#had to delete my last edition of this post because i had four sentences in that one

[erumai-maadu]

"Please share your last sentence; or, if you don't have one, share a plot bunny or idea!"

im bad at tagging people in things (sobs) so I'm tagging @thescarlettempress, @roundthreeofygo, and anyone else who wants to!!

I was tagged by my beloved, @winterberryholly!! Here's the last sentence i wrote from the nejiten pegging fic that may never see the light of day at the rate I'm going with it.

Before Neji could even begin to think about how to respond without immediately giving up that it was he who wanted her to peg him until he couldn’t walk the next day, she started guessing.

#nejiten #neji hyuga #tenten #marking this mature juuuust in case #had to delete my last edition of this post because i had four sentences in that one #and then found a one liner that worked immediately after I posted it lmao

[midnightsnyx]

girl at home | mat barzal | part 1

pairing: mat barzal x fem!reader summary: you're eighteen when you find yourself pregnant after Mat leaves for hockey. nearly eight years later, Mat finds out about your daughter and you have to deal with the consequences of not telling him about her.

warnings: mentions of pregnancy & not really edited word count: 1.3k authors note p1: don't mind me starting a new series when i have four other wips on the go :):) i love kid fics and this idea was stuck in my head so i wrote & decided to give it a go and post it. if this does well and you guys are interested, i'll do more. authors note p2: so notes about the series: i gave the readers daughter a name because i hate writing y/d/n lol of course you can change it in your head to something else if you want :) also the last name johnson is just there so i could have a full name but we all know she'll be a barzal also thank u @multifandombabes for giving me the push to post this!! happy reading & let me know what you guys think!

masterpost

In hindsight, you should have realized that it was bound to happen sooner rather than later. You did your best to avoid places you knew he would be when he was home, going to visit your grandparents or other family. Anywhere that would give you the opportunity to not be seen by him, because then you’d have to explain your brown haired, green eyed, seven year old. 

You weren’t proud of your choice to keep Nora a secret from Mat but you did what you thought was right when you were eighteen, sitting on the floor of your best friend’s bathroom four weeks after you had said goodbye to Mat and staring at three positive pregnancy tests. He had just left for hockey and you didn’t want to be what held him back and as time went on, it got harder to pick up the phone so a few months after Nora was born, you erased Mathew Barzal from your life. You deleted the photos, phone numbers, social media, with the only reminder being the little girl.

And it worked fine. Until now.

Nora usually didn’t come grocery shopping with you because you always ended up taking three times as long as you normally would. Except, your sitter fell through and your mom couldn’t watch her so you had to bring her along. Which is totally fine until you run into Mat. Who has a girl with him. 

So yeah, everything was fine until now.

It’s kind of comical the way his panicked eyes dart between the three of the girls standing around him. A quick glance at Nora confirms that she’s two seconds away from saying something to Mat which will not go well since the kid has zero filter.

“Hey, you’re that hockey player mama and grandma watch on TV!” she exclaims and you want to melt straight through the floor when Mat looks at you with one eyebrow raised. 

“Yeah?” he asks, kneeling down so he’s at her level.

“Yeah,” she confirms, and then loudly whispers: “I’m not supposed to watch ‘cause some games are past my bedtime but sometimes I’ll sneak out.” 

He offers his hand and smiles. “Well, it’s nice to meet you…” he trails off, clearly hoping she’ll offer her name. You hope she just says her first name instead of announcing her full name which she tends to do lately.

“Nora,” she tells him, shaking his hand and then to your unsurprised horror, she proudly tells him her full name. “Nora Nadia Johnson.” 

He keeps the smile on his face but stiffens and gently drops her hand. 

“Cool name,” he says, still smiling but you can see the tension in his shoulders. 

“Thanks! My first name means light and my middle name-”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish her sentence because you grab her hand, abandon your shopping cart and high tail it out of the store. She grumbles while trying to keep up with your pace and eventually you just pick her up and carry her to the car.

“What did we say about talking to strangers?” you ask while buckling her seatbelt, ignoring her annoyed sighs. 

“He wasn’t a stranger, you watch him on the TV all the time.”

“Have you ever met him?” you ask, raising an eyebrow and she mumbles something under her breath.

“What was that?”

“No,” she mumbles, crossing her arms over her chest and giving you a look that is so Mathew that you could laugh.

“Well then, he’s a stranger.” 

You leave it at that because she starts talking about the summer camp she’s starting next week. You’re only half listening, trying to get over the shock of seeing Mat and knowing he realizes that he probably has a kid you never told him about. If you were in his shoes, you would be angry so you are expecting him to show up on your doorstep later that evening but he doesn’t. Part of you wonders if the reason he doesn’t come is because of that girl he had with him but you figure if he really wanted answers, he would come regardless. 

What you’re not expecting, is a text from his sister Liana. You still see his family from time to time out in public but after you essentially ghosted Mat, they didn’t really want anything to do with you. When everybody found out you were pregnant, you lied and said it wasn’t Mat’s which nobody really believed but they couldn’t prove it and you’d used your mothers maiden name as Nora’s last name so there were no ties. You were surprised that his family didn’t tell him anyways, but you thought that perhaps they didn’t for the same reason you didn’t.

To give Mat no reason to stay here and instead, pursue his dreams and go play in the NHL. 

So a text from his sister is unexpected. 

Liana: hey, are you free for lunch tmw?

You almost delete it at first and pretend she never messaged you, but you know that there’s no going back now that Mat saw Nora. He’s not stupid. He probably went home and asked his parents about her. So you text her back a reluctant yes and agree on a spot to meet up the next day.

Nora goes to your moms house because you’re unsure if it will just be Liana who shows up, or if anyone else does. You meet up at a Starbucks and aside from the initial tension, it melts almost immediately and the two of you go back to the big sister/little sister relationship you had when you and Mat were dating. Except now, she’s all grown up.

After some catching up, the conversation turns to the reason she asked to see you. She hesitates, picking at her nails - a nervous tick you know she does - before sighing. 

“Look, everybody kind of turned their head with ‘The Nora Situation’ because it was clearly what you wanted, and it was probably what was best for Mat,” she says. “But he knows now, and he’s got questions that we can’t and won’t answer. Dad had to talk him down last night and his girlfriend went back to New York this morning.”

You wince at that, not liking that the reason his girlfriend left is because of Nora but Liana must notice because she shrugs, taking a sip of her drink.

“Honestly, she wasn’t very nice. I’m not broken up over it and Mat didn’t seem to be either.” 

Okay, that is interesting. 

“Anyway,” she continues, “this is Mat’s new number.” She slides a small piece of paper across the table and you gingerly take it. “I know you didn’t want to tell him, and I understand but he knows. So give him a chance, okay?”

You manage a nod and let her leave with the final word. All you want to do is take Nora and leave, to get as far away as you can but something inside you stops you from doing it because maybe Liana is right, and you should give Mat a choice. After all, you were the one who decided to take it away from him in the beginning. 

So later that night, after Nora is asleep, you curl up on your couch with the piece of paper and stare at it for a good fifteen minutes. Regardless of whether or not you text him, you will have to deal with this and you’d rather it be on your terms. You reluctantly type his new number in your phone and hesitate, trying to think of what to even say. This isn’t a conversation you were expecting to have with him. You type and delete a dozen messages before deciding on something simple.

To Mathew: Hey, I guess we should talk.

You take a deep breath, and hit send.

#hockey imagines #allies writing #nhl fanfiction #hockey fanfiction #nhl imagines #hockey imagine #mat barzal x reader #mat barzal imagine #mat barzal fanfiction #mat barzal fic

[thatll-do]

top five favorite video game characters?

Ok, so I originally had this whole thing with pics and gifs typed out, and I was on the last sentence before posting answer when tumblr glitched out and deleted all of it. So Imma redo it and hopefully do the original draft justice, but without gifs and pics just in case that was what screwed it up

Edit: it happened a third time >:(

1: As a devout Haru stan and apologist, it pains me a little to say that I have not had the full Haru experience, having not played any of the spinoffs or supplementary material outside of Persona 5 Royal, and we are not counting the Haru that exists only in my head, which is why despite my love for her, I cannot in good conscious call her one of my favorite video game characters, yet. With that in mind, I will have to with mild begrudges have to hand it to Futaba. What can I say? I have no choice but to stan an internationally wanted hacker who is capable of shutting down governments from her phone while being incapable of calling the pizza place down the road without going into a nervous breakdown. Plus, have you seen her? She smol. Diminutive. Gremlin shaped. Perfectly scampable. Plus, I feel she provides a very welcome change of pace with her palace in the story, being the only one where the antagonist is not some overtly hostile villain being quite refreshing for when she comes into the story, with her overall arc being very satisfying to watch play out, both in the grand narrative and in her smaller personal interactions. However, I must admit I'm not overtly fond of how navigators are used in Persona games, with them feeling generally detached from the general gameplay loop of them not being active party members, but as someone who doesn't typically go for JRPG's I am totally willing to recognize this may just be a me thing and that my sensibilities might not quite line up with how these things typically go

2: Surprise motherfucker! Nobody expects Wheatley! Which is a shame, because he's great, but it's understandable. On the one hand, you have GLaDOS, who was scientifically engineered to be fucking hilarious at every possible moment. And then in the other corner you have Chell, a fine self insert to insert your sense of self into, who shoots things when you tell her to. But people often overlook this little metal ball of idiocy, and what he brings to the table. First, he brings a very different kind of humor to the table that I think tends to go a bit underappreciated by the audience, and I'm not just talking about the slapstick and general incompetency, although that is also top notch. Honestly, just his inane ramblings are fucking comedy gold on their own that I could listen to for hours. He's also surprisingly arguably a more effective antagonist than GLaDOS. I went into Portal 2 almost completely blind, and while GLaDOS's insults were funny, they never really like stung or anything. There wasn't any real substance to it, it was just a one-sided hatred from my perspective. But Wheatley? When he did his heel-turn, I was in active shock. It took me several seconds to fully process what the fuck had just occurred. Unlike GLaDOS, there was a genuine bond formed, and breaking that opened so many doors despite slamming my fingers in them. And highlights what he does incredibly well. He brings a certain element of chaos and danger that GLaDOS could never have due to the fact that she has a functional sense of self preservation. With GLaDOS, you know what you're in for. She's gonna try to kill you, but she's gonna do it through elaborate traps and her patent pending Aperture Science Testing Chambers, but never directly, and she sticks to those rules. She is bound to them, and because of that you can plan around them and monkey your way out of it. But Wheatley? Wheatley in charge of Aperture is like a ticking time bomb without the watch. He doesn't even know what the rules are, otherwise he wouldn't mash two testing tracks together like a four-year-old smashing two lego master-builder sets together and almost accidentally killing you in the process.

3: Madeline, from Celeste. She is trans and I can project myself onto that

Not much else to say, really

4: Nope, you're not getting off that easy. The actual thing about Maddy is that, genderisms aside, I don't think I've ever felt quite as seen as I have with her. Celeste, by all accounts, is a very simple game. Both in terms of story and mechanics. The story is you climb a magical mountain in Canada, and the mechanics are run, jump, and climb. But it's how these two interplay to put you in the mindset of her, how anxiety hounds you, how it unnerves and undermines you, getting you stuck doing the same things making the same mistakes over and over again, is where Madeline really strikes a chord with me. And the game really doesn't shy away from how "tricks" and coping techniques can help but they're not a cure-all, they don't always work. Your fears and worries will break through, and you can try to ignore them, or leave them behind entirely, but you really can't. The only way to deal with them is to accept them for what they are, that they're just a part of you but you nonetheless and need to work with them. Her frankly snippy personality is also appreciated, because like, while it's not the nicest thing it's refreshing to see someone who's kinda just really tired of people act on that annoyance even if it's not strictly other people's fault for setting it off. And also her being trans just really brings it in for me

Actual number 4: This may be because I'm a horny shill, or maybe because I would prefer to liken myself as something of a philosopher, but I find myself drawn to 2B and her plights and think that the world of Nier:Automata provides some of the most profound and insightful moments modern gaming can offer. She's something of a stoic hardass, meant to be unfeeling of the world around her but still taking note of the absurdity of it all and sometimes going along with the unexpected asides from the farce she finds herself in. For all intents and purposes, she's just a cog in the machine, just a perfect mindless unthinking AI soldier in a proxy war with machine enemies that has spanned millennia. But as much as she plays the part, she can't help but display an overt world-weary awareness of her role that she's lived and relived time and time again. It may be only displayed subtly most of the time, but those tinges in her interactions quickly bleed out once you get a fuller picture of the story at hand.

5: Ok, as tempted as I was to put a FromSoft character here, even I have to admit that I find their interactable NPC's rather lacking. And while I like a fair amount of them, I would never call them my top of the list favorites. Instead, I'll go with my favorite companion who is trapped in one of my least favorite games, Curie from Fallout 4. I'll try to keep this spoiler free since I think you've been playing it and I don't wanna ruin anything for you, but simply put Curie is a sweetheart. You find her long abandoned in what was one of the most monstrous vaults designed, made purely to violate every medical ethics code in the book, but she spends her days toiling away trying to create medicines instead. After nearly 200 years alone, she's eager to explore the world, and she just has this bright-eyed curiosity about the wasteland that's rather infectious. Where most people see ruins and decay, she sees resilience and life persisting, and that kind of optimism in such a jaded setting hits like a hot shower after a filthy day outside. She's not terribly complicated, but she doesn't need to be

#sometimes i answer these things

[pastedpast]

Hello and welcome to my blog, 'pasted past'! It is a jumble of thoughts and scraps of information cut and pasted (hence the pun) from the Internet and jotted down from books and magazines which focus on art, history, nature, music, travel, film, and more besides. Occasionally, I write about personal stuff, but I tend to discard posts with particular opinions after a while.

I've been working on this blog as a labour of love since February 2011, and never more than in the last year or so. I am continuously editing: amending, updating, even deleting posts. I tap words into my mobile phone, tablet or computer, whichever is closest to hand. I could be on a train, or the beach, at my desk, or in bed - whenever the ideas and inspiration strike and I just have to note it all down. Like me, it is a work in progress, forever changing, developing, evolving. I don't know how many people read my blog, but I write it for myself, regardless. It has provided a peaceful oasis/refuge for my mind, giving me something else to concentrate on during times of turmoil!

My other hobbies include making scrapbooks, bookmarks, digital collages, decoupaging tins and boxes, and recording the events of my life in diaries. I like working with scissors, paper and glue, the original tools for cutting and pasting. I'm limited in both talent and resources, but, never mind, it keeps me out of trouble!

Ideally, I'd like to publish some sort of book using a selection of my favourite pieces of work on this blog, but that's unlikely. I've currently written over 1800 posts, many of which still require editing and those with pictures would cost a fortune to print out in bulk. Plus, I'm not sure about copyright issues. I've tried my best to credit all sources on the blog, but have sometimes slipped up and forgotten. Maybe I will publish another type of book one day, or just stick to my scrapbooks. I love books: browsing, buying, collecting and, oh yeh, reading them, so no wonder I want to make ones of my own as well!

On a final note, the photographs above are of the 'Spanish omelette in progress' that I made with my friend after I returned from Barcelona last month. I don't get chance to do much cooking these days as I haven't had my own kitchen for four years. I didn't bother taking a pic of the end result because it looked nothing like the magnificent culinary masterpiece I discovered while I was there (totally scrumptious!), although, to be fair, our effort was tasty enough, especially as I served it with fresh green beans and cheese. I originally posted the photos on Facebook, but I've recently deactivated my profile (again!). I prefer writing (and editing) on this platform instead. Sure, I don't always know where to place commas and I know next to nothing about the more advanced mechanics of sentence structure, e.g clauses, or things like split infinitives - I didn't have particularly good schooling in my teens - but I try my best to write as clearly I can*.

*A tutor at university once commented in some feedback about an assignment I'd done that I wrote "lucidly and engagingly" - great praise I will always treasure!

[that-crazy-five-foot-two-chick]

Summary: Winry sat in the optimal place to study in the school cafe for the entire fall semester. Then spring came, and suddenly some self-entitled twit who dressed like off-brand Gerard Way decided it was his territory. He was so not going to get off easy.

Rating: T

Word Count: 1.8k words of coffee shop/college AU with a side of enemies to almost-lovers

A/N: It's finals week, I posted this on Ao3 at almost 5am, and if the rest of the sentence didn't make it obvious, I'm writing from unfortunate experience. Not beta-ed or proofread, although I happened to see one thing to fix when I woke up this morning. Feel my raw power. Rawr.

It wasn't that big a deal.

It kind of really was, though.

Every Thursday morning during the fall semester, Winry sat in the same spot at the same school coffee shop. It was the spot sent by the entire patron pantheon of cram papers. Maybe one person didn't need an entire booth, but it was in the corner, and the tops of the bench seats had opaque plastic barriers that just so happened to be perfect for minimizing excess visual chaos. For the most part, there weren't loud conversations, and the jazz music that came through the speakers helped her tune out people ordering coffee. Add to that the fact that she could use campus flex dollars and not her own bank account that was begging for mercy, and it was the perfect spot to get papers done.

But apparently not this spring.

As soon as Winry walked in, she noticed him in the corner. Some emo wannabe guy on his computer. Probably on Reddit complaining about how women didn't appreciate the amazing pics he sent them on Tinder. Or at least, it was a fair guess based on the sour look on his face. Why did this guy of all people have to steal the holy grail spot? Ugh. She was still gonna get her coffee, darn it.

"You know the deal, Sciezska. Medium roast with a shot of espresso and vanilla creamer."

"On it! You paying in flex?"

"Yeah." She scanned her student ID and lowered her voice. "Who's off-brand Gerard Way in the corner?"

"Who's Ger—"

"The punk kid."

"Ohhh. I can try to get his number for you, if you want."

"No, he looks like a total tool! And not the kind I like dealing with!"

"Which means you think he's hot. I didn't think you were into that type, but you're not wrong."

"For the last time, no, Sciezska! He took my spot! And I'm trying very, very hard to keep this to a stage whisper, but if you keep trying to set me up with some random creep, I won't be able to!"

A distinctly male voice grumbled, "I'm not a creep."

"Keep telling that to the girls on Tinder. I'm sure they'll understand eventually."

"Yeah, and I'll bet if you look at your 'Live, Laugh, Love' sign a little more, you'll understand it eventually." He mumbled something under his breath.

"What was that, Mr. Nice Guy?"

"Lay off, it's eight in the morning. I said the only reason I even have a Tinder account is because my roommate stole my phone while I was going to the bathroom."

"Well, if you didn't want it, why didn't you delete it?"

"Eh, I figured if I really got sick of being single one day, it'd already be there."

"Never would have guessed you were single," Winry said dryly.

"Come on, it's way too early to be rubbing that kind of crap in. Who says I'm not fine with being single anyway?"

Sciezska timidly spoke up. "Medium roast with espresso and vanilla creamer?"

Winry thanked her as red jacket boy continued. "'Edward Elric, Bachelor.' Almost sounds as good as 'Edward Elric, Bachelor of Science.'"

"B.S. degree. Sounds about right."

"About time you stopped acting like I'm an idiot!"

Winry snorted. "That's not what I meant."

"Hey!"

"And with that, I'm going to go find some other spot to write my paper."

Edward, as his name apparently was, scoffed and mumbled something that sounded like "good riddance". Maybe the librarians wouldn't get on her case too much for bringing in coffee.

-----

A week later, Winry walked into the cafe, assuming the circumstances of the previous week were an anomaly. They were not.

"Medium roast with a shot of espresso and vanilla creamer," she grumbled and sulked in the direction of the corner seat.

"Hey, don't start with me again, blondie. I've had a whopping four hours of sleep and I can't promise you'll like what comes out of my mouth."

"We're at a coffee shop. Get some coffee. I can't help it if you're too hung over to be polite."

"Now look, genius. I did not stay up until 4 A.M. working on a stupid chem paper for that sadistic pyromaniac excuse for a professor just for some random chick to accuse me of being hung over."

"Oh."

"Yeah. And for your information, coffee doesn't really help me wake up. It just helps me focus on homework." He lifted up his empty cup and gave it a shake.

"That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard."

"ADHD is a weird thing, and yet, here I am."

"Huh, interesting."

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pick up where I left off with the same stupid ten page paper I started last night."

"Oh right. Sure," Winry stammered. "Listen, I'm really sorry I just assumed things about you. It was wrong of me, and I'd like to make it up to you, if that's okay."

Edward eyed her suspiciously. "What do you have in mind?"

"Well...I could look over your paper once you're done writing it? I've got a paper of my own to write while I'm waiting, and I can sit right across the table here so you don't have to come get me. I won't try to talk to you or anything. Neither of us need that kind of distraction."

"Alright, alright. Get your coffee and sit down. The girl at the counter's been up there waiting for a good minute or two while you've been at confessional over here."

"Wait, she has?" Winry's eyes widened, and Edward laughed at her expense. He was kind of attractive when he wasn't scowling...wait what? She pouted and got up to retrieve her coffee. When Winry returned, she plopped down on the bench opposite Edward and opened her laptop. Peeking out from behind it, she added, "By the way, I'm Winry. I figured you ought to at least know the name of the person who's proofreading your paper."

"Well, Winry, you're the one who volunteered." The corners of his mouth twitched upward. The two worked on their assignments in silence, occasionally speaking up when necessary.

-----

Edward was in the corner again the next week as well.

"Hey, Edward! Mind if I join you for homework again?"

"Normally, I'd say no, but you didn't bother me too much last week, so you might as well." He turned away slightly.

"Great! Have you gotten your coffee yet? I didn't see a cup, and you got something the last two times."

"Eh, I haven't been here long. If you're going up and getting yours, would you mind ordering a caramel macchiato for me?" He asked, sliding his ID across the table.

"Yeah, no problem. I'll be back in a sec."

She returned and slipped his ID back before pulling out her computer. "Do you have anything for me to look over this time?"

"Not this week. But if you have anything you need looked over, I can do that, too."

"Actually, I do, if you wouldn't mind."

"Winry, I just volunteered. Just send the paper to my school email. Mine's 'elricedwa'," he instructed as he proceeded to spell it.

"Medium roast and a caramel macchiato?" Sciezska called out.

"Coming!" Winry replied and turned to Edward. "I just sent it, so you should be able to start while I'm getting our stuff." Eyes glued to his laptop, Edward gave a thumbs up.

Once she returned with their drinks, Winry sat down and wordlessly set Edward's drink next to him.

"Thanks," he muttered distantly. His lips mirrored the words he was reading. Though his lips weren't plump by any stretch of the imagination, they were shapely. His steely concentration made the air leave Winry's lungs. To top it all off, the first rays of sunlight came through the window just right, hitting Edward's hair in a way that made it positively glow.

What was she thinking? Those were only the sorts of things people thought when they had a crush. She'd only had two positive interactions with him, including this one. ...well, maybe it was a crush. She could certainly do worse than someone with a questionable fashion sense. After all, he worked hard, and he got good grades, if the quality of his writing was any indication. Okay, fine. He was also drop dead gorgeous, if you could see past his clothing choices. Yeah, she had a crush.

"Did you hear anything I just said?"

"...no."

"Figures. I finished reading your paper. It's not bad, I just left a few suggestions for sentence structure. Now I am going to enjoy my caramel macchiato." He took off the lid and breathed in the steam with his eyes closed, nearly drooping into the cup in content. When he opened his eyes slowly, Winry was awestruck by the similarity between the color of his eyes and his drink.

"What?" Edward furrowed his eyebrows.

"Nothing. I didn't say anything. At all. Nope."

"Okay." He shrugged. She reopened the document and went through his suggested edits. Gnawing her lip in concentration, she leaned forward a bit to settle in and tackle the editing.

"...hey, uh, Winry?" Edward gulped. "Are you going to drink your coffee?"

"Oh! Yeah, I almost forgot. Thanks, Edward!" she smiled.

"No–no problem. And you can call me Ed, you know. Most people do. Except for that excuse for a professor that calls me pipsqueak. Can you believe he's my advisor? I mean, come on, I'm a grown man. I'm not that short."

Winry made a poor attempt at containing her laughter. "Okay then, Ed. Prove it. Stand up."

"Fine." He slid out of the booth and stood. Winry followed suit and appraised their respective heights.

"Well, I'd hardly call you tall, but you're at least taller than me by a few inches, for whatever that's worth."

Edward grinned as if he had won some sort of prize. "Time for shorties to sit down now!"

"Watch it now. You're not too far from that label yourself, mister."

They both returned to their positions in the booth and worked steadily for the next hour. At the end of that time, Winry closed her laptop. "Ed, are you okay? You seem distracted."

"ADHD. I'm always distracted," he dismissed.

"No, like, are you sick or something? You did get more than four hours of sleep this time, right?"

"No comment." Ed's mouth twitched. He mumbled barely loud enough to hear, "Wouldn't have mattered anyway."

"Are you sure? If you're not feeling well, I can drive you over to the health center."

"N-no. That's not it." He exhaled, then slid a napkin across the table. His hands trembled slightly. "Anyway, here's my number. In case you need me to look over a paper. Or whatever. I've got a class soon."

Winry blushed, but tucked the napkin in her laptop. "Thanks, Ed. See you next week?"

"Yeah. Next week."

-----

Winry: This goes with your major, right?

Edward: Blocked

#fma #fma fanfic #503 day #when i wrote it it was probably still 503 day somewhere #edwin #edward elric #winry rockbell #fma sciezska #fma sheska #my writing #my fic #coffee shop au #college au

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

#by alexseanchai #miraculous ladybug #tag game

[xparadisexlostx]

Palaemon

So this is a ficlet I’ve been working on for a while now. I don’t know if it’s really going to go anywhere, but I’ve worked on the first chapter, editing and deleting shit for a while and while I have some issues with it, I wanna post it just because of all the work I’ve put into it.

This story will have some body gore/mutilation, and especially as it goes on just elements of things that are Not Ok (and I mean that in a SHIELD brought Coulson back to life against his will and I fully believe they do shady/potentially immoral experiments way). 

I have a whole profile for Winnie that I’ll link when I find it lmfao.

“Data log six-four-seven. Project name: Palaemon. This is project head Dr. Winifred Fletcher.” She wanted to make her voice a monotone over the recording, but as she passed the guards at the entry point and headed up the drive she could feel a shiver of fear crawl up her spine that caused an unconscious little quiver in her tone. It’d been a long time since she’d personally done any field documentation. Years, even. Back when she’d been young and zealous and determined to make a name for herself at SHIELD. Now she had dozens of low-level researchers and new hires in those same shoes she had been, eager to run headfirst into danger if it meant getting her approval. She didn’t have time to deconstruct how she felt about that. SHIELD had always kept her too busy.

She pressed the button on her recording device again. “It is May twenty first two-thousand-and-fourteen. I have been called in to assess a scene at cite three-nine-nine. All seven agents deployed are active participants in Palaemon and were last administered compound HDR 3-00-1 six days ago: the fifteenth of May, two-thousand-and-fourteen. All participants were cleared by medical staff before deployment two days ago, with no unusual side-effects documented during examination.”

Her voice had returned to its normal, professional drone, but something was making her deeply uneasy.

She wasn’t afraid of death. She wasn’t even particularly afraid of pain. It wasn’t the dark gravel drive only illuminated by headlights, or the dilapidated building that leaned like its tired wooden bones might snap at any second that sent chills up her spine. Part of the lure of SHIELD was the thrill of danger, and the morbid, twisted curiosity that came from the unknown. She didn’t fear any external force… only herself and the consequences of her own actions.

Her foot pressed just a little too hard on the brake as she stopped, and it threw her roughly against the seatbelt, which locked like a retractable leash around the neck of an ill trained poodle. A little cough left her, and she groped blindly beside her for the gear shift before finally freeing herself of her bindings. She snatched a bag from the passenger seat and pushed open the door. Immediately the night air rushed around her, heavy and humid, clinging to her skin, laying on her chest, and making it harder to breathe. Cicadas were droning a loud, repetitive song in the trees around her, and by the time she began ascending the stairs to the porch, her heavy breathing had fallen in sync with the alien music.

There was a terrible smell coming from the house, like that of wasting fish and burned fat. And someone was crying. Soft piteous whimpers that turned into wails that escaped the cracks of the open windows. Winnie recognized the voice as Veronica Cooper---one of the field agents who had recently joined Project Palaemon. There were other voices, talking in soft, short sentences that she assumed were platitudes that would make the agent calm down, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. She did note, as she pulled on a pair of sterile gloves, that the attempts apparently failed. The crying only grew louder and more desperate. 

She opened the half cracked door and felt a hard lump form in her throat. When the stench hit her eyes they immediately began to burn in their sockets. Directly inside the doorway, a dead agent was lying prone on the floor, his face straight down in a puddle brown vomit streaked with blood that, upon further investigation, appeared to be his own. His body was covered in bites and scratch marks, his shirt was ripped away to reveal a bloated stomach, and in his still clenched fists he was clutching shards of glass. Winnie looked around, her headlamp only illuminating fractions of the hall at a time, each just as bloody and horrific as the scene in front of her. She determined he must be holding onto the remnants of a light fixture that had been ripped forcefully from the ceiling. Wires were hanging from the hole, and directly below, the metal fixture had been discarded---it’s lightbulbs torn out. Why? The shards were too small to use as weapons. Perhaps he’d been holding onto the light as he was being attacked? Possible. But…

From her bag she produced a tongue depressor as she knelt down by the body. Carefully, she pulled back his lips as best she could. Shards of glass glittered in the bright light of her head lamp. They were deeply embedded in his gums and crushed between his teeth. He’d been eating them when he died. That possibly explained the vomit. But what could possess a man to do something like that? 

“Doctor Fletcher?” A man’s voice called. An agent she didn’t know. She heard Cooper screech and then begin to violently sob. The old, thin floors shook as the vibrations from the other room carried down the hall. That same male agent swore, and there was a scraping sound of wood on wood as if someone had run into a table or a chair. She was going to have to make her assessment of the dead wait until she had dealt with the living.

Winnie carried on down the hall, gingerly stepping over and around everything she could. Blood was smeared along the peeling remnants of wallpaper. And there were no lights except for that which came from her flashlight. Fixtures were ripped out of the ceiling, and there was a lamp on the floor that had been violently shattered with three disembodied, mangled fingers laying in the wreckage. She passed the dining room, her light just barely illuminating three mutilated figures. Each with swollen stomachs and eyes that had been torn from their sockets. They had fallen close to the entryway, each with a single bullet hole in their heads. But she couldn’t stop to observe them the way she wanted to.

By the time she reached the living room, Cooper’s wailing was so loud it made her ears ring. There was no light at all coming from the doorway, and she frowned. Her confusion didn’t last long. The second she stepped into the room, headlamp blazing, Veronica Cooper began to screech and howl like a wild animal. She was handcuffed, but it still took two other agents to restrain her. They were trying to keep hold of her arms while a third agent was attempting to put a blanket over her completely nude upper half. 

“Will you cut that fucking lamp off?!” One of the agents hissed as Veronica bit into his arm like a rabid animal. Blood began to bubble out of the wound and dribble through Cooper’s parted lips before the third agent managed to forcibly pry her jaw off.

The doctor hesitated for a moment, needing to get at least a preliminary glance at the agent Cooper. She looked much like the dead bodies in the dining room. Her stomach was heavily bloated, and one of her eyes was missing from its socket. Claw marks and bites were all over her exposed upper body, and her hand was missing three fingers that Winnie assumed matched those she’d seen in the hall. 

She turned off the headlamp. 

Immediately Cooper went from a raving wild woman, to a crumpled, sobbing creature. When the blanket was brought back to her, she didn’t resist. At least not that Winnie could see. Granted, she couldn’t see much. The only light in the room came from a trickle of moonlight that snuck its way through the torn curtains.

“Agent Cooper.” The doctor stepped forward blindly. It didn’t draw any visible or audible response from the agent. “Agent Cooper, can you understand me? It’s Doctor Fletcher. Can you tell me what happened?”

No response.

One of the agents restraining her chimed in. “When we arrived at the house Agent Cooper and three others were alive. Cooper was in the hall, and we managed to restrain her. I heard crying coming from the downstairs bathroom. There was also gurgling and---running water. No one responded when I called out for them, but when I stepped into the room and they saw my headlamp, they started screaming. I ran, thinking I could calm them down or find some way to restrain them if I could get back to the other agents, but they pinned me down in the dining room, and Tillman and Renolds were forced to open fire. When the scene was secured we attempted to speak to Agent Cooper, but she was confused. She hasn’t said much aside from ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘please’ or ‘water.’”

She nodded and bit the inside of her cheek. “And the others? This was a seven man team. We’re missing two agents.”

“We searched the house and the two exterior buildings but they were clear. Best guess is when things got weird they bolted.”

 “Or they did this to them and fled the scene.” The man who had been bitten growled. He was holding onto Veronica with a vice grip now. She couldn’t see him properly, but the way the poor girl’s shoulder was awkwardly raised while the rest of her shadowy form slumped lifelessly toward the floor was proof of his tight hold on her. “We got a search team out in the forest looking for the-shit!”

Fletcher saw his shadow contort awkwardly as he tried to maintain his grip and distance himself from Veronica all at once.

“Jesus fuck-Renolds grab her. Grab her!” 

“What--why? You’ve-”

There was a thud as the agent dropped her completely and stepped back. “She’s licking the blood off my fucking arm!”

“Water.” Agent Cooper was hoarse from all her screaming, and there was desperation in her tone. The men shuffled awkwardly as Veronica attempted to get closer to the bleeding man again. “Please! Water!”

“Can’t you give her something?” 

“No.” Fletcher said, her response automatic. She wasn’t sure what was turning faster, her mind or her stomach. But she knew that they couldn’t give Veronica anything. Not yet. “There’s a medical transport outside parked behind me. They’ve been instructed on what to do, but ride with them back to HQ and help them keep her contained. Afterwards my staff will assess any injuries you have and release you back to your duties.”

There was a long silence.

She was glad it was dark. If her light was still on, she would have likely seen disgust on their faces. It was on hers. Here she was denying Veronica even the slightest semblance of peace. It was callous at best, and unforgivably monstrous at worst. But HDR 3-00-1 was one of the most bizarre drugs she’d ever worked with and these were their first human trials. Any drug, even a mild sedative, could interfere with accurate lab results. As soon as she’d been given a full examination, her team would give her the best care SHIELD could offer. Fletcher would make sure of it.

One of the men cleared his throat. “The search party will radio you directly if they find anything.”

The agents had to carry Veronica out of the house. She fought them all the way down the hall, but once she saw the light of the med-transport there was no containing her agonized screams. When her cuffs were released she began clawing at her own face, and when the agents pulled them away, she fought them like a wild animal. One of the med staff caught a foot in the jaw as they laid her onto the metal gurney and pulled the straps up to restrain her. Even after one of the men pulled off his jacket and draped it across her face to blot out the light, she continued to howl and buck against the restraints, nearly tipping the gurney onto the ground. The last thing she heard as they pulled the doors shut was Veronica Cooper’s raspy, haggard voice begging for water.

[mariana-oconnor]

@cruciatusforeplay

replied to your post

“Weekly Word Count”

I find your weekly word count posts really motivating. Obviously your big writing weeks are very impressive, but also the weeks where you write a bit less than you might have liked are really awesome to read about, because it's really good to see that other people's creative output also goes up and down depending on what else is happening in their lives. Congrats on your many-word week :)

I’m so glad. I think it’s been a good habit for me to keep to. It helps me keep up motivation, but also it means I get to sit down on a Saturday (usually) and say ‘look, you haven’t written as much as you did last week, but that’s still words. You still wrote.’

And it helps to look back and see that I’ve had slow weeks before, and they’ve been followed by weeks where I’ve written so much. If I ever feel like ‘oh god, I’m never going to feel inspired again,’ I can look back and remind myself that I’ve felt like this before and it didn’t last forever. Inspiration and motivation come and go, but they do come back again. That’s very helpful and reassuring, and it’s nice to have actual proof of it.

I’m glad that posting it is helping others, too. I worry a bit that, given that I tend to write pretty fast, some people might find it discouraging, and that’s the last thing I want. Everyone writes at their own pace, but like you said, everyone’s output goes up and down. A good week for one person might be 100 or 1000 words, a good week for another might be 100,000. That’s just how it is.

I’ll always remember that gif set that went round a few years ago of Stephen King and George R R Martin on a panel together discussing their writing speeds. Martin says he sometimes has days where he writes three sentences and deletes four, while King thinks it’s a terrible day if he hasn’t written 1000 or something like that. That was the gist anyway.

Ah, I’ve found it:

(There’s some stuff about JKR at the end in case anyone’s trying to avoid her, but it’s the beginning that’s relevant.)

I started doing this after having seen @tisfan​‘s weekly ‘state of the fic’ post. I found it very reassuring to see how a little bit on a lot of fics all adds up. Tisfan (and @27dragons) often have two or three fics on the go at a time that they are writing and publishing chapter by chapter to a set schedule, and they start the next thing while they’re finishing posting the last one. I know I can’t work like that. I have to have things finished before I start publishing them, or my brain files them away under “done” and forgets about them. But just that process of every week writing down what I’ve done and posting it online so I have some form of monitoring, seemed like it might help me keep track of things. And so far it has.

It’s a little more difficult to keep track of my editing, and things seem to be starting to languish in editing hell. But the process is definitely helping at the moment. I’ll have to come up with some sort of editing system.

#cruciatusforeplay #writing

[midnighthyuck]

Beautiful | jungwoo!au

summary: you were working on a photoshoot with your university team, in the meanwhile, jungwoo has to dress up as a girl to help his sister. 

words: 2.600 (sorry bout that)

pairing: you & jungwoo

a/n: pretty sweet. also, sorry about any mistakes, english is not my native language. it’s not that good idk? but it would be a shame deleting it all without giving a try. promise next time will be better.

requests are open!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Two hours. That was the amount of time you had already spent trying to convince your senior that purple lights wouldn’t look as good as blue ones. The scenario was all set up but the lights still annoyed you. He had been working with photoshoots before you, period. He had plenty of works highly well recognized by all teachers in photography faculty, period. Yet, purple didn’t feel right.  

Tired of hearing your annoying complains he decided to give it a try. It ended up with you being congratulated by your ‘unceasing persistence’ and happy with the finally blue studio. He was good, but you also were. Being on top of the class was the main reason you were the only sophomore in the wise room.  

Once done with the lighting discussion you decided to take a look on the models. It was not your first time on a shooting like that so you had plenty knowledge of how the girls get stressed and sensitive right before the show. Most of them you’d never seen before and was pretty much sure you wouldn’t be seeing again anytime soon, still you made sure to bring them some fruits and cool water. 

‘’You all look stunning! Definitely the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen’’ you genuinely smiled at them. That was your job, making them feel at ease, instead of freaking them out like Doyoung would be doing in a few minutes. 

He wasn’t a bad guy, but the amount of overwork he had been dealing with in the past few months may have helped him to become this ‘fast mood shifting’ weapon. Or you might just think it because you are two opposites. Doyoung doesn’t know how to behave when it comes about girls. Also don’t you when it comes about boys. 

“There’s one missing’’ Ten made himself noticeable, handing you the paperwork. 

“It’s fine, we still got a few minutes.’’ you tried to stay calm, although you knew Doyoung would be shouting at you once the shoot started and one of his ‘girls’ was missing. ‘’I’ll go grab some coffee for us. Make sure Doyoung doesn’t freak out.’’  

“I will try.’’ It’s all you get back when you’re already reaching the elevator.  

In the meanwhile, Jungwoo was in denial.  

“No.” was all he said. 

“No, you don’t get me.” Junghah, the older sister, insisted. “I need you to be there for me. The director will fucking kill me. Also, what if I never get a job like this again?” 

“You should be there, not me!” his voice still sounded awfully adorable, despite the loudness. 

“I know! Do you think I’m like this cause I want to? Huh?” Junghah’s voice made itself louder than expected thanks to the eco. She had been in the bathroom for the whole day long. It had been four hours already. “Even if I manage to get out of here, I don’t think I can stay away for too long, you understand?” 

Jungwoo was too good, even he suspected of it, but everything must have a limit. He thought about the uncountable number of times he’d helped his older sister until the very moment. Combing her hair when she broke her arm. Dumping her ex-boyfriend for her cause she wouldn’t be able to handle his crying face. Not to mention all the times he had lied to their mom in order to help her sneak out of the house to go out.  

He knew that dressing up as a girl and showing up in a photoshoot wasn’t the best decision at all.  “Pretty please.’’ and that was it. 

With that simple sentence she had him all over her shoes.  

Jungwoo was way too good. 

[…] 

“Hold on, please!” you let the air in your lungs come out as a demand, running to the metal door a few steps away from you while managing to keep both ice americanos in your hands inside its cups, instead of dripping all over the elevator’s floor. “Thank you.” you mumble once in, trying to fix the harsh first impression you’d just caused. 

A smile was the answer. An awkwardly cute smile coming from an around 5 feet tall girl. She was huge, that was no secret, even compared to the ones waiting for you at the studio, yet something about her felt just to adorable, despite her size. Her long hair fell just right over her shoulder’s, contouring her back with a few other strands over her cheekbones. She was definitely adorable and you couldn’t help but smile. 

“Excuse me, are you here for the shooting?”  

“Uh, yes!” not only the face was lovely, but also the voice.  

You tried to keep your reactions to yourself, but seeing her ears getting red just made you internally jump in joy. “I see. I’m also on it, I mean, not modeling as you can see. I’m in charge of light and photography.’’ you smiled once again when she opened her mouth impressed, getting even more red than before. “Is this your first time?” 

“...Is it that obvious?” and once again you found yourself whipped by that extremally cute face.  

“Nah, it’s just cause you have very sincere expressions. It’s not bad though.” The conversation could keep on some other time, because in the very next second you’d arrived in the 8th floor. 

You, politely, guide the girl to the makeup room and let her there so they could work out on how to make her look like the astonishing (you would call kinda fake looking) woman we see on magazines. 

[…] 

As you thought Doyoung couldn’t keep his frustrations to himself, but since you were there the models had someone to rely on. Specially the cute one. It was her first time so it took ages for her to feel comfortable enough to pose properly.  

You managed to make some good pics before noon arrived, so you’d just sit around and wait until your colleagues were also done. Going out for a few drinks was always one of the best parts of working on projects with them.  

While setting up a few things in your head and organizing some paper and equipment, you heard two of your senior laughing. ‘If they can chill, they can also help me get everything done’ your thought while frowning. Finally reaching both guys you could barely remember the names, you were able to hear was seemed to be so funny. 

“I don’t know how Doyoung let that thing be on the project. That’s definitely not a girl, dude.”  

“I mean, maybe if I was drunk, or blind” both them laugh annoyingly.  

“Well, if it is so cool making fun out of people, I guess you guys will die in laughter once you check up on yourselves in the mirror.” you claim entering the place. “Or it might be funnier if your just shut the fuck up and take care of the work you’re here to do.’’ 

“Yeah, but nobody told me this was a gay parade.” one insisted. 

You smile back. “I bet they told you it was a circus. That’s why you keep acting like a fucking clown.” 

Before it could get any worse (or better), all the models, now done with their hard work, entered the room laughing in delight once it was over. Except from the tall one, who came in leaving the bathroom right behind you. You frowned in pain. You just wished she didn’t hear all the bullshit those two said. 

“Thank you for that.” she told you once you both were the only ones left in the huge studio, since taking the elevator was a kind of process when there were around 14 people in there. And taking the stairs on 8th floor was not an option.  

The touch of your hand on hers makes she feels vulnerable, and once again she blushes. “Never mind those assholes. Men are fucking stupid. Are you coming with us for a drink?” 

“Uh, not really. I gotta go back to check on my sister.” 

“Oh, I see.” and when the elevator finally arrives to get you, you hear her sighing in relief. 

“You did well today. I bet we are gonna see each other again anytime. What’s your name anyways?” 

“Kim Jungwoo.” she answers back with a wide smile.  

“You’re name is as adorable as your face, you know it?” you can’t help but make your thoughts real by telling the truth. 

“Oh... Thank you. I don’t get this a lot.” 

“But you should. Honestly, you’re the cutest model I’ve ever bumped into. Feel lucky, cause I see plenty of gorgeous girls every once in a while. You’re extremally beautiful.” 

“Thank you.” you are amused by the laugh that comes from her. It was just too much of a cute sound. But before you could embarrass yourself in front of her again the door opens, revealing a groups of people waiting for you to follow them to the nearest bar.  

You just wave goodbye and wish Jungwoo luck.

[…] 

Later that night Jungwoo searched for you online. He wasn’t brave enough to send a request, though. He felt cheesy for being like that, just appreciating your face once again by a picture someone else took. But it was not all about looks. It was about you all. Something just felt warm inside him while watching a stupid video Jaehyun posted on your birthday.  

Was it the smile? Was it the cozy voice? He didn’t know for sure, but it made him feel even worse for not being fearless.  

He was a coward afterwards.  

[…] 

You couldn’t bare the pain in your neck anymore, even after trying to stretch or taking pain-killers. You decided to go home for the day, you wouldn’t be much productive editing the pictures with that annoying pinch keeping all your attention for itself.  

“Excuse me!” the sweet voice reached your ears when you were just about to leave the building.  

“Yes?” you frowned. That face was somehow familiar. 

“Uh- well... I was here last weekend on the photoshoot...’’ You still couldn’t link it. 

“Sorry, I don’t recall. Are you a staff member?”  

“Not exactly. Well, I was... one of the models.” Oh. It wasn’t hard to say why you weren’t able to recognize her (him? they?). 

They still were tall as hell, the baby face had pretty much the same features and naive expressions, but it all just felt so different. The person right in front of you now seemed like someone else. 

“I think I remember now.” you said trying to conceal your surprise. “How can I help?” 

There it was again. Ears turning red, just as the tip of the nose, confused face and shrunken shoulders. Just as adorable as you could remember. 

“I actually... Hm...” 

“The pictures aren’t ready yet, if that’s what you’re here for. It takes some time.” 

“No!” they answered louder than you expected, getting you surprised. “I... actually came to.. Uh, talk to you.” 

“Me?” you didn’t mean to sound as surprised as you actually did.  

“I’m so sorry! I swear I’m not a weirdo. I just didn’t have the chance to talk to you that much that day, and I was wondering if... Well, if y-you...” 

No. The answer was already set on your mind before you could even think about the painful pinch on your neck. But that was when you realized it wasn’t there anymore. You frown in confusion and run your fingers through the back of your head. Everything is just fine. 

“Ok.” you said before thinking well, interrupting the other while getting lost on their own words. “What about grabbing some coffee?” 

They were not a dog, but for a second you could swear you saw a wagging tail when they opened that bright smile right in front of your eyes. 

[…] 

So Kim Jungwoo was indeed a guy.  

The whole ‘’dressing’’ as girl thing had a story behind it, before you could get angry at him. No that you had a real reason for that, but as Ten would say “getting mad at boys is you favorite sports”. But even though, he was way different from all the other boys you had ever met.  

Adorable wasn’t the only word to describe him. He was... sweet (?) Like genuinely.  Not the kind of “am I cute?” sweet, the real sweetness. The one kids lose once they grow up. The one that makes us love animals because they’re just too pure for this world.  And you hated yourself for feeling so much at ease with a guy as you did with Jungwoo. 

You knew his intentions. Growing up with two older brothers and being friends with Johnny made you a kind of expert when it comes to know that guys are into you. Yet, you couldn’t help but smile at each sweet expression he’d let off whenever you said something that caught him out of guard.  

[…] 

Keeping in touch with Jungwoo was just natural.  

People tend to say they never really realize they fell in love, but you’d never forget that friday night, when he texted you a “I wanna see you soon.”.  

What is this? You thought to yourself, holding onto your phone tightly, staring at the ceiling wondering since when were you anticipating seeing Jungwoo that much. What exactly was that cozy warmness inside your chest. 

[…] 

“I like you.” Jungwoo closed his eyes when the words came out, becoming real. 

It had been a month since the first time you thought he was adorable. And now, right in front of that playground somewhere nearby your house, on that cold november noon, he was being adorable once again. 

He didn’t dare to take your hands. He knew you well to know how suspicious you were with skinship, what got you smiling. You moved one step forward, getting closer to the taller cute boy, taking one of his hands on yours. 

“I know.” 

“Since when?” he sighs deeply. You wish you were brave enough to check up his expression. I bet his ears are red, you thought.  

“Since day one.” you laugh when his lamentation moan reaches your ears, at the same time he decides to lay his head on your shoulder.  

“That’s so unfair.” he sighs once again, that’s when you feel the urge to pet his head. At the first touch he gets surprised, since touching wasn’t really something between the two of you. “I’m sorry.” 

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” you smile, although you knew he couldn’t see it.  

Gathering all his strength, he takes a step back to face you. “And... What’s your answer?” 

You laugh. “You know I have a soft spot for you and there’s no way I’d say no when you’re looking at me like that.”. 

And when he pouts at you with that ridiculously adorable face you can’t help but hugging him. “You were special since the first second. Thank you for that.” 

He hugs you back and now you’re able to feel his heartbeat, which gets you a bit worried since it was way faster than people consider healthy. 

“I never cared when people gave me compliments. But that day, when you said I was beautiful, I felt you were looking through me. It was not about being a guy, being a girl, not even about being attractive. It was about... me. I’m the one to thank you.” 

You smile while petting his back. “You’re beautiful, Jungwoo.” 

And he was. 

Kim Jungwoo was the prettiest thing that had ever crossed your path. 

#nct jungwoo #nct imagines #nct #jungwoo edits #jungwoo imagines #jungwoo #nct scenarios #nct au #nct aus #jungwoo au #nct u #nct u jungwoo #nct 127 #nct 127 jungwoo

[trashpanda-remus]

One More Time With Feeling: Chapter One

So, I’m finally starting this thing up! I can’t tell if it’s moving too slow or too fast but I’m posting it before I can hate and delete it!

On AO3

Tagging: @icequeenoriginal and going back to get @athenashipsthings

WARNINGS: Language, mention of cancer, fear of death, tell me if I’m missing any

“Roman sighed, rolling his eyes at his screen. On it was Remus absolutely glowing, waving his left hand around and shrieking so loud he coughed. Beside him was Derrik, smiling as well and grabbing Remus’ hand. On both men’s hands were matching gold bands.

“I’m going to be a husband, y’all!!” Remus’ scream pushed through the speakers and Roman had to turn his phone off to regroup.

It wasn’t that Roman wasn’t happy for his brother, he was ecstatic that Remus had found somebody and all that, but he had to find out through a vlog? Three weeks later?

The King twins hardly spoke after they turned 20, but this was a huge life event and Remus was still too angry to give him a call?

The King twins had once been inseparable. Until they turned nineteen, when Remus drifted, fell into a crowd his brother wasn’t a fan of. College pulled them apart in a way high school hadn’t quite achieved. But that didn’t mean they didn’t care about one another.

The two hardly spoke, yes, but it wasn’t as though they hated one another - Roman at least expected a call. If it weren’t for his brother’s YouTube channel, would he have ever known?

Watching his brother laugh onscreen, his chest tightened. The duo looked happy; Derrik lighting up in a way Roman ha only ever seen when the two were together. Remus was cackling at every other sentence from his boyf- fiance. He was proud of Remus, that he was happy, but that didn’t stop the hurt. 

“We’re thinking something simple!” Remus announced. “In six months. We’re only waiting for that because I’ve gotta go to the doctor’s office the week before to be officially pronounced cured.”

Roman had almost forgotten about that. Had it almost been ten years already? The months hovering over his brother, taking notes over any sign of illness or ailment seemed to drag into his memories of just yesterday. But, Remus was going to be cured in less than a year.

Thoughts moved through Roman’s head as he moved towards his phone. and dialed his twin brother’s number. The phone rang three times before there was an answer.

“Rah!” Remus’ voice erupted from the phone, loud and excited with a wheeze behind it, as though he had been laughing before picking up. “What’cha need, Ro-Ro?”

“Oh, nothing,” Roman chided into the phone. “Just an explanation as to why my own brother didn’t want to tell me he was engaged?”

“Oh,” Remus sighed. “I wanted to call everyone, but somebody saw Dee’s ring in a stream and - I just had more announcements I wanted to do later on and…” Remus coughed. “Things got derailed.”

“Derailed? How?” Roman asked. “When were you planning to tell me?”

“When I get home from my doctor’s appointment tomorrow,” Remus said, trying to be casual. “They’re running tests, cause a big milestone’s coming up and you know how my luck works.”

Roman chuckled at his brother, rolling his eyes. Remus did tend to have terrible luck when milestones approached. He had to get his tonsils taken out the night before his tenth birthday, spent his sixteenth in chemo. He had been so sick the day before graduation that he almost passed out on stage. 

“And it doesn’t look good, Roman…” Roman’s breath stopped. 

“What… What do you mean, Re?” He tried to even out his breathing, not good could mean a lot of things, right? His mind was just stuck because he was a worrywart, he worried about his brother, big deal.

“The tests are still underway, so we aren’t panicking, but I’ve been feeling.. off. And Derrik’s been scared that maybe it’s getting bad.” Remus sighed. “My doctor says that if it happens, it’ll probably respond to what was used last time. It’ll be okay. I just… wanted it to be a good news, bad news thing.”

Roman felt like the walls were closing in. This was a nightmare he’d had when he was nineteen, a scary thought that passed his mind from time to time when he wasn’t quite busy enough to keep them at bay. This couldn’t be real. He knew he couldn’t protect his brother from this, but he felt like, like a failure. The cotton was back in his throat, but he spoke up.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Just… keep me updated, please. Let me know the moment you get the news!”

“Promise, Twinno! The second I get a yay or nay, you’re getting a phone call!”

And with that, there was silence. 

_-_-_-_-_-

The next day, Roman was on his toes. He leaned close to everybody around him, his friends were supportive of him, letting him lean despite his refusal to talk about what was bothering him. He tried to do some editing, some writing and all that, but his gaze kept flickering to his phone. His mind was wandering.

The phone didn’t ring until four in the afternoon, Virgil jumped out of his skin with how quickly his boyfriend grabbed for it. Roman’s voice was frantic as he picked up the phone. 

“Remus!” His voice was choked up, without even knowing the news. “So?”

“Remember that time when we were sixteen?” Remus’ subdued voice was the first red flag. “It came back and you got all wishy washy, all ‘but why you?’ and stuff. And I said, ‘Ya know, it just didn’t think I beat it right the last time. This time I’ll get it right.’” 

Roman nodded, not liking where this was going. 

“Well time to start from the top. One more time with feeling.”

#one more time with feeling #omtwf #remus angst #remus #sick remus sanders #prinxiety #dukeceit #ships tw #shipping tw #cancer mention #medical terminology #cancer tw

[leesungjongg]

message.

Hi. 

Some of you know me as B, others by my full name, and some probably don’t know me at all. I have been on hiatus for a while and I wanted to come back on to give my thoughts and what will happen to this blog. This will be long because there’s so much I want to say, but also I feel like there’s nothing to say at all. 

I’m taking a full hiatus. As in, I won’t be coming back to tumblr. If you’re satisfied with this answer and you don’t want to read the rest, feel free to scroll past this. 

I will explain why I want to take a hiatus. Writing this makes me sad but it’s probably for the best. I’ll start from the beginning.

I’ve run this blog since… April of 2015? That’s most likely when I first began posting more frequently about INFINITE. It was also around the time I finished high school and closed that chapter of my life. 

Graduating from high school was probably the most liberating moment of my life because it meant that I would leave everything behind and move on to better things - and I did! I had started a new chapter, one where I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I couldn’t put it down because I was SO EXCITED. That summer, I spent my time learning Korean and watching Korean dramas, and most importantly, getting to know INFINITE as a 7 member kpop group. It was probably the best summer of my life, and it’s kind of funny because the song, That Summer, actually suits the mood and spirit of that summer. Pun totally intended. 

I made so many friends on tumblr. Everyone was so welcoming, and there were so many people that were so kind to me. I honestly won’t ever forget it. Inspirits are truly the most amazing people. Honestly, I don’t know if I can get through this without crying, but I’m going to try. You guys had open arms and immediately welcomed me in, as if I was already part of the family. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I thought I could slip in without anyone noticing but it was unavoidable. I’ve met so many amazing people that I can’t even keep count. To anyone I’ve ever talked to, or ever interacted with, even for a moment, you are incredible and don’t ever forget that. Some of you I am still in touch with and I am so grateful. I value my friends a lot. And this blog also means a lot to me because it holds all the memories I’ve made with you all.

I still remember when The Eye came out and everyone was talking about the OT7 picture at the end and theorizing and posting clips, gifs, and edits. It was such a unifying and thrilling moment. I had so much fun. 

But as the years went on, the excitement faded and I saw less and less Inspirits on tumblr. There weren’t as many posts being made and I got discouraged from coming onto the site. 

At the beginning, I missed OT7 a lot. I missed their interactions and funny jokes and the behind the scenes footage that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I thought it would be fine, and that we would still be able to laugh and joke like back then. 

But three months ago, I posted this. 

Of course I miss INFINITE. Of course I miss getting new content from them. Whenever I got a notification that they had updated instagram, I got excited. But now, I don’t really feel anything. Isn’t that weird? I kept asking myself, do I still miss them? Really?

I still don’t know the answer to those questions. But I do know that the last sentence of that post still rings true to this day. 

I miss Inspirits the most. No one else can match my level of excitement over INFINITE as much as you guys. 

Which is why I’m sad to be writing this. 

I entered this fandom right when I started college, which honestly were the best four years of my life and I would do it all over again if I had the chance - including becoming an Inspirit again. I laughed and cried with you guys and I really, really treasured the time I spent with you on here. There are so many people who have come and gone and I feel like now it’s my turn to leave.

I don’t want to leave. But I feel like my heart’s not in it anymore. I don’t know if I’ve reached the end of the chapter yet. It doesn’t seem like I have. So I’m marking my place for now. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to it. Maybe one day I’ll read it again and reminisce, or maybe I won’t. I’m not going to delete my blog. That was never my intention from the start. It will still be here, in case I ever do find my way back. 

But for now... this is it. Thanks for sticking with me and making these years really memorable for me. And thank you for reading this, it means a lot to me.

Sincerely,

B

#personal

[kyndaris]

A Single Step and Then Another

Writing is no small feat. Ever since I was bitten by the writing bug, I’ve struggled with keeping projects afloat and maintaining interest in blog management. Before Tumblr, I tried to start a blog twice on Blogspot (now known as Blogger). Much of that came from my desire to track my days. Like keeping a diary or journal. But interesting things were far and few between. The days of my youth largely blurred together and I could hardly find the time to sit down and jot down my thoughts on school or university.

During primary school, when computers were still churlish machines that chugged along at a snail’s pace, I tried my first attempts at writing fanfiction. I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but my curiosity led me to tease out what happened after the Happily Ever After’s that were promised in certain Disney films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As ever, I proved an astute business woman, selling my perfectly printed books that were stapled on one side on the market for $2 a pop.

Alas, the only person that bought my works of genius was my mother.

High school was when I rediscovered my hobby. I was already an avid reader. Writing, while a more difficult challenge, once more sunk its claws into me. As always, I wrote to entertain - imagining daring mercenaries in a fantasy world or anthropomorphic animals clinging to a dying kingdom. Most were inspired by the stories I read and the video games I played. Many of the characters were named after my friends or were poor caricatures. 

There were times, however, when I was writing that I wondered if perhaps I was stealing too many tropes from such classics as Eragon and the Fire Emblem franchise. As such, I often hewed and hawed over many of my works. By the end of high school, I deleted the one major story that I had sitting on my FictionPress. Mostly because I had no proper idea of where I wanted the narrative to go. And I was just filling it up with utter nonsense.

Yet the idea of a mercenary and a hidden princess persisted. I tried to use it again in my next writing project. Still, the land of Thlandaris never quite reached my lofty expectations. Changing everyday animals into weird fantasy creatures with fantastical names also didn’t help.

And so my writing stalled once again.

It was not until I began working, however, that I found my way back again to the world of writing. Though I hadn’t opened up a blank Word page in a while (at least for anything other than a university assignment or a job application), ideas aplenty danced and tossed around in my head. That, of course, was when I decided to restart my attempts at keeping a blog. Yes, I knew it would never really transpire into something majorly popular (though the hope remained that one of my many articles would become viral and a newspaper would decide to feature it), but I thought it would assist with my attempts at writing.

The going, however, was slow when I began work on Divided We Fall. The story itself went through three drafts. With the last one being the most complete. And while I would have sorely liked to have edited it, it had taken a good four years to arrive at what I had been hoping for. Even during those gruelling years of crafting the characters of Feryden, Elisander, Kiralt and Lathin (who were based on many of my earlier characters), I was also tempted by starting up a new project. Like many before me, it was easy to simply toss away an idea that was taking too long and do something different.

Despite that, I decided to keep a record of my many ideas for future stories. After all, if I could just finish one, then surely I had accomplished something.

Back to Divided We Fall, I went. And gosh darn it, I finished it in 2018. Along the way, of course, I had written several short stories. And, I had also managed to be consistent with my blog updates. Yes, many were just impressions and reviews of the games I played - but churning out one a week was also nothing to scoff at.

But I still had ideas aplenty filling my head. While I was quite taken with the idea of writing a reinterpretation of Snow White, my dear friend Hayatedragoon convinced me to stick with my first idea. The one that I hoped would be published as a short series of books. The Adventures of Lacet and Idana.

Throughout the writing of my stories, there were many times when I wanted to give up or delete everything that I had written. As with most creative types with a hint of perfectionism, I was my own worst critic. No-one would like my characters, I said! My dialogue is atrocious! The singular starting sentence was not enough to capture the attention of readers!

With time, however, I managed to silence those thoughts (mostly). There are times, still, when I have wondered if it has all been worth the blood and sweat. It isn’t as if I have publishers and agents beating down my door. Nor do I have a thousand followers on FictionPress leaving me with positive reviews of the things I have written.

I will be honest, a part of me yearns for the praise. And my genius to be recognised. But to do so, however, would go against the very reason why I began writing. The reason why I wanted to write was to weave my own tales. To explore the stories of characters that do not usually get the spotlight. While Lacet and Idana follow many tropes that are stereotypical to the fantasy genre, I like to think I’ve subverted a few expectations. Lacet is no wise wizard. Nor is he young (and incredibly hot) upstart mage. He is middle-aged. His hair is balding and he has a bit of a stomach. 

Of course, as more chapters of Wild Child are uploaded to my FictionPress, I cannot help but worry if my writing will fall into the trap that so many others have done. Will I have ruined the characters by putting too much of myself into them? Will they all become Mary Sues by the end of it all? Will I overcompensate and so they all become terribly unlikeable? 

In other news, I finished editing Monsters Beneath My Bed a couple of months ago as well. Yet I’ve delayed uploading it until I’ve the entirety of Wild Child is up. And before I could even think to rest on my laurels, I began another short story (which is still in progress at time of writing up the blog post) and committed myself to another novel length story. This time, however, the genre is a departure from my usual stomping grounds. Forget fantasy. Let’s try and commit to a modern adventure/ thriller! 

Already I am regretting my decision. Nothing seems factually accurate and I fear that my attempt might just be deleted given another month or two. 

But I will persist. The key to forging ahead, at least for myself, is to worry not about how perfect the quality of the writing is. That is what the editing process is about. Of course, even after editing, slip-ups can still occur. But by carving out the crude gem can one polish it. Such is the process of writing. And if you think I’m talking out of my arse, well, the first few seconds of Neil Gaiman’s ad for his masterclass in writing also provided the perfect analogy of driving with one headlamp and hoping the editing will make people THINK you knew where the plot was going from the very start.

Getting caught up in the nitty gritty of the perfect prologue (for almost two years) did not allow me to craft the entirety of the story. Nor did it allow me much exploration of the characters and other important facets of the world. 

So, for those that are thinking of trying to write their own masterpiece, all I can say is start it as soon as the idea comes. And never waver. Sure, it might not be as good as you hoped, but all of that can be fixed later on. Also, never be afraid to look up synonyms on Google (or a thesaurus). 

But what I found helpful as well was to learn by reading widely. I mean, authors were published for a reason, right? Let them inspire you on your own writing journey. And question what you can make better.

#personal blog #writing process

[meryton-etc]

I saw @yeats-infection do this and I was so so so bored I decided it couldn’t hurt for me to do it too I shall tag @saumenschliesel, @combeferre, @likehandlingroses and anyone else who wants to do this, please do because it’s interesting to read!

ao3 name: InfiniteCalm

fandoms: I have written for many and then deleted them! At the minute it’s mostly Downton Abbey and Leonard Finch Grantchester. If you’d told me that this time last year I’d be so confused. I think then I was in the middle of the abandoned Merlin-realises-identity-politics-wont-save-him project. And of course Tolkein will forever have ownership rights to some of my brain real estate, though I find it difficult to write for that because the stories all seem quite complete to me.

number of fics: unlucky thirteen!

fic i spent the most time on: the hellish harry potter fic that was born out of a mental breakdown that i didn’t realise was a mental breakdown at the time. see if you can tell from the plot/prose/formatting....

fic i spent the least amount of time on: Lost in Translation just came and flowed and was finished during a time when that was particularly rare. I like it though! Nimona forever.

longest fic: Let’s not talk about TSOHS anymore!!!!!!

shortest fic: Let’s see... oh, it’s Photographs! I think I was 17 when I published that! So long ago... I still think the plot of this holds up, but obviously if I wrote it today I would change a great deal. Nimona was a really great webcomic, and I read it with two of my best friends. We were on a school trip once and had to go in search of wifi to steal in order to read the penultimate page. 

most hits: i’m not talking about the real most hits!! The most hits of my Downton stories is Then Came Hallelujah Sounding, which checks out I guess, since I published so close to Christmas, which seems to be peak fanfic reading time. 

most kudos: out of the Downton fics the most kudos is You’re Knee Deep in Clover. I guess because it has Daisy and Thomas dancing, Baxter/Molesley proposal etiquette and a nice little trauma response at the end. What more could you want from a fic? 

most comment threads: Wake Up (Like This) and How the Note Lingers are tied for this one! Personally I find fic comments are the best things ever ever ever and I love them so much, and I’m glad that people responded to these stories so well in particular. The comments on How the Note Lingers were so so cool so thanks to youse for writing them :) also here I would like to stress that Wake Up (Like This) was such a joke title, it is not serious, please don’t take it seriously!!

most bookmarks: Overriding the question again! Both my Grantchester fics have one each (you know who you are <3 ). I love these scmoop-ridden cliché overwritten monstrosities so much. Thomas/Richard, despite being only 30 years apart from Leonard/Daniel, is an awful lot heavier than the latter, so it can be nice to write something where you don’t first have to work out how they get to each other’s houses. 

total word count:  59,642???!!!! 

favorite fic i wrote: choose between my babies? Or conversely, everything I’ve ever written is complete and utter garbage!! (It’s wake up like this)

fic i’d rewrite / expand on: like. at this stage, i read things and i’m like, everyone who says to edit things is clearly right! everything published is riddled with typos and sentences that make no sense because i cut out what went before it without reading over the paragraph. So in that sense, all of them! if i still liked HP i would rewrite TSOHS becuase there were some (some!!!!!) good ideas there. 

share a bit of a WIP: under the cut! I have two “real” WIPs that i will not post because I’m superstitious so have a snippet of something i most likely will not post.

He’s a nervous little thing, though. A bit soft, though she’d never put it like that out loud. Sudden noises scare him- the news- traffic- his father. Too many adults looking at him have him shrinking shyly into her side, his hand searching for hers. He’s only four, she thinks desperately, he’s young enough to grow out of this stage yet, before we have to make him. He’s made friends with the little girl next door, and some of the older children are kind enough towards him, so at least there things are OK, and he’s not suffering the lack of siblings. His cousins are far away, and all older than him, though they do dote on him. And rightly enough, too. He’s a gangly, clumsy little thing, legs long, like saplings. He runs along after the other children. He’s trying his best.

...

One of the Flynns comes running in, followed by a grinning Leonard, interrupting their conversation with questions about their tea. Leonard comes over to her, his dirty little face flushed with fresh air and exercise, and he shows her the stuff they found on their adventure- bits of dirt, mostly, but not as bad as the time they brought a live leech home to show everyone. When they get home to start preparing their own tea, he makes her laugh by trying out some of Mrs Flynn’s idiosyncratic phrases in conversation. He’s full, these days, of malapropisms. But she looks at him gazing at the newspaper, tracing the headlines and frowning at the smaller print, and thinks that before long he’ll be using those words properly. He seems so young, to be sent away to school. But there it is. 

#my fic #tag #ask me something!!!

[momentofmemory]

it’s almost the end of october, which means one of the greatest, most terrifying exploits known to writers is upon us: NaNoWriMo.

there are plenty of super good survival posts out there, but as this’ll be my seventh time participating (six wins, hoping for a seventh), i thought i’d drop my own set of tips into the mix. i’m going to focus mostly on the practical details of how to write; if you want tips on the writing itself either search the writing/reference tags or pester me to do another one later :P with that said, ~on with the post~

Step One: Figure Out Your Goal

i know, i know, obviously it’s to write 50k, but what does that mean to you? are you expecting

polished prose, ready to send off to a publisher?

being able to write every day? 

just throwing up a bunch of ideas?

a mix of everything?

all of these are valid, but they’re going to require different approaches. if you want jaw-dropping writing, you’re going to need in the ballpark of five or more hours each day, if not more. if you want consistency, you’ll want to look at your normal schedule and set up a couple times you know you can write at. if just you want words, pretty much all you need to make sure is that you squeeze writing time in whenever.

your goal will probably change as the month progresses, and that’s totally fine. just check in every so often to remember a)what you’re working for and b)if it’s actually plausible. speaking of...

Step Two: Realize Your Limitations

1. Typing.

imma get super practical here: your typing speed dictates how fast you can get done. if you write 40wpm (the average), you cannot write the full 1667 in a half hour any more than you can run a mile in under three minutes. it’s honestly not a bad idea to check out your own speed, if only to help you understand yourself better. in my experience, actual writing then works like this (using my max speed, 89, as an example):

Absolute Max: 89 wpm (baseline)

Warring: 70 (75% of baseline)

In the zone: 45 (50% of baseline)

Taking my time, concentrated: 22 (25% of baseline)

anything lower than your max/4 probably means you’re spending a lot of time either researching or staring at the page, so just be aware of that.

2. Time & Focus

this kinda goes without saying, but best case scenario this is at least 1-2 hours of your life a day, or dedicating full Saturday/Sundays if you’re a weekend warrior kind of person. it’s so, so worth it if you can make time for it, but also don’t feel bad if you can’t! doing a half nano (25k) or whatever you want is also a fully acceptable plan.

that said, if you do have time, figure out your focus too. if you’ve never been the kind of person that can type for six hours straight, you will probably not magically become this person when it hits Nov. 1 (though with practice, you might be by Nov. 30). i like trying to write at least 300 before work and another 300 during lunch. that way there’s only 1k left for the evening, and having words on the page just makes me feel better. experiment with different ways of blocking out your time in the first few days and see what works best for you.

3. Don’t Forget You Live in a Body

writing is hard work, you will need to eat brain food! hunching over wrecks your back, stand up and stretch every so often! you will hate existing if you forgo sleep for days! and for the love of charles dickens, patron saint of getting paid by the word, take care of your mother-effing wrists!!

seriously on that last one. i’ve ignored it in the past and thoroughly screwed up my wrists one year; don’t be me. keep in them in a neutral position, do regular stretches, and if you need to, get wrist wraps (i recommend these).

Step Three: Actually Doing the Thing

the previous steps have had pretty broad advice, but now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty. these are mostly things i know work for me, and therefore may not for you—adjust to your own needs!

1. Write for 15 Minutes Every Day, Non-Negotiable.

i don’t even mean this is a “write 15 min and then your brain will be tricked into writing more” kinda way, but like, literally. you’re probably not going to be able to do 1667 every day—sometimes you’ll be tired and just won’t have the time. you’re very likely, however, to have 15 minutes, and you’ll want to use them. Doesn’t matter if you write 50 words or 500 in that time, at least you’ll have done something, and that’s usually enough to keep you from feeling like just giving up the next day.

2. You Might Need Physical Spaces

i’m a pretty sensory person when it comes to writing, and having a dedicated writing space is so helpful for me. going back to the idea of being an embodied person, it’s a lot easier to get your brain into a writing mode if your body’s already there. some good options include:

coffee shops (cozy! food!)

a specific room in your home (easily accessed! do what you want!)

libraries (free! quiet!)

a friend’s house (writing buddy! easy access to sounding board!)

all of these places usually have access to wifi, which is a positive.

3. You Definitely Need Digital Spaces

i pretty much always write in the same processor, once again because it helps set the mood. the main options include:

google drive (solid choice, cloud backup, mobile accessible)

dabble writer (cloud backup, links to nano, dark mode, chapter options)

write or die (only for actual writing—a scary but effective motivator; save elsewhere)

word/pages/etc. (ready to go on your computer, formatting options)

scrivener (great plotting tools, detailed interface)

i use dabble writer myself (they’re a nano sponsor, so you can get it free for this month, and as a double bonus you get it half off for the rest of the year if you win). and no, i’m not getting paid to wax poetic about them, but honestly i’ve used it to win the past two years and i adore it. 

anyway my biggest tip here is that i SUPER SUPER DON’T RECOMMEND NON-CLOUD OPTIONS. it’s very risky, but if you must, do a proper back up at least once a week. that shiz is not worth it.

4. The Timer is Your New Best Friend

because i’ve heard this argument before: no, it’s not a crutch, and no, it’s not cheating. it’s literally best practices. i’m personally a big fan of this online timer, and i let it run for 15 min every time i write. after each session i check how many words i wrote, then after maybe a quick 1-2 min break, start over.

you can totally set the timer for longer or shorter periods, depending on what works for you. i’m a fan of the 15 min sessions bc it’s just long enough to get a bit of flow going, and just short enough that i can convince my spacy brain that we can get through it without wandering. it’s also a fantastic length for warring, if you’re down for that.

5. Write That Idea Down for Lewis’s Sake

the original idea for the chronicles of narnia came to c.s. lewis when he was at a restaurant, and thank the lord, he wrote it down on a napkin. he wouldn’t write it until some time later, but if he hadn’t written it down, he might’ve forgotten it. why is this important, you ask?

BC YOU WILL FORGET THINGS.

if you have an idea, write it down in your phone or your notebook or the waterproof paper in your shower, because i don’t care how sure you are that you’ll remember it, you super won’t. i’ve forgotten many solutions to plot holes in my time and i still hold vigils over their graves. don’t be me. write it down.

Step Four: Managing that Inner Critic of Yours

all right, pay attention. i’m not going to tell you not to edit, because i would be a massive hypocrite if i did. i totally edit during nano. the important part is letting your editor help you win, not hurt you. and that means gaming your critic’s system.

1. Have a Dedicated Deletion Section

many people hear “don’t delete anything” and baulk, because for some of us it’s distracting and we want to rewrite that section until it matches our vision. so, i’m here to tell you: delete it!! rewrite entire chapters!! just save the original content as part of your word count. this is another reason i love dabble, bc at the start of nano i just make a separate part of the book, label it “delete”, and any time i’m writing and dislike a sentence/paragraph i just dump it into that folder and move on. this way you still get to keep the numbers (and why shouldn’t you? you wrote them!) while also writing words you actually like. plus, sometimes that line you deleted in ch. 1 winds up being supremely pertinent in ch.15, and now you can just copy/paste it instead of having to try to remember what exactly you’d said.

2. Acknowledge Ranting as a Time Honoured Tradition

think there’s no precedent for that 2K diatribe you wrote on the london underground? well fear not, because you can’t possibly do worse than hugo’s entire chapters worth of content on the french sewer system! or melville’s frankly terrifying obsession with the finer features of whale biology!

like, yeah, maybe you’ll decide later you don’t need it, but for now, embrace that soap box. dead white guys have been doing it for centuries and still get places in college syllabi. the least you can do is give it a place in your word count.

Step Five: Have Fun!

i know, i know, it’s cliche, but seriously. if this isn’t fun, or at least rewarding, why are you doing it anyway? so enjoy it! send passages you’re proud of to your friends! daydream about it in the car on the way to work/school! cry over a notebook about the twist you just came up with! nano’s a time of fun and exploration, and you shouldn’t miss out on it because you’re thinking too much.

also, this might be counter productive to put at the end of an essay on nano, but don’t obsess over reading essays on nano :P there comes a time when one must simply do, and nano is pretty much the definition of that.

#nanowrimo #writing tips #writing #reference #writing advice

[batik96]

Writing ...

I wrote a few words to end 2017. I wrote a few words to start 2018. I found that, if I were to write 43 words each day in 2018, that would be 15,695 words written by year’s end. That would please me.

Much of February was a wash, writing-wise. Now I’m trying to salvage March.

When last we left off, I had written 3,116 words in 2018, for a then-89-word daily average. Even now, if my calculator is to be believed, I have a 44.5-word daily average, which still surpasses my goal of 43 words a day. (Not sure how I managed that, but I won’t complain.) Going forward ...

March 11, 2018: Today, I have written 140 words, for a total of 3,256 words for the year -- and a 46.5-word daily average.

March 24, 2018: I wrote 1,055 words today. That makes 4,311 words for the year -- and a 51.9-word daily average. (It did nothing to help my nearly 2-year-old WIP, but I have written something postable -- soon, I promise -- for the first time in months. It feels good.

April 8, 2018: I wrote yesterday. It’s hard to quantify, because I really was rewriting a small section for which I found a better (I think) take. If I check just that section, I wrote 253 words. But it replaces a section of 247 words and is largely similar, except with a few key word changes. So the 6-word increase could well be accurate. So, I guess that puts me up to 4,317 words for the year. Or a 44.5-word daily average. Which is still above my 43-word goal, so I guess I’m managing. Though I really hope to get some other projects out of the way soon so I can focus more easily on the words.

May 6, 2018: I wrote 444 words today. I’m not sure any of it is any good. Or if it’s all really boring. (It seems pretty mundane.) But I wrote. (Which is a good thing, since I’m signed up for an exchange. Yikes!) So that’s 4,761 words for the year, or 37.785 words a day. I’ve officially fallen below my daily goal. Time remains my biggest constraint. (I feel as if I’m lacking ideas, but I also feel I’d have more ideas if I had more time.) But I expect the exchange-fic deadline to help resolve that, since it pretty well guarantees I have to write at least 600 more words -- and soon. (Plus, that’s 444 words of “they haven’t even met yet”. I still need words for “they met and it was amazing”.) Onward!

May 7, 2018: I added another 276 words today. For a year-to-date total of 5,037 and a daily average of 39.66. Still not back to my 43-word-a-day goal, but I’m seeing progress, so that’s something.

May 10, 2018: Another 174 words added. For a year-to-date total of 5,211 words and a daily average of 39.778. It’s a very minor increase from my previous daily average, and it’s not 43 words. But it’s not nothing. (I think this confirmed for me, though, that I write better when no one is around. Or, at least, when my husband isn’t around. He doesn’t really like it when my attention is elsewhere, especially if he doesn’t know where. That makes it really hard for me to relax enough to write. I apparently can write more in 10 minutes with him out of the house than I can in an hour when he’s around.)

May 12: I have written 647 words today. (In addition to tweaking some of the words I’d already written.) Still a long way to go, but ... progress. That makes 5,858 words for the year and a daily average of 44.37 words -- officially back above my 43-words-a-day goal.

May 19: Over the past few days, I’ve written 1,643 words, for a year-to-date total of 7,501 words. That’s a 53.96-word daily average. And I believe it’s actually something completed. Not the now 2-year-old WIP, or the thing I was writing on May 12 (which has stalled), but still a viable, whole thing that I hope to post soon. (When I started this on Jan. 1, I noted that 43 words a day would give me 15,695 words by year’s end. I’m almost to my halfway-point goal of 7,847.5 words with 42 days before the halfway point in the year. Considering how little writing I managed in 2017 and much of 2016, I’m pretty happy with that. I hope I can keep it up!)

May 25: I decided to rewrite a chunk of a fic, to see if I end up liking the way it goes any better. (It’s not that I don’t like it, but it was supposed to include smut and now it may not and I’m not sure the initial take was enough to keep it from being mind-numbingly dull without the smut. I’m hoping the rewrite helps with that -- and also maybe inspires me to decide I can manage the smut after all.) Anyway. In the course of the rewrite, I’ve added 571 words this morning. That gives me a year-to-date total of 8,072 words and a daily average of 55.6689 words.

May 26: I’ve written 589 words this morning, part of a 945-word doc that I’m not sure I ever recognized as words written because it is more head canon/fic idea/fic outline than actual fic. But its 900+ words. And it feels good. So I’m going to claim them. Those 945 words bring my yearly total up to 9,017. That’s a daily average of 61.76 words. (If I were to maintain that pace, I could write 22,500+ words this year.) Considering how scarce words have been for me over the past two years, actually having ideas feels great, even if I do still need to work on making the ideas into actual fic. And even if writing actual fic still is like pulling teeth (without proper dental equipment).

June 3: Tracking my words at the moment is complicated. I had 2,100 words written. I added more, deleted some, reworked a bit. So I’m not absolutely certain how many actual new words I’ve written in the past week. But, the doc started at 2,100 counted words and now has 6,158 words, so I know I can claim at least 4,058 words since May 26. That gives me a year-to-date total of 13,075 words -- more than I had in 2016 and 2017 combined -- and a daily average of 84.9 words. 

June 10: I’m losing track of my word count, simply because, well, I’m writing. I’m working on one thing, in particular, and I am kind of in the editing phase, the phase where I change this chunk of words to a different chunk of words. Sometimes it’s a bigger chunk, sometimes smaller. But that 6,100-word doc is now more than 6,800 words, so that’s at least 700 words in the past week. That brings my year-to-date total somewhere around 13,775, for a daily average of 85.5 words. I also posted something (that made it into a previous word count) this past week, which felt really good. 

Aug. 25: It’s been a while, but I wrote 633 words last night. I’ve managed today to add 339 words. I think I’m a bit behind on my 43-words-a-day bid, so I’m just going to go with “972 words in two days is not a bad word count” and leave it at that. 

Aug. 27: I wrote a few more words yesterday -- 49, to be precise. And, thanks to a bit of as-I-was-falling-asleep inspiration/texting-myself-so-I-wouldn’t-forget, I have written 135 words this morning. Neither is much, especially considering the 49 words are the result of a 4-hour time period during which I could have been writing and simply couldn’t find the words. But 184 words is more than I had two days ago, and 1,156 is more than I had four days ago. Baby steps. 

That’s also a year-to-date word total of around 14,931 and a daily average of 62.47 words. Which is stunning. It’s been so long since I wrote that I assumed I was far, far behind on my 43-words-a-day goal. And I’m not -- by a lot. In fact, when I started this at the beginning of the year, I did the math and figured that 43 words a day, by year’s end, would mean I had written 15,695 words. Now? With 126 days left in the year? I only need to write another 764 words to meet my goal for the year. Granted, there’s still time for me to be hit by a total lack of inspiration and miss my goal. but 764 words seems do-able in the next four months, especially since I’ve written more than that in the past four days.

Aug. 29: Another 155 words added. For a year-to-date total of 15,086 or 62.6 words a day. Slowly. (Not surely, just slowly.)

Aug. 30: I’ve written 267 words, and it’s not yet 8 a.m. That makes 15,353 for the year, or 63.44 words a day during 242 days. That leaves 121 days in the year to reach my 15,695 goal. That’s 342 words I need to reach my goal. Still not going to call it a done deal. But I’m thrilled that it seems attainable. That’s less than 3 words a day needed between now and year’s end.

Sept. 3: I’ve managed 236 words written this morning, in not that much time. So I’ll take it. That’s 15,589 words for the year, or 106 words shy of my goal for the year. That’s a 63.39-word average over 246 days. I now have 119 days in which to write 106 words. If I don’t meet my goal, I’m going to be bummed!

Oct. 9: It’s been a while. And I may have managed a word or two -- a literal word or two, not an actual few paragraphs being passed off as “a word or two” -- since last I updated this post. But they truly were to few to even bother attempting to count. Today? I have written 468 words. During the past week or so, in single sentences or -- sometimes -- phrases, I have written more. Combine today’s count with that and I’m up to 744 words in the past couple of weeks. Which brings my word count for the year to 16,333 words in 282 -- a 57.9-word daily average. I’ve now broken my writing goal for the year with more than two months to go. I’m very happy with that! Now the goal is to finish my current endeavor. (I’m not going to say “finish the WIP,” because there’s no way the one I consider my WIP is going to be done by the end of the year. At least not without me finding someone to subsidize it for the next two months while I take a leave of absence from my job and move to a remote cabin with an excellent internet connection but far away from my family.) (The current “endeavor” is more realistically attainable!)

Oct. 15: Since last I updated, I have written 549 words. I’m not going to vouch for its quality -- I’m so busy trying to take things one step at a time, just get me from Point A to Point B and I’ll worry about Point C later, that I’m not sure if the words are actually decent or just merely functional. But they are words, and I trust my betas to tell me if they suck. Meanwhile, that brings my word count up to 16,882 words in 288 days, for a 58.6-word daily average.

Oct. 20: I added another 103 words today. It’s not much, but it was the 103 words that allowed me to finish that particular scene, so it feels like a lot. And, technically, it’s more than double my 43-words-a-day goal! That brings me up to 16,985 in 293 days, or a 57.9-word daily average.  

Dec. 2: Good grief. I went the entire month of November without writing a word. (Well, I wrote 183 words outlining what I needed to write, but I didn’t actually write those words, so the 183 words don’t count for the purpose of this specific count.) Happily, December is off to a better start. I just added 106 words to my current writing effort. There’s still a long way to go and I’m not sure I’ll manage to finish it by year’s end. But every little bit helps. That brings my year-to-date total up to 17,091 words in 336 days. That’s a 50.866-word daily average.

Dec. 7: Another 130 words. So, 17,221 words in 341 days, for a daily average of 50.5 words. 

Dec. 16: Another 550 words. So, 17,771 words in 350 days, for a daily average of 50.77 words. Still not close to finishing this particular piece, but closer than I was 550 words ago!

Dec. 22: Another 709 words, for a 356-day total of 18,480 and a daily average of 51.9 words. This one is both going exactly as I intended/expected and surprising me at every turn.

#Batik96 babbles about life #and writing

[khalilhumam]

China&#039;s persecution of Muslim minorities: A Uyghur student living in Turkey shares her story

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/chinas-persecution-of-muslim-minorities-a-uyghur-student-living-in-turkey-shares-her-story/

China's persecution of Muslim minorities: A Uyghur student living in Turkey shares her story

‘I came to Turkey legally, on a passport issued by the Chinese authorities. Why did they punish my family?’

Screenshot from a YouTube video shot in one of the Miraj restaurants in Urumqi.

The identity of the author of this story has been kept anonymous for safety reasons. Since 2017, China's northwestern region of Xinjiang has seen a drastic rise in the incarceration of its ethnic minority citizens, including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Hui. The United Nations, along with international human rights organizations, estimates that over 1 million ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in internment camps, which the Chinese government calls “vocation training centers.” The Chinese government's secrecy around those camps makes numbers difficult to assess, but sources estimate that hundreds have died while detained. Other forms of persecution in the region have also been widely reported, such as bans on religious rituals and restrictions on freedom of movement or use of minority languages. This situation has pushed many young Uyghurs to leave China, mainly for Europe and the Middle East. Global Voices interviewed Fazilat Abdureshit, a 23-year-old from Atush in western Xinjiang, who ended her first cycle of studies in 2015 and applied for a scholarship in Turkey the same year. She is now studying Islamic theology at the Bursa Uludağ university in western Turkey.  This interview was conducted over the phone in English and edited for brevity. 

Photo of Fazilat Abdureshit, used with permission

Global Voices (GV): When you left for Turkey in 2015, everything was fine with your family. What has happened since? 

Fazilat Abdureshit (FA): I went home once a year to visit, the last time was in January 2017 when I spent two weeks with my family, before returning to Turkey. My aunt joined me as she had planned to spend some time with me before going back to Xinjiang. But in May 2017 my father called and told us not to come back to Xinjiang, without giving any clear explanation. We got scared, so my aunt just stayed with me in Turkey. In August of that year, my brother sent us some money from Xinjiang to provide for my aunt's living expenses. After that, I lost contact with him. Finally, in October 2017 I got a message from my grandmother, telling me that my brother, Rezaidin Abdureshit, had been arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for sending us money. My brother is 32 years old and has two children, a 5-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son. We were so shocked by the news. By this time I was also unable to contact my other siblings, who had deleted me from their social media, and didn't answer my calls.

GV: Your father, Abdureshit Hoshur Haji, used to be a successful entrepreneur in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital. What has happened to him?

FA: Until May 2018 I was able to stay in touch through short messages on WeChat, once every three months. But after that, I couldn't reach him at all. I learnt later that he had been sent to an internment camp. In June 2020 I received news about my father, who is now 64 years old, informing me he had been sentenced to 17 years in prison. Since I learned this through indirect channels, I have no more information about the verdict. I know my father is a law-abiding citizen, so my guess is that he was targeted because I, as well as one of his brothers, live in Turkey.

GV: Have other members of your family, besides your father and brother, also been imprisoned?  

FA: Yes. In June 2020 I also learned that my father's brother, Ablimit Hoshur Halis Haji, a businessman and prominent philanthropist, and my aunt's husband Shanshidin Haji, who is an oncologist at the Tumor Hospital in Urumqi, were each sentenced to 20 years in prison. Shanshidins Hajis’ brother, Imin Haji, who heads a major construction company, has also been sentenced to 20 years. His sister Nurgul Rahmitulla got a 15-year sentence. Imin Hajis’ son Adiljan is in prison too, I don't know for how long. My father's younger brother, Ahmatjan Haji Muhammad disappeared three years ago. He came to visit us in Turkey in February 2017, and was taken by the authorities on his return to China. I have no further information about him. My sister's husband, Adiljan Imin, has been detained for three years now. My sister Mukaddas Abdureshit was also taken in 2018, but was later released since she was pregnant. My father's cousin Amrulla Abdusami, a businessman, was taken three years ago and I have no information about what happened to him. He has four children, his eldest son Elijan Amrulla, who is 23, was also sentenced to eight years, probably for studying the Koran. This happened to the son of another of my father's cousins, Ilham Hayrulla, who was arrested five years ago for studying the Koran. My family has been doing business in China for a long time. They ran a three-branch restaurant in Urumqi called Miraj, which was closed down by the authorities, allegedly for promoting the Uyghur cultural identity. In that process, my father's business partners were also detained.

GV: What is your message for the Chinese authorities?

FA: I really want to ask them why my father and other relatives were sent to prison. And why my family members cannot contact me. I came to Turkey in a legal way, on a passport issued by the Chinese authorities. So why did they punish my family? What is their crime? They all know the Chinese language and have committed no crime. My father is a good man, well-known in our society. I demand the truth about what happened to them.

Read more stories about the persecution of minorities in China’s Xinjiang region  

< p class='gv-rss-footer'>Written by Guest Contributor