#like i usually write novels in the tags but i don't even have the brain power to think of what to say lmao

[natelia-aldelliz]

Cue Gaz and Price's horrified faces, that I sketched but didn't have the energy to actually draw (also, Ghost in the first panel is angry about Gaz calling Soap 'Johnny', how dare he)

Gaz : Oh my god bruv what did you do to your hair?? Ya know some strands are supposed to be the same length, right?

Price : Leave the poor man alone, he's already been ravaged by a vampire *snorts*

Gaz : True, lmao gotta chill there, Soap, but really though, how are ya cutting your hair, with kitchen scissors? Oh my god don't tell me you're using your knife

Ghost :

Gaz : You're using your knife, aren't you

Ghost : I mean, it's very sharp, it's basically a razor

(disclaimer that Gaz's opinions about Soap's hairstyle are not shared by the artist, i actually adore his little mohawk)

#cod mw2 #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #captain john price #ghostsoap #soapghost #i originally intended to colour it but honestly too much work for my little overloaded brain #like i usually write novels in the tags but i don't even have the brain power to think of what to say lmao #anyway thank you for all people liking reblogging or commenting on my drawings i really appreciate it #but i'm terrified to interract with people so i don't say anything but i still really appreciate it #i read everything you have to say about my drawings with a huge smile on my face while happy stimming it genuinely makes my day

[awearywritersworld]

there can be no covenants between men and lions

ryomen sukuna x reader summary: sukuna would rather contemplate your murder than come to terms with his feelings for you, but you call him out on his bullshit. w/c: 3k tags/warnings: enemies to lovers. angst to fluff. aged up!yuuji. heavy kissing. features yuuji x reader and he is, of course, best boy. cursing. sukuna decides he wants to kill you (so obviously there are mentions of murder and such) but cant even stand the sight of you upset, what a goof. i'd once again like to think sukuna's not too ooc in this but im still more than likely delusional. not canon compliant. fem!reader. no use of y/n. no manga spoilers. a/n: i was so touched by all of the love that part one received, i wanted to try my hand at part two. i hope i've done it justice! just as part one references homer's the odyssey, this references homer's the illiad because sukuna is very hot and well read. achilles, the protagonist of the novel, is discussed. i'm definitely open to writing a part three, because this one is much heavier on the angst and i miss soft sukuna from part one. series masterlist // masterlist

you and yuuji rarely argue, but when you do, it's often over his aversion toward seriousness, even when a situation calls for it. though you really should have kept your mouth shut, because in this moment, you'd give anything to see his typical carefree expression.

his eyes are regarding you intently, taking in your flustered appearance with knitted brows.

"yuuji..." you trail off, wracking your brain for an explanation of your current predicament.

despite the fact he regained control of his body only moments ago, one of his hands is curled around the back of your neck, while the other is resting on your hip.

"baby, what happened?" he presses, the tone of his voice entirely unreadable.

"s-sukuna," is all you can manage to choke out.

his eyes darken immediately, his jaw tensing in a way that intimidates you. "he hurt you."

you really can't tell if it's a question or a statement, and your response comes a little too quickly. "no! that's not... no."

the next few seconds tick by in a slow sort of agony, heat creeping up your cheeks.

he notices for the first time that his head is eerily quiet. no snide remarks, no scathing commentary. just his own thoughts as he pieces together the situation.

his gaze drops to the angry, red marks littering your neck and you watch in helpless horror as understanding passes his features.

"oh."

the word hangs in the air as you await his reaction, fully anticipating disgust and betrayal. you're positive it's only a matter of time before he throws you out of the apartment and tells you to never come back.

what you don't expect, however, is the way his shoulders relax as the tension leaves his face.

he straightens himself, arms falling to his sides, but he doesn't put any distance between your bodies.

"how long have you...?" he's not quite sure how to phrase the question.

"a few months. this was the first time anything... um... happened. we usually just talk."

he tilts his head to the side, so you clarify. "after you've fallen asleep."

mulling over the information, he hums in response, looking thoughtful for a few more seconds. then, his usual demeanor is back and he grabs your hand. "wanna get dinner? i'm starving!"

he tugs you a few feet toward the door before you come to your senses. "woah, woah. wait a second, yu."

when he looks back at you expectantly, you find that his face holds not one hint of bitterness or judgement. "aren't you angry?"

you're amazed to find that he's the one looking sheepish.

"how could i be? it's not exactly easy to be with me when i have a thousand year old curse rattling around in my body, but you stay anyway," he expresses, making your heart soften. "i just want you to be safe, so i'll take whatever relationship the two of have now over him being a threat to you."

as your hands reach up to cradle his face and your eyes sparkle with adoration, you briefly wonder how you ever found such a sweet man. he places a quick kiss to your lips, the smile on his face easy going as ever. "sooooo, i'm thinking takoyaki or maybe udon—"

"we can get whatever you want," you glance at the spatters of blood across his chest left there from the mission, no doubt from sukuna's careless slaughter. "as long as you go wash up first."

"right!" he agrees quickly, bounding off to the bathroom.

you stand alone in the middle of your living room, left with the ghost of both yuuji and sukuna's lips against yours and a sense of bewildered excitement.

back in his prison, however, sukuna is furious with himself. he should have let you die that day he kept you from being run over. better yet, he should have killed you with his own hands before the brat won back control of his body.

he is a terrible being that delights in carnage, a fact that's well known even centuries later. so why, when he could have done anything in the world, did he go to you? you even asked that same question before you—

he rejects the memory of you pressing your lips to his disdainfully.

your foolishness and your naivete are revolting. your softness and your pliancy are nauseating.

he shouldn't have been anywhere near you, if not to rip your obnoxious heart from your chest like he'd always planned. it was a situation he'd dreamt about and now it's slipped through his fingers, even though those same fingers had graced your fragile little neck.

you were nothing more than a clueless mouse in the jaws of a snake, and though the pains of hunger have been tearing at its stomach for years now, the serpent let itself starve.

sukuna retreats to his domain, fingers prodding at his temples irritably. he allows himself to wallow for a few hours, shutting out both you and the brat.

then, steeling his resolve, he begins to watch and wait like the predator he knows himself to be.

lulled into a false sense of security regarding your safety, it's clear that yuuji has let his guard down. just barely so, but enough that sukuna can see a few weaknesses in his chains. ironic seeing that, now more than ever, the king of curses wants you dead.

it goes without saying that he promptly ceases his nightly interactions with you. it's beneath him, wasting his time with a human. he knows that now.

but while he may not speak to you, he cannot refrain from stealing glances as the days stretch on. you're usually reading, completely oblivious to his watchful eye. he convinces himself it's simply to keep tabs on you, as he's deemed you his foremost enemy.

he's not sure how much time has passed when you begin calling out for him in hushed whispers after yuuji falls asleep, the hurt and confusion in your voice plain to him. it's irksome, and evidently, you're incapable of taking a hint.

his silence becomes more painful with each turn of the moon. you're a bit mortified to find that you genuinely miss him, so you just want answers. did he finally realize that you're nothing special, not worth bothering with?

eventually, growing restless, you all but beg him. "sukuna, please. talk to me. what happened? what'd i do wrong?" his chest tightens with what he believes is vexation. "you can't just make me like you and then disappear. you can't kiss me like that and then—"

"you insolent, maddening little creature!" his eye flies open just in time to see you gasp, your body jerking away from him. "shut up already! can't you see i want nothing to do with you? don't you tire of being pathetic?"

you don't dignify him with a response, swallowing thickly and turning away from him.

finally, he thinks, some fucking quiet. though if he's gotten what he wanted, why does his chest still ache?

he stares at the back of your form until the sun rises.

sukuna is no simpleton. he can be patient when he is sure of a reward, but he's thrilled that the perfect opportunity arises just two days after your encounter.

yuuji is exhausted. gojo kept him out all last night, despite the grueling mission he had today, and when he all but stumbles through your apartment door, the moon is already high in the sky.

you never mention the change in your relationship with sukuna to yuuji. even though he was so understanding, you still feel a touch awkward discussing it further. and maybe in the back of your mind, you're holding out hope that it might go back to the way it was.

sukuna watches through yuuji's eyes when you greet him, your expression half concern and half 'i told you so'. nights out with gojo usually lead to this very situation.

he showers while you finish cooking dinner and once you both eat, he helps you clean up despite his exhaustion. after whispering his thanks and pressing a kiss to your temple, he retires to bed.

you promise you'll join him soon, but sukuna knows it probably isn't true. following his outburst, you've taken to staying in the living room until you're ready to sleep.

yuuji's out before his head hits the pillow and nearly two hours later, you're still not in bed. sukuna's eager, but waits until he's sure the brat's deep in his slumber before he tries to take over. it's relatively easy, and he pushes down yuuji's unconscious mind as far as he can before rising to his feet.

this is finally it. he stretches his limbs lazily, a dangerous smirk settling on his lips. the floor creaks with each step he takes, but he pays no mind to stealth. you're no match for him.

tonight, you'll be his first victim of many and the thought of making up for his past misjudgement has him giddy with excitement.

but the sight that greets him upon exiting the bedroom— you curled into yourself on the couch, your shoulders shaking with quiet sobs— it stops him in his tracks.

he wants to move, more than anything, so what the fuck is wrong with him? is the brat taking over already?

and why is that uncomfortable sensation making it's home in the center of his chest once more?

when you notice his presence, your face shifts to him and reveals your wide, teary eyes. it's clear you're surprised by his appearance, but you quickly bury your face in your knees.

you just want him to leave you alone. you hate him for what he said, for what he did. he forced his way into your life, made you care about him, and then he just vanished. he's cruel and you feel like an idiot because you should have known that from the beginning. or maybe you did and he just made you forget.

"go away. i.. i don't want to see you."

he's disbelieving, for a brief moment, that here you are giving him orders while he stands in the doorway with the intention of taking your life.

he moves toward you, invading your space in a way that is meant to be intimidating, but when you look up at him, every emotion ranging from sadness to rejection to indignation is etched into your features. though the terror he hoped to inspire is noticeably absent.

"i said go away!" you swiftly stand up, your hands meeting squarely with his chest as you push him with every ounce of power you have.

you may as well have shoved a brick wall, as he doesn't move even a fraction of an inch. he seizes one of your wrists anyway.

"what is it you think you're doing, exactly?" he spits.

"let go of me!" you beat against his chest with the hand he left free until his fingers wrap around that wrist too.

"enough."

he's certain there isn't a being that has attacked him (if he can even call that an attack) and lived to speak of it, not once in an entire millennia.

so just end the insolent brat and be done with it, he urges himself.

but he can't and he doesn't understand why, so he just stares down at you.

"what the fuck do you want?" you mean for it to come out forcefully and full of spite, but your voice cracks before you can finish.

an excellent question, indeed. what does he want?

he doesn't answer you and it's so goddamn frustrating that you begin to cry again, rambling to fill the discomforting silence. "you've already told me i'm pitiful and annoying. it's clear you think my company is insufferable, that i'm undesirable—"

that ache in his chest is unbearable now. it claws at his ribcage and shreds the flesh of his heart. it makes his stomach twist uncomfortably and rings shrilly in his ears. he can't even hear you anymore, but he can still see the tears sliding down your cheeks and the way you gasp between words.

the truth of the matter crashes down on him and the devastating weight of it is so crushing it squeezes the air from his lungs.

that feeling in his chest isn't annoyance or repugnance. its anguish— the kind that rattles his bones and leaves him sick with regret.

it's because you're in pain, and worse yet, he is the cause of it.

sukuna pushes you back against the wall before you can comprehend what's happening. his hands find either side of your face and you're alarmed to find that he looks... frightened.

"what are you doing to me?" he pleads for an explanation, because he sure as hell doesn't have one.

how can one little human hold such power over him? it's unnatural. it defies all logic and reason.

you stare at him, open mouthed. his face is so close that his breath fans across your skin and it makes you feel dizzy.

"what are you talking about?" you finally ask.

"you should be dead right now," he frets, despair seeping into every word. "it should be easy."

it dawns on you that you should probably feel afraid, but you just don't. his touch is firm, but careful. and there's no malice to be found behind his eyes. "you're not making any sense."

he thinks back on the time you've spent together, trying to figure out how the hell he ended up here— him at your mercy, rather than you at his. he remembers the first time he made you laugh and considers that it may have been the beginning of his unraveling. for the following two weeks, you both discussed homer at length as you made your way through his poetry.

"there can be no covenants between men and lions. wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other through and through." you blink at him, recognizing at once that he's quoting the illiad. his voice is low and unsteady in a way that suggests desperation. it makes you shiver. "therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall."

your eyes narrow as you begin to understand his his internal struggle, though you're unsure if he's attempting to reason with you or with himself.

"you quote achilles, and rightfully so i suppose, given your common qualities— exasperating pride and a penchant for meaningless violence." he looks relieved, like your seeming agreement eases his mind. it's short lived. "but you forget his passion."

his gaze shifts away from you, his hands withdrawing from your face.

"his passion?" he repeats as if it's the most incredulous thing he's ever heard.

"by the end of the story, is he not acquainted with regret, sympathy, and respect? he doesn't remain blind to the error of his ways forever."

"only a foolish human could make such fanciful deductions," he chides through gritted teeth, still refusing to meet your eye.

you actually laugh at him. "perhaps you shouldn't call upon achilles to make your point after all. at least he grows out of his utterly childish view of the world."

"how dare you?" he demands, his features growing wild as one hand finds your throat (his touch not nearly harsh enough to cause you any discomfort), the other colliding with the wall beside your head. his display doesn't fool you though. "you witless, wretched brat! you're nothing more than a blip in a universe you cannot even begin to understand. you sicken me."

you throw achilles' words in his face just as easily as he did to you. "hateful to me as the gates of hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another."

his gaze hardens, and for a split second, you think you may have been mistaken in your fearlessness, but then his fingers thread themselves through your hair and he pulls your lips to his.

it's rough and commanding, and he tells himself it's only to get you to shut up. to wipe that expression of smug pity from your face.

it's not because, despite the fact you know how awful he is, you're convinced there's something salvageable in him too. nor is it because you tyrannize his every passing thought. and it's certainly not because the feeling of you pressed against him brings him more satisfaction than ripping the hearts from the chests of a hundred men.

ultimately, his denial is overshadowed by his desire. your touch is nothing short of needy as you tug at his shirt, an attempt to bring him even closer, and god does he hope that means you feel just as desperate as he does. he deserves at least a little consolation.

as his hands roam every valley and curve of your body, he deems it unfair that a being whose very existence spells hell on earth should be so taken with such a devastatingly divine creature.

"i've wanted you so terribly," he mumbles against your mouth before he can stop himself.

"then fuck you for making us both wait," you breath out.

his fingers dig into the flesh of your hips in response and his lips shift to your neck. "watch that pretty little mouth of yours, brat."

he nips at the spot just below your ear hard enough that it makes you gasp, doubtless a punishment for your impudence. you recover quickly though, wasting no time with your flippant reply. "or what? you'll go back to plotting my murder?"

he pulls away from you abruptly, sighing deeply and pinching the bridge of his nose. "you truly have zero sense of self preservation, don't you?"

"guess so," you shrug, smiling at him bashfully. "can we watch a movie? i'll even let you pick."

you ask as if it's the most normal request in the world. as if he isn't a thousand year old curse that would be off turning the city to ash were he not here with you instead.

he rolls his eyes, scoffing at the ridiculousness of it all. "fine."

#m!writes #sukuna #sukuna x reader #sukuna imagines #sukuna angst #ryomen sukuna #ryomen sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna imagines #ryomen sukuna angst #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen imagines #jujutsu kaisen angst #jjk #jjk x reader #jjk imagines #jjk angst

[takiki16]

Hey so I am starting to get into Jupiter Ascending fandom (a couple years late but what can I say). I was thinking of writing a fic. Do you have any resources for JA extra information?

Thanks in advance. Also I am loving your fic (it's how I started getting into the fandom lololol). can't wait to reread!!!

HOOOOOOO BOY!!!!

I'm paging @bemusedlybespectacled, @gallifreyburning, @vr-trakowski, @sorrelchestnut, @florentinequill, @fuckyeahjupiterascending, @vrabia, and honestly ANYONE ELSE who wants to chime in here, bc HOOOOOOO BOY!

(I made that sweet puppy in fucking 2015 on my dying laptop in the travel study dorm in DC, JUPITER ASCENDING HOW I LOVE THEE)

The eternal fucking tragedy of Jupiter Ascending is that the wider world doesn't love it like we do. Does it have every single thing that turns my crank, id-wise? Sure! Does it have gorgeous over-the-top sequined costumes and extravagant set pieces that remind you at every minute that this movie specially thanked Swarovski Crystal in the credits? Sure! Does it have theeeee single most pinpoint reading of MY PERSONAL FEMALE GAZE that Channing Tatum has ever done? (sorry mister Magic Mike, but you do not even come CLOSE to "may I kill him?" in terms of sexy) SURE! Was this movie a commercial or critical success? Absolutely not 😔

There isn't, as far as I'm aware, an art book. There isn't an official novelization. There isn't even an actual script posted to the usual internet databases that isn't just an automatic shitty talk-to-text rendition of the movie dialogue. There are concept art paintings and old cast interviews floating around, and this auction website where the Wachowskis auctioned off some of the props from the movie, but as far as canon resources and extra material beyond the movie itself there isn't much. A quick duckduckgo search would probably be more helpful to you than anything else, if any of the websites still have the articles up - it WAS eight years ago, and doesn't that just break my fucking heart.

My corner of tumblr LOVED this movie. In 2015, there were TONS of posts gathering interviews, posting concept art, making cosplays, all the signs of a small but healthy fandom ecosystem. However, we call this the blue hellsite for a reason - not all of those resources are still there, and the ones that survived time and incompetent archival site coding are probably difficult to find. I would definitely recommend trawling the JA tags of all the blogs I tagged at the start of this post, as JA introduced me to two of my longest and most beloved of all mutuals. ALL of their insights were key to A Fine Chain.

There is also my own jupiter ascending tag and my more specific jupiter ascending meta tag, although I don't know how bored you are lol. The general JA tag is 105 pages - I would almost recommend just starting at page 105 and working forward from there since it chronicles my descent into kinky space angel werewolf brain rot pretty nicely. There are also my ao3 bookmarks for JA.

I WILL SAY that it has been 8 years, and I have changed into a very different person than the one I was when I first saw this movie. I don't REGRET the first few chapters of A Fine Chain, or any of my breathless meta posts, but I do think that if I were to write any of them over again, I'd hope that my writing style has matured and I'd have lots more extra material to draw from. Actually graduating from law school, writing long fic in another fandom, and generally percolating more as a person has given me lots of new perspectives on JA that make it more interesting even as I still enjoy it (for example, HBO's Succession is ODDLY RELEVANT and I wish there were more JA fanwriters to take advantage of that fact).

...I hope that was helpful? I will ETERNALLY mourn the fact that this fandom wasn't isn't bigger - we haven't even broken 1k on ao3! But EYE MYSELF am here to discuss JA stuff as long as this weird spurt of creative energy sustains me, and my inbox is always open!

#jupiter ascending #fandom #my posts #jupiter ascending meta #if NO ONE WILL LOVE YOU MY GLITTERY SPACE EXTRAVAGANZA I WILL LOVE YOU #was it perfect? no. was it a bit of a hot mess at times? yes. BUT DO I LOVE IT? HELL YEAH #long post

[phoenixyfriend]

I think the problem I have with finding good Anidala fic is that. Like.

They're usually background to something else, as the established canon ship.

A lot of authors add the element that they were doomed to go domestic-violence-y or bitter divorcees and I don't want that.

Or there's the undercurrent of This Will Become A Tragedy, which. Can I have a few instances where it isn't, please?

People really like writing Padme as being The Sane And Sensible Female Character, Because Women Always Have The Brain Cell.

It's always mixed with a callout for either them or the Jedi.

Like. Damn. Can I just get my comedic AU where they can be morons in love?

Fantasy AU where Padme's a princess in a castle that Anakin has to save and they make out while the dragon is almost upon them because they're horny young adults and Obi-Wan Will Take Care Of It, Right?

College AU where Anakin's working in a repair shop and Padme comes in with a broken transmission and he literally trips over himself trying to impress her.

Lovebug AU where they get hit with some spell or chemical that makes them take all their private Romance Novel Dialogue and start spouting it in public and everyone around them is just like 'yes, this ridiculous phrasing is the fault of the interfering element' but no it's just Them Being Them.

Post-war AU where O66 didn't happen and they dump the twins on Uncle Obi for date night but the date night gets crashed by assassins and they spend the rest of the evening shooting things, flying speeders, and arresting people.

Mid-TCW AU where they have to 'pretend' to be married for a mission but they're already secretly married and they awkwardly try to straddle the line of looking like they're not in love to the supervising Jedi but looking like they are in love to the leaders of the planet they're on and they never land on the same page when deciding how much affection to show.

Literally any AU, modern or canon or what, where the two of them find out someone's got a crush and get really, really into matchmaking as a duo like they cannot get enough of this. You mentioned this person twice and they are already planning your wedding.

Them tag-teaming to seduce themselves a third (Rex, it's Rex) but their standards for romance involves things like shooting pirates and blowing up buildings, so it only works if the person they're seducing can be impressed in a good way by exploding starships (I mean he probably can).

Modern AU where Ahsoka needs someone to come in for a parent teacher conference, and the usual adults (Plo, Shaak, Obi-Wan) are all out of town, so Anakin and Padme go to talk to her teacher instead and it's. Uh. Why are there bodyguards here?

Any AU where they roleplay Anakin-the-handyman showing up to fix her pipes, and they're going to make it a sex thing but Threepio and Artoo interrupt because of course they do.

EDIT: OH I FORGOT ONE

Femme fatal Padme showing up at PI Anakin's doorstep looking for help with uncovering the crimes she suspects her fiance, Rush Clovis, of doing for the mob.

#star wars #anidala #anakin skywalker #padme amidala #rexanidala #captain rex #the clone wars #phoenix talks #shipping

[goodluckclove]

The Archivist no. 1 - Control

so fuck it i'm trying this anyway. here's a long-form, but ultimately singular piece i wrote trying to process the singular Terrible Event of my upbringing. if unaliving stuff is triggering for you now you shouldn't read this.

i'm not going to do this that often because it's nice to work things out in my head but holy shit this was weird to come back to. if someone finds it relatable in that oh hey your shit sucked too and you survived huh?? way i'll get into it again at a later time.

otherwise uh. yeah. enjoy? legit though read the tags before you do this i don't want anyone freaking out.

The Archivist no. 1 – Control

Mom wasn’t sleeping much in the nights before she killed herself. It wasn’t unusual given her rampant insomnia. Dad would pass out in the bedroom, and I would come out of my room at the end of the hall tin the middle of the night and find her watching bad crime dramas and reading the news on her iPad. I didn’t sleep much back then either, I guess.

Sometimes I would sit with her for a while, but the shows didn’t interest me much. Mostly I’d make a joke and continue to the kitchen to grab a snack before going back to my bedroom to keep on writing. I was almost sixteen years old and I had completed two novels that stood, unread, on an elephant’s graveyard of abandoned projects. So it goes.

Near the end of summer I came down with some sort of head cold. I woke up in the middle of the night, feverish and frustrated, and went out into the hall to see if Mom would be awake.

Time flickers and I’m lying on the couch with my head in her lap. She’s stroking my hair. She’s telling me that in the morning we’re going to go out in the mall and she’s going to buy me new pants. I don’t know why she told me that. I don’t know if it was a lie. She solved a lot of problems by shopping for clothes, so it sounded like something she would say. Mom even insisted in a voice that hung quiet in the dark that we would go to Macy’s, a rarity when she only ever bought my wardrobe from Goodwill.

I believed her then because I was a child and I loved my mother. I was sick and I loved my mother. I was looking forward to her buying me new pants.

Did she know then? I don’t know. She’s had two rounds of electroshock therapy since then, so the memory has been thoroughly wiped from her brain. It’s just gone. That moment exists solely in my own recollection, which is barely better than it never existing to begin with.

Later that morning she left saying she had some errands to run. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I had no way to, really, being that they had me on nine hundred milligrams of Seroquel at the time – one hundred more than the recommended dose for an adult man. The mornings left me in a sticky daze and I usually wasn’t able to gain any lucidity until a few hours after I woke up.

Once that happened I felt a little stirred by the circumstances. Mom had errands? What errands? She didn’t do the grocery shopping, she had my brother and I make that trip every week. She didn’t have a job or friends to meet. More than that, her agoraphobia crippled her at times and made leaving the house for anything a feat. But no, she just let for errands and told me that as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

I told myself it was fine.

When I texted her a few hours later she didn’t respond. I called her after that and she didn’t answer. I think I called her a few times.

She didn’t come home at all that day. I remember feeling the dread clinging tight to the top of my rib cage like something toxic just about to drip. It was a feeling I didn’t know how to communicate, and in retrospect I know now that it is a deeply-rooted instinct from my childhood. The warped insight that tells me that, when Mom leaves under mysterious circumstances, or when she leaves after you make her made – she’s going out to drink.

But that couldn’t be it. Mom was sober now and proud of it. She marked her sobriety date as Cino de Mayo and laughed every year at the irony. Mom was sober now. Things were different.

Dad came home from work and I was lingering in the living room, standing guard like an anxious animal. My older brothers were in their bedroom, on their laptops, no knowledge of the panic I was feeling.

Dad greeted me and asked where Mom was. In a voice that mimicked neutrality I said that she left to run errands. He took that with a nod and went to the backyard. I don’t know why he did that – he wasn’t smoking anymore, but by this point he might’ve been using e-cigarettes. Or maybe he was just enjoying the evening air. I just know I was sitting inside the house, very aware that the only other adult I knew was outside, and my mind was racing.

Do I tell him? Should I tell him?

Eventually I opened the sliding glass door and stood in the kitchen until I drew his attention. In my imagination he sees the look on my face and knows that something is wrong. I don’t know if this is true.

“You have to look for Mom,” I said.

He did. No questions asked. I didn’t linger over that at the moment, but thinking now I know that must mean that he understood what was happening. He wasn’t surprised.

Mom had no intention of taking me to Macy’s.

I don’t know what I did while he was driving around looking for her. I don’t really have a clear playback of finding out what happened. The extent of my trauma has severely limited what I am able to remember, and for this specific part of my life what I know happened now is influenced heavily by the many times my Dad recounted it to me.

A few years later he took me for ice cream and we sat in the parking lot to eat it, staring out at a night bathed in orange streetlamp haze. At one point he put his cup on the dashboard and pointed.

“You see that motel?” He said, drawing my attention to a nondescript line of buildings. “That’s where I found her.”

He recognized her car in the parking lot. The manager didn’t want to tell him what room she was in, (“I bet he was worried I’d catch her in an affair,” he’d remark darkly) but I imagine he explained the situation and got the help he needed. Apparently they found Mom after she took all of our medication. Well, I don’t know if it was all our medication. I just know that she had taken my psych drugs, as well as my dad’s and her own, and decided to mix them with a six pack of beer.

Did someone specify it was beer at some point after that? I don’t know why I would know that. I also don’t know why I would assume it was that over any other type of alcohol.

My Mom took my medication to end her life.

It didn’t work, though. Dad told me later that she died for a little over a minute.

I told them I was worried about taking more Seroquel than both of them put together and they promised me it was very hard to overdose on Seroquel.

Was she counting on that? Or did she forget?

I never liked anything at Macy’s.

At some point I found out that Mom was stable and in the hospital. She was in a coma. In my head I have a memory of standing at the kitchen counter and watching my father call Kaiser to get a new supply of all of our medication. He wrote them all down, every name and their proper dosage. I listen to him speak kindly to the pharmacist on the other end of the line.

“The thing is,” he explains, “we packed to come home from vacation, and our luggage got lost on the flight…”

Inside myself is a vacancy so haunted that ghosts are too afraid to dwell there.

Dad ends up sleeping on the couch. He does not want to sleep in an empty bed. He tells me that he will leave in the morning to go back to the hospital, but he just wants to get a little bit of rest. Once he closes his eyes I slide a quilt above his sleeping body and put on a Jim Gaffigan stand-up special that I only process every third word of.

I don’t know where my brothers are in this memory. I am not thinking about that when it is happening. I’m thinking of my father, and my mother, and how if I didn’t tell my father to look for her he might’ve waited and ended up too late.

Years later I will learn that my father never told my brothers, or my older sister who lived on her own, that Mom tried to kill herself. I can’t bring myself to say tried – she succeeded, and was only brought back by the marvels of medicine. While I am thinking of my mother’s death none of them have any idea what is happening.

I am the one that told my siblings how our mother died for a moment years prior. We learn at the same time that they had no idea. When I ask my father why I was the only one he told about her death and not them, he told me that I agreed they shouldn’t find out.

When did this happen? I was fifteen years old and I have no knowledge of this conversation. Was I there? Or was only my body present and he decided that was enough.

Mom wakes up after three days. My sister joins my brothers and myself and we drive to the hospital to visit her. I can’t imagine what I am feeling. Maybe everything, maybe nothing. I remember riding up the elevator and going down the hall, and then my brain skips again and I am standing at my mother’s hospital bed.

She looks sick and she looks the same. There are tubes. I think she’s probably sedated. She is my mother and I love her and she took all of my medication to try and kill herself.

“Why did you do it?” I ask her, voice soft. I am trying very hard not to cry.

Mom smiles. I don’t know if this is true. She smiles as if doesn’t realize that she didn’t stay dead. When she speaks her voice wavers, faint and weakened.

“I didn’t feel – like I had control,” she pauses to catch her breath. “So I did this...and now I do!”

She is pleased like a child presenting an interesting leaf. My mother is proud of what she was able to accomplish. In some part of my brain that hasn’t fully learned how to speak up enough to defend itself, I absorb the knowledge that she has told me something that will ruin me time and time again for the rest of my life.

All of that is gone now. Mom doesn’t remember, and Dad has decided that it is our job to make sure she never has to.

I wonder if he heard what she said to his child. If he is able to process the deep, permanent damage his wife has done in two simple statements. A sympathetic part of me says that I wouldn’t know what to do in his shoes either, but is that true? I’m not sure.

Pull the child aside in the hallway of the hospital. Take them by the shoulders and lean in close so you have a semblance of privacy.

She is sick, I would say. She is unwell and she is lying. When she is like this, you do not have a mother.

Most of the time I do not have a mother.

When I am in the psych ward after my own suicide attempt my parents are the only ones I allow to visit me. I love my parents and my mother sometimes offers to take me to Macy’s. My Dad crafts little notes like cootie catchers written in red ink. I peel tangerines from the bowl in the cafeteria while they tell me what the dog is doing. He does not treat me like I am sick. Perhaps he considers me more suitable for survival.

I wonder if Mom does what Dad did to me in the parking lot with the ice cream. Does she press her palms into the sheets of her bed and think this is where my child came and told me they tried to drown themselves.

She probably doesn’t. I don’t think she remembers anymore.

I don’t think about the night Mom killed herself as often as I used to, and when I do I don’t really feel anything anymore. As I heal I’ve been warned that things might emerge, and that time might actually make the memory more vivid instead of distant. I don’t know what to say to this. When the possibility emerges I just tell myself that all of that is gone now. It isn’t real.

By this time next year my parents will have no way to find me. I’ve taken control my own way – not through death, but by cutting them off entirely. Whether that is something they understand, or even remember, is not my problem anymore.

#writing #writeblr #writing community #writers on tumblr #queer writers #actually writing #creative writing #memoir #non fiction #tw sui attempt #tw sui vent #tw family trauma #tw family abuse #tw family death #tw family problems #tw childhood trauma #archivist

[identitty-dickruption]

i just found your post on having to play 5D chess with PDA where you tagged it mentioning you had many tips to trick the brain and to ask for them if interested! I can’t find if you already posted those because Tumblr’s search function is ass- would you be willing to share some of them, or if you already have, direct me to where I could find it? Thank you!

I think I may have given a couple tips somewhere, but I never got around to making a conclusive post so thanks for asking! the key thing is always to get at the root of the problem, to be patient to yourself, and to understand that sometimes even the best of tools just aren't going to work

so, first. there's a reason PDA is sometimes taken to stand for Persistent Demand for Autonomy. this isn't necessarily true in all cases or in all situations, but I've found it can be a helpful way to reframe it in my mind. when I'm starting to feel that my PDA has been triggered I ask myself:

am I feeling like I've lost control of the situation? how can I feel like I can regain this sense of control?

how much autonomy do I have in my life in general at the moment? are there other places I can regain autonomy?

what is it that other people are doing that may have triggered this response?

my PDA is almost always at its worst when I am in periods of high-stress, when I don't feel like I'm in control of anything. sometimes this means that, before I can do housework or uni work or whatever else, I need to go do something else that makes me feel back in control

usually, this means taking a safe risk. walking in a straight line from somewhere without my phone or a map. doing something creative without having any kind of plan. changing up something about my appearance. eating something I've never eaten before, or in a combination I haven't had before. that kind of thing. it's only once I've reminded myself that I have autonomy that I have a higher tolerance for environments where my autonomy is somewhat restricted

another thing that has helped is maintaining an attitude of everyday resistance. it's easier to complete a task if I feel like I'm in control of HOW I do it, WHEN I do it, and the ATTITUDE I do it with. a classic example of this is giving myself a range of options of what I do with my time like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. I can either do the laundry or take my dog for a walk or write one sentence of my uni pre-work etc etc

in a more general sense, it's also important to communicate with people in your life about what your needs are on this front. if you can pinpoint exactly what it is that tends to trigger your PDA response, it's a hell of a lot easier to make sure that other people in your life are aware of it, and how they can help to navigate it along with you

and then. perhaps most importantly. I do not let myself get annoyed or frustrated myself, regardless of how much I actually get done. I find that I end up being most productive when I don't force it and I don't feel like anyone is forcing me to do anything (including myself!). productivity happens while nobody is looking

I hope this helps!

#sorry for the length. oops #feeling in control is kind of more important than actually being in control #it's kind of all about turning your back on a task so that your brain wants to do that task #which is difficult but definitely possible

[chaosteddybear]

Things I want to know about my fellow writers!

Thanks for the tag @theemptyislost ☺️

I'm tagging @dmagedgoods @ineadhyn @mslanna @eve-is-random @scuttlingcrab @loveless-nameless-graceless-two (no pressure! And sorry to those who have been tagged already!) and you, dear reader! ❤️

Last book I read: 

The only one I feel comfortable sharing is Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney. I actually only just started it but I am excited! The others are mostly about mental health and such, and even the last smutty novel was very dark so this'll be a breath of fresh air I expect 😅

Greatest literary inspirations: 

I am so inspired by lmm that it's embarrassing. More at my core though, would be books from my childhood. They might have formed a little more about who I am than anything else. So for example Lemony Snicket is my heart, and those books meant so much to me that I am pretty sure they're the subconscious reason I love dashes so much, for example. Also the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series... I am still obsessed with the way they set a mood, the way they have a goal but never a conclusion, the creepiness and how they toy with various different ways to be terrifying.

Things in my current fandom I want to read but I don't want to write:

Pretty much anything Raphael (bg3)! I am so insecure about my ability to write Raphael...

Things in my current fandoms I want to write but I think nobody would be interested in them but me: 

More OC stuff. I find it easy to write "you" or canon characters if they're ones I know well and feel comfortable writing, it just flows. But I'm not inspired to write that stuff anymore even a little bit. I want to do OC stuff, but it's so scary. Writing plot? *shivers*. I don't know how to turn it into anything, it's all just chaos in my head, and my wrists hurt even thinking of trying to untangle it.

You can recognize my writing by:

Feral tone. Probably no plot other than using kink and power dynamics to communicate. I'm sorry, and also not sorry, it is what it is 😭

My most controversial take (current fandom):

Sometimes I like to think that Haarlep leads a cushy life and makes Raphael happy! I like to imagine Raphael keeps them safe and happy and clean too 😌 just two cozy lovers 😌

My top three favorite tropes: 

1. Regular person does something extraordinary, 2. Hero can't accept that they're a hero, 3. Misunderstandings, especially if it's two people who love each other but can't see that the other feels the same.

What’s your current writing mood (10 – super motivated and churning out words like crazy, 0 – in a complete rut): 

Honestly, a 2. I'd say 0 but at least I have WIPs I keep running through in my head, I just can't write them down, and I'm still RPing.

Share a random frustration:

I just hate when my ideas are too complicated to write down 😭😭 usually my brain is very stream of consciousness and I can just write it as it flows, but when I'm thinking in multiple directions, it all breaks and I can't get anything down at all.

#Me irl

[ryehouses]

i was tagged in this by @bobafett, who wants to bring back ask box games! this was really fun and really helped drive home the fact that i am maybe a little too wordy!

y'all know the drill. copy, paste, fill in your own answers! feel free to share!

How many works do you have on AO3? impossible for me to say because i have shed ao3 handles like a particularly robust hermit crab, but if i'm just counting everything under iridan, thirteen!

What’s your total AO3 word count? ......1.3 million, as iridan. if we throw in some of my other psueds and the truly awful eragon fanfiction i wrote when i was fourteen, we're probably loking at 2 - 2.5 mil.

What fandoms do you write for? presently, star wars, jujutsu kaisen, star wars again. i have some witcher fic in my gdocs and older projects in rdr2, dishonored, anything that can catch and hold my attention for long enough for my brain to produce a bit of dopamine,

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? all five of them are in the ast 'verse except for lost country

Do you respond to comments? i try to, but it's really hit or miss! i am painfully shy and usually can only go '!!!!!' in thanks

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? of my completed fics, none! i am not really in to the angst ending. if i ever do get around to finishing it, i started a dishonored/his dark materials au that would have ended with corvo going slowly, gently nuts and taking over the outsider's place in the void

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? i like happy endings, so all of them!

Do you get hate on fics? occasionally. i still think about that one commentor on ast who accused me of blaming the jedi for order 66 like, all the time. mostly no, though, everyone is really nice!

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? i've been told that 'wrestling as nasty foreplay' is something of a signature move of mine, so! 1) yes and 2) whatever kind of smut 'wrestling as nasty foreplay' applies as

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? yes, but almost exclusively his dark materials crossovers. i do have a witcher/temeraire fusion au sitting in my gdocs

Have you ever had a fic stolen? no, not that i'm aware of. i do semi-frequent google searches to see if my shit pops up anywhere.

Have you ever had a fic translated? i don't think so! ast was podfic'd, if that counts.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? i don't think so, because i am a whole idiot and am hard to collaborate with.

What’s your all time favorite ship? of ALL TIME? impossible to say. i am inconsistent and flighty. bobadin hit me pretty good, though

What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? haha too many. i started a jedi!din fic and didn't get far. i've had several WIPs on ao3 sit without an update for years. i have drafted, redrafted, and drafted again a novel that will most likely never see the light of day. finishing even one of those would likely water my crops for several years

What are your writing strengths? i take particular pride in my settings! somebody on ao3 told me last week that i have nice turns of phrase, too, and i am proud of those too

What are your writing weaknesses? i have never once said anything in six words when i could say them in six hundred million billion instead

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? obviously i've experimented in various projects, but i am fundamentally kind of lazy and prefer to sprinkle in a few words here and there instead of spending the time to learn about another language's grammar structure

First fandom you wrote for? the first fandom i published anything in was eragon, way back in the day! the first fandom i wrote for was his dark materials, in a composition notebook in like the fifth or sixth grade!

Favorite fic you’ve written? could not possibly pic! they are all like my children and also my therapist.

i'm tagging @meyerlansky and anybody else who wants to participate! consider yourself invited!

#ask box #ask games #i do miss ask games those were fun

[ohmeadows]

with the experience you have now, what is something you usually do when you feel the creative block so bad that it makes you want to drop all your writing during an indeterminate period of time? (Not considering talking to someone because i don't have friends with the same interests as me)

Lately i have been writing consistently but now i am in a point between the overwhelming need to keep creating and the suffocating need to just stop. the last time this happened not a single word was written in over a year xd

oh and im so in love with your writing btw <3

thank you and i'm sorry to hear you're struggling with a creative block, i know the feeling all too well. (there's a span of years between 2013 and 2016 where i didn't write at all.)

while a little break does do good, i know the threshold to getting back to it becomes so high it feels insurmountable. but it sounds like you need to replenish the well, as i like to call it. think of your writing as a well you draw from, and it needs a steady supply of water to be able to sustain you dipping into it for the power and inspiration to keep going. feeding it involves engaging in texts in a different way. for me, that's reading, and a lot. i sometimes feel so parched i have to steamroll thru ten books before i feel like i have it balanced again.

i've made some posts beforehand on how to approach reading as a writer (wish i'd tagged them better), but it boils down to:

make lists of beautiful words and sentences that you like; could you emulate them? could you write them in your style?

how do the writers pull off the tricks you struggle with? for me this is knowing when to just move the scene along, or how to showcase that time has passed. (i did a whole study on this from my fave books and it boiled down to just writing "A day later/Weeks down the line/Three months passed before she/It didn't take more than forty-five minutes to get across town but it felt like moving backwards through time" which was fun to learn)

just reading for fun. cannot be understated. sometimes you just need to be pulled into a story and feel too dazzled to stop and think to be reminded of how delicious writing feels

and yes, this goes for mangas, comics, scripts, movies, tv shows, even game writing imo (visual novels are great fun for how they do dialogue and emotional appeal).

another thing to not lose touch with the writing as a practice but maybe take a little breather from the project is to start a journal. i like this one a lot personally, there's the concept of morning pages where you get up in the morning and write three pages without stopping or overthinking.

this leads into automatic writing, which is about setting a timer (25 mins is a good one i feel, but even 15-10-5 does wonders) and while it ticks, you have to keep writing. yes, even if all you write is the same word over and over, or your thoughts as they come to you. this is a key component exercise at all writing schools i've ever gone to. personally i like to "guide it" so to speak with a prompt, be it a word (Lust, Rose, Name, Echo) or a full sentence ("She didn't like where this was going.") or an image. what this exercise teaches you is to shorten the distance between hand putting the words down and your thoughts as they process and come to you, as well as embracing writing messy and ugly and shitty because you can always come back and fix a half-assed page, but you can't do anything with a blank one.

third and final thing: movement. go outside. look around. if you can, get moving, take in the surroundings. there's no expectation on you to write anything from this, just let the movement and your thoughts be it. whenever i hit creative rut, i go for a walk. the first half hour my brain is quiet and annoyed. then things start moving in there as well. i'll walk all the way down to the sea and look at the waves and back home and process an idea from it. (i do keep the notes app on my phone readily available for this, but a notebook or receipt or post-it notes also work fine.)

like all art, writing is a practice and the actual act of writing is maybe 20-30% of what it is. nourish the well and it will nourish you back.

+ for what it's worth, i also often try to edge in rest days where i don't write. at least two a week. be gentle and forgiving on yourself.

#ask meadows anything

[zhongwans]

wtf is up with hao jingfang? was she planted in the fandom from the very beginning or...? her actions are so contradictory. is she a supporter of zzh or not lol

This is just my opinion but I think HJF was not actually a fan and just saw an opportunity to market her new novel and get a built-in fandom for it in the process. When she first talked about wanting to write a novel for Junzhe I think nobody really thought of the possibility that she was using them for clout because the first thing most of us knew about her is that she won a Hugo Award back in 2016, so it's like why would someone like her need to farm clout from a pair of BL actors? But when you take a closer look at her, she actually isn't all that at all. Like Flora (from twitter) said, none of her works have ever been adapted into film or television so why was she so confident that this one will? And while she seems to have prestige and is respected, she doesn't really have a following that genuinely looks forward to her works either. People seem to describe her works as the type of books people pretend to like because they're "serious and deep" and then immediately forget exist. The reviews aren't exactly glowing either, especially for her latest work. Her characters across all her works have about as much nuance and personality as a rotting corpse and her dialogues feel shallow and vacuous, nothing more than empty filler to pad up the word count. Who knows? Maybe she saw the kind of passionate following these webnovel adaptations get and decided she wanted the same kind of attention for her own work?

She must have seen an opportunity with GJ and ZZH's then-popularity. They've both said that they wanted to work with each other again and that they were interested in a sci-fi project. Usually BL actors (especially ones that get really popular as a ship) don't end up working together again but HJF is friends with Xiao Chu and it's possible she knows some things that made her confident enough to assume ZZH and GJ really did want to collaborate again in the future. At the time I was wondering where this woman was getting her confidence and it only made sense when I realized she was close to someone who has direct contact with GJ and ZZH.

So I personally think her motivations were always entirely selfish and she was only really using the two of them for clout. That's why when 813 happened she quickly distanced her novel from ZZH and then only backtracked when she noticed a huge chunk of the fandom was still on his side and when it seemed possible for him to get justice.

Also this is unverified information but there were leaked message logs showing that HJF allegedly tried to sell the adaptation rights for her novel back in Jan/Feb 2022 and wanted GJ to act in it. If those message logs are legit then it must mean her efforts fell through, but what's most interesting is that about 5 months later she suddenly went wild on weibo, attempted to start a smear campaign against GJ (they even had tags prepared beforehand, ready to plaster the issue all over hotsearch) and accused him of silencing her on social media. I have no idea why she thought that was even remotely believable to anyone with a working brain. Who does this dumb bitch think GJ is? The head of the CAC?

Anyway, this is just my opinion on her and her possible motivations. I have no idea if she's a CAPA plant or whatever, but even without all that and just judging her based on her actions alone, she's just a desperate clout chaser, a shitty human being and a mediocre writer.

[thethistlegirlwrites]

WIP Questionnaire

Thanks for the open tag, @verba-writing !

I'll do these for Thief of Hearts since it's my Camp Nano April WIP!

What was the first part of your wip that you created?

So, fun story, I actually came up with the base premise of this idea almost 10 years ago. My freshman year of college (2014-15, *gasp*) my roommate and I binge watched Criminal Minds, and we got through episode 3.02 and my brain apparently decided to take 'what if stealing hearts was a little more metaphorical than this but more literal than the usual meaning', wrote down a title and tagline, then forgot it for the next nine years until I found it while spring cleaning my Google drive.

If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

I want to say "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri just because it's too good to pass up how specifically it works, but I also think "Things that Stop You Dreaming" by Passenger really fits the whole world of the story really well, so either of those two.

Who are your favourite characters you've made? Why?

For this story? Definitely Emmett and Rory. Making me choose between them would be like making me choose a favorite child. They're both delightfully flawed, morally grey, and just trying to make it in a city that kind of wants to kill them. Emmett has a knack for making the worst possible decisions without realizing that's what he's doing, Rory is ruthless and probably would have been described as heartless BEFORE Emmett actually stole her heart, and they've just generally been very fun to throw together, force to work on the same side, and watch the sparks (and occasional knife) fly.

What other pieces of media do you think would share a fan base for your story?

I think oddly enough this one is going to appeal to dystopia lovers as much or more than pure fantasy readers. I just read a Korean YA novel in translation, Snowglobe, that basically was an inverted version of the perpetual winter city in TOH, and really felt like that was a fairly close comparative story. Aside from that, I'm not really sure. I like a plethora of weird things that shouldn't go together so I'm not sure at all of what a shared fan base looks like. I'm always cobbling together my projects out of bizarre combinations of inspiration sources and I have zero idea where they will land or what will be a hit with anyone besides me and the few people who get to listen to me bemoan the writing process and read the chaotic early drafts.

What has been your biggest struggle with your wip?

Timing of the plotline. I've been constantly changing when things happen because all the action is crammed into a 48 hour window but ironically that's turned out to be MORE time than I know what to do with given the pace the plot needs to have, so I'm finding ways to flesh things out and frustrate some of the characters' plans so that it's not all over TOO fast.

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

Rory has a pet magical pigeon named Blizzard. He's been affected by the magic that floods the city of Rime, and while he's adapted to endure the extreme cold and see in the perpetual dark, he's nearly flightless because of one wing that is more or less just a warped stub. He's going to be fun to flesh out as a part of the story, and he's sort of Rory's answering service when she's out making a messenger delivery, since people can leave messages they want sent in a little pouch he wears on his back while he's on duty. It would be nearly impossible to have more than one generation of animal in the city without them mutating because of the magic, so most people don't even bother. Small animals that pose minimal risk if their descendants develop magical powers or strange features like foot-long fangs are the only regularly kept animals in Rime, and since most people can't afford to feed themselves and a pet, there's very few domesticated creatures at all.

How do your characters get around? (ex: trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

Mostly on foot, or by ship if they're leaving the city by the port. Keeping large animals in Rime would be costly and that's prohibitive for most people, and the large animals that can manage the winters are mostly the local caribou population, which have been affected by the magic much like Rory's pigeon. Someone might be able to ride them, but it also might end very badly.

What part of your wip are you working on rn?

Drafting. I've gotten the main plot points knocked out, but I'm filling in the gaps and trying to plot a daring rescue right along with my characters, so that's fun. Mostly I'm just following them around with a clipboard and pencil trying to take notes and keep up and getting whiplash from watching them argue about any and everything.

What aspects (tropes, maybe?) of your wip do you think will draw people in?

I'm hoping the worldbuilding is a big draw because that's always the part of a project I go crazy with. I hope people find the idea of a magic-warded permanently winter city where daylight is basically a version of the northern lights appealing enough to be curious. My other big draw is the characters, because I personally love them very much and I hope other people do too. I do have a few fun tropes but a lot of them are skewed slightly to the side, like the kind of chaotic enemies-to-coparents arc and sharing body warmth but also half convinced the other person will kill you when you fall asleep.

What are your hopes for your wip?

Honestly, just that people get to enjoy it and fall in love with the characters the way I did. I would genuinely love to log onto Tumblr and see that someone had made fan art of them, or a moodboard, or to realize a fic category had appeared on AO3 (one of my draft beta readers @nade2308 already wrote a soft cute slice-of-life future fic after bingereading what there was of the draft to see, and I'm genuinely just floored and gleeful about that fact). I'm also sort of lurking like a gremlin ready to watch people lose it over my 'strong female character' choosing to parent a child as the culmination of her arc. Yes, Rory can kill you about ten ways but one of those is to mom you to death. And like the menace I am (and having seen the discourse on Tumblr) I am doing the evil hand rubbing waiting for the response to that one...

No pressure tagging @catwings-writes-things , @nade2308writes, @telltaleclerk, @the-one-and-only-valkyrie, @imbrisvastatio and anyone else who wants to hop on the train for this one!

Questions are:

1. What was the first part of your wip that you created?

2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

3. Who are your favourite characters you've made? Why?

4. What other pieces of media do you think would share a fan base for your story?

5. What has been your biggest struggle with your wip?

6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

7. How do your characters get around? (ex: trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

8. What part of your wip are you working on rn?

9. What aspects (tropes, maybe?) of your wip do you think will draw people in?

10. What are your hopes for your wip?

#writing #thief of hearts #rory #emmett #rory blake #emmett santos

[borealopelta]

fic writer interview

tagged by @regseekings thank you sooo much <3

How many works do you have on AO3? 38

What’s your total AO3 word count? 129,960

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? i was something made for god to label fragile (now i'm stuck) (1,133) - Our Flag Means Death, stede/izzy/ed out of time, eternal heatstroke (631) - Our Flag Means Death, stede/izzy/ed sure as the sun come up from the south (371) - Our Flag Means Death, stede/izzy/ed steppin' around in a desert of joy (301) - Ted Lasso, isaac/colin I'm a stitch away from making it (and a scar away from falling apart) (279) - IT movies, richie/eddie

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? yes !! it takes some time usually but i want people to know i appreciate them taking the time to say nice things :)

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? i'd sayyy uh a carnival bear set free, which is a sumner/drax dead dove fic and leads directly into the endgame of the book which is angsty as hell in itself

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? most of them have a happy ending!! i'm nice!! but my most recent one, eyes on the horizon (chuck/roger) has a cute ending that i really like :)

Do you write crossovers? nope, i don't like to read them, write even less. i have attempted a fusion/AU of existing media or two before but none of those have been published

Have you ever received hate on a fic? crabsolutely, some people will leave death threats in guest comments and that's just how it goes

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yeah!! less so lately because i'm just not vibing with it atm, but i looove writing smut. i think i cover the whole spectrum of vanilla to kinky

Have you ever had a fic stolen? no thank god. i love tiny fandom

Have you ever had a fic translated? nope!

Have you ever co-written a fic before? no, and i don't want to either

What’s your all-time favourite ship? sighhhh i don't know, they come and go. i'm perpetually fond of tom hartnell/ john irving of the terror fame and doc thorne/eddie carr from the lost world (the novel) but it comes and goes

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? my lost world longfic........girliepop you are NOT getting done 😭

What are your writing strengths? i think i'm okay at vivid descriptions and getting characters' personalities mostly right :)

What are your writing weaknesses? long plots, group scenes, dialogue/description balance if i'm not 100% clear on what i want to accomplish in the scene (either too much dialogue or too little. good lord)

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? with good reason it's okay. i've read very very bad things where the foreign dialogue was just jarringly out of place and it put me off it p much for good

What was the first fandom you wrote for? sigh. hollywood undead rpf 👍

What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to? i reallllly want to write hunt for red october fic.........stupid as hell but it's in my brain so much !! ramius/borodin intrigues me greatly (i think sean connery and sam neill should have kissed)

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? hmmm.... i think it's let me under your skin, my small eastern european village armitozer au. i really really really love the vibe of it, it means a lot to me, and i'm still very happy with it almost 3 years after posting (jesus christ) which is very rare for me. read it :) or not. but i do like it so so much

#tag game #link #my fic #long post #self promo #<- I GUESS!

[rayshippouuchiha]

I've finally hit the point where I have to write the first fic for a fandom. I'm crying. There's nothing on Ao3 and I didn't bother checking FFN since I don't know how they tag CNs. Heroic Death System is so good, though. Maybe that's the problem. Its so good that no one ever wanted to add on. Or CNs just aren't popular. T-T All I wanted to do was read about Shang Ke BSing a reason for the change in behavior. But there's nothing at all. So now I'm going to have to write all the fics for it. I'll start with Arc 2 Redux since that Arc eats at me the most.

BTW, Heroic Death System is a Quick Transmigration story where Shang Ke has to have a Heroic Death as ordered by the System to fix the plotline that went badly thanks to the OG body. (Quick Transmigration refers to the Host being tasked with a mission and once its completed, taken to another world to continue on. Sometimes its to fix the plotholes, sometimes to "keep the plot on track". Usually in the case of the later, the Host accidentally gets the MC or target character to fall in love which derails the plot entirely. Whether or not there's penalties or workarounds depends on the System. Most of the QT novels I've read, in the case of romance, have the partner reincarnating across the worlds as well, so its still one partner. Usually it means there are Past Life Shenanigans in the background.) SK has a great internal thought process, its always funny. In the earlier Arcs he's a bit oblivious but he catches on partway through Arc 2. Also, it's a bit spicy in the later Arcs. SK ends up eagerly welcoming his lover's advances in the later lives even if he has to hold off for a while to stay in character. Each Arc is a great mini-story in its own right, if you like tragedy, with all but 2 Arcs having a repeat where SK can return and live a happy life with his partner. If SK gets a good score on his life, he can earn Rebirth cards that let him live with his lover's different incarnations. Also, there's Past Life Drama that comes up and makes it so there's suddenly Plot! in the later Arcs. It was pretty interesting. Good Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Time Travel (in some characters PoV), MPreg (in some lives), some Torture not explicitly described, Illnesses/Disabilities, Shapeshifters, Beastpeople, Sentinel&Guide, Fantasy, Cultivation, AlphaxAlpha, God AU and Ghost AU are the main things SK lives through. Also, his partner is very ... forceful isn't quite right. He loses SK every life in traumatic circumstances so his subconscious wants him to make the most of every moment, which leads to quick romance and ... OK, honestly, he's kinda yandere in some lives from past life trauma. He's very much the domineering CEO type in this, blended with yandere moments. SK is ok with this since he can get back together with his partner quickly in the new life and because his partner chills out in his redos since he stays with him. I'm trying not to give out spoilers for anyone who wants to read this later. Each Arc, not counting his redos, are about 10 or so chapters each, so they're good for bitesized reading. There's 275 chapters altogether, fully translated on snowycodex . com.

Anyways, I love the redo lives and I just keep imagining how SK explains his differences/BSing a reason for the change from OG body's actions. My Heart Beats For You (CW: brain tumors, heart diseases, car accident, kinda suicidal behavior(which occurs throughout the novel, i.e. the title)) has me in a death grip that randomly visits me a lot so I have high hopes I can write something good for it. I'm planning on having SK be "drunk" and whitewash his past to his lover and his friends. I have so much of the story he'd tell plotted out by now but I'm just going to have to figure out how to space it out and add in interruptions from the other characters.

(*/▽＼*) I want to share it with you if I can finish it. I'm a huge fan. I'd love to see what you think.

Fuck yes babe this sounds fantastic. Link me when you get it done and I'll check it out!

#RayRambles #love when y'all get passionate about stuff like this

[stillgrows]

get to know the mun

what made you pick up the current muse(s) you have? oh, goodness. there are so many and they are so varied. they're all muses i've picked up over the years who have spoken to me; in some ways, it's funny to look back and see what my "type" was at the time (see: huey laforet and johannes cabal being from things i was into around the same time, and then luxord and kariya being from similar times for me as well; looking @ my new gnshn additions is funny because yeah, you're into the fake people lately, aren't you).

is there anything you don’t like to write? while i love shipping, i dislike relationships where there is no... challenge? not even challenge in a butting heads way, but they have to be able to provide something to the other. they have to enable growth in the other. so i guess completely 100% fluffy cute happy ships without any substance (and the substance does not have to be negative in any way... it just has to actually be there).

is there anything you really enjoy writing? i love parallels and foils in narration. i also do love writing smut, i shall not lie; it's a good way to look into the dynamics of a character with themself and their own body as well as of a relationship. in general though i enjoy anything that really pries open a character and lets me examine them in different ways.

do you write in silence or do you play music? depends! i have character playlists i will usually use, but sometimes the vocals are a detriment and i'll just write in silence (or with music on in the living room so it's Noise but i'm not Listening)

do you plan your replies or wing them? yes? it really depends. sometimes i'll reply instantly and in that case i'm winging it, but i've usually had inspiration occur to me which counts as vague planning even if instantaneous? with replies being so short it's difficult to say, vs writing a novel where i know the ending and am winging the middle.

do you enjoy shipping? forgot this question was coming and kind of answered it already... so, yes. a lot. but it has to give something to the characters. i don't just ship just to ship. i'm not rewriting my above answer so y'all get the same thing twice.

what’s your alias/name? syd, or plant (although i've had several additional ones over the years) age? 27 birthday? 18 july favorite color? burnt orange favorite song? currently my top song on my on repeat playlist is over & over by rio romeo but i think axolotl by cosmo sheldrake may be my actual current favorite. this changes very often. last movie you watched? uh. it may have been my ghost in the shell rewatch a while ago? last show you watched? a murder at the end of the world last song you listened to? currently listening to brain damage by joywave favorite food? oh, um. hm. raw oysters with a good mignonette. favorite season? late summer/early fall do you have a tumblr best friend? does my girlfriend count?

tagged by: stole from @kkriitters tagging: you

#ooc // dash games #sorry koy if i do the drink one i'll send it to you sjdfhs #i don't really do character-specific dash games and post them. but keep an eye out for that tomorrow hehe

[microsuedemouse]

~ 15 questions & 15 friends ~

tagged by my much beloved @czarcaustic <3

1. Are you named after anyone?

My grandfather!! Courtney was his middle name. (That spelling was originally the masculine form of the name, though it's pretty rare to see it used as such these days.) My middle name is also a family name :)

2. When was the last time you cried?

Uhh... oh it was a couple nights ago, when talking with my parents about my Nana. I still miss her a lot

3. Do you have kids?

Nope. At this stage of my life I can't say it feels super likely ever to happen, though I'd be lying if I said I don't feel a twinge of Something when I meet babies at work lol.

4. What sports do you play/have you played?

lmao I have never played any. I am extremely unathletic by nature, and also always struggled to get my brain around the rules of pretty much any of them when I was like, a kid in gym class

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Sure, but not a lot? Probably an average amount I figure

6. What is the first thing you notice about people?

Man, I dunno - probably their faces or their clothes, depending on context?

7. What's your eye color?

Brown!

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Big big fan of both! I'm not a big sad endings guy, though. Even when it feels right for the story, it's usually not my jam. (I guess sometimes sad endings can be good for scary movies, but that's like... sort of its own thing? because it's about The Horror.)

9. Any talents?

This is always a hard question for me to answer, bc I feel like most of the things I'm good at are more skills than talents - they're things I've practiced and developed over time, like with my writing and art. Although I guess it'd be fair, if unusual maybe, to say I've got a couple naturally strong interpersonal skills. I'm very good at communication, including figuring out what other people are trying to say, and I'm also pretty good at making people feel comfortable and understood.

10. Where were you born?

In southern Ontario, in the city where both of my parents did most of their growing up :)

11. What are your hobbies?

Writing (fiction prose, mostly) and the many kinds of thinking that go with it (worldbuilding, character development, etc). Arts and crafts (of many kinds; I'm often bouncing from one thing to another. Currently I'm having lots of fun learning to crochet). Taking in stories (reading books and comics, watching movies and TV, playing games, listening to podcasts - I love stories in all their forms). Goofing off with my family, especially my younger siblings.

12. Do you have any pets?

We have three cats - Neverland, Louie, and Smudge :)

13. How tall are you?

Uhh my ID says 165 cm, so that's... 5'5"-ish? I'm genuinely so incapable of remembering that on my own, for some reason.

14. Favorite subject in school?

It was usually English and art, growing up. In university it was always my courses that delved into genre fiction - science fiction, children's lit, the fairy tale... also that graphic novel seminar I took

15. Dream job?

Iiii. [sweats] I wanna be a novelist, but also, that's hard in its own way, and I think it's gonna take me a while yet to really Get There in terms of my own skills, disregarding the challenges of publishing. Beyond that... is something I've been struggling a lot with lately, because it's hard for me to imagine myself in a job where I'm both content and competent, let alone able to support myself. I've been wondering a lot again about library sciences, lately, but I just don't know. It's tough out here!

I definitely don't have 15 people to tag, but. @izupie @werewolfin @serenabeanie @womanaction @mana-sputachu perhaps, if you're feelin' it?

#survey #ty KC ily <333

[ardentlytess]

✨the tag game✨

tagged by: @talays-portkey thank you so much!!<3

THREE SHIPS 🚢 i have so many, but the top three that live in my brain rent free most often would have to be: puentalay from vice versa, wangxian from mdzs/the untamed, & sangwoo/jaeyoung from semantic error (with akktheo from enchanté as a close close close fourth)!

FIRST SHIP 🚢 i'm honestly pretty sure the first ship i was every properly invested in was percabeth from percy jackson & the olympians, followed by peeta & katniss from the hunger games, closely followed by suki from avatar: the last airbender & myself. what can i say. past me had taste.

LAST SONG 🎧 it was one step closer by intersection (AKA, fruits basket's second ending theme)! i tend to listen to a lot of anime openings/endings while studying in particular so i'm cycling through one of my usual playlists right now!

LAST MOVIE 🍿 i actually very rarely watch movies so i had to think a bit for this one, but i'm relatively certain that it was your name engraved herein. very heartbreaking. very beautiful. very very very real. the ending broke me as a human being, especially paired with the quote the director gave about the reality of missing the "train of happiness."

CURRENTLY READING 📖 i am currently reading girls of paper & fire by natasha ngan! to be honest, it's been a pretty difficult read for me emotionally given the subject matter, but it's a sapphic fantasy novel set in an asian-inspired, caste-based fantasy world that follows a young girl who's abducted & forced to become a concubine to the king, only to find herself falling for a fellow courtesan while juggling her own goals of survival, justice, & revenge. i'm just about to finish this one, though, so after i do, i'm probably going to pick up either hell followed with us by andrew joseph white (a queer sci-fi/dystopian novel that follows a trans mc who's slowly mutating into a deadly monster— also has autistic rep) or godslayers by zoe hana mikuta (the second book in a sapphic sci-fi/dystopian series about mechas carrying out the will of a tyrannical capital city & gearbreakers who are the only ones willing to bring them down)!

CURRENTLY WATCHING 👀 i've been in a weird kind of slump lately, so of everything currently airing i'm only really keeping up with my school president, moonlight chicken, & bokura no micro na shuumatsu— & even with these, i'm very rarely watching them on the days they actually come out, even though i'm enjoying all of them so far! i am, however, also doing an impromptu, completely unofficial vice versa rewatch that was definitely not supposed to be a full rewatch & was just supposed to be a quick little flip through to get some quotes for a set i'm working on but turned into a full rewatch because i simply couldn't resist. 10/10. highly recommend. puentalay will never not transcend a slump for me.

CURRENTLY CONSUMING 👄 this one's maybe slightly strange but strawberries dipped in ice water!! ice water just makes strawberries (& every fruit, honestly) taste so much better. also trying (& failing) to focus on a pchem lecture. considering i'm writing this up instead, i'd say it's not going too swimmingly. 

CURRENTLY CRAVING 🫦 hmmmmm honestly i've been craving milk tea for weeks now & tteokbokki even longer! will hopefully be treating myself with one or the other once this round of midterms is over & done with!

ONWARD TAGS 🏷️ i'm tagging: @i-got-the-feels @pannakorn @puentalay @oswlld @icouldhyperfixatehim @stormyoceans @chinzhilla @chinzillas @gooseras @hidden-joy @laowen @intolove & anyone else who'd like to do it! i'm not entirely sure who has/hasn't been tagged yet &/or who's interested so definitely don't feel obligated! just sending lots of good vibes & love to you all<3

#tag games #becauseigtf #ninisdarlings #userpuentalay #userjjessi #userbon #touseranna #usergooseras #tuserhidden #mjtag #<- also gonna go ahead & put tracked tags for those of you who have them too #just because my tumblr has a bad habit of not actually notifying people when they're tagged in-post #so apologies for the double tag!! #hope you're all having a wonderful day<33