#because it's all very coherently and comprehensively tagged

[weregreatatcrime]

At risk of sounding old, a lot of these newer fandoms could REALLY take a lesson from the tmnt Fandom about tagging and marking things

[skazoo]

still do.

↳ choi jongho x f!reader

he couldn't stop loving you, even if he tried. and he did try for some time. it just didn't work.

length. 3.7k

genre. exes (and friends) to lovers, fluff, crack and a sprinkle of inevitable angst (i'm sorry).

warnings/tags. language, mention of death, mention of illness of a loved one, implied depression, .

networks. @kflixnet k-labels

notes. hello with another "this was supposed to be just teeth rotting fluff but somehow turned a little depressing and angsty on its own, i swear i didn't touch anything" do we see a pattern here? bc i do. i offer this lil jongho fic after sm time of absolutely nothing but i've finished my exams literally the other day, (DURING PRIDE MONTH!?!?? unacceptable) hope you like it!!

i'm desperate for feedback and i love comments with your opinion!

(cross-posted on ao3 only)

navigation

it’s a well-known fact —to your friend group, to the employees of the cafè on the way to your apartment, to the old lady that sells flowers at the corner of the big building you work at— that choi jongho not only likes you but he’s irremediably and unequivocally in love with you.

and that is still not right because jongho doesn’t just love you, no, that would be too obvious, too easy. he still loves you. 

if he goes back enough in his memories, jongho could say he’s always loved you.

he’s never been one to believe in love at first sight so when wooyoung drunkenly introduced the two of you at his birthday party, and he found himself unable to breathe let alone speak a coherent sentence to you, he immediately panicked. was he having a heart attack? a stroke? he was healthy, an athlete! how could this be happening to him!? he even made his own doctor hate him with all the panicked questions he asked the poor man on the phone but apparently, all he needed to relatively calm down was wooyoung’s loud laugh as he told him that he simply had a crush on you.

did he have a crush on you? 

you, with your beautiful smile and melodic laugh and sparkling eyes and– okay, yeah. he did have a crush on you but who wouldn’t!?

strong argument indeed, he thought.

that fateful night was only the start of a happiness he didn’t know he was able to experience.

you became friends, then best friends, then something more and then you were kissing, sleeping, and cuddling in bed together, going on cute little dates, and showing more PDA jongho ever imagined doing. 

he thought you were happy with him. navigating life with the same confused curiosity all young adults seem to innately possess.

then something happened that he couldn’t have ever predicted. and not because he wasn’t paying attention to you or because he was slacking off with his boyfriend duties, no. it came as a complete shock to everyone —you included, in a sense— because the signs just weren’t there. 

out of the blue, without notice, you broke up with him. after a year and for reasons that are still beyond his comprehension.

questions thundered into his mind asking why you had come to the heartbreaking decision, why you had sent him a ‘we need to talk’ text at 2am in the morning, and why he’d later found you at the front door of his apartment with tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes, soft whimpers vaguely sounding like ‘sorry’ and ‘it’s not your fault’. 

if he thinks back to that night, jongho gets chills from how scared he was; holding your body to his chest, not knowing what to do or what to say, not knowing who hurt you or why you were hurting.

when he thinks back to that night —something he finds himself doing more often than his heart can take— jongho clearly remembers the silent promise he repeated in his head at least a thousand times after you went back to your apartment. a promise he’s set on keeping.

and it’s for that very promise that he now sits in the crowded cafe downtown, drinking an overrated caramel macchiato and hiding behind a book he has no interest in.

at least it’s what he tells himself. that he came to the same coffee shop you told him you’d be meeting your date at because that’s what friends do. he tells himself he’s wearing a mask and sunglasses inside because he can and will love you platonically if that’s what you need or want. jongho tells himself a lot of things and he hopes he’s strong enough to believe in them in a way that will make them reality sooner or later.

but it’s not like two booths away from him you’re faring any better.

are people outside your friend group really this boring and uninteresting? have men always been this arrogant and full of themselves? was your current ex-boyfriend the exception that proves the incredibly unfair rule? 

when you met jongho you knew you were lucky. hot college athlete with sarcasm to match yours and a badly concealed heart of pure gold? you knew you hit the jackpot. but you weren’t ready to realize that he really was one in a million men that actually put in the effort to go beyond the bare minimum.

why is it, though? 

the question threatens to break loose all the pent-up frustration this date is generously providing you with and you opt to ignore it and hide it in the back of your mind for another occasion. one that includes cheap wine, pizza, and an equally bewildered yunjin sitting on your couch with funny socks and mouth full.

for now, you only limit yourself to throwing a fake smile at the obnoxious man sitting in front of you who’s spent the entirety of this heinous date talking exclusively about himself and his crypto-currency business. 

he’s finishing what you think is a long rant about the stock market when he moves to get up.

you think you’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel but he just lets out an annoying chuckle and looks at you with his small and pig-like patronizing eyes. “don’t worry, love. i’m not leaving you i’m just going to ‘powder my nose’, how you girlies say.” he winks and you resist the urge to gag at how… slimy he looks and feels.

as soon as he’s out of sight you let yourself slump on the small table, groaning a bit as you do so.

what were you even thinking? you tell yourself that today is going to be a well-suffered lesson for your future self: no dates with people that quote elon musk as if he’s some kind of greek philosopher.

your hands reach for the phone in your bag on their own. the last message you received was a sarcastic ‘have fun’ from wooyoung in the group chat but other than that everything is quiet, seemingly wanting to punish you for going against your friends’ advice to bail on the guy as soon as you saw him treat the barista like shit.

under the group chat, jongho’s name glares at you. 

you would be lying if you said out loud that this date didn’t have the sole purpose of distracting you from the claustrophobic guilt you’re feeling lately. 

jongho had never really cried in front of you but you swear if you could you’d erase the image of his damp eyes looking at you with confusion on that ugly night. and if you have to be honest you’d erase the encouraging but strained smiles he gives you now that you’re back at being friends too, because they don’t do anything but make you feel a shittier person than you already think you are. but maybe you deserve it. maybe this is finally going to be the occasion in which you understand that your actions have consequences.

your fingers work quicker than your brain can catch up, and before you realize it, you open again the conversation with jongho that ended before you went out and start typing.

> you: wyd?

> jjong: you’re on a date

> jjong: focus

> you: what is this an exam?

> you: nevermind this was a bad idea…

> jjong: texting me or the date?

> you: shut up

> you: the date 

> jjong: aw i’m sorry i could have told you that like,, an hour ago

> jjong: oh wait 

> jjong: i did!

another groan leaves your lips, only this time laced with a small chuckle at his antics. you mark the message as seen and throw your phone back into the bag. 

you hope other people can't see how much you miss him.

while you’re too focused on burning holes in the bathroom door from how hard you’re staring at it, dreading the moment it will open to reveal your current problem, in the loud noise of the cafe you don’t hear the heavy stomps of someone approaching you from behind. 

only when you feel two warm hands plant themselves on your shoulders and you hear a familiar voice muttering to itself something that sounds like ‘found you’, you’re forced out of your angry trance state and you’re asked to quickly choose between either your fight or flight instincts. you throw a blind punch and the person creeping up on you folds into two.

but that’s on him because who creeps on someone sitting alone at a table and touches them without making themselves known? what happened to ‘hello, what a coincidence to see you here’? what happened to manners?

you snap your head to the figure behind you and you let your panic subside but your annoyance rises.

“how– what are you doing here!?” your words come out in a hiss that makes the old couple sitting in the booth behind you turn around and look at you with judgy eyes but that doesn’t affect jongho in the slightest.

“saving you? duh.”

“who asked you that?!”

“what– Y/N, you texted me even before you met the guy, may i add. and the message said: ‘please end my suffering.’ in my book that’s a cry for help!”

he’s right but you let out an affronted huff anyway. arms crossed and lips in a pout you know is childish. “whatever.”

you feel him staring at you with a raised eyebrow and a smug smirk that you, oh so badly want to wipe off his face. 

“what?” you spat. your tone more embarrassed than you’d like to let on.

“what, what?”

“what the fuck are you smiling for?”

he throws his arms in the air exasperatedly. “am i not allowed to be happy now?”

“of course you are, it’s just… you being happy,” you air-quote to punctuate your suspicions on his current joyous disposition. “usually means wooyoung fell or someone got hurt.”

he laughs. “do you think so lowly of me, Y/N?”

“shut up.” the napkin you’ve been fidgeting with because of the irrational panic rising in your guts is now messily crumpled on the table and you groan at the whole situation. head in your hands and eyes closed. you’re so bad at this.

what happened to moving on? what happened to leaving jongho alone because he doesn’t deserve someone treating him like shit? you broke up with him supposedly to save him, but, not even three months in, and now that your mind is clearer you think it’s okay to want him back? to feel full again every time you talk about the things you did together and bask in the silence that follows with a warm knowing smile? you think it’s good to let your eyes wander to his face when you know he’s not looking, falling in love all over again? to feel your face involuntary stretch into a smile every time you spot him waiting for you outside work?

whatever your fucking problem is, you’re scared that you’ll come to find out its only solution is the person you fought so hard to push away. because what if you managed to scare away the last source of happiness you had? it’s selfish, you know, but it’s also the only thing you can think about as he looms over you; body so dangerously close to yours that you can catch the flowery perfume he always wears.

you think he’s speaking to you because his big hand is outstretched in your direction and his eyes are looking at you expectantly, with a veiled urgency.

“sorry, what?”

“i said get up and let’s go.”

“go where exactly?”

he rolls his eyes and you keep to yourself the striking resemblance he has with a spoiled child right at this moment.

“c’mon, we’re living this tinder nightmare here.”

“oh, are we?” you ask equal parts amused and curious of where this little skit of his is going.

when his deadpan expression doesn’t shift into one of his gummy smiles at your slightly annoying antics you know something impulsive and possibly embarrassing is about to happen and you know you will be the only person who will have any sort of unnecessary remorse out of the two of you.

your hands fly to your parted mouth and you hiss at him again. “are you serious!?”

he smiles.

“jongho, no.”

jongho yes, the mischievous look he throws you seems to proudly announce. 

he checks the toilet door one last time before gently grabbing your arm and not-so-gently yanking you out of the booth. a surprised squeal leaves your mouth but not a word of protest is heard from you.

“oh my god, i’m really doing this.”

his eyes are set on the door and he speaks without looking at you. “doing what?” 

“leaving someone like that while they’re in the bathroom! that’s so… i don’t know jjong, that’s so rude!”

you see his shoulder shake and you know if he were to face you right now you’d see one of his shit-eating grins. what you can’t imagine is the softness in his eyes as you call him with your nickname for him. he missed it. he misses you. painfully, completely, constantly.

his wide strides are followed by your frantic steps as he maneuvers the two of you out of the door and into the busy downtown street.

“so what? do you wanna go back in there and risk being bored to death by a guy that’s not even a quarter of what you deserve?”

“wha– no! i just–”

“then why should you feel sorry for that sad excuse of a date, uh? like, really, he took you to the most overrated place he could think of, Y/N. he didn’t even know you don’t like coffee!”

you chuckle at the frown of deep offense that blooms on his face. his lips in an affronted pout. “but that’s what the date is for, jjong. he couldn’t have possibly known.”

he stops in his tracks when he’s far away enough from the crowd in line waiting to be granted entrance to the place you just left. 

“i do, though.” an imperceptible strain to his voice as his eyes search yours in a way that’s almost desperate. “i know you don’t like coffee and that you like to sleep on the right side of the bed and that you just have to sing that ridiculous song to tie your shoes because otherwise, for some inexplicable reason i still have to understand, you can’t.”

has the world around you stopped? your ears are ringing from the deafening silence and you feel like everyone around you has stopped breathing and is waiting for you to say something to the boy in front of you who stares you down in determined distress.

“i know you, Y/N.”

you know he deserves an explanation. him more than anyone in your life. him more than yourself, even. jongho with his proverbial patience that let you cry and consoled you the whole night even after you’d told him you were breaking up with him. jongho that didn’t push or torment you with questions the days after. jongho who accepted —maybe in pure and raw self-preservation— to go back to being just friends, with tears in his eyes and a smile on his lips because that’s what you’d told him you needed at that moment. his kindness that, more often than not, you’re convinced you don’t deserve.

“i know.” you close on yourself, your arms coming to hug you tight so that he can’t see the cracks that constantly try to spread over your skin. “i know you do.” an imperceptible whisper that threatens to drown in the buzz of the busy city around you.

“then why?” his eyes are pleading and his voice is quiet when he speaks again. 

“i know i should give you time and i know you’ll tell me one day but please–” he gulps down a lump that you know he’s had for at least three months. one of worry, confusion, and guilt. one you know you gave him.

“–please, give me something. anything.”

silence.

“Y/N, please say someth–”

“my mother was sick, jongho. she still is.” the line you’ve dreaded crossing for so long is no longer a line. the wall that’s been standing in between you and everyone else now has a hole in it. 

“i was out of my mind just from the news of her condition, i– i wasn’t well mentally and physically just from that and i saw time slip through my fingers, felt every single second like a punch to the guts. i threw away all the clocks in my mother’s house, i started sleeping on the floor outside her bedroom, i– the week i told you i was busy with deadlines, we were still together, remember?” he nods, small but it’s there.

 “i spent those days obsessing over something that was not yet real. my brother had to slip me sleeping pills to let me close my eyes for even a second.” your voice cracks because the guilt you get from just looking at jongho always has to be added to the guilt you feel when seonghwa kindly asks you how you’re doing lately.

“i-i was a mess just from that and i didn’t want you to be with me when what i was scared of was going to finally become a reality. i didn’t want you to see me like that because i didn’t think it was what you deserved. and you may be unable to understand and yell at me that it had to be your choice and not mine but i still don’t think that what i did was wrong, i’m sorry.”

the apology floats in the air between you. it’s not articulate or rich but it’s the only one you can get out at the moment.

“my psychologist says– he says i’m doing better now. we agree that the worst is over but there’s this…  unknown that hangs over my head and every second that passes i don’t know if this guillotine will cut my head off or miss me by a hair.”

he just looks at you with that unreadable expression that scares you.

“i didn’t– i don’t want to go back to when the worst wasn’t over and i’m scared that if i give myself back to you i will take you down with me one way or the other.”

you don’t know what you expect him to say or do after you just vomited everything you’re constantly trying to keep hidden, on him, but his loud silence is starting to feel too heavy, unsettling.

he doesn’t feel present, his eyes unfocused and unblinking. 

he shakes his head as if to wake up from a trance and looks at you with eyes too full of love. no pity in them and you want to thank him for it.

“ba– Y/N why didn’t you tell me?”

the simple question throws you off. 

why did you do the things you did? 

why does anyone do things?

you want to cry and tell him that not everything has an explanation. not a logical one anyways.

“i don’t know, okay! i wasn’t sure how you felt! god, i didn’t know how i felt and–”

“how could i have ever felt!? we were together for more than a year, Y/N. i loved you. i still do.”

“w-what?”

he lets out a chuckle that is not mocking or mean or condescending, not one you would’ve expected from anyone else. it’s kind and soft and a little bit amused, much to your irritation.  “do you find it surprising?” 

you open your mouth to say something but he beats you to it. 

“i am in love with you, have been since the moment i saw you at that stupid party and when you told me you had to break up with me i just– Y/N, i couldn’t let you go or stop loving you, even if i tried. and believe me, i did try for some time, but it just didn’t work.” 

with tears clouding your vision you’re surprised you manage to find the time or strength to tease him. “you tried?”

and apparently, it is those two words that make him break out of the containment chamber he’s forcing himself to be trapped in. he smashes through the protective glass in true jongho fashion. a well-placed punch and the chains that kept him away from you thinking that’s what you needed, dissolve into thin air as he closes the distance, messily rushing to you and caging you in a desperate hug that steals the air from your lungs. 

you feel his hands claw at the back of your shirt and it’s the heartbreaking and deep affection that allows you to accept that you’re not difficult and you will not be. not to him, not to the people that love you.

he buries his nose in your hair, breathing you in like he wants to absorb you forever, then everything that happens next goes naturally, smoothly, following a line that was always supposed to be the one and only.

it fits perfectly. when you kiss and it's like the universe, your friend group, the employees of the cafè on the way to your apartment, the old lady that sells flowers at the corner of the big building you work at, knew it was meant to be.

you both stand with your eyes closed, embracing each other.

he wants to be a person who deserves you and whom you deserve. jongho loves you and he wants to be there, picking up your pieces, putting you together like a puzzle, taking his time. 

you sniff, looking up at him with what you hope looks like a soft expression and not some sort of a pained smile. “hi.”

“hey.” he smiles back, thumbs caressing away stray tears.

“you know that i saw you sitting there the second i stepped foot into the coffee shop. 

“you did not.”

“you were reading the book upside-down.”

he blushes but his arms tightens around you.

“i was not.”

[tadpolesonalgae]

Hello! I have wanted to start writing for a long time and I was wondering if you have any tips for new writers? (Any advice is greatly appreciated 😊)

Have a lovely day ❤️

Hi hello!! I’m so sorry this has taken me so long to actually answer—every time I begin trying to attempt a comprehensive list of tips I always second guess myself or think it isn’t coherent enough and end up deleting it 🫠🤦

First and foremost, knowing the platform you’re working on!

Back in the old days when I first started writing on here, I had no idea how tags worked (still struggle), no idea how to link things, how to structure a fanfic or any idea about layout (what font to use for a title, where to put the pairing so people know who you’re writing for, word count if you want to include that, etc.), and didn’t know how to put that ‘read more’ thing on, so I strongly advise being familiar with the platform you’re going to write on 😭

Secondly, spelling and grammar!

Some people don’t mind it as much, but being familiar when to use capitals, when to use commas, speech marks and quotation marks, how to end dialogue too in terms of where the punctuation goes! (Which still sometimes messes me up 🫢)

Proofreading too I think is very important! Again, it might bother some people more than others, but as a general rule, making the story simple to read so no one struggles with figuring out how to say the sentences in their head will benefit the coherency :)

Knowing what you’re writing!!

I went on a tangent about this a couple of days ago (I think?), but knowing who you want to write for, what type of story (smut, angst, or fluff as the general three), how you want to format your fics: do you want to write drabbles/headcanons/one-shots/multipart fics? A mixture of all of them? What suits you best?

As a side note: scheduling?

I think it’s important to know how much you’re capable of writing without risking burnout! Especially with fanfiction where I’m assuming you want to start because you enjoy it, to not lose the fun of it through feeling pressured to write as much as possible :)

Sometimes you might be able to write more often than others, and it’s good to be able to know what you need, whether that’s time away from writing or forcing your way through it—though it can take a while to figure out. :)

[eolewyn1010]

Reading Percy Jackson TLT was an ordeal for me 1 - Writing

Now, as a disclaimer in the name of fairness, I only ever read The Lightning Thief and none of the Percy Jackson series beyond that, so my experience with Rick Riordan's writing is limited (and I'm not planning to change that). It's also a distorted experience because I didn't read the original - I read a translated version, and I often noticed that it wasn't the best translation. For example, whoever was responsible was apparently incapable of translating an imperative mood, crippling quite a lot of dialogue. So I'll give Riordan that: I have probably not seen the best of his work.

That said, I massively disliked this book. Yes, even within the boundaries and rules of Kids' Fantasy. I won't tag this to the fandom because it seems nigh impossible to find anyone who so much as tolerates negative criticism of Percy Jackson. I've been called brain-damaged for not liking it, which is certainly a mature take. But I will feel better listing it all down that one time, getting it out of my mind, so here we go.

These dialogues are weird, these people are weird

I constantly catch myself thinking, "no one talks like that??" Even taking the translation aspect into account, a lot of the dialogue sounds just stilted. After the bus crash, some of the passengers are described by Percy as literally running in a circle yelling "We're gonna die" - no one behaves like that. It's a funny, over-the-top imagination that would fit in a cartoon, and it completely breaks with the serious tension of the preceding scene, and with my suspension of disbelief. People, even hysterical people, don't do that seriously. It feels like a scene in a theater play.

It appears equally forced when Annabeth apparently mutters to herself as she walks away from Percy: "Mission... Poseidon? ...[some cussing]... need a plan..." And I sit there like: Really? You mutter that to yourself? I can believe that you mutter a curse to yourself, but this "shreds of sentences" thing? Why would she talk to herself in the first place? So Percy can randomly hear some incomplete thoughts? No. It's to tease the readers. Riordan, you shouldn't make me aware of the author's presence all the time. Annabeth never talks to herself otherwise. It isn't even a character thing for her. And made out like this, it's so unnatural.

Same goes for Percy talking in his sleep... apparently very clearly and comprehensibly, so that Annabeth can piece together what he's been dreaming of. Except. People who talk in their sleep? They mumble. They hardly get a cohesive sentence out. How am I supposed to believe that this is playing in the real world? These people don't behave like people.

And one more thing that struck me as odd: A description of Grover with "his eyes narrowed; there was fear in them." Hm. Have you ever tried to look afraid with your eyes narrowed? It isn't actually that easy. When people are scared, their eyes widen. Tell me when you can narrow your eyes and get your expression not to look angry, not distrustful or doubtful, but afraid.

Is this plot ever going anywhere?

So, it's one thing that this structure of quest-hopping isn't how I personally like my books. A bigger problem seems to me that it's lacking coherence. Most of the kids' stops on the way and monsters to slay have nothing to do with their mission. Why is all of this so disconnected? Did we learn anything new from the Medusa adventure, from the episode with Echidna?

And at times, it feels like the plot is artificially prolonged. This is really bad in the beginning when no one can be arsed to tell Percy what the hell is going on. Neither Chiron nor know-it-all Annabeth can just give him a straight answer to anything. Which, Chiron comes off as plain gaslighting Percy at his human school when he denies that Percy just fought for his fucking life, and Annabeth? Percy even lampshades it; at one point he's like, "as if I was supposed to already know all that." Well, HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT WHEN NO ONE OPENS THEIR FUCKING MOUTH? And the one time that Annabeth actually wants to tell Percy something, she gets interrupted by a random outside occurence that isn't even important. Can anyone get this shit moving already?

The worst foreshadowing since Stephenie Meyer

I wish Riordan would stop slapping me over the head with Dead Herrings (aka Red Herrings that don't work the way they should). Telling me something very specific and then going "Nooo, it's couldn't possibly be that highly specific thing!" will not redirect my thoughts the wrong way; it will just make me wait jadedly for the moment when, oh, such surprise, it turns out it was exactly what you thought of first.

"Oh, Percy can do funny things with water and the only thing he's good at is rowing - who could possibly be his father!"

"This lady is surrounded by scared-looking statues and we can't see her eyes - who could she possibly be!"

"This statue looks like my uncle - what a weird coincidence!"

"Dude keeps telling Percy to put on the flying shoes - wonder what he's on about!"

Honestly, it feels very condescending. My friend said the book is written for 12-year-olds, but does Riordan know that 12-year-olds aren't idiots? It's not a good idea to treat your readers as being dense.

Inconsistent worldbuilding

Do we ever get a reason for Grover eating literal garbage? Oh, I know, the extra-diagetical explanation is a joke I'm not in on and that frankly enrages me (later more on that). But in-universe we are never told how he's capable of chewing tin cans without cutting himself to shreds. We're never told how he can digest that shit. If you have to make this a thing, Riordan, at least make it work!

Camp Half-Blood is... eh. Okay-ish? Riordan doesn't know the first thing about Ancient Greek architecture, and it comes back to bite him with Annabeth. But for now, I have questions about the strawberries. How are they growing so well when they never have rain over the valley? Like. Plants do need water. And there's no reason why Dionysus and his kids should be able to make them grow well, none. Dionysus isn't and has never been a god of nature, ever since he separated from Pan (and Pan IS a separate character in this book). The only plant he has a connection to is fucking grapevine. I can buy that he can make grapevines grow, but everything else should be under the jurisdiction of Demeter and her children. Who are allegedly largely unimpressive, but we'll get to that. Also. All strawberries? Nothing but strawberries, ever? Monoculture is ruining the soil, y'know. That camp should be on dead ground within a decade or so.

Then again, Percy also claims he hasn't eaten anything unhealthy ever since he entered the camp. And then counts, "grapes, bread, cheese, lean barbecued meat." No strawberries then? Anyway, my point is: This isn't healthy. It's a very reduced diet - a balanced diet for 12-year-olds, still growing and physically very active 12-year-olds, requires more than that! How do the kids in the camp not all have deficiency symptoms?

I'm not sure how the disappearing monsters work. Body parts can just randomly stay behind as the spoils of war? Who decides which parts? Riordan wanted Medusa's eyes to still do their work after Percy slays Medusa, because the eyes still working is part of the Perseus myth that he's processing, but that really doesn't roll with "the body just disappears when the creature is slain." Like, what. Why wouldn't her head just disappear with the rest of her; it's a part of her body? Can just the head disappear instead and randomly leave the body behind? What are the rules here?

And there's the bit with "does this actually play in the real world?" again. Because when they wander the forest, Grover complains that they cannot see the stars because of the pollution. Which. This red sheen over the sky shouldn't be a thing in the middle of a forest. This is not how light pollution works, unless they are close to a city, in which case, why are they sleeping in the forest? Or is Grover trying to tell me that there were no clouds before environmental pollution? (Granted, I don't know why they went into the forest in the first place and didn't just sleep at Medusa's shop...)

In a similar vein, why is the police looking after Percy as a criminal suspect and not as a missing child? When a 12-year-old disappears, who in their right mind goes, "he could have murdered his mother"?? Why isn't the reaction, "something really bad happened to them both; we need to look for them both!", but "we need to look specifically for this kid because he has definitely done something terrible to his mom"? What is that for an outlandish approach to a missing kid?

This is a Very American Perspective (and it doesn't work)

Now, telling me that the USA are the center of Western civilisation is obviously extremely subjective, and as a non-American, I'm probably not supposed to agree. That Chiron goes on to declare the nebulous future "fall of Western civilisation" this huge, apocalyptic catastrophe and in the process sounds like a whiny rightwing politican - okay, that's me being cynical. But this really fails as soon as the Olympus and the Greek gods get in on the equation. I cannot imagine any place in the world that's less into pagan polytheism than the USA. The Greek gods aren't revered there, or if they are, it's by very small groups.

So, if Riordan's train of thought is "they are revered by whatever name; they may have different names, but it's always the same gods", then we get into a real conundrum with the multitude of pantheons in various religions. Because the gods in different religions are very incongruent in what functions and personalities they have. It already fails with the Greek-to-Roman transference - close as these two mythologies may be, they don't work in 1:1 accordance (something which Riordan heavily misrepresents, but I'm not going into that here). So, if the modern USA are so central to Western civilisation that the gods moved the Olympus and the Underworld and everything there, how did the gods' personalities and powers not massively shift over the millennia; how did gods not disappear and appear and merge to fit more contemporary notions of God / gods? Are they completely unperturbed by mortal developments and mindsets? Then why would they ever change anything, including their location?

Speaking of Greek and Roman gods... I really enjoy the action scenes. Riordan is good at writing action; it's fun. So. It ires me that I got completely ripped out of the scene by Percy randomly spouting Latin curses. Why Latin? What does that have to do with his prodigious propensity to Ancient Greek? Why. Why does Riordan keep mixing up Roman with Greek mythology, one language with the other? They are very distinct!

Chiron at one point describes the cooperation of gods with mortals as "the dawn of the Western civilisation". This is funny, as Western civilisation hit a real low after the fall of the Roman Empire (and yes, I'm focussing on Europe in this part of my argument - there was no Western civilisation in America before the late 16th century). And it stayed like that throughout a large portion of the middle ages. The civilisation on a roll until about the 11th century was what we'd today sum up under "Arab". They were the big scientists, the big architects, they dominated the trade, they spread all over the place; it was a whole thing. Yet of course gods of Western civilisation cannot be worshipped in Fez, in Tunis, in Granada, in Baghdad, in Alexandria - so where were they in the meantime? How did they not disappear while Christianity became a thing? They were not being worshipped anymore; the majority of people alive in the Western world weren't aware there had ever been other religions in Europe than Christianity because translating the old texts into modern languages was something Arabian scholars did early on, but it was a late fashion to Christians.

"The Second World-War was a war between the children of Zeus and the children of Hades, and the losing side (aka the Nazis and their allies) were the children of Hades." ... There are certainly ways to help kids approach the very complicated layers of politics and social aspects regarding the World Wars. This isn't one of them, and I curse Riordan in the tongues of a thousand historians for the paragraph in which he summed it up like that. This is how you're explaining fascists? "Oh, they're the children of Hades, so I guess they're just born evil." This is just vile.

The weird implications of fantasy creatures being treated as animals

Percy doesn't want to walk behind Chiron because he thinks the dude would just randomly take a literal shit on him. Toilet humor is funny, you guys! Except this isn't a horse, no matter how often Percy calls him one. The nymphs aren't trees. Grover is not a goat. It's one thing to integrate features of these because we're talking fantasy mix creatures, but they are still sentient and sapient on a human level! In case of Chiron, he's hundreds of years old and a wise guardian and teacher to Percy and others. Why are we always accompanied by the implication that they are, in some capacity, animals? That's just plain old Fantasy Racism. Stop dehumanizing people you yourself have established as people, please?

Grover is the most present non-human character in this book; so he's the usual victim of this. I cannot count the times Percy calls him a goat boy, or just plain a goat. He is not. A goat. He's a person. I'm supposed to believe he is Percy's best friend. Why does Percy talk to or about him like he's holding him in contempt half the time? Why does Annabeth? She's been living with intelligent non-humans since she was seven! They make fun of him, they dismiss his warnings and instincts as "whining", even though he turns out to be right. They don't treat him seriously, they aren't friendly, they hardly do more than scold him, boss him around or roll their eyes at him.

We still get the other side of the coin

Despite the former problem, Riordan manages to be contemptuous of humans, too. People inside the camp, Annabeth most of all, but Chiron (in a softer way) as well, and eventually Percy and Grover keep talking down at humans. Chiron says the reason why Percy's sword can't kill humans is because "mortals aren't important enough." You know, I would have been fine with "it's to protect humanity" or something; I didn't need a complicated justification for how this sword works. But it would have been nice to not get the most disparaging version that makes icky humans out to be a lower class of life! "Not important enough"? With all his talk of the precious Western civilisation, Chiron should know that mortals are vital to the immortals. No humans, no gods.

Funny thing is, Annabeth repeatedly describes mortals als blind and stupid because they don't know of the mythological goings-on. I thought that was the Mist(TM)? So, what is it? You are magically protected from being perceived as being and doing supernatural stuff - then it isn't the humans' fault, is it? - or people are just stupid and self-censor in their heads. Then why bother with the Mist. The Mist existing and being explained makes me wanna yell at Annabeth to stuff her high-and-mighty attitude. Granted, the Mist isn't too internally consistent. It hides centaurs randomly galloping across the landscape in plain sight of humans, it hides the furies, but it doesn't hide Echidna and the Chimera. I would have liked an explanation for that.

Harmful stereotyping

So. Riordan really hates dog owners, doesn't he? What was with the pink poodle? I mean, I got it; the owners are terrible - that's why he has an unfitting name and why he ran away. But Riordan has to hammer me over the head again. They dyed the doggo pink. Oof. And then Echidna. Here's wondering if Riordan ever depicts a dog owner as a decent person who treats their dog well.

But I take a vastly bigger issue with his consistently hateful depiction of step-parents. Now, Evil Step-Parents(TM) are a well-worn fairytale trope. And Riordan just... never questions it. Personally, I hate it. If it's a step-parent, they're abusive; no exceptions. Percy's stepfather is beating his wife, Annabeth's stepmother treats her as a freak and isolates her from her siblings; it's all very on-the-nose. Only once, I wanna read an acknowledgment that step-parents are just people, and they are as likely to be good people as everyone else. In fact, someone who decides to take a partner who already has a child usually has to internalize that fact at first and accept that this child is going to be a part of the relationship in some capacity. Can we not shit on non-biological parents all the time?

In that context, Annabeth's biological father being a lousy parent as well looks odd, granted. It's definitely something different than Percy's angelic mom. Is Riordan telling me that Athena just has a bad taste in men? Or is that more shitting on humans?

Oh boy, and he loves him some fatshaming. And no, it isn't just "this fat character turns out to be evil", it is "every single character described as being overweight is a negative character in some way, plus depicted as someone with really poor hygiene, plus just generally physically revolting. Go on, re-read the Echidna scene. Tell me that he doesn't go out of his way there to hammer home just how obnoxious and repulsive she is before she turns out to be a monster. How many unflattering words can he squeeze into one paragraph? Why would a kid care? Why does Percy even look at a complete stranger long enough to study how bad her sense of fashion is? Other big characters include Dionysus (more on him when I talk about Riordan's takes on mythology) who's... not evil, but mean-spirited and grumpy and contemptuous and constantly pissed-off. And Gabe, the stinking, ugly, abusive stepfather who literally lives among trash and is so unsubtle that he complains to his wife's face that he didn't get her life insurance because she showed up alive. Gabe Ugliano, because he's ugly, you see? Rick Riordan is funny. He's also trying to beat me to death with an anvil. And showing his ass, because a lot of domestic abuse is way subtler than that.

Ugly = evil is a shorthand that Riordan keeps reusing - and that his hero has weirdly internalized! And don't even tell me of a judgy 12-year-old as an unreliable narrator - because the narrative keeps proving Percy right. Ares' ugly daughters and the ugly girl at human school are brutal bullies (I mean, Annabeth keeps insulting and bullying Percy, but she's pretty, so it's fine when she does it). That Medusa looks elegant and refined and "must have been a beautiful woman once" makes Percy trust her, but the moment he stops trusting her, she starts looking monstrous. It's really lazy characterization.

Also, a fun little detail from Camp Half-Blood: The phenotype of people with sharp noses? Is associated with troublemakers. Uh-huh. I'm comfy with that. That doesn't sound anti-Semitic at all. ... FUCK THIS. Riordan, stereotypes like this are HARMFUL. Do. Your. Research.

An afterthought

Does Riordan have any faith in his own writing? Because the one time I'm sold on a dramatic moment, he ends up subverting it. I'm all, "Percy's falling towards the river! Monsters! Everything is panic!" And then the new chapter starts, and the moment falls flat. Because Riordan doesn't hold onto the fear Percy feels in that moment; he makes him snark about it in hindsight. It's really not a good idea to set up an emotionally captivating moment and then make fun of it.

[elytrafemme]

do you have any tips an improving writing skills/learning writing techniques?

i do actually! :D

i will preface by saying though that i am by no means an experienced writer and i am still trying to learn so much writing stuff so this is just stuff that has helped me personally ^_^ also this is very disorganized sorry my brain is a bit foggy today

(1) READ! genuinely the best way to learn how to improve writing skills is to read things! i don't recommend going hyper-analytical on what writers do good and bad (i settled into that habit accidentally and am trying to wean myself off of it), but as you read things you will generally observe really good points in the piece, like if the writer is good at worldbuilding or something! so if there's a skill you're trying to work on, or if you're just aiming to improve in general, reading is really really important to learning stuff. readings also just very good :] sorry i can elaborate more on this if you want i feel like i'm getting repetitive but yeah!

(2) FREE ASSOCIATION WRITING! in my experience this helps a lot with A. perfectionism and B. writer's block. basically, set a timer (5-15 minutes is usually what i've done) and get yourself a prompt that you like, or if you prefer just go promptless, and write down a bunch of stuff. the idea is not to go back and try to routinely edit, just to get stuff out-- yes, it is going to be half coherent and it might kill you a bit in hindsight, but i've been able to pull out some really great lines out of messes in scribbles and it helps get the brain going!

(3) EXPERIMENT! me and my partner both sort of 'specialize' in different kinds of writing (for me it's poetry, for her it's prose), but both of us have kind of experimented with the other style. sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn't but one thing i think we've both found is that being able to play around with different formats and types of storytelling can help you see the benefits and drawbacks of everything. for example, poetry is really good with figuring out the way that words sound & sensory detailing, but prose helps a lot with setting up characters and contexts.

(4) DRAW FROM REAL LIFE! this is kind of dicey because a lot of times in writing, you don't want to project entirely onto the character-- that's not a rule of thumb or anything, do whatever the fuck you want-- just because it's good to try and bridge the gap between your experiences and theirs, and kind of combine them. BUT i do think it's really good to look into your own experiences and observations to guide your writing!

(5) GIVE YOUR READERS ANCHORS! this is a bit out of the norm with the others, but essentially, the idea here is that if you're writing something, as you go back and read it, you want to make sure to A. read it out loud so it sounds natural and B. make sure that it's easy to follow along. balancing dialogue with introspection with description etc. is a fucking tricky thing and it's not a standard balance for everyone at ALL, some writers naturally do more dialogue and some naturally do more description and both are fantastic! the idea here is less about trying to fit this strict norm, and more that you make sure that were a reader to, say, go through some thick paragraphs of introspection, they have 'hooks' or 'anchors' within them that draw them back to the present of the fic. same with dialogue tags, making sure readers can tell what is still going on and doesn't get confused with characters. this mostly just helps tense and comprehension but i do think it's a good skill to have :]

this is very rambly and long im srry but FINAL THING TO REMEMBER

(6) WRITE WHATEVER THE FUCK U WANT! i have complicated thoughts on the idea of a good vs a bad writer but those thoughts can overall be summed up as: it's kind of not important just do what u want. if these tips dont help then dont use them! and these arent a guide to be the bestest writer ever also. im just kinda throwing stuff out there that's helped me improve my writing skills so may help u. but like if u dont like this then by all means throw it out the window u have no idea how many bits of writing advice ihave been given that i realized did NOT help me even if they helped others yknow? so yeah!

much love <3

[mister-eames]

your tags on that cobb/eames gifset just made me spent the past hour rummaging through my drafts and bookmarks lol, because there are some really big-brained people out there who can explain the scene far more eloquent and articulate than i'll ever be in my entire life

https://sibilantly.tumblr.com/post/123071144163/im-the-anon-from-earlier-and-arthur-actively

https://boomcomplains.tumblr.com/post/146847371124/inception-30-day-challenge-day-three-favorite

https://ameslore.tumblr.com/post/154987428152/inception-character-and-plot-analysis

enjoy! :D

ALICIA I LOVE YOU FOR THIS! I just woke up and read all of them and I am very well fed <3 thank you so much for taking the time to dig these out! xo I thoroughly enjoyed them 🥰

And gosh I'm the same I could not ever articulate my theories or headcanons in such a comprehensive, straight-mannered, thoughtful or coherent way, so I really appreciate it x thanks again! x

[veliseraptor]

Feel free to ignore this if you want, lord knows poking the spn fandom with a stick would be terrifying at the best of times, but I’m curious so I figured I’d ask: what’s your perspective on all the destiel shenanigans, as someone who never shipped it?

ohhhh my god it is so weird. It truly is a bizarre experience for me! Like, I was deep in Supernatural fandom, for years, and yet I’ve also been pretty far out of it for a long while too such that I...was almost completely disengaged from everything that was going on. So when it started popping up on my dash again specifically with respect to everything happening with Destiel it was...only semi-comprehensible, in a lot of ways? Everything after...honestly, after season six gets very fuzzy for me. I have about half of season seven. after that...big blank spot until, oh, 15.18 I guess? 

anyway it’s all been very...”a lot’s happened while I was away, hasn’t it” of things.

(have had one mutual in that interval still blogging about Supernatural, whom I love dearly and is pretty much my sole source about what’s been going on over there, but you can only absorb so much via vague osmosis.)

but to actually respond to what you’re asking here! it’s very funny to me, generally, because for context: I was always one of them Sam Girls, I found the way that I felt the narrative treated Dean frequently grating, and Destiel was one of my first notps because of the way I associated it with certain Types of (as it would be called now) Discourse around Sam.

(personally I was a Sastiel shipper, myself. is that what it was called? I forget. anyway, i.m.o. that was the superior Castiel pairing, not that you asked my opinion about that.)

but like. I am never very invested in things being “endgame canon” and don’t tend to really care what’s “endgame canon” because odds are it’s not going to be my ship anyway (though I guess Samifer became “endgame canon” if you squint, so there’s that), so I was just...not very invested in the “will they/won’t they” question of Destiel’s canonization or lack thereof. I was also always a cynic who figured yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. 

and when it did happen - well, sort of - initially on hearing it I was mostly just like “huh, good for them” and then “oh no, that...that was a storytelling choice, and also one entirely in line with what I’d expect from this show” (for which I do, to be clear, still have a fair amount of residual fondness), and then very quickly “these memes are choice particularly given this fucking timing” and then “good god this went batshit quickly.” 

and then it just kept going! and going! which was not surprising exactly but mostly I’ve just been watching from a distance with a lot of “well this is something” and relief that I’m no longer emotionally invested enough in Supernatural as a thing to get really tangled up in it. that’s nice! for once I am not in the megafandom discourse maelstrom, I’m not even in its periphery, it’s been a while.

and when it comes to the conspiracy theories...hoo boy. I mean, I don’t know enough about everything to really comment cogently, but generally speaking I tend to find conspiracy theories about tv shows/movies that get really baroque about how everyone is plotting against a segment of fandom with a degree of malintent and forethought that seems borderline supervillainous...less than compelling.

I’m inclined to say more that this whole debacle has been a disastrous PR debacle with a bunch of last minute changes and poor communication, exacerbated by the chaos caused by the global pandemic and the fact that Supernatural has never been defined by its, uh, total narrative coherence and continuity. 

though I will grant that the conspiracy theories here have more to lend them credence than, say, the Johnlock Conspiracy. but that’s kind of a low bar.

however, the take that “the CW’s handling of Destiel is worse than government censorship, actually” is one of the worst I’ve seen in a long, long time.

anyway this is my last Hot Take on all of this, any further posting I do about Supernatural will either be bizarre nostalgia, me doing a deep dive in the Samifer tag, or memes. 

(if you’re so inclined and want to read old fic of mine, the many, many Supernatural fics I wrote between ~2010-2013 can be found on my ffn account. I do not vouch for quality. there are also a few dubious ones that didn’t make it over to FFN on my AO3, but I’m not going to link to those. you can go find them if “wincest with bonus hallucifer” sounds like your jam.)

[astrallines]

Rulership of Time

Astrology functions as an assessment of temporal quality, but is the archetype of time ruled by any particular sign? Preface The wheel of the zodiac is often depicted with Aries on the left, thus keeping it in line with the houses: that is, Aries corresponds to the ascendant and first house, Taurus occupies the second house, and so on.

However, there are some interesting patterns that emerge under other rotations. Rotating the wheel one sign counter clockwise, so that the first house is held by Taurus, we find Cancer and Leo on either side of the nadir, the lowest point of the wheel. This emphasizes the wonderful symmetry between each pair of signs that share rulers:

The exception being, of course, the Sun and Moon which rule one sign each. This might point to a secret identification between these forces, which are typically conceptualized as the most fundamental opposites: consciousness and the unconscious, light and dark, etc. The arcane marriage of these principles is a motif which humanity has been pondering since antiquity. Positioning this syzygy at the bottom of the wheel gives the impression that the other signs spring forth from this coupling as a series of portraits from one luminary to the other; as call and response music, or dance steps. One can say that the entire zodiac functions as a mythological alphabet that elaborates of the riddle of the Sun and Moon.

Time Under this cosmic lens, let’s examine a feature essential to our experience of the universe: time. Where does time show up in the zodiac? Can any particular sign be said to govern this concept? At the very least, we can draw the strongest general associations between time and these signs:

If you ask astrologers which sign most corresponds to the concept of time, Gemini would be a common and reasonable answer. It is the traditional ruler of clocks and measurements of time, and is said to rule the time-dependent concepts of transit and commuting.

Capricorn is another traditional response, since it rules the schedule, the time table, the restriction of time, the inexorable march of time. Father Time, the bearded old man with the scythe and the hourglass, is one of the most well known personifications of Saturn.

Aquarius is a bit more esoteric in this regard, but perfectly valid. Aquarius is most associated with the concepts of the instant, the moment ... suddenness! Moreover, it is the traditional ruler of kairos, the ancient Greek idea of “pregnant time.” From Wikipedia:

The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos (χρ��νος) and kairos. The former refers to chronological or sequential time, while the latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature.

Chronos is a clear attribute of Capricorn, therefore these two notions of time are represented by the two Saturn-ruled signs. These two signs are farthest from our supposed origin-nadir, the Cancer/Leo threshold. Capricorn is opposite Cancer, and Aquarius is opposite Leo. This suits the mythological conception of Saturn as the demiurge, the architect of mundane incarnation, the mechanic of the machinery of the cosmos.

To complete this symmetry, we would hope that Virgo is also associated with time. That way, Saturn-ruled signs can roost up at the dome of time, representing its furthest limits, while Mercury ruled signs can reflect each other as attendants to the atemporal solar/lunar archetypes, initiating those forces into the game of time. Gemini does this job perfectly for the Moon, showing how time is “reflected” in the mind through the image of the clock.

So, is Virgo then one of our rulers of time? Ever humble and self-diminishing, Virgo does not jump out as readily as the others, but it does indeed complete a very crucial and unglamorous role. Any astrologer will tell you that Virgo rules punctuality. That is, the adherence to time. If Gemini is the clock at the train station, and Capricorn is the schedule, and Aquarius is the fortune of sliding through the closing door, then Virgo is the plain fact of showing up on time.

So it is clear that there are affinities between rulerships. The two mercury-ruled signs rule basic, mundane relationships to time: time measurement and time observance. The two Saturn-ruled signs rule the extremes of time: time’s bondage and time’s potentiation. There are also affinities between elements, which we explore later. But there are also delightful parallels between the pairs of signs which share no essential qualities. Consider that Gemini and Capricorn both rule structural, objective attributes of time, summarized by the clock and the schedule respectively. The other pair rules more subjective qualities of time: Virgo corresponds to the season, and Aquarius to the zeitgeist.

Elemental Purports What does it mean that all four of these time-governing signs are earth or air? At the most obvious level, we should note that in the cultural imagination water and fire are characterized by motion, while earth and air are not. Air is about potentiation; it is the closest element to pure yang. It is the breath, which corresponds esoterically to the pneuma, the coherence of spirit which vivifies matter. It is atmosphere: that which surrounds every atom, and every germ of life, from the smallest bud to the egg of the cosmos. In a sense, pure potentiation means being eternally unborn. It is actually full activity—boundless perpetual motion—or “unlimited wind” in the Vedas—the inexhaustible first word of creation which has no duration, and obviously no equivalent upon the time-dependent material plane.

That plane is brought to us in part by earth, the closest element to pure yin. It is easy to understand how “pure passivity” is not comprehensible within time—easier than the concept of “pure activity” which we looked at previously. There is only ever the appearance of stillness in our perception; never an object which is actually fully static. The signature “movements” of matter may be entropy and decay.

We should also understand the conventional elemental associations with the astrological attitudes: cardinality is “like” fire; fixidity like earth; mutability like air. Therefore these time signs are:

The airy part of air (Gemini)

The airy part of earth (Virgo)

The fiery part of earth (Capricorn)

The earthy part of air (Aquarius)

So earth is implicated in three of these, and air is implicated in three of these. The only exception to air is the fiery part of earth; earth in its cardinal aspect. This means it is the apparent, self-projecting aspect of earth; earth with its essence on display. Capricorn governs, if you’ll remember, the bondage aspect of time, and the sign that is the most common answer to the naive question of time rulership.

The only exception to earth is the airy part of air: Gemini. This is notably the second-most common response to the question of time rulership. And, as we have seen, together Gemini and Capricorn account for the objective qualities of time. Here’s a weird one: if Gemini and Capricorn are the most obvious rulers of time, perhaps that is partially due to the subjective quality of our time, which is so concerned with, and aware of, objective qualities!

Or maybe it is the fact that the subjective qualities of time are defined by contradiction, and thus more difficult to understand in any age. After all, what is the “earthy part of air” and “the airy part of earth”? There does seem to be an especially elusive mystery about Aquarius: the concept of kairos, but also of the wish, and of heaven. What are we to make of the fact that Aquarius is “familiar to the alien”? Or the fact that it is associated both with the moment and with “timelessness”? We have seen air as pure potentiation, necessitating boundless movement; how could there be a “fixed” expression of such a principle?

In contradiction to the most “alien” sign, Virgo is typically tagged as the most mundane sign. The relative anonymity of Virgo is also contrasted with the radical idiosyncrasy of Aquarius. And its tradition-mindedness would appear also to chafe against Aquarian novelty. Yet let us remember what these signs share: they given definition to the subjective attributes of time. We mentioned that Aquarius holds both the uniqueness of the moment, and the unchanging eternal, but Virgo holds this mystery too. Virgo’s anonymity comes from a deep, intuitive understand that we are all the same. That is why the goddess and the virgin go by so many names. In fact, they necessitate that many names, because the multiplicity of the expression is part of the expression. Virgo is the scattering of the atoms; matter in full possible diffusion. The secondary ruler of Virgo, besides mercury, is not one planet but an abundance of asteroids. Virgo knows both “I am a link in a chain” and also “I am this link.” What is punctuality but specificity? What is a unit of matter but a detail? Virgo knows both, “This season has come before,” and also, “This summer is this summer.”

Summary The wind of Gemini is the wind that blows in the quality of time, existing in some unknowable potentiation beyond this world. Capricorn is the slow-burn of matter upon which quality plays, and is thereby bound. Virgo rotates the wheel, perpetuating the cycle through its incremental movement. The rotations are then recognized by their quality of motion. Aquarius imagines the wheel stopped, glimpsed in gestalt, and the wheel is recognized by the quality of its stillness. Cumulatively, these four archetypes collaborate to describe the terms of the dance through which psyche extends itself into its many other guises.

[sumeshi-t]

when to shutcho bitchass up.

so i had this long ass reply as i was about to reblog a haikyuu writer’s response to a hate ask but i had to eat lunch, and my wifi’s acting up so it all got deleted. but anyway, after lurking in the shadows for god knows how long, i decided to speak up about this on-going issue of hate being poorly masked as “constructive criticism”. 

it doesn’t just happen on haikyuu blogs, like, every fandom has it. and it saddens me because i’ve seen the greatest blogs out here just vanish into thin air (or has gone on hiatus and never returned/archived the blog/deactivated) for getting hate that they absolutely do not deserve. nobody does. nobody needs that hate; not now not ever. most often than not, there are people who hide behind the anon feature in asks. but i guess some people lately have now learned how to own up to their own mistakes; and yes, everyone’s opinion is valid, is welcome to be entertained; however the way you word these things out also matters. it’s just like when someone writes something, you know? why do you get to complain, “your writing suckxz” when you can’t even write down why you think so? lol gtfo. people can interpret your words in however way they want, and that’s the one thing you cannot control. so at least, when you attempt to apologize for something you “didn’t mean to” or “was just a joke”, at least make it sound like you mean it. if you want your opinion to be taken seriously, learn how to say it with manners.

anyway, this post will be terribly long, probably longer than the shit i’ve ever written anywhere lmao. some of the things i’ll say here might come off as redundant but because the same thing happens over and over again, what else would you expect?

Exhibit A: “constructive criticism” does not mean, or shall never be equated to “hate”

if you go around tumblr, there are tons of posts which educate people how to properly write a critique, how to decently and reasonably critic someone’s work, whether it be in the form of writing, or digital art, etc. even if you type “constructive criticism” on that google search bar, tons of websites are going to tell you how to do it, so it really is unacceptable to use “it’s constructive criticism” as an excuse when all you’ve said is “your writing sucks”. literally, how can “constructive criticism” go from “you’re not even a good writer, why the hype?” to “you’re too positive, too fake, if you’re sad, show that you’re sad.” that ain’t it chief. constructive criticism is given to the works of a content creator, not directed at the content creator itself.

ever heard of the sandwich method? yeah, yummy and easy, right? basically it means, you start it off with the positive things about the content creator, then the negative ones in the middle, then reinforce them at the end. okay, i’ll repeat that here, let me break it down if that isn’t enough for cute little noggins to understand:

tell the content creator what made you hooked on their works in the first place. what made you indulge in all that deliciously free content, that has brought you to tears, to laughs, to orgasm. you don’t necessarily have to praise them, but acknowledge that you’re aware of what they’re doing and how it is, or how their progress is so far.

now here comes the critique part. this where the “however” and the “but” words come in, to transition from (for example) “your way with words is breathtaking” to “sometimes i feel they’re too much to digest all at once”. get it? pinpoint to the content creator just exactly what aspects in their current state do you wish they could improve on, or areas do you think they are lacking or weak, so to speak. be concise, be comprehensive, be nice.

lastly, my favorite part, is you give them tips or advice or just a fucking hint how you think they can achieve the things you said from #2. even if you know or assume that they’d understand your point, or “it’s their job to find it out by themselves”... well, a little input or jumpstart wouldn’t hurt, would it? so from the example, “your way with words is breathtaking” to “(however) sometimes i feel they’re too much to digest all at once” you end it with a, “i think or why don’t you try doing so, and this, and that,”

lemme go back to the “it’s their job to find it out by themselves” aha, news flash honey: this isn’t their job. it’s their way of enjoyment, their leisure, their free time that they use up just to bring out free content for lots of people like you to indulge in. most people come here, or on ao3, or basically anywhere where you can post your work, just for fun. you cannot be demanding, that’s why they have their rules and all, but i digress. content creators feed on feedback, and feedback alone. i hope you have an idea how something as simple as “asdflkjshdls” in the tags can bring a phat smile to a content creator’s face, what more, if it’s something coherent. just fucking keyboard smash is a boost to their confidence (trust me, it’s very fun knowing that how “asdfgjkl” i was when writing something, is the same as the “asdfgjkl” the readers had when reading)

this sandwich method thing doesn’t only apply to this certain situation. in fact, this is an effective means of communicating your point across to people in school, at work, and even in the comforts of your home. right? 

didn’t you feel bad when your teacher returned your paper to you and just said, “i gave you that grade just because” and nothing more? or when that classmate of yours said, “no, i don’t like this idea. think up of something else” for a project? didn’t you ever question them, “why, and on what basis?” 

how about, when your boss returned your report, only saying, “revise this” but what is “this”? sure, there are bosses who do this to try to teach their employees to find things out and find solutions on their own, but you cannot deny that some are just being disgustingly rude about it. 

how about at home you say? well... remember that time when your parents compared you to their friends’ children, or even compared you among your own siblings? or that time you were lashed out on? actually, you know, what, i’m sorry for bringing this up, as light as this was worded out, some people might get triggered simply from those two phrases i put out. however, i will address this issue next.

Exhibit B: you don’t know the people you are talking to, therefore you do not know what they are going through

you can’t say, “oh, you’re all just so sensitive” or “it’s just an opinion” when clearly, this (tw: depression, suicide, family issues, gender and sexuality, body positivity, etc) topics is/are sensitive to most content creators, to most people. some brush it off fine, and take a while to reach their boiling point, but not everyone’s like that. you can’t tell people how they should react to your random spewing of hate. each person has their own level of tolerance, so don’t go off and assume that everybody online is the same and grew from the same fucking tree. 

some or most people use writing/drawing/etc. as a means to cope with what shit life has thrown at them; and then you, being so stupidly ignorant, just waltz in and drop that bomb on what possibly, could be the only ray of sunlight they have in their life, especially now in this bleak year. 

receiving anon-hate or hate-asks should not be the norm. it is not and never will be okay. i thought you were here to critic their work, why even joke about something that could have been personal to someone? why even joke about these kinds of things in the first place? why even bring up something that might have been a personal issue when all you had to do was critic their work? 

my god, stop acting like a boomer already. tbh the audacity of some people here, idk. if you’re not going through anything at all, then may god/brahma/allah/whichever supreme being you believe in or whatever good karma it is, bless you. 

it’s not that one should sympathize, or, it isn’t also expected of people to full on empathize, but a little respect goes a long way. why don’t we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the person we’re about to send that hate-ask to. if not us, how about that close friend who’s easy to bring to tears, or mom, or cousin? wouldn’t it be aggravating? wouldn’t it be painful?

well... who am i to assume, i don’t even know you. get it?

just please, acknowledge that everyone here is human. they have emotions, they have their own thoughts, they have their own lives outside of the screen. how they choose to portray themselves here has nothing to do with you. how they choose to react to that hate ask doesn’t have to do with anything you should concern yourself with. 

LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS. LET PEOPLE LIVE THEIR LIFE THEIR OWN WAY, both virtual and in reality. 

i know this post won’t get too far, but i have had enough of seeing the nicest people, who just wanted to express their creativity and share the happiness and the fun, be put down just because of unnecessary hate. i hope those people who send those in never get to experience that, or if they have, i hope they understand that doing so to others isn’t going to change anything about themselves.

[dearlazerbunny]

Lie to Me (Ch. 5 of ?)

Pairings: Loki x Reader

Genre/Ratings: M eventually (aiming for a slow burn here); warnings for kidnapping and subsequent anxiety/PTSD (will be marked before every chapter)

Words: 1500

Summary: If you had to guess what the captured, traitor, trickster god Loki Laufeyson wanted or needed at this moment, a babysitter would be far, far down on the list. (Set after the events of Avengers 1.)

SHOUTOUT TO @molmcb and @jessiejunebug and their continued quest to inflate my ego as I beg them to tell me my writing is halfway decent  

Requested Tags: @deraniel @iamverity @yasnooshka24@themusingsofmany@dark-night-sky-99 @wegingerangelica

“You said you have questions.”

Your pencil scratches to a halt on your notebook. “What?”

The man in his cell heaves a long suffering sigh. “Must you make me repeat myself constantly? You said you have questions. Ask them.”

Um… what? You raise an eyebrow at him and peer closely, trying to distinguish and sort of schmoozing like the last time he spoke to you. “Are you… are we, like, talking now? Is this a thing?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well you seemed pretty insistent on keeping up the whole silent treatment, sooooo… why talk now? Did my ever-present charm finally seduce the Trickster?”

He gives you a look that could feasibly translate to ‘you’d be more attractive dipped in a swamp and covered in grass clippings’. “I am bored. You are here and seem somewhat capable of producing coherent thoughts. Therefore, you happen to be my only option for entertainment.”

“Hoo boy, lucky me.” You snort. “Don’t lie to me, you probably just want to figure out how to sway me into unlocking your handcuffs again.”

He seems amused by this. “I am the god of lies, Witling. I very much doubt you could tell when I lie to you.”

“Bet.” You pause. “I- sorry. What did you call me?”

The Trickster has an incredibly self-satisfied smirk on his lips, one that instantly makes you want to slap it off of him. “You seem to think yourself incredibly pithy for a mortal. Not many would speak so smartly to the God with a sliver tongue. And, you apparently refuse to call me by name, thus I shall not call you by yours, Witling.”

Considering everything he just said to you were well-places insults, they’re incredibly pretty insults. You suppose it’s that whole silver tongue thing. The man could read a phone book and it’d be X-rated. “I’m assuming you’re not actually calling me witty, Trickster?”

“Ah, the little one understands sarcasm. Quite a boon.”

At this point the jabs just fly right over your head. You put your chin in your hand and rest it on the table, musing. “Hm. The Witling and the Trickster. Sounds like a bad buddy-cop movie. I’m sure Neil Gaiman would make a killing off of it though.”

“You are very quickly trying my patience.”

“Well hey, you said you wanted entertainment, right?” The ferocity of his glare doesn’t scare you this time, surprisingly- you just scrunch your nose up at him, your equivalent of a toddler sticking out her tongue in a na-na-you-can’t-get-me kind of way. “So, can I really ask anything?”

“Provided it is not something so asinine as ‘do apples taste as they do on Earth’.”

“Hey, it’s a good question! Seven year old me was a smart cookie.” Externally, you’re trying to keep calm, but your heart is thumping so wildly in your chest you’re surprised the god doesn’t comment on it. You can ask him anything. Possibilities are whirling around in your head so quickly you can barely think of one to snatch up and voice. So you blurt the first thing you can think of- “did you really give birth to a horse?”

There’s a moment of silence, and you almost think he hasn’t heard you, but then his face twists into the most haughty, appalled, scandalized look that’s ever come out of god or mortal in any of the nine realms; you’re willing to bet your entire life’s savings on it. “Did I what.”

You try to subtly clamp a hand over your mouth in effort to keep from bursting out laughing right to his face. “I’m assuming that’s a no, then?”

“Mortals are the most inane, idiotic, moronic creatures-” He steadies himself, seemingly controlling his outburst with a well-controlled breath. “No. I absolutely did not. Where in Hel did you manage to come up with such a ludicrous statement?”

“So once upon a time, you turned into a mare to seduce a horse called Svadilfari and the resulting, um, incident, created an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir. I mean, if the story is true, you were kind of in a bad spot and had to think on the fly, but uh… yeah. Kind of a creative way of doing things.” The Trickster looks even paler than usual. “You sure that didn’t happen? ‘Cause uh, its kind of a well documented story-”

“I can assure you in my one thousand and fifty odd years of life I have not ever seduced a horse.” You have to give a little giggle at that, because such an odd statement coming out of someone so furious is absolutely hilarious.

“Well, damn. Mythomaniacs everywhere just had a sharp pain in their chests and don’t know why.”

The Trickster leans his head back against his cell wall with a solid thunk and lets his eyes close. “And Thor wonders why I loathe Midgard so much.”

“I guess centuries of rumors working their way down the grapevine could mess up your reputation a bit, huh?” You’re half teasing, and half trying to cheer him up, but he doesn’t seem all that convinced. You’re also terrified you’ve just insulted the crap out of him and he’s going to go back to the silent treatment, and you really do not want that to happen- this is the most fun you’ve had in ages. “So you’re a thousand and fifty? Roughly?”

“Yes.”

“How long is that in, like, regular years?” He cracks open one eyelid to give you the stink eye, and you roll your eyes back at him. “You know what I mean. Midgardian years, whatever.”

“How should I know that?”

“Well, how long do Asgardians live?”

He seems to think for a moment. “Five thousand or so, give or take.”

“Okay, sooooo…” you scratch some quick math onto the paper in front of you. Five thousand years divided by one thousand and fifty, Loki’s age- 4.76ish. If the normal human lifespan is ninety years, being generous, then ninety divided by 4.76 is… “Huh.”

“Have you made a revolutionary discovery? Shall I call your pathetic press?”

“Just out of curiosity, how do you think the prefrontal cortex matures in Asgardians as compared to humans?”

“Considering Asgardians are vastly superior to mortals, I should say at a greater capacity.”

“I sure hope so,” you murmur to yourself. Because this is… wow. Kind of terrifying, and kind of hilarious.

“What has your tongue in knots?”

“Do you really want to know?”

He cocks and eyebrow and glances around at his cell. “I’m not sure how the information could make my situation any worse.”

“Fair. Well, by human standards, you’re just shy of nineteen years old.”

“I have no context for your lifespans.”

“Um, eighteen is when you’re legally considered an adult in most countries. Here in the States you can’t legally consume alcohol until you’re twenty one. And I’m twenty four, so technically, by Earth’s standards, I’m older than you.”

Oh, the look on his face is just priceless. You wish you had a camera. “That is preposterous.”

“Math doesn’t lie, man. Oh my god, if you were normal, you’d be some rich frat boy right now…!”

“I have no comprehension for this term… frat boy… but from your tone of voice I can sure you I most decidedly would not be one.”

You shake your head, a huge grin on your face. “This is hilarious. I’m older than you. I feel like I should give you a lecture on safe driving skills or why you should stay in school.”

Trickster is practically nose to nose with the glass wall of his cell, looking ridiculously frustrated. “I have harnessed the power of an infinity stone to my own whims and you dare insinuate that you outrank me!”

A what now? “What’s an infinity stone? I haven’t heard of that term.”

It’s almost like a light switch flipping off- everything in him visibly shuts down and withdrawals into himself, swallowing everything up as a snake might a rat. “It is nothing. Unimportant.”

The way he stops on a dime is almost scary. Someone who can control their emotions at the drop of a hat like that… well. They usually don’t learn that skill by pleasant means. So you drop it for now, but you do write yourself a little note with a question mark, right next to his ‘human age’ that’s circled in big black marks. “Hey, I was just kidding Trickster. I doubt I outrank you in anything other than, like, random Midgardian trivia. Trust me, even with the handcuffs, you’re still the heavyweight here.”

To your relief, something like life filters back into his face, just a bit. “It would be best you do not forget that, Witling. There will come a day where I could make your life a living nightmare.”

But his voice is so light you just crinkle your nose at him. “Nah, I bet you’d be harmless. I’m the one who kept you entertained all these dark lonely nights after all.”

“I believe I would rather have Mjolnir set on my head.”  

[otayuriweek]

What hard work? Nothing has been done since 2017 and that was nothing but a lot of reblogging. Seriously how is that hard? A lot of people would like to participate in an OtaYuri week, if you're not willing to do something with this blog, delete it and let someone else pick it up. As of right now, you're just being selfish and petty for not allowing someone else to host the week. That's all it boils down too.

Did you even read the post? I will repeat what I said here: anyone is free to host their own Otayuri Week, and we would be happy to support them by reblogging their announcements on our blog provided that they’re being inclusive of all fans. 

Otayuri Week doesn’t have to be on this blog. In fact, anon, you’re the one being fairly selfish in telling me to delete it after I explained that the blog is currently serving as an archive for the works submitted to past events. The fact that you think that hosting an event is just “a lot of reblogging” really speaks volumes on how well such a theme week would go if hosted by someone like you.

Detailing it further for others that might be curious on how to host this sort of thing, this implies:

checking if there’s enough interest for the event to be viable through fandom contact, polls, fandom/ship activity in general, amount of creators active, while being aware that only a very small portion of the people claiming to be interested will actually participate

planning out a viable schedule while juggling together: 1) the availability of several mods, 2) the dates for all other fandom events, often gathered by hand and by asking people because most fandoms don’t have a comprehensive event calendar, 3) several other factors such as busy holiday/school/business times for participating fans, time needed to go through each phase with a good response without the fandom losing interest, etc

setting up the blog, themes, etc, involving code and graphic design and image editing, all of which can take a considerable amount of time (also applicable to the steps below)

drafting up banners and other initial graphics for the blog and announcement posts

drafting up the rules for the event as well as coherency rules for the mods, this not to mention extra information pages/posts such as faqs

drafting up an announcement post in a way that will be both informative and engaging

contacting other event blogs for affiliation advertising, spreading the word, answering asks, sending requests to be included on event calendars if they exist, etc, basically PR

setting up necessary media for themes submissions, several rounds of voting for themes, etc, and draft up graphics and announcement posts for ALL those things

process all the data between each phase, often manually, i.e.: go through each and every submitted theme, sort through them to make sure there are no duplicates, discuss with other mods how to handle similar themes, individually input them on the forms to be used for the voting rounds, etc

spread the word AGAIN for every new announcement that is made

create the final theme masterpost including graphics and announcement text, discuss theme placement within the timeframe according to how tired the fandom will be versus how versatile the themes are versus what will work well, etc etc etc

spread the word AGAIN, contact affiliates, more PR effort

figure out all the tags you’re going to use for the event, which can list all the characters involved, pairings present, themes, days, type of media, event date/year, etc so that fans can filter the participating works more easily, set up page on blog sorted by all these, make sure all mods are on the same page regarding tags to use

set up AO3 collection, figure out how that works for a multi-year event, make sure all mods know how to use it

THIS IS ALL BEFORE THE EVENT BEGINS. note that pretty much all of the steps described until now have to be cross-checked with the other mods, which might have conflicting opinions or low availability to confirm everything is up to standard and that we can continue with everyone’s agreement

event begins. there are hundreds of entries every day. you must keep track of which ones have already been reblogged, which ones have not, make sure all of them are tagged properly on the blog with all the tags I described above, cross-check with several other tags for the event because people will put their works even on tags that we supposedly aren’t tracking, or even not tag them at all and expect us to find them anyway. this takes HOURS, even if everything is in its proper place.

find all the works on AO3 for the event, most of which aren’t linked or tagged so that we can find them easily. add them to collection.

post all the submissions that have been sent anonymously for us to post, make sure to tag properly and check they show up on the tag.

if a mod doesn’t show up or doesn’t do their work? you need to go back and do it and have triple the work because you can’t be sure of what has been taken care of or what hasn’t, often by individually checking the notes of each post to make sure it has/hasn’t been reblogged because there are too many entries on our blog to find a single post easily. once again, this for HUNDREDS of posts every day. 

keep checking the tags and AO3 several weeks after the event is over for late entries.

Note that this is the condensed version! All this while juggling several mods with probably conflicting opinions on everything, a busy schedule and daily life for everyone, all the time it takes to draft up the posts and do the graphics and process the data, and then dealing with the hundreds of daily entries once the event itself arrives while keeping every single one of those steps on schedule? You can bet it’s hard work. 

Yes, we have not hosted Otayuri Week since 2017. You’ll be surprised to find that people with a large amount of responsibilities often don’t have the time and mental availability for this sort of workload, even without any added complications, and neither of the remaining mods is able to keep it up at the moment. I’ve already expressed my thoughts on adding new mods or handing over the event in my other post.

I will not answer anymore asks in the tone of anon above. I have already explained the reasons for this decision and stated my full support for anyone who wishes to host Otayuri Week in the future, and I’m more than happy to explain things further if anyone has more questions. However, I will not stand for the childish sort of personal attacks and disregard for people’s work as were used by anon in this ask, especially since anon chose to completely ignore what I actually said in my original reply.

–Mod Howl

[paladin-andric]

11/11/11 Tag

Thanks to @corishadowfang​ for the tag! Sorry this took so long but I’ve been pretty shot the past couple days.

Rules: Answer the eleven questions, make eleven of your own, then tag eleven people.

1. Do you have a WIP for NaNo?  If so, what’s it about?

Sort of? I’m not really doing Nano officially, but I’m trying very hard to wrap up Blackheart this month.

2. Are there any things you’d really like to write about that you haven’t had the chance to yet?

I’ve got a story about dragons invading late medieval Europe on the backburner. It features actual historical figures that were in power at the time, like famous Polish King Casimir the Great, Pope Innocent VI, and more! Some events change due to the dragons’ invasion, like the massive war ending a power struggle in the Holy Roman Empire and ensuring Louis V, son of the previous emperor ascends to rulership, where as in our timeline he lost out to Charles VI and ended up being the Duke of Bavaria. In this story most of Europe is destroyed and the survivors flee to the Byzantine Empire, which intends to make a stand at Constantinople. The son of the dragons’ leader spends a large portion of the story being held captive in Constantinople, and is interrogated and persuaded throughout the story.

3. Plotter, pantser, or plantser?

Plantser, I guess? I plan the framework, and sometimes I have a scene I really want to make a certain way, but for the most part it’s touch and go.

4. What is your favorite part of the writing process?

The creative process. Just daydreaming about all sorts of scenes and scenarios is incredibly fun. When it comes time to put it to paper though it gets tougher.

5. What does your editing process look like?

Spellcheck and extension. I usually write a scene haphazardly and then add more dialogue and descriptions when I return.

6. Is there a scene in your WIP you’re particularly proud of?  Share it!

This scene in the chapter “Field of Dreams” chapter of Blackheart, it’s my favorite chapter in the book honestly. As a prelude, how this works in Blackheart is that demons capture people and turn them into mindless beasts. Earlier on, a paladin runs into a corrupted birdwoman as he journeys through the city. He goes to kill it like all the others, but when she starts begging for help he realizes the survivor is still clinging on deep in there. He tries to bring her somewhere safe to perform a purity ritual to save her. She struggles and eventually is overcome by the corruption. The last thing she remembers before waking up in darkness is the paladin choking her as she begged for mercy.

Fianna suddenly found herself standing in nothingness. All around her, terror filled the air.

Voices of the damned screamed at her, dark visages stared from afar and corpses and flames littered the expanse.

Other  corrupted lurched forward, hobbling toward her, screaming and howling  as they closed in. The darkness had come to claim her at last.

She could only cower in as absolute fear gripped her heart. This really was it.

The  crowd latched onto her, dozens of unholy beasts dragging her into the  ground. She could feel herself falling, sinking into nothing as her soul  was trapped in the nothingness.

Just as she felt her head begin to sink under, to join her body in eternal torment, a loud noise brought everything to a halt.

The  beasts dragging her to the abyss suddenly paused, turning away and  looking up. She too joined them in staring up into the blackness.

The  sky flashed a bright white, the corrupted monsters, in unison, all  crumbled away. They simply fell apart into nothing at all, scattering to  the wind and leaving Fianna alone.

The screams let out a loud  unified wail before the blackness, all around her, flashed wildly,  vibrant colors flowing through the air and filling the void with light.

She  felt numb for a moment as she found herself no longer sinking. The  koutu clenched her talons as she lay on the ground, panting and heaving.

"Fianna."

Dozens of voices filled the air. Unlike the screams of the damned, these voices were clear, coherent, and sweet as honey.

She looked up, and all around her, as the void pulsed with light and color...figures surrounded her.

They were familiar. All of them.

Her family.

Her friends.

Everyone she could ever remember meeting.

One of the figures stepped forward.

She  was a tall and graceful koutu, every step dignified, her eyes full of  warmth and love. Her feathers were patterned the same as Fianna's...

Her feathers...?

She looked down.

The jet black feathers were changing, warping.

The  blackness seemed to almost...bleed away, the feathers beginning to glow  with color in the middle, expanding outwards until the blackness was a  simple lining at the ends of each feather.

Soon, that tiny bit of   blackness bled away, and her feathers were her own again. Her midsection  was a bright and beautiful orange, while the rest of her was mainly a deep, vibrant blue.

Just like she remembered.

She looked back up at the other koutu, whose coloration and shape was the same as her own.

"Sister..." Fianna said breathlessly.

"You are free," she spoke softly.

"B-but, the demons, you were-"

"I know," her sister assured her, "I know. I am no longer here...but even though I am not here...I will always be HERE."

She pressed her hand against Fianna's chest...over her heart.

Fianna could feel herself crying again.

She  reached out and embraced her sister. The older koutu returned the  gesture, the two of them kneeling and hugging each other tightly.

They sat in silence like this for quite some time.

For the first time since the attack, Fianna felt alive...even though she had the sneaking suspicion she wasn't.

The paladin was right. This was better. She was thankful.

The nightmare was over.

"I missed you so much," Fianna said, her face damp with tears.

"I missed you too."

"I'm so happy we're together again."

Her sister was silent for a moment.

"...you know you're not dead, right?"

Fianna blinked.

"W-what?"

"You have to go back."

The koutu's eyes widened as comprehension dawned on her. "N-no, no!"

"I'm sorry," her sister said quietly, "I know you don't want to."

"Sister, please..."

"I can't control it, Fianna. It's your life, not mine."

"T-than how are you-"

"Because this isn't real."

Fianna's heart sank.

She was in her own imagination, dreaming about being with her family again, rather than actually being reunited.

Her grip tightened on his sister, who looked at her curiously.

"Fianna?"

"I don't want to let go..."

"Trust  me, I understand," she answered quietly. For the first time, her voice  too was filled with pain. "I want to be together too."

"I-I just...want it to be over."

"You have to get through this," her sister spoke, "Please. Don't end up like me."

Fianna couldn't believe this was happening.

"I  want you to live. Can you do that? Please. I've been watching you, you  know. I know how hard it's been...but you've come so far. You're so nearly  there. Just a little more. Please...you have to hold on, okay?"

Fianna nodded.

"O-okay...okay, I'll do my best."

The two sisters looked up and stared at one another.

"I'll keep watching you. I know you can do it. Be good for me, alright?"

"O-okay."

"I'll be waiting for you, someday."

With that, everything faded away once again.

7. Is there an author that inspires you a lot?

I wouldn’t say particularly. I like certain books but I don’t really “follow” anyone like that...well, maybe some of the other writers on here.

8. Do you do anything to prepare yourself to start writing?

Put on some music and grab a drink.

9. What’s your favorite type of villain to write?  To read about?

Villains that you love to hate. After so many ““““sympathetic”””” villains (this mass murderer got bullied by people that have nothing to do with who he’s killing, he’s justified!), it’s nice to have a villain that’s just plain evil and knows it. Someone that’s so shamelessly bad that you’re just dying for the heroes to give em’ his comeuppance. Also, villains and antagonists can be very different. Someone like The Boss from MGS3 is an antagonist, but she could hardly be called a villain. Sympathetic antagonists are a lot easier to root for than someone that’s out and out a bad guy.

10. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received on your work?

Probably either @lady-redshield-writes​​ or @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword​. They’ve both said so many great things I can’t even begin to remember all the nice stuff they’ve said.

11. What are your characters’ favorite animals?

Considering his shield and family crest, Alexander’s is probably the eagle. Leianna likes dogs. Lexius and Senci both like cats.

My questions:

1. Do you make steady progress in writing or work in short bursts?

2. What’s your favorite character archetype?

3. Favorite fictional hero? (Can be from any media) Has that character influenced any of your own?

4. What sort of scenes do you struggle most with? (Fights, group conversations, etc.)

5. What time period do you find yourself writing the most of?

6. Do you enjoy music, background noise or silence while writing?

7. Where’s your favorite writing spot?

8. Do you like people reading along as you write, or do you want people to wait til’ it’s all edited and done?

9. Share a random hobby besides writing!

10. If you could have your cast from your story visit another time or world, real or fictional, where would it be?

11. Have any of your characters changed or developed drastically since they were first created?

Tagging @lady-redshield-writes​, @homesteadchronicles​, @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword​, @candy687​, @ashesconstellation​. Joining in, as always, is completely up to you.

[qqueenofhades]

hello! i have a half formed idea for a book (based off of a really shitty fic i wrote oops gonna delete that and scrap the good parts into something new) but i was wondering if you had any advice for actually writing a book? i know you've written a couple books, and your fics tend to be multiple chapters, and i can't seem to stay inspired beyond a couple chapters! thank you so much :D

Oh dear. I have done various writing advice asks in the past, but who knows what they were tagged. I suppose you could search in the stygian depths of my blog if you really wanted, and see if anything you found there was useful?

As far as advice, I feel like I’m a shitty person to ask in this department because my own process is so unhelpful. I have idea, I start writing idea, I think about idea obsessively, realise I have a problem, work problem out, eventually book is done, ta-da. I then edit and tinker with things, but the first draft is still pretty close in shape/structure to the final version. Some people write different scenes and then place them in the correct order, but I can’t think of a time I’ve really written anything out of order/non-sequentially. I feel like I can’t write a scene without having already written what comes before, and while I can change details and edit sentences and so forth, I don’t normally change major plot beats/emotional reactions/twists/etc. I also don’t outline things or make any exterior diagrams or so forth, although some people find this helpful. If you’re the kind of person who likes to map your story out on paper beforehand (or think that it might help you to stay motivated if you can see it/have a checklist), then give this a try.

Once again, I feel like I’m being stupendously unhelpful, but my advice when anyone asks how to write a book is “well, write a book then.” I tend to think in long-form projects (as evidenced by my many fics) and the nice thing about fic is that you have as much space/word count as you need to tell the story in as much detail as you want. If you’re thinking about this actually being a book, you may have to be more ruthless, but you can also use e-publishing platforms like Amazon or Smashwords and so forth, and still have it as long as you like.

On that note, you’ll have to find someone to read over your work/edit it, especially if it’s something you’re not confident in doing yourself. I proofread and edit all my own stuff, but then, I’ve been doing this for many years and am an academic and used to catching small and fussy details. Even then, it can look different when I see it on a page/read it in hard copy with a pen in hand, and I see things that I don’t see on the screen because it has gotten so very familiar to me. Asking a friend to edit your stuff can be dicey, and I don’t recommend it unless you know this is someone who can definitely make your work better and knows what to look for and will be kind about feeding it back to you. 

As someone who has sat through many ego-shredding rounds of more or less constructive criticism on many things, I can sympathise about it not being fun at all (but at least I know how to take it). You can share your stuff with someone beforehand if you want, but you don’t have to. Once you have something that is some kind of coherent draft, however, it does benefit to have a second pair of eyes on it somehow. Even if it’s a “can you read this and tell me what you think” kind of way, and again with someone who fairly represents a general reader and can give you their take on what they got out of the story, if the plot was satisfying, if the character arcs resolved, etc. I know the most terrifying thought about writing is always the thought of being Known/showing it to someone else, but really, there is no way around it in the professional creative process. Write something that you yourself want to read, but that does imply readers.

If you’re writing about sensitive subjects or things that could upset people, by all means, do your homework . Google is free and easily available, there are plenty of resources to be sure that you’re doing a good job. Obviously you do have some degree of artistic license, but that involves you doing your due diligence and understanding that people will react to it in a certain way if it hasn’t been. I am (big surprise, as an academic) a fan of research in general. I think it helps to set the scene and to evoke details and to immerse the audience in what they are supposed to be tasting/seeing/smelling/feeling/etc. The fun of well-written fiction, in my mind, is to escape to somewhere comprehensively and to know what the characters are experiencing and to be able to picture it vividly. 

That is why I tend to be a ho for detail and description in my own stuff, because I am always extremely curious about it. I always do a lot of world-building just because I like to do it, and because if you have plot points/developments/etc that might seem a little far-fetched, it’s easier for your audience to buy it if you look like you know what you’re doing and have thought of loopholes/objections/etc, and that this is taking place in a fully realised and objectively consistent universe that exists outside the basic demands of plot (and don’t change the rules to get your characters out of trouble). If you have to change the characters’ personalities/artificially put things off/your whole plot could be solved in five minutes if they talked to each other, you probably need to do a little more work. Audiences will be patient, but they will also figure things out, and if there is an obvious solution that you’re just not addressing, they’ll get frustrated. But yes.

Also: humor. I can’t read books or stories that take themselves TOO seriously. Especially if you have a lot of angst or drama or plot (as I tend to do), you need to throw in some comic relief and/or wit or other things to leaven the brew. If you can tell that the author is willing to poke fun at themselves and their own characters (we’ve all encountered that piece of media where the lead character Cannot Be Criticized By Anyone even while they’re being an idiot and is clearly a projection of the author’s egoism/how great they think they are), that is usually a hallmark of a good story and someone that knows what they’re doing, and I really do stand by that. If it’s pretentious and trying to make a Point, it’s just not that enjoyable. This is a hellworld. We need some escapism and ridiculousness with our adventures and our drama. So yes.

Good endings, basically. Don’t put your characters/readers through so much and then nope out of a satisfying resolution because Gritty Realism (think why everyone hated the final season/ending of Game of Thrones). You can, but.... again, it’s not something I personally like, and people seem tired of it in general. An ending does not have to be a Disney happy ever after, but it shouldn’t make a reader feel like a sucker for emotionally engaging with your story, and should have some kind of payoff for having done so.

(Also. Whenever possible, make it more gay. I mean, who said that.)

Anyway. Last but not least, have fun. If you’re writing something you enjoy and take pride in, that will transfer, and I always think that is worth the most.

[wistfulcynic]

Another Brick In The Wall, Chapter 9

a/n: Prepare for feels

Summary: Emma Swan, sheriff’s daughter, mayor’s niece, quarterback’s girlfriend, is the undisputed princess of Storybrooke High. She is smart and confident and used to getting what she wants. What she wants is Killian Jones, the new boy in school. But Killian is not easily manipulated, and reluctant to allow the dark secrets in his past to touch the girl he is rapidly falling in love with.

Rating: T

Read it on AO3: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

Tags for: @darkcolinodonorgasm @jennjenn615 @hollyethecurious and @resident-of-storybrooke

Chapter 9:

Killian stood at the bathroom mirror fiddling with the knot of his tie, wishing he didn’t have to spend this already nerve-wracking evening feeling like he was being strangled. “Is this really necessary?” he grumbled. 

“It’s a formal party, little brother,” replied Liam, coming up behind him and batting his hands away from the knot. “Yes, you need a tie.” He adjusted Killian’s tie himself then placed his hands on his brother’s shoulders and smiled at their reflections, feeling a small pang at the sight of them standing there together. Killian had grown so tall over the past year, now nearly as tall as Liam was himself, and dressed in a suit with his hair neatly combed he looked so grown up. Liam wanted to hug him but refrained, knowing that in his current mood Killian would scoff and pull away. Instead he stood, suddenly assailed by memories and by the wild thought that what he actually wanted was to go back in time and hug the little boy his brother had been the first time Liam had felt a similar pang.

The day of his mother’s funeral was bright and sunny, which made Liam angry. Not even the weather was cooperating, remaining unseasonably warm and steadfastly refusing to turn grey and dark to match his mood. He had been scrambling for days to arrange everything, the church, the flowers, the service, the burial. It was far too much to take onto his young shoulders but he had no choice. His father had started drinking on the day the doctors proclaimed the tumour inoperable and terminal, and hadn’t stopped since. Liam had been so busy, so overwhelmed by the tasks and his grief and his anger at his father that he’d had barely any attention left for Killian, who fortunately at six didn’t fully understand what was going on around him and was content to play quietly while Liam handled things. When the dreaded day finally arrived they stood together before the casket, his brother’s small hand in his, Killian dressed in a suit and tie but with his dark hair falling over his forehead into his eyes. There hadn’t been time to have it cut. He tugged on Liam’s hand. “I can’t see,” he whispered. 

Liam lifted his brother up in his arms, watching Killian’s big eyes grow bigger as he took in the sight of their mother laid out in death, seeing the moment his brother grasped that she was gone and wouldn’t be coming back. He watched as Killian fought his tears for as long as he could —he always tried so hard to be brave— and he saw the moment when they would be held back no longer. Killian blinked rapidly, gulped, then turned his face into Liam’s shoulder and sobbed. Liam held him close, feeling his small body tremble and heave as he wept. 

He had always loved Killian, of course he had, both because and in spite of the decade between them, always had time for him, never minded him tagging along behind or his endless questions, but in that moment Liam’s heart was flooded by a surge of love unlike anything he had ever felt before. He knew then that he would protect his brother with everything he had in him, would lay down his life to that cause. 

In that moment, Liam reflected now, he had become Killian’s parent. 

As with any parent he had made mistakes, hadn’t always lived up to his own standards. He had failed to protect Killian from Milah, failed even to notice that there was something amiss with him, although with hindsight the changes in his brother’s behaviour and attitude had been glaringly obvious. Almost overnight he had gone from an energetic, talkative boy to a sullen and moody one, responding curtly to questions and frequently disappearing for hours on end. Caught up in his investigation of Admiral Gold, Liam had simply shrugged all this away as the effects of adolescence. He cringed to remember it, wishing he could kick his past self, or maybe give him a good punch to the jaw. 

At least he had taken immediate and decisive action once he’d learned what was going on, thought Liam, removing Killian from Milah’s influence and taking him as far away from her as possible, then ensuring that he had the professional counseling he would need to deal with what he’d been through. He had done everything he could yet he still worried that it wasn’t enough, still ached every time he saw the shadows that lurked behind his brother’s eyes, still blamed himself for their presence.  

Killian cleared his throat, jolting Liam out of his reverie. He looked again at their reflection in the mirror, noting his brother’s exaggerated smirk. 

“Are we going to get going, then?” asked Killian, in an exasperated voice. “Or are we just going to stand here all night admiring our faces? Mine’s all right, but I definitely don’t want to be staring at yours for the next six hours.”

To hell with it, thought Liam, and pulled his brother close, squeezing him hard. 

“Ugh, Liam, get off, you’re wrinkling me!” Killian, as expected, shoved him away. “If I have to wear this bloody thing the least you could do is not crease it.” 

Liam released him from the hug, rolling his eyes as Killian ostentatiously smoothed his jacket. “You look fine. Good even. Emma will swoon.” He grinned as Killian turned bright pink, then his expression softened into seriousness. “I just love you, little brother. You know that, right?”

Killian performed an eyeroll almost identical to Liam’s own. “Of course I do. I love you too.” He grinned. “Even though you’re annoying as fuck—”

“Language!” 

“—and you’re going to make us late. Can we go now?”

“Lead the way, brother.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As soon as the Joneses arrived at the Swan house, they were engulfed by warmth and noise and energetic welcome, people eager to take their coats and get them a drink. Despite this effusive hospitality Killian was still nervous and antsy as he scanned the room to see who was there. To his relief he soon spotted Ruby and Victor —he had never been so glad to see Victor Whale’s smug grin, he thought— and was just turning to tell Liam that he was going to talk to them when his brother stopped dead, his mouth dropping open and his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. 

“What the devil is wrong with you?” asked Killian, astonished.

“I— um, er, I—” Liam swallowed, blinked, and shook his head. “Who is that?” He nodded in the direction of a petite brunette standing a few feet away, talking animatedly with Ruby’s grandmother. 

“Um, Miss French?” ventured Killian, certain Liam couldn’t be referring to Granny but baffled as to why the school librarian would inspire such a reaction in his brother. 

“Miss French?” echoed Liam. “The librarian? The one you’re doing your independent study with?”

“Yeah?” Killian was completely confused now. “Why do you ask?”

“Er— no reason,” said Liam, fidgeting uncomfortably. “I just— um, thought she’d be older.” 

A glimmer of comprehension was beginning to dawn in Killian’s mind, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from breaking into an enormous grin. “Would you like me to introduce you?” he asked innocently.

Liam seemed to choke on his words again and before he could recover Killian had caught Miss French’s attention and beckoned her over. 

“Hello, Killian, I thought I might see you here,” she greeted him with a friendly smile. “How have you been enjoying your holidays so far? Is it very different from England?”

“Very,” said Killian wryly. “More snow, for a start. Though I would imagine it’s a lot more different for you.” 

“Well it’s summer in Australia, so yeah, pretty different,” she laughed, and from the corner of his eye Killian could see that his brother’s ears had gone bright red. The Jones family tell. This was excellent. 

“Miss French, this is my brother Liam.” Killian dug his elbow into Liam’s ribs, jolting his brother out of what appeared to be a fugue state. “He went to Australia several times when he was in the Royal Navy.” 

“Really?” Miss French turned her attention to the elder Jones, and Killian could swear he heard Liam’s Adam’s apple scrape across his dry throat. “What places did you visit?”

As Liam attempted to choke out anything resembling a coherent answer, Killian spotted Emma’s mother bearing down on them with a tray of drinks and moved to intercept her before she could interrupt and possibly extinguish the sputtering sparks of his brother’s romance. “Let me take those for you, Mrs Swan,” he said, flashing her a brilliant smile. She blinked for a moment, slightly dazed, then returned it. 

“Why thank you, Killian, that’s very kind,” she said, angling the tray so he could take his hot spiced apple cider and Liam’s hot buttered rum. He turned back and handed Liam his drink, just in time to hear his brother stuttering something about the Sydney Harbour Bridge, to Miss French’s evident amusement. 

“Oh thank bloody fuck,” muttered Liam under his breath as he took the mug. 

“Language!” admonished Killian, smiling angelically as his brother glared daggers at him over the mug’s rim. “I’m just going to go talk to Ruby and Victor, see you later Liam, Miss French.” 

As Liam stared helplessly at his brother’s retreating back, the vision of loveliness that was somehow the high school librarian spoke again. Desperately he tried not to think about how her voice was like a song, and focus on her words instead. 

“I’m actually glad to have a chance to speak with you, Mr Jones—” 

“Liam,” he croaked. Why was his throat so dry? He’d drunk nearly half the rum.

“I beg your pardon?” She blinked the biggest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen, and he nearly forgot his own name. 

“Er—” he cleared his throat. “My name, it’s um, Liam. Please call me Liam.”

“Liam,” she repeated, smiling again. He wished she would stop doing that so he could bloody breathe, and also that she would never stop because she was stunning. “I’m Belle.” 

Belle, he thought. French for ‘beautiful.’ Almost too on-the-nose, yet somehow perfect.

“Belle,” he said softly. “It suits you.” 

She flushed a glorious shade of rose pink. “My mother named me,” she said, almost shyly. He wanted to ask her all about her mother and her father and everyone else close to her and all her thoughts and hopes and dreams but before he could even open his mouth again she steered the conversation back to the point. “Liam, I wanted to talk to you about Killian.” 

“Killian?” Liam was shaken out of his fuckstruck haze by a flash of fear. “What about him? Is there a problem?”

“No, no, nothing like that! He’s one of the brightest students I’ve had the pleasure of working with, but— well, you see, in addition to being the librarian I am also the college admissions counselor. I was hoping we might discuss Killian’s options for university.” 

“He’s going to Oxford,” said Liam automatically. 

“Yes, I know he’s been offered a place there, it’s just, well, what with everything that’s happened and the way Killian seems to be finally settling into life here in the US, I thought he might not wish to return to England for uni. Especially if you plan to remain here.” 

Liam’s mind whirled. He’d been so caught up in dealing with Killian’s current drama that he hadn’t spared a thought for the drama that was to come. The one thing that his brother had been absolutely certain about since the secret broke was that he no longer wished to return to England. Did that include Oxford? Liam somehow suspected it did. 

“I do plan to remain here,” he replied. “I like my job very much and feel surprisingly at home in Storybrooke. Killian does as well.” He’d never given the matter much consideration before, but now that he thought about it he realised how true this was. Storybrooke, after only a few short months, felt like home in the way his hometown never had.

Belle laughed. “Storybrooke has a way of doing that to people,” she said. “I only intended to stay a year myself, but it’ll be five years for me, in July.” 

“I don’t think,” said Liam slowly, thinking hard, “that Killian is as dead set on Oxford as he once was. But if he stays in the US for uni I’d need to be certain that he had access to the same quality of education he’d have received there. And then there’s the question of, er, finance. He’d have a bursary at Oxford.”  

Belle smiled reassuringly. “I don’t think either of those things will present an insurmountable problem,” she said. “Let me tell you some of the ideas I’ve had, and then if you’re agreeable we can broach the subject to Killian.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the time Emma had finished helping her mother with hosting duties and was able to actually join the party, Killian, Ruby, and Victor —accompanied, Emma was irritated to note, by Aurora— were settled comfortably on and around the end of her living room sofa, laughing uproariously. 

“What’s so funny?” Emma whispered to Ruby. 

Victor and Killian are just telling stories from their road trip the other day,” Ruby replied. Earlier that week Victor and Killian had driven down to Portland for the concert Victor had wanted to see. Caught up in her mother’s whirlwind of party planning, Emma hadn’t had a chance to see or speak to Killian at all over the past few days, and now she couldn’t help feeling a bit left out. Usually she was the first person Killian told anything —for a while she had been the only one— yet now she had no idea what tale he’d been recounting. Again, she reminded herself that this was good, that he needed other friends. That she was glad he’d found them in Storybrooke.  Still, the vicious talons of her jealousy would not relinquish their grasp, particularly when Aurora leaned close to him, eyes shining with laughter, and touched his arm as she cried “And then what happened?”

Killian delivered his punch line and the group exploded in laughter. Aurora’s hand slid, oh so casually, from Killian’s arm and onto his leg. Emma waited for her to remove it, or for Killian to pull away, but instead he remained where he was and she actually slid closer to him on the couch, and Emma’s vision went red around the edges. Don’t be a jerk, Emma, she begged herself, just let it go, even as her mouth opened and she heard her voice say “I’m surprised to see you here, Aurora. You’ve never come to our party before.”

Their mothers were good friends and they had grown up next door to each other, but for some reason Aurora and Emma had never been close. 

“Oh, it just seemed like it might be fun this year,” said Aurora, with a significant glance at Killian, who had just taken his phone out to show Ruby some pictures and was paying no attention. Her hand was still on his leg, and she flexed her fingers slightly. Emma felt her face grow hot and her own fingers itched to grab Aurora by the hair and drag her from the house. She could cool off in a snow drift, thought Emma viciously, it might do her good. 

And what the hell was going on with Killian, she fumed. He didn’t even seem to notice Aurora was touching him. Not like the way he tensed and looked uncomfortable if Emma even so much as brushed up against him. What the fuck was that about?

Why the fuck was she thinking “fuck”? What was wrong with her?

“Swan?” Emma shook herself out of her thoughts at the sound of Killian’s voice. “Is everything all right?” 

She tried to smile but could tell from the way his brow wrinkled that he wasn’t buying it. “I’m fine. Um, can I talk to you?” 

He smiled, and his was genuine. “Of course, love.” He stood and followed her away from the group, not noticing as Aurora’s hand slid off him. 

Emma didn’t really know what she wanted to say, only that she wanted him away from Aurora. So it came as much of a surprise to her as to him when the words “Do you want to take a walk in the garden?” fell from her lips. 

“The garden? Isn’t it covered in snow?” 

She shrugged. “It’s still pretty, and, I don’t know, I feel like I need some air.” 

Killian shrugged too. “Sure,” he grinned at her. “Whatever you wish, Swan.” 

He offered her his arm and she giggled as she linked her own thorough it. As they turned away she caught a glimpse of Aurora’s face falling into a pout and felt a wash of emotion she couldn’t put a name to. Triumph? Relief? It didn’t feel quite like either. All she knew was that Killian had agreed to come with her not just willingly but gladly. He still preferred her company over any other’s, and that made her happy. 

They put on their coats and she exchanged her heels for boots, glad she’d chosen to wear thick tights with her dress. Killian had only his dress shoes so she dug out an old pair of her dad’s boots, which almost fit, and a thick pair of socks. Soon they were bundled up and ready, and linking arms again they headed out to the snowy garden.

It was a large, well-tended space, a testament to her mother’s affinity with nature, with a walled-off vegetable area to the left and a thick rose hedge at the back, separating their house from Aurora’s.  At the centre of it all stood a huge, sprawling tree, with branches that reached to the furthest corners of the garden and a large white swing hanging from the sturdiest one. 

“This is the apple tree my aunt Regina gave Mom when I was born,” said Emma as they approached it. “They’re stepsisters and they never really got along, but when Mom was pregnant with me they had a huge fight and Regina knocked Mom down a flight of stairs. She almost miscarried me. Aunt Regina felt terrible and tried to make amends with the tree. I don’t think Mom was exactly thrilled; Aunt Regina is kind of weirdly obsessed with those apples and it makes Mom a bit uncomfortable. But she said Regina was trying to make a gesture of goodwill and she could do the same, so she planted it, and since then they’ve made an effort to be civil, or at least not to be completely awful to each other. About three years ago Mom actually set Aunt Regina up with her husband. Or, he’s now her husband. You know what I mean.”

“Indeed. It’s good that they were able to settle their differences, even if only in part.” 

“I think they’re too different to ever really be close, but I’m glad they don’t fight anymore. And I like Aunt Regina well enough. She can be a bit… abrasive, but she always tries to be nice to me.” 

“Well, she did nearly kill you, so nice is really the least she could do.” said Killian, his voice gruff.

Emma laughed. “That’s what Dad says.” 

Killian chuckled and tightened his arm around hers, almost protectively. She snuggled into his side and leaned her head on his shoulder, feeling him tense just briefly before he relaxed with a small sigh, and she thought she felt his cheek brush her hair. “Can I ask you something?” he asked. 

“You just did.” 

He sighed again, dramatically this time, and she could almost feel his eyes roll. “Another thing, then,” he said. 

“Sure.” 

“Is your mum’s name really Snow?”

“Yep.”

“And— is there a story behind that?” 

“She says it’s the curse of hippie parents and I should be grateful she rebelled against her upbringing when naming me.”

“Hold up,” Killian stopped walking and looked down at her. “You’re telling me that if she’d stuck with family tradition you could have been named Rain? Or Sleet?” Emma began to laugh. “Or Blizzard? Or Drizzle? What an opportunity missed!” He sounded almost indignant.

“Drizzle Swan?” Emma could barely choke out the words through her laughter. “Really?”

“There’s dozens of words for precipitation, love, your mum could really have flexed her creativity. I mean, there’s flurry, hail, spit—”

“Spit?!”

“It’s a real weather thing! Or what about monsoon? Or torrent? Torrent sounds like something people might name their kids these days.”

Emma was laughing so hard she snorted, which made her laugh harder. She buried her face in Killian’s shoulder and for the first time since she’d found out about his past he didn’t stiffen when she got close to him. He was too busy laughing himself, his shoulder shaking under her cheek as he held onto her arm, his other hand gripping the back of her coat. He turned his face into her hair and she turned hers into his neck, and as their laughter faded their arms shifted and tightened around each other until they were standing in the middle of the garden, twined together, snow falling softly around them. 

They stood like that for a long time. Finally Killian sighed, his breath tickling the fine hairs on her temple and making her shiver. “Emma,” he said, in a voice so soft she could barely hear it, “I wish things were different.” 

“They could be—” 

“No. They are what they are and we have to deal with them. I have to deal with them. I just— I need time to sort myself out.” 

Familiar pain twisted within her, but she kept her grip on her emotions. “I understand,” she said. “I really do, and I don’t want anything from you that you’re not able to offer freely. I’ll wait.” 

“I could never ask you to—” 

“I want to.” I love you. I’d wait forever. She swallowed the words back, knowing he wasn’t ready to hear them. 

“Swan, I don’t deserve—” he began, and her pain was burned away in a bright flash of cleansing anger. She was so sick of him thinking himself worthless because of what that— that— Emma didn’t even like to think the word she had in mind for Milah, but she certainly felt it— what that woman had done to him. Pulling back from the embrace, she fixed him with a glare and fisted her hand in the front of his coat, thumping his chest with it. 

“Yes,” she said firmly, almost snarling. “You do. You deserve— so much,” she finished lamely, unable to say what she wanted to say without revealing far too much. 

He looked down at her and their eyes met, his overflowing with the same desperately conflicted yearning they’d held the night of his birthday. She could see in them that he wanted to kiss her, and more than anything in the world she wanted to let him, longed to feel his lips and tongue on hers again, as she had countless times in her dreams. She wanted to wrap herself around him and sink into him, to absorb his pain and guilt and burn them away with the fire of the fury she still felt on his behalf. She wanted all this and more, but she also knew that he didn’t, not really. He wasn’t ready. 

Gathering every ounce of willpower she possessed, she stepped back, out of his arms, before he could do something he’d regret. 

His expressive eyes flashed with disappointment, followed quickly by relief. 

Emma swallowed the lump in her throat, forced it down. This was the right thing, she reminded herself. However much it hurt, it was the right thing. And therefore the only thing. 

“Come on,” she said, summoning a bright smile from God knows where. “Let’s get back inside. It’s freaking freezing out here. What idiot thought it was a good idea to stand in the garden in the middle of winter?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Your Killian is a lovely young man,” said Snow some hours later as they collected empty plates and mugs and loaded them into the dishwasher.  

The butterflies did a quick jitterbug in Emma’s belly, but she managed to roll her eyes. “Mo-om, he’s not my Killian.” 

“Are you sure about that, dear?” asked Snow, in the sing-song voice that never failed to raise Emma’s hackles. 

“Mom, please don’t try to matchmake us,” she pleaded. “Killian’s made it clear he just wants to be friends.” That wasn’t entirely true, but her mom definitely didn’t need to know about what had happened in the garden. 

“Emma, you know perfectly well I don’t matchmake,” scolded Snow. 

“Yeah?” Emma tried to imitate Killian’s eyebrow quirk but only succeeded in looking surprised. “Tell that to Lance. Or Jasmine. Or Aunt Regina, and you don’t even like her!”

“I like your Aunt Regina!” protested Snow, unconvincingly, as a telling flush bloomed on her cheeks. “We’ve worked hard to put aside our differences.” 

“Uh huh,” said Emma, forbearing to point out that those differences had evidently not been put far enough aside for her step-aunt to accept Snow’s invitation to this party. “Mayoral business” had been her excuse, but Emma had it on no lesser authority than that of her cousin Henry that the Mayor’s office was already closed for the year, and he, Regina, and Robin were planning to spend Christmas skiing in Aspen. 

“And anyway,” Snow persisted, “I don’t have to like someone to think they deserve a happy ending. You definitely deserve one.” 

“Well, I’m not going to have my happy ending with Killian, so can you drop it please?” If she repeated this enough, thought Emma, she might eventually believe it.  

“Of course, sweetie, I won’t push,” said Snow. “But— don’t write Killian off just yet.” 

She smiled her serene smile and refused to be drawn out any further on the subject. 

Notes: The eagle-eyed among you may remember that I called Snow Mary Margaret earlier in this story. That’s now been changed. She’s much more Snow than MM here, and the name change led to the garden scene, which is not what I’d intended but I think is going to take the story in a better direction. 

[suitablysublime]

TWEAKING YOUR TUMBLR THEME: A CRASH COURSE

i know css/html and code my own themes. one side effect of this is that every so often i encounter someone—a friend or a friend’s friend, usually—who has installed a new theme and is now struggling to customize or tweak it without knowing how to go about doing that. 

now i’m always happy to help out, but these are always things that take just a few minutes to figure out if you can read the code and, well, give a man a fish or teach a man to fish. you know how it goes. 

so here we go: this is how to fish.

PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING CSS & HTML 

let me lead with this: it is normal to feel confused, overwhelmed, intimidated, stupid, and/or frustrated when working with an unfamiliar coding language. my father has been writing software for forty years, but he will look at what is to me a page of very basic css/html and be completely baffled by it all the same. this is normal. please don’t let it discourage you if you feel this way at first. 

in my opinion, the first step to conquering these feelings is to wrap your brain around the big picture of what these languages do. what do we use them for?

well, all web pages — and thus, all tumblr themes — are written in these two languages. the only thing you need to know for our purposes is this: html holds the content of a web page, and css controls its appearance. 

how does this work? 

a webpage is built of html objects called <div> tags. think of them like bricks: you stack a bunch of <div>s on top of each other and bam! you have a house. but it’s a terrible house, because it’s just a pile of bricks with stuff scribbled on them. 

this is where the css comes in. a <div> tag can have a unique id or belong to a general class, and we use css to style the appearances of our <div>s on a per-id and per-class basis. to return to our housebuilding metaphor, css is our blueprint: it gives order, structural stability, and aesthetic coherence to our messy pile of bricks, and now, bam! we have a house. for real.

PART TWO: THE SYNTAX

coding languages are like human languages in that they have their own unique vocabulary and grammar. to tweak a tumblr theme, you need to have a basic grasp of this syntax so you can understand what you’re looking at.

css manipulates objects called elements. usually, an element is the id or class of a <div>, but an element can correlate to any html tag. the basic anatomy of a css element goes like this:

selector {      property: value; }

and we can translate this into english as “when the element this selector is looking for occurs, it will look the way i have described it here.” 

selectors might look like this: h1 { or #id { or .class {

the distinction between these different types of selectors is not important for our purposes. all you need to know is that the selector corresponds to (or selects) a particular html tag, like: <h1>, <div id = "id">, or <div class="class">.

properties are the visual features of an element, like its height, width, color, and so on, and the value is a statement that describes the desired setting for the property. a property-value statement is called a declaration, and a collection of declarations is called a declaration block. 

you can generally figure out what a declaration is doing by looking at the name of the property, since they’re pretty self explanatory most of the time. for example, font-size: 12px; says that any text contained in this element is going to have its size set such that a character is 12 pixels tall. 

[ sidebar: if you are a Tiny Font person, consider using the knowledge you’ve gained from this tutorial to edit your theme such that the text of all your posts is very small, and then don’t use small text or sub/superscripts in your replies. you’ll get the Tiny Font aesthetic on your blog with perfect consistency, without rendering your posts illegible on the dashboard. ]

PART 3: MAKING YOUR CHANGES

the key to quickly and easily modifying a tumblr theme is to be able to identify the name of the css selector for the element you want to modify. let’s look at my own theme as an example. 

depending on what changes you want to make and how the theme’s creator laid out their code, you may not have to do much work at all to get the selector. 

for example, if you want to do something with your theme’s pagination buttons, it’s a pretty reasonable guess that the css selector will be something like “pagination_next” or “pagination_prev”, and you can go straight to the html editor and do a ctrl+F search for “pagination” to find it. 

but what if the selector isn’t immediately obvious? for the purposes of this example, let’s say i want to change the text of the blog description from red to dark blue (while preserving the red color of other elements in the theme, which precludes simply using tumblr’s in-built color picker.)

i could just scroll through the theme code until i found a selector that looked like the one i wanted, and then change something and update the preview & repeat ad nauseum until i found the right one. but again, depending on how the theme’s creator did their coding, this might be very difficult, frustrating, and time consuming. many prolific tumblr theme creators don’t lay out their code in a particularly human-readable way.

fortunately, there is a much easier way.

step 1:  load your tumblr and right-click somewhere on the page. depending on what browser you use, the exact name of what you’re looking for will vary, but the keyword to look for is “inspect”: 

click this.

(if you are using safari, you need to make sure “show develop menu” is checked in the advanced tab of the preferences window.)

step 2: your screen will now look something like this: 

if the element you want to change is in a popup or tab, open it so it’s visible on the screen.

step 3: the topmost box in the inspector displays all the html of your theme. if you hover over an html tag, the corresponding element will be highlighted in blue.

find the <body> tag. you may need to expand this manually depending on your browser. move your mouse down the line of divs until you find the element you want to modify. 

here, my mouse is hovering over <div id="blg_desc"> in the inspector, and you can see how the blog description is shown in a blue rectangle. (the large orange shape shows the size of the element’s margins.)

this tells me that the css selector for this element is #blg_desc.

step 4: close the inspector and open tumblr’s theme customization interface. go to edit html. ctrl+f to find the css selector: 

now, my goal is to change the text color, so the declaration i’m interested in is color:{color:6};. the {color:6} value is an object tumblr uses to store colors in a theme as an alternative to using rgb or hex codes (like #B61818, which is the shade of red i have stored in {color:6}. these objects correlate to the color picker under theme options: 

thus, if i change the value of color to {color:1}, the text of my blog description will be blue instead of red. i can also write this as color:#0d52c0;. 

(note that the exact shade of red/blue in my description varies a little from line to line; this is because of styling i did within the html itself that makes some lines transparent, and thus lighter because of the pale grey background.)

& if you use pages with custom html, the inspector trick will of course work for them too.

PART FOUR: IN SUMMARY

remember that css/html is not magic. it might feel intimidating, but at the end of the day it’s just a language for translating human thoughts like “i want a small purple square” into instructions a computer can understand, like this: 

#ps {       height: 100px;      width: 100px;      background-color: #8c4c7a; }

and all you need to do to make the changes you want is 1) identify the css selector and 2) understand the properties you’re manipulating. 1) is the difficult part, because everybody lays out their selectors differently—but using the inspector will allow you to instantly identify selectors by sight. and once you have that, 2) is super easy, because properties are standard and intended to be readily legible to humans. 

you may occasionally run into tricky properties, like for example display or position, which do things that are a little more abstract / not immediately obvious. for those cases, refer to the w3schools css dictionary for clear, simple, but still comprehensive explanations for proper usage. 

[werevulvi]

Tag Game

Tagged by: @just---curious

Nickname: Don't have any, I'm just Laura.

Zodiac: Aries.

Height: 5'6" (168 cm).

Last Movie I Saw: Crimson Peak (almost 2 years ago). I really loved it. Yes, last time I watched any movie was 2 years ago...

Last Thing I Googled: "radical feminism” just to look up what are kind of the complete general views (cause bad memory and needed some guide) so that I can make a comprehensive post about what my stance is on points, as to why I’ve recently become radfem. Haven’t gotten to writing that quite yet though.

Favorite Musician: David Bowie. Cause he was my only idol as a kid and teen and although I'm not so connected to him anymore, he just always has a special place in my heart. The only man who does! Ahaha. Just kidding, and not that way.

Song Stuck in my Head: "The Secret Germany (For Paul Celan)" by Rome. I listened to it on repeat all night so that's probably why it stuck.

Other Blogs: Not on tumblr but "mentalfrostbite.blogspot.com" is a blog I've had since 2010 and write stuff in. It’s in English too, at least since 2013 or something. Not posted much in it these past few months or so though. Now I've mostly been posting on tumblr instead. Cause I get more attention here xD.

Do I Get Asks?: Yeah, since I got a bit of an influx of radfem, detrans and lesbian followers these past couple of months I've gotten quite a lot of asks and I'm really happy to get them! Please keep them coming :)

Blogs Following: 140 that I'm following, and then I have 577 followers.

Amount of Sleep I Get: Uhm... how to explain... it can vary really a lot. I mean REALLY a lot, beyond the scope of my own understanding, but... on a very rough average 8-12 hours per time-of-the-day-I'm-asleep, which is not more often day than night, or night than day, and no order in that department either. Put shortly: my sleep pattern completely lacks any sort of coherency and is all over the place. It's sleep chaos. Hard to estimate.

Lucky Number: 13. I chose it when I was a kid cause I already then felt like I had an abnormal amount of bad luck in life, which I've kept feeling like and still do. And I chose it kinda ironically because it means bad luck, but I use it as kind of a lucky charm to turn the bad luck into good luck. Also I have a thing for “odd” numbers in general, and 13 has two odd numbers in it.

What I’m Wearing: A mint green tight t-shirt, purple velour hoodie, black sports bra, long and very comfy Indian style belly-dancing skirt (it's also very pretty with intricate golden print and has little bells that jingle when I move around... I'm so hopelessly femme), black panties and a huge dark grey men's fleece robe. Barefoot, no makeup, still no hair. Yes it is a hideosly composed outfit, but also says a lot about me as a person.

Dream Job: To never have to work, and no one ever telling me I should become mentally stable enough to handle having a job, and keep pressuring me to want a job. I don't. Stop trying to make me become a useful citizen. I live for me, not society. And I’m doing fine on my sickness compensation. There is not a single job in the world that I'd want to have. Not even a belly dancer at a lesbian only strip club... oh wait, that would be pretty awesome, actually!

Dream Trip: I don't care where to, I only really care who with and what we'd be doing. I never cared much for nature or places in general. Although for the past several years I've really wanted to travel to just any big city and party my ass off like it's the end of the world.

Favorite Food: Anything with chicken, but not too spicy. I love curry and garlic, rice, crispy potato stuff, bread, salmon, bloody beef with bearnaise sauce, sandwish cakes, etc. I like rich and heavy food, but also mild and light sea food.

Instrument: Harpsicord. It's the pre-destine to piano, that the rich over class played on back in the 1500's. Very rarely ever used in modern music, but some musicians of today add it for a cool effect. For example Emilie Autum does. But I also really love the accordion. My grandfather played it to me as a child, before he died when I was very young (around 5) and I've always loved the sound of that instrument ever since. It's mezmerising! Unfortunately the genres of music it's often played in are usually not to my taste. Nope, I want me some rock music played with accordion!

Languages: English is my second language, then also Swedish is my native language. I don't know any other ones, but a little bit of German. I casually consider myself bilingual.

Favorite Songs (as of right now): "Lost Jericho" by Arielle Bombasle and ERA, "A Woman's Heart" by Celtic Woman, "Te Amo" by Rihanna, "One Lion's Roar" by Rome, "Pax Psychosis" by Grendel, etc.

Random Fact: It took 2 months and costed over 60 bucks to change the number to my landline phone and make it a hidden number... all because I got phone-terrorised by some demented man who kept calling me 20+ times a day, not understand who he was even calling and it was driving me mad! No idea how he got my number, but yeah that's history now.

Describe Yourself With Aesthetics: Huddled up on a bench, smoking a cigarette, cold but holding onto a cup of hot coffee. Traces of lipstick around the cup edge and on the filter. Long skirt fabric twisting around the ankles in the wind, revealing rainbow coloured shoelaces on military boots. Squinting to avoid getting smoke in the eyes with sharp black and golden makeup around. Always tired and full of thoughts.

I tag anyone who wants to do this.