#but instead i get taken out of the story every time i see the draft-like blank insertion of Y/N

[goldlightsaber]

look i feel like we need more original names for female characters instead of every single one of them being named Whyen

[heliads]

I love you writing and I was hoping you could write Ben Florian x VK!Reader the reader is Lefou's kid. A soulmate AU where the negative things you think about yourself are marked on your soulmate's skin. Reader only has one or two things because Ben is from Auradon and has a good life and family. While Ben has around half a dozen. Reader is the one who gives Ben the love potion. During the lake scene they notice Ben is their soulmate and tries (but fails) to hide it thinking he deserves better

masterlist

There really is no good place for a prince. They are political figureheads in every sense of the phrase— too young to actually rule, too old to be allowed to skip state functions. They sit in corners of expensive meetings and cut ribbons in front of newly opened buildings, but they can’t do a whole lot except smile and pose. 

Shame your friend seems so fixated on capturing one, then. It feels like you’ve just barely left the Isle of the Lost, only bid farewell to the entirety of your prior life experience hours ago, and yet already Mal is scheming about how to best tear down everything around you. If Prince Ben is the best way to fulfill her nefarious plans, then so be it.

The only problem is that you’re now involved in all of this, too. Mal wants a wand and so she’ll take a prince to get there, but as one of her best friends, you’ve been drafted into the plot to catch a prince. Ben won’t have any idea what’s coming. Shame, he would probably run if he had any clue.

Mal’s good at covering her tracks, though, she always has been. You can remember elaborate plans from when you were much younger to steal cookies or cloaks, spellbooks and shoes. At this point, hearing Mal tell you that she’s going to bewitch the crown prince of Auradon into falling in love with her shouldn’t surprise you, just the fact that she’s taken this long to come up with the idea.

Usually, you have no problem going along with Mal’s little adventures. They’re entertaining, at the least, a good way to pass a few days when you’ve already gone over every alleyway and hiding place on the Isle at least a dozen times in the last month. The issue is that you’re not on the Isle anymore, and maybe– just maybe– disrupting everything here isn’t entirely what you want to do.

Mal doesn’t know this, of course. None of your fellow VKs do. Every time they monologue and moan about how they can’t wait to get out of this place, you find yourself holding your tongue, biting back your real thoughts about how the school isn’t actually as bad as you feared. Sure, the constant judgment from the other children of princes and princesses isn’t all that fun, but Auradon Prep has its positives, too. For one thing, you think your soulmate might be here.

What a terrible thing for the child of a villain to prioritize. You’ve heard Mal scoff at the idea of a soulmate, and although Evie is certainly more interested in the idea than some of your other friends, you’re still not sure that you’d find a welcome audience amongst their ranks when it comes to tracking down your soulmate. After all, the odds of that soulmate being from Auradon and not the Isle are pretty high. They’ve all but told you that themselves.

All things considered, for a society with such control over magic and spells, it’s pretty difficult to find your soulmate. You’d always wondered why those in charge couldn’t shorten the whole affair to something more simple– a name on the wrist, perhaps, or an invisible string that only the two of you could see– but instead, soulmate magic went the complicated route. How lovely.

The story about the origin of the soulmate magic is convoluted and ancient, going back generations and changing with each family. The general consensus is that soulmates were created to preserve the sanctity of true love, with the idea that soulmates should be able to love each other entirely, flaws and all. So, when you think something negative about yourself, those very same thoughts will show up on the skin of your soulmate, something like a warning label for what they’re going to get themselves into.

This is all well and good for people with few negative thoughts, maybe they’ll have something here and there about a bad sports result or a poor test grade that their soulmate can chuckle over before meeting them. For you, though? You, the child of a villain, cursed to live forever on a too-small island with the other convicts and criminals, you have had more fears and hated things about yourself than most. Your soulmate must be covered in unhappy musings, which only makes you feel worse about yourself than before. A self-perpetuating cycle of the worst kind.

By contrast, the startling absence of your soulmate’s negative thoughts on your own skin makes you certain that they couldn’t be from the Isle of the Lost. There are only one or two fears on your skin, proof of loving parents and a stable home, and they’re minor things like a bad hair day or a fear of not doing their absolute best. These change, often leaving every few months to be replaced by something else insignificant.

What makes you most certain that your soulmate is the child of a royal is the one negative thought that has stayed on your skin since the very beginning. Your soulmate, whoever they are, is terrified that they will let down the king and queen. Only someone with close ties to the royalty could have such a fear, so it’s proof that your soulmate is somewhere here on Auradon.

So maybe you don’t want to leave this place, not yet. Not until you can learn who your soulmate is. It’ll be almost impossible to track them down on this information alone, but supposedly that’s how the whole thing is supposed to work. You learn about the worst parts of your soulmate, and then you get to love the best of them. The only problem is that you’re fairly sure that if your soulmate is a royal, they won’t want to love you at all.

It’s easier to ignore the whole affair. Easier to agree to Mal’s plan when she proposes enchanting Prince Ben. At least another one of your friend’s schemes will keep your mind off the soulmate affair.

That’s what you tell yourself, at least, but your conscience is starting to get steadily more vocal as the days go by. Ben is a nice guy, which hurts, surprisingly. Although the love spell may have been cast on Mal, as one of Mal’s closest friends, you’re around the two of them all the time. The boy you see is someone that you wish could be your soulmate. He may be a prince, and you may be a villain, but he makes you want to believe in love after all.

You certainly have the capacity for such musings. For some reason, the love spell didn’t take all that well, and although Ben is now compelled to stay with Mal more than he was before, it’s not like he’s totally obsessed with her as Mal had hoped. Mal claims it’s because love spells can never work fully due to the soulmate issue, like having a soulmate is a kind of shield to protect you against that sort of enchantment, but regardless, Ben has just enough independent thought that he can tell you jokes and try to make you smile like– well, like he tries to do with Mal.

The realization that Ben is a genuinely good person, and worse, someone you don’t want to trick, haunts you as you fall further into Mal’s scheme. You’ve been trying to push the whole thing from your mind, letting Ben join your soulmate in the depths of your mind you don’t want to touch, but your train of thought keeps circling back to him despite your best attempts otherwise.

Besides, it doesn’t help that Mal keeps trying to involve you in the plot. Right now, the two of them are at the Enchanted Lake, out on a cute little date. Mal had been making mock disgusted faces at you the whole time she was getting ready, but some part of yourself can’t stop whispering that this doesn’t seem so bad, actually, that the thought of being out here alone with Ben would make for a wonderful day instead of the tedious chore Mal is making it out to be.

Ben doesn’t know you’re here, though. Mal wanted backup in case something happened, so you’re lingering in the woods to keep anyone from stumbling upon the scene and also holding onto more magical baked goods in case Mal feels the need to renew the spell. It’s kind of like torture, strolling through this beautiful forest, knowing that Ben is so close and you are helping hold him under the thrall of this plot.

The storm in your mind must be thundering too loudly for you to think straight, because you lose track of yourself and accidentally walk too close to the lake. You weren’t supposed to be spotted, but before you can back away and melt back into the foliage, Ben looks up and sees you. You panic, immediately heading the way you’d come, but you hear footsteps after you moments later and Ben manages to track you down before you can go too far. Mal is so going to kill you for messing with her plan.

“Sorry,” you murmur, eyes wide when he finally catches up to you, “I didn’t realize the two of you were– I’ll go now.”

Ben shakes his head. “No, no, it’s alright. It’s not like we have a monopoly on the woods.”

He’s dripping water, most likely due to a recent dip in the lake, and you can’t seem to stop your gaze from following the path of the droplets as they cascade down his shoulders, across his hands, and, most importantly of all, over the swooping letters of the fears of his soulmates. 

Usually, Ben wears long sleeves or something else to hide them. You can see why now– there are many of them, many more than you, perhaps half a dozen in all. You can’t read all of them from where you’re standing, just snippets about how a villain’s kid shouldn’t have a soulmate, how they’ll never amount to much, things like that. Things like what you’ve been thinking recently.

Ben must catch on to your train of thought, because he smiles weakly, absentmindedly scratching at a sentence proclaiming that his soulmate isn’t worth the good luck they get. “Yeah, my soulmate’s a little stressed, I guess. Hopefully, I can talk about that with them soon. I want them to know that they’re worth it, wherever they are.”

It had never occurred to you that hating yourself would make your soulmate this obsessed. You have no proof that Ben is your soulmate but– 

But, as you watch, you can see a new fear appearing out of nowhere, wrapping itself around Ben’s left wrist. I’m not good enough for a soulmate this good. Just what you were thinking mere moments ago. It’s like proof.

Ben looks up slowly, and although you were never blessed with the ability to read minds, you swear you can tell exactly what he’s thinking right now. “Are you–” he starts, ends, tries again, “Do you know who your soulmate is?”

You can do several things at this moment. You can confirm what you’re mostly sure is true, you can lie, you can pretend you hadn’t heard him. You spot movement in the trees behind him, a flash of purple, and remember belatedly that Mal is still somewhere at the Enchanted Lake, waiting for Ben to come back and wondering why you’re holding him here for so long.

All of a sudden, the reality of the situation comes crashing down around your shoulders. This is not something that can happen. Ben is a prince. You are the child of a villain, and the friend of another VK who’s counting on you to continue fooling Ben so she can pursue her latest mad plan. There is no world in which this works out.

So, you force a smile, banishing all thoughts back into the deep recesses of your brain once more. “No,” you say, “I don’t know. I think they’re a VK, though.”

Ben’s face falls in a flash. “Really? Because I thought–”

You shake your head quickly. “I don’t– it’s not me. I think Mal is waiting for you, though. You shouldn’t keep her for long.”

Ben glances back over his shoulder in memory of the girl he’s left somewhere in the woods behind him, and when he looks back, you’re gone. You’re good at running. It’s a skill you’ve perfected over the years. You just never thought you’d have to use it now.

Prince Ben is your soulmate. Impossible. True. Mal comes back later that afternoon, tells you the date went splendidly despite your accidental intrusion. Ben must not have let the brief moment in the woods faze him for long. It hurts more than you care to admit.

There is only so much running a VK can do, try as they might to pretend otherwise. You avoid Ben at all costs, hoping that whatever foolish war is currently being fought inside your heart will come to a tolerable ceasefire if you just ignore it long enough. Mal tells you that the plan is going swimmingly, she’s never seen the prince more excited about the VKs and the upcoming coronation. You nod and smile and tell her that you’re glad everything is going to plan, but inside, you cannot seem to stop your mind from screaming. 

And then, all of a sudden, despite your best attempts to remain out of sight, Prince Ben finds you. It’s completely out of the blue, so casual that you almost don’t realize it’s happening until he’s sitting down at your table in the library and it’s too late to run. 

You feel like an animal caught in a trap. He’s just smiling like nothing is the matter. “I know it’s you,” he says by way of hello. 

Your heart is stuck in your throat. “What?”

“I know it’s you,” Ben repeats, “I know you’re my soulmate. I had the Fairy Godmother do a little spell so I could check for you, but I think I knew since that day at the lake.”

You frown. “You can do that?”

He shrugs, looking a little embarrassed. “Not everyone can, I think. But I, uh, insisted.”

You grin. “Prince privileges?”

“Something like that.” He’s smiling, though, maybe pleased that you’re not trying to run off this time. “But you knew even without the spell, didn’t you?”

That does shake your uncertain sense of calm. “Yes,” you admit, “but I didn’t think you— I didn’t think it would work out.”

The look on Ben’s face is genuinely heartbreaking. “What, just because I’m a prince?”

He says it so casually, it’s almost funny. “Yes, Ben, because you’re a prince and I’m a VK. I mean, my dad was Lefou. He literally tried to ruin the happy ever after of your parents, why would you want someone like me to be your soulmate?”

“Same reason you shouldn’t be afraid to want me. You’re not your father, Y/N, and I’m not my parents. We’re just us, and I know that I want you to be my soulmate. I have since the start. I was hoping you would tell me you knew, but after a few days went by and you still said nothing, I figured I had to take matters into my own hands. Even if that meant using a spell or two.”

You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to laugh in your face and tell you it’s ridiculous to think that he would ever want a VK as a soulmate, but he doesn’t. In fact, you don’t think he ever will. As impossible as it seems, Ben wants someone who isn’t from a perfect fairy tale. He wants you. And that, lovely and wonderful and absolutely crazy, sounds like a fairly good happily ever after for you. 

disney tag list: @rogueanschel, @lovesanimals0000, @mayfieldss, @eclliipsed

[xoxoavenger]

How to Break a Heart

pairing: Luke Castellan x Fem!Aphrodite!Reader

summary: Y/N's mother gives her a deadline on when she needs to break her first love's heart, but Y/N isn't in love. Luckily Luke has a plan to fool the goddess; they'll pretend to be in love, and Y/N can break his heart. But these plans never go accordingly.

word count: 4341

warnings: betrayal, no comfort but there is still fluff for most of it

notes: luke castellan has taken over my life i have like 9 drafts so we'll see how this goes (i'm always scared to post for a new character so any love is appreciated greatly)

part 2

masterlist

"How did it go?" Luke asked as Y/N walked out of the Aphrodite cabin. Her mother had requested an IM with her, and Luke had waited outside for her. Y/N didn't look too happy, but she never did after a talk with her mom.

"She thinks it's time." Y/N said, and as much as he wished he could read her mind, he had no idea what she was talking about.

"For what?" He asks, following as she begins to walk into the woods. It's clear she just needs to be on a walk to be away from everyone else, but she's letting him tag along.

"She said it's an embarrassment that I'd become an adult and still hadn't broken my love's heart." She says. "But I haven't fallen in love with anyone yet, and I don't wanna break some innocent person's heart." She stops talking when they reach the river, sitting on the wet ground. He thinks about his pants real quick and then sits next to her, wanting to give her his support.

"She gave you a time limit?" Luke asks, knowing the answer. The Aphrodite kids didn't usually go on quests, but this was a quest of its own. She knew the gods couldn't resist making things more difficult.

"Yeah. Four months. As if I could fall in love with someone in that time, let alone here." She grabs a rock and throws it into the current, the splash barely touching them.

"Maybe you don't have to." Luke whispered, looking at her. She turned to him, brows furrowed as she rested her head against her bent knees.

"I don't think my mom is gonna let it slide any further than she already has. The truth is, I've been putting this off for years. She's wanted me to break some pour soul's heart for two years now. Every time she's visited me, it's always 'what about that Hephestas boy?' or 'that Apollo kid looks so nice now.' I don't wanna know what she'll do if I disobey." Y/N admits, taking a deep breath.

"That's not what I meant." Luke smirked, causing Y/N to frown.

"What are you talking about, then?" She asks, sitting up and looking at him face on.

"If we pretend that we're in love - I mean, put on a whole show that convinces the whole camp," Luke says it quietly, as if Aphrodite may be listening to them right now.

"Then I can 'break' your heart and please my mom without actually hurting anyone!" She says excitedly, watching as Luke nods. "You're a genius!" She cried, throwing her arms around Luke. She was so happy to have this weight lifted off her shoulders. He held her back, and it felt nice for a moment.

"So, what's the story?" Y/N asked, leaning back and pulling her knees up and leaning on them gently now, instead of hiding behind them.

"We just have to pretend to be dating. I invited you over here to ask you out, so we'll walk back to camp holding hands." He said it so simply, she just nodded.

"What about kissing? Won't they get suspicious?" She asked, making Luke chuckle.

"We can figure that out later." He told her, and she just nodded. "For now, we only have to convince our friends."

"And the olympians." She shrugged.

"Only your mom. The rest of them won't care." Luke told her, standing up. He reached out a hand to help her up, and she took it. He then switched hands to hold her's, interlacing their fingers. Y/N had held hands with many boys, being a daughter of Aphrodite, but for some reason Luke's felt different. She was holding the hand he used to fight with his sword, calloused but somehow smooth. She looked at him, and for a moment she wondered if this would work. It was crazy to lie to a god, even if the goddess was her mother. Could she really pretend to be in love and break his heart? Would they still be friends afterward?

Luke squeezed her hand and smiled, and she felt relief flow through her. If there was anyone who could pull this off, it was Luke.

"We got this." He told her, and she nodded.

They walked to camp, hand in hand, and Y/N knew immediately that this idea would work.

"Oh my God!" Her sister Silena called, immediately seeing Luke and Y/N. "Uh, I knew it!" And Y/N pushed down the urge to roll her eyes. She could have come out of the woods with anyone and Silena would have claimed to have seen it coming.

And just like that, everyone knew they were together.

For about a month, they got away with just hand holding, hanging out a little more than regular, going on a couple night walks. But on one of their night walks, Luke brought up what she had been thinking.

"We have to kick it up. If we want people to think we really fell in love in four months, we have to be inseparable." He told her.

"Silena has already caught on. We have to make it look like we got caught doing something." She had been thinking about it, not wanting to go there, but they both knew there was no way around this. They had to make it believable. Everyone had to believe them for this to work.

"The Hermes cabin." Luke nodded, but Y/N furrowed her brows.

"But your cabin is like, never empty." She told him, concerned.

"Anyone who finds us in the Hermes cabin will tell everyone immediately. And we will get found basically as soon as we're in there." He had definitely thought about this.

"We'll get in trouble." She tells him, looking to the side at the water.

"Us getting in trouble for getting caught in a cabin alone together?" He smirks, squeezing her hand. "Yeah, I'm sure your mom will be really angry." When she turned to him he was smiling, and she couldn't help but smile back.

"You're a genius." She almost kisses him, because that's what she would do in the situation, but then she remembered they're not actually dating. She was almost embarrassed, but then she realized.

"We can't do this without ramping our relationship up a bit." She tells him, and he thinks for a second. He turns to the trees, and the smile is on his face once more.

"The younger kids are watching." He whispered, making her blush. Of course their younger siblings would be watching their romantic walk. "If it's okay with you," He mutters stopping and turning to her. He takes her other hand. "I can kiss your cheek. Or we," She drops is hands and grabs his face, bringing his lips to hers. She knew they'd have to kiss in front of everyone sooner or later, and clearly Luke was freaking out a little bit. She felt his hands go to her torso, high above her waist but just a little below her bra line. It made her heart race just a little bit.

Their lips moved in tandem, much more than any first kiss she's ever had before. She forgot everything as one of her hands slipped from his face to his chest. One of his slipped to her lower back, the other going to the back of her head. They broke for one second to reposition, but for some reason it was too much for her. She curled her fingers into his orange Camp Half-Blood shirt and brought him closer once more. She could feel him smile as he curled his fingers in her hair to position her better.

All too quickly, they separated. Y/N blinked a couple times, trying to clear her brain.

"I think they got the hint." He tells her, and she could only stare at him and try to figure out what he just said.

"Yeah," She whispered, realizing he was talking about their rouse. Of course, the only reason they had kissed was to get the camp talking. "They'll definitely be talking about that."

She didn't want to think about how upset she was, or why she was upset. This was fake - everything with Luke was fake.

"We should head back before Chiron comes and puts us on probation or something." She said, watching him nod. She let him lead her back to her cabin, where he gave her a kiss and a wink outside her door.

She was in trouble.

~

The next day, they met up to watch the kids make friendship bracelets. Luke had already made a deal with Travis, and no one noticed when the two left.

"We have a couple minutes until everyone comes in." He tells her, and she nods. He walks over to his bed, the single one in the corner of the huge cabin. Y/N has never seen it completely empty, and when she looks around it seems too quiet.

"How do you wanna," She mutters, heart pounding. She's nervous, and it's obvious.

"Hey," His voice is quiet, and she looks over at him. "We don't have to do anything that you don't wanna do." His hand goes to her har, pushing her hair out of her face a little bit. She had to force herself not to look away.

"We have to." She mutters, a sad frown on her face. They both knew she didn't have a choice for this.

"But we can just get caught alone." He assures her, sitting back on his bed. Y/N stays where she is.

"No, it has to be more. We have to convince everyone." She is convincing herself too, that she has to do this. She doesn't go on quests, and this isn't even courageous. This is something her siblings do for fun. She can do it for her mother.

"Okay," He tells her, grabbing her hands. She's about to ask how they should be set up, but then there's footsteps on the stairs. Before she can think, she practically pounces on Luke. She's straddling him, pressing him against the bed. Their hands became untangled and his go to her waist, lower than their first kiss. She hears the door open, and her heart freezes.

What are they doing?

Before she can mess up the entire plan, Luke leans up and presses their lips together. She doesn't know what to do with her hands, just letting them hold her up while Luke's venture under her shirt.

"Oh my gods!" Y/N and Luke separate with wide eyes. They were planning on getting caught, but not by her.

"Annabeth?" Luke whispers, turning to see his sister in the doorway, hand over her eyes.

"Shit," Y/N curses, getting up. She realizes her shirt is all scrunched, so she pulls it down.

"What a weird camp." The kid next to Annabeth says. Y/N notices him for the first time, a short kid that looked like he was enjoying this drama. He has to be new, because she's never seen him around and definitely never with Annabeth.

"This is strange." Ananbeth crosses her arms and squints. Y/N feels like she can see right through them.

"Oh, Chiron is not gonna be happy." The kid says, smiling. Before Y/N can argue that neither of them would tell the centaur, he walks up behind them.

"That assumption would be correct, Mr. Jackson." She has to remind herself that this was the plan, that they wanted to get caught.

"Chiron," Y/N says, looking up at him as he walks into the wide door frame. Annabeth and the kid move to let him in, also showing Y/N and Luke the amount of people behind him, waiting to see the

"This is unexpected from you two." He says, and Y/N can feel herself second guessing this plan. She doesn't like to be scolded by Chiron. Luke grabs her hand as if he knew what she was thinking.

"We're sorry, Chiron." Luke started, taking a deep breath.

"But we're not kids anymore," Y/N starts, the confidence coming from no where. "And sometimes we need time on our own." She can feel everyone's eyes on her, including Luke's.

"We can talk about this in the Big House." Chiron was clearly peeved, but she knew he couldn't get that mad. Everyone knew why Luke and Y/N stayed even though they were the oldest campers; they would be dead in the real world.

"You're up to something." Annabeth says as everyone leaves.

"I'm always up to something." Luke smirks before looking at the new kid. "I'm Luke."

"I'm Percy." The kid says, looking over at Y/N.

"Y/N." She nods, a small smile on her face. She looked at Annabeth, who knew something was up. She had to ramp it up.

She put a hand on Luke's shoulder and kissed his cheek, squeezing his hand and leaving. It had to be enough for now.

~

As it turned out, Annabeth went on a quest a couple weeks later, so they didn't need to worry about convincing her. But Luke was practically sick with worry for her wellbeing, and Y/N wasn't much better. Her deadline was coming up, and she was actually dreading it.

She was enjoying Luke's presence, enjoying the touches and the attention. She knew it was her mother's powers making her feel this way, but part of it was just her. She actually looked forward to waking up and going to see Luke. She thought about the night that they had fallen asleep in the warm sand, his chest cushioning her head. His arms were around her, and when they were caught in the morning she didn't even care about Chiron's second warning. Luke had snuck them desert anyway.

It helped calm her down from worrying about the kids on a quest, the fate of which would in turn decide the fate of Camp Half-Blood. She hated the feeling of war in the air, the campers fighting. Luke's comfort helped that situation as well. He would always grab her close, making her anxiety calm down and her mind quiet. She had taken to hanging out with him away from everyone's eyes, aside from plans to get caught. They would lay in the strawberry fields, looking at the clouds. Sometimes she would fall asleep, giving away the fact that she couldn't sleep in her own bed at night. As soon as Luke realized this, he made the Aphrodite cabin swear to secrecy when he would sneak in. They were great at keeping secrets when it helped their sister's love life, and her health. She had gotten so used to Luke sleeping in her bed, it was weird to think there was a time when he wasn't.

The first time it happened, she had almost jumped out of her skin.

It was right before the kids left, when everyone started to get uneasy about the Lightning Bolt. She had made a random comment that day when her and Luke were sitting on the dock, because she was too tried from her lack of sleep. They had been 'dating' for two months now, and even before she would tell him these things as his best friend. She had almost fallen asleep with her head resting against his shoulder, and he had shaken her awake. She stumbled to her cabin, not even wanting to tell her siblings about the night, but she couldn't sleep.

Everyone knew she had problems sleeping, so they tried to be as quiet as possible. They let her keep her window open, even though it dried their skin. And though her body was absolutely begging her to sleep, her mind wouldn't turn off.

She jumped out of her skin when she heard Luke's low voice.

"Thank the gods your window is already open." She shot up, heart racing. She looked over to see Luke climbing in. "And also thank the gods you live on the bottom bunk." His voice was so quiet she could barely hear, but at least she knew her siblings wouldn't hear. She knew they would never tell Chiron, since they loved a good relationship.

"What are you doing?" She asked, eyes wide and a smile playing on her face. His scar shown in the moonlight as he sat on the windowsill, taking off his shoes. He handed them to her, and she put them down gently on the ground before lowering himself down on her bed.

"I'm gonna help you sleep." He told her, looking at her in a way that made her heart race just a little. Even in the little privacy, where no one could see them, he was caring for her.

"You don't have to." She turned her head down, feeling self conscious in her bonnet. He smiled at her.

"I want to."

The two settled in, Y/N lifting up the covers for Luke to come under. They switched positions so she could sleep next to the wall, his arms around her immediately. She felt so secure and safe in his arms, more relaxed than she had felt in weeks. He settled his face against her head, giving the softest kiss to her forehead. So soft she was questioning it as her mind drifted away.

When she woke up, she was in his arms. The sun was up, and it was much later than she had woken up in the past month.

"Tell him I went on a walk. And she's sick." Luke was whispering, his voice rumbling in his chest that Y/N was laying against. Given the small size of the bed, they were entangled. Her legs were fused with his, her torso stuck between the wall and Luke's body. Her hand was entangled into his sleep shirt, and she didn't untangle it because that would have given up that she was awake. And she wanted to stay like this a little longer.

And she was enjoying the warm light and the nice morning.

"You know he'll come in here anyway." A boy was saying, but Y/N didn't want to listen. Without thinking, she rubbed her face into Luke's shirt, trying to get more comfortable. She rubbed a leg against his, shifting and sighing.

"If you wake her up," Luke's voice sounded venomous, and it made her start to smile a little. Her head felt so light but also so heavy in a good way. She didn't think she could feel that way.

"Fine, I'm gone." The guy said, and Y/N heard his footsteps walk away. She stretched for a second, settling down so that her leg was thrown over his and she was more on top of him than against the wall. Her hand relaxed, still holding onto his shirt but not as tightly.

"You awake?" Luke whispered so quietly for a moment he didn't think she heard him.

"No." She said quietly, feeling her breathing even out.

"Alright." He brushes his hand against her back, soothing her even more. "Let me know when you're awake."

~

All the Aphrodite kids were working overtime to make sure that Chiron never found out that Luke was sneaking into the cabin and also to keep the Hermes cabin from snitching. And also from keeping the harpies from killing Luke. 

It was a full-time job. 

They usually slept in Y/N's bunk, because her siblings just wanted her to be happy. They all knew that she was supposed to break someone's heart, but they tried not to talk about it. No one else knew about the deadline. 

"Can you tell me how you got your scar?" Y/N asked one night, tracing the mark as they laid in bed. She had been getting so much sleep with him that she was able to stay up a little bit with him now and whisper low enough that no one else could hear.

"You don't wanna hear about it before it before you go to bed." He whispers, eyes going dark and hand grabbing hers, stopping her from touching it. Her heart drops, and she feels like a little kid scolded. 

"You never told me." She mutters, not wanting to push but wanting to know. They'd gotten so close now that she wanted to know everything about him before she no longer had an excuse to be around him all the time. 

Oh gods, how was she going to sleep without him? 

"You're already overthinking." He whispers, and she just huffs and tries her hardest to turn from him while his arms are around her and she's also stuck between him and the wall. For a moment she thought about throwing herself over him and getting up, just to prove a point, but she knew that was taking things a little too far. 

"I just wanted to be there for you like you are for me." She knew that didn't have nightmares like most demigods did; at least, if he got them, he hadn't had any since he'd been with her. But she also knew no one could deal with everything on their own, and if he wasn't telling her, who else was he telling? 

"I'm okay." He tells her, settling in and making her start to get comfortable again. She stretched, leaned against him and let her eyes close, trying to forget about his scar. 

Something about the conversation rubbed her the wrong way. 

~

The kids returned and the war was avoided, and now Annabeth seemed to have her own relationship problems. It made Y/N relieved, then sad, because she remembered that her own relationship was fake. In a few short weeks, she would have to 'break' Luke's heart. But that was in the future, and she could put it off as long as she could. She didn't want to have to break his heart, because she had a feeling it would only break her's.

Everything had been going great until her mother showed up.

This time, it hadn't been an IM. This time, her mother was waiting for her in the strawberry fields where she was supposed to meet with Luke.

"Mom?" Y/N asked, not sure if she was seeing correctly. Her mother's beautiful face brightened, and Y/N just blinked. She had never met her mother in person.

"My favorite child." Her mother said, making Y/N's eyes widen. She thought Silena was her favorite child. "I am so proud of you."

"What?" Y/N had been planning on talking to Luke about their breakup tonight, but her mother thew her off.

"You've broken the most talented swordsman's heart! The pain, oh, it almost breaks my own heart." Aphrodite put her hands over her own heart, and Y/N just furrowed her eyebrows.

"But, I haven't broken Luke's heart yet." Y/N says, thinking about how weird Luke had been acting when he asked to meet her there. She thought it was about them breaking up, but what if it was something else. Could he tell that she had fallen?

"No?" Her mother looked genuinely confused. "I sense such distress, such a hole of love in his heart." Y/N had never seen a god confused, and she didn't like this.

"Something's wrong." Y/N muttered, flinching when fireworks began to be set off.

"Yes," Her mother said gravely, grabbing her daughter's hand. "I will help you find him and set this right." She said it as if Y/N was supposed to break his heart over the pain he must've been feeling. Before she could protest, her mother was teleporting her. She ended up in front of Luke in the forest, her mother no where to be found. Luke looked angry, his sword was pointing right at her. It was actually pressing lightly into her chest, which made no sense. Luke would never do that.

"Y/N?" He asked, eyes widening. The anger melted away a little bit, but he still didn't look like the version of him she knew.

"What are you doing?" She asked, watching him lower his sword but not his guard. His eyes caught on something behind her, and she turned.

Percy was standing there, eyes wide and scared. He had his own sword in his hand, arms lifted in defense.

"Get out of the way, Y/N." Percy said, sounding older than his twelve years. It scared her, seeing this kid forced to mature.

"What are you doing?" She repeated, turning back to Luke. His expression had hardened slightly, but it still wasn't as angry as he had been when she first showed up.

"You don't want any part of this." Luke's voice was deep and dark, and Y/N felt her heart drop to her stomach.

"What have you done?" She rephrased, eyes wide as the fear sprinkled through her body in cold waves.

"What I had to." Luke said, as if that explained everything. "The gods are against us. They need us, but they don't care about us. I mean, have you ever even spoke with your mom is person?" He was trying to use her, and it hurt her feelings.

"I just did." She said quietly, turning fully to Luke. "And she told me you were heartbroken." She reveled at the shock that washed over his face.

"She must have been feeling someone else." Luke answered, and Y/N just shook her head.

"Luke, please." She walked toward him, grabbing his free hand. "We had something. We were pretending to date but you can't tell me you were acting the whole time." She felt tears in her eyes now. "Luke, I love you." She whispered finally. Filling the silence was the wind in the trees, the distant sound of fireworks. But not Luke's voice. He stayed quiet for a moment.

"It'll pass." He tells her quietly, tilting his head.

He might as well have stabbed her, the words hurt so bad. Using her shock, he threw his sword up, and not even letting go of her hand he caught it the opposite way, using the bottom to hit her head and send her to the ground.

"Goodbye," He muttered as he let her hand slip from his, stepping over her to face Percy.

Y/N could hear the breaking of her heart as she let her eyes close. 

//

tags: @avada-kedavra-bitch-187  @one-sweet-gubler

[primoredial-jade]

heartbeat

“ my heart's on fire for your love. “

pairings: childe x gn!reader

cw: awkward / wholesome love confession confrontations, spoilers of liyue’s archon quest, reader is a medic, reader has hair long enough to put behind ear, reader resides in liyue, few mentions of light injuries and wariness of death, childe calls reader “doc’” 

a/n: i had finished this and left it in the drafts from over a year ago! this is an alternative story i wrote for a prompt didi ( @monocaelia ) sent me for a drabble i wrote called to be in love, and i guess i totally went a different route for that one. hope you enjoy this one as well!!!

“i don’t get paid nearly enough for this.” 

the harbinger has the audacity to chuckle under his breath, leaning further back into the examination table with one of his hands covering his eye. he keeps his voice light despite the apparent discomfort he’s in. 

“don’t worry, doc’. i could offer a little donation to show my gratitude, if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

you can’t help the exasperated, heaving sigh that escapes your mouth. you knew his pockets ran deep, but you weren’t being serious. had it been anyone else, you would have kept quiet to maintain your professionalism, but with childe, this all went out the window. 

being a disciple of baizhu and gui at the renowned bubu pharmacy of liyue, you were prone to getting oddball patients every now and then. having to resuscitate a boy from nearly dying eating jueyun chili’s here, selling medicinal herbs to a woman that ate them raw on the spot there.

but truly, no one was as odd as childe. 

as a medical professional, you couldn’t just turn away a patient if they needed your help. the first time he turned up to the pharmacy with cuts and bruises all over in search of painkillers, you had an inkling who he was aligned with based off of the colors of his outfit alone, never mind the fact that he was obviously a foreigner. 

at that time, liyue harbor had only just survived osial’s attack, and word had gotten around that the fatui had much to do with it. while you remained as concise with your words as possible when handing him the bottle of painkillers, you could not repress the urge to make the passive-aggressive question that, 

“it really is a shame that some renowned factions, despite their cunning in their quest for world domination, do not have professional resident medics on standby. don’t you think?” 

you probably should have been killed on the spot for making such a crass comment. as his eyes rose to slowly meet your own, you found a deep sea torrent of both interest and fascination instead of anger. it had taken you aback, but you kept your chin held high.

needless to say, childe’s interest was piqued. 

he had begun to make it a habit to visit at least once every two days. granted, he really was injured or needed medicine when he dropped by, and you were definitely not happy about it; not only because it was him, but because you didn’t necessarily like to have regulars in this type of job. seeing the same patients, even if it was childe, getting hurt over and over again didn’t do your heart any favors.

sometimes, you would seriously consider if he got himself injured on purpose just to see you.

he initiated small talk during your examinations, and while at first you were curt and to the point, he managed to weasel his way past your walls. little by little, you were falling prone to his undeniable charm.

his stupid grin and quirk of his brow when you made an offhand comment made your pulse quicken, his dumb jokes that you didn’t understand unless you were snezhnayan still made you crack a smile, and the fact that he was always honest with you– you were beginning to tolerate him. maybe, more than you had anticipated.

it wasn’t like you were dumb. you could feel the longing looks he gave while you tended to his shallow wounds, his methods of finding cheeky ways to retain your attention for longer, the way he openly talked about his family. fatui don’t reveal personal information like that to just anybody.

today, it seemed as if he had gotten hit in the face with a dirtbomb from treasure hoarders, judging by the dirtied spots on his clothes. some of it must have gotten in his eye.

“i’m not even specialized in optometry,” you mumble, but he shrugs his shoulders innocently, disregarding your comment entirely.

“so long as you can help me see again, it doesn’t matter to me,” he answers easily.

“let me, then,” you urge in a quiet hush, peeling his hand away from his eye.

he has it still scrunched up in discomfort, and you can see the defensive tears from that eye covering the expanse of his face. while you know he isn’t necessarily crying voluntarily, it still brings a pang to your chest.

with the knowledge that he’s a capable fighter with a pain tolerance that is unrivaled, yet even just a little dirt can incapacitate him– it shocks you. at the end of the day, he was human, just like you.

and if he wasn’t so lucky the next time, it could even get in both of his eyes. who knows what would transpire on the battlefield next. he could… lose.

you’re clearly shaken up by your thoughts, and childe waves his free hand over your face, amusement clear on his expression.

“i didn’t come to one of the best pharmacy’s in teyvat to get spaced out on,” his tone softens, sounding more serious, “i’m fine, trust me. nothing to worry about, see?”

he gives a charming half-smile, and you resist the urge to pinch his cheek in retaliation.

“i’m going to flush it out. don’t force yourself to open it, but if you feel the discomfort easing up, just do it slowly,” you instruct, taking a bowl of clean water to his side.

childe, usually one to make more joking complaints, is uncharacteristically compliant with your demands. the room is quiet as he lets you pour the cool water over his eye, and slowly but surely, he opens it up again.

it’s red-rimmed and has seen better days, but you let out a hushed sigh of relief knowing that it’s still functioning fine from what you can tell so far.

“does it still hurt?” you ask, taking a towel and gently wiping away the wetness of the water on his face. it feels… oddly domestic, somehow.

childe shakes his head no, but squints up at you. “not really, but it’s still a little blurry.”

you hum, sliding closer to his face to get a better look, assessing it for a final time just to make sure.

this close, you can feel his breath fanning across your face. it distracts you, but not nearly as much as the endless pools of blue that are staring right into your own. it should unnerve you, the way they don’t sparkle like anyone else’s would, but it doesn’t.

his eyes flicker all across your face, and you feel heat rising up your neck.

once you nod in affirmation and pull away, it’s only then do you realize the flustered state that you left him in. he’s fidgeting, hands clenched into loose fists and ears pinking. you give him a funny look, unable to suppress a smirk.

“it looks fine to me, childe. thankfully it does not look like there will be lasting damage, but you should really see a qualified optometrist, so–“

“i have to tell you something.” he interrupts, looking bashful. you’re immediately on high alert. childe is never bashful.

“childe, i’m still on the clock,” you remind, already having some idea of what he might have to say.

“then consider this a… a patient telling you about their life, or something,” he finishes lamely, chuckling nervously. you can only chew on your lip in anticipation, blood pounding in your ears.

“well, i...” he takes a breath, “i think... well. i’m in love with a nurse,” ajax admits, posture suddenly straightening, confident. “i have been in love with them for a while now, actually. so… if i were to confess, how do you think they would react?” he purses his lips in anticipation at your response.

despite his unwavering voice, his red ears indicate how he really feels in this moment. he’s cute, you think. you briefly hold eye contact, smirking when he is the one to break it. it brings you a sick sense of pride to see such a powerful man brought to his knees from something like this.

he looks definitively taken aback at the airy chuckle you give, responding, “ah, i see.”

now he is really confused. “i– what?” he sputters, eyes darting over your face to get a read on you. 

the quirk in your brow, the knowing smile you have on your face. really, looking at how beautiful you look in this moment only confirms his feelings. 

the cogs in his brain are turning every which way, until finally, it clicks. he brings up a hand to his forehead, letting out a low grumble of embarrassment. with zero shame, he pulls you toward him by your wrist and leans his head against your shoulder. allowing him this brief moment of reprieve, you bring up a hand to card through his hair.

“you knew?” he asks, clearly ashamed at his lack of finesse. you snort, pulling away slightly to meet his eyes.

“well, you haven’t exactly been discreet…” 

he can only bury his head into your shoulder again, completely flushed.

“okay, well,” his breath tickles your skin as you give another chuckle, “i’ll ask again. how do you think this nurse would react?”

pulling completely away from him, you point up at the clock. he huffs, unhappy with your consistency to uphold professionalism.

“maybe you should ask this nurse in another hour after their shift is over.”

childe rolls his eyes. “alright, alright. then i hope this nurse will be happy to meet me at wanmin’s restaurant with their answer– i will only be expecting good things.” 

he laughs the entire way you shoo him out, and only eases up to lean down and tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear.

“i’ll see you soon, doc’.”

[girlpanthera]

CW// SH, drug use, military/war, mental health

Deciding to expand on some lore for my little AU. (none of this is exactly time/ historically accurate) Anyways, this takes place in India during / around the war in Vietnam. The Beatles headed off to India, deciding to take a break while political conflict heated up around the world. They wanted time to brainstorm more music ideas and bond with each other. during their time in india, they experimented with hard drugs, and they all had almost normal reactions to it except for Paul. he seemed to be specifically affected by it, beginning to act erratically and showing self harming behaviors. he was very short tempered and instead of being bossy, his angered reactions would result in hitting others, or harming himself before devolving into hypersexuality. most of this was taken out on John, since they were closer, while ringo and George left john to manage this new mentally fragile paul at most times, keeping to themselves.

As war broke loose, The Beatles were all spared from the draft, except for John and paul. (in connection to how i won the war and Sargent Paul in magical mystery tour)

Paul, due to his extreme self harming habits, was dishonorably discharged from his sargent position only a few months into the war, as his habits tended to not only disgust the other platoon mates, but also cause risk of him getting infections and effected his overall performance during war time. He returned back to India, leaving John, causing even more tenseness in their relationship. John was focused on anti war propaganda and trying to find a way to protect the platoon mates while paul was self absorbed within himself, his own image, and what he wanted.

When Paul returned he spoke about what he saw in Vietnam at night, He talked about “cats of every color” who would stand on two feet and play trumpets, making the platoon loose sleep. He said these cats came from the knots of the trees and would play tricks on them, each kitten had fur the color of a primary color. he mentioned the odd happening about how one of his platoon mates had grown the lower half of a leopard and returned to the platoon shortly after he had lost his legs to a bouncing betty and had been left in the fields to die. he blamed the self inflicted scratches on his neck on that specific platoon mate, stating that he would carry him like a kitten by the scruff to the fox hole at night, the same hole where a french soldier from ww1 had been buried, but seemed to be only in the first stages of decomposition oddly enough despite how long ago he had died.

Ringo passed this off as the acid and trauma getting to paul’s head, but George was specifically intrigued by paul’s story about the women in Vietnam. about how they were all leopards. They were generously curvy and didn’t speak, but kept the soldiers nice and clean and offered them tea. he said these women existed in india, and the uk, and America, too. he said all women were secretly these patheras. he called them “the wild women”

Paul began wearing only womens underwear and button ups, he would take George to the fields to get high and he would talk about how “Paul was dead: and that “the original Paul flew out the windshield of a weaponry jeep earlier that year, the second week in India” and this Paul didn’t seem to be pleased with needing to act like someone he wasn’t.

Paul began getting much closer with George, even getting physical with him despite george’s hesitation and disgust at paul’s actions. George hated this new Paul, yet admired him deeply. his actions disgusted him but his charm and allure and stories made him stay wrapped around paul’s finger.

soon George even began getting gifts from these wild women. he would see the cats of every color, losing sleep at night to their trumpets, and he would check the feet of the soldiers that would knock on their door, just to assure they had no leopard feet. George began losing it as well, he gave into paul’s touches and rough sexual behavior, whereas ringo watched them slip out of it, spending most of his time trying to make them take meds and hide sharp objects from them. John was scheduled to come home within a week, as he had blown off his own foot. He needed escape from the war as well,and from what he wrote, the platoon thought so as well. they made excuses for him, and one member even took the blame for blowing off his damn foot.

THIS IS ALL I HAVE FOR NOW SOOOO. i’ll be making more art for it :P

@littlemiss-noname

[formulafics]

Hi there! I just wanted to come on here and say firstly I love your fics so much like they are amazingly good and also wanted to say keep up the good work :)

And secondly what tips would you give someone who wants to make their own smau?

And I hope you are having a good day/night ❤️❤️

A fic writers guide to figuring out how to create your own smau’s, and not lose your mind doing it!

A/N: Hi! Thank you so much, I appreciate it 🥹🫶🏻 Also, i’m sorry it’s taken me a while to answer you! <3 Since I get asked this quite a bit, I went ahead and made an ‘official’ post for it. You can ask any other questions in the comment, or through my ask box!

First and foremost, I’ve made a few posts about this, and as I always say, i’m still figuring it out myself, so take this advice lightly, as you may not agree with all of it as you make your own works! This is solely from my experiences as someone who’s been writing and making fanfictions for at least 4 years.

✎ ✐ CREATING SMAU’S 📱

This account is the first account i’ve made Social Media au’s on! Therefore, i’ve only been doing these for a little over 4 months.

My first tip is to play around with your layout! When you read smau’s, i’m sure you notice that almost every fic has a different look. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, just mess with it until you find what you like!

My second tip is to use whatever app your creating in the fic as reference. What I mean is, even though I do not use twitter, I have it downloaded so I can look at tweets and the responses, in an attempt to mirror that in my works! Same goes for instagram, and any other social media app you use! I also use the profile pictures that the drivers have by looking at their pages, as well as what other drivers/celebs like their posts.

Add on to the second tip: While I suggest doing that, It is up to you! Youre creating a fictional story and if you’d rather take the likes and responses into your own hands, that’s okay! That’s a part of learning what you like, but I added it as it’s something that I personally find incredibly helpful at times.

My third tip, and possibly my most important one is to have. a. layout. Fanfictions, for me, are so much easier to create when I take the time to lay it all out! You can either make a draft on Tumblr or use your notes app to just make bullet points of the order your story should go. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it’s genuinely so helpful in allowing you to keep track of your story, as well as not missing any of the points you want in your fic! I find that if I make a smau without a layout, there are often small mistakes that I only notice after it’s posted, and while it’s not that bad, It’s still much more satisfying to not have those mistakes.

My fourth tip is working smarter not harder. That’s not to say that if you don’t use these things, you’re not smart - in fact, to any smau creators that edit everything themselves instead of using a generator, mad props to you. However, if you’re interested in the generator, I use it for my twitter posts! I also added some other apps I use when creating my fics.

⌕ TWITTER GENERATOR LINK

-> used to create my twitter threads

⌕ COPY AND PAST SYMBOLS

-> symbols used in my fics, and to decorate my blog!

my symbol archive: © ★ ❀ ⋆ ⤷ ⤻ ⌕ ⌇ ⌗ ✎ ✐

⌕ PICSART

-> used to crop pictures, add filters to them, as well as the border you see on my tweets! it’s free (with some restrictions if you don’t pay), but still has a good selection of ways to edit.

⌕ PHONTO

-> the best phont app i’ve come across. used to create my header and any pictures you see with words on them, such as the header for this here post!

⌕ CANVA

-> i don’t use this one a ton, mostly because i forget about it, but it’s incredibly helpful for creating magazine esque covers, and i usually would use it for adding an article to my fic!

My fifth tip is to not worry about the length of your smau. It doesn’t matter if your fic is one instagram post or 20 of them, just do what you want to do, and what you enjoy doing!

Other than that, I honestly don’t have many tips! Just take your time, use inspo when needed, and have fun with it. At the end of the day, people just enjoy having more content of their favorite drivers!

✎ ✐ WRITING FANFICTION 💻

While I have yet to write full fanfictions on this account, a majority of my time in the fanfiction universe has been spent writing, so here are some tips for that, if anyone wants them!

1. Take your time: It’s so easy to get into the “I just want this done” mindset, but that is not helpful at all! It’s important to try and remember that there’s no deadline for you to complete your works. Slow and steady wins the race. I once wrote a 15k word fanfiction and it took me over two weeks, and even then, I tried to rush it, and that gave me MAJOR burn out. In fact, after that fic, I deactivated the account I had, and took a long break from something I enjoy, writing.

2. Use inspiration to your advantage: Even if you already have a good plot and layout for your story, it never hurts to find pictures and prompts that you can include. Take the time to understand the overall vibe/concept of your plot, then take to tumblr to try and find some pictures that fit it! This can also help motivate you when you’re feeling writers block.

3. As with the smau’s, have a layout. When I write fics, especially long, in depth pieces, I like to break the plot apart and write in portions, then add it together at the end, rather than one straight shot for the whole thing! I hate when i’m in the middle of a story and realize I completely missed a certain scenario I wanted to have in the fic, or when I forgot to emphasize something.

And those are all of the big tips I have for writing!

✎ ✐ THE MENTAL ASPECT 🧠

While writing and creating fanfiction is fun, and can be a stress reliever, it can also be a stress inducing activity, especially when you run an account doing it. As someone with ADHD, and a chronic overthinker, I have tendencies to stress myself out with a number of things, so here are some tips on avoiding that.

First, remember that this is a hobby. This is supposed to be fun, so if you aren’t having fun, consider stepping back. Try to determine why you’re not enjoying it, and go from there.

“I feel overwhelmed with requests.” Almost anyone who writes fanfiction has likely been here - so, know you aren’t alone. When requests start overwhelming you, I would suggest to close them, then take a break from them! Remember that they are requests, not requirements. If you don’t like an idea or aren’t motivated to write it, do not write it. As much as it can suck to have to deny a request or put it on the back burner, it’s not worth forfeiting something you enjoy.

“I just don’t know how to write/create this” That’s okay! Like almost anything in life, it’s a process of learning. Yes, it’s frustrating, but try to remember that this will probably teach you something that will be helpful in the future! If you do not want to take a break, consider looking at prompts and inspiration for your story. Take the time to reflect on your original plot or idea, and either try to change things, or add things that help your idea come together. Also know that if you’re struggling with ideas, many fic writers are probably willing to help you out! While I can’t speak for everyone, i’m more than happy to help.

“I want to write, but at the same time, I don’t enjoy it that much.” This is a feeling that you either understand or don’t, and it’s a good thing if you don’t, but is completely okay if you do! This is a sign of burnout or writers block, and unfortunately, many of us go through it. Like any other hobby, when you do it for an extended period of time, or hyperfixate on it all the time, you may find that you want to do it, but can’t enjoy it. Time should fix this, but you can also reach out to other writers, or even those who read your work! When this happens, either take a step back to remind yourself why you enjoy writing, or take on a new idea, with no commitment. Just write something that comes to your mind, and hopefully it’ll allow you to unclog your brain. (That sounds kind of mean, but I don’t mean for it to lmao.)

Secondly, if you can have a friend or mutual that will help build on your ideas, that is so incredibly helpful. Even if said person is just there to provide some prompts or pictures when you need it, it’s a life saver. That being said, I know not everyone just has this, so the least I can offer is my own inbox and dms.

Huge shoutout to @renarots. I’m sure by now you guys are used to me mentioning her in my fics, but she truly truly has helped me so so much and I cannot imagine making these fics without them. 🥹❤️ And also they’re one of the best friends i’ve ever had, echo chamber aside.

Lastly, write whatever the fuck you want to write. Fanfiction is a world of its own. There’s room for any and everything. As long as you aren’t being downright offensive and harmful, write whatever it is you’d like to, because there is bound to be a number of people who absolutely cherish your work. That’s part of the beauty of this app.

[mikashisus]

Memories of You

“i’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. i’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. i’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you i’m not afraid of your dark.”

— andrea gibson

summary: In which, Barbatos reflects on a distant past, a time where he felt the cruel sting of first love.

pairing: venti x fem!reader

content warnings: death, angst

wc: 1.7k

author’s notes: this has been sitting in my drafts for awhile. decided to post it here since i dont want it to go to waste yk.

i recommend listening to iris by the goo goo dolls while u read! enjoy! <3

Aether shuffled his way through the busy streets of Mondstadt, craning his neck to look for the ever playful bard.

This time of year had rolled around once again: the time of the Windblume Festival.

Mondstadt was a romantic and free city, without the rule of royalty. And although many years had passed since the people last saw their beloved archon, he still wandered the streets as a carefree bard— an archon hidden in plain sight, though his "disguise" actually should've given him away a long time ago.

At the sound of singing, Paimon gasped and grabbed Aether's attention by pulling on his arm. "Look!" She pointed ahead, where Venti had been standing in front of the mighty statue of Barbatos. "The tone-deaf bard is performing again! Let's get closer!" She floated above the heads of the crowd, glancing back at Aether while he struggled to get to the front.

Akin to Venti's many other songs, this one told a story of a harrowing tale. Of a love found through festivals and flowers, of a maiden with stars in her eyes and a smile as warm as the sun.

She was as beautiful as the sky on a cloudless night, with grace like that of royalty. Every word she spoke flowed off her tongue like liquid gold, and each press of her fingertips were as light as a feather. Crafted from the finest marble and made to be worshipped like a goddess.

She fell in love with a boy, one filled with determination and courage. A boy who cared a little too much for others and never for himself.

A boy who sought freedom, up until the very end.

The story continued, with the girl clueless as to the boy's death. Not having witnessed his final moments and final words, she was left in the dark, never to know he passed on because his form was taken on by someone else.

His memory was preserved, and she found him after a long while of wandering on her own. Tears were shed, and wine was brewed in celebration, and as the Anemo Archon bestowed a blessing of protection onto her, he whispered to her through the wind and together they created what was now known to be the Windblume Festival.

The people of Mondstadt joined in, and the tradition was carried down through the generations. The song ended on a happy note, but Aether could sense there was something more to the story.

As the people around him clapped for Venti's stellar performance and eventually dispersed, Aether took his chance to finally speak with the bard.

"Ah, Aether! Paimon!" Venti greeted with a smile, his voice a little strained. There was something clearly wrong. "How are you enjoying another Windblume Festival? Is it as exciting as the others?"

Paimon hummed excitedly. "Mhm! It's so nice seeing the city decked out! And I bet you're having the time of your life with all this wine too!" She pointed accusingly to the wine left at the foot of the Barbatos statue, along with multiple bouquets of cecilias.

Venti laughed nervously before clearing his throat. "Shh!" He brought a finger to his lips and spoke softly, "Don't blow my cover!"

"Who was that song about?" Aether questioned, getting straight to the point instead of beating around the bush.

He knew Venti was familiar with whomever was in that ballad, as he knew many people throughout history and was knowledgeable on many events. He knew how the Golden Apple Archipelago was formed (because he was behind it), the history of all the festivals in Mondstadt (because he created them), and especially— what happened 2,600 years ago during the reign of Decarabian.

Venti's face fell, a solemn smile adorning his lips. "Ah, that. Nothing gets past you, does it?" He tried to lighten the mood with a small laugh. He sighed, "Meet me at Old Mondstadt. I'll tell you the story in full there. But first, there's something I must do. I'll see you there."

Aether nodded, watching as Venti disappeared into a gust of wind and dandelions. He followed the bard's orders and began to trek into the mountains, ignoring Paimon's theories and complaints on the way.

The wind blew especially hard here, a testament to the ruins that withstood time. He wandered the outskirts as he waited for Venti, taking in the breathtaking scenery.

A gust of wind blew his braid around, and he squinted his eyes until it died down a little. There was no doubt in his mind that that had been Venti making a grand entrance. He turned to his right, and sure enough, his suspicions were correct. The lonesome bard stood there with a look of nostalgia in his eyes and a small bouquet of cecilias in his hand.

"It was over two thousand years ago, before the fall of Decarabian," he began, his tone turning serious. Aether could tell he was no longer talking to Venti, and was now speaking with Barbatos. There was always a notable difference between the two.

Venti was a carefree bard who represented the true meaning of freedom. He had no worries and lived everyday to its fullest. He traveled the world and sang songs from the past, present, and even the future. He was jovial and exceptionally fun to be around. Barbatos on the other hand, was on the calmer and wiser side. He was full of regrets, and although being labeled the god of freedom, he wasn't free in the slightest. He carried the memories of his fallen friends, and held a deep rooted fear of the heavens above. He's seen the cruelty of the world, experienced it for himself, and drank his worries away until he felt numb.

He was kind and gentle towards his people, loved them with all his heart and protected them from threats. He promised them everlasting freedom, even if it meant giving up his own in turn for it. He never abandoned them, and always listened to the prayers they whispered along the wind. He tried his best to answer said prayers, giving hope to his people and blessing them with joyful days. He walked among them, saw them as equals and never as inferior.

Among the gods Aether has met, two have struck a serious chord within him. The gods of freedom and wisdom, two who were the kindest and most loving.

"I met a girl..." Venti continued, taking a sharp inhale. "Well... my friend did. The two of them met during the rebellion. They loved each other dearly, and before I knew what was happening, I had also fallen in love with her." He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts.

"I watched as they lived out their days happily together, despite what was going on. I thought it cruel to wish that was me loving her instead of him, but... I supported them, because that was the only thing I could do." He swallowed the lump forming in his throat. "And then it happened... my friend passed, and his final words to me were a song. I ascended to godhood not long after, and brought his memory back into the world."

"And now his form represents what the Anemo Archon looks like..." Aether said softly, receiving a slow nod in return. It was crazy to think about that: that the Anemo Archon statue in the city, and the statues of The Seven littered throughout Mondstadt depicted the nameless bard's form, and not Barbatos'. In fact, he never realized that until now.

"I couldn't let his memory be forgotten." Venti shook his head. "And now it never will be." A small silence passed as the three of them let that fact sink in. Venti closed his eyes and continued his story. "After his death and my ascension, I found her again. She was older— she was a mortal after all. And her beautiful features had not changed at all. Our reunion was bittersweet, as it wasn't me she was looking at, but my friend. It hurt, but I dared not tell her my true identity.

"We continued on, and I got to love her in his stead. I wrote her poems and sang her ballads, even sung some of the ones he dedicated to her. As the Anemo Archon and the god of freedom, I sought out peace and freedom for my people. I made festivals, one of them being the Windblume Festival. I dedicated the festival of love and cheer to her, and in the song I wrote about her, I tweaked the story a little.

"I changed it so that both her and I created the Windblume Festival. That way, she would always be a huge part of Mondstadt's history. Just like my friend."

"What happened after?" Paimon asked, a little too invested into this story. So much so, that she didn't realize how much of an impact her question had on him.

He bit his lip, his eyes turning glossy as he looked down at the cecilias he held tightly in his hands. "She died, never knowing what truly happened to the one she loved, and never knowing that I am Barbatos." The wind picked up, a clear sign of his bubbling emotions, and he made quick work to calm down. He couldn't be seen like this, vulnerable and upset. It tarnished his image as a jovial bard.

He led them inside the ruined tower, descending a few sets of stairs until they reached a spacious room. He walked ahead as the other two gawked in wonder, and knelt down next to a masterless vision. Her vision. He placed the bouquet of cecilias overtop of the vision, closing his eyes and paying his respects before he stood back up.

"It's okay, though. She didn't need to know that I am Barbatos to know that I loved her."

author’s notes: didn't realize until after i wrote this that the windblume festival was created FOR the anemo archon & not by him 💀 mb ig

barbatos created ludi harpastum tho, i do know that. i think i got the two mixed up when writing but wtv. we'll just pretend he created the windblume festival lmfao

this was written before the events of 4.0.

masterlist!

[cowboysandpilots]

For the Love of Hockey— Ch. 1

Disclaimer: I love hockey, and I love watching it, but I have absolutely no idea of the inner workings of the NHL, what it's like to play on a team or the rules and regulations of any hockey association. Please take everything I write in this fic with a grain of salt, as I've taken a lot of creative liberties to make the story work out as I want and have planned.

A/N- Hi, I'm so happy you're here. :) If you would like to support me and my writing, please remember to hit the reblog button, as Tumblr has no algorithm and likes (while appreciated) do nothing to get creators work seen. If you would like to support me further, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi. If you're curious about where your support would go, I'm currently at $80/$200 for my monthly groceries, so any support would go towards that. :)

Amazing hockey text divider was made by: @writercole ❤️ (If you have your Tumblr palette set on goth rave, it may be a little hard to see)

Bradley Bradshaw is a legacy player. His dad played hockey, both his uncles played hockey, and if he had any brothers, he's sure that they would've played too. It's not that he doesn't love the game; he does; it's just that he's under so much pressure, and he can never seem to live up to it. He plays it safe; he doesn't rush the puck or take illegal hits. He has a clean record with zero minutes in the penalty box, and he's very proud of that.

He may not be the best player, but he's got the best sportsmanship, and no matter what fans or reporters say, no one can take that away Until Hangman comes along. The man gets under his skin like no other. He's a cocky rookie, first year in the NHL and the talk of the town. He has no respect for the older players and no problems breaking the rules. He has more penalty minutes than any other rookie in the league, and somehow, people love him for it.

The first time that Bradley sees Jake's smug grin, it's on the TV. He doesn't know the kid, has never played against him, but the way he's boasting about the team he got drafted to and the way he's answering every reporter's questions like he's god's gift to hockey, has Bradley's blood boiling. He clicks off the TV and chucks his remote to the other side of his couch; he should go to bed; he's got training in the morning anyway.

Despite his best efforts, Bradley can't get to sleep. He gravitates toward his phone, which is what always happens, even though the blue light makes his tired eyes burn. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew that the internet would be full of praise, love and ridiculous fawning for the rookie whose teammates had dubbed 'Hangman; he still opens Twitter and scrolls through his feed. It's like he can't help it, and why he chose to focus on this asshole instead of sleep, he'll never know.

The morning practice, surprisingly, isn't hell, even though Bradley barely slept and has to listen to his teammates go on and on about Hangman.

"What do you think about the new guy, Roo?" Mickey asks once they're off the ice and all crowded in the locker room.

"Don't think about him at all," Bradley answers coolly, passing him to get to the showers;— That's a lie. He spent last night scowling at his phone. He had to stop doing that; he needed to focus on this year's season and helping his team make it to the Stanley Cup. What kind of captain would he be if he let some cocky rookie get to him? It wasn't even guaranteed that the two teams would play against each other.

As Bradley's terrible luck would have it, the media coverage and general hysteria about Jake "Hangman" Seresin only got worse. The kid could apparently do no wrong, which only made his insufferable ego so much bigger. It gets to the point where Bradley doesn't even watch TSN anymore because Jake's smugness is practically dripping through his flatscreen; it makes his skin burn.

By some sort of miracle, Bradley has three days of blissful silence. Well, silence from hearing about Hangman anyway. Three days off to travel and get settled into a new city for another away game where he bonds with his team, doesn't watch the news, and spends most of his time on the ice. It's amazing. It's the most calm Bradley has felt in his life.

Much to the dismay of their coach, part of the team's bonding consists of going out to drink. Bradley, as captain, makes the case to Iceman, their coach, who got and kept that nickname when he, himself, played in the NHL.

"C'mon Ice, it's called team building!" Bradley grins. It was true that the team was a lot looser and in better spirits after a night out as long as they kept themselves in check and made sure the hangovers wouldn't be too bad.

Ice couldn't help but sigh and shake his head. He knew all too well what a team could get up to on a night out. It's not that he didn't trust Bradley; he did. It was hard to say no to the kid, and it didn't help that he was his uncle. Or really, his Godfather but Bradley's been calling him uncle since he was a kid, of course not anymore, now it's 'Ice' or 'Coach' and sometimes when he's in trouble, it's 'Sir'. He guesses that's how none of the other players know, he's sure that they would give Bradley a hard time if they knew so it was always an unspoken rule that neither of them would say anything.

"You'll look after them, won't you? Make sure that no one gets too drunk and nothing happens to your team?" Ice always calls the team Bradley's team, always emphasizes it when he's talking about being a role model. That's what the captain's for for everyone else to look up to, but Bradley had to admit that it was a little draining. Sometimes, he wanted to let loose like the rest of them.

Bradley nods. As always, he'll make sure that nothing gets broken, bones or otherwise, and no one gets arrested. "I'll make sure." He nods dutifully.

The day goes by in a blur after that, and when he gets back to his hotel room, Bradley takes a much-needed shower. He almost collapses into his bed with just the damp towel around his hips, but not before there's a knock on his hotel door. He pulls on his briefs, a nice pair of jeans and runs his fingers through his curls before he walks up to the door and pulls it open. The person who is standing on the other side is not to he expects.

"Hey, Bob." He offers easily.

The man makes no attempt to hide the fact that he's looking Bradley up and down but not in the way of checking him out, more like the way he's judging Bradley, buttoning up his Hawaiian shirt. "Are you wearing that to the bar?"

"I was planning on it. Why, what's wrong with it?"

"Nothing, just... you want to meet girls, right?" Bob gives a small and teasing smile. He has a way of making jokes that are just on the edge of mean but somehow never make Bradley angry.

"Ha-ha," He huffs sarcastically. "I can't be a designated driver if I leave with a girl, now can I?" Bradley has to admit that he would like to meet someone, but it wasn't really on the top of his priority list.

The bar is much too loud and crowded for a sober Bradley. The sound of the bass buzzes behind his eyes, and it makes him want to slip his sunglasses on, but there are only two types of people who wear sunglasses inside, blind people and douchebags. Bradley was neither.

He was making his way back to the bar for a second round at his teammate's request when he was knocked into. He doesn't exactly know what happened, but he knows he wasn't carrying a drink, so why is his shirt all wet? "Fuck." He grunts, looking down to assess the damage.

"What the hell, man? You know you owe me a drink." The voice is accusatory, like the entire thing was Bradley's fault and not the guy whose words are slurring enough; he probably didn't need that drink anyway.

Bradley looks up, lips parted, ready to tell the asshole off, except he recognizes that asshole; it's the same one who's been lighting up his TV screen and making him roll his eyes so much he's surprised they're not stuck. Jake Seresin.

A/N- Thanks so much for reading! Right now, this fic is looking like it's gonna have at least 10 chapters, and because I'm a crazy person, I've already started outlining a sequel. Lol until next time, friends. 💕

Tagging people who said they were interested: @cryinginthebronco @jojobeaner @rigmarole-07 @agent-elle @nerdygirl1234 @milobyelo @callsign-crow @itshoneywhatever @flowersonmymind1016 @seresinning @bloodanddiamonds

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

Eddie, Baby

Here’s a little drabble I have had in my drafts for a while now, but now it’s a cute little oneshot! (On AO3 too!)

“Robin, I need your help.”

They were waiting outside the school at the moment, the bell was due to ring any minute and it was a rare Friday they both had off, so they were picking up the kids to go to the arcade.

Well, they were picking up one half, Eddie was going to be picking up the other half and his bandmates.

“What’s wrong now, Dingus?”

“I need a way to make Eddie realize I’ve been flirting back this whole time.” 

“Why haven’t you just made a move already?”

“I don’t know if he’s actually into me or that’s just how he is..he could just be flirting to be annoying, but I’m doing it for real and I don’t think he realizes.”

“So why do you need to make a big to-do about it? Just tell him to either date you or back off with the flirting.”

“I don’t know Robin, I just want to do something special. I’m really really into him. Like, so into him, I don’t think I will ever ask anyone else out ever again.”

“Oh dingus..”

“I know that sounds dramatic but it’s true.”

“You know I’m going to tell this story at y’all’s wedding right?”

“Oh shut up..” Steve says, turning red.

“I think I have an Idea.” Steve says to Robin one day at work about a week later. They are both working at one of those novel/retro/50s style diners now while they work through their common core classes at the local community college. 

“Oh yeah? Shoot.” Robin’s taken care of all the customers on her side of the order window so she leans forward on the back counter to talk to Steve through it, who’s grilling on the other side.

“I’ve been writing..”

“Writing…?”

“Writing music. I may or may not have written a song about Eddie.”

Robin is stunned for a moment then says “Wow, you really are gone on him, huh?”

Robin expected a “Shut up, Robs!” or something, but she got a “...Yeah, I really am.” instead.

“Okay Dingus, what do you need me to do?”

“Can you play the drums?”

“Uh, yeah a little?”

“Do you think you can get Nancy to help? She plays piano..”

Again Robin is at a loss for words. “Sure, Steve, I’ll ask her.”

-----

They had been practicing for weeks when their opportunity to play it for Eddie made itself known.

“Heeeyyy Stevie~” Eddie drawled when he came into the diner that day.

Steve, who was mopping before closing up, sighed slightly and took out his earbud before answering “Yes, Eddie?” Not looking up at the metalhead.

Metalhead was said with love mind you, and Eddie is definitely one. Despite it being 40-ish years ago now, Eddie dresses like, listens to the music of, and lives like a metalhead from the 80s. Like he was plucked right out of 1985 and brought to the present day. The only discrepancy you may see are the beat up old iPhone (and beat up is putting it modestly, screen cracked and blacked out in places, busted headphone jack that had to be twisted into just right in order to work, no case to be seen) and the earbuds he always has tucked into one or both of his ears.

“Wanna be one of my groupies?”

“Eddie, you don’t need to ask me like that every time you guys have a gig, just tell me when and where and I’ll be there to throw my panties at you.”

Eddie beamed at him “Next Saturday there is an open mic night up in Indy. We’re going to go and take our chances at there being an industry scout somewhere in the crowd!”

“Sounds great Eds! We’ll be there.” Steve smiled back at him “I’ll let Robs and Nancy know too.”

“Maybe we should make it a weekend? You know of any places that aren’t ungodly expensive to stay at?”

“I’ll be able to find something, send me the address of the place and I will look. And for the love of god, PLEASE use the talk to text so I don’t have to decipher what you were trying to type on only half your keyboard.”

Somehow Eddie’s grin got even bigger. “You’re the best Stevie, I’ll send it to you! He said as he headed out the door, blowing Steve a kiss like he always does.

Steve rolled his eyes and pretended to catch the kiss and tuck it into his apron pocket.

Steve put his headphone back in and called Robin. “Hey Robs, no no I’m good just finishing up on the floors. Eddie came in an– no of course not, just being normal Eddie. Yeah so he came in and said Corroded Coffin are going to an open mic night up in Indy. Yeah. Yeah, not this coming Saturday, Next Saturday. Yeah I think it’s time..let Nancy know will you? Also you know I hate to ask, but will you pleeeeeaase ask Frank for us to have that weekend off? You know he loves you. Thanks Rob, you’re the best. I’ll talk to you later. Love you too, bye.”

Steve hangs up, and smiles to himself before finishing up on the floors.

—--

Eddie was vibrating with excitement all the way up to Indy. Steve had booked the hotel rooms for them all, and he, Robin, and Nancy headed up there early to get everything brought to their rooms before they’d meet at the bar.

They head straight there and park around back where they can start unloading and find Robin’s truck already there with Steve already hefting some of Eddie’s amps out of the back.

“Hey handsome, come here often?” Eddie calls to Steve as he gets out of his van.

Steve chuckled at that “Should ask you the same thing, hot stuff.”

“Girls, girls, you’re both super pretty and all that, but Corroded Coffin is two sets away, you guys gotta get going.” Robin calls out from the backdoor, pointing at her bare wrist like she’s tapping on a watch

“Yeah yeah, we’re coming.” Eddie rolls his eyes then tries to jump up to the level of the loading dock.

Big distinction there, the “tries”, since he doesn't quite make it and would have fallen right on his ass if Steve didn’t just about snatch him out of thin air.

“Good lord, Eddie. You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”

Steve’s strong arms were grasped tight around Eddie’s waist and Eddie had to really concentrate hard on not letting his brain go all fuzzy at the contact.

“You should’ve let me fall Stevie, would’ve been a perfect chance to tell you how hard I’ve fallen for you.” Eddie bats his eyelashes and clasps his hands together at his chest. 

Steve rolls his eyes then pulls Eddie close saying “You’re such a tease.” before letting him go and heading inside with Eddie’s sweetheart in her case.

‘Fucking hell.’ is all Eddie can think before his feet are carrying him inside to get set up.

 Their set goes amazing! Everything went perfect, and he could see Steve, Robin, and Nancy at the bar, and even a couple other people that looked a bit too stiff to be regular patrons...

They take their bows, and head off stage, taking their amps and equipment off with them in a couple quick trips to get the stage cleared for the next group. Dropping their things into Eddie’s van and saying a quick goodbye to the other guys (who were too young to drink anyhow, and giving them the keys for their rooms.), Eddie headed back inside to search for his other friends.

He was stopped briefly by one of those stiff-looking people as he headed through the backstage area, Eddie promising to give him a call once he'd done his research about signing.

Eddie barely registers that the emcee is introducing the next act because holy fuck how hard is it to find three barely adults in one fucking gay bar? He wants to tell them the news and Jesus Christ he’s about to really start worrying (Did they get kicked out for some reason? Did they not like his show and just up and left before they were done?) when he hears a new voice through the speakers.

Eddie freezes.

No.

There’s no way.

He turns around slowly and sure enough, there they are. Up on the stage. 

‘How’d they get up there without me seeing them? We were literally up on that same stage not 5 minutes ago??’ Eddie thinks to himself before he’s really registering what Steve is saying.

“My name is Steve and these two lovely ladies, Robin and Nancy, are here to help me confess something to one special person in the audience.”

The crowd oohs and ahs, everyone looking at everyone else around them wondering who the lucky person is; Eddie wants to too but he physically cannot get his eyes to move from Steve’s back as he turns to check on his equipment because no fucking way.

No fucking way is Steve about to start singing.

‘I mean, he’s literally on a stage with a fucking guitar around his neck (hot), what do you think he’s gonna do up there? Strip?’ Now that’d be a sight.

But as it turns out, there is so fucking way.

The tune starts off small and quiet like a lullaby from Nancy’s piano before Steve starts playing himself, running his fingers up and down the neck of his guitar strumming out some little pop tune that Eddie really wants to make jokes about, really wants to say “Of course that’d be what Steeeve Harrington would be able to play.” but he can’t because then Steve starts to sing.

Oh hey, they actually sound really good, where did this come from?? Also, who is Steve singing to? Eddie knows it can’t be him, he’s been flirting with Steve constantly since Eddie had come out to them, and Steve has taken it in stride, even joking along with him a couple times but neve_

“Whoa, but I hear your voice; it calls me like the night, it’s singing in each syllable I write..”

“Oh Eddie, baby, won’t you come to my arms tonight? I beg and plead you, please succumb to my charms tonight.”

Jesus H. Christ this is not happening.

‘Me??‘ Eddie’s brain short circuits. ‘He’s confessing this to me? That can’t be right…’

Eddie does and doesn’t want to believe it but he can’t help but to believe his own mind’s ramblings while processing the lyrics to Steve's song.

It's been about 10 whole seconds of existing in the same air as Steve's singing and Eddie wants to scream, cry, and throw up simultaneously.

For the rest of the song Eddie’s eyes are glued to Steve. His face, his hands on the guitar (hot, again), the sweat shining on his forehead and sticking a few stray strands of hair to it.

When they finish, the crowd erupts into applause and wolf whistles as they take a small bow and step down from the stage.

Eddie thought his feet would be frozen but he finds himself surging forward towards the backstage area, pushing bodies aside, pushing doors open, all the way to the back of the bar where he finds them loading their gear back into Robin’s truck.

“Eddie! Did you like the song?” Eddie hears Robin ask him but his focus is trained on Steve, who looked over at him as soon as Robin had called out Eddie’s name. 

Eddie registered a bit of fear in his expression as he stalked toward Steve, before he leaping on top of him, knocking them both to the ground as Eddie kissed Steve stupid.

“You are. So fucking. Hot I can’t. Stand it.” Eddie punctuated each section with a kiss to somewhere on Steve’s grinning face.

“I take it you liked the song?”

Eddie kissed Steve full on the mouth, starting off with the feverish pace he had when he jumped him, but softening it as Steve’s hold on his waist (and his lips against his own) grounded him.

“I loved the song, Stevie.” Eddie said when he finally broke away for air. “Why though?”

“Why did I write it?” Steve asked, confused.

Eddie nodded.

“I wrote it for you.”

“Obviously! But you could’ve just asked me out, Steve! I’ve been full-on flirting with you for months now.”

Steve laughed, stroking Eddie’s cheekbone with his thumb. “I wanted to make it as memorable as you, Eds.” he said before pulling Eddie back down into another kiss.

[k-n-e-o]

Nct Dream as high school students

This has been in my drafts for years! I’ve just reread it now and I think it’s pretty decent to post lol.

This is also mildly based off of my own highschool experience (which it’s now been years since I’ve graduated so obviously not current experience lol)

Disclaimer: this doesn’t have mark in it because he wasn’t back in nct dream at the time of writing, so I had it in my head that he already graduated and is in college

—————-

[ Renjun ]

This is used a lot but it fits him so well

He’s our little artist

Loved art class

Helps the drama kids make the props and costumes

Made a chair once for an art project, absolutely hated it (this was taken from something a friend of mine had to do once lol)

He was covered in black, red, yellow, and blue wood stain for weeks

He also smelled like saw dust for a while too

I think he’s the only one that would make and bring his lunch just because he doesn’t want to have to deal with the other idiots at the school during lunch

Him and the boys stay in the art room at lunch, it’s quieter

I want to say he’s the only one in the group that actually studies

But knowing this group of boys,

None of them are getting anything done lol

[ Jeno ]

We all know this boy is the jock of the group.

He’s also one of the responsible ones

Being the driver of the dreams carpool to school everyday

He also uses the schools fitness centre (basically a weight room and stuff)

Gets his lunch money stolen by Haechan all the time so he now brings double so he’s not asking Jaemin to steal stuff from the cafeteria

Track and field boy

Probably beats his own records every year

Also probably does football with Jaemin (spoiler?)

A goofball in all his classes, especially the ones he shares with Jaemin

Leaves little smiley faces on his friends work when they aren’t looking.

[ Haechan ]

I’m sorry but he’s a theatre boy

Auditions for all of the plays

Leaves his I.D card on the stage all the damn time

So he can’t sign out a computer when he needs one

Ends up using his phone instead and sometimes gets in trouble for it

He’s known all around the school even if people don’t actually know him they know of him

Every teacher knows him too

And they only roll their eyes when he’s loud and goofy in class

I won’t lie he probably doesn’t know any of the names of people in his class so he has to ask whenever he’s paired up with them for projects even though he’s been going to school with them for years already (how can you tell I was the person who people forgot lol)

But they can’t be mad at him for long when he’s got them bent over in laughter a few seconds later

[ Jaemin ]

In culinary arts, so he gets free food sometimes

Especially when he works in the cafeteria at lunch

Sometimes if jeno doesn’t have lunch money Jaemin will sneak some fries out for him

Also on the football team

(I don’t know why I see him doing this but I do so fight me)

Forgets his water bottle all the damn time so had to do push-ups whenever any of the football coaches catch him

Heart breaker of the century

Has girls (and some guys) staring at him and stalking his social media

Taking bio and chem at the same time

Quickly regrets that choice he made lol

Spends his spares annoying Renjun in art

Ends up painting his arm or hand and gets scolded by the art teacher

Friends with almost all of his teachers

Yes like Haechan he’s also that kid who the teachers know instantly by name and who they tell their other classes funny stories about

Probably almost blew up the chemistry lab with Haechan once

Now Haechan and him aren’t allowed to touch any of the lab equipment

Works out with jeno but sometimes slacks off

Makes jeno stop by the local coffee shop every morning on the dreamies way to school

[ Chenle ]

I don’t know why but I struggled so much with Chenles

It’s weird

He’s probably a band student who uses the piano in the room as often as he can.

He goes into the band room in the morning when jeno and Jaemin have early football practice and he goes when he has a spare

And when he’s still there after the school he plays the piano

I mean, he probably has like three pianos at home

But there’s something about the giant nearly empty room

And just playing the piano just to play

He’s a simple boy with simple desires

You can expect this boy will try out for the basketball team

And if he’s not with his friends or at a piano in the band room

He’ll probably be in the gym shooting hoops

Hate hate hates doing homework

He’s the main reason why Jisung gets nothing done too lol

Also if the dreamies aren’t “studying” at a cafe you can bet they are at Chenles house

And the only reason is because his house is the only one that can fit all six of them comfortably

Sometimes mark joins too, for old times sake

[ Jisung ]

You can fight me on this but this boy would be in the poetry slam club

He’s that quite cute boy who everyone glances at through out the meeting

Never used his locker

Instead he puts all his stuff in Chenles locker because, and I quote

“It’s easier”

Goes to all the sports games cause Chenle drags him there

Attempts to study

But we all not that ain’t happening

Gets really stressed during exam season

Probably eats one to many instant ramen packages

(He found Chenles secret stash)

Probably doesn’t skip class

Although he tried it once with Haechan but decided it wasn’t his thing

Eats lunch with the others at a near by food place every Friday as an end of the week treat

Is late to his afternoon class because they lost track of time

He’s the one always asking for a pencil or a pen

Probably tried out for the soccer team

And obviously got in

Kinda disappointed that the soccer season is short tho

But works hard none the less

Always forgetting his water bottle

Works on his writing when he has a moment of free time in class

Probably the kind to leave little love notes in his crushes locker

I don’t think he’s a huge party person

But he gets invited to a lot of them

Always complains about his student I.D photo 

But it’s not as bad as he says it is

Hands in assignments late because he keeps forgetting to do them

[fazedlight]

20 Questions More

A deeper and more detailed version of the 20 questions for AO3 fanfic writers. Thanks @eqt-95 and @inkedroplets for the tag!!

1) How do you keep getting ideas for your ship/fandom?

Daydreaming. Writing fanfic is secondary to that. It was only in the past couple of years that it occurred to me that I could write some of it down and see what happens.

2) Which authors inspire you in your fandom, and why are they so freakishly good?

@searidings is my absolute favorite, the way she unravels the characters' emotions and angst is absolutely superb.

3) Aside from the characters of your main ship, who are the characters you love to write?

Ohhh I really love this question:

Cat in Inauthentic, as well as this ficlet and this one. I love her sense of humor.

Lillian in Darkness in All Things. For the same reason as Cat, I just love her snark.

Zor-El in Even Though You're Kryptonian. He kind of surprised me when I started writing him, and to this day I don't know if some of his lines are driven by genuine confusion or if he's just trolling.

4) Are there pairings or tropes you know for sure you'd never write about? Which ones?

I'm a never-say-never kind of person. There's a lot that I don't think I would ever write, but I've been surprised on where stories have taken me before, and may be surprised again.

5) What is your writing process and why is it cursed?

"Process" might be an overstatement...

I have a "scribbles" doc where I keep my ideas. I cull ideas often (though ideas often make their way back anyway). As I write more into the doc, a certain idea may get too big for it, so I spin it out into its own doc.

From there, I kind of go back and forward between outlining and writing. I write completely out of order. Which is why, so often, my multichaps are almost fully drafted by the time I publish chapter 1. I've usually already made it to the resolution point of the plot (meaning, no one's in danger anymore, the bad guy is gone, etc), though the final chapter often doesn't get written until later.

6) What is your favorite part of your writing process?

I love when I've finished the first pass of a chapter/one-shot, and I'm in the editing stage. The story really feels like it's coming together at that point, and it's before all the self-doubt starts bubbling up (that hits hard just before posting).

7) What’s the weirdest thing you’ve had to research for a fic?

A friend of mine is a professor in astroparticle physics, so I spent a couple of hours asking him about quantum mechanics stuff. But only a small portion of that ended up being relevant to the fic and the rest was just for fun.

8) Is there a particular writing rule you struggle with (grammar, spelling, tense, reality in general)?

When I'm first sketching out a scene, about half the time I write in present tense (it feels more like I'm writing a play at that point sometimes), but I publish in past tense. So I end up needing to do a bunch of revisions 😭

Also TYPOS.

9) What was your hardest scene to write so far and why?

Fight scenes are ROUGH, man.

This is probably one of those answers I'll change every time depending what's at the top of my mind. But writing out a fight scene - like in Even Though You're Kryptonian, Darkness in All Things, or It's a Metallo Life - gets surprisingly difficult if there are more than 2 people.

I know exactly how I'd shoot those scenes if I had a camera crew, special effects, etc. But it's hard making sure the audience is aware of where everyone is positioned, why they can/can't act in the moment, etc.

10) Have your characters ever done something you didn’t expect, changing your plot completely?

All the fucking time, man. From the very beginning, even. I was trying to have Lena still be angry by the DEO scene in So I Kept Pretending, but that didn't make sense anymore.

I actually recently had a fic idea dissolve because it wasn't vibing with the characters. Which is fine, it became a ficlet instead!

11) If you could converse with any of the characters, who would it be and why?

Absolutely Kara. I have so many questions about kryptonian culture and how it drives her character.

12) What are some of the tropes or themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

Trope-wise, I definitely return to the Rift again and again. I find themes around forgiveness and understanding to be really interesting. Can two good-hearted people with conflicting needs hurt each other while still loving each other? How? What does that mean for the aftermath?

I think that's part of what draws me to supercorp - the complexity of their relationship. How they can both be right, and both be wrong, and love each other enough to rebuild from the ashes.

13) What's your most important resource as a writer?

Coffeeshops and libraries. Getting into slightly busy, cozy environments, out of the house, really helps shake loose the stuff in my head.

14) Can you share some of your strategies for editing and revising your work?

Especially for longer works, I tend to put the work down (and circle to other works, or go outside, or whatever) before coming back to it. It helps to step away for a bit - it's easier to pick up on repetitiveness or unclear passages when coming back.

Though I always find mistakes in my stories much later, so I'm not sure I'm one to give advice on this anyway 🤣

15) Which is worse: making the summary, picking the tags, or the anxiety when you post your fic?

Posting anxiety is the absolute worst. If I leave myself in front of my computer I'll end up refreshing constantly waiting for the first kudos (if it's a one-shot or first chapter) or the first comment (if it's a later chapter) to figure out if I've accidentally pissed off everyone in the fandom somehow.

Luckily, my partner will usually pull me away to go on a walk or grab lunch or do something else to take my mind off it 💗

16) How do you define success for your fanfic - hits? Kudos? Comments? Bookmarks? Or just if you like it?

I only publish what I like. Sometimes I'm nervous that other people won't like it, but I will always like it. Stories that aren't going a way I like - even if I think the idea is cool! - will dissolve. Just recently I dissolved one that felt like it was a cool idea, but it didn't make enough sense for the characters.

Kudos and comments always make me feel appreciated as an author!! Sometimes I'll get a user subscriber out of it, too, and it feels like an honor that someone would want to hear from me more than once.

The thing that feels most precious, though, is when someone comments on how something made them feel (I love making people laugh at my dumb jokes, or cry when a story is supposed to hit emotionally), or when they pick up on something that I wasn't sure would get picked up on.

I tend to lean towards understatement in my stories. For me, the biggest success is knowing that someone recognized what I was going for, without me being overt.

17) Do you have a playlist for your favorite character/ship?

Alas, I don't. But given that Kara is canonically a Britney Spears fan and musicals nerd, I feel like my default playlist works 🤣

18) If fan art was going to be made from your work, which fic would you pick and which fan artist would you like to create it?

Oh gosh, I don't want to pick someone and create pressure, or not pick someone and make them feel bad. This fandom has so many great artists!

That said, some of my favorites do commissions, you can see everything I've commission here.

19) How many WIPs do you currently have?

1 supercorp & 1 rojarias (for @supergirlmayhem)

For me, 2-3 is my happy number, so I'm relieved to be down to this after being so high (I think up to 11?) for so long.

20) What's your advice to new fanfic writers?

If you're wondering why you can't find that story you want, it might mean that you're the one to write it 💗

- - - - -

Tagging (respectfully and without pressure) @rustingcat @luthordamnvers @sssammich @tinyvariations @thatonebirdwrites @theredcapeofk @sideguitars @luthordamnvers @mycatismyeditor @inkedroplets @nottawriter @snowydragonscave @jetgirl1832 if you want some rapid-fire q's thrown your way. But also anyone who'd like to do this!

[heavenisaplaceonearth-with-you]

mkay - upsetting story time and rant.

!! heavy tw for s*xual assault !!

this is just something that's been bothering me that i need to get off my chest -

so there's this one horrible human being of a teacher who taught me english for three years. he's six years older than me, he's like a baby teacher, never had a job before this one. in my freshman year he became obsessed with my writing to a degree where he was asking me to send him my work every day (and now four years later i find out that he published something i wrote under his name on his blog. ew. and i have no way to prove it, because i gave it to him on paper and i don't have any other drafts).

now this made me horribly uncomfortable first of all because my first love, dance, was taken away from me when i was 11 when i got assaulted by my dance teacher (horrible time). and i didn't want the same thing to happen to writing yk? so i was hoping to get rid of him at the end of freshman year but no. he was my teacher in sophomore year. then junior year. it's well known in my school that teachers pick which students are in their class and everyone noticed i was the only student he kept putting in his class.

senior year he got kicked out ("mutual agreement" my ass) and was moved to the lower school.

all three of those years were hell let me just say. he could never leave me be. he started making suggestive comments, using the word pleasure wayyy too often in the wrong context while we were talking (he'd stop me in the hallway or call me from the other end of the hallway to talk even tho i was obviously busy and trying to turn away and not have the conversation). he would always sit too close, touch me too randomly, close the door when we were in a room together, looking at my chest instead of into my eyes. and the feeling horrible was amplified to a million bc of my previous experience with the dance teacher. i won't go through all the details but when i came asking for extra credit (i badly fucking needed it my dad would have ended my life if i had an A-) he said i had to read lolita and write an essay about it for him. everyone else who asked for extra credit just had to make a presentation on globalization. what the fuck.

even this year he kept coming and seeing me and talking to me because my drama class was in the lower school building (bc the school has no arts budget) and all my friends would notice him standing weirdly in front of the drama class door (it's made of glass) and they'd all stand around me to block me from view (i love them). this moron - he literally had the audacity to come up to me and ask to see my prom dress. barf.

so then there was this project we had to do where a member of the faculty had to be our advisor. i asked my english teacher from this year who saved my life she's literally my mom to choose me because the faculty get to choose the students. so she went to do it and then she saw i'd already been taken EVEN THO THE FORM WAS SENT LITERALLY 30 MINUTES EARLIER. and guess who'd picked me? exactly. the fucking weirdo.

so this is a project that carries on to senior year so even when he was not even teaching high school i kept needing to go meet with him. it was a nightmare.

one time tho we had a group study thing in the library to work on the project and all the advisors were there, including K. so when horrible human being came and sat next to me and did his usual weird touchy thing, K came over IN A FURY and was like "hey nastya" in a soft voice (me: awkward wave) then he turned on mr. weirdo in his stern angry pissed voice and says "i need to speak with you."

he took him away and i watched them talking and K was moving his hands very aggressively and nearly shouting at the other guy. then mr. gross monkey comes back and sits across from me instead of next to me and asks me if i need anything else with the project and i say no and then he leaves the library.

K passed by after and asked if i was feeling ok and i said yeah i'm good. he asked me what my project was about and i told him and he was really into it so he told me to tell him if i needed help with the project, they didn't have to bring mr. weirdo back up.

so my point is there is a healthy kind of mutual relationship that you can have with a teacher based on care and love and trust, but there are also some certain gross people who have relationships with students based on some weird sexual obsession. i was telling the counselor this whole story (pretty sure i got gross monkey fired - the counselor was enraged) and i was saying how i felt bad because what if my behavior was leading him on because i didn't put my foot down and tell him to leave me alone. but she said look, you're a kid. it's never your fault. no one has the permission to touch you unless you give it to them.

and that's what i wanted to say to you guys because even if you were actively pursuing a teacher/dropping hints whatever and then that teacher acts on those actions when you're a minor...it's still not your fault. you weren't 'asking for it' in any way. you're a child, the adult should know better.

bottom bottom bottom line is love doesn't always entail sexual feelings and when it does it can't JUST be the sexual feelings. that's where i think i draw the line between healthy and unhealthy student-teacher relationships.

also being a girl is really fucking hard.

thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[artknifeandglue]

as shattered stars shine: DVD commentary (part 1/12)

Home, sick, and desperately need to do something other than write, so I'm going to yell semi-coherently about as shattered stars shine, a story that seized my brain in end-April last year and refused to leave until I wrote the whole damn thing.

Will do it chapter by chapter, but post might be long, so cut.

“I’ll risk my life, I’ll give my life to you. After all, you gave me time, didn’t you? If all my desires could come true, if I could attain them, I want to see you I make my wish upon the stars” … If life would only return to you, if it could reach you, I don’t care what happens to me” -Mephisto by Queen Bee

I describe this fic as a Gift of the Magi meets Faust, which it pretty much is. Many thanks to Queen Bee for an emotionally devastating song. Now on to the writing process and commentary! (Note: I’m not going to put the whole fic here because that’d defeat the purpose of uploading it, and also because I feel really weird about posting the full 60k words here. Instead, I’ve taken quotes from it and put them here.)

Meteor showers, Eggsy knows, aren’t actually as rare as people think. Thirty of them in a year works out to one meteor shower somewhere every five weeks.

Quite literally the first line - this was the very first thing I wrote, and it stayed in all the way until the final draft (with some tiny revisions!). Originally, the second line had a throwaway comment about a primary school teacher having given him this bit of information. Also, this damn line alone kicked off a whole lot of reading about meteor showers. Many thanks to the International Meteor Organisation for their assistance.

Deep brown eyes flicker up towards Eggsy, and for a moment he feels as though they might in their intensity reveal his every secret, every corner of his soul. It should be intimidating, Eggsy knows. It should be frightening. Yet a shiver of excitement starts at the back of his neck and darts down his spine, leaves his hands tingling with something almost like the thrill of his escape, but better. How much richer, Eggsy thinks, how much warmer this feeling is, this business of feeling alive.

Kingsman’s story is that of Eggsy starting a new life as an agent, but his new life doesn’t start the moment he enters Kingsman – it starts when he goes to meet Harry Hart. Also relevant: this particular story’s themes of a second chance at life, at being alive.

“About two weeks and many hopeful glimpses up at the Galahad office window later, Eggsy takes a look in the mirror and accepts that yeah, okay, he might be just a little bit in love with Harry Hart…

Which, you know, writing on the wall and all that. Eggsy’s bi, not stupid.”

He’s a clever one, and he’s got his priorities in order. What else is there to say? They’re in looooove.

“…and yet all Eggsy finds himself needing is that rare fleeting moment in which Harry passes by, a stray comet crossing his path.”

Sticking the shooting-star metaphor (though comets aren’t meteors) in various places because I can. Also, though, Harry is the vehicle through which Eggsy’s hope for a better life comes true.

“Everything else, Eggsy thinks, can wait until after then. Later, he tells himself as he lies awake at night, the curve of Harry’s lips on his mind, the leap of his heart in his chest unaddressed. There will be time later…

Then a grenade goes off in a lecture hall, and then Eggsy finds himself right back at the beginning, out of time and alone.”

As seen in the lyrics, time is a recurring theme in this fic: Eggsy runs out of time to confess, Harry runs out of time to apologise, and then Eggsy runs out of his soul-traded time when he gets shot. The Deal with the Devil comes in precisely because of this – Eggsy isn’t willing to accept that he’s run out of time, and later, neither is Harry.

“Two-thirds into a twenty-kilometre night run, Eggsy glares at the stars sparkling in the night and reminds them you don’t do shit…

Until they do.”

Cosmic coincidence or intentional tempting of Eggsy? A little from Column A, a little from Column B. He’s still holding on to the last vestiges of the idealistic notion of wishing upon a star, and having the stars actually grant one (1) wish would push him a little more in that direction, while also setting him up for greater disappointment and resentment later!

“Above him, as though in answer, the flickering light of the stars winks back, hopeful and glimmering, like a promise from a benevolent universe.”

Personification! There’s an excellent reason why the stars seem almost alive and sentient, at least in this fic.

Bring him back, he demands, the words part spite and part despair. Above him, brilliant and blazing, meteors rocket to their deaths and fizzle out one by one, taking with them the emptiness of his rage. I’ll trade you anything if you bring him back.

So my favourite work is The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the corruption/perversion of beauty is something I personally enjoy exploring. How can we take a bunch of beautiful things (the night sky, a meteor shower, the stars) and attribute to them a sort of tragedy/terror in their beauty? Dunno. I like to think I’ve done it somewhat well over this fic.  

In the armchair where Chester King had sat and handed him a gun, someone sits nursing a glass of scotch. “Hello, Eggsy. Care for a drink?”

Why is Arthur’s office also the Devil’s office? Jokes about Chester King being the literal Devil aside, I think having Eggsy constantly revisit the place where it all started going wrong – dare I say his own personal hell? – is fitting. What better way to convince a man to sell his soul than to bring him back to the beginning of the end and show him you can fix this for a small, small price?

But there is one truth achingly, excruciatingly familiar to him, one thing he knows not by training but by a lifetime of hanging in there by the skin of his teeth: second chances don’t come often, not to people like him. Second chances don’t ever come back, and some of them don’t come at all unless bought for with blood the way Dad did seventeen years ago. Seventeen years of snatching tomorrows from the hands of an uncaring universe, and now a second chance — both his and Harry’s — sits in front of him in that stupid armchair, empty crystal glass in hand, waiting.

A central motivation for Eggsy in this fic is seizing an opportunity when it presents itself. His canon backstory makes it clear that opportunities have been in short supply all his life, and I think he’d be acutely aware of this fact. Coupled with grief and love, it makes him all the more likely to accept Mephistopheles’ deal.

It’s like being dunked into ice water, like being turned inside out and torn apart, scattered in a million pieces across space and time unending.

The stranger throws his empty glass onto the hearth, where it shatters into sparkling fragments upon the logs that shimmer and gleam like stars. The flame hisses, roars and leaps out of the fireplace, licking at Eggsy’s calves like a promise, a premonition, burning—

Star references! But also, flames of hell foreshadowing.

Eggsy jolts awake to find sunrays spilling through the window into a house he has no memory of going home to, sunlight warm against his legs where he must have kicked the covers off in restless sleep. It is morning. He is in his bed, alone.

If the stars at night are a dark and terrifying force in the story, surely morning is a positive one? Except the sun is a star too. Hehe.

…an effort that Roxy lays waste to when she bursts into his office at half past noon and slaps his laptop shut just to tell him about Merlin’s latest phone call. A frazzled lady calling in to the Kingsman main line with only the words Oxfords, not brogues to identify her, begging to speak to literally anybody. A previously unidentified person has just woken up in the mortuary of a hospital and demanded that they call this number, but he won’t say anything about who he is or what’s happened to him, and can someone please come get him?

Roxy doesn’t appear all that much in the fic, chiefly because this is meant to revolve around Hartwin and how we get to a point where they’d both sell their souls for the other person, but I love her and want to write more of her. The phone call line was second to be written (after the first line of the fic) and has stayed exactly as it was in previous drafts.

In the half-hour of pre-takeoff preparations, mind trapped between an English manor he has already left behind and a Kentucky hospital he won’t arrive at for eighteen more hours, he wastes the minutes away mindlessly flicking through several social media apps, their content a passing torrent of information that slips past his consciousness and away into the unknown. Celebrity is pregnant. Jamal’s got a new jacket. Bitcoin. Celebrity is dating other celebrity. Meteor shower peaks tomorrow. Ryan’s found a hundred quid on the pavement. Something about cryptocurrency. Personality test about a horse or a lightbulb. Celebrity affair. Celebrity divorce. AI. Bitcoin, again.

Research I didn’t think I’d need to do but ended up exploring: flight times from place to place, but also social media trends and topics in 2015-2016.

Before Eggsy leaves, he fishes out the worn Kingsman medal from his pocket and presses it into Harry’s palm. It sits like a talisman in his grip, fingers curled loosely around it. On some level, Eggsy thinks, it is. It did save him at least once, so what’s a second time?

Lee’s medal! I like to think it signifies different things to Harry and Eggsy – for Eggsy, it’s his second chance, a symbol of hope; for Harry, it’s the sign of one of his greatest failures, a symbol of guilt. Therein lies the duality of this fic and of Harry and Eggsy’s motivations for selling their souls. (More on Harry’s in the commentary on later chapters.)

That night, he dreams of the rooftop again, of sitting under an ink-black sky full of stars. They flicker and wink at him, parties to a secret between him and the universe.

At the end of the chapter, all is well! Sort of. Not entirely.

[terriyakiblack]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! 🧡🧡

boy you know what DOESN’T make me happy? Coming home to a dead PC. Shit on a stick that was a pain in the ass to fix. augh my poor fingiesss

1) So funnily enough, I can list problem solving / working on my PC as one thing. I was furious when I got home, it’s been a day, but holy shit it was a good feeling to get that new power box in and see it finally start up. Chef’s kiss.

2) Making stuff. Not necessarily being artistic, depending on how you look at it, but I’ve been working on a video project for a while now, almost done with it, and it just… feels good to make something. No real details ‘cause I like to keep certain personalities a little separate, but watching that timeline in my video editor go from nothing but a green bar of script I recorded to tons of cut and spliced footage just feels real good way deep inside, like around your pancreas or something, y’know?

3) I could just say Sea of Thieves and leave it at that but I’ll do you one better: sitting down with a Pepsi and snack, getting online — be it planned or not — grabbing the guys and going out on the seas is a fuckin vibe. It’s just nice, but if you add onto that some successful hunting or going out and coming back with a new story to tell, there’s nothing like it. I wouldn’t trade my mates for anything because they’re everything to me.

4) I’m absolutely awful about music and listen to damn near anything and it depends on how I’m feeling that particular day, but when I read my own mood right, find the right music and it sounds good, it hits right it is a damned good time.

5) I feel like I’m cheating a little bit here by saying this after already listing ‘making stuff’ but the Do You Think Sharks Have Feelings? project is deeply important to me. I note my official start time of it as September of 2020, but I know I had some brainstorming going on in the months leading up to that, but that means it’s been at my side through some pretty rough shit. By early April of 2021 I had written about five parts to it, IIRC, or it was four and then I split one part. I manged to write what I felt was an impressive amount of material then, and I kept going. Slowly, very slowly, but surely. Actually, it was a pitiful amount I got done over the next year, but I had the ideas in my head. When I was finally diagnosed with stuff and given medication, my ability to write took the fuck off. … things… in the house settled as well as I realistically should have hoped for, but it became bearable. Every first draft written, edited, and marked complete gave me a feeling like no other. Writing this dumb thing puts me in a great mood, even when I’ve taken a small break. Ever since April of 2022, I’ve been writing constantly. An annoying amount, even, sometimes, writing as we sail between islands or wanting to work on it instead of playing something, stuff like that. But the point is that no matter if I’m stumped on the part I’m working on or if I’m blitzing down an entire chapter in one day (done that twice now oops), I love this stupid thing.

[co-reborn]

2023 Update

Most normal people would do this in January, but here I am being a weirdo and doing it in February. Why is that so? Well, it’s because my life has taken a major change exactly a year ago so I’m doing it now instead.

Life isn’t too bad, I’m not very busy but I can’t get to writing as easily as I used to. I still want to write, I still spend some time every other day opening up a draft but the words aren’t coming as easily as before. 

This update will mainly be talking about my drafts and asks along with other random bullshit:

Drafts

Throw everything you expect from me out of the window. I don’t even know what I want to commit to anymore. My two original series are pretty much dead and I lack the drive to complete them. A part of me really wants to even delete the rewrites but I would not for the memory of them. Just don’t expect a continuation of them at all, let alone the completion of them. 

I think the only few drafts I’m really interested in are some college AU smuts (like Bust or Bust) along with trying to get Conquered Odds to a satisfying conclusion. However as usual, ideas come in the most random places so I might stray away from these again in the future. 

Basically, don’t expect any specific piece from me. If something even comes out, hope you guys appreciate it and continue supporting me. 

Asks

I have been ignoring many many asks for the past year and I’m not really in any mood to get to them whenever I do have free time. So I intend to delete all of them and empty my inbox for a fresh start. Going forward, I will try to answer them but I also can’t guarantee answering them. If I don’t feel like it, I’ll likely just delete it. Hope there are no hard feelings. If I don’t want to, I don’t want to. As easy as that.

Community Labels

So ever since this bullshit has been a thing, I mainly upload my posts with them immediately but I don’t think all my readers see them because they are hidden due to the mature tag. Look at this post by peach on how to turn off the filter. 

To avoid missing out on my posts, I do hope you guys also check out my pinned post or my (desktop) masterlist on my latest works. I will not be posting my stories with the tag immediately but will delay it for maybe a week or two, or good ol’ Tumblr decides to put it for me. 

Confidence

My confidence is fluctuating a lot these days. Sometimes I come in wanting to write, then I sit in front of my computer/phone and no words come out. From my POV, there’s no better way to get a gauge of how the general readers view my works other than notes so I tend to over fixate on them at times. The other writers are always amazing at conveying their feelings about them but it’s really hard to get any form of feedback from readers. 

I say this, but I don’t really want to reach out to you guys to send asks for some feedback but just to let you guys know how I feel about this and a little more about myself.

I’ll try to continue growing as a writer, but I feel like I’m stagnating a lot. Sometimes I want to try something different but I don’t know how to get started. So I go in a circle and go back to the default. Ok I think I’m ranting at this point and I don’t know where I’m going with this lol.

---

That’s it for the 2023 update, see you guys again if/when a new fic is out (probably)

[masked-marauder]

FORWARD MARCH HARE (1952)

Director: Chuck Jones

Story: Michael Maltese

Animation: Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam

Release Date: February 14, 1953

I've always found this cartoon to be extremely interesting, as it doesn't really follow the formula of your average Bugs Bunny. Instead of showing him outsmarting a foe, it's just him causing trouble unintentionally. It feels a lot more like something you'd find in a Mickey Mouse or Goofy cartoon. Not that I find that to be a bad thing, though. This cartoon is full of great, subtle gags that you'd have to rewatch to notice.

The cartoon begins with Bugs, doing his... morning workouts? This seems like somewhat of a one-off thing and it isn't really ever brought back up, but I find the sheer pointlessness of it funny. Anyway, while he's doing them, a letter accidentally slips into his hole for Bertram Bonny, or B. Bonny. Bugs notices this and mistakes it Bonny for him, believing that he has been drafted. I always wondered who Bertram Bonny was, and how he got stuck with such a stupid name.

Anyway, it cuts to him, in the induction center. This leads to a bunch of great little gags, like the man looking at him, turning to the screen and letting out a small snicker, and turning back.

Another great little gag comes with the doctor examining Bugs's skeleton, only to come to the conclusion that he doesn't get paid enough for this job.

My favorite out of all of these induction gags comes from him, doing the eye exam and passing it so well that he reads off the disclaimer at the bottom. I know that this gag is kind of reused from Hot Cross Bunny, but it's funny, so who cares?

We soon find Bugs, reporting for basic training. This sets up a lot of gags, such as him knocking over a bunch of the other privates like bowling pins.

Throughout the cartoon, there's this great running visual gag where every time Bugs messes up, the next time we see the drill sergeant, he has been demoted a rank.

Another great visual gag comes from Bugs, showering in the colonel's helmet. "Cleanliness is next to godliness", he states.

All of this culminates in one of, if not my favorite ammunition shell LT gags (trust me, there's a lot), where Bugs tries hammering a nail for a calendar WITH a shell. There's something charming about seeing Bugs with such a childlike sense of stupidity.

As the ammunition shell bursts out of the quarters, we get a neat little visual gag of the colonel, with his helmet having a huge chunk taken out of it due to the shell shooting it.

At this point, it finally becomes clear to the sergeant (who has been reduced to the rank of PRIVATE) that Bugs is NOT Bertram. Despite not being able to serve in the army due to being a, well, rabbit, Bugs, ever the patriot, still wants to do his part for his country. Luckily, there IS a way. This culminates in one of the most hilariously morbid endings for a Bugs Bunny cartoon ever. Bugs is shown hitting ammunition shells with a hammer on an assembly line, labelling the ones that don't explode as "DUDS". And just think, in 30 years he can retire!

All in all, despite its unusual setup, Forward March Hare is a wonderfully written cartoon, chockfull of great slapstick and visual gags. You can view it here!

And so, this marks my first full-on "cartoon review". It can only go down from here.