#Why the fuck am I writing a whole ass novel in the tags

[harpoonsnotspoons]

Yeah so I might be a yapper and I'll admit to that. But I'll shut up for an indeterminate amount of time if someone with a nice voice starts yapping to me and lets me lay on them while they do it because god fucking damnit I could fall asleep to that shit. It's like drugs but better because drugs can't have soothing voices with stupid fucking accents and they can't ramble about the dumbest shit you've ever heard of that makes your brain melt into a puddle because what the actual fuck are you saying. What are you talking about. Nvm I don't care just shut up and let me sleep on you

[darklydeliciousdesires]

Sky Full of Stars - Chapter Seven.

Second update is here, besties! This is basically shaping up to be a novel, the 20th chapter just begun in the writing and I am loving every last second of creating their story! Just to note, too, the song Picses that is mentioned is a real song, by the band Jinjer, the musical claim for Jade's voice and Seventh Gate on a whole. Give it a listen, it's beautiful.

Big thanks to my tiny audience for your commitment to reading. I see a few of you liking it but remaining quiet. I would so love to hear from you, if you'd be so kind to drop a little comment, and even better, add a reblog to help me get a bit more exposure. Thanks guys :)

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six

Tag list - In the comments

Words - 4,047

Warnings - 18+ content throughout. Minors DNI!

“Ahh, he has arrived. Dogs, come on. This show of frenzy is not becoming of you.”  

Patrick Brody; he could never just greet someone with a simple hello, letting his son into the house on Christmas morning. He at least gave Adrien a big hug while he was being dived all over by two very excitable Pit Bull terriers, though.  

“Merry Christmas, pop,” he spoke with affection, his dad nodding and smiling. 

“Same extended in return. Now, your mother is in the kitchen, if you will excuse me, I am slowly working myself through what’s left of my Tanqueray while I ruminate on Keats and a little Joy Division. It’s great to see you, though. I’ll be out when the food is done.”  

Ahh, he was in one of his moods, chasing a slither of melancholy. Why he’d chosen Christmas morning to do such was beyond Adrien, but he was used to the strange habits of his fiercely intellectual father. The last time he’d visited, it was Sangria paired with The Rolling Stones and a book on the art of John Williams Waterhouse.  

Truly, there was nobody like his father. Or his mother.  

“Is that my boy?”  

“Sure is,” Adrien called, placing the large bag of gifts he’d brought beneath the tree in the lounge, walking down to the kitchen to see her emerge, her arms held wide. “Merry Christmas, ma.” 

“Merry Christmas, my love,” she spoke, pulling him into a hug. “Is your father still absconding?” 

“He is,” he confirmed, giving the dogs a little more attention before following her down the hall. 

“You know, I thought he’d get out of that whole tortured artist bit when he hit thirty,” Lois voiced, hurrying back into the kitchen to check on the gaggle of pots occupying the stove. “Never damned well happened!” Turning the burners down, she glided to the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle of wine with raised eyebrows. “I got this or beer? Up to you.”  

“I’ll take a beer, but let me, mom. You have enough to do, or I can stir something?” He made a move off the high stool, watching his mother race towards him, waving her hands. 

“You will stay away from the cooker, Adrien Nicholas Brody!” she warned, unscrewing the top and handing him the bottle. “You’re a liability.” 

His face was a picture of affronted. “Says the woman who’s set fire to her own hair how many times?”  

Pointing at him, she waved her finger, starting to laugh softly in spite of herself. “Fucking smart ass, is what you are.”  

“I get it from you, ma,” he teased, reaching for Ginsberg’s giant head when the dog made it clear he required further petting, Bukowski pottering around in the hallway, shaking the hell out of a brand-new chew toy. Moving over to the balcony, he turned the key and slid the door, letting himself out into the cold Christmas morning, lighting up a cigarette. 

“Still smoking, huh?” his mother observed, raising an eyebrow. 

“Don’t start bitching. Not with how many you used to chain a day,” he warned, raising an eyebrow.  

Picking up her wine, she felt confident to leave the food for five minutes, joining him out on the balcony. “Wasn’t going to. I could do with one. Gimme.” Rummaging in his pocket, he pulled the pack out, Lois taking one and leaning to the light he offered, the smell of the lighter fluid mixing pleasantly with the tobacco. Taking a long drag, she immediately looked more blissful.  

“Oh, full tar. Good boy,” she sighed, kissing his shoulder as she rubbed his arm. 

“Not my choice, I stole them from my girlfriend,” he confessed, watching her eyes widen. 

“Excuse me, son of mine?” Her exclamation was coupled with the usual wild gesticulating, arms flying expressively. “Girlfriend, you just drop that in there casually, that there’s a girlfriend on the scene now?”  

He laughed softly through his nose, looking out across the white landscape below. “Yeah, there’s a girlfriend. It’s been three and a half months now.”  

Lois wound her hand expectantly. “And? Name, age, what does she do? Please don’t tell me it’s another bullshit model who doesn’t know shit from Shinola. I can’t bear the idea of you bringing another pretty dullard into my goddamned house!” 

“You liked Sofia,” he protested. 

“Sofia was well read, she was interested in other cultures, she’d travelled. She was an anomaly. Anyway, we don’t talk about her any longer! Tell me about the girl,” she demanded, her eyes full of excitement. 

“Her name is Jade, she’s thirty-one, and she’s the vocalist for a band called Seventh Gate. And she acts as well.”  

Lois paused, her wine glass almost reaching her mouth, her other hand moving to grip, and then softly shake his forearm. “You’re dating Jade Burton?” 

Wait. How did his mother even know who she was? “Hold on, you know who she is?” 

Her finger thrust towards the kitchen, her entire arm waving. “That new canvas I have out in the hallway? I painted that listening to Black Electric Wasteland.”  

Their second album, but how... how did his mother know that? “Who are you, and what have you done with Lois?” 

“Oh, come on! You know I listen to rock! I’ve got Sabbath and Def Leopard albums in my collection,” she exclaimed, taking another drag on her cigarette. 

“Yeah, but Seventh Gate is way heavier than that. It’s the musical equivalent of having a safe dropped on your head.”  

She snorted into her wine glass. “And how the hell do you know? You only listen to music made by fellas with gold teeth who wear jeans nine sizes too big!”  

He couldn’t help but snort a laugh at that. “Because that’s how I met her. I got talked to going to the Rock and Iron festival with Lewis while I was in LA. The first time I met Jade was when she jumped onto the barrier and screamed about in an inch from my face.” That particular revelation delighted his mother, imagining it. He went on to explain a little more, how he’d met her properly backstage, thought she was incredible and swiftly decided in a moment of madness to join the tour for a week.  

“Good for you, god! You didn’t do anything like this in your teens, you were always so focused. Why not in your thirties? And look what came of it, you’re dating a legend! Oh, mother of pearl, that girl’s voice!” Flicking her finished cigarette over the rail, she bustled back inside, locating her phone and swiping around, putting it in the dock and pressing play. “I love this song. Pisces. Please tell me you’ve heard it?” 

He had, since it had been in their setlist on tour. They stood silently as they listened to the opening bars, Lois softly singing along to the melodic opening, clasping a hand to her chest. “I adore her! All of them, such talented girls!” 

Adrien was still stuck in the realms of huge surprise that his mother had not only heard of Seventh Gate, but was a fan, too, when the kitchen door opened, his father walking in.  

“Interesting harmonies, and the chord progression is stunning work. Who is this?” 

“Adrien’s girlfriend and her band. They’re the girls whose music inspired my painting!” Lois replied with enthusiasm, continuing to softly sing as her husband topped up his gin. “You’ll never believe what he did, Patrick. Meets her at a show and then, he just hops on a tour bus with her for a week. Just like that!” 

His father paused, eyebrows raised. “You and five women absconded to a bus for a week,” he mused, sipping his gin. “A lesser man might make a joke about such setting tongues wagging, but it feels a little too low brow.” Another sip of gin was taken. “How is your tongue, by the way?” 

Patrick Brody; he was a man entirely too witty for his own good.  

Adrien closed his eyes, slowly shaking his head. “You’re fucking terrible.” 

“I’m an effervescent delight. And you? You’ve now officially cemented yourself as a groupie.” Closing the fridge, he stood for a moment, tapping his foot as he continued to listen. “Yes. I like it, mmhmm.” 

Adrien couldn’t help but grin. “Just wait for the chorus.”  

His dad looked curious for all of five seconds, before the tempo changed drastically, both musically and vocally. “What in the?” he exclaimed, wide eyed, scratching his chin. “That’s a woman?”  

“Yep,” Adrien confirmed, “that’s my girl.” 

He listened a little longer, sipping his drink. “Does she need a priest? It sounds like she has a demon.” 

Immediately, Lois pointed at the door. “Get out of my kitchen at once, you lousy philistine!” Their little double act had their only child laughing quietly, thinking his dad truly wasn’t all too wrong. After all, he’d likened that ripsaw roar to something hell had spat up too upon first hearing it. “When can I meet her?” 

He knew he’d have that question directed at him sooner rather than later. “I’ll arrange something with her and get back to you. I have five weeks before I’m away again, we can come over one afternoon, or meet you guys in the city?”  

“I’d love that, yes. So, tell me more about her, then,” she requested, her eyes lighting up. She could see it so clearly, how smitten her son was. “She’s British, isn’t she?” 

“British-Sicilian. She was born in Palermo. Arrived three months earlier than expected while her mom was over there visiting family, backpacking with her dad.” 

“Oh!” she cried, resting a hand to her chest. “She was a little preemie baby? How dear.” 

“Yeah,” he confirmed, “almost didn’t make it, weighed about three pounds when she was born. I like to think she defied all the odds stacked against her, though.” He smiled, thinking of her fortitude, her toughness to do the job that she did, and at the standard she did it. “She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met.” 

Lois studied him for a moment, beginning to nod. Finally, he’d met the one who she sensed wouldn't be going anywhere in a hurry. “I’m going to love her, aren’t I?”  

Watching that sly smile, he looked away for a moment, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Yeah. You really, really are.” She left all talk of the new girl there, going back to the cooker and inquiring over how everything else was in her son’s life as she stirred and tinkered.  

Meanwhile, over in Harlem, Jade found herself in a similar surrounding. Except in her family, you pitched in, or you got the hell out of the way. 

“Steven!” Gemma yelled, her husband jumping a foot in the air. “If I have told you once, I have told you a million times, stop stealing the turkey skin!” 

“Why? You don’t like it, Rachel is a fussy vegan, Jade doesn’t care, and Marco isn’t even here. Allow a man to have his simple pleasures, my little snap dragon,” he teased, winking when his daughters began to laugh, Jade making a snappy motion with her hand towards the back of her mother’s head. It was very weird, for her brother not to be there, this year staying in LA with his new boyfriend, Jack and his family.  

“Your parents like it, and I finally have the skin nice and crisp, so it’ll give your mother one less thing to complain about,” she replied, physically hip bumping Jade down a little as she poured cream into the potatoes, ready to mash into a pulp.  

“Go, go on, out of my way!” 

“You called me in to carve the bird, Gemma,” he reminded her, taking the large knife the younger of his daughter’s passed over to him.  

“Well then do it instead of standing there slowly making a start on eating it!” 

Jade quickly finished her potato-based endeavours, reaching for the bottle of scotch on the side, topping up her mother’s glass and adding ice from the fridge dispenser. “Mum, drink that before you give yourself a heart attack and thus make dad have to work on his day off.”  

“Open heart surgery on the tiles with a carving knife,” he chimed, examining the blade. “I think I could make do.”  

The family all paused to laugh, Gemma taking the drink passed to her gratefully, wrapping her arm around her daughter’s waist. “Thanks, buba.” Taking a sip, she then widened her eyes. “Rachel!” Check what time we’re on. I need to put the beans on at the very last minute, so they don’t overcook.”  

“Can’t, mama. My phone is in the lounge.” 

“Check mine,” Jade spoke, “It’s on the counter.”  

Illuminating the screen, Rachel took in the time, as well as something else notable. “It’s two twenty-one, and sis, why do you have a picture of Adrien Brody as your screen lock? Are you fangirling?” 

“No,” she beamed, “but I am dating him. That’s the news I had to share before I got wrapped up in the Christmas chaos.”  

Immediately, her right eardrum was almost blown out. “What the utter bloody hell, Jade Lucia? You’re... and... seriously? Adrien Brody, really?” 

“Mum, you’re making it sound like he has two heads, or like I have. I’m not sure which is worse,” she chirped, reaching for her wine and taking a big gulp.  

Gemma nudged her with a soft elbow. “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it! So, come on. Tell us everything!” 

“Not everything,” her dad mumbled, raising an eyebrow. 

“Well, I wanna know everything,” Rachel piped up, nodding towards the door. “Get out, dad. I wanna hear if he’s good in bed or not.”  

He instantly looked mildly mortified, scrunching his eyes tightly shut. “Pretending I didn’t hear that,” he sang, shaking his head, “wishing you were still two and six instead of these grown women who let penises near you.”  

Jade almost choked on her wine for her laughter, Steven finishing his very neat and precise carving, nothing less than anybody expected for a surgeon to accomplish. “I am leaving you to your women’s talk. I shall be in the lounge, eating my nougat.”  

As soon as he was gone, two sets of eyes turned to her. “Tell us everything!” they both spoke at once, Gemma especially excited as she bounced on her heels a little. Her darling mother still had that silliness of youth about her, a very young fifty. With preparations all done for the moment, they stood and listened as Jade regaled them with the story, even grabbing her phone to show them the picture taken literally at the exact moment they’d first met, Jade bellowing a scream right in his face.  

“What, so he just blew off his commitments and got on a bus with you?” her mother cried, sipping her drink, looking absolutely delighted. 

“He did, and yeah. We fell in love,” she confessed, beaming as they cooed, Rachel moving to hug her. 

“That’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever heard! Aww!” she spoke, kissing her sister’s cheek fondly. “You’re keeping it quiet, I gotta say. Haven’t seen any pictures of you guys together in the press or anything.” 

“Well, we haven’t been out together much,” she admitted, fiddling with her necklace, one he bought for her three days previously when he came back into the city. “There have been a couple, though.” A little lament sounded in her sigh, knowing of course it would happen sooner or later, being that she was relatively well known, and Adrien of course very famous. “Thank fuck there wasn’t any after what happened with Jen. Nobody got pictures of him there, which I’m glad of. I don’t want anything like that possibly impacting him negatively.” 

Gemma’s eyes widened. “He was there when it happened?” 

Gulping at the memory of that terrifying day, she fortified herself with a mouthful of wine. “He was. He’s the one who found her. He saved her life.”  

The eldest of the Burton women let out a little gasp, covering her mouth with her hand. “God above, I can’t imagine how I’d react.” 

“Horrible as it was for him, he was probably the best person to find her,” she admitted, “he’s very steady and pragmatic, very calm. He doesn’t get flustered easily at all. I doubt any of us would have thought to check for her stash, Jess’s weed too and get rid of it so nobody got arrested and made an already nightmarish situation a thousand times worse.” 

“What a good guy, wow. And how is my beautiful Jen now?” Gemma asked. Jen had always been her favourite, looking at the kitchen table and being able to picture her there, drumming upon the surface with a couple of pencils as a gawky, fifteen-year-old kid with bright pink hair. That very brownstone was where Seventh Gate had begun, their rehearsals confined to the basement, the girls all coming over after school every day to practice for hours. 

Jade smiled, remembering her last phone call with her. “She’s doing okay. The first week withdrawing was hell, but better than it could have been since she wasn’t a long-term, substantial user. She’s doing the twenty-eight-day program but is open to staying longer if she feels like she needs to.”  

Feeling a little teary, she took a breath, stilling the little emotional vortex that began to swirl. Of course, true to her nature, she only let herself feel it momentarily before she hardened herself. “I’m so proud of her. She was just like, ‘I have a problem and I need to get help in fixing it, because I ain’t going out like that, I’m not scaring you guys that bad ever again’, so checked herself into Urban Recovery in Brooklyn as soon as she got back to the city.” 

She remembered how small and broken she’d looked the day after her overdose, seeing here there in hospital, trying to remain upbeat. Jen never cried, the epitome of a tough New York girl, but as soon as she’d seen Adrien, she’d burst into tears, apologising for putting him through something like that and thanking him over and over for saving her life.  

Speaking of the man himself, after they had both spent the day with their families, they met up again that evening at Jade’s apartment in the West Village, Adrien flecked with a sprinkling of snow as he arrived. Christmas in New York was her favourite time of the year, loving watching it tumble from the sky through the two floor to ceiling windows in her living room. ��

The space was airy and light, yet sumptuously cozy, candles dotted around lighting every surface, a very big but tastefully decorated tree in the corner of the apartment, the warm white lights twinkling beautifully against the minimal ornaments. They shared a bottle of red wine while exchanging gifts, Jade buying him a whole heap of things she knew he liked, his favourite perhaps being a little crochet doll of a bald, bespectacled man in an orange robe on a bicycle. It took him a good five minutes to stop laughing. 

“His holiness on a bicycle, oh god, I love it!” he hissed, reaching for the last gift in the pile.  

“Now this one has had me riddled with anxiety over whether you’ll like it or not, and I just have to hope to hell that you do!” she spoke, Adrien opening the paper with curiosity, pulling out a white label record from within.  

“The boy from Queens?” he spoke, looking at the title written on there with a Sharpie, nothing else denoting anything. “Who’s it by?” 

Pointing at her record player in the corner, she smiled. “It’s an original collaboration. Put it on and find out.” Heaving himself off the couch, he walked over and did exactly that, placing the vinyl down atop the player and switching it on, carefully lining the needle up. As soon as he heard the opening beats, he spun to stare at her.  

“What did you do, Burtie?” he spoke, his smile beginning to spread. His mouth then fell open completely, hearing the vocal intro that was Method Man himself, dropping rhymes over his beats.  

Burtie. She loved that particular cute little nickname, breathing a huge sigh of relief at his reaction. “I played him some samples of those beat tracks you sent me, shared a few lyrical ideas to tailor it, added to it, and we recorded it upstairs after you’d left last week. You do not even want to know how much it cost me to get it pressed at such short notice as a one off, but you’re worth every cent, my darling.” 

Standing there listening, the clever lyrics all relating to him, he was floored. Utterly stunned. “This is the best gift anyone has ever gotten me!” he spoke, nodding his head, “damn, that’s so sick! Baby, thank you so much. Seriously, this is the best.”  

“Isn’t it, though? And you’re welcome,” she beamed, elated that he was enjoying something she’d worked so hard on collaboratively. It was always great to hang out with her friend, having Clifford there for nineteen hours straight working on it. Getting to work with him on something so personal up in her little recording space had been an unforgettable experience, though.  

Once the track had finished, he came back over to her, lifting up the large gift he’d brought for her, giving her a kiss before sitting down beside where she was comfortably resting in her gigantic bean bag. “Here, I’d say I hope you’ll like it, but I know you definitely will.”  

Taking it from him, she propped it back against her large coffee table, picking at the corner before gently tearing the paper. The squeak that bubbled in her throat as she clasped a hand over her mouth made his stomach prickle with joy, watching her so excited.  

“Oh my life!” More of the canvas was revealed, Jade flapping her hands as she bounced a little, eyes widening. “Oh my fucking god, Adrien!”  

“And I’m deaf. Again,” he joked, pushing a finger against his ear and giving it a little wiggle to stop the ringing her scream had evoked.  

Her mouth hung open, looking between him and the painting, more noises of approval sounding. “You bought me a Beksinski original?” 

Zdzislaw Beksinski was her favourite artist, the Polish painter and photographer whose medium was dark and macabre, the original painting discovered by Adrien after scouring the internet, finding it for sale through a private collector. It had been worth every single ounce of hassle in getting it shipped over from Germany, the insurance, the customs debacle, the mild heart attack he’d suffered at hearing it might not arrive in time for Christmas, just to see the look of such pure, unfiltered happiness on her face.  

“He... he touched this,” she whispered, her fingers gently gliding over the ridges of the oil paint, every swirl and groove, shaking her head in amazement. “Baby, I love it. Thank you! Come here, my handsome mans.” Pulling him into her arms, she showered him with kisses, utterly delighted to have received such a thoughtful gift. She shuddered to think what he must have shelled out for it. Beksinski’s work went for tens of thousands.  

Admiring it as she leaned back against his chest, she honestly couldn’t remember the last Christmas she’d felt quite as elated as she did in that moment, in the arms of her love, cozy and warm as outside, the snow continued to cover Manhattan in a thick blanket of glistening white.  

“I got you something else, too.” Picking up a small package, he handed it to her, Jade feeling something she instantly recognised within. Pulling it out, there in her hand lay a looped up, long coil of dark blue bondage rope, her grin widening so much, he couldn’t help but laugh softly.  

“Put your hand in my bra right now and check out what just seeing this has done to my nipples.” He obliged, giving the left one a little stroke. It was like a bullet. “Okay we’re going to bed right now.”  

It was the exact reaction he’d been looking for. 

[im--never--happy]

hello aaaa i wrote an ask and my internet glitched so idk if it sent or not, so i'm super sorry if you got two in a row! you can ignore this is if you did haha. nyway i just wanted to say i really enjoy your blog and i saw you mention that you have a lot of pre-canon mako thoughts/hcs -- would you, by chance, like to share some of them :O i would be endlessly delighted!! (only if you want to ofc!) (also you're insanely sweet in the tags of reblogs you made of my silly posts, ty <3)

hiiii helloooo yess! i would be thoroughly delighted to share some of my many many mako thoughts and headcanons. alas i have no spoons for writing a whole ass long thing today and so will be posting a novel length scream fest about mako tomorrow when i hopefully have more spoons and time <3

for now tho, here are some posts i made in the past with some mako thoughts and headcanons and even a couple snippets of a fic i'm writing:

general mako facts and angst and mako being the only responsible adult in the krew

angsty fic snippet where mako's trying to get hired by RCPD but they are suspicious of his past

super fucking angsty fic snippet of mako having TRAUMA™

absurdly angsty fic snippet about Mako's trauma with firebending and his parents' murders

variety pack of angsty lil fic snippets

thoughts about why mako finds it hard to trust or rely on people

lots of angsty (pre-series) headcanons about how shitty mako's life has been and how much trauma this boy has been through

more thoughts about mako's relationship with his bending

hope that helps stave off the mako angst itch for a bit while i summon the energy and am hopefully blessed with the spoons to write a thing <3

[crazypossumman]

So I am writing a novel loosely inspired by Dante’s Inferno. I’ve been working on it since eighth grade when I first read Inferno and became utterly obsessed. Anyway, I was very fucked up the other night and then found this in my notes:

“Why My Atheist Ass Loves Dante’s Inferno:

My first point to this argument would be the fact that it is basically self insert fanfiction. My boy Dante really went, “but what if me and Virgil, my favorite poet uwu, had to travel through hell together on a long, sentimental journey in which I am able to learn from him as a pupil does from his master,” and everyone was like, “ok yeah let’s here him out.”

On a more serious note, this text (looking at it individually within the divine comedy) has such a powerful meaning behind it. Dante is traveling through the dark forest (life) and is trying to get to the top of a hill (enlightenment, paradise, nirvana, what have you), but he is stopped by three beasts (the three types of sin). But his end game is still to get to paradise and be with his beloved or whatever. So he still wants to go to the top of that metaphorical hill.

Ipso facto, when Virgil leads him through hell, he is leading him THROUGH the beasts. It’s not some round about way where he skirts these sins. He goes through sin after sin in Virgil’s company, and in beholding the punishments for said sins—which, being an ironic twist on the sin itself, reveal just how ugly the sin itself is—being enacted upon figures he associates with the sin, he is essentially traveling through life while learning from the mistakes of others. That’s as simple as the story is!

But instead it is taken and written in to prose, woven between Christianity and Greek mythos, stretched into a fascinating adventure that captivates and shocks the mind. It was heavily associated with political and religious figures of the time period, which caused it to stick in the minds of its readers (think: if you read that Pope whoever was seen burning in the whatever circle of hell, every time you hear about that pope from then on out, you’re like “oh yeah isn’t that the guy who—“). It integrates well known biblical figures, which created that same association but with something ancient and sacred. Not to mention that, being one of the few religious texts written in the common tongue in its time, it became super wide spread (I mean, their reading selection was limited).

And my third reason would have to do with the amount of classical art and literature it went on to expire. It’s a lot. There’s a painting or two for every critical scene of the inferno, and it is a widely referenced piece of literature in media day-to-day life (think phrases like “stuck in limbo” or “abandon all hope, ye who enter here”). There are also so many translations of the Inferno, originally written in Italian, and most of them contain footnotes, translation notes, interpretations, references, and research tidbits relating to that author’s specific translation. Meaning. Every time you get a different translation. There is whole knew stuff to learn. Base points are always the same, but I love a good fun fact or someone’s individual analysis on a certain piece of symbolism.

Point four: It’s so much extra Christianity-lore. Like sure it’s a headcannon but it reads like official content.”

Writing Tag ↓ | Pinned | Writing Masterlist | Kofi | Etsy

[m00dysunflower]

Testimone di Gangster vs Purple Haze Feedback

Just came fresh off of reading the new Squatizi light novel (which I LOVED) and decided to ruminate on why I loved one and hated the other so much.

I want to preface that if anyone is nasty in replies or tags about my views and opinions of PHF, I'll block you, I don't have time to fight over a non canon Fugo centric light novel. And I think it's valid to compare the 2 stories because they're both based around part 5 and in light novel format that supposedly expands upon the part. If you find my thoughts valid and insightful, cool, if you don't, move along, you're not going to convince me to change my mind sadly.

Also this isn't going to have too bad of spoilers. I'm kinda more vague when it comes to talking about the Squatizi story.

............................................................................

Purple Haze Feedback:

I respect that people needed more Fugo content and it was a genuinely good premise. An aftermath story of Fugo returning to Passione under Giorno and Mista? Yeah I would have loved a story about that. But if you need to warp characters' personalities and throw in a bunch of forgettable stands and their users to do it... I honestly can't bother to care.

If it was much shorter then I could tolerate it, but it wasn't, so here I am. I'll be going point by point with PHF just to organize my thoughts better for such a chaotic story.

1. It warped the pre-established characters.

Mista I think was done the most dirty with that opening scene, but to insinuate that Abbacchio and Fugo killed kids behind Bruno's back felt like absolute whiplash. Also Abbacchio is bisexual obviously, he would have slept with men too, not just women lol.

I don't like that they made Trish become a pop star. Maybe she would have been better as a model, but regardless, not so soon after part 5 when she needed her time to be normal and heal, or at least be under Giorno and Mista's protection.

The whole "Fugio" moment also felt off-putting to me and is part of the reason I don't like the ship. Look, it was absolutely no rain scene or "The only time I feel at ease", let's not try to compare it.

Fugo was okay, but he was just boring and I feel that's not good... you know, considering he's the protagonist of this story. He got better near the end, sure, but by the time I got to the end I was so tired and done with the story. A better writer would have done him and the story more justice.

2. Uninteresting supporting cast and villains

Cannolo was a fine addition, but I never understood what his stand actually did, same with all of the villains' stands. I think that's just poor writing if people walk away not understanding what just happened. I had to reread scenes and I still didn't get most of what happened. Voodoo Child was a cool stand, reminded me a bit of Moody Blues, but I didn't like Sheila as a character. And I'm sorry, who let's a 14 girl in a skimpy ass outfit be the Don of Mafia's bodyguard? Sheila's whole design was so hyper-sexualized and gave me the ick, especially if she was allegedly supposed to be indigenous coded. I've only seen speculation though so I won't go into it further.

Volpe and Manic Depression are the only villain names I remember. I couldn't even tell you the names and stands of the others or what Manic Depression even did as a stand. None of them felt like an actual threat.

3. Felt like a poorly written fanfic

The random mention of Tonio from DIU as Volpe's brother was also a whiplash "where the fuck did that come from" moment, because it was so unnecessary and felt like a cheap tie in for something that was formally published in a book. It really helped give it an average fanfic feel (and I write cheesy, overly dramatic fanfiction!). I think that was also when I was nearing my breaking point.

I once had someone try to mansplain to me that PHF was a "more realistic look of the mafia"... it is not, I promise you that lol. Mafia had rules about women and children and all other kinds of shit that Passione definitely does not abide by. Real life Mafia has so much more to it. This is camp fictional media, no one should ever take it so seriously.

In short, I just think PHF had a lot of wasted potential and would have done better with an altered story. I just can't convince myself to blindly love it, no matter how much I tried to like it.

............................................................................

Testimone di Gangster

I read it last night so it's still so fresh in my mind, but this is how you expand upon a story in my humble opinion. This is also probably going to be shorter just because it was a shorter and more focused story with less characters. I also don't want to spoil it for those who haven't read it yet since it just came out in English.

First off, I think it was a such great idea to take two characters we knew so little about and expand upon them in a way that felt so much more natural. There's less room for warping characters when they didn't have such distinct personalities to begin with and also helps build the world up.

There was no overly complicated plot about drugs and stands and it gave more insight on how the crime world works in Jojo's version of Italy. It even had nods to other real life gangs and how Passione fit into this world with them. It even gave nods to the Cosa Nostra and a real life prosecutor (Falco) who dealt with a lot of gang business in Italy and I think that's just so cool. I love shit like that so much, I adore me some good worldbuilding in general that we didn't necessarily need, but it's just cool to see.

I'll admit, the story was bit hard to follow in the first chapter, but once I picked up that it was from Squalo's perspective, it was such an easy and fun read that didn't make me question what was going on every two paragraphs.

It really showed us how Tiziano is clever and calculating and can be such a useful stand user and teammate. It solidified why he and Squalo are partners (and most definitely in more than just crime for sure now ahaha). I also just love the idea of him being an attorney, especially with Talking Head as a stand, it was a fantastic concept.

The entire time I was just so entertained and caught up in the story, it was so much more engaging than I thought it was going to be. I was genuinely invested in the trial and how Tiziano was going to win the case for Passione. I'm almost sad that this story was so much shorter and would have loved more in between moments with Squalo and Tiziano, but maybe it was for the best not to drag things out.

The ending was a great nod back to their involvement in part 5 and this was in general a great insight into who they were before joining Diavolo's special guard. Plus it makes so much more sense and is amusing to know that he had a lawyer (Tiziano) apart of his elite team.

............................................................................

Now look, I don't think I necessarily have a bias because I do like Fugo just as much as I like Squalo and Tiziano. I also normally don't care for light novels when comes to anime/manga so I don't think it could be that either.

Maybe it was simply the Fugo/Fugio lovers had over-hyped and demanded that everyone read PHF that it just soured the novel before I even read it? I couldn't say for sure. All I know is I went into PHF was no expectations and was so dissatisfied where as I went into Testimone di Gangster with some expectations and was thoroughly entertained.

This is by no means a dig at Fugio shippers, like I said, PHF's ending and the hype around it made me personally more uncomfortable with the ship than I already was before reading it. Simple as that.

If I were to recommend additional Jojo content, especially for the part 5 lovers, Testimone di Gangster is the one I would urge people to read if they have an hour or two to spare. It's a short and sweet look at some great side characters and has more of part 5 spirit without getting caught up in a bunch of bland ocs.

[hartshorn-and-isinglass]

I love that multiple people tagged my last Dracula Daily shitpost with "Jonathan Harker". That might be the last character from the novel anyone would normally associate me with, LOL.

Also been fun to see people bring up that being completely banished from God's sight goes against Catholic teaching, just because that calls to mind the way in which the vampire panic of the 18th century was a problem for the Catholic Church. The existence of vampires kind of breaks the world-building the Church had been doing, because you're not supposed to get resurrected like that and demons aren't supposed to have this much power or else humans are 100% fucked. Hence why Calmet felt obliged to write a whole-ass essay dissecting the vampire problem.

Anyway.

I am trying my luck with eggs and cottage cheese today. The eggs went well; the cottage cheese might be a little more contentious on the way through, we'll see. Also, I can finally get back to that bag of candy corn that I only got a chance to start on Thursday. The waist cincher is okay so far (it's basically an underbust corset on my short torso) but we'll see how things go later in the week. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to help smooth out the jacket. The jacket is passable in its current state; stretch goals (or something to do while I'm procrastinating finishing the earrings) are to install shoulder pads to try and smooth out the creases that perpetually plague this thing.

[enpr-ss]

absolutely brutal tags:

#after that episode my partner looked me dead in the eyes and asked#while crying#is he really gone?#and I said yes

#read the manga but literally forgot to the point i was also shocked with the reveal#bc literally no one was talking about it no one

#the whole of tumblr anime-onlys were so distraught and we were just like ''hm. tragic. anyway''

#what do you mean#he is dead#you do know what a spirit is right

#TO MY BROTHER WHO ALMOST CRIED WHEN WE ASKED HIM IF DIMPLE DIED#THAT LITTLE BITCH

#y’all mfs had me fooled i was so fucking confused when his ass came back

#for fucking real guys#y’all are fake but also thanks

#my funniest move was writing a novel length Reddit comment#on the discussion post#writing about how it was such a great end to his character#and then arguing with people denying he’s actually dead#I did that for HOURS#funniest shit ever#fuckign crying#I even dropped a Dimple Was A Friend

#my mouth was sealed for weeks while i watched my anime only friend grieve

#i watch the show with my dad who has been insisting that surely dimple will come back#while still obviously being broken up over him dying#and finding the proper way to act in this scenario has been the highlight of my acting career

#listen if we had to go through those last arcs having no fucking clue what was going to happen next then anime onlies do to

#i just forgot he didn't die#i was like 'i remember he was still alive after this arc. ig i was wrong.'

#holding hima funeral depsite knowjng hes right there in the reigen manga

#I CANT BELIEVE YOU GUYS#YOU MOTHERFUCKERS#I AM SO IMPRESSED AND GLAD BUT ALSO GOD DAMN IT

#I WAS LIKE OH SO THAT WAS JUST FOR NOTHING THEN?

#thank u thank u lying to my sister's face is my favourite pastime

#yall really had me going i was in MOURNING#should have known. this guy has almost died a million times

#fucker came back every other time. why wouldnt he this tims#green neon ass cockroach (affectionate)

#the mp100 fandom deserves the world for not spoiling anything EVER#like I still remember back in season one when the whole reigen is the claw leader thing happened and manga readers didn’t say a word

#seeing everyone be sad about about him is so funny

and the award for best performance goes to: every manga reader who’s spent the past 6 weeks pretending dimple is dead

[copperbadge]

Showed someone my NaNoWriMo setup and uhh I didn't think novel writing in excel could inflict psychic damage to others?? I just wanted a simple way to look at my daily word count 🥺

I mean, do what makes the work easiest, Anon, follow your bliss, don't listen to the haters, even me. I write villanelles in Excel for very good reasons of accessibility!

When we talk about "they did WHAT in Excel?" it's generally because it seems like the person is making more work for themself, and absolutely because if they send it out into the world that way, they're making more work for everyone else. Presumably you aren't submitting your NaNo novel to agents as an Excel document -- I did leave one villanelle in Excel as proof of concept but generally they’re not still in a table when I transfer them. I kind of get why you’d do something unorthodox, because I write my novels in plaintext, which is now widely seen as a bit weird; I use absolutely no formatting I don't have to, and I tag formatting with <i>basic html</i> because I want to be able to find it once it's in its final form and needs to be typset. That seems like more work too but it has internal logic. 

I think to me the issue is that I know what a pain in the ass it is to work with prose in Excel -- I actually do it quite a lot for work. The bulk of the work I am doing today is taking a sheet that has 40 names in it and writing a biographical blurb for each name on that name’s line in the sheet. It’s a method of data visualization fairly unique to the way I run the shop, but it works because you see the data points and the blurb side by side, and it makes it super easy to import all the information to the database eventually. 

But I also know its limitations. Like, I’m genuinely very curious, do you put the whole day's new writing into a single cell? I can't imagine you would because eventually you'd run into the issue of cell height limits, even if the cell took up the whole screen, and it would make scrolling a nightmare. Although if you struggle with re-reading and endlessly correcting rather than moving on to new work, it would certainly make that more difficult to do, which could be an advantage. Or do you put every new paragraph into a new cell? That makes more sense, though I'd wonder about whether quotation marks would fuck up the formatting. 

And it seems like especially with the latter (though really with either) it doesn’t actually make getting the wordcount significantly easier. I couldn’t figure out how to get the wordcount of a cell in Excel at all -- are you using COUNT, and building a pivot table? That’s quite impressive if so. Or are you making a new sheet for each day and writing into the new sheet? That seems like it would make it difficult to get everything out of the book easily, on the back end, but it would mean you’d get your eyes on every day’s work a second time. 

I tell you this not to try and evangelize you away from Excel, but just so that you know -- getting a daily wordcount in GDocs or Word is not super difficult, as long as you mark where you started that day. In GDocs, you just highlight what you want to count and hit Tools > Wordcount; the window will return something like Words: 207 of 309, meaning the document contains 309 words and you’ve highlighted 207 of them. In Word it’s slightly clunkier; you highlight the words and hit “Review > Wordcount” and it will tell you how many words are highlighted, but to get the total wordcount you have to de-highlight and do the wordcount again. 

In any case, honestly, do whatever makes it easiest to write, especially during NaNo. Just...maybe make sure it’s in a Word document before you submit it anywhere. :D

[lacependragonwrites]

Hello! Welcome to the blog. This is an updated intro. I've been here for a minute, just wanted to tidy things up.

I am Wallace, but I also like Wally and Lace just as much (and I generally refer to myself as Lace), so feel free to pick your preference! They/Them or He/Him pronouns, in that order.

This is my writing sideblog. My main blog is over at @lacependragon! I will follow, like, comment on posts, and send asks from there, but I post my writing here and I reblog writing stuff to this blog.

I'm a queer, autistic author with chronic illness/pain and a whole lot of wips. I'm Canadian. I've been writing over half my life (and when you're a couple years shy of 30, that's not bad!) and I was reasonably popular as a fanfic author (RWBY fics mostly), something I've largely stopped doing as of September, 2021.

I'm very passionate. Which is to say I have a Lot(TM) of opinions. And I refuse to take personality tests even if I love them for characters.

Also I really love writing programs. I don't think you need them to be a good author, whatsoever, but god I love them so much.

My Writing

I write basically two things: big ass, character driven, SFF series with tightly woven plots & relationships, plus ridiculous amounts of lore and worldbuilding; and romance novels. That's it. I'm pretty sure I'm better at the latter, which I think is cool.

Also: I have a lots of wips. I cycle between them regularly but I always come back around to the others eventually.

I can sum up my writing as such:

Mostly SFF with a focus on fantasy and scifantasy

Character focused and driven

Often relationship driven - family, friendship, romance, etc.

Almost all of my protagonists are they/them NBs or some other flavour of trans

Mainly queer, disabled, neurodivergent characters

Queer and trans focused romances, also polycules

Found family, slow burn romance, platonic bonds, redemption arcs, overcoming adversity & trauma

Gray morality and tough decisions

Intricate world-building, in-depth magic systems, lots of fantasy creatures, and details on how these things interact with everyday and overarching life

Puns. A lot of puns.

A lot of silly combo words I use as a shortcut to avoid conlanging unnecessarily (though I do LOVE a good conlang)

Listen there's a lot of apocalypses in my WIPs. And overcoming them. It's a theme. It's because of the state of the world. Roll with it.

The Blog

What can you expect on this blog?

Character intros, WIP intros, worldbuilding posts, magic building posts, lore posts, and more

Lots of rambling posts about my WIPs, in general, and progress updates as I draft them

Screenshots and discussions of writing programs, including Scrivener, Word, Excel, Plottr, Aeon Timeline, Scapple, Powerpoint, Illustrator (for maps), Clip Studio Paint (for maps), Photoshop (for nonsense), and Notepad++

Snippets and chapters from various drafts of various WIPs

Inspiration posts for various WIPs

Reblogs of other writeblrs I think are great

Tips, tricks, and advice I picked up from my own experiences as a writer

Rambles about writing, the universe, and my process

Non-Writing Tag: #wall talk

The WIPs

[Under the cut because oh my goodness this is getting long]

Main Projects

THE METAHUMAN INITIATIVE Book One: Descent

Series Overview Urban fantasy, mystery/thriller, suspense, adult. Long as fuck.

Nat Carter is drawn to Veda City, a place built to uncover the secrets of superpowers in Metahumans, after the violent and mysterious death of their family. Once there, they set out to uncover who killed their family, why, and how it boosted Nat's own powers, only to realize that the conspiracy is far deeper than they ever imagined. And, somehow, Nat might be at the centre of it all.

Links: WIP Post | Series Tag | Book One Tag | Series Playlist | Book One Playlist | Character Profiles | Book One Excerpts

BEURKRATTI: THE PLACE OF STONES

Series Overview High fantasy, urban/constructed fantasy, adventure, mystery, adult. Multiple connecting series.

The changing world brings forgotten history forward. The Wardens, the protectors of the world, struggle to find the source of the faltering ancient magic that is causing widespread destruction. Old gods and new are risen in the Free Cities, and nothing is as it seems. For a young Warden, Katya, an opportunity arises to seek the answers for her people's inevitable spiral into nothingness, only to find far more than she ever bargained for.

Currently Undergoing Major Revisions

Links: WIP Post [Being Updated] | Series Tag | Book One Tag [TBA] | Spotify Playlist [None]

BOOK OF FARSIDE Book One: City of Fractured Dreams

Series Overview Scifantasy, apocalypse, adventure, mystery/suspense, adult. Series.

A floating, island city suffocated by civil unrest is thrown into deeper and more violent turmoil after the return of the apocalypse kills its elite fighting force in one fell swoop. Everyone seeking power leaps at the chance to seize it, all while ignoring the dark fate that made it possible. Amidst it all, two siblings, separated by eight years and an entire city, struggle to find one another and not lose themselves in the process.

Links: WIP Post | Series Tag | Ramble Tag | Book One Tag | Spotify Playlist

PATHS MADE OF STARDUST

Series Overview Fantasy, magic school, mystery/suspense, young adult. Series.

Every year, new witches flock to one of the many witch colleges across Mokeno. This year, three students arriving at Starmont College will cross paths for more than just classes. Two first-year students discover a third is held captive by her father's illegal curses and fight to free her from his grasp. If they succeed, they can bring down one of the most corrupt men in the country. If they fail, getting caught will be the least of their problems.

Links: WIP Post [Being Updated] | Series Tag | Book One Tag [TBA] | Spotify Playlist [None]

RESTORING MOONBLOOM HOLLOW

Series Overview Romance, fantasy romance, polyamory, adult. Companion series.

A dying trading post on an abandoned road receives new life when a poorly worded ad tricks an alchemist into moving to the town. Unfortunately, Arlo is not the saviour Moonbloom Hollow was looking for. Two townspeople, Samir and Winnie, don't let Arlo's grumpy exterior stop them, however. They are determined to save their town, and Arlo is determined to save themself. Maybe, working together, everyone can get what they need, and maybe fall in love along the way.

Links: WIP Post [Being Made] | Series Tag | Book One Tag | Spotify Playlist [None]

Side Projects/Minor Projects

Supernova | wip post | tag Urban fantasy, contemporary, young adult. Standalone 15-year-old Andie has never belonged. Bounced from foster home to foster home, they figure they’ll leave the system when they age out. An encounter after school one day awakens powers Andie never knew they had and quickly turns their life upside down. A foster home that cares, foster parents who know their struggles, a new school, and even new friends. But where did Andie come from? And how did they get here? They need to know, or they’ll never be able to rest.

Ghostpossible | wip post | tag Urban fantasy, new adult. Standalone When Y2K hit, it tore open a portal through the ether, letting ghosts, spooks, and all sorts of monsters through. Sixty years later, the best people to tackle the dead and ghastly are the young, and Kai Yeung, part time college student and full-time big sibling, is trying to make it big in the ghost hunting live streaming business. Money is tight, and this is their best option. Until a guy named Archie shows up and reveals that he’s been possessed by an ancient magical artifact and the very grumpy warrior trapped inside it. If Kai can get the artifact off, they can sell it and provide for their sister for years to come, but that’s only if they can get it off Archie before those chasing him can catch up.

Demon Fuckers Anonymous | wip post | tag Fantasy, dark academia, new adult, erotica. Standalone. A disabled student in their upper years at a prestigious, elitist, bullshit academy for magical grad school struggles to keep up due to exhaustion and ableism. To get back on track, they summon a demon in hopes of getting him to help. But the summon uncovers a deep conspiracy beneath the bowels of the school, and a long pent up desire to connect with someone, mind and body.

Queer Witch Cozies | wip post | tag Urban fantasy, cozy mystery, romance, adult. Series Ciar Gallagher can find things no one else can, that’s their talent as a witch. So when a frantic man comes to the door one night begging for Ciar’s help, they’re pretty sure they can do it. But there’s two problems. One, the man is a regular human, one with no knowledge of magic, and two, he’s asking Ciar to find his kidnapped daughter, and Ciar’s never tracked a person before.

Care Home for Chosen Ones | wip post | tag Urban fantasy, contemporary, adult. Standalone 25-year-old Marlowe takes great pride in their career as a care worker at Sunrise Elder Care, especially in their chats with the remaining chosen ones of a long finished prophecy. But when strange shadows begin to haunt the care home, Marlowe must summon all their knowledge and their most trusty weapon – the push broom – in order to stop the returning Dark One and save the elder chosen ones and their home before it’s too late.

Persephone Project | wip post | tag Science fiction, mystery/thriller, adult. Standalone Five years ago, Axl Thorn was arrested aboard the U.S.S. Faraday for techno-terrorism and multiple counts of first degree murder. Now, the cybernetic attacks have made a resurgence, but this time someone else is behind the keyboard. Pulled out of holding to help, Axl is kept on a short leash by their pissed off personal guard, whose job is both to keep Axl out of trouble – hah! – and to keep others from attacking them. Yet as the attacks grow stronger, the unlikely allies must cast aside their differences if they have any hope of saving the station and all those it connects to.

[vvatchword]

Let me tell y’all something personal

I was raised in a toxic mix of evangelical rural conservative bullshit. This has ended up having a series of unfortunate effects on my life, as well as the people I love, AS WELL AS my nation, if you haven’t noticed that lately. Anyway, BioShock Infinite was giving me fucking flashbacks. A hymn or a symbol or a phrase would leap out of left field. Mixed in was that familiar racism—far more obvious in Infinite than it was in my world, of course, but still something I fully understood. And despite being the WORST fucking FPS player you’ve ever fucking seen, I put the game on hard like an ascetic and wore that shit like a hair shirt, and I beat the goddamn thing.

It was cathartic. Wildly so. Deliciously so. It hurt so, so good. Like burning the fuck out of a raw wound. It was like I got to attack all those horrible monsters inside and outside of me—blow them apart, scream at them, take a hit, fall, rise, fall again, rise again: you can’t kill me, but I can kill you. I will outlast you. You will hurt me but I cannot die, I will not die, not to you.

I got to face my own Comstock—look her in the face, see myself, and stare her down with all the shame and hate burning in me, unafraid of pain because it must be faced to be expunged. Recognized the kind of person who would sell what they loved most in the world and understood exactly why. Understood the kind of person who would burn the whole world down because they can’t outrun themselves. Understood who would become what they hated most on purpose while weaving up big excuse-laden paragraphs to explain why I’m Actually Not a Horrible Person, Why Are You Looking at Me That Way, Stop!!! I’ll Destroy Everything I Love to Prove It! I’ll Kill Myself in Every Other Way Than Physical Death! Believe Me! Love Me! Don’t Leave Me All Alone!

Fucking thank you Ken Levine and Irrational Games, that’s fucking all. Those of y’all throwing hissy fits about the story can kiss my ass. Somebody understands suffering and it ain’t you.

So if I don’t write something heavily inspired by this at the very least, I mean. I guess I died. 

In less dramatic news, I’m happy to say that I was NOT spoiled for this game despite a stretch of ten fucking years. I guessed a lot more than I thought I would, and I was still deliciously delighted from beginning to end. This is a miracle. BioShock 2 made me so fucking gunshy lol. I shouldn’t have been. I should’ve trusted Levine, the man knows what the fuck he’s doing. (Except Burial at Sea, I’m told, and I’m inclined to believe that friend lol. Can’t win em all. Still going to play it. RIP me)

I’m so glad I saved the gameplay footage. It’s for fanficcing purposes. I actually fucking streamed it like some kind of asshole. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to be entertaining seeing as I am really bad at it. It’s both embarrassing and hilarious to me. My friend razzed me the whole time and I explained that my universe’s DeWitt was kicked in the head by a horse. Fuck you Dan

As for the fanfiction angle: my story now has seven parts.

Part 1: Andrew Ryan steelmanned, Ayn Rand style

Part 2: Diane McClintock

Part 3: Johnny Topside (currently at 220,000 words and 40 chapters)

Part 4: Jack

Part 5: Meltzer

Part 6: Subject Delta

Part 7: BioShock Infinite something-or-other. Idk, a novelization? How?

This will possibly take the rest of my life and I’m fine with that. I say “possibly” because it’s one of my special interests and I know a lot of bullshit about it already, especially the Objectivist part. Oh man speaking of the personal bullshit from above: guess who was almost an Objectivist for about four years lol

Anyway. After I finish the DLC, I’m going to open up the BioShock tag for myself and actually read BioShock Infinite fanfiction and such… at last.

Also, I will need to choose some kind of media to cleanse my palate after this stretch of BioShock shit, holy shit am I reeling under the weight of about 17,000 triggers and sociological and philosophical fuck-yous

Holy shit. I finished BioShock Infinite and holy shit. I love it. I fucking adore it. How dare you motherfuckers terrify me rofllll

[bao3bei4]

kpop music videos that gave their fans sexual brainworms

OR accidental fetish pop and its fringe fanbase: meditations on gendered desire 

large warning here: i am someone who has been into kpop for the past 10 years. however, i have always been an extremely casual fan. i do write fic, but not rpf. if any of that makes you not want to hear me talk about kpop rpf (or you don’t want to hear about it in general), please keep moving.

anyway, obviously pop is corporate, soulless, and manufactured. but sometimes some truly bizarre shit gets past the committees and destroys a generation. these are their stories.

the video that started this is all is got7’s just right, released july 10th, 2015.

yes that’s all 7 members of got7 (one is out of frame) shrunken down for your viewing pleasure. they live in your room and tell you you’re just right. 

this sheer fetish power of this video is nerfed only by how utterly sexless it is.

they’re styled like and dance like this. it’s a totally unironic sendup of the seminal work that preceded it by four years, “what makes you beautiful” by the white kpop group “one direction.” the chaste energy of the whole thing makes you legitimately wonder if the good people at jyp have just never heard of microphilia. (during a dramatic reading of this piece, here a friend interjected seriously, “i think it’s korean culture not to talk about things like this, fetishes in the workplace.”)

it’s for the best, honestly, though because the actress in the music video is lee ja in, who was 11 when the video was shot. considering that the members themselves ranged in age from 18-23 at the time, i think it’s actually very impressive that we only have to cancel one. 

you receive absolutely no prizes for guessing that it’s jackson wang we’re sending to social justice prison. why’d he do this? no one asked. 

at any rate, got7 fans, or “gans” (they actually call themselves igot7s which is too twee for me), have much to think about here: all 7 very small members of got7 sneaking into their room, possibly weird age play, and jackson wang eating a very large cake.

let’s see what they actually did. 

twitter was actually very tame. the most charged thing i found was (unsurprisingly) from a bts fan (“ban”). i don’t actually know what it means, but i think it means something.

so, of course, i turned to the internet’s last bastion of free speech, where you can say whatever the fuck you want and receive cheers, or as the kids say, “kudos.” that is, i read fanfiction. 

for those of you who don’t know your herstory, i started my journey at Asianfanfics.com, where, at the time of writing, there were 12,067 got7 stories. i want to start this by saying that i think feminism won, because someone was paying real human dollars to advertise their irene/wendy fanfiction on a banner ad, which is quite possibly a win for women for everywhere. 

anyway, Asianfanfics.com’s search engine sucks ass (i kept on finding stories about different combinations of bts members worrying about their weight and being reassured by another member that were entitled “just right”), so i decided to look through all got7 stories written between july 2015 and december 2015. 

but, alas, not a single got7 microphilia fic to be found. 

also, some genre commentary while i’m here: i think the stories i respect the most are the “[y/n] is a ordinary girl who’s assigned to be got7’s manager! can she make them into superstars? as sparks begin to fly, can she keep it professional?” like fuck yeah that sounds like a kickass dating sim. it almost definitely already is one. i salute all the teens around the world for buying into the fantasy of dating a boy band member that they themselves sell you. 

however, i don’t think i respect the “[member a] and [member b] are mafia/jocks and nerds/college students/high schoolers” concepts. in my opinion, the whole fantasy of boy band member is their personas, their hidden real personalities, their celebrity, and the show business setting. find a different intellectual property if you wanna write about school. i even respect the “yugyeom drank girl juice [not estrogen] and turned into a sexy girl” story more, because at least it knows exactly what it wants, and also because they’re all still boy band members. well, band members. shout out to yugyeom. 

so, anyway, i looked elsewhere. at the time of writing, archive of our own only had 11,645 got7 stories, but it does have a better search, so it effectively has more. as an aside, i think it’s so funny, and mildly disorienting at first, that archive of our own separates the “music & bands” section from the “celebrities & real people” section. boy band members aren’t real people. 

the first problem i encountered is that only 20 or so stories were written within a year of just right’s release. absolute cringe gans. don’t you care about your boys? there were zero stories tagged “vore” or “microphilia” either. stories containing the word “tiny” that were rated either “explicit” or “mature” were all normal (“normal”) size fetishization rather than, you know, just right. 

however, i learned my lesson from twitter. i realized that what had happened was that watching this video had created sleeper agents, just waiting for their activation phrase. that activation phrase? bangtan boys. and yeah, lo and behold, there was one! unfortunately (fortunately?) it had nothing to do with got7, let alone just right, so i’m not going to talk about it.  

basically what i learned is that this video may have actually been very normal, and my brain has just been destroyed by being too online at a young age. 

however, there are plenty more videos in this genre. i present to you exo wolf, a banger from may 30th, 2013. i say banger, because in a comedic inversion, it’s actually fucking terrible. 

this video is pretty self-explanatory in terms of why it might induce certain responses. 

let’s get the formalities out of the way. this video, the member who’s getting cancelled is kai. he has braids in this video :/

also skating on thin ice: xiumin and chen. guys what was up with the whole exo-m thing? like, we’re gonna have a cpop subgroup, but it’s going to be part chinese members and part korean members that we’ll give a chinese name? unsurprisingly, the three exo members who have departed from the group are all chinese. they weren’t able to stand the microaggressions probably. but xiumin and chen remain uncancelled as an official chinese apology for five thousand of years of on-and-off invasions of korea. sorry guys that was kinda fucked up. our bad! 

anyway, there are basically three avenues for exo fans to take: 1) humans with wolfish characters (usually wolf pack dynamics, which even wolves themselves don’t fucking use so i think all of you should shut up. the real omega here is your brain), 2) werewolves (duh), and 3) wolves with human characteristics (i.e. standard furry fare). 

exo themselves let all these possibilities exist at the same time, superimposing them over each other, which is very woke and egalitarian of them. let’s see what the people decided. awoo.

Asianfanfics dot com had many stories in this vein. i feel very validated that this time i was able to correctly predict a fetish. that said, briefly returning to my earlier comment regarding alternate universes: it’s intense psychic whiplash reading about these vampires and werewolves, and going okay okay luhan is a vampire this that whatever, and then seeing the actual real performance photos the author attaches at the bottom of each chapter. bro i forgot these were actual people.... it breaks immersion so bad... i’m sorry, i just can’t believe that any of these dancing boys are having weird vampire sex with wings or whatever. 

archive of our own also had many stories in this vein. and i think there are some important difference between the two sites worth talking about. 

first of all, i think the higher engagement rate of archive of our own really enables some of the authors to get super bold. it makes Asianfanfics.com seem a little quaint, actually. like the wordcounts are waaay longer, for one. it’s uncommon for a story hosted on Asianfanfics.com to be more than a few thousand words long (most of them could easily be published in the new yorker), whereas some of these archive of our own people have written full length novels about if the members of exo were werewolves. i guess it’s just intensely demoralizing for the aff.com crew to get, like, three comments per story. 

the second big difference is that i’m noticing more common themes between the ao3 crew’s writing. like stan intertextuality, or plagiarism, or whatever, but they seem to be implicitly engaging with each other’s characterizations, storylines, and tropes. i think it is because they probably all follow each other on twitter. (i have been active on twitter for three weeks now so i am an expert on fanfiction twitter.) 

anyway, like not that i am a particularly big gan (cannot even list all the members), but these people seem to have reached a very specific consensus on how jackson wang, for instance, would react in a variety of situations that really surprises me? if i were to sit down and write a got7 story, i think the fuckboitude, the douchebaggery is a big part of his charm. not to be nationalist or anything, but for god’s sake, he’s from hong kong. but these people have him as very sensitive, lots of protective instincts. not that i understood what anyone on aff.com was doing with his character either, but they did all seem to be doing different things. “kudos” to that, i guess.

but: exo. wolf. i searched the “wolves” tag. this filtered the list down from 33459 stories to 52 stories. and the “wolves” tag was very different from the aff.com “wolf” tag. for the most part, aff.com liked stories where a member was a wolf (usually shapeshifting), feral boy, lots of y/n, lots of y/n dating a feral boy who is secretly a wolf. 

ao3 really, really, really likes alpha/beta/omega stories. sorting by the most popular stories, only five on the first page weren’t a/b/o. and one of them was a cis f!baekhyun story, so i think the intended effect was communicated. anyway, let’s talk about some of the themes. 

first of all, i’m disappointed. today’s bonus cancellation is of ao3 “wolves” writers. why the fuck are you drawing so heavily from european wolves?? there are wolves in asia!! you don’t need to keep giving their packs and ranks weird latin names. i will kill you. i hate italy. korea literally has a native wolf. i hate all of you!!! if you want to write caucasian wolves go watch that dumbass cw show!!!! my god. 

the second theme (the first one was white supremacy) is that no one wants to be a wolf who fucks. i think that we need a sex positivity movement, or something, for omega rights. like, are all of you doing okay? you’re queering misogyny by inventing new genders to oppress. another level to “no one wants to be a wolf...” is the “who fucks” part. there are so many consent issues. and not even in like, a sexy intentional way? in a “i genuinely do not think this author understands how their writing comes off” way. unfortunately i am sensitive to untagged sexual coercion, and there was a lot of that.

at any rate, the aff.com wolves were at peace with being wolves, very self-actualized. the ao3 wolves know that every minute they spend alive on this bitch of an earth is suffering, and also sex.

the third theme is the evolution of y/n. y/n, who, in a startlingly woke move for aff.com, is almost always korean, is a girl main character stumbling into love, boy bands, and wolves (i think it’s because aff.com is oldschool kpop fandom, so therefore heavily asian itself in userbase). but y/n is not the main character in ao3 stories. she is the straight best friend. in what i think is a hilarious move, ao3 authors invert the gay best friend paradigm to give the gay main character a straight girl as best friend. she usually calls him “a gay,” she has lots of thoughts on boys, and she knows his sexuality better than he does and before he does. (sidebar: if all the men are gay, and all the women are straight...)

there’s a really fun twist to this, though, because the main character is always a self-insert in fanfiction. but where older fanfiction like aff.com was at peace with this and literalize it via y/n shenanigans, modern fic writers who haven’t finished distangling their complicated relationship with wanting to be a man who loves other men instead simply imbue their main character with their essence. a little voodoo doll sehun, with a lock of y/n hair. 

this creates a deeply ambivalent relationship with gender in these stories. the main character is usually an omega, but one who resents being an omega. their body and its parts is usually described, if at all, as ostensibly intersex (except more offensively), but in practice, these discourses inscribe a trans body. (nb: i think cis writers approach this in a really fucked up fetishizing way, but i hope by this point we know that that goes without saying) it’s incredibly straightforward to read this, and see the underlying desires and fears in a heady cocktail of unfiltered writing that’s deeply confessional. you know when freud had people say whatever the fuck they wanted and figured they’d eventually free associate into releasing their subconscious into reality? yeah. 

okay, and while we’re on the topic, let’s talk f(x) nu abo, released on may 4th, 2010. 

this is a blitzy, maximalist, amped up dance hit that even has its own applause and cheers built in. it’s so fucking annoying, and i love it. 

this song is on here because the second most popular kpop a/b/o story on ao3 is called “nu abo” except it’s about bts. that’s offensive enough in its own right. write something about f(x) (702 works). when will women win the right to have their own self-lubricating holes.

anyway, even though f(x) is probably innocent in all of this, i’m still cancelling amber liu. 

for queerbaiting. who told her to look like ruby rose but hot? and for what? i’m also cancelling her for racism, but that wasn’t in this video. 

moving on to a double feature: vixx voodoo doll and vixx chained up, released november 19, 2013 and november 9, 2015 respectively. this is because while voodoo doll is more formative, i think the fans who write fanfiction today got into kpop more recently, so we are casting a wide net.

anyway, voodoo doll is jam packed with weird pseudo-medical imagery, blood, vivisection, bondage, puppet shit, femdom, sharps, piercings, asphyxiation, dollification, stabbing/penetration metaphors, and a really sick and catchy dance. god that looks like the list of tags on the a/b/o wolf stories. 

for this song, we’re cancelling you, for being way too into this song when you were 13.

vixx voodoo doll made me goth i guess! insert that pic of the your music saved me sign, except it saved me from getting into emo or pop punk probably. 

chained up, comparatively, is much more tame. the only thing of note about it is that there are around 10 completely different chokers and choker looks the members wear in this music video. also they’re singing about being chained up, but that seemed a bit obvious. 

we could argue that voodoo doll is gay while chained up is gay (derogatory); that voodoo doll is queer while chained up is gay; that chained up is a sensitive masterpiece of omega4omega sexuality. but we’re not going to. 

we’re going to talk about what voodoo doll fanfiction was and was not. first, Aff.com had plenty of it. however, i was extremely disappointed to see that much of it did not hew to the spirit of vixx voodoo doll. my god, the voodoo doll becoming the one preying upon you disgusts me. the fantasy of the voodoo doll is that of absolute power. the idea that the doll itself has agency? instantly breaks the fantasy. i’m even not into voodoo dolls and i’m offended. 

i also don’t think it’s part of the voodoo doll fantasy to release the doll. the only story on there that involved Y/N kidnapping vixx members like in the music video was unavailable because the author deactivated their account. come back qxeen what did you see. 

i think this got off track, actually, in that i was mostly wondering why these people imprinted differently onto vixx voodoo doll than i did. like i don’t think you’re supposed to actually like straightforwardly absorb the morals and aesthetics of music videos like it’s propaganda. however, it’s more entertaining if you do. i hope ao3 doesn’t let me down. 

out of the then 5932 works in the vixx fandom (the least out of every group so far, excluding f(x) because they’re women), 59 of them included the word “voodoo” somewhere. that’s 1%. i legitimately can’t tell if that’s high or not. 

after some more cursory reading through the first page of popular results, my big takeaway is that people watched that video and wanted to be tortured and enslaved? but not, like, in a sexy way where the torturing is the point, the way where the point is to suffer bravely and beautifully, to endure the world’s harms like jesus on the cross, and then to fall into the arms of a beautiful boy who may or may not be the one hurting you in the first place. 

there’s a certain predictability to these fantasies. like it’s not even masochism, which would be fun at least, it’s literally just like the desire to be beautiful, even as you suffer. and i do find that a little boring. (but, i mean, you can’t help being a woman!)

sidebar: on chained up. what’s interesting about chained up, is that most of the then 38 “chained up” works (likely because the video has no storyline) are about the members fucking during chained up promotions. no one’s ever actually chained up, but whatever. it’s fine. it’s fine! 

anyway, here, more than ever, the nature of desire is stripped bare. i’ve written before [elsewhere in the unreleased tshirt cinematic universe] on how kpop boys are, through fandom, re-formed as white, or more strongly, i guess, blank slates. it’s really interesting to me how so much of this dynamic of projection is enabled by the fact that they’re asian men. they’re infantilized, feminized vessels; they’re seductive, but childlike, oblivious to their own charms, so nonthreatening; they have uncontrollable desires for sex, they’re scared of sex. and above all else, white women submit themselves to them, insert themselves into them. basically kpop fans tend to rework old school yellow peril and emasculation fantasies to reenact their own desires, often white, often cishet on them. 

what i am saying is that there’s another thesis about forced feminization and its racialized subtext in here. obviously gender is a racialized construct to begin with, but like it’s fascinating to argue that when white women remake asian men according to their own desires, that is, into themselves, they (hopefully) unintentionally echo these old fears about the sexual order.

it illuminates, it seems, the underlying dynamic in the denigration of asian men, which is of course the fear of miscegenation. now, my breathtaking ability to make everything about me aside, miscegenation is interesting because it presents a racial synthesis, beginning to collapse and trouble the artificial designations of purity. so we make asian men into white women, and end up with an unsettling hybrid. i’m sure this has deep implications for me personally.

but i think we already knew that quite a few of these people had yellow fever, so let’s talk about the gender dialectic at play. basically, the above dynamic, of making men into women (whether literally, in body; or subjectively, in mind; or even relationally, as they are objectified into passive vessels for your desire) coexists with the ostensibly converse dynamic, in which the straight women desires to be a gay man. these aren’t necessarily in conflict: it could easily be that these are different writers writing different stories, that both are ways of expressing discontent with existing in a raced, gendered body, or even that the end product of both is the same.

it’s been a while without a picture. all of you now have the legal right to hunt and kill me for making a d&g joke.

anyway, what i want to talk about is how these two fantasies can coexist. that by making a man into yourself, you can speak on your own desire in a passive way. my normal interest is analyzing forced masc fantasies (albeit in chinese opera lol), and they bear little to no resemblance to this kind of fantasy. this kind offers plausible deniability, of course, because wanting things is embarrassing. but also the fantasy isn’t about wanting to be a man, it’s about having no choice but to be a failed one. the gender pessimism running through these stories is palpable. basically andrea long chu wants what wolf fanfiction writers know: everyone is an omega, and everyone hates it.

at any rate, this racialized dynamic is one that i wasn’t sure how to bring up throughout this piece, mainly because there is no definitive way for me to tell the race of any individual writer, beyond just like the clear and present vibes that i receive. but i think it structures a lot of the fantasies contained in this essay. (i felt more comfortable bringing up the gendered dynamic, because it was fairly trivial to find out the current gender of the person writing each story i was reading.) 

obviously we should return to the specter haunting this conversation: the very much alive david eng. i think this sort of argument is familiar to readers of racial castration, especially his chapter on m. butterfly. btw sorry for mentioning that play 2 out of 3 posts on this blog. i have problems.

let’s talk about the parallel imagery between the depiction of gallimard’s final speech and the fanfiction i’ve described above. in it, gallimard makes himself into his own dream woman, dressing in yellowface and robes, the costume of puccini’s original madame butterfly. and he laments his lost love:

there is a vision of the orient that i have. of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. who are born and raised to be the perfect women. who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally.

in that, i see the self insert, and i see the sufferer of vixx voodoo fic. the fantasy that gallimard has about asian women is repeated, this time about asian men and a helpless identification with them. and on some level, gallimard’s women do have something very compelling to identify with: they suggest that there’s a way to endure white male violence without sacrifice, and even more potently, to enjoy it on some level.

but onward to the titular racial castration. eng argues that gallimard’s wilful ignorance of song’s true gender is a psychic castration -- song’s masculinity is diminished so that his own can be enhanced within their relationship. this, eng believes, acts out “richard fung’s contention that in western imaginary ‘asian and anus are conflated.’” this process stabilizes the relationship between the asian man and the white woman: they occupy the same place within the sexual dyad. 

this is, i think, why some people are addicted to writing from the bottom’s perspective. again -- not implying that irl bottoms don’t exist or that bottoms are psychically castrated lol -- but rather that you can fantasize about this ideal asian man that you can come to embody. in kpop rpf, rather than it being between a white man and an asian man (unless someone’s started writing chad future fic), it’s between two asian men. so this transformation is performed. whiteness is always intruding and so i think eng is helpful here to making it visible again. 

this essay isn’t a callout or actual cancellation or anything like that, i do wanna be clear. i guess i just like talking about fantasies, even the embarrassing ones, and where they come from. i think oftentimes in fandom spaces, we write a lot of stories off as idfic, and i think virtually every single one of the stories i referenced to write this fairly uncontroversially fall into that category. but i think calling something an “id” something or the other naturalizes the satisfaction it gives as purely instinctual and unconscious, when i do think there are deeper narratives at play. while i didn’t ever actually reference the base here (sorry), i do think it’s worth talking about how real world power shapes & maintains the superstructure, and thereby our fantasies. 

anyway in conclusion, maybe i was the one with sexual brainworms the whole time.

[yostresswritinggirl]

100 Followers Special

(And how to participate) you don't need to be a follower to vote ack

~yostresswritinggirl

Hello AGAIN, with your back to back followers special! Exiled here, very tired, as I just closed the requests box for our 50 followers special. I asked for some recommendations and no one helped me so this is what I came up with!

Granted, it's nothing that special, I literally just dumped my notes into this so—

Please make sure to follow the guidelines and read this thoroughly to properly participate!

1. You will be given a long list of fic prompts specific to a character that I've come up with for weeks on end, please don't steal, as I will remove them after this event is done!

2. Voting! You now have the power to influence my writing schedule haha- what you need to do: is to pick three prompts from the list and send it to me; either through reblog tag, a reply, or in my ask box (not anon so we can count fairly, will not publish these answers tho so worry not)! Not in messages tho! It should be in this format:

1. Character - prompt or prompt title

2. Character - prompt or prompt title

3. Character - prompt or prompt title

example:

1. Albedo - Citrinitas

2. Zhongli - Braid

3. Xingqui - Author!Reader

The top three most voted prompt and character will be the next fics I'll publish after I'm done with the current reqs. Speaking of: Voting ends when I finish the current reqs. You'll know it's done once the counter in my blog desc reaches 12/12.

3. In addition to the three prompts, you also get to add your own prompt to it! My prompts list does not include ALL the characters that's why I wanted to give you this option too! Add a fourth number and specify a character, a prompt/idea, and the format of the fic! Format it this way:

4. Character - Prompt/Idea (Format)

4. Kaeya - What's under that eyepatch? (Scenario)

After I pooled the answers, I'll randomly pick between the bonus answers and write them last! So give it your best shot!

4. Tags-list! I thought this would be necessary for this kind of a whim special, so if you wanna be tagged, just put Tag Me! at the end of your vote. Please make sure that you're actually able to be tagged because I just tried and some users are not in my orbit huhu, look here

5. If a pocket watch/series prompt gets chosen, I will only post the first chapter, not the whole damn fic pls. Have mercy,,,

I will post a counter of the top three in my blog description and will be updated as frequently as possible. Any questions, please direct to this post or my dms <3

Without further ado, here is your choice list!

Xingqui - "My liege, would you care to accompany me on my reading break? I've picked up a romance novel and it reminded me of us."

-> Author!Reader: You met Xingqui at Wanwen Bookhouse when delivering a batch of your newly-published book. But as a ghost writer, no one knew it was you that authored such books. Safe to say it was cute watching the noble bookworm fanboy about you in front of you. [FLUFF] [FIC]

-> Headcanons with a reader older than Xingqui who's a close family friend of the Feiyun Commerce Guild. Fascinated after meeting you in a party, the noble boy aspires to become the best man for you despite the difference, promising to be the best suitable partner for you in the future. [FLUFF] [HEADCANON SCENARIO]

Childe - "Hey there, comrade! What a coincidence that we had a break at the same time, care to accompany me for a walk? I promise I won’t lead you to a fight haha... hey, don’t look at me like that!”

-> Antinomy -  The 10th Harbinger (You) and the little shit they had to mentor (Childe), this fic enumerates the trials of the 11th before he became a Harbinger under your care. From strangers to mentor to friends to love- Childe made a grave mistake, now you’re once again strangers. [FLANGST] [ONESHOT]

Albedo - "Ah, it's you. I've heard of fleeting rumors that you've been pestering a certain someone just to see me. Next time, just come directly to me, I wouldn't mind the assertiveness."

-> Refer to these three as well: Albedo Fic Ideas [FLUFF/FLANGST/FLANGST] [ONESHOT/ONESHOT/SERIES]

-> “You’re Enough”: A year into being the new Chief Alchemist of Mond, Albedo finds himself holed up in his room in the dead of night, haunted as he continuously comes out empty on his research to bring his master back, feeling inadequate. So you reminded him of what he’s capable of. [FLUFF?] [ONESHOT INSPIRED BY You Are Enough - Sleeping At Last]

-> Under the Artificial Sky: Michaelangelo Scenario focused on Albedo’s sketching aspect. Grand Master Varka and Acting Grand Master Jean figured Albedo needed a break and a change of scenery, and sent him off under the guise of a commission in Liyue. What he didn’t expect was another artist from Fontaine accompanying him in this big project.(Albedo and Reader are tasked to paint the new Jade Chamber within 7 days) [FLUFF] [SERIES - 7 CHAPTERS]

-> Albedo SMUT: I had this idea while laying wide awake at 3 AM. The alchemist had been trying all remedies to shake off the stress and fatigue in his system and they all seemed to fail, no amount of sketching or discoveries can pull him away from it. So when you offered a solution he hasn’t heard, he’d jump at it immediately. “You know, some people say having intercourse with someone is a good stress-reliever.” “Intercourse? If it’s true, then please, I wish to have intercourse with you.” “Wha- wait Albedo, do you not know what that is? It’s only done between lovers!” “Convenient, I love you, anything else?” (Two virgin dumbasses do the thing to relieve stress) [SMUT] [ONESHOT]

Xiao - “I’ve taken care of every threat around this area, you can relax now, I made sure of that.”

-> What is it with you and Qingxin flowers? The Traveler had once heard of Xiao’s affinity for Qingxin flowers, and they’re flying companion boldly asked this lingering question to the adepti himself. His pupils dilate and sharpen before Paimon could finish her sentence. (An origin story about his favorite flower, and his favorite person) [SLIGHT FLANGST] [ONESHOT]

-> Just how harmful is adeptal energy to normal humans? You both found out in the worst way possible: silently, deadly. (Slight spoiler: you fucking die) [ANGST] [ONESHOT]

-> Nightmares Taste Horrible: He’s seen that look in your eyes and the ancient soul within it; you’ve lived long ago, and the only thing your soul carried now was the nightmares of a macabre timeline. Was it him or was it demons that brought you that fear? No matter, he’ll protect you even from yourself. (eating the nightmare of a dead soul reincarnated to you) [FLANGST?] [ONESHOT]

-> Go for the throat: The seal that marked you had made it all too late for him to remedy. Bleeding eyes, growing fangs, it’s just another demon to vanquish just like he’s done for centuries. What makes it different was it was sealed in you. (Inspired from Melanie Martinez’s song uhu) [ANGST] [ONESHOT]

Zhongli - “Mortals are capable creatures that evolve and adapt for means of survival, but they advance in ways that changes the world around them. This retirement, may be harder to me than it is to them.”

 -> “In human history, there’s a certain noble and powerful connotation to rulers who braid their hair.” Convince to braid his hair using some historical braid trivia; that long hair behind his back should not be ignored for any longer. [PURE FLUFF] [DRABBLE]

-> History has its eyes on you: A traveling theatre hailing from the land of entertainment finds its way to Liyue for their last caravan. A certain Geo Vision man seems to resonate with your newest script: fighting and protecting your land, building up its nation, before being forced to let go of it. He resonates maybe a little too much. (Musical!Reader with heavy references to Hamilton hehe) [FLUFF] [ONESHOT]

Venti - "Can you hear the symphonies of the wind as it sings to you? That's me, guiding you and protecting you! Whenever you hear it, know that you're safe and sound under my protection!"

-> the one the bard once loved: like actual bard, you are the archer or smth, loved by Venti and Barbatos. Yandere!Barbatos undertones, very unhealthy relationship. This hurts the kokoro. [PURE ANGST] [ONESHOT]

-> The Caravan: (related to the Zhongli and Musical!Reader up there) Your caravan stops at Mondstadt for a whole week before it reaches its final destination. This new fanfare pulled in a peculiar bard who now wants to tag along for the fun of it. "I have no more responsibilities in this free land!" Just what kind of responsibilities does a broke bard have in the first place? [FLUFF] [ONESHOT/HEADCANON]

Diluc - "You look weary, and you still managed to pull yourself here. Here, a fresh and cold glass, on the house. A relieved smile should be enough payment."

-> Abandoned by The Altar: A timeline oriented story focused on your once perfect childhood relationship as Diluc's bride to be, soon becoming estranged after the death of his father and his neglect. You only wish now that he looks at you the same way he did when you heard you were supposed to be together forever when you were young. [FLANFF] (The ending gets better pls; Inspired by Still Into You - Paramore) [ONESHOT]

-> There are No Laws Against Homelessness in Mondstadt: My favorite title out of all of this ahahhaa- who says adventurers can't be broke? You're the living embodiment of that. (Good boi Diluc with a broke ass reader) [FLUFF] (Warning: homelessness) [ONESHOT]

Scaramouche - "Let's go already, the sun is setting and we're nowhere near our destination. If you wanted to linger just to spend more time with me, I would have indulged you behind closed doors anyways."

-> Scaramouche Finally Does the Fandango: Have you ever wondered how Scaramouche is like working with other people? His first assignment was to accompany you in your main region and he sees you in your natural habitat, entranced. [I dunno how to tag this, NORMAL?] [ONESHOT/SHORT]

-> Skincare bitch, how I headcanon Scaramouche as someone actually conscious and always tending to their skin. Look at that smooth skin, cute cheeks, let me pinch, eyeliner glory— In which case, that hat has more purpose than being a frisbee. (May or may not include reader. (based from a reblog convo with chels-void) [GOOD VIBES] [HEADCANONS]

-> Once Supreme: Before Scaramouche, there was someone else higher than him. Before Balladeer there was just a young man fighting for his beliefs and her Majesty. Before Mondstadt, his smile wasn't just for deception. "Someday, someone would take advantage of that smile, Scaramouche. It's not appropriate in this work environment." The day you break a man. (Harbinger!Reader again, and lots of HCs for Scaramouche, same format as Antinomy) [I also do not know how to call this, eventual ANGST] [ONESHOT]

Kaeya - "What are you doing out here in the dead of night? Citizens like you should be cozied up in bed and leaving the patrols to us Knights. Come, I'll accompany you back home."

-> Honey Whiskey: A mysterious band of dancers from Sumeru visits Mondstadt and its taverns to offer a night of alluring dances. What was supposed to be a night of drinking for Kaeya and his troops ended up becoming a tipsy surprise mission when the main dancer steps down from the stage— and ignores him?! How scandalous! (Slightly suggestive themes/You're a bad guy) [COOL?] [ONESHOT] [slightly inspired by song with the same name]

General:

-> A Musical!Reader but with a scenario with every other character, most probably headcanons master post.

-> Genshin Food prompts: From that one post, I ended up making a whole storyline of oneshots related to their special dishes. Oneshots connected to a bigger picture. By impulse you've ended up leaving your normal life behind to pursue your cooking career, starting from Mondstadt, to learn all the cuisines to establish the first ever international restaurant. With the implications of magic and peculiar customers, your simple dream turns into a harder goal. [GOOD SHIT] [SERIES] [CANON-COMPLIANT]

-> God of Time!Reader that hails from Fontaine. Do you wish to know more about their origins and their purpose in this world? [CANON-COMPLIANT] [HEADCANONS] (General since it deals with all the characters/interactions)

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Tagslist-for-my-thirsty-homies:

[tobebbanburg]

I was tagged by @bewires (who I can never fucking seem to tag idk why Lia, Lia are you there, can you see me, is this just tumblr being a bitch, I will never know) 

I’m tagging @boutiquetraveltravelboutique so you have something to look at after your hiatus (should you wish), and @hesnotmy because it’s got to the point where thinking of Sarah makes me think of you.

How many works do you have on AO3?

68

What's your total AO3 word count?

440,334

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

9 (on AO3 at least...). In descending order of frequency we have The Old Guard, Pak van mijn Hart, The Last Kingdom, Jeeg Robot, Wolf, Trust, Aladdin, L’ultimo Terrestre, and Shadowhunters

Are there any new fandoms you want to write for?

This doesn’t quite count as I’ve already started writing it, but I’m tentatively attempting to write some Bridgerton fanfic. And I have an idea for a Downton Abbey fic but that really shouldn’t count as I wrote Downton fic way back in my teens but we don’t speak of that

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Ink & Ivy

Take a Breath and Softly Say Goodbye

Pas de Deux

A Pirate’s Life is a Short but Merry One (Unless You’re Immortal)

The Blood and Sand Beneath Our Feet

Which of your fics do you want more attention for?

Ok I’m going to go in a different direction and say which fics I don’t want more attention for, which would be any of my weirder Richard fics or the Netflix/Old Guard Fandom BDSM fic. Because I’ve had a couple of people go from reading Ink & Ivy straight to those and getting whiplash (and potentially trauma) so... I am beyond overjoyed you want to read more of my work but it’s 100% safer if you sort by kudos and avoid anything that includes the Netlfix Geeked Week sex dungeon.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Absolutely! I mean I always feel inadequate because I can never reply to comments as well as I can write fic, but that’s life I guess.

What sorts of things do you normally write?

Fluff, smut, crack, and the occasional longer AU.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Last time I got asked this I forgot I did actually have an angsty-ish fic, because normally I avoid angst like the plague. But Lowlands Away ends with Andy thinking about losing Quynh which is as angsty as I’ll ever likely get!

What's a fic that pushed you out of your comfort zone?

Take a Breath and Softly Say Goodbye, purely because it was by far the longest fic I’ve written. Also the Richard/Valerio sounding fic because... it’s a Richard/Valerio sounding fic.

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

I do! They range from the relatively serious TOG but make it ancient Greek/Roman ones I’ve done to the weird-ass TOG Shadowhunters crossover I wrote for Julia’s birthday. It was written entirely with her in mind and as such is probably the nichest and weirdest thing I’ve written.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope, and likely never will. I feel like it’d be similar to playing doubles tennis, where I’d just worry about letting the other person down the whole time.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

My Knight’s Tale AU for the Old Guard. It’s barely 1k atm, and there’s just so much to write and work out that I don’t think I’ll go back to it any time soon.

What are you currently working on?

So much, I need WIP restraint, really. Besides my Bridgerton and Downton Abbey fics I have a sequel to The Blood and Sand Beneath Our Feet that’s racking up words quickly, a Nile-centric fic, and ofc the iceman!Nicky AU that’s going... slow. And then, because I love pain, I’m slowly picking up my original novel again and trying to get back into that.

What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told it’s the authors notes I leave at the end of fics, but also Sarah reliably informs me it’s blowjobs.

What are your writing weaknesses?

That part when I’ve written all the interesting dialogue and action and have to work out how to fill in the rest. Agony.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Most recent?

Midsomer Murders Officially, on AO3, it’s the Last Kingdom, with The Old Guard being my most current fandom.

What's your favourite fic you've written?

This changes every day tbh. Right now it’s More than Mercia, my Aethelflaed/Aldhelm fic, and my first “serious” fic.

What fic are you most proud of?

Again, this changes constantly, and atm it’s To Die a Hundred Times. I just think it’s neat.

[mayfriend-archive]

Totally understand if you're not up for it and fully recognize the ronald mcdonald dom/sub anon vibes which is an AMAZING post btw but like...now i'm curious, what the hell did Lord of the Flies anon DO that got him blocked for the discourse? like...i just can't wrap my head around high school lit being...uh...that inflammatory i guess?

Okay so, I'll start by saying I've had a new anon from apparently the same anon saying they are NOT the person I blocked, just a rando making the same points, but I'll answer your question anyway just to set out why this person in particular got blocked, out of the several thousand who reblogged/commented on that very successful addition to the LoTF post I made.

First off, I added the 'real life Lord of the Flies' story because I thought it was a good story. I had read about it only a couple days beforehand in Humankind and, after reading out the entire chapter to my parents who weren't very interested, I was excited that there was not only a post where it would be relevant to post, but that I wouldn't be hijacking it, as it was already rejecting the widespread interpretation taught in many schools, that humanity is inherently savage.

When making the addition, I a) did not think it would get more than a couple reblogs, because the post was already at 50k notes and I figured anyone that might be interested would already have seen it, and b) I did not know the very specific context that prompted William Golding to write the book; all I knew was that he had been a teacher at a public school (basically, the poshest schools in the country - think Eton, Harrow, very 'old money' places that pump out Conservative politicians by the bucket-load 🤢) who hated his job and the boys he taught (which, valid), and new information I'd been given in Humankind - that Golding had said to his wife one day, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?" - which had no mention of The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne, which I have since learned was the text that Golding loathed enough to write an entire novel in refutation of - and included what I considered a very telling letter from Golding to his publisher, in which Golding wrote of his belief that 'even if we start with a clean slate, our nature compels us to make a muck of it.' Another Golding quote that I believe portrays his belief in humanity's 'innate savagery' is that "man produces evil as a bee produces honey."

Obviously, the author of a book putting forward the case for humanity's inherent goodness was going to oppose Golding's hypothesis; Bregman not only noted Golding's literary accomplishments and beliefs, but his personal life.

When I began delving into the author's life, I learned what an unhappy individual he'd been. An alcoholic. Prone to depression. A man who, as a teacher, once divided his pupils into gangs and encouraged them to attack each other. "I have always understood the Nazis," Golding confessed, "because I am of that sort by nature." (Humankind by Rutger Bregman, p. 24-25)

I have bolded the part about him as a teacher, because it is incredibly relevant to the original post that I commented on, which begins with a comic of a teacher locking her class in to see them 'recreate' Lord of the Flies, something which the follow up comments before mine staunchly reject as both misunderstanding the point of the book, and the fact that it took the kids in Lord of the Flies a significant amount of time without adult supervision to go 'savage'. This misreading of the text is widespread enough that when Golding won the Nobel Prize for Lord of the Flies, the Swedish Nobel committee wrote that his book 'illuminate[s] the human condition in the world of today'. Whether or not they misread it is beyond my expertise - they do at least mention the factors of the outside world neglected by many when analysing the book, but still seem to believe it says something about human nature as a whole rather than just, to quote thedarkbutbeige 'British kids being rat bastards' - but Golding quite happily took his Nobel prize on this basis. Which, in fairness, I would too. It's a fucking Nobel prize.

It was with this knowledge, and this knowledge alone, that I stated in my now very, very widely read comment that Golding 'wrote the book to be a dick', in response to the tags of the person I reblogged from. As I said, I now know that Golding did not write the book (solely) because he hated the kids he taught, but as a response to The Coral Island and the general idea that clearly the British were inherently civilsed, whilst the people they colonised and enslaved were inherently savage. So. That's the background.

The anon - or rather, the person I thought was anon - was the sole exception out of dozens of replies, who instead of telling me about The Coral Island politely decided it was time to go ALL CAPS and regurgitate points already made by thespaceshipoftheseus, and implied that the only reason that the real life Tongan castaways didn't go all Lord of the Flies was because they weren't British. Not because they weren't surrounded by violence like the boys in Lord of the Flies, or there wasn't a World War ongoing, or that they weren't the upper, upper, upper crust of a class-obsessed society like Britain - but because they weren't British. A complete inversion of the concept that Golding was trying to get across - now, instead of all of humanity being equally prone to savagery in the right conditions, it was solely nationality that determined it. As in, the British were inherently savage, but nobody else was.

I, trying for humour, made the terrible mistake of replying to them.

I won't lie, I was absolutely blown away that this was real life. What I think they were trying to do was be that Cool Tumblr Person who, after somebody's been shitty on a post, goes to their blog and sees something Damning in their about/description. In an ideal world, I imagine I'd have gone nuts or done something Unforgiveable. In what I can only call the rant that followed, they stated several times that I needed to go back to high school to get some 'proper literary analysis' skills and that the story of the Tongan castaways was completely unrelated to the point at hand which. I mean, I disagree, considering that I made the addition, but I couldn't get my head around how commenting on a post that was already rejecting the thesis that the 'point' of Lord of the Flies was that humanity was inherently savage and was, in fact, about how kids - British or otherwise - learn how to function from the adults around them, and that traumatised, terrified children aren't going to create a mini-Utopia, and put forward a real life example of how without the key additions of an ongoing world war, a colonial Empire and the subsequent mindset of thinking you are 'inherently civilised' and therefore can't do anything wrong, actually, people just want to take care of each other.

A friend has since asked me why I even have 'england' in my description. To be honest, it's a timezone thing - I talk to a lot of people online who don't share my timezone, and it generally makes me feel like if I don't reply immediately because it's 3am, they have the tools to see that I'm not in their timezone and not just ignoring them. I did consider changing it to 'british' or 'uk' after it was... 'used against me', I guess, simply because I didn't want to deal with it, but you know what. No. Not gonna do that. I am from England, and I have never hid that fact. I have a tag called 'uk politics', during Eurovision I refer to the UK's act as 'us' (even if I really, really don't want to. Because James Newman slaughtered that song and it was downright embarrassing), I regularly post stuff in my personal tag about where I live (and mostly complain about this piece of shit government). If people really think my nationality makes every point I make null and void, then they don't have to follow me or interact with my posts; tumblr is big, and I am one medium-small blog very easily passed over.

I did reply to them, trying to explain the above, but their next response really just doubled down. Because I used the word British instead of English - foolishly because the posts above mine focused on Britishness, and also because although Golding was English and taught English kids, the pro-Imperialism author of The Coral Island, R. M. Bannatyne was actually Scottish so, ding ding ding, falls into the 'British' category - they then decided that I was somehow trying to pretend I wasn't English and made all the same points, before ending with this doozy:

At this point, I knew there was nothing to be gained from replying, because if we're whipping out conditions like they're pokemon cards then there's no actual conversation anymore, and I'm not going to start mudslinging like an identity politician. They made up their mind, and I figured there could be no harm in letting them think that they 'won' by blocking them instead of replying.

Until the ask. INNATE ENGLISH SAVAGERY did, I'll admit, make me think it was them, back again. I even thought up a really good response approximately 12 hours after I replied, I was that sure. Until the second message came in, and said they were just someone who came from the post and made the same point by chance. So the saga draws to a close... for now.

It may have been them, it may not have been - the anon feature makes it impossible to be sure, but as the second message I got said, we're in a heatwave. It's too hot to argue. And I've just written a goddamn essay about a book I dislike anyway.

My pasty English ass is going to go melt. If there's Disk Horse, do not tell me. I am Done™

[nocturne-pisces]

I’m the fucking lizard king- (1)

Summary: The idea that if you repeatedly bash your head into a brick wall, eventually the brick wall will love you back.

Pairing: OC!AFAB/NB!ChaoticDumbass (but described vague enough to be reader)xTFATWS!Bucky

Word Count: 762 

Warnings: for this chapter? just bad language and existentialism. 

A/N: welcome to the shit show. void is a character i’m working in a novel for.

[if you want you can pretend there’s a cover image here, but i’m too dumb for photoshop]

The notebook that Dr. Raynor took notes with, more to prove a point than to write anything, in her sessions with Bucky laid across her thigh as her pen scratched notes about how childish he was being. Bucky kept refusing to answer questions, or flat out lied to her, and her battlefield tried patience was wearing eerily thin. 

“Jesus Christ, this again? I thought we were past the passive aggression?”

“If you don’t talk, or if you lie,” she added, knowing that he would try to worm his way around her rules, “then I write. That’s how it’s been from the beginning, James.”

“Alright, alright. Put the pen down,” he surrendered. Bucky let out a chest-rattling sigh, the kind that made your ribs feel empty.

“So again, I’ll ask. How are the missions with Sam and V going?” Christina placed her pen in it’s holder on the notebook and set it to the side, folding her hands in her lap and training her gaze on Bucky.

“Good. They’re going really well. Sam is as annoying as usual, too much optimism for someone who’s been arrested by the federal government and spent two years on the run,” he shared, his eyes fixed on where he was toying with the seam on his gloves. Sharing his feelings and eye contact wasn’t something that he’d worked up to yet. 

“And V?”

Void, or V for short, was a new team member. Someone that they’d found in Madripoor with connections to information on the soldier serum and the power broker and incredibly too much sugar in their system at all times. Team mate might not be the right phrasing, either, because it wasn’t like they’d ever gotten an invitation to the team officially. Void, more or less, just thought the two of them were entertaining and decided to tag along. The usefulness they provided on missions was more a side effect than an intended outcome. 

Bucky rolled his eyes, a familiar flush creeping up the back of his neck as a whole new wave of irritation crashed over him. 

“Void is -- fuck, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know how you feel about them as a teammate?”

“I don’t know how I feel about them as anything to me, doc.”

“Sounds like your thoughts run deeper than you’re willing to say.”

________________________________________________________________

Bucky’s phone had buzzed a total of eight times while he was in that appointment. Once he was on the street and headed back to his own block, he pulled it out of his pocket and went over the barrage of text messages from Void. 

V: do you think there are aliens who think they’re the only sentient beings in the universe?

V: what if the earth is flat but it’s like a coin and edges are rounded so you never like fall off the edge or whatever and the sail from one side to another never looks like a disc? 

V: bucky these are important questions please respond :(

V: i’m going to start sending you memes you wont understand unless you reply to me in the next five minutes. >:|

V: two more minutes boinky, i swear to britney i’ll do it >:(

V: i’m literally an angel i don’t understand why you hate me so much :’(

V: [image attached]

V: [image attached]

Bucky gripped his phone willing his patience to reappear before he snapped it in half. When he looked back down at the screen he noticed that the bubble with the three dots had appeared, signaling that Void was typing again. 

Bucky: if you don’t shut the fuck up i am going to choke you to death

V: FUCKO!!!

V: finally you replied. i thought you left out of the back door and i wouldn’t get to see how irritated you were.

Bucky’s eyebrows knitted together, looking up and down the street to find where Void was stalking him from. He couldn’t see them, couldn’t tell where they were hiding, but he felt eyes on him like lasers.

V: there’s no point in looking for me, you know i’m way better at hiding than you

Bucky: where the fuck are you, i’m coming to kick your ass

V: Dr. Raynor would be very dissapointed to hear you say that

Bucky: excuse me? you know about my therapy sessions?

V: google is my friend, dumbass.

Bucky: you better pray i don’t find you, v

V: but jaaaaaames you never hang out with me. i have to go all yandere just to even pretend we’re friends

Bucky: we’re not friends

V: 

Bucky: found you. two buildings over. south wall. your ass is grass.

V: AND I OOP

Before Bucky could break out in a dead sprint, his arm itching to get Void in a headlock, his phone vibrated again.

Sam: Why was I just emailed V’s last will and testament? 

______________________________________________________________

A/N: I’m not smart enough to keep up with tag lists. :)

[loisfreakinglane]

i was tagged by @queenofattolia like a bajillion years ago

RULES: Copy/paste and bold your fic preferences because why not, gotta choose one (near impossible, but go with your first gut instinct), and tag someone because, again, why not.

slow burn or love at first sight

I LOVE A SLOW BURN

fake dating or secret dating

i don’t have a strong opinion here, but I feel like i’m more into fake dating in visual content than fic content? HM.

enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers

both solid options but i looooooooove the intimacy and slow burn that comes with friends falling in love/realizing they’re in love

oh no there’s only one bed or long-distance with correspondence

it’s not always like this but i LOOOOVE fic where they fall in love sight unseen, just like online or over the phone or over letters or whatever

hurt/comfort or amnesia

I want all of my faves to get FUCKED UP and ppl they love to take care of their obstinate asses no matter how much they say ~i’m fine~

fantasy au or modern au

I struggle keeping track of worldbuilding in even fantasy novels, my dumb brain finds modern aus way easier to engage with

mutual pining or domestic bliss

mutual pining is an ultimate forever fave trope always, they can have that domestic bliss at the END of the fic...... or in the sequel........

smut or fluff

I WANT THEM TO BANG IT OUT ALWAYS they’re welcome to get fluffy in the afterglow

canon compliant (missing scenes) or fix-it fic

i fucking love fix it fic, fix ALL OF IT FIX IT RIGHT FREAKING NOW

alternate universe or future fic

this is hard bc I don’t feel I have much of a preference here...... and honestly I’m lolz thinking about how if your show goes on too long your future fic can BECOME an alternate universe fic (i’m specifically remembering all the SMALLVILLE HIGH KIDS GO TO METROPOLIS FOR COLLEGE AND CLARK BECOMES SUPERMAN fics)

one-shot or multi-chapter

both are fine but I love getting in deep with long fic

kid fic or roadtrip fic

I have no major passion here other than roadtrips can be fun and crazy and that weird isolation from normal life with ppl you might otherwise not have really connected with makes for some deep bonding experiences. and also when kidfic is rly good it can be everything but I find a lot of fic writers don’t know how to write children. granted my experience with children is limited but it does pull me out of it when you’re writing a 9 year old like they’re 3

reincarnation or character death

REINCARNATION IS SO RARE BUT SO FUN

arranged marriage or accidental marriage

arranged marriage can be GREAT but I’m just not all that big on historical/fantasy aus which is what most of those are in? and accidental marriages are more my speed in the sense of OOPS WE GOT DRUNK MARRIED IN VEGAS WE SHOULD GET AN ANNULMENT OR MAYBE WE SHOULD MAKE OUT FIRST IDK

high school romance or middle aged romance

you guys I like. do not like high school aus lmao. on rare occasions, they have worked for me but 99% of the time it’s a hARD PASS. i’m very down for like....... fics where they’re all grown up NOW and reconnecting again for the first time since high school??????? but yeah

time travel or isolated together

both great but I reaaaaaaaaally love time travel. my favorite fic daydreams are of the ~my favorite character time traveled into their past body and now they can change everything~ variety (HENCE WHY THAT ONE BEING HUMAN EP IS ONE OF MY MOST WATCHED EPISODES OF ALL TIME AND IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A WHOLE SEASON)

neighbors or roommates

almost the exact same thing but i figure neighbors has a little more mystery built in, a bigger buildup of falling for each other and learning each other etc

sci-fi au or magic au

either is fine? ig i defer more to magic au bc i can get into urban fantasy settings, like modern but just with magic on top, and scifi often involves like. going to space. again i am very small and don’t have a lot of brain power to figure that shit out esp if i can’t see it with my eyeballs and have to imagine it instead

bodyswap or genderswap

I have no major preference here??? but like genderswap fic usually gets me more girls so like give me more girls 

angst or crack

ALWAYS ANGST PREFERABLY WITH A HAPPY/HOPEFUL ENDING. ALWAYS. I WANT BLOOD AND TEARS

apocalyptic or mundane

both are fine? but again. my brain is small. i like small concepts i can wrap my brain around kthx

AND I AM TAGGING!!!!!!!!!!!!! @eleonoraditoledo @bluetiefling @beavesaintmaries @lexmurphy @magnarangs @herasyndlla @iamgwenslongroadhome @exshiegra