#breaking cycles fic

[deliriumsdelight7]

Breaking Cycles - Epilogue

This is it, folks!  One more fic all wrapped up.

Read on AO3

[yardsards]

there's such an interesting extra layer to amity and her relationships (especially w luz) that gets revealed when you learn that not only is she an abuse victim herself, but she is also the child of an abusive marriage

like not only was she personally abused/neglected and taught that she doesn't deserve to have her boundaries respected and won't get positive attention unless maybe she "earns it" by being useful and overachieving, but also her main example of a romantic partnership involved one partner exploiting the other and treating him as an expendable tool

in all of her relationships (platonic, romantic, familial), amity learns to give and receive kindness, learns to respect and set boundaries, learns that the value of herself and others aren't dictated by achievements or usefulness. she's breaking the toxic patterns that her parents taught her via their treatment of her.

but with her romantic relationship with luz, not only is she learning all of the above, but she's also breaking the toxic patterns of a romantic relationship that she would have learned from watching her parents.

when she shows kindness to luz, loves luz wholeheartedly even when she makes mistakes or causes problems, respects luz's privacy and boundaries, she is treating her girlfriend in a way that opposes the way her mother treated her own husband.

when she learns that she doesn't need to be useful or else risk abandonment/punishment, she's learning that she shouldn't accept or expect to be treated by her girlfriend the same way that her father was treated by his own wife.

i just. i love stories about characters breaking cycles. and i love luz and amity's relationship so much. it's very much not the kind of relationship i'm invested in the same way i am invested in with ships between adults. but rather like, it's a relationship between these two young people who are learning to healthily navigate this kind of relationship for the first time in their lives and it's really sweet.

[pencilofawesomeness]

“I made her feel powerless, I knocked her down and— and she still makes me feel scared.” —Satoru, So Find One And Seize It, Chapter 5

So a consequence of rereading Chapters 4 and 5 of SFOASI from The Odyssey series by the utterly incredible HotCocoaaa ( @biscaanii ) and then listening to Hawk in the Night by Maddie Buckley soon afterward is getting immediate brainrot for the most depressingly brutal piece I could start 2024 with. It worked too well for the Gojo Clan, especially Cocoa's rendition of Satoru and his grandmother, Akemi. She's a terrible woman and she fascinates me.

Go read this series guys it's so great—

[metalhoops]

Steve never liked the cities. 

They were always too crowded, too noisy. He liked Hawkins. He liked a quiet life in the suburbs. It was part of the reason he’d never gone to college, that and having to worry about his adopted band of misfit kids and the hell dimension that opened every year. Yet, somehow he found himself on a weekend trip to Chicago.

It was all Eddie’s fault. He had to pick some things up from a music store in town for the band, he’d mention strings or amps. Steve only half understood. It was an excuse for Eddie to take his van to Chicago. Steve had been surprised to find himself invited.

“You never leave town since Vecna went dark, dude. How are you going to travel around with six kids and a Winnebago if you never leave Hawkins?” Eddie asked, somehow managing to convince Steve to join him. 

They took turns driving Eddie’s van.  Eddie’s choice of music was questionable, but his version of road trip games was even more worrisome. They’d been travelling behind an old truck for the better part of an hour when Eddie kicked his feet on the dash and questioned,

“What do you think would be the worst way to die right now? Because I’ve spent the past half hour watching that guy’s toolbox rattle around and I’m convinced a nail gun to the head would be a killer way to go.” 

Steve should’ve known better, but he’d give anything for a distraction from the long stretch of road. 

“Probably getting set on fire at a pump while you insist you need a smoke the second we pulled over at the last gas station,” Steve noted, switching on his indicator and passing the vehicle, using all the horsepower the poor-beat up van had. 

“And here I was thinking I had a twisted imagination,” Eddie spoke, before listing off a series  of more gruesome scenarios. 

By the time the two reached their motel, Steve felt strangely lighter. Whether it was the distance from Hawkins and the trouble it had caused him or because he and Eddie had spent an hour listing out worst-case scenarios until they felt comical and absurd instead of real and imminent threats, he didn’t know. Being trapped in a town with a rip in the fabric of space and time had a way of making you always feel on your guard. That night the two slept quickly and soundlessly. 

It was when they walked through town Steve remembered why he hated cities. He was left shuffling through unfamiliar streets, elbow to elbow with strangers, trying desperately to keep up with Eddie as the man weaved and ebbed with the crowd as Steve used to slice through water. Eddie was one with the city. Steve was apart from it.

Without thinking, Steve reached out, grabbing onto the hem of Eddie’s jacket, letting himself be guided. Eddie showed him where to step, how to move. He kept his head down and followed Eddie’s lead to the music store. Much to his surprise, when they were all done, and once more ready to head back into the fray of the foot traffic, Eddie offered the crook of his elbow for Steve to hold onto. 

“Hey, it’s easier than you almost tugging a hole in a perfectly good jacket. You don’t have a good track record, Harrington,” Eddie teased. He had a point. 

He hadn’t meant to make a habit of it. Yet the small action of latching onto Eddie to keep him at arm’s length followed the two back to Hawkins. 

The thing about hanging out with Eddie was that the man was surprisingly hard to keep up with. He was always rushing places at the drop of a hat, jerked one way or the other by whatever flight of fancy caught his attention. 

He’d be beside Steve at the Family Video store one minute, then darting to the horror section driven there by some tangential conversation, which then of course, would lead him to remember some old sci-fi film and send him running to the sci-fi section, only to find it lacking. That would lead him to Robin and their extensive movie catalogue on the computer, all the while, he’d still be talking to Steve. He found it easier to keep up with Eddie if he had a hold of him. 

He’d find his fingers tucked into the crook of Eddie’s elbow, hooked in the chain of his jeans or clinging to the cuff or hem of his shirt and trailing in the wake of him. 

Contrary to popular belief, Steve wasn’t an idiot. Not when it came to social situations. He knew being extra touchy with Eddie was something he could only do in certain situations. He was hyper-aware of it when he’d made the mistake of hooking his thumb into the back pocket of Eddie’s jeans in the arcade. The two had driven the kids there and were wasting time bouncing between watching the kids and playing pinball. 

A group of teenagers had been gawking at the two already, likely trying to work out what twist of fate had landed the former king of Hawkins High and current school Freak together. With the action, the mumbled whispers turned into slack jaws and less favourable words muttered just loud enough for Steve to hear. 

Steve wasn’t an idiot. He knew what it looked like. He would be lying if he said he didn’t want it to be like that, not that he’d voiced any of it. Not yet. He needed to do it in a town where people didn’t know his name, so people wouldn’t talk if he was reading Eddie all wrong. He didn’t think he was, he was good with reading people. 

In a crowd, holding onto Eddie was okay.  On their increasingly frequent trips to the city, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Fort Wayne. When no one else could see, that was okay. In small-town Hawkins, in broad daylight, it wasn’t. 

Steve suddenly understood the appeal of the city.  

[jbm04]

I wanna write a pile of TLT AUs where they all end with Harrow and Gideon realizing in different/interesting ways that things aren’t quite right. A (technically) post-series TLT fic where Harrow and Gideon are stuck traversing multiple river bubbles like different past lives. Always finding each other. Always going through it. And then always realizing that they aren’t home. And then BAM! Next bubble.

It’ll be about breaking that cycle. Maybe this is what it is to cross the river?

[wisteriagoesvroom]

😵‍💫 snippet pls 🙏🙏

omg sorry this took me a while to reply anon. i thought this was in reference to the “lestappen bondgirl au without the genderbend” wip but it was actually the “landoscar-literally-fuck-around-and-find-out” fic aksjsksks. there’s a snippet here but here’s another one if you care… idk that i’ll ever get round to publishing this one cus it feels weirdly ooc rn, but anyway.

————

“Sotter volchay.” Lando says.

“What’s that?”

“Like, quiet. Like you.”

Oscar stifles a laugh, and runs his hand through Lando’s hair. Lando practically purrs.

“Sotto voce, Lando.” Oscar says. Back to this. The formal name, as if nothing has happened between them, as if both of them didn’t have their mouths stuffed full of each other mere minutes ago, whimpering and needy and pathetic in a way they aren’t with anyone else.

“You–” Oscar starts, before he shakes his head, and Lando gets the signal. He scoots down the sofa, under him, and a latent part of Oscar’s logical brain that is behind the sex fog goes that’s gonna fuck your back.

But then Lando’s glorious mouth is on his again, possessive and pressing, and the thought completely disappears.

————

from that “guess my wips” game from a few days back, like so far back i don’t even think i could find the post because clearly i post way too much on here 😭

[thecryptidzenith]

After u reblogged my post of me whining abt Sklonda I read ALLL of ur fic so far and I'm HOOKED. FATE FAVORS ME !!! RAAAA!!!!!! I'm on the edge of my seat

Thank you! Midnight Oil is definitely my Baby, and it means a lot to me when people respond positively to it. There's just. There's so much going on in it. We go from Newsies to a murder mystery to How To Be A Thief 101 to a prison break to Baby's First Murder to making a deal with a demon (kinda.) And that's just the first 60k. It is such a wild ride from beginning to (the yet unseen) end and I'm so glad that so many people have come along for the journey, it's always a highlight of my day to see people's reactions to it.

[definitelynotshouting]

hunger au grian genuinely CANNOT catch a break!! YHS to EVO to being parasitized from the inside out and questioning if you are really you to being suffocated by the world’s most overbearing family to being on the run to knowing you are intrinsically different from the person that your friends loved despite being outwardly the same to being on a perpetual blood sugar crash to accidentally dragging your friends into a death game 3 time over b/c of said crash to being kicked out from the only home you’ve ever known to trying to finally end it just for your friends to drag you back kicking and screaming as they force you to face the facts: your death will make no amends!! this is just your way of making the pain of everything— your birth, your existence, the ever-gnawing hunger— go away!!

i am so utterly insane about him. hunger!grian 🤝 siffrin isat: relatable to everyone by having the entire spectrum of mental illness ❤️

YEAH I REALLY WASNT KIDDING WHEN I SAID I WAS GIVING HIM EVERY MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE DSM-5 AND ALSO A FEW NEW ONES SJDNWJDJS

Also yeah i think its bc of hunger!grian that im as insane abt siffrin as i am. Bro was handcrafted in a lab to make me crazy THEIR ISSUESSSSSSS......🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰💥💥💥💥💥💥

[preciouslittletoonette]

I think it would be so funny for a future Bendy game to do this where in those chase sequences that end with us cutting the Ink Demon off with a door- rather than just accepting defeat, he punches it. Like imagine-

We just narrowly escaped from him through a metal, reinforced door and blocked him off. A few beat passes and because of past games, we think it's safe...

Until the Ink Demon's fist soars through the metal door without a scratch. And he starts to peel the metal apart to create a gap for himself.

I just think that would be really funny and absolutely wicked to witness because we know he's strong as hell

[deliriumsdelight7]

The latest chapter of Breaking Cycles was so sweet! What a great ending. I'm really looking forward to the epilogue! So, how does it feel to end this story after nearly 3 years and 21 chapters? Did the ending go like you had planned from the start, or did it change significantly along the way?

Thank you so much! As a daughter of a man who regularly chose the bottle over his own kids, it was important to me that Lachlan really got his moment with Arianwen. As my love @raginglittlehurricane has said to me, we deserved a moment in the movie where the two of them played together, instead of ending the movie with him just sort of mopily playing by himself in a corn field.

This fic has changed in all sorts of ways I never intended since I started it. For one thing, I was sure I wasn’t gonna exceed 12 chapters. Whoops. For another, the angst and drama factor was really going to be cranked up to 11. After Lachlan accidentally slept with Lacey, Belle was going to stop speaking to him, and he was going to start shacking up with Lacey just to try and get Belle’s attention. It was going to culminate in Lachlan breaking his promise to Belle and driving drunk - the one thing that would hurt her the most. Eventually, Belle was going to break under the pressure, and try to buy a one-way plane ticket to California, knowing that the US was the one place Lachlan couldn’t follow. But before she could do it, Lacey would have found out by snooping on her computer, and stolen Belle’s bank card and all of her savings so she couldn’t leave - because as much as Lacey resented her sister, she didn’t want to be left behind a second time.

Then I actually wrote out the bit where Belle finds out Lacey and Lachlan slept together, and… I couldn’t go through with it. That entire dynamic was so toxic and hurtful that I couldn’t think of a way to come back from it. I wouldn’t have been able to root for Lachlan and Belle getting back together, or Belle and Lacey reconciling. In the end, I’m much happier with how this came out. Some might say I rushed Lachlan’s growth, and maybe they’d be right. But the whole reason I started this fic was to give Lachlan the closure and healing the movie denied him. He spent over a decade suffering for his brother’s death. Adding all of that on top of it just seemed cruel.

Thanks for the ask! It’s been a long, almost three year journey, but we got there in the end!

[pagesofkenna]

absolutely refusing to do this in the fic because the undertale reference will immediately scrub out the tone i'm trying to go for lol, but

'despite everything, its still you' but in a bad way. like, it's still just you. you tried so hard to be better but you cant be, youre trying to be something more but youre not

[keycarabiner]

I want to write so bad but currently feeling terribly burnt out so maybe today I’ll work my way through my 100+ open AO3 tabs instead… 🫥

[dumb-bitchass]

c ai is my new "if anyone sees this i'll literally buy a plane ticket and the leave the country never to be heard from again" app

[looking-for-a-sword]

If anybody has any idea how or preferably knows a remedy to get over a ship.. now would be the time to share it... Pretty please?

[shovellyyy]

How do yall keep track of ur fanfic plot??? Bc I literally write it out. I got almost 7 pages of notes on a little notepad about the iwaoi surfer au. I also have a notebook dedicated to my omegaverse series and other plot lines for more fics. I just find it more satisfying and fun 😭