#also i’m caught up with the audiobook! what am i supposed to do now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

iffeelscouldkill · 3 years

Text

TSCOSI Week Day 3: Sana / Leadership

A/N: ssshhhhhhh yes I know it’s late but ssssshhhhh let’s just pretend I’m posting this 5/6 days ago

Here, finally, is my fic for Day 3 of TSCOSI Week, on the theme of Sana / Leadership! This takes place in an ambiguous point in Late Season 2. It does not have any bearing on the episode that was released today, which I haven’t even listened to yet, because I was busy trying to finish off this fic 😂😭 Energy and motivation have not been on my side lately. But here we are!

I had two ideas I could have gone with for this day’s prompt, and of course I chose the one I knew would lead to a longer fic, but it was worth it. This type of TSCOSI fic is my favourite to write - pure Rumor/Iris crew fluff and shenanigans. So enjoy!

---

The first clue Sana had that something was amiss was when she woke up.

Rather than waking to the vibration of her comm against her ear (yes, her comm had an alarm function and yes, she slept with it in in case of emergencies. She would not be taking questions at this time), she came to naturally, which she hadn’t done in months. Sana smiled to herself, stretching – and then froze.

She never woke up naturally, and the few times that she did wake during the night she didn’t feel this pleasantly well-rested. What time was it?

“Computer?” Sana spoke aloud to ELLA. “Current on-ship time?”

“The current on-ship time – is – nine – forty-three AM,” ELLA’s voice intoned. Sana sat bolt upright in her bed.

That wasn’t right. There was no way she’d slept through her alarm, and she had it set to recur at the same time every morning. Which meant…

“Sana Tripathi to all crew,” Sana said, opening up a comm line to all of her crewmates’ devices. “Hey, guys. Would someone mind telling me why my alarm didn’t go off this morning?”

“It didn’t go off because I deprogrammed it when I poured you into bed last night at some ungodly hour,” came the reply in Arkady’s deadpan tones, and Sana cringed slightly, regretting opening up a line to the whole crew. “Also, I’ve said this before, but sleeping with your comm in your ear? Pretty unhealthy, and that’s coming from me.”

“Thank you for that feedback, Arkady,” said Sana, with all the dry sarcasm she could muster.

“Prolonged comm usage, even when the comm is idle, has also been known to lead to hearing damage in a small percentage of cases,” put in RJ, and Sana’s eyebrows rose. “Something to do with a low level of uh, high-frequency feedback? So as a best practice, you should really take it out before bed.”

“RJ, are you lecturing me right now?” Sana asked, halfway between deeply amused and indignant.

“Uhhhh- n-no Ma’am! I mean, uh- no, Captain.”

“They’re right, you know,” Violet put in next. “I mean, it really is a small percentage of cases, but as your medic I have to advise you not to leave your comm device in for prolonged periods. Also, that sounds – uncomfortable? For sleeping?”

Sana sighed, resigning herself to being ganged up on by her entire crew. “Duly noted, Violet. Getting back to the subject at hand-”

“Wow, human ears are so fragile!” This, of course, was Krejjh. “They can really be damaged by comm feedback?”

“For a prolonged enough period-” RJ began to explain.

“We don’t all have your ‘superior alien senses’, dude,” put in Brian, laughing. Sana put a hand to her head.

“Guys-”

“I deprogrammed your alarm because you need a break, Captain,” Arkady cut in, almost gently. “Don’t think we didn’t notice that you’ve been pulling extra shifts so that the rest of us could take breaks, while not taking any yourself.”

“The human body is at its best when given time to rest and recover,” Violet added, also gently. “And you’re human too, Captain.”

Sana could feel her face flaming, but she was also extremely touched by the concern the crew were showing her – even though they’d apparently ganged up on her in the process.

“All right, I can admit that the lie-in was appreciated,” she said. “Thank you for the thought, everyone. Krejjh, I’m coming to relieve you in-”

“Oh, no need, Cap’n,” Krejjh interrupted cheerfully. “Crewman Park is taking your shift! He’s relieving me in ten minutes, and then Crewman Jeeter and I are going to play cards.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Sana said, beginning to feel slightly alarmed. “Park, I’m coming up to the cockpit in-”

“Sorry, Captain, but I think you’ve been outnumbered,” Park said, as mildly as ever. “Also, Krejjh promised me fruit jerky in exchange for taking the next shift, and I’m not about to give that up.”

Sana stared at the wall, running a hand over her face. “Park, you hate fruit jerky.”

“This is special fruit jerky,” Park replied, deadly serious. “The really good kind. Enjoy your time off.”

“There must be something I can do,” said Sana, realising she sounded slightly desperate.

“Uh, you can join me and Krejjh for a game of cards in ten minutes?” Brian suggested.

“Or you can relax, Captain,” Violet said, still in that gently amused tone. “It’s for one day. We promise you’ll be back to keeping us all in line tomorrow.”

The whole day?! Sana exclaimed internally. And okay, maybe the way that she balked at the idea of a day of enforced rest said something about the habits she’d fallen into.

She could at least give it a try. The crew had obviously put some thought into this – and it didn’t seem like they were backing down any time soon.

“Maybe I could use a breather,” she admitted aloud, and pretended not to hear someone’s sigh of relief over the comms. “But if any of you need anything…”

“We’ll let you know, Captain,” Arkady promised her, sounding not in the slightest bit sincere. Sana sighed.

“Okay. Sana Tripathi out.”

Or maybe by the afternoon her crewmates would let up, and she could go back to doing something useful.

---

Sana spent the next ten minutes or so trying and failing to relax with an audiobook, one of a handful she’d downloaded off the public net for sleepless nights. It just felt wrong to be lying on her bed doing nothing during the day. Normally she cherished her moments of downtime when she could get them (and okay, they’d been few and far between lately), but this felt… too much. Surely she should be somewhere else, maybe off discussing their next destination with Krejjh after they managed to resupply on Hathor, going over the new truck with Arkady to check it was outfitted to their needs, or maybe putting her head together with Park and RJ to get their analysis of the latest information about Regime movements.

And sure, they didn’t have any immediate jobs for Boss Violet that needed doing, and it was far enough to Hathor that planning their next destination could probably wait a day or two. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t needed. Even when Sana was off-shift, she tended to linger around the crew areas, just keeping an eye out; watching for signs of exhaustion among her crewmates, making sure they weren’t hiding injuries or strain. Injecting a cheery comment here or a calming word there, to keep people’s spirits up.

She was the Captain, and it was her job to look out for her crew. It had been a tough past few weeks, and Sana didn’t want to take this current peace for granted.

Sighing, Sana shut off the audiobook recording and went to the mess hall. Krejjh and Brian were sat at one of the tables, playing a rousing game of something that Krejjh dubbed ‘Reverse Snap’, where the object was to call out when you turned over two cards that were ‘spiritual opposites’. Unsurprisingly, Krejjh had been the one to devise the system of ‘spiritual opposites’, and was therefore given the power to decide whether a play was valid or not, a power that they abused liberally. Brian never seemed to mind; Sana suspected the enjoyment for him was in watching his fiancé get caught up in the game, and laughing at their ridiculous justifications for why they should be allowed to win each round.

Sana declined to get involved in the action herself, but it was a nice change of pace to just sit and spend time with two of her crewmates, without any other purpose beyond having fun. It was true that she didn’t get to do this often enough.

Unfortunately, the game came to a halt after Krejjh lost three consecutive rounds and poutingly declared that Brian must be cheating, even though he’d been faithfully citing their own rules each time he won a hand. “This is boring. Let’s go snuggle in our room and listen to RIFT!” they said.

Brian just smiled and gathered up the cards. “Okay,” he agreed easily. “How’re you feeling, Captain? More relaxed?”

Sana smiled wryly. “I do take downtime, you know. Despite what everyone seems to think.”

“Captain, you sleep with your comm in your ear,” Brian pointed out, mild and easy-going, but unerringly right, as always.

“I wish everyone would stop fixating on that,” Sana grumbled. Brian laughed.

“Look, this whole ‘enforced day off’ thing wasn’t my idea, but I am on board with the concept,” he said. Sana thought about asking him whose idea it had been, but she supposed it didn’t matter. “You deserve to have a break from looking after us all the time, you know? It was the least we could give you.”

Sana sat back in her chair, a little taken aback. She hadn’t been thinking about it in that way – that this was a joint effort by the crew to do something nice for her, to gift her with a day to herself. She’d been so caught up in chafing at the enforced idleness. But they’d all obviously pitched in on this, making sure that her shifts were covered and that everything was taken care of.

“Honestly, being Captain of this crew? It’s no hardship,” she told Brian – and Krejjh, who was hovering by the table – honestly. “But… thank you. It’s an incredibly sweet thought, and I do appreciate it.”

Brian smiled again. “It’s really nothing,” he told her. “See you later, Captain.”

Krejjh gave her a parting salute. “Enjoy your morning, Cap’n Tripathi!” they chirped, and then bounded after Brian.

Which left Sana with some food for thought, but still nothing to do. The mess, for now, was deserted, everyone evidently occupied with their own work or rest. Should she go back to her room, or try to find something to do around the ship? She wondered whether fixing things up and doing handiwork around the ship would be classed as ‘working’ in the eyes of the crew. Sadly, it probably would.

Resigned to giving her audiobook another try, Sana got up from the table and made her way along the corridor to her room. Passing by the medbay, she noticed that the light by the door was green, which meant that it was open, and she could movement from inside. She knocked, wondering if Violet would want a hand – or some company.

“Come in,” Violet called, and Sana pressed the button to open the door and stepped inside. Violet was inside, surrounded by rows and groups of orderly supplies - evidently doing that full inventory she’d been planning. She didn’t look surprised to see Sana.

“Can I… help with anything?” Sana asked. Violet gave her a wry smile.

“I don’t have a dictionary on me, but I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t come under the definition of “relaxation”,” she teased. Sana put her hands up.

“All right, granted. I can just keep you company for a while, then? Unless you prefer to work in silence.”

“Company is welcomed, Captain,” Violet told her. “And actually, there is something I could use a hand with.”

Sana was about to ask what it was, when she followed Violet’s gaze up to a high shelf full of supplies that she’d evidently been unable to clear. “Oh! Sure, I can help with that,” she said, trying not to seem too outwardly pleased at the opportunity to do something. Judging by Violet’s expression, she probably hadn’t succeeded. “Do you want them all down?”

“Yes, please, Captain.”

Sana got to work lifting boxes of what appeared to be empty syringes and some basic first aid supplies – bandages, gauze, cooling packs – down off the shelf and handing them to Violet, who made a noise of satisfaction when she saw what they contained. “So, how’s the overall situation with our med supplies?” Sana asked her. “Anything we need to restock?”

Violet gave her a sidelong glance, and Sana huffed. “If you want me to just turn off the part of my brain that’s concerned about the well-being of this ship, I’ve got some bad news for you.”

Violet laughed a little. “Okay, fair. We’re pretty well-off for med supplies, though I’d like it if we could get some more heptocaldrin – for injuries, not as a… stealth weapon.”

“Can’t it be both?” Sana joked. “I’ll put some feelers out with contacts who have connections with medical suppliers, see if we can get hold of some. – After today,” she added hastily at Violet’s raised eyebrow.

“Thank you,” Violet said, smiling serenely. “Are you planning to stay and watch me sort these?”

“Well, since I have so much leisure time at my disposal today,” Sana said lightly. “Can I sit here?” She gestured to the recliner that sat in the corner, the spiritual successor to the much-loved beanbag chair.

For the first few minutes, neither of them said anything much. It was quite soothing watching Violet work, although Sana itched to actually get involved and help her. She couldn’t help taking note of the condition of the medical supplies as Violet sorted them and made notes on her checklist, thinking about where they could find better-quality suppliers.

“Can I ask you something, Captain?” Violet said. Sana felt almost like she’d been caught out, though Violet’s tone was casual, almost idle; she hadn’t looked up from her work, still methodically sorting supplies.

“Of course,” Sana said.

“You’re always making sure that the six of us clock off and get enough rest. Why don’t you ever do the same for yourself?”

In hindsight, Sana should have known this question was coming. Before today, she likely would have given it a chipper, joking answer (like she did when Violet asked her, a few weeks after their flight from New Jupiter, how long she had been on shift), but now she made herself give the question some proper consideration.

“It’s different when you’re the one in charge,” she said after a little while. “If something goes wrong, if there’s an eventuality that I’ve overlooked, that’s on me. And given our current – status – the consequences of that could be much worse than me going without a break, or a couple hours of sleep.”

Violet gave her a sad smile. “But those are important things. I know it’s easy for me to say, when I don’t have to feel the weight of that responsibility – I couldn’t do what you do. But you’re at your best when you’re well-rested, too. What happens if you overlook something because you’re underslept and you haven’t had a break in days?”

“Well, that’s what I keep you all well-rested for,” Sana said lightly.

“Captain,” Violet said reprovingly.

“Violet,” Sana replied in the same tone. Jokingly, she said, “Are you going to start singing at me to take a break next?”

Violet blinked confusedly at her before the light of understanding dawned in her eyes. “Was that a ‘Hamilton’ reference?”

“You spend enough time with Arkady, you find yourself making opera and musical theatre references without even knowing it,” Sana replied. “You’ll need to watch out for that.”

“I’ll be on my guard,” Violet said. And then, more seriously, “But if it turned out to be a reliable method, then yes, I would sing at you.”

Sana couldn’t help laughing. “Well, luckily, there’s no need. Here I am, taking a break.”

“Uh huh,” was all Violet said, giving her an appropriately sceptical look.

“I am!”

“And if I asked you for your opinion on the overall quality of our med supplies, I’m sure you wouldn’t have any thoughts at all,” Violet said pointedly.

“Well, you can ask,” Sana replied. “But I’d have to tell you that the Captain will get back to you about that tomorrow, when she’s back on the clock.”

“Oh, good to know.”

---

Spending time with Violet in the medbay took up another hour, but before long Sana found herself back in her room and at a loose end again. And okay, maybe she was going about this wrong; she shouldn’t just be looking for ways to kill time all day. Plus, spending time with the crew was nice, but they were all busy with their own jobs, so that didn’t really equate to relaxation. There had to be something she could do by herself – other than listening to that audiobook.

On the Rumor, Sana had spent a lot of her downtime in her room working on sewing or embroidery projects. But lately, she hadn’t really had a project that she could – wait.

Sana sat up straighter on her bed, thinking. When they’d been putting together the ‘shopping list’ of supplies for Hypatia, she’d joked about adding a hammock to the list. She hadn’t seriously gone looking for one, but when she’d been checking out some of the hardware stores near where they made landing, looking for parts for the engine and the ship’s various systems, she’d discovered that they also sold swathes of fabric, rope, and – crucially – wooden poles.

Sana got up and went to the little closet built into the wall of her room. At the back, right where she’d left it, was a bundle of poles and rope with brightly-coloured fabric wrapped around it. Sana pulled out the bundle, breaking into a grin. She hadn’t really expected to find enough time to work on this when she’d bought the materials, though she’d vaguely intended to do a bit here and there. But now was the perfect time to try and put it together.

Sana unrolled the bundle on her floor and got to work.

---

“Incoming call from… Ignatius Campbell. Incoming call from… Ignatius Campbell. Incoming…”

Sana was in the middle of sewing the wooden poles into either end of her hammock fabric when the call came through to her comm link. “Computer, accept call. Campbell, hi!”

“Captain Tripathi!” Campbell’s voice boomed cheerily. “Is this a bad time?”

“It’s a pretty good time, actually,” Sana said as she worked the needle in and out of the fabric. “I’ve got the day off today, so I’m just doing some sewing in my room.”

There was a fractional pause on Campbell’s end. “The day off, huh?” he said. “How’s that going? Not too bored, I hope?”

Sana smiled to herself as she tied a knot in the sewing thread to secure it and then bit off the thread. She had scissors, but they were buried somewhere in the heap of fabric and she couldn’t be bothered to root around for them. “It was a bit slow to start off with, but I’m getting into it now.”

“Gotta say, I can’t believe they actually managed to persuade you to take a whole day out of your schedule to relax,” Campbell said. “The last time I called, you hadn’t slept in – was it thirty-six hours?”

“Thirty-two,” Sana said quietly, to herself.

“-And you were on your sixth cup of coffee – do you even remember that call?”

Sana sighed, part amusement and part resignation. “Yes, I do remember. Sorry for-”

“No, no, it’s fine, I was just – well, it was a bit worrying,” Campbell said. “Anyway, glad you’re taking a break. You sound… better.”

Who knew that everyone had apparently been so concerned for her wellbeing? Sana thought. Then her hand stilled in the middle of threading her needle. Maybe she should have realised how concerning it was to everyone. But she hadn’t thought – well, she guessed she hadn’t noticed that everyone was looking out for her just as much as she’d been trying to look out for them.

She cleared her throat a little. “Well, what can I do for you, Campbell?”

“Oh, nothing in particular,” Campbell replied. “Just wanted to call to catch up, really. Trade some gossip, funny stories about the crew… It’s been a while since you were able to stop by.”

Sana smiled ruefully, and then a thought occurred to her. “So, you just so happened to call to catch up on the one day when I don’t have anything going on? That’s good timing.”

“Uh—” Campbell’s cornered response was immediately telling. “I might’ve heard that – today would be a good time to call—”

Sana huffed in amusement again, rolling the fabric over the pole at the other end of her hammock and lining up the ends of the material. “Be honest, Campbell. Did the crew ask you to check up on me?”

“I called the ship’s comms last night, and Arkady picked up,” Campbell admitted. “I really was calling just to see how you all were, and well, she filled me in on how things had been lately. How they were all planning to cover your shifts and chores today to give you a break. She said that you might be at a loose end, so I offered to call you back around this time. I would’ve called earlier, but Eloise asked me to watch the boys in the morning.”

“How are they?” Sana asked, smiling.

“Oh, as full of energy as ever, I can barely keep up with them,” Campbell said, a smile in his own voice. “Look, I’m sorry if I overstepped-”

“No, it’s – fine, Campbell. Really,” Sana assured him. “I’m touched at how everyone’s been…” She searched for the right phrasing. “I’m touched at how much thought went into this. It really means a lot.”

“What you do means a lot,” Campbell responded, sincere. “To the whole crew. And to… me.”

Sana’s face warmed, and she realised she’d been sitting there, holding the fabric together without doing anything for the past several minutes. She picked up her needle and began on the same neat row of stitches that she’d made at the opposite end. “Thank you, Campbell.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Campbell replied gruffly, and then cleared his throat. “So – any good stories to share?”

“I’ll make you a trade,” Sana offered. “One story about the crew, for every story about your nephews.”

“Oof. You drive a hard bargain, Captain Tripathi, but I accept.”

Sana laughed. “Okay. Well. You might remember how Arkady has an unfortunate habit of leaving some of her weapons holsters in odd places around the ship…”

---

A few hours later, the new hammock – strung up in a corner of the mess where Sana had mounted some sturdy hooks on two adjacent walls – was almost ready. All it needed was a test subject; Sana could of course get in and test it herself, but it would be ideal if she could observe someone else getting into the hammock, so that she could judge how things looked from the outside.

Oddly, the mess hall was deserted, and had been for the past while, which was strange; she would have expected to find at least one or two members of the crew spending time in here. Just then, she spotted RJ, who had entered on the far side of the room and frozen.

“RJ!” she said happily. “You’re the perfect person to test out my new hammock.”

“Uh-” RJ looked around, as if hoping to be rescued by someone, before reluctantly walking over. “You’ve been making a… hammock?”

Sana gestured towards her creation with a flourish. “What do you think?”

RJ’s eyes narrowed as they inspected her handiwork, pulling lightly on the ropes that suspended the hammock. “Is it structurally sound?” they asked doubtfully.

“Why don’t you get in and test it for yourself?” Sana invited them. “Don’t worry about the hooks – they’re the same kind that you find on industrial pulleys. They’ll hold.”

RJ’s eyes flicked towards the doorway. “I’m not really sure if I should be-”

“Oh c’mon, you can take three minutes out of your shift, can’t you?” Sana cajoled them. “Just blame it on me waylaying you.”

RJ laughed a little. “Well – I guess if it’ll only take a minute…” Gingerly, they hoisted themself up onto the hammock, legs dangling over the side, before swivelling round and reclining more fully in the hammock. “Wow, this is actually – really comfortable.”

“Isn’t it? Hammocks are the best,” Sana enthused. “Is the amount of rocking okay?”

“Yeah, it seems fine. It’s not making me seasick, at least,” RJ joked. “You’ve done a pretty good job with the placement of-”

“RJ, there you are,” Park’s voice came from the other side of the mess. “Did you- oh, hi, Captain.”

“Hey, Park,” Sana said easily as Park approached, eyeing the hammock with curiosity. In the hammock, RJ sat back up, a guilty expression on their face. “RJ was being good enough to help me test out this hammock I’ve been making.”

“So I can see,” Park said, neutrally. “Seems like a good use of your time off.”

Sana raised an eyebrow at him, unsure whether the comment was sincere or impeccable sarcasm, but deciding to interpret it as sincere. “Thank you,” she said. “Want to test it out? It would be good to get data from someone taller.”

“I’d love to help, but I really need to borrow RJ,” Park said apologetically. “Sorry, Captain. Maybe after dinner?”

“Of course,” Sana said, as RJ quickly got out of the hammock. She watched Park take their arm and almost steer them away, the two of them conversing in hushed whispers once they were far enough away that they evidently thought she wouldn’t overhear.

Something odd was going on. Sana glanced at the hammock, and then back at the doorway that Park and RJ had just left through. Maybe she should leave it alone – after all, she was off the clock, and she didn’t have to know about everything that was going on on the ship.

Even though Park and RJ were behaving really strangely.

After a few seconds, Sana’s curiosity got the better of her, and she quietly followed.

“Well, I can’t go back through now,” RJ was saying to Park in slightly annoyed tones, as they walked down the corridor. “The Captain will definitely know something’s up. Anyway, I don’t remember seeing a screwdriver in the kitchen.”

A screwdriver? Sana thought, baffled.

“Well, Arkady says there are none in the engine room, and there’s not many other places on the ship left to check,” Park said tiredly. “So, if you’d like to tell her that you weren’t able to look in the kitchen…”

RJ made a reluctant noise. “Fine, what if we-”

Sana, from her vantage point around the corner, saw the two pause in front of the door that led to the medbay. Park raised his hand and knocked on the door in a specific pattern – one long, and three short knocks. After a second, the same knock came back and the door opened.

“Bad news,” Park said as the two entered the medbay. “Sana was in the mess, so RJ wasn’t able to check the kitchen properly.”

Sana moved around the corner until the open door of the medbay was in view, where a baffling sight (and this was coming from someone who’d seen a lot of weird things in her time) greeted her. The medbay observation table had been dragged into the middle of the room, and an array of screwdrivers, knives, and for some reason, spoons cluttered the tabletop. Arkady, looking irritated, was standing on top of the table with a knife in her hand, trying to pry at the cover that enclosed the medbay’s ceiling lamp. Violet, Brian and Krejjh were grouped around the table, looking up at what Arkady was doing; Violet was holding a penknife and shining a small torch in Arkady’s direction, while Krejjh was holding a small hammer, a steel rule and a lightbulb. Brian just looked entertained.

“I think we should check the engine room again,” RJ said. Arkady rolled her eyes.

“I told you, McCabe, I – Captain!”

Instantly, every crew member in the room (except Park, who simply looked resigned) whipped guiltily around, trying in vain to hide what they were doing. Krejjh dropped the steel rule.

“Cap’n Tripathi!” they said cheerily. “You are just in time for our – uh – table performance art routine! We’ve been practicing specially for you!”

“Really?” Sana asked, amused. “Because it looks to me like you were all trying to change a lightbulb. Badly.”

“As it so happens, Act One of our performance-”

“Krejjh, give it a rest,” Arkady said, as Brian laughed behind his hand. “Captain, we’re fine, honestly. We found the replacement bulb, we just need to figure out how to get this damn cover off.”

“And how long have you spent trying to pry it off, so far?” Sana asked.

“It’s been about an hour and a half,” Violet admitted. Arkady’s shoulders slumped.

“I’m almost there, but I think I need a different screwdriver to-”

She stopped as Sana walked over to the table, and held out a hand for Arkady to pull her up. Climbing onto the table, with the help of a steadying hand from Park, Sana took a magnet out of her pocket (she had a lot of things in her pockets) and held it near the rim of the ceiling lamp cover. A tiny screw flew out and clung onto the magnet. Sana held the magnet to the other side of the cover, attracting another screw, and then another, and another. Finally, she twisted the cover, and it popped off the ceiling.

“Lightbulb,” she said.

Krejjh handed her up the lightbulb, and Sana switched the working bulb out for the dead one, before easily replacing the cover and pushing the screws back into place. She dusted her hands and looked around at the crew.

“Well, that was fun. What’s Act Two?”

Violet smiled, and RJ looked impressed, while Brian shook his head. “I told you we should have just asked her.”

Sana looked back at Arkady, who was glowering at the knife she’d been holding like it had personally offended her.

“You could have asked me,” she agreed. “But I get that you were trying not to disturb me after you worked so hard to give me some time off. And, honestly, it’s been one of the best days I can remember for a while. So – thank you all. So much. I know that being the Captain doesn’t make me invincible. Or infallible. And as much as I want to look out for all of you, I need to remember to apply the same thought process to myself as well.” She caught Violet’s eye, and winked.

“In hindsight, it probably shouldn’t have taken a day of forced rest for me to see that, but I’m grateful that you were all willing to go to the trouble of arranging it so that I could. Even to the point of changing lightbulbs.” She smiled.

“And while you’ve all been working hard, I’ve rigged up a pretty awesome hammock in the mess hall, so it would frankly be a crime not to hold a movie night after dinner.”

Krejjh whooped, and Brian and RJ immediately struck up a fierce debate about whether they should watch a historical fantasy drama or a sci-fi epic. Park tiredly followed them out of the room, presumably to act as adult supervision.

“I’d better go make sure that they don’t forget about dinner,” Violet said, and went after them.

Arkady climbed down so that she was sitting on the edge of the table, and after making a space in the collection of cutlery and engineering tools, Sana joined her. For a few moments, neither of them said anything.

“I meant what I said just now,” Sana said, eventually. “I had a really good day, and… it meant a lot that everyone would go to the trouble of doing something like that for me. And of thinking it up and arranging it.”

“Violet did a lot of it,” Arkady said, a little too quickly. “And Park, especially with covering your shifts. And the comm thing was Krejjh’s idea.”

“Really?” asked Sana, amused. “And what about intercepting the call from Campbell that came in last night, making sure it didn’t disturb me, and then arranging for him to call back when you knew I might be going a bit stir-crazy?”

Arkady huffed. “He told you.”

“Of course he did,” Sana said. “Look, I’m sure it was a group effort, but… I couldn’t help thinking that the idea had to have come from someone who knew me pretty well. And maybe someone who’s been more worried about me lately than they wanted to admit.”

Arkady looked away, her shoulders raised in a defensive half-shrug. “I know you’re the Captain. I know you’ve got to look out for us, and – it’s not like I can really talk when it comes to putting in too many hours when I work on something. I don’t think there’s anyone in the crew who hasn’t done that at some point. But you’re always there to kick our asses into taking a break, and-”

“And someone needed to do that for me?” Sana finished for her, wryly.

Arkady looked back at her and snorted. “Pretty much. Thirty-two hours, Sana. With six cups of coffee.”

Sana winced. “In hindsight, that was probably the first red flag.”

“The first?”

“Okay, okay,” Sana said, laughing a little and holding up her hands. “You have my word that I will not let things get to that point again. And if they do, you have my full permission to-”

“-Kick your ass?”

“I was going to say, ‘put me in time-out in my own hammock’, but either works.”

“Speaking of which,” said Arkady, giving Sana a significant look. “Do I need to ask which part of the ship lost its emergency harnesses?”

Sana laughed. “This one is made from actual wood and fabric and rope. Turns out, I had a lot of time on my hands this afternoon…”

“And you used it to build another hammock.”

“It was that, or listen to a really dull audiobook,” Sana said. “I call it an investment in future relaxation! And future movie nights. Good for the whole crew.”

One half of Arkady’s mouth ticked up, and she looked almost wistful. “We haven’t had a movie night since we were on the Rumor.”

“I want to reinstate the tradition,” Sana said. “I think we could all use a bit of a breather every now and again. Today reminded me of that. So – thank you, Kady.”

She was purposely laying it on thick, because winding up your best friend with excessive sentiments that you meant every word of really never got old. She was rewarded when Arkady quickly jumped down from the table. “I think we’ve already done the Feelings Corner for this evening, so if you need me, I’ll just be in the kitchen, helping with dinner.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to hear the latest motivational speech I’ve been working on?” Sana teased her. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it today. It’s a good one.”

“You know what, I’ve changed my mind,” Arkady said. “You’re not allowed to have days off any more.”

---

A/N: This idea came about as a bit of an inversion of the ‘leadership’ prompt - what if Sana couldn’t be in charge for the day? What would it look like if the crew decided she needed to take some time off? I was really taken with the concept (apparently I just have a thing for members of the crew gently but insistently taking care of Sana), and then I came up with the idea that something goes wrong that Sana would normally be able to fix, and the crew is desperately trying to keep it from Sana while she’s “off-duty”. This image popped into my head of like, the entire crew trying and failing to change a lightbulb, and it was so absurdly perfect that I had to write it xD

It also wound up being a spiritual continuation of the theme we’ve had so far in Season 2 of “Sana is bad at clocking off” - hopefully nothing in Episode 3 has come along and contradicted that xD (Guess I’ll find out!)

#Sana Tripathi #Arkady Patel #Violet Liu #Krejjh #Brian Jeeter #Jin Seon Park #RJ McCabe #TSCOSI #TSCOSI Week #ficlet #Starship Iris season 2 #Starship Iris spoilers #man this did not want to end though #5.8k!!! how

49 notes · View notes

tomatograter · 4 years

Note

Do you have a list anywhere of your favorite hs fics?

I suppose it’s appropriate I make one now! will prolly come back to add on at some point, but as it stands

HERE’S THE FIC RECS: (it is quite long, click the readmore)

Last updated Sept 10 2021 !

Perpetuity => https://archiveofourown.org/works/12835047

Written pre-epilogues, largely about mending damaged bridges after the game. I always mention this fic as what settled me back into hs as a fandom and dirk/jake

A Palate Cleanser => https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642637

The jake eulogy we missed on candy. it’s real good. (now with a podfic version on the second chapter!!!!)

It’s only a canvas sky

==> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28718544

Their guardians dead at the hands of the Condesce, growing up in the shadow of her slow takeover of the Skaian Federation, Dirk Strider and Jake English have spent their whole lives alone up until shortly before their twelfth birthdays.

Or: Dirk fixes a transmitter, makes a friend, builds a robot, and tries to communicate affection over distance to the barest possible minimum.

(A good mix of fluff/angst/yearning, captures early & friendship dirkjake REALLY well, a good analogue au to their canon upbringing!!)

Sburgatoria => https://archiveofourown.org/works/20726822/chapters/49242167

What if we were four lesbians stuck in an uncanny valley real housewives purgatory-esque-suburbia and we bickered then kissed 😳

Prologos

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23961157

“Sadstuck for the discerning jakeliker”

Magnesium Ion, Porphyrin Ring => https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787465/chapters/51988876

Jade + Jake exploration throughout their growing up years, the relationship they had to their guardians and to one another between split realities and time.

I Know What You Think Of Me => https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516589

You never knew you wanted vriska and jake to be friends but now…. you do! and they’re going to gut a mountain of salmon to get there. Hilariously masterful vrisrezi to boot.

What Happens In-Between =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240424/chapters/58409713

i KNOW you aren’t done with jaded fisheries observer vriska just yet and for that i’m thankful to say, we have a sequel, and dirk is in it to her great annoyance

Drive it home with one headlight => https://archiveofourown.org/works/19281412/chapters/45856705

The Hitchhikers Guide to Your Ex-Boyfriend ==>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25747519/chapters/62875855

EXTENSIVELY ILLUSTRATED!!!! Post-canon fanadventure focusing on jake, brain ghost dirk, and a very concerned third party inhabiting jake’s brain that isn’t all too happy with the current turn of dubiously canon events. Still updating, very fun and smart.

The Four Kings, the God Thief, and the Black Diamond Pirates =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17886581/chapters/42220607

DIRK AND VRISKA. PIRACY. SONG. HOES (JAKE)

Sea shanties for Thots (Four kings sequel) =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22210135/chapters/53028541

jake needs to adjust to his new life and occupation overseas, ft; more songs, more piracy, and schrodinger’s hoe. Extensively jake-introspective, told through his POV.

Song of the Pyre =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10875459/chapters/24161439

EPIC SCALE vrisrezi space opera ft. hardass legislacerator Terezi & outlaw Vriska being forced to work together after they sort-of-accidentally kill terezi’s shitty clown ex. Feelings are caught, trials are held, there’s a revolution coming. Delightfully written. Reads as pretty solid and complete despite the 19/21 chapters done - ACT 1 counts as a book of its own, ACT 2 is solid.

Pilot Light, Pale rapture (full series) => https://archiveofourown.org/series/1403233

“They want you on Olympus, they want you on a faraway star watching the planet turn benignly. They want the original Gods in the four corners of the earth, protectors in an invisible palace. “And the Witch sat vigil in her southern eastmost realm, looking down upon her descendants,” they’d say, “and saw that it was good.

You do not have an Olympus. You have a house that smells like burnt toast, because Davepeta did just that only an hour ago.”

Prospit kids + Really Good and Fun earth C shenanigans ensue. Incredible insightful exploration on Jade, her childhood, and mostly what happens after the curtains close and she finally has time to be awake.

After Meat, Aftermath. (full series) => https://archiveofourown.org/series/1420354

In one universe, college!au Rose lalonde takes barre classes. In another, arguably more relevant one, Rosebot peers into her life. this will lead to inevitable chaos. incredible rose + kanaya + vriska + jake + dirk focus and one of my fav AU’s.

*below are my favorite dirk-focused works:*

Detective Pony

https://archiveofourown.org/works/2427119/chapters/5371283

At first I didn’t include this one, having taken for granted that everyone had read it already, but I think as of ‘21 the fandom is a bit different and not many have. Facts being: this is the definitive solo Dirk Strider story; seamless with the detective pony book dirk edits in homestuck-proper, deeply indulgent, funny, and cathartic, one might even say. Also an audiobook and a webseries, if that’s more up to your speed!

A Eulogy for Laplace’s Demon (After Meat, Aftermath spinoff) =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20047735/chapters/47475769

A good jump-in point for AM,A but hugely more focused on dirk arguing with his own demons. Doesn’t pull any punches.

Dualshock Desertbloom =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428552/chapters/43651733

Dirk wakes up in a scalding liminal space and splinters his beta self out of his body like an amoeba parting in two. It’s a Predicament. They have to learn how to cohabitate if they want to try to figure out what the fuck is going on, and Dirk can’t help but prod and poke around to learn more about his twisted-funhouse-mirror-self along the way. Really meaty character-study, some of my favorite dirkvoice (and brovoice) passages are definitely all over here.

House of Dirk => https://archiveofourown.org/works/19156126/cha pters/45530146

dirk and caliborn, in a sitcom, holding hands. nothing bad could ever possibly happen

Timaeus, Testified. => https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479223/chapters/46368625

“go crazy go stupid!!!!!!” - dirk strider, metamonster

*Fun / short / thoughtful stories:*

Two idiots at Homoville, N69, TX

==> https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130925

Dirk freaks out and goes on r/relationships to try and figure out how to mend the semi-relationship he has with his weird roommate. (hint: his name starts with J)

Light Without Effulgence

==> https://archiveofourown.org/works/25986289

Rose is having a writer’s block. Jake is bored in the middle of his family’s own vacation. They sit down to mercilessly pick at each other’s brains, and the results may surprise you (not clickbait)

Interrogating the text from the wrong perspective => https://archiveofourown.org/works/615521

(Calliope and Rose have fandom wars. Its really funny)

Witching Hour => https://archiveofourown.org/works/12620732

Eschewal => https://archiveofourown.org/works/4284384

jake goes ham

Dreamscapers => https://archiveofourown.org/works/22455073/chapters/53653849

Stygian blue =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23946412/chapters/57588850

Terezi and brain ghost Vriska have a conversation. (illustrated!!!)

Bitter =>

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30871334

Jaw-dropping JadeRose comic oneshot; meta, jealousy, crushes, and girls being a little off.

*FANADVENTURE CORNER:*

CHOICELESS HOPE

==> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28100313/chapters/68850048#workskin

Your name is TEREZI PYROPE.

You have been searching the depths of the FURTHEST RING for CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND, PRETEENHOOD NEMESIS, TEEN SWEETDIAMOND, and POSSIBLE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE, VRISKA SERKET, for what may or may not have been THREE MONTHS.

Near the start of her search for Vriska, Terezi is offered a choice.

KITTYQUEST

==> https://mspfa.com/?s=32792&p=2

Centuries in the future, the daughter of jade harley and davepeta pierces together what it is like to grow up knowing your parents and much of your extended family are immortal beings. Incredible art, lots of really really fun cameos and incredible worldbuilding (Not epilogue compliant, barely credits compliant, remains one of my favorite extended pocket universes to this day.)

FAILURE TO LAUNCH

==> https://mspfa.com/?s=34750&p=1

It’s june egbert’s first night out! From the official TV programme summary; “Starring the one and only JUNE EGBERT! Who knows what shenanigans will ensue… Wild hootenannies? Late night pizza picnics? ROMANCE??? Tune in and find out on FAILURE TO LAUNCH!” this can only ever end well, right?

THERAPYSTUCK

==> https://mspfa.com/?s=36345&p=3

That’s right, buckos. The lot of you are going to therapy. Turns out after a member of the tight-knit god community (Sollux) decides to seek a little help, more shenanigans were sure to follow.

#fic rec #updated sporadically

538 notes · View notes

jae-writes-fanfiction · 4 years

Text

Caviar and Cigarettes

Ashton x Reader - Collab Masterlist - 3763 Words - Part 1 of 1

Notes: this was written as part of a collab event as a gift for @mermaidcashton using a mix of their different suggested tropes but specifically ‘waking up in vegas.’ I hope you enjoy it ❤️ also I’ve never been to a casino I’m sorry this is 100% based off of what I know from TV

Warnings: mentions of alcohol/alcohol consumption, people are on a plane which could be scary, light nsfw content, some swearing.

- - -

The overhead compartments creaked as the plane rushed down the runway headed for liftoff. The sensation always sent a shiver down your spine and caused knots to grow in your stomach.

You hated flying and had everyone been back in LA instead of visiting the UK on a press tour, you would’ve opted to drive to Las Vegas from home and meet the boys there. Unfortunately for you, being their one-person PR/Social Media Management team placed you behind the scenes for the entire junket. And now, it placed you in the window seat of a plane preparing to hurtle dangerously through the sky- although your friendship with the bride-to-be was partly at fault.

Next to you, Ashton rolled his eyes as you gripped the armrest tightly. Across the aisle he watched Michael and Crystal giggle at something, and just ahead of them he could see Callum and Luke watching a movie on one of their phones.

He loved his friends and was beyond happy for Michael and Crystal but each of their small smiles and soft looks felt stifling and Ashton found himself wishing things could just be like when they were younger. Everything felt easier then, it was much more fun going on trips, there was less pressure to do or say the right thing or post the right statuses. They were just four friends making music. Now, everything was different including you.

You silenced your phone and offered Ashton a consolatory smile. “I know you’d rather be across the aisle,” you said glancing over at the others, “but let’s try to be friendly it’s a long flight.” There was a slight edge to your tone and it didn’t go unnoticed.

“You’re right dollface,” Ashton bit back, “I’d much rather be seated with my friends. Not our social media manager.”

You felt a warmth spread across your face as you tried to think of a smart response. Ashton has always been the most aloof of the four when you joined the behind the scenes team yet every conversation with him turned sour.

When you didn’t respond Ashton decided to keep going. “I mean I offense but how the hell are any of us supposed to relax when you’re here hovering around? This is supposed to be a party! A vacation! But you make it look like work.”

“That’s right Ash,” you said icily, “because I am working. I have to make sure none of you do anything stupid while you’re ‘having fun and letting loose’.”

And there you go, Ashton thought, like always making everything else difficult. Why couldn’t you just be agreeable?

“Besides,” you said interrupting his thoughts, “the last thing the group needs is more dating drama. Your last stint did enough damage.”

There. You said it, after weeks of thinking it you actually said it. You didn’t blame him for how the breakup went and for a while you were proud at how little attention Ashton gave to the fan speculation. But then he deleted all their pictures together and made a few (now long deleted) vague tweets that sent the fan base into a deadly spiral that spewed death threats at his ex and caused you more than enough sleepless nights.

You felt a little guilty when he didn’t respond with another jape- but who did he think he was anyway? Sure he was attractive but he couldn’t get away with everything. Not this time. Not after you had to stage and arrange posts for him every time he swapped partners.

You huffed and slipped your headphones in. There was no hope for pleasant conversation, and you had no desire to fill the time with mobile games. The audiobook claimed to calm and soothe the overworked professional with meditation and organization tips. Compared to the $350 plane fare the $25 download seemed like a reasonable and informative way to fill the ten-hour flight.

By the halfway mark you’d been proven wrong on both accounts. The narrator’s lilting accent was distracting in all the wrong ways, and the information sounded like every motivational speaker ever; all hype and no substance. Twice you felt your eyes drifting closed and twice you managed to snap yourself out of it. The third time however you didn’t snap back awake as your head lolled to the side.

The brush of your hair against his shoulder alerted Ashton to the situation. He chuckled lightly under his breath, for a moment you were at peace. For a moment you were someone he didn’t know, someone he might’ve liked to know better.

But moments don’t last forever, Ashton knew this to be true and before long the light jostling of the plane woke you up. You blinked slowly trying to adjust to the lights and grimaced as Ashton came into focus. The intensity of his gaze puzzled you. Was there something on your face? The expression was unconscious, but Ashton saw it flicker across your face and that stung. Not even away more than a minute and you were already getting to him.

Uninterested in having another quiet row like a soon-to-be-divorced couple, he quickly looked away leaving you once again to choose between silence and the droning audiobook as the plane crossed the Atlantic and then the entirety of the North American continent.

The sun had already set when the descent started. Outside you could see the world swathed in swatches of brilliant color and dazzling shapes against the horizon. It felt like your heart skipped a beat. The Vegas strip was everything you’d expected. The hotel itself looked like a work of abstract art, it’s glass elevators sparkling under the desert sunset.

Late dinner reservations had been made for the five of them, and you took the opportunity to settle into your room, eat an entire room service pizza, and take a nap. They would be out on the hotel’s casino floor for the rest of the night and you were more than happy to join them.

By the time you put yourself together and got there, the house was in full swing. The music was loud, the people louder. You noticed Ashton first at a roulette table surrounded by other beautiful people. You turned to walk away and look for Crystal when he noticed you.

You smiled thinly and made your way over to him, you had to. Anything else would’ve been seen as rude and that was a problem you didn’t want to deal with.

You lightly touched his shoulder to let him know you were there and glanced over the table. He hasn’t lost anything but wasn’t winning either. Ashton froze at your touch, the innocuous gesture sent a shock through his body, and at that moment something changed.

The dealer called for bets to be placed for the new round as you settled in next to Ashton. The dark jacket paired well with the retro red shirt he wore and you had trouble looking away.

“You look-“ Ashton started but couldn’t finish the sentence, his wide eyes glanced over your body for one of the first times seeing it outside of business wear. The metallic accents caught in the low light and cast an ethereal glow over you that kept drawing his focus.

You flushed, “thanks...you do too.” The sentiment felt heavy despite the normalcy of the exchange and you quickly accepted a glass of something from a roaming waiter to loosen your tongue.

You glanced back over the table and turned to Ashton with a conspiratorial grin. You leaned in to whisper and Ashton felt your hot breath on his neck.

“Always bet on black,” you offered while biting your lip as he laughed lightly. Everyone said that everyone knew that was a rookie move. But for the moment it seemed like the best advice and you were shocked when he did it.

Not as shocked as you were when he won.

Ashton turned and looked at you, amazed.

“Ash that was so lucky!” You gushed openly and your genuine smile pulled at his heart.

“Maybe it’s just you,” he said softly, the honest edge to his voice surprising you. You laughed awkwardly trying to play off the sentimentality of the words but they kept playing over in your mind.

“I think the happy couple ran away for a little bit,” he offered quickly moving on, “but I think we ought to go celebrate.”

You nodded, “well since I did help you win, I suppose you could buy me a drink.”

Ashton grinned back and quickly gathered his winnings before wrapping an arm around your waist and leading you towards the lounge. You could smell his cologne as you walked and you weren’t sure if it was that or his hand on your hip that kept distracting you from whatever he was saying.

The hazy lounge atmosphere was almost as intoxicating as the cocktails that Ashton kept ordering for the two of you. The liquor burned in all the best ways and a soft sweet taste lingered on your lips. You felt warm and giddy, and surprisingly happy to have been spending this time with Ashton.

At some point, his arm wrapped around your shoulders and you laughed at one of his jokes. Had he been sober the sound might’ve broken his heart, like most secret things do if they’ve been dreamed about before.

You turned to say something but stopped with the words dead on arrival. Ashton was closer than you had realized while talking, your faces just inches apart. The red hue of the lights flashed across his features and seemed to show how truly beautiful he was.

For a moment the closeness lingered, and you could feel a tense stiffness in the arm around you, and electricity where his hand curled around your bare shoulder. Unconsciously you felt your face tilt up towards his, and Ashton felt the same desire to close the gap.

What am I doing, you thought trying to blink out of it, I technically work for him I can’t kiss him! Besides he doesn’t even tolerate me normally.

Ashton froze, unable to tear himself away from you, the soft tint of the lights exaggerated the shadows on your face and kept drawing his eyes back to your lips. His hand on your shoulder itched to run up to tangle in the hair at the back of your neck and pull you against him.

She doesn’t even want to be here, he thought suddenly, why the hell would she want to kiss me on top of that?

But somewhere in the back of his mind Ashton knew you were struggling over something similar. He knew you were at least tempted, otherwise you would’ve moved.

A scantily clad cocktail waitress interrupted the moment and sent you both back to looking away. Your stomach felt uneasy from the tension and you drank quietly for a while contemplating your next move. You needed to say something funny, something light to keep this good energy going.

“Look at the bartender,” you said, “can you imagine him working anywhere else?” Your joke was directed at a thin sort of person who without a doubt had the Vegas aesthetic down to a T.

Ashton felt his heart drop, couldn’t you say something nice? Did you always have to be so critical of everyone?

“That’s typical,” he mumbled into his drunk.

“What do you mean it’s typical?”

“You, princess. Always having some shallow thing to say,” he took a long drink draining the glass before turning back to your shocked face.

This had been a bad idea, you knew he had some problem with you but it had been enough.

Refusing to cause a scene on the crowded floor you swiftly stood. “It was just a joke,” you hissed through a clenched jaw before walking towards the lobby and elevators that would whisk you back to the safety of your room.

“Hey come back!” Ashton tossed money into the table and quickly darted after you, slipping into the elevator at the last second.

“We were having a good time,” he said defensively, “stop being such a spoilsport.”

“A good time? Sure, it’s all fun and games for you. Didn’t you ever stop to think that maybe something is majorly wrong when you can’t go twenty minutes without insulting me?”

“It wasn’t an insult it was a comment.”

You laughed openly, “oh that’s rich Ash. A comment.”

The doors slid open on your floor and you quickly turned heel and left. You heard his footfalls behind you and it took everything in you to resist slamming your door before he could enter the room. You angrily kicked your shoes off sending them in varying directions that you didn’t care to fix.

Ashton felt his palms get sweaty and his mouth dry. He didn’t want to keep watching you walk away anymore. “Can’t we just talk about this like friends?”

“Friends?” You felt your heart get all twisty at the words, “we’ve never been friends Ashton.”

When he didn’t respond you continued, crossing your arms in front of your chest as if the pressure would keep you still and safe.

“I used to think we could’ve been. When we first met I thought: now there’s the one- attractive and smart and mature. But all you’ve ever done is play games, spew pretensions, and hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” he said lamely taking a step closer to you.

“You don’t hate me? Oh that’s right you just hate the way I dress, and joke, and talk...” You met his gaze with a challenge and in another first of the night, he accepted.

Ashton looked at you with a fondness he had never expressed out loud and a gentleness that’s translated in how he took your hand in his and pulled you against him.

“I don’t hate you at all,” he said softly cupping your cheek with his other hand, “I hate that when you’re here you’re always working, I hate that you can’t ever just be with us, I hate that I miss you when you don’t answer a text, and I absolutely loathe that when you do it’s because you have to talk to me.” Because I want to talk to you, he thought unable to form the words in the mouth.

You suddenly felt very small pressed against him and you knew he could see the heat rising in your face.

“Professional was just easier,” you whispered unable to look him in the eyes, “because I don’t hate you either. For a long time I hated having to orchestrate and present people with you-“ because they weren’t me, you thought unable to say the words out loud.

His thumb softly traced the slant of your cheekbones as you hesitantly looked back into his eyes, and unlike in the lounge you did resist the urge to close the space between you, and neither did he.

The kiss was soft and filled with the emotion of everything not said, like all first kisses should be.

“I don’t hate you at all,” he whispered whilst placing kisses to the sides of your face, “not even a little bit, not even at all.” As your lips let a second time you both felt how surely the sentiment was quite the opposite and had been for quite some time.

Ashton was the only thought in your mind, and the only word on your lips as the kisses grew sloppier and needy. He tasted like cherry syrup from the cocktails and you wanted more.

A little disoriented from the alcohol you haphazardly walked backward pulling Ashton with you until you felt the edge of the mattress press against your calves. In a fit of giggles, you both tumbled back onto the bed.

You had never seen him smile like this before, his whole face seemed brighter and you knew instantly he was thinking the same things too. You moved in a flurry of hands and touches that struggled through the haze to remove clothes.

You straddled him to slide the jacket from his shoulders and fumbled with the buttons on his shirt until that too was discarded. Your hands trembled as they skated across his chest, and you felt him shiver as they were replaced with your lips. You slid down his body leading trails of kisses that stopped just above his belt buckle. The way it caught the light sent a delicious shiver down your spine and you tucked that thought away for another time.

Deftly you slipped the belt off before working on the slacks. You slowed and groaned softly upon revealing a dark red pair of lace pants under his trousers.

“Sweetheart,” you cooed teasingly as you repositioned yourself between his legs, “you should’ve led with this.” His hoarse laugh stifled into moans as you traced the lace with your tongue. Your eye wandered to the glittering bottle of champagne on the nightstand and between it and the heady look on Ashton’s face, you knew it was going to be a good night.

The next morning which really ended up being the next afternoon- you were pleased to wake up curled and tangled around a very naked Ashton. The pounding headache and dry mouth were a direct contrast.

You were thankful the curtains were still closed as the moderate darkness seemed to help the monster out hangover you were now feeling. You shifted slightly and were surprised to notice you weren’t entirely naked. You were wearing a t-shirt you didn’t remember owning. The words looked like gibberish but you gathered it was from the hotel’s gift shop.

The discovery prompted you to look around the room and you noticed something. Ashton’s fancy clothes and delightful red panties were joined by a pair of his jeans, another shirt, and an extra pair of your bottoms as well.

There were papers strewn on the nightstand and a shopping bag near the door that you didn’t remember buying. The cool air stung your bare legs and prompted you to curl back into Ashton who lazily smiled and kissed your temple as you rejoined him.

“G’morning darlin’,” he said through a yawn making you giggle.

“Do you remember going back out last night?”

Ashton shook his head but before he could say anything his ringtone cut through the silence and roused a chorus of pained groans from both of you.

He scrambled to answer it and you noticed the empty bottle of champagne on the other side of the bed, and what looked like a sacked minibar’s worth of trash with it.

I am never drinking again, you thought as the ringing subsided and your head began to throb.

“Michael wants us for brunch,” Ashton said tossing his phone back to the cluttered nightstand. You groaned at the thought of food and hoped it would be greasy enough to cut through the drunk brain fog.

You had to swing by Ashton’s room for him to get dressed making it a little later than anticipated when you finally got to the lobby. Crystal and Michael were sharing a love seat and as you both exited the elevator they erupted into raucous laughter and cheers that reverberated pain through your head.

“Aw fuck,” you hissed rubbing a hand on your temple. Ashton had an arm around your waist which kept yours from stumbling.

“Oh come on I expected a little more life after last night,” Michael called with a grin.

“I didn’t think Mikey was serious,” Crystal said, “do you have the papers on you?”

On top of them, Luke chimed in, “I got the whole crying jag on video it’ll make a hell of an update when we get back.”

You and Ashton shared a confused look and silently looked to Callum for help. He was drinking a delightful looking mimosa and sighed putting it down.

“I don’t think they remember,” he started before getting cut off.

“Awe no way! Look at them, they’re the picture of romantic bliss,” Michael taunted with a laugh.

You sighed, “come on now guys I know it’s a little odd for us to hook up but enough with the jokes.”

“Hook up?” Luke laughed, “that’s not what Elvis would have to say about it.”

You were trying not to get frustrated but it was hard. “Luke, what in the hell does Elvis have to do with anything?”

Callum cut in before the others could keep hounding you.

“Promise me you won’t freak out?”

You nodded and felt Ashton do the same.

“Alright,” Callum started slowly leaving time to gauge reactions as he spoke, “Luke and I got a call last night around 4:30, one of you were crying about how you ruined mike’s moment when you were too out of it to explain we came down here to meet you...”

As he spoke flashes of memories seemed to play in your mind. You almost remembered dialing the phone inside who to talk to, but certain you didn’t want to upset anyone.

“Apparently you’d just come in from one of those 24-hour chapels and we’re worried Mike and Crystal would be upset you stole the show.”

“Why would we go to a church?” Ashton asked slowly. Neither you nor Ashton were specifically interested in that sort of thing. Yet as he asked it you remembered stumbling through the lobby looking for something new to wear.

Your mind reeled trying to fit together pieces that you weren’t sure went to the same puzzle. You ran a hand through your hair a small ring on your hand catching in the light. You recognized it immediately as Ashton’s. Something borrowed, you thought unsure of why that mattered.

Callum shook his head as Michael dissolved into a fit of laughter.

“You dumbasses, you got married!”

You and Ashton quickly looked at each other and then back at the others and then back at each other trying to process this whirlwind of information.

The moment lingered longer than Michael found funny and without much else said you were whisked by the other happy couple off for brunch and out into a world where nothing would ever be the same.

#rpf #5sos writers collab #ashton x reader #5sos #oneshot #mermaidcashton #tw: alcohol

21 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 3 years

Text

April Progress Update, and May Goals:

*bear with me this is gonna get long.

I’m going to first just look at April goals and see if I did them, then afterward summarize everything I did this month (cause it was a lot more than I planned ToT)

Chinese study plan from April:

1. Read anything

Well, I did read. However my goal to read hanshe to chapter 80 and Zhenhun to the end of the sundial arc never happened. I did read a lot though. I ended up focusing mainly on extensive reading.

Chinese chapters read: 62 (I counted graded readers/小王子 as 1 chapter for every two that I read, but this number is probably still inflated... compared to my normal 20-pleco page chapters I probably read 31-40 of those-kind-of-chapters length wise).

Chinese stories finished: 4 (Pleco Graded Reader Butterfly Lovers, Chinese Short Stories, Mandarin Companion Journey to the Center of the Earth, 小王子 - you can tell this is where my attention went this month).

Chinese Listening Reading Method chapters done: 14.5 (4.5 Silent Reading, 2 Chapters of A History of Humankind, 1 chapter hp, 1 chapter Alice in Wonderland, iffy but like 3 chapters 小王子, iffy but like 4 chapters of the Xiao Mao cat story - I should note that for Silent Reading, 小王子, Xiao Mao I only looked at the chinese mostly so more step 2, and for the others I did step 3 as recommended). Also I realize... I should probably count this with hours instead of chapters, because hours are where the original poster about LR mentioned when milestones are hit. However, being realistic, I do not do things in hour segments so I’m not sure any tracking will be as easy as this way...

A cool thing potentially about L R Method? I found some resources recently that will make this a lot easier (Bidiread is a site that can make parallel texts for you, which made silent reading MUCH easier since the audio doesn’t perfectly match so you NEED to see the chinese even if only doing step 3, to make sure you can keep track of where you are in the text when the audio skips paragraphs). I also found Francais Par Le Methode Nature as videos on youtube with audio and the text visible (is that not simply L R method step 2 but its all comprehensible, i love that book). And I found a few files on youtube of audiobooks with english audio and chinese/english parallel text on screen (a bit backwards in process but i’m curious to test it), one youtube channel who does chinese audio with parallel texts on screen (phenomenal!), and I remembered the site bilinguis exists which is excellent for French if you wanna try L R Method (it has a few french audios with the parallel texts). Also in the case of A History of Humankind - the audiobook for once is very closely synced to the actual chapter start/ends, so it was just easier to do L R Method with.

2. Listen to Chinese Spoonfed Audio, shadowing when I can

YES I did this! I was on 11 last month, now I’m on 15. (so 4 audio this month) Yes I realize that wasn’t a lot of improvement T-T. What can I say I am not very good at being disciplined. However I did learn something interesting this month ABOUT listening to these so I think I might do it more - I listened to some in the background while playing games, then later listened to them again (also why I only got through 4 - I was replaying audios maybe 2 times). And when I listened the second time I could understand nearly all, whereas obviously when playing my game I only caught parts of it. So I suppose what this showed me is partially listening and partially focusing still may have some benefit in helping to learn the info - and well obviously its easier to make time to play audio when u don’t need to focus 100% on it.

I also did some other misc listening to random stuff without any plan: 6? audio 1 of DeFrancis Beginner Chinese Reader, 1 audio of FSI Chinese, 2 condensed audios of Guardian (which was so cool?? also so cool i can follow along so well now??), 1 dracula chapter audio (don’t even ask i don’t know either), tian ya ke audio drama ep 1.

Chinese show episodes watched: 28 (You can see here is where my time went listening wise lol - Two Souls in One is GOOD u might wanna check it out, is all I’m saying, especially if the taiwan drama Bromance was ur thing, or the anime Ouran Host Club, or even Bureau of Transformer to a degree. I watched up to ep 25 and once its all aired to the finale I’m gonna finish it.

Optional going through my hanzi book: I burned out on this, but it was a good use of my time when I felt like writing. I only wrote/studied maybe 30 hanzi, and maybe 50 hanzi+radicals in my Radical-Specific hanzi book. If I continue, I think my goal will be to just continue the Radical-book to completion. Realistically, longer term, I need to go through the freaking Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Character’s book just to get the hanzi and their rough meaning to stick in my head (and learn the pronunciations through well context and vocab how I normally do). Right now I just learn through reading, but its an issue of sometimes I just end up associating one hanzi with the new word I learned but then as soon as I see it in a new word I don’t even remember having seen it before. If I paid a bit more attention to distinguishing I might notice when I’ve seen them before or they’re new, and have more starting info to relate to the character to attach the word info onto. (its a convoluted way of me saying if I have things to connect to each other I remember better even if it makes little sense to connect them - if I know car and pet, carpet’s easier to remember even though it has nothing to do with cars, cry in french ‘pleurer’ was easier to remember once my brain thought ‘plume of tears’ even though that makes no sense. i just remember things better than seeing pleurer and having no idea what to attach it to at all - even if i heard it means cry, if i don’t have a thing to associate it with i’ll forget easier. or melancholy - i had to associate it with melons, and cholly - reminds me of words for sickness so heavy-sick +sad is how i started finally remembering that word cause wow did i look it up over and over as a kid).

---

Japanese study plan from April:

1. continue through nukemarine’s memrise courses.

Okay I did do this!! Congrats! In March I had completed LLJ 3 - Kanji, 289/318 finished in LLJ 4 Tae Kim part 1. As of April, I have completed: LLJ 4 Part 1, LLJ 4 Part 2 51/365, LLJ 5 Core Vocabulary 420/1020. So yeah! Going quite well, in that I consistently did it - I realized for me the best time to do it is playing video games oddly enough, or watching youtube - just do it in between areas, or ep scenes/videos, as a short 5-10 minute break. Since I like taking breaks from things anyway. Like audio, its hard for me to find ways to get myself to do stuff like this (except worse cause I don’t vibe with flashcards).

My goal for May will probably be finish LLJ 4 Part 2, LLJ 5, and start LLJ 6? I can dream right...

Also, a cool note: I found audio-flashcard files that people made of the Japanese Core 2k vocabulary deck and sentences, with english-japanese audio. (If anyone wants a link just let me know). So now if I DO eventually get burned out on flashcards, I could switch to using those. They would work about as well as the Chinese Spoonfed Audio files I have (which work extremely well for me - audio flashcards I just listen to are so much more suited to how I study lol). However, I’d like to stick with Nukemarine’s decks as long as possible while I can focus - they cover grammar explicitly which helps me a lot, and the reading practice COMBINED with constant audio really helps me learn the readings of words. Which is something I need for japanese a LOT more than chinese.

2. continue reading Tae Kim’s grammar guide

Ahahahahaaa hahaaa... did not do it. Nope.

What I did do that was grammar related:

Watched Cure Dolly lessons 1-5 (and will probably watch more as I seem to click well with those explanations)

Read 24 pages of Japanese in 30 Hours while transcribing actual japanese into it (and will probably continue to read it, its so short I should just DO IT in a couple days, it also fulfilled my desire to write stuff)

JapaneseAudioLessons.com - read the wa vs ga explanation, reading the portable japanese grammar notes document right now (its 11 pages I’ll finish it today). I’ve said it before but i really LOVE this resource, and they have so much for free. I absolutely recommend if a beginner wants Pimsleur or Michael Thomas or some other paid resource etc, to just go to this site, download their full lesson grammar guide (its like 311 pages like a real textbook) and go through all their free audio lessons. You will cover a lot of ground (more than Pimsleur or Michael Thomas), and all for free. In addition, I’ve bought some of their kanji teaching books and they’re overall my favorite for remembering kanji specifically (yes more than Heisig’s RTK by far, and more than KKLC - although the Kodanshi book is a good reference to have around). I’m not kidding at all when I say just try this site’s free resources if you’re trying to use free stuff, its the closest I’ve found to an audio only teaching method, or an audio/textbook-like combo, that’s this much stuff and free. (For non free, I actually liked Genki if you do everything in it).

Other misc things done in japanese:

Watched Dracula the Musical in japanese with no subs. It was super hard, but also not so hard. It changed my life. 1000/10 would recommend watching it if you even remotely like dracula OR vampires - featuring a lesbian Dracula/Mina, and more importantly a story change about who kills Dracula, and Dracula and Mina’s agency and choice being the driving force of the ending. These story changes I LOVE and I now want them in more adaptations moving forward, its what I always craved of the ending of Dracula and never got - Dracula as a person (not monster), Mina as a person (not prey), and their choices influencing how the story ends and by whom (versus Van Helsing/the establishment symbol regaining control through annihilation of the ‘threat’ to that norm). Also it gave me a new interest in Japanese plays which is cool. I did not expect to love them this much! Also gave me a boost in japanese confidence, in that I no longer feel as “scared” to try immersing in japanese or in some kinds of content that seemed ‘harder’ - and that was a big hurdle I was too afraid to do, in the past when I studied.

Watched a few more lets plays (lets guess maybe 3-5 sections of 20 minutes?). Persona 2 innocent sin (cool to see me follow along despite not knowing the game), Final Fantasy IX (this one I saved, and could definitely pick up words from since I know some of the story and the lets player read everything - I should look up FFX), random stuff.

Tried to play some games in japanese! I’m going to go with this was about 3 hours. I tried crisis core’s opening to the first save point - it was playable (I can read most of the menus), and I can follow enough text to get the overall gist - however it was draining as so much is text only (I FORGOT how much reading is in this game). Great for reading practice I suppose. Also great in that it definitely reset my expectations about what is ‘doable’ for me - however I do think KH2 is probably still the easiest game i should start trying games with (since I have so many of the controls/menu memorized and can waste less time re-reading the tutorials), and since I know so many words by memory I’ll be able to focus more on grammar (whereas in CC I was glancing through kanji trying to keep up with the live action scenes). A bit too much reading for me to tackle again for a while, it was draining lol. Then I tried persona 3 for psp - first, i like the ps2/ps3 version better ToT. Second, also somehow I could read enough to survive - but the reading again took time, a lot isn’t voiced, and there are not frequent save points. So again I just played to the first save point. That one I may try again before CC though, because a lot more of the language is daily life stuff I could glance through and speed-read-guess lol, or could actually use if I learned it. Also occassionally p3 reads out loud which is nice. I suspect the Visual Novel I got will actually be best for practice (despite me not knowing the plot at all), because I’m guessing more of the lines will be voiced. All this reading would help me more if I could hear it voiced - and I may want to watch more Lets Plays, and Audiobooks on youtube, mainly for that fact: subtitles that i can read WITH audio so i can practice listening and reading together.

Tried reading a bit! First, some mangas I had (though I only read a page of each) - mainly it was just nice to see mangas are more accessible now. they’re about as readable to me rn as manhua were in chinese at 6-8 months in. I can just about follow the main gist, more if I use a dictionary for details. Also thanks to @yue-muffin telling me, learned I can look up words on iphone in the web browser just by highlighting words and clicking “look up.” Life changing. That in combination with me finding some japanese scripts of Final Fantasy games online (and I’ve always been curious what localizations changed), and this has been a little reading I found myself doing just because i felt like it. I didn’t read much - the equivalent of several dialogue boxes (the games i played made me read a LOT more lol). but I liked that i could see their kana when i looked them up, sound the sentences out to myself, contemplate them (so intensive read). Also if you have Speech tools enabled on your phone, you can swipe down with 2 fingers and it will read the page aloud - I used to do that a little with chinese on dual chinese-englist mtlnovel pages since it WILL read both, but Pleco reads chinese better so unless i’m only-listening i switched to pleco for that. But for these scripts it works great! (occasionally it will read all-kanji titles like chinese though lol - not once its into japanese sentences though). I thought it was really cool I could basically emulate what I do in Pleco for chinese, in a normal web browser for Japanese. (Also, for websites, Idiom app seems to work ok for reading Aloud as well - possibly better - but ios iphone “Look up” dictionaries are MUCH better than Idiom app’s).

In summary basically I surprisingly enjoyed reading and might keep trying to do it just because its interesting. However in general, first: I really want 2k words done in Nukemarine’s LLJ courses (LLJ 7 would put me at 1k common words, LLJ 12 would put me at 2k so...), and I’d really like a better grammar foundation (Cure Dolly, or japanese audio lessons grammar, Nukemarine LLJ also obviously fits that task with the grammar portions, really anything). While I want to play games, again I just really realize... how much easier my life will be with a better basis of knowledge first lol. Reading I can do in bite size if I want, but playing games is Draining in between saves right now lol. While i CAN do it right now, unless its a game i really can tune out with (like KH2 maybe) then its just too intensive right now for me to tolerate too much of.

Also, again, I think doing Nukemarine’s LLJ decks as breaks while playing games/watching stuff is working great, going to keep doing that. And listening to audio flashcard files while I have dead time (like level grinding). I have been listening to the Chinese Spoonfed audio, but other options could be: the english-japanese Core 2k audio files, the Japanese Audio Lessons files (which once years ago I’d listen to while excerising). For now I’ve focused on Chinese Spoonfed audio because I know I need to FINISH something before jumping to something else lol.

---

French stuff I did in April:

Listened to 6 chapters of Francais Par Le Methode Nature (and read some of them - oh i missed this book its my fave way to learn and it finally has audio!!)

listened to some bits of audiobooks (i don’t even know why, i don’t know - dracula, frankenstein, carmilla, sherlock)

read a little of Le Petit Prince (idk 3 chapters? browsing my book after finishing in chinese and... ok my heart is still a bit ;-; ... i’m gonna need to recover from this story...)

read a bit of dracula (again... idk why... also it was kind of a L R Method step 2 attempt in that I listened to audio too, but really I mainly just... read)

L R Method: 2 Chapters of Alice in Wonderland (step 2, because I have not tried step 3 yet).

What is funny as hell to me is both how many words I look up when I contemplate intensive reading (again life changed by the fact i can just highlight words and click “word lookup” on my phone). But also how I already... know I can thoroughly read without doing it. Like... yes I can look up a word I fuzzy-know to get clarification, but even my phone auto-gives me french-french dictionary first and sometimes only (is it because my google is in french), i’ve been used to french definitions only for years.. and also like... i know when i read a whole paragraph i get whatever words were fuzzy before? just read some of dracula again today and its fine. its fine. again informational texts are easier for me - but dracula being a lot of letters ‘describing what happened’ suits me quite easily (and somehow manages to be less annoying to me than the english version). like... alice in wonderland was probably the harder for all the quick adjectives/verbs used in just one or two paragraphs when i was still re-remembering vocabulary i used to know lol. Like... in a dream world i’d love to test L R Method and see HOW MUCH it can teach a person. But like... while french would be the easiest to test it with? I kind of realize i’m also at a point in french where i have more benefit just continuing to read in french and listen in french (to fix my poor listening skills). referencing the english is not really... particularly necessary, it just usually slows me down. while i’m missing a LOT of words for fluent speaking/grammatically ok speaking - i don’t think listening reading method would really help me with that, since reading sure hasn’t. if any readng material might it’s francais par le methode nature just because it drills simple correct grammar construction, and reinforces it, and teaches grammar through context. but all my other reading materials... are more comprehension...

Anyway in SUMMARY wow i did a lot more than i expected this month!

---

Next months goals!

Chinese May Goals:

***Read anything. Great plan, has been working great. Ideally I would like to: finish Xiao Mao book one, and then either continue another Xiao Mao novel or start one of the other stories rated 2+ ease. I am considering 许三观卖血记 because its about as easy as the little prince, I’ve read an excerpt and its historical fiction so generally practical. Or 流星·蝴蝶·剑 by Gu Long if I want to work on a base in wuxia words from an easier novel. Or 他们的故事 by 一根黄瓜丝儿 if I’m ready to return to it - although this one is longer (the other stories being more like 12-20 chapters) so I’d prefer to save this for later. For any of these - look words up as desired since I’ll read them in Pleco. Ideally as my ‘harder’ reading I would like to either continue hanshe (intensive reading), or continue guardian (extensive reading) - so its a matter of if I want to look words up.

***Continue listening to Chinese Spoonfed Audio (please can i Finish it please ;-;)

Optional: experiment with Listening Reading Method. With the finding of those videos on youtube, I’d like to make my life literally as easy and streamlined as possible and literally just TEST L R Method by doing it with a few of the videos I found. It literally cannot get easier than premade videos with audio.

Other optional: listen to misc audio (I would love the time to watch the tian ya ke audiodrama WITH its subtitles then listen without again), watch shows, read Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Characters (i doubt this will happen), do some of my Radical-hanzi book.

Japanese May Goals:

***Continue: Nukemarine’s LLJ courses - ideally finish LLJ 4 Part 2, LLJ 5, and start LLJ 6. (this truly can be basically my only study method if I can’t do more). THIS IS THE PRIORITY. The quicker I get ALL of this done, the more of a foundation I will have to do Anything else.

Hopefully: Continue some kind of grammar explanation beyond Nukemarine’s stuff - either Tae Kim (unlikely but i was at chapter 10 before), Cure Dolly (i’m on 6), Japanese Audio Lessons Grammar, Japanese in 30 Hours while writing japanese in (I’m on page 24). Again this is a higher priority as it will make anything else easier.

Optional: Reading in any form - so video game time, lets plays, audiobook youtube with captions, actual reading as desired (like scripts). Including this because I know I will eventually try again lol.

Optional: listening in any form - so another musical! maybe listen to japanese audio lessons, or the core 2k audio, or a lets play, etc. I find I’m probably less likely to listen to something but it might happen!

French May Goals*:

*aka if I feel like doing it because french has no real goals at the moment! -3-)/

***Continue watching Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature videos. (There’s only 33, they’re like 10 minutes long or less, its about basics, PLEASE). I remember this book took forever to read 1/3 of when i was an upper beginner, well now surely its less slow going? especially because read aloud its as fast as the speakers voice! so it is not time consuming and i’ve wanted to finish this book forever! i could at least finish it up to where the audio files match to!

Read???? Read??? Honestly I’ve just been wanting to read Dracula and Carmilla in French its a vibe I’ve been in. Its not high priority or anything but hey it might happen. If it does happen, ideally I’d like to listen to an audiobook too around the same time (maybe after, or have the page read, idk). Just because while reading refreshes my vocab, what I really want to build up is listening/pronunciation. To get to a point where I can listen and shadow would be nice.

Tied to above, try L R Method? Not a high priority, though it would be super easy to test! Just because I already started testing it with Alice in Wonderland... but that basically amounts to just reading practice with audio again, for me.

I found Merlin in french so THAT is a thing.

Honestly the only thing I really want to do ‘study’ wise in french is finish that freaking book, especially now that I can listen to audio with it. It’s a nice foundation and I’d really like a refresher/fill in any big gaps in my learning. Anything else about french written here is mostly a reminder to myself to LISTEN to audio when possible, and try and improve that skill a bit if I go and read.

---

Real fast CORE SUMMARY:

Chinese: READ easier stories rated 2+ and keep getting through some, in combination with reading the harder hanshe and Guardian. Also listen to Chinese Spoonfed audio whenever u remember! Attempt some L-R method with the youtube videos you found. Immerse as desired.

Japanese: continue Nukemarine LLJ courses. Also do some grammar study somewhere, and immerse as desired.

French: listen/listen-read to Francais Par Le Methode Nature. Also read/listen as desired - ideally combining the activities.

*in all cases, where possible, combine listening-reading or try to practice both skills. (So reading in Pleco - play audio afterward to practice, play Guardian condensed audio in down time, with audiodramas follow subs when possible, when immersing with anything try L-R like strategies to add practice with both skills).

#rant #april progress #april goals #may study plan #study plan #may goals #may #what i learned from this is... i have no fucking structure guys #im a mess i just do Whatever #only thing close to ANY structure is that with chinese im fairly consistent about reading #someone help me come up with a cleaner study plan?#or is the fact just that this is Just how i study???#do i just need to bounce and do random stuff?

2 notes · View notes

dragonstoravens · 3 years

Text

Babylon Vol. 1: Bad Behavior, A Dancer in her Own Right

[ID: a blue patterned banner with text reading “BABYLON.” End ID.]

(Two chapters today, but this one’s a bit of a shorter update anyway. Believe it or not, we’re getting towards the end of volume 1 now!! It’ll be all posted by the end of December, and then in the new year at some point we’ll start posting 2. We’re also looking into Wattpad, and maybe even making an audiobook, so keep an eye out for those updates. Enjoy the chapters!)

Taglist (ask to be added or removed!): @charlottedotexe @glitterandstarshine @rainbowcoloreddays @the-starlight-chills @erased-in-stone

General: @elywritesbydarkness @residentofthedisc @humour-and-hyperfocus @skyfirewrites @viawrites-andacts

17. Bad Behavior

A tap on her shoulder alerted Azure to someone just behind her. She turned, smile plastered to her face. The woman was about her age, grinning conspiratorially. That was never good, in her book. Grinning usually meant there was a plan for the conversation, and conspiratorially meant she’d have to actually participate. She washed away her distaste for the idea with some champagne before speaking.

“Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Oh no, we haven’t. Samantha Whitewater, my family owns the Whitewater mining firm.” The introduction was followed by a small bow, which Azure returned. A colony family, then. Whitewater continued. “I just wanted to congratulate you.”

Congratulate her? She hadn’t done anything of note to these people. She never made deals and she talked about herself as little as possible, trying to create a black box of a history no one would question. There was nothing to congratulate, and even less for a stranger to bring up out of nowhere. She touched the comm.

Hey Hotshot, you remember anyone from the Whitewater family?

I think I got a proposal from them once, he responded. More business than pleasure, though I think they wanted a marriage too. At least they didn’t keep pushing when I denied both.

That was all she needed. At least Samantha and her family had manners. Her smile relaxed to something more genuine. She didn’t know what she was about to be congratulated for, but at least it wouldn’t be underhanded. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, things have been awful slow for me lately.”

“Oh, nothing like that. I’m just congratulating you on making such a good match. No one else here could say the same, though of course the Jericho name is something of a hot-ticket item to many of us. My own family included, I have to admit.” She laughed like it was some kind of joke between friends, and Azure’s blood pressure rose. Trinity, seeming to just take notice of the conversation as Azzy’s burgeoning anger began to make itself known through their mental link, began to turn, a crease in his brow the only sign of confusion showing through the ice-sculpture poise he wore around these events like armor.

She blinked to cover for the twitch in her eye, tucking her hands behind her back to cover the sparking. She ignored the vague warning of Azzy, no, that buzzed in the back of her head from Trinity, bulldozing on. “I wasn’t aware he was on sale in the first place.” Her words came out clipped, stilted, and poisonously sweet. Speaking of her friend as though he was an item made her stomach churn, even in retaliation. These events often weren’t terrible until something like this came up, the word choice surrounding people objectifying and economic in the worst manner. But never once had someone brazenly spoken about Trinity to her face before, like it was normal or expected. That was her friend Whitewater was talking about, the one who’d taught her about shrimp forks and helped her reach high shelves in her lab and made poorly edited images of frogs telling bad jokes for her when she was sad. She seethed. “I suppose that would explain why you caught me off guard then.”

The woman blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what it’s like where you come from--” the incredibly rude phrasing was somehow undercut by the fact that she still didn’t seem to think she was insulting anyone at all-- “but clearly you’re not used to this kind of society. We’re all a commodity here. The best he or anyone should hope for is to find someone equally as useful to him as he is to them, and maybe someone he can get along with-- though with someone as Icy as Jericho I never held out too much hope for that. That could have been me, but I guess it’s you.”

Azure opened her mouth to speak, but Trinity’s hand on her back stopped her just long enough for her to hear him out. Azure. She’s right. Drop it.

Azure shot back a response with a dangerous growl entering her mental voice, indignant and angry and protective. I don’t recall askin’ how anyone else here felt about it but me, so you drop it. She cleared her throat, her tone once more painted over with a thin veneer of polite but apparent disdain. “It is me, thank you very much Miss Whitewater. I wish you the very best of luck in finding someone merely useful to you.” If it wasn’t going to get her kicked out, she’d have spat at the woman’s feet like she used to when people bullied Crim in elementary school. Instead, she grinned conspiratorially with entirely too many of her teeth. “Because as we both know, that’s simply the most one can hope for in this wonderful little bubble.”

“Like you’ve done any better.” Whitewater finally seemed perturbed, angry that something was disrupting her sterile worldview. Her lip curled slightly. “That man touches you like he’d rather be doing anything else. Two inches away from anything that could be considered a little risque, even while dancing? At least someone like me would’ve known what I was getting into, with someone like him.”

Trinity saw Azzy draw in a breath, and knew whatever she was about to say would be even worse. So before it could leave her mouth. Trinity had turned fully to face the two of them, and in an instant his arm was wrapped firmly around her waist. His hand rested squarely on her hip-- right on the strip of skin her dress’ cutout bodice left exposed to the air. His fingers dug into her flesh just slightly. Not hard enough to even leave prints on the skin, but just enough to send a message. Azzy relaxed in posture only, looking for all the world like a guard dog that had just been told to sit as she looked up at him sidelong. “I’m sorry, Miss Whitewater, but my date and I have business elsewhere. Will this be all?”

“Of course. Enjoy your evening, Jericho. Garza.” Whitewater’s voice was stilted. Trinity turned Azzy around and used his arm around her to begin to shepard her away-- he wasn’t sure she was prepared to actually leave this alone, left to her own devices. They made it about ten feet before Azure looked back over her shoulder, sliding her arm around his waist as well and winking back at Whitewater, Garza’s supposed devious intention with Trinity on display. Internally, there was a small blip of take that, asshole, and then a self satisfied calm. Trinity sighed. He hated to play into whatever that was, but unfortunately a deserted hallway was likely the only place he was going to be able to talk to Azzy alone. He tugged her away into a winding passage off to the side of the main ballroom, gritting his teeth as he imagined the scandalized stare that Whitewater woman was probably still sending after them. He couldn’t deny that it was… amusing, to an extent. But he liked to avoid attention he wasn’t looking for at this kind of thing, and the last thing he needed was a jilted business-lover spreading around the fact that he’d pulled his date into a secret corner in the middle of an event. What was done was done, though, and he had to admit he hoped Whitewater felt sufficiently humiliated by the end of all that. Whatever it was.

Finally satisfied they were alone, he let go of Azzy-- careful not to let his hands linger a second longer than they had to-- and sighed, leaning against the wall with a slightly bemused smile. “What was that about? And why did it seem to have everything and nothing to do with me?”

Azure blew a stray curl from her face, absently rubbing her hip where he’d touched her with her opposite arm. The consequences of her actions appeared to be finally setting in, and her face was apologetic in that same way it was when she realized she’d started eating in massive bites at dinner instead of polite and small ones yet again. She looked almost bashful as she looked up at him. “Sorry Hotshot, I just...I don’t know, she started talkin’ about you like you were a thing instead of a person. I’m used to ‘em talkin’ about how hot you are, and that’s fine because it’s true at least, but no one’s ever said anythin’ like that about you right to my face before, it pissed me off.” She finally let her own hip go, shaking her hands to rid them of sparks and avoiding his eyes to avoid letting it be known just how honest she was about to be. “It’s rude, and it’s dehumanizin’, and I just believe real strongly that you deserve better than that.”

Trinity almost denied it, wanting to cite times he certainly had not deserved better, but the last thing he wanted was to open up that can of worms. The wound of his profiteering off that war-torn planet was still too fresh, his apology still somewhat inadequate. Instead, he just shook his head. “I know what you think, but whether that’s truly how I am or not, it’s how I’ve presented myself for years to these people. Besides, she practically called you a bumpkin to your face too, and I’m not sure you even noticed.” He felt something soften slightly inside him as he looked at his friend. She’d been defending him. God strike him down if he knew why. God would probably strike him down regardless.

She waved a hand, looking unaffected. “Who gives a shit about me? I am a bumpkin for all these people should care. But you’re…” she struggled, squinting her eyes and scrunching her freckled nose as the machinery of her mind ground its way to some kind of an end to her sentence that was eloquent. It failed. Instead, she came out with: “You’re cooler’n they are and they should admit it to themselves and act with some damn respect.”

Trinity tried and failed for several moments to hold himself together before he burst, doubling over with laughter. She’d never seen him laugh like this in person-- heard it, maybe, over a particularly good meme or something, but never like this, actual tears forming in his eyes. She grinned, wide and crooked, her job here complete. He slapped his knee, struggling to straighten back up. “Ah, Az. You’ve brought us full circle.” He wiped a hand over his eyes. “I give a shit about you. I am also what she said about me. And you are also ‘cooler’n’ them. Yes?”

Now suddenly she was bashful again. No one ever called her cool. Smart, maybe, or nice or even helpful sometimes, but never cool. She blushed. “Sure. At least I know how to act normal. Sorta. In comparison, at least.” Her hand reached up to scratch behind her ear, sympathy painting her features. “It’s a sad little life she’s about to lead. Honestly, I hope it’s what she actually wants or else she’s gonna be damn lonely without an actual someone to connect with.”

“It’s a sad life most of us lead,” was his only response. His face was turned slightly from her, into the shadows of the dark hallway, leaving his expression unreadable. “Sometimes there are things more important than our own happiness. Shall we?” He held out a hand, gesturing back down the hall towards the well-lit bustle of the ballroom. It struck Azzy that things in this world seemed to hide better among glitter and blinding lights than they did in the dark. Nevertheless, she placed her own hand gently in his.

“Now remember, act like you like me or else I might actually have to throw down one of these days.”

“Right, right.” Trinity huffed out a tiny little laugh, his fingers finding the skin of her hip once more. “As long as you’re alright with it.”

“I’m a bad actor, this is easier.” She leaned her head into his shoulder, wrapping her arm around his waist and leaning into him. “Plus, this way I don’t even have to stand up straight.”

18. A Dancer In Her Own Right

Her boots made a gentle beat against the hard metal of the floor. One step then another, sure of herself even as she looked in the opposite direction to her movement. There was a rhythm to her every sway, every object she tossed over her shoulder and caught in the other hand a step in a dance she was choreographing on the spot. Something from this drawer, cross the room to another cabinet, all of it swirling around that constant central point that was the examination table and her workbench. Watching her set up for a deep maintenance test was like witnessing a ballet. Her stretch for something off a high shelf was easy, graceful. She knew exactly how far everything was, exactly how many steps to get there. She carried the objects she collected as though they weighed nothing, a spring in her step the whole way.

Trinity sat on a counter as far out of her way as he could get, but he might as well not have been there at all, for all having another person in her space slowed her down. He couldn’t help but marvel a bit at the sureness of her movements, now that she was in a place entirely her own. In society and on a ballroom floor she stumbled occasionally, one might even assume she was clumsy. That thought would be long gone the moment they saw this dance, one made by and for her, the perfect combination of grace and power. Ballroom dances were as much for the observers as the dancers themselves, but being able to observe this felt like a privilege more than a right. Being allowed to appreciate this sight as an outsider, a friend but someone who would admit freely that he couldn’t even begin to understand her, was a gift. In this moment, Trinity relaxed, and let himself appreciate the organic yet mechanical beauty of her, without letting his brain get in the way. After all, dancing was supposed to be instinct above thought.

She held out a hand, and he automatically picked up a wrench that sat at his side, placing the handle in her palm. She took it without looking, and the dance went on. She vaulted casually onto a countertop like it was the most natural thing in the world, grabbing some gray box off a shelf near the ceiling and hopping down without a hint of hesitation, no signs of exhaustion as sparks flew in her wake. She made her way back to the center to drop both things off, to pick up something else, to continue this seemingly endless waltz. Individual curls of hair freed themselves from her braid, her beanie long discarded in favor of having the goggles she typically wore around her neck situated atop her head. She stopped briefly at the edge of her stage, only to map out a new path that carved the edges of the room from the center, a small bucket in hand to hold whatever things she needed as she went along. She needed a lot of trinkets and tools, and she knew what each of them were. She paused briefly in front of him, and pointed above his head. It took him a moment to insert himself into her rhythm again, then he knew what she wanted without words. He slid off the counter and held out his hands to make a step for her, boosting her up to whatever it was she needed to reach. She stepped lightly onto his outstretched hands, opening a cabinet and pulling a bottle down in the same motion as her descent back to the ground. She flashed him a grin, crooked and pleased. He heard a snippet of something she was humming to herself, low and sweet, her own orchestra to accompany her own dance.

Now that he was no longer needed for the moment, Trinity hopped back up on the counter, content to just watch her work in perfect harmony with herself.

#wip: babylon #writeblr #writers on tumblr #spilled ink #chapter update

6 notes · View notes

razieltwelve · 4 years

Text

Mistaken Identity (Final Effect)

Her Imperial Majesty Averia VII was overjoyed to hear that Supreme Admiral Blakey and her wife had just welcomed their first child into the world. However, the smile on her face froze the instant she caught sight of the happy couple and their child over the communications channel.

“Pardon me for one moment,” the empress murmured before calmly cutting the communications feed. “I’ll be back in a second.”

X X X

Supreme Admiral Blakey blinked. The empress was normally a very polite person, and she’d seemed perfectly happy right up until her gaze had landed on the baby cradled in Blakey’s arms. That baby had adorable cat ears, the same lilac eyes as Blakey... and pink hair of a very familiar shade.

Oh crap.

“What’s wrong?” her wife asked. “You look worried.”

Blakey looked at her wife... her wife with brown hair that wasn’t quite as dark as the black hair Blakey herself had. “I think the empress is going to murder one of her wives.”

“What?” her wife blurted. “Why?”

“You know how Claire, the bearer of Saviour, and I are like super good friends?” Blakey’s wife nodded. “Look at our daughter’s hair.”

“Oh crap.”

X X X

The first inkling that Claire had that her doom was imminent was when the normally unflappable imperial hedgehog accompanying her made a yelping sound and took one big step to the right. Ice erupted down the corridor, a tidal wave of raw cold that would have swept her off her feet and hurled her against the walls if she hadn’t immediately called on Saviour’s power.

The Semblance crushed the incoming attack, reducing the onslaught of Semblance-enhanced ice to a fine powder that swept past on either side of her without leaving so much as a strand of her hair out of place. The imperial hedgehog meanwhile was in the process of communicating with Lord Hedgeborough who had latched onto Averia’s leg but was having no luck in slowing her down at all as she stomped down the corridor.

“What did you do?” Averia growled. “I thought that mission you went on nine months ago in Alliance territory sounded a bit strange, but I never thought for a second that you’d... you’d... you’d...”

To Claire’s horror, Averia actually looked like she was about to cry. But then the sorrow faded and was replaced by pure, unbridled rage. Her Aura shook the corridor and sent tremors through the palace as Lord Hedgeborough abandoned his attempts to restrain her in his smaller form in favour of transforming and trying to grab her. However, the surge of power that came from the empress, along with the tendrils of ice that formed around her, was enough to drive even the mighty hedgehog back.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Claire replied. Mental alarm bells were ringing throughout her mind. Something was very, very wrong here. She had been about to join Averia in sending their congratulations to Supreme Admiral Blakey about the birth of her first child when this had happened. Wait. Was it something to do with that? “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” Averia hissed. “I just saw Blakey’s daughter, Claire. Tell me, if she has black hair and her wife has brown hair, but her child has pink hair - Farron pink hair! - what sort of conclusion should I draw?”

“Oh crap.” Claire had no idea how that had happened. “I know it looks bad, but that had absolutely nothing to do with me.”

“Then why is the girl’s hair pink, Claire?” Averia was so mad that the entire corridor had frozen around them. “I... I... I know you two have always been close, but we’re married. I’m supposed to be able to trust you, but then you go on a mission with her, and nine months later she has a pink-haired daughter? What other conclusion am I supposed to draw?”

Claire wracked her mind for an answer, but she was currently coming up blank. Thankfully, salvation was at hand. Lord Hedgeborough barged through the spires of ice and frost that blocked the corridor and all but threw Lumos Dia-Farron at them.

The Dia-Farron member of the Imperial Guard managed to land on his feet and promptly threw his hands up in front of him. “Please, don’t mangle me!” Like any sensible person, he was smart enough to worry about his safety when a fight between two such powerful people was involved. “But I think I can explain!”

Claire mentally promised to never, ever complain about his eccentricities again if he could get her out of this. “Please do.”

Lumos took a deep breath and then used Bag of Tricks to pull out a holographic projector that proceeded to display an elaborate family tree. “Like we always do, the Dia-Farron looked into the background of anyone marrying someone else important. Since Supreme Admiral Blakey is important, we also looked into the background of her wife. It turns out that she’s a distant descendant of Neopolitan from the Age of Heroes.”

“Wait...” Claire had already put together the pieces, but Averia was still too upset to think clearly.

“Yes. As you know, researchers believe that Neo’s Semblance was a distant shard of Saviour that had split off from the original Semblance and fused with a shard of Ragnarok long before the Age of Heroes. More importantly, it explained why Neo was one of the few people alive with Farron-pink hair who wasn’t actually a Farron.”

Averia blinked. The ice covering the corridor began to recede. “But... that was so long ago...”

“Neo’s genes are kind of a mess - it comes from being a weird hodge-podge of Saviour and Ragnarok genes. Frankly, it’s a miracle she wasn’t some kind of short-lived mutant although that likely explained her short stature. Due to her weird genetics, the genes for hair colour in many of her descendants, even some in this day and age, are complex, capable of expressing in a variety of different hair colours regardless of the hair colours of the parents. For instance, it’s not unheard of for some of her descendants to have completely pink hair but for their children to have dark hair, or for some to have dark hair but then have children...”

“With pink hair.” Averia took two steps and then staggered. She would have fallen if Lord Hedgeborough hadn’t caught her. “I... I am such an idiot.” She stared at her hands. “I can’t believe I just walked out here and attacked you, and...”

Claire could already see the empress beginning to sink into a cycle of self-loathing, so she did something that many a bearer of Saviour had done to foolish people over the years. She walked to the empress, took a moment to aim her attack, and then she chopped her over the head.

“Ouch!” Averia cried, clutching her head. “You hit me!”

“Yeah, I did.” Claire sighed. “So stop beating yourself up.” She saw the look in Averia’s eyes and pressed on. “Yes, we will talk about it, but we will talk about it later. Right now, we need to go back over there and finish congratulating Blakey on her child.” She paused. “Because she’s probably wondering if I’m still alive with the way you must have stormed out of there.”

X X X

Author’s Notes

Trust Neo to keep making trouble for her descendants centuries after she’s gone. In all seriousness though, there have always been rumours, some more credible than others, that Blakey and Claire are interested in each other romantically. Can you imagine how shocking it must have been to see Blakey’s kid with Farron-pink hair when neither Blakey nor her spouse have it and the timing on Claire’s mission matches perfectly? Yeah. Perfect recipe for trouble.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here. I’ve recently released two stories, Attempted Adventuring and Surviving Quarantine, as well as two audiobooks, Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Army of Golems and Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire. If you like humour, action, and adventure, be sure to check them out.

#final effect #fanfiction #averia vii #claire final effect #lord hedgeborough #lumos #blakey

12 notes · View notes

carryonsimoncarryonbaz · 4 years

Link

I was deeply affected by Wayward Son. I loved the book but there are a lot of scenes that have stayed with me since I finished reading it and listening to the audiobook. I want the backstory, to fill in the gaps, to know more about those moments that transfixed and viscerally affected me. I’m trying to process them through writing. It’s why I wrote If Only I Was Sure and A Sky Full of Stars. Both of those fics lightly touched on or referenced events of Chapter 17 of Wayward Son but this fic delves into that brief flashback more fully. This was difficult to write. But I had definite ideas of how I thought this scene went and I needed to get them out of my head. I’m still not over this book. Thank you for reading and I hope you like it. This was written as a birthday gift for @krisrix who endured many conversations about these scenes from me and who provided insight and support for my head canons.

Also I had quite a few thoughts about word choice, magic, and intimacy while I was writing this so expect a meta from me on that topic in the next day or so.

Why Can’t You See

Simon

I’m sitting on one end of the sofa and Baz is at the other end. He’s got his laptop out and he’s frowning at it while he taps at the keyboard.

I’ve got my book open but I can’t say I’ve gotten much reading done.

I’d far rather look at him.

I savor looking at Baz. Like this. When he can’t see me watching him, when my eyes can roam over him at will, can take in the sight of him freely without having to meet his answering gaze.

It’s easier this way.

After . . . after everything I just wanted to keep Baz close. I couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from him. It physically hurt every time he left the room. I wanted to hold his hand, feel the chill of his palm against mine, craved the sturdy sensation of his arm around my shoulders. It made me feel safe.

It made me feel real.

But it was bloody awful when he left to go back to Watford, to finish out the year.

There was never any doubt in my mind that he’d go. I’d have fought him if he’d tried to stay away.

I would have.

Watford is in his bones, his blood. It’s the last place he saw his mother.

It’s the last place he was . . . well, he thinks it’s the last time he has truly alive but I think that’s rot. He’s as alive as anyone.

The only thing that made my days tolerable, kept me from going mad each week, was knowing that Baz would arrive on Friday night.

Every Friday night.

Baz would come and he’d sit with me, let me lean into him and not expect me to say anything, not expect me to do anything other than exist.

I’m still existing. Barely.

It all feels like a dream sometimes. Or a nightmare. What happened. The end of the Humdrum. The end of the war.

The Mage.

The end of me. Of magical me, I suppose. I’m still here, but I’m pretty much a shell of what I was. Of who I was.

I’m empty. Of magic. Of power. Of purpose.

It’s like I’ve changed places with the Humdrum. Now I’m the empty one.

I don’t know how to fill the hole left in me.

I don’t know how to be like this.

I go to class. I do my school work.

Well, some days I do my work.

Some days I don’t do anything at all.

What’s the point, really? What’s the point of getting a degree? It’s not like I’m going to find a job, looking like this. Being like this.

With wings and a tail and mad sword skills but not much else.

I don’t know. I try not to think about it but it doesn’t work that way for me anymore.

I can’t stop thinking.

Mostly I think about Baz. About us. About what he means to me.

I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I mean, I love Penny, but this is different.

This is a fire in my soul.

And I want him.

Baz is too far away right now. He’s just on the far end of the sofa but it could be a million miles away as far as I’m concerned.

I want him closer.

But he’s got work to do for class and so do I. I can’t help stretching out my legs and tucking my toes under his thigh, though.

It helps me believe this is real.

To feel him—solid, present, a slight chill to him when I make contact. He doesn’t fade into mist when I touch him.

He’s real.

And somehow, he’s still mine.

Baz turns my way now, a soft smile brightening his face.

That’s the smile he saves for me.

I never knew this side of Baz Pitch. I never knew the tenderness that lay hidden beneath that finely curated façade.

Not until Christmas. Not until after .

I smile in response and then drop my eyes back down to my book. There’s only so long I can let him look at me like that.

Like I’m more than I am.

I’m not.

Not anymore.

And I can’t face that in his eyes. I know that if he looks long enough, if he really looks, he’ll see me.

Me. Simon Snow. The washed-up failure of a Chosen One.

A Normal with magical parts. A weird freak of a hybrid who doesn’t belong in the magical world and is far too odd for the Normal world.

I don’t fit. I don’t fit anywhere.

I thought I fit with Baz. There are moments I think I still do, moments when we’re soft and it’s just the two of us and the world fades away.

Baz still thinks we fit. That we match.

We don’t. Not anymore.

(Maybe we never did)

But we certainly don’t anymore, no matter how hard I wish it.

No matter how hard I try to make myself fit.

There are moments, moments when Baz looks at me—when I see the love shining in his eyes, feel the touch of his skin against mine, feel his fingers in my hair, his lips sliding against my own—that I think maybe. Maybe it’s enough.

But then I remember.

And I know it never will be.

It will never be what we had . I’ll never be able to be with him that way again. I don’t mean be with him in a sexual way.

I mean, I do mean that, in a way.

Sharing magic is intimate. It’s the most intimate experience I’ve ever had. I can’t help but imagine how sex would deepen that intimacy—how magic would enhance it, strengthen it, intensify the moment.

Not that I’d know.

Baz and I haven’t had sex. Not really.

Not yet.

But I’ve thought about it. Not going to lie about that. I’ve thought about it a lot.

I have moments when I think I’m ready to take the next step, to move to the next level with Baz. When I want it so much.

And then I think there’ll always be something lacking. It will never have that intensity without magic.

Because I’m not magic.

I can’t give that sensation back to Baz. He was giddy, exhilarated, drunk with it that night in our room. It was the most enchanting, mesmerizing thing I’d ever seen.

It was beautiful and we shared it. Together.

I’d gladly relive that moment over and over.

But it can’t ever be like that again.

That’s what I’m afraid of.

That no matter how good it is, it will never measure up to what it could have been .

With magic.

And in that moment, Baz will see what he’s missing. He’ll see me for what I am.

Less.

Lacking.

Broken.

I don’t want to be seen that way. It’s better not to be seen at all.

But I still want. I want him so much.

Kissing Baz is like completing a circuit. It makes me feel whole. Like I felt when I shared my magic. When I inexplicably trusted him with it, with me .

When Baz trusted me back. Trusted me enough to let me push my magic into him. I didn’t ask. I didn’t really think. I just did it.

I did it because it felt right.

I didn’t know what could happen. I did it anyway. And he let me do it.

Every time. I just reached out and touched him and pushed until the magic poured out of me. I let him take what he needed.

My magic felt stable when I was with Baz, when he was directing it, when he was with me that way.

He’s still with me, but not like that.

It’ll never be like that.

It’s like having a dud firework. There’s a spark but it never goes off. You never get the glorious ending you’re expecting.

I’ve no experience with any of this. It’s not like I really know what to expect.

Not that Baz does. He hadn’t even kissed anyone before last Christmas.

So I suppose we’re a match of sorts in our inexperience.

I’d kissed Agatha, of course, but that was never even close to what I felt when I kissed Baz for the first time. Or the second.

Or every time since.

I didn’t really think about sex when I was with her. Not the way I do with Baz. I don’t know—maybe I was too caught up in all that was going on to let myself think about it.

Maybe I was too worried I’d go off.

Maybe I just wasn’t attracted to Agatha the way I am to Baz.

There is no question I’m attracted to Baz. I’m just as much of a moron as he always said I was, for not realizing sooner.

For not seeing that there was so much more to my obsession than just trying to figure out what he was plotting.

Wondering what his hair felt like or appreciating his muscular thighs definitely had nothing to do with plotting .

It was well gay, is what it was. I can see that now. And I’m fine with it. I am.

It’s the one thing I’m sure of, how much I love Baz.

It’s the only thing that breaks through the static in my head. It’s what gets me through the day.

Loving Baz is what’s keeping me afloat.

Everything about him. His voice, his scent, the way he says my name, the smile he saves just for me.

I love touching him. I love running my fingers through his hair, feeling his skin against mine, making him sigh that way he does.

Watching his eyes go half-lidded with pleasure, his head tilting back, hair mussed and tumbled. Because of me. Because of what I’m doing to him.

I can do that. I can make him feel good. Sometimes it’s enough to distract him from focusing on me.

There are moments that I touch Baz and I don’t want to stop. I want my hands to speak for me, to say the things I can’t. To show him the love that’s in my heart, that burns in my soul.

I don’t want him to stop touching me then, when I feel like I could go off from the sensations he brings to me, that I could go supernova.

But I can’t do it. I pull back. I can’t feel the flames of my magic licking under his skin and I want to.

I want to.

But it’s not there and all he’ll see is me looking back at him, blank and empty. And I can’t do it. I pull away, retreat into myself.

I’m not pushing him away. I’m just pulling back.

Sometimes it’s more than that. Sometimes I do recoil from his touch. It makes me feel too much. It’s as if he’s cracking me wide open, seeing every part of me. All that’s hidden.

The broken parts.

That frightens me.

There’s not much that scares me, really. But seeing the reality of myself reflected in Baz’s eyes does.

I know it hurts him when I pull away. I see the distress. The concern. The way his touches turn feather light, tentative, cease completely. How he retreats.

There’s never pity. Not yet, at least.

I want to touch him now. I want to tuck his hair behind his ears and pull his face to mine and snog him senseless.

I want to touch his body, warm his skin, light a fire in his veins, make him feel my love—every pounding heartbeat of it.

Let him know he is the centre of my world, even if my lips can’t speak the words.

I would cross every line for him. If I could.

Baz stays over some nights. I usually sleep better when he’s here. I don’t have as many nightmares.

Nothing calms me like the sound of his breathing. I missed having another person in the room the first few weeks after we moved in.

I wanted to tell him. I wanted him to stay. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and imagine we were back at Pitch Manor. Back when things were good. When things were magical.

When I was magical.

He does stay, some nights. He’d stay every night if I asked him but I don’t.

I think that would be too much. Too much for me.

The more he stays over the more . . . the more we experiment. Take small steps to being more intimate.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

With me setting the pace.

Each time he stays we get closer . . . closer to something. And each time my anxiety ratchets up higher and higher and I pull away and we take a few steps back.

And then I want him so much and things heat up again and I just can’t do it. It’s not his fault. It’s me.

But I know he thinks he’s doing something wrong.

I don’t know how to tell him that everything feels right and everything feels wrong and I can’t tell the difference sometimes.

Not until I do. And then I have to stop.

I look at him right now and it makes my chest ache.

I want him to stay tonight.

I want him.

Read the rest at ao3.

#carry on #wayward son #simon snow #baz pitch #snowbaz #chapter 17 #my fic #my writing

55 notes · View notes

veroticker · 4 years

Text

Bitter rivals - J Sterling

You can buy the book on Amazon.

Summary (from J Sterling’s website)

They say you always want what you can't have. And what I want is Julia La Bella. I'm supposed to hate her with every fiber of my being, but I'll let you in on a little secret.... I don't. Not even close. The woman is stunning. She's also a colossal pain in my- you know what- but even that turns me on.

Julia's my number one competitor in the wine industry and she also happens to live next door. Not a good combination for a guy who's been told to "stay away from her" his whole life. Our parents can't stand each other; a bitter, outdated rivalry with no end in sight. Which doesn't fare well for my heart. Or my loins. Yeah, I went there.

I want her. I've always wanted her. So how am I going to convince her to see me as the super hot, smart, irresistible guy next door, instead of the one person on earth she's supposed to despise? I'm not entirely sure, but we're about to find out.

Wish me luck.

Blurb

““Look at the number of women standing there fawning all over him,” my assistant and best friend since grade school said, her head shaking, as she pointed a finger at my archnemesis across the room. “I’m actually embarrassed to be female right now.”

I pushed her arm down before he noticed and did something mortifying in response, like inform the entire room that I was in love with him or something. I wouldn’t put it past him. James Russo loved to embarrass and humiliate me. He’d been doing it since high school.

“Jeanine! Don’t draw his attention toward us. And I don’t want to look at him, or his fan club.” I groaned even though it was a lie, and she damn well knew it.

James Russo had grown up to be one hell of a gorgeous man. And I absolutely wanted to check him out, maybe even lose myself in a dirty fantasy or two, but I couldn’t admit that part. At least, not out loud. I was supposed to loathe his very existence. Despising James was as much a part of my DNA as my dark hair and Italian heritage.

“You totally want to look at him,” she teased. “Maybe then you’ll see how often he looks at you.”

Pivoting on my brand-new high heel, I turned to face my soon-to-be-former best friend if she didn’t pull it together, “James Russo does not look at me any more than I look at him. We hate each other, and you know this. You’ve always known this. He is the world’s worst human. If there were an award for it, he’d win. Why are you being so weird? Are you drunk?” I glanced around her at our stash of wine bottles still firmly in place on the ground, checking to make sure none were empty.

If anyone knew how much James and I couldn’t stand one another, it was Jeanine. She had grown up with the two of us, had been fully aware of our families’ mutual war, and had been caught in the middle of it on more than one occasion. While she sometimes placated me with subtle jabs and insults in James’s honor, she usually played the role of peacekeeper—or at least, she tried.

“I just wonder when you two will bury the hatchet, is all,” she said for, like, the fourteen thousandth time since we’d been born.

“Never,” I said, giving her the exact same response that I always had.

Burying the hatchet wasn’t an option in my family. Even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, it wasn’t allowed. My dad would disown me completely and make me change my last name before he ever forgave a Russo.

Glancing across the competition space, I spotted James, his dark hair framing his two-week-old stubble as he smiled at a group of women, who, instead of working their own wine booths, looked all too willing to leave and take him to bed if he asked. Not that I cared what James did in his bed or with whom, but damn that facial hair. It would be the death of me. I’d spent one too many nights dreaming of the way it would feel as he dived between my thighs or as he kissed me, brushing across my cheek. That man sure knew how to keep his beard in check—always perfectly trimmed, fading just right toward the top where it met his hairline. It annoyed me as much as it turned me on, which was saying a lot since he was the most annoying human in existence.

“You’ve got a little drool right there.” Jeanine nudged me with her arm, pointing at the corner of her mouth, and I snarled.”

(review under the cut)

Review

(audiobook) It’s a Romeo&Juliet’s type of story: man and woman are from families who’ve hated each other for generations, and they get warnings from their parents that they should never interact. Of course, Fate and Cupid have other plans.

I liked that the story took place in vineyards--and they live next to each other and are rivals in wine making. There aren’t too many details, but there’s some talk about making good wines that got me dying to try them.

Also, as a first, it’s the man who’s been pining for the woman all those years. He’s so in love it’s embarassing.

Very good narration, as usual with those narrators.

The story is an enemies to lovers without all the angst. Yes, there’s the feud, and some miscommunication along the years, but they basically love each other from the start and they just need to find a way to resolve the feud. Once they decide to go out, they make a perfect couple--that the whole town is rooting for!

And you’ll do too, because they’re the sweetest people together.

Quickie

Series: standalone

Hashtags: #enemies-to-lovers #wine #family feud

Triggers: mild family abuse

Main couple: Julia La Bella & James Russo

Hotness: 4/5

Romance: 5/5

+ I want to taste all those delicious wines...

- such a ridiculous reason for a feud

Stalker mode

You can suscribe to J Sterling’s newsletter on her website.

You can also follow her on Facebook.

#J Sterling #Bitter rivals #contemporary romance

1 note · View note

thinkingaboutyoungroyals · 5 years

Note

During a conversation Cyrus decides came out to Amber, saying that he already had a crush on Jonah. She supports him and in the middle of the conversation she says that her brother also likes boys, but he does not know that she knows it. She nows that He has a crush on Cyrus but does not comment on Cyrus at all. The next day Amber will meet Cyrus at edit of the school and Tj appears asking what she is doing there and it is at that moment that Cyrus perecebe that Tj is the Amber's brother.

Hope this is okay! I made a slight deviation from the original prompt.

Cyrus nonchalantly sipped his milkshake as he scanned The Spoon for the waitress he had been trying to see. He had a self-help audiobook that she wanted to borrow so he decided to come by and drop it off.

Finally, Amber emerged from the kitchen, hands full with a tray of food. He waved to her and she caught his eye. She smiled and mouthed, “One minute” before heading to a table of guests.

He waited, simply enjoying his solitude and the delicious milkshake. Both Buffy and Andi were still weird around each other so Cyrus made up an excuse to not hang out with either of them that day. He loved them both and wanted them to get along again but they were truly stressing him out. So a rare day to himself was quite enjoyable.

“Hey.” Amber slid into the seat in front of him, looking exhausted. “I’m so tired, oh my god. I’ve been working since opening and it’s only been four hours and I already feel like a zombie!”

“When’s your break?” Cyrus asked, feeling bad for her.

“I’m taking it now,” she replied, smiling. “So, how are you?”

He shrugged. “As good as I can be, I suppose. Oh, wait, here’s that audiobook you wanted to borrow.”

He picked up the disk next to his almost empty plate of baby taters and handed it to her.

“You are the sweetest!” Amber squealed as she took it. “Honestly, you’re the best. How you still don’t have a girlfriend is a mystery.”

Cyrus looked down at this milkshake, nervously twirling the straw.

“Are you okay? Did I say something?”

He didn’t know what it was. Maybe her gentle voice that was genuinely worried? Maybe the fact that he hadn’t had a proper talk with his actual best friends about his own feelings in a while?

Sometimes, he felt like his own stuff were always pushed to the sidelines. He always had to pretend to be the strong one. The one who had it all together when in truth, he was a mess on the inside.

Amber may not be a therapist, but Cyrus felt that he could trust her.

“I’m… not really a… girlfriend… kind of guy,” he started, avoiding her eyes.

It took a beat or two but Amber let out an “Oh…”

A moment of silence.

“Boyfriend, then?”

Cyrus felt his lips twitched and he finally looked up. How relieved he was to see Amber smiling, not looking at him strangely or different. Just… normal.

“Well… I don’t have one, that I can tell you for sure,” he said, half-jokingly. “I mean… my last crush didn’t exactly go so well. I mean, I’ve over it but… you know.”

She nodded in understanding. “Was he cute at least?”

Cyrus couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yes. You know him.” He hesitated before adding, “Jonah.”

Amber’s eyes widened before she giggled. “Seriously, who doesn’t have a crush on that boy?”

Cyrus shrugged. “It’s the dimples.”

“Definitely the dimples!” Amber agreed, grinning. “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re both over him, aren’t we?”

“Totally!”

“Completely!”

The two laughed together and it felt nice. This was the exact kind of conversation he always wanted with Andi. Just the two of them talking about their mutual like for Jonah. Andi was always one step ahead of him in that regard, but still, it would have been nice to talk about boys… like it was normal.

“This makes me want to set you up with my brother,” Amber suddenly said.

Blushing but feeling flattered, Cyrus shook his head. “Nah, I’m… I’m good. I… kinda like someone right now.”

“Ooohh, really?” Amber leaned forward, excitedly. “Do tell!”

“It’s nothing huge, it’s just a silly crush. I’m not even planning on making a move or anything. Plus, he’s completely straight. Like a pole.”

Amber hummed. “That’s disappointing. Well, anyway, if you change your mind, let me know.” She winked.

Cyrus released the straw he had been playing with. “So… your brother’s gay?”

Amber nodded. “Yeah. Well, it’s more of a hunch but I’m leaning towards ‘yes’. He’s never been interested in girls and… well… there’s this guy that he won’t shut up about, lately. It’s kind of annoying, honestly.” She laughed, fondly. “He’s so smitten, I can tell. He hasn’t said anything, though. I think he’s scared.” Her face fell at this. “He doesn’t know that I know and I… kind of wish he’d trust me a little on it.”

Cyrus smiled and reached out across the table to pat her hand. “He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

“Yeah…” Amber returned the smile, gratefully before standing up. “Anyway, I should be getting back to work.” She picked up the audiobook. “Thanks for this, by the way. I’ll return it when I’m done.”

“Sure, thing!”

“Thanks, Cyrus!”

And with that, Amber went back to work and Cyrus went back to finishing his meal.

……….

A week passed and the whole thing was pushed to the back of Cyrus’ mind. He went about his days at school like normal – going to his classes and hanging out with his friends during breaks.

When Amber texted him one day asking if she could stop by the Middle School on her way to work to drop off his audiobook, he didn’t think much about it and agreed.

The blonde was waiting for him by the entrance, the audiobook in her hands.

“Thank you, again,” she said, handing it to him.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, stuffing it into his book bag. “Did you like it?”

“It was very helpful! Do you have another one I can borrow?”

“Sure, I can drop it off at The Spoon this week.”

“You’re amazing!”

“Yeah, well…”

“Sis? What are you doing here?” a new voice joined them.

New yet familiar.

Cyrus’ mouth fell open when T.J. walked up to them, looking confused.

Meanwhile, Amber smiled and gave him a little wave. “Hey, Teej. I’m just dropping something off for my friend here.”

“S-Sis?” Cyrus managed, looking from one to the other.

“Yeah, this is my baby brother, T.J. You know him?”

T.J.’s mouth fell open as he turned red. “Amber! Stop with the baby brother stuff!”

Amber smirked. “But you are my baby brother.”

“W-Wait…” Cyrus’ head was spinning with the sudden revelation. “T.J. is your brother? That brother?”

“You were talking about me behind my back?!” T.J. screeched.

“I always talk about you behind your back,” Amber replied, pointedly before turning to Cyrus. “Yes… that brother.” She cocked her head to the side, thoughtfully. “Now that I think about it… does he call you ‘Underdog’?”

“Amber!”

“Um… yes?”

The blonde girl’s smile widened, almost scarily so. “I see. Well, this was a productive day. I’d love to stay and chat more but I gotta get to work. Teej, pick me up at 7, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. See you later, Sis.”

She sent them both flying kisses before flipping her hair as she turned around practically skipped away.

Meanwhile, the two boys stood there, both equally awkward and embarrassed.

So… T.J. was Amber’s gay brother. He wasn’t the straight as a pole heterosexual male Cyrus thought he was before.

Hope brimmed in his chest. He didn’t know whether to like it or loathe it.

But, wait, Amber said there was someone T.J. wouldn’t shut up about, lately. Was it him? She did ask him if her brother had ever called him “Underdog”. So, obviously, T.J. talked about him to his sister.

But, wait, just because T.J. was gay, too, didn’t mean that he liked him back. Cyrus hadn’t even come out to him yet! So he wouldn’t know that Cyrus was gay, too.

“Um, sorry about my sister, she’s so annoying.” T.J. nervously chuckled. “Siblings, am I right?”

Cyrus wouldn’t know, he was an only child. But, he nodded, anyway.

“So…uh… she talked about me?”

Cyrus smiled to himself. “A little.”

“Probably embarrassing stuff. Ugh, I’m so gonna get her back for that. And I’m talking green hair dye in her shampoo.”

At his annoyed tone, Cyrus couldn’t help but chuckle. “Your sister really cares about you, you know,” he said, instead.

T.J. blushed and coughed. “I… care about her too. But if you tell her, I’m denying it!” he added.

Chuckling, Cyrus shook his head.

They really were siblings. It made sense, now that he thought about it. Still surprising. But, definitely explained quite a lot.

“Anyway, I gotta head to work so I’ll see you-.”

“Are you doing anything this Saturday?” Cyrus blurted out.

T.J. froze and stared at him.

A lump was beginning to form in Cyrus’ throat. “’Cause I was wondering if… you’d like to go see a movie or something?”

To his surprise, T.J.’s cheeks turned red. And all of a sudden, he was smiling up to his ears.

“Yeah!” he exclaimed, looking like an excited puppy with his tail wagging behind him. “I’d like that! I… I mean… Yeah, that’s cool.”

His smile was addictive. Cyrus couldn’t stop his own lips from upturning as he was filled with excitement.

“It’s a date!” he replied, happily.

A beat too late, he realized what he said. But, T.J. didn’t seem to notice as he continued smiling at him.

“Text me the details?” he asked.

Cyrus nodded.

“Great! I’ll see you around!”

The athlete patted his shoulder before turning on his heels and walking away. Cyrus continued to look at him and had to giggle.

T.J. was bouncing. It was the most adorable sight Cyrus had ever seen.

And not only that, he had a date with T.J.! He felt like bouncing, himself.

#tyrus #tyrus fanfic

536 notes · View notes

rippergiles · 5 years

Text

I was tagged by: @51kas81 , thanks!

1. Nickname - a bastardization of my last name has led to Chandi/Chondles/etc. I’m pretty sure I’m still The Great Hambino in @imawifethat‘s phone

2. Gender - (vaguely feminine squiggly line)

3. Star sign - Aries

4. Height - 5′7, 5′8, somewhere in there

5. Time - 10:45pm when I started this, I got distracted so it’s 11:32 now

6. Birthday - April 5

7. Fave bands - Louden Swain is the constant. The Whomping Willows when it comes to wrock. Been listening to a lot of Bastille as I finished my fic because I realized the “Bad Blood” album fits that relationship well, haha.

8. Fave solo artists - Dessa, Hank Green (though I love everything Hank does not just his music)

9. Song stuck in your head - the RWBY theme song because I just caught up to see Blake and Yang hold hands!!!!

10. Last movie watched - Beautiful Boy

11. Last show watched - RWBY if webseries count. Otherwise, Masterchef Junior.

12. When did I create my blog - It would appear my current earliest posts are from February of 2011. I know I deleted some really old ones when I organized my blog so there might be a few months before then when I was around.

13. What do I post – Buffyverse, Harry Potter, Supernatural, Doctor Who

14. Last thing I googled - "The Last Werewolf” which is supposed to be a sexy werewolf novel where the audiobook is narrated by Robin Sachs. It feels on brand for me right now, was just deciding whether to buy it.

15. Do you have any blogs - Besides this one? I have one where we posted GISHWHES items and one where I test out new themes before putting them here, haha

16. Do you get asks - occasionally

17. Why did you choose your url - hahahahahaha

18. Following blogs - 381 but so many of those are inactive now :(

19. Followers - 1099 but so many of the newest ones are just porn bots...not sure what tumblr was hoping to accomplish but it didn’t work.

20. Favourite colour - purple or green

21. Average hours of sleep – like 6 during the week because I have to wake up early for my job but I also make bad decisions like stay up reading fanfic mindlessly scrolling social media. Usually more like 8-9 on weekends.

22. Piercings - yeah, two in each earlobe plus an industrial bar in my cartilage

23. Instruments - I am a talentless fool

24. What I’m wearing - a t-shirt and underwear.

25. How many blankets do you sleep with - one

26. Dream Job – Oooh. Can I run like a cool animal sanctuary or something?

27. Dream trip - I’d like to visit Cairo or Athens or Rome. Somewhere with lots of history.

28. Fave food - most forms of potatoes. Pasta. Fried plantains.

29. Nationality - American

30. Current fave song - How do you pick just one? “Call Off Your Ghost” by Dessa “Marilyn Hanson” by Hank Green “Non-Stop” from Hamilton “Overachiever” by Louden Swain “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie “Hurricane” by Thirty Seconds to Mars “Blister in the Sun” by Violent Femmes “Wolfstar” by The Whomping Willows “This Year” by The Mountain Goats “Rasputin” by Boney M

and I’m tagging everyone! Go forth!

#tag game

16 notes · View notes

himluv · 6 years

Text

Blogland!

I can’t believe it, but May has come and gone. Hello June! This morning, as I stepped into my office my bare toes found rays of sunshine that were so warm I smiled. That’s a simple joy, a promise of summer and the warmth to come over the next couple months, and I am here for it!

Now then, what the heck happened in May?

May Goals

Write 500 words/day for The Steel Armada

Write 2 chapters for Sanctuary

Continue short story submissions

Keep reading

How’d I do?

Write 500 words/day for The Steel Armada

YES!!!!! I wrote a total of 15,758 words for The Steel Armada this month. That’s just over 500 words a day. Now, I didn’t actually sit down every day, but I did write more this month than I have any other month this year.

Write 2 chapters for Sanctuary

Nope. I finished chapter 3 and started chapter 4, but that was it. Just under 1,000 words total for the month on this project.

Continue short story submissions

Yeppers. Lifelike is still out (day 41!), and I just received another rejection on The Cost of Rain this morning. Don’t worry, I just turned around and sent it out to another magazine. No tears over here!

Keep reading

Slowly but surely. According to Goodreads, I read four titles this month. Not great, but I’ll take it.

Total May Word Count: 18,545

I kept May’s goals straightforward because I wasn’t confident in my ability to meet my word count goals. But, I did well! I’m really proud of myself.

During this month I wrote a ton, outlined some chapters, and had a heck of a time corralling ideas into something cohesive. This rewrite is a wild ride, and for now I’m following wherever the characters lead me. I think I’m starting to see how it all gels together, but I won’t know for sure until I get there. Scary stuff, but fun too.

Oh, Sanctuary, I’m so sorry I didn’t get more work done on you. I may have to admit that this project is going to take longer than I initially planned. As long as I finish it this year, that’s fine, but a part of me was really hoping to knock this one out quick.

I did write a couple tumblr drabbles this month, which padded my word count a bit, but they were good fun and had good responses from readers, so yay!

Short story submissions are trucking along. I have a couple thoughts for blog posts about this process so far, so that will probably go up sometime in June.

Reading has ground to a bit of a standstill as I’m caught in a battle of wills with The Master Magician. I’m having a really tough go of it, but I only have 70 pages left. I’m going to make an effort today and tomorrow to just get it over with.

Honorable Mentions?

I’m wracking my brain to think if there were any extra-curricular activities this month. I’ve been table top gaming with my husband and our good friend Ben. One such game saw me acting as the “Game Master” for the very first time. I was nervous, but I had a blast, and I’m definitely considering running a game as a nice storytelling alternative when I need a break from blank pages and condemning cursors.

The blog had its best month EVER this month! Here, have some stats!

Posted 11 blog posts; 4 Weekly Goals Summaries, 3 Book Reviews, 2 Editing Check-Ins, 1 Monthly Recap, and 1 personal post about my laptop.

525 views, with 406 visitors!

Links were clicked 14 times!

7 comments were left!

8 new followers!

This blog is a tiny thing, a determined little tank engine of a site that keeps chugging along despite its relatively low viewership and interaction. There are plenty of writing blogs that have thousands of followers and a number of views that would make my head spin. But that isn’t this blog. And that’s fine. I initially created this site as a place to hold myself accountable and to share my writing experiences. This year, I’m finally doing that. And book reviews, random thoughts, and opinions on fandom and fanfiction.

This consistency in posts is proving itself in the blog’s stats this year. Expect a post about it around the end of June, a sort of six month update.

Madhu and I have been going on biweekly Walk ‘n’ Talks. She’s a morning person, so we usually hit a local park around 9/9:30, before the masses, and march about talking about our books. We hash out any foggy areas in one another’s feedback and I tend to do a lot of brainstorming/thinking out loud when I’m with her. Plus, I need motivation to do more activity out of doors. I’ve been a bit of a hermit this month.

Which brings us to June.

June’s To-Dos

Write 500 words/day on The Steel Armada

Write chapters 4 and 5 of Sanctuary

Continue short story submissions

Keep reading!

Straightforward worked last month, why change it? I am upping my workload on Sanctuary, mainly because I don’t want to sit on this project forever. I’d really like to have both The Steel Armada and Sanctuary done by November so I can work on something new for NaNoWriMo this year.

Short story submissions will continue until the stories find homes. It sort of feels like cheating making it a goal for the month, but I suspect that, as the rejections pile up, it will be harder and harder to convince myself to carry on. So, I keep it on the board. That way I’ll be reminded and determined to keep submitting.

And the reading. We all know by now that writing and reading go hand in hand. What’s the phrase? Can’t stop, won’t stop! Also, a quick shout out to the lovely folks that left series recommendations on my review for Skin Game. I’ve got the first Vampire Files audiobook on hold, as well as the first book in the Peter Grant series. I appreciate you both, and can’t wait to try these stories out!

As for non-writing/reading plans in June… I got pretty much nothing. Which is wonderful. We’re supposed to start playing Gloomhaven this month, which I can’t wait for. I’m trying to keep myself spoiler-free for this game, but what little I’ve heard about it sounds very, very exciting.

Um… other than that, yard work, a couple of nebulous hiking plans, and catching the Farmer’s market on Saturdays. That’s all I got, but it’s wonderful.

Happy June, everyone.

The Recap – May 2018 Blogland! I can't believe it, but May has come and gone. Hello June! This morning, as I stepped into my office my bare toes found rays of sunshine that were so warm I smiled.

#Blogging #Book Reviews #Books #Editing #goals #goodreads #Reading #Rewriting #Short Stories #stats #Submissions #word counts #Writing

4 notes · View notes

arabellaflynn · 6 years

Text

I finally caved and bought myself a pair of magic earplugs. I murder earbuds. I spent the years 1999-2016 inclusive destroying pair after pair of earbuds by getting the cord wrapped around something, or the bud caught under a heavy thing in the bottom of my bag, and yanking. I'm moderately fussy about earbuds in the same way I'm moderately fussy about shampoo -- which is to say, not very, but I do need something at least one step above cheap. My very favorite ones were Sony MDR-E9s, which were $10 a pair for a good ten years, and were absolutely everywhere until Sony broke my heart by discontinuing them. I ruined about a pair a month, on average. RIP, all my pretty blue earbuds. I graduated to Bluetooth earbuds when I got tired of knocking headphones off my noggin when practicing with my hoops. I tried braiding the wires (and at one point the actual Sansa Clip MP3 player) into my hair, but there's no way to do that and also keep the pads on or the earbuds in while I'm moving. You have no idea how much time you spend untangling yourself from your goddamn headphone cords until you don't have to do it anymore. Not having a tether always running from my head to my bag got me down from $10 a month to $35-40 once or twice a year, which was nice. They survive me long enough for the battery or USB port to flake out, which as cheap as I am, is about six months. Generally I got the ones with a wire linking the two buds. Acesori is nice for the (very low) price, as is Phaizer. (The magnetic backs are a nice touch -- they're meant to stick to each other when you wear them around your neck, but the buds are light enough that they'll also stick to, like, the fridge, or the side of my clothing rack, even with the USB charge cable hanging off of them.) I wanted the magical musical earplugs, but when I started looking around for them, AirPods were $160 when you tried to buy them without an iPhone attached. That's about $120 more than any sane person ought to be paying for a set of tiny speakers, no matter how snazzy they are. No. Just, no. I finally drove another set of Phaizers into the ground, so I went looking around on Amazon, and lo and behold, true wireless earbuds are down in the $35-40 range now. I have trouble convincing myself to spend money on just about anything, but I really do use these things every single day, and I go mad without a music player, so I gritted my teeth and clicked the order button. My main thought is, "I'm gonna lose these damn things someday." MicroSD cards have already gotten down to the point where you could accidentally insufflate the equivalent of the Library of Congress, and I have several times had to play hot-and-cold with my earbuds to find where I put the fucking phone down. ("My podcast is still running, it has to be in the house somewhere.") Now I have little plastic things smaller than my thumb joint that are streaming music into my ears from my tablet, that is... somewhere on the bed? And running Google Play Music, so it's actually spooling data from servers in, I have no idea, California? Iowa? The Marianas Trench? Who knows. It just finished playing something Samira Saïd recorded in Arabic like twenty years ago. I'm training myself to put them back into the case every single time I take them out of my ears. I've made it like three days and I still know where both of them are. So far, so good. I bought these, if anyone cares. I have no idea why they all insist they are for iPhone/Samsung; Bluetooth is Bluetooth, and they play fine with a really rather nice Lenovo IdeaPad Touch, a perfectly acceptable Kindle Fire 7, and an Alcatel OneTouch "smartphone" that rides the short bus to phone school. The case is also the charger; each bud is supposed to get 3-4 hours of play on a 45 mAh battery, with an additional 650 mAh reservoir in the case, which should be enough to cope even with me. They're about 98% as awesome as I thought they would be. The sound quality is solidly "$35 earbuds". They're not hyperintelligent Bose noise-canceling studio headphones. You are not going to master an album on these. On the other hand, they're pretty good earplugs -- that's how they stay in place. Any drivers with halfway decent bass response are going to sound pretty good when you jam them directly into your ear canals. The tannoy on the T sounds like the grown-ups in the Charlie Brown cartoons when I have them in, but the tannoy on the T sounds mostly like that when I have them out, too. The important part is that I can hear my music, and I cannot hear the conversation you're having on your speakerphone in the middle of the train car about that embarrassing medical condition, and that's all I care about. The downside is that they are not especially robust, and they're too small to have any controls on the earbud itself. The ones with the linking wire have the charge port/battery/buttons on one bud and I'm pretty sure the Bluetooth module is in the other; these have to have a Bluetooth chip and battery in each earplug, which doesn't leave a lot of room for anything else, so the only control on the earbuds themselves is a single click button. One click on either bud for play/pause, and press-hold to turn them on or off individually. You have to do everything else on the actual widget that is streaming the audio. I know most people are already staring at their phones all the time, but mine doth not internet, so it's usually in my bag, and I have to dig it out to skip a song. The earbuds have a very anxious-preoccupied attachment style with respect to the phone, and hate intervening walls, but I suspect I probably could have solved that issue by spending another $10 on them. In theory, they're Class III devices, which should have a range of about 10 meters, but in practice they're twitchy and have no real shielding, so if there's anything weird like power lines or catenary wires around, they get more like 5-10 feet. I shouldn't ever be farther from my bag than that, but still. The most interesting glitch is one I didn't expect. Instead of both pairing with the device, one bud pairs with the device, then the second bud pairs with the first. If there's any lag at all -- because, I don't know, the impedance of my head has suddenly changed? -- the audio gets ever so slightly out of sync. Like, milliseconds. It's not noticeable at all with music, where the stereo field tends to be wide and the background very busy, but it makes audiobooks or podcasts sound odd. If it's not specifically done as a radio drama, voice-only things tend to be recorded as if they're mono, from a single mic with no spatial orientation, but mixed down as two identical stereo channels, because everything expects stereo nowadays and it's easier than trying to dig through the menus for that one weird setting. The result is a voice track that seems to originate from a source that's "nowhere"/somewhere the middle of your head. When the buds slip out of sync, the slight temporal shift effectively becomes a slight shift in stereo phase, which suddenly either makes the voice seem to have a physical location, or be coming simultaneously from a source on either side, depending on how long the delay is. It's interesting on a technical level, but mildly annoying, so I've taken to just sticking one of the buds back into its case if I want to listen to podcasts. Which is what I do most of the time with the ones that hang around my neck anyway, so I can hear the stop announcements on the bus. Ain't technology grand? from Blogger https://ift.tt/2MYCro4 via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

#IFTTT #Blogger #Unsolicited Advice

1 note · View note

rigelmejo · 4 years

Text

8/19/20 progress

I already knew this I supposed... but further confirmation that

It’s easier to immerse in a new material, if you look up keywords for the first episode or chapter. (Those first chapters are when a lot of the genre specific and story specific words pop up, so if you catch the keywords then it will be easier to follow all main-plot information in the following material).

immersing more DOES improve comprehension the more you do it.

I am watching Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang (The Shaw Eleven Lang). I first tried to watch it in December, then in general I tried to watch shows in only-chinese more in January-May. In those months, shows got consecutively a little bit easier to follow without looking words up - although mostly, each new genre the difficulty spiked again a bit. So difficulty was like: 10, 8, 7, 8, 6, 8, 6, 4, 7, 5, etc... where 10 is most difficult to follow. I do notice that overall, regardless of genre differences/show differences spiking difficulty back up, I am getting overall better at some things.

My reading speed, ability to catch words quickly that I’ve studied, ability to read through grammar easier, ability to read through *some grammar at a quicker speed, ability to look away from the screen more and still follow the plot (so listen comprehension is better, reading speed to catch up to when I look away is improved). Overall, just the comfort level of the activity - it doesn’t feel nearly as draining to immerse in only-chinese, it doesn’t feel like I need to use a translator to look up key words if I don’t want to. As in I feel I can at least minimally follow a plot even if I skip looking up words that catch my attention. I notice overall that I have more ability to figure out at least SOME words from context alone in bigger sentences - so not just verbs. And a super noticeable skill that has improved: my ability to notice name/place/proper noun introductions is WAY IMPROVED. For the whole year of learning Chinese, I really struggled immensely with recognizing when words were a name of something instead of a noun/adjective/verb to figure out. The only time I could tell was if someone said ‘zhe she’ or ‘mingzi’ or ‘jiao’ or ‘jieshao’ first to clue me in that it was about to be a proper name, or for people hearing ‘xiaojie, gongzi, shifu, shidi, shijie, shixiong, xiong, xiansheng, laoshi’ and eventually catching on that it’s a name. But places and named objects like swords or specialized tools like shovel types or named reports completely escaped me.

I remember that the first time I watched Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang, I could only follow the fact “there’s a sword they want, they know each other, and a princess (?) is running away from her fiance (?) who wants the fancy sword her family owns that everyone seems to want.” Which... to be honest, I do think that’s the minimum gist of the plot, so I did pretty well for my no-lookup guess of what was going on back in December. But this time when I watched, I looked up a lot of words more for double checking my correct comprehension or specifying details, not because I needed it to follow the plot. And for names, I just caught them: We’ve got Xiao Shi Yi Lang, Lian Chengbi, SiNiang, Shen Kunbi (the princess, I’m not sure I caught the second part right unless I can see it’s characters on screen), Xiao gongzi (the evil small woman who also looks like Lian Chengbi sometimes?), Jiao Zhu (Lord Jiao, the snake clan’s leader), the empress (? or queen, Shen family, I can’t quite catch if the first part of her name is a title or her name). The 4 great masters that Yi Lang, SiNiang, and Xiao gongzi just annihilated from importance... I caught the servant of Shen’s name too, the girl who begged Lian-xiong to take her with him to find her princess, but they haven’t said it enough for me to remember it.

I also catch that they’re mentioning the named place of the region often (Jiang something), the Shen clan area, and the sword does have a name (which I recognize the characters of but can’t remember the pronunciation of). I caught that Xiao gongzi is from a clan/kind of people too, the Heaven-something. All of this is a ton more specific detail-wise than I was ever able to catch back in December. Some of this is because I know new words, some is because I can read/comprehend faster so I have the TIME to catch other low-hanging-fruit details I should understand, some is because I’ve gotten much better at recognizing proper names versus nouns/adjectives/verbs. I’m really happy about the proper noun stuff... it was probably the HARDEST thing for me to distinguish in written chinese, whereas any other grammar issue was a bit perplexing but noticeable to me if I could just get extra time to read through it. I think again I probably have Tamen de Gushi novel to thank for this... it’s writing style used first person so it was easy to follow, but many other characters were always name-mentioned without usual introduction scenes, and yet others were left unnamed and so I had to get used to ‘that person’ and ‘aunt and uncle’ and ‘the gang of friends’ and get better at recognizing vague characters being talked about too.

I think a lot of these comprehension improvements in the last 8 months were partially just WATCHING more chinese-only stuff, and also doing 2000 word cards and reading in some short bursts (I’d read 15 chapters of Tamen de Gushi, a few chapters of Priest novels, and Mandarin Companion Sherlock).

In addition, I notice a decent increase lately from maybe May-August. I think what I added recently, that’s been helping - listening to chinese audio, and flashcards with sentences.

For Chinese audio I have 2 main sources - audiobooks/audiodramas where I just play them whenever I want either for background noise or to listen to and try to follow the plot, and an audio of Spoonfed Chinese sentences with english then chinese sentences so its very comprehensible audio ‘flashcards’ i can just play in 30 minute chunks in the background for ‘review’ or ‘exposure’ to i+1 sentences. This audio addition to study has been super easy to add, I just try to play it more. I think the audiodramas/books are helping me solidify the words I DO know, get more familiar with what ‘sounds right,’ increase my listening speed comprehension, and help set ‘phrases’ stick better in my head. The audio 30 minute ‘flashcard’ loops are like audio reinforcement of the sentences in anki I’m doing, and they give me more audio-only review and exposure compared to anki - helping me work on listening comprehension, and on hearing easy new i+1 sentences I can always comprehend and learn a little new stuff from each day. I really love big audio files of ‘flashcards’ and I discovered the study idea back when I studied japanese (the website japaneseaudiolessons.com was basically entirely based on this concept of teaching/study, and also to a degree I think Michael Thomas and Pimsleur are just paid versions of this method).

They let you be introduced to new things to learn in a very easy to understand way building on what you already know, and review in a way where the flashcards remind you of the translation in case you needed it. Its very low effort, but it really reinforces what you’ve learned and helps you pick up new stuff. (And it’s higher effort if you also try to repeat it and practice speaking). However, audio flashcard files I think work BETTER if you try to pay attention - at least if you hear any new sentences. That way you actively TRY to figure out what you expect the answer to be before you hear it, and note what the actual answer was so you remember this new word/grammar. Whereas reviews with this audio, you can pay attention a bit less actively, since its only going to be important to focus if you CAN’T automatically guess what the right answer is - in which case, listen more to that piece of audio. But if you’re replaying it over and over, even if you only actively pay attention some of the time, you’ll pay attention enough to pick up new info, and passively listen to things you comprehend already enough to review them. So overall, its definitely lower effort than listening to audiobooks/audiodramas and trying to purposely follow the plot. (Although I think passively listening to audiobooks/audiodramas is the easiest task, I don’t think it efficiently teaches you more as quickly as listening to audio-flashcard loops since in audiobooks/dramas you comprehend less).

Chinese flashcards with sentences in anki - right now all my anki flashcard decks use sentences mostly. The Spoonfed Chinese deck is helping with words IN context and WHAT contexts to correctly use different words. This is helping strengthen the foundation of words I know. Likewise, my HSK deck in anki also has sentences and explains individual character meanings, so that’s also reinforcing it. I’m mostly using these decks for exposure/recognition, so I’m not working on trying to correctly speak/produce such sentences very much (just occasionally). So they aren’t helping a ton at improving my speaking/production grammar. But they are helping me a lot with comprehending better, and with remembering the proper tones in words I know, and the proper words to use for different situations (especially with near synonyms). I think these cards are making my reading speed comprehension in chinese better (just like reading more in chinese was helping).

I have also been reading more - without a dictionary when possible, because I’m lazy. I haven’t been reading as much as I want, but I do feel what I’m doing is challenging myself. (I guess I just wish I challenged myself more ToT). I read chapter 1 of MoDu with no dictionary twice - the second time was much easier, somehow. I read part of chapter 1 of Guardian, part of chapter 1 of Tian Ya Ke. I read a little bit of Tamen de Gushi with no dictionary, I read a Mandarin Companion book. I notice that in general reading is helping me recognize phrases like how authors tend to word descriptions of body movements or appearance, or descriptions of emotional displays (like he rubbed his neck, put his hand in his pocket, face grew pale, eyes glanced away, mouth curled upward in a slight smile, etc). Those descriptions are getting much easier to recognize and read quickly. Also, I notice with more difficult novels, I’m getting better at roughly guessing unknown words with unknown characters - the hard part is getting myself to focus on paragraphs where I see a lot of unknown characters, because my eyes would prefer to just skim over them all. I have to make myself actually look, find the words I do know and grammar I recognize, then actually look at the unknown characters for clues of if they’re part of a 2-part version of a word I know the other character in, if they’re characters I can guess roughly the meaning of, if I can guess their sound or not, and what their word type is grammar wise if that will help me - is it a name, title, verb, adjective, noun.

Usually I can skip adjectives without losing the main idea of the plot, but I still slow down and try to figure out the adjective if it keeps popping up - it means the author relies on it a lot. Names automatically get easier once I realize they’re just names to recognize. And unknown characters part of 2 character words, if i CAN guess a meaning from context, are generally the most important for me to pick up. Because they usually contribute to plot or details, and they’re words I actually can keep relying on later on in the writing if I figure them out. As usual... dialogue is my strong suit, and the easiest part to follow. Action descriptions of things going on are the second easiest. Then finally, long descriptions of places/people/economy/looks/situation/group etc are still my weakest point since those parts are noun and adjective heavy, usually with less already-known general words I can lean on to help me.

---

I am really pleased about my show comprehension improvements though. I’m thinking, as long as I look up the words in new shows for the first couple episodes, I should be able to get into new genres/new shows without them feeling draining anymore.

I’m going to keep working on my flashcards until they’re in the 2000s, to match up with my original old single-word 2000 cards. Then maybe focus more on reading. I’d like to get more comfortable reading novels (even though lol I know that’s probably THE HARDEST of my comprehension goals).

Also surprisingly I’ve been really picky about my tones lately, so I’m spending probably 1/3 of my study time overall just on focusing on tones - tone training, pinyin pronunciation basics again, listening carefully. I noticed my active vocabulary has decreased a little these past couple months... but I suspect that’s mostly because I’ve NOTICED where I was incorrectly using the wrong word for a situation, so now my mind isn’t auto-supplying a word to use unless I’m relatively sure its supposed to be used for that situation. So in the long term it’ll probably be a good thing. Likewise, words are auto-showing-up in my mind less to use if the tones are less solid.

I’ve been using the Hanzi flashcard deck on and off again (anki version). I’m contemplating adding my own pronunciation mnemonics to them, so they’ll be more thorough.

Other notes:

- nothing seems to make those words like ‘turan’ ‘suiran’ ‘jinran’ ‘shihou’ ‘zhiqian’ ‘ranhou’ ‘ziran’ really seem to stick for me except reading/listening more. They’re all ‘explanation’ words usually used in telling stories or descriptions, and since they’re not directly anything you could ‘draw/visualize’ then for me I find I just need to be exposed to enough examples of them being used.

- similarly, the way authors/storytellers say descriptions of people moving hands/eyes/heads/looks really is something to just... get used to. All the words are simple, its just getting used to seeing them in those combinations.

- i still have no idea if ‘repetitive listening’ of 50-100 times helps a LOT lol. But i do think listening MORE in general, definitely helps to a degree. Especially once you’ve got 1000-2000 words you’re vaguely familiar with. That means there’s a lot of words you’ll eventually Recognize when listening, even if you can’t comprehend full sentences.

- immersing in content you’re already familiar of the context of, is always easier. whether its because you read it/watched it in english before, or because you looked up keywords/summaries for the first couple episodes before diving in. That said, I prefer to also do some immersion where i go in knowing absolutely nothing (so if i need to, i’ll look up keywords while watching). Because i like to see exactly how much i can understand when i had nothing to rely on going into it. That said, that’s more for gauging progress. For actually PICKING UP NEW WORDS from a show or audio, I think having context ahead of time improves the ability to pick up new words.

- if you’re learning a language that happens to make audiodramas about stuff you like??? I 100% recommend checking them out! Chinese has been a treasure trove for me, because if I like a book or show, then there’s a corresponding book/show, and there’s usually also an audiodrama, and usually also fanmade dialogue-containing music video edit videos and AU edit videos, and regular music videos, and osts.... and you can find ONE story you like and have like 200+ hours of material to sink into. If I like one story (lets say MoDaoZuShi by MXTX) then I can watch a drama, read a novel (in chinese and english, in traditional or simplified characters), listen to an audiodrama, listen to ost, find a ton of music video edits with dialogues, find fanfic in multiple languages, watch donghua if I wanted animation instead of live action. And also check out any of the author’s other works. Same thing with getting into something by Priest - I can watch Guardian, listen to fanmade audiobooks, find music video edits with dialogue, listen to the ost, read the novel in traditional or simplified or english. And several other priest novels ALSO have audiodramas along with all this other stuff. A person can easily find a visual show, an audio drama/book, a text only novel, and a picture-text manhua all about some story they like. So they’ve got this very easy to find ‘study material’ to immerse in a variety of different ways. Whether they ‘need’ practice in each area, or are just more comfortable with say ‘audio’ or ‘manhua’ instead of reading novels, they can still find stuff to enjoy. When I studied french I always found reading material I liked, but I should have been looking harder for other materials in other areas, like I am in chinese. Likewise, in japanese I could often find visual shows or manga i wanted to check out, but I had trouble finding audio-only I was interested in... I could have been looking for a broader variety of materials than I did at the time.

#august 2020 progress #august progress #progress

2 notes · View notes

razieltwelve · 4 years

Text

Competition (Final Effect)

When Her Imperial Majesty Averia VII finally married, the empire rejoiced. When she gave birth, however, the empire plotted.

X X X

“What are you doing here?” The Dia-Farron snarled.

The seer huffed. “What does it look like? I’m bringing a present for the new crown princess. We’ve foreseen great things in her future.”

“Oh, be quiet.” The Dia-Farron rolled her eyes. “You have not. You’re just here to curry favour with the empress and get your hooks into her successor. You lot are still bitter that the empress did an apprenticeship with us instead of you.”

The seer scowled. Given that he resembled his ancestor, Caius Ballad, quite closely, it was a fearsome expression. “You only got that apprenticeship because you sabotaged our offer!”

“What are you talking about? Maybe that bridge just blew up on its own, thereby preventing your team from arriving on time to make its pitch.” The Dia-Farron smirked. “And aren’t you all supposed to have precognition? Why didn’t you see that one coming then?”

“We all know there are a few of you with Semblances that obscure precognition, or did you think we missed the fact that you had a bearer of Lucky Fox on the planet at the time. What was she doing, taking a holiday?”

“You can’t prove a damn thing!”

“And we’re not going to make the same mistakes this time!”

The Dia-Farron glared. “Professor Cuddleburg can trump any present you come up with. He is the cutest and cuddliest hamster in the galaxy. In fact, he’s in the top five cutest and cuddliest hamsters of all time. There’s no way the crown princess won’t love to have him around, which means we’ve basically got one foot in the door already. If he has to stay around, it’s only natural for the empress to hire him and one of us as the crown princess’s tutors.”

“We’ve got an in with the hedgehog,” the seer replied. “Lord Hedgeborough is well aware of your scheming. He has no intention of letting you have everything your own way, and he has the ear of the empress herself.”

“Hmph.” The Dia-Farron brandished Professor Cuddleburg at the seer. “You really think that will matter in the face of such an adorable hamster? Besides, it’s not like the empress listens to everything he says. The bearer of Ragnarok is basically one of us. She’ll put in a good word, I’m sure.”

“And we’ve already approached the bearer of Saviour.” The seer smirked. “She, at least, can be relied upon to do what is best for the empire and not be swayed by an adorable hamster.”

“I think you underestimate the power of our hamsters,” the Dia-Farron countered. In her hand, Professor Cuddleburg cackled menacingly. “It wasn’t that long ago that there was a Dia-Farron on the throne. The empress might not act much like one of us, but the proud blood of a Dia-Farron still flows through her veins. She’ll make the right choice.”

“We’ll see.” The seer pointed at his eyes. “And when it comes to seeing nobody sees better than us.” He patted his pocket. “I even have a secret weapon.”

“A secret weapon? Unless it’s a victory beam, I don’t think you’ve got a chance.”

X X X

Her Imperial Majesty Averia VII sighed as the representatives from the Dia-Farron and the seers practically tripped over each other in their bids to reach her and her daughter first. In the end, it was the seer who succeeded after dodging a net and throwing a chair.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” the seer announced, still catching his breath. “It is an honour to be invited to meet the crown princess.”

Behind Averia, Claire and Jahne weren’t even trying to conceal their laughter as the Dia-Farron got back to her feet and considered firing her net gun again before thinking better of it. There was too much of a risk of hitting the empress and her daughter.

“I am always pleased to welcome a representative of the seers,” Averia replied. “How fares the House of Ballad.”

“We fare well,” the seer replied before he offered a wrapped box. “A gift for the crown princess, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Thank you.” Averia nodded at Jahne to open it. In her arms, Thyra’s gaze was drawn to the astoundingly adorable hamster that the Dia-Farron was holding up like some kind of talisman. Following the baby’s gaze, the seer’s eyes widened, and he not so subtly stepped to the side to block the baby’s view before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small chocobo chick.

What caught Averia’s eye was the chick’s coloration. It was a striking purple that matched the hair colour of Caius Ballad. Thyra’s gaze immediately snapped to the chocobo, which cheeped softly and stared back at the baby.

“That is an unusual chocobo,” Averia said. “I can’t say I’ve seen many purple chocobos in my time, and he is exceptionally purple.”

“Ah, yes. Purple chocobos are exceedingly rare, but the reason this particular fellow is an even more vivid shade of purple than most of his kind is because he was hatched on a world we recently discovered had been badly contaminated by gravity Dust following a volcanic eruption. As a result, his feathers are a more intense purple, and he appears to have developed some control over gravity in addition to the usual Synergist abilities purple choocbos usually have.”

“Fascinating.” Averia glanced to the side as Jahne opened the gift. Her lips twitched. It was a tiny outfit in the authentic style of the Nsu Clan. “An adorable outfit.”

“We thought it appropriate since you are also the Chieftain of all the Clans, and we hope for young Thyra to become a farsighted and wise ruler whose reign shall be remembered long into the future.”

Averia’s lips twitched. She had a feeling it was more like he and the rest of his clan wanted Thyra to be more favourably disposed toward them.

“We do, of course, have other gifts,” the seer continued smoothly. “But we shall present them during the upcoming naming ceremony, in accordance with tradition.”

“Of course.” Averia nodded. In her arms, Thyra shifted restlessly and reached for the chocobo chick. Little wisps of frost formed, a testament to her heritage. “I look forward to it.” She glanced past him. “Perhaps you should allow the Dia-Farron representative to present her gift. She seems to be having a conniption.”

X X X

“That clever bastard,” the Dia-Farron muttered. “I definitely didn’t expect him to have a purple chocobo chick that’s even more purple than normal.” She smirked. “But if he thinks we’re beaten, he’s got another thing coming, right, Professor Cuddleburg?”

The hamster took a moment to unleash the full power of his cuteness and then nodded. They had a battle to win.

X X X

The birth of a crown princess is always cause for celebration in the empire. However, it also provides unique opportunities for the various factions within the empire itself. These factions will spare no expense in their pursuit of favour and influence with the new royal, turning the traditional naming ceremony into something close to a pitched battle.

X X X

Author’s Notes

Never count out the Dia-Farron. The seers might have the upper hand for now, but they’ve still got a few cards to play. Plus, they’ve got an important advantage. When it comes to science and technology, nobody is better than they are. And if the princess wants to be the best, she’d have to learn from the best, right?

Incidentally, the Imperial hedgehogs are their own faction. However, they are less concerned with influencing the crown princess directly than they are with keeping any potential bad influences away. This policy became standard after the many clashes between Vanille I’s hedgehog and hamster. Knowing how close Averia VII is to Lord Hedgeborough, the seers wisely chose to seek his approval, which he granted largely to counterbalance what he knew would be powerful efforts from the Dia-Farron.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

#final effect #fanfiction #averia vii

9 notes · View notes