#also not me realising with painful clarity that i do really write 3 paragraphs of a thought which can be expressed with two sentences 💀

[passthroughtime]

hecked up the first rb, APPARENTLY it's too much tags and too much for a reply. so here goes (+forbidden kwgm art under the cut of the OG post if anyone's interested)

ohhhh it's really cool to know about the origins of the moriohpsycho piece! i love it… NICKELBACK KUWAGAMI REAL??? what is the song… brb gotta go listen to their full discography. & giggling @ referencing arakawa and sawashiro actually. fandom is about small things like this ig

loyalty card program sounds like a damn good deal to me xD and oh nooo you are spoiling me jichan… kabedon kuwagami… *EXPLODES*

i've been joking about kwgm acting around each other like teens during puberty since forever BUT IT'S. it's like this yeah.

(btw i firmly believe that kuwana can totally do better than this but for some reason his brain just short-circuits and sends him 30 years back. and whatever is this happens)

spotting sneaky ymk's boobies hiding under this jacket… kuwana you should show your good stuff first and not. this.

he still looks smitten asf… dude… get a fucking grip.

rizz failed… 😔

anyway thank you for this i'll. go look at it for eternity.

about your first kwgm fic: i recognised the same train of thought as i've had but figured that it must be something in the water :D ...or that a lot of people are just as traumatized by the awkwardness of that undercover mafuyu cutscene in JE and can't get it out of their head as well. but well i'm <3 really honoured to give you a couple little even short-lived brainworms hehe

and thanks for promo. genuinely. my fic is massive and i need someone to put in a good word for it so people would read it. jk.

great answer as always, jichan. been really enjoying these <3 (and not to be a weirdo but i. i AM breathing. in your direction. at all times.)

ok but seriously your kuwagamis are always a treat that gets me through my day. it sucks so much i can't bring as much kwgm into your life as you bringing into mine…

and i really appreciate you telling so many kind words about the ever-changing, it means more to me than you can imagine. and that you liked it when i wasn't really sure about it. i've, uh, been in a real dump after posting chapter 3 and during 11-month hiatus prior as well (i did this to myself though…), and just couple months after i've decided to talk to people about judgment again, i saw an artist i haven't seen before on kwgm tag whose artworks Get Them Just Right...

after some time i've started winking at you (not being really subtle), because i was like "i hope this amazing artist whose artworks i'm going insane over would notice my silly little fic someday 😔 but i know it's a bit long and barely interesting… not really good as well... but still… notice me plz…"

so it's so funny to me to find out you liked it all along LOL. and cackling at your realization of my impromptu hannah montana situation (the funniest thing is that this tumblr had the same username as my ao3 one for literal years, and i've changed it to passthroughtime when i've started posting here about judgment... lol)

it's so endearing to hear about your meeting with four-white-trees as well. fandom is like that sometimes isn't it

me @ you wanting to reread the ever-changing: PEOPLE REALLY DO THAT?? with MY writing? 🤯🤯🤯

i'm not being completely serious here but i'm. very honoured. (MY PRETTYBOY AGENDA LIVES ON)

sooooo... *twirls her hair* how many asks should i send until kuwagami art. jk as well. the real question will be: does it happen often that someone else’s art inspires you? in fandom spaces specifically

well you see it’s like a loyalty card program, every 10 asks or so you get a complimentary kuwagami

just kidding you can just breathe in my direction and I’ll be tempted to draw them. kuwagami blast! (you've caught me on a... just okay art day lol)

(people still like kabedons, right?)

anyway for my actual answer: in terms of direct inspiration, it doesn't really happen much? the last two times i did art directly based on someone else's work is probably this one from this fic, and also that time i drew art of someone else's judgment au. oh! and there's that moriohpsycho art based on this comic! (filthyguts' work is so very. hgngngghh. very good.) nothing else really comes to mind, and when i think of the other things i've been into recently there hasn't been as much opportunity for that to happen...

flex and herds = strong fixation but lmao. almost nobody else made stuff about them. nobody is surprised umineko = surprisingly i don't read much umineko fanfiction? and in terms of illustration, i certainly picked up imagery and indirect inspiration but nothing concrete enough for me to give an example... now that i think about it, i did once draw andromalius from redaction/sunny, but that was years ago, and also mostly because i was acquainted with the writer. ...i don't have that artwork on hand right now death note = didn't really get involved with the fandom + i enjoyed my own ideas well enough! ...i can't recall if i drew long-hair-L art before or after seeing other artists do it. and as for everything else the same kind of reasoning applies. didn't really get involved with the fandom or wasn't really compelled to make art in response to stuff i saw, or i just don't remember anymore.

buuuuuuut if we're opening this up to just... pulling ideas from other people? then yeah, all the time, though that kind of goes without saying when you have a creative hobby. ...it's probably going to be hard to come up with examples of this since it's more ambiguous.

there's uhhhhhh... kuwana listens to nickelback which was a @/four-white-trees invention, wasn't it? (not tagging in this post so he doesn't feel obligated to read my big ass ask responses 💀) as of writing this, it's not posted but i did end up making kuwagami art based on a nickelback song so. yknow. there's that LMAO

for sawashiro and arakawa, i do sometimes go reference @/todayisafridaynight 's art to help me with my own. ("how did he draw this part of the suit? oh, like that huh? hmm" <- this kind of thing)

and um. i'm not trying to pander to you (at least not this time), but genuinely it's one of the few examples that come to mind at this moment. but when i was writing my first kuwagami fic, i could feel the influence of the ever-changing on my brain... was turning over some of your ideas there...

you remember this? (you even pointed it out in your comment on my fic, and i should've said something then, but whatever i'm saying it now)

that was absolutely because of this

(obligatory poke at anybody else reading this post that you can read passthroughtime's fic here.)

so, um. yeah. not really sure what else to add to that. pretty self evident i think. (i'm always talking about the ever-changing but i don't think i can overstate the impression it left on me at the time)

anyhow there aren't really any other examples off the top of my head! these are all recent examples so they're not so difficult to recall, but there are probably others i've forgotten...

[solacefruit]

For the ask meme, 3) and 17), please? And maybe 25) if you're up to it? Irrelevant but I'm the Tormentil- missing/Harrierpaw ruddles from Ailuronymy – I love your writing too, it's amazing! (I'm very excited for a potential Riverclan full-length story, like MAMS, at some point – even if I have to wait quite a while)

Hello there! Thank you so much for saying so, that’s lovely to hear. Please don’t hold your breath for a Riverclan novel, though! It’s not even on my concept list at this point and there’s a lot of other stories, including full-length ones, I’m going to be attempting first. So it’s not impossible for me to write a Riverclan one--it would be pretty neat to have a novel for each clan--but I can’t promise it’ll ever happen at this stage. Maybe! But also maybe not. It’s a mystery for me too.

Now on to your questions!

Send an ask: get to know the author.

3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favourite scenes first? Something else?

For all my Warriors work so far, I’ve written from beginning to end. In part that’s just because of the episodic nature of chapters, but also I’d say that’s my default approach for all my writing. When I get into original fiction--and especially big original fiction, novel-length work--I expect I’ll be taking a much more flexible approach, probably jumping around based on the vibe sometimes, but I like linearity because the first draft is really just getting the building blocks on the page. After that point, then you start really sculpting and being clever with it and moving bits around once you have a sense of the whole.

But for me, I think that first stage is more about getting a clarity of purpose and a rough outline--and that can be done pretty well with front-to-back writing. 

17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

Don’t sweat it. That stuff you think is important is completely not important at all. You’re doing all this nitty-gritty obsessive researching and “world-building” pointless, mundane aspects of the world because you: 1. are procrastinating actually writing; 2. have been tricked into thinking that’s what the “good” “serious” fantasy writers do, because that’s what a lot of boring old guys you don’t even like to read do and brag about, and you’re still believing can’t be a good fantasy writer without that, because that’s the popular image of a fantasy writer; & 3. are scared if you’re not perfect and exact in every detail, people are going to tear your writing apart for being “inaccurate” or making a mistake. 

That’s no way to live. You don’t like doing it, really. You’re trying to preempt criticism from people who weren’t ever going to like your writing anyway, and I think you know that. You’re trying to imitate authors you don’t even want to write like, because you think what they write is kind of boring and flat and it’s really straight and you sort of hate it, but you feel you should since it’s what’s “right”.

But you’re not being authentic to yourself, or your vision, or your talent, or what you want to write, and you should be. 

It’s really not your fault you feel this way, but you’re going to be so much happier when you realise this version of a fantasy writer is all total hokum and not your style and instead start writing what you want to, the way you want to. People are really going to like what you’re bringing to the table. It’s going to set you apart and you’re going to love writing fantasy that’s a bit weird and kooky and self-indulgent and fun and queer and all the things those old books just aren’t. 

I can’t stress how liberating it will be to put on heart-shaped pink sunglasses and decide that the most important thing your writing has to be is genuine and fun for you. You never wanted to write realist fiction anyway. Secondary worlds forever. 

25. Copy-paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of.

I thought about it for a bit because something I never do here is share any poetry I write, despite writing a decent amount of it. Partly that’s just not this blog’s audience, but also a lot of it I hope one day to put into publication, if only in a little chapbook. That said, I wrote this a while back on commission for someone’s character who was deathly ill and his lovers left behind, so I don’t mind sharing it now. It’s a tanka set (5-7-5-7-7, a bit like a haiku). 

summer has four hands,  he remembers, and twenty  loving fingertips-- and it doesn't end, ever;  it lasts a lifetime--at least, in his heart--even as his own fingertips grew slow and cold, his hands too weak to return a touch, to reach out and hold on, to find comfort in their  warm skin and promise them that he would be okay: each new winter weighed him down with the too-familiar  tiredness of a body with not quite enough life in it, like a garden under the frost, cold and withdrawn at the edges of the leaves, waiting for a sunrise that isn't coming. The ground, he remembers, was solid as stone under the snow that last winter, a final  cruel laugh from the world, as though giving him to the  earth--as though burying a lover--was not hard enough for them already-- but it was a pain that time alone could heal; so he waited, in the place so near and so far away, until the seasons moved once more and time brought them to his open hands, ten fingertips made of light, never to let go again. when he remembers the living world, he thinks of it better than it  was and forgives it for the brevity and falling snow.

[antomec]

Spook-a-boo

Collab fic with the amazing @cheschire-kaat/ @mystify-iing/ @kaatastroph-e ! you have too many blogs girl This is our first Colu fic and quite honestly, we had so much fun writing it!

Without further ado, here is Spook-a-boo!

This is also up on AO3 and FFnet.

Words: 1962

Rating: T for swearing

Summary: It’s 3 am and I’m still in the library studying for finals and I’m losing my grip on reality and I think I just saw a ghost

Late Sunday nights (or early Monday mornings) were not meant to be spent at the library, no matter how much Lucy loved being in them.

It was nearing 3 am, and Lucy could not find it within herself to give a fuck. She’d been up since 7 and in the library since 10, trying to cram a whole semester’s worth of notes inside her tiny brain in roughly eighteen hours.

Someone kill her, please.

If it weren’t for Natsu and his stupid ass, she wouldn’t have lost precious sleep like this. She could have been sound asleep in her very comfy bed, thank you very much.

But no, Natsu just had to get himself arrested.

And of course, he just had to appeal to her conscience to pick him up from the station, which also happened to be in another fucking district. So now Lucy was cursing every deity she had ever prayed to in the hopes that one of them would inevitably take offense and would just destroy her.

Lucy swears colourfully under her breath as she remembers the pale-faced boy – or was that just his makeup? – Natsu had apparently fought with just after he had also set fire to a fucking curtain.

“But Lucy, it was an accident!”

“I’m about ten seconds away from making your death look like an accident.”

It had been a very wild night for the both of them, Lucy figures – Natsu with his fight, and Lucy miserably failing to memorize her notes on the car ride over. Bailing out her pink-haired friend ended up being a lot more complicated than she anticipated – then again, with her luck, it wasn’t surprising – but she had finally, finally achieved to leave the police station with a whining and hungry Natsu after, what, three hours? Or was it four?

With the way the shadows in the corners of the room and by the bookshelves seemed to grow larger with every passing second, Lucy concludes that she should probably take a break from the hot-tempered fool she had grown to consider her best friend over the years. After all, he was nothing but a magnet for trouble, and the extra stress was honestly the last thing she needed in her life.

When she finally notices how she’s been reading the same paragraph for the fifth time, she groans out loud in exhaustion and stretches her back, accidentally knocking her pencil case off the table, which falls on the floor with a dull thud.

The sound takes Lucy by surprise, causing her to jump. “I-is someone there?” Logically thinking, she was supposed to be the only one here, but that thought was shot to hell when she started hearing things.

Her hackles rise when she hears scratching. It sounds like someone dragging their nails down a chalkboard.

And when she sees a shadow out of place on the floor, the fear is back in full force.

Because the shadow has fucking horns.

All the horror movies Natsu had put her through goes hurtling through her mind, replaying each gruesome scene with frightening clarity. This is it, this was how she was going to die – she could already see the headlines: SMASHING, HOT COLLEGE KID MYSTERIOUSLY MURDERED IN SCHOOL LIBRARY

But fuck if she was going down without a fight.

(Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realises that it’s probably nothing, and that she was making a mountain out of a molehill, but Lucy refuses to acknowledge that little part.)

Lucy takes in a single deep breath, recollects everything that Natsu had ever taught her in case of a serial killer, and lets loose a scream that he would’ve been proud of and bolts like Naruto toward the exit, zigzagging between the shelves.

It would have worked had she not crashed headfirst into something very solid.

The impact would have made her fall on her ass, but a pair of strong arms catches her just in time. “Oi, what the fuck?” asks a bodiless, gravelly voice, and Lucy’s instincts kick into overdrive. After all, the one thing that Lucy’s learned over the years with Natsu, it’s that questions come after punches. And with that, Lucy blindly punches as hard as she can.

The stranger doubles down gasping as her fist makes contact with his solar plexus, the air whooshing out of him. He drops her abruptly, and Lucy falls on her ass.

She sits frozen in fear, as she finally takes in her assailant. She stares at a guy her age breathlessly clutching his chest, pain clearly depicted on his roguish features.

“Yo,” he breathes out, “what is your problem?”

She wants to answer, she really does. But she keeps staring at him, speechless, analysing him from head to toe.

Unfortunately for Lucy, she might've just punched the most gorgeous guy she's ever seen.

Her eyes take in his unruly burgundy hair and dark skin as they wander from his calloused hands to his slightly pointed ears, pausing on his lips for a very brief second before being inevitably attracted to the very prominent scar that runs across his face. Whatever happened to him hadn’t seemed to spare his right eye, which looks as though it's permanently sewn shut.

"You done looking at me, Blondie?" he asks in an annoyed tone.

"How do I know you're not a figment of my imagination?" She snaps back. Of all the stupid things Lucy has ever said, she feels like this one takes the cake.

The boy doesn’t answer, just stares at her in silence, and she can tell from his expression that he was quite clearly judging her. Though the gods had blessed him with incredible attractive looks, Lucy notes, it certainly wasn’t the case for his attitude.

“What?” Lucy asks, affronted. “You could very well be something that my too-exhausted brain cooked up in order to make me go home. It does that sometimes, “ she adds hastily.

The boy mumbles something under his breath. “Yes, Spirit-boy?” Lucy asks again.

“Spirit-boy?” he groans. “I ain’t dead, thank you very much. Now, what the fuck did you punch me for?”

Her cheeks flush at being reminded of what she did to him. Dear Mavis, was she embarrassed. “Well”, she begins, breathing deeply, “I’m in the library because I have to study for my finals ‘cause my idiot friend decided to start a fucking fight and also set fire to a curtain which also got the cops involved, and which also ultimately forced me to bail him out from another fucking district. Also it’s extremely late and maybe I’m losing my grip on reality because I think I just saw a ghost. Or a demon. Yep, probably a demon."

He doesn’t speak for a minute, and when he does, his tone is slightly amused. “For fuck’s sake”, he says, “it’s too late for this shit.” Spirit-boy – she would call him as such until she learned his real name – proceeds to take her hand in his and, ignoring her cries of protest, drags her to that cursed, haunted spot of the library.

Her protests die soon when she realises that if she does somehow get murdered by something supernatural, she could skip her finals.

"Oh," Lucy says, giggling, "I could haunt Natsu from beyond the grave."

Spirit-boy looks at her in worry. "Did you hit your head somewhere? Maybe you have a concussion. It would explain all this."

Lucy giggles again. "No, but I might've busted a vein yelling at my friend."

Spirit-boy stops them and looks at her as though she'd reminded him of something. "Speaking of your friend," he starts, “would he be named Natsu Dragneel by any chance?”

Lucy blinks in astonishment. Once. Twice. “...Yes?” How the fuck does he know?

As if he had heard her silent question, he shrugs. "I figured as much. You see, I too had an idiot to bail out. In another district.”

Lucy gasps. Could it have been...make-up boy?

“Yeah, he gets that a lot. I always tell him to lay off the makeup, but he never listens.”

She looks at Spirit-boy in awe. Is he fucking psychic or something?

The look on her face must have been priceless, because Spirit-boy starts cackling and pulls them along.

“So. What exactly happened?” he asks, and she shivers at the memory.

“I was sitting over there, studying. And suddenly, I heard a loud sound, as if someone threw...” she trails off as she sees him bend – what a nice butt – and pick up something from the floor. She glances down to see her school material strewn across the ground. She must have knocked her bag over when she ran for her life.

Spirit-boy straightens and holds out her pencil case, and suddenly Lucy wants to sink into the earth and be done with her life.

He’s smirking. She’s embarrassed. But Lucy quickly gets ahold of herself once again. “Okay, okay, all right. But I also saw a shadow! With horns! And something scratching by the windows! It was terrifying, I’m telling you!”

“Are you sure?" He was skeptical, and Lucy couldn't fault him for it.

"Not completely, no. But I was in shock!" She adds at his expression.

"Alright, alright, now where'd you see the freaky shadow?"

“Over by that bookshelf,” Lucy says, pointing. Spirit-boy starts his inspection methodically, and Lucy suddenly wonders why he too is at the library.

She asks him, and he answers with his head under her table. "Same as you. Had to bail out my friend while also simultaneously study for my finals." He grunts and clambers up on the table. "Man, finals can go fuck themselves."

Lucy nods in agreement.

Spirit-boy looks above the bookshelf, extending his arms as if he’s grabbing something…which he is, because he jumps down from the table with a cat in his arms.

He drops the animal ungracefully on the table, the feline crying in protest. “There you go, blondie. Here’s ya' malevolent ghost.”

Mortified. That’s how she feels. She stutters something between a defense and an apology, cheeks turning redder and redder by the second. The strange boy is laughing, and it’s irritating but perhaps she deserves it.

Embarrassment still written all over her face, Lucy gingerly picks up the stray kitten. It purrs, and she laughs. “You might have scared me to death, but I gotta admit –you are one adorable little bastard.”

She turns toward the boy. "I'm taking this furball home; perhaps it would do Natsu some good to learn how to take care of a cat." Lucy pauses for a second and adds, "Who knows, maybe he’ll start being more responsible."

Like that could happen.

Lucy plasters a manic grin on her face and continues. "Now then, time for me to go home, crash into a mini-coma and fail tomorrow's final.”

She picks up her bag and notebooks – unconsciously leaving her pencil case behind – and starts to walk away.

“Oi! Blondie!”

She turns around and sees Spirit-boy running toward her. “Yes, Spirit-boy?”

“Don’t call me that,” he snaps before taking ahold of her hand. Her heart skips a beat as he takes out a pen and from his pocket and – oh my god – starts writing random numbers.

“Name’s Erik.” he claims, letting her hand drop. “Call me. And good luck."

And just like that, he’s gone. Leaving her with a stray kitten, a pounding heart and his number scribbled on her hand.

What a night.

Back in the school’s library, empty once again, Lucy’s pencil case still lies on the table, its contents spread on the floor. That is, until the pencils, pens and erasers start, one by one, to float and fly back into the case.