#( wip ) bb&gg

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PÍA RAMBLES #8

you might have seen this post or this wip intro. i'm here to talk about this book because i think it's really cool @teddywriting and i wrote almost 40k words by simply playing dolls with our ocs.

(yes i will be using screencaps of before sunrise, 1995 for any and all subsequent updates regarding this project thank you very much)

what's weird about this book in particular is that, despite maripaz and theo taking up way too much space in my brain, it's also incredibly hard to talk about them?? i know every single detail about them down to what they might order to eat at a mcdonald's, and yet i feel no one outside from teddy and i really knows these characters. their lore is weird and a bit convoluted and explaining it feels like i'm trying to explain the plot of a television show with like 18 seasons of character development you just had to be there to witness to understand even a fraction of it.

but first some basics about the actual book

title: babylon boy (book 1 of the home habitat duology)

genre: literary fiction

category: i say adult because there will be no censoring of topics but in this first installment our protagonists are around eighteen years old. you might consider that ya but i wouldn't

a small summary: having independently run away from home for their own reasons, theo and maripaz meet while homeless on the streets and form an alliance of convenience to survive. while theo vehemently denies the drug addiction he’s nursing, maripaz tries to deal with the way both want and revulsion seem to exist in her at the same time. falling in love is probably the easiest thing they do.

teddy and i are co-authoring, as in we both write the words. they will be primarily working on theo's chapters and i will be primarily working on maripaz's chapters but we'll both be involved in fully crafting this story.

talking about your book is hard when all that happens in it is character work so even whether someone gets sick at one point feels like a spoiler you want people to be surprised by.

we created mari and theo in 2020 on a whim. i can't even remember what prompted it exactly. we wanted a new pair of characters to play with and we decided to make two assholes to bicker and be mean to each other. this iteration saw three reincarnations before we put the characters on the shelf and almost resigned ourselves to them being a miss... if not for one important detail... i really, really believed they should have kissed. this first version of them would eventually be known as the homeless au.

looking back it's Wild thinking about how different mari and theo used to be. we moved onto new aus to play around with, landing on a superhero-type beat that became their new canon for a while. we had fantasy and sci-fi and musicians and hadestown and the raven cycle (that last one did so much for us it's insane). every new thing we tried shaped them more and more until they were unrecognisable from their original versions. one day i really want to go through their threads from start to finish and look at that change in real time.

there was a new thesis to their characters and it was no longer "what if two awful guys with issues were forced together and tried to bite each other's heads off". instead we were looking at two characters that through every new incarnation became more sincere and gentle. they had meta-narrative character development.

(every new au also gave us more characters to populate the world including but not limited to theo's twin sister, maripaz's seven siblings, alex, philip, a whole lot of parental figures, a quirky cast of friends... but i'll talk about them some other time)

then i did it again. in the 2.0 version of the homeless au there was one scene i loved beyond words where an argument between our two protagonists resulted in maripaz punching theo right on the mouth. when she tried to swing a second time he stopped her hand and warned her that if she wanted to hit him he would hit back. they fought and the scene ended. i said to teddy: they should have kissed. we laughed and imagined how homeless au would go now that their characters had changed so much. we started thinking about it more and more until we were moving the pieces of their cinematic universe around to fit this new idea... and suddenly we had plot for a book that would revamp that original homeless au... and a sequel too! (but more on that second one another time)

teddy started a rp thread of what came right after the opening scene of babylon boy, where theo and maripaz would shoplift and he would steal the angel necklace she wore (<- this is important)... and we just kept going... and going. we'd already had a few keys scenes to work towards, one those being that punching scene that started it all, as well as the ending. teddy added two new scenes we began calling the halo scene and the church scene, and we moved something we called the pool scene into this book from another au. we just had to fill in the blanks... fill in the blanks we did.

these right here are the names i gave each individual thread of the roleplay-ification of babylon boy. their purpose is not so much to be chapter titles but to make specific scenes easy to find for future reference. though obviously i had to be a bit artistic about it.

i don't know if babylon boy will have chapter titles, and if they will have some sort of theme going on (usually i like just putting two words together to create some imagery). "angel face" is probably what i would title chapter 1, but i also hesitate on that decision because i think i would like to save angel for later.

these threads are less of a draft and more the skeleton of a draft, that's why i called it a draft 0. its purpose is to give teddy and i direction and reading through them i already know how i want to shift the timeline and how i'd rewrite some of the scenes to make them a lot better, but it did give us a great cause and effect look of things. the way teddy and i approach our roleplay threads is more loose than what i do with @on-the-river-lethe (with whom i'm currently roleplaying draft 1 of our book lupine trail and also a giant hunger games au). fluffy and i write responses between 1k-4k words, they are basically chapters. teddy and i instead do a quick call and response, mostly focused on dialogue, we build on top of each other and neither of us really knows where a thread will go when we start.

there are no actual non-roleplay words written for babylon boy thus far. teddy is in charge of chapter 1 as we open with theo's pov but we are both busy or focused on other things. right now we're enjoying the playing around stage of the process (which i don't see going away even once we start seriously writing, i know for a fact we'll probably do various roleplay-type passes to babylon boy).

you've probably noticed the christian imagery is rampant here. it happened kind of by accident and the already mentioned halo scene is entirely to blame for it. like i said, teddy and i have this very "yes, and," approach to storytelling together where we kinda build on top of what the other puts down. teddy gave me the description of one (1) scene where theo sees a halo of light around maripaz's head and i decided "well, this is now i thing that is here to stay". church scene really brought it all together and there is a scene in book 2 adeptly nicknamed the angel scene that is kind of the culmination of this.

the imagery is almost exclusive to theo's pov as mari is more the subject of the imagery than the one pushing it forward. teddy and i will be doing our most to fill this book with visuals: characters lined with stained glass windows, lights shaped like hearts, signs and graffiti that say meaningful stuff.

babylon boy, as the title suggests, is more theo's book. both he and maripaz have meaningful arcs but theo's is really at the core of it, mari takes centre stage in book 2 (titled gossamer girl). i think i talked about this somewhere before but the titles just kind of... happened. gossamer was relevant for that superhero au and it's just a word i really adore so i wanted to use it on the title. you can't go wrong with alliteration so gossamer girl it is. and because i love when books in a series match i had to do something with boy. like gossamer i adore babylon for some reason, and so we got babylon boy. i wasn't sure about that one because while gossamer girl made sense with the theme, what did "babylon boy" even mean, exactly? teddy came in clutch and analysed the title for me. they connected it to theo's drug addiction and now i can't think of any two titles that are more perfect for this series.

like i said, there are no actual words written for this book so sadly i cannot share any excerpts. but i will share

Festival was very much the result of teddy and i having just watched before sunrise, 1995

we watched before sunrise, 1995 because the mannerisms of the two leads reek of maripaz and theo

"until a miracle happens" became a recurring thing said in the draft and it wrecked me

Our Fears is probably my favourite thread both thematically and visually. followed closely by Church Angels, though that one is mostly visually

The Pool is the longest thread with about 90 responses and all of it is beautiful. i would probably consider it the companion to Our Fears

"mutual pining they're both just idiots"

the closing image is probably my favourite one of the book

the core themes are very much trust, love, and communal help. we've got such an array of npcs who simply... help. i love the human race.

i'll probably do another update before we start properly writing talking about maripaz and theo as characters specifically. a bit of a crash course on who they are, really.

anyway. i'm giving you a golden star if you read all of that ⭐ do ask me or teddy about this story!! we'd be happy to talk about it. or even just about the characters.

cheers, pía

[monimolimnion]

20 first lines tag

tagged by my beloved writing buddy @clarionglass thanks bb!!

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 other authors!

1. yarrow (unreleased) uh oh spoilers this is an unreleased franmaya fic from just this week. writing is going well, so it should be up Soon™

“Maya Fey is dreaming.”

2. look through you post-AAI1 fic i wrote last month!

“It’s way, way too late, and all is quiet.”

3. Kindred the big kahuna. My longform fic about Miles Edgeworth adopting a dog and all the shenengains therein (also narumitsu). I swear I’m coming back to you Pess... soon... T-T

“Phoenix. I’ve adopted a dog.”

4. sandglass (handle with care) a narumitsu fic where i burdened miles edgeworth with all my touch-starvation

“2:49 A.M. Miles knows the time precisely because he is awake, unfortunately, and staring at the alarm clock, situated just so on the bedside table because Phoenix still refuses to purchase a phone made in this century with a working alarm system.”

(i know that’s two lines sue me)

5. Miles Away baby’s first AA fic! i’m still so very fond of this one

“Phoenix can’t sleep.”

6. Tales of Dŵrwedd It’s a novel, baybee! This here is the book I wrote about my Witcher OC, Wynne, and how she met her later girlfriend Aurelie. 66k words. Writing this baby got me through quarantine and then some

“Ah, Novigrad. Sunset has the city all in silhouette, vivid orange and pink throwing the city into dramatic shadows, as I cluck to the grey mare beneath me and we pass underneath Oxenfurt Gate, turning north towards Temple Isle.”

7. Featherlight long-abandoned game grumps orchestra!AU

“When people complimented the beauty of a musician, it was always about their grace and poise, how they made something infinitely complex look as effortless and serene as a swan ghosting across water.”

8. Go Slow the first and last time i ever wrote smut. 

“It all started the day Arin broke the internet.”

9. hit me with your rhythm stick just a GG drabble because i liked the song

“It’s Between Grumps, and they’ve eaten just slightly more sugar than is healthy. “

10. Stay another GG drabble

“It’s the shaking he notices first.”

11. Undertow first fic I ever published! GG soulmate AU

“Sometimes he catches himself admiring the way the tattoos intermingle on her shoulder, the mandala fading as it curves around the the familiar little pattern of bubbles that hide in the crook of her scarab's wing.”

That’s it for fic stuff. How about we do first lines of games I’ve released next?

12. When Aster Falls rohan and aster my beloveds

"Listen, you’re never going to believe any of this, but hear me out, okay?"

13. Were|House we released this last year for Halloween!! ft a stellar crew of amazing peeps including @clarionglass who tagged me in this in the first place lol

"I bet Halloween this year is gonna suck."

14. DemiDato: Monster Dating Show (Demo) Full game isn’t out yet, and was also co-written with two amazing friends anyway, so here’s the first line of the demo instead. leaving in the funky renpy code for authenticity

"Are we live? {w} We’re live? {w} Okay!"

Okay I’m out of stuff without going back into old roleplay and nobody needs to see that (remember circus!AU, clari?). I don’t really have a lot of WIPs because of How My Brain Is (and those that actually are abandoned are mostly brainstorming only).

Any patterns? I used to struggle a LOT with coming up with good first lines, and I notice as I’ve gotten older I’ve leaned hard into short, snappy, very in-media-res-y openings, instead of longer sentences. That, or dialogue, which works the same. Do I like it? Dunno, honestly, but that’s where I’m at.

Picking yarrow as my favourite opener even though it’s tied-shortest because it’s the newest shiniest baby, and the scene it leads into is killer and i’m very proud of it

Tags! gonna tag @pringlesaremydivision, all the discord gremlins who i know actually write things @spaghettiandpeas @daddywright @rainphee (and all the other gremlins if they want)

aand anyone else who sees this consider yourself tagged by me, if you want!

[mymadmedleyw]

Daily state for WIPs:

I think I finally have an idea of how to finish Chapter4 for my current ongoing GG one.

Which story actually smoothly brushes WTPH's last chapter, so I think I will very slowly return to that story too. (Until then, I can't really write back properly for feedbacks of that GG one, unless telling something way ahead of those times to get unravelled. - You'll see what I am talking about once I reach that point in WTPH...)

On the weekend I'll travel back and forth with train, so I'll have at least once 3,5 hours to occupy myself. I think it will be first the GG one to clear out, then collecting my thoughts for WTPH's last chapters and how to connect the many scenes in my head.

Side note: the GG one will have two other additional shorts, but those are already done, only await their time to be shared.

Soon I'll go on a holiday and soon a huge project will start at my workplace so until then I think I will use my free time wisely. Besides, just as BB one is done (slight modifications is missing or required, maybe), I am vibrating inside to share it -- which only allowed to happen in September -- so I have to occupy myself and push down that excitement. That's why I am writing this much lately, I guess. 😅

[sweetimagines]

7-7-7 Tag Game

Thanks, @cobalt-one and @shenanigans-and-imagines for the tag! You gals are amazing 💖 

Rules are: go to page seven of your wip, go to line seven and share seven sentences and then tag seven writer-blogs to follow suit

Current WIP is “Desperste Measures - Part 2”

Y/N's getting annoyed at how many times Poe arrives from missions going straight to the medbay.

What really bothers her though, is the fact that he's been running into Terex on almost every single mission.

She trusts his skills but the memory - and scars - of "questioning" given to her by the First Order Agent is still recent.

The thought of anyone else, specially him, going though that terrifies her.

BB-8 and BB-6 have a sweet farewell under Poe's X-Wing before the orange droid is pulled up to his spot.

"You better bring him back in one piece or I'll kick your ass, Flyboy."

What she's really saying is: come back safe.

tagging: @kyber-hearts-and-stardust-souls @kaylaarann @whimsicalworldofme @thekillingquill @theonewiththefanfics @tasteofswallowedwords @ju-gg

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BABYLON BOY & GOSSAMER GIRL by pía & teddy

♡ genre & categroy: literary fiction, adult

♡ pov: dual 3rd person

♡ teddy and i revisited the beginnings of mari & theo and came out of it with a rewrite of their first story that reclaimed its place as their real canon??, duology + all the novellas we want, alliteration galore, sometimes all you need is a personal project with your qpp

♡ a reminder that teddy is @teddywriting

♡ cw: drug addiction, child neglect, homelessness, imperfect recovery, unmedicated mental illness

♡ themes: second opportunities, self-love, family both chosen and born, gentleness, what if choosing to live your life was an option

a b o u t :

babylon boy - circa late 00s. theo and maripaz find each other while searching for meaning, but they're not quite the answer they were looking for. having independently run away from home they are focused on survival. maripaz left behind a family with more kids her parents knew what to do with and a boyfriend she never really liked. theo cut his family's losses and he hopes eventually they will stop missing him, his problems are his own. survival leads to companionship leads to friendship leads to i would be really bummed if you ever parted from me. there is no future as they hop from place to place, shoplift, and try to have a night of rest, there is only today and maybe tomorrow. gossamer girl - circa early 10s. the most earth shattering things still happen walking down the street or in the store.

in other words: a story told in two parts (plus a few others) about maripaz and theo—who ran away from home to spare their families the trouble. maripaz was only taking up space in her house and theo definitely does not have a drug addiction problem. they meet when theo helps maripaz shoplift from a grocery store and he steals one of the two necklaces she brought with her, this one with an angel charm (this is important). teddy is writing the theo pov and i am writing the mari pov and they go back and forth throughout.

c h a r a c t e r s :

maría paz "maripaz" vega. would rather die than ever express a want or need. should be dancing to abba at a discotheque. loves valentine's day themed stuff unironically. sixth daughter of eight kids. audhd. constantly interrupting her narration with snippets of the past. wants love to fix her so so bad. i think that i'm not who you think i am / but i like to be seen and i like to be wanted [better than this - lizzy mcalpine].

theodore "theo" rayes. hasn't had a problem ever his brain is so normal promise. should be doing silly tricks at the skate park. smartest stupidest pretty boy you'll ever meet. twin brother (older). autistic. constantly interrupting his narration with daydreams of the future. has these drugs under control (trust me). medicate, meditate, save your soul for jesus / throw a punch, fall in love, give yourself a reason [call your mum - noah kahan].

the actual plot is less important than these two's emotional journeys. the conflict comes from... why isn't how much i love you enough to make everything right? what if you wanted someone to choose you and mean it. what if you wanted to be someone people can rely on. what if we were what the other person is looking for but where we're at right now is making it so hard but here we are, we are staying.

aesthetic: the changing lights of a carnival ferris wheel, tongues coloured from candy, heart-shaped sunglasses, intertwined fingers, the murmur of the ocean tide, fine white sand, pink and orange sunsets, hands sticky from melting ice cream, light refracted on a suncatcher, cramped secondhand bookstores, the buzz of fluorescent lights in a hospital waiting room, freckle-covered cheeks, the heads of strawberries, nightlife lights refracted on wet pavement, a necklace you never take off, rhinestone decorated flip phones, a steady heartbeat, graffities that scream for something more, homemade plastic jewellery, the light behind your head looks like a halo, tangled bedsheets, soft music at the grocery store, the cold of the frozen aisle, photographs from disposable cameras, porcelain angels

snippet for you:

Watermelon in triangles.

“That one’s mine.” Carla had grabbed one of the soup bowls, then the watermelon Maripaz had picked, and another one. Juan Pa had left then unattended after calling up the stairs if anyone wanted any.

“Girls,” Mum called from the living room, her telenovela was so loud Maripaz had been able to hear it from the second floor. Bringing herself to do homework before dark was hard enough. “No fighting, please. I don’t want to deal with this.”

Carla had watermelon juice, a single drop of it, rolling down her chin. “Don’t make a scene. It’s just fucking watermelon, just grab another one.”

Maripaz made a scene.

The soup bowl broke into six separate pieces when it crashed on the floor. Carla screamed, not from pain, but indignation and anger. She shoved Maripaz so hard she knocked over one of the kitchen table chairs.

“Girls! Por el amor de Dios, not one second of peace in this house.”

the universe as a whole has been baptised as HOME HABITAT. but you will see this tagged as #bb&gg, as well as any variation of #maripaz&theo. teddy and i have at least 2 novellas planned to bridge the gap between babylon boy and gossamer girl, and one prequel about maripaz's oldest sister. but more on that some other time!

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but who will stop me from making the boticelli angel line one of the epigraphs of babylon boy.

exactly.

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heads up, seven up.

thank you @chauceryfairytales for being lovely as always and tagging me!

i... actually can't remember what i worked on last. so i am going to go with this. @teddywriting and i have been brainstorming a duology for our ocs maripaz & theo and i am So excited for it. book 2: gossamer girl because linear writing is a stranger to me

Theo hummed softly when she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pressed against his back. They’d tossed around in their sleep, both of them, and the bed sheets were tangled now. Maripaz tried to deal with this by tugging as hard as her tired muscles could, but they stayed twisted around. She remembered Theo coming back, dawn early, the dip of the mattress that woke her up, his breath on the back of her neck apologising for startling her, he’d pulled the quilt properly over them both.

and i'm tagging @saltwaterbells @coffeeandcalligraphy @dallonwrites @moonssugar and if you see this and wanna have a go, have at it!

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final wordcount of babylon boy draft 0! this drafting shit's easy when drafting is actually just playing dolls in roleplay threads with @teddywriting

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it is within the timeline's bounds for me to make maripaz autistic about bbc merlin and the legend of zelda

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i am done explaining the plot of babylon boy. listen to reckless driving by lizzy mcalpine and glean the plot from there

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listening to the bb&gg playlist just like. skip. skip. skip. noah kahan. skip. skip. skip. skip. lizzy mcalpine. skip. skip.

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Please tell me everything there is to know about Bb&Gg 🙏 I’ve been scrolling the tags but I’m desperate for more!!! Hope you’re doing well 💛

omg first of all thank you so much 💖

and second, bb&gg are the initials of babylon boy and gossamer girl. a duology i co-write with my partner @teddywriting that is titled home habitat.

if you've scrolled through the tags you've got the general idea of what it's about but here are the basics: it follows our characters theodore "theo" rayes and maría paz "maripaz" vega, who each ran away from home for different reasons. they meet on the street and the plot of book 1 (babylon boy) follows their year of homelessness and how their relationship grows and changes. it is a very "characters over plot" book as the plot is really the emotional journey mari and theo go through, dealing with matters of want and trust and companionship. i'm not saying much about book 2 (gossamer girl), just that it follows the same character > plot structure and deals with matters of family and second opportunities.

throughout babylon boy theo is dealing with a drug addiction he is vehemently denying and maripaz is dealing with problems related to shame. talking about bb&gg is difficult without just explaining the entire character arcs these two go through. they first meet when theo helps maripaz shoplift some food and he steals one of the two necklaces she was wearing, this one with an angel pendant (this is important). upon fatefully meeting again theo returns the necklace to maripaz, having felt guilty for stealing it at all, and they form an alliance to help each other survive. the relationship obviously has a rocky start, not aided by each of them dealing with their own internal problems that they make external through arguments and once even ending in a physical fight.

if categorised in the fell first/fell harder, maripaz would be fell first. problem being her backstory includes her literally having just left a neglectful boyfriend that poisoned her rose-tinted look of romance, though it didn't kill it completely as maripaz is at her core a romantic. so, when she begins to catch feelings for theo she buries them and buries them deep. this would make theo the fell harder half of the equation, as he goes through a mini arc of realising he's demisexual and maripaz has the privilege of being the first person he's ever felt romantic and sexual attraction towards.

the real progression of events is a bit hazy. teddy and i do a lot of bite-sized rps that are very call and response, very "yes, and," so whatever happens is revealed to us as it happens. the book properly is not something we've started yet as we're either too busy (teddy) or burned out (me) for it atm. we've got around... 5... ? moments decided, if you don't count the meeting at the start. one of those being the physical fight i mentioned above. said fight is whom we have to thank for home habitat existing at all, we revisited it and a story with character arcs and a whole sequel sprung out. the other scenes are the church scene, the pool scene, the halo scene, and the ending! (not explaining any of those, sorry). i always have a really hard time trying to talk about mari and theo. they are so much the result of their environment that i feel i need to explain not just them but every other character in this universe so people understand. and then you'll be stuck hearing me talking about every single character because i'm also unwell about all of them.

home habitat is a bit of a change of form for what is "base canon" for mari&theo. mari and theo's twin sister bee are usually best friends, a very "extrovert adopts introvert" situation. tge character alex moore and theo are usually best friends, it is a Thing(tm) that they are best friends, in some aus they even live together. but because of the setting of home habitat, mari and bee have never met and neither have theo and alex. in fact, alex and mari were friends in school in this version. i am a little sad people might never get to see that version of them, as these four as a Group(tm) are very dear and special to me.

but yeah, i'll leave it at that. thank you again! 💖 hope you're doing well too

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i'm sorry to everyone who's gonna read home habitat (<- not actually sorry)

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call your mum by noah kahan ft. lizzy mcalpine is devastating to me specifically

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themes tag.

tagged by @oh-no-another-idea. rules: bold the themes that appear in your wip (& italicize those that are loosely covered)

thought i'd do this with home habitat, but obviously i could do it with just about any wip lmao

addiction | beauty | betrayal | change vs. tradition | chaos vs. order | circle of life | coming of age | communication | convention vs. rebellion | corruption | courage | crime and law | dangers of ignorance | darkness and light | death | desire to escape | dreams | displacement | empowerment | facing darkness | facing reality | faith vs. doubt | fall from grace | fame and fortune | family | fate | fear | fear of failure | free will | friendship | fulfillment | good vs. bad | government | greed | guilt and forgiveness | hard work | heroism | hierarchy | honesty | hope | identity crisis | immortality | independence | individual vs. society | inner vs. outer strength | innocence | injustice | isolation | knowledge vs. ignorance | life | loneliness | lost love | love | man vs. nature | manipulation | materialism | motherhood | nature | nature vs. nurture | oppression | optimism | peer pressure | poverty | power | power of words | prejudice | pride | progress | quest | racism | rebirth | relationships | religion | responsibility | revenge | sacrifice | secrets | self-awareness | self-preservation | self-reliance | sexuality | social class structure | survival | technology | temptation and destruction | time | totalitarianism | weakness | vanity | war | wealth | wisdom of experience | youth

tagging... honestly anyone who might want to do this! if you see this and wanna have a go, have at it!

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honestly everyone should have a partner to ship your ocs with and then you fill dms with the psychoanalysis of their sex scenes