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headcanonsandmore · 2 years ago

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Tegan/Nyssa fic recommendations

Fic lists used to be a big deal in fandom circles, and I think it’s always good to share fic recommendations with people. So here’s my current list of recommendations for Tegan/Nyssa fanfics!

If you have any others you want to recommend, please reblog with them! 😊😊

One Word More by Serenbex. Miss Nyssa Traken and Miss Tegan Jovanka come from very different places and very different walks of life. They have nothing in common and don't even really like each other very much. Can changing opinion and changing circumstances help them to better understand themselves and each other? Rated G for General Audiences. AU fic based on ‘North and South’; enemies-to-lovers, a bit of angst with some socialist themes thrown in. @serenbex is an amazing author and y’all should read my friends’ fic.

In fact, check out all of Serenbex’s fics; they’re truly fantastic. Special shout-outs to their multi-series epic ‘From The Stars’ (which is still ongoing) and the adorable one-shot ‘Lost In Translation’.

Earthling Customs (and the Aliens that Love Them) by WearyOctopus. After time-engine trouble strands the Tardis in space for several hours, Nyssa claims that Tegan is more than 300 days into her adventures on the Tardis and, thus, due to celebrate Christmas. The four travelers agree to an elaborate yuletide spectacular, some more enthusiastically than others. In the hustle of preparations, Tegan and Nyssa are paired off and begin to sort out their as-yet unspoken feelings for each other. Rated G for General Audiences. Adorable fluff with some excellent ‘The Fifth Doctor is a single dad’ coding.

Keeper Of My Heart by darklioness82. On Terminus, Nyssa gave Tegan a very special parting gift from Traken. Reunited 30 years later, Tegan learns its true value and meaning. Rated G for General Audiences. (Check out darklioness82’s other fics as well; they’re amazing)

Our Times by Ellimac. Tegan meets a mysterious stranger on a plane and accidentally falls in love. Turns out she's an alien, but they can work around that. Multi-chapter AU fic. Rated G for General Audiences.

White Elephant by TechnicolorRevel. Nyssa and Tegan go looking for a gift, at the Doctor's request. They get a bit side tracked. Rated G for General Audiences. Fluff with a bit of grief mixed in.

Quiet by TechnicolorRevel. Tegan has some trouble sleeping her first night on the TARDIS. Rated G for General Audiences. Character study.

Like You I’m Indestructible by Netgirl_y2k. The one where Tegan stays on Terminus with Nyssa. Rated G for General Audiences. What it says on the tin.

in a dream your future had a voice by TechnicolorRevel. Nyssa borrows Tegan's lipstick. Rated G for General Audiences. Cute fluff with a slight of insecurities explored.

Basically, everything Tegan/Nyssa by TechnicolorRevel; they’re really great at writing the pairing.

Show Me More Of This Traken Thing Called Kissing by Doyle. Nyssa makes a formal bid for Tegan's romantic affections. Tegan isn't quite sure what to do with that, really. Rated T for Teen. Really fun fic dealing with cultural differences in regards to courtship rituals.

Drag Me Through The Best of Years by Aces. An exploration over time of Tegan and Nyssa’s relationship, building on missing moments through their time together. A really sweet fic. Rated G for General Audiences.

The Many Proposals Of Tegan And Nyssa by LonelySpaceAce. What it says on the tin; its literally just these two being in love and proposing multiple times. Rated G for General Audiences. @lonely-space-ace is amazing at writing these two being adorable dorks.

Just read everything by LonelySpaceAce, because they’re amazing.

Amsterdam by LissyStrata. Left alone in Amsterdam for the weekend, Nyssa gets into some substances she shouldn't and Tegan looks after her. (Takes place after Arc of Infinity). G for General Audiences, but does technically involve some drug usage. Fluff with some hurt/comfort. Very funny. @lissy-strata is great at this.

Frozen like me by Calapine. Tegan and Nyssa struggle to keep warm in freezing temperatures. This one was originally posted to LiveJournal back in 2004, so don’t ever think that Tegan/Nyssa is a recent fandom development.

to love the light, the fire's spark, you must first have been buried in the deep down dark by TechnicolorRevel. Nyssa might have been good at diplomacy, but she'd always felt like she wasn't very good at her own feelings. Rated T for Teen. Really excellent bit of character writing for Nyssa.

Day By Day (By Day) by Settiai. If the Doctor wanted to disappear for a week with Adric in tow, leaving Nyssa and Tegan alone in the TARDIS...... well, who were they to argue? Rated T for Teen. Really cute slice-of-life fluff.

Language Transparency by JohnAmendAll. The TARDIS's ability to translate everything you say, hear and read is so convenient. Why wouldn't you want it? Rated T for Teen. Mild angst with a lot of fluff (and even a little saucy towards the end).

We Found Wonderland by rorybluebox. Snippets of Tegan and Nyssa falling in love. Raedt G for General Audiences. Lots of sweet fluff.

Borrowed Anxiety by mylordshesacactus. A couple of “missing moments” style scenes between Tegan and Nyssa. Rated G for General Audiences.

First Snowfall by orphan_account (their AO3 homepage is discontinued, apparently). Nyssa's never seen snow before, and Tegan tries to rectify this. Rated G for General Audiences. Very sweet fluff.

A Very Silly Battle by evilqueenofgallifrey (MayFairy). Tegan teaches Nyssa about pillowfights. In addition to getting hit with pillows, they also both get hit with soft gay feelings. Rated G for General Audiences. Very cute fluff. Side note; this was one of the first Tegan/Nyssa fics I ever read because @evilqueenofgallifrey has a blog on Tumblr and posted this on here.

Hope you like these fics, everyone! Like I said, please reblog and comment with any others you’d like to recommend!

#tegan/nyssa #nyssa/tegan #doctor who fanfiction #fanfic recs #fanfiction recommendations #tegan x nyssa #nyssa x tegan #tegan jovanka #nyssa #nyssa of traken #indestructible #heathrow scientific #tyssa #doctor who

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oldtvandcomics · 1 year ago

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Queer Media Monday New Year Extra - 2023 Hall Of Infame

I was kind of supposed to do this at the end of the year, but missed the day because of Christmas, so it got postponed to New Year’s Eve. Which is a Sunday, but whatever. While I enjoy almost all the media I consume (I pick it carefully beforehand), there were three queer stories in 2023 that I just cannot recommend, but also are for one reason or the other too important to simply ignore. So, here is my 2023 Hall Of Infame. I’ll be more opinionated than usual, but let me have this, as a treat.

Loki (2021-2023)

As part of the MCU, alternate-timeline Loki escapes at the end of the 2012 movie The Avengers and gets caught up with a time-travel agency trying to keep the Multiverse in order. Notable for being the one that actually states Loki’s queerness on-screen. Well. At least his bisexuality. His genderfluidity, not as much.

This show had so. much. potential. Good actors, Disney budget, and a premise that can be taken in a million interesting directions. Unfortunately, they didn’t.

It seems like every time this show has to make a narrative choice, it takes the least interesting way. The new characters are shallow and Loki doesn’t feel like himself, probably because key parts of his backstory and personality have been simply ignored for no clear reason. Motivations aren’t established where they should be, and nothing is explored in depth. Interesting ideas, themes and concepts are brought up, just to be dropped immediately and never mentioned again. Oh, and that famous queer coming out scene? Was an offhand mention of Loki having dated men at some point. It never came up again.

This is not a good show. And not even in an interesting way, where we at least have a delightful trainwreck to analyze, but in a very boring, aggressively mediocre way. It’s nice if you want to watch something without having to care about characterization, themes or a bigger overarching story, or if you are doing what the entire fandom was doing and collectively hallucinate an entire different show. Otherwise, don’t bother. Go watch Doctor Who, Legends of Tomorrow or even Ministerio del Tiempo instead. The first two are very queer. The last one isn’t, but has great time travel bureaucracy and a cool morally gray lesbian as part of its main cast.

Le Premier Jour de Paix by Elisa Beiram

Read as part of my project to read more French books by French authors, this was sold to me with the promise of it being about living in peace and how to achieve it. Also, queer. It… Wasn’t entirely wrong?

So the blurb on the back is misleading. Aureliano is where the story starts out, but the book actually follows three stories, each on a somewhat bigger scale than the previous. Aureliano is the first, and the least important one. The second is a woman whose job is to travel around and solve smaller local conflicts, the third the lead negotiator for world peace. She is in contact with an alien, who uses neopronouns, hence the book’s classification as queer.

If you want an idea of a better future, this book is not it. It is very, very bleak, set in a world ravaged by climate change, where everyone still alive is just kind of carrying on with not much hope at all and a lot of resentment for the people in the past. There is also a discussion that can be had about aliens as queer representation and the implications of humanity needing alien intervention for the conflicts to stop.

I must admit that the aliens were quite good, world building-wise, and that the author has clearly done research into climate change, conflicts and how to solve them, and was kind enough to include a list of sources in the back. She clearly cared a lot and did the best work she could. However, it feels like she’d been trying to write a hopeful book without being able to envision a hopeful future.

Interesting book, and I wouldn’t recommend against it. But probably also not for it.

Fanfic (2023)

Fanfic is a Polish movie about a transgender boy coming to terms with his gender. It is a movie I very much wanted to like, because we definitely could use more Eastern European queer movies. Also, I love fanfictions as much as the next Tumblr user, and this is a subculture that definitely has not been explored enough on screen. Especially in relation to queerness, the potential is enormous.

Frankly, I don’t think the filmmakers knew here what they were talking about. They missed both the fanfiction and the trans aspects.

What the main character is writing here is not fanfiction. It is called fanfiction, but lacks the connection to fandom culture or even any recognizable source material. It appears to be about a band, or it is a band AU, and all characters are very obvious self-inserts. But like, what band?! It’s never elaborated upon. The story works well this way, but if you are going to call a movie “Fanfic”, then it does need to have some insight into actual fan culture, or it is just false advertising. As to the trans aspect, it feels strongly simplified, to the point that it seems unauthentic. I am not a trans man myself, but I have been in a difficult place at the age of the characters, and as such can say with certainty that this movie does not understand the amount of pain its protagonist is in.

First, the transition happens very quickly. He pretty much goes from “hey, boy’s clothes, I like” to cutting off his hair binding his breasts and wanting to be called a boy within a day, with no signs of him actively questioning his gender before. As I said, I’m not trans, but based on what I’ve seen on the Internet, it definitely takes longer than this. Also, what bothers me more: This seems to magically fix all of his problems immediately. He becomes visibly confident and relaxed, has no trouble insisting on people gendering him right, and stands up for a classmate when she’s being picked on by the teacher. Coming from a character who days before was seriously depressed and drowning reality in self-insert fiction and stolen pills, no, I don’t buy it. What makes me the most upset is that one scene where a classmate calls the protagonist out for being so caught up with his own issues that he’s blind to those of other people, and it is framed as a good thing. As I said, I’ve been there. To this day, I have absolutely no idea what my classmates were doing around that time, because I was caught up in my own pain and my own need to survive and simply didn’t have any mental energy left for anything else. It sucks that Tosiek couldn’t be there for his friends, but given the pain he was in? Not his fault.

I repeat. This movie is doing its best, but clearly does not fully understand the subjects it chose.

So yeah. All three of these stories had a huge potential, and absolutely failed to live up to it. They are still worth knowing about. Loki, because it was a huge fandom phenomena, the other two, because they are stories by smaller, non-anglophone creators who clearly did their best. Eventually, they failed, but the stories could still be interesting conversation starters.

Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to more good queer media!

Queer Media Monday is an action I started to talk about some important and/or interesting parts of our queer heritage, that people, especially young people who are only just beginning to discover the wealth of stories out there, should be aware of. Please feel free to join in on the fun and make your own posts about things you personally find important!

#yeah these three were rather disappointing #they're all in this weird grey area #where I don't want to waste time and effort recommending them #but just ignoring their existence is also wrong #Queer Media Monday #loki show #Le Premier Jour de Paix #Fanfic (2023)#2023 wrap up

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dewipersikkk · 4 years ago

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Daily Rivamika Fanfics Recommendations : Day 2

Theme : Modern AU (PART 1)

Collide by eplrluieett

Rating : M

Summary : A series of one-shots, stand alones, and drabbles dedicated to Levi and Mikasa.

Review : Collection of "chef kiss" one-shots of Rivamika. The one-shots are heartwarming (some angsty) and I love to read it! The first one-shot has an Ackerbaby and it's emotional and super cute.

The other agent Ackerman by @alienheartattack

Rating : M (SMUT)

Summary : Mikasa, an up-and-coming agent at the Bureau of Intelligence, has an enormous crush on the top spy at her agency. When she's paired with him on her latest mission, she finds out a lot more about the other Agent Ackerman than she bargained for.

An accidental encounter by seekingtomorrow

Rating : General

Summary : Mikasa has to steal Levi's cravat for a sorority initiation, but she gets caught.

Review : Some of of my Rivamika reading lists in the past :). College AU! I love the author's works.

Roomates by seekingtomorrow

Rating : Teen

Summary : Sometimes Armin loves his roommates, loves living with Mikasa and Eren. And sometimes, Armin wishes he could live with anyone but a sex-starved fitness buff and a pyromaniac.

Review : FUNNIEST FANFIC THAT I EVER READ! Some Aruannie crumbs too!

The Million Dollar Man by volti

Rating : M

Summary : “You never thought love was selfish before.”

“I never thought we had a way out.”

Mikasa’s mother arranges for her to marry millionaire Levi to settle a debt/financial problems. Mikasa hates the idea and has no feelings for Levi, who is in love with her, but goes through with it for the sake of saving her family.

Review : OMG I CAN'T GET BORED READING THIS FIC FOR THOUSAND TIMES! HEART-BREAKING, TEAR-JERKING AND I'M SO EMOTIONAL READING THIS AAAA!!! At least, Mikasa learns to love Levi right?

Textbook notes by KawaiiCaptain

Rating : General

Summary : Levi and Mikasa are in the same class, unfortunately they have to share a textbook, though some things start to change as time progresses.

The taste of pomegranate by @alienheartattack

Rating : Teen

Summary : Mikasa Ackerman has just landed her first big role, dancing a pas de deux in a showcase for Erwin Smith’s dance company, but the partner he’s chosen for her is driving her insane. Ballet AU!

Mint Tea and Post-its by monidon

Rating : General

Summary : Mikasa isn’t sure when the first note appeared on her desk, but it was clearly from someone who knew her- or at least knew she preferred her tea hot and plain. Deaf!Mikasa

Review : I love Monidon's fanfics so much and I remember monidon always post up her crochets Rivamika featuring Baby Izumi and Erwin.

Pure dawn by sulkyfuckingcat

Rating : Explicit (SMUT)

Summary : It's a late evening on Christmas eve. Mikasa thought it would be like any other night: close the coffee-shop, watch TV and go to bed. What happens when a regular customer decides to stay a bit longer...

Can I Get Your Name, Please? by robin_jonahs

Rating : Teen

Summary : Levi works at a busy coffee shop with Hanji, along with others. Hanji is in a great mood, and Levi is not. Hanji knows Levi's got a thing for that customer, and Levi doesn't want to admit it.

Astringent on the Tongue by @alienheartattack

Rating : M

Summary : Levi's favorite customer at his tea shop has been away for a few weeks, and he misses her terribly.

Spicy : Jalapeno by Hallow17

Rating : M

Summary : Mikasa has worked something up just for Levi- in the form of some sexy lingerie. This leads to something sexy for the both of them!

Cultivating Happiness by thedrunkenwerewolf

Rating : Teen

Summary : Mikasa asks Levi for help fixing her garden, which leads to something more.

White noise and blue shadows by @valya-azucena

Rating : Teen

Summary : Levi is a 31-year-old office worker by day, and a video game addict by night. He doesn't have many friends, but while playing he meets Mikasa, a mysterious girl who threatens to surpass his gaming statistics.

The Sound of Lightning by @lychee-green-tea

Rating : M

Note : Incomplete

Summary : Levi has always known that someday, a day like this might come. A day that will shatter the peace that he has come to know. Peace is a fickle thing, after all, and never lasts. But it is the culmination of a hard earned life, of finding that one human who he chose to spend the rest of his days with, of bringing some actual light into the world instead of away from it, that leads him to this thought: whoever is dumb enough to come after humanity’s strongest pair, bring it the fuck on.

Or, the one where Levi and Mikasa are badass protective parents.

...........

END OF PART 1

#rivamika #rivamika fanfics #levi x mikasa

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lilydalexf · 4 years ago

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Michelle Kiefer

Michelle has 55 stories at Gossamer. If you haven’t read them, what are you waiting for?! She has great takes on Mulder and Scully. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her fics here before, including Christmas in California, Making Other Plans, and Six Inch Valley. Big thanks to Michelle for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I’m not sure anyone is still reading my stories. I haven’t migrated my X-Files ones to AO3. I don’t think Gossamer provides any viewing statistics. I’d be very happy to hear that people still like my work.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

My X-Files fandom experience was amazing. I remember that sense of excitement and immediacy. It was thrilling to write stories (and read those of other authors, of course) in an active fandom for a show that was on the air. It was truly my first experience in an online world--a parallel world to my real life existence. I learned how to keep a foot in each world. As I recall, it was very hard to keep my focus in my “meat” world, when the online one was so fast moving and thrilling. But I did get some balance in my life as time went on.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Message boards and mailing lists were my experience. They were primitive compared to the pretty screens now. I forged some amazing friendships, some of them with people I discovered lived relatively near me. All I wanted to do was discuss episodes and fic. The flame wars were a little intimidating, but also amusing if you didn’t get swept up.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I was very passionate about the fandom--as I said, there were times when my online life seemed to overpower my real life experiences. I learned to manage that, and think I’m all the better for that. And I found some amazing friendships that are active and thriving today. I learned a lot about writing with XF fanfic. The level of quality was stunning. A decent percentage of fic were as good or better than traditional published fiction. But there were so many writers! I wanted to make an impact on the fanfiction world, but that meant taking my writing very seriously and learning to develop a story, pace that story, make it compelling and believable.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had a couple of coworkers that talked about the show all the time. I was curious, so I watched an episode. I believe it was the cannibal town one. I thought David Duchovny was odd looking and wasn’t terribly impressed. But I tried another episode - Wetwired, which blew me away with the morgue scene when Mulder thinks he’s going to identify Scully’s body. Ah...I thought, now, I see what everyone is talking about! And from then I was hooked.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

As I watched, I wanted more. I was fairly new to the internet (frankly, the internet was new to almost everyone) I found episode reviews, and some of them were fantastic. Some mentioned fanfiction. I was unaware of such a thing, though to be honest, since childhood, I’d been spinning stories in my head about characters on TV shows. I found some fanfic. The first couple of stories were not great (at least one was horrible) but then I found some that were very good. Probably a bit soap-operaish, but still readable. And then I became voracious as I plowed through the mass of stories looking for the good stuff. And boy was there good stuff.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I’m not estranged from it, but I don’t spend much time with it after all these years. I’ve found fanfic in some other shows that I like and only occasionally read old XF stories.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I’ve not been as involved with any other fandoms, i.e. following commentary on the show. I tend to dive into TV shows well after their heyday, so I’m always late to the party. I do read fanfic from other shows, and have actually written fanfic for other shows, but I need a really good idea to write. None of the other fandoms for my other shows are as busy and active as XF, even ones currently in production. And none of them have as much fanfic and certainly not the level of brilliance that we had in XF.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I tend to go for interesting partnerships, very much in the XF fashion. And a flawed hero is always a plus! The partnerships don’t necessarily have to be romantic---in fact I find I prefer those that are not. Really, Mulder and Scully were the only ones I felt deeply as a pairing, probably due to the chemistry between the actors. But the partnerships have to be well-balanced and realistic. I loved the characters on Sleepy Hollow. The two main characters were very much in the mold of Mulder/Scully.

My newest passion is British detective shows and I’ve completely fallen for the “Morse-verse” shows, Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis and Endeavour. Less of an XF feel, but compelling characters with interesting backstories. Other favorite partnerships in the British detective genre are on Inspector Lynley and Broadchurch.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

A bit less now, though I’m still involved with a wonderful group of ladies who love the X-Files. When we get together for a yearly weekend, we binge episodes and eat impressive amounts of junk food. XF isn’t on network TV these days, but if it was, I’d probably watch it.

A couple of years ago, I listened to Kumail Nanjiani’s XF podcast on my long commute. I loved the commentary and interviews so much that I did watch some old episodes.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don’t read much XF fic. I’m currently reading in some other fandoms, but it’s harder to find good stories--the ones I follow aren’t very active these days and the quality just isn’t what XF was. We were so lucky. We had maybe 20 incredible top authors at any one time, then maybe another tier of 50 to 100 good to maybe great writers. And with new episodes, there was so much inspiration. We were so spoiled.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Everything from Syntax6, MaybeAmanda, Kel. A special story for me was “Strangers and the Strange Dead” by Kipler because I remember reading that very early in the morning in my unheated basement in the winter because that was the only time I could use our single computer without others in the family complaining. I remember actually gasping at the big reveal in the story. I can even remember the story’s opening line!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I was just learning how to write fiction when I was involved in XF, so I’m not sure my best work is there, though the bulk of my stories are there. I liked some of the work I did with others. I wrote Bone of Contention and Out of the Everywhere with Kel and I think that those stories got the best aspects of both of our styles. For stories I wrote myself, I think they’re not bad, but they are rather short and it’s always easier to maintain a theme and style for a short story. I liked Black Cherry Velvet. I’m writing some Inspector Lewis stories that I think are pretty good--they benefit from the years of experience that I was gaining through XF.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

Never say never, but I probably won’t write more XF. I used to burn with it, but I think that got burned out a bit. Still, I have such wonderful memories of the whole period. It might be worth looking at again.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

As I mentioned, I am currently playing in the Inspector Lewis world. It’s sad--it’s a very small and not terribly active fandom. Sad that my best work is in an inactive fandom where I’m lucky if 20 or 30 people are reading them. It doesn’t help that I don’t write the most popular pairing.

But I’m really enjoying it. I occasionally write for Man From Uncle, which really shows my age, as that was a childhood obsession.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

With XF, it was always a take on an episode--did I get a tiny idea that I wanted to develop, or was I not thrilled with the way something went on the show. Now, it’s usually a “what if” kind of thing where I get inspired by a possible event and explore how that would play out, i.e. “What if this character had a one night stand resulting in an unplanned pregnancy?” What would happen? How would he handle the consequences of this? How would it change his life?

What's the story behind your pen name?

It’s literally my own name. I SOOOO wish I’d used a pen name. But I was naive and fandom was so new to me that it never occurred to me that a pen name would be better. I always told myself that my real name sounded like something made up, like a TV newscaster name, and I hoped people assumed it was a pen name.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My husband and my kids were the only ones who knew about it for many years. Then I went to a fandom/fic gathering for three days and had to explain to a few other family members and my work mates why I was going to Chicago on my own. It’s still mostly a need to know thing and they don’t really need to know.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I’m on AO3 as msk. And everything I wrote for XF is on Gossamer.

(Posted by Lilydale on February 2, 2021)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #michelle kiefer

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marzipanandminutiae · 4 years ago

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For the character ask meme, obviously I have to ask Lucille (or Edith!)

Oh no I have suddenly developed an ocular affliction that causes me to read the word "or" as "and"

What a strange and unfortunate-

Edith Cushing

First impression: My first impressions of this movie are kind of hazy in my memory now, because it's been six years but also because all I really recall is how much I loved it. Like, you know those movies where you leave the theatre and you just feel Changed(TM)? CPeak was definitely one of those, even if my Fandom Spiral for it was delayed.

I do remember thinking, "oh thank god, a Victorian female lead who's strong and independent and compelling without giving the impression that the director secretly hates 19th-century women." That definitely hasn't changed.

Impression now: MY STONE-COLD BADASS BUTTERFLY GODDESS. I love Edith so much. I want to write her more, and I have some stories coming up which will give me that opportunity. She's imaginative but no-nonsense, a keen appreciator of beauty but eminently practical. Edith is the eternal "sir, this is a Wendy's," and the epitome of "do no harm, but take no shit." Also her wardrobe is excellent.

Favorite moment: Any time she's talking about her book. It's so relatable and she's so determined to make her dream come true. Characters do talk to you, and I wonder, if she ever found an earlier copy of the text she'd stashed away somewhere, what Cavendish would make of himself now.

Idea for a story: Edith is secretly gay and marries Thomas just to get to Lucille. That's it; that's my next multi-chapter fanfic. Coming eventually to an AO3 near you!

Unpopular opinion: I don't think she was pregnant at the end of the movie. Or if she was, I imagine long-term chronic cyanide poisoning would make her miscarry. I also don't think she ever saw Thomas' ghost again, but I do think she held onto the land around Allerdale Hall and reopened the mines- half to fulfill his dream as a last gift and half because it never hurts to have another source of income. I doubt she ever went back into the house, though.

Favorite relationship: Canon? With her father. I love the scenes where they interact, because it's clear how much they love each other and understand each other as people. We love a healthy fictional parent-child relationship in this house.

Fandom? I am currently the woman in that math meme, except trying to figure out how to morally break Edith in just the right way that she'd fall for Lucille. Without being totally unrecognizable as herself.

Favorite headcanon: It's not exactly headcanon, but Del Toro said Edith dislikes Christmas in her character bio, and I imagine that's because of just how many parties an upper-class American Christmas in the 1890s-early 1900s would involve. Maybe she can get out of going to some, but she's Carter's hostess, and since he enjoys "social frivolity" as much as she doesn't...I imagine she breathes a sigh of relief when January 7th comes around and she can finally just spend evenings by the fire with her manuscript and a cup of chocolate.

Lucille Sharpe

First impression: If Murder Bad Why Evil Lady Hot?

Impression now: I want to suit up in full body armor and give her a hug. She's such a mess, and she's a mess that you can't help feeling sympathy for. Obviously she does so much that's awful and horrifying, and none of it is justified (except killing her parents- they had it coming). But god...there's just SO MUCH below the surface to analyze and poke around in. That's what makes her so fascinating to write.

...also If Murder Bad Why Evil Lady Hot?

Favorite moment: It's not my favorite, but it's a moment I have many questions about. The part in the park where she tries to dissuade Thomas from going after Edith. Why did she do that? Was she objecting to Edith's youth because she actually has some scruples left? Was it just about her own insecurities in the face of a Sweet Young Thing(TM) who Thomas already seems way too interested in? Was it a slightly petulant complaint that Edith's company would be unbearably tiresome for even a few months?

I feel like the answer could say a lot about her as a person. If only we knew it.

Idea for a story: How long do you have? I'm writing a hurt/comfort fic right now about Thomas bringing her home from the asylum and the immediate aftermath thereof, so that's definitely an idea to explore.

Unpopular opinion: I think her relationship with Thomas is more or less consensual. Or at least, I don't think the fact that his eyes were closed when Edith caught them together means what the fandom seems to think it means (that he was uncomfortable). Like. He was kissing her shoulder and actively pulling her closer to him. His eyes may have been closed, but the body language doesn't exactly say "just getting through it" to me.

The power dynamic is undoubtedly screwed up, especially since they were 13 and 11 when everything started (according to Del Toro) and Lucille is not above laying on the guilt trips about everything she's done for him (according to the novelization). So it's still not a HEALTHY relationship, even besides the codependence and the fact that they're siblings. But I don't think Lucille is outright forcing Thomas to have sex with her, or ever has.

Favorite relationship: Canon- I mean. She has one non-murder-motivated relationship in canon, so...I find the Sharpe siblings somewhat endearing because I think, ultimately, they really do love each other. I bet she has a favorite among Thomas' automata, and I bet she could listen to him talk about his inventions for hours.

Fandom- I don't have to math meme this one. Lucille likes having Her People, to love and possess. Lucille likes women. Lucille thinks Edith is beautiful. Lucille has absolutely no scruples about pursuing what she wants, if she can allow herself to want it. This theme has been lovingly explored by fans many times over, and it never gets old to me.

Favorite headcanon: Lucille is an aesthete at heart. You can't tell me a woman who does housework in silk-velvet and owns that nightgown/robe set isn't hell-bent on beauty even at the expense of practicality. Gods help anyone who tried to offer decorating advice if they ever had gotten the house fixed up- she'd lovingly plan every single room herself, and accept no advice or criticism from anyone. (Except possibly Thomas, but I doubt even him.)

#ask #anon #long post #ask meme #ask game #character meta #crimson peak #child abuse mention #csa mention #incest mention #emotional abuse mention

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master-sass-blast · 4 years ago

Text

Gifted.

*tosses escapism fic into the void* yeet.

Summary: You and Piotr go Christmas shopping and enjoy the holiday season.

That's it. That's all that's happening. You're welcome.

Pairing(s): Piotr Rasputin x Reader and mentioned Illyana Rasputin x Kitty Pryde.

Rating: G.

Word Count: 2k precisely.

Set after “It’s Truly Magical.”

A/N: On the off-chance someone asks or is worried, yes, there are no mentions of masks or social distancing in this fic. That's because, in this fic, there is no COVID (ergo, no need for masks and such). I'm just not dealing with it in my fanfic as well. I won't. You can't make me.

Wear your fucking masks irl pls and thank u.

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @super-darkcloudstudent, @dandyqueen, @leo-writer

“What a bright time, it's the right time/ To rock the night away/ Jingle bell time is a swell time/ To go glidin' in a one-horse sleigh…”

You inhale deeply, then smile. The smells of fresh pretzels and pine –the latter is likely a fake scent that the stores use, but it’s still good—tantalize your nose. You tuck your hat and gloves in your purse, then look over at your husband. “Where all are we going?”

“Ah…” Piotr scans his list –which has notes on which stores to check and what order the stores are laid out in the mall, so as to streamline things. “Kitty said she did not want gifts because she does not celebrate Christmas, so we are just shopping for… my family and Russell. You said you already bought gifts for your dad and Wade?”

“Yup,” you say with a grin. Nate’s easy to shop for –ammo, clothes, and the odd book or two are usually all he want—and for Wade you just find the weirdest stuff listed on Amazon. “And I already sent my uncle a gift from us, so we don’t have to worry about him.”

Piotr nods, ‘hmm-ing’ as he makes a note on his list. “Okay.” He mumbles in Russian under his breath, then says, “Mama had no list this year; I think we start with her first since figuring out gift will take longer.”

“That’s fine. Where should we start?”

“I think bookstore is best bet. From there, we can stop by Hot Topic and candle shop for snezhinka, then Game Stop for Mikhail.”

“Sounds good.” You link your arm through his and smile up at him. “Lead the way, babe.”

***

You glance between the piles of books on the table, then at your husband, who looks like he’s about to pull his hair out. “Do you think that, just maybe, you’re overthinking this? Just a little?”

“This is important,” Piotr insists as he skims through books from various areas of Barnes and Noble –cooking, history, fiction; he’d grabbed at least one book from nearly every section. “She has specific tastes. Cannot be just any old book.”

You purse your lips together. You don’t doubt that Alexandra has particular tastes in reading material –as a woman from her walk in life is bound to have—but you’re also certain that she wouldn’t want her son driving himself insane just to pick a present for her. You sit down next to Piotr and gently put your hand on his arm. “Sweetheart. She’s going to like whatever you get her.”

“Not necessarily. I have seen her toss many books aside with scoff and never pick them up again.”

“Okay, why?”

He shrugs. “Realism. She thinks some authors are ‘too indulgent’ or ‘too unrealistic.’”

“Alright, so maybe we leave out the crime and romance stuff,” you suggest, setting the few books he’d grabbed from those areas aside. “What does she like to do?”

Piotr goes quiet. His expression grows ashen as he contemplates the question. “I… don’t know.”

“Does she like to cook? Or draw? Or watch certain types of shows or movies?”

“I don’t know,” he repeats, more insistent. “She…” He sighs. “She never sits still. I don’t think any shows or movies interest her. When I was child, she always worked. On farm, taking care of animals, helping workers, making food, balancing accounts, translating letters and schoolwork… I never saw her rest. Do something for herself.”

You let out a soft snort. “Maybe a book on meditation.”

Piotr rolls his eyes, grinning. “Perhaps not.”

“Who does she like to be around, then?”

“Otets.” Piotr smiles when the answer comes easily. “She and my father” –he holds up two crossed fingers—“are like this. Aside from siblings and me, I think he is only person she is really close to.”

“Alright, maybe a cookbook, then. That’d give them something to do together.”

Piotr nods, then starts looking through the cookbooks he’d picked. “Question is, which one?”

“Well, we know she likes to stay busy and keep moving. Maybe something that’d challenge their skills? Something they haven’t tried?” You hold up a book boasting ‘rich and authentic Middle Eastern recipes.’ “This could be good. I think they’d have access to most of the ingredients, here in New York.”

He nods again, then sets the aforementioned book aside before checking over the other ones. “I think…” He lifts a hardcover thriller novel off the table. “She likes mysteries. This one has good reviews… maybe…”

You gently take the book from his hands and set it atop the Middle Eastern cookbook. “I think it’s a great choice.”

He smiles, then kisses your cheek. “Spasibo, myshka.”

***

“Bozhe moi.”

You giggle as the two of you step over the threshold of the Yankee Candle store, only for Piotr to recoil and take a step back. “You good there, baby?”

He presses his fingers against the sides of his nose. “Is like… assault of smells.”

“I know.” You inhale deeply, them flash him an impish smile. “Isn’t it great?”

Piotr groans, still rubbing his sinuses. “Do you mind—”

“I’ll find a candle for Illyana. Wanna meet up in Gamestop?”

“Spasibo, dorogoy.”

You blow him a kiss, then head into the candle store. You take a couple minutes to peruse the holiday display at the front of the store –and grab a couple votives for you and Piotr to enjoy—before heading towards the back of the store, where all the shelves of their regular candles are. You pause to smell your favorites –seriously, the McIntosh apple one never fails to make your mouth water—before taking a step back to survey your options. Alright, what to get for a mildly angsty, queer Russian goth?

It’s not as straightforward as it sounds (har har). Illyana’s an enigma, much like her mother. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t usually bother with convention.

Do I go for aesthetic? You pick up a pitch black candle labeled “Midnight Forest” and give it a cursory sniff. Ugh, smells like ass. No, thank you.

You also have to consider that whatever you get is likely going to be smelled by Kitty, too. As much as Illyana marches to the beat of her own drum, she’s surprisingly conscientious of her bubbly, energetic girlfriend.

Maybe something natural? Like the farm? You try a few options, wrinkling your nose after each sniff. God, what is it with the fresh scents and smelling heinous? You debate texting Piotr and dragging him back in here, if only so you’re certain you’ll get something Illyana would like—

And then it hits you over the head like a brick.

She’s gonna use these for meditation. You head down the rows of shelves, grab a jar labeled “Vanilla,” and give it a smell. Perfect. Not too strong, not too bland. You grab a lavender scented tumbler (for relaxation), then snag a pink one that smells like the perfume Kitty favors on a hunch it’ll be a hit.

By the time you pay for yours and Illyana’s candles, Piotr’s already waiting outside the Gamestop for you, bag in hand.

He eyes your bulging bags, eyebrow raising in trepidation. “Why…”

“Look, it’s your fault for abandoning me,” you say before he can point out your lack of self-control. “You know I’m weak for candles.”

Piotr snorts, then sighs. “Fair enough.” He nods and makes approving noises when you show him the picks you made for Illyana, then shows you what he grabbed for Mikhail.

“‘Mister Mosquito?’” You nearly double over laughing. “What even is this?”

“He wanted ‘weird video game,’” Piotr says, shrugging one shoulder. “I figure this should do.”

“He’s gonna love it,” you reassure your husband. “That’s weird as shit.” You start strolling along the main hall of the mall –and then your stomach rumbles. “Can we get pretzels?”

“Da, myshka,” Piotr chuckles, “we can get pretzels.”

***

“There'll be parties for hosting/ marshmallows for toasting/ and caroling out in the snow/ there'll be scary ghost stories/ and tales of the glories of/ Christmases long, long ago…”

“It’s the most! Wonderful time! Of the year!” you sing along as you rip another chunk off your pretzel. You smile to yourself as you admire the glittering, twinkling decorations decking the food court. “How’s your pretzel?”

“Very tasty.” Piotr dips a bite of his pretzel in some mustard, pops it in his mouth, then swallows before wiping his fingers on a napkin. “I think we only have handful of stops left.”

“Couple of sweaters for your dad… weird socks and-or scarves for Mikhail…” You lean over, reading off the list in his hand (which is written in a mixture of Russian and English). You take another bite of pretzel, then tap on a portion of blended “Russi-nglish” that you can’t decipher. “What’s that?” you ask once your mouth is clear.

“Random gift options,” he translates. “For filling out presents, stockings, that sort of thing.” He touches the tip of his index finger to the page, moving down the list in order. “Chocolate, books, gift cards. Guaranteed hits, essentially.”

“Ooh, I could go for some chocolate.”

Piotr snorts. “You just had pretzel. And this is for others, myshka.”

“If it’s in the car with me, I make no promises.”

He laughs, then makes an extra note on his list. “Safety chocolate… for myshka. Got it.”

***

“Here, dorogoy.”

“Oh, thank you!” You smile as Piotr takes some of the excess bags from your hands, shifting them so he can carry them (which, with his strength and the size of his hands, is no problem at all). You amble along next to him, admiring the various pop-up stands boasting games, calendars, and Christmas-themed treats. “Is there anywhere else we need to stop?”

“I believe we have everything.”

“And I’m guessing we need to head home so we can make dinner?”

“That would be best, da.” Piotr looks down at you, expression curious. “Why? There is somewhere you wish to stop?”

“Eh, not really,” you say with a shrug. “I just like coming to the mall during this time of year. The decorations, the music, the extra stands and seasonal gifts… It just makes me happy.”

“Aah, khorosho. I understand. We can come back later for date, if you like. Take time to walk around and admire stores.”

You grin up at him. “I’d like that.”

The two of you make to head out of the mall, back to the parking lot—

And then Piotr veers towards the right.

“Where are we going?” you ask, giggling as he leads you towards the bookstore. “I thought we already got everything we needed from here?”

He winks at you. “Trip is not complete yet. Not with hot chocolate, anyway.”

You grin and let him guide you over to the café in the bookstore.

Piotr gets you situated at a table near the expanse of windows at the front of the shop. He leaves your bags with you, then leads up at the counter to order your drinks.

You smile, lovestruck as you gaze over at him. How did I get so lucky? You lean back in your seat, taking a moment to admire the snow falling outside before checking out the decorations throughout the store…

Which is when you realize that there’s mistletoe hanging over your table.

You chuckle to yourself. Perfect.

“You are in good mood,” Piotr comments as he returns with two cups of hot chocolate.

“Of course, I am,” you admit with a broad grin. “I’ve got you. And tradition’s on our side.”

Piotr’s smile turns quizzical. He cocks his head to the side, staring at you for a moment, then looks up when you point towards the ceiling. “Ah,” he chuckles, “yes. That is good reason to be happy.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” You hook your finger under the collar of his shirt and gently tug him towards you. “Come here, handsome.”

He lets out a soft, happy giggle and bends down to kiss you.

#sass writes #piotr rasputin x reader #colossus x reader #holiday fluff #i miss going outside #which never happens so like #fml #don't mind the sounds of despair coming from my general direction #just use the fluff to drown it out #just like how i am #also kitty is jewish and thus doesn't observe christmas #i will die on this fucking hill :)#x men fanfiction #deadpool fanfiction

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feather-dancer · 4 years ago

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Tales of Arcadia Fanfic Recommendations - Part 4

Are you thinking perhaps, wow I never expected a fourth fanfic recc list so soon? Because if you do I feel exactly the same way! I thought I’d have some more of my own writing out by the time it happened and yet even before Wizards I was building up a good list of reading then the release just set off a flood of ‘em I’ve been duly binging and hoarding. Because of how long this post is getting I’m at the point of wanting it out my drafts and in the wilds before it begins to grow legs.

As when I posted the third list, I suspect within 48 hours I’ll find a new fic and I’ll need to start drafting a fifth one thus the cycle continues...

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8

Plus one shameless plug for my own current fics because I can.

General Trollhunters

Hold My Hand in The Dark - Jim may have escaped the Darklands but even now it still has it’s claws in him.

To Say Nothing of the Dog - A Steli fic that’s very cute. Sometimes trolls aren’t the strangest thing you find out in the woods of Arcadia.

say that you'll stay awake for me - Another Steli fic where they’re both completely useless but it’s full of fluff anyway.

Candy canes and Sugar plums - Two very sweet Christmas themed one shots. In one Not!Enrique has to get ready for a photography session and another Jim as a half-troll gets mistaken for Krampus by a pair of kids.

Despondent Contemplations - Back in the old library that was once their home in Heartstone Trollmarket, Blinky and AARRRGGHH reminisce about old times. Contains minor spoilers for Wizards but not enough to remove from this section.

The Indecency of Courage - The thoughts of Kanjigar during his final battle.

Brotherhood - It’s hard to love a sibling who betrayed then later attempted to kill you and in return you permanently blinded but with some relationships it’s worth seeing if it’s still possible to mend.

In Our Times To Come - Jilaire, trauma comes in many shapes and forms but as long as you have the right people around you perhaps you can work your way through them together.

General Wizards - Skip this section if you wish to avoid spoilers

The City Never Sleeps - Douxie, Archie and Nari are now on the run trying desperately to keep off the radar in their new home of New York City but the flights of fancy of the old traveling days meet a whole new reality where things are a lot more expensive. For his new family though, this wizard willingly burns himself out over and over to keep them safe.

Home Away From Home -The sequel oneshot to the above and the struggle continues. Nari's attempts to figure out her place after a month of adjustment while Douxie seems to have lost all concept of things called plates.

a rescue from the weight you've carried - The ending these kids DESERVE.

Eyes Like Hope, a Smile Like Mercy, a Voice Like Justice - Without even realising it, Jim offered so much to the trolls of the past just by the virtue of being Jim.

Another Mistake - It’s not easy to revisit your past but in Douxie’s case he is offered a unique chance to see his younger self and the humbler roots he once came from.

Strings - Zouxie and oh GOD is this adorable and fluffy and I love it very much.

Waiting for Dawn - It’s over isn’t it? But Jim’s journey isn’t, not quite yet. His next task involves stumbling back home with the help of his friends and family and figure out the immediately of the after.

Center Stage - Douxie’s relationship with Merlin might have been incredibly complicated but it does not make the grief any easier to bear.

i've got to find my soul all before i sleep - Jim has been given a second chance at life and as a human at that but the niggling feeling of his old (New?) skin not quite fitting right anymore.

Stricklake

A Little Bit Pear-Shaped - Even when you think you haven’t taken your eye off the ball you find out maybe you might have and, well, then the title happens.

it's a lovely day in stricklake month - And Dreamcrow is once more coming up with the goods for us all to enjoy. The 6th chapter is nsfw as forewarning.

Dropout - Jim was human, once, then in the course of mere days he was transformed into a half-troll, fought to save the world and then forced to leave home and family behind as a reward for surviving. It’s no wonder that when given the chance to finally breathe again Barbara struggles with what has and what will be.

K.O. - The end result of Strickler’s terrible not so fun day results in a hospital visit but at least the upside involves the fact Barbara is there.

Alternate Universe

The Unwelcome Guest Do you remember Sam from the wonderful Whispers Within aka the Gay Uhl with a monster boyfriend fic? Well here he is a bit earlier than that still causing chaos but this time via trying to be ever so helpful towards a certain avocado coloured changeling who would sincerely like this to stop happening. Please.

left-hand florilegium - Even the great Walter (Stricklander) Strickler was a youngling, once, but no road a changeling may travel was designed to be anything other than a constant test to prove your worthiness in survival to gain a place in a brand new world.

Both Sides of the Sky - Jilaire with a historical regency twist and an arranged marriage that forces Jim into Claire’s path. On the surface he appears extremely nervous of something (Or more specifically someone) and she’s had quite enough of suitors making for a poor match. However, a simple act of kindness can bring with it an awful lot of shadows you might well have better off staying oblivious to.

A Foundation of Fluff - I never knew a ship of Barbara, Strickler and Draal could be so adorable and?? Yet?? The spite ship train is glorious. A foundation of fluff is a very apt description.

Broken Mirror - You might think this is another Unbecoming take but you’ll be surprised. During an argument with Merlin over his general treatment of others after the great move to New Jersey, Jim is flung elsewhere to wake up on the fabled day he found the amulet and very much human again. Not wanting to mess things up this time he goes to rescue Kanjigar before he is felled but nothing goes as expected.

Bitter Sixteen - The stalkling was set on Jim and in a lightning storm he was carried away but what if Toby never got that call to come to his rescue?

The World Ended Yesterday - The events of Unbecoming seem so long ago now yet here something went very wrong during the attempt to return to the future causing Jim to be lost to not only time but the very world he came from. Seemingly within another reset, he is not going to bury his head in the sand but equally the half-troll is determined to spare this world’s self future tragedy.

What the Night Brings - There are trolls in Arcadia, hidden underground and planning payback for having the surface lands stolen from them centuries ago. While there is contention in the ranks nobody dares say no to Gunmar the Skullcrusher and there is no Trollhunter to protect the dissents. Jim unwittingly witnesses what he should not and now carries the scars and no longer does he remain a human when the dusk comes, instead he is now some form of were-troll. What’s worse, he’s having to face this whole confusing mess alone.

Claire The Courageous - In a different universe Claire became the Trollhunter instead of Jim and Steve of all people ends up being the one dragged into the world of trolls with her. That however does not mean that Jim isn’t still involved in her journey in some way...

#Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Wizards #ToAWizards

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maxbegone · 4 years ago

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AND WE ARE BACK!

Part two of the Schitt’s Creek Community Fic Rec is here! This time, we focused on celebrating our favorite AU’s! Once again, this is dedicated with love to the the authors of this community! Every participant chose one AU (which was a little hard to do for some) to share and why they enjoyed it.

Thank you to everyone who submitted!

@bestwisheswarmestregards // @brighter-than-sunshine // @danieljradcliffe // @devilstelephone // @fishyspots // @imargaery // @justwaiting23 // @patrickbrewsky // @rockinhamburger // @roguebabyinyourstore // @rosebuddsmotel // @stuck-on-your-heart // @the-13th-wheel // @thedidipickles // @thisbuildinghasfeelings // @yourbuttervoicedbeau

And a very special thank you to anyone who has ever written anything in this community!

Everything is posted below the cut, and you can check out part one here!

**As always, if I missed an author’s tumblr handle, please let me know!

@bestwisheswarmestregards

Odd Man Rush by @samwhambam

It’s David and Patrick and Hockey! Three of my favorite things! Also the ending is one of my favorite endings. It’s so sweet! It’s part of the series score and all of the stories are so cute but this one is my favorite!

@brighter-than-sunshine

Thanks For Choosing Bagged! by dinnfameron

I love this one because the dialogue is so adorable, and true to David and Patrick! I can totally see the characters getting involved in something like this, like a different version of a rom-com.

@danieljradcliffe

Going Down by concannonfodder

This is one of the best stories of NYC!David and recently out Patrick while they're both trying to find themselves. It's beautifully written and my favourite part is that each chapter switches between David and Patrick's POV. It does a great job of highlighting the aspects of their personalities that we know and love but shows them to us in a new light.

@devilstelephone

sustineo by @rockinhamburger

The contemporary art discussions between Patrick and David are interesting and important to the story. Patrick still cares for and emotionally connects with David In a world that is so different than Schitt’s Creek. I liked that Sebastian Raine was the evil force without being included as a character.

@fishyspots

Welcome to Cabaret by @vivianblakesunrisebay

It's lovely from start to finish! In this 'verse, Christmas World didn't pull out, so David didn't get the lease for the general store. Instead, he gets roped into helping Moira with Cabaret, and meets Patrick (kind of) through that. I love the way this author writes. The dialogue is in-character, and the plot is wonderful and pulls out moments from canon and reimagines them in some truly inspired ways. I'm such a fan of all of this author's works; this was the first one I read, and it remains my favorite.

@imargaery

David.; or, a Tale of Misapplied Sense by Siria

A Jane Austen D&P AU and it is BRILLIANT. If you're an Austen fan, you will be able to immediately pick up on how well this author adapted Austen's style, wit, character descriptions, and ability to whack you over the head with romance when you're not even ready for it yet. Siria is a very experienced fanfic writer, but writes for many fandoms, so I think that's maybe why it doesn't have that many hits? I'm so glad I clicked on it. I want to wrap myself up in this story. I want to make a podfic out of it. I want to put it on a t-shirt and wear it every day. Also, it's in a regency AU where homophobia isn't a thing, so you don't even have to worry about that. I want to tell you more, but that would spoil it. Just read the damn thing and thank me later.

@justwaiting23

You Were the Ocean, I Was Just a Stone by @al-ex-an-d-er-hamiltons

The image of a curly haired fisherman Patrick is enough but this whole fic is such a sweet concept. Their interactions in this are so reminiscent of the show but also so different because they already know each other vaguely, and I come back to this fic over and over just because it's the perfect mix of angsty miscommunication and fluff.

@maxbegone

Known and Be Known by ahurston

As someone who tends to lean toward canon/canon-divergent stories, this was a refreshing take on an AU. Beautifully written and wonderfully raw, ahurston conveyed the vulnerabilities between both David and Patrick so wonderfully. “The mortifying ordeal of being known,” personified in fanfiction format. With humor and some wonderfully hot scenes peppered throughout, this fic was just brilliant from start to finish. I love when authors explore Patrick's insecurities and vulnerabilities - they aren't written about as often as David's are. I implore you to read this, if you're able.

@patrickbrewsky

Bound by Symmetry by barelypink

They say write what you know. I instead read what I know. David is the accidentally fantastic teacher we all wished we'd had in high school, and some of us wish/hope we are or might be one day. This fic is a great exploration of combining everything David knows he is (creative, bright, v.knowledgeable about art) and all the things he thinks he's not (empathetic, a role model, great with kids, selfless, kind, & big hearted) The selling point quote: "And it feels good, David realizes, to have a job that means something, a purpose beyond himself. A place where he feels like he belongs, just like his students." (David Rose proves he is both a good and nice person).

@rockinhamburger

Blackbird, Fly by distractivate

This is a post-apocalyptic story about love, connection, and hope, with a central theme of growth from destruction. I could not put this one down; I read it feverishly in one sitting, desperate to soak up every word. I love this fic because it is what I like to think of as an exemplar for transformative works (one of ao3’s top values). I love the way the fic stretches toward the light in the dark. It makes me think: about the quintessential elements of these characters, what remains the same despite changed circumstance, and what inevitably shifts when these characters we know and love are faced with a situation far outside their experience or comfort. This story likely hits differently in 2020, when post-apocalyptic narratives feel much less distant than they might have just a year ago. And yet, all the more reason to read an incredible work about hope and resilience and transformation.

@roguebabyinyourstore

Fifteen Hundred Miles by MoreHuman

Where do I even begin with this fic? I was at first skeptical about what reason David Rose would have to willingly subject himself to a trek through the wilderness out of his own volition. Well I’m so glad I ignored that admittedly stupid part of me because this is one of the mostly beautifully crafted stories I have ever read. Patrick and David are individually on their own journeys of self-discovery, but the way they help each other find what they sought... It’s breathtaking. Their feelings for each other bloom so organically over their time together that despite the circumstances laid out before them, the miles that they stumble and walk and run bring them miles closer to each other. Closer to the love that they both didn’t know they needed. The characters come alive and are identical to their canon selves. The dialogue and banter are spot on David and Patrick. The writing itself is superb. The tropes are incredible, the pining and *oh no there’s only one tent.* The slow burn is tantalizing but in a way that feels true to a genuine love story. The way the setting somehow breathes in tune with the characters, the way they leave messages behind in the trail register—conveying more than they can utter aloud— and the way their families communicate with them throughout their time on the trail through letters. All of the elements of this story ground it in universal truth, in feelings that are not only relatable, believable but demand to be felt. I can wax poetic until I am blue in the face, but really... Read this story. And then reread it a million times.

@rosebuddsmotel

I Carry These Heart-Shapes Only to You by @ladyflowdi and @ships-to-sail

There are over 180,000 words in this WWII AU, but not one of those words is wasted. It is gorgeous in its prose, and incredibly romantic without romanticizing the very real pain and tragedies of the era in which it exists. It's not an easy read by any means, but it's the kind of cathartic emotional journey that is more than worth it in the end.

@stuck-on-your-heart

kiss from a rose by mihaly ( @davidroseshusband )

What can I say about this very special fic that would do it justice? In this story, Alexis stars in a Bachelorette-style dating show and it’s every bit as brilliant as it sounds. On top of the incredible characterization, there are little surprises at every turn, there’s pining, and of course, there’s love. Secret love, even. This fic is truly addicting – I promise you won’t be able to stop once you start reading, and it will leave you feeling so satisfied (and if you’re like me, a little misty)!!!

@the-13th-wheel

Hold Me Like You’ll Never Let Me Go by @mooodlighting

It is a wonderful short AU where Patrick and David where they meet at an airport after they get snowed in. It is cute, there is longing and pining that just make it a wonderful read!

@thedidipickles

Beneath the Winter Snow by Distractivate

The writing is so utterly gorgeous all the way throughout that I frequently needed to take breaks to breathe. The author *perfectly* builds an Olympic world that I can totally see my favorite characters inhabiting, and the resolution is gorgeous. All of Distractivate's AUs are amazing, but this one still stands out.

@thisbuildinghasfeelings

How Do We Get Back by @unfolded73

This one deals with a literal alternate universe, which is the first thing I loved about it because I had never read a fic quite like it before. It's a beautifully written 60,000+ word masterpiece that definitely makes me feel ALL the feelings. In addition, it is absolutely riveting. I could not stop reading until I got to the end.

@yourbuttervoicedbeau

Make It To Me by figmentof ( @rosesdavid )

Epistolatory fic is SO hard to pull off and the author does such an incredible job with the way the characters shine through even though we only see them interact via text message. This fic is my comfort food and I reread it regularly <3

Anonymous Recs:

Just Breathe by olivebranchesandredwine

I love this one because it's got Patrick as a yoga teacher (hot!) and shows David being proactive about anxiety and it's just such a lovely story.

Shall I Stay? by alladaydream ( @maybewecandreamalittle )

This is so worth the 100k wordcount. 18-year-old David and Patrick sweetly leaning into first love, a lot of angst and pining in the middle that allow them both to heal and grow, and a heartfelt reconciliation. Plus, two bonus cherries on top with artist!David and a beautiful epilogue in which they (spoiler) live happily ever after. The tone and pacing of this fic is so good, and I always go back to it when I want to read something comforting.

Your Heart is Keeping Time with Me by @yourbuttervoicedbeau

I haven't seen 50 First Dates, but this fic is better than the movie could ever be. The author's writing is so beautiful and her David who has amnesia and her Patrick who wants to help him are just PERFECT. I want more and more and more of this.

Once again, thank you to everyone who participated and thank you to every single person who has written something in this community! It would be wonderful to do a part three, but for now, enjoy some alternate universe fics!

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slipping-through-my-fingertips · 4 years ago

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Klaine Advent 2020 (day 1)

Summary: Blaine has an embrassing secret

Notes: Happy December! I'm so excited to be participating in the Klaine Advent again. Sorry this fic isn't overtly winter/christmas themes but that's probably because it doesn't really feel like winter quite yet to me. Hopefully these will be more wintery as I continue writing. This year fics won't be connected (though I'm sure some will have sequels or multiple parts) but they will all be posted here together instead of separate oneshots.

Day One: Abashed

Kurt and Blaine liked to read before bed each night. Tucked under the sheets together Blaine typically reading on his phone and Kurt preferring magazines or a book. What Kurt didn’t know though was Blaine hadn’t been spending his nights crossing off novels on his to-be-read list instead he was bookmarking fanfiction and leaving gushing comments about characterization.

It was difficult to keep this from the love of his life. The only person in Blaine’s life who knew was his best friend Sam. Honestly, Blaine’s shocked neither boy had revealed this guilty pleasure to their partner. Blaine knew Sam hadn’t blabbed to Mercedes because she would’ve told Kurt and Kurt most certainly would’ve confronted Blaine about it. Maybe confronted is too strong, Kurt would’ve wanted to discuss it. They always made sure to have a constant open line of communication.

All of their bad habits, worries, successes, and secrets were out in the open nowadays. In the past, terrible communication had been their downfall. If they had just talked about their emotions, Blaine was positive they wouldn't have broken up...twice.

Which was why he felt guilty keeping secrets from Kurt. For god’s sake, they’ve known each other for ten years, one would think all their most embarrassing moments were known. Kurt was literally there for The Gap Attack. Eventually, living with Kurt this was inevitable, Blaine walked in on Kurt exercising with Richard Simmons. That had been way less embarrassing as far as Blaine was concerned because Kurt not only got more muscular from it, Blaine also found it unabashedly hot. Now, Blaine was certain Kurt timed his workouts with the end of Blaine’s shifts at work so he’d walk into their shared apartment and catch Kurt in his workout clothes.

Blaine tried to pick up his Kindle to start a new sci-fi novel he’d been waiting to read for months but found he couldn’t focus because he wanted to read the newly uploaded chapter of a fic he’d been following since the first chapter was published. At first, he hadn’t noticed the fic was unfinished, he thought it was another one-shot but the first chapter drew him in and he had to keep up with it. So, like most nights, he put his Kindle aside and opened his phone. Thank god for private tabs because he really, really, doesn’t want Kurt to find out about this.

He rolled over on his side still reading after Kurt shut off his bedside light and decided to try and sleep. Soon enough, his breathing shifted and Blaine knew he was asleep. When the chapter ends, Blaine put his phone on the charger and turned to face Kurt.

It was so peaceful watching him. His pink lips parted slightly and one hand outstretched begging Blaine to crawl into his embrace. Blaine snuggled into Kurt’s chest and watched as it rises and falls with each breath.

“I read fanfiction,” Blaine admitted, “it’s bothering me that you don’t know this and I’m so embarrassed and ashamed.”

Kurt doesn’t move. Of course not, he was asleep. But Blaine sighed anyway and closed his eyes.

The next morning was Sunday so Blaine woke up expecting morning snuggles but Kurt wasn’t in bed. He sat up quickly looking for any signs of Kurt but the bathroom light is off and the bedroom door is cracked open just as they left it the night before. Before Blaine can work himself into a panic because realistically he knows Kurt is probably making coffee, Kurt came back into the room. He was carrying a wooden tray.

“Hey there, sleepyhead.” Kurt smiled. “I brought coffee and pancakes.”

“I love you,” Blaine told him.

He moved his legs so Kurt could sit in front of him on the bed. Kurt placed the tray on Blaine’s lap and took a mug of coffee for himself. It wasn’t until Blaine had a mouthful of syrupy chocolate chip pancakes that Kurt started talking.

“I love you too, you know,” he said, “no matter what.”

Which was a weird thing to tell Blaine on a random Sunday morning in December.

Blaine swallowed. “Me too.”

“You can tell me anything too, I won’t judge you.”

Oh god, did he know? Did Sam finally cave and tell Mercedes? Was Kurt talking to her while Blaine slept in?

As if Kurt could read the alarm on Blaine’s face, which let’s be real he totally could, he moved the tray to the nightstand and grabbed one of Blaine’s hands.

“I know you’re feeling guilty. I saw it all week but I was waiting for you to come to me about it,” Kurt said. “You didn’t though so I thought maybe you needed me to start the conversation instead.”

Blaine bent his head, suddenly he didn’t want those blue eyes on him.

“Blaine.”

He looked up again. Kurt’s forehead had worry lines now. In order to prevent early wrinkles, Blaine spoke up.

“It’s embrassing,” he prefaced.

“That’s okay, just talk to me.”

Blaine took a breath. “I read fanfiction.”

Kurt just stared at him. Was he upset? Disgusted? Did he want to laugh at Blaine?

Turns out, none of the above.

“That’s all?” he asked like he was waiting for Blaine to confess more.

“Like a lot of fanfic, Kurt, I have so many bookmarked. I leave comments and kudos and follow the writer’s I love on Tumblr and there’s discussion boards that I’ve joined.”

One thing Blaine hadn’t considered when he finally told Kurt about this was having to convince Kurt this was a weird problem.

“So, you’re not ashamed of me?” Blaine whispered.

“Ashamed?” Kurt repeated. “Never, baby, never.”

He leaned in to kiss Blaine then.

“If I still liked you after the Gap Attack, the Rachel Berry fiasco, and made costumes and attend multiple cons with you and Sam, nothing will phrase me.”

Blaine ducked his head and blushed.

“Plus,” Kurt continued, “I thought you were going to tell me you wrote it or something! That would’ve been a deal-breaker.”

He looked up at Kurt and found him smiling.

“That was a joke right?” he asked.

Kurt just kissed him again in response and Blaine found he didn’t really care if Kurt minded if he decided to write fanfiction or not.

#klaine advent 2020 #klaine advent: abashed #klaine fanfic #klaine fanfiction #my fics

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silentauroriamthereal · 4 years ago

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2020 fic year in review

I was tagged by my lovely @khorazir! Thanks, you!

Total number of completed stories: Three, but two of them were fairly long? I wrote:

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: John/Sherlock, 50,689 words, explicit, John POV. Set in New York, because I was itching to go there and couldn’t, and setting a fic somewhere is the next best thing. Probably my most political fic to date, this one was a deliberate reversal of the fake-couple-for-a-case trope, aka I wanted to create a setting wherein John and Sherlock become a couple during a case but need to keep it a secret for the sake of the case. So I set it at a massive, anti-gay conference in the US. Naturally. :P

Sine Nomine: John/Sherlock, 45,626 words, explicit, mostly John POV with sections of Mycroft and Sherlock POV as well. In fact, though the sections aren’t equal in length, it’s symmetrical: it goes Mycroft POV/John POV/Sherlock POV/John POV/Mycroft POV. This story has a dark premise and a particularly dark setting for one section. It’s based on the concept of Mycroft rewatching the footage of John beating Sherlock in the morgue for the hundredth time or so and revisiting the question of whether John had been the making of his brother, or made him worse than ever. He’s definitely come to the latter conclusion, but decides to give John one final chance in the form of a test. John, for his own reasons, makes what Mycroft deems the incorrect choice, and Mycroft basically sends him into a death trap. The setting of this place is officially set in Serbia with indirect hints at events similar to the Srebrenica Genocide in Bosnia, but the actual setting is Syria, which I’ve just spent the past year studying intensely. Putting a slice of that into the dark core of this story, albeit disguised as another place, was strangely cathartic for me. The title, which is Latin for “no name”, is a double reference to the village here, which Sherlock and Mycroft never name, ominously referring to it only as “the village”, both to each other and to John, as well as John’s never-named or owned feelings for Sherlock. This one is close to my heart for a lot of reasons, but most of all because of Syria. Also, the vast majority of the time in my writing, I choose a singular POV and stick to it very closely for the entire story. Choosing to rotate between these three men essentially allowed me to show how they’re all justified in their own decisions here, and to examine the relationships between all three of them. It’s a story about reckonings and eventual, hard-won reconciliations.

The Secret of Hazel Grange. Sherlock/John, 18,181 words, explicit, Sherlock POV. I’m going to claim that the reason I only managed to swing three fics this entire year is partly that I put another project on hold in order to write this one, lol. This is the third Christmas fic I’ve written and I’m happy with how it came out. It’s also the only story I’ve written that’s explicitly set during this pandemic, and during the second London lockdown, which is eerily similar to the code red lockdown my own city is in, so it just felt right. It’s been a somewhat miserable holiday season for me (so many reasons, including unhappiness at work and an illegally high rent increase that my apartment building is putting through, on top of the pandemic and all of that isolation and all of those cancellations), so writing some happy endings for someone else was pure escapism for me. Hopeful for others, too!

Total word count: 114,496 words of posted fic. 130,796 if we’re counting my work-in-progress that got interrupted for the Christmas fic. :)

Fandoms written in: BBC Sherlock.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I wrote about what I thought I expected to be able to write. Right now, I have a full-time job, a part-time job, and then freelance work, all to attempt to make ends meet, so I have very little spare time to write in, unfortunately. So getting over 100k words in is actually somewhat miraculous to me. It feels like not very much when it’s just three stories, but I guess it still amounts to a fair number of words?

What’s your own favourite story of the year? Picking favourites is always tough, but for the Syria connection, I’d have to go with Sine Nomine.

Did you take any writing risks this year? I suppose that going so hard on the whole Republican anti-gay groups thing could be considered “risky” in some circles, but not really hereabouts! LGBTQ+ rights is one of my areas of advocacy (in fact, I’m a founding member of the Rainbow Equity Council at my workplace and spent a crap ton of time this month drafting governance documentation for it), but genocides are the issue that are really closer to my heart, so the Syria connection, even if it wasn’t named outright, could also be seen as a “dangerously” political stance, I suppose. But compared to other writing choices (like Scars, which features actual rape, or any of my Freebatch stuff, or any of the stories where Mary is an overt terrorist (rather than “just” a freelance assassin, lol)), I don’t really think I was terribly risky this year.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? The first item on the agenda is to get back to work on Nocturne, my WIP. After that, we’ll see. That said, I STILL would like to get back to searching for an agent for my novel, which is strongly based on Against the Rest of the World. I would also like to write that Johnlock cookbook I keep vaguely promising (it would feature recipes from my fics), and in a quirky “other” sort of project, I also wrote a heap of haikus about Republicans this fall that I’d like to see about getting published. Want a taste? Sure you do. I give you:

Brett Kavanaugh

Brett has a face like

a snarly little hedgehog.

He likes beer, okay?!

Mitch McConnell

Moscow Mitch is a

corrupt turtle who keeps his

balls in his neck pouch

Most popular story of the year? Well, the longer a story is posted, the more time it has to collect hits, kudos, bookmarks, and comments, obviously, so that makes The Four Horsemen the clear winner here.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: From this year or in general? :P I often find that my plottiest, most detailed, most researched stories that I personally think contain some of my most thoughtful writing are the ones that get the least attention. For instance, after series 3 aired, I wrote three back-to-back intensely-detailed series 3 fix-it fics (which all, to their credit, do get plenty of attention, though none so much as Vena Cava, the third of the three). Then I wrote a light-hearted, almost-crack porn fic, more as mental relaxation than any sort of literary genius, and that fic - Best of Three - remains my most wildly-popular story of anything I’ve ever written. It used to frustrate me, but now I’m just grateful to have anyone read anything of mine. But along that theme, yeah: the most complex of this year’s stories (Sine Nomine) is probably the one I feel is the least appreciated, but that’s also fine. No complaints here - I’m very lucky to have the readership I have!!

Most fun story to write: Sine Nomine, for all the reasons I talked about above, though I’d also call this the most emotionally-invested story of mine from this past year. That said, setting any story in Manhattan is always going to be fun, and I loved researching approximately 500 holiday rental properties in various parts of England in order to finally just create my own, aka Hazel Grange, lol.

Most unintentionally telling story: Ha, well, if you weren’t sure about my stance on gay rights, marriage equality, or Republicans in general, The Four Horsemen should clear that up pretty distinctly, lol!

Biggest disappointment: Just that I haven’t had more time to write.

Biggest surprise: Possibly that I felt so able to represent all three POVs in Sine Nomine as equally as I did. By that, I don’t mean being able to write in their perspectives, but rather in presenting their arguments with (I hope) equal persuasion: Mycroft thinks that John’s entire presence in Sherlock’s life has spelled nothing but disaster for Sherlock. He’s arguably not wrong. He decides that John is out of chances, and that he’s justified in being the one to make that call. Sherlock disagrees, hard, and he’s not wrong. John makes the choice he makes for his daughter, not for the choice Mycroft gives him between choosing either Mary or Sherlock once and for all, and he’s not wrong to have done that, or unjustified in wanting to go and demand some answers from Mary, who isn’t dead after all, here. But then I think that their various reasons for reconciliation are all equally justified, too. I hope! Usually when you stick to one perspective, the story naturally gears itself to persuade the reader to identify with that one character and to take their side. Here, I hope I manage to juggle the balance fairly equally.

I don’t know who’s been tagged in this already, but I’ll tag: @totallysilvergirl, @blogstandbygo, @nade2308, @weneedtotalkaboutsherlock, @hubblegleeflower, and anyone else who writes.

#2020 fic year in review #writer stuff #sherlock #johnlock #silentauror

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joeys-piano · 4 years ago

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Top 5 Fics of 2020

As 2020 closes and as I’m looking back on what I’ve done this year, there were five stories that stood out to me because of how I felt, what I’ve experienced, and because of what came over me as I was working on the pieces. I picked stories that many of you enjoyed, stories that I think you could discover, and stories that challenge you to think a little differently on what you already know. I felt that was a good balance for what I had in store~

Savor The Moment | 12.4k | Teen

I can say without a doubt that is the best fanfic I’ve written this year: not only is it the longest by far, not only did I draft and revise and edit and rewrite this behemoth during the entire month of August and pretty much babied this thing into the first week of my Fall Semester, not only was I focusing and fleshing out the relationships one of my favorite BSD characters, but I remember how much I struggled with this work and how much I grew after finishing it. If y’all have to know one thing about me, it’s that dialogue and writing children characters are very difficult for me. So to tackle a project that encompasses both and much more -- that’s terrific!

I love how I wrote for Oda in this and how I explored his relationship with the children, with the curry shop owner, and with Dazai. I love how I approached his backstory and bled in some of the elements I enjoyed from the Dark Era light novel into this work. I love the atmosphere, the vibes, the metaphors and all the food descriptions -- there are gorgeous quotes throughout the work and to this day, I still can’t believe that they all came from my head. This was such a good story for me: both in that it helped me grow as a writer and challenged me in my weaker areas and that it was fun to try something new and to expand on the little details I adored from the source material.

If there’s any work of mine that I think best summarizes who I am as a writer, it would have to be this one.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings & Funerals | 5.7k | Teen

There was a time in my life when angst was my bread and butter. However, as I grew older and more cynical towards life in general, I saw myself leaning towards softer and happier ideas. Mostly because they were an escape and a distraction from what was happening to me at the time, and partially because angst isn’t all that great for my heart. But during the beginning of November, something possessed me. I didn’t set out to write a character death or a heavy story; but instead, it just came out of me. And with BEAST as my backdrop and with funerals in my head, it took me about a week to finish this story from draft to end.

In terms of technicalities and skills, this work best represents much of my experience as a writer. You can see it through my syntax and flow, through the concepts and metaphors I was weaving through the plot, through how I handled the head hopping and transitions between Oda and Dazai’s POVs (making sure that they were as smooth as silk for y’all’s reading experience), through how I handled the emotional stakes and the soulmate-ish vibes going on, and through how I described the grief and mourning for what could’ve been and for what came to be.

I’m not that surprised that the response for this fic has been on the lower side compared to my other works, especially since it revolves around character death and heavy themes. But if you really enjoy BEAST and would like an in-depth scene expansion between Oda and Dazai when they met for the last at Bar Lupin, I would definitely recommend this to you.

Tender is the Light | 1.5k | General

Christmas is a polarizing holiday, depending on who you ask, because we’re celebrating the humble birth of a man and are partnering it with consumerism. So already, this day is pretty sus and I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend it this year than to write and gift myself a very cuddly, drarry fanfic. As I mentioned in the author’s notes, I don’t normally write for myself and I especially don’t gift myself a fanfic for holiday purposes. But considering how this year went and how stressed I was and the epiphany I had during this month, the old constraints I had for myself didn’t matter and I just wanted to create something that I knew I would enjoy. That probably sounds selfish and a part of me thinks it is; but honestly, it isn’t because if I wanted to work and create something, it’s got to give me joy too -- I feel.

So you could almost say I was working out some internal things while writing this and was just having fun and didn’t care that there wasn’t really a plot to this entire thing. Since it was a fic for me, I just focused on what made me feel good and happy. And as it turns out, fluffy banters of humor and cuddly introspective smacked a nerve in my heart and I felt renewed every time I came to work on this. This was such a cathartic fic for me to work, and I just had the time of my life focusing on the small things that are like nuggets of gold for me.

Hold Me A Little Closer | 2.6k | Mature

2020 was a year of many things, much of which I won’t mention and much of which we’re still living through. It was also the year I wrote my first, full-fledged smut. Or more accurately, my first genuine attempt at writing smut through my perspective as a biromantic asexual. Since 2018, I’ve been experimenting with how I wanted to portray physical intimacy and every time I scrolled through the Internet or read how others have done it, what I found was that there weren’t many resources or approaches that I felt comfortable with or with writing. Most of what you find out there is pretty much you figure it out on your own, or just looking at what others have done and copying it. Which that in itself comes with its own difficulties, depending on the approach you want to take with your own smut.

So being a discovery writer with my headlights down the path, I decided to write my first smut with an introspective approach + a tad of ace perspective because that’s who I am. I love the concept of emotional intimacy and that was the forefront for this story, accompanying the physical details. Because I knew for myself that odazai was more than just the physical aspect of it, and that both characters enjoy each other in an emotional or thoughtful setting where they can be vulnerable and be themselves and all the juicy bits about that whenever they’re together. And that might be the ace in me talking, but that’s the kind of intimacy I love between characters and the physical aspect is just one medium out of many in how they can convey that.

Personally, I would say this is the story that got me more comfortable writing for odazai. I’ve written for them beforehand in a few other fics, but this is definitely the one where I grew to know and care for them more and it comes through with the writing.

If My Eyes Were to Linger | 1.5k | General

With me talking about the top best fics that I’ve written this year, there’s no way I could conclude this without talking about the first fic I wrote for a new fandom. This story is my first foray into drarry and it comes after weeks of reading all sorts of content from them writers and I wanted to try it too. This harkens back to nine years ago when I wrote my first fanfic: I saw that others were writing stories and I wanted to do it, too. That brief childhood spark was the catalyst I needed when I considered and began jotting out this piece. You can tell through my writing that I’m figuring things out and figuring how I want to approach the individual voices of Draco and Harry.

I should also add that I was nervous as shit while writing this because I was embarking into a fandom where I knew no one in the community and I knew that no one I knew would even follow or read what I was writing. It’s been a long time since I’ve splashed into waters like that and through the help of my friends and talking with them, they helped me carry through and finish writing this piece. That meant a lot to me because for the first time in a long time, I was finally writing for me. I was finally writing a story where I didn’t care so much about how the engagement would be because I already knew there wouldn’t be much because of the circumstances I was in. So without hits or kudoses or really any expectations, I just wrote what I wanted to write and I had a damn good time with reading as I went.

And with the past few drarry fics I’ve written this month, you can feel that the adrenaline and childlike glee that came back to me is still with me. I don’t know how long this energy will last or if it’ll go away and I’ll transition into something else. But what I do know is that there are certain freedoms that come with going into the unknown and rediscovering myself again. And to know that this is for me: more than anything, that means so much.

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #oda sakunosuke #dazai osamu #odazai #draco malfoy #harry potter #drarry #fanfic writing #fanfic writer

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docholligay · 4 years ago

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LIVESTREAM WINNERS AND TOP POINT COMMENTS

THose of you who read the schedule already know this but the winners are:

HOLLIGAY INVOKES THE SPIRIT OF CLOSET GHOST

and

WE COOK FOR DINNER IN THE APOCALYPSE

Please join me for both! It’ should be a terrifying, thrilling time.

AND NOW, THOSE OF YOU WHO MADE ME FEEL THE WARMEST. Thank you to all who answered--I know this was super self indulgent and it means a lot to me that you took the time. So, literally 12 out of the 13 of you got at least one point (One person did not give any details, or even a quote) MAZEL.

Point allocations are below!!

One point winners:

4(?)ish years ago, you sent Jet a series of letters/cards/funeral lilies, from different Sailor Moon characters. The lilies were for Mako. One card was from Michiru, after Haruka's death. I have never been able to find them again, but I just loved the care you put into them--how they were all written specifically from the character, the fact that you even put tear stains and perfume on the cards. It was just so creative and touching, and it felt like the characters were real for an instant, mourning and living and giving you a peek at their lives. --- @kumeko (That was A Little Letter, and Mako’s was actually a separate thing for the same contest!)

“Before you get yourselves killed I want to go on record as saying this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.” Rei stood with her hands on her hips at the front of the garage- from that short story about Mina and Haruka strapping an engine to a shopping cart. You can really feel how rei must feel, the resigned exasperation mixed with genuine, but hidden, concern for Mina and haruka’s safety. I think i have said the exactsame thing before people i know do stupid shit. --- BeefSalad33 (oh ma, an oldie but, I think, a goodie)

OH MAN. I am always thinking nonstop about that piece where Minako confronts Seiya about bullying Haruka, specifically for the line where Mina spits out "you think she'll love you for this?" and UGH that LINE. it HAUNTS me, I want to BITE DOWN ON IT AND NEVER LET GO, I WANT TO PUT IT EVERYWHERE EVER BECAUSE IT HURTS SO GOOD, AND I DON'T EVEN CARE ABOUT SEIYA. --- @wouldntyoulichentoknow (I’m so glad that I’ve managed to make both you and jetty grit your teeth and care about Seiya at some point ahahah)

"*But flowers grow from death and decay, don’t they? That has always been true, you know that, Mako. You are a rose of perfect beauty, grown in the rich fertilizer of your loss.*

She threw the stress ball across the room, knocking over the cup on the sink, spilling the ice down the drain."

The contrast between reminding herself of how life works, and then still being bitter about it, and knowing what she is and being frustrated about it. It's a lot, when sorting out various issues- i have trauma, and that makes me better at empathizing with people, i'm adaptable long-term, and that means i can put up with some bullshit, that kind of thing, but that doesn't mean those are wholly good things. It's nice to see it put into words, and so plainly, and with such a strong reaction of it.

Roses can still grow wild, as pretentious as that sounds with how your passage resonates to me, but it's still nice to feel that. ---- @katrani (I’m so glad it resonates with you! I liked that line a lot! )

2 point answers:

Christmas Carol, Stave 1 - “You are a terrible person,” she jutted out her chin, feigning strength. “Fareeha deserved much better than you. But,” she took a deep breath. “I still hope she forgives you, someday. Someday, I hope you will deserve it.” It feels like cheating to use the most recent thing you’ve written, but nonetheless this section conveys so much about your take on Mercy, so quickly. She may be an idealist, the peacekeeper and builder, and she may want Pharah to have a relationship with her mother that’s not this disaster, but that doesn’t stop her from acknowledging that Ana’s been the primary factor in making it what it is and telling Ana that directly. I love how you write Mercy (and Tracer for that matter) as very warm characters who try to see the best in their situations but won’t gloss over the fact that sometimes, someone does have to be shot in the fucking face. “Good” doesn’t mean “hopelessly naive”, even with a pacifist, and I appreciate that you have characters who show that.

Bonus, and a fringe case as technically part of the Fushigi Yuigi hateblog: “She was still trying to get home, had been unable to get Tamahome to let her poison him, and then Nakago had hugged her into his chest until she had been forced to flatten him with a punch to the nads. She was tired, she was hungry, and she was trying to have a moonlight bath to consider her options and wash the stink of a man off of her.

And then, Tamahome, again.” - Haruka-gets-dumped-into-Fushigi-Yuugi-as-Yui was a delight that entire episode, but this post was one of the best. Is it really just narrativizing your frustrations with the many, many writing choices that were made here? Absolutely. But it’s a fun little bit of comedic pacing here, especially with the utter exhaustion of Haruka that this bullshit isn’t over yet. (“Fuck my life” to the moon wondering if Usagi could help and regretting how hard it would be to drown herself are close runners-up on that front.) --- Regalli

(Mercy is, in many ways, my attempt to write someone who is MOSTLY a pacifist that I can respect. It’s not easy for me! I often find pacifism to be cowardice, because so often in life the people I know who are pacifists are, well, not the folks in the street. So i thought, could you write someone who is very hesitant to kill, who believes that even Doomfist, even Reaper, even whoever, deserve care if they are hurt, who believes that a sword will not leave her hand free to uplift the fallen, and make her brave? And make her strong? And so was born, Mercy, who proved that, yeah that person, at least in my mind, can exist.)

I think one of my favorite passages from your writing is from "The Rest is Commentary". Particularly the part that starts with "I am a doer. " That entire paragraph is wonderfully written, with mix of beautifully descriptive language to describe *why* you don't trust words. It's slightly paradoxical, but it also fits with the rest of the essay (?) so well. And even beyond that, I love reading when you write about your faith. You are deeply devout woman, and a personal aspiration to me. When you write about your faith, it reminds me that there is work that needs to be done to live it, and not easy work either. But it is very much worth every bead of sweat, and every drop of blood. --- @shavedjudomonkey

(Thank you so much! I love that people have connected so much with my Jewish writing)

3 point answers:

From Requiem for the Great Consummation, I adore the word play with "compose." Ie, in the line, "Michiru folded her hands in her lap and composed herself." Why? I'm a musician. So, Michiru, with her music, holds a special place in my heart. (Why Ami gets the music attacks is beyond me. WTF?) I don't think the writers ever really understood what it takes to be a musician, and while fanfic writers often include Michiru's music, I've never really seen it done well. (I'm sure it has been. I just haven't seen it.) Music is all about structure. It has to feel free and soaring, but it can only be that because of the intense amounts of tension and structure underneath. A kite without a string plummets. When I reach for high, soaring notes, that's when I have to be most conscious of having a solid base. Making music Is constant tension. So, often when I see writers portray musicians, it's all "she never felt so free and untethered as when she sang/played the,violin/piano/whatever." And I think, "wow, really? She must have been Crap." So, back to compose/compose. This wordplay shows that tension. The "I have rehearsed this 5,000 times and am still working so hard I'm sweating standing still in this freezing auditorium so that it can look and sound completely free and easy." This is Michiru's entire life. She is composing herself. She is outlining complex rhythms and tensions and resolutions that even though you hear when the piece is played, you don't fully take in or understand, and all you consciously comprehend is 'wow, pretty.' Because that's how music works. Organs have keys that can't be heard by the human ear, and composers include them in their pieces. Why? We can't hear them! But we feel them. If you look at the score for an orchestral piece, it contains So. Many. Notes. So much going on. But when you listen, all you hear is that melodic theme. But if you take out anything underneath, things change and cam fall apart. Michiru lives her life like that. She creates herself, composes herself, and it looks elegant and free and easy, but it is so so very tightly controlled and rehearsed, and that particular wordplay showed off that side of Michiru's music, which is one I don't get to see explored much. --- @incorrecttact

(Thank you so much for this!! I am NOT a musician, but so much of Michiru and music speaks to me, the structure of it, the discipline, the way it allows you to express yourself while hiding behind something else. And yes! I think of that double meaning so much!)

I want you to know... that this was very, very difficult. I made a notepad and collected shit I'd pulled out from your work where I could find comments where I did such, and then I AGONIZED. Here is where I landed but know it's so close with other things god.

"Winston worked in earnest at his inventions, and Emily went back to teaching, and the two of them began to cook for each other again. Family dinners once a week resumed, grew with some of the new recruits that were being folded into their family. Pharah and Mercy’s daughter took them to the zoo, the park, out into the world. Dva had continued the game they had all been playing before Tracer died, their party picking up after the terrible and well-done loss of their beloved rogue. ***Life did not return, but it grew forward. It bloomed again.***" — A Clock's Fading Chime

I ended up choosing this one because I hate it a little when I read it. Not because it's not good but because it's SO PAINFUL. I love so much about the way you talk about love, and I think grief is all a part of that. We grieve because we loved. The idea of the grief period, especially for those in a close circle of a lost person, being like the cycle of the seasons where a flower may die but life blossoms in the soil it left behind is so evocative and perfect and everything leading up to that last line is the soil for which that line got to bloom. The slow, simple way life returns to them, that they adjust to the heavy rock in their pack (A piece of yours I revisited for this and a metaphor I will always carry with me) and start growing stronger together. And that they find it WITH EACH OTHER too just god, it kills me. But would I rather wish it wasn't necessary? YUP. FOR SURE. It hurts to think about someone who plays Lena's role dying in our own lives and trying to mend the rift between those left behind. But it brings all those possibilities and who may have gone already before to mind because it feels so grounded in the reality of what these experiences are like and shit it's just a great sampling of everything I love about your work. Beautiful prose, saying so much with so little, grounded in stuff that feels read, and ending on a banger, transfixing line. ---- @thoughtfulfangirling

(Thank you so much! I LOVED that whole series of fics around that, as it is in the way that I often like to toy with the nature of grief, and the way that we go on. Things aren’t ever the same, but we go on. And I’m so glad you gt into it too! It’s very self-indulgent for me, basically everything with OW, so I love when other poepl like it)

4 point answers:

Given that I am not Jewish, I hope this isn't overstepping my bounds, but your passover Seder speech really spoke to me this year. Specifically the bits about the relationship between cowardice and metaphorical bondage:

"This is a celebration of our freedom from bondage, but it is a also a reminder, a call that we must ensure we do not, in cowardice, return ourselves to bondage. "

Without explaining too much, and risking the kind of parasocial oversharing that you lamented the other day in a post, this particular push and pull has been at the forefront of my mind this year. The intense gravity that the familiar, the easy, the safe, can have, versus the genuine terror of pressing out into the unknown in search of something better.

Trying to change, and to do better, and to press on, is fucking terrifying, and hard. But, that is not an excuse. And I appreciated the reminder. --- @blastoise-m

(Not overstepping at all! I am so glad that it speaks to you, I really, really love this kind of writing, and I really should get back to doing more of my Jewish writing. My rabbi is leaving, because we apparently don’t have the money to have a rabbi! And he’s readying people to be lay leaders, and called on me to be someone who could give Divrei Torah (sort of like our sermons) because of my tendency to do stuff like this, and it’s very scary! But really exciting as that’s the kind of stuff that had me interested in being a rabbi, is picking this stuff apart and applying it to our own lives HI YOU ASKED FOR NONE OF THIS SORRY)

"There are no beautiful deaths in this world, and am sorry that you must know it. Rei never was allowed to say goodbye. I watched Haruka grow weaker and more ill every single day. We each have been jealous of the other, at turns, but I tell you this truth now: Our lives mean much more than our deaths. You and Seiya had a wonderful love story, and you raised a wonderful daughter, and unfortunately it is very often difficult to finish a story in a satisfying sort of way. It is not the end of your story, simply of hers. For you, it is a new chapter"

I think this is still one of my top 5 fav fics that you've ever written. I still think of it randomly once in a while. It's such a small moment but it sold me Usagi and Seiya in a way never would have expected. It's such a moment of growth for both Usagi and Muchiru. A small moment of connection for two people who are so different.

This is wrapped up in the entire MaS series, which I could never separate from this work let alone this quote. The entire series is a series about love and all its many permutations. About finding meaning in a world when you think your meaning has been taken away. About carrying on when you think there's no reason to do so. And I think this quote really encapsulates all of that.

This story, this entire series, is one the favorite things I've ever read and I'm so glad that you decided to share it. --- @madegeeky

(I truly and in all ways love how much you love this fic, it cheers em and makes me so happy every time I am reminded of it. And thank you for loving that line! I FEEL that line. It’s been true for every death that has come to me, so I love when it has meaning for others. )

The 5 point answer:

"God separated the sky and the sea, and that’s true, but there will always be the horizon where they blend."

I'm not much of a quote person. I'll often remember the feeling or the takeaway but rarely the words themselves. This, though, has stuck with me.

There is so much in this world, and so many people, who see everything as absolutes. Black and white. Good or bad. Right or wrong. And as I've grown and changed, that has come to bother me more and more.

This quote is such an elegant and accessible way to express how that oh-so-common point of view is a fallacy. And really it's just a lovely line that invokes both lovely imagery and feeling. ---- @seolh

I FORGOT I WROTE THIS, and like the completely arrogant piece of shit I am, when I read it was I was like, “Oh fuck, that’s a solid line.” And yes I am with you on getting older and relizing that the horizon line can be so fuzzy out there, sometimes, and this quote WEIRDLY came back to me when I needed it, a lot, and so thank you!

#names for thing

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recurring-polynya · 4 years ago

Note

hello ms. polynya! if you are still taking drabble requests and are in the mood for it, I would love to see more of the mall AU (yes, THAT mall AU lmao). bonus points for more omnidirectional horny teenage pining, because that first mall AU drabble nearly made me cry laughing and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. p.s. re: that fanfic author meme—my favorite story of yours is hold on, hold on! closely followed by call me back when the war is over :)

(cont’d)

mall au anon again, realizing I forgot to send like half of what I wanted to request because I got too excited (durr hurr): would love the ensemble cast/lieutenant goon squad because I really enjoy how you riff off of these characters, and/or renji and izuru being dumb friends and also wrangling their Big Crushes. no pressure to fill this though, thanks for being wonderful and generous 💖

I saved this one ‘til last so I would have something to look forward to. I love the Mall Goths AU, it is my greatest pleasure in life to write a bunch of undead shonen badasses as dorky teens trying to ask their crushes to prom.

Thank you to @alopexplasma, who came up with the name of Renji's car. I compulsively write Renji driving a Camaro in every AU I can conceivably shoehorn it into, and somehow, the incredibly obvious name never occurred to me. I am a moron.

Read on ao3 or ff.net

(if you haven’t read the original, read Ch 7 first, either site will do)

💘 💌 💘

Renji folded his hands on his knees and leaned forward, regarding Izuru very, very seriously. “Look, as you know, I don’t have any money, or... connections, or… well, anything, really, but you know that if you got cancer or were in a car wreck or something, any organs that I have two of, like kidneys or lungs? One of them would be yours, man. Bone marrow? I have so much bone marrow, and you can have as much of it as you want.”

“You know,” Momo pointed out, setting two paper cups down on the table, “if you marry Rukia someday, you will be absolutely rolling in it. I brought you coffee.”

“I assume she would want a pre-nup,” Renji replied very philosophically. “Which I respect.”

Izuru rolled his eyes and picked up his coffee. Just before taking a sip, he remembered. “Is this just the sludge that collects at the bottom of the airpot again?”

“Could be,” Momo tried to sound innocent.

“Oh, boy, my favorite!” Renji announced. “It’s so good, you just have to put, like, six creamers in. You want some creamers, Izuru?”

“I’ll pass,” Izuru said, pushing the coffee away. “Why can’t we do this in the game store, again?”

“Because Rukia hangs out at the game store!”

Instead, they were in the Barnes and Noble, where Momo worked in the cafe. Nothing personal to Momo, but Izuru hated the Barnes and Noble. It felt so bland and corporate, and smelled like new carpet, and he always felt like he should buy something if he was going to hang out there (not that he ever did). Besides, the couch was comfier at the game store.

“Just do this for him,” Momo implored, while Renji dug through the creamers, trying to find six that matched.

“It’s not that I don’t want to do it,” Izuru explained. “It’s that I think it’s a bad idea. You have been friends with Rukia since, what, fifth grade?”

“Third grade.”

“Third grade. Right. You sit next to her in class. You eat lunch with her. You talk to her all the time. Just say, ‘hey, Rukia, I really like you, will you go to prom with me?’ There’s no way she can look into your dumb puppy eyes and say no. Tell him, Momo.”

“Izuru’s certainly right about the puppy eyes.”

Renji sighed. “You don’t know Rukia like I do. Her family doesn’t do affection at all, and talking about feelings really scares her. If I ask her point blank like that, she’ll get defensive, and she won’t speak to me for a month, and she won’t go to prom at all, and then I’ll have to third-wheel Ikkaku and Yumichika.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Izuru pointed out. “You could…” he waved a hand vaguely. “You could take Momo.”

Momo shook her head. “Nanao and the Kotetsu sisters and I agreed to go together as gal pals,” she explained. “You could be a gal pal with us, I suppose, but only if you’re willing to coordinate outfits. You do look good in aqua.”

“Thanks,” Renji replied glumly. “Hey, I thought Rangiku was in your group, too?”

“Oh, she got a date.”

Izuru sniffed, pretending to be disinterested. If Shuuhei had finally gotten up the courage to ask Rangiku, then good for him.

“That upperclassman with the silver hair, Gin, asked her. He seems a little creepy to me, but she really likes him, and he’s friends with Aizen-sempai, so he must be a decent guy.”

Kira’s hands tightened on his knees. “She’s not going with Shuuhei?”

Renji gave him a look.

“Shuuhei says prom is lame and he’s not going,” Momo shrugged.

“I see,” Izuru frowned. “I mean, he’s not wrong.”

“He is wrong!” Renji protested. “Prom rocks. You wear fancy outfits and buy flowers for the person you like and there’s some insane theme, like Arabian Nights or Haunted Halloween Castle. You slow dance to ‘Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ by Aerosmith, and when it’s over you go get pancakes. What part of that isn’t awesome?”

“This year’s theme is ‘Lifetimes Past,’” Momo dryly informed him.

“Exactly. In any case, I have dreamed of taking Rukia to prom for years, are you going to help me write her a love letter or not?”

Izuru groaned. “I don’t know why Rukia gets such crummy grades, because she’s actually very smart. She is definitely going to be able to tell that you didn’t write this.”

“I know that! You think I don’t know how smart she is? Look, I just want you to write it all nice in Kira-speak, and then I’ll translate it into dumbass. Just help me get my thoughts together. You know I don’t word good, but I really think that writing it out and giving her a chance to process it on her own is the best way to go about this.”

Momo turned sad eyes on Izuru, not that his resolve wasn’t already crumbling. Abarai was a goon and a bonehead, but his devotion to his long-time best friend was tooth-rottingly sweet. Izuru would feel like a villain in a Christmas special if he said no.

“Fine. Fine. But I want you to help me get the Festiva running again and I get to approve whatever it is you’re planning on wearing to prom. It better have sleeves, for one thing.”

“Deal!” Renji replied, his face splitting into a huge grin.

Izuru turned to a clean page in his writing notebook and licked the tip of his pen. “Dear Rukia,” he narrated.

“No! Don’t put her name!”

“Don’t put her name?”

“No names. I have seen a lot of teen movies, and notes like these always end up in the wrong hands. Rukia would die if something like that happened. Or if her brother found it, he would straight up murder me and then I wouldn’t get to go to prom.”

Izuru blinked at him. “Fine. No names.” He tapped his pen against the page. “ ‘We have been friends for a long time, and I feel that the time has come for me to make a clean breast of it. You are the most important person in my life. I am utterly besotten--”

“Er, hey, um, Izuru.” The tips of Renji’s ears were very pink. “Not to say that this isn’t, um, true, but I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Do you want to go to prom? JUST AS FRIENDS’ Maybe that part could be all in caps? or underlined? We could put in some little boxes that she could just check off ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and hand it back to me?”

Izuru raised one eyebrow. “But you don’t want to go ‘just as friends.’”

“Well, that’s true, yes, but this is Rukia we’re talking about, so you kinda have to ease her into things.”

Izuru regarded Renji with lidded eyes. “You can’t even ask her to prom as friends? You’re such a coward.”

“I’m not a coward,” Renji returned, but his voice was very small.

“You’re sixteen and I do not like to throw the word ‘love’ around, but it’s very obvious that you love Rukia, and I refuse to help you ask her to the prom as friends. You don’t have to admit everything, but you have to admit something. It’s go big or go home.”

“Okay,” Renji grumbled.

“I think he’s right,” Momo said, patting Renji’s hand. “She must wonder how you feel about her from time to time. If you insist on framing it ‘as friends’, she may actually view that as a rejection of the possibility of anything romantic ever happening between the two of you.”

Renji wrinkled his nose, but didn’t say anything.

“Ahem,” Izuru cleared his throat. “Let’s put in some compliments. What are some things you like about Rukia?”

“Things he liked about Rukia” was one of Renji’s very favorite subjects, and he perked up right away. “She’s cool,” he announced. “She’s cool as hell. Write that down.”

“I think you’re cool as hell,” Izuru wrote down reluctantly. This is not your love letter, he reminded himself. No one is even going to know you had anything to do with this.

“Your hair smells really good and you’re the most creative person I know,” Renji dictated. “You have incredibly sexy biceps.”

“Renji.”

“What? She does!”

“Fine, fine. That’s probably enough compliments, we need to keep this to one page. Um, what do you regard as your primary ‘ship symbolism?”

“My what now?”

“You know. When you think about Rukia and yourself, what metaphor springs to mind? Sun and moon? Sea and sky? King and lionheart?”

Renji looked utterly perplexed.

“Momo, help me out. How do you see you and Aizen-sempai?” “Doctor and Companion,” Momo answered immediately.

Izuru made a face. “Right.”

Renji’s face was screwed up in hard thought. Izuru could practically smell circuitry frying. “Rukia is like… a star?” he finally hazarded.

“A star is good!” Momo encouraged.

“And you are…?” Izuru prompted. “The moon? The sky? A different star?”

“A Camaro?” Renji guessed. “I’m loud and I have a powerful engine.”

“How are you even in AP Literature?” Izuru groaned.

“Well, what’s your dominant simile or whatever with Shuuhei?” Renji demanded.

“Poet and warrior,” Izuru snapped back testily.

“Which one of you is the warrior?” Momo asked, wrinkling her nose. “I mean, you both work on the school newspaper.”

“Shuuhei takes tae kwon do!” Izuru insisted.

“Well, why don’t you just write in whatever you’re gonna say for the poet-warrior thing, since you’ve obviously already put a lotta thought into it,” Renji suggested. “I’ll polish up my star/sportscar metaphor and drop it in when I copy it over.”

Izuru did not like leaving the keystone of a love confession in the hands of a man who thought manual transmissions were romantic, but he had to go on shift down at the food court in half an hour. He had to keep this moving. “Fine,” he bit off. “‘You are my muse. Your strength of body and spirit inspire poetry in me. My soul sings when I am with you. If only I had your bravery, this admission would be much easier. Instead, I am sending you this shy missive to ask, from the depths of my tender heart: Will you go to the prom with me?’ Done.”

“Oh, that was so romantic,” Momo sighed. “Izuru, you should write a romance novel.”

“Never,” Izuru replied.

Renji was making a Renji face.

“You hate it.”

“It was just… pretty flowery.”

“Rewrite it however you want. ‘My soul revs at 5000 rpm for you, right before I drop my rusty bumper in your brother’s driveway again.’”

“Don’t trash talk Zabimaro!”

“I would never trash talk Zabimaro, I was trash talking the metaphorical Camaro that is your love for Rukia.” Izuru ripped the page out of his notebook and handed it over. “Here you go. I gotta go to work. Beef n’ Cheddars don’t assemble themselves.”

Renji studied the page for a moment. “Thanks, Izuru. You won’t regret this.”

“I already regret it. Good luck. I still think you should just talk to her.”

“Well, I think you should ask Shuuhei!” Renji barked out suddenly. “I know you want to! You can go to Denny’s with us afterward!”

Izuru flashed him a pitying look. “Thank you for your concern, but I happen to share the opinion that prom is lame and I have no plans to attend.”

💘 💌 💘

When Izuru walked into the gaming store the next day, Ikkaku and Iba were sitting at the front table, assembling decks of Magic cards.

“The girls took over the back,” Ikkaku grumbled bitterly as he contemplated a Thicket Basilisk.

“Is Renji here?” Izuru asked. “He said he was coming today.”

“Haven’t seen him,” Iba grunted. “Your friend Hinamori is, though.”

Izuru had been trying to maintain his usual heavy veneer of Not Caring About Abarai’s Wretched Love Life, but secretly, he was dying to know how the note had gone over. Renji had said he was going to give it to Rukia after school, and then ghost off to soccer practice so she had time to think it over. Izuru thought this was the dumbest idea he had ever heard, apart from every other plan Renji had ever had.

There certainly was a lot of giggling coming from the back of the store. Rangiku was holding court on the couch, Momo and Rukia on either side of her. On the coffee table, half a dozen magazines featuring girls in sparkly dresses were scattered among the usual copies of Dragon and Wizard.

“I can’t decide if I want to go for a one-shoulder gown, or something completely strapless,” Rangiku was sighing. “Rukia, you have good shoulders, what are you thinking?”

Rukia mumbled something about lacking the necessary structural support for a sleeveless gown.

“You’d be surprised! It just needs to fit tightly enough!”

“You should come shopping with us on Saturday, Rukia!” Momo offered brightly. “You really don’t know what’s going to look good until you try it on.”

“Oh…” Rukia stammered. “My brother said he would buy me a dress. He said it’s important that I reflect well on the family.”

“Fortunately, your brother has killer taste,” Rangiku shrugged. “I would let him buy me all the dresses he wanted to.” She smiled her bright, friendly smile. “You could still come shopping, though, get some ideas of what you like! We could take some pictures to show him. I’m sure he takes input.”

Izuru had met Rukia’s brother. The man most certainly did not take input.

“Plus, it’ll just be fun to have you along!” Momo encouraged. “You have a great sense of style, I’d love to have your opinions!”

The portents looked auspicious, but Izuru needed positive confirmation. “Are you planning to go to the prom, Rukia?” he asked, flinging himself down in the ancient, creaky recliner. “I would have thought you were too cool for that.”

Two pink spots appeared on Rukia’s cheeks. “Yeah, I’m going, I guess.”

“You are not going to believe this, Izuru!” Rangiku gasped breathlessly. “But our Renji asked her to go with him!”

“Surely not!” Izuru scoffed, a pleasant feeling of satisfaction filling his chest.

“It’s just as friends!” Rukia protested. “And of course I don’t care about prom, but it means a lot to him, so…” she made a frustrated shrug.

Just.

As.

Friends.

Izuru shot a glare of horrified disbelief at Momo, who shrugged helplessly.

As if on cue, Renji’s mop of bright red hair poked around the edge of the Warhammer display. The couch backed to the front of the store, so Izuru could see him, but the girls couldn’t. Renji pointed emphatically at Rukia, and then stuck out his tongue victoriously, making a “hang loose” sign with his hand.

“I need to talk to you!” Izuru announced loudly, jumping up, grabbing Renji by front of his shirt, and hauling him into the aisle with all the ceramic dragon figurines. “You moron!” he hissed.

“I just did what you said!” Renji defended, holding up his hands.

“No, you didn’t! Did you even give her the note?”

“I did not. I thought about it, and I decided you were right. I talked to her with my actual voice. I told her I really wanted to go to prom with her, and she made a real cute face and then she said yes. Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

Izuru squeezed his eyes shut. “But you’re going as friends.”

“Yeah, well, we are friends, and I’m okay with that. You know, it was the right move, anyway. The reason I was late is because her brother cornered me after work and lectured me for half an hour.”

“Byakuya went into the Foot Locker?” Izuru frowned, trying to picture it.

“Of course not. He would never go into a Foot Locker. He waited outside.”

Izuru admittedly hadn’t taken Rukia’s intense, overprotective brother into account, back when they were writing the note, even though he remembered Renji bringing it up. “Well, I’m glad you’re still alive.”

“Yeah, me too. I offered to wax his car, just immediately. That knocked him off his game a little.” Renji made a thoughtful face. “He, uh… was appreciative, actually. I guess Rukia’s been wanting to go to prom and pretending she doesn’t, and he thought I picked up on it and asked her because I’m a good friend.”

Izuru stared at Renji blankly. “What?”

Renji shook his head. “I can’t explain it. Kuchiki brains are weird. Anyway, he said I don’t have to wax his car, but he wants me to come over to dinner so he can pre-screen my table manners and I have to meet their scary grandfather.” Renji scratched his head. “I wonder if the old man has a car I could wax.”

Izuru let out a big sigh. “Well, I’m glad it worked out. Sort of. Even if you wasted a very good love letter that I worked very hard on.”

“You spent ten minutes on it, tops, and it did not go to waste.”

Izuru frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“Don’t you feel like… like it helps to talk that stuff out? To put your feelings into words and write them down and look at them? I mean, I know it helped me, I was just thinking that maybe…”

“Give it up, Abarai,” Izuru mumbled. Whenever anything remotely good happened to Renji, he got really optimistic that all his friends could repeat his successes. When Izuru was in the right mood, it struck him as sort of sweet, but right now, it was just irritating.

Renji stuffed his hands in his pockets and huffed. “Look. Talking to Rukia was… it was easier than I thought. T’be honest, I pretty much expected her to turn me down cold.” He gave a wistful little smile. “We’ll just see how it goes, y’know? Might even be able to work up the nerve to ask her for a slow dance.”

Izuru shook his head. “You’re hopeless, Abarai.”

“Yeah, well, takes one to know one.”

“We are not the same,” Izuru informed him pointedly. “I am a dreamer who pines for that which is out of his reach. You’re just a dumbass who can’t grab at the thing an inch in front of him.”

Renji gave one of his big, open shrugs. “Say what you want about me, but I have grabbed. It’s hard to judge distance when you’re too close to it. I’m just saying that I don’t think your dreamy moon poet is as far off as you think.”

“Why do you always listen to me exactly enough to misunderstand everything I say?” Izuru griped.

“I am a dumbass, you had me there.” He stood up straighter. “But Rukia is not a dumbass and I would like to go say hello to her before she thinks we’re making out back here in the sparkly dragon grotto like Ikkaku and Yumichika.”

“I heard that!” Ikkaku’s voice echoed through the store.

“Matsumoto is trying to convince her to get a strapless dress,” Izuru explained.

“Really? I’m in favor of that,” Renji grinned, his eyebrows raising. “She’s got the shoulders for it.”

“Go,” Izuru sighed, slapping his friend on the back.

As Izuru turned to follow Renji to the back sitting area, he saw Shuuhei hovering in the store’s main aisle. He was wearing a Tool t-shirt over a ratty grey henley with the elbows blown out. His hair looked like he put a bunch of gel in it and then immediately gone to a gymnastics class. There was a ‘69’ sharpied on his cheek. As usually, Izuru couldn’t believe how cool the guy was.

“Uh, hey, Izuru,” Shuuhei said, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

“Hey,” Izuru replied, trying to sound nonchalant. “Wondered if you were in today.”

Usually, Shuuhei would reply with some joke about his loud co-worker, Mashiro, but instead, his fingers curled and uncurled around a piece of paper he was holding.

Hmm, Izuru thought absently. Shuuhei must use the same kind of notebook that I do.

Shuuhei’s eyes darted to the side, and then back to Izuru. “Hey, um, someone slipped a note in my locker today, but they didn’t sign it. I don’t, uh, want to be forward or anything, but I think… this might be your handwriting?”

The floor dropped away from Izuru’s feet. He was had been transported to the Elemental Plane of Mortification. His corporeal body had ceased to exist.

Suddenly, behind Shuuhei’s back, Renji and Momo appeared in the doorway to the back room, flashing huge grins and four enthusiastic thumbs up.

Izuru was going to kill them.

#wacky au requests #my writing #i loved this one??#a 90's high school au is a thing that can be so personal #i never went to prom and it has ruined my brain by making me obsessed with prom stories #mr p never went to prom either and he has not spent a single second thinking about it since #i said this was the last one but there might be one more

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todaydreambelieversfic · 4 years ago

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Author Spotlight: Coffeegleek Day 3

Author : @coffeegleek

How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

At least a few revisions. Then multiple editing passes, and even with my spouse as my proofreader for the past 25+ years, and doing more editing passes before posting to AO3, I still find annoying little typos, sometimes large ones.

If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

There was a crack fic I stopped writing years ago. It was a self-challenge during one of those tumblr trope challenges. I was trying to combine all of the tropes into the same fic as they were announced. It got zero traction though so I gave up. I'd love to go back and complete it, make it better. I had the whole thing outlined too.

What do you look for in a beta?

My spouse. We've been together for decades. He's been proofreading my original science fiction work and various fandoms' fanfics since before we were married. He even proofreads my Klaine smut and doesn't blink an eye. (He's a Glee fan too and on tumblr.) He knows what I'm trying to say when I can't find the right words and supplies them. He catches things I don't. What I love the most is for my original work, he's written his own fanfic. It's BAD. It truly is, but it's so heartfelt and earnest. He even came up with a soundtrack should I ever publish my sci-fi novel and the movie or show rights be bought. You really can't get a better beta than that. <3

There’s a number of friends on tumblr that I bounce ideas off of and who give me advice for topics they know far more about than me and google. I try to thank them in my fics.

If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

I’m going to steal another author’s recent answer and say that I could never do someone else’s work justice. However, I would love to see the author’s ideas for their fics even if they couldn’t write a prequel or sequel.

I suck at remembering titles and author names. There were two political fics that I would love to read more of should their authors ever decide to write in those verses again. One was where Kurt and Blaine's dads were running for president and Kurt and Blaine were along for the ride, staying in the same hotels at time (where they first met,) having to do school remotely, having to be the perfect sons for the press and Blaine being fed up because his parents were conservative Republicans. Then there was another fic where Burt was president and Kurt was the First Son living in the White House, along with Finn, and it was hard to date when your every move is watched by the press.

Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

I write AU, so canon is only a word often misspelled by me. :) Seriously though, I try to incorporate as many canon elements and characters into my AU fics as I can. It's the kind of AU I like to read as well. What draws me to read and write AUs is taking canon characters, putting them into a different setting, and seeing how they'll react. At their core, they still need to remain the same in principle and have many of the same traits. Like Kurt will always love fashion and be headstrong no matter what. Blaine is always going to have that spark within himself, no matter how depressed or oppressed he gets. Burt and Carole are always going to be loving and nurturing parents at heart. Even in fics where Burt isn't woke, there's a part of him that means well. (Not one of my own fics, but one I read a long time ago.) Different circumstances will change the canon characters and make them react in different ways though. Like, Kurt could end up more withdrawn and hide his love of fashion as a matter of survival and self preservation. He or Blaine could turn into "bad boys." Coach Beiste will always have a heart of gold. Miss Pillsbury will always have a problem with messes. Things like that. I know canon. Give me all the alternate universe versions of it and I will be a happy camper.

Talk about a review that made your day.

I haven't checked for reviews on my fics in ages (because I'm an insecure chicken) so I don't remember any specifically. I do remember there were many that made my day. There are those who take the time to review every chapter. Ones who write only a short note to thank me for writing the fic - both the angsty ones and the cracky fun ones. I love it when someone mentions something that no one else has that I was hoping someone would notice because I was proud of it. I'm not a popular author and don't get a lot of kudos or comments or reblogs compared to many. So each comment and kudos means a lot to me and I'd like to publicly thank every single person who wrote one or hit that kudos button.

Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

I once got a troll who decided it was his job to complain that I had misspelled hors d'oeuvres in one sentence out of an entire verse where the word was written multiple times correctly. It was a series of Klaine Advent one shots for the Empty Nest verse. At first I was shocked and replied with an apology. Then I was, "F this. The person is a troll who didn't read any other part of the fic or verse, just this one quickly written one shot entry, and if all they had to say was that I'd misspelled a commonly misspelled word, then they aren't worth my time." I deleted the comment. There's concrit and trolling. It wasn't concrit.

What advice do you have for people just starting to write?

Have fun writing, even the hard stuff. Know that it's okay to take breaks. Try your best and know you'll get better the more you write and the more you read. Pronouns are your friend and free. Don't put, "I know this is going to suck, so whatever," in your fic description. We all suck at times. It's a part of writing. But if you want folks to read it, using that as your fic's summary isn't the way to go. Just my opinions, which won't even buy you a cup of coffee.

Which fic do you most like to discuss with other people? Why?

I think it’s pretty obvious from all of my rambling that I enjoy talking about both of my series - Empty Nest verse and A Very Hallmark Christmas verse. I'm not a popular author and I know my fics, especially the Empty Nest verse ones, aren’t everyone’s thing, so I never get to really discuss them except with friends that I bug to death in private and via long replies to comments on AO3. (You all are saints blessed by all of the good and patient gods.) I have so much to say about them - the process of writing them, the world building, research, and character decisions that went into every single one. I know they’re not perfect. I know the Empty Nest verse grew miles beyond the ficlette about Burt and Carole that it was meant to be. I know my sense of humor in the Hallmark verse isn’t everyone’s thing either. I still worked really hard on them and am glad that I did. Empty Nest let me release a lot of the fear and anxiety I had for my Hispanic and gay son after the 2016 election. The Hallmark ones were a needed break to put some humor into my life. If others enjoyed them, great. If folks want to know more, my inbox is always open.

What's one aspect of writing fic that gets you really excited?

Writing humor even if I'm the only one that finds it funny. As I said above, writing the Hallmark Christmas movie dialogue and plot and the actors as they were filming it was a blast. Writing the commercials was fun and exciting. In my angsty fics, knowing I wrote a good scene, line, or moment that brought out all the feels. That's more of “satisfaction of a job well done” than excited.

***

Check out Coffeegleek’s Fics

Humorous Spooky Drabbles - Humorous drabbles to spookish type prompts based on a tumblr post called October Drabble Prompts #1 by hallofceleano. The parts in bold and italic are from those prompts. Characters include Kurt, Blaine, Burt, Carole, and Finn. All fun; only #4 has some mild angst. #4 is for snarkyhag and regarding #5 - I know next to nothing about Twilight and had to look up Taylor Lautner on imdb. The liberties I took are my own.

A Very Sloppy Christmas - lucy8675309 posted to tumblr a series of gifs with Kurt dressed up as an elf. It inspired me to write the following prompt, which CoffeeAddict80 encouraged me to write as a fic:

I now want a fic where real Santa’s elf!Kurt gets drunk and vents to Blaine about all the woes of working for Santa. He’s over 100 years old and the outfits are terrible. Why couldn’t they wear clothes like the elves did in that one movie? Drunk elf Kurt has no idea he’s venting to Santa’s son.

Bonus if he wakes up and realizes he just had a drunken one night stand. He isn’t sure who it was with. Only that he’s naked, the guy in the bed beside him is naked and showing off a really great ass. Then said guy turns over and after Kurt’s done staring at his dick, he looks at the guy’s face and realizes who it is.

It’s a Twisted World - I decided to challenge myself by combining the posted 5 weekly Klaine AU Friday themes and adding another one of my own. So that means: Farm, Fairytale, Vintage (1900’s,) Super Powers, Zombie Apocalypse, and Harry Potter World Klaine with a splash of a fic idea I thought of while in the produce section of the grocery store. Each week, the story will continue, though each part stands alone. This is not a brilliant work of perfectly composed fan fiction. What it is, is fast-paced, cracky fun, with a large dose of innuendo. At least it had my son laughing his ass off. I hope y'all enjoy it too. :)

#author spotlight #coffeegleek

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