percabethfiles

[percabethfiles]

Charlie

Uh... Hello? Anybody still here? I haven't been around in years and years. But I keep my fandoms stored in some corner of my brain waiting for something to tug them out. And of all things this time it was Taylor Swift re-releasing her old songs, because I used to imagine so many percabeth scenes listening to "Fearless". So have this little something that's been sitting unfinished in my archives for years now.

Remember that time Percy saw Sadie Kane and thought “Hey, this is what mine and Annabeth’s daughter would look like”? Yes.

(Also there are small nods to that fic I wrote about Logan, Hidden Heritage, but I've been meaning to re-write it someday because there were SO MANY PLOT HOLES omg)

When they find out it’s a girl it’s a bit too soon to know for sure, or so the doctor tells them. They’ll have to wait for the next appointment to know for certain. “So don’t go buying any tiny dresses yet,” he jokes and they laugh along, but they’ve been together for approximately eighteen years now, they can tell what the other’s thinking with a glance and the ecstatic grin that breaks through their lips lets him know they’re on the same page. Too late. They’re already thinking plush bow and arrows and a Merida costume for her first Halloween.

Percy tries to keep his cool. As the weeks progress, he tries not to get his hopes up, but in his heart he knows already. They hadn’t really had a preference before, they’d been too happy knowing their baby was fully human and had all its limbs (with the number of deities they’d pissed off, you never knew), but a little girl? It feels right after their two boys, it feels like their family will be complete.

(He thinks about a slight blonde girl with streaked hair and a British accent dropping from the sky on a magic camel, remembers thinking “if Annabeth and I had a daughter…” and his chest squeezes tight with happiness so raw he has a little trouble breathing)

When the doctor beams at them next appointment and says “Congratulations, Jackson family, it really is a girl,” he’s not surprised, but no less elated. He doesn’t hear the lame joke about Jackson Five, he’s too busy trying to be a manly man and not burst into tears because he’s going to have a daughter. When Annabeth’s in the other room paying for the appointment, and he’s waiting for the doctor to print the really impressive high tech 3D picture of the ultrasound, the man asks him “So did you go ahead and buy a tiny dress anyway?”

Percy blushes.

The man shakes his head in amusement. “Every time”.

His work colleagues, proud dads of little girls themselves, try to terrorize him with tales of tea parties and future boyfriends, and Percy thinks somewhere in the middle of all that teasing they mean well, but really, he’s mostly annoyed. It’s not like he’s new to parenthood, he’s got two sons already and they seem to be turning out okay, and before, when Logan and Nathan were just a nice dream for the future, there was Estelle, the little sister Percy had never expected, but loved to bits all the same.

And then Charlie is born.

She’s tiny, warm and pink, all curled up in her yellow cable-knit blanket, a tuft of blonde hair peeking out of a tiny, tiny beanie, features scrunched into the most adorable variation of a grumpy face. He’s not new to parenthood, he’s been here twice before, but the rush of affection and protectiveness and awe and raw love is just as genuine. He’s smiling like a dork, can’t seem to stop, walking from side to side, avidly searching her traits. She’s bigger than Nate was when he’d been born, but smaller than Logan. Her hair was light, like Nate’s, would it stay blonde or darken with time? Would her eyes be like his or Annabeth’s? And oh, she had her mother’s nose (they all did).

It never fails to amaze him how such a small, vulnerable being can shake up his whole world until it’s made a space for her. And he’s done this before, he’s no first time sailor this time, he’d thought he had it all under control. But she blinks and looks up at him with half-lidded eyes and a frowny face and—they’re green. Her eyes are the blue-green Logan’s are, Percy’s are.

(He’s got two sons who are his life, and he does love all his children equally, but holding his daughter for the first time, he thinks he understands his friends’ warnings. He doesn’t love her more, it’s just… different. It’s special.)

When he goes back to work, Nick takes one look at him and bursts into laughter. He claps him on the shoulder in commiseration.

“I told you.”

He’s completely wrapped around her finger already.

It’s not too different, he finds out. Especially having been pre-trained by Estelle. He’s got to brush up on his Disney princess knowledge, and hair braiding skills. He hasn’t gotten much better at color coordinating the polka dotted bows and tiny shoes, but Charlie is really forgiving. She is a very happy baby, much happier and easy going than any of the boys had been.

She’s also fucking crazy.

She is smaller and skinnier than her brothers, likes to wear frilly dresses and talk to plush animals and dance around the house in a pink tutu, but she’s wild. She never learned to crawl, just held on to the couch until she was wobbling on two feet, and it seemed like the very next day she was running across the house, the mall, the park, and if he turned his eyes away for one second, she was shooting off in the streets and nearly getting run over.

He’d found her dangling from the kitchen cabinets, trying to reach the cowering cat. She had a phase when she thought she could fly and she would climb furniture and stairs and the window sill and just… Launch herself into the air expecting her flying powers to manifest spontaneously. If they hadn’t been trying to raise them away from the whole mythological world, he would have sat her down and clarified that she had the wrong Olympian Grandparent in mind. She might have had more luck jumping into the ocean.

She had a way to jut out her lower lip, and turn those big green eyes on him that could render his every effort to be a responsible parental presence useless.

Besides, she was so funny. He could never muster enough anger to discipline her, because if he found her on the kitchen table covered in peanut butter, somehow sporting a very sticky Mohawk, and looking entirely unapologetic, well, he just couldn’t stop laughing.

One day he’s coming home from work and he hasn’t even pulled the key from the lock when Charlie calls out ‘you’re back daddy,’ in what sounds vaguely like a new jersey accent. He finds her sitting on the floor of the living room, drowning in one of Annabeth’s bathrobes, pink plastic barbie sunglasses on, holding a pooh bear sippy cup with one hand and a pinky stretched out.

“Charlie, what are you doing?”

“It’s wine Wednesday, daddy.”

“It’s what?”

“Wine Wednesday.”

He had half a mind to check if her sippy cup actually contained wine because they hid their alcohol way up in the cabinets she can’t reach but that girl could climb like a monkey. He knows he should follow that remark up with some kind of questioning of where she’d even heard of ‘wine Wednesdays’ and then explain that kids don’t drink wine or some other kind of responsible parent speech, but a sudden burst of incredulous laughter bubbles up in his throat and he takes refuge in the kitchen, lest he encourages her behavior.

He finds Annabeth there, hand over her mouth, clearly in stitches over their daughter’s performance. He wants to question if she gave her permission to wear her bathrobe but finding his wife nearly doubled over in silent laughter in the kitchen is too much and he finally lets out the guffaw he’d been trying to hold on to.

It’s not the first time Charlie leaves them breathless with laughter, and he’s almost scared of what she’s going to cook up in the future.

Charlie is a hellion.

There isn’t one person safe from her pranks, but she’s so adorable she hardly ever catches hell for it, and she’s learning to use it in her favor – thankfully, just in time for her parents to develop immunity to her puppy eyes. And she’s… difficult, yes, but not always, and not in a terrible way. For all her climbing the roof, organizing illegal cookie sales, getting in fights with her classmates, she’s not a bad kid. She’s got Percy’s penchant for befriending the kids no one wants to go near, and defending her ragtag team of losers. She’s loyal to a fault, and it gets her in trouble often.

She and Nate have epic jealousy fights over everything, including – but not limited to – Logan’s attention, the crayons, the biggest piece of cake and all the videogame characters in the world are not enough, they will always want whatever the other picked. It gives them many, many headaches. Logan, on the other hand, positively spoils her, and whenever Charlie gets in trouble they can be sure to find her hiding behind her big brother while he gives them this solemn look and says “It’s ok, mom and dad, Charlie promises she won’t do it again. We’ve talked.”

When the whole “Logan being attacked by a dracanae in school and thus finding out his Olympian heritage” debacle came to pass, and they started frequenting camp again, there was nowhere in the entire Camp Charlie would rather be than the stables. She’d spend hours there with the Aphrodite kids, brushing the pegasi and talking to them endlessly about all her classmates and her friends, and her dolls, and her new dress, and the new book grandma gave her. It was all really cute until Percy realized the pegasi were talking back, and she fully understood their replies.

And it’s funny, really, because Logan had taken after Percy, to a point where bathing him had been hard as a child because he tended to stay dry in the tub, and Nathan was Annabeth to a T, but Charlie was a perfect mix of them both.

He guesses it makes sense it would be so explosive.

When Charlie is twelve, she gets kicked out of school.

Percy is not overly worried about it himself – the number of schools he’d been kicked out of reached double digits, and this was only her first – but he is worried about how she will feel. Getting the boot from a place that’s housed you for years, where your friends are, where everyone already knows you and having to start over is never pleasant, no matter how used to it you were.

He’d expected the school to have gotten tired of all her pranks and misbehaving, which was fair, he guessed. But when Annabeth comes home from the meeting with the school director, she is seething, and not at their daughter. Charlie is angry too. In fact, it’s the first time he’s ever seen his daughter well and truly pissed off. The two of them are a sight for nightmares, both blondes standing side by side ranting with righteous fury, they look ready to start a revolution. What he gets from her angry snarls and Charlie’s rushed rambling is that Charlie had talked back to a teacher that was picking on the autistic kid and demeaning the thirteen year old who was repeating sixth grade.

She’d called him a brain-washing small minded overgrown bully who, he was quoting, didn’t get enough love from his parents.

And Percy is so proud his eyes even get a little misty.

Because he’s getting old and sentimental and raising kids is very hard. No one knows what they’re doing, not one person, not even the fancy psychologists with those books on raising perfect, well rounded, high-achieving members of society that Annabeth insisted on reading when she was pregnant with Logan. You do your best and you hope for the best, and you don’t know what you get until it’s basically too late to do anything about it. And even if he did have the best mom in the history of the entire world to draw example from, he was also half of an absent Olympian father whose heritage condemned him to dance in and out of battlefields half his life.

He’s always been terrified of being a crap father.

He looks at Charlie cussing out with every mild version of actual cuss words, stalking around the kitchen like a little lioness in a cage, furious at the unfairness of the whole situation, caring less about being expelled and more about who was going to defend her friends from that awful teacher when she’s gone.

His daughter is only twelve, but she’s already so brave, such a force of nature. She won’t stand for injustice, and she won’t take insult lying down. And she’s so kind. She’s growing up, and the person she is slowly turning out to be… is good.

And something in his heart shifts and settles down, smooths over old fears and anxious thoughts.

Percy doesn’t mean to brag, but he thinks he’s not doing half bad as a parent.

#fanfic #pjo #percabeth #percabeth kids #charlie jackson #back at it again with the old unfinished fics #percabeth fanfic

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Weird question but what does Nathan look like? I know that Charlotte has curly blonde and sea green eyes and that Logan looks like Percy but I don’t think I’ve come across what Nathan looks like :p.

Hello! I truly don't know how long it's been since you sent this ask, I haven't checked the blog in an eternity! So sorry!

I'm not sure I have described Nathan before, no hahahaha perhaps in passing in Hidden Heritage (which needs a rewrite asap, upon a second look). I always imagined that he took over Annabeth in personality, but he was more of a mix of Percy and Annabeth in looks. As a child he'd have very light blonde hair, but with age it'd grow darker, and end up as a light brown, curly like his mother's, and I think I gave him gray eyes? He's got their tanned complexion as well.

And here's some extra info, he's better at archery than sword fighting. He'd also be a huge nerd. And he wants to study engineering in college.

Thank you for the ask!

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I love your fanfiction a so much!!!! Can you please do genderbent Percabeth au?

It's been soooo long since I've checked the blog, so sorry for missing this ask!

As I've mentioned on the other asks I've just answered, I'm crazy busy in college and I haven't been in the most creative of moods. I've had trouble writing anything lately, even for other fandoms, so I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid I can't write your request. I'm not sure I could do it justice.

Thank you for the ask though, and for the kind words, they are much appreciated!

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Hey I noticed you haven't really posted anything recently, are you all right?

I've been missing a lot of these asks, so sorry! I am doing alright, I just dropped out of tumblr for a while. College has been really crazy, and it's crazier than ever right now. I'm very close to graduation, and in the middle of my internship, which means I was very close to living at the hospital at some point hahaha

Now with the pandemic it's been just as wild, though us students have been relocated to other areas where we don't deal directly with covid.

I'm afraid with all this mess I've had little time to write, but also, I haven't been feeling very creative either. I've had trouble writing anything at all for months now, even for other fandoms, so I haven't checked on this blog a lot.

So sorry for worrying you! And thank you for checking in!

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Hi there! I want to start by saying that you are an amazing writer and everytime I read your fics I just get this fuzzy feeling in my chest - your writing is that good (and may I say, I only got that feeling when reading the books themselves). The idea of Logan, Nate and Charlie got me better than any other idea out there; I just love it! I don't know if you take requests or not, but I have to ask this: would you make a fic where Logan learns about his parent's time in Tartarus?

I'm so sorry I completely missed this ask! I haven't checked tumblr in so long, I don't know how long you've waited for a reply! So sorry!

And thank you so much for your kind words, they warmed my heart. After all this time to know people still enjoy my silly stories, it's lovely.

College has fully taken over my life in a way that not only kept me busy but also dried up my creative well severely. I haven't written in so long. What little I've written was mostly fiddling with unfinished stories I've always meant to finish and publish, with little success.

I can only guarantee that I'll keep buggering on and trying to finish those oneshots, but I'm afraid it may be a while yet. Sorry.

And thank you again for the kind words!

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Could you please do a follow up where annabeth meets percy’s college friends??

I actually did write this shot a loooong time ago, and I think I ended up discarding it because I didn't like how it came out. But I still have parts of it somewhere.

I'll look into it hahaha

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I really, really wanted to write a med school AU but I run into the culture barrier. I study medicine in Brazil and our medical schools are organized quite differently from the US. First year is pretty similar, but after that it kinda deviates. Like, I'm here in third year going through the outpatient clinics tending to patients with a classmate, and my teachers come in to check and help with medication and etc but the bulk of the work is ours. From what TV tells me of american med school they take longer to get there. Idk. Anyone goes to med school in United States? Wants to shed some light?

#med school AU #fanfic problems #anyone wants to help? #percabeth

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Would anyone mind if I just share some thoughts? It’s not dissing anyone, I promise, it’s just something that’s been bothering me and kind of kept me from writing PJO for a while now.

I remember when the first book of heroes of olympus came out and everyone was excited and I was ecstatic and then i spent the entire book going “Where’s percy? I don’t like the new children, gimme my old children.” And it was that whole fear of new things or whatever, and it took me a while to warm up to them.

When Son of Neptune came out I did spend a big part going “Now where’s Annabeth?” but I had an easier time accepting Hazel and Frank and I loved Reyna at first sight, I thought she was a fierce bugger.

I obviously enjoy the ridiculous amount of percabeth that came after that, and the next books have their ups and downs but I overall enjoyed the series, if I don’t start nitpicking.

And the thing is: I distinctly remember the time when the norm was THE NEW KIDS ARE GREAT LET’S LOVE THEM and I felt left out because I was on the fence about  them. I very shyly started writing about the seven of them as a group, because I was getting used to these new characters showing up, and eventually the magic happened. I liked them. I assimilated them into my PJO fic repertoire and there you have it.

And then college starts and steals 95% of my free time for two full years and when I drag myself out of it for long enough to scroll tumblr, all over the fandom it’s all “the seven”, with quotes and derision and everybody hating on them and going “they are not close friends!” and I’m like... “What did i miss?”

And i’m just using this particular topic as an example because it was the last controversy I spotted, there’s been other points along the way. And I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with anything, or saying I’m going to start writing to the fandom’s whims, but honestly every time I come back and check on the fandom everything’s been flipped on its head and I feel like I fell out of the bandwagon about a hundred miles back. And I’m a bit too old to bicker with people on the internet about what they like or dislike on a fictional book about greek gods and their heroic demi-children. You do you.

But it does kind of put a damper on my will to write. Because it makes me feel like I don’t know these characters anymore, and maybe what I’m writing is out of character and I didn’t even notice. I don’t know. I’ve been very disheartened lately.

Not like it matters, all I can write is fluff.

And it’s not even very good quality fluff.

Anyway. Thanks for reading this rant? Confession? Whatever this is. And I don’t think enough people would read this to start fighting on the comments but anyway, don’t. lol 

#lettie's been feeling down about writing PJO #sorry i haven't posted in a while #here's mostly why

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That moment when you're just starting to come out of that parallel universe bubble you slip into during finals and you think you could write some fanfiction for funsies cause it's been so long so you open one of your WIPs and you think "yeah this could work this might fit my weird shitty mood" and you get to typing and as soon as you finish typing the first word of the first new sentence you immediately and unconsciously turn to your right to check for your notes. There are no notes, Lettie. This is fanfiction, my girl, you're the one who's writing, it's all in your head, you the boss. The tests are over, come back to us.

#i am alive #but barely #I'm sorry for going missing #this year was... #inhumane #I am not yet fully functional again #college #med school #college problems #or #fanfiction problems #finals #send help

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Oi, presto medicina ! onde vocÊ faz ?? como estudar melhor ?? parece que não absorvo mais nada -.- Beijos

Olá, pessoa conterrânea e colega! Eu estudo no rio grande do sul, na minha cidade natal. Onde você estuda?

Sobre conselhos pra estudar… Em que ano você está? Ou semestre. A nossa faculdade é anual. Eu estou no segundo ano recém, então talvez o que eu disser seja chover no molhado pra ti. E pra ser sincera, eu não sou a melhor aluna da minha turma, eu fico só respeitavelmente acima da média. mas eu vou tentar.

Parece óbvio, mas uma coisa que funciona pra mim é fazer anotações durante a aula, senão eu pego no sono. E outra coisa, se os professores usam slides e enviam os slides pra sua turma, anote SÓ o que eles falam que não estava nos slides, que eles comentam mas que não estava escrito. Porque senão depois em casa, quando você estiver revisando a aula, pode passar batido o que não estava escrito e eles pode cobrar porque falaram em aula. Meus professores adoram fazer isso. Isso é uma boa pra mim porque eu não consigo copiar rapidamente o suficiente pra copiar o slide e o que eles dizem, é muito rápido, quando vejo já passou o slide e eu acabo deixando de copiar coisas importantes.

Outra coisa é: não adianta resumir o livro inteiro se você não ler o seu resumo. Eu fiz muito isso no primeiro ano. Levava uma semana fazendo um resumo e no dia antes da prova estava de saco cheio, cansada, não queria olhar mais pras folhas de papel e quando chegava na prova não lembrava o que eu tinha lido. Às vezes a gente acha que sabe, mas na real não sabe. O que funciona MUITO pra mim é responder perguntas mesmo. Chamo uma amiga ou peço pra minha mãe e irmã perguntarem o que está no meu resumo pra mim. Não precisa ser colega. Se no seu resumo tem “O tipo de carcinoma mais prevalente em mulheres no Brasil é o CA de mama” a pessoa pode tranquilamente fazer o caminho inverso e te perguntar “Qual é o CA mais prevalente em mulheres no Brasil?” mesmo que não seja da área da saúde. Se ninguém puder te ajudar, você pode transformar seu resumo em questionário e responder você mesma, mas sem olhar as respostas. E responde mesmo! Não faz tipo “ah, essa eu sei”, porque aí você não revisa e esquece. Não é que eu esteja dizendo pra você decorar tudo, mas algumas coisas são complexas mesmo e não tem jeito de aprender a não ser ler mil vezes. Especialmente fisiopatologia, você só sabe que conseguiu entender quando consegue explicar pra alguém sem se perder hahaha

Ah, e para aulas práticas, de histologia e patologia, eu faço um simulado de prova prática. O nosso monitor de histologia tinha um pdf com as lâminas e um arquivo separado com todas as explicações, tipo, que órgão é esse? O que está circulado? Que célula é essa? Que epitélio é esse? etc. E eu estudava as lâminas. Minha amiga escolhia uma lâmina aleatória de todas as que tínhamos que saber (enquanto eu olhava pra outro lado) e me fazia perguntas sobre a lâmina, depois eu escolhia uma pra ela e assim nós íamos. Em patologia, nossos professores tem o atlas de todas as peças que temos no laboratório, então eu fiz basicamente a mesma coisa, olho as peças no atlas e falo pra mim mesma “que órgão é esse? Qual a descrição da peça? Qual a patologia presente?” Isso é o que funciona pra mim.

Então, isso é o que eu consigo pensar pra te falar, não sei se ajudei, mas é assim que eu faço. E não fique achando que você não é inteligente se levar tempo pra pegar uns conceitos ou não conseguir reter informação. É MUITA informação muito complexa que enfiam na nossa cabeça quase à força todo dia. Eu sei que a gente se sente burra e parece que não sabe nada, mas isso leva um pouco de tempo mesmo. Se você está no início do curso que nem eu, vai começar a se dar conta que as coisas estão passando a fazer sentido, e você começa a ligar os pontos. Algum dia você vai estar conversando com um paciente e ele te fala uma coisa e dispara uma sirene na sua cabeça “ISSO EU SEI!” e você se sente o máximo hahahahaha Faz a tua parte, estuda, pratica, vai nas aulas, presta atenção, que o resto vem com o tempo.

Se tiver alguma outra pergunta, comentário, reclamação, declarações de afeto, ou quiser conversar, sinta-se à vontade pra se manifestar.

Beijos, boa sorte e aguenta firme! Vai dar tudo certo!

#lettie goes to med school #never mind the long post #not fanfic #sorry #just answering

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Oii, sou brasileira tambem e depois de mtos anos descobri que vc é tambem! Entao eu totalmente entendo a dificuldade de entrar no curso de medicina, e eu so queria dar um super parabens pq vc merece! Espero que vc esteja amando e no futuro sera uma otima medica! Bjs

Muito obrigada pela lembrança e pelas palavras gentis! Estou indo pro segundo ano agora e embora todo curso tenha suas chatices eu tenho muita certeza de que é o que eu quero fazer a minha vida inteira e eu to no lugar certo. 😊 Best wishes pra você também! Beijoos

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watch me WIP, watch me nay nay.

every fanfic writer ever in the history of mankind (via charme-miraculeux)

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My writing be like

#fanfic #time travel #the shame #cliches #overused tropes #i don't even care #i love it #sorry not sorry #fics #fanfiction #this one was pjo #pjo #percabeth

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I was once a one-fandom-one-obsession kinda girl but after all these years I am a fandom whore, I get thrown around so easy like, I have maybe 5 favorite fandoms and I alternate between them for the smallest reason like "oh greece documentary on tv-eeeeeeee back in pjo land" "sea looks pretty todaaaaaay I'M COMING CAPTAIN SWAN!" "wow time sure is weird whelp there we go again, Doctor"

#about me #i didn't choose the fandom life #the fandom life chose me #fandom #pjo #doctor who #ouat #also #harry potter #httyd #all the fandoms #even Naruto #everyone #all the time #hard to live like this

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The most important writing lesson I ever learned was not in a screenwriting class, but a fiction class.

This was senior year of college.  Most of us had already been accepted into grad school of some sort. We felt powerful, we felt talented, and most of all, we felt artistic.

It was the advanced fiction workshop, and we did an entire round of workshops with everyone’s best stories, their most advanced work, their most polished pieces. It was very technical and, most of all, very artistic.

IE: They were boring pieces of pretentious crap.

Now the teacher was either a genius OR was tired of our shit, and decided to give us a challenge.  Flash fiction, he said. Write something as quickly as possible.  Make it stupid.  Make it not mean a thing, just be a quick little blast of words. 

And, of course, we all got stupid.  Little one and two pages of prose without the barriers that it must be good. Little flashes of characters, little bits of scenarios.

And they were electric.  All of them. So interesting, so vivid, not held back by the need to write important things or artistic things. 

One sticks in my mind even today.  The guys original piece was a thinky, thoughtful piece relating the breaking up of threesomes to volcanoes and uncontrolled eruptions that was just annoying to read. But his flash fiction was this three page bit about a homeless man who stole a truck full of coca cola and had to bribe people to drink the soda so he could return the cans to recycling so he could afford one night with the prostitute he loved.

It was funny, it was heartfelt, and it was so, so, so well written.

And just that one little bit of advice, the write something short and stupid, changed a ton of people’s writing styles for the better.

It was amazing. So go.  Go write something small.  Go write something that’s not artistic.  Go write something stupid. Go have fun.

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Before med school

Me: I wanna write this birth scene but I don't really know how hospitals are run and the baby stuff happens, gonna keep it vague

After med school

Me: -has an entire class dedicated to teaching about conception, gestation, lab exams, physical exams, risk factors, aggravating pathologies and hospital protocol-

Me: -witnesses births as part of such class-

Me: I now know how hospitals are run and the baby stuff happens!

Me: ...

Me: nobody wants to read 10k words on timing of umbilical cord clamping controversies.

Me: gonna keep it vague

#med students writing fanfiction #med student #fanfiction #writing #fics #fanfic #writing problems #med student problems #nurse student problems too probably

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The Sober Drunk

I have a friend who looks absolutely sober when she’s drunk, she carries a perfectly sane conversation, stands straight, looks for all purposes like a sober person. And then she turns around and throws up on the sidewalk.

This a bit of pointless fun set in New Rome Chronicles.

*

There are types of drunk, Percy knows. College has taught him which ones his friends are. Jason is a sad drunk, whenever he overindulges he’s the one with his head in his hands mumbling about ruined childhood and his poor, poor friends. Piper is the over affectionate drunk, everyone is her best friend, everyone is the best person in the world. Frank the praetor makes it a point to not lose his wits in case an emergency arises and he’s often the appointed driver, or the one who collects the drunk friends and gets them out of the party when they’ve had enough, and the one time he got slightly buzzed all it did was make him sleepy. Percy had been told he was a giggly drunk, laughing at absolutely anything for fifteen minutes straight and then passing out.

Annabeth was different. She, like Frank, did not like the idea of losing her grip on herself so she very rarely got more than a drink or two in.

But the one time she’d gone out with her New Rome friends and came back drunk… Well. Percy actually had trouble recognizing the fact that she was drunk at all.

She’d opened the door herself, and then locked it back with a remarkable lack of fumbling. It was near two in the morning, but he was getting some last minute paper done, so he’d still been up in the living room trying not to fuck up the letters too bad, even though his dyslexia was acting up. He’d looked up from his keyboard to wish her hello, and she’d just stood there, eyes squinting at something in the distance. He’d thought she was angry.

“What did I do?”

“What,” she had actually said it as a sentence, not a question.

“Are you angry?”

“No, I’m thinking.” She stood there a little while more, and he was starting to get nervous. Annabeth was glaring at something in his general direction, and if that something was him, it wasn’t good news.

He mentally went through every single possible thing he could have done wrong that week. Did he leave the wet towels on the floor again? He’d done the dishes so it wasn’t a big pile of dirty plates that was bothering her. Did he use one of her special artsy pencils by accident again?

“What… Exactly are you thinking about?”

“The looming inevitable world-wide energy crisis.” She didn’t even stumble.

“The looming wha--? Okay.  That’s… That’s a pretty depressing thought. But okay.”

She did glare at him this time. “Stop talking, Percy. You’re messing up my train of thought.”

He stared at her. She was a hundred percent serious. “Uh… Okay. Sorry, I guess.”

“Yes,” she said, then walked off.

He didn’t know exactly what was wrong with her, but she seemed serious about it, so he thought better than to ask again. And anyway, the growth of white whale populations was waiting to be written about. He typed a bit more, referenced an obscure article that every single one of the other articles seemed to reference, realized he’d misspelled ‘extinction’ throughout the entire damn paper, and sat with his head in his hands for full five minutes wishing he was dead. Then he got up to get more coffee.

Walking into the kitchen, he ran into the image of Annabeth sitting on the kitchen floor, cross-legged, elbows propped up and face resting on her hands. She was sitting right in front of the fridge, door open, staring at the contents inside it. He walked closer, half to check what she was doing, half to make sure that she was really there, because he was on his fourth mug of coffee and hadn’t slept in two days.

“Annabeth, what are you doing?”

“I’m busy, Percy.”

“You’re sitting on the kitchen floor staring at the fridge.

She sighed exasperatedly. “I’m clearly solving the energy crisis, isn’t it obvious?”

No, it really, really, wasn’t. Upon closer inspection, he realized she was a bit more pasty faced than she looked when she’d left the house. And she did smell a bit like a bar, but those things can’t be helped.

“How many drinks did you have?”

“That is completely irrelevant to the energy crisis, Percy.”

“It is completely relevant to understanding what the hell you’re doing, though.”

“UGH, I lost it now! See what you did? Now we’re going to keep using up our resources in terrible fossil fuels until there is nothing left to use. There’s a dark future ahead of us, Perseus. Our children will live in a dark, polluted world because of you.”

“Oookay. I guess I’m a terrible person. But maybe get off that floor?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I need the fridge. It inspires me.”

Aaand this was definitely spiraling down into drunk babble. At least he didn’t have to worry about angering Annabeth. Or about his girlfriend suddenly turning into Grover.

“Aren’t you cold though?”

She stopped to consider it, then huffed in a very exaggerated, exasperated way and held out a hand towards him. “I guess.”

He somehow interpreted it as a sign to pull her up, which he did with little fumbling on her part. Annabeth stood up perfectly straight and composed, like she hadn’t just said she needed the fridge to solve the world-wide energy crisis because it inspires her.

“Okay, Gandhi, let’s get you an aspirin and some water.”

She looked at him like he had personally offended her. “Gandhi fought for India’s independence, Percy, that’s completely out of this context, why would you say that?”

“God, you’re a weird drunk,” he mumbled, searching the cabinets for an aspirin.

“Don’t blame my drunkenness for your lack of general world-knowledge, Perseus.”

Aaand now she sounded like her mother.

He decided he really didn’t like drunk Annabeth.

In the morning, he found her sitting at the kitchen counter nursing a giant mug of strong coffee, eyes bearing that scary raccoon look of leftover makeup, looking like hell had swallowed her and spit her back. She was also holding a notepad.

“How’s the head?” he asked, as low as he could, feeling merciful.

“Filled with regret. The aspirin helped though. Thanks,” she whispered back, taking a large gulp of the coffee and promptly grimacing. “This is like drinking ink.”

“Want me to make a new mug?”

“No, it’s perfect.” She furrowed her brows again. “Care to tell me why I wrote a dissertation on eco-friendly energy-generating technology?”

“You’re a weird drunk,” he deadpanned.

“I can accept that,” she said solemnly.

“What does it say, though?”

“It’s complete gibberish, half of is discoursing on the possibility that the fridge lights are always on instead of only lighting up when you open the door.”

He stopped mid-way making his own coffee. “That would be a contributing problem to the energy crisis.”

“Oh, shut up.”

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