#i tried googling lines that i vaguely remember from the fic

[coaaster]

Lost Fic - does anyone know what that fic is where bakugou and his gf are at a house party drinking and they’re playing a game of truth or dare. and reader is sitting on his lap, he’s thinking like ‘my gf so smart’ not realising he’s actually saying it out loud. i remember the end they went to bed and reader recorded him being cute and was showing him the video the morning after. also kaminari threatening to record him.

im so sad i forgot to reblog it :,))) so any help is appreciateddd

edit: found in replies, Intoxicated on ao3!!

#bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #lost fic #bkg x reader #bnha bakugo katsuki #<3 #i tried googling lines that i vaguely remember from the fic #bc google has a better search engine than tumblr #and still couldn’t find it #so it’s either from an older blog or they’re just hidden #:((((

[snailor-bee]

even in another time...

So I saw an event on Twitter that was "yeehawgust" a prompt list for everything "Wild West" and I told Angel we should write something for each other. >:O Just something short. She picked "marace + first photo" I tried to make this kinda of a Western 1800s America, I did very little Googling so please excuse any inconsistencies haha.

I hope you like it @itsthefandommash!

Ace x Marco / SFW  / 1.1k Summary: Ace just wants to get a picture together with the love of his life, damnit. Warnings: General warning for implied homophobia but none is expressed to anyone in the fic itself.

· · ─────── ·🔥· ─────── · ·· · ─────── ·🔥· ─────── · ·

They’ve been together for about three years now. It's more than pleasant but it's hard to put down in words. Ace never thought this would be his life, settled down in some small town, assistant sheriff to the town’s sheriff, Edward Newgate, a man he’s begun to regard as a father figure, dating a man who he could swear hangs the stars in the sky. Marco is his guiding northern star, something that has finally calmed the storm that has raged inside of Ace since before he could remember.

When Ace stumbled into town, basically an outlaw looking for a quick buck (always stealing from people who deserved it and nothing else, he wasn’t a monster), he’d gotten his ass handed to him by the sheriff. Not that it kept Ace down. He was a master at escaping, jail cells were nothing more than a suggestion by that point, but his pride had been damaged. Instead of cutting town and trying elsewhere, he’d challenged Newgate again and again, all ending up in failure.

Which was how he met Marco, the town’s doctor who had been called in to fix up his bruised and battered body.

It was the beginning of, well, everything. They took a while of dancing around each other (can never be too careful, on the road two men could mess around just fine, but put most in a town and they’ll punch you in the face if you look at them the ‘wrong’ way, Ace has learned from experience) but eventually they found each other.

And while Marco’s family was understanding, they still had to be careful with the general town population not to flaunt it. Maybe some suspected but then again, maybe not. Marco was well loved and when Sunday came around, Ace dutifully trailed along to church, though he was bored out of his mind the entire time.

The kisses he always got when they got back to Marco’s place made it worth though.

All this was to say, when a photographer found his way to the town and Ace watched everyone clamber for a picture of their families, he felt the familiar flames of jealousy roll around in his gut.

Because they couldn’t get a picture. That would be… stretching it a little too much. Sure, they were friends and were close because Ace was close with all of the Newgate’s adopted children. But a picture together? That would be the equivalent of standing in the middle of the town hall and screaming his love.

Or so it felt. Anyway, Ace tried not to let it bother him, just went about his duties and forced a thinly veiled smile whenever someone shoved their brand-new photo into his face and he made some vague compliment that he didn’t really feel.

Was it so wrong to want the same? Ace loved Marco, he knew that way down into his soul. He never wanted to part from him. Wanted to wake up each day to admire Marco’s sleeping face, trace the lines that bordered his eyes, his lips. Wanted to carve each day into memory.

A photograph would freeze Marco for him. So that as the years went by, Ace could hold it up and see where Marco had been before and see where he was now. It sounded nice.

He didn’t voice any of these thoughts though. Ace had long gotten used to not dreaming of things that were impossible and forcing Marco to sit there and feel bad because Ace felt bad was unappealing.

So he was totally unprepared when Marco asked him to run some errands to find when he returned Marco’s living room had been totally reconfigured. (They had separate places but Ace stayed over so often that he basically lived at Marco’s house.) A camera with its accordion-looking body was set up, pointed towards two chairs.

Thatch was beaming at him as Marco ushered him into his (their) room. “Here, get changed,” he ordered, shoving a bundle of clothes into Ace’s arms.

“Marco? What is this?” Marco just smiled and leaned forward enough to peck him on the cheek.

“Figured we oughta get one. Thatch bought a camera off that photographer and he's been playin' around with it so he’ll be able to develop the photographs for us.” Marco hesitated. “Unless you didn’t want one…?”

Shuffling the bundle into one arm with the other he grabbed Marco’s collar and pulled him into a hard kiss. When they parted, Marco’s rounded glasses were skewed on his face and Ace smiled, canines flashing. “Oh you better BELIEVE I want one. Better fly away birdie so I can change or else Thatch’ll be waitin’ a little too long.”

Marco chuckled as he fixed his glasses. “Alright, alright, I’m leavin’.” His blue eyes regarded Ace warmly as he hovered in the doorway. “Don’t take too long, I’m holdin’ ya to that promise.”

Ace laughed and Thatch’s voice drifted over to them. “What’s the hold up you two!” Marco shot him a wink before he left, and Ace hustled to get dressed.

The rest of the evening was spent with Thatch fussing over them both, positioning them then fixing their clothing, then their hair. During the actual photograph, it was hard to keep still. It was a shame that they wouldn’t be able to smile during them (Ace loved Marco’s smile) but at least he would at least get a photograph so he wouldn’t complain.

By the time Thatch packed up and left it was late and Ace gratefully collapsed into Marco’s arms. “That was tirin’!” he whined as Marco started carding a few fingers through his black hair.

“Was it?” his deep voice said with a hint of amusement. “Maybe we shouldn’t do it again.”

“No way!” Ace argued. “We gotta get one every few years. Need to see how much more hair you lose.”

“Excuse me?” Marco said, poking harshly against Ace’s ribs making him squirm until he burst out with laughter. “That was rude, apologize! Or else.”

“Or else what?” Ace challenged.

“I’ll kick you out,” Marco said firmly.

Ace snorted and saw the way Marco’s frown wavered as if he was trying to stop himself from laughing or smilin’. “No, you wouldn’t,” he said with conviction.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Marco agreed, voice as warm as a summer day. “But I would be extremely cross with you.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that,” Ace said rolling his eyes. Then, softer, he looked at Marco and said, “I’m sorry, you’re oh so handsome, I’ll never think otherwise.” And though his tone was teasing, there was a truth laced through every word.

As always, Marco understood what he meant and pulled him closer. “I love you, Ace.”

Ace buried his face into Marco’s neck, breathing in the smell of him, relaxing him instantly. “Yeah, I love ya too.”

#marace #one piece #bee writes #bee writing #portgas d. ace #marco the phoenix #yeehawgust

[gallifrey1sburning]

Muggle Technology Through the Ages:

A vague and incomplete timeline of what people were using when for writers who want to avoid anachronistic technology use in their canon timeline-compliant Harry Potter fic.

Keeping track of the evolution of technology is hard! Here's a cheat sheet for those of you who either a) like me, have trouble keeping track in your head even though you lived through it, or b) are young enough that you didn't live through a lot of it at all.

Phones:

Land lines were the norm well into the 90s. Not only that, but CORDLESS landlines didn’t even become prevalent until the mid 90s; they still cost hundreds of dollars in 1994, and the frequencies on them were weird, so you would sometimes hear your neighbors’ phone calls by accident. Ours used to turn on my little sister’s remote control Barbie car. We thought it was haunted.

Although cell phones have been around since the 80s, they were uncommon until the 90s, and then they were nothing near as ubiquitous as they are now. In 2000, when I was in high school, I had ONE friend with a cell. I got my first one in 2002, and it was only for emergencies while driving, because when I’d get lost I would have to pull over and use a pay phone otherwise.

Unlimited calling wasn’t a thing until 2002; until then, all plans were pay per minute. A lot of plans stayed that way for many years after. “Roaming” cost more. (Roaming was when you were outside of your own area code, basically.) When you moved, you got a new number.

Texting was expensive and difficult for ages. You used your normal phone numeral keys and a system called T9 tried to figure out what you meant, because every number stood for 3-4 letters. It was a giant pain in the ass.

The first full QWERTY keyboard phones came out in 1997, and most people didn’t have them until the early 2000s. I got my first one in 2007, and no one thought anything of it.

There was NO internet capability of any sort on mass market cell phones until 2000/2001. After that, it was still pretty limited until the iPhone came out.

Texting didn’t really become a big part of how we communicate until 2002/2003 for most people. And, like calls, they charged per text, so you were VERY careful and would get super mad at your friends who pushed you over your limit, because that shit was expensive. I can’t find info on when unlimited texting started being offered, but I didn’t get it until 2007/2008.

The first iPhone also came out in 2007. It was the first phone with full internet access. It was also the second full touchscreen phone ever, and the first one (the LG Prada) was only announced a month before.

Camera phones have existed since 2000ish, but weren’t the main method people used for pictures until much later, mostly because they were super shitty. I still had a separate, physical digital camera in 2008/2009.

Internet:

Consumer access to the internet was virtually nonexistent until 1995. My family got it circa 1997. It was all dial up.

Dial up was slow, sometimes you couldn’t connect, and it USED YOUR PHONE LINE. Remember, from above, the fact that landlines were the predominant phones until the early 2000s? Yeah. If you didn’t have multiple lines, you weren’t likely to be online for very long at a go. My parents limited us to 20 minutes. Also, sometimes, if a call came in while you were online, you’d get kicked off.

Broadband came out in the late 90s, and people were still commonly using dial up until the mid 2000s

WIFI wasn’t common for consumer use until the mid 2000s, either.

We may not have been texting, but we were all VERY into instant messaging. Pretty much everyone had AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) or ICQ starting in the late 90s as well. I did a lot of late night chatting when my family was asleep and I wouldn’t be tying up the phone line.

Social media & popular websites:

Here are some key dates for when various things that seem like they’ve been around forever actually started!

Google: 1998

Livejournal: 1999

MySpace (it was huge before Facebook and not mostly for musicians!): 2003

Facebook: 2004, and you had to have an email address from a college or university that had been formally included until 2006.

YouTube: 2005

Twitter: 2006

Spotify: 2006

Tumblr: 2007

Instagram: 2010

Tinder: 2012 (before that, the biggest online dating services were Match.com (1995), eHarmony (2000) and OkCupid (2004).)

Bonus: Netflix came out in the late 90s, but it was a physical DVD mail order subscription service. They didn’t introduce streaming until 2007!

Music:

CDs came out in the early 90s, but a lot of people kept using cassettes for a long time afterwards. I got my first CD player in the late 90s; portable CD players weren’t popular before that because the CDs would skip if you jostled the player. My first car (a 1991 model I bought in 2001) only had a cassette player, so I had this weird converter thing to hook it up to my CD player. Mostly I just listened to the radio, though.

Digital music wasn’t super big before the late 90s/early 2000s, and even then, we were mostly downloading (read: stealing) it and burning it to CDs. Napster was the main service we used for piracy at first; it came out in 1999. That’s around when mix CDs started overtaking mix tapes for wooing people with pointed song lyrics.

The first MP3 player came out in 1997. iPods (which were JUST for music) were introduced in 2001, and CDs only started to lose popularity around 2003. I got my first iPod in college (an iPod mini) and it was SO COOL. It came in 4 or 6 GB versions.

Some of this info is from research, some from personal (and American) experience, but hopefully it’s helpful! I didn’t bother to go into computers or TV here, but they’ve changed a hell of a lot, too, and I’m happy to do a run down some other time. Suffice to say that the TV I took to college with me in 2003 was a 12” screen tube TV with a built in DVD player, and that before leaving for college, I didn’t have my own computer—I shared it with my entire family. There were six of us. Yeah.

#harry potter #technology #writing resources #tech timeline #anachronistic technology #ravenclaw life #why am i like this

[babuis]

Who Needs Memories? [Chilumi] - 1

Genre: Long Fic

Word Count: 2.2k

Synopsis: Lumine is not naive. Through her thousands of years living, she should know better. Should have learned better. She knew better then to trust someone who threw her insecurities into her face. So why was she here, standing in the room of the person who betrayed her while wanting to give him another chance?

Or

Events from before the Golden House between Childe and Lumine to the unreleased future.

A/n: I’m deciding on whether I want to pursue this as a long fic in my google docs. Tbh I can really only write for Genshin when I’m in this strange, dreamy, longing mood where I wish to leave everything behind and enter the world of Genshin- it just feels so inviting and like home for some reason.

Pulled this out of my ass Bcs I’m in that mood rn. Sadness makes me poetic (but I’m not sad? Genshin gets me in a very dreamy mood)

So imma test it out by seeing how it’s received. Should I make this into a longer series?

Story starts before golden house.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lumine couldn't go back to sleep. 

This wasn't a new development. Since arriving in Teyvat, she had fallen victim to many sleepless nights or sleeps that were interrupted by night terrors she couldn't quite remember until much later when it was no longer important. Sometimes when she did sleep, her dreams would be filled with fragments of memories from the thousands of years she lived with her brother from world to world before all of this that refused to leave her mind.

Tonight she had dreamed about the time when they weren't in a particular world, but rather the period in between where they simply existed in the clouds.

Lumine and Aether sat on a large cloud, staring into the expanse before them. They sat with their knees hugged to their chest, feeling the last rays of the sun brush over them before nightfall. 

"Hey Aether?'

"Hm?"

Lumine sighed as she lay lazily on her back. Her body sunk into the soft pillows of cloud ever so slightly and she stared up into the infinite abyss of the sky above their heads.

"Do you ever wonder what else is out there?' she questioned him, reaching her hand up, "We've been to so many worlds already. Will there be a point where we no longer learn new things?"

Aether scoffed lightly, turning his head to look at his twin, "We've been alive for thousands of years, have you yet to come to a world and not learn anything?"

"No," Lumine admitted, "But you said it yourself, we're so old already. What if one day..."

Aether sighed again, shifting to face his sister fully, "Don't worry about it. Worlds may be similar to each other. We may just arrive in them to fight a little, but there' always been subtle differences that make each special."

"Hmm," Lumine hummed, closing her eyes as a chill brushed over her body, "Do you think mom ever got bored?"

"Bored? She had twins."

Lumine chuckled lightly, "Yea, she did, didn't she?"

They didn't speak after that. Soon the vibrant colors of the sunset turned into the cool night sky and millions of stars twinkled around them, each representing a new world. Lumine shuddered slightly, wondering if her fears were silly. With so many worlds, surely there would be new things to see. A new purpose to have.

"We should go to that one next," Aether said, pointing to the brightest star to their left, "Burning up real bright."

Lumine nodded, shielding her eyes a bit from the light, "Sure is."

Aether lay down, settling beside her, "Go to sleep, Lumi," he said softly, "we got a new world ahead of that."

"Hmm," she hummed again, closing her eyes.

Soon, her brother's breathes turned steady as he fell asleep. She gave him one last peek before she too, succumbed to slumber. 

Even if they explored all the worlds there were and learned everything there was to know, she would be okay just as long as she had Aether by her side to navigate her life with her.

And then he was gone.

Lumine shuddered as the wind blew towards her from the water. It seemed to be particularly cold in Liyue that night on the harbor. She sat on the wooden dock, letting her slender legs hang over the edge. The stars shined above her, much like they had in her dream.

Except this time she was sitting on the hard dock instead of the fluffy clouds and she was alone.

Her hair tickled her cheek as she dejectedly thought about Aether. They had come to this world, the brightest one to their left, together, only to be separated. They had never separated before and the anxious heaviness that took permanent hold of her chest became heavier as she remembered her dream.

I miss you Aether.

This world had been shockingly new from the rest of the ones she had visited. With it's divisions between the archons and people, it seemed like this world was made up of multiple ones with a complexity that she kept getting dragged into.

It was something her past self would have marveled excitedly at- there was just so much to learn. But without Aether, without her rock through it all, it almost seemed meaningless. Her only purpose now, was to find him.

Perhaps this is what she got for wishing for a new purpose in life. If she could go back and take it all back, she would.

"Hey girlie, it's dangerous for you to be so lost in thought this late at night. A bad man could come and sweep you away."

Ah, Childe.

Lumine turned her head to see the blue eyes ginger standing behind her, a mischievous glint in his eye as he looked down at her. She licked her lips, turning away from him.

"What do you want, Fatui?" she asked harshly, "If you push me in the water, I'll blast you all the way to the stone forest."

Childe raised his hands up in surrender, a throaty chuckle making its way out of his mouth, "No need to be so hostile, I thought we shared a more intimate relationship than that."

"I'm warning you," Lumine said again, pulling her knees up to her chest.

Childe took a seat beside her, looking into the distance where she was, "I would never, girlie. I'm a bad man but I wouldn't push an unsuspecting lady into the water."

"Sure you wouldn't, Fatui," Lumine said with disdain.

"I wouldn't," he repeated, "What are you looking at? Actually, what are you doing up so late? It's well past your bed time."

Lumine snorted, "You're not older than me."

"I'll have you know I'm a young adult," Childe protested.

Lumine gave him a wry smile, "As am I."

"You don't look a day older 18," Childe hmphed, "Pray tell, Ojou-chan, how old are you really?"

Lumine finally glanced at the ginger who was staring at her with curious eyes, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would, actually," he said, not looking away.

'You wouldn't even be able to fathom it if you tried,' Lumine thought to herself, 'nor is it safe for me to tell you.'

Childe stared at Lumine some more, refusing to be the first to look away. Her golden eyes burned with something he couldn't quite place, but were at the same time quite hardened. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and her eyebrows were softly furrowed into a stern looking pout. 

'How cute,' he mused to himself, 'too bad you're just a pawn in Tsaritsa's game.'

"You don't trust me," he settled on saying, his mouth quirking to the side.

Lumine finally looked away, making Childe celebrate internally, 'ha! I win!'

"Why should I?" she muttered.

"I get it, La Signora gave you a bad impression," Childe said, "But like I said, I don't particularly like her either. I'm the black sheep of the Harbingers you know, we're not all like her."

Lumine didn't say anything. If she learned anything from her extensive existence, it was to not trust a man like Childe.

"Fine, then answer this for me since you're unwilling to share," Childe caved, "What are you doing up so late?"

Lumine shrugged, "It's not late. If I'm correct, it's a new day."

"Fine smart ass," Childe sassed her, "What are you doing up so early?"

"I guess I'm an early bird then," Lumine said vaguely, not wanting to mention her lack of sleep.

"Great answer."

The two sat in silence again, the breeze blowing even harder. Lumine shivered again at the wind's caress which prompted Childe to shrug off his jacket to give to the blonde. Lumine noticed and put her hand up to stop him hurriedly, not wanting to create even more debt to the Harbinger.

"You're cold," Childe insisted, "Take it."

Lumine frowned, "No, you're cold. You take it."

"Ojou-chan," he said, exasperated, "I'm from Snezhnaya, a bit of wind isn't going to kill me."

Lumine raised an eyebrow, "I use Anemo powers, a little bit of wind isn't going to kill me either."

"But it'll make you sick."

"No it won't."

"Yes it will."

"No it won't."

"Yes it will."

"No it won't."

She knew it wouldn't. It had been a very long time since Lumine had gotten sick, the last time being in a world with giant man eating beings. The only reason for her sickness, of course, wasn't her health, but the disgusting stench of dead bodies.

Lumine stubbornly stood up and started walking down the dock back towards the center of the town where she was staying. She was done with this conversation- done with him. However, Childe seemed to have other plans as he followed the petite girl down the paved road.

"Stop following me," came Lumine's cutting words, not even bothering to look back.

'Charming,' Childe thought as he ignored her words, "It's dangerous for a pretty girl to roam around the town in the dark."

Lumine simply rolled her eyes, coming to a halt in front of a random building, "I'm not in danger of the Milleleth anymore, and I'm sure I could handle some petty thieves if I did a dragon."

"Ah, that's right. I'm talking to the Hero of Mondstadt here," Child said teasingly, 'and the biggest pain in the ass to Tsaritsa.'

Lumine gave him an unimpressed look, "I suppose that's right, so as you can see, I can handle myself."

'If anything, you're the biggest threat in this town,' she thought distastfully.

"Alright then, Ojou-chan, I'm off-"

Before he could finish his goodbye, he was cut off by a large growl emitting from Lumine's stomach. For the first time that night, Lumine lost her composure and blushed a bright red and her body burned hotter than the sun despite the chilly morning air. Childe paused, blinking twice, before busting out into laughter that caused the girl to further lose composure.

'Damn this near mortal body!' Lumine cursed, 'I never had to eat this often before!'

"Hahaha!" he laughed heartily, clutching his sides, "Did you perhaps eat the dragon to defeat it?" he teased her.

Lumine growled, "Shut up," she said hotly.

"Say, why don't I take you and Paimon to get some food then?" Childe suggested, "I'm sure you're hungry and you wouldn't turn down free food when you lack Mora."

Lumine grumbled quietly to herself, knowing he was right. She had very little Mora left thanks to Paimon spending so much on food and she was admittedly hungry. Hunger was a foreign concept to her body up until recently, and she detested the very idea of it.

"Don't be stubborn Ojou-chan," Childe persisted, "I did afterall, save you from the Millelith didn't I?"

Lumine begrudgingly nodded her head, "Fine," she said quietly, "Let me get Paimon first."

And so they walked side by side to her inn- that he helped he book- to fetch Paimon and go eat. They walked leisurely, as if they weren't two people that were on drastically different sides. They walked as if they were acquaintances- as if they were friends to the unknowing eye.

Lumine knew she shouldn't. She should have stopped all interaction after that one time he helped her out by clearing her name. Shouldn't have accepted the help nor the Mora from him- no matter how broke she was. She could have found a way or slept on the outskirts of the town. She shouldn't be accepting his invitation to eat.

What was wrong with her?

Teyvat had proved to be full of surprises, her behavior being one of them. It had been months since she woke up from her slumber. When was the last time she had stayed in one place for so long? Fought off monsters for other people rather than the thrill of the fight?

It didn't matter, Lumine supposed. What mattered was finding her brother and what happened after that would be a future Lumine problem. What else was there to do after finding her brother? What was the purpose of her world hopping?

Lumine no longer remembered.

As they neared the inn where she left Paimon, she could hear the floating girl's shrill and angry voice scolding her for leaving. Paimon's voice only turned more sour when she saw the Fatui next to her.

"Lumine!" the pixie exclaimed, "You can't leave to go rendezvous with the enemy!"

Lumine  gave the little girl an unimpressed look, "I did no such thing, he's cashing in a favor."

"A favor?" Childe interrupted, "Considering I'm paying for your food, I'd say I'm doing a service and you know owe me a favor."

Paimon looked angry for a second, "Lumine! You can't just- wait, did Paimon just hear you say food?"

"Sure did little one," Childe grinned, "Come on, it's my treat."

And just like that, Paimon's anger disappeared at the promise of something warm to fill her stomach. Constellations materialized around her floating body as she followed the ginger to a restaurant he claimed that he knew 'they would just love.'

Lumine lingered at the steps of the inn, staring up into the sky that was now painted with the vibrant colors of the sunrise. 

What was the purpose of her life?

Lumine basked in the warmth of the sun and found comfort in the lack of visible stars in the sky.

Lumine didn't remember.

Perhaps she never knew.

#chilumi #lumine #ying lumine #tartaglia #Childe #ajax #genshin impact #genshin lumine #genshin headcanons #genshin imagines #genshin childe #genshin paimon #genshin ajax #teyvat #Childe x lumine #ship #angst #fluff #fic #who needs memories? #genshin fic #genshin fan fic

[itsclydebitches]

YYH Recaps: Koenma Appears

Welcome to episode two, everyone! Before we get to the recap proper, I want to continue down Nostalgia Lane for a moment. Remember how last time I mentioned a Hiei bookmark I used daily back in middle school? Well, I tore through an old "treasure box" I created as a kid (a collection containing everything from a shark tooth to a small book on witchcraft. You know, the important things every child needs) hoping to find it... but I didn't. It's a hard life we lead.

However, I did find some other YYH relics that I thought you all might enjoy seeing. Behold — and, if you'd like, laugh at — my collection:

First up is a picture of young Toguro and Genkai that I wanted to use as my bookmark, but found that it was too wide. For the record, I didn't (and still don't) care about Toguro much, he was just the byproduct of finding a cool Genkai picture. Not shown is the back of the image with the names of my classmates because I made them all sign this along with our yearbook.

God bless my friends for putting up with me.

Second is a collection of very pretty trading cards that I ordered from god only knows where. I have vague memories of not finding any at my local comics shop and convincing my mom to let me order on The Olde Internet. Did I want the trading cards to trade them? Absolutely not. They exist to sparkle and make my heart happy.

Finally, I've saved what is perhaps the best for last. Now, you have to understand that grade to middle school age Clyde did not have the education that she would receive later on, which includes a knowledge of the ephemeral nature of fanworks and the importance of accurate record keeping. What this means is that I have absolutely no context for this. No author, no explanation... just the image itself.

Was this a standalone fanart? A part of a fic? Some specific request or just the will of the artist? I cannot answer these questions. I tried a reverse image search (which is, admittedly, the extent of my tech skills) and you know what the single hit I got was? "Fiction." Thanks, google. So yeah, I can only assume that my child self considered Kurama giving a de-aged Hiei a bubble bath adorable enough to save, but the artist wasn't important enough to jot down for future viewing. Sorry about that, mystery artist. And, as should go without saying, if anyone does know where this came from please let me know! Though I suspect that this is a case of a YYH-specific site closing down and the fanworks getting lost along with it. That happened a great deal before the age of AO3 when volunteers decided to put their time and talent towards saving fanworks of all sorts... 

But enough of all that. Let's get to recapping!

As we established last episode, Yusuke and Botan are on their way to the spirit world to kickstart Yusuke's ordeal. Watching this after over a decade of consuming other media, I really appreciate that Yusuke acts like a human person and asks lots of questions about this. When Botan is cryptic for the sake of the audience — we're going to see "the person" who can explain everything — Yusuke is justifiably like, and what person would that be?? I mean, this is also a way to establish basic facts for the viewer and it simultaneously feeds into Yusuke being someone who is difficult for the sake of being difficult — "If someone wants to say something, they should come to me!" — but it's just nice to see a character who doesn't accept cryptic BS because the story needs them to. If Botan gives an unclear, but ~dramatic~ explanation, Yusuke is going to call her out on that.

So she explains that they're going to see King Yama and Yusuke is all whoa whoa whoa, there's royalty involved? Suddenly, he's not so adamant that they come to him. 

Botan tries to reinforce this rare spark of humility and demands that Yusuke be on his best behavior from here on out.

Pff. Yeah right.

But “he can send you to oblivion forever if he wants to!” is a suitable enough threat to cow Yusuke for now. Which is interesting considering that a few hours ago he was happy to accept hell as his rightful ending. Granted, we could argue that there's a big difference between hell and oblivion — a character may not be afraid of punishment in the same way they are a lack of existence — but I'd say this ties more into Yusuke's development at the wake. Now that he's accepted that people care for him and that he should strive to return to them, the threat of having it snatched away actually means something. Even if that line is otherwise positioned as a comedic moment.

Botan flies them through a portal where we see the River Styx below and Yusuke comments on how big everything is. At first I was like, "What are you talking about? You were just flying over some major city in fictional Japan, wasn't that big too?" but this line makes more sense when they reach the palace and you realize that yeah, it's big. As in, the camera blurs while tilting down its length to show how insanely tall it is. Yusuke and Botan are tiny gnats at the gate's entrance.

"Oh man, what a pad!" Yusuke says and sure, that's one way to look at it lol.

Botan announces that she has a "new arrival" and the gates open for them, but so far there's no one else around. One part of me wants to question the time and budget put into this scene because shouldn't there be, like, thousands of people? Even just waiting outside? The idea that this is the hub of the underworld and that Botan is responsible for ferrying all the souls, yet she is guiding just this one (1) dude for a solid day is, from a world building perspective, kind of nuts. But beyond the need to develop Botan as a character (she can't be a part of the story if her job is treated realistically, with all the endless work that entails), I think this choice functions rather well from an atmospheric perspective too. Meaning, this moment is supposed to be rather tense for Yusuke. He just died, just found out the afterlife exists, just discovered a desire to get his life back, and is now about to meet a King who can toss him into oblivion if he's rude — which Yusuke always is. So this is a Very Dangerous Moment and their relative isolation feeds into that. As does the setting. Yusuke flinches back from the hallway, saying that it looks like a giant throat, so he is now literally walking into the belly of the beast. 

Suddenly, the size of the palace isn't an indicator of awesome wealth, just general intimidation. Also, check out the spikey purple mountains in the background and the harsh reds of the scene, especially compared to the soft yellow of the river. All of it is designed to create an, "Oh shit" reaction in both Yusuke and the audience.

Yusuke's image of King Yama matches these surroundings:

Oh wait! Wrong character ;)

He's massive, red, shadowed, and poses a formidable threat. And how does Yusuke deal with threats? By fighting them! Even those he can't hope to beat. Remember, this isn't a situation where Yusuke has any power here, but he still desperately holds onto the possibility that he might. What if he gets off a punch on King Yama's nose? Then goes for his eyes? Yeah, that'll work! 

Overlooking the fact that it absolutely would not — Yusuke's fantasy conveniently skips how he escapes Yama's clutches — what exactly is Yusuke hoping to accomplish here? Somehow take over the entire underworld? Escape as a ghost and live out his afterlife in hiding? We don't know and that's because Yusuke doesn't know. He doesn't think ahead, he just obeys this instinct to fight. An instinct that, crucially, overrides everything else. Botan has already told him that all Yusuke needs to do is be polite and everything will be fine, but it's not even that Yusuke believes that he can't achieve that; that he knows himself too well and, fearing a slip, starts planning for a potentially inevitable confrontation. There are simply no plans outside of battle plans. Yusuke just hears about someone vaguely intimidating and his brain jumps straight to, "How do I beat him in a fight?" no matter the odds, or that other options are readily available to him. Again, much of YYH's characterization occurs though its comedy, so outside of the general humor of witnessing this fantasy, it actually does a stellar job of reinforcing precisely who Yusuke is. In life the only thing he had going for him was his ability to fight. It was his one joy, his one skill, arguably the one good thing he did if we frame those reflexes as "saving" the kid... so is it any wonder that fighting dominates his every thought? It's all he knows.

And, as we'll see down the line, that single-minded obsession is very useful to the spirit world.

For now though, Yusuke finishes his absurd plans to take down King Yama and Botan asks what in the world he's muttering about back there. Which is an unintentionally hilarious line because by the end Yusuke is not muttering, but full on shouting. Botan. How did you not hear him?

Not important. They reach the next door and we get our first inkling that all is not as Yusuke (and we) expect when Botan leans into an intercom to say that they've arrived. Tech in a fantasy spirit world? This feels not only out of place, but rather... mundane? That's the point. When the doors open Yusuke expects his super scary monster, but gets... a whole lot of monsters that aren't scary at all!

The underworld is run by various demons (or ogres), though their looks are contrasted with the harried office worker personalities they've got going on. Someone is running by with a comically tall stack of papers. Someone else is shouting into a cell phone. The first two demons we see cross paths, looking like they're about to punch one another, just as Yusuke expects... except they're just dramatically getting out of the other's way, worried not about the hierarchy of this realm, but the fact that someone is behind schedule. The nerve!

"This place is a madhouse!" we hear somehow shout and yeah, that's the joke. The afterlife is just as chaotic, overworked, and — ultimately — boring as any human office. For all the strangeness of seeing hundreds of demons, this is familiar.

Which, alongside Botan's bubbly nature contrasting assumptions about the Grim Reaper, is one of the first instances of YYH undercutting the viewer's expectations in terms of looks. No one entirely looks the part they play in this tale and if you're trying to teach people to look past surface characteristics... there are worse ways to do it. Horrifying creatures with horns and sharp teeth? Nah, they're just chill dudes trying to do their job. Cutesy girl who looks like she belongs in a mall reading magazines? Nah, she's the Grim Reaper. Terrifying delinquent with a spine-chilling reputation? Nah, he makes faces at kids and saves them from cars.

Of course, the "nah" isn't accurate either. These are monsters with horns, Botan is a cutesy girl, and Yusuke is a delinquent with that reputation. The message isn't so much that people look like Thing A, but get to know them and you'll discover they're actually Thing B, it's the idea that you can be A and B (and C, D, E...) simultaneously. People — or rather, seemingly simple archetypes — can, in fact, embody multiple characteristics at once.

We'll get our third example in just a second.

Yusuke makes a comment about this being the "dead people stock exchange" — accurate — and Botan leads him to a more ornate door past all the desks. It's clear they've arrived at King Yama's office, since she's bowing and formally presenting him to... someone. Yusuke looks around for the giant beast he's imagined, only for a tiny voice to hail him from the ground.

Looks are deceiving!

“This is Yusuke Urameshi and he’s honored to meet you." Botan knows what's up. She knows Yusuke isn't going to express anything of the sort without some prompting. Too bad he's busy cracking up at this apparent child running the show. Side note: Yusuke has a fantastic laugh.

He even goes so far as to accuse Botan of lying to him.

“Why would I lie about such a thing?!”

“Why would the spirit world be run by a toddler?”

It's true! That’s a legitimate question! I love that Yusuke asks questions. The "toddler" goes on to explain that he's actually the "mighty Koenma," son of King Yama, though he's lived fifty times as long as Yusuke, "so watch your mouth." Assuming Koenma knows and/or remembers how old Yusuke is — fourteen — and is good at math, that puts him at seven hundred years old. He looks good for his age!

"And in addition to knowing the secrets of the universe," he says, "I am quite potty trained."

You've gotta love Koenma.

Yusuke's attitude changes drastically once they get down to business. Koenma produces an egg, saying that Yusuke's ordeal is to hatch it and face what comes out. The hatching part isn't difficult, all he needs to do is keep it on his person. The challenge is in the fact that this egg will feed off his spirit energy and that energy in turn will change what kind of creature develops. If his spirit is wicked and cruel, so will be the beast and it will devour Yusuke upon hatching.

However, if his spirit is good and kind, the beast will become a sort of guardian, guiding him back to his living body.

Note though that throughout this conversation the egg is always a "beast." It's a "monster." It's not necessarily intentional, but there's a strong bend towards the negative here in the description that really emphasizes the whole "ordeal" aspect. Koenma briefly reassures Yusuke that he can remain a ghost if he prefers, but he's already made up his mind. Despite another threat of being lost to a void — this time through spiritual digestion — Yusuke takes the egg almost without hesitation.

He regrets it later though.

"I can't believe I did that."

Can we blame him? I'd be nervous about some egg feeding off the energy of my soul too and I'm a former, almost straight A student (damn you, math) with no life-altering regrets and a general desire to put as much good into this world as I'm able. I’m boring. But what if those occasional, mean little thoughts you have add up? What if the prejudices you're still unlearning stack against you? Does the egg care about what you do, or only how you feel about the act? This sort of test would eat me alive!

Maybe literally. 

Good thing Yusuke doesn't have time for an existential crisis!

Just as he's beginning to regret this decision, Botan points out that it won't matter if he passes if he doesn't have a body to return to. Now, why wouldn't he have a body? Maybe because his mom is set to cremate him tomorrow.

Whoopsie.

Yusuke is, understandably, distraught. We get another excellent exchange:

“Botan, is there any way for ghosts to communicate with living people?”

“Yes.”

“SO ARE YOU GONNA TELL ME?”

I swear, Yusuke is the only smart protagonist. I mean, he's dumb as a sack of bricks at times, but that's neither here nor there. Bless this fictional boy for reacting like an actual person. 

Botan explains that people are more attuned to the spirit world when they're asleep, so Yusuke can deliver a message to someone in their dreams. Seems easy enough. They first head to Atsuko, but find that she's raging drunk and nowhere near sleep. 

"You fool!" she yells. "No one gave you permission to die!" Atsuko continues to yell about how plenty of people survive car accidents, so why couldn't you? "Were you mad at me, Yusuke? Didn't I raise you right?"

Botan comments on how sad the display is. Yusuke's response?

“The only thing that’s sad is now she’s got one more excuse to act that way."

Y'all, that's some mature shit for a goofy shonen anime. Yeah, Yusuke recognizes that, while she's obviously heartbroken, his death has just given her another reason to do what she's been doing for years: drinking herself into a stupor. Toss in Atsuko putting the blame on Yusuke — "No one gave you permission to die!" — plus the belief that she did do a good job — "Didn't I raise you right?" — and it paints a rather bleak picture. This is by no means an uncommon theme. Negligent parents, whether they're framed that way or not, are pretty common in shonen series, but it's still rather jarring to re-watch this as an adult and go, "Oh. The situation’s like that." It's honestly a lot when you remove it from YYH's otherwise humorous, casual context.

Yusuke heads to Keiko's next and finds her sound asleep, commenting on how her room looks more "girly" than when they were kids. Check out that smile!

He's about to try and deliver his message, but Keiko is in the midst of a nightmare. “She’s crying… what’s wrong?”

Oh my god. Remember how I just said Yusuke is also the densest protagonist around? Example A right here. You just died, you fool! You just saw Keiko collapse at your funeral. What do you think is wrong??

We get a peek at Keiko's dream where she is — shockingly! — thinking of Yusuke. He's far out of reach, walking away and unresponsive to her calls. Keiko soon trips and Yusuke disappears completely.

Luckily, she has the real thing at her bedside. Yusuke tries talking to her and at first it's unclear if this supernatural stuff is really working. That is, until Keiko murmurs about how heavy he is.

Reassured, Yusuke delivers his message that Keiko needs to help Atsuko pull herself together and, most importantly, call off burning his body. We get this very soft and pretty background to establish their yet unspoken feelings for one another, though Yusuke gets close with, “I’m coming back. I don’t want to see you cry anymore" as he brushes her tears away. Aww.

Keiko wakes, thinking at first it was just a dream, but no, "I'm sure I felt it."

The next morning she heads to Atsuko's to explain the dream, only to first hear that Atsuko had a dream too, this one about Yusuke "living in some other world full of ogres and he kept knocking them down until he became their leader." It sounds absurd, of course, but it brings Atsuko some comfort to think of her boy in a place like that and Keiko backs down. Right, she'd only had a comforting dream too.

Now, there are two important parts to this exchange. The first is that this is an excellent example of how you let the characters drive the story, rather than forcing the characters adhere to the plot you've come up with. Meaning, in the latter situation, our cast would have needed to have their personalities twisted and the viewer's suspicion of disbelief tested to give Yusuke what he needs: a sleeping family member willing to believe his message. But it absolutely makes sense for Atsuko to be drunk rather than sound asleep, so Yusuke can't rely on her. Likewise, it absolutely makes sense for Keiko to be asleep, but not believe the dream once she's woken up. After all, how many times have we been persuaded by something in the dead of night only for things to look more logical and less likely in the morning? The characters act both like themselves and like people who do normal, people-ish things, which means that Yusuke runs into more conflicts. That's good! It not only raises the tension and stakes — now he has less than a day to convince someone — but makes his inevitable success feel that much sweeter. A less well written show (cough-RWBY-cough) would have had the characters change their personalities, behave in unlikely ways, or just come up with a sudden, contradictory solution because Yusuke needs to keep his body. Instead, Yusuke actually has to work for that within the bounds of the rules established and the likeliness of each plan succeeding. The first one fails? Move onto plan #2.

Second, this dream of Atsuko's has some cool implications within YYH's world. Meaning, we're about to learn in just a moment that some people are naturally more aware of the supernatural than others, even when they're not asleep. We'll also see down the line that spiritual awareness tends to run in families... so perhaps Atsuko possesses more than the average mother? I'm not saying it's necessarily intentional on the author(s) part, but we can choose to read this dream as evidence of spiritual awareness — true insight into the world Yusuke was just in and the fantasies he'd had about conquering it — rather than just a coincidental joke for the viewer. After all, Yusuke gets his own spiritual awareness from somewhere...

(Okay, so there's totally another, canonical reason for that, but we can have both!)

So, as Yusuke puts it, “This dream business isn’t gonna cut it.”

“There’s always the final method," Botan says.

“You always this vague?”

I am literally living for these interactions.

Botan explains that the more extreme form of communication is possessing a living person, but there are two rules attached: it has to be someone you know and the vessel has to be someone who is quite spiritually aware, as discussed above. Atsuko isn't a contender because the story hasn't acknowledged that she might be sensitive, that's just my own headcanon now. Yusuke outright says, “In that case I’m screwed. There’s no one like that!"

Cut to good old Kuwabara.

At first it looks as if he's just oh so conveniently sensing a spirit right when the audience has learned he has this power, but in reality it's Yusuke and Botan flying behind him that sets it off. Again: this show is pretty good about keeping things internally consistent, rather than making choices because That's Just How Stories Work, I Guess. Kuwabara's friends note that he's acting strangely and I love this detail that apparently one of the guys is new to their group because the other two need to explain that this is the "tickle feeling." Ever since Kuwabara was a boy he's been able to sense the dead around him. Some nice, some... not so nice.

He looks directly at Yusuke — even though he's not able to see him — and declares that what's following them is “A puny low-level ghost, like a haunted racoon or something.”

I'd support Yusuke's anger more if he hadn't just exclaimed his surprise that Kuwabara serves a purpose 😂

Yusuke is pissed enough though to proclaim that he won't do it, nuh-uh, no way is he possessing this guy's body. Botan's response is one of my FAVORITES in the WHOLE SERIES:

"Here's my impression of Yusuke: look at me, I’m burning!”

Literally 75% of this series is just about a found family sassing one another and I love it.

Obviously this helps Yusuke remember his priorities and he grudgingly agrees to the plan. Botan prepares Kuwabara's body somehow — idk, spiritual magic or whatever — and warns Yusuke that he only has an hour to find someone and warn them because a human body can't handle possession any longer than that. Sure. I buy it.

So Yusuke takes control and please ignore the incredible ethical issues here. The show will never acknowledge them again. 

He blurts out, “Hey, check it out! I’m inside Kuwabara, feeling smooth!"

Istg I don't remember the series being this unintentionally gay. I don't even ship Yusuke/Kuwabara and I'm digging the possibilities here lol.

Back on track, his friends drag him with, “Looks like he’s back to normal” because again, 75%. What's not normal though is Kuwabara (Yusuke) suddenly charging down the street to leave them behind. He heads straight to the restaurant where Keiko's parents work, demanding to see her. They're rightly concerned about this stranger barging in and screaming for their daughter.

Upon asking who he is/why they should tell him, Yusuke makes his biggest mistake: “Because it’s me, you guys, I’m Yusuke!”

Obviously the time limit and raw emotion of knowing who he is has outweighed the knowledge that, you know, no one would believe that. Yusuke has spent the last two days bopping around as a ghost and familiarizing himself with some of the afterlife's insanity. The knowledge of what's normal for everyone else — AKA, not dead boys appearing in strangers' bodies — is not at the forefront of Yusuke's mind.

So, Keiko's parents react accordingly! The father in particular is disgusted by this claim, going so far as to threaten Yusuke with his knife and outright insult Kuwabara's looks: “Yusuke was never ugly like you… we were close family friends with that boy!" His wife chimes in that this kind of joke is particularly heinous on the day of his funeral. Between Atsuko drunkenly blaming Yusuke for his death and Mr. Takenaka grieving for what he might have been, this is one of the few times we see someone just sad for Yusuke's passing, exactly as he was and without regrets or criticism. "We were close family friends with that boy" paints a nice contrast to the delinquent persona Yusuke was cultivating.

As he's thrown out of the restaurant he says, “We should have special passwords for times like this!” Fun fact, my family does! Well, not this exact situation lol. I was given a password as a child to memorize in case my parents ever needed to send someone else to pick me up or interact with me in any way. If the stranger didn't know the password, I was to kick up a fuss. I rest easy with the knowledge that this password would not doubt assist me if I was ever in Yusuke's position!

With Keiko's parents a bust, Yusuke starts sprinting to everywhere she frequents with the hope of running into her. Or at least he tries. 

Yusuke is suddenly waylaid by a group of nameless teens with a bone to pick with Kuwabara. And you know what? I like it. I wonder how much of my praise stems from coming off of RWBY Volume 8, but it's just so nice to watch a story where the plot — simple as it is — hangs together. We've established that Kuwabara is a street fighter. Last episode we watched him start a fight with Yusuke. Yusuke is on a time limit. Now Kuwabara's tendencies have created a new hurdle for Yusuke!

Needless to say, Yusuke kicks butt, even in Kuwabara’s body. 

As one guy is passing out he says, “Man that hurt! I didn’t think anyone could throw punches that hardcore except Yusuke Urameshi."

Yusuke: “Darn, giving Kuwabara a good name." LOL

You think this challenge is finished though? Nah. Over the course of about half an hour Yusuke encounters a comical number of people trying to get even with Kuwabara. 

As always, I like the nods towards this writing decision to help justify it, with Yusuke wondering how Kuwabara has pissed this many people off. If you want to pull off something that has a low chance of happening, it can help to give the characters a "Seriously?" moment. If both they and the audience are on the same page over how ridiculous this situation is, the audience is more likely to accept it once the character does.

By the time Yusuke escapes his hour is nearly up. However, thanks to some coincidental plotting, he spots Keiko's friends just across the street! 

YYH does a decent job of making its characters feel like they have their own lives outside of what's immediately happening on screen and we get a good example of that here. We pick up the girls' conversation partway through, both of them worried about Keiko's state of mind and, given that we'll see in a second that Keiko was in the store with them, it implies that something happened to reignite this worry. They're off enjoying their day, doing their own thing, there was an event we're not privy to, and now we catch the response to that. It just helps make the characters feel more well-rounded even though they are, at their core, one-dimensional background characters who don’t even have names yet.

Case in point: the one girl is still concerned with their image. "People are starting to say things!"

Yeah, your friend's childhood friend just died. Hopefully they're saying, "Poor thing."

Anyway, Yusuke runs up to ask where Keiko is only for both girls to run away screaming. Turns out his face is messed up from the numerous fights and Keiko's friends are easily scared. 

Luckily, Keiko comes out just a second later and Yusuke is faced with the challenge of how to convince her in, oh, about five minutes. Remember, we've already established through Keiko's parents that just saying, "I'm Yusuke" doesn't work. That's why he hesitates. It's not just drama for the sake of drama, he's stuck.

“I’ve known her my whole life, there must be something between us that only I would do!”

Yeeeeaah. About that 😬

Suddenly inspired (I suppose that's one way to put it...) Yusuke runs up behind Keiko and grabs her breasts. “Keiko, nice uniform! They’re so squishy!”

It goes without saying that, like flipping her skirt up, this isn't okay. More specifically, the problem lies in the story framing this as a joke for the audience, something to laugh at despite Keiko's discomfort, rather than the concept of two childhood friends actually be that comfortable with one another. But, as already established, this is one of the more ehhhh aspects of Yusuke's characterization that, luckily, will mostly disappear as the story goes on.

Note though that the show clearly wants us to think highly of this. Not just as a "joke," but as a smart solution to his problem and more evidence of their inevitable relationship — the background becomes the same soft, bubbly background we saw during their dream conversation. And, admittedly, it does work. Keiko instinctively slaps Yusuke hard enough to knock him to the ground and he starts laughing, saying that he doesn't care what anyone on the street says, she hits the hardest.

What I do like about this is that the assault isn't the only thing Keiko bases her faith on. Not only has she already had the dream, we get to see Yusuke from her perspective, showing all the mannerisms she picks up on by superimposing Yusuke's real body over Kuwabara's. Indeed, she says as much: “I knew it was you from the first time you spoke…and it’s not just your stupid gags, or how you laugh. There are ways you move and speak that in a hundred years I wouldn’t forget."

Catch me crying in this club!

Knowing she believes him and that he's almost out of time, Yusuke reiterates his message: please don't burn my body and also keep Mom on track. Only, you know, it's phrased far better than that lol. As he speaks, both Yusuke's and Kuwabara's voices overlap until the latter grows fainter and only Yusuke's voice remains. His body too. It's a nice touch, avoiding the awkwardness of Keiko having this moment with a stranger, even if that is what's happening on some level.

“I know I’ve been a bum to you at times, but please wait for me."

His hour up, now we can get the awkwardness! Kuwabara comes out of his weird trance thing to find Keiko crying against his chest. Wow, he thinks, this girl must be really into me! 

God, to have the confidence of Kuwabara.

Of course, Keiko quickly realizes it's not Yusuke anymore and slaps him too for cuddling her closer. My favorite thing is that when she does this a crowd INSTANTLY appears. I mean they TELEPORT in. We needed an audience for Kuwabara's shame and YYH delivered, all logic be damned.

“Um, sorry about that!” Keiko yells as she runs away, because she's a good person who recognizes that weird spirit things just went on and Kuwabara isn't actually to blame.

“No, that’s okay. I probably deserved it," Kuwabara responds because he's also a good person and I didn't appreciate him nearly as much as I should have as a kid.

Keiko runs all the way to Atsuko's place where she finds her dressed for Yusuke's funeral. She blurts that Yusuke might still be coming back and Atsuko goes, "He already has." Turns out she opened his coffin to "smack him one more time for leaving me" — yikes — and found that his heart had started beating again, just as Koenma said it would. 

Being in a shonen anime, they apparently decide to just trust Keiko's message rather than, idk, taking him to a hospital or something.

The camera tilts up to show that Yusuke has been watching all this, including that both women break down again and comfort one another. Aww. How heartwarming.

What's less fuzzy though is this mysterious egg. Yusuke takes another look and finds that it has developed a heartbeat too, presumably in time with his body's. He theorizes that he did decent things today, right? But Botan (teasingly) points out that he did beat up a lot of other kids. Rather than getting angry, Yusuke remains uncharacteristically pensive, emphasizing the magnitude of what this means for him. He's got to get it right.

No pressure or anything! We'll have to see how Yusuke balances his karmic scales in the next episode. Until then, I'll try not to put all my TV time into Star Trek: Voyager :D 

See you then!  💜

#YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #YYH recaps #mymetas

[katyobsesses]

I've decided to do that fic ask thing that's been floating around even though I haven't been tagged <3

how many works do you have on AO3?

22... apparently? three of those are fic book covers though.

what’s your total AO3 word count?

139,883 words

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

On AO3? 3. In general? 4 or 5 i think? I currently write for Glee and Marvel on my AO3 (there's also one Yuri On Ice fic) and I've previously written (and published) for Harry Potter on FF.Net. I do also have a few outlines/ideas for Merlin fics floating around my google docs but I've never posted any, and I used to write Twilight fics back in the day.

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Ain't No Grave (Can Keep My Body Down) Book Cover with 222 kudos (Marvel published 2016) --A book cover for a popular Stucky fic

A Punch In The Face with 101 kudos (Marvel published 2014) --A Young Avengers drabble of sorts, Teddy/Billy meet cute

Express Your Love with 81 kudos (Marvel published 2014) --I cannot remember what this is, I think it's Stony? Something about Tony never saying 'I Love You' to steve but instead showing his love through actions?

In A Previous Life with 77 kudos (Marvel published 2014) --A drabble of sorts. Billy and Tommy talk to Wanda about their life with her before they were reincarnated.

Putting a Punching Bag in the Workshop was Tony's Best Idea Ever with 64 kudos (Marvel published 2014) --Basically what it says on the tin. Stony. Tony is distracted by Steve's arse as he boxes.

Annoyingly these are all fics I'm not that proud of, but they're older so the kudos amounts make sense i guess 🙄 the next most Kudos'd is one I am proud of though - “You took EVERYTHING from me.” with 58 Kudos (2019) - Basically a little oneshot of what I thought could have happened in the 5 years everyone was dusted and how I thought they might have introduced Billy and Tommy into the MCU, it was going to create a whole 'verse but then we got confirmation on things like Kate Bishop and Cassie Lang and Spiderman Far From Home came out and I dropped the ideas. But I still like this fic.

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

most of the time, yes, though sometimes I leave them sitting for too long and then feel awkward about replying to them and i don't (*cough* most of my comments on WTNY(ibwfy) *cough*)

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

probably In Paris With You which I'd forgotten about until scrolling through my fics! I wrote this, orginally, way back in like... 2011 based on a poem of the same name that got stuck in my head as i studied it for my English GCSE. but it's been updated and changed like 3 times since then.

Also my fic As long as I'm here as I am, so are you is rather angsty. Basically Kurt is listening to Ben Platt's album Sing to Me Instead and one song reminds him of Finn. (because it reminded me of them)

do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I've never written a crossover, though I think I once toyed around with some sort of Harry Potter crossover that never made the light of day, I can't remember what it was with though... maybe Merlin?

have you ever received hate on a fic?

not on AO3! But I did have someone call my OC in One More New Direction a Mary Sue on FF.net which wasn't nice, and someone else said they hated my characterisation of Mercedes in a chapter which was weird because Mercedes wasn't even in the chapter it was just my OC talking about her and her impression of her.

do you write smut? if so what kind?

I've tried, multiple times, in my 10+ years of fic writing, but i just can't do it. Maybe it's because I'm Asexual? it just always feels weird even after I've read smut as, like, revision. I feel like a lot of the characters are, like, ace by proxy because i don't know how to write characters being motivated by sex.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope! Not that I know of anyway

have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope!

have you ever co-written a fic before?

not that I remember? I vaguely remember being a Beta for someone like 10 years ago though.

what’s your all time favourite ship?

I honestly don't know! I've definately written mostly Klaine, but I'm such a multishipper that I have no clue. I'm really loving writing Hevans rn mostly because we are lacking Hevans content which is criminal. actually, fun fact, my fic Welcome To New York (it's been waiting for you) was originally going to be Klaine, but as i was writing the outline I fell back into the Hevans hole and decided to switch it up. I'm glad i did because it would have gotten nowhere as a Klaine fic!

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

If i don't think I'll finish something I don't post it. I have a graveyard of fics half drafted.

what are your writing strengths?

I honestly don't know. I like writing dialogue and I know I'm good at portraying something with a small amount of words but you'll have to ask my readers 😊 (in fact, if you've read my stuff please let me know what you think my strengths are! I'm honestly curious!)

what are your writing weaknesses?

I'm terrible at stretching a scene into something bigger if it warrents it. Like i said I'm good at portraying something with few words but sometimes I feel like that throws the pacing off. I use a lot of paragraphs because of that, to make the reader pause and reflect until the next line or to show that the character is pausing and reflecting. idk man. I also hate writing dates, which is annoying because WYNY(ibwfy) is mostly dates. I've been on one in my life and it was shit so i have no idea how to write one lol.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I think that, unless you don't want the reader to know what is being said or the words used are obvious in context, that you should write it in english EG: --"Merci!" Kurt said.-- is fine but if you want to write something longer I would do something like --"hello my name is Kurt Hummel and I love scarfs" Kurt said in french-- or something, it depends on the context.

Actually, going back to In Paris With You. Kurt is french in that, and it's from Blaine's POV so when Kurt speaks french it's in french with Blaine translating what he can in the narration. He's not meant to be able to understand Kurt perfectly, so the audience doesn't either. But if I was writing, say, Kurt and Sebastian talking to each other in French from Kurt's POV I'd write it in english so that audience can also understand that Kurt understands.

(does that make sense?)

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter. definately Harry Potter! It was how i got into fanfiction, and how i got into glee <3 JKR is a horrible person, but her books - and especially the fandom surrounding them - mean a lot to me.

what’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I have no idea. I'm really liking my Love and Friendship series right now, and I love One More New Direction because it got me through - is getting me through - this crazy couple of years. so probably them? I also really love (that makes you) The Scarlet Witch which is kind of like a character analysis of Wanda that I wrote after watching WandaVision.

#long post #katy writes #katywrites #fanfiction #glee #mcu #marvel #harry potter #ao3 #me

[wexhappyxfew]

Hey Shannon❤️ can you tell us something about Natia and Winters relationship? And also, how do you pick quotes for each chapter?

FRANCY!!! hello my friend! how are you doing? :D thanks for stopping on by, i've really been excited to answer this one especially because i get to focus in on Natia and Winters connection more than anything! it is one of the most highly important of the fic i feel, in many various respects and i'm super hype to discuss them! and the QUOTES!! oh i have a full little process i go through with that too hehe! let's jump into it! <3

Natia Filipska and Richard Winters in LANDSLIDE

From the start of writing Landslide, I really wanted to make Natia and Winters' connection one that showed how two, different leaders and leadership styles could still work together and in their own ways as well. In the beginning, we see Natia already take a dislike to Winters, but she has reason.

I feel that's something I enjoy most about writing Natia as well by the way?!?! She will always have a valid and detailed reasoning behind why she does certain things.

But the way I see it with Natia and Winters in their first meeting in Holland is very much their characters and their morals put on center stage. Natia has worked alone for a majority of the war, she's had to look out for really only herself and she's seen and gotten quite a lot of trauma just from various events in the war in general and so when team work is included, she's more reluctant to such a thing - this comes from both her training as well as what the war has forced her to do. But when things meet up in the end, she ends up being a pretty well off team leader.

Winters on the other hand is that sort of 'all-American-leader", who knows his men, knows how to work his men as a team and lead them, he's firm, he doesn't take any crap from people and most importantly, he makes sure no man is left behind. There's already a division there in general between how Natia leads and how Winters leads as well as level of experience in war. And with these differing opinions, that sort of sets them off even more.

Something I didn't want to do was make them *enemies* really because Natia already has a LOAD of enemies that she really is already dealing with and making Winters an enemy was never a goal. More of a challenge or a power with which she can put up a bit of a fight against. It makes for quite an interesting dynamic as the two start to slowly trust one another and learn how to then initially work together as well.

My initial goal was to show obviously there was a strong opposing difference and force when the two shared a scene together. FOR EXAMPLE,,,

" The Germans have merely retreated, they have not left Holland open to be taken by the Allies. I've fought enough of this war to know that. And I'm just trying to help where I can to save more of your men than get them killed," she said, taking in a tiny breath as she stood, beginning to sweat under the tense gazes of the American men who watched her. Natia had stood in this position before, she'd collected too many flowers that day for graves that shouldn't have even needed to be dug. It had been a slaughter, she hoped this wouldn't be the same for what it was worth.

" We're under British Command, Agent Fidel, I'm afraid we'll have to follow through. They wouldn't lead us astray though, I'm sure we'll be fine." Colonel Sink said to her, before nodding and going back to his initial discussion with the higher ranking members of Headquarters. Natia's gaze narrowed slightly.

" Agent Fidel." Captain Winters said, his voice dangerously low. Natia let out a huff and then moved over towards him, muttering to herself out of annoyance.

" It's walking into a trap." she said once she had moved over to Captain Winters, where the Map-Keepers presence lingered, " The enemy just doesn’t leave a country like Holland wide open next to the English Channel, letting it crawl with-"

" Agent Fidel." Captain Winters said again and Natia's eyes darted up to his, her mouth slowly clamping shut in the process, as her darkened gaze watched over his own.

" Might I remind you that here, you are not Colonel Sink or the British Command or the CO. I'm sorry to have to put you in your place and remind you of the your position. You are an assigned radio operator." Captain Winters told her.

This is a portion of Chapter 21 (Death’s Faith) and in this specific scene, we see this obvious tension throughout. Natia is someone who has been in war since 1939 while Captain Winters on the other hand first got his taste of war in 1944. Now, something I did not want to do is degrade completely Richard Winters and how he handled war because he held himself to his morals and his character throughout and I wanted to take that and insert that into the fic in a way that was my own.

Something important that I worked with here was that though he is firm, he still isn’t the point of going *over* who he is as a human and his personality. And I really tried to hit that fine line in the fic more than anything. Making Natia sort of go silent though in the face of Winters though I felt was an interesting touch that I only vaguely remember doing and I feel it is sort of a connection to Natia’s past with Agent Mortem and how this higher power silenced her previously and how Winters is a presentation of that in her eyes for the first portion of the fic.

But as the story progresses, we see Natia slowly breaking away from that idea and slowly start to form respect for Winters out of their long line of misfortunate circumstances they hold together. And sort of a realization that there were bigger issues than their own personal feuds and differences in a way compared to the war.

And I’m still really moving through the progression of that connection in the fic, but by the end, I have a feeling people will be really satisfied with the outcome of two leaders finally entirely seeing eye to eye by the end. Definitely one of my favorite connections throughout the book — and one of my personal favs is when we see Winters defend Natia against Lieutenant Dike HAHA! A major point for their friendship I will say!!

The way I see it is Natia, the lone wolf, and Winters, the alpha, who slowly incorporates her into the pack after a bit of defense and defiance. It’s a really interesting connection that flows throughout the fic and I’ve been really enjoying it! :)

CHAPTER QUOTES

Chapter quotes I feel I have always done since I uploaded even my first fic which was Sunshine Soldier! I guess I’ve just always enjoyed that a lot, it gives a bit of perspective on the upcoming chapter that the readers are about to read!

I use Pinterest, Goodreads or just general sort of searched up themes on Google for quotes. And usually each quote is centered around a central theme ie darkness, grief; sadness, joy, etc..... and then I can go from there and get even more specific on chapter sort of tones and subplot themes.

For example, in Chapter 6 (The Curse of Silence) this is the opening quote, “Silence is the biggest gift and the worst curse.”. Agent Mortem played a huge factor in Natia being silenced for the first portion of the war and by the end, released from his reign, she’s allowed a voice that is uncontrolled and gets her in various amounts of trouble along with it. Yet silence did allow for Natia to dissect and understand Mortem enough to corrupt him and essentially “escape” him, though inherently get her into trouble in other instances. (which is a topic for a later discussion!)

But that’s sort of the general idea I go with every time I put up a chapter! :D Thank you so much for the ask Francy, this was so much fun to answer!! <333 I always enjoy these sorts of things where I can go in and give my own best, personal analysis on stuff in fic! 💛

#natia filipska #richard winters #bob fic #band of brothers #landslide #character analysis #connection analysis #writing and quote help #thanks francy!

[savrenim]

tropesssss

this got long so I am putting it under a cut; all of my additions will be in italics

Hi, I’m the tvtropes anon who is also the recent long ifmlam question anon. I‘m very happy you like the page! I made it because I wanted people to enjoy it so it’s great to know someone does. I am very actively updating that page. I intend to comb every chapter for tropes and by then I should gotten most stuff that I’m capable of getting, so I’ll message you. “Most stuff” because I bet after all the chapters I’ll realize something in hindsight or learn a new trope that definitely applied to the fic and go back and add it, but that’s probably going to cause way fewer additions than when I’m actively rereading the fic in search of tropes. “That I’m capable of getting” because I’m one person and am capable of straight-up missing things, or of noticing things but not knowing it’s a trope or that it has a trope on TVTropes. Other people are likely to pick up on stuff I missed or know tropes I don’t. Oh! I spent awhile trying to find a trope for touch-activated powers and only found very specific powers like the Midas Touch instead of a trope for touch powers in general. If that trope exists I definitely missed it and there’s room for someone to add it. “Adding back stuff the original cut” needs to be its own trope I s2g. The closest standalone trope I found was Adaptation Expansion, which can be plain old additions the original didn’t have as well, it’s not exclusive to “the original cut this and now the adaptation put it back in” which is what I so desperately want. So until then, it’s an Adapted Out inversion… I also have lots of thoughts about Adapted Out and its inversion. There’s lots of different “types” I identified when I was crawling the Hamilton musical trope page for people the musical adapted out that the fic put back in. I might actually get to separate them by these “types” because the ifmlam Adapted Out section is getting hella long. It’s literally just turning into “a list of every historical person who wasn’t a full character in the musical” lol. Anyways, the “types” 1) Stuff in the source material literally does not exist in the adaptation. In the original book, Character A is 18 in the year 2000 and has 2 loving parents and 7 siblings. In the film adaptation, Character A is 18 in the year 2000 and has 2 loving parents and the truthful line “I’m an only child.” 2) Stuff in the source material doesn’t get included, but there’s no proof it doesn’t exist in the adaptation. The theatre adaptation doesn’t show or mention Character A’s parents, but they never say anything like “I never knew my parents.” 3) Stuff in the source material ultimately doesn’t get included in the adaptation (could be type 1 or 2), but it did get included in drafts of the adaptation/the adaptation creators really tried to include it but never found space for it so it never reached the drafts. Also noticed “types” for adding stuff back when I was working on the fic page. I’m wondering if Adapted Out inversion isn’t the right thing to describe some of these? This list is also going to include half-adding stuff back because it wasn’t 100% removed, which makes me wonder if everything I put under Adapted Out is being used correctly… maybe the characters not 100% removed are actually just an Adaptation Distillation and the readdition is an Expansion? I’ll look into it. But I digress. 1) Character gets a pretty vague reference in the adaptation’s adaptation, one that isn’t a crystal-clear identification of who exactly is being referenced. For example, the theatre adaptation of the film has Character A refer to “my siblings.” That means at least 2 siblings are included, but we have no clue if this means all 7 are included or not. Or the theatre adaptation of the film shows Character A dancing with someone at the ball. The original book had Character A dance with several characters at the same ball. It’s probably one of those characters, but we have no clue exactly which one. 2) Character gets a clear reference in the adaptation of the adaptation. The theatre adaptation of the film also has Character A refer to “my sister, the pilot” and the

original book has only one sister of Character A that is a pilot. It also has Character A buy baseball tickets with someone with pink hair, and the original book has only one character who buys baseball tickets with Character A and has pink hair. 3) Character is referenced/addressed by name or role in the adaptation of the adaptation. 4) Character appears in the adaptation of the adaptation. Mix and match. I’ve noticed a lot of vaguely referenced characters upgrading to clear references (a 1 situation upgrades to a 2), and clearly referenced characters who were only mentioned getting clear references and mentions again but also appearances (a 2 and 3 situation upgrades to a 2, 3, and 4). Now I realize if you start with a 2 and one-of-3-or-4 situation and upgrade to a 2 and both-3-and-4 situation, you weren’t wholly Adapted Out of the story, you just get your role expanded. I’m pretty sure that’s Adaptation Expansion instead and I’ll have to fix that (I just checked the Adaptation Expansion page again and it directly mentioned reintroducing darker elements of fairy tales back in, so adding back stuff that already existed counts too. It’s not just for making up new stuff to expand on what existed the way I thought). But I’m really not sure if going from a 1 to a 2 is Expansion or inverting Adapted Out. Maybe it’s a different trope entirely. Ditto with being unsure for going from a 1 and one-of-3-or-4 situation to a 1 and both-3-and-4. And for swapping which of 3 or 4 you have, but staying a one-of-3-and-4 situation. Also not that sure where to draw the lines. When does it stop being “yeah Hamilton Adapted this Out and you put it back in, it’s an Adapted Out inversion” and start being “this was way too far removed from/insignificant to the musical’s story to be considered Adapted Out of it, so putting this true historical thing in this fic is no longer Adapted Out”? (It’d definitely be Shown Their Work but I think there’s a more specific trope for it?) Like, is the incident where he talked to John Witherspoon is clearly referenced in a musical line without mentioning Witherspoon himself (and later he’d evacuate the college before the soldiers got near it), is that significant enough a line and significant a role in Hamilton’s life to make the guy Adapted Out and thus making it an Adapted Out inversion when you put him back in? If he’s not significant enough, Sally gets the same line count in the musical (“everyone who loves me has died”) that could make one think of her and how she’s not here, and gets around the same mentions in the fic. Is her “you actually don’t exist” version of not appearing as opposed to Witherspoon’s “we’re not mentioning you but you probably do exist” enough to make her count as Adapted Out in the musical and to thus make her inclusion an inversion of that trope in the fic? Troping this fic is probably my new hyperfixation. Why couldn’t it be math, I literally have a math class whose work I’m neglecting to trope this fic lmao kill me Oh one more thing I am worried the Round 2 musical will fly off into the tumblr namechange void someday. I know I have a copy, from when I could actually message you on tumblr and asked you permission to back up some tumblr posts and you said yes. So I thought of instead of asking you to put it somewhere else, I could get it backed up with that web.archive.org thing or the wayback machine or whatever, maybe those are the same things, in order to be able to link to your stuff somewhere other than tumblr and have it still be clearly yours (my current backup is a Google Doc full of copy/pastes from tumblr because I didn’t think of better options when I did that. If I was inclined to lie, I could very easily just… change it and claim it’s still a copy/paste from you). But then I realized it’s probably better for people to go to your actual pages to give you the traffic instead of the wayback machine or whatever. I don’t remember if you finished songs for the round 2 musical or if it was just a general outline, but this is a request/suggestion (not a demand) to have you

put that on ao3 too instead of only on tumblr? Again, thanks for writing it and for responding to me about it.

hi anon! thank you very very much and it is very cool to see how excited you are about getting all the tropes down! I'll be honest, I hadn't even heard of adapting in or adapting out or any of the trope inversion terminology or downplayed or just. all the lexicon that tvtropes uses, so I am not going to be useful in terms of you making those calls, but I both trust your judgement as well as the glory of a crowdedited thing is that the crowd will eventually reach consensus, hopefully!

one correction, though, re his sister Sally: whenever Wait For It is supposed to have been sung, which I'm assuming you're referencing, it is definitely before the late 1790s as the Reynolds Pamphlet hasn't gone down yet, and Sarah (Sally being a nickname) Burr-> Reeve died in 1797. so the musical line could only have been a reference to that specifically if they were ignoring timelines, which, to be fair, they do quite a lot (the 'first murder trial' bit from the end of Non-Stop actually happened in 1800.)

as for the round 2 musical, I do not have any plans of posting it on ao3, or really anywhere else besides tumblr. I do not post things to my ao3 that are not intended for and thus edited for my ao3. quite frankly, I barely intended to post 'musical, round 3' to ao3; it just got too long to make a reasonable tumblr post and I'd written a lot of active lyrics enough for it to become worthwhile to add that extra polish and throw it up as a fic. round 2 was mostly a thought experiment, I have no more written than the single tumblr post I wrote about it, I plan to write no more than that post, and I do not plan to bring it up to my ao3 standards and will not be posting it on ao3.

I'm honestly not too worried about traffic for ifmlam, and do not mind a link to wayback machine, or cross-posting the post to another website. honestly I don't really care if you put it up on ao3 yourself; I think someone else did it for they had a version of 'musical, round 2', and it was really cool and fell under the general 'fanworks of ifmlam' category. so if you care deeply about things being on ao3 you can post it yourself with a note of it was copy-pasted from the author's tumblr, I don't really care. however, if you're worried about preserving the proof of canoninity, I have no plans of changing my tumblr url mostly because I did so once and it was deeply inconvenient to try to go back and change it in all of my fic, but also tumblr might go down, who knows, wayback machine may very well be safer. also, like. these days I have moved on to enough other different work between both being interested and active in different fandoms as well as spending most of my time writing original work that it feels kind of like false advertising to direct people to my blog specifically for the sake of ifmlam with the expectation of more ifmlam content. when ifmlam gets new content, it'll be on ao3, and there really isn't a lot of related content or fandom blogging on this blog anymore, and given that I link to my blog in every chapter, I figure the people who want to look at my other writing and/or actually support me via ko-fi or patreon have ample chance to. I'm not really concerned about whether or not I'll lose audience because the tvtropes page linked to wayback machine instead of my actual blog if that's what you decide to go with.

#ifmlam

[kinetic-elaboration]

September 10: Friday

I just had this feeling this morning like I didn’t want to go to work and eh... that was probably right. Nothing really bad happened, I just felt very strongly that I did NOT want to be there.

My coworker wanted to talk to me at like 8:30 in the morning (you know those silly little ‘don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee’ signs?? literally do not talk to me before 9:30 EARLIEST) and I was supremely incoherent. Then later a different coworker essentially took out his bad mood on my department including on me personally, and it was... dumb. I got his point but I’m just, as I tried to explain to others later, unkeen on being talked to about actions I took under others’ explicit instructions. Also, in part because of that, in part because I thought he was semi-unreasonable, and in part because I just truly didn’t want to do what he was asking/telling me to do, I did not really budge on the issue. Which was very awkward because as I said I did get his point. And of course the issue is SOMETHING DUMB which is always how it is. All of these fights are 100% shit that would sound idiotic if you tried to explain it to someone else, which is why I’m vaguing right now.

And the nametags thing came up on Teams (thanks @ the same coworker), and the only good thing about that is that the director explicitly said she was against the idea so I feel pretty confident that it won’t be mandated. Also I could detect some panic in other people about it. I do NOT like the way this is being handled AT ALL. Plus it’s just the hill I’ve decided to die on (because I think I can win--so I guess it’s better to say this is the hill I’m going to defeat my enemies on) so I gotta get annoyed at it. I refrained from contributing to the conversation but I did like the director’s anti-nametag post, which I think gets my point across.

Also I felt like I spent a lot of time doing not much, to be honest. Still didn’t go to stupid compact shelving. Devoted too much time to the crap in the above paragraphs. Talked to BL over in admin and heard some more unflattering stories about a particular administrator. Like, incredibly unflattering. Which is stuff I do want to know but it contributes to the overall Mood of the day, which again is ‘I don’t want to be here.’

I took a very late lunch, and that in turn contributed to me not paying enough attention to the time and leaving late.OH AND I got 3 important emails in the last ten minutes of the day. Two were very expected because they were coming from the West Coast but the last was like.. do not make me deal with this right now.

I didn’t deal with almost any of it but I did get so distracted that I left about five minutes late, and so I missed the bus. I wasn’t too upset about it since the weather was nice anyway and I didn’t mind spending some time downtown. But I did waste time trying to see if I could catch said bus, and then more time trying to go to my favorite coffee shop, which had closed at 5. But since it was 5:15, there were still people inside (cleaning up, which is fair) and people outside (drinking coffees they’d bought before 5 I’m sure, also fair), and the sign said hours were until 7 so I spent a few confused, embarrassing moments going ????? what is the truth?

So ultimately I went to a different cafe, a newish one that opened in 2019 I think. I’ve always avoided it in part because the floor is very loud and in part because I felt like I was cheating on my main place lol. (Not that I never get coffee anywhere else... just that this place is so close to my usual place, I always feel like, if I’m in the area, I might as well go to said usual place.) I did find the inside very disorienting. The pattern of the floor is just truly A Lot. They did have these weird teacup ornaments hanging from the ceiling though. I got an iced latte, which was fine, and this delicious spinach and feta pastry. I feel like I should stop by more often for baked goods. I settled outside with what I’d gotten, mostly because of the floor, partly because it actually was nice out, and partly because I’m not currently comfortable with indoor dining, even in places with almost no one in them.

I only had like 25 minutes to kill at that point, but it was nice. I had a notebook with me and I did a teeny bit of planning on the Southern Gothic AU (still behind on this!!). Mostly I listened to the conversation next to me. I couldn’t entirely help it; the girl’s voice was carrying. She was talking to her guy friend about some recent issues they’d been having in their friendship. I was honestly...kind of impressed with them? I could mostly hear her--he was talking too but his voice didn’t carry as much--but it just overall sounded like a really open, emotionally honest, generally calm talk. Like certainly there were strong emotions in play (not exactly going to judge whether they were “warranted” given the apparent facts of the dispute, since I just ranted about a disagreement over something so dumb I don’t even want to name it in public) but they were just... expressing feelings that were difficult, and expressing displeasure with others’ actions, without yelling or being passive aggressive, etc. I mean even that they’d picked this time and place to meet specifically to discuss it I thought was commendable. And they were definitely friends, not bf/gf, because the disagreement involved his girlfriend (once referred to as his “partner”...sorry lol I judged that a LITTLE since they looked like they were maybe 21 years old--partner in WHAT??). The girl mentioned her therapist, which put a lot of her tone and vocabulary into perspective. Not necessarily in a bad way, I mean, it seemed to be working? But as someone who has never been to therapy, but is self-taught, so to speak, in gauging and describing my own feelings, I could... discern a sort of purposeful vocabulary that almost sounded scripted. I wrote down some specific quotes but I don’t want to put them in a public place. I’ll draw my respecting-strangers’-privacy line in the sand there. But a lot of, like “when you do x, it makes me feel y” kind of controlled explanations.

Anyway, I got very invested in that. Partly for future writing purposes, partly out of curiosity and partly because... I don’t know that I could have that kind of conversation NOW and I’m fairly sure I could not have when I was in college. I mean.... I don’t know... I’ve blocked out a lot of the pretentious/serious/about-our-feelings talks I did have. And what sticks out now are all the times I didn’t do that--all of the many, many issues with TA38... Even the way B and I have literally NEVER acknowledged the handful of times we hooked up in 2009.

You’re never gonna sound COOL talking about your emotions, your wants and your needs; it’s always gonna sound, imo, like a Therapy Script. And I don’t even always think you gotta have those talks. After graduation, R and I literally had this exchange where we said ‘well we both made mistakes last year, and we could try to untangle it now, but it’s just gonna bring up a lot of bad feelings. It’s done now anyway. Blanket apologies given, blanket acceptance of apologies, let’s move on.” And we did and it was fine. But if we’d had better conversations while we were living together, that would have been a different situation.

All of which is of course complicated for me personally because I am extremely conflict-averse. EXTREMELY.

Anyway, I ran into BL at the bus stop and we talked a bit there and on the bus, which was fine but kinda exhausting tbqh especially because of the topic of conversation. I got home at 6:30 and must have crawled immediately into bed and gone to sleep, but I barely remember it at all. Woke up at 10:30 and had no idea what time it was or what day it was or what I was doing.

Had dinner and then somehow went down a rabbit hole that started... somewhere?? and ended with me looking up my childhood home on Google Earth, which you KNOW is the sign of a mentally stable person who is doing just fine okay.

Now it’s the absolutely disgusting hour of 2:30 in the morning... Idk I wanted to go out tomorrow and take advantage of the nice weather but we’ll see how that goes. The thing is I feel like I need a full day to sleep but I only have two (2) days and in that time I gotta do laundry, cook for the week, preferably write one (1) whole chapter of this fic, and possibly also go on the aforementioned excursion. Which is a lot for me. It doesn’t really... fit.

Everything’s just so much all the time and so on.

#the year 2021 #2021: rl #real dear diary moment here

[cytarabi]

Hey! I've become a huge fan of your fics on ao3. I wanted to know how do you push out so many beautiful chapters so quickly? What's your writing process like? I'm working on a big JB fic, which I'm trying to finish timely, but high quality. Always like to see how other writers do their thang! Thank you!

Hi! I remember your name!! <3 Thank YOU for the question and praise, that’s so sweet!!

I love seeing how other writers do their thang, too! And I’ve found it can be very, very different for each author.

TLDR I write a lot of my fic ahead of time. I outline the entire fic, chapter by chapter before I start writing. I use several tools to speed the process and/or to make it more artsy fartsy.

I’ve found that I’m a “plotter” and not a “pantser” (two main ways of writing, unless you hate being labeled lol.)

Plotter means that I prefer plotting out most of the story before I write the details. Here’s been my process for my multichapter fics:

1) I come up with an idea and let it brew! I think about key scenes or dialogue I love and I jot them down in my phone on Google notes. Write down your ideas, you’ll probably forget them.

2) During this brewing time, (for As Black As Thunder and my next fic) I take the time to read, read, read. I read works and jot more notes! I have an entire Google doc for Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier where I wrote down her tone usage, figurative language and summary of each chapter. I can’t tell you how much this has helped get me in the write TONE for the work. Tone is SO important. Readers reading a thriller will expect thriller beats! Deep Fried Drinks was a rom com, so the verbs, adjectives etc are very different from creepy Gothic. When I started As Black As Thunder (ABAT), wow, it was hard to nail the tone at first. But by the second half of the fic, I’m fully immersed in it and it’s much easier to create the tone naturally. Without using inspiration, I don’t think it would have turned out as well. For ABAT, I think I took two weeks of no writing, when I’m used to writing every day. It was hard not to write, but wow, was I ready when I started!

3) When I’m ready to outline, I do! I open a google doc for the fic and start throwing everything I can think of in there. My ABAT doc was only like three lines for 6 months... lol! I’ve only just started looking into story structure, so my older fics are all wonky. BUT for ABAT and Deep Fried Drinks, I tried to follow story structure for plots. First act, second act, third act, character arcs, etc. My longest fic, Time Stops, dropped a bunch of readers in the middle and I think it’s because my middle SAGGED majorly. I didn’t try to follow a structure, just sort of plotted it out how I wanted to, and it was probably very repetitive and boring. For ABAT, I plotted a mid point turn to spice things up, chose things to make the character more proactive, etc. I highly recommend Ellen Brock on Youtube for any plotting advice. She’s an editor, and I’ve learned so much!

4) Organize plot into chapters, write key notes for chapters and fill out background info. The first two are self explanatory, but the third is my favorite! One thing that speeds my writing (I have no idea if people do this or not) but I have lists. So many lists! For ABAT, I have lists of common outfits for characters (I usually hate writing about outfits but I’m glad I wrote more for this work). I also write the character arc for each main character. For ABAT, I have the following for Brienne:

Brienne 

Symbols: white crocus flower (purity, youthfulness, sensitive to rain), White begonia, Small birch saplings struggling for light

Goal: serve public, be idealistic, honorable

Lie: (hidden for spoilers)

Truth: (hidden for spoilers)

Flaw: stubborn, idealistic, watched her father get fame and respect for his engineering, wants to do the same thing and do it perfectly, doesn’t understand systemic racism 

Motivation: serve people, be accepted by the public, belonging, abandonment

Stakes: public rejection, Tarth name on the line, mockery, insanity, failure

So when I think about a curve ball for Brienne at any point of the story, this character section helps me stay true to character. I have a section for Brienne, Jaime, Cersei and Missandei. Cersei has a larger section because she’s a villain... ;)

In addition to this section, I also write down their personalities and strengths. You know, like if they went to an interview lol. For example, I have Missandei have the following strengths: 

Missandei

Adaptability: able to adapt

Intellection: introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions

Consistency: all people should be treated the same

Futuristic: fascinated by future

Learner: loves to learn

I ALSO have an emotion worksheet and this is SO USEFUL. They say in writing: show that the character is angry, not tell the reader. WELL, IDK about you but I can’t keep track of all the little quirks characters do and yet, I want them to be consistent. If while writing a scene, I sometimes think, “Hmm what is Jaime doing if he’s in awe right now?” I search for “awe” at the top of my fic, and bam, I have options, more or less. For a lot of emotions, I brainstormed ideas based on character traits, arcs, Gothic tone etc. I fill all of this out before I write the first chapter. 

Here’s an example of some emotions I have for ABAT:

Emotion List (remember to have introspection, unique perspective) 

Awe:

B: wrinkle deepened between brows, parted lips, fixed gaze, stands still

J: arched brow, open mouth, stare, goes closer

C: lowering chin or raising chin, goes closer

M: adaptable, quick to react

Deceptive:

B: looking away, walking away

J: scratching ear

C: smiling, neatly placed hands

M: long blink

Thoughtfulness:

B: staring off, quiet, daydreaming

J: staring at object important to him, twisting pencil or object in his hand, squeezing his hand

C: squeezing hand, staring at object she wants to get rid of or improve

M: daydreaming, staring off at her own outfit—it’s foreign

5) Now the fun part: writing! I used to write with scene structure outline, but I think I’ve grown off the training wheels. But it really helped me in Deep Fried Drinks to plot out the chapter scenes ahead of time, and I used Ellen Brock’s proactive and reactive videos to help me out with that. I throw on some music to get me in the mood of the story and I write during my kid’s nap, about two hours every day. Sometimes I’ll write at night, but lately I’ve been too tired to do that. My tip for this part is to try and figure out what you want to improve. What are you good at, and what could you improve as a writer? My first fics had like zero figurative language. Awkward. This takes a level of awareness that’s hard to reach but watching or researching creative writing technique really helps me. For example, I used to NEED to write all five senses out for each chapter ahead of time. Now it comes naturally to me! I would say now my main issue is phrasing? Pacing? And I need to tone down the melodrama for my next work....... lol! I write, write, write--and usually, I write 60-90% of the fic before I start editing!

6) Editing. Fun fun fun. I don’t mind editing, I just don’t think I’m that GOOD at it. I try to read through my chapter twice and edit as I go. I look for things I want to take out or add, look for show vs tell, formatting, etc--do things make sense? Did I miss anything? In ABAT, I’ll write something in chap 20 that I need to start in chap 18, so I’ll go back and make a quick note to “add part about document somewhere in this chapter” so I don’t confuse readers. When I edit chap 18, I’ll add that line or paragraph in. It’s all an intricate web! I also have a list of vague words I try to eliminate or replace with stronger words (I have more words if you want them). I found that I have certain words or phrases that echo a lot, like “while”, “turned around”, “turned” or “did not”--now I search for these phrases/words and try to change them:

Get rid of vague words, fix by explaining more:

Some 

While

Thing

Stuff

Very

Really

Big/small

Good/bad

Simple verbs: had, was, went

Got/get

Few

Several

What

Do/Did

It

Like with all writing “rules”, they can be broken, but it helps to know why they are rules. I steered away from adverbs, and I think it improves my writing. Other writers have different prose and adverbs work so well--it all depends on your style! If I find these vague words in dialogue, for example, I almost never change them because dialogue is usually freaking vague lol!

7) Beta reader(s)! I honestly think this work is better than my other stuff because I have a newer beta reader, theunpaidcritic!!! *I bow* She’s literally an expert so it’s SO helpful for me in every way--I can’t fangirl about her enough. If you’re struggling to get a beta reader, I recommend joining a JB discord (transformative werk is my favorite discord, and there is a beta read request thread) or post a request on reddit!

8) Post! Once you’ve edited and gone over beta reader notes, it’s time to post! Congrats!!!!!!!!!!

For time reference, I started this process around mid-May for ABAT, and I will be done by early September. Maybe I’m just a fast writer? Compared to angel-deux, ha, I look slow. Everyone is different! Please let me know if you have any other questions, I am ALL about helping out! :) <3 <3 <3

#cytarabi answers #jaime x brienne #writing #braime

[readysetstarker]

Phone Sex AU: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

continuation of the above fic! thanks so much for the support on the original post! i apologize for any typos or mistakes; it’s late and i’ve got insomnia. this one is 3.7k words of filth for ya

Tag list: @strawberryparkers​, @hoe4parker​, @deliciousflapbanditfarm​, @idontfeelsogoodmrspock​, @srrnnrrs​

Warnings: 19-year-old Peter. Phone sex, anal fingering, masturbation, dirty talk, daddy kink, praise kink if you squint.

—

Peter bit back tears as he threw his backpack down hard onto his bedroom floor and locked the door behind him. The stain on his hoodie reminded him of his failure from that morning; mixing up chemicals in his lab had resulted in a full-building evacuation, and his entire chemistry lab had no problem letting everyone know he was to blame. 

It certainly didn’t help that Flash made one of his stupid livestreams wherein he broadcasted Peter’s fuckup to the entire school. He was a laughingstock, getting snotty remarks shouted at him all day while walking between classes.

Hey, Parker, where’s the fire?

Blow up any labs today?

Can you come to my 12 o’clock midterm and set fire to Professor Strange’s desk, too? I didn’t study for it and I’m totally going to fail.

Peter shed his dirty hoodie and shoes and tossed it across the room before flopping onto his bed and forcefully groaning into his pillow. He wanted to suffocate himself in it and scream so loud his neighbors would hear it. Every instance of mockery from the day stabbed at his ego like knives until he couldn’t bear thinking of it anymore.

He needed a distraction. Fast.

Studying? No, it just reminded him too much of his laboratory fuckup. He thought about working on his grad school thesis, but again, his mistake kept creeping up with each thought of schoolwork. Peter pulled his face out of the pillow only to pick it up and pull it over the back of his head. Smothering himself to death sounded as good a distraction as any.

The phone nestled in his back pocket vibrated, and Peter pulled his head out from beneath his pillow to check his incoming caller. Aunt May from her cell phone. He answered, giving her a greeting that easily covered up his frustration from the day.

“Hey, May. Are you on your way home from work?”

“Hey, Pete!” May said, and Peter realized he could hear a crowd in the background. “No, I got invited to dinner with some coworkers, so I’ll be late home. We’re getting Mexican. Do you want me to bring you home anything?”

“No, thanks,” Peter said with a small smile. At least May was having a good day. “I think I’ve still got some Chinese leftovers in the fridge. Have fun and call me if you need a ride home.”

“I’m not gonna drink, Pete. Night!”

Peter hung up and returned to his wallowing. At the very least, May wouldn’t be around to witness his lowest point in college.

He peeked out from where he had buried his face into the pillow and stared at his cell phone. His mind immediately supplied him with the memory from a few weeks ago of how he had jerked himself off while a complete stranger had cooed and called him pet names, told him how good he was, called himself Daddy. Peter had been completely blindsided by the things that phone call had done to him.

Not that he was complaining. The word felt so good rolling off his tongue.

“Daddy,” he murmured to himself, eyes slipping shut at the bloom of heat at his cheeks. 

Teeth sunk into his bottom lip. May wouldn’t be home for a few more hours, and the bottle of strawberry-flavored lube certainly wouldn’t use itself. Neither would the brand-new “realistically-styled” didlo he had bought online and hidden in his room when the package had arrived. He had yet to use it.

Who better to help me break it in than You-Know-Who?

It was a better distraction than studying, that was for sure.

Peter didn’t know exactly what his Daddy looked like. He was an older man, that much he knew, with dark hair that was going silver from stress at his temples. (He had called it “a curse of age” until Peter told him how much he loved his Daddy’s graying hair.) He kept his facial hair neatly trimmed and always drank whiskey when he worked on the hotline. Peter definitely imagined how his mouth would taste if he could get his tongue between the older man’s lips.

Not knowing what he looked like didn’t stop Peter at all from trying to imagine him. He had even googled celebrities that shared the sparse details he was given to see if he could conjure up a face that matched the voice in his ear. Nothing fit so far, but Peter wasn’t one to give up.

He did know the man’s real name, though: Tony. Generic enough that looking the name up on social media produced hundreds of millions of results, but personal enough that Peter could feel somewhat closer to the person on the phone.

His stomach climbed up into his throat as he found the hotline’s number in his call history and redialed it. This part was nerve-wracking. He had no problem moaning into the speaker and getting himself off with someone in his ear, but having the anticipation of waiting for the hotline operator to answer his call gave him restless butterflies in his stomach. 

There was a click on the other end, and the woman’s monotonous voice spoke through the speaker asking what “fantasy” he was looking for. It was maybe the fifth time he’d heard the cold open for the hotline and he still couldn’t get over how utterly uninterested she sounded while delivering it. 

“Um, I’m looking for a specific person, actually,” he said. “Extension forty-six?”

“Hold, please.”

Peter felt himself relax as the hold music began playing. Getting past her was the hardest part; here, he moved on to someone who didn’t judge him. Or, at the very least, didn’t sound like they were judging him. Peter didn’t have to hide. His Daddy let him be unashamedly himself while they fucked.

The line finally connected, cheesy saxophone music  abruptly cutting off in his ear, and Tony’s smooth voice purred at him through the earpiece. “Hey there, sweet thing.”

“‘Hey there’ yourself, Daddy.”

“Well, well, look who it is,” he said, laughing, while Peter bit back an excited giggle. “I haven’t heard from you in almost two weeks, baby boy. Where’d you run off to?”

“Just living life,” Peter answered. He moved to lay down on his stomach and prop his head on a folded arm, ankles crossed and resting on top of his abandoned pillow. “But I missed you.”

The growl that answered sent chills up Peter’s spine. His skin lit up. 

“I missed you, too, Pete. I’ve been rather lonely since our last talk.” Peter liked to think that Tony was sincere, that he genuinely looked forward to Peter’s calls. It certainly helped that he recognized Peter’s voice.

Peter sighed contentedly and relaxed into his mattress. This was exactly what he needed after such a shitty day.

Tony seemed to pick up on his uneasiness. There was silence, probably drinking from his glass, before he said, “Heavy sigh, baby. What has my boy so worried?”

My boy. God, Peter was so fucked.

Peter intended to lie to him, but he liked pretending that Tony worried about him. It was hard to deny the man anything when he spoke like that, right in Peter’s ear. He supposed he could be vague enough, not going into too much detail so as not to take up too much of Tony’s time.

“I just fucked up at school,” Peter said. He repositioned himself to run fingers through his hair. “It was a public fuckup, so it’s not like the only people who know are my labmates. Hell, my advisor probably heard about it, too.”

“I’m sorry you had such a bad day. Anything I can do to make it better?”

Peter had hoped he would ask, and even if he didn’t, he knew just how to segue their conversation in his favor. “There is one thing I can think of,” he said, then lowered his voice to add, “Daddy.”

“Yeah, baby? What can Daddy do to make it better?”

Peter chewed on his lip before answering.

“I want you to fuck me.”

He could hear what might have been a choking sound on the other end of the line and tried not to smile at himself. The thought of surprising Tony by making demands made him a little lightheaded, but in the best way. He pushed himself up to kneel on his mattress while waiting for Tony’s response.

Tony groaned once he got a hold of himself. “That what you want, huh? Want Daddy to fuck you so hard you can’t think of anything else but his cock inside you?”

Peter held back a whine and nodded before remembering Tony couldn’t see him. “Yes, Daddy, I want it so bad.”

He was already growing hard in his pants, and he put a hand over his crotch to palm at the bulge there. He gave himself a few gentle squeezes but nothing more than that; Tony liked control, liked knowing that Peter listened to and obeyed him, and he didn’t want to come too quickly. He did roll up into his palm, though, to keep the ache from overwhelming him.

“What do we say when we want something, Peter?”

“Please.”

“That’s my good boy.”

Peter scrambled across his mattress to the nightstand drawer where he kept his lube and new toy. The lube still had the plastic seal around the cap, and he had to stop himself from excitedly ripping it off with his teeth. He returned to kneeling on the bed, the phone pressed tightly to his ear while he waited for Tony’s instructions. 

“Tell me what you’re wearing, pretty boy. I wanna know what I’m tearing off you tonight.”

Peter looked down at himself, wincing at the shirt he was wearing. It was corny, a red short-sleeve shirt with the words If it wasn’t for physics and law enforcement, I’d be unstoppable written across the chest. Ned had gotten it for him for his birthday as a gag gift, not expecting Peter to unironically wear it in public. On his legs was a pair of dark skinny jeans.

He really didn’t have anything sexy in his closet.

Tony never seemed to mind. Even at Peter’s vague answer of just a t-shirt was enough to get a groan from him.

“I bet you’d look good in one of mine,” Tony said into his ear while Peter made quick work of removing his jeans and underwear. “You’d have it falling off your shoulder, barely fitting in it. God, you’d look so delicious, though.”

“Your T-shirt and nothing else?” Peter supplied, and he rolled his hips down into the mattress. “I wanna wear that instead. Can you imagine me like that?”

Tony hissed between his teeth and praised how good Peter would look in a black AC/DC number. Peter sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and ground against his bed again. God, what he would give to actually wear it, straddling Tony’s lap, with a hand larger than his climbing up his thigh and underneath the shirt’s hem. He whined at the mental image now seared in his brain.

“Yeah, baby boy, I definitely can,” Tony said, and Peter hoped he was getting himself off with that image. “Fuck, keep that shirt on, will you? Look so fucking good in my clothes. The only thing better than having you naked.”

Peter moaned and rocked down onto his mattress again, the black and red bottle of fruity lube catching his eye. His mouth watered at the sight of it. He needed something inside of him, and he needed it now.

“Daddyyy,” Peter whined. He reached for the lube. “I need you.”

“Need you too, baby. Want you so fucking bad.” Tony’s voice sounded so rough, so wrecked, and it was all because of Peter. That thought went straight to Peter’s dick. Peter was sure he could have come on that thought alone, no stimulation necessary.

“You got lube?” Tony asked, and Peter confirmed it, popping the cap open where he knew Tony could hear. “Get yourself nice and wet for me, baby. Open up for my cock. I’m gonna fuck you so good, it’s gonna ruin anyone else for you.”

Peter scrambled to get onto his back and set the phone by his pillow on speaker. The lube was cool on his skin as he dribbled it out onto his fingers; the artificially sweet smell of strawberries flooded his nostrils and aided in his hormone-drunk high. He licked a small stripe of it off his fingertip and hummed at the taste. It wasn’t as sweet as it smelled, but the flavor was there.

Unprompted, Tony’s voice came through the speaker: “Spread your legs for me, honey, let me see that sweet little hole of yours. Fuck, can I even get my fingers in you? You’re so goddamn tight.”

Peter’s mouth fell open when he reached between his thighs and the first finger breached through. Instead of a moan, a breathy, high-pitched noise squeezed itself from his throat. His head fell to the side, eyes locating his slim black cell, and he pressed the finger in all the way until his knuckles brushed against his ass.

Each breath was accompanied by a quiet exhalation as he slowly fucked his finger in and out of himself. He clenched his eyes shut. Maybe, he thought, he could pretend it was Tony’s finger pressing into him, another one sliding in beside the first to work him open, teaching his body to welcome the pleasant intrusion. But he knew it was his own fingers by the ache in his wrist and their slender and long size. He liked to think Tony’s would be bigger, thicker, much more pleasurable compared to his own.

Tony moaned next to his ear, and with his eyes closed, Peter could imagine the man was lying next to him and watching his face contort in pleasure from being fingered open.

“God, baby, you feel so fucking good.” Tony groaned on the last word. Was he working himself in his fingers or just acting? Either way, it set a fire in Peter’s chest.

Peter let out a desperate whine and bucked his hips up onto his fingers. “Please,” he begged, opening his eyes. He half-expected to see his Daddy there and was disappointed to find only his phone, still mid-call. “I’m going crazy, Tony, I need you.”

“Yeah, baby boy, I know. I got you.” Tony hissed, high and sharp. “You good to take my cock now? Let me hear you.”

A dejected whimper left his lips as Peter pulled his fingers out of himself. The empty feeling that accompanied their removal was an unfamiliar sensation. He grabbed for the dildo still at his feet and slicked it up quickly. Peter made no attempts to be quiet, and Tony chuckled.

“So eager. Tell Daddy how long you’ve been waiting for him to fuck you.”

“Day one,” Peter admitted as he moved to lie on his stomach and prop his ass up in the air on his knees, cheek now shoved into his pillow, with the dildo held awkwardly between his legs. The mattress dipped and bounced beneath his struggle to find balance. “I’ve wanted you since day one. Wanted you to pin me to the bed and fuck me until I couldn’t stand.”

“Be careful what you wish for.” Tony’s voice held a promise Peter could only wish to be kept. “I’m gonna put it in now. Slow and steady. I want you to feel every inch of it as my cock splits you open.”

Peter followed his instructions, pressing the head against his unused hole and prodding it with wet and sticky fingers until he could nudge it past the tight rim and inside. His breath caught in his throat with the initial penetration, and the pleasant slide and pressure of the silicone dick pushing further inside of him ripped a moan from him. A litany of Daddy, Daddy, yes, Daddy, please poured from his lips until the fake balls of the dildo laid against his own.

Peter let out a heavy breath muffled by the plush pillow on his cheek.

He’s full, so full. Every inch of it Tony’s.

His fingers curled into his bed sheets when he shifted, and the head pressed against something that sent liquid fire through his veins. Peter nearly bit his tongue from the shock of it.

“Daddy,” he cried, pulling the phone closer. On the other end, he swore he could hear Tony’s breath hitching as though he was working himself over, masturbating to the sound of Peter getting himself off.

“Good boy, taking all of Daddy’s cock,” Tony said into the phone, and the praise went straight to Peter’s neglected dick. He managed to resist touching it, ignoring that ache to shove his fingers into his ass. Now, he was so hard he hurt. “How is it, knowing only your Daddy can make you feel like this?”

Peter’s mouth opened but no sound came out. He moved his hips, not daring to do anything more without Tony’s permission.

“Fuck me, please,” Peter keened.

“I could never say no to you, baby boy. You want Daddy to be rough with you?”

“Yes!”

Peter’s fingers struggled to find a steady grip on the edge of the dildo; so much lube, the smell of strawberries permeating each breath he took, that he couldn’t get the silicone to move the way he wanted. It took some doing, but he managed to lock his fingers around the shaft and pull it out of himself slowly. With how awkward the angle was, his shoulder now digging into the mattress, he couldn’t manage to pull more than half of the fake cock out.

With a quick flick of his wrist, he shoved some of the dildo back into his hole. He gasped as it pulled at his rim. Some more lube slicked its way in and out of him, until he could start a steady pace.

Tony sat patiently on the phone and listened to each sound he made. In turn, Peter focused on the other man’s breathing and groaning. He worked himself up to a steady rhythm of the cock pushing in and out of himself, hard enough to make his bed squeak beneath him. He shoved the dick into himself hard, hitting his prostate with the head, and bucked his hips. 

His cock begged for attention. He kept his other hand clutching at his pillow.

The squeaky mattress, the sloppy squelching of the generously-lubricated dildo pushing into him; Peter wondered if Tony could hear all of it over the debauched moans and pleading. The word Daddy almost exclusively left his lips with each thrust. Pleas of harder, faster were met with permission to fuck himself that way.

Tony’s admissions were scattered amongst a nearly-endless stream of praise. “So tight, baby. I can feel every inch of you on me. Just for me, aren’t you, baby? You’re made perfect just for me. I’m going to come inside you and eat it out, watching you squirm on my tongue. You’d take it so good, baby boy, like you always take me, and you’d fucking love it. Every inch of you is so goddamn perfect.”

Peter thrust his hips again to seek some sort of reprieve from the endless throbbing between his thighs. The things those words did to him…

“D-Daddy,” he stuttered as a hard thrust sent stars blooming behind his eyelids. “Daddy, please, I’m so close. I’m gonna come.”

“Come for me, Petey,” Tony said. He sounded like he was straining to smother his voice, holding back. Was he trying not to moan into the speaker? 

Peter didn’t have time to dwell on that thought. His other hand gripped his dark cock so hard that his legs shook, and he was barely three pumps in before he spilled over his hand, strands of spunk tangling between his fingers and dripping down onto his bedsheets. Peter nearly screamed, Tony’s name on his lips as he buried his face into the pillow to drown out the sound so May didn’t get an awkward confrontation with the neighbors later.

He jerked himself furiously, the dildo pushed in as far as he could physically fit it, until the pain overwhelmed the pleasure. The sharp sting from the head of his dick under his fingers made him tear his hand away from himself.

On the phone, he could hear Tony had gone silent, breathing heavily. Peter frowned at having missed hearing his Daddy come, but made sure he was heard as he licked the sticky mess of seed and strawberries from his hand. That earned him a pained groan.

“Fuck, baby, I don’t have that kind of energy anymore,” Tony said, and Peter couldn’t hide his laughter. “But I appreciate the effort.”

The dildo took some work but Peter eventually pulled it out and tossed it onto the floor. He would have to remember to clean it before he used it the next time, and maybe find a better hiding place for it than his sock drawer. That one time May came close to finding it was the closest Peter had ever come to having a heart attack. He wasn’t looking for a repeat performance.

Peter laid on his side on the bed to purposely ignore the puddle of his release still resting on top of his bed sheets. Nothing grosser than laying in it, he thought.

“Thank you, Daddy,” he said after he caught his breath. “I needed that.”

“Anything for you.” Tony chuckled on the other end. “We should probably wrap this up. I feel guilty knowing you’ve paid a good chunk of cash for tonight.”

I want to stay, Peter thought, but he caught himself before the words left his lips. Instead, he just agreed with a quiet, “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll catch you later, Tones.”

“Hey, now, don’t sound so disappointed. I could never ignore your calls, my sweet boy. I’ll always answer for you.”

For once, Peter’s thankful Tony can’t see how his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. He bid Tony goodnight and hung up. One breath, and then two. He really needed to clean up; his sheets and toy needed to be washed, and he needed a shower. 

May still wasn’t home when he started the washing machine and when he finished bathing. He caught his wet-haired reflection in the mirror and tried not to cringe at just how disappointed he looked.

“He’s a sex line operator,” Peter said to himself while pushing wet curls from his forehead, “nothing more.”

#starker #ironspider #peter parker x tony stark #my work #nff #phone sex au #good night i need to try to sleep #i work this weekend #but i'm gonna work on my inbox prompts i promise

[camryndaytona]

Cassandra Clare

Cassandra Clare is one of the most popular and successful young adult authors of today, however, a huge percentage of her fans have no idea of her past where she was know more for her bullying than her writing. I started this as a post on my “You Should Know” instagram, but eventually it got way too big and I had to create a post for it as well.

Terms to Know

Big Name Fan

Or “BNF” is an old term mostly used during the early 2000s, before ff.net or AO3.

They were the biggest names in fandom, producing the most popular art or fanfics.

Getting on the wrong side of a BNF could lock you out from the entire fandom, as you would be blocked from any forum they (or they friends) moderated.

The Inner Circle

In the early 2000s the Harry Potter fandom was essentially ruled by the Inner Circle. 

Although most of the Inner Circle changed constantly due to fandom drama and scandals, one member stayed for almost it’s entire duration: Cassie Claire

ff.net

Fanfiction.net

One of the early and most popular sites for hosting fanfiction.

The Draco Trilogy

Draco Dormiens

Author’s Summary: When an accident in Potions class turns Harry into Draco and Draco into Harry, each is trapped playing the part of the other. Romance, mistaken identities, Really Cunning Plans, evil bake sales, a love triangle, and snogs galore.

Draco Sinister

Author’s Summary: When Hermione is kidnapped, Harry and Draco must team up to rescue her from a thousand-year-old evil that threatens the entire wizarding world. Cursed demon swords, love potions, time travel, dementors, flying dragons, Draco wears leather, and everybody dies at least once. Except when they don’t.

It is notable for being the source of the Draco in Leather Pants trope as well as the catalyst for the Cassandra Claire plagiarism wank.

Draco Veritas

Author’s Summary: The sequel to Draco Sinister, featuring winter at Hogwarts, snogging, Quidditch, mysterious things and Rhysenn Malfoy.

Why was the Trilogy so popular?

As most people in fandom probably know, there’s usually two subsets of shippers: gay and straight (please note that, back in the early 2000s, there was still a lot of homophobia, and the heterosexual ships were undeniably more popular for that reason).

Since The Draco Trilogy had both Draco/Hermione and a lot of Harry/Draco subtext, fans of both ships flocked to the fic.

The Plagiarism 

Although she’d done it all along, it wasn’t until the second fanfic, Draco Sinister, that fans began to catch on. What was “it?”

Cassie including a lot of quotations from other work. And I mean a LOT. She lifted entire conversations and paragraphs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Black Adder, Red Dwarf, and Terry Pratchett. At first she didn’t even mention this “inspiration,” so everyone assumed that this wit was all hers.

Once she was called out, she put a standard disclaimer at the top of her work, which was worded to imply that she might have borrowed a few, small quotes here and there, not that she was taking paragraphs and scenes. When she was called out for her continued plagiarism she switched to claiming that she “forgot” what her sources were.

Finally a former fan called Avocado got tired of it and reported her to ff.net. Within a day her works were taken down.

Predictably the fandom melted down over this and accusations began to fly. Cassie used her status as a BNF to ban anyone mildly critical of her from any message board or mailing list. A friend of Cassie’s claimed to be a real life lawyer and harrassed young fans with seemingly legal threats. There are even threats of people calling the police in an early form of “swatting.” Cassie tried to get a “hater” kicked out of university for “hacking” her and a REAL lawyer had to be involved before Cassie admitting to making it all up.

After all that began to die down, as she was working on the third installment of the trilogy, Cassie began accusing her friend and fellow BNF, Aja, of plagiarizing her. When that failed to incite the anger she wanted against Aja, Cassie began to claim that Aja was posting leaked spoilers for the Draco Trilogy. This infighting between the two lead to the collapse of The Inner Circle.

Laptop Gate

Although the third part of the Trilogy wasn’t as popular as the first two, due to the plagiarism scandal, it still racked up a ton of views when she began posting it. So when there was a potential threat to the continuation of the saga, readers were horrified.

This potential threat was a break in and the loss of Cassie’s computer.

Almost immediately after the robbery was announced Cassie’s lawyer friend (who was also her roommate) popped up again. This time, they were raising money to replace the laptops of Cassie and her roommates that had been stolen in the break in. Any extra money from the fundraiser would go to some vaguely mentioned charity.

Divisive comments poured in.

Some people expressed frustration that more “meaningful” fundraisers (like someone who had lost everything in a fire) didn’t get anywhere near as much attention and support.

Fans were even less happy when no proof was provided of either the break in or the charitable donation of excess funds (which was reported to be over $10,000).

When called out they changed the subject and posted links to another fan that was also fundraising (although they never posted any charity before or after, even when asked to do so the lawyer friend claimed to be “too busy” to share a link).

Published Works

After enjoying her celebrity as the Queen of Fanfiction, it’s no surprise that Cassie decided to venture into actual, original published works.

Except they weren’t that original, because it’s Cassie and she really, really seems to like “borrowing” from herself and others.

Let’s start with some name changes

Cassie

Cassandra Claire (with an i) is her fanfiction name

Cassandra Clare (without an i) is her published name

You may be surprised by how well this name change suited her. For a long time, before exposes began to be posted, you could google her published name without finding out about her history in fandom. Additionally, some of her victims from her fanfic days read her published books without realizing who the author actually was (until they started to recognize the quotes and paragraphs that she’d lifted straight from her fanfiction)

Her Writing

“Mortal Instruments” is Cassie’s Ginny/Ron incest romance fanfiction.

“The Mortal Instruments” is Cassie’s published work, about two fake siblings who fall in love with each other.

Similarities to Harry Potter

Now I haven’t read Mortal Instruments or The Mortal Instruments so I’ll let someone who has read them both do some explaining:

When I opened the book, I knew that Clary was Ginny. Alec was Harry. Isabelle was Clare’s version of Blaise (who back then was not officially male or female, and could therefore be interpreted by fandom either way). Valentine was a strange mixture of Lucius and Voldemort. And Jace, of course, was undeniably Draco.

Jace is so Draco, in fact, that it’s impossible to see him as his own character. The way Clare characterizes Jace is the exact same way she characterized her Draco. They share lines (the ones she didn’t steal from Buffy, of course), they share nervous tics, they share appearances, and they even share memories. The second I read the scene in which Jace tells Clary the story about the boy and the falcon, I felt an unpleasant jolt of recognition: that story is one Draco tells in one of the Draco Trilogy installments. I couldn’t remember which one. I couldn’t even remember who Draco told it to (Harry? Ginny? Hermione?). But I knew it was if not word for word taken from her fanfiction, it was very, very close.

Yikes. That’s a lot of similarities.

The same person I quoted about went on to say that the fanfiction was still much better than her published work, and that she’d rather re-read the fanfic than the non-fanfic.

Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dark Hunters

Almost immediately after The Mortal Instruments (the non-fanfic one) became popular, Sherrilyn Kenyon slapped it with a lawsuit for copying her urban fantasy series, Dark Hunters.

Kenyon fans attacked Claire fans, Cassie’s history was brought to light, and Cassie got to pull out her favorite argument “you hate me because I’m Jewish.” Which is interesting, because I’ve been working on this for two weeks, and I only just learned that she’s Jewish when I read about her accusing others of anti-Semitism.

Now as Cassie apologists will tell you, Kenyon did ultimately lose that suit, but it’s really, really starting to get repetitive over here.

I’ll borrow a quote from Ryan Givens, “If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” Or in this case, maybe you’re the plagiarist.

Common Questions

Has Cassie apologized for this?

She did occasionally

Has Cassie changed?

My opinion is no. She’s not.

Let’s see, as the “Queen of YA Literature” she has:

used Copy Right strikes to prevent people from calling out problematic passages in her books

sent her fans after critics

posted a hilariously ironic blog about cyber bullying

attacked her OWN FANS because they didn’t like the ending of a book

currently complains about people posting her real name (which is Judith Rumelt, in case you wanted to know) despite her own history of publishing people’s actual phone numbers online

Calls critics anti-Semetic while having this quote in her book

Claims that she was threatened when someone called her friend an “ignorant duck” 

Loves Token Minorities

Wrote a questionable almost rape

My Thoughts

I don’t like Cassie.

I really don’t.

And look, I’m not saying that Cassie is a narcissist, but here’s a fun little saying called The Narcissist’s Prayer:

That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did… You deserved it.

Does any of that sound familiar, because it should. It’s basically Cassie’s text book responce of “avoid admitting fault until there’s too much proof, say I didn’t do it on purpose, blame someone else, claim to be the victim, find another person to accuse of drama.”

Now I’m going to again quote from ProblematicYA because I absolutely love their writing. In this quote, they’re talking about how all of Cassie’s books, even those set in different times or cities, follow the same pattern. Non-Shadowhunter meets Shadowhunter (who is basically Draco).

So what’s really my problem? My problem is the fact that Cassandra Clare is a marginally talented writer who has one story and one cast of characters up her sleeve, and yet somehow she’s sold millions and millions of books based on this. My problem is the fact that Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series was partially copied from her fanfiction trilogy, which copied a plethora of other authors, not even including J.K. Rowling, who provided her with the characters, premise, and setting for her beloved trilogy. My problem is the fact that Cassandra Clare is in the authorly equivalent of a time loop, and has come full circle. My problem is the fact that Cassandra Clare is, in essence, writing fanfiction of her own work, and it is getting published and she is getting paid bank for it, when other far more original and talented authors are getting absolutely nothing for their hard work. I may despise Stephenie Meyer and the world she’s created, but at least Twilight and its accompanying works are her own original product; at least she deserves to reap the benefits of the crazy fandom she’s inspired.

Look. I don’t believe in dredging up ancient history just to hurt people. Shit we did when we were teens shouldn’t be held against us as adults. People grow and change a lot from what they were as teens.

But bitch, you actually have to GROW AND CHANGE. And Cassie hasn’t.

Also, try actually apologizing for what you’ve done instead of silencing critics.

Sources and More Information

As always, I love, love, love fanlore and I linked to many of their articles throughout this post.

A user on the HobbyDrama subreddit made a great write up called The Cassandra Cla(i)re Saga.

ProblematicYA wrote several amazing articles on the subject:

Why I Have A Problem With Cassandra Clare and Why You Should Too

anti-bullying ya queen cassandra clare is a massive bully. water also wet.

They also have an entire tag dedicated to Cassie

Alli6 wrote Things you should Know

Cassandra Clare, Rape Culture, and the Oft-Forgotten Metaphor by The Book Lantern.

SnarkTheater also has pages of things tagged as Cassie Claire, including chapter by chapter break downs of the books.

source http://camryndaytona.com/2020/06/cassandra-clare?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cassandra-clare

#my blog

[im-the-king-of-the-ocean]

2, 7, and 11 for the ask game (for Souls)

2. What scene did you first put down?

The scene of ch1, where Ruby tries to escape and the first experiment that introduces Penny happens.  Originally Souls was supposed to be a oneshot as a response to a request for Nuts and Dolts angst by an anon.  That was supposed to be it, but before I even answered the request, I think, it took off and spiraled into something bigger.

.

7. Where did the title come from?

I wanted a title that referred to how both Penny and Ruby were presumed dead but actually are still alive.  I think I started out with ‘Walking Dead’ references (y’know, zombies), and then ambled over to the phrase ‘dead man walking’, which I vaguely remembered as something that referred to a person that’s walking around but supposedly dead.

(in hindsight, I should have done the simplest google search of the term instead of assuming the phrase related to zombies, but welp - I learned last night it actually refers to men on death row).

Anyways, I decided to swap in the word ‘souls’ for ‘man’ because that seemed more RWBY’s speed (a simple soul, etc.) and ‘living’ for ‘walking’ because I wanted the focus to be on how they’re actually alive, not just walking around.  Thus, the title ‘Dead Souls Living’ was born.

Altho now I kinda like the concept of it being a title you think refers to Ruby and Penny at first glance, but the ‘souls’ are actually Ironwood and Watts, who are technically alive, but whatever spark was in their souls (like the spark Ozpin says Ruby has) is gone.  So, they’re alive, technically, but that hopeful light that rallies others has long been snuffed out within them (if Watts ever had it in the first place).

.

11. What do you like best about this fic?

So far, it’s my fic that’s most successful in balancing my impulse to put in everything including the kitchen sink when the mood strikes me and my desire to have a significant amount of the narrative plotted out ahead of time.

(yes, I know my writing style is pretty much two polar opposites constantly having to interact with each other, but it tends to lead to interesting places so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

(also, as much as I wish there was some kind of in-between, I have yet to actually find it)

To make a long story short, the first long form fic I tried writing had too many ideas/plot lines/complications, which resulted in me getting overwhelmed and stressed out.  Partly in response to that, the second long fic I tried I restricted to a single character having an arc and a POV, which I ended up getting bored with (and then fandom drama affected how I thought of that specific character and subsequently the story just fizzled out period).

My third long fic (the last one before Souls) came close to functioning well, but it’s problem was transforming the characters pretty far from their canon selves, the realization I liked my versions of the characters better than their actual canon selves, and the ensuing internal conflict over the issue.  Though I loved the fic (and still do), I let it go when I realized I no longer had passion for the characters as they are (and left that fandom to boot).

What I like about Souls best, and what makes it so fun to write, is that it’s built on everything I learned from these past experiences.  

It’s heavily structured, but with room for random impulses.  Everything is outlined in advance, but in such a way that I can add in unplanned additions (like an entire set of scenes following Taiyang post the Fall of Beacon).

I restricted myself to three core character perspectives (Ruby, Penny, Watts), which is just enough that writing each doesn’t feel monotonous, but it’s not too many and thus doesn’t become overwhelming.

Unlike all its predecessors, Souls manages to rest in this balanced position between impulsivity and planning.  I delight in seeing the plot lines I’ve worked on and planned thoroughly come to life, and, at the same time, how random sparks of inspiration strengthen them. 

(this next Penny chapter, for instance, I knew what the main scene that was to happen was, but the beginning I’ve written for it was a completely spur of the moment choice.  I’m super proud of how it turned out.)

Fanfiction too, I think, is intrinsically a transformation of a source material.  By definition then, Souls is a transformation of RWBY.  However, the relationship it has with RWBY canon is a much happier one than my third long fic (the one that came directly before it) had with its canon.  Overall, that makes it a better fic and one significantly more fun to write.

Souls is fueled by a deep love for the characters in it (yes, even Watts - I’m fully aware he’s a spiteful bastard but god is he the funnest spiteful bastard to write Ever) rather than the itch to warp the characters into what an (arrogant) part of me thinks they should be instead of what they are.

The much shorter answer to this question is: what I like best is that writing Souls is enormously fun and comes from a place of love and joy, and subsequently enthusiasm for it is easier to build than if passion for it came from someplace negative.

Fanfic Asks

#whirls writing #dead souls living #maxiemumdamage #for the record that last answer wasn't supposed to get that long #the main answer i had was 'it's fun' #and then all that happened when i tried to explain how it's fun

[forestwater87]

Ok this is super embarrassing but you’re one of my favorite writers in this uh.. whatever this blogosphere is so!! I wanna try and take a crack at writing my own fanfic but.. I got no idea where to even start. Any advice?

Oh man, I feel awful about this! I didn’t know my inbox had any new messages, so some of these asks have been sitting here for . . . some time. 

Anyway, first off thank you very much! Secondly, the most obvious advice is just, you know, “do it.” But that’s infinitely easier said than done. I started writing fanfic when I was around 10 years old, so overthinking it wasn’t an issue, since I thought I was the world’s greatest writer. Assuming you’re not 10 years old and as blind to the concept of literary criticism as I was . . . well, the first step is obviously getting an idea. EDIT: Holy shit, this is long. I’m gonna have to break this bad boy up with headers, like it’s a real blog post or something.

Getting Ideas/Inspiration

I don’t know if you already have something you’d like to write about or if you’re still at the “gee that looks like fun” level of fanfic ruminating, but if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, turning to the existing fandom is a great place to start! 

1: Filling in fandom gaps: I’ve found a lot of my best fic ideas by looking through what already existed and seeing where there was something missing; when I first started writing for Camp Camp, literally only @raenbowsofficial created anything for Gwenvid -- it didn’t even have a ship name yet, and I’m pretty sure the 3 people into it were still throwing “daven” and “gavid” around as well -- so there being zero other fics for it meant that if I wanted it to exist, I’d have to be the one to write it. (That’s also nice if you’re kind of insecure, because when no one else has tried the idea you’re interested in, you have no pressure to compare it to anything else.) 

Also, you could take a popular/already existing concept and write it the way you’d like to see it, if the existing fanfics do something with the story or characters that you’re not thrilled with. That’s handy because it gives you a general blueprint to work off of in terms of tropes and broad story beats, while letting you explore something new. Obviously, don’t rip off someone else’s fic note-for-note, but being inspired by someone else is a great way to kickstart your creativity! If you do have a specific author or story that you’re using as a jumping-off point for your own writing, I would strongly recommend linking them in your author’s notes at the beginning or end of the fic, and maybe gifting the story to them! You don’t have to, since the creation is entirely your own, but it’s still always nice to acknowledge the people who inspire you the most.

2: Fandom inception. If you want to be a little more direct and literal, there’s always the option of writing fanfic of a fanfic or fanart that you really love, if there’s a universe or story idea that you like, and you want more of it. As long as you give credit and notify the original creator, I think you’d have no issues in terms of fanfic etiquette, and I imagine they’d be honored to have inspired your own writing. Fandom is a very collaborative experience, after all, and we’re all in this together! :)

3. For more general “I have a vague idea of what I want to do (the ship, or maybe a tiny plot bunny) but I’m not sure where to go with it,” my biggest recommendation is music. Especially folk indie-rock music, which is 90% angst and 100% haunting. And again, looking at fanfic/art is a great way to get inspired -- I have a tendency to put up a particularly good or emblematic piece of fanart/fic in another window when I’m working on something tricky to write, just for something to stare at when my ideas start running dry (shoutout to @doritofalls, @ellohcee, and the aforementioned RA for being my go-tos when I need to stare at something pretty to feel inspired; there are absolutely others, because this fandom is filled with absurdly talented people, but those 3 are my heroes of inspiration and if you SOMEHOW don’t already know them, fix that immediately). 

Wow, that’s a lot and it’s literally just all about getting an idea . . . which you might already have. Yikes. For the sake of people who have to scroll past this, let’s put the rest under a cut:

Fleshing Out the Idea: An Ode to Outlines

Some people are able to just sit down and write something incredible from a vague idea, and the story just builds on itself without any sort of planning or organization to guide them along the way. These people are named Cipher/Campernetics, and we hate her for being unfairly talented.

For the rest of us, outlines are essential.

My outlines tend to be insanely specific, because I’m very afraid of letting a single idea slip through the cracks, and I build on them over time as I get increasingly sure of where the story’s going. The early outlines tend to be extremely vague, with lots of “and then something happens” connecting major plot points. An example for a current WIP I’m doing right now:

(Seriously, “Julia and everything”? Future Forest is going to be so pissed at current Forest when she reaches that point and realizes she has no idea what she’s doing)

And as the story starts to take shape and a plot eventually forms -- they tend to take at least 10 chapters to materialize, but they do generally show up! One of the great things about fanfiction is that plot is largely optional, though, so no worries if you’re starting without a full story idea -- I find myself writing more and more details down, if for no other reason than that I want to make sure I remember what I was thinking when I finally get to that scene (because I have absolutely gotten to a point in a story and forgotten what I’d had planned. It sucks). Here’s an example from another fic with pretty significant spoilers if you can figure out which one it is oops:

I’d recommend keeping your outlines pretty simple, at least to start with: words and phrases, rather than whole-ass sentences like the above. The complexity will develop as your ideas do, so no need to wrack your brain trying to write out the entire story in bullet form.

I use the bolded ideas as stepping stones, more or less; I’ll write out the piece of the story that each line represents, which can be as little as a sentence or as much as 4 or more chapters (RIP my most recent long-running fic), then delete that line and move on to the next. 

Bolding them isn’t necessary, but it does make it easier to differentiate at a glance what needs to be written. If you keep everything in the same hundred-page Google Doc like I do, this is very important.

Your outline doesn’t have to be well-written, and you can 100% use fillers like “and then something happens here.” I do that all the time -- again, another completely different story:

Now, the vaguer things are, the more annoyed Future You will be when it comes time to write whatever it’s bulleting -- there’s a reason I haven’t updated this fic, and it’s because I have zero idea what the everliving fuck “Pinky-and-the-Brain-ing all over the place” means -- but it’s really good for when you’re first getting started sketching out the vague outline of your fic. The more you panic trying to figure out all the twists and details at the very start, the less likely you’re ever just going to sit down and write the damn thing.

(This might be why I don’t write plot-heavy stories, to be fair. Mystery writers very well might have to have it all planned out from the get-go, and I’d recommend chatting with someone who’s a bit less “coffeeshop AU” and a bit more Agatha Christie for that kind of advice.)

Knowing When to Post

There are people that exist, who have amazing self-control, who can wait until their entire story is written and then release it in sections, at regular intervals, until the story is completed.

I am not one of these people, though I try to be with literally every single fic I’ve ever written.

Personally, I do this until I reach a point where I get stuck and need validation, and then post what I have in a giant chunk and then don’t update it for several months. This is almost universally known as the worst way to write fanfics, both in terms of getting interaction from fans and keeping readers from wanting to kill you, and if you have the ability to write the entire thing and sit on it until it’s ready to be shared, you are a hero.

Alternatively, if you can actually stick to a set schedule of writing it as you go and still update with a new chapter every X days, you are not human and I’m terrified of you, because if you find a way to weaponize this power you will rule the world.

Honestly, a good rule of thumb? Post it when you’re ready for people to read it, whether it’s done or not. Not all works will get done, and it seems mean to deny people the delicious little stub you’ve written even if you’re not going to finish it. When you’re happy with what you have -- or are so tired of looking at it that you need to post it or you’ll throw your computer out the window -- just do it and let out a sigh of relief, then either take a few days before going back to writing or just jump in immediately like a goddamn masochist.

(I have tried to get far enough ahead that I can start posting the already-written stuff on a schedule, figuring by the time I’m caught up I’ll have completed the entire story and won’t have any awkward gaps. Ahahahahahahahahaha that has never once worked.)

If you’re not certain about your writing, get a beta! The fandom is full of talented people who’d be happy to read over your work, and if the person you ask doesn’t have the time or spoons, they probably have a few ideas of other people you could reach out to. You don’t need a beta, but it always makes me feel better to have another set of eyes look over my writing before posting, and my beta always catches things I completely missed. Plus, you get a nice taste of that sweet, sweet validation we all crave.

This . . . is a bad guide. Just in general. The advice is . . . not good, and I think it’s largely useless. But I keep trying to think of useful things to add to it and coming up empty, so I hope something in here helped, and if you’d like to bounce your ideas off of someone, feel free to shoot me a message! Talking ideas over with friends is a great way to flesh them out as well, and I am happy to be anyone’s fandom friend.

#ask forest #forestwriting #legit no one is going to read this and i'm not saying that to judge anyone #in fact i'll lowkey judge you if you DO read all of this because why #Anonymous

[recklessrex]

The prompt: 14 using Scar and Persi (it doesn't need to be canonically with ur fic, to avoid spoilers, I'm just curious to see them on different situations :]

“Can you explain why my phone is up there?”

The first thing Persimmian was aware of was that the sky was a rather pleasant shade of bright blue. A couple of puffy clouds here and there. Very pretty.

The second thing she was aware of was the warm, familiar weight at her side, tucked under her right arm. A quick instinctual mental assessment (thin, tall, scruffy fur, on the right he's always on the right) instantaneously identified it as her best friend Scaramouche.

The third thing she was aware of was that her left side was cold. No warm, familiar weight.

"Scar…"

The warm, familiar weight on her right shifted and settled. She wiggled her shoulder to nudge him awake.

"Scar."

"Hh?"

"Where's Crash?"

That got Scar's attention. He lifted his head. Seeing no silver spotted tom on his friend's other side, he propped himself up to look around.

"I gotta bettah question for ya," he said.

"Hnh?" grunted Persi, still staring at the pretty sky.

"Where da fuck are we?"

Persi peeled her eyes away from the pleasant blue sky and puffy clouds to take a look around. They were laying in some sort of small field behind what looked like a suburban neighborhood. Rows of rundown houses with small back gardens lined three sides of the field. The fourth side was bordered by a highway.

"Where the fuck are we?" she asked.

"S'what I'm askin' you" Scar answered, rising into a kneeling position.

"I know. I mean I don't know. Shit," Persi's mind raced. The sensation was almost comforting to her. It meant she was finally properly awake. Her thoughts were always going a mile a minute.

But none of her thoughts right now could tell her where they were or how they'd got there.

"What'd we do last night?" she wondered as she sat up.

"Well we still have all our clothes on, so we prolly di'n't fuck," said Scar, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to say. He was good at straight-faced teasing.

"Fuck off," Persi scolded softly, her mind elsewhere. She stood up and looked around some more. No sign of Crash. That's not good. Probably. She narrowed her eyes. Her ears went back. Her tail flicked back and forth, its long fur swaying.

Scar stood up next to her, eyeing his oldest friend. He knew what she looked like when she was thinking. It usually didn't take long. He looked around too, hoping to spot his other best friend laying in the grass some meters off, but no luck. Even with only one good eye he could tell they were alone in this field.

Persi could vaguely remember a party. She clung to that memory and worked to expand it. She's been there with Scar and Crash. Of course, that part was easy, they went everywhere together. The party had been mostly lame, but there had been booze. She remembered sitting on a sofa and laughing about something with the lads, beer in hand. She thinks it was beer. She didn't remember leaving.

"So what we doin', boss?" Scar's voice cut into her thoughts.

"We left the party without Crash, apparently," she said aloud, frowning. It didn't answer his question, but it was the thought she was having at that moment, and she knew what he really wanted was to hear her thoughts.

"Oh yeah, I remember, the party!" exclaimed Scar, snapping his fingers in triumph. Then he realized how the rest of that sentence went.

"Why da fuck would we do that?" he asked.

"I don't fuckin' know!" answered, frustrated and starting to worry. Scar was worried too, but Scar could shrug it off a lot easier. Sometimes it just pays to be calm about shit, even bad shit.

"Oi, Crash!" Persi called, hoping if he was in or near one of those houses he might hear her.

"Crashie!" echoed Scar "Where ya at?!" But they got no response.

"Maybe he like, was already passed out when we left or something," Scar thought aloud after a moment. It was the only thing he could think of that made sense.

"Ah yeah, maybe. I guess," agreed Persi. Then suddenly a thought came to her, one that should have come much sooner. Resisting the urge to smack herself in the face, she reached for her phone.

"Oi, where's my phone?!" she cried in alarm.

"I don't fuckin' know" shrugged Scar.

"You still got yours?"

He checked.

"Yeah."

"Call Crashie," ordered Persi.

Scar dialed Crash's number.

Ring

Ring

Ring

Oi, you've reached a badass. You know I'm badass cuz I'm Australian. Aw yeah! Leave a message!

That was a new one.

Scar hung up and opened the text messenger.

Crashie, dude, where you at?

He dialed again.

Ring

Ring

Ring

Oi, you've reached a badass. You know I'm ba-

Scar hung up. Shit.

"No luck?" Persi asked.

"Nothing," he said. "I texted him." Then he had a thought.

"Hang on I'ma try yours," he said.

They both listened close, but neither could hear Persi's ringtone within earshot.

After another attempt to call Crash, and a couple more unanswered texts, Persi decided they should head to one of the suburban streets bordering the field to get their bearings. As they walked, Scar kept trying Crash's and Persi's phones, and they both occasionally called out,

"Crash!"

"Yo Crashie!"

"Oi! Where are ya mate!"

No response.

It turned out they hadn't traveled far from the party. They didn't recognize the street they came to at the edge of the field, but a quick Google Maps of the street name put it just three blocks from the address of the party, which was still saved in Scar's phone.

They headed off in that direction, hoping to retrace their steps, and possibly even find Crash asleep on the sofa. When they reached the party, or rather where the party used to be, they let themselves in, and made a search of the premises. They properly started to panic when all they found was trash, empty booze containers, and drunk jerks passed out in various locations around the house, none of them an Aussie silver bengal named Crashendo.

The stench of drunk farts and stale booze was getting to Persi. Exiting the house to stand on the lawn she took a deep breath of semi-fresh air and tried to get a grip on her thoughts. She was out of ideas. They needed to find Crash. They needed some sort of plan. Dammit. She was a decision maker, a tactician. She thought on her feet. She didn't do plans. Crash is the planner, she thought forlornly.

Scar joined her on the lawn, phone in hand.

"Maybe we can at least find your phone," he said, his voice totally even, as if nothing was wrong. But his clenched jaw and anxious eyes told a different story. Persi was grateful for Scar's calm sensibility under pressure.

He may not be the most educated fella, but damn if he ain't the only one with a brain sometimes, she thought, allowing herself a small affectionate smirk at her friend before worry wiped it from her face again.

"I don't really give a fuck about that," she growled, "but go ahead." It was a lie. Worry was making her argumentative. She wasn't sure how finding her phone would help find Crashie, but Scar never had an idea that turned out to be useless. She trusted him.

He started to turn back into the house as he dialed, but something stopped him in his tracks.

Persi's ringtone.

From outside somewhere…

They both looked around them intently, ears twitching back and forth, trying to pinpoint the sound. It went to voicemail. Scar dialed again. It seemed to be coming from… above them?

They looked up. There, on the roof, tucked into a corner where the main roof met an alcove, laying next to two phones, asleep under the pretty blue sky and puffy clouds, was Crash.

"Oi!" called Persi, "Crash!"

"Crashie! Eyyy buddy!!"

"Crash! Wake up!"

"Ey!"

Persi picked up an empty beer can from the lawn and tossed it at her sleeping friend. He grunted and stirred, then sat up, looking thoroughly bewildered.

"Crashie!" shouted Persi.

"Persi!" echoed Crash, looking down to find where her voice was coming from, the confusion leaving his face instantly when he spotted his best friends.

"What's up?" he asked with a smile, and without a single trace of irony.

"You are, looks like," answered Scar, straight-faced.

Persi's worry had evaporated, to be replaced with intense irritation. How in the hell had he... No she didn't want to know. And how was Scar not even surprised?

She pinched the bridge of her snout where it met her eyes. If she was honest with herself, she shouldn't be surprised either. Why couldn't she have normal friends? She glared up at Crash.

"Can you explain why my phone is up there?” she inquired flatly.

"Boss, I can't explain why I'm up here," he answered as he collected both phones and stood up.

"Well den get da fuck down ya idiot!" laughed Scar.

"Get the fuck down 'ere!" growled Persi in agreement, her accent bleeding through in her frustration. "D'you have any idea wot we been through? Get your arse down 'ere!"

"Can't say that I do, boss," drawled Crash as he slid on his arse down to the edge of the roof, where he gracefully jumped off. And not-so-gracefully landed hard on his feet with a soft thud, forgetting to bend his knees to absorb the impact and nearly falling over.

"Ow," he muttered.

"Y'alright?" chorused Persi and Scar.

"Yea I'm good," said Crash, brushing imaginary dust from his wrinkled jumper. "So what've you two been up too?"

"Well first of all, we wake up in middle of a fuckin' field…"

Scar and Persi continued to fill Crash in on the morning's events as the three best friends started out for home. They quickly ran out of things to say as it turned out it hadn't been terribly eventful after all, just nerve-wracking, so they switched to other topics of conversation. On and on they walked, laughing and shoving each other and chatting about nothing in particular.

Persi put an arm around each of her friends, Scar on the right, Crash on the left, both warm, familiar weights against her sides. The sky was blue and pretty, and everything was right in the world.

#This was so much fun to write! #thanks for the prompt! #cats fic #cats ocs #my ocs #Persimmian #Scaramouche #Crashendo

[advernia]

the world in her heart, her heart in his hands

assorted sidenotes for the fic i made in response to an anon-sent aesthetic prompt! oooh boy, i sure took long on this one lmao...... _(:3 」∠)_

prompt #7: steady notes coming from a guitar nearby, fireflies dancing around the clearing, two sleeping bags close together, and a bright full moon briefly covered by a cloud.

so the core idea i had when i saw that prompt got requested was based on jonah’s say i do! route: he says that one day, he wanted to go to the land of reason + see the place alice was born and raised. tbh idk how the prompt even led me to that, but the imagery vibes i got from the prompt hinted of something like freedom. or something like lovers secretly meeting in the woods, which i sort of went by.

OKAY SO I SWEAR I FINISHED WRITING THE PROMPT (day zero!!!) EARLY (by my standards) LMAO.............. like, maybe a week after i got the ask or so? but then when i went about proofreading it i felt that it was... lacking??? i can’t explain it myself, but i didn’t wanna post it yet until i got that feeling cleared out - i tried revising + adding, but it didn’t help so i just started thinking about expanding the fic instead...

thinking about the scenes really took longer than i thought?!?!?! i wanted this request up early but i was stumped on what kind of scenes i wanted to see + how their lengths were gonna be.... plus i was thinking if i should go solely on narration + description........ or maybe more of dialogue...... then i jumped to holy shit what’s my timeline gonna be what cultural whatnot am i gonna emphasize and i think i fussed over those aspects rather than picturing the actual scenes LMAOOO.......................

great disclaimer: i have NEVER stepped into the uk..... or england + london for that matter ahahaha GET REKT tho i want to someday huehuehue....... i heavily relied my research on maps + history websites + train timetables to help me get through the touring parts so do forgive me if i messed up somewhere + butchered history haha..... i was thinking to make things vague, but since i’m always in for emphasizing the differences between cradle + land of reason, i decided to get a little technical with it......

i have to admit that i wrote most of the fic during breaks in work hELLA RAD........... i’m doing my job properly, i swear........ it’s just that when i already have a stable idea of what i want to happen, the scene becomes clearer in my mind. i wanted so! badly! to add scenes of jonah pronouncing words and looking at various things funny!!! jonah and his attempts to communicate with londoners!!! fussy jonah poking around a boutique, him being fascinated + studying displays of gun shops, or him accidentally offending the royal guard + constables LMAOOOOO but i couldn’t seem to write anything satisfactory involving those ideas........... ಥ_ಥ

back to the issue of timeline, i was picturing the london in this fic to be around the 1860s or smth.... but then i remembered that in edgar’s dramatic end letter, he mentions his fascination with electricity aka lightbulbs......... which were, like...... discovered early 1800s but only became common in 1882 ahahaha....... when i realized this i was already writing day 18 oOOPS so i just decided to go on and wing it I’M SORRY _(:3 」∠)_

on timeframe, i know that it’s very highly unlikely that jonah would take a vacation for two months. i bet the mere concept of a one-month vacation is enough to give him a heart attack LMAOOOO but let’s just say that red army told him to take his time in the land of reason, especially when they learn that jonah plans to formally meet alice’s parents. when he hears about this, lancelot tosses in the suggestion of proposing to alice while they’re in the land of reason, so that jonah can tell her parents about that too. jonah thinks it’s a fantastic idea..... so he decides to accept hot damn, a two month vacation!

whole route & lengths of stay (points streaked with red are mentioned within the fic minus nottingham whoops sorry):

london [16 days bc IT’S A BIG CITY LMAO (day 30 - 14). rides a morning train going to bristol on the 14th, arrives there midday.]

bristol [5 days (day 14 - 9). leaves bristol on the morning of the 9th to walk all the way to glastonbury, arrives there come late afternoon / evening.]

glastonbury [4 days (day 9 - 5). leaves midday of the 5th to walk their way to alice’s village, arrives there around sunset.]

alice’s village / ‘actual wonderland’ lmao [5 days (day 5 - 0). located somewhere in between bridgwater, taunton, and glastonbury. month 1 of vacation has ended.]

day log commentary!

thirty. arrival in the land of reason through falling - routes where alice does go back don’t feature her falling down london’s sky, so maybe she’s just... spit out from the hole????? idk haha so i altered it anyway!!!!! the landing scene was initially like this: jonah lands first, he catches alice in his arms, they banter a bit....... and then they suddenly remember the suitcase only for said object to fall right on jonah’s head LMAOOO....... it’s a cradle magical object that looks like a regular suitcase but will always be as light as a feather despite it’s contents + it has GREAT CAPACITY so jonah is actually okay!!!!!! i decided to scrap that scene concept though haha!

twenty-nine. does the hole to the land of reason only open around midnight or smth???? i’m sure it doesn’t, but i went with jonah + alice leaving cradle minutes before twelve o’clock, so when they arrive in london jonah gets to see the big ben signal midnight. is that planned on alice’s part? maybe. on another note, i’m assuming that a high-ranking officer + noble like jonah is definitely used to traveling to other countries so he’s definitely not one for homesickness, but i like the thought of him always feeling all sorts of uncomfortable on his first nights away from home - he doesn’t make a big deal about it bc he gets better three days in or so. idk, it just seems fitting for someone very particular like him.

twenty-seven. if luka’s hair is fucking dyed, my god (no wonder i found those light ends of his hair sorta funny), then here’s jonah excuse to adapt another hair color with the help of magic crystals LMAO - i always stick with a reality ensues standpoint, so his ikeman looks aside, i’m sure londoners would find jonah’s hair color (heck, maybe even his eye color) very unique. alice can’t deal with all that sudden attention lol but she somewhat proud that the man who has effortlessly captured the attention of the people of her world too is the man she proudly calls her lover ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

twenty-three. now that i think of it, what exactly does cradle mean when they say the land of reason? are they simply referring to the city of london, or earth as a whole??? most likely the latter, but i’m pretty sure no one except blanc (and possibly ray bc that globe in his room lol) know exactly how large the land of reason is. anyway, not gonna lie, i wanted jonah + alice talking about novels by maybe the likes of charles dickens, thomas hardy, george eliot or h.g. wells. heck, maybe jane austen and charlotte bronte too!!!! but i had to scrap that bc gaps in understanding cultural & historical references + use of language, figurative and non-figurative.... it’s a shame about the last two though - i’m sure jonah can somehow probably relate to the society depicted in their books since the red territory sounds like your typical breeding place of victorian era nobles lmao!!!!

eighteen. sometimes when people learn / gain a deeper understanding about new things, they have the urge to brag about said knowledge to others - of course jonah wants to show alice what he knows about her world so far haha! calling a train a mechanical beast tho lmao..... he refers to it that way, but i think it’s his target of fascination in london!!! noise and possibly environmental issues aside, it’s very convenient + efficient and can cater to all, but what he finds most impressive that it’s a man-made locomotive!!! that’s something worth incredible praise!!! ( ᐛ )و

fourteen. actual train ride!!! hmmm.... i think jonah only panics maybe a good thirty minutes in when the train starts moving??? alice tries to calm him down by pointing at the passing scenery out the window + idle chatter until jonah finally relaxes himself.... but then he starts to panic slightly again when alice suggests that they look around the train and he’s like: is that even remotely safe??? what about our baggages, can we leave them unattended??? hey, i saw you snicker - how dare you laugh at me!!!

nine. according to google, an estimate of a walk starting from bristol going to glastonbury is 8h 25min. that’s for the present time though - would’ve it been shorter or longer in the past??? idk, but definitely one’s pace during the walk affects the total time, lol. since railroads only started out around 1830s + i made alice a village girl, walking really is her way to go. pedestrianism was still a thing around the 19th century!!! her stamina in other routes tho lol (ﾟ⊿ﾟ)

six. here’s my self-indulgent thing of wanting to add a dance scene, pt. 1 LMAOOOO -   the steps in the scene aren’t really from a certain folk dance in england, much less from glastonbury itself... i did look up on england folk dances, but i couldn’t pick one that i wanted to incorporate into the scene so i went with describing some random steps on the top of my head _(:3 」∠)_ ..... maybe someday, i’ll write a proper one..... on another note though, i suppose jonah can adapt quickly to folk dances, but he may come off a bit stiff at first in line / column dances where there’s the switch of partners??? i mean, there are formal 19th century dances that have that same concept, but.... the finesse + personal boundaries are all there lmao -  he’s not against the casual intimacy + show of obvious joy in folk + common dances though, it’s just more of that he’s not used to the informality of it all, i think.

five. plot twist: alice does lead jonah to her home, the cottage on a hill like she always described, but what he doesn’t expect is when she solemnly says that she’d introduce him to her parents she leads him to the back of the hill and in the foot of the hill he finds himself staring at her parents’ gravestones as she’s smiling sadly with a bouquet of flowers in her hand OH WAIT WRONG GENRE WASN’T THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FLUFF LMAO - kidding aside, i do hope cybird catches onto the idea of a story event of chosen suitor going to the land of reason with alice to meet her parents or smth!!! they did do a travel event in the jp ver, after all.... but i’m not keeping my hopes up haha....... _(:3 」∠)_

zero. self-indulgent thing of wanting to add a dance scene, pt. 2 - tho it’s in the latter part along with the prompt lmao!!! hmmm, i’m pretty satisfied with how this one turned out tho i had a little problem arranging the first half - the rest i relatively left untouched even after i added the rest of the days to the fic. hopefully, does well as a nice end to the fic itself..... tbh, the thought of summer dress alice + casual shirt & pants jonah both barefoot & running around like children in moonlit woods (don’t do this in real life folks) made me smile a lot. give me more soft-and-not-so-tooth-rotting-fluff scenes, cybird

also!!! since the prompt involved a guitar, i had a certain track on repeat lmao - you can listen to it here, and it’s the second to the last track titled umibe ni yurete (swaying in the beach)! (ノ^∇^)

and that’s all that i’ve got today!!! thank you very much for reading + hope you’re staying safe & well wherever you are!!!!（｡≧◇≦）ﾉ

#rundown.txt #u know what else took me so long to decide on this fic #a title + summary LMAOOOO #i wanted the title to be something related to the prompt but.... so much for that orz #i usually have no problems making them up but #why was this a struGGLE LOLOL