#I guess my writing evolved since I wrote it about a year ago

[youchangedmedestiel]

If some of you want to read a ficlet about Destiel finishing their salt and burn in time before midnight on New Year's Eve and engaged in that famous tradition that Cas just discovered, then let me tell you that I have something for you. And it's called Kissing you is like fireworks.

[livlepretre]

Stefan snorts. "The disdainful act would be more convincing if you haven't slept with all three of us already."

I thought he didn’t remember his relationship with Elena so how did he know he slept with Elena?

well, there are two ways to look at this:

The Watsonian perspective: the theories that can be explained in text:

a) Stefan is referring to their hookup at the warehouse concert when he includes himself. He doesn't mean they literally fucked, he means she was about to fuck him (she was-- Stefan already had his hands in her underwear when they were interrupted and she was eager for him), and he's being knowingly imprecise in order to make a cutting remark that still rings true. Interestingly, Elena does not challenge him on this-- because she knows he's being literally true and is forgetting in the moment or because she understands what he says may as well be true from his perspective

b) some of his true memories are bleeding through here since he's riled up-- maybe Rebekah did a lousy job of compelling him. maybe it's just a situation where his unconscious mind can summon those memories but he can't consciously integrate them or understand them.

The Doylist perspective: the theories that can be explained from my authorial perspective-- keep in mind that I wrote this like 3.5 years ago, which was another planet where I wasn't even pregnant yet and I just sort of whiled away my long hours of solitude happily writing fic-- I can't really remember what I was thinking, I can only guess:

a) maybe I knew it was not really true (the watsonian option a) but I thought the line was interesting so I decided to leave it there anyway to stir the pot

b) it's a screw up. I'm a flawed human writing this extremely unwieldy fic with no beta or anyone to proof read or fact check me, so I just forgot and put that in there

c) I've changed my mind over the past few years about what Stefan remembers exactly and have forgotten that I ever changed my mind. There have been a lot of asks about Stefan on this blog, and I have pretty much answered that he doesn't remember that he and Elena were lovers. But maybe in my original framework from a few years ago, he knows they slept together but doesn't remember being IN LOVE. and maybe I forgot that was my original angle. That's plausible. I had pretty severe memory fog during my pregnancy and the first year postpartum, which I why I basically didn't update. Couldn't keep anything straight. The text could support that reading, even now, though, which is an interesting one, I think.

What is my personal interpretation though?

I think it's an interesting incongruence that I decided to wrote, maybe realized it didn't make sense, and then left it in because it was too interesting not to. I seem to have a vague memory of wringing my hands over this line and deciding I liked the interplay.

All this being said, I say a lot of things on this blog, but there is so much room for change as my thoughts on this story and my reading of it evolves. I am sure I have contradicted myself before, and will do so again many times over before this fic is finished. It's a work in progress, and part of that means that "what things mean" evolve over time too. I try to give myself as much wiggle room as possible because there are myriad things where I have changed the plot or changed what a character meant by an earlier line way later and was able to get away with it.

Finally though... what it means is ultimately up to you. I love answering questions about this fic, and talking about it in general, but hopefully the text can support numerous interpretations. Choose the one that feels most fun to you-- and if there's another option you've thought of, that I didn't mention here-- hey, maybe that's the one! Your reading is your reading. 🖤

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 5/30/2023

I feel like I worked really hard last week, and yet I don't actually have much to show for it. I guess a lot of it is little stuff that piled up. I mean, I very much do still have a bit pile of dumb little tasks to do, but it's smaller than it was last week. I feel like I've had to do a lot of driving and socializing lately, too, which not only take up time, but wipes me out both before and after.

If you like extra features, I did finish up my go places addenda post last week. I have a lot of ao3 comments to reply to, but aside from that, I guess I'm pretty much done with that one. It gave me a lot of grief while I was writing it, but in the end, I think I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I have some good feelings about the end stages of sitting with it.

Onward and upward!! Sorry if this is old hat to my regular followers, but just to get everyone up to date, the new project is Ductwork, the next part of Heart is a Muscle. The preview summary I slapped on the end of What We Do with Our Hearts reads "Renji tries to not make it a big deal when he gets his long-damaged kidou ducts fixed; Rukia is having none of it. Byakuya would like to be removed from this narrative and yet can't seem to manage it."

I started it about a year ago, immediately finishing Hearts, and knocked out about 7700 words of it at the time. I'm kinda gun-shy, because last summer I really really wanted to finish a little in love and I tried and failed (tried and died, basically), a thing that has not been made better by the fact that people have started sending sad little messages like "i hope you finish this someday..." That being said, I am trying to be more realistic about my capabilities, especially because I have a lot more Mom-duties in the summertime. My goal is to make 20,000 words of progress before I fizzle out this time. I mean, if I do finish it, that would be great! I'm not gonna stop dead if I hit 20k. I do hope to participate in the Bleach Returns event this July, but whether that consists of a small break or a big break, I don't know. We'll see.

So, I already have a significant chunk of the first act done, but I'm having trouble moving forward, because I don't have a great idea of how the second act is gonna go. For now, it's two acts, it's evolving, and I'm letting it. I'm trying to let myself exist in creative mode and have some fun with that. In that vein, I just went ahead and let myself write The Big Scene, the scene that is the entire reason I am writing this fanfic. I wrote 3500 words on it this week. It's not done yet, but I am having fun. I've also been having little bursts of inspiration for scenes that follow and other things I want to do, so overall, I am in a good place. It's nice. This is good.

The overall document length at the moment is 12,617, which means I've done about 5k words since I started working on it, which is a quarter of the way there! That's distinctly Not Bad!!

In other news, I've been increasingly dissatisfied with Google Docs, so I am experimenting with writing this one in Microsoft Word. I don't deal with change well, so for now, I hate it, but I'm figuring out ways to make it more the way I like, and at least it doesn't constantly reload back to the top of the page. I will keep you updated. It's not like I can't just cut and paste it back into the other program, which I would end up doing anyway, because GDocs works pretty well for beta-reading and the AO3 auto-html script is handy.

[ayesakara]

The first draft of my Durarara! Shizuo Heiwajima/Vorona fic is complete. Took me a little less than a month to go over 28k words.

I've done more that in that kind of timeframe in the past. I remember NANOWRIMO 2006 when I did 50k words in a month during my QAF-US fandom days. That fic went on to be over 140k words over the next one year. I also remember doing around 14k words in 3 days for another QAF fic for a challenge. I guess I used to like writing for deadlines.

But this was not a deadline. I haven't written anything since the FRATT I did 4 years ago.

This was a weird strange obsessive feeling that came over me while I was watching the 2nd Durarara! arc from s2 with @qs63 last month. Vorona had just showed up in the previous arc, Shizuo and her had just had their first violent meeting at the end of that arc, and my mind was suddenly busy making connections. All I could think, breathe or dream of was.... this crazy, chaotic, beautiful, badass anime dude named Shizuo Heiwajima.

I guess I just fell in love with him.

All I wanted was for him to find some peace in his life and be amongst people who also wanted peace in their lives. People who definitively cared for him, who'd had a change of heart on their initial assessment of Shizuo; people whose feelings towards him evolved and actually grew from the first time they'd met him, people who came to realize he was more than just the monstrous violence. That he was human.

Enemies to friends is my favorite fanfic trope and when the canon source material actually hints at this -- this is where fandom thrives. Durarara, the anime, clearly hinted at that trope when it came to Shizuo and Vorona, and I couldn't let that go to waste. I had to write about this.

So I did. :)

Of course, no romance fic, in my view, is complete without a boatload of angst, torture, violence, hurt/comfort, and tender loving care. Bwahahahaha!

It still needs to be beta'd, I'm still editing and revising... but when its done and its posted, I hope there will one or two people at least who will read my Shizuo.

If not, then I would still be happy I wrote this. I am happy Shizuo gets to have this adventure in my head, at least.

[danielleitloudernow]

This came up on my FYP feed and I thought it would be super fun to do in honor of NaNoWriMo.

20 Questions

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

I have 30: 2 series, 5 WIPs, and a whole bunch of one shots 😁

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

134,500. Not sure how I hit an even number, but that's fun!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly Korrasami (The Legend of Korra) and JEmily (Criminal Minds), but I have written for WarriorBard (Xena Warrior Princess), Ramvers (Captain Marvel), and Pricefield (Life is Strange). I'm working on originals, too, but that's neither here nor there.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Fuck Was I

The Consequences of Jello

Profiles and Princesses

Measure the Coefficient of Static Friction Between Us

The Violets in the Mountains Have Broken Rocks

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

Always. I always respond to comments. It's so fun interacting with readers, and often, other writers. I've made a few friends from it and it's been so great. I have been known to drop off the face of the earth so I don't answer for a long ass time, but j always answer. Plus, I think it's a great way to show appreciation for those taking the time to interact. I love those emails telling me a fic has a comment. I poured so much of myself and my time into something and someone took the time to say something about it! It's pure magic.

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

I think my fics are all HEAs, honestly. But there's a healthy dosing of angst throughout a lot of them.

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

Probably any of them, but Fuck Was I if I had to choose.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I did and I have. A fellow writer once called it "flaming troll shit" and since I changed my perspective to see it that way, I A) am considerably less bothered, and B) haven't really noticed it since.

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

I do write smut. I write the type of smut I want to read and it's always evolving. I don't really do like, BDSM (love to read it, don't have much urge to write it, though), but I'll throw in some kink once in a while. Really, I guess I just like to write real sex. The emotions, the connection, the want.

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

Honestly, no. It's never really been something on my radar. It feels like a lot to keep track of or to meld and that's just a lot. Kudos to those who can and do, though.

11. Have you ever had a fiction stolen?

I really hope not. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but plagiarism is illegal, kids.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I'm aware of.

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

I have not. I have a beta reader (shout out to ireallyshouldnt_behere) who tells me if I'm an idiot or gives me suggestions, but we haven't moved into the realm of actual co-author (yet). We have joked about it before, and I would love to try a co-writing fic with someone.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Honest to God, JEmily. I had this theory when Criminal Minds first started back in the day that Emily and JJ got a little too drunk one night and clothes came off, that it turned into a thing. And then Will came along and Emily had to go and break her own damn heart because she didn't think she was good enough or JJ would be in danger being with her. Which is funny, given the Lauren arc, but I digress. But also, Xena and Gabrielle, always, because I grew up on XWP and those two were so obviously in love.

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

A novel I started writing 12 years ago 🤣 I love the concept and the characters and what I want to do with it, where I expect it to go. But holy fuck, it's been tedious. I have like...40k words of just bullshit that's not even really connected.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Emotions. Sometimes tension. Angst. Smut.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogue. And moving from point A to point B. Sometimes grammar (and that annoys me most of all).

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

I've done it, but let's be honest, it's Google translated because I'm American and for some reason we think English is the only language...

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Legend of Korra. I had read something that just made my head hurt and I thought "I can write better than that!" Spoiler alert, that's a really shitty reason to write something and no, you can't always 'write something better.' Plus, everyone is different: voice, styles, confidence, all that. Anyway, I cranked out a random idea (Living on a Spare) I thought was funny, and here we are.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

Oh, why do you make me choose? That's a really good question. I think Chaos Theory (at least at the moment). I just found a bunch of bad pick-up lines and turned them into something ridiculous.

Just for funsies, I'mma tag @thewillowtree3 @blackbird-brewster @cargopantsprentiss @ahhhsami and hope you guys do it but really it's up to you! Cheers, yo!

[nikolaraftis]

Another question that comes to mind - how did you come to title the book and series? Do you have thoughts on how it has evolved?

When I first sat down to seriously consider this series and my characters and world, the first idea I had at the core of it was "these are people who have gone through things people should not, and there are characters very different to each other that by the end of the series, probably have little in common, except for one thing: they are made from clay, as all living things are." I took inspiration from Greek myth and how humans were built from clay and given fire. Hence, I started off wanting to name my series Bones of Clay. Didn't really like it so much, neither did my friends when I posed it to them, and so I settled for a while on Hearts of Clay, which seemed more fitting to the themes and the romance sub-plot that's always running underneath it all. Because the whole mix of this series' aesthetic, I guess, is a bit of a strange one. It's the 1920s of another universe, where dragons are real and almost every magical thing you can think of, but there's also a fantasy mafia of werewolves, but also a royalty plot, but also there's a cult, but also also there's romance and saving the world from great evil and prophecies. This is kind of why it has to be a series with shifting focus. And because the books follow Zena Moralis' journey through all that, I named each book, in order: The Return, The Rise, The Tragedy, and The Fall. With each book's purpose quite clearly, explicitly set out for both her and some other characters, including Geronimo.

Nearly a month ago, I decided I had to rewrite the draft I had because nothing was going the direction I wanted and since the months I had left it abandoned my style had changed and so had a lot of my ideas and direction. By then, I had quit things with my writing partner, and it helped spur on this idea that I wanted to make my series anew. It needed a new name. I actually recruited my sisters to help me when I was outlining in my notebook. I sat down on a bean bag and said I needed them to give feedback on some book title ideas I'd jotted down. From there, we narrowed the list and the themes and direction -- they insisted on knowing what the series is about, basically, and all the key events of each book -- and we came up with a new titles: Bones Of A God, Skin Of A Jewel Snake, Blood Of A Moon, and Heart Of A Clay Hourglass. From there we went: these are all ingredients to something, but what? And in the end, it was unanimous that this was what made a Moralis. Specifically, Zena Moralis. It's the weirdest, kind of hair-brained, out-there things considering I have not written out this entire series yet, but it made me decide that this would have to be the Moralis series. Because, Moralis: bones of a god, skin of a jewel snake, blood of a moon, and heart of a clay hourglass. Geronimo is indeed the other main character, but this is still Zena's story.

A lot of the original ideas have carried over, as you can see. If we played word association with how I think of the series, it'd look something like: hourglass, immortality, time, love, betrayal, politics, blood, forests, myths, gods, siblings, patricide, loyalty, swords, sun, compass, stars, void, war, grief, death. The very earliest draft I ever wrote of this was when I was about 13, and even back then there was political drama and looming war, but also love and, well, dragons and strange fantasy plants and pink bees that drink fruit juice that I called "berry blies". I have to say, 13-year-old me was on another level. And until now, I was planning to write this series as Young Adult and then let marketing put it into YA Fantasy or Sci-Fi or Supernatural or wherever it wanted the books to go. But with all the stuff I want to do, the topics and themes I want to tackle, it just makes more sense for it to be an adult series. I feel we have a lot of (possibly questionable at times) YA fiction books, and some trashy adult ones that are either too stuffy or full of toxic contemporary romance or just fairy porn. I know some that aren't (Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House and Hell Bent comes to mind) but I wanted to add to the area in my own way. Folks always say to write what you'd want to read, and I'd want to read adult fantasy, because I've grown past the teenager stage and, honestly, have been finding it harder to relate to some of those YA books even now when I've barely hit 20. Roundabout way of doing it, but this genre sort of change also influenced the titles.

Admittedly, the titles of the books feel like they border on too fantastical at times, but they fit better than the old ones did. It seemed too boring to have such plain titles.

All in all, my thoughts on how this has evolved is... it's kind of incredible. And I'm a little scared that the longer I leave this world and these characters (it's already been about 7 years), the more it will change still, and then I will never be done with it. I'm kind of at a point where I want these books done and out to the world so that I can have new ideas for new worlds and stop expanding this one, otherwise it feels like too big a beast for me to write, period. The way the titles have evolved reflect too how much more this series is coming into itself though. I build this story, of course, but at the same time the naming process and the writing feels kind of like an excavation where the more I write and alter things just a bit, the closer we get to the true image I see in my mind.

Anyway, sorry for a bonkers long response, whoops. Hope it answered your question! <3 (As you can see, I love rambling about my work)

[galaxae]

hi adrian :3 🔎📄and 🤬 for the ask game mwah ily

mwahhh ly2 thankyou for the ask for real

(my lovely mutual green is referencing this post here)

🔍Give a clue (a picture, emoji, a word, etc) and let your followers guess what a WIP is about.

hmm which wip to do... ok no i got it i'm gonna do a quote. the quote is not actually in the story but it's a shorthand thematic description i use

"never give nukes to a teenager"

🤬Is there a WIP that you hate?

i don't really *hate* any of my creations. they're all very special to me! that said, honestly, the one i like the least right now is my short story "one good day" about a lesbian supervillain, her backstory, and her "redemption" if you want to call it that. i havent touched that story in a while because i wrote it when i was in a very dark place (last october-ish?) and my writing class' reaction to it was mixed, which makes sense obviously it's a first draft, but i was still hurt bc i was in a sensitive spot emotionally. my professor really liked my revisions of it for the end of the semester, but still. i'll return to it when i've healed more from my parents' bullshit, maybe. that story very much explores a toxic, complicated parent-child relationship in depth and idk how much i can handle that right now!

📝Share a snippet of an unposted WIP, with or without context.

oh naur not this one....... i suppose i will tho. putting this one last so i can do a readmore. enjoy

There’s a name that haunts me. Azalea.

I heard it once, years ago, while my dad was talking about a family friend. That name has lingered like a ghost behind me ever since. Sometimes, it tugs on my shoulders, or says something in my ear that I can’t make out, or clings to my back like a desperate child. I’ll be in the middle of something — a meeting at work, a drawing, my boss calling me into his office — something important, something I need to give my full attention — and I struggle, already, with paying attention to things — and Azalea makes it worse. Azalea, Azalea, Azalea.

The same name as a genus of flowers, or the common name for that genus, at least, because Rhododendron is more likely to make your eyes glaze over when you read it. That one wouldn’t make a great human name. They’re pretty, used widely in decorations for people’s lawns, so much so that it’s hard to find info about how they actually originated and evolved, or what purpose they serve in the natural environment, separate from humans. And insects thrive in their presence. But they are toxic, highly toxic for humans. Even for frogs, too. Dangerous, angry, and deadly, but still so beloved by everyone, somehow.

I don’t even remember anything about the family friend my dad mentioned. He hasn’t brought her up in years. But Azalea, not the person, but the name, she is still there. Pulling at my hair from behind, shaking me awake from a drunk stupor, poking and prodding me. I wanted her to go away at first. I don’t know why she’s there or what she wants from me. But she’s around, either way. She has been for years, maybe a decade or longer. I��ve grown accustomed to it.

The last thing I remember is this. A white blur in front of my windshield. A steering wheel in my hand, shifting of its own accord, its cold fake leather running through my palms. A skid. A voice, possibly mine, saying, “Oh god!” A loud crack. Then, silence. Silence, save for Azalea’s frantic whispers.

And now I'm here.

This is some imitation of the bedroom of my childhood. The one I stay in now, too, of course — I'm not going to deny that I moved back in with my dad. But this one looks like it did when I was young: a mattress that could soak me up like a towel on a spill if I wanted it to. A stripe of frog and swamp wallpaper across the wall opposite me, surrounded by those animal fun fact posters, with a few comic posters scattered through those. A tall dresser in the corner, the old one my dad grabbed from a yard sale, that looks like it survived an apocalypse or something.

I sit up. I try to sit up. My hands feel like static. When they push me up, everything blurs.

I really miss that frog wallpaper.

My sight evens out pretty quickly. Looking at the posters again, now that my eyes are more on their level, they look torn. Some corners are missing. The words on them are made of symbols I don't recognize, maybe another language, maybe Samoan. I know that’s the language of half of my blood. Does Samoan use different symbols than English? I don't actually know. I kind of wish I did.

The posters switch places with each other. They cover and uncover the frogs. There are more of the posters and then less of them. My head hurts all of a sudden.

My nightstand, down and to my left, could be a saving grace, something that doesn't hurt to look at. That plain, dark wood, with the alarm clock on it that didn't work (my dad always had to wake me up himself, even when I was a teenager). Usually it was covered in pencils, sticky notes full of my sketches, empty wrappers, dirty plates, the original nightstand mostly obscured. When I look this time, the only thing atop it is a piece of paper. I reach for it.

Dear Carter Gaumond,

We regret to inform you that as of Monday, October 28, you will no longer be employed wi

The paper dissolves in my hands. Crumbling to dust. That poor stranger. This guy got fired.

Oh, no. Hold on. That guy is me. That's my name.

I'd almost forgotten.

That was four months ago, I think, this letter in the mail. And now I'm here, wherever I am. Feeling like I'm about to throw up.

--

i'd love to give context if anyone wants it but that right there is a revision of my novel's first draft that i wrote in 2020, unsure if or when i will publish it but yknow, it's there

[the-blind-geisha]

Questions about OCs and stuff

You can find the original file here! I reblogged it super late at night.

Gonna fill this one out myself, because it looked fun!

OC questions:

* Who was your first ever OC? Do you still “use” them? How have they evolved over time?

Oreana was my first ever OC, and yes I do! She evolved from me wanting to write myself in with my favorite fixations to becoming her own actual character.

I could tell as a character she wanted to have the princess title removed, but I refused since I wanted that to be another obstacle for her. XD

2. Who is your newest OC? Why did you make them?

Asther Thyme, my goat OC was one I bought on toyhouse, but newest one made by me is Demiurge turned into a jackal.

I bought the goat because I am trying to rethink about this old idea of mine I wrote years ago as a kid that had more furries in it than humans. Demiurge turning into a jackal was just originally for fun but he stayed after awhile.

3. Biggest self-insert OC?

Oreana. XD; While she's come a long ass way since then, I still feel the parts of me that are in her.

4.What kind of music do your OCs listen to?

There's too many to list. Oreana just likes anything with a good beat, and Ignatius and Demiurge prefer instrumental.

5. What are some of your OCs biggest fears?

Oreana: being used again Ignatius: enduring loss again Demiurge: the loss of himself

Demona: never returning home

Cheshire: Demiurge ever getting his Creator's love when he feels he doesn't deserve it.

6. Do you have any OCs without stories? Will you ever create one for them?

Yuna, Asther, Elasha, and Haruka. Their Toyhouse bios aren't even filled in yet, because I don't know what to do. XD;

And yes, they will! I just have to get my ideas all together first.

7. What are your favourite relationships between your OCs? (romantic or platonic!)

Romantic, mainly because of the lack of love in my life. XD;

8. Do you have any OC family trees?

Oreana does have parents and 2 brothers—as well as an ancestor I can't get into because that's spoilery, and Ignatius has a twin brother.

9. Favourite OC?

It bounces from Oreana, Ignatius, to Demiurge.

10. OC you most struggled to make?

Ignatius. In fact, he went through a redesign about a year—er two years—ago. He originally was just going to look very much like a guy from YYH I loved but a naga, till I decided to make him more like an amalgamation of characters and ideas I loved. Doing that was so much so for the better. As I don't have to feel fixated on the one canon character to be fixated on him.

Fanfic questions:

11. * Sum up one or more of your wips!

Werewolf professor in a fantasy styled Victorian London looks to try and quell the fear over the werewolf curse. It's a commission so I can't really plop too much of it down.

12. Which story took the most research?

Anything from Assassin's Creed. Especially the Victorian London ones regarding brothels, tuberculosis, opium dens, and factories.

Don't get me started on the sex stuff... since that was considered 'prudish', it feels nearly lost to time.

13. Which story has the most lore?

Uuuh... A Love Most Profound and or The Demon King of the Desert, depending what you mean. Both spoke of their beliefs and even had rough outlines of their worlds.

14. Current word count of all your main wips?

I don't think I have any active yet since I'm on vacation.

15. How many projects do you have going on right now? Are there any that you doubt you’ll ever finish?

I have my private journal

A private personal story

In Another Life, We Could Have Been Lovers

Amnesia: A Dreamer's Requiem

An Empty Heart Full of Memories

The Devil After Midnight

The Devil's Tome

Within the Dream Temptation

The Princess and the Dove

I am not sure. I would like to get through all of these, but it's doubtful.

16. What was you first major project? How far along is it?

I guess The Devil's Contract would be considered that. And it's done now at 50 chapters. I was quite happy to have it finished.

17. What are some tropes and character dynamics found in your wips?

Slow burn, soulmates, and just romantic stuff.

18. Describe the setting of one or more of your wips

Horror fantasy of who is doing what and what is happening under the OC's nose, Victorian werewolf fantasy, and murder fantasy with a bit of reincarnation? I guess we'll say.

19. What are some things that inspired your stories? Real events? Maybe a dream?

Dreams more than anything, and if not those, anything I play or watch. Even The Demon King had elements of LOZ in it.

20. What story are you the proudest of? Why?

The Demon King of the Desert. It helped me come to terms with a bit more online trauma, and it seemed to touch a few folks. So I'm happy with it.

About me questions:

21. * When did you start considering yourself a writer/artist?

Artist, I always felt I was one. In fact, I was quite upset when I got online and people preferred my writing over my art. XD But I came to terms with it after awhile. Heck, I realize when I blend the two, people enjoy both.

Writing started to happen the more I wrote stories on websites, and folks came to love them or use them as a means to shoulder through a tough time in their life.

22. What are all the “kinds” of writing/art you do? (short stories, poetry, screenplays, digital, painting, clay, etc.)

I do short stories, poetry, digital art, traditional art too at some points—and sing as well as (kind of) play the piano.

23. Are you in any writer/artist groups? (Ex: discord server!)

Sadly, not really. I get nervous to spread my works to places I'm not comfortable in. But I've heard joining discord servers is a good idea.

24. Do you have/want a career in your medium? If not, what do you do/want to do instead? I would love to publish a book or do a comic of some sort. How I'll go about that, I have zero clue.

25. What’s your favourite genre to write? Is it also your favourite genre to read?

Fantasy and or romance. I prefer to read fantasy over reading romance. I only write romance because of the trauma in my life.

26. What are your favourite books?

The Maze Runner and The Last Unicorn.

27. What are your favourite movies?

The Last Unicorn,Watership Down, and now The Super Mario Brothers Movie (I've watched it like 4 times since I bought it lol).

28. Favourite songs at the moment?

Moonlight Shadow (original artist Mike Oldfield but any artist will do), The Secret of Monkey Island intro melody, and Tombi from Trigun.

29. What was your first fandom you were in? Did you make any art/fanfic for it?

Ronin Warriors, and yes, I wrote and drew for it but ALL that stuff is now archived and lost to time. Lol Well, only gone from the net, really. I still have it offline.

[tirelesslytenderthoughts]

i wrote this 7 weeks ago on my main tumblr after finished reading Rilke. i thought i might as well include it here after the longest time of not writing. here it goes–

i feel like writing my thoughts now that the season is mellow and rainy and cosy and everything else in between that fits the category.

my readings and books that i have read did not really evolve and the amount have become concernedly little. that only means life has taken its toll on me ever since. yet i continue and do not wish it to cease.

the age of 30 to me equals to the age of no longer accepting immaturity in any way but having only a year ahead of me before i turn to the said significant year proves me otherwise, though not completely. was i terrified of getting old? not really. i was quite adamant about it but the journey in completing my masters degree together with the process of getting married helped me shape quite an optimistic perspective, and here i am feeling thrilled as ever.

i feel like i’m allowed to start fresh all over again though nobody is stopping me. when understanding things flow better as i age, my worries become much less. don’t get me wrong, overthinking is never my companion but i’m guessing i have always been calculative around people over how i react and feel. being attentive is generally exhausting but now that i’m aware of how and who to give my time to, i’m more calm and it soothes my soul so much. this space i have in my heart for my loved ones sometimes aches but i frequently remind myself that god has ways to show me things and it’s my chore to process for my own betterment. that’s just how i learn to live.

imperfection is another matter that i try to live without. i learn to let go of things well by watching other people do it flawlessly. maybe there’s a moment i ridicule their selfish act, but through and through, i consider it a knowledge so i know when to hold myself back from reacting impulsively. for the record, i have been impulsive for the past years and let me tell you that being impulsive and attentive altogether would give you pain and sting to the head. 

i just finished reading Rilke’s letters. he preached on solitude for the betterment of one’s own, and as a hasty person reading them feels nothing but a soft slap in the face. though it’s precisely on creativity, i still took it personally. the thing about change is that i’m scared of losing myself along the way, be it marriage or aging or whatever that’s coming. let’s put it this way; i have this bell at the back of my head reminding me that if i act decisively, i might regret soon and if i’m indecisive, nothing is done and i’m insensible. 

no idea where this is going at all but 2023 has been the year that i collected pails of tears, not because of any loss so far alhamdulillah, but ironically, in knowing things and unveiling the (open) secrets that were always there for me to move forward and to be in the next stage of life comfortably. as fruit needs time in the sun to ripen, i pat myself on the back for braving through the unpleasant weight to feel this fulfilled at this moment in time, therefore grateful nonetheless. 

i’m sure there will be more thoughts i’ll be pouring down from now onwards as god has always been nice to me and life makes its own turns and twists when i believe it to be.

this feels nice. i shall do this more often.

the time is 18:06 and chore, responsibilities, and the love of my life are calling me. and i have never felt the unfeigned delight to be in their service. this surprises me, too. just like life does when perspectives undergo a sea change.

yours sincerely, x

[college-girl199328]

Over the weekend, a Japanese restaurant in Vancouver was bombarded with dozens of negative reviews, which included claims of racism and assault by staff.

However, the owner says many of the people who wrote in never actually visited the restaurant. According to Justin Ault, his restaurant, Hapa Izakaya, received about 40 one-star reviews about a day after he had an encounter with an angry customer. 

Ault explained to the Daily Hive that the customer joined a guest dining at the restaurant Saturday evening and later expressed that he had an issue with the 90-minute dining time limit. This policy is usually enforced during busy business hours, Ault claims.

According to the owner, the customer asked him, "Well, what if I don’t leave?" Are you going to throw me?" Ault said he responded, saying, "I’d rather not."

"Well, what if I don’t pay my bill?" The customer apparently responded, ‘I guess I’ll call the police,'" Ault said. 

The customer allegedly refused to pay his bill after not ordering much. He owed the restaurant $5 after telling the man, "It’s time to leave," and he refused. Ault said he counted to 10, but the man did not get up. 

"He just gave me this arrogant smirk, and I helped him out of the restaurant," he said, adding that another restaurant guest helped escort the man out "because the guy was taking swings at me and actually did punch me in the face or elbow me in the face."

After returning from the encounter, people in the restaurant congratulated Ault on his action to remove the man from the restaurant. He said Vancouver police officers responded to the scene, but he decided not to file charges against the customer, who did not pay his bill. 

The Daily Hive reached out to the VPD but was not able to confirm if officers responded to the incident.

While Ault thought the interaction was the end of it, negative reviews started to roll in about a day later.

First reviews claimed Hapa Izakaya had poor service, rude staff, and terrible food, but then evolved into people claiming they witnessed the encounter between Ault and the customer reviews claimed the incident was racially charged and the customer was physically assaulted. 

Ault says the claims that the encounter was racially motivated had him scratching his head: I’m like, racist to a white as far as I know, he’s Caucasian," the owner of Japanese and British descent said. 

After looking up the names of the people who posted reviews of the restaurant on Facebook, many of the people came up as people who live in Montreal, and it just became very apparent that it was a concerted effort."

Ault believes the customer from the previous night told his friends and family to write negative reviews for the restaurant. Hive reached out to several people who left reviews but did not receive a response. 

Ault admitted he has considered the possibility that his restaurant was targeted because it is an Asian restaurant.

Ault admits he appreciates him vocalizing his concerns with him the day he dined, but setting off in an attempt to ruin the restaurant’s reputation by "crossing line reviews" can be very damaging. We’ve been around for 20 years now, and I think our reputation as a business, our restaurant as a business, my staff, and myself are pretty solid. We’re not perfect. But I think that anyone who’s dined in our restaurant, at least 99.3% of them, has had a great experience."

Many of the reviews have since been deleted by Google, Ault confirmed. However, if it weren't for Google taking down the comments, he said, it could have been damaging to the restaurant.

"If I just opened up three months ago or six months ago, something like this, without that depth of positive reviews and love from the community, it could be disastrous and also impact other customers who would consider visiting the restaurant, Ault added. So if there are false negative reviews with serious allegations, he says they lose future business.

[angeli-marco-writes]

∘◦ ♪ ◦∘ Timothée Chalamet - Concerto ∘◦ ♪ ◦∘

A/N - I wrote and posted this almost a year ago on my Wattpad. My writing has evolved a lot since then, but I’m still proud of this piece, and hope you enjoy it. I do not know Tim, nor do I claim to in any way. This is a work of fiction and entirely my own. 

Warnings - smut. Detailed (but protected and consensual) sex, slight BDSM, overstimulation. Cursing. Legal alcohol consumption and smoking. Also 10k words of sickening fluff though, even the smut is fluffy.

Summary - At a classical music concert, the last person you expect to meet is a young man as charming and suave as Timothée. And the last thing you expected is for him to invite you back to his flat. Turns out music really is food for the soul, and other things...

IT’S A FRIDAY EVENING IN NEW YORK CITY. The sun is setting behind the towering silhouettes of undulating buildings all across the city, the moon casting shadows all around au contraire to the luminescence of building lights, beaming all around as well as the street lamps, bringing colour and light to people’s faces in the dark.

You’re standing on the pavement outside Symphony Space Concert Hall on the Upper West Side, people watching. Nothing more or less conspicuous, just observing everyone flooding into the hall, though none of them seem to be under 50 years of age. After checking the time, you take your phone out of the pocket attached to your delicate silk jumpsuit you’re wearing for the night, the one reserved for classy parties and sophisticated concerts only (though very handy). You open the email holding your ticket for the evening, a Poulenc appreciation concert, and you show it to the bouncer who grants you entry to the auditorium.

The room looks incredible. Photos of Francis Poulenc, as well as some old parchment sheets of his music spread out delicately over the usually bare walls. The lights create a perfect ambience in the hall for what's sure to be an incredible evening. The red velvet seats are half full, dotted with people at least twice your age, except from one seat near the front where you can see merely a defined jaw and brown curls. On the stage stands two glossy black grand pianos, slotted beside one another with plush velvet stools and their lids propped up, allowing one to see the inner workings of such wonderful instruments. Behind the pianos are seats enough for an entire orchestra, creating a crescent moon shape. A couple of the seats already have instruments atop them, aching for their owners to play beautiful melodies with them. You make your way down to where your seat is, familiar with the layout of the auditorium. You’re on the right hand side of the centre stalls, third row back, but as you arrive, there’s a boy you saw earlier, not much older than yourself.

“Hi, do you mind if I squeeze past?” You ask him, watching his head jolt up from the programme to reveal a mop of beautiful dark brown curls framing his chiselled face, piercing green eyes with flecks of hazel when the light changed direction. You recognise him, an actor, you simply can’t place him.

His look of incredulity melts into a smile. “Sure.” He says, moving his legs so that you can squeeze past and take your reserved seat on his left. He turns to face you, smiling. He’s wearing a crisp navy suit with a pale blue shirt and a matching tie. He looks well presented, and by his nervous and lopsided smile, you guess that he’s rather nervous to be at the concert alone too. “Timothée.” He tells you, holding his hand out.

You return his gesture, smiling right back at him, and tell him your name. “You here alone?” You ask him, turning in your seat to get a better view. He nods.

“Thought I’d be the only under fifty here.” He laughs, “I’m 24 by the way, but I shan’t ask your name since you're a lady.” You can't help but laugh at this, just a little giggle at how sweet he is, but your interaction is cut short as the lights turn down in the auditorium but shine brighter on the stage, and a full orchestra enters the stage, accompanied by their instruments, two pianists and a conductor. Murmurs in the hall settle down to a faint hum while the musicians tune to the sound of the oboe, and then begin to play.

The music is mesmerising, starting with orchestral pieces with faint piano accompaniment, then just a nocturne for piano, split between the two lead pianists. You could listen to it all night, but an interval has to come. As the lights slowly turn back up, you see an infantile smile on Timothée’s face, as though he’s just watched the most excellent thing in the world.

“Come on,” you say to him, smiling sadly while you tap his knee, “let’s get a drink.”

He reluctantly stands up to follow you out of the auditorium and to the small bar area. You order two margarita’s without consulting him, but he seems grateful as you sit beside each other on a high table, people watching once again.

“What's your job then?” He asks you, making small talk.

“I’m a piano major at Juilliard, teaching piano on the side though.” You respond, and he seems really taken aback. His jaw falls a little slack while his eyes bulge a tad.

“Wow, you must be excellent!” You blush a little at his words, elegantly taking a sip from your drink while he eyes you carefully. You feel awkward under his gaze, though flattered nonetheless. He’s gorgeous, and he’s complimenting you and accepting drinks from you, what a night.

“What about you?” You inquire. He's an actor, you know that, but asking means that you may be able to get some more context and maybe it’ll click where you’ve seen him before. He clears his throat, and you can see some older people walking by who pull faces, judging the pair of you, but you brush them off.

“I’m an actor, mainly small films though.” He says, remaining vague. You don’t push much more, realising that he probably likes not being fawned all over for once, so you simply ask of the favourite names he’s had the honour of working alongside, which must be an uncommonly asked question because a light flickers behind his eyes.

“Selena Gomez, Steve Carell, Armie Hammer, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Robert Pattinson, Maia Mitchell…” He begins to list, but only when he mentions Maia does it click. You aren't huge into films, but you have seen him in a film with Maia Mitchell and Maika Monroe a few years ago.

“Hot summer nights, right? You were in that?” His cheeks turn a magnificent crimson and he bows his head as though embarrassed. He mumbles something along the lines of ‘not my best performance’, but you disagree. “I think you were wonderful, and did you mention Armie Hammer?” He nods again, seeming a little brighter. You take another sip from your drink, and he follows suit, watching your poised movements.

“Call Me By Your Name.” You nod in recognition, you remember watching the film when it first came out and loving the music from it.

“You’re excellent you know, at piano I mean, and the intimate scenes aren’t half bad either, you make them better.” You say with a teasing smirk on your painted lips, making Timothée’s eyes widen again. You chuckle and grasp his hand, dragging him into the auditorium for the second half.

The second half is a whole concerto, Poulenc’s Concerto For Two Pianos And Orchestra. Ten minutes in, Timothée’s hand finds your thigh and seems very comfortable, so comfortable in fact that you don't dare move it. As the concerto flows further on, his hand slides further up your clothed leg and squeezes your upper thigh a little You tense under his touch, infatuation and lust filling every cell and exiting through your pores, just waiting for more passion to fill your body and make you drunk on the feeling.

When finally the concert ends, both of you stand to applaud the musicians for a solid few minutes, and you could swear you see a tear leaving Timothée’s mysterious eyes and rolling down his heavenly made, painfully defined cheekbones. While you clap, you surreptitiously edge closer together, millimetre by millimetre until you’re hip to hip with elbows nudging. Your head comes up to his chin, making you feel a little small, but you’ll feel even smaller once your heels come off. Once the majority of the audience have filed out, you grasp his hand and pull him through the crowds where you stand on the corner of the pavement, only metres from the venue. You’re reluctant to loosen your grip on his slim hand, as he is with yours.

“Cigarette?” He offers, holding a half full box out to you. You half smile and shake your head in refusal.

“I don’t mind if you do though.” You say, meeting his gaze. “I love the taste of smoke when I kiss someone.” You add in a whisper, leaning up on your tiptoes to whisper in his ear. He goes rigid, making you smirk to yourself. This is going to be a good night.

He lights his cigarette and takes slow drag, only looking away to blow the smoke in an opposite direction to you. How respectful, you think, as your stomach fills with butterflies and bubbles with anticipation. He puts it out on top of a bin and throws it away without littering, and just that small and helpful gesture makes you crave his touch, having his fingers trace your sweaty skin and making your body tingle, your back arch with desire and pleasure.

“Wanna get a drink?” You ask, pointing to a nice bar across the road. You’re desperate to sleep with him, but not without pleasantries first. He, however, shakes his head and intricately entwines his fingers with yours.

“I’ll do you one better than a drink.” His smirk sets off a different kind of longing in you, forcing your body to follow him wherever he takes you.

As you walk, he starts conversation, but you’re so breathless from the desperation speed walking that your answers are brief. He asks you why you attended the concert, only to remember that you’re a music student and piano teacher; so in turn, you ask him the same question.

“When I was doing Call Me By Your Name, I had to learn the piano, and while I was learning classical pieces, I kind of just fell in love with classical piano music, I don’t know.”

His nervousness is sweet, making him appear far more humble than anyone of his stature would usually be.

You get to his building after a twenty minute dash in heels, and he pulls you flush against him while entering through the revolving doors, allowing you to lay your weight on him for a moment while you gather your breath. You feel his heartbeat thudding and racing against his ribs, reverberating against your own chest. You turn around to face him and place your hand on his chest.

“Breathe.” You say to him, allowing him to release a long held breathy chuckle. You leave the doors, both laughing, and fervently press the buttons to wait upon a lift. “So,” You then continue, breaking the silence where only your breaths were heard. “Favourite piano piece from the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack?”

“Hallelujah Junction!” You both answer at the same time, just as the lift doors open. You fall into the lift in a fit of giggles, clinging onto each other. You find yourself with your back pressed against the cold metal handle bar in the elevator with Timothée’s face inches away from your own. Your breath mingles together. As soon as he presses the button to his floor, he nudges his nose with your own.

“God, you're so beautiful.” he says seconds before his mouth is pressed hotly against your own, kissing you with an unrivalled passion. Your lips mould and move together like it’s second nature. His one hand holds your waist while both of yours grip his face, feeling a slight stubble.

The lift dings and he drags you out, unlocking his apartment door and leading you inside.

“Welcome to Casa del Timmy.” he says while hugging you from behind, allowing you to get a full view.

His apartment is stunning. Sleek, yet also vintage. Your eyes follow across the perimeter through a door to the left, where he has an office area containing a sleek white desk with a mac and a stack of papers and pens, next to it is a vintage white bookcase stacked as high as possible with novels of all shapes and sizes, and even an indie style rug underneath a colourful modern dining set..

The door next to the office is a kitchen, white countertops with wooden cupboards and a beautiful view of the city out of the window. To the right is a set of glass doors that open onto a small balcony where you can see the whole city, even Manhattan and Brooklyn depending which way you look and how the moon beams down. There’s a closed door right in front of you and through the entry hall and living room which you assume is his bedroom held behind a golden doorknob.

His living room, where you remain standing, holds an array of house plants with a couple of very comfortable looking plush sofas, his TV stand as well as his coffee table look like polished vintage items, refurbished from a flea market maybe, while his book shelf and rug are grand and modern. The best part of all though is a grand piano in an oak wood, matching the wood from his television table, and you become instantly entranced by the instrument that you don’t even notice the velvet stool or the perfectly organised cabinet of music, with a guitar propped up against it.

“Wow.” You breathe. Timothée grips you tighter, trailing kisses across your shoulder and up the side of your neck, inhaling every few seconds to treasure the scent of your perfume. Gardenia, rose champagne, grapefruit, davana; heavenly. You grip his hands with your own, holding them tightly where they’re settled on your tummy. You roll your head against his shoulder to give him better access to kiss you, but he stops abruptly and leads you to the piano stool. He opens the cabinet and pulls out a well loved piece of music.

“I know it’s for two pianos, but let's have some fun.” He says, grinning at you, an infectious smile that you can’t help but return. Hallelujah Junction, first movement. He puts the music out on the piano and takes a seat beside you, your thighs touching and hands overlapping as they begin to glide over the keys.

Playing this piece is second nature to you, allowing you to find your way easily, slipping your fingers between Timothée’s, and the white and black keys. You begin a harmonious melody spanning the whole of the piano, but after only a couple of pages, you realise that its not working as your notes cross over, making it very difficult to play on just one piano. You laugh together, but only for a moment before he is trailing his tongue up your neck, then your lips, and delving inside your mouth. You gasp, moaning into the passionate kiss that he’s giving you, and within seconds you find yourself straddling his lap on the piano stool. You trap his thighs between yours, moving and grinding your hips a little against his to receive more friction where you can feel how needy he is.

Within seconds, he has your legs wrapped around his waist and his teeth on your clavicle. The pleasure makes sounds escape your lips that you didn’t even realise were possible. You knot your ankles as he stands up with one hand around your waist and the other feeling his way around his apartment. After a few funny missteps and close calls of him dropping you while only walking the expanse of his living room, he pins you against his bedroom door, finding your lips again

He gently pokes at your dusty pink bottom lip with his tongue, slipping his tongue back into your mouth, exploring avidly and devouring every taste of you that he can muster. You do the same, but become too infatuated by his taste to put much more passion into it: gin, mint, bergamot and smoke. Smoke, sugar and sin, the most deadly combination of them all, and that's all you can smell on him, making you moan even louder. An erotic moan that makes Timothée twist open the handle to his bedroom door as quickly as is humanly possible.

He as good as throws you onto the bed, but undeniably, it turns you on a lot to see his dominant side this early on into the evening. He doesn't seem like the type to pin you down and boss you around, but as he shuts his bedroom door and delicately takes off his probably very expensive shoes, you can see a glint in his eye, almost as if he’s planning on doing unspeakably pleasurable things to you. Just the thought makes you wetter than before.

As he locks the door and shuts his shoes away, you take a quick look around the room. His bed is nice, comfortable and exquisitely large, like other things you hope. He has a nice colourful throw, vintage looking pillows to match his nightstand, holding only a pillbox, a glass of water, hand sanitiser, and a box of tissues. The simplicity makes you want to laugh, but you restrain yourself. He has a big dresser to match his bedside table with the drawers a little skewwhiff and clothes poking out. His wardrobe is fitted to the wall and by the looks of it, surprisingly neat too. That much cannot be said for his sofa though. A plush, light grey sofa sits on one side of his room just away from the window, and it's covered with clothes. At least he made the bed though, that's more than you can say for most 20-odd year old mans rooms that you’ve been into.

He sheds his blazer and crawls up to where he left you on the bed, needy and craving more. He looks down at you with desperation in his eyes, and you can’t help but to attack his lips, threading one hand in his beautiful dark curls while the other nimbly pulls open his tie and undoes his shirt. You shrug it off his shoulders and run your nails up and down his spine. You feel him shiver beneath his touch while your hands travel all over his body. His shoulders, his biceps, his toned stomach; he’s skinny, but has enough substance to him to be strong and sexy as hell.

“You’ll kill me if you stop.” He whispers, followed by a string of breathy curses. His eyes roll into the back of his head, giving you ample opportunity to grasp his shoulders and slip the pair of you over, pinning him beneath you. His eyes flit all over your face before kissing you again.

“You are so freaking beautiful.” He mumbles between kisses. He slips his hands up to find the zip of your jumpsuit which he slides down crazily fast, only breaking the kiss to shrug it off your shoulders. He just lies in awe, noticing that you don’t have a bra on beneath it. His tongue darts out from between his lips as he examines every undulation of your body, following the swell of your breasts right down to your hips. Your nerves return under his scrutiny, making you want to hide your face, but instead he holds your wrists behind you.

“You never have to cover up,” he says, nothing more or less than genuine love in his eyes, “not for me.”

Despite only meeting him hours ago, you know that you can trust him, so you ungracefully clamber off his lap and lie on your back to shimmy off your burden of a jumpsuit. He practically leaps at the opportunity to worship your body, before him in only your panties. He starts at your ankle, placing feather light kisses all the way from your ankle, up your leg, not minding the slight harshness of your legs, and only stops at your knee joint to switch his lips to his tongue, licking a straight line all the way up your inner thigh, stopping centimetres from where you need him the most. Not through any of this ritual does he break eye contact though. He skips over your panties and only pulls them down a little to trail kisses from your pelvic bone, up past your navel, through the valley of your breasts, and finally back to your lips. He makes you feel things that you could only dream of before meeting him.

“Timothée…” you breathe, hearing his breath hitch in his throat at the way your tongue curls around his name.

You reach between the two of you to his trousers. You undo the belt buckle with ease and push his trousers off his hips and down his thin legs, allowing him to kick them off at the bottom. He seems embarrassed, wearing Y-fronts that make more visible just how much he wants you.

“How about we strip together?” You offer, and Timothée reluctantly nods. He pushes himself off of you and stands up, giving you a hand to stand up as well. He still hasn’t taken his eyes off you since the moment you left the concert hall. “3, 2, 1…”

You both remove your underwear, pushing them down your legs and stepping out of them, only to step closer together so that your chests are flush against one another. He moves his hand up to cup your face, brushing your hair away from your face while tilting your chin up, capturing your lips in a lustful yet also sensual kiss.

He nudges you and your legs hit the bed, making you topple over and break the kiss from a giggle, but he doesn’t seem to mind and only laughs with you, moving your body further onto the mattress. He doesn't go to you again, he just lies beside you and dances his fingers absently down your pubic bone, ghosting circles around your clit.

“Jesus Christ.” You exclaim at the sudden feeling. Timothée kisses your jawline, but adds in between kisses, “Less of that, darling, I’m Jewish.”

You can’t help but laugh at him. You know he’s joking, just trying to mess with you, but as a punishment for laughing, he thrusts two fingers inside you with no warning, making you cry out in a mixture of both pain and overwhelming pleasure.

He pumps his fingers in and out of you, never going deeper than the second knuckle even when you cry out for more. Only when your moans turn to gasps for breath and you’re writhing beneath him does he delve in further and add his thumb to your clit, giving you a more intense orgasm than you’ve ever had before.

You immediately feel blood rushing back to your cheeks, colouring them from embarrassment, but Timothée doesn’t mind. He removes his hand from your core, and makes sure your eyes are fixated on his every movement as he licks his hand clean of all your cum. You’re so turned on that you even reach for his own hand, interlacing all your fingers except for his index one, of which he takes the hint and slips it into your open mouth, allowing your tongue to curl around it, making him groan.

He slips further down the bed and locks his eyes onto yours, you can see different shades of green and hazel in them and a whole world locked behind those beautiful eyes. Slowly, he delves into your heat, licking up everything that his hands missed. His mouth works wonders, sending your mind into a state of mild euphoria. The tip of his nose nudges your clit and you can feel yourself involuntarily gasp, so when Timothée finishes savouring every taste of you that he can get, he harshly bites your sensitive clit for just a moment, stimulating parts of your mind and body that you didn’t know could feel pleasure, let alone pleasure that intense.

He comes back up and kisses your lips, planting his hands in your hair as you kiss him back and get lost in the moment, your tongues dance together in an exploration, an experimentation of passion.

You pull away after a minute or so, gasping for air. Timothée examines your face for a moment, and you find yourself once again losing your thoughts and sanity in his eyes, until you feel the tip of his throbbing cock brush against your bare thigh. You feel bad for how much he’s been neglecting his own levels of desire in order to pleasure you, so you wrap your fingers around the base of his cock. He takes a sharp intake of breath and flutters his eyes closed, his long dark eyelashes twitching alongside his eyelids whenever you grasp harder or pump him.

He’s surprisingly big, causing you to take longer while rubbing your hand up and down his member. Half way down one thrust, you squeeze his cock a little, hearing him whimper a little. The mere sound of him drowns your core in want. You edge your way down the bed and swallow as much of his dick as you can take until his tip hits the back of your throat. He lets out the most sensual guttural groan that you’ve ever heard, his eyes still closed while placing his hand on the back of your head to keep you steady. You bring your head back up to look at him while your tongue swirls his tip, his mouth is parted a little with breathy moans of your name escaping every once in a while, his eyelids switching from being lazily half open to squeezed so tightly shut that they wrinkle a little.

You go back down slowly, inch by inch, hollowing your cheeks. You work your hand in the part of him that won’t fit in your mouth and continue to bob your head up and down. You lick a strip up a vein on the underside of his dick, making him near enough scream your name. With one final bob of your head where you deep throat him, you pull away with plump lips, climbing up his body to straddle his waist. He looks up at you with wide and loving eyes, pulling you down for a sensual kiss.

“Are you clean?” He asks breathlessly, kissing down the hickeys that he’s already littered your skin with.

“Yeah, i got tested after my last break up a few months ago, and I haven’t been with anyone since. Is that because I just…” He nods and you laugh a little, the vibrations from his chuckle rumble throughout your body.

“I did the same, but I’ll still…” You get what he’s saying and climb off him. He flings open the top drawer of his bedside table and after a minute or so of rooting through it he pulls out a condom packet and places it next to his glass of water. You give him a questioning look with your brows knitted together, but Timothée just smiles at you. He slips one slim arm beneath your back and the other under your knee joint before scooping you up and holding you close to his chest.

“Well hey there Timothée.” You say with a chuckle, secretly astonished at how strong he is, because with one arm still holding you, he throws away the decorative pillows and pulls the duvet back, throwing you onto the mattress and leaping on top of you. You smile into his kiss, savouring every second of the feel of his lips pressed hotly against your own, the taste of smoke driving you crazy.

He pulls away and sits up, tearing open the condom packet and grasping his hand sanitiser. He flicks the lid open and squeezes it liberally onto his hands before applying it and rubbing it into yours. “Are you sure?” He asks you, and your urgent kiss to his jawline is followed by a string of fervent reassurances that you are desperate to have him inside you, though you respect that he wants consent and that he wants to be clean. He slips the condom on, his eyes trained on your lips and the way they part from wanting every few seconds. He’s enjoying torturing you and making you wait, the same way that you edged him but denied him orgasm.

He slips the condom on and slowly enters in one smooth stroke. You gasp at the contact, especially how deep he goes with the first thrust, so deep that his pubic bone hits your own. He reaches for the duvet and he pulls it up over his shoulders, covering the pair of you since he can see that you’re shivering a little in the open. He looks for reassurance, but then begins to thrust inside you, holding his weight above you. You can see his biceps tensing while trying to hold his weight up and keep a steady rhythm.

“How about we spice this up?” He suggests, a sly smirk playing on his lips. He cocks an eyebrow, and the sun hits his face at an angelic angle, only making him more beautiful. You nod eagerly to him, only making his smirk grow wider.

“Yes Mr Timothée,” you say, triggering a dominant smirk to relight behind those stunning eyes.

“That's Mr Chalamet to you tonight, Miss.” Words cannot even explain how wet he makes you by saying that, already making your mind want to submit to his every want. You let out a whimper and remove your hands from his hips to lay above your head on the pillows. He joins his fingers around your wrist and proceeds to lay his slender hand flat against your wrists, preventing you from moving.

“Is this okay?” He asks, his movements coming to a halt. You nod and kiss him again. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

He must really enjoy what he’s doing to you. “Yes Mr Chalamet.” You reply, making your eyes as doe like and innocent as possible.

Timothée’s thrusts restart, faster this time. You moan louder, ecstasy filling every inch of your spent body before you’ve even properly begun. His moans are lower, more like groans, all of your name. It sounds heavenly coming from his lips, the way his mouth moves when he says your name just makes it better. His hips hit yours with vigour, adjusting to get a better position where he hits the best spot inside of you.

“There Timothée!” You scream desperately, your back arching on the mattress while your hands fight to break free. Submitting isn’t as easy as you hoped.

“I’m close.” He warns you and frees your wrists, but he doesn’t let your hand go too far. He interlocks his fingers with yours, using one elbow to prop himself up. His thrusts turn sloppy, more fervent, and just as he’s finishing, he digs his thumb into your clit.

Your entire body turns limp, screaming his name in a state of complete euphoria like you’ve never felt before. It travels from your brain to the tips of your fingers, setting a fire in your belly and making your toes curl. Your back arches so far off the bed that your chest becomes pressed against Timothée’s, your breasts moving in time with his breathing. You feel him come to his own climax, silencing his screams by kissing you with more passion than he has before.

You ride out your highs, but the level of pleasure illuminating every nerve ending in your body means that you don’t notice Timothée pulling out and disposing of the condom, you only notice when he flops down beside you on the bed and pulls you closer to his slightly sweaty body. You rest your head on his chest that seems to be glowing in the moonlight from the sheen of sweat. He absently plaits your hair, staring off into the distance. The faint thudding of his heart within his ribs comforts you, it's a little faster than would be normal, making you smile a little.

“How was that?” His hand grips around your shoulder even tighter, pulling you closer to his body. He seems content in simply holding you, maybe he just enjoys cuddling. “Wait, don’t answer that.” He corrects himself, his pupils dilating and his excellent, angelic body going rigid. You chuckle to yourself, drawing circles on his chest with the pad of your forefinger,

“Excellent, Mr Chalamet.” You tease him.

“I wasn’t too rough, was I?” He looks fearful, fretting, it's evident in the sudden sulk of his face, pulling his cheeks and forehead down. You shake your head again, slowly but surely moving your leg to lie over his. Ye inclines his neck to place a gentle kiss to our hairline, and you can feel him smile into it.

“Timothée?”

“Yes beautiful?” Just his simple words make you giggle and blush, such a sweet sentiment from a gorgeous and well meaning man.

“I’m hungry.” You say, feeling slightly embarrassed. He laughs, you feel his body move from it, and he proceeds to pepper your face with the softest and sweetest kisses possible.

“I’ll make us some food, grab any shirt you want and meet me in the kitchen.”

You watch him pull on a pair of grey sweat pants and walk out. His pale hips sway just a little as he walks, and he looks so lanky from where you’re laying on his bed, the covers pulled up around your chest. He kissed your forehead before heading to the kitchen, what kind of a man does that on the first night? He’s a famous actor and the most gorgeous man you’ve ever seen, let alone a couple of years above yourself. He really knows how to please a girl, your skin rises in tiny goosebumps of pleasure while a shiver shoots down your spine and leaps across your synapses just at the mere thought of what he did to you, by far the best climax you’ve ever had.

You slowly slide out from under his warm, plush covers that smell just like him, only leaving with severe reluctance that melts away as soon as you shrug on the pale blue button down that he wore for the concert. Only a few hours ago you’d met at a concert for old people, already having a common interest that few your age have, yet he’s so eager about classical piano which is so special to you. You fiddle with the buttons, leaving the top few open in hopes of another round - he is making you an almost-midnight feast after all.

You walk out of his room and pad barefoot across his living room floor, only to have a little grey cat come and rub at your feet. You lean down to tickle behind its ears, hearing it meow, and you continue your way too where Timothée has left the kitchen door open for you. He’s standing over the stove with some ingredients laid out on the spotlessly clean countertops. You smile in spite of yourself, running a hand through your messy hair before wrapping your arms around his torso from behind. You place a couple of kisses to his shoulder blades until he turns around and picks you up in one swift movement, sitting you on the counter so that you meet his height.

“It looks better on you.” He whispers, pulling you closer by your bare thighs to plant a kiss on your lips. He’s making you feel things you’ve never experienced before, you can’t wipe the smile off your face for the first time in a while, and he's making you food in the middle of the night after cuddling you.

Dreamboat.

After watching him cook for a while, you slip out of his kitchen and take a seat at his piano. You run your fingers over the smooth wood, it’s well loved but well kept. Then you take a seat on the stool. You can feel where Timothée sits to play, your smile turning a little sad. There’s so much to him that people won’t see because he’s getting famous, but he’s still a person and that’s something that you’re able to experience first-hand.

Eyes closed, you feel for F and Ab with both of your hands. You press the keys down gently, creating the soft blend of notes that is Clair De Lune. You fall lost in the music in a new way, a new feeling washing you with all of tonight's new sensations and sitting at a piano that is neither your own nor at school, it feels somewhat ethereal.

Your fingers glide all across the keys, black to white, flats to sharps, switching between octaves like its second nature. Your mind dances along with the rhythm, your whole mind, soul and being becoming lost in the symphony that you’re creating, one that you haven’t been able to create for a while, and it’s only thanks to Timothée.

You become so absorbed in playing that you don’t notice him leaving the kitchen to listen. He just stands in the doorway, leaning against it with his head lolled a little to the side, completely mesmerised by your movements, your music, and just everything you are. Only when you play the final notes are you alerted of his presence from the creaking of the floorboards beneath his feet. He walks over to you with purpose, a slight grimace on his perfect lips, but he just hugs you. Timothée just holds you close to his chest, allowing you to entwine your arms around his neck and nuzzle your face in his bare chest.

“Stay the night?” He asks, such a simple request but he truly does seem anxious. You want to be genuine, kind, but it’ll be best to relieve the tension.

“You’re making me a late night post-sex feast and giving me your shirt, of course I’m staying the night.” After a moment of silence, he exhales a laugh and node, brushing a curl or two into his face. “Anyway, your cat likes me too, so it’d be a shame to disappoint the little cutie.”

After only a few minutes, you find yourself back in bed with Timothée. He’s carrying a tray full of food that looks and smells gorgeous, followed by his cat who decides to dance between his legs. He serves you a strangely shaped piece of an odd looking pizza, though it still looks excellent, and it has some perfectly cooked and seasoned vegetables next to it on a white plate.

“What is this?” You ask him as kindly as possible.

“Flammekueche with some vegetables. It’s a French pizza with crème fraiche and bacon. My dad makes it all the time and always gives me some that I just freeze and reheat. I can only make microwave meals and vegetables, so this isn’t bad for me.” The way he explains it makes him so endearing, and even makes the food seem more than enticing. “You’re not allergic to anything are you? Or vegetarian?” You shake your head with a smile, kissing him and thanking him for the meal even though he won’t let you touch it before you sanitise your hands.

You talk the whole while that you eat, learning little things about his favourite books and his family. His favourite book just happens to be Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a book you both know and love, and Timothee has a Jewish mother, a French father, an older sister, and he grew up in the city. You however are from out of the city with an exceptionally normal family, and your favourite book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. He seems to be growing fond of you, wiping the pizza sauce from your lip, followed by a kiss each time.

He places your plates on the floor as soon as you finish, snatching at the speed of light for some hand sanitiser, lube and another condom. You more than happily oblige with all of his steps and strip off his shirt, kissing the living daylights out of him before he’s even slotted the condom on. He kisses you back with equal fervour nonetheless, exploring your whole mouth with the tip of his tongue. He cautiously adds some lube to the sides of the condom and slips into you while you’re still atop him. You moan at the penetration, arching your body forwards and hereby giving Timothée a full view of your breasts and the way they bounce with his every thrust inside you.

You moan pornographically at his slow and passionate movements upwards and deep inside you, finding your special spot within moments. He settles his hands upon your hips, squeezing them and guiding your every movement. You ride him just the way he wants you to, you can see it in his eyes. He looks at you like a teenage boy would at a naked supermodel, of which you are only naked and most definitely not a supermodel, despite him treating you like one, and Timothée is thankfully older than a teenage boy yearning for sex.

“You look so fucking brilliant.” He tells you, admiring the way that your face contorts with pleasure while taking every inch of him.

You rhythmically grind your hips against him, swirling them occasionally just to hear him cry out. Nothing is a hinderance from you going faster, but this sex isn’t needing to be urgent to be satisfying. He squeezes your hips harder and you decides to move up a little further, bouncing back down on him as he becomes buried to the hilt in your desperate core. You do it again, engulfing him anew and moaning his name continually from the mix of friction and pleasure that’s sending you into another euphoria, but not enough to release again just yet.

Timothée still hasn’t taken his eyes off you, namely your breasts where he’s currently focussed, eyes trained on your hardened nipples - partly from not wearing a shirt and partly from Timothée’s ministrations. He leans up and captures your left nipple in his mouth, sucking and kissing and swirling his tongue around you in the most divine way possible. He moves his hands away from your hips too, allowing you to grind your hips on his in any way that you like. His one hand moves to your other breast, tweaking and pulling at your right peak and sending sensations through your body that you’d never realised could be real before; while his other slips to the rounds of your ass, squeezing delectably.

“Mr Chalamet, p-please,” you find yourself begging, leaning down while still riding him, his torture on your breasts never ceasing, not even when he thrusts his hips up one final time, allowing your core to devour him whole and sending you into your third otherworldly climax of the night.

“Timothée!” You scream, your climax pouring out of you. You feel him come too, and you hear him cry out your name like a blessing.

He doesn’t pressure you, he just waits until you’re able to clamber off him with as minimal pain and exhaustion as possible, though you do whine at the loss of contact as you lie beside him, his arms securely around you and holding you as close to him as possible. It doesn’t matter that you’re both sweaty or spent, it just feels special.

“Look at that, done before 1am.” He chides, cuddling into you. You laugh a little at him, especially his humour, but it is rather remarkable.

“Two rounds, a meal, and a concert. Can’t speak for you, but I’m knackered.” He smiles at you sleepily, passing you the shirt that you wore earlier. You shrug it on and do it up while Timothée puts his joggers back on and draws the curtains, leaving the two of you in dark for the most part. You lie further down, still close to his thin chest, you hear his breathing rattle a little, but it's soothing.

“Night beautiful.” Is the last thing you hear before falling asleep in his arms.

⊱ ────── {⋅. ♪ .⋅} ────── ⊰

The only issue about sleeping with Timothée is that you forget it's a Saturday morning, and on Saturdays, you have to work. Your phone alarm starts to go off at 7.15 precisely, which when you’re home, gives you enough chance to get ready for teaching in a calm manner so that you aren’t already angry before teaching little children how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Today however, that is not the case.

Timothée sleeps through it somehow, but your eyes are shocked wide awake, causing you to leap from the comfort and warmth of his bed and cuddles just to crawl on the floor in search of your phone and where it fell last night. You find it next to his door somehow, and switch the alarm off immediately, propping yourself up against the door to release a long held breath and to watch the sun rise through his windows. He looks so beautiful asleep, his lips parted slightly, soft snores escaping every so often, dark eyebrows furrowed and his mop of curls haphazardly lying around him like a halo. The morning glow makes his cheekbones appear even more defined.

You want to gather your belongings without waking him, get dressed and catch a cab back to your flat, but just as you go to open his door, he stirs.

“Where do you think you’re going beautiful? Come back to bed, I’m keeping you here with me forever.” You know he’s joking, and his words melt your heart and inhibitions a little, but you can’t justify staying

“I have to work, my first student is at 9.30.” You say, walking across to stand beside his bed and brush some hair off his forehead, kissing him and your lips lingering on his sweaty skin a little longer than they probably should have.

“And? I’ll drive you home in time, if you live near Juilliard then I know a shortcut. Just come back.” He's virtually pleading, puppy eyes and quivering lip just to add to the effect, and you simply can’t say no when he looks so perfect. You place your things on the floor by the bed and slip beside him, allowing your eyes to flutter shut just a moment longer.

His finger traces your naked body beneath the shirt, focussing on the bruises he left on your hips and the marks on your neck. Just his touch is enough to take control of your body, to give you goosebumps, to electrify every feeling of love and lust held within.

“Can I use your shower please?” You ask him, and he nods, placing his chin atop your head.

“I’ll take you to my bathroom and then I’ll make you breakfast. Grab whatever clothing you want from my room, but you can’t leave this bed until you agree to dinner with me tonight.”

Your heart rate increases tenfold at his gesture, and you want to take a leap of faith and say yes straight away, but that would be playing your cards too quickly. “We’ll see.” You respond sultrily, making your way to leave, but his strong grip pulls you flush against him with no space to move. You can hear him laughing in your ear.

“Say yes to dinner and then you can leave.” He slips his hands further down your front without losing his grip and decides to toy with your clit as though it’ll get you to talk.

“Y-yes! God, Timothée, of course I’ll go to dinner with you, just don’t stop!” You find it impossible to understand the shockwaves of pleasure pulsating and electrifying your every sense from an action as simple as the pads of his fore and middle fingers twisting and pressing your sensitive clit. It’s so incredible that after the previous night, it feels like overstimulation, and you can’t get enough.

“I’ll never stop.” He murmurs gruffly into your ear, you can hear the hoarseness that smoking causes but god it sounds and tastes so good.

He pulls your body closer and rolls you over. “Hey baby.” You say as calmly as you can, but within seconds you find yourself sitting on his face, half of his stunning bone structure lost beneath you. He delves his tongue into your already dripping heat, licking as far as he can get and only pulling away to kiss and suckle at your clit.

“Let me come Mr Chalamet!” You cry out, and with one final swipe of his tongue around your core and a squeeze of your ass, you let go. Timothée licks you clean while you still chant his name, and he proceeds to pick you up in order to carry you to the bathroom. You settle your heels at the base of his spine, digging in a little, and his arms tense beneath your ass from the manner he carries you. You like being above him, able to trace every line and bit of stubble on his face with your focussed eyes that he stares so deeply into at any given chance.

“Don’t be too long or I’ll be tempted to join you.”

You slowly cross the threshold of the bathroom, winking at him as you close the door. He inaudibly groans, but you can tell from his facial expression and the tension in his joggers that make him look utterly sexy. You slowly unbutton his shirt, reluctant to take it off, but when you step under the warm jet of his shower, that reluctance washes away along with any inhibitions you may have had about Timothée. He’s an angel: clean, respectful, enjoys classical music, has a cat, isn’t a cocky dickhead, and he’s literally the most gorgeous human being that you’ve ever laid eyes on.

You run your fingers through your hair, standing directly beneath his showerhead. The steam clouds your vision, but you can hear Timothée singing while he cooks, Mystery of Love. What a dork, you think, chuckling to yourself while you rinse Tim’s shower gel from your body, and you just know that after this you’ll smell like him, but he smells delectable. As the water hits the most sensitive parts of your body, you remember the previous night. Just the thought of what he did to you makes you crave his touch again.

Through the bathroom window, you can make out the New York traffic that builds every morning, accompanied by the screeching of tires and sirens and car horns. Despite it being a ruckus, it's soothing as you step out the shower and wrap yourself in one of Timothée’s fluffy towels.

“How do you look so sexy when you’re getting out of the shower? God, I can't stress it enough, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve seen in my life, even without any makeup and with your hair un-styled, just wrapped in my Goddamn towel. You’re gonna be mine, mark my words.” You feel tears come to your eyes at his kind words, watching him purposefully walk from the kitchen and all the way across his apartment just to place his hands on your waist and tell you how beautiful you are. Those words are better than a concerto to you.

Once you’ve finished getting dry in his bedroom, you ferret through his drawers until you pull out a white top with various tie dye patterns across it. It’s cute, very Timothée. You pull it on and it reaches your mid thighs, making it clock in your head just how much of a lanky lad he is. You bundle together your stuff and head out of his room, closing the door behind you and greeting him with a kiss. He sits you at the breakfast bar and serves you a proper cooked breakfast: bacon, scrambled eggs, and pancakes.

“There's ketchup and syrup in the cupboard if you’d like.” He offers, sidling up on the seat beside you, nudging the tip of your nose with his thumb. The smile hasn’t left your face since you met him.

“This is good, you’re an excellent cook.” You tell him, resting your hand on his. His cheeks glow an even brighter red in the cascading morning sunlight, dappled by his blinds, but he looks magnificent despite his embarrassment.

You take out your phone, just to take a picture of the breakfast while it’s still untouched, and of your hand held by Timothée’s, already wearing rings. You notice that he’s already wearing a silver chain too, and a couple of bracelets on the wrist away from your own, which you find unusually attractive.

“I wish you could stay all day.” he whispers, placing his forehead on yours.

“Me too.” you say softly, smiling sadly and caressing his cheek.

You finish your breakfast and make your way to the living room in a strange kind of waltz orchestrated by Timothée. He insists on holding your waist and turning around a little, moving your feet in sync until you yank him down onto the sofa, catching his lips mid sigh which leads to a much more passionate make out session than you anticipated. Once that’s over, he plaits your hair beautifully, explaining how it used to calm his sister down before an audition. By the time he’s finished a very good pair of plaits, you check the time and it’s already 9, time for you to leave with NYC traffic, but Tim won’t let you go.

“Not without a photo.” He insists, but you question his reasons. Who would want a photo of you with wet hair in plaits, an oversized tee-shirt and a bare face? But his answer is too sweet to refuse. “I like taking pictures of beautiful things, and of which, you are the most beautiful.” Your cheeks flush a raging scarlet, and Timothée takes your few moments of silence as the perfect opportunity to take a picture of you, sunlight hitting your face in all the right places, and he takes another for good measure, his hand on your cheek and his lips on yours, a kiss that shuts you up for good.

He takes you down the stairs right to the garage where he keeps his car, and surprisingly, it’s an understated car, not crazily extortionate nor flashy, something which you respect highly. He sits you in the passenger side, making sure to kiss you before closing the door, and he gets in the driver's side. After starting the engine and leaving the parking lot, he lays his palm flat against your thigh and keeps it there the whole drive while you change gears for him. You tell him all about your childhood, your high school, your time in uni while he tells you his life at a performing arts high school and then his life as an actor, he truly fascinates you.

Once he pulls up outside your building, he tries to convince you to let him come in, or at least walk you to your door, but on the grounds of not scaring the life out of your neighbours and students, you say no with a promise to see him later.

“I’m gonna fuck you so hard tonight that you won’t be able to walk.” He says, pulling you in for a final passionate kiss before you step out of the car. He made you wet just before you have to work, you’ll get him back later, but the revenge melts as soon as he leans out the window to blow you a kiss and tell you how stunning you are.

You’re so lost in your trance of Timothée that you don’t notice your first student tapping you on the shoulder and excitedly saying “Was that the Timothée Chalamet?”

You chuckle to yourself, watching him drive off into traffic, all for you. “Yes it was love, yes it was.”

[mittensmorgul]

For anyone interested in long-term residence in the supernatural fandom, please have some observations I’ve made over the decade I’ve been here. Take it or leave it as you will, but I’ve found all of this info useful over the years I’ve been here.

I wrote this yesterday, and it achieved its mission of identifying the sort of folks who would react negatively to it (i.e. a lot of block lists have been updated), so now that it’s been edited for content, it’s going under a cut (because that is how we do things on tumblr in general, unless we have a deliberate purpose for annoying readers with excessively long text posts) for the sake of people who actually do care about the fandom and its history. If that’s not you or your reason for being here, then keep on keeping on with your own thing, I guess. For those who are interested, there’s a lot of fandom resources some of us have been building for years that you might enjoy knowing about.

First off, I’ve been informed by a few friends who’ve read through this for coherency’s sake that it sort of reads like a *shakes cane from porch* fandom grandma complaint, but honestly... I earned this rocking chair and goshdangit imma rock now. So apologies for any “back in my day” vibes or faint aroma of tiger balm this post might give off. Then again, it’s loosely based on a similar post from 2012 so like... time is a flat circle anyway I guess.

1. There is no such thing as “tumblr famous,” unless you’re referring to the hilarious and delightful fic of the same name (please go read it, you will cackle). Posting Hot Takes for imaginary Clout™ on this site is kind of pointless in the long run. Sure you can post solely for the sake of stirring shit and getting notes, but the majority of the folks who do aren’t long term residents of the fandom. They’re just tourists moving through our little beach town for spring break. If you’re actually intent on moving to this corner of the fandom for an extended stay, please bother to really feel out the permanent residents and understand the culture and general mood of the neighborhood. It bears no resemblance to whatever’s going on across town where all the bars and beach parities are happening, and those loud, drunken revelers are, again, gonna disappear back to their regular lives or on to the next party eventually. That doesn’t mean the fandom is dying, it’s just evolving.

(funny how I had several comments implying that I’m just trying to keep the fandom from evolving with this post, because I sincerely do want the fandom to continue on for years to come, and that is impossible without evolution. We can evolve without self-immolating, though. mostly i included point 1 for an excuse to push ancient but hilarious fanfic on you.)

2. Once you post something here, it’s been unleashed to the fandom winds. You never know where it will end up, or who will comment on it or add to it. Remember that time Misha tweeted the link to the Epic Cockles Love Story post? No? It was wild. That was 2012. They all know we’re here, and how to find us if they want to. Please don’t take it to their doorsteps.

Obviously if someone is being a dick on your posts, please feel free to block them, but the whole entire point of this site is to engage people with your posts. Being big mad that someone reblogged your post with comments or supporting evidence, or happy headcanons or “HECK THIS IS GREAT BECAUSE (insert personal story about their experience or whatever else made them Feel Things about your post)” is frankly ridiculous. If your goal is to avoid any sort of engagement with your posts, then maybe try instagram instead. From what I understand, there is a SPN fandom presence there, and nobody can tarnish your original posts with unwanted commentary. But the ability to reblog with additional commentary is a FEATURE of tumblr that builds community through conversation. Otherwise we’re all just talking to ourselves in a vacuum, and that’s what actually kills fandoms.

(and for the folks who just want to blog how they want to blog and don’t want people to engage on their posts at all, please feel free to block anyone you want, as well... nobody wants to step on your toes, but most of us also don’t want to walk on eggshells wondering if this post is one of the “do not add comments for any reason” sorts of posts, either. This is a huge fandom and most people can’t even begin to keep track of every creator and their url du jour, and what their personal rules might be regarding interaction with their content. Including a “please don’t add comments” note at the bottom of your posts-- and not in your tags that won’t even show up on reblogs, but in the actual body of the post-- would sincerely help avoid any awkward or unwanted interactions, too. At the end of the day, you are in control of your own fandom experience and the block button exists.

For the record, I block zero fandom blogs (which is why I posted this, I wanted it to reach a wide scope... refer to the opening paragraphs as to why).

3. Since this post was partly inspired by a tag I left on that post going around about how “previous tags” mean fuckall on this site (which you can read here), just a reminder that if you like someone’s tags or feel they add value to the post, part of the Peer Review structure of tumblr encourages you to PASTE THEM INTO A REBLOG. If you do this, then at least credit the person who actually wrote the tags! Don’t just copy someone else’s tags into your tags on your reblog of the post without credit either. They were not YOUR tags. (I have had this happen to tag rambles I wrote and someone else got credited with them on a subsequent reblog and it is FRUSTRATING). Just... don’t even bother to write “previous tags” because WHAT PREVIOUS TAGS?! Nobody is gonna bother to chase back the chain of reblogs trying to find where the mystery tags came from, friendos. That way lies madness.

(for the record, since some folks seemed to focus on this point solely, writing “previous tags” on a post isn’t inherently a BAD thing, but for anyone who actually is here for more than one-off shitposting, then it’s sort of a pointless thing in the long run. This wasn’t intended to suggest people who ARE here for one-off shitposting are bad or “doing it wrong,” but for people who might actually want to preserve that hilarious joke or insightful comment. People delete posts and entire blogs all the time around here. Links break. I get that the upcoming generation just shrugs at that and moves on with their lives, but heck... you don’t have to accept that all entertainment is disposable if you don’t want to. There’s a bizarre sort of nihilism plaguing us all about the impermanence of pretty much everything that feels like something we should be fighting against rather than buying into wholesale, even in our escapist entertainment. I’m just exhausted by the complete loss of joy in community.

*shouts from the peanut gallery* IT AIN’T THAT DEEP, JUST GET SOME FRESH AIR AND LOOK AT A PUPPY OR SOMETHING

Yes... yes it isn’t really that deep, but bigger picture in the state of reality we’re all entirely disillusioned with, are we supposed to just give up on everything, including the things we cling to because they bring us a tiny spark of hope that we’re not all just trapped in this dystopian nightmare and things might actually be worth living for?

*peanut gallery clinging to burnt husks of peanuts in a barren peanut field* but this is how we have chosen to cope

Okay... you do you... I feel bad for you but if that’s the case then this post is NOT FOR YOU. AND THAT’S FINE. I honestly do not care if you don’t care! I mean, I’m sorry anyone has to live in a world that drives them to that mindset, but I understand. This post is for anyone who might look at their lives and their choices and think “no wait, I unironically enjoy this and want more from the experience of that enjoyment than I’m currently feeling.” Everyone else can continue with their lives as usual.)

4. CONTENT THEFT IS NEVER OKAY. PERIOD. Things like “credit to the artist” or tagging gifs or images you found on pinterest as “not mine” isn’t actually credit. If you can’t source an image or gif set, DO NOT POST IT! We don’t REPOST (i.e. save an image and then create a new post with it as if it was our own creation). We REBLOG (click the little square arrows and reblog from the actual creator). That goes for gif sets, fanvids, screencaps, meta, fic... everything.

(hopefully everyone here already understands this one, but I felt compelled to include some “these are stupidly obvious” reminders anyway, since this is ostensibly some sort of advice column. This is the equivalent of the warning label on your toaster reminding you not to use it in the bath. Like... duh...)

5. Close kin of item 4 is SOURCE YOUR SHIT. 

(for 100% disclosure purposes, I specifically discussed this one in this specific way because of an influx of anon ask messages I received in the wake of the finale. Literally the inciting incident for creating this entire post was what I can only assume was a joking ask about a comment Misha made at a con years ago. Someone actually bothered to take the time to type out those sentences to me. I have no idea what they were expecting in reply, or what could possibly motivate them to send this comment about something so entirely random from, again, several years ago. Just a joke? No idea, but whatever... it got me thinking that there might actually be people who are new to the fandom who MIGHT actually care about the fandom history, and maybe they just don’t know where to go for that info, or how to even begin searching through 16 years of history for things they might actually find enjoyment in, rather than just hauling random out of context garbage out on main and pointing and laughing about it now. People are actually allowed to care about things. It’s not cringeworthy to actually care about things, and you are not alone in actually caring, and there’s this whole big room over here full of people who are thrilled to share in that with you. This post is intended FOR THOSE PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY, so if that is not you, please just continue walking by.)

Yes, I know lots of y’all are new around here right now, but dredging up stuff from years ago that fandom has completely debunked and presenting it as TRU FAX again is just exhausting. We’re not trying to be party poopers, but seriously, we have seen it all and are mostly done with extinguishing bags of flaming dog poop on our front porches for the umpteenth year in a row. I’ve seen a lot of posts that have the same tone as “I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil” or “I heard kylo ren has an eight pack” and just... the information is there for anyone who cares enough to find it.

This goes double for “why is nobody talking about this thing I just discovered while watching the show for the first time?!” And, oh hon, we have talked it all into the ground over the last fifteen years. We’re happy you’re discovering it again, but I promise we talked about it plenty when the episodes originally aired. We have such a rich meta history that lots of us have worked really hard to preserve. I encourage you to seek it out, if nothing else than as historical artifacts. The way we have discussed the show has been a 16-year evolution. People have written literal doctoral dissertations on this show. Your shitposts are fun! We love reliving our own experience through fresh eyes, and seeing your wonder at experiencing it all again for the first time! But y’all didn’t invent this fandom in the last six months, either.

Meta Sources and Minerals provided by our friendly neighborhood fandom archivist, @lets-steal-an-archive

Academic books and articles about SPN 

A collection of Meta Essays going back to s1 and organized by topic (all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again)

SPN Heavy Meta Archive (s1-3)

Mel’s Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-12)

Oranges8hands Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-15, with many similar entries to Mel’s... though ymmv on viewpoint in a lot of these too)

Anyone remember Fandom Wank? Not the concept but the actual LJ... No? Okay have a link to SPN topics that ended up there. Through 2013. We have seen so much... including several fandom containment breaches.

for all your art sourcing needs, please see @theroadsofararchive, the repository for so much fandom art.

need to find a gif of something? canonspngifs is a vast repository of gifsets of the entire series. If the gif you want to use in your post happens to be the first gif in the gifset, in the tumblr gif finder thingy just paste the permalink to that post from canonspngifs (which is easily searchable by episode, character, location, situation, quotes, and sometimes even color and clothing items the actors are wearing... it’s really well organized, especially for tumblr >.>) and the first gif will be automatically linked with credit to the gif creator attached. It makes life easy that way. It’s also convenient when trying to remember something specific but can’t remember what episode it’s from. I’ve used the site to jog my memory before going to the superwiki armed with more specific search results to find episode quotes and references. Or sometimes I just scroll through all the nice gifs for fun, too.

Need a screencap of something and know exactly which episode it’s from? Try Home of the Nutty. You might not find the exact screencap you’re looking for, but they have a complete set of caps of every episode, and it’s an incredibly useful resource for quick reference checks and the like. Just give pages a chance to fully load before clicking on the next one. The site is easily overloaded, but it’s still free to use (and again, with credit... Pretty much every screencap on my entire blog is from HotN unless otherwise credited).

As you can see, this is a fandom built on preserving our history. You absolutely are not required to engage with any of this if that’s not of interest to you, but I can only assume that there are people who would be interested in it if only they knew it existed and how to find it. Well, now they do.

6. A few more notes on tags, and how they work on tumblr. The first 20 tags on your ORIGINAL posts are searchable sitewide, so if you want to be able to find something again, tag that thing first before going on general tag rambles. The only place tags on reblogs are searchable is on your own blog. So you don’t have to put 50 tags trying to get a post seen if it’s a reblog. You’re just spitting into the wind at that point. If you have a filing system for finding things again, then by all means add those tags (again, in the first 20, so they’re searchable), but you don’t need to tag a reblog “destiel” and “deancas” and “dean” and “cas” and “dean x cas” or whatever. Pick one for your personal blog’s filing system, that’s all you need.

(this was only added because tagging and searching on this site is so very broken... I get that a lot of folks don’t care about ever searching their own blogs again for anything, so this one only really applies if you do often find yourself trying to find old posts. If not, then it’s not really relevant.  It took me years to work out a decent tagging system, and at the beginning of my time here I never thought I’d end up camping out here for a decade and falling this deep into the fandom, and I regretted my lack of consistent tags only years later when I realized I actually wanted to be able to go back and find specific old posts again. So... for anyone who wants to err on the side of caution, working out a sensible tagging system really helps if you’re here for the long term. I personally tag content by episode, because some of my other general tags are so large as to be practically useless as a search term. But whatever system you choose to file stuff on your own blog, it really only has to make sense to you. And again, if this is pointless advice for someone who has no intention of settling here for the long term. Please feel free to ignore it. I just wish someone had explained it this way to me ten years ago and saved me the hassle of retroactively tagging something like 30k posts... especially now that using the mass tag replacer is the fastest way to get your entire blog deleted... oops? so yeah, don’t use the mass tag replacer either >.>)

7. Tags on Tumblr DO NOT WORK LIKE TAGS ON TWITTER. If you @ someone in the body of the post, it will show up in their notifications (if they’re the sort of person who even checks their notifications... not all of us do. For the record, I generally don’t...), but putting actor or ship names in the tags on a tumblr post does absolutely nothing. It’s not the same as tagging the actor’s twitter account in a tweet. Nobody’s getting notifications about you tagging a post about Jensen here as “Jensen Ackles.” There is a difference. Please learn it. (and don’t take headcanons and ESPECIALLY RPF or otherwise explicit art or fic from tumblr to twitter and tag the actors in it. That’s just... not okay.)

(I have seen the pearl clutchers getting all in a huff about the mere existence of RPF or even explicit content of fictional characters if it doesn’t meet their purity standards, but tagging those things allows people who don’t want to see it to actively avoid that content here. Nobody has a right to tell people their fictional content shouldn’t exist at all, or that creators of that fictional content somehow deserve harassment or threats for having dared to create such “immoral” content, won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children... and no... you do not do that here. Don’t be the problematic behavior you wish to ban from the world. Learn to use tags to protect yourself from, as i have attempted to emphasize here, fictional content you are personally upset by. That’s a you problem, not a problem for the creators of potentially upsetting content that they tag appropriately for.)

8. General formatting stuff: If you’re writing long text posts, visually break them up so people aren’t faced with one long wall of text. The enter key is your friend. Also, if you put long text posts under a Read More break and send people to your blog to finish reading, please ensure that your blog is actually visually accessible (tiny text, or light grey text on a dark grey background, or a visually busy background might be aesthetically pleasing to you but nobody can actually read it. Loads of folks won’t even try. Which is great if you don’t actually care whether people are able to appreciate your content or not, but something to at least consider if you *do* actively want to encourage engagement with your work. Confirm how your blog looks on both mobile and desktop and make sure it’s actually functional in both, too).

And since I mentioned that most of my experience on fandom tumblr has been in the SPN fandom, here’s a bit of a reminder for folks who are new around here. With the reminder that I have been here more than a decade and still feel like a newbie myself sometimes...

This is an OLD FANDOM. There are many, many people who have been at this longer than some of you have been alive. The average age for creators in this fandom is older than you think (I think of my friends in their 30′s as young’ins okay? okay). With that understood, you are responsible for the content you consume and are exposed to. Curate your experience. Ship and let ship. YKINMKATOK. Don’t deliberately expose yourself to content you find upsetting for whatever reason. Tags and warnings are your friends, not targets for you to attack in some sort of purity war. People will ship things you do not like (or in specific ways you do not like), will say things you do not agree with, and will find their happiness in things you abhor. That is not your concern. Find what you do like, and support and engage with it, and ignore (or block, or unfollow) the rest. Tumblr has a feature that lets you blacklist tags so the content you’re trying to avoid won’t appear on your dash.

Remember the paradox of tolerance.

It is not your job in fandom to police how other people enjoy the fandom. It’s not *my* job to police how *you* enjoy the fandom, UNLESS your enjoyment is in actively harming other real human beings in the fandom. If you don’t like their take on the character or the show or the plotlines or their ships or anything else, you don’t need to engage with their posts at all! The necessary corollary to this is that clarifying misunderstandings or correcting factual misinformation is not “policing.” 

(this is where the peanut gallery reminds me it ain’t that deep, and I plead with them to put down the social media and find just one (1) thing to actually believe in in this godforsaken life, find something other than disdain and cynicism and spite to live for. If those things motivate you to find a larger cause for yourself, then great, use them to your advantage, but use them to find something that makes you a better person or brings you a modicum of joy and connection to your fellow human beings despite living in a dystopian hellscape of a world)

I have seen a lot of posts lately that are founded on the sort of authority that comes with “I watched through tumblr for a few months and then watched the last three episodes of the series” and as such are just... missing the larger context of the entire show, and are unfounded entirely in canon. I 100% appreciate the new enthusiasm for the fandom that we’ve been living in here for years, and it’s wonderful to see new people enjoying the thing we love. Your headcanons are valid, you are valid, but recognize that your headcanons aren’t canon. All of us finale denialists have accepted this in some measure, so we feel you. We truly, truly feel you. But regarding actual canon, we have a resource for that: the Superwiki. Learn it, live it, love it, as Metatron would say.

(which you could discover he said in 10.17 Inside Man, thanks to the superwiki! accept no substitutes!)

(and again, there have been people who have been involved in fandom for years who haven’t engaged with canon in years, either! You can play in this universe however you choose, BUT FOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT CANON AT ALL, WHICH I AM AGAIN POINTEDLY SAYING MIGHT NOT BE YOU, READER, AND I’M NOT SUGGESTING YOU ARE WRONG FOR NOT WANTING TO ACTUALLY ENGAGE WITH CANON, but if you DO want to engage with canon, please have some useful resources. Why do people feel personally attacked by being presented a list of helpful resources? Absolutely baffling.)

(also: words have definitions. “Canon” is a specific thing, meaning in this case “the finished media product that aired on television.” Anything beyond those limits is secondary canon (think: john’s journal, which is not canon but canon adjacent at best...), word of god (i.e stuff said by the writers and showrunners), or headcanon (which includes actor commentary-- they may have helped create the show with their acting choices and whatever, but they are not in control of the story overall). If there’s something you dislike about actual canon, you can reject it and supplement it with your own theories or preferred outcomes-- that’s basically what fanfic is-- but that doesn’t make your theories canon (much to all our dismay, that’s just not how any of this works. This is not to invalidate how anyone engages with the show or the fandom, just trying to clarify what seems to have been a source of unintentional misunderstandings. Your theories do not have to be “canon” to be legitimate interpretations.)

***I am setting this section apart, and did make a separate post of just this following information, because this is where we go from being relatively chill about different parts of fandom choosing to interact in different ways and you do you and blog however you want, to “hey can everybody please understand that the way you are interacting with this specific material might be harmful for specific legal reasons, and stating that you do not care about the consequences of your actions does actively make you the asshole here...” Okay, now that we have that understood:

The spnscripthunt collective has been steadily acquiring new scripts (which are posted in full on the superwiki for everyone to enjoy, for free). The language around how some folks are talking about these scripts is... concerning. For very real legal reasons, actually, and not because we’re feeling precious about the collection and don’t wike it when meanies use them in shitposts.

-First off, these scripts are not “leaks.” They are all verified and legally purchased (or gifted, in some cases, but still acquired entirely above board. we didn’t whack anyone over the head in a back alley for these scripts, or swipe them out of someone’s trailer on set).

(in case anyone was unaware, these scripts are the copywritten protected property of Warner Brothers. So yes, how we use them and share them with the fandom could have legal repercussions. We present them as a collected resource of fandom history which SHOULD fall under Fair Use doctrine, but this is untested legal water. Insinuating that the scripts are somehow not entirely legally obtained, or that posting them for public access involved less than 100% transparent and entirely legal transactions is incredibly concerning.

Once again for the peanut gallery, if you don’t care about any of that and are just having a good time with it, at least be mindful of the work and expense a large group of people have gone through to acquire and present the content you’re all too eager to exploit for cheap thrills. Some of us do actually care and are not exactly comfortable with the fact that others don’t seem to care about burning it all to the ground. We can’t force you to listen or behave as we’d hope you might, but at least be aware of the potential consequences of your actions. All we’re asking is for you to not be the douchebag who sets the whole neighborhood on fire with your illegal fireworks display. Is that too much to ask for? more on that in a second, first... a psa)

-If you see a script for sale and are unsure if it’s legit (or believe it might already be freely available in our collection), please feel free to ask us for advice. Our goal is to make as much of our fandom history available to the entire fandom, and we absolutely do not want anyone shelling out money for stuff you can already find for free.

(seriously, we’ve seen a bunch of resellers cropping up selling printed versions of the scripts we bought and uploaded for everyone to enjoy free of charge, or scripts that are otherwise of dubious origin. We’ve been at this for years now and know what’s actually out there. We don’t want anyone to fall for a scam if we can help it)

-Also, the usual reminder that the scripts we acquire ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE FINAL SHOOTING DRAFTS. In fact, the majority of scripts in our collection are NOT. Changes are made daily to scripts, even during filming. Comparing a Production Draft (white pages, effectively the first “final draft” of what usually becomes a series of drafts before filming wraps) to a much later revision (say... green or goldenrod revisions, several of which we DO have in our collection for comparison) and how those earlier drafts often differ wildly from the aired version versus how similar a much later green draft is to the aired version, for example, can teach you a lot about the television writing process. The link above to the superwiki scripts page has a nice little explainer about how this process works.

Differences between our posted scripts (many of which are white drafts, aka FIRST complete drafts, which will likely go through multiple rounds of revisions before filming even begins) and the aired version of the show are not all “acting choices” or a director or editor just cutting whole scenes on a whim. It’s insulting to everyone involved in production to suggest that’s the case.

(and yeah, fine... whatever, make any sort of posts you like regarding how those changes came about, but at the very least understand that it’s not actually the truth about how any of this works. Don’t care that that’s not the truth and want to make the posts anyway because shitposting is fun and that’s the extent of your sense of humor? FINE! You’re entitled to do that! But at least you DO know the truth now, and hopefully so do the people who engage with your posts. Deliberate ignorance isn’t cute, smooth lions notwithstanding)

There’s probably a whole other post to be made on fandom tagging etiquette, but again I don’t really use the tags enough to know what’s going on with that whole situation. I’ve also probably left a lot of stuff out, so please feel free to add things I’ve overlooked.

Thanks also to @trisscar368 and @thayerkerbasy for help compiling this, too. They were kind enough to escort me through the park to feed these pigeons. Now I need to take them out for ice cream. :’D

So I guess welcome to the neighborhood. Make yourself at home, but like... try not to trash the place while you’re here. Some of us live here by choice, lol.

[fordarkisthesuede]

I got tagged by @fractualized - and I had to think about this for a while. Sorry for the delay, frac'! I pretty much felt like this all week (lol):

GIF by lostwithoutmyboswell

Ok, so we're gonna start from #5, because I decided to rate these like a loon:

#5:

Birth. Starting off on the disk horse topic of HP fanfic. Listen, regardless of how I feel about the series now (which is messy, to say the least), there's one thing I still can't help but love about it...and it's not only tiny, but half of the reasoning behind it is of my own making. It's Peeves the Poltergeist. I LOVE Peeves. He's my favorite character type - short, temperamental, powerful, 90% humor and fun, inhuman, and neither a Good nor Bad guy. I rarely used to read HP fic back in the day, but I noticed that for such a big fandom, he never had much to his name. (And what I did find was...disappointing for me.) I reread the series in 2015 for the first time in a while and did some Deep Thinking about him. What his limits are. How he's presented. Where he even came from. The bare scraps of canon and Word of God (distasteful) material pushed my buzzing brain to write about him, and eventually churned out this little origin story. I wrote several one-shots surrounding him, but this is my favorite of the bunch. In my eyes, it's simple, short, and effective in storytelling. So I like it. (^_^)

#4:

The Whole Nine Yards. Yes, my current WIP is on the favorite list. It started off as a sex-romp list, because I had too many positions and kinks I wanted John and Bruce to try. It first grew into showing Bruce/John as a couple at home, because my main fics in the Perseverance Project series don't get to show them being all lovey-dovey as much as I'd like. Then I added a few dashes of angst for character building. Then it evolved into including what AtBoM skipped over (for various reasons) - visits at Arkham showing their [growing] love and trust rebuild post-S2, and showing different sides to them.

So what we have now is: "Two guys in love met in an asylum 2.5 years ago, and less than one year after they first met, one keeps coming to visit the other. The visits' subjects are then related to current day, where they finally live together like a real couple, with all it's ups and downs, and sexy results". It's a mouthful, I know. ;D But I think it works!

It's great to explore all these things and essentially back-track a bit versus rewrite any part of AtBoM. Plus, I get to mumble about something that always interests me in this 'verse: Bruce's relationship with his parents. To go from loving them and putting them and their deaths on a pedestal to look to for inspiration to keep going on being Batman, to learning they were the biggest criminals in the city and a key reason while he's even having to be Batman... That's gotta affect how he looks at things. Like, I mentioned Bruce's dislike of his house in AtBoM and TToJ, but here it's full-force. It was a mausoleum for their memory and now it's just a means to an end. He doesn't consider it home, or even rightfully his. But John living there with him makes it a home. Their home. :')

Also, I feel like I'm playing a decorating game and a dress up game with it! Kind of like The Sims, I guess. xD John's room and summer wardrobe are fun to craft as I go. (Don't worry, you'll get to see John's classic outfit at the end. For...reasons.) Plus, soon* you'll see Bruce's bedroom revamped!

#3:

A Ghost Too Far. Disk Horse, part two. Peeves is the one thing I still wistfully sigh over and go "ah, what could have been"...all while knowing that I took the bones of my blorbo and crafted him a full body myself. It's been 7 years since I started writing this particular story, and it clocks in over 230K words. As things are now, I have no idea if I'll ever actually finish it, for a myriad of reasons. So to make a long story short (HA!):

Out of the hundreds of thousands of HP fanfics, and the handful that had Peeves as a character, I found Peeves had no proper big epic romance story of his own and decided to make him one, combining it with one big exploratory setting of How He Is, all set in 2003/2004. His destined romantic partner is an American witch (queue eyeroll), acting as a one-year-only DatDA teacher (queue harder eyeroll), who I can describe in modern** terms as a gender-non-conforming adult punk who is absolutely fascinated with ghosts. She makes it a point to study the castle ghosts, especially Peeves, as poltergeists are super rare and physical ones are apparently unheard of outside of him. She makes a deal with Peeves that he can break just about anything she owns and annoy her all he wants, in exchange for information on how he works. Which I worked out via the aforementioned HP reread and lots of Deep Thinking as literally by feeding off of (aka absorbing) magic from humans, like his "relatives" the Dementor and Boggart. Unlike them, he primarily eats high energy feelings of "anger" "sadness" and "excitement", because he was created in a castle with children who can have powerful feelings of all three very easily. Is this theory of mine presented in canon? Who fucking cares anymore, the author's dead in all senses but literal.

It might not be finished, and it might never be, but writing out this monstrosity of a theory while getting a guy like Peeves to fall in and explore love for the first time holds a special place in my heart. Because not only does Peeves reside permanently in my brain (I'm pretty sure he's the Writing Gremlin who suggests those "this is what goes painfully wrong" scenarios), but so does Dandrane, who I hand-crafted to be Peevesy's romantic partner. I love her. I owe her. Her favorite color is hot pink; because of her, I have gotten over my old feud with the color pink. I wrote her to be 30 while I was then 24; after a while, nearing/turning 30 no longer bothered me. I wrote her to be cool, confident, and a little horrible. Because we all have that bitchy little voice in our head sometimes... The desire to break something without consequences... The need to have our anger recognized rather than ignored or attempted to be placated... Dandrane is a wonderful vessel for these feelings, even after all this time.

She's my cool girl. My tall bean. My silly little flamingo. I want to put her in an enriched enclosure and watch her with a set of binoculars.

#2:

At the Brink of Midnight. My most popular fic is second-place in my heart, at this current hour. (Ha!) For reasons I'm sure you long-time readers already guessed, that I have mentioned time and again in it's author notes: this fic was FUN to make!!!

The Halloween setting! The fresh takes on Scarecrow and Poison Ivy! John recreating Joker! Bruce rescuing John! Bruce finally hugging John! THE CONFESSION SCENE! A rave scene in a graveyard!!! Batman and Joker teaming up to kick ass!!!!!

It's! So! Great!!! It's not too long, but still a big novel-length! Easy to read and get lost in! It presents an original character who carries the possibility of redemption! It hits all those story beats I craved to see for a Season 3! Hell, even now I'd be hard pressed not to expect to see Dr. Crane in any potential sequel we'd get IRL!

Are there things I'd change? Sure. But nothing major. I'm still happy with it, even 4 years later. Maybe part of my love for it is also a desire to be able to pump out 110K words within a few months again...

#1:

The Tolls of Justice!

Is it my most popular fic? Nah, it's #2. But it's my #1. The king of my heart. It took 2-and-a-half years to finish, in no small part because 2020 was a bitch. And despite the frustration at writer's block, despite the silly errors that I still need to go back and fix, and despite the time it took...God, I LOVE it.

Whenever I reread part of it, I get sucked in and read more than I meant to. I know the majority of the little notes I made, but whenever I read one of the tarot hints I can't help but go ehe he he. I read John's breakdown in Arkham, and his transformation into what is his final form of vigilante!Joker, and I still tear up. I see the theme of a writer playing God, of having a defined inescapable ending but proving that choices still matter, and just sit with it in utter delight.

I have many favorite moments: Tiffany and John's day out, the entirety of the Wayne Gala, John and Iman's investigation at the theater, Batman's descent into the Court of Owls' secret lair with Robin... But I have a favorite bit. It's the kind of thing I giggle over while kicking my legs in my seat.

So in Chapter 12, Batman and Joker are having a few moments together before the Big Battle in the high tier of seats above the main floor/"stage area", able to watch the Court of Owls' mock-trial below. In theaters, the highest tier is sometimes known as "the gods" seats.

As my version of the CoO has their whole thing built on "our God wrote down our destiny exactly and the Evil God keeps causing chaos to interfere", and considering the DC multiverses and that Batman and Joker are constantly in them, and as Bats and Jokes are generally simplified as "Order and Chaos"... They're figuratively 'gods' in "the gods" seats watching the show below. ౧(*മ് ധമ്)੭ु⁾⁾

As for WIPs, I only have 2 at the moment. I use OneNote to write all my ideas for it (when I'm actually writing them down):

As you can see, I have sections for The Whole Nine Yards (abbreviated "W9Y" in notes only) and the untitled "BtTTS S5" below. (The "After Hours" is just IRL work notes, when I had to use my personal PC for work in 2020, and "Noir "is literally a list of film noir movies I'm keen to watch. I've been really into them lately!)

Right now S5's notepad only has 2 sections - the Thinkbox and "J Tech". The Thinkbox pages are pretty much the brainstorm dumping ground...but TWNY's is actually laid out rather nicely, like this. I'd post a screenshot, but then this post would...uh, turn nsfw... (; ' o' )

Right now, the only WIP word docs are here, in my "BtTTS - The Perseverance Project" folder:

As for tagging...hm. Um... Since it was frac' who tagged me... I choose @distort-opia, if they're so inclined! (And anyone else who wants to!) Edit: I am a fool who does not reread properly. 😭 Sorry hun, you already did it! So field's wide open!!!

*at the time of this posting, TWNY Chapter 7 is still in progress. It's 2/3rds of the way done! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

**at the time of writing the story in question, the term "gender non-conforming" was not known about as widely as it is now; basically, I knew what it was without knowing what it was called.

[persepholline]

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

[gwlemonyshenanigans]

Spotlight Friday

Time is flying by so fast! In two days the event will kick off! Are you as excited as we are?

It’s time to put two more of our wonderful creators in the spotlight!

Meggie-Stardust/Wreck

Where can we find you? (Ao3, FFN, Tumblr, etc?)

AO3: Wreck; Tumblr: meggie-stardust

Who is your favorite character?

Treize

Which is your favorite Gundam?

Deathscythe

What is your favorite episode or scene from Gundam Wing? (Show, movie, or manga)

I love every moment that Treize gets to be extra, up to and including his death, but also the moment when Epyon is revealed to to be wearing kneehigh boots and holding a whip. Just chef's kiss.

What got you into the Gundam Wing fandom?

Back in the day I had a crush, and they started watched GW, so I did, too. And then I started looking stuff up and then I found the old GW Addition message boards and discovered fic and the rest is history. But that that was also like 22 years ago! So the rest of the story goes, at the end of 2020, a friend and I decided to rewatch the series for the first time since the early 2000s, and I got sucked back in. And here I am!

Which type of fandom media do you prefer to contribute? And to consume? (art, fics, metas, etc.)

I write fic, and I write silly shitposts. In terms of consuming, I love all contributions to fandom. Every one brings their own thing to the table, and it is such a gift for everyone else.

What is your favorite trope?

Specific to GW? I love me a good safe-house fic. And I am a big fan of post-war, everyone works for the Preventors.

Shamelessly plug the work you are most proud of and the reason why!

My Lemony fic from last year, and the first major GW thing I'd written since taking a 15 year break from GW. It's a 1x2x3 with multiple POV's and I can't believe I actually finished it! https://archiveofourown.org/works/31357937/chapters/77541641

Dhampir

Where can we find you? (Ao3, FFN, Tumblr, etc?)

AO3

Who is your favorite character?

Most likely Duo, but honestly all the boys are near and dear to me.

Which is your favorite Gundam?

Deathscythe, I love the look so much and the scythe is so cool. He was the first Gundam I saw when I started watching and I was intrigued from that moment forward.

What is your favorite episode or scene from Gundam Wing? (Show, movie, or manga)

When Duo breaks Heero out of the base towards the beginning of the series. I don't know why that scene was so poignant to me, but it's the scene that always comes back to me when I think about Gundam Wing.

What got you into the Gundam Wing fandom?

I didn't even know about Fanfiction at the time, it wasn't until almost ten years after watching Gundam Wing that I discovered Fanfiction, but it was one of the first series I checked out as soon as I discovered it and I was amazed at how great the writing was and the stories people came up with. I wanted to try it myself after reading and haven't left since!

Which type of fandom media do you prefer to contribute? And to consume? (art, fics, metas, etc.)

Fiction, I'm in awe of those who can draw, but I can't draw at all.

What is your favorite trope?

I used to be a die-hard 1x2 and 6x2 fan, but some great writers have made me love practically all the pairings possible.

Shamelessly plug the work you are most proud of and the reason why!

Oh man, that's hard. I guess I would say Sum Tuus, it's my longest fic and fairly dark, but I had so much fun with it too. I'm so proud of it because it wasn't the easiest to write, but I finished it and loved watching the characters evolve and change as they got older. It was one of the first times I wrote from a first person POV, which was a new experience, and I discovered I really enjoy it!