#all of these are getting way too plotty haha

[intermundia]

hello! my name is will :) i have two sideblogs, @mgu-h for formula 1 and @merthurianity for merlin

what to expect here on main: it’s like half aesthetic posts and half star wars, specifically obi-wan and anakin, aka the team, with romantic obikin. i also post about ancient greece a bit, and applied my classics degree pointing out some cultural history of obikin dynamics.

i made edits of obi-wan saying “anakin” and anakin saying “master” at each other and a combo. i love to read about star wars and talk about it, esp. the revenge of the sith novel. sometimes i write meta about it all. i also collect star wars books too (more than 300 so far!)

i've also officially published more than 50 obikin stories! if you are interested in checking out what i have written, here are links and short descriptions of all my works, from novels to PWPs. i'm really proud to have reached this milestone (750k words! whew). thank you guys for all your support along the way <3

Novel-length stories:

Lex Talionis: COMPLETE Plotty, smutty, Sith AU. It’s my take on how Obi-Wan and Anakin could fall to the dark side, weaving in as much lore as I can. Force dyad, Sith’ari, Zygerria, etc. Obi-Wan and Anakin go through.. character development.. and it is dramatized in the changing way they have sex. I poured in all of my theories about metaphysics and the Force, all my knowledge about Augustus and how a Republic dies, all of my opinions about consent and agency. It has rough sex in it and some uncomfortable power dynamics that get resolved, so it is not for everyone, just a heads up. It is complete, and yes, there is a happy ending lol. War Drums: IN PROGRESS Darth Vader dies at the end of Return of the Jedi full of regret and wakes up in his 10-yr-old body after the events of the Phantom Menace. Young Obi-Wan struggles to acclimate to the death of Qui-Gon and the discovery that the boy he swore to train grew up into a Sith. Vader tries to use his knowledge to fix the galaxy and Obi-Wan uses his training to make sure they do it the right way. Anakin underwent his rite and is now an adult, galaxy beware. Murder Puppy: IN PROGRESS Obi-Wan’s decision to do more than flirt with the enemy ends up accidentally acquiring a clingy Sith acolyte, and he is tasked with holding his leash while they work together to end the war. This will probably end up around 40k so a bit shorter than the other two, which are chunkier

Core Oneshots: (my argument for the ship, basically)

Symposium: The story that started it all for me haha. I put Plato's Symposium in a word document and transformed it into a scene where Obi-Wan is forced to reconsider his relationship with Anakin, while dosed with an aphrodisiac, which leads to lines being crossed back in their hotel room. It suggests the erastēs/erōmenos dynamic that appears in much of my work. Unwrap, Wrap: Obi-Wan needs emotional hurt/comfort. This story has him fall apart, and Anakin help put him back together, after a traumatic battle late in the clone wars. Dramatizes the way that the war has muddied their roles and how much their lives are entangled. Obi-Wan gets a handjob in the shower, also, if that is relevant.

Longer Canon AUs: (8k+ words, AUs that take place in the GFFA)

Nostos: Technically a sequel to Symposium. It explores would happen if you took the dynamic established in Symposium and then put the characters in the canon end of Attack of the Clones. How would their behavior be impacted? How would the Jedi react to their decisions? Suckerpunch: Set during the Clovis arc, after Anakin had his jealous fight. Obi-Wan checks on him, and learns about both his marriage and the Tuskens. He doesn't want to lose his apprentice to the dark side, or a Senator. Ready Stance: Anakin is bored during a hyperspace journey during the clone wars, so he asks Obi-Wan to spar. Obi-Wan watches him warm up, they spar, and things escalate. This fic explores more core facets of their relationship, like the legacy teaching dynamic. Found, Fixed: Post-Zygerria Obi-Wan hurt/comfort. It’s similar to Unwrap, Wrap, except it’s told from Anakin’s POV and is much more explicit. It’s one of my rare bottom!Obi-Wan fic, he gets taken care of and comforted from being whumped so hard by the show. Anakin Sucks: Anakin has an oral fixation and it drives Obi-Wan to distraction over the course of the Clone Wars, 5+1 crack taken very seriously lol Make War: show!era Obi-Wan after fighting Vader on Mapuzo shares a dream with him while suspended in bacta. Warning for noncon!! Now with a second chapter set after their near miss on Jabiim. Third chapter based on the kenobi show finale hopefully will be out soon!

A/B/O Stories: (AUs that have this squicky trope, all set in GFFA)

Warm Blood: A/B/O fic that people seem to enjoy. Features omega Anakin having a suppressant failure on the battlefield and going into heat. Alpha Obi-Wan has to fight his way to him, and then tries to resist his instincts—until Anakin confesses his true feelings. Run Away With Me: A/B/O sequel to Warm Blood, tells the story of what happened after the mating, how they left the Jedi and what they’ve been doing. Anakin is preparing to go into heat, and Obi-Wan is helping him nest. Set during Revenge of the Sith, though they don’t know what’s happening in their isolation. Temporary Like Achilles: A/B/O fic. Alpha Obi-Wan is drugged by Dathomirian Nightsisters into a feral state, omega Anakin finds and rescues him. It's a fuck or die with feelings and ultimately a happy ending. Heat Haze: A/B/O fic. Alpha Obi-Wan is living alone on Tatooine, 10yrs post Mustafar. Omega Anakin is about to go into his first heat, and is searching for his mother during the Attack of the Clones. The Force shifts Anakin into the future, bringing the two together in time for Anakin’s heat to begin. Heat Shimmer: A/B/O fic. Alpha Obi-Wan is on Geonosis during Attack of the Clones, investigating. Preheat omega Darth Vader is on Geonosis 13 years later, and the Force decides to move him back in time for his heat. They fight, but it's impossible to fight some insticts. Give Up, Give In: A/B/O fic. Qui-Gon lived AU. Omega Obi-Wan is dosed with a heat inducer during a mission. Alpha Anakin who has loved the older Knight forever doesn’t handle that very well. Ends with Service Top Anakin, a favorite of mine

Longer Modern AUs: (8k+ words, developed AUs that attempt to model the canon dynamic in everyday life)

My Anankē: Classics AU is built on the premise that Obi-Wan would never break the rules re: teacher/student fraternization. He would rather endure years of mutual pining than act inappropriately. Once Anakin’s graduated though, that’s a different story. These are oneshots telling the story of their relationship. It is not told in chronological order, so each one basically opens up another window into their lives. Soulbound: Obi-Wan is a bossy lawyer who plays World of Warcraft. Anakin is an insecure veteran who is in Obi-Wan’s guild and drives him insane. They meet randomly in a bar, and Obi-Wan realizes that Anakin acts the way he does because he likes to be bossed around—so he bosses him around. Zone of Truth: Obi-Wan basically helped raise Anakin through being his Big Brother mentor through a local gaming shop, eventually teaching him to drive and getting him an internship etc. Anakin graduates college and Obi-Wan turns into a ghost, for very good reasons, it turns out. Anakin’s betrayed him, and he’s betrayed himself.

Shorter Smutty AUs: (shorter stories, canon + AUs)

Snap, Crackle, Pop: Padawan Anakin gets braid tugging and spanking after behaving very badly during the Battle of Muunilinst early in the Clone Wars. Tilted: Anakin wakes up after Mortis in a female body and hides, struggling to come to terms with the change. Obi-Wan comes to check on him and reassure him, smut ensues. Make Your Siren’s Call: show!era Obi-Wan struggles to fall asleep in the cave from the photoshoot, and dreams about his old apprentice, full of guilt, angst, and smut Stress Relief: Sith-like/Dom!Obi-Wan is rough on eager!Anakin in their Temple apartment, plays on Master/Padawan dynamic. Unperishing Glory: Homeric AU, Anakin is Achilles-type Chosen One and Obi-Wan is his Patroclus-type mentor-friend, angsty sex Murder Puppy: Playful!Obi-Wan seduces raisedSith!Anakin during a duel, bringing him back to the light during sex. People seem to really like this one, it is one of the things I get the most asks about. I have plans for a short story to expand, it’s on the WIP list I promise. Unwelcome Guest: An AU where Obi-Wan couldn't strike Anakin down on Mustafar. Suitless!Vader comes to find him on Tatooine, and wants to be punished for mistakes, there is spanking involved. Rosetta Stone: Based on the Mummy, an AU where Obi-Wan is a librarian and Anakin is a former soldier, and they defeated a mummy together. Obi-Wan is oblivious and repressed, so Anakin has to be very forward. Safe as Houses: Based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anakin is the slayer and Obi-Wan is his Giles-like librarian watcher. Anakin seeks Obi-Wan out in crisis and Obi-Wan takes care of him. The Outlander: Obi-Wan fell to the dark on Naboo AU, so Qui-Gon is Anakin’s Master instead. Anakin sneaks out of the Temple to a club to meet possessive Obi-Wan, there is smut against a wall outside, and Anakin falls to the dark side. Please, Daddy?: Daddy kink fic. Features a bratty Anakin, sex pheromones, spanking and just general daddy!filth. A New Hope: Anakin never left Tatooine AU. He becomes a Han Solo-type pilot who helps a rebel!Obi-Wan escape the Empire. He’s a touch starved, praise starved, virgin who’s insecure about his missing hand. Obi-Wan takes good care of him. Communication, What Communication: Organized Crime AU with collegeStudent!Anakin and accidentalSugarDaddy!Obi-Wan, gratitude kink haha. This fic has been picked up and turned into the phenomenal multichapter story Recoil and Ricochet by @wernnaa.

Potidaea, 432BC: Alcibiades!Anakin and his tutor Socrates!Obi-Wan fight together in the phalanx. Armor kink and period-accurate intercrural sex ensue lol. Minikin and Tiny-Wan: Fluff and crack based on the premise that there are tiny figurines of the Jedi that are alive (kind of like the little dragons in the goblet of fire). Obi-Wan and Anakin each get one, and their Tinys enjoy each other’s company, leading to an awkward but useful conversation. #BinGate: Great British Bake Off AU, Anakin is a contestant who lost his temper and destroyed his bake, Obi-Wan is a judge who enjoys scolding Anakin. Let Me, Master: Padawan Obi-Wan, shy demisexual Master Anakin, Obi-Wan throws caution to the wind and finally seduces his clueless Master, smut ensues with bottom Obi-Wan. Anakin, Duke of Vader, Prince of Coruscant: Anakin is a bratty, troubled prince and Obi-Wan is his unimpressed knight bodyguard. Anakin cries, showing true vulnerability, and Obi-Wan realizes he has a kink for that lmao Sic Transit Gloria Mundi: Sexually frustrated after sparring with his Master, Anakin decides to visit the glory hole in the locker room. Little does he know, he’s not the only one. Boy Toy: Obi-Wan is a fashion designer and Anakin is a first time model. They’ve just finished a boytoy themed photoshoot and get trapped together in an elevator Brotherhood: Anakin is a college student in a spiral after the death of his mother, and his father Qui-Gon left for a trip, leaving his much older step-brother Obi-Wan, who he doesn't know very well, in charge. Obi-Wan picks Anakin up from jail, and the argument goes places. Hard Racing: Anakin is a Formula 1 driver and Obi-Wan is his team principal. After an accident at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix where he ran into his teammate, he is sore, tired, and afraid of getting demoted from his spot. Obi-Wan comes to his hotel to reassure him of his value to him and the team. Beer and Paint: Obi-Wan and Anakin are both apprentices to famous artist Qui-Gon. Anakin has tattoos/piercings/blue streak in his hair, and Obi-Wan is obsessed. Sloppy art and drunk sex ensue.

Smutty +F fic AUs: (short fics that includes Padmé or Ventress)

Très Lecherous: Padmé and Obi-Wan agree to share subby!Anakin, this fic is all three together, and includes DP if that is your jam. Blue Shadow Virus: continuation of above AU, Padmé almost died on Naboo and Anakin doesn’t take it well. Obi-Wan and Padmé dom him into relaxing Post-Revenge: Set after the episode of TCW where Ventress rescues Obi-Wan from Maul and Savage. This is only Ventress/Obi-Wan, but Anakin is extremely present in the fact that Ventress uses Obi-Wan's secret feelings for Anakin to incite him into hate sex. Plus Anakin Makes 3: Sort of a sequel to the Post-Revenge fic, Anakin discovers Obi-Wan and Ventress having a tryst, decides to participate rather than freak out, so more DP haha.

Collaborations: (stories i co-authored with friends)

Apartment Story: Post-Deception arc reconciliation fic, where Obi-Wan is drunk and Anakin is angry. Feelings are revealed, and comfort, understanding and smut ensues. Written with my friend @whohatessandas a RP and adapted into a story. Satellite Mind: What would happen if Obi-Wan could hear Anakin’s thoughts? Spoiler: it does not go well. Set during the last few days of the clone wars, and tracks how their relationship combusted over Anakin’s secrets. Written with @theseptemberist.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

14. What have you been finding frustrating with writing this chapter/fic?

Complain a lil bit at me. I love me some complaining. Brains are the absolute worst, honestly, there has to be a better way to have a consciousness.

GAH, well, since you asked for complaining, haha...

I HAD written all of Lent From Tomorrow. Or, well. I had written fully-fully the first 3/4 of it and had a robust outline and chunklets in the last quarter. So I felt safe to start posting it. I KNOW myself. I am BAD at posting WIPs. I am bad at it. My track record of my entire life illustrates this.

So I started posting it and things were going swimmingly! "Yes!" I told myself. "I'm successfully posting a WIP!"

But then I pulled a WandaVision and went, "oh, dear, everyone consuming this story figured out my red herrings much faster than anticipated, I must CHANGE THE STORY" but not in a "screw the audience over" way like WandaVision, just in a "this reveal comes much sooner than I had written, because otherwise I'm worried it will come across like beating a dead horse to keep dropping hints when y'all already know."

So... that completely undid the back HALF of the story, and I started writing it chapter-by-chapter as I posted, and I was doing okay. It wasn't the weekly update schedule I'd had with the prewritten chapters, but that's fine. It's fanfiction. People go years without updating sometimes, especially me, because I AM BAD AT WIPS. But it was still going okay!

And then April and May happened, and I'm ngl, literally every day of April, something cartoonishly horrible happened in my real life and I did not write a word for the entire month. Or do much of anything. I don't even think I read any comic books. I did zero. And then May was... not much better. Like, maybe something cartoonishly horrible happened every three days instead of every day, but it was still way too much.

I actually wrote more in May than I've written in that same time span since 2024 started, which I'm really proud of myself for -- I wrote 14,000 words (plus like 800 words of unpostable noodling) in three weeks, and that's not, like, Impressive or Enough but it's better than I've been able to produce in a while. I told myself just focus on the drabbles and tiny ficlets that were coming out of the prompt/pairing list I'd set up for myself for MLMay, and I tried not to freak myself out, and words happened, and it was nice! And then the last week of May also happened and we're back to Very Bad Brain Times.

So... I know what happens in the last quarter of Lent. I WANT to be writing it. But my brain is just not "together" enough right now to slip into the mindset for such a heavy-duty, plotty, researchy, emotional longfic, and I'm just spiraling and making myself feel even worse by getting more and more anxious about how long it's taking me to write it.

I know, logically, that it's not a huge deal. If people are gonna stick around to read what comes next, they will, and if they don't, they don't, and that's fine. That's how posting serial fiction works. I mean, that's even how TV used to work in the before-streaming times, and it's not like I worried about the feelings of a showrunner if I got behind on a show or decided it went somewhere I didn't care to follow. That's just serialized art! It's fine! I know logically that it's fine!

But reader, Emotionally, It Is Not Fine. I love this story so much, and I'm so invested in actually finishing something for once and I've stupidly pinned like... a lot of my beliefs about my Worth As A Person on "whether I can finish and successfully post an entire longfic," which, I get it, that in itself is not the biggest issue at play here, but whatever. Baby steps. And I just... it sounds so stupid. And I KNOW that it's small potatoes.

I just want people to like it.*

And I know that every passing day that I don't update, fewer people are going to read it and/or like it, and that also feeds the Bad Brain Spiral. And I don't know.

So tl;dr, the most frustrating part of writing this chapter is myself? I guess????

*Before anyone jumps in to whine about and/or laugh at this statement, I'm not saying "I want it to be a stucky fandom classic," or anything ridiculous like that. I literally just mean that I want the people who choose to read it to enjoy it enough to finish it and maybe have an emotionally positive experience from reading it.

**I also feel very. This is another dumb complaint that I know won't come across right, because internet, but -- I feel very like... separated from stucky fandom (in part because I'm a newer fan who came to the fandom after its heyday, in part because I don't like a lot of currently-popular fanons, in part because I am way too shy for Discord?) and I feel bad bugging uninterested people with thoughts/feelings about my own stories, so I've kind of just... stoppered up my excitement for this story for a long time. Also, an asshole ex-friend of mine straight-up told me that "stuckies are going to hate it because there isn't enough sex and it's really boring for being a fic, especially since it's Steve POV and not Bucky POV" and that just kind of made me feel like. I couldn't squee about the story. And it's HARD to write longfic and not feel like you can share it with people??? IDK. Stuff and thoughts. Whatever. etc.

[dehautdesert]

Once again I participate in the "get to know your mutuals" chain mail meme (I'm 100% this is not the correct term but my brain is really fried atm), this time I was tagged by @stripedroseandsketchpads :D I feel like I do this every two months at least so I'm kind of out of people to tag who haven't done it recently, and I've also been kind of dissociated from Tumblr due to work stress so I don't remember if I added anyone new recently :/ So whoever wants to do it, let's pretend I tagged you :D

Last song I listened to: Them Crooked Vultures - No One Loves Me & Neither Do I - I just discovered this band! Even though it's made up of really famous people from other more famous bands! And I really like it!

Currently watching: The Borgias. So far it's... okay? I'm enjoying the character beats but the actual plotty plot (i.e. the politics and wars) is so slowly paced and overly linear. They seem really scared of the audience not getting it so they only allow one plotty thing to be happening at any given time, and they make sure to spell everything out at least once per episode. Which is... not what I'm used to in my historical political drama (quite the opposite in fact!). Perhaps I could have benefited from this approach if it were a fantasy world or a country I don't have much to do with (I remember having to open up a map of Scotland so many times while reading the first Lymond because they kept going from one city to the other and I didn't know where they were in relation to each other), but it's set in my own country and half of the "as you know" recaps are just basic Italian geography for the anglophone audiences lol. After the fifth time one well-educated character explains to another well-educated character that Florence is in the north-west and Naples is south of Rome, I kind of want to scream. The pronounciations are also all over the place - three guys are sitting at a table looking each other in the eyes and pronouncing "Medici" 3 incorrect ways, at least they could have streamlined it between the actors. Like far be it from me to demand proper pronounciation with the way Italians butcher English words constantly, but at least make it consistent! Luke Pasqualino is the only one pronouncing anything as it should be pronounced, and I really felt bad for him in that scene where Lucrezia keeps asking him to say her name and they're both repeating it over and over, because he's the only one pronouncing it correctly while she's saying it as if she had a mouth full of rocks. Btw my favourite Holliday Grainger fucking up the Italian scene so far is when she needs to ride breathlessly up to the French king and say a long line about her brother Juan the Gonfaloniere and basically she's supposed to repeat "Gonfaloniere" several times and you can literally see her going "my brother is the gonfalonsajkdnajsdsbaj" and making a "fuck it, whatever" expression when she gets to the complicated part. Anyway I am enjoying the show, the pronounciations make me laugh they don't make me mad. And the costumes are gorgeous!

Sweet/spicy/savory: Savory or spicy, depending on the mood. I dislike sweet things.

Current Obsession: Nothing really, I've been really tangled up with RL things and am feeling vaguely anhedonic because I keep thinking about work, so it's hard to get into something haha. This is actually why I'm able to focus on the Borgias, because they have quite low bandwidth requirements (i tried to watch it before and found it slow-ish). This too shall pass I suppose :)

[ravenwingdark]

like fire, ice and explosions was soooooooooooooooooooooooo good. i… like... reading stories where shouto... loses his shit? he "deserves" that, you know what i mean? to go off the rails, either a little or a lot. he should be allowed to not be fucking okay! he should be allowed to have a reaction, and a messy reaction at that. i feel like he isn't actually allowed to do that though, in canon that is. maybe the mangaka thinks it's unnecessary but i don't think so, so i'm really glad for your story, for you letting him go through all of these feelings, for letting him react in a "messy" way. and i like how supportive is bakugou, and how bakugou he still is, like he's probably not the most comforting person ever, but maybe that's exactly why it works, with shouto at least. i wish we had had more characters reacting in "canon" to the part of dabi's speech about shouto instead of people only reacting to him as being related to dabi and all of that. i don't remember if there's even any comment about the quirk marriage thing? but, yeah, it's like people don't really say anything about what happened to shouto, even now that it's in the open and, okay, of course, shouto wouldn't want people to say anything, but like, it's weird that it doesn't happen. but anyway, that became a rant, i'm sorry, that was not what i was meaning to do.

i like pyrrhic victory too. i like the trio's dynamic in there very, very much, and the scenes of the rescue were so perfectly good. what i like the most is... probably how fitting is anamnesis's quirk to, like, shouto's entire life story? like, of fucking course that's the quirk of the person who kidnapped him, it's sort of poetic in the most disturbing way. pyrrich victory kind of makes me really depressed though. it's a whole new fucking trauma for him, and i'm not really seeing any "light at the end of the tunnel" for shouto, not at the moment anyway. it doesn't seem like shouto will ever be moderately okay again! i'm glad he slipped up in the latest published chapter and that bakugou noticed it and confronted him about that quickly and because it's bakugou i'm hoping he won't be fooled by however shouto tries to deflect from that, and then maybe there's hope yet, but i don't know. i'm not feeling that hopeful even with the "angst with a happy ending" tag. do you have the ending in mind already? how do you usually write? do you usually have everythingh planned, or you "go through the motions"?

haha thank you so much! you really touched on all the worldbuilding and inner conflict I wanted to explore in the series. Frankly, Hori just doesn’t have the time to dive so deep into every character that deserves it—mangakas have such strict schedules and a timeline they need to follow (or they may get relegated to Shounen Monthly), so a lot of the inner world of some of the secondary characters has to be implied. thats the joy of fanfic!

And yes, I do have everything in place for the ending, and almost all of it is written :) I know this ask is a bit older so maybe out of date, but at the 75% point of a story is usually the “Darkest Moment” where everything looks the worst.

In some ways, Shoto’s worse (suffering from new trauma, not trusting his own head) and in other ways he’s become more resilient—he’s got a very strong support system system, and he’s learning how to ask for help. He’s learned a lot from LFIE and the aftermath, learned to forgive Endeavor (as much as he can) and is trying to move past his trauma, though he’s 18 years old, and only a few years removed from that abuse, and def doesn’t have his life figured out

When I decided to write the sequel I did a bullet point list with each major development being numbered, then subsections. I believe it had 51 major plot moments. Since it’s a plotty casefic, I’ve pretty much adhered to The Plan with only adding extra details here and there. (Meanwhile, LFIE was seat of the pants)

And if you’re worried about a happy ending, just take a look at the title! Pyrrhic Victory—well, we’ve already gotten quite a bit of suffering, what’s left?

TYSM for such a kind, thoughtful comment, hope you enjoy the final stretch :)

[laurent-ofvere]

maya i just had a whole giggle fit over the n/l infidelity hc omg.. tell us more please? <3

here are a bunch of random bits from the outline:

POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD even tho I totally successfully covered them up

Description: laurent is cheating on damen post canon with nikandros. Lots of hate sex. Motives are unclear at first. At the end, laurent reveals REDACTED and wants niks help. 

Want/Need 

Laurent: Wants - REDACTED (sex starts as a way to manipulate nik, becomes that + a degrading fun time for all) Needs - niks help (chose nik bc he is the best option since he has political significance + is damens right hand + is hot

Nikandros: Wants- to spite fuck laurent to get back at damen/take his hatred of laurent out on him when they fuck Needs- to maybe use their “bond” to get through to laurent and use his potential influence to help akielos

Emotional state of mind 

Laurent - plotty and slutty

assumes damen is fucking around even tho they’re monogamous, doesnt even care. Cares about vere (and akielos by proxy) so honestly wants REDACTED, but is a little crazy and maybe a little REDACTED bc a fully sane man doesn't REDACTED REACTED REDACTED

Starts up with nik to turn him into a tool, takes the slutty route. Eventually gets into it (degredation kink, fucked up dynamics)

Kind of king he is: not a tyrant, not a beloved ruler. Is more irritated that he’s ruling with what he perceives as an oaf. “This is not what i signed up for”

nikandros - angry, resentful, horny 

Hates laurent bc he thinks he’s annoying, manipulative and full of self interest. Hates damen more bc 1. he allied with laurent and 2. he is not a good king, which was a hard pill for him to swallow. 

Fucks laurent to get back at damen and to relieve his overall frustration with laurent, eventually sees this could be beneficial + enjoys fucking him/degrading him/having this control and power over him

Damen things

Relationship with laurent: he’s kinda pre canon self, ignorant and fuckboy-esque. Doesnt realize that theyre strained, too selfish and in his own world to realize much. They have sex regularly, laurent is faking it.

Relationship with nikandros: he thinks they're cool. He’s all “haha nik you worry too much, its all good bro!”

Kind of king he is: decent. not evil, not revolutionizing the country. Off screen arguments with laurent about certain logistics (ex: slavery. Laurent is also eager to end it, but this shit takes time damn hello) Kind of man he is: pre canon damen vibe

[incandescentflower]

Thai QL Favorites Tag Game

Tagged by both @mineonmain and @dribs-and-drabbles Thank you!

Credit: this game was created by @thatgirl4815 as Thai BL Favorites Tag Game.

Favorite Thai QL: Bad Buddy is still tops, although it is starting to be that there are stronger and stronger ones that maybe at some point it will be like choosing from favorite children haha. BBS is a great relational story line, but I am excited about the more plotty ones happening, especially with fantasy or sci-fi plots and have high hopes others will continue to rot my brain. (looking at you Be My Favorite)

Favorite Pairing: I really feel like this is gonna get boring if I keep talking about Pat and Pran so I'm gonna also say Ink/Pa - I love their dynamic, I was so excited they would be a ship. I also am pretty certain Pisaeng and Kawi will be on this list - for reasons you can find in my screaming all over my blog right now, but since it isn't over yet I guess only time will tell. I would also say Akk and Theo. I wouldn't equally say Cher and Gun, but Force and Book do what they do well. Their shows are very unserious, but we all need some of that in our lives and they are the best at giving it.

Most underrated actor: Until now, I would have definitely said Gawin Caskey. He was never given a lead role and more than anything was doing OSTs (although his voice is beautiful so that's a great way to use him, but shouldn't be the only way). Last year when he was in both Not Me and Enchante at the same time it was like "Why the hell hasn't he gotten a lead?" Seems clear now that he maybe hadn't been the most comfortable with all that being a lead entails, but he is out there doing it now and my boy is so good. I'm so happy for him. I hope this means he'll get more opportunities later.

Favorite Character: It isn't going to be original, but yeah, it's Pat and followed oh so closely by Pran. They're great characters brought to life by great actors. Pran feels a little closer to my own tendencies and so perhaps that is why I get all heart eyes for Pat too. He's just so heart on his sleeve when he stops being oblivious and you gotta love someone who loves openly, honestly without holding back.

Favorite Side Character: This one is tough because I love a ton of side characters, but surprisingly Wai keeps popping into my head. I think Wai clearly is a complicated character, but he does have a nice growth arc, let's go of his stubborn pride, which he seems pretty attached to, and comes around to caring about the engineering guys at the end. I'm sure that it's Jimmy that really sells it, but I have always had positive feels for Wai despite him pissing me off during the series lol. Obviously I love Ink and Pa, and yes, Korn. Pearmai is amazing in Be My Favorite and I love every scene she is in. Max too. I love Max so much, he could never get enough screen time. I've gotta stop or I'll just keep listing them.

Favorite scene in a QL: Ok, this is serious spoilers for Triage so if you don't want to read any, then don't keep going - but honestly I *loved* that the vision Tin had of Tol earlier in the series was actually Tol flipped into the loop. It was such a fun time loop variation and I really enjoy fun time travel paradoxes and scenes where you understand it better from a different angle. Like I say below, underrated.

Favorite line in a QL: This is impossible, but what came to mind first was the scene is ep 11 part 4 of BBS where Pat and Pran have an exchange but Pat's lines are: "Thank you. For trying to make a silly guy like me happy...You never leave me. You fight alongside me. That makes me feel very happy." Again, Pat just telling how he feels in the moment and I love that so very much. And Pran barely says anything with words, but Nanon is king of the sparkly eyes and he says it all in return.

Most Anticipated QL (& why): Only Friends. I love all the actors. It's gonna be a hot mess of drama and all of them in the roles clearly are going to have fun doing it. And Cherry Magic because I want to see how they adapt it and after seeing Tay and New non-DBK roles I think they'll be great in it.

Healthiest relationship in a QL: Pat and Pran are the great communicators who know each other enough to give and take when it's needed and isn't that what we all hope to be able to do?

Most toxic relationship in a QL: I...feel like I have to plead the fifth on this. the ship I would put here is very popular and I think their whole dynamic is problematic and can't really even think about them without feeling annoyed so yeah, I have one that stands out over the others for me but I'll leave it at that. there's definitely plenty though. the healthy relationships are not always the majority.

Guilty pleasure series: Hmm, probably Together with Me. There was so many problems with that show and the plot was terrible in many ways, but Max and Tul were so convincing as the best friends who turned lovers and couldn't get out of their own way. I loved them in that. I also mostly liked Big Dragon which is another problematic start but worked for me. My rule apparently is if you are gonna hook up and be messed up, you both gotta be equally under influences.

Most underrated series: Well, this could change depending on how Be My Favorite ends and is finally received (I think it might not get the noise it deserves, it doesn't seem like it is at this point) but Triage is definitely what I'd say is most underrated one that has finished. It's plot is fun and the holes are lamp shaded and the actors obviously have great chemistry and the theme is that trying matters and I need those kinds of messages in my life, pretty much all the time.

I'm not sure who has been tagged before but how about @galauvant @lurkingteapot @dimplesandfierceeyes @sunshinedobi @kornswasianguyswag @dragonsareawesome123 @dontbesoevil

but no pressure, only if you want to :)

[heretherebedork]

Thank you very much for your in-depth response! (Looks like I can't comment on the post, so I hope you don't mind me sending another ask to respond back. :) ) I thought about it some more, and IDK, maybe I just read and watched too much Japanese media when I was growing up, haha. Because (at least at that time, not sure about nowadays) even so many canon straight couples in J-fiction never showed much, or any, physical evidence of their partnership (sometimes even barely any verbal evidence either, TBH), especially in works where the plot was the main focus (as opposed to works where the main focus was on the romance itself, of course, because usually there was at least some in those haha!), so granted I likely have a large bias/skew on the shapes that fictional coupleship can take from all of that. The heat level itself wasn't really my point though (as I certainly am not expecting heat out of Museum's main pair either haha), it was just that for me it's still possible for characters of any gender(s) to be in an obvious canon relationship/partnership in-story even without any onscreen/on-page physical stuff being necessary (again, though, I admit that that probably includes a lot of my old-J-media bias talking :) ). I understand your discussion on all of that, though, as well as your point that in the current day, being super vague about relationships (particularly non-straight ones) doesn't really cut it. As for Midnight Museum, IDK, to me there just seems to be way too much obvious romance coding being used in everything to do with the main pair (both in terms of cinematography cues as well as all of the classic tropes present in the physicality they do have so far as well as the dialogue and script overall) for them to just end up explicitly passing it off by the end of the show as a 'Nope Not Any Kind Of Partnership No Way They Were Just Good Friends Y'all' or something, haha (especially with it being a Thai show, instead of, like, The Land Of Censorship Of Which We Do Not Speak or something, you know? :P ). Anyway, I love reading your thoughts on things, so thank you for the good discussion on this! :) <3

Glad to see that my response did speak to most of it.

But I still don't think there's going to be any romance. I don't think they're going to be brothers, I just think the show is... never going to touch on the idea of romance with them. They will be Something Important but not romance.

Yes, Thailand does produce queer shows and lots of them but I would not expect them to do a queer show without any kind of advertisement or mention or showing of it, even now. That doesn't feel like the GMMTV style, honestly. Maybe I'll be wrong. But who knows?

No idea why you can't reply to the post, my replies are definitely turned on.

Anyway, I get the idea of an implied relationship but I think it shows where the whole of their relationship involves lots of Mystic and Fated and Time Travel things like Midnight Museum it'd be very hard to just kind of do an implied vague romantic relationship if they were going to do that way.

I also get that a lot of more plotty shows can have background barely-there romances and that Japanese media definitely

I definitely look forward to it but I am very much in the 'this show will not be queer' camp just from the way the show has been teased. I suspect the romance is just a tease, a bit of baiting, them playing with Gun's typical roles.

Honestly, I'll just be happy if neither of them has a full on female love interest through the show. That's my entire hope. Just leave it vague enough that I don't have to fight canon. I mean, not like I haven't fought canon dozens of times before but, you know, I just want it easy this time.

[blackberrysummerblog]

hii <3

2, 21, 23, 29 and 78 for the ask game. sorry if they're too many ^^'

Thank you so much for the ask @imagineacoolerusername! I apologize for not responding sooner, because I’m really excited someone took me up on the ask game (and it’s never too many, I love thinking more about what/how I’m writing).

2) Where do you get your fic ideas?

I’m similar to a lot of people on this one—my ideas come from things that I see or hear around me. It goes hand in hand with the first question in the ask list, which is “do you daydream a lot before you write” and I am a *huge* daydreamer. I generally do get an idea of a full story realized quickly enough that I don’t spend a lot of time dreaming before I write (haha…she says after literal months of WIP posts from the same unpublished fic, lol). I daydream constantly about my hyperfixations though, and I just let my mind wander wherever it feels like. There are stories in my head I would never actually post because they’ve become OOC and self-indulgent to a comical degree, but I get pleasure out of thinking about them and so I let my thoughts drift there when they want to. I often get some good material that way for stories that I actually do want to share with people.

For my crucible marriage AU, the idea came from a throwaway line in Carry On about Watford having possibly started as a mages’ settlement: I started thinking about an AU where that was still the case, and there would still be the school but it would start for students at a younger age than in canon. Assuming the kids mostly went home in the evenings, the crucible wouldn’t need to assign roommates, and instead could do another job like…magickally determining one’s spouse. That was the thought process, and because I am *feral* for arranged marriage/married-at-first-sight stories, the fic has been living at the front, middle, and back of my brain ever since.

21) Do you prefer writing chaptered fics or one-shots?

I don’t have a strong preference; it just depends on what the story requires. I’ll know when I begin writing if a story is going to be long and plotty enough to require chapters; in this fandom I’ve done entirely one-shots because I’m leaning heavily on soft vibes without enough conflict to need more than one post to tell. The crucible marriage fic will definitely be chaptered, though

23) Is writing the beginning, middle, or end of the story easiest? Hardest?

It depends where it starts in my head, i.e. the part I’m trying to get to. If the idea starts off largely in middle of the story I want to tell, then I need to figure out a beginning that can segue into that. It’s usually not super hard, but then again, I mostly enjoy doing domestic-style fluff and cutesy flirting, so it’s not an enormous exercise to intro that. I’m having a harder time with the current AU’s beginning, especially since at this point I’ve dragged it all out so long that I want it to be just right. The hardest part for me is almost always the ending, by which I don’t mean how it all ends up, but the last sentence. I’m pretty weak with last lines, and the *absolute fucking worst* at titles. I think both feel like high-pressure, sum-your-precious-baby-up-in-very-few-words situations to me. I am flat out disgusted with myself for some of the titles I’ve gone with after throwing up my hands.

29) What’s something about your writing that you’re proud of?

I like my dialogue. I think it flows pretty well and is often cute or funny. And I think I do a decent job with shoehorning my contrived plot points in. The example I’m thinking of is the field trip fic I wrote (I can’t even bring myself to namecheck the title, did I mention how bad I am at them?) where the entire story basically hinged on getting Simon to have to sit on Baz’s lap on the bus. It was easy enough to assign them as seatmates, and spilling something on the seat is a good reason for Simon to not be able to use it, but because it’s a magickal universe there really shouldn’t have been any reason they couldn’t spell the seat dry. Magic had to have been disallowed on the bus, which let me write a nice little bit about how Simon had gotten it banned on an earlier trip (and also to reflect on how few field trips he’s even been on, awwww). Anyway, I thought it was funny and just about killed myself when Baz quipped “here comes the not-so-magic-school bus” to humiliate Simon in front of the class. Pretty much everything that happened after that was just as contrived, and I thought it was hilarious.

78) What motivates you during the writing process?

It’s a compulsion for the flesh to become word. I write even the stories that I would never post because they’re too dirty or too personal or too badly conceived to share, because once they’re described in words it provides a kind of release for me.

There’s a short story by William H. Gass called “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” and I really recommend it for achingly real and emotive lines, but the one I’m thinking of is this, said of the narrator’s neighbor: “Nevertheless, I keep wondering whether, given time, I might not someday find a figure in our language which would serve him faithfully, and furnish his poverty and loneliness richly out.”

I want that when I write, to find words that will mean something to myself and someone else, that will hold a moment or experience up in the light in such a way that it’s viewed tenderly and with generosity.

Thanks again for asking; I hope my answers weren’t too long winded! If anyone else wants to play you can reblog this post:

[foeyayshippingweakness]

soulmates and time travel for the rate-a-trope

soulmates: this is an A- for me!! it’s not a tag I comb through per se, but I’ll enthusiastically click on a fic with it whenever one comes across my path. whether or not the fic is considered “good” doesn’t matter for me if it’s a soulmate au; any soulmate tropes make me giddy and excited about the general concepts and the way it can applied inside and outside of the fic. there’s lots of ways it could go; platonic soulmates, multiple soulmates of difference genres, 1+ romantic soulmates. my favorite ones are the more creative and out there tropes, for example, soulmates who can’t lie to one another, dreamwalk/dreamsharing with soulmates, or maybe the MC doesn’t even have a mark. it’s even more enjoyable when combined with other tropes, such as enemies to lovers! it probably helps that most soulmate aus I come across also happen to be angsty with at least a smidgen of hurt/comfort heheh

time travel au: A+ grade at any given time. do ALL the time traveling, fuck everything up, fix everything, live through a moment that a character was never meant to experience and change nothing, get stranded in the past, etc etc. I personally have like… at least 20 wips with the concept of time travel, and I do, in fact, go combing through the tag itself on ao3 though it’s usually a bit more difficult of a trope to read fandom blind!! I like either gen/plotty time travel fics or romantic ones, I’m not picky :) I’ve probably read way too many time travel fics than a normal person should HAHA (some of this can be attributed to naruto or hp or my need for at least one time travel fic for each fandom I slip into)

[eatyoursparkout]

Questions for the fanfic ask! (man, all of them are so fun!) 20. what is your favorite trope to write?

43. how did writing change you?

2. talk about a notable time a narrative or character has looked you dead in the eyes and said “fuck your plan, here’s what we’re actually doing.”

20) Ooh, too many to count really... hence why my ao3 profile is a huge mix of tropes- I keep wanting to try out new things! Some that immediately come to mind are 5+1 (because I like the structure of writing a series of interconnected scenes), and hanahaki (for the poetic angst potential), but the thing that I probably write the most is variations on get-together fics. I like navigating all the feelings and the will-they-won't-they tension that leads up to that final emotional catharsis. I haven't written enough of it, but I also love enemies to lovers for the crunch, and let me be weak, let me sleep, because it's another great way to emotionally torment a character.

43) I'm sure it's changed me in other ways that I can't think of right now, but honestly what I've noticed most is that it's really changed the way that I observe and interact with my surroundings. Whenever I'm out, I'm constantly noticing and cataloguing details about people, the environment, etc. and thinking about how I'd describe them in words. One time I was walking back to my apartment in the winter and I suddenly became super aware that I was doing it- thinking about how I'd describe the rubbery crunch of the snow, the way it squeaked beneath my boots... it's just something that I can't turn off now 😂

Semi-related, but it's also made it so hard to read books without stopping every other page to make note of some turn of phrase I like, or some well-constructed paragraph. I have to decide before I sit down whether I'm going to shut off that critical reader and just enjoy the story, and even then I often fall into the trap haha

2) My answer for this one is probably going to be kind of disappointing! I'm way more planner than pantser, and pretty much outline everything. I've had some outlines expand to be larger than intended, but I've never had a moment where a fic truly diverged from my original idea. This is probably also influenced by the fact that a lot of my works are (explicit) oneshots and/or character/relationship studies, so I don't often write the kind of plotty, long stories that could really go off the rails...

[writing-whump]

Omg Jey, thank you so much for your thoughts! This was a very exciting reblog to wake up to :D

I'm kinda glad you could guess the leaving was an option. I was seriously considering it and Seline was certainly too, since she was seriously hurt by that whole secret.

Oh, but you are totally right that this will impact all of them in the future, from Matt to Isaiah to Sel. She will definitely have a lot less tolerance for secrets and mysteries.

The point system definitely still needs to be addressed. You can bet Isaiah has been mauling it since, trying to comprehend the logic behind it, lol, and how to get rid of it. It's an expression of her distrust towards him, and he is way more aware of it now than he was before. They are both holding back on each other, partly because of the other and partly because of their own issues and Isaiah didn't know it was that serious from her side.

Haha, the old combos will be coming back shortly, I'm sure. I'm glad you like Rip and Dylan though. I shall dive more into why everyone is so invested then ;). Honestly, Isaiah and Matt both see themselves in Rip and their small pack policy didn't have to deal with people around them when there is no official Executioner reason yet. I see it as both Isaiah expanding his horizons a little and also being confronted with what his role means to him and what he wants to do. Isaiah's interest in someone signifies things in the bigger context of the wolf world, so he has to be careful about who he shows favor to without them being a pack member—but does he want to do it that way? And if he is forced to, how will he do it? Rip is also undecided about what this means for him and if he should even stay with these weirdoes, since their kindness doesn't make sense to him. I have a certain plotty plan for this situation ;D

It's always kind of confusing to bring in new OCs, cause you don't know how long they will last if they will sort of sprout from the seeds, or be one-time plaything tryouts. But I get excited for Rip's pov and arc easily, so the focus might just be coming from that too.

Thank you so much for all your comments and thoughts this way, it was so fun to hear them!!

Can you believe I had whole chapters, plot points and dialogue planned out for Seline leaving? And then it just...took a different turn lol

[pynkhues]

#9 “oh, you’ve started stealing my socks now?” 😊

(Sorry this took so long!) 

Set in The Centre and Circumference / Domestic Fic universe

“I’m just going to – ”  

“No, you ain’t,” Rio snaps back at her, his nostrils flaring, and Beth rolls her eyes, curling the blanket tighter around her shoulders and flopping back onto the couch. He squints at her for a second, and she’s pretty sure he’s waiting to make sure she doesn’t get up again, which is honestly hilarious. After all, she’s doing okay – she’s three glasses of red wine deep and has the blanket. He’s the one shivering in a pair of stiff black jeans and a too-thin hoodie on the living room floor.

Satisfied that she’s not going to make a break for the thermostat, he turns his attention back to the fire. Or rather, not the fire, Beth thinks, amused, but the enormous log he’d dropped into the fireplace, the smattering of kindling and what has to be close to thirty burnt out matches, leaving smears of charcoal on the concrete floor of the thing.

“We could just turn the central heating on until you get it going,” Beth says, and she keeps her voice light, soothing, even if internally she’s practically glowing. There’s just something so magical about finding something new he’s bad at, especially given the list is so short – cooking, singing (and that one had surprised all of them. “With that deep, husky voice?” Ruby had asked, eyebrow raised, grinning wide. “Figured he’d be a regular Ray Charles.”

“Nope,” Beth replied gleefully, taking a sip on her cocktail. “Like skinning a cat.”)

And now, apparently, lighting a fire.

Rio mumbles something under his breath which sounds vaguely threatening, but Beth’s pretty sure it’s aimed at the log, not her, which is a little harsh. After all, it’s not the log’s fault, she thinks, reaching to grab her wine glass off the coffee table and god, okay, it really is cold. She pulls her glass to her chest and then curls the blanket better around herself again, keeping the cool air at bay.

The night had started off so well too. With her kids at Dean’s and Marcus at Laura’s and the weather warnings blearing over the radio, Beth had closed the dealership early to get all the staff home safely and somehow managed to talk Rio into doing the same with the warehouse (albeit, not quite as early). It had barely been three by the time she’d gotten home, and she’d managed to throw on some sweats, get a casserole in the oven, crack a bottle of wine and check in with the kids, Annie and Ruby before Rio had stumbled in the door, brushing sleet from the shoulders of his coat.

And it had almost been romantic, she thinks contentedly, safe from the bustle of the real world outside of their dining room, eating dinner, drinking wine, jazz practically oozing languidly off Rio’s turntable, her foot inching up his leg beneath the table, when he’d suggested they take it to the living room.

And now here they were, Beth thinks, watching as Rio surges back up onto his knees, furiously lighting another match, holding it low on the kindling, the flame almost licking around the stick instead of catching on the bark, and it must be wet or something because it’s really not going to light. The match burns down, singing Rio’s fingers, and he swears, tossing the thing haphazardly into the fireplace.

Biting back a grin, Beth sits forwards a little on the couch, about to get up to help him (she’d have done it earlier if he hadn’t been so insistent on her staying warm and relaxing back on the couch – while also not letting her turn on the heating, promising this’d be roaring soon enough), when suddenly Rio’s work cell starts buzzing in the back pocket of his jeans. He cusses again, yanking it out, checking the number, and promptly answering it.

“What?” he grunts in lieu of a greeting, and someone must say something significant, because suddenly he’s rocking up to his feet, covering the mouthpiece as he looks at Beth and says:

“Gimme a minute, yeah?” before striding off into the hallway then darting up the stairs to their shared home office, and Beth frowns, because if he’s taking it upstairs, it means it’s either news he doesn’t want her to know, somebody he doesn’t want knowing about her (he’s weirdly paranoid about certain unnamed people hearing her voice, and no matter how much she pries, he refuses to tell her why), or both.

Watching him disappear up the stairs, Beth shuffles forwards, dropping her wine glass back to the coffee table and then herself to the floor.

Thing is, it is weird. All those months ago in Beth’s old bed, in her old house, the fireplace had been the first thing on his list when they’d played Dream House, and on those early, new nights, she’d dreamt of what that meant, assuming it held a significance to him in the same way that the kitchen did for her. Something that would make a house their home. Had imagined him with a childhood spent in front of one, toasting marshmallows or warming his toes, imagined it as one of the few things he’d had to go without in his loft, imagined him missing it, but now she’s not so sure.

It’s like he’s never even seen someone light one before.

She almost laughs when she gets to the fireplace, pushing aside the enormous log he’d laid down at the base of it and the sticks which actually are wet (he must’ve grabbed them from outside when she was cleaning up dinner), and starts to sort through the kindling, finding the smallest, driest pieces. She finds a newspaper on the shelf below the coffee table – one she’s pretty sure Rio’s done with, and tears off a few shreds, scrunches them up, starting to build the base of the fire. When she’s happy enough, she lights a match, dropping it down and watching the flame surge as it swallows the newspaper, just starting to catch the sticks above.

Humming a little to herself, she grabs one of the enflamed sticks, pushing it a little deeper, letting the embers flick over to the newspaper at the back, catching against them there, slowly starting to catch on the sticks there too. She watches the fire ebb, the embers starting to dust the concrete floor of the fireplace, lets it build again, her eyelashes briefly fluttering shut as the first breath of warmth hits her cheeks.

“So were you gonna tell me you knew how to do that, or just gonna watch me make a mess of it?”

The words are little more than a lazy drawl, and Beth glances behind herself to see him wandering towards her, like a whip of darkness in the cool, dusky light of the evening. She grins, shrugging, turning her attention back to the fire. She pulls the stoker off the holder, and gently prods a few of the flaming sticks towards the naked ones.

“You didn’t ask.”

Rio snorts, sitting down beside her, rocking just slightly forwards, and he doesn’t hold his hands out to the fire, doesn’t stretch out in front of it, but she knows he’s warming himself up. He runs cold anyway – she thinks it probably has something to do with the fact he has barely an ounce of body fat on him – but he doesn’t even have to touch her for her to know his hands are even more freezing than usual.

“Scouts,” he guesses, and Beth grins over at him again, tilting up her chin a little proudly.

“Got the badge and everything,” she replies, and then points with the stoker to where she’d pushed his efforts aside for her own. “Your log was too big.”

��Yeah, I heard that before,” he hums in faux resignation, and Beth rolls her eyes, a blush dusting her cheeks at the innuendo before she can stop it, and she pokes his side with the handle of the stoker. He takes it easily, and Beth moves around him, her blanket dragging behind her as she reaches for a smaller piece of wood.

“You need to be gentler with it too,” she says gesturing to the fire, and then quickly looks back at Rio, who’s mouth is open to reply. “Don’t.”

His laugh is quick, lyrical over the crackle and thrum of the fire, and Beth can’t quite bite back her grin either as she carefully places the smaller log by one of the healthiest parts of the fire, letting the flames slowly engulf it.

“Everything okay?” she asks, and at Rio’s questioning look, adds: “With the phone call, I mean.”

Rocking his head from side-to-side, Rio prods at the fire, watching the flames move, sticks like skeleton fingers snap beneath the heat. This close, she can see the slightest dusting of freckles at his cheeks, each little bump of new hair in his five o’clock shadow, the impossible length of his eyelashes. He looks engrossed, eyes tracing the way the fire builds, the way it consumes, the way it -

“Can you take more cars next week?”

Beth blinks back at him, wets her lips, collecting herself. She wraps herself up again in the blanket, curling her legs underneath her as she thinks it over.

“Probably,” she decides. “Not like we have the kids, and Annie could use the extra cash at the moment for Sadie’s meds anyway, so I’m sure she wouldn’t say no to a few longer days too.”

“Might need you to.”

“Is everything okay?” she asks again, forehead furrowing, and Rio sighs this time, clenching his eyes shut briefly, rubbing at his forehead with his free hand. She doesn’t think he’ll reply – usually doesn’t when she asks, and she knows he’ll be annoyed if she asks again. To her surprise though, Rio drops his hand, stokes the fire, and says:

“Just internal shit with our suppliers. Want to finish up faster so we can shut down business with ‘em. AJ’s hooked me up with some guys he’s worked with before, says they’re hard work too, but get shit done. Figure I’ll go check ‘em out, and if they’re good, start moving us across, at least temporarily, until we find someone longer term.”

Beth considers this. She knows there’s been issues with one of their big suppliers – has been for months, Rio had told her as much, but she hadn’t realised it had gotten this bad. She bites the inside of her cheek.

“If we’re changing people, I want to be there to meet them,” she says, and Rio exhales, like he knew that was what she was going to say, and Beth frowns, watching him watch the fire. It’s not like she hasn’t met with people before, with suppliers and partners and associates, but Rio rarely offers. She thought for a while that he liked making her weasel her way into it all, and she thinks that he did, for a while, but these days he seems to only like her in meetings with people he’s - - they’re already in business with. People he knows. Like he’s worried she might make a bad impression or something on anyone new, and sure, she knows she’s not exactly Demon, but she thinks she’s always presented professionally.  

When he doesn’t answer, Beth’s frown deepens.

“Rio.”

“You get all your badges?”

Beth blinks, forehead furrowing.

“What?”

“At scouts,” Rio adds when he clocks her confusion, and Beth promptly rolls her eyes. “Ain’t there like a hundred of ‘em?”

“Rio, I’m serious.”

“You still got ‘em? I bet you do,” he hums, dropping the stoker to the front of the fireplace and shuffling a little back. He looks over at her appreciatively, sucking in his lips, like he’s picturing it. “Got the little hat still?”

“Rio,” she groans, hand escaping the blanket to push him, when suddenly he surges forwards, pushing her heavily onto her back against the freezing floorboards. She squawks, flails, still half tangled in the blanket as he rolls them over until she’s lying flat on top of him, and god, she must be squashing him, she thinks, feeling the sharp plains of him underneath her, and she tries to sit up, but he pulls the blanket around her and uses it to yank her back down towards him so hard she’s almost winded against the hard, flat top of his ribcage.

She squints down at him.

“You’re too skinny,” she tells him accusingly, and he just looks up at her, eyebrow raised, as she adds: “No wonder you’re always cold.”

“Ain’t that what I got you for?” he asks, and Beth rolls her eyes, about to tell him no, actually, but he does have her to go to this meeting with him, thank you very much, when suddenly he pulls her close to him, shoving his freezing hands down the back of her sweat pants, squeezing her ass over her panties before changing his mind and shoving his hands beneath those as well. Beth makes a noise she’s pretty sure only dogs can hear, trying to wriggle away from him, and Rio just laughs, rolling her onto her side and rubbing his icy nose against her neck.

“Mmm, feelin’ warmer already,” he purrs, rolling his hips against hers, and Beth groans in the least sexy way possible, trying to wriggle away from his cold hands. It’s no good though, they’re too big and – when he feels her moving – too firm.

“Yeah, well, believe it or not, I’m not,” she hisses in reply, and Rio sits back enough to look down at her, pulling one of his hands off her ass.

“Yeah? Damn. Think I got a few ideas on how we fix that though.”

Beth gives him an unimpressed look at that, and when she goes to push him off her, he grabs both her wrists in his hand and gives her a shit eating grin. It’s enough to make her smile way too sweetly in reply, lifting her leg until she can get her foot against his hip, kicking him back, when he glances down, eyebrow arched, and promptly lets go of her wrists to tug on her (well, his) black sock.

“Oh, so you’ve started stealin’ my socks now?” he says, and Beth curls her toes to stop him from pulling it off her. They really are warmer, she thinks, even if they swallow practically half her leg.

“Well, since stealing your money and your business worked out so well for me, I figured I should see how this went,” she says with a sniff, just to see the way his forehead furrows, his lips part, unimpressed.

“Oh, is that right?”

A giggle escapes Beth’s mouth before she can help it, and Rio grabs her ankle, pushing it away so he can better slide between her legs, laying flush against her, and she almost hates the way her breath hitches, the way he notices it – of course he notices it – and well, she thinks, blinking suddenly when she feels his half-hard cock push against her cunt. She keens before she can help that too, feeling the heat pool low in her.

“You warmin’ up yet, mama?” he asks her, the hand down the back of her pants shifting, moving around to her hip, playing with the lace of her panties, keeps moving, until his cold fingers are slipping between her folds, and she jumps, fingernails digging into his neck, and god, when had her hands even moved there?

“We haven’t finished this conversation,” she promises him, squinting, and he nods, faux serious, but there’s a look in his eye that tells her he knows that too, and as long as he does, Beth thinks, surging up to kiss him.

That’s really all that matters.

[intermundia]

Masterlist…?

in terms of what's on my blog — it's like half aesthetic posts and half star wars, specifically obi-wan and anakin, aka the team, with romantic obikin. i also post about ancient greece a bit, and applied my classics degree (lmao) pointing out some cultural history of obikin dynamics. i made edits of obi-wan saying “anakin” and anakin saying “master” at each other and a combo. i love to read about star wars and talk about it and sometimes i write meta! i collect star wars books too :)

in terms of my fiction — i've written 650k+ words of obikin over the last two years. i publish my fic on ao3 because all the stories i write are explicit. i've talked on tumblr about my novels lex talionis and war drums. some aus that i've talked about on here are classics au (professor obi-wan, my anankē), murder puppy au (raised sith anakin), anakin swap au (anakin/vader time travel swap au). filter "fanfic stuff" if you don't want to see it <3

i've written 49 stories, multichap and oneshots. here are descriptions of all of them, if you are curious to see what's what:

Novel-length stories:

Lex Talionis: COMPLETE Plotty, smutty, Sith AU. It’s my take on how Obi-Wan and Anakin could fall to the dark side, weaving in as much lore as I can. Force dyad, Sith’ari, Zygerria, etc. Obi-Wan and Anakin go through.. character development.. and it is dramatized in the changing way they have sex. I poured in all of my theories about metaphysics and the Force, all my knowledge about Augustus and how a Republic dies, all of my opinions about consent and agency. It has rough sex in it and some uncomfortable power dynamics that get resolved, so it is not for everyone, just a heads up. It is complete, and yes, there is a happy ending lol.

War Drums: IN PROGRESS Darth Vader dies at the end of Return of the Jedi full of regret and wakes up in his 10-yr-old body after the events of the Phantom Menace. Young Obi-Wan struggles to acclimate to the death of Qui-Gon and the discovery that the boy he swore to train grew up into a Sith. Vader tries to use his knowledge to fix the galaxy and Obi-Wan uses his training to make sure they do it the right way. Anakin underwent his rite and is now an adult, galaxy beware.

Murder Puppy: IN PROGRESS Obi-Wan’s decision to do more than flirt with the enemy ends up accidentally acquiring a clingy Sith acolyte, and he is tasked with holding his leash while they work together to end the war. This will probably end up around 40k so a bit shorter than the other two, which are chunkier

Core Oneshots: (my argument for the ship, basically)

Symposium: The story that started it all for me haha. I put Plato's Symposium in a word document and transformed it into a scene where Obi-Wan is forced to reconsider his relationship with Anakin, while dosed with an aphrodisiac, which leads to lines being crossed back in their hotel room. It suggests the erastēs/erōmenos dynamic that appears in much of my work.

Unwrap, Wrap: Obi-Wan needs emotional hurt/comfort. This story has him fall apart, and Anakin help put him back together, after a traumatic battle late in the clone wars. Dramatizes the way that the war has muddied their roles and how much their lives are entangled. Obi-Wan gets a handjob in the shower, also, if that is relevant.

Longer Modern AUs: (8k+ words, developed AUs that attempt to model the canon dynamic in everyday life)

My Anankē: Classics AU is built on the premise that Obi-Wan would never break the rules re: teacher/student fraternization. He would rather endure years of mutual pining than act inappropriately. Once Anakin’s graduated though, that’s a different story. These are oneshots telling the story of their relationship. It is not told in chronological order, so each one basically opens up another window into their lives.

Soulbound: Obi-Wan is a bossy lawyer who plays World of Warcraft. Anakin is an insecure veteran who is in Obi-Wan’s guild and drives him insane. They meet randomly in a bar, and Obi-Wan realizes that Anakin acts the way he does because he likes to be bossed around—so he bosses him around.

Zone of Truth: Obi-Wan basically helped raise Anakin through being his Big Brother mentor through a local gaming shop, eventually teaching him to drive and getting him an internship etc. Anakin graduates college and Obi-Wan turns into a ghost, for very good reasons, it turns out. Anakin’s betrayed him, and he’s betrayed himself.

Longer Canon AUs: (8k+ words, AUs that take place in the galaxy far, far away)

Nostos: Technically a sequel to Symposium. It explores would happen if you took the dynamic established in Symposium and then put the characters in the canon end of Attack of the Clones. How would their behavior be impacted? How would the Jedi react to their decisions?

Ready Stance: Anakin is bored during a hyperspace journey during the clone wars, so he asks Obi-Wan to spar. Obi-Wan watches him warm up, they spar, and things escalate. This fic explores more core facets of their relationship, like the legacy teaching dynamic.

Found, Fixed: Post-Zygerria Obi-Wan hurt/comfort. It’s similar to Unwrap, Wrap, except it’s told from Anakin’s POV and is much more explicit. It’s one of my rare bottom!Obi-Wan fic, he gets taken care of, from a beard trim to.. you know :)

Warm Blood: A/B/O fic that people seem to enjoy. Features omega Anakin having a suppressant failure on the battlefield and going into heat. Alpha Obi-Wan has to fight his way to him, and then tries to resist his instincts—until Anakin confesses his true feelings.

Run Away With Me: A/B/O sequel to Warm Blood, tells the story of what happened after the mating, how they left the Jedi and what they’ve been doing. Anakin is preparing to go into heat, and Obi-Wan is helping him nest. Set during Revenge of the Sith, though they don’t know what’s happening in their isolation.

Temporary Like Achilles: A/B/O fic. Alpha Obi-Wan is drugged by Dathomirian Nightsisters into a feral state, omega Anakin finds and rescues him. It's a fuck or die with feelings and ultimately a happy ending.

Heat Haze: A/B/O fic. Alpha Obi-Wan is living alone on Tatooine, 10yrs post Mustafar. Omega Anakin is about to go into his first heat, and is searching for his mother during the Attack of the Clones. The Force shifts Anakin into the future, bringing the two together in time for Anakin’s heat to begin.

Heat Shimmer: A/B/O fic. Alpha Obi-Wan is on Geonosis during Attack of the Clones, investigating. Preheat omega Darth Vader is on Geonosis 13 years later, and the Force decides to move him back in time for his heat. They fight, but it's impossible to fight some insticts.

Give Up, Give In: A/B/O fic. Qui-Gon lived AU. Omega Obi-Wan is dosed with a heat inducer during a mission. Alpha Anakin who has loved the older Knight forever doesn’t handle that very well. Ends with Service Top Anakin, a favorite of mine

Anakin Sucks: Anakin has an oral fixation and it drives Obi-Wan to distraction over the course of the Clone Wars, 5+1 crack taken very seriously lol

Make War: show!era Obi-Wan after fighting Vader on Mapuzo shares a dream with him while suspended in bacta. Warning for noncon!! Now with a second chapter set after their near miss on Jabiim. Third chapter based on the kenobi show finale hopefully will be out soon!

Shorter Smutty AUs: (shorter stories)

Snap, Crackle, Pop: Padawan Anakin gets braid tugging and spanking after behaving very badly during the Battle of Muunilinst early in the Clone Wars.

Tilted: Anakin wakes up after Mortis in a female body and hides, struggling to come to terms with the change. Obi-Wan comes to check on him and reassure him, smut ensues.

Make Your Siren’s Call: show!era Obi-Wan struggles to fall asleep in the cave from the photoshoot, and dreams about his old apprentice, full of guilt, angst, and smut

Stress Relief: Sith-like/Dom!Obi-Wan is rough on eager!Anakin in their Temple apartment, plays on Master/Padawan dynamic.

Unperishing Glory: Homeric AU, Anakin is Achilles-type Chosen One and Obi-Wan is his Patroclus-type mentor-friend, angsty sex

Murder Puppy: Playful!Obi-Wan seduces raisedSith!Anakin during a duel, bringing him back to the light during sex. People seem to really like this one, it is one of the things I get the most asks about. I have plans for a short story to expand, it’s on the WIP list I promise.

Unwelcome Guest: An AU where Obi-Wan couldn't strike Anakin down on Mustafar. Suitless!Vader comes to find him on Tatooine, and wants to be punished for mistakes, there is spanking involved.

Rosetta Stone: Based on the Mummy, an AU where Obi-Wan is a librarian and Anakin is a former soldier, and they defeated a mummy together. Obi-Wan is oblivious and repressed, so Anakin has to be very forward.

Safe as Houses: Based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anakin is the slayer and Obi-Wan is his Giles-like librarian watcher. Anakin seeks Obi-Wan out in crisis and Obi-Wan takes care of him.

The Outlander: Obi-Wan fell to the dark on Naboo AU, so Qui-Gon is Anakin’s Master instead. Anakin sneaks out of the Temple to a club to meet possessive Obi-Wan, there is smut against a wall outside, and Anakin falls to the dark side.

Please, Daddy?: Daddy kink fic. Features a bratty Anakin, sex pheromones, spanking and just general daddy!filth.

A New Hope: Anakin never left Tatooine AU. He becomes a Han Solo-type pilot who helps a rebel!Obi-Wan escape the Empire. He’s a touch starved, praise starved, virgin who’s insecure about his missing hand. Obi-Wan takes good care of him.

Communication, What Communication: Organized Crime AU with collegeStudent!Anakin and accidentalSugarDaddy!Obi-Wan, gratitude kink haha. This fic has been picked up and turned into the phenomenal multichapter story Recoil and Ricochet by @wernnaa.

Potidaea, 432BC: Alcibiades!Anakin and his tutor Socrates!Obi-Wan fight together in the phalanx. Armor kink and period-accurate intercrural sex ensue lol.

Minikin and Tiny-Wan: Fluff and crack based on the premise that there are tiny figurines of the Jedi that are alive (kind of like the little dragons in the goblet of fire). Obi-Wan and Anakin each get one, and their Tinys enjoy each other’s company, leading to an awkward but useful conversation.

#BinGate: Great British Bake Off AU, Anakin is a contestant who lost his temper and destroyed his bake, Obi-Wan is a judge who enjoys scolding Anakin.

Let Me, Master: Padawan Obi-Wan, shy demisexual Master Anakin, Obi-Wan throws caution to the wind and finally seduces his clueless Master, smut ensues with bottom Obi-Wan.

Anakin, Duke of Vader, Prince of Coruscant: Anakin is a bratty, troubled prince and Obi-Wan is his unimpressed knight bodyguard. Anakin cries, showing true vulnerability, and Obi-Wan realizes he has a kink for that lmao

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi: Sexually frustrated after sparring with his Master, Anakin decides to visit the glory hole in the locker room. Little does he know, he’s not the only one.

Boy Toy: Obi-Wan is a fashion designer and Anakin is a first time model. They’ve just finished a boytoy themed photoshoot and get trapped together in an elevator

Brotherhood: Anakin is a college student in a spiral after the death of his mother, and his father Qui-Gon left for a trip, leaving his much older step-brother Obi-Wan, who he doesn't know very well, in charge. Obi-Wan picks Anakin up from jail, and the argument goes places.

Hard Racing: Anakin is a Formula 1 driver and Obi-Wan is his team principal. After an accident at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix where he ran into his teammate, he is sore, tired, and afraid of getting demoted from his spot. Obi-Wan comes to his hotel to reassure him of his value to him and the team.

Beer and Paint: Obi-Wan and Anakin are both apprentices to famous artist Qui-Gon. Anakin has tattoos/piercings/blue streak in his hair, and Obi-Wan is obsessed. Sloppy art and drunk sex ensue.

Smutty +F fic AUs: (short fics that includes Padmé or Ventress)

Très Lecherous: Padmé and Obi-Wan agree to share subby!Anakin, this fic is all three together, and includes DP if that is your jam.

Blue Shadow Virus: continuation of above AU, Padmé almost died on Naboo and Anakin doesn’t take it well. Obi-Wan and Padmé dom him into relaxing

Post-Revenge: Set after the episode of TCW where Ventress rescues Obi-Wan from Maul and Savage. This is only Ventress/Obi-Wan, but Anakin is extremely present in the fact that Ventress uses Obi-Wan's secret feelings for Anakin to incite him into hate sex.

Plus Anakin Makes 3: Sort of a sequel to the Post-Revenge fic, Anakin discovers Obi-Wan and Ventress having a tryst, decides to participate rather than freak out, so more DP haha.

Collaborations: (stories i co-authored with friends, both happen to be set in the canon universe)

Apartment Story: Post-Deception arc reconciliation fic, where Obi-Wan is drunk and Anakin is angry. Feelings are revealed, and comfort, understanding and smut ensues. Written with my friend Crys as a RP and adapted into a story.

Satellite Mind: What would happen if Obi-Wan could hear Anakin’s thoughts? Spoiler: it does not go well. Set during the last few days of the clone wars, and tracks how their relationship combusted over Anakin’s secrets. Written with @theseptemberist.

[writingonesdreams]

Hi Dreamy please talk at length about some random things you've made up for the tears of iron multiverse. World stuff, character stuff, magic stuff, differences between aus in terms of how the characters interact with that particular setting, etc. If this is too much at once feel free to just talk about one of these things. Sending you apple blossoms and warm breezes.

Aww Sleepy this is such a cute ask! I have been looking forward to answering it since I got it. Thank you so much for thinking of me!

Tears of Iron Multiverse haha I love that

World stuff

Tears of Iron is actually a futuristic scifi setting. The world is kinda ours, modern urban like, but with extra scifi gadgets and alternate history with the influence of magic

And dragons, dragon hunting, dragon befriending, dragonknights, them dying, them coming back

Magic is taught at universities, cause it just takes that long to master enough for safe use. If you don't study and use it, you lose it

That's why most people are born with magic, but very little actually keep it

Magic sports are totally a thing though. Basketball and football with high jumpts and extra strong martial arts. Parkour when you aren't limited to just human abilities is great

Character stuff

Did I mention the main characters are mostly a fix it versions of my all time favourite fictional characters? Great base for cherries

Aside from Zephyr and Skye. Who are kinda the most me, past me and a wishful me

The story is a plotty excuse for Leander, Zephyr and Kieran comfort moments tbh. Though Skye gets in there with the introspection for Hal. I love the special bond Hal and Skye have together

I don't think Hal knows how to interact with anyone outside her. He is a confused distrustful overpowered god with years of solitude and tragic loss behind him. The rest of the guys are kinda scared of him. I have to figure out a way how to get him involved in their found family moments

Magic stuff

You can't use Dragonknight art magic with strong emotions. Dangerous, it's too powerful. You need a peace of mind. Meaning being upset while using magic is either impossible or hurts

The Islands are great emotion readers. You always know someone is upset cause the weather and the nature react to it. Also helps with self-awareness if you aren't sure what you feel, cause th Islands know

Dragonknight magic art gives users the ability to sense the world around them, and especially other users and how they are doing. It gives people specific auras, and special insight into their current states

Mind magic has two branches. The creative one where you design daydreams and illusions for others and the scientific one, where you explore other people's thoughts and emotions. Skye does a rare combination of researching other people's preferred daydreams or reactions to her own illusions.

In the story she mostly uses the mind magic for communication with dragons, who only talk telepathically, through images and feelings if they didn't bother to learn the language

Inspired partly by the Inception movie's concept of dreams. I didn't want it to be used for stealing though. What other official use of dreams and illusions would people have though?

Dream and mind magic is kinda very abstract, very personal (as a writer I live in movies in my own head all the time ofc) so it was supposed to be an expression for that, but it's also hard to formulate? And hard to do with a character that isn't making up stories like me. If she did, I would also have to design the stories though. Heh actually harder than I thought

AU stuff

The mage gangs AU is great for exploring the darkest sides of the characters. They will not get this evil or this free in the main story

The tragic AU is great for grief exploration. Probably because I find earned happy endings after bounts of suffering much harder and more rewarding to write. Tragedy is simple, effective, repressed

Tragic AU also has kingdom relationships, politics, intrigues...what I like about it really is that character decisions have big influence on the world. It's easy to feel meaningful when what you do changes history and lives of others

Enemy kings AU just gives me nice enemies to friends explorations where they are kinda pushed to being friends for political reasons, really struggle to actually trust each other, but are actually really good for each other if they give this weird new bond a chance...main story has mostly established relationships (beginnings of I might or might not explore in flashbacks). But the beginnings, the strangeness, the hostility is all there

Thank you for sending this^^ very cute and lovely of you💕

[thequeerthing]

tongue-twist here for the asks ~

19 - 34 - 49

hey tongue-twist, lovely of you to ask some back. v sweet community vibes!

🌱

19. does grinding do anything for you?

oh my gosh, i am a huge slut (/💜) for grinding.

it does a lot. especially grinding on someone's thigh.

i saw someone grind on their partners hair once, and oh my gosh. oh my gosh

🌿

34. vampires or werewolves?

vampires for like, 90 percent. a strong 90 percent

vampires, the different lore takes on them that i enjoy (avoiding isms etc), are so very interesting and hot, and also the inherent eroticism of mouth to skin - and on wrists n necks???

yes, anyday.

my neck is a huge erogenous (spelling) zone for me, and kissing (and biting) wrists and hands feels so very softly intimate. and i love soft kinky stuff.

(gentledoms welcome to my dms! excluding cishet men, as you can not be het with me without disrespecting me.)

🐺

werewolves i love as a creature too, but would probably feel a bit uncomfortable fucking them. but love - oh for sure.

like they're uncomfortably way too much like an animal, which has me concerned for their consent - especially when they become "feral" and "out of control".

while i do enjoy the occasional look into people's fantasies about it here, it's just not my cup of tea.

.... 9/10 times.

like if i were to hit it off with a werewolf, oh for sure.

🌳

49. what's a porn category you wish existed, but doesn't?

#1: consentaclessssss

there's so little content out there about it, i go throu scrolllers r/consentacles to try and get my fill but I've Seen It and oh. how desperate the situation (and I) am.

i am actually taking the route of creating what i want to see. but uh, for now it's just for my eyes haha.

also the tentacles in video is often so unsatisfyingly done.

either its something I No No about, or it's just. these are gonna just sit here in your holes and not move, not grind you, not helpfully touch any erogenous (spelling) zones, obviously not doing very much for you.

also its boring when the tentacles don't come from a communicative creature, or anything interesting abstract concept at all. boo.

#2: much more vampire porn.

especially queer and storybased vampire porn (that's what i dig, but pwp or more plotty depending on horny drive)

there's a huge lack of it. and it's hard to find reputable studios/and the like who does it at all, let alone what i wantttt

gentledom vampire porn: great

honestly just gentledom gets me good.

and that brings me to

💜

#3: more gentledom. specifically queer ones!

I've listened to what i can find of queer audio gentledom porns, and they could sometimes be so fantastic, just so little out there that i could search for!

searching on the internet is such a mess nowadays, esp when it's gotten to be so corporate "sanitized".

that's all for this turn, but all yall feel free to ask me more. here for it✨

[randomingoftherandomness]

What I am hoping for from Winner is King ( 烽火流金)

Okay, so at this point, let’s just be reals here, Word of Honor has kinda set the bar for me in terms of standards to expect from the slew of danmei adaptations this year. Granted, I know that there are some who think the way it was adapted was not up to their standards and that it could have been done better, please don’t bring it on this post because this is not the post for it.

In this post, I’m going to talk about  Winner is King (*•̀ᴗ•́*)و ̑̑

Now, Sha Po Lang, the original novel, is for me one of the best things that I have read in a very long while. As such, I can be rather precious about what I am hoping to see come alive on the show and what I am hoping will be present in the portrayals I see. I know there are some concerns regarding the script and behind the scenes stuff - and they are very valid concerns that I feel too! - and with the recent announcement that instead of 45 episodes, we are only getting 40, I can foresee that there could be some rushed handlings of the very plotty nature of the source material and perhaps a sense that style can trump substance.

But as the actual show isn’t beaming right into our eyeballs just yet, here are some things I am looking forward to seeing in Winner is King and some things that I am crossing my fingers will make the final cut! 

Warning for some novel spoilers ahead. I’ll keep it under the read more.

Tagging @zhongwans because I said I would haha...

Things I am looking forward to:

The Changgu dynamic. I think it goes without saying that if the chemistry between your leads is a dud, the show doesn’t need to even pass Go, it can just shuffle itself off the board because it will be dead in the water. The Changgu dynamic has to be nailed; I need to see that self-doubt, that caring for the other but coming at it from the wrong way, that awkwardness that comes with trying to hold back the burden of your love and care because you don’t want to overwhelm the other... 

I need Gu Yun to be shamelessly sweet with his words and his coaxing of his Yan Wang from a sulk. I need Changgu saying “I hate you to death, Gu Yun” (pining)

Hu Ge Er. Let me just be clear here, I will cheer when she dies, but I hope that how they handle her characterisation will do her justice. There is no excusing the level of horrible that she is, but I hope that she isn’t written as a single dimension abusive piece of shit. Nuance, is what I am looking for. I need her to be the villain and the reason for Chang Geng.

I. NEED. THE. WOLF. ATTACK. SCENE. OUTSIDE. OF. YANHUI. TOWN. aka The First Time They Meet

There is legit no excuse for them to fuck this up, but the Steampunk elements. I would not know what else to say if they fuck this one thing up that is so integral and basic to the love of this IP. They cannot fuck this up. I am very sure I will join people in rioting if they do.

I need to see my Red Kites, my Heavy and Light Armours, my Dragons... I need to see the steam powered lamps, the iron puppets... I need them to get the Wind Slashers right. I need them to get this world-building right ok? I need to be dropped into this show and just swoon over just how accurate to imagination everything looks. Tencent does have the blessed ability to make very good looking productions, so on this note, I am assured. 

I need them to get the human element right; I need to understand why Gu Yun is the way he is, I need to know why the members of the Lin Yuan Pavillion will back Chang Geng and why they won’t. I need to know why Liao Chi would betray the Emperor. I need them to make me feel; I want them to make my heart hurt when Chang Geng’s heart is hurting, I want them to make me cry when Gu Yun is at his lowest and feels like he can’t go on. I want them to make me laugh, I want to feel for Shen Yi and Miss Chen’s awkward courting. 

On that note, I hope they get the Shen Yi and Gu Yun dynamic right too! These two are bros ok? Life and death, ride or die, best bros forever and I need, need them to nail just how integral these are to each other and how much they chose each other as family. I need the bickering, I need the protectiveness, I need the banter. 

I also need Chang Geng conspiring to marry Shen Yi off quickly so that he can have Gu Yun all to himself lol but lbr here if we can get an ending for this show from Tencent that even breathes the same atmosphere of air as satisfactory I will praise the heavens

The Bone of Impurity. I don’t know to what extent they will cover this or if they would do it the way the book does it, but this being an element that is integral to Chang Geng, I would be surprised if they dropped it entirely. So yeah, I am looking forward to seeing Chang Geng fretting and worrying and getting Bone of Impurity attacks.

Just the way that Gu Yun allows himself to be cared for my Chang Geng and how Chang Geng lets Gu Yun care for him

I want one acupuncture hedgehog scene please and thank you

I do want to see how they handle Chang Geng and his elder half-brother; how that dynamic unfolds will be something to pay some attention to, I think

Oh! That moment when Chang Geng kneels down in front of his brother and tells him to please bury any talk of his marriage and revealing to his brother the scars that he carries from his time living under Hu Ge Er’s roof (this is one brand of Whump that I promise you will hurt you very badly and it will be very good)

The argument at Jiangnan is something I really think will also make the final cut. It wouldn’t make sense to drop it seeing as this is a pivotal shift in their relationship where Chang Geng is finally holding his ground and not bending over backwards and believing everything his Yi Fu says. And this was the catalyst for their four year separation so yeah. I hope they do this justice.

I am not a betting person, but I high key bet that the scene between Gu Yun and the previous Emperor where he tells the man, “If you go, then I won’t have anyone left” and this being the moment that softens the dying fucker’s heart enough to give him a bracelet of beads that will be a major plot point towards the end

THE. BATTLE. SCENES.

Things I am hoping will happen:

At this point, speculation is that the point that tripped Winner Is King up for a recheck was the politics. This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party in China and rumour has it that shit be sieving thick and so a lot of shows are erring on the side of caution. 

Politics is the highest likelihood of a recheck but I am hoping that it won’t be dumbed down or watered down too much because the politics and the way things played out in the book was absolutely divine and I really want to see that court intrigue and scheming and interplay unfold.

I’ve mentioned in my most recent podcast episode that I am banking on this show to scratch my itch for a Nirvana in Fire level of plottiness and infinite craftiness of the characters and I am crossing all fingers and toes for that to happen because All! The! Characters! Hold! Their! Own! And I need to see that play out please I am not asking for much...

The final sea battle with the Pope. I wouldn’t even know where they would even begin to shoot that scene but this is something I would love to see happen.

The Bone of Impurity attack after Gu Yun sneakily left the capital. That was the scene that caught me and hooked, lined and sinkered me for Chang Geng as a character. Listening to this scene be brought to life in the audio drama has really hammered it home that if they make this bit into the show, I will watch and weep if it is done right. 

Cao Niangzi being Cao Niangzi. I am thinking it might not happen the way I want, but I just need them to get them right.

Ge Chen peeing on the enemy’s face. Please. I laughed so hard. I need this. It will be a balm to my soul.

Please, I need Gu Yun’s soul crushing flute playing like I need Gong Jun to always be absolutely horrible at singing because baby this is your niche and this is your charm own it work it

I also need Gu Yun stealing a bamboo flute from a 10 year old because he got jealous please and thank you

Any flashback of Chang Geng and Hu Ge Er before Yanhui Town

I want to see that moment that Gu Yun hears first hand from someone who had knowledge of what Hu Ge Er would do to a baby Chang Geng and the horrible abuse she inflicted on him, because up to that point, he only knew that something went on, but never to the extent that revelation wrought unto him

Any of the Bone of Impurity moments; any mention of it, any visual representation of it... Gosh, just the idea of having the Bone of Impurity made visual is just... Ugh. Yes. Please. The suffering.

[bonus] Things I wish will happen but will probably not:

The hot spring scene or a version of it

An implication that baby cannibalism was involved in the making of a Bone of Impurity

The scene where they get to the goddess doll (the description of it in the book was so bone chilling and if they do this I will have nightmares, I’m just warning you)

I really, really want a scene where, after being crowned Emperor, Chang Geng goes to the frontlines to reclaim the South and upon hearing that he was there, Gu Yun immediately panicked like he was about to be caught with his pants down doing something illegal when all he did was ordered his subordinates to keep news of his injuries from being reported back to the capital

Any flashback of Chang Geng and Hu Ge Er before Yanhui Town; especially when they were with the Barbarians

I want to see some version of Hu Ge Er realising what she has done to her own child and to Chang Geng

Okay this got super long but what are you guys looking forward to seeing when Winner is King hits our screens? I’m looking forward to creating content for this fandom when it hits ೕ(˃̵ᴗ˂̵ ๑) In the meantime, sound off on what you’re expecting and what you’re maybe wary about!