#and it's just been languishing in my wips for months and months

[sharkneto]

God, one day I'm going to finish my Five And Allison Talk Post-S3 fic. I go back and just look at it every few weeks. Wish someone would finish it (me, I'm the someone).

Snip because maybe getting more of it out in the world will kickstart something for me. A continuation of the snip shared HERE --

-

Softer, Allison says, “I still don’t understand why you voted against it. It doesn’t make any sense. You spend your whole life fighting the apocalypse to just give up?”

Five knocks back the rest of his drink and considers the empty glass. He then stands to cross the room to pour himself another. She watches him. It’s not until he’s finishing the pour that he says, “It seemed like the better option.”

“In what world, Five?”

“In the one where, when we do follow Dad’s special little plan, it ends with me dying alone in the basement of the Commission as a one-armed centenarian.”

She swallows. In the harried few days before the end in Oblivion, a few details about Five meeting himself yet again and then watching him die had made it to her. She hadn’t given them much stock around everything else going on.

“He told me to not save the world,” Five continues. “And the only scenario I can think of that ends with me in a box in the basement of the Commission for a hundred years is one where you’re all dead. Again. And if that’s the situation, I’d rather be dead with you. I’m not doing that again, not if it was never going to work.” He swallows thickly before continuing, “Assuming that version of me thought like me, I figured that’s what his warning was. Add in that it was Dad’s plan and into a fucked alternate dimension… The math seemed bad.” He splays his hands, the dark alcohol sloshing in his glass.

Allison stares at him.

She should have paid more attention to those passing comments about Five meeting himself.

She blinks before shaking her head. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

He shrugs. “You asked.”

Slowly, she says, “So… your math wasn’t actually about saving the world or stopping anything. It was just… how you’d rather die?”

“That’s a rather inelegant way to put it but… yes.”

Allison studies her brother’s young face, working to slot this into her understanding of how everything went down at the Hotel. This whole time, she’d been assuming—what? That Five gave up? That he’d hated their dad more than he loved them? That he cared about her less than the others to have thrown away her life and happiness for a few good hours with the rest of them?

Instead, he was facing what he assumed was a no-win scenario that only he made it out of. The world already gone, and whatever they chose the rest of them would go too. The only difference was whether or not he was still standing on the other side of it.

And he voted to not be. He voted to be done.

It brings her to a single conclusion: “That’s so selfish.”

His expression twists, incredulous and hurt as her words sink in. “Excuse me?”

“It worked, Five. We’re here, right now, with everyone. It worked. And it almost didn’t because you voted to stay. Because you wanted to give up.”

“That’s not how time works, Allison.”

“We ended up in Oblivion anyway! And that worked, in a messy way, but it worked. If you’d just agreed to go to begin with, we wouldn’t have lost Luther. Or Klaus!”

“As I seem to recall, I wasn’t the only one who voted no! I was just lucky enough to be the deciding vote. And it’s probably because I voted no that it worked!"

Allison lets out a noisy sigh. “Explain that to me, how that makes any sense.”

“Because if I hadn’t talked to my future self and watched him die pathetic and alone, I would have voted yes. A chance to fix everything? Hit the undo, reset it all? Of course I want that! But easy fixes—”

“Easy!?”

“—easy fixes like that always have a catch! And if I hadn’t known what this one’s catch was, that it outweighed its solution, I would have gone for it.”

“So you voting no and then still doing it anyway changed that how?”

“Ripples, Allison.” He sighs. “Me voting yes would have meant we all marched in right then and probably were either killed by the guardians or got used up by the machine, even more than we were anyway. Think about it. We didn’t march straight in, so what happened instead? The kugelblitz advanced to our toes. Dad killed Luther. Dad left Klaus behind and he died, too, or, at least went to his Void or whatever he calls it. Which meant we had eyes on Dad when Klaus popped back. We had a ghost form of Luther to stop the last guardian, all his strength with none of his vulnerabilities of having a physical form.”

“Are you saying it’s a good thing now that Luther and Klaus died?”

“Obviously not! That’s no one’s ideal way for that to have worked! But it’s those differences that are what’s important, what skewed things to make us end up here instead of me back there.”

#i really love this fic #and it's just been languishing in my wips for months and months #one day... i will finish it #for allison #she deserves more nuance than a large chunk of the fandom gives her #tua #snips #ficblogging

[mamawasatesttube]

one thing i really am trying to get through my own head is that not every fic has to be a masterpiece. sometimes you just scribble something down for vibes or bc it's cute and that's that and it's not a bad thing. shaking myself by the shoulders it doesn't all have to be grand fancy metaphor-laden narratives about the human condition or whatever!!!!!! live a little post the silly little scribbles there's no rules!!!! it doesn't all have to be transcendent and perfect!!!! aaaaaaa!!!!

#this is me hyping myself up about the idea of posting something silly and fluffy that's been pretty much finished for months #it's just been sitting in my wip folder languishing in uncertainty bc clearly silly fluff isn't Polished Enough #bonks myself over the head. it's comic book fanfiction you are just here for a good time you pretentious fuck #rimi talks

[kiwiana-writes]

The way we get into each other's bones [Angstapalooza RWRB Edition] bc the multiminute podcast i got from u isn’t enough apparently

and also the only fans one, u know, for balance

The way we get into each other’s bones [Angstapalooza RWRB edition]

Lmaoooo the TWELVE MINUTE VOICE NOTE I sent you already gave you more info about this than I think anyone other than @ships-to-sail @celeritas2997 and @rmd-writes is privy to. BUT.

For those of you who aren’t in the middle of the Venn diagram between RWRB and Schitt’s Creek, a few years back I wrote a 53k canon divergence breakup/reconciliation fic that was dubbed “angstapalooza” while I was writing it. And based on people’s reactions… it earned the moniker. (It’s also, despite my overall reputation in SC as a smut/kink peddler, become The Work people associate with me, apparently. Or as @indestructibleheart put it: “mj being seen as someone who only writes angst is like how nick is gonna go down in history for playing gay royals. it's not their fault their angst fics just happen to be very memorable, but they actually have a full imdb of other roles.“ 😂😂😂

SO. When, halfway through writing the actor AU, I had a sudden idea for a multi-chapter canon divergence breakup/reconciliation fic… well. The appellation seemed appropriate. It also immediately terrified the RWRB/SC Venn diagrammers 😂

I really do just need to sit down and, like, focus on this one, because it’s by far my longest-languishing WIP. But here’s the start of the pitch: canon divergent from Rio, they start hooking up much earlier, and break up—spectacularly and angrily—a couple of months before Philip’s wedding. Cakegate is no longer antagonism and UST, it’s two very recent very hurt exes having to play the diplomatic bullshit in the public eye while seeing each other for the first time since breaking up.

There’s a prologue in media res that covers cakegate, then we flash back to Rio and see the progression of their relationship (before and after cakegate) from there. Angst with a happy ending, and many delicious things on the way I won’t spoil right now.

As a little treat, have the (heartbreaking!!) end of the prologue:

Later, what Alex will hate himself for the most isn’t the absolute waste of $75,000 worth of dessert. It won’t be the heartbroken look on Martha’s face, or the disappointed expression on his mom’s when he gets home, or the diplomatic shitstorm the whole thing threatens to kick off.

No, what Alex will hate himself for the most is that when they fall to the floor, Henry’s hands find their way to Alex’s hips, gripping tight enough that his fingers will probably leave bruises later—and just for a moment, it feels like coming home.

Hold up, rewind, knock me off of my feet [OnlyFans/Roommates]

I talked about this one here but have a little snippet because I genuinely love this fic. I just keep getting distracted by ooh-shinies

“I think I’m into Henry.”

“Right, no, I got that part somewhere in between hearing how pretty he is when he cries and you waxing rhapsodic about how he has, and I quote, ‘thighs that could crush a watermelon or, like, hang off a pole or something’.”

Alex blinks at her, confused. “What? I didn’t say anything about his thighs.”

“Not today.”

Two words should not be able to be that damning. He does vaguely recall saying that, actually, a few weeks after they moved in together and Alex had come home to find Henry in shorts for the first time.

Which, okay. It’s possible Alex has been ignoring a few signs. Big signs. Twelve foot tall signs that are so neon you kind of have to wonder if they’re radioactive.

[WIP tag game]

#wip tag game #affectionatelyrs #wip: hold up rewind knock me off of my feet #angstapalooza RWRB edition

[little-peril-stories]

nano 2023 let's gooo

Well, friends, it's that time of year again. Why I have once again decided to leap straight from Whumptober to Nanowrimo, no one knows, but here we go.

The difference from 2022 to 2023: last year, for both Whumptober and Nano, I was "playing to win" (so to speak —playing against myself, of course), while this year I wasn't/will not be. Like, if I end up writing 50,000 words this November, great!

But. I have an issue with being competitive (again, only against myself; I hate competing against others in most contexts) and I know I will get obsessive about 1667 words every day and getting every single badge, etc., etc.

So I'm just...not.

I don't have a word count goal. The goal is simply to finish the first draft of angsty heist wip. If I can, great. If not, great. I started it in April, got distracted by TQOL and life, and the poor story's been languishing around the midpoint since I put it aside. I think if I can push beyond the midpoint, I'll be all right. But even if that turns out not to be true—oh well!

I'm still going to work on TQOL, and since I've fallen into editing TPOT and have been looooooving that process, I'm going to keep doing that, too. So this Nano is really just going to be about doing the writing things I want to do and that make me happy, and if angsty heist wip gets finished as part of that journey, well, bonus.

Is this more a #CalmWriMo as coined by @winterandwords? Why, I suppose it is. Thanks for putting forth the idea and the hashtag. 😊

Anyway. Happy November, happy Nanowrimo, happy Calmwrimo, happy another day of being alive, and happy writing!

Bonus lines for anyone who made it to the bottom of this ramble lolololol.

From The Queen of Lies chapter whatever-the-hell-it-is-now-this-one-used-to-be-chapter-7:

In the faintest reaches of her heart, she allowed herself to grieve ever so little, and to wonder if she would ever see him again.

I made it to Chapter 30 in editing The Prince of Thieves, oh god oh god:

“I don’t know anything else,” she says, her voice shaking. She’s half off the floor, frozen now, breath coming in little bursts. I know, whether I live beyond today or not, I will never be able to forget this moment—her terrified gasping, her wide eyes, the way her chest rises and falls so fast it’s hard to follow. My hand tingles, fuzzy and warm in memory of how it clung to hers all night, and I am struck with how much the idea of Hatchett ending Bree Cooper’s life threatens to rip me apart from the inside.

nothing for angsty heist wip lol I'm sure those will be forthcoming throughout the month

#nanowrimo 2023 #wip: angsty heist project #nanowrimo #calmwrimo #lps the court of rogues

[citrus-cactus]

Howdy, all! I can't post my art summary quite yet because it contains part of someone's Secret Santa gift, so I thought I would fill out the fic summary template created by @reliablejoukido (see her original post here!). Even though I didn't publish (or finish!) much, I did start writing again this year, and that feels like a huge accomplishment, so it seemed like it would be fun to look back and talk a little bit about what I have in the works.

First, the finished fic!

My er... grand return to writing (I wouldn't call it that, but I did have a lot of fun writing and drawing for it, even if it took 6+ months from start to finish ^^;). I love these three characters as a trio so much. It was really hard to pull out a quote I liked and have it make sense in context, so I put the summary in there... but since I brought it up in another post, I thought I'd share what one of my editing drafts looks like:

(ok, so maybe not the tiniest font imaginable, but sometimes there are cross-outs to the cross-outs and sometimes I DO run out of room near troublesome paragraphs and in the margins!)

Now, onto WIPs!

Hmm, well! That sure is a title, isn't it? ;) I wanted to write Junzumi and came up with this idea late last year, and finally started trying to figure it out. It's meant to be fun and flirty and a bit awkward, but the ultimate goal is to be kind to JP, because he (and his body) are given so little love overall. And even though JP and Zoe are not actually hooking up in this fic, it is meant to show the relationship between the two of them in college, and how they could start going from friendship to dating. There IS nudity, but it's meant to be tasteful and respectful, I promise!

Oof. I haven't forgotten this fic, I swear (even though I published Chapter 4 three years ago!). I got really excited to work on it earlier this year (flush with success from actually publishing something, rotfl!) and then let it continue to languish (orz). Upon reflection, the reason it's been stalled is I was having a hard time figuring out the flow of action, but after re-outlining it in September I think I know now what Maki needs to be doing in order to experience the emotions I always meant her to be feeling in this chapter. And yes, she and Meiko meet (yay!).

Chapter 6 has been done for YEARS, and Chapter 7's probably pretty close to done as well, so it really is just this chapter being the hold-up.

AKA, Garg Fic #1. Been mulling over ideas for fic for this fandom all summer, and finally decided to write one based on some minor characters from the SLG comics (that I didn't even read, and can't read now because they're out of print). But I AM reading the new Dark Ages comics, and I'm proving to be a really good guesser about certain details, so actually, I feel INCREDIBLY validated about my original vision and characterization, ahaha.

As you may be able to tell from the quote selection, this is not a happy story. But I believe it's a story worth telling. It's about preserving customs in the face of tragedy, and mourning, and extinction, and love.

AKA, the thing that pulled me away from writing Garg Fic #1. I was possessed. I was writing something in my head about Macbeth's relationship with Demona this summer, and suddenly (VERY suddenly) it morphed into this. Dang, but they're fun to think about. This fic is weird, it will contain one MAJOR narrative trope/cliche, and it's definitely going to be NSFW if I end up getting that far. But I reeeeeeally like this paragraph I wrote for it XD

Thanks for the template Zuz, and thanks to everyone else for letting me ramble about writing! See you again for the art roundup!

#fanfiction #the cactus speaks #fanfiction summary #fanfiction summary 2023 #my fanfic

[a-pale-azure-moon]

WIP Wednesday

It's done.

There will be revisions and tweaks to make between now and when I post it in a few days, but I have finished the final chapter of Someday We'll Shine Together. At long last, it is complete.

I'm struggling to distill all of my emotions into words at the moment. This fic has been a part of my life for about three years now. I'm feeling accomplished and proud of myself for really and truly finishing it despite the fact that when I first had the idea, I was convinced this was another of those fleeting inspirational flashes that would never go anywhere and would forever languish in my WIP folder. I got very attached to this story in the process of creating it, and I got even more attached to it when it was one of the things that helped see me through a very difficult time in my personal life. As such, I'm also grieving that it's over and that I now must let it go. Sure, it'll always exist for me to revisit whenever I want, but that feeling is never the same as the one derived from actively working on it.

While I'm still digesting all of these emotions, here's a rough timeline and some background of the fic's development, so you can all see how I finally got to this point. This is pretty personal too, because the two are irrevocably intertwined. (Content warning: death/grief)

Summer 2020: Initial inspiration hits after I rewatched Utena during COVID lockdown.

Fall 2020: Brainworms are on-and-off active, writing short blurbs in a Google doc when they come to me, but there's no true shape to the whole plot yet, it’s just random scenes. It's more or less still strictly a 3H-esque retelling of Utena, and I'm not expecting anything to actually come of these blurbs.

Winter 2020: More blurbs trickle in here and there. The story in my head is starting to divert more drastically from the show.

February 19, 2021: Draft of the pivotal scene at the end of Chapter 15 written. I remember the specific day for this because I wrote it the same day we put down our dog, Clancy. (Writing emotional scenes often helps me process my own emotions.)

April 11, 2021: Creation of my dedicated author's notes file to keep track of the various threads and ideas I'd come up with, especially the backstory about Faerghus and how Dimitri became the Lion Prince. I filled it in like an extended summary or wikipedia entry about the 'verse and the overall plot of the story. I jotted a lot of stuff down between April and June as the brainworms really got to work again.

Summer 2021: I'm starting to entertain the idea of actually seeing this project through. Chapters 1 and 2 are drafted over the summer months, but I hit a block and the self doubt comes roaring right in to deter me.  A LARGE part of my struggle with getting this fic out of development hell was me being unable to get out of my own way.  Every stumbling block I hit (especially early on) was an invitation for my inner critic to resume browbeating me into giving up this “stupid” idea.

September 2021: I finally make up my mind that I'm really going to do this, and I spend the next six weeks ironing out the bumps in the plot and making a chapter-by-chapter outline highlighting the key scenes/plot points/character beats within each one. I organized the various blurbs I had into chronological order and put them under the correct chapter headings. I also started thinking of the best way to get myself to see this project through, as well as what would be a realistic timetable for its completion. I estimated that the final length of the whole thing would be around 350 pages or roughly 150K words. (This is hilarious to me in hindsight.  I severely underestimated the scope of this fic!)

November 2021: I try to do the NaNoWriMo challenge (50K words in a month) to draft as much of the fic as I can. I "only" produce about 35K words in the end, but it was enough to draft Chapters 3 and 4 and write at least one decent-sized blurb within each of all of the remaining chapters.

December 2021: I took a short hiatus from working on SWST to finish Beneath the Ethereal Moon. When that's done, I went over my outline yet again to refine it further and then cleaned up my draft of Chapter 1 with an eye on posting it after right after New Year's. I determined that posting (and writing) one chapter per month should be doable, especially since I have a generous buffer to start with.

January 2022: I get a bad case of cold feet/anxiety and don't post Chapter 1. I'm having trouble getting a feel for Chapter 5 and fail to finish it before the end of the month. (This naturally doesn't help alleviate my self-doubt or silence my very loud inner critic.)

February 2022: Cold feet strike again and I fail to post Chapter 1 a second time. I'm still stuck on Chapter 5 (though I've at least made some progress), and while I'm extremely aware that I'm being my own worst enemy, that doesn't make it any easier to beat back old habits.

March 2, 2022: In the wee hours of the night (it was after midnight), I finally posted Chapter 1 and went straight to bed after. I slept terribly of course, haha.

I wish I could say "and you know the rest from here," but that's not true. Posting Chapter 1 was a huge mental hurdle cleared, but there were other things going on behind the scenes that almost derailed this project for good. The timing was such that if I were more prone to hubris, I'd think that the universe itself was testing my resolve. Or possibly mocking me.

On March 3, 2022 (yes, the day after I posted Chapter 1), my father was admitted to the hospital with a debilitating pain in his lower back. Initially, we thought it might be a flare up of his sciatica or maybe something like a kidney stone, but the truth was far worse. What he had was a spinal epidural abscess caused by a bacterial infection in his blood. He was transported to the ICU of a larger (further away) hospital once the severity of his condition was discovered, and he was pumped full of massive doses of antibiotics. Thanks to that, he stabilized, but what followed after was a long period of uncertainty as he would start to make gains only to suffer a setback. Even once the infection and his pain level were under control, he'd been so severely sick that the bacteria had ravaged his various body systems, leading to issues with his kidneys and his heart.

For 91 days, my family and I were stuck on a wretched rollercoaster of getting hopeful (he was transferred to a rehab facility three different times when it looked like he was improving) and then having our hopes dashed when something would happen that would see him sent back to the hospital (falling out of bed, chest pains, difficulty breathing). Hope began to fade in mid May when he was transferred back to the ICU due to diastolic heart failure, which caused his lungs to fill up with fluid. They tapped his lungs thrice, removing at least a liter of fluid each time, but they kept filling up again despite all the diuretics the doctors were giving him. Then his kidneys began to shut down too. We kept hoping right until the end, but he passed away on June 1, 2022, the day before what would've been his and my mother's 49th wedding anniversary.

(Proof that real life can be even crueler than fiction.)

I was only able to continue updating SWST while my father was sick because of that buffer I'd had, and I very nearly deleted the story from AO3 altogether after he died. I remember ruminating about how futile it was to continue with this project; I'd written almost nothing while he was sick, so my buffer was now gone and I questioned whether or not I'd be able to write, let alone write consistently, with the promised months of grief and general upheaval ahead. Even writing a story that I had, to that point, been passionate about felt utterly pointless.

It was strange though. I woke up on June 2nd thinking that maybe I should go ahead and post chapter 4 anyway, since it was already done and it was one of the chapters I particularly liked. So I did. And in the following days, we had my father's funeral and a part of me felt like I could breathe again. I was grieving yes, but the constant daily stress and uncertainty from his illness was gone, and I think that freed my creative drive to start working again. I remember the first day I sat back down at my computer with the intention to write and how much better I felt in general after I got some words onto the screen.

It's hella ironic that I planned SWST with grief and loss as major themes and it turned out I'd be processing such things myself while writing most of it. I know my own grief affected the story, though it's impossible to say to what degree; I get a lot of catharsis in general from writing emotional scenes, so I tend to go hard on them regardless. It didn't change the plot or direction of the story at all, since that was already planned, but it's certainly safe to say that I channeled a lot of my own feelings into some of the most intense moments. The ending of Chapter 9 stands out in particular as something that felt like it was coming straight out of my own heart.

Even on the hard days when I was feeling too overwhelmed and/or the words just weren’t coming, this story gave me a reason to keep going.  Just keeping the goal in mind and reasserting my resolve to be consistent and see this project through to the end helped me cope.  It both kept me grounded and helped me process what I was going through and it gave me something to look forward to when I uploaded each chapter and anxiously waited to see what the readers would think.

I started this fic as a means of testing myself: testing my commitment to writing consistently, to finishing a long-term project, and to getting over at least some of the many, MANY mental hurdles that have held me back from writing for way too long.  I knew that this story would always be near and dear to me if I managed to finish it, but it became even more precious than I ever could’ve imagined back in 2020.  It hurts that I must say goodbye to it, but…it’s forever mine.  I can say with my whole chest that I MADE THIS THING and I’m so very proud of it! <3

#my writing #swst #wip wednesday #personal

[moorishflower]

WIP word search game!

Okay! I was tagged by @dsudis!

My words are: blue, deep, walk, sky, down, heal

blue: (from the unnamed Hallmark-Adjacent sequel)

If Morpheus is honest with himself – and he has been attempting, within the last three months, to be more honest with himself – the moment that he considered Robert Gadling a viable husband was the very instant he had seen him bathed in the lights of Trafalgar Square, in a dozen different shades of blue and white and soft golden from the surrounding buildings and with his hair pulled back into a bun, as though he had done so out of habit just before he had left his flat.

deep: (from an unnamed vampire!Dream WIP that's been languishing until I get into vampires again)

His stranger turns to look at him, and it pulls his face into deep shadow. Hob can only see the white curve of his throat, a tempting peek of collarbone. His face is obscured in darkness, with only those two bright points of witchlight to mark where his gaze falls. “I have had many names,” he says. Each word is slow and purposeful, as if it is being pulled from a sleeptalker. “Morpheus. Oneiros. Draculea. More, still. I was called the shaper of forms, once. Voivode, and Lord, and King. My true name is older.”

heal: (from an Edgin/Xenk canon divergence AU set 4 years prior to the movie)

"I can heal myself," the paladin says placidly, and then makes absolutely no effort to do so while Ed pours a thin stream of icy water over the slash on his cheek. It's not as bad once all the blood's cleared away -- he can't see clear through to teeth at least -- and that only leaves him with addressing the actual problem, which is the shoulder injury. Ed stares at the guy's pauldrons, wondering where in the Nine Hells he even starts.

walk: (from a yet-unposted bit of Little Histories)

"I am ambivalent about the nature of food served from a truck," Dream says. He still feels somewhat slow and muddled, but the walk is pleasant. Humans need movement, Hob has informed him. It is part of the development of their infants, and most enjoy it well after their childhood, as well. There is something pleasant about utilising his muscles; in the moment, he wonders why it had been so hard to rouse himself yesterday.

sky: (from the same Edgin/Xenk fic)

The opportunity comes just as the sun is beginning to get dangerously low in the sky and the nightlife of Luskan -- skullduggery, alleyway knifing, pickpocketing and the like -- is kicking into high gear, when a man on a horse as white as the driven snow turns away from the Southern Gate and keeps right on riding towards Mirabar.

down: (unnamed Johanna/Lucifer fic)

The demon darts forward, too bloody fast for a woman who's spent most of the evening getting fantastically drunk after ousting a fucking poltergeist from an attic, and knocks the crucifix from her hands. Jo responds by yanking out the vial of holy water she keeps in her bra and dumping it directly down the demon's cleavage. She suspects she only manages this because the demon was too distracted by trying to figure out why she was fumbling in her bra to begin with, but that's to her benefit, so she counts it as a win.

And I will taaaaag... @avelera (show me the secret drafts of Joke's On You!!!), @landwriter, @softest-punk, @beatnikfreakiswriting and anyone else who'd like to play <3

Your words are: invite, bleed, lonely, glance, small, curve

#wip ask meme

[the-darkdragonfly]

NEW CHAPTER!!!! A Trick of the Light

Chapter 9: A Field of Roses

I KNOW! I KNOW! It's been an AGE!

Sorry folks, feel free to pray for my muse, she's having a time.

Anyway! Thank you (as always) to Maddie and Libby for listening to me complain brainstorm over the last 5 months while this languished in my wips.

xox

♥️♥️♥️

I guess I didn’t really think this through- she had giggled into the towel he’d handed her as she stood before him, pink and warm, skin steaming from the water he had helped her out of as the snow swirled wildly outside the window. 

He’d bitten down a smirk, though she had noticed it regardless, eyes shining with mirth as she watched him in the light of the candles she’d obsessively lit before pouring the last bucket of near scalding water into the tub. 

“It smells so good though!” Her grin widened, as he picked yet another soggy petal from his chest, nodding and trying desperately not to laugh. 

“Aye,” he deposited the small pink hitchhiker on the edge of the tub, a rogue petal from Emma’s attempt at something she had called bath salts.

It had been a series of amusing trial and error attempts before she’d decided to add the rose petals Fiona had helped her tie in the few last days of autumn, the various herbs and spices Emma had crushed into the heaps of hand-crushed salt; pungent and mostly terrible.  She’d gagged, holding a hand in front of her face as he dutifully disposed of batch after batch, early pregnancy hormones preventing her from finding any part of the ordeal humorous. 

“They didn’t really stick to me,” she turned in an attempt to inspect her backside- probably because I’m not hairy like you are- which had remained petal-free, unlike his own. 

He had found her, the tiredness he’d dragged with him throughout his day lifting from his soul as watched her bent over her work, his fingers ink-stained from the ledgers at the warehouse as he itched to touch her, to pull her attention away from her task for even only a moment. His ears had echoed Alec’s annoyed mutterings most of the day until the merchant ship they had been waiting on all morning finally appeared on the horizon clearing from his heart. She had collected small bowls, scattered around her like soldiers awaiting her orders, and was busy measuring something into them as she tilted her head to the door- you’re just in time!- sweat from the fire gathering at the base of her neck. 

He’d braided her hair before he’d left that morning while her hands soaked into the wash basin, the swirl of silk under the warm water like the call of the sea, and she’d leaned back into his chest, pressing a kiss into her hair. 

The scent of roses had stayed on her skin, impossible as it was through the travel of portals and time and realms, the faint drift of the blooms he had brought her over the years. 

She’d bought a small bag of salts- this is the real deal, babe!- from a trip into Boston before Liam was born, pouring a small handful of the soft scented grains into the bathtub as he helped her over the edge, her pregnant stomach making the movement awkward- don’t you dare laugh, Jones, this is entirely, mostly, partly your fault- his hand on her elbow as he lowered her into the water. 

There hadn’t been any room for him that day, the tub in their Storybrooke home smaller than the large porcelain one which sat in the corner of their bedroom at the cottage by the sea, and he had knelt on the floor, the bathmat wet under his knees, and spoke softly to her and their child. 

The memory hung around him like fog on a cool sea, thick and quiet, until a sharp clang of metal on stone echoed frantically through his blood as his head cleared like the sun burning it all away.  

Read the rest here.

Read my other stuff!

♥️♥️♥️

Tagging! (I would love to add you - drop me a line!)

@elizabeethan @donteattheappleshook @sailtoafarawayland @teamhook @wefoundloveunderthelight @caught-in-the-filter @ultraluckycatnd @veryverynotgood @snowbellewells @hollyethecurious @jrob64 @kmomof4 @artistic-writer @gingerpolyglot @xarandomdreamx @justanother-unluckysoul @zaharadessert @xsjax @karlyfr13s @tiganasummertree @wyntereyez @klynn-stormz @onceratheart18 @rkrbirdgirl @ouatdaily @blowmiakisscolin @courtorderedcake @winterbaby89 @pirateprincessofpizza @superchocovian @deckerstarblanche @jlsadphoenix @alexa-fangirl-forever @stahlop @undercaffinatednightmare @lostintheskyfaraway @anmylica @motherkatereloyshipper @last-tsarina @lfh1226-linda @hookedmom @yikes-00 @midnightsuki @paradiselady19 @jonesfandomfanatic

#a trick of the light #a captain swan tale #the darkdragonfly #captain swan #the ripple effect #killian jones #emma swan #emma x killian

[landwriter]

hello dear and cherished gloam. is there perchance an update on when we might expect the publication of Lighthouses? I've loved the bits you've posted so much and I'm just dying to read the whole thing <3

I wish I knew!! I haven't had time to touch it in months because life has been pretty hectic and absorbing but I am way too greedy and generally into sharing my brainworms to let 20K+ of WIP languish forever. I think once the snow flies I'll be finding myself with more computery hobby time and v much hope to include writing & the Sandman fandom in that.

ETA: anywhere between December and Not Never?!

#asks #lighthouses #sorry gang i can only hold like two to three things in my head at once max <3

[winkle-pickers]

🦈🎁🚀 for the ask game! (If you're still doing it ofc)

Omg YES, I am doing all ask games in perpetuity 😂💞 Thank you for checking, and I'm delighted to answer!

🦈 Which character is the toughest to write?

I think last time I answered Jounouchi, and that is still true to an extent, but oh my god BAKURA. I just tried writing my first Bakura fic recently. Like yes I know being mysterious and strange and (deliberately?) confusing is like his whole thing, but if you haven't been steeped in the Bakurae/Ishtar side of the fandom for the last 20 years...it's a lot of meta to catch up on. A LOT. So many good takes, many in direct opposition to each other, many of them equally compelling despite that. WHEW. I tried my best, I hope I didn't write an offensively wrong Bakura, everyone's gotta start somewhere right?!?! ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

Ooooh, yes!! A little Kaibros character study from years ago that has been languishing in my drafts, that I'm re-working and may actually publish someday. I'll stick it under a readmore, tell me what you think!

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

Unfortunately, I don't have the kind of brain where I can sit in front of a blank document and think a story out in bullet point form. I desperately wish I did lol. But alas I must charge in headfirst and get a few thousand words in before I have any idea of where I want things to go. Sometimes (often) I blast through the entire thing without outlining. Sometimes I hit a snag somewhere and realize I done fucked up and need to put myself back on the tracks.

And then there was the time I got 100k words into a YGO/Zelda crossover and realized oh no i think this will be MUCH more than 100k and wrote a very rough outline, then another Zelda game came out halfway through the fic and I had to spend a solid month rewriting my outline to accommodate lore from the new game, and also I somehow accidentally turned the whole thing into a huge ensemble cast with multiple concurrent plot threads balancing both YGO and Zelda character arcs, Hyrulean politics, and an imminent multiverse collapse. My Scriv file now has a 120k word planning & research section. (Oops.)

tl;dr I have exactly one fic that is well outlined and the rest are me doing the writing equivalent of a Leeroy Jenkins. congrats if you get that reference and are ancient like me

ANYWAYYYYSS thank you for the ask!!! Kaibros snippet under the cut 🐉

“Come on, nii-sama,” Mokuba pleads. It comes out weirdly desperate, more pathetic than he’d intended. “This is so unfair. It’s unfair enough that I don’t have parents, and it’s even more unfair that you won’t tell me-”

“You do have a parent.” Seto's reply is so sharp that it makes Mokuba flinch.

“I know, I know,” Mokuba replies, irritated at the pedantry. “You’re my parent legally. But you’re not, you know...I just want...”

Mokuba realizes as he’s talking that he’s said something terribly wrong. The change in his brother’s face is minuscule and significant and makes his stomach flip in shame. He trails off, the words curling up and dying as they fall off his tongue.

“Please go to bed,” Seto says. His tone of voice is so perfectly even that Mokuba gets up and leaves without another word.

Mokuba doesn’t go to school the next day, opting instead to stay in bed and stare at the wall. Seto either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

For the first time in years, he cries. And then he thinks about the fact that it’s been years since he last cried. Mokuba spends so much time wondering what the fuck is going on in his brother’s head that he’s maybe neglected to turn the same scrutiny on himself. And he’s maybe leaned a little too far into his role as the ‘normal’ Kaiba - the charming one, the easygoing one, the one who exists to balance out the bombastic, powerful force of nature looming tall at his back.

But who had cried - just once - after Gozaburo hurled himself from the top of the Kaiba Corporation building, and who had watched the coroners wheel away the black-draped gurney with impassive, bone-dry eyes?

#asks #ask game

[armulyn]

Four months ago, listening to dark and epic songs such as I See Fire and Battle Scars and with the Wingfeather Saga on the mind, I opened a doc and wrote, as you do, just to let off some steam. What came out was a weird amalgation of different AUs of the saga that I'd plow through five pages of each and then switch tacks.

None of them are complete, seeing as the Wingfeather Saga is so wonderfully (and infuratingly) written that any attempts to make things better usually end in the utter decimation of the plot, characters, and/or themes of the saga.

Now, a month and a half post my last edit to them, I decided quite elegantly and maturely, what the heck? and decided to try letting one out.

So, what if Artham actually did find the way back into the Deeps after finding the water from the First Well?

Fun fact, this is the 'The Warden and the Bear King' WIP from that ask game a while back.

[SPOILERS ABOUND. THROUGH BOOK 3 I THINK.]

Artham finds the cavern back into the deeps of Throg about two months after exiting, and rushes in without hesitation. Maybe it's the same one he left from, maybe it isn't, but either way it's twisting, unwieldy, and difficult to get the seed-husk of water from the First Well through unspilt. Hours he winds through passages, through burrows, and through endless doubts and shrieking voices warning him to go back.

He makes it to the dungeon eventually, and he freezes at the sight of it. Music is playing nearby— he'd thought he'd heard it ten minutes ago, but he'd told himself he was imagining it!— Sing the song the voices start, and against his will his lips start to move a bit... Terrified, he flees like mad, and he might have reached the surface once more had not a clatter from behind startled him.

He'd dropped the seed-husk.

Sprinting back, he frantically picks it back up, but nearly all the water has drained away, only a few drops left. He paws at it, trying to push the trickle of water back into the husk, the useless talons scraping awfully on the stone like nails on a blackboard. It's hopeless, so eventually he gathers his strength and tattered courage and presses on with what few drops he has left. He has to find Esben now, he tells himself, refusing the voices that press upon him at the name, for it is only a matter of time before he loses the rest of the water, the only thing that stands between him and utterly failing the High King yet again.

Back into the dungeon, closing his ears forcefully against the pulsing music, ducking behind cages when a Fang wanders through, searching for Esben. When he finds him, the king is in a newly reinforced cage, further back from the exit than it had been before. They've taken precautions, but precautions are nothing to a properly motivated Throne Warden, and the cage door cracks open within seconds.

"Esben," he chokes, and his brother starts. Esben's face is as he remembers it— bearded with fur, grey bubbled skin breaking out in patches, dazed pain in his eyes— but a wonder in them as well. "You... came back." he croaks, and Artham has to dash away tears to see the chains properly. He'll break them in a moment but first— "Aye," he says, "Now drink this."

He holds the battered seed husk gently to Esben's mouth. He watches carefully as his brother drinks the few drops eagerly— they probably haven't given him water for days, he fumes— and then leans back against the cage wall, exhausted by this small exertion. But there isn't time for rest or to wait until the water takes effect, and Artham hauls him to his feet. They stumble together from the cage, through the dungeon, Artham supporting almost all of Esben's weight, and thinking that if they happen to trip and fall then they would never manage to get up again. He prays with breath he can't spare that they won't trip.

Artham has always been tall, and his strength had been renowned in years past, but he has languished in a dungeon for— years, surely. He is stronger than Esben, but two months of frantic wandering, eating whatever he can and constantly moving hasn't improved his strength so much as his endurance. Thankfully, by the time the dungeon turns back into winding caverns and tunnels, Esben seems stronger, and can walk on his own. Neither of them speak in the pitch darkness, each moving as if in a dream with only each other to remind them they aren't. Artham holds tight to Esben's hand with his left arm, and the other wraps around Esben's side, even if his brother doesn't need his support any more. He doesn't want to imagine losing hold of his brother, here in the darkness. They stumble past a patch of blooming flowers and vibrant grass sprung from the cold rock where Artham had dropped the water from the First Well.

Under a pitch-black sky they stumble from pitted stone onto night-darkened grass.

They spend perhaps a week in the Blackwood, journeying west at a stumbling pace. They grow stronger, with daylight, food, water, and companionship. Sometimes other cloven shamble past them, but always wild and untamed. Artham and Esben don't have any water from the First Well left, nor anything else to envy, and so they're left alone for the most part. In the bright sunlight, Artham can see what he'd missed in the dark of the deeps. Throughout their steady trek, the water was working upon Esben, and his face seems clearer, the grey mottled skin gone and the patchy fur a golden-brown color that matches his hair. He looks a little odd, a little bulkier and more bear-like than before, but he has come back to himself, he is Artham's little brother, and he is not broken but healed.

The brothers have a lot of time to talk on their westward journey.

At first, Artham has trouble keeping back the high-pitched gibbering his voice and words keep trying to become, especially when Esben is quiet or contemplative or otherwise not talking. Esben is alarmed when it starts, which sets Artham off even more, which turns Esben’s alarm to worry, and it all ends in a mess of I’m sorrys and heart to hearts and confessions.

Once the brothers lose each other for an entire six hours.

Artham had gotten panicked, and in his sleep-deprived state he’d run away from the familiar man who called him by name with the blue eyes that filled with pain and memories at times— his fault, it was his fault—

Esben trails him at first, tracking his brother’s panicked flight through the loamy soil, but it isn’t safe to journey alone in the Blackwood, even in broad daylight, and soon he stops to consider his options, perched high in a tree where he had fled from the reach of a toothy cow. Artham would calm down soon, and probably panic and retrace his path. Esben was on said path, and if he kept shouting his name from the tree where the many creatures of the wood couldn’t reach him…

Artham refuses to stray more than ten feet from his little brother’s side for the rest of the Blackwood.

In the original story, Artham had stowed away on a Fang ship to Skree, following a tiny pinprick of light that told him the children of the king were there. He had nearly starved in the hold, but made it to Glipwood only five years after the fall of the Shining Isle. Now, with his little brother at his side, he has more to think of than himself.

They take refuge in an abandoned cottage a few hours from the edge of the Blackwood, shifting through debris for anything useful. Artham finds an intact glass vial in the kitchen, but the last of the precious water had gone toward Esben’s healing, and so he tucks it, empty, among their scant belongings in the hope it might be useful.

-

Esben had decided, in the first clear-minded rest after their exit from the deeps, that he was not going to ask Artham about what happened to Nia and the children. He barely remembered anything about that day, beside sitting down to lunch to the sound of Nia’s laughter as she tried to coax little Kalmar to eat. Janner had been excitedly relating some epic adventure from his day to his Uncle Artham, whose strained face of the past week eased somewhat while he listened.

Then the Fangs had come.

After Esben had been taken captive, ripped away from the room of the Fane of Fire and force-marched to the dungeon, he had caught sight of Artham being shoved into one of Rysen’s well-kept cells. Seeing the fear in his brother’s eyes, the Throne Warden had shaken his head, mouthing they’re safe. That was the extent to which they had communicated for the four years of captivity in the deeps of Throg, for Esben had not been bound for the cells but rather to an interrogation room, and they were kept separate on the march to Throg. In the deeps, they had not spoken at all, both consumed by the dreadful music and their own demons.

Esben had been given a front-row seat to his brother’s breaking, though they had only glimpsed each other once in a blue moon. He could hear the Stone Keeper taunting Artham with food, with freedom, with a snatch of sunlight. He could hear his brother shouting his name, and receiving no answer. He could hear his brother muttering in his sleep, in his waking hours, mumbling and shrieking as if the voices in his mind had taken over his speech.

Artham was the one they focused on, for they knew they could count on the king to break. What had the king ever done, besides rule from the protecting shadow of the Warden? What had the king ever done to protect the kingdom, while the Warden waged wars with his own strength and the strength of those loyal to him? What had Esben ever done, besides falling to the Fangs the moment he tried to fight without his brother by his side?

The Stone Keeper came and went from Artham’s side like a scuttling shadow, but she never paused by Esben, for which he was shamefully grateful. The dark of his cell and the silence was never broken save by what peeked in from without, as the days turned and his brother went mad and Esben began to think he was forgotten by even his captors. His only companion was the music that echoed in the dungeons and crept into every forgotten corner, and filled his head to chase away the silence.

His brother, Esben decides, has gone through enough. He isn’t going to ask and possibly bring back bad memories. He isn’t going to ask about the tears that had watered Artham’s fierce eyes even as he was shoved into a cell, even as he mouthed they’re safe. He isn’t.

Sitting at the dilapidated table of the abandoned cottage, Artham tells him anyway.

#the wingfeather saga #wingfeather saga #artham wingfeather #esben wingfeather #although forever incomplete i actually had fun with these #and quite like them #so here's one of my favorites #there's like. at least five separate AUs. that are literally all #'how many ways can I mix up who gets off the burning Anniera and how and how long does it take to find each other???' #also the Crack Armulyn Theory We Don't Talk About #wingfeather spoilers #present tense and pseudo-bulletpoint because weirdly that's the format that Works for AUs #don't ask me why #my writing #writing #the wip title for this (before the real one) was 'wingfeather bros' because i am abundant with imagination obviously

[nervousoctoberknits]

january wrap up!

i wasn't sure how i wanted to handle this blog so idk if i'll do updates every month or just as i finish projects or something else entirely but we'll start here for now!

these are the main projects i'm currently working on (links to ravelry pattern pages).

spark cardi, v neck sweater*, afterthought-everything sock tube, musselburgh hat

*the pattern i'm using for this one unfortunately has a trash size range so the home sweater v neck has an Extremely similar look with a more inclusive size range

spark by andrea mowry

yarn: briggs and little regal in light brown heather, patons kroy sock in copper colors held double (colour combo blatantly copied from @birch.grove bc i fell in love with it)

this was a languishing wip with just the sleeves and bottom body ribbing done for like...3 years? decided at the beginning of january i wanted it done and off my needles so i've been powering through. just ~2" of the shawl collar left to go! might end up being a gift for my mom if it fits her bc she really loves this one. this was my first experience with steeking and it went perfectly fine, probably mostly thanks to the v rustic briggs & little yarn.

v neck sweater

yarn: loops and threads heathered tweed in basil

i've knit this sweater in this same yarn once before (in black, it's in my profile pic) and i wear it alllllll the time so decided i needed a second one. i sized up for this one bc i thought i wanted an even more oversized fit but i'm not 100% yet on if that was the right call. worst case it'll be a cozy sweater i don't wear out or my mom will get another new sweater out of it lmao

sock tube

yarn: london house yarns sparkle sock in baubles

this was a new year's cast on while i was still feeling festive and it's been my desk/meeting knitting. finished the tube on jan 31st so now it'll probably wait until i decide what contrast colour heels, toes & cuffs i wanna add. i'm thinking white but i don't have a plain white sock yarn in my stash rn so 🤷🏻‍♀️ no rush to finish these tho.

musselburgh hat by ysolda teague

yarn: knit picks elixir in grenadine

this is now gonna be my desk project. i needed something small and simple to work on while i spent my dad's birthday with him near the end of the month and i had an weird amount of this yarn that i wasn't totally sure what to do with so. my first musselburgh! just gonna knit to whatever length i can get with the 2 balls of yarn i have

#project: spark #project: v neck #project: sock #project: musselburgh

[prettylittlelyres]

Violins and Violets - update

I can't begin to express how pleased I am with my progress today!

I went to bed this evening feeling really put down because I'd only (ha!) written about 800 words on my book, my total for January was languishing (ha! ha!) at around 46.8k (I wanted 48k), and instead of having a lovely, productive evening of writing, I'd played piano for a hour and drawn a picture of a tiger.

Obvously it's silly to feel bad about getting so much done - and especially to feel that it's so little - anyway, but I then wrote about 2,800 words in bed, and now my total for the day is 3,665 words! That's more than I've written on any day this month (and I will check my logs for November and December to be sure... but I think it's more than I wrote on any day for a long time).

Noy my total for January's work on this WiP stands at over 48k, which means my total for the second "Violins and Violets" book is now at over 66k, and I'm well on track to get the book finished by the end of the month. And the end of the month is next week!

I plan to rest my writing brain in February, because I haven't taken a break since before Hallowe'en. I've written every day in November and December 2023, and - so far - every day in January 2024. I hope I would let myself take a break when I needed to anyway, but I'm actually going to try to enforce it in February, because I'm worried I'll burn out otherwise.

But for the moment, I am riding on the very happy feeling of having written so much in just one day! May tomorrow be just as satisfying, and may I maintain my motivation for the last few days of the month.

I think I will queue some celebratory excerpts to post automatically throughout February, as it's been rather quiet on this blog as far as excerpts are concerned. I spend so much time actually writing these days - thank you, brain - that it's difficult to know which bits to post. That can be one of my "resting tasks" (things I'm going to do to trick myself into feeling productive while actually forcing myself to put my feet up) for February. As for March... I'm hoping to start Book 3.

Happy Writing, everyone! I hope your WiPs - or next projects - give you just as much joy as this project is giving me.

#writeblr #blog #violins and violets #writer's life #writing about writing #amwriting #violins and violets series #violins and violets book 2

[greaseonmymouth]

I have had a very busy few weeks and this week in particular has been wild, so I’ve not had time (or energy) to write any fic for like a month. so my current wip has been languishing while I’ve just been daydreaming about it every spare moment instead, as you do

well I woke up this morning from a dream that I was at London book fair (I was in fact at London book fair this week) and attending a seminar but actually I was running the seminar, and the seminar was just all of us watching Journal 64

#my dream was literally me trapping a bunch of book industry people in a room with me and forcing them to watch a Danish movie #like sorry guys if you were here for Fear and Loathing in Translation #or The Lifecycle of a Book and its Impact on the Climate #or New Trends in Publishing in Sub-Saharan Africa #not anymore you aren’t! pay attention to my detectives or you will never leave #guess what. I’ll be watching journal 64 tonight #this is clearly a sign

[redrocketpanda]

20 Q's for Fic Writers

Thanks @spacejammie-eimmajecaps fren for the tag :3

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

I currently have 12! 11 from this year, and 1 published in 2014

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

78, 238! (75, 322 from this year)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I mainly write for Haikyuu, My Hero Academia and Bluelock, but have also published for BG3 + Buddy Daddies. And I have some JJK in the wips

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 

Just the Way You Like It (kngr, bllk): 150 Miri's First Swimming Lesson (buddy daddies): 133 Cater to You (kngr, bllk): 116 Interlude: The Senses of You (kazurei, buddy daddies): 113 Strategies for Play (bokuakakuroiwa, haikyuu): 85

I am still a baby writer but I hold all of my little kudos to my heart very fondly

5. Do you respond to comments?

Most of the time I will respond, yes!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oooh... I don't know that I write angsty endings. Usually it's angst all the way till the end. Maybe Interlude: The Senses of You as although there's comfort at the end there's also lots of crying? I think overall it's my most angsty fic as well

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hmmm... most of them have happy endings so idk... maybe Strategies for Play bc Kuroo's "masterplan" worked and it ends post great sex with everyone cuddling in bed being super cute?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope, not ever received hate on my fics but I have received hate about my fics on here (the Astarion one)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Most of what I write tends to be smut lmao. And I guess all kinds but usually with some kind of bdsm/kink dynamics to them? 4 of my published fics are smut (cater to you, he was made to be broken, strategies for play, and the miya atsumu humilation show), and an additional 1 has some sexual content in it (just watch me). My more "risque" content is currently languishing in my wips waiting to be finished (yeah i'm looking at you inumaki/itadori/sukuna fic)

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Yes, but none of them have been published yet LMAO. I can't tell you about one of them that'll be published soon for the They Were Roommates big bang, but I did/do have a bluelock/D&D cross over that's probably the "craziest" one (and also SO much fun to plan). Deep in my wips I also have a BokuAka Greek Mythology AU and sketches for a Haikyuu/Dirty Dancing AU

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Hope not!

12. There was no question 12 so I'll make one up myself: What's the longest you've ever spent working on one fic? And the shortest?

LMAO. I love this because who made this one up? idk! If we're going by published fics then The Miya Atsumu Humiliation Show took me from May to October 2023 (5 months), and I've been working on my TWRRMs bang fic since May (currently 6 months). I've also been planning/writing Fire On the Horizon since Jan 2023!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've co-created a fic, as in coming up with the idea with another person, and I've also co-created in the sense of working with beta readers for bang fics. I've not co-written anything yet though, but I would love to!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Nooo... what a cruel question. I'll give you my top 5 bc I simply cannot choose: krbk (kirishima/bakugou), stsg (gojo/geto), skts (sakusa/atsumu), bkak (bokuto/akaashi), bokuroo (bokuto/kuroo)

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

gods. So many of them tbh... I might one day muster the will to finish he was made to be broken. I want to finish the kunichi (kunigami/raichi) one but idk if I will ever get round to it. And the bllk/D&D one would take a lot of work, but maybe if/when I get back into bllk that'd help

16. What are your writing strengths?

I always struggle with this question bc I have really bad writing insecurities but recently I've been able to conclude that I think I'm reasonably good at comedic writing (people tend to find my fics quite funny), emotive writing (I make people cry/feel Emotions, even if said people don't usually when reading fics), and descriptive writing (I get lots of compliments that people can visualise exactly what I've described)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

idk if it's a "true" weakness but I'm always paranoid that my dialogue is weak as balls. I also don't have much experience with writing long fic, and thus also character + plot development, but this is something I wanna work on. Oh, the biggest one is probs confidence in myself though!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I think it sounds like a cool idea if it works within the context!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Hahaha so technically I think the first fandom I ever wrote for was Spyro the Dragon when I was like... 6 or 7. On Ao3 though it was Harry Potter in 2014. When I returned to writing in 2022, the first one was My Hero Academia

20. Favourite fic you've written?

Oooooooooh. I think my favourite is Strategies for Play. I adored writing it and it was the easiest one I've ever written. Plus writing Bokuto/Akaashi/Kuroo/Iwaizumi dynamics was *chefs kiss*. Otherwise, the [redacted] TWRMMs bang fic I'm writing at the moment is one I've had lots of fun with and am excited to share (very, very soon!) Just Watch Me is also one of my favourites bc krbk my beloveds and it's the one that brought me back to fic writing so its v dear to my heart Tagging some of my fave writery friends as I'd love to read their answers, but join in too if ya want!: @mari-writes, @mooifyourecows, @axreliono, @ciunasboinin, @howlsmovinglibrary

#this was so funnnnnn #love little writery tag gamesssss #ao3 #fic writing game

[palbabor-writes]

so i’ve had a draft languishing in my WIPs for a bit.

it’s a getō x reader & it’ll be pre-gojo’s past arc by a few months but will link up with that by the end. no spoilers in this bit tho!

anyhow. here’s a snippet. lemme know what you think 🧐

She’s prickly, unsociable & so brittle it sets his teeth on edge.

A small clan. One of the lesser. Always scrabbling for an edge. Lagging behind those with the bloodlines. Those who like to pretend that the echoes of long faded ichor matter in the grand scheme of things. It’s been years since the Zen’in clan has produced the ten shadows. What will prayers and haughtiness do about it now?

Don’t talk to her about it, Satoru warns. Better to not stoke a fire that isn’t contained. But Satoru has a high-mindedness that’s all his own.

After all, that’s his birthright. And the first in four hundred years to have both. A paragon at seventeen. Of course she’d slip his notice.

She’s a year younger, Shoko reminds him. Part of another three man team. Not any of his business. Why bother? It’s all so very Shoko. Lazy. Practical. Prescribed. She’ll make a fine doctor. If she can be bothered to put in the time.

Despite these warnings from his team mates, he can’t help but look for her name on the rosters. Both familiar and unfamiliar, checking and double checking until he spies her surname. She’s lagging behind. Crushed under the numbers of her peers.

Shit.

But it’s not his concern, he reminds himself. Who cares?

When he knocks on Yaga’s door he has another question in mind. Something eloquent; prepped and well thought out. But the one he blurts out is: why will no one recommend her?

Yaga fixes him with a hard look. Some have tried. Teachers mostly. But most decide it’s not worth the fight. He doesn’t elaborate. And Getō’s original query is so distant now he can’t even grasp at a tendril of an excuse.

I’m a first grade. Let me put her up in the next panel.

You don’t even know her. Yaga intones; sharp eyes boring into Getōs. Besides, you have two missions coming up this month. Not to mention your own panel. Graduation is next year.

I don’t care.

He does though. So much it makes his toes curl and his mind wander. Yaga tells him to get out with a snort of derision and Getō can practically feel his teacher’s eyes rolling as he slides the door closed behind him.

You ever even talk to her? Gojo laughs, popping another mochi into his mouth.

Once or twice.

She’s the rank she is because she can’t hack the system. You know that, right?

Sure, getō echoes, spying you on the training field. But it’s our job to uphold and support our fellow sorcerers.

Ugh, not this bullshit again

If you don’t want to hear it, don’t ask. Getō quips, a glimmer of a smile on his lips

The day after the panel recommendations are announced he loiters by your classroom. He doesn’t mean to be so obvious. He should be waiting for Shoko in the infirmary. He told her he would. But for some reason, this just feels like the right thing to do.

Your eyes snap to his when you step into the hallway, your boots shining with a fresh polish, fingers knotted into tight fists at your side

Did you really put my name up for 1st grade?

Uh, yeah. Getō at least has the grace to scratch at the back of his head, nails sharp against the obsidian strands. This is not going to plan.

Why?

Because I wanted to.

You don’t even know me.

Why does everyone say that, he thinks, nose wrinkling in distaste. Even if it is partially true.

That’s not true, he lies. We’ve gone to jujutsu tech for two years together. Even fought in this years group during the school tournament. And I remember you from martial arts training. That was almost three years ago now.

You’re silent after his litany of reasons and he pads one step, two steps closer.

You aren’t a grade 4. He says, hoping to imbue some conviction into his vocalization. Haven’t been for at least a year. Even then you really came in at grade 2, what with your control over cursed—

And you, in your infinite wisdom, felt I’d just languish in obscurity until you came along and fixed it?

I- what?

I told them no.

Told them? Wait. Do you mean the council? Shit. This isn’t going to plan.

Yeah. Told them there’d be a mix up. You must have put my name on accident. Or as a joke.

He’s getting annoyed; shoulders bunching closer to his ears, upper lip curling until his sharp canine is gleaming in the late afternoon glow of the overhead lights. It wasn’t an accident. And I certainly didn’t do it as some sort of joke. Has Satoru been talking to you? Did he tell you—

Look, you sigh, pink tongue slicking over your bottom lip, leaving a glimmering sheen behind. Getō’s nostrils flare at that and he rocks forward, toes stretching for the tip of his boots. As if that’ll let him soak up more of you. As if it’ll dampen the simmering anger from your eyes.

I don’t need your help.

🧍‍♀️

#pal writes #finally #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk geto #getō suguru #suguru geto #knowing me there will be smut #but also know me there will be build up #and likely some angst