#I actually drafted a version of this post two months ago and never posted it and so now I gotta go back and post it

[captainofthetidesbreath]

having spent over two months (and ongoing) watching people say that Imogen is masc and butch and the gentleman in the relationship and a stepdad to Pâté and watching them attempt to attach masculinity to her as much possible from how she is described to how her physicality is illustrated and watching them pretend that she isn't super feminine, I am constantly reminded of this image:

[gamebunny-advance]

Doodle Dump: Misc. Edition

Time for misc. doodles~

Notes under the cut.

1: "Ikigusare Idols". Like many people, "Injection Girl" randomly appeared in my Youtube feed, and I was admittedly charmed by them. It's like they're from a bygone era, but they just put out another music video last month. Currently, my favorite song is "スーパーZ指定ガール". (Content warning for mass violence in the lyrics.)

2-4: "Clown Doll Redesign". So, since I've started doll customizing as a hobby, I tend to lurk on the Dolls and CustomDolls subreddits on the lookout for inspo and info. Not too long ago, someone posted asking for advice/critique on their doll ideas. So I sketched these (and some notes on the original design, which are not included here) as a response. In the end, I never did reply because I don't actually have a reddit account, and I thought it would be weird to make one solely to criticize someone, so I'm just posting them here.

My main critiques were that there wasn't a lot of contrast in their color choices and that the blue and red hair seemed random when the rest of the design was pink/green. So, my main goal was to increase the contrast between the pink and green, so the different patterns would stick out more and to unify the pallet a bit more. The skintones differ from the reference because the doll they said they were going to use was a G3 Frankie Stein, who has bluish skin and a prosthetic left leg, so I'm not really sure why their sketch uses the original green skin or why the silver leg is on the wrong side, but it is what it is.

The first 2 are straight pallet swaps, but the 3rd is based on a second design that the OP made. They originally asked for users to pick between the two. Most people said they preferred the blue and yellow design because it was more cohesive, but the OP replied that they really wanted to make the pink and green one work somehow, so that's why I focused on using that one as the base, but I still included a version with the alternate pallet and patterns.

Here's a link to the original thread since I'm kinda reposting their art by including it with sketch. Just maybe avoid linking back to me >_<;

5-8: "Music Junkie Soundwave". In a similar vein, there was another user on the subreddit that wanted opinions on a potential Transformers fashion doll line, citing a video that one of their friends made on the idea.

Now despite having a limited knowledge of Transformers, and I'm still pretty green to the fashion doll world, I wrote a whole-ass dissertation on the idea because magical girl/boy robot dolls are totally something I'd be into.

But, for a similar reason to the clown doll, I didn't want to make a reddit account just to critique someone (though I still have the original response in my drafts).

When I finished writing that response, I decided to sketch how I would go about the idea as it'd been proposed, and created this Soundwave doll idea. Admittedly, he's very inspired by Giacomo from Pokemon Scarlet/Violet (never played it, but I do like some of the character designs in it). I dunno if the overalls are a little dorky, but I couldn't think of another way to represent his chest-deck in a meaningful way.

9-10: "Kingsley and Mamuta". I tried to make some human? designs for them, but it's not going great. I really wanted Mamuta to still be monstrous, but designs like that aren't my strong-suit... Kingsley I'm just not satisfied with yet.

11: "OC Line-Up". Just a few OCs of mine. From left to right: Carol, The Prince Formerly Known As Frog, Shapeshifter, and Fizz.

12: "Rival". An idea for a rival to Kun3h0, ala Shadow the Hedgehog and Wario. I made another sketch recently that goes in a very different direction, but I kinda want to finish that so I haven't included it in this dump.

[crescencestudio]

Devlog #33 | 07.26.23

Hi everyone!

It's only been a month (per usual) since the last devlog. But it feels like so long ago! Very weird that last devlog I hadn't even released Intertwine yet. But here we are, back with another one!

Before we get into things, I want to extend the biggest thank you to everyone who has played and supported intertwine!

if you havent played yet, here it is. this is me on my knees asking because i am quite proud of it and what our team accomplished in two months!

in the almost month it's been out, we stand at almost 15k total plays and 200+ reviews which is so crazy to me. i never would've expected that kind of reception for our little game and when i say it has been so motivating for alaris!!! u dont even know!!!

thank you again for all the kind words---i know you are all Sick of me talking about it but i don't know how else to express my gratitude <3 it means so much to me ;_;

I wanted to make sure I inserted an official section for it in the Devlog just to really thank you all for the support. But with that, I shall get into the updates!

But not before a quick belated happy birthday to Fenir!

Writing

I posted it earlier this week, but I HAVE!!! THE MOST EXCITING NEWS!!! At least for me.

I FINISHED DRUK'S FIRST DRAFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We all know how long this has been in the making. I've been talking about his route for what feels like an eternity. Evidently, it's Very Normal to experience burnout, struggles with motivation, creative ruts, etc. etc. at this point in development. The initial and final stages of development are easier because your motivation is up. In the beginning, it's like Wow!! This is Fun!! And towards the end, it's like Wow!!! I actually Fckn Made It!!!!

And so the middle part of development, aka the stage I just entered with Druk's route, is the slog.

Now that I've overcome that initial hurdle, while I'm not near the end of development, I do feel like I will have a better handle of progress on the following routes since I have a better set of expectations and tools on how to get through this stage (compared to when I initially started Druk's route, and I was like what are all these Feelings?? Why am I Struggling so much??).

That being said, WE ARE OVER HALFWAY DONE WITH THE SCRIPT! It currently stands at 200k words including the demo, and with how each of the routes have been shaping up, we have about 150k left to go. Wow!!!!! It is crazy to know I've written that much for Alaris, and this feels like such an exciting milestone to know that I'm over halfway there for the script!

We also have just about wrapped up Fenir's developmental edits, so that makes Kayn and Fenir's foundational versions of their routes done (all that would be left at this point is line tweaking and/or revisions based on beta feedback)!! Overall, this was a really exciting month for writing updates, and I'm so happy to feel back on track with Alaris development <3 I also finished my dissertation proposal in case anyone is keeping track of that HEEHOO

Art

Most of my attention for art was (un?)fortunately on Intertwine this month AGAIN. I really had anticipated being able to dive right into Alaris and irl work this month after Otojam ended. But the reception to Intertwine made it so I needed to dedicate some time to "marketing" artwork aka the artwork I like to make when reaching certain milestones of support (e.g., 1k downloads, etc.). Obviously these aren't necessary, but I like to show my thanks and appreciation in some way, and the artwork is what feels best conveys my gratitude.

Because we hit milestones relatively quickly, I ended up having to make those pieces faster than I anticipated prior to release. So I spent the first half of this month mostly on intertwine "promotional/apprecation" artwork. Near the tail end of this month though, I've prioritized Alaris artwork and have made progress on both the Kickstarter physical rewards and some CG sketches!

sneaky peeky of pretty mermay Aisa

Vui continues to hit it out of the park with the backgrounds. Most of them are spoilers at this point. But I do have one that isn't too bad of a spoiler! And because you all have been so supportive and patient with me, I show hehe

vui and his bg mastery: a preview of the dragon springs

The demo mentions dragon springs (I..... think......... LMAO), and here is a preview of what those dragon springs can look like. Wonder what the context will be in which we visit them, teehee! I'm in love with the way Vui brings the fantasy world of Alaris to life. I am so grateful for him ^^

Market Research

My wrist was feeling ~delicate~ this month due to Otojam crunch and then post-release pieces. So I don't have any actual art pieces to showcase this month for market research. I did play Otojam games and started Cupid Parasite (ryuki and allan my beloveds). But crescence's wrist needs to relax LOL. So no art pieces more than necessary for this month!

I will send some love to my besties over at Ravenstar Games though! If you haven't heard, they have a game currently in development called Lost in Limbo. It looks sick as hell, and the team is unbelievable talented and hardworking. This month to celebrate Barbie, they were able to sneak this promotional piece in, even while working on their Master's ((Do you see...... a familiar group of people..... heh))

Alaris x Lost in Limbo x Barbie the collaboration of the century

That's all from me for now. Thank you again for all the support and love on Intertwine! I've truly cherished all the fanwork, reviews, kind messages, etc.

That being said, while it was a bit of a struggle getting back returning to the Alaris world initially (I was literally like what.... was the plot of this again... LMAOsazodujf), it's been so rewarding to return to my OG gang. The intertwine release and return to Alaris work has also been strangely sentimental since it's reminded me how far I've come in the two years I've been in this dev Thang. As always thank you for your continued support (and for supporting Alaris since it's inception when I was a Wee Dev), and I look forward to bringing you more updates in the future <3

See you all next month, and stay safe!

[cb-writes-stuff]

Because of this post, I’m gonna be dropping some info about my WIP, which is currently going by the codename…

Project Opal

…because I can’t think of a proper title. (Now that I’ve shared this, I can finally start tagging stuff with it.)

Synopsis

Nauth never understood why things happened. Why the wind comes alive at noon and dies in the evening. Why some moons in the sky are smaller than others. Why he lost his parents. Why an ordinary man’s life is thrown into chaos.

Things had been going well. He had good friends, a home, and even prospects of a better job. Everything turns upside down on the Night of Wyrd’s Watch, when an attempt on his life forces him to flee the city.

As far back as he could remember, Nauth has always had why’s. Is this the time to find a because? Or is it merely the start of a life constantly on the run from death?

Character descriptions below the cut.

Character Descriptions

Nauth - A second-generation native of Kem lon-Dalan, Nauth currently lives alone, working as a stablehand at the Fox and Rabbit alongside Ven to provide for himself. He’s rather reserved about himself and his past, but still quite outgoing. He’s playful, but also has a hard line of what he will and won’t put up with (even if that line does move around a lot).

He’s not especially tall, usually an inch or two shorter than the average man on the street. Granted, people in the Vandeth Desert are generally taller than usual. Compared to Delgane people, on the other hand, he’s around average height. His skin and eyes are darker than a native, but he hardly stands out in the wide array of nationalities in the city.

Ven - Ven fits the typical idea of a shodathi*. Sun-tanned, light on his feet, and a little cheeky. Ven’s family took in Nauth many years ago after his parents died, and he and Ven grew up as brothers, almost from birth. Even after Nauth moved back to his family home, they remained quite close. Now, they work together at the same job.

*The Vandeth word for “person”; also used to mean a native of the Vandeth Desert, typically by heritage as well as citizenship.

Lynn - For reasons unknown, Lynn moved to Kem lon-Dalan with her younger sister almost seven months ago, leaving their homeland of Delgan. They both took jobs at the Fox and Rabbit, Lynn working in the stables with Nauth and Ven. The three of them quickly became friends. With their help, Lynn learned the Vandeth language, though she still struggles to speak it. Her peachy complexion and long honeygold hair made her an exotic sight in the desert, landing her a job serving wine inside. She also sings for tips.

Lynn is typically very easy-going and fun. At times she can be possessed by self-righteousness and haughtiness, courtesy of her Delgane upbringing. She can appreciate a good joke, though. A good joke.

Fun fact: Lynn was actually male in earlier versions of the story, and will likely be male again in future drafts. For reasons.

Other Things I Wanna Say

So, Nauth’s storyline isn’t the only one. There’s also gonna be one that follows Ven and Lynn, and at least one more following another character. But if I had to pick, I would say that Nauth is the main character. But Ven and Lynn are important too.

[myliobatis]

Why Did This Fic Involve So Much Math: Behind The Scenes Of A Really Long Chapter

I kept threatening to do this and here it is: the planning materials (scribbles) that kept me organized enough to finish chapter two of far to the west and worlds away, aka the ensemble-cast-repentance-in-avallónë fic that ate my life. I am not constitutionally suited to writing longfic (and a 10k chapter is LONG for me, I usually hover in the 1k or less range), so this was an extremely necessary part of the process. Let’s get into it!

where it all began: early shape-of the-world thoughts in the back of a work notebook. it also contains first drafts of several scenes, but those are not pictured because they have Actual Confidential Work Materials mixed in.

from there, it developed into this bullet-point conceptualisation of the “deal with the death”, which has lived in the bottom of the continually-growing gdoc ever since. almost none of this rationale made it into the text, even though it underpinned everything.

here are the notes I took during my silm and UT reread these past few months. I made a conscious effort to compare the text to fanon, because I hadn’t reread since my first time in the fandom eight years (!) ago. the areas marked with the red inkstick are notes I found particularly useful for this project (vs. generally interesting).

within that notebook, there are some pages specific to planning this series. this one was an early stab at working out the order in which the characters would return. you can also tell that I ran through multiple pens during this process!

working out relative ages at the time of the crossing to Beleriand, which was part of a larger effort to contextualize character relationships.

an early attempt to plan the order of scenes and break up the chapters, including a couple of concepts I later removed. I wrote myself into a corner with the publishing order at the start of the series and here was desperately trying to fix it (only partially successfully!)

another stab at the sequence of returnees, in which you can tell I was having trouble remembering the year of tyelpë’s death…!

questions I asked myself to flesh out the worldbuilding of returnee-aman. in the end I chose to go with less self-actualisation, because. well. drama

working out what exactly this in-universe project entailed; only some of which made it into the finished version. never could work in the random Teleri shipbreaker.

a page of painful math, using this timeline, to figure out when a reasonable date to start the returns was. I did so so much math and then remembered like two weeks later that the numenorean invasion happened and had to recalibrate all over again!!

finally, this large-format sketchbook sheet I wrote out at around 75% finished the fic, to finalize the order, mark down issues to resolve, and make sure the characters were getting roughly equivalent screen time (the dots are tracking focus scenes).

Not pictured: hours and hours and HOURS of thinking about scenes and mentally editing while running, walking, doing laundry, etc. It was weird to put my entire brain into this post, but fun!

[hideyseek]

/BARGES IN/ HELLO BUDDY REVERSE UNO CARD FANFIC ASK MEME 🥺, 🤡 , 🛒, ⌛

HIIIIIIIIIII ENNJI <3 I LOVE 2 BE UNO REVERSE CARDED!! also haha sorry these got ... quite long (i can talk about how long it takes me to write a thing for SO LONG buddy) so i'm putting the whole thing under a cut.

from these fanfic writer emoji asks

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

mmmmmmm.... had to think about this one for a bit because the types of interactions i tend to write for kakehai aren't actually the ones that put me in MY feels, haha. but i think moments of very small and mundane domesticity are moments i really like -- there's an almost off-hand kind of intimacy in that kind of sharing space that i'm really compelled by. that idea of like, oh this person is so familiar to me that things like reaching around them or being passed something by them is all happening somewhat subconsciously.

🤡 What’s a line, scene, or exchange you’ve written that made you laugh?

ohoho. i do think that i've gotten a lot less funny over the years, both as a person in how i interact with the world and also in the kind of writing i'm doing. part of this i think is just the particular bits of haiji/kazetsuyo that i latched onto (in particular contrast to the lighthearted, laugh-at-the-narrator, very romantic type of fic i primarily wrote for inception).

anyway, that to say i actually couldn't think of anything when i was answering this so then i went down a rabbit hole of google docs bc surely i'd written something i thought was funny in the last year and genuinely all i could find (though admittedly i didn't search very hard) was this snippet from a kunikidazai pwp ficlet i started for bcsdp when kunikida's been lost in thought for a while:

“Ku-ni-ki-da-kun,” Dazai prompts. “What’s happening upstairs?” “Nothing,” Kunikida snaps, and wishes he’d said none of your business as soon as Dazai smirks.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

ok well i was going to say "i don't know but i skimmed through all my posted fic on ao3 and i had two whole fics that involved the pov character being a forger of some kind and a core romance-related theme being 'what is real vs what is valuable' which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice".

but then i remembered that i have like, three or four wips across a couple fandoms that are all basically "what happens to my blorbo guy after a big, life-changing experience ends and then he's left adrift and has to figure out how to be a person?" so i'll say that! i'm really compelled by the idea of having a like, identity-defining project and then having that like -- end abruptly and having a character still have to be themselves without it.

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

SO LONG. ohh my god SO SO LONG. well okay that's not true, it really depends. one of my big "writing goals" (incredibly abstract goal, i would not say i'm working toward it) is to write faster.

i've gotten to a point where i can, more or less, rough out an outline of a 2-4k fic focusing on 1-2 character relationships with a single reasonably straightforward plot and no particular thematic intention in an afternoon, and probably draft it in a week (and revise in another week) if i'm not doing much else or the idea is really compelling and i don't get overthinky. a year or two ago, that would have taken me maybe a month or two of very like, focused and intense writing. but also there's like ... something about the 4k threshold that i just never can really cross with a fic like this.

but in terms of drafting and going from the start of an idea to an actual fic i am incredibly, incredibly slow. most fics that i'm writing now are more than 4k (even the mini version of heist!au is shaping up to be 5k ish) and are probably ... 3-5 drafts? for narrative!fic i've spent maybe 2-3 years now putting snippets in a evernote doc and drafted the first 1/4 to 1/3 of the story literally 4 times in the last year -- i'm like a chapter and a half into draft 4 now and that's taken already 2-3 weeks (and this was genuinely a fluke from the recent holiday weekend) and in my mind this is still a "first draft".

ok wow this was possibly more than you desire to know about how long it takes me to write things however haha i'm still not done! the thing that has been keeping me moderately sane about all this is this FANTASTIC BOOK called the art of slow writing by louise desalvo which i have also been reading incredibly slowly (i am about 60% of the way through and it has been since like, february of this year) but the book is this really wonderful (to me) collection of both desalvo's process and perspective of writing a novel, and a ton of referencing other writers and how goddamn long it took them to write things (with lots of gentle and loving mockery of writing as a practice, which i really enjoy). anyway! i recommend it -- whenever i get frustrated about how long a fic is taking i'll go read a chapter of this (they are all very short) and calm down about it.

[cboffshore]

Taking the phrase body of water to new heights - and depths. This is "The Altruist."

We're at the finale now, and there's only one way to end it.

A fun fact: Nya's sacrifice at the end of Seabound is the only scene in Ninjago to have ever made me sob. Sure, other scenes have come close - Garmadon's sacrifice and the post-Cole's-fall mourning scene come to mind - but Nya's funeral had me weeping like I was there. I think it was because I'd grown up relating to her, and it was a volatile time - I was less than a month away from graduating with my first degree. We were both moving on in our own ways. It was one hell of a hit, honestly. Deep down, I think I knew it wasn't going to last (and then Crystalized rolled into town), but in that moment? Ouch. Even now, knowing what happens after the Seabound finale, the last two episodes still get me. Initially, I condensed the emotional experience into the original version of "The Altruist":

Looking back now, I am happy with this. But - as we've established during this series - I can do better. And I wanted to do better, but I wasn't totally sure how until very recently.

A few months ago, I got my hands on the Water Dragon set. It was a total fluke - when I first tried to buy it (in-person, of course, because that's half the fun) shortly after the Seabound wave release, my local store told me they were sold out and unlikely to get any more, ever. This was last year. Recently, I ended up popping into the store just for fun, and imagine my surprise when I approached the Ninjago shelf and encountered a stack of at least five of the sets. Reader, I have never grabbed a box so quickly. I built it in two sittings, enjoyed the greatest play function of all time (aka using the insanely long tail's momentum as a whip to repeatedly knock the included Kalmaar figure off of the table), and realized that the wing pieces were the inspiration I'd been looking for.

Now might be a good time to confess that this is the first piece I created for this remaster series. Everything else - the KPS, the other revamps and overhauls - followed this. Being based on a preexisting set of ideas and very few visual sources, this process was simple, but there's still a lot going on.

The moment I unboxed the wings in the set, I envisioned a high-low skirt and waterlike train structure. As such, nearly every element of this base design is derived from an overhead shot of the dragon set: palette, the navy velvet skirt overlay and bodice, and the scalloping on the edge of the skirt.

From the original version of "The Altruist," I preserved a few key principles: the general flowiness, the high neckline, and the simplicity of any accessories. I ended up cranking up that last one - there are no shoes, headpiece, or jewelry. All of the focus is on the body to reflect the base mechanics of Nya's sacrifice.

The water motif runs deep in this one for what I hope are obvious reasons: seafoam on the underskirt/leg wrap to suggest waves, glitter on the overskirt to suggest a rushing current, and pale hints of seaweed green for a little contrast.

In terms of character symbolism, the form here does most of the heavy lifting. Another fun fact (this one doesn't involve crying): part of my design philosophy for every outfit I draft is that I ask myself the question, "If given the opportunity, would the base character actually wear this?" and commit if the answer is yes. This is one of the few instances where the answer has been no and I've chosen to continue anyway. Nya, famously, is not into wearing big dresses. This would piss her off. However, the layering here acts as a summary of the slow. tragic loss of self that her sacrifice leads to. The dark blue seafoam leg wrap and gray mesh sleeve, which are the most-buried layers, are components she'd be okay with wearing. The wave-inspired bodycon underneath counts as a dress, sure, but it's certainly closer to most of her default pre-ninja outfits, so it's all right. The massive train and velvet overlay, however, are decidedly not something Nya would be comfortable in. In the series, the only time Nya's ever shown as comfortabe in a giant skirt is when she's literally possessed in the Skybound finale - when she's literally not herself. Here, the giant skirt is overwhelming and acts as a parallel to the way she slowly loses herself over the next year.

It's been wonderful being able to go back and revisit the works that got me started; looking at this remaster series and my originals side-by-side is mindblowing to me. When I entered this fandom 12 years ago, I never envisioned myself doing much in the way of creative engagement. When I tentatively began interacting with the online community and doing my own writing, I thought that was as far as it would go - and now this art is one of my most consistent hobbies. And people like it! That's wild to me. (Side note, I also apparently became so confident in my writing that my enthusiastic tags on AO3 earned me a two-week shadowban on my most recent work - that's gotta mean something for my self-esteem, right?)

I'm about to step away from Tumblr for a little while over winter break. In the meantime, though, I'm working on another mini seasonal series that I hope you'll all adore; I'll also be planning out carrying over my Twitter work. No definite timeline on that yet, sorry - have the last bonus wallpaper instead.

As always, thanks for sticking around! I hope this was as special for you as it was for me.

[thelostrainbowthenovel]

Antagonist: Argento Mercury

The second post about the antagonist! Originally had started a different version of this in my drafts six months ago, but I never really touched it since then. As was going to be mentioned, I have felt more comfortable during the past year to share more about the main antagonist, as while my original intention was to keep them a secret till the actually story comes out, I have technically already shared snippets about him already.

So, get ready to hate this guy! This is just his basic information for now since I still need to draw his official reference, but hope you still enjoy reading!

=============================================================

- King Argento Mercury

. Age: 25

. Gender: male

. Sexuality: straight

. Family: father, (deceased)mother, older sister

. Relationships: Crowned Princess Talia Neptune(former fling, still currently pursuing)

. Abilities: metal magic(natural), hand-to-hand combat, sword-fighting

. Physical Appearance: tall with a well-built and muscular build, straight and shoulder-length silver hair, tanned skin, dark gray eyes

King of the Kingdom of Melor, the cursed to be forgotten fifth kingdom. Since he was born he was raised in only the most cutthroat and merciless environment, one that did not leave room for softer emotions or anything deemed as “weakness”. Argento himself has grown to be very cunning and ruthless, doing whatever he deems necessary to achieve his goals and get what he wants, and cares little for the feelings of others he may hurt along the way. He does recognize his behavior as cruel, but with the attitude instilled in him from his older family members and his kingdom's general bitterness towards others and goals of becoming the strongest over all the other countries, it is the only way of thinking he knows. He is intelligent in many areas, most notably battle strategies and is always calculating his next moves carefully. He is entirely unforgiving and unforgivable, but he does have somewhat of a small soft spot only for those he deems the most loyal to him, such as his older sister. His hunger for power and domination has allowed him to recently become the new king, as he managed to beat his father in a duel for the throne. Melor traditionally follows an "upon death" line of succession, but heirs can duel their predecessors for the throne if wanted or needed. Such is the case for Argento, as when he was building up his strength he planned on beating his father to put his plans into full action without his father potentially preventing him. He still recognizes his father is a powerful and strong man to have on his side, so he still keeps him and his sister close for a form of "council" with his plans, as they help him out.

When he was 22 he decided to venture out of Melor to spend the summer in Versuvia, the melting pot country of the mainland, to conduct some research on how to bring his kingdom back into prominence. While there he met Crowned Princess Talia Neptune, who was also in the country on a trip her and her graduating class got to take. They hit it off fairly well at first, both charmed and interested in the other, and soon entered into a little fling together. It was pretty fun and exciting for the first several weeks, though Talia was never really aware of his royal background or Melor in general, just assuming him to be some rich hunk and never thought to look into who he was further. As he was enticed by her spirit and magic, he thought that with his "help" he could help her expand upon and broaden the range of her power beyond the vanity she most often displayed it as at the time. This is when she started to notice the red flags about him, and when he wanted for her to come back to Melor with him, she refused. This caused some pretty big verbal fights and hurtful words to happen between the two, which all escalated to the point where during one particular fight Talia impulsively slapped him in an attempt to get him away. Needless to say she was very scared after that point, quickly packing her things up and heading back home as soon as possible. Even if heavily implied from their fights, there was never an official breakup between the two. Argento noticed this, and as he was never taught the proper ways of romantic love he had a twisted obsession about her, one where he wanted her for himself but not necessarily for pure love or the like. He swore a "vengeance" on her after that fateful summer, and during the past three years since then he both became king and together with his family, has been putting together a plan to get her back.

[dragon-swords-prophecies]

Hello! Would you like to ramble about your wip(s) or ocs? I didn't see an intro post for any of them, and I'd love to hear about them 💖

(P.S. dragon friends? I'm only writing them for the first time but I absolutely love them, too)

[EDITORS NOTE: I very quickly make less and less sense as I go on bc time kept getting later and later so. sorry about the words if they don't make sense. also it's a bit (very) ramble-y.]

*peers at my drafts, half of which (there are 6) are intro related* Ah yes, I knew I forgot to do something! Shit.

hello! the explanation behind the lack of intros is abt 4 months ago my current wip intros and writeblr intros became inaccurate and/or nonexistent, I removed the old one as a pinned post and intended to make a new one. that new one is sitting mildly unfinished in my drafts. whoops. I also have never made a decent character intro in my life so there are not any of those either! (Even if they were they wouldn't be current probably)

So, in approximate order of when I came up with them, here are my main wips!

Frost & Fire: The big one. the main one. the one that "created" the world that all the others happen in. Recently was revamped into a new version with a much better plot and also one that made sense! This is the one with the most dragons, but as I am physically incapable of writing anything without dragons (seriously, just ask my english teachers why I hate realistic fiction) all the other ones also have dragons. This is also the one I know the most about.

Plot is basically that a super powerful super super magical (that magic is from what is basically the dawn of the world) and super super super ancient dragon dies (or... gets Murdered? Who knows!) and someone (Dizerdrat, an asshole dragon of several centuries old who has killed A Lot Of People including two of the MC's mother) is attempting to claim the power for himself!!! A group of decently successful heroes who are Supposed to be Retired (spoiler alert; they're not, they want to be but they're not) get dragged out of said retirement to save the world!

All 4 of the MCs in that, including Enna, the narrator, are former Dungeons & Dragons characters of mine.

One of Copper: The one that comes after frost & fire. about 30 years after. I think. Maybe 50. Timeline unclear as of now.

But it involves someone (a wizard. it's always a wizard.) stealing a weapon (sword maybe?) belonging to one of the gods and he gets really mad about that and threatens to kill everyone! goddess of death, Illa (she is my favorite of the immortal OCs I have), wishes for this to not happen because she was the catalyst of the last war among the gods (spoiler alert: she used to be human/mortal! she is not longer mortal. whether or not she is still human is up for debate) and she really, really doesn't want to see that again!

The heroes of this one are, through no fault of my own but also it's entirely my fault, all trans. All of them. Only two of them were supposed to be trans but then Ash went and said ''no actually I'm a trans woman'' and Josh said ''ya know why you keep messing up my pronouns when you're writing me? that's cause I've got both sets!''

That is only of little consequence but I think it's funny that they all basically went ''nope not gonna be cis no thank you''.

But they are the exact opposite of the MCs of Frost & fire. None of them is of any actual importance anywhere. But one of them has a blood curse & magic! And one is purple! And another one (the trans woman) is a black smith! The last one has no redeeming qualities in so far besides the fact that he is really nice and has the least depression out of all of them but that's still good!

Silence and Secondhand Souls: this one comes before Frost & Fire! by abt 150 years!* It's a tragedy! The narrator is telling the story in what is possibly my favorite way to narrate! She's telling the story in first person past tense bc she's dead and a ghost who's talking abt how she died!

Her name is Alexandra "Alex" Rovenowa and she died when she was 21, and got sent on the quest that killed her when she was 19 ish! She was in training to be a wizard but a very annoying series of events got her sent on a minor quest with an acquaintance (Leo Nailo). Said quest snowballed, they got two more quest mates (Finn & Eryn Mesk), and ended up forced to fight Dizerdrat, the aforementioned asshole dragon!

They all die. It's sad.

Alright I think that's all of the main ones, and for sale of length I will not put any character intros on here but if you want to know about any of them that I mentioned or the Main Characters (MCs) of any of those wips please ask and I shall answer!

[sleepymarmot]

I haven’t giffed for a while, so making the previous post was a bit of an adventure.

I started this gifset in February 2021. Back then I ripped every frame and the gifs were too big for tumblr, so I had to delete every other frame by hand. It looked so choppy that I put the post on ice, and it got buried under other drafts. Evidently I found the post again months later but didn’t fix it and left it to rot again.

I found the post again this week and almost published in that state, but thought it’d be too embarrassing to post a gifset with every second frame in 2023. I then tried to remake it in proper quality. I discovered that I had one of the gifs ripped with every second frame, and had to re-rip it again (and remember how to crop them). For some reason, the new screenshots were brighter, so I had to use a different coloring for them. I also had to split that gif into two, but that’s easy.

The gifs were still way past the Tumblr limit, and I was on the brink of losing hope and shelving the post again when I realized that I can just reduce the number of colors. This is b/w! There are 64 and even 32 colors per gif in that post and it all looks perfectly fine. So my big problem from two years ago was finally solved. (Too bad this solution would not work with normal color gifs.)

The original version was also awfully slow. For the new one I started experimenting with frame delays since I’m unfamiliar with giffing every frame. At first I tried to abandon frame animation altogether and set the FPS on the timeline the same as original video, but that didn’t work (in two different ways). Then I realized that gif exporting ruins frame delays anyway, rounding them up/down to either 0.03 or 0.07. 0.03 looked perfect in my desktop image viewer but too fast on Tumblr in the browser. 0.05 looked too slow. Then it finally occurred to me to do the math, and 1 second / 23.976 fps indeed equals 0.04 (rounded). So I adjusted the gifs to have 0.04 as frame delay and it still looks wrong somehow, even though objectively it should be the best option.

By the way, I had to carefully replace gifs one by one in the original post buried like fifty pages deep within my drafts, and not just because I didn’t want to make a new one: that draft is in the legacy photo post format, and I don’t have access to it for new posts anymore.

After finishing and uploading all that, I realized that I never cropped out the black border, and it’s quite visible at the edges of the gifs. But I already wasted way too much time to go through every gif again.

In the end, the only thing I had to redo from scratch was the final gif (now split in two). For all the others, I used the same psd, adjusted the export settings, then redid the frame delay of the exported gifs. The real time-consuming part was not the editing process itself, but figuring out what I needed to do.

All this was for an extremely simple gifset, by the way. The kind that requires no actual creativity or hard work, only a bit of technical know-how. If you know what you’re doing, and not blindly poking at the settings you’re not used to, it should take no time to make. I just want to share how much I’m overthinking everything. (And also to journal for my own sake, because this has been An Experience.)

[koocycle]

as you were | jungkook one shot

↳ synopsis. He was only two months into knowing you, yet he already loved and cherished you like no one had done before. But now you’re gone, and you brutally left him nothing behind besides a story with missing puzzle pieces and a set of questions.

pairing. architect! jungkook x fem reader

word count. 4.6k

au + genre. summer! au, semi-exes! au, angst, fluff.

warnings. none

author’s note. being on a writing hiatus for more than a year now, you’d think this was planned to make a come back. (jokes on you and me both), but i actually wrote this rough draft half a year ago and never pushed myself to finish it. struggled with it, could cry over it, same old same old when it comes to me and writing. i’ve decided to get my ass out there and post one of my hundred, rotten and forgotten drafts!!

also why i want to thank @latetaektalk for being SO patient with me as she keeps pushing me (in the most unfriendliest ways) to keep it going!! linh who’s been reading every draft (and each version of every draft, if yk what i mean), from hundreds of different aus. MUCH much thanks!!

while i’m working on bigger things that bring me more joy while writing, i want to show my face out here before i hide in my docs again, and until i dare to peek out again with something new and better, i’d love to read what you think!

this is based off the netflix series ‘lovestruck in the city’.

Jungkook was eager to unravel your every secret.

Without much doubt, both parties knew that you’ve gotten him hooked around your finger from the moment he laid his eyes on you. And you knew there was not much that could go wrong; it never mattered to him how mischievous or how harmless your secrets could possibly be, to what limit his imagination dared to sketch the images you never showed him. Never has he cared about the weight they could hold on to, about the depth that only seemed to increase the longer he thought about all the things you could be hiding from him. You drove him insane like nobody had ever done before. There were no restrictions when it came to you and him, never did he even dare himself to think about setting boundaries. Like a love-sick campus boy, Jungkook was only longing to learn more about you. Over his dead body that he was ever losing you like a damned fool would.

‘‘I think what I’m trying to say is that… it’s probably better for us to pretend last summer never happened.’’

Jungkook’s phone screen falls black in his hand when the voicemail goes quiet once more, coming to an abrupt ending that has his office go mute. His fingers travel through his dark locks ever so gently, like they aren’t filled with rage. His body grows tense in his office chair, no tears hanging on for dear’s life in the corners of his eyes this time around. Maybe they were there the first few times he listened to the 30-second audio eight months ago, maybe the tears were shamelessly streaming down his cheeks back then. Yet today, his sadness is replaced with fury, and it’s everything he can’t handle.

Jungkook doesn’t want to go home just yet. The sky above his workplace paints a hideous, jet black shade and the inside of the building is gloomy and tragic at this hour of the day. The place looks a bit unfortunate without the presence of his colleagues around here, but it’s not enough reason to bring himself home. He’d tell you the cheap prosecco he just poured in his coffee cup is what keeps him at the office this late, just like how he’d tell you he’s used to heavier liquids other than the bubbled wine he buys at local night shops. Yet his eyes are starting to get heavy, and there’s no point in lying when you were the person who knew him best.

Your voice doesn’t even sound the same in the message. The merry tone that always colored your words was not there when you told him to forget about you—again, over a voice message. An action so impersonal, so distant and so foolish, like it was easy for you to forget about him, expecting him to do the same thing with a snap of his fingers. And maybe it was him who was the foolish one for not expecting you to be capable of such cruelty.

‘‘You remember my phone number, right?’’ Is what he asked the final time he was able to hold you, beams of sweat dripping down his forehead with the way the sun fell down his skin.

Worried, massive eyes met yours for the nth time that day.

‘‘Yes, Jungkook.’’ You grinned at him, eyes twinkling the longer you watched him in his troubled state. ‘‘You only made me repeat it a hundred times. I’ll probably forget it the second you’re gone.’’

His smile was unbeatable. ‘‘You’re cheeky.’’ His fingers nipped at your cheeks, ‘‘what if you forget?’’

‘‘I won’t.’’

He sent you a knowing glare. ‘‘What will you do if you do?’’

Merely to satisfy him, your hands scurried inside your shoulder bag to find what he was wishing to see. In a rather clumsy manner, you pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, fingers hurrying to open it. ‘‘Then I got this.’’

His teeth showed. ‘‘That’s my girl.’’ It only took another look into your eyes before he felt secured again, arms falling atop your shoulders to pull you closer to him. His chest was firm as your head rested against him, the assuring hand on the back of your head not dismissed. ‘‘I told you to get yourself a phone. Would’ve made this so much easier.’’

‘‘I told you I’ll be getting one as soon as I get back home.’’ You had told him. ‘‘You’ll miss your flight if we’re getting into this now.’’

‘‘You say that as if that’s a bad thing.’’

‘’You’re lame.’’ Your eyes shot up to meet his, the arms you had wrapped around his waist tightening when they did. ‘‘You should go before you actually miss it, though.’’

He took another moment to take your features in, eyes scanning over every possible detail he could find so he could safely hide them in a memory box up his head. That, for what he thought would be for the time being.

‘‘Kiss me first?’’

Jungkook was a dork, you should’ve seen it coming, yet the taken aback looking smile that made your lips curve was there all the same. You reached up as you stood on your tippy toes, a chuckle leaving both you and him before you were able to press your lips against his. ‘‘I’ll miss this.’’

‘‘No need to.’’ He grinned down at you. ‘‘Do you remember our meeting spot?’’

Your eyes flickered back to his lips. ‘‘Of course I do.’’

‘‘When, baby?’’

You studied him. ‘‘The final Saturday of the month.’’ You cooed, meeting his gaze again and a hand reaching up to rest on his chest so you could gently push him away. ‘‘Now go. I’m not joking.’’

‘‘Whatever you want’’

With a silly, boyish grin on his face, he gripped on to the suitcases on his side. A firm grip on them in the hopes they’d increase his will to leave you. And barely later, when he was only a few steps ahead of you, Jeon Jungkook turned back around to shower you with a dozen of pecks, not without muttering a quick but ensured ‘‘I’ll see you soon.’’ after, of course.

The cup of prosecco in his grip feels heavier than ever before now. He should’ve known you were not one to keep a promise.

Jungkook is in a mourning state the day after. Ever since the clock hit 9 AM as he’s cleared his office; throwing unnecessary papers, floor plans and blueprints out of the way, his mind still doesn’t stay on track. The ongoing design that’s displayed on his computer screen stares back at him in a mocking manner and if it wasn’t for the way Jung Hoseok is keeping an eye out on him just outside his office, he’d be losing himself in another bottle of wine by now. He could always close his blinds, a little voice in the back of his head has been challenging him, but Jungkook knows that it’s only a matter of time before the office’s little mouse barges in to give him a lecture about whatever ‘consequences’ he could be going through if he continues now.

And as if proving his exact point not too long after that, it’s exactly Jung Hoseok that titters into the room like it’s him who owns the place.

‘‘Can’t you knock?’’ Jungkook groans when the older man is only a couple steps in, fingertips reaching up to massage his throbbing temples, elbows supporting his position.

‘‘I could if I wanted to,’’ Hoseok sing-songs in response, a disturbing layer of satisfaction coating his voice as he does so. ‘‘But I like the concept of caution. Makes things a little more exciting in here.’’

The younger can only so much roll his eyes at him, swallowing the words that are seated at the tip of his tongue. ‘‘You don’t have to check up on me every hour. I can take care of myself.’’

‘‘Oh, but I know you can. You’re just not doing it.’’ The elder marvels, his voice a tad bit too loud for an already hectic morning like this. He makes himself comfortable in place, diving down Jungkook’s leather sofa with his hands behind his head like it isn’t his first time. ‘‘How is the design going?’’

‘‘Fine, I guess.’’ Jungkook whimpers, palms rubbing his eyes like he just strolled out of bed. His hair looks like something has gone through them a couple times already, and once more, a hand goes up to do exactly that. ‘‘I’m changing it up.’’

‘‘Again?’’ Hoseok asks from his snug position on the couch. ‘‘How long do you want to keep those people waiting for?”

‘‘I wanna give them what they’re paying me for. God damn.’’ He falls back in his chair with a loud huff, fingers crossing over his chest. ‘‘Not some shitty design that’s making me run in circles.’’

‘‘You know you’re not, right?’’ The brunet sits up, tugging his glasses higher up his nose before leaning down to rest his arms atop his thighs. ‘‘Come on, what did she do to you, Jeon?’’

She.

It’s not Jung Hoseok’s fault that Jungkook became so fucking delicate. And the younger usually enjoys putting a flat hand on his chest as he swears it’s merely a phase he has to go through: a phase of heartbreak, a phase of discomfort that takes some more time to heal. It’s easy for people like Jung Hoseok to walk in here and pretend like everything is fine. People like Jung Hoseok who got their lives figured out with the people they love. It’s an easy job for them to talk out loud, and it’s peak arrogance if Jungkook were one to speak.

‘‘Don’t talk about her.’’

‘‘Obviously, it seems like I’ve got to when you’re not doing what those people pay you for. All fingers point her way, Jungkook.’’ Hoseok hisses, pinched brows pulling together. ‘‘You went on a vacation and met that woman just as fast as she disappeared. You used to finish project after project with ease, people quite literally lined up to see you work in action. Suddenly you come back and lose your drive? As if.’’

‘‘Can you stop? I don’t need you to give me a lecture.’’ Jungkook jeers. ‘‘You don’t know her. The way I get to work these days is on me, I don’t appreciate you sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.’’

Hoseok nods with a tightness to it, like he’s holding himself back from spilling words he’ll regret. ‘‘Okay.’’ he mutters quietly, fingers grazing over his denim jeans. ‘‘I just want the best for you, you’re my friend and that woman was no good. It’s for the better if you forget about her.’’

For the better, he said.

Jungkook huffs, fixing his position so half his face hides behind his computer screen. ‘‘You can get out if you came to argue.’’ He doesn’t like the way his voice sounds, but he’s having a hard time toning it down. ‘‘I’ve got work to do.’’

Hoseok doesn’t say anything after that, sensing that silence is the best way to deal with his younger friend for now. Thus he gets up and exits the room without another word, leaving Jungkook and his thoughts to suffer by himself for the time being. It’s not something he enjoys doing, but Jungkook has always been a little stubborn, an individual that needs time for himself to sort his thoughts out. He’ll figure it out by himself sooner or later.

On the other side of the door, Jungkook is unsure what to do with himself as soon as the soft thud is heard from behind Hoseok’s back. The office runs quiet again and Jungkook’s thoughts are the one thing keeping him trapped in his chair, still and timid like the incomplete design isn’t staring back at him in a pleading, discomforting manner. He would love to care, take charge and put a little more effort into it, yet his mind is elsewhere, making it hard for him to keep his head into the game.

That woman was no good, he had said. His chest filled with confidence as he spoke, making sure Jungkook understood every word even though the younger boy would much rather cover his ears. It was a work in progress, Jungkook had been telling himself the past couple of months, but people like Jung Hoseok only seemed to be eager to speed things up.

You can’t be a bad person—Jungkook knows you are not a bad person. Jungkook saw things that others didn’t see, felt things that he knew you felt as well. And even though he had known you for no longer than a brisk two months, he was sure he was ready to examine your every persona that was hidden beneath the flowery, dazzling girl he met at that beach last year. You promised him that much.

‘‘I think we should just dive in!’’ You had exclaimed back then, wet sand creeping between your toes the more you jumped around the place. ‘‘I’m like, so ready to catch some of those waves you’ve been gushing about.’’

‘‘Absolutely not.’’ Jungkook scoffed on your side, the slight curves that tugged on to the edges of his lips betraying his cool character nonetheless. ‘‘We’ve got to go through the basics before we actually get into the water, you know that right?’’

He watched as you threw your head back at him, a loud and exaggerated groan leaving your throat before you locked gazes again, an obvious pout on your lips this time. ‘‘What’s even fun about that,’’ you whined. ‘‘You’re so boring.’’

‘‘Patience, baby.’’ He beamed, two hands curled around each hip from behind with a slight push forward, ever so gentle, of course. ‘‘Now, get on that board for me. I’ll teach you some positions.’’

He knew what was coming when he saw the way your brows shot up. ‘‘Positions…’’ You sang, a teasing edge to it as a silly grin spread on your face.

‘‘Keep on dreaming, doll.’’ He quipped, fingers nipping at your chin and the way he fought his smile back not missed by you. ‘‘Now do as I say before I make you figure it out yourself.’’

You complied with ease after deciding you shouldn’t be the one to give him such a hard time that early into the crisped morning. He noted how you were having a difficult time keeping your lips sealed shut as he kept stepping around the surfboard beneath your feet, knowing he got the upper hand even if it was you who slipped inside his trailer that morning. Ever the sly little fox you were, your feather-light footsteps did nothing to wake him up as you sneaked into his cramped bed—it was nothing compared to the queen-sized bed you hid from him inside your hotel room just a little away from the beach’s area, but you were not planning on telling him as long as you could slip beneath his thinned covers instead.

It wasn’t like Jungkook was giving you a run for your money, either. Even that same night, when you eventually snuggled deeper at his side and let your arms fall all over his body, outside’s chilly air still lingering on your skin as you did so, he didn’t complain one bit. Jungkook slept with his door unlocked for a reason, and he thought it was more than worth it. Not even when you dragged him out of his bus barely an hour later, clumsily tugging his surfboard beneath your free arm on your way to the shore as you begged him to teach you how to surf. His eyes were still puffy and his hair was a hot mess in the middle of the empty beach, pushed out of his face by the many times you had run your fingers through it.

Yet still, he taught you how to surf. Because Jungkook could never say no to you.

‘‘Basically,’’ you had started, feet planted on the wooden material. ‘‘We live together at this point.’’

‘‘Is that so,’’ Jungkook chirped, his question not really a question. ‘‘Spread your arms. Like this,’’ his hands moved from your behind to grip on both of your wrists, spreading them to match the board beneath you.

‘‘Hmm, yeah,’’ your head fell down his shoulder as soon as you felt his chest pressed against your back, hot breath fanning in his neck. ‘‘Don’t you think so? I’ve been sleeping in your trailer for a week now and you haven’t kicked me out once.’’

‘‘I should’ve.’’ He piped, his smile evident in his voice. ‘‘Spread your feet as well.’’

You did as he told you, curving your upper body when you felt his hands guide you. ‘‘You would never,’’ you snapped back at him, a smile fighting its way on your face. ‘‘Could never.’’

‘‘Curve your back and go down your knees a bit. Your posture looks off.’’ Ignoring your previous comment, he knew he couldn’t beat you to it.

‘‘I think I got it now.’’ You started, waving his hands off you before you turned around. ‘‘We should totally get into the water now that we’ve got the place to ourselves.’’

Jungkook was nearly melting in your hands when you brought them up to cup the plush of his cheeks, ushering him a tad bit closer to place a quick kiss on the tip of his nose, another one followed against the corner of his mouth when he didn’t provide you an answer.

Hooded eyes looked down at you instead. ‘‘You’re underestimating how complex of a sport this is, doll.’’ His features fell serious even as his thumb rubbed circles on your hip bone, a small gesture of kindness Jungkook always seemed to carry with him.

‘‘I don’t doubt that at all.’’ You preened, hands playing with the hairs at the back of his neck, ‘‘but I got myself such a great tutor, not much can go wrong.’’

With a pause and another look into your eyes, he couldn’t pass. ‘‘You’re so used to having everything your way, I don’t know how you do it.’’

Correction: Jeon Jungkook knew quite exactly how you did it—it was like you had put a spell on him that’s got him looking like a lovesick fool chasing rainbows. Hence it didn’t surprise him when your fingers intertwined with his own the moment a smile flashed up on his face. With your hand that had looked so much smaller, so much more delicate than his rough ones, he underestimated the power they held when you dragged him forward, heading straight towards the water with his surfboard clutched beneath your arm.

‘‘I told you it seems easier than it actually is.’’

The damp piece of cloth felt hot against your skin the more pressure Jungkook put against it, the shed’s familiar scent of old paint and planed wood reaching your senses as soon as he told you to sit down. ‘‘And I believed you,’’ you chirped, ‘‘but we had fun, right?’’

Jungkook huffed. ‘‘There is no fun in you getting hurt.’’

‘‘Good thing I’m not hurt anywhere.’’ Jungkook crouched down to match your eye level, not offering you a response as he pinched his brows together and gently continued tapping the cloth against the blossoming bruise on your forehead. ‘‘Can you stop worrying that big head of yours? You’re making me nervous.’’

‘‘I make you nervous?’’ He snorted. ‘‘You fell pretty fucking hard, ___.’’

A hint of annoyance coated his voice like you haven’t heard before. The lips that curled inwards gave it away. ‘‘So? I feel fine now.’’

He didn’t say anything at that and continued to focus on the bruised spot above your brow. You took the opportunity to inspect his features as he did so, allowing your head to fall back against the wall on your side as your eyes attempted to pry into his. Silence took over when you waited for him to say something to tame the tension down, but yet again, without much luck on your side.

‘‘Now what, you’ll just ignore me because you don’t believe me?’’

It didn’t take much for him to drop his hand then, thighs supporting his elbows as a hand ran over his face with a huff. ‘‘It’s not that, ___.’’ He refuted, cheeks blown out. ‘‘You’re just so fucking careless, I wish you wouldn’t push your safety aside just because you,’’ he air quoted, ‘‘‘had fun’.’’

The look that swam in your eyes after that was something he had rather not seen; they were a little conflicted, unable to think of words to say next and the silence that ran through was a bit strange for the type of relationship you shared.

‘‘Ah,’’ he groaned, standing up on stretched legs once again. ‘‘Forget about it.’’

You gave yourself a little longer to keep quiet then, watching as Jungkook awkwardly dusted his pants off and casually started to pace around the shed like you wouldn’t notice the way his cheeks colored a pretty pink. His tattooed fingers played with a couple figurines by the window and it took everything in you to keep yourself composed, (for the sake of his own ego).

‘‘It’s okay,’’ you stood up from your seat, the rusted creak obvious to Jungkook’s ears. ‘‘I like listening to what you’ve got to say.’’

His stomach grew warmer the closer you got, and unlike the floor in his camper, where you tried your best to hide every footstep from him, the shed’s unoiled floor gave them all away.

‘‘It wasn’t important.’’ He had said, body visibly relaxing at the feel of your arms that wrapped around his waist, cheek squished against his back like you knew what it did to him.

‘‘Sounded important to me,’’ you replied, voice small as you hugged him tighter. ‘‘Besides, I like it when you get concerned like that—at what? Week three into knowing me?’’ You teased him, knowing he felt the way you looked up at him from behind. ‘‘When will you be proposing, Jeon? You can’t keep me on my toes forever.’’

‘‘Please,’’ He prattled, no way you couldn’t sense his smile. ‘‘Like you’d say yes.’’

You hummed, the vibrations running through his skin. ‘‘You don’t know unless you try.’’

It didn’t surprise you when he turned back around with a toothy grin on his face. ‘‘Alright, you little tease,’’ he cooed. ‘‘Show me that huge bulge on your forehead.’’

You slapped his chest. ‘‘It’s not huge!’’

‘‘Hm, sure.’’ He mumbled, thumb softly stroking against your forehead. ‘‘It’s massive. Can’t keep my eyes off it.’’

You crossed your arms, muttering a quiet ‘‘jerk,’’ underneath your breath but swallowed the rest of your complaints when his hands cupped the sides of your face, fingertips tugging strands of hair behind your ears as his eyes flickered down your lips. He didn’t ask for permission this time, feeling like it was the right thing to do when your mouths molded together, his fingers resting at the back of your neck as his thumb caressed your cheeks, lips guiding you for better access. Jungkook’s hands slipped lower down your back and rested in place before he pushed you closer to stand chest to chest.

A look of uncertainty painted his face when you broke the kiss, ‘‘You haven’t brought me here before.’’ your arms still embraced him but your curious cat eyes scanned your surroundings. ‘‘Is this where you hide from me?’’

He snickered. ‘‘Can’t hide from you, doll.’’

Jungkook leaned down to press another longing kiss on your lips again but you moved away, resulting in him kissing your jaw instead. ‘‘Are those yours?’’

‘‘Mhm.’’ He hummed, nose pressing against your skin as he inhaled your sweet fragrance.

‘‘You’re not even looking!’’

The heavy man in your arms didn’t bother to lift his head from the comfortable spot on your shoulder this time, the small, wet pecks he left in the crook of your neck not coming to a nearing end, either. ‘‘I don’t have to look. Everything in here is mine.’’

‘‘You’ve got to be kidding.’’ You struggled yourself out of his arms when your eyes fell on something in the distance, moving past him to reach out for it. Jungkook followed after you with a long huff, arms limply falling next to his frame. ‘‘These are yours?’’

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, but your excited voice made up for it. ‘‘Yeah,’’ he grinned. ‘‘You like them?’’

‘‘Do I like them?’’ Your eyes bulged out of your head, a camera in each hand that you came to admire. ‘‘I love them Kook, what…’’

‘‘Careful with them, baby.’’ He quickly reached out for them just in case anything went wrong, one hand on your hip as the other went to the heavier device. ‘‘They’re fragile.’’

Heartening eyes met his, yours filled with curiosity. ‘‘Can you teach me how to work with them?’’

And there you went doing that again; eyes growing until they couldn’t increase any more, corners of your lips that were unable to stay into a straight line due to the excitement that became visible feature by feature. And yes, Jungkook fell for it, once again.

‘‘Again,’’ he began, wanting to tease you a bit further. ‘‘It’s not the easiest hobby out there.’’

He watched as you rolled your eyes to the back of your head. ‘‘We get it, you’re a genius. But I’ve got to start somewhere, no?’’ You gauged, fingers playing with the buttons before you looked through the viewfinder. ‘‘How hard can it be to shoot a couple pictures?’’

Jungkook studied the way you pinched one eye to a close, how your nose scrunched and lips pursed. ‘‘There’s a lot you need to keep in mind while doing so,’’ he dared to wrap his arms around your waist again, nice and warm as he placed his chin on your shoulder. ‘‘Where is all this curiosity coming from anyway? First the surfing, now the cameras…’’

‘‘Hm, can’t I be curious?’’ You smiled, loving the way his breath fanned your throat. ‘‘You’re an architect that surfs and photographs? Something is not clicking.’’

He listened to your mumbles, the teasing tone not dismissed. ‘‘Are you doubting my skills now?’’ He jabbered, ‘‘Come on baby, can’t deny that I was pretty impressive out there. Don’t think I didn’t see you drooling all over me.’’

‘‘Of course, Kook.’’ You hummed, a pretty smile on your face. ‘‘My boyfriend is pretty impressive.’’

The larger man grew still against you for a moment, progressing your words first. ‘‘Boyfriend…’’ he muttered, arms growing tighter around you as his fingers intertwined. ‘‘I like the way you say that.’’

‘‘Do you?’’

‘‘Hm, yes.’’ He pretended to think, trying to hide his beam in the dark spot of your neck. ‘‘Say it again?’’

You put the camera away. ‘‘Say what again?’’ You quipped, turning around to face him and wrap your arms around his neck. ‘‘Boyfriend?’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ he groaned, squinting his eyes. ‘‘Feels good.’’

It did feel good.

© koocycle 2022

[smoochkooks]

—chapter thirteen: this is a story of love

this is a part of my an ode to a broken heart drabble series.

pairing: jeon jungkook/reader

genre: unrequited love, best friends to (?), heavy angst, smut

word count: 1.2k

summary: “this is a story of love so strong, it reaches stars. love so strong, that it makes you weak. love even greatest poets couldn’t find the right words to describe. but I did. I had my heart broken so many times, I wrote an ode to honor it.” 

previous || next

a/n: here’s what the cover of oc’s book looks like :) 

Three months later

There’s a scene at the end of Little Women that hasn’t left your mind ever since you saw it two years ago.

Jo March is standing behind a glass wall. Her eyes, wide with fascination, glued to the picture before her: a book – her own story about March sisters – is being printed.

Two years ago, at the cinema, you wouldn’t have even dared to think that one day, this could be you – at the printing house owned by Varieté Publishing, watching An Ode To A Broken Heart coming to life.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

Jung Ji-eun, the woman from Varieté appointed to monitor the release of your book, looks as polished as always. Her auburn hair is longer again, and you wonder if she reconciled with her husband after all.

“I always take here our new authors to show them how the whole process looks like,” she says, a hint of smile on her plump lips, tainted with dark nude matte lipstick. “That’s the moment most of them actually starts realising this is really happening, that they’re soon gonna have their books sold all over the country.”

Casting your eyes down, you once again take a glance at the book in your hands. The very first, printed copy of An Ode To A Broken Heart Ji-eun handed you today upon arriving at Varieté. Somehow it looks much different than what you saw on the computer’s screen when the design team showed you the final draft of the cover. It looks even better up close, feels real when you’re holding it, and smells just how you love. Like new books.

The art piece you choose is simple yet it carries meaning hidden underneath the black swirls and lines. Two faces, their eyes closed. Man planting a kiss on woman’s forehead. Gesture of intimacy, yet it’ll never be more than that.

“It feels so... weird. I can’t believe it’s all true,” you respond to Ji-eun after a moment, shaking your head. “But I’m happy. So, so happy and grateful. I might be a writer but right now I can’t find the right words to describe my emotions well.” you chuckle.

Ji-eun smiles, this time without hesitation, and places her palm on your shoulder. “And we are happy to have such a talented, young artist collaborating with us. But before we officially celebrate, we need to discuss a few more things today. Want to grab a coffee with me?” she asks, to which you answer with a nod.

Minutes later, you’re sitting in a coffee shop across the street from Varieté. Ji-eun is scrolling through her iPad as you sip on your pumpkin spice latte.

“The ebook version of An Ode To A Broken Heart has scored the highest number of preorders ever since Cho Nam-joo announced the publication of Kim Ji-young, Born 1982,” she says and shows you the Instagram post on Varieté’s account which officially started your book’s promotions. “Look here. We were worried before that people wouldn’t like the author being anonymous but they are actually more intrigued to read it now.”

jisoo.choi1996: Can’t wait to read it! I wonder who Magnolia May really is.

meimeireads: I love sad stories. I’m ready to cry.

soheexoxo: anonymous author? she must have been hurt by that guy sooo bad. poor girl

kimeunha89: Preview seems really interesting. I normally don’t go for angsty stories but I’m curious about his one

“Wow,” you murmur, reading the comments. They’re all so nice, sending you words of encouragement. You didn’t think you’d receive such positive feedback. “So people are into unrequited love stories, after all.”

Ji-eun laughs, for sure reminded about her own words of concern she said to you during your first meeting. And here you are now, just a few days before the official release.

“So Soohyun didn’t confess to Haneul, after all,” she states, placing down her iPad on the table. She’s referring to the main characters of the book that are supposed to represent you and Jungkook. “But that last conversation between them wasn’t in the final draft, though. Why did you insist on adding it?” she asks.

Taking a deep breath, you recall the memory Ji-eun is speaking of. You, dancing with Jungkook, the frown on his face when you told him the truth about Yoongi.

“Someone who was with me at the wedding suggested I should do so.”

Ji-eun lifts her perfectly shaped eyebrow. “You do understand what this scene might indicate for the readers?” That this is not an ending, you answer silently. “It for sure gives them some scrambles of hope, maybe even more. Obviously, that’s a good strategy. People love to speculate. But why?” she presses. “Why did you end the story like that?”

“Maybe I’m not ready to let it all go just yet.”

You think about Yoongi’s words. He might have misinterpreted the whole situation. From his point of view, it could’ve looked... intense, but you were there, in front of Jungkook, and you didn’t feel anything beside concern and anger coming from him. But again, your judgement might be as well clouded and you’re refusing to believe him because you’ve never had anyone look at your relationship with Jungkook from different perspective.

Look at it objectively.

“I know a thing or two about hope. I was hoping for a long time that my husband would change because I loved him so much that I didn’t think rationally.” Ji-eun confesses. You spare a look at her hands folded in front of you. There’s no wedding ring on her finger anymore. “Was I foolish to do so? Maybe. It didn’t work out for me but I don’t regret trying to fight. At the end of the day, hope doesn’t cost as anything.”

But are you really capable of waiting maybe yet another twenty years for Jungkook? You’ve already given up so much, yet it all appeared to be futile. And you know that even if one day you’ll move on and give your heart away to someone else, Jungkook will always remain there, burried deep inside your memory as your first and only true love.

In Greek mythology, when Pandora opened the box gifted her by the gods with countless plagues put inside, only one item remained and did not escape. It was hope.

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” you quote.

One corner of Ji-eun's lips lifts up. “Pablo Neruda.”

You nod. “I like this quote because it refers to inevitability but it’s also about not losing hope even in the darkest times.”

“And that’s exactly what I wish you, ___,” Ji-eun says at last. “To find happiness even among all your hardships.”

This is a story of love so strong, it reaches stars. Love so strong, that it makes you weak. Love even greatest poets couldn’t find the right words to describe. But I did. I had my heart broken so many times, I wrote an ode to honor it. This is my own testament of the things I had lost and never had them given me back. If I could dedicate this book to only one person, I would choose me.

To the new beginnings and hope.

Magnolia May.

[writer-in-theory]

State of Grace (Spencer Reid x Reader)

summary: after several bad breakups in a row, reader decides to stop looking for love. reader never saw spencer coming. series summary: a series of oneshots to celebrate the release of red (taylor's version). 19 songs, 19 fics. pairing: spencer reid x reader category: fluff, some angst but happy ending warnings: mentions of past cheating, mentions of past unhealthy relationships, language word count: 6.8k a/n: Here it is, the first part of Loving Him Was Red. I've decided to post these at midnight a day early because I want to get the last one posted before the actual album is released. It's obviously not midnight this time, but I’m so excited to share this with everyone. While it’s not a true series, this is definitely the largest fic project I’ve ever done and I’m so proud of it. Not to mention it gives me an excuse to listen to Red on repeat from now until November 12th 👀

series masterlist masterlist send me a request!

“Love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right..."

After forty-five minutes of staring at your computer screen, all you knew was that whoever said writing was easy clearly wasn’t a writer. If it were easy, then the final novel in your series would have been published two years ago instead of sitting half-written in your drafts folder.

Sometimes you wished your first book never became popular. While it had been your childhood dream to become published, now you actually had to finish out the series. The first book had originally been written six years ago, back when the world hadn’t screwed you over yet—no, before love ever screwed you over. That was the problem, wasn’t it? The same scene refused to be written, the pivotal moment that your readers had been waiting for after two novels. The first two novels followed the budding friendship between the two main characters, and the third was meant to bring them together romantically. After six years of nothing but bitter heartbreak, your fingers refused to type out a happy ending for the main couple.

It started with your first partner as an adult. You’d given everything you had to them thinking they’d be your first love but turns out they were under the impression it was just a fling. Tossed away like a used napkin, you thought maybe you should’ve gotten the hint right then that you weren’t meant for love.

Instead, you’d moved on to someone else who did seem to want a relationship with you. They just also wanted a relationship with another person behind your back. That had been the worst; a complete betrayal from someone you were sure you could trust. That same trust wouldn’t come easily next time, you told yourself.

Until it did, and you were making the same mistakes yet again with a new person. He’d seemed nice enough; always doting on you and making sure you had everything you needed to be happy. For the first few weeks, you assumed you’d finally found the one. Prince Charming had found you and he was whisking you away to your well-deserved happy ending. Then his behavior turned sour. It started small at first; little moments of jealousy when you talked about your friends or wouldn’t update him on where you were during the day. It turned dark so slowly that you hadn’t even noticed until it was too late. It took months to recover from him.

After all of those failures, it was easy to throw out the idea of a happy ending. Maybe love was a game you were destined to lose, and maybe such endings were only meant for fiction and that was okay. You could handle that; if only you could actually fucking write the fictional happy ending.

Instead, you stood from the office chair—twisting to elicit the satisfying popping sounds from your back—and walked downstairs to staff the bookstore. The store was one of your favorite places to be. It was run by an older woman whose family had owned it for generations. She’d needed to find someone to help her run the store as it grew hard for her to stand for long periods of time. When you worked up the courage to leave your possessive ex, you’d been desperate for a place to stay. Susan offered you the apartment above the store if you would work for a lower wage. Considering how expensive rent could be in D.C., there was no way that deal could be passed up. Two years later, you’d come to view the tiny bookstore as another branch of home.

“Good morning, Susan,” you greeted as you bounded down the stairs, rubbing the exhaustion and frustration from your eyes so you could focus on the store. Staying up late most nights to write wasn’t suitable for your physical health but the guilt of not trying to write would’ve been worse.

“Morning, Y/N. How’s the writing coming?” she asked from her seat behind the counter. The amused smile on her face let you know that she absolutely knew how the writing was coming, she just wanted to hear you say it.

“Same as yesterday. What’s my first job?”

“We got a new shipment of books today. Could you be a dear and shelve them?”

“I’m on it,” you agreed, sliding the heavy boxes out from behind the counter so you could easily access the books. Shelving was a more physically exhausting—but thankfully mind-numbing—task. It was easy to slip out of focus, daydreaming about ways you could get past the writer’s block. That made it even easier to miss when he asked you a question.

You only noticed the customer was there when you took a step back to make sure the shelf looked neat enough, nearly jumping out of your skin when the taller man’s form appeared in the corner of your vision. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you. What can I help you with?” you asked, immediately switching into your customer service voice.

Considering how popular chain bookstores were becoming now, it wasn’t too often there were actually many visitors to the shop. He was a new visitor, that much you knew for sure. A face like that would be easy to remember. He dressed a little like a college professor might, but the gun at his belt signaled to you that he was very much not a professor. Whoever he was, you were envious of the way his hair could look so good when there was clearly no attempt to control the curls.

Oddly enough, the man also looked nervous in a way you wouldn’t have expected from someone who looked like him. Someone with as pretty features as he had deserved to have all the confidence in the world. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m sorry,” he apologized, “I was asking if you’d read that before.” His hand pointed loosely at the book held in your hands.

Well, now that was a fun question. “Moondust by Y/N L/N,” you read the front cover aloud, swiping your hand lightly over it to brush away the nonexistent dust. “I have. A few times, actually, probably more than I should’ve.” It wasn’t a lie. When the book was first published, you absolutely had to re-read it when a hard copy was sent to you. When it reached every important milestone, you’d pulled out your edition and immersed yourself in the story once again.

The man’s eyebrows lifted a little and it just wasn’t fair that someone could look that adorable so early in the morning. “You liked it then?”

A part of you knew the easiest course of action would be to put yourself out of your misery and admit to being the author. Still, no one had asked you directly about the book before and something was telling you not to admit it. This man surely wouldn’t want to talk to you so openly about the book if he knew you were the person who created it. You’d always been careful about who you told about your writing; it took weeks for anyone close in your life to actually know you’d published your first book. So, you decided the best course of action was to dig a deeper hole for yourself. It wasn’t lying, per se, and technically withholding information that wasn’t asked for wasn’t a crime. “I think it’s a good read. I might be biased though, I see a lot of myself in the main protagonist.” Maybe that’s because the main protagonist was heavily influenced by you.

“I’ll try it then,” he concluded, plucking one of the books off of your newly-stocked shelf.

The way people held books said a lot about them. This man held it between both of his hands, fingers lightly gripping it as though the book were a prized possession that needed to be treated with care. He was book smart, pun unintended, and likely spent more time in school reading books than making friends. This was someone you saw as a kindred spirit; a lover of books, devouring the pages to soak up all of the emotions and knowledge from the inked words. “I needed a new book to read on the jet.”

“Oh, you’re traveling? Somewhere warm, I hope,” you replied as you walked with him up to the front counter. Susan was more than capable of checking him out, but you wanted to keep talking to this book lover who had chosen to love your words.

“It’s for work. I don’t know where we’re going yet,” he admitted.

“Huh, well a little spontaneity is good for the soul. So, what kind of agent are you?”

If you thought his previous look was adorable, then you didn’t know how to describe the look of surprise and—dare you say it, wonder—that spread over his face. “How did you...?”

“We live in D.C. and you travel for work but you don’t know where you’re going until you actually get there. It’s also an ungodly hour in the morning that no one is willingly awake for unless your job requires it. Sounds like a government agent to me,” you explained, shrugging your shoulders. “Also the gun at your belt is kind of a dead giveaway. Not that I was looking at your belt! I just, um...you talk now.” Smooth. Suddenly, attempting to write those final few chapters seemed way more desirable than being here. Your face felt like it was on fire, you could only imagine how red it had gotten.

The man laughed, and you’d gladly suffer through that embarrassment again if you got to see that smile. Luckily, he decided to spare you by not commenting on your last statement. “I’m an agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit for the FBI,” the man explained, “we create psychological profiles for serial killers.”

“Well, Mister FBI Agent, can I see the badge?” Honestly, it was just the best way you could think of asking for his name without sounding strange. It worked though because soon he was fishing it out of his bag and handing it to you. Dr. Spencer Reid, huh? “So should I call you Agent Reid or Doctor Reid? Ooh, how about Doctor Agent Spencer Reid? Gotta get both titles in there, they’re both impressive.”

“You can call me Spencer,” he answered if a little sheepishly. Hopefully, you weren’t scaring him too bad, you wanted to hear what this guy thought of your book (and that was definitely the only reason you wanted to see him again). “What do I call you?”

“Y/N/N,” you introduced, wondering briefly if he’d make the connection between your nickname and the full name printed on the cover of the book in his hands. “Okay, you’re all set. Definitely come back and let me know what you think of it.”

“I will,” Spencer promised, tucking the book away into his bag, “Thank you, Y/N/N.”

“Anytime.”

Almost a week later, you told yourself that Spencer never planned on actually coming back to the bookshop. That was okay; after all, what did one cute guy’s opinion really matter to you? You let yourself forget about Spencer Reid, throwing all of yourself into your books. During the day you would work at the bookshop or spend time with friends, and you spent most nights sitting up at your desk with a candle burning away, hoping new words would show up on your screen. They never did, or even worse the words would be typed up but angrily erased when they didn’t come out perfectly right.

Regardless, you couldn’t help the smile that washed over your face when his figure finally stepped into the shop the following Thursday morning.

“Hey, long time no see, Doctor Agent Reid,” you greeted, tossing him a teasing wink and setting down the stack of books you were shelving. “Didn’t think it would take you that long to finish.”

“I finished it on the walk to the office,” Spencer admitted, and you told yourself to file that one away for later because how could a person actually read that fast?

“So, what’d you think?”

“It’s one of the best novels I’ve read in a while,” he told you, and good reviews would never cease to make your heart flutter. You only felt a little guilty that Spencer didn’t know he was talking to the author, but told yourself it was okay because he was complimenting the novel. “The symbolism of the apple tree was so well done, and I didn’t expect the ending. I had to read the sequel too.”

“Yeah?” You fought the wide grin threatening to pull at your lips, trying to keep it schooled into something much more reasonable for a fan of a book. “The second just as good as the first?”

“It was better. I loved the dynamic between the families in Moondust, but it was brilliant to have Starlight focus on building the friendship between Riley and Kendall. It’s such an optimistic and realistic view of love and relationships that I never expected. I admire Riley for the positive way she views the world despite everything that happened to her family.” If only you could hear Spencer talk like this forever. He gestured excitedly with his hands, his entire face lighting up as he spoke about the book. You wondered if he was always this passionate when it came to reading or if it was exclusive to your novels.

Still, you couldn’t help the next words that left your mouth. “I’m not sure it’s a realistic view of love, but it’s definitely optimistic. I think the term I’d use is blind optimism.”

“That’s what makes it so realistic. Kendall went his entire life focused on working to help support his parents. He was so focused on survival that he never once considered the ability to love anyone as wholly as he did Riley,” Spencer continued, “there was no reason for Riley to think he would love her, but she still continued to believe in him.”

“She was desperate for love, she was so willing to be with literally anyone as long as they took her away from her family home. It’s no surprise she started falling for her friend, and she’s damn lucky that he’d fallen for her too. That stuff doesn’t happen in real life. It’s beautiful to read, but foolish girls who are desperate to be loved don’t get the guy. At least not the kind of guy that they actually want.”

“You said you related to the main protagonist,” Spencer point out and damn him for remembering a random conversation with a stranger.

“Are you saying I’m foolish?” you returned, crossing your arms over your chest even though there was no real anger in your words.

“No, but you’re saying that,” Spencer countered, and maybe he was right but there was no way you’d admit it.

“Touche. So tell me, Dr. Reid, how does an FBI agent keep such a positive outlook on life? You must see some awful things.”

“I also see beautiful things. Parents reuniting with their missing children, couples finding their way back to each other after horrific trauma. They’re all able to love again, arguably even stronger than before.” It was a beautiful way to look at the world and you couldn’t help but admire Spencer for continuing to have that view. He seemed a little nervous then, fingers fidgeting as he asked, “Do you want to get coffee with me sometime?”

Where did that come from? “What?”

“I can’t be late for work, but I want to prove you wrong about Riley. She’s not desperate, she believes in the goodness of the world and that’s not foolish,” Spencer explained quickly, “I have so many more thoughts about the series and I could talk about it for hours.”

“I’d love to get coffee with you then, Spencer,” you agreed, proud that you were the one causing that bashful smile on his face. He handed you a little business card with the seal of the FBI on it and, oh, why did it affect you so much that you had his phone number? “I’ll call you?”

“Please. I want to hear more about what you think of the series, especially since there’s going to be a third installment. I have my own predictions on what’s going to happen, I want to know how you think Kendall and Riley will end up.”

“Oh, you and me both,” you murmured, but luckily Spencer must not have heard you. So you spoke a little louder, “Absolutely. I can’t wait to read about how they finally come to terms with their feelings for each other, especially considering how different their lives are.”

“I have a feeling we’ll be waiting for a while. It’s been two years and three months since the last book was published, I wonder when the author plans on publishing the last one.”

“She’s working on it, okay?” you shot back, face flushing as you had to remind yourself that you didn’t actually want Spencer to know it was you. Not now that you were in so deep. How could you possibly explain that to him now? “I mean, we’ve been waiting for so long now, it’ll feel even better when we finally get to see how it all ends. She’s probably doing it on purpose or something.”

“You’re probably right, Y/N/N,” Spencer laughed, “I’ll see you soon.”

“Be safe at work,” you returned the goodbye, only letting out a groan and letting your head fall against the front counter when he left the building.

“Now that was just sad, dear.” Oh, of course, Susan had heard everything. You turned your head to see the old woman coming out of the backroom, sitting down in her rocking chair behind the counter. “Why haven’t you told the poor man?”

“I don’t know.” That was the truth of it, right? “He asked me a week ago if I’d read Moondust and I didn’t want to brag and say ‘oh yeah, I’ll do you one better I wrote it’, you know? But now it’s way too late to fix it.”

“It’s never too late to fix it, Y/N,” the older woman told you. Her voice was a little shaky but soothing, her words bolstered by decades of experience that you didn’t have yet. She was right, of course, but that didn’t mean you were happy about it.

“He’s just so nice,” you continued to try to make excuses, slipping away from the counter so you could sit on some old boxes, facing Susan and completely invested in the conversation. “I want to keep talking to him. He’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before.”

“Oh, you like him, don’t you?”

“What? No, where’d you get that idea?” It was completely ridiculous. You’d just met Spencer a week ago, there was absolutely no way that you liked him. He was a nice guy who happened to like your books. He had an interesting viewpoint and you wanted to hear more about it, that was all. “No, I’m getting coffee with him to talk about the book. That’s it.”

“Okay, Y/N. All I ask is that you don’t miss out on something good because you refused to open the door for it.”

Coffee with Spencer was a wonderful thing. It became a part of your weekly routine, as much as it could be at least, considering he was often out of D.C. for work. Whenever he was home, though, he’d make it a point to call you and set up a time to grab a coffee and talk. It was never texting with him; Spencer said that he preferred calling because it felt more personal to hear the other person’s voice. You had to agree with him, mostly because you liked hearing him talk.

At first, your coffee dates were strictly book talk. You two would debate the intricate details of the novels, anything from the differing sibling relationships in both families to if Kendall was really the type of person to drive a blue car. Eventually, the conversation drifted to your own lives. You got to hear all about the family-like dynamic of Spencer’s team at work. You heard about how Hotch and Rossi were like father figures to him, how JJ and Derek were his best friends but if he ever needed cheering up he’d always go to Penelope because she was like pure sunlight. You told him all about your own friends and about how you came to work at the bookstore.

After a few weeks, you opened up about your own relationship failures. “...which is why I’m taking a break from all relationships,” you finished, chest heaving as you tried to reign in the nervous breaths. Not many people knew everything about your love life, but Spencer did now. He didn’t try to apologize like so many people typically did. It was just further proof that he had his own struggles; he understood that useless apologies didn’t help.

“You’ll find your Kendall, Y/N/N, I promise,” was all Spencer told you, and you really wanted to believe him.

One day Spencer opened up to you, too. He told you about his mother, and his father, even a mentor named Gideon who had left right after Spencer went through something traumatic. He told you all about how people had a tendency to leave once he started caring about them, how he had a constant fear of finding another goodbye letter waiting for him. You didn’t apologize either, instead telling him that you promised never to say goodbye through a letter.

You didn’t know when it happened, but suddenly your coffee dates with Spencer became your favorite time of the week. You’d look forward to it all week and miss it when he was away on a case. It was a friendship you never expected but you were so glad that it happened.

It was a friendship that was good for your writing, too. Suddenly, you were sitting at your desk every night with the motivation to finish Riley and Kendall’s story. Your hands flew across the keyboard for hours and this time you didn’t want to erase most of it. You told yourself it was because of Spencer’s faith in people, but when the story was finally over it was clear that wasn’t the entire truth.

It wasn’t the whole truth because suddenly Kendall twitched his nose when he was thinking about something and drank coffee with way too much sugar. Riley had always been optimistic about the world, but now she believed that two people with broken hearts could put each other back together to create a beautiful mosaic out of their broken pieces. When Kendall finally admitted he’d fallen for Riley, you told yourself you absolutely did not imagine Spencer’s lips speaking those words instead.

Because there was absolutely no way you could love Spencer Reid. Every time you allowed you allowed yourself to take the risk, you ended up burned worse than before. Every person you’d ever loved had once started like Spencer; sweet, funny, and seemingly perfect for you.

That wasn’t necessarily true though, was it? No one was quite like Spencer. He was funny in a completely unexpected way; he just said jokes so nonchalantly. They were brilliant jokes that took you a minute to get, but once you understood you practically howled with laughter. Spencer wasn’t sickly sweet like honeysuckle but rather it was understated. He didn’t try to prove how sweet he was to you, he was genuinely himself all the time and you began to wonder how you hadn’t noticed the difference between him and your exes before. Your exes made cases for why they deserved you, tried to overcompensate to mask their cruelties, and Spencer didn’t need to say a single word to make you want him. All you knew was that you wanted to take the risk with him because Spencer wasn’t playing a game against you, he was playing with you.

So when the announcement of your third book finally came, you planned to tell him everything. You sat up all night writing in the inside cover of a copy, spilling out everything you didn’t have the courage to say out loud. It wasn’t fair that Spencer—who treated every book like it was something to be treasured—was constantly afraid of inked words meant just for him. It wasn’t right that everyone he ever cared about chose the very thing he loved most as their way to say goodbye. When you decided to tell him, you wanted to make him love written words again. You wanted him to have a letter meant just for him that wouldn’t break his heart.

When it was time for you to get coffee with Spencer again, you shoved the book in your bag and took off, body buzzing with an energy you hadn’t had in six years. Of course, things never quite went the way you wanted them to, did they?

“Did you hear the news?” Spencer asked excitedly when he saw you, not even waiting for you to answer before continuing. “L/N finally finished Sunlight. Authors typically wait at least six months between the announcement and release date, but L/N is releasing it next week anyway. Did you know she lives in D.C. too? She’s doing a book signing, we have to go together. ”

“I don’t know, Spence. I think I’m busy that day.”

“I didn’t tell you what day it was,” Spencer called you out. You should’ve known better than to try to outsmart the FBI profiler. “What’s actually wrong?”

“What if she’s not what you’re expecting her to be like?” The question clearly caught Spencer off guard. His eyes narrowed as he considered it, hand gripping a little tighter around the coffee cup it was ensnaring.

“It’ll be okay. I’ll always have the stories, and I got to meet you because of them.” It wasn’t often Spencer was vulnerable with people, you’d been able to deduce that much in the first few conversations you’d had. So when his features softened and he looked at you like you were something to cherish, you knew to pay attention to the moment. “I don’t have many people I care about outside of my team. I’ll always be thankful to Y/N L/N for writing the books that led me to you.”

The book in your bag felt like a leaden weight trying to drag you under the earth. How could you possibly tell him you’d been lying to him for several weeks, months even, when he’d just opened up like that to you? So, you left the book forgotten in your bag and said, “Okay, let’s go to the book signing. I work mornings, but I’ll meet you there.”

And when the time finally came you stood in the backroom of the bookstore that wasn’t yours, more nervous over Spencer than your book. You’d made a mistake. All too soon, you knew what it felt like to wield the knife instead of being the back it was buried in. Spencer deserved better than finding out like this, but how could you tell him before when he’d been so excited to share today with you?

“It’s gonna be great. People’ve been waiting for this book for years, they’re gonna love it,” your editor promised as you nervously paced the small room. It wasn’t the book you were anxious for though. If it meant Spencer would understand why you didn’t tell him, then you’d let this book tank. You just didn’t want to lose a friend, not this friend. He’d made art out of your broken heart and this time you were the one sabotaging it, scribbling in black paint over the restoration he’d made.

Your phone rang three minutes before it was time. You didn’t even need to look at who was calling to know whose voice you would hear when you answered. “Hello?”

“Y/N, where are you? You’re going to miss it.” You could hear the small crowd talking in the background of his side of the call the same way you could faintly hear it from the backroom you were hiding out in.

“Oh, um, I’m running a little late,” you lied, because if he had to find out today then you wanted to tell him when you could see his face. “Go on without me, I’ll catch up. I’ll be there, I promise.”

Those three minutes passed too quickly. Before you knew it, your editor was out there giving their speech and introducing you. Then, you were stepping out onto the main floor of the bookstore to see a small crowd gathered in front of the table your team had set up. Right in front with a terrifyingly blank expression was Spencer. You’d watched as his usually expressive face switched from shock, to hurt, to anger, and finally, to that cold stare you never wanted to see him wear again.

“Hi everyone, thank you so much for being here,” you greeted, trying to smile through the ache blossoming in your chest. “I’ll keep this short so you can all get back to your day, I just wanted to let you all know how much I appreciate your support. This series never would’ve gotten finished without all of you. I am so incredibly excited for you to read the ending to Riley and Kendall’s story.”

The actual signing went quickly. You got to meet fans of your book and it filled you with so much joy to see them excited about what you’d written. Pictures were taken, hugs were given until eventually, the only person who was left was Spencer.

“Was this fun for you?” he asked, and you were sure it was impossible for his voice to sound so cold. You’d taken someone with so much positivity and belief in people and had crushed his heart.

“Spencer, please,” you tried, standing up from the table and walking around front to stand in front of him. “I wanted to tell you, I really did.”

“No you didn’t, otherwise you would have.” He wasn’t even looking at you. That was the worst part of it; seeing the hurt wash over his expression and knowing you made him feel like this. Knowing that he was so disgusted, so hurt, that he couldn’t even look at you.

“Please, I didn’t mean to hurt you. We just started talking about the book and I didn’t know how to tell you after. I’m sorry.”

“I’m so stupid,” he spat, tearing his fingers through his hair and messing it up more than it normally was. He was a genius and he always knew it before. You hated yourself for making him feel otherwise. “I opened up to you, I told you things I haven’t even told my team, and you were playing your little game the whole time.”

“Spencer, please, I wasn’t playing a game, you have to believe me!” The tears were obscuring your vision now. “I tried to tell you so many times but I just couldn’t. I thought-” A shuddering breath interrupted your words, making you take a moment to collect yourself. “I thought if you knew who I was then you wouldn’t have a reason to talk to me anymore. I didn’t want to ruin what we had.”

“You already did, Y/N.” The tone he used was enough to signal what you already knew: this was it, the end of everything you were hoping would last. There was only one thing left that you had, one more thing you couldn’t leave unsaid between you two.

You pulled out the book you’d written in a week ago, holding it out for him to take. “Please, just...I wanted to give this to you last week. I hope it explains everything.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Spencer snapped, but still he grabbed the book and didn’t snuff out what little hope you had left. Just like that though, he was walking away and you weren’t sure if this was the last time you would ever see Spencer Reid.

Dear Spencer,

To Spencer Reid

Dr. Reid,

Spencer,

Surprise! That wasn’t funny, I’m sorry.

I don’t really know where to start, so I guess it only makes sense to go back to that first day at the bookstore. That day, I started to give up on Sunlight. I’d been up all night trying to write and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to read about these characters that I’d lost faith in. Then you showed up and asked what I thought about Moondust, and I...I didn’t want you to see me as the washed-up cynical author I was feeling like that day.

Then you came back and loved the book like I once had. Your face literally lit up while you were talking about Riley and Kendall. I wasn’t looking for an ego boost, I was trying to figure out how you still had so much belief in love, in people, in the universe. You were a marvel and I had to figure you out, but I couldn’t do that as Y/N L/N. I didn’t want you to think of me any differently, I just wanted to be the girl from the bookstore.

I never saw you coming, Spencer.

You came around and it was like all of the armor I’d built around myself just fell away. Suddenly I wanted to believe in the world again and you’re to blame for that. At first, I was mad. I had finally found a way to protect myself from a world that only aimed at the most vulnerable parts of me, but you changed that. You changed me and I’ll never forgive you for it. You reminded me of why I originally wrote Moonlight, of why I recognized so much of myself in Riley. You’re the only reason this story got finished, and I finally understand why.

You once told me I would find my Kendall, but I think he was there with me all along. He was going on coffee dates and making me want to try again with love. You’re my Kendall, and that scares the hell out of me. I want to try again with you, though, if you’ll have me.

- Y/N

It wasn’t easy to move on from Spencer Reid. You gave it your best effort but after two weeks all you had to show for it was your old life. The life you had once been content with, but now all you saw was where he could have fit into it. There wasn’t even a novel to distract yourself with because you’d finished your series. All you had was work and the few friends who hadn’t noticed how down you were. Was there any chance of recovery from this?

There had to be. You’d faced heartbreak before, so often you considered yourself somewhat of an expert in it. This was just another losing game, but you could come back. You knew how to pick yourself up off the ground, shake off what dirt you could, and walk away with minimal scarring. Happy endings truly were just meant for fiction, but that was okay. You knew that before and you could relearn it now.

One day, everything would feel okay again. You wouldn’t wonder what Spencer was doing, or if he’d read your note, or even if he would ever want to see you again. For now, you did—you wondered about it constantly—but this wasn’t permanent.

So you worked all day and went back up to your apartment at night. You got back into a routine that didn’t include Spencer.

Until two weeks and three days had passed. It was only fitting that you were working at the bookstore when you saw him again. Spencer was dressed nicely as always; that familiar purple scarf wrapped loosely around his neck and hand gripping the strap of his bag tightly. You didn’t say anything, how could you? It felt more like a mirage than real life; like you would blink and Spencer would be gone.

“You’re unbelievable.” Spencer echoed the last words he said to you, but this time there was no bite to them, no malice. The words were softly spoken, hanging in the air between you.

“You came back.”

“I couldn’t stay away.” Spencer glanced around, seemingly pleased with the lack of people around, before adding, “Can we talk?”

“Please,” you answered in kind, wrapping your arms around yourself like that might protect you from whatever he had to say. Even though he was here, that didn’t mean you’d get the ending you wanted. You hated the tension clinging to you now, the awkwardness hanging in the air between you and Spencer where it had never been before.

“I read the note.” Spencer paused, just looking at you and you wondered what he was searching for. He must have found it, whatever it was, because he kept going. “I wish you would’ve told me.”

Your shoulders slumped of their own accord. Of course, it was silly to expect anything else. Your entire friendship had been based on a lie from the beginning, what else could you expect but for him to still be upset? “I know I should’ve. If I could go back, I would’ve told you right from the start that I wrote those books. I’m so sorry, Spencer.”

“Not that,” Spencer clarified, and it only took moments for your confusion to morph into heated cheeks and shaking hands.

“Oh.” Your voice was small, barely sounding through the aisleway. “I didn’t really know for sure until I was editing Sunlight.”

“It’s a beautiful story,” Spencer spoke, seemingly switching the conversation away from your confession, “two people who were previously broken finding a home in each other. I loved the hopeful ending, them finding home in each other again after everything they put each other through.”

Where was he going with this? Your breaths were coming faster now, your heart racing in time with the thoughts flying through your head. “I’m glad you liked it.”

“Being with you is like coming home.” The words stole your breath away, leaving you gasping for air. He was closer to you now, your back pressed to the bookshelf behind you. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see his hand fidgeting with the strap of his bag, betraying his nervousness.

“Spencer,” you tried, but what could you possibly say to that? You’d dreamed of someone sweeping you off your feet like this, but now you were here and were paralyzed by all of the emotions swelling in you. Never once did you imagine you would get his forgiveness.

“I never saw you coming either, Y/N,” he continued. “These past two weeks were impossible without you there to talk to. You were always more than the girl from the bookstore to me.”

You were a writer, words were your expertise. No matter the situation, you always had the right words to say. Spencer took them though, through all of your words out the window and leaving you absolutely breathless and hopelessly in love with him.

“Can I kiss you?” You didn’t even know you’d said those words until Spencer was surging forward, hand steadying your face as his lips pressed to yours. It was sweet in a way you weren’t expecting. Your exes had all kissed you like they were trying to take; you were used to bruised lips and stinging skin from where they’d gripped you. Spencer’s touch was soft, reminding you of the way he’d held your book. He held you like you were meant to be treasured, and you held him the same way because you knew he was used to being taken from too. You didn’t want to take, you wanted him to know how much you cared about him through gentle hands in his hair and a soft press of your lips to his.

“Do you want to get some coffee with me?” Spencer asked when you pulled away.

You laughed, nodding and hugging him once before returning some space back to him. It was such a simple request after all you’d been through, but you couldn’t imagine anything else coming from him. “I’ll go wherever you want to, Spencer. I’m not losing you again.”

“I don’t plan on letting you go,” he answered and he had to know those words sent your stomach fluttering.

It wasn’t perfect. You knew eventually you’d have to come to terms with the scars your exes left on you, along with whatever scars Spencer still carried with him, but that would come with time. For now, it was just you and Spencer making art from your imperfect pieces. You couldn’t help but think that this was peace. Walking down the sidewalk with Spencer’s hand occasionally brushing yours, you knew love with Spencer wasn’t a game to lose; it was a state of grace.

SERIES TAGLIST

@samuel-de-champagne-problems @alexlovescriminalminds @reidsbookclub @givemeth @fightingdragonswithreid @eurydice-but-gay @girloncorneliastreet @silverhetdanes @just-a-human-witha-pen

[otemporanerys]

Definitely gimme the ⭐️ on Interregnum please!! <3

Doing some Director's Commentary, please ask me about my fics

The thing about species swap is, it's always been a bitch and a half to write. The first draft of what eventually became Cultural Exchange was supposed to go into ME2. Where it was meant to end, I have no idea, but the Word document I have ends when he's about to kill Sidonis at around 11k.* Eventually I decide, "OK, I'm just going to write the ME1 version of this fic, get this idea out of my head, leave it there." Ha. Anyway, the two things I really liked about the old draft of Cultural Exchange that won't make the cut for the final story are almost verbatim included in Interregnum, and those are 1. the conversation he has with his father on Arcturus where his dad tells him he'll never be a Spectre and 2. the initial flirtation with Lisanthe, the asari bartender. I like both of these scenes a lot, and I figured out a way to incorporate the Castor conversation in Life Behind Enemy Lines (the ME2 fic) but I couldn't get Lisanthe in there, which is a shame because I really like her.

Eventually it gets to a point where structurally, I can't keep the Castor conversation in LBEL anymore, so I think "why don't we do a Gareth standalone in between ME1 and ME2?"** Initial framing device was five stages of grief, kind of a focus on Gareth's deteriorating mental health, which is where all the smoking comes from. (It was supposed to be more explicitly self-medication; I personally think it works better as subtext.) At this point it's called Black Dog. That version doesn't work, so I put it to the side. Later, prompted by a question about service histories in the Dragon Effect Discord, and I start to think about Gareth's time in the Marines, and I figure out that he's probably not old enough to have been on Elysium, but he is the right age to have been on Torfan. Following a bit of discussion with @n0rmandysr1 (thank you), I decide he's a new sniper, posted on the outside of the compound, picking off anyone who's fleeing. I do a fuckton of research on snipers, write half a fic (Butcher Boy, if anyone's curious) actually following what he does on Torfan, aaaaaand... it doesn't work. Still, not to worry - I've got three good solid chapter ideas for Interregnum (I picked that title approximately five seconds before posting it) - 2183, the bonding with his sister and finding out Shepherd's dead; 2184, hooking up with Lis and getting emo over Shepherd; and 2185, the last stand on Omega and realising Shepherd's alive (and he loves her). All gravy, I'm not quite finished drafting chapter 3 but I hit post on chapter 1. Then I realise - what if Torfan is about his dad? Fucking hell, back to the drawing board. So that's why a fic I was planning on throwing up over the course of three weeks took nearly two months. Three other points: 1. Thank you to @misseffect and @deustiel without whose unbridled enthusiasm I would never have gotten this far. Success has many fathers and an AU has many cheerleaders, thanks to @drumsandwaves among many others 2. I love Gareth's mom so fucking much I could dedicate a whole other post to her 3. a lot of IR is drawn from my own life. I quit smoking two years ago and I still fucking miss it, and I probably have my older brother to thank for a key part of Gareth's backstory. He actually wanted to go to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, for a while, which I have Gareth drop out of. Other fun facts from that experience will come into play, probably after LBEL.

*In this version of the fic, Gareth turns Shepherd down at Ilos, and they don't hook up until later on in ME2. I don't want to spoil it because it's still a pretty pivotal moment in LBEL.

**This is not the first time I thought about doing another entry in species swap before embarking on the ME2 longfic - I actually started drafting a Joker/EDI piece set in ME3 which would kind of be a teaser for it, but it just hasn't worked out. You can see why it took me 10 months to get back to the AU.

[homosexuhauls]

15 JUNE, 2021 by Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie

IT IS OBSCENE: A TRUE REFLECTION IN THREE PARTS

PART ONE

When you are a public figure, people will write and say false things about you. It comes with the territory. Many of those things you brush aside. Many you ignore. The people close to you advise you that silence is best. And it often is. Sometimes, though, silence makes a lie begin to take on the shimmer of truth.

In this age of social media, where a story travels the world in minutes, silence sometimes means that other people can hijack your story and soon, their false version becomes the defining story about you.

Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it, as Jonathan Swift wrote.

Take the case of a young woman who attended my Lagos writing workshop some years ago; she stood out because she was bright and interested in feminism.

After the workshop, I welcomed her into my life. I very rarely do this, because my past experiences with young Nigerians left me wary of people who are calculating and insincere and want to use me only as an opportunity. But she was a Bright Young Nigerian Feminist and I thought that was worth making an exception.

She spent time in my Lagos home. We had long conversations. I was support-giver, counsellor, comforter.

Then I gave an interview in March 2017 in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, (the larger point of which was to say that we should be able to acknowledge difference while being fully inclusive, that in fact the whole premise of inclusiveness is difference.)

I was told she went on social media and insulted me.

This woman knows me enough to know that I fully support the rights of trans people and all marginalized people. That I have always been fiercely supportive of difference, in general. And that I am a person who reads and thinks and forms my opinions in a carefully considered way.

Of course she could very well have had concerns with the interview. That is fair enough. But I had a personal relationship with her. She could have emailed or called or texted me. Instead she went on social media to put on a public performance.

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it. But I mostly held myself responsible. My spirit had been slightly stalled, from the beginning, by her. My first sense of unease with her came when she posted a photo taken in my house, at a time when I did not want any photos of my personal life on social media. I asked that she take it down. The second case of unease was her publicizing something I had told her in confidence about another member of the workshop. The most upsetting was when she, without telling me, used my name to apply for an American visa. Above all else was my lingering suspicion that she was a person who chose as friends only those from whom she could benefit. But she was a Bright Young Nigerian Feminist and I allowed that sentiment to over-ride my unease.

After she publicly insulted me, it was clear to me that this kind of noxious person had no business in my life, ever again.

A few months later, she sent this affected, self-regarding email which I ignored.

Friday September 15 2017 at 4.35 AM

Dearest Chimamanda,

Happy birthday. I mean this with all my heart, even though I know I have fallen (removed myself?) from your grace. It would be impossible for me to stop loving you; long before you gave me the possibility of being your friend you were the embodiment of my deepest hopes, and that will never change.

I think of you often, still – stating the obvious. I grieve the loss of our friendship; it is a complicated sadness. I’m sorry that I caused you pain, or to feel like you can no longer trust me. There’s so much that I wish could be said.

I pray this birthday is the happiest one yet. I wish you rest and quiet and abiding stability, and of course more of the kind of success that means the most to you.

I hope mothering X is everything you hoped and prayed for and more.

Have a wonderful day today.

Love always.

About a year later, she sent this email, which I also ignored.

Thursday November 29 2018 at 8.42 AM

Dear Chimamanda,

I realise this is long overdue and vastly insufficient, but I’m really sorry. I’ve spent so much time going back and forth in my head and my email drafts; wondering whether to write you, how to write you, what to say, all kinds of things. But in the end, this is the thing I realise I need to say.

I’m sorry I disappointed and hurt you by saying things publicly that were sharply critical, unkind and even disrespectful, especially in light of all the backlash and criticism you experience from people who don’t know you. I could have acted with more consideration towards you. I should have, especially given the privilege of intimacy that you had offered me. There are many reasons why I chose to behave the way I did, but none of them is an excuse. And I clearly realise now, after many, many months of needless sadness and angst and hurt and actual confusion, that I did not treat you as a friend would—certainly not as someone would to whom you had offered unprecedented access to yourself and your life.

You’ve meant the world to me since I was barely a teenager. It’s been very hard navigating the emotional fallout of the past several months, knowing you were displeased with me but truly not quite understanding why, then deciding I didn’t care, then realising that would never be true. I’ve always cared. But I was too mixed up about the situation to be able to make sense of it, or properly see past my own justifications. I’m sorry it took me so long to grasp how I let you down.

I realise that I don’t have room to ask anything of you, but I would be grateful for a chance to say this in person. Still, even if I never get that, I really hope you believe me.

Congratulations on restarting the workshop, and on all the other amazing successes of the past several months. I think of you often; it would be impossible not to. You look so happy in your pictures. I really hope you are well.

All my love,

I hoped never to hear from her again. But she has recently gone on social media to write about how she “refused to kiss my ring,” as if I demanded some kind of obeisance from her. She also suggests that there is some dark, shadowy ‘more’ to tell that she won’t tell, with an undertone of “if only you knew the whole story.”

It is a manipulative way of lying. By suggesting there is ‘more’ when you know very well that there isn’t, you do sufficient reputational damage while also being able to plead deniability. Innuendo without fact is immoral.

No, there isn’t more to the story. It is a simple story – you got close to a famous person, you publicly insulted the famous person to aggrandize yourself, the famous person cut you off, you sent emails and texts that were ignored, and you then decided to go on social media to peddle falsehoods. It is obscene to tell the world that you refused to kiss a ring when in fact there isn’t any ring at all.

I cannot make much of the hostility of strangers who do not know me – fame taints our view of the humanity of famous people. But the truth is that the famous person remains irretrievably human. Fame does not inoculate the famous person from disappointment and depression, fame does not make you any less angered or hurt by the duplicitous nature of people. To be famous is to be assumed to have power, which is true, but in the analysis of fame, people often ignore the vulnerability that comes with fame, and they are unable to see how others who have nothing to lose can lie and connive in order to take advantage of that fame, while not giving a single thought to the feelings and humanity of the famous person.

And when you personally know a famous person, when you have experienced their humanity, when you have benefited from their kindness, and yet you are unable to extend to them the basic grace and respect that even a casual acquaintanceship deserves, then it says something fundamental about you.

And in a deluded way, you will convince yourself that your hypocritical, self-regarding, compassion-free behavior is in fact principled feminism. It isn’t. You will wrap your mediocre malice in the false gauziness of ideological purity. But it’s still malice. You will tell yourself that being able to parrot the latest American Feminist orthodoxy justifies your hacking at the spirit of a person who had shown you only kindness. You can call your opportunism by any name, but it doesn’t make it any less of the ugly opportunism that it is.

PART TWO

When I first read this person’s work, which was their application to my writing workshop, I thought the sentences were well-done. I accepted this person. At the workshop, I thought they could have been more respectful of the other participants, perhaps not kept typing dismissively as others’ stories were discussed, with an air of being among people below their level. After the workshop, I decided to select the best stories, edit them, pay the writers a fee, and publish them in an e-magazine. The first story I chose was this person’s. I wrote a glowing introduction, which the story truly deserved.

They sent this email.

Fri, Aug 7, 2015, 8:20 AM

Thank you so much for that introduction. It means so much to me and I’m going to keep reading it to get through the rest of my stay at Syracuse. I sent it to my mother and she got nervous about the piece because you said ‘it disturbs’, said she’s not sure how she’s going to feel when she reads it. But she’s also one of those ‘let’s leave the past in the past’ people. My sister approved, which meant a lot because our childhoods were each other’s.

All that to say, I’m so grateful you gave me the space to write the short version of this piece, the encouragement to write the longer piece, and now, a platform for it. I definitely have plans to write more about Aba.

Thank you, with all my heart.

PS- I wanted to sign off gratefully + gracefully in Igbo but I said let me not fall my own hand 🙂

About a year later, they sent another email to let me know that their novel would be published.

Wed, Jun 8, 2016, 8:20 AM

Greetings!

I hope all’s been well with you this past year. Belated congratulations on the baby’s arrival, I hope she’s being a delight (I’m sure she is), and on the Johns Hopkins honors.

I was thinking about how this time last year, I’d just received the email from you about Farafina and I wanted to reach out with a quick update. I’ve just accepted an offer for the novel I excerpted as my application and it feels like the workshop was a catalyst for the events that’ve led me here. So, thank you, for the workshop and your words and the Olisa TV series and listening to me babble on about my story at the hotel. I deeply appreciate all of it and you.

All my best,

Before the novel was published, I spoke of it to some people, to help it get attention. I had not been able to finish reading it. I found the writing beautiful, but the story false-hearted and burdened by bathos. When I spoke of the novel, however, it was the former sentiment that I expressed, never the latter.

After I gave the March 2017 interview in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, I was told that this person had insulted me on social media, calling me, among other things, a murderer. I was deeply upset, because while I did not really know them personally, I felt they knew what I stood for and that I fully supported the rights of trans people, and that I do not wish anybody dead.

Still, I took no action. I ignored the public insult.

When this person’s publishers sent me an early copy of their novel, I was surprised to see that my name was included in their cover biography. I had never seen that done in a book before. I didn’t like that I had not been asked for permission to use my name, but most of all I thought – why would a person who thinks I’m a murderer want my name so prominently displayed in their biography?

Then I learned that, because my name was in the cover biography, a journalist had called them my “protegee” and they then threw a Twitter tantrum about it, calling it clickbait, viciously disavowing having received any help from me.

I knew this person had called me a murderer, I knew they were actively campaigning to “cancel” me and tweeting about how I should no longer be invited to speak at events. But this I felt I could not ignore.

I sent an email to my representative:

From: Chimamanda Adichie

Date: Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 2:06 PM

I’m writing about X

She attended my Lagos workshop two years ago and I selected hers as one of a few pieces I published after the workshop.

Apparently I was referred to as her ‘mentor’ and/or she was referred to as my ‘protege,’ in some articles, which led to her tweeting about it. Her tweets were forwarded to me by friends. In them, she reacted quite viscerally to my being called her ‘mentor’ and her being my ‘protege.’ To be fair, she is not technically my ‘protege,’ and it is perfectly fine that she feels this way, but her ungracious tone and the ugliness of the energy spent on her tweets surprised me.

I recently received her book and noticed that my name was included in her official book bio. I was stunned. Surely if she is so strongly averse to my being considered a person who has been significant in her career, (which is my understanding of the loose use of protege/mentor) then it is unseemly to make the choice to include my name in her bio. I found it unusual, as I don’t think I’ve seen it done before in a book bio, but I also now find it unacceptably cynical.

It is only reasonable for a person who sees my name as it is used in her bio — ‘her work has been selected and edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’ — to assume some sort of mentor/protege relationship.

To publicly disavow this with a tone bordering on hostility and at the same time so baldly use my name to sell her book is utterly unacceptable to me.

I’d like you to please reach out to her publishers and ask that my name be removed from her official book bio. I refuse to be used in this way.

After contacting her publishers, my representative wrote:

They have asked whether your preference would be to remove the Acknowledgment to you in the back of the book also, in future reprints.

I replied:

I don’t think that is my decision to take, and so will not answer either way, although it would be ideal if she herself made the decision to do so.

On the subject of how to go about it, I was absolutely determined not to be used by this person, but I was also sensitive to the costs the publisher might incur, as this was not in any way the publisher’s fault. Instead of pulping the already printed copies, I asked that the jackets be stripped and rebound. To my representative I wrote:

I’m completely determined that I not be used in this opportunistic and hypocritical way. But I want to make sure to proceed reasonably.

I was assured that my name would be removed and I moved on.

But from time to time, I would be informed of yet another social media post in which this person had attacked me.

This person has created a space in which social media followers have – and this I find unforgiveable – trivialized my parents’ death, claiming that the sudden and devastating loss of my parents within months of each other during this pandemic, was ‘punishment’ for my ‘transphobia.’

This person has asked followers to pick up machetes and attack me.

This person began a narrative that I had sabotaged their career, a narrative that has been picked up and repeated by others.

The normal response would be to ignore it all, because this person is seeking attention and publicity to benefit themselves. Claiming that I have sabotaged their career is a lie and this person knows that it is a lie. But if something is repeated often enough, in this age in which people do not need proof or verification to run with a story, especially a story that has outrage potential, then it can easily begin to seem true.

My addressing this lie will indeed get this person some attention – may they bask in it.

Here is the truth: I was very supportive of this writer. I didn’t have to be. I wasn’t asked to be. I supported this writer because I believe we need a diverse range of African stories.

Sabotaging a young writer’s career is just not my style; I would get no benefit or satisfaction from it. Asking that my name be removed from your biography is not sabotaging your career. It is about protecting my boundaries of what I consider acceptable in civil human behavior.

You publicly call me a murderer AND still feel entitled to benefit from my name?

You use my name (without my permission) to sell your book AND then throw an ugly tantrum when someone makes a reference to it?

What kind of monstrous entitlement, what kind of perverse self-absorption, what utter lack of self-awareness, what unheeding heartlessness, what frightening immaturity makes a person act this way?

Besides, a person who genuinely believes me to be a murderer cannot possibly want my name on their book cover, unless of course that person is a rank opportunist.

PART THREE

In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.

I find it obscene.

There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class.

People who ask you to ‘educate’ yourself while not having actually read any books themselves, while not being able to intelligently defend their own ideological positions, because by ‘educate,’ they actually mean ‘parrot what I say, flatten all nuance, wish away complexity.’

People who do not recognize that what they call a sophisticated take is really a simplistic mix of abstraction and orthodoxy – sophistication in this case being a showing-off of how au fait they are on the current version of ideological orthodoxy.

People who wield the words ‘violence’ and ‘weaponize’ like tarnished pitchforks. People who depend on obfuscation, who have no compassion for anybody genuinely curious or confused. Ask them a question and you are told that the answer is to repeat a mantra. Ask again for clarity and be accused of violence. (How ironic, speaking of violence, that it is one of these two who encouraged Twitter followers to pick up machetes and attack me.)

And so we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow.

I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.

[all-hail-the-buescher-27]

Repair Notes: 1923 York No. 2 Trumpet-Model Cornet

I made the first of these posts like 9 months ago and never got around to writing any more (with this one just sitting, barely started, in my drafts), let’s fix that.

The next interesting instrument to pass through the shop after that Getzen Frumpet was this rather lovely long-model cornet by J.W. York and Sons in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  From what I know, this one one of those situations of an instrument sitting around and planned to be used by a beginning trumpet student, which is really less than what this one deserves.  It was in really good shape overall, including the original case and accessories, and beginning brass players aren’t known for being the most careful (though I hope they prove me wrong).  Being in such good shape, it just needed a chemflush and polishing.

(Catalog page source)

Design-wise, this is very much an example of the long cornet concept that was gaining traction as the trumpet entered the mainstream in US ensembles of the 1920s.  Though it has the classic 720 degrees of curved tubing in the wrap that almost every cornet follows, this design does so with a relatively small loop for the main tuning slide, giving it similar proportions to a modern C trumpet (and indeed, I’d hazard a guess that the C-Bb-A versions, the 4 and 5, achieved C with a main slide that cut off that loop).  It was in York’s “Finish C”, which the 1925 catalog describes as being a frosted silver-plate finish with burnished accents and bell interior, with the bell interior gold-plated.  Interestingly, it only mentions pearl-inlaid finger buttons, though this also has small inlays on each of the valve slide draw knobs (which was fun to handle in the chemflush).

I love early 1900s cornets so I was already was going to be biased towards this, but I even more excited by this one because my personal cornet is a 1921 York Perfec-tone No. 9, which was York’s first foray into the long cornet concept.  It was actually advertised originally as the “Long Model or Trumpet-Cornet”, with the No. 2-5 series apparently taking its place as the most trumpet-like cornet.  While I wasn’t able to try the two side-by-side, the No. 2 was definitely the more trumpet-like of the two, including in terms of what mouthpiece was provided with it.

This is a bit rambling and I don’t really know what else I wanna talk about (partly without revealing those photos of my cleaned-up Perfec-tone), so have some before and detail photos.  Two other fun design things it has can seen in the disassembled photo.  The first is the integrated Bb-A stop system, basically having a little stocking on the lower tube of the Bb-A slide and a screw to clamp down the outer sleeve. The other one is also on the Bb-A slide, being its reverse tuning slide design.  With the upper outer sleeve being the part moving with main slide, the inner slide can be an extension of the tapered leadpipe, allowing for fewer compromises in the overall taper.

From a repair tech perspective, the water key springs were rather annoying to access without risking the finish, specifically on the main tuning slide where the little draw knob/handle got in the way substantially.  Gotta find myself some good pointy side cutters…