#it'll probably be published sometime this week

[heartbreak-sandwich]

Just a teensy peek at my Ronance blurb I'm working on rn 💕I'm so in love with them

You can read the finished post here!

#ronance #robin buckley x nancy wheeler #ronance fluff #fonance fic #just a blurb #it'll probably be published sometime this week #they are holding me together today lol

[oc-poll-tournament]

So, I'll Try To Make This A Thing!

There is enough interest from the poll on my other blog that I want to try and see if this will work! I don't have tons of time because of school, but I already go on Tumblr anyway, so might as well have something to host while I'm at it, lol. So, I'll try and host this thing.

Rules: Whoever is interested, please submit 1-2 original characters (from fanfic or original writing) for the tournament (if you want to group them together, please let me know, if not, I'll just have them be separate), either by messaging this blog, submitting to this blog, sending an ask to this blog, or reblogging this post and putting the information there! I will ask that you also submit your introduction to the character that you want on the poll post at the same time, and that once the poll is live, you can submit propaganda via ask or submission that I'll publish.

Since I do have school, I ask that everyone be patient. I might not be able to respond right away to everything, but I'll try to be as on time as possible! You'll have a week to submit, so submissions close January 16 at 12 pm Central time! I'll try to have a preliminary post with the characters in their brackets (if I use brackets) by sometime the next day. Also, please, if you have any ideas or suggestions, please let me know! I have never done this before, lol. Would you rather have the polls last one day or one week?

I'll try to update this post with links and extra things I think about, and this post will be pinned so it'll be easy to find! Also, I am planning on having a character in this as well, so I hope that's ok!

Here are links to the active polls:

Final Poll: (Chess vs. Crislie Crimsworth vs. Nat Finch)

Answers to questions I have gotten:

Characters can be from anything you've worked on: fanfic, WIP, or finished/published work, as long as they are an original character of yours!

Submissions should include some information about your character, preferably name, pronouns, any unique features, and backstory, but it can be as long or short as you'd like! I'll put that information on the poll post for voters to see! And if you have a picture (picrew, drawing, etc.), please send that along with your submission so I can put it on the poll post as well!

Propaganda will be allowed to submit for your character when the poll is active, but bribes will not be allowed.

So far, I am thinking of having the polls be random, where I put the characters in a random wheel spin and put them in polls against each other based on that. So, probably no brackets. I just like the idea that it'll be completely random!

For a prize, @somealienquill graciously offered to draw a portrait sketch of the winner!

Blogs who showed interest on the poll post are tagged below the cut:

@albatris, @maple-writes, @pen-of-roses, @waltzshouldbewriting, @lux-scriptum, @ibuprofen-exe, @your-absent-father, @abalonetea, @grailfish, @jfictitional, @drabbleitout, @izzyspussy, @flannelandsarcasm, @gailynovelry, @inscrutable-shadow, @sevenscreaminglizards

#OC poll tournament #writeblr

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Podcasting "How To Think About Scraping"

On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, "How To Think About Scraping: In privacy and labor fights, copyright is a clumsy tool at best," which proposes ways to retain the benefits of scraping without the privacy and labor harms that sometimes accompany it:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-think-about-scraping-2db6f69a7e3d?sk=4a1d687171de1a3f3751433bffbb5a96

What are those benefits from scraping? Well, take computational linguistics, a relatively new discipline that is producing the first accounts of how informal language works. Historically, linguists overstudied written language (because it was easy to analyze) and underanalyzed speech (because you had to record speakers and then get grad students to transcribe their dialog).

The thing is, very few of us produce formal, written work, whereas we all engage in casual dialog. But then the internet came along, and for the first time, we had a species of mass-scale, informal dialog that also written, and which was born in machine-readable form.

This ushered in a new era in linguistic study, one that is enthusiastically analyzing and codifying the rules of informal speech, the spread of vernacular, and the regional, racial and class markers of different kinds of speech:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/24/because-internet-the-new-linguistics-of-informal-english/

The people whose speech is scraped and analyzed this way are often unreachable (anonymous or pseudonymous) or impractical to reach (because there's millions of them). The linguists who study this speech will go through institutional review board approvals to make sure that as they produce aggregate accounts of speech, they don't compromise the privacy or integrity of their subjects.

Computational linguistics is an unalloyed good, and while the speakers whose words are scraped to produce the raw material that these scholars study, they probably wouldn't object, either.

But what about entities that explicitly object to being scraped? Sometimes, it's good to scrape them, too.

Since 1996, the Internet Archive has scraped every website it could find, storing snapshots of every page it found in a giant, searchable database called the Wayback Machine. Many of us have used the Wayback Machine to retrieve some long-deleted text, sound, image or video from the internet's memory hole.

For the most part, the Internet Archive limits its scraping to websites that permit it. The robots exclusion protocol (AKA robots.txt) makes it easy for webmasters to tell different kinds of crawlers whether or not they are welcome. If your site has a robots.txt file that tells the Archive's crawler to buzz off, it'll go elsewhere.

Mostly.

Since 2017, the Archive has started ignoring robots.txt files for news services; whether or not the news site wants to be crawled, the Archive crawls it and makes copies of the different versions of the articles the site publishes. That's because news sites – even the so-called "paper of record" – have a nasty habit of making sweeping edits to published material without noting it.

I'm not talking about fixing a typo or a formatting error: I'm talking about making a massive change to a piece, one that completely reverses its meaning, and pretending that it was that way all along:

https://medium.com/@brokenravioli/proof-that-the-new-york-times-isn-t-feeling-the-bern-c74e1109cdf6

This happens all the time, with major news sites from all around the world:

http://newsdiffs.org/examples/

By scraping these sites and retaining the different versions of their article, the Archive both detects and prevents journalistic malpractice. This is canonical fair use, the kind of copying that almost always involves overriding the objections of the site's proprietor. Not all adversarial scraping is good, but this sure is.

There's an argument that scraping the news-sites without permission might piss them off, but it doesn't bring them any real harm. But even when scraping harms the scrapee, it is sometimes legitimate – and necessary.

Austrian technologist Mario Zechner used the API from country's super-concentrated grocery giants to prove that they were colluding to rig prices. By assembling a longitudinal data-set, Zechner exposed the raft of dirty tricks the grocers used to rip off the people of Austria.

From shrinkflation to deceptive price-cycling that disguised price hikes as discounts:

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111071627182734180

Zechner feared publishing his results at first. The companies whose thefts he'd discovered have enormous power and whole kennelsful of vicious attack-lawyers they can sic on him. But he eventually got the Austrian competition bureaucracy interested in his work, and they published a report that validated his claims and praised his work:

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111071673594791946

Emboldened, Zechner open-sourced his monitoring tool, and attracted developers from other countries. Soon, they were documenting ripoffs in Germany and Slovenia, too:

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111071485142332765

Zechner's on a roll, but the grocery cartel could shut him down with a keystroke, simply by blocking his API access. If they do, Zechner could switch to scraping their sites – but only if he can be protected from legal liability for nonconsensually scraping commercially sensitive data in a way that undermines the profits of a powerful corporation.

Zechner's work comes at a crucial time, as grocers around the world turn the screws on both their suppliers and their customers, disguising their greedflation as inflation. In Canada, the grocery cartel – led by the guillotine-friendly hereditary grocery monopolilst Galen Weston – pulled the most Les Mis-ass caper imaginable when they illegally conspired to rig the price of bread:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada

We should scrape all of these looting bastards, even though it will harm their economic interests. We should scrape them because it will harm their economic interests. Scrape 'em and scrape 'em and scrape 'em.

Now, it's one thing to scrape text for scholarly purposes, or for journalistic accountability, or to uncover criminal corporate conspiracies. But what about scraping to train a Large Language Model?

Yes, there are socially beneficial – even vital – uses for LLMs.

Take HRDAG's work on truth and reconciliation in Colombia. The Human Rights Data Analysis Group is a tiny nonprofit that makes an outsized contribution to human rights, by using statistical methods to reveal the full scope of the human rights crimes that take place in the shadows, from East Timor to Serbia, South Africa to the USA:

https://hrdag.org/

HRDAG's latest project is its most ambitious yet. Working with partner org Dejusticia, they've just released the largest data-set in human rights history:

https://hrdag.org/jep-cev-colombia/

What's in that dataset? It's a merger and analysis of more than 100 databases of killings, child soldier recruitments and other crimes during the Colombian civil war. Using a LLM, HRDAG was able to produce an analysis of each killing in each database, estimating the probability that it appeared in more than one database, and the probability that it was carried out by a right-wing militia, by government forces, or by FARC guerrillas.

This work forms the core of ongoing Colombian Truth and Reconciliation proceedings, and has been instrumental in demonstrating that the majority of war crimes were carried out by right-wing militias who operated with the direction and knowledge of the richest, most powerful people in the country. It also showed that the majority of child soldier recruitment was carried out by these CIA-backed, US-funded militias.

This is important work, and it was carried out at a scale and with a precision that would have been impossible without an LLM. As with all of HRDAG's work, this report and the subsequent testimony draw on cutting-edge statistical techniques and skilled science communication to bring technical rigor to some of the most important justice questions in our world.

LLMs need large bodies of text to train them – text that, inevitably, is scraped. Scraping to produce LLMs isn't intrinsically harmful, and neither are LLMs. Admittedly, nonprofits using LLMs to build war crimes databases do not justify even 0.0001% of the valuations that AI hypesters ascribe to the field, but that's their problem.

Scraping is good, sometimes – even when it's done against the wishes of the scraped, even when it harms their interests, and even when it's used to train an LLM.

But.

Scraping to violate peoples' privacy is very bad. Take Clearview AI, the grifty, sleazy facial recognition company that scraped billions of photos in order to train a system that they sell to cops, corporations and authoritarian governments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/20/steal-your-face/#hoan-ton-that

Likewise: scraping to alienate creative workers' labor is very bad. Creators' bosses are ferociously committed to firing us all and replacing us with "generative AI." Like all self-declared "job creators," they constantly fantasize about destroying all of our jobs. Like all capitalists, they hate capitalism, and dream of earning rents from owning things, not from doing things.

The work these AI tools sucks, but that doesn't mean our bosses won't try to fire us and replace us with them. After all, prompting an LLM may produce bad screenplays, but at least the LLM doesn't give you lip when you order to it give you "ET, but the hero is a dog, and there's a love story in the second act and a big shootout in the climax." Studio execs already talk to screenwriters like they're LLMs.

That's true of art directors, newspaper owners, and all the other job-destroyers who can't believe that creative workers want to have a say in the work they do – and worse, get paid for it.

So how do we resolve these conundra? After all, the people who scrape in disgusting, depraved ways insist that we have to take the good with the bad. If you want accountability for newspaper sites, you have to tolerate facial recognition, too.

When critics of these companies repeat these claims, they are doing the companies' work for them. It's not true. There's no reason we couldn't permit scraping for one purpose and ban it for another.

The problem comes when you try to use copyright to manage this nuance. Copyright is a terrible tool for sorting out these uses; the limitations and exceptions to copyright (like fair use) are broad and varied, but so "fact intensive" that it's nearly impossible to say whether a use is or isn't fair before you've gone to court to defend it.

But copyright has become the de facto regulatory default for the internet. When I found someone impersonating me on a dating site and luring people out to dates, the site advised me to make a copyright claim over the profile photo – that was their only tool for dealing with this potentially dangerous behavior.

The reasons that copyright has become our default tool for solving every internet problem are complex and historically contingent, but one important point here is that copyright is alienable, which means you can bargain it away. For that reason, corporations love copyright, because it means that they can force people who have less power than the company to sign away their copyrights.

This is how we got to a place where, after 40 years of expanding copyright (scope, duration, penalties), we have an entertainment sector that's larger and more profitable than ever, even as creative workers' share of the revenues their copyrights generate has fallen, both proportionally and in real terms.

As Rebecca Giblin and I write in our book Chokepoint Capitalism, in a market with five giant publishers, four studios, three labels, two app platforms and one ebook/audiobook company, giving creative workers more copyright is like giving your bullied kid extra lunch money. The more money you give that kid, the more money the bullies will take:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Many creative workers are suing the AI companies for copyright infringement for scraping their data and using it to train a model. If those cases go to trial, it's likely the creators will lose. The questions of whether making temporary copies or subjecting them to mathematical analysis infringe copyright are well-settled:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/ai-art-generators-and-online-image-market

I'm pretty sure that the lawyers who organized these cases know this, and they're betting that the AI companies did so much sleazy shit while scraping that they'll settle rather than go to court and have it all come out. Which is fine – I relish the thought of hundreds of millions in investor capital being transferred from these giant AI companies to creative workers. But it doesn't actually solve the problem.

Because if we do end up changing copyright law – or the daily practice of the copyright sector – to create exclusive rights over scraping and training, it's not going to get creators paid. If we give individual creators new rights to bargain with, we're just giving them new rights to bargain away. That's already happening: voice actors who record for video games are now required to start their sessions by stating that they assign the rights to use their voice to train a deepfake model:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence

But that doesn't mean we have to let the hyperconcentrated entertainment sector alienate creative workers from their labor. As the WGA has shown us, creative workers aren't just LLCs with MFAs, bargaining business-to-business with corporations – they're workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Workers get a better deal with labor law, not copyright law. Copyright law can augment certain labor disputes, but just as often, it benefits corporations, not workers:

https://locusmag.com/2019/05/cory-doctorow-steering-with-the-windshield-wipers/

Likewise, the problem with Clearview AI isn't that it infringes on photographers' copyrights. If I took a thousand pictures of you and sold them to Clearview AI to train its model, no copyright infringement would take place – and you'd still be screwed. Clearview has a privacy problem, not a copyright problem.

Giving us pseudocopyrights over our faces won't stop Clearview and its competitors from destroying our lives. Creating and enforcing a federal privacy law with a private right action will. It will put Clearview and all of its competitors out of business, instantly and forever:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

AI companies say, "You can't use copyright to fix the problems with AI without creating a lot of collateral damage." They're right. But what they fail to mention is, "You can use labor law to ban certain uses of AI without creating that collateral damage."

Facial recognition companies say, "You can't use copyright to ban scraping without creating a lot of collateral damage." They're right too – but what they don't say is, "On the other hand, a privacy law would put us out of business and leave all the good scraping intact."

Taking entertainment companies and AI vendors and facial recognition creeps at their word is helping them. It's letting them divide and conquer people who value the beneficial elements and those who can't tolerate the harms. We can have the benefits without the harms. We just have to stop thinking about labor and privacy issues as individual matters and treat them as the collective endeavors they really are:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/26/united-we-stand/

Here's a link to the podcast:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/09/24/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_450/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_450_-_How_To_Think_About_Scraping.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/25/deep-scrape/#steering-with-the-windshield-wipers

Image: syvwlch (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Print_Scraper_(5856642549).jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #cory doctorow #podcast #scraping #internet archive #wga strike #sag-aftra strike #wga #sag-aftra #labor #privacy #facial recognition #clearview ai #greedflation #price gouging #fr #austria #computational linguistics #linguistics #ai #ml #artificial intelligence #machine learning #llms #large language models #stochastic parrots #plausible sentence generators #hrdag #colombia #human rights

[netherworldpost]

Been following you since the Evil Supply Co days, was very pleased to place my first order from Netherworld Post recently! I love the "hope this fireball finds you failing to save" design so much! A few people in my d&d group are definitely getting that one.

I hope you have an awesome day and something nice happens to you!

I am incredibly honored that so many folks have been following since Evil Supply Co.

It was nearly four years to do the day from when I first emailed friends "What do you think of this business name change?" to flipping the switch to launch.

One thing that hasn't made it through the transition

(I emphasize)

...yet...

...is the stories.

I used to write 3 - 6 very short stories a week. Sometimes a few paragraphs, sometimes longer. Most got posted here -- started here, on Tumblr!

The structures needed work, more connectivity. The genre, the characters and locations, the softness? All remain. But the structures needed work.

This will take time.

Not four years of time (length of shop closure to rebuild).

But they will come back.

I'm rambling. I'm a bit nervous over how all of this is operating. The nerves are not based in evidence -- the roll out has been smooth, the response bigger than expected. Just personality quirk, I suppose.

Back to sense-making.

I'm grateful you're here and that I am able to do all of this.

Phase One (where we are now) is to launch the shop and get the initial orders out the door. The presses are pressing ink to paper, first batch of orders goes out late next week. Continues onwards at a steady pace forever.

Phase Two (rest of the year) will be slowly adding more. Both to the shop for pay and the downloads "pay if you want."

Phase Three (next year, probably) is when I think we'll have stories again. It won't take that long to launch them -- launch will be part of Phase Two -- but I think it'll be next year until I'm at a steady pace.

I'm rambling again. I'll cut this to the end.

The primary availability of stories for Evil Supply Co. was free via social media posts.

I want to keep that availability. I don't trust social media to maintain its presence as it stands in the next several years (I'm looking at 3, 5, 10, 15 years forward).

The zero-cost-to-read prohibited basic structures such as "hm I like Strawberry, this mermaid, I wish to read more about her wacky antics." There simply wasn't funding to build out any of the million ways to do that.

Part of Phase Three is solving that, finding the balance. There are a million options, with strengths and drawbacks and costs. I'll have a better answer for it as the year progresses.

As I say, I am wary of social media (all platforms) direction -- they will continue to exist, I'll continue to use them to their fullest advantage, but they are growing increasingly hostile to independent creators. I don't work for Tumblr, Tumblr doesn't owe me continued access to audiences at the current pace.

Ultimately, I work for the moon and you come to the Post for the things you're interested in -- neither of us work for a social media platform -- and I'm keeping that tightly in mind to ensure I can continue to service your desires + build new things you'll love but didn't know existed yet.

Thank you for being here.

The something nice you hoped for came true in two ways.

Your note and an afternoon pulling together notes on how to independently publish myths and legends and stories and rambles about the Netherworld.

The scale of this equation is...

...significant.

Fortunately. So is my willingness to tackle it. :)

Cheers to you and thank you again for being here.

Long may we sip potions, in the moonlight, while sitting on our folded cloaks, listening to ghosts, telling stories of dryads and mermaids and witches and more, as the jack-o-lanterns surrounding us wile away the hours with their flickering tongues of flame and smoke.

#evil supply co #evil supply co. #evilsupplyco

[startrekfangirl2233-writes]

15 and 50 for Rooster!

Hi Nik! Here is Kiss #50 for Rooster x Reader - a kiss out of love. I hope you love it!

I really liked what my brain came up with for Kiss #15 so you're getting it as a full one-shot 😈

A Kiss Out of Love

It's late. It's so late and you're so tired. Every fiber of your being droops in exhaustion as you methodically rinse out a stack of dirty baby bottles. It's as you turn the faucet off and load the bottles into the dishwasher that you realize that one sound, the one ever-present sound that's ricocheted through the house for the past two months has gone blessedly silent. The baby's not crying anymore. After weeks of that squealing wail in your ears, they practically ring with how powerful the silence is.

You've taken your baby girl to the doctor, of course. You've had your pediatrician give her a check-up to make sure everything was okay. Each time, you were told, "She's just a baby. Babies cry." Or, "It's probably just colic. It'll pass. So long as she's eating and pooping and responding to your voices, she's just fine." It drove you to distraction, the baby's unending wails coupled with the intrusive thoughts in your own mind telling you that you were the worst mother in existence.

It was Bradley who noticed you were shutting down. He took his paternity leave the day he noticed your struggles and stepped right in to help. Just having him there helped more than you could ever articulate. Sometimes your baby girl just needed a change in parent and the screeching wails turned into happy gurgles and giggles. There were still many days and nights where she cried and cried the day through, but they were easier with Bradley by your side. He had a sixth sense for whisking her away for a drive; a sixth sense for knowing that the baby needed Grandpa Mav and Grandma Penny time. But most importantly he had a sixth sense for knowing when you'd need some You Time or time with him.

So it's not wholly out of the ordinary that Caroline is asleep, down for her afternoon nap at the perfect time. What is a little odd is that Bradley's asleep with her. Your husband's got Caroline against his chest, his hand covering the entirety of her butt and legs. Both father and daughter sleep in the same way, with their lips ever so slightly parted and their heads tilted in the same way. You carefully gather Caroline up against your chest, kissing her forehead as you lay her down in the crib.

After making sure the baby monitor is set, you kiss Bradley. You pour all of your love into the kiss, smiling when he kisses back, muffling your giggles into his shoulder as he pulls you into his lap.

"What whazzat for?" His voice is still sleep-tinged and you'd have jumped him if you still weren't so sore from giving birth and if you weren't so tired.

"I love you, Bradley." At his questioning hum, you kiss him again. This time, you're too occupied to notice anything but how the world goes sideways as Bradley carries you to bed.

"I love you, beautiful. But it's time for bed. I think our daughter gets jealous when Mommy and Daddy have too much alone time." His words fall on deaf ears. You were fast asleep the minute he laid you in bed with a kiss.

Want to request a Kiss and a pair for me to write? Guidelines are here.

Want to see other Kisses I've written? Here's the full Masterlist.

I DO NOT CONSENT TO HAVE MY WORK POSTED, TRANSLATED, OR PUBLISHED ON ANY SITES OTHER THAN HERE OR ON AO3 BY ME. IF YOU SEE MY WORKS ANYWHERE OTHER THAN HERE OR AO3, THEN THEY HAVE BEEN POSTED WITHOUT MY PERMISSION AND I WILL BE WORKING TO TAKE THEM DOWN.

#star writes #top gun fanfic #top gun fanfiction #top gun maverick fanfic #top gun maverick fanfiction #kiss writing game #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #rooster x reader

[morallyinept]

i am a fic writer, and admittedly I don’t read others works as much as I probably should because any free time I have is usually spent writing if not one of my other hobbies. i do try though. but you both write AND read a colossal amount, how?! how do you consistently write so much? you publish so many fics and I cannot wrap my head around it. what’s your process and what keeps you motivated? i’ve been struggling with motivation for a number of reasons lately and one of them is because of sort of feeling like a waste of space here on tumblr. I have friends and readers and moots that I’m grateful for but…I don’t know. i wish my blog was more like yours sometimes. i feel like i post and then I’m just a ghost and people forget i’m here.

Hey Non! 🖤

The short answer is, I have no life 😝 Kidding, I'm just super organised, I think. But there are some other factors...

I'm a pretty fast reader, (I was a freelance proofreader for a while) so I can read pretty quickly, and I utilise my lunch breaks at work, or the downtime before bed to read too. Chronic insomnia also helps! 🥴

I'm big list lover (as you might've seen) and I really utilise my likes to bookmark stuff I want to come back to and add to the Fic Rec List. I try to update it weekly (or bi-weekly if I'm busy) so things don't get lost in my likes. I also use my rec list as my own way of tracking what I want to read in future/have already read. I then try to reblog it once I've read it (something I'm trying to be better at, admittedly).

With regards to writing, a lot of my stuff is written in advance, so stuff I post is queued up from weeks/months ago when I wrote it, except things I write on a whim when an idea comes and I wanna post it quicker. I write a bunch of GIFLETS usually in a day, for example, as they're pretty short and will give me weeks of fics to post.

Writing is my passion, so I write a lot. I've been writing since I could write my own name pretty much.

I joke about having no life, but lately I've had additional free time due to having a back injury, (I'm ok!) so I've been resting and able to write more than I usually would, so I'm taking full advantage of that too with forward planning. That will slow down considerably though when I go back to work in a few weeks.

I utilise my free time, and writing is my main hobby, alongside doodling. I do make time for other things though. I don't spend 100% of my free time constantly writing. Again, it comes down to organisation, I write notes (a heck of a lot of notes!) and keep WIPs in order etc...

Scheduling/queuing posts is something I do a lot too, so it proabably looks like I'm always online posting and reading, but I'm actually not. It's all stuff I've queued up ready to go and can forget about.

I probably spend around 1-2 hours a day updating my queue, designing banners/posts etc... and then responding to comments/re-blogs, ASKs etc... and that's not all at the same time, it'll be spread out throughout the day too. Some days more than others, and other days not at all.

Same with writing, I'll spend time doing it daily or dedicate a sole day at the weekend if I have no plans, and limit myself too so I don't burn out or forget about other things, like adulting. (I should probably mention I'm single and live by myself, so I have plenty of time to do my own things without worrying about spending time with a partner or anything. I do make time to see my friends and family regularly though.)

What keeps me motivated? Well, you guys, for one. Readers and interaction. Music. Pedro, of course, and my own thoughts (thots). But being organised really helps me so I don't burn out.

But I just wanna mention that I too, struggle with motivation. I've had writer's block a few times lately and have often considered my own place here too at times. And you're not a waste of space, I can assure you. Everybody brings something different to this fandom, I think. And that's a good thing. Variety is the spice of life, afterall. ✨️

Primarily, writing for your own enjoyment should come first. I know that's easy for me to say, but I honestly don't give a damn about the number of notes my posts get, I much prefer the engagement personally.

I write for me, because I enjoy it. But I get that everyone's reasons are different, and I know it can feel disappointing and leave you pondering "why bother?" When you don't necessarily get the engagement you hope for.

I guess it stems also a little to that old saying you get out what you put in. On outward appearance, it seems like I put in a hell of a lot, 😅 but it really comes down to me just being a little regimented and utilising my time as best as I can, I guess.

I could wake up one morning in the future and decide I don't want to do this anymore, so I'm enjoying doing it for now. Plus, I suppose the more followers and engagement you have, the more it could become difficult to stay on top of that too... I guess it's a balancing act to some degree.

I think it's important not to compare yourself though. Everyone has their own lives outside of Tumblr, and some may not be able to post as much as they want to, and that's perfectly okay. Being here isn't a race. You're not on a deadline, so don't put unncessary pressure on yourself.

Your own blog/corner of the internet is yours and unique to you. Be proud of what you've made it into. 🥰

Hoo boy, I rambled on a bit! 🫣 Oops! But I hope that answers your questions, lovely.

Love you! 🖤

#jett's asks #pedro pascal fandom #writing

[uncannycerulean]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

thank youu to @annanother-thing, @squintclover and @silently--here for tagging me! (yes, it takes three tags for me to get over the procrastination hurdle)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

8 + 1 unrevealed

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

52,373 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

so far I've only written Harry Potter, but I really want to write pynch (Raven Cycle) at some point (but it's a bit scary)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Invisible Dragons  - drarry, chance encounter, hopeful ending, T, 7k

Wine and Whale Bones- drarry, cursebreakers in Venice, T, 3.5k

Good Bones - drarry, a small Draco POV scene, T, 1.5k

A crack in everything - wolfstar and Hagrid/Trelawney, Post-apocalyptic AU, 7k

How it plays out - Severus POV, Poker fic, M, 2k

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

yes! sometimes it takes me a bit, but I try to reply to every single one

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

hmmm, I don't really do angsty endings.

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

Wine and Whalebones for sure.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Last week I somehow attracted a troll on an Anti-Draco rampage. I didn't enjoy the experience.

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

no (at least not yet?)

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

no, I think I'd find it hard to combine universes and do both of them justice

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

no (thank god. knock on wood)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

no

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

I am in the process of co-writing together with the lovely @drarrymyheart but it's a low-pressure project so it'll likely marinate for a little longer before seeing the light of day

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

Ohh that's so hard! Probably drarry because they've been a constant and other ships sort of come and go

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

I said I would write a sequel to Invisible Dragons but I'm honestly not sure I ever will. Sequels are hard!

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think giving my characters opportunities to learn and heal is a strength. And vibes, at least in short pieces.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm not very strong on conflict, mostly cause I want my characters to be okay

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

It has to fit the story. I like when people include expressions like terms of endearment in another language.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I never published it, but the first piece I wrote was for the Raven Cycle fandom

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Obviously I love all of them! But in terms of "which one would I like more people to read" it's definitely my Post-Apocalyptic one (A crack in everything)

Tagging: @bluestringpudding @andithiel @drarrymyheart and @khb-writes <3

#ask game #tag game

[theminecraftbee]

How do you start writing fanfic? I kinda want to give it a go

oh, interesting question! the easy answer is "just start writing" - i have an idea and i just start writing it. but that's probably not useful for everyone! so here are some things that might help!

get an ao3 account. if you don't already have one, see if a friend has a free invite link, and if not, be prepared for the fact the queue is sometimes like two weeks long before you'll get your invite email. having an ao3 account will help you post your fanfics, but if you use bookmarks better than i do, will also help you keep track of what you're reading! speaking of...

figure out what kinds of stuff you like to read! this won't always be the same as the kind of thing you like to write, but it'll probably be similar, and reading things you like will help you write things you like because you'll pick up on some of the elements of what you read, whether you are trying to or not.

set realistic goals for yourself! your first fanfic will not be perfect, especially if you've never written anything before. it will, however, be something you're proud of, as long as you don't expect to be a genius the first time you write! in addition, i'd say "don't try to write a longfic as the first thing you write, write something shorter", because it's a lot easier to lose motivation while writing a long thing than it is while writing a short thing.

(genuinely, practice and read things. gotta emphasize those. also don't compare yourself to other people who have been writing for ten years if you've only been writing for two weeks, you aren't being fair to yourself then!)

then come up with an idea! i recommend choosing a character you read/watch a lot for who you write the first time; choose one of your favorite guys, yeah, but choose your favorite guy you watch all the time, not your favorite guy you only rarely see. this will also make writing them easier.

as for what idea to come up with... can't help you there, but that's where "learn what kind of stuff i like to read" and "practice" will start making it easier! if you have ever gone "man i wish x existed" or "that idea for an au sounded cool but there's nothing written for it" or "this part of canon that i wish had a bit more about it"... do that!

some people are better at planning than others. i, personally? not good at planning. i normally scrawl out, at best, a list of events that need to happen, and then change my mind halfway through writing. half the time though i'm like "i know where i want this to start, i know what i want this to do, i know how i want it to end, i will make up the rest as i go" and i just start writing. for some people, this is fine - don't force yourself to do mega planning if that'll stop you from actually writing.

however, if a LACK of plan stops you from writing, like i said, i personally find that planning by coming up with the major 'set pieces'/'moments' i want the fic to have and connecting those together helps. idk you may want to ask someone else how to plan if you don't know.

then, as i said before... just start writing! i find external arbitrary deadlines help motivate me, but those may stress you out, so you don't have to do that part. just writing is enough!

don't feel bad if you scrap stuff and start new stuff and don't finish stuff for a while - everyone does that.

i personally recommend waiting until you finish a thing to post it to ao3 because i lose motivation once a fic is posted and having the goal of "actually publish it" helps force me to finish what i'm writing but not everyone is this way; if you think posting and getting feedback is more helpful for you, do that!

uh, finally, ignore the numbers. like, okay, i'm not saying "i want attention and validation" is bad because yeah, i do want attention and validation. that's part of why i post things online. i DO mean that you should ignore the hit counter entirely, not compare the kudos counter to other fics, and cherish each comment, no matter how many of them there are, you know?

not sure how helpful this long list of advice is, but i hope it helps a little!

#answered #backfrommarsagain

[meraxes-of-new-albion]

Tag games! Thanks for the tag @sparklehoard <333

(readmore because i ramble)

Are you named after anyone?

Yes! my parents are nerds. i got named after a doctor who character.

also trying to decide if i'm gonna use a new name... if i do it'll probably be Best Bland Bioware Man My Beloved

(Kaidan Alenko <3)

When was the last time you cried?

uhhhh.... more recently than usual. couple weeks ago i think? stubbed my toe or something and that's the straw that broke the camel's back, yall know how it is

Do you have kids?

nope! and noooo thank you, if i ever wanted kids i'd adopt a teenager

What sports do you play or did you play in the past?

I'm gonna be That Guy since i was a marching band kid for 8 years. that's some cardio, man.

Do you use sarcasm?

Whaaaaat noooo never (yes constantly)

What's the first thing you notice about people?

i'm a very bad Things Noticer in general so... maybe hair color?

What's your eye color?

That kind of blue-gray most blue eyed people have in my experience

Scary movies or happy endings?

I'm not much for horror but it's growing on me. It has to feel like it's *saying* something, though, i HATE paranormal stuff and mindless slasher flicks. But saccharine endings are no good either. so... i guess happy endings, if you make me pick.

Any talents?

Pedantry? uh. i'm very good at fucking around and still managing to mostly accomplish my original goal. Whether it be crafts or technology or even career stuff, I can usually approximate a result pretty well pretty quickly.

Where were you born

idk a hospital. apparently people actually give a damn about this stuff. there's lots of hospitals in my hometown so idk which one even lmao

What are your hobbies?

god i have SO MANY HOBBIES HELP. sewing. knitting. i weave rugs out of twine i get from work. i play warhammer 40k, and may end up getting into the fantasy side of it (i got an army as a gift for christmas lol). lots of video games (mostly FPS RPGs, and roguelikes, but a bit of everything). theoretically i like baking, although i hate doing dishes and don't own a dishwasher, so i... don't :( OH OH OH i write sometimes too... i never publish anything because i never finish anything but i do like writing

Do you have any pets?

How tall are you?

I HAVE A CAT HIS NAME IS WALL-E AND I LOVE HIM

LOOK AT HIM

5'9, or... ~175 cm

Favorite subject in school?

Biology :) though i don't like the cell stuff, i do better with things i can touch or see without a microscope.

Dream job?

zookeeper :) which i'm doing!!! but like. living wage zookeeper. would be great. with like. yknow. paid time off n stuff. that would be nice.

(don't feel pressured if i @ you <3)

@the-many-children-of-the-void @bonewhiteglory @zumer-feygele @testostergnomes @starspeckledabyss @cuntwrap--supreme and anyone else who wants to :)

[honeysuckle-venom]

I'm taking an online writing class over the next six weeks. It starts tomorrow (though it's asynchronous) and I'm very, very nervous. I have a deep desire to write, and someday hope to publish a memoir, because there aren't enough modern voices talking about schizophrenia recovery via talk therapy. But I also have a lot of hangups around writing. I used to write a lot as a kid, and everyone around me considered me a very talented writer. My mom was a professional writer and had always been very clear that she and I shared a "gift." She always kind of took credit for my writing ability, which is sort of funny considering that's one of her main complaints about her own mother. My mom talked a lot about how talented I was and how I would be an amazing author one day, and she put a lot of pressure on me to write. She had really high hopes that she and I would one day write a book together, in fact, and a few times tried to start doing that with me, though by the time I was old enough to start working with her like that I was also old enough to have significant problems with her that kept us from getting very far. My desire to write in my spare time decreased as I got older, I think due to a combination of pressure, burnout, and increasing self-consciousness. And while I did write some fanfiction and some poetry in college, and took and very much enjoyed a playwrighting class in my senior year, I mostly stopped writing creatively by the time I was 20. I haven't finished a short story in nearly ten years. I'm out of practice, and my skills are deeply rusty. But it's more than that. People commenting on my writing ability can be really triggering for me. It just brings up all this really complicated past stuff with my mom. My therapist has been urging me to write for a long time, and I have very mixed feelings about that, which she is aware of. Every time she tells me I have a way with words and should be writing I'm simultaneously proud and somewhat triggered. In the past I couldn't stand to hear her say that, it would send me into a panic attack. These days I can handle it and sometimes appreciate it, but it also causes a certain amount of anxiety and discomfort.

Deep down I agree with her. I've always preferred expressing myself verbally, and I used to be a good writer, and it is important for me to have a medium to express myself, and writing is probably the best choice. Getting back into creative writing would probably ultimately be very good for me, and that's why I've decided to try to do it. But I'm also very afraid that it's not just that I'm rusty, it's that I've completely lost the ability to write and will never be any good again, even though that's unlikely and writing is a skill you can practice. Irrational or not, the idea of having entirely lost the ability still scares me. And underneath that is a much more complicated fear, a twisting shameful resentful terrified tangle of feelings about my mother and our relationship and our similarities and our past and our future. I can't even fully explain what about the concept of writing is so triggering, but it just brings up all of these feelings and memories from the past in a way that's really difficult for me.

And I was prepared to deal with that and push through it and take this class, but when I signed up a few weeks ago I wasn't in nearly as precarious a place as I am now. I wasn't psychotic, I was feeling relatively stable. In fact I was stable enough to be bored and seek a class for some mental stimulation. But now I'm back in psychotic survival mode, and I'm really nervous about trying to deal with this class at the same time. It'll be okay, even if all of my homework sucks the only person who will see it will be the teacher and it's not like I'm working towards a degree or anything. I'm doing this to help rebuild a skillset and for "fun." I just have to remember that I guess.

#text post #my post

[nontoxic-writes]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

thanks so much @cha-melodius and @stereopticons for the tags! i am very late on this but also i mostly use tumblr on mobile and they make it impossible to copy & paste these things lol

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

18! it feels like it should be less though, i swear ive only written like five

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

288,090. Let's not talk about the word count of my wip folder.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Right now, Red, White and Royal Blue. I have a couple Top Gun wips I still hope to publish and I used to write for Schitt's Creek.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I'd Swing With You for the Fences (Schitt's Creek, E, 87k; celeb/baseball AU)

Even If it's Just Pretend (RWRB, E, ongoing; exes-to-fake-dating-to-lovers canon divergence)

You and My Hometown (Schitt's Creek, E, 38k, holiday exes/fwb AU)

I'll Keep Your Brittle Heart Warm (Schitt's Creek, E, 13k, sequel oneshot to ISWYFTF)

A Simple Complication (Schitt's Creek, E, 8k, fwb singles week AU)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yep! I am behind from a couple fics but I've been responding on my current multichap and i WILL one day catch up, even if it'll be two years late.

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

I haven't written a single angsty ending lol

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

Currently, I'd say You and My Hometown just because it's the angstiest complete fic I have and the end goes a few years ahead in their happily ever after.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yeah sometimes. A couple backhanded compliments, too. Sometimes I wish people would just stop reading it, and if they feel like they have to finish, at least stop commenting if they're not liking it.

Also like... authors can see your public bookmarks. If you're gonna be even vaguely disparaging in there... maybe click the "private bookmark" checkbox.

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

I don't consider myself a smut writer, because I tend to think of smut as a separate genre, if that makes sense? I definitely write some smutty scenes, but I don't write pwp or smut for smut's sake (thank you to those of you who do, truly doing the lord's work).

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

I don't, but there is a Descendants AU in my Schitt's WIP folder lmfao.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No, thank god.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but that would be so lovely!

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

No, but I have written as part of a group project where we each wrote a chapter: The Blouse Barn Divorce Ranch.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

It honestly is probably firstprince. I've been so in love with them for four years, the book truly changed my life.

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

The Schitt's Creek superhero AU. When I tell you that the plot twist I had planned for that was gonna be so good... RIP.

Also my Schitt's Creek apocalypse AU that I had written the beginning and ending for and could never get the middle right ugh.

Also also my Top Gun wrong number sexting WIP.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Working in canon elements. Which, maybe I should focus on plot and characters instead if I ever want to publish original work whoops.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions. I don't visualize when I read, so I never really bother with mundane descriptions when I write. I need to remember some readers do need those details when reading, even if I don't.

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

I won't do it unless it's something I can run by a native speaker.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I honestly don't even know. Maybe Buffy?

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Even If it's Just Pretend. It's been such a labor of love and some of my absolute favorite lines are in it.

But also the Schitt's Creek Penelope AU, The Rumors Are Terrible and Cruel. I love Penelope so much and weaving that in with some of my favorite characters was such a blast. I wish more people had read it lol.

Okay like I said, I'm super late to this, so no idea who has done this yet. Tagging @lilythesilly, @maxbegone, @roseapothecary and @kiwiana-writes just in case any of yall haven't done it!

#writer memes #fic writing

[purble-gaymer]

mmm just wanted to say that i really love your writing and i'm really excited to see what you make in the future! your gsa stuff is so pleasant and angsty and i've really been enjoying wwtmk <3 that's not even getting into how much i liked the cannibalism fic.... now you'll be a part of me forever !! i'm such a sucker for that kind of thing.

actually, i was kind of wondering what you were plotting for the future so i could look forward to it! i've loved following your work so farrrr

waa hello thank you!! yknow i don't hear much about the beast in the walls but i really love that one so good to know! i can share some of my prospective calendar (though everything i say is subject to change)

once wwtmk is done, i probably won't be posting much for a bit. i might do something sword/blade/mk related for valentine's day if i can think of an idea before then. after that though, i have another little project focused on the knights at the time they first met. it's a continuation of a fateful encounter. at the moment it's sitting at about 23k, and i think i'm a little past halfway through it. ideally i'll start publishing it sometime in late february or march, but winter is usually the busiest and most stressful term so it'll be later rather than sooner. plus i'd like to have a majority of it written out first. i don't exactly have a surplus of time or energy this time of year so it'll be a while still.

most ship content will probably end up on my other pseud for the foreseeable future (excluding the potential valentine's thing) to avoid like...cluttering things, i guess? so for that there's always more knights, maybe metamorpho in a normal context, maybe arthur/nonsurat for the two people who care because i love them a lot. oh and also falspar and dragato doing whatever the hell they're doing because i would die for them.

absolutely there will be more gsa one-shots. i've had some ideas floating around but no energy to really get into them. plus my usual strategy for the gsa is to sit down and write for three straight hours because they sort of automatically put me in a flow state, and i can't do that at school cause i have other things to do. there might be some stuff about their history. i don't really know where to begin with all that, plus there's ocs i'd have to deal with, so we'll see. galacta knight related stuff is also a possibility, especially more about him and mk when they were working for nme. check out how much galactadad angst i can make

overall this year i wanna write more out of my comfort zone honestly. writing things like the beast in the walls or know your place was weird but it was also really really fun. so if i ever jump on any out-there ideas, i might actually do something with them. OH THIS INCLUDES AN ARTHUR AND MK BEING FAMILY THING I'VE BEEN SITTING ON. i completely forgot about that. i should polish it up and publish it for my birthday because it is so self-indulgent and silly. so that is now happening next week. metamorphosed one-shot is also happening later this week (tomorrow or thursday) because i'm normal about that au.

so that's a lot, and most of it is very up in the air because i'm always doing things...but you can 100% expect more knights content in the near future. wwtmk is like standing on the edge of a canyon peeking into my kirby interpretations. i have to write or i will explode

#asks #excluded any of my 'not scrapped but not exactly on the chopping block' fics as to not get anyone's hopes up #i really really want to do an adventure from the meta-knights pov fic but every time i pick up my draft again i drop it for like six months #amazing mirror animeverse has been effectively abandoned. not sure i ever talked about that one #i confess. it's because i wanted mirror s/b/mk :pensive: #but yeah i can't keep myself away from gsa family fics. arthur and mk's relationship is everything to me #i have a thing about mk first meeting the gsa but i don't know if i want it to be a one-shot or a multi-chapter thing #sitting on a couple thousand words about it #it might just get posted as a one-shot at this point cause i want to share it but i don't really want to write more of it #or maybe as two chapters. because arthur dad moments are crucial #OKAY THAT'S ALL I'LL STOP FOR NOW!!! THANK YOU

[sniffanimal]

.

I've seen far too many posts recently (last ~6 months), largely from teens/zoomers, where it's clear they've been given some wild misinformation about how HRT actually works and what it's able to do and not able to do and how to safely do it, and what going off of HRT is like.

I know I'm not a Popular Blogger, I'm not on tiktok, etc, but I do feel that if I can at least give better information to one person then it'll have been worth it. i might write like a zine about HRT and publish it free online, and maybe try and reach out to some people who I know use other social media and see if they wanna share about it.

I'd also want to have testimony from people who have taken HRT of any kind (even/especially if you're cisgender, intersex, or have detransitioned) about their experience so if I can reach out to you you can shoot me an ask.

I'd also want to run everything by someone with experience in endocrinology so if that's also applicable to you lmk, otherwise I'll poke around online when the time comes (I don't see an Endo for my HRT so I can't ask them)

this is probably going to be a bit of a Project as I'll really want to make sure my information is as accurate as possible but

this thought was all started by hearing a gender fluid person confidently state they just want to take testosterone maybe one week a month bc they only feel masc sometimes and I'm like. brother your hormones will not like that one bit.

like there's options for people who don't want to fully transition hormonally, you can go on then stop for a long time then go back on, you can do low-dose, you can go whole hog but just get laser hair removal, you can get surgery. it's important to know what HRT does and what you actually want out of it.

I'm firmly nonbinary as a more or less political stance, but I am transgender and have nearly fully medically transitioned. I knew what I wanted out of HRT and surgery and I got it.

this is getting long but I'm like. afraid for baby trans people who think your hormones system is something you can toggle in a character creator screen

#badger rants

[buniyaad]

20 Questions for Writers

i was tagged by cousin @radioactive-earthshine

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

175 published works! I do not count any WIPs, outlines, notes scratched longhand, or random shitposts I make on the tunglr because that's another 1700+ 😂😂😂

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

According to my stats page.... 1,218,398. So 1.2 million+ words published since maybe 2010. Everything prior to 2010 was deleted because I was super embarrassed of what I used to write 😭

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I follow my heart so my AO3 is basically my fixation chart in real-time. Way too many specific fandoms to count, but in terms of medium: I write for a lot of manga fandoms, used to write kpop fanfiction as a kid, still write kdrama fanfiction whenever something catches my eye, and of course comic books and wrestling. I also have a handful of fanfics for books.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Shadow Dance (Captain America/Avengers movies) Sometimes Love Starts in the Bed [Or that One Week Kamui Tried His Parents' Approach at Romance] (Gintama manga) To the Rhythm of His Love (Black Clover manga) Tere Liye, Hum Hain Jiye (Black Clover manga) Red Bangles, Black Anklets (Naruto manga)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I love responding to comments!! It makes me feel special lmao 😂

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ephemeral (Hunter x Hunter manga). I basically wrote the ending for the Dark Continent arc (since it's unlikely it'll ever get finished), and sank the boat and all its passengers while making my OTP end up together in heaven after they both died 😂😂😂

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

Leoht Unfæger (Beyond Evil kdrama). Basically wrote a novella repairing my ship's relationship that the kdrama had done serious damage to. They got married in the end even though one half went to jail for contributing to the other half's sister's demise. Oh, and the same guy who went to jail also used to bang the sister 😂😂😂

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

Regularly! I'm pretty vocal about my likes and dislikes, and many times, by behavior has invited demons into me house. During my Black Clover fandumbing days, a crackhead used to make it their mission to leave hateful comments on my fics. I don't delete them however. Most of the time it makes me laugh bc you can figure out the speech patterns and tag exactly who it is that wrote it. I like to think ten years down the line, they'll look back on their clownery and let the shame eat them alive.

9. Do you write smut?

Yes!

10. Do you write crossovers?

It depends! During my kpoppie days, I did a crossover of my favorite band and one of my favorite kdramas, and never finished it (even though I have the ending outlined on paper). It really depends on the fandoms and if I find synergy between them.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Probably lol, but not that I know of. I grew up during the asianfanfics days, and used to post fanfiction on other sites before I got an AO3 account. It was not uncommon to see fanfiction stolen from LJ and other sites that were then posted to asianfanfics, which had a notorious plagiarism issue.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! I have three in circulation in the Russian language, and one that was translated into Chinese!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Nope, unless RPing during the third grade on Naruto forums counts as collaborating on fanfic 😂😂😂

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

It changes every day bc I am dynamic and go with me heart. But also note, for some of my favorite ships, I've either never written fanfiction for, or it's no longer available cuz I done deleted it, so I'll just note my CURRENT haunts (which may or may not be decades old... sad 😂).

Comic books: Jon Kent/Jay Nakamura, Bart Allen/Kon El

Manga: Asta/Liebe, Jack the Ripper/Yami Sukehiro

Who knows what I will like tomorrow.... I certainly don't 🤪

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have a Smallville Earth 2 post-canon fic outline I've had sitting in my drafts for over ten years....... Inshallah one of these days, but I sincerely doubt it 😂😂😂

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Building dread, purple prosing, and writing the saddest sadz before giving folks the happy ending. I'm also a slowburn maestro. Love horror, but usually end up writing more romance than plain horror LOL 👽

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

I be overthinking shit, or I be outlining something and saying I'm finna write it but then I don't because I end up getting distracted by something else. I have a Prison Playbook kdrama fic outline that's nineteen pages long that I will never write out bc I got distracted by ANOTHER kdrama. I have OCD but that shit apparently has no impact on my publication goals 😭

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

Love it! I'm fluent in multiple languages, so I love peppering in different languages in my fanfics, and regularly borrow from Hindi and Arabic language songs, poems, and other media to title fics. Maybe 30% of my fanfiction is inspired by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan songs. It do be like that sometimes djhfgdfgdf

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I genuinely don't remember anymore, it has been SO long. All I DO know is that I deleted it all because I was an embarrassed baby and really wish I hadn't. It can be anything between the following fandoms: Yugioh, X-Men comics, Bleach, Smallville, some variant of old teen movies, etc. I seriously don't remember which one, but ONE of them. lol.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

All of them. I bleed words. I be rereading my own fanfiction like they're the hottest novels on the stands. I try to read other fanfiction when the mood strikes, but I myself am my target audience, so I be writing things that I know I'm gonna reread years down the line. For example, my HxH fanfics are still my favorite fanfics from the fandom cuz nobody else was writing Hisoka/true!form!Bisky, and few people were dedicated to Melody/Kurapika. I'm a narcissist 👽👽👽

#real talk #ava's ficcing adventures #gpoy

[areweevercameraready]

a little snippet...

A/N: so....i actually have...... maybe 100,000k words unpublished with the boys in human au.,.... and since the human au infodump, i've been wondering if i should post things from the spinoff au. i asked a friend and she suggested i post at least a bit since there Were Folks who enjoyed these characters. im hugging everyone who has been keeping up :') thank you and i love you and you don't know how much this means to me, that people like my work.

i do plan on updating more than beliefs, though as you can probably tell, updates are pretty slow. i've had big weird life changes over the past three or so years, which is kinda sad, since i used to be able to update chivalry literally once a week :'D but thank you all for sticking with me through it!! i'm hoping, once i'm done writing my thesis, i can get back to updating MTB more often. i've had the whole thing plotted in my head for a while and you all deserve to see more of macbeth, along with where he was during like. all of chivalry.

heads up that this is NOT going on AO3 — it's a bit far from the actual fandom space so I'm really hesitant to put it up there. it'll only be here! somewhat related, but i might spruce up this blog layout. the banner image is kind of old/i don't like the anatomy, and same with the icon. and i just took a look at the blog and went "wow the text is smaller than i remember it being..." so that's a sign that it's Too Small! time for a change probably.

Words: 7,615

WARNINGS: descriptions of anxiety disorder, descriptions of past child abuse, suicidal/depressive thoughts, someone's ankle breaks (don't run in heels, kids!), alcohol and drunkenness

if i forgot anything, please let me know! this is only one chapter of a longer thing (i'm still on the fence about posting all of it but frankly, if i do revamp this blog, i straight fuckin might. i don't plan on publishing these novels for market consumption, but i would be happy to know if folks out there enjoyed them :') )

enjoy the snippet! <3

Eric Yuan hadn't considered himself lovable in a long, long time.

The anxiety disorder was just scraping the surface. There was the legal battle he'd gone into against his parents for custody over Gavin. He was so responsible it was irresponsible, sleeping odd hours, sometimes none at all, and living off of the cheapest coffee he could find to keep himself awake. There was the lack of time, the long hours of work to pay for the apartment and his and Gavin's lives, between working at the bar and at the restaurant, trying to pull together something to keep them afloat. He survived off of lunch and, when tips were good, the occasional dinner. 

Gavin had noticed, of course, but he was nice enough to not say anything. Eric tried to be as honest as he could about how sometimes they couldn't get new games or new things, how he would have to stay late at night at work. If Eric was thankful for anything, it was how understanding Gavin was. That kid rolled with as many punches as were thrown and while Eric knew he shouldn't have to, knew that his brother deserved a better upbringing than the shit that their parents and now the world were putting them through, he also recognized that this was the best he could do. 

He tried to hide himself in work, two jobs that provided enough money to keep them going. Honestly, if he’d talked with his managers and budgeted hours differently, he could get by with just the bartending job. But the days without work were spent taking Gavin to school, watching Gavin at home, laying on the couch and staring at the ceiling. He had to have something to bury himself in so he wouldn’t be stuck with his thoughts, the ones that promised danger, contempt, building paranoia and anxiety until he choked on his own breath. Thoughts that promised a kinder world. On the other side.

If he killed himself, Gavin would go right back to their parents, and Eric had to stay alive if only to prevent that. That was….that was the only reason. 

Sometimes, he wondered if Gavin knew, because on nights like that the kid always managed to find his way into Eric's bed. He'd crawl in and snuggle between Eric's arms and tell him he had a nightmare. Eric never knew how honest he was being, but he never turned the offer down.

He had to keep alive. So he did. 

And like, man worked a lot. Often, too much. How the fuck was he supposed to keep up with the world around him if he barely used his social media, didn't watch any of the new content put out in recent years, didn't engage with new platforms. Well, he had a Twitter, but that was just to look at funny memes. Those were his favorite development in recent years. Twitter also helped keep up with the news somewhat, but he didn’t exactly pay attention to that. Also, cat videos, those were important to him. 

Yeah, he was fairly disconnected, but what else was new and what could you do.

Eric Yuan's life flipped when he was opening the bar at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday. He wasn't an owner or manager, but he was a shift lead. The most dependable shift lead, if you asked his manager, and while he often told Eric that he was pretty reliable, it wasn’t as though Eric processed that kind of praise. He did know that he got the most done, and was the most efficient, because he could take that kind of metric comparison. But, like. Most reliable? He didn’t know how true that was. Eric liked to take the opening shifts, helped get home at a reasonable enough hour to see Gavin to sleep and for him to sleep enough to take the lunch shifts at his other job. 

The opening shift consisted of a few things. Making sure dishes were racked for the night, that the trash was all arranged and the bins were out in the alley, that bottles that looked like they were going to go empty had restocks close by. It was slow and quiet, for shift leads, but it was perfect for Eric. He liked to turn on some music and walk around, working efficient and quick enough usually to have a few minutes of quiet before the bartenders started showing up. 

The alley behind his bar was more like a driveway than anything, wide enough just for one car. Most of the time, the neighboring businesses would just put their bins back here during work hours. 

While opening on this day, though, Eric noticed a man running. He'd turned the sharp corner near the bar and hurried partway down the block, panting as if he'd been running a while. Eric actually pulled his own bins back as the man passed him. Then promptly tripped. What idiot runs in heels, anyway?

The man tried to get back up, but a few steps proved his ankle injured enough for him to collapse again. And that's when he looked up, frantically looking around for help, and his eyes locked with Eric's. 

Eric waved, ever so slightly. And, well. He's always been the type to help someone who needed it. He didn't know what the man was running from, but it seemed that time was of the essence. He jogged over and picked the man up easily, making sure he didn't grab the man's dreadlocks accidentally beneath his arm, and hurried him into the bar. At least the dude was pretty light, and he let Eric pick him up, wrapping his arms around Eric’s shoulders. 

The first and only real thing Eric noticed was that he smelt a little floral. Must have been perfume or something. The man wasn’t wearing clothes that Eric would have called casual, especially with the heels. A fall like that must have hurt his ankle.

"Thank you," the man whispered, and Eric noticed how gentle his voice was, how lofty and warm. "Close the door, please, they can't see me."

Eric didn't know who the fuck "They" was, but Eric kicked the door closed on his way in. Just as he did, too, he heard the sound of footsteps at the end of the alley. Eric helped the man hide behind the bar, out of view of the door, and shushed him quietly as a knock sounded on the door. 

He wiped his hands on his apron, stepping back towards the door. He paused before opening it only to prepare his face, so he could open it with the deadliest glare. And there were. People. There. Were many people. Many with cameras. All looking fairly out of breath. 

How did that guy outrun a whole ass crowd? 

The man who had knocked was haggard, taller than Eric but with an obviously lankier build, wheezing as he asked, “Have you seen anyone come up this road?”

He sounded kinda desperate. Eric shook his head slowly, cogs working in his head as he put together a cover story. “No, I’ve just been trying to open up shop. I took the bins out,” he gestured to the trash bins, set alongside the wall. “But I didn’t see anyone then. If someone was out there, they could have run past while I was stocking.”

The man nodded, either willing to accept that lie or too frantic to look too deep into it. Eric watched with sharp eyes as he and the group looked up and down the street. He didn’t think this concerned him, though, and he wanted to check back in on the absolute rando’ he’d just let into the bar. So he nudged the guy’s hand. 

“I think the candy shop over there’s open, around that corner.” Eric pointed to the end of the alley. “If someone ran past, they could have seen them. Other than that though, I don’t have anything, and I’ve gotta get back to opening.”

Just a few well-placed white lies. The man at the door nodded and motioned the group to leave without another word. Eric let the door slam behind them. 

Well. Then. He exhaled slow, a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, then turned to the bar counter. 

The way the bar was arranged was such that there was a peninsula counter, sticking out of the wall with seats arranged on all sides. On one side, too, was a small stage. Often, they would just play music. Sometimes they had performers, live musicians, and every Thursday was comedy night for local comedians. In June, they have a small drag show every Friday, and in December, they have a run of charity shows. There are still fliers and decorations up from the last one; Eric should take them down while he’s opening. 

The man who he’d snuck in slowly peeks his head around the counter. There was something awfully familiar about him, like Eric had definitely seen this dude before, but he isn’t attuned to the daily gossip. Maybe it was just because the man was pretty as could be, eyes a warm brown that lingered around Eric before darting back at the door. His brows were perfectly shaped. Eric could see a little heart on his cheek, too, and silver decorations in his dreadlocks. Very, very pretty.

The man scan the area, see Eric going around to take the chairs out from where they’ve been stacked in the corner. And he asks, in a voice almost more delicate than Eric could have imagined, “Are they gone?”

“Yeah,” Eric said, setting down the barstools as he went around the bar’s lounge area. “They stalkers or something?”

As soon as Eric said the people chasing him were gone, the man sighed, standing up all the way and cracking his neck. He scooted to the sink behind the counter to wash his hands, which was fair. It wasn’t like the bar ground was the cleanest, even just before opening. 

Someone like this dude, this put together and manicured and astoundingly beautiful, shouldn’t have had to put his hands on the bar’s fuckin’ ground.

“Basically stalkers. Paparazzi,” the man sighed. 

“Paparazzi?” Eric asked, looking back at the man.

Was this dude fucking famous? Eric couldn’t recognize him. Damn, he was that far removed from things, that he couldn’t recognize an entire celebrity.

The man must have realized now that Eric hadn’t known who he was, because his grin turned sheepish as he wiped his hands on a towel. “Yep! I’m, uh. Songbird? That’s my stage name. And my YouTube channel.” 

That name rang, like, literally no bells in Eric’s head. Figures, though. He rarely watched Youtube. 

They stood in relative silence for a few beats before the man tried again. “Cadence? Cadence Beaulieu?” 

“Oh,” Eric said, and it must have been obvious how he didn’t know who the fuck this Cadence dude was, because Cadence laughed a little in his face. 

“You’re cute,” Cadence said, limping out around the bar, holding onto the bar’s side. “I don’t get that much anymore.” 

“Cool.” Eric instinctually hurried over, holding Cadence’s arm and waist as he helped him onto one of the bar’s seats, but his head was reeling from the idea of a famous celebrity calling him cute. Like? That didn’t just happen. Did it? This guy was fucking famous? 

What the fuck was he supposed to say? How do you talk to famous people? Eric helped him settle into the seat before asking, “Do you want water or something?”

“No, I’m good,” Cadence smiled at him.

Eric was going to loose his mind, he got called cute by a famous dude and now he’s looking at the famous dude and realizing how cute the famous guy was. He hadn’t paid attention to that earlier, too preoccupied with getting the guys at the door to leave, but now that he was actually looking at this guy—his anxiety was about to start kicking in, hard, he could tell. What if he made an ass of himself in front of the famous dude? The incredibly pretty famous dude. 

“Cool,” Eric looked down, at the bar, and whistled a little. “If you want, you can, uh, stay here for a bit, until your car comes?”

He figured the famous dude isn’t driving around himself. 

Cadence nodded. “If that’s okay,” he murmured, taking out his phone. “I can stay outta your way, then.”

Slowly, Eric nodded, too. He had to get the extra drinks ready. Finish opening up. And. He couldn’t really. Process? What was happening. He just thought he was helping someone up off the street, having tripped, and….Wait.

“Wait, how’s your ankle?” he tried to swallow his anxiety, looking back at Cadence, who seemed to be idling on his phone. 

Cadence looked back up at him, then at his ankle. He was wearing strappy heels, flowy pants, a tight shirt, and an old oversized jacket, and none of these looked like clothes that were good to be running around in. Especially those heels. Eric didn’t know much about heels but he figured they might be an inch? And that was probably enough to fucking break a leg. Rude to stare, though. So he just. Averted his eyes back to the glasses he was stacking for later.

This guy was so fucking pretty. Eric was holding him earlier. He’d carried him—Eric had deadlift carried a whole ass celebrity. 

“Probably sprained,” Cadence said with a sigh. “When I get home, I can ice it. I don’t think it’s fully broken, though, I could put a little weight on it.”

Now, they had ice in the box. Eric grabbed one of the spare bags for their limes and filled one with ice, part of their protocol for when drunkards would hurt themselves. He wrapped it in one of the clean towels and, once the Grey Goose was restocked, brought it over to Cadence. Who took it. Gratefully. It seemed. 

“Thanks,” Cadence gave him a smile, which like. Eric still didn’t really know how to feel about this. 

“No problem,” he said. “Sorry, uh. For, uh, being quiet. And not knowing who you were.”

Because like, that felt like something he should apologize for, you know? If Cadence is used to people recognizing him on the streets and some level of respect because of it, then maybe Eric treating him like a regular person (maybe even ignoring him, since he’s just sitting in the corner) might be rude? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the fucking etiquette for talking to famous people, this isn’t a problem he’s ever had!

“It’s okay, no, don’t even worry,” Cadence giggled—that sound, that fucking sound was so soft, what the hell?—and waved his hand dismissively. 

“Okay,” Eric nodded. And he didn’t have much to. Like. Add? 

So he turned around and went back to restocking the bar. And he didn’t say anything about how he could feel Cadence watching him. He didn’t say anything, but he could feel Cadence’s eyes on his back every so often, when he’d look up from his phone. 

Maybe he was tweeting something about him. Eric didn’t know much about social media so if he did get tweeted about, he definitely wasn’t going to be able to find it. Or maybe he was texting his famous friends about the weirdo bartender who’s just ignoring him as he lifts the crates out of the storage room and cracks them open. 

There’s no way this dude would be bullying him over shit like this for no reason, right? 

Regardless, Eric wasn’t about to start a conversation and ask. He just knew that the guy was staring at him. For what felt like an hour. Realistically, only like, half an hour. But for fucking forever, man.

At some point, though, it had to end. After about twenty minutes, Cadence stood up, wobbling a little on his hurt ankle. Eric, who’d been restocking the limes, looked up, then stood up. 

“Your car here?” he asked. 

“Yep,” Cadence smiled a little at him. “When does this place open, anyway?”

“Uh,” Eric frowned, checking the clock on the wall. “In ten.”

Where the fuck are his bartenders, anyway? They’re supposed to get here at around now. Fuckers. 

Cadence nodded, though, noting the time. “Glad this all happened before hours, then. Wouldn’t want it to get too crazy in here for you,” he looked at the clock on the wall, then back at Eric, with a small smile that made Eric’s already quick-beating heart skip a beat thinking of how his eyes creased with gentle happiness. 

“Uh. Yeah,” Eric tried to smile, too, but something told him it looked a little more like a grimace. 

Cadence waved, Eric waved. Then Cadence left. And the door closed behind him.

And that was the that. On that. 

Eric was fairly zoned out for the whole shift. He was mixing drinks on autopilot, not so much as handling customers. Some drunkard got rowdy, Eric wasted no time to tell them to fuck off. His patience was zilch. 

He got home and Gavin’s already put himself to bed, tucked in and in his PJ’s, though Eric heard him get up when he closed the front door. Eric picked him up, tucked him back in again, and kissed him on the head. Poor kid hated being alone late at night, especially when he had to put himself to bed. Eric laid on the bed with him, one foot off to hold himself steady, and made sure Gavin was all the way asleep before he stood up to change his own clothes. 

Only once he was sure Gavin’s not getting out of bed again does he check his phone, too. 

“Cadence Beaulieu” had over four million followers on Twitter, over fifteen million subscribers on Youtube, and an Instagram account that makes Eric blush almost inappropriately. And this is the guy who was. In his bar. Talking to him. Eric picked this man up earlier and didn’t even notice that the heart on his face was made up of three moles. It looked like a tattoo almost, but no, apparently. 

He spent almost too much time binging Cadence’s content before he managed to pass out to the sound of one of his beauty tutorials. Interesting, that this is the guy he met. This is the guy who he picked up, carried into his bar, hid in the corner.

Interesting. 

But not every day is so interesting. So Eric goes back to work and expects nothing to change. He tries to put this rare celebrity encounter behind him. Tries not to think of how much of an idiot he must have been, seeming to just fade into the background and ignore what could have been a real moment had he asked more questions, became something more memorable perhaps. He could have asked Cadence how he was doing, at least. How his day had been. Anything, really. 

Instead, Eric just has the memory of the prettiest man on the planet sitting in the corner of the bar, of his bar. Alone together. A stranger, sure, and maybe Eric understood somewhere that that was part of why the anxiety was so strong? But c’mon. Man was pretty. Nice, too. 

Damn. This is why he’s single, he joked bitterly to himself. Lonely, the joke in his head twisted. He didn’t have the gall to actually talk to anyone, what was he supposed to do.

He had been cleaning out glasses at the bar, late one night. He’d picked up a later shift, after Gavin had already gone to sleep. Usually, Eric liked to be home while the kid slept, but sometimes the scheduling didn’t work out like that and he’d need to pick up extra hours for other bartenders who had to tap out. He was a very strong cover, apparently. And on the spectrum of “thank god that lucky ass thing happened,” this was right below Cadence’s accident. 

About two weeks after Eric meets a whole ass celebrity, two men sit down at the bar during one of the live musical performances. It was Eric’s time working behind the bar, and he saw the one with the eyepatch wave him over. Which, like. Okay, sure, he was getting there. But customer service and you never know how many drinks they’ve had before they walk in at one in the morning and you definitely don’t want to get mad at the dude giving you the tip and maybe this dude’s never been to a bar, who the fuck wears soft cashmere at a bar, and his buddy there was in a bowtie and suspenders like this was some kind of book club and not remarkably past midnight on a Thursday. 

Like, okay, nerds, maybe they’ve just never been to this kinda bar. Sure. Fine.

“What can I get started for you boys,” Eric said, slinging his washcloth over his shoulder on his approach. 

“Two cosmopolitans, please,” the one with the eyepatch said, giving Eric a smile that read polite. 

Eric looked at the one with curly hair and glasses, who nodded in confirmation. “One shot in both? You got any vodka preferences?” he asked, taking out the house vodka and two tumblers. 

Before the eyepatch’ed one could reply, the one with glasses butted in, saying, “One with one shot, a double in the other, please. And if you have Ketel One, that would be grand.”

“A double shot? Marlowe!”

“What, it’s been a good day! I think I deserve a double shot. And you know two shots isn’t enough to do much.” This Marlowe guy sounded pretty cocky, if you were to ask Eric, but no one ever asks the bartender. So he didn’t say anything about it. 

He tuned out of the argument there, as soft as it turned. Much less of an argument, more aggressive flirting, and that was something that was easy for him to zone out of until he set the two cocktails down. “Double shot,” he said, setting the double in front of Marlowe. “And a single. If you boys need anything else, my name’s Eric and I’ll be at the bar all night.” 

“Eric,” the one with the eyepatch smiled, and it was kind of pretty in that controlled, poised way that some models do. “Thank you. If we need anything, I’ll-I’ll call.”

“Thank you, Eric,” Marlowe said, raising his glass and taking a long sip. 

Eric just nodded and went around, checking on others. Earlier, he’d seen some dude try to roofie a girl, and had taken the drink back. She had left with a friend she trusted, and he’d kicked the guy out pretty forcefully, but the moment still left quite the imprint. He was always on edge whenever that happened, hoping to prevent it from happening again. 

He did a few rounds before he ended up in front of Marlowe and his friend again, maybe half an hour later. This friend was on his phone, typing something out, while Marlowe flagged Eric down, with an empty glass before him. 

“Hello, Eric,” Marlowe raised the glass. “Would you be a dime and make me a Long Island Iced Tea?” 

Okay. This dude had to be a heavier drinker, if he was going to be calling out drinks by name. And it wasn’t necessarily Eric’s job to know how much someone could drink, especially strangers. The guy didn’t, like….he didn’t look drunk just yet. You know? So Eric nodded. 

“Sure thing. You got any preferences?” he asked, taking the cup back and pulling out a tall glass. 

Now that seemed to be the right question, or at least one the man hadn’t thought of. Marlowe reached up, cupping his chin in thought, and spared a few glances at his friend still typing. Hopefully this wasn’t, like, for the friend. Eric would have to watch for that. But after a bit of time, Marlowe nods. “Yes. Ketel One again for the vodka.” 

“Sure.” They had Ketel One under the vodka cabinet, but people rarely ordered it. It was one of their premium vodka’s and house vodka was Smirnoff. 

“Do you have Patrón for tequila?” 

“Yeah, I’m….pretty sure,” Eric, before he could be made to swallow his words, took a stride to the tequila cabinet and checked. “Yep, I’ve got Patrón for you.” 

“Excellent. I don’t know enough about the other three alcohols to have preferences, but if you could tell me what you put in, I’d love to start learning.”

An….interesting request. But Eric knew the house drinks like the back of his hand (and he might not be able to hold his liquor like the best of them, but he’d still tried all of the standard drinks. For posterity.) so he pulled out the Bacardi first. “This’ the rum. In house, we use Bacardi. Pretty light for a rum, but it does have a better taste than Captain Morgan. A lot better to mix with,” he explained. 

Marlowe had turned himself toward the counter, watching Eric pour in the Bacardi first, then the Ketel One, then the Patrón. Then, he put those three down. The triple sec was all out on the shelf, since they were common enough and the bar stocked a small enough range to have the whole selection out for viewing. Eric pulled down a bottle of Bols to add, then Henrick’s gin from the shelf below. They were running out behind the bar anyways. “Bols is the triple sec,” Eric said as he poured. “It’s really good for mixing with multiple alcohols. Sometimes a drink’ll play nice with other alcohols and sometimes it’ll only play nice with, like. Coke.”

“That makes sense. The consistencies are very different,” Marlowe hummed. 

Sounded like this dude was the analytical type. Which might explain why he had some of his preferences on hand. If you don’t go to bars often, you’re going to be scared of the unknown. Eric was almost proud of the guy for that, if this was him trying new things. 

He just hoped Marlowe wouldn’t throw up in the bathroom or something. That would fuckin’ suck. Always a situation when the patrons didn’t know their own limits.

“Henrick’s is the gin, and it’s just a easy gin to use,” he said with a shrug. “And then we just….”

He pulled out the cola spritzer, topped the glass off with cola, and put the slice of lemon in. And then he slid it over to Marlowe, who took the drink in one hand with a fascinated look. Dude even pushed his glasses up. 

“Interesting. I’m excited to try it,” Marlowe said, glancing back up to Eric with a smile. 

And before Eric could even warn him about how strong of a gut punch it was about to be, Marlowe picked up the glass and took a swig about a third of the cup. “Woah, buddy,” Eric couldn’t stop himself from jumping at that. “You alright?”

“Marlowe, what the fuck are you doing?” dude’s friend finally looked up from his phone to see Marlowe slam the glass down and cough into his arm. 

“Holy shit,” Marlowe said, fixing his glasses with a smile that seemed a little too wide to be sober. “That’s quite strong, but very, very good. Thank you, Eric!” 

His glasses were still crooked. Eric almost leaned forward to fix them, before the guy’s friend got to it first, and that was all for the better. It’s not like Eric knew these people, after all. 

Marlowe took out his phone and Eric took the chance to lean towards his companion. “He asked for a pretty strong drink,” Eric warned. “If you need a hand taking care of him, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve held a dude’s hair back in the bathroom.”

His friend must have been surprised at the suggestion, but it can’t have been an uncommon thing considering how quickly he got over the possibility. “Thank you, that’s very k-very kind. He’s not usually one to drink a lot,” the friend sighed, then nodded to Eric. “Thank you for your service tonight, Eric. My name is Phillip.”

Phillip, alright. “Good to meet you, Phillip,” Eric said, and he went back around the bar to do rounds.

It was another hour and half before the bar closed, though. Eric wasn’t technically the shift lead for closing, but he was on the shift. When it got close enough to three, he turned on Semisonic’s song “Closing Time.” Most of the people had left by then, quick to leave on their rides or to new bars. 

But still sitting at the bar were the two people Eric had pegged as nerds earlier, Marlowe and Phillip. After Marlowe finished the Long Island Iced Tea, Eric had poured a water, but the man still ordered a margarita on top of it. And now it looked like he was paying for it, given how he was literally leaning on Phillip’s shoulder, arms wrapped around his waist. Phillip didn’t look all too pleased, however. 

“David is going to be worried si-worried si-sick when we get home.” Eric could hear Phillip chide Marlowe as he got close.

“It’s-It’s all dandy. I love David,” Marlowe hiccupped into Phillip’s shoulder, then leaned around and pressed his face into the base of his neck. “I love YOU, Prince.”

Phillip tutted, reaching back to run his hand through Marlowe’s curled hair. “I love you-love you too, you idiot.”

Cute. Really gay, and cute. Eric put away the cups he’d just washed and approached the pair, noting how they’d slowly but surely become the last people at the bar. 

“Hey,” he said, waving slightly. “Phillip, right?”

“Mhm. Eric,” Phillip greeted. “Sorry to still be here. I can see you’re closing up.”

“Eh. Marlowe’s falling asleep on you, I get it. Do you two have a ride home?” 

At that, Phillip winced. And Eric could have guessed the follow up, honestly. “Actually, Marlowe was supposed to be the driver,” Phillip confessed, patting Marlowe’s hand. “I think he overshot how much he could drink, though. As per usual.”

“I only had three drinks!” Marlowe interrupted, all too proud of himself for having three drinks that had the alcoholic consistency of a freight train. 

Phillip and Eric both seemed to be on the same page, though, because neither acknowledged him. Save for a few gentle pats from Phillip as Marlowe buried himself more in Phillip’s back. 

“Okay. Do you need to call someone?” Eric asked. 

Phillip rubbed the back of his neck, thinking for a moment before nodding. “Yes. I know someone who’ll be awake who can come help, but….well. Marlowe’s car is still in the parking lot. It has a parking limit in the morning, which will quickly become an issue.”

Fuckin’ city parking. Eric had definitely gotten a ticket or two before, parking his motorcycle in the wrong place. He usually just walked to work, though, since he was two blocks away. So he didn’t have a vehicle to worry about….

A drunk man and a man with a cane could get picked up real easy this late at night by some unfavorable people. Maybe that worry was what made Eric offer. Maybe it was because Phillip and Marlowe had been fairly kind to him throughout the night. It could also have had something to do with how nice Phillip seemed to be taking it now, how calm he was handling the situation. And maybe, too, how Phillip himself didn’t ask. 

There was something nice about being able to offer help, rather than having it asked of him always. 

“If you want, I can drive you home,” Eric suggested. “I’ll catch an Uber back to my house from yours.”

Phillip blinked, and Marlowe giggled. Eric didn’t know what was so funny. He thought it was probably pretty shady to offer. He knew he wouldn’t let just any stranger drive his bike, after all. But he’d gotten to the point where he could do a solid vibe check just by looking and interacting with someone, and these two seemed nice. He could see himself accepting this kind offer, under similar circumstances, from either of them. 

Still, kinda scary to think he’d be driving someone else’s car to their own house. He wouldn’t know where it was, Phillip would have to direct him. But Phillip legally couldn’t drive, not with the one eye gone, and Marlowe definitely couldn’t drive if he tried. Which he shouldn’t. 

“That would be so-so lovely, thank you,” Phillip said. 

Getting clearance to drive some drunk patrons home was a breeze, knowing it was Eric “workaholic glad you’re getting out early” Yuan. Soon enough, he had his arm looped around Marlowe’s waist, helping him up as Phillip led them to the car, which was parked about half a block away. Phillip also used a cane, which would have been a pretty difficult thing to work around if he needed to carry Marlowe himself. All the more reason Eric was glad to help them home. 

They walked up to a nice sedan, likely a newer model judging by the built in navigation. Phillip helped Eric lay Marlowe in the back seat as he mumbled something about a pony, and Phillip himself climbed into the shotgun. The car wasn’t that hard to drive, now that Eric looked around at the controls. Same as any. The break was a little more tense than he was used to, but once he got it onto the road, he could manage. 

Phillip, in shotgun, turned on a jazzy, late night radio station. And directed Eric gently towards their home, probably. Neither of them made conversation much but, to some extent, it didn’t seem like it was necessary. And that was kind of nice, to Eric. He didn’t always like conversing, especially with patrons and folks who didn’t know him. Which accounted for most people. But Phillip’s presence was nice, calming almost, which was rich for a guy who Eric had just met. He was tense, like he usually was, but for a stranger? In this kind of precarious circumstance?

It’s when the drive took them onto a small, two-lane road at the edges of the city and beginnings of the forest that Eric starts to worry. Was Marlowe actually a heavy-weight? Maybe he was pretending to be drunk back there so they could mug him? Take his kindness for granted and leave him in a ditch? He didn’t think he looked like he was worth mugging, but like….maybe. Was that a necessary cane or was it a weapon?

“It’s this-this house here,” Phillip said, pointing to a gravel driveway, and Eric swallowed despite the dryness of his mouth. 

“Sure,” he murmured, pulling onto the gravel. 

As he did, the house’s porch light turned on, front door thrown open as someone else jogged out. Eric stopped, threw the car into park immediately, but Phillip didn’t seem too phased by the newcomer. Instead, he turned to Eric and held out a one hundred dollar bill. “Thank you so much for all your help this evening,” he said with a smile.

Eric looked at the bill, then up at Phillip. He hadn’t really expected to be tipped for this, in all honesty. But it made sense. You know, if he’s going to drive you home, tip him. He’s done over the top enough. But a hundred fucking dollars? This dude just whipped a hundred dollars out on a tip? How loaded were these gay dudes, and then they didn’t have someone to drive them home?

“That’s a hundred dollars,” he said, unthinking. 

He blushed a little, stuttering on words to add on and say he didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, but Phillip just laughed. His laugh was breezy, like leaves in the wind. “Yes, it’s a hundred dollars. I think it’s-it’s warranted, considering you drove me and my idiot home,” Phillip put the bill on Eric’s lap and undid his seatbelt. “It’s a hundred dollars plus something-something extra.”

Eric looked down at the bill, picked it up, and there was. A whole ass phone number written on the side. With the “Phillip & Marlowe” written on the side. 

Before he can ask what the fuck is happening and if he’s been dreaming this whole time, the backseat door opens. “Davy,” Marlowe’s voice is so slurred it’s almost incomprehensible, but the person who’d come out of the house, this “Davy,” unbuckles Marlowe swiftly. 

“Jesus, Marl’, how much did you drink?” Davy grumbles, pulling Marlowe out by his arms. 

Instead of setting him on the ground, though, Davy just wrapped them around his shoulders and then slowly, steadily, lifted Marlowe into his arms. Marlowe let him, swinging his own legs up to make it easier for Davy to catch them. Once he had some semblance of a grip, Marlowe leaned forward and pressed his face against Davy’s, kissing him rough enough for Phillip to laugh at, Eric to stare confusedly at. 

“He gets like this, when he’s-when he’s drunk,” Phillip leaned over to explain, though it does nothing to clear up Eric’s questions. 

At this point? He’s a lot more willing to walk home. Just get out of the car and walk. 

“Alright, y’ sap,” Davy grumbles, pulling Marlowe off of himself and nestling him into more of a hold. 

Eric was still sitting in the driver seat, just watching through the passenger window as Phillip opens his own door and climbs out. Davy leans his head towards Phillip, who pats his shoulder warmly and looks down at Eric. 

All three of them are looking at him now. 

The odd one out. 

And, like, fair. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing here, either. 

“Uh,” he said. “I can just, uh. I can call myself an Uber now.”

“Who the fuck’re you?” Davy asked, almost at exactly the same time.

Eric put his hands up and slowly climbed out of the car. This Davy person didn’t really look mad—Phillip leaned over, whispering something to him, and Davy nodded along. And Eric didn’t know what the fuck that was about really, but he didn’t feel in the mood to test anything. Not at three in the morning, in someone else’s driveway. He had to get back home. 

“I can just….” Eric gestured to the road again, taking a few steps back. 

Davy shook his head. “No fuckin’ way, dude,” he was much more abrasive than the other two, and something in the sturdiness of his tone got Eric to shut up. “I’ll drive you.”

On literally any other day, Eric would probably have started running right then and there. His palms were sweaty still, from gripping the steering wheel tighter than ever and from the mounting panic of driving someone else’s car to a house he didn’t know. In a car with a bunch of strangers. 

But, to be frank, Eric was just starting to believe this wasn’t real. 

He was probably just tired. He didn’t usually work shifts this late, and this was a whirlwind of a night already, and he’d already swallowed whatever panic arose earlier, which usually left him without the energy to worry about semi-tense situations. It was a kinda numb feeling. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? He dies and Gavin goes back with their parents? Bit too late in the night for Eric to care about something as trivial as dying. 

So he nodded slowly to Davy’s suggestion. “That would be nice,” he said. 

Davy grinned. He lifted Marlowe a little and said, “I’ll put this one to bed and come back out, ‘ight?” 

Eric just nodded again, which must have been good enough for Davy, because he just turned around and marched himself back into the house. Phillip stayed outside, though, leaning on his cane with both of his hands. Eric shuffled around the car, now feeling a little more awkward, and Phillip gave him a small shrug as if to say he sympathized.

“I’m sure this is-this is strange,” Phillip added on. 

It sure as fuck was. But Eric was like, almost too out of it to properly acknowledge that. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “This’ gonna be one hell of a dream to wake up from.”

Phillip chuckled at that one, laugh light like air. He leaned over and rested a hand on Eric’s shoulder—Eric flinched, hands reaching up into a defensive stance, and Phillip pulled back quick. 

It was. A little out of his comfort zone. 

Just a little. He didn’t like people touching him, especially people he didn’t know, because for the longest time he’d been used to sudden motions as a threat. And while he used to take it, Eric had long since trained himself to fight over flight. So it did take self-control to not just deck this dude.

He turned back around to Phillip, shoulders hiked enough for his neck to stiffen just a bit, and he tried to lower his own hands. They were shaking, much to his chagrin, so he stuffed them into the pockets of his jeans. 

“Sorry,” he fumbled over his words. “Sorry, I, uh. I’m kinda...it’s late, and I don’t really like, uh. People touching me.”

“No need to apologize, that-that was on me,” Phillip responded. “No need at all. I should-I should have known better, but I’m ti-I guess I’m tired my-myself. I’m very sorry for touching.”

Eric smoothed himself out slowly, as best he could, and Phillip rested himself against the side of the car. He glanced over, watching Phillip as the man looked up at the tree line. In the moonlight, Eric could see him smile, ever so slightly. He looked weirdly regal, with how prim he was, even after being at a dive bar for three hours. His hair was still brushed to the side like it’d been gelled, though Eric had seen him run his hand through it a few times. And although it was dark, he could still make out the freckles that dotted Phillip’s face, like stars in their own right.

He turned away, looking at his feet, and hoped Phillip didn’t feel too badly. It wasn’t his fault Eric was a nervous fuckin’ wreck. But he didn’t say anything. Getting a little too tired to hold proper conversation.

They both look up as the front door opens and closes again, as that Davy guy jogs out. He’d changed out of his clothes into other pajama looking clothes, or maybe he’d just thrown on a jacket. 

“Alright, nerd’s been sung a lullaby and is all tucked into bed.” He clapped his hands, rubbing them together slowly. “You gonna be able to get yourself in bed okay, Princey?”

“Oh, I’ll be okay. Just-Just sad my favorite artist won’t be there to kiss me goodnight,” Phillip said, and Eric did a double take at how flippantly the flirt was doled out.

Wasn’t Phillip dating that Marlowe guy? Eric glanced between Davy and Phillip as Davy scoffed and grabbed Phillip by the shoulder of his sweater, yanking him close and kissing him for a second. Were they like, all dating? Was that what was happening here? 

Eric was more confused than anything else. He knew of polyamory. He’d just never seen it. Then again, he didn’t know about a lot in the queer community. Once, one of the queens who came in for drag night called him “gnc as hell” and he had to get an explanation from one of the girls sitting at the bar. Polyamory, though, was a new kind of fear for him. That was just more people to disappoint. 

He looked back at the car and climbed into the passenger seat while Davy pulled back from Phillip and mussed up his hair. Eric very intentionally ignored eye contact while Davy climbed into the driver’s seat and rolled down Eric’s window, though he did wave at Phillip while Davy pulled away.

“Drive safely, David!” Phillip called out, waving a hand. 

“Be back in a sec, baby!” David must have been his name proper, because he blew Phillip a kiss through the window and then rolled it back up. 

Eric just kept sitting. Quietly. He almost wanted to pull his knees up, but this was someone else’s car and he didn’t really want to put his shoes on the leather seats. He put his hands on his knees, though, and tensed his knuckles a little. 

Whereas the ride to the house was quiet in a calm manner, Eric felt a lot more tense now. He didn’t know this David. And this David dude seemed a lot less poised than Phillip or Marlowe, given how he just turned off the radio and mumbled music lyrics, off-key and without any actual tune. And Eric could recognize that only because, at some point, David was singing some Shinedown song he knew. “State of My Head?” Probably. 

Would David be mad? If this was a polyamory situation, would it be like encroaching on territory to have driven Phillip and Marlowe home? Eric didn’t know. He didn’t want it to seem like that; he just didn’t want them to have to call an Uber and get a ticket. Shit was expensive. 

At the first red light off the one-lane road, David glanced at him, and Eric caught the sight of a birthmark near his neck. It looked faded but it was still a recognizable shade of red. Eric looked away almost immediately, so David wouldn’t notice him staring. He must not have been too successful, though, because David chose that moment to start a conversation.

#human au #eric #cadence #gavin #the human au has two main fics #the first is about eric joining the polycule and that's where this snippet is from #the second is about everyone else joining the polycule and it is.......... so fucking long / // .. . . #i am just always nervous about the world knowing about things that are close to my heart and like #writing these fics have been getting me through grad school and also having a job in grad school #been very very stressed and taking it out on the boys and now the boys are so close to my heart #i hope you enjoy this !!! #hopefully ill draw new things and change up the layout and get a new theme #ive been thinking of making myself themes because like. whats the point of knowing how to make custom interactives if i cant #make myself a tumblr theme :^) #anyway long winded tags aside #thank you very much for sticking through this with me and thank you everyone who enjoys these homies #i also enjoy them #this is two chapters of the fic actually #its two chapters of the eric fic

[pebblysand]

the end of act two

in my head, i was going to write a long post. one of those extended a/n-s i used to do, but i think my brain is too mushed, right now, too tired and wired, to say anything of value. maybe i'll do it later, or maybe you'll just send me lots of anons (we all know i love those) which will end up letting me tell you all the things i want to tell you.

for now, i just want to say: thank you. thank you for sticking with me, this past year. thank you for believing in this story. i feel like me posting this chapter, today, is definitely the end of something. not the end of the story yet (there are between five and seven chapters left), but the end of an act, at least.

castles has parts. acts. or maybe, eras, you know, a bit like taylor swift. there are: the early days, the 'blur', chapters one through seven. then, chapter eight. the pivot, the one that changes everything again. and now, nine through fifteen. the rise and fall of mia and harry. the trials, the slow and cumbersome process of adulting. the start of harry and ginny, too - for real.

i often get asked how far i am going to take this story. the answer is: the year 2027, in universe (hopefully, i will finish before then, irl). i can't say why because that would be much too spoilery, but i promise, i know. this obviously means that the pacing will be different, moving forward, though it will speed up gradually. the next chapter will cover a few months, then a year, then a few years. i have plans. you'll see.

before letting you read on, a word of warning. this chapter is long. like 18,000-words long. i struggled all week, wondering whether to cut or not to cut (that is always the question) but decided to just let it be long. first, because chapter eight is long, too, and sometimes things just need to be said. second because selfishly, as i don't know how many chapter i have left, leaving it like this gives me the option to late cut it if needed, if i end up landing on an uneven number, which would throw off the chapter titles thing. i hope you can forgive me.

this chapter is also a bit of a rollercoaster. there are scenes that make me cry. there is also, like, tooth-rotting fluff. it's strange. i hope you like it.

lastly, i also wanted to let you know that i'm going to be taking a break from this story. not forever, don't worry, but probably until march 2023. that means that, for a new chapter to actually come out, it'll probably be may, at the earliest. i think i'm leaving it in a satisfying place, though. a place in which you can probably wait. and if you don't want to, that's fine too. while this is not where the story ends in my head, you could decide it ends there for you. i promise, i won't resent you. i just have real life things going on, and have worked a lot lately, so i think i deserve the break. it doesn't mean that won't write/publish anything, it just means that castles will be on standby, for now. here, too, i hope you can forgive me.

thanks again for all the love, messages, comments, anons, and general support these past few months. i wouldn't have made it here without you. keep them coming, please, they always make my day.

lots of love,

jo

#castles #now i can finally sleep