, which is a bonding moment. They fall in love etc. They prepare to fight the evil grandpa but Vincent gets caught up in the sun because they didn't make it to the dark inside soon enough. So he literally burns up (not described in a gore way because I was 12 but yeah he doesn't just turn to dust but literally burn). But he dies in her arms so it's this tragic romance moment. And the sequel hook is that she has to fight the evil grandpa alone.
No I have never read twilight and at that age I think I would've actually been banned from it.
Train of thought (2015 - aged 14)
A short story in comic form, written in full on one of my sketchbooks.
This is a world in which the 4 Temperaments, as well as other categories (Pessimist, Optimist) are personified. There is more than one entity per category, and people are grouped into countries based on their category. The story starts with the Realist cynically observing the Pessimist and the Optimist waiting helplessly on the train tracks (both free, not tied up, also standing etc). The Optimist foolishly convinces himself no train will come, and the Pessimist is convinced they will die anyway so what's the point anyway. They get run over offscreen. The Realist, who is an absolutely emotionless being (he is supposed to represent Reason and is completely removed from and opposed to Emotion), so his reaction to seeing those two killed right before him looks like indifference, although he pities them (though with a bit of an attitude of superiority).
He was called to sort things out between the Temperaments, who have some level of international conflict. Specifically Choleric and Sanguine aren't allied anymore and are in some sort of conflict. Realist sides with Choleric and helps him rationalise the whole situation. Choleric comes to his senses and sorts things out with Sanguine and reconciles with her etc.
The problem is that the seemingly extremely rational Realist has been hearing voices all this time, and they grow louder and louder, and suddenly this world doesn't seem real anymore. The scene shifts immediately. It's a hospital room, and a man with the same physical appearance as Realist is in the hospital bed, looking as if having suffered a grave accident. The voice echoing is now clear: it was his wife calling him by his name, Richard, name that he doesn't recognise because he lost his memory due to his head injury.
Once awoken, he learns several shocking news regarding what had happened. The train he was on got derailed, causing a devastating accident. He is suddenly curious to know the other patients in the hospital (which is full of the injured from said accident). He meets at least 4 people with whom he is able to communicate and learn more about what happened. Those are Cole (the Choleric), Sandy (the Sanguine), Melvin (the Melancholic) and Felicia (the Phlegmatic). All four were businesspeople heading to a meeting in which to discuss the relationship between their respective businesses and negotiate trade etc etc.
Richard talks the most to Cole, with whom he is both annoyed, due to his abrasive attitude, but also gets along with eventually, finding a lot in common. Richard also gets a lot of information about everything, but is unable to actually remember it, which frustrates him. Richard falls asleep/ unconscious again and dreams the continuation of the same dream. The Choleric gets shot by somebody trying to overthrow the current government, but doesn't die. Despite the controversy, he once again allies with Sanguine. The Realist doesn't find his place in this world. Richard wakes up. He doesn't find his place in the real world either, with his not remembering anything, except the facts others tell him, which he has to take at face value.
During the following days he befriends the other patients and learns about their lives too. For example, Cole and Sandy were actually together but had a fight about something. Of course now that it was a life vs death situation, they put aside their differences. Richard himself finally gets his memory back when he remembers his wife, Sophia (who also appeared as a constant background character in the dreams too). She is very happy to have him back as it were, but she leaves eventually, in order to let him rest.
This time Richard cannot dream anymore and instead is plagued by (traumatic) memories. He remembers exactly what happened during the day of the accident. His co-workers (and friends, who in the dream appeared as the Optimist and the Pessimist) had actually died right then and there, in a thoughtless attempt to escape. This memory disturbed him a lot. He also remembered having interacted with all 4 of the survivors (that he had talked with at lenght) while on that train ride, as they were seated very close one to another and they even exchanged some words, enabling him to make a first impression of them (and explaining why he even dreamt about them too - for example in real life Richard directly saw how Cole was injured).
The next day they even watch the news and see that the accident is still being discussed. The others, such as Sandy, have other concerns however, such as Cole being rushed to the emergency room again (I'm not good at medicine and was even more so at 14 but bear with me) because his injury either got infected or there was some internal bleeding etc. Although the scene is kind of dramatic, he survives and makes a recovery.
All of them heal from their wounds over time, and, having become friends during this time of hardship, keep in touch etc. Richard ponders upon his tendency to judge people based on first impressions and stereotypes etc etc. Eventually he too goes home, happy to reunite with his wife.
My main inspirations include Inside out which I just saw recently at that time and was very normal about, thank you very much. I was interested in stuff about personality types and read a lot about it (and did every test out there lmao - yes MBTI too - I always get different stuff between INTJ, ENTJ, INFJ, ENFJ so for me it's not accurate but its fun as a concept). The actual starting point for my writing it was this dark joke I heard at the time: in a tunnel, the Optimist sees the light at the end, the Pessmist sees the dark, the Realist sees the train lights, and the train conductor sees 3 idiots on the train tracks. So yeah hearing that joke + my "psychology phase" at the time made me go into a several day writing binge. Ah those are always fun. I get struck by an idea and come back with a fully formed short story.
(Unnamed) - what I now call draft 0 (may 2019 - aged 18)
The first story I wrote after my hiatus/ writer's block/ mental health break. 14 handwritten A4 pages so I'd say... 5k-7k words?? As an estimate.
A young, Elena, princess falls in love with her servant, Kęstas, who secretly turns out to have been a foreign prince all along. The two run away together from her dictatorial brother, the king Anatoliy. Once in the forest, Elena learns the truth about Kęstas, namely that her brother killed his parents, conquered his country and took him prisoner. The two get married in secret, but they cannot hide forever so they return, backed by the people, who revolt. Elena also frees her older sister, Svetlana, the rightful monarch, and they remove Anatoliy from power, sending him into exile. They reunite years later, Anatoliy now a humbled pig farmer. His older kneels to hug him, showing her forgiveness towards him. He sincerely apologises, saying he had been a madman.
The sole inspiration for this was the Hetalia fanfic A Blend of White and Red by SweetVerses (on ffn) that I read in April or may 2019 and it changed my brain chemistry. I was obsessed especially with the winter vibes and tried my best to emulate that. I rewrote the fic as a royal AU as it were, added some other details until it was my own thing and boom. Narratively satisfying ending too. That was certainly very procrastination fueled + inspiration of the moment. But it had been years since I'd last written a full story, and since I had allowed myself to just write without being perfect, so writing this was the single most liberating writing experience of my entire life.
Available on my sideblog but it's handwriting only so I summarised the complete plot here.
The Keeper of the Underwater Graveyard (2023 - aged almost 22)
My most recent piece of writing + most recent feverish writing binge. 20k words.
Žadgailas, a young merman, is treated as if he is a demigod, ruling over the sea and the dead buried in it, but he begins to doubt this and tries to learn the truth. He is very fascinated by the human world above, which he first ever visits on his 15th birthday, meeting a human girl, Lærke, to whom he swears he will never forget her and even search for her again. The two remain loyal to the other, eventually having to suport the other in finding some horrific truths.
Since this was written directly in English and is very available to read, I won't spoil anything else. The main inspirations are Eglė Queen of Serpents and The Little Mermaid, although I changed quite a lot and idk how much it can even be considered a retelling. But I was in a combination of extreme inspiration and extreme procrastination so I just cranked this in like a week. Oh well it happens to the best of us. I think it's a beautiful story in its own right but I think I'm going to inevitably find it flawed soon but oh well.
FANFICTION
I will first say that I've been writing fanfiction since the very beginning. I'm not sure which was first. I scrapped a lot of stuff I did as a tween, because in my early teens I was embarrassed of it, but now I really regret it. During about 2009-2010 I wrote one of my 1st fanfics, namely a Transformers (the Michael Bay one) rewrite + prequel + sequel. Told oh so so dramatically, but also kinda ironically. And a spin-off. I especially insisted upon the sibling rivalry dynamic between Skits and Mudflap... childhood blorbos lmao. I was also doing a lot of comic format fanfics, namely various scenes with Mario characters. One I loved very much but I can never find again, namely their playing football with FF1 characters. And another I even forgot the plot but at the time I was so so excited with it I could literally recite it to my brother.
The coolest adventure of Mario (2011-2012 ish? - aged 10-11)
My very first attempt at writing a play. Mario characters in a mega crossover with other characters, including Lego Ninjago, Transformers, Sonic etc. Peach and Daisy meet in a high-school setting and become friends. They are the popular girls. Kai (ninjago) gets in a fight with Bowser. Mario meets Kirby etc.
Peach throws a party and the villain characters aren't invited etc. The Paper Mario villains show up, as well as the fanon ones. Shadow Queen kidnaps Peach. Mario and Luigi learn of this and go save them etc.
Now the characters being in a more peace time, they go swimming at a water park. Another time they dress up as mafia guys (that one paper Mario thing etc). They compete in the Olympics etc.
But their fun doesn't last because the villains come for revenge so all the heroes team up, but the villains even brought Megatron??? Rosalina appears to help them out at some point. And they use all skills and tools from before, and all characters show up and contribute etc which I find cool. Setup payoff + that's what crossovers are for. Also Optimus casually destroys Megatron with a bazooka. Mario and Peach kiss , curtain falls etc. + party montage lmao.
I took this so so seriously. I did cast my classmates. Really did want to organise this. Some wanted to participate, others backed down. I casted myself as peach and my crush as Mario. The guy was creeped out at the last scene. A lot of kids already thought I was weird so. But hey at the time I did have the guts to straight up write a fanfic play and force my classmates to act in it lmao.
Unnamed FF13 fanfic (late 2012-early 2013 - aged 11-12)
Various retellings of Final Fantasy plots and characters. First one with White Mage and Black Mage from FF1 (as per that game with a Mario crossover). I shipped them a lot frrrr. My blorbos. Basically fluff + Mario crossover. Also a bunch of random drama.
The FF13 again mostly a retelling, but also mostly ship focused. A lot of Lightning + Hope (yeah bro I get it that it's problematic and nowadays I cringe at myself, but I didn't at the time) especially as per FF13-2 etc, a lot of them involving Lightning dying etc. Very dramatic overall. I scrapped a lot of it like legit ripped the pages, cut them up etc.
In my very dramatic phase, which translates into the type of story I liked to write. See my first original novel.
01&02 (2015 - aged 14)
Vocaloid fanfiction in comic form, all on my sketchbook. 50+ pages of comic pages of my longest running comic ever.
The Vocaloids are sentient robots living alongside humans. Rin remembers how she and Len were made by the same inventor a long time ago, and he gave them hearts, metaphorically speaking, as in made them sentient. This was later applied to all Vocaloids.
Fast forward much time later. They live their lives normally, being mostly preoccupied with their performance arts (singing + acting). Many vocaloid songs are reinterpreted as plays they perform, but some get integrated into the main plot. The robots are regularly maintained by the humans, and got them out of trouble etc. These humans were descendants of the original scientists (several generations down the line).
Rin is a gamer/ streamer and makes several online friends, including getting herself a boyfriend (a human tech nerd). But they eventually break up and it ends up badly down the line. In the meantime, Len has a crush on Miku, but she is seemingly more interested in Kaito etc. They even play in several plays together though (like Servant of Evil etc). At some point Miku is also with the same guy Rin used to be with and again it's not good for her etc. However, over time, Len and Miku get along increasingly better, and collaborate on some song/ ad (SPL) and Miku realises she likes him too etc so they get together too.
At this point the story seems like it's mostly romance drama but suddenly they realise something is wrong. The human guy was never so much interested in actual dating as much as gathering data. Now that he had all his resources, he created a virus that affected the vocaloids quite irreparably. It was quite slow acting, however. The human scientists try to find solutions but they don't really manage, despite their best efforts.
Len, Miku, Rin and the others spend a lot of time together like before, but are now more aware of their mortality as it were. Miku one day starts to feel the actual effects of the virus when her voice cracks and it's this shocking emotional moment etc. Len and Miku get married etc and this again is this emotional scene etc. Miku legit just dies. And soon enough every single one of them is infected with the virus with no hope of a cure and they kind of just die one by one. The humans are helpless to find solutions. And the vocaloids are just devastated at their newfound sense of mortality + loss of their friends.
Len dies too, and this affects Rin a lot. She knows she will die quite soon, too, so she sets out on an existential journey. She finally finds the place where her inventor first made her and Len. She looks through his old papers and computers etc, with no hope of finding a cure. She locates her "father's" grave and contemplates her life, the memories she formed with her friends, the miracle of having had this Heart, as well as appreciating life, as she feels closer and closer to death. She falls off her feet, on the ground, next to the graves, but she is smiling and seemingly shedding a small tear.
My main inspirations were: vocaloid songs: Kokoro + the Disappearance of Hatsune Miku, and also a film I saw as a kid about a robot who got more and more human organs until he became human and died. Permanently changed my brain chemistry etc (I loved that movie despite at the time being terrified of robots). I spent like all summer writing and drawing this fanfic, and had great great fun. Literally unrestrained summer fun.
Frozen Parody (april 2016- aged 15)
Frozen retelling as a modern ice skating competition. Comedy/ satire. Only like 10 comic pages so quite short.
Elsa is a child prodigy in ice skating, earning the title of the Ice Queen. However, she has a strained relationship with her sister Anna because of a childhood accident caused by her negligence. While ice skating, Anna broke her back (?) and remained paralysed from the neck down.
Now as adults, they are more independent etc. Elsa runs away to her castle which is actually a private hotel (??) .
Hans is introduced as a "villain" but only in the sense that he's a direct competitor and maybe overly confident that he will win/ a huge sore loser. His main characteristic is not being in power and manipulating others into thinking he's a nice guy, instead being characterised by over competitiveness. He and Anna are in a relationship, but it's very short lived because Anna herself is quite flighty (immature, indecisive) about relationships in general. She almost immediately gets with Kristoff after breaking up with Hans, which makes the latter very jealous.
Desperate to win the contest (as well as maybe out of petty revenge??) Hans cheats by creating a hidden hole in the ice. During the competition, it is Anna who falls in, Elsa having to jump in the cold water to save her (as Anna absolutely cannot swim etc). The day is thus saved. Hans is disqualified from the competition altogether.
Quick flash forward to the future, Anna and Kristoff are married, Elsa happy for them etc. They live at the Ice Hotel (r) (hotel firm owned by Elsa). I just found the notebook at man it's a bit of a mean satire but one joke that stands out is that the trolls (love experts) are refered to as Kristoff's doctor-therapist-fortuneteller parents. I think that should set the tone for how this story is like.
Yeah I was in my "Frozen is cringe and for kids" phase I guess. Ok though but nowadays I like it unironically. No need to mock it lmao. But I'll say only one thing. I gave Hans a more believable motivation in this spoof fanfic than the actual movie lmao.
Do you know what it feels like? (July 2019 - aged 18)
Hetalia human AU, mostly a LietBel ship fic. 14k words.
Two lonely and miserable people meet and think they can fix each other, which temporarily seems to work but it ultimately leads to a very toxic place. Available on my deviantart, ffn and tumblr, so not giving away more of the plot.
I wrote this right in between writing draft 0 and starting outlining draft 1, which was a nice breather (as well as a nice writing binge - I got this out in the span of about 2-3 weeks). I had just read seemingly all fanfic of this ship on ffn (not a lot of it) and was struck by an Idea so I had to write it down as fast as possible. I was in a good place at the time (was writing this in the week before and the one after I got baptised, and I was finally in the summer vacation after a brutal school year namely 11th grade). I think that this reflects in the fact of my writing a story with an optimistic ending, and, while very dramatic because it wouldn't be written by me if it weren't, still full of wholesome moments etc.
UNFINISHED/ ONGOING/ PARTIAL/ ABANDONED
NOVELS
Love is a Choice (summer/autumn 2017- abandoned sometime during mid/late 2018?? - aged 16-17)
My 3rd novel, but it never saw the light of day. It was supposed to be a Christian Victorian romance novel. I only wrote the first 2-3 chapters + a lot of disconnected scenes, outlines (redoing those outlines many times), research sheets etc, concept art etc.
The plot takes place in 1845, in a unnamed town in southern England, not very far from London. The main character is one Ernest, a 30 year old bachelor, the youngest son of a family from the lower nobility/ gentry (so upper middle class to upper class). He is made to marry a certain Jeannine, who comes from a seemingly poorer family but otherwise of significant aristocratic origin (her grandfather was a French marquis but fled France in 1793 due to very obvious reasons). Jeannine was 25 I think and her family was rushing her to get married too etc. Anyway they end up married despite being strangers etc. Ernest is a very neurotic individual, with a clear perfectionistic tendency and general "weird" aura about him. Jeannine is herself very shy and introverted (especially in comparison to her twin sister Georgette), but otherwise a much more relaxed person in comparison to Ernest. He is nerdy and he likes building mechanical stuff like cuckoo clocks etc and Jeannine has more artistic leanings.
Now the main plot was supposed to be their falling in love etc but try as I might I literally couldn't... write anything in the middle, at least not the main plot. There was zero actual chemistry between the two aside from my drawing cute art of them. But I wrote very extensively about the side characters which there were many of. Ernest had several servants, all of which had their own backstory, personality etc, and all of them got along with him very nicely. The main housekeeper/ admin was his old nanny, who just so happened to also be a French immigrant with a sad backstory like Jeannine's grandpa etc. She never had children of her own, but basically adopted Ernest. (The idea here is that Ernest's family was quite bad actually. The mom and dad hated each other. Ernest was never loved by his mother, despite that not being the case with his older siblings, and their father was very absent etc). The cook was married to the gardner, and there was also another couple among them (one of the maids and the stable keeper I think??). The cook's apprentice is an orphan teen that got taken under their wing (Ernest is a teacher figure to her, but he didn't adopt her etc). Generally the household is kind of a found family which is very wholesome. This is meant to contrast the tense situation of Ernest's biological family.
He also has a close friend, Jasper, who is a small business owner (he has an antique shop and I think that's actually how the two met because Ernest was trying to recondition an old clock and looking for parts). He has a wife Gabrielle (you guessed it - also French - I genuinely spent a lot of time researching every detail and yes apparently in the 1st half of the 19th century, it was not uncommon for there to be French immigrants in England, with the French Rebolution + subsequent revolutions + religious persection of the Huguenots) who is a seamstress. (OK now that I mentioned my very specific real world details that I included because I did some research: I imagined Gabrielle was raised Catholic and her parents gave her quite a hard time for having married a Protestant and herself having converted etc. Jeannine and her family I imagined to have been Huguenots - which are basically just Calvinists. Ernest I imagined to be a member of a Reformed Baptist church (at the time it was called Particular Baptist), despite not having been raised that way and ofc, that's just one more thing that his parents would give him trouble for. Given the time + location + already mentioned details, you can safely 100% imagine Ernest would attend Spurgeon's sermons in person).
Ernest had 3 older siblings, two brothers and a sister. The oldest, William, was 40 years old, had a wife Sophia and 5 kids. He was the owner of a factory and very financially successful, but, not unlike his father, was much more caught up in work rather than family etc. He also hung out the wrong kinds of company (doing gambling I think??) and was very much a smoking addict. At some point in the story his health takes a turn for the worse (he faints at some point and he fears that he is developing a heart problem, which scares him back to his senses as it were. He has his come-to-Jesus moment, and then tries to reconcile with his wife and children etc. There's even a montage in which he tries to become healthier so he runs around to lose weight or whatever). The other brother, Frederick, is 38 and is also married, to one Olivia, with whom he has 2 or 3 children I don't remember. He is a believer but his wife is not and that's the beginning of their conflict, but at some point she actually just... cheats on him with some dude. Undergoes a full on Hosea + Gomer arc (and quite explicitly based on that mind you). She realises that the lover she ran away with actually wants to harm her etc so she runs home to her husband, literally in rags etc. And of course he forgives her etc. The sister, Amelia, is 36 and she actually lives far away from the other siblings because she married a northerner. They also have several kids etc, and among all of the siblings, Amelia has the happiest marriage. She was meant to be the good example to the others as it were. During childhood, she was the closest to Ernest, the brothers being rather bullies to him (during adulthood their relationship improved however). The mother was very miserable and bitter despite living a life of comfort and luxury. The father was suffering from some sort of terminal disease (I imagined something like stomach cancer and yes I did google whether they knew cancer was a thing back then - turns out they did but ofc the only solution was to physically remove the tumour by surgery and hope they got it all out basically). The father had also been a very bad parent but now that he was closer to death he was reflecting on his life and feeling regretful etc.
Jeannine's family was much more normal. She had a twin sister, Georgette, who was also unmarried etc (but for some reason nobody rushed to find her a high-class match???) but at some point she falls in love with a gardner/ farmer guy and marries him. The parents were in a good relationship, and were reasonable in the way they raised their daughters. They had no other children aside from them (due to how complicated it was to give birth to twins??). I was undecided in my outlines whether to write the grandpa as still alive or not. Either way he would've been quite elderly at this point. His name was Yves and he ran away because of the Revolution, only fleeing once the king had died (he was very loyal etc). Jeannine's dad was his youngest child (or second to youngest - he had a large family) and he was raised in England his whole life.
Anyway, eventually Ernest and Jeannine fall in love and are finally more of a real couple etc. Part of what drew her to him was the closeness with his servants, and how by being Mistress of the household, she got to be part of this large family too. Most of Ernest's internal conflict was like "this woman I was forced to marry is objectively a good person in every single way but I still can't force myself to fall in love - am I in the wrong here and am I a terrible person for this etc? And he was generally very very very overthinking. Very perfectionistic. Also spending a lot of time feeling guilty over stuff and yeah. More on that later.
The big twist at the end, when Ernest's dad dies (and has a deathbed conversion), is that the reason Ernest was so marginalised as a child is because he was actually his mother's illegitimate son. His "dad" was resentful towards him because his wife cheated on him etc, and his mom hated him because he was a living reminder of her "helpless condition" (cannot just run away with her lover but has to raise child while still living with the husband she despises). However, re: deathbed conversion, Ernest's dad apologises to him and reconciles with him. Some time after the death, Ernest finds that he actually not only is part of the inheritance, but got an equal part to his siblings.
That's where the story ended, and the sequel hook was Ernest finding his biological father etc. On my sketchbooks I drew many scenes etc. But many were of the next generation as it were. The adventures of Ernest and Jeannine's children (4 of them: Alexander, the responsible eldest son, Ada, the rebellious daughter, Justin, also a kind of rebellious son, and Irene, the very sweet daughter. Alexander ended up getting married to Edith, one of Jasper's daughters. She had a crush on him since childhood etc. Irene, maybe by virtue of being the youngest, was closest to her parents. Justin, after finally becoming a responsible adult, got into Law school. Ada, after sorting out her vicious sibling rivalry with Alex, as well as becoming a responsible adult etc, got into journalism. She married a young widower and single father Frank, who ran an independent newspaper. Everybody kind of gets paired off together in some way. Justin is revealed to be the grandfather of Zephyr, from my 2nd novel. Talk about literary universe. Ernest builds a school whose principal he becomes etc. He teaches maths and physics, Jeannine teaches French and History (and over time they get more teachers to hire).
Aside from the unending family trees, the sequel gets very depressing very fast, as all beloved characters just die off one by one. William dies of a heart attack when he is in his mid 50s (despite all the changes he made to better his health??!!!), with a very emotional and gut wrenching scene in which his wife laments how others only find it tragic when a recently married wife gets widowed, but one that was married for 30 years, not so much, despite hurting her much more to know she lost the one she spent 3 decades with. Frederick dies in an accident (gets thrown by his horse). Ernest, now himself middle-aged, with his children grown up (some of them as I said rebellious in their youths, which makes him feel like a bad parent), and both his brothers dead etc, falls into a very deep depression out of which nobody can take him out, not even his beloved wife etc. There is this very dark scene in which he faints due to burnout from how much he had been over working himself, and Jeannine finds him unconscious on the floor etc. But due to how absolutely hopeless and miserable he had acted lately, Jeannine just immediately jumps to the conclusion that he committed suicide, which everybody else believes until Ernest himself wakes up to explain was not the case as he only just fainted after having been awake for several days in a row. He eventually heals after spending some time by the sea and relaxing from his work etc. But I never found a satisfying ending to the sequel. Is that all? Everybody is dead and Ernest doesn't get along with his family anymore? He only barely gets over his depression by hanging out by the sea for a bit?
And this is the moment where I analyse this from a meta perspective. It's almost embarrassing to what degree Ernest's development over the year that I wrote this mirrored my own mental state. At first, I focused on his attention to moral integrity - good! I too was trying to be good. Then I focused on his perfectionism, and guilt. He was feeling guilty for not being able to force himself to fall in love. He was very strict with every detail of his life - in one scene he rearranges his entire library because a book is out of order. Even though he literally commits absolutely no sin whatsoever during the entire narrative, he still acts so guilty like WHYYYY. Why make a character who is morally impeccable but still has the behaviour of one guilty for existing. Oh well he did have a bit of that illegitimate child complex but he didn't even know he was illegitimate until the end so like??? But now in retrospective I'm like oh. Oh. I was very well behaved, unnaturally well behaved for a 17 year old, and still felt the weight of the world with how guilty I felt all the time. I was dealing with horrific intrusive thoughts on the daily, on the hourly basically. I suppose I was aware even then that my Protagonist was basically me in many ways. But I never even allowed him bad thoughts!!! Not even a tiny little "but what if I just stabbed somebody" and have him react in horror or whatever. Which would've explained his guilty attitude etc. But no that's not clean enough for a Christian romance. Yes in hindsight I censored myself a lot in order to fit into that label. Very squeaky clean. No real conflict aside from the side characters who were interesting because they were allowed to have flaws and an actual character arc. But then I started getting art block. Writer's block. My head was literally empty. Except it was very full of all sorts of bad thoughts. But it was empty of my usual ideas etc. I began finding no purpose much less pleasure in my otherwise extremely treasured hobbies. When I did "get inspiration", it was to ruin my main character's happy ever after, make his siblings die tragically, his family life become dramatic and divided, and him be miserable, depressed, overworked and with a middle age crisis, and contemplating suicide. Although he didn't even do that. It would be too inappropriate. So he just fainted from exhaustion I guess. I wrote that scene in December 2017. And then in 2018 didn't manage to come up with much new. I stagnated completely, and almost completely stopped writing and drawing altogether. As you might already know 2018 was the worst year of my life. So it's no wonder I was literally unable to create anything. Sometimes I get sad when I look at my folders and see stuff like 2016 (70 items) 2017 (60 items) 2018 (30 items) 2019 (50 items) etc. Like the decline is so obvious and I know why. But at least, as that "if you have art block that's your brain trying to tell you to do studies", while my original stuff was plummeting, I have some genuine bangers in terms of studies from the summer of 2018.
Overall, the story was supposed to be heartwarming but ended up depressing. It does have all the blueprints to be a beautiful and uplifting one though! The love between characters is still palpable. It only needed to be more real ie not so censored that the main character literally has no flaws, and more of a conflict. Also the sequel was just literally me ruining the source material so I would completely scrap that or at least change it a lot. I'm sometimes very emotional about this unfinished novel. Oh, it was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Its development mirrors my mental state at the time quite accurately. One day I wish to rewrite this. Maybe when I get all my existential questions sorted out, and being more mature I am able to look back at all of this and make sense of it. But I would make it a less squeaky clean story too. I would make Ernest have serious questions about his faith, not this lowkey legalistic lifestyle being treated as "just being a good Christian, let's not ask many questions etc".
The main inspirations were all those period drama films where the woman is married to a husband she isn't in love with so she cheats on him with somebody she is in love with. Trying my absolute best to go the opposite direction of that. Had been reading the Rose of Versailles manga at the time + watching a lot of period dramas. Inspirations from the history I read etc.
NOVELLAS/ SHORT STORIES
The Hacker (October 2013 - with the last additions during spring 2016 - aged 12-15)
A movie script idea I had been writing on and off.
The main premise is a hacker (for whatever reason) trying to create a virus that infects the whole Internet, but one day he passes out in exhaustion in front of his computer and suddenly finds himself in the virtual world. Every app has a human form etc.
The main character, villain-protagonist is a guy named Hans, and the antagonist, arguably a more moral individual, is the mysterious Mr. G. The latter is supposed to be a representation of the entire Internet but a later reveal is that everybody in that virtual world is an isekai'd actual human. And the elusive Mr. G? Is Hans's programmer neighbour, Gerhard. (At first I chose Hans' name arbitrary but then I decided this is actually taking place in Germany because one of the songs I was listening to a lot for inspiration was Berlin by the Piano Guys).
In the virtual world, the virus created by Hans took actual form (it was a black goo/ wave that engulfed everything it touched, destroying it. Whatever it touched, started glitching green then black 0s and 1s, making the characters turn to dust not unlike in infinity war + endgame). The problem was that Mr. G and the others were basically convinced that if they got infected by the virus they would get killed irl too. Said Mr G had two children (teens - the girl representing social media and the boy representing video platforms). Over the course of the story, they both get engulfed by the virus, basically dying. The boy, right before his father's eyes, and the girl, right before Hans' eyes, and he is helpless to stop it, although he had made the virus in the first place. The scene of confrontation between Mr. G and Hans (which I wrote in 2016) hits extremely hard. The rage I drew on his face, as well as the sorrow like man... and if you think about it yeah, this dude really killed Mr. G's children...
At any rate both remember their lives back in the real world (in an early version there was a memory room which showed their flashbacks in video format). Gerhard was a single dad, his wife having left him for whatever reason (mostly to do with his workaholic tendencies). Hans had a girlfriend too and she does make an appearance in the virtual world too, as a sort of mercenary figure (she kind of opposes Hans but not really. She tries to help Mr. G's daughter too but with no success). At the very end, the virus spreads so far that almost everything is destroyed. Mr. G is dying (literally fading away) and shares some last words with Hans. He dies immediately afterwards too.
The two wake up back in the real world, their respective computers not only completely ruined, but literally on fire too. Thankfully, their death in the virtual world doesn't translate into their death irl. But the two still are in danger because the apartments caught fire and they have to escape etc. They make it out alive and mostly uninjured. Gerhard reunites with his children (and his ex is there too, to tell him he cannot look after the kids etc but that gets solved too). Hans goes to prison etc. However, fortunately, it is clear to him that Gerhard finally forgave him. It is implied Hans will get out eventually and resume his life etc, and they'll be friends etc.
The main inspirations were (movies that I had watched for the 1st time in my life at the age of 12 and literally had my mind blown) the Matrix + Inception. I already mentioned the song Berlin by the Piano Guys being used as inspiration etc. And most importantly, because I wouldn't have started writing it if it weren't for reading those, two short stories I read in a Romanian Christian magazine for college students from the early 2000s. One of them was about hacking and the other was about a college student metaphorically rotting away in his dorm room for decades, which to me seemed both horrifying but also a great source of inspiration for the "darker tone" I was going for with my story.
It is unfinished in the sense that I never actually sat down and wrote the script itself. But I finalised the outline back in 2016 so...
Fairy worldbuilding project (starting 2017 ish - aged 16)
Not much of a story but I loved doing worldbuilding. There are fairies who are based on several insects, and each species has a country, its Queen etc. Butterflies are considered frivolous etc but they carry the textile industry. Bees are the hardworking ones etc - food industry. Flies, Moths and Fireflies are nocturnal so they hold meetings at odd hours in order to adjust to the timezone of the others. Ie international meeting between Butterflies and Moths: 10 am but its very early for the Butterfly and very late for the Moth etc. Ladybugs!!! Just all bugs basically fall here. Including scarabs which are like super buff. Actual bugs are stereotyped as dirty etc. Flies are kinda tricksters etc. They get along ish but not really.
The plot if it had one would be internal political conflict in the Butterfly Kingdom. The Queen refuses to step down and let her niece rule. Matriarchal society etc. The Butterfly Queen rules over the others Kingdoms as well etc so it's kind of an Empire. But Ants for example, being mostly terrestrial and wingless, are separate.
This mostly makes sense by looking at the actual artwork. Not much else here. Ongoing forever maybe, it's just for fun. My baby cousins loved watching me draw these.
VAGUE IDEAS
NOVELS
Yet unnamed (January 2023 - aged almost 22)
I wish to rewrite that fanfiction Do you know what it feels like? as an original piece.
NOVELLAS/ SHORT STORIES
Many ideas throughout 2016-2019 but ofc not only.
Untitled medieval story (summer 2019 - aged 18)
Arranged marriage between a prince and a princess. They don't get along at first but eventually fall in love. He was a bit arrogant at first but got better. He had some scars from smallpox as a child etc which is how she gets him to talk about his backstory. He even gets wounded in battle at some point, and by that point she already cared about him etc etc.
In Memoriam (2020/2021 ish - aged 19-20)
A story from the perspective of an old woman seeing her whole life before her eyes. She faints/ almost dies of a heart attack when she looks at the 21 December 1989 memorial, and has a lot of flashbacks in chronological order or not. We learn that she was fervently loyal to the communist party and there seems to be feeling subconsciously guilty over something. The rest would be a spoiler - I genuinely want to write this one day.
I want this to be part of a volume for other short stories, Red Shadows, all in some way related to Romanian communist or post-communist history, all of the characters being at least tangentially connected in some way, thereby unifying the narratives within the volume.
FANFICTION
Untitled (2016/2017 ish - aged 15-16)
A Derpy and Dr. Whooves ship fanfic. Basically combining a human AU with the Pony world. The two meet irl, him being a time traveller, fall in love etc, start a family, but the interdimensional police eventually come after him and catch him, forcibly separating the two. She ends up in the pony world and spends many years there, raising Dinky etc. But one day she manages to reach an interdimensional warp zone and find her long lost husband etc but the police kill him. Thankfully by now she already knew to operate time travel tech so she rewinds time etc before he gets shot and by a combo of time stops, also redirects the bullets etc. They manage to escape from them forever, and live happily etc.
I wish I had written this when I first thought of it, but I basically just daydreamt it and left it.
Betrayed (2018 ish - aged 17)
A Hans fanfic (Frozen) which recontectualises his villain turn not as a random thing neither as a planned thing, but as him going insane from so much betrayal during his lifetime. He tells Anna if only there were somebody to love you not to be cruel, but to make a bitter jab at the fact that he believes her to be cheating on him with Kristoff. Basically Anna's engagement song is taken seriously and not as a joke and Hans is like how can you abandon me so fast etc. He does succumb to madness as it were etc and the events go down and he gets imprisoned etc see the Frozen fever short. So the story would end tragically with him catching some sort of disease, a literal deadly fever, and some nurse being the last person he sees. For a brief moment he remembers the good times with Anna and as he lay dying he calls her name. The nurse, for the sake of comforting a dying man, pretends to recognise him etc and tells him some encouraging words etc. He dies but kind of imagining a more happy version of events in which he just happened to fall sick but at least he saw his fiancee during his last moments.
I did make myself cry with this concept lmao but I never sat down to write it.
The Red Plague (2019 - aged 18)
Hetalia historical fanfic. There is a mysterious lab disease called the red plague. Russia is the first to get sick etc. The plague is supposed to mirror the spread of communism etc and the symptoms are supposed to be both physical but especially psychological, the other characters being horrified at how much their friends chanted for the worse etc.
Yet untitled (january 2023 - aged almost 22)
Maybe I will try that Hamlet with a happy ending lmao why not. I should at least try
____
Of course, there are so so many more stories I have not included, especially the older ones. I will update this every now and again. I hope you enjoy this. I will post pictures too. This masterpost is merely an introduction.
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sabo-has-my-heart · 2 years
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Omgomg I was so surprised and happy that u wrote my ace & sabos lover scenario and it was amazing!!! ❤️❤️❤️ (Funny how you mentioned you’re going through something similar because this is pretty much what I’m going through at home 😩😶‍🌫️) It would make my heart STOP if u continued the last bit to maybe sabos out of town for his business trip.. and Ace n reader are left alone and they’re just hanging out, possibly alcohol gets involved and maybe they kiss??? GAH the thought brings enough butterflies to make me vomit
Warnings: angst, slight cheating, hurt/comfort, 
Word Count: 1160
I actually write most of the fics I receive, the ones I don’t write are either because they didn’t give me enough to go off of and never resent the request after telling them such (Seriously, I need more than “this character in college au, fluff/nsfw/angst”) or because I’ve stared at them for hours and can’t come up with anything. I’m glad you liked it though, I was really thinking about how it should go and what should happen as I was writing it. I’m sorry you’re going through a similar thing, I hope it gets better. btw, this probably will not have the butterflies that you might think.
He still felt bad about having feelings for his brother’s girlfriend, especially after knowing that Sabo knew, but the blond had asked him to make you smile. Vaguely, he wondered what his brother was thinking about. Sabo wouldn’t break up with you just so you could be happy with him, would he? You’d be heartbroken for so many reasons if he did that, you still loved him, just because things were hard right now, didn’t mean you didn’t still love him. Maybe he’d tell you to take a break from the relationship? Spend more time with Ace? You might still be a little crushed, but Ace knew you’d hold out hope that you’d mend things with Sabo while he cheered you up and comforted you. Some, 3 way relationship where both he and his brother got to have you? Wouldn’t that be awkward though? Sabo was his brother, wouldn’t it be weird to both be loving the same girl? Not that they didn’t already both love her, but a three way relationship would mean they were both dating you. He’d be out of town for at least a week, supposedly, though Ace wasn’t really sure. Maybe his brother would try to use this as an excuse to see what happened if you were left alone together, maybe he’d try and catch you doing something or distance himself from you. No, it couldn’t be that, it wasn’t like the blond to do something like that. 
Once more, the two of you were sitting on your living room couch, smiling and laughing at a movie. Your smile was still a little sad and your laugh not quite as loud or as unrestricted, but at least you were a little happier. He was a little more distant than he usually was, he knew he was, but how could he not be? With Sabo knowing how much he loved you, with the guilt of loving his brother’s girl in the first place, of course he’d be a little distant. Something you’d picked up on almost immediately.
“Ace, is there… is something wrong?” you asked once the credits started to roll, making him look at you. Of course you noticed, you were dating Sabo which meant you were smart and observant.
“No, well, yes. It’s just…” Ace sighed, he knew there was no getting around telling you, but that didn’t mean he was happy about telling you, “Sabo… Sabo knows how we feel about each other.” Ace admitted, your eyes widening. He knew, neither of you had said anything, not even to each other, but he knew. 
“He…” your breathing picked up, fear filling your eyes, Ace quickly pulling you into a hug, even as you struggled against him, at least, until you broke down crying.
“Shh, it’s okay. I… I know, when he told me that he figured it out… fuck, I felt like hell. I… I offered to distance myself from you, I apologized, I couldn’t have felt worse. But Sabo, he just… he asked for time to think. He told me about this trip, asked me for time to think, asked me to make you smile while he was gone.” he explained, feeling worse and worse. He was thinking about what Sabo had said to him, you were crying and feeling guilty. But all his brother had asked was to make you smile, Ace held you tighter as you cried. Once you’d finished crying, Ace’s arms still wrapped around you, you felt his lips against your forehead. It was just a comforting forehead kiss, but it still made your heart flutter. Pulling away slightly, you looked into each other’s eyes, your hand caressing his cheek as you slowly met for a real kiss. Pulling back just a little, you once more stared into each other’s eyes before leaning back in, kisses desperate and frantic. Filled with pent up emotions, not just how you felt for each other, but all the pain, the guilt, the need, everything was poured into it, holding each other tightly as if hanging on to each other for dear life, feeling like you were drowning. Perhaps you were. Drowning in your feelings for each other, drowning in your guilt and pain, drowning in your emotional states. So you clung to each other, you kissed each other, and you bared your raw emotions to each other until there was nothing left and you were left shaking but empty. The guilt, the anxiety… the love, everything you had had been put into your kiss, leaving your mind, your soul, empty and numb. But for the first time in a long time, you didn’t feel pain or worry, you just felt tired as you lay your head against his chest, his hand rubbing soothingly up and down your back. Your mind didn’t register the soothing words he whispered, too tired from weeks of your emotions running so high and wild. It wasn’t long before you were asleep in his arms. Ace understood, he could tell how desperate you were, how you held him, how he held you. He still felt guilt and love and sadness, but it was dulled. Grabbing the blanket thrown over the back of the couch, he readjusted the two of you before throwing it over you, letting you sleep as you lay your head against his chest. It was possible that Sabo might come home and see you, it was possible he’d put up secret cameras and was watching you, all Ace could hope for was that his brother would forgive him for holding you like this. Then again, his brother had forgiven him for loving you in general, he’d asked Ace to keep you company. Who knows what was going through his brother’s mind, what his brother would think if he saw this. Sabo’s mind was probably just as frazzled, just as much of a whirlwind, except Sabo didn’t have someone or something to release his pent up emotions on, didn’t have a release for what he was feeling. He could only hope that the trip was helping his brother in some way though.
Ace wasn’t totally correct, Sabo had an outlet, his outlet just happened to be going to the gym to beat the shit out of a punching bag followed by going back to his hotel, staring at a picture of you, and crying. It left him just as raw and empty as it left the two of you, but it was a welcome respite from the storm of emotions. He’d figure this out, figure something out. For him, for his brother, and most importantly, for you. He loved you and right now, all he wanted was to hold you. It was funny, knowing how much his brother cared for you, being away from you for a few days had him yearning to hold you again. He’d work things out later, he’d talk with you and Ace when he got home, he’d make something work.
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jkrockin · 1 year
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fanfic writer ask: director's cut for my love is otherwise
(Don't look at how it's been five days since I got this ask and nobody else remembers I reblogged that director's cut meme last week! Shh! Kayfabe!!)
We're talking about my love is otherwise, the colonial Australia mail order bride AU I wrote for The Terror AU fanzine in 2021.
Well now technically you already have the director's cut- the version that went into the zine was a hair under 6k, and the version on AO3 IS the director's cut, clocking in at 7,432 words of raw uncut linguistic hedonism, and cameos by James Fitzjames, gadabout émigré, who in my heart spends the time in which this fic takes place falling in love with grizzled paddle steamer captain Francis Crozier. (They're not relevant to this story but I do think about their forever unwritten All the Rivers Run AU from time to time.)
The whole piece owes basically everything to two fics: clear as western skies by mwestbelle and Came With Your Faith Unshaken by @drunktuesdayss; the former I read back in the halcyon days of 2009 and kept rattling around in the back of my head, inspiring Thoughts, and the latter I read while going through the Mail Order Brides tag as research, and which got me, sideways fashion, reading Best Friends wrestleboys fic despite not being even vaguely in wrestleboys fandom, not least because everything drunktuesdays writes fucking rips. When I pitched the story for the zine, I'd intended to also set it in a semi-mythologised American Old West, but not only did I struggle to not just completely steal setting notes from the fics I just linked, I dunno! I just liked the idea of setting it literally closer to home, and not putting these English lads into yet another American setting.​ There's not enough fic set in Australia, in my humble opinion.​
Uhh what all can I tell you? The location of Edward's land is not specified very much on purpose, hah, but it's somewhere northwestish of Parramatta, roughly in the Baulkham Hills, Bella Vista, King's Park kind of direction, nebulously on a creek fed out of the Parramatta River. I do live in the Sydney basin myself, albeit a ways further east; at the time that I wrote the fic I didn't have my driver's license- god, that's weird to realise- so I didn't do this at the time, but if I were writing it now, I'd probably have gone and spent a day driving around to reacquaint myself with the Vibe, but I did not do that, so. In my defence, this fic is set in, roughly... uh now I actually don't remember? Early 1870s, I think? And the Vibe has changed considerably in the past 150 years. I spent a fair amount of time with my mother's historical architecture and decorating books to think about what Edward's house would have been like, a lot of which did not make it into the text; I laid it out much like the house I live in, which was built in 1889; my house is Italianate Victorian, rather than the blockier rural mid-Victoriana I went for for Edward's house, but it's not an uncommon layout, having two front and two middle rooms off a central hallway, kitchen/living/pantry area off the back. Again, a fair amount of reading that straight did not make it into the text, but which I like to think adds subtextual flavour.
Other stuff: in this AU, the real life suburb of Dundas Valley is called that because it's where Dundy lives; the background Fitzjames/Crozier thing that's happening, very offscreen; farmhands Tom Hartnell and Magnus Manson are having a soft boy sheepherding romance where they gently touch hands softened by lanolin and share bedrolls and so on; I can't remember if he got mentioned in the fic as it is, but somewhere nearby Irving and Malcolm are also sharing property and lingering glances. There's some flavour in here also from having read novels like The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, Walking the Boundaries by Jackie French, and My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, but I don't know how much that comes through in the cross-dressing gay sex.
(yeah I dropped a reading list for my 7.5k smutty AU fanfiction I do what I LIKE)
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Yesterday I watched this wrestling thing, and it featured Matthew Crosby, and that reminded me of how much I like Matthew Crosby every time I see (or hear) him, which isn’t all that often. That made me decide I should listen to some of his actual comedy, which I’m now going to do, but before I do that, I thought I’d make a list of everything I know about Matthew Crosby:
- Turned up in Catsdown’s dictionary corner a couple of times, was very funny both times. I think I mixed him up with Adam Buxton at first because they both sat in dictionary corner, wore glasses, and discussed something vaguely nerdy.
- I also saw him in an episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats, where I think he said almost nothing.
- Got referenced sometimes on Russell Howard and Jon Richardson’s radio show, and I think he co-hosted the show with Jon sometimes after Russell left, though I haven’t actually heard any of the post-Russell episodes.
- Does a radio show with Ed Gamble, which I also haven’t heard.
- Is wearing a 30 Rock t-shirt in his Wikipedia picture, which immediately makes me like him.
- Co-created and co-wrote Hypothetical. I thought I remembered him appearing on the show at some point, but I just looked it up and he hasn’t.
- Did an episode of Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, in which he talked a lot of shit about Cliff Richard and discussed how he used to be a terrible teacher.
- Used to date Josie Long, so he has to be pretty cool, right? I assume that if Josie Long likes or has ever liked someone, they have to be, at minimum, all right. Like how I don’t know much about Ellis James but I assume he must be cool because Isy Suttie likes him.
- Was referred to by Daniel Kitson, in 2007, as his hipster friend. Given what Kitson himself was like at that time, I cannot imagine how hipster Matthew Crosby must have been to get that title.
- Is in a sketch group called Pappy’s Fun Club that has existed for a long time. They turn up a lot when I watch videos from comedy festivals, even the ones from many years ago. They also have a podcast that I haven’t listened to, but have heard a couple of episodes recently (a regular one and this Christmas special they did) and really, really enjoyed both.
- Did one of those radio show episodes with Daniel Kitson, as part of a series of episodes that Kitson did from 2-6 AM, while at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 2008, with a different comedian as a guest each time. Crosby spent much of the episode rolling his eyes (or doing the audio equivalent of that) about Kitson’s insistence on playing an entire Lucksmiths album all in one go, and trying to show off for his then-new-ish girlfriend, whom he said was listening from England.
My main thought about that one is that Matthew Crosby came off as the most normal of all the guests on those radio episodes, though that might just be because he was following Steve Hall, who wasn’t so much a human radio presenter as a hundred balls of self-loathing stacked on top of each other under a trench coat. Matthew Crosby managed to come off as relatively normal compared to that.
It’s like – okay, you know how everyone in comedy, very much including the heterosexual men, sort of has a crush on Daniel Kitson? It’s like that Heat Magazine thing that people made a lot of jokes about for a few years, with Jon Richardson and Russell Howard being declared people’s weird crushes. Well Daniel Kitson is everyone’s weird crush, in the sense that it causes everyone to be a bit weird while working with or talking about him, and in each case that comes out in a slightly different way. Steve Hall might be in the top position as the person with the weirdest crush on Daniel Kitson (I’d put Stewart Lee in second place, in case anyone’s wondering, though David O’Doherty has to be in the running), and Matthew Crosby on the more normal end of the spectrum. He was able to spend a night doing radio with Daniel Kitson and be, especially compared to the others, almost a normal person about it. My main takeaway from the episode was “Wow, that was surprisingly normal.”
- Did a really accurate parody of annoying fight hype reporters at The Wrestling event yesterday.
Anyway, I think those are all the things I know about Matthew Crosby, before actually listening to any of his comedy, which I shall do soon.
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psalacanthea · 2 years
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WiP Wednesday
slightly early cuz I can’t seem to post anything during the day lately due to being distracted.  A bit of Baldur’s Gate 3 about my Drow bard Zynatheri’s extremely weird and checkered past.  Tagging @oxygenforthewicked and @kirkwalls-dumbest should you want to post something!
...
Wyll gave Zyn an odd look.  “Sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
Fishing out her knife after she was sure he didn’t need any more healing, she crouched down to slice through the vine holding down his left leg as he worked the other one free.  “Oh, sure.  Spent over a decade in a male body.  Maybe closer to fifteen, not sure.  You got out?”
Wyll jerked his leg free, and then grabbed her offered arm to jump over the vines before they could grab him again.  “Looks like.  Thanks for the timely assistance there.”
“Well, if I left you here I’d be slightly more likely to die,” Zyn said, returning her knife to its sheath with a little flip.  Only a bit of showing off.  “Come on.  We’ve got to get a wiggle on if we’re going to make it to the inn.  A proper inn, finally.  Might be able to make a bit of coin if I’m lucky.  Oh gods, and a bath?”
“No, no, no.  You’re not going to go and change the subject so easily,” Wyll protested, taking three jogging steps to catch back up.  
Zyn stifled a sigh, rolling her eyes as she made her way back to the rest of the group.  She turned her back to them, spinning around to face Wyll and walk backwards.  “I could tell you the story but you’re not going to believe it anyways, so why bother?” She turned back around with a flip of her braid and a flick of her hand.
“What did you lie to Wyll about this time?” Shadowheart inquired, the glow in her hands fading as she stepped back from Astarion.  
Zyn threw up her hands, aggrieved.  “I’m saying I’m not lying!  Not lying!  The complete opposite of the thing I generally do!  It was just a passing fucking comment.”
“Woah, woah, I’m only curious.  No need to get your hackles up,” Wyll said amiably.  “And even if I happened to slightly disbelieve you, always willing to suspend it to enjoy a bit of bardic hyperbole, eh?”
“It’s not even-”  Zyn sighed.  Well, as far as prying went, this was a story she didn’t mind telling.  “I was at a soiree held by my patron at the time.  She had particular tastes, and so did most of her associates, so it was that kind of soiree.”
“I hate that I’ve been around you long enough that I know what that means,” Shadowheart sighed, grabbing her pack off the ground.  She slung it on, and picked up her mace from the ground, shaking a bit of viscera off of it.
“And I hate that I wasn’t invited,” Astarion quipped, still looking annoyed as he examined the claw marks in his sleeve.
Zyn ignored his aside with a faint smirk.
“During the group festivities, a wizard asked if I was open to being polymorphed.  I was drunk, so I said yes.  So then I had a dick, which when you think about it is the most boring thing he could have done.  I passed out at some point and when I woke up he was gone, and it was a masque so I never caught his name, and my patron and I had a falling out, and she refused to pay for another polymorph,” she finished, vaguely winded.  
The memory was old, and so too were the emotions associated, but she was vaguely offended for her old self.  “Anyways, it took me over fifteen years to have enough money to fix it because one, I wasn’t in any particular hurry to be female, and two, every time I had the money I’d spend it on something else.”
“I can’t believe you actually had a patron,” Astarion said.  “Was it charity?”
He shoved his sleeve at her, and she sighed and reached for her component pouch.  What a spoiled baby.  It was just a few little tears.  “Yeah, sure, she found me in a crate outside the butcher.  Someone wrote ‘Free Bard to a Bad Home’ on the front.”
“Yes...that does seem accurate.”
“Not the kind of adventure I think I’d enjoy,” Wyll mused.  “Though I suppose after a while you’d get used to it.  Still.  Reckon I’d rather not feel out of place in my own body like that.”
“I’ve never been very attached to being a woman,”  Zyn said absently, casting a quick mending on Astarion’s sleeve with a small sing-song hum.  As the fabric knit itself back together, she lifted her gaze back to Wyll.  “I’d do it again if it was both easy to do and undo, but it’s not.  Wizards.  They’ll do it for free at an orgy, but charge you out the arse any other time.  Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“Truly a struggle for the ages,” Wyll said sympathetically.  Abruptly he stopped, head tilting as he gave a slow, audible sniff.  Turning away, he glanced up at the sky, faintly visible through the trees.  “Is that…smoke?”
Oh no.
“Please don’t tell me that’s in the direction of…”
“The inn.  ‘Fraid so.”
Zyn closed her eyes tightly, taking in a long, cleansing breath.  It didn’t work, as it was, indeed, scented with smoke.  “Fuck.”
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dirty-bosmer · 2 years
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YESSSSS YOU REPOSTED MY FAVOURITE ASKS LIST. Okay: 1, 4, 19, 24, 36, 38 (SORRY I GOT CARRIED AWAY)
OOoooh, thank you bori. Sorry I'm getting to it so late 😩
1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?
Calibri — the default microsoft word font, usually at size 11 or 12 with 6 point spacing after every paragraph.
4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?
In a bad way - utilize. My academic advisors have ruined this word for me 😩 every time they see it they scratch out its eyes and now It's just no longer in my vocab.
19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?
I wrote really shitty poetry in middle school because I was hormonal and sad and thought I was deep lol. It was probably not very good, but I'm too scared to confirm that, and in high school I had zero interest in writing until my senior year. Actually, I did start write Syl's story as part of a companions fic but dropped it like three chapters in (again, not very goof). The turning point for me was the end of the year project for AP Language and Composition. My teacher was super enthusiastic and engaging so I decided "hey let me give this a try." Turns out I was pretty okay!
I did some creative writing in college, but didn't start writing fanfic again until my sophomore year, just for funsies. It was a creative outlet amidst hours and hours in the lab and banging my head against my phsyics book. Now it's something I do almost daily, if not weekly in some form, and I can tell all the practice and the love for reading that I've rekindled is paying off!
24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?
Oh gee, like no time at all 😭 With Nim, I just started writing and followed the Mages Guild and Thieves Guild questlines for direction, then had to find fun ways to tie them together. I had a vague idea where I wanted to take it for part two, but it has been such A MESS and the lack of planning really shows.
I'm definitely spending a lot more time thinking about it for Syl. In talking with some writing friends, I think I'm going to at least want an outline for each chapter, and I'll try to post updates only when when I have the next two or three chapters written out already. I hope I enjoy it! Honestly, it might be less work for me in the end.
36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice…what do you Know?
I saw your answer to this cause I creeped through your blog heehee but it is very much the same. Biology and it's many branches and the toil of academia. Also being an awkward bisexual.
38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?
Hmmm, I don't know if it's all that uncommon, but I am so uncomfortable by my characters sometimes. Mostly Lucien tbh, but every time I re-read his scenes, I'm like wtf Sonny. Why are you writing this, and then I get so sick of myself I look away lol There are scenes like that with Nim too, where I get so upset with her even though I AM THE ONE MAKING HER DO THIS, but I've come to learn that I must enjoy how horrifying it all is, cause why else would I put them through it? It's like reading that horrible book I was telling you about the other day. It was so frustrating and disturbing and even though it was straight up unbearable at times, I still enjoyed reading it 😂 Is writing supposed to be torturous? because it was for me and I like it because I am 40% masochist.
Lmao I can't believe I put those thoughts out into the world.
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gold-andgranite · 9 months
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sweet disaster // the notes + the prologue
hey y’all! ever since finding the tgm community here on tumblr earlier this summer I’ve had a little idea floating around I just couldn’t let go of. after incubating said idea (read: storyboarding and note taking/ visualizing scenes as I’m driving/ having hot girl backyard time/ while washing dishes/ as I am folding laundry/ etc. etc. etc.), I got a first little prologue-y type chapter written up! I have a vague idea of where this fic is headed but I’m allowing myself the creative freedom to not have anything super nailed down yet, and instead just letting this little world evolve however it will. we will find out together! I have missed writing lately, and even though most of my writing over the years has been either academic or free verse poetry, I’m excited to give prose a try! 
a bit of housekeeping: I wrote this initial bit as a second person pov but with a named character (we are JJ). it’s what felt the most comfortable to write, but if it really weirds all y’all out, I’d be willing to accept that constructive criticism and switch to a different pov. I want us to feel immersed, but if it gets clunky (especially with, perhaps, pov changes later on) then I’m willing to change the pov, and that would include tweaking this chapter as well post-posting. 
as far as warnings go? each chapter will have chapter-specific warnings, as needed, but overall this story will touch on mental health issues, a bit of angst, some smut down the road, language, military inaccuracies, etc. basically the usual warnings for most fics on here -- like I said, I will update those warnings for each chapter as they arise. we’re starting off super mellow with just a slight language warning for this teaser trailer appetizer thing. 
okay! I think that about does it for now! I’m really excited to go on this journey with y’all!
-- goldi 
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“JJ, come ON! You have nothing else going on today! You’re taking a day off from working out, you went grocery shopping yesterday, and I know you’re not working later today, either.” She ticks the reasons off on her fingers before throwing a particular withering look your way, dropping her chin to really send the point home. You inhale sharply, lowering the coffee mug from your lips, counterpoints halfway off your tongue, already feeling the words in your mouth – but, well, fuck. As your best friend, roommate, and coworker – you didn’t have counterpoints. And she knew it, fighting her smile at first, being a good sport about it, but you both knew her eyes were twinkling with excitement.
“Okay. Okay.” You put your hands up in surrender, laughing now, as she squeals and rushes forward to throw her arms around you.
“Yay! Yay! Emi said yes, too! I promise, J, it’s gonna be fun. We’ll have fun! It’s something different! And . . .” she smirks, really going heavy on the whole “devil in the angel’s eyes” thing. “I wanna go support our troops, you know?”
At that, you roll your eyes. “Really, Kennedy? This still?”
“YES.” She held your shoulders in her hands, staring directly into your soul. “JJ. My last date was a fuckin’ trainwreck. I can’t do it anymore! I don’t wanna keep sifting through shitty profiles on my phone only to get a go on a lukewarm-at-best, somebody-sedate-me at worst date!!” She’s graduated to shaking your shoulders, a quarter laughing but three quarters serious. Parker, the most recent online dating disaster, was a pretty bad date for her, you knew that – beginning with when he honked and texted “here” to come pick Kennedy up. She hates that shit – you all do, of course. The group chat went feral over that one. 
“I know, Ken. I’m sorry. I’ll go, okay? I’ll be your wingwoman, if you need. I just – I really don’t want you to get hurt, okay? You’ve had your fair share of shitbags, and –”
“JJ, god, I’m not looking for anything serious! This is an attempt at streamlined efficiency more than anything else,” she giggles. “I just wanna go spend my afternoon looking confused at an air show, take in the beauty of the United States military machine” – cue eye roll – “flirt with as many men as possible, and see how many numbers I can get. We’ll be like those women in the USO in the forties! It’s really your patriotic duty, J.”
“My patriotic duty?? USO? Jesus, Ken –” you break off, fully cackling now, coffee set down on the counter a safe distance from where you’re gripping the counter bent over laughing. “Should we bring little American flags to hand out, too?”
That catches her off guard. “I mean . . . I think I’m covered on the tiny flag front . . .” The mischief glints in her eyes over a knowing smile, a language in which only best friends are fluent.
“KENNEDY!” You gasp, pretending to be scandalized. Your best friend could kill a man without laying a single finger on him, you know this, but her penchant for flair still caught you off guard at times. “You are NOT wearing your stars and stripes undies to this air show! I thought you were just getting phone numbers!” 
Kennedy sighs, planting her hands on her hips. “Ohh, but I am, J. I am.” She passes by you, patting your back. “We leave in an hour! Emi is meeting us there!” she sings as she glides down the hallway. “It’s gonna be fuuuuuuuun! You’re gonna have fun, JJ!!”
You turn back to your coffee, threading your fingers through the handle, shaking your head at Kennedy’s antics. You knew she was right; if all you did today was watch your best friend flirt with men in uniform, narrating the encounters documentary-style with Emi, then it’d be worth it. 
Memorable, at the very least.
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andswarwrites · 11 months
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Day 23
I always have the zaniest dreams right before waking up.  Sometimes they get cut short, and I end up wondering how the story would have ended, but other times, they conclude and I jolt awake, as though my brain says: "Story's over, so sleep is over as well.  Have a nice day!"  I once had a nightmare during a thunderstorm, and a thunderclap woke me up, drenched in sweat, and I lay trembling because of how scared I'd been.  Have you ever had such a vivid dream that you awoke and were either tremendously relieved none of it had been real, or tremendously disappointed?
I don't dream every night, but I do dream frequently.  They're invariably weird, ranging from "Where did that even come from?" to "What the heck was that?"; because I'm just wired for storytelling, my brain continues to build scenarios and spin yarns even while I sleep.  I dream about a lot of people I actually know, but sometimes they feature a cast of completely fictional characters, usually with some epic plotlines.  Some are so memorable that I remember them, even years later, like a vague, muddled yet very cool movie I got to see while I slept.
As a kid I loved discussing dreams with friends.  We'd share the craziest, best and scariest stories, and sometimes we would laughingly share the most random dreams with each other.  So imagine my disappointment when I asked my boyfriend, later husband, to tell me about his own dreams, and discovered that he never remembered his.  Apparently it's quite common, but I felt cheated.  After sixteen years of marriage, very occasionally he recalls one, and he tells me about it immediately, because he knows how much I love discussing them.
The concept for Mavis and the Wolf (a novel I completed in 2018) arose so naturally: I wrote about a woman, Mavis, falling asleep and having an incredibly vivid dream.  Then I described her waking up, and trudging through boring, workaday life, waiting to re-enter that dream, and she did.  Every night, she would dream about the same world.  The dream was the adventure.  But then the dream started to spiral out of control, and she couldn't wake up.  As much as she'd enjoyed the dream, she wanted it to end.
I don't know if that plotline qualifies as "fantasy", but it definitely had some fantastic subplots.  I got my whole obsession with dreams out of my system with that story, and since then I wrote a story of exaggerated reality, then I wrote a dystopian novel, and now I'm working on pure science fiction: it takes place hundreds of years in the future on a distant planet.  I wonder if spending so much time in fictional worlds tunes my brain to paint such colorful stories for me while I sleep.  And I'm glad the nightmares are infrequent. 
When I was a child, some bad dreams would wake me up in the middle of the night and I would call out to my parents.  I remember one time it had been so bad I didn't feel safe alone in my room, in the dark, so my parents patiently set up a little cot so I could sleep in their room.  While Dad set up the cot, Mom let me snuggle up beside her, and with an arm around me, she soothed me until I felt sleepy.  They tucked me in and turned out the light.  I'll never forget that feeling of security, of safety.  Sleep no longer eluded me, because of where I was, and who I was with.
N- tells me she has a pathological fear, not of the dark itself, but what might be lurking in the dark.  That reminds me of nighttime as a child, when the half light is even worse than pitch back, because unassuming shapes like blankets and sweaters draped over furniture suddenly take on menacing shapes of creatures with sharp teeth, closing in.  And you can't get out of bed, you can't even stick a toe out from under the sheets and covers, because what if a cold, skeletal hand reaches out and grabs a hold.  Even today, I'm happy there's no space under my bed for monsters to hide.  I know how juvenile that is, you don't have to tell me.
I feel like dreams come with a loophole.  If your dream paints a picture that is disturbing or has a fantasy that is not quite right, you can shrug it off, and say it was just a dream.  Except, can you?  I try not to overanalyze the symbolism and relevance of dreams, that's not exactly my cup of tea.  I have, however done some research when dreams have scared the pants off of me, to find out what they could mean.  At times, they have been triggered by intense stress.  I'm glad I've never had night terrors.  But I've woken up and clung to S-, grateful to have returned to reality.
Will I ever write more dream-related fiction?  Honestly, I would love to.  It's like having carte blanche to simply write whatever you feel like writing, without structure, because what dream even has structure?  None I've ever had.  You can add any element you want, create any plot twist you want, you can follow the story, typing as fast as you can to keep up.  For me, a lot of my stories write themselves.  Events happen that were not planned, they just blurt themselves out onto the page the way you sometimes express a thought you didn't even register before opening your mouth.
I've never really published a book.  I keep accumulating works of fiction, which I let a few select friends and family read.  Of course, even self-publishing would give me a sense of accomplishment.  It's not the objective, however, as far as I'm concerned.  If I re-read my work and I see that it's better than the previous work, that makes me love it.  If I let another person read it, and they like it, goal achieved.  Just one reader is all I ask for.  Everything after that is just gravy.
Sweet dreams.
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