#and i'm not as vigilant as i could be about reading back my own writing

[nyehilismwriting]

helloooo! i've been following your writing/coding journey since the early days of sentinel and it's been so nice watching your story-telling blossom into a masterpiece. i love project hadea a lot and the characters are all so compelling i always have trouble choosing who to romance (rohan refuses to kiss me lmao). forgive me if you've been asked this question a million times already, but i was wondering what are some of your literary inspirations? what sort of writing shaped your style? it's one that i wish i could achieve one day tbh!!

WAH this is so kind of you 🥺

i'm sure i've spoke before about some of my inspirations but i am always happy to do it again:)

my writing style tends to go through phases- i feel like i write hadea slightly differently to some of my other projects, particularly the shorter ones. often, when I'm going for something poetic, i can't maintain that for as long, or i feel like it gets effortful; some authors seem able to maintain a really lovely style for long-form works. i'd say max gladstone (and there's no way you've followed me this long without seeing me talk about him before lmfao), julia armfield (who wrote our wives under the sea), louise erdrich (the painted drum, the antelope wife) are all authors whose prose particularly sticks out to me as something i'd like to emulate.

i'll also have to shout out adrian tchaikovsky and peter watts as scifi authors who manage to maintain a very effortless, easy to read style while writing hard scifi; it's not easy to do, but they pull it off, often with clarity and humour i really admire. and their work is not without poetry! i also really like adrian tchaikovsky's tendency to skew sharply into and out of horror: he's got such a knack for atmosphere and tone, something that really stands out to me whenever i read his work.

i'm trying to read more nonfiction/autobiography type stuff, as well: i recently finished billy-ray belcourt's 'a history of my brief body', and in the summer i read ocean vuong's 'on earth we're briefly gorgeous' (which is fiction, but in a similar vein); I'm hoping to read more joan didion this year, as well. i think reading stuff like this is a good way to develop both empathy and also an interesting study in tackling highly personal emotional stuff, and in a lot of cases i do feel i can learn a lot from the prose of these works.

i also read quite a bit of poetry, in itself, which i think helps; i like my writing to have a rhythm to it, and i tend to find that reading poetry helps a lot with that.

finally, as i think i've mentioned before, i love the magnus archives and the writing in that: i think that writing stuff that's meant to be read out loud/performed is a really interesting exercise, even if that's not the final goal, and it really helps to develop a sense of rhythm for your prose.

[lilac-witch]

Hi cute! how are you? I hope you're well! You could write about Az returning with Feyre from training and they are talking and Az is so unfocused that he doesn't notice that there is another person in the room besides the ic, so y/n screams and runs out to hug Az and they're over. falling to the ground haha ​​they are best friends who have feelings for each other. Y/n had been away on a mission and didn't know Feyre but she knew her from EVERYTHING Az had been telling her jandjsmcjsldk thanks baby

First request! Super sweet ask and a great idea :)

Gadzooks - Azriel x Reader

masterlist | part 2

Summary: After weeks away on a mission, Y/n returns to her family in the Night Court, with the addition of a new member. And thanks to Azriel, she feels like they've known each other forever. Meaning: "an exclamation of surprise or annoyance" Word Count: 658 Warnings: None.

------------

"A letter has arrived for you, m'lady."

Y/n's head drifted from the paperwork before her, to the Peregryn male situated at the door. She motioned for him to come forward, receiving the envelope swiftly.

Once the male had left, Y/n tore into the white paper.

Dear Y/n

So much has happened since you left for Dawn. Feyre is officially living in Velaris, and I've taken over her training regiment. Let's just say her technique could use some work.

She's great though, perfectly suited for Rhys. If only the stubborn bastard would finally confess to her that they're mates.

I miss you. Cassian is as annoying as ever, and Rhys is so busy fretting over Feyre, so there isn't anyone to really talk to.

I hope everything is going well in Dawn, and I can't wait to see you again.

Your loyal friend, Azriel.

Y/n smiled as she finished reading through the letter. Over the many weeks that she had spent in Dawn Court, Azriel had kept her up to date on all things Feyre-related. From their first meeting, to the trauma she'd endured, Y/n knew it all.

Perhaps it was time she returned home. It was coming up on three months since she'd left, and Thesan seemed to no longer require her services. Yes, it was time to return to Velaris.

-------------

"You did well today," Azriel said as he and Feyre strode through the halls of the House of Wind.

"I feel like I'm getting stronger. The regimes no longer hurt so much," she laughed.

"Well then, maybe they could do with an upgrade," Azriel stated, lips twitching upwards into a smirk.

"Don't you dare, Shadowsinger."

Azriel was about to open his mouth in retort, when a solid object collided with his body, propelling him towards the floor.

Azriel would have been concerned regarding his shadows' lack of vigilence, or even his own instincts having not kicked it, had it not been for the warm vanilla scent that filled his nose.

"Y/n..." he mutter, arms wrapping around her warm body. "When did you get back?"

"A little while ago," she muttered into his neck, hot breath hitting his skin in the most delectable way.

"I missed you," he whispered.

"I missed you too, Az."

The heartfelt moment didn't last long, courtesy of his brother.

"If you two lovebirds are done, I believe introductions are in order."

Azriel glared daggers into Cassian's skull, doing his damnedest to keep the blush that crept up his neck, at bay.

He helped Y/n up, hands lingering on her waist for a second longer than what just 'friends' would do.

Rhysand cleared his throat, stepping towards the female at his side.

"Feyre, meet Y/n, the last member of our inner circle, and my most trusted emissary. Y/n meet Feyre..."

"I've heard all about you," Y/n stated, mouth spread wide in a smile. "All good things of course."

Feyre's face grew warm, and her eyes met Azriel's.

"Is that so?"

Y/n nodded, taking a cautious step forward, before wrapping an arm around Feyre, guiding her towards the kitchen.

"Indeed it is, and what better way to get to know me than over a cup of tea. Has Azriel mentioned I make a mean cup of tea?"

"He has not," Feyre stated, raising an eyebrow in his direction.

"Hm, how rude," Y/n huffed, smiling at Azriel as the pair disappeared from sight.

He felt his stomach flutter at the sight of that beautiful smile. It had been too long since he'd last seen it.

"You know, you complain about me not confessing to Feyre, but I've had to watch you tiptoe around Y/n for over a century," Rhys drawled, a teasing smirk on his obnoxiously handsome face.

"No one asked you," Azriel grumbled, heading in the direction the two females had gone, in hopes of escaping more of his brother's playful jabs.

------------

And I'm back!

it feels so good to be able to write again, and to be able to bring your requests to life. A reminder that my inbox is open to all your dreams and wishes ;)

Until next time lovelies :)

[johnwickb1tsch]

18 👀 I’m curious to see if there’s any scenes that didn’t make the cut in one of your fics?

Oh man, that's a good question Scoob! Usually I manage to jimmy things i write in SOMEWHERE, but this is the only scene I could think of in my scrap pile that I'm absolutely sure I'm going a different direction after banging my head on the table about it. This was fun but way too tame for what the story requires. It's from the Constantine x femVampire!Reader fic. Reader is feeling sorry for herself because Constantine is ghosting her AGAIN, when she meets a mysterious stranger... I know you can guess who it is. 🤣🤣

The Girl Next Door - Deleted Scene

You do your best not to think about John Constantine–and fail at it most of the time. You find that the blood of evil doers nourishes your body, but does not really satisfy. What you really crave, like the most filling meal, and the most delectable dessert, is a 6’1” drink of sardonic demon hunter.

You do wonder why. Things had seemed fine, when you parted ways just before dawn. He’d kissed you with a tenderness that tied up your heart, his big hand dwarfing the side of your face, holding you like you were something precious to him. 

The memory just twists the knife a little more to the left. 

You continue to feel that presence, that omnipresent seething energy, that sensation that you are being watched. But it never shows itself, so you do your best to be vigilant, and continue to go about your business. 

You are delighted one night when you find a bookstore/cafe open late. Shopping has become hit or miss, with your new nocturnal hours. You can order things, of course, but it’s certainly not the same. 

The old hippy at the register offers you a smile before going back to his dog eared copy of Invalids Home From Hot Climates. The place smells like coffee, and books, and you feel like you might have stumbled through the gates of your own personal little heaven. 

Aren’t you supposed to burst into flames or something?

Thinking that maybe catching up on your reading will help get you out of your funk, you start to wander the stacks, pulling titles that interest you. Classics you’ve always meant to read, but never really had the time. Sylvia Plath, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and John Steinbeck, James Joyce, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Herman Melville, and Agatha Christie all pile up in your hands. 

On the highest shelf, Anais Nin catches your eye. You reach for it on tiptoe fruitlessly, balancing your stack of books in your other hand. It is way over your head. You could jump for it without spilling your bookish burden–but you know it would not look human to the few other people milling around the shelves and curled up in the comfy reading nooks. 

A long arm reaches over you, plucking out the book, and only then are you aware of a solid presence looming behind you. No one has managed to sneak up on you like this since the night of your undeath. Unnerved, you whirl, putting your back to the stacks. Only narrowly do you manage not to bare your fangs like a startled kitten in this public venue. 

You find a tall man dressed all in black standing very close to you, his arm still raised with the book dwarfed in his big hand. His angular face is accented by a short beard; longish raven hair brushes his collar. Dark eyes fix on you curiously; the weight of his gaze almost makes you squirm. “Saw you struggling,” he explains simply in a deep baritone, offering you the cloth-bound tome. 

You find you cannot look away from those bewitching dark eyes, almost as though you’ve been hypnotized. It’s more than the fact that he is panty-drenchingly handsome–there is something mesmerizing about him, and you’re not sure if his power is sinister or simply…profound.

Almost absently, you accept the book, adding it to your stack balanced in your hand. 

He looks at your copious selections with a smirk. “Someone’s been eating her wheaties.” 

You realize it probably does look odd, for a woman of your size to be toting around such a load one-handed. You make a show of clutching your stack to your front with both hands, feeling ridiculously shy as a school-girl, as though the barrier of old books might provide some protection from this stranger’s charm. 

 “Just…catching up on some reading.” 

He offers the slightest smile for that, not showing teeth, and you cannot tell if he is flirting with you, or sizing you up. There is something odd about his energy. Human, and yet…heavier. His aura is like a thundercloud, and you’re not sure if you are intrigued, or afraid. He’s just this side of being in your space, and a part of you wants to ask him to back up–a part of you really doesn’t.  

“Have some time on your hands?”

“Something like that.” 

He nods, and makes no indication that he intends to move, his attention fixed fully down upon you. 

He gets the honor of being the only man, aside from John Constantine, who has made you feel even a little nervous since you turned. You’re not sure you like him very much for it. 

“What did you find?” you ask, hoping to break the tension, pointing at a little green book in his other hand. It looks old, older than any of your selections. 

“Robinson Crusoe.” 

“Looks like it's seen better days,” you observe with a sad pout, sorry to see a book in disrepair. 

“I’m going to fix it,” he tells you, the first hint of warmth entering his expression. 

“Oh?”

“It’s a hobby of mine.”

Like this man couldn’t get any hotter. 

He smirks at you, like you said it aloud. 

For some stupid reason, you start to blush. 

“Can I…buy you a coffee?”

“Why?” you blurt, mortified the moment it leaves your mouth. 

His smirk widens to a smile, and he seems to struggle with himself, trying not to show his teeth. 

“Just thought you have a nice stack,” he answers utterly deadpan, and you are dumbfounded as those eyes that seemed like black holes moments before sparkle. 

“Um…thanks for the offer…” 

He takes a step closer, and then he is crowding you against the shelf, his broad body dwarfing yours. Something about his presence makes you forget that you’re a vampire, and you could rip out his spine with your bare hands if you wanted to. He makes you feel small, and a little vulnerable, and fuck you if you don’t kind of like it. 

“You don’t drink coffee?” he fishes, and you feel like the two of you are speaking in code, but only he has the key. 

“It’s not my favorite,” you admit, resisting the urge to tack on anymore. 

“What do you like to drink?”

As though on cue, the spiced scent of his cologne and his skin makes its way to your nostrils; and beneath that, what you are sure would be a heady taste of his lifeblood. If you didn’t know any better…you would think he was baiting you with vampire pheromones, or something. The wave of longing that hits you is intense, and you have to close your eyes and lean back from him. You take a deep breath–which does not help. You feel like you’re paralyzed, and when you open your eyes you find he is leaning over you with an arm on the shelf again, nearly nose to nose with you. 

You try twice for your voice, and it will only come as a whisper. “Please don’t.”

Don’t what, you don’t even know, but something is weighing on you and you feel like you can’t move.

You flinch as he reaches up to touch you, the tips of his fingers resting on your throat, just above your surprisingly pounding pulse. His eyes settle on your mouth, before rising to meet yours, and you are both hopeful and terrified this strange, captivating man is going to kiss you. 

He speaks, though it doesn’t really break the spell. 

“Be seeing you, vampling.”  

With wide eyes and utter shock you watch him stride away from you–and my god, what a glorious view. Long powerful legs, and an utterly biteable rear end. There is a pause in which you presume he pays for his book, before the bell over the door chimes, and he exits onto the street.

You stand where he left you for a good half hour, re-learning how to command your limbs, and maybe, your brain. 

[kimetsu-no-yaiba-writings]

HIHI! Im not really good at requesting things so I apologize in advance of this seems weird😭 odd request but!1!1 could you maybe do Rui with a s/o that’s a lunar moth demon? Like has the wings and antennas of said moth and stuff :)

Hiya Anon! (^○^) First off I want to thank you for requesting, especially something so fun!

Please don't apologize either, I'm more than happy to write your request ☆ If you have anymore please send them my way!

I just hope that i've done your request justice....

Also as I've written quite a bit I'm gonna stick these headcanons under a 'Keep Reading' line which I hope you don't mind.

Rui x Luna moth Demon S/O - Headcanons:

To Rui, you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his long life - Your just absolutely stunning!

Even before you both started a relationship – back when you first met each other, where you were injured + caught in his web and he was going to eat you 😊 – you held a ethereal beauty that soothed him yet made him yearn

…….he did threaten to eat you a lot at the beginning of your friendship, although now he threatens to eat you in a joking manner

Big beautiful pearlescent green wings that shimmer when you move – covered in a soft fuzz and a gentle dust – the crescent moons on your wings winking each time you move.

Your bottom wings have these beautiful twisting tails too which happen to trail on the floor alot so you have a tendency to stay above ground so they don't get damaged

Rui does help you keep them intact and healthy

Your antennae sit comfortably on your forehead just above your brows, resting on your head when not in proper use - as if your letting them relax

They happen to be as equally as soft as your wings, and feathered out elegant – the colour a mellow yellow, slightly dull in comparison to your wings

Of course Rui doesn’t touch your wings or antennae too much, he knows both are delicate – that and your sense of smell is incredibly sensitive due to your antennae…

Your eyes are stunning too, a beautiful shade of (E/C) that have the amazing ability to see everything around you in hyper detail

It just also happens that due to your amazing eyesight you happen to be a bit light sensitive…..

Although funnily enough, light is something that grabs your attention quickly? You just have to investigate it at all costs

Does that mean Rui has to constantly be vigilant for unusual light sources? Yes

Also your eyes glow – like a cat’s – when light is shone at them

Has this accidently scared members of the spider family? Yes! Have any of them learnt not to shine lights around so you don’t accident scare them? No

Honestly each and everyone of your features are beautiful to Rui

You differ so much to him and his spider qualities - although his eyes do the glowy thing too (which is terrifying! Why did spiders have to have the glowy eye things too?!)

Your method of hunting is fascinating too.

Completely different to his hunting.

Soft clicks leaving your throat in odd patterns to confuse your prey (and predator) as you lead them off on a wild + intoxicating dance before devouring them swiftly

Hiding away above in the forests canopy, your eyes that see all analyzing everything about your prey from the way they stand to the sound of their blood + heart rate

You can go months between eating - Lunar moths lack mouths completely and survive of off their own body fat - although you eat ALOT when you finally do need to eat which Rui happily provides for you

Your blood is also moth-like! Instead of a deep crimson its a deep and haunting blue - Although if you were to ever get injured to the point of shedding blood, Rui is personally hunting & killing the thing that harmed you down

Rui does like to spoil you

He always manages to find - or maybe make? - the finest fabrics and furs for you, everything is suited to your tastes and wants

The fur is always soft and warming due to your obsession with warmth and keeping it locked in your body

The flesh you consume is only ever hunted by his or your hand - Rui only ever does this for you

Your bestowed his love and affection for all of time

His small smiles and feather soft kisses - Cold lips brushing along the apple of your cheek in a sign of affection as you walk together with hands holding

Soft and gentle hands upon your face, appendages and body

Your the only one who he whispers compliments and praise too

The only one he'll ever shed tears for - In sadness, anger, lust and happiness etc.

You are his love

[chvoswxtch]

Could I request something for Frank with a s/o who is having mental health struggles? I’m not doing to well as of late and I would love nothing more then Frank taking care of me 💕

Take you’re time, no rush :)

Ps. I love your writing

hi my darling! so sorry this is coming to you so late. I myself have been struggling a bit mentally lately. I hope that you're doing well, and that today is a good day for you angel. ❤️

thank you so much for the request. it was actually super therapeutic for me and kinda helped get me out of the funk I was in, so thank you!!

there's not really any warnings for this except swearing & lots of fluff. also i'm not sure if the glitch with dark mode has been fixed or not but if you're on dark mode, you may have trouble viewing this. I apologize for any inconvenience reading in advance! word count: 2.3k

let me help.

Frank Castle had always been good at reading people. During his time in the marines, he perfected this skill and learned to pick up on certain cues and read body language to anticipate what someone might be thinking or feeling, which gave him a huge advantage when it came to combat. It also helped him out quite a bit when he became a father since he was usually able to figure out what kind of shenanigans his kids were about to get into before they had a chance to actually get into trouble. But lately, it helped him out the most when it came to you. 

You and Frank were total opposites when it came to emotions. While he hid everything until you could coax it out of him, you were a lot more open about yours, even if you weren’t trying to be. Your face gave you away, every single time. Not only that, but Frank knew you like the back of his hand. He could always read you, even when you were trying to hide and put on a brave face. A few months into your relationship, Frank had finally gotten you to confess about your mental health struggles to him. He had been picking up on little things; small changes in your demeanor, subtle shifts in your moods, and even the tone of your voice when it was off. He didn’t want to push you if you weren’t comfortable, but it also killed him to know something was bothering you and you were afraid to let him help. 

Ever since then, Frank was extra vigilant when it came to you. He had learned what helped when you got into a bad headspace, and what he could do to make it better. He figured out what you needed from him, even if you were having trouble communicating it. He discovered that sometimes you wanted a distraction, and sometimes you just wanted to be held and comforted. Sometimes you tried to put the noise in your head into comprehensible sentences, and sometimes you preferred the soothing timber of his voice as he read to you or told you a story from his previous life. Sometimes Frank could convince you to go for a walk on a pretty trail he’d found, and you’d walk side by side silently as he held your hand gently.

“Somethin’ about sunshine “curin” the blues. Some shit Curt told me, I don’t know. Said it might help.”

Frank had actually reached out to Curt on several occasions about you, since his experience with his group made him the closest thing to a professional he could find. Through learning how to care for you, Frank actually started to figure out how to care for himself. He started to figure out what worked for him when things got heavy, and how to process his own struggles. After a while, Frank even got comfortable letting you care for him like he did for you when things got bad. It was a learning curve the two of you were navigating together, with the occasional help from Curtis, and it only made your relationship that much stronger. There was an immense comfort in the peace you two found in each other. Anytime that peace was disrupted, Frank picked up on it immediately, sometimes before you even did.

He knew today was an off day the second he walked through the door. Your voice was quieter as you greeted him, sounding almost exhausted, and you hugged onto his large frame tighter than you normally did. Frank let you linger in his embrace, cradling the back of your head as he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead. He studied you quietly when you took a step back, trying to figure out what it was you needed from him right now. He could tell by the tight smile on your lips you weren’t going to bring it up. Maybe you hadn’t even noticed it yet. Or maybe you were trying to avoid it. Whatever the reason, he didn’t want to push you if you didn’t feel like talking.

“Think I need a hot shower. Wanna join me?”

The eager nod of your head caused a tiny smile to spread on Frank’s mouth as he held his hand out for yours.

“Alright then, pretty girl. C’mon.”

Steam filled the bathroom as Frank turned the knob as far to the side as it would go. Your reflections were indiscernible as the mirrors fogged up, only able to catch the briefest glimpse of your own silhouettes. Frank was quiet as he undressed you, keeping his touch gentle and soft. A flush had already started to spread over your face from the heat. Frank carefully helped you into the shower, giving your hand a light squeeze and offering a smile when he noticed the confusion on your features.

“Go ahead, sweetheart. Be there in a minute.”

Once Frank had rid himself of his own clothes, he stepped in behind you silently. Your eyes were closed as you tipped your head back underneath the showerhead, allowing the warmth of the water to wash over you completely. It echoed off the tiles like a steady summer rain, and even he found the sound soothing. Frank gave you a moment to try and let the water wash away whatever it was you were trying to rid yourself of, only joining you under the stream when you opened your eyes and reached for him.

An aroma of lavender and vanilla filled his senses as he poured your body wash into his hands, beginning to massage it over your shoulders first and then down each of your arms. He took his time as he cleansed you, kneeling down as the suds traveled down your thighs and over your feet. He made sure every inch of your skin had been caressed by his fingertips before rinsing you off. Frank gently grabbed your wrist to halt your movements when you reached for his body wash, giving a light shake of his head and a timid smile.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me.”

“Frank-”

“Just let me help, baby.”

Frank silenced any further protest as his lips descended on yours. He wrapped one arm around your waist to hold you against his chest as his free hand lightly massaged your green apple scented shampoo into your hair. He gently scratched at your scalp with his blunt nails, smiling as your eyes fell shut and a satisfied hum vibrated from your lips against his skin. The longer he worked his fingers in your hair, the more you melted into his embrace. Frank carefully grasped your chin between his thumb and index finger to tip your head back, turning your head to the sides ever so slightly to make sure all the shampoo got washed out fully. After repeating the same process with your conditioner, he reached behind you to shut the water off and wrapped you up in a fluffy towel.

“Let’s get you comfy, shortcake. You want shorts or somethin’? Or just a shirt?”

“Just a shirt, please. Can I wear one of yours?”

Frank chuckled lightly as he wrapped a towel around his waist, holding onto your hand as he helped you out of the shower and led you back to the bedroom.

“Course you can. Don’t gotta ask, baby.”

Frank grabbed your favorite lavender scented body lotion from the cabinet, knowing how much it bothered you that your skin felt too dry after a scalding hot shower. He helped you dry off and slipped on a pair of briefs before motioning towards the bed and pouring some lotion into his hands.

“Lay back for me.”

Your eyes followed Frank’s hands as he moved them over every part of your body while he massaged the lotion deep into your skin. There was a slight furrow of his brows, as there always was when he was concentrating on something. But everytime he caught your gaze, his permanent broody features morphed into a tender smile, and it made you weak. After slipping one of his large shirts over your head and your favorite pair of fuzzy socks onto your feet, Frank scooped you up into his arms and sat back against the headboard with you in his lap. He rested his chin on top of your head as you snuggled into his chest, running his fingers through your wet hair slowly.

The two of you stayed like that silently for a few minutes before Frank heard your deep exhale.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t gotta thank me. You know that.”

“And you know that I’m going to.”

Frank couldn’t help but grin, shaking his head slowly as he held you even tighter to his chest.

“How you feelin’? Better?”

“Much.”

“This one hit fast, huh? Seemed like you were in higher spirits when I left earlier.”

“Yeah, it did.”

Frank glanced down at you, cupping your face in his large hand to get you to look at him. He studied you for a moment, brushing his thumb along your cheekbone softly.

“Somethin’ happen?”

“No…nothing happened. I-I don’t know. I felt okay this morning and then I just…didn’t.”

“S’alright, honey. Just checkin’.”

Another defeated exhale caused your shoulders to shrink. Frank leaned in to brush his nose against yours, pressing a soft kiss to your lips.

“Hey, it ain’t your fault. You know that.”

“I know-”

“And there’s nothin’ wrong with you. So don’t go thinkin’ that shit. It happens to everyone, baby.”

“Not like this. Not everyone deals with this.”

“I know, but it’s outta your control.”

“And that’s what I hate. I hate not feeling in control of my own body, my own head. I know what’s happening, and I can’t do anything about it. I just…have to wait for it to pass.”

“You don’t gotta do it alone.”

Frank sighed quietly as he sat up a little straighter, turning your body so that you were straddling his waist as he held your face in both of his large hands.

“Baby, I love you. Alright? I’m here. I ain’t goin’ nowhere, no matter what. When this happens, we get through it together, yeah? We always get through it, don’t we?”

You leaned into Frank’s touch, wrapping your hands delicately around his wrists as you stared deeply into his eyes and nodded. 

“Yeah, we do.”

“I’d say we’re doin’ pretty fuckin’ good, all things considered.”

A small giggle escaped your lips, and you couldn’t help but mirror the smile that spread over Frank’s mouth.

“Who knew Frank Castle would make such a good therapist?”

“Easy now, don’t go broadcastin’. I ain’t acceptin’ any new patients. I got my hands full.”

“Oh, do you?”

Frank’s lips split even further as a toothy grin took over his mouth, reaching behind you to grab your ass with both of his large hands, giving it a tight squeeze.

“Yeah, see?”

Your eyes widened as your mouth fell open, lightly slapping at his chest as you burst into a fit of giggles at his actions.

“Frank!”

“What? Made ya laugh, didn’t it?”

“Is this what Curtis is teaching you?”

“Nah, I decided to improvise on that one.”

All you could do was shake your head as you giggled loudly. It was nearly impossible not to smile when you were around Frank, but it was even harder when he was smiling. Frank had such a beautiful smile, and it always caused one to appear on your lips. It could light up the midnight sky, and oftentimes it chased the darkness away within you. His laughter bellowed from deep within his chest, and it spread a warmth throughout you as it enveloped you like a security blanket. Frank tilted his head to the side slightly as he gazed at you lovingly, bringing one of your hands up to his mouth to press a kiss to the back of your hand.

“Hey, you and me. Yeah?”

You couldn’t help but smile as you nodded, leaning in to press your forehead against his.

“Yeah. You and me.”

“Atta girl. Now, how ‘bout I order some Lombardi’s and you pick us a movie.”

“You’re letting me pick? Anything I want? Like…anything?”

Frank’s eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the excitement in your eyes and the grin on your mouth.

“Do I need to reiterate that I’m gettin’ you the best goddamn pizza in all of New York so you don’t torture me?”

“Now Frank, when have I ever tortured you?”

Frank arched one of his dark brows in question as a smirk curled at the side of your mouth.

“You want me to answer that honestly?”

“If anyone tortures anyone around here, it’s you.”

“Me? What the hell-”

You giggled as you pressed a finger to Frank’s mouth, leaning in to kiss his nose gently.

“Relax. I won’t torture you, I promise.”

Frank glared at you insincerely as your grin spread across your cheeks, letting out a deep exhale as he let his head fall back against the headboard.

“It’s gonna be a fuckin’ musical, ain’t it.”

“It’s not…technically a musical.”

“For fucks sake.”

“You promised you’d watch Moana with me months ago!”

“Alright, alright. Fine. Go put the damn thing on.”

As you queued up the movie and waited for Frank on the couch, you couldn’t stop yourself from giggling when you heard him grumbling to himself in the kitchen. His fingers aggressively tapped on his phone’s screen as he dialed the number to Lombardi’s, muttering a few swears and an exasperated fuckin’ Disney before placing your order. As he took his seat beside you on the couch, you grabbed his face and kissed him deeply, pulling away slowly with a soft smile.

“Thank you, Frankie. I love you.”

“I love you, shortcake. Always.”

[ewingstan]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9-11 for whatever Worm characters come to mind! (Or Sophia/Calvert/Taylor/Krouse if you have any thoughts!)

Fuck it. All of em for all of em.

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

Sophia: I'll be real I don't feel super strongly about her. She's written to be hateable in an effective way, but she's less of a full character than Emma despite being in much more of the story. And her shit kinda gets bogged down by racist writing (a lot of the worst of it happening right before Aisha's introduction, which is also pretty racist). She's involved in a lot of cool and interesting moments but they're rarely interesting because of her.

Coil: Works really well as the first overarching villain in Taylor's story. He's able to sell the "I'm a bad guy but in an excusable way that's not really too bad" well enough, but also has a lot of obvious red flags even before the Dinah reveal. So you can understand perfectly well why Taylor, a kid who really wanted to continue hanging out with the undersiders and do things that made her feel like she had any control, would go along with him. But you can also take a step back and say Jesus, only a kid who really wanted to continue hanging out with the undersiders and do things that made her feel like she had any control would go along with him.

Taylor: Wildbow has a reoccurring tendency to focus on characters who are both incredibly smart and can get an incredible amount of info quickly, but only in specific limited ways. Its true of Taylor, Lisa, Sylvester, Kenzie, Mia—a lot of my favorites. But the interesting thing is that they're never smart in the same ways, never collect the same sort of info. Lisa has general super-induction but no great skill at making plans. Sylvester can read and manipulate people to a superhuman level but is constantly getting blinded by his own resentments and desires. Taylor's hyper-vigilance gave her the ability to see and react to everything external around her, but no means or real incentive to know whats going on internally with people around her. And it makes sense! She's incredibly afraid of letting people in who'll end up hurting her; people who've genuinely been kind to her in the past have used their previous closeness to hurt her later! Knowing that someone doesn't mean her harm now isn't gonna reassure her, so its safer to assume everyone's a threat and not worry too much about what they're actually thinking.

And then there's Rachel, who she not only connects with emotionally, but is the only person who's able to make an emotional connection with her! And since you understand why its not the norm, its all the more incredible to see!

Krouse: oh I'm glad you asked

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Sophia: I like that she and Lung both get wrapped back up in the end for Skitter's Gold Morning missions. I wish she got to do more in those, but I do like it as a story beat.

Coil: How high he got and how far he fell.

Taylor: Man the escape from Coil's trap is a fucking great chapter. She's a one-woman horror movie. Single-handedly sells her as a villain who'd get national attention, and its not even a moment the public knows about. And its in such a great place in the story too, where all the tricks she's using have been established so its not feeling like a weird escalation in her abilities, but she hasn't all employed them at once or to such incredible effect yet. It’s the real culmination of her taking “lessons” from Bakuda about being scary.

Krouse: One of the moments that really sold me on him was when he was getting attacked by Case 53s, and immediately started thinking about how he could take them down, before he interrupts his own thoughts to go "wait, what am I doing, I should just run away." It just sells so much of his whole deal. He's a great on-his-feat thinker, he can be an incredible strategist when he's on his own, but he also doesn't share Taylor's suicidal urge to face any problem head-on. Its kind of the inverse of one of Taylor's early establishing moments: after getting attacked by Rachel, she reaches for a reason to calm down, realizes she doesn't have one, and immediately retaliates hard enough to get blood on her boots. God they're such good foils, its weird that the extent of their relationship is mutually disliking each other. Not even intense dislike in either case.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

Sophia: That the black member of the trio is the one that consistently gets physically violent, is characterized as the athletic one compared to the others in general (instead of "the cute one" or "the prep" she's "the track star"), gets described as being savage multiple times, doesn't have much of a character outside of sucking despite being in a work that's otherwise really good at giving internality to people who act shitty, all that jazz.

Coil: How little sense we got of what Calvert's dominion would really look like. That we didn't get much of his takeover without other disasters interfering actually works—it fits the themes of constant conflict interfering with stability and safety. But I still want more of a sense of what Calvert wanted.

Taylor: I didn't care about her reunification with her mom. I say a lot that the ending of Worm is one of the best endings of any story I've read, and that's true of Gold Morning as a whole, but I don't actually care much about the last epilogue. The Brian reveal certainly doesn't help there.

Krouse: Do you know how much it sucks that when people ask me who my favorite worm character is, the tumblr sexyman is in contention?

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

Sophia: any story that takes her basic parts, gets rid of the obviously shitty stuff, and develops her into a real character.

Coil: Disney Channel sitcom

Taylor: Well I already tried expy-ing Khepri into my tabletop campaign, and that got mixed results, so I'll take TTRPGs off the list. I'd be interested in her getting put in a medium where you'd have to be creative with how to represent the bug cloud, like live theater.

Krouse: I was gonna say Mob Psycho but then I remembered that they already had a guy who teleported around being a jackass. But I would like too see a well-animated version of his fighting style.

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

Sophia: I'll Make You Sorry by Screaming Females

Coil: For some reason I get an Everything Everything vibe from him? Maybe Photoshop Handsome or Breadwinner.

Taylor: I don't actually read her as trans but Dysphoria Hoodie is what immediately came to mind. I'm at least theoretically still making a Cicada Days animatic about her. I think portions of BCNR's Sunglasses fits with whats going on internally with her in the Mannequin fight

Krouse: Want to make a Prowl Great Cain AMV for him one day. Lyrics fit perfectly, and the way its sung gets the same otherwise inexpressable intensity of how I feel about him. Darnielle said “This is a song about betrayal. A lot of songs about betrayal are about betrayal and redemption. Not this one.” And yeah, that's Krouse!

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

Sophia: Oh, no

Coil: It would prolly be fine except for how he'd torture a branch of my psychological continuity and then effectively kill it by destroying that reality whenever I leave the dishes out too long. Don't correct me on how his powers work

Taylor: Uhhh probably not. Even if I wasn't much older, I don't really talk to my roommates unless they're the talkative sort. She's been stuck living with clamshells before, it wasn't good for her.

Krouse: I'd have to kill him

10 and 11: alright these are "could you be best friends with" and "would you date" and in both cases the fact that I'm 23 means no. I don't have Blake's ability to form rich friendships with people much younger than me. And I'm not interested in Calvert as a friend or a lover.

[thenotebookwizard]

She-Ra | Defiance CH 21 Preparation

The morning of her Coronation vigil, Catra remembers Adora and comes face to face with how much she might already mean to the people of Halfmoon - something she had never dreamed was possible.

The Coronation sequence will be several chapters - it's important and is the wrap up for Catra before the time skip. The next two chapters will be Catra sitting her vigil, followed by the actual Coronation ceremony.

We will be wrapping up and setting the stage for Halfmoon threads.

I never expected to get this far.

I'm over 100k in, and I know how long this story is. I love this story, but it has taken over my brain in some delightful ways. I'm loving writing it, and I wish it made sense to post faster. Maybe once my draft of the whole thing is done I will?

For now, buffer is good. I have plenty of buffer.

But I never expected to get this far. Defiance is the most complicated story I have ever tried to tell, and I am loving the experience. I'm learning - about me. About my process. And about how fast I can write when my brain is on fire.

Here we are, the midpoint of Arc one.

And there is so much to come. I never expected to get this far, but I really look forward to seeing how far I can take it.

When I started in the She-Ra fandom, it was never my plan to write for it. It was my plan to dip my toes in, read some good fics. Leave some comments. Enjoy the community for a bit before returning to the stories I already had in progress.

And yet.

I came up with the idea for several different stories, and they all played out in my head. I wrote notes for a lot of them. One of them, For Honor, stuck with me in a really bright, clear way and I wrote about 250k of it really, really fast in 2023. I didn't do a great job on some of it, but some of it was the best work I've put out. Ever.

I never posted it.

Defiance came about with the Big Bang. I had a deep love of 'Princess Catra of Halfmoon' AUs, and some of them were just breathtakingly good. None of the ones I read were finished. I hadn't noticed a lot of fandom love for them, so I set aside my idea for one to use later, with a handful of notes.

Then I decided - I could spare 90k words for the Big Bang. I wrote fast, I wrote well, and Defiance was born. By the time posting for the Big Bang started, I knew I had a runaway story on my hands, and I dove back in.

Now, it is deeply important to me to finish this story and have a finished Princess Catra of Halfmoon AU and break what might or might not be a curse on the trope. (I know there are finished ones out there; I just haven't run across them yet.)

So, thanks to everyone for their support and their love for this story. I hope you stick with me to the end - thought I know not everyone will.

It will be worth it. I promise you that.

[fivenightsatnatemares]

Mangled #1

First part of a twoshot I'm writing for the beginning of the actual story (woohoo!)

It's not my favorite work but it is.. Acceptable. I hope y'all enjoy it. And I hope y'all will find as much love for these characters as we have.

Best to listen to Mangled while reading this story, considering music guides our adventure here 🎶

As always thank you to my lovely friend Boop for being my beta reader 🐰 - Beep

Wordcount: 1.3k

TW: Strong language

It had been years. Years of silence in the place where Mare Wily used to be the nightguard. At least when the children left and the lights went out.

Mare didn't remember exactly how it had happened. One day his brother that owned this pizzeria asked him to do a job for him, just keeping tabs on the security cams, the next he was growing deformities and feeling... Strange.

He had learned to adapt, he had taught himself how to survive amongst the animatronics that came to life at night, even befriending them.

Things changed when fresh blood entered the hallowed halls.

A new nightguard. A young girl, couldn't have been more than 24. Brunette, pretty short. The moment Mare laid eyes on her from within the shadows, he knew she was done for.

It started simple. She did her job, the animatronics came to life, she was terrified. Mare had experienced it all himself. No big deal.

But there was a change. Maybe Mare wanted to scare her off, tell her to never come back. Maybe he just did it for the thrills. Either way, he decided he wanted to involve himself in this little game the animatronics were playing.

It started with changing things on the camera's when he thought she wasn't looking. Moving an endoskeleton that had been dormant even before he was there, opening a pizza box that was previously closed. Little things, just to make her feel like this place was truly haunted... As if the evidence wasn't staring her right in the face in the shape of a giant animatronic bear.

It eventually evolved into banging on the walls and doors, turning off the lights and then turning them back on, and even breaking some of the camera's. Anything to make her feel like she wasn't welcome.

These nights kept going for weeks, until there was a certain night, a night where the young nightguard had been a little too vigilant, the night where she spotted him.

He assumed she had seen him on the camera's initially, as her next course of action was to poke her head out of the security doors and start yelling for 'the guy with long black hair'. No response. Mare wasn't going to go up and talk to her, he needed her out, not up in his business.

She was here every night, and every single night it drove Mare more to the brink of insanity. Why wouldn't she leave, why did she keep calling out to him, why did she care?

It was funny at first, imagining her going crazy thinking there was another human being in here with her. Pfft,as if. Human was far from what Mare would describe himself as nowadays. He was the one who told his animatronic friends about the best ways to go after her. Sure, he made sure they wouldn't actually get her, but what kind of person sticks murderous mascots on someone?

So he stayed away. Partially because he didn't feel like explaining himself. Partially because he thought he might hurt her.

He was a monster, after all.

Another night rolled around, this time the girl had learned something new. Over the weeks she had been clever enough to find out some things, like that she could wander around with a Freddy mask on and the animatronics mostly wouldn't notice her. But this night, she had found the speaker system. Now she was able to broadcast messages throughout the entire pizzeria.

It was getting on Mare's nerves.

"Hey!" He heard her voice loud and.. Well, not clear. But definitely loud. "I know you're in here. I don't know what happened to you, but I want to help."

Mare rolled his eyes. Why would this random girl who was probably gonna end up just like him if she kept coming in, be able to help someone like him? He had been messing with her on purpose, why couldn't she just see-

He groaned, mentally cutting his own ramblings off. She wasn't worth it. All of this wasn't worth it. He made his way over to her. She would have to find out the hard way he wasn't here to make friends.

So now here they were. Mare with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall in the hall across from her little saferoom. She had closed the door when she heard footsteps, just as a precaution, and was now staring at him through the little window.

"Who are you?"

A curious tone, riddled with caution. Mare smiled to himself.

"Nobody important."

The girl's brows furrowed in frustration. She seemed to hesitate.

"Can I open this door or will you kill me?"

Her voice came out stronger than he expected. Maybe this girl wasn't as scared of him as he thought she was.

He shrugged, "Can't promise I won't."

After another moment of hesitation, the girl stepped back, and to his surprise, the door was opened right in front of him.

Gone were the walls keeping them apart. She had put her trust in him.

Mare adjusted, pushing himself from the wall and taking a step closer, his arms still crossed. He raised an eyebrow.

"Are you stupid?" He asked, looking down at the girl in front of him.

"Are you bad?" She retorted, not answering his obvious jab. She still seemed cautious, but there was no sign of her stepping back.

He chuckled. "I suggest you leave this place unless you want the metal assholes to get you. Or worse, end up like me."

The girl frowned, crossing her arms in defiance. "I'm not leaving. Not until I find out whatever the hell is going on here, and until I find a way to help you."

Mare's face contorted into an expression of annoyance. He sighed and shook his head as he ran a hand through his messy hair.

"I don't need help."

She immediately shook her head, a solemn look on her face.

"You're obviously never leaving this place. Tell me why. Tell me it isn't cause you're somehow stuck here. I've felt it too, y'know. I've felt the pull to come back here every night. I've felt something drawing me to this place." The nightguard glanced around the room, vaguely gesturing towards the office before turning back to the man in front of her. "Hell, I'm here every day of the week just to figure out what's going on in this place. It's been months. I'm not stupid, no, far from it. I know something is going on here and I know you have something to do with it."

At those words, something lashed out in Mare. Anger built up rapidly as he snapped his gaze towards her. He felt the blue streaks on his face burn. Before he could even register what he was doing, he had grabbed the girl by her wrist and pressed her against the wall with his arm up to her throat.

"You have so much to say, huh? For someone who doesn't know shit. I have something to do with it? You act like we're to blame, but last I checked it was you wearing a damn mask and coming back every time." He barked at her, pushing her back as he let her go and stepped away. "Why are you even here anyway? Hasn't been a nightguard here in years."

She looked at him with this dumbfounded stare, as if she didn't know what to say for once. She brought her hand up to her throat and soothed the sore skin, her other hand reaching up to hug herself.

"My brother.. He.. He co-owns this place." She sighed. "He wanted to help me get back on my feet after I lost my previous job."

Mare's head snapped back up. Co-owns? He was talking to the goddamn sister of Seán Light? No wonder she was such a pain in the ass.

"Your brother, Seán?" Mare asked.

She nodded.

He visibly clenched his jaw, shook his head and turned to leave. Was this some sort of sick joke? He had finally accepted his fate, and now there was some sister who felt the need to waltz in here. Nah. Not his problem. If she died, that was not on him.

[kuwdora]

For the vidding asks: 10, 12, 21!

10 What was the best comment you've received on one of your vids?

Let me tell you about a comment that fundamentally rattled my soul to the core and made me extremely hyper-vigilant, but eventually I got less rattled by it and absorbed it into my creative process because it was so incredibly helpful for me and made me a better vidder.

I made this due South Fraser/RayK vid in 2007, it was my second ever vid I was trying to make. It's called Better Off. If you look at my original vid notes I wrote like 500 words talking about how much I hate I my vid. How much it sucks, how it’s awful. How I was apologizing for it and basically giving up on the vid. The whole self-flagellating nine yards. I got a lot of great feedback on it, like over 20 comments, so despite me hating my own vid of new hobby I was learning to do, people fucking loved it.

HERE is the comment thread that changed my life. Where j-s-cavalcante kindly said the greatest most wonderful things to me but also made me go 👀:

I wish you hadn't waxed eloquent on the subject of how bad this vid is, because now I feel like an idiot posting this comment: I LOVED it. It makes me think, it scares me, it makes me see DS in a slightly different way, and it's fascinating with ALL those action scenes and blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. And, OMG, Dangerous!Fraser is freaking me out a little, here, and making me want to write, and that's one of the best things I think vids do for me. I find the good ones inspiring. I don't think anyone has quite dealt with this issue in a vid before, certainly not in this depth. But the idea that Fraser is deliberately risking Ray's life in these "wildly bizarre ways" for some unknown, maybe pathological, reason of his own is…scary and believable and intense! The use of so many of their action scenes all cut together so quickly is really, really effective in getting the point across. The song is cool and it inspired shivers up my back. Wow. (It also brings Speranza's "Wildly Dangerous Ways" (http://www.trickster.org/speranza/WDWays.html) to mind--one of my all-time favorite F/K fics.) And you did something so clever that I really loved…I'm not sure if I can express it properly, but there are a few clips that seem very obvious choices for the lyrics in question, such as the shot of Damian Kowalski on the " who's your daddy?" line and the scenes from Ray's messy apartment on the "I'll be hiding in your dirty room" line (there are more---"I'll not wake you," and the airport lines, etc.). And when those scenes show up matched to those lines, they seem like too-facile choices, but then in the very next line+clip combination, you reinterpret them: "I'm your daddy now" has Fraser holding the heavy bag for Ray, and so on. I found that very effective and just…intelligent. I think it's an intelligent vid. But you say it sucks, so I guess I don't know any better. I'll just live in blissful ignorance…and play it for writing inspiration…. :)

Dear asker, friend. @marahsarie. I want you to know that when I made this due South fanvid I was 100% sure in my belief that I was making a happy, intense adventure vid. Wholesome. Action. My beta sapote at the time was trying to say the same things j-s-cavalcante was saying but I was not grasping it. So when I read j-s’s comment I lost my goddamn mind. How could I have failed to understand what the fuck I was making? How other people might see it?? I was embarrassed and confused and and and...then I got it.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii...didn’t realize that the song I was using was the singer was about a cult leader. But because this song was about a cult leader and that was the reading that people who watched the vid were taking away from it... everyone lost their minds. It was a darker interpretation of Benton Fraser than anyone had ever seen in a vid before. Pathological? Fraser? In my vid? I guess it's more likely than I thought.

I stewed and chewed on this comment and reviewed my 300 emails I exchanged with sapote to understand what the fuck I was thinking when I heard the lyrics and how I made something so different than what I thought I was making. I wrote over 2k words about song choice and what I learned, which you can check out here if you want to see what thinking about song choice was like so early in my vidding experience.

That comment was so full of love, it was supportive, and specific and surprising. It meant the world to me. It made me think about how to intentionally approach a song, try to understand what the song is or might be about based on the song lyrics themselves, the singer’s confirmation of the song meaning, and what other people might interpret a song as. I also started thinking about how and when I will want to vid with or against specific song narratives and how I could make a vid successful in the process depending on what I did to make my case. Whether it was with symbolism or metaphor or technical efforts. Sometimes I still end up with happy accidents (as well as intentional horror, hahh) and there is always the possibility of more unintentional accidents and horrors because my brain is very squishy. I'm still human and I've fucked up before and will probably fuck up again but I will try to do my to know what's going on in what I make.

Truly that was the best comment ever. It really really helped me think critically about my work and how others might approach it even when I do or don't know what they might see. And it was just so kind and nice and reassuring and it really got me excited to make more vids after that, too.

— 12 Most underrated vid that you wished had gotten more views?

My Maya Herrara vid from Heroes! Racist fans were fucking awful about Maya as portrayed by Dania Ramirez. Fuckshit racists. The Heroes writers wrote the most racist shit, too, and did her character a great fucking disservice. It was awful. I’m still fucking pissed about it. You can read my extensive notes about Maya I wrote at the time on the original vidpost.

I loved Maya and wanted to vid her. Even though I wish the show Wasn’t Like That. I wish that she had something better, I wish that actress had something better, too. I loved her so much and I wanted more of her. I love her and I'll probably cry again the next time I rewatch the show. I don’t know if Heroes fandom people ever watched my vid back in the day since it wasn't the main Slash Pairing. I made this vid in 2008 and it has like 18 views on YouTube so here we are. I love Maya. She deserved better.

— 21 How would you describe your vidding style?

My vidding style is passionate, earnest, irreverent. It’s also unhinged, deeply fucked up. I love utilizing internal motion in clips to create a sense of movement and use that energy with the musicality of songs. I’m also inordinately gleeful about vidding fucked up themes and sources and can’t bring myself to be apologetic about it. But I’m equally unhinged with my love and joy for the wholesome characters and shows I make fanvids for, too. I don’t know if I come off as balanced or anything but. I always approach my vids with love (for the show, the characters, the vidding process, the creative catharsis, etc).

Thank you kindly for these lovely asks!!!

[mmkin]

The Siren's Shark (Ch 5 - but this siren has some spice of her own)

yeah baby i'm on a roll here's another chapter, whee. Link to AO3.

Content warning - some smut, so 18+ but it's good smut, so hey.

V

o0o0o0o

Arlong sat back as Kuroobi made his report of the contents of the crates and boxes Yolande had brought onto the ship. He didn’t think his siren intended to harm him – that went against the bond they shared – but his nakama insisted on vigilance, and after what had happened with Nami, the ray fishman’s paranoia only increased.

"...Jars of fruit preserves or spices, but I also came across empty glass bottles and vials along with filled ones of various solutions. Some look like oils, others are powders. Various paraphernalia I would expect of a chemist." Kuroobi looked down at the piece of paper. "Some of these could be used against us if she so desired it."

“Hmm.” Arlong stared off with a thoughtful frown. She hadn’t asked for space on the ship, but then there was just enough room for her plants. It would be interesting to see what she could do if she had the room for a laboratory, but Kuroobi was right to be cautious. “Keep an eye on her,” he said, knowing the other fishman would be pleased, and relieved, to hear that.

o0o0o0o

Yolande wished she could have seen Flen’s face when Arlong collected the money from him. When the doctor proposed to her several months after Yoshi’s death, it wasn’t out of love, but pragmatism and loneliness. Not that there was anything wrong with pragmatism, and there were worse reasons to marry someone, but she did not relish the idea of sharing a life with the pompous man. At least she never had to see him or his nephew again.

As she came to the cabin, she glanced down at the table as she passed it. Several pieces of correspondence littered the surface, and she raised her eyebrows as she saw a list that was not in Arlong’s writing, or the former captain’s. Several lines down, and she realized this was a list of the inventory she had in the cargo bay. She looked up to see Arlong standing in the doorway, looking down at her. He realized what caught her attention, and gave her a level stare.

She tilted her head to the side as she gave him a pointed glance. He smirked at her challengingly. Hoo boy. The rough edges! She picked up the paper, reading through the rest of it. Kuroobi had missed a few things only because she’d hidden them well.

“Pretty thorough,” she muttered. “You don’t fuck around, do you?”

“There’s a different fucking I prefer to do.” His grin widened.

o0o0o0o

“Well… I suppose I can’t blame you. If I were the captain, I think I would have done the same. The only concern I have is that he handled my supplies carefully.” She set the list back down.

Arlong closed the door and approached her. "Kuroobi may be a warrior first, but he respects other professions. It does make me wonder what you are capable of producing if you had the space."

“Various things. Some medicines, if I know the chemical formula or plant extract. Antiseptics. Oils for perfumes or foods. Preserving or pickling produce. Often, what I make is based on what’s locally available or in demand.”

“Weaponry?” He saw her stiffen at that, but she didn’t say no. He smirked at that. “Fireworks, explosives?” he inquired with a small grin. Silence met him, and he grinned at her. “No need to be modest,” he said with a small laugh. This should be fun...

o0o0o0o

Over the last couple of weeks, she'd simply taken the time to familiarize herself with the ship and crew, and their captain. She'd gone from being a widow living with her stepdaughter to being the lover of a pirate captain and the only woman on a ship full of men. If there was one thing that could be said about past experiences, it was that it left her more prepared for the latest upheaval in her life.

Arlong was in many ways still an enigma to her. Open enough he was about his desire for her, and he was eager enough to lecture her on fishman history and culture, but when it came to the last decade of his life, he would clam up, or offer scant information and though no one had said it, it'd become apparent that the sharkman also told his crew to not talk about it, either.

It left her no less curious about whatever had happened to Arlong and his crew. She sat there in the bed, savoring the last few minutes of warmth she would have under the blankets with Arlong’s residual body heat before she got up for the day. As she did, she watched him take a bottle from a chest and decided that she wasn’t going to be silent again.

Arlong drank a lot. Powerful fishman he might be, that much alcohol would take its toll on him in due time. She called out his name softly, and he turned to her, his hand on the cork of the bottle.

“Do you really need to drink that?” she asked. He stared at her for a moment.

“Why do you ask?”

"I just… noticed that you drink a lot. In the morning, with lunch, after dinner..."

“What of it? You think to be like a scolding, nagging wife and forbidding me from drinking?” he snapped.

She rolled her eyes at that. “No, Arlong. I enjoy a good drink now and then. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned for you.”

He glanced at the bottle in his hand before looking at her again. Their gazes locked.

-Bitterness, hate, fear, wariness, shame, guilt, regret-

She held out her hand to him. He moved close, wrapping her hand in his large one as he stood at the side of the bed, looking down at her. "Such a sweet little siren," he rumbled as he let go of her hand and reached out to lift her chin. He was wearing a pair of pants but hadn't put on a shirt yet. She reached out to touch his chest.

“It’s easy to seek refuge in drugs or alcohol. I understand it,” she said softly. “But you don’t want it to become a crutch.” She wrapped her hands around his wrist, giving it a gentle squeeze and feeling his hand flex, fingers twitching against her chin. “Do you at least think you can wait until dinner? Save the drinking for when everyone is having fun tonight.”

“If I’m not having a drink this morning, what do I do then?” he challenged.

“Read a book? Play a game? Go for a swim?” she replied lightly. He snorted at that before a smirk spread across his face, and the grip under her chin tightened by a fraction.

“I see a pleasant distraction right here,” he purred hungrily. She slid her palms along his wrist and forearm, feeling the sharkskin. It was nothing like she’d ever felt before, and Arlong had made it clear through his physical responses if not his words how much he liked it when she ran her hands along him. Her hands trailed down to her elbow before circling back to his wrist. Sometimes it simply boggled her how thick his biceps were, or how large his hands were compared to her own.

"If it will help you feel better, Arlong." His hungry gaze did arouse her, but she also felt the instinct as his siren to soothe away his pain.

“Mmm. Good.” He started unbuttoning his pants. “Let’s see how you do with that pretty mouth of yours.”

She’d used her hands on him, just as he had for her, but she knew eventually the subject of oral pleasure would come up. Fine, she was willing to oblige, but she wouldn’t let him get in the habit of using her in any way he saw fit – at least not without reciprocation. She looked at his cocks, already semi-hard as he opened the front of his pants.

“That hardly seems fair,” she commented as she sat there on the bed. “After all, you have two of these. And I only have one of this…” She lifted the hem of the nightshirt, revealing a pair of striped panties. She was gratified to see his cocks twitch at that. “I doubt there’s a man alive – or dead – who would turn down the chance to receive some head. But I have needs, too.”

Arlong narrowed his eyes, staring down at her challengingly. She smirked back at him, refusing to back down. “Come now. Out of the two of us, I’d say I have more work to do in that department than you. Don’t I deserve pleasure, too?”

His lips stretched into a grin, and she felt a glimmer of uncertainty. Did she want these teeth at her snatch? Or his nose anywhere near that vicinity? Well… what was it they said? Fortune favors the bold… though was this too bold?

Her heart thudded in anticipation as they stared at one another, his cocks out and throbbing, and her pussy aching at the sight of Arlong aroused for her.

“You think to give your captain orders?” he asked with a low growl. She nodded slowly, maintaining eye contact.

“Right now… you’re not my captain. You’re my sharkman. My mate.”

o0o0o0o

My sharkman. My mate. Her words echoed through Arlong’s mind as he looked down at her. Her wavy hair was rumpled from sleep and her nightshirt was old, many washings having caused its original colors to fade. But she still looked pretty damn fuckable. He noted that her nipples were poking against the material of her nightshirt.

With a soft growl, he reached down, tugging her panties off and tossing them to the floor, hearing her squeal of surprise. He grinned down at her.

"You asked for this, siren." With that, he pushed her back onto the bed so she was lying down before sliding a hand below her lower back, lifting her hips as her pajamas bunched below her breasts. It was quite a nice view, he mused to himself, the morning light casting a gentle glow on her as she lay there, open for him. With his other hand, he slid a finger and then another into her, hearing her sigh in pleasure as she wiggled around. She lifted her legs, draping them across his shoulders as he lowered his mouth, his nose resting lightly on her stomach.

He’d tasted her on his fingers, but the source was much sweeter. He growled into her as his tongue joined his fingers, and she let out a shuddering gasp. Grinning at this, he would growl into her at intervals, enjoying the effect the vibrations from his throat had on her.

"Arlong…" she groaned, wiggling her hips as he flicked his tongue across her clit. "Oh, fuck… please…" As he intensified his attention, she rocked her hips against his face, and he let out a few loud snarls, feeling her shudder against him every time he did so. She lifted her pajamas higher, massaging one of her breasts and sliding along her stomach with one hand, giving him something to watch while her other hand went on his head, fingers tangling into the mess of thick black locks.

She ended up with a few scrapes along her lower stomach from his nose because of how she bucked against him as she approached, and went over the edge, but he didn't hear any complaints when she gingerly examined herself afterward. He licked the slick off his lips, remembering how her most intimate parts quivered as he massaged her clit while licking her clean.

"My turn," Arlong reminded her, his cocks aching for her. He'd rocked himself against the bed while eating her out but held himself from cumming onto the sheets.

"Impatient, are you?" she asked with a lopsided grin. He sat back on the bed, gesturing to his groin, giving her an imperious stare. She chuckled softly at that but offered no further comment as she settled herself between his legs, looking down at his claspers with arousal and a touch of nervousness.

“All for you, my siren,” he rumbled. He ached for her, and his cocks twitched under her gaze, oozing several drops of precum.

She started on the one that was closest to her. He was so big she couldn’t fit it all in her mouth, but her effort was admirable. A deep snarl of satisfaction purred from him as he felt that hot mouth and tongue work around him as he occasionally shifted his hips, feeling her use a free hand to trail her nails along his stomach, something that he found more stimulating than he would have expected.

She alternated between the two cocks, sucking and pumping and occasionally reaching down to massage his sac while he watched, growling encouragement to her. He rested his hand on the top of her head, his head lolling back as he lost himself in the pleasures that her mouth and hands had to offer him.

One load shot down her throat as he moaned her name, and he gripped his other cock as he stared at her with half-lidded eyes, jerking himself off so the second load splattered onto her cheek and chin. True, cum could easily be cleaned off while the bite marks were considerably longer-lasting, but it still thrilled him to see her with the evidence of his passion on her face.

“My siren,” he growled, sitting up and leaning over her so he could admire his handiwork while she blushed. “Such a pretty sight you are.”

She smirked at that, maintaining her dignity as she rose to her feet, looking down at him. “I know I am going to fondly remember the sight of you between my legs, your nose on my stomach,” she shot back. He growled at her playfully and pulled her into his lap, showing her that he wasn’t quite done with her.

o0o0o0o

Back in the good old Arlong Park days, the fishmen were mostly free to do as they pleased in the villages where Arlong had extracted tribute. This included taking pets from the humans, because if Arlong could have a pet human, why couldn't his fellow fishmen? So tribute money was not the only thing extracted from the villages Arlong kept an iron grip on, and Nami was not the only human kept by the fishmen, though she was the one who'd been kept the longest. Unlike many of the other humans that caught the attention of a fishman, Nami had never been called upon for that sort of service.

Yolande was quite unlike Nami, her noises made it evident what Arlong used her for, though he made a fair amount of noise as well, the cacophony penetrating the walls of Arlong’s cabin when he really went at it. I do like hearing my siren sing for me, especially when she’s trying to not make any noise, Arlong had admitted a few nights ago while drinking with his crew, giving out a lewd chortle as he did so after one of the other fishmen commented on the screaming they’d heard earlier.

She’d been out of earshot when the captain made that remark, which was probably a good thing, Chew mused dryly as he slurped up some of the ramen that was the offering for today’s breakfast.

Unlike Kuroobi, Chew did believe in sirens. He remembered his mother telling him about them, and hearing about them again as he got older. He'd known Arlong long enough – and seen Arlong with a few girls back on Fishman Island – to see that the gleam in Arlong's eyes when he looked at Yolande was more than mere infatuation. He never imagined that he'd see a fishman and his siren, but here it was. He wondered what it might be like to have a siren of his own.

He stepped outside of the mess hall for some fresh air, bracing as the cold air hit his face. A knit cap sat on his head, a fortuitous find after the capture and ransacking of this ship. Even after several months of drifting through the cooler parts of the South Blue, Chew was certain he’d never truly get used to the cold. The Conomi Islands seemed almost like a dream sometimes.

"Hey, you all right?" he heard Yolande say. He turned to her and regarded her with a cool gaze. His head was pounding with one of his migraines, and he was grateful that the clouds were thick and gray because if it'd been sunny, it would have felt like the light was stabbing into his eyes. Fucking big-nosed kid and his hammer.

His first instinct was to brush her away and tell her he was fine.

“My head hurts,” he said instead. She was a nurse after all, wasn’t she?

“Is it a headache or migraine?”

“What’s the difference?” he shot back. She asked several questions about his headache and health, and he answered them.

“I suffer from migraines too, and I have medication that can help you if you’re willing to give it a try.”

His cool facade cracked as he stared at her with surprise and interest. She gave him a smile before retreating from his side, returning several minutes later with a small bottle in her hand. She held it up so he could read the label so he knew what he was taking.

“Take one pill with some water. This makes me drowsy and it might do the same for you, so be sure to square off a few hours for rest. If it turns out to work for you, I’ll provide you with more, okay?”

Chew stared down at the pill in his hand. He remembered hearing Yolande’s voice the first time she came onto the ship. He’d been feverish, and in his delirium, could not help but recall the time he’d been sick as a young boy, and how his mother had hovered over him, taking care of him.

She’d died less than a year after that, and with no family members available or willing to take care of him, he’d ended up in the slums, where he fell in with Arlong and the others.

He got some water from the mess hall and took the pill before doing as she instructed and taking a nap before joining the crew for dinner.

“Hey, how do you feel?” he heard her ask. He turned toward her, knowing that if not for the pill, he’d likely be feeling like shit and that could have lasted into tomorrow if his luck was being especially shitty.

“The pain’s gone.” He stared at her for several moments, before adding a quick “thank you.”

She beamed at him. “I’m happy to hear that, and you’re very welcome.” Arlong called her away to sit next to him, and Chew got himself some food and sat down with several other fishmen. He wanted to dismiss her attitude as a facade, a forced cheeriness for her job or some such, but he had the feeling that she was sincerely happy to see he was better. He remembered how relieved and happy his mother had been when he’d recovered from the sea-pox after several terrifying and uncertain days and nights. He’d only been five when she died, so there wasn’t much he remembered, but he did remember the warmth in his mother’s eyes and touch.

o0o0o0o

Yolande drifted in the direction of Arlong's cabin, wanting to read and rest for a bit before it was time to help Hatchan with the evening meal. If she wasn't with Arlong or spending time by herself, she often found her way to the kitchen. She was by no means a chef, but she knew well enough to make a basic dish tasty, and she might not have six hands, but Hatchan welcomed her help in the kitchen nonetheless. He was happy enough to answer her questions about fishman culture and Fishman Island. It was a far cry from the World Government-provided textbooks she remembered from her childhood and the scant – but condescending words – offered about non-humans in these texts.

As she drifted down the hallway to the cabin, she paused as she heard Kuroobi’s voice. It appeared that the door had swung open a little again. It was something she’d noticed a few times, and one had to be firm in pulling the door shut for it to stay that way. Something about the doorjamb, she presumed, but carpentry wasn’t a trade she had tried her hand at yet.

She stood there in the shadows, seeing light from Arlong’s room cutting its way across the floor in the dim hallway.

"Are we just supposed to drift forever? I know we're supposed to be in hiding, but at some point, a decision has to be made," she heard Chew say.

Some grumbling from Arlong that she couldn't make out, then Hatchan spoke up. "Perhaps we could go to the New World."

“There’s a reason why we chose the East Blue in the first place, chu.”

She closed her eyes. The New World. East Blue. Twenty years since she’d been in the East Blue, and even longer since the New World...

“There could be uncharted islands. I mean, we’re fishmen, it shouldn’t be too hard finding a new island, especially a small one,” Hatchan pointed out.

“As long as we’re out of this freezing hell,” Kuroobi growled. She pressed her lips together to stifle a laugh.

“We are fishmen, so perhaps we do some plundering before we do that. Amass a bigger ship and more resources. I’ve heard more than once that you do not want to go through the New World ill-prepared. Even if we decide on something else, we do need a bigger and better ship,” Chew argued.

She was so intent on staying quiet that she did not react until it was too late when Kuroobi stepped in front of the door, cutting off the light. She yelped quietly as his hand wrapped around her upper arm in an iron grip, and she was dragged before Arlong after Kuroobi slammed the door shut.

“See, I told you,” Kuroobi said in an accusatory tone as he glanced at the captain.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything. I simply came to the cabin to rest, and the door was already open,” she explained as she tried to pull away.

“Let her go,” Arlong ordered. She took a deep breath and straightened herself, looking at the captain. “How much did you hear?”

“Chew asking if you were going to drift.”

“Mmm.” Arlong seemed relieved at that. What had they been talking about before? What was the crew not telling her?

“What are you running from? What happened in the East Blue?”

Arlong stared at her, and she wondered if this was one of these times he would say he didn’t want to talk about it. The other fishmen looked at him.

“I, along with my nakama, created a haven for fishmen on an island, where we might enjoy life on land. However, humans took it away from us and drove us out, and others attempted to enslave us.”

It was the truth. But not all of it. She wondered if she should press the issue. Hachi was fiddling his fingers together nervously. Hmm, perhaps not.

“All right. That explains a lot. I’m sorry that happened to you. Chew’s not wrong, you can’t drift forever. Well, unless that’s the kind of lifestyle you’re looking for, but it’s not, isn’t it?”

“What do you think we should do?” Hatchan asked. She gave out a nervous laugh.

“The New World can be rewarding, but it also has risks. Ultimately though, I think the decision rests with Arlong. This is your crew, not mine, and you know them a lot better than I do. The only thing I object to is unnecessary dangers or risks, I’m sure you understand that.”

“It’s reasonable,” Chew put in. “We’ve been through enough.” He gave his captain a pointed glance. Arlong regarded him coolly before returning his attention to her.

“This will require some consideration,” he finally said.

o0o0o0o

Hatchan was in the kitchen, setting things up to cook for the evening meal. He turned to see Kuroobi slide into the mess hall.

“Would you like something now?” the octopus man asked. Kuroobi shook his head as he stood in the doorway that sat between the mess hall and the kitchen.

"You are a curious man, Hatchan. You are my nakama and we have known one another for so long. When you left us, I did not want you to go, but Arlong thought it best. You are back with us now, having seen further proof of the prejudice humans have against fishmen, but you still defend them."

Hatchan held back a wince. He longed to tell his nakama about his time at Sabaody, but that would mean telling them about his involvement with the Straw Hats.

“I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, there are good humans,” Hatchan said calmly, refusing to let Kuroobi intimidate him. “Yes, there’s bad ones, but also good ones, too. I’m not going to hate a whole group based on the actions of some. That would make me no better than the humans who hate all fishmen.”

“Nami betrayed us,” Kuroobi said curtly, nudging the subject in another direction.

“You know what Arlong did was wrong. Maybe if he had treated her better, he might still have his park.”

“Hachi, you have always been too soft to humans. Look at what happens when you try to make friends with them,”

“That’s not the point and you know it. Things have changed. I’ve gotten older and wiser. Whatever was done to fishmen in the past, Nami had no part of it. She was an innocent child that got swept up in all of this. She only wanted the freedom of her village. She’s moved on to better things.”

Kuroobi glanced at him sharply. Hatchan quickly realized his mistake. “I just mean, she had the Straw Hats. And her village got its freedom. Yeah, I miss Arlong Park, too. But I really hope that we can move on to something better, too. You’re my nakama.”

Kuroobi relaxed, if only by a fraction. “I do want better than this.”

Hatchan smiled before he noticed Yolande and Shioyaki enter the mess hall. They were here to help him with dinner. Kuroobi turned to see her and regarded the pair with a curt nod before retreating. Hatchan saw a flicker of sadness on her face before she entered the kitchen, pulling on an apron and washing her hands.

A ship full of hungry fishmen was a daunting prospect for any cook, even one with his experience and extra limbs, and the Commander of Banquets had practical skills to put to use, especially since there wasn’t much occasion – or room – for the parties that used to be held at Arlong Park.

Shioyaki was also one of the fishmen more willing to accept Yolande as the newest member of the crew. Kuroobi wasn’t the only one who seemed unable to look past her mixed heritage, so Arlong’s siren welcomed all the friends she could get.

“Do you have any funny story for us today?” Shioyaki asked as he chopped some vegetables. Yolande frowned thoughtfully before she grinned.

“Okay… here we go. This is the story of Little Kato and Big Kato.

… Once upon a time, in a village lived two men who had the same name, Kato. To tell them apart, the one who only owned one horse was referred to as Little Kato, and the other one, who owned four horses, was known as Big Kato.

Little Kato would sometimes borrow Big Kato's horses to plow his field. While doing so, he would refer to all five of the horses as his. Big Kato caught wind of this and angrily corrected him, telling him to not do it again. Little Kato did it again the next time, so Big Kato killed Little Kato's horse.

Little Kato could do nothing but skin the horse and place it in a sack so he could sell it at the marketplace. That evening, he came across a farm and asked for a place to sleep, but the farmer’s wife would not let him in but told him he could sleep out back. Kato didn’t want to sleep in an open space so he settled under the window, and since the weather was so nice, the wife left it open.

As he lay there in the grass trying to get some rest, he overheard her being visited by the village magistrate, who was bitter rivals with her husband as their sarcastic comments about the farmer revealed. When the farmer came home, she hid all the good food, and the magistrate hid in a chest.

Seeing Little Kato trying to make himself comfortable, the kind-hearted farmer invited him to spend the night. The wife had only gruel for the farmer and the unwanted guest. Little Kato convinced the couple that in his sack was a wizard, and that the wizard had filled the oven with good food and wine for them.

It was where the wife had hidden the meal she was sharing with the magistrate. The farmer asked to see the wizard, but little Kato demurred, saying the wizard would lose his power if people laid their eyes upon him. However, the wizard was perfectly happy to put the farmer’s greatest enemy at his mercy, for a bit of gold.

Kato then pointed to the chest, telling him that the magistrate was in it. The wife threw herself down at Kato's feet, afraid of what else the wizard might do, and confessed her affair with the magistrate. With a grieving heart, the farmer told Kato to take the chest and the gold. The young man took the chest and gold, but after a while, it started to feel quite heavy for him and his arm ached from dragging it along the road.

He stopped at a bridge to rest, and kicked the chest, talking to himself about how the rest of his journey would be much easier if he dumped the chest into the river. The magistrate pleaded for him to not do that, and if he unlocked the chest, he’d give Little Kato all the money he had on him.

Now with a good-sized purse of gold, Little Kato returned home. Big Kato asked how he had gotten hold of such wealth, and Little Kato told him that he had sold his horse's skin. Big Kato killed his own horses and tried to sell them, but when he asked for the same amount of money Little Kato got, the tanners beat him.

Little Kato’s grandmother died, and the young man put her in his bed as a last sign of respect before she was to be taken away. Big Kato, bitter at the loss of his four fine horses, slipped into the house in the dark of night and brought his axe down on the old woman’s corpse, believing it to be Little Kato.

Little Kato took his grandmother in the wagon the next day to bury her. At the inn, he told the ill-tempered innkeeper that his grandmother was relaxing in the wagon and to bring her a glass of wine, but that she was deaf, so to be sure to shout at her.

The innkeeper came to the wagon where she was propped in a seated position, offering her the wine. He shouted at her several times and when she didn't respond, he hit her on the nose, causing the woman to fall over. Little Kato burst from the inn, accusing the innkeeper of killing his grandmother, pointing to the hole in her head that had been caused by the axe.

Realizing the misfortune that would befall him if he did not take responsibility, the innkeeper offered to bury her as if she were his own family, as well as a purse of money for his silence. Little Kato went on his way, now even richer.

Upon seeing that Little Kato was alive, Big Kato visited him to see what happened. Little Kato convinced the other man that he simply sold his dead grandmother’s corpse.

Big Kato killed his grandmother and attempted to sell her corpse several times, and the terrible crime came to light. His reputation tarnished, Big Kato stuffed Little Kato into a sack to carry him to the river and drown him.

He passed a temple and went inside to pray before doing this deed, leaving the sack near the street. An old man with his cattle passed by, and he heard Little Kato whining about how he was not meant to die when he was so young.

The cowherd told him that he was so old but still couldn't go to heaven. Little Kato convinced him to take his place in the sack so that his way to heaven could be hastened. Little Kato promised to take good care of his cattle and went off. Big Kato reclaimed his sack, none the wiser, and threw the sack into the river, certain that his problems would finally be over.

On his way home, much to his shock and horror, he saw Little Kato cheerfully come up the path with some cattle. Little Kato told him that the sack landed at the bottom of the river and a mermaid promised him a herd of cattle if he would give her a kiss.

Big Kato fell for Little Kato's stories once again and asked Little Kato to tie him up in a sack and toss him into the river, even adding a heavy stone to the sack to make sure he reached the bottom.

No one ever saw Big Kato again, and Little Kato lived comfortably for the rest of his days...”

“Haha!” Shioyaki said with a laugh. “I think the story would have been better if Little Kato was a fishman, though,” he added dryly.

She raised her eyebrow at that. "Hmm... the story could be reworked like that."

The salmon fishman smirked at that. “So you have a collection of these stories eh?”

"I pick them up here and there. Some I get from sailors or merchants, like I did with these limericks. Others I read from books or hear from friends. It never hurts to have a few tales and jokes in your social repertoire," she said with a chuckle. It was amazing what one could learn just by listening or digging around in old books. She'd learned so much in life and knew there was even more to discover.

And sharing these amusing bits often served as a good icebreaker, as she’d learned early on in her life. Make others laugh, put them at ease around you. It didn’t always work, but it did often enough for her to keep it in her repertoire if hiding wasn’t an option.

o0o0o0o

“Humans drove us from the home we created for ourselves, and to flee them, we had to enter this cold hell,” Arlong snarled, taking a swig of his drink as several fishmen called out in agreement. “Hiding from humans and licking our wounds, when we are the superior race!”

The recent discussion he’d had with his nakama helped him make a decision. They’d drifted long enough and had the time to recover from their wounds.

“We will make a place for ourselves in this world. And the first step is a newer and better ship. I don’t doubt many of you remember the magnificent Shark Superb. What a fine vessel it was…”

There were murmurs of agreement as several bottles or tankards lifted into the air. Arlong grinned. “What do you say we get a better ship?”

Cheers met these words. As well as when he announced they would be turning northward, into warmer waters.

A platter of various cuts of beef as well as gyoza was brought to him along with sauce to dip it in. He let out a wondering hum as he tasted the spicy sweetness on his tongue after dipping some beef into the sauce. Where did this flavor come from?

“Is this one of your surprises, Hachi?” he asked. The octopus man blinked and shook his head before pointing out Yolande, who was sitting at one of the tables with Take and Shioyaki. He called her over, and she rose from the seat, approaching him.

“This sauce, I am told you made it. What is it?”

“Sweet hot sauce, my personal recipe.” She stood there as he stared at her. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail and like most of the others here, she was clad in something with long sleeves, in this case a thin sweater. He idly wondered how she’d look in beach gear. A nice little two-piece that showed off her cute gills and firm ass would be pleasing, he mused. And he’d be better able to admire the bounce of her tits or the sway of her hips when she wasn’t so covered up. He pulled his thoughts back to the present moment, licking some sauce off his finger as he looked at her.

“I’ve had that type of sauce before, but never this good.”

“You’re too kind.” She looked down, and he reached out with a hand, grabbing her arm and pulling her to his side.

“Sirens are said to sing, but I think the crew will be happy with your sauce, hm?”

“I would prefer to use my chemistry skills for this than weapons,” she whispered. He narrowed his eyes before making a soft tutting sound.

“It would be a shame to not make use of your skills when the opportunity arises. After all, we will be getting a bigger ship in due time, and you can be sure we will need to defend ourselves, hmm?”

His grip tightened. She frowned and took a deep breath but like before only offered silence as she stared past his shoulder. He smirked before returning his attention to his meal.

o0o0o0o

The story of Little Kato and Big Kato has been borrowed from the tale of Little and Big Klaus (sometimes spelled Claus) a Danish story collected by Hans Christian Andersen and then featured in Andrew Lang’s Color Fairy books.

As always, reviews and feedback are very much listened to and appreciated.

[swaps55]

I've been thinking about you a lot today and just hoping things are going okay. I'm still so sorry for your loss.

I really appreciate this. Thank you for the note. <3

It sucks. There's probably something more eloquent I could say, but it just...sucks.

It's so surreal to have your own world rocked and then watch the rest of the world just...continue like everything is normal. And you have to keep doing normal things. I'll think of something and burst into tears at my keyboard while writing up text for a proposal and answering an email from a coworker. Such a bizarre liminal space to be in.

I've lost people in my life, but never one with such a strong digital footprint. It's a gift in a lot of ways. I can read back through her blog. I can scroll back through Discord. I can listen to her Spotify music, read her fic. I'm so grateful I liveblogged a lot of multiplayer adventures, because some of those shenanigans are still there for me to look back on. But right now I'm just so fucking sad that her digital spaces are now a memorial to her, not something living and breathing and changing and...continuing.

One of the songs on her memorial playlist is Vigil from Mass Effect. A while back I saw a post that describes that track as like getting a hug from someone you'll never see again, and I feel that in my bones.

[misailurist]

State of the Fanfiction

Wanted to talk a bit about fanfics I wrote back in the day and plans for the future. tldr: it's (almost) all weird-ass Simeon Saint rarepairs

Eight years ago, I wrote Simon Says, a way-too-long story about Simon Blackquill's time in prison... which quickly became focused on him dating/breaking up with Simon Keyes. There had been some interest in that pairing, and I liked it myself, but keeping them together felt antithetical to the story's overall message of "Blackquill is OK now and has learned to stop martyring himself for others," and also I not-so-secretly think messy breakups are more fun than successful romances. So that's what I did. Despite that, I'd had a lot of notes at the time about what a sequel might look like, where Keyes got out of prison and had his own redemption arc and became the kind of boyfriend who wouldn't destroy Blackquill's life. But when it came to actually write it, I decided that redemption arcs were boring, scrapped it all, and started working on my bonkers Keyes/Phantom fic where literally the only reason behind the pairing choice was, "Phantom is about as emotionally functional as an animal, so I bet Keyes could train him into being his dog." I wrote two chapters and then wandered away from fandom entirely to try being a functional adult for a while. Now, a whole ass time skip later, being a functional adult sucks ass and AAI2 finally got localized, so here I am again. I ended up reading all my own fanfic -- do you know that if enough years pass, you'll forget enough of what you wrote that reading your own fics feels like finding a new favorite author who made a bunch of shit just for you? Do recommend. And in those fics, I found three stories where I were mad that they hadn't been finished. Did you know that if you're your own new favorite author, you are now burdened with the knowledge that unfinished fics won't be updated unless YOU, YOURSELF update them? Awful. Terrible. Do not recommend. The three fics were: 1. Just Fake it. My post-bad-end Blackbright fic. I should go to jail for not finishing that. (On the bright side, it's what made me hyper-vigilant about backing up my writing, which is why I have the remnants of all the stories on this list at all.) I would like to finish it but I am in the middle of replaying the games and don't want to touch it until I've replayed Dual Destinies. (I am currently on...... Turnabout Big Top. Sigh.) 2. Impostor Syndrome. The aforementioned Keyes/Phantom fic, which I have updated with the new localized names so it is now a Saint/Phantom fic. Although it is currently just "the meandering post-prison adventures of Simeon Saint" fic because I am completely, utterly making this shit up as I go and haven't gotten to the shipping part yet. Does anyone want to read this but me? Trick question, I don't care. I'm basically in a fugue state right now and I don't think I could stop if I wanted. Also we are T-minus-two-chapters to where there will, in fact, be some actual for real Saint/Phantom shipping, so idk hang in there. 3. Simon, Horace, and Miles. The "what if there were no IS-7" AU. This one sucks actually. But I still love the idea of it. There's meat there. But the whole thing needs to be scrapped and restarted from the ground up. Something to consider once Impostor Syndrome is out of my system. Also I would rewrite it to be properly soutamitsu. That's a pairing the world needs more of, damn it. Also I lied, there's a secret fourth one that I never posted anywhere publicly: 4. Fabulous! A Simeon Saint/Max Galactica smut fic I started and then remembered I don't like writing smut. But the setup was pretty good so maybe I'll try again to finish it???

[seafoamchild]

i had another panic attack yesterday in the car on the way to the cacao farm. i'm not totally sure why. i just got super hot and starting sweating uncontrollably, felt tingling in my limbs, my whole body was clammy, and i thought i was going to be sick. i had to close my eyes even though we were driving through beautiful countryside and i wanted to see the landscape. i just kept telling myself that i'm in an adult body now and i don't have to be scared, i am safe.

examining my own psyche and confronting my past traumas has been a lonely experience. i feel isolated as i uncover the effects trauma has had on me. i know my pain is not unique, but it's a painful process to face things that have caused me so much anguish. i did not get to feel safe in my home while growing up. i had a volatile father prone to unpredictable and uncontrollable fits of rage, a mother who never stood up to him and made it our responsibility to "keep him happy", and a brother who was physically and psychologically abusive to me. i spent YEARS in hyper-vigilant fight-or-flight mode whenever i was around my family. i knew there was something wrong, but i always thought there was something wrong with ME, not my family.

i've been reading a lot about Complex PTSD and emotional flashbacks. it makes a lot more sense for what i've been experiencing. my mood swings always felt like something deeper than just depression or anxiety, but i could never quite figure out why i felt so bad, and why i felt so bad about my own existence in particular.

this article by Pete Walker resonated deeply with me. he writes about emotional flashbacks being "sudden and often prolonged regressions to the frightening and abandoned feeling-states of childhood... Typically they manifest as intense and confusing episodes of fear, toxic shame, and/or despair".

he also writes "toxic shame obliterates an individual's self-esteem with an overpowering sense that she is as worthless, stupid, contemptible or fatally flawed, as she was viewed by her original caregivers. Toxic shame inhibits the individual from seeking comfort and support, and in a reenactment of the childhood abandonment she is flashing back to, isolates her in an overwhelming and humiliating sense of defectiveness... When stuck in this state, they often polarize affectively into intense self-hate and self disgust, and cognitively into extreme and virulent self-criticism".

"Ongoing experience convinces me that some children respond to pervasive emotional neglect and abandonment by over-identifying or even merging their identity with the inner critic and adopting an intense form of perfectionism that triggers them into painful abandonment flashbacks every time they are less than perfect or perfectly pleasing".

i never knew about emotional flashbacks until recently, and i feel a sense of relief reading about them because that is precisely what i feel has been going on for all these years. i do ONE THING wrong and all of a sudden i can feel my heart sinking because i have once again proven myself to be a worthless, pointless waste of life who can't do anything right and doesn't deserve respect from anyone, much less love. i deserve to be hated, ridiculed, and abandoned. that's what my inner critic tells me.

it's a message from my inner child, letting me know that my wounds still haven't healed. i numbed my emotions as a child, and did not understand what was going on. but the emotions are still there, swelling up within me, begging to be addressed. what i really needed was for someone to tell me my emotions were valid, i was good enough just the way i was, that my needs were important too.

this process makes me tired because i just want to shut it all out and keep distracting myself with busyness and substances, but i won't. i wrote this down, for starters!

[sylvaridreams]

I cut out some off topic chatter and fixed a couple typos but otherwise this is copy paste from discord, followed by some more from just me. Diving into Alba, his status as a leader and symbolic figure, his relationships with friends and lovers, and his relationship with himself.

(Long post ahead.)

Dama: tbqh i'm wondering how much longer his relationship with canach can or will last.... they love each other but the conditions keep getting more and more strained it feels like. now alba's vanished again…

Sage: I was wondering that too actually like. Wondering how strong it can last, esp since things were pretty separate for eod and haven't exactly gotten better since

Dama: canach maybe tries to find him during this... like alba was notably in the grove, giving interviews, canach tries to get ahold of him (maybe they had plans for later) and alba just never responds or shows up. stands him up and canach's like ok. well i can wait, he's probably having one of his moments.

Dama: and then weeks pass and nothing.

Dama: and then months. at some point he has to assume alba's either dead or just moved on.

Dama: letters not only being ignored but coming back return to sender. 🧍‍♂️ like "unable to locate" kind of shit

Dama: it's not like anyone else in what was once dragon's watch knows where he is either

Sage: The only one you'd be able to rely on to track him down is honestly MEISI. And..well.

Dama: my god Ivan is literally the last person who talked to him isn't he (editing note: I don't think Alba even speaks when Zojja uses his comms to call Taimi later.)

Dama: and then these demons start cropping up all over the world and its like. god. things look grim enough with just that but it appears the commander has either died or just left. and he's known for just leaving, and he's also known for doing things to put himself in danger, so. after some time canach probably just... finishes the grieving he's already started years ago, and tries to move on

Dama: i think it would hit alba hard if canach just moved on. 🧍‍♂️ a real blow to the chest.

Sage: The commnach economy is in fucking shambles

Dama: because in HIS head they're a sure thing possibly forever.... yeah i was away for a few months doing wizard shit why would you just assume i was dead?

Dama: "you didn't write me" well i. i. didn't think it would reach you.

Sage: And away for a year before that because of the tiger. And -

Dama: at some point i think canach wouldn't be willing to take him back either. at least not right now. work on yourself a bit man.

Dama: take care of yourself so you don't hurt the next person to fall in love with you.

Sage: Albas fucked up and struggling but canach is allowed to be and feel hurt because good lord.

Dama: canach has been a good sport about it for a long time but he made it clear when they started dating-dating and not just fooling around that he had his own issues and that he had boundaries and limits to what he could help with or tolerate or be around. and alba has pushed those limits almost non stop

Sage: ALBA YOU IDIOT YOU LOST THE 10/10 CACTUS

Dama: (in game screenshot reading…

Alba Moonseeker: Does what make me angry?

Peitha: The fact that everyone doesn't immediately bathe in your excellence.)

Sage: Hope how casual and informally indifferent meisi is with him now on average helps.

Dama: WHY ARENT YOU BATHING IN HIS EXCELLENCE MEISI :cry2:

Sage: Hes been there for it all it wasn't excellent

Sage: Meisis been there for it all from.a little sapling in the vigil to dragons dying to morning a charred corpse on a plateau. He respects alba, he loves alba, he had a crush on him a fuckin millenia ago. But hes never, will never deify alba.

Sage: Even among dragons watch hes a rare gaze that Just Sees a Person.

Dama: a person who can be incredibly shitty as a friend sometimes, lbr

Dama: his "I'd save the village" ass. Liar.

Sage: Probably doesn't even know one of meisis partners might die /s

Sage: Again. Meisi stays. Its more of a headache and a chore than a friendship the last few years but. If his presence does anything to help stabilize alba it is likely worth it. Even for what he has/hasn't done meisi doesn't think he deserves cutoff isolation

Dama: no but fr does he ask meisi how things are, does he take an interest in these things, or is it all take and very little give from him much of the time? you have to tell alba something's up for him to inquire about it, he won't go seeking you out to check on you.... case in point, zojja post-maguuma. his little "i would have loved to have seen her" was such bullshit to me. what stopped you buddy? never once did he Try to go find her. does he know one of meisi's partners might die... probably not, or he doesn't know the full extent of it. i don't think it's a lack of interest in people or anything, i don't think it's fully intentional, but i do think he's kind of selfish and self centered and zoomed in on his own stuff. being a hero. being THE hero.

Dama: "I'd save the village." but you don't know who any of the villagers are beyond the surface level "villager" title. you don't ask how they are. and meanwhile the dragon's champion is razing the next village over because you had to pat yourself on the back again.

Sage: Hes so focused on saving the world hes lost connection with it

Dama: i think at his base alba is a lonely person because he does things to keep himself alone. and that's why he's perfect for heroics and perfect for the pedestals that he gets lifted up onto. the commander, the hero of tyria and amnoon and cantha, the wayfinder. pinning titles to his lapels like war trophies. meanwhile he doesn't know the most base things about his closest friends. doesnt know Zeeki's dying, doesn't know almost anything about Bourbon's backstory, he only knows so much about Auruim because Auru is loud and pushy about rubbing alba's face in things. Thiiyf had to walk away from the Pact, she could have stayed by his side into Lws3 and beyond but she couldn't stand to be involved with him any longer knowing how limited her time was.

Dama: he sees his friends as not caring about him when the world doesn't need saving, well? do you care about your friends? ever?

Dama: dragon's watch is basically defunct with soo won gone -- yeah and i bet these people still make an effort to keep in contact and share things from their lives while he runs around getting hurt and being miserable and bemoaning that no one needs the commander. i love him so much god

Dama: bottom line I think that the guild and others "only reach out when the world needs saving" because. alba doesn't care unless the world needs saving.

Dama: it would be such a funny (not funny) gut punch for him to see how much everyone has moved forward in their personal lives and still stayed connected while he was. doing what? whatever. like he felt like such an outsider with the wizards and all, these guys all know each other and he's just some random from Tyria... but he doesn't know his friends either.

Dama: he's a stranger to them too.

Dama: I think he went to Rama's party primarily because he was desperate and hoping that someone would drop a big adventure on the table for the guild to go conquer as a team.

Dama: i would find it so funny if the next time he sees someone from dragon's watch they showed up with a kid and he's like haha whose baby is this then and they're like ??? commander this is my daughter....? i wrote you a letter when she was born, didn't you... read it? and everyone's quietly uncomfortable because of COURSE he didn't.

Sage: Its sad to think that *meisi* is probably more knowledgeable about what deidre means to Auru god d a m n.

Dama: of course he is, Meisi takes an actual interest in Auruim.

Alba is overall a man desperate for approval and love. He's a bad friend and lover because he only cares when the stakes are world ending, and people don't seem to care about or like him much because Alba doesn't care about or like himself. He's unable to wrap his head around a trolley problem like "would you go kill the dragon's champion on the mountain, or would you save a village from bandits" as a philosophical question because to him the "correct" answer boils down to "which one is going to make people love me?" He wouldn't save the farm, not as long as there was anything bigger and more important to do.

Being elevated to the pedestal of Commander as a sapling and then left up there for over a decade has made him incapable of seeing eye to eye with other people, even friends and lovers, not with his massive ego in the way. In a way I think that 13 years of nonstop warfare has just traumatized him to where he can't see himself as a singular small person, he has to be the face of an army, the face of heroism, and it doesn't help that he’s always going to be the Commander, hero of amnoon, dragon's champion, now wayfinder. Not a person, just a symbol.

SotO has been fascinating because not only is he treated as an outsider to a group of people so close to one another that they're family–outside looking in at healthy, real interpersonal relationships– he's also treated with revile and hatred by people within the fractals that he's "failed" – thinking specifically about the Zaishen and refugees in the Elona fractal. Their version of him failed to do the good deed, kill the big bad, win the wars, and so they hate him, and it's been a LONG time since random innocents have treated Alba that way. It took me back to the start of Lws4 when people were running from the branded attacks on Amnoon, shouting at him "You said this wouldn't happen, you said we were safe, you said you'd protect us and it was over," etc. Forcibly rubbing his face in (a version of) his failures and telling him YOU fucked this one up. The first time in a long time that people who "should" revere his symbol instead spit on it and deny him the love he needs. Maybe that *is* what he needs. To be kicked down and told he's done wrong and he can't fix it. Maybe he needs more failures under his belt, failed attempts, failed relationships, so he can finally value what he has.

I don't know right now if he and Canach will try again later on; currently the plan is that in a few months, Alba will make some sort of contact with his old guild and be told, essentially "we assumed you were dead or had left us, either way we've moved on in these ways and suggest you do too," and Canach will inform him that the same is true for their relationship; i.e. you either died or disappeared again, and I can't keep doing this either way. I've mourned you enough already. Go deal with your problems and learn to treat people who care about you like people who you care about rather than props and side characters to your A-plot.

I could definitely say more on that but I'll wait until I get some lore figured out and posted for Auru and Bourbon for SotO. :)

[throughtrialbyfire]

Hi, can you tell me what was your original inspiration for Cycle? Where did you start with the ideas? Plot? Characters? A little of both? ❤️

hi winter!!!! <3333

i think the idea for CotS kinda just… happened. it was a speculative concept of what it would look like if there was more than one "last" dragonborn, and how that would fit into the world or change the narrative of skyrim!! i already had some concepts for a few characters and some scattered story ideas, so i decided to make a trio and send them on adventures. athenath was the first one i made, though, since he was originally going to be a self insert i tossed about like a ragdoll into various situations (especially involving cicero), then they decided that they had their own story to tell, and here we are! the trio's backstories and personalities blossomed as i wrote more about them, which is what lead to a rewrite of some chapters, but i love them a lot. it really was just gonna be a little side project from my original writing that i had no intention of posting anywhere, but, well, we see how that went AHAH

as for the plots, i was genuinely going to write out every quest and side quest. i thought that in order for the trios adventures to work, i had to do that, and follow canon exactly. then i engaged in the fandom more and read more fic and realized that, no, i can be canon-divergent and not write every quest HAHKJGDHKJFG. i still have drafts of chapters where they talk to characters to initiate certain plots, and maybe i'll put them to use one day. it went from following canon, to canon divergence, to using canon as my guideline and making my own arcs and storylines, altering existing ones, and toying with the framework of bethesdas writing as much as i feel necessary. i still try to adhere to the lore and keep it grounded in the world of the elder scrolls, but i'm allowing more room to play with that lore as the story goes on. for example, since solitude as a city doesnt have much in the way of a city-wide quest like some others do, i'm writing from the ground up an entire arc for the town based on several quests in the game and just expanding upon those.

of course, a lot of alteration has to be done in order to make room for three heroes. i have to rewrite dialogue and even rework some quests to make room for them to fit into it, or decide which one of them is gonna be handling a solo mission. for example, i planned for athenath to get dawnbreaker because that's one of my favorite weapons in skyrim, so i had to decide why the other two wouldn't be able to follow into meridia's temple. so, i decided vigilants of stendarr would be trying to stop the trio from going inside because the vigilants think the trio are "aiding the daedra", and only one of them could run in while the other two held the vigilants back. i'm slowly dividing up the daedric quests between who gets what, or if all three do the quest. it's a challenge to be sure everything still flows smoothly, but i love it >:3c plus, i've come up with a hell of a lot of other OCs as i've gone along to flesh out the world, and as i get to know those characters, too, skyrim feels more and more like home.

i hope any of that made sense <3 thank you so much for the ask!!!! i could legitimately ramble abt the writing process with this fic for so, so long AHAH so thank you for letting me do that!!

ask game

[rollercoasterwords]

As a fic writer, how do you stay positive and not stress yourself out with constantly comparing?

I've been really struggling with that. I start spiraling when a certain chapter doesn't get as many comments as usual, comparing my hit counts and kudo counts to other fics, and it's really not healthy but I'm struggling with knowing how to stop, how to just be happy and proud of the response I've gotten. Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

honestly? i know this might seem counterintuitive but my best advice in that situation is probably to stop posting for a while

like. for me the thing that helped most/still helps most when i find myself falling into the trap of comparison was taking a step back and reevaluating why i wanted to write and what i got out of writing in the first place. like, for me, the core reason i write is for the joy of creating something, and getting to share it with others is all just a bonus. but i haven't always felt that way, and it definitely took a lot of reflection and having to unlearn a lot of social messaging to get there.

i think we are all very much blasted with the message that the most important metric for how worthy art is = how big the audience looking at it is. and i think, because of the way capitalism conditions us to interact w art, it's really really easy to feel like your art is only meaningful if people are seeing it and telling you it's good. like, the focus turns to outside affirmation rather than an interior sense of worth.

but the act of creating art has merit in and of itself. art is worth something because the act of creation is beautiful and joyful, regardless of who sees or doesn't see the final product.

writing fanfiction has helped me find the joy in writing again by removing it from the sort of profit economy that conditions me to think art is only worth something if it can be sold. before i got into writing fic, i felt this sense that creative writing wasn't worth anything unless it was something that i could one day publish which really just stifled me, and it wasn't til i went "fuck it i'm just gonna write something for the fun of it with no plans to ever try and get other people to read it" that i started to really enjoy writing again. and i think that's why i tend to be really wary of anything that starts to treat fic like books or pull fanfic back into this pseudo-profit economy where worth is measured by online popularity/tiktok virality--bc for me, fanfiction is an escape from that sort of mentality.

now, i try to be really vigilant about when i'm starting to fall back into the habit of feeling like my writing is more or less valuable based on whether it gets more or less hits/kudos/comments etc. i think this winter i finally reached a point where writing fic was starting to feel too much like a job w the pressure i was putting on myself to write a certain amount of words or meet certain deadlines, so now i've just been writing without posting anything for like 2ish months and i've found it really helpful! it's good to remember that writing is fun and rewarding even if nobody is seeing it in the moment and there's not that constant feedback loop of affirmation.

and if getting that outside affirmation is a driving factor in why you're writing, and it's draining because it's driving you to constantly compare, then i think it's worth taking a step back and evaluating why you want to write and whether it's like....emotionally sustainable. there's nothing wrong with wanting affirmation and wanting people to see your work, but at least for me anytime i've prioritized outside affirmation it's weakened my own interior sense of worth and made me much more likely to burn out or abandon writing projects. it's difficult bc like i said we are all very much conditioned to prioritize outside affirmation when it comes to art, but for me reframing the way i think about what makes art worth creating in the first place has literally made my writing experience a million times better. so, the most concrete advice i have for giving yourself space to do that is just--stop posting for a bit. stop seeking an audience in any way shape or form. give yourself some time to write by yourself and for yourself, to figure out what about writing brings you joy when there is no outside affirmation and make that the centerpoint of your creative endeavors.

i think there might also be a skin on ao3 that hides kudos and hits and comment numbers, so it might be a good idea to look into that if you're really struggling to stop comparing! also, i highly recommend cj the x's video essays the kronk effect and 7 deadly art sins, as well as jamie berrout's essays against publishing if ur looking to challenge/reframe/expand/adjust the way you think about art + literature :•)