#anyways im down to 3 casual writers now and that is NOT enough

[bloopitynoot]

I just reevaluated all my Ao3 subscriptions and now have space for WIPs to follow!

If you have any absolute banger wangxian, shadowgast, or binqiu/liubingshen fics in progress I would LOVE to read along :'3

[nnon0]

JJH fic recs #3

previous fic recs : 1. 2.

note: hey yall ik it’s been a while ive been busy with life and truth be told, it’s been getting pretty hard to find good fics to recommend cuz i feel like ive read them all 😭😭😭 anyway jaehyun’s SOLO REVIVED ME SO IM BACK 😜 but im prob just gonna keep updating and adding to this post with fics and not make anymore posts so everytime yall come back there’s gonna be new fics AND PLS RECOMMEND SOME FICS AS WELL

(🫀) - personal faves

(🫀) TRY AGAIN @kaleidohscopic

WC:32.4k

exes to lovers, coworkers! au

if you could have it your way, you'd never have to see, hear, or even think about jeong jaehyun ever again. a fortuitous blind date, and that same dimpled smile after all those years, is somehow enough to make you reconsider. maybe he was always meant to be by your side.

summer of seven years @lebrookestore

WC:30k

summer!au writer!jaehyun

Coming back home was hard for both you and Jaehyun, but when you realize both of you are back in the same place again, feelings from three years ago rise to the surface, and you start to realize that the things you thought you knew when you were younger never quite played out.

(🫀)His love, Her force @anashins

WC:28k

Undercover detective!jaehyun x ballerina!reader , fake marriage au, slow burn

Fleeing from a ruthless stalker, you are forced to participate in a witness protection program at the other side of the world, pretending to be the wife of a taciturn undercover detective from now on. Despite all differences, you slowly start to settle with your new life as a married couple - until your newfound happiness is stripped away from you all over again.

(🫀) BAD HABITS @jaedore

WC:21k

Boxer!jaehyun

You were never really good at saying ‘no’ to people, always a people pleaser, listening to your teachers, parents, to authority. Jung Jaehyun is a professional boxer attempting to make it to the top with the help of your father, who used to be a well known boxer. Being in a friends with benefits relationship with Jaehyun would be the last thing you’d find yourself in-you’re always focused on finishing college, studying hard, and sticking to yourself. With you pushing your feelings down for him and him focused on other things, you’re already in too deep to pull out of this complication. When will it be too much? When is your breaking point?

(🫀) cynosure - a focal point of admiration @drquinzelharleen

WC:20.4k

surgeon!jaehyun , enemies-to-lovers

When the young hot shot doctor, Jung Jaehyun, has been solicited to your hospital. He is to become the new Chief of Surgery. Your excitement and curiosity are soon to be washed away by his cocky disposition.

no guidance @yutaholic

WC:20k

knocked up, smut, pregnancy au

You insist on keeping things casual with Jaehyun, even though he wants something more serious, but then you miss a period and in an instant, your lives are turned completely upside down.

happy now? @hwaflms

wc: 19.9k

ex!jaehyun, fake dating au

your family has been pressuring you for months to bring your boyfriend, jaehyun, over for dinner, and you think it’s really sweet that they like him so much. the only problem is that your “boyfriend” jaehyun, hates you.

(🫀) ordinary people @ppangjae

WC: 18.3k

friends-to-lovers, fake dating!au, ceo!jaehyun

Jaehyun’s parents are coming home for Christmas and he may have made the biggest mistake of telling them he has a ‘girlfriend’. Insert you, his best friend, who so happens to be the only girl he knows and trusts. You, on the other hand, would have never expected Jaehyun to show up at your door at two in the morning with nothing but a proposition; to be his fake girlfriend. And man, are you in big trouble.

(🫀)ethereal @celestialmark

WC: 16.7k

fluff, life lessons

(note: shed a tear reading this it was so beautiful i highly highly recommend)

Jaehyun was indeed way more than his good looks. Jaehyun was gentle, honest and sincere, you felt it all in the way he smiled, the way he talked and in the way he kissed you. He was the living definition of ethereal, and his beauty shone the most on the inside

(🫀)SUN&MOON @ppangjae

WC:14.6k

enemies-to-lovers, fake dating

Asking Jeong Jaehyun to accompany you to your family’s 1-week Christmas vacation as your boyfriend has its consequences. One can surely get through 1 week of pretending to be in love with an enemy, right?

(🫀) chasing stars, losing you @prodbymaui

WC: 14k

exes to lovers, ceo!jaehyun x model!reader

When your relationship got announced, it made noises louder that anyone could've imagined. Of course it will, a pair containing a supermodel and a CEO of one of the most successful enterprise that made a name in both the fashion and business industry. But soon enough, everyone witnessed how the perfect relationship they had been envying crumbled down into tiny pieces until there's nothing left to pick up.

(🫀) if we were a movie @sehunniepotwrites

WC:14k

childhood friends to lovers!au , college au , theatre/drama au

For someone who was always the understudy and never the lead, scoring this role was huge for you. All you had to do was pretend to be in love with your best friend. No big deal, right? Wrong. It was the biggest deal because, for the past four years, you had been hiding your feelings for Jung Jaehyun.

If this were a movie, he would be your perfect match and the story would end happily with the credits rolling to a perfectly timed soundtrack. Too bad this wasn’t a movie— this was real life and life came with complications.

oops, baby (i love you) @prodbymaui

WC:12.5k+

modern royalty au, arranged marriage

you had been living your life as a rebellious and controversial crown princess, now you must face the consequence of purifying your tainted image; marrying the gentle and infamous crown prince of South Korea.

deadly kiss @slightlymore

WC: 12k+

chief architect jaehyun x chief engineer fem reader

office au, enemies? to lovers, dom x dom and trying to force each other to sub, romance, smut, fluff

(🫀) FEELINGS @ppangjae

WC:11.6k

f2l!au, fake dating! au

After many failed first dates, Jaehyun decides to take matters into his own hands and teach you how they work and what you should do to guarantee yourself a second date. But of course, this is just a plan that’s set up for failure.

in your court @boymeetsweevil

WC:10.8k

basketball player!jaehyun , bff!haechan

Two idiots in love, oc is scary when mad, hyuck is crafty always, jae is a bit intense but he’s just trying his best, gratuitous descriptions of dimples, a kiss!!! sfw!

coparenting @eleganzadellarosa

wc: 10.3k

angst, fluff smut

babydaddy!Jaehyun x fem!reader

(🫀)SEVEN LETTERS @ppangjae

WC: 10.1k+

soulmate!au , childhood friends-to-lovers , slight fake dating

On a camping trip, you find a message in a bottle that’s been washed up the shore, only to find out that it’s a message from you in the future. Your message tells you three things:

1. You must make Jeong Jaehyun fall in love with you because,

2. He’s your soulmate and

3. Because of your future self’s mistake, he ended up falling in love with someone else.

the wedding @jae-canikeepyou

WC:9.5k

rivals!jaehyun fluff-crackish

jeong jaehyun’s your long-time friend, and as far as one could remember, every single and little thing you both do ends to a competition; it turned into a permanent kind of relationship you have for over a decade now. no one expects that it would ever change, not until a childhood friend of yours from high school decides to make you two as his singers for his upcoming wedding.

one more time @moondustis

WC:9.4k

smut, friends to lovers

Maybe this right here is a story about growing up and finding yourself, or about finding love and being vulnerable. But it definitely is a story about friendship, skating, pancakes and Jung Jaehyun learning how to deal with his feelings.

(🫀) rose bud @hazyhae

WC:9.2k

stoner!fuckboy!jaehyun , smut

friday nights are party nights, and it's here that your feet always seem to lead you to your favorite stoner. you know the sweet words that leave jaehyun's mouth don't belong just to you, but something about him leaves you wanting more.

baby @moonctzeny

wc:9.1k

college au, fake dating!au

When Yuta breaks your heart for the millionth time, you meet Jaehyun, freshly broken up and looking for revenge. You decide to start fake dating to get back on your exes, but your plan takes an unexpected turn. You fall in love.”

when fratboy falls @gyeomsweetgyeom

WC: 8.9k

fratboy!jaehyun x tutor!reader

Jaehyun is a fratboy with a notorious reputation for being a playboy, you have never heard of him. surely, he can use tutoring as an excuse to get close to you, right?

hello again, my sunshine @alluringjae

WC:8.5k

high school reunion!au, business lawyer!jaehyun, fashion designer!reader, high school best friends to strangers to lovers!au

there’s no more running away when you’re thriving in the fashion industry, yet it’s exactly what you want to do when you encounter your first love after a decade in your high school reunion.

(🫀) The lies of apollo @jaevie

WC:8k

Spy!jaehyun x spy!reader , forbidden love , smut , enemies to lovers

As powerful corporations seek to sun privatization, two spies find themselves falling in love and discovering the wonders of physical affection.

Head over Broomsticks @sehunniepotwrites

WC: 3.5k

Hogwarts!au Sports!au Quidditch!au Gryffindor!jaehyun

When your friends are tired of watching you and your crush go around in circles, they take matters into their own hands. Putting their Advanced Potions skills to the test, Donghyuck and Chenle conjure up a powerful truth serum and slip it in your drink right before a Quidditch game, which leads to a few inappropriate comments about No. 77, Jeong Jaehyun, of Gryffindor’s Quidditch team. This would’ve been fine if you were just a regular spectator but you are much more than that--you’re the Announcer and everyone is subjected to hear your unfiltered thoughts. Just great.

SERIES

(🫀) when icarus falls @baobaojng

college athlete!au , crush!au

(note: this series genuinely brought me to tears btw I HIGHLY RECOMMEND )

some tragic story of you sharing one class with your long time college crush jaehyun who never notices you until he accidentally reads your work and he gets curious— oh, and he uses lame excuses to get to talk to you.

[spaceyflowerswriting]

Not a request just a question out of curiosity. How did you feel when you first started out writing fanfics for a particular fandom? Have you always been passionate about writing? What is your method to know a character better so as to make your works seem close to their original personality?

I love your works, they genuinely make my day and would love to write for lookism one day as well and you're my biggest inspiration ❤️ hope you have a wonderful day :)

[Don't have to reply if you don't feel like it]

i got REALLY wordy so things are under a cut!

anyways can i just say this is such a sweet message 😭😭💓💕💓💕💞💖💞💕💓💖💞💘

thank u so much for sending this ask !! it always means the world to me when ppl express care and curiosity about other's creativity journeys :'] 💖

this goes for u, too, anon; if ur comfortable sharing, i'd love to hear ur own answers to ur questions! <33

how did you feel when you first started out writing fanfics for a particular fandom?

i started when i was around 9 and was very excited to share so thats what i did :] but over time i grew insecure and felt my old stuff was stupid lmao so i deleted it all off the web and then writing became a private thing for me for a very, very long time (writing like 40k, 38 chapters worth of stuff just for me 😭). i've wanted to share during my last few fandoms but never got the courage to until i got into lookism/viral hit !

(well, actually, i did share some writing during my "obey me!" phase but it was just text convos lol)

naturally, i was nervous putting my writing out in the world again esp bc the last time i did was when i like 11-12, and i was 16 when i wanted go public with my writing again 😔 im very glad i pushed myself to tho, bc its basically been a year now and i've had a blast!

i never imagined so many people would like my silly writing, enough to send in requests T_T 💕💖

have you always been passionate about writing?

kind of,,? i really only got into it because of fanfiction lol but i did consider becoming an author for like. a week of my life sjdhwhdj so really it's just a hobby i do since im the walking definition of "speaks little but thinks a lot"

gotta put thoughts down somewhere yknow? and at the end of the day, writing to me is just what art is to me; it's for fun and to express myself. sure, i wanna get better at both, but if my stuff turns out "objectively" bad, at least i know i had fun with it :'D

(that's my philosophy with art in general; make "bad" art!! have fun!!! enjoy life!!! i hate comparison/competitive things!!!! lets all just have a nice time being kind to each other!!!!!)

creative writing is very cool tho and i have a bunch of ocs i'd love to write stories for, but the artist in me is saying i want to do them webtoon style ;_;

what is your method to know a character better so as to make your works seem close to their original personality?

going to be honest, im not the best person to ask for this 😭 im the world's most casual writer and i take my "just have fun with ur art" thing very seriously;;

i.e. i just keep note of how a character acts throughout a story, characterize them along the way, and then use that as my base for any writing i do of them 😭

um. i also (re)read fandomwiki pages of them, if any, to double check for stuff 😭😭😭 occasionally i rewatch/reread moments of them in their stories when i want to look for something specific but otherwise it's just me going "hm would this character do this?", comparing it to my base, and reacting accordingly!

other times i straight up go "yeah they probably wouldnt do this BUT it would be cute so im going to do it 😍"

so, if nothing works, just let urself be self indulgent <3 unless u do want to take ur writing more seriously than i do, then uh yeah it would be much better for u to look up advice from people who take their writing more seriously ^_^"

final notes

thank u for liking my stuff, im very happy to hear they make ur day ;__; 💖💕💓💞 plus saying im ur biggest inspiration too is so,, ueueuueu,,,, ;;__;; 💞💘💞💞💘💕💖💘

i really hope u get around to writing for lookism or any other fandoms/original works!!! i wish u the absolute best with you and your writing journey, and feel free to tag/dm me with anything u write!! i'd be happy to support :]

hope you're having a wonderful day, too 💖💖

[pokefanclaire]

Secret Santa

Hello everyone! I’m no writer but I decided to have a crack at a fan fiction for a ship I absolutely adore. Alfendi Layton x Lucy Baker. Also I don’t own any rights to the game, or characters its purely my weird thoughts.

This fan fiction has mutual pining and teasing but is pretty tame. I’m not entirely sure how to describe this!

Secret Santa

‘Th’ Prof always uses the mug I gifted him for secret Santa. It’s a normal enough looking mug with “World’s greatest detective” printed in black ink and the inside is decorated with a flurry of magnifying glasses facing every which way. I watched him unwrap my gift for ‘im from under the Scotland yard Christmas tree about a month ago and he ‘asnt used another mug from the break room since’ Lucy thought proudly as she eyed the space allocated for making hot drinks.

“Good morning dear Lucy”

Lucy jumped in surprise of his sudden arrival and twirled to see a tired looking Alfendi sporting disheveled placid burgundy hair and 3 day old stubble across his chin.

“slept ‘ere again prof?”

“.. You know you have to fill that with water Baker?”

He gestured to the empty kettle Lucy was absent mindedly staring at. Alfendi laughed light heartedly at his assistants morning forgetfulness.

Lucy stepped aside as Alfendi began to make tea in his favourite mug. He had clearly slept in the mystery room last night she thought, yet his disheveled, unkept appearance did nothing to calm the flutters in her stomach or the increased pounding of her heart against her ribcage from his arrival to the break room.

Noticing the heat rising in her cheeks from his close proximity she snapped her attention toward the fridge to fetch a lemon slice to add to his earl grey tea Placid enjoyed each morning.

The coolness of the fridge gave her cheeks much needed relief, and Lucy gave out an audible sigh of relief.

“’ere ya are Prof”

Lucy beamed turning around. She felt a solid mass suddenly press against her entirety realising the Prof was standing right behind her.

“Sorr’ Prof”

she said stumbling back a step.

“It was entirely my fault I apologise dear Lucy. Are you okay?”

Smiling shyly placid prof tugged at the back of his neck nervously.

“It were nowt Prof, why’d you sleep at the mystery room anyways?” smiling at the nervousness she now felt. “was there some new case?”

“Not at all Lucy, I just didn’t want to get behind on paperwork. And besides my favourite mug is here at Scotland Yard. I really like it, and what it stands for”

Lucy stared at her mentor.

“I think I know who my secret Santa was”

“well you should” Smiled Lucy “been the worlds greatest detective and all that. Piece of cake for a great mind like yours”

Alfendi drank from his mug maintaining piercing eye contact with his dear Lucy.

“...And my dearest assistant, did you happen to find out the identity of your secret Santa?”

“nah Prof’ It was a crazy difficult puzzle with no instructions but it looks lik’ sum kinda box. I spent all Christmas day tryin’ to solve it. My ma and dad had a go too, and my neighbour tried but nowt”

“I wonder who would send you such a thing dear Lucy”

Lucy felt her cheeks burn from his relentless stare. She couldn't remember the last time Alfendi blinked…

“was ‘t you? Prof’”

Of course Lucy had her suspicions with him been the son of the famous Hershal Layton. A Puzzle sounded fitting. But she was a detective constable and all of Scotland Yard would of known that she would find a puzzle an entertaining gift.. Had Alfendi been staring at her this whole time? She watched his sweet amber eyes flicker to a darker, more dangerous shade of yellow.

Alfendi grinned sipping from his mug trying to guess her train of thoughts.

“You know, I’m quite good with puzzles my dear Baker. Can I possibly be of some help to you?”

Before Lucy could answer Alfendi had crossed the room to her. She had just enough time to groan as Potty Prof’s eyes met with hers. From his slightly crouched position he leant over her shoulder and whispered into her ear.

“because I am… the world greatest detective aren’t I Baker?”

“morning folks!” Dustin called glancing over at Lucy and Alfendi with a raised eyebrow “Not interrupting summat am I?”

Alfendi grinned at Dustin, his unkempt messy hair bright crimson.

“You ‘kay Lucy Love?” Dustin smiled, eyebrow still raised questioningly in Lucy’s direction.

Lucy was inches away from the grinning Potty Alfendi’s face, his unshaven dishevelled look making the break room vanish from her vision as heat rose to her cheeks. She took an inward breath, wanting to answer Dustin quickly before suspicion took hold and everyone at Scotland Yard would soon be making fun of her obvious crush on her mentor.

“um yea Dusti’ ta”

she finally managed with an altogether strange look on her face. Alfendi smelt of stale cigarettes, coffee and old books, an intresting and all together appealing combination rushing her senses.

“I’m just fine” Lucy added. Convincing herself this time.

“are you Baker? Because you look a little distracted by something, or someone perhaps?” he teased.

“then see ya Lucy love, have a good’n” Dustin stifled a laugh as he exited the break room noisily jangling his keys. “young love!” he added from half way down the corridor.

Lucy’s cheeks were hot, She could only imagine how uncomfortable she looked to Alfendi as he continued to intimidate her at her eye level.

“Baker, come with me”

He turned on his heels without looking back toward the break room certain Lucy would follow. Lucy hesitated for a split moment, deep in her own thoughts before racing to catch up with her handsome mentor. Out in the corridor, she looked left and right for Alfendi assuming he had gone to the mystery room she skipped up the corridor after him. The door to the mystery room was wide open, with no apparent inhabitant in there she knocked on the door.

“Hello? Prof? Are you here?”

her calls were met with silence but she observed on Alfendi’s desk was the still warm mug of tea, steam escaping the rim. He had to be here, She felt herself falter as she leaned inside the room knowing that it was most likely Potty Prof inside, Lucy felt the familiar heat rising to her cheeks at the thought of her Potty prof, the original Alfendi Layton. Fearless.

Lucy scanned the corridor once more before deciding to search the suspiciously silent Mystery room.

“Prof?”

Hands quickly covered her eyes as the door slammed shut behind her, heated breath brushed against the nape of her neck.

“care to guess which of your dear mentors is here with you?” Whispered Potty..

“Th’ original of course”

Silence fell once more.

“what did you call me just now” twisting to be sure he saw her lips move as she spoke. “not po…did you say original?”

“aye, I mean ya were ‘ere first wernt you? What woul you like me to call ya?”

Dazed Alfendi stared still covering Lucy’s eyes.

“...and Lucy, you aren’t scared are you? Of me I mean. Us”

He moved a hand to the side, brushing through Lucy’s golden hair. She groaned as the familiar scent of the prof fogged her consciousness for the second time that morning. ‘Get it together Lucy, he’s your boss! and this sort of thing isn’t allowed.. besides he’s just teasing. He never goes through with it, jus’ leaves me hanging. He’s all talk, that Potty’ She managed to comfort herself with her thoughts for a moment before allowing one eye to gently flutter open. He stared silently as heat rushed to her cheek turning her a shade of crimson familiar to Potty.

Alfendi gently traced the outline of her cheek with his outstretched fingers casually moving his face closer to hers before lightly brushing his thumb back and forth over her bottom lip.

“what would happen if I.. We just…..gave in Lucy?.”

Lucy stared at him in disbelief, convinced he was teasing as always she roared with hysterical laughter causing her to lose her balance and tumble forward into Alfendi.

“If I knew it was so easy to get you onto my lap Baker, I would of trapped you in the mystery room months ago”

Lucy’s eyes met with his, smiling broadly.

“I know you Prof, its all teasin’ an nowt else”

“one day I wont be able to stop myself Baker?”

Lucy was left feeling confused at the look on the now placid Prof’s face. Well placid Prof isn’t one for teasing, she thought about the living nightmare her life would become if both potty and placid decided to tease her. Shaking the thought from her head she tried to stand steadying herself on the sofa, offering both hands to the Prof she helped him regain his balance.

“Sorry abou’ falling onto you there Prof! I didn’t mean ta”

Alfendi didn’t reply, instead he stared down silently.

“wa is it?”

Her gaze fell on what had taken the Profs attention. Lucy was still holding Alfendi’s hands after helping him up.

“sorr’ Prof!”

Lucy let go of his hands instantly, retracting her arms from his direction.

“….Lu… Lucy… can you do me a favour please?”

Still looking down at his now empty hands.

“o’course Prof, anything”

Beamed Lucy, hoping by now he would of finally stopped teasing for the day.

“Can you try, to be less… perfect in my presence during work hours. I’ve found it very distracting of late” Alfendi didn’t bring his eyes to meet hers, but Lucy giggled at Pottys latest tease.

Alfendi’s hair was a placid, pale wine colour. He looked up with dull amber eyes.

“I mean it Lucy.”

A silence fell between them.

“tea prof?, how ‘bout I make us a brew! Earl grey with a lemon slice kay? Or would the othe’ trouble maker like a coffee?”

Alfendi laughed sheepishly as Lucy skipped from the mystery room toward the Scotland yard break room.

“Tea would be perfect my love”

morning turned to afternoon, and then dusk as 18:00 flashed on Lucy’s wrist watch.

“I’m ‘eading home now Prof, would you like to ride together?”

Alfendi hadn’t heard the question, or ignored his assistants declaration that she intended to leave.

“Is the mysterious puzzle in your backpack Lucy or at home?”

“s’in me backpack, I like it a whole bunch and who knows when i’ll figure it out eh?”

“May I see it Lucy? If you would kindly accept the help of your mentor”

“Sure Prof, I would love you to ‘elp me get a little further with solving the puzzle. Can I grab you some food from the take out place ‘round th’ corner” Understanding Alfendi will tackle her puzzle for a few hours at least.

“May I suggest something similar? I need to return to my apartment building this evening to take care of some household chores, and shave as i’m sure you’ve noticed I failed to remember to bring my razor with me into to work these past few days”

Alfendi ran a hand through his newly emerging beard with a disgusted curl tugging at the edge of his lips.

“we could grab some take away, and we can cycle to my apartment and I can help you with your puzzle while I take care of my chores”

“I uh.. I like it the stubbl’ I mean Prof.it suits ya somthin wicked”

Alfendi looked over at Lucy his hand frozen in the rough patch of hair now inhabiting his cheek.

“Can you confirm please, the newly emerged stubble you like?” Alfendi raised an eyebrow at Lucy.

“wel’ I guess yea.  stubbl’ or ‘least yours”

Lucy stared for a moment before realising she hadn't answered Prof’s next question.

“oh an’ take out at your place would be grand”

Alfendi didn't say a word until they reached the take out place near Scotland yard.

“what do you fancy Lucy? I mean from the take-out menu of course”

He grinned from ear to ear.

“’ello Potty, wondered if you were joining us this evening”

“Do you fancy something Italian Baker?”

“This is a chines’ restaurant silly”

He leaned into Lucy’s scarf sending his warm breath over her ear.

“I’m the something Italian silly”

“no, I don’t fancy any dam’ Italian”

“yes you do Baker”

Alfendi blew warm air over her ear and felt the gooseflesh wash over her exposed skin.

“yes you do.” he repeated.

The pair stood in silence: Alfendi grinning at her blush, Lucy pretending to be very interested in the Chinese food menu.

“now are you ready to order from the Chinese menu?”

[deaddovecoterie]

confessions

co-written with @whoseblogsthis

Peeta Mellark x Fem!Reader

Prompt: “Isn’t it obvious? I’m in love with you!” 

Fandom: the hunger games

Rating: T

Word Count: 2.6k

Warning(s): swearing, unedited, two oblivious dumbasses in love

Genre(s): angst, fluff

A/N: LMAO HI GUYSSSS. so i had the INSANE privilege of writing with my mutual, friend, and insanely talented writer, @whoseblogsthis, ky. i obviously couldn’t have done this without her and im so so blown away by her and her talents. this is basically our child and baby and so im basically screaming right now cause we just finished this and its 1:01am. ANYWAY i really really hope you guys love this as much as we loved writing it <3 mwuah love you all

main stuff -> y/n (your name)

-> e/c (your eye colour)

-> y/l/n (your last name)

Peeta Mellark. 

He was your constant; your rock. You could rely on him for anything and everything.

He was the steadiest thing you’d had in your life for a long time now, but as he took your wrist and led you upstairs away from the party, you couldn’t help but feel the anger bubble up in your chest. 

“Peeta, what—”

“Why?” he nearly shouts. Peeta is mild mannered. He’s many things, actually; polite, charming, and personable, but angry was not one of them. It didn’t scare you like you’d always expected it to, but rather frustrated you. 

“Why what, Peeta?” you hiss back. 

He looks at you as if you had just grown two heads, his brows knit together in disbelief.

“You’re joking,” he breathes. You shake your head, not understanding what he is trying to get at. You defensively cross your arms, knowing the juvenile element would annoy him, but having nothing to do with your hands increases your already anxious state.

“That guy,”

“That guy?”

“Yes, y/n, yes. That guy that was just a little too friendly with you? So close to you that he was practically crawling under your goddamn skin? What were you thinking?”

You laugh at him, unable to contain it. “I can handle myself perfectly fine. Why are you being such an ass?” you all but shout at him. “It’s none of your business anyway?” 

“Hm, let’s see y/n, he could’ve, god, I don’t know, taken advantage of you?” 

You scoff, unable to handle his cliché statement. 

He brings his hands up and pushes his hair back, looking up at the ceiling as he exhales heavily through his nose. You squint at him, unable to read the emotions on his face. 

“What is up with you?” you whisper, not quite sure if he was able to hear. Your eyes narrow, unsure of what his next words might be. 

“For someone so smart, you can be so goddamn oblivious sometimes, y/l/s.”

“Oh my god, what is with all the stupid riddles tonight? I can’t read your mind! You can’t expect me to just know things,” you exasperate, throwing your hands out in front of you. “For someone who’s supposed to be good at communication, you’re doing a pretty shitty job of displaying it,” you spit, throwing his words right back at him. 

“Fine,” he hisses, starting to move towards you.

You cock your eyebrow at him, your bodies coming closer, nearly closing the gap.

“Fine?” you question.

“Yeah.” he huffs out, repeating the word with an heir of finality, “yeah.” His breath warms your face, the scent of vodka invading your senses.

Your cheeks heat up, suddenly very aware of his proximity. You watch his adam's apple bob as he swallows thickly. He can’t meet your eyes, his heart hammering against his chest so loud that it feels as though you can hear it. His head drops along with his gaze, studying the floor before chancing a glance at you. Peeta lets go of a breathy laugh as words tumble out of his mouth.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he breathes, his words choked, hardly audible, him now looking you right in the eyes. Your stomach does a flip once, unsure of his next words. Blue eyes stare at your e/c ones that are clouded in confusion. You can feel his frustration start to build as he takes a step back from you, his voice rising and hands coming from his sides. 

“I’m in love with you,” he bursts out. 

Oh my god.

You stare at him in shock, his proclamation stunning you. You blink once, twice, as his words echoing through your head.

His hazel eyes bore into your e/c ones, willing you to say something, anything, to let him know you heard him. But yet you stand there, unable to find the words. 

Nothing is coming out.

Say something, you beg yourself, wanting to scream out an answer, yet your mouth continues to remain shut. You swallow hard, your tongue feeling like sandpaper. How could you be so oblivious to his feelings? You and him have known each other since childhood, yet there you are, standing only inches away from him, the truth finally known. It seemed 

The look in his eyes is absolutely heart-wrenching; if you hadn’t just heard him, you’d have thought he had lost his best friend. In a way, you guess, he had. 

Peeta just shakes his head softly, shrugging his shoulders in such a way that makes you want to reach out and take his hand. His dark waves fall over his eyes and he turns around, facing the door.

“I—” you begin, but you know it’s too late. 

“Just, um, forget it, y/n,” his voice soft, small, “I’ll see you in environmental studies.”

He opens the door and steps out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. You want to scream, to tell him to come back.  

“Dammit!” you exclaim, throwing your red solo cup as hard as you can at the wall. The contents spill all over, some of the liquid splashing on you but you can’t bring yourself to care. 

You reach to pull at your loosely braided hair, a habit of yours that came out whenever you were experiencing an excess of negative emotions, before you realize where you are. You harshly rub your eyes with the heels of your hands as you remind yourself to breathe. 

In, out . . . In, out. 

“Get it together,” you tell yourself, taking one last deep breath. “Okay.”

You turn to head back downstairs to the party, nothing on your mind except finding Peeta and setting everything straight, hoping at this point that that was even a possibility anymore. 

God, you hated this part. You hated having to make up. Saying sorry was never your strong suit, your pride always getting in the way. But this? This was not a matter of pride. This was about finally coming to terms with the truth that you so desperately tried to avoid for years. 

You almost trip as you descend the stairs, looking everywhere for Peeta but unable to find him anywhere in the crowd. 

Spotting a head of wavy bronze hair by the water cooler, you rush over to your english lit classmate, who is also a friend of Peeta’s; Finnick Odair. 

“Hey Finnick,” you say once you reach him, trying to keep your voice even. He greets you with his signature smirk before bringing his cup to his lips and taking a sip.

“Ah, y/n, having a good time I trust?”

“Trying to,” you grumble. Finnick gives you a quizzical look before you proceed; “Have you seen Peeta?” You can’t help but notice the slight crack in your voice when you say his name.

“Yeah,” he confirms, “I saw him leave a few minutes ago. Seemed pretty upset.” 

“Yeah, wonder why,” you mutter bitterly, knowing he wouldn’t hear your words above the music. 

You bite your lip, weighing the option of asking Finnick to help you find Peeta. Half of you wanted to go and find him yourself, your need to get the weight off your chest as quickly as possible, the other half of you wanting to stall for as long as you could.

 “Could you text him? Ask him where he is?” 

“Why can’t you?” 

You fight the urge to roll your eyes, your cheeks burning. “Because, I—” 

“Wait,” Finnick’s smile widens. “Wait, are you the reason he’s upset?” 

Your silence is enough for him. His dopey smile falters for a moment, an emotion that you could only define as realization sweeping over his face. He shakes his head softly, pulling his phone from the pocket of his hoodie and opening his texts. His thumbs glide swiftly across the screen as he compiles a message to send to Peeta. 

You can’t have been standing there for more than a minute when his phone dings. Finnick flashes you the screen. 

From: Pita Bread 

I’m fine... at the pond. 

“Thank you, Finnick, really,” you breathe.

He just nods, taking another sip of his drink. 

You rush out of the frat house the party was being held in, running across the street to Panem University’s main campus, willing your legs to go faster. 

The pond was at the northern end of campus, smack in the middle of Tribute Hall and the Coriolanus Snow Study Center. You see a silhouette sitting on one of the few stone benches surrounding the body of tranquil water, tossing handfuls of what you can only assume is trail mix at the ducks that liked to take up at the pond. 

You slow down, bringing your footfalls to a trot, then silently padding your way over the grass towards him. Your chest is heaving from the exertion as you try to make your breaths even.

“Peeta,” You call out, your voice void of any venom as you stalk towards the boy. You’re almost inclined to slap him because of how he acted. No rational person could expect someone to give them an answer to a question as heavily weighed as that right away. 

He stands up once you reach him, refusing to look you in the eyes. For a fleeting moment, you catch the grief-stricken look in his usually bright eyes and it’s enough to keep you from raising your hand at him. 

“Why did you leave like that?” you breathe out. He shrugs a shoulder with almost casual indifference. “Peeta.” you nearly plead, looking at him as your eyebrows knit together.

“What did you expect me to do?” he says feebly. 

You look up at the night sky, inhaling deeply as you hurriedly send off a prayer to whatever higher power that you can say everything you want to say to him, in the way you want to say it. 

In a way that says something to him. Means something. 

The stars seem to twinkle brighter, almost like they received your message. God, this is so hard.

Peeta is still looking anywhere but at you, his focus now on the ducks idling in the water. 

“You could have waited for me,” you say. “I mean, come on! That was… big. A big thing to drop on me,” you add, “so of course I was shocked. But if you had just waited for me . . .” 

“What?” he snorts, finally looking you in the eyes. “What would you have said that couldn’t have possibly made me feel like more of a fool than I already was? What—” 

“I love you,” you blurt. 

Here it goes.

“And not in a ‘you’ve always been there for me, so I’m kind of indebted to you’ kind of way but in a way that’s like, ‘I want to do cheesy stuff with you because I know it will make you smile.’ That’s like, I would do anything, anything to prove to you that I’m worthy of your love. Peeta, you’ve seen everything I was and everything I am, and it just— I just couldn’t believe when you said that . . . But I— I trust you with everything in me and it frightens me, because you know I’ve been hurt before, but I can’t deny that everything feels right when I’m with you. I just. I want another chance. If, if you’ll let me.” You breath the words out, hardly anything but air coming out.  

“Y/n, breathe.” 

“Right,” you exhale, your mind swirling around, making vertigo seem like a walk in the park. 

“You’re not . . . unworthy of love,” Peeta begins but he stops, trying to figure out his words. “What Cato did to you, it doesn’t mean you’re undeserving of love. He’s.. an asshole, who’s going to get what’s coming to him. I— I’m sorry for dropping it on you like that, but seeing you with that guy, he just reminded me so much of Cato, and it made me so mad because I didn’t want you to go through that again, and I.. couldn’t help but think it was my final chance to tell you how I felt.” 

“Final chance?” 

“Y/n, I’ve loved you since like year six.” 

“Peeta, you absolute dumbass!” you exclaim, quickly going to cover your mouth as your own words shock even yourself. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . wow,” a laugh nearly escapes your lips. “We’re both oblivious fools, huh?” 

Peeta’s brows furrow in confusion, as you let out a soft chuckle. His head is tilted slightly to the side, his soft curls falling into his blue eyes. This moment is one you’ll always remember, you think to yourself, already trying to commit it to memory. The way the trees slightly sway from the late summer breeze, the moonlight reflecting off the water; best of all, the glint in Peeta’s eye when your gazes meet. It’s so cheesy, really, but you couldn’t care less. You’ve played it over and over in your head for years, different scenarios always being formulated, but nothing you could have ever dreamt of could compare to this moment. 

“I’ve loved you since year seven,” you tell him, every word of it true. “I can’t believe it took us both this long. Could have avoided the whole Cato fiasco of year twelve, I suppose, if we had just . . . had the gall to tell each other back then, I guess,” you say, the last sentence mumbled.

“Yeah.” Peeta laughs, a genuine deep laugh that reaches his eyes. It rouses the butterflies that have been in the pit of your stomach, the fluttering making you nervous as you watch him scratch the base of his neck almost embarrassedly. 

“So,” you say, dragging the ‘o’ sound. “Pretty sure this is the part where most people would kiss.” 

“Do you want to kiss me?” 

“No, not you, Peeta. I was talking to the duck behind you,” You frown, unable to contain the scoff that passes your lips. “Yes.. yes, I want to kiss you,” you breathe, your pulse hammering.

You step forward, your hands reaching up, gliding against his cheeks, his hands resting on your waist. In a moment of bravery, you place your lips against his. They’re soft, and he tastes like cedar and bread, and it’s like coming home, being in his arms as his lips move against yours, the breeze chilling your skin but his warming you. 

There are no words spoken between the two of you as you both pull away. His eyes are still closed, his long eyelashes resting against the tops of his cheeks; the corners of his mouth are pulled up slightly. 

God, he’s beautiful. So beautiful. That word is usually reserved for sceneries, sunsets or pretty dresses, but in this moment, you can’t tear your eyes away from him. 

“Finally!” someone shouts, causing the both of you to jump back from each other, acting like two first years getting caught passing notes in class. You look around before your eyes land on Johanna Mason, leaning against the statue of the university founder Alma Coin that’s off to the left of the entrance of the study center. Finnick is with her, his signature smirk gracing his elegant features once more. “We were wondering when you two would have the balls to tell each other how you felt.” 

“It seems everyone knew but you two,” Finnick adds with a deep chuckle. 

“Alright, Finny, I think we should leave the two lovebirds alone.” Johanna says, turning away. “Be safe, you two!” 

“If you need anything,” Finnick winks at Peeta. “You know where to reach me.”  

You laugh softly, leaning your head against Peeta’s chest. His arms wrap around you, encasing you in him. His cheeks rests on the top of your head, his breaths evening out as you listen to his steady heart beat. 

This is it. This is home. 

[lover-of-trash-and-people]

bittersweet netflix shadow and bone finale (s1 e8) rewatch; accoutrement: white wine with ice cubes in it (no YOU'RE a mom drink shh)

my wine's like fruity I love her

light and darkness title card we love to see it

Inej looking at Alina before she goes below deck to hide <3

okay that 'what can you really do on your own' was like not fun that shit hurted

okay but Jesper's 'not enough'? <3

oh no my baby Zoya's first inkling that Darkles does not really care

omg Helnik just appeared and I remembered how much heartbreak I have to face in this episode

gods I love Danielle as Nina so so much

'this can't be it' said she with her pleading smile with downturned eyebrows MA'AM I-

don't break my dumb little heart

I might hate Calahan's little accent but they're making me tear up

oh gods I literally cannot keep a hold on myself when Dani's accent bleeds through with full force, it's like she comes more alive or smth

'I will keep you warm' SIR WHAT-

I am surprised they showed a leaning in for a kiss so soon but I'm not mad about it

her little eyebrow twitch at 'what are waffles'

when that rando said 'i hunt slavers now' a dread settled into me because I knew what was about to go down

Matthias looking somberly at the stuffed wolf's head </3

I am so incredibly entranced by this exchange between Fedyor and Nina and what it represents, it's very interesting that they pushed up their storyline to match with the timeline

damn it's kind of jarring to be back in the Fold

'REMEMBER WHO'S DRIVING'??!!!! *you better stop* meme, *i am, disgusted* meme, *oh wow, oh wow* meme

Mal you fucking idiot you could never take the crows by surprise

the music rising as Kaz starts explaining his thought process, fucking perfection

haha Mal bitchass Inej caught you

'Because if he isn't with Kirigan's crew, he's with ours' WHEN I TELL YOU I SCREAMED

'And why would we destroy the Fold? It's the greatest weapon we've got' valid point at the moment but you know I don't necessarily agree with your methods

the use of the light tunnel in the show instead of Alina just being a super flashlight in the books is quite an interesting addition as well

is this an inappropriate time to point out how pretty Ben Barnes is

okay I kind of love the depiction of the shadow powers okay sue me

'they are traitors who tried to kill you' why are you suddenly making valid points despite having kind of committed low scale genocide

'i never said I was smart' YES MAL BE THE VOICE OF HIMBOS EVERYWHERE

Kaz's face going from 'can you believe this idiot' at Mal to 'fuck me I'm gonna do the same thing aren't I' at Inej

'For who would oppose us now?' *himbo romantic rival appears out of nowhere and shoots at him* god I love this show

him standing calmly in his ridiculous all black attire after nodding at his soldier to stop the himbo in his tracks, i fucking can't

could she summon light without the Darkling making her after he put the collar on her until the uhm moment in the books? idts but in the show she can hmm

'only because I'm not in the game' you tell him Jesper

not me snickering at 'you'll be seen not as a saviour, but as a heretic' LMFAO

'Shame. I'll have to give that speech again now.' THIS SHOW IS A FUCKING COMEDY AND YOU CAN'T PROVE ME WRONG

YES LET'S FUCKING GO SULI SOLIDARITY

Darkles casually whipping the Cut out like a shuriken or a throwing knife at Jesper because he shot at him lmao I can't

INEJ FUCKING GHAFA STABBED ONE THE OLDEST AND MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE IN THAT WORLD AND THAT IS VERY TELLING OF HER POWER

that moment where you actually think that affected him despite having read the books and watched the show

and then he has to go and fucking say 'it will take more than this' and I can't be help but be a little bit impressed at this old fool's resilience

throwback to when he said 'the king is a child' sir you make some valid points sometimes and it does make it difficult to hate you

I would just like to inform everyone that it is currently 6:09 am IST and I am sipping my second mug of wine while watching netflix sab for the second time instead of doing my three papers that are due tomorrow

I'm sorry but Inej jumping to check on Zoya after she gets knocked over by the volcra? first class display of solidarity and sisterhood as well as Inej's inherent kindness

Kaz jumping in front of a FUCKING VOLCRA AND STABBING IT WITH HIS CANE to save Inej, you best believe love is true, kids

god the volcra are so ugly and gross, they did such a good job with them

they kind of remind me of these creatures (I think they might have been called Hollows or smth) from the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children movie

STAG VISION TIME

despite my dislike for the callous nature with which the stag plotline was handled, I kind of dig the stag vision scene

'It's just me and you now, Alina. And we're all we need, anyway.' I actually feel bad for this old fool simping for this wonderful gorgeous powerful woman despite lying to her and manipulating her and exploiting her power

okay 'I never needed you' *stabs the bone fragment out of his hand* beautiful power move I fucking love you so so much

alright ben looking like ✨ that✨ not only in physical pain but also emotional pain at what the Darkling clearly considers another betrayal from this girl he wants to give the world and maybe? loves? maybe? or at least has feelings for makes my fucking heart hurt while simultaneously soar at Alina taking back control and reclaiming her power as her own and stepping into her own

'how do you claim such power' okay could have had better dialogue there writers

the fucking score lifting as she says 'you cannot claim what was not given to you' good people my heart is full

one day I'll talk about my defense of the chosen one trope because god damn I kind of love it

hmm I wonder was that brief hesitation that we saw on Alina's face due to her thinking about the 'you chose to betray our people' comment or the 'i was trying to save us' comment because that will define some of her actions in the later seasons (hopefully god if we get some, I honestly don't know what with this stupid brownface debacle)

I'm not saying talking about brownface and pointing out that it is wrong (for further context, I am actually brown) and harmful is stupid btw I'm talking about the incidents involving brownface in question

I don't wanna talk about this anymore but I might feel like I need to and end up posting about it idk

goodness Ivan actually believing in this cause makes me so sad because he too has been victimized by the system that ostracizes Grisha and he has every right to feel the way that he does

Ben actually fighting in that ridiculously heavy cloak and kefta when he's about to turn 40 this year makes me super impressed because I as a 19 year old sometimes wake up with muscle pulls after weeks of inactivity it's weird idk

also I understand that this Mal Darkling fight is completely fanservice and serves nearly no purpose to the plot in general but like I? love it?

'I don't have to kill you Darkling. Your past will do it for me' YES HIMBO GO OFF YOU TELL THAT OLD MAN GODS THAT WAS SEXY AS FUCK

maybe it's because I know Darkles will survive and will come out of it more powerful but I can't get myself to feel bad for him at the moment

Inej and Mal tearing up at Alina's condition made me almost feel something despite it being super obvious she was gonna be fine and save their asses at the last moment

HER POWER

a solitary Kaz in spotted on the western side of the newly expanded fold in his signature all black emo boy look

okay but the crows with zoya and malina is such an adorable team? I literally love them so much?

INEJ'S FUCKING SMILE AT ALINA GIVING HER THE DAGGER AND KAZ LOOKING AT HER AGSGSGSHSJSJSK MY HEART CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE

SHE KNOWS JUST WHAT TO NAME IT WELL GIRLIE I KNOW IT TOO AND MY FUCKING HEART IS LITERALLY GONNA BURST

okay I know they had one interaction but Mal and Jesper would be besties in another universe

Kaz glaring at Jesper when he answers ''course not' to Alina's 'will you still be trying to kidnap me?' tell me one fucking adaptation that got the dynamics between characters this perfectly

okay why do I love that Alina kept the jewellery as maybe a small nod to she has the wits to, um, you know, I don't wanna say steal, but, um, yeah, steal it because she knew she would need money to survive on the run

oh Jessie I love you so much I wish you hadn't said those things on you ig story about the brownface

it's like every single celeb I grow attached to god's like nope that one is going to do or say something problematic (hey btw im not reassigning blame to god for stuff people have done out of their own free will, 'twas a joke)

AAAAAAAH them saying 'the deal is the deal' in the show even though they didn't have to but like they did and I love them for it

Inej literally not being able to not stare at Kaz's face and smile after this <3

'I didn't expect it to burn at all. But it can be destroyed in the end. Just like him' babe you're not wrong but like um just you wait

god Mal being on supportive boyfie mode is well, absolutely adorable, obviously, but I wish we got to see more of him as a person outside of his attachment to Alina

kaz my little demjin I wish you hadn't have had to suffer so much to meet the crows and find your calling

fastforwarding Zoya's arc is also an interesting choice to me

I wish the hug hadn't been done though, it didn't feel earned

maybe Alina awkwardly and half-heartedly (remember, at this point the alliance is fresh and they still don't entirely trust each other) reached for a hug and Zoya avoided her? and then the rest of Zoya's lines followed? that would have made more sense to me at least

I love Sujaya as well, she brought life into Zoya with whatever little screentime and scraps of writing she got

inej asking kaz 'what's your angle?' beep bop bleep morp I sense another incoming embarrassing love confession

'but we do need you' *stares at her face intensely* 'I need you' ah look at the clock, look's like it's time to screech and flap your arms like you're a volcra because you're incapable of containing your emotions

NO YOU CAN'T GO DIRECTLY FROM KANEJ PROGRESS TO HELNIK BREAKUP (TEMPORARY, MIND YOU)

helnik my loves you don't deserve this I'm so sorry for both of you

Matthias fucking smiling ruefully while he says 'this was... just a cruel joke all along' THIS IS NOT FUCKING OKAY

omg hellgate

AAAAAAAAH NINA IS ON THE SAME FRAME AS THE OG CROWS I CAN'T HANDLE THIS

CAMERA PAN FROM KAZ SAYING 'JUST HOW THIS ALL STARTED... WE'RE GONNA NEED A HEARTRENDED' TO NINA OVERHEARING HIM AND LOOKING OVER?????!!!!!! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING THIS TO ME?!

Nina genuinely being curious as to the status of the sun saint because she obviously still cares

Also, 'But she is a Saint' okay Kaz trying to earn brownie points you have succeeded

DID THAT SAILOR JUST SAY 'GOED MORGEN FENTOMEN' TO MALINA BECAUSE I AM NOT OKAY WITH THEM JUST THROWING THAT IN MY FACE ALL OF A SUDDEN

gods I know I'll probably see them again but my heart is full of sorrow as my eyes drink in the sight of my crows for the last time for a while

I know people were annoyed at the meadow flashbacks but guess what? as a darklina, I loved them

'now that the Darkling is dead' could have phrased that a little differently my dudes that line needed to hold more weight

am I glad that they showed Darkles in this state with his nichevo'ya as a tasty little cliffhanger despite not being entirely true to the source material? maybe but only because Ben Barnes saying 'follow' and the nichevo'ya doing exactly so sent a chill down my spine

well, that's it for now, I'll have to move on I guess, get back to my real life which I'm obviously not ready to do

thank you to whoever actually read these things

I probably should have just made reactions or commentary videos instead but I'm lazy

my tumblr will probably go into inactivity once more as I emerge from my stint in the grishaverse

it was quite short (less than 2 months), considering the length of my other obsessions but it was definitely more intense than the other ones

[hongism]

Hello again Caly 👋🏻 It's been a while, I'm sorry. I’m the anon that messaged you about asking for advice/your opinion on something related to writing a while ago. 🥺 So basically my question would be: what's your stance on writing fan fiction for real people? Do you think it’s fine or kind of weird and why do you think so?

I’ve also written out my background/thoughts for context. You can totally skip that, I just thought it might make sense to explain where I’m coming from. I’m sorry in advance for the wall of text that will follow. I’m very bad at keeping it short. 😭

So, I used to be a writer. I started out with kpop fan fiction when I was around 14 (I’m 24 now), but I stopped writing for kpop groups when I was around 17. From then on I wrote fan fiction for fictional characters, mostly anime characters, but I stopped sometime last year. I still have a lot of unfinished ideas I want to write, a lot of them include fictional characters, but others include real people, like the Ateez members or another group’s members, and that's the problem. Let me explain a little further: After a very painful breakup in the second half of last year I got back into kpop. More than ever. While I was casually listening to a few groups before, I suddenly started getting into like 10 groups within a really short amount of time (got7, mx, dreamcatcher, everglow, skz, svt, oneus etc. just to name a few). It’s been great so far, because the music and the groups are kind of a safe haven to me (if that makes sense). I mean, Kpop really helps me cope and kind of escape or make reality a little easier, I'm sure there are more people out there who feel the way I do. I wouldn’t say I’m overly obsessed or anything, but Kpop just is my biggest source of comfort right now, so sometimes I wonder "isn’t this a bit much?“. It’s a difficult topic. But anyways, of course one of the groups I got into was Ateez, otherwise I probably wouldn't be here writing this right now. So I listened to fireworks when it came out and I was impressed and instantly fell in love with them. A little while after that, when I still couldn’t match all of their names with their faces, I started browsing the ao3 tag out of curiosity and I stumbled across moc. I absolutey fell in love with the story and every aspect of it. It also inspired me to write myself again! I've had so many old and new ideas flood my mind, but I really haven't gotten around to write anything yet, because the fact that I'd be writing fan fiction for real people as an adult woman makes me feel kind of uneasy? But I don’t want it to make me feel uneasy! You know? I think it should be fine as long as you’re capable of differentiating reality from fiction. And as an adult with common sense you usually can do that, right? But I’ve seen many people, mostly on tumblr and twitter, say that it’s just weird and wrong and that it automatically makes you a delusional and obsessive fan. So now I’m torn between wanting to realize all the ideas I have (Big thanks to you, because you, your blog and moc are a huge inspiration for me 💕 also moc is without a doubt the best fan fiction I’ve ever read. It’s just an absolutely impressive and thrilling story) and feeling like I’m not supposed or allowed to do that? I hope that makes sense. I know there’s a million other things I wanted to tell you, but I think that’s enough for now. If this is a discussion that interests you, I might comeback with my two cents. 😳 Anyways, I hope I was able to convey my inner conflict and my feelings and everything. 🥺 English isn’t my first language so it was a bit difficult to phrase everything in a way that felt right. Thank you so so much for taking the time to read and answer this. I appreciate it A LOT. I hope you have a great week ahead of you! 🥰🥰🥰

hello hun i'm sorry it took me so long to respond to your ask!! i wanted to make sure to set aside some time so i could be as thorough as possible in my response and give you my thoughts as clearly as possible!

so this debate has been something i've dealt with and struggled with a lot over the years of consuming fanfiction and creating it. i started out writing fanfiction of media like anime before getting into kpop, and it took me around 3 years to even start reading kpop fanfiction. every once in a while, the debate of whether or not real person fanfiction is okay or not comes up, and that does always discourage me. i wish i could be like 'yeah im solidly set in this opinion!' but i do still get discouraged myself, and that's something i think a lot of people struggle with! i resonate a lot with how you feel and what your opinions are and how much music and kpop means to you. i also get those worries of 'isn't this a bit much?' and such and it's a difficult thing to talk about and think about, but as you said, i think there is a line when it comes to fanfiction and life and reality

i have no issue with real person fanfiction. i tend to not read or write 'idol' aus because it feels a little too real for my comfort zone, but i will say that the people who dislike it are loud. they're hard to ignore and avoid. you aren't delusional or obsessive for enjoying fanfiction. it's called fan FICTION, meaning it's not real and it should not be meant to be real. it should be fine as long as you're able to draw the line and say 'this is not real and it will never be'. i think it's okay in some instances to be like 'man i wish i could live in this universe' while still realizing it's not real and you're not trying to force it down anyone's throats. that's the biggest thing in my mind. as long as you are not trying to shove it in these idols' faces or psychoanalyze them and their relationships, it's okay.

if someone doesn't like fanfiction, it's easy to just take a step back and say 'okay i won't talk about it/share it with you'. you can really cater your own experiences, decide what you want to see or don't want to see, but a lot of people complain about 'having' to see it. pretty much every single fanfic writer i've spoken to and encountered says they NEVER want someone to send a fanfic to an idol/the person who is in it, which is good and i think the best course of action when it comes to fanfic.

all in all, fanfic exists, it's out there, and it's FICTION. it's not real, it's not meant to be shoved in other people's faces, it's not meant to be shared with the idols who are characters in it, and most often the idols are 'place-holders' for characters. what i mean by that is they are a common place for a lot of people, something recognizable and enjoyable, but the personalities and way they're written will always differ across the board. you could think of it almost as a canvas, a person you like being a canvas for you to paint your words and stories on. writing fanfiction about kpop does not make you any less or more of a fan, it doesn't mean you don't respect and care about these idols as human beings and people, and the biggest thing to worry about is simply understanding and respecting your boundaries as a fan by not sharing it/shoving it in the idols' face.

i hope this all makes sense and isn't coming off the wrong way? but i also hope it helps you feel better and understand how i feel!! you say english isn't your first language, but i would NEVER have guessed, your english is absolutely perfect and understandable <3 thank you so much for trusting me and talking to me about this, i'm very grateful and thankful for it and your sweet words about my works 🥺💕

[strangeradventuresofp]

first aid (sokka x firenation!reader)

requested by : @gogo-is-cooler-than-you​  -   could you do a sokka x reader based on First Aid by gus dapperton where the reader used to be from the firenation but escaped and then joined the gaang and they found out and kicked her out? ty

The girl pulled her brother along, leaving you on your knees behind them with a heavy heart. His own heart ached as he heard your sobs, thick with misery and despair. The bald boy’s heart truly went out to you; he had never expected this to happen, nor wanted it to happen. He liked you, he enjoyed your company. The blind girl had shared so many laughs with you, she had grown to consider you a friend of hers. They were your friends. Were. The word stung so painfully. The truth was, you were experiencing the worst pain you had ever felt at this very moment.

~~~

Pain resonated through your body, blood seeping through your casual green -now, very red- clothes. You limped through the streets of wherever you were, leaving a trail of red behind you from the deep cut on your leg. Clutching your side, your hand gathering more and more stains as you fell to your knees in an alleyway, grunting loudly in pain. You shifted, to put your back up against the wall of the alleyway, applying pressure to your side in an attempt to reduce the bleeding.

The loss of blood caused your vision to turn blurry, blinking frantically to try to increase your sight once again. As you looked up, you saw four figures stood in front of you. You assumed they were talking, but you could hear only muffled noises beneath a continuous ring that caused an intense reverberation. One of the figures moved closer, the face becoming clearer. It was a boy, looking about the same age as you. His face was dark, and chiseled, as if he had been crafted by the Gods himself. Dark hair was pulled back apart from just a few baby hairs poking out at his hairline. The clothes he possessed were blue and white, signalling he was a citizen of the Water Tribe, North or South, you really didn’t have a clue. 

The last thing you saw were his chocolate lashes fluttering with concern as he eyes bored into yours. 

~

Soon enough, your eyes were flickering back open and you propped yourself up on your elbow so you could familiarize your new surroundings.

“Hey, you’re awake! How are you feeling? I’m Sokka. I sorta saved your life earlier.” He shrugged, a smile of pride gracing his face, earning a giggle to pass through your lips.

“I feel much better than earlier, thanks for saving my life, Superman.”

“You’re welcome...”

“Y/N.”

“You’re welcome, Y/N! Glad I could assist.” Another chuckle found it’s way through your lips as you and the boy, Sokka, smiled at each other. You thought he was handsome before, but knowing that he had helped you, without even knowing you, made him all the more attractive to you.

~~~

The first time you had met, he had saved your life from the injuries that you had suffered from some Fire Nation soldiers during your escape, and you stayed with him and his friends, who slowly became your friends also, for months on end. None of them ever asked how you even ended up with the injuries, probably because they imagined it was very traumatic for you, and didn’t want to set you off in any way. 

Your escape from the Fire Nation was the best thing you ever did, sick of being tormented by the royal family and slandered by the rest of the world. You had taken an Earth Kingdom outfit that used to belong to one of the Fire Lord’s prisoners and took in a bag with you when you were a stowaway on a ship that was headed towards the Earth Kingdom. Long story short, you got into a fight with some soldiers on the ship and as soon as you got off, you hid and changed into your new clothes, ready to start a new life. Little did you know, it would lead you to travel the world with the avatar and his friends, including the boy who, soon after you joined the Gaang, became your boyfriend - the boy who had saved your life.

And you had no idea that it would lead you to exact moment. After months of befriending and getting to know these wonderful people, they were leaving you.

~~~

You and Sokka had been training all day. After discovering you had no real way of defending yourself, your boyfriend took it upon himself to train you in combat, using a spear that he had made for you. It wasn’t a very good weapon, but your heart melted at the gesture, and you used it in every fight you were in. You were getting very good, and Sokka was full of pride.

After your sparring your session, Sokka was pouting, and you were laughing, hand on your chest.

“I totally kicked your butt!”

“N-No! I-I let you win, obviously.” Giggling at his remark, you pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, turning his frown into a wide smile. 

“Guys!” Katara and Toph came running through to you, panting for breath, looking very distressed. Immediately, you and Sokka ran over, worried expressions plastered over both of your faces. “There’s Fire Nation soldiers here.” The confession made Aang’s ears prick up, joining the group of you. The five of you stood in a line, ready to defeat whatever was thrown your way.

As soon as red uniforms were seen coming through the bushes, the five of you launched yourselves at them. Spinning your spear, you deflected most of their fire attacks before kicking them into the dirt. Toph stomped and caused a soldier to go flying back to where he came from. Katara’s waterbending allowed her to pin a soldier up to a tree, freezing him in place. Aang was delicately dancing around a soldier, who was getting very frustrated with not being able to hit him. And Sokka...

Your eyes darted over to where your boyfriend was on the ground, pinned down by a soldier standing above him, fists clenched. As the soldier pulled his fist back, fire erupting from it, you lunged at him, roaring with rage, kicking him in the side to get him away from Sokka. 

Suddenly, flames shot out of your own fists, clearly taking the soldier by surprise as he tried to dodge your attacks. Almost instantly after the soldier dispersed the fire heading for his face, a blazing ring of fire met his shins, causing him to jump, but fall on his back a few seconds later. With all the soldiers down, you turned back to your friends, who were staring at you, fear present in their faces.

“You’re a firebender?” Toph yelled over the distance that stood between you and the others. “And you didn’t think to tell us?”

“I-I.. I’m sorry, I just.. I didn’t want you to think that I was like the others.”

“Even if you’re not, it’s not the point, anymore. You lied to us.” Katara’s face was stern, and tears pooled in your eyes. You looked up to catch Sokka’s eye, but were unsuccessful, as you found him looking towards the floor with misty eyes. 

“Y/N..” The younger boy smiled sympathetically at you, but couldn’t hide the disappointment in his eyes. 

“You knew how much the Fire Nation hurt me and my family, and how much they’ve hurt everyone else. You should’ve been honest with us.” 

“I’m sorry, guys. I’m so, so sorry.” Your tears became too many to stay put in your eyes, and they began to spill down your cheeks as your friends began to back away from you. 

~~~

Sokka was what hurt the most. You knew you hadn’t been entirely honest, and you didn’t blame him for walking away. But you truly admired him, you loved him. And you were excited for the development of your relationship. It felt like you had known him for a lifetime, not just a few months. The kisses you shared meant everything. He meant the world to you. He saved your life. 

“Goodbye, Sokka.” You managed to say between sobs. “I won’t forget about the way you saved my life.”

my masterlist

A/N : hiii so i finally (i think) have gotten over my writers block im so sorry this took me so long but hopefully it was worth waiting for !! thanks so much for the request i hope you like it<3 anyway thanks for sticking with me i love u guys and i hope u all have a great day ilysm xo p

[nachocici]

Ardyn Dreams

I am no means a writer.. so please don't be so harsh on me :/

@pokemontrainerjenny8 , and @ire-in-reverence

(Saw your tags thought maybe you liked to see!)

Doodles based on dreams here below!

https://nachocici.tumblr.com/post/617592447817613312/pokemontrainerjenny8-im-always-ranting-about-my

Dream 1-

Surrounded by endless darkness, tiny slivers of light spilling through the ceilings, The lights are fading one by one, I'm terrified of the darkness, I reach the beam of light, I'm hopeful but terrified, I clasp my hands in a silent prayer, my prayers go unanswered, as a gloved hand reached into the light, grasping my chin, My eyes meet the darkness and it smirks, I realized I wasn't scared of the darkness, I'm scared of what resides in it.

Dream 2-

I'm in a high quality room, I have everything I could possibly want, But I'm empty, The things brought to me only reminds me of how limited my freedom is. How lonely I am. One person is allowed to come, and go as he pleases. He weaves stories of his travels and his conquests. It leaves me envious. There are times he's gone for days, or weeks at a time. The help usually comes but, their not very talkative. I miss my home, my friends, and my old life. But, it's all gone with the click of a lock. I check the door handle every day; hoping, and waiting. It finally turns, I'm trembling. I swing it open all that greets me is an empty, vast hallway. No one is sight; this is my chance. I'm hopeful. My steps slow and cautious, soon turned into slight jogging. I'm almost around the corner. A sharp exhale leaves my body as I collide into a another body. Heavy hands grip on to my shoulders, trapping me. Shock, disbelief, anger his eyes read, but it all vanished as his signature mask comes into play and he smirked. He chuckled saying he wasn't expecting such a surprising, warm welcome as he held me close and escorting me back to my prison. I knew there would be consequences. I felt guilt clawing at me, for whoever had to take the punishment in my place.

Dream 3-

I'm out of the room, but I can only wander so far on my short leash. Eyes are always on me, even when I can't see them. I'm never alone. I'm surrounded by rows of bookcases, mostly history, research, and war, sadly none interest me. I'm merely enjoying a stroll, until a book spine stood out to me on the very top shelf. I felt a pull, an urge to read all of its contents, but, I'm vertically challenged. I see no ladder and, I can't ask for help because of him people avoid me. I slowly climb on the shelves, clinging to the boards best I could. The book just out of reach, my finger tips on the spine. "Well now, it looks like you may need a hand?"

My head snaps to the side to see him there, that sly smirk and over confident posture. I'm embarrassed, no telling how long he was there. Watching me struggle, he's a sadist. He reached over and helped me off the bookshelf but, instead of putting me down, his arms just cradle me. He just held me looking into my eyes, I squeak trying to push away, but he just held me there, smiling finding my distress utterly amusing. He just continued to hold me and walk away from the bookcase. Whenever he returns from his endeavors, he wants my absolute attention and I don't know why..

Dream 4-

I'm in deep in the heart of insomnia, working at a small hardly know coffee shop near a school campus. My usuals came in to prompto and noctis lugging their book bags, Prompto greets me cheerfully as always and Noctis offers a casual hey. This is their usual hang out spot after school, I felt like I've know them for a while now, enough to consider us as friends. Enough of platonic teasing at least, we chat till they leave, and go on with the rest of my shift, somehow ended up vacationing?? Well enforced vacation (I'm usually a workaholic they have to force me on breaks) Me and friends ended up pitching in to vacation at galdin quay for a couple of days, beach fun scenarios ensue.

Night 1- My eyes open all I see is the golden violets skys of a sunset. I sit up and see I'm laying in a field of golden wheat that goes on for miles. I'm confused, I stand up and look around wondering where am I. My eyes turn towards the sky again the sunset, I'm mesmerized and lost in my situation, I hear shuffling near me I turn and see a man he's too far away to see his face, he's just as stunned to see me, he calls out to me then I wake up forgetting the dream entirely,

Night 2- I open my eyes. I'm in the same field again but, this time I see a lone tree in a small clearing. I walk towards the tree feeling its bark under my palm, until hear a voice shout right behind me. I flinch and zoom behind the tree, I'm awake now

Night 3- I'm here again, but next to the tree, I see a man sitting there, his back facing away me. He doesn't sense me, he's lost in thought. I slowly make my way towards him, scared to startle him or myself. I slowly reach his side, wondering why this man is a constant presence in my dreams. He looks at me shocked his golden eyes piercing mine, he speaks "it's you.. ", I smile and sit next to him to me "it's me?" I say awkwardly. We sat there exchanging introductions, asking each other questions. Making small talk it's hard to follow, since our dialogue feels decades apart, but we managed since it was very new and strange experience for the both of us. We continued this for a few more nights when I finally asked him why is he always here? In this dream? He looks at me quizzically, "You think it's a dream?", he utters it's more of an escape for him. With his eyes looking so worn and distant, I stare at him "escape from what?" He chuckles sadly "my chains.. ." I asked him why doesn't he brake these chains and free himself. He then glares at me scoffing at my naivety saying he's tried time and time again with no success. We go back and forth a lot on the topic of hope, until somehow I convinced him to try again and if we ever met outside of this dream I'll help him anyway I can, I told him I considered him a friend worth helping and it's time he starts believing in that at the very least! He just stares at me bewildered, he smiles softly and speaks but I couldn't hear because I'm awake once again.

I returned home, a few days pass, no more weird dreams, life back to normal, I'm back at work greeted by prom and noct asking about my trip, they leave, finish my shift, and head home. The sun is setting, reminding me of my strange dreams. I see my apartment complex just half way down the street, I stop all of a sudden. Not sure why but I turn around and he's there, he looks worn out, as he staggers towards me. I'm in shock I couldn't believe my eyes he's here right in front of me! He throws his arms around me, crushing me into him, he whispers, 'it's you.. ." into my shoulder.

End

[thegeminisage]

hey liz i've been thinking a lot about story structure lately and i wanted your take on how you decide what structure your stories will have? i know there's that "you have to do what your story needs and tells you to do" thing but these bitches dont ever tell me anything they just multiply so. thoughts? - bma

(as an aside, i don't know whether involving medium would change many things but it may be worth considering. mainly i think medium is just a matter of arrangement and that the story would be for most intents and purposes the same no matter how you choose to tell it. i guess you could argue that structure is arrangement in itself and intrinsically tied to medium but i sort of feel like it is secondary arrangement, if at all? like if you consider time as an element to outline -- the time IN the story (how things happen to your characters) is not necessarily the time you’re telling the story IN (how you are telling your reader that things are happening) aka internal chronology doesnt equal your work’s pacing? or should it??? does this make sense? i dont think so. i am sorry.) - bma :|

NOOO dont be sorry ur making total sense

i think there’s 3 thots to unpack here (medium, structure, & chronology) & i’m gonna start with medium bc it’s easier. im also putting it behind a cut bc it’s gonna get just stupidly long and rambly. i’m sorry in advance if it’s not helpful to you, i have a lot to say for someone who has never taken even one single class on writing and as a result doesn’t know jack shit (there’s a tl;dr at the end dont worry)

about MEDIUM: 

so like ok i’m just some goof-off with a HS degree who writes fanfiction but In My Very Super Qualified Personal Opinion, i don’t think that most of the time medium is intrinsically tied to STRUCTURE of the main storytelling arc...i think the art of storytelling itself is distinct from the medium you choose to tell the story IN. this post puts it better than i ever could but basically for me, i feel like the story itself is sort of the raw, malleable concept, and the medium you choose to tell it in is how you convey the information??

like in a book, you can say “she forgot her keys” and in a film you have to show her smacking her forehead, heading back into the house, and swiping her keeps off the counter. you can’t TELL in film, you have to show. similarly i regret every day i cannot perfectly describe a facial expression with words when i see it so clearly in my head. for audio-only podcasts that are dialogue heavy out of necessity you have different limitations than you would for, say, animated music videos with no dialogue at all. games allow for more interactivity and exploration while sacrificing accessibility, tv shows allow for more length while sacrificing, uh, a big hollywood budget...medium affects the kind of story you can reasonably tell which is why some stories are better suited to one medium than another. i think trying things in other mediums is a good way to stretch your storytelling muscles but with enough skill nearly any story could be told in any medium. i think when trying to decide on a medium you just gotta weigh the pros & cons and what you feel comfortable with/what you think would be most effective/what would evoke the strongest reaction

re: structure:

firstly “do what the story tells u to do” is a little silly like...the story isn’t sentient. come on. that’s like “i can only write when the writing gods inspire me” there are no writing gods! inspire yourself! it’s all in our weird messed up brains! ok anyway.

this is, again, just how i do things, and i am 700% self-taught so take it with a grain of salt, but when i sit down and start blocking out a story from scratch i don’t...actually consider the big structure at all! sorry if that’s not helpful to you. i like to make a list of everything i want to happen, and then put it together in a few different orders to see what looks best. and when i’m finished, whatever i have just like...IS the structure i go with, with perhaps minor tinkering to make it flow more smoothly. (i think this might be in the same spirit as “do what the story tells you” with less bullshit and more Agency Of The Writer.)

for long and more complex projects, i actually usually have several lists - one list of stuff that is, for example, the Action Plot (the kingdom has been cursed, i’m tracking down my serial killer sister to bring her to justice, i’m running from djinn who wanna kill my dad, i’m trying to bring my dead not-boyfriend back to life). then i have another list for Character A & Character B’s romance or whatever. and maybe a even another one for solo character development (magicphobic prince learns to love magic, former werewolf hunter figures out his family is a cult, half-demon learns to embrace his own nature). and as many lists as we need for however many Main Characters and or Plots/Sideplots

how i order the lists: individually first. don’t mix them together to start with. when deciding the order of an individual list i like to, for example in a romance arc, use escalating intimacy. “A and B have dinner together” is naturally gonna go way sooner than “A and B kiss” or “A and B talk about A’s angsty backstory” because that’s more satisfying. draw it out, good/important stuff last, dangle that carrot so we have a reason to keep reading! for singular character development, it’s basically a straightforward point A to point B...if i want my guy to start hating magic with everything he is and end up being very comfortable with it, i have to put “reluctantly uses magic to save his own life” WAYYY before “casually using magic to light torches and reheat his cold stew.” 

the tricky part for me is when i’m done with these lists and then i need to mix them together To Pace My Whole Story. (this is usually why i wind up with a rainbow colored spreadsheet.) i don’t like to put too many things too close together because then the pace feels uneven. even if my Action Plot is only a thinly veiled excuse for romance and character development, i still don’t want to focus on a romance for 30,000 words and then go “and oh yeah in case you forgot Serial Killing Sister is still coming for your asses.” the more sideplots and major character arcs you’re juggling the harder it is to get an even distribution, which is my main concern always

and like, generally, whatever i have when i’m finished...is my structure. (sorry.) 

i don’t know much about the classic 3-act or anything like that, but i usually can divide them up into 3-5 big arcs based on story turning points. sometimes i take a scene out of one arc and put it in another because it fits better and i like for my shit to be organized, but usually by the time i’m finished with all that, that’s what the final story is mostly gonna look like. (there have been a few exceptions when i realized i needed extra scenes/changes while i was MID-DRAFT and let me tell you that murders me EVERY time. it happened on the merlin fic i’m currently posting and that was like my own personal hell.)

this is also where thots about chronology come in:

i think time CAN be an element of this if you WANT it to be, but it doesn’t HAVE to be. if you want it to be, i would consider it just another “list” like character development or the romance arc. 

i usually plot without considering Time very much...to me, it’s all down to the events you want to show, and however much time it takes is the byproduct. if you want to show something from a character’s chilhood but then tell the bulk of it when they’re adults, that’s one thing. if you want to show a scene from their childhood, teenhood, young adulthood, etc, that’s a different kind of pacing?? i usually do it this way so i can regard time like wordcount: it takes as long as it takes. 3 days or 3 years, a 1.5k drabble or a 100k epic...overall, my LARGEST CONCERN is that even distribution. in the same way that i don’t want one chapter to be 30,000 words when the rest are 10,000 words, i personally am not a fan of huge timeskips offscreen

(because this where i think someone’s own internal chronology DOES matter...this is just a personal preference, as a reader i have a hard time really comprehending, say, a year timeskip or a 10yr timeskip when all i did was turn one page. like, a year is such a long time. i can’t even begin to describe how different i am now to how i was a year ago. it’s the same for character development. time IS development and as a writer i’m not really comfortable having that take place offscreen - for main characters, at least. it’s just too jarring. a little prologue with something happening 10 or 20 years ago is usually fine, but for the most part, i’m not a fan. ...i can do one chapter per year a lot easier than i can do two chapters in childhood and the other 8 in adulthood. of course you can play with this a LOT with nonlinear storytelling, which is a whole other very cool thing, and someone skilled in their work can keep me sucked in no matter what, but imo if you don’t want to risk throwing your reader out of your work it’s better to keep things steady)

HOWEVER sometimes time IS an element u wanna consider outside of just making sure your shit is evenly distributed...if your heart is moved to tell a story in a specific timeframe, over a year, or from solstice to solstice (this was almost the timeline for my merlin fic and then i changed it), for the first six months of a friendship, or even a huge journey in the span of a single day (toby fox had a lot of success with this one lol).

i think it can help to choose a start and end point for your chronology the same way you do for character development (prince goes from hating magic to being ok with it, story takes place from ages 8 to 25, or from new year’s eve 2038 to 2039, whatever) - that way you can keep your distribution even, if that’s a thing you want to do...even if you have a lot of skips you can still note what happens offscreen to make it work better in your head? like, if you just make it another List, another column on your spreadsheet, when you’re in the early stages of organizing you can be conscious of it and make sure it’s playing into the story the way you want it to

anyway these r my thots im SOOOO SORRY this is so long lmao. brain machine broke today which is why i had to ramble more to explain myself. the tl;dr in case ur brain is melting out of ur ears & u didn’t sign up for an essay:

imo medium is totally distinct from storytelling tho ofc some stories are better suited to some mediums

structure? i don’t know her. i plot w/o regard to structure and then if it looks funny i mush it into a more structurally sound shape

my main concern when structuring anything, including time, is an even distribution of Events and a steady rate of escalation

structure to me is just what i have when i’m finished plotting. i’m sorry one day i’m gonna take a writing class

internal chronology matters to me personally because i have a little bit of time blindness but maybe not to everyone, i know many very successful stories where they disregarded that entirely to no ill effect

writer’s block isn’t real! everyone just needs more rainbow spreadsheets

thank u for asking I HOPE i didn’t make you regret it too badly lmao and that at least a little of it was helpful!! 

[pizzarollpatrol]

Fic Rec List #4 2/3/2019

First rec list of 2019! As always, thank to all these beautiful writers for sharing. 40 fics on this list this time. If a link doesn't work, please let me know! I’ll be happy to fix it.  

You Don't Have to be Alone by @thottybarnes

Summary: In which Bucky Barnes, a soldier who lost his arm on a peacekeeping mission overseas in Syria is having issues adjusting to being a disabled man in modern times. You, Barnes’ best friend since childhood, take it upon yourself to help him the best you can. Bucky x Reader. —— Oh my god I loved this so much. I just really love your writing.

Safe House by @thottybarnes 

Summary: When a mission goes south, you make it a personal mission to make your boyfriend, Bucky Barnes, see the light at the end of the tunnel by taking him to your safe house. Bucky x Reader.

Peppermint Shake by @thottybarnes

Summary: In which Reader happens to buy a peppermint milkshake with a cherry and two straws while on a date with her best guy. 40s!Bucky x Reader—— I love this one so much, its so sweet and endearing. 

Hero for Hire by @delicatelyherdreams

Summary: Tired of constantly being sat on the sidelines for missions, Bucky Barnes deciders that he’s going to do his own hero work and office his services to the public as a freelance “hero for hire.” he expects to be asked to rescue cats from threes or help little old ladies cross the street, but he doesn’t expect to get tangled up in your life. He definitely doesn’t expect to fall for you either. But, when you’re a hero for hire, you’ve gotta see the mission through. Bucky x reader. Completed series.—— holy fuck. Y’all, if you only read one fic from this list, read this one!!! Oh my god it is such a ride. I loved this fic with my whole ass heart and I got so freaking invested. 

Touch me Tenderly by @delicatelyherdreams

Summary: You’ve never seen his skin, never seen his scars. He’s scared to show them, but maybe all he needs is to feel your tender touch. Bucky x reader.

Day Off by @softlybarnes​

Summary: Bucky really wants to take a nap with the reader, but she just wants to read.Bucky x reader. —— Holy crap. This is literally the softest thing I’ve ever read. This is my actual dream, I absolutely loved this and I desperately want this in life. I love how clingy he is and I love how despite how he’s touching her, its still just innocent, grounding touch. I love this fic with my whole ass heart, definitely one of my favorites. 

Sad by @softlybarnes

Summary: The reader, who has struggled with depression all her life, slips back into that deep sadness. Bucky is worried and tries his best to help. Bucky x reader. —— I was crying almost the entire time i read this, it’s so beautiful and heartbreaking

Sugar by @softlybarnes

Summary: Bucky survives the war and comes home just a little bit changed. His girl loves him anyway, and she knows exactly how to show it. Bucky x Reader. Smut. —— YOOOOOOOOO. Dude I just love your writing so much, you don’t understand the happiness I feel every time i read one of your fics. I loved this one so much. I love the way to talk to each other and how they carry their relationship.

Casual by @writing-parker

Summary: The reader has been seeing Steve for more than a year now, stuck somewhere between friends with benefits and an actual relationship. He wants to commit to you, but he cant let himself. You overhear a conversation you wish you hadn’t-learning much more about the way Steve feels about you than you ever wanted. Steve Rogers x reader. —— My heart BROKE. Even tho know you see how Steve feels about the reader from his thoughts, I still couldn’t help but hate him. God, this was so good. 

Give Him Back by @soopranatural

Summary: The Hulk is not an idiot, he knows when he is needed and he knows when he is not. Bruce Banner x Enhanced!Reader. —— Oh my god. ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. This is the first Bruce fic I’ve ever read and I feel in love. I love how you characterized Hulk and it was so sweet. This fic definitely left me wanting more Bruce and Hulk fics.

Firefighter!Bucky Drabble by @hootyhoobuckaroo

Summary: If firefighter!Bucky rescued you from a fire, realistically you wouldn’t even know it was him. Bucky x Reader.—— AHHHHHH I never even considered Firefighter!Bucky until now and I can’t stop thinking about it. I loved this sooooo much. 

Eggnog by @buckyforbreakfast

Summary: Bucky as a little too much and gets creative with the gingerbread men. Bucky x Reader. —— I know, I know, Christmas passed already but holy crap. I was not about to leave this fic out of the list. Its so cute, I could not contain myself.

Baby by @paradisaicsam

Summary: Different situations in which reader makes Peter flustered by calling him baby. Peter Parker x Reader. —— Oh i loved this one so so much. Its so sweet and endearing.

A Restless Night by @221bshrlocked

Summary: “My room is haunted, so I have to sleep in yours.” Steve x reader. Smut.

Things Change by @fvckingavengers

Summary: After completing a rough mission, Bucky and the reader retreat to her family’s vacation home as a safe house. Bucky x reader. 

Effortless by @supernovasandcoronas

Summary: “I’ll be right back” kisses: A puts their hands on B’s shoulders from behind them, where they are sat on the couch. He leads down around, while B turns his head a little, accepting the quick peck. Sam Wilson x reader.

Fresh Eyes by @supernovasandcoronas

Summary: You’re a pharmacist in one of the busiest pharmacies in Brooklyn. When some of the Avengers start picking up their medications from your pharmacy, you know life is about to get infinitely more interesting. Sam Wilson x Poc!Reader

Oxytocin by @supernovasandcoronas

Summary: Touches that may or not lead to something more. Bucky x reader.

Gentle by @invisibleanonymousmonsters

Summary: Y/N has never seen Bucky be anything but gentle and loving. It’s hard for her to believe her boyfriend was ever the world’s deadliest and most lethal assassin. Bucky x reader. —— Oh god, I loved this with my whole ass heart. 

Swipe Right by @avengerscompound

Summary: Sam Wilson signs Steve up for Tinder. When the woman he Super Likes during Sam’s tutorial messages him, Steve goes from unwilling dating app user to developing feelings. Steve  Rogers x Reader. Completed series.

Breakfast in Bed by @avengerscompound

Summary: Children really do change things They also have terrible timing. Steve x reader.

Dead Serious by @puppy-barnes

Summary: When you accidentally kill a man after a night with friends, you call your boyfriend Bucky to come save the day. Bucky x Reader. —— God, I loved this so much. Its so original and hysterical and I’ve read this so many times. 

Polaroids by @spidey-holland67

Summary: May gets Peter a camera for his birthday, ever since then he cant stop taking pictures of you. He always kept them in a box in his room, but one day some one finally finds them. Peter Paker x Stark!Reader. Smut

Sharing by @elivanah

Summary: Steve’s girlfriend finds out that Steve and his best friend used to share their women. Steve x reader x Bucky. Smut.  —— If this aint the hottest shit I’ve read in a while. 

What Feels Right by @waywardmoeyy

Summary: Castiel makes a move on the reader. Castiel x reader. 

Adrenaline Fix by @jaamesbbarnes

Summary: When you need to spice up your life and Bucky in intendedly provides the spice but also the comfort. Bucky x Reader. —— AHHHH IM SO SOFT YOU DONT EVEN KNOW. 

Lil Bit Floozy by @piscesbarnes

Summary: Bucky’s more prone to be responsive when you’re a soft drunken mess. Bucky x reader

Snowed In by @beckzorz

Summary: You’re all set for a vacation in the woods. A cozy cabin, a fireplace, solitude… Then a tall stranger falls through your front door. What’s a girl to do? Bucky x reader. —— Hannukah fic!!

Starshine by @a-splash-of-stucky

Summary: The starts feature in some important moments throughout your life. 40s!Steve Rogers x reader —— Absolutely loved this and shed a few tears by the end. 

Unusual Request by @a-splash-of-stucky

Summary: In which you dress up as a schoolgirl and have a threesome with Nat and Steve. Steve x Natasha x Reader. Smut.

How Long Will I Love You by @a-splash-of-stucky

Summary: Nothing Lasts forever, except, perhaps, your love for him. Artist!Steve Rogers x Artist!Reader. —— Just break my heart into billions of pieces i guess.

The Quest for Love by @sgtjbuccky

Summary: (Modern-Day!AU) Work has always been a priority for Bucky, leaving things like love long forgotten, and for him it’s no problem, but for Sam and Steve it is the biggest problem to grace this earth. Fed up with Bucky and his constant protests and avoidance of love, they set him up on a series of dates to find the girl of his dreams with the help of the magical spirit of December. Only for Bucky to realize love isn’t always found where one goes looking for it, but may be close by. Bucky x reader. Completed series. —— Ohhhhhhhh my goddddddddd.  The love i have for this series is unreal. I love their banter and playfulness and how easy going their whole relationship us. Its so fun and sweet and endearing. 

Say It by @sgtjbuccky

Summary: In where you loved Bucky unconditionally, enough to sacrifice your life for his happiness, now Bucky tries to save you. Bucky x reader. Completed series. —— Bruhhhhhhhhh, this is such a good ass series. Unrequited love, sacrifice and soooo much pain. Love this fic with my whole ass heart.

Already Yours by @sgtjbuccky

Summary: Bucky hasn’t had the best of luck trying to charm you, but when confidence finally washes over him, he makes his move only to realize is ain’t as smooth as he used to be, but that may not be a bad thing at all. Based on prompt: “You keep licking your lips and giving me that look, you don’t even know me, yet I’m already yours”. 40s!Bucky x reader.

The Three Times Steve Caught You by @bucky-plums-barnes

Summary: Bucky is back from the war, you have time to make up for. Sometimes it’s interrupted. 40s!Bucky x reader. 

Woman Like a Drug by @writingcroissant

Summary: Bucky thinks naughty thoughts and you’re not ready to reveal a secret. Bucky x reader

Out of Touch by @buckitybarnes

Summary: “I think i requested this one before but i really want this fic! Bucky always to goes to hang with the reader when he wakes up with nightmares because he thinks she’s always still up. In reality, reader make FRIDAY wake her up when Bucky gets up at night so she can comfort him and Steve finds out.” Bucky x reader. —— This tore my heart to bits.

I Just Want Attention by @buckysforeverprincess

Summary: You begin to have doubts about your relationship with Steve as he starts to pull away from you. Steve x reader. —— Oh fuck, whatever I had left of a heart was destroyed. 

Kinkmas - Day Eight by @beardandbooty

Summary: Subby rope bunny Bucky. Bucky x reader. Smut. —— Technically this is more of an headcanon/drabble (???) than a fic but It was too good to not put it on the list. Also, i love the term rope bunny, and Bucky’s last line in this fic.

Headcanon by @prettyyoungtragedy

Summary: Ask: “Being one of the best assassins ever known, Bucky lord to use his skills and stealth to get handsy with you whenever he can. He can almost have you on the verge of coming on the couch while everyone is in the same room watching movies and they never notice.” Bucky x reader. Smut. —— Also a headcanon, but I loved this a little too much. 

[shurisneakers]

espresso [4]

Summary: In which your best friend’s brother begins to set you up on dates when you mention that you haven’t been in a relationship in years, but things don’t go as expected.

Warning: swearing, dating, anger issues

A/N: this is my entry for the beautiful @bithors writing challenge!

hey hey big shoutout to @samingtonwilson because every time she betas this and sends me the revised copy im like!!!! a QUEEN!!!! holy shit!!!

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous part- Part 3 || Espresso Masterlist

“No. Fucking. Way.”

“Yes fucking way! Ain’t she beautiful?” Bucky beamed, running his hands gingerly over the door of his new ride. An old muscle car, a sleek black with a few scratches and dents, but proudly glinting in the moonlight.

You let out a low whistle, glancing up at Bucky as you crouched beside the car for a better look. “Gorgeous. She got a name?”

“I was debatin’ Grace, but now I’m thinkin’ she’s more of an April. What do you think?”

You would have teased him, but this was genuinely the happiest you’d seen him in a long time. Alight eyes were crinkled at the corners and his grin was one of the largest you’d ever seen, and heck, you wondered why he couldn’t be like this more often.

“Shits, that’s perfect.”

You sent him a pair of finger-guns when he opened the door for you and he rolled his eyes in feigned exasperation, smile still stretched over his lips.

In an empty threat, he replied, “Say shit one more time in plural and you’re walking there on your own.”

“Well, God forbid a girl has funs,” you joked only to be met with a groan of annoyance. “Oh, calm down.”

Once in the car, you immediately went to set your feet on the dashboard, legs crossed at the ankle, but received a deadly glare. You slowly lowered your feet, never breaking eye contact with him even as your features twisted in playful fear.

As you tugged your seatbelt on, you asked, “When’d you get her?”

“Two days ago. Couldn’t afford the payments on the other one. Sold it to some frat guys ages ago and took whatever was left after payin’ off the bank to get this one.” He sighed contentedly as he turned the key in the ignition so the engine roared to life. “DMV shit got delayed. She’s probably, like, a third-hand vehicle and needs the upholstery totally ripped up and replaced– but I think she’s pretty great.”

With a soft sound of disagreement, you shook your head. “She’s a ten out of ten, no need for anything. I’m happy for you.”

You tucked your hands behind your head, leaning back into the worn out leather seats which had turned soft over years of use, and a soft sigh of comfort left your lips to prove your point.

“How are your classes going?” he asked after a moment, still smiling softly at your previous statement.

“Getting fingered by Wolverine would be less painful,” you replied casually so Bucky choked and coughed on an inhale. You laughed quietly. “How’s engineering going?”

The indicator made a clicking noise you thought must have sounded less out of tune years ago as he took a left turn. “Shitty. Fuckin’ hate it.”

Eyebrows furrowed, you tilted your head with an agape mouth. “Shitty? Two days ago it was the shit, you said you loved it, that you elected to major in it.”

He gave you a tight-lipped smile and half a shrug and, immediately, you knew something was wrong. While you and Bucky didn’t often discuss your respective career choices and plans for the future, each time you did manage a conversation adjacent, he’d mentioned it was something he’d wanted to do– hell, had he not mentioned it, the number of shitty jokes and puns he made in its reference would have convinced you alone.

“Didn’t want to at first. But Becca advertised wanting to go into journalism all throughout high school and it’s not– it’s not a traditionally lucrative job, at least for the first few years.” He shrugged again, this time in a bit of insecurity, nervousness, but his eyes remained trained on the road. “Figured one of us should be able to embrace that nontraditional job so I picked up something more secure. Something secure because things at home are, you know…”

He had trailed off, but you knew what he meant. Money was a sensitive topic for both, Rebecca and Bucky and, although they could never be ashamed of their family, their pride kept them from asking for help from you despite your continued offering.

“Anyway, she ended up choosing poli-sci for law school for the same reason, so that was pretty ironic,” he grinned and you could see it didn’t reach his eyes, maybe hurting his cheeks as much as it hurt you just to see it.

You remained silent and your teeth wreaked havoc on your lower lip as he continued, “Can’t do anything about it now, though. But, if I could, I’d change my choices in an instant.”

Toying with your fingers in your lap, you asked, “What would you major in instead?”

“I don’t know, it’s kind of stupid really–“

“Didn’t you wanna write?” you added softly, eliciting a look of surprise from him.

He glanced at you quickly. “How’d you know?”

“You were always writing in high school. I saw you with your little notebook every lunch, Bucky,” you laughed, images of an acne-covered Bucky with shoulder-length hair bent over a tiny journal, scribbling for the life of him.

He groaned in embarrassment, a light pink dusting over his cheeks. “I can’t believe you noticed that, Christ. The emo phase was strong.”

“Well, if it helps, I think you’d be a kick-ass writer. I’d be first in line to buy your book. Wouldn’t even sell it on eBay after getting you to sign it.”

He fell silent at that, choosing to bite his lip in place of a response. You’d begun to wonder if you’d said something wrong when he whispered, “Thanks, Mario.”

You didn’t say much more, only turning to look out the window. It wasn’t too long before you heard him chuckle to himself but before you could ask him what he was laughing about, he spoke up, “This is so sad. Alexa, play Despacito.”

You snorted. Fuckin’ dork.

Bucky was leaned against the door of his car as he waited with you until your date for the evening arrived, keeping you engrossed in the utterly ridiculous nonsense you both spoke about.

“I’m just saying, if you made coffee with Gatorade and injected it into your bloodstream, you’re basically God. Like, who the fuck would need heroin then?” you tried explaining for the fifth time, unable to keep the smile off your face. You had your arms crossed over your chest in an effort to keep yourself warm whilst Bucky’s hands were shoved into the pockets of his sweatpants.

“Gatorade is for cowards, we use only Red Bull in this holy house– it actually does something. How about if you mixed vodka, ground espresso beans, and protein powder, then snorted it–”

You clicked your tongue. “Intravenous is more effective–”

“Didn’t realize the offer of a date included you, James.”

In a bit of a laborious task, you looked away from Bucky to the guy who came to a stop before you. Dark hair gelled back and darkness which wasn’t hidden by his glasses surrounding deep hazel eyes, he wore a simple black sweater over a pale blue t-shirt. “But I’m not complaining. Love me some three-way action.”

“Tony,” Bucky sighed, smiling nonetheless. “This is–“

“Mario? I figured.” Tony flashed a quick smile at you.

Immediately you could hear loud sniggering from beside you, making you spin to face him in annoyance. “You have got to stop doing that! What the fuck?” you exclaimed, punching a laughing Bucky on the shoulder as he feebly tried to defend himself.

“My name’s Y/N, not Mario,” you stated to clear the confusion, rolling your eyes at Bucky who burst out laughing again, clearly showing no remorse.

He looked from his watch to you, not fazed by your exchange with Bucky. “Ah, I see. Well, shall we get going? Game’s about to start.”

“See ya later, Mario. Have a good time, guys.” Bucky ruffled your hair as you tried to swat his hand away, taking a step towards Tony as he looked at you with a small smile on his face. “I’ll be on the other side of the court if you need me.”

“D’you want to get some food during halftime or before the first quarter?” Tony asked once Bucky waved a goodbye and jogged to join his friends.

“Halftime sounds good, I think the game’s about to start,” you answered, sending him a half smile.

He only nodded and adjusted his glasses, beckoning for you to join him.

You both made small talk and it turned out he wasn’t nearly half as bad as Peter. He rarely spoke of himself and only mentioned he would be looking for a sustainable source of energy in the future, something about wanting to lessen the environmental burden of current energy dependencies.

It started out well enough, the both of you commenting on the players who you knew. You waved at Sam from your place on the bleachers and he shot you a wink in response

“Sam’s starting tonight and it’s against the Gotham Jokers. S’why Bucky and everyone else is here,” you explained, leaning forward to rest your elbows on your knees.

“Wilson? Number seven? He’s your friend?” Tony asked, squinting at the ball as it was tossed into the air, soon taken by one of the Jokers.

You didn’t bother sparing him a glance as you watched Sam quickly steal the ball back and passing it to Rhodey. “Yeah. Why d’you sound so surprised?”

“Think he’s a bit overrated, that’s all,” Tony mumbled, making you reel back and stare at him disbelievingly. “Got the whole school worshipping the ground he walks on.”

“Captain of the team, MVP last season. He got scholarships to three different prestigious universities, too,” you recited, jumping to your feet as Sam made a shot from the three point line, the ball going in effortlessly with a swish. You looked over your shoulder to raise an eyebrow at Tony, “Still think he’s overrated?”

He only shrugged. “Guess not.”

The next few minutes flew by quickly, Tony progressively getting more invested in the game as it went on. He occasionally let out a cheer when you did, but other than that, he was more observant than anything.

But just as the Jokers were about to pass the ball, Tony jumped to his feet with a scowl, “Double dribble! Double fucking dribble! He stopped! What the fuck, why isn’t anyone calling that out?”

“Tony, he didn’t hold it. There was no double dribble,” you urged as the people surrounding you turned to glare at you both.

“Jesus fuck, this entire crowd is ignorant. Uneducated,” he stated angrily, sitting down in a huff.

You patted him on the back in attempted consolation, but he only ignored you, continuing to glower ahead.

Everything was fine and dandy until the Jokers’ defense pushed one of your team’s players when the referee wasn’t watching. In Tony’s defense, everybody reacted loudly to that. But no one had the passion Tony had when he leapt up like a fucking Jack in the Box, fists thrown in the air. “What the fuck!?” he screamed to no one in particular.

“Yeah, what the fuck!?” you echoed, cupping your hands around your mouth.

“You fucking blind ass, stupid piece of shit, punkass bitch!” he raged, pupils dilated and eyebrows furrowed.

“Okay, never mind.” You promptly sat down, trying to pull Tony with you but he shook you off fervently. You thought he resembled the fucking Tasmanian Devil from Looney Toons.

“That was a foul! Why don’t you use your fucking whistle, you trick ass little bitch?! Try blowing something other than your own dick for once!” he screamed at the referee, shaking his arms around wildly.

“Jesus Christ,” you whispered, putting your head in your hands as he ranted on and on for another ten seconds before finally sitting down, cursing steadily to himself.

When your team made an effortless basket, you prayed it would calm Tony down. And to some extent it did work and he kept quiet until the first quarter was up, only rolling his eyes when people turned to look at him.

Ignoring them from that moment on, he tilted his head as he watched Sam send a wink to a girl who only rolled her eyes playfully in response. “Who’s that?”

“Sam.”

“I know that’s Sam, I’m asking who the girl is.”

“Sam’s girlfriend, Sam,” you replied as you laughed at his expression of confusion.

“Sam has a girlfriend… named Sam?” You nodded as he sighed, smiling despite himself. “Fuck, what would their couple name be?”

“Well, they’re Sam and Sam. Or as I like to call them,” you dropped your voice as he raised an amused eyebrow, “Sam.”

“That’s so fucking creative, how did you ever think of that name?” he asked, a smile on his face that made him look ten times less stressed than he’d been mere moments ago.

You actually didn’t mind Tony at that moment. You might have even considered him to be fun.

That was until the next quarter started and the referee called a foul on Sam for apparently no reason and Tony was back on his feet, face red like one of those ugly Angry Birds. He then started in a shrieking voice, “Oh, so now you want to blow that whistle, you piece of utter shi–“

Tony gave you a ride back to your apartment after the game which had ended much later than you thought it would. You knew Bucky had left after the third quarter when he sent you a text saying he needed to get up early for his shift, but he asked you to call him when you got home safe.

You wondered if he was still awake but, as you’d promised, you called him the moment you crossed the building threshold.

“Hello?” his rasped in an infinitely exhausted voice– you instantly regretted calling him.

“Hey, fuck, sorry. I didn’t think you’d be asleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, get some rest,” you said hurriedly, guilt seeping through your words.

“No, no, it’s fine,” he paused and you could hear him yawn despite the muffling over the line. “Is everything fine, baby?”

“Yeah everything’s– wait, what did you just call me?” you asked as you bit your tongue and your eyebrows shot up in surprise.

The silence you were met with was quickly followed by a string of curses, presumably since he perceived what he’d said. His voice was clearer as he replied, “Shit. Sorry, Mario. It just slipped out. I’m, like, half dead. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah. Just called to talk about the king of anger paralysis, clone of Charlie Sheen, Tasmanian Devil embodiment–”

Bucky cut you off with a sigh. “Tony?”

“Oh, yes. Wanna hear all about my super great time with dear Squidward or should I save it for tomorrow?” you asked as you jogged up the stairs to your apartment.

You could hear rustling on the other end before he yawned once again, saying lightly, “I’m ready. Go on for as long as you want.”

“It all started when he called the referee a ‘fucking blind ass, stupid piece of shit, punkass bitch.’”

Bucky sighed. “Oh, shits.”

PART 5

TAGLISTS ARE CLOSED

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

[bthump]

what would you like to change in berserk? actually im asking how the story would work without using rape as a plot device but also in general (characterization, plot etc.)

Ooh this is an interesting question, ty!

I wouldn’t change either Guts or Griffith’s backstories tbh, I think they’re actually pretty well done, and important to their characters and narratives without being the be all end all. Well, I’d like to make Gennon less of an evil gay stereotype and Donovan less of a scary black man stereotype but yk, other than those details the existence of rape in their backstories isn’t something I’d change.

With Casca… tough call. Her story is all about gendered violence to the point where if you got rid of the rape attempts you’d have to come up with a whole new story for her. But it’s still a shallower and less well-rounded depiction of abuse than either guts or griffith’s backstories, bc it’s so emphatically gendered, like, rather than informing her personality or her choices it’s just framed as being a woman.

So actually I guess for Casca what I’d change is (actually pretty obviously lol) her motivations. She’s not in love with Griffith, she idealizes his dream because she knows he wants to dismantle those power structures that fuck her over and create a place where those w/ power can’t easily abuse their power over others. She hates Guts not because she’s jealous of him (tho she could still be jealous of his emotional closeness with Griffith, like she’d still admire Griffith here even if she’s not in love with him and I like that rival dynamic), but because she recognizes that he could end up destroying Griffith’s dream.

Also I think we can still cut out most of the rape threats she gets while still showing that she has something to fight against. Maybe keep Adon being a gross dick (in all fairness he kind of mirrors Gennon towards Griffith which kind of shows how they’re fighting for the same dream - ie a world where those kinds of dudes are shut down) but have Casca just fighting for her life rather than against rape attempts as she runs from the 100 man fight.

So nothing really changes much until Guts comes back from his vacation. And now Casca is genuinely, genuinely angry and hateful towards him, because he did exactly what she’s been afraid he was going to do - destroyed Griffith’s dream, and her hope for a better future.

Which means they don’t have sex lol, Casca was never into Guts, they began a friendship towards the end of the war but nothing more. And now that Guts has come back Casca is actively hostile to him, though after Guts lets her stab him she probably forgives him a bit bc it’s not like he intended to destroy absolutely everything, and he’s clearly fucked up about it.

Also no suicide attempt.

So their dynamic during the rescue mission is resentful allies, like a throwback to their first three years knowing each other.

Wyald still happens but no attempted rape w/ Casca obviously.

Now when it comes to the Eclipse, I want it to be all about Guts, and I want it to hit the audience over the head with parallels to his childhood. It’s the Eclipse, it doesn’t need to be subtle. Rather than looking wistful when Griffith sacrifices everyone, I want Guts to look betrayed, I want him to look just as sad and horrified as he did when he was 11 and Gambino told him he sold him to Donovan.

Agh I’d hate to lose the creepy silent monster vibe from Femto, but something like a cold, “you’re still alive?” would be v fitting w/ the “you should have died” parallels. Tho idk I’m torn on that.

And ok I said I want it to be all about Guts but I can’t just kill off Casca. But if she’s gonna live the Eclipse needs some serious personal meaning for her too. So maybe her reaction to being sacrificed, knowing it’s for the dream she’s dedicated her life to and in theory she should be willing to give her life for it, and trying to reconcile that with the horrificness of the situation and her desperate desire to survive anyway. So she survives long enough for Femto to show up, because she’s not the third best fighter in the Hawks for nothing, and then…

torture? Femto has monsters hold Guts down and tortures Casca in a way reminiscent of a kid pulling the wings off a fly. She loses an arm, Guts keeps his because he’s too busy being utterly terrified and possibly flashbacking to hack his own arm off in a rage.

Like, one thing about the Eclipse rape, is that if Miura had to have it as a way of emotionally affecting Guts, how the fuck did he manage to draw like two chapters of awful awful shit with Guts being held down by monsters that he’d just watched rape Casca, and completely fail to allude to Guts’ own rape trauma? How. Hooooow it’s mind boggling. It’s absurd.

But you don’t even need the graphic rape for that, like hell, Miura has absolutely adequately set up the correlation between giant monsters Guts is compelled to fight and his own childhood trauma imo to justify Guts having a very emotional traumatic reaction to just being held down and made helpless by monsters after being essentially given to them.

There’s Black Swordsman Guts in a nutshell, and this is exactly what was implied to have caused him to go full traumatized amoral asshole. Before g*tsca was a gleam in Miura’s eye all he had were those parallels to Guts’ childhood trauma - Guts being given away to monsters by someone he trusted - and that’s all he needed.

So anyway, because Casca lives, she has her own reaction to being casually tortured by Femto before being rescued, which is also a replay of her childhood trauma but without the agency of killing her attacker herself with a sword. So her reaction could very well be similar to Guts’ - a desire to kill monsters and get revenge. Maybe she’s lost her idealism wrt the dream, and she’s more cynical now - a better world is impossible, best you can do is survive this one.

She and Guts go their separate ways because they’re barely friends, let alone lovers, and remember 2 brands = big ghost problems.

After this the narrative splits 3 ways between NGriff, Guts, and Casca.

I’m reaching the limits of my creativity lol. So I’m just gonna suggest that Guts gets the behelit, Casca gets the armour and the rpg group, Casca gets the moving on arc and hooks up with Farnese while maybe finding a happy medium between changing the world and lashing out against the world, and Guts succumbs to his inner darkness and gets a highly emotional confrontation with Griffith. Since he has the behelit maybe he uses it upon realizing that Griffith’s heart is still beating for him, bc the emotional conflict is just too much, and sacrifices Griffith to become a Zodd-esque apostle wandering battlefields and fighting for no reason, basically returned to his pre-Griffith state.

It’s probably shorter than 355 chapters too lbr. I’d say NGriff creates Falconia right before the confrontation with Guts, so yk he achieves his dream b4 ironically getting sacrificed. Otherwise his story doesn’t change much. Maybe stronger suggestions that he’s not as unemotional as he looks, to build up to a guts confrontation better.

Like… I’m not a very creative or good writer lol but I feel this general outline could be written in a very good and satisfying way by someone with talent, like Miura.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Ask the Author

I was tagged by @78669! Thank you! ok!

1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

A third installment for Un/Hurt - I have a pretty good idea what it would be about, but I started about five times and I was never. quite. happy. I feel a bit guilty because I hinted at a third one. I think the longest version I’ve written about it is about 2k words so. not much.

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

Aaah. aaaaaaaah. That one. Snow White.

ok. So if I ever critise other writers - professionals or friends or anyone ever - I do so in the full knowledge that I gave life to a monstrosity.

Okay, let me talk about Snow White (a title that - in retroperspective, also describes the main-cast pretty well)

One story I started writing in 9th grade. 

It basically ticked all the edgy-teen stereotypes. Little village: check. Edgy teen protagonist who’s Not Like The Other Girls: Check. Dumb parents who JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND: Check. Lots of casual drug use and alcohol: check. 

I guess the only strong point was that she didn’t have a love interest (because she was Too Smart for anything but casual sex with her best friend). Oh and her neighbour was a murderous, torturous rape-y cult member and if I had finished the thing she would have killed him and gotten arrested for it and stayed quiet about her (pretty valid) reasons for killing him because in prison she would be away from her parents who I don’t think ever did much wrong except tell her that she’s got issues. Oh I think one of her teachers was a spy or something. Also there was a lot of references to Japanese stuff in there because again. I was in 9th grade and I loved to plaster Kanji on things. (Although now that I looked at the document again, WHICH I DID, I ACTUALLY OPENED THE KURSÉD DOKUMENT FOR YOU) the Kanji chapter titles are gone. So I came to my senses about that one.

So far you’re going to say: Wow so you wrote an annnoying, slightly problematic story when you were That Age we all did, big deal. That doesn’t make it a monstrosity.

Well.

The thing is -

The whole story might even have had potential if I had thrown out some of the bullshit and given the main-character some sort of personality, but unfortunately it’s also basically almost unreadable. Like. At that point of my writing, every tip I ever gotten from teachers and advice books was: “Take your time, don’t rush! Describe!” Because that’s young writers tend to do - rush - but unfortunately they didn’t expect Josie’s dumb ass, who quickly concluded: 

The Longer The Story - The Better!

and that was the downfall of the entire story. Because bitch, I can talk for ages without saying anything and the result was:

464 pages of Word Document,

Times New Roman 12pt, smallest possible spacing. 257k words. And it wasn’t nearly finished. There hadn’t even happened much.

Just to give you a sense of how unreadable it is. I’ll allow you (if you speak German) a peak at my greatest shame. Or at least the opening.

What 9th grade me wanted to say: “It was warm outside.” What 9th grade me actually wrote, because she’d been told not to rush and to describe:

The entire scene is just about Protagonist and Friends being angst-y in the garden. Literally nothing plot-relevant happens (like in most scenes). Aaaah. 

Just to make you realise the extent of this catastrophe, I randomly just scrolled for a while and then here we are at page 264.

What 9th grade me wanted to stay: “Main Character is lying on her bed. She’s looking at the ceiling. Probably looking for a personality.”

What 9th grade actually wrote:

(Did I mention that this goes on for almost 300k words? Like. These days I’m proud when I write 20k words. Ninth Grade me, where did you find this much energy and why was this what you invested it on??? this giant chunk of text with no content - like yeah there’s characters and stuff happening but it’s mostly just...endless mind-numbing descriptions of things happening in metaphor) 

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

Usually chronologically, but ever so often I jump ahead to a scene that I really look forward to writing. The problem is that sometimes when I get there, something changed inbetween - because I’m a bit too spontanous and I love details - and then usually I have to re-write it anyway.

4) favorite character you’ve written

Usually the current one. And at the moment I’d probably answer the story from my latest original work - because they’re pretty fun and feral and also pretty simple. But with some distance this Victorian Demon Detective who gets hired by the murder-victims to avenge them was pretty fun. Was a giant dick. I enjoyed the entire 20 pages I wrote with him in them, before my attention wavered and I moved on.

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

I’m pretty much suprised every time I write a nice, likeable character.

6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now

I wish I’d ever really bothered to learn how to right good transitions. Mostly it’s just: Scene SMACK Next Scene SMACK Another Scene. Also I wish I could describe the passing of time more naturally.

7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

I don’t talk about it with strangers much. Except you people on tumblr.com. Depends on how it’s going. When I got a project I’m excited about and it’s going well, I’ll talk about it. If it’s not going well, I will pretend I haven’t ever written aything.

8) favorite genre to write

I don’t really have one. Although I don’t do Romance much and Crime/Thriller isn’t my cup of tea either. Mostly I beat the trope: Unlikely partners forced to work together - to death. 

9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

Buy notebooks and scribble into them.

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

I usually have music on - I got a Spotify playlist for my current story and listen to it on Shuffle - but I can write anywhere, university - even on the underground I type on my phone (when I’m in the mood). In school I got called out for writing in the lessons so often I learnt to write Kurrentschrift so that the teacher wouldn’t be able to tell what I’m doing lol.

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

I feel like I used to be better at some point in the past, actually. But mostly the characters?

12) your weaknesses as an author

I can never really stick to an outline, so I will go into one direction with the plot and then I’ll have another idea and I sometimes worry there isn’t enough of a red thread.

13) your strengths as an author

Hmm...I can throw a lot of problems at my characters at an astonishingly efficient rate?

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

For the last one I did, as I said. It’s a very weird mixture of Viking music, Electro-Synth, Opera and pop-songs.

15) why did you start writing?

I just always did, I think?

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

Most of my major characters while I’m writing them, but it’s usually the current one. So at the moment it’s Nith, the main-character of my current story, because they deserve so much better and everyone fucks my magic child over and they just want to be accepted but at the same time the thought of living around actual...people terrifies them, because they’ve been considered cursed and were rejected for the biggest part of their life and now they’re kinda twisted and due really dubious shit so that they don’t have to be alone in their icy wasteland. Then they met a literal prince and they were forced to work together (because that trope is my jam) except Nith panicked and poisoned him so they’re in even deeper shit now. 

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

YOU CAN’T WRITE COLD CASE FANFICTION IF YOU NEVER WATCHED THE FUCKING SHOW AND DON’T EVEN KNOW THE CHARACTERS’ NAMES oh, ok you already did. And they go to Mars. ofc.*

(No, but serious advice: Don’t let anyone ever tell you it’s useless. As long as you enjoy yourself, just keep writing.)

*yep that’s a thing 11 year old me did. I liked the blond woman in the trailers on Kabel1 ok?

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

When I was about 18 we had Tauben im Gras in school and I got obsessed with writing like that. I got pages after pages just filled by me writing in that style. It’s like a dubstep remix of what my 9th grade self wrote, but I won a price for one of those so there’s that.

But usually, whatever I’m currently reading influences me. Like, not even because I want it to. For example I was once switching to and fro reading fanfiction and writing something of my own. But the fanfiction was in English and my writing in German and I first adopted the same tense, then the POV and suddenly my brain insisted I need to write this in English. fuck.

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

- I take a lot of notes in a document which are mostly written as me dragging and insulting my characters

- then I split it up into scenes and write down plot-points for every scene

- I also note what it does for the characters individual storyline.

- then I start writing and ignore all of that because the character saw a butterfly and it sparks an entire dialogue with another character and they decide not to save the princess at all but to start an ice-cream truck.

20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

Little spurts are usually draft-versions of scenes. Long sessions happen when I’m really inspired. What works best for me is putting a bowl of snacks in front of me and having a chip or a peanut every 100 words and to keep writing until the bowl is empty (at that point, usually there’s a sunrise outside)

21) what do you think when you read over your older work?

I don’t ever do that much. but since you made me look at The Cursed One, I was actually surprised that it was not quite 100% as horribly cringy as I made it out to be in my soul. I didn’t want to spoon my eyes out of my skull.

22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

Not really. Nothing I would want to write in the first place.

23) any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

not really obscure, no

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

At the moment a lot of norse mythology stuff

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

I’m never really proud of anything I write, but I’m kinda fond of the opening for one of my story-ideas, because I think it’s pretty efficient when it comes to world-building and setting the scene and explaining how the people in that place tick:

[vosebin-blog]

AAAHHHH *insert my longest yeah boy ever here* HOWDY i’m sophie, the writer for this cute lady here. i haven’t....watched twin peaks cause im lame but i did grow up watching the twilight zone and i think true detective is in the same vein of concept of dark and creepy so!! all about having a good time here my friends🍸✨🍸 

u know the drill: plots and tldr after the jump, app jic, stats.  send me a dm if u wanna brainstorm or give this a like and ill get to u asap! xoxo

26 y.o muhan native that had moved to seoul for college, then work. "day" job was an accountant and its only v recently that she revealed herself 2 be the ~mysterious~ writer thatd been topping the bookseller lists w her rlly icky nasty writing

to make it easy, if u want to get a good idea of her content, think gillian flynn and crank that up by 10. writing is also quite similar: blunt, unapologetic, meant 2 make u uncomfortable. cults. religious mania. murder. unpleasant women for characters galore. wrote 3 books: scratch marks, hunger of the woods, split wide

also y no one would have guessed that a face like hers wouldve written about shit so unnerving + horror / mystery genre dominated by male writers!!

has been accused over the yrs for misogyny and misandry thats apparently “present” in her work. if u bring this up to her she will probably laugh u out of town 

only had 1 press conference, and that was 2 announce a sudden retirement + reveal her identity ( tho its rlly an.....indefinite hiatus but anyway ) and thats really that for seoul

but to those at muhan, shes probably just known as the girl who returned right when her mothers gone missing. coincidence??? i think not

except theyre not entirely wrong lol but with how carefree and relaxed shes been theres been a certain reputation thats been tacked onto her since game start

which she fully embraces, stereotype by stereotype, bcus its funny. creepy writer aesthetics? shes got it buddy, from the rickety rocking chair on the front porch near the mouth of the woods 2 that anne sexton ~flair~ for storytelling. 

keeps a pleasant exterior, but lmao the bitch vibes r thereeeee 200%. nice to talk to, but not a nice person i can promise u that. maybe makes up for it a little for being self aware and not being fake about it???

if u were in highschool wit her or were of acquaintance, then u most likely got a taste of it loool. was that 1 friend ( frenemy?? enemy??? ) who held nothing back, insults or otherwise

real reason y shes back here is only to pay back wtv huge ass debt mama accumulated and ran away from....but no one knows that except those friendly debt collectors thatve been coming around lately. shes working on it, but the bigger issue is having to face the demons of living in ur childhood home where youve left buried in the yard till now

long story short: sebin and mom had an extremely, extremely dysfunctional relationship. complicated history of envy, hatred, emotional abuse, vicious fights, gaslighting, understanding and family love. ultimately shit happens when ur left as a single mom banished to the side of the woods and have 2 give up everything to raise a kid u didnt even want. its not pretty, its not cute but its the 1 thing that shes known to be real all her life and it means something. writing ( obscured as it may be ) has helped her deal with it and in a way, its almost confessional. she hasnt disclosed any of this with anybody and doesnt plan to

given that, shes turned out ok?? as in, she kind of embraces the person shes been shaped into rather than reeling from shame

pet peeve is when ppl think they have her ~all figured out~ to which shes like.....ok....its not that deep lmao pls kindly fuck off sherlock holmes

should probably add that mom ran a little apothecary that raked in a decent amount of money but not enough. sebin just recently sold it 

thinks church is pointless, isnt all that aware of the cult but would prob think its stupid as fuck too. someone, be it god or satan or anyone else, pls save her...or dont LOL

dresses all ~casual chic~ ankle boots, lightwashed jeans, loose dress shirts. lotsa cute scarves

drinks too much. smokes too much. its a problem but she dont think so

find her @ the casino playing bridge or at college being a guest lecturer when shes not chilling at her house 

some plots / prompts

someone to have clever banter with

fan or admirer of her work that wont pipe the fuck down or relax and kinda makes sebin snap

bible thumpers who think shes a disgrace to the ~esteemed~ image of her mom

cult members who think that she’d be a good addition to their crew

mutual sexual ~tension~ or the classic will they wont they with a twist

her writing hit hard @ something rlly personal and it makes u rlly uncomfortable and u rlly just cant feel easy around her as a result

friends, exes, frenemies, classmates, childhood playmates

u thought her mom was an absolute darling and got along with her well so when sebin comes along and sells her shit right after the lady’s disappeared it strikes a nerve

someone shes met in seoul and / or uni

sebin just highkey scares u and she gets a kick out of messing witchu

let me show you my darker half, and i’ll show you mine. intense. honest. maybe even a little frightening. not so idle conversation late at night

u try to hit on her but shes just not gonna let u in so easy buddy

rainy night and u need somewhere to stay so u come by her house

‘why do u have.....all those knives........and guns.......and taxidermy......’