#I KNOW I wrote down a rough timeline of events for all of the story ideas for Fateswap | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

praazlwurm · 2 years

Text

Just heard about #Volotober!

I've been working on a collection of one-off chapters set during the timeline of my fanverse, which starts with pick a god (and pray), and wrote a chunk of prequel fic set during main-game events.

It's partly inspired by a fanart of Volo studying one of the murals in this post. And here's the Picrew credit!

Posting here before ao3 (the collection will go up eventually)

(reading the "fates favorites" fics is optional, just know that Magpie is the player character, 25, and highkey actually isekai'd and not from pokemon-future)

Volo did not intend to encounter her in the icelands – not yet, at least.

He's settled inside a winding cave on the southern end of the region, warmer than some areas but still frigid enough to require the constant companionship of his newly-evolved arcanine. Between her, his lantern, and the folded bedroll he sits cross-legged on, the chill of a howling blizzard is kept out, if barely.

And, between the blizzard and the rapt attention he's giving the mural above his head, he doesn't note the scuffling approach until his arcanine perks up.

A hulking form makes its way into the cave on enormous paws, claws meant for mud resigned to make do with snow. The firelight is barely enough to illuminate a muzzle billowing steam.

Ursaluna barrels down upon him, and in his scramble to escape he knocks over his lantern.

Arcanine rises with him, letting out a sharp bark of warning, and the beast hesitates long enough for him to kick his pack out of the range of sparks.

"Woah!" comes a familiar yelp, and the lord backs up a few steps as the voice's owner slides down from their perch. Then, muffled by cloth, "Sorry! Didn't see you there -- oh, just you, Volo."

"Just me," he responds and scolds himself for the sour note as he puts his little campsite back to rights. He looks up to see her pull up a pair of slit-eyed snow goggles and allows this to excuse her tactless entry; such things were designed to block out as much excess light as possible, after all. He affects cheer as though just recognizing her (as though anyone else in Hisui could arrive with such fanfare.) "Miss Magpie! I hadn't heard you were in the north yet. For Lord Avalugg, I presume?"

An easy lie, seeing as he'd moved north as soon as he heard she had quelled the Lord of the Hollow. He thought this would give him a jump on surreptitiously keeping track of her in the wastes, but of course, such luck wouldn't bear out.

Magpie hums, setting the goggles above the furred brim of a hat and working a finger under the scarf bound around her chin. She shakes off the snow inelegantly, a flat expression barely more readable than total obstruction.

Without a response, Volo's mind races for thought, his prefabricated cover story with Gaeric inapplicable as of yet. He could pose it as resource gathering, assuming she doesn’t know the Guild traded with the Pearl Clan for most northern supplies; or simple bad luck to be caught by the storm, or even that his hand had been forced by--

"Is that Lord Braviary?" she asks.

Her voice is rough, as the lungs are often left by the wastes, but her dark eyes are bright with intrigue. She's looking behind him, and even if he feels his pulse pick up he still finds earnest cheer in his response.

"I suspect so, yes!" He settles his arcanine, but remains standing to gesture broadly. "I happened upon this cave only recently, and what an enthralling find! These etchings match a number found in other places in Hisui, though I've yet to puzzle out the significance."

Magpie moves further into the firelight, tucking her hands into the fold of her uniform. Her neck has to crane a fair bit higher than his, but her mouth moves into a familiar frown of intense focus.

He relaxes just barely, knowing that look well enough to know he can escape her notice for now. He mulls the predicament a little more and can't ignore the twist of ire in his gut.

He'd accepted weeks ago that he would never (legitimately) lay hands on the plates given to her by the lords, and instead kept her trials in his periphery while finding something else to study. A set of ruins in the mirelands had set his search ablaze, and he's been trying to work out the depictions by elimination.

"Luckily I just met him, so it’s a familiar figure. This one…” she trails off. She has yet to look over, so he doesn't put much effort into the show of tapping his chin contemplatively. She cocks her head, pointing to the top line, “It would be a little rude to have some drawn head-on and others not. But this one might be Lord Kleavor, if he’s facing left."

"Truly?" he chirps, with genuine surprise. The nearly colorless drawing had escaped parsing so far. He drags his pack back over and makes to sit, just as she looks over again.

"Mind sharing your bedroll?"

He freezes, thoughts stuttering before catching up. Volo unfolds it from a square pad to a rectangle, offering a smile both thin and saccharine. "For my favorite corpsmember? Never!"

She snorts, and they sit as he pulls a journal into his lap a bit more sedately. He flips to a blank spread, just in case, and sketches out a figure to label as the Lord of the Heartwood.

His gaze flicks up through his bangs, furtive, relieved to see her no longer looking at him but at the mural. Only for his chest to stutter when he sees her looking at the high, far right corner.

"Do you recognize any others?" he asks, light and neutral, leaning into her expertise even when he has his own theories for each figure.

"No," she says, equally neutral, but the wheels are spinning. He can see it in the worrying of her lower lip and, as the focus grows more intense, a gnawing at the cuticle of one thumb.

It's a tic he hasn't noted before, and he must be looking too hard because she shifts to look like she's merely warming her hands. She twitches as he looks away, and buries her hands in her lap.

"What do you think they mean?" she prods after a beat of snow-blown silence. Ursaluna settles down huffily, blocking what little wind could sneak in from the side they entered from just enough to gain a little warmth.

He pauses in his note-taking, looking up at the mural. The furrow in his brow is genuine as he asks, "Mean? I've been thinking it’s depictions of the figures of legend. A proto-pokedex, if you will!"

His chipper jibe slides off her as water from a psyduck's feathers, offering the barest twitch of her chin in denial. Before he can rile, and long before he would need to stifle it, she explains.

"The fact they're lined up so carefully suggests it's not just art. But, this one would impact a lot of translation if it was mistaken for anything," she says, and gestures to one that makes his breath catch.

Bipedal and bearing a vividly pink pinwheel like a shield, he's suspected it to be one of the great trio spoken of reverently in the scant remaining Celestica scriptures. He remains still, wound to strike, behind a blank mask long enough that she opts to fill the silence.

"I don’t think this could be a one-glyph to one-letter translation. It would be a lot of work to pass on such a short phrase, and not a lot of remarkable, three-letter words start with the letter bee, y'know?" she seems to jest. He feels his brows scrunch as he tries to grab hold of her meaning, and when she sees diligence in his curiosity –

She blanches.

Panic is not something he's often seen on the woman's face. Tension, tiredness, even a rare fit of pique when he'd approached her and the two wardens of the highlands.

The way she pales, the suck of breath, the brief flash of the white of her eye; it's all foreign to him, and more alarming than the nonsense sounds she had been spouting a moment ago.

"W-what I mean is," she says, and has her hands up to point at the mural, to twist and flutter articulately, something anyone else might find distracting, "they could s-symbolize ideas of things, like traveling for Braviary or, uh, woodcutting? Fighting, maybe, on the part of Kleavor."

He drags his focus away to at least feign distraction for the moment, desperately pinning this moment to the back of his mind, squarely at the top of the list labeled: Weird Things About the Riftborne.

Then, mind catching up, he sets a hook in this new line of thought eagerly.

"Using pokemon to communicate concepts?" he posits, low and intrigued. Some color returns to her cheeks in his periphery, and he continues, "That would be a fascinating way to pass on messages to future peoples. Prone to losing nuance but otherwise unchanging."

She doesn't respond, and as he's less bothered by the silence he's content with the quiet as he scribbles out line after line. Pausing every so often to turn a page or tap his stick of charcoal against his chin, cautiously noting in his own shorthand the possible 'concepts' behind the few great pokemon he's wary of her knowing about just yet.

Magpie is a terrible fidgeter, he notes as he looks back and forth between his notes and the mural. His bangs being on the side she sits at allows him to sneak glances. To see her tapping along the lines of her knuckles with her fingertips or pinching a hem.

The only one that irks him is the sudden, incongruous popping of her knuckles, wrists, and finally neck – the latter loud enough to make him flinch.

"Are you alr–" he starts.

"Sorry!" she chirps, tucking her hands away again.

He tries not to scrutinize it too much but must fail somewhere because she continues.

"It's just too cold out to add anything to the 'dex notes, and I'm all stocked up on potions, is all."

"It is cold," he grants, allowing himself a little wryness. The barrier he’s constructed between Local Merchant Volo and his fiercely guarded passions is strong enough to allow some gaps of false vulnerability. So long as it means coaxing his way into her trust for the work ahead. He's wrapping up what he's gleaned, so he hazards, "Why are you here, anyway?"

"Ugh, so," and she scooches to lean against ursaluna's side, facing him more directly. "To quell Avalugg, I need a piece of ice, but from a specific mass of ice, but specifically from the bit on top, and to reach that I need to fly up there, except the warden with the burrd," another unrecognizable interjection, "not only won't get it for me, but is making me play tag to even reach the burrd. So I thought, hey, let her stew at Snowpoint for a hot minute and I'll kindly ask Ursa– oh, I forgot!"

She stands abruptly, not minding that Volo is fully reeling from that onslaught.

As he recuperates, she leans down to the pokemon's face, coaxing, "You were onto something, just then right? What'd you smell?"

Ursaluna chuffs, grumbles, and eventually rises enough to cross the frigid stone to the foot of the mural.

He can't place why he tenses, but can equate the feeling to seeing old Calaba among the Solaceon ruins: the wariness of a stranger around his ancestral site, which came just before the shattering realization that the site had been vandalized by another party entirely.

As the beast digs, then retreats enough for Magpie to finish unearthing its find, however, he finds the tension slipping away. In their few, manufactured encounters, he's never known the woman to be glib about a history foreign to her, or treat the aged wonders around them apathetically.

In fact, he thinks as the two trains of thought begin to overlap, her reaction at Solaceon had been... extraordinarily odd.

She had gotten shifty the moment she entered the ruin, not an uncommon reaction, but upon viewing the mural she'd looked ready to bolt.

To say nothing of her reaction to the fragment itself.

On the List of Weird Things About the Riftborne, the third or fourth entry -- depending on the sorting being chronological or in order of significance -- has long been the moment she had hauled the stolen stone through the entrance of the ruin.

For the scant heartbeats before he'd greeted her with customary false cheer (and customary, less-false gratitude) she had looked... electrified.

Not shocked or surprised, but as though the only thing keeping her hair from standing on end was the perpetual weight of wetland air. She barely said a word to Calaba, something the woman took as deference, and moved with a stiltedness that looked downright painful. He had kept an eye on her from afar the rest of that day, half in curiosity and half in an uncharacteristic fear that she would get mauled by something in the depths of the swamp.

After the ruin, however, she had been something fearsome herself. Her already fully evolved partner decidueye had helped her hack and slash her way south, crossing broad rivers with daring leaps he couldn't think to match. When she had returned to the territory of the lord and warden, her pack stuffed and pokeball supply expended, the tension had vanished, placid hyperfocus returning to the matter at hand. A theory forms in his mind that she pours that excess energy into battling, which would explain not only her exceptional skill at battling, but also the fact she seems to spend more time away from Jubilife village than within it.

Volo is yanked from his reverie by her shrill gasp, not quite fast enough to lean away as she scurries to the side of his lantern and kneels in its glow. With near reverent care, something he’s quite literally never witnessed in her before, she unfurls a scrap of enticingly aged vellum and pins down the corners with nearby stones.

“Lords,” he breathes, leaning over fast enough to unbalance himself. In a spill of ink, miraculously unfaded after not seeing the light of day for decades, at least, lines of what can only be verse loop across the page. It’s an ancient form of Hisuian, far closer to the blockish single letters of the Celestica than the modern swipes of syllabic kana. Mind awhirl, it is no great challenge to let his voice lift with curious ignorance, “That… what on earth could that be?”

“Poetry, I think,” she says, and his breath catches. She couldn’t possibly– “I’ve found just a couple others like this. One right near Lord Ursaluna’s home, and one around Cottonsedge.”

She flashes a grin at him, oblivious of his pallor as the expression is so unrestrained as to pinch shut her eyes. A familiar, accursed thump echoes in his eardrums from the vicinity of his chest.

“The second was about sootfoot root, of all things,” she continues, returning focus to the page, “I think implying it to be the predecessor of the potato we use today. This one though…”

Volo watches, pulse fluttering as rapid as a starly’s, as the sky-fallen woman of indeterminate origin and bearer of less-indeterminant godly favor reads out his ancestral tongue.

“When that Pokemon was born,” she reads, stuttering over what ought to be the most commonly spoken word, “intelligence bloomed among us, enriching all our… morrows, which could mean the future in general or the broader human experie–”

She pauses, and he realizes she’s actually looking back at him. He had been so lost in the depths of his own confusion, anger, and awe, that he had been staring at her in dumbfound silence for a few minutes now.

“Volo?”

“You… you can,” he swallows, throwing lassos about his mental moorings to try and leash a coherent thought together, “you can read that?”

Magpie goes very still.

With the wind leeching in from the cave opening at her back, it could be passed off to anyone else as a chill, but Volo sees through that. Sees the way her shoulders fold in just a hair, the scrunch of her brows, the flat turn of her eyes as she retreats into herself, hauls up the drawbridge and readies the portcullis to fall between them.

“A little,” she says, quietly. A hand on the lever, or ready to cut the rope entirely.

In a heaven-sent moment, he snaps back into awareness, knowing with a fire in his chest that this is a moment he cannot lose to the sands of time.

“That’s amazing,” he says, intrigued but stifling any note of awe as he suddenly knows it would only chase her off. It’s disorienting, and to be investigated further, but he knows this is a moment to abandon a layman’s artifice. “It’s an old system of writing, predating modern Hisuian but not so ancient as to be extinct,” he says, feeling a bit like he’s coaxing out a rare pokemon.

Yet, it is in a bid towards equal footing, something he hasn’t stood on with anyone but Cogita. And the Mistress had soured at the very sight of him, refusing to relay anything more than bare bones of Hisui’s legends as though guarding them. Hoarding, he thinks sharply, for some other, better inheritor.

That thought, and the likelihood that he could well be looking at that inheritor now, is enough to anchor him once more in the present, in his own machinations.

Still, Magpie’s lips twitch into a weak smile.

“I’m… glad it’s not another dead language,” she says, eventually, and though the phrasing is baffling he nods to the sentiment. This bolsters her a bit, gaze returning to match his from where it had drifted aside. “I have a couple others I’d be glad to show you, actually, and–”

She pauses, and he catches the barest flick of her focus from his eyes to his chin. She snickers, reaching up a hand.

“You’ve got a bit of–” her fingers stop just short of touching his face, his heart pounding, and snaps back down. Like a groundwater pump, the force of it seems to flood scarlet into her cheeks, and she whips her head away. “Y-you’ve got a bit of black there. On y-your. Face.”

Oh, Arceus, he thinks, and the thought is like taking his own gabite’s Dragon Claw to the chest. He rubs at his chin mindlessly, his eyes wide and downcast. Unbeknownst to either party, both share a giddy, terrifying thought: I’m in trouble.

After about a decade of excruciating silence, Volo finds it in himself to snap back into what has fast become the neutral territory between the two of them.

“I could never deny a chance to read some ancient texts,” he says brightly, and when she dares a glance he plasters on a not-entirely-fake smile and wags his finger, “any more than I could deny my favorite customer!”

It’s the exact right thing to say, he knows with no small amount of pride, as she sinks into the kind of relief only felt by those who escape the notice of the deadliest alphas. She busies herself rolling up the scroll and tucking it away – in her pack, not what she’s bafflingly termed her “quick-ditch satchel.” He hasn’t learned much beyond the term, but thinks she might have it packed with a few essential supplies and a small horde of tempting diversions, as it's designed to provide a last-resort escape.

Volo, in turn, finishes scribing out the last of the hieroglyphic figures before shutting his journal, weighing the risks of asking “where are the other scrolls” or “could we meet again before you return to Jubilife?” Either could be too forward, but he does so ache to know more about these lost, terribly old verses.

In a moment of grace, Magpie offers a solution quite outside the realm of what he’d considered possible.

“Do you want to come with us,” she asks, and motions past him to the Lordly pokemon, “to look for more?”

“Oh, dear me. I see I’ve quite failed,” he says dramatically, and assuages a flicker of alarm by continuing, “to remove any doubt in your mind of my interest in doing so.”

Her grin is blinding, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be quite able to regret inspiring it.

• • • • •

“Keep an eye out for pep-up plants, would you?!” Magpie shouts over the sound of both the wind and the incredible pounding of ursaluna’s paws upon pack ice.

“White flowers in the icelands,” Volo responds, a little quieter as he’s inches away from clinging to her back in fear. “Will do!”

Her laugh is less vocal than it is physical, something he can feel beneath his arms as they’re wrapped around her torso. He keeps his hands clear, gripping his own forearms despite the chill, because he’s learned any sudden pivot of their enormous escort could pitch the two riders into collision.

She had barely waited for the storm to pass before harrying him on board, entirely too confident that she could hold her own position at the reins as he settled in the actual saddle. It wasn’t the worst choice, seeing as they still had some daylight left – anything was better than trying to traverse the wastes at night, even this borderline compromising position and jostling passenger experience.

“Where are we going?” he asks, hoping his voice isn’t lost to the thick fur of his uniform’s neckline, cuffed over his face.

“Wherever the wind takes us,” she answers in jest, then amends, “north, right now. Which is good since I’m supposed to head that wa–”

Ursaluna jerks into a hard bank leftward, surging so much that his spine hits the saddle’s back like a brick wall. Never has he wished so much for his guild backpack, currently lashed to the deepest slope of the pokemon’s back. Nor has he wished so suddenly for some other padding as Magpie is thrown into his front. She lets out a meager oof while he’s entirely winded.

“Northwest,” she amends.

Breathless as he is, it’s not until the lord breaks into a sprint that he yelps, incredulously, “What’s it doing?!”

“He’s got a scent!” Magpie barks, with a little bit of a bounce in her seat. Volo feels it through his arms and, far more notably, where his knees are folded forward around her hips. The woman is oblivious, so it’s up to him to quell his thoughts alone. The lord gallups on, until the distant western hills begin to loom out of the foggy atmosphere, until a sparse forest jabs defiantly from the snow to their right, until– “Stop!”

She hauls on the reins, nearly crashing the crown of her skull into his face in the process. He reels, narrowly avoiding getting winded again by preemptively tightening his hold, and sparks with annoyance for all of a heartbeat.

It’s then that he sees the enormous cavern that’s opened up in front of them, a notorious feature of the wastes known for killing misled travelers by the dozens either in falls, by exposure, or to their… residents.

Ursaluna settles from its near-vertical rear, grumbling, and Magpie gives it a commiserating pat on its enormous, discolored ruff.

“I know what to look for now,” she assures the beast as she slides down from her perch, looking up at Volo with what might be expectance. With the hat, slit-eyed goggles and scarf, not a lick of her expression gets through.

He joins the Lord of the mire in its malcontentedness, gingerly hopping down onto the slick ice which surrounds the mouths of such caverns. He reacquires his pack as, in his periphery, Magpie unloops the obijime beneath her coat, losing the cloth at her waist carelessly.

Lower on the List is that the riftborne either has not learned or does not much care for the proprieties of clothing. She adores them aesthetically, as he'd often grow bored of watching her raid Anthe's newest additions like someone starved of the arts. But barring actual nudity, from the months-ago moment she had wandered out of Galaxy Hall in a pair of trousers cut unconscionably short, she has not adhered to the average feminine Hisuian's sense of modesty.

He angles his cap down for his own sake of mind, and is yet able to see as she proffers one end of the length of gilded rope to their escort. Brow furrowing, he rescinds his aversion to look up and ask, "Why are you…"

Magpie pauses shy of the lip of the cavern, looking for all the world as one about to leap off daringly. She might smile, behind the scarf; it certainly sounds like it when she responds, "Ever heard of free rappelling?"

He very much hasn't and thus very much jolts in surprise when she does step off the ledge. He darts forward, low to the ground to stay balanced, in time to watch her lower herself down five feet or so from the eight-foot drop. Once she touches down, and out of the wind chill, she pulls up the goggles to ensure he can see that entirely barmy smile of hers in her eyes.

"C'mon down, the water's great," she jibes.

Volo looks from her, to the enormous pokemon, to the hazy skies above in search for cosmic leniency. I'm really in trouble.

Then, grasping the rope by both hands and between his thighs in a proper grip, he joins her below.

As does her partner pokemon, an umbreon she had introduced weeks ago as Panos. It spoke volumes that she had reared an eevee just as quickly to this form as she had her earlier rowlet.

Panos fluffs up against the chill, casting off a warm glow as they creep below the shadow cast by the mouth of the cavern.

In a breathless moment, he understands why the umbreon has joined them.

At the far end of a hollow of ice shaped like a distended stomach, a writhing mass of scarlet and whispy white bleeds a weight into the air. Seething malice turns the air acrid in his lungs, and he finds himself gagging on it, hanging back as she forges on.

The zoroark swipes out, wild and ruthless, but is a mite slower than the umbreon, whose effectiveness quickly sees the beast confined to yet another pokeball for further study.

"You don't even know what that was, do you?" he snarks upon seeing a look of blithe curiosity in her eyes. The same he's glimpsed at the mention of any new find. He sighs when she looks up with a tilt to her head, tugging down his now stifling collar. "That was the baneful fox, zoroark. Legends of it abound with the horrors of tragedy and spiteful memory, and it bears ill will on just about every living thing."

"It looks incredibly badass, my guy," she retorts, and before she can catch his bewildered expression at the phrasing, she turns and loops her scarf around Panos' neck and shoulders with a tiny croon of endearment.

Then she's puttering about the perimeter of the icy cavern, drawing out a rudimentary chisel of iron to test for spots of interest. An ore or two later, she ducks down and sinks the iron in a soft spot of densely packed snow rather than ice. She lets out a little, a-hah!

Volo busies himself with digging out his lantern and journal, watching as her pokemon joins her in digging at the snow. He hazards a couple paces closer, only to have her crowd into his light to read the scroll. Then, like it’s only just occurred to her, she looks up to ask,

“Can you also read this?”

“...yes,” he says, straining not to let his aggravation show. He doesn’t want to let on too much but it’s a matter of principle to say, “It’s been a focus of study for me the last few years.”

It throws him entirely to see her deflate – not disappointed, but with a hint of wariness. In the beat of quiet he feels a desperate curiosity as to what all these variables add up to. It’s as she glances away that an answer occurs to him.

She had seen something in the space beyond the rift. She might have clammed up directly after but she had and with Giratina still in the realm of Distortion…

Arceus. Of course.

As his stomach drops out from under him, she buys into his placid mask for once and begins to read.

“Wintry… austere… brimming with strange power,” she recites, pinching the vellum at the corners. “Certainly the land of Hisui bears some resemblance to s-sin… Sin-joh? Lords, it's hard to parse this without capitalization. Do you–”

Magpie finally looks at him, likely catching the tail end of his open shock at the word.

He can’t entirely help it, feeling like he’s balancing on the sheer face of Mt. Coronet. Clinging on meant keeping it all to himself, Sinjoh, Blackthorn, his ancestry. But letting it out meant freefall, a… leap of faith.

Arceus, he thinks; he prays. If ever you deigned to listen to me, or my people, speak to me now. Guide me.

Into the resounding silence, Magpie prompts, “Hey, Volo?”

He looks at her, every muscle wound tight as the springs in a pocket watch, watching as a gentle, coaxing smile curls her lips.

“Let’s get out of the cold.”

• • • • •

“Aren’t you meant to be seeking out the Warden at Snowpoint?” he asks, lightly, as he steps into the hot spring to join her. Magpie hums without looking up, resting her head against the stone and letting her legs rise to the surface. He looks away, focusing on the soaking heat rising past his hips.

“This is what’s called ‘marinating’ the enemy,” she eventually responds, cracking open her eyes.

“So not only do you make an enemy of a child,” he echoes, unable to stifle a chuckle as he sits down, “but you treat her like a serving of stewmeat?”

“It refers to–” she halts. Behind eyes drifted shut in his pleasure at the heat, he hears her breath catch. “That is, I – ugh, just shut up.”

Volo relents to a laugh, savoring the slow unwinding of tension from his muscles. With nightfall, the wastes drop to nigh uninhabitable temperatures, populated only by pokemon with ice at their cores and the rageful ghosts of anything foolish enough to brave traveling. In contrast, the hot spring she had led them to just west of the cavern below is searingly hot, leeching a mist into the air that shrouds it like a land forbidden from mortal sight.

“You know, there’s an old legend about this place holding the secret to immortality,” he sighs, keeping his eyes shut, half out of courtesy. The both of them had only their own undergarments to swim in, and as much as the riftborne intrigues him he’ll not go so low as to seduce her to his whims.

“I have a working theory,” she answers after a beat, and her tone is sly, “that anyone advertising a path to eternal legacy is actually hawking aphrodisiacs.”

His head tilted skyward, he allows himself just a beat of gobsmacked surprise. Now who isn't above seduction?

“Don’t you think I of all people would know of such a thing,” he jibes instead, finally looking at her from across the eddies of steam. He waits just long enough to spot a flush before continuing, “As a member of the inimitable Gingko guild?”

“They would sell it,” she says with just a whiff of disparagement.

“Only to the worthy,” he responds, and props himself up on his elbows when she actually engages the baited comment.

“Who would you consider worthy, wise guildsman?”

Volo looks at her, for once entirely undistracted by her near nudity and far more enthralled by the flare of curiosity in her eyes. After a long moment stewing, he offers, “I should think the most deserving people would be the kindhearted.”

“Not the just,” she asks, and he can see her hands move beneath the water, scooping up her ankles to sit crosslegged on the shelf of rock beneath her. “Or perhaps the clever?”

“There are very few arbiters of justice deserving of an everlasting life,” he mutters and traces an eddy into the water, ever preoccupied by questions of the character of his deity. He sighs, continuing, “And as for the clever…”

“It would be cruel, I think, to inflict two curses on the same soul,” she offers.

A spark races up his spine, electrifying, as he reevaluates nearly every preconception of the riftborne he’s maintained. He dares to breathe, “Curses?”

Magpie hums, mulling this in turn. “I think so. To be so curious and adept at questing for knowledge, and be given an eternity to pursue it? The experience might be interesting, but I think the older you get, the less sane you can stand to be.”

Volo remains quiet, watching her with what some might mistake as a heated gaze, though it is flush with a different kind of desperation. He so, so rarely stumbles upon someone both aware enough to engage such ideas and willing to talk to him, of all people.

“Kids are the sanest of anyone, never so insistent on making rules or forcing the world to fit into so many boxes,” is all she offers after some time, looking once more heavenward to study the skies.

Rivulets trace the column of her throat. With the moon all of a sliver of silver above, the only light is offered by the stars as they spill out across a velvety, celestial cloak.

“Christ,” her lips spill yet another foreign phrase, “what a sky.”

He could interrogate; could prod in jest at the dissonance between her apparent envy of children and her current avoidance of the waiting Diamond clan warden; could move closer across the pool and ensnare her while her mind seems adrift; could force the knowledge of the higher powers at play in Hisui with the ease of twisting a limb.

But for the moment, and for the night, he chooses to remain quiet. To listen to the gentle rasp of water on stone, the occasion doleful cry of a froslass, the wind over the wastes. To be still, wait for the morning and its renewal to approach.

He tells himself it isn’t fear that makes him turn down her offer of companionable travel at dawn. That it isn’t a twist of bitter anger that he feels when he thinks of her connection with the Lord above all, with his heritage. That it isn’t mourning, when he thinks of betrayals to come.

That he doesn’t hope she’ll forgive them.

[preceding the events of pick a god (and pray)]

Happy Volotober!

#volotober #volo #pokemon volo #volo pokemon #pokemon legends arceus #pokemon #pokemon fanfiction #volo/oc #my brother in christ i cannot escape this verse

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fredrickzoller · 1 year

Note

How do you think they started hooking up? Due to Dieter internalised homophobia, I doubt he would makes moves towards a man who much more powerful than him in terms of career and rank. Maybe you wrote a story and I just didn’t read. Also I hope you aren’t tired of my questions, im on my “obsessed obsessed obsessed” phase of shipping rn loool

No, I love your questions, anon! I love getting to think about them all over again and I love hearing peoples' takes on them as well.

It took me a while because I can't really go into this without delving into the territory of non-con, and i have to be in the right headspace to like, dive into this. So, yeah, behind the cut because talk of non-con/sexual assault.

(Also, as a note, this is a very abridged version of everything because again I hope to expand upon it more in upcoming fics)

So in the timeline I have for Landstrom, they start hooking up in 1934 (as per "Tease Rough") shortly before the Night of the Long Knives. For those unfamiliar with the event, uh, quick and dirty is that basically Hitler wanted to purge anyone from his ranks he felt was undermining/against him/not conducive to his "vision" for Germany and that included his main homie, Ernst Roehm, who was as "out" as a gay man could be in 1930s Germany. (Like, secret-but-not-a-secret, you feel me?)

So like the point of this is, before Roehm was murdered, homosexuality within the SA and the SS was way more… I mean not "accepted" per se but it was just like, a blind eye was turned to it. Only after Roehm's death and Himmler taking over (the SA was dissolved and what was left was absorbed into the SS) did they start really cracking down on homosexuality within the organization, and then of course persecute citizens who "practiced" it.

In my hcs for Dieter, he joins the SS at a young age (18/19, so around its inception, which would make sense if he's already at major at 34) and at first he's thinking like, okay, discipline and purpose will help rid me whatever the fuck I got going on but then it's like oh. Wait. I can maybe find an advantage here.

For all his internalized homophobia, I think he is also quite audacious (as witnessed in how he interacts with Hugo and Archie, and he seems a bit flippant even with Goebbels, which is… lol probably not wise), and he knows he's attractive in a boyish way. So, yeah he doesn't necessarily proposition officers but he makes it very clear that he's available in exchange for however they might be able to assist him. He's young and reckless and arrogant. He does not think he will be caught or subject to punishment so long as he proves and ingratiates himself, in which case he will have protection (but you know, he's also not above selling people out if need be. I haven't a particular instance in mind but I can ABSOLUTELY imagine he'd play the victim if he were suspected of any of this, because of course he would. His whole life is about playing the victim wah poor me.)

But there's more to it - to him actively seeking out partners (including Hans).

And this is where the non-con/assault comes in. But my hc for him is that he's a victim of rape, his first "boyfriend" when he's 14 and his bf is 17 - and him putting himself out there to sleep with other superior officers to get ahead is yes, exactly what it says on the tin (getting ahead, whoring his way up the ranks) but also self-inflicted punishment, what he feels is deserved for what he "let" happen, and for this behavior he's letting rule him, unchecked. He does not like bottoming but he does it, accepts it, because he feels it's deserved - for this thing he doesn't really want to do (or, shouldn't want to do) but is doing anyway, this is his punishment. It's some fucked up shit that never really gets resolved (of course) and that Hans only sort of? pieces together because he only finds out certain details (about the boyfriend/the rape trauma etc).

As for who starts it, it's addressed in the 2nd chapter of "Preoccupied" that Dieter is the one to proposition Hans (very bluntly, might I add), and this is what draws Hans to him - just that he'd be so brazen about it. Of course, Dieter is a fucking moron and thinks that this means he has any sort of power over Hans, which we know is not true lmao. (Again, this is gone into, in Tease Rough, how Dieter thinks he's in charge and hasn't figured Hans out enough to realize it.)

Hans isn't the first man he tops with, but obviously Dieter is drawn to wanting to continue whatever the fuck they start, because he knows that will rarely, if ever, be an option. He doesn't have to relive the trauma each and every time, which, okay. Like good, I guess? In his mind, any way.

(Also, after Night of the Long Knives, Dieter definitely does not seek out other officers as partners, and lucky for him, many of the men he's been with [I say 'many' but I can't imagine it actually being more than a handful] he either does not see again or they are dealt with. Not all, but most.)

I just personally see Hans as being very turned on and intrigued by people who show that sort of audacity, because it's a nice challenge for him - very stimulating to try and figure out how to one-up them, in the end (tangentially, this is my hc for Hans and Bridget's tryst too, that he's drawn to her being able to keep up with him, banter-wise). I think Hans would be bored by someone who would just give in to his advances immediately, which I have him hinting at has been the case in the past with the few men he's hooked up with - that they submit to him quickly and he's just like yawwnnnn.

And part of the reason Dieter propositions him so confidentally is because he has a Source in re: to the fact that Hans enjoys being with other men.

And this Source will make an appearance in my next Landstrom fic. :)

#landa #hellstrom #ship: landstrom #cw rape #thank you anon!

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pandoras-princess · 3 years

Text

Next Best Thing (Tommy Shelby x fem!reader, John Shelby x fem!reader)

*gif not mine//credit to owner

A/N: Hello my lovelies! 🌸 Welcome to my first ever Peaky Blinders fic, I wrote it ages ago and have just edited it slightly so my apologies if the quality isn’t greaaat but the other parts will be better I promise! 😅 This is an AU fanfic where John never married Martha or had kids before he married Esme and there is no Grace for Tommy andddd the timeline is absolutely wack, I know it’s a lot so if you’re in the market for a traditional by the book Peaky Blinders fic this one is not for you I’m afraid 🤗 also if you’re finding it a bit slow I advise you to hang in there until after the time skip because that’s the better half of this part in my opinion, nevertheless I seriously enjoyed writing this so Happy Reading Peoples! 🥳🥳 as ever I appreciate every like, reblog and follow, feedback is forever welcome 😌

Summary: Being the bestfriend of Jonathan Shelby meant that you’d grown up attached at the hip. And considering you were hopelessly in love with him, life was eventful to say the least. With John marrying Esme you decide it’s high time you got over him. And as they say the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else...

Pairing: (OOC) Thomas Shelby x fem!reader, John Shelby x fem!reader

Warnings: Swearing, violence, smoking and drinking, mentions of addiction, mentions of sex but no smut I’m afraid

PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR

━◦ ♡ ◦━◦ ♡ ◦━◦━◦ ♡ ◦━◦ ♡ ◦━

Being John Shelby's best friend was definitely not an easy job.

You and John were the exact same age, born on the same day of the same month of the same year, precisely one hour and eleven minutes apart, and since your family only lived one house away from the Shelby's it was a given that you and John would grow up to be best friends.

You were as good as family to them, so when your father was killed in the war and your mother unable to cope turned to the drink and drugs, you were left officially orphaned at age 10 and Polly arranged for you to live with them, raising you as her own.

Growing up with the Shelby's came with it's challenges. They were all fiercely protective of you but no one more so than John. When you were kids he'd beat up anyone that dare made you cry, or sad or angry or anything other than happy really, and as you grew older and began to date he'd scare away anyone deemed not up to scratch, which seemed to be pretty much all of them, threatening violence known around Small Heath as common behaviour for the Peaky Blinders. This meant that you never really had a boyfriend, or many boys interested in you at all for that matter, and any who were rarely had the balls to act on it for fear of the Peaky Blinders wrath. However this didn't bother you much as there was only ever one boy you truly wanted interested in you, the one boy who never would be interested in you.

Of course being a teenage girl you'd had your silly crushes, Tommy being one of them. But they all paled in comparison to what you felt for John.

Being best friends meant that the two of you spent practically all of your time together, did everything together, went through and dealt with everything together. He had always been your shoulder to cry on, your ear to bend, your hugs and smiles and laughs, your safe place. It was inevitable that you'd fall for him. And fall for him you did, painfully obvious to everyone except John himself.

Shortly after your 16th birthday, you were reading a book by the fire, a woven blanket strewn across your legs and a steaming mug of hot chocolate warming your hands when John bursts into the house loud, drunk and jolly. He often snuck out to join his brothers in their shenanigans - whether it be business or pleasure - and you were all too happy to listen to his stories when he came home.

You watched John intently as he regaled to you his latest night out. You watched the corners of his mouth twitch ever so slightly as he spoke, a smug smile tracing his lips every so often. His eyes glistened from the whiskey and his lips were wet. A cigarette clasped lazily between his fingers, his eyes closed for a split second whenever he took a drag. Deep in admiration of the boy sitting in front of you, you didn't quite notice the change of events in the story.

"-and then she walked right up to me and kissed me!"

It was at that point that your attention snapped back, ears pricking up and heart racing as you go over what he'd just said. But too excited to wait, John didn't give you the chance to work out if you had misheard him.

"Well before I know it she's got me in the back alley dress hiked up going at me like a feral she was. Can ya believe it after all this time I'm finally a man aha!" John exclaims, a goofy, ear-splitting grin plastered on his face.

He spares any explicit details, knowing it was no way to talk with a lady no matter how close they are to you or how drunk you may happen to be. Nevertheless, upon hearing those final words coupled with the look of pure elation on his face, your heart shatters into millions of ice cold shards right before your eyes. The pain that was rapidly building in your chest and the image of John with some tart, skirt bunched around her waist fucking like dogs in the alley was too much for you to bear. A wave of nausea washes over you and you stand abruptly, dashing to the loo before the contents of your stomach emptied onto the carpet.

A few minutes later you hear faint knocks on the door.

“Ye alright in there love?” John asks, concern lacing his words.

“All good” you reply quickly, willing your voice to steady itself.

Wiping the sheen of sweat from your forehead you collapse into a heap against the wall, and a sigh escapes your lips as you wrack your brain for the exact moment you had lost him. While John had never shown any signs of liking you, you were always able to draw hope from the relationship you two had, no matter how blind it may have been. Now though, he had dashed that hope, blind or otherwise, as he had given himself to someone else. He had openly chosen not to be with you.

Not to be yours.

Fobbing John off with some excuse about a dodgy dinner you quickly retreat to bed, going without giving him a hug, unable to bring yourself to touch him. And from that day onwards you lived with the knowledge that your love was unrequited. You lived with loving him, and him not loving you.

For the most part it was rather easy. John wasn't the kind for serious relationships - preferring causal sex to the committed kind - so you never really had to deal with any girlfriends or the lark, just the occasional tart interested in him on the rare nights out you tagged along. Even then, you soon learned not to go on any nights out without Ava or Polly present and so the issue of John and his women quickly became dormant. That was, however, until John agreed to marry Esme Lee.

Tommy came to you before asking John, asking for your help in convincing him. He knew John would come to you with it asking for advice before deciding. Tommy explained his plan, marry John off to the Lee girl forcing them to squash the war and join forces to overthrow Billy Kimber. It was simple enough and since you'd already accepted there was never to be a you and John, you agreed.

The time came and sure enough John came to you, confused and somewhat annoyed at Tommy's rough handed approach, and sure enough you stayed true to your word, telling him it was nothing new, people had arranged marriages all the time.

So on he went to marry her, your true feelings unknown to the man.

[2 years later]

"You shouldn't be working here you know. John certainly wouldn't like it" Tommy said, a smile tugging at his lips as he watched you carefully wipe down the bar surface. He was referring to your new job as barmaid in the Garrison and having just finished your first shift you were cleaning up. Last orders had been and gone and every punter had now left the pub, drunk and merry on their ways.

After John married Esme you spent the next two years much to yourself. You embraced the spinster lifestyle and faded away into the passing days. However it was the turn of a new year and to everyone's joy you'd come to your senses, deciding it was high time you stopped wasting your life moping after John. He didn't love you - that much was clear - but somebody out there must and so it was time for you to move on, you thought. Reinvent yourself. This 'new you' started with marching into Tommy's office and demanding the new barmaid job. Surprisingly he offered no resistance, merely a quizzical look at your sudden determination before giving you the job. So here you were, your first shift done and nobody left in the place but you and your new boss.

"Well it might surprise you to know, Mr Shelby, but I don't abide my decisions by what John would or would not like me doing" you reply. Finishing up you leave the cloth on the bar and make your way over to the table, taking the chair adjacent to his.

"Is that so?" He asks, his piercing blue eyes meeting yours as he offers you a cigarette. You accept, bending down slightly to the offered flame and without breaking eye contact, you light the cigarette and take a drag, exhaling as you sit back up.

"Yes, Thomas, that is so" you reply, the use of his name making clear your exasperation with the questioning.

"Very well then, a toast-" he picks up the bottle of whiskey and pours some into each glass, placing one in front of you and taking one himself "-to your new job, and to your new found freedom" he says, locking eyes with you on his last words and clinking your glass before you both down it. If growing up with the Shelby's had taught you one thing it was how to hold your liquor.

Soon you and Tommy were halfway through the bottle and quite drunk, too caught up in the fun to notice. It was now something past 3 in the morning; you and Tommy had been talking, drinking and laughing for nigh on 3 hours now, going through old stories of your childhoods, stories from before you were born and from afterwards, stories of your parents and stories of his.

"So tell me, what is the meaning behind this sudden change in you then?" Tommy inquired, only too happy to see your old self back again.

Before you knew it the whiskey had gotten the better of you and you found yourself telling him the reason. You told him about John, about your love for him, about that night and about how you'd come to terms with it and decided to move on.

"Besides, it's not like he was the first boy I ever liked, so I'm quite sure he won't be the last" you state matter of factly, unaware of the storm you had just brewed.

See, unbeknown to you, Tommy was fully aware of everything you had just poured out to him. He knew about your love for John. He knew the deepest parts of your heart, your mind, your soul. Every crush and fling you'd ever experienced Tommy knew all about it, thanks to a little book you liked to keep hidden under your mattress. You had been detailing all matters of yourself in that little black journal for as long as you could write. Polly happily replacing it when you found your current one full, it was much easier than finding a shoulder to cry on every time you needed one. When Tommy came across it he had no idea what it was, merely out of curiosity did he open it and start reading.

"Oh, who was?" Tommy asked, lighting another cigarette. Following suit you decide to take a minute to weigh up your options, drinking in the smoke as you did.

"You” your voice remains deceptively steady, not wanting the man watching you so closely, so attentively, to become aware of the raging swarm of butterflies occupying your stomach.

"Is that so?" Tommy pulls on his own cigarette, the smoke rising from his lips as his eyes lock onto yours. "So what changed then?" His eyebrow arches perfectly, a smirk gracing his lips.

"You're 4 years older than me! There was no way you'd ever look at me as anything other than an annoying little sister!” You say in a chuckle, the fiery whiskey encompassing all of your thoughts in a humorous glow.

"And if I told you I do look at you as something other than an annoying little sister?" His eyes flick to your lips for a millisecond before returning to your own (E/C) orbs. If you’d have blinked you would’ve missed it, but your full attention being fixed on the man before you meant that you hadn’t.

"Well... that would certainly change things." The possibility of one of your fantasy's coming true ignited you to your very core.

Silently, Tom rises from his seat and offers his hand to you. You take it, and he leads you to his office with the worst of intentions in mind.

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a-snow-decahedron · 3 years

Note

alphys and flowey, with 22!

I'm so sorry for taking so long. Here we go. 22: books (from this prompt list)

This is for Alphys week! -> Day 6: Flowers

(who said it had to be several flowers?)

Crumpled Paper

Words: 1300

Read on AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33809740

The first time he met the royal scientist, it had been during a visit she made to the castle, a day after he had emerged in his fath- Asgore's garden, crying out for help for the first time. She carried a bag, which she dropped the moment the king informed her of his finding. She examined him, checking on his magic levels, and as she worked, her face could barely hide her worries. Through stuttering words Dr. Alphys gave her report: she said he had no SOUL, but besides the fact, he seemed fine. She came by every few days to check his stats, apologizing profusely every time. What for? She couldn't explain herself without stumbling on her words, but he got something about an experiment. But it would be fine, she assured him!

He wasn't fine, he couldn't feel, no matter how much he tried. He was not the same and it wasn't worth it to keep trying.

But then he discovered the real power behind determination. Curiosity led him to various places, and soon he found himself outside of the scientist's laboratory. She hid something, and he was determined to find out.

* * *

"Howdy!"

Alphys was startled by the sudden voice. She was back from a trip to the dump, holding a bag full of cans and metallic wastes. At this time of the day, she didn't expect to find anyone outside the lab.

A flower stood by the door, giving her a toothy smile.

"Howdy, doctor! Have we met before?" The flower snickered and winked, as if there was an inside joke she didn't get.

She recognized the kind of flower on sight, after all, she had worked with them during the last weeks. But just like her other experiments, it seemed determination didn't have the expected effects. She rememebered taking the vessels back to the garden and...

Oh no.

Not THIS too.

She tried forming a sentence. But what could she say? She felt herself start sweating, her breathing getting faster. She swallowed and managed to say "We do not know each o- but you said that we do..." She decided to set for a question. "Do you want to... come in?"

The flower's expression was blank for a moment as if considering his options, then he smiled. "Sure! Get me inside!" Alphys sighed in relief. This shouldn't be difficult, right? They could just... take their time to talk.

After some arrangements, she managed to fit the flower in her bag to carry him and set him in her workbench. His small black eyes examined the room, eagerly looking for something. What it was, Alphys couldn't tell.

She was filled with questions of her own. Dozens of theories were running in her head, but she feared the flower wouldnt be able to answer them. She watched him as he tried to pick up one of the books resting on her desk. They were too heavy to lift.

"Do you... want my help?" She held the book for him, which had a winged hero on the cover. She opened it on a random page, so they could both look at the drawings.

"What does it say?" He pointed at one of the speech bubbles.

"What?" Alphys was distracted looking at the pose one of the main characters, a human with human ears, was making.

"On the book. The handwriting's weird."

"Oh that... I'm not sure. It seems it's a human language, but it's not like the one we speak. I think it's called Japanese. It comes from the land where they make cool things like anime and..." She started going through the list of every little fact she learnt about the land through her TV shows, but the flower interrupted her.

"Why do you have a book you can't read?"

"It's called manga." She was quick to correct. "I'm learning how to read and write! I've been looking for books in the dump that can teach you how."

"Is that what you do as a sicentist?" He raised an eyebrow, which was as white as the rest of his face.

"N-no, but it's something... I do sometimes, when I have the time."

"Cool! Can you teach me?"

"To read Japanese?"

"No, I'll pass, it sounds complicated. My sibling would have liked it. They are such a nerd, always saying weird words."

Would that mean...? Oh no, one animated flower is a thing but more? Alphys would be screwed.

The flower opened his eyes wide at his words and he stuck his tongue out in thoguht, as if he was solving a mental puzzle. Alphys waited, was it the right move to ask questions? Would it scare the flower?

"Ah, my tongue slipped. I guess I'll have to tell you. But later, OK?" A part of Alphys wanted to turn to dust right there, a different part wanted to spit out every question that crossed her mind, but the saner part of her decided it was best to play along. Anything to make this less awkward.

The flower found a solution sooner than her. "Why don't you... teach me how to write? I don't know if I can." He looked down at his vines.

"Yeah, sure. let me grab some paper and pencils." Alphys felt the tension dissipate as they changed topics.

"Do you have color pencils too?"

"Uhm, we'll see what I can get."

Alphys found a box of pencils next to her computer, on top of a pile of paper detailing her blueprint ideas, a few scratched projects and a personal story she was working on. Her handwriting made her the least suitable for the job, but the flower was content with her lessons. They chatted about mundane topics, forgetting their situation for a moment. He was reluctant to tell her his name, and never mentioned the "sibling" again, but both of them seemed at ease.

"Do you wanna... stay here tonight? Or do you need to go to the garden?" He considered his options, then shook his head. Alphys leaned to look at the paper, it seemed her friend grew tired of writing and made a drawing. "What's that?"

"It's me! Well, not me me, but my cooler form!" It showed a winged godlike creature, shooting stars out of his hands. He was surrounded by a rainbow cloud.

"Oh! You drew inspiration from the manga I showed you?"

"Maybe? But this is way better!" He was grinning, proud of his successful creation. It took him some time to get used to grabbing pencils with his vines. Even though he couldn't make small things, his grasp was good enough to make a rough sketch.

"I like it! Give it a name!"

"What would they name it... " He whispered, barely audible. "Ah! I know what."

He took a black marker, and with a strange kind of handwriting and in all uppercase he wrote:

"THE ABSOLUTE GOD OF HYPERDEATH"

For the rest of the timeline, the drawing was put on the fridge with a magnet. He didn't get much information about the scientist that night, and saw less of her with every passing day

When he found out why, he reset. Many timelines went by. The ghost of the drawing was forgotten, but his ability to grab things stayed.

* * *

Alphys walked into the lab, putting on her labcoat over her dress. Her day was eventful, and her confession marked the start of a new time. She was feeling... better? Sure, her confidence had a long way to go, but she could handle it one thing at a time. Her smile dropped when she found a crumpled piece of paper, with a message scribbled with a black marker. It was a strange kind of handwriting, in all uppercase.

It read: "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID"

#alphys #flowey #fic #undertale #safeutdr #alphysweek2021 #i hope you enjoyed

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dgcatanisiri · 2 years

Text

Much as I love the Star Trek novels, and the whole timeline established for 24th century Trek after DS9, Voyager, and then Nemesis, I DO have to scratch my head at why, apparently, 2012 to 2014 called for a mad dash through the timeline. In the span of about twelve books, they go from February 2383 to November 2385, and for no real reason. And they don’t ever really fill in the blanks there, to the point that it basically comes across that nothing happens in that timeframe... Which is just BAFFLING to me, since this is the time that the doors are open TO do wild and crazy things with the characters.

After all, in this continuity, Picard and Crusher and married and have a son, which is a big deal for a man so focused on the family legacy, the man who broke down at the death of his brother and nephew and had this heartbreaking moment of recognition that “there will be no more Picards.” Hell, the man who was so uncomfortable with children at his introduction that he was practically ordering Will Riker to handle the children on the Enterprise for him.

Speaking of, Will Riker and Deanna Troi, on the Titan, have a daughter, and there is NO mention of Lwaxana Troi moving heaven, earth, hell, and anything else that might dare to get in her way to immediately begin spoiling her granddaughter.

To say nothing of the issues with DS9 in this, which... Well, part of the problem THERE is the author who was writing most of the DS9 focused stories is one I struggle with in general because I find him to be prone to writing doorstoppers that could be condensed by like half and still manage to convey the same amount of story and that he dropped a lot of the balls that the initial post-WYLB books were setting up as their next step for significantly less interesting versions. Plus I can’t forgive him for trying to split up Sisko and Kassidy, even if it was in the name of trying to fulfill that warning from the Prophets of how he “would know nothing but sorrow” for marrying her - when he wrote that storyline into Rough Beasts of Empire, I spent the whole book saying “this is NOT Benjamin Sisko.” And I could keep going, but I might just give that its own vent post at some point, I have the basis for one already written, but now that I’m actually at the point where he HAS almost sole creative control for the advancement of these storylines, I’m sure I’ll have more to vent about as I go through these...

But still, the ramming through of the events of these in universe three years... I find that they also kill the investment in the characters, because the stories end up more focused on plot mechanics at this point. There’s no development, and particularly not of the new crew who come on to fill the gaps left by various characters who were moved on. The 24th century stories end up frequently being more plot-motivated than character-motivated, which is... depressingly lacking, especially when compared to the character-centered development of the initial run of the Avatar novels for DS9 and the cocurrent run of Voyager novels. Granted, the fact that after this stretch, they DO slow down, to the point that I think the stories set in 2386 span like five publication years, but... There’s A LOT of time that COULD have been given more attention and time to develop the characters.

Y’know, while I regret that the novels effectively had to throw up a reset button in the name of sticking to the evolving canon of Trek returning to TV, it DID feel like it was a loss of the story events less than the characters - I could rattle off a few of the characters who joined these crews in the time set in these books, but they wouldn’t really mean anything, given that I don’t know them, and... That’s kind of my point.

#dg rambles #star trek novels

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goldenpineapples · 3 years

Text

Six-Fic Six-Sentence Sunday

Hi all! Fics below the cut. I know I don’t use this blog ‘properly,’ but I wanted to try one of these preview posts at least once as a form of self-motivation! I haven’t been able to read or write as much as I’d like this year, but I think that’s finally turning around!

Stay safe out there, everyone! Be seeing you!

Cyberpunk: Xadia

T+ // Sci-fi AU, aged-up characters. Roughly based roughly on TTRPG Cyberpunk setting, and now some video game as well! A sequel to the 2020 Birthday Bash chapter

Rayla lets Callum a little further into her life, and its details start connecting dots in Callum’s memory. The two work to uncover her past, in spite of both gang law and corporate policy.

===

The crowd surged as Rayla stepped into a small spotlight alongside the vocalist, her guitar swinging wide as its now-distorted notes ripped through the charged room. The frontman reared back, microphone raised, and howled with redoubled energy.

“Hunt down- hunt down- hunt down- your self-esteem!”

Then the lyrics were all but lost in the anguished roar of Rayla’s solo, and Callum winced, electing to cover his ears and stay in the crush of bodies to keep from losing sight of her. She wasn’t watching the crowd, wasn’t watching her hands, only mournfully sweeping her eyes along the edge of the stage, her mouth twisted in a grimace as she played.

Vollarian’s Day

T+ // Very Late Valentine’s prompts.

A mix of canonverse / other AUs, to follow the Rayllum Valentine’s prompts from earlier this year (2021)

Excerpt from Chapter 1

===

“So what’s the book for?”

“Oh,” Callum perked up, reaching for the sizable tome, “just a little… story, I guess, that made me think of you. Of us.”

She eyed the book in his hands. “That looks pretty substantial for a ‘little story.’”

“It’s a collection! They’re not bad, but… here we go- ‘Vollaria’s Everlasting Ardor.’ This is the one.

Rayla’s ears twitched at the name. ‘Vollaria’ didn’t exactly sound… human.

“This isn’t one of the stories with the shirtless men on horses, is it?”

Untitled ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ AU

M+ // Xadia AU (?), major character death, potential graphic violence. Based on the concept of the Japanse light novel “All you need is kill,” which was adapted to the hollywood film “Edge of Tomorrow,” this is a not-so-nice time loop story.

Since a certain someone brought it up a long, long time ago...

When the seemingly-random minor devastations began, the pentarchy could do little besides disregard them as magical events of the world. Now, several months into a shaky alliance with Xadia, the military might of both factions is near-spent attempting to contain what the Elves have guaranteed is a calamitous threat. A lottery is drawn to determine which unlucky souls will be sent to the next expected target...

===

The last thing Callum could focus on, as his vision darkened, was the moon over the elf’s shoulder. Visible in the daytime despite the glare of magic light from nearby. Its surface rippled as if liquid, like a drip into a bucket- some trick of death, he was sure…

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

And then he was breathing again- huge gasps of air, forcing his lungs to work again -but they were fine. He was fine. Sitting up in his bed in the castle, the chill of early hours again settling around him like morning dew.

Drought

T+ // Canonverse Non-Rayllum side story related to the fighting soon after the breach was opened. What happened to those that inhabited the lands close to the world was torn open? A one-shot relating the tale of a human that fled the fighting on the Xadian side of the border, who happens across an earthblood elf’s forest, dying as it is too close to the breach.

===

“Even a small amount is enough.”

She watched the human ignore her cupped hands, opening his canteen and carefully pouring a tiny measure of water into its cap- less than she’d hoped, but more than she’d dared believe the man would ever give her.

When she took the offering back to her Tree, pouring the water over its single exposed root, the human roused himself to anger once more.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing? We both need that more than your dead tree!”

Already beginning to feel the slight reinvigoration of the water, Milyn offered the vessel back. “Not dead.”

The cap was snatched away, but only secured after the man took a greedy swallow of what precious water was left to them.

Untitled Minority Report AU

T+ // Modern Sci-Fi AU (Yeah, again) Another AU based more closely on the Minority Report movie than its 1950s short story source.

Prediction of the near-future is now within reach of the modern world, and law enforcement has successfully used it to prevent violent crime, including murder. For Rayla, an officer of this division, it’s a slow day of monitor-watching… until it isn’t.

And yes, pink hair as requested.

===

“He’s still out on that farm?”

Rayla was already pulling on her street jacket and lense-ordering a dropcraft to the address Callum had given her all that time ago. “Far as I know.”

“Rayla?”

She turned. “Yeah?”

“Promise me you won’t run.”

Soren’s face slackened into a deadpan as she hesitated, not saying what they both knew, and Rayla shrugged before leaving him alone in the control room, spinning the prediction’s truecopy between his hands.

Already Dead

Undecided rating // Xadia ‘low fantasy’ AU. This is the... ninth iteration of the very first fanfic I ever wrote, starting in April 2020. Its timeline, story, and characterizations have been rewritten so many times, but I feel like this might be the right story I want to tell? It’ll be my love letter to the fantasy genre that helped me so much in my life, as well as the fanfic world I’ve grown to love.

Callum embarks on an elf-supervised pilgrimage to research primal alternatives to dark magic, while Rayla comes to terms with what being an assassin entails.

===

“What did he do?”

Runaan’s eyes narrowed. “His crimes have been committed, and his guilt recorded. All that’s left is his justice.”

Rayla looked away from the glare, down at her hands, reciting what she knew would please him. “Assassins don’t decide right and wrong, only life and death.”

“Just so.”

She swallowed the rough lump in her throat.

“I’ll do it.”

#rayllum #rayllum fanfic #wip #six sentence sunday

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weaverofthreads · 3 years

Text

On the process of writing a novel...

Ok, so this began as a DM to a very dear friend who had said they were super excited to work on a novel of theirs that they'd abandoned for years, but they felt a bit lost when looking at the project again. They had "too many characters, too many intrigues" and they didn't "know how to create order" for all their ideas. They didn't know "what to keep, what to remove, what to change" and wanted to know if I had any tips.

I began to reply in messages and then realised I needed to make a whole post out of it, so here it is! All 3k words of it. This is for you, darling! I hope it helps.

Things I found extremely helpful when planning my novel for NaNoWriMo this year, after also taking some time off from it.

Most of this comes from Alicia Lidwina’s Four-Part article on her NaNoWriMo prep process, and setting up a writer’s notebook, for 2018. You can find the link to the first part here and I highly recommend you check out the whole series of articles for a more in-depth read.

Content of this ‘essay’:

Preparation, Groundwork, and Materials

Project 'Stats' & Overview

Mood, Moodboards, and Key Imagery

Things to Consider, and Important Bullet Points

Get to Know Your Characters

Chronological Order

Tangential and Preceding Events

Basic Premise, Plot Definition, Sub Plot Ideas

List of Locations

Scenes

Chapter Outline

NaNo Plan

Additional Notes and Tips for Writing

Ok. Let's begin.

First of all, I'm not saying that this is the only way to write or organise a novel. It can be tackled in as many ways as there are writers in the universe. This is just the method I used to get my ideas crystallised and organised.

Preparation, Groundwork, and Materials.

Take your preparation seriously. I bought a cheap but still nice A4 sketchbook with blank paper for maybe £2 at the local hobby store, and used it solely for the purposes of being my Novel Notebook. It doesn’t have to be a pretty, perfect, Aesthetic(TM) journal at all. Its function is to act as a route-guide through the process.

I bought a cute sticker from Etsy and used it as the front cover design so that I liked the book and that it felt a little bit special, without being too intimidating to put a mark in. Then I left the very first page blank, and opened it to the first double page. On the left, I wrote ‘Contents’ and then moved on to the right and wrote ‘Project Stats and Overview’.

I used a pen that was comfortable to write with, which for me was important. I’m a very tactile person, and having nice paper and pens (not necessarily fancy), made the process feel good.

Project Stats and Overview

This is the bare bones of the book, and includes details such as:

Project Working Title: (in my case it’s Weaver of Threads)

Targeted Wordcount: (to give yourself an idea of the scope, but it’s not necessary. For me it’s 50-100k)

Genre: (for me, fantasy)

Series: (will it be one book or more? For me, probably more than one, and at least two).

Inspiration: (here you can jot down all sorts of things which inspire your world and your writing, and it can be anything. In my case, I began with “density and lore, and feeling of being grounded in a real world from LOTR and Tolkien.” And I went on to include other writers and novels in the fantasy genre, as well as elements from our own world, such as Mongolian herding communities and way of life, the history of the Persian Empire, and Renaissance Florence!).

Project Timeline: Give yourself a structure, and be realistic. If you know you’re a slow writer who’s prone to distractions, be generous, but if you’re someone who responds well to short deadlines, tighten the time frame up a bit. I said “November 2020 - November 2021 for the whole manuscript” because I know I’m a procrastinator who gets dejected if they shoot past intense deadlines….

Editing Deadline: December 2021-January 2022. I know I can edit fairly quickly, so I made this one much shorter.

Main Requirements Prior to Starting: What do you need to get sorted before you can get going? It could be purchasing a laptop or figuring out a magic system. In my case, it was the latter.

What Happens in your novel?: This is not ‘what do your characters do?’, but what, in one sentence, actually happens in the book. For Fellowship of the Ring, you could say ‘a diverse group of people assemble and set off together with the goal of destroying the Ring’. LOADS more stuff actually takes place, obviously, but that’s probably the key thing that happens in that book. So, write the same thing for yours. I’m not going to tell you what happens in mine, because that would spoil it :).

That took up the first A4 page of my writer’s notebook, and after that, I moved on to Mood and Key Imagery.

Mood, Moodboards, and Key Imagery

On the left hand side of the page, I wrote down the words and concepts that sprang to mind when I thought of the novel itself. These were in no particular order or placement — just a random cloud of ideas in a rough column on the left hand side of the page — and they included: history, mystery, love, friendship, betrayal, nostalgic, homesick, sense of belonging, sense of place, searching, closeness, secrets… etc. etc.

Then on the right hand side, I wrote down five key words that I wanted to associate with the novel. These would form the ‘visual aesthetic’ in the background of my mind, and could be very easily expressed with a moodboard.

This same process (writing down words and creating a moodboard) could be achieved on a website like Pinterest. Take your time with it, find the right visual clues that really match the essence of your story, and create a final mood board with a limited number of panels that will be your novel’s ‘true north’ when it comes to feelings. If you're artistically inclined too, you could draw sketches of things relevant to your world too.

While this stage is really important for solidifying the feeling and mood of the novel, don’t get stuck here and spend forever procrastinating on Pinterest or whatever. Once you’ve crystallised that ambiance, it’s time to move on. It’s also perfectly fine to come back to this at a later stage if you find yourself running out of inspiration or drifting a bit. Daydreaming, drawing, mood-board-ing are all great ways to work on your novel on days when you don’t feel like writing.

Things to Consider:

Alicia Lidwina asked herself some questions which helped me get past the ‘block’ that I’d created when thinking about the novel, and those were:

What scares me about this story? (in my case it was the scope of it - it was easy for me to get lost in over-thinking tiny details and get too overwhelmed to handle the big picture)

What will readers take away from it? (in my case, I hoped that it was a sense of friendship, people from desperate cultures finding common ground, and a sense of being grounded in a real, tangible world.

What is its selling point? (essentially, why would an agent/publisher choose yours over the next one in the pile?). Don’t be bashful about this. This is your notebook, so if you’re proud of a feature or aspect of the story, write it down. In my case, there is no ‘Big Bad come to destroy the world’, no Chosen One who is the only one who can stop it. There is an antagonist, but it’s on a personal scale, and that’s the selling point. It’s about two people going on a personal journey to uncover a lost piece of knowledge that’s arguably not all that world-changing on its own, but which means the world to them.

What will be the three biggest issues in writing the first draft? Identify the three biggest roadblocks, and then take a bulldozer to them. For me, it was time management, getting mentally stuck, and the sheer darned effort of it becoming overwhelming!

Important Bullet Points

These are five key facts about your novel, distilled from the sections above. They include: What’s at the heart of the story? How long is the story? What’s the narrative focus of the story? What are the maximum number of main characters? And the maximum number of supporting characters (this obviously doesn’t mean you can’t have other, less important characters too!)?

Relationship between the two main characters is forefront

50-100k words

The novel’s focus is on the characters’ main goal (had to be more vague here so I didn't give it away)

2 main characters

3 supporting characters

If you find you’ve got too many main characters (not necessarily a bad thing to have a lot of characters - look at A Song of Ice and Fire after all!), then figure out whose story you want to tell here. You can always write another story with other characters in a connected novel, or a sequel. You don’t have to tell everything all at the same time.

Speaking of characters…

…Get to Know Your Main Characters:

Here you can write character sheets for each of your main characters and cast. There are hundreds of these templates available on the internet, asking questions like ‘how would your character react to [insert event]?’ etc. to get to know your character. If this isn’t your thing (it isn’t mine) then at least write down some useful information about them. Rough height and weight, hair, eye and skin colour, general temperament, and any other defining physical or mental traits.

Next came the Chronological Order

This does not have to represent the final order of the novel’s structure, nor the order in which you write the manuscript, but you need to know what happened within the timeline, and when, in order to be really clear when you’re telling the story. You can write the manuscript out of order, and you can tell the story with flashbacks or in a different order, but you need to have the underlying chronology securely in place so that your writing makes sense and so that you don’t confuse yourself or the readers in the process.

Preceding and Tangential Events

These don’t need to be in the novel itself, but it may be important to define the sequence of events that also led up to the moment where we pick up your story, and what is happening elsewhere so that you can be sure of these too. In my case, I defined the events that concerned one of the supporting characters’ lives so that I knew how and why they were at the point they are in the story. It relates directly to - and heavily influences - the events of the novel, so I needed to have this person’s history nailed down as well, even though I don't tell it all explicitly in the book (because that would be unnecessary and a bit dull).

Basic Premise, Plot Definition, and Sub-Plot Ideas (plus writing a synopsis)

Alicia Lidwina defined the story premise helpfully with the following formula:

Story Premise = Main Character + Desire + Obstacle

Pick a different colour for each of these components, and write a short paragraph to explain them in the context of the novel. Alicia Lidwina used the following:

[Main Character] “Harry, an orphan who didn’t know that he’s a wizard, [Desire] got invited into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and wanted to live his school life to its fullest, [Obstacle] but a certain Dark Lord who killed his parents is trying to rise into powers again and kill him in revenge.

Do this for your novel, and keep it really short.

Plot Definition: This is even shorter than that! It’s a single sentence!! It’s most closely tied to the desire of the character, and lies at the heart of the story. It’s most likely a distilled version of the ‘what happens in the story’ from the Project Stats page, so check that to see what you wrote there.

Sub Plot Ideas

Five bullet points (no more) for things that are happening concurrently and which are related in some way to the main story. For me, Kae and Tomas are doing their research, so that’s the main theme, but beneath that there are a few other related incidents.

Writing a Synopsis - developed out of the points in this section, and includes:

Who the main character is

What the stakes are (the story premise is your guideline)

What the main plot line is

How the MC resolves the problem in the main plot line

How the book ends.

List of Locations

Start with the main ones and add to it as you go on. Write a little bit of information about them so that you have something to refer back to. I also drew a big old map which I found very helpful and also really fun to do.

List of Scenes

It’s very important to map out every single scene that happens in the novel. Use your timeline to help with this, but remember a scene is not necessarily a chapter. You can have more than one scene within a chapter, but try not to have too many.

I used small post-it notes (sticky notes) and wrote down things like “M joins K’s clan at the fire and K learns about magic” and “K studies at Citadel, intro to Citadel, magic, and characters” as separate scenes. Once you’ve written down everything that is going to happen (this will take some time! Get a drink and some snacks ready, and go slow), you can stick them into your notebook in the order you’d like to tell the story. Some chapters may have just one scene, while others may have two or three. I didn’t have more than two in any of my chapters, and actually ended up splitting some scenes that I’d made too vague in this section into more chapters. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but it will form a road map.

Additions and Notes:

I left a section of the Scene Outline bit of the notebook blank for things to add in as I went along. I haven’t used it yet, but I might.

Chapter Outline

I arranged the scenes into the chapters already by sticking them in order, but you could do a chapter outline separately after this. It’s up to you.

NaNoWriMo plan:

I did this back in October, and wrote down the main goal for nanoprep, which was to finish the background info. Breaking that down further, I listed - magic (how does it work exactly), geography, and politics.

After that, it was just a case of writing the 1667 words a day. *spoilers, I got distracted and didn’t do NaNo this year* . What I should have done, was break it up into chunks and write down my goals so that I had something tangible to use as a road map, and I will be doing that now for the novel as I take it up again outside of NaNo. Having check boxes and manageable goals really works for me. Find what will work for you, and if it turns out not to, adapt!

Some final pointers and tips:

Set regular goals for yourself. Whether you work by saying ‘I’ll write 1000 words a day’ or ‘I’ll write something every day’, make a structure for yourself. If you slip and miss a day, week, or month (I didn’t meet NaNo this year because I chose to work on another project instead *slaps forehead*), don’t beat yourself up. Writing is a craft and it takes a long time and a lot of discipline to master a craft.

Your first draft does not have to be good. At all. Your first draft is just words on paper. A first draft is the block of marble taken from the quarry, and subsequent edits and reworking is the process of carving the sculpture itself. The editing that is done by the publisher or the professional you employ to edit it for you later, is the final polishing. Don’t be demoralised if the block of marble seems very rough when it first lands in your studio. That’s ok!

Take regular breaks. Writing is hard work, and most people can’t concentrate on something successfully for longer than 55 min's, and if you’re doing that, you’re already doing really well. Personally, I’m at 15-20 on a good day. Write in little sprints of ten minutes or so, and then get up and stretch, look out the window, maybe leave the room, come back in with a fresh approach.

Stretch your hands, and wear wrist braces when you work. Seriously. I gave myself tendinitis on my first major project, and couldn’t use either hand properly for weeks. The ones I have are these, and they allow me to work safely for much longer.

Keep hydrated. Have a bottle of water on the desk in front of you between your arms as you type and sip it, otherwise you’ll forget. 2 litres a day is usually recommended, but know your body and drink accordingly.

Treat yourself. Whether that’s something as simple as a decadent hot chocolate after your first chapter/chunk/sprint is done, or a new notebook or a pen or that sticker set you wanted on Etsy or literally anything nice, reward yourself for the hard work you’ve put in, with tangible things you can look at or experience and say ‘I have that because I did the work’. It’ll help with your sense of achievement, especially if the project is a long one.

Join a local writer’s group for feedback. With the current Covid-19 chaos, this is probably not possible right now, but getting constructive feedback on your work from someone who hasn’t been cocooned in the project in the way you are, but who respects you as a writer and wants to help you grow, will be invaluable. It’s too easy to exist in a little isolated bubble and think you’re doing ok, when in reality you could be creating bad habits which will be difficult to break later. By these, I mean things like ‘filler words’ you don’t realise you use, or other pit-falls it’s easy to tumble into when you can’t see the wood for the trees…It’s intimidating, and it might take some courage to work up and do, but I promise it’ll help you grow. You don’t have to do what the people suggest, but it’s great to get outside opinions all the same.

Submit work to writing competitions. This will help with showing agents and publishers later down the line that you’re not only committed, but hopefully talented, and will help you to push yourself. Use the world of your novel for the setting, and get to know it by writing short stories on the competition’s theme set there.

Read. Read the writers you admire, and read them ‘actively’ - figure out exactly what it is about ‘that’ sentence that made you shiver, and use the same techniques in your own work (don’t plagiarise, obviously, but if it was alliteration that made the sentence work so well, use it yourself! Perhaps it was the metre of the line? Great, now you know a rhythm that will drive a sentence forward or slow it down etc.)

Enjoy it. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, it’ll show in the work. Take a step back if you start floundering, and ‘interview’ yourself about why it’s not fun any more. Refer back to the sections in the notebook that helped to clarify the plot/process, and see if you’ve wandered away from them. Make yourself answer questions like: ‘What is the main reason I don’t want to do this?’ ‘What is the character’s motivation?’ ‘Should I scrap this section?’ (don’t delete it, but cut and paste it into another ‘scraps’ document, and then start afresh from the last place you were happy with. Nothing is wasted - it all goes into building the world and getting to know the characters, even if it doesn’t get explicitly told in the finished product, so don’t be afraid to do that last bit).

Good luck!

I hope you found this helpful, and if you have any questions or things you’d like to add to this, please feel free to send me an ask here on Tumblr.

If you’re a new writer hoping to get an agent or publisher, you might also find this post on ‘talking to a published author’ helpful or interesting.

If you would like to keep up to date with my own novel’s progress, you can follow me here on Tumblr, as well as on my writing Instagram @rnpeacock

#writing #writeblr #writing process #how to write a novel #novel writing #nanowrimo #national novel writing month #writing a book #writing advice #author #authors on tumblr #how to structure a book #long post

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todaydreambelieversfic · 3 years

Text

Author Spotlight: Gleefuldarrencrissfan Day 2

Author: @gleefuldarrencrissfan

Share one of your strengths.

I've been told that I do a great job writing in each character's voice, especially Blaine, Kurt, Santana, Brittany, and Finn. It's very important to me that my characters remain true to who they are. I work very hard to make sure that each one sounds like they would in the show.

I've also been told that I'm great at cliffhangers. Honestly, I end on cliffhangers a lot as I try to figure out which route I plan to take for the story. I map out stories, but sometimes, the story takes me in a different direction. I also like to take suggestions from my readers. Many times, I have multiple scenarios on the direction in which the story can go. I love keeping my readers on their toes.

Share one of your weaknesses.

Well, because I have so many scenarios running through my head, I sometimes get stuck, and so, I don't update regularly. I used to try to publish weekly or more, but as a mom of two, a full time assistant in a high-needs classroom, an avid crafter, and a member of a band, my plate stays pretty full. I hope that my readers will subscribe and drop a comment from time to time to remind me to keep writing.

Which fic has been the hardest to write?

I'm going to bring up two, Dueling Duets and Love, Blaine. Dueling Duets is a complex fic with many characters and a very intricate plot. On top of that, Blaine has PTSD, as do I. It became too painful to finish this, so it is the only fic of mine that is abandoned. I would like to finish it, but I just don't see that happening any time soon.

Love, Blaine was so difficult for me because I wrote it all before publishing, and I thrive on feedback. I kept going back and rewriting scenes over and over because I just couldn't make up my mind about certain things. I also get anxious with a timeline hanging over my head, and so I went past the deadline. Unfortunately, my appendix decided to burst the week I was supposed to publish, so I was trying to write through the pain. I did finish it, and I'm proud of it, but I probably won't put myself through that again.

Which fic has been the easiest to write?

Private Messages, by far. Honestly, it was so easy because Kurt was me in a sense, a fanfic author, desperate for feedback on his writing. I also outlined this fic thoroughly, and so it just seemed to flow when I got to a certain point. It is by far, my most popular fic, and honestly, it is my favorite of all of the ones that I've written. Don't get me wrong. It was very complex, bouncing back and forth from Blaine's and Kurt's perspectives, with plotlines from the show, Kurt's story, and the actual story all coming together and interweaving at times making it difficult to write, but I always knew where it was going, and so it was the easiest to finish.

Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

It's one of my passions, along with music and crafting. I'm an artist at heart, and so I'd never be happy or fulfilled in life if I wasn't creating in one shape or form. I honestly love the way art makes you feel, both as the artist and as the person affected by other people's art. My favorite thing is one someone tells me how my writing or work made them feel.

I'm also writing educational children's books, and I hope to inspire kids in the future to love to learn, and so it is a major passion of mine to be a published author and get my books out there for kids to read.

Is there an episode or character or arc above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

Blaine Anderson. He was by far the character that inspires me the most, probably because I see myself in him, the confident, happy performer who is really quite insecure and maybe even depressed. I wish that the show would have let us see more of his personal life. At felt like, at times, he was just Kurt's boyfriend, but he was so much more than that. It would have been nice to actually see his home, his parents, and his brother to get greater insight on why he is the way he is. Thank god for fanfiction.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Just write. The first draft does not have to be perfect. That's what editing is for. Get yourself a beta, dig in, and just get the words on the page. No one can read your work if the pages are all in your head.

What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Stick to what you know. That's what research is for. Branch out. Explore. Interview and talk to others. Although, if you are researching something embarrassing, for example, Brazilian waxing, use incognito mode. lol.

If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Private Messages. I just love this story, and I think it would best translate into a movie. Besides, Blaine is an actor in this one, so it works.

What’s your process? Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines? What are the perfect writing conditions for you?

Ha ha. I find it funny that I have a process because it depends on the fic I'm writing at the time. for my more complex stories, I do best when I map them out first. I don't do a complex map, just a basic synopsis of the first 10 chapters or so, and then a rough outline afterward. Of course, I keep it a soft outline, and I also plan a few other scenarios in case the story goes in a different direction. Even Chris Colfer says that his characters surprise him in his stories, and so I'm in good company, I suppose.

However, on my shorter stories like Rim Job, and idea just comes to me, and I just write what comes to me, and then I even take suggestions from my readers about further chapters. I guess it just depends on the tone of the fic. If it's serious, I'm much more structured, but on my less serious pieces, I just have fun and write.

The perfect conditions are when I'm alone (be it when others are sleeping or out of the house) and I can just allow my muse to work. I put on some background noise (Glee music or episodes) for inspiration and just sit down in front of my laptop with my notebooks. Many times, I have scenes written in my notebooks before I type them out (I write when I'm waiting at the dr.'s office or at work during a break, ect) so all I have to do is type and polish the scene. Unfortunately, I have several scenes in my notebooks that haven't made it into a word document yet just because of lack of time. Hopefully, I will catch up this summer.

***

Check out Gleefuldarrencrissfan’s Fics

Somewhere Only We Know - Blaine has three little words on his mind when he says good bye to Kurt in the court yard at McKinley. Can he make himself declare them out loud? An alternate ending to "Born This Way"

Silly Love Songs - It's Valentine's Day, and Blaine had plans to serenade Jeremiah. But what if Blaine discovered the doodle Kurt made in Silly Love Songs before he serenaded Jeremiah? The scene at the Lima Bean is canon and everything to the point of Kurt sketching the doodle, but the ending, of course will be how I had hoped it would've happened.

Courage - Do you believe that one moment can change the course of your life? That one event change the way you saw everything, or do you think it's a series of moments that build from one experience to the next. A year ago, I would've said that was crazy. But I'm not the same guy that I was a year ago.

#author spotlight: gleefuldarrencrissfan

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phoomwhoosh · 2 years

Note

👀

11, 25 and 30 (and then I stopped for a bit or this would end with a ton more)

Thank you for these questions! Dang, that first one kind of stumped me lol

11. most bizarre idea for writing you’ve had?

My MOST bizarre? Oh, man, so, my actual first original story that I took seriously was wild, man. (I also completed it and it had over 250k words by the end.)

At the time of writing it, I didn’t think that it was bizarre at all. But I look back and go, “So, I basically wrote a story of a girl transitioning to a boy via magic and then trading her soul out for her best friend’s so he could live again. And I named it His True Reflection." I wrote this when I was, like, 14-15 and didn’t even know “transgender” was a word, y’all, which is what makes it so wild to me ESPECIALLY considering what I named the story. Honestly, there were so many other things in that story that I look back on and go, “What.” I’d list them all but that would take too long LOL

25. post an excerpt of one of your wips.

Here, have a sentence from And miles to go before I sleep:

Dutch was pouring himself a cup of coffee and gave Daniel a very pointed look as he put another pot on.

(lol, this is from the next chapter, actually. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a running joke that Daniel makes coffee only for himself and never puts another pot on for everyone else.)

30. do you outline before you write? do you find it difficult to write an outline? do you usually follow the outline?

So, okay, I do a rough outline on occasion. I have an idea and then write down that idea and any notes that I think could fit in-line with that idea. But I don’t outline everything that's gonna happen, which is what I was taught to do in school and is probably why I hated some of my creative writing classes. And sometimes I only start a timeline of events after I’ve been writing for a bit and realize, “Wait, when did this happen? I must know the date!”

And sometimes I don’t even do an outline at all. For example, And miles to go before I sleep had no outline at all. I knew “The Cobras are bikers sorta” and “Daniel’s car gets stalled right outside of the town they live in.” That was it. That was all I had. I knew nothing about the direction that the story was going. Like, at all. I just sat down and started writing and made decisions on the fly. I honestly, genuinely did not name the town until chapter 7. LOL

#fanfic ask game #writing ask game #and miles to go before i sleep fic

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tamanone · 3 years

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