#just give them a while to coalesce into something coherent

[stifledlaughterao3]

End of Year Fic Writing Bingo

This year was a pretty good one for fic! I think a key element of 2023 for writing was that I dug back into some WIPs that had been languishing and just sort of forced myself to finish them, even if they weren’t as perfect as I imagined they would be, or went in a different direction than I had originally intended. A lot of these, looking at the list, were gifts or inspired by prompts, which helps in having a firm deadline. I didn’t do my ‘write daily’ thing I did in 2020 and 2021, but I still wrote a lot, and initiated WIP hours with friends so that I would have a dedicated time to write. 

Fannishly I did a lot of other things this year too: 3 Fic Clique Ficlet episodes and a handful of podfics! They were really fun and I hope to do similar things next year. 

As you can see, I sadly did NOT make bingo (despite being so close SO many times) but hey, I tried! 

(Individual fic commentary below the cut)

something else entirely holds me in thrall (Pokemon)

“Everyone lives and nothing hurts” – I had started this fic due to re-playing Pokemon games from my childhood (Pokemon Crystal my beloved). It’s just my friends and I in the Pokemon world having idealized jobs with our Pokemon. I was encouraged internally to finish it so I could give it to one of the friends who had a character in the fic to help them through a hard time. So less “everyone lives” (all friends in it are alive!!) but “nothing hurts” definitely hits in this self-indulgent, really happy AU of our lives. 

shorn-off children like them (Call Me Chihiro (2023))

“If no one else will write it, I will” – so I watched the movie on a whim and it REALLY hit me where it hurts. So few movies get the ‘estranged child’ feelings well, and I saw a lot of myself in my mid-twenties with this character. So I wrote this because I just don’t see analysis of people in my situation in media, and I wanted to give her the character development I went through to end up in a happier place. 

The Archon is Too Sublime (原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game))

“Thought of a great line” – I really liked the summary line of this fic, it sets the tone for the whole thing. I just honestly love writing irreverent, silly but sincere fics like this. 

beloved gem, plucked rose (原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game))

“I was joking with my friend and then it happened” – shoutout to Purple for fucking around with “haha what if Tighnari accidentally became a cult leader and Cyno loved the idea of being a beautiful cult leader’s beloved” and it spiraled into one of my most popular fics of the year. 

it flows as the breaths inside the lungs (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters)

“This is going to be SO hot” – My first fic in a new fandom is giving pharaohs heat cycles based on the Nile flooding?? Sure!! It was definitely one of my horniest fics I wrote this year, and I was very pleased by the result. 

ex situ by stifledlaughter (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters)

“But what happens AFTER canon?” I quite liked Marik’s character when I first watched YGO– I related a ton to the ‘very bitter after religious abuse’ backstory he had, and I wanted to explore how he seemingly mellowed out a ton in the last season. 

Dragon-In-Wait (BNHA)

“Thought of a great scene” – so this was the prequel to one of my favorite fics I’ve ever written, Last Out the Winter. I started it in 2020 and sometime in early 2023 I was like “I have 40k down. I just need to slam out 10-20k more to finish it.” 40k later, I had finished it, and, amusingly, the “great scene” I had in mind from the beginning was slightly changed! But that’s what happens when you let a fic languish for 3 years. 

(space) riot when I'm with you (IT - Stephen King & Pride and Prejudice)

“It came to me in a dream” – While this was indeed a prompt from the Fic Clique podcast, the plot to it was a hazy contrivance of having read a LOT of Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic and wanting to explore the horror genre a bit more. It just sort of coalesced in my brain to the surprisingly coherent fic it turned out to be. 

A Timely Convergence of Melodies (new chapter) (Kuroko no Basuke)

“I just want them to kiss” – Ahhh, my fic that is the slowest to update of all time. I went 3 years in between updating this chapter and the last. Since each chapter focuses on a different couple reliving the same 5 or so hours, I do consider this mentally a ‘one shot’. This was another “omg just FINISH IT” fic I yanked out of my drafts and slammed out. It wasn’t what I originally wanted for it, but I’m glad it’s done all the same. 

A Handmade Scrapbook (new one-shot) ("Designation: Miracle" fandom, a Kuroko no Basuke AU)

“Fuck this character in particular” – I love Masaomi from Designation: Miracle with all of my heart but boy is it fun to Put That Man In Situations. Doing a SVSSS crossover with the OT4 appeals to the nichest audience of like 4 people on the planet who have read D:M and understand SVSSS but it was fun for ME to write and that’s what matters. 

deep in the night, I am looking for some(one) (2 new chapters) (Fanfic of the "Letter to the Headitor" AU for BNHA)

“I want this universe and those characters” – As always, my fanfics of the LTTH AU are my little bouncy house of humor and fun to roll around in. I went a little more serious with the most recent chapter, but it felt very earned after the other more lighthearted ones. LTTH will always be a fic that, in watching it update in real time, helped me through some real bad stuff and I will always write about it with joy in my heart. 

Untitled Fic Clique Episode (Fandom RPF & Untitled Goose Game (Video Game))

“Just to see if I could” – The SECOND I got the idea for this I yanked out my computer and slammed this out in approximately two hours. I was losing my gourd, possessed, feral with my goose teeth and wings. It is possibly the funniest thing I’ll ever write and I may have peaked but that’s okay. 

Game of the Scene by stifledlaughter (原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game))

“This idea won’t shut up until I write it” – I’ve been noodling on this Razor/Fischl/Bennett future fic for a while now, and part of my “just write it!!” mentality this year involved me taking the noodling thoughts and stir-frying them into something edible. I was pretty pleased with it in the end, especially the female OC, who is definitely one of my favorites I’ve written. 

adularescence (new one-shot) (原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game))

“Gift fic” – my yearly solstice gift for my metamour! She let me write Zhongli with two dicks this year, I was really excited about that. 

the skin you're in (Wizard of Oz) 

“Found a prompt list” – more specifically, a Yuletide recipient’s list! What’s funny about this one is that originally, I had been assigned to them for a different fandom (Neopets) only to read the rest of their prompts and read their cool prompt for a genderqueer Ozma. It prompted me to re-read select books from the Wizard of Oz series so I could better write this fic, which was pretty fun. 

more mundane and magical (Love and Leashes (2022))

“I saw the plot and needed it for my OTP” – So I have been really really wanting to write a fic set in the modern day kink community/scene, even though I left my in-person kink community several years ago due to burnout. I still have many fond memories of it, and truly wanted to write a fic that reflects the good parts of the community with rose-colored glasses, so I no longer felt as bitter about the bad parts. When I saw this movie requested for Yuletide, I knew that I had to write for it, and that finally, I could marry this plot idea (“put those characters in the kink scene”) with this fantastic movie that lends itself so well to that idea. Writing it was joyful, cathartic, and a little melancholy, which I feel really enhanced the fic. 

Clean bingo card:

#fanfic #personal

[sorio99]

Deltarune Chapter 2: Live Thoughts

So, since the new chapter of Deltarune came out, I've played it all the way through, so, here are my thoughts as I had them. Basically a live-blog, but, not live anymore, I wrote these in my notes app before.

NOTE: Obviously there are going to be ALL THE SPOILERS for Deltarune Chapter 2 in this, as well as Chapter 1. Reader discretion is advised.

Wow, okay, so I was wrong about it being immediately explained.

Various descriptions have changed, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the change to a new game, or the one to a new chapter.

I feel like Berdly is definitely a m’lady guy.

Okay, so, we’re not skipping class this time.

I really wish we could call Toriel and tell her we’re gonna be late again, but I couldn’t see an option for that. Maybe Kris told her on the ride to school.

Okay, so, Noelle is definitely adorable, and a huge lesbian.

Susie seems lovestruck too, kinda.

SHE HAD CHALK, AND SHE DIDN’T TELL ALPHYS BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT SHE AND SUSIE COULD GO GET IT TOGETHER OH MY GOD

Okay, honestly wasn’t expecting the closet to work again.

Fricking LOVE the new transition.

Okay, so, Ralsei knows about, the real world? How, why, and what?

Oh, that, makes, a little sense? But also, if we hadn’t brought the toys over to the closet then, would they all be, dead?

AND WHAT IS RALSEI IN THIS CONTEXT?!?!

Okay, but I love the new town.

Holy shit, save points have storage, AND a spare list? Hell yeah.

So, we’re all level 2 now. I guess they moved from EXP based (or, execution point based?) to Milestone.

Love the basement for bad guys, with K. Round standing guard.

Bitch said “Child abusers live in Hamster Cage”.

Wait, he uses the hamster wheel?

I don’t know if I believe the king about his “bluff” or not. I think not, but, I don’t know.

I can see the “Susie moves to Ralsei’s castle to escape her abusive home” fic already.

RALSEI GAVE KRIS A TRASHCAN, AND SAID IT WAS FOR THE MANUAL IF HE GIVES US ANOTHER ONE OH MY GOD IM SO SORRY MY SWEET FLUFFY BOY

And of course, the moss call-back.

Oh god, Susie just said “My own room, huh.” and my heart is ready to shatter.

This girl has one actual food item in her fridge, and it’s just salsa

Oh, scratch that, there’s ice, crumbs, and jawbreakers in there too?

Oh, okay, Ralsei did give her actual food.

Entering Lancer’s room gives the cartoon Splat sound effect from Chapter 1, and his bedroom is identical to Chapter 1.

Perfect.

And the sound effect, plays in reverse when leaving? Okay.

So, explore until we’re ready to leave, huh? Seems, suspicious.

Oh my god, I just realized, the LightCandy is literally the chalk Noelle gave Susie. What the fuck.

So, for giving the Top back his cake, we get regenerating SpinCake that heals everyone for 140. Nice.

Battle challenges, huh? This should be interesting.

So, we can get a ClubsSandwich, $100, or…Jigsaw Joe’s entire life savings. Okay.

Aw, Clover has separate heads in their dialogue box!

Just realized this “dojo” also has their bed. Odd.

Alright, let’s take these challenges!

Oh, so if we act with Kris, than spare with Ralsei or Susie…got it!

He has a mercy meter. There’s a mercy meter now. I love this.

Oh, of course his life savings is exactly one dollar.

I can already tell the Graze challenges are gonna be the biggest bitches.

Okay, so, being able to rematch bosses, with different gimmicks and attacks, but based on the same logic? Always amazing.

I love the little cut-ins from the other characters with certain lines, like Susie and Lancer revealing “for a price” means zero dollars.

“Cookie and Wife”?

The Blacksmith runs a bakery where he can fuse items…okay.

Imma get a Silver Card.

What the fuck, Mr. Society?

Okay, so, we’re “leaving” through the way we came in, so “surely” we’re going back “home” to the “real world” and our “family”. Sure.

LANCER was added to your key items.

Oh was he now?

And so was Rouxls, “even though no one wanted that.”

Oh, we, actually went back to the light world. Huh. Actually wasn’t expecting that.

Jack of Spades, and the Rules Card. Makes sense.

Still LV 1 here, thankfully. No murder yet.

Okay, thankfully I can call Toriel now.

…Undyne, what the fuck?

Also? This, car horn music, I guess? Is, um…interesting.

Oh, the, computer lab. Where Toby was in Chapter 1. Okay. Makes sense.

“Guess this means we can’t start our project.” I’d say the biggest obstacle is more that we have no clue what the hell this project is supposed to be.

Hmm, we could use the computer at my house, or we could have a fun Toby Fox adventure…

My house!

I knew Susie wouldn’t allow it, also, you always wanna jump in big pits? That’s, worrying.

Computer lab time!

So, computer themed, maybe?

Rouxls jumped out, apparently. According to Lancer.

Okay, this build up is creepy, where’s the fluffy boy?!

Who is SHE?!

Was

Was that Noelle’s chatter sound?

Asking for help?

OH MY GOD

ITS THE REINDEER LESBIAN

SHES BEEN TAKEN

NOOOO

And, I suppose, this must be, our queen.

Q5U4EX7YY2E9N. Sure. I’ll stick with Queen, yeah.

Oh, she’s a computer! That…that’s probably not, great?

Oh, those plugs are bad, brainwashers. Okay.

Okay, they’re both tired…but Ralsei isn’t here. Fuck.

Aiming at moving targets is hard.

2 Werewires spared, only 4 to go, I guess!

RALSEI IS BACK, YAY!

Fun Gang, back together, working to save Susie’s soon-to-be-girlfriend!

Rhythm game to start a new bumping song. Nice.

Might live blog less from here, since, you know, the game is starting proper.

God, I love Deltarune’s look and sound, it’s so clean? And expressive, and AAAGH, I just love it!

I love angry Ralsei.

First lose control laughing moment: Kris and Susie squishing Ralsei like a toothpaste tube, to play an arcade game.

Did, did I just play Punch-Out inside an Undertale?

Curing computer viruses with Syringes…sure.

Sweet is the rhythm guy! Nice to meet you, Sweet! You and Toby are great at this music thing.

Hey, Susie can act now! Awesome!

Ralsei too, because of bullying! Yay!

Now the whole gang’s dancing!

(This is where I took my first real break, to process stuff and relax, and also to sleep)

In between thought: it’s kinda interesting that, in Chapter 1, Susie basically had to be forced to care about Kris, Ralsei, and Susie, but as soon as Noelle is in the slightest bit of danger, she’s immediately like, “We have to save her or die trying”, huh?

“Reverse diss-tracks, where the vocalist puts themselves down and praises Queen…or noise music.” That’s some, interesting taste in music.

“All our songs are only 4 seconds long!” Damn, so you’re, like, Vine musicians?

So, the Knight is opening alternate fountains, that create dark worlds out of, more mundane places? Interesting…

So, someone new is leading the rebels. This, can’t go well.

Smorgasbord 2.

Oooh, a TP raising Item! Nice!

Oh, the guy who was already working for Queen is a Werewire now. Okay.

66 up arrows. Hmmm, I wonder if I can retry at some point…

Oh boy. Here’s the queens…wait what?

Oh my god.

Go kart time.

Noelle, you traitor! How could you!

Oh, okay. Berdly I believe more.

Also, “beloved”.

I love how Queen apparently didn’t even ask him.

“Light Nerds” Good one, Queen.

That’s one weird Check for Berdly.

Berdly, for God’s sakes, Noelle is a lesbian, you idiot.

You know, given this villain rant, I think I hate Berdly more than I do King. And I’ve dealt with both bullies AND abusive dads.

Oh god, Roller Coaster Tycoon murder (also Berdly is dead)

Garbage! Saved by it again.

Oh, this place looks glitchy.

Also, Susie, you’re not the king of the trash pile. You’re QUEEN of the trash pile.

Oh god, please don’t tell me she’s dying.

Okay, good, she just needed fluffy boy hug.

Fork in the path, advantageous to split up, huh? But there’s three of us, and, two paths probably.

Okay, I can either go with the Fluffy boy who might secretly be evil, or the mean girl who might get lesbian scenes…hmmm…

I’m flipping a coin.

Okay, Ralsei it is!

Oh, Susie is upset at me getting to pick.

Oh, they’re going together.

Oh, this can’t be good.

If I had a nickel for every indie game with a cat themed metropolis on my pc, I’d have two nickels. You can finish the meme.

I swear I just saw Noelle on the right. Something big in the streets, hmmmm…

Okay, definitely saw Noelle that time. Shame the Poppups, popped up.

…I get it, Toby, but I’m still mad.

Blocked 10 ads…okay, I still love this game.

God, I’m already missing my party members.

Okay, so I still have Lancer, but, I’m really hoping Noelle listens to reason, because Lancer is, not.

Oh god no, don’t fight me now Queen. And please don’t join me.

Alright, nobody likes Berdly. Figured.

God they’re so dumb.

“G-got any room for another truce?” Noelle, I would do a No Mercy run for you, of course I’m going to help you.

I can’t believe “No Triple Trucies” is even an option.

Yay! Noelle in party!

“LV1 Snowcaster. Might be able to use some cool moves.” She’s got Heal Prayer, a more powerful (but more expensive) Pacify, and a damaging Ice move for only 16% TP.

I love her.

I don’t know what a sugarplum is myself, actually.

Noelle, you have a one track mind, and I like it.

Lancer, she’s not a cream, and we’re not making her a bad guy.

Oh, and she’s scared of mice, I love it!

Ah, she’s never been in battle before, let’s see how this goes.

See? That wasn’t so bad, Noelle.

Oh, she’s a natural!

“Needles aren’t scary…” Tell that to anyone under 20, Noelle.

Also, “subtle” pro-Vax message?

Oh my god, I just love her animations.

So, the virus and the syringe are fighting…hm…

Okay, so, first, Noelle’s defend animation, also perfect.

Second, so Ambyu-lance’s bullets block and destroy Virovirokun’s…hmm…

Have I mentioned how much I love Noelle? This funky little Christmas Lesbian can do no wrong.

Oh my god, she can’t even confidently say we’re friends, and hearing Kris say it makes her happy, I love her so much.

Okay, so, Queen drinks Battery Acid. Makes sense for a computer.

Kris is so done with this shit, I can tell.

I am both scared of and loving Queen.

Oh Jesus Christ Berdly what the fuck is that.

That is not greatness that is…I don’t know. I’m pretty sure even tumblr isn’t horny for you, Berdly.

Christ, he’s gonna break Queen by being an idiot and then he’ll be the Chapter boss.

Her eyes say lying. Of course.

“I Did Not Know You Had… Nipples” that’s, a good point.

…Berdly, you disturb me.

Second lost control laughing moment: Noelle’s cardboard robot face, and Queen just saying “Wow Cool Face”

Lancer, what is the “illusory nipple technique”?

Oh, of course the music bots built the statue. Berdly would never do manual labor.

Oh, and, they built the next “big” thing…hmmmm…

Why are we, flavors of tea???

Okay, that should be all the werewires for now.

The, clothing store, sold me, a useless mannequin, for $300. Of course.

I am going to touch the cheese.

Maus!

Cheese maze, purposely ruined to spare more Mices.

Hmm, Berdly talks about Noelle’s crush. $20 says he actually thinks it’s him, or maybe Kris at a stretch.

Noelle is now immune to mice! Yay!

Oh, CD Bagel, Seedy Bagel, just got that.

Okay, sacrifice pacifist run to kill Berdly…I’m tempted.

Uh, Berdly, Noelle just one shot both your allies. I’m not alone, you are.

Jokes on you, buddy, I’ve been dodging A+ for years!

“(He hit me in the face with a tornado…)” Yes, Noelle, and I have papercuts on my eyelids. He do be an asshole.

Oh good, they both made Battery Acid Pies. Now we’re in a car together. Perfect. This is exactly how I wanted things to go.

Potassium

Who is this trash man?

Spamton, huh. Oh boy.

Oh god, this song has lyrics.

Oh joy, a mini boss on my own. Just what I wanted.

Oh, new game over screen! Nice.

Anyways, I hate this guy.

Okay, just one more deal, I think. I wonder what’s next.

I’m not giving you my credit card info, dude.

Oh damnit, 1% more.

Okay, I’m very scared now.

Oh, I lost $51. That’s, fair.

Okay, back in the car.

Oh my god, Queen loves Noelle too. Perfect.

Lancer took the mixtape! Nice!

Oh, he ate it…nice!

DECEMB…

Oh god she’s a little kid.

December.

I’m so sorry, Noelle. I really hope you’re going to be okay. We’ll figure out what to do.

Queen, why does everything you have explode?

Now the prize is on my head.

Susie and Ralsei! You’re back!

She can slightly heal me now…cool!

And she taught him Sarcasm. I love them all so much.

Uh, Susie! You can have it!

Okay, so, now Susie is both gay for Noelle, and suspicious of her. Amazing.

And Noelle is turned on by the threat of being killed. Have I mentioned I love these dorks?

The gang’s all here!

Uh, just got past fireworks, and, where’s Noelle?

Oh, okay. She was just watching Fireworks.

Oooo, catching mice minigame!

Oooo, more elaborate but simpler to control mice minigame!

Oooo, bucket hole!

Also, nice gay Noelle moment noted.

Oh no, please don’t take the perfect girl away from us!

Okay, so, I don’t like Berdly, but, Acid river? Bit much…

Oh, okay. He was never in danger. I hate both of you. GIVE US BACK NOELLE

GOD DAMNIT NOT THE CAGE AGAIN.

Oh, great, now we’re captured too. Except possibly Ralsei.

She only plays mobile games. Burn her.

For once Berdly is correct.

Queen, you are dumb.

Is that the super Mario world fade?

I don’t, next question.

No looking at my Search history!

Oh, hey, we can chat in here.

LANCER TIME!

YES I MISSED YOU YOU DOPE

Lancer, never say Pants hole again, and never say you were inside it either.

Lancer, do you still not know our name?!

So this is how they lampshade the tutorial-Toriel thing, huh?

Oh no, Lancer, please don’t die in here.

Um, are there rooms for all the kids at school?

Asriel…

Puzzle time!

Plot twist: Susie is not Susan.

Berdly is dumb.

Admittedly, I did brute force that second one a bit…

Okay, now Susie has outsmarted both me AND Berdly. This is sad.

Oh god, he’s gonna cry now.

Oh, my god, that’s what December meant. That’s why Berdly cares about Noelle. That’s why…oh god.

Oh wow, Susie’s a gamer. This is incredible Lore.

Oh wow, first Lancer’s face returns, now Berdly is Anime. I love this game.

Oh my god, Ralsei in a tux. I love him.

Alright, so, Lancer needs to go back to Castle Town, and we need to get the heck to Noelle. I hope Berdly’s plan actually works…

Aw, I wanted him to stay tuxedo…

Color Cafe, huh?

Oh god, Rouxls came here. I am terrified.

I love this hype manor song!

Toby Fox, why is there so much 3D Shenanigans in this 2D Top Down RPG???

Note: from here, I end up going to the secret of this chapter. Do not read if you don’t want to be spoiled on that plotline. Skip to where I say Pancake Batter.

Okay, I’m going back, and I’m gonna find this third blue check mark.

Okay, found it, now to get back to the guy…

Yay, fireworks, again!

East treasure’s hallway leading to Basement on 1F…

Oh dear.

So there’s a secret here after all…where is…

Found it!

Okay, how to open this lock, now…hm.

Well, one thing was in the field, so, maybe in the city?

Oh Jesus it’s Spamton.

$28, not a penny more.

KeyGen, huh…

If this is as hard as Jevil, I’m gonna be pissed.

Oh, great, just Kris going in. Again. Fantastic.

Oh what the fuck.

Oh Jesus Christ I hate this build up.

Oh, and I died on the elevator. That’s fun.

Okay, so I hate this elevator. A lot.

Okay! Took like six tries, but I made it past the elevator! Now, let’s see what’s waiting for me…

EmptyDisk…hmmmmmmmm…

Maybe take that back to Scamton or whoever?

…Ralsei, Susie, what are you two doing?

Okay, trash man, you better like this.

Oh Jesus Christ.

Okay, this is not what I expected to follow Jevil’s lead. But, let’s see what happens when I turn this disk in.

Oh, nothing happened. Sure it did. Just gonna walk away then…

Oh, wouldn’t you know it, something happened!

Okay, so big puppet robot man. This is terrifying.

THANK YOU SUSIE!

Roller coaster boss! Again! Oh good!

YELLOW SOUL!

Can’t write notes, gotta kill.

Spamton, oh my god. And it’s Neo’s outfit. How the fuck did I not realize before?

Im terrified, let’s GOOOOOO!

Holy shit is that the Undertale Game Over message??????

Many tries later

Okay, I think it’s actually Ralsei and Susie talking…

Quitting the game so they can get their healing items out of storage and buy some good ones extra later

Okay, third turn, and I’ve only been hit once! Granted, it did almost 50 damage to Susie, but, still, doing better this time!

Even more death later

Did he just, attack himself?

Is he surrendering?

I…I did it! I did it in one sitting! Minus quitting so I could grab healing items that did more than 40 HP!

Oh, he killed him by freeing him…….okay.

Dealmaker, huh? Let’s see what this bad boy is…

+4 defense, +5 magic (even on Kris?), and $+30%…”and…?”

Okay, Ralsei, you get that, Susie get’s Jevilstail, and I get many questions.

Alright, now back to the actual plot!

Oh…Kris has goosebumps, and Susie’s asking if they’re okay…no. I’m saying no.

I love these two so much. Now let’s save the adorable lesbian.

Pancake Batter. Alright, we’re good.

Sorry, Noelle, got distracted.

Mouse wheel!

Tasque manager helped!

Man, this room is big and empty, with an odd exit door and screens on the north wall. Hmmmm…

Toby!

Thank you annoying dog!

Okay, I still love this music. Just wanted to say that. Anyways, PROGRESS!

We’re tea covered now. Except Susie. She’s tea filled.

Oh god, I don’t trust Berdly with Susie.

God, Knight teased.

Duck ride with Fluffy Boy.

Okay, so, puzzle time, methonk.

High Five!

More duck ride!

Ralsei, do you wanna do the kissy?

Oh boy.

Oh jeez.

Oh damn.

Rouxls.

Ralsei, you read my mind.

Oh Jesus it’s the tank from the first game.

Okay, so, we, take houses? Okay.

I can’t believe some people thought this dork was Gaster.

Wow, I beat him in like 3 and a half turns because I blocked him in.

Another God Dammit because SOMEONE didn’t pay attention to what happened to Lancer.

His head is still blue…

Hey, Camera! Peace signs and hugs!

Mostly hugs.

Yay, more Susie and Noelle time!

Oh my god, my heart is breaking.

Okay, I love these adorable girls.

Oh boy, this is, weird.

“Point and hearts come out” or “Eat moss”. The choice of a generation.

Fair point, Susie.

She likes scary things, huh.

Kinky

Have I mentioned how much I love these two? Because I do.

Susie and Noelle are best girls ever, no objections.

Oh good, Berdly, don’t ruin this completely, okay?

I fucking knew it.

Noelle, you’re going to kill him, and that’s okay with me.

Susie, stop squishing him like toothpaste!

Oh boy, I get big “final boss” energy right now…

Werewerewire?!

Okay, so I just stole from Noelle’s room.

Okay, boss time.

Shit, I should’ve healed up.

Okay, so, I died, but, I can fix that!

So, this boss is calling back to how the town’s internet has gone out, a fact I didn’t even learn until watching other content last night when I should have been sleeping, because I forgot to talk to Alphys during the brief chance I had.

Also, now both she and Ralsei have made reference to the real world outside…hmmmm…

So I guess the plot is about Google search being evil…yeah that checks out.

Bitch, did you just funny runny way?

Hmm, I’d say 50/50 odds of him being a drama Queen vs. him trying to trick Susie into caring about him.

Yep, he’s trying to score a kiss. Berdly…get a job.

Alright, let’s save Noelle, and possibly the whole town.

The “Roaring” Knight?

Oh god, the determination…who is this Knight, what is going on, and how involved are we?

Wait wait wait wait wait wait WAIT

When she described the Knight making more darkness, she said they took their blade, and showed an image of a knife. Was…was this…

HOLY SHIT IS KRIS’S NIGHT SELF THE KNIGHT?!?!

Oh. It was a giant robot. Not a statue.

Susie’s dancing!

Oh yeah, he can fly.

Resistance! Yay!

Okay, so, we sentai up in this bitch.

I wonder how the hell this story would go if we didn’t go pacifist then? Because in Chapter 1, all that really changed was how the boss was defeated in the cutscene, and like a couple details later. This is, a lot more than that.

Okay, so, three rounds of HP, punch out for her turns, just keep attacking. Got it.

Two rounds down, one to go!

Yes, eat your own Baseball, bitch!

Oh, suicide attack. Well it was just a robot.

Oh. She still has us.

Oh fuck the robot is Noelle’s mom. Fuck.

Okay, so, Queen is dead.

Oh fuck, don’t take over the world with darkness all of you, please.

The Roaring?

Oh fuck, new legend lore.

Titans, Fountains, enveloping the land in devastation. Oh jeez.

Lost eternally in an endless night…that’s not paradise. That’s hell.

QUEEN IS ALIVE?!?! AND DIDN’T KNOW ANY OF THAT?!?!

Thank you, Susie!

Okay, that’s a good ending for a second chapter, it’s dark fountain time!

Susie, please don’t turn evil.

…

And, we’re in the computer lab!

Wait, Ms. Boom? Does, does Gerson have a daughter, or wife?

Lost control laughing #3: this

I love this game so much. Time to explore town again.

Okay, Alphys does crush on Undyne still, at least.

Oops, I just let all the prisoner dogs out.

Awww, Undyne likes Alphys too!

Napstablook, I love you.

Oh shit, Asgore used to be a pig?

Oh god, this Rudy storyline is gonna be depressing all the way through, huh?

Susie, can we steal the tower of the gods?

Hey, we can actually go back to Ralsei’s dark world?!

Okay, this is gonna be interesting.

Oh thank god, we can save in the epilogue now, cool.

Oh cool, King and Queen together.

Oh my god he calls her Queenie Beanie. I love this.

So, a card and a computer fucked to make Lancer, who is a card. Okay.

Okay, so Lancer DOES know Kris’s name! Just not Ralsei’s!

New battle challenges! Yes!

Might save “Ch. 2 All-stars” for another time, though…

Perfection is the mannequin reaction.

Oh my god there’s a dedicated room for listening to music I love this

Alright, time to skedaddle back to the real world.

Okay, so Alvin is Gerson’s son, and he’s depressed. Fun.

Oh, MK and Snowy are by the creepy bunker. That’s…fun.

Okay, so, Susie scared them off after they insulted Kris, because Kris said something about the bunker…hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Hey, Nice Cream Guy is one of the Ice-E’s employees! Nice!

Ah, PizzaPants. Never change.

Oh hey, it’s the little guy, who’s clone is a Gaster follower. And the bird guy’s still in the library, and the donut guy is still in his car…

Hey, Catty and Bratty are becoming friends again! Cool!

Omg, Sans’s store is open. Do I…go in?

Hell yes I do!

Okay, so, Grillby’s music still, but, different interior. Interesting…

Sans, a day and 2 years in this game are not equivalent. It’s a day and 3 years.

The trousle grows further away.

Oh jeez Susie’s been drinking the milk. Oh god.

Cool, Susie’s seeing Onion too!

Oh, never mind.

A song is coming from deep under the water…either Shyren is involved, or this is gonna take a turn.

See you, Su-

Oh! Hey mom! Meet Susie!

Pie for all!

Oh my god, Susie, my heart is breaking.

Okay, so Alphys and Toriel know about the chalk. That, kinda makes Susie thinking she’d get expelled for it, really depressing.

Okay, so, Toriel and Susie are gonna make Pie together, that’s cool. Still, pretty worried about, Kris.

Uh, I just ran the sink, and, uh…

WHAT THE FUCK

OKAY SO MY SOUL IS UNDER THE SINK, KRIS WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHY IS IT BLACK OUT THE WINDOW WHERE ARE YOU GOING

WHAT THE FUCK

…so we get a cute scene with Susie and Toriel, then Susie asks where Kris is and…they do this sometimes?

I’m very concerned.

Okay, Toriel is concerned too, enough to say “hell”. Even Susie is shocked.

Okay, so, they’re coming back, uh, okay, this isn’t good, right?

Stopped the faucet, opened the drawer, and…we’re back?!

Kris what the fuck are you doing

And why couldn’t we find Asgore in the town?

Okay, so, we’re all sleeping in the living room. I, guess tomorrow’s the weekend, probably? I don’t know?

Susie, doesn’t have caring parents, I guess?

Oh god, Susie wants them to come to our world, but, Lancer is a playing card, he can’t…I don’t know. I’ll say it’s “far-fetched”.

There’s a festival, apparently. This seems…suspicious.

I’d take Ralsei, so you could take Noelle.

She’s asleep.

That, might not be good, in this context.

Okay, so, we’re asleep too, I think?

Oh god, Toriel’s tires are slashed, that can not be good, in any way.

Okay, night time, Toriel and Susie are asleep…now what are you doing, Kris?

That, knife…

Okay, so, yep, they’re the Knight, and they just opened Darkness in their living room. This is, not, good. And, the tv’s on, and the door’s unlocked…

What the fuck is happening?

Ending credits song sounds, techno? Is this more of Don’t Forget? Or a remix? I hear the lyrics at least.

“To be continued in Chapter 3” OH IT BETTER BE, TOBY

So, yeah, that's Deltarune Chapter 2. In conclusion: this explains nothing, raises 120% more questions, and overall is still an incredible, wonderful game. I also like how each Chapter so far has been almost as long as a full play through of Undertale, and yet we're still somehow only 2 sevenths of the way through. Oh yeah, did I not mention? After completing it, it brought me to a chapter select with SEVEN DIFFERENT CHAPTERS, only two of which were available. So, you know. THAT'S FUN!

In actual conclusion, please play this game, it's free, it's amazing, and also buy the soundtrack on Bandcamp so Toby can make some kinda living.

#deltarune #deltarune spoilers #deltarune chapter 2 #deltarune chapter two #deltarune chapter two spoilers #deltarune liveblog #shut up sorio #I have so many more thoughts #just give them a while to coalesce into something coherent

[chatonne-rousse]

Be Bold, Be Kind, Be Brave

This is one akuma whose intentions are good. After all, who couldn't use an extra dose of courage to overcome fear?

A superhero whose identity will be immediately revealed in the process, for one.

When an akuma causes several secrets to come to light all at once, our heroes will need to drum up some courage to face their fears - and each other.

But what's waiting after that looks like it might be a dream come true. It'll just take a bit of bravery and a lot of heart. Piece of cake.

***

Only eight days late and several dollars short, I’m wishing @jennagrinsoverml a happy belated birthday with this gift, written just for her.  ILY, my friend!  

Read it on Ao3 here.

***

Ladybug has to give Courageous some credit: she's a rarity, an akuma born of selfless means. A teenager who hadn't mustered the courage to stand up for a younger student being bullied at school, she'd been so ashamed, so angry with herself, that Hawkmoth had found an easy target to ply with honeyed words and promises.

Her power isn't even a terrible one. The beam of light she shoots from her right hand simply causes the person it strikes to relive the last encounter they had when their bravery failed them, this time with courage aplenty. It's admirable, really.

Admirable, but terrifying nonethless.

(The fear of Chat Noir finding out her identity is deep and dark and often floats to the surface of her nightmares with blue eyes and white hair and a drowned, ruined world. He cannot know. The cost is too high.)

"Whatever you do," she calls to her partner, frantic and scared, "don't let her hit you! Please, Chat!"

She hears the desperation in her own voice, and the look on his face conveys that he certainly does. He nods solemnly.

"I'll do my best, My Lady."

She nods back, and off they go into the fray.

For well over an hour, they fight Courageous through parks and plazas, sidewalks and thoroughfares. All around them, the people of Paris have squared their shoulders, lifted their chins, and braved conversations big and small with people only they could see.

Ladybug has to smile as she hears a young man confidently ask for a raise and watches his eyes light up at the response.

That smile fades when she remembers once again that the last time her courage had failed her was just as they were dismissed for lunch break, when she'd tried to invite Adrien to a movie that weekend. His eyes had been so kind as he'd waited for her to gather her words properly, and somehow that had just made it harder.

Then Lila had "accidentally" tripped and knocked into her, sending her to the floor. The memory of Adrien's hand reaching out to her to help her up, those same kind, patient eyes locked on hers, makes Ladybug's cheeks heat even now. But after she was upright again, after Lila had stalked off because no one seemed to care that she "probably would need surgery now because her arthritis would flare", Nino had reminded Adrien about the gig he was DJing on Friday and Alya had led her away to show her something on her phone.

Just like that, her opportunity was gone.

And that would be fine, honestly. Marinette was used to moments of stuttering and botched declarations when it came to Adrien.

But if she's hit by Courageous, Chat Noir - plus the citizens of Paris, Hawkmoth, everyone - will hear Ladybug try to ask Adrien Agreste on a date, and that will be a disaster of epic proportions.

"Ladybug, look out!"

Chat's body slams into hers, sending them rolling on the sidewalk just as a beam of magical light zips over their heads. In a flash, Chat Noir bundles her in his arms and vaults them to the rooftop above, making sure she's steady on her feet once they land.

"Thank you, Ki-" The words die in her throat when she sees over her partner's shoulder that Courageous has followed them.

Chat turns, his baton at the ready, while Ladybug reaches for her yo-yo, but neither is quick enough to stop the akuma's beam from finally finding one of its main targets.

"I'm sorry, Bug," he murmurs as his eyes glaze over.

Using her yo-yo as a spinning shield, Ladybug drags her partner behind the nearest chimney stack just as he begins to speak.

Panic sets in as her mind screams at her over the hum of her yo-yo, the akuma's laughter, her partner's voice.

I can't just leave him!

"Father, may I come in?"

Oh no, oh no, oh no. I can't hear this!

"Yes, Nathalie said she penciled me into your schedule for noon."

Nathalie?

Ladybug's gaze snaps to her partner, yo-yo still spinning to deflect beams of light. She's surprised to find Chat Noir's head bowed in deference, though his eyes shine with a confident gleam.

"I requested this appointment to ask you again if I could attend the event with my friends tomorrow evening. I've already completed my assignments for school and the homework from my Mandarin tutor."

Mandarin tutor? What?!

"Yes, Father, I'm aware that you don't care for Nino, but..."

The panicked scream in her mind gives up any attempt at coherence; by this point, it's no more than a muddled loop of Nathalie, Mandarin, Nino, Father.

Ladybug feints to the left to avoid being hit by the akuma as a mix of terror and adrenaline floods her system. She leaps forward, leaving Chat behind the chimney in the hope that she can engage the akuma just long enough to get her partner back and finally, finally finish this off.

She knows too much already. The cat has bolted straight out of the bag and is running loose on this rooftop beneath her feet, a distraction she can't handle right now.

On hero autopilot, she hurdles one beam after another, then tucks and rolls and pops up to roundhouse kick Courageous in the chest, sending her flying.

She hears the akuma's "oof" just as Chat Noir's jubilant voice rings out from behind the chimney.

"Thank you, Father! Thank you so much!"

She can hear his grin in those simple words, the sheer joy in being given permission to leave the house. Everyone in their class knows what a tight leash Gabriel Agreste keeps on his son. It breaks her heart every time she thinks of it. In fact, she's successfully fought for his release from that marble prison on more than one occasion! So yes, she'd already known with all the clues in place, but there was truly no mistaking it now: that was Adrien talking to his father.

Because Adrien is Chat Noir.

Her heart cracks. Oh, Chaton.

Suddenly, the akuma's progress in clambering to her feet is impeded by the whoosh and subsequent metallic thunk of Chat's overhand swing with his baton.

Relief floods her heart at the return of her partner. No matter who he is, Chat Noir is her other half, and Ladybug is never quite herself without him.

"Maybe we could use a little extra luck, My Lady!" Chat winks at her over his shoulder before facing the akuma again.

"Yes! Right! You bet!"

Get it together, Marinette, she thinks. Her face heats and she scampers away to the safety of the chimney stack where Chat was hidden to call for her lucky charm.

A red and black spotted can opener drops into her hands and she looks at it in confusion. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she grumbles, looking around frantically but seeing nothing to help her decipher how to use the lucky charm.

She takes a deep breath, peeks out from behind the bricks, and promptly takes a light beam to the face.

No, no, no, no!

It feels vaguely like having a water balloon popped on her head, a chill of sensation dripping down her spine and rippling through her nerves. It's a small mercy that being hit by an akuma rarely hurts physically. Her vision swims like a mirage in the desert, the familiar courtyard at school coalescing from vapor around her.

The last thing she sees is her partner's stricken face.

The last thing she hears is the akuma cackling.

"Heylo! Who! I mean," she takes a deep breath, a rush of confidence tingling along her nerves. "Hey, Adrien!" She smiles and gives him a little wave.

His grin takes her breath away. "Hi, Marinette! How are you?"

"I'm great!"

You can do it, you can do it!, her heart sings, and miraculously, her brain listens. Her smile turns coy. She taps her lip with her index finger. Her pulse pounds a bolstering tattoo in her ears. Go for it, girl!

"But I could be better."

Adrien's smile drops a fraction. "Are you okay? Is there something I can do?"

With another deep breath, she squares her shoulders and looks him in the eyes, her very cells imbued with a courage unparalleled even when she's wearing spots. She could do anything, anything, right now, but she has her mind set on accomplishing one thing and one thing only.

"You could join me for a movie on Saturday."

"I could...?" His brows furrow, but his grin grows slowly, bright but incredulous. "Are you asking me....?" He blinks, takes two shallow breaths. "Do you mean just the two of us?"

She nods decisively. "A date."

You did it. You did it! A veritable party erupts in the back of her mind, radiant relief spreading to her fingertips. It feels so good to finally break through her anxiety and fear and ask him that simple question that felt like an impossible task just a few hours ago.

Thankfully, he doesn't keep her waiting. The answer is in his eyes, anyway. "I would love to," he breathes, cheeks pink and smile dazzling.

"Really?" Marinette squeaks, and now it's his turn to nod.

"I'll be there even if I have to sneak out." Adrien reaches for her hand and gives it a little squeeze. "We'll talk about it later today, okay?"

She nods again, her chest so full of emotion she can barely breathe. Not only did she ask him, but he said yes!

Suddenly, blue sky fills her vision and she regains awareness to the sound of a scuffle on the other side of the chimney stack. Ladybug tentatively gets to her feet, reaching for her yo-yo and setting it spinning immediately. This time there's no peeking around the corner; she bursts from behind the bricks on the offensive, ready to finish the fight.

What she finds is Courageous struggling under Chat's baton, twisted up like a pretzel and unable to move for the steel-toed boot resting across her shoulders.

"Just in time, LB!" Chat crows triumphantly. He tosses her a bracelet emblazoned with the words Be Bold, Be Kind, Be Brave that currently pulses with Hawkmoth's dark energy.

In moments, the bracelet is broken, the akuma is freed and purified, and a confused teenager sits where Courageous was restrained a moment ago.

Chat docks his baton at his back and looks at his partner with the softest eyes she's ever seen, a tiny, equally soft smile playing at his lips.

Her heart sighs. Adrien. That's Adrien, and he knows.

The lucky charm sits heavy in her palm. Abject fear makes her hope against hope that she won't remember his identity when she casts her miraculous cure, just as her heart longs to hold on to the knowledge that her precious partner is the boy of her deepest desires, and maybe, maybe they really can have it all.

With a deep breath, she throws the unused can opener into the air, watching magical ladybugs and healing light burst forth and spread throughout the city. She waits, holding her breath, but when pink light swirls around them, the only affect it has is the healing of the twinge in her ankle from when she fell mid-fight.

She looks up, and her partner's eyes say it all.

He remembers, too.

Even as fear grips her heart, radiant joy shines from his face as his grin spreads. It scrunches his eyes behind the mask and pinkens his cheeks, delight seeming to glow from his pores. Ladybug has never seen her partner so happy. That elation is a balm to her soul, and she can't help but smile right along with him.

Ladybug turns to the akuma victim and holds out her hand, offering the bracelet back to her. "I really like that inscription" she says, pointing at the now-silver bracelet as the girl fixes it back on her wrist.

She smiles shyly at the two heroes. "I wish I had the courage to do more. I wish I was brave like you."

"We get scared sometimes, too. Everyone does," Ladybug starts, before her partner nudges her shoulder with his elbow.

"Speak for yourself, Bugaboo. This cat has no fear." Chat Noir throws her an exaggerated wink, and the girl laughs. "But real talk, anyone can be a hero in their own way. Little things, big stuff...you're stronger than you think, I promise. Cat's honor."

She nods. "Thank you for, you know, saving me and everything." Glancing at the street below, she gestures toward the edge of the roof. "Would it be too much trouble to get me back down there?"

"Not at all," Ladybug replies with a smile. Calling on her own courage, she looks at her partner and takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing, she thinks. "The usual spot in five? Or less, I guess, since it...doesn't matter now," she says with a shrug that she hopes looks nonchalant.

And there's that smile that shines like the summer sun. He gives her a jaunty salute. "I'll be there with bells on," he says, tapping the bell at his throat and making it jingle.

Ladybug just shakes her head and giggles.

A few minutes later, when she lands beside Chat Noir on their familiar rooftop, her earrings are beeping a frantic rhythm, signaling mere seconds before she detransforms. Instinct has her looking around the roof, ready to dart behind anything she can use to hide.

Before she can move, Chat steps toward her and quietly asks, "Marinette?"

Her transformation dissolves in a wave of pink light, and she hears him gasp as she catches Tikki gently in her palms. Marinette takes her time retrieving a macaron from her purse to feed her kwami, deliberately moving slowly in an attempt to get herself under control before she looks up at her partner. He knows, and he's thrilled, and that's amazing, but it feels like the entire world will change when their gazes finally meet, and she's just not ready yet.

"I, um...I didn't use my cataclysm, so I can stay transformed if you'd prefer, but..." he trails off.

There's something in his voice that finally makes her look at him. Just like when he talked to his father under the akuma's control, his head is bowed slightly, but instead of confidence, this time his eyes are bright with nervous hope.

Marinette understands both the nerves and the hope, and she'll joke with her partner until the end of time about who's in charge, but it feels wrong for either Chat or Adrien to look at her with uneasy deference.

And that's what she thinks of as courage wells in her chest. Her brave, steadfast partner, the other half of their unstoppable team, the boy with terrible timing who can still make her laugh, her best friend whom she loves so fiercely, should never feel he has to approach her in fear.

"Oh, Minou," she breathes. "Of course, go ahead. I...I already know."

He nods and stands a little straighter, and with a whisper and a flash of green, Chat's magical leather is replaced with denim and cotton poplin.

Predictably, her brain is short-circuiting, hollering in panic and terror, but even as her heart pounds wildly in her chest, it whispers quietly, gently, that this is her partner. Her silly kitty. Her dearest friend. He just happens to look like Adrien Agreste at the moment.

(Okay, this is going to take some getting used to.)

Tikki flies off to join Plagg nearby, while Marinette sits down on the roof with her knees pulled to her chest. She pats the space to her right and Adrien settles in cross-legged next to her.

He's the first to break the silence. "I'm sorry, Marinette. I shouldn't have gotten hit. I shouldn't have let you get hit. I know this wasn't what you wanted, and-"

"No, no, don't apologize," she interrupts, shaking her head. "It happens. It's...not the first time." Marinette sighs and closes her eyes, suddenly feeling a lot less courageous in the face of this world-bending change now that they're in their civilian clothes and it's Adrien apologizing to her. She presses her forehead to her knees and tries to imagine the boy beside her in magical leather and cat ears. It only helps a little, but it's enough. "We, um-" she pauses, licks her lips. "We have a lot to talk about. I just don't know if I'm ready for...all of it."

Adrien is silent for an uncomfortably long moment. "Yeah. We do." She hears him take a deep breath that shakes a bit on the exhale and turns her head a fraction to peek at him. His eyes are on the distant horizon. "I...think I understand some things now."

Abruptly, he turns toward her, a little smile tilting the corners of his mouth when he his eyes meet hers. Fear tells her to look away, but she tamps it down and holds his gaze. His smile widens.

"May I ask you something, Marinette?"

She nods.

"When you came up to me at lunch today, were you...planning to ask me on a date?"

Her pulse pounds in her ears. She could give in to fear, say no and brush it off like Chat had misheard her when she was under the akuma's spell. But suddenly her heartbeat seems to drum, "be bold, be kind, be brave," over and over again, and just as the smile begins to slip from his face, she finds the nerve to nod again.

Just like on the other rooftop a few minutes ago, his face lights up like the first rays of sun after a week of rain, shining splendid even in the early afternoon light.

"Am I--" he whispers, his breath hitching though his joy never dims, "Am I the boy?"

Be bold, be kind, be brave.

She calls on her Ladybug courage and nods once more.

His breath catches again and his eyes fill with tears that he brushes away quickly.

Clarity dawns all of a sudden, sweeping her fears to the corners of her mind to be dealt with later. She understood Chat Noir being happy to know his partner's identity, his excitement in finding out his Lady was his friend, too. But this is so much more. Beside her sits Adrien, wiping tears of joy from his eyes at the knowledge that Marinette is in love with him. This might just be a dream coming true on a random rooftop on a random Thursday afternoon.

"Chaton," she breathes, stretching her legs in front of her and placing a hand on his knee.

His hand covers hers, and she meets his gaze, words caught in her throat at the intensity in his eyes.

"I have a confession to make." He rubs the back of his neck with his free hand and takes a deep breath. "I think everyone in Paris knows that Chat Noir is in love with Ladybug. I...know you know." He shrugs as his smile turns a little helpless. "But no one knows that I might have a little tiny bit of a huge crush on Marinette Dupain-Cheng, too."

"Kid, don't lie to your girlfriend. You know very well that I knew, because I've been telling you forever!" Plagg calls from somewhere behind them. Tikki hushes him loudly.

"Okay, he's not wrong," Adrien says, huffing out a combination of a laugh and a sigh. I'm just very stupid, apparently."

"Hey, don't talk that way about my partner." Marinette bumps his shoulder with hers. "I have a teeny, tiny, huge crush on him, too, you know, and I don't appreciate your tone."

Adrien's surprised laugh rings out across the rooftop, filling her heart with so much love she can barely breathe with the force of it. She could listen to that laugh for the rest of her life. She hopes she'll have that chance.

He brushes tears from his eyes again as his laughter subsides, his grin still shining bright. "I'm so happy it's you, Marinette. Beyond happy." He turns her hand beneath his and threads his fingers through hers. "Honestly, there's no one else I would rather have as my partner."

"Me too, Minou," she murmurs, squeezing his hand lightly as incredulous joy sings through her veins.

Tikki's little voice pipes up nearby. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's almost time to go back to class."

Adrien lets go of her hand to fish for his phone and curses under his breath when he sees the time. "She's right, My Lady. Could we meet up this evening? I know we have, um...a lot of things to talk about."

Marinette nods. It feels like she's done a lot of that in the last few minutes.

When Adrien stands, he offers his hand to help her up. Just like in the courtyard at lunch, his eyes are patient and kind, but now they shine with something more. She lets him pull her to her feet, then wraps her arms around his waist in a tight hug.

His soft exhale at her ear as he melts against her makes her smile, scrunching up his white overshirt under her cheek. Her senses are filled with him, and she's surprised to realize that it's a feeling of comfort and safety instead of the usual panic.

Maybe loving Adrien and being loved in return will be easier than it seemed all this time. Her fears seem so silly when his arms are wrapped around her shoulders and his head rests on top of hers - a perfect fit.

Even the nightmarish terror of Chat Blanc is diminished. Adrien never told anyone her identity; he knew because he himself was Chat Noir, and there's no way in the world that Chat would hurt his Lady, nor would Adrien ever harm Marinette on purpose. She must have misunderstood. He must have misunderstood. He was an akuma, after all. She sighs into Adrien's shirt. She can never allow that terrible timeline to occur, but whatever happens after this, they'll face it together. Stronger. She'll make sure of it.

"Do you think my father will let me go to Nino's gig in real life?" he asks quietly.

The sad note in his voice breaks her heart. She squeezes him tighter.

"I don't know, Kitty. Do you think we'll be having a movie date on Saturday?"

He leans back abruptly, though his hands still grip her shoulders. "Of course! I'll be there if I have to sneak out!"

Marinette boops his nose, laughing when his eyes cross. "I think that's your answer for Friday night, too."

Suddenly she's in his arms again, this time lifted off the ground and spinning. She can't help but giggle.

"I knew I was in love with a genius!" he cries, jubilant. He sets her down and plants a kiss in the middle of her forehead before calling for Plagg to transform him.

When he turns his masked face back to her, it's like the world is different. She can easily see the brilliant green of Adrien's eyes in Chat's glowing sclerae. The blending of two of her favorite people into one extraordinary boy who - oh my goodness - just said he loves her gives her a shot of courage even before she suits up again.

"You missed, beau gosse."

His eyes widen comically. "I....what?"

Marinette smiles and calls for her transformation, then taps her lips with her gloved fingers. "You kissed me, but you missed."

The sly gleam in his eyes makes her breathing speed up.

"First of all, I would ask before I did that," Chat says, sticking out his thumb before raising his clawed index finger. "Second, I thought I'd save our first kiss for Saturday. Seems like a great way to end our first date, doesn't it?"

Our first date. A tingle runs down her spine. She likes the sound of that.

"I guess I can wait." Her smile turns cheeky. "But it'll be our third--"

"Ah, ah, ah," Chat cuts her off with a grin. He extends his thumb again. "First of all, I don't remember either of those."

Ladybug rolls her eyes, still smiling.

"And second," he says, his voice pitching lower and making her heart skip a beat, "it will be Marinette and Adrien's first kiss."

Oh, this boy, she thinks as her heart soars.

She bites her lip to keep from giggling. "I suppose you're right, even though we both know we're the same people."

Chat gives her a deadpan look. "Just let me have this, Bug."

She bursts into laughter and reaches for her yo-yo, delighting in watching a grin light her partner's face.

"I really am looking forward to Saturday," he says, unhooking his baton from his back. He reaches for her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. "We'll talk about it later today, okay?"

She nods and watches him vault off toward home.

The wind against her face is exhilarating as she swings back to the bakery. It's amazing how one revelation seems to have changed everything. Even the zip of her yo-yo through the air sounds different to her ears now that she knows, now that he knows.

Marinette detransforms as she touches down on the terrace and sinks into her pink-striped chair while Tikki phases through the hatch into her room in search of food. A quick check of her phone tells her that she has ten minutes before she has to go back to school.

School. One more thing that's going to be different.

Before nerves can creep in, she thinks of Chat Noir and his beaming joy at learning the identity of his beloved partner. That was Adrien. She thinks of the comfort of being wrapped in Adrien's arms, his scent, his warmth. That was Chat Noir.

And when she sits down in class behind him in a few short minutes, that boy with the soft smile and shining eyes will look like Adrien, but now he's so much more.

Marinette stands up from her chair with a lighter heart than she can remember having in a long, long time. She's suddenly looking forward to the second half of the day, even more excited for Nino's event tomorrow night, and positively thrilled that she has a date with Adrien - who is Chat Noir! - on Saturday.

There's so much to experience, so many memories to be made. It feels a bit like a dream. It feels more than a bit scary. But it's going to be great.

It's just going to take a little courage.

She's got this.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fan fiction #identity reveal #adrien agreste #marinette dupain-cheng #ml fic #ml fanfic #adrienette #my writing #happy birthday jenna! #the real power move is posting this on an episode premiere day #thanks for reading it anyway

[theoriginalladya]

What is your process when you do your research and world building for a new story? What advice would you give to someone?

Oh goodness, what a fabulous question! But… do I even have something I could call a ‘process’? Hmm, let me think.

[to be completely transparent here, this is my second try at this question. I was going to use Caleb as an example, since you were so kind to start me down his path, but Real Life interrupted yesterday, and then I had a new idea pop into my head this morning – what’re the odds? LOL – and thought it might be worth using as an example]

So, let’s say you’re sitting in the car after getting home from running to our favorite coffee/tea shop, and you check tumblr and email before getting out of the car and in the process you’re ambushed not once, but TWICE by IDEAS, and suddenly those ideas MERGE into the PERFECT STORY IDEA.

(welcome to my world – no one’s safe! :D )

Idea #1: you’ve had it for over ten years, it’s part of #54/120 on your Master Shepard Spreadsheet so it’s been there a while. Occasionally, it teases and tempts your brain for time, but nothing really ‘hits’ until you see someone reblog a post you’d shared a while back and rereading that gives you an “OH!” moment of sorts.

Idea #2: comes crashing out of the wild like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park, slamming into you, your idea, and grabbing hold screaming “MINE! MINE! MINE!” (ie: a friend has been writing about a smiliar sort of concept and you’ve been interested, yet you haven’t found the right way to do participate… until NOW).

ULTIMATE IDEA is born. So, now what?

Well, after sitting in the car for about ten minutes as the pieces and parts swim around in your head and find where they fit together, finally coalescing into a relatively coherent premise… it’s time to start. You think to yourself, “Where is the beginning?” then realize… you already have, so it’s time to take the next step and for that I always have a few things on hand:

1) Notebook – I try to have a notebook (big or small, whatever works) for each of my projects just so I can find stuff easier. A place where I can scribble down anything that hits me – literally! – while I think about the idea. Dialogue snippets, scene ideas, characters I want to be there, plot points, etc. Always step #1

2) Sticky Notes – great for jotting down short things quickly and attaching them inside said notebook (trust me, INSIDEor you’ll end up losing it still. I speak from experience *sobs*). Sometimes my notebooks have more sticky notes in them than writing on the pages, but that’s okay. Sticky notes are easier to manipulate and move around… especially when outlining a plot where you change the order a half dozen times and still aren’t satisfied…

3) PENS PENS PENS! – okay, maybe this is more the former teacher in me, but I HAVE to have a bunch of pens on hand to write with. In case one runs out of ink. In case the cats steal borrow them. Or maybe just to feed my weird pen obsession… hmm.

Now then, back to the question. So, you’ve got this idea (and it’s a GREAT idea you’re really excited about!!!) and you next need to figure out how/what/when/where/etc…

I usually have a kernel of a plot idea by this point: oh, hey, let’s make it angsty (sorry, Kaidan!). Shepard died in the War and Kaidan is still trying to move on. He’s still with the Alliance, teaching biotics (hmmm… soldiers or teens? 5-10 years after the war?) with Jack (hi, Jack!) and Kahlee (not enough Kahlee fic out there!) until Admiral Hackett pulls him to go chase down a Shepard sighting. Why? Aren’t there others who can do that? Why this particular Shepard sighting and not previous ones? WHY KAIDAN? After what he’s been through? Because if anyone’s going to know if it’s Shepard or a fake (FAKE? OH NO!) it’s Kaidan, right? And maybe… just to twist the heartstrings, let’s say the report came out of… OMEGA… which is still rebuilding after Cerberus and the War, but hey, it’s Omega so it’s pretty much as it was, so maybe a teeny bit less grudgy towards the Alliance types (but not much) because of Shepard helping save it from Cerberus… and the reapers. (maybe? Hmm, might need to think about that more)

OK, great! Potential plot! What comes next?

At this point, I tend to go to the Mass Effect Wiki to jump around, immersing myself in lore, ideas, characters, etc. Sometimes looking for something specific, other times (like now) with only a vague idea, but mostly just waiting for the sparks to fly (translation: ideas to hit!). A lot of times I will start developing playlists for the characters (Aubrey Shepard playlist here) or the story ideas, just to have something to listen to that might stir up more ideas. Occasionally, I will pull out one of the writing prompt lists I’ve saved to see if any of them ‘call’ to the character/story/world and noodle around with that to see what it generates. (Best use of this so far has been with the writing prompt you gave me ages ago for Caleb Shepard. Look what THAT spawned! 😊)

Now, to specifically address worldbuilding: Fanfics are a lot easier to develop in this regard because I have a setting in which to put the story. In this instance – Mass Effect. With some stories (like my AUs) there is a twist to that which requires a little more effort. For example: ME/WWII ‘verse, I’m adapting Mass Effect to fit into 1940s Europe during the war. In my Celtic AU, I’m adapting it to fit in a very specific way for my Irish Shepard. In my Werwolf AU, I’m adapting the Werewolf: the Apocalypse RPG world to the Mass Effect world.

Some ideas are easier to adjust than others, but the biggest suggestion I have for anyone else trying this is to think outside the box. Let your imagination run wild. Once I figured that out, it sort of opened up a whole new way to look at things creatively (and sort of let loose all these Shepards to the spreadsheet… but that’s another story!). Take inspiration wherever you find it. Play with it. Mold it. Use it if it works for you; toss it if it doesn’t. There’s no one right way to do this.

I stress that again – THERE IS NO RIGHT/WRONG WAY TO DO THIS.

I’m the best example of that. I trained as an historian, not a writer. It’s taken me a good 25+ years to get to the point I’m at now (after the muses finally came back). My strength is in researching things, finding information I can use to build up ideas, developing plots. This is also my weakness because a) I tend to find a crumb and keep following the trail, even if it runs out, b) I get distracted by SQUIRRELS! and c) I have way too many great ideas on my list of things to write, most of which will likely never get written. But, hey… it’s entertaining to think about them, anyway. 😊

I hope this makes sense! I would say if I had to describe my writing process as a DnD alignment, it would be somewhere between Chaotic Good – Chaotic Neutral – Chaotic Evil, just depends on which moment you catch me in! 😉

Thanks so much for the question!

Just as a side note: Aubrey Shepard is now officially #120 on the Master Shepard Spreadsheet…

#swaps55 #on writing #writing as a process #research #ladya writes #Welcome to the chaos inside my head! #aubrey

[averykedavra]

If you’re feeling up for it could you please do 3. “You’re not hurting me, you’re not heavy. I’ve got you, love.” With Roman and Janus. Thank you!!

(Wow, you all really like roceit, huh? This is my sole prompt for today as I caught up on homework instead, but I’ll be back tomorrow, if canon doesn’t break me)

Words: 3981

“Okay,” Janus said. “What’s wrong?”

“What?” Roman flinched and pulled at his apron. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Hold on a second,” Janus told the customer in front of him, who opened their mouth to ask a question. Janus made a zip it gesture before pushing off the counter and dragging Roman into the storage closet. The door automatically closed, and Janus kicked the wedge into the gap before it slammed.

Hidden among racks of coffee beans, Roman seemed to relax. He ran a hand through his hair and leaned forward to kiss Janus quickly on the lips.

“You okay?” Roman asked when he pulled away. “You look stressed.”

“Of course I am, I’m on barista duty.” Janus glanced at the door. He could hear the customers babbling, but if this was an emergency, they would survive without a dead-eyed barista to hand them coffee. “What’s wrong?”

“What, do I need an excuse to see my boyfriend?” Roman placed a hand on his chest in mock hurt. “I love you!”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Janus said, though he allowed himself to preen at the affection. “You’re harried and there’s coffee all over your apron. And you’re supposed to be lifting boxes. What happened?”

Roman sighed and deflated like an old balloon. “The shadow demons are holding the place hostage again.”

“Again?” Janus groaned. “What is that, three times this month?”

“Yep.” Roman popped the p.

Janus sighed and glanced at his feet. “What do they want this time?”

“Dunno, but I can assume the usual.” Roman waved a hand. “Annihilation and destruction and blood to drench the floors, et cetera et cetera.”

“Great. This shift was too quiet.” Janus untied his ponytail and retied it, pulling all the strands taut. “Any casualties so far?”

“The coffee machine stopped working again.”

“Those bastards.”

“I’ve been telling you to get an exorcist,” Roman said. “Honey, this is just going to keep happening.”

“Am I in charge? No! Ask Patton, whenever he actually shows up.” Janus rolled his eyes. “Besides, exorcists are scam artists and religious nuts.”

“We have demons,” Roman pointed out. “You can believe in shadow demons, but not in exorcists?”

Janus rolled his eyes again. “That’d be a large chunk of the budget. If it matters to you so much, ask Patton.”

Roman huffed. “I’d much rather talk to you! Because I like you!”

“Sap.” Janus glanced at the door again. “We’d better hurry. What’s the details of this one?”

“Runes on the basement wall. Can’t decipher them. Virgil’s guarding the door to make sure nothing escapes.”

“Runes. Should be easy.” Janus wiped his hands on his apron and wished he’d made himself a shot of espresso. Saving the coffee shop was always easier while buzzed on caffeine. “Lead the way, darling.”

“Gladly!” Roman grabbed his hand, kissed it, and pulled Janus out of the storage room. They passed a clamoring crowd of customers, and Janus soaked in the final glimpse of sunlight. It was a busy day. All the more reason to solve this problem before it threatened any customers--they didn’t need another one-star Yelp review.

Of course, they could just move. Or, probably more reasonably, burn the cursed place to the ground and stab the ashes. No good could come from a shop so deeply filled with shadow demons. But Patton insisted--through email, the few times he actually responded--that the place had value to the community. Janus doubted that, but he wasn’t paid enough to object.

Capitalism. The only reason he took this job. It had seemed too good to be true that they were hiring without any previous experience. And, as Janus feared, it was.

Still, perhaps it would be good for his resume. Worked as manager-by-default at Spirit Cafe. Practiced at taking orders from no one, fighting shadow spirits, bartering for the life of an unlucky intern, and making espresso.

“Capitalism,” Janus complained as Roman led him downstairs.

“Yes, love, I know.”

The basement was two levels--the first was called the ‘chocolate factory,’ and the second, ‘spider hell.’ Roman had named the first in a burst of whimsy after rereading the Willy Wonka book. The second was self-explanatory. The second was also home to most of the demons.

When Janus passed the few employees around, they gave him a do we have to evacuate look. He responded with a don’t think so, keep toiling for the man look. Roman gave them all a perky thumbs up.

The second set of stairs were too greasy to make out their color. It was old legend that the posters and artwork grew older the farther you went--the cafe on the top floor was fresh and bright, and the chocolate factory was decorated with motivational posters that were splattered with coffee. Spider hell was devoid of intact decorations. Just old photos with faded edges, a few outdated certificates of health, and torn motivational posters.

For example, the poster on the door to spider hell. It had a kitten image, and was probably supposed to say Hang in there! The bottom was torn off. It just said Hang.

Roman opened the door and bowed dramatically. Janus sighed, kissed Roman’s cheek, and entered spider hell.

The hallway itself was clean, if a bit too reminiscent of fluorescent middle school halls. Most of the doors didn’t open. Janus kicked one as he passed, and the narrow window glinted back at him. Door, door, old bathroom with moths around the lights, door, mysterious graffiti--

Virgil, who breathed a sigh of relief and slumped against the door to the boiler room. His apron was tied around his waist like a sweater. Behind him were several wooden rods, a few floorboards, and balled-up motivational posters, all jammed against the door to keep it locked.

“You’ve been busy,” Roman said. “Is that a folding chair?”

“I had to be careful!” Virgil pressed closer to the door. “I’m too young to die! I was gonna steal some metal from the pipes, but Janus would have been mad.”

“Correct,” Janus agreed. “We’re going to deal with this situation, alright? You can go cover for me upstairs--we need another barista.”

“I can leave?” Virgil whooped. “Oh, thank fuck, I’m gonna get the hell out of here. Have fun.”

“We will!” Roman said.

Virgil saluted them, then raced down the hallway. “Gonna expect a pay raise for all this!”

“Take it up with Patton,” Janus yelled.

“Don’t blame things on your imaginary friend!”

“He’s not--”

The door slammed behind Virgil. Janus turned to Roman petulantly. “He’s not imaginary. I’ve seen him. Once.”

“Sure,” Roman said.

“Ugh.” Janus rolled his eyes. “Why do I keep you two around?”

“Well, Virgil’s the coffee machine whisperer! And I’m devilishly handsome.” Roman winked at him. “You can’t resist, dearest.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Janus turned to the door. “In we go?”

“Into the breach, dear boyfriend.”

It took several minutes to pull the obstacles off the door. Virgil had managed to pound nails into the doorframe, probably in sheer panic, and Roman kept pausing to nurse splinters. Janus pried the folding chair from the door, tore off the posters, and kissed Roman’s hand when he asked. Finally, the door was clear enough for Janus to force it open.

An unwritten rule at the coffee shop was to keep flashlights everywhere. Behind every door, on every table, and in every pocket. Janus pulled his own out of his apron. Roman did the same.

At first, the boiler room looked normal. The huffing pipes, tossing steam into the corners, and the grimy concrete floor. Then Janus’ flashlight skidded onto the wall, and the beam illuminated a series of runes burned into the plaster. Each letter was about the size of Janus’ head, and the edges were rough, like they’d been clawed there.

“No blood,” Janus noticed. “They’re losing their touch.”

“I’m assuming that’s a message.” Roman walked forward and squinted at it. “Can you make anything out?”

Janus tried to put the squiggles into some kind of order. It looked like a few dozen letters, but he couldn’t be sure, because they blended into each other and made his head hurt. “I have no idea what that says.”

“Darn.” Roman folded his arms and flickered his flashlight on the runes like a strobe light. They did not magically coalesce into something coherent. “Logan’s not here, right?”

“He’s off-shift.” Janus thought for a second before pulling out his phone. “I’ll text him.”

“What if he’s busy?”

“The customer is always right, and always comes first,” Janus said while unlocking his phone. “Customers don’t want to die. He can spare a moment for us. And I’m his manager-by-default, so he has to do what I say.”

“Fair,” Roman said, giving Janus the you’re very cute when you’re in charge smile.

Janus would have teased him about that, if they had time. Instead, he just shot Logan a text. Can you decode something?

Half a minute passed.

This is important, Janus texted.

Ten more seconds with no response.

I will fire you, Janus texted. We’re all going to die, Janus texted. This is an emergency, Janus texted. Our deaths will be on your conscience if you keep ignoring me, Janus texted.

“Maybe he just hasn’t seen the texts,” Roman pointed out, leaning over Janus’ shoulder.

Answer me or I swear I’ll fucking find you, Janus texted.

“Dearest,” Roman said.

“What?”

Before Roman could say something endearingly naive about ‘compassion’ or whatever, Janus’ phone buzzed.

What do you need? Logan had texted back.

Janus held up his phone and took a picture of the runes. Fortunately, they showed up on camera. The picture still mysteriously corrupted mid-message, but when Janus re-sent it, Logan sent back a thumbs up.

What does it say? Janus asked.

Logan typed for several seconds. Finally, Janus received a small wall of text. He skimmed it, closed his eyes, and opened his eyes again.

“That’s not English,” Roman said hesitantly. “I’m not losing it. That’s not English, right?”

“I think it’s Catalan.” Janus sighed and thumbed out a response. That wasn’t English, try again.

Apologies, Logan responded. I’ll try again.

Janus waited impatiently, watching the small white dots as Logan texted. Roman dropped a kiss to his forehead for no apparent reason. Janus did his best not to blush.

Finally, Logan sent a small paragraph, followed by English?

Yes, good job. Thank you.

No problem. Stop texting me more than once or I will block you.

How dare you, I am your manager.

No response. Janus resolved to discreetly spill coffee on Logan’s shirt on their next shared shift.

“What’d he say?” Roman asked, impatiently jumping from foot to foot.

Janus skimmed the paragraph. “It looks like a riddle. ‘What walks on two legs--’”

“Human,” Roman interrupted. “Oh, that’s an easy one!”

Janus shook his head. “‘What walks on two legs in the air, eight legs on the ground, and more legs the longer you look?’”

For a second, they were both quiet.

“That’s not a human,” Roman finally said, a bit weakly.

“Humans don’t tend to gain limbs, you’re correct.” Janus let out a breath. “Analogy or not, human is not the answer.”

“Then what is it?” Roman turned to the wall again. The letters dripped like burns down the wall. “We--I’m assuming they want us to solve the riddle.”

“Yeah.”

“Why a riddle?”

“Sometimes you get bored,” Janus said. “I get it.”

Roman looked incredulously at him.

“The bigger question is what happens if we don’t guess it,” Janus continued, tapping his fingers on his phone. “Definitely something good.”

“And how much time do we have?”

As if by agreement, they both looked back at the door. It had slammed shut. The only light were their flashlights, illuminating the hulking boiler and the dustiest corners of spider hell. No spiders yet, but it was only a matter of time. Janus could almost hear them rustling.

“That’s not going to open,” Roman said, his voice pitched up. “Is it?”

“Only one way to make sure.” Janus strode over to the door and tugged on the handle. It was like tugging on a concrete wall. “Congratulations, you win a prize.”

“Wonderful,” Roman exclaimed. “Fabulous! We’re trapped here!”

Janus stepped back and rammed his shoulder into the door. The only thing he achieved was shoulder pain.

“I’m gonna call someone.” Roman pulled out his phone. The blue light trembled over his face. “Get us out of here.”

“We haven’t solved the riddle yet!” Janus protested, giving up on the locked door. “Solve it, and we leave, and the shop won’t be in danger.”

“I’d rather be alive, thanks!”

“Coward,” Janus murmured, scanning the room for immediate threats, and finding nothing but shadows and cobwebs. That didn’t mean nothing was there. It just meant they still had time. “We have to keep the shop from burning down, it’s the bare minimum of our jobs.”

Roman ran a hand through his hair. “And what’s it to us? I hate this job, and so do you.”

“Patton would fire me if I didn’t--”

“So get fired!” Roman burst out in frustration. “Let this place go up in smoke, I don’t care!”

“There are people in here! We need their money!” Janus waved his hands around. “Capitalism!”

That made Roman snicker, which made the tension settle, which made Janus smile back.

“You can leave if you’d like,” Janus allowed after a moment. “If you can find a way out. I can try to solve the riddle on my own.”

“What? No! We’re in this together.” Roman grinned at him. “If my boyfriend is stubborn enough to face down shadow demons like an idiot, I’m going to be an idiot with him.”

“Charming,” Janus said sarcastically, to avoid saying something extremely sappy. “You truly know how to treat a man.”

“I do!” Roman smiled wider and gestured at the runes. “A very smart man who will definitely solve this riddle!”

Janus nodded and turned back to the wall of runes.

Two legs in the air, and eight legs on the ground. It must be an analogy, like the original riddle, but what could air and ground represent? Imagination and reality? Or perhaps the legs were the metaphorical parts--

“Go Janus!” Roman cheered quietly from behind him.

“What?”

“I’m encouraging you!” Roman made jazz hands. “Solve it! You can do it, dear!”

Janus snickered and rolled his eyes.

“Go Janus,” Roman whispered.

Janus tried to focus on the riddle again.

Maybe he should research it. Logan clearly didn’t have an answer, or he probably would have included it with his text, but Logan was still a good problem-solver. Janus should have asked what language it was in. Janus should have confirmed the translation. Janus should have given Virgil a backup plan.

There was no use psyching himself out, though. This was another routine afternoon. He’d come out victorious a dozen times before, and there was no reason he wouldn’t keep up the streak.

Two legs in the air, eight legs on the ground, and more legs the longer he looked.

Janus looked harder.

And he saw legs. And hands, and claws scratching at the cement.

Oh, yay, just what he’d wanted! It must be his birthday.

“Roman,” Janus said slowly. “Do you see that too?”

“What?”

“Look very closely.”

A long pause. Then a loud “Fuck!”

“You see it?”

“Hard to miss now,” Roman said, wide-eyed. “What is that?”

Slowly, and steadily, the runes were crumbling. The burns were melting deeper into the wall. And from the holes, shadows climbed out--or maybe it was just the holes themselves, deepening and tearing, turning the world inside out.

“Fun,” Janus said, wishing he’d taken his chance to get the hell out of here while he still could. “This is very, very fun.”

“We should probably solve that riddle,” Roman said.

“Oh, really?” Janus clutched his flashlight tighter. The beam glanced off the shadows like light on oil. “I would have never guessed.”

Two legs in air, eight legs on the ground, more legs and hands and eyes glistening with oil--

The next few seconds were a blur. Something lunged, Janus’ flashlight winked out, and Roman’s clattered to the ground. A cold rope-hand-something curled around his ankle, and Roman’s hand grabbed his.

“Where’s my--” Roman’s voice was panicked. “Shit, okay, the flashlight’s by the boiler--”

“Okay,” Janus said quietly, trying to kick away the cold cloud-hand-whatever it was. “I can’t see the runes anymore.”

“They’re basically falling apart as we speak. You remember the riddle, right?”

“Two, eight, far too many.” Janus swallowed and tried to think. The cold around his ankle was growing warm, too, like frostbite so icy it burned. “Two, eight--”

His ankle was wrenched in a direction it wasn’t supposed to.

Janus heard a wet snap.

And oh, he knew that feeling. Too sudden and complete to hurt. Too much hurt to even comprehend, as if he could feel the pain coming, but not enough time to brace himself. Not nearly enough time.

Red-hot pain, jolting up his bones, from his broken fucking ankle.

He might have screamed. His knees buckled, and someone--Roman--caught him halfway to the floor. Everything was dark. Something red flashed in his vision. Janus could barely breathe without pain tearing at his lungs, but he tried, breathe in and out and wait for the world to stop spinning.

“Hey, whoa, okay, okay,” Roman was murmuring. “What happened? What--”

Janus opened his mouth to explain. All that escaped was a small whimper. If Janus was in less pain, he would have been embarrassed.

“Okay, okay, love, it’s okay.” A hand brushed Janus’ hair out of his face. “Keep breathing. Calm down. It’s okay.”

“Ankle,” Janus forced out. His limbs felt like jelly. “Fucking ankle, gonna fucking--”

“Yes, yes, you’ll get your revenge.” Roman’s voice was achingly soft, and it made Janus relax a bit. “I can lower you to the ground so you don’t have to put weight on it--”

“No,” Janus complained, rather enjoying the feeling of Roman’s arms around him. “Pretty sure we wanna be able to run--”

“You can’t run anyway.”

“Capitalism,” Janus mumbled. “Hate it.”

“Me too, love.”

Something scraped at Janus’ shoulder, something that felt uncomfortably like teeth. He stifled a yelp.

“Oh, that was something.” Roman’s harried tone told Janus he’d felt it, too. “Where is my flashlight--I can’t see anything--”

“Riddle,” Janus reminded him.

“Right,” Roman said. “Right, right, you know what? I’m gonna call someone! I’m gonna call someone.”

“Mm.”

A pause and several rustles. The pain was dulling to a manageable low roar. Janus felt something brush his hand and he swatted at it. Maybe they’d break his other ankle next. Maybe they’d work through him limb by limb, like a game of Hangman.

“Fuck off,” Janus told the darkness.

“Phone’s not--” Roman swore. “Phone’s not working. Of course.”

“Riddle.”

“Right.”

“Riddle,” Janus repeated. Two legs, eight legs, lots of legs. Maybe it didn’t have an answer and they were just messing with him. Maybe he’d answer it and die anyway. That would be a shame, dying with his boyfriend, especially because letting everyone in the building perish was definitely a health code violation.

Roman whacked at something. “Away, foul fiends!”

Janus tested his ankle. He couldn’t even bring himself to move it.

Wonderful. He couldn’t solve a three-line riddle, and he was going to die like a fool in the shadows of spider hell--

Wait.

“Two legs,” Janus said. His voice rasped. “Two legs in the air, when it’s falling on a thread--oh, I hate you.”

“What?” Roman asked.

“And eight legs on the ground, and more legs the longer you look.” Janus laughed. “That’s fair enough.”

Something brushed against his back, feeling like scales.

“Spiders,” Janus said. “That’s the answer! Are you happy now? It’s spiders, leave us alone!”

For one horrifying second, one throb of his ankle, nothing happened.

And then the flashlight at Janus’ feet turned on.

Spider hell looked the same as it always did. Empty walls, a boiler choking on steam, and Roman’s flashlight rolling in the dust. Roman grabbed Janus’, leaned over, and grabbed his own.

“What--” Roman looked around. “Did you--solve it?”

“I think--” Janus slipped a bit in Roman’s arms.

“You did it!” Roman laughed in relief. “You did it, you absolute genius--”

Janus looked up at his boyfriend. Even through the haze of pain, he looked exceedingly adorable. Janus leaned forward and kissed him quickly on the lips. “Don’t flatter me.”

“But darling, it’s so easy!” Roman adjusted Janus in his arms. “Does your ankle hurt?”

“Take a guess.”

“We’ll have to find you a doctor,” Roman said, pulling him forward. “Out of the basement first, though, before another villainous creature decides to use as afternoon entertainment.”

“Or the spiders find us,” Janus agreed. He tried to shift his weight onto his good foot, but he could barely move without his head spinning. “Ow.”

“Just stay put! I’ll carry you!”

“No.”

“I’ll assist you,” Roman amended. “Lean on me, and I’ll walk you upstairs, okay?”

Janus shifted in Roman’s arms. “Am I hurting you? I’m heavy.”

“You’re not hurting me, you’re not heavy.” Roman pressed a kiss to Janus’ head and led him to the door. He kicked it, and it opened. “I’ve got you, love. I’m escorting the brave savior of the coffee shop!”

“I’m manager by default,” Janus said, wrapping an arm around Roman’s waist. Just to hold himself up, of course. No other reason. “It’s my job.”

“You do a great job of it!”

“Someone has to.” Janus clung to Roman’s side as he led them up the stairs. The poster told him to Hang. Janus filled in the other two words, and hung in there.

“I think it’s broken,” Janus said as Roman half-carried him up the stairs. “This is humiliating. Also, expensive.”

“We’ll figure it out, people get hurt, it happens.” Roman paused on one landing. “I’m just happy it wasn’t anything worse.”

“Still the worst injury so far,” Janus said ruefully. “Give me employee of the month.”

Roman smiled and pulled him up the final stairs. “I’ll ask Patton.”

When they burst dramatically through the doors into the cafe, Virgil breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re not dead!”

“Not for lack of trying, no.” Janus eased himself onto a chair and took a deep breath. The cafe was bursting with people and lights, all the customers completely unaware that they’d just escaped their demise. Janus envied them. “The situation is taken care of, you can relax.”

“Thanks,” Virgil said. “Uh--you okay?”

“He’s taking the rest of the day off,” Roman said before Janus could explain. “Broken ankle. I’m going to rest with him at home, then he’ll take a trip to the clinic.”

“I’ll what?” Janus repeated. “I have a shift--”

“You’re the manager,” Roman pointed out. “Give yourself a free day.”

“The cafe’s busy! I’d leave us short-staffed!”

“You can’t walk.”

“Capitalism!”

“Self-care!” Roman folded his arms. “Virgil, can you cover for Janus as he goes home?”

“Uh--” Virgil looked between them. Janus expected him to say no. “‘Course! I bet I can grab Logan for an emergency shift, too.”

“No, you can’t,” Janus said mockingly as Virgil pulled out his phone. “He’s a bastard and won’t--”

Virgil’s phone buzzed. “He’ll be here in five.”

“Wh--” Janus blinked. “How did you--”

“He just doesn’t like you.” Virgil smirked at him. “Go rest, Jan, we’ll cover your ass.”

“You heard him!” Roman held out a hand. “Come on, love, let’s have a break. The coffee shop won’t burn down while you’re gone, and if it does, Patton can handle it.”

Janus wasn’t sure about that one. Maybe he would return to a burned shell of a building. Or several dead bodies.

But Virgil and Logan knew what to do. And an afternoon with his boyfriend didn’t sound too bad.

“Fine,” Janus said. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

Give me a prompt, and I’ll write a short drabble!

#roceit #roman sanders #janus sanders #sanders sides #logan sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #averywrites #asks and answers #anon #yes i had way too much fun with this au why do u ask #yes this is too long why do u ask #yes i need sleep why do u ask #crap forgot warnings #tw injury #tw death mention #tw spiders #coffee shop au #supernatural au

[theastrophilearchitect]

I started writing a book.

And I’m mad about it, because I just started this post, brought up a new tab and lost it because I didn’t save my draft.

Anyway. That’s a thing I did. Wow.

As of this moment, this post won’t be going up until April 19th, but I’m starting writing this at 10.30pm on Sunday, February 21st, 2021. I’ve done a lot in the last couple weeks, and I want to have some record of all I’ve accomplished without just letting most of it fade over the next two months.

I’ve always wanted to be an author. From when I was reading under my covers with a torch past bedtime, through the years I wanted to be an artist, through the years I wanted to be a lawyer. It’s always been there - no matter what primary career path I went down, I wanted to be an author. The last few years, I’ve been invested in becoming a biologist, and that dream really took a backseat.

In the start of this lockdown, my mental health went downhill, and some advice my therapist gave me was just to prioritise myself. It sounds simple enough, but, even in my free time, I’d been focusing on schoolwork - revising constantly for exams I’m still not sure are actually happening. (Boris Johnson is apparently making an announcement tomorrow about beginning to ease lockdown, but we’ll see) So, on Saturday, February 6th, I started an attempt to coalesce the ideas I had floating in my head into something tangible.

I’ve tried to write books countless times (not technically countless - I have all the documents on my laptop, so I could if I wanted to), but mostly, I’ve never gotten further than a couple bare plot points and some characters, maybe some ideas for subplots, before I’ve stagnated and given up.

Three times, I’ve finished a skeletal outline. Twice, I’ve started to go back over those outlines only to realise they made no sense or just seemed week, and simply not cared enough to fix it. Until now, I guess.

February 6th, 7th, and fast-forward to my week off beginning the 15th, up until the 19th, I kept developing this concept I’d managed to form, but I was struggling to establish a coherent plot. I had up until and including a midpoint (which was later condensed into just a first act), but everything after that was just a void. I began searching for some skeletal structure I could apply to it, both to work on pacing and fill in the blanks. I tried several, and got a little further, but was about to give up hope.

Then I remembered a video by Katytastic I’d watched years ago about the 3-act, 9-block, 27-chapter structure she used, and couldn’t see the harm in giving it a go. And something clicked.

You can find the video here - the structure’s detailed and easy to follow, plus she even gives an example of using it to generate a plot.

I started binge-watching her writing vlogs in the background, and even started using her same writing program, Scrivener, which just made every a thousand times easier by taking away the need to juggle a billion Word documents. It’s fairly pricey, but I’m currently using the 30-day free trial - it’s 30 days of use, not of ownership, too: if you use it every day, it lasts 30 days, but if you use it once a week, it lasts 30 weeks.

Where Kat used the 27 parts the structure broke down into as chapters, I chose to refer to them as beats, and separate chapters later.

On Saturday the 20th, I finished defining my scenes and started writing an actual draft. I wrote two scenes, putting me at a collective word count (not including notes, synopses, etc.) of 2,580 words.

This morning, Sunday the 21st, I started over. I hated my opening. I’m not going to go through the mess of today’s process, but I currently have around 80 one-line-outline scenes, split into 3 acts. I wrote a draft of my prologue and detailed-outlined (which I’m mentally referring to as zero-outlining because it’s similar to how Katytastic does what she calls a zero draft, but is very much outlining, not a draft) two and a half other chapters. Scriver also tells me how many words I wrote in total, across notes, character profiles, location lists, a document I’ve named ‘Train of Thought’ for my ramblings as I go etc.

Today, I wrote a grand total of 4,141 words, which, rather counterintuitively, puts me at a draft total of 2,598. That makes sense. Anyway.

There are a lot of unknowns in the world right now, and I have no idea how much time I’ll have in the next six months to invest in this project, but I’d like, at bare minimum, to have one complete draft by the start of the next school year in September, which gives me just over 6 months. Which is probably too much time to actually motivate myself, but that’s not the point.

A manuscript needs to have a minimum word count of 50K words to be considered a novel, so, even though my ultimate goal for this project is around 80K words, 50K is going to be my goal for this draft.

I’m being optimistic about sticking with this.

Tuesday 23/02/2021 - Word Count: 3,099 I wrote nothing yesterday; planning to focus writing solely on days off rather than work days, but last night, watching through the incredibly long queue of Alexa Donne writing videos, I came to the conclusion writing every day, even just a little, would be the best way to ensure I keep working on this, so I set myself a goal of just 500 words a day.

Wednesday 24/02/2021 - Word Count: 5,350 After doing a little bit of maths as to how long this outlining and draft would take me if I were to only write 500 words a day, I decided to boost that goal to 1,000. I got started around 1pm today, online school draining me so much I couldn’t face another two hours. I worked on and off until 6pm, and around 4.45pm, I finished outlining Act One!

Thursday 25/02/2021 - Word Count: 7,022 I continued my scene outlining into Act Two, but I hit a brick wall around the midpoint. I have to write chronologically - some people jump around, but I have to write linearly, or it feels like I’m trying to make something in a void. It just doesn’t work. I didn’t know how to get from one scene to the next - there were so many things I needed to establish to get there, but I didn’t want to backtrack. I decided to re-jig the whole thing, but, after dinner, I realised I didn’t have to, and instead, decided to just start a draft, conscious of the things I need to establish as I go.

Friday 26/02/2021 - Word Count: 8,208 Starting draft one, I rewrote the prologue I’d already written, technically putting me to my second draft of it, because I’d been thinking about it for days and just wanted to revisit it, and it was so much better. Then I moved on to chapter one, but decided I wanted to re-jig my chapters. While outlining, I’d split the whole book into only about twenty chapters, but decided to go for shorter ones for more effective divisions of the story. I got most of the way through the first scene of chapter one, but basically ran out of both time and motivation, since I hadn’t heavily outlined that scene. in total, I wrote over 2000 words today, but because I only increased the prologue word count by about 100 words, it didn’t do that much to the total count.

Saturday 27/02/2021 - Word Count: 11,050 I got some chores done Saturday morning and focused on finishing my book so I could include it in my February wrap-up, but I still had time to get some writing done around mid-day. My goal was just to hit 10K this weekend, but I though I could do it in one day. I wrote about 1,000 words before feeling a little word-drained, but took a break for lunch, got back to it and wrote 2,400 words. Though that only added a little over 2,000 to the word count, it took me to 10K! I’m 20% of the way to being able to call it a novel! We’re in quintuple digits!

And then eight hours later, I wrote another thousand words and got to 11K.

Sunday 28/02/2021 - Word Count: 13,722 I spent most of my Sunday morning writing, though it took me more than two hours to write about 1500 words, though it only added about 1100 to my count. I decided to set myself an overall and weekly deadlines to hold myself accountable. Due to the fact I don’t yet have a clue how many words this will work out as, I decided I wanted to have either a complete first draft or 100K words (which I doubt I’ll reach, but it seems like a good way to make myself finish the draft before my deadline) by the end of April. Which works out to a little under 1500 words a day, or just under 11K a week, which is perfectly doable. Bearing in mind my current word count is including outlines, but I still believe in myself.

I wrote another 1600 words later, which took me to 14K, until I deleted the 300 word outline I wrote for one scene, but I worked out my words per day for the next two months with the assumption of a 10K word count as of March 1st and a target of either a complete draft or 100K words by the end of April, so I’m nearly 4,000 words ahead of schedule. Which gives me 6,606 words to write this week, instead of 10,328. (If you couldn’t tell, I like numbers. They just make sense to me.

Monday 01/03/2021 - Word Count: 15,005 I didn’t quite hit my daily goal, but I was completely leached of motivation today, I’m ahead of schedule anyway and I was only under by less than 200 words. It’s alright. But, hey, we hit 15K! Two days after hitting 10K!

Tuesday 02/03/2021 - Word Count: 21,119 This was an insane writing day. My end-of-day target was only 16,480, and that was still ahead of schedule - if I was sticking to the 100K by April 30th, I’d only actually need to be at 12,950 today. This was the best writing day I’ve ever had. I wrote before school and during breaks, which kept both my writing and working momentum up.

I didn’t read a page of my current read, but I wrote a total of 7,681 words and increased my wordcount by 6,114 words, or literally an additional 40.75%. I hit 20K three days after hitting 10K, and am 42.238% of the way to being able to say I wrote a novel, be it a shitty first draft that won’t be complete at 50K words.

I also finished chapter three, which I’ve been working on for three days and came out ~5,000 words, and wrote chapters four and five in their entirety.

Note to self: this is day 10 of vaguely outline-drafting this project.

Wednesday 03/03/2021 - Word Count: 23,364 I've only written 490 words today, as of writing this update, but I just wanted to make note of the fact I've done some calculations, and can reasonably finish my draft this month. I'm still not completely sure how long it'll work out to be, so I can't quite work out my daily words to finish on the 31st, but if I stick to my current 1,475 words a day, I'll hit 63,894 words by the end of the month, which is a little less than I imagine this draft will be, but if I stick to that as a minimum, my first draft won't have to go into April.

I'd like to post this later this week, but I already have a post for this Friday, so God only knows how long this will be by the time it goes up. So far, I've written 1,900 words today, and I don't think I'm out of fuel yet, but I'm stopping because I need to read today, and I'd rather not burn out. I'm over my goal, anyway.

Oh, also, I'm nearly at 25K, which is halfway to a novel, but I haven't broken into Act Two yet, which means this book will be 75K minimum. I'm going to do some maths and work out how many words a day to hit 80K by March 31st. 2,030. That's doable. So I haven't read, but back to writing for like ten minutes.

I've now hit an additional 2,245 words for the day, though I wrote a total of 2,663

Thursday 04/03/2021 - Word Count: 25,415 I've decided to work out how many words I need to write each day to hit 80K by March 31st, and watch the fluctuations. (I like statistics). It should steadily go down throughout the month if I surpass it each day. Today's minimum word count is 2,023, already seven words less than yesterday's. How exciting.

The last scene of Act One was very heavy on world-building I haven't yet figured out, so I stuck what was meant to happen in brackets and just moved on, meaning I have now broken into Act Two!

I think, during the week, I'm going to focus on just meeting my minimum word count rather than exceeding it, just to save fuel for the weekends, when I can write so many more words.

And, we hit 25K! I'm halfway to a novel!

Friday 05/03/2021 - Word Count: 26,693 In complete honesty, I'm beginning to lose momentum. Maybe it's just today, but I don't really want to write and feel like I need a break, but I'm going to make myself write anyway. I'm going to make myself keep writing until this draft is done, however shitty it may end up. I really hate first drafts.

When you say 2,000 words is only 7-8 pages, it doesn't sound like that much to write per day but my god. Luckily, most of the stuff I've had to save to a Pinterest board called 'Writing Motivation' says if you write when you don't want to, it should pass instead of worsening. I wanted to hit 35K this weekend, but I'm not sure I'll have the momentum. I'll at least hit 31,270, though, which is my minimum goal for this week. I'm still over 700 words off my goal for today, but I'm taking a break because my head is foggy and there's still eight hours left in the day. Besides, 700 after dinner is easy. She says, realising she's probably jinxing it. Oh, well. 80K by March 31st would be difficult, even if I weren't going back to school soon, but that's a stretch goal. 100K by April 31st is my minimum, and I'm 9,000 ahead of where I need to be for that.

I think I’m stagnating because I’ve hit the ‘Fun and Games’ section, which I find really boring. I’m going to try to keep going with it, but I may just skip it and come back later.

Saturday 06/03/2021 - Word Count: 28,150 So, I did not get the extra 700 words in. Before dinner, some stuff I had to deal with came up, and by the time it was done, I just wanted to go to bed, so I did. Today, I'm going to try to make up for it, which I think is reasonable because it is now the weekend. I'm still kinda exhausted this morning, but I'm going to do my best, and my wrist hurts, but I'm not sure why. You'd think it would be from all the typing, but only one wrist hurts - you know what? Never mind. They do both hurt. I'm just not sure why, but it doesn't hurt typing this, so that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, to hit my word count for the day, I need to write 2,555 words, which doesn't sound like too much, but it kinda is because I'm primarily writing Act Two at the minute, and for every thousand words I write, I lose like 400 from my outline. You'd think I'd just not include my scene outlines in the word count, but it's too late for that now.

I'm thinking this over, and I really don't think trying to write 80K by the end of the month is going to be good for either my motivation, mental health, or ability to function back at school, so I'm going to stick to 100K or a finished draft by April 30th, and re-work out my goals from there, based on yesterday's word count, so I'm not making myself do catch-up today.

So, to hit 100K by April 30th, I only need to write 1,309 words each day (which will decrease over time because if that's my minimum now, I'll probably surpass it, decreasing the amount of words left etc.). That's so much less pressure.

God, I really don't want to write today. I just want to watch YouTube and Netflix and read.

Okay, so here's the thing. I've been working on this story straight for three weeks and I'm kinda exhausted of it. I'm not done with it, not at all, and I want to keep working on it because it exists, which makes it workable.

I watched a writing vlog by ShaelinWrites yesterday, and she said she writes different projects at once, alternating in week- or multi-week-long blocks. I think I might try that.

My plan with this post and the following updates was to keep updating it until the day it goes up, the day after which is when I begin drafting the next, but, since I may be switching projects for a while and this is really about the project I've decided to dub 'Bay Tree' (which is just, I guess, a pseudonym for here because while I have no idea what it would eventually be called, I know that's nothing like the title I'd want to give it) so I'd want to start a new post for a new project.

I'm now doing a little outlining instead of actually continuing writing, but I think this will help me, though I'm still not certain about whether or not I'm going to directly continue with this specific project for the minute. Instead of setting daily goals based on a target, I'm also just going to say 1,000 words a day, and see where that takes me.

I've just been outlining into Act Three, and I've met a major plot stumble, but I'm going to work that out and explain what I'm doing in my next writing update.

So, go drink some water, eat if you haven't eaten in the last few hours, stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself how wonderful you are and how much happiness you deserve, and, if you want to write a book, stop thinking about it, and go write.

#blog #blogging #blogger #blogpost #blog post #writing #books #book #reading #read #write #writer #author #draft #first draft #story #writing blog #writerblr #bookblr #novel #debut

[rabidbehemoth]

On Kylo Ren as Incoherently Evil

@neonnothing brought up a succinct point that I had to stop and really think about my response to during our dissection of TROS. and i had a three hour text convo with two other friends the same day about ren (god help me) and it all coalesced into the following meta, which I’m still thinking about: 

Regardless if people think he is redeemed or not, I think no ONE absolutely no one can argue against the fact he overcame so much internalized hate to cross over to the good side.  That he still deserves love, at any given point, as long as it's consensual. NO ONE CAN TAKE THAT AWAY and almost NO ben hater actually give him this acknowledgement. Everyone's like "OH but he hasn't earned it." 

I'm pretty far from a Ben hater, but that's my argument too, and my eternal disappointment. For me, the worst part of his arc wasn't when he died (I did cry a little okay), but when he turned to the light for what I felt was far too little reason. I think by saying he hasn't "earned it", maybe people mean what I do: that he didn't have a chance to struggle in TROS. All the struggling happened in TLJ (with some in TFA, actually), and Abrams just swoops in an profits without building on that whatsoever. Experiencing Leia's death doesn't count for me because it wasn't even his fault. I wanted more than anything to see Ben come to jesus, to lose something so precious he is forced to reconcile with who he's become because he's out of other paths. I think redemption, like any character heel-face-turn, to be satisfying, has to have the weight of inevitability, of reaching the last resort and finding there's no where to go but up. 

This is almost entirely what my earlier 3 hour convo was about, and thanks to that I have a new theory as to why it may have been impossible to give Ben a satisfyingly inevitable turn toward good (even in the hands of a competent director!): his motivation is nonsensical. The backstory about his turn to the dark is too vague, leaves too much to the imagination (you and I may have fertile fandom-fed imaginations that can almost see what Ben Solo might have been like as a young man, or earlier in his journey toward the dark, but my friends couldn't and they had dramatically different interpretations of his character because of it). How do we go from "my master/uncle betrayed me", which is a terrible, tragic, traumatizing thing, to "let's light people on fire"? I mean, how exactly? Sketch it out for me. It's not a simple thing. That kind of development takes time, and you have to be willing to sit in that character's head and play with possibilities and see how their life may have lead them in that direction. It's work, hard work. Painful work, if you're doing it right.

I think it's telling, that my friends (quite smart people really) mistook Ben's motivation as wanting power. it doesn't take much to debunk that--he only seizes power from snoke when rey is threatened, but more importantly he's simply much more fixated on killing the past and the light than embracing the dark and being evil or for the sake of it, or for power. The fixation with darth vader's mask seems to speak more of a fixation with the past, particularly his own bloodline, than the kind of admiration that snoke suggests he has. And he gets rid of that icon so freely. 

There are so many questions regarding what Ben wants and why he is the way he is (what role do his parents play in this exactly? We're always laden with implications and no answers). This incoherent motivation is further complicated by the incoherent morality of the SW verse, in which you have to pick and choose who's right based on color codes and be willfully blind to contradictions. His status as evil is extremely unstable and kind of unknowable too, which is why I think so many fans have been unsettled by the suggestion that he might toe the line into grey morality, become some kind of grey jedi with rey. Because that would be truly subversive to the SW universe--where is your god, your rules, now? I think the instability and incoherence of his evilness is precisely the defining point: either you read that to mean he's redeemable and an appropriate romantic partner with some adjustments, or you read that to mean he's worse in some way that a normal static villain and especially inappropriate as a romantic partner.

Funny thing, I think the reylos are the ones paying better attention, because his motivation finally becomes coherent when rey is what he wants. That we can understand, it's a development that happened on screen for understandable reasons, and his backstory and motive become far less important in fleshing out the character (REALLY, RIAN JOHNSON MANAGED A LOT WITH TLJ WHILE STARTING FROM VERY LITTLE, I'M JUST REMINDING U). 

Kylo's character is mostly a patchwork of guesswork, relying on codes that they then go and poke holes in. All the chars rely on similar codes, but kylo's is just done in such a weird and inexplicable and self-contradicting way that it seems to allow people to read him dramatically differently. So maybe it's no wonder that he's so divisive. It's like publishing a story before you've come up with the ending, and you don't quite know where your character is going--that's all stuff you figure out later as you're writing, then come back and fix the beginning. Except they published chapters as they went and can't go back and make it all make sense.

And without a sensible, coherent foundation to what makes the character the character (from the very beginning, not just the coherency that his connection with rey brings him), it's pretty much impossible to do an effective about-face, isn't it? You have to have those motivations fleshed out in perfect clarity, so you get that ring of truth when the char finally sees the light.

That's what I wanted. Not a simple turn to the light, I wanted him to see it first, because I'm still frankly in the dark about why he's been in the dark at all.

#reylo #kylo ren #star wars meta #reylo meta #tros salt

[dustedmagazine]

Apartment House on Another Timbre: Three Perspectives

If you survey the website of Apartment House, you won’t find an “about” page or any exposition of the ensemble’s history or philosophy. While such reticence is rare these days amongst artistic endeavors of any stripe, the very lack of information tells you something about Apartment House’s raison d’être. It’s all about the work, and the ensemble’s role is to make performances that are about the music, and not Apartment House’s take on the music. This renunciation of ego makes sense when you consider that the ensemble’s name derives from a John Cage composition; one of Cage’s intentions was to envision music that was open to the world and wasn’t about assertions of selfhood. Cellist Anton Lukoszevieze founded the ensemble in 1995, but its recording career didn’t get into gear until 2013.

Since then, the group has released 22 single or double CDs covering work by contemporary composers ranging from Cornelius Cardew to Christian Wolff to Linda Catlin Smith to Ryoko Akama. With a rotating membership, performances range from solos and duos to chamber ensembles. Thirteen were issued by the Another Timbre label, including three titles at once in late 2020, each presenting the music of a single composer — Martin Arnold (b. 1958), Antoine Beuger (b. 1955) and Maya Verlaak (1990). The act of releasing these albums simultaneously affords a chance to consider how Apartment House engages with the different intentions and requirements asserted by each composer. Dusted writers Marc Medwin, Michael Rosenstein and Bill Meyer cover the three recent releases.

Maya Verlaak / Apartment House— All English Music is Greensleeves (Another Timbre)

All English Music is Greensleeves by Maya Verlaak

Múm was an Icelandic group with singers channeling the wisely innocent voices of children while a lush landscape, rife with music boxes and other liquid-crystal sonorities, multihued the adjacent soundspaces. There is something similarly open about this music, something so unpredictably predictable, so comforting, so quietly inclusive! Belgian composer Maya Verlaak delves to the depths of experience’s networks while observing from just far enough to escape the iron grip and rationalizations of memory. This is music in which even the harshest sounds melt into a winning simplicity, a world of sound and sense in symbiosis.

It would be too easy to point toward modality to explain such a beautifully optimistic vision. After all, “All British Music is Greensleeves” tears that increasingly irrelevant construct to shreds in a hurry as two layers of sound, one prerecorded, spin bits of the tune down the dimly lit corridors conjoining memory and reflection. Chord, cluster and motive blur boundaries, even as space ensures a tidy trail of readily identifiable components needling consciousness reluctantly toward recognition. It’s a world with which Ives or Mahler might have made contact, had chamber music been more in their sights, such are the buds and blooms of poly-event amidst distantly lit string writing that refuses to answer Ives’ perennial question. The unfurling harmonies, formed of motives in quasi-counterpoint, are inextricably linked with their kaleidoscopic timbres. Recurrence is both evident and backgrounded but none so blatant as the delicious silences, almost periodic, separating the streamlined multivalences. Fortunately, as with many Apartment House recordings, vibrato is nearly absent.

The “Formation” pieces place a similarly subversive emphasis on relationship so subliminal that a simple listen won’t unlock the door or open the blinds. Any hats doffed toward conventional chord or set are quickly displaced by the gentle but insistent winds of change emanating from a vocal imperative or an intoned repetition. Mark Knoop and Sarah Saviet are in something near dialogue with overlapping technologies guided by a compositional voice whose questions also seek a malleable answer. The openness at the heart of Verlaak’s work stems from the various paths through subversion, re-subversion and integration integral to the majority of these pieces. What, in the case of “Song and Dance,” do performers do when confronted only with the analysis, or justification, for a musical score rather than with the score itself? What happens when the justification becomes the score? How is it possible, practical or desirable to confront musical parameters neither heard nor witnessed? The wonderful thing about such conceptions is that they really form the metanarrative of all artistic endeavor. No art, no matter how explicit, relinquishes all of its secrets, just as no single pitch or sonority, even those as pure as Apartment House offers with staggering consistency, is the actual embodiment of that sound. Composers and performers deal in approximations, and it is to Verlaak’s credit that the processes have been rendered at least partially transparent with such beautifully cooperative forces to give them form and voice.

Marc Medwin

Martin Arnold / Apartment House—Stain Ballads (Another Timbre)

'Stain Ballads' by Martin Arnold

This is the second release on Another Timbre by Canadian composer Martin Arnold, the first being The Spit Veleta a 2017 program of violin and piano solos and duos by Apartment House members Philp Thomas and Mira Benjamin. This time out, Arnold provides the group with a program consisting of a solo, a duo, a quartet, and piece for sextet. Across the four pieces, the composer balances a sense of lyricism with a fascination with the abstracted concept of “formlessness.” In his interview on the Another Timbre site, he puts it this way when asked about the title of the CD. “Stains are… radically specific – always stain-shaped. They might remind one of something – like when one looks at the inkblots of a Rorschach test (though significantly, they don't have Rorschach's added symmetry) – but they don't present a form, a coherent outline, a generic structure that can be abstracted and distilled; with a stain, form and content are the same thing. My work continues to aspire to that condition.” Each of the four pieces here delve in to the way that melodies and themes can be opened up to ride the edges of lyricism and abstraction.

The program opens with “Lutra” for solo cello and humming performed by Anton Lukoszevieze. The piece starts out with arco themes colored with hummed and bowed diaphanous overtones. Hovering at the upper registers of the instrument, threads are introduced, slowly progressing, punctuated occasionally by softly plucked notes. Staying within the same set of registers as well as harmonic and timbral areas, Lukoszevieze lets the notes resonate and serenely decay. In the last section the piece moves to percussively plucked notes with poised slow resolve, fading to hushed resonance in the final moment. “Stain Ballad” follows, orchestrated for cello, piano, viola, two violins, reed organ, and percussion. Arnold voices the various layers in a slow flux, moving in and out of synch with each other. The ensemble does a sterling job of maintaining an overall balance so that no one particular instrument is ever the sole focus. Instead, the various parts wend along as various subsections of the ensemble coalesce and then dissipate in to the mercurial overall flow of the piece. The striated parts adeptly take advantage of the timbral synergies and contrasts of the instruments as one moment, string arco melds with reed organ while in other sections, the percussive attack of Philip Thomas’ piano, the woody retort of Simon Limbrick’s percussion and pizzicato strings shift and shudder across each other.

The pairing of Lukoszevieze’s cello and Mira Benjamin’s violin on “Trousers” dives in to specific techniques like the utilization of multiple mutes, bowing with the wood of the bow, hushed microtones and a sliding sense of harmonics. Arnold talks about it, noting that “the sound of “Trousers” is certainly at odds with a “good” Classical sound: I shut down projection, fullness of tone, resonance, the consistency, stability and predictability of the sound being produced.” Over the course of the 22 minute piece, fragments of melody, muted textures and quavering string overtones play off of each other with measured consideration. Themes play out, get subsumed into the progression of the piece and then resurface. The recording closes out with “Slip,” a quartet for cello, violin, bass clarinet, and piano. The piece takes its name from the Irish slip jig, a jig that is in 9/8 as opposed to the usual 6/8 and a slowed pace accentuates the odd time signature. For the first quarter of the piece, cello, violin and bass clarinet move in woozy unison, lithely navigating the precarious phrasing. Pianist Mark Knoop’s entry, a quarter way in, introduces spare chords that serve to unsettle the phrasing even further, though the quartet never wavers in their assuredly ambling momentum. As the piece proceeds, the four parts veer off from each other, with lines dropping in and out. High-pitched violin arco sounds against crystalline piano chords making way for pizzicato cello and piano. The final section featuring Heather Roche’s dusky bass clarinet playing brings the piece to a transfixing conclusion. On Stain Ballads, Arnold continues to expand on his strategies toward opening up and abstracting melody, balancing compositional form with a sense of “formlessness.” With the members of Apartment House, he has found worthy collaborators.

Michael Rosenstein

Antoine Beuger / Apartment House—Jankélévitch Sextets (Another Timbre)

'jankélévitch sextets' by Antoine Beuger

In 1992, Antoine Beuger cofounded Editions Wandelweiser, the publishing arm of a community of like-minded, post-John Cageian composers. Along the way he has taken on the roles of artistic and managing director. Since Wandelweiser is a collective, his stewardship of the label and publishing arms makes him influential, but not an authoritarian figure. Quite the contrary. On Another Timbre website, there is an interview with Beuger that raises a provocative point about the authority of the score. He compares the current position of a classical composer to a perspective prescribed by Christian theology. The composer hands down rarefied instructions, which he (Beuger emphasizes the masculinity of this approach) best understands, and leaves to others the work of realizing his often very difficult and inscrutable instructions.

With Jankélévitch Sextets, Beuger takes a different approach. It is the fourth in a series of pieces that he wrote for specified numbers of musicians. Each composition deals with relationships implied by that number, and each does so employing mainly quiet, sustained tones. Additionally, each acknowledges a cultural figure; in this case, the Franco-Russian philosopher, Vladimir Jankélévitch. Beuger cites his appreciation for two of Jankélévitch’s ideas. First, music has no itinerary; it flows unpredictably. Second, sounds appear by disappearing. The latter point makes sense if you consider how you notice phenomena only after they stop. One suspects that if Jankélévitch was a fan of mid-20th century American music, he’d have had a lot of time for William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water (Till The Well Runs Dry).”

Beuger’s piece consists of repeated statements of a close bundle of long tones, each followed by a brief silence, with instruments insinuating themselves or dropping out during each pass. While the name is plural, the music is presented as a single, 64:20 long track, which asks the listener to accompany the ensemble through its entirety. The instrumentation consists of accordion, bassoon, bass clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass, which affords many opportunities for similar-sounding pitches to ease shift between close harmony and beating difference tones. This is not music that tugs at your sleeve; neither ingratiating nor imposing, it’s there if you wish to approach it, cycling through changes that reveal sounds by removing them. The music locates the essence of six-ness not in some contrapuntal exchange that draws attention to all the voices, but in the way that a group can persevere over time by allowing its members opportunities for respite. Apartment House’s treatment of this material captures its subtle balance. It takes discipline to blend sounds so patiently, and even more to do so in a way that don’t ask you to admire their restraint.

Bill Meyer

#dusted magazine #albumreview #apartment house #antoine beuger #vladimir jankélévitch #maya verlaak #martin arnold #another timbre #contemporary composition #marc medwin #michael rosenstein #bill meyer

[louiserandom]

Raffle prize! :3

echoes of the stars

for: the amazing, sweet and supportive @edthemastershark​💙

Rating: T

Pairing: MadaTobi

A/N: very belated prize >.> didn’t realize how busy I’d be, but I hope you still enjoy it, Ed :3 

P.S. about other prizes: @kitsunesongs​, I’m struggling to make your fic short and coherent but might just end up with a fluff-angsty wall of plot... we’ll see how it goes😃 and @benzen-c6h6​, THERE SHALL BE MERMAIDS😍

Meow :3 Read on AO3 or continue under the cut!

———   

“You’re far away,” Madara’s amused voice wrests Tobirama’s mind away from his musings.

Tobirama looks over to his partner, allowing himself a tentative smile.

“Just thinking,” he says.

“Not about me, it seems,” Madara says, fake pout and all, “unacceptable.”

Tobirama simply rolls his eyes. “Allow me to correct this gravest of missteps. Truly, a travesty.” 

Madara opens his mouth, probably to drop another quip, and Tobirama promptly shuts it with a kiss, a habit that’s engrained in him by now, despite the lingering novelty of their relationship. Hot lips brush against his, and an equally fiery chakra rushes to meet Tobirama’s ice-cold signature, both sensing the other’s mounting pleasure, the energy tantalizing as their chakras coalesce. Tobirama leans back against the rock behind him and tugs Madara into his lap, coaxing his lips open and earning a delectable moan that makes him feel all kinds of fuzzy and tingly.

Words he’d never thought he’d use to describe his once well-controlled feelings, but it seems Anija’s sappy wording is rubbing off on him now that he finds himself falling for his once enemy, later friend, later best friend and now—

They draw away for breath, then sink into another kiss, as slow and languid as the first, which does nothing to quell the desire Tobirama feels simmering in the base of his stomach. It takes all his self-restraint not to whine as Madara pulls away once more.

“I love,” Madara’s voice hitches, “l-love when you do that. But better stop unless you want our first time to be in public.”

“We’re hardly in public,” Tobirama says, running his hands along Madara’s sides, “but—I really wouldn’t like to do this on top of Anija’s head statue.”

“Ah, right,” Madara remembers what spot they’ve chosen for their night picnic. “Well, first, someone could see through the genjutsu. And yes, your brother can go to hell with this stupid fucking head. I forgot that it’s already finished. There’s no escaping it, is there?” he laments, probably wondering exactly how much Hashirama’s going to pout if he smacks the engraving off with his Susanoo.

“Don’t you have perfect memory?”

“Haven’t looked at it with the Sharingan yet,” Madara says, long-suffering, “so I can make my brain forget it.

Tobirama lets out a laugh. “Lucky you. I had to deal with eidetic memory most of my childhood and had no way of turning it off. Every one of Anija’s embarrassing antics, heaps upon heaps of his atrocious handwriting and every single one of his whiny rants embedded in my memory. It was a nightmare.”

“Ouch,” Madara sympathizes, “my condolences for your childhood psyche.” He tilts his head to the side. “What changed?”

“Memory becomes more abstract over time,” Tobirama explains. “It hasn’t been studied widely, but some children are able to remember scenes in great detail, regardless of clan or dōjutsu. It can be… unsettling.”

“Especially if it’s memories from a battlefield?” Madara asks, bit hesitant.

“Oh, definitely.” Tobirama looks to the side, hands still playing with the hem of Madara’s haori.

Madara raises his hand, in turn, to caress Tobirama’s cheek, turning him back to face him.

“Is that what you were thinking about?”

Tobirama shakes his head. “Never mind. Seriously. It’s unimportant.”

“It is to me,” Madara insists. “And it’s not that—I mean, you don’t have to share whatever it is with me, but just…” He sighs, dark eyes glinting with moonlight as they stare imploringly at Tobirama. “Talk to someone about it? Please?”

Tobirama chuckles, burying his head into Madara’s chest to hide the blush he can feel warming his cheeks, so unused he is to genuine care that doesn’t come either from Anija or Tōka. And there’s that fluttering feeling again, making his heart race and rendering his thoughts incoherent. It’s unfair, what this man does to him. Illegal, the power he holds over his heart after just a few months of a tentative relationship.

“It’s not that,” Tobirama says, clasping his lover’s hands in his, “I trust you enough to share my worries with you, Madara. But I mean it when I say it really is… It’s fine.”

Madara huffs. “That is not the voice of someone who is fine.”

“That is the voice of someone who is just slightly bothered. By mundane things. Like a sprain or a lost kunai.”

“Did you sprain yourself or lose a kunai?”

“No.”

“Then you’re bullshitting me,” Madara announces, pulling his hands away and crossing his arms. “And I demand to know what—or who—upset you.”

Tobirama eyes him, suspicious. “If it is… someone, would you scare them half to death like the Hyūga that dared proposition me that time?” he asks, voice leaking derision.

“So it is someone! I knew it!” Madara says and, completely ignoring the question, demands, “Now, who do I have to kill?”

“No one,” Tobirama says, chuckling, “murder is off-limits, Madara. No death threats. No inciting interclan hostility because you think I can’t take care of an asshole on my own.”

“I never thought that,” Madara argues, shifting so he’s snuggled up with almost no space between them, laying head onto Tobirama’s shoulder. “I just wanted to take care of him myself. Because, uh, I hate assholes with a burning passion.”

“Uh huh.”

“I was born to fight them.”

“Right.”

“Destined by fate.”

“Oh really?” Tobirama feigns contemplation. “Well, in that case, I hope you’re not inflicting too much self-harm.”

It takes all of a second for Madara to get it, after which he pulls away and proceeds to tackle Tobirama onto the blanket they’ve strewn over the ground and tickles him, wordless but determined, taking no pity as Tobirama is overwhelmed by fits of tearful laughter.

“Fuck—Madara,” Tobirama breathes through huffs of laughter, “please—haha—stop godsdammit!”

“I’m an asshole,” Madara says wryly, “why would I listen to you?”

He does, though, relenting after a few more seconds of torment, leaving Tobirama breathless beneath him and not even bothering to dodge Tobirama’s punch to his shoulder. And the next one.

And the next.

“Done?” Madara asks, smirking.

“Fuck you.” Tobirama punches his arm again for good measure. “Tickling is off-limits.”

“Excuse me? You would be abusing it just as much as I do if I were ticklish.”

Tobirama rolls his eyes but doesn’t protest; tickling is his and Anija’s favorite type of mutual torture after all.

“Well,” Madara says, “was the exquisite torture enough to squeeze the truth out of you?”

Tobirama sighs, staring fondly at the lingering pout, the adorable frown and slightly ruffled hair that suits his lover so well.

(His and no one else’s, if Tobirama has a say in it. This trust, this closeness is something he decides he’ll never willingly let go.)

“Will you kiss me again?” he asks after a few moments of silence.

Madara eyes him, suspicious. “Are you going to tell me then?”

“Promise.”

And then Madara’s lips meet his, and the worries dissipate, as per usual, giving way to pure sensation. Madara’s tongue twining with his, his hands tangling in Tobirama’s hair, just as Tobirama wraps his arms around him and drags him closer. Madara ends up straddling him, which does little to help curtail his desire. Tobirama is glad to find himself lost in it, relishing their points of connection, the feeling growing overwhelming as their chakras mesh again, making them both moan and cling fast to each other, wanting, desperate.

“Fuck,” Madara groans as they part, “oh, fuck.”

“Good idea,” Tobirama breathes, vision hazy. “Stay the night?”

“Wh-what? Like, like, uh,” Madara stutters. Tobirama suspects he’d be flailing if his hands weren’t supporting his weight. “As in, stay the night as usual or?”

“I mean spend the night,” Tobirama says, “with me. As in have sex with me, Madara.”

It’s always best to be blunt with Madara, in any case.

And it’s been harder, with each passing day, to sleep next to each other as they’ve grown used to doing. Nightmares were kept at bay and breakfast became a less lonely affair, what with their brothers moving in with their wives and spending much less time with them as of late. And, of course, there was the added burden of keeping it in their pants when one or both of them would wake up with an erection. Madara insists on waiting, though, because apparently there’s something special about Tobirama’s virginity.

It’s getting more and more annoying.

Madara has stopped spluttering, finally, and sits up, shifting uncomfortably (well, too comfortably) on top of him.

“Well, we’ll—we’ll see about that once you tell me what the fuck is bothering you, Tobirama,” Madara announces, a light flush on his cheeks, waving his arm in a clumsy show of determination and knocking down the bottle of sake they’d placed on a nearby rock. “Fuck. Shit. Whatever, it was almost empty anyway."

“You will see that I’m tired of waiting,” Tobirama says, procuring a brand-new bottle of Anija’s signature moonshine from his storage scroll and setting it aside for later. “And Madara, I…” he trails off, staring helplessly into Madara’s eyes. “I was just thinking about how fragile everything is. It pisses me off.”

Madara frowns but otherwise stays silent, knowing to give Tobirama time to gather his thoughts.

“What we’ve built,” Tobirama continues, “the peace treaties, the village, the peace between our clans, finally and…” He claps Madara’s hands in his. It’s a wonder how soothing the gesture is. “This. Us. But not just us, you know—everything. I feel like it’s too perfect, too good, something that I always dreamed about because Anija dreamed about it, but while he always believed in it, I never quite could.”

Once he was old enough to grasp the more complicated concepts of settlement-building, Tobirama would stay late nearly every night, ignoring battles the ensuing day, ignoring his debilitating fatigue. He worked on infrastructure and administrative plans, education and tax systems, ideological documents and drafts of treaties for a potential shinobi, all the while listening to a despondent voice in his head telling him it’s futile.

A perfectly imperfect dream.

Tobirama’s eyes latch onto familiar constellations once again, so as not to see Madara’s deepening frown. He’s such an idiot and he should stop talking but something compels him to go on.

“And now, we’re here, and thank the gods Izuna’s wound is fully healed and my recklessness didn’t lead to another war. And new clans are joining the village, and we’ve restructured the recruiting system, but I can’t help feeling I’m going to do something wrong and fuck everything up. Or that I’m going to overlook something, and the future generations will have to deal with the consequences, and all that we’ve worked so hard for is going to crumble,” Tobirama says in the rush of one breath, cutting himself off before he reveals more of his stupid concerns. He knows what his father would say. To ignore the voices of doubt, stand up and act, to stop being a coward. “I’m sorry. I sound stupid.”

“You don’t.” Strong arms pull Tobirama into a tight embrace, and he ends up burying his head in the crook of Madara’s neck, breathing in the warm, home-like scent of musk and cedar, the slight tinge ash that always clings to Madara’s skin and the faint honey-like fragrance of his hair. “That is perfectly understandable, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed for being afraid.”

Tobirama takes a shaky breath, closing his eyes and basking in the closeness.

“I don’t think I can. I’ve never been scared of the future before, when it looked like war and death. Now it’s… happiness and I’m terrified of losing it, Madara.”

“So am I,” Madara whispers, grazing his lips against his ear, “so is your brother. So is everyone who put their all into building this village. Of course there can—and will—be mistakes. Of course we’ll fuck up at some points but,” he intersperses his next words with feather-light kisses, “I swear, Tobirama. It’s going to be all right.”

A proper kiss this time, soft and lasting just enough for Tobirama to stop shivering from the suddenly overwhelming dread.

“A stumble won’t mean defeat.” Madara tightens his embrace momentarily, flaring his chakra just so the warmth soothes Tobirama’s nerves further. “None of us knows what the future holds. None of us is going to be perfect. But you—Tobirama, you’ve done so much, started actually thinking of how to make this a reality before Hashirama and I learned to sign our fucking names on treaties. You’re the one that notices most of our mistakes and corrects them more efficiently than we could ever hope.” He shushes Tobirama with his finger when he’s about to protest. “And we’re all thankful for that. We are all there for you, helping you along the way and doing this together,” Madara promises, placing soft kisses onto Tobirama’s hands. “Everyone is trying their best, and that’s all any of us can do, isn’t it?”

It’s a challenge to keep tears from welling up, so Tobirama takes a few deep breaths to brace himself before he attempts to answer. His voice is strangled, close to breaking, but he ignores the weakness and says, “I know. Thank you. I’ll try to remember that.”

“Please do,” Madara says, smile evident in his tone. “And remember that I’m always here to listen.”

“Thank you.”

They spend the next few minutes quietly embracing and breathing together, chakra playfully mingling between them as the wind dances around them, whistling its restless melody.

“I’ve noticed you, too, tend to look at the stars to calm yourself,” Madara asks softly.

“Mm. Yes.” Tobirama lifts his head, giving Madara a quick kiss, and moving so he’s nestled against Madara, back-to-chest, facing the starlit canvas of the night sky.

“I used to find familiar constellations as a child, then outline figures in the ones I didn’t and think up names for them,” Madara admits. “Those two are Big Bear and Little Bear.” He traces the shapes with his fingers. “Because of the tails, see?”

Tobirama frowns. “They look like bowls with ladles to me.”

“Shut the fuck up with your bowls and ladles,” Madara grumbles. “You and Izuna have no imagination. Those are bears.”

“Whatever you say, Madara.” Tobirama chuckles. “Then here’s mine: that one looks like the symbol for pi.”

“A symbol for pie? Why the fuck would a pie even need a symbol? Those are Twins!”

They bicker over what each constellation depicts until they’ve run out of visible stars in their portion of the sky—and drained half of the moonshine.

“Well,” Madara says by the end of it, “we’ve at least settled who’s the more creative one out of the two of us.”

“You mean to say, who has the more developed imagination and who’s still a five-year-old,” Tobirama teases, not bothering to avoid Madara’s flick to his forehead.

“Dick.”

“Asshole.”

“You still like me.”

“And you like me.”

“I guess we’re stuck with each other then,” Madara laments. “Whatever shall we do?”

“Talk science?” Tobirama suggests, reaching for the moonshine and moving to sit cross-legged in front of Madara, who’s looking at him, one skeptical eyebrow raised. “There’s one mind-blowing fact we’ve just discovered about the stars, thanks to telescopes. Turns out they’re really, really, really far away and the light we see from them is actually from the past, because it takes so long to reach us. The worlds we see are millions, maybe billions of years old, and by now are probably dead and gone—but we’ll never actually live to see how they end.”

Madara blinks. “That’s depressing.”

“And… fascinating?” Tobirama tries.

“More depressing. But still cool, I admit.” Madara drains his drink. “Maybe there’s a world out there just like ours. War-torn and tired of war, building peace through trial and error.” His lopsided smile makes Tobirama’s heart skip a beat. “Makes you feel a bit less alone in the universe, doesn’t it?”

Tobirama returns the smile. “I don’t feel alone with you.”

It’s both sweet and hilarious to see the expression of utter shock on Madara’s face, and the blush that follows, and the spluttering before he settles on words.

“Oh, I, uh, yeah, me too! You’re, um, you’re okay.”

“And you’re remarkable, Madara.”

Tobirama is grinning like an idiot, probably, and Madara goes on muttering something about cocky self-satisfied bastards, before yanking Tobirama by the collar into yet another of their many kisses this night—and, hopefully, of many more to come.

#madatobi #tobimada #madara uchiha #tobirama senju #lou writes #fanfic #camp nano april 2020 #raffle prize

[morgandria]

Moon Musings

I am on day #!^* of One Of -Those- Migraines (thanks, March), so while I’m sitting here trying not to be miserable, you’re getting some moon stuff. I have a pile of random thoughts that are trying to coalesce themselves into a coherent lunar-focused project in the future, so the moon has been on my mind. In many ways, I miss the moon. I live on a street corner in town where two separate lights shine directly on my yard, and since they installed new LED lights there's no such thing as darkness at night. Even my backyard, which would be in the shadow of the house normally, is lit since the LEDs spill farther and brighter now, and my neighbours keep their back porch light on all the time. We won't even talk about the fact that out of the last 16 months, I think we had full cloud cover for about 14 of them. That's the reality.

So this is more of the woo side. This is UPG, 100%. I often don’t use traditional names for the different Full Moons - some of them don’t resonate, so I do what works for me. Secondly, my personal lunar lore behind the names I do use is all mashed up with a whole lot of synesthesia, and some personal experiences. So...if any of this works for you or entertains you, cool. If not? No worries. Do your thing, and I’ll do mine. I also live in Ontario, and always have, so my experiences and practices are absolutely rooted here. Weather patterns and seasons won't work the same elsewhere, so you need to work with what you've got.

January: Wolf Moon

I do use a traditional name for this moon, but only because I used to go howling with the wolves in the back 40 when I was a teenager. I used to be able to take long white walks in the fields when they were all lit up, and were fortunate to have some lupine neighbours. I love the sharpness of the night sky, and finding moments of silence and stillness. More practically these days I bundle up at home away from the ice and the cold and enjoy a good cup of tea when I can. The vibration of this moon's energy always seems to bring me insomnia, though. The colours I associate with January’s moon are white, silver, red, and a deep amethyst. Other things, more randomly: birch trees, the sound of cracking ice, the hissing of river reeds in the wind.

February: Storm Moon

There’s a tempestuous feel to February’s moon for me. It’s usually the month we get intensely cold. January is often a icy, thaw/freeze mess, but February always feels like the time when Winter decides it’s time to really throw its’ weight around with some serious storms. The feel of this moon’s energy is sinuous for me, sliding around and into everything, but also fierce. There’s something profoundly cleansing about letting a sharp winter wind pierce through to your bones and strip away all the gunk cluttering up your energy. My colours for this moon are grey and deep blues, like Prussian blue or steel blue. Other things: labradorite, blue tiger’s eye, and the smell of wintergreen,

March: Crow Moon

This is the moon when my crows come back to my neighbourhood. They usually move out around the start of December, and I start to see and hear them again around the start of March. Nothing about March in Ontario is spring-like: it’s either a solid mass of ice coating everything, or faded grey-brown and thick with mud. Ugh. I actually used to camp on March break as a teenager, but inevitably it ended up with a dozen frozen teenagers in a friend's kitchen having an impromptu Sunday breakfast while I woke up and wondered where everyone'd gone. (Stir-crazy kids in the sticks with nothing to do for a week do silly things.) Nowadays, I’d rather look up at the skies than down at the earth during this moon, and I choose to focus on my corvid friends because they make me happy. Crow Moon is somehow all aquas and peacock blues in colour, and mare’s tails in impossible blue skies, and the world smells once again of fresh, clean Earth, when the ice lets it through.

April: Seed Moon

Maybe the moon where (people who are better gardeners than me) start to get their seeds in the ground. I live in a snow belt, so I don't trust myself to plant anything until May. It's still not super warm, or even remotely dry, but there starts to be hints of things like warmer sun and breezes around the edges. Later in the month you get those days where pollen and snow can fly at the same time. There's no leaves yet, but you can see the buds getting fatter. I think of it as a "restful" time during the year, before summer gets really busy with family and friends. If we're having a good Spring I might get a day or two where I can actually get outside and tidy the yard some. I associate Seed Moon with the colours of soft buttery yellow and pale peridot green, which starts to invade around the rust-brown-green background. It's a citrine month, and also one where those little blue flowers come up in people's lawns.

May: Hare Moon

We don't have hares here. I wish we did - I used to see snowshoe hares in the country when I was wee - but I have rabbits, at least. And yet, this is not "Rabbit Moon". A hare is a different beast from a rabbit entirely. They have a fierce wildness that our Eastern Cottontails do not. And for me, the moon of May, the month of Beltane and the nuptials of the Lord and Lady, have a fierce, wild joy as the world finally explodes with warmth and light and leaves and flowers. I don't ever really trust winter is gone until mid-May. Hare Moon is emerald and violet and velvet, the shadow of leaves and sweet intoxicating aromas. There's something tactile about it - you want to run your hands through it, let it brush past you and run its' fingers through your hair.

June: Mead Moon

I sometimes also call this the Honey Moon. It is the sweetest time of the summer for me, before it's mind-meltingly hot. You get those gorgeous days that are still draped in gentle grey veils of rain on the growing, swaying green fields, and the flowers are growing tall and tangled - honeysuckle, clover, alfalfa and St. John's Wort. There are bees -everywhere-, and the very first of the summer fruits are coming ripe and I spend eight months of the year absolutely dying for the four when we get local, seasonal fruit. It's an idyll, before I'm completely sunbaked and dried out in the heat. Mead Moon is all sky blue and honey gold, saffron and ultramarine. It's warm sand and cold lakes, the smell of hay drying in the fields, and long drives down country roads to escape the concrete of town.

July: Satyr Moon

This month's moon is probably the time when folks in these parts get up to the most outdoor activity. I associate it most with a kind of revelry and hedonism - hence the 'satyr'. We get people taking their vacations, heading to the cottage, the campsite, and having their reunions and parties. Concerts, fairs, festivals...we have a lot to cram into a short time. The lilies in my yard finally have bloomed their brilliant orange, by the start of the month, and July is one long stretch of pure jewel-like greens, under bleached blue skies. This is the other month, like April, where everything feels like it's just poised, waiting to explode with the brisk business of harvest. For me, this moon is natural life in its' prime, and despite my dislike of intense heat and humidity I try to remind myself to enjoy it where and how I can. Satyr Moon is an endless mosaic of greens, a heady musky smell of wood and water, cedar and leaf, shadows and firelight dancing, and distant music everywhere.

August: Barley Moon

This moon is the first harvest moon, here, when the wheat is finally harvested and all that dust in the air makes it ripe and golden and warm. Haying season will sometimes give the moon a bit of a gold tint earlier on, but not those deep amber rises I adore in August. I am an August Virgo, and I adore the Barley Moon - I mean, I quite literally worship wheat. All the first fruits of harvest are peaking, there's SO much goodness in the fields, and yet I can feel summer slowing down, and gradually waning to a bronze-green glowing that I absolutely adore. The nature of daylight changes, subtly, and I try to catch onto every sunset and fix it into my brain, to save it for those white winter days when we haven't seen even the notion of sun for weeks. When we slide from the scorch of the dog days into long, gloaming evenings and cooler nights and the hints of colour on the leaves at the end of the month - heaven. Barley Moon is wheaten and speckled browns, endless golds, blackberry and peach, the smell of dry grass and fresh corn. It's countless toasted tomato sandwiches, far too much zucchini, and penetrating spears of bronze light through the trees as the sun slides away to let the fat amber moon rise up.

September: Harvest Moon

There's no stopping harvest. This moon is when -everything- comes down, and you have no choice but to get your ass moving. You try to get as much of it off the vine while it's best. I get very hobbity when Harvest comes, and I want to be living a simple life. I start to miss home, and rural life, and my family, a lot. It feels different than my youth, and it's...wrong now, somehow. These days it's more like Second July - it rarely cools off below 20°C., it's often stupidly humid, and can be much, much warmer. Our changing climate makes it feel like a month of dragging what I dislike most about Summer out, and it just feels unnatural. Add into that everyone still running around trying to pretend like Summer isn't ending, and I do not like it much for that reason. September always ends up cluttered and rushed, just too much going on in our lives for various reasons. I wish I appreciated it more, but I don't. But there are moments: the deepening indigo of September twilights, the movement of the birds (both those ready to move on and those snatching up all the food they can before the cold comes), the exuberance of goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace and asters. Harvest Moon is indigo and wine-red, the sweetness of a frost-touched grape, the musk of a yeast-laden apple's skin, and the first cries of the migrating geese.

October: Hunter's Moon

Hunter's Moon has two sides. From the start of October, until Thanksgiving, is gorgeous, brilliant leaves and bright crisp skies. It's deep blue waters reflecting streaks of smoke and high cloud. Any time after that, it can snow. It certainly will get wet and windy, at the very least. And then everything is grey, torrents of wine-dark leaves all with that sugar-sweet rot as they lie where they fall intertwined with the smell of the cold and everyone's woodstoves firing up. I cannot tell you how much this season refills my spirit. It's always been a hunter's moon for me. Various hunting seasons start (turkey, duck, deer, then into moose later in the fall), and I have many fond memories of delicious game meat meals with family well into the spring. It was a vital part of life, and always done with respect and thanks. Hunter's Moon is grey on grey, the edges of smokey obsidian and crimson-carnelian-red. It is antler and bone and slow-burning hardwood, the hissing of the corn stalks drying in the darkening fields.

November: Snow Moon

You'll see Snow Moons all over the winter calender, depending on where you live. For me, winter starts at Samhain, and it is inevitable that we have snow here very close to that date (whether before or after). It was true living on the Rideau, and it's still true over here in the Central Ontario snowbelts off Georgian Bay. November's is another two-sided moon: there's the gold, and the grey, The gold is of a clear day's sun through the last of the golden maple leaves clinging to the branches is clarion, of wetland reeds and cow corn still standing in the now-frosty fields. The grey comes softer than October, creeping softly across lawns and windows and the brown leaves curling on the ground, and as drifting veils of snow blowing in to cover the land in its' first lingering solid coats of white. I love the world's withdrawal into silence - I too, withdraw into myself and listen to inner voices. Snow Moon is white and silver (but also pearl grey and ash and brown) and the nights are long, powdery indigo, mounted by silent owl wings, iolite eyes set in silver frames.

December: Oak Moon

This last moon is curious for me, in that I do not know precisely why I continue to use this name. I like it - it has many associations for me in my Craft - but I guess I haven't thought much about it. Many oak trees do keep some or all of their rich tannin-brown leathery leaves through winter, though, and I do enjoy their song (along with the remnants of the leaves on our ash trees) in the wind... but that's not it. Neither is the whole Oak King/Holly King construct, which I don't really engage with. I have a strong connection with a particular energy, that of an aged, Green Man sage-type spirit that comes with this moon, so perhaps that's part of it as well. I suspect it will always be a bit of a Mystery, which I'm ok with. December's night skies seem curiously leeched of their blue hues, as the nights grow longer, a velvety black glittering blanket. Oak Moon comes dressed in the deep, rich colours of the Earth element - glossy evergreens, rich brown, deepest black, and is redolent of pine and cedar, and the flash of cardinals and blue jays at the bird feeder.

I don't know if any of that is useful, entertaining, or even intelligible. I hope at the very least, it prompts you to think about how you interact with the moons of the year, and the seasons, and how you perceive the world around you.

#lunar calendar #full moons #UPG #witchcraft #musings #personal #seasons #Ontario #i miss living in the country

[whatelsecanwedonow]

I’m picking out parts of this conversation I found especially interesting. Italics are mine:

You know, I’ve been trying to think of some precise, encapsulating question to ask you about what we’ve been witnessing over the last few weeks, and everything I was coming up with felt forced or phony. Maybe it’s better, because you’ve been eloquent during times of crisis in the past, just to ask what you’ve been thinking about and seeing in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing? I’d like to say I’m surprised by what happened to him, but I’m not. This is a cycle, and I feel that in some ways, the issue is that we’re addressing the wrong problem. We continue to make this about the police — the how of it. How can they police? Is it about sensitivity and de-escalation training and community policing? All that can make for a less-egregious relationship between the police and people of color. But the how isn’t as important as the why, which we never address. The police are a reflection of a society. They’re not a rogue alien organization that came down to torment the black community. They’re enforcing segregation. Segregation is legally over, but it never ended. The police are, in some respects, a border patrol, and they patrol the border between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that situation erupts, and we express our shock and indignation. But if we don’t address the anguish of a people, the pain of being a people who built this country through forced labor — people say, ‘‘I’m tired of everything being about race.’’ Well, imagine how [expletive] exhausting it is to live that.

Does the scale and intensity of the protests suggest some positive strides toward accountability? Maybe. Look, every advancement toward equality has come with the spilling of blood. Then, when that’s over, a defensiveness from the group that had been doing the oppressing. There’s always this begrudging sense that black people are being granted something, when it’s white people’s lack of being able to live up to the defining words of the birth of the country that is the problem. There’s a lack of recognition of the difference in our system. Chris Rock used to do a great bit: ‘‘No white person wants to change places with a black person. They don’t even want to exchange places with me, and I’m rich.’’ It’s true. There’s not a white person out there who would want to be treated like even a successful black person in this country. And if we don’t address the why of that treatment, the how is just window dressing. You know, we’re in a bizarre time of quarantine. White people lasted six weeks and then stormed a state building with rifles, shouting: ‘‘Give me liberty! This is causing economic distress! I’m not going to wear a mask, because that’s tyranny!’’ That’s six weeks versus 400 years of quarantining a race of people. The policing is an issue, but it’s the least of it. We use the police as surrogates to quarantine these racial and economic inequalities so that we don’t have to deal with them.

...we’ve got a [expletive]-up permanent campaign system with too much money in it. Don’t people know that already? The politicians don’t even know how [expletive] up their system is. Nancy Pelosi was on ‘‘The Daily Show,’’ and we were talking about how money has a corrupting influence in politics. I said, ‘‘You raised $30 million. How does that money corrupt you?’’ She said it doesn’t. So money corrupts, but not you? That’s someone within the system. And when I went down to Washington for the 9/11 victim-compensation bill, I learned something that shocked me. We had a program that was working. Bureaucratically, it wasn’t broken. What is broken about Washington isn’t the bureaucracy. It’s legislators’ ability to address the issues inherent in any society — and the reason they can’t address them is that when you have a duopoly, there is no incentive to work together to create something better. Plus, you have one party whose premise is that government is bad and whose goal is to prove that, which makes them, in essence, a double agent. All these things coalesce to make problem-solving the antithesis of what we’ve created. We’re incentivized for more extreme candidates, for more extreme partisanship, for more conflict and permanent campaigning, for corporate interests to have more influence on the process, not less. The tax code isn’t complicated because poor people have demanded that it be that way.

What do you think of the news media’s handle on this political moment more generally? I don’t think it has ever had a good handle on a political moment. It’s not designed for that. It’s designed for engagement. It’s like YouTube and Facebook: an information-laundering perpetual-radicalization machine. It’s like porn. I don’t mean that to be flip. When you were pubescent, the mere hint of a bra strap could send you into ecstasy. I’m 57 now. If it’s not two nuns and a mule, I can’t even watch it. Do you understand my point? The algorithm is not designed for thoughtful engagement and clarity. It’s designed to make you look at it longer.

Have there been any positive changes, though? Let me give you an example of what might be one: When you were doing ‘‘The Daily Show,’’ part of what made you unique was your last-sane-man-in-Crazytown quality. You would actually say that someone in power was telling a lie when the nightly newscasters wouldn’t. Now they will say that. Is that a step in the right direction? The media’s job is to deconstruct the manipulation, not to just call it a lie. It’s about informing on how something works so that you understand the lie’s purpose. What are the structural issues underneath the lie? The media shouldn’t take the political system personally, or allow its own narcissism to rise to the narcissism of the politicians, or become offended that the politicians are lying — their job is to manipulate.

How much might his administration’s response to Covid-19 hurt him in November? That’s the question the media asks. What they should be focused on is, here’s what happens when you hollow out the pandemic-response team. You have to go after the case of competence and anticorruption. The media wants to prosecute the case of offensiveness. That doesn’t matter. But there were decisions about P.P.E. and the states that were made without any federal response, and that does matter. It’s really about, what is government? Are we the Articles of Confederation? Are we the Constitution? Are we the United States? What are we? If we’re just 50 states, and if New York can push Delaware out of the way and get masks, and now Delaware has got to pay 10 times what it was going to pay — are we being led or not? It’s the wildest thing. I’ve never seen anybody who can say in the same breath, as the president does, ‘‘I am in charge, only I can fix this, and I take no responsibility.’’ You cannot process that. So what you have to process is the actual process: How do masks help? Do they help? You have to really explain it to people, but we allow the mask-wearing to be reduced to its symbolic meaning. Things like masks can’t just become another avatar of political representation. That’s where we go wrong.

This might be a little Civics 101, but I hope you’ll indulge me: A lot of your work has fundamentally been about interrogating certain truths or ideas about America and the American experiment. Things like: What does this country mean? What are its ideals and values? What’s its character? Over the last few years those questions have only become harder to contemplate in any coherent way, let alone answer. Do those questions still hold for you? Every society lies to itself to some extent. Every person does. And sometimes you have to face the truth. The truth of the American experiment is that government is messy. It’s hard to manage. We are melding cultures and religions in a way that most countries don’t. But we have an exceptionalism that we have taken for granted, and we get lost in the symbolism of who we are rather than the reality. The reality of who we are is still remarkable. You can’t take the anecdotal and pretend it’s universal. You can’t take a picture of the Lake of the Ozarks and people on top of each other drinking and say, ‘‘That’s how America responded to the pandemic.’’ Because it’s not. The boots-on-the-ground response has been phenomenally resilient and responsible and courageous. The sense that this could all turn into ‘‘Mad Max’’ tomorrow always hangs over everything — but it hasn’t. There are issues, but again, we point a spotlight on the anecdotal and pretend that it’s universal. What that does is feed the narrative for people who want to use it for their own purposes. That’s what drives me bananas. We’re basically having giant public fights about symbolism, while the reality of our situation goes unexamined.

Are you hopeful about what lies ahead? Always. Because the view we get of the country is not accurate. We get the artifice of it, the conflict of it. I’m not naïve. I don’t think that true divisions and animosities and bigotry and prejudices don’t exist. We see that every day. But fundamentally, we are a resilient and strong and resourceful nation that has oftentimes overcome our worst tendencies — ‘‘overcome’’ is probably too strong a word. But our biggest problem as humans is ignorance, not malevolence. Ignorance is an entirely curable disease.

How? Information and work. You need to talk to people. Ignorance is often cured by experience, by spending time with what you don’t understand. But I honestly don’t know. Well, you know what? I do know: In the same way that Trump’s recklessness is born out of experience, so is my optimism, because good people outweigh [expletive] people. By a long shot.

#the good people have to be in control tho to speak to the last two sentences #the weight of the good must be felt #but 'you can't take the anecdotal and pretend it's universal' is!!! #'we're basically having giant public fights about symbolism' #yes #b/c it's listless insanity there's no one at any wheel #being able to succinctly discuss topics like this is a hell of a thing #i don't rly care to tag this and have randos interact #'an information-laundering perpetual-radicalization machine' is also twitter dot com #and like... all of social media #anyway #long post

[heuristicallyinclined]

MallekWeek2020 Writing Prompts

Chapter 6: Day 6: MSPA Reader meeting trickster!Mallek for the first time

(AO3)

Summary: First time as in first meeting? Or first time as a trickster? Why not both?

Notes: One more day. God I don't know how this got done. This was very fun to write though.

God fucking damn it Mallek.

Play a game he said. You’ll have fun and make new friends he said. You’ll eventually meet them in person through a series of convoluted time paradoxes that simultaneously have and have not happened yet he said. It will be all good he said.

You know what he didn’t fucking say?

That at one point, he would turn into some candy coated asshole who would be terrorizing you the first time you ever met in person.

You knew that he was an “information specialist” and just generally enjoyed getting into shit he shouldn’t. And it was fine, he was having fun, you were having fun, doomed timelines were being averted. Future him would talk to current you and give you advice to repay future you for helping past him. You know, things that don’t really make sense, but your pursuit of friendship has barely even ever led you astray, so why worry about it?

He even told you that when your sessions merged that you two would finally meet. He said that your present selves were about to meet and be experiencing the same time for the first time and you were so pumped to meet him in person. Apparently, the future two of you were chilling and hanging out together in the future while pinging past each others’ past selves and it sounded so nice. Just some friends helping each other become friends so that you could become friends and ensure that you became friends in the first place.

That was the last you heard from future Mallek and you didn’t know if he didn’t tell you this because telling you would change your reactions and alter the timeline or if shit had just gone entirely off of the rails in this one.

You were finally able to reach current Mallek on your palmhusk and you knew you were excited to see him, as well as the rest of your friends too. He was excited too since he liked future you and figured present you would be pretty chill too. You hoped he would. You knew he would, since all of what hasn’t happened has happened already has so things will be fine.

It was as things were about to coalesce that he said he thought he found something that would help with the game. That he poured through the code and that he thought he found a cheat that would help create a tool you guys could use to win. And maybe this was partially your fault for encouraging him, but you’re just an encouraging person in general and want your friends to do well. Especially when they are doing something that sounds cool and that they are passionate about, like hacking. You thought it would be beneficial to everybody. So you did.

You were starting to regret that.

He said he was going to go alchemize it and would be over to see you in a bit and for you to hang out right where you were. You were excited to see whatever mystery hack this was. Then things just felt different. Like someone opened a pixy stick too close to you and you felt like you had to sneeze everything just smelled like sugar and kind of burned.

You heard him before you saw him.

“SUP;”

You turned around and immediately squinted trying to shield your eyes from whatever that was. It wasn’t a bright light, it was just this nauseous burst of color and it just looked wrong. Everything clashed together in a way that simultaneously called attention to him and made you want to look away. Looking at him too long gave you a headache and you could have sworn that he didn’t have firm edges, that he was just, almost glitching?

“IT = GREAT TO FINALLY MEET YOU BUD;”

Oh hell no. This was not Mallek. You had seen his profile picture and this was not that. Like this dude looked like Lisa Frank personally beat his ass. Also, what is his volume? You could barely hear your own panicked thoughts. Maybe you could get him to calm down?

You hesitantly greet him and ask if he is feeling okay. He sounded a lot more mellow on Grype and you wanted to know if something happened while he was trying to make the tool.

“I = AM DOING GREAT; I HACKED THE GAME; AND EVERYTHING = GOING TO BE OKAY NOW;”

He sounded manic, like he could barely contain himself and you notice he was holding a massive swirly lollipop. This couldn’t be the tool, this was a joke. This has to be a joke. It is a joke that is super not funny to you and you start stepping away slowly from him. He floated towards you, seemingly unaware of your fear.

“AW; WE = ALREADY FRIENDS; YOU =! NEED TO BE SHY; I = SO EXCITED TO MEET YOU;”

You let him know that you were happy to see him too, but maybe you two should hold off on talking until he was feeling better.

“WHAT; I = SO MUCH BETTER NOW; I USED TO BE FREAKING OUT ABOUT MY ORDEALS; THEN I WAS STRESSED ABOUT THE GAME; AND THIS SWEET CHEAT SOLVED EVERYTHING;”

Oh wow. Yeah. You are glad he is feeling better. He did a good amount of that too, it didn’t do everything. Like he helped turn it into an executable file in the first place and he had even opened up about his anxieties to you. He shouldn't give it all the credit. You were all just friends helping friends. And maybe he should put that down and take a deep breath.

“YOU = ALWAYS BEEN REALLY HELPFUL FRIEND; WE GOT THE GAME BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME WHERE IT WAS; AND WE HAVE THIS BECAUSE I FOUND IT; NOW I = PUMPED THAT I CAN HELP YOU;”

Oh he really doesn’t have to do that, you are good. You didn’t do it for a reward you just wanted to hang out with your friends and be happy and you two were already doing that so really there is no need t-

“BUT YOU DID THIS BECAUSE YOU WERE LONELY; YOU WERENT HAPPY;”

He is floating closer to you and you try to say you were happy now. You don’t have to bring that up.

He is now on the ground slowly walking towards you and this was somehow the most scared you had ever been in the game.

“DONT YOU WANT TO ALWAYS BE HAPPY; DONT YOU THINK IT WOULD COOL TO NOT WORRY ANYMORE ABOUT ANYTHING”

No, you think that not being happy all the time makes it easier to relate to others having a hard time. Like using candy to pretend that nothing is wrong.

“I WAS NOT HAPPY SINCE I DIDNT HAVE ANY CONTROL OF MY LIFE ON ALTERNIA; YOU GOT ME OUT; NOW WITH THIS I = COMPLETELY IN CONTROL; I OWN THE GAME; I CAN DO WHAT I WANT WHENEVER I WANT TO; YOU CAN TOO;”

He didn’t look like a guy like a guy in control. It seemed like he got worried he was going to lose control again and did something maybe not smart. You know how much he likes being able to do his own thing and you could understand

“DONT BE LAME; THIS = SO MUCH BETTER THAN BEING STRESSED ALL THE TIME; PLUS WITH THIS YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TOO; WERE BUDS; I WANT YOU TO GET IN ON THIS WITH ME;”

What you really want is for him to back the fuck up because he is really getting in your personal space and you’re getting super uncomfortable.

“COME ON; BE HAPPY WITH ME;”

Whoa, wait, what?

“I ALREADY DID ALL OF THE CODING; AND I != HAVE ANY FUTURE KNOWLEDGE TO HELP YOU WITH ANYMORE; WITH THIS WE CAN STILL HANG OUT;”

You didn’t talk to him just because you thought he was useful, you already liked him. He doesn’t need to do shit like this for you to want to hang out with him.

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, as it somehow made his already huge grin impossibly wider. Yeah, you weren’t getting out of this one.

Before your sugar rush started, your last coherent thought was that you wondered if this happening is dooming the timeline, or ensuring its’ success.

Notes: Okay so, trickster mode gives a megaphone to your impulses and fears so for this I theorized that in a game, he might need to feel useful. With all of MSPA's other cool friends, he might be anxious that if he isn't bringing anything to the table anymore, why see him? Also, finding a game breaking power up for someone who is desperate for control? Yeah. Not great.

#mallekweek #mallekweek2020 #mallek adalov #my writing #homestuck #hiveswap

[alyssabethancourt]

If you only read one of my project updates, make it this one.

It took most of the day to kick in, for some reason, but the price of the Mornnovin eBook on Amazon has finally adjusted to 99¢. It will remain at that deeply discounted price at least until February 26th. I may or may not be persuadable on the subject of extending the sale for an additional week.

So now that the stress of that unexpected snafu has lifted, I can do a proper update.

It's Friday, five days in, and as of posting this the fundraiser is sitting pretty at $821 or 22% funded. We're nicely on track. The next big goal, obviously, is getting to 25% ($925) and I'm confident we can hit that mark easy-peasy before the end of the weekend. Please, keep talking up this series and sharing the link with your friends, family, and followers.

Trajelon is a special book not just because it's mine and I have to say that, but because it explores issues and themes that I don't think we see often enough in fiction – especially not in the sparkly elf magic genre.

I'm going to get real with you for a minute.

I've talked before about how the version of Mornnovin that is now published is the culmination of thirty years and four versions of telling that particular story. What people may not know is that I'd also written Trajelon once before.

In late 1997, I was 18 years old and I'd made some terrible decisions that I was locked into living with for the foreseeable future, both because of the nature of responsibility but also because of pride. People had tried to warn me, and of course being the age I was, I knew everything. I'd been downright insolent about my conviction that I knew what I was doing.

So there I was, miserable, bridges burned, everything to prove, struggling under the load of several massive responsibilities all taken on at once, knowing that I'd made the bed I now had to lie in. I was also trying to pass my first semester of college as an English major. I can't remember now precisely which combination of events led me to come to this conclusion, but I started to feel that although I was reasonably good at academic writing, my creative writing was a clear waste of my time. I actually went as far as deciding to give it up.

I think, now, that I might have been trying to punish myself.

That take makes sense in hindsight because as soon as I'd grounded myself from the sort of writing I actually enjoy doing, two things happened.

One, at odd moments I started doodling scenes that weren't supposed to be part of anything, so I was free from the feeling that they had to be any good or make any kind of sense or fit within a larger narrative. This would come to be important later.

And two, the scenes I was scribbling down without any commitment to story or quality were all about bad things happening to Loríen.

Because writers have to write, even if they've made bullshit nonsense declarations about how they've given it up, a story idea did eventually coalesce out of all of these snippets. And because of where I was, the story was dark. The finished product was horrible, but it was genuine – a savage cry of pain from someone who believed she had no right to it.

Fast forward ten years. Now it's 2007. I'm still living in that hell of my own making, but it's different because I'm ten years older and time does change things, for better or worse. Now I'm working a crappy retail job and it's killing me. To save my sanity, one day, I pull some blank receipt paper out of the cash register and in tiny, cramped letters I start scribbling some scenes that aren't supposed to be part of anything. They're just junk for my brain, something to keep me alive. Because they're not for anything real, I don't worry about them being any good or fitting within whatever other arbitrary writing rules I have for myself. At night, while the household is asleep, I transfer the cramped letters from cash register paper to computer file.

After a while, I realize they are actually starting to make a coherent story, but it's not canon, I tell myself. It's just some cracky Asrellion fanfiction. Just some mindless entertainment. I keep giving myself permission to tell a different kind of story from whatever I imagine canon to be.

By the time I leave that crappy retail job, I find that in my time there I've managed to scribble onto bits and pieces of receipt paper what amounts to roughly twenty typed pages of... something.

Then I realize that what I have on my hands isn't just something, it's the seed of a new version of Book 2. One that actually has something to say besides screaming in wordless agony. The only problem is, this new book that I can see laid out before me is far too good for the terrible most-recent draft of Book 1 that would precede it.

Then I realize that I'm going to have to write this book, which means that I'm also going to have to rewrite the first book in the series in order to lay the necessary groundwork.

That's the story of how I came to begin my ground-up re-imagining of Mornnovin in 2008.

It turns out to be a good thing that I took the time to do that first, because I wouldn't have been ready then to tell the story that I ultimately had in me in 2016 when I wrote Trajelon over the course of six intense months. By then, I had escaped Hell. By then, I was safe. By then, I had some perspective on what it is not just to live through but to survive trauma and depression.

The first incarnation of Trajelon was what I needed it to be when I screamed it up, all those years ago. It was catharsis. I don't blame it for its darkness or its ugliness any more than you would blame a post-surgical scar for its raw appearance. This iteration of Trajelon is what it needed to be. Almost Athena-like, it sprang fully-formed from the brain of its creator. And it's no longer a cry of suffering. It's... a meditation on living with the suffering that inevitably comes along with the triumphs we experience in life. Living with, enduring, growing from. Learning to discard where possible. Drawing into our identity and building off of where necessary.

No doubt this is scary territory for some readers, but that's exactly why I think it's so important to tell these stories. They can't all be about glorious victories on the field of battle. There are more shades to the spectrum of the human (elven?) experience. I so wish this book had existed at a time when I could have drawn strength from it. Now I no longer need to draw on that kind of strength, but others do. I know they do.

So maybe this was a big old heavy update for a Friday evening, but I hope you don't mind the candor. This book is very personal for me, as you now understand, and that would have become clear anyway as soon as you read it. Because I think that's actually its truest and purest strength, I wanted to be up front about it in this fundraiser. I am pitching to you a fantasy novel written by a survivor of abuse, trauma, and depression written for survivors of abuse, trauma, and depression.

If you, like I do, think that's an important thing to have exist in the world, please help me get the word out and bring it into reality.

And thank you for letting me get real.

Help fund TRAJELON on Kickstarter.

#depression #trauma #abuse #fiction for survivors #fantasy #fantasy fiction #elves #writing #indie author #indie publisher #fundraiser #kickstarter #mornnovin #trajelon #asrellion #alyssa marie bethancourt

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The Closet

Natalie awoke.

Her eyes fluttered open, trying to listen to what was being whispered to her. Through the drunkenness of sleep and the haze of broken dreams, she strained to hear the words, but failed to comprehend their language.

The soup of broken thoughts coalesced into coherence. She remembered: she lived alone.

She shot up into a sitting position on her bed. The whispers felt like they reached her ears from everywhere and nowhere at once. They sliced through her mind, sharp and leaving razor-thin cuts in her thoughts. Fear bled from those invisible wounds, causing her heartbeat to wildly race.

Her closet’s door stood open. Natalie stared in disbelief as blue light poured out of it. Not the warm yellow light that could come from the small light bulb hanging inside there, but something much brighter. Colder. The light itself refused to maintain consistency, for it sparkled like a body of water was reflecting it, ever-flowing and shifting.

When she awoke again, thin slivers of light poured in through the cracks in her blinds. It was morning and time to go to work. She visited the closet and peered inside, finding what she should have expected to find—her clothing, and shoes, and boxes.

No strange lights, nothing out of the ordinary.

No whispers.

She went about her day, dismissing it as something ephemeral. She wondered if she had simply dreamt it all. During work, Natalie caught herself searching the internet on her phone. Some part of her feared that anybody could discover her strange search history.

Nothing turned up on this new house she had bought and moved into a few months ago. The move had been stressful, but nothing about it had been unusual. Not until now.

During another break, she wound up on sites and online threads regarding descriptions and discussions of sleep paralysis and night terrors. Weariness weighed her down all day—as if she had barely slept the night before.

In a moment of silence and solitude, waiting for the elevator to open in front of her, she remembered that bright light. Scintillating, dancing. Luring her.

The soft chime of the elevator broke her out of her trance as its doors opened before her. She rode it down to the parking garage and left to go home. On the drive across town, she distracted herself with music and chatter from the radio, as well as flipping through messages on her phone while she waited at red lights.

Natalie crashed into bed early that night. While brushing her teeth, her thoughts circled towards the strange—dream? Nightmare? She could not say. She expected another such event that night, and the exhaustion allowed her to drift into sleep in what felt like an instant.

She awoke one time and stumbled in the dark for a nightly bathroom visit and then awoke again the morning, feeling fully rested. The day passed and some tricky challenges on her current work project distracted her too much for her to occupy her thoughts with the strange experience.

The more days passed, the more distant it grew. The more surreal it became to imagine it, the more the memory blurred. Such thoughts shrank until over a week had passed.

The closet door opened. It took her several moments to gather her thoughts, leaving her confused and disoriented. She blinked, sitting up in her bed and realizing that over a week had passed. Nine days without such incident.

One of the whispers she heard sounded so clear that she could almost spell it out, though she found it impossible to comprehend.

Dune-Akeer.

Tendrils of forbidden knowledge snaked through her thoughts and wrapped themselves around the memories from a week ago. The whispers continued, dancing at the edge of her perception like soft white noise.

The light shone from her closet; bright blue and ominous and sparkling as brightly as ever. As alien as the whispered words, echoing in her head.

This was no sleep paralysis—she knew that much. She untangled herself from the sheets on her bed and felt everything. The soft carpet underneath her bare feet; the cold hardwood floor. The nightly air kept cool by air conditioning, sweeping over exposed skin. And the closet with its strange light—it drew nearer with each timid step that she took towards it.

Her hand, outstretched, trembled, but not with fear. It shook with anticipation.

Natalie’s destiny awaited beyond that door. The light beckoned her.

With it standing ajar, she saw something through the crack. A silhouette stood out against the blinding brightness. An eye peered back at her, pitch black like a doe’s and glistening and curious.

The door slammed shut and Natalie gasped. The light disappeared with it. Nothing shined, not even a hint of it emerging from the cracks at the seams of the closet door’s frame. The whispers had gone silent and would not return.

She swallowed and felt a pit forming in her stomach. Natalie shivered with the sensation of goosebumps forming on her arms and the back of her neck.

She had to know what this all meant. This was no dream.

No hallucination.

Every inhibition died that moment. Unyielding curiosity took root in her. A thirst for knowledge took the shape of a knife in her mind, thrusting outwards. Matching that motion, she grabbed the closet door and ripped it open.

Darkness had taken the bright light’s place and softened the outlines of everything inside the closet. There was nothing unnatural in there but clothing hanging from hangers on the bar. Several pairs of shoes and boots on the floor. Boxes up top.

She yanked the light cord and the light bulb’s soft glow flickered on into existence, illuminating the walk-in closet’s interior.

The goosebumps settled and any lingering sense of fear crumbled away. The pit in her stomach remained, because she had to know. She had to get to the bottom of this. Natalie refused to believe she was losing her mind.

Rifling through the objects in her closet, the sound of hangers clattering and boxes rattling fully shook her awake. None of this had the quality of dreams, every last bit of it felt so real. She could taste the dust on her tongue and realized that her job had not left her any time or energy to do any cleaning since she had moved in here.

With a violent motion, she spread the hanging clothes apart.

On the brink of giving up and going back to bed with the uneasy feeling stuck in her stomach, she spotted something unusual after all. What appeared to be a wooden surface in the back of the closet was, in truth, a wallpaper made to mimic the texture of polished wood.

She would never have noticed this, had it not been for the top right corner of this faux-wooden wallpaper peeling away at the edges.

Her fingers dug in and tore at it. Natalie tugged and scratched and ripped and scraped it away. Much of the wallpaper proved to be persistent, glued well to the closet’s back wall, but she managed to remove the top third of it.

The pit in her stomach grew and a bitter taste spread in Natalie’s mouth as she struggled to understand what she was looking at. It had to be the top third of an arrangement of symbols, placed in the shape of a circle. They reminded her of old Norse runes, but to her knowledge looked nothing like them.

A sharp pain spread throughout her skull, shooting from one temple to the other. She cringed at the headache overcoming her senses while she tried to study the symbols or make any sense of them. It quickly got so unbearable that she fetched her phone from the dresser nearby and used the device to take a photo of the symbols.

Time and experiences melted into rote motions as she downed some painkillers and a whole glass of water against the headache. She found herself loitering around for the next hour, aimlessly pacing through her darkened home and then browsing the internet for answers. But she found none and—when she realized with horror how few hours of sleep she would get that night before getting up to work again tomorrow—eventually returned to bed to continue sleeping.

She would experience this again and figure it all out eventually—she hoped.

When she awoke the next morning, she remembered nothing else to have transpired but felt like she had slept in an uncomfortable position, aching all over.

Work colleagues who saw her that day asked if everything was alright. A look into the mirror revealed thick dark rings underneath her eyes. She assured her colleagues that she was fine, albeit having slept poorly. “Dreamt something funny and now I feel like I was hit by a truck,” she joked. She knew deep down that she could not tell anybody about her experiences. Checking into a mental institution was just a few disturbing sentences away, she feared.

Natalie tried everything to gather evidence over the next days. She set up her phone to film videos of the closet during the night to see if she was missing anything when she slept, but to no avail. Then she repeated the same experiments by setting up the camera in the closet.

Still nothing.

Days passed and she spent every free second conducting research. She made some calls to the Realtor who had sold her the place to learn more about the house’s previous owners, but got nothing out of it. Natalie joked to her about the place possibly being haunted and giving her nightmares, which prompted a long and awkward silence on the phone call. This struck her as odd, but nothing came of it, and the Realtor’s nervous laugh preceded her saying that nobody had died on the premises of this house.

The symbols or runes or whatever they were didn’t match anything that Natalie could find in online searches or even in frantic hunts through library books.

Days turned into weeks without any results or anything else happening. One morning, she woke up having dreamt about the light shining from her closet, but that’s all it was—a dream. In the hours of footage she had been gathering and filling external hard disks with, she sifted through everything three times to ensure that the light had not returned that same night.

It must have been a full month since she had started researching the history of her home, the symbols in the closet, and eventually even scouring weird message boards filled with conspiracy theorists who shared related experiences. Not once did she find anything remotely similar outside of one account from a person obviously suffering from schizophrenia.

It was around then that Natalie realized with growing frustration that she had become obsessed. Though she feared the consequences, she started contemplating the option of seeing a therapist about this.

She began to question her sanity again, and she especially began to question if what she believed to have experienced was real at all.

Yet there it was—at the back of her closet in her bedroom—she had peeled away all the wallpaper and revealed the full circle of symbols. It was impossible for her to tell if they were occult or alien. They might as well have been both.

One morning, she had finally worked up the courage to call up a therapist. But before she could during a break at work, she got a call from her Realtor, Sally.

Natalie hesitated to take the call. She just froze, staring at the display and her Realtor’s name on it, “Sally Summers.” Natalie tapped it and took the call, likely only seconds before Sally would have given up on the call.

The pit in her stomach returned. Her innards knotted and a weird tingle danced and pirouetted down Natalie’s spine as she heard her Realtor out.

Sally admitted that she had done some digging, and found out that the owner before the last one—from nearly thirty years ago—was some sort of kook. His family had died in an accident and he was incarcerated for manslaughter, though the two were not necessarily related. The newspaper articles were somewhat vague, but she had pieced together that this was the man who had lived here before the previous owners, long before she had even picked up working in real estate.

Babbling and making excuses, Sally assured Natalie that she would have disclosed such information if she had known and promised that had not been the case until now. Natalie believed her—there was a subtle melody of desperation riding along in the Realtor’s voice.

Just as she was about to hang up, eager to conduct her own research into the matter, Sally interrupted Natalie and surprised her deeply. The fearful tone in her voice made more sense when she offered her to contact a psychic she knew.

Natalie politely declined the offer, telling Sally that she didn’t believe in such things. She assured her Realtor that there was nothing to worry about and thanked her for her candor before hanging up.

She knew now again she couldn’t share anything of what she was experiencing.

This was not knowledge that you share.

Still, the light refused to return. In that time, Natalie found out that the mysterious incarcerated owner had died in a correctional facility over twenty years ago. She stopped investigating this matter—for dead men tell no tales.

Right when she had accepted that the light would never return again, she awoke to it. The night hung deep with its darkness draping over everything, and the bright blue light created a sharp contrast in her bedroom.

Losing no time, Natalie climbed out of bed and approached it.

Her heart pounded like a giant drum, causing her whole body to thrum. The throbbing extended all the way into her digits, which she was acutely aware of as she reached out and touched the closet door.

It opened by itself before her fingertips ever reached it, but she embraced it and clutched the edge of the door with growing determination. She had to know what awaited her on the other side.

She pulled it open.

With the closet door opened wide, the whole bedroom was bathed in the bright light, as was she.

But all Natalie had eyes for was the world beyond this portal. It looked nothing like Earth. Plants with jagged leaves that looked as sharp as razors and with bright blue lights shining from their stems, casting the eerie blue glow that emanated and engulfed her. Rock formations that curved into looming stone spirals. And that silhouette of a figure again. Mere steps away.

Limbs far too long to look natural. Too freakish to be human. It turned and stared back at her through pitch-black eyes. It tilted its long and angular head and studied Natalie. She studied it back.

She stepped through the closet and into this world.

The closet door slammed shut behind her and Natalie was never seen again.

—Submitted by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #Lovecraftian #occult #alien #strange #otherworld #light #dimension #time and space #chthonian #obsession #schizophrenia #madness #insanity #drugs #closet #other world #sleep paralysis #hallucination #perception

[everyonesfavoritegoldenboy]

Johnny's Fever Dream (Private) (P) Part 1

*warning, mildly explicit*

Thursday Night

I rolled over in my sleep...if you could call it that...a few times I thought I heard my bear clawing at the inside of my nightstand... desperate to get out... desperate to breathe... desperate to tell me its secrets. What more could he tell me that I didn't already know?

I sat up a couple of times...my head foggy with that feeling of stiffness from lying on one side for too long and I rubbed my eye with the heel of my hand. I finally took pity...or was it just curiosity that got the better of me or was it just wanting whatever it was to shut the hell up...and opened the drawer. The bear just sat there looking up at me...where I had left it...What were you expecting, Dumbass?

I groaned and looked at the blurry red numbers on my alarm clock. It was way past midnight but it had felt like I just put my head down..."I need to pee..." I said to no one...just a force of habit.

It felt like someone was in the room with me the whole time...I listened but only heard the usual bathroom noises. I shook off after shaking my head again and shuffled back to my room.

It was warm throughout the whole apartment...I wanted to open my window or kick on some air...it was making me drowsy and half coherent...kinda like when I'm getting a good buzz. Some light music was playing somewhere...could have been from Diaz' but then it would have to be blaring and I don't think his grandma would be into that. I realized it was coming from my room. I didn't think I hit the radio button when I left...it was dark in there but I know I saw something... someone sitting on the edge of my bed.

Immediately I tried to clear the stupor from my head and was prepared to kick whoever's ass that clearly made the wrong decision by being in my room right out of the window. I didn't care if I was in my boxer shorts and T-shirt and looked like an idiot doing it...they were about to eat pavement.

"Johnny..." Her soft voice filled the room and sucked the air right out of it. I stared in awe and amazement. The shadows had not come into any more focus and I still couldn't make anything out...but I recognized her voice from anywhere.

I cocked my head to the side in disbelief.

"Rattles... I..."

I didn't need to hear anymore...I rushed over to her and dropped down, burying my face in her lap, grabbing her around the waist and rubbing my face into her, trying to inhale her scent deep into my lungs. "You're here...how...?" I couldn't finish my sentence. I don't care how it made me look...I was going to hold her and never let her go again.

She shifted and I felt her hand go through my hair... fingering through to my scalp and tugging at my head until I looked up at her...her features coalescing between Daniel's and hers briefly confusing me in the darkness.

Her eyes flashed snake-like for a fraction of a second, before I had a chance to process anything, she was kissing me deep...her tongue darting into my mouth quickly, both hands deep in my hair. My eyes were wide as she took control of the situation, trying to get me to kiss her back. I wanted to...I was just so confused.

"Johnny... please...I've missed you..." Her voice plaintive and sad. She peppered my cheeks and forehead with urgent kisses and I was losing my resolve. I could feel her...it had to be real!

"Amanda..." I said pulling back a little...I had to see her eyes again...read her face...be certain that she was with me and that this just wasn't some dream of her I conjured up in my desperation. I had already swore I saw her earlier today...and it turned out to be someone else. I hadn't drank anything since the night at Robby's nor did I smoke anything...it could be left over stress...my mind trying to road block the decisions I made.

She had started working kisses down my neck... lingering on my throat...I was losing the battle quickly. I mean I've had plenty of sex dreams... plenty of them...but nothing this real... nothing this solid. Her attentions were making me weak... she snaked her hands up and down my back... slipping them inside my boxers and giving me a sly look as she found the evidence of her actions having a real affect. We hissed simultaneously...she tossed me back on the bed and I propped up on my elbows.

It was then that I took notice of what she was wearing...or more what she wasn’t.  She was clad in nothing but a black lacy bustier and nine inch heels.  Her hair long and cascading down her back as she watched me look at her and swallow hard.  I’ve never gotten this far with her...and if this was a dream...I definitely had quite the imagination. Her lip curled as she straddled me and it was all I could do to keep my hands from going to her hips and holding her steady where I needed her the most.  

“You like what you see...big boy?”  She purred.  She dropped down before I could answer and kissed me again, moaning into my mouth.  ‘Fuck this...’ I thought, finally losing the resolve in shards of mirror and I took control of the kiss delving my hands in her hair and closing my eyes to her touch.  There was laughter all around the room and it wasn’t a laugh of relief...a laugh of joy.  It was a laugh of mocking ridicule.  I tried to ignore it.  I tried to focus on the woman in front of me and how relieved I was to have her back in my arms...I reached down and began to undo her lacy coverings...she abruptly stopped kissing me and pulled away, still straddling my hips. She wagged a finger.  “Ah ah...We’re going to need some help...”  She snapped her fingers once and from the shadows of the other room an identical Amanda walked in.  Head to toe she looked like an exact copy.  I swallowed and did a literal double-take.  Looking between the two as they looked back at me with innocent glares, smiles wide, teeth glowing in the semi-darkness. 

Now I know I’m dreaming...this...this isn’t real.  I was about to pick whatever it was up off of me and deposit her on her pretty little ass outside my front door, but I didn’t know what synapses were firing when the second Amanda?  Amanda numero dos?  I dunno...got down on her knees and started crawling toward my spread legs hanging off the side of the bed and the Amanda on top of me watching my reactions as she did so.  I felt cool breath hit my inner thigh and I involuntarily shivered.  I had a feeling I knew what was coming next and I twitched hard with desire.  Whatever was happening I was pretty keen on following it all the way through to completion at this point.  

The Amanda on top of me, reached between us and pulled off my shirt.  It mussed my hair on the way off and she giggled, the laughter reaching her eyes.  She wasted no time running her hands up and down my chest and then biting me at the juncture of my neck and shoulder.  She seemed to like it rough.  I growled and let her sink her teeth in while the other Amanda busied herself at my boxers.  She trailed her hands up and down my shorts and tried to tug them down and just gave up and began feeling me through them.  I shuddered and gasped, throwing my head back against my pillow.  I kept telling myself that it was alright.  I wanted what was happening to me.  I had been denied and stressed and frustrated for so long.  I would have to think hard about what was happening later and not wonder if I needed to see one of Shannon’s shrinks at some point.  There has to be something Freudian about all of this shit. 

Thunderstruck started playing from somewhere in the room and I couldn’t help but snort a laugh at something I had told Ms. Robinson a long time ago.  The Amanda on top of me had suddenly disappeared leaving the other Amanda below still tormenting in places where I needed a quick release the sooner the better.  How long had it been?  I can’t even remember the last time when I wasn’t using the ‘Five finger discount’  I looked around, past the erotic action below, which was mind-blowing, licking and teasing and touching and I saw Amanda standing in my doorway...fully clothed, arms folded, watching the scene as if she had just come upon it.  A deep frown furrowing her brow and a look of betrayal and displeasure on her beautiful face.  The face that I saw inside of my head every time I thought of her lately.  The last face she gave me before walking out of my life.  The face I saw at the dealership.  The face I saw at my apartment the day she finally had enough of me.  The day she said goodbye.  Suddenly, nothing mattered except making that face, that pain, that hurt, that anguish disappear.  And realizing that no matter what I do or could do or have done, I just couldn’t. I just didn’t know how! 

#ckrp #johnny #dreams #he may need some cognitive therapy

[kmomof4]

3a Canon Divergence: Somewhere Out There

3a Canon divergence inspired by @thejollyroger-writer’s recent trip to Ireland and the song from the 1986 movie An American Tail. 

ao3 link

Many thanks to @hollyethecurious and @winterbaby89 for beta services and the CSSNS discord ladies for the encouragement to write this after a discussion about missing our friends evolved into an impromptu 3a divergence brainstorming session.

Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight,

Someone’s thinking of me, and loving me tonight.

Somewhere out there, someone’s saying a prayer,

That we’ll find one another, in that big somewhere out there.

And even though I know how very far apart we are,

It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star.

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby,

It helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky!

Somewhere out there, if love can see us through,

Then we’ll be together, somewhere out there,

Out where dreams

Come true.

Emma woke with a start, breath ragged, chest heaving, desire coiling in her belly. All she could remember from the dream that woke her was a pair of blue eyes, the hue of which were the deepest, most clear blue she’d ever seen, a jungle dripping with humidity, and a kiss that rocked her world.

She swung her feet out of bed and padded over to the sliding glass door to her balcony. She couldn’t help the feeling that washed over her that said it was more than a dream. It had the feeling of memory.

The night wind caressed her arms and raised goosebumps as she looked up at what stars she could see in the New York City predawn darkness. Her eyes landed on a particularly bright star, even with the city lights. She couldn’t understand why the dream felt like a memory, but she also couldn’t suppress the longing she felt. The longing for the mystery man in her dream that felt like a memory. Could he be out there somewhere? Who was he? Could he see the same stars she did? Would he make a wish? As she tried to pull the wisps of the dream into some coherent whole, she remembered a feeling of gratefulness, of excitement, playfulness, anticipation. As if this was something they had been moving towards for some time. She looked back up at the star. She shut her eyes and brought the vision of blue eyes that could somehow see right through her to the front of her memory. Opening her eyes again, she wished that if he was real, he would find her. For some reason, her gut was telling her that there would be no finding him, and her gut rarely steered her wrong. She shook her head at her fanciful musings. If anything about the dream (memory) had been real, perhaps going back to sleep would reveal more of it. She took a deep breath, went back inside, and was asleep again almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

~*~*~

Killian Jones stood at the helm, guiding his beloved Jolly Roger, without conscious thought. It allowed him the time and freedom to think of Emma, the only thing he loved more than his ship. The pain of their separation had lessened over the past year to a near constant dull ache that allowed him to pull out her memory without feeling like he couldn’t breathe with the desire to be by her side again.

Taking a deep breath, he looked up into the endless expanse of stars above him. Finding a particularly bright star slightly to port, he whispered a prayer to any god that would listen that his love and her son was safe and that he would someday be able to find her. As he looked closer at the star he was wishing on, he realized that it was part of Cygnus. Confusion that melted into stunned amazement colored his features. No wonder he had noticed that star first. Cygnus was always the first constellation that he looked for in the night sky. And even though it was in the wrong position, his subconscious must have directed him to it. But why was it pointing to the west instead of north? Suddenly, he heard a voice on the night breeze. Find me.

Looking again at the constellation of his love, he knew that it was pointing to her. He adjusted the heading of the ship. I’m coming, Swan.

~*~*~

The following night the Jolly emerged from the portal into the Land Without Magic. He looked skyward and quickly located Cygnus, still pointing west. Given the position of the rest of the stars in the sky, he estimated it to be about 4am. Hoping against hope that it wouldn’t take him too long to reach shore, he adjusted the headings and sent his thoughts ahead of him. Almost there, Swan.

~*~*~

Emma woke to a pounding on the door.

Grumbling not only at being pulled from a wonderful dream, but also being woken at, she glanced at her phone, 7:30 on a Saturday morning, she was going to give whoever was at her door a sound thrashing before she slammed the door in their face and attempted to get back to the dream she was having. A dream that she remembered this time. The most gorgeous man she’d ever laid eyes on, with eyes blue as the sea, telling her that he would win her heart without trickery.

She opened the door, mouth open ready to give this idiot a piece of her mind, when her jaw dropped even further as she saw the man from her dream standing on her threshold.

His face broke out into a relieved smile as he breathed, “Swan, at last.” He moved toward her before her thoughts could coalesce into anything more than utter astonishment. Cupping the back of her head, his lips descended on hers before she could even blink.

And oh boy, could the man kiss. His lips moved over hers with a sensuality that made her weak in the knees. When his tongue requested entrance, she opened for him without conscious thought. A breeze suddenly swept through them with a kaleidoscope of rainbow color bursting from their joined lips. He released her with a just as stunned expression as she was sure she was sporting. “Killian?”

“Emma?” he echoed, his eyes wide, “You remember?” His shock melted into undisguised joy as she pulled him into her apartment. Her face mirrored his as memory after memory paraded themselves through her brain. Their beginnings on the beanstalk, beating him in a sword fight at Lake Nostos, him coming back for her to go after Henry in Neverland, his constant support and belief in her, his promise to win her heart once she and Henry were home safe, saving him from the shadow in Dark Hollow, Pan’s curse... those last two and their last moments together at the town line compelled her to crash her lips against his again. Tongues tangled and teeth clacked together in their desperation to get as close as physically possible.

Releasing her lips, his cerulean gaze bored into hers. “Answer me, Emma,” he begged. “Do you remember?”

She stroked his cheek tenderly. “Did a day go by that you didn’t think of me, Killian?” she asked in reply.

A groan escaped him as he pulled her into his arms again, “Not a one, darling,” he cooed, just before lowering his lips to hers.

“Bedroom,” she moaned against his lips, walking backwards, drawing him with her deeper into her apartment and turning into her open doorway.

“What about your lad,” he asked, finally completely releasing her lips so that she could answer.

“Henry sleeps like the dead. He won’t be awake before ten on a Saturday,” she assured him, “We have plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time,” he parroted, “for what I have planned. Oh Swan, how I’ve missed you, my love,” he murmured, pressing tender kisses along her neck, making her shiver.

“Even if I didn’t know it, I missed you too.” She leaned her head back, giving him better access. “I dreamt about you. Night before last and this morning.”

He pulled back, amazement covering his features. “Really?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” she answered. “You beating on the door this morning woke me from a dream when you told me you’d win my heart. I was about to let you have it so I could try to get back to it. But then, you were there, and the kiss, and, and…” her voice trailed away as he pulled her to him and began sucking a mark into her collarbone. “Ohhh, Killian,” she moaned, weaving her fingers in his hair and holding him to her.

“Delicious,” he murmured. “Your skin is the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.”

She pressed herself into him until her breasts flattened against his chest and she could feel every muscle of his body. She led him further into the bedroom until her legs hit the bed. She sat down on it and immediately went to work on his laces, while above her, he shrugged out of his duster and started working on the buckles of his vest. Pushing his leathers down enough to free his straining erection, she looked up at him coyly through her eyelashes. “I see something I want,” she purred, before pulling him forward into the ‘v’ between her legs and circling his red and weeping tip with her tongue. She closed her mouth around him and bobbed her head taking him deeper each time until he hit the back of her throat. She moaned around his length before releasing him with a pop. She looked back up at him to see his eyes nearly shut in ecstasy, his face completely wrecked. “You alright there, Captain?” she asked.

“Ohhh, Swan,” he shuddered, “I will be paying you back for that. Up you get,” he commanded before climbing on the bed next to her. A giggle escaped her mouth as she moved to the head of the bed, never taking her eyes off her pirate who pursued her with predatory intent. His eyes nearly glowed with love and lust as he made his way toward her on the bed. Finally reaching her, she started working on the buttons of his shirt as he let out a low growl. “Are you fond of this garment, Swan?”

Too distracted by the skin she was revealing as she unbuttoned his shirt, she was barely aware of his hook catching in the fabric of her plaid pajama top and tearing it asunder. She threw her head back in ecstasy as his lips closed around a rosy nipple. After his ministrations nearly drove her mad, she became aware of the steady direction he was pursuing. He pressed open mouthed kisses with swirls of his tongue down into the valley between her breasts before heading lower to her navel, and finally to the top of her pajama bottoms. He drew them and her panties down in one smooth movement until she was completely bared before him. His quick intake of breath made her acutely conscious of how long it had been since anyone had seen her naked.

“Don’t Swan, please,” he pled, as she made to cover herself, “I want to see all of you.” He took her hand in his own and pressed kisses into her knuckles. “You are so beautiful, my Swan,” he murmured, “You take my breath away.” He shrugged his own shirt off, so she could finally see all of him. He was perfect in her eyes. The scars that criss crossed his torso told her parts of the story that ultimately led him to her. She grabbed his hook and gently kissed the cold metal before she reached around the back of his shoulder to release the buckles that held his brace to his arm. At the widening of his eyes and his sharp inhale, she rushed to reassure him.

“You are beautiful too, Killian,” she confessed, “and I want to see all of you.” Her gentle insistence made the air rush out of his lungs. His eyes swam with wonder and love as he helped her remove the brace from his stunted arm. Once it was removed, she brought his arm up and rubbed her cheek against the gnarled end. She turned into it and placed a lingering kiss to the disfigured limb. “This is a part of you, Killian. And every part of you is beautiful to me.” She looked up into his eyes again to impress upon him the seriousness of her next words. The words that she herself had just realized the truth of. “I love you, Killian Jones. I love every part of you.”

At her declaration, he made one of his own. “And I love you, Emma Swan and I will never again leave your side.” He lowered himself to her then and kissed her within an inch of her life. He drove her higher and higher with his kisses and his hands roaming her body, finding all the little places that made her cry out in pleasure, until he finally lined himself up and pushed into her warmth. She wrapped her legs around his hips as he began slow and measured thrusts into her that made her see stars. Every time their hips met, he ground himself against her clit until she was nearly sobbing with her need to come. With one final thrust and grind, he whispered in her ear, “Come with me, Emma. I want to feel you come all over my cock.” She was helpless to resist him and came just as she felt him throb within her, signalling his own release.

Breathless and sated, she turned to him once he had rolled off of her. “How did you do it? How did you get to me?”

He looked thoughtful as he gazed at her ceiling before turning to look at her. “Night before last, I was at the helm of the Jolly, thinking of you, when I noticed that Cygnus was not where it belonged in the night sky. It was pointing west instead of north. At that moment, I heard your voice on the night wind. Find me it said. I knew in my heart that Cygnus was pointing the way to you. So I adjusted our course and sailed west until we fell through a portal that brought us out about an hour and a half from the shore. I continued following Cygnus until it rested on this building. I got inside and easily saw which one was yours with your name on the rows of boxes just inside the door.”

She stared at him for a moment, stunned, before leaning over him and kissing him with all the love in her heart. They broke apart suddenly when they heard Henry emerge from his room like a herd of wild elephants. “Mom! Mom!” he exclaimed, banging on her door. “I remember! Where are you? What’s happening?”

Emma threw on her robe and quickly crossed the room, hissing at Killian to get dressed and meet them in the kitchen, before opening the door to her breathless, twelve year old son. “Mom! What happened?” he asked, his eyes wide as saucers. She ushered him into the kitchen as he continued to pepper her with questions. “I was asleep and having weird dreams of dying and you kissed me and woke me up, and meeting my father, and being taken to Neverland. Then I woke up and realized they weren’t dreams at all, but I remembered it all! How did it happen? Was it another True Love’s Kiss?”

She sat him down and knelt in front of him as she heard Killian emerge from her bedroom into the hallway. “Yes, Henry,” she began. “It was a True Love’s Kiss.” She turned her head toward Killian now standing at the entrance of the kitchen. He sent her a gentle smile and small nod, encouraging her to continue. “Between me and Killian,” she confessed, giving Henry a small smile. The smile that broke his face rivaled the sun, and she knew she didn’t have to worry about how he was going to feel about having Captain Hook as a part of his family.

“Cool!” he shouted, looking over at Killian. “But what now? Can we go home? Is Storybrooke back? Can we go to the Enchanted Forest if it isn’t?” His enthusiasm was contagious and she couldn’t help but laugh as she looked at Killian again,

“Well, Captain?” she asked, “I think those are better questions for you. But as far as I’m concerned, let’s get packed! We’re going home! One way or the other!”

With a whoop that threatened to break the windows, Henry leaped up and ran past Killian to his bedroom. She sauntered up to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He laid a gentle kiss to her lips before he answered Henry’s questions. “I’ve no idea if Storybrooke is back or not, but we can certainly go find out. And if it isn’t, I have every reason to think that the portal back to the Enchanted Forest is still there. It didn’t close after spitting us out. I could still see it as the sun was rising and I could see the harbor in the distance.”

“Mmmm,” she hummed, “Well then, Captain. Let’s go home.”

Fin

Tagging my crew @hollyethecurious @winterbaby89 @snowbellewells @resident-of-storybrooke @jennjenn615 @kingofmyheart14 @profdanglaisstuff @thisonesatellite @ultraluckycatnd @flslp87 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @let-it-raines @shireness-says @kymbersmith-90 @darkcolinodonorgasm @bethacaciakay @ilovemesomekillianjones @teamhook

#somewhere out there #krystal writes #3a canon divergence