#anyway here's an excerpt

[elialys]

Peter, who sat down a while ago on one of the small chairs, trying to make himself as unobtrusive as he could, watches as Olivia goes back to her roaming, much more slowly this time. Her whole demeanor changes within a minute, as if she’s finally allowing her anger to simmer down now that Walter is out of sight. After grabbing that same, dusty doll for the third time, studying it intently for long seconds, she puts it down again. Her hand goes up to her face, next, pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes closed, and Peter almost feels the energy draining out of her, her shoulders slumping, hunching slightly inward. It’s as if the weight of that responsibility is crushing her all over again, without her anger to latch onto. His urge to get up and walk to her is strong, fighting against his most intrinsic instincts. He knows he can’t help, not in a way that matters, but it causes him something close to physical pain, watching her beating herself up like that without being able to give her some comfort. He remains seated instead, uncomfortably so, because there is no way in hell she will allow him to approach her right now, not as she stands. “Can I offer some unsolicited advice?” he does ask after a long minute, keeping his voice low, just in case she’s forgotten he’s here. Given her lack of reaction, she was aware of his presence. She drops her hand, which comes down to her hip as she straightens up, glancing at him. She doesn’t even bother with a spoken answer, giving him a tired shrug instead. “Get some rest,” he tells her, seriously. When she scoffs, as he knew she would, he insists. “I know you didn’t sleep any more than I did last night, so you’ve been up for almost two whole days. Whatever he’s hoping for you to see, I’m pretty sure sleep deprivation can’t be helping.” This is the longest she’s looked at him since last night, in New York, when they first got to the building. With every second she spends with her eyes locked with his, he senses her turmoil increasing, not just in the way her body has started to sway, almost imperceptibly, one of her most glaring telltales. Her face is slowly constricting, too, the look in her eyes becoming anxious. Just as Peter is about to throw caution to the wind and go to her, offer her that comfort they both know she won’t take yet needs, Olivia abruptly puts an end to their eye contact, turning her upper body away from him, her finger briefly going up to her lips.

It's a fact that I love writing body language. It's also a fact that I will probably always love writing Olivia's body language the most. And I 150% thank Anna for the way she played her, because it's magic.

[fairydrowning]

Born to be a protagonist in a ghibli movie, forced to be irl.

[vic-does-battlecats]

Nightheart having a fit as an apprentice over being named Flame when he is a solid black cat and then his solid black cat daughter being called Shine is really really funny actually

[newoozi]

your new friend vernon is walking you home one night, telling you all about the date his mom is setting him up on in an attempt to “get out there more”. he admits it’s been a while since he’s taken somebody on a date, and he’s sort of nervous and half dreading it. he doesn’t even have any idea what he’s going to wear.

the two of you reach the front of your apartment building, and you face to look at him. placing your hands on his shoulders you teasingly say, “wear that navy blue polo shirt of yours. it almost makes you look nice.”

he huffs out a small laugh in response, but the truth is he’s sort of spiraling. you notice what he’s wearing beyond an aesthetic sense? do you pay attention to how the shirt fits him perfectly, how it hugs at his chest and shows off his arms? of course, vernon knows he’s attractive — people swoon over him on the daily, and many times he can get away with not paying for ramen at the convenience store if the girl at the counter is young. but, it never crossed his mind that you thought about him in that way. it was different with you, wasn’t it?

he thinks about that, and you, on the way back to his dorm.

you text him to ask about his date the next night, the curiosity getting the better of you.

how was ur date? did she appreciate the polo?

he admits he didn’t wear the polo, but doesn’t offer any explanation as to why. he adds that the date was going fine until they were saying goodbye and she went in for a kiss on the cheek and he held out his hand. he probably won’t see her again.

you laugh out loud at his message.

when it’s your birthday a week later, he wears the polo to the casual dinner you host at your place with your closest friends. he notices when your eyes linger on his lean figure, and the way you blush when you know you’ve been caught. you’re almost sure he’s worn it on purpose.

[even-disco-baby]

ESPIRIT DE CORPS  — The lieutenant is aware that you adore him. Painfully so. You aren’t exactly subtle about it.

Oh god. I’m not? Oh fuck.

Good! I wasn’t trying to be *subtle* about it.

Hey. No need to get personal.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS — Sorry, boss. His thoughts, not mine.

In any case, he is aware. Your adoration is plain for all to see, even for such an island of a man as the lieutenant is. Or once was, perhaps. And his own feelings toward you are… difficult to describe, but they are there. 

EMPATHY — Strong feelings. 

ESPIRIT DE CORPS — He doesn’t know if they can be called love, but it is a thought that has occurred to him. In a broad sense, they surely are love of *some* kind, at the very least. You are his friend. He cares for you. And…

HALF LIGHT — And he is afraid of you.

EMPATHY — And he is afraid *for* you.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS — And he is afraid for himself.

YOU — Afraid? Why?

INLAND EMPIRE — You know why. Do not fool yourself. You, with the scaffold of you all awry. There is no part of you that offers him sure footing.

ENDURANCE — Even your body… One way or another, he knows that he’ll probably be the one to find you dead, and it could come any day.

I hope it’s soon.

I wouldn’t want it to be anyone else.

No! I don’t want to do that to him…

Wait a second! Who said anything about dying?! I’m turning over a new leaf! I want to live!

PAIN THRESHOLD — Oh, Harry… You still don’t understand, do you? You’re already dying. You’re a miracle, really. You know you nearly had a fatal heart attack just from stubbing your toe in the dark this morning? It’s no longer a matter of if, but when.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Hey, you’ve always known that you were gonna be here for a good time, not a long time! The lieutenant ought to take a page out of your book, instead of being such a miserable, lonely old man.

RHETORIC — No offense, but I don’t think that the partying has made you any less miserable, lonely, or old. 

KIM KITSURAGI — Your partner takes another long drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke fill his lungs. He holds it there for a moment, then slowly breathes it out into the night.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS — He accepted a long time ago that this ritual may very well be the death of him, too. It’s a risk that he has made far more calculated by his rigid discipline. He would find it difficult to live without these small indulgences, but nearly impossible if he granted them too much power over himself.

And so it is with *you.* He can indulge himself with questions, imaginings. What it would be like to lower his spines and be a softer kind of animal. But he cannot give these feelings any more power over him than this, or it will be the death of him.

YOU — …Am I really so bad that I would kill him?

ESPIRIT DE CORPS — No. Worse than that, you would *change* him. You or anyone. To entertain the notion of true love as anything more than a pleasant, unattainable dream would be the death of the man that he has built himself into over the decades. He would become something so much smaller and more vulnerable. An animal with a soft belly exposed to the world.

YOU — Is that really anything to be afraid of?

HALF LIGHT — It is the only thing that there is to be afraid of.

INLAND EMPIRE — He is right to be afraid. The world is nothing but a series of patterns, so easily disrupted and changed and lost forever. There is no sense in any of it, no grand reason that makes any of it worth the terror and the pain. The world will swallow you both and then be swallowed whole. Après le monde, le gris. Après le gris… rien. There is nothing that either of you could offer the other to change this. In the face of it, your small bodies and your fleeting thoughts become so unbearably absurd. 

VOLITION — No. It is bearable. 

YOU — It is?

VOLITION — It is the only thing that there is to bear.

[immunetoneurotoxin]

“Not a soul assigned to their case at the Bureau could make sense of their existence. There wasn’t a single scientist, parapsychologist, doctor, or specialist with over a dozen PHD’s under the sun that could figure them out. Pyrokinesis in a human? They defy every law of nature, yet they exist amongst humanity regardless. How do you explain that?” “The truth is that there are a lot of unknown things out there in the world that mankind hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of. Everyone flocked to this case trying to find rational answers, but there aren’t any. Look at the files in your hands. By the eyes of science, Pyro should not exist. Don’t you know what happens to things mankind doesn’t understand? The Bureau has done sickening things to them in the name of research.” “That’s why I helped them escape, Conagher.”

Excerpt from the novel INCENDIARY; A TF2 Pyro origin story Read the latest chapter of 'Incendiary' on AO3 here! Artwork created by the incredible @narklos ♡ 

[chiropteracupola]

y'know, it is always cool and epic to stab the local hereditary lord / colonial governor in the ear with your weaving tool until he dies

[sarah-yyy]

me: i'm going to write some mindless smut, it's going to be QUICK, i'm going to be done in NO TIME my brain: or!! it can 95% misunderstandings, 5% feelings, -20% smut, and take you 3 months!!

[ratatatastic]

do you write fic on ao3?

unfortunately for everyone involved i do!

[aritany]

okay. this book is NA which means it's going to be inevitably marketed as YA were i to ever pursue publishing for it. do you think this sort of content belongs in YA spaces? do you think there's room for conversations about this with younger audiences, or does this belong in adult fiction?

(content on consent derived from ace by angela chen, a 10/10 read)

[deliciouskeys]

Last Line Challenge

Rules: In a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or however many as you like)

Thank you @phoenixtakaramono, @bisexualhomelander, @kosmochlor, @merry-andrews, and @plasticfangtastic for no pressure tagging me. ETA: Ugh, forgot to c/p this part above the cut: a lot of people already did this but no pressure tags to @eutz , @snow-white-9999 , @blaacknoir , @lunarpunisher , and yes you too @xieyaohuan 😉

Does anyone else find it hard to do this lol? My spatial "last line" in every google doc of a chapter in progress is a graveyard of text that I wrote but then removed. And my last line where I stopped is often for a good reason, not just because I ran out of time. So it's a line that is likely to go into the graveyard next time I look at it.

I don't know if this fic (chapter) will ever see the light of day, but technically this is the last thing I wrote:

Sometimes his imagination took him to more ludicrous places. Asking William what he wants. And when this coarse filthy-mouthed Brit would inevitably tell him to go suck his dick in the same tone as ‘go to hell’, by god, maybe he’d grin and do it, even though he’s never done anything like it before, just to enjoy the bewilderment on William’s face. He wanted to see William undone, dramatically, humiliatingly, by his own hand. He wanted to thank him for taking care of Ryan in the same breath as telling him he’d been waiting to see this sight. He wanted to deposit him back where he plucked him from, and in the morning have breakfast all together as a family, maybe William looking a little worse for the wear, maybe Ryan noticing but never guessing why.

The last thing I wrote of something that will see the light of day, but maybe not this particular part lol:

“He doin’ alright?” “He’s… doin’ better each day, let’s just say that.” “Looked fine in yesterday’s photos plastered all over the papers.” Butcher shrugs. “Yeah, he was damn intent on taking a good picture. They had a whole operation set up in the flat, hair and makeup, them lighting umbrellas and white backdrop and everything. But he hasn’t even been up and about much. They had to airbrush his face, he’s been so fucking pale.” “The baby get airbrushed too?” Judy asks and Butcher smiles because that's just like her. “Not while I was on watch. I’m sure they touched everything up in post though. None of 'em magazine pics ever look real.”

[boleynqueenes]

nowe thus in chronological order (so far)...IF anyone cares <3

December 1518

December 1521

December 1525

1526 (short excerpt), 2

January 1526 (short excerpt)

February 1526 (short excerpt)

March 1526

March 1526 (short excerpt)

December 1526

1527 (short excerpt)

March 1528 + March 1528

October 1528

December 1528

Late 1530 (short excerpt)

Late 1530 (short excerpt, 2)

February 1531

February 1533

October 1533 (short excerpt)

February 1534 (short excerpt, before 'read more')

Summer 1534 + short excerpt (reblog, 2nd one)

September 1534 + September 1534 + September 1534

December 1534 (excerpt, to be added to its own chapter)

July 1535 (short excerpt)

And then the 1535 scenes (thus far) are the only ones which are traditionally linear, so I'll leave those be for now...

[seasteading]

ARENT YOU TIRED OF BEING NICE? DONT U JUST WANNA GO APE SHIT? ↳ A CHARACTER STUDY

if it seems like i haven't touched my main wip in 2 months, that's because i haven't 😋

instead, anyone unfortunate enough to have spoken more than a sentence to me will have realized that i've spent that time in baldurs gate 3 hell, with nothing but durge brainrot to show for it—brainrot i will now inflict on main with some selected excerpts <3

transcripts under cut:

She does not remember many fairytales, but she thinks this one starts the same way as all the rest: a princess to flee a castle, a handsome knight to save her from the shadows that haunt the woods. The princess does not have a name beyond her title. The knight is called Griseis. She speaks it aloud. There is no tugging at her memory, no rush of truth. Yet it is the name of a creature with the purpose to vanquish, same as her, and all those with a purpose must have a name.  “My name is Griseis,” she tries. It holds no magic, but she likes the way it rests upon her tongue, like it could belong there. She slips the waterlogged fairytale into her pack.

Yet beneath the drone of busywork, the urges remain. They bid her to tear the legs off a rabbit caught in the brambles that surround the garden, and Atonement endures. A stained glass window shatters, and they bid her to pick a shard off the floor and cut through Novice Clements’ fragile throat. Atonement endures. They infect her dreams. Behind her eyelids flicker visions of a temple in ruins, of Ilmater’s statue bathed in the blood of his faithful, so she works more, sleeps less.

And he laughs at her. Brings his uninjured hand to her jaw and pushes his thumb under her upper lip, using her own slack shock to pry her mouth open. Finger pressed against a sharp canine, “Look at you. Bhaal’s Chosen, the purest of his spawn, baring your teeth like a damn dog.” She doesn’t have to think about it. Put your hand by a dog’s mouth, and expect to get bitten. She bites.

But the painter who’d put her features to canvas saw something else, too. Maybe the taint in her blood had made it into the pigments. Maybe it’d been Bhaal himself guiding their hand, ensuring proper justice be given to his spawn’s visage. Griseis looks, and the Dread Lord’s Chosen looks right back.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[cws: violent ableism and fantasy racism, anti-indigenous racism mention, dehumanization, abuse culture, implied SA/CSA which did not happen but sure would have looked like it to outside parties.]

-

every single time i see someone talk about how the ancients (more specifically the amaurotines, because they always mean the amaurotines) weren't that bad--sure, their society had a few little problems, but overall they were responsible and compassionate and knew what they were doing, and had a good thing going that shouldn't have been interfered with even internally--i think about them turning the violent death of a grieving coworker's disabled daughter, the events of which they mock him for, into a funny story to share around the water cooler.

i think about how someone in a high position of authority, who was in charge of the legal aspect of her existence--of deciding whether she should be euthanized or not, in fact!--ignored blatant red flags for her being sexually abused when he was fully in a position to help. obviously, as fucked as what was happening with meteion was that was not the case. and hermes, i love you. but holy shit is 'haha yeah i made a little girl servant i have complete power over, and didn't register or approve her existence with the government like i'm supposed to. which also would have involved people looking her over. because she's my pet project :)' a REALLY bad look. people should have been investigating him, and the person whose primary job it was to investigate him went 'oh okay, you're an authority figure and i know you so i'll take your word for it :)'

i think about how that authority figure barely remembered she died or even existed, and thought the idea that she could be murdered or should be grieved at all was an odd little thought her quirky dad was self-harming by making such a big deal out of. i think about the fact that these people preen about their ~vigorous intellectual debates~ and ~constructive free exchange of ideas about society,~ and yet after untold thousands of years this idea is such an utterly unthinkable fringe position that supposedly no one has ever heard of it.

(no shade on hythlodaeus enjoyers but holy shit i do NOT like this man, and this is one of the biggest reasons why. jesus fucking christ.)

like i'm sorry but no amount of pretty parks and sharing and being polite and paying lip service to responsible creation, and speaking nicely to children (sometimes) and meaning well (sometimes), and just generally not being a bunch of malicious mustache-twirling cartoon villains, changes the fact that amaurot was a society of cruel evil selfish bastards who had the power to treat the world like their personal toybox and get away with it. and who are also strongly implied to have been colonizers long before the final days, no less. and it horrifies me how it sails over so many people's heads that the entire point of the Nicey Nice Everyone Shares and Gets Along and is Happy is that it's absolutely fucking terrifying how effective they clearly were at stifling any meaningful accountability, opposition, or reform.

(don't get me started on the take i keep seeing everywhere that the amaurotines are analogous to real-life indigenous genocide victims, oh my god do NOT get me started, jesus wept)

like. this isn't just annoyance over incorrect or kind of insensitive takes. the vast majority of the time when i see people try to defend the ancients, they say with their whole chests a mountain of absolutely horrible things--implied or mask off--about real life issues, and seeing things like this reduced down to 'having a few little problems, but really what society doesn't' is just. upsetting. it is really upsetting and i wish it was not such a constant, and that i could find more people actually talking about the nature of amaurot's fuckery without at best getting immediately derailed into SO YOU'RE SAYING THEY SHOULD ALL BE DRAGGED OUT AND SHOT IN THE STREET, IS THAT IT

all this is to say: setting aside any wider-scale events, it boggles my fucking mind that just for that passage alone the fandom as a whole wouldn't cheer hermes on if he started setting people in his vicinity on fire lmao

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

You’re like the sun | Changing States

I wasn’t going to post this here because it felt rough but actually it’s so cute! Jeremiah asks Harrison to come over when there’s a blackout under the pretence that he needs to borrow his lighter for candles & now he’s crying bc he’s in love:

"What happened?" His thumb ironed at Jeremiah’s tears that'd continued to fall and he wrapped his arm tighter around his shoulders, then leaned forward and kissed his temple, his lips still on his forehead as he said, “Oh, what’s happened?” He began to rock them, a gentle sway, then linked their legs together as if to close the grief in their distance. He skimmed his fingers along the back of their hands, and Jeremiah clung to him then, his inhale a lightheaded jitter.

“I lied to you,” he whispered, although it’s not what he meant to say. He wasn’t upset, he knew that, but his body had identified something before he’d had a chance to, a feeling so large it felt like it could break him. Love.

“Yeah?”

“My lighter’s not broken.”

And then a laugh. The sound was twinkly, and for a second, Jeremiah almost thought it’d made the candle flames around them dance. Jeremiah turned to face him now, confused.

But he was smiling, all his teeth winking when he said, “Lie to me whenever you want,” and pecked Jeremiah on the cheek over and over again, enmeshing him.

Jeremiah tried to explain himself, that he hadn’t wanted to be in the dark alone, how large it felt, how he now felt guilty for tricking him into venturing into the night himself, how he hadn’t thought of how selfish the ask was, to beckon someone into the dark when he himself couldn't handle it and how he hadn’t meant to even bring up the lie or the lighter, how he couldn’t explain the feeling in his chest without using the word love.

But then: a coo above him, a gentle shush and a chin crooking against his shoulder, a voice saying not to worry, a voice saying he’d cross this city at midnight if Jeremiah ever called, a voice that said he could never be afraid of the dark knowing Jeremiah was inside of it, a voice that went soft, so close it was like he'd become him, whispering “You’re like the sun.”

[din-dadrin]

(thinking about din and duty and love and denial) hey guys wanna see something cool